“Look at that, Elinor,” said Mrs. Dennistoun, next day, when she had read, twice over, a letter, large and emblazoned with a very big monogram, which Elinor, well perceiving from whom it came, had furtively watched the effect of from behind an exceeding small letter of her own. Phil was not remarkable as a correspondent: his style was that of the primitive mind which hopes its correspondent is well, “as this leaves me.” He had never much more to say.

“From Mariamne, mamma?”

“She takes great pains to make us certain of that{vol. i_204} fact at least,” Mrs. Dennistoun said; which indeed was very true, for the name of the writer was sprawled in gilt letters half over the sheet. And this was how it ran:—

{vol. i_205}

“The first name very big and the second very small,” said Mrs. Dennistoun, as she received the letter back.

“I am sure we are much obliged to her for not coming, mamma!”

“Perhaps—but not for this announcement of her not coming. I don’t wish to say anything against your new relations, Elinor——”

“You need not put any restraint upon yourself in consideration of my feelings,” said Elinor, with a flush of annoyance.

And this made Mrs. Dennistoun pause. They ate their breakfast, which was a very light meal, in silence. It was the day before the wedding. The rooms down-stairs had been carefully prepared for Phil’s sister. Though Mrs. Dennistoun was too proud to say anything about it, she had taken great pains to make these pretty rooms as much like a fine lady’s chamber as had been possible. She had put up new curtains, and a Persian carpet, and looked out of her stores all the pretty things she could find to decorate the two rooms of the little apartment. She had gone in on the way down-stairs to take a final survey, and it seemed to her that they were very pretty. No picture could have been more beautiful than the view from the long low lattice window, in which, as in a frame, was set the foreground of the copse with its glimpses of ruddy heather and the long sweep of the heights beyond, which stretched away into the infinite. That at least {vol. i_206}could not be surpassed anywhere; and the Persian carpet was like moss under foot, and the chairs luxurious—and there was a collection of old china in some open shelves which would have made the mouth of an amateur water. Well! it was Lady Mariamne’s own loss if she preferred the chance of picking up a little fun in the evening, to spending the night decorously in that pretty apartment, and making further acquaintance with her new sister. It was entirely, Mrs. Dennistoun said to herself, a matter for her own choice. But she was much affronted all the same.

“It will be very inconvenient indeed sending a carriage for her, Elinor. Except the carriage that is to take you to church there is none good enough for this fine lady. I had concluded she would go in your uncle Tatham’s carriage. It may be very fine to have a Lady Mariamne in one’s party, but it is a great nuisance to have to change all one’s arrangements at the last moment.”

“If you were to send the wagonette from the Bull’s Head, as rough as possible, with two of the farm horses, she would think it genre, if not chic——”

“I cannot put up with all this nonsense!” cried Mrs. Dennistoun, with a flush on her cheek. “You are just as bad as they are, Elinor, to suggest such a thing! I have held my own place in society wherever I have been, and I don’t choose to be condescended to or laughed at, in fact, by any visitor in the world!”

“Mamma! do you think any one would ever compare you with Mariamne—the Jew?{vol. i_207}”

“Don’t exasperate me with those abominable nicknames. They will give you one next. She is an exceedingly ill-bred and ill-mannered woman. Picking up a little fun in the evening! What does she mean by picking up a little fun——”

“They will perhaps go to the theatre—a number of them; and as nobody is in town they will laugh very much at the kind of people, and perhaps the kind of play—and it will be a great joke ever after among themselves—for of course there will be a number of them together,” said Elinor, disclosing her acquaintance with the habits of her new family with downcast eyes.

“How can well-born people be so vulgar and ill-bred?” cried Mrs. Dennistoun. “I must say for Philip that though he is careless and not nearly so particular as I should like, still he is not like that. He has something of the politeness of the heart.”

Elinor did not raise her downcast eyes. Phil had been on his very good behaviour on the occasion of his last hurried visit, but she did not feel that she could answer even for Phil. “I am very glad anyhow, that she is not coming, mamma: at least we shall have the last night and the last morning to ourselves.”

