There was a strong bond between Ellinor and Dixon, although they scarcely ever exchanged a word save on the most common-place subjects; but their silence was based on different feelings from that which separated Ellinor from her father. Ellinor and Dixon could not speak freely, because their hearts were full of pity for the faulty man whom they both loved so well, and tried so hard to respect.
This was the state of the household to which Ralph Corbet came down at Easter. He might have been known in London as a brilliant diner-out by this time; but he could not afford to throw his life away in fireworks; he calculated his forces, and condensed their power as much as might be, only visiting where he was likely to meet men who could help in his future career. He had been invited to spend the Easter vacation at a certain country house which would be full of such human stepping-stones; and he declined in order to keep his word to Ellinor, and go to Ford Bank. But he could not help looking upon himself a little in the light of a martyr to duty; and perhaps this view of his own merits made him chafe under his future father-in-law’s irritability of manner, which now showed itself even to him. He found himself distinctly regretting that he had suffered himself to be engaged so early in life; and having become conscious of the temptation and not having repelled it at once, of course it returned and returned, and gradually obtained the mastery over him. What was to be gained by keeping to his engagement with Ellinor? He should have a delicate wife to look after, and even more than the common additional expenses of married life. He should have a father-in-law whose character at best had had only a local and provincial respectability, which it was now daily losing by habits which were both sensual and vulgarising; a man, too, who was strangely changing from joyous geniality into moody surliness. Besides, he doubted if, in the evident change in the prosperity of the family, the fortune to be paid down on the occasion of his marriage to Ellinor could be forthcoming. And above all, and around all, there hovered the shadow of some unrevealed disgrace, which might come to light at any time and involve him in it. He thought he had pretty well ascertained the nature of this possible shame, and had little doubt it would turn out to be that Dunster’s disappearance, to America or elsewhere, had been an arranged plan with Mr. Wilkins. Although Mr. Ralph Corbet was capable of suspecting him of this mean crime (so far removed from the impulsive commission of the past sin which was dragging him daily lower and lower down), it was of a kind that was peculiarly distasteful to the acute lawyer, who foresaw how such base conduct would taint all whose names were ever mentioned, even by chance, in connection with it. He used to lie miserably tossing on his sleepless bed, turning over these things in the night season. He was tormented by all these thoughts; he would bitterly regret the past events that connected him with Ellinor, from the day when he first came to read with Mr. Ness up to the present time. But when he came down in the morning, and saw the faded Ellinor flash into momentary beauty at his entrance into the dining-room, and when she blushingly drew near with the one single flower freshly gathered, which it had been her custom to place in his button-hole when he came down to breakfast, he felt as if his better self was stronger than temptation, and as if he must be an honest man and honourable lover, even against his wish.
As the day wore on the temptation gathered strength. Mr. Wilkins came down, and while he was on the scene Ellinor seemed always engrossed by her father, who apparently cared little enough for all her attentions. Then there was a complaining of the food, which did not suit the sickly palate of a man who had drunk hard the night before; and possibly these complaints were extended to the servants, and their incompleteness or incapacity was thus brought prominently before the eyes of Ralph, who would have preferred to eat a dry crust in silence, or to have gone without breakfast altogether, if he could have had intellectual conversation of some high order, to having the greatest dainties with the knowledge of the care required in their preparation thus coarsely discussed before him. By the time such breakfasts were finished, Ellinor looked thirty, and her spirits were gone for the day. It had become difficult for Ralph to contract his mind to her small domestic interests, and she had little else to talk to him about, now that he responded but curtly to all her questions about himself, and was weary of professing a love which he was ceasing to feel, in all the passionate nothings which usually make up so much of lovers’ talk. The books she had been reading were old classics, whose place in literature no longer admitted of keen discussion; the poor whom she cared for were all very well in their way; and, if they could have been brought in to illustrate a theory, hearing about them might have been of some use; but, as it was, it was simply tiresome to hear day after day of Betty Palmer’s rheumatism and Mrs. Kay’s baby’s fits. There was no talking politics with her, because she was so ignorant that she always agreed with everything he said.
He even grew to find luncheon and Miss Monro not unpleasant varieties to his monotonous tête-à-têtes. Then came the walk, generally to the town to fetch Mr. Wilkins from his office; and once or twice it was pretty evident how he had been employing his hours. One day in particular his walk was so unsteady and his speech so thick, that Ralph could only wonder how it was that Ellinor did not perceive the cause; but she was too openly anxious about the headache of which her father complained to have been at all aware of the previous self-indulgence which must have brought it on. This very afternoon, as ill-luck would have it, the Duke of Hinton and a gentleman whom Ralph had met in town at Lord Bolton’s rode by, and recognised him; saw Ralph supporting a tipsy man with such quiet friendly interest as must show all passers-by that they were previous friends. Mr. Corbet chafed and fumed inwardly all the way home after this unfortunate occurrence; he was in a thoroughly evil temper before they reached Ford Bank, but he had too much self-command to let this be very apparent. He turned into the shrubbery paths, leaving Ellinor to take her father into the quietness of his own room, there to lie down and shake off his headache.
