But as Elinor put this impatient question, her countenance all ablaze with anger and vehemence and reso{vol. i_55}lution, yet with a gleam of anxiety in the puckers of her forehead and the eyes which shone from beneath them, they stepped out upon the road by which other groups were passing, all bound towards the centre of the church and its tinkling bells. Elinor stopped, and drew a longer panting breath, and gave him a look of fierce reproach, as if this too were his fault: and then she smoothed her ruffled plumes, after the manner of women, and replied to the Sunday-morning salutations, with the smiles and nods of use and wont. She knew everybody, both the rich and the poor, or rather I should say the well-off and the less-well-off, for there were neither rich nor poor, formally speaking, on Windyhill. John did not find it so easy to put his emotions in his pocket. He cast an admiring glance upon her as with heightened colour and a little panting of the breath, but no other sign of disturbance, she made her inquiries after this one’s mother and that one’s child. It was wonderful to him to see how the storm was got under in a moment. An occasional glance aside at himself from the corner of her eye, a sort of dart of defiance as if to bid him remember that she was not done with him, was shot at John from time to time over the heads of the innocent country people in whom she pretended to be so much interested. Pretended!—was it pretence, or was the one as real as the other? He heard her promising to come to-morrow to see an invalid, to send certain articles as soon as she got home, to look up certain books. Would she do so? or was{vol. i_56} all this a mere veil to cover the other which engaged all her soul?
And then there came the service—that soothing routine of familiar prayers, which the lips of men and women absorbed in the violence and urgency of life murmur over almost without knowing, with now and then an awakening to something that touches their own aspirations, to something that offers or that asks for help. “Because there is none other that fighteth for us but only Thou, O God.” That seems to the careless soul such a non sequitur, as if peace was asked for, only because there was none other to fight; but to the man heavily laden, what a cry out of the depths! Because there is none other—all resources gone, all possibilities: but one that fighteth for us, standing fast, always the champion of the perplexed, the overborne, the weak. John was a little careless in this respect, as so many young men are. He thought most of the music when he joined the fashionable throng in the Temple Church. But there was no music to speak of at Windyhill. There was more sound of the bees outside, and the birds and the sighing bass of the fir-trees than of anything more carefully concerted. The organ was played with a curious drone in it, almost like that of the primitive bagpipe. But there was that one phrase, a strong strain of human appeal, enough to lift the world, nay, to let itself go straight to the blue heavens: “Because there is none other that fighteth for us but only Thou, O God.{vol. i_57}”
Mr. Hudson preached his little sermon like a discord in the midst. What should he have preached it for, that little sermon, which was only composed because he could not help himself, which was about nothing in heaven or earth? John gave it a sort of partial attention because he could not help it, partly in wonder to think how a sensible man like Mr. Hudson could account to himself for such strange little interruption of the natural sequence of high human emotion. What theory had he in his mind? This was a question John was fond of putting to himself, with perhaps an idea peculiar to a lawyer, that every man must be thinking what he is about, and be able to produce a clear reason, and, as it were, some theory of the meaning of his own actions—which everybody must know is nonsense. For the Rector of course preached just because it was in his day’s work, and the people would have been much surprised, though possibly much relieved, had he not done so—feeling that to listen was in the day’s work too, and to be gone through doggedly as a duty. John thought how much better it would be to have some man who could preach now and then when he had something to say, instead of troubling the Rector, who, good man, had nothing. But it is not to be supposed that he was thinking this consecutively while the morning went on. It flitted through his mind from time to time among his many thinkings about the Compton family and Elinor; poor Nelly, standing upon the edge of that precipice and the helplessness of every one to save her, and{vol. i_58} the great refrain like the peal of an organ going through everything, “None other that fighteth for us but only Thou, O God.” Surely, surely to prevent this sacrifice He would interfere.
She turned to him the moment they were out of the church doors with that same look of eager defiance yet demand, and as soon as they left the road, the first step into the copse, putting out her hand to call his attention: “You said I could not put up with it, a girl so well-brought-up as I am. What is it a well-brought-up girl can’t put up with? A disorderly house, late hours, and so forth, hateful to the well-brought-up? What is it, what is it, John?”
“Have you been thinking of that all through the morning prayers?” he said.
“Yes, I have been thinking about it. What did you expect me to think about? Is there anything else so important? Mr. Hudson’s sermon, perhaps, which I have heard before, which I suppose you listened to,” she said, with a troubled laugh.
“I did a little, wondering how a good man like that could go on doing it; and there were other things——” John did not like to say what it was which was still throbbing through the air to him, and through his own being.
“Nothing that is of so much moment to me: come back, John, to the well-brought-up girl.”
“You think that’s a poor sort of description, Elinor; so it is. You are of course a great deal more than that.{vol. i_59} Still it’s what one can turn to most easily. You don’t know what life is in a sort of fast house, where there is nothing thought of but amusement or where it’s a constant round of race meetings, yachting, steeplechases—I don’t know if men still ride steeplechases—I mean that sort of thing: Monte Carlo in the winter: betting all the year round—if not on one thing then on another, expedients to raise money, for money’s always wanted. You don’t know—how can you know?—what goes on in a fast life.”
“Don’t you see, John,” she cried, eagerly, “that all that, if put in a different way not to their prejudice, if put in the right way would sound delightful? There is no harm in these things at all. Betting’s not a sin in the Bible any more than races are. Don’t you see it’s only the abuse of them that’s wrong? One might ruin one’s health, I believe, with tea, which is the most righteous thing! I should like above all things a yacht, say in the Mediterranean, and to go to Monte Carlo, which is a beautiful place, and where there is the best music in the world, besides the gambling. I should like even to see the gambling once in a way, for the fun of the thing. You don’t frighten me at all. I have been a fortnight at Lady Mariamne’s, and the continual ‘go’ was delightful, there was never a dull moment. As for expedients to raise money, there——”
“To be sure—old Prestwich is as rich as Crœsus—or was,” said John, with significance, “but you are not going to live with Lady Mariamne, I suppose.{vol. i_60}”
“Oh, John!” she cried, “oh, John!” suddenly seizing him by the arm, clasping her hands on it in the pretty way of earnestness she had, though one hand held her parasol, which was inconvenient. The soft face was suffused with rosy colour, so different from the angry red, the flush of love and tenderness—her eyes swam in liquid light, looking up with mingled happiness and entreaty to John’s face. “Fancy what he says, that he will not object to come here for half the year to let me be with my mother! Remember what he is, a man of fashion, and fond of the world, and of going out and all that. He has consented to come, nay, he almost offered to come for six months in the year to be with mamma.”
“Good heavens,” cried John to himself, “he must indeed be down on his luck!” but what he said was, “Does your mother know of this, Elinor?”
“I have not told her yet. I have reserved it to hear first what you had to say: and so far as I can make out you have nothing at all to say, only general things, disapproval in the general. What should you say if I told you that he disapproves too? He said himself that there had been too much of all that—that he had backed something—isn’t that what