The Project Gutenberg eBook of A Pair of Blue Eyes, by Thomas Hardy
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A PAIR OF BLUE EYES
by Thomas Hardy
“A violet in the youth of primy nature,sewing kits for 6 year olds under 50 dollars
Forward, not permanent, sweet not lasting,
The perfume and suppliance of a minute;
No more.”
CONTENTS
| PREFACE |
| Chapter I |
| Chapter II |
| Chapter III |
| Chapter IV |
| Chapter V |
| Chapter VI |
| Chapter VII |
| Chapter VIII |
| Chapter IX |
| Chapter X |
| Chapter XI |
| Chapter XII |
| Chapter XIII |
| Chapter XIV |
| Chapter XV |
| Chapter XVI |
| Chapter XVII |
| Chapter XVIII |
| Chapter XIX |
| Chapter XX |
| Chapter XXI |
| Chapter XXII |
| Chapter XXIII |
| Chapter XXIV |
| Chapter XXV |
| Chapter XXVI |
| Chapter XXVII |
| Chapter XXVIII |
| Chapter XXIX |
| Chapter XXX |
| Chapter XXXI |
| Chapter XXXII |
| Chapter XXXIII |
| Chapter XXXIV |
| Chapter XXXV |
| Chapter XXXVI |
| Chapter XXXVII |
| Chapter XXXVIII |
| Chapter XXXIX |
| Chapter XL |
PREFACE
The following chapters were written at a time when the craze for indiscriminatechurch-restoration had just reached the remotest nooks of western England,where the wild and tragic features of the coast had long combined in perfectharmony with the crude Gothic Art of the ecclesiastical buildings scatteredalong it, throwing into extraordinary discord all architectural attempts atnewness there. To restore the grey carcases of a mediævalism whose spirit hadfled, seemed a not less incongruous act than to set about renovating theadjoining crags themselves.
Hence it happened that an imaginary history of three human hearts, whoseemotions were not without correspondence with these material circumstances,found in the ordinary incidents of such church-renovations a fitting frame forits presentation.
The shore and country about “Castle Boterel” is now getting well known, andwill be readily recognized. The spot is, I may add, the furthest westward ofall those convenient corners wherein I have ventured to erect my theatre forthese imperfect little dramas of country life and passions; and it lies nearto, or no great way beyond, the vague border of the Wessex kingdom on thatside, which, like the westering verge of modern American settlements, wasprogressive and uncertain.
This, however, is of little importance. The place is pre-eminently (for oneperson at least) the region of dream and mystery. The ghostly birds, thepall-like sea, the frothy wind, the eternal soliloquy of the waters, the bloomof dark purple cast, that seems to exhale from the shoreward precipices, inthemselves lend to the scene an atmosphere like the twilight of a night vision.
One enormous sea-bord cliff in particular figures in the narrative; and forsome forgotten reason or other this cliff was described in the story as beingwithout a name. Accuracy would require the statement to be that a remarkablecliff which resembles in many points the cliff of the description bears a namethat no event has made famous.
T. H.
March1899
THE PERSONS
| ELFRIDE SWANCOURT | a young Lady |
| CHRISTOPHER SWANCOURT | a Clergyman |
| STEPHEN SMITH | an Architect |
| HENRY KNIGHT | a Reviewer and Essayist |
| CHARLOTTE TROYTON | a rich Widow |
| GERTRUDE JETHWAY | a poor Widow |
| SPENSER HUGO LUXELLIAN | a Peer |
| LADY LUXELLIAN | his Wife |
| MARY AND KATE | two little Girls |
| WILLIAM WORM | a dazed Factotum |
| JOHN SMITH | a Master-mason |
| JANE SMITH | his Wife |
| MARTIN CANNISTER | a Sexton |
| UNITY | a Maid-servant |
Other servants, masons, labourers, grooms, nondescripts, etc., etc.
THE SCENE
Mostly on the outskirts of Lower Wessex.
Chapter I
“A fair vestal, throned in the west”
Elfride Swancourt was a girl whose emotions lay very near the surface. Theirnature more precisely, and as modified by the creeping hours of time, was knownonly to those who watched the circumstances of her history.
Personally, she was the combination of very interesting particulars, whoserarity, however, lay in the combination itself rather than in the individualelements combined. As a matter of fact, you did not see the form and substanceof her features when conversing with her; and this charming power of preventinga material study of her lineaments by an interlocutor, originated not in thecloaking effect of a well-formed manner (for her manner was childish andscarcely formed), but in the attractive crudeness of the remarks themselves.She had lived all her life in retirement—the monstrari digitoof idlemen had not flattered her, and at the age of nineteen or twenty she was nofurther on in social consciousness than an urban young lady of fifteen.
One point in her, however, you did notice: that was her eyes. In them was seena sublimation of all of her; it was not necessary to look further: there shelived.
These eyes were blue; blue as autumn distance—blue as the blue we see betweenthe retreating mouldings of hills and woody slopes on a sunny Septembermorning. A misty and shady blue, that had no beginning or surface, and waslooked INTO rather than AT.
As to her presence, it was not powerful; it was weak. Some women can make theirpersonality pervade the atmosphere of a whole banqueting hall; Elfride’s was nomore pervasive than that of a kitten.
Elfride had as her own the thoughtfulness which appears in the face of theMadonna della Sedia, without its rapture: the warmth and spirit of the type ofwoman’s feature most common to the beauties—mortal and immortal—of Rubens,without their insistent fleshiness. The characteristic expression of the femalefaces of Correggio—that of the yearning human thoughts that lie too deep fortears—was hers sometimes, but seldom under ordinary conditions.
The point in Elfride Swancourt’s life at which a deeper current may be said tohave permanently set in, was one winter afternoon when she found herselfstanding, in the character of hostess, face to face with a man she had neverseen before—moreover, looking at him with a Miranda-like curiosity and interestthat she had never yet bestowed on a mortal.
On this particular day her father, the vicar of a parish on the sea-sweptoutskirts of Lower Wessex, and a widower, was suffering from an attack of gout.After finishing her household supervisions Elfride became restless, and severaltimes left the room, ascended the staircase, and knocked at her father’schamber-door.
“Come in!” was always answered in a hearty out-of-door voice from the inside.
“Papa,” she said on one occasion to the fine, red-faced, handsome man of forty,who, puffing and fizzing like a bursting bottle, lay on the bed wrapped in adressing-gown, and every now and then enunciating, in spite of himself, aboutone letter of some word or words that were almost oaths; “papa, will you notcome downstairs this evening?” She spoke distinctly: he was rather deaf.
“Afraid not—eh-hh!—very much afraid I shall not, Elfride. Piph-ph-ph! I can’tbear even a handkerchief upon this deuced toe of mine, much less a stocking orslipper—piph-ph-ph! There ’tis again! No, I shan’t get up till to-morrow.”
“Then I hope this London man won’t come; for I don’t know what I should do,papa.”
“Well, it would be awkward, certainly.”
“I should hardly think he would come to-day.”
“Why?”
“Because the wind blows so.”
“Wind! What ideas you have, Elfride! Who ever heard of wind stopping a man fromdoing his business? The idea of this toe of mine coming on so suddenly!...If heshould come, you must send him up to me, I suppose, and then give him some foodand put him to bed in some way. Dear me, what a nuisance all this is!”
“Must he have dinner?”
“Too heavy for a tired man at the end of a tedious journey.”
“Tea, then?”
“Not substantial enough.”
“High tea, then? There is cold fowl, rabbit-pie, some pasties, and things ofthat kind.”
“Yes, high tea.”
“Must I pour out his tea, papa?”
“Of course; you are the mistress of the house.”
“What! sit there all the time with a stranger, just as if I knew him, and notanybody to introduce us?”
“Nonsense, child, about introducing; you know better than that. A practicalprofessional man, tired and hungry, who has been travelling ever since daylightthis morning, will hardly be inclined to talk and air courtesies to-night. Hewants food and shelter, and you must see that he has it, simply because I amsuddenly laid up and cannot. There is nothing so dreadful in that, I hope? Youget all kinds of stuff into your head from reading so many of those novels.”
“Oh no; there is nothing dreadful in it when it becomes plainly a case ofnecessity like this. But, you see, you are always there when people come todinner, even if we know them; and this is some strange London man of the world,who will think it odd, perhaps.”
“Very well; let him.”
“Is he Mr. Hewby’s partner?”
“I should scarcely think so: he may be.”
“How old is he, I wonder?”
“That I cannot tell. You will find the copy of my letter to Mr. Hewby, and hisanswer, upon the table in the study. You may read them, and then you’ll know asmuch as I do about our visitor.”
“I have read them.”
“Well, what’s the use of asking questions, then? They contain all I know.Ugh-h-h!...Od plague you, you young scamp! don’t put anything there! I can’tbear the weight of a fly.”
“Oh, I am sorry, papa. I forgot; I thought you might be cold,” she said,hastily removing the rug she had thrown upon the feet of the sufferer; andwaiting till she saw that consciousness of her offence had passed from hisface, she withdrew from the room, and retired again downstairs.
Chapter II
“’Twas on the evening of a winter’s day.”
When two or three additional hours had merged the same afternoon in evening,some moving outlines might have been observed against the sky on the summit ofa wild lone hill in that district. They circumscribed two men, having atpresent the aspect of silhouettes, sitting in a dog-cart and pushing along inthe teeth of the wind. Scarcely a solitary house or man had been visible alongthe whole dreary distance of open country they were traversing; and now thatnight had begun to fall, the faint twilight, which still gave an idea of thelandscape to their observation, was enlivened by the quiet appearance of theplanet Jupiter, momentarily gleaming in intenser brilliancy in front of them,and by Sirius shedding his rays in rivalry from his position over theirshoulders. The only lights apparent on earth were some spots of dull red,glowing here and there upon the distant hills, which, as the driver of thevehicle gratuitously remarked to the hirer, were smouldering fires for theconsumption of peat and gorse-roots, where the common was being broken up foragricultural purposes. The wind prevailed with but little abatement from itsdaytime boisterousness, three or four small clouds, delicate and pale, creepingalong under the sky southward to the Channel.
Fourteen of the sixteen miles intervening between the railway terminus and theend of their journey had been gone over, when they began to pass along thebrink of a valley some miles in extent, wherein the wintry skeletons of a moreluxuriant vegetation than had hitherto surrounded them proclaimed an increasedrichness of soil, which showed signs of far more careful enclosure andmanagement than had any slopes they had yet passed. A little farther, and anopening in the elms stretching up from this fertile valley revealed a mansion.
“That’s Endelstow House, Lord Luxellian’s,” said the driver.
“Endelstow House, Lord Luxellian’s,” repeated the other mechanically. He thenturned himself sideways, and keenly scrutinized the almost invisible house withan interest which the indistinct picture itself seemed far from adequate tocreate. “Yes, that’s Lord Luxellian’s,” he said yet again after a while, as hestill looked in the same direction.
“What, be we going there?”
“No; Endelstow Vicarage, as I have told you.”
“I thought you m’t have altered your mind, sir, as ye have stared that way atnothing so long.”
“Oh no; I am interested in the house, that’s all.”
“Most people be, as the saying is.”
“Not in the sense that I am.”
“Oh!...Well, his family is no better than my own, ’a b’lieve.”
“How is that?”
“Hedgers and ditchers by rights. But once in ancient times one of ’em, when hewas at work, changed clothes with King Charles the Second, and saved the king’slife. King Charles came up to him like a common man, and said off-hand, ‘Man inthe smock-frock, my name is Charles the Second, and that’s the truth on’t. Willyou lend me your clothes?’ ‘I don’t mind if I do,’ said Hedger Luxellian; andthey changed there and then. ‘Now mind ye,’ King Charles the Second said, likea common man, as he rode away, ‘if ever I come to the crown, you come to court,knock at the door, and say out bold, “Is King Charles the Second at home?” Tellyour name, and they shall let you in, and you shall be made a lord.’ Now, thatwas very nice of Master Charley?”
“Very nice indeed.”
“Well, as the story is, the king came to the throne; and some years after that,away went Hedger Luxellian, knocked at the king’s door, and asked if KingCharles the Second was in. ‘No, he isn’t,’ they said. ‘Then, is Charles theThird?’ said Hedger Luxellian. ‘Yes,’ said a young feller standing by like acommon man, only he had a crown on, ‘my name is Charles the Third.’ And——”
“I really fancy that must be a mistake. I don’t recollect anything in Englishhistory about Charles the Third,” said the other in a tone of mildremonstrance.
“Oh, that’s right history enough, only ’twasn’t prented; he was rather aqueer-tempered man, if you remember.”
“Very well; go on.”
“And, by hook or by crook, Hedger Luxellian was made a lord, and everythingwent on well till some time after, when he got into a most terrible row withKing Charles the Fourth.
“I can’t stand Charles the Fourth. Upon my word, that’s too much.”
“Why? There was a George the Fourth, wasn’t there?”
“Certainly.”
“Well, Charleses be as common as Georges. However I’ll say no more aboutit....Ah, well! ’tis the funniest world ever I lived in—upon my life ’tis. Ah,that such should be!”
The dusk had thickened into darkness while they thus conversed, and the outlineand surface of the mansion gradually disappeared. The windows, which had beforebeen as black blots on a lighter expanse of wall, became illuminated, and weretransfigured to squares of light on the general dark body of the nightlandscape as it absorbed the outlines of the edifice into its gloomymonochrome.
Not another word was spoken for some time, and they climbed a hill, thenanother hill piled on the summit of the first. An additional mile of plateaufollowed, from which could be discerned two light-houses on the coast they werenearing, reposing on the horizon with a calm lustre of benignity. Another oasiswas reached; a little dell lay like a nest at their feet, towards which thedriver pulled the horse at a sharp angle, and descended a steep slope whichdived under the trees like a rabbit’s burrow. They sank lower and lower.
“Endelstow Vicarage is inside here,” continued the man with the reins. “Thispart about here is West Endelstow; Lord Luxellian’s is East Endelstow, and hasa church to itself. Pa’son Swancourt is the pa’son of both, and bobs backwardand forward. Ah, well! ’tis a funny world. ’A b’lieve there was once a quarrywhere this house stands. The man who built it in past time scraped all theglebe for earth to put round the vicarage, and laid out a little paradise offlowers and trees in the soil he had got together in this way, whilst thefields he scraped have been good for nothing ever since.”
“How long has the present incumbent been here?”
“Maybe about a year, or a year and half: ’tisn’t two years; for they don’tscandalize him yet; and, as a rule, a parish begins to scandalize the pa’son atthe end of two years among ’em familiar. But he’s a very nice party. Ay, Pa’sonSwancourt knows me pretty well from often driving over; and I know Pa’sonSwancourt.”
They emerged from the bower, swept round in a curve, and the chimneys andgables of the vicarage became darkly visible. Not a light showed anywhere. Theyalighted; the man felt his way into the porch, and rang the bell.
At the end of three or four minutes, spent in patient waiting without hearingany sounds of a response, the stranger advanced and repeated the call in a moredecided manner. He then fancied he heard footsteps in the hall, and sundrymovements of the door-knob, but nobody appeared.
“Perhaps they beant at home,” sighed the driver. “And I promised myself a bitof supper in Pa’son Swancourt’s kitchen. Sich lovely mate-pize and figgedkeakes, and cider, and drops o’ cordial that they do keep here!”
“All right, naibours! Be ye rich men or be ye poor men, that ye must needs cometo the world’s end at this time o’ night?” exclaimed a voice at this instant;and, turning their heads, they saw a rickety individual shambling round fromthe back door with a horn lantern dangling from his hand.
“Time o’ night, ’a b’lieve! and the clock only gone seven of ’em. Show a light,and let us in, William Worm.”
“Oh, that you, Robert Lickpan?”
“Nobody else, William Worm.”
“And is the visiting man a-come?”
“Yes,” said the stranger. “Is Mr. Swancourt at home?”
“That ’a is, sir. And would ye mind coming round by the back way? The frontdoor is got stuck wi’ the wet, as he will do sometimes; and the Turk can’t openen. I know I am only a poor wambling man that “ill never pay the Lord for mymaking, sir; but I can show the way in, sir.”
The new arrival followed his guide through a little door in a wall, and thenpromenaded a scullery and a kitchen, along which he passed with eyes rigidlyfixed in advance, an inbred horror of prying forbidding him to gaze aroundapartments that formed the back side of the household tapestry. Entering thehall, he was about to be shown to his room, when from the inner lobby of thefront entrance, whither she had gone to learn the cause of the delay, sailedforth the form of Elfride. Her start of amazement at the sight of the visitorcoming forth from under the stairs proved that she had not been expecting thissurprising flank movement, which had been originated entirely by the ingenuityof William Worm.
She appeared in the prettiest of all feminine guises, that is to say, indemi-toilette, with plenty of loose curly hair tumbling down about hershoulders. An expression of uneasiness pervaded her countenance; and altogethershe scarcely appeared woman enough for the situation. The visitor removed hishat, and the first words were spoken; Elfride prelusively looking with a dealof interest, not unmixed with surprise, at the person towards whom she was todo the duties of hospitality.
“I am Mr. Smith,” said the stranger in a musical voice.
“I am Miss Swancourt,” said Elfride.
Her constraint was over. The great contrast between the reality she beheldbefore her, and the dark, taciturn, sharp, elderly man of business who hadlurked in her imagination—a man with clothes smelling of city smoke, skinsallow from want of sun, and talk flavoured with epigram—was such a relief toher that Elfride smiled, almost laughed, in the new-comer’s face.
Stephen Smith, who has hitherto been hidden from us by the darkness, was atthis time of his life but a youth in appearance, and barely a man in years.Judging from his look, London was the last place in the world that one wouldhave imagined to be the scene of his activities: such a face surely could notbe nourished amid smoke and mud and fog and dust; such an open countenancecould never even have seen anything of “the weariness, the fever, and the fret’of Babylon the Second.
His complexion was as fine as Elfride’s own; the pink of his cheeks asdelicate. His mouth as perfect as Cupid’s bow in form, and as cherry-red incolour as hers. Bright curly hair; bright sparkling blue-gray eyes; a boy’sblush and manner; neither whisker nor moustache, unless a little light-brownfur on his upper lip deserved the latter title: this composed the Londonprofessional man, the prospect of whose advent had so troubled Elfride.
Elfride hastened to say she was sorry to tell him that Mr. Swancourt was notable to receive him that evening, and gave the reason why. Mr. Smith replied,in a voice boyish by nature and manly by art, that he was very sorry to hearthis news; but that as far as his reception was concerned, it did not matter inthe least.
Stephen was shown up to his room. In his absence Elfride stealthily glided intoher father’s.
“He’s come, papa. Such a young man for a business man!”
“Oh, indeed!”
“His face is—well—PRETTY; just like mine.”
“H’m! what next?”
“Nothing; that’s all I know of him yet. It is rather nice, is it not?”
“Well, we shall see that when we know him better. Go down and give the poorfellow something to eat and drink, for Heaven’s sake. And when he has doneeating, say I should like to have a few words with him, if he doesn’t mindcoming up here.”
The young lady glided downstairs again, and whilst she awaits young Smith’sentry, the letters referring to his visit had better be given.
1.—MR. SWANCOURT TO MR. HEWBY.
“ENDELSTOW VICARAGE, Feb. 18, 18—.
“SIR,—We are thinking of restoring the tower and aisle of the church in thisparish; and Lord Luxellian, the patron of the living, has mentioned your nameas that of a trustworthy architect whom it would be desirable to ask tosuperintend the work.
“I am exceedingly ignorant of the necessary preliminary steps. Probably,however, the first is that (should you be, as Lord Luxellian says you are,disposed to assist us) yourself or some member of your staff come and see thebuilding, and report thereupon for the satisfaction of parishioners and others.
“The spot is a very remote one: we have no railway within fourteen miles; andthe nearest place for putting up at—called a town, though merely a largevillage—is Castle Boterel, two miles further on; so that it would be mostconvenient for you to stay at the vicarage—which I am glad to place at yourdisposal—instead of pushing on to the hotel at Castle Boterel, and coming backagain in the morning.
“Any day of the next week that you like to name for the visit will find usquite ready to receive you.—Yours very truly,
CHRISTOPHER SWANCOURT. 2.—MR. HEWBY TO MR. SWANCOURT.
‘PERCY PLACE, CHARING CROSS, Feb. 20, 18—.
“DEAR SIR,—Agreeably to your request of the 18th instant, I have arranged tosurvey and make drawings of the aisle and tower of your parish church, and ofthe dilapidations which have been suffered to accrue thereto, with a view toits restoration.
“My assistant, Mr. Stephen Smith, will leave London by the early trainto-morrow morning for the purpose. Many thanks for your proposal to accommodatehim. He will take advantage of your offer, and will probably reach your houseat some hour of the evening. You may put every confidence in him, and may relyupon his discernment in the matter of church architecture.
“Trusting that the plans for the restoration, which I shall prepare from thedetails of his survey, will prove satisfactory to yourself and Lord Luxellian,I am, dear sir, yours faithfully,
WALTER HEWBY.”
Chapter III
“Melodious birds sing madrigals”
That first repast in Endelstow Vicarage was a very agreeable one to youngStephen Smith. The table was spread, as Elfride had suggested to her father,with the materials for the heterogeneous meal called high tea—a class ofrefection welcome to all when away from men and towns, and particularlyattractive to youthful palates. The table was prettily decked with winterflowers and leaves, amid which the eye was greeted by chops, chicken, pie,&c., and two huge pasties overhanging the sides of the dish with a cheerfulaspect of abundance.
At the end, towards the fireplace, appeared the tea-service, of old-fashionedWorcester porcelain, and behind this arose the slight form of Elfride,attempting to add matronly dignity to the movement of pouring out tea, and tohave a weighty and concerned look in matters of marmalade, honey, and clottedcream. Having made her own meal before he arrived, she found to herembarrassment that there was nothing left for her to do but talk when notassisting him. She asked him if he would excuse her finishing a letter she hadbeen writing at a side-table, and, after sitting down to it, tingled with asense of being grossly rude. However, seeing that he noticed nothing personallywrong in her, and that he too was embarrassed when she attentively watched hiscup to refill it, Elfride became better at ease; and when furthermore heaccidentally kicked the leg of the table, and then nearly upset his tea-cup,just as schoolboys did, she felt herself mistress of the situation, and couldtalk very well. In a few minutes ingenuousness and a common term of yearsobliterated all recollection that they were strangers just met. Stephen beganto wax eloquent on extremely slight experiences connected with his professionalpursuits; and she, having no experiences to fall back upon, recounted with muchanimation stories that had been related to her by her father, which would haveastonished him had he heard with what fidelity of action and tone they wererendered. Upon the whole, a very interesting picture of Sweet-and-Twenty was onview that evening in Mr. Swancourt’s house.
Ultimately Stephen had to go upstairs and talk loud to the vicar, receivingfrom him between his puffs a great many apologies for calling him sounceremoniously to a stranger’s bedroom. “But,” continued Mr. Swancourt, “Ifelt that I wanted to say a few words to you before the morning, on thebusiness of your visit. One’s patience gets exhausted by staying a prisoner inbed all day through a sudden freak of one’s enemy—new to me, though—for I haveknown very little of gout as yet. However, he’s gone to my other toe in a verymild manner, and I expect he’ll slink off altogether by the morning. I hope youhave been well attended to downstairs?”
“Perfectly. And though it is unfortunate, and I am sorry to see you laid up, Ibeg you will not take the slightest notice of my being in the house the while.”
“I will not. But I shall be down to-morrow. My daughter is an excellent doctor.A dose or two of her mild mixtures will fetch me round quicker than all thedrug stuff in the world. Well, now about the church business. Take a seat, do.We can’t afford to stand upon ceremony in these parts as you see, and for thisreason, that a civilized human being seldom stays long with us; and so wecannot waste time in approaching him, or he will be gone before we have had thepleasure of close acquaintance. This tower of ours is, as you will notice,entirely gone beyond the possibility of restoration; but the church itself iswell enough. You should see some of the churches in this county. Floors rotten:ivy lining the walls.”
“Dear me!”
“Oh, that’s nothing. The congregation of a neighbour of mine, whenever a stormof rain comes on during service, open their umbrellas and hold them up till thedripping ceases from the roof. Now, if you will kindly bring me those papersand letters you see lying on the table, I will show you how far we have got.”
Stephen crossed the room to fetch them, and the vicar seemed to notice moreparticularly the slim figure of his visitor.
“I suppose you are quite competent?” he said.
“Quite,” said the young man, colouring slightly.
“You are very young, I fancy—I should say you are not more than nineteen?”
I am nearly twenty-one.”
“Exactly half my age; I am forty-two.”
“By the way,” said Mr. Swancourt, after some conversation, “you said your wholename was Stephen Fitzmaurice, and that your grandfather came originally fromCaxbury. Since I have been speaking, it has occurred to me that I knowsomething of you. You belong to a well-known ancient county family—not ordinarySmiths in the least.”
“I don’t think we have any of their blood in our veins.”
“Nonsense! you must. Hand me the ‘Landed Gentry.’ Now, let me see. There,Stephen Fitzmaurice Smith—he lies in St. Mary’s Church, doesn’t he? Well, outof that family Sprang the Leaseworthy Smiths, and collaterally came General SirStephen Fitzmaurice Smith of Caxbury——”
“Yes; I have seen his monument there,” shouted Stephen. “But there is noconnection between his family and mine: there cannot be.”
“There is none, possibly, to your knowledge. But look at this, my dear sir,”said the vicar, striking his fist upon the bedpost for emphasis. “Here are you,Stephen Fitzmaurice Smith, living in London, but springing from Caxbury. Herein this book is a genealogical tree of the Stephen Fitzmaurice Smiths ofCaxbury Manor. You may be only a family of professional men now—I am notinquisitive: I don’t ask questions of that kind; it is not in me to do so—butit is as plain as the nose in your face that there’s your origin! And, Mr.Smith, I congratulate you upon your blood; blue blood, sir; and, upon my life,a very desirable colour, as the world goes.”
“I wish you could congratulate me upon some more tangible quality,” said theyounger man, sadly no less than modestly.
“Nonsense! that will come with time. You are young: all your life is beforeyou. Now look—see how far back in the mists of antiquity my own family ofSwancourt have a root. Here, you see,” he continued, turning to the page, “isGeoffrey, the one among my ancestors who lost a barony because he would cut hisjoke. Ah, it’s the sort of us! But the story is too long to tell now. Ay, I’m apoor man—a poor gentleman, in fact: those I would be friends with, won’t befriends with me; those who are willing to be friends with me, I am above beingfriends with. Beyond dining with a neighbouring incumbent or two, and anoccasional chat—sometimes dinner—with Lord Luxellian, a connection of mine, Iam in absolute solitude—absolute.”
“You have your studies, your books, and your—daughter.”
“Oh yes, yes; and I don’t complain of poverty. Canto coram latrone. Well, Mr.Smith, don’t let me detain you any longer in a sick room. Ha! that reminds meof a story I once heard in my younger days.” Here the vicar began a series ofsmall private laughs, and Stephen looked inquiry. “Oh, no, no! it is toobad—too bad to tell!” continued Mr. Swancourt in undertones of grim mirth.“Well, go downstairs; my daughter must do the best she can with you thisevening. Ask her to sing to you—she plays and sings very nicely. Good-night; Ifeel as if I had known you for five or six years. I’ll ring for somebody toshow you down.”
“Never mind,” said Stephen, “I can find the way.” And he went downstairs,thinking of the delightful freedom of manner in the remoter counties incomparison with the reserve of London.
“I forgot to tell you that my father was rather deaf,” said Elfride anxiously,when Stephen entered the little drawing-room.
“Never mind; I know all about it, and we are great friends,” the man ofbusiness replied enthusiastically. “And, Miss Swancourt, will you kindly singto me?”
To Miss Swancourt this request seemed, what in fact it was, exceptionallypoint-blank; though she guessed that her father had some hand in framing it,knowing, rather to her cost, of his unceremonious way of utilizing her for thebenefit of dull sojourners. At the same time, as Mr. Smith’s manner was toofrank to provoke criticism, and his age too little to inspire fear, she wasready—not to say pleased—to accede. Selecting from the canterbury some oldfamily ditties, that in years gone by had been played and sung by her mother,Elfride sat down to the pianoforte, and began, “’Twas on the evening of awinter’s day,” in a pretty contralto voice.
“Do you like that old thing, Mr. Smith?” she said at the end.
“Yes, I do much,” said Stephen—words he would have uttered, and sincerely, toanything on earth, from glee to requiem, that she might have chosen.
“You shall have a little one by De Leyre, that was given me by a young Frenchlady who was staying at Endelstow House:
“‘Je l’ai planté, je l’ai vu naître,
Ce beau rosier où les oiseaux,’ &c.;
and then I shall want to give you my own favourite for the very last, Shelley’s‘When the lamp is shattered,’ as set to music by my poor mother. I so much likesinging to anybody who reallycares to hear me.”
Every woman who makes a permanent impression on a man is usually recalled tohis mind’s eye as she appeared in one particular scene, which seems ordained tobe her special form of manifestation throughout the pages of his memory. As thepatron Saint has her attitude and accessories in mediaeval illumination, so thesweetheart may be said to have hers upon the table of her true Love’s fancy,without which she is rarely introduced there except by effort; and this thoughshe may, on further acquaintance, have been observed in many other phases whichone would imagine to be far more appropriate to love’s young dream.
Miss Elfride’s image chose the form in which she was beheld during theseminutes of singing, for her permanent attitude of visitation to Stephen’s eyesduring his sleeping and waking hours in after days. The profile is seen of ayoung woman in a pale gray silk dress with trimmings of swan’s-down, andopening up from a point in front, like a waistcoat without a shirt; the coolcolour contrasting admirably with the warm bloom of her neck and face. Thefurthermost candle on the piano comes immediately in a line with her head, andhalf invisible itself, forms the accidentally frizzled hair into a nebuloushaze of light, surrounding her crown like an aureola. Her hands are in theirplace on the keys, her lips parted, and trilling forth, in a tender diminuendo,the closing words of the sad apostrophe:
“O Love, who bewailest
The frailty of all things here,
Why choose you the frailest
For your cradle, your home, and your bier!”
Her head is forward a little, and her eyes directed keenly upward to the top ofthe page of music confronting her. Then comes a rapid look into Stephen’s face,and a still more rapid look back again to her business, her face having droppedits sadness, and acquired a certain expression of mischievous archness thewhile; which lingered there for some time, but was never developed into apositive smile of flirtation.
Stephen suddenly shifted his position from her right hand to her left, wherethere was just room enough for a small ottoman to stand between the piano andthe corner of the room. Into this nook he squeezed himself, and gazed wistfullyup into Elfride’s face. So long and so earnestly gazed he, that her cheekdeepened to a more and more crimson tint as each line was added to her song.Concluding, and pausing motionless after the last word for a minute or two, sheventured to look at him again. His features wore an expression of unutterableheaviness.
“You don’t hear many songs, do you, Mr. Smith, to take so much notice of theseof mine?”
“Perhaps it was the means and vehicle of the song that I was noticing: I meanyourself,” he answered gently.
“Now, Mr. Smith!”
“It is perfectly true; I don’t hear much singing. You mistake what I am, Ifancy. Because I come as a stranger to a secluded spot, you think I must needscome from a life of bustle, and know the latest movements of the day. But Idon’t. My life is as quiet as yours, and more solitary; solitary as death.”
“The death which comes from a plethora of life? But seriously, I can quite seethat you are not the least what I thought you would be before I saw you. Youare not critical, or experienced, or—much to mind. That’s why I don’t mindsinging airs to you that I only half know.” Finding that by this confession shehad vexed him in a way she did not intend, she added naively, “I mean, Mr.Smith, that you are better, not worse, for being only young and not veryexperienced. You don’t think my life here so very tame and dull, I know.”
“I do not, indeed,” he said with fervour. “It must be delightfully poetical,and sparkling, and fresh, and——”
“There you go, Mr. Smith! Well, men of another kind, when I get them to behonest enough to own the truth, think just the reverse: that my life must be adreadful bore in its normal state, though pleasant for the exceptional few daysthey pass here.”
“I could live here always!” he said, and with such a tone and look ofunconscious revelation that Elfride was startled to find that her harmonies hadfired a small Troy, in the shape of Stephen’s heart. She said quickly:
“But you can’t live here always.”
“Oh no.” And he drew himself in with the sensitiveness of a snail.
Elfride’s emotions were sudden as his in kindling, but the least of woman’slesser infirmities—love of admiration—caused an inflammable disposition on hispart, so exactly similar to her own, to appear as meritorious in him as modestymade her own seem culpable in her.
Chapter IV
“Where heaves the turf in many a mould’ring heap.”
For reasons of his own, Stephen Smith was stirring a short time after dawn thenext morning. From the window of his room he could see, first, two boldescarpments sloping down together like the letter V. Towards the bottom, likeliquid in a funnel, appeared the sea, gray and small. On the brow of one hill,of rather greater altitude than its neighbour, stood the church which was to bethe scene of his operations. The lonely edifice was black and bare, cutting upinto the sky from the very tip of the hill. It had a square mouldering tower,owning neither battlement nor pinnacle, and seemed a monolithic termination, ofone substance with the ridge, rather than a structure raised thereon. Round thechurch ran a low wall; over-topping the wall in general level was thegraveyard; not as a graveyard usually is, a fragment of landscape with its duevariety of chiaro-oscuro, but a mere profile against the sky, serrated with theoutlines of graves and a very few memorial stones. Not a tree could exist upthere: nothing but the monotonous gray-green grass.
Five minutes after this casual survey was made his bedroom was empty, and itsoccupant had vanished quietly from the house.
At the end of two hours he was again in the room, looking warm and glowing. Henow pursued the artistic details of dressing, which on his first rising hadbeen entirely omitted. And a very blooming boy he looked, after that mysteriousmorning scamper. His mouth was a triumph of its class. It was the cleanly-cut,piquantly pursed-up mouth of William Pitt, as represented in the well or littleknown bust by Nollekens—a mouth which is in itself a young man’s fortune, ifproperly exercised. His round chin, where its upper part turned inward, stillcontinued its perfect and full curve, seeming to press in to a point the bottomof his nether lip at their place of junction.
Once he murmured the name of Elfride. Ah, there she was! On the lawn in a plaindress, without hat or bonnet, running with a boy’s velocity, superadded to agirl’s lightness, after a tame rabbit she was endeavouring to capture, herstrategic intonations of coaxing words alternating with desperate rushes somuch out of keeping with them, that the hollowness of such expressions was buttoo evident to her pet, who darted and dodged in carefully timed counterpart.
The scene down there was altogether different from that of the hills. A thicketof shrubs and trees enclosed the favoured spot from the wilderness without;even at this time of the year the grass was luxuriant there. No wind blewinside the protecting belt of evergreens, wasting its force upon the higher andstronger trees forming the outer margin of the grove.
Then he heard a heavy person shuffling about in slippers, and calling “Mr.Smith!” Smith proceeded to the study, and found Mr. Swancourt. The young manexpressed his gladness to see his host downstairs.
“Oh yes; I knew I should soon be right again. I have not made the acquaintanceof gout for more than two years, and it generally goes off the second night.Well, where have you been this morning? I saw you come in just now, I think!”
“Yes; I have been for a walk.”
“Start early?”
“Yes.”
“Very early, I think?”
“Yes, it was rather early.”
“Which way did you go? To the sea, I suppose. Everybody goes seaward.”
“No; I followed up the river as far as the park wall.”
“You are different from your kind. Well, I suppose such a wild place is anovelty, and so tempted you out of bed?”
“Not altogether a novelty. I like it.”
The youth seemed averse to explanation.
“You must, you must; to go cock-watching the morning after a journey offourteen or sixteen hours. But there’s no accounting for tastes, and I am gladto see that yours are no meaner. After breakfast, but not before, I shall begood for a ten miles’ walk, Master Smith.”
Certainly there seemed nothing exaggerated in that assertion. Mr. Swancourt bydaylight showed himself to be a man who, in common with the other two peopleunder his roof, had really strong claims to be considered handsome,—handsome,that is, in the sense in which the moon is bright: the ravines and valleyswhich, on a close inspection, are seen to diversify its surface being left outof the argument. His face was of a tint that never deepened upon his cheeks norlightened upon his forehead, but remained uniform throughout; the usual neutralsalmon-colour of a man who feeds well—not to say too well—and does not thinkhard; every pore being in visible working order. His tout ensemble was that ofa highly improved class of farmer, dressed up in the wrong clothes; that of afirm-standing perpendicular man, whose fall would have been backwards indirection if he had ever lost his balance.