Ralph walked along, ruminating in gloomy mood as to what was to be done; how he could best extricate himself from the miserable relation in which he had placed himself by giving way to impulse. Almost before he was aware, a little hand stole within his folded arms, and Ellinor’s sweet sad eyes looked into his.
“I have put papa down for an hour’s rest before dinner,” said she. “His head seems to ache terribly.”
Ralph was silent and unsympathising, trying to nerve himself up to be disagreeable, but finding it difficult in the face of such sweet trust.
“Do you remember our conversation last autumn, Ellinor?” he began at length.
Her head sunk. They were near a garden-seat, and she quietly sat down, without speaking.
“About some disgrace which you then fancied hung over you?” No answer. “Does it still hang over you?”
“Yes!” she whispered, with a heavy sigh.
“And your father knows this, of course?”
“Yes!” again, in the same tone; and then silence.
“I think it is doing him harm,” at length Ralph went on, decidedly.
“I am afraid it is,” she said, in a low tone.
“I wish you would tell me what it is,” he said, a little impatiently. “I might be able to help you about it.”
“No! you could not,” replied Ellinor. “I was sorry to my very heart to tell you what I did; I did not want help; all that is past. But I wanted to know if you thought that a person situated as I was, was justified in marrying any one ignorant of what might happen, what I do hope and trust never will.”
“But if I don’t know what you are alluding to in this mysterious way, you must see—don’t you see, love?—I am in the position of the ignorant man whom I think you said you could not feel it right to marry. Why don’t you tell me straight out what it is?” He could not help his irritation betraying itself in his tones and manner of speaking. She bent a little forward, and looked full into his face, as though to pierce to the very heart’s truth of him. Then she said, as quietly as she had ever spoken in her life,
—“You wish to break off our engagement?”
He reddened and grew indignant in a moment. “What nonsense! Just because I ask a question and make a remark! I think your illness must have made you fanciful, Ellinor. Surely nothing I said deserves such an interpretation. On the contrary, have I not shown the sincerity and depth of my affection to you by clinging to you through—through everything?”
He was going to say “through the wearying opposition of my family,” but he stopped short, for he knew that the very fact of his mother’s opposition had only made him the more determined to have his own way in the first instance; and even now he did not intend to let out, what he had concealed up to this time, that his friends all regretted his imprudent engagement.
Ellinor sat silently gazing out upon the meadows, but seeing nothing. Then she put her hand into his. “I quite trust you, Ralph. I was wrong to doubt. I am afraid I have grown fanciful and silly.”
He was rather put to it for the right words, for she had precisely divined the dim thought that had overshadowed his mind when she had looked so intently at him. But he caressed her, and reassured her with fond words, as incoherent as lovers’ words generally are.
By-and-by they sauntered homewards. When they reached the house, Ellinor left him, and flew up to see how her father was. When Ralph went into his own room he was vexed with himself, both for what he had said and for what he had not said. His mental look-out was not satisfactory.
Neither he nor Mr. Wilkins was in good humour with the world in general at dinner-time, and it needs little in such cases to condense and turn the lowering tempers into one particular direction. As long as Ellinor and Miss Monro stayed in the dining-room, a sort of moody peace had been kept up, the ladies talking incessantly to each other about the trivial nothings of their daily life, with an instinctive consciousness that if they did not chatter on, something would be said by one of the gentlemen which would be distasteful to the other.
As soon as Ralph had shut the door behind them, Mr. Wilkins went to the sideboard, and took out a bottle which had not previously made its appearance.
“Have a little cognac?” he asked, with an assumption of carelessness, as he poured out a wine-glassful. “It’s a capital thing for the headache; and this nasty lowering weather has given me a racking headache all day.”
“I am sorry for it,” said Ralph, “for I wanted particularly to speak to you about business—about my marriage, in fact.”
“Well! speak away, I’m as clear-headed as any man, if that’s what you mean.”
Ralph bowed, a little contemptuously.
“What I wanted to say was, that I am anxious to have all things arranged for my marriage in August. Ellinor is so much better now; in fact, so strong, that I think we may reckon upon her standing the change to a London life pretty well.”
Mr. Wilkins stared at him rather blankly, but did not immediately speak.
“Of course I may have the deeds drawn up in which, as by previous arrangement, you advance a certain portion of Ellinor’s fortune for the purposes therein to be assigned; as we settled last year when I hoped to have been married in August?”
A thought flitted through Mr. Wilkins’s confused brain that he should find it impossible to produce the thousands required without having recourse to the money lenders, who were already making difficulties, and charging him usurious interest for the advances they had lately made; and he unwisely tried to obtain a diminution in the sum he had originally proposed to give Ellinor. “Unwisely,” because he might have read Ralph’s character better than to suppose he would easily consent to any diminution without good and sufficient reason being given; or without some promise of compensating advantages in the future for the present sacrifice asked from him. But perhaps Mr. Wilkins, dulled as he was by wine thought he could allege a good and sufficient reason, for he said:
“You must not be hard upon me, Ralph. That promise was made before—before I exactly knew the state of my affairs!”
“Before Dunster’s disappearance, in fact,” said Mr. Corbet, fixing his steady, penetrating eyes on Mr. Wilkins’s countenance.
