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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of A Pair of Blue Eyes, by Thomas Hardy
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: A Pair of Blue Eyes
+
+Author: Thomas Hardy
+
+Release Date: July 8, 2008 [EBook #224]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A PAIR OF BLUE EYES ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by John Hamm
+
+
+
+
+
+A PAIR OF BLUE EYES
+
+by Thomas Hardy
+
+
+
+      'A violet in the youth of primy nature,
+       Forward, not permanent, sweet not lasting,
+       The perfume and suppliance of a minute;
+       No more.'
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE
+
+The following chapters were written at a time when the craze for
+indiscriminate church-restoration had just reached the remotest nooks
+of western England, where the wild and tragic features of the coast
+had long combined in perfect harmony with the crude Gothic Art of the
+ecclesiastical buildings scattered along it, throwing into extraordinary
+discord all architectural attempts at newness there. To restore the
+grey carcases of a mediaevalism whose spirit had fled, seemed a not
+less incongruous act than to set about renovating the adjoining crags
+themselves.
+
+Hence it happened that an imaginary history of three human hearts,
+whose emotions were not without correspondence with these
+material circumstances, found in the ordinary incidents of such
+church-renovations a fitting frame for its presentation.
+
+The shore and country about 'Castle Boterel' is now getting well known,
+and will be readily recognized. The spot is, I may add, the furthest
+westward of all those convenient corners wherein I have ventured to
+erect my theatre for these imperfect little dramas of country life and
+passions; and it lies near to, or no great way beyond, the vague border
+of the Wessex kingdom on that side, which, like the westering verge of
+modern American settlements, was progressive and uncertain.
+
+This, however, is of little importance. The place is pre-eminently (for
+one person at least) the region of dream and mystery. The ghostly birds,
+the pall-like sea, the frothy wind, the eternal soliloquy of the waters,
+the bloom of dark purple cast, that seems to exhale from the shoreward
+precipices, in themselves 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
+for some forgotten reason or other this cliff was described in the story
+as being without a name. Accuracy would require the statement to be
+that a remarkable cliff which resembles in many points the cliff of the
+description bears a name that no event has made famous.
+
+                                         T. H.
+March 1899
+
+
+
+
+                          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.
+Their nature more precisely, and as modified by the creeping hours
+of time, was known only to those who watched the circumstances of her
+history.
+
+Personally, she was the combination of very interesting particulars,
+whose rarity, however, lay in the combination itself rather than in the
+individual elements combined. As a matter of fact, you did not see the
+form and substance of her features when conversing with her; and this
+charming power of preventing a material study of her lineaments by an
+interlocutor, originated not in the cloaking effect of a well-formed
+manner (for her manner was childish and scarcely formed), but in the
+attractive crudeness of the remarks themselves. She had lived all her
+life in retirement--the monstrari gigito of idle men had not flattered
+her, and at the age of nineteen or twenty she was no further 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 seen a sublimation of all of her; it was not necessary to look
+further: there she lived.
+
+These eyes were blue; blue as autumn distance--blue as the blue we see
+between the retreating mouldings of hills and woody slopes on a sunny
+September morning. A misty and shady blue, that had no beginning or
+surface, and was looked INTO rather than AT.
+
+As to her presence, it was not powerful; it was weak. Some women can
+make their personality pervade the atmosphere of a whole banqueting
+hall; Elfride's was no more pervasive than that of a kitten.
+
+Elfride had as her own the thoughtfulness which appears in the face of
+the Madonna della Sedia, without its rapture: the warmth and spirit
+of the type of woman's feature most common to the beauties--mortal
+and immortal--of Rubens, without their insistent fleshiness. The
+characteristic expression of the female faces of Correggio--that of the
+yearning human thoughts that lie too deep for tears--was hers sometimes,
+but seldom under ordinary conditions.
+
+The point in Elfride Swancourt's life at which a deeper current may be
+said to have permanently set in, was one winter afternoon when she found
+herself standing, in the character of hostess, face to face with a man
+she had never seen before--moreover, looking at him with a Miranda-like
+curiosity and interest that she had never yet bestowed on a mortal.
+
+On this particular day her father, the vicar of a parish on the
+sea-swept outskirts of Lower Wessex, and a widower, was suffering from
+an attack of gout. After finishing her household supervisions Elfride
+became restless, and several times left the room, ascended the
+staircase, and knocked at her father's chamber-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 a dressing-gown, and every now and then enunciating, in spite
+of himself, about one letter of some word or words that were almost
+oaths; 'papa, will you not come 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't bear even a handkerchief upon this deuced toe of mine, much less
+a stocking or slipper--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 from doing his business? The idea of this toe of mine coming on so
+suddenly!...If he should come, you must send him up to me, I suppose,
+and then give him some food and 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 of that 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 not anybody to introduce us?'
+
+'Nonsense, child, about introducing; you know better than that. A
+practical professional man, tired and hungry, who has been travelling
+ever since daylight this morning, will hardly be inclined to talk and
+air courtesies to-night. He wants food and shelter, and you must see
+that he has it, simply because I am suddenly laid up and cannot. There
+is nothing so dreadful in that, I hope? You get 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
+of necessity like this. But, you see, you are always there when people
+come to dinner, 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 his answer, upon the table in the study. You may read them, and then
+you'll know as much 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't bear 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;
+and waiting till she saw that consciousness of her offence had passed
+from his face, 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 of a wild lone hill in that district. They circumscribed
+two men, having at present the aspect of silhouettes, sitting in a
+dog-cart and pushing along in the teeth of the wind. Scarcely a solitary
+house or man had been visible along the whole dreary distance of open
+country they were traversing; and now that night had begun to fall,
+the faint twilight, which still gave an idea of the landscape to
+their observation, was enlivened by the quiet appearance of the planet
+Jupiter, momentarily gleaming in intenser brilliancy in front of them,
+and by Sirius shedding his rays in rivalry from his position over their
+shoulders. 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 the vehicle gratuitously remarked to the hirer, were smouldering
+fires for the consumption of peat and gorse-roots, where the common was
+being broken up for agricultural purposes. The wind prevailed with but
+little abatement from its daytime boisterousness, three or four small
+clouds, delicate and pale, creeping along under the sky southward to the
+Channel.
+
+Fourteen of the sixteen miles intervening between the railway terminus
+and the end of their journey had been gone over, when they began to pass
+along the brink of a valley some miles in extent, wherein the wintry
+skeletons of a more luxuriant vegetation than had hitherto surrounded
+them proclaimed an increased richness of soil, which showed signs of far
+more careful enclosure and management than had any slopes they had yet
+passed. A little farther, and an opening 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 then turned himself sideways, and keenly scrutinized the almost
+invisible house with an interest which the indistinct picture itself
+seemed far from adequate to create. 'Yes, that's Lord Luxellian's,' he
+said yet again after a while, as he still 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 at nothing 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 he was at work, changed clothes with King Charles the Second, and
+saved the king's life. King Charles came up to him like a common man,
+and said off-hand, "Man in the smock-frock, my name is Charles the
+Second, and that's the truth on't. Will you lend me your clothes?" "I
+don't mind if I do," said Hedger Luxellian; and they changed there and
+then. "Now mind ye," King Charles the Second said, like a 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?' Tell
+your name, and they shall let you in, and you shall be made a lord."
+Now, that was 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 King Charles the Second was in. "No, he isn't," they said.
+"Then, is Charles the Third?" said Hedger Luxellian. "Yes," said a young
+feller standing by like a common 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
+English history about Charles the Third,' said the other in a tone of
+mild remonstrance.
+
+'Oh, that's right history enough, only 'twasn't prented; he was rather a
+queer-tempered man, if you remember.'
+
+'Very well; go on.'
+
+'And, by hook or by crook, Hedger Luxellian was made a lord, and
+everything went on well till some time after, when he got into a most
+terrible row with King 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 about
+it....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
+outline and surface of the mansion gradually disappeared. The windows,
+which had before been as black blots on a lighter expanse of wall,
+became illuminated, and were transfigured to squares of light on the
+general dark body of the night landscape as it absorbed the outlines of
+the edifice into its gloomy monochrome.
+
+Not another word was spoken for some time, and they climbed a hill, then
+another hill piled on the summit of the first. An additional mile of
+plateau followed, from which could be discerned two light-houses on the
+coast they were nearing, reposing on the horizon with a calm lustre of
+benignity. Another oasis was reached; a little dell lay like a nest at
+their feet, towards which the driver pulled the horse at a sharp angle,
+and descended a steep slope which dived under the trees like a rabbit's
+burrow. They sank lower and lower.
+
+'Endelstow Vicarage is inside here,' continued the man with the reins.
+'This part about here is West Endelstow; Lord Luxellian's is East
+Endelstow, and has a church to itself. Pa'son Swancourt is the pa'son
+of both, and bobs backward and forward. Ah, well! 'tis a funny world.
+'A b'lieve there was once a quarry where this house stands. The man who
+built it in past time scraped all the glebe for earth to put round the
+vicarage, and laid out a little paradise of flowers and trees in the
+soil he had got together in this way, whilst the fields 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't scandalize him yet; and, as a rule, a parish begins to scandalize
+the pa'son at the end of two years among 'em familiar. But he's a very
+nice party. Ay, Pa'son Swancourt knows me pretty well from often driving
+over; and I know Pa'son Swancourt.'
+
+They emerged from the bower, swept round in a curve, and the chimneys
+and gables of the vicarage became darkly visible. Not a light showed
+anywhere. They alighted; 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
+hearing any sounds of a response, the stranger advanced and repeated the
+call in a more decided manner. He then fancied he heard footsteps in the
+hall, and sundry movements of the door-knob, but nobody appeared.
+
+'Perhaps they beant at home,' sighed the driver. 'And I promised myself
+a bit of supper in Pa'son Swancourt's kitchen. Sich lovely mate-pize and
+figged keakes, 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 come to 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 from the 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
+front door is got stuck wi' the wet, as he will do sometimes; and the
+Turk can't open en. I know I am only a poor wambling man that 'ill never
+pay the Lord for my making, sir; but I can show the way in, sir.'
+
+The new arrival followed his guide through a little door in a wall, and
+then promenaded a scullery and a kitchen, along which he passed with
+eyes rigidly fixed in advance, an inbred horror of prying forbidding
+him to gaze around apartments that formed the back side of the household
+tapestry. Entering the hall, he was about to be shown to his room, when
+from the inner lobby of the front entrance, whither she had gone to
+learn the cause of the delay, sailed forth the form of Elfride. Her
+start of amazement at the sight of the visitor coming forth from under
+the stairs proved that she had not been expecting this surprising flank
+movement, which had been originated entirely by the ingenuity of William
+Worm.
+
+She appeared in the prettiest of all feminine guises, that is to say, in
+demi-toilette, with plenty of loose curly hair tumbling down about her
+shoulders. An expression of uneasiness pervaded her countenance; and
+altogether she scarcely appeared woman enough for the situation. The
+visitor removed his hat, and the first words were spoken; Elfride
+prelusively looking with a deal of interest, not unmixed with surprise,
+at the person towards whom she was to do 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
+beheld before her, and the dark, taciturn, sharp, elderly man of
+business who had lurked in her imagination--a man with clothes smelling
+of city smoke, skin sallow from want of sun, and talk flavoured with
+epigram--was such a relief to her that Elfride smiled, almost laughed,
+in the new-comer's face.
+
+Stephen Smith, who has hitherto been hidden from us by the darkness, was
+at this 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 would have imagined to be the scene of his activities: such a
+face surely could not be nourished amid smoke and mud and fog and dust;
+such an open countenance could 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 as
+delicate. His mouth as perfect as Cupid's bow in form, and as cherry-red
+in colour as hers. Bright curly hair; bright sparkling blue-gray eyes;
+a boy's blush and manner; neither whisker nor moustache, unless a
+little light-brown fur on his upper lip deserved the latter title: this
+composed the London professional man, the prospect of whose advent had
+so troubled Elfride.
+
+Elfride hastened to say she was sorry to tell him that Mr. Swancourt was
+not able 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 hear this news; but that as far as his reception was concerned,
+it did not matter in the least.
+
+Stephen was shown up to his room. In his absence Elfride stealthily
+glided into her 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
+poor fellow something to eat and drink, for Heaven's sake. And when he
+has done eating, say I should like to have a few words with him, if he
+doesn't mind coming up here.'
+
+The young lady glided downstairs again, and whilst she awaits young
+Smith's entry, 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
+this parish; and Lord Luxellian, the patron of the living, has mentioned
+your name as that of a trustworthy architect whom it would be desirable
+to ask to superintend 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 the building, and report thereupon for the satisfaction of
+parishioners and others.
+
+'The spot is a very remote one: we have no railway within fourteen
+miles; and the nearest place for putting up at--called a town, though
+merely a large village--is Castle Boterel, two miles further on; so that
+it would be most convenient for you to stay at the vicarage--which I am
+glad to place at your disposal--instead of pushing on to the hotel at
+Castle Boterel, and coming back again in the morning.
+
+'Any day of the next week that you like to name for the visit will find
+us quite 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 to survey and make drawings of the aisle and tower of your
+parish church, and of the dilapidations which have been suffered to
+accrue thereto, with a view to its restoration.
+
+'My assistant, Mr. Stephen Smith, will leave London by the early train
+to-morrow morning for the purpose. Many thanks for your proposal to
+accommodate him. He will take advantage of your offer, and will
+probably reach your house at some hour of the evening. You may put every
+confidence in him, and may rely upon his discernment in the matter of
+church architecture.
+
+'Trusting that the plans for the restoration, which I shall prepare from
+the details 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
+young Stephen Smith. The table was spread, as Elfride had suggested to
+her father, with the materials for the heterogeneous meal called high
+tea--a class of refection welcome to all when away from men and towns,
+and particularly attractive to youthful palates. The table was prettily
+decked with winter flowers 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 cheerful aspect of abundance.
+
+At the end, towards the fireplace, appeared the tea-service, of
+old-fashioned Worcester porcelain, and behind this arose the slight
+form of Elfride, attempting to add matronly dignity to the movement of
+pouring out tea, and to have a weighty and concerned look in matters of
+marmalade, honey, and clotted cream. Having made her own meal before he
+arrived, she found to her embarrassment that there was nothing left for
+her to do but talk when not assisting him. She asked him if he would
+excuse her finishing a letter she had been writing at a side-table, and,
+after sitting down to it, tingled with a sense of being grossly rude.
+However, seeing that he noticed nothing personally wrong in her, and
+that he too was embarrassed when she attentively watched his cup to
+refill it, Elfride became better at ease; and when furthermore he
+accidentally 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 could talk very well. In a few minutes ingenuousness
+and a common term of years obliterated all recollection that they were
+strangers just met. Stephen began to wax eloquent on extremely slight
+experiences connected with his professional pursuits; and she, having
+no experiences to fall back upon, recounted with much animation stories
+that had been related to her by her father, which would have astonished
+him had he heard with what fidelity of action and tone they were
+rendered. Upon the whole, a very interesting picture of Sweet-and-Twenty
+was on view that evening in Mr. Swancourt's house.
+
+Ultimately Stephen had to go upstairs and talk loud to the vicar,
+receiving from him between his puffs a great many apologies for calling
+him so unceremoniously to a stranger's bedroom. 'But,' continued Mr.
+Swancourt, 'I felt that I wanted to say a few words to you before the
+morning, on the business of your visit. One's patience gets exhausted
+by staying a prisoner in bed all day through a sudden freak of one's
+enemy--new to me, though--for I have known very little of gout as yet.
+However, he's gone to my other toe in a very mild manner, and I expect
+he'll slink off altogether by the morning. I hope you have been well
+attended to downstairs?'
+
+'Perfectly. And though it is unfortunate, and I am sorry to see you
+laid up, I beg 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 the drug 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 this reason, that a civilized human
+being seldom stays long with us; and so we cannot waste time in
+approaching him, or he will be gone before we have had the pleasure of
+close acquaintance. This tower of ours is, as you will notice, entirely
+gone beyond the possibility of restoration; but the church itself is
+well 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 storm of rain comes on during service, open their umbrellas and hold
+them up till the dripping ceases from the roof. Now, if you will kindly
+bring me those papers and 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
+more particularly 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 whole name was Stephen Fitzmaurice, and that your grandfather came
+originally from Caxbury. Since I have been speaking, it has occurred
+to me that I know something of you. You belong to a well-known ancient
+county family--not ordinary Smiths 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, out of that family Sprang the Leaseworthy Smiths, and
+collaterally came General Sir Stephen Fitzmaurice Smith of Caxbury----'
+
+'Yes; I have seen his monument there,' shouted Stephen. 'But there is no
+connection 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. Here in this book is a genealogical tree of the
+Stephen Fitzmaurice Smiths of Caxbury Manor. You may be only a family
+of professional men now--I am not inquisitive: I don't ask questions of
+that kind; it is not in me to do so--but it 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
+the younger man, sadly no less than modestly.
+
+'Nonsense! that will come with time. You are young: all your life is
+before you. Now look--see how far back in the mists of antiquity my own
+family of Swancourt have a root. Here, you see,' he continued, turning
+to the page, 'is Geoffrey, the one among my ancestors who lost a barony
+because he would cut his joke. Ah, it's the sort of us! But the story
+is too long to tell now. Ay, I'm a poor man--a poor gentleman, in fact:
+those I would be friends with, won't be friends with me; those who are
+willing to be friends with me, I am above being friends with. Beyond
+dining with a neighbouring incumbent or two, and an occasional
+chat--sometimes dinner--with Lord Luxellian, a connection of mine, I am
+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 me of a story I once heard in my younger days.' Here
+the vicar began a series of small private laughs, and Stephen looked
+inquiry. 'Oh, no, no! it is too bad--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 this evening. Ask her to sing to
+you--she plays and sings very nicely. Good-night; I feel as if I had
+known you for five or six years. I'll ring for somebody to show 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 in comparison 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 of
+business replied enthusiastically. 'And, Miss Swancourt, will you kindly
+sing to me?'
+
+To Miss Swancourt this request seemed, what in fact it was,
+exceptionally point-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 the benefit of dull sojourners. At the same
+time, as Mr. Smith's manner was too frank to provoke criticism, and his
+age too little to inspire fear, she was ready--not to say pleased--to
+accede. Selecting from the canterbury some old family 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 a winter'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, to anything 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
+French lady who was staying at Endelstow House:
+
+
+     '"Je l'ai plante, je l'ai vu naitre,
+       Ce beau rosier ou 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 like singing to anybody who REALLY cares to hear me.'
+
+Every woman who makes a permanent impression on a man is usually
+recalled to his mind's eye as she appeared in one particular scene,
+which seems ordained to be her special form of manifestation throughout
+the pages of his memory. As the patron Saint has her attitude and
+accessories in mediaeval illumination, so the sweetheart 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 though she may, on
+further acquaintance, have been observed in many other phases which one
+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
+these minutes of singing, for her permanent attitude of visitation to
+Stephen's eyes during his sleeping and waking hours in after days.
+The profile is seen of a young woman in a pale gray silk dress with
+trimmings of swan's-down, and opening up from a point in front, like a
+waistcoat without a shirt; the cool colour contrasting admirably with
+the warm bloom of her neck and face. The furthermost candle on the piano
+comes immediately in a line with her head, and half invisible itself,
+forms the accidentally frizzled hair into a nebulous haze of light,
+surrounding her crown like an aureola. Her hands are in their place 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 of the 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 dropped its sadness, and acquired a certain expression
+of mischievous archness the while; which lingered there for some time,
+but was never developed into a positive smile of flirtation.
+
+Stephen suddenly shifted his position from her right hand to her left,
+where there was just room enough for a small ottoman to stand between
+the piano and the corner of the room. Into this nook he squeezed
+himself, and gazed wistfully up into Elfride's face. So long and so
+earnestly gazed he, that her cheek deepened 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, she ventured to look
+at him again. His features wore an expression of unutterable heaviness.
+
+'You don't hear many songs, do you, Mr. Smith, to take so much notice of
+these of mine?'
+
+'Perhaps it was the means and vehicle of the song that I was noticing: I
+mean yourself,' he answered gently.
+
+'Now, Mr. Smith!'
+
+'It is perfectly true; I don't hear much singing. You mistake what I am,
+I fancy. Because I come as a stranger to a secluded spot, you think I
+must needs come from a life of bustle, and know the latest movements of
+the day. But I don'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 see that you are not the least what I thought you would be before
+I saw you. You are not critical, or experienced, or--much to mind.
+That's why I don't mind singing airs to you that I only half know.'
+Finding that by this confession she had 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 very experienced. 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
+be honest enough to own the truth, think just the reverse: that my life
+must be a dreadful bore in its normal state, though pleasant for the
+exceptional few days they pass here.'
+
+'I could live here always!' he said, and with such a tone and look
+of unconscious revelation that Elfride was startled to find that her
+harmonies had fired 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's lesser infirmities--love of admiration--caused an inflammable
+disposition on his part, so exactly similar to her own, to appear as
+meritorious in him as modesty made 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 the next morning. From the window of his room he could see, first,
+two bold escarpments sloping down together like the letter V. Towards
+the bottom, like liquid 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 be the scene of his operations. The lonely
+edifice was black and bare, cutting up into 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, of one substance with
+the ridge, rather than a structure raised thereon. Round the church ran
+a low wall; over-topping the wall in general level was the graveyard;
+not as a graveyard usually is, a fragment of landscape with its due
+variety of chiaro-oscuro, but a mere profile against the sky, serrated
+with the outlines of graves and a very few memorial stones. Not a tree
+could exist up there: nothing but the monotonous gray-green grass.
+
+Five minutes after this casual survey was made his bedroom was empty,
+and its occupant had vanished quietly from the house.
+
+At the end of two hours he was again in the room, looking warm and
+glowing. He now pursued the artistic details of dressing, which on
+his first rising had been entirely omitted. And a very blooming boy he
+looked, after that mysterious morning 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 little known bust by
+Nollekens--a mouth which is in itself a young man's fortune, if properly
+exercised. His round chin, where its upper part turned inward, still
+continued its perfect and full curve, seeming to press in to a point the
+bottom of his nether lip at their place of junction.
+
+Once he murmured the name of Elfride. Ah, there she was! On the lawn
+in a plain dress, without hat or bonnet, running with a boy's
+velocity, superadded to a girl's lightness, after a tame rabbit she
+was endeavouring to capture, her strategic intonations of coaxing words
+alternating with desperate rushes so much out of keeping with them, that
+the hollowness of such expressions was but too 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 thicket of 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 blew inside the protecting belt of evergreens,
+wasting its force upon the higher and stronger 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 man expressed his gladness to see his host downstairs.
+
+'Oh yes; I knew I should soon be right again. I have not made the
+acquaintance of 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
+a novelty, 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 of
+fourteen or sixteen hours. But there's no accounting for tastes, and
+I am glad to see that yours are no meaner. After breakfast, but not
+before, I shall be good for a ten miles' walk, Master Smith.'
+
+Certainly there seemed nothing exaggerated in that assertion. Mr.
+Swancourt by daylight showed himself to be a man who, in common with
+the other two people under 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 valleys which, on a close inspection, are
+seen to diversify its surface being left out of the argument. His face
+was of a tint that never deepened upon his cheeks nor lightened upon
+his forehead, but remained uniform throughout; the usual neutral
+salmon-colour of a man who feeds well--not to say too well--and does not
+think hard; every pore being in visible working order. His tout ensemble
+was that of a highly improved class of farmer, dressed up in the wrong
+clothes; that of a firm-standing perpendicular man, whose fall would
+have been backwards in direction if he had ever lost his balance.
+
+The vicar's background was at present what a vicar's background should
+be, his study. Here the consistency ends. All along the chimneypiece
+were ranged bottles of horse, pig, and cow medicines, and against the
+wall was a high table, made up of the fragments of an old oak Iychgate.
+Upon this stood stuffed specimens of owls, divers, and gulls, and over
+them bunches of wheat and barley ears, labelled with the date of the
+year that produced them. Some cases and shelves, 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 the
+character 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 it necessary to act the part of a fly-wheel towards the somewhat
+irregular forces of his visitor.
+
+They prepared to go to the church; the vicar, on second thoughts,
+mounting his coal-black mare to avoid exerting his foot too much at
+starting. Stephen said he 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 after their names.'
+
+'What's the matter?' said the vicar, as William Worm appeared; when the
+remarks were repeated to him.
+
+'Worm says some very true things sometimes,' Mr. Swancourt said, turning
+to Stephen. '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 has a 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 that there's no living night nor day. 'Tis just for all the world
+like people frying fish: fry, fry, fry, all day long in my poor head,
+till I don't know whe'r I'm here 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;
+but William 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 Worm
+corroboratively.
+
+'Yes, it is remarkable,' said Mr. Smith.
+
+'Very peculiar, very peculiar,' echoed the vicar; and they all then
+followed the path up the hill, bounded on each side by a little stone
+wall, from which gleamed fragments of quartz and blood-red marbles,
+apparently of inestimable value, in their setting of brown alluvium.
+Stephen walked with the dignity of a man 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 a butterfly;
+not definitely engaged in travelling, yet somehow chiming in at points
+with the general progress.
+
+The vicar explained things as he went on: 'The fact is, Mr. Smith,
+I didn't want this bother of church restoration at all, but it
+was necessary to do something in self-defence, on account of those
+d----dissenters: I use the word in its scriptural meaning, of course,
+not as an expletive.'
+
+'How very odd!' said Stephen, with the concern demanded of serious
+friendliness.
+
+'Odd? That's nothing to how it is in the parish of Twinkley. Both the
+churchwardens are----; there, I won't say what they are; and the clerk
+and the sexton 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 if we trust at all. But here we are. A wild place, isn't it?
+But I like it on such days as these.'
+
+The churchyard was entered on this side by a stone stile, over which
+having clambered, you remained still on the wild hill, the within not
+being so divided from the without as to obliterate the sense of open
+freedom. A delightful place to be buried in, postulating that delight
+can accompany a man to his tomb under any circumstances. There was
+nothing horrible in this churchyard, in the shape of tight mounds bonded
+with sticks, which shout imprisonment in the ears rather than whisper
+rest; or trim garden-flowers, which only raise images of people in new
+black crape and white handkerchiefs coming to tend them; or wheel-marks,
+which remind us of hearses and mourning coaches; or cypress-bushes,
+which make a parade of sorrow; or coffin-boards and bones lying behind
+trees, showing that we are only leaseholders of our graves. No; nothing
+but long, wild, untutored grass, diversifying the forms of the mounds
+it covered,--themselves irregularly shaped, with no eye to effect; the
+impressive presence of the old mountain that all this was a part of
+being nowhere excluded by disguising art. Outside were similar slopes
+and similar grass; and then the serene impassive sea, visible to a
+width of half the horizon, and meeting the eye with the effect of a
+vast concave, like the interior of a blue vessel. Detached rocks stood
+upright afar, a collar of foam girding their bases, and repeating in its
+whiteness the plumage of a countless multitude of gulls that restlessly
+hovered about.
+
+'Now, Worm!' said Mr. Swancourt sharply; and Worm started into an
+attitude of attention at once to receive orders. Stephen and himself
+were then left in possession, and the work went on till early in the
+afternoon, when dinner was announced by Unity of the vicarage kitchen
+running up the hill without a bonnet.
+
+
+Elfride did not make her appearance inside the building till late in
+the afternoon, and came then by special invitation from Stephen during
+dinner. She looked so intensely LIVING and full of movement as she came
+into the old silent place, that young Smith's world began to be lit
+by 'the purple light' in all its definiteness. Worm was got rid of by
+sending him to measure the height of the tower.