The vicar’s background was at present what a vicar’s background should be, hisstudy. Here the consistency ends. All along the chimneypiece were rangedbottles of horse, pig, and cow medicines, and against the wall was a hightable, made up of the fragments of an old oak Iychgate. Upon this stood stuffedspecimens of owls, divers, and gulls, and over them bunches of wheat and barleyears, labelled with the date of the year that produced them. Some cases andshelves, more or less laden with books, the prominent titles of which were Dr.Brown’s “Notes on the Romans,” Dr. Smith’s “Notes on the Corinthians,” and Dr.Robinson’s “Notes on the Galatians, Ephesians, and Philippians,” just saved thecharacter of the place, in spite of a girl’s doll’s-house standing above them,a marine aquarium in the window, and Elfride’s hat hanging on its corner.
“Business, business!” said Mr. Swancourt after breakfast. He began to find itnecessary to act the part of a fly-wheel towards the somewhat irregular forcesof his visitor.
They prepared to go to the church; the vicar, on second thoughts, mounting hiscoal-black mare to avoid exerting his foot too much at starting. Stephen saidhe should want a man to assist him. “Worm!” the vicar shouted.
A minute or two after a voice was heard round the corner of the building,mumbling, “Ah, I used to be strong enough, but ’tis altered now! Well, there,I’m as independent as one here and there, even if they do write “squire aftertheir names.”
“What’s the matter?” said the vicar, as William Worm appeared; when the remarkswere repeated to him.
“Worm says some very true things sometimes,” Mr. Swancourt said, turning toStephen. “Now, as regards that word ‘esquire.’ Why, Mr. Smith, that word‘esquire’ is gone to the dogs,—used on the letters of every jackanapes who hasa black coat. Anything else, Worm?”
“Ay, the folk have begun frying again!”
“Dear me! I’m sorry to hear that.”
“Yes,” Worm said groaningly to Stephen, “I’ve got such a noise in my head thatthere’s no living night nor day. ’Tis just for all the world like people fryingfish: fry, fry, fry, all day long in my poor head, till I don’t know whe’r I’mhere or yonder. There, God A’mighty will find it out sooner or later, I hope,and relieve me.”
“Now, my deafness,” said Mr. Swancourt impressively, “is a dead silence; butWilliam Worm’s is that of people frying fish in his head. Very remarkable,isn’t it?”
“I can hear the frying-pan a-fizzing as naterel as life,” said Wormcorroboratively.
“Yes, it is remarkable,” said Mr. Smith.
“Very peculiar, very peculiar,” echoed the vicar; and they all then followedthe path up the hill, bounded on each side by a little stone wall, from whichgleamed fragments of quartz and blood-red marbles, apparently of inestimablevalue, in their setting of brown alluvium. Stephen walked with the dignity of aman close to the horse’s head, Worm stumbled along a stone’s throw in the rear,and Elfride was nowhere in particular, yet everywhere; sometimes in front,sometimes behind, sometimes at the sides, hovering about the procession like abutterfly; not definitely engaged in travelling, yet somehow chiming in atpoints with the general progress.
The vicar explained things as he went on: “The fact is, Mr. Smith, I didn’twant this bother of church restoration at all, but it was necessary to dosomething in self-defence, on account of those d——dissenters: I use the word inits scriptural meaning, of course, not as an expletive.”
“How very odd!” said Stephen, with the concern demanded of seriousfriendliness.
“Odd? That’s nothing to how it is in the parish of Twinkley. Both thechurchwardens are——; there, I won’t say what they are; and the clerk and thesexton as well.”
“How very strange!” said Stephen.
“Strange? My dear sir, that’s nothing to how it is in the parish of Sinnerton.However, as to our own parish, I hope we shall make some progress soon.”
“You must trust to circumstances.”
“There are no circumstances to trust to. We may as well trust in Providence ifwe trust at all. But here we are. A wild place, isn’t it? But I like it on suchdays as these.”
The churchyard was entered on this side by a stone stile, over which havingclambered, you remained still on the wild hill, the within not being so dividedfrom the without as to obliterate the sense of open freedom. A delightful placeto be buried in, postulating that delight can accompany a man to his tomb underany circumstances. There was nothing horrible in this churchyard, in the shapeof tight mounds bonded with sticks, which shout imprisonment in the ears ratherthan whisper rest; or trim garden-flowers, which only raise images of people innew black crape and white handkerchiefs coming to tend them; or wheel-marks,which remind us of hearses and mourning coaches; or cypress-bushes, which makea parade of sorrow; or coffin-boards and bones lying behind trees, showing thatwe are only leaseholders of our graves. No; nothing but long, wild, untutoredgrass, diversifying the forms of the mounds it covered,—themselves irregularlyshaped, with no eye to effect; the impressive presence of the old mountain thatall this was a part of being nowhere excluded by disguising art. Outside weresimilar slopes and similar grass; and then the serene impassive sea, visible toa width of half the horizon, and meeting the eye with the effect of a vastconcave, like the interior of a blue vessel. Detached rocks stood upright afar,a collar of foam girding their bases, and repeating in its whiteness theplumage of a countless multitude of gulls that restlessly hovered about.
“Now, Worm!” said Mr. Swancourt sharply; and Worm started into an attitude ofattention at once to receive orders. Stephen and himself were then left inpossession, and the work went on till early in the afternoon, when dinner wasannounced by Unity of the vicarage kitchen running up the hill without abonnet.
Elfride did not make her appearance inside the building till late in theafternoon, and came then by special invitation from Stephen during dinner. Shelooked so intensely LIVING and full of movement as she came into the old silentplace, that young Smith’s world began to be lit by “the purple light” in allits definiteness. Worm was got rid of by sending him to measure the height ofthe tower.
What could she do but come close—so close that a minute arc of her skirttouched his foot—and asked him how he was getting on with his sketches, and setherself to learn the principles of practical mensuration as applied toirregular buildings? Then she must ascend the pulpit to re-imagine for thehundredth time how it would seem to be a preacher.
Presently she leant over the front of the pulpit.
“Don’t you tell papa, will you, Mr. Smith, if I tell you something?” she saidwith a sudden impulse to make a confidence.
“Oh no, that I won’t,” said he, staring up.
“Well, I write papa’s sermons for him very often, and he preaches them betterthan he does his own; and then afterwards he talks to people and to me aboutwhat he said in his sermon to-day, and forgets that I wrote it for him. Isn’tit absurd?”
“How clever you must be!” said Stephen. “I couldn’t write a sermon for theworld.”
“Oh, it’s easy enough,” she said, descending from the pulpit and coming closeto him to explain more vividly. “You do it like this. Did you ever play a gameof forfeits called ‘When is it? where is it? what is it?’”
“No, never.”
“Ah, that’s a pity, because writing a sermon is very much like playing thatgame. You take the text. You think, why is it? what is it? and so on. You putthat down under ‘Generally.’ Then you proceed to the First, Secondly, andThirdly. Papa won’t have Fourthlys—says they are all my eye. Then you have afinal Collectively, several pages of this being put in great black brackets,writing opposite, ‘LEAVE THIS OUT IF THE FARMERS ARE FALLING ASLEEP.’ Thencomes your In Conclusion, then A Few Words And I Have Done. Well, all this timeyou have put on the back of each page, ‘KEEP YOUR VOICE DOWN’—I mean,” sheadded, correcting herself, “that’s how I do in papa’s sermon-book, becauseotherwise he gets louder and louder, till at last he shouts like a farmer upa-field. Oh, papa is so funny in some things!”
Then, after this childish burst of confidence, she was frightened, as if warnedby womanly instinct, which for the moment her ardour had outrun, that she hadbeen too forward to a comparative stranger.
Elfride saw her father then, and went away into the wind, being caught by agust as she ascended the churchyard slope, in which gust she had the motions,without the motives, of a hoiden; the grace, without the self-consciousness, ofa pirouetter. She conversed for a minute or two with her father, and proceededhomeward, Mr. Swancourt coming on to the church to Stephen. The wind hadfreshened his warm complexion as it freshens the glow of a brand. He was in amood of jollity, and watched Elfride down the hill with a smile.
“You little flyaway! you look wild enough now,” he said, and turned to Stephen.“But she’s not a wild child at all, Mr. Smith. As steady as you; and that youare steady I see from your diligence here.”
“I think Miss Swancourt very clever,” Stephen observed.
“Yes, she is; certainly, she is,” said papa, turning his voice as much aspossible to the neutral tone of disinterested criticism. “Now, Smith, I’ll tellyou something; but she mustn’t know it for the world—not for the world, mind,for she insists upon keeping it a dead secret. Why, SHE WRITES MY SERMONS FORME OFTEN, and a very good job she makes of them!”
“She can do anything.”
“She can do that. The little rascal has the very trick of the trade. But, mindyou, Smith, not a word about it to her, not a single word!”
“Not a word,” said Smith.
“Look there,” said Mr. Swancourt. “What do you think of my roofing?” He pointedwith his walking-stick at the chancel roof,
“Did you do that, sir?”
“Yes, I worked in shirt-sleeves all the time that was going on. I pulled downthe old rafters, fixed the new ones, put on the battens, slated the roof, allwith my own hands, Worm being my assistant. We worked like slaves, didn’t we,Worm?”
“Ay, sure, we did; harder than some here and there—hee, hee!” said WilliamWorm, cropping up from somewhere. “Like slaves, ’a b’lieve—hee, hee! Andweren’t ye foaming mad, sir, when the nails wouldn’t go straight? Mighty I!There, ’tisn’t so bad to cuss and keep it in as to cuss and let it out, is it,sir?”
“Well—why?”
“Because you, sir, when ye were a-putting on the roof, only used to cuss inyour mind, which is, I suppose, no harm at all.”
“I don’t think you know what goes on in my mind, Worm.”
“Oh, doan’t I, sir—hee, hee! Maybe I’m but a poor wambling thing, sir, andcan’t read much; but I can spell as well as some here and there. Doan’t yemind, sir, that blustrous night when ye asked me to hold the candle to ye inyer workshop, when you were making a new chair for the chancel?”
“Yes; what of that?”
“I stood with the candle, and you said you liked company, if ’twas only a dogor cat—maning me; and the chair wouldn’t do nohow.”
“Ah, I remember.”
“No; the chair wouldn’t do nohow. ’A was very well to look at; but, Lord!——”
“Worm, how often have I corrected you for irreverent speaking?”
“—’A was very well to look at, but you couldn’t sit in the chair nohow. ’Twasall a-twist wi’ the chair, like the letter Z, directly you sat down upon thechair. ‘Get up, Worm,’ says you, when you seed the chair go all a-sway wi’ me.Up you took the chair, and flung en like fire and brimstone to t’other end ofyour shop—all in a passion. ‘Damn the chair!’ says I. ‘Just what I wasthinking,’ says you, sir. ‘I could see it in your face, sir,’ says I, ‘and Ihope you and God will forgi’e me for saying what you wouldn’t.’ To save yourlife you couldn’t help laughing, sir, at a poor wambler reading your thoughtsso plain. Ay, I’m as wise as one here and there.”
“I thought you had better have a practical man to go over the church and towerwith you,” Mr. Swancourt said to Stephen the following morning, “so I got LordLuxellian’s permission to send for a man when you came. I told him to be thereat ten o’clock. He’s a very intelligent man, and he will tell you all you wantto know about the state of the walls. His name is John Smith.”
Elfride did not like to be seen again at the church with Stephen. “I will watchhere for your appearance at the top of the tower,” she said laughingly. “Ishall see your figure against the sky.”
“And when I am up there I’ll wave my handkerchief to you, Miss Swancourt,” saidStephen. “In twelve minutes from this present moment,” he added, looking at hiswatch, “I’ll be at the summit and look out for you.”
She went round to the corner of the shrubbery, whence she could watch him downthe slope leading to the foot of the hill on which the church stood. There shesaw waiting for him a white spot—a mason in his working clothes. Stephen metthis man and stopped.
To her surprise, instead of their moving on to the churchyard, they bothleisurely sat down upon a stone close by their meeting-place, and remained asif in deep conversation. Elfride looked at the time; nine of the twelve minuteshad passed, and Stephen showed no signs of moving. More minutes passed—she grewcold with waiting, and shivered. It was not till the end of a quarter of anhour that they began to slowly wend up the hill at a snail’s pace.
“Rude and unmannerly!” she said to herself, colouring with pique. “Anybodywould think he was in love with that horrid mason instead of with——”
The sentence remained unspoken, though not unthought.
She returned to the porch.
“Is the man you sent for a lazy, sit-still, do-nothing kind of man?” sheinquired of her father.
“No,” he said surprised; “quite the reverse. He is Lord Luxellian’smaster-mason, John Smith.”
“Oh,” said Elfride indifferently, and returned towards her bleak station, andwaited and shivered again. It was a trifle, after all—a childish thing—lookingout from a tower and waving a handkerchief. But her new friend had promised,and why should he tease her so? The effect of a blow is as proportionate to thetexture of the object struck as to its own momentum; and she had such asuperlative capacity for being wounded that little hits struck her hard.
It was not till the end of half an hour that two figures were seen above theparapet of the dreary old pile, motionless as bitterns on a ruined mosque. Eventhen Stephen was not true enough to perform what he was so courteous topromise, and he vanished without making a sign.
He returned at midday. Elfride looked vexed when unconscious that his eyes wereupon her; when conscious, severe. However, her attitude of coldness had longoutlived the coldness itself, and she could no longer utter feigned words ofindifference.
“Ah, you weren’t kind to keep me waiting in the cold, and break your promise,”she said at last reproachfully, in tones too low for her father’s powers ofhearing.
“Forgive, forgive me!” said Stephen with dismay. “I had forgotten—quiteforgotten! Something prevented my remembering.”
“Any further explanation?” said Miss Capricious, pouting.
He was silent for a few minutes, and looked askance.
“None,” he said, with the accent of one who concealed a sin.
Chapter V
“Bosom’d high in tufted trees.”
It was breakfast time.
As seen from the vicarage dining-room, which took a warm tone of light from thefire, the weather and scene outside seemed to have stereotyped themselves inunrelieved shades of gray. The long-armed trees and shrubs of juniper, cedar,and pine varieties, were grayish black; those of the broad-leaved sort,together with the herbage, were grayish-green; the eternal hills and towerbehind them were grayish-brown; the sky, dropping behind all, gray of thepurest melancholy.
Yet in spite of this sombre artistic effect, the morning was not one whichtended to lower the spirits. It was even cheering. For it did not rain, nor wasrain likely to fall for many days to come.
Elfride had turned from the table towards the fire and was idly elevating ahand-screen before her face, when she heard the click of a little gate outside.
“Ah, here’s the postman!” she said, as a shuffling, active man came through anopening in the shrubbery and across the lawn. She vanished, and met him in theporch, afterwards coming in with her hands behind her back.
“How many are there? Three for papa, one for Mr. Smith, none for MissSwancourt. And, papa, look here, one of yours is from—whom do you think?—LordLuxellian. And it has something HARD in it—a lump of something. I’ve beenfeeling it through the envelope, and can’t think what it is.”
“What does Luxellian write for, I wonder?” Mr. Swancourt had saidsimultaneously with her words. He handed Stephen his letter, and took his own,putting on his countenance a higher class of look than was customary, as becamea poor gentleman who was going to read a letter from a peer.
Stephen read his missive with a countenance quite the reverse of the vicar’s.
“PERCY PLACE, Thursday Evening.
‘DEAR SMITH,—Old H. is in a towering rage with you for being so long about thechurch sketches. Swears you are more trouble than you are worth. He says I amto write and say you are to stay no longer on any consideration—that he wouldhave done it all in three hours very easily. I told him that you were not likean experienced hand, which he seemed to forget, but it did not make muchdifference. However, between you and me privately, if I were you I would notalarm myself for a day or so, if I were not inclined to return. I would makeout the week and finish my spree. He will blow up just as much if you appearhere on Saturday as if you keep away till Monday morning.—Yours very truly,
“SIMPKINS JENKINS.
“Dear me—very awkward!” said Stephen, rather en l’air, and confused withthe kind of confusion that assails an understrapper when he has been enlargedby accident to the dimensions of a superior, and is somewhat rudely pared downto his original size.
“What is awkward?” said Miss Swancourt.
Smith by this time recovered his equanimity, and with it the professionaldignity of an experienced architect.
“Important business demands my immediate presence in London, I regret to say,”he replied.
“What! Must you go at once?” said Mr. Swancourt, looking over the edge of hisletter. “Important business? A young fellow like you to have importantbusiness!”
“The truth is,” said Stephen blushing, and rather ashamed of having pretendedeven so slightly to a consequence which did not belong to him,—“the truth is,Mr. Hewby has sent to say I am to come home; and I must obey him.”
“I see; I see. It is politic to do so, you mean. Now I can see more than youthink. You are to be his partner. I booked you for that directly I read hisletter to me the other day, and the way he spoke of you. He thinks a great dealof you, Mr. Smith, or he wouldn’t be so anxious for your return.”
Unpleasant to Stephen such remarks as these could not sound; to have theexpectancy of partnership with one of the largest-practising architects inLondon thrust upon him was cheering, however untenable he felt the idea to be.He saw that, whatever Mr. Hewby might think, Mr. Swancourt certainly thoughtmuch of him to entertain such an idea on such slender ground as to beabsolutely no ground at all. And then, unaccountably, his speaking faceexhibited a cloud of sadness, which a reflection on the remoteness of any suchcontingency could hardly have sufficed to cause.
Elfride was struck with that look of his; even Mr. Swancourt noticed it.
“Well,” he said cheerfully, “never mind that now. You must come again on yourown account; not on business. Come to see me as a visitor, you know—say, inyour holidays—all you town men have holidays like schoolboys. When are they?”
“In August, I believe.”
“Very well; come in August; and then you need not hurry away so. I am glad toget somebody decent to talk to, or at, in this outlandish ultima Thule. But, bythe bye, I have something to say—you won’t go to-day?”
“No; I need not,” said Stephen hesitatingly. “I am not obliged to get backbefore Monday morning.”
“Very well, then, that brings me to what I am going to propose. This is aletter from Lord Luxellian. I think you heard me speak of him as the residentlandowner in this district, and patron of this living?”
“I—know of him.”
“He is in London now. It seems that he has run up on business for a day or two,and taken Lady Luxellian with him. He has written to ask me to go to his house,and search for a paper among his private memoranda, which he forgot to takewith him.”
“What did he send in the letter?” inquired Elfride.
“The key of a private desk in which the papers are. He doesn’t like to trustsuch a matter to any body else. I have done such things for him before. Andwhat I propose is, that we make an afternoon of it—all three of us. Go for adrive to Targan Bay, come home by way of Endelstow House; and whilst I amlooking over the documents you can ramble about the rooms where you like. Ihave the run of the house at any time, you know. The building, though nothingbut a mass of gables outside, has a splendid hall, staircase, and gallerywithin; and there are a few good pictures.”
“Yes, there are,” said Stephen.
“Have you seen the place, then?
“I saw it as I came by,” he said hastily.
“Oh yes; but I was alluding to the interior. And the church—St. Eval’s—is mucholder than our St. Agnes’ here. I do duty in that and this alternately, youknow. The fact is, I ought to have some help; riding across that park for twomiles on a wet morning is not at all the thing. If my constitution were notwell seasoned, as thank God it is,”—here Mr. Swancourt looked down his front,as if his constitution were visible there,—“I should be coughing and barkingall the year round. And when the family goes away, there are only about threeservants to preach to when I get there. Well, that shall be the arrangement,then. Elfride, you will like to go?”
Elfride assented; and the little breakfast-party separated. Stephen rose to goand take a few final measurements at the church, the vicar following him to thedoor with a mysterious expression of inquiry on his face.
“You’ll put up with our not having family prayer this morning, I hope?” hewhispered.
“Yes; quite so,” said Stephen.
“To tell you the truth,” he continued in the same undertone, “we don’t make aregular thing of it; but when we have strangers visiting us, I am strongly ofopinion that it is the proper thing to do, and I always do it. I am very stricton that point. But you, Smith, there is something in your face which makes mefeel quite at home; no nonsense about you, in short. Ah, it reminds me of asplendid story I used to hear when I was a helter-skelter young fellow—such astory! But”—here the vicar shook his head self-forbiddingly, and grimlylaughed.
“Was it a good story?” said young Smith, smiling too.
“Oh yes; but ’tis too bad—too bad! Couldn’t tell it to you for the world!”
Stephen went across the lawn, hearing the vicar chuckling privately at therecollection as he withdrew.
They started at three o’clock. The gray morning had resolved itself into anafternoon bright with a pale pervasive sunlight, without the sun itself beingvisible. Lightly they trotted along—the wheels nearly silent, the horse’s hoofsclapping, almost ringing, upon the hard, white, turnpike road as it followedthe level ridge in a perfectly straight line, seeming to be absorbed ultimatelyby the white of the sky.
Targan Bay—which had the merit of being easily got at—was duly visited. Theythen swept round by innumerable lanes, in which not twenty consecutive yardswere either straight or level, to the domain of Lord Luxellian. A woman with adouble chin and thick neck, like Queen Anne by Dahl, threw open the lodge gate,a little boy standing behind her.
“I’ll give him something, poor little fellow,” said Elfride, pulling out herpurse and hastily opening it. From the interior of her purse a host of bits ofpaper, like a flock of white birds, floated into the air, and were blown aboutin all directions.
“Well, to be sure!” said Stephen with a slight laugh.
“What the dickens is all that?” said Mr. Swancourt. “Not halves of bank-notes,Elfride?”
Elfride looked annoyed and guilty. “They are only something of mine, papa,” shefaltered, whilst Stephen leapt out, and, assisted by the lodge-keeper’s littleboy, crept about round the wheels and horse’s hoofs till the papers were allgathered together again. He handed them back to her, and remounted.
“I suppose you are wondering what those scraps were?” she said, as they bowledalong up the sycamore avenue. “And so I may as well tell you. They are notesfor a romance I am writing.”
She could not help colouring at the confession, much as she tried to avoid it.
“A story, do you mean?” said Stephen, Mr. Swancourt half listening, andcatching a word of the conversation now and then.
“Yes; THE COURT OF KELLYON CASTLE; a romance of the fifteenth century. Suchwriting is out of date now, I know; but I like doing it.”
“A romance carried in a purse! If a highwayman were to rob you, he would betaken in.”
“Yes; that’s my way of carrying manuscript. The real reason is, that I mostlywrite bits of it on scraps of paper when I am on horseback; and I put themthere for convenience.”
“What are you going to do with your romance when you have written it?” saidStephen.
“I don’t know,” she replied, and turned her head to look at the prospect.
For by this time they had reached the precincts of Endelstow House. Drivingthrough an ancient gate-way of dun-coloured stone, spanned by thehigh-shouldered Tudor arch, they found themselves in a spacious court, closedby a facade on each of its three sides. The substantial portions of theexisting building dated from the reign of Henry VIII.; but the picturesque andsheltered spot had been the site of an erection of a much earlier date. Alicence to crenellate mansum infra manerium suum was granted by Edward II. to“Hugo Luxellen chivaler;” but though the faint outline of the ditch and moundwas visible at points, no sign of the original building remained.
The windows on all sides were long and many-mullioned; the roof lines broken upby dormer lights of the same pattern. The apex stones of these dormers,together with those of the gables, were surmounted by grotesque figures inrampant, passant, and couchant variety. Tall octagonal and twisted chimneysthrust themselves high up into the sky, surpassed in height, however, by somepoplars and sycamores at the back, which showed their gently rocking summitsover ridge and parapet. In the corners of the court polygonal bays, whosesurfaces were entirely occupied by buttresses and windows, broke into thesquareness of the enclosure; and a far-projecting oriel, springing from afantastic series of mouldings, overhung the archway of the chief entrance tothe house.
As Mr. Swancourt had remarked, he had the freedom of the mansion in the absenceof its owner. Upon a statement of his errand they were all admitted to thelibrary, and left entirely to themselves. Mr. Swancourt was soon up to his eyesin the examination of a heap of papers he had taken from the cabinet describedby his correspondent. Stephen and Elfride had nothing to do but to wander abouttill her father was ready.
Elfride entered the gallery, and Stephen followed her without seeming to do so.It was a long sombre apartment, enriched with fittings a century or so later instyle than the walls of the mansion. Pilasters of Renaissance workmanshipsupported a cornice from which sprang a curved ceiling, panelled in the awkwardtwists and curls of the period. The old Gothic quarries still remained in theupper portion of the large window at the end, though they had made way for amore modern form of glazing elsewhere.
Stephen was at one end of the gallery looking towards Elfride, who stood in themidst, beginning to feel somewhat depressed by the society of Luxellian shadesof cadaverous complexion fixed by Holbein, Kneller, and Lely, and seeming togaze at and through her in a moralizing mood. The silence, which cast almost aspell upon them, was broken by the sudden opening of a door at the far end.
Out bounded a pair of little girls, lightly yet warmly dressed. Their eyes weresparkling; their hair swinging about and around; their red mouths laughing withunalloyed gladness.
“Ah, Miss Swancourt: dearest Elfie! we heard you. Are you going to stay here?You are our little mamma, are you not—our big mamma is gone to London,” saidone.
“Let me tiss you,” said the other, in appearance very much like the first, butto a smaller pattern.
Their pink cheeks and yellow hair were speedily intermingled with the folds ofElfride’s dress; she then stooped and tenderly embraced them both.
“Such an odd thing,” said Elfride, smiling, and turning to Stephen. “They havetaken it into their heads lately to call me ‘little mamma,’ because I am veryfond of them, and wore a dress the other day something like one of LadyLuxellian’s.”
These two young creatures were the Honourable Mary and the HonourableKate—scarcely appearing large enough as yet to bear the weight of suchponderous prefixes. They were the only two children of Lord and Lady Luxellian,and, as it proved, had been left at home during their parents’ temporaryabsence, in the custody of nurse and governess. Lord Luxellian was dotinglyfond of the children; rather indifferent towards his wife, since she had begunto show an inclination not to please him by giving him a boy.
All children instinctively ran after Elfride, looking upon her more as anunusually nice large specimen of their own tribe than as a grown-up elder. Ithad now become an established rule, that whenever she met them—indoors orout-of-doors, weekdays or Sundays—they were to be severally pressed against herface and bosom for the space of a quarter of a minute, and other-wise made muchof on the delightful system of cumulative epithet and caress to whichunpractised girls will occasionally abandon themselves.
A look of misgiving by the youngsters towards the door by which they hadentered directed attention to a maid-servant appearing from the same quarter,to put an end to this sweet freedom of the poor Honourables Mary and Kate.
“I wish you lived here, Miss Swancourt,” piped one like a melancholy bullfinch.
“So do I,” piped the other like a rather more melancholy bullfinch. “Mammacan’t play with us so nicely as you do. I don’t think she ever learnt playingwhen she was little. When shall we come to see you?”
“As soon as you like, dears.”
“And sleep at your house all night? That’s what I mean by coming to see you. Idon’t care to see people with hats and bonnets on, and all standing up andwalking about.”
“As soon as we can get mamma’s permission you shall come and stay as long asever you like. Good-bye!”
The prisoners were then led off, Elfride again turning her attention to herguest, whom she had left standing at the remote end of the gallery. On lookingaround for him he was nowhere to be seen. Elfride stepped down to the library,thinking he might have rejoined her father there. But Mr. Swancourt, nowcheerfully illuminated by a pair of candles, was still alone, untying packetsof letters and papers, and tying them up again.
As Elfride did not stand on a sufficiently intimate footing with the object ofher interest to justify her, as a proper young lady, to commence the activesearch for him that youthful impulsiveness prompted, and as, nevertheless, fora nascent reason connected with those divinely cut lips of his, she did notlike him to be absent from her side, she wandered desultorily back to the oakstaircase, pouting and casting her eyes about in hope of discerning his boyishfigure.
Though daylight still prevailed in the rooms, the corridors were in a depth ofshadow—chill, sad, and silent; and it was only by looking along them towardslight spaces beyond that anything or anybody could be discerned therein. One ofthese light spots she found to be caused by a side-door with glass panels inthe upper part. Elfride opened it, and found herself confronting a secondary orinner lawn, separated from the principal lawn front by a shrubbery.
And now she saw a perplexing sight. At right angles to the face of the wing shehad emerged from, and within a few feet of the door, jutted out another wing ofthe mansion, lower and with less architectural character. Immediately oppositeto her, in the wall of this wing, was a large broad window, having its blinddrawn down, and illuminated by a light in the room it screened.
On the blind was a shadow from somebody close inside it—a person in profile.The profile was unmistakably that of Stephen. It was just possible to see thathis arms were uplifted, and that his hands held an article of some kind. Thenanother shadow appeared—also in profile—and came close to him. This was theshadow of a woman. She turned her back towards Stephen: he lifted and held outwhat now proved to be a shawl or mantle—placed it carefully—so carefully—roundthe lady; disappeared; reappeared in her front—fastened the mantle. Did he thenkiss her? Surely not. Yet the motion might have been a kiss. Then both shadowsswelled to colossal dimensions—grew distorted—vanished.
Two minutes elapsed.
“Ah, Miss Swancourt! I am so glad to find you. I was looking for you,” said avoice at her elbow—Stephen’s voice. She stepped into the passage.
“Do you know any of the members of this establishment?” said she.
“Not a single one: how should I?” he replied.
Chapter VI
“Fare thee weel awhile!”
Simultaneously with the conclusion of Stephen’s remark, the sound of theclosing of an external door in their immediate neighbourhood reached Elfride’sears. It came from the further side of the wing containing the illuminatedroom. She then discerned, by the aid of the dusky departing light, a figure,whose sex was undistinguishable, walking down the gravelled path by theparterre towards the river. The figure grew fainter, and vanished under thetrees.
Mr. Swancourt’s voice was heard calling out their names from a distant corridorin the body of the building. They retraced their steps, and found him with hiscoat buttoned up and his hat on, awaiting their advent in a mood ofself-satisfaction at having brought his search to a successful close. Thecarriage was brought round, and without further delay the trio drove away fromthe mansion, under the echoing gateway arch, and along by the leaflesssycamores, as the stars began to kindle their trembling lights behind the mazeof branches and twigs.
No words were spoken either by youth or maiden. Her unpractised mind wascompletely occupied in fathoming its recent acquisition. The young man who hadinspired her with such novelty of feeling, who had come directly from London onbusiness to her father, having been brought by chance to Endelstow House had,by some means or other, acquired the privilege of approaching some lady he hadfound therein, and of honouring her by petits soins of a marked kind,—all inthe space of half an hour.
What room were they standing in? thought Elfride. As nearly as she could guess,it was Lord Luxellian’s business-room, or office. What people were in thehouse? None but the governess and servants, as far as she knew, and of these hehad professed a total ignorance. Had the person she had indistinctly seenleaving the house anything to do with the performance? It was impossible to saywithout appealing to the culprit himself, and that she would never do. The moreElfride reflected, the more certain did it appear that the meeting was a chancerencounter, and not an appointment. On the ultimate inquiry as to theindividuality of the woman, Elfride at once assumed that she could not be aninferior. Stephen Smith was not the man to care about passages-at-love withwomen beneath him. Though gentle, ambition was visible in his kindling eyes; heevidently hoped for much; hoped indefinitely, but extensively. Elfride waspuzzled, and being puzzled, was, by a natural sequence of girlish sensations,vexed with him. No more pleasure came in recognizing that from liking toattract him she was getting on to love him, boyish as he was and innocent as hehad seemed.
They reached the bridge which formed a link between the eastern and westernhalves of the parish. Situated in a valley that was bounded outwardly by thesea, it formed a point of depression from which the road ascended with greatsteepness to West Endelstow and the Vicarage. There was no absolute necessityfor either of them to alight, but as it was the vicar’s custom after a longjourney to humour the horse in making this winding ascent, Elfride, moved by animitative instinct, suddenly jumped out when Pleasant had just begun to adoptthe deliberate stalk he associated with this portion of the road.
The young man seemed glad of any excuse for breaking the silence. “Why, MissSwancourt, what a risky thing to do!” he exclaimed, immediately following herexample by jumping down on the other side.
“Oh no, not at all,” replied she coldly; the shadow phenomenon at EndelstowHouse still paramount within her.
Stephen walked along by himself for two or three minutes, wrapped in the rigidreserve dictated by her tone. Then apparently thinking that it was only forgirls to pout, he came serenely round to her side, and offered his arm withCastilian gallantry, to assist her in ascending the remaining three-quarters ofthe steep.
Here was a temptation: it was the first time in her life that Elfride had beentreated as a grown-up woman in this way—offered an arm in a manner implyingthat she had a right to refuse it. Till to-night she had never receivedmasculine attentions beyond those which might be contained in such homelyremarks as “Elfride, give me your hand;” “Elfride, take hold of my arm,” fromher father. Her callow heart made an epoch of the incident; she considered herarray of feelings, for and against. Collectively they were for taking thisoffered arm; the single one of pique determined her to punish Stephen byrefusing.
“No, thank you, Mr. Smith; I can get along better by myself”
It was Elfride’s first fragile attempt at browbeating a lover. Fearing more theissue of such an undertaking than what a gentle young man might think of herwaywardness, she immediately afterwards determined to please herself byreversing her statement.
“On second thoughts, I will take it,” she said.
They slowly went their way up the hill, a few yards behind the carriage.
“How silent you are, Miss Swancourt!” Stephen observed.
“Perhaps I think you silent too,” she returned.
“I may have reason to be.”
“Scarcely; it is sadness that makes people silent, and you can have none.”
“You don’t know: I have a trouble; though some might think it less a troublethan a dilemma.”
“What is it?” she asked impulsively.
Stephen hesitated. “I might tell,” he said; “at the same time, perhaps, it isas well——”
She let go his arm and imperatively pushed it from her, tossing her head. Shehad just learnt that a good deal of dignity is lost by asking a question towhich an answer is refused, even ever so politely; for though politeness doesgood service in cases of requisition and compromise, it but little helps adirect refusal. “I don’t wish to know anything of it; I don’t wish it,” shewent on. “The carriage is waiting for us at the top of the hill; we must getin;” and Elfride flitted to the front. “Papa, here is your Elfride!” sheexclaimed to the dusky figure of the old gentleman, as she sprang up and sankby his side without deigning to accept aid from Stephen.
“Ah, yes!” uttered the vicar in artificially alert tones, awaking from a mostprofound sleep, and suddenly preparing to alight.
“Why, what are you doing, papa? We are not home yet.”
“Oh no, no; of course not; we are not at home yet,” Mr. Swancourt said veryhastily, endeavouring to dodge back to his original position with the air of aman who had not moved at all. “The fact is I was so lost in deep meditationthat I forgot whereabouts we were.” And in a minute the vicar was snoringagain.
That evening, being the last, seemed to throw an exceptional shade of sadnessover Stephen Smith, and the repeated injunctions of the vicar, that he was tocome and revisit them in the summer, apparently tended less to raise hisspirits than to unearth some misgiving.
He left them in the gray light of dawn, whilst the colours of earth weresombre, and the sun was yet hidden in the east. Elfride had fidgeted all nightin her little bed lest none of the household should be awake soon enough tostart him, and also lest she might miss seeing again the bright eyes and curlyhair, to which their owner’s possession of a hidden mystery added a deepertinge of romance. To some extent—so soon does womanly interest take asolicitous turn—she felt herself responsible for his safe conduct. Theybreakfasted before daylight; Mr. Swancourt, being more and more taken with hisguest’s ingenuous appearance, having determined to rise early and bid him afriendly farewell. It was, however, rather to the vicar’s astonishment, that hesaw Elfride walk in to the breakfast-table, candle in hand.
Whilst William Worm performed his toilet (during which performance the inmatesof the vicarage were always in the habit of waiting with exemplary patience),Elfride wandered desultorily to the summer house. Stephen followed her thither.The copse-covered valley was visible from this position, a mist now lying allalong its length, hiding the stream which trickled through it, though theobservers themselves were in clear air.
They stood close together, leaning over the rustic balustrading which boundedthe arbour on the outward side, and formed the crest of a steep slope beneathElfride constrainedly pointed out some features of the distant uplands risingirregularly opposite. But the artistic eye was, either from nature orcircumstance, very faint in Stephen now, and he only half attended to herdescription, as if he spared time from some other thought going on within him.
“Well, good-bye,” he said suddenly; “I must never see you again, I suppose,Miss Swancourt, in spite of invitations.”
His genuine tribulation played directly upon the delicate chords of her nature.She could afford to forgive him for a concealment or two. Moreover, the shynesswhich would not allow him to look her in the face lent bravery to her own eyesand tongue.
“Oh, DO come again, Mr. Smith!” she said prettily.
“I should delight in it; but it will be better if I do not.”
“Why?”
“Certain circumstances in connection with me make it undesirable. Not on myaccount; on yours.”