“Yes—exactly—before Dunster’s—” mumbled out Mr. Wilkins, red and confused, and not finishing his sentence.
“By the way,” said Ralph (for with careful carelessness of manner he thought he could extract something of the real nature of the impending disgrace from his companion, in the state in which he then was; and if he only knew more about this danger he could guard against it; guard others; perhaps himself)—“By the way, have you ever heard anything of Dunster since he went off to—America, isn’t it thought?”
He was startled beyond his power of self-control by the instantaneous change in Mr. Wilkins which his question produced. Both started up; Mr. Wilkins white, shaking, and trying to say something, but unable to form a sensible sentence.
“Good God! sir, what is the matter?” said Ralph, alarmed at these signs of physical suffering.
Mr. Wilkins sat down, and repelled his nearer approach without speaking.
“It is nothing, only this headache which shoots through me at times. Don’t look at me, sir, in that way. It is very unpleasant to find another man’s eyes perpetually fixed upon you.”
“I beg your pardon,” said Ralph, coldly; his short-lived sympathy, thus repulsed, giving way to his curiosity. But he waited for a minute or two without daring to renew the conversation at the point where they had stopped: whether interrupted by bodily or mental discomfort on the part of his companion he was not quite sure. While he hesitated how to begin again on the subject, Mr. Wilkins pulled the bottle of brandy to himself and filled his glass again, tossing off the spirit as if it had been water. Then he tried to look Mr. Corbet full in the face, with a stare as pertinacious as he could make it, but very different from the keen observant gaze which was trying to read him through.
“What were we talking about?” said Ralph, at length, with the most natural air in the world, just as if he had really been forgetful of some half-discussed subject of interest.
“Of what you’d a d---d deal better hold your tongue about,” growled out Mr. Wilkins, in a surly thick voice.
“Sir!” said Ralph, starting to his feet with real passion at being so addressed by “Wilkins the attorney.”
“Yes,” continued the latter, “I’ll manage my own affairs, and allow of no meddling and no questioning. I said so once before, and I was not minded and bad came of it; and now I say it again. And if you’re to come here and put impertinent questions, and stare at me as you’ve been doing this half-hour past, why, the sooner you leave this house the better!”
Ralph half turned to take him at his word, and go at once; but then he “gave Ellinor another chance,” as he worded it in his thoughts; but it was in no spirit of conciliation that he said:
“You’ve taken too much of that stuff, sir. You don’t know what you’re saying. If you did, I should leave your house at once, never to return.”
“You think so, do you?” said Mr. Wilkins, trying to stand up, and look dignified and sober. “I say, sir, that if you ever venture again to talk and look as you have done to-night, why, sir, I will ring the bell and have you shown the door by my servants. So now you’re warned, my fine fellow!” He sat down, laughing a foolish tipsy laugh of triumph. In another minute his arm was held firmly but gently by Ralph.
“Listen, Mr. Wilkins,” he said, in a low hoarse voice. “You shall never have to say to me twice what you have said to-night. Henceforward we are as strangers to each other. As to Ellinor”—his tones softened a little, and he sighed in spite of himself—“I do not think we should have been happy. I believe our engagement was formed when we were too young to know our own minds, but I would have done my duty and kept to my word; but you, sir, have yourself severed the connection between us by your insolence to-night. I, to be turned out of your house by your servants!—I, a Corbet of Westley, who would not submit to such threats from a peer of the realm, let him be ever so drunk!”
He was out of the room, almost out of the house, before he had spoken the last words.
Mr. Wilkins sat still, first fiercely angry, then astonished, and lastly dismayed into sobriety. “Corbet, Corbet! Ralph!” he called in vain; then he got up and went to the door, opened it, looked into the fully-lighted hall; all was so quiet there that he could hear the quiet voices of the women in the drawing-room talking together. He thought for a moment, went to the hat-stand, and missed Ralph’s low-crowned straw hat.
Then he sat down once more in the dining-room, and endeavoured to make out exactly what had passed; but he could not believe that Mr. Corbet had come to any enduring or final resolution to break off his engagement, and he had almost reasoned himself back into his former state of indignation at impertinence and injury, when Ellinor came in, pale, hurried, and anxious.
“Papa! what does this mean?” said she, putting an open note into his hand. He took up his glasses, but his hand shook so that he could hardly read. The note was from the Parsonage, to Ellinor; only three lines sent by Mr. Ness’s servant, who had come to fetch Mr. Corbet’s things. He had written three lines with some consideration for Ellinor, even when he was in his first flush of anger against her father, and it must be confessed of relief at his own freedom, thus brought about by the act of another, and not of his own working out, which partly saved his conscience. The note ran thus:
“DEAR ELLINOR,—Words have passed between your father and me which have obliged me to leave his house, I fear, never to return to it. I will write more fully to-morrow. But do not grieve too much, for I am not, and never have been, good enough for you. God bless you, my dearest Nelly, though I call you so for the last time.—R. C.”
“Papa, what is it?” Ellinor cried, clasping her hands together, as her father sat silent, vacantly gazing into the fire, after finishing the note.