+
+What could she do but come close--so close that a minute arc of her
+skirt touched his foot--and asked him how he was getting on with
+his sketches, and set herself to learn the principles of practical
+mensuration as applied to irregular buildings? Then she must ascend the
+pulpit to re-imagine for the hundredth 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
+said with 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
+better than he does his own; and then afterwards he talks to people and
+to me about what he said in his sermon to-day, and forgets that I wrote
+it for him. Isn't it absurd?'
+
+'How clever you must be!' said Stephen. 'I couldn't write a sermon for
+the world.'
+
+'Oh, it's easy enough,' she said, descending from the pulpit and coming
+close to him to explain more vividly. 'You do it like this. Did you ever
+play a game of 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
+that game. You take the text. You think, why is it? what is it? and so
+on. You put that down under "Generally." Then you proceed to the First,
+Secondly, and Thirdly. Papa won't have Fourthlys--says they are all my
+eye. Then you have a final Collectively, several pages of this being
+put in great black brackets, writing opposite, "LEAVE THIS OUT IF THE
+FARMERS ARE FALLING ASLEEP." Then comes your In Conclusion, then A Few
+Words And I Have Done. Well, all this time you have put on the back
+of each page, "KEEP YOUR VOICE DOWN"--I mean,' she added, correcting
+herself, 'that's how I do in papa's sermon-book, because otherwise he
+gets louder and louder, till at last he shouts like a farmer up a-field.
+Oh, papa is so funny in some things!'
+
+Then, after this childish burst of confidence, she was frightened, as if
+warned by womanly instinct, which for the moment her ardour had outrun,
+that she had been too forward to a comparative stranger.
+
+Elfride saw her father then, and went away into the wind, being caught
+by a gust 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, of a pirouetter. She conversed for a minute or two
+with her father, and proceeded homeward, Mr. Swancourt coming on to
+the church to Stephen. The wind had freshened his warm complexion as it
+freshens the glow of a brand. He was in a mood 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 you are 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
+as possible to the neutral tone of disinterested criticism. 'Now, Smith,
+I'll tell you 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 FOR ME 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, mind you, 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
+pointed with 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
+down the old rafters, fixed the new ones, put on the battens, slated
+the roof, all with 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
+William Worm, cropping up from somewhere. 'Like slaves, 'a b'lieve--hee,
+hee! And weren'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
+in your 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,
+and can't read much; but I can spell as well as some here and there.
+Doan't ye mind, sir, that blustrous night when ye asked me to hold the
+candle to ye in yer 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 dog or 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.
+'Twas all a-twist wi' the chair, like the letter Z, directly you sat
+down upon the chair. "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 of your shop--all in a passion. "Damn the
+chair!" says I. "Just what I was thinking," says you, sir. "I could see
+it in your face, sir," says I, "and I hope you and God will forgi'e
+me for saying what you wouldn't." To save your life you couldn't help
+laughing, sir, at a poor wambler reading your thoughts so 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
+tower with you,' Mr. Swancourt said to Stephen the following morning,
+'so I got Lord Luxellian's permission to send for a man when you came. I
+told him to be there at ten o'clock. He's a very intelligent man, and
+he will tell you all you want to 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 watch here for your appearance at the top of the tower,' she said
+laughingly. 'I shall see your figure against the sky.'
+
+'And when I am up there I'll wave my handkerchief to you, Miss
+Swancourt,' said Stephen. 'In twelve minutes from this present moment,'
+he added, looking at his watch, '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 down the slope leading to the foot of the hill on which the church
+stood. There she saw waiting for him a white spot--a mason in his
+working clothes. Stephen met this man and stopped.
+
+To her surprise, instead of their moving on to the churchyard, they
+both leisurely sat down upon a stone close by their meeting-place, and
+remained as if in deep conversation. Elfride looked at the time; nine
+of the twelve minutes had passed, and Stephen showed no signs of moving.
+More minutes passed--she grew cold with waiting, and shivered. It was
+not till the end of a quarter of an hour that they began to slowly wend
+up the hill at a snail's pace.
+
+'Rude and unmannerly!' she said to herself, colouring with pique.
+'Anybody would 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?' she
+inquired of her father.
+
+'No,' he said surprised; 'quite the reverse. He is Lord Luxellian's
+master-mason, John Smith.'
+
+'Oh,' said Elfride indifferently, and returned towards her bleak
+station, and waited and shivered again. It was a trifle, after all--a
+childish thing--looking out 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 the texture of the object struck as
+to its own momentum; and she had such a superlative 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
+the parapet of the dreary old pile, motionless as bitterns on a ruined
+mosque. Even then Stephen was not true enough to perform what he was so
+courteous to promise, and he vanished without making a sign.
+
+He returned at midday. Elfride looked vexed when unconscious that his
+eyes were upon her; when conscious, severe. However, her attitude of
+coldness had long outlived the coldness itself, and she could no longer
+utter feigned words of indifference.
+
+'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 of hearing.
+
+'Forgive, forgive me!' said Stephen with dismay. 'I had forgotten--quite
+forgotten! 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 the fire, the weather and scene outside seemed to have stereotyped
+themselves in unrelieved 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 tower behind them were grayish-brown; the sky,
+dropping behind all, gray of the purest melancholy.
+
+Yet in spite of this sombre artistic effect, the morning was not one
+which tended to lower the spirits. It was even cheering. For it did not
+rain, nor was rain likely to fall for many days to come.
+
+Elfride had turned from the table towards the fire and was idly
+elevating a hand-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 an opening in the shrubbery and across the lawn. She vanished,
+and met him in the porch, afterwards coming in with her hands behind her
+back.
+
+'How many are there? Three for papa, one for Mr. Smith, none for Miss
+Swancourt. And, papa, look here, one of yours is from--whom do you
+think?--Lord Luxellian. And it has something HARD in it--a lump of
+something. I've been feeling it through the envelope, and can't think
+what it is.'
+
+'What does Luxellian write for, I wonder?' Mr. Swancourt had said
+simultaneously 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 became a 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 the church sketches. Swears you are more trouble than you are
+worth. He says I am to write and say you are to stay no longer on
+any consideration--that he would have done it all in three hours very
+easily. I told him that you were not like an experienced hand, which he
+seemed to forget, but it did not make much difference. However, between
+you and me privately, if I were you I would not alarm myself for a day
+or so, if I were not inclined to return. I would make out the week and
+finish my spree. He will blow up just as much if you appear here 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
+with the kind of confusion that assails an understrapper when he has
+been enlarged by accident to the dimensions of a superior, and is
+somewhat rudely pared down to his original size.
+
+'What is awkward?' said Miss Swancourt.
+
+Smith by this time recovered his equanimity, and with it the
+professional dignity 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 his letter. 'Important business? A young fellow like you to have
+important business!'
+
+'The truth is,' said Stephen blushing, and rather ashamed of having
+pretended even 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
+you think. You are to be his partner. I booked you for that directly
+I read his letter to me the other day, and the way he spoke of you. He
+thinks a great deal of 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 the
+expectancy of partnership with one of the largest-practising architects
+in London thrust upon him was cheering, however untenable he felt the
+idea to be. He saw that, whatever Mr. Hewby might think, Mr. Swancourt
+certainly thought much of him to entertain such an idea on such slender
+ground as to be absolutely no ground at all. And then, unaccountably,
+his speaking face exhibited a cloud of sadness, which a reflection on
+the remoteness of any such contingency 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 your own account; not on business. Come to see me as a visitor,
+you know--say, in your 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 to get somebody decent to talk to, or at, in this outlandish ultima
+Thule. But, by the 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
+back before Monday morning.'
+
+'Very well, then, that brings me to what I am going to propose. This is
+a letter from Lord Luxellian. I think you heard me speak of him as the
+resident landowner 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 take with 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
+trust such a matter to any body else. I have done such things for him
+before. And what I propose is, that we make an afternoon of it--all
+three of us. Go for a drive to Targan Bay, come home by way of Endelstow
+House; and whilst I am looking over the documents you can ramble about
+the rooms where you like. I have the run of the house at any time, you
+know. The building, though nothing but a mass of gables outside, has a
+splendid hall, staircase, and gallery within; 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 much older than our St. Agnes' here. I do duty in that and
+this alternately, you know. The fact is, I ought to have some help;
+riding across that park for two miles on a wet morning is not at all
+the thing. If my constitution were not well 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 barking all the year
+round. And when the family goes away, there are only about three
+servants 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 go and take a few final measurements at the church, the vicar
+following him to the door with a mysterious expression of inquiry on his
+face.
+
+'You'll put up with our not having family prayer this morning, I hope?'
+he whispered.
+
+'Yes; quite so,' said Stephen.
+
+'To tell you the truth,' he continued in the same undertone, 'we don't
+make a regular thing of it; but when we have strangers visiting us, I am
+strongly of opinion that it is the proper thing to do, and I always do
+it. I am very strict on that point. But you, Smith, there is something
+in your face which makes me feel quite at home; no nonsense about you,
+in short. Ah, it reminds me of a splendid story I used to hear when I
+was a helter-skelter young fellow--such a story! But'--here the vicar
+shook his head self-forbiddingly, and grimly laughed.
+
+'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
+the recollection as he withdrew.
+
+
+They started at three o'clock. The gray morning had resolved itself
+into an afternoon bright with a pale pervasive sunlight, without the
+sun itself being visible. Lightly they trotted along--the wheels nearly
+silent, the horse's hoofs clapping, almost ringing, upon the hard,
+white, turnpike road as it followed the level ridge in a perfectly
+straight line, seeming to be absorbed ultimately by the white of the
+sky.
+
+Targan Bay--which had the merit of being easily got at--was duly
+visited. They then swept round by innumerable lanes, in which not twenty
+consecutive yards were either straight or level, to the domain of Lord
+Luxellian. A woman with a double 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
+her purse and hastily opening it. From the interior of her purse a host
+of bits of paper, like a flock of white birds, floated into the air, and
+were blown about in 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,' she faltered, whilst Stephen leapt out, and, assisted by the
+lodge-keeper's little boy, crept about round the wheels and horse's
+hoofs till the papers were all gathered together again. He handed them
+back to her, and remounted.
+
+'I suppose you are wondering what those scraps were?' she said, as they
+bowled along up the sycamore avenue. 'And so I may as well tell you.
+They are notes for 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, and
+catching a word of the conversation now and then.
+
+'Yes; THE COURT OF KELLYON CASTLE; a romance of the fifteenth century.
+Such writing 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
+be taken in.'
+
+'Yes; that's my way of carrying manuscript. The real reason is, that I
+mostly write bits of it on scraps of paper when I am on horseback; and I
+put them there for convenience.'
+
+'What are you going to do with your romance when you have written it?'
+said Stephen.
+
+'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.
+Driving through an ancient gate-way of dun-coloured stone, spanned by
+the high-shouldered Tudor arch, they found themselves in a spacious
+court, closed by a facade on each of its three sides. The substantial
+portions of the existing building dated from the reign of Henry VIII.;
+but the picturesque and sheltered spot had been the site of an erection
+of a much earlier date. A licence to crenellate mansum infra manerium
+suum was granted by Edward II. to 'Hugo Luxellen chivaler;' but though
+the faint outline of the ditch and mound was visible at points, no sign
+of the original building remained.
+
+The windows on all sides were long and many-mullioned; the roof lines
+broken up by dormer lights of the same pattern. The apex stones of these
+dormers, together with those of the gables, were surmounted by grotesque
+figures in rampant, passant, and couchant variety. Tall octagonal and
+twisted chimneys thrust themselves high up into the sky, surpassed in
+height, however, by some poplars and sycamores at the back, which showed
+their gently rocking summits over ridge and parapet. In the corners
+of the court polygonal bays, whose surfaces were entirely occupied by
+buttresses and windows, broke into the squareness of the enclosure; and
+a far-projecting oriel, springing from a fantastic series of mouldings,
+overhung the archway of the chief entrance to the house.
+
+As Mr. Swancourt had remarked, he had the freedom of the mansion in
+the absence of its owner. Upon a statement of his errand they were all
+admitted to the library, and left entirely to themselves. Mr. Swancourt
+was soon up to his eyes in the examination of a heap of papers he had
+taken from the cabinet described by his correspondent. Stephen and
+Elfride had nothing to do but to wander about till 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 in style than the walls of the mansion. Pilasters of
+Renaissance workmanship supported a cornice from which sprang a curved
+ceiling, panelled in the awkward twists and curls of the period. The old
+Gothic quarries still remained in the upper portion of the large window
+at the end, though they had made way for a more modern form of glazing
+elsewhere.
+
+Stephen was at one end of the gallery looking towards Elfride, who stood
+in the midst, beginning to feel somewhat depressed by the society of
+Luxellian shades of cadaverous complexion fixed by Holbein, Kneller, and
+Lely, and seeming to gaze at and through her in a moralizing mood. The
+silence, which cast almost a spell 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 were sparkling; their hair swinging about and around; their red
+mouths laughing with unalloyed 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,' said one.
+
+'Let me tiss you,' said the other, in appearance very much like the
+first, but to a smaller pattern.
+
+Their pink cheeks and yellow hair were speedily intermingled with the
+folds of Elfride's dress; she then stooped and tenderly embraced them
+both.
+
+'Such an odd thing,' said Elfride, smiling, and turning to Stephen.
+'They have taken it into their heads lately to call me "little mamma,"
+because I am very fond of them, and wore a dress the other day something
+like one of Lady Luxellian's.'
+
+These two young creatures were the Honourable Mary and the Honourable
+Kate--scarcely appearing large enough as yet to bear the weight of such
+ponderous prefixes. They were the only two children of Lord and Lady
+Luxellian, and, as it proved, had been left at home during their
+parents' temporary absence, in the custody of nurse and governess. Lord
+Luxellian was dotingly fond of the children; rather indifferent towards
+his wife, since she had begun to show an inclination not to please him
+by giving him a boy.
+
+All children instinctively ran after Elfride, looking upon her more as
+an unusually nice large specimen of their own tribe than as a grown-up
+elder. It had now become an established rule, that whenever she met
+them--indoors or out-of-doors, weekdays or Sundays--they were to be
+severally pressed against her face and bosom for the space of a quarter
+of a minute, and other-wise made much of on the delightful system
+of cumulative epithet and caress to which unpractised girls will
+occasionally abandon themselves.
+
+A look of misgiving by the youngsters towards the door by which they
+had entered 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.
+'Mamma can't play with us so nicely as you do. I don't think she ever
+learnt playing when 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. I don't care to see people with hats and bonnets on, and all
+standing up and walking about.'
+
+'As soon as we can get mamma's permission you shall come and stay as
+long as ever you like. Good-bye!'
+
+The prisoners were then led off, Elfride again turning her attention to
+her guest, whom she had left standing at the remote end of the gallery.
+On looking around 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, now cheerfully illuminated by a pair of candles, was
+still alone, untying packets of letters and papers, and tying them up
+again.
+
+As Elfride did not stand on a sufficiently intimate footing with the
+object of her interest to justify her, as a proper young lady, to
+commence the active search for him that youthful impulsiveness prompted,
+and as, nevertheless, for a nascent reason connected with those divinely
+cut lips of his, she did not like him to be absent from her side, she
+wandered desultorily back to the oak staircase, pouting and casting her
+eyes about in hope of discerning his boyish figure.
+
+Though daylight still prevailed in the rooms, the corridors were in
+a depth of shadow--chill, sad, and silent; and it was only by looking
+along them towards light spaces beyond that anything or anybody could be
+discerned therein. One of these light spots she found to be caused by
+a side-door with glass panels in the upper part. Elfride opened it, and
+found herself confronting a secondary or inner 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 she had emerged from, and within a few feet of the door, jutted
+out another wing of the mansion, lower and with less architectural
+character. Immediately opposite to her, in the wall of this wing, was
+a large broad window, having its blind drawn 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 that his arms were uplifted, and that his hands held an
+article of some kind. Then another shadow appeared--also in profile--and
+came close to him. This was the shadow of a woman. She turned her back
+towards Stephen: he lifted and held out what now proved to be a shawl or
+mantle--placed it carefully--so carefully--round the lady; disappeared;
+reappeared in her front--fastened the mantle. Did he then kiss her?
+Surely not. Yet the motion might have been a kiss. Then both shadows
+swelled 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 a voice 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
+the closing of an external door in their immediate neighbourhood reached
+Elfride's ears. It came from the further side of the wing containing the
+illuminated room. She then discerned, by the aid of the dusky departing
+light, a figure, whose sex was undistinguishable, walking down the
+gravelled path by the parterre towards the river. The figure grew
+fainter, and vanished under the trees.
+
+Mr. Swancourt's voice was heard calling out their names from a distant
+corridor in the body of the building. They retraced their steps, and
+found him with his coat buttoned up and his hat on, awaiting their
+advent in a mood of self-satisfaction at having brought his search to
+a successful close. The carriage was brought round, and without further
+delay the trio drove away from the mansion, under the echoing gateway
+arch, and along by the leafless sycamores, as the stars began to kindle
+their trembling lights behind the maze of branches and twigs.
+
+No words were spoken either by youth or maiden. Her unpractised mind was
+completely occupied in fathoming its recent acquisition. The young man
+who had inspired her with such novelty of feeling, who had come directly
+from London on business 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 had found therein, and of honouring her by
+petits soins of a marked kind,--all in the 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 the house? None but the governess and servants, as far as she
+knew, and of these he had professed a total ignorance. Had the person
+she had indistinctly seen leaving the house anything to do with the
+performance? It was impossible to say without appealing to the culprit
+himself, and that she would never do. The more Elfride reflected, the
+more certain did it appear that the meeting was a chance rencounter, and
+not an appointment. On the ultimate inquiry as to the individuality of
+the woman, Elfride at once assumed that she could not be an inferior.
+Stephen Smith was not the man to care about passages-at-love with women
+beneath him. Though gentle, ambition was visible in his kindling eyes;
+he evidently hoped for much; hoped indefinitely, but extensively.
+Elfride was puzzled, and being puzzled, was, by a natural sequence of
+girlish sensations, vexed with him. No more pleasure came in recognizing
+that from liking to attract him she was getting on to love him, boyish
+as he was and innocent as he had seemed.
+
+They reached the bridge which formed a link between the eastern and
+western halves of the parish. Situated in a valley that was bounded
+outwardly by the sea, it formed a point of depression from which the
+road ascended with great steepness to West Endelstow and the Vicarage.
+There was no absolute necessity for either of them to alight, but as
+it was the vicar's custom after a long journey to humour the horse in
+making this winding ascent, Elfride, moved by an imitative instinct,
+suddenly jumped out when Pleasant had just begun to adopt the deliberate
+stalk he associated with this portion of the road.
+
+The young man seemed glad of any excuse for breaking the silence. 'Why,
+Miss Swancourt, what a risky thing to do!' he exclaimed, immediately
+following her example by jumping down on the other side.
+
+'Oh no, not at all,' replied she coldly; the shadow phenomenon at
+Endelstow House still paramount within her.
+
+Stephen walked along by himself for two or three minutes, wrapped in the
+rigid reserve dictated by her tone. Then apparently thinking that it was
+only for girls to pout, he came serenely round to her side, and offered
+his arm with Castilian gallantry, to assist her in ascending the
+remaining three-quarters of the steep.
+
+Here was a temptation: it was the first time in her life that Elfride
+had been treated as a grown-up woman in this way--offered an arm in a
+manner implying that she had a right to refuse it. Till to-night she
+had never received masculine attentions beyond those which might be
+contained in such homely remarks as 'Elfride, give me your hand;'
+'Elfride, take hold of my arm,' from her father. Her callow heart made
+an epoch of the incident; she considered her array of feelings, for and
+against. Collectively they were for taking this offered arm; the single
+one of pique determined her to punish Stephen by refusing.
+
+'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 the issue of such an undertaking than what a gentle young man
+might think of her waywardness, she immediately afterwards determined to
+please herself by reversing 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
+trouble than a dilemma.'
+
+'What is it?' she asked impulsively.
+
+Stephen hesitated. 'I might tell,' he said; 'at the same time, perhaps,
+it is as well----'
+
+She let go his arm and imperatively pushed it from her, tossing her
+head. She had just learnt that a good deal of dignity is lost by asking
+a question to which an answer is refused, even ever so politely;
+for though politeness does good service in cases of requisition and
+compromise, it but little helps a direct refusal. 'I don't wish to know
+anything of it; I don't wish it,' she went on. 'The carriage is waiting
+for us at the top of the hill; we must get in;' and Elfride flitted
+to the front. 'Papa, here is your Elfride!' she exclaimed to the dusky
+figure of the old gentleman, as she sprang up and sank by his side
+without deigning to accept aid from Stephen.
+
+'Ah, yes!' uttered the vicar in artificially alert tones, awaking from a
+most profound 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
+very hastily, endeavouring to dodge back to his original position with
+the air of a man who had not moved at all. 'The fact is I was so lost in
+deep meditation that I forgot whereabouts we were.' And in a minute the
+vicar was snoring again.
+
+
+That evening, being the last, seemed to throw an exceptional shade of
+sadness over Stephen Smith, and the repeated injunctions of the vicar,
+that he was to come and revisit them in the summer, apparently tended
+less to raise his spirits than to unearth some misgiving.
+
+He left them in the gray light of dawn, whilst the colours of earth were
+sombre, and the sun was yet hidden in the east. Elfride had fidgeted all
+night in her little bed lest none of the household should be awake
+soon enough to start him, and also lest she might miss seeing again
+the bright eyes and curly hair, to which their owner's possession of a
+hidden mystery added a deeper tinge of romance. To some extent--so
+soon does womanly interest take a solicitous turn--she felt herself
+responsible for his safe conduct. They breakfasted before daylight;
+Mr. Swancourt, being more and more taken with his guest's ingenuous
+appearance, having determined to rise early and bid him a friendly
+farewell. It was, however, rather to the vicar's astonishment, that he
+saw Elfride walk in to the breakfast-table, candle in hand.
+
+Whilst William Worm performed his toilet (during which performance
+the inmates of 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 all along its length, hiding the stream
+which trickled through it, though the observers themselves were in clear
+air.
+
+They stood close together, leaning over the rustic balustrading which
+bounded the arbour on the outward side, and formed the crest of a steep
+slope beneath Elfride constrainedly pointed out some features of the
+distant uplands rising irregularly opposite. But the artistic eye was,
+either from nature or circumstance, very faint in Stephen now, and he
+only half attended to her description, 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 shyness which would not allow him to look her in the face
+lent bravery to her own eyes and 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
+my account; on yours.'
+
+'Goodness! As if anything in connection with you could hurt me,' she
+said with serene supremacy; but seeing that this plan of treatment was
+inappropriate, she tuned 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 never want 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 to keep my newspapers till I get back.'
+
+'You needn't have explained: it was not my business at all.' Miss
+Elfride was rather relieved to hear that statement, nevertheless. 'And
+you won't come again to 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
+of yours with a lady at Endelstow Vicarage clash with--any interest you
+may take in me?'
+
+He started a little. 'It does not,' he said emphatically; and looked
+into the pupils of her eyes with the confidence that only honesty can
+give, and even that to youth alone.
+
+The explanation had not come, but a gloom left her. She could not but
+believe that utterance. Whatever enigma might lie in the shadow on the
+blind, it was not an enigma of underhand passion.
+
+She turned towards the house, entering it through the conservatory.
+Stephen went round to the front door. Mr. Swancourt was standing on the
+step in his slippers. Worm was adjusting a buckle in the harness, and
+murmuring about his poor head; and everything was ready for Stephen's
+departure.
+
+'You named August for your visit. August it shall be; that is, if you
+care for the 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
+and speaking under her father's arm.
+
+Whatever reason the youth may have had for not wishing to enter the
+house as a guest, it no longer predominated. He promised, and bade them
+adieu, and got into the pony-carriage, which crept up the slope, and
+bore him out of their sight.
+
+'I never was so much taken with anybody in my life as I am with that
+young fellow--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 a genuine artistic reason for coming, though no such reason
+seemed to be required. Six-and-thirty old seat ends, of exquisite
+fifteenth-century workmanship, were rapidly decaying in an aisle of
+the church; and it became politic to make drawings of their worm-eaten
+contours ere they were battered past recognition in the turmoil of the
+so-called restoration.
+
+He entered the house at sunset, and the world was pleasant again to
+the two fair-haired ones. A momentary pang of disappointment had,
+nevertheless, passed through Elfride when she casually discovered that
+he had not come that minute post-haste from London, but had reached the
+neighbourhood the previous evening. Surprise would have accompanied the
+feeling, had she not remembered that several tourists were haunting the
+coast at this season, and that Stephen might have chosen to do likewise.
+
+They did little besides chat that evening, Mr. Swancourt beginning to
+question his visitor, closely yet paternally, and in good part, on his
+hopes and prospects from the profession he had embraced. Stephen gave
+vague answers. The next day it rained. In the evening, when twenty-four
+hours of Elfride had completely rekindled her admirer's ardour, a game
+of chess was proposed between them.
+
+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
+noticed that he had a very odd way of handling the pieces when castling
+or taking a man. Antecedently she would have supposed that the same
+performance must be gone through by all players in the same manner; she
+was taught by his differing action that all ordinary players, who learn
+the game by sight, unconsciously touch the men in a stereotyped way.
+This impression of indescribable oddness in Stephen's touch culminated
+in speech when she saw him, at the taking of one of her bishops, push it
+aside with the taking man instead of lifting it as a preliminary 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
+who taught you to play?'
+
+'Nobody, Miss Swancourt,' he said. 'I learnt from a book lent me by my
+friend Mr. 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 ever had the opportunity of playing with a living opponent. I have
+worked out many games from books, and studied the reasons of the
+different moves, but that is all.'
+
+This was a full explanation of his mannerism; but the fact that a man
+with the desire for chess should have grown up without being able to
+see or engage in a game astonished her not a little. She pondered on the
+circumstance for some time, looking into vacancy and hindering the play.
+
+Mr. Swancourt was sitting with his eyes fixed on the board, but
+apparently thinking 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 down his hand upon the table, and making three pawns and a
+knight dance over their borders by the shaking. 'I was musing on those
+words as applicable to a strange course 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 and scholar 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, 'tell me all about it. Come, construe, construe!'
+
+Stephen looked steadfastly into her face, and said slowly, and in a
+voice full of 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 me AWAITS ME? Effare SPEAK OUT; luam I WILL PAY, cum fide WITH
+FAITH, jussas poenas THE PENALTY REQUIRED.'
+
+The vicar, who had listened with a critical compression of the lips to
+this school-boy recitation, and by reason of his imperfect hearing had
+missed the marked 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 your translation was unexceptionably correct and
+close, you have a way of pronouncing your Latin which to me seems most
+peculiar. Not that the pronunciation of a dead language is of much
+importance; yet your accents and quantities have a grotesque sound to
+my ears. I thought first that you had acquired 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 your instructor in the
+classics could possibly have been an Oxford or Cambridge man?'
+
+'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 with
+astonishment. '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
+pronounce it 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 in this way--by letter. I sent him exercises and construing twice a
+week, and twice a 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 responsible for 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
+remember his speaking to me on this very subject of pronunciation. He
+says that, much to his regret, he sees a time coming when every man will
+pronounce even the common words of his own tongue as seems right in his
+own ears, and be thought none the worse for it; that the speaking age is
+passing away, to make room for the writing age.'