“Goodness! As if anything in connection with you could hurt me,” she said withserene supremacy; but seeing that this plan of treatment was inappropriate, shetuned a smaller note. “Ah, I know why you will not come. You don’t want to.You’ll go home to London and to all the stirring people there, and will neverwant to see us any more!”
“You know I have no such reason.”
“And go on writing letters to the lady you are engaged to, just as before.”
“What does that mean? I am not engaged.”
“You wrote a letter to a Miss Somebody; I saw it in the letter-rack.”
“Pooh! an elderly woman who keeps a stationer’s shop; and it was to tell her tokeep my newspapers till I get back.”
“You needn’t have explained: it was not my business at all.” Miss Elfride wasrather relieved to hear that statement, nevertheless. “And you won’t come againto see my father?” she insisted.
“I should like to—and to see you again, but——”
“Will you reveal to me that matter you hide?” she interrupted petulantly.
“No; not now.”
She could not but go on, graceless as it might seem.
“Tell me this,” she importuned with a trembling mouth. “Does any meeting ofyours with a lady at Endelstow Vicarage clash with—any interest you may take inme?”
He started a little. “It does not,” he said emphatically; and looked into thepupils of her eyes with the confidence that only honesty can give, and eventhat to youth alone.
The explanation had not come, but a gloom left her. She could not but believethat utterance. Whatever enigma might lie in the shadow on the blind, it wasnot an enigma of underhand passion.
She turned towards the house, entering it through the conservatory. Stephenwent round to the front door. Mr. Swancourt was standing on the step in hisslippers. Worm was adjusting a buckle in the harness, and murmuring about hispoor head; and everything was ready for Stephen’s departure.
“You named August for your visit. August it shall be; that is, if you care forthe society of such a fossilized Tory,” said Mr. Swancourt.
Mr. Smith only responded hesitatingly, that he should like to come again.
“You said you would, and you must,” insisted Elfride, coming to the door andspeaking under her father’s arm.
Whatever reason the youth may have had for not wishing to enter the house as aguest, it no longer predominated. He promised, and bade them adieu, and gotinto the pony-carriage, which crept up the slope, and bore him out of theirsight.
“I never was so much taken with anybody in my life as I am with that youngfellow—never! I cannot understand it—can’t understand it anyhow,” said Mr.Swancourt quite energetically to himself; and went indoors.
Chapter VII
“No more of me you knew, my love!”
Stephen Smith revisited Endelstow Vicarage, agreeably to his promise. He had agenuine artistic reason for coming, though no such reason seemed to berequired. Six-and-thirty old seat ends, of exquisite fifteenth-centuryworkmanship, were rapidly decaying in an aisle of the church; and it becamepolitic to make drawings of their worm-eaten contours ere they were batteredpast recognition in the turmoil of the so-called restoration.
He entered the house at sunset, and the world was pleasant again to the twofair-haired ones. A momentary pang of disappointment had, nevertheless, passedthrough Elfride when she casually discovered that he had not come that minutepost-haste from London, but had reached the neighbourhood the previous evening.Surprise would have accompanied the feeling, had she not remembered thatseveral tourists were haunting the coast at this season, and that Stephen mighthave chosen to do likewise.
They did little besides chat that evening, Mr. Swancourt beginning to questionhis visitor, closely yet paternally, and in good part, on his hopes andprospects from the profession he had embraced. Stephen gave vague answers. Thenext day it rained. In the evening, when twenty-four hours of Elfride hadcompletely rekindled her admirer’s ardour, a game of chess was proposed betweenthem.
The game had its value in helping on the developments of their future.
Elfride soon perceived that her opponent was but a learner. She next noticedthat he had a very odd way of handling the pieces when castling or taking aman. Antecedently she would have supposed that the same performance must begone through by all players in the same manner; she was taught by his differingaction that all ordinary players, who learn the game by sight, unconsciouslytouch the men in a stereotyped way. This impression of indescribable oddness inStephen’s touch culminated in speech when she saw him, at the taking of one ofher bishops, push it aside with the taking man instead of lifting it as apreliminary to the move.
“How strangely you handle the men, Mr. Smith!”
“Do I? I am sorry for that.”
“Oh no—don’t be sorry; it is not a matter great enough for sorrow. But whotaught you to play?”
“Nobody, Miss Swancourt,” he said. “I learnt from a book lent me by my friendMr. Knight, the noblest man in the world.”
“But you have seen people play?”
“I have never seen the playing of a single game. This is the first time I everhad the opportunity of playing with a living opponent. I have worked out manygames from books, and studied the reasons of the different moves, but that isall.”
This was a full explanation of his mannerism; but the fact that a man with thedesire for chess should have grown up without being able to see or engage in agame astonished her not a little. She pondered on the circumstance for sometime, looking into vacancy and hindering the play.
Mr. Swancourt was sitting with his eyes fixed on the board, but apparentlythinking of other things. Half to himself he said, pending the move of Elfride:
“‘Quae finis aut quod me manet stipendium?’”
Stephen replied instantly:
“‘Effare: jussas cum fide poenas luam.’”
“Excellent—prompt—gratifying!” said Mr. Swancourt with feeling, bringing downhis hand upon the table, and making three pawns and a knight dance over theirborders by the shaking. “I was musing on those words as applicable to a strangecourse I am steering—but enough of that. I am delighted with you, Mr. Smith,for it is so seldom in this desert that I meet with a man who is gentleman andscholar enough to continue a quotation, however trite it may be.”
“I also apply the words to myself,” said Stephen quietly.
“You? The last man in the world to do that, I should have thought.”
“Come,” murmured Elfride poutingly, and insinuating herself between them, “tellme all about it. Come, construe, construe!”
Stephen looked steadfastly into her face, and said slowly, and in a voice fullof a far-off meaning that seemed quaintly premature in one so young:
“Quae finis WHAT WILL BE THE END, aut OR, quod stipendium WHAT FINE, manet meAWAITS ME? Effare SPEAK OUT; luam I WILL PAY, cum fide WITH FAITH, jussaspoenas THE PENALTY REQUIRED.”
The vicar, who had listened with a critical compression of the lips to thisschool-boy recitation, and by reason of his imperfect hearing had missed themarked realism of Stephen’s tone in the English words, now said hesitatingly:“By the bye, Mr. Smith (I know you’ll excuse my curiosity), though yourtranslation was unexceptionably correct and close, you have a way ofpronouncing your Latin which to me seems most peculiar. Not that thepronunciation of a dead language is of much importance; yet your accents andquantities have a grotesque sound to my ears. I thought first that you hadacquired your way of breathing the vowels from some of the northern colleges;but it cannot be so with the quantities. What I was going to ask was, if yourinstructor in the classics could possibly have been an Oxford or Cambridgeman?”
“Yes; he was an Oxford man—Fellow of St. Cyprian’s.”
“Really?”
“Oh yes; there’s no doubt about it.
“The oddest thing ever I heard of!” said Mr. Swancourt, starting withastonishment. “That the pupil of such a man——”
“The best and cleverest man in England!” cried Stephen enthusiastically.
“That the pupil of such a man should pronounce Latin in the way you pronounceit beats all I ever heard. How long did he instruct you?”
“Four years.”
“Four years!”
“It is not so strange when I explain,” Stephen hastened to say. “It was done inthis way—by letter. I sent him exercises and construing twice a week, and twicea week he sent them back to me corrected, with marginal notes of instruction.That is how I learnt my Latin and Greek, such as it is. He is not responsiblefor my scanning. He has never heard me scan a line.”
“A novel case, and a singular instance of patience!” cried the vicar.
“On his part, not on mine. Ah, Henry Knight is one in a thousand! I rememberhis speaking to me on this very subject of pronunciation. He says that, much tohis regret, he sees a time coming when every man will pronounce even the commonwords of his own tongue as seems right in his own ears, and be thought none theworse for it; that the speaking age is passing away, to make room for thewriting age.”
Both Elfride and her father had waited attentively to hear Stephen go on towhat would have been the most interesting part of the story, namely, whatcircumstances could have necessitated such an unusual method of education. Butno further explanation was volunteered; and they saw, by the young man’s mannerof concentrating himself upon the chess-board, that he was anxious to drop thesubject.
The game proceeded. Elfride played by rote; Stephen by thought. It was thecruellest thing to checkmate him after so much labour, she considered. What wasshe dishonest enough to do in her compassion? To let him checkmate her. Asecond game followed; and being herself absolutely indifferent as to the result(her playing was above the average among women, and she knew it), she allowedhim to give checkmate again. A final game, in which she adopted the Muziogambit as her opening, was terminated by Elfride’s victory at the twelfth move.
Stephen looked up suspiciously. His heart was throbbing even more excitedlythan was hers, which itself had quickened when she seriously set to work onthis last occasion. Mr. Swancourt had left the room.
“You have been trifling with me till now!” he exclaimed, his face flushing.“You did not play your best in the first two games?”
Elfride’s guilt showed in her face. Stephen became the picture of vexation andsadness, which, relishable for a moment, caused her the next instant to regretthe mistake she had made.
“Mr. Smith, forgive me!” she said sweetly. “I see now, though I did not atfirst, that what I have done seems like contempt for your skill. But, indeed, Idid not mean it in that sense. I could not, upon my conscience, win a victoryin those first and second games over one who fought at such a disadvantage andso manfully.”
He drew a long breath, and murmured bitterly, “Ah, you are cleverer than I. Youcan do everything—I can do nothing! O Miss Swancourt!” he burst out wildly, hisheart swelling in his throat, “I must tell you how I love you! All these monthsof my absence I have worshipped you.”
He leapt from his seat like the impulsive lad that he was, slid round to herside, and almost before she suspected it his arm was round her waist, and thetwo sets of curls intermingled.
So entirely new was full-blown love to Elfride, that she trembled as much fromthe novelty of the emotion as from the emotion itself. Then she suddenlywithdrew herself and stood upright, vexed that she had submitted unresistinglyeven to his momentary pressure. She resolved to consider this demonstration aspremature.
“You must not begin such things as those,” she said with coquettish hauteur ofa very transparent nature “And—you must not do so again—and papa is coming.”
“Let me kiss you—only a little one,” he said with his usual delicacy, andwithout reading the factitiousness of her manner.
“No; not one.”
“Only on your cheek?”
“No.”
“Forehead?”
“Certainly not.”
“You care for somebody else, then? Ah, I thought so!”
“I am sure I do not.”
“Nor for me either?”
“How can I tell?” she said simply, the simplicity lying merely in the broadoutlines of her manner and speech. There were the semitone of voice andhalf-hidden expression of eyes which tell the initiated how very fragile is theice of reserve at these times.
Footsteps were heard. Mr. Swancourt then entered the room, and their privatecolloquy ended.
The day after this partial revelation, Mr. Swancourt proposed a drive to thecliffs beyond Targan Bay, a distance of three or four miles.
Half an hour before the time of departure a crash was heard in the back yard,and presently Worm came in, saying partly to the world in general, partly tohimself, and slightly to his auditors:
“Ay, ay, sure! That frying of fish will be the end of William Worm. They be atit again this morning—same as ever—fizz, fizz, fizz!”
“Your head bad again, Worm?” said Mr. Swancourt. “What was that noise we heardin the yard?”
“Ay, sir, a weak wambling man am I; and the frying have been going on in mypoor head all through the long night and this morning as usual; and I was sodazed wi’ it that down fell a piece of leg-wood across the shaft of thepony-shay, and splintered it off. ‘Ay,’ says I, ‘I feel it as if ’twas my ownshay; and though I’ve done it, and parish pay is my lot if I go from here,perhaps I am as independent as one here and there.’”
“Dear me, the shaft of the carriage broken!” cried Elfride. She wasdisappointed: Stephen doubly so. The vicar showed more warmth of temper thanthe accident seemed to demand, much to Stephen’s uneasiness and rather to hissurprise. He had not supposed so much latent sternness could co-exist with Mr.Swancourt’s frankness and good-nature.
“You shall not be disappointed,” said the vicar at length. “It is almost toolong a distance for you to walk. Elfride can trot down on her pony, and youshall have my old nag, Smith.”
Elfride exclaimed triumphantly, “You have never seen me on horseback—Oh, youmust!” She looked at Stephen and read his thoughts immediately. “Ah, you don’tride, Mr. Smith?”
“I am sorry to say I don’t.”
“Fancy a man not able to ride!” said she rather pertly.
The vicar came to his rescue. “That’s common enough; he has had other lessonsto learn. Now, I recommend this plan: let Elfride ride on horseback, and you,Mr. Smith, walk beside her.”
The arrangement was welcomed with secret delight by Stephen. It seemed tocombine in itself all the advantages of a long slow ramble with Elfride,without the contingent possibility of the enjoyment being spoilt by herbecoming weary. The pony was saddled and brought round.
“Now, Mr. Smith,” said the lady imperatively, coming downstairs, and appearingin her riding-habit, as she always did in a change of dress, like a new editionof a delightful volume, “you have a task to perform to-day. These earrings aremy very favourite darling ones; but the worst of it is that they have suchshort hooks that they are liable to be dropped if I toss my head about much,and when I am riding I can’t give my mind to them. It would be doing me knightservice if you keep your eyes fixed upon them, and remember them every minuteof the day, and tell me directly I drop one. They have had such hairbreadthescapes, haven’t they, Unity?” she continued to the parlour-maid who wasstanding at the door.
“Yes, miss, that they have!” said Unity with round-eyed commiseration.
“Once ’twas in the lane that I found one of them,” pursued Elfridereflectively.
“And then ’twas by the gate into Eighteen Acres,” Unity chimed in.
“And then ’twas on the carpet in my own room,” rejoined Elfride merrily.
“And then ’twas dangling on the embroidery of your petticoat, miss; and then’twas down your back, miss, wasn’t it? And oh, what a way you was in, miss,wasn’t you? my! until you found it!”
Stephen took Elfride’s slight foot upon his hand: “One, two, three, and up!”she said.
Unfortunately not so. He staggered and lifted, and the horse edged round; andElfride was ultimately deposited upon the ground rather more forcibly than waspleasant. Smith looked all contrition.
“Never mind,” said the vicar encouragingly; “try again! ’Tis a littleaccomplishment that requires some practice, although it looks so easy. Standcloser to the horse’s head, Mr. Smith.”
“Indeed, I shan’t let him try again,” said she with a microscopic look ofindignation. “Worm, come here, and help me to mount.” Worm stepped forward, andshe was in the saddle in a trice.
Then they moved on, going for some distance in silence, the hot air of thevalley being occasionally brushed from their faces by a cool breeze, whichwound its way along ravines leading up from the sea.
“I suppose,” said Stephen, “that a man who can neither sit in a saddle himselfnor help another person into one seems a useless incumbrance; but, MissSwancourt, I’ll learn to do it all for your sake; I will, indeed.”
“What is so unusual in you,” she said, in a didactic tone justifiable in ahorsewoman’s address to a benighted walker, “is that your knowledge of certainthings should be combined with your ignorance of certain other things.”
Stephen lifted his eyes earnestly to hers.
“You know,” he said, “it is simply because there are so many other things to belearnt in this wide world that I didn’t trouble about that particular bit ofknowledge. I thought it would be useless to me; but I don’t think so now. Iwill learn riding, and all connected with it, because then you would like mebetter. Do you like me much less for this?”
She looked sideways at him with critical meditation tenderly rendered.
“Do I seem like LA BELLE DAME SANS MERCI?” she began suddenly, without replyingto his question. “Fancy yourself saying, Mr. Smith:
‘I sat her on my pacing steed,
And nothing else saw all day long,
For sidelong would she bend, and sing
A fairy’s song,
She found me roots of relish sweet,
And honey wild, and manna dew;’
and that’s all she did.”
“No, no,” said the young man stilly, and with a rising colour.
“‘And sure in language strange she said,
I love thee true.’”
“Not at all,” she rejoined quickly. “See how I can gallop. Now, Pansy, off!”And Elfride started; and Stephen beheld her light figure contracting to thedimensions of a bird as she sank into the distance—her hair flowing.
He walked on in the same direction, and for a considerable time could see nosigns of her returning. Dull as a flower without the sun he sat down upon astone, and not for fifteen minutes was any sound of horse or rider to be heard.Then Elfride and Pansy appeared on the hill in a round trot.
“Such a delightful scamper as we have had!” she said, her face flushed and hereyes sparkling. She turned the horse’s head, Stephen arose, and they went onagain.
“Well, what have you to say to me, Mr. Smith, after my long absence?”
“Do you remember a question you could not exactly answer last night—whether Iwas more to you than anybody else?” said he.
“I cannot exactly answer now, either.”
“Why can’t you?”
“Because I don’t know if I am more to you than any one else.”
“Yes, indeed, you are!” he exclaimed in a voice of intensest appreciation, atthe same time gliding round and looking into her face.
“Eyes in eyes,” he murmured playfully; and she blushingly obeyed, looking backinto his.
“And why not lips on lips?” continued Stephen daringly.
“No, certainly not. Anybody might look; and it would be the death of me. Youmay kiss my hand if you like.”
He expressed by a look that to kiss a hand through a glove, and that ariding-glove, was not a great treat under the circumstances.
“There, then; I’ll take my glove off. Isn’t it a pretty white hand? Ah, youdon’t want to kiss it, and you shall not now!”
“If I do not, may I never kiss again, you severe Elfride! You know I think moreof you than I can tell; that you are my queen. I would die for you, Elfride!”
A rapid red again filled her cheeks, and she looked at him meditatively. What aproud moment it was for Elfride then! She was ruling a heart with absolutedespotism for the first time in her life.
Stephen stealthily pounced upon her hand.
“No; I won’t, I won’t!” she said intractably; “and you shouldn’t take me bysurprise.”
There ensued a mild form of tussle for absolute possession of the much-covetedhand, in which the boisterousness of boy and girl was far more prominent thanthe dignity of man and woman. Then Pansy became restless. Elfride recovered herposition and remembered herself.
“You make me behave in not a nice way at all!” she exclaimed, in a tone neitherof pleasure nor anger, but partaking of both. “I ought not to have allowed sucha romp! We are too old now for that sort of thing.”
“I hope you don’t think me too—too much of a creeping-round sort of man,” saidhe in a penitent tone, conscious that he too had lost a little dignity by theproceeding.
“You are too familiar; and I can’t have it! Considering the shortness of thetime we have known each other, Mr. Smith, you take too much upon you. You thinkI am a country girl, and it doesn’t matter how you behave to me!”
“I assure you, Miss Swancourt, that I had no idea of freak in my mind. I wantedto imprint a sweet—serious kiss upon your hand; and that’s all.”
“Now, that’s creeping round again! And you mustn’t look into my eyes so,” shesaid, shaking her head at him, and trotting on a few paces in advance. Thus sheled the way out of the lane and across some fields in the direction of thecliffs. At the boundary of the fields nearest the sea she expressed a wish todismount. The horse was tied to a post, and they both followed an irregularpath, which ultimately terminated upon a flat ledge passing round the face ofthe huge blue-black rock at a height about midway between the sea and thetopmost verge. There, far beneath and before them, lay the everlasting stretchof ocean; there, upon detached rocks, were the white screaming gulls, seemingever intending to settle, and yet always passing on. Right and left ranked thetoothed and zigzag line of storm-torn heights, forming the series whichculminated in the one beneath their feet.
Behind the youth and maiden was a tempting alcove and seat, formed naturally inthe beetling mass, and wide enough to admit two or three persons. Elfride satdown, and Stephen sat beside her.
“I am afraid it is hardly proper of us to be here, either,” she said halfinquiringly. “We have not known each other long enough for this kind of thing,have we!”
“Oh yes,” he replied judicially; “quite long enough.”
“How do you know?”
“It is not length of time, but the manner in which our minutes beat, that makesenough or not enough in our acquaintanceship.”
“Yes, I see that. But I wish papa suspected or knew what a VERY NEW THING I amdoing. He does not think of it at all.”
“Darling Elfie, I wish we could be married! It is wrong for me to say it—I knowit is—before you know more; but I wish we might be, all the same. Do you loveme deeply, deeply?”
“No!” she said in a fluster.
At this point-blank denial, Stephen turned his face away decisively, andpreserved an ominous silence; the only objects of interest on earth for himbeing apparently the three or four-score sea-birds circling in the air afaroff.
“I didn’t mean to stop you quite,” she faltered with some alarm; and seeingthat he still remained silent, she added more anxiously, “If you say thatagain, perhaps, I will not be quite—quite so obstinate—if—if you don’t like meto be.”
“Oh, my Elfride!” he exclaimed, and kissed her.
It was Elfride’s first kiss. And so awkward and unused was she; full ofstriving—no relenting. There was none of those apparent struggles to get out ofthe trap which only results in getting further in: no final attitude ofreceptivity: no easy close of shoulder to shoulder, hand upon hand, face uponface, and, in spite of coyness, the lips in the right place at the suprememoment. That graceful though apparently accidental falling into position, whichmany have noticed as precipitating the end and making sweethearts the sweeter,was not here. Why? Because experience was absent. A woman must have had manykisses before she kisses well.
In fact, the art of tendering the lips for these amatory salutes follows theprinciples laid down in treatises on legerdemain for performing the trickcalled Forcing a Card. The card is to be shifted nimbly, withdrawn, edgedunder, and withal not to be offered till the moment the unsuspecting person’shand reaches the pack; this forcing to be done so modestly and yet socoaxingly, that the person trifled with imagines he is really choosing what isin fact thrust into his hand.
Well, there were no such facilities now; and Stephen was conscious of it—firstwith a momentary regret that his kiss should be spoilt by her confused receiptof it, and then with the pleasant perception that her awkwardness was hercharm.
“And you do care for me and love me?” said he.
“Yes.”
“Very much?”
“Yes.”
“And I mustn’t ask you if you’ll wait for me, and be my wife some day?”
“Why not?” she said naively.
“There is a reason why, my Elfride.”
“Not any one that I know of.”
“Suppose there is something connected with me which makes it almost impossiblefor you to agree to be my wife, or for your father to countenance such anidea?”
“Nothing shall make me cease to love you: no blemish can be found upon yourpersonal nature. That is pure and generous, I know; and having that, how can Ibe cold to you?”
“And shall nothing else affect us—shall nothing beyond my nature be a part ofmy quality in your eyes, Elfie?”
“Nothing whatever,” she said with a breath of relief. “Is that all? Someoutside circumstance? What do I care?”
“You can hardly judge, dear, till you know what has to be judged. For that, wewill stop till we get home. I believe in you, but I cannot feel bright.”
“Love is new, and fresh to us as the dew; and we are together. As the lover’sworld goes, this is a great deal. Stephen, I fancy I see the difference betweenme and you—between men and women generally, perhaps. I am content to buildhappiness on any accidental basis that may lie near at hand; you are for makinga world to suit your happiness.”
“Elfride, you sometimes say things which make you seem suddenly to become fiveyears older than you are, or than I am; and that remark is one. I couldn’tthink so OLD as that, try how I might....And no lover has ever kissed youbefore?”
“Never.”
“I knew that; you were so unused. You ride well, but you don’t kiss nicely atall; and I was told once, by my friend Knight, that that is an excellent faultin woman.”
“Now, come; I must mount again, or we shall not be home by dinner-time.” Andthey returned to where Pansy stood tethered. “Instead of entrusting my weightto a young man’s unstable palm,” she continued gaily, “I prefer a surer‘upping-stock’ (as the villagers call it), in the form of a gate. There—now Iam myself again.”
They proceeded homeward at the same walking pace.
Her blitheness won Stephen out of his thoughtfulness, and each forgoteverything but the tone of the moment.
“What did you love me for?” she said, after a long musing look at a flyingbird.
“I don’t know,” he replied idly.
“Oh yes, you do,” insisted Elfride.
“Perhaps, for your eyes.”
“What of them?—now, don’t vex me by a light answer. What of my eyes?”
“Oh, nothing to be mentioned. They are indifferently good.”
“Come, Stephen, I won’t have that. What did you love me for?”
“It might have been for your mouth?”
“Well, what about my mouth?”
“I thought it was a passable mouth enough——”
“That’s not very comforting.”
“With a pretty pout and sweet lips; but actually, nothing more than whateverybody has.”
“Don’t make up things out of your head as you go on, there’s a dear Stephen.Now—what—did—you—love—me—for?”
“Perhaps, ’twas for your neck and hair; though I am not sure: or for your idleblood, that did nothing but wander away from your cheeks and back again; but Iam not sure. Or your hands and arms, that they eclipsed all other hands andarms; or your feet, that they played about under your dress like little mice;or your tongue, that it was of a dear delicate tone. But I am not altogethersure.”
“Ah, that’s pretty to say; but I don’t care for your love, if it made a mereflat picture of me in that way, and not being sure, and such cold reasoning;but what you FELT I was, you know, Stephen” (at this a stealthy laugh andfrisky look into his face), “when you said to yourself, ‘I’ll certainly lovethat young lady.’”
“I never said it.”
“When you said to yourself, then, ‘I never will love that young lady.’”
“I didn’t say that, either.”
“Then was it, ‘I suppose I must love that young lady?’”
“No.”
“What, then?”
“’Twas much more fluctuating—not so definite.”
“Tell me; do, do.”
“It was that I ought not to think about you if I loved you truly.”
“Ah, that I don’t understand. There’s no getting it out of you. And I’ll notask you ever any more—never more—to say out of the deep reality of your heartwhat you loved me for.”
“Sweet tantalizer, what’s the use? It comes to this sole simple thing: That atone time I had never seen you, and I didn’t love you; that then I saw you, andI did love you. Is that enough?”
“Yes; I will make it do....I know, I think, what I love you for. You arenice-looking, of course; but I didn’t mean for that. It is because you are sodocile and gentle.”
“Those are not quite the correct qualities for a man to be loved for,” saidStephen, in rather a dissatisfied tone of self-criticism. “Well, never mind. Imust ask your father to allow us to be engaged directly we get indoors. It willbe for a long time.”
“I like it the better....Stephen, don’t mention it till to-morrow.”
“Why?”
“Because, if he should object—I don’t think he will; but if he should—we shallhave a day longer of happiness from our ignorance....Well, what are youthinking of so deeply?”
“I was thinking how my dear friend Knight would enjoy this scene. I wish hecould come here.”
“You seem very much engrossed with him,” she answered, with a jealous littletoss. “He must be an interesting man to take up so much of your attention.”
“Interesting!” said Stephen, his face glowing with his fervour; “noble, youought to say.”
“Oh yes, yes; I forgot,” she said half satirically. “The noblest man inEngland, as you told us last night.”
“He is a fine fellow, laugh as you will, Miss Elfie.”
“I know he is your hero. But what does he do? anything?”
“He writes.”
“What does he write? I have never heard of his name.”
“Because his personality, and that of several others like him, is absorbed intoa huge WE, namely, the impalpable entity called the PRESENT—a social andliterary Review.”
“Is he only a reviewer?”
“ONLY, Elfie! Why, I can tell you it is a fine thing to be on the staff of thePRESENT. Finer than being a novelist considerably.”
“That’s a hit at me, and my poor COURT OF KELLYON CASTLE.”
“No, Elfride,” he whispered; “I didn’t mean that. I mean that he is really aliterary man of some eminence, and not altogether a reviewer. He writes thingsof a higher class than reviews, though he reviews a book occasionally. Hisordinary productions are social and ethical essays—all that the PRESENTcontains which is not literary reviewing.”
“I admit he must be talented if he writes for the PRESENT. We have it sent tous irregularly. I want papa to be a subscriber, but he’s so conservative. Nowthe next point in this Mr. Knight—I suppose he is a very good man.”
“An excellent man. I shall try to be his intimate friend some day.”
“But aren’t you now?”
“No; not so much as that,” replied Stephen, as if such a supposition wereextravagant. “You see, it was in this way—he came originally from the sameplace as I, and taught me things; but I am not intimate with him. Shan’t I beglad when I get richer and better known, and hob and nob with him!” Stephen’seyes sparkled.
A pout began to shape itself upon Elfride’s soft lips. “You think always ofhim, and like him better than you do me!”
“No, indeed, Elfride. The feeling is different quite. But I do like him, and hedeserves even more affection from me than I give.”
“You are not nice now, and you make me as jealous as possible!” she exclaimedperversely. “I know you will never speak to any third person of me so warmly asyou do to me of him.”
“But you don’t understand, Elfride,” he said with an anxious movement. “Youshall know him some day. He is so brilliant—no, it isn’t exactly brilliant; sothoughtful—nor does thoughtful express him—that it would charm you to talk tohim. He’s a most desirable friend, and that isn’t half I could say.”
“I don’t care how good he is; I don’t want to know him, because he comesbetween me and you. You think of him night and day, ever so much more than ofanybody else; and when you are thinking of him, I am shut out of your mind.”
“No, dear Elfride; I love you dearly.”
“And I don’t like you to tell me so warmly about him when you are in the middleof loving me. Stephen, suppose that I and this man Knight of yours were bothdrowning, and you could only save one of us——”
“Yes—the stupid old proposition—which would I save?
“Well, which? Not me.”
“Both of you,” he said, pressing her pendent hand.
“No, that won’t do; only one of us.”
“I cannot say; I don’t know. It is disagreeable—quite a horrid idea to have tohandle.”
“A-ha, I know. You would save him, and let me drown, drown, drown; and I don’tcare about your love!”
She had endeavoured to give a playful tone to her words, but the latter speechwas rather forced in its gaiety.
At this point in the discussion she trotted off to turn a corner which wasavoided by the footpath, the road and the path reuniting at a point a littlefurther on. On again making her appearance she continually managed to look in adirection away from him, and left him in the cool shade of her displeasure.Stephen was soon beaten at this game of indifference. He went round and enteredthe range of her vision.
“Are you offended, Elfie? Why don’t you talk?”
“Save me, then, and let that Mr. Clever of yours drown. I hate him. Now, whichwould you?”
“Really, Elfride, you should not press such a hard question. It is ridiculous.”
“Then I won’t be alone with you any more. Unkind, to wound me so!” She laughedat her own absurdity but persisted.
“Come, Elfie, let’s make it up and be friends.”
“Say you would save me, then, and let him drown.”
“I would save you—and him too.”
“And let him drown. Come, or you don’t love me!” she teasingly went on.
“And let him drown,” he ejaculated despairingly.
“There; now I am yours!” she said, and a woman’s flush of triumph lit her eyes.
“Only one earring, miss, as I’m alive,” said Unity on their entering the hall.
With a face expressive of wretched misgiving, Elfride’s hand flew like an arrowto her ear.
“There!” she exclaimed to Stephen, looking at him with eyes full of reproach.
“I quite forgot, indeed. If I had only remembered!” he answered, with aconscience-stricken face.
She wheeled herself round, and turned into the shrubbery. Stephen followed.
“If you had told me to watch anything, Stephen, I should have religiously doneit,” she capriciously went on, as soon as she heard him behind her.
“Forgetting is forgivable.”
“Well, you will find it, if you want me to respect you and be engaged to youwhen we have asked papa.” She considered a moment, and added more seriously, “Iknow now where I dropped it, Stephen. It was on the cliff. I remember a faintsensation of some change about me, but I was too absent to think of it then.And that’s where it is now, and you must go and look there.”
“I’ll go at once.”
And he strode away up the valley, under a broiling sun and amid the deathlikesilence of early afternoon. He ascended, with giddy-paced haste, the windyrange of rocks to where they had sat, felt and peered about the stones andcrannies, but Elfride’s stray jewel was nowhere to be seen. Next Stephen slowlyretraced his steps, and, pausing at a cross-road to reflect a while, he leftthe plateau and struck downwards across some fields, in the direction ofEndelstow House.
He walked along the path by the river without the slightest hesitation as toits bearing, apparently quite familiar with every inch of the ground. As theshadows began to lengthen and the sunlight to mellow, he passed through twowicket-gates, and drew near the outskirts of Endelstow Park. The river now ranalong under the park fence, previous to entering the grove itself, a littlefurther on.
Here stood a cottage, between the fence and the stream, on a slightly elevatedspot of ground, round which the river took a turn. The characteristic featureof this snug habitation was its one chimney in the gable end, its squareness ofform disguised by a huge cloak of ivy, which had grown so luxuriantly andextended so far from its base, as to increase the apparent bulk of the chimneyto the dimensions of a tower. Some little distance from the back of the houserose the park boundary, and over this were to be seen the sycamores of thegrove, making slow inclinations to the just-awakening air.
Stephen crossed the little wood bridge in front, went up to the cottage door,and opened it without knock or signal of any kind.
Exclamations of welcome burst from some person or persons when the door wasthrust ajar, followed by the scrape of chairs on a stone floor, as if pushedback by their occupiers in rising from a table. The door was closed again, andnothing could now be heard from within, save a lively chatter and the rattle ofplates.
Chapter VIII
“Allen-a-Dale is no baron or lord.”
The mists were creeping out of pools and swamps for their pilgrimages of thenight when Stephen came up to the front door of the vicarage. Elfride wasstanding on the step illuminated by a lemon-hued expanse of western sky.
“You never have been all this time looking for that earring?” she saidanxiously.
“Oh no; and I have not found it.”
“Never mind. Though I am much vexed; they are my prettiest. But, Stephen, whatever have you been doing—where have you been? I have been so uneasy. I fearedfor you, knowing not an inch of the country. I thought, suppose he has fallenover the cliff! But now I am inclined to scold you for frightening me so.”
“I must speak to your father now,” he said rather abruptly; “I have so much tosay to him—and to you, Elfride.”
“Will what you have to say endanger this nice time of ours, and is it that sameshadowy secret you allude to so frequently, and will it make me unhappy?”
“Possibly.”
She breathed heavily, and looked around as if for a prompter.
“Put it off till to-morrow,” she said.
He involuntarily sighed too.
“No; it must come to-night. Where is your father, Elfride?”
“Somewhere in the kitchen garden, I think,” she replied. “That is his favouriteevening retreat. I will leave you now. Say all that’s to be said—do all thereis to be done. Think of me waiting anxiously for the end.” And she re-enteredthe house.
She waited in the drawing-room, watching the lights sink to shadows, theshadows sink to darkness, until her impatience to know what had occurred in thegarden could no longer be controlled. She passed round the shrubbery, unlatchedthe garden door, and skimmed with her keen eyes the whole twilighted space thatthe four walls enclosed and sheltered: they were not there. She mounted alittle ladder, which had been used for gathering fruit, and looked over thewall into the field. This field extended to the limits of the glebe, which wasenclosed on that side by a privet-hedge. Under the hedge was Mr. Swancourt,walking up and down, and talking aloud—to himself, as it sounded at first. No:another voice shouted occasional replies; and this interlocutor seemed to be onthe other side of the hedge. The voice, though soft in quality, was notStephen’s.
The second speaker must have been in the long-neglected garden of an oldmanor-house hard by, which, together with a small estate attached, had latelybeen purchased by a person named Troyton, whom Elfride had never seen. Herfather might have struck up an acquaintanceship with some member of that familythrough the privet-hedge, or a stranger to the neighbourhood might havewandered thither.
Well, there was no necessity for disturbing him.
And it seemed that, after all, Stephen had not yet made his desiredcommunication to her father. Again she went indoors, wondering where Stephencould be. For want of something better to do, she went upstairs to her ownlittle room. Here she sat down at the open window, and, leaning with her elbowon the table and her cheek upon her hand, she fell into meditation.
It was a hot and still August night. Every disturbance of the silence whichrose to the dignity of a noise could be heard for miles, and the merest soundfor a long distance. So she remained, thinking of Stephen, and wishing he hadnot deprived her of his company to no purpose, as it appeared. How delicate andsensitive he was, she reflected; and yet he was man enough to have a privatemystery, which considerably elevated him in her eyes. Thus, looking at thingswith an inward vision, she lost consciousness of the flight of time.
Strange conjunctions of circumstances, particularly those of a trivial everydaykind, are so frequent in an ordinary life, that we grow used to theirunaccountableness, and forget the question whether the very long odds againstsuch juxtaposition is not almost a disproof of it being a matter of chance atall. What occurred to Elfride at this moment was a case in point. She wasvividly imagining, for the twentieth time, the kiss of the morning, and puttingher lips together in the position another such a one would demand, when sheheard the identical operation performed on the lawn, immediately beneath herwindow.
A kiss—not of the quiet and stealthy kind, but decisive, loud, and smart.
Her face flushed and she looked out, but to no purpose. The dark rim of theupland drew a keen sad line against the pale glow of the sky, unbroken exceptwhere a young cedar on the lawn, that had outgrown its fellow trees, shot itspointed head across the horizon, piercing the firmamental lustre like a sting.
It was just possible that, had any persons been standing on the grassy portionsof the lawn, Elfride might have seen their dusky forms. But the shrubs, whichonce had merely dotted the glade, had now grown bushy and large, till they hidat least half the enclosure containing them. The kissing pair might have beenbehind some of these; at any rate, nobody was in sight.