Mrs. Dennistoun shook her head. “The Tathams will be here,” she said; “and everybody, to dinner—all the party. We must go now and see how we can enlarge the table. To-night’s party will be the largest we have ever had in the cottage.” She sighed a little and paused, restraining herself. “We shall have no quiet{vol. i_208} evening—nor morning either—again; it will be a bustle and a rush. You and I will never have any more quiet evenings, Elinor: for when you come back it will be another thing.”

“Oh, mother!” cried Elinor, throwing herself into her mother’s arms: and for a moment they stood closely clasped, feeling as if their hearts would burst, yet very well aware, too, underneath, that any number of quiet evenings would be as the last, when, with hearts full of a thousand things to say to each other, they said almost nothing—which in some respects was worse than having no quiet evenings evermore.

In the afternoon Phil arrived, having returned from Ireland that morning, and paused only to refresh himself in the chambers which he still retained in town. He had met all his hunting friends during the three days he had been away; and though he retained a gallant appearance, and looked, as Alice Hudson thought, “very aristocratic,” Mrs. Dennistoun caught with anxiety a worn-out look—the look of excitement, of nights without sleep, much smoke, and, perhaps, much wine, in his eyes. What a woman feels who has to hand over her spotless child, the most dear and pure thing upon earth, to a man fresh from those indulgences and dissipations which never seem harmless, and always are repellent to a woman, is not to be described. Fortunately the bride herself, in invincible ignorance and unconsciousness, seldom feels in that way. To Elinor her lover looked tired about the eyes, which was very{vol. i_209} well explained by his night journey, and by the agitation of the moment. And, indeed, she did not see very much of Phil, who had his friends with him—his aide-de-camp, Bolsover, and his brother Harry. These three gentlemen carried an atmosphere of smoke and other scents with them into the lavender of the Rectory, which was too amazing in that hemisphere for words, and talked their own talk in the midst of the fringe of rustics who were their hosts, with a calm which was extraordinary, breaking into the midst of the Rector’s long-winded, amiable sentences, and talking to each other over Mrs. Hudson’s head. “I say, Dick, don’t you remember?” “By Jove, Phil, you are too bad!” sounded, with many other such expressions and reminders, over the Rectory party, strictly silent round their own table, trying to make a courteous remark now and then, but confounded, in their simple country good manners, by the fine gentlemen. And then there was the dinner-party at the cottage in the evening, to which Mr. and Mrs. Hudson were invited. Such a dinner-party! Old Mr. Tatham, who was a country gentleman from Dorsetshire, with his nice daughter, Mary Tatham, a quiet country young lady, accustomed, when she went into the world at all, to the serious young men of the Temple, and John’s much-occupied friends, who had their own asides about cases, and what So-and-So had said in court, but were much too well-bred before ladies to fall into “shop;” and Mr. and Mrs. Hudson, who were such as we know them; and the brid{vol. i_210}e’s mother, a little anxious, but always debonair; and Elinor herself, in all the haze and sweet confusion of the great era which approached so closely. The three men made the strangest addition that can be conceived to the quiet guests; but things went better under the discipline of the dinner, especially as Sir John Huntingtower, who was a Master of the hounds and an old friend of the Dennistouns, was of the party, and Lady Huntingtower, who was an impressive person, and knew the world. This lady was very warm in her congratulations to Mrs. Dennistoun after dinner on the absence of Lady Mariamne. “I think you are the luckiest woman that ever was to have got clear of that dreadful creature,” she said. “Oh, there is nothing wrong about her that I know. She goes everywhere with her dogs and her cavaliers servantes. There’s safety in numbers, my dear. She has always two of them at least hanging about her to fetch and carry, and she thinks a great deal more of her dogs; but I can’t think what you could have done with her here.”

“And what will my Elinor do in such a sphere?” the troubled mother permitted herself to say.

“Oh, if that were all,” said Lady Huntingtower, lifting up her fat hands—she was one of those who had protested against the marriage, but now that it had come to this point, and could not be broken off, the judicious woman thought it right to make the best of it—“Elinor need not be any the worse,” she said. “Thank heaven, you are not obliged to be mixed up{vol. i_211} with your husband’s sister. Elinor must take a line of her own. You should come to town yourself her first season, and help her on. You used to know plenty of people.”

“But they say,” said Mrs. Dennistoun, “that it is so much better to leave a young couple to themselves, and that a mother is always in the way.”