+
+Both Elfride and her father had waited attentively to hear Stephen go on
+to what would have been the most interesting part of the story, namely,
+what circumstances could have necessitated such an unusual method of
+education. But no further explanation was volunteered; and they saw, by
+the young man's manner of concentrating himself upon the chess-board,
+that he was anxious to drop the subject.
+
+The game proceeded. Elfride played by rote; Stephen by thought. It
+was the cruellest thing to checkmate him after so much labour, she
+considered. What was she dishonest enough to do in her compassion?
+To let him checkmate her. A second game followed; and being herself
+absolutely indifferent as to the result (her playing was above the
+average among women, and she knew it), she allowed him to give checkmate
+again. A final game, in which she adopted the Muzio gambit as her
+opening, was terminated by Elfride's victory at the twelfth move.
+
+Stephen looked up suspiciously. His heart was throbbing even more
+excitedly than was hers, which itself had quickened when she seriously
+set to work on this 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 and sadness, which, relishable for a moment, caused her the
+next instant to regret the mistake she had made.
+
+'Mr. Smith, forgive me!' she said sweetly. 'I see now, though I did not
+at first, that what I have done seems like contempt for your skill.
+But, indeed, I did not mean it in that sense. I could not, upon my
+conscience, win a victory in those first and second games over one who
+fought at such a disadvantage and so manfully.'
+
+He drew a long breath, and murmured bitterly, 'Ah, you are cleverer than
+I. You can do everything--I can do nothing! O Miss Swancourt!' he burst
+out wildly, his heart swelling in his throat, 'I must tell you how I
+love you! All these months of my absence I have worshipped you.'
+
+He leapt from his seat like the impulsive lad that he was, slid round
+to her side, and almost before she suspected it his arm was round her
+waist, and the two sets of curls intermingled.
+
+So entirely new was full-blown love to Elfride, that she trembled as
+much from the novelty of the emotion as from the emotion itself. Then
+she suddenly withdrew herself and stood upright, vexed that she had
+submitted unresistingly even to his momentary pressure. She resolved to
+consider this demonstration as premature.
+
+'You must not begin such things as those,' she said with coquettish
+hauteur of a 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,
+and without 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
+broad outlines of her manner and speech. There were the semitone of
+voice and half-hidden expression of eyes which tell the initiated how
+very fragile is the ice of reserve at these times.
+
+Footsteps were heard. Mr. Swancourt then entered the room, and their
+private colloquy ended.
+
+The day after this partial revelation, Mr. Swancourt proposed a drive to
+the cliffs 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 to himself, and slightly to his auditors:
+
+'Ay, ay, sure! That frying of fish will be the end of William Worm. They
+be at it again this morning--same as ever--fizz, fizz, fizz!'
+
+'Your head bad again, Worm?' said Mr. Swancourt. 'What was that noise we
+heard in the yard?'
+
+'Ay, sir, a weak wambling man am I; and the frying have been going on in
+my poor head all through the long night and this morning as usual; and I
+was so dazed wi' it that down fell a piece of leg-wood across the shaft
+of the pony-shay, and splintered it off. "Ay," says I, "I feel it as if
+'twas my own shay; 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 was
+disappointed: Stephen doubly so. The vicar showed more warmth of temper
+than the accident seemed to demand, much to Stephen's uneasiness and
+rather to his surprise. 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
+too long a distance for you to walk. Elfride can trot down on her pony,
+and you shall have my old nag, Smith.'
+
+Elfride exclaimed triumphantly, 'You have never seen me on
+horseback--Oh, you must!' She looked at Stephen and read his thoughts
+immediately. 'Ah, you don't ride, 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
+lessons to 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
+to combine in itself all the advantages of a long slow ramble with
+Elfride, without the contingent possibility of the enjoyment being
+spoilt by her becoming weary. The pony was saddled and brought round.
+
+'Now, Mr. Smith,' said the lady imperatively, coming downstairs, and
+appearing in her riding-habit, as she always did in a change of dress,
+like a new edition of a delightful volume, 'you have a task to perform
+to-day. These earrings are my very favourite darling ones; but the worst
+of it is that they have such short 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 knight service if you keep your
+eyes fixed upon them, and remember them every minute of the day, and
+tell me directly I drop one. They have had such hairbreadth escapes,
+haven't they, Unity?' she continued to the parlour-maid who was standing
+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 Elfride
+reflectively.
+
+'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; and Elfride was ultimately deposited upon the ground rather more
+forcibly than was pleasant. Smith looked all contrition.
+
+'Never mind,' said the vicar encouragingly; 'try again! 'Tis a little
+accomplishment that requires some practice, although it looks so easy.
+Stand closer to the horse's head, Mr. Smith.'
+
+'Indeed, I shan't let him try again,' said she with a microscopic look
+of indignation. 'Worm, come here, and help me to mount.' Worm stepped
+forward, and she was in the saddle in a trice.
+
+Then they moved on, going for some distance in silence, the hot air of
+the valley being occasionally brushed from their faces by a cool breeze,
+which wound its way along ravines leading up from the sea.
+
+'I suppose,' said Stephen, 'that a man who can neither sit in a saddle
+himself nor help another person into one seems a useless incumbrance;
+but, Miss Swancourt, 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
+a horsewoman's address to a benighted walker, 'is that your knowledge of
+certain things 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 be learnt in this wide world that I didn't trouble about that
+particular bit of knowledge. I thought it would be useless to me; but
+I don't think so now. I will learn riding, and all connected with it,
+because then you would like me better. 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
+replying to 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 the dimensions 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 no signs of her returning. Dull as a flower without the sun he sat
+down upon a stone, 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 her eyes sparkling. She turned the horse's head, Stephen arose, and
+they went on again.
+
+'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 I was 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, at the same time gliding round and looking into her face.
+
+'Eyes in eyes,' he murmured playfully; and she blushingly obeyed,
+looking back into his.
+
+'And why not lips on lips?' continued Stephen daringly.
+
+'No, certainly not. Anybody might look; and it would be the death of me.
+You may kiss my hand if you like.'
+
+He expressed by a look that to kiss a hand through a glove, and that a
+riding-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,
+you don'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 more of 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 a proud moment it was for Elfride then! She was ruling a heart with
+absolute despotism 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
+by surprise.'
+
+There ensued a mild form of tussle for absolute possession of the
+much-coveted hand, in which the boisterousness of boy and girl was far
+more prominent than the dignity of man and woman. Then Pansy became
+restless. Elfride recovered her position and remembered herself.
+
+'You make me behave in not a nice way at all!' she exclaimed, in a tone
+neither of pleasure nor anger, but partaking of both. 'I ought not to
+have allowed such a 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,' said he in a penitent tone, conscious that he too had lost a
+little dignity by the proceeding.
+
+'You are too familiar; and I can't have it! Considering the shortness
+of the time we have known each other, Mr. Smith, you take too much upon
+you. You think I 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
+wanted to 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,' she said, shaking her head at him, and trotting on a few paces in
+advance. Thus she led the way out of the lane and across some fields in
+the direction of the cliffs. At the boundary of the fields nearest the
+sea she expressed a wish to dismount. The horse was tied to a post, and
+they both followed an irregular path, which ultimately terminated upon
+a flat ledge passing round the face of the huge blue-black rock at a
+height about midway between the sea and the topmost verge. There, far
+beneath and before them, lay the everlasting stretch of ocean; there,
+upon detached rocks, were the white screaming gulls, seeming ever
+intending to settle, and yet always passing on. Right and left ranked
+the toothed and zigzag line of storm-torn heights, forming the series
+which culminated in the one beneath their feet.
+
+Behind the youth and maiden was a tempting alcove and seat, formed
+naturally in the beetling mass, and wide enough to admit two or three
+persons. Elfride sat down, and Stephen sat beside her.
+
+'I am afraid it is hardly proper of us to be here, either,' she said
+half inquiringly. '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 makes enough or not enough in our acquaintanceship.'
+
+'Yes, I see that. But I wish papa suspected or knew what a VERY NEW
+THING I am doing. 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 know it is--before you know more; but I wish we might be, all the
+same. Do you love me deeply, deeply?'
+
+'No!' she said in a fluster.
+
+At this point-blank denial, Stephen turned his face away decisively, and
+preserved an ominous silence; the only objects of interest on earth for
+him being apparently the three or four-score sea-birds circling in the
+air afar off.
+
+'I didn't mean to stop you quite,' she faltered with some alarm; and
+seeing that he still remained silent, she added more anxiously, 'If you
+say that again, perhaps, I will not be quite--quite so obstinate--if--if
+you don't like me to be.'
+
+'Oh, my Elfride!' he exclaimed, and kissed her.
+
+It was Elfride's first kiss. And so awkward and unused was she; full of
+striving--no relenting. There was none of those apparent struggles to
+get out of the trap which only results in getting further in: no final
+attitude of receptivity: no easy close of shoulder to shoulder, hand
+upon hand, face upon face, and, in spite of coyness, the lips in the
+right place at the supreme moment. That graceful though apparently
+accidental falling into position, which many have noticed as
+precipitating the end and making sweethearts the sweeter, was not here.
+Why? Because experience was absent. A woman must have had many kisses
+before she kisses well.
+
+In fact, the art of tendering the lips for these amatory salutes follows
+the principles laid down in treatises on legerdemain for performing
+the trick called Forcing a Card. The card is to be shifted nimbly,
+withdrawn, edged under, and withal not to be offered till the moment the
+unsuspecting person's hand reaches the pack; this forcing to be done so
+modestly and yet so coaxingly, that the person trifled with imagines he
+is really choosing what is in fact thrust into his hand.
+
+Well, there were no such facilities now; and Stephen was conscious of
+it--first with a momentary regret that his kiss should be spoilt by her
+confused receipt of it, and then with the pleasant perception that her
+awkwardness was her charm.
+
+'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
+impossible for you to agree to be my wife, or for your father to
+countenance such an idea?'
+
+'Nothing shall make me cease to love you: no blemish can be found upon
+your personal nature. That is pure and generous, I know; and having
+that, how can I be cold to you?'
+
+'And shall nothing else affect us--shall nothing beyond my nature be a
+part of my quality in your eyes, Elfie?'
+
+'Nothing whatever,' she said with a breath of relief. 'Is that all? Some
+outside circumstance? What do I care?'
+
+'You can hardly judge, dear, till you know what has to be judged. For
+that, we will 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's world goes, this is a great deal. Stephen, I fancy I see the
+difference between me and you--between men and women generally, perhaps.
+I am content to build happiness on any accidental basis that may lie
+near at hand; you are for making a world to suit your happiness.'
+
+'Elfride, you sometimes say things which make you seem suddenly to
+become five years older than you are, or than I am; and that remark is
+one. I couldn't think so OLD as that, try how I might....And no lover
+has ever kissed you before?'
+
+'Never.'
+
+'I knew that; you were so unused. You ride well, but you don't kiss
+nicely at all; and I was told once, by my friend Knight, that that is an
+excellent fault in woman.'
+
+'Now, come; I must mount again, or we shall not be home by dinner-time.'
+And they returned to where Pansy stood tethered. 'Instead of entrusting
+my weight to 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 I am myself again.'
+
+They proceeded homeward at the same walking pace.
+
+Her blitheness won Stephen out of his thoughtfulness, and each forgot
+everything but the tone of the moment.
+
+'What did you love me for?' she said, after a long musing look at a
+flying bird.
+
+'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 what
+everybody 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 idle blood, that did nothing but wander away from your cheeks
+and back again; but I am not sure. Or your hands and arms, that they
+eclipsed all other hands and arms; 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 altogether sure.'
+
+'Ah, that's pretty to say; but I don't care for your love, if it made a
+mere flat 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 and frisky look into his face), 'when you said to
+yourself, "I'll certainly love that 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
+not ask you ever any more--never more--to say out of the deep reality of
+your heart what you loved me for.'
+
+'Sweet tantalizer, what's the use? It comes to this sole simple thing:
+That at one time I had never seen you, and I didn't love you; that then
+I saw you, and I did love you. Is that enough?'
+
+'Yes; I will make it do....I know, I think, what I love you for. You are
+nice-looking, of course; but I didn't mean for that. It is because you
+are so docile and gentle.'
+
+'Those are not quite the correct qualities for a man to be loved for,'
+said Stephen, in rather a dissatisfied tone of self-criticism. 'Well,
+never mind. I must ask your father to allow us to be engaged directly we
+get indoors. It will be 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 shall have a day longer of happiness from our
+ignorance....Well, what are you thinking of so deeply?'
+
+'I was thinking how my dear friend Knight would enjoy this scene. I wish
+he could come here.'
+
+'You seem very much engrossed with him,' she answered, with a jealous
+little toss. 'He must be an interesting man to take up so much of your
+attention.'
+
+'Interesting!' said Stephen, his face glowing with his fervour; 'noble,
+you ought to say.'
+
+'Oh yes, yes; I forgot,' she said half satirically. 'The noblest man in
+England, 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 into a huge WE, namely, the impalpable entity called the
+PRESENT--a social and literary Review.'
+
+'Is he only a reviewer?'
+
+'ONLY, Elfie! Why, I can tell you it is a fine thing to be on the staff
+of the PRESENT. 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 a literary man of some eminence, and not altogether a reviewer.
+He writes things of a higher class than reviews, though he reviews
+a book occasionally. His ordinary productions are social and ethical
+essays--all that the PRESENT contains which is not literary reviewing.'
+
+'I admit he must be talented if he writes for the PRESENT. We have it
+sent to us irregularly. I want papa to be a subscriber, but he's so
+conservative. Now the 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
+were extravagant. 'You see, it was in this way--he came originally from
+the same place as I, and taught me things; but I am not intimate with
+him. Shan't I be glad when I get richer and better known, and hob and
+nob with him!' Stephen's eyes sparkled.
+
+A pout began to shape itself upon Elfride's soft lips. 'You think always
+of him, and like him better than you do me!'
+
+'No, indeed, Elfride. The feeling is different quite. But I do like him,
+and he deserves even more affection from me than I give.'
+
+'You are not nice now, and you make me as jealous as possible!' she
+exclaimed perversely. 'I know you will never speak to any third person
+of me so warmly as you do to me of him.'
+
+'But you don't understand, Elfride,' he said with an anxious movement.
+'You shall know him some day. He is so brilliant--no, it isn't exactly
+brilliant; so thoughtful--nor does thoughtful express him--that it would
+charm you to talk to him. 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 comes
+between me and you. You think of him night and day, ever so much more
+than of anybody 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 middle of loving me. Stephen, suppose that I and this man Knight of
+yours were both drowning, 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 to handle.'
+
+'A-ha, I know. You would save him, and let me drown, drown, drown; and I
+don't care about your love!'
+
+She had endeavoured to give a playful tone to her words, but the latter
+speech was rather forced in its gaiety.
+
+At this point in the discussion she trotted off to turn a corner which
+was avoided by the footpath, the road and the path reuniting at a point
+a little further on. On again making her appearance she continually
+managed to look in a direction 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 entered the 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,
+which would 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
+laughed at 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 arrow to 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 a
+conscience-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 done it,' 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 you when we have asked papa.' She considered a moment, and added more
+seriously, 'I know now where I dropped it, Stephen. It was on the cliff.
+I remember a faint sensation 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
+deathlike silence of early afternoon. He ascended, with giddy-paced
+haste, the windy range of rocks to where they had sat, felt and peered
+about the stones and crannies, but Elfride's stray jewel was nowhere
+to be seen. Next Stephen slowly retraced his steps, and, pausing at a
+cross-road to reflect a while, he left the plateau and struck downwards
+across some fields, in the direction of Endelstow House.
+
+He walked along the path by the river without the slightest hesitation
+as to its bearing, apparently quite familiar with every inch of the
+ground. As the shadows began to lengthen and the sunlight to mellow,
+he passed through two wicket-gates, and drew near the outskirts of
+Endelstow Park. The river now ran along under the park fence, previous
+to entering the grove itself, a little further on.
+
+Here stood a cottage, between the fence and the stream, on a slightly
+elevated spot of ground, round which the river took a turn. The
+characteristic feature of this snug habitation was its one chimney in
+the gable end, its squareness of form disguised by a huge cloak of ivy,
+which had grown so luxuriantly and extended so far from its base, as to
+increase the apparent bulk of the chimney to the dimensions of a tower.
+Some little distance from the back of the house rose the park boundary,
+and over this were to be seen the sycamores of the grove, 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
+was thrust ajar, followed by the scrape of chairs on a stone floor, as
+if pushed back by their occupiers in rising from a table. The door was
+closed again, and nothing could now be heard from within, save a lively
+chatter and the rattle of plates.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter VIII
+
+     'Allen-a-Dale is no baron or lord.'
+
+
+The mists were creeping out of pools and swamps for their pilgrimages
+of the night when Stephen came up to the front door of the vicarage.
+Elfride was standing on the step illuminated by a lemon-hued expanse of
+western sky.
+
+'You never have been all this time looking for that earring?' she said
+anxiously.
+
+'Oh no; and I have not found it.'
+
+'Never mind. Though I am much vexed; they are my prettiest. But,
+Stephen, what ever have you been doing--where have you been? I have
+been so uneasy. I feared for you, knowing not an inch of the country. I
+thought, suppose he has fallen over 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 to say to him--and to you, Elfride.'
+
+'Will what you have to say endanger this nice time of ours, and is it
+that same shadowy 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
+favourite evening retreat. I will leave you now. Say all that's to be
+said--do all there is to be done. Think of me waiting anxiously for the
+end.' And she re-entered the house.
+
+She waited in the drawing-room, watching the lights sink to shadows, the
+shadows sink to darkness, until her impatience to know what had occurred
+in the garden could no longer be controlled. She passed round the
+shrubbery, unlatched the garden door, and skimmed with her keen eyes the
+whole twilighted space that the four walls enclosed and sheltered: they
+were not there. She mounted a little ladder, which had been used for
+gathering fruit, and looked over the wall into the field. This field
+extended to the limits of the glebe, which was enclosed 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 on the
+other side of the hedge. The voice, though soft in quality, was not
+Stephen's.
+
+The second speaker must have been in the long-neglected garden of an old
+manor-house hard by, which, together with a small estate attached, had
+lately been purchased by a person named Troyton, whom Elfride had never
+seen. Her father might have struck up an acquaintanceship with some
+member of that family through the privet-hedge, or a stranger to the
+neighbourhood might have wandered thither.
+
+Well, there was no necessity for disturbing him.
+
+And it seemed that, after all, Stephen had not yet made his desired
+communication to her father. Again she went indoors, wondering where
+Stephen could be. For want of something better to do, she went upstairs
+to her own little room. Here she sat down at the open window, and,
+leaning with her elbow on 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
+which rose to the dignity of a noise could be heard for miles, and the
+merest sound for a long distance. So she remained, thinking of Stephen,
+and wishing he had not deprived her of his company to no purpose, as it
+appeared. How delicate and sensitive he was, she reflected; and yet he
+was man enough to have a private mystery, which considerably elevated
+him in her eyes. Thus, looking at things with an inward vision, she lost
+consciousness of the flight of time.
+
+Strange conjunctions of circumstances, particularly those of a trivial
+everyday kind, are so frequent in an ordinary life, that we grow used to
+their unaccountableness, and forget the question whether the very long
+odds against such juxtaposition is not almost a disproof of it being a
+matter of chance at all. What occurred to Elfride at this moment was a
+case in point. She was vividly imagining, for the twentieth time, the
+kiss of the morning, and putting her lips together in the position
+another such a one would demand, when she heard the identical operation
+performed on the lawn, immediately beneath her window.
+
+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 the upland drew a keen sad line against the pale glow of the sky,
+unbroken except where a young cedar on the lawn, that had outgrown its
+fellow trees, shot its pointed head across the horizon, piercing the
+firmamental lustre like a sting.
+
+It was just possible that, had any persons been standing on the grassy
+portions of the lawn, Elfride might have seen their dusky forms. But the
+shrubs, which once had merely dotted the glade, had now grown bushy and
+large, till they hid at least half the enclosure containing them. The
+kissing pair might have been behind 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 he might be concerned in the foregoing enactment. But the
+reservations he at present insisted on, while they added to the mystery
+without which perhaps she would never have seriously loved him at all,
+were calculated to nourish doubts of all kinds, and with a slow flush of
+jealousy she asked herself, might he not be the culprit?
+
+Elfride glided downstairs on tiptoe, and out to the precise spot on
+which she had parted from Stephen to enable him to speak privately to
+her father. Thence she wandered into all the nooks around the place from
+which the sound seemed to proceed--among the huge laurestines, about the
+tufts of pampas grasses, amid the variegated hollies, under the weeping
+wych-elm--nobody was there. Returning indoors 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
+candles stream 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
+no light was shining from the window when I was on the lawn?' and she
+looked and saw that the shutters were still open.
+
+'Oh yes, I am in,' he said indifferently. 'What did you want Unity for?
+I think she 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
+that reason was. Her mind for a moment strayed to another subject,
+unimportant as it seemed. The red ember of a match was lying inside the
+fender, which explained that why she had seen no rays from the window
+was because the candles had only just been lighted.
+
+'I'll come directly,' said the vicar. 'I thought you were out somewhere
+with Mr. Smith.'
+
+Even the inexperienced Elfride could not help thinking that her father
+must be wonderfully blind if he failed to perceive what was the nascent
+consequence of herself and Stephen being so unceremoniously left
+together; wonderfully careless, if he saw it and did not think about
+it; wonderfully good, if, as seemed to her by far the most probable
+supposition, he saw it and thought about it and approved of it. These
+reflections were cut short by the appearance of Stephen just outside the
+porch, silvered about the head and shoulders with touches 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
+have kissed 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
+have not yet spoken to papa about our engagement?'
+
+'No,' he said regretfully, 'I could not find him directly; and then
+I went on thinking so much of what you said about objections,
+refusals--bitter words possibly--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 a delicate voice, which implied that her face had grown warm. 'I want
+him to know we 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. It is 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, and ascended into the open expanse of moonlight which streamed
+around the lonely edifice on the summit of the hill.
+
+The door was locked. They turned from the porch, and walked hand in hand
+to find a resting-place in the churchyard. Stephen chose a flat tomb,
+showing itself 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 I will. Yes, indeed,' she said, drawing closer, 'whatever may be
+said of you--and nothing bad can be--I will cling to you just the same.
+Your ways shall be my ways until I die.'
+
+'Did you ever think what my parents might be, or what society I
+originally moved in?'
+
+'No, not particularly. I have observed one or two little points in your
+manners which are rather quaint--no more. I suppose you have moved in
+the ordinary society 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,'
+she murmured tenderly, 'I do indeed. And why should you tell me these
+things so impressively? 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 for centuries, 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,'
+pursued Stephen, without further hesitation. 'And I remember very well
+how, when I was very young, I used to go to the milking, look on at the
+skimming, sleep through the 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 be done 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 so rough in your youth, and done menial things
+of that kind.' (Stephen withdrew an inch 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 the past; and I see
+that you are all the worthier for having pushed on in the world in 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 by letter. I knew him years before he went to Oxford, but I had not
+got far enough in my reading for him to entertain the idea of helping
+me in classics till he left home. Then I was sent away from the village,
+and we very seldom met; but he kept up this system of tuition by
+correspondence with the greatest regularity. I will tell you all the
+story, but not now. There is nothing more to say now, beyond giving
+places, persons, and dates.' His voice became timidly slow at this
+point.
+
+'No; don't take trouble to say more. You are a dear honest fellow to say
+so much as you have; and it is not so dreadful either. It has become a
+normal thing that millionaires commence by going up to London with their
+tools at their back, and half-a-crown in their pockets. That sort of
+origin is getting so respected,' she continued cheerfully, 'that it is
+acquiring some of the odour of Norman ancestry.'
+
+'Ah, if I had MADE my fortune, I shouldn't mind. But I am only a
+possible maker of 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
+my story; and yet I feared to do so, Elfie. I dreaded to lose you, and I
+was cowardly on that account.'
+
+'How plain everything about you seems after this explanation! Your
+peculiarities in chess-playing, the pronunciation papa noticed in your
+Latin, your odd mixture of book-knowledge with ignorance of ordinary
+social accomplishments, are accounted for in a moment. And has this
+anything to do with 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
+side door; you two were in a room with the window towards me. You came
+to me a moment later.'
+
+'She was my mother.'
+
+'Your mother THERE!' She withdrew herself to look at him silently in her
+interest.
+
+'Elfride,' said Stephen, 'I was going to tell you the remainder
+to-morrow--I have been keeping it back--I must tell it now, after all.
+The remainder of my revelation refers to where my parents are. Where do
+you think they live? You know 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
+under the 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. He put 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--who worked in the fields with him--held each tree
+upright whilst he filled in the earth: they told me so when I was a
+child. He was the sexton, too, and dug many of the graves around us.'
+
+'And was your unaccountable vanishing on the first morning of your
+arrival, and again 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. I then went to live with my uncle, a blacksmith, near Exonbury, in
+order to be able to attend a national school as a day scholar; there
+was none on this remote coast then. It was there I met with my friend
+Knight. And when I was fifteen and had been fairly educated by the
+school-master--and more particularly by Knight--I was put as a pupil in
+an architect's office in that town, because I was skilful in the use
+of the pencil. A full premium was paid by the efforts of my mother
+and father, rather against the wishes of Lord Luxellian, who likes my
+father, however, and thinks a great deal of him. There I stayed till six
+months ago, when I obtained a situation as improver, as it is called, in
+a London office. 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 very strange it seems to me!' she murmured.
+
+'My mother curtseyed to you and your father last Sunday,' said Stephen,
+with a pained smile at the thought of the incongruity. 'And your papa
+said to her, "I am glad to see you so regular at church, JANE."'
+
+'I remember it, but I have never spoken to her. We have only been here
+eighteen months, and the parish is so large.'
+
+'Contrast with this,' said Stephen, with a miserable laugh, 'your
+father's belief in my "blue blood," which is still prevalent in his
+mind. The first night I came, he insisted upon proving my descent from
+one of the most ancient west-county families, on account of my
+second Christian name; when the truth is, it was given me because my
+grandfather was assistant gardener in the Fitzmaurice-Smith family for
+thirty years. Having seen your face, my darling, I had not heart to
+contradict him, and tell him what would have cut me off from a friendly
+knowledge of you.'
+
+She sighed deeply. 'Yes, I see now how this inequality may be made
+to trouble us,' she murmured, and continued in a low, sad whisper,
+'I wouldn't have minded if they had lived far away. Papa might have
+consented to an engagement between us if your connection had been with
+villagers a hundred miles off; remoteness softens family contrasts. But
+he will not like--O Stephen, Stephen! what can I do?'
+
+'Do?' he said tentatively, yet with heaviness. 'Give me up; let me go
+back to London, and think no more of me.'
+
+'No, no; I cannot give you up! This hopelessness in our affairs makes me
+care more for you....I see what did not strike me at first. Stephen,
+why do we trouble? Why should papa object? An architect in London is an
+architect in London. Who inquires there? Nobody. We shall live there,
+shall we not? Why need we be so alarmed?'
+
+'And Elfie,' said Stephen, his hopes kindling with hers, 'Knight thinks
+nothing of my being only a cottager's son; he says I am as worthy of his
+friendship as if 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 an answer, 'but I have not even formed a strong friendship, such
+as you have for Knight. I wish you hadn't. It diminishes me.'
+
+'Now, Elfride, you know better,' he said wooingly. 'And had you really
+never any 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 and sad 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, and was buried the day you first came.'
+
+'Let us go away. I don't like standing by HIM, even if you never loved
+him. He was BEFORE me.'