Had no enigma ever been connected with her lover by his hints and absences,Elfride would never have thought of admitting into her mind a suspicion that hemight be concerned in the foregoing enactment. But the reservations he atpresent insisted on, while they added to the mystery without which perhaps shewould never have seriously loved him at all, were calculated to nourish doubtsof all kinds, and with a slow flush of jealousy she asked herself, might he notbe the culprit?
Elfride glided downstairs on tiptoe, and out to the precise spot on which shehad parted from Stephen to enable him to speak privately to her father. Thenceshe wandered into all the nooks around the place from which the sound seemed toproceed—among the huge laurestines, about the tufts of pampas grasses, amid thevariegated hollies, under the weeping wych-elm—nobody was there. Returningindoors she called “Unity!”
“She is gone to her aunt’s, to spend the evening,” said Mr. Swancourt,thrusting his head out of his study door, and letting the light of his candlesstream upon Elfride’s face—less revealing than, as it seemed to herself,creating the blush of uneasy perplexity that was burning upon her cheek.
“I didn’t know you were indoors, papa,” she said with surprise. “Surely nolight was shining from the window when I was on the lawn?” and she looked andsaw that the shutters were still open.
“Oh yes, I am in,” he said indifferently. “What did you want Unity for? I thinkshe laid supper before she went out.”
“Did she?—I have not been to see—I didn’t want her for that.”
Elfride scarcely knew, now that a definite reason was required, what thatreason was. Her mind for a moment strayed to another subject, unimportant as itseemed. The red ember of a match was lying inside the fender, which explainedthat why she had seen no rays from the window was because the candles had onlyjust been lighted.
“I’ll come directly,” said the vicar. “I thought you were out somewhere withMr. Smith.”
Even the inexperienced Elfride could not help thinking that her father must bewonderfully blind if he failed to perceive what was the nascent consequence ofherself and Stephen being so unceremoniously left together; wonderfullycareless, if he saw it and did not think about it; wonderfully good, if, asseemed to her by far the most probable supposition, he saw it and thought aboutit and approved of it. These reflections were cut short by the appearance ofStephen just outside the porch, silvered about the head and shoulders withtouches of moonlight, that had begun to creep through the trees.
“Has your trouble anything to do with a kiss on the lawn?” she asked abruptly,almost passionately.
“Kiss on the lawn?”
“Yes!” she said, imperiously now.
“I didn’t comprehend your meaning, nor do I now exactly. I certainly havekissed nobody on the lawn, if that is really what you want to know, Elfride.”
“You know nothing about such a performance?”
“Nothing whatever. What makes you ask?”
“Don’t press me to tell; it is nothing of importance. And, Stephen, you havenot yet spoken to papa about our engagement?”
“No,” he said regretfully, “I could not find him directly; and then I went onthinking so much of what you said about objections, refusals—bitter wordspossibly—ending our happiness, that I resolved to put it off till to-morrow;that gives us one more day of delight—delight of a tremulous kind.”
“Yes; but it would be improper to be silent too long, I think,” she said in adelicate voice, which implied that her face had grown warm. “I want him to knowwe love, Stephen. Why did you adopt as your own my thought of delay?”
“I will explain; but I want to tell you of my secret first—to tell you now. Itis two or three hours yet to bedtime. Let us walk up the hill to the church.”
Elfride passively assented, and they went from the lawn by a side wicket, andascended into the open expanse of moonlight which streamed around the lonelyedifice on the summit of the hill.
The door was locked. They turned from the porch, and walked hand in hand tofind a resting-place in the churchyard. Stephen chose a flat tomb, showingitself to be newer and whiter than those around it, and sitting down himself,gently drew her hand towards him.
“No, not there,” she said.
“Why not here?”
“A mere fancy; but never mind.” And she sat down.
“Elfie, will you love me, in spite of everything that may be said against me?”
“O Stephen, what makes you repeat that so continually and so sadly? You know Iwill. Yes, indeed,” she said, drawing closer, “whatever may be said of you—andnothing bad can be—I will cling to you just the same. Your ways shall be myways until I die.”
“Did you ever think what my parents might be, or what society I originallymoved in?”
“No, not particularly. I have observed one or two little points in your mannerswhich are rather quaint—no more. I suppose you have moved in the ordinarysociety of professional people.”
“Supposing I have not—that none of my family have a profession except me?”
“I don’t mind. What you are only concerns me.”
“Where do you think I went to school—I mean, to what kind of school?”
“Dr. Somebody’s academy,” she said simply.
“No. To a dame school originally, then to a national school.”
“Only to those! Well, I love you just as much, Stephen, dear Stephen,” shemurmured tenderly, “I do indeed. And why should you tell me these things soimpressively? What do they matter to me?”
He held her closer and proceeded:
“What do you think my father is—does for his living, that is to say?”
“He practises some profession or calling, I suppose.”
“No; he is a mason.”
“A Freemason?”
“No; a cottager and journeyman mason.”
Elfride said nothing at first. After a while she whispered:
“That is a strange idea to me. But never mind; what does it matter?”
“But aren’t you angry with me for not telling you before?”
“No, not at all. Is your mother alive?”
“Yes.”
“Is she a nice lady?”
“Very—the best mother in the world. Her people had been well-to-do yeomen forcenturies, but she was only a dairymaid.”
“O Stephen!” came from her in whispered exclamation.
“She continued to attend to a dairy long after my father married her,” pursuedStephen, without further hesitation. “And I remember very well how, when I wasvery young, I used to go to the milking, look on at the skimming, sleep throughthe churning, and make believe I helped her. Ah, that was a happy time enough!”
“No, never—not happy.”
“Yes, it was.”
“I don’t see how happiness could be where the drudgery of dairy-work had to bedone for a living—the hands red and chapped, and the shoes clogged....Stephen,I do own that it seems odd to regard you in the light of—of—having been sorough in your youth, and done menial things of that kind.” (Stephen withdrew aninch or two from her side.) “But I DO LOVE YOU just the same,” she continued,getting closer under his shoulder again, “and I don’t care anything about thepast; and I see that you are all the worthier for having pushed on in the worldin such a way.”
“It is not my worthiness; it is Knight’s, who pushed me.”
“Ah, always he—always he!”
“Yes, and properly so. Now, Elfride, you see the reason of his teaching me byletter. I knew him years before he went to Oxford, but I had not got far enoughin my reading for him to entertain the idea of helping me in classics till heleft home. Then I was sent away from the village, and we very seldom met; buthe kept up this system of tuition by correspondence with the greatestregularity. I will tell you all the story, but not now. There is nothing moreto say now, beyond giving places, persons, and dates.” His voice became timidlyslow at this point.
“No; don’t take trouble to say more. You are a dear honest fellow to say somuch as you have; and it is not so dreadful either. It has become a normalthing that millionaires commence by going up to London with their tools attheir back, and half-a-crown in their pockets. That sort of origin is gettingso respected,” she continued cheerfully, “that it is acquiring some of theodour of Norman ancestry.”
“Ah, if I had MADE my fortune, I shouldn’t mind. But I am only a possible makerof it as yet.”
“It is quite enough. And so THIS is what your trouble was?”
“I thought I was doing wrong in letting you love me without telling you mystory; and yet I feared to do so, Elfie. I dreaded to lose you, and I wascowardly on that account.”
“How plain everything about you seems after this explanation! Yourpeculiarities in chess-playing, the pronunciation papa noticed in your Latin,your odd mixture of book-knowledge with ignorance of ordinary socialaccomplishments, are accounted for in a moment. And has this anything to dowith what I saw at Lord Luxellian’s?”
“What did you see?”
“I saw the shadow of yourself putting a cloak round a lady. I was at the sidedoor; you two were in a room with the window towards me. You came to me amoment later.”
“She was my mother.”
“Your mother THERE!” She withdrew herself to look at him silently in herinterest.
“Elfride,” said Stephen, “I was going to tell you the remainder to-morrow—Ihave been keeping it back—I must tell it now, after all. The remainder of myrevelation refers to where my parents are. Where do you think they live? Youknow them—by sight at any rate.”
“I know them!” she said in suspended amazement.
“Yes. My father is John Smith, Lord Luxellian’s master-mason, who lives underthe park wall by the river.”
“O Stephen! can it be?”
“He built—or assisted at the building of the house you live in, years ago. Heput up those stone gate piers at the lodge entrance to Lord Luxellian’s park.My grandfather planted the trees that belt in your lawn; my grandmother—whoworked in the fields with him—held each tree upright whilst he filled in theearth: they told me so when I was a child. He was the sexton, too, and dug manyof the graves around us.”
“And was your unaccountable vanishing on the first morning of your arrival, andagain this afternoon, a run to see your father and mother?...I understand now;no wonder you seemed to know your way about the village!”
“No wonder. But remember, I have not lived here since I was nine years old. Ithen went to live with my uncle, a blacksmith, near Exonbury, in order to beable to attend a national school as a day scholar; there was none on thisremote coast then. It was there I met with my friend Knight. And when I wasfifteen and had been fairly educated by the school-master—and more particularlyby Knight—I was put as a pupil in an architect’s office in that town, because Iwas skilful in the use of the pencil. A full premium was paid by the efforts ofmy mother and father, rather against the wishes of Lord Luxellian, who likes myfather, however, and thinks a great deal of him. There I stayed till six monthsago, when I obtained a situation as improver, as it is called, in a Londonoffice. That’s all of me.”
“To think YOU, the London visitor, the town man, should have been born here,and have known this village so many years before I did. How strange—how verystrange it seems to me!” she murmured.
“My mother curtseyed to you and your father last Sunday,” said Stephen, with apained smile at the thought of the incongruity. “And your papa said to her, ‘Iam glad to see you so regular at church, JANE.’”
“I remember it, but I have never spoken to her. We have only been here eighteenmonths, and the parish is so large.”
“Contrast with this,” said Stephen, with a miserable laugh, “your father’sbelief in my ‘blue blood,’ which is still prevalent in his mind. The firstnight I came, he insisted upon proving my descent from one of the most ancientwest-county families, on account of my second Christian name; when the truthis, it was given me because my grandfather was assistant gardener in theFitzmaurice-Smith family for thirty years. Having seen your face, my darling, Ihad not heart to contradict him, and tell him what would have cut me off from afriendly knowledge of you.”
She sighed deeply. “Yes, I see now how this inequality may be made to troubleus,” she murmured, and continued in a low, sad whisper, “I wouldn’t have mindedif they had lived far away. Papa might have consented to an engagement betweenus if your connection had been with villagers a hundred miles off; remotenesssoftens family contrasts. But he will not like—O Stephen, Stephen! what can Ido?”
“Do?” he said tentatively, yet with heaviness. “Give me up; let me go back toLondon, and think no more of me.”
“No, no; I cannot give you up! This hopelessness in our affairs makes me caremore for you....I see what did not strike me at first. Stephen, why do wetrouble? Why should papa object? An architect in London is an architect inLondon. Who inquires there? Nobody. We shall live there, shall we not? Why needwe be so alarmed?”
“And Elfie,” said Stephen, his hopes kindling with hers, “Knight thinks nothingof my being only a cottager’s son; he says I am as worthy of his friendship asif I were a lord’s; and if I am worthy of his friendship, I am worthy of you,am I not, Elfride?”
“I not only have never loved anybody but you,” she said, instead of giving ananswer, “but I have not even formed a strong friendship, such as you have forKnight. I wish you hadn’t. It diminishes me.”
“Now, Elfride, you know better,” he said wooingly. “And had you really neverany sweetheart at all?”
“None that was ever recognized by me as such.”
“But did nobody ever love you?”
“Yes—a man did once; very much, he said.”
“How long ago?”
“Oh, a long time.”
“How long, dearest?
“A twelvemonth.”
“That’s not VERY long” (rather disappointedly).
“I said long, not very long.”
“And did he want to marry you?”
“I believe he did. But I didn’t see anything in him. He was not good enough,even if I had loved him.”
“May I ask what he was?”
“A farmer.”
“A farmer not good enough—how much better than my family!” Stephen murmured.
“Where is he now?” he continued to Elfride.
“HERE.”
“Here! what do you mean by that?”
“I mean that he is here.”
“Where here?”
“Under us. He is under this tomb. He is dead, and we are sitting on his grave.”
“Elfie,” said the young man, standing up and looking at the tomb, “how odd andsad that revelation seems! It quite depresses me for the moment.”
“Stephen! I didn’t wish to sit here; but you would do so.”
“You never encouraged him?”
“Never by look, word, or sign,” she said solemnly. “He died of consumption, andwas buried the day you first came.”
“Let us go away. I don’t like standing by HIM, even if you never loved him. Hewas BEFORE me.”
“Worries make you unreasonable,” she half pouted, following Stephen at thedistance of a few steps. “Perhaps I ought to have told you before we sat down.Yes; let us go.”
Chapter IX
“Her father did fume”
Oppressed, in spite of themselves, by a foresight of impending complications,Elfride and Stephen returned down the hill hand in hand. At the door theypaused wistfully, like children late at school.
Women accept their destiny more readily than men. Elfride had now resignedherself to the overwhelming idea of her lover’s sorry antecedents; Stephen hadnot forgotten the trifling grievance that Elfride had known earlier admirationthan his own.
“What was that young man’s name?” he inquired.
“Felix Jethway; a widow’s only son.”
“I remember the family.”
“She hates me now. She says I killed him.”
Stephen mused, and they entered the porch.
“Stephen, I love only you,” she tremulously whispered. He pressed her fingers,and the trifling shadow passed away, to admit again the mutual and moretangible trouble.
The study appeared to be the only room lighted up. They entered, each with ademeanour intended to conceal the inconcealable fact that reciprocal love wastheir dominant chord. Elfride perceived a man, sitting with his back towardsherself, talking to her father. She would have retired, but Mr. Swancourt hadseen her.
“Come in,” he said; “it is only Martin Cannister, come for a copy of theregister for poor Mrs. Jethway.”
Martin Cannister, the sexton, was rather a favourite with Elfride. He used toabsorb her attention by telling her of his strange experiences in digging upafter long years the bodies of persons he had known, and recognizing them bysome little sign (though in reality he had never recognized any). He had shrewdsmall eyes and a great wealth of double chin, which compensated in some measurefor considerable poverty of nose.
The appearance of a slip of paper in Cannister’s hand, and a few shillingslying on the table in front of him, denoted that the business had beentransacted, and the tenor of their conversation went to show that a summary ofvillage news was now engaging the attention of parishioner and parson.
Mr. Cannister stood up and touched his forehead over his eye with his finger,in respectful salutation of Elfride, gave half as much salute to Stephen (whomhe, in common with other villagers, had never for a moment recognized), thensat down again and resumed his discourse.
“Where had I got on to, sir?”
“To driving the pile,” said Mr. Swancourt.
“The pile ’twas. So, as I was saying, Nat was driving the pile in this manner,as I might say.” Here Mr. Cannister held his walking-stick scrupulouslyvertical with his left hand, and struck a blow with great force on the knob ofthe stick with his right. “John was steadying the pile so, as I might say.”Here he gave the stick a slight shake, and looked firmly in the various eyesaround to see that before proceeding further his listeners well grasped thesubject at that stage. “Well, when Nat had struck some half-dozen blows moreupon the pile, ’a stopped for a second or two. John, thinking he had donestriking, put his hand upon the top o’ the pile to gie en a pull, and see if ’awere firm in the ground.” Mr. Cannister spread his hand over the top of thestick, completely covering it with his palm. “Well, so to speak, Nat hadn’tmaned to stop striking, and when John had put his hand upon the pile, thebeetle——”
“Oh dreadful!” said Elfride.
“The beetle was already coming down, you see, sir. Nat just caught sight of hishand, but couldn’t stop the blow in time. Down came the beetle upon poor JohnSmith’s hand, and squashed en to a pummy.”
“Dear me, dear me! poor fellow!” said the vicar, with an intonation like thegroans of the wounded in a pianoforte performance of the “Battle of Prague.”
“John Smith, the master-mason?” cried Stephen hurriedly.
“Ay, no other; and a better-hearted man God A’mighty never made.”
“Is he so much hurt?”
“I have heard,” said Mr. Swancourt, not noticing Stephen, “that he has a son inLondon, a very promising young fellow.”
“Oh, how he must be hurt!” repeated Stephen.
“A beetle couldn’t hurt very little. Well, sir, good-night t’ye; and ye, sir;and you, miss, I’m sure.”
Mr. Cannister had been making unnoticeable motions of withdrawal, and by thetime this farewell remark came from his lips he was just outside the door ofthe room. He tramped along the hall, stayed more than a minute endeavouring toclose the door properly, and then was lost to their hearing.
Stephen had meanwhile turned and said to the vicar:
“Please excuse me this evening! I must leave. John Smith is my father.”
The vicar did not comprehend at first.
“What did you say?” he inquired.
“John Smith is my father,” said Stephen deliberately.
A surplus tinge of redness rose from Mr. Swancourt’s neck, and came round overhis face, the lines of his features became more firmly defined, and his lipsseemed to get thinner. It was evident that a series of little circumstances,hitherto unheeded, were now fitting themselves together, and forming a lucidpicture in Mr. Swancourt’s mind in such a manner as to render useless furtherexplanation on Stephen’s part.
“Indeed,” the vicar said, in a voice dry and without inflection.
This being a word which depends entirely upon its tone for its meaning, Mr.Swancourt’s enunciation was equivalent to no expression at all.
“I have to go now,” said Stephen, with an agitated bearing, and a movement asif he scarcely knew whether he ought to run off or stay longer. “On my return,sir, will you kindly grant me a few minutes’ private conversation?”
“Certainly. Though antecedently it does not seem possible that there can beanything of the nature of private business between us.”
Mr. Swancourt put on his straw hat, crossed the drawing-room, into which themoonlight was shining, and stepped out of the French window into the verandah.It required no further effort to perceive what, indeed, reasoning might haveforetold as the natural colour of a mind whose pleasures were taken amidgenealogies, good dinners, and patrician reminiscences, that Mr. Swancourt’sprejudices were too strong for his generosity, and that Stephen’s moments ashis friend and equal were numbered, or had even now ceased.
Stephen moved forward as if he would follow the vicar, then as if he would not,and in absolute perplexity whither to turn himself, went awkwardly to the door.Elfride followed lingeringly behind him. Before he had receded two yards fromthe doorstep, Unity and Ann the housemaid came home from their visit to thevillage.
“Have you heard anything about John Smith? The accident is not so bad as wasreported, is it?” said Elfride intuitively.
“Oh no; the doctor says it is only a bad bruise.”
“I thought so!” cried Elfride gladly.
“He says that, although Nat believes he did not check the beetle as it camedown, he must have done so without knowing it—checked it very considerably too;for the full blow would have knocked his hand abroad, and in reality it is onlymade black-and-blue like.”
“How thankful I am!” said Stephen.
The perplexed Unity looked at him with her mouth rather than with her eyes.
“That will do, Unity,” said Elfride magisterially; and the two maids passed on.
“Elfride, do you forgive me?” said Stephen with a faint smile. “No man is fairin love;” and he took her fingers lightly in his own.
With her head thrown sideways in the Greuze attitude, she looked a tenderreproach at his doubt and pressed his hand. Stephen returned the pressurethreefold, then hastily went off to his father’s cottage by the wall ofEndelstow Park.
“Elfride, what have you to say to this?” inquired her father, coming upimmediately Stephen had retired.
With feminine quickness she grasped at any straw that would enable her to pleadhis cause. “He had told me of it,” she faltered; “so that it is not a discoveryin spite of him. He was just coming in to tell you.”
“COMING to tell! Why hadn’t he already told? I object as much, if not more, tohis underhand concealment of this, than I do to the fact itself. It looks verymuch like his making a fool of me, and of you too. You and he have been abouttogether, and corresponding together, in a way I don’t at all approve of—in amost unseemly way. You should have known how improper such conduct is. A womancan’t be too careful not to be seen alone with I-don’t-know-whom.”
“You saw us, papa, and have never said a word.”
“My fault, of course; my fault. What the deuce could I be thinking of! He, avillager’s son; and we, Swancourts, connections of the Luxellians. We have beencoming to nothing for centuries, and now I believe we have got there. Whatshall I next invite here, I wonder!”
Elfride began to cry at this very unpropitious aspect of affairs. “O papa,papa, forgive me and him! We care so much for one another, papa—O, so much! Andwhat he was going to ask you is, if you will allow of an engagement between ustill he is a gentleman as good as you. We are not in a hurry, dear papa; wedon’t want in the least to marry now; not until he is richer. Only will you letus be engaged, because I love him so, and he loves me?”
Mr. Swancourt’s feelings were a little touched by this appeal, and he wasannoyed that such should be the case. “Certainly not!” he replied. Hepronounced the inhibition lengthily and sonorously, so that the “not” soundedlike “n-o-o-o-t!”
“No, no, no; don’t say it!”
“Foh! A fine story. It is not enough that I have been deluded and disgraced byhaving him here,—the son of one of my village peasants,—but now I am to makehim my son-in-law! Heavens above us, are you mad, Elfride?”
“You have seen his letters come to me ever since his first visit, papa, and youknew they were a sort of—love-letters; and since he has been here you have lethim be alone with me almost entirely; and you guessed, you must have guessed,what we were thinking of, and doing, and you didn’t stop him. Next tolove-making comes love-winning, and you knew it would come to that, papa.”
The vicar parried this common-sense thrust. “I know—since you press me so—Iknow I did guess some childish attachment might arise between you; I own I didnot take much trouble to prevent it; but I have not particularly countenancedit; and, Elfride, how can you expect that I should now? It is impossible; nofather in England would hear of such a thing.”
“But he is the same man, papa; the same in every particular; and how can he beless fit for me than he was before?”
“He appeared a young man with well-to-do friends, and a little property; buthaving neither, he is another man.”
“You inquired nothing about him?”
“I went by Hewby’s introduction. He should have told me. So should the youngman himself; of course he should. I consider it a most dishonourable thing tocome into a man’s house like a treacherous I-don’t-know-what.”
“But he was afraid to tell you, and so should I have been. He loved me too wellto like to run the risk. And as to speaking of his friends on his first visit,I don’t see why he should have done so at all. He came here on business: it wasno affair of ours who his parents were. And then he knew that if he told you hewould never be asked here, and would perhaps never see me again. And he wantedto see me. Who can blame him for trying, by any means, to stay near me—the girlhe loves? All is fair in love. I have heard you say so yourself, papa; and youyourself would have done just as he has—so would any man.”
“And any man, on discovering what I have discovered, would also do as I do, andmend my mistake; that is, get shot of him again, as soon as the laws ofhospitality will allow.” But Mr. Swancourt then remembered that he was aChristian. “I would not, for the world, seem to turn him out of doors,” headded; “but I think he will have the tact to see that he cannot stay long afterthis, with good taste.”
“He will, because he’s a gentleman. See how graceful his manners are,” Elfridewent on; though perhaps Stephen’s manners, like the feats of Euryalus, owedtheir attractiveness in her eyes rather to the attractiveness of his personthan to their own excellence.
“Ay; anybody can be what you call graceful, if he lives a little time in acity, and keeps his eyes open. And he might have picked up his gentlemanlinessby going to the galleries of theatres, and watching stage drawing-room manners.He reminds me of one of the worst stories I ever heard in my life.”
“What story was that?”
“Oh no, thank you! I wouldn’t tell you such an improper matter for the world!”
“If his father and mother had lived in the north or east of England,” gallantlypersisted Elfride, though her sobs began to interrupt her articulation,“anywhere but here—you—would have—only regarded—HIM, and not THEM! Hisstation—would have—been what—his profession makes it,—and not fixed by—hisfather’s humble position—at all; whom he never lives with—now. Though JohnSmith has saved lots of money, and is better off than we are, they say, or hecouldn’t have put his son to such an expensive profession. And it is cleverand—honourable—of Stephen, to be the best of his family.”
“Yes. ‘Let a beast be lord of beasts, and his crib shall stand at the king’smess.’”
“You insult me, papa!” she burst out. “You do, you do! He is my own Stephen, heis!”
“That may or may not be true, Elfride,” returned her father, againuncomfortably agitated in spite of himself “You confuse future probabilitieswith present facts,—what the young man may be with what he is. We must look atwhat he is, not what an improbable degree of success in his profession may makehim. The case is this: the son of a working-man in my parish who may or may notbe able to buy me up—a youth who has not yet advanced so far into life as tohave any income of his own deserving the name, and therefore of his father’sdegree as regards station—wants to be engaged to you. His family are living inprecisely the same spot in England as yours, so throughout this county—which isthe world to us—you would always be known as the wife of Jack Smith the mason’sson, and not under any circumstances as the wife of a London professional man.It is the drawback, not the compensating fact, that is talked of always. There,say no more. You may argue all night, and prove what you will; I’ll stick to mywords.”
Elfride looked silently and hopelessly out of the window with large heavy eyesand wet cheeks.
“I call it great temerity—and long to call it audacity—in Hewby,” resumed herfather. “I never heard such a thing—giving such a hobbledehoy native of thisplace such an introduction to me as he did. Naturally you were deceived as wellas I was. I don’t blame you at all, so far.” He went and searched for Mr.Hewby’s original letter. “Here’s what he said to me: ‘Dear Sir,—Agreeably toyour request of the 18th instant, I have arranged to survey and make drawings,’et cetera. ‘My assistant, Mr. Stephen Smith,’—assistant, you see he called him,and naturally I understood him to mean a sort of partner. Why didn’t he say‘clerk’?”
“They never call them clerks in that profession, because they do not write.Stephen—Mr. Smith—told me so. So that Mr. Hewby simply used the accepted word.”
“Let me speak, please, Elfride! My assistant, Mr. Stephen Smith, will leaveLondon by the early train to-morrow morning...MANY THANKS FOR YOUR PROPOSAL TOACCOMMODATE HIM...YOU MAY PUT EVERY CONFIDENCE IN HIM, and may rely upon hisdiscernment in the matter of church architecture.’ Well, I repeat that Hewbyought to be ashamed of himself for making so much of a poor lad of that sort.”
“Professional men in London,” Elfride argued, “don’t know anything about theirclerks’ fathers and mothers. They have assistants who come to their offices andshops for years, and hardly even know where they live. What they can do—whatprofits they can bring the firm—that’s all London men care about. And that ishelped in him by his faculty of being uniformly pleasant.”
“Uniform pleasantness is rather a defect than a faculty. It shows that a manhasn’t sense enough to know whom to despise.”
“It shows that he acts by faith and not by sight, as those you claim successionfrom directed.”
“That’s some more of what he’s been telling you, I suppose! Yes, I was inclinedto suspect him, because he didn’t care about sauces of any kind. I always diddoubt a man’s being a gentleman if his palate had no acquired tastes. Anunedified palate is the irrepressible cloven foot of the upstart. The idea ofmy bringing out a bottle of my “40 Martinez—only eleven of them left now—to aman who didn’t know it from eighteenpenny! Then the Latin line he gave to myquotation; it was very cut-and-dried, very; or I, who haven’t looked into aclassical author for the last eighteen years, shouldn’t have remembered it.Well, Elfride, you had better go to your room; you’ll get over this bit oftomfoolery in time.”
“No, no, no, papa,” she moaned. For of all the miseries attaching to miserablelove, the worst is the misery of thinking that the passion which is the causeof them all may cease.
“Elfride,” said her father with rough friendliness, “I have an excellent schemeon hand, which I cannot tell you of now. A scheme to benefit you and me. It hasbeen thrust upon me for some little time—yes, thrust upon me—but I didn’t dreamof its value till this afternoon, when the revelation came. I should be mostunwise to refuse to entertain it.”
“I don’t like that word,” she returned wearily. “You have lost so much alreadyby schemes. Is it those wretched mines again?”
“No; not a mining scheme.”
“Railways?”
“Nor railways. It is like those mysterious offers we see advertised, by whichany gentleman with no brains at all may make so much a week without risk,trouble, or soiling his fingers. However, I am intending to say nothing till itis settled, though I will just say this much, that you soon may have other fishto fry than to think of Stephen Smith. Remember, I wish, not to be angry, butfriendly, to the young man; for your sake I’ll regard him as a friend in acertain sense. But this is enough; in a few days you will be quite my way ofthinking. There, now, go to your bedroom. Unity shall bring you up some supper.I wish you not to be here when he comes back.”
Chapter X
“Beneath the shelter of an aged tree.”
Stephen retraced his steps towards the cottage he had visited only two or threehours previously. He drew near and under the rich foliage growing about theoutskirts of Endelstow Park, the spotty lights and shades from the shining moonmaintaining a race over his head and down his back in an endless gambol. Whenhe crossed the plank bridge and entered the garden-gate, he saw an illuminatedfigure coming from the enclosed plot towards the house on the other side. Itwas his father, with his hand in a sling, taking a general moonlight view ofthe garden, and particularly of a plot of the youngest of young turnips,previous to closing the cottage for the night.
He saluted his son with customary force. “Hallo, Stephen! We should ha’ been inbed in another ten minutes. Come to see what’s the matter wi’ me, I suppose, mylad?”
The doctor had come and gone, and the hand had been pronounced as injured butslightly, though it might possibly have been considered a far more serious caseif Mr. Smith had been a more important man. Stephen’s anxious inquiry drew fromhis father words of regret at the inconvenience to the world of his doingnothing for the next two days, rather than of concern for the pain of theaccident. Together they entered the house.
John Smith—brown as autumn as to skin, white as winter as to clothes—was asatisfactory specimen of the village artificer in stone. In common with mostrural mechanics, he had too much individuality to be a typical “working-man”—aresultant of that beach-pebble attrition with his kind only to be experiencedin large towns, which metamorphoses the unit Self into a fraction of the unitClass.
There was not the speciality in his labour which distinguishes thehandicraftsmen of towns. Though only a mason, strictly speaking, he was notabove handling a brick, if bricks were the order of the day; or a slate ortile, if a roof had to be covered before the wet weather set in, and nobody wasnear who could do it better. Indeed, on one or two occasions in the depth ofwinter, when frost peremptorily forbids all use of the trowel, makingfoundations to settle, stones to fly, and mortar to crumble, he had taken tofelling and sawing trees. Moreover, he had practised gardening in his own plotfor so many years that, on an emergency, he might have made a living by thatcalling.
Probably our countryman was not such an accomplished artificer in a particulardirection as his town brethren in the trades. But he was, in truth, like thatclumsy pin-maker who made the whole pin, and who was despised by Adam Smith onthat account and respected by Macaulay, much more the artist nevertheless.
Appearing now, indoors, by the light of the candle, his stalwart healthinesswas a sight to see. His beard was close and knotted as that of a chiselledHercules; his shirt sleeves were partly rolled up, his waistcoat unbuttoned;the difference in hue between the snowy linen and the ruddy arms and facecontrasting like the white of an egg and its yolk. Mrs. Smith, on hearing thementer, advanced from the pantry.
Mrs. Smith was a matron whose countenance addressed itself to the mind ratherthan to the eye, though not exclusively. She retained her personal freshnesseven now, in the prosy afternoon-time of her life; but what her features wereprimarily indicative of was a sound common sense behind them; as a whole,appearing to carry with them a sort of argumentative commentary on the world ingeneral.
The details of the accident were then rehearsed by Stephen’s father, in thedramatic manner also common to Martin Cannister, other individuals of theneighbourhood, and the rural world generally. Mrs. Smith threw in hersentiments between the acts, as Coryphaeus of the tragedy, to make thedescription complete. The story at last came to an end, as the longest will,and Stephen directed the conversation into another channel.
“Well, mother, they know everything about me now,” he said quietly.
“Well done!” replied his father; “now my mind’s at peace.”
“I blame myself—I never shall forgive myself—for not telling them before,”continued the young man.
Mrs. Smith at this point abstracted her mind from the former subject. “I don’tsee what you have to grieve about, Stephen,” she said. “People who accidentallyget friends don’t, as a first stroke, tell the history of their families.”
“Ye’ve done no wrong, certainly,” said his father.
“No; but I should have spoken sooner. There’s more in this visit of mine thanyou think—a good deal more.”
“Not more than I think,” Mrs. Smith replied, looking contemplatively at him.Stephen blushed; and his father looked from one to the other in a state ofutter incomprehension.
“She’s a pretty piece enough,” Mrs. Smith continued, “and very lady-like andclever too. But though she’s very well fit for you as far as that is, why,mercy “pon me, what ever do you want any woman at all for yet?”
John made his naturally short mouth a long one, and wrinkled his forehead,“That’s the way the wind d’blow, is it?” he said.
“Mother,” exclaimed Stephen, “how absurdly you speak! Criticizing whether she’sfit for me or no, as if there were room for doubt on the matter! Why, to marryher would be the great blessing of my life—socially and practically, as well asin other respects. No such good fortune as that, I’m afraid; she’s too farabove me. Her family doesn’t want such country lads as I in it.”
“Then if they don’t want you, I’d see them dead corpses before I’d want them,and go to better families who do want you.”
“Ah, yes; but I could never put up with the distaste of being welcomed amongsuch people as you mean, whilst I could get indifference among such people ashers.”
“What crazy twist o’ thinking will enter your head next?” said his mother. “Andcome to that, she’s not a bit too high for you, or you too low for her. See howcareful I be to keep myself up. I’m sure I never stop for more than a minutetogether to talk to any journeymen people; and I never invite anybody to ourparty o’ Christmases who are not in business for themselves. And I talk toseveral toppermost carriage people that come to my lord’s without saying ma’amor sir to ’em, and they take it as quiet as lambs.”
“You curtseyed to the vicar, mother; and I wish you hadn’t.”
“But it was before he called me by my Christian name, or he would have got verylittle curtseying from me!” said Mrs. Smith, bridling and sparkling withvexation. “You go on at me, Stephen, as if I were your worst enemy! What elsecould I do with the man to get rid of him, banging it into me and your fatherby side and by seam, about his greatness, and what happened when he was a youngfellow at college, and I don’t know what-all; the tongue o’ en flopping roundhis mouth like a mop-rag round a dairy. That ’a did, didn’t he, John?”
“That’s about the size o’t,” replied her husband.
“Every woman now-a-days,” resumed Mrs. Smith, “if she marry at all, must expecta father-in-law of a rank lower than her father. The men have gone up so, andthe women have stood still. Every man you meet is more the dand than hisfather; and you are just level wi’ her.”
“That’s what she thinks herself.”
“It only shows her sense. I knew she was after “ee, Stephen—I knew it.”
“After me! Good Lord, what next!”
“And I really must say again that you ought not to be in such a hurry, and waitfor a few years. You might go higher than a bankrupt pa’son’s girl then.”
“The fact is, mother,” said Stephen impatiently, “you don’t know anything aboutit. I shall never go higher, because I don’t want to, nor should I if I livedto be a hundred. As to you saying that she’s after me, I don’t like such aremark about her, for it implies a scheming woman, and a man worth schemingfor, both of which are not only untrue, but ludicrously untrue, of this case.Isn’t it so, father?”
“I’m afraid I don’t understand the matter well enough to gie my opinion,” saidhis father, in the tone of the fox who had a cold and could not smell.
“She couldn’t have been very backward anyhow, considering the short time youhave known her,” said his mother. “Well I think that five years hence you’ll beplenty young enough to think of such things. And really she can very wellafford to wait, and will too, take my word. Living down in an out-step placelike this, I am sure she ought to be very thankful that you took notice of her.She’d most likely have died an old maid if you hadn’t turned up.”
“All nonsense,” said Stephen, but not aloud.
“A nice little thing she is,” Mrs. Smith went on in a more complacent tone nowthat Stephen had been talked down; “there’s not a word to say against her, I’llown. I see her sometimes decked out like a horse going to fair, and I admireher for’t. A perfect little lady. But people can’t help their thoughts, and ifshe’d learnt to make figures instead of letters when she was at school ’twouldhave been better for her pocket; for as I said, there never were worse timesfor such as she than now.”
“Now, now, mother!” said Stephen with smiling deprecation.
“But I will!” said his mother with asperity. “I don’t read the papers fornothing, and I know men all move up a stage by marriage. Men of her class, thatis, parsons, marry squires’ daughters; squires marry lords’ daughters; lordsmarry dukes’ daughters; dukes marry queens’ daughters. All stages of gentlemenmate a stage higher; and the lowest stage of gentlewomen are left single, ormarry out of their class.”
“But you said just now, dear mother——” retorted Stephen, unable to resist thetemptation of showing his mother her inconsistency. Then he paused.
“Well, what did I say?” And Mrs. Smith prepared her lips for a new campaign.
Stephen, regretting that he had begun, since a volcano might be theconsequence, was obliged to go on.