“If I were you I would not pay the least attention to what they say. If you hold back too much they will say, ‘There was her own mother, knowing numbers of nice people, that never took the trouble to lend her a hand.’”

“I hope,” said Mrs. Dennistoun, turning round immediately to this other aspect of affairs, “that it never will be necessary for the world to interest itself at all in my child’s affairs.”

“Well, of course, that is the best,” Lady Huntingtower allowed, “if she just goes softly for a year or two till she feels her way.”

“But then she is so young, and so little accustomed to act for herself,” said the mother, with another change of flank.

“Oh, Elinor has a great deal of spirit. She must just make a stand against the Compton set and take her own line.”

Mrs. Hudson and Alice and Miss Tatham were at the other end of the room exchanging a few criticisms under their breath, and disposed to think that they were neglected by their hostess for the greater person{vol. i_212}age with whom she was in such close conversation. And Lady Mariamne’s defection was a great disappointment to them all. “I should like to have seen a fine lady quite close,” said Mary (it was not; I think, usual to speak of “smart” people in those days), “one there could be no doubt about, a little fast and all that. I have seen them in town at a distance, but all the people we know are sure country people.”

“My dear,” said Mrs. Hudson, primly, “I don’t like to hear you talk of any other kind. An English lady, I hope, whatever is her rank, can only be of one kind.”

“Oh, mamma, you know very well Lady Mariamne is as different from Lady Huntingtower as——”

“Don’t mention names, my dear; it is not well-bred. The one is young, and naturally fond of gayety; the other—well, is not quite so young, and stout, and all that.”

“Oh, that is all very well,” said Alice; “but Aunt Mary says——”

Miss Dale was coming in the evening, and the Miss Hills, and the curate, and the doctor, and various other people, who could not be asked to dinner, to whom it had been carefully explained (which, indeed, was a fact they knew) that to dine twelve people in the little dining-room of the cottage was a feat which was accomplished with difficulty, and that more was impossible. Society at Windyhill was very tolerant and understanding on this point, for all the dining-rooms were small, except, indeed, when you come to talk of such{vol. i_213} places as Huntingtower—and they were very glad to be permitted to have a peep at the bridegroom on these terms, or rather, if truth were told, of the bride, and how she was bearing herself so near the crisis of her fate. The bridegroom is seldom very interesting on such occasions. On the present occasion he was more interesting than usual, because he was the Honourable Philip, and because he had a reputation of which most people had heard something. There was a mixture of alarm and suspicion in respect to him which increased the excitement; and many remarks of varied kinds were made. “I think the fellow’s face quite bears out his character,” said the doctor to the Rector. “What a man to trust a nice girl to!” Mr. Hudson felt that as the bridegroom was living under his roof he was partially responsible, and discouraged this pessimistic view. “Mr. Compton has not, perhaps, had all the advantages one tries to secure for one’s own son,” he said, “but I have reason to believe that the things that have been said of him are much exaggerated.” “Oh, advantages!” said the doctor, thinking of Alick, of whom it was his strongly expressed opinion that the fellow should be turned out to rough it, and not coddled up and spoiled at home. But while these remarks were going on, Miss Hill had been expressing to the curate an entirely different view. “I think he has a beautiful face,” she said with the emphasis some ladies use; “a little worn, perhaps, with being too much in the world, and I wish he had a better colour. To me he looks{vol. i_214} delicate: but what delightful features, Mr. Whitebands, and what an aristocratic air!”

“He looks tremendously up to everything,” the curate said, with a faint tone of envy in his voice.

“Don’t he just?” cried Alick Hudson. “I should think there wasn’t a thing he couldn’t do—of things that men do do, don’t you know,” cried that carefully trained boy, whose style was confused, though his meaning was good. But probably there were almost as many opinions about Phil as there were people in the room. His two backers-up stood in a corner—half intimidated, half contemptuous of the country people. “Queer lot for Phil to fall among,” said Dick Bolsover. “Que diable allait-il faire dans cette galÈre?” said Harry Compton, who had been about the world. “Oh, bosh with your French, that nobody understands,” said the best man.