+
+'Worries make you unreasonable,' she half pouted, following Stephen at
+the distance 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 they paused wistfully, like children late at school.
+
+Women accept their destiny more readily than men. Elfride had now
+resigned herself to the overwhelming idea of her lover's sorry
+antecedents; Stephen had not forgotten the trifling grievance that
+Elfride had known earlier admiration than 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 more tangible trouble.
+
+The study appeared to be the only room lighted up. They entered,
+each with a demeanour intended to conceal the inconcealable fact that
+reciprocal love was their dominant chord. Elfride perceived a man,
+sitting with his back towards herself, talking to her father. She would
+have retired, but Mr. Swancourt had seen her.
+
+'Come in,' he said; 'it is only Martin Cannister, come for a copy of the
+register for poor Mrs. Jethway.'
+
+Martin Cannister, the sexton, was rather a favourite with Elfride. He
+used to absorb her attention by telling her of his strange experiences
+in digging up after long years the bodies of persons he had known, and
+recognizing them by some little sign (though in reality he had never
+recognized any). He had shrewd small eyes and a great wealth of double
+chin, which compensated in some measure for considerable poverty of
+nose.
+
+The appearance of a slip of paper in Cannister's hand, and a few
+shillings lying on the table in front of him, denoted that the business
+had been transacted, and the tenor of their conversation went to
+show that a summary of village 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 (whom he, in common with other villagers, had never for a moment
+recognized), then sat 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
+scrupulously vertical with his left hand, and struck a blow with great
+force on the knob of the 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 eyes around to see that before proceeding
+further his listeners well grasped the subject at that stage. 'Well,
+when Nat had struck some half-dozen blows more upon the pile, 'a stopped
+for a second or two. John, thinking he had done striking, put his hand
+upon the top o' the pile to gie en a pull, and see if 'a were firm in
+the ground.' Mr. Cannister spread his hand over the top of the stick,
+completely covering it with his palm. 'Well, so to speak, Nat hadn't
+maned to stop striking, and when John had put his hand upon the pile,
+the beetle----'
+
+'Oh dreadful!' said Elfride.
+
+'The beetle was already coming down, you see, sir. Nat just caught sight
+of his hand, but couldn't stop the blow in time. Down came the beetle
+upon poor John Smith's hand, and squashed en to a pummy.'
+
+'Dear me, dear me! poor fellow!' said the vicar, with an intonation like
+the groans 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 in London, 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
+the time this farewell remark came from his lips he was just outside the
+door of the room. He tramped along the hall, stayed more than a minute
+endeavouring to close 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 over his face, the lines of his features became more firmly
+defined, and his lips seemed to get thinner. It was evident that a
+series of little circumstances, hitherto unheeded, were now fitting
+themselves together, and forming a lucid picture in Mr. Swancourt's mind
+in such a manner as to render useless further explanation 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 as if 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
+be anything of the nature of private business between us.'
+
+Mr. Swancourt put on his straw hat, crossed the drawing-room, into which
+the moonlight was shining, and stepped out of the French window into
+the verandah. It required no further effort to perceive what, indeed,
+reasoning might have foretold as the natural colour of a mind whose
+pleasures were taken amid genealogies, good dinners, and patrician
+reminiscences, that Mr. Swancourt's prejudices were too strong for his
+generosity, and that Stephen's moments as his 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 from the doorstep, Unity and Ann the housemaid
+came home from their visit to the village.
+
+'Have you heard anything about John Smith? The accident is not so bad as
+was reported, 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 came down, 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 only made 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 fair in love;' and he took her fingers lightly in his own.
+
+With her head thrown sideways in the Greuze attitude, she looked a
+tender reproach at his doubt and pressed his hand. Stephen returned the
+pressure threefold, then hastily went off to his father's cottage by the
+wall of Endelstow Park.
+
+'Elfride, what have you to say to this?' inquired her father, coming up
+immediately Stephen had retired.
+
+With feminine quickness she grasped at any straw that would enable her
+to plead his cause. 'He had told me of it,' she faltered; 'so that it is
+not a discovery in 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, to his underhand concealment of this, than I do to the fact
+itself. It looks very much like his making a fool of me, and of you too.
+You and he have been about together, and corresponding together, in a
+way I don't at all approve of--in a most unseemly way. You should have
+known how improper such conduct is. A woman can'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, a villager's son; and we, Swancourts, connections of the Luxellians.
+We have been coming to nothing for centuries, and now I believe we have
+got there. What shall 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! And what he was going to ask you is, if you will allow
+of an engagement between us till he is a gentleman as good as you. We
+are not in a hurry, dear papa; we don't want in the least to marry now;
+not until he is richer. Only will you let us be engaged, because I love
+him so, and he loves me?'
+
+Mr. Swancourt's feelings were a little touched by this appeal, and he
+was annoyed that such should be the case. 'Certainly not!' he replied.
+He pronounced the inhibition lengthily and sonorously, so that the 'not'
+sounded like '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 by having him here,--the son of one of my village
+peasants,--but now I am to make him 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 you knew they were a sort of--love-letters; and since he has been
+here you have let him 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 to love-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--I know I did guess some childish attachment might arise between
+you; I own I did not take much trouble to prevent it; but I have not
+particularly countenanced it; and, Elfride, how can you expect that I
+should now? It is impossible; no father in England would hear of such a
+thing.'
+
+'But he is the same man, papa; the same in every particular; and how can
+he be less fit for me than he was before?'
+
+'He appeared a young man with well-to-do friends, and a little property;
+but having neither, he is another man.'
+
+'You inquired nothing about him?'
+
+'I went by Hewby's introduction. He should have told me. So should
+the young man himself; of course he should. I consider it a most
+dishonourable thing to come 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 well to 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 was no affair of ours who his parents were. And
+then he knew that if he told you he would never be asked here, and would
+perhaps never see me again. And he wanted to see me. Who can blame him
+for trying, by any means, to stay near me--the girl he loves? All is
+fair in love. I have heard you say so yourself, papa; and you yourself
+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, and mend my mistake; that is, get shot of him again, as soon as the
+laws of hospitality will allow.' But Mr. Swancourt then remembered that
+he was a Christian. 'I would not, for the world, seem to turn him out
+of doors,' he added; 'but I think he will have the tact to see that he
+cannot stay long after this, with good taste.'
+
+'He will, because he's a gentleman. See how graceful his manners are,'
+Elfride went on; though perhaps Stephen's manners, like the feats
+of Euryalus, owed their attractiveness in her eyes rather to the
+attractiveness of his person than to their own excellence.
+
+'Ay; anybody can be what you call graceful, if he lives a little time
+in a city, and keeps his eyes open. And he might have picked up his
+gentlemanliness by 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,'
+gallantly persisted Elfride, though her sobs began to interrupt her
+articulation, 'anywhere but here--you--would have--only regarded--HIM,
+and not THEM! His station--would have--been what--his profession makes
+it,--and not fixed by--his father's humble position--at all; whom he
+never lives with--now. Though John Smith has saved lots of money, and
+is better off than we are, they say, or he couldn't have put his son
+to such an expensive profession. And it is clever and--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's mess."'
+
+'You insult me, papa!' she burst out. 'You do, you do! He is my own
+Stephen, he is!'
+
+'That may or may not be true, Elfride,' returned her father, again
+uncomfortably agitated in spite of himself 'You confuse future
+probabilities with present facts,--what the young man may be with what
+he is. We must look at what he is, not what an improbable degree of
+success in his profession may make him. The case is this: the son of
+a working-man in my parish who may or may not be able to buy me up--a
+youth who has not yet advanced so far into life as to have any income
+of his own deserving the name, and therefore of his father's degree as
+regards station--wants to be engaged to you. His family are living
+in precisely the same spot in England as yours, so throughout this
+county--which is the world to us--you would always be known as the wife
+of Jack Smith the mason's son, 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 my words.'
+
+Elfride looked silently and hopelessly out of the window with large
+heavy eyes and wet cheeks.
+
+'I call it great temerity--and long to call it audacity--in Hewby,'
+resumed her father. 'I never heard such a thing--giving such a
+hobbledehoy native of this place such an introduction to me as he did.
+Naturally you were deceived as well as 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 to your 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
+leave London by the early train to-morrow morning...MANY THANKS FOR YOUR
+PROPOSAL TO ACCOMMODATE HIM...YOU MAY PUT EVERY CONFIDENCE IN HIM, and
+may rely upon his discernment in the matter of church architecture."
+Well, I repeat that Hewby ought 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
+their clerks' fathers and mothers. They have assistants who come to
+their offices and shops for years, and hardly even know where they
+live. What they can do--what profits they can bring the firm--that's all
+London men care about. And that is helped in him by his faculty of being
+uniformly pleasant.'
+
+'Uniform pleasantness is rather a defect than a faculty. It shows that a
+man hasn't sense enough to know whom to despise.'
+
+'It shows that he acts by faith and not by sight, as those you claim
+succession from directed.'
+
+'That's some more of what he's been telling you, I suppose! Yes, I was
+inclined to suspect him, because he didn't care about sauces of any
+kind. I always did doubt a man's being a gentleman if his palate had no
+acquired tastes. An unedified palate is the irrepressible cloven foot
+of the upstart. The idea of my bringing out a bottle of my '40
+Martinez--only eleven of them left now--to a man who didn't know it from
+eighteenpenny! Then the Latin line he gave to my quotation; it was very
+cut-and-dried, very; or I, who haven't looked into a classical 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 of
+tomfoolery in time.'
+
+'No, no, no, papa,' she moaned. For of all the miseries attaching to
+miserable love, the worst is the misery of thinking that the passion
+which is the cause of them all may cease.
+
+'Elfride,' said her father with rough friendliness, 'I have an excellent
+scheme on hand, which I cannot tell you of now. A scheme to benefit you
+and me. It has been thrust upon me for some little time--yes, thrust
+upon me--but I didn't dream of its value till this afternoon, when the
+revelation came. I should be most unwise to refuse to entertain it.'
+
+'I don't like that word,' she returned wearily. 'You have lost so much
+already by 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 which any 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 it is settled, though I will just say this much,
+that you soon may have other fish to fry than to think of Stephen Smith.
+Remember, I wish, not to be angry, but friendly, to the young man; for
+your sake I'll regard him as a friend in a certain sense. But this is
+enough; in a few days you will be quite my way of thinking. 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 three hours previously. He drew near and under the rich foliage
+growing about the outskirts of Endelstow Park, the spotty lights and
+shades from the shining moon maintaining a race over his head and down
+his back in an endless gambol. When he crossed the plank bridge and
+entered the garden-gate, he saw an illuminated figure coming from the
+enclosed plot towards the house on the other side. It was his father,
+with his hand in a sling, taking a general moonlight view of the 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 in bed in another ten minutes. Come to see what's the matter wi'
+me, I suppose, my lad?'
+
+The doctor had come and gone, and the hand had been pronounced as
+injured but slightly, though it might possibly have been considered
+a far more serious case if Mr. Smith had been a more important man.
+Stephen's anxious inquiry drew from his father words of regret at the
+inconvenience to the world of his doing nothing for the next two days,
+rather than of concern for the pain of the accident. Together they
+entered the house.
+
+John Smith--brown as autumn as to skin, white as winter as to
+clothes--was a satisfactory specimen of the village artificer in stone.
+In common with most rural mechanics, he had too much individuality to be
+a typical 'working-man'--a resultant of that beach-pebble attrition with
+his kind only to be experienced in large towns, which metamorphoses the
+unit Self into a fraction of the unit Class.
+
+There was not the speciality in his labour which distinguishes the
+handicraftsmen of towns. Though only a mason, strictly speaking, he was
+not above handling a brick, if bricks were the order of the day; or a
+slate or tile, if a roof had to be covered before the wet weather set
+in, and nobody was near who could do it better. Indeed, on one or two
+occasions in the depth of winter, when frost peremptorily forbids all
+use of the trowel, making foundations to settle, stones to fly, and
+mortar to crumble, he had taken to felling and sawing trees. Moreover,
+he had practised gardening in his own plot for so many years that, on an
+emergency, he might have made a living by that calling.
+
+Probably our countryman was not such an accomplished artificer in a
+particular direction as his town brethren in the trades. But he was, in
+truth, like that clumsy pin-maker who made the whole pin, and who was
+despised by Adam Smith on that account and respected by Macaulay, much
+more the artist nevertheless.
+
+Appearing now, indoors, by the light of the candle, his stalwart
+healthiness was a sight to see. His beard was close and knotted as that
+of a chiselled Hercules; his shirt sleeves were partly rolled up, his
+waistcoat unbuttoned; the difference in hue between the snowy linen and
+the ruddy arms and face contrasting like the white of an egg and its
+yolk. Mrs. Smith, on hearing them enter, advanced from the pantry.
+
+Mrs. Smith was a matron whose countenance addressed itself to the
+mind rather than to the eye, though not exclusively. She retained her
+personal freshness even now, in the prosy afternoon-time of her life;
+but what her features were primarily 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 in general.
+
+The details of the accident were then rehearsed by Stephen's father, in
+the dramatic manner also common to Martin Cannister, other individuals
+of the neighbourhood, and the rural world generally. Mrs. Smith threw in
+her sentiments between the acts, as Coryphaeus of the tragedy, to make
+the description 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't see what you have to grieve about, Stephen,' she said. 'People who
+accidentally get 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
+than you 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 of utter incomprehension.
+
+'She's a pretty piece enough,' Mrs. Smith continued, 'and very lady-like
+and clever 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's fit for me or no, as if there were room for doubt on
+the matter! Why, to marry her would be the great blessing of my
+life--socially and practically, as well as in other respects. No such
+good fortune as that, I'm afraid; she's too far above 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
+among such people as you mean, whilst I could get indifference among
+such people as hers.'
+
+'What crazy twist o' thinking will enter your head next?' said his
+mother. 'And come to that, she's not a bit too high for you, or you too
+low for her. See how careful I be to keep myself up. I'm sure I never
+stop for more than a minute together to talk to any journeymen people;
+and I never invite anybody to our party o' Christmases who are not
+in business for themselves. And I talk to several toppermost carriage
+people that come to my lord's without saying ma'am or 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 very little curtseying from me!' said Mrs. Smith, bridling and
+sparkling with vexation. 'You go on at me, Stephen, as if I were your
+worst enemy! What else could I do with the man to get rid of him,
+banging it into me and your father by side and by seam, about his
+greatness, and what happened when he was a young fellow at college, and
+I don't know what-all; the tongue o' en flopping round his 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
+expect a father-in-law of a rank lower than her father. The men have
+gone up so, and the women have stood still. Every man you meet is more
+the dand than his father; 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 wait for 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 about it. I shall never go higher, because I don't want to, nor
+should I if I lived to be a hundred. As to you saying that she's after
+me, I don't like such a remark about her, for it implies a scheming
+woman, and a man worth scheming for, 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,' said his 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 you have known her,' said his mother. 'Well I think that five years
+hence you'll be plenty young enough to think of such things. And really
+she can very well afford to wait, and will too, take my word. Living
+down in an out-step place like 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 now that Stephen had been talked down; 'there's not a word to say
+against her, I'll own. I see her sometimes decked out like a horse going
+to fair, and I admire her for't. A perfect little lady. But people can't
+help their thoughts, and if she'd learnt to make figures instead of
+letters when she was at school 'twould have been better for her pocket;
+for as I said, there never were worse times for 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
+for nothing, and I know men all move up a stage by marriage. Men of her
+class, that is, parsons, marry squires' daughters; squires marry lords'
+daughters; lords marry dukes' daughters; dukes marry queens' daughters.
+All stages of gentlemen mate a stage higher; and the lowest stage of
+gentlewomen are left single, or marry out of their class.'
+
+'But you said just now, dear mother----' retorted Stephen, unable to
+resist the temptation 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 the
+consequence, 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
+warrant that you'll pick holes in everything your mother says, if you
+can, Stephen. You are just like your father for that; take anybody's
+part but mine. Whilst I am speaking and talking and trying and slaving
+away for your good, you are waiting to catch me out in that way. So you
+are in her class, but 'tis what HER people would 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-faced case-clock against the wall.
+
+'I'm sure,' added Mrs. Smith in a more philosophic tone, and as a
+terminative speech, 'if there'd been so much trouble to get a husband in
+my time as there is in these days--when you must make a god-almighty of
+a man to get en to hae ye--I'd have trod clay for bricks before I'd ever
+have lowered my dignity to marry, or there's no bread in nine loaves.'
+
+The discussion now dropped, and as it was getting late, Stephen bade his
+parents farewell for the evening, his mother none the less warmly
+for their sparring; for although Mrs. Smith and Stephen were always
+contending, they were never at enmity.
+
+'And possibly,' said Stephen, 'I may leave here altogether to-morrow;
+I don't know. So that if I shouldn't call again before returning to
+London, don't be alarmed, will you?'
+
+'But didn't you come for a fortnight?' said his mother. 'And haven't you
+a month'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
+nothing about my having been here, for her sake. At what time of the
+morning does the carrier pass Endelstow lane?'
+
+'Seven o'clock.'
+
+And then he left them. His thoughts were, that should the vicar permit
+him to become engaged, to hope for an engagement, or in any way to think
+of his beloved Elfride, he might stay longer. Should he be forbidden to
+think of any such thing, he resolved to go at once. And the latter, even
+to young hopefulness, 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, the modest 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 was hardly philosopher enough to avail
+himself of Nature's offer. His constitution was made up of very simple
+particulars; was one which, rare in the spring-time of civilizations,
+seems to grow abundant as a nation gets older, individuality fades,
+and education spreads; that is, his brain had extraordinary receptive
+powers, and no great creativeness. Quickly acquiring any kind of
+knowledge he saw around him, and having a plastic adaptability more
+common in woman than in man, he changed colour like a chameleon as the
+society he found himself in assumed a higher and more artificial tone.
+He had not many original ideas, and yet there was scarcely an idea to
+which, under proper training, he could not have added a respectable
+co-ordinate.
+
+He saw nothing outside himself to-night; and what he saw within was a
+weariness to his flesh. Yet to a dispassionate observer, his pretensions
+to Elfride, though rather premature, were far from absurd as marriages
+go, unless the accidental proximity of simple but honest parents could
+be said to make them so.
+
+The clock struck eleven when he entered the house. Elfride had been
+waiting with scarcely a movement since he departed. Before he had spoken
+to her she caught sight of him passing into the study with her father.
+She saw that he had by some means obtained the private interview he
+desired.
+
+A nervous headache had been growing on the excitable girl during the
+absence of Stephen, and now she could do nothing beyond going up again
+to her room as she had done before. Instead of lying down she sat again
+in the darkness without closing the door, and listened with a beating
+heart to every sound from downstairs. The servants had gone to bed.
+She ultimately heard the two men come from the study and cross to the
+dining-room, where supper had been lingering for 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 almost
+immediately followed by her father, who also retired for the night. Not
+inclined to get a light, she partly undressed and sat on the bed, where
+she remained in pained thought for some time, possibly an hour. Then
+rising to close her door previously to fully unrobing, she saw a streak
+of light shining across the landing. Her father's door was shut, and he
+could be heard snoring regularly. The light came from Stephen's room,
+and the slight sounds also coming thence emphatically denoted what he
+was doing. In the perfect silence she could hear the closing of a lid
+and the clicking of a lock,--he was fastening his hat-box. Then the
+buckling of straps and the click of another key,--he was securing his
+portmanteau. With trebled foreboding she opened her door softly, and
+went towards his. One sensation pervaded her to distraction. Stephen,
+her handsome youth and darling, was going away, and she might never see
+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 at his door, and whispered 'Stephen!' He came
+instantly, opened the door, and stepped out.
+
+'Tell me; are we to hope?'
+
+He replied in a disturbed whisper, and a tear approached its outlet,
+though none fell.
+
+'I am not to think of such a preposterous thing--that's what he said.
+And I am going 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 the
+drawing-room for a few minutes; he will hear us here.'
+
+She preceded him down the staircase with the taper light in her
+hand, looking unnaturally tall and thin in the long dove-coloured
+dressing-gown she wore. She did not stop to think of the propriety
+or otherwise of this midnight interview under such circumstances. She
+thought that the tragedy of her life was beginning, and, for the first
+time almost, felt that her existence might have a grave side, the shade
+of which enveloped and rendered invisible the delicate gradations of
+custom and punctilio. Elfride softly opened the drawing-room door and
+they both went in. When she had placed the candle on the table, he
+enclosed her 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 either biassed in favour of a thing, or prejudiced against it.
+Argument is powerless against either feeling.'
+
+'No; I won't think of him so,' said Stephen. 'If I appear before him
+some time hence as a man of established name, he will accept me--I know
+he will. He is not a wicked man.'
+
+'No, he is not wicked. But you say "some time hence," as if it were no
+time. To you, 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 a year--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. The remark awoke in Stephen the converse fear. 'You, too, may be
+persuaded to give me up, when time has made me fainter in your memory.
+For, remember, your love for me must be nourished in secret; there will
+be no long visits from me to support you. Circumstances will always tend
+to obliterate me.'
+
+'Stephen,' she said, filled with her own misgivings, and unheeding his
+last words, 'there are beautiful women where you live--of course I know
+there are--and they may win you away from me.' Her tears came visibly
+as she drew a mental picture 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 family don't want you, and get to include me
+with them. And there will be a vacancy in your 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
+at first, and then you will look and be interested, and after a while
+you will think, "Ah, they know all about city life, and assemblies, and
+coteries, and the manners of the titled, and poor little Elfie, with all
+the fuss that's made about her having me, doesn't know about anything
+but a little house and a few cliffs and a space of sea, far away." And
+then you'll be more interested in them, and they'll make you have them
+instead of me, on purpose to be cruel to me 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
+recognition of the uncertainty of all that is not accomplished. And,
+worse than that general feeling, there of course remained the sadness
+which arose from the special features of his own case. However remote a
+desired issue may be, the mere fact of having entered the groove which
+leads to it, cheers to some extent with a sense of accomplishment. Had
+Mr. Swancourt consented to an engagement of no less length than ten
+years, Stephen would have been comparatively cheerful in waiting; they
+would have felt that they were somewhere on the road to Cupid's garden.
+But, with a possibility of a shorter probation, they had not as yet 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
+for marriage 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
+thing that ever does sweethearts good!'
+
+'Secretly would do, would it not, Elfie?'
+
+'Yes, secretly would do; secretly would indeed be best,' she said, and
+went on reflectively: 'All we want is to render it absolutely impossible
+for any future circumstance to upset our future intention of being happy
+together; not to begin being happy now.'
+
+'Exactly,' he murmured in a voice and manner the counterpart of hers.
+'To marry and part secretly, and live on as we are living now; merely to
+put it out of anybody'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
+strong enough to make any woman in the world marry against her will: no
+conceivable pressure, up to torture or starvation, can make a woman once
+married to her lover anybody else's wife.'
+
+Now up to this point the idea of an immediate secret marriage had been
+held by both as an untenable hypothesis, wherewith simply to beguile a
+miserable moment. During a pause which followed Stephen's last remark,
+a fascinating perception, then an alluring conviction, flashed along the
+brain of both. The perception was that an immediate marriage COULD be
+contrived; the conviction that such an act, in spite of its daring, its
+fathomless results, its deceptiveness, would be preferred by each to the
+life they must lead under any other conditions.
+
+The youth spoke first, and his voice trembled with the magnitude of the
+conception he was cherishing. 'How strong we should feel, Elfride!
+going on our separate 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
+from her father's opposition which made it blaze with a dozen times the
+intensity it would have exhibited if left alone. Never were conditions
+more favourable for developing a girl's first passing fancy for a
+handsome boyish face--a fancy rooted in inexperience and nourished by
+seclusion--into a wild unreflecting passion fervid enough for anything.
+All the elements of such a development were there, the chief one being
+hopelessness--a necessary ingredient always to perfect the mixture of
+feelings united under the name of loving to distraction.
+
+'We would tell papa soon, would we not?' she inquired timidly. 'Nobody
+else need know. He would then be convinced that hearts cannot be played
+with; love encouraged be ready to grow, love discouraged be ready to
+die, at a moment's notice. Stephen, do you not think that if marriages
+against a parent's consent are ever justifiable, they are when young
+people have been favoured up to a point, 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
+your papa's wishes. Only think, Elfie, how pleasant he was towards me
+but six hours ago! 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 you
+irremediably 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 to her mind, 'I cannot bear your going away like this! It is
+too dreadful. All I have been expecting miserably killed within me like
+this!'
+
+Stephen flushed hot with impulse. 'I will not be a doubt to you--thought
+of you shall not be a misery to me!' he said. 'We will be wife and
+husband before we part 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 to me--it seems to me now--like trying to catch you--a girl
+better in the world than I.'
+
+'Not that, indeed! And am I better in worldly station? What's the use of
+have beens? We may have been something once; we are nothing now.'
+
+Then they whispered long and earnestly together; Stephen hesitatingly
+proposing this and that plan, Elfride modifying them, with quick
+breathings, and hectic flush, and unnaturally bright eyes. It was two
+o'clock before an arrangement was 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 door had 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 monotonous
+parallelogram 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 went downstairs, portmanteau in hand. Throughout
+the night he had intended to see Mr. Swancourt again, but the sharp
+rebuff of the previous evening rendered such an interview particularly
+distasteful. Perhaps there was another and less honest reason. He
+decided to put it off. Whatever of moral timidity or obliquity may have
+lain in such a decision, no perception of it was strong enough to detain
+him. He wrote a note in his room, which stated simply that he did not
+feel happy in the house after Mr. Swancourt's sudden veto on what he had
+favoured a few hours before; but that he hoped a time would come, and
+that soon, when his original feelings of pleasure as Mr. Swancourt's
+guest might be recovered.
+
+He expected to find the downstairs rooms wearing the gray and cheerless
+aspect that early morning gives to everything out of the sun. He
+found in the dining room a breakfast laid, of which somebody had just
+partaken.
+
+Stephen gave the maid-servant his note of adieu. She stated that Mr.
+Swancourt had risen early that morning, and made an early breakfast. He
+was not going away that she knew of.
+
+Stephen took a cup of coffee, left the house of his love, and turned
+into the lane. It was so early that the shaded places still smelt like
+night time, and the sunny spots had hardly felt the sun. The horizontal
+rays made every shallow dip in the ground to show as a well-marked
+hollow. Even the channel of the path was enough to throw shade, and the
+very stones of the road cast tapering dashes of darkness westward, as
+long as Jael's tent-nail.
+
+At a spot not more than a hundred yards from the vicar's residence the
+lane leading thence crossed the high road. Stephen reached the point of
+intersection, stood still and listened. Nothing could be heard save the
+lengthy, murmuring line of the sea upon the adjacent shore. He looked
+at his watch, and then mounted a gate upon which he seated himself, to
+await the arrival 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. There were 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 the hill.
+
+The other set of wheels sounded from the lane Stephen had just
+traversed. On closer observation, he perceived that they were moving
+from the precincts of the ancient manor-house adjoining the vicarage
+grounds. A carriage then left the entrance gates of the house, and
+wheeling round came fully in sight. It was a plain travelling carriage,
+with a small quantity of luggage, apparently a lady's. The vehicle
+came to the junction of the four ways half-a-minute before the 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
+younger woman, who seemed to be her maid. The road they had taken led to
+Stratleigh, a small watering-place sixteen miles north.
+
+He heard the manor-house gates swing again, and looking up saw another
+person leaving them, and walking off in the direction of the parsonage.
+'Ah, how much I wish I were moving that way!' felt he parenthetically.