“You said I wasn’t out of her class just before.”
“Yes, there, there! That’s you; that’s my own flesh and blood. I’ll warrantthat you’ll pick holes in everything your mother says, if you can, Stephen. Youare just like your father for that; take anybody’s part but mine. Whilst I amspeaking and talking and trying and slaving away for your good, you are waitingto catch me out in that way. So you are in her class, but ’tis what HER peoplewould CALL marrying out of her class. Don’t be so quarrelsome, Stephen!”
Stephen preserved a discreet silence, in which he was imitated by his father,and for several minutes nothing was heard but the ticking of the green-facedcase-clock against the wall.
“I’m sure,” added Mrs. Smith in a more philosophic tone, and as a terminativespeech, “if there’d been so much trouble to get a husband in my time as thereis in these days—when you must make a god-almighty of a man to get en to haeye—I’d have trod clay for bricks before I’d ever have lowered my dignity tomarry, or there’s no bread in nine loaves.”
The discussion now dropped, and as it was getting late, Stephen bade hisparents farewell for the evening, his mother none the less warmly for theirsparring; for although Mrs. Smith and Stephen were always contending, they werenever at enmity.
“And possibly,” said Stephen, “I may leave here altogether to-morrow; I don’tknow. So that if I shouldn’t call again before returning to London, don’t bealarmed, will you?”
“But didn’t you come for a fortnight?” said his mother. “And haven’t you amonth’s holiday altogether? They are going to turn you out, then?”
“Not at all. I may stay longer; I may go. If I go, you had better say nothingabout my having been here, for her sake. At what time of the morning does thecarrier pass Endelstow lane?”
“Seven o’clock.”
And then he left them. His thoughts were, that should the vicar permit him tobecome engaged, to hope for an engagement, or in any way to think of hisbeloved Elfride, he might stay longer. Should he be forbidden to think of anysuch thing, he resolved to go at once. And the latter, even to younghopefulness, seemed the more probable alternative.
Stephen walked back to the vicarage through the meadows, as he had come,surrounded by the soft musical purl of the water through little weirs, themodest light of the moon, the freshening smell of the dews out-spread around.It was a time when mere seeing is meditation, and meditation peace. Stephen washardly philosopher enough to avail himself of Nature’s offer. His constitutionwas made up of very simple particulars; was one which, rare in the spring-timeof civilizations, seems to grow abundant as a nation gets older, individualityfades, and education spreads; that is, his brain had extraordinary receptivepowers, and no great creativeness. Quickly acquiring any kind of knowledge hesaw around him, and having a plastic adaptability more common in woman than inman, he changed colour like a chameleon as the society he found himself inassumed a higher and more artificial tone. He had not many original ideas, andyet there was scarcely an idea to which, under proper training, he could nothave added a respectable co-ordinate.
He saw nothing outside himself to-night; and what he saw within was a wearinessto his flesh. Yet to a dispassionate observer, his pretensions to Elfride,though rather premature, were far from absurd as marriages go, unless theaccidental proximity of simple but honest parents could be said to make themso.
The clock struck eleven when he entered the house. Elfride had been waitingwith scarcely a movement since he departed. Before he had spoken to her shecaught sight of him passing into the study with her father. She saw that he hadby some means obtained the private interview he desired.
A nervous headache had been growing on the excitable girl during the absence ofStephen, and now she could do nothing beyond going up again to her room as shehad done before. Instead of lying down she sat again in the darkness withoutclosing the door, and listened with a beating heart to every sound fromdownstairs. The servants had gone to bed. She ultimately heard the two men comefrom the study and cross to the dining-room, where supper had been lingeringfor more than an hour. The door was left open, and she found that the meal,such as it was, passed off between her father and her lover without any remark,save commonplaces as to cucumbers and melons, their wholesomeness and culture,uttered in a stiff and formal way. It seemed to prefigure failure.
Shortly afterwards Stephen came upstairs to his bedroom, and was almostimmediately followed by her father, who also retired for the night. Notinclined to get a light, she partly undressed and sat on the bed, where sheremained in pained thought for some time, possibly an hour. Then rising toclose her door previously to fully unrobing, she saw a streak of light shiningacross the landing. Her father’s door was shut, and he could be heard snoringregularly. The light came from Stephen’s room, and the slight sounds alsocoming thence emphatically denoted what he was doing. In the perfect silenceshe could hear the closing of a lid and the clicking of a lock,—he wasfastening his hat-box. Then the buckling of straps and the click of anotherkey,—he was securing his portmanteau. With trebled foreboding she opened herdoor softly, and went towards his. One sensation pervaded her to distraction.Stephen, her handsome youth and darling, was going away, and she might neversee him again except in secret and in sadness—perhaps never more. At any rate,she could no longer wait till the morning to hear the result of the interview,as she had intended. She flung her dressing-gown round her, tapped lightly athis door, and whispered “Stephen!” He came instantly, opened the door, andstepped out.
“Tell me; are we to hope?”
He replied in a disturbed whisper, and a tear approached its outlet, thoughnone fell.
“I am not to think of such a preposterous thing—that’s what he said. And I amgoing to-morrow. I should have called you up to bid you good-bye.”
“But he didn’t say you were to go—O Stephen, he didn’t say that?”
“No; not in words. But I cannot stay.”
“Oh, don’t, don’t go! Do come and let us talk. Let us come down to thedrawing-room for a few minutes; he will hear us here.”
She preceded him down the staircase with the taper light in her hand, lookingunnaturally tall and thin in the long dove-coloured dressing-gown she wore. Shedid not stop to think of the propriety or otherwise of this midnight interviewunder such circumstances. She thought that the tragedy of her life wasbeginning, and, for the first time almost, felt that her existence might have agrave side, the shade of which enveloped and rendered invisible the delicategradations of custom and punctilio. Elfride softly opened the drawing-room doorand they both went in. When she had placed the candle on the table, he enclosedher with his arms, dried her eyes with his handkerchief, and kissed their lids.
“Stephen, it is over—happy love is over; and there is no more sunshine now!”
“I will make a fortune, and come to you, and have you. Yes, I will!”
“Papa will never hear of it—never—never! You don’t know him. I do. He is eitherbiassed in favour of a thing, or prejudiced against it. Argument is powerlessagainst either feeling.”
“No; I won’t think of him so,” said Stephen. “If I appear before him some timehence as a man of established name, he will accept me—I know he will. He is nota wicked man.”
“No, he is not wicked. But you say ‘some time hence,’ as if it were no time. Toyou, among bustle and excitement, it will be comparatively a short time,perhaps; oh, to me, it will be its real length trebled! Every summer will be ayear—autumn a year—winter a year! O Stephen! and you may forget me!”
Forget: that was, and is, the real sting of waiting to fond-hearted woman. Theremark awoke in Stephen the converse fear. “You, too, may be persuaded to giveme up, when time has made me fainter in your memory. For, remember, your lovefor me must be nourished in secret; there will be no long visits from me tosupport you. Circumstances will always tend to obliterate me.”
“Stephen,” she said, filled with her own misgivings, and unheeding his lastwords, “there are beautiful women where you live—of course I know there are—andthey may win you away from me.” Her tears came visibly as she drew a mentalpicture of his faithlessness. “And it won’t be your fault,” she continued,looking into the candle with doleful eyes. “No! You will think that our familydon’t want you, and get to include me with them. And there will be a vacancy inyour heart, and some others will be let in.”
“I could not, I would not. Elfie, do not be so full of forebodings.”
“Oh yes, they will,” she replied. “And you will look at them, not caring atfirst, and then you will look and be interested, and after a while you willthink, ‘Ah, they know all about city life, and assemblies, and coteries, andthe manners of the titled, and poor little Elfie, with all the fuss that’s madeabout her having me, doesn’t know about anything but a little house and a fewcliffs and a space of sea, far away.’ And then you’ll be more interested inthem, and they’ll make you have them instead of me, on purpose to be cruel tome because I am silly, and they are clever and hate me. And I hate them, too;yes, I do!”
Her impulsive words had power to impress him at any rate with the recognitionof the uncertainty of all that is not accomplished. And, worse than thatgeneral feeling, there of course remained the sadness which arose from thespecial features of his own case. However remote a desired issue may be, themere fact of having entered the groove which leads to it, cheers to some extentwith a sense of accomplishment. Had Mr. Swancourt consented to an engagement ofno less length than ten years, Stephen would have been comparatively cheerfulin waiting; they would have felt that they were somewhere on the road toCupid’s garden. But, with a possibility of a shorter probation, they had not asyet any prospect of the beginning; the zero of hope had yet to be reached. Mr.Swancourt would have to revoke his formidable words before the waiting formarriage could even set in. And this was despair.
“I wish we could marry now,” murmured Stephen, as an impossible fancy.
“So do I,” said she also, as if regarding an idle dream. “’Tis the only thingthat ever does sweethearts good!”
“Secretly would do, would it not, Elfie?”
“Yes, secretly would do; secretly would indeed be best,” she said, and went onreflectively: “All we want is to render it absolutely impossible for any futurecircumstance to upset our future intention of being happy together; not tobegin being happy now.”
“Exactly,” he murmured in a voice and manner the counterpart of hers. “To marryand part secretly, and live on as we are living now; merely to put it out ofanybody’s power to force you away from me, dearest.”
“Or you away from me, Stephen.”
“Or me from you. It is possible to conceive a force of circumstance strongenough to make any woman in the world marry against her will: no conceivablepressure, up to torture or starvation, can make a woman once married to herlover anybody else’s wife.”
Now up to this point the idea of an immediate secret marriage had been held byboth as an untenable hypothesis, wherewith simply to beguile a miserablemoment. During a pause which followed Stephen’s last remark, a fascinatingperception, then an alluring conviction, flashed along the brain of both. Theperception was that an immediate marriage COULD be contrived; the convictionthat such an act, in spite of its daring, its fathomless results, itsdeceptiveness, would be preferred by each to the life they must lead under anyother conditions.
The youth spoke first, and his voice trembled with the magnitude of theconception he was cherishing. “How strong we should feel, Elfride! going on ourseparate courses as before, without the fear of ultimate separation! O Elfride!think of it; think of it!”
It is certain that the young girl’s love for Stephen received a fanning fromher father’s opposition which made it blaze with a dozen times the intensity itwould have exhibited if left alone. Never were conditions more favourable fordeveloping a girl’s first passing fancy for a handsome boyish face—a fancyrooted in inexperience and nourished by seclusion—into a wild unreflectingpassion fervid enough for anything. All the elements of such a development werethere, the chief one being hopelessness—a necessary ingredient always toperfect the mixture of feelings united under the name of loving to distraction.
“We would tell papa soon, would we not?” she inquired timidly. “Nobody elseneed know. He would then be convinced that hearts cannot be played with; loveencouraged be ready to grow, love discouraged be ready to die, at a moment’snotice. Stephen, do you not think that if marriages against a parent’s consentare ever justifiable, they are when young people have been favoured up to apoint, as we have, and then have had that favour suddenly withdrawn?”
“Yes. It is not as if we had from the beginning acted in opposition to yourpapa’s wishes. Only think, Elfie, how pleasant he was towards me but six hoursago! He liked me, praised me, never objected to my being alone with you.”
“I believe he MUST like you now,” she cried. “And if he found that youirremediably belonged to me, he would own it and help you. “O Stephen,Stephen,” she burst out again, as the remembrance of his packing came afresh toher mind, “I cannot bear your going away like this! It is too dreadful. All Ihave been expecting miserably killed within me like this!”
Stephen flushed hot with impulse. “I will not be a doubt to you—thought of youshall not be a misery to me!” he said. “We will be wife and husband before wepart for long!”
She hid her face on his shoulder. “Anything to make SURE!” she whispered.
“I did not like to propose it immediately,” continued Stephen. “It seemed tome—it seems to me now—like trying to catch you—a girl better in the world thanI.”
“Not that, indeed! And am I better in worldly station? What’s the use of havebeens? We may have been something once; we are nothing now.”
Then they whispered long and earnestly together; Stephen hesitatingly proposingthis and that plan, Elfride modifying them, with quick breathings, and hecticflush, and unnaturally bright eyes. It was two o’clock before an arrangementwas finally concluded.
She then told him to leave her, giving him his light to go up to his own room.They parted with an agreement not to meet again in the morning. After his doorhad been some time closed he heard her softly gliding into her chamber.
Chapter XI
“Journeys end in lovers meeting.”
Stephen lay watching the Great Bear; Elfride was regarding a monotonousparallelogram of window blind. Neither slept that night.
Early the next morning—that is to say, four hours after their stolen interview,and just as the earliest servant was heard moving about—Stephen Smith wentdownstairs, portmanteau in hand. Throughout the night he had intended to seeMr. Swancourt again, but the sharp rebuff of the previous evening rendered suchan interview particularly distasteful. Perhaps there was another and lesshonest reason. He decided to put it off. Whatever of moral timidity orobliquity may have lain in such a decision, no perception of it was strongenough to detain him. He wrote a note in his room, which stated simply that hedid not feel happy in the house after Mr. Swancourt’s sudden veto on what hehad favoured a few hours before; but that he hoped a time would come, and thatsoon, when his original feelings of pleasure as Mr. Swancourt’s guest might berecovered.
He expected to find the downstairs rooms wearing the gray and cheerless aspectthat early morning gives to everything out of the sun. He found in the diningroom a breakfast laid, of which somebody had just partaken.
Stephen gave the maid-servant his note of adieu. She stated that Mr. Swancourthad risen early that morning, and made an early breakfast. He was not goingaway that she knew of.
Stephen took a cup of coffee, left the house of his love, and turned into thelane. It was so early that the shaded places still smelt like night time, andthe sunny spots had hardly felt the sun. The horizontal rays made every shallowdip in the ground to show as a well-marked hollow. Even the channel of the pathwas enough to throw shade, and the very stones of the road cast tapering dashesof darkness westward, as long as Jael’s tent-nail.
At a spot not more than a hundred yards from the vicar’s residence the laneleading thence crossed the high road. Stephen reached the point ofintersection, stood still and listened. Nothing could be heard save thelengthy, murmuring line of the sea upon the adjacent shore. He looked at hiswatch, and then mounted a gate upon which he seated himself, to await thearrival of the carrier. Whilst he sat he heard wheels coming in two directions.
The vehicle approaching on his right he soon recognized as the carrier’s. Therewere the accompanying sounds of the owner’s voice and the smack of his whip,distinct in the still morning air, by which he encouraged his horses up thehill.
The other set of wheels sounded from the lane Stephen had just traversed. Oncloser observation, he perceived that they were moving from the precincts ofthe ancient manor-house adjoining the vicarage grounds. A carriage then leftthe entrance gates of the house, and wheeling round came fully in sight. It wasa plain travelling carriage, with a small quantity of luggage, apparently alady’s. The vehicle came to the junction of the four ways half-a-minute beforethe carrier reached the same spot, and crossed directly in his front,proceeding by the lane on the other side.
Inside the carriage Stephen could just discern an elderly lady with a youngerwoman, who seemed to be her maid. The road they had taken led to Stratleigh, asmall watering-place sixteen miles north.
He heard the manor-house gates swing again, and looking up saw another personleaving them, and walking off in the direction of the parsonage. “Ah, how muchI wish I were moving that way!” felt he parenthetically. The gentleman wastall, and resembled Mr. Swancourt in outline and attire. He opened the vicaragegate and went in. Mr. Swancourt, then, it certainly was. Instead of remainingin bed that morning Mr. Swancourt must have taken it into his head to see hisnew neighbour off on a journey. He must have been greatly interested in thatneighbour to do such an unusual thing.
The carrier’s conveyance had pulled up, and Stephen now handed in hisportmanteau and mounted the shafts. “Who is that lady in the carriage?” heinquired indifferently of Lickpan the carrier.
“That, sir, is Mrs. Troyton, a widder wi’ a mint o’ money. She’s the owner ofall that part of Endelstow that is not Lord Luxellian’s. Only been here a shorttime; she came into it by law. The owner formerly was a terrible mysteriousparty—never lived here—hardly ever was seen here except in the month ofSeptember, as I might say.”
The horses were started again, and noise rendered further discourse a matter oftoo great exertion. Stephen crept inside under the tilt, and was soon lost inreverie.
Three hours and a half of straining up hills and jogging down brought them toSt. Launce’s, the market town and railway station nearest to Endelstow, and theplace from which Stephen Smith had journeyed over the downs on the, to him,memorable winter evening at the beginning of the same year. The carrier’s vanwas so timed as to meet a starting up-train, which Stephen entered. Two orthree hours’ railway travel through vertical cuttings in metamorphic rock,through oak copses rich and green, stretching over slopes and down delightfulvalleys, glens, and ravines, sparkling with water like many-rilled Ida, and heplunged amid the hundred and fifty thousand people composing the town ofPlymouth.
There being some time upon his hands he left his luggage at the cloak-room, andwent on foot along Bedford Street to the nearest church. Here Stephen wanderedamong the multifarious tombstones and looked in at the chancel window, dreamingof something that was likely to happen by the altar there in the course of thecoming month. He turned away and ascended the Hoe, viewed the magnificentstretch of sea and massive promontories of land, but without particularlydiscerning one feature of the varied perspective. He still saw that innerprospect—the event he hoped for in yonder church. The wide Sound, theBreakwater, the light-house on far-off Eddystone, the dark steam vessels,brigs, barques, and schooners, either floating stilly, or gliding with tiniestmotion, were as the dream, then; the dreamed-of event was as the reality.
Soon Stephen went down from the Hoe, and returned to the railway station. Hetook his ticket, and entered the London train.
That day was an irksome time at Endelstow vicarage. Neither father nor daughteralluded to the departure of Stephen. Mr. Swancourt’s manner towards her partookof the compunctious kindness that arises from a misgiving as to the justice ofsome previous act.
Either from lack of the capacity to grasp the whole coup d’oeil, or from anatural endowment for certain kinds of stoicism, women are cooler than men incritical situations of the passive form. Probably, in Elfride’s case at least,it was blindness to the greater contingencies of the future she was preparingfor herself, which enabled her to ask her father in a quiet voice if he couldgive her a holiday soon, to ride to St. Launce’s and go on to Plymouth.
Now, she had only once before gone alone to Plymouth, and that was inconsequence of some unavoidable difficulty. Being a country girl, and a good,not to say a wild, horsewoman, it had been her delight to canter, without theghost of an attendant, over the fourteen or sixteen miles of hard roadintervening between their home and the station at St. Launce’s, put up thehorse, and go on the remainder of the distance by train, returning in the samemanner in the evening. It was then resolved that, though she had successfullyaccomplished this journey once, it was not to be repeated without someattendance.
But Elfride must not be confounded with ordinary young feminine equestrians.The circumstances of her lonely and narrow life made it imperative that introtting about the neighbourhood she must trot alone or else not at all. Usagesoon rendered this perfectly natural to herself. Her father, who had had otherexperiences, did not much like the idea of a Swancourt, whose pedigree could beas distinctly traced as a thread in a skein of silk, scampering over the hillslike a farmer’s daughter, even though he could habitually neglect her. But whatwith his not being able to afford her a regular attendant, and his inveteratehabit of letting anything be to save himself trouble, the circumstance grewcustomary. And so there arose a chronic notion in the villagers’ minds that allladies rode without an attendant, like Miss Swancourt, except a few who weresometimes visiting at Lord Luxellian’s.
“I don’t like your going to Plymouth alone, particularly going to St. Launce’son horseback. Why not drive, and take the man?”
“It is not nice to be so overlooked.” Worm’s company would not seriously haveinterfered with her plans, but it was her humour to go without him.
“When do you want to go?” said her father.
She only answered, “Soon.”
“I will consider,” he said.
Only a few days elapsed before she asked again. A letter had reached her fromStephen. It had been timed to come on that day by special arrangement betweenthem. In it he named the earliest morning on which he could meet her atPlymouth. Her father had been on a journey to Stratleigh, and returned inunusual buoyancy of spirit. It was a good opportunity; and since the dismissalof Stephen her father had been generally in a mood to make small concessions,that he might steer clear of large ones connected with that outcast lover ofhers.
“Next Thursday week I am going from home in a different direction,” said herfather. “In fact, I shall leave home the night before. You might choose thesame day, for they wish to take up the carpets, or some such thing, I think. AsI said, I don’t like you to be seen in a town on horseback alone; but go if youwill.”
Thursday week. Her father had named the very day that Stephen also had namedthat morning as the earliest on which it would be of any use to meet her; thatwas, about fifteen days from the day on which he had left Endelstow. Fifteendays—that fragment of duration which has acquired such an interestingindividuality from its connection with the English marriage law.
She involuntarily looked at her father so strangely, that on becoming consciousof the look she paled with embarrassment. Her father, too, looked confused.What was he thinking of?
There seemed to be a special facility offered her by a power external toherself in the circumstance that Mr. Swancourt had proposed to leave home thenight previous to her wished-for day. Her father seldom took long journeys;seldom slept from home except perhaps on the night following a remoteVisitation. Well, she would not inquire too curiously into the reason of theopportunity, nor did he, as would have been natural, proceed to explain it ofhis own accord. In matters of fact there had hitherto been no reserve betweenthem, though they were not usually confidential in its full sense. But thedivergence of their emotions on Stephen’s account had produced an estrangementwhich just at present went even to the extent of reticence on the most ordinaryhousehold topics.
Elfride was almost unconsciously relieved, persuading herself that her father’sreserve on his business justified her in secrecy as regarded her own—a secrecywhich was necessarily a foregone decision with her. So anxious is a youngconscience to discover a palliative, that the ex post facto nature of a reasonis of no account in excluding it.
The intervening fortnight was spent by her mostly in walking by herself amongthe shrubs and trees, indulging sometimes in sanguine anticipations; more, farmore frequently, in misgivings. All her flowers seemed dull of hue; her petsseemed to look wistfully into her eyes, as if they no longer stood in the samefriendly relation to her as formerly. She wore melancholy jewellery, gazed atsunsets, and talked to old men and women. It was the first time that she hadhad an inner and private world apart from the visible one about her. She wishedthat her father, instead of neglecting her even more than usual, would makesome advance—just one word; she would then tell all, and risk Stephen’sdispleasure. Thus brought round to the youth again, she saw him in her fancy,standing, touching her, his eyes full of sad affection, hopelessly renouncinghis attempt because she had renounced hers; and she could not recede.
On the Wednesday she was to receive another letter. She had resolved to let herfather see the arrival of this one, be the consequences what they might: thedread of losing her lover by this deed of honesty prevented her acting upon theresolve. Five minutes before the postman’s expected arrival she slipped out,and down the lane to meet him. She met him immediately upon turning a sharpangle, which hid her from view in the direction of the vicarage. The mansmilingly handed one missive, and was going on to hand another, a circular fromsome tradesman.
“No,” she said; “take that on to the house.”
“Why, miss, you are doing what your father has done for the last fortnight.”
She did not comprehend.
“Why, come to this corner, and take a letter of me every morning, all writ inthe same handwriting, and letting any others for him go on to the house.” Andon the postman went.
No sooner had he turned the corner behind her back than she heard her fathermeet and address the man. She had saved her letter by two minutes. Her fatheraudibly went through precisely the same performance as she had just been guiltyof herself.
This stealthy conduct of his was, to say the least, peculiar.
Given an impulsive inconsequent girl, neglected as to her inner life by heronly parent, and the following forces alive within her; to determine aresultant:
First love acted upon by a deadly fear of separation from its object:inexperience, guiding onward a frantic wish to prevent the above-named issue:misgivings as to propriety, met by hope of ultimate exoneration: indignation atparental inconsistency in first encouraging, then forbidding: a chilling senseof disobedience, overpowered by a conscientious inability to brook a breakingof plighted faith with a man who, in essentials, had remained unaltered fromthe beginning: a blessed hope that opposition would turn an erroneousjudgement: a bright faith that things would mend thereby, and wind up well.
Probably the result would, after all, have been nil, had not the following fewremarks been made one day at breakfast.
Her father was in his old hearty spirits. He smiled to himself at stories toobad to tell, and called Elfride a little scamp for surreptitiously preservingsome blind kittens that ought to have been drowned. After this expression, shesaid to him suddenly:
“If Mr. Smith had been already in the family, you would not have been madewretched by discovering he had poor relations?”
“Do you mean in the family by marriage?” he replied inattentively, andcontinuing to peel his egg.
The accumulating scarlet told that was her meaning, as much as the affirmativereply.
“I should have put up with it, no doubt,” Mr. Swancourt observed.
“So that you would not have been driven into hopeless melancholy, but have madethe best of him?”
Elfride’s erratic mind had from her youth upwards been constantly in the habitof perplexing her father by hypothetical questions, based on absurd conditions.The present seemed to be cast so precisely in the mould of previous ones that,not being given to syntheses of circumstances, he answered it with customarycomplacency.
“If he were allied to us irretrievably, of course I, or any sensible man,should accept conditions that could not be altered; certainly not be hopelesslymelancholy about it. I don’t believe anything in the world would make mehopelessly melancholy. And don’t let anything make you so, either.”
“I won’t, papa,” she cried, with a serene brightness that pleased him.
Certainly Mr. Swancourt must have been far from thinking that the brightnesscame from an exhilarating intention to hold back no longer from the mad actionshe had planned.
In the evening he drove away towards Stratleigh, quite alone. It was an unusualcourse for him. At the door Elfride had been again almost impelled by herfeelings to pour out all.
“Why are you going to Stratleigh, papa?” she said, and looked at him longingly.
“I will tell you to-morrow when I come back,” he said cheerily; “not beforethen, Elfride. Thou wilt not utter what thou dost not know, and so far will Itrust thee, gentle Elfride.”
She was repressed and hurt.
“I will tell you my errand to Plymouth, too, when I come back,” she murmured.
He went away. His jocularity made her intention seem the lighter, as hisindifference made her more resolved to do as she liked.
It was a familiar September sunset, dark-blue fragments of cloud upon anorange-yellow sky. These sunsets used to tempt her to walk towards them, as anybeautiful thing tempts a near approach. She went through the field to theprivet hedge, clambered into the middle of it, and reclined upon the thickboughs. After looking westward for a considerable time, she blamed herself fornot looking eastward to where Stephen was, and turned round. Ultimately hereyes fell upon the ground.
A peculiarity was observable beneath her. A green field spread itself on eachside of the hedge, one belonging to the glebe, the other being a part of theland attached to the manor-house adjoining. On the vicarage side she saw alittle footpath, the distinctive and altogether exceptional feature of whichconsisted in its being only about ten yards long; it terminated abruptly ateach end.
A footpath, suddenly beginning and suddenly ending, coming from nowhere andleading nowhere, she had never seen before.
Yes, she had, on second thoughts. She had seen exactly such a path trodden inthe front of barracks by the sentry.
And this recollection explained the origin of the path here. Her father hadtrodden it by pacing up and down, as she had once seen him doing.
Sitting on the hedge as she sat now, her eyes commanded a view of both sides ofit. And a few minutes later, Elfride looked over to the manor side.
Here was another sentry path. It was like the first in length, and it began andended exactly opposite the beginning and ending of its neighbour, but it wasthinner, and less distinct.
Two reasons existed for the difference. This one might have been trodden by asimilar weight of tread to the other, exercised a less number of times; or itmight have been walked just as frequently, but by lighter feet.
Probably a gentleman from Scotland-yard, had he been passing at the time, mighthave considered the latter alternative as the more probable. Elfride thoughtotherwise, so far as she thought at all. But her own great To-Morrow was nowimminent; all thoughts inspired by casual sights of the eye were only allowedto exercise themselves in inferior corners of her brain, previously to beingbanished altogether.
Elfride was at length compelled to reason practically upon her undertaking. Allher definite perceptions thereon, when the emotion accompanying them wasabstracted, amounted to no more than these:
“Say an hour and three-quarters to ride to St. Launce’s.
“Say half an hour at the Falcon to change my dress.
“Say two hours waiting for some train and getting to Plymouth.
“Say an hour to spare before twelve o’clock.
“Total time from leaving Endelstow till twelve o’clock, five hours.
“Therefore I shall have to start at seven.”
No surprise or sense of unwontedness entered the minds of the servants at herearly ride. The monotony of life we associate with people of small incomes indistricts out of the sound of the railway whistle, has one exception, whichputs into shade the experience of dwellers about the great centres ofpopulation—that is, in travelling. Every journey there is more or less anadventure; adventurous hours are necessarily chosen for the most commonplaceouting. Miss Elfride had to leave early—that was all.
Elfride never went out on horseback but she brought home something—somethingfound, or something bought. If she trotted to town or village, her burden wasbooks. If to hills, woods, or the seashore, it was wonderful mosses, abnormaltwigs, a handkerchief of wet shells or seaweed.
Once, in muddy weather, when Pansy was walking with her down the street ofCastle Boterel, on a fair-day, a packet in front of her and a packet under herarm, an accident befell the packets, and they slipped down. On one side of her,three volumes of fiction lay kissing the mud; on the other numerous skeins ofpolychromatic wools lay absorbing it. Unpleasant women smiled through windowsat the mishap, the men all looked round, and a boy, who was minding aginger-bread stall whilst the owner had gone to get drunk, laughed loudly. Theblue eyes turned to sapphires, and the cheeks crimsoned with vexation.
After that misadventure she set her wits to work, and was ingenious enough toinvent an arrangement of small straps about the saddle, by which a great dealcould be safely carried thereon, in a small compass. Here she now spread outand fastened a plain dark walking-dress and a few other trifles of apparel.Worm opened the gate for her, and she vanished away.
One of the brightest mornings of late summer shone upon her. The heather was atits purplest, the furze at its yellowest, the grasshoppers chirped loud enoughfor birds, the snakes hissed like little engines, and Elfride at first feltlively. Sitting at ease upon Pansy, in her orthodox riding-habit andnondescript hat, she looked what she felt. But the mercury of those days had atrick of falling unexpectedly. First, only for one minute in ten had she asense of depression. Then a large cloud, that had been hanging in the northlike a black fleece, came and placed itself between her and the sun. It helpedon what was already inevitable, and she sank into a uniformity of sadness.
She turned in the saddle and looked back. They were now on an open table-land,whose altitude still gave her a view of the sea by Endelstow. She lookedlongingly at that spot.
During this little revulsion of feeling Pansy had been still advancing, andElfride felt it would be absurd to turn her little mare’s head the other way.“Still,” she thought, “if I had a mamma at home I WOULD go back!”
And making one of those stealthy movements by which women let their heartsjuggle with their brains, she did put the horse’s head about, as ifunconsciously, and went at a hand-gallop towards home for more than a mile. Bythis time, from the inveterate habit of valuing what we have renounced directlythe alternative is chosen, the thought of her forsaken Stephen recalled her,and she turned about, and cantered on to St. Launce’s again.
This miserable strife of thought now began to rage in all its wildness.Overwrought and trembling, she dropped the rein upon Pansy’s shoulders, andvowed she would be led whither the horse would take her.
Pansy slackened her pace to a walk, and walked on with her agitated burden forthree or four minutes. At the expiration of this time they had come to a littleby-way on the right, leading down a slope to a pool of water. The pony stopped,looked towards the pool, and then advanced and stooped to drink.
Elfride looked at her watch and discovered that if she were going to reach St.Launce’s early enough to change her dress at the Falcon, and get a chance ofsome early train to Plymouth—there were only two available—it was necessary toproceed at once.
She was impatient. It seemed as if Pansy would never stop drinking; and therepose of the pool, the idle motions of the insects and flies upon it, theplacid waving of the flags, the leaf-skeletons, like Genoese filigree, placidlysleeping at the bottom, by their contrast with her own turmoil made herimpatience greater.
Pansy did turn at last, and went up the slope again to the high-road. The ponycame upon it, and stood cross-wise, looking up and down. Elfride’s heartthrobbed erratically, and she thought, “Horses, if left to themselves, make forwhere they are best fed. Pansy will go home.”
Pansy turned and walked on towards St. Launce’s
Pansy at home, during summer, had little but grass to live on. After a run toSt. Launce’s she always had a feed of corn to support her on the returnjourney. Therefore, being now more than half way, she preferred St. Launce’s.
But Elfride did not remember this now. All she cared to recognize was a dreamyfancy that to-day’s rash action was not her own. She was disabled by her moods,and it seemed indispensable to adhere to the programme. So strangely involvedare motives that, more than by her promise to Stephen, more even than by herlove, she was forced on by a sense of the necessity of keeping faith withherself, as promised in the inane vow of ten minutes ago.
She hesitated no longer. Pansy went, like the steed of Adonis, as if she toldthe steps. Presently the quaint gables and jumbled roofs of St. Launce’s werespread beneath her, and going down the hill she entered the courtyard of theFalcon. Mrs. Buckle, the landlady, came to the door to meet her.
The Swancourts were well known here. The transition from equestrian to theordinary guise of railway travellers had been more than once performed byfather and daughter in this establishment.
In less than a quarter of an hour Elfride emerged from the door in her walkingdress, and went to the railway. She had not told Mrs. Buckle anything as to herintentions, and was supposed to have gone out shopping.
An hour and forty minutes later, and she was in Stephen’s arms at the Plymouthstation. Not upon the platform—in the secret retreat of a desertedwaiting-room.
Stephen’s face boded ill. He was pale and despondent.
“What is the matter?” she asked.
“We cannot be married here to-day, my Elfie! I ought to have known it andstayed here. In my ignorance I did not. I have the licence, but it can only beused in my parish in London. I only came down last night, as you know.”
“What shall we do?” she said blankly.
“There’s only one thing we can do, darling.”
“What’s that?”
“Go on to London by a train just starting, and be married there to-morrow.”
“Passengers for the 11.5 up-train take their seats!” said a guard’s voice onthe platform.
“Will you go, Elfride?”
“I will.”
In three minutes the train had moved off, bearing away with it Stephen andElfride.
Chapter XII
“Adieu! she cries, and waved her lily hand.”
The few tattered clouds of the morning enlarged and united, the sun withdrewbehind them to emerge no more that day, and the evening drew to a close indrifts of rain. The water-drops beat like duck shot against the window of therailway-carriage containing Stephen and Elfride.
The journey from Plymouth to Paddington, by even the most headlong express,allows quite enough leisure for passion of any sort to cool. Elfride’sexcitement had passed off, and she sat in a kind of stupor during the latterhalf of the journey. She was aroused by the clanging of the maze of rails overwhich they traced their way at the entrance to the station.
Is this London?” she said.
“Yes, darling,” said Stephen in a tone of assurance he was far from feeling. Tohim, no less than to her, the reality so greatly differed from the prefiguring.
She peered out as well as the window, beaded with drops, would allow her, andsaw only the lamps, which had just been lit, blinking in the wet atmosphere,and rows of hideous zinc chimney-pipes in dim relief against the sky. Shewrithed uneasily, as when a thought is swelling in the mind which must causemuch pain at its deliverance in words. Elfride had known no more about thestings of evil report than the native wild-fowl knew of the effects of Crusoe’sfirst shot. Now she saw a little further, and a little further still.
The train stopped. Stephen relinquished the soft hand he had held all the day,and proceeded to assist her on to the platform.
This act of alighting upon strange ground seemed all that was wanted tocomplete a resolution within her.
She looked at her betrothed with despairing eyes.
“O Stephen,” she exclaimed, “I am so miserable! I must go home again—I must—Imust! Forgive my wretched vacillation. I don’t like it here—nor myself—noryou!”
Stephen looked bewildered, and did not speak.
“Will you allow me to go home?” she implored. “I won’t trouble you to go withme. I will not be any weight upon you; only say you will agree to my returning;that you will not hate me for it, Stephen! It is better that I should returnagain; indeed it is, Stephen.”
“But we can’t return now,” he said in a deprecatory tone.
“I must! I will!”
“How? When do you want to go?”
“Now. Can we go at once?”
The lad looked hopelessly along the platform.
“If you must go, and think it wrong to remain, dearest,” said he sadly, “youshall. You shall do whatever you like, my Elfride. But would you in realityrather go now than stay till to-morrow, and go as my wife?”
“Yes, yes—much—anything to go now. I must; I must!” she cried.
“We ought to have done one of two things,” he answered gloomily. “Never to havestarted, or not to have returned without being married. I don’t like to say it,Elfride—indeed I don’t; but you must be told this, that going back unmarriedmay compromise your good name in the eyes of people who may hear of it.”
“They will not; and I must go.”
“O Elfride! I am to blame for bringing you away.”
“Not at all. I am the elder.”
“By a month; and what’s that? But never mind that now.” He looked around. “Isthere a train for Plymouth to-night?” he inquired of a guard. The guard passedon and did not speak.
“Is there a train for Plymouth to-night?” said Elfride to another.
“Yes, miss; the 8.10—leaves in ten minutes. You have come to the wrongplatform; it is the other side. Change at Bristol into the night mail. Downthat staircase, and under the line.”