But in the meantime Phil was not there at all to be seen of men. He had stolen out into the garden, where there was a white vision awaiting him in the milky moonlight. The autumn haze had come early this season, and the moon was misty, veiled with white amid a jumble of soft floating vapours in the sky. Elinor stood among the flowers, which showed some strange subdued tints of colours in the flooding of the white light, like a bit of consolidated moonlight in her white dress. She had a white shawl covering her from head to foot, with a corner thrown over her hair. What had they to say to each other that last night?{vol. i_215} Not much; nothing at all that had any information in it—whispers inaudible almost to each other. There was something in being together for this stolen moment, just on the eve of their being together for always, which had a charm of its own. After to-night, no stealing away, no escape to the garden, no little conspiracy to attain a meeting—the last of all those delightful schemings and devices. They started when they heard a sound from the house, and sped along the paths into the shadow like the conspirators they were—but never to conspire more after this last enthralling time.

“You’re not frightened, Nell?”

“No—except a little. There is one thing——”

“What is it, my pet? If it’s to the half of my kingdom, it shall be done.”

“Phil, we are going to be very good when we are together? don’t laugh—to help each other?”

He did laugh low, not to be heard, but long. “I shall have no temptation,” he said, “to be anything but good, you little goose of a Nell,” taking it for a warning of possible jealousy to come.

“Oh, but I mean both of us—to help each other.”

“Why, Nell, I know you’ll never go wrong——”

She gave him a little impatient shake. “You will not understand me, Phil. We will try to be better than we’ve ever been. To be good—don’t you know what that means?—in every way, before God.”

Her voice dropped very low, and he was for a{vol. i_216} moment overawed. “You mean going to church, Nell?”

“I mean—yes, that for one thing; and many other things.”

“That’s dropping rather strong upon a fellow,” he said, “just at this moment, don’t you think, when I must say yes to everything you say.”

“Oh, I don’t mean it in that way; and I was not thinking of church particularly; but to be good, very good, true and kind, in our hearts.”

“You are all that already, Nell.”

“Oh, no, not what I mean. When there are two of us instead of one we can do so much more.”

“Well, my pet, it’s for you to make out the much more. I’m quite content with you as you are; it’s me that you want to improve, and heaven knows there’s plenty of room for that.”

“No, Phil, not you more than me,” she said.

“We’ll choose a place where the sermon’s short, and we’ll see about it. You mean little minx, to bind a man down to go to church, the night before his wedding day!”

And then there was a sound of movement indoors, and after a little while the bride appeared among the guests with a little more colour than usual, and an anxiously explanatory description of something she had been obliged to do; and the confused hour flew on with much sound of talking and very little understanding of what was said. And then all the visitors streamed{vol. i_217} away group after group into the moonlight, disappearing like ghosts under the shadow of the trees. Finally, the Rectory party went too, the three mild ladies surrounded by an exciting circle of cigars; for Alick, of course, had broken all bonds, and even the Rector accepted that rare indulgence. Alice Hudson half deplored, half exulted for years after in the scent that would cling round one particular evening dress. Five gentlemen, all with cigars, and papa as bad as any of them! There had never been such an extraordinary experience in her life.

And then the Tathams, too, withdrew, and the mother and daughter stood alone on their own hearth. Oh, so much, so much as there was to say! but how were they to say it?—the last moment, which was so precious and so intolerable—the moment that would never come again.

“You were a long time with Philip, Elinor, in the garden. I think all your old friends—— the last night.”

“I wanted to say something to him, mamma, that I had never had the courage to say.”

Mrs. Dennistoun had been looking dully into the dim mirror over the mantlepiece. She turned half round to her daughter with an inquiring look.

“Oh, mamma, I wanted to say to him that we must be good! We’re so happy. God is so kind to us; and you—if you suppose I don’t think of you! It was to say to him—building our house upon all this, Go{vol. i_218}d’s mercy and your loss, and all—that we are doubly, doubly bound to serve—and to love—and to be good people before God; and like you, mother, like you!”

“My darling!” Mrs. Dennistoun said. And that was all. She asked no questions as to how it was to be done, or what he replied. Elinor had broken down hysterically, and sobbed out the words one at a time, as they would come through the choking in her throat. Needless to say that she ended in her mother’s arms, her head upon the bosom which had nursed her, her slight weight dependent upon the supporter and protector of all her life.

That was the last evening. There remained the last morning to come; and after that—what? The great sea of an unknown life, a new pilot, and a ship untried.