+The gentleman was tall, and resembled Mr. Swancourt in outline and
+attire. He opened the vicarage gate and went in. Mr. Swancourt, then,
+it certainly was. Instead of remaining in bed that morning Mr. Swancourt
+must have taken it into his head to see his new neighbour off on a
+journey. He must have been greatly interested in that neighbour to do
+such an unusual thing.
+
+The carrier's conveyance had pulled up, and Stephen now handed in his
+portmanteau and mounted the shafts. 'Who is that lady in the carriage?'
+he inquired indifferently of Lickpan the carrier.
+
+'That, sir, is Mrs. Troyton, a widder wi' a mint o' money. She's the
+owner of all that part of Endelstow that is not Lord Luxellian's. Only
+been here a short time; she came into it by law. The owner formerly was
+a terrible mysterious party--never lived here--hardly ever was seen here
+except in the month of September, as I might say.'
+
+The horses were started again, and noise rendered further discourse a
+matter of too great exertion. Stephen crept inside under the tilt, and
+was soon lost in reverie.
+
+Three hours and a half of straining up hills and jogging down brought
+them to St. Launce's, the market town and railway station nearest to
+Endelstow, and the place 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 van was so timed as to meet a starting
+up-train, which Stephen entered. Two or three hours' railway travel
+through vertical cuttings in metamorphic rock, through oak copses rich
+and green, stretching over slopes and down delightful valleys, glens,
+and ravines, sparkling with water like many-rilled Ida, and he plunged
+amid the hundred and fifty thousand people composing the town of
+Plymouth.
+
+There being some time upon his hands he left his luggage at the
+cloak-room, and went on foot along Bedford Street to the nearest church.
+Here Stephen wandered among the multifarious tombstones and looked in at
+the chancel window, dreaming of something that was likely to happen by
+the altar there in the course of the coming month. He turned away and
+ascended the Hoe, viewed the magnificent stretch of sea and massive
+promontories of land, but without particularly discerning one feature of
+the varied perspective. He still saw that inner prospect--the event
+he hoped for in yonder church. The wide Sound, the Breakwater, the
+light-house on far-off Eddystone, the dark steam vessels, brigs,
+barques, and schooners, either floating stilly, or gliding with tiniest
+motion, 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. He took his ticket, and entered the London train.
+
+
+That day was an irksome time at Endelstow vicarage. Neither father nor
+daughter alluded to the departure of Stephen. Mr. Swancourt's manner
+towards her partook of the compunctious kindness that arises from a
+misgiving as to the justice of some previous act.
+
+Either from lack of the capacity to grasp the whole coup d'oeil, or from
+a natural endowment for certain kinds of stoicism, women are cooler than
+men in critical situations of the passive form. Probably, in Elfride's
+case at least, it was blindness to the greater contingencies of the
+future she was preparing for herself, which enabled her to ask her
+father in a quiet voice if he could give 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 in
+consequence 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 the ghost of an attendant, over the fourteen or sixteen miles
+of hard road intervening between their home and the station at St.
+Launce's, put up the horse, and go on the remainder of the distance by
+train, returning in the same manner in the evening. It was then resolved
+that, though she had successfully accomplished this journey once, it was
+not to be repeated without some attendance.
+
+But Elfride must not be confounded with ordinary young feminine
+equestrians. The circumstances of her lonely and narrow life made it
+imperative that in trotting about the neighbourhood she must trot
+alone or else not at all. Usage soon rendered this perfectly natural to
+herself. Her father, who had had other experiences, did not much like
+the idea of a Swancourt, whose pedigree could be as distinctly traced as
+a thread in a skein of silk, scampering over the hills like a farmer's
+daughter, even though he could habitually neglect her. But what with
+his not being able to afford her a regular attendant, and his inveterate
+habit of letting anything be to save himself trouble, the circumstance
+grew customary. And so there arose a chronic notion in the villagers'
+minds that all ladies rode without an attendant, like Miss Swancourt,
+except a few who were sometimes visiting at Lord Luxellian's.
+
+'I don't like your going to Plymouth alone, particularly going to St.
+Launce's on horseback. Why not drive, and take the man?'
+
+'It is not nice to be so overlooked.' Worm's company would not seriously
+have interfered 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 from Stephen. It had been timed to come on that day by special
+arrangement between them. In it he named the earliest morning on which
+he could meet her at Plymouth. Her father had been on a journey to
+Stratleigh, and returned in unusual buoyancy of spirit. It was a good
+opportunity; and since the dismissal of 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 of hers.
+
+'Next Thursday week I am going from home in a different direction,' said
+her father. 'In fact, I shall leave home the night before. You might
+choose the same day, for they wish to take up the carpets, or some such
+thing, I think. As I said, I don't like you to be seen in a town on
+horseback alone; but go if you will.'
+
+Thursday week. Her father had named the very day that Stephen also had
+named that morning as the earliest on which it would be of any use to
+meet her; that was, about fifteen days from the day on which he had left
+Endelstow. Fifteen days--that fragment of duration which has acquired
+such an interesting individuality from its connection with the English
+marriage law.
+
+She involuntarily looked at her father so strangely, that on becoming
+conscious of 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
+to herself in the circumstance that Mr. Swancourt had proposed to leave
+home the night previous to her wished-for day. Her father seldom took
+long journeys; seldom slept from home except perhaps on the night
+following a remote Visitation. Well, she would not inquire too curiously
+into the reason of the opportunity, nor did he, as would have been
+natural, proceed to explain it of his own accord. In matters of fact
+there had hitherto been no reserve between them, though they were not
+usually confidential in its full sense. But the divergence of their
+emotions on Stephen's account had produced an estrangement which just
+at present went even to the extent of reticence on the most ordinary
+household topics.
+
+Elfride was almost unconsciously relieved, persuading herself that her
+father's reserve on his business justified her in secrecy as regarded
+her own--a secrecy which was necessarily a foregone decision with her.
+So anxious is a young conscience to discover a palliative, that the ex
+post facto nature of a reason is of no account in excluding it.
+
+The intervening fortnight was spent by her mostly in walking by
+herself among the shrubs and trees, indulging sometimes in sanguine
+anticipations; more, far more frequently, in misgivings. All her flowers
+seemed dull of hue; her pets seemed to look wistfully into her eyes,
+as if they no longer stood in the same friendly relation to her as
+formerly. She wore melancholy jewellery, gazed at sunsets, and talked to
+old men and women. It was the first time that she had had an inner and
+private world apart from the visible one about her. She wished that her
+father, instead of neglecting her even more than usual, would make some
+advance--just one word; she would then tell all, and risk Stephen's
+displeasure. Thus brought round to the youth again, she saw him in
+her fancy, standing, touching her, his eyes full of sad affection,
+hopelessly renouncing his 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 her father see the arrival of this one, be the consequences
+what they might: the dread of losing her lover by this deed of honesty
+prevented her acting upon the resolve. 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 sharp angle, which hid her from view in
+the direction of the vicarage. The man smilingly handed one missive, and
+was going on to hand another, a circular from some 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 in the same handwriting, and letting any others for him go on to
+the house.' And on the postman went.
+
+No sooner had he turned the corner behind her back than she heard
+her father meet and address the man. She had saved her letter by two
+minutes. Her father audibly went through precisely the same performance
+as she had just been guilty of herself.
+
+This stealthy conduct of his was, to say the least, peculiar.
+
+
+Given an impulsive inconsequent girl, neglected as to her inner life by
+her only parent, and the following forces alive within her; to determine
+a resultant:
+
+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 at parental inconsistency in first encouraging, then
+forbidding: a chilling sense of disobedience, overpowered by a
+conscientious inability to brook a breaking of plighted faith with a man
+who, in essentials, had remained unaltered from the beginning: a blessed
+hope that opposition would turn an erroneous judgement: 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 few remarks been made one day at breakfast.
+
+Her father was in his old hearty spirits. He smiled to himself
+at stories too bad to tell, and called Elfride a little scamp for
+surreptitiously preserving some blind kittens that ought to have been
+drowned. After this expression, she said to him suddenly:
+
+'If Mr. Smith had been already in the family, you would not have been
+made wretched by discovering he had poor relations?'
+
+'Do you mean in the family by marriage?' he replied inattentively, and
+continuing to peel his egg.
+
+The accumulating scarlet told that was her meaning, as much as the
+affirmative reply.
+
+'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 made the best of him?'
+
+Elfride's erratic mind had from her youth upwards been constantly in
+the habit of 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 customary complacency.
+
+'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 hopelessly melancholy about it. I don't believe anything in the world
+would make me hopelessly 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
+brightness came from an exhilarating intention to hold back no longer
+from the mad action she had planned.
+
+In the evening he drove away towards Stratleigh, quite alone. It was
+an unusual course for him. At the door Elfride had been again almost
+impelled by her feelings 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
+before then, Elfride. Thou wilt not utter what thou dost not know, and
+so far will I trust 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 his
+indifference made her more resolved to do as she liked.
+
+It was a familiar September sunset, dark-blue fragments of cloud upon an
+orange-yellow sky. These sunsets used to tempt her to walk towards them,
+as any beautiful thing tempts a near approach. She went through the
+field to the privet hedge, clambered into the middle of it, and reclined
+upon the thick boughs. After looking westward for a considerable time,
+she blamed herself for not looking eastward to where Stephen was, and
+turned round. Ultimately her eyes fell upon the ground.
+
+A peculiarity was observable beneath her. A green field spread itself
+on each side of the hedge, one belonging to the glebe, the other being a
+part of the land attached to the manor-house adjoining. On the
+vicarage side she saw a little footpath, the distinctive and altogether
+exceptional feature of which consisted in its being only about ten yards
+long; it terminated abruptly at each end.
+
+A footpath, suddenly beginning and suddenly ending, coming from nowhere
+and leading nowhere, she had never seen before.
+
+Yes, she had, on second thoughts. She had seen exactly such a path
+trodden in the front of barracks by the sentry.
+
+And this recollection explained the origin of the path here. Her father
+had trodden 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 of it. 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 and ended exactly opposite the beginning and ending of its
+neighbour, but it was thinner, and less distinct.
+
+Two reasons existed for the difference. This one might have been trodden
+by a similar weight of tread to the other, exercised a less number of
+times; or it might have been walked just as frequently, but by lighter
+feet.
+
+Probably a gentleman from Scotland-yard, had he been passing at the
+time, might have considered the latter alternative as the more probable.
+Elfride thought otherwise, so far as she thought at all. But her own
+great To-Morrow was now imminent; all thoughts inspired by casual sights
+of the eye were only allowed to exercise themselves in inferior corners
+of her brain, previously to being banished altogether.
+
+Elfride was at length compelled to reason practically upon her
+undertaking. All her definite perceptions thereon, when the emotion
+accompanying them was abstracted, 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 her early ride. The monotony of life we associate with people of
+small incomes in districts out of the sound of the railway whistle, has
+one exception, which puts into shade the experience of dwellers about
+the great centres of population--that is, in travelling. Every journey
+there is more or less an adventure; adventurous hours are necessarily
+chosen for the most commonplace outing. Miss Elfride had to leave
+early--that was all.
+
+Elfride never went out on horseback but she brought home
+something--something found, or something bought. If she trotted to town
+or village, her burden was books. If to hills, woods, or the seashore,
+it was wonderful mosses, abnormal twigs, a handkerchief of wet shells or
+seaweed.
+
+Once, in muddy weather, when Pansy was walking with her down the street
+of Castle Boterel, on a fair-day, a packet in front of her and a packet
+under her arm, 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 of polychromatic wools lay absorbing it.
+Unpleasant women smiled through windows at the mishap, the men all
+looked round, and a boy, who was minding a ginger-bread stall whilst
+the owner had gone to get drunk, laughed loudly. The blue eyes turned to
+sapphires, and the cheeks crimsoned with vexation.
+
+After that misadventure she set her wits to work, and was ingenious
+enough to invent an arrangement of small straps about the saddle, by
+which a great deal could be safely carried thereon, in a small compass.
+Here she now spread out and 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 at its purplest, the furze at its yellowest, the grasshoppers
+chirped loud enough for birds, the snakes hissed like little engines,
+and Elfride at first felt lively. Sitting at ease upon Pansy, in her
+orthodox riding-habit and nondescript hat, she looked what she felt. But
+the mercury of those days had a trick of falling unexpectedly. First,
+only for one minute in ten had she a sense of depression. Then a large
+cloud, that had been hanging in the north like a black fleece, came and
+placed itself between her and the sun. It helped on 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 looked longingly at that spot.
+
+During this little revulsion of feeling Pansy had been still advancing,
+and Elfride 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
+hearts juggle with their brains, she did put the horse's head about, as
+if unconsciously, and went at a hand-gallop towards home for more than
+a mile. By this time, from the inveterate habit of valuing what we
+have renounced directly the 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,
+and vowed she would be led whither the horse would take her.
+
+Pansy slackened her pace to a walk, and walked on with her agitated
+burden for three or four minutes. At the expiration of this time they
+had come to a little by-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 of some early train to Plymouth--there were only two
+available--it was necessary to proceed at once.
+
+She was impatient. It seemed as if Pansy would never stop drinking; and
+the repose of the pool, the idle motions of the insects and flies upon
+it, the placid waving of the flags, the leaf-skeletons, like Genoese
+filigree, placidly sleeping at the bottom, by their contrast with her
+own turmoil made her impatience greater.
+
+Pansy did turn at last, and went up the slope again to the high-road.
+The pony came upon it, and stood cross-wise, looking up and down.
+Elfride's heart throbbed erratically, and she thought, 'Horses, if left
+to themselves, make for where 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 to St. Launce's she always had a feed of corn to support her on the
+return journey. 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
+dreamy fancy 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 involved are motives that, more than by her promise to
+Stephen, more even than by her love, she was forced on by a sense of the
+necessity of keeping faith with herself, as promised in the inane vow of
+ten minutes ago.
+
+She hesitated no longer. Pansy went, like the steed of Adonis, as if
+she told the steps. Presently the quaint gables and jumbled roofs of St.
+Launce's were spread beneath her, and going down the hill she entered
+the courtyard of the Falcon. Mrs. Buckle, the landlady, came to the door
+to meet her.
+
+The Swancourts were well known here. The transition from equestrian
+to the ordinary guise of railway travellers had been more than once
+performed by father and daughter in this establishment.
+
+In less than a quarter of an hour Elfride emerged from the door in her
+walking dress, and went to the railway. She had not told Mrs. Buckle
+anything as to her intentions, and was supposed to have gone out
+shopping.
+
+An hour and forty minutes later, and she was in Stephen's arms at the
+Plymouth station. Not upon the platform--in the secret retreat of a
+deserted waiting-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
+and stayed here. In my ignorance I did not. I have the licence, but it
+can only be used 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 on the platform.
+
+'Will you go, Elfride?'
+
+'I will.'
+
+In three minutes the train had moved off, bearing away with it Stephen
+and Elfride.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XII
+
+     'Adieu! she cries, and waved her lily hand.'
+
+
+The few tattered clouds of the morning enlarged and united, the sun
+withdrew behind them to emerge no more that day, and the evening drew to
+a close in drifts of rain. The water-drops beat like duck shot against
+the window of the railway-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's excitement had passed off, and she sat in a kind of stupor
+during the latter half of the journey. She was aroused by the clanging
+of the maze of rails over which 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. To him, 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, and saw 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. She writhed uneasily, as when a thought is swelling in
+the mind which must cause much pain at its deliverance in words. Elfride
+had known no more about the stings of evil report than the native
+wild-fowl knew of the effects of Crusoe's first 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 to
+complete 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--I must! Forgive my wretched vacillation. I don't like it here--nor
+myself--nor you!'
+
+Stephen looked bewildered, and did not speak.
+
+'Will you allow me to go home?' she implored. 'I won't trouble you to go
+with me. 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 return again; 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,
+'you shall. You shall do whatever you like, my Elfride. But would you in
+reality rather 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 have started, 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 unmarried may 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. 'Is there a train for Plymouth to-night?' he inquired of a
+guard. The guard passed on 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 wrong
+platform; it is the other side. Change at Bristol into the night mail.
+Down that staircase, and under the line.'
+
+They ran down the staircase--Elfride first--to the booking-office, and
+into a carriage with an official standing beside the door. 'Show your
+tickets, please.' They are locked in--men about the platform accelerate
+their velocities till they fly up and down like shuttles in a loom--a
+whistle--the waving of a flag--a human cry--a steam groan--and away they
+go to Plymouth again, just catching 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
+worse of me than I am, Elfride.'
+
+And then they rattled along through the night, back again by the way
+they had come. The weather cleared, and the stars shone in upon them.
+Their two or three fellow-passengers sat for most of the time with
+closed eyes. Stephen sometimes slept; Elfride alone was wakeful and
+palpitating hour after hour.
+
+The day began to break, and revealed that they were by the sea. Red
+rocks overhung them, and, receding into distance, grew livid in the blue
+grey atmosphere. The sun rose, and sent penetrating shafts of light in
+upon their weary faces. Another hour, and the world began to be busy.
+They waited yet a little, 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 wofully
+against 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 your purity.'
+
+'Stephen, once in London I ought to have married you,' she said
+firmly. 'It was my only safe defence. I see more things now than I did
+yesterday. My only remaining chance is not to be discovered; and that we
+must fight for most desperately.'
+
+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
+bench just inside the office-door. She fixed her eyes upon Elfride with
+an expression whose 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 in the 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 the other night. Stephen, she is my enemy. Would that God had had
+mercy enough upon me to have hidden this from HER!'
+
+'Do not talk so hopelessly,' he remonstrated. 'I don't think she
+recognized us.'
+
+'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 without any at all for that matter; or even that would take
+all life away to-morrow, so long as it enabled me to get home again now.
+Brandy, that's what I want. That woman'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
+know is 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 of bread-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 upon how to get the horse from the Falcon stables without
+suspicion. Stephen was not allowed to accompany her into the town. She
+acted now upon conclusions reached without 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. We have begun stealthily as thieves, and we must end stealthily
+as thieves, at all hazards. 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,
+at which time Elfride thought she might call at the Falcon without
+creating much surprise. Behind the railway-station was the river,
+spanned by an old Tudor bridge, whence the road diverged in two
+directions, one skirting the suburbs of the town, and winding round
+again into the high-road to Endelstow. Beside this road Stephen sat, and
+awaited her return from the Falcon.
+
+He sat as one sitting for a portrait, motionless, watching the chequered
+lights and shades on the tree-trunks, the children playing opposite the
+school previous 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 the youth'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
+romantic morning of their visit to the cliff, but shorn of the radiance
+which glistened about her then. However, her comparative immunity
+from further risk and trouble had considerably composed her. Elfride's
+capacity for being wounded was only surpassed by her capacity for
+healing, which rightly or wrongly is by some considered 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 I have stayed there a night now and then with Miss Bicknell. I
+rather calculated upon that.'
+
+And now parting arose like a death to these children, for it was
+imperative that 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
+after having gone thus far with you? Have I not shown beyond possibility
+of doubt that I can be nobody else's? Have I not irretrievably committed
+myself?--pride has stood for nothing in the face of my great love. You
+misunderstood my turning back, and I cannot explain it. It was wrong to
+go with you at all; and though it would have been worse to go further,
+it would have been better policy, perhaps. Be assured of this, that
+whenever you have a home for me--however poor and humble--and come and
+claim me, I am ready.' She added bitterly, 'When my father knows of this
+day's work, he may be only too glad to let 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 if we 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. 'O Stephen,' 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 of our 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 put right by his promise to allow me to have you
+when I am good enough for you--which may be soon. Say I have nothing to
+offer him in exchange for his treasure--the more sorry I; but all the
+love, and all the life, and all the labour of an honest man shall be
+yours. As to when this had better be told, I leave 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, the
+orange-tree must save me, as it saved virgins in St. George's time from
+the poisonous 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
+diminish and her blue veil grow gray--saw it with the agonizing
+sensations of a slow death.
+
+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 eyes into the road. What yesterday had seemed so desirable, so
+promising, even trifling, had now acquired the complexion of a tragedy.
+
+She saw the rocks and sea in the neighbourhood of Endelstow, and heaved
+a sigh of relief.
+
+When she passed a field behind the vicarage she heard the voices of
+Unity and William Worm. They were hanging a carpet upon a line. Unity
+was uttering a sentence 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 to take the horse, Elfride led her round to the yard, slipped off
+the bridle and saddle, drove her towards the paddock, and turned her in.
+Then Elfride crept indoors, 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 his handwriting. 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 as far as Wadcombe. I shall be at home by to-morrow afternoon, and
+bring a friend with me.--Yours, in haste,
+
+C. S.'
+
+
+After making a quick toilet she felt more revived, though still
+suffering from a 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 not coming home last night. You didn't say anything about staying.'
+
+'I intended to come home the same evening, but altered my plan. I wished
+I hadn'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 he comes home?'
+
+'What! and get you into trouble?'
+
+'I deserve it.'
+
+'No, indeed, I won't,' said Unity. 'It is not such a mighty matter, Miss
+Elfride. I says to myself, master's taking a hollerday, and because he's
+not been kind lately to Miss Elfride, she----'
+
+'Is imitating him. Well, do as you like. And will you now bring me some
+luncheon?'
+
+After satisfying an appetite which the fresh marine air had given her
+in its victory over an agitated mind, she put on her hat and went to
+the garden and summer-house. She sat down, and leant with her head in a
+corner. Here she fell asleep.
+
+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 sweep round the entrance; some prior noise from the same source
+having probably been the 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.
+She heard a tongue holding converse with her father, which was not that
+of either of the servants. Her father and the stranger were laughing
+together. Then there was a rustling of silk, and Mr. Swancourt and his
+companion, or companions, to all seeming entered the door of the
+house, for nothing more of them was audible. 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 to tell you of that I promised to.'
+
+They entered the summer-house, and stood leaning over the knotty
+woodwork of the balustrade.
+
+'Now,' said her father radiantly, 'guess what I have to say.' He seemed
+to be regarding his own existence so intently, that he took no interest
+in nor even saw 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
+is what I went away for. I went to be married!'
+
+'Married!' she faltered, and could hardly check an involuntary 'So did
+I.' A moment 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 the hedge, and of the old manor-house. It was only finally settled
+between us when I went to Stratleigh a few days ago.' He lowered his
+voice to a sly tone of merriment. '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 one thing.'
+
+'You forget that I know her. She called here once, after we had been,
+and found her away from home.'
+
+'Of course, of course. Well, whatever her looks are, she's as excellent
+a woman as ever breathed. She has had lately left her as absolute
+property three thousand five hundred a year, besides the devise of this
+estate--and, by the way, 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 my walking-stick; though that bears evidence of being rather a
+raked-up affair--done since the family got rich--people do those
+things now as they build ruins 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 in comparison with us, though with few connections. However, she
+will introduce you to the world a little. We are going to exchange her
+house in Baker Street for 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 a curate of course by that time. Elfride, I
+am past love, you know, and I honestly confess that I married her for
+your sake. Why a woman of her standing should have thrown herself
+away upon me, God knows. But I suppose her age and plainness were too
+pronounced for a town man. With your good looks, if you now play your
+cards well, you may marry anybody. Of course, a little contrivance will
+be necessary; but there's nothing to stand between you and a husband
+with a 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 waiting to see you. It is as good as a play, too,'
+continued the vicar, as they walked towards the house. 'I courted her
+through the privet hedge yonder: not entirely, you know, but we used to
+walk there of an evening--nearly every evening at last. But I needn't
+tell you details now; everything was terribly matter-of-fact, I assure
+you. At last, that day I saw her at Stratleigh, we determined to settle
+it off-hand.'
+
+'And you never said a word to me,' replied Elfride, not reproachfully
+either in tone or thought. Indeed, her feeling was the very reverse of
+reproachful. She felt relieved and even thankful. Where confidence had
+not been given, how could confidence be expected?
+
+Her father mistook her dispassionateness for a veil of politeness over a
+sense of ill-usage. 'I am not altogether to blame,' he said. 'There
+were two or three reasons 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 a stiffer 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 to understand each other--that I
+resolved to say nothing even to you. How did I know how far you had gone
+with them and their son? You might have made a point of taking tea with
+them every day, for all that I knew.'
+
+Elfride swallowed her feelings as she best could, and languidly though
+flatly asked a question.
+
+'Did you kiss Mrs. Troyton on the lawn about three weeks ago? That
+evening I came into the study and found you had just had candles in?'
+
+Mr. Swancourt looked rather red and abashed, as middle-aged lovers are
+apt to do when caught in the tricks of younger ones.
+
+'Well, yes; I think I did,' he stammered; 'just to please her, you
+know.' And then 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
+increased affection of tone often adopted towards relations when newly
+produced.
+
+Poor Elfride, not knowing what to do, did nothing at all; but stood
+receptive of 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
+showed a strange old woman over the conservatory a month or two ago, and
+explained the flowers to her so prettily, that she would so soon be here
+in new colours. Nor did she, I am sure.'
+
+The new mother had been truthfully enough described by Mr. Swancourt.
+She was not physically attractive. She was dark--very dark--in
+complexion, portly in figure, and with a plentiful residuum of hair in
+the proportion of half a dozen white ones to half a dozen black ones,
+though the latter were black indeed. No further observed, she was not a
+woman to like. But there was more to see. To the most superficial critic
+it was apparent that she made no attempt to disguise her age. She looked
+sixty at the first glance, and close acquaintanceship never proved her
+older.
+
+Another and still more winning trait was one attaching to the corners
+of her mouth. Before she made a remark these often twitched gently: not
+backwards and forwards, the index of nervousness; not down upon the jaw,
+the sign of determination; but palpably upwards, in precisely the curve
+adopted to represent mirth in the broad caricatures of schoolboys. Only
+this element in her face was expressive of anything within the woman,
+but it was unmistakable. It expressed humour subjective as well as
+objective--which could survey the peculiarities 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
+whose fingers were literally stiff with rings, signis auroque rigentes,
+like Helen's robe. These rows of rings were not worn in vanity
+apparently. They were mostly antique and dull, though a few were the
+reverse.
+
+
+RIGHT HAND.
+
+1st. Plainly set oval onyx, representing a devil's head. 2nd. Green
+jasper intaglio, with red veins. 3rd. Entirely gold, bearing figure of
+a hideous griffin. 4th. A sea-green monster diamond, with small diamonds
+round it. 5th. Antique cornelian intaglio of dancing figure of a
+satyr. 6th. An angular band chased with dragons' heads. 7th. A facetted
+carbuncle accompanied by ten little twinkling emeralds; &c. &c.
+
+
+LEFT HAND.
+
+1st. A reddish-yellow toadstone. 2nd. A heavy ring enamelled in colours,
+and bearing a jacynth. 3rd. An amethystine sapphire. 4th. A polished
+ruby, surrounded by diamonds. 5th. The engraved ring of an abbess. 6th.
+A gloomy intaglio; &c. &c.
+
+
+Beyond this rather quaint array of stone and metal Mrs. Swancourt wore
+no ornament whatever.
+
+Elfride had been favourably impressed with Mrs. Troyton at their meeting
+about two months earlier; but to be pleased with a woman as a momentary
+acquaintance was different from being taken with her as a stepmother.
+However, the suspension 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 to action, as her marriage suggested. Elfride and the lady were soon
+inextricably involved in conversation, and Mr. Swancourt left them to
+themselves.
+
+'And what do you find to do with yourself here?' Mrs. Swancourt said,
+after a few 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
+enough into the world to live a novel is to write one.'