They ran down the staircase—Elfride first—to the booking-office, and into acarriage with an official standing beside the door. “Show your tickets,please.” They are locked in—men about the platform accelerate their velocitiestill they fly up and down like shuttles in a loom—a whistle—the waving of aflag—a human cry—a steam groan—and away they go to Plymouth again, justcatching these words as they glide off:
“Those two youngsters had a near run for it, and no mistake!”
Elfride found her breath.
“And have you come too, Stephen? Why did you?”
“I shall not leave you till I see you safe at St. Launce’s. Do not think worseof me than I am, Elfride.”
And then they rattled along through the night, back again by the way they hadcome. The weather cleared, and the stars shone in upon them. Their two or threefellow-passengers sat for most of the time with closed eyes. Stephen sometimesslept; Elfride alone was wakeful and palpitating hour after hour.
The day began to break, and revealed that they were by the sea. Red rocksoverhung them, and, receding into distance, grew livid in the blue greyatmosphere. The sun rose, and sent penetrating shafts of light in upon theirweary faces. Another hour, and the world began to be busy. They waited yet alittle, and the train slackened its speed in view of the platform at St.Launce’s.
She shivered, and mused sadly.
“I did not see all the consequences,” she said. “Appearances are wofullyagainst me. If anybody finds me out, I am, I suppose, disgraced.”
“Then appearances will speak falsely; and how can that matter, even if they do?I shall be your husband sooner or later, for certain, and so prove yourpurity.”
“Stephen, once in London I ought to have married you,” she said firmly. “It wasmy only safe defence. I see more things now than I did yesterday. My onlyremaining chance is not to be discovered; and that we must fight for mostdesperately.”
They stepped out. Elfride pulled a thick veil over her face.
A woman with red and scaly eyelids and glistening eyes was sitting on a benchjust inside the office-door. She fixed her eyes upon Elfride with an expressionwhose force it was impossible to doubt, but the meaning of which was not clear;then upon the carriage they had left. She seemed to read a sinister story inthe scene.
Elfride shrank back, and turned the other way.
“Who is that woman?” said Stephen. “She looked hard at you.”
“Mrs. Jethway—a widow, and mother of that young man whose tomb we sat on theother night. Stephen, she is my enemy. Would that God had had mercy enough uponme to have hidden this from HER!”
“Do not talk so hopelessly,” he remonstrated. “I don’t think she recognizedus.”
“I pray that she did not.”
He put on a more vigorous mood.
“Now, we will go and get some breakfast.”
“No, no!” she begged. “I cannot eat. I MUST get back to Endelstow.”
Elfride was as if she had grown years older than Stephen now.
“But you have had nothing since last night but that cup of tea at Bristol.”
“I can’t eat, Stephen.”
“Wine and biscuit?”
“No.”
“Nor tea, nor coffee?”
“No.”
“A glass of water?”
“No. I want something that makes people strong and energetic for the present,that borrows the strength of to-morrow for use to-day—leaving to-morrow withoutany at all for that matter; or even that would take all life away to-morrow, solong as it enabled me to get home again now. Brandy, that’s what I want. Thatwoman’s eyes have eaten my heart away!”
“You are wild; and you grieve me, darling. Must it be brandy?”
“Yes, if you please.”
“How much?”
“I don’t know. I have never drunk more than a teaspoonful at once. All I knowis that I want it. Don’t get it at the Falcon.”
He left her in the fields, and went to the nearest inn in that direction.Presently he returned with a small flask nearly full, and some slices ofbread-and-butter, thin as wafers, in a paper-bag. Elfride took a sip or two.
“It goes into my eyes,” she said wearily. “I can’t take any more. Yes, I will;I will close my eyes. Ah, it goes to them by an inside route. I don’t want it;throw it away.”
However, she could eat, and did eat. Her chief attention was concentrated uponhow to get the horse from the Falcon stables without suspicion. Stephen was notallowed to accompany her into the town. She acted now upon conclusions reachedwithout any aid from him: his power over her seemed to have departed.
“You had better not be seen with me, even here where I am so little known. Wehave begun stealthily as thieves, and we must end stealthily as thieves, at allhazards. Until papa has been told by me myself, a discovery would be terrible.”
Walking and gloomily talking thus they waited till nearly nine o’clock, atwhich time Elfride thought she might call at the Falcon without creating muchsurprise. Behind the railway-station was the river, spanned by an old Tudorbridge, whence the road diverged in two directions, one skirting the suburbs ofthe town, and winding round again into the high-road to Endelstow. Beside thisroad Stephen sat, and awaited her return from the Falcon.
He sat as one sitting for a portrait, motionless, watching the chequered lightsand shades on the tree-trunks, the children playing opposite the schoolprevious to entering for the morning lesson, the reapers in a field afar off.The certainty of possession had not come, and there was nothing to mitigate theyouth’s gloom, that increased with the thought of the parting now so near.
At length she came trotting round to him, in appearance much as on the romanticmorning of their visit to the cliff, but shorn of the radiance which glistenedabout her then. However, her comparative immunity from further risk and troublehad considerably composed her. Elfride’s capacity for being wounded was onlysurpassed by her capacity for healing, which rightly or wrongly is by someconsidered an index of transientness of feeling in general.
“Elfride, what did they say at the Falcon?”
“Nothing. Nobody seemed curious about me. They knew I went to Plymouth, and Ihave stayed there a night now and then with Miss Bicknell. I rather calculatedupon that.”
And now parting arose like a death to these children, for it was imperativethat she should start at once. Stephen walked beside her for nearly a mile.During the walk he said sadly:
“Elfride, four-and-twenty hours have passed, and the thing is not done.”
“But you have insured that it shall be done.”
“How have I?”
“O Stephen, you ask how! Do you think I could marry another man on earth afterhaving gone thus far with you? Have I not shown beyond possibility of doubtthat I can be nobody else’s? Have I not irretrievably committed myself?—pridehas stood for nothing in the face of my great love. You misunderstood myturning back, and I cannot explain it. It was wrong to go with you at all; andthough it would have been worse to go further, it would have been betterpolicy, perhaps. Be assured of this, that whenever you have a home forme—however poor and humble—and come and claim me, I am ready.” She addedbitterly, “When my father knows of this day’s work, he may be only too glad tolet me go.”
“Perhaps he may, then, insist upon our marriage at once!” Stephen answered,seeing a ray of hope in the very focus of her remorse. “I hope he may, even ifwe had still to part till I am ready for you, as we intended.”
Elfride did not reply.
“You don’t seem the same woman, Elfie, that you were yesterday.”
“Nor am I. But good-bye. Go back now.” And she reined the horse for parting. “OStephen,” she cried, “I feel so weak! I don’t know how to meet him. Cannot you,after all, come back with me?”
“Shall I come?”
Elfride paused to think.
“No; it will not do. It is my utter foolishness that makes me say such words.But he will send for you.”
“Say to him,” continued Stephen, “that we did this in the absolute despair ofour minds. Tell him we don’t wish him to favour us—only to deal justly with us.If he says, marry now, so much the better. If not, say that all may be putright by his promise to allow me to have you when I am good enough foryou—which may be soon. Say I have nothing to offer him in exchange for histreasure—the more sorry I; but all the love, and all the life, and all thelabour of an honest man shall be yours. As to when this had better be told, Ileave you to judge.”
His words made her cheerful enough to toy with her position.
“And if ill report should come, Stephen,” she said smiling, “why, theorange-tree must save me, as it saved virgins in St. George’s time from thepoisonous breath of the dragon. There, forgive me for forwardness: I am going.”
Then the boy and girl beguiled themselves with words of half-parting only.
“Own wifie, God bless you till we meet again!”
“Till we meet again, good-bye!”
And the pony went on, and she spoke to him no more. He saw her figure diminishand her blue veil grow gray—saw it with the agonizing sensations of a slowdeath.
After thus parting from a man than whom she had known none greater as yet,Elfride rode rapidly onwards, a tear being occasionally shaken from her eyesinto the road. What yesterday had seemed so desirable, so promising, eventrifling, had now acquired the complexion of a tragedy.
She saw the rocks and sea in the neighbourhood of Endelstow, and heaved a sighof relief.
When she passed a field behind the vicarage she heard the voices of Unity andWilliam Worm. They were hanging a carpet upon a line. Unity was uttering asentence that concluded with “when Miss Elfride comes.”
“When d’ye expect her?”
“Not till evening now. She’s safe enough at Miss Bicknell’s, bless ye.”
Elfride went round to the door. She did not knock or ring; and seeing nobody totake the horse, Elfride led her round to the yard, slipped off the bridle andsaddle, drove her towards the paddock, and turned her in. Then Elfride creptindoors, and looked into all the ground-floor rooms. Her father was not there.
On the mantelpiece of the drawing-room stood a letter addressed to her in hishandwriting. She took it and read it as she went upstairs to change her habit.
STRATLEIGH, Thursday.
“DEAR ELFRIDE,—On second thoughts I will not return to-day, but only come asfar as Wadcombe. I shall be at home by to-morrow afternoon, and bring a friendwith me.—Yours, in haste,
C. S.”
After making a quick toilet she felt more revived, though still suffering froma headache. On going out of the door she met Unity at the top of the stair.
“O Miss Elfride! I said to myself ’tis her sperrit! We didn’t dream o’ you notcoming home last night. You didn’t say anything about staying.”
“I intended to come home the same evening, but altered my plan. I wished Ihadn’t afterwards. Papa will be angry, I suppose?”
“Better not tell him, miss,” said Unity.
“I do fear to,” she murmured. “Unity, would you just begin telling him when hecomes home?”
“What! and get you into trouble?”
“I deserve it.”
“No, indeed, I won’t,” said Unity. “It is not such a mighty matter, MissElfride. I says to myself, master’s taking a hollerday, and because he’s notbeen kind lately to Miss Elfride, she——”
“Is imitating him. Well, do as you like. And will you now bring me someluncheon?”
After satisfying an appetite which the fresh marine air had given her in itsvictory over an agitated mind, she put on her hat and went to the garden andsummer-house. She sat down, and leant with her head in a corner. Here she fellasleep.
Half-awake, she hurriedly looked at the time. She had been there three hours.At the same moment she heard the outer gate swing together, and wheels sweepround the entrance; some prior noise from the same source having probably beenthe cause of her awaking. Next her father’s voice was heard calling to Worm.
Elfride passed along a walk towards the house behind a belt of shrubs. Sheheard a tongue holding converse with her father, which was not that of eitherof the servants. Her father and the stranger were laughing together. Then therewas a rustling of silk, and Mr. Swancourt and his companion, or companions, toall seeming entered the door of the house, for nothing more of them wasaudible. Elfride had turned back to meditate on what friends these could be,when she heard footsteps, and her father exclaiming behind her:
“O Elfride, here you are! I hope you got on well?”
Elfride’s heart smote her, and she did not speak.
“Come back to the summer-house a minute,” continued Mr. Swancourt; “I have totell you of that I promised to.”
They entered the summer-house, and stood leaning over the knotty woodwork ofthe balustrade.
“Now,” said her father radiantly, “guess what I have to say.” He seemed to beregarding his own existence so intently, that he took no interest in nor evensaw the complexion of hers.
“I cannot, papa,” she said sadly.
“Try, dear.”
“I would rather not, indeed.”
“You are tired. You look worn. The ride was too much for you. Well, this iswhat I went away for. I went to be married!”
“Married!” she faltered, and could hardly check an involuntary “So did I.” Amoment after and her resolve to confess perished like a bubble.
“Yes; to whom do you think? Mrs. Troyton, the new owner of the estate over thehedge, and of the old manor-house. It was only finally settled between us whenI went to Stratleigh a few days ago.” He lowered his voice to a sly tone ofmerriment. “Now, as to your stepmother, you’ll find she is not much to look at,though a good deal to listen to. She is twenty years older than myself, for onething.”
“You forget that I know her. She called here once, after we had been, and foundher away from home.”
“Of course, of course. Well, whatever her looks are, she’s as excellent a womanas ever breathed. She has had lately left her as absolute property threethousand five hundred a year, besides the devise of this estate—and, by theway, a large legacy came to her in satisfaction of dower, as it is called.”
“Three thousand five hundred a year!”
“And a large—well, a fair-sized—mansion in town, and a pedigree as long as mywalking-stick; though that bears evidence of being rather a raked-upaffair—done since the family got rich—people do those things now as they buildruins on maiden estates and cast antiques at Birmingham.”
Elfride merely listened and said nothing.
He continued more quietly and impressively. “Yes, Elfride, she is wealthy incomparison with us, though with few connections. However, she will introduceyou to the world a little. We are going to exchange her house in Baker Streetfor one at Kensington, for your sake. Everybody is going there now, she says.At Easters we shall fly to town for the usual three months—I shall have acurate of course by that time. Elfride, I am past love, you know, and Ihonestly confess that I married her for your sake. Why a woman of her standingshould have thrown herself away upon me, God knows. But I suppose her age andplainness were too pronounced for a town man. With your good looks, if you nowplay your cards well, you may marry anybody. Of course, a little contrivancewill be necessary; but there’s nothing to stand between you and a husband witha title, that I can see. Lady Luxellian was only a squire’s daughter. Now,don’t you see how foolish the old fancy was? But come, she is indoors waitingto see you. It is as good as a play, too,” continued the vicar, as they walkedtowards the house. “I courted her through the privet hedge yonder: notentirely, you know, but we used to walk there of an evening—nearly everyevening at last. But I needn’t tell you details now; everything was terriblymatter-of-fact, I assure you. At last, that day I saw her at Stratleigh, wedetermined to settle it off-hand.”
“And you never said a word to me,” replied Elfride, not reproachfully either intone or thought. Indeed, her feeling was the very reverse of reproachful. Shefelt relieved and even thankful. Where confidence had not been given, how couldconfidence be expected?
Her father mistook her dispassionateness for a veil of politeness over a senseof ill-usage. “I am not altogether to blame,” he said. “There were two or threereasons for secrecy. One was the recent death of her relative the testator,though that did not apply to you. But remember, Elfride,” he continued in astiffer tone, “you had mixed yourself up so foolishly with those low people,the Smiths—and it was just, too, when Mrs. Troyton and myself were beginning tounderstand each other—that I resolved to say nothing even to you. How did Iknow how far you had gone with them and their son? You might have made a pointof taking tea with them every day, for all that I knew.”
Elfride swallowed her feelings as she best could, and languidly though flatlyasked a question.
“Did you kiss Mrs. Troyton on the lawn about three weeks ago? That evening Icame into the study and found you had just had candles in?”
Mr. Swancourt looked rather red and abashed, as middle-aged lovers are apt todo when caught in the tricks of younger ones.
“Well, yes; I think I did,” he stammered; “just to please her, you know.” Andthen recovering himself he laughed heartily.
“And was this what your Horatian quotation referred to?”
“It was, Elfride.”
They stepped into the drawing-room from the verandah. At that moment Mrs.Swancourt came downstairs, and entered the same room by the door.
“Here, Charlotte, is my little Elfride,” said Mr. Swancourt, with the increasedaffection of tone often adopted towards relations when newly produced.
Poor Elfride, not knowing what to do, did nothing at all; but stood receptiveof all that came to her by sight, hearing, and touch.
Mrs. Swancourt moved forward, took her step-daughter’s hand, then kissed her.
“Ah, darling!” she exclaimed good-humouredly, “you didn’t think when you showeda strange old woman over the conservatory a month or two ago, and explained theflowers to her so prettily, that she would so soon be here in new colours. Nordid she, I am sure.”
The new mother had been truthfully enough described by Mr. Swancourt. She wasnot physically attractive. She was dark—very dark—in complexion, portly infigure, and with a plentiful residuum of hair in the proportion of half a dozenwhite ones to half a dozen black ones, though the latter were black indeed. Nofurther observed, she was not a woman to like. But there was more to see. Tothe most superficial critic it was apparent that she made no attempt todisguise her age. She looked sixty at the first glance, and closeacquaintanceship never proved her older.
Another and still more winning trait was one attaching to the corners of hermouth. Before she made a remark these often twitched gently: not backwards andforwards, the index of nervousness; not down upon the jaw, the sign ofdetermination; but palpably upwards, in precisely the curve adopted torepresent mirth in the broad caricatures of schoolboys. Only this element inher face was expressive of anything within the woman, but it was unmistakable.It expressed humour subjective as well as objective—which could survey thepeculiarities of self in as whimsical a light as those of other people.
This is not all of Mrs. Swancourt. She had held out to Elfride hands whosefingers were literally stiff with rings, signis auroque rigentes, like Helen’srobe. These rows of rings were not worn in vanity apparently. They were mostlyantique and dull, though a few were the reverse.
RIGHT HAND.
1st. Plainly set oval onyx, representing a devil’s head. 2nd. Green jasperintaglio, with red veins. 3rd. Entirely gold, bearing figure of a hideousgriffin. 4th. A sea-green monster diamond, with small diamonds round it. 5th.Antique cornelian intaglio of dancing figure of a satyr. 6th. An angular bandchased with dragons’ heads. 7th. A facetted carbuncle accompanied by ten littletwinkling emeralds; &c. &c.
LEFT HAND.
1st. A reddish-yellow toadstone. 2nd. A heavy ring enamelled in colours, andbearing a jacynth. 3rd. An amethystine sapphire. 4th. A polished ruby,surrounded by diamonds. 5th. The engraved ring of an abbess. 6th. A gloomyintaglio; &c. &c.
Beyond this rather quaint array of stone and metal Mrs. Swancourt wore noornament whatever.
Elfride had been favourably impressed with Mrs. Troyton at their meeting abouttwo months earlier; but to be pleased with a woman as a momentary acquaintancewas different from being taken with her as a stepmother. However, thesuspension of feeling was but for a moment. Elfride decided to like her still.
Mrs. Swancourt was a woman of the world as to knowledge, the reverse as toaction, as her marriage suggested. Elfride and the lady were soon inextricablyinvolved in conversation, and Mr. Swancourt left them to themselves.
“And what do you find to do with yourself here?” Mrs. Swancourt said, after afew remarks about the wedding. “You ride, I know.”
“Yes, I ride. But not much, because papa doesn’t like my going alone.”
“You must have somebody to look after you.”
“And I read, and write a little.”
“You should write a novel. The regular resource of people who don’t go enoughinto the world to live a novel is to write one.”
“I have done it,” said Elfride, looking dubiously at Mrs. Swancourt, as if indoubt whether she would meet with ridicule there.
“That’s right. Now, then, what is it about, dear?”
“About—well, it is a romance of the Middle Ages.”
“Knowing nothing of the present age, which everybody knows about, for safetyyou chose an age known neither to you nor other people. That’s it, eh? No, no;I don’t mean it, dear.”
“Well, I have had some opportunities of studying mediaeval art and manners inthe library and private museum at Endelstow House, and I thought I should liketo try my hand upon a fiction. I know the time for these tales is past; but Iwas interested in it, very much interested.”
“When is it to appear?”
“Oh, never, I suppose.”
“Nonsense, my dear girl. Publish it, by all means. All ladies do that sort ofthing now; not for profit, you know, but as a guarantee of mentalrespectability to their future husbands.”
“An excellent idea of us ladies.”
“Though I am afraid it rather resembles the melancholy ruse of throwing loavesover castle-walls at besiegers, and suggests desperation rather than plentyinside.”
“Did you ever try it?”
“No; I was too far gone even for that.”
“Papa says no publisher will take my book.”
“That remains to be proved. I’ll give my word, my dear, that by this time nextyear it shall be printed.”
“Will you, indeed?” said Elfride, partially brightening with pleasure, thoughshe was sad enough in her depths. “I thought brains were the indispensable,even if the only, qualification for admission to the republic of letters. Amere commonplace creature like me will soon be turned out again.”
“Oh no; once you are there you’ll be like a drop of water in a piece ofrock-crystal—your medium will dignify your commonness.”
“It will be a great satisfaction,” Elfride murmured, and thought of Stephen,and wished she could make a great fortune by writing romances, and marry himand live happily.
“And then we’ll go to London, and then to Paris,” said Mrs. Swancourt. “I havebeen talking to your father about it. But we have first to move into themanor-house, and we think of staying at Torquay whilst that is going on.Meanwhile, instead of going on a honeymoon scamper by ourselves, we have comehome to fetch you, and go all together to Bath for two or three weeks.”
Elfride assented pleasantly, even gladly; but she saw that, by this marriage,her father and herself had ceased for ever to be the close relations they hadbeen up to a few weeks ago. It was impossible now to tell him the tale of herwild elopement with Stephen Smith.
He was still snugly housed in her heart. His absence had regained for him muchof that aureola of saintship which had been nearly abstracted during herreproachful mood on that miserable journey from London. Rapture is often cooledby contact with its cause, especially if under awkward conditions. And thatlast experience with Stephen had done anything but make him shine in her eyes.His very kindness in letting her return was his offence. Elfride had her sex’slove of sheer force in a man, however ill-directed; and at that criticaljuncture in London Stephen’s only chance of retaining the ascendancy over herthat his face and not his parts had acquired for him, would have been by doingwhat, for one thing, he was too youthful to undertake—that was, dragging her bythe wrist to the rails of some altar, and peremptorily marrying her. Decisiveaction is seen by appreciative minds to be frequently objectless, and sometimesfatal; but decision, however suicidal, has more charm for a woman than the mostunequivocal Fabian success.
However, some of the unpleasant accessories of that occasion were now out ofsight again, and Stephen had resumed not a few of his fancy colours.
Chapter XIII
“He set in order many proverbs.”
It is London in October—two months further on in the story.
Bede’s Inn has this peculiarity, that it faces, receives from, and dischargesinto a bustling thoroughfare speaking only of wealth and respectability, whilstits postern abuts on as crowded and poverty-stricken a network of alleys as areto be found anywhere in the metropolis. The moral consequences are, first, thatthose who occupy chambers in the Inn may see a great deal of shirtlesshumanity’s habits and enjoyments without doing more than look down from a backwindow; and second they may hear wholesome though unpleasant social remindersthrough the medium of a harsh voice, an unequal footstep, the echo of a blow ora fall, which originates in the person of some drunkard or wife-beater, as hecrosses and interferes with the quiet of the square. Characters of this kindfrequently pass through the Inn from a little foxhole of an alley at the back,but they never loiter there.
It is hardly necessary to state that all the sights and movements proper to theInn are most orderly. On the fine October evening on which we follow StephenSmith to this place, a placid porter is sitting on a stool under asycamore-tree in the midst, with a little cane in his hand. We notice the thickcoat of soot upon the branches, hanging underneath them in flakes, as in achimney. The blackness of these boughs does not at present improve thetree—nearly forsaken by its leaves as it is—but in the spring their green freshbeauty is made doubly beautiful by the contrast. Within the railings is aflower-garden of respectable dahlias and chrysanthemums, where a man issweeping the leaves from the grass.
Stephen selects a doorway, and ascends an old though wide wooden staircase,with moulded balusters and handrail, which in a country manor-house would beconsidered a noteworthy specimen of Renaissance workmanship. He reaches a dooron the first floor, over which is painted, in black letters, “Mr. HenryKnight”—“Barrister-at-law” being understood but not expressed. The wall isthick, and there is a door at its outer and inner face. The outer one happensto be ajar: Stephen goes to the other, and taps.
“Come in!” from distant penetralia.
First was a small anteroom, divided from the inner apartment by a wainscotedarchway two or three yards wide. Across this archway hung a pair of dark-greencurtains, making a mystery of all within the arch except the spasmodicscratching of a quill pen. Here was grouped a chaotic assemblage ofarticles—mainly old framed prints and paintings—leaning edgewise against thewall, like roofing slates in a builder’s yard. All the books visible here werefolios too big to be stolen—some lying on a heavy oak table in one corner, someon the floor among the pictures, the whole intermingled with old coats, hats,umbrellas, and walking-sticks.
Stephen pushed aside the curtain, and before him sat a man writing away as ifhis life depended upon it—which it did.
A man of thirty in a speckled coat, with dark brown hair, curly beard, andcrisp moustache: the latter running into the beard on each side of the mouth,and, as usual, hiding the real expression of that organ under a chronic aspectof impassivity.
“Ah, my dear fellow, I knew ’twas you,” said Knight, looking up with a smile,and holding out his hand.
Knight’s mouth and eyes came to view now. Both features were good, and had thepeculiarity of appearing younger and fresher than the brow and face theybelonged to, which were getting sicklied o’er by the unmistakable pale cast.The mouth had not quite relinquished rotundity of curve for the firmangularities of middle life; and the eyes, though keen, permeated rather thanpenetrated: what they had lost of their boy-time brightness by a dozen years ofhard reading lending a quietness to their gaze which suited them well.
A lady would have said there was a smell of tobacco in the room: a man thatthere was not.
Knight did not rise. He looked at a timepiece on the mantelshelf, then turnedagain to his letters, pointing to a chair.
“Well, I am glad you have come. I only returned to town yesterday; now, don’tspeak, Stephen, for ten minutes; I have just that time to the late post. At theeleventh minute, I’m your man.”
Stephen sat down as if this kind of reception was by no means new, and awaywent Knight’s pen, beating up and down like a ship in a storm.
Cicero called the library the soul of the house; here the house was all soul.Portions of the floor, and half the wall-space, were taken up by book-shelvesordinary and extraordinary; the remaining parts, together with brackets,side-tables, &c., being occupied by casts, statuettes, medallions, andplaques of various descriptions, picked up by the owner in his wanderingsthrough France and Italy.
One stream only of evening sunlight came into the room from a window quite inthe corner, overlooking a court. An aquarium stood in the window. It was a dullparallelopipedon enough for living creatures at most hours of the day; but fora few minutes in the evening, as now, an errant, kindly ray lighted up andwarmed the little world therein, when the many-coloured zoophytes opened andput forth their arms, the weeds acquired a rich transparency, the shellsgleamed of a more golden yellow, and the timid community expressed gladnessmore plainly than in words.
Within the prescribed ten minutes Knight flung down his pen, rang for the boyto take the letters to the post, and at the closing of the door exclaimed,“There; thank God, that’s done. Now, Stephen, pull your chair round, and tellme what you have been doing all this time. Have you kept up your Greek?”
“No.”
“How’s that?”
“I haven’t enough spare time.”
“That’s nonsense.”
“Well, I have done a great many things, if not that. And I have done oneextraordinary thing.”
Knight turned full upon Stephen. “Ah-ha! Now, then, let me look into your face,put two and two together, and make a shrewd guess.”
Stephen changed to a redder colour.
“Why, Smith,” said Knight, after holding him rigidly by the shoulders, andkeenly scrutinising his countenance for a minute in silence, “you have fallenin love.”
“Well—the fact is——”
“Now, out with it.” But seeing that Stephen looked rather distressed, hechanged to a kindly tone. “Now Smith, my lad, you know me well enough by thistime, or you ought to; and you know very well that if you choose to give me adetailed account of the phenomenon within you, I shall listen; if you don’t, Iam the last man in the world to care to hear it.”
“I’ll tell this much: I HAVE fallen in love, and I want to be MARRIED.”
Knight looked ominous as this passed Stephen’s lips.
“Don’t judge me before you have heard more,” cried Stephen anxiously, seeingthe change in his friend’s countenance.
“I don’t judge. Does your mother know about it?”
“Nothing definite.”
“Father?”
“No. But I’ll tell you. The young person——”
“Come, that’s dreadfully ungallant. But perhaps I understand the frame of minda little, so go on. Your sweetheart——”
“She is rather higher in the world than I am.”
“As it should be.”
“And her father won’t hear of it, as I now stand.”
“Not an uncommon case.”
“And now comes what I want your advice upon. Something has happened at herhouse which makes it out of the question for us to ask her father again now. Sowe are keeping silent. In the meantime an architect in India has just writtento Mr. Hewby to ask whether he can find for him a young assistant willing to goover to Bombay to prepare drawings for work formerly done by the engineers. Thesalary he offers is 350 rupees a month, or about 35 Pounds. Hewby has mentionedit to me, and I have been to Dr. Wray, who says I shall acclimatise withoutmuch illness. Now, would you go?”
“You mean to say, because it is a possible road to the young lady.”
“Yes; I was thinking I could go over and make a little money, and then comeback and ask for her. I have the option of practising for myself after a year.”
“Would she be staunch?”
“Oh yes! For ever—to the end of her life!”
“How do you know?”
“Why, how do people know? Of course, she will.”
Knight leant back in his chair. “Now, though I know her thoroughly as sheexists in your heart, Stephen, I don’t know her in the flesh. All I want to askis, is this idea of going to India based entirely upon a belief in herfidelity?”
“Yes; I should not go if it were not for her.”
“Well, Stephen, you have put me in rather an awkward position. If I give mytrue sentiments, I shall hurt your feelings; if I don’t, I shall hurt my ownjudgment. And remember, I don’t know much about women.”
“But you have had attachments, although you tell me very little about them.”
“And I only hope you’ll continue to prosper till I tell you more.”
Stephen winced at this rap. “I have never formed a deep attachment,” continuedKnight. “I never have found a woman worth it. Nor have I been once engaged tobe married.”
“You write as if you had been engaged a hundred times, if I may be allowed tosay so,” said Stephen in an injured tone.
“Yes, that may be. But, my dear Stephen, it is only those who half know a thingthat write about it. Those who know it thoroughly don’t take the trouble. All Iknow about women, or men either, is a mass of generalities. I plod along, andoccasionally lift my eyes and skim the weltering surface of mankind lyingbetween me and the horizon, as a crow might; no more.”
Knight stopped as if he had fallen into a train of thought, and Stephen lookedwith affectionate awe at a master whose mind, he believed, could swallow up atone meal all that his own head contained.
There was affective sympathy, but no great intellectual fellowship, betweenKnight and Stephen Smith. Knight had seen his young friend when the latter wasa cherry-cheeked happy boy, had been interested in him, had kept his eye uponhim, and generously helped the lad to books, till the mere connection ofpatronage grew to acquaintance, and that ripened to friendship. And so, thoughSmith was not at all the man Knight would have deliberately chosen as afriend—or even for one of a group of a dozen friends—he somehow was his friend.Circumstance, as usual, did it all. How many of us can say of our most intimatealter ego, leaving alone friends of the outer circle, that he is the man weshould have chosen, as embodying the net result after adding up all the pointsin human nature that we love, and principles we hold, and subtracting all thatwe hate? The man is really somebody we got to know by mere physicaljuxtaposition long maintained, and was taken into our confidence, and evenheart, as a makeshift.
“And what do you think of her?” Stephen ventured to say, after a silence.
“Taking her merits on trust from you,” said Knight, “as we do those of theRoman poets of whom we know nothing but that they lived, I still think she willnot stick to you through, say, three years of absence in India.”
“But she will!” cried Stephen desperately. “She is a girl all delicacy andhonour. And no woman of that kind, who has committed herself so into a man’shands as she has into mine, could possibly marry another.”
“How has she committed herself?” asked Knight cunously.
Stephen did not answer. Knight had looked on his love so sceptically that itwould not do to say all that he had intended to say by any means.
“Well, don’t tell,” said Knight. “But you are begging the question, which is, Isuppose, inevitable in love.”
“And I’ll tell you another thing,” the younger man pleaded. “You remember whatyou said to me once about women receiving a kiss. Don’t you? Why, that insteadof our being charmed by the fascination of their bearing at such a time, weshould immediately doubt them if their confusion has any GRACE in it—thatawkward bungling was the true charm of the occasion, implying that we are thefirst who has played such a part with them.”
“It is true, quite,” said Knight musingly.
It often happened that the disciple thus remembered the lessons of the masterlong after the master himself had forgotten them.
“Well, that was like her!” cried Stephen triumphantly. “She was in such aflurry that she didn’t know what she was doing.”
“Splendid, splendid!” said Knight soothingly. “So that all I have to say is,that if you see a good opening in Bombay there’s no reason why you should notgo without troubling to draw fine distinctions as to reasons. No man fullyrealizes what opinions he acts upon, or what his actions mean.”
“Yes; I go to Bombay. I’ll write a note here, if you don’t mind.”
“Sleep over it—it is the best plan—and write to-morrow. Meantime, go there tothat window and sit down, and look at my Humanity Show. I am going to dine outthis evening, and have to dress here out of my portmanteau. I bring up mythings like this to save the trouble of going down to my place at Richmond andback again.”
Knight then went to the middle of the room and flung open his portmanteau, andStephen drew near the window. The streak of sunlight had crept upward, edgedaway, and vanished; the zoophytes slept: a dusky gloom pervaded the room. Andnow another volume of light shone over the window.
“There!” said Knight, “where is there in England a spectacle to equal that? Isit there and watch them every night before I go home. Softly open the sash.”
Beneath them was an alley running up to the wall, and thence turning sidewaysand passing under an arch, so that Knight’s back window was immediately overthe angle, and commanded a view of the alley lengthwise. Crowds—mostly ofwomen—were surging, bustling, and pacing up and down. Gaslights glared frombutchers’ stalls, illuminating the lumps of flesh to splotches of orange andvermilion, like the wild colouring of Turner’s later pictures, whilst the purland babble of tongues of every pitch and mood was to this human wild-wood whatthe ripple of a brook is to the natural forest.
Nearly ten minutes passed. Then Knight also came to the window.
“Well, now, I call a cab and vanish down the street in the direction ofBerkeley Square,” he said, buttoning his waistcoat and kicking his morning suitinto a corner. Stephen rose to leave.
“What a heap of literature!” remarked the young man, taking a final longingsurvey round the room, as if to abide there for ever would be the greatpleasure of his life, yet feeling that he had almost outstayed hiswelcome-while. His eyes rested upon an arm-chair piled full of newspapers,magazines, and bright new volumes in green and red.
“Yes,” said Knight, also looking at them and breathing a sigh of weariness;“something must be done with several of them soon, I suppose. Stephen, youneedn’t hurry away for a few minutes, you know, if you want to stay; I am notquite ready. Overhaul those volumes whilst I put on my coat, and I’ll walk alittle way with you.”
Stephen sat down beside the arm-chair and began to tumble the books about.Among the rest he found a novelette in one volume, THE COURT OF KELLYON CASTLE.By Ernest Field.
“Are you going to review this?” inquired Stephen with apparent unconcern, andholding up Elfride’s effusion.
“Which? Oh, that! I may—though I don’t do much light reviewing now. But it isreviewable.”
“How do you mean?”
Knight never liked to be asked what he meant. “Mean! I mean that the majorityof books published are neither good enough nor bad enough to provoke criticism,and that that book does provoke it.”
“By its goodness or its badness?” Stephen said with some anxiety on poor littleElfride’s score.
“Its badness. It seems to be written by some girl in her teens.”
Stephen said not another word. He did not care to speak plainly of Elfrideafter that unfortunate slip his tongue had made in respect of her havingcommitted herself; and, apart from that, Knight’s severe—almost dogged andself-willed—honesty in criticizing was unassailable by the humble wish of ayouthful friend like Stephen.
Knight was now ready. Turning off the gas, and slamming together the door, theywent downstairs and into the street.
Chapter XIV
“We frolic while ’tis May.”
It has now to be realized that nearly three-quarters of a year have passedaway. In place of the autumnal scenery which formed a setting to the previousenactments, we have the culminating blooms of summer in the year following.
Stephen is in India, slaving away at an office in Bombay; occasionally going upthe country on professional errands, and wondering why people who had beenthere longer than he complained so much of the effect of the climate upon theirconstitutions. Never had a young man a finer start than seemed now to presentitself to Stephen. It was just in that exceptional heyday of prosperity whichshone over Bombay some few years ago, that he arrived on the scene. Buildingand engineering partook of the general impetus. Speculation moved with anaccelerated velocity every successive day, the only disagreeable contingencyconnected with it being the possibility of a collapse.
Elfride had never told her father of the four-and-twenty-hours’ escapade withStephen, nor had it, to her knowledge, come to his ears by any other route. Itwas a secret trouble and grief to the girl for a short time, and Stephen’sdeparture was another ingredient in her sorrow. But Elfride possessed specialfacilities for getting rid of trouble after a decent interval. Whilst a slownature was imbibing a misfortune little by little, she had swallowed the wholeagony of it at a draught and was brightening again. She could slough off asadness and replace it by a hope as easily as a lizard renews a diseased limb.
And two such excellent distractions had presented themselves. One was bringingout the romance and looking for notices in the papers, which, though they hadbeen significantly short so far, had served to divert her thoughts. The otherwas migrating from the vicarage to the more commodious old house of Mrs.Swancourt’s, overlooking the same valley. Mr. Swancourt at first disliked theidea of being transplanted to feminine soil, but the obvious advantages of suchan accession of dignity reconciled him to the change. So there was a radical“move;” the two ladies staying at Torquay as had been arranged, the vicar goingto and fro.