+
+'I have done it,' said Elfride, looking dubiously at Mrs. Swancourt, as
+if in doubt 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
+safety you 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 in the library and private museum at Endelstow House, and I
+thought I should like to try my hand upon a fiction. I know the time for
+these tales is past; but I was 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 of thing now; not for profit, you know, but as a guarantee of
+mental respectability to their future husbands.'
+
+'An excellent idea of us ladies.'
+
+'Though I am afraid it rather resembles the melancholy ruse of throwing
+loaves over castle-walls at besiegers, and suggests desperation rather
+than plenty inside.'
+
+'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 next year it shall be printed.'
+
+'Will you, indeed?' said Elfride, partially brightening with pleasure,
+though she was sad enough in her depths. 'I thought brains were the
+indispensable, even if the only, qualification for admission to the
+republic of letters. A mere 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 of
+rock-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 him and live happily.
+
+'And then we'll go to London, and then to Paris,' said Mrs. Swancourt.
+'I have been talking to your father about it. But we have first to move
+into the manor-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 come home 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 had been up to a few weeks ago. It was impossible now to
+tell him the tale of her wild elopement with Stephen Smith.
+
+He was still snugly housed in her heart. His absence had regained for
+him much of that aureola of saintship which had been nearly abstracted
+during her reproachful mood on that miserable journey from London.
+Rapture is often cooled by contact with its cause, especially if under
+awkward conditions. And that last 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's love of sheer force
+in a man, however ill-directed; and at that critical juncture in London
+Stephen's only chance of retaining the ascendancy over her that his face
+and not his parts had acquired for him, would have been by doing what,
+for one thing, he was too youthful to undertake--that was, dragging her
+by the wrist to the rails of some altar, and peremptorily marrying
+her. Decisive action is seen by appreciative minds to be frequently
+objectless, and sometimes fatal; but decision, however suicidal, has
+more charm for a woman than the most unequivocal Fabian success.
+
+However, some of the unpleasant accessories of that occasion were now
+out of sight 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
+discharges into a bustling thoroughfare speaking only of wealth
+and respectability, whilst its postern abuts on as crowded and
+poverty-stricken a network of alleys as are to be found anywhere in the
+metropolis. The moral consequences are, first, that those who occupy
+chambers in the Inn may see a great deal of shirtless humanity's habits
+and enjoyments without doing more than look down from a back window;
+and second they may hear wholesome though unpleasant social reminders
+through the medium of a harsh voice, an unequal footstep, the echo of
+a blow or a fall, which originates in the person of some drunkard or
+wife-beater, as he crosses and interferes with the quiet of the square.
+Characters of this kind frequently 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 the Inn are most orderly. On the fine October evening on which we
+follow Stephen Smith to this place, a placid porter is sitting on a
+stool under a sycamore-tree in the midst, with a little cane in his
+hand. We notice the thick coat of soot upon the branches, hanging
+underneath them in flakes, as in a chimney. The blackness of these
+boughs does not at present improve the tree--nearly forsaken by its
+leaves as it is--but in the spring their green fresh beauty is made
+doubly beautiful by the contrast. Within the railings is a flower-garden
+of respectable dahlias and chrysanthemums, where a man is sweeping 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 be considered a noteworthy specimen of Renaissance
+workmanship. He reaches a door on the first floor, over which is
+painted, in black letters, 'Mr. Henry Knight'--'Barrister-at-law' being
+understood but not expressed. The wall is thick, and there is a door at
+its outer and inner face. The outer one happens to 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
+wainscoted archway two or three yards wide. Across this archway hung
+a pair of dark-green curtains, making a mystery of all within the arch
+except the spasmodic scratching of a quill pen. Here was grouped
+a chaotic assemblage of articles--mainly old framed prints and
+paintings--leaning edgewise against the wall, like roofing slates in
+a builder's yard. All the books visible here were folios too big to be
+stolen--some lying on a heavy oak table in one corner, some on 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 if his life depended upon it--which it did.
+
+A man of thirty in a speckled coat, with dark brown hair, curly beard,
+and crisp 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 aspect of 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 the peculiarity of appearing younger and fresher than the brow
+and face they belonged to, which were getting sicklied o'er by the
+unmistakable pale cast. The mouth had not quite relinquished rotundity
+of curve for the firm angularities of middle life; and the eyes, though
+keen, permeated rather than penetrated: what they had lost of their
+boy-time brightness by a dozen years of hard 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
+that there was not.
+
+Knight did not rise. He looked at a timepiece on the mantelshelf, then
+turned again to his letters, pointing to a chair.
+
+'Well, I am glad you have come. I only returned to town yesterday; now,
+don't speak, Stephen, for ten minutes; I have just that time to the late
+post. At the eleventh minute, I'm your man.'
+
+Stephen sat down as if this kind of reception was by no means new, and
+away went 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-shelves ordinary and extraordinary; the remaining parts, together
+with brackets, side-tables, &c., being occupied by casts, statuettes,
+medallions, and plaques of various descriptions, picked up by the owner
+in his wanderings through France and Italy.
+
+One stream only of evening sunlight came into the room from a window
+quite in the corner, overlooking a court. An aquarium stood in the
+window. It was a dull parallelopipedon enough for living creatures at
+most hours of the day; but for a few minutes in the evening, as now, an
+errant, kindly ray lighted up and warmed the little world therein, when
+the many-coloured zoophytes opened and put forth their arms, the weeds
+acquired a rich transparency, the shells gleamed of a more golden
+yellow, and the timid community expressed gladness more plainly than in
+words.
+
+Within the prescribed ten minutes Knight flung down his pen, rang for
+the boy to 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 tell me 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 one
+extraordinary 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,
+and keenly scrutinising his countenance for a minute in silence, 'you
+have fallen in love.'
+
+'Well--the fact is----'
+
+'Now, out with it.' But seeing that Stephen looked rather distressed, he
+changed to a kindly tone. 'Now Smith, my lad, you know me well enough by
+this time, or you ought to; and you know very well that if you choose to
+give me a detailed account of the phenomenon within you, I shall listen;
+if you don't, I am 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,
+seeing the 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 mind a 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
+her house which makes it out of the question for us to ask her father
+again now. So we are keeping silent. In the meantime an architect in
+India has just written to Mr. Hewby to ask whether he can find for him
+a young assistant willing to go over to Bombay to prepare drawings for
+work formerly done by the engineers. The salary he offers is 350 rupees
+a month, or about 35 Pounds. Hewby has mentioned it to me, and I have
+been to Dr. Wray, who says I shall acclimatise without much 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
+come back 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
+she exists in your heart, Stephen, I don't know her in the flesh. All
+I want to ask is, is this idea of going to India based entirely upon a
+belief in her fidelity?'
+
+'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
+my true sentiments, I shall hurt your feelings; if I don't, I shall hurt
+my own judgment. 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,'
+continued Knight. 'I never have found a woman worth it. Nor have I been
+once engaged to be married.'
+
+'You write as if you had been engaged a hundred times, if I may be
+allowed to say so,' said Stephen in an injured tone.
+
+'Yes, that may be. But, my dear Stephen, it is only those who half know
+a thing that write about it. Those who know it thoroughly don't take
+the trouble. All I know about women, or men either, is a mass of
+generalities. I plod along, and occasionally lift my eyes and skim the
+weltering surface of mankind lying between me and the horizon, as a crow
+might; no more.'
+
+Knight stopped as if he had fallen into a train of thought, and Stephen
+looked with affectionate awe at a master whose mind, he believed, could
+swallow up at one meal all that his own head contained.
+
+There was affective sympathy, but no great intellectual fellowship,
+between Knight and Stephen Smith. Knight had seen his young friend when
+the latter was a cherry-cheeked happy boy, had been interested in him,
+had kept his eye upon him, and generously helped the lad to books, till
+the mere connection of patronage grew to acquaintance, and that ripened
+to friendship. And so, though Smith was not at all the man Knight would
+have deliberately chosen as a friend--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 intimate alter ego, leaving
+alone friends of the outer circle, that he is the man we should have
+chosen, as embodying the net result after adding up all the points in
+human nature that we love, and principles we hold, and subtracting all
+that we hate? The man is really somebody we got to know by mere physical
+juxtaposition long maintained, and was taken into our confidence, and
+even heart, 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
+the Roman poets of whom we know nothing but that they lived, I still
+think she will not stick to you through, say, three years of absence in
+India.'
+
+'But she will!' cried Stephen desperately. 'She is a girl all delicacy
+and honour. And no woman of that kind, who has committed herself so into
+a man's hands 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 it would 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, I suppose, inevitable in love.'
+
+'And I'll tell you another thing,' the younger man pleaded. 'You
+remember what you said to me once about women receiving a kiss. Don't
+you? Why, that instead of our being charmed by the fascination of
+their bearing at such a time, we should immediately doubt them if their
+confusion has any GRACE in it--that awkward bungling was the true charm
+of the occasion, implying that we are the first 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
+master long after the master himself had forgotten them.
+
+'Well, that was like her!' cried Stephen triumphantly. 'She was in such
+a flurry 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 not go without troubling to draw fine distinctions as to reasons.
+No man fully realizes 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 to that window and sit down, and look at my Humanity Show. I
+am going to dine out this evening, and have to dress here out of my
+portmanteau. I bring up my things like this to save the trouble of going
+down to my place at Richmond and back again.'
+
+Knight then went to the middle of the room and flung open his
+portmanteau, and Stephen drew near the window. The streak of sunlight
+had crept upward, edged away, and vanished; the zoophytes slept: a dusky
+gloom pervaded the room. And now another volume of light shone over the
+window.
+
+'There!' said Knight, 'where is there in England a spectacle to equal
+that? I sit 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
+sideways and passing under an arch, so that Knight's back window
+was immediately over the angle, and commanded a view of the alley
+lengthwise. Crowds--mostly of women--were surging, bustling, and pacing
+up and down. Gaslights glared from butchers' stalls, illuminating the
+lumps of flesh to splotches of orange and vermilion, like the wild
+colouring of Turner's later pictures, whilst the purl and babble of
+tongues of every pitch and mood was to this human wild-wood what the
+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
+of Berkeley Square,' he said, buttoning his waistcoat and kicking his
+morning suit into a corner. Stephen rose to leave.
+
+'What a heap of literature!' remarked the young man, taking a final
+longing survey round the room, as if to abide there for ever would be
+the great pleasure of his life, yet feeling that he had almost outstayed
+his welcome-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, you needn't hurry away for a few minutes, you know, if you want
+to stay; I am not quite ready. Overhaul those volumes whilst I put on my
+coat, and I'll walk a little 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, and holding up Elfride's effusion.
+
+'Which? Oh, that! I may--though I don't do much light reviewing now. But
+it is reviewable.'
+
+'How do you mean?'
+
+Knight never liked to be asked what he meant. 'Mean! I mean that the
+majority of 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
+little Elfride'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
+Elfride after that unfortunate slip his tongue had made in respect
+of her having committed herself; and, apart from that, Knight's
+severe--almost dogged and self-willed--honesty in criticizing was
+unassailable by the humble wish of a youthful friend like Stephen.
+
+Knight was now ready. Turning off the gas, and slamming together the
+door, they went 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
+passed away. In place of the autumnal scenery which formed a setting to
+the previous enactments, we have the culminating blooms of summer in the
+year following.
+
+Stephen is in India, slaving away at an office in Bombay; occasionally
+going up the country on professional errands, and wondering why people
+who had been there longer than he complained so much of the effect of
+the climate upon their constitutions. Never had a young man a finer
+start than seemed now to present itself to Stephen. It was just in that
+exceptional heyday of prosperity which shone over Bombay some few years
+ago, that he arrived on the scene. Building and engineering partook
+of the general impetus. Speculation moved with an accelerated velocity
+every successive day, the only disagreeable contingency connected with
+it being the possibility of a collapse.
+
+Elfride had never told her father of the four-and-twenty-hours' escapade
+with Stephen, nor had it, to her knowledge, come to his ears by any
+other route. It was a secret trouble and grief to the girl for a short
+time, and Stephen's departure was another ingredient in her sorrow. But
+Elfride possessed special facilities for getting rid of trouble after a
+decent interval. Whilst a slow nature was imbibing a misfortune little
+by little, she had swallowed the whole agony of it at a draught and was
+brightening again. She could slough off a sadness 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
+bringing out the romance and looking for notices in the papers, which,
+though they had been significantly short so far, had served to divert
+her thoughts. The other was migrating from the vicarage to the more
+commodious old house of Mrs. Swancourt's, overlooking the same valley.
+Mr. Swancourt at first disliked the idea of being transplanted to
+feminine soil, but the obvious advantages of such an 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 going to
+and fro.
+
+Mrs. Swancourt considerably enlarged Elfride's ideas in an aristocratic
+direction, and she began to forgive her father for his politic marriage.
+Certainly, in a worldly sense, a handsome face at three-and-forty had
+never served 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 suffering from a heavy thunderstorm; carriages had been called for
+by the easeful, horses by the brisk, and the Drive and Row were again
+the groove of gaiety for an hour. 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 equipage formed one in the stream.
+
+Mrs. Swancourt was a talker of talk of the incisive kind, which her low
+musical voice--the only beautiful point in the old woman--prevented from
+being wearisome.
+
+'Now,' she said to Elfride, who, like AEneas at Carthage, was full
+of admiration for the brilliant scene, 'you will find that our
+companionless state will give us, as it does everybody, an extraordinary
+power in reading the features of our fellow-creatures here. I always
+am a listener in such places as these--not to the narratives told by my
+neighbours' tongues, but by their faces--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 in this practice through
+having been an ugly lonely woman for so many years, with nobody to give
+me information; a thing you will not consider strange when the parallel
+case is borne in mind,--how truly people who have no clocks will tell
+the time of day.'
+
+'Ay, that they will,' said Mr. Swancourt corroboratively. 'I have known
+labouring men at Endelstow and other farms who had framed complete
+systems of observation for that purpose. By means of shadows, winds,
+clouds, the movements of sheep and oxen, the singing of birds, the
+crowing of cocks, and a hundred other sights and sounds which people
+with watches in their pockets never know the existence of, they are
+able to pronounce within ten minutes of the hour almost at any required
+instant. That reminds me of an old story which I'm afraid is too
+bad--too bad to repeat.' Here the vicar shook his head and laughed
+inwardly.
+
+'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,
+was known to deceive persons for more than two years into the belief
+that he kept a barometer by stealth, so exactly did he foretell all
+changes in the weather by the braying of his ass and the temper of his
+wife.'
+
+Elfride laughed.
+
+'Exactly,' said Mrs. Swancourt. 'And in just the way that those learnt
+the signs of nature, I have learnt the language of her illegitimate
+sister--artificiality; and the fibbing of eyes, the contempt of
+nose-tips, the indignation of back hair, the laughter of clothes, the
+cynicism of footsteps, and the various emotions lying in walking-stick
+twirls, hat-liftings, the elevation 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
+across there,' she continued to Elfride, pointing with merely a turn of
+her eye. 'The absorbing self-consciousness of her position that is shown
+by her countenance is 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 far above the highest degree of the humble,
+could be so ignorant of the elementary instincts 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 saw in Lord Burleigh's nod.'
+
+Elfride could not but admire the beauty of her fellow countrywomen,
+especially since herself and her own few acquaintances had always
+been slightly sunburnt or marked on the back of the hands by a
+bramble-scratch at this time of the year.
+
+'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
+in colour than any real ones. Look at that beautiful rose worn by the
+lady inside the rails. Elegant vine-tendrils introduced upon the stem as
+an improvement upon prickles, and all growing so naturally just over her
+ear--I say growing advisedly, for the pink of the petals and the pink
+of her handsome cheeks are equally 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,
+utilizing the 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 traces of being arranged beforehand, so well
+is it done. Look at the demure close of the little fists holding the
+parasols; the tiny alert thumb, sticking up erect against the ivory stem
+as knowing as can be, the satin of the parasol invariably matching the
+complexion of the face beneath it, yet seemingly by an accident,
+which makes the thing so attractive. There's the red book lying on the
+opposite seat, bespeaking the vast numbers of their acquaintance. And
+I particularly admire the aspect of that abundantly daughtered woman on
+the other side--I mean her look of unconsciousness that the girls
+are stared at by the walkers, and above all the look of the girls
+themselves--losing their gaze in the depths of handsome men's eyes
+without appearing to notice whether they are observing 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
+mind were a long distance from all he saw. 'I declare that my watch is
+so hot that I can scarcely bear to touch it to see what the time is, and
+all the world smells like the inside of a hat.'
+
+'How the men stare at you, Elfride!' said the elder lady. 'You will kill
+me quite, 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
+Elfride artlessly, showing her pleasure at being observed.
+
+'My dear, you mustn't say "gentlemen" nowadays,' her stepmother answered
+in the tones 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 at tradesmen'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 contrary
+direction a chariot presenting in its general surface the rich indigo
+hue of a midnight sky, the wheels and margins being picked out in
+delicate lines of ultramarine; the servants' liveries were dark-blue
+coats and silver lace, and breeches of neutral Indian red. The whole
+concern formed an organic whole, and moved along behind a pair of dark
+chestnut geldings, who advanced in an indifferently zealous trot, very
+daintily performed, and occasionally shrugged divers 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 he somewhat 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, her greatest pleasure being apparently to
+enjoy nothing. Opposite this pair sat two little girls in white hats and
+blue feathers.
+
+The lady saw Elfride, smiled and bowed, and touched her husband's elbow,
+who turned and received Elfride's movement of recognition with a gallant
+elevation of his hat. Then the two children held up their arms to
+Elfride, and laughed gleefully.
+
+'Who is that?'
+
+'Why, Lord Luxellian, isn't it?' said Mrs. Swancourt, who with the vicar
+had been seated with her back towards them.
+
+'Yes,' replied Elfride. 'He is the one man of those I have seen here
+whom I consider handsomer than papa.'
+
+'Thank you, dear,' said Mr. Swancourt.
+
+'Yes; but your father is so much older. When Lord Luxellian gets a
+little further 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
+dears want 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 a bracelet and a wrist; I wonder women haven't better
+taste.'
+
+'It is not on that account, indeed,' Elfride expostulated. 'It is that
+her arm has got thin, poor thing. You cannot think how much she has
+altered in this last twelvemonth.'
+
+The carriages were now nearer together, and there was an exchange of
+more familiar greetings between the two families. Then the Luxellians
+crossed over and drew up under the plane-trees, just in the rear of the
+Swancourts. Lord Luxellian alighted, and came forward with a musical
+laugh.
+
+It was his attraction as a man. People liked him for those tones, and
+forgot that 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 this
+afternoon, and the sight filled us all with such a sense of suffocation
+that we were glad to get away. Ha-ha!' He turned to Elfride. 'Miss
+Swancourt, I have hardly seen or spoken to you since your literary feat
+was made public. I had no idea a chiel was taking notes down at quiet
+Endelstow, or I should certainly have put myself and friends upon our
+best behaviour. Swancourt, why didn't you give 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 OF KELLYON 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! They
+promised 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 good would 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 a
+mistaken kindness on their part. Is the review so much against me?' she
+inquired tremulously.
+
+'No, no; not that exactly--though I almost forget its exact purport
+now. It was merely--merely sharp, you know--ungenerous, I might say. But
+really my memory does 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 am in reality sent here as a special messenger by my
+little Polly and Katie to ask you to come into our carriage with them
+for a short time. I am just going to walk across into Piccadilly, and
+my wife is left alone with them. I am afraid they 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 of the little girls, and to the mild interest of loungers with
+red skins and long necks, who cursorily eyed the performance with their
+walking-sticks to their lips, occasionally laughing from far down their
+throats and with their eyes, their mouths not being concerned in the
+operation at all. Lord Luxellian then told the coachman to drive on,
+lifted his hat, smiled a smile that missed its mark and alighted on a
+total stranger, who bowed in bewilderment. Lord Luxellian looked long at
+Elfride.
+
+The look was a manly, open, and genuine look of admiration; a momentary
+tribute of a kind which any honest Englishman might have paid to
+fairness without being ashamed of the feeling, or permitting it to
+encroach in the slightest degree upon his emotional obligations as
+a husband and head of a family. Then Lord Luxellian 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 the Row for a few minutes to speak to a friend he recognized there;
+and his wife was thus left sole tenant of the carriage.
+
+Now, whilst this little act had been in course of performance, there
+stood among the promenading spectators a man of somewhat different
+description from the rest. Behind the general throng, in the rear of the
+chairs, and leaning against the trunk of a tree, he looked at Elfride
+with quiet and critical interest.
+
+Three points about this unobtrusive person showed promptly to
+the exercised eye that he was not a Row man pur sang. First, an
+irrepressible wrinkle or two in the waist of his frock-coat--denoting
+that he had not damned his tailor sufficiently to drive that tradesman
+up to the orthodox high pressure of cunning workmanship. Second, a
+slight slovenliness of umbrella, occasioned by its owner's habit of
+resting heavily upon it, and using it as a veritable walking-stick,
+instead of letting its point touch the ground in the most coquettish of
+kisses, as is the proper Row manner to do. Third, and chief reason, that
+try how you might, you could scarcely help supposing, on looking at his
+face, that your eyes were not far from a well-finished mind, instead of
+the well-finished skin et praeterea nihil, which is by rights the Mark
+of the Row.
+
+The probability is that, had not Mrs. Swancourt been left alone in her
+carriage under the tree, this man would have remained in his unobserved
+seclusion. But seeing her thus, he came round to the front, stooped
+under the rail, and stood beside the carriage-door.
+
+Mrs. Swancourt looked reflectively at him for a quarter of a minute,
+then held out her hand laughingly:
+
+'Why, Henry Knight--of course it is! My--second--third--fourth
+cousin--what shall I say? 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
+of years! You know, I suppose, of my marriage?'
+
+And there sprang up a dialogue concerning family matters of birth,
+death, and marriage, which it is not necessary to detail. Knight
+presently inquired:
+
+'The young lady who changed into the other carriage is, then, your
+stepdaughter?'
+
+'Yes, Elfride. You must know her.'
+
+'And who was the lady in the carriage Elfride entered; who had an
+ill-defined and watery look, as if she were only the reflection of
+herself in a pool?'
+
+'Lady Luxellian; very weakly, Elfride says. My husband is remotely
+connected with 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 shall only 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
+for several days; so that I must, I fear, lose the pleasure of seeing
+you in London this 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 a day or two. I should be delighted to be with you at the
+beginning of that month; and I could stay a nice long time. I have
+thought of going westward all the 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
+evening before I go home; indeed, I ought to have been there now--I have
+such a press of matters 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 to mere acquaintances, the process is a palliative to certain
+ill-humours. Among these, 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, Elfride and Mrs. Swancourt were engaged in conversation in the
+dressing-room of the latter. Such a treatment of such a case was in
+course of adoption here.
+
+Elfride had just before received an affectionate letter from Stephen
+Smith in Bombay, which had been forwarded to her from Endelstow. But
+since this is not the case referred to, it is not worth while to pry
+further into the contents of the letter than to discover that, with rash
+though pardonable confidence in coming 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 a man's temperament--sanguine
+or cautious--than this: did he or does he ante-date the 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
+SAVED the rest for to-morrow, not wishing to be so extravagant as to
+consume the pleasure all at once. Nevertheless, she could not resist the
+wish to enjoy yet a little more, so out came the letter again, and in
+spite of misgivings as to prodigality the whole was devoured. The letter
+was finally reperused and placed in her pocket.
+
+What was this? Also a newspaper for Elfride, which she had overlooked
+in her hurry to open the letter. It was the old number of the PRESENT,
+containing the article upon her book, forwarded as had been requested.
+
+Elfride had hastily read it through, shrunk perceptibly smaller, and had
+then gone with the paper in her hand to Mrs. Swancourt's dressing-room,
+to lighten or at least modify her vexation by a discriminating estimate
+from her stepmother.
+
+She was now looking disconsolately out of the window.
+
+'Never mind, my child,' said Mrs. Swancourt after a careful perusal of
+the matter indicated. 'I don't see that the review is such a terrible
+one, after all. Besides, everybody has forgotten about it by this time.
+I'm sure the opening is good enough for any book ever written. Just
+listen--it sounds better read aloud than when you pore over it silently:
+"THE COURT OF KELLYON CASTLE. A ROMANCE OF THE MIDDLE AGES. BY ERNEST
+FIELD. In the belief that we were for a while escaping the monotonous
+repetition of wearisome details in modern social scenery, analyses of
+uninteresting character, or the unnatural unfoldings of a sensation
+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
+might possibly be rung upon donjon keeps, chain and plate armour, deeply
+scarred cheeks, tender maidens disguised as pages, to which we had not
+listened long ago." Now, that's a very good beginning, in my opinion,
+and one to be proud of having 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 read on. '"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 been thought worth while to adopt on the title-page, with
+the idea of disguising her sex."'
+
+'I am not "silly"!' said Elfride indignantly. 'He might have called me
+anything but that.'
+
+'You are not, indeed. Well:--"Hands of a young lady...whose chapters are
+simply devoted to impossible tournaments, towers, and escapades, which
+read like flat copies of like scenes in the stories of Mr. G. P. R.
+James, and the most unreal portions of IVANHOE. The bait is so palpably
+artificial that the most credulous gudgeon 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 who can!' Elfride intended to hurl these words sarcastically
+at her invisible enemy, but as she had no more satirical power than a
+wood-pigeon, they merely fell in a pretty murmur from lips shaped to a
+pout.
+
+'Certainly: and that's something. Your book is good enough to be bad in
+an ordinary literary manner, and doesn't stand by itself in a melancholy
+position altogether worse than assailable.--"That interest in an
+historical romance may nowadays have any chance of being sustained, it
+is indispensable that the reader find himself under the guidance of
+some nearly extinct species of legendary, who, in addition to an impulse
+towards antiquarian research and an unweakened faith in the mediaeval
+halo, shall possess an inventive faculty in which delicacy of sentiment
+is far overtopped by a power of welding to stirring incident a spirited
+variety of the elementary human passions." Well, that long-winded
+effusion doesn't refer to you at all, Elfride, merely something put in
+to fill up. Let me see, when does he come to you again;...not till the
+very end, actually. Here you are finally polished off:
+
+'"But to return to the little work we have used as the text of this
+article. We are far from altogether disparaging the author's powers. She
+has a certain versatility that enables her to use with effect a style
+of narration peculiar to herself, which may be called a murmuring of
+delicate emotional trifles, the particular gift of those to whom the
+social sympathies of a peaceful time are as daily food. Hence, where
+matters of domestic experience, and the natural touches which make
+people real, can be introduced without anachronisms too striking, she is
+occasionally felicitous; and upon the whole we feel justified in saying
+that the book will bear looking into for the sake of those portions
+which have nothing whatever to do with the story."
+
+'Well, I suppose it is intended for satire; but don't think anything
+more of it now, 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
+nothing but oneness with her: the review was the very reverse. And a
+stranger with neither name nor shape, age nor appearance, but a mighty
+voice, is naturally rather an interesting novelty to a lady he chooses
+to address. When Elfride fell asleep that night she was loving the
+writer of the letter, but thinking of the 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 in the 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 tangible weariness even to people whose acquaintances
+there might be counted on the fingers.
+
+A mere season in London with her practised step-mother had so advanced
+Elfride's perceptions, that her courtship by Stephen seemed emotionally
+meagre, and to have drifted back several years into a childish past.
+In regarding our mental experiences, as in visual observation, our own
+progress reads like a dwindling of that we progress from.
+
+She was seated on a low chair, looking over her romance with melancholy
+interest for the first time since she had become acquainted with the
+remarks of the PRESENT thereupon.
+
+'Still thinking of that reviewer, Elfie?'
+
+'Not of him personally; but I am thinking of his opinion. Really, on
+looking into the volume after this long time has elapsed, he seems to
+have estimated one part of it fairly enough.'
+
+'No, no; I wouldn't show the white feather now! Fancy that of all people
+in the world the writer herself should go over to the enemy. How shall
+Monmouth's men fight when Monmouth runs away?'
+
+'I don't do that. But I think he is right in some of his arguments,
+though wrong in others. And because he has some claim to my respect I
+regret all the more 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 he misunderstands me. I cannot be easy whilst
+a person goes to rest night after night attributing to me intentions I
+never had.'
+
+'He doesn't know your name, or anything about you. And he has doubtless
+forgotten 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
+masculine pseudonym in vanity or conceit, but because she was afraid it
+would be thought presumptuous to publish her name, and that she did not
+mean the story for such as he, but as a sweetener of history for young
+people, who might thereby acquire 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 to explain; I wish I might write myself!'
+
+'Now, Elfie, I'll tell you what we will do,' answered Mr. Swancourt,
+tickled with a sort of bucolic humour at the idea of criticizing the
+critic. 'You shall write a clear account of what he is wrong in, and I
+will copy it and send it as mine.'
+
+'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 and
+slightly yawned, and in the manner of elderly people began to cool from
+his ardour for the undertaking now that it came to the point. 'But,
+really, it is hardly worth while,' he said.
+
+'O papa!' said Elfride, with much disappointment. 'You said you would,
+and now you 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, "To the 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
+be treating 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
+initials only? 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
+fortnight seemed likely to be realized. As happens with sensitive and
+secluded minds, a continual dwelling upon the subject had magnified to
+colossal proportions the space she assumed herself to occupy or to have
+occupied in the occult critic's mind. At noon and at night she had
+been pestering herself with endeavours to perceive 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 of ordinary
+young women who never ventured into the fire of criticism at all. Now
+she would have the satisfaction of feeling that at any rate he knew
+her true intent in crossing his path, and annoying him so by her
+performance, and be taught perhaps to despise it a little less.
+
+Four days later an envelope, directed to Miss Swancourt in a strange
+hand, made its appearance from the post-bag.
+
+'Oh,' said Elfride, her heart sinking within her. 'Can it be from that
+man--a lecture for impertinence? And actually one for Mrs. Swancourt in
+the same hand-writing!' She feared to open hers. 'Yet how can he know my
+name? No; it is somebody else.'
+
+'Nonsense!' said her father grimly. 'You sent your initials, and the
+Directory was available. Though he wouldn't have taken the trouble to
+look there unless he had been thoroughly savage with you. I thought
+you wrote with rather more asperity than simple literary discussion
+required.' This timely clause was introduced to save the character of
+the vicar's judgment under any issue of affairs.
+
+'Well, here I go,' said Elfride, desperately tearing open the seal.
+
+'To be sure, of course,' exclaimed Mrs. Swancourt; and looking up
+from her own letter. 'Christopher, I quite forgot to tell you, when
+I mentioned that I had seen my distant relative, Harry Knight, that I
+invited him here for whatever length 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 of Elfride's book. How absurd, to be sure! I had no idea
+he reviewed novels or had anything to do with the PRESENT. He is a
+barrister--and I thought he only wrote in 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't know. The idea of his knowing my name and all about me!...Why,
+he says nothing particular, only this--
+
+
+'"MY DEAR MADAM,--Though I am sorry that my remarks should have seemed
+harsh to you, it is a pleasure to find that they have been the means of
+bringing forth such an ingeniously argued reply. Unfortunately, it is
+so long since I wrote my review, that my memory does not serve me
+sufficiently to say a single word in my defence, even supposing there
+remains one to be said, which is doubtful. You will find from a letter
+I have written to Mrs. Swancourt, that we are not such strangers to each
+other as we have been imagining. Possibly, I may have the pleasure of
+seeing you soon, when any argument you choose to advance shall receive
+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
+in undertones.
+
+'And he will come and see me, and find the authoress as contemptible in
+speech as she has been impertinent in manner. I do heartily wish I had
+never written a word to him!'
+
+'Never mind,' said Mrs. Swancourt, also laughing in low quiet jerks; 'it
+will make the meeting such a comical affair, and afford splendid by-play
+for your father and myself. The idea of our running our heads against
+Harry Knight all the time! I cannot get over that.'
+
+The vicar had immediately remembered the name to be that of Stephen
+Smith's preceptor and friend; but having ceased to concern himself in
+the matter he made no remark to that effect, consistently forbearing
+to allude to anything which could restore recollection of the (to him)
+disagreeable mistake with regard to poor Stephen's lineage and position.
+Elfride had of course perceived the same thing, which added to the
+complication of relationship a mesh that her stepmother knew nothing of.
+
+The identification scarcely heightened Knight's attractions now, though
+a twelvemonth ago she would only have cared to see him for the interest
+he possessed as Stephen's friend. Fortunately for Knight's advent, such
+a reason for welcome had only begun to be awkward to her at a time
+when the interest he had acquired on his own account made it no longer
+necessary.
+
+
+These coincidences, in common with all relating to him, tended to keep
+Elfride's mind upon the stretch concerning Knight. As was her custom
+when upon the horns of a dilemma, she walked off by herself among the
+laurel bushes, and there, standing still and splitting up a leaf without
+removing it from its stalk, fetched back recollections of Stephen's
+frequent words in praise of his friend, and wished she had listened
+more attentively. Then, still pulling the leaf, she would blush at some
+fancied mortification that would accrue to her from his words when they
+met, in consequence of her intrusiveness, as she now considered it, in
+writing to him.
+
+The next development of her meditations was the subject of what this
+man's personal 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 of some teasing remark being returned. Ultimately
+Elfride would say, 'Oh, what a plague that reviewer is to me!' and turn
+her face to where she imagined India lay, and murmur to herself, 'Ah,
+my little husband, what are you doing now? Let me see, where are
+you--south, east, where? Behind that hill, ever so far behind!'
+
+
+
+
+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
+The Crags, which almost overhung the valley already described as leading
+up from the sea and little port of Castle Boterel. The stony escarpment
+upon which they stood had the contour of a man's face, and it was
+covered with furze as with a beard. People in the field above were
+preserved from an accidental roll down these prominences and hollows
+by a hedge on the very crest, which was doing that kindly service for
+Elfride and her mother now.
+
+Scrambling higher into the hedge and stretching her neck further over
+the furze, Elfride beheld the individual signified. He was walking
+leisurely along the little green path at the bottom, beside the stream,
+a satchel slung upon his left hip, a stout walking-stick in his hand,
+and a brown-holland sun-hat upon his head. The satchel was worn and old,
+and the outer polished surface of the leather was cracked and peeling
+off.
+
+Knight having arrived over the hills to Castle Boterel upon the top of a
+crazy omnibus, preferred to walk the remaining two miles up the valley,
+leaving his luggage to be brought on.
+
+Behind him wandered, helter-skelter, a boy of whom Knight had briefly
+inquired the way to Endelstow; and by that natural law of physics which
+causes lesser bodies to gravitate towards the greater, this boy had
+kept near to Knight, and trotted like a little dog close at his heels,
+whistling as he went, with his eyes fixed upon Knight's boots as they
+rose and fell.
+
+When they had reached a point precisely opposite that in which Mrs. and
+Miss Swancourt 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
+twenty yards of my heels, all the way up the valley.'
+
+The boy, who apparently had not known he had been looking at Knight's
+heels at all, took the sixpence mechanically, and Knight went on again,
+wrapt in meditation.
+
+'A nice voice,' Elfride thought; 'but what a singular temper!'
+
+'Now we must get indoors before he ascends the slope,' said Mrs.
+Swancourt softly. And they went across by a short cut over a stile,
+entering the lawn by a side door, and so on to the house.
+
+Mr. Swancourt had gone into the village with the curate, and Elfride
+felt too nervous to await their visitor's arrival in the drawing-room
+with Mrs. Swancourt. So that when the elder lady entered, Elfride made
+some pretence of perceiving a new variety of crimson geranium, and
+lingered behind among the flower beds.
+
+There was nothing gained by this, after all, she thought; and a few
+minutes after boldly came into the house by the glass side-door. She
+walked along the corridor, and entered the drawing-room. Nobody was
+there.
+
+A window at the angle of the room opened directly into an octagonal
+conservatory, enclosing the corner of the building. From the
+conservatory came voices in conversation--Mrs. Swancourt's and the
+stranger's.
+
+She had expected him to talk brilliantly. To her surprise he was asking
+questions in quite a learner's manner, on subjects connected with the
+flowers and shrubs that she had known for years. When after the lapse of
+a few minutes he spoke at some length, she considered there was a hard
+square decisiveness in the shape of his sentences, as if, unlike her own
+and Stephen's, they were not there and then newly constructed, but were
+drawn forth from a large store ready-made. They were now approaching the
+window to come in again.
+
+'That is a flesh-coloured variety,' said Mrs. Swancourt. 'But oleanders,
+though they are such bulky shrubs, are so very easily wounded as to be
+unprunable--giants with the sensitiveness of young ladies. Oh, here is
+Elfride!'
+
+Elfride looked as guilty and crestfallen as Lady Teazle at the dropping
+of the screen. Mrs. Swancourt presented him half comically, and Knight
+in a minute or two placed himself beside the young lady.
+
+A complexity of instincts checked Elfride's conventional smiles of
+complaisance and hospitality; and, to make her still less comfortable,
+Mrs. Swancourt immediately afterwards left them together to seek her
+husband. Mr. Knight, however, did not seem at all incommoded by his
+feelings, and he said with light easefulness:
+
+'So, Miss Swancourt, I have met you at last. You escaped me by a few
+minutes only 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
+off the edge of it. It was strange that you should be one of her family
+all the time.' Elfride began to recover herself now, and to look into
+Knight's face. 'I was merely anxious to let you know my REAL meaning in
+writing the book--extremely anxious.'
+
+'I can quite understand the wish; and I was gratified that my remarks
+should have reached home. They very seldom do, I am afraid.'
+
+Elfride drew herself in. Here he was, sticking to his opinions as
+firmly as if friendship and politeness did not in the least require an
+immediate renunciation 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, and speaking 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
+cause unnecessary sorrow, but: "To make you sorry after a proper manner,
+that ye may receive 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't wi' Scripture" again, as you do now, Mr. Knight?'
+
+'You may do better next time,' he said placidly: 'I think you will. But
+I would advise 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 any means 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 she has 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: her greatest real praise, when the novelty of her
+inauguration has worn off, is that nothing happens to keep the talk of
+her alive.'
+
+'Yes, I see,' said Elfride softly and thoughtfully. 'But of course it is
+different 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 to make a novel popular, for one thing.'
+
+'Is that really necessary? Well, I am sure you could learn to do that
+with practice,' said Elfride with an ex-cathedra air, as became a person
+who spoke from experience in the art. 'You would make a great name for
+certain,' she continued.
+
+'So many people make a name nowadays, that it is more distinguished to
+remain in obscurity.'
+
+'Tell me seriously--apart from the subject--why don't you write a volume
+instead of 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 was interested in her appearance. 'As I have implied, I
+have not the wish. And if I had the wish, I could not now concentrate
+sufficiently. We all have only our one cruse of energy given us to make
+the best of. And where that energy has been leaked away week by week,
+quarter by quarter, as mine has for the last nine or ten years, there is
+not enough dammed back behind the mill at any given period to supply
+the force a complete book on any subject requires. Then there is the
+self-confidence and waiting power. Where quick results have grown
+customary, 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 world of professions, all possible. It was by the constraint of
+accident merely. Not that I object to the accident.'
+
+'Why don't you object--I mean, why do you feel so quiet about things?'
+Elfride was half afraid to question him so, but her intense curiosity to
+see what the inside of literary Mr. Knight was like, kept her going on.
+
+Knight certainly did not mind being frank with her. Instances of this
+trait in men who are not without feeling, but are reticent from habit,
+may be recalled by all of us. When they find a listener who can by no
+possibility make use of them, rival them, or condemn them, reserved and
+even suspicious men of the world become frank, keenly enjoying the inner
+side of their frankness.
+
+'Why I don't mind the accidental constraint,' he replied, 'is because,
+in making beginnings, a chance limitation of direction is often better
+than absolute freedom.'
+
+'I see--that is, I should if I quite understood what all those
+generalities mean.'
+
+'Why, this: That an arbitrary foundation for one's work, which no length
+of thought 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,'
+she said mischievously. 'And I suppose where no limit exists, as in the
+case of a rich man with a wide taste who wants to do something, it will
+be better to choose 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
+does nothing 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 than delight in the prospect of fame. I have thought many times
+lately that a thin widespread happiness, commencing now, and of a piece
+with the days of your life, is preferable to an anticipated heap far
+away in the future, and none now.'
+
+'Why, that's the very thing I said just now as being the principle of
+all ephemeral doers like myself.'
+
+'Oh, I am sorry to have parodied you,' she said with some confusion.
+'Yes, of course. 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 much littleness in trying to be great. A man must think
+a good deal of himself, and be 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 of himself when it is proved he has been thinking wrong, and too
+soon then sometimes. Besides, we should not conclude that a man who
+strives earnestly for success does so with a strong sense of his own
+merit. He may see how little success 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
+agree with him than he ceased to seem to wish it, and took the other
+side. 'Ah,' she thought inwardly, 'I shall have nothing to do with a man
+of this kind, though he is our visitor.'
+
+'I think you will find,' resumed Knight, pursuing the conversation
+more for the sake of finishing off his thoughts on the subject than for
+engaging her attention, 'that in actual life it is merely a matter of
+instinct with men--this trying to push on. They awake to a recognition
+that they have, without premeditation, begun to try a little, and they
+say to themselves, "Since I have tried thus much, I will try a little
+more." They go on because they have begun.'
+
+Elfride, in her turn, was not particularly attending to his words at
+this moment. She had, unconsciously to herself, a way of seizing any
+point in the remarks of an interlocutor which interested her, and
+dwelling upon it, and thinking thoughts of her own thereupon, totally
+oblivious of all that he might say in continuation. On such occasions
+she artlessly surveyed the person speaking; and then there was a time
+for a painter. Her eyes seemed to look at you, and past you, as you were
+then, into your future; and past your future into your eternity--not
+reading it, but gazing in an unused, unconscious way--her mind 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
+painfully confused.
+
+'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 and simplicity.
+
+Feeling restless now that she had so unwittingly spoken, she arose and
+stepped to the window, having heard the voices of her father and Mrs.
+Swancourt coming up below the terrace. 'Here they are,' she said, going
+out. Knight walked out upon the lawn behind her. She stood upon the edge
+of the terrace, close to the stone balustrade, and looked towards the
+sun, hanging over a glade just now fair as Tempe's vale, up which her
+father was walking.
+
+Knight could not help looking at her. The sun was within ten degrees
+of the horizon, and its warm light flooded her face and heightened the
+bright rose colour of her cheeks to a vermilion red, their moderate pink
+hue being only seen in its natural tone where the cheek curved round
+into shadow. The ends of her hanging hair softly dragged themselves
+backwards and forwards upon her shoulder as each faint breeze thrust
+against or relinquished it. Fringes and ribbons of her dress, moved by
+the same breeze, licked like tongues upon the parts around them, and
+fluttering forward from shady folds caught likewise their share of the
+lustrous orange glow.
+
+Mr. Swancourt shouted out a welcome to Knight from a distance of
+about thirty yards, and after a few preliminary words proceeded to a
+conversation of deep earnestness on Knight's fine old family name, and
+theories as to lineage and intermarriage connected therewith. Knight's
+portmanteau having in the meantime arrived, they soon retired to prepare
+for dinner, which had been postponed two hours later than the usual time
+of that meal.
+
+An arrival was an event in the life of Elfride, now that they were again
+in the country, and that of Knight necessarily an engrossing one. And
+that evening she went 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 its
+existence. 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 the churchyard, iron bars had been thrust into the venerable
+crack extending down the belfry wall to the foundation, the bells had
+been taken down, the owls had forsaken 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 in the village previous to
+beginning the actual removal of the stones.
+
+This was the day after Knight's arrival. To enjoy for the last time the
+prospect seaward from the summit, the vicar, Mrs. Swancourt, Knight, and
+Elfride, all ascended the winding turret--Mr. Swancourt stepping
+forward with many loud breaths, his wife struggling along silently, but
+suffering none the less. They had hardly reached the top when a large
+lurid cloud, palpably a reservoir of rain, thunder, and lightning, was
+seen to be advancing overhead from the north.
+
+The two cautious elders suggested an immediate return, and proceeded to
+put it in 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 his
+shoulder, 'and so, don't you start till we are nearly at the bottom, or
+you will 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 be clear. Knight was not in a talkative mood that morning.
+Elfride was rather wilful, by reason of his inattention, which she
+privately set down to his thinking her not worth talking to. Whilst
+Knight stood watching the rise of the cloud, she sauntered to the other
+side of the tower, and there remembered a giddy feat she had performed
+the year before. It was to walk round upon the parapet of the
+tower--which was quite without battlement or pinnacle, and presented a
+smooth flat surface about two feet wide, forming a pathway on all the
+four sides. Without reflecting in the least upon what she was doing she
+now stepped upon the parapet in the old way, and began walking along.
+
+'We are down, cousin Henry,' cried Mrs. Swancourt up the turret. 'Follow
+us when you like.'
+
+Knight turned and saw Elfride beginning her elevated promenade. His face
+flushed 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 of the stone-work, and she almost lost her balance. Knight
+sprang forward with a face of horror. By what seemed the special
+interposition of a considerate Providence she tottered to the inner edge
+of the parapet instead of to the outer, 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 have met a woman fool enough to do a thing of that kind! Good
+God, you ought to be ashamed of yourself!'
+
+The close proximity of the Shadow of Death had made her sick and pale
+as a corpse before he spoke. Already lowered to that state, his words
+completely over-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 from stern anger to pity. But his severe remarks had rather
+frightened her, and she struggled to be free.
+
+'If you can stand, of course you may,' he said, and loosened his arms.
+'I hardly 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
+you hurt?' he said.
+
+She murmured an incoherent expression, and tried to smile; saying, with
+a fitful aversion of her face, 'I am only frightened. Put me down, do
+put me down!'
+
+'But you can't walk,' said Knight.
+
+'You don't know that; how can you? I am only frightened, I tell you,'
+she answered petulantly, and raised her hand to her forehead. Knight
+then saw that she was bleeding from a severe cut in her wrist,
+apparently where it had descended upon a salient corner of the
+lead-work. Elfride, too, seemed to perceive and feel this now for the
+first time, and for a minute nearly lost consciousness again. Knight
+rapidly bound his handkerchief round the place, and to add to the
+complication, the thundercloud he had been watching began to shed some
+heavy drops of rain. Knight looked up and saw the vicar striding towards
+the 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,'
+said Knight; 'or at any rate inside out of the rain.' But her objection
+to be lifted made 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
+such another. Now, then, will you clasp your hands behind my neck, that
+I may carry you 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
+closed eyes.
+
+He took her into his arms, entered the turret, and with slow and
+cautious steps descended round and round. Then, with the gentleness of
+a nursing mother, he attended to the cut on her arm. During his progress
+through the operations of wiping it and binding it up anew, her face
+changed its aspect from pained indifference to something like bashful
+interest, interspersed with small tremors and shudders of a trifling
+kind.
+
+In the centre of each pale cheek a small red spot the size of a wafer
+had now made its appearance, and continued to grow larger. Elfride
+momentarily expected a recurrence to the lecture on her foolishness, but
+Knight said no more than this--
+
+'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 a lower tone, and seriously, 'You are familiar of course, as
+everybody is, with those strange sensations we sometimes have, that our
+life for the moment exists in duplicate.'
+
+'That we have lived through that moment before?'
+
+'Or shall again. Well, I felt on the tower that something similar to
+that scene is again to be common to us both.'
+
+'God forbid!' said Knight. 'Promise me that you will never again walk on
+any such 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
+few minutes longer, and the storm had ceased.
+
+'Now, take my arm, please.'
+
+'Oh no, it is not necessary.' This relapse into wilfulness was because
+he had again connected the epithet foolish with her.
+
+'Nonsense: it is quite necessary; it will rain again directly, and you
+are not half recovered.' And without more ado Knight took her hand, drew
+it under his arm, and held it there so firmly that she could not have
+removed it without a struggle. Feeling like a colt in a halter for the
+first time, at thus being led along, yet afraid to be angry, it was to
+her great relief that she saw the carriage coming round the corner to
+fetch them.
+
+Her fall upon the roof was necessarily explained to some extent upon
+their entering the house; but both forbore to mention a word of what she
+had been doing to cause such an accident. During the remainder of the
+afternoon Elfride was 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 with Elfride. She had been looking over a chess problem in one of
+the illustrated periodicals.
+
+'You like chess, Miss Swancourt?'
+
+'Yes. It is my favourite scientific game; indeed, excludes every other.
+Do you play?'
+
+'I have played; though not lately.'
+
+'Challenge him, Elfride,' said the vicar heartily. 'She plays very well
+for a lady, 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
+Stephen Smith the year before. Elfride had not; but she had begun to
+take for her maxim the undoubted truth that the necessity of continuing
+faithful to Stephen, without suspicion, dictated a fickle behaviour
+almost as imperatively as fickleness itself; a fact, however, which
+would give a startling advantage to the latter quality should it ever
+appear.
+
+Knight, by one of those inexcusable oversights which will sometimes
+afflict the best of players, placed his rook in the arms of one of her
+pawns. It was her first advantage. She looked triumphant--even ruthless.
+
+'By George! what was I thinking of?' said Knight quietly; and then
+dismissed all 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 his mind, that he had two or three times allowed her to replace a
+man on her religiously assuring him that such a move was an absolute
+blunder.
+
+She immediately took up the unfortunate rook and the contest proceeded,
+Elfride having now rather the better of the game. Then he won the
+exchange, regained his position, and began to press her hard. Elfride
+grew flurried, and placed her queen on his remaining rook's file.
+
+'There--how stupid! Upon my word, I did not see your rook. Of course
+nobody but a 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
+towards his royal victim.
+
+'It is not very pleasant to have it taken advantage of, then,' she said
+with some vexation.
+
+'Club laws, I think you said?' returned Knight blandly, and mercilessly
+appropriating the queen.
+
+She was on the brink of pouting, but was ashamed to show it; tears
+almost stood in her eyes. She had been trying so hard--so very
+hard--thinking and thinking till her brain was in a whirl; and it seemed
+so heartless of him to treat her so, 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
+merely registered a protest. 'I cannot endure those cold-blooded ways of
+clubs and professional players, like Staunton and Morphy. Just as if it
+really mattered whether 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 she
+purposely made blunders that Stephen Smith might win!
+
+It was bedtime. Her mind as distracted as if it would throb itself out
+of her head, she went off to her chamber, full of mortification at being
+beaten time after time when she herself was the aggressor. Having for
+two or three years enjoyed the reputation throughout the globe of her
+father's brain--which almost constituted her entire world--of being an
+excellent player, this fiasco was intolerable; for unfortunately the
+person most dogged in the belief in a false reputation is always that
+one, the possessor, who has the best means of knowing that it is not
+true.
+
+In bed no sleep came to soothe her; that gentle thing being the very
+middle-of-summer friend in this respect of flying away at the merest
+troublous cloud. After lying awake till two o'clock an idea seemed to
+strike her. She softly arose, got a light, and fetched a Chess Praxis
+from the library. Returning and sitting up in bed, she diligently
+studied the volume till the clock struck five, and her eyelids felt
+thick and heavy. She then extinguished the 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 when
+regarded as such by all eyes turning upon her at the table in obedience
+to some remark. Everybody looked at Elfride. She certainly was pale.
+
+'Am I pale?' she said with a faint smile. 'I did not sleep much. I could
+not get rid of armies of bishops and knights, try how I would.'
+
+'Chess is a bad thing just before bedtime; especially for excitable
+people like yourself, 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 like that.'
+
+'But I want to, papa! Honestly, I am restless at having been so
+ignominiously overcome. 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 the
+library, and the door was closed. Elfride seemed to have an idea
+that her conduct was rather ill-regulated and startlingly free from
+conventional restraint. And worse, she fancied upon Knight's face a
+slightly amused look at her proceedings.
+
+'You think me foolish, I suppose,' she said recklessly; 'but I want to
+do my very best just once, and see whether I can overcome you.'
+
+'Certainly: nothing more natural. Though I am afraid it is not the plan
+adopted by women of the world after a defeat.'
+
+'Why, pray?'
+
+'Because they know that as good as overcoming is skill in effacing
+recollection of 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
+more flattering interpretation. 'I am almost sure you think it vanity in
+me to think I am a match for you. Well, if you do, I say that vanity is
+no crime in such a case.'
+
+'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.
+The game progressed. Elfride's heart beat so violently that she could
+not sit still. Her dread was lest he should hear it. And he did discover
+it at last--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 is too much for you, I know. Let us write down the position, and
+finish another time.'
+
+'No, please not,' she implored. 'I should not rest if I did not know the
+result at once. It is your move.'
+
+Ten minutes passed.
+
+She started up suddenly. 'I know what you are doing?' she cried, an
+angry colour upon her cheeks, and her eyes indignant. 'You were thinking
+of letting me win to please me!'
+
+'I don't mind owning that I was,' Knight responded phlegmatically, and
+appearing 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
+absurd thing. 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 of a bookcase. Ten minutes pass; he captures her knight; she
+takes his knight, and looks a very Rhadamanthus.
+
+More minutes tick away; she takes his pawn and has the advantage,
+showing her sense of it rather prominently.
+
+Five minutes more: he takes her bishop: she brings things even by taking
+his knight.
+
+Three minutes: she looks bold, and takes his queen: he looks placid, and
+takes hers.
+
+Eight or ten minutes pass: he takes a pawn; she utters a little pooh!
+but not the 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. He
+immediately takes her bishop: she looks surprised.
+
+Five minutes longer: she makes a dash and takes his only remaining
+bishop; he replies by taking her only remaining knight.
+
+Two minutes: he gives check; her mind is now in a painful state of
+tension, and she shades her face with her hand.
+
+Yet a few minutes more: he takes her rook and checks again. She
+literally trembles now lest an artful surprise she has in store for him
+shall be anticipated 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
+the hall 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
+again before 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
+between young 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, her face hot and red, her arms thrown abroad. At intervals of a
+minute she tossed restlessly from side to side, and indistinctly moaned
+words used in the game of chess.
+
+Mrs. Swancourt had a turn for doctoring, and felt her pulse. It was
+twanging like a harp-string, at the rate of nearly a hundred and fifty
+a minute. Softly moving the sleeping girl to a little less cramped
+position, she went downstairs again.
+
+'She is asleep now,' said Mrs. Swancourt. 'She does not seem very well.
+Cousin Knight, what were you thinking of? her tender brain won't bear
+cudgelling like your 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 less extensive than his abstract knowledge of them led himself and
+others to believe. He could pack them into sentences like a workman, but
+practically was nowhere.
+
+'I am indeed sorry,' said Knight, feeling even more than he expressed.
+'But surely, 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 in order, as you would a child. She will say things worthy of a
+French epigrammatist, and act like a robin in a greenhouse. But I think
+we will send for Dr. Granson--there can be no harm.'
+
+A man was straightway despatched on horseback to Castle Boterel, and the
+gentleman known as Dr. Granson came in the course of the afternoon.