Mrs. Swancourt considerably enlarged Elfride’s ideas in an aristocraticdirection, and she began to forgive her father for his politic marriage.Certainly, in a worldly sense, a handsome face at three-and-forty had neverserved a man in better stead.
The new house at Kensington was ready, and they were all in town.
The Hyde Park shrubs had been transplanted as usual, the chairs ranked in line,the grass edgings trimmed, the roads made to look as if they were sufferingfrom a heavy thunderstorm; carriages had been called for by the easeful, horsesby the brisk, and the Drive and Row were again the groove of gaiety for anhour. We gaze upon the spectacle, at six o’clock on this midsummer afternoon,in a melon-frame atmosphere and beneath a violet sky. The Swancourt equipageformed one in the stream.
Mrs. Swancourt was a talker of talk of the incisive kind, which her low musicalvoice—the only beautiful point in the old woman—prevented from being wearisome.
“Now,” she said to Elfride, who, like AEneas at Carthage, was full ofadmiration for the brilliant scene, “you will find that our companionless statewill give us, as it does everybody, an extraordinary power in reading thefeatures of our fellow-creatures here. I always am a listener in such places asthese—not to the narratives told by my neighbours’ tongues, but by theirfaces—the advantage of which is, that whether I am in Row, Boulevard, Rialto,or Prado, they all speak the same language. I may have acquired some skill inthis practice through having been an ugly lonely woman for so many years, withnobody to give me information; a thing you will not consider strange when theparallel case is borne in mind,—how truly people who have no clocks will tellthe time of day.”
“Ay, that they will,” said Mr. Swancourt corroboratively. “I have knownlabouring men at Endelstow and other farms who had framed complete systems ofobservation for that purpose. By means of shadows, winds, clouds, the movementsof sheep and oxen, the singing of birds, the crowing of cocks, and a hundredother sights and sounds which people with watches in their pockets never knowthe existence of, they are able to pronounce within ten minutes of the houralmost at any required instant. That reminds me of an old story which I’mafraid is too bad—too bad to repeat.” Here the vicar shook his head and laughedinwardly.
“Tell it—do!” said the ladies.
“I mustn’t quite tell it.”
“That’s absurd,” said Mrs. Swancourt.
“It was only about a man who, by the same careful system of observation, wasknown to deceive persons for more than two years into the belief that he kept abarometer by stealth, so exactly did he foretell all changes in the weather bythe braying of his ass and the temper of his wife.”
Elfride laughed.
“Exactly,” said Mrs. Swancourt. “And in just the way that those learnt thesigns of nature, I have learnt the language of her illegitimatesister—artificiality; and the fibbing of eyes, the contempt of nose-tips, theindignation of back hair, the laughter of clothes, the cynicism of footsteps,and the various emotions lying in walking-stick twirls, hat-liftings, theelevation of parasols, the carriage of umbrellas, become as A B C to me.
“Just look at that daughter’s sister class of mamma in the carriage acrossthere,” she continued to Elfride, pointing with merely a turn of her eye. “Theabsorbing self-consciousness of her position that is shown by her countenanceis most humiliating to a lover of one’s country. You would hardly believe,would you, that members of a Fashionable World, whose professed zero is farabove the highest degree of the humble, could be so ignorant of the elementaryinstincts of reticence.”
“How?”
“Why, to bear on their faces, as plainly as on a phylactery, the inscription,‘Do, pray, look at the coronet on my panels.’”
“Really, Charlotte,” said the vicar, “you see as much in faces as Mr. Puff sawin Lord Burleigh’s nod.”
Elfride could not but admire the beauty of her fellow countrywomen, especiallysince herself and her own few acquaintances had always been slightly sunburntor marked on the back of the hands by a bramble-scratch at this time of theyear.
“And what lovely flowers and leaves they wear in their bonnets!” she exclaimed.
“Oh yes,” returned Mrs. Swancourt. “Some of them are even more striking incolour than any real ones. Look at that beautiful rose worn by the lady insidethe rails. Elegant vine-tendrils introduced upon the stem as an improvementupon prickles, and all growing so naturally just over her ear—I say growingadvisedly, for the pink of the petals and the pink of her handsome cheeks areequally from Nature’s hand to the eyes of the most casual observer.”
“But praise them a little, they do deserve it!” said generous Elfride.
“Well, I do. See how the Duchess of——waves to and fro in her seat, utilizingthe sway of her landau by looking around only when her head is swung forward,with a passive pride which forbids a resistance to the force of circumstance.Look at the pretty pout on the mouths of that family there, retaining no tracesof being arranged beforehand, so well is it done. Look at the demure close ofthe little fists holding the parasols; the tiny alert thumb, sticking up erectagainst the ivory stem as knowing as can be, the satin of the parasolinvariably matching the complexion of the face beneath it, yet seemingly by anaccident, which makes the thing so attractive. There’s the red book lying onthe opposite seat, bespeaking the vast numbers of their acquaintance. And Iparticularly admire the aspect of that abundantly daughtered woman on the otherside—I mean her look of unconsciousness that the girls are stared at by thewalkers, and above all the look of the girls themselves—losing their gaze inthe depths of handsome men’s eyes without appearing to notice whether they areobserving masculine eyes or the leaves of the trees. There’s praise for you.But I am only jesting, child—you know that.”
“Piph-ph-ph—how warm it is, to be sure!” said Mr. Swancourt, as if his mindwere a long distance from all he saw. “I declare that my watch is so hot that Ican scarcely bear to touch it to see what the time is, and all the world smellslike the inside of a hat.”
“How the men stare at you, Elfride!” said the elder lady. “You will kill mequite, I am afraid.”
“Kill you?”
“As a diamond kills an opal in the same setting.”
“I have noticed several ladies and gentlemen looking at me,” said Elfrideartlessly, showing her pleasure at being observed.
“My dear, you mustn’t say ‘gentlemen’ nowadays,” her stepmother answered in thetones of arch concern that so well became her ugliness. “We have handed over‘gentlemen’ to the lower middle class, where the word is still to be heard attradesmen’s balls and provincial tea-parties, I believe. It is done with here.”
“What must I say, then?”
“‘Ladies and MEN’ always.”
At this moment appeared in the stream of vehicles moving in the contrarydirection a chariot presenting in its general surface the rich indigo hue of amidnight sky, the wheels and margins being picked out in delicate lines ofultramarine; the servants’ liveries were dark-blue coats and silver lace, andbreeches of neutral Indian red. The whole concern formed an organic whole, andmoved along behind a pair of dark chestnut geldings, who advanced in anindifferently zealous trot, very daintily performed, and occasionally shruggeddivers points of their veiny surface as if they were rather above the business.
In this sat a gentleman with no decided characteristics more than that hesomewhat resembled a good-natured commercial traveller of the superior class.Beside him was a lady with skim-milky eyes and complexion, belonging to the‘interesting’ class of women, where that class merges in the sickly, hergreatest pleasure being apparently to enjoy nothing. Opposite this pair sat twolittle girls in white hats and blue feathers.
The lady saw Elfride, smiled and bowed, and touched her husband’s elbow, whoturned and received Elfride’s movement of recognition with a gallant elevationof his hat. Then the two children held up their arms to Elfride, and laughedgleefully.
“Who is that?”
“Why, Lord Luxellian, isn’t it?” said Mrs. Swancourt, who with the vicar hadbeen seated with her back towards them.
“Yes,” replied Elfride. “He is the one man of those I have seen here whom Iconsider handsomer than papa.”
“Thank you, dear,” said Mr. Swancourt.
“Yes; but your father is so much older. When Lord Luxellian gets a littlefurther on in life, he won’t be half so good-looking as our man.”
“Thank you, dear, likewise,” said Mr. Swancourt.
“See,” exclaimed Elfride, still looking towards them, “how those little dearswant me! Actually one of them is crying for me to come.”
“We were talking of bracelets just now. Look at Lady Luxellian’s,” said Mrs.Swancourt, as that baroness lifted up her arm to support one of the children.“It is slipping up her arm—too large by half. I hate to see daylight between abracelet and a wrist; I wonder women haven’t better taste.”
“It is not on that account, indeed,” Elfride expostulated. “It is that her armhas got thin, poor thing. You cannot think how much she has altered in thislast twelvemonth.”
The carriages were now nearer together, and there was an exchange of morefamiliar greetings between the two families. Then the Luxellians crossed overand drew up under the plane-trees, just in the rear of the Swancourts. LordLuxellian alighted, and came forward with a musical laugh.
It was his attraction as a man. People liked him for those tones, and forgotthat he had no talents. Acquaintances remembered Mr. Swancourt by his manner;they remembered Stephen Smith by his face, Lord Luxellian by his laugh.
Mr. Swancourt made some friendly remarks—among others things upon the heat.
“Yes,” said Lord Luxellian, “we were driving by a furrier’s window thisafternoon, and the sight filled us all with such a sense of suffocation that wewere glad to get away. Ha-ha!” He turned to Elfride. “Miss Swancourt, I havehardly seen or spoken to you since your literary feat was made public. I had noidea a chiel was taking notes down at quiet Endelstow, or I should certainlyhave put myself and friends upon our best behaviour. Swancourt, why didn’t yougive me a hint!”
Elfride fluttered, blushed, laughed, said it was nothing to speak of, &c.&c.
“Well, I think you were rather unfairly treated by the PRESENT, I certainly do.Writing a heavy review like that upon an elegant trifle like the COURT OFKELLYON CASTLE was absurd.”
“What?” said Elfride, opening her eyes. “Was I reviewed in the PRESENT?”
“Oh yes; didn’t you see it? Why, it was four or five months ago!”
“No, I never saw it. How sorry I am! What a shame of my publishers! Theypromised to send me every notice that appeared.”
“Ah, then, I am almost afraid I have been giving you disagreeable information,intentionally withheld out of courtesy. Depend upon it they thought no goodwould come of sending it, and so would not pain you unnecessarily.”
“Oh no; I am indeed glad you have told me, Lord Luxellian. It is quite amistaken kindness on their part. Is the review so much against me?” sheinquired tremulously.
“No, no; not that exactly—though I almost forget its exact purport now. It wasmerely—merely sharp, you know—ungenerous, I might say. But really my memorydoes not enable me to speak decidedly.”
“We’ll drive to the PRESENT office, and get one directly; shall we, papa?”
“If you are so anxious, dear, we will, or send. But to-morrow will do.”
“And do oblige me in a little matter now, Elfride,” said Lord Luxellian warmly,and looking as if he were sorry he had brought news that disturbed her. “I amin reality sent here as a special messenger by my little Polly and Katie to askyou to come into our carriage with them for a short time. I am just going towalk across into Piccadilly, and my wife is left alone with them. I am afraidthey are rather spoilt children; but I have half promised them you shall come.”
The steps were let down, and Elfride was transferred—to the intense delight ofthe little girls, and to the mild interest of loungers with red skins and longnecks, who cursorily eyed the performance with their walking-sticks to theirlips, occasionally laughing from far down their throats and with their eyes,their mouths not being concerned in the operation at all. Lord Luxellian thentold the coachman to drive on, lifted his hat, smiled a smile that missed itsmark and alighted on a total stranger, who bowed in bewilderment. LordLuxellian looked long at Elfride.
The look was a manly, open, and genuine look of admiration; a momentary tributeof a kind which any honest Englishman might have paid to fairness without beingashamed of the feeling, or permitting it to encroach in the slightest degreeupon his emotional obligations as a husband and head of a family. Then LordLuxellian turned away, and walked musingly to the upper end of the promenade.
Mr. Swancourt had alighted at the same time with Elfride, crossing over to theRow for a few minutes to speak to a friend he recognized there; and his wifewas thus left sole tenant of the carriage.
Now, whilst this little act had been in course of performance, there stoodamong the promenading spectators a man of somewhat different description fromthe rest. Behind the general throng, in the rear of the chairs, and leaningagainst the trunk of a tree, he looked at Elfride with quiet and criticalinterest.
Three points about this unobtrusive person showed promptly to the exercised eyethat he was not a Row man pur sang. First, an irrepressible wrinkle or two inthe waist of his frock-coat—denoting that he had not damned his tailorsufficiently to drive that tradesman up to the orthodox high pressure ofcunning workmanship. Second, a slight slovenliness of umbrella, occasioned byits owner’s habit of resting heavily upon it, and using it as a veritablewalking-stick, instead of letting its point touch the ground in the mostcoquettish of kisses, as is the proper Row manner to do. Third, and chiefreason, that try how you might, you could scarcely help supposing, on lookingat his face, that your eyes were not far from a well-finished mind, instead ofthe well-finished skin et praeterea nihil, which is by rights the Mark of theRow.
The probability is that, had not Mrs. Swancourt been left alone in her carriageunder the tree, this man would have remained in his unobserved seclusion. Butseeing her thus, he came round to the front, stooped under the rail, and stoodbeside the carriage-door.
Mrs. Swancourt looked reflectively at him for a quarter of a minute, then heldout her hand laughingly:
“Why, Henry Knight—of course it is! My—second—third—fourth cousin—what shall Isay? At any rate, my kinsman.”
“Yes, one of a remnant not yet cut off. I scarcely was certain of you, either,from where I was standing.”
“I have not seen you since you first went to Oxford; consider the number ofyears! You know, I suppose, of my marriage?”
And there sprang up a dialogue concerning family matters of birth, death, andmarriage, which it is not necessary to detail. Knight presently inquired:
“The young lady who changed into the other carriage is, then, yourstepdaughter?”
“Yes, Elfride. You must know her.”
“And who was the lady in the carriage Elfride entered; who had an ill-definedand watery look, as if she were only the reflection of herself in a pool?”
“Lady Luxellian; very weakly, Elfride says. My husband is remotely connectedwith them; but there is not much intimacy on account of——. However, Henry,you’ll come and see us, of course. 24 Chevron Square. Come this week. We shallonly be in town a week or two longer.”
“Let me see. I’ve got to run up to Oxford to-morrow, where I shall be forseveral days; so that I must, I fear, lose the pleasure of seeing you in Londonthis year.”
“Then come to Endelstow; why not return with us?”
“I am afraid if I were to come before August I should have to leave again in aday or two. I should be delighted to be with you at the beginning of thatmonth; and I could stay a nice long time. I have thought of going westward allthe summer.”
“Very well. Now remember that’s a compact. And won’t you wait now and see Mr.Swancourt? He will not be away ten minutes longer.”
“No; I’ll beg to be excused; for I must get to my chambers again this eveningbefore I go home; indeed, I ought to have been there now—I have such a press ofmatters to attend to just at present. You will explain to him, please.Good-bye.”
“And let us know the day of your appearance as soon as you can.”
“I will”
Chapter XV
“A wandering voice.”
Though sheer and intelligible griefs are not charmed away by being confided tomere acquaintances, the process is a palliative to certain ill-humours. Amongthese, perplexed vexation is one—a species of trouble which, like a stream,gets shallower by the simple operation of widening it in any quarter.
On the evening of the day succeeding that of the meeting in the Park, Elfrideand Mrs. Swancourt were engaged in conversation in the dressing-room of thelatter. Such a treatment of such a case was in course of adoption here.
Elfride had just before received an affectionate letter from Stephen Smith inBombay, which had been forwarded to her from Endelstow. But since this is notthe case referred to, it is not worth while to pry further into the contents ofthe letter than to discover that, with rash though pardonable confidence incoming times, he addressed her in high spirits as his darling future wife.Probably there cannot be instanced a briefer and surer rule-of-thumb test of aman’s temperament—sanguine or cautious—than this: did he or does he ante-datethe word wife in corresponding with a sweet-heart he honestly loves?
She had taken this epistle into her own room, read a little of it, then SAVEDthe rest for to-morrow, not wishing to be so extravagant as to consume thepleasure all at once. Nevertheless, she could not resist the wish to enjoy yeta little more, so out came the letter again, and in spite of misgivings as toprodigality the whole was devoured. The letter was finally reperused and placedin her pocket.
What was this? Also a newspaper for Elfride, which she had overlooked in herhurry to open the letter. It was the old number of the PRESENT, containing thearticle upon her book, forwarded as had been requested.
Elfride had hastily read it through, shrunk perceptibly smaller, and had thengone with the paper in her hand to Mrs. Swancourt’s dressing-room, to lightenor at least modify her vexation by a discriminating estimate from herstepmother.
She was now looking disconsolately out of the window.
“Never mind, my child,” said Mrs. Swancourt after a careful perusal of thematter indicated. “I don’t see that the review is such a terrible one, afterall. Besides, everybody has forgotten about it by this time. I’m sure theopening is good enough for any book ever written. Just listen—it sounds betterread aloud than when you pore over it silently: ‘THE COURT OF KELLYON CASTLE. AROMANCE OF THE MIDDLE AGES. BY ERNEST FIELD. In the belief that we were for awhile escaping the monotonous repetition of wearisome details in modern socialscenery, analyses of uninteresting character, or the unnatural unfoldings of asensation plot, we took this volume into our hands with a feeling of pleasure.We were disposed to beguile ourselves with the fancy that some new change mightpossibly be rung upon donjon keeps, chain and plate armour, deeply scarredcheeks, tender maidens disguised as pages, to which we had not listened longago.’ Now, that’s a very good beginning, in my opinion, and one to be proud ofhaving brought out of a man who has never seen you.”
“Ah, yes,” murmured Elfride wofully. “But, then, see further on!”
“Well the next bit is rather unkind, I must own,” said Mrs. Swancourt, and readon. “‘Instead of this we found ourselves in the hands of some young lady,hardly arrived at years of discretion, to judge by the silly device it has beenthought worth while to adopt on the title-page, with the idea of disguising hersex.’”
“I am not ‘silly’!” said Elfride indignantly. “He might have called me anythingbut that.”
“You are not, indeed. Well:—‘Hands of a young lady...whose chapters are simplydevoted to impossible tournaments, towers, and escapades, which read like flatcopies of like scenes in the stories of Mr. G. P. R. James, and the most unrealportions of IVANHOE. The bait is so palpably artificial that the most credulousgudgeon turns away.’ Now, my dear, I don’t see overmuch to complain of in that.It proves that you were clever enough to make him think of Sir Walter Scott,which is a great deal.”
“Oh yes; though I cannot romance myself, I am able to remind him of those whocan!” Elfride intended to hurl these words sarcastically at her invisibleenemy, but as she had no more satirical power than a wood-pigeon, they merelyfell in a pretty murmur from lips shaped to a pout.
“Certainly: and that’s something. Your book is good enough to be bad in anordinary literary manner, and doesn’t stand by itself in a melancholy positionaltogether worse than assailable.—‘That interest in an historical romance maynowadays have any chance of being sustained, it is indispensable that thereader find himself under the guidance of some nearly extinct species oflegendary, who, in addition to an impulse towards antiquarian research and anunweakened faith in the mediaeval halo, shall possess an inventive faculty inwhich delicacy of sentiment is far overtopped by a power of welding to stirringincident a spirited variety of the elementary human passions.’ Well, thatlong-winded effusion doesn’t refer to you at all, Elfride, merely something putin to fill up. Let me see, when does he come to you again;...not till the veryend, actually. Here you are finally polished off:
“‘But to return to the little work we have used as the text of this article. Weare far from altogether disparaging the author’s powers. She has a certainversatility that enables her to use with effect a style of narration peculiarto herself, which may be called a murmuring of delicate emotional trifles, theparticular gift of those to whom the social sympathies of a peaceful time areas daily food. Hence, where matters of domestic experience, and the naturaltouches which make people real, can be introduced without anachronisms toostriking, she is occasionally felicitous; and upon the whole we feel justifiedin saying that the book will bear looking into for the sake of those portionswhich have nothing whatever to do with the story.’
“Well, I suppose it is intended for satire; but don’t think anything more of itnow, my dear. It is seven o’clock.” And Mrs. Swancourt rang for her maid.
Attack is more piquant than concord. Stephen’s letter was concerning nothingbut oneness with her: the review was the very reverse. And a stranger withneither name nor shape, age nor appearance, but a mighty voice, is naturallyrather an interesting novelty to a lady he chooses to address. When Elfridefell asleep that night she was loving the writer of the letter, but thinking ofthe writer of that article.
Chapter XVI
“Then fancy shapes—as fancy can.”
On a day about three weeks later, the Swancourt trio were sitting quietly inthe drawing-room of The Crags, Mrs. Swancourt’s house at Endelstow, chatting,and taking easeful survey of their previous month or two of town—a tangibleweariness even to people whose acquaintances there might be counted on thefingers.
A mere season in London with her practised step-mother had so advancedElfride’s perceptions, that her courtship by Stephen seemed emotionally meagre,and to have drifted back several years into a childish past. In regarding ourmental experiences, as in visual observation, our own progress reads like adwindling of that we progress from.
She was seated on a low chair, looking over her romance with melancholyinterest for the first time since she had become acquainted with the remarks ofthe PRESENT thereupon.
“Still thinking of that reviewer, Elfie?”
“Not of him personally; but I am thinking of his opinion. Really, on lookinginto the volume after this long time has elapsed, he seems to have estimatedone part of it fairly enough.”
“No, no; I wouldn’t show the white feather now! Fancy that of all people in theworld the writer herself should go over to the enemy. How shall Monmouth’s menfight when Monmouth runs away?”
“I don’t do that. But I think he is right in some of his arguments, thoughwrong in others. And because he has some claim to my respect I regret all themore that he should think so mistakenly of my motives in one or two instances.It is more vexing to be misunderstood than to be misrepresented; and hemisunderstands me. I cannot be easy whilst a person goes to rest night afternight attributing to me intentions I never had.”
“He doesn’t know your name, or anything about you. And he has doubtlessforgotten there is such a book in existence by this time.”
“I myself should certainly like him to be put right upon one or two matters,”said the vicar, who had hitherto been silent. “You see, critics go on writing,and are never corrected or argued with, and therefore are never improved.”
“Papa,” said Elfride brightening, “write to him!”
“I would as soon write to him as look at him, for the matter of that,” said Mr.Swancourt.
“Do! And say, the young person who wrote the book did not adopt a masculinepseudonym in vanity or conceit, but because she was afraid it would be thoughtpresumptuous to publish her name, and that she did not mean the story for suchas he, but as a sweetener of history for young people, who might therebyacquire a taste for what went on in their own country hundreds of years ago,and be tempted to dive deeper into the subject. Oh, there is so much toexplain; I wish I might write myself!”
“Now, Elfie, I’ll tell you what we will do,” answered Mr. Swancourt, tickledwith a sort of bucolic humour at the idea of criticizing the critic. “You shallwrite a clear account of what he is wrong in, and I will copy it and send it asmine.”
“Yes, now, directly!” said Elfride, jumping up. “When will you send it, papa?”
“Oh, in a day or two, I suppose,” he returned. Then the vicar paused andslightly yawned, and in the manner of elderly people began to cool from hisardour for the undertaking now that it came to the point. “But, really, it ishardly worth while,” he said.
“O papa!” said Elfride, with much disappointment. “You said you would, and nowyou won’t. That is not fair!”
“But how can we send it if we don’t know whom to send it to?”
“If you really want to send such a thing it can easily be done,” said Mrs.Swancourt, coming to her step-daughter’s rescue. “An envelope addressed, ‘Tothe Critic of THE COURT OF KELLYON CASTLE, care of the Editor of the PRESENT,’would find him.”
“Yes, I suppose it would.”
“Why not write your answer yourself, Elfride?” Mrs. Swancourt inquired.
“I might,” she said hesitatingly; “and send it anonymously: that would betreating him as he has treated me.”
“No use in the world!”
“But I don’t like to let him know my exact name. Suppose I put my initialsonly? The less you are known the more you are thought of.”
“Yes; you might do that.”
Elfride set to work there and then. Her one desire for the last fortnightseemed likely to be realized. As happens with sensitive and secluded minds, acontinual dwelling upon the subject had magnified to colossal proportions thespace she assumed herself to occupy or to have occupied in the occult critic’smind. At noon and at night she had been pestering herself with endeavours toperceive more distinctly his conception of her as a woman apart from an author:whether he really despised her; whether he thought more or less of her than ofordinary young women who never ventured into the fire of criticism at all. Nowshe would have the satisfaction of feeling that at any rate he knew her trueintent in crossing his path, and annoying him so by her performance, and betaught perhaps to despise it a little less.
Four days later an envelope, directed to Miss Swancourt in a strange hand, madeits appearance from the post-bag.
“Oh,” said Elfride, her heart sinking within her. “Can it be from that man—alecture for impertinence? And actually one for Mrs. Swancourt in the samehand-writing!” She feared to open hers. “Yet how can he know my name? No; it issomebody else.”
“Nonsense!” said her father grimly. “You sent your initials, and the Directorywas available. Though he wouldn’t have taken the trouble to look there unlesshe had been thoroughly savage with you. I thought you wrote with rather moreasperity than simple literary discussion required.” This timely clause wasintroduced to save the character of the vicar’s judgment under any issue ofaffairs.
“Well, here I go,” said Elfride, desperately tearing open the seal.
“To be sure, of course,” exclaimed Mrs. Swancourt; and looking up from her ownletter. “Christopher, I quite forgot to tell you, when I mentioned that I hadseen my distant relative, Harry Knight, that I invited him here for whateverlength of time he could spare. And now he says he can come any day in August.”
“Write, and say the first of the month,” replied the indiscriminate vicar.
She read on, “Goodness me—and that isn’t all. He is actually the reviewer ofElfride’s book. How absurd, to be sure! I had no idea he reviewed novels or hadanything to do with the PRESENT. He is a barrister—and I thought he only wrotein the Quarterlies. Why, Elfride, you have brought about an odd entanglement!What does he say to you?”
Elfride had put down her letter with a dissatisfied flush on her face. “I don’tknow. The idea of his knowing my name and all about me!...Why, he says nothingparticular, only this—
“‘MY DEAR MADAM,—Though I am sorry that my remarks should have seemed harsh toyou, it is a pleasure to find that they have been the means of bringing forthsuch an ingeniously argued reply. Unfortunately, it is so long since I wrote myreview, that my memory does not serve me sufficiently to say a single word inmy defence, even supposing there remains one to be said, which is doubtful. Youwill find from a letter I have written to Mrs. Swancourt, that we are not suchstrangers to each other as we have been imagining. Possibly, I may have thepleasure of seeing you soon, when any argument you choose to advance shallreceive all the attention it deserves.’
“That is dim sarcasm—I know it is.”
“Oh no, Elfride.”
“And then, his remarks didn’t seem harsh—I mean I did not say so.”
“He thinks you are in a frightful temper,” said Mr. Swancourt, chuckling inundertones.
“And he will come and see me, and find the authoress as contemptible in speechas she has been impertinent in manner. I do heartily wish I had never written aword to him!”
“Never mind,” said Mrs. Swancourt, also laughing in low quiet jerks; “it willmake the meeting such a comical affair, and afford splendid by-play for yourfather and myself. The idea of our running our heads against Harry Knight allthe time! I cannot get over that.”
The vicar had immediately remembered the name to be that of Stephen Smith’spreceptor and friend; but having ceased to concern himself in the matter hemade no remark to that effect, consistently forbearing to allude to anythingwhich could restore recollection of the (to him) disagreeable mistake withregard to poor Stephen’s lineage and position. Elfride had of course perceivedthe same thing, which added to the complication of relationship a mesh that herstepmother knew nothing of.
The identification scarcely heightened Knight’s attractions now, though atwelvemonth ago she would only have cared to see him for the interest hepossessed as Stephen’s friend. Fortunately for Knight’s advent, such a reasonfor welcome had only begun to be awkward to her at a time when the interest hehad acquired on his own account made it no longer necessary.
These coincidences, in common with all relating to him, tended to keepElfride’s mind upon the stretch concerning Knight. As was her custom when uponthe horns of a dilemma, she walked off by herself among the laurel bushes, andthere, standing still and splitting up a leaf without removing it from itsstalk, fetched back recollections of Stephen’s frequent words in praise of hisfriend, and wished she had listened more attentively. Then, still pulling theleaf, she would blush at some fancied mortification that would accrue to herfrom his words when they met, in consequence of her intrusiveness, as she nowconsidered it, in writing to him.
The next development of her meditations was the subject of what this man’spersonal appearance might be—was he tall or short, dark or fair, gay or grim?She would have asked Mrs. Swancourt but for the risk she might thereby incur ofsome teasing remark being returned. Ultimately Elfride would say, “Oh, what aplague that reviewer is to me!” and turn her face to where she imagined Indialay, and murmur to herself, “Ah, my little husband, what are you doing now? Letme see, where are you—south, east, where? Behind that hill, ever so farbehind!”
Chapter XVII
“Her welcome, spoke in faltering phrase.”
“There is Henry Knight, I declare!” said Mrs. Swancourt one day.
They were gazing from the jutting angle of a wild enclosure not far from TheCrags, which almost overhung the valley already described as leading up fromthe sea and little port of Castle Boterel. The stony escarpment upon which theystood had the contour of a man’s face, and it was covered with furze as with abeard. People in the field above were preserved from an accidental roll downthese prominences and hollows by a hedge on the very crest, which was doingthat kindly service for Elfride and her mother now.
Scrambling higher into the hedge and stretching her neck further over thefurze, Elfride beheld the individual signified. He was walking leisurely alongthe little green path at the bottom, beside the stream, a satchel slung uponhis left hip, a stout walking-stick in his hand, and a brown-holland sun-hatupon his head. The satchel was worn and old, and the outer polished surface ofthe leather was cracked and peeling off.
Knight having arrived over the hills to Castle Boterel upon the top of a crazyomnibus, preferred to walk the remaining two miles up the valley, leaving hisluggage to be brought on.
Behind him wandered, helter-skelter, a boy of whom Knight had briefly inquiredthe way to Endelstow; and by that natural law of physics which causes lesserbodies to gravitate towards the greater, this boy had kept near to Knight, andtrotted like a little dog close at his heels, whistling as he went, with hiseyes fixed upon Knight’s boots as they rose and fell.
When they had reached a point precisely opposite that in which Mrs. and MissSwancourt lay in ambush, Knight stopped and turned round.
“Look here, my boy,” he said.
The boy parted his lips, opened his eyes, and answered nothing.
“Here’s sixpence for you, on condition that you don’t again come within twentyyards of my heels, all the way up the valley.”
The boy, who apparently had not known he had been looking at Knight’s heels atall, took the sixpence mechanically, and Knight went on again, wrapt inmeditation.
“A nice voice,” Elfride thought; “but what a singular temper!”
“Now we must get indoors before he ascends the slope,” said Mrs. Swancourtsoftly. And they went across by a short cut over a stile, entering the lawn bya side door, and so on to the house.
Mr. Swancourt had gone into the village with the curate, and Elfride felt toonervous to await their visitor’s arrival in the drawing-room with Mrs.Swancourt. So that when the elder lady entered, Elfride made some pretence ofperceiving a new variety of crimson geranium, and lingered behind among theflower beds.
There was nothing gained by this, after all, she thought; and a few minutesafter boldly came into the house by the glass side-door. She walked along thecorridor, and entered the drawing-room. Nobody was there.
A window at the angle of the room opened directly into an octagonalconservatory, enclosing the corner of the building. From the conservatory camevoices in conversation—Mrs. Swancourt’s and the stranger’s.
She had expected him to talk brilliantly. To her surprise he was askingquestions in quite a learner’s manner, on subjects connected with the flowersand shrubs that she had known for years. When after the lapse of a few minuteshe spoke at some length, she considered there was a hard square decisiveness inthe shape of his sentences, as if, unlike her own and Stephen’s, they were notthere and then newly constructed, but were drawn forth from a large storeready-made. They were now approaching the window to come in again.
“That is a flesh-coloured variety,” said Mrs. Swancourt. “But oleanders, thoughthey are such bulky shrubs, are so very easily wounded as to beunprunable—giants with the sensitiveness of young ladies. Oh, here is Elfride!”
Elfride looked as guilty and crestfallen as Lady Teazle at the dropping of thescreen. Mrs. Swancourt presented him half comically, and Knight in a minute ortwo placed himself beside the young lady.
A complexity of instincts checked Elfride’s conventional smiles of complaisanceand hospitality; and, to make her still less comfortable, Mrs. Swancourtimmediately afterwards left them together to seek her husband. Mr. Knight,however, did not seem at all incommoded by his feelings, and he said with lighteasefulness:
“So, Miss Swancourt, I have met you at last. You escaped me by a few minutesonly when we were in London.”
“Yes. I found that you had seen Mrs. Swancourt.”
“And now reviewer and reviewed are face to face,” he added unconcernedly.
“Yes: though the fact of your being a relation of Mrs. Swancourt’s takes offthe edge of it. It was strange that you should be one of her family all thetime.” Elfride began to recover herself now, and to look into Knight’s face. “Iwas merely anxious to let you know my REAL meaning in writing thebook—extremely anxious.”
“I can quite understand the wish; and I was gratified that my remarks shouldhave reached home. They very seldom do, I am afraid.”
Elfride drew herself in. Here he was, sticking to his opinions as firmly as iffriendship and politeness did not in the least require an immediaterenunciation of them.
“You made me very uneasy and sorry by writing such things!” she murmured,suddenly dropping the mere cacueterie of a fashionable first introduction, andspeaking with some of the dudgeon of a child towards a severe schoolmaster.
“That is rather the object of honest critics in such a case. Not to causeunnecessary sorrow, but: ‘To make you sorry after a proper manner, that ye mayreceive damage by us in nothing,’ as a powerful pen once wrote to the Gentiles.Are you going to write another romance?”
“Write another?” she said. “That somebody may pen a condemnation and ‘nail’twi’ Scripture’ again, as you do now, Mr. Knight?”
“You may do better next time,” he said placidly: “I think you will. But I wouldadvise you to confine yourself to domestic scenes.”
“Thank you. But never again!”
“Well, you may be right. That a young woman has taken to writing is not by anymeans the best thing to hear about her.”
“What is the best?”
“I prefer not to say.”
“Do you know? Then, do tell me, please.”
“Well”—(Knight was evidently changing his meaning)—“I suppose to hear that shehas married.”
Elfride hesitated. “And what when she has been married?” she said at last,partly in order to withdraw her own person from the argument.
“Then to hear no more about her. It is as Smeaton said of his lighthouse: hergreatest real praise, when the novelty of her inauguration has worn off, isthat nothing happens to keep the talk of her alive.”
“Yes, I see,” said Elfride softly and thoughtfully. “But of course it isdifferent quite with men. Why don’t you write novels, Mr. Knight?”
“Because I couldn’t write one that would interest anybody.”
“Why?”
“For several reasons. It requires a judicious omission of your real thoughts tomake a novel popular, for one thing.”
“Is that really necessary? Well, I am sure you could learn to do that withpractice,” said Elfride with an ex-cathedra air, as became a person who spokefrom experience in the art. “You would make a great name for certain,” shecontinued.
“So many people make a name nowadays, that it is more distinguished to remainin obscurity.”
“Tell me seriously—apart from the subject—why don’t you write a volume insteadof loose articles?” she insisted.
“Since you are pleased to make me talk of myself, I will tell you seriously,”said Knight, not less amused at this catechism by his young friend than he wasinterested in her appearance. “As I have implied, I have not the wish. And if Ihad the wish, I could not now concentrate sufficiently. We all have only ourone cruse of energy given us to make the best of. And where that energy hasbeen leaked away week by week, quarter by quarter, as mine has for the lastnine or ten years, there is not enough dammed back behind the mill at any givenperiod to supply the force a complete book on any subject requires. Then thereis the self-confidence and waiting power. Where quick results have growncustomary, they are fatal to a lively faith in the future.”
“Yes, I comprehend; and so you choose to write in fragments?”
“No, I don’t choose to do it in the sense you mean; choosing from a whole worldof professions, all possible. It was by the constraint of accident merely. Notthat I object to the accident.”
“Why don’t you object—I mean, why do you feel so quiet about things?” Elfridewas half afraid to question him so, but her intense curiosity to see what theinside of literary Mr. Knight was like, kept her going on.
Knight certainly did not mind being frank with her. Instances of this trait inmen who are not without feeling, but are reticent from habit, may be recalledby all of us. When they find a listener who can by no possibility make use ofthem, rival them, or condemn them, reserved and even suspicious men of theworld become frank, keenly enjoying the inner side of their frankness.
“Why I don’t mind the accidental constraint,” he replied, “is because, inmaking beginnings, a chance limitation of direction is often better thanabsolute freedom.”
“I see—that is, I should if I quite understood what all those generalitiesmean.”
“Why, this: That an arbitrary foundation for one’s work, which no length ofthought can alter, leaves the attention free to fix itself on the work itself,and make the best of it.”
“Lateral compression forcing altitude, as would be said in that tongue,” shesaid mischievously. “And I suppose where no limit exists, as in the case of arich man with a wide taste who wants to do something, it will be better tochoose a limit capriciously than to have none.”
“Yes,” he said meditatively. “I can go as far as that.”
“Well,” resumed Elfride, “I think it better for a man’s nature if he doesnothing in particular.”
“There is such a case as being obliged to.”
“Yes, yes; I was speaking of when you are not obliged for any other reason thandelight in the prospect of fame. I have thought many times lately that a thinwidespread happiness, commencing now, and of a piece with the days of yourlife, is preferable to an anticipated heap far away in the future, and nonenow.”
“Why, that’s the very thing I said just now as being the principle of allephemeral doers like myself.”
“Oh, I am sorry to have parodied you,” she said with some confusion. “Yes, ofcourse. That is what you meant about not trying to be famous.” And she added,with the quickness of conviction characteristic of her mind: “There is muchlittleness in trying to be great. A man must think a good deal of himself, andbe conceited enough to believe in himself, before he tries at all.”
“But it is soon enough to say there is harm in a man’s thinking a good deal ofhimself when it is proved he has been thinking wrong, and too soon thensometimes. Besides, we should not conclude that a man who strives earnestly forsuccess does so with a strong sense of his own merit. He may see how littlesuccess has to do with merit, and his motive may be his very humility.”
This manner of treating her rather provoked Elfride. No sooner did she agreewith him than he ceased to seem to wish it, and took the other side. “Ah,” shethought inwardly, “I shall have nothing to do with a man of this kind, thoughhe is our visitor.”
“I think you will find,” resumed Knight, pursuing the conversation more for thesake of finishing off his thoughts on the subject than for engaging herattention, “that in actual life it is merely a matter of instinct with men—thistrying to push on. They awake to a recognition that they have, withoutpremeditation, begun to try a little, and they say to themselves, ‘Since I havetried thus much, I will try a little more.’ They go on because they havebegun.”
Elfride, in her turn, was not particularly attending to his words at thismoment. She had, unconsciously to herself, a way of seizing any point in theremarks of an interlocutor which interested her, and dwelling upon it, andthinking thoughts of her own thereupon, totally oblivious of all that he mightsay in continuation. On such occasions she artlessly surveyed the personspeaking; and then there was a time for a painter. Her eyes seemed to look atyou, and past you, as you were then, into your future; and past your futureinto your eternity—not reading it, but gazing in an unused, unconscious way—hermind still clinging to its original thought.
This is how she was looking at Knight.
Suddenly Elfride became conscious of what she was doing, and was painfullyconfused.
“What were you so intent upon in me?” he inquired.
“As far as I was thinking of you at all, I was thinking how clever you are,”she said, with a want of premeditation that was startling in its honesty andsimplicity.
Feeling restless now that she had so unwittingly spoken, she arose and steppedto the window, having heard the voices of her father and Mrs. Swancourt comingup below the terrace. “Here they are,” she said, going out. Knight walked outupon the lawn behind her. She stood upon the edge of the terrace, close to thestone balustrade, and looked towards the sun, hanging over a glade just nowfair as Tempe’s vale, up which her father was walking.
Knight could not help looking at her. The sun was within ten degrees of thehorizon, and its warm light flooded her face and heightened the bright rosecolour of her cheeks to a vermilion red, their moderate pink hue being onlyseen in its natural tone where the cheek curved round into shadow. The ends ofher hanging hair softly dragged themselves backwards and forwards upon hershoulder as each faint breeze thrust against or relinquished it. Fringes andribbons of her dress, moved by the same breeze, licked like tongues upon theparts around them, and fluttering forward from shady folds caught likewisetheir share of the lustrous orange glow.
Mr. Swancourt shouted out a welcome to Knight from a distance of about thirtyyards, and after a few preliminary words proceeded to a conversation of deepearnestness on Knight’s fine old family name, and theories as to lineage andintermarriage connected therewith. Knight’s portmanteau having in the meantimearrived, they soon retired to prepare for dinner, which had been postponed twohours later than the usual time of that meal.
An arrival was an event in the life of Elfride, now that they were again in thecountry, and that of Knight necessarily an engrossing one. And that evening shewent to bed for the first time without thinking of Stephen at all.
Chapter XVIII
“He heard her musical pants.”
The old tower of West Endelstow Church had reached the last weeks of itsexistence. It was to be replaced by a new one from the designs of Mr. Hewby,the architect who had sent down Stephen. Planks and poles had arrived in thechurchyard, iron bars had been thrust into the venerable crack extending downthe belfry wall to the foundation, the bells had been taken down, the owls hadforsaken this home of their forefathers, and six iconoclasts in white fustian,to whom a cracked edifice was a species of Mumbo Jumbo, had taken lodgings inthe village previous to beginning the actual removal of the stones.
This was the day after Knight’s arrival. To enjoy for the last time theprospect seaward from the summit, the vicar, Mrs. Swancourt, Knight, andElfride, all ascended the winding turret—Mr. Swancourt stepping forward withmany loud breaths, his wife struggling along silently, but suffering none theless. They had hardly reached the top when a large lurid cloud, palpably areservoir of rain, thunder, and lightning, was seen to be advancing overheadfrom the north.
The two cautious elders suggested an immediate return, and proceeded to put itin practice as regarded themselves.
“Dear me, I wish I had not come up,” exclaimed Mrs. Swancourt.
“We shall be slower than you two in going down,” the vicar said over hisshoulder, “and so, don’t you start till we are nearly at the bottom, or youwill run over us and break our necks somewhere in the darkness of the turret.”
Accordingly Elfride and Knight waited on the leads till the staircase should beclear. Knight was not in a talkative mood that morning. Elfride was ratherwilful, by reason of his inattention, which she privately set down to histhinking her not worth talking to. Whilst Knight stood watching the rise of thecloud, she sauntered to the other side of the tower, and there remembered agiddy feat she had performed the year before. It was to walk round upon theparapet of the tower—which was quite without battlement or pinnacle, andpresented a smooth flat surface about two feet wide, forming a pathway on allthe four sides. Without reflecting in the least upon what she was doing she nowstepped upon the parapet in the old way, and began walking along.
“We are down, cousin Henry,” cried Mrs. Swancourt up the turret. “Follow uswhen you like.”
Knight turned and saw Elfride beginning her elevated promenade. His faceflushed with mingled concern and anger at her rashness.
“I certainly gave you credit for more common sense,” he said.
She reddened a little and walked on.
“Miss Swancourt, I insist upon your coming down,” he exclaimed.
“I will in a minute. I am safe enough. I have done it often.”
At that moment, by reason of a slight perturbation his words had caused in her,Elfride’s foot caught itself in a little tuft of grass growing in a joint ofthe stone-work, and she almost lost her balance. Knight sprang forward with aface of horror. By what seemed the special interposition of a considerateProvidence she tottered to the inner edge of the parapet instead of to theouter, and reeled over upon the lead roof two or three feet below the wall.
Knight seized her as in a vice, and he said, panting, “That ever I should havemet a woman fool enough to do a thing of that kind! Good God, you ought to beashamed of yourself!”
The close proximity of the Shadow of Death had made her sick and pale as acorpse before he spoke. Already lowered to that state, his words completelyover-powered her, and she swooned away as he held her.
Elfride’s eyes were not closed for more than forty seconds. She opened them,and remembered the position instantly. His face had altered its expression fromstern anger to pity. But his severe remarks had rather frightened her, and shestruggled to be free.
“If you can stand, of course you may,” he said, and loosened his arms. “Ihardly know whether most to laugh at your freak or to chide you for its folly.”
She immediately sank upon the lead-work. Knight lifted her again. “Are youhurt?” he said.
She murmured an incoherent expression, and tried to smile; saying, with afitful aversion of her face, “I am only frightened. Put me down, do put medown!”
“But you can’t walk,” said Knight.
“You don’t know that; how can you? I am only frightened, I tell you,” sheanswered petulantly, and raised her hand to her forehead. Knight then saw thatshe was bleeding from a severe cut in her wrist, apparently where it haddescended upon a salient corner of the lead-work. Elfride, too, seemed toperceive and feel this now for the first time, and for a minute nearly lostconsciousness again. Knight rapidly bound his handkerchief round the place, andto add to the complication, the thundercloud he had been watching began to shedsome heavy drops of rain. Knight looked up and saw the vicar striding towardsthe house, and Mrs. Swancourt waddling beside him like a hard-driven duck.
“As you are so faint, it will be much better to let me carry you down,” saidKnight; “or at any rate inside out of the rain.” But her objection to be liftedmade it impossible for him to support her for more than five steps.
“This is folly, great folly,” he exclaimed, setting her down.
“Indeed!” she murmured, with tears in her eyes. “I say I will not be carried,and you say this is folly!”
“So it is.”
“No, it isn’t!”
“It is folly, I think. At any rate, the origin of it all is.”
“I don’t agree to it. And you needn’t get so angry with me; I am not worth it.”
“Indeed you are. You are worth the enmity of princes, as was said of suchanother. Now, then, will you clasp your hands behind my neck, that I may carryyou down without hurting you?”
“No, no.”
“You had better, or I shall foreclose.”
“What’s that!”
“Deprive you of your chance.”
Elfride gave a little toss.
“Now, don’t writhe so when I attempt to carry you.”
“I can’t help it.”
“Then submit quietly.”
“I don’t care. I don’t care,” she murmured in languid tones and with closedeyes.
He took her into his arms, entered the turret, and with slow and cautious stepsdescended round and round. Then, with the gentleness of a nursing mother, heattended to the cut on her arm. During his progress through the operations ofwiping it and binding it up anew, her face changed its aspect from painedindifference to something like bashful interest, interspersed with smalltremors and shudders of a trifling kind.
In the centre of each pale cheek a small red spot the size of a wafer had nowmade its appearance, and continued to grow larger. Elfride momentarily expecteda recurrence to the lecture on her foolishness, but Knight said no more thanthis—
“Promise me NEVER to walk on that parapet again.”
“It will be pulled down soon: so I do.” In a few minutes she continued in alower tone, and seriously, “You are familiar of course, as everybody is, withthose strange sensations we sometimes have, that our life for the moment existsin duplicate.”
“That we have lived through that moment before?”
“Or shall again. Well, I felt on the tower that something similar to that sceneis again to be common to us both.”
“God forbid!” said Knight. “Promise me that you will never again walk on anysuch place on any consideration.”
“I do.”
“That such a thing has not been before, we know. That it shall not be again,you vow. Therefore think no more of such a foolish fancy.”
There had fallen a great deal of rain, but unaccompanied by lightning. A fewminutes longer, and the storm had ceased.
“Now, take my arm, please.”
“Oh no, it is not necessary.” This relapse into wilfulness was because he hadagain connected the epithet foolish with her.
“Nonsense: it is quite necessary; it will rain again directly, and you are nothalf recovered.” And without more ado Knight took her hand, drew it under hisarm, and held it there so firmly that she could not have removed it without astruggle. Feeling like a colt in a halter for the first time, at thus being ledalong, yet afraid to be angry, it was to her great relief that she saw thecarriage coming round the corner to fetch them.
Her fall upon the roof was necessarily explained to some extent upon theirentering the house; but both forbore to mention a word of what she had beendoing to cause such an accident. During the remainder of the afternoon Elfridewas invisible; but at dinner-time she appeared as bright as ever.
In the drawing-room, after having been exclusively engaged with Mr. and Mrs.Swancourt through the intervening hour, Knight again found himself thrown withElfride. She had been looking over a chess problem in one of the illustratedperiodicals.
“You like chess, Miss Swancourt?”
“Yes. It is my favourite scientific game; indeed, excludes every other. Do youplay?”
“I have played; though not lately.”
“Challenge him, Elfride,” said the vicar heartily. “She plays very well for alady, Mr. Knight.”
“Shall we play?” asked Elfride tentatively.
“Oh, certainly. I shall be delighted.”
The game began. Mr. Swancourt had forgotten a similar performance with StephenSmith the year before. Elfride had not; but she had begun to take for her maximthe undoubted truth that the necessity of continuing faithful to Stephen,without suspicion, dictated a fickle behaviour almost as imperatively asfickleness itself; a fact, however, which would give a startling advantage tothe latter quality should it ever appear.
Knight, by one of those inexcusable oversights which will sometimes afflict thebest of players, placed his rook in the arms of one of her pawns. It was herfirst advantage. She looked triumphant—even ruthless.
“By George! what was I thinking of?” said Knight quietly; and then dismissedall concern at his accident.
“Club laws we’ll have, won’t we, Mr. Knight?” said Elfride suasively.
“Oh yes, certainly,” said Mr. Knight, a thought, however, just occurring to hismind, that he had two or three times allowed her to replace a man on herreligiously assuring him that such a move was an absolute blunder.
She immediately took up the unfortunate rook and the contest proceeded, Elfridehaving now rather the better of the game. Then he won the exchange, regainedhis position, and began to press her hard. Elfride grew flurried, and placedher queen on his remaining rook’s file.
“There—how stupid! Upon my word, I did not see your rook. Of course nobody buta fool would have put a queen there knowingly!”
She spoke excitedly, half expecting her antagonist to give her back the move.
“Nobody, of course,” said Knight serenely, and stretched out his hand towardshis royal victim.
“It is not very pleasant to have it taken advantage of, then,” she said withsome vexation.
“Club laws, I think you said?” returned Knight blandly, and mercilesslyappropriating the queen.
She was on the brink of pouting, but was ashamed to show it; tears almost stoodin her eyes. She had been trying so hard—so very hard—thinking and thinkingtill her brain was in a whirl; and it seemed so heartless of him to treat herso, after all.
“I think it is——” she began.
“What?”
—“Unkind to take advantage of a pure mistake I make in that way.”
“I lost my rook by even a purer mistake,” said the enemy in an inexorable tone,without lifting his eyes.
“Yes, but——” However, as his logic was absolutely unanswerable, she merelyregistered a protest. “I cannot endure those cold-blooded ways of clubs andprofessional players, like Staunton and Morphy. Just as if it really matteredwhether you have raised your fingers from a man or no!”
Knight smiled as pitilessly as before, and they went on in silence.
“Checkmate,” said Knight.
“Another game,” said Elfride peremptorily, and looking very warm.
“With all my heart,” said Knight.
“Checkmate,” said Knight again at the end of forty minutes.
“Another game,” she returned resolutely.
“I’ll give you the odds of a bishop,” Knight said to her kindly.
“No, thank you,” Elfride replied in a tone intended for courteous indifference;but, as a fact, very cavalier indeed.
“Checkmate,” said her opponent without the least emotion.
Oh, the difference between Elfride’s condition of mind now, and when shepurposely made blunders that Stephen Smith might win!
It was bedtime. Her mind as distracted as if it would throb itself out of herhead, she went off to her chamber, full of mortification at being beaten timeafter time when she herself was the aggressor. Having for two or three yearsenjoyed the reputation throughout the globe of her father’s brain—which almostconstituted her entire world—of being an excellent player, this fiasco wasintolerable; for unfortunately the person most dogged in the belief in a falsereputation is always that one, the possessor, who has the best means of knowingthat it is not true.
In bed no sleep came to soothe her; that gentle thing being the verymiddle-of-summer friend in this respect of flying away at the merest troublouscloud. After lying awake till two o’clock an idea seemed to strike her. Shesoftly arose, got a light, and fetched a Chess Praxis from the library.Returning and sitting up in bed, she diligently studied the volume till theclock struck five, and her eyelids felt thick and heavy. She then extinguishedthe light and lay down again.
“You look pale, Elfride,” said Mrs. Swancourt the next morning at breakfast.“Isn’t she, cousin Harry?”
A young girl who is scarcely ill at all can hardly help becoming so whenregarded as such by all eyes turning upon her at the table in obedience to someremark. Everybody looked at Elfride. She certainly was pale.
“Am I pale?” she said with a faint smile. “I did not sleep much. I could notget rid of armies of bishops and knights, try how I would.”
“Chess is a bad thing just before bedtime; especially for excitable people likeyourself, dear. Don’t ever play late again.”
“I’ll play early instead. Cousin Knight,” she said in imitation of Mrs.Swancourt, “will you oblige me in something?”
“Even to half my kingdom.”
“Well, it is to play one game more.”
“When?”
“Now, instantly; the moment we have breakfasted.”
“Nonsense, Elfride,” said her father. “Making yourself a slave to the game likethat.”
“But I want to, papa! Honestly, I am restless at having been so ignominiouslyovercome. And Mr. Knight doesn’t mind. So what harm can there be?”
“Let us play, by all means, if you wish it,” said Knight.
So, when breakfast was over, the combatants withdrew to the quiet of thelibrary, and the door was closed. Elfride seemed to have an idea that herconduct was rather ill-regulated and startlingly free from conventionalrestraint. And worse, she fancied upon Knight’s face a slightly amused look ather proceedings.
“You think me foolish, I suppose,” she said recklessly; “but I want to do myvery best just once, and see whether I can overcome you.”
“Certainly: nothing more natural. Though I am afraid it is not the plan adoptedby women of the world after a defeat.”
“Why, pray?”
“Because they know that as good as overcoming is skill in effacing recollectionof being overcome, and turn their attention to that entirely.”
“I am wrong again, of course.”
“Perhaps your wrong is more pleasing than their right.”
“I don’t quite know whether you mean that, or whether you are laughing at me,”she said, looking doubtingly at him, yet inclining to accept the moreflattering interpretation. “I am almost sure you think it vanity in me to thinkI am a match for you. Well, if you do, I say that vanity is no crime in such acase.”
“Well, perhaps not. Though it is hardly a virtue.”
“Oh yes, in battle! Nelson’s bravery lay in his vanity.”
“Indeed! Then so did his death.”
Oh no, no! For it is written in the book of the prophet Shakespeare—
‘Fear and be slain? no worse can come to fight;
And fight and die, is death destroying death!’
And down they sat, and the contest began, Elfride having the first move. Thegame progressed. Elfride’s heart beat so violently that she could not sitstill. Her dread was lest he should hear it. And he did discover it atlast—some flowers upon the table being set throbbing by its pulsations.
“I think we had better give over,” said Knight, looking at her gently. “It istoo much for you, I know. Let us write down the position, and finish anothertime.”
“No, please not,” she implored. “I should not rest if I did not know the resultat once. It is your move.”
Ten minutes passed.
She started up suddenly. “I know what you are doing?” she cried, an angrycolour upon her cheeks, and her eyes indignant. “You were thinking of lettingme win to please me!”
“I don’t mind owning that I was,” Knight responded phlegmatically, andappearing all the more so by contrast with her own turmoil.
“But you must not! I won’t have it.”
“Very well.”
“No, that will not do; I insist that you promise not to do any such absurdthing. It is insulting me!”
“Very well, madam. I won’t do any such absurd thing. You shall not win.”
“That is to be proved!” she returned proudly; and the play went on.
Nothing is now heard but the ticking of a quaint old timepiece on the summit ofa bookcase. Ten minutes pass; he captures her knight; she takes his knight, andlooks a very Rhadamanthus.
More minutes tick away; she takes his pawn and has the advantage, showing hersense of it rather prominently.
Five minutes more: he takes her bishop: she brings things even by taking hisknight.
Three minutes: she looks bold, and takes his queen: he looks placid, and takeshers.
Eight or ten minutes pass: he takes a pawn; she utters a little pooh! but notthe ghost of a pawn can she take in retaliation.
Ten minutes pass: he takes another pawn and says, “Check!” She flushes,extricates herself by capturing his bishop, and looks triumphant. Heimmediately takes her bishop: she looks surprised.
Five minutes longer: she makes a dash and takes his only remaining bishop; hereplies by taking her only remaining knight.
Two minutes: he gives check; her mind is now in a painful state of tension, andshe shades her face with her hand.
Yet a few minutes more: he takes her rook and checks again. She literallytrembles now lest an artful surprise she has in store for him shall beanticipated by the artful surprise he evidently has in store for her.
Five minutes: “Checkmate in two moves!” exclaims Elfride.
“If you can,” says Knight.
“Oh, I have miscalculated; that is cruel!”
“Checkmate,” says Knight; and the victory is won.
Elfride arose and turned away without letting him see her face. Once in thehall she ran upstairs and into her room, and flung herself down upon her bed,weeping bitterly.
“Where is Elfride?” said her father at luncheon.
Knight listened anxiously for the answer. He had been hoping to see her againbefore this time.
“She isn’t well, sir,” was the reply.
Mrs. Swancourt rose and left the room, going upstairs to Elfride’s apartment.
At the door was Unity, who occupied in the new establishment a position betweenyoung lady’s maid and middle-housemaid.
“She is sound asleep, ma’am,” Unity whispered.
Mrs. Swancourt opened the door. Elfride was lying full-dressed on the bed, herface hot and red, her arms thrown abroad. At intervals of a minute she tossedrestlessly from side to side, and indistinctly moaned words used in the game ofchess.
Mrs. Swancourt had a turn for doctoring, and felt her pulse. It was twanginglike a harp-string, at the rate of nearly a hundred and fifty a minute. Softlymoving the sleeping girl to a little less cramped position, she went downstairsagain.
“She is asleep now,” said Mrs. Swancourt. “She does not seem very well. CousinKnight, what were you thinking of? her tender brain won’t bear cudgelling likeyour great head. You should have strictly forbidden her to play again.”
In truth, the essayist’s experience of the nature of young women was far lessextensive than his abstract knowledge of them led himself and others tobelieve. He could pack them into sentences like a workman, but practically wasnowhere.
“I am indeed sorry,” said Knight, feeling even more than he expressed. “Butsurely, the young lady knows best what is good for her!”
“Bless you, that’s just what she doesn’t know. She never thinks of such things,does she, Christopher? Her father and I have to command her and keep her inorder, as you would a child. She will say things worthy of a Frenchepigrammatist, and act like a robin in a greenhouse. But I think we will sendfor Dr. Granson—there can be no harm.”
A man was straightway despatched on horseback to Castle Boterel, and thegentleman known as Dr. Granson came in the course of the afternoon. Hepronounced her nervous system to be in a decided state of disorder; forwardedsome soothing draught, and gave orders that on no account whatever was she toplay chess again.
The next morning Knight, much vexed with himself, waited with a curiouslycompounded feeling for her entry to breakfast. The women servants came in toprayers at irregular intervals, and as each entered, he could not, to save hislife, avoid turning his head with the hope that she might be Elfride. Mr.Swancourt began reading without waiting for her. Then somebody glided innoiselessly; Knight softly glanced up: it was only the little kitchen-maid.Knight thought reading prayers a bore.
He went out alone, and for almost the first time failed to recognize thatholding converse with Nature’s charms was not solitude. On nearing the houseagain he perceived his young friend crossing a slope by a path which ran intothe one he was following in the angle of the field. Here they met. Elfride wasat once exultant and abashed: coming into his presence had upon her the effectof entering a cathedral.
Knight had his note-book in his hand, and had, in fact, been in the very act ofwriting therein when they came in view of each other. He left off in the midstof a sentence, and proceeded to inquire warmly concerning her state of health.She said she was perfectly well, and indeed had never looked better. Her healthwas as inconsequent as her actions. Her lips were red, WITHOUT the polish thatcherries have, and their redness margined with the white skin in a clearlydefined line, which had nothing of jagged confusion in it. Altogether she stoodas the last person in the world to be knocked over by a game of chess, becausetoo ephemeral-looking to play one.
“Are you taking notes?” she inquired with an alacrity plainly arising less frominterest in the subject than from a wish to divert his thoughts from herself.
“Yes; I was making an entry. And with your permission I will complete it.”Knight then stood still and wrote. Elfride remained beside him a moment, andafterwards walked on.
“I should like to see all the secrets that are in that book,” she gaily flungback to him over her shoulder.
“I don’t think you would find much to interest you.”
“I know I should.”
“Then of course I have no more to say.”
“But I would ask this question first. Is it a book of mere facts concerningjourneys and expenditure, and so on, or a book of thoughts?”
“Well, to tell the truth, it is not exactly either. It consists for the mostpart of jottings for articles and essays, disjointed and disconnected, of nopossible interest to anybody but myself.”
“It contains, I suppose, your developed thoughts in embryo?”
“Yes.”
“If they are interesting when enlarged to the size of an article, what mustthey be in their concentrated form? Pure rectified spirit, above proof; beforeit is lowered to be fit for human consumption: ‘words that burn’ indeed.”
“Rather like a balloon before it is inflated: flabby, shapeless, dead. Youcould hardly read them.”
“May I try?” she said coaxingly. “I wrote my poor romance in that way—I mean inbits, out of doors—and I should like to see whether your way of entering thingsis the same as mine.”
“Really, that’s rather an awkward request. I suppose I can hardly refuse nowyou have asked so directly; but——”
“You think me ill-mannered in asking. But does not this justify me—your writingin my presence, Mr. Knight? If I had lighted upon your book by chance, it wouldhave been different; but you stand before me, and say, ‘Excuse me,’ withoutcaring whether I do or not, and write on, and then tell me they are not privatefacts but public ideas.”
“Very well, Miss Swancourt. If you really must see, the consequences be uponyour own head. Remember, my advice to you is to leave my book alone.”
“But with that caution I have your permission?”
“Yes.”
She hesitated a moment, looked at his hand containing the book, then laughed,and saying, “I must see it,” withdrew it from his fingers.
Knight rambled on towards the house, leaving her standing in the path turningover the leaves. By the time he had reached the wicket-gate he saw that she hadmoved, and waited till she came up.
Elfride had closed the note-book, and was carrying it disdainfully by thecorner between her finger and thumb; her face wore a nettled look. She silentlyextended the volume towards him, raising her eyes no higher than her hand waslifted.
“Take it,” said Elfride quickly. “I don’t want to read it.”
“Could you understand it?” said Knight.
“As far as I looked. But I didn’t care to read much.”
“Why, Miss Swancourt?”
“Only because I didn’t wish to—that’s all.”
“I warned you that you might not.”
“Yes, but I never supposed you would have put me there.”
“Your name is not mentioned once within the four corners.”
“Not my name—I know that.”
“Nor your description, nor anything by which anybody would recognize you.”
“Except myself. For what is this?” she exclaimed, taking it from him andopening a page. “August 7. That’s the day before yesterday. But I won’t readit,” Elfride said, closing the book again with pretty hauteur. “Why should I? Ihad no business to ask to see your book, and it serves me right.”
Knight hardly recollected what he had written, and turned over the book to see.He came to this:
“Aug. 7. Girl gets into her teens, and her self-consciousness is born. After acertain interval passed in infantine helplessness it begins to act. Simple,young, and inexperienced at first. Persons of observation can tell to a nicetyhow old this consciousness is by the skill it has acquired in the art necessaryto its success—the art of hiding itself. Generally begins career by actionswhich are popularly termed showing-off. Method adopted depends in each caseupon the disposition, rank, residence, of the young lady attempting it.Town-bred girl will utter some moral paradox on fast men, or love. Country missadopts the more material media of taking a ghastly fence, whistling, or makingyour blood run cold by appearing to risk her neck. (MEM. On Endelstow Tower.)
“An innocent vanity is of course the origin of these displays. ‘Look at me,’say these youthful beginners in womanly artifice, without reflecting whether ornot it be to their advantage to show so very much of themselves. (Amplify andcorrect for paper on Artless Arts.)”
“Yes, I remember now,” said Knight. “The notes were certainly suggested by yourmanoeuvre on the church tower. But you must not think too much of such randomobservations,” he continued encouragingly, as he noticed her injured looks. “Amere fancy passing through my head assumes a factitious importance to you,because it has been made permanent by being written down. All mankind thinkthoughts as bad as those of people they most love on earth, but such thoughtsnever getting embodied on paper, it becomes assumed that they never existed. Idaresay that you yourself have thought some disagreeable thing or other of me,which would seem just as bad as this if written. I challenge you, now, to tellme.”
“The worst thing I have thought of you?”
“Yes.”
“I must not.”
“Oh yes.”
“I thought you were rather round-shouldered.”
Knight looked slightly redder.
“And that there was a little bald spot on the top of your head.”
“Heh-heh! Two ineradicable defects,” said Knight, there being a faintghastliness discernible in his laugh. “They are much worse in a lady’s eye thanbeing thought self-conscious, I suppose.”
“Ah, that’s very fine,” she said, too inexperienced to perceive her hit, andhence not quite disposed to forgive his notes. “You alluded to me in that entryas if I were such a child, too. Everybody does that. I cannot understand it. Iam quite a woman, you know. How old do you think I am?”
“How old? Why, seventeen, I should say. All girls are seventeen.”
“You are wrong. I am nearly nineteen. Which class of women do you like best,those who seem younger, or those who seem older than they are?”
“Off-hand I should be inclined to say those who seem older.”
So it was not Elfride’s class.
“But it is well known,” she said eagerly, and there was something touching inthe artless anxiety to be thought much of which she revealed by her words,“that the slower a nature is to develop, the richer the nature. Youths andgirls who are men and women before they come of age are nobodies by the timethat backward people have shown their full compass.”
“Yes,” said Knight thoughtfully. “There is really something in that remark. Butat the risk of offence I must remind you that you there take it for grantedthat the woman behind her time at a given age has not reached the end of hertether. Her backwardness may be not because she is slow to develop, but becauseshe soon exhausted her capacity for developing.”
Elfride looked disappointed. By this time they were indoors. Mrs. Swancourt, towhom match-making by any honest means was meat and drink, had now a littlescheme of that nature concerning this pair. The morning-room, in which theyboth expected to find her, was empty; the old lady having, for the abovereason, vacated it by the second door as they entered by the first.
Knight went to the chimney-piece, and carelessly surveyed two portraits onivory.
“Though these pink ladies had very rudimentary features, judging by what I seehere,” he observed, “they had unquestionably beautiful heads of hair.”
“Yes; and that is everything,” said Elfride, possibly conscious of her own,possibly not.
“Not everything; though a great deal, certainly.”
“Which colour do you like best?” she ventured to ask.
“More depends on its abundance than on its colour.”
“Abundances being equal, may I inquire your favourite colour?”
“Dark.”
“I mean for women,” she said, with the minutest fall of countenance, and a hopethat she had been misunderstood.
“So do I,” Knight replied.
It was impossible for any man not to know the colour of Elfride’s hair. Inwomen who wear it plainly such a feature may be overlooked by men not given toocular intentness. But hers was always in the way. You saw her hair as far asyou could see her sex, and knew that it was the palest brown. She knewinstantly that Knight, being perfectly aware of this, had an independentstandard of admiration in the matter.
Elfride was thoroughly vexed. She could not but be struck with the honesty ofhis opinions, and the worst of it was, that the more they went against her, themore she respected them. And now, like a reckless gambler, she hazarded herlast and best treasure. Her eyes: they were her all now.
“What coloured eyes do you like best, Mr. Knight?” she said slowly.
“Honestly, or as a compliment?”
“Of course honestly; I don’t want anybody’s compliment!”
And yet Elfride knew otherwise: that a compliment or word of approval from thatman then would have been like a well to a famished Arab.
“I prefer hazel,” he said serenely.
She had played and lost again.
Chapter XIX
“Love was in the next degree.”
Knight had none of those light familiarities of speech which, by judicioustouches of epigrammatic flattery, obliterate a woman’s recollection of thespeaker’s abstract opinions. So no more was said by either on the subject ofhair, eyes, or development. Elfride’s mind had been impregnated with sentimentsof her own smallness to an uncomfortable degree of distinctness, and herdiscomfort was visible in her face. The whole tendency of the conversationlatterly had been to quietly but surely disparage her; and she was fain to takeStephen into favour in self-defence. He would not have been so unloving, shesaid, as to admire an idiosyncrasy and features different from her own. True,Stephen had declared he loved her: Mr. Knight had never done anything of thesort. Somehow this did not mend matters, and the sensation of her smallness inKnight’s eyes still remained. Had the position been reversed—had Stephen lovedher in spite of a differing taste, and had Knight been indifferent in spite ofher resemblance to his ideal, it would have engendered far happier thoughts. Asmatters stood, Stephen’s admiration might have its root in a blindness theresult of passion. Perhaps any keen man’s judgment was condemnatory of her.
During the remainder of Saturday they were more or less thrown with theirseniors, and no conversation arose which was exclusively their own. WhenElfride was in bed that night her thoughts recurred to the same subject. At onemoment she insisted that it was ill-natured of him to speak so decisively as hehad done; the next, that it was sterling honesty.
“Ah, what a poor nobody I am!” she said, sighing. “People like him, who goabout the great world, don’t care in the least what I am like either in mood orfeature.”
Perhaps a man who has got thoroughly into a woman’s mind in this manner, ishalf way to her heart; the distance between those two stations is proverbiallyshort.
“And are you really going away this week?” said Mrs. Swancourt to Knight on thefollowing evening, which was Sunday.
They were all leisurely climbing the hill to the church, where a last servicewas now to be held at the rather exceptional time of evening instead of in theafternoon, previous to the demolition of the ruinous portions.
“I am intending to cross to Cork from Bristol,” returned Knight; “and then I goon to Dublin.”
“Return this way, and stay a little longer with us,” said the vicar. “A week isnothing. We have hardly been able to realize your presence yet. I remember astory which——”
The vicar suddenly stopped. He had forgotten it was Sunday, and would probablyhave gone on in his week-day mode of thought had not a turn in the breeze blownthe skirt of his college gown within the range of his vision, and so remindedhim. He at once diverted the current of his narrative with the dexterity theoccasion demanded.
“The story of the Levite who journeyed to Bethlehem-judah, from which I took mytext the Sunday before last, is quite to the point,” he continued, with thepronunciation of a man who, far from having intended to tell a week-day story amoment earlier, had thought of nothing but Sabbath matters for several weeks.“What did he gain after all by his restlessness? Had he remained in the city ofthe Jebusites, and not been so anxious for Gibeah, none of his troubles wouldhave arisen.”
“But he had wasted five days already,” said Knight, closing his eyes to thevicar’s commendable diversion. “His fault lay in beginning the tarrying systemoriginally.”
“True, true; my illustration fails.”
“But not the hospitality which prompted the story.”
“So you are to come just the same,” urged Mrs. Swancourt, for she had seen analmost imperceptible fall of countenance in her stepdaughter at Knight’sannouncement.
Knight half promised to call on his return journey; but the uncertainty withwhich he spoke was quite enough to fill Elfride with a regretful interest inall he did during the few remaining hours. The curate having already officiatedtwice that day in the two churches, Mr. Swancourt had undertaken the whole ofthe evening service, and Knight read the lessons for him. The sun streamedacross from the dilapidated west window, and lighted all the assembledworshippers with a golden glow, Knight as he read being illuminated by the samemellow lustre. Elfride at the organ regarded him with a throbbing sadness ofmood which was fed by a sense of being far removed from his sphere. As he wentdeliberately through the chapter appointed—a portion of the history ofElijah—and ascended that magnificent climax of the wind, the earthquake, thefire, and the still small voice, his deep tones echoed past with such apparentdisregard of her existence, that his presence inspired her with a forlorn senseof unapproachableness, which his absence would hardly have been able to cause.
At the same time, turning her face for a moment to catch the glory of the dyingsun as it fell on his form, her eyes were arrested by the shape and aspect of awoman in the west gallery. It was the bleak barren countenance of the widowJethway, whom Elfride had not seen much of since the morning of her return withStephen Smith. Possessing the smallest of competencies, this unhappy womanappeared to spend her life in journeyings between Endelstow Churchyard and thatof a village near Southampton, where her father and mother were laid.
She had not attended the service here for a considerable time, and she nowseemed to have a reason for her choice of seat. From the gallery window thetomb of her son was plainly visible—standing as the nearest object in aprospect which was closed outwardly by the changeless horizon of the sea.
The streaming rays, too, flooded her face, now bent towards Elfride with a hardand bitter expression that the solemnity of the place raised to a tragicdignity it did not intrinsically possess. The girl resumed her normal attitudewith an added disquiet.
Elfride’s emotion was cumulative, and after a while would assert itself on asudden. A slight touch was enough to set it free—a poem, a sunset, a cunninglycontrived chord of music, a vague imagining, being the usual accidents of itsexhibition. The longing for Knight’s respect, which was leading up to anincipient yearning for his love, made the present conjuncture a sufficient one.Whilst kneeling down previous to leaving, when the sunny streaks had goneupward to the roof, and the lower part of the church was in soft shadow, shecould not help thinking of Coleridge’s morbid poem “The Three Graves,” andshuddering as she wondered if Mrs. Jethway were cursing her, she wept as if herheart would break.
They came out of church just as the sun went down, leaving the landscape like aplatform from which an eloquent speaker has retired, and nothing remains forthe audience to do but to rise and go home. Mr. and Mrs. Swancourt we