+He pronounced her nervous system to be in a decided state of disorder;
+forwarded some soothing draught, and gave orders that on no account
+whatever was she to play chess again.
+
+The next morning Knight, much vexed with himself, waited with a
+curiously compounded feeling for her entry to breakfast. The women
+servants came in to prayers at irregular intervals, and as each entered,
+he could not, to save his life, avoid turning his head with the hope
+that she might be Elfride. Mr. Swancourt began reading without waiting
+for her. Then somebody glided in noiselessly; 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
+that holding converse with Nature's charms was not solitude. On nearing
+the house again he perceived his young friend crossing a slope by a path
+which ran into the one he was following in the angle of the field. Here
+they met. Elfride was at once exultant and abashed: coming into his
+presence had upon her the effect of entering a cathedral.
+
+Knight had his note-book in his hand, and had, in fact, been in the very
+act of writing therein when they came in view of each other. He left off
+in the midst of 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 health was as inconsequent as her actions. Her
+lips were red, WITHOUT the polish that cherries have, and their redness
+margined with the white skin in a clearly defined line, which had
+nothing of jagged confusion in it. Altogether she stood as the last
+person in the world to be knocked over by a game of chess, because too
+ephemeral-looking to play one.
+
+'Are you taking notes?' she inquired with an alacrity plainly arising
+less from interest 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, and afterwards walked on.
+
+'I should like to see all the secrets that are in that book,' she gaily
+flung back 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
+concerning journeys and expenditure, and so on, or a book of thoughts?'
+
+'Well, to tell the truth, it is not exactly either. It consists for
+the most part of jottings for articles and essays, disjointed and
+disconnected, of no possible 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
+must they be in their concentrated form? Pure rectified spirit, above
+proof; before it is lowered to be fit for human consumption: "words that
+burn" indeed.'
+
+'Rather like a balloon before it is inflated: flabby, shapeless, dead.
+You could hardly read them.'
+
+'May I try?' she said coaxingly. 'I wrote my poor romance in that way--I
+mean in bits, out of doors--and I should like to see whether your way of
+entering things is the same as mine.'
+
+'Really, that's rather an awkward request. I suppose I can hardly refuse
+now you have asked so directly; but----'
+
+'You think me ill-mannered in asking. But does not this justify me--your
+writing in my presence, Mr. Knight? If I had lighted upon your book by
+chance, it would have been different; but you stand before me, and say,
+"Excuse me," without caring whether I do or not, and write on, and then
+tell me they are not private facts but public ideas.'
+
+'Very well, Miss Swancourt. If you really must see, the consequences
+be upon your 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
+turning over the leaves. By the time he had reached the wicket-gate he
+saw that she had moved, and waited till she came up.
+
+Elfride had closed the note-book, and was carrying it disdainfully by
+the corner between her finger and thumb; her face wore a nettled look.
+She silently extended the volume towards him, raising her eyes no higher
+than her hand was lifted.
+
+'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 and
+opening a page. 'August 7. That's the day before yesterday. But I won't
+read it,' Elfride said, closing the book again with pretty hauteur. 'Why
+should I? I had 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 a certain interval passed in infantine helplessness it begins to
+act. Simple, young, and inexperienced at first. Persons of observation
+can tell to a nicety how old this consciousness is by the skill it has
+acquired in the art necessary to its success--the art of hiding
+itself. Generally begins career by actions which are popularly termed
+showing-off. Method adopted depends in each case upon the disposition,
+rank, residence, of the young lady attempting it. Town-bred girl will
+utter some moral paradox on fast men, or love. Country miss adopts the
+more material media of taking a ghastly fence, whistling, or making your
+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 or not it be to their advantage to show so very much
+of themselves. (Amplify and correct for paper on Artless Arts.)'
+
+'Yes, I remember now,' said Knight. 'The notes were certainly suggested
+by your manoeuvre on the church tower. But you must not think too much
+of such random observations,' he continued encouragingly, as he noticed
+her injured looks. 'A mere fancy passing through my head assumes a
+factitious importance to you, because it has been made permanent by
+being written down. All mankind think thoughts as bad as those of people
+they most love on earth, but such thoughts never getting embodied on
+paper, it becomes assumed that they never existed. I daresay 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 tell
+me.'
+
+'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 faint
+ghastliness discernible in his laugh. 'They are much worse in a lady's
+eye than being thought self-conscious, I suppose.'
+
+'Ah, that's very fine,' she said, too inexperienced to perceive her hit,
+and hence not quite disposed to forgive his notes. 'You alluded to me in
+that entry as if I were such a child, too. Everybody does that. I cannot
+understand it. I am 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 in the 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 and girls who are men and women before they come of age
+are nobodies by the time that backward people have shown their full
+compass.'
+
+'Yes,' said Knight thoughtfully. 'There is really something in that
+remark. But at the risk of offence I must remind you that you there take
+it for granted that the woman behind her time at a given age has not
+reached the end of her tether. Her backwardness may be not because she
+is slow to develop, but because she soon exhausted her capacity for
+developing.'
+
+Elfride looked disappointed. By this time they were indoors. Mrs.
+Swancourt, to whom match-making by any honest means was meat and
+drink, had now a little scheme of that nature concerning this pair. The
+morning-room, in which they both expected to find her, was empty; the
+old lady having, for the above reason, vacated it by the second door as
+they entered by the first.
+
+Knight went to the chimney-piece, and carelessly surveyed two portraits
+on ivory.
+
+'Though these pink ladies had very rudimentary features, judging by what
+I see here,' 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 hope that she had been misunderstood.
+
+'So do I,' Knight replied.
+
+It was impossible for any man not to know the colour of Elfride's hair.
+In women who wear it plainly such a feature may be overlooked by men not
+given to ocular intentness. But hers was always in the way. You saw her
+hair as far as you could see her sex, and knew that it was the palest
+brown. She knew instantly that Knight, being perfectly aware of this,
+had an independent standard of admiration in the matter.
+
+Elfride was thoroughly vexed. She could not but be struck with the
+honesty of his opinions, and the worst of it was, that the more they
+went against her, the more she respected them. And now, like a reckless
+gambler, she hazarded her last 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 that man 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
+judicious touches of epigrammatic flattery, obliterate a woman's
+recollection of the speaker's abstract opinions. So no more was said by
+either on the subject of hair, eyes, or development. Elfride's mind
+had been impregnated with sentiments of her own smallness to an
+uncomfortable degree of distinctness, and her discomfort was visible in
+her face. The whole tendency of the conversation latterly had been to
+quietly but surely disparage her; and she was fain to take Stephen into
+favour in self-defence. He would not have been so unloving, she said,
+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 the sort. Somehow this did not mend matters, and the sensation of
+her smallness in Knight's eyes still remained. Had the position been
+reversed--had Stephen loved her in spite of a differing taste, and had
+Knight been indifferent in spite of her resemblance to his ideal, it
+would have engendered far happier thoughts. As matters stood, Stephen's
+admiration might have its root in a blindness the result of passion.
+Perhaps any keen man's judgment was condemnatory of her.
+
+During the remainder of Saturday they were more or less thrown with
+their seniors, and no conversation arose which was exclusively their
+own. When Elfride was in bed that night her thoughts recurred to the
+same subject. At one moment she insisted that it was ill-natured of him
+to speak so decisively as he had done; the next, that it was sterling
+honesty.
+
+'Ah, what a poor nobody I am!' she said, sighing. 'People like him, who
+go about the great world, don't care in the least what I am like either
+in mood or feature.'
+
+Perhaps a man who has got thoroughly into a woman's mind in this manner,
+is half way to her heart; the distance between those two stations is
+proverbially short.
+
+'And are you really going away this week?' said Mrs. Swancourt to Knight
+on the following evening, which was Sunday.
+
+They were all leisurely climbing the hill to the church, where a last
+service was now to be held at the rather exceptional time of evening
+instead of in the afternoon, previous to the demolition of the ruinous
+portions.
+
+'I am intending to cross to Cork from Bristol,' returned Knight; 'and
+then I go on to Dublin.'
+
+'Return this way, and stay a little longer with us,' said the vicar. 'A
+week is nothing. We have hardly been able to realize your presence yet.
+I remember a story which----'
+
+The vicar suddenly stopped. He had forgotten it was Sunday, and would
+probably have gone on in his week-day mode of thought had not a turn in
+the breeze blown the skirt of his college gown within the range of his
+vision, and so reminded him. He at once diverted the current of his
+narrative with the dexterity the occasion demanded.
+
+'The story of the Levite who journeyed to Bethlehem-judah, from which
+I took my text the Sunday before last, is quite to the point,' he
+continued, with the pronunciation of a man who, far from having intended
+to tell a week-day story a moment 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 of the Jebusites, and not been
+so anxious for Gibeah, none of his troubles would have arisen.'
+
+'But he had wasted five days already,' said Knight, closing his eyes
+to the vicar's commendable diversion. 'His fault lay in beginning the
+tarrying system originally.'
+
+'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 an almost imperceptible fall of countenance in her stepdaughter at
+Knight's announcement.
+
+Knight half promised to call on his return journey; but the uncertainty
+with which he spoke was quite enough to fill Elfride with a regretful
+interest in all he did during the few remaining hours. The curate having
+already officiated twice that day in the two churches, Mr. Swancourt had
+undertaken the whole of the evening service, and Knight read the lessons
+for him. The sun streamed across from the dilapidated west window, and
+lighted all the assembled worshippers with a golden glow, Knight as he
+read being illuminated by the same mellow lustre. Elfride at the organ
+regarded him with a throbbing sadness of mood which was fed by a sense
+of being far removed from his sphere. As he went deliberately through
+the chapter appointed--a portion of the history of Elijah--and ascended
+that magnificent climax of the wind, the earthquake, the fire, and
+the still small voice, his deep tones echoed past with such apparent
+disregard of her existence, that his presence inspired her with a
+forlorn sense of 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 dying sun as it fell on his form, her eyes were arrested by the
+shape and aspect of a woman in the west gallery. It was the bleak barren
+countenance of the widow Jethway, whom Elfride had not seen much of
+since the morning of her return with Stephen Smith. Possessing the
+smallest of competencies, this unhappy woman appeared to spend her life
+in journeyings between Endelstow Churchyard and that of a village near
+Southampton, where her father and mother were laid.
+
+She had not attended the service here for a considerable time, and she
+now seemed to have a reason for her choice of seat. From the gallery
+window the tomb of her son was plainly visible--standing as the nearest
+object in a prospect which was closed outwardly by the changeless
+horizon of the sea.
+
+The streaming rays, too, flooded her face, now bent towards Elfride with
+a hard and bitter expression that the solemnity of the place raised to
+a tragic dignity it did not intrinsically possess. The girl resumed her
+normal attitude with an added disquiet.
+
+Elfride's emotion was cumulative, and after a while would assert itself
+on a sudden. A slight touch was enough to set it free--a poem, a sunset,
+a cunningly contrived chord of music, a vague imagining, being the usual
+accidents of its exhibition. The longing for Knight's respect, which
+was leading up to an incipient yearning for his love, made the present
+conjuncture a sufficient one. Whilst kneeling down previous to leaving,
+when the sunny streaks had gone upward to the roof, and the lower
+part of the church was in soft shadow, she could not help thinking
+of Coleridge's morbid poem 'The Three Graves,' and shuddering as she
+wondered if Mrs. Jethway were cursing her, she wept as if her heart
+would break.
+
+They came out of church just as the sun went down, leaving the landscape
+like a platform from which an eloquent speaker has retired, and nothing
+remains for the audience to do but to rise and go home. Mr. and Mrs.
+Swancourt went off in the carriage, Knight and Elfride preferring to
+walk, as the skilful old matchmaker had imagined. They descended the
+hill together.
+
+'I liked your reading, Mr. Knight,' Elfride presently found herself
+saying. 'You read better than papa.'
+
+'I will praise anybody that will praise me. You played excellently, Miss
+Swancourt, and very correctly.'
+
+'Correctly--yes.'
+
+'It must be a great pleasure to you to take an active part in the
+service.'
+
+'I want to be able to play with more feeling. But I have not a good
+selection of music, sacred or secular. I wish I had a nice little
+music-library--well chosen, and that the only new pieces sent me were
+those of genuine merit.'
+
+'I am glad to hear such a wish from you. It is extraordinary how many
+women have no honest love of music as an end and not as a means, even
+leaving out those who have nothing in them. They mostly like it for its
+accessories. I have never met a woman who loves music as do ten or a
+dozen men I know.'
+
+'How would you draw the line between women with something and women with
+nothing in them?'
+
+'Well,' said Knight, reflecting a moment, 'I mean by nothing in them
+those who don't care about anything solid. This is an instance: I knew a
+man who had a young friend in whom he was much interested; in fact, they
+were going to be married. She was seemingly poetical, and he offered her
+a choice of two editions of the British poets, which she pretended to
+want badly. He said, "Which of them would you like best for me to send?"
+She said, "A pair of the prettiest earrings in Bond Street, if you don't
+mind, would be nicer than either." Now I call her a girl with not much
+in her but vanity; and so do you, I daresay.'
+
+'Oh yes,' replied Elfride with an effort.
+
+Happening to catch a glimpse of her face as she was speaking, and
+noticing that her attempt at heartiness was a miserable failure, he
+appeared to have misgivings.
+
+'You, Miss Swancourt, would not, under such circumstances, have
+preferred the nicknacks?'
+
+'No, I don't think I should, indeed,' she stammered.
+
+'I'll put it to you,' said the inflexible Knight. 'Which will you have
+of these two things of about equal value--the well-chosen little library
+of the best music you spoke of--bound in morocco, walnut case, lock and
+key--or a pair of the very prettiest earrings in Bond Street windows?'
+
+'Of course the music,' Elfride replied with forced earnestness.
+
+'You are quite certain?' he said emphatically.
+
+'Quite,' she faltered; 'if I could for certain buy the earrings
+afterwards.'
+
+Knight, somewhat blamably, keenly enjoyed sparring with the palpitating
+mobile creature, whose excitable nature made any such thing a species of
+cruelty.
+
+He looked at her rather oddly, and said, 'Fie!'
+
+'Forgive me,' she said, laughing a little, a little frightened, and
+blushing very deeply.
+
+'Ah, Miss Elfie, why didn't you say at first, as any firm woman would
+have said, I am as bad as she, and shall choose the same?'
+
+'I don't know,' said Elfride wofully, and with a distressful smile.
+
+'I thought you were exceptionally musical?'
+
+'So I am, I think. But the test is so severe--quite painful.'
+
+'I don't understand.'
+
+'Music doesn't do any real good, or rather----'
+
+'That IS a thing to say, Miss Swancourt! Why, what----'
+
+'You don't understand! you don't understand!'
+
+'Why, what conceivable use is there in jimcrack jewellery?'
+
+'No, no, no, no!' she cried petulantly; 'I didn't mean what you think. I
+like the music best, only I like----'
+
+'Earrings better--own it!' he said in a teasing tone. 'Well, I think I
+should have had the moral courage to own it at once, without pretending
+to an elevation I could not reach.'
+
+Like the French soldiery, Elfride was not brave when on the defensive.
+So it was almost with tears in her eyes that she answered desperately:
+
+'My meaning is, that I like earrings best just now, because I lost one
+of my prettiest pair last year, and papa said he would not buy any more,
+or allow me to myself, because I was careless; and now I wish I had some
+like them--that's what my meaning is--indeed it is, Mr. Knight.'
+
+'I am afraid I have been very harsh and rude,' said Knight, with a look
+of regret at seeing how disturbed she was. 'But seriously, if women only
+knew how they ruin their good looks by such appurtenances, I am sure
+they would never want them.'
+
+'They were lovely, and became me so!'
+
+'Not if they were like the ordinary hideous things women stuff their
+ears with nowadays--like the governor of a steam-engine, or a pair
+of scales, or gold gibbets and chains, and artists' palettes, and
+compensation pendulums, and Heaven knows what besides.'
+
+'No; they were not one of those things. So pretty--like this,' she said
+with eager animation. And she drew with the point of her parasol an
+enlarged view of one of the lamented darlings, to a scale that would
+have suited a giantess half-a-mile high.
+
+'Yes, very pretty--very,' said Knight dryly. 'How did you come to lose
+such a precious pair of articles?'
+
+'I only lost one--nobody ever loses both at the same time.'
+
+She made this remark with embarrassment, and a nervous movement of
+the fingers. Seeing that the loss occurred whilst Stephen Smith was
+attempting to kiss her for the first time on the cliff, her confusion
+was hardly to be wondered at. The question had been awkward, and
+received no direct answer.
+
+Knight seemed not to notice her manner.
+
+'Oh, nobody ever loses both--I see. And certainly the fact that it was a
+case of loss takes away all odour of vanity from your choice.'
+
+'As I never know whether you are in earnest, I don't now,' she said,
+looking up inquiringly at the hairy face of the oracle. And coming
+gallantly to her own rescue, 'If I really seem vain, it is that I am
+only vain in my ways--not in my heart. The worst women are those vain in
+their hearts, and not in their ways.'
+
+'An adroit distinction. Well, they are certainly the more objectionable
+of the two,' said Knight.
+
+'Is vanity a mortal or a venial sin? You know what life is: tell me.'
+
+'I am very far from knowing what life is. A just conception of life is
+too large a thing to grasp during the short interval of passing through
+it.'
+
+'Will the fact of a woman being fond of jewellery be likely to make her
+life, in its higher sense, a failure?'
+
+'Nobody's life is altogether a failure.'
+
+'Well, you know what I mean, even though my words are badly selected and
+commonplace,' she said impatiently. 'Because I utter commonplace words,
+you must not suppose I think only commonplace thoughts. My poor stock
+of words are like a limited number of rough moulds I have to cast all my
+materials in, good and bad; and the novelty or delicacy of the substance
+is often lost in the coarse triteness of the form.'
+
+'Very well; I'll believe that ingenious representation. As to the
+subject in hand--lives which are failures--you need not trouble
+yourself. Anybody's life may be just as romantic and strange and
+interesting if he or she fails as if he or she succeed. All the
+difference is, that the last chapter is wanting in the story. If a man
+of power tries to do a great deed, and just falls short of it by an
+accident not his fault, up to that time his history had as much in it as
+that of a great man who has done his great deed. It is whimsical of the
+world to hold that particulars of how a lad went to school and so on
+should be as an interesting romance or as nothing to them, precisely in
+proportion to his after renown.'
+
+They were walking between the sunset and the moonrise. With the dropping
+of the sun a nearly full moon had begun to raise itself. Their shadows,
+as cast by the western glare, showed signs of becoming obliterated in
+the interest of a rival pair in the opposite direction which the moon
+was bringing to distinctness.
+
+'I consider my life to some extent a failure,' said Knight again after a
+pause, during which he had noticed the antagonistic shadows.
+
+'You! How?'
+
+'I don't precisely know. But in some way I have missed the mark.'
+
+'Really? To have done it is not much to be sad about, but to feel that
+you have done it must be a cause of sorrow. Am I right?'
+
+'Partly, though not quite. For a sensation of being profoundly
+experienced serves as a sort of consolation to people who are conscious
+of having taken wrong turnings. Contradictory as it seems, there is
+nothing truer than that people who have always gone right don't know
+half as much about the nature and ways of going right as those do who
+have gone wrong. However, it is not desirable for me to chill your
+summer-time by going into this.'
+
+'You have not told me even now if I am really vain.'
+
+'If I say Yes, I shall offend you; if I say No, you'll think I don't
+mean it,' he replied, looking curiously into her face.
+
+'Ah, well,' she replied, with a little breath of distress, '"That which
+is exceeding deep, who will find it out?" I suppose I must take you as I
+do the Bible--find out and understand all I can; and on the strength of
+that, swallow the rest in a lump, by simple faith. Think me vain, if you
+will. Worldly greatness requires so much littleness to grow up in, that
+an infirmity more or less is not a matter for regret.'
+
+'As regards women, I can't say,' answered Knight carelessly; 'but it is
+without doubt a misfortune for a man who has a living to get, to be born
+of a truly noble nature. A high soul will bring a man to the workhouse;
+so you may be right in sticking up for vanity.'
+
+'No, no, I don't do that,' she said regretfully.
+
+Mr. Knight, when you are gone, will you send me something you have
+written? I think I should like to see whether you write as you have
+lately spoken, or in your better mood. Which is your true self--the
+cynic you have been this evening, or the nice philosopher you were up to
+to-night?'
+
+'Ah, which? You know as well as I.'
+
+Their conversation detained them on the lawn and in the portico till the
+stars blinked out. Elfride flung back her head, and said idly--
+
+'There's a bright star exactly over me.'
+
+'Each bright star is overhead somewhere.'
+
+'Is it? Oh yes, of course. Where is that one?' and she pointed with her
+finger.
+
+'That is poised like a white hawk over one of the Cape Verde Islands.'
+
+'And that?'
+
+'Looking down upon the source of the Nile.'
+
+'And that lonely quiet-looking one?'
+
+'He watches the North Pole, and has no less than the whole equator for
+his horizon. And that idle one low down upon the ground, that we have
+almost rolled away from, is in India--over the head of a young friend of
+mine, who very possibly looks at the star in our zenith, as it hangs
+low upon his horizon, and thinks of it as marking where his true love
+dwells.'
+
+Elfride glanced at Knight with misgiving. Did he mean her? She could not
+see his features; but his attitude seemed to show unconsciousness.
+
+'The star is over MY head,' she said with hesitation.
+
+'Or anybody else's in England.'
+
+'Oh yes, I see:' she breathed her relief.
+
+'His parents, I believe, are natives of this county. I don't know
+them, though I have been in correspondence with him for many years till
+lately. Fortunately or unfortunately for him he fell in love, and then
+went to Bombay. Since that time I have heard very little of him.'
+
+Knight went no further in his volunteered statement, and though Elfride
+at one moment was inclined to profit by the lessons in honesty he had
+just been giving her, the flesh was weak, and the intention dispersed
+into silence. There seemed a reproach in Knight's blind words, and yet
+she was not able to clearly define any disloyalty that she had been
+guilty of.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XX
+
+     'A distant dearness in the hill.'
+
+
+Knight turned his back upon the parish of Endelstow, and crossed over to
+Cork.
+
+One day of absence superimposed itself on another, and proportionately
+weighted his heart. He pushed on to the Lakes of Killarney, rambled amid
+their luxuriant woods, surveyed the infinite variety of island, hill,
+and dale there to be found, listened to the marvellous echoes of that
+romantic spot; but altogether missed the glory and the dream he formerly
+found in such favoured regions.
+
+Whilst in the company of Elfride, her girlish presence had not
+perceptibly affected him to any depth. He had not been conscious that
+her entry into his sphere had added anything to himself; but now
+that she was taken away he was very conscious of a great deal being
+abstracted. The superfluity had become a necessity, and Knight was in
+love.
+
+Stephen fell in love with Elfride by looking at her: Knight by ceasing
+to do so. When or how the spirit entered into him he knew not: certain
+he was that when on the point of leaving Endelstow he had felt none of
+that exquisite nicety of poignant sadness natural to such severances,
+seeing how delightful a subject of contemplation Elfride had been ever
+since. Had he begun to love her when she met his eye after her mishap
+on the tower? He had simply thought her weak. Had he grown to love her
+whilst standing on the lawn brightened all over by the evening sun? He
+had thought her complexion good: no more. Was it her conversation
+that had sown the seed? He had thought her words ingenious, and very
+creditable to a young woman, but not noteworthy. Had the chess-playing
+anything to do with it? Certainly not: he had thought her at that time a
+rather conceited child.
+
+Knight's experience was a complete disproof of the assumption that
+love always comes by glances of the eye and sympathetic touches of the
+fingers: that, like flame, it makes itself palpable at the moment of
+generation. Not till they were parted, and she had become sublimated in
+his memory, could he be said to have even attentively regarded her.
+
+Thus, having passively gathered up images of her which his mind did not
+act upon till the cause of them was no longer before him, he appeared
+to himself to have fallen in love with her soul, which had temporarily
+assumed its disembodiment to accompany him on his way.
+
+She began to rule him so imperiously now that, accustomed to analysis,
+he almost trembled at the possible result of the introduction of this
+new force among the nicely adjusted ones of his ordinary life. He became
+restless: then he forgot all collateral subjects in the pleasure of
+thinking about her.
+
+Yet it must be said that Knight loved philosophically rather than with
+romance.
+
+He thought of her manner towards him. Simplicity verges on coquetry. Was
+she flirting? he said to himself. No forcible translation of favour into
+suspicion was able to uphold such a theory. The performance had been
+too well done to be anything but real. It had the defects without which
+nothing is genuine. No actress of twenty years' standing, no bald-necked
+lady whose earliest season 'out' was lost in the discreet mist of
+evasive talk, could have played before him the part of ingenuous girl
+as Elfride lived it. She had the little artful ways which partly make up
+ingenuousness.
+
+There are bachelors by nature and bachelors by circumstance: spinsters
+there doubtless are also of both kinds, though some think only those
+of the latter. However, Knight had been looked upon as a bachelor by
+nature. What was he coming to? It was very odd to himself to look at his
+theories on the subject of love, and reading them now by the full light
+of a new experience, to see how much more his sentences meant than he
+had felt them to mean when they were written. People often discover the
+real force of a trite old maxim only when it is thrust upon them by a
+chance adventure; but Knight had never before known the case of a man
+who learnt the full compass of his own epigrams by such means.
+
+He was intensely satisfied with one aspect of the affair. Inbred in him
+was an invincible objection to be any but the first comer in a woman's
+heart. He had discovered within himself the condition that if ever
+he did make up his mind to marry, it must be on the certainty that
+no cropping out of inconvenient old letters, no bow and blush to
+a mysterious stranger casually met, should be a possible source of
+discomposure. Knight's sentiments were only the ordinary ones of a man
+of his age who loves genuinely, perhaps exaggerated a little by his
+pursuits. When men first love as lads, it is with the very centre of
+their hearts, nothing else being concerned in the operation. With added
+years, more of the faculties attempt a partnership in the passion, till
+at Knight's age the understanding is fain to have a hand in it. It may
+as well be left out. A man in love setting up his brains as a gauge of
+his position is as one determining a ship's longitude from a light at
+the mast-head.
+
+Knight argued from Elfride's unwontedness of manner, which was matter
+of fact, to an unwontedness in love, which was matter of inference only.
+Incredules les plus credules. 'Elfride,' he said, 'had hardly looked
+upon a man till she saw me.'
+
+He had never forgotten his severity to her because she preferred
+ornament to edification, and had since excused her a hundred times
+by thinking how natural to womankind was a love of adornment, and how
+necessary became a mild infusion of personal vanity to complete the
+delicate and fascinating dye of the feminine mind. So at the end of the
+week's absence, which had brought him as far as Dublin, he resolved to
+curtail his tour, return to Endelstow, and commit himself by making a
+reality of the hypothetical offer of that Sunday evening.
+
+Notwithstanding that he had concocted a great deal of paper theory on
+social amenities and modern manners generally, the special ounce of
+practice was wanting, and now for his life Knight could not recollect
+whether it was considered correct to give a young lady personal
+ornaments before a regular engagement to marry had been initiated.
+But the day before leaving Dublin he looked around anxiously for a
+high-class jewellery establishment, in which he purchased what he
+considered would suit her best.
+
+It was with a most awkward and unwonted feeling that after entering and
+closing the door of his room he sat down, opened the morocco case, and
+held up each of the fragile bits of gold-work before his eyes. Many
+things had become old to the solitary man of letters, but these were
+new, and he handled like a child an outcome of civilization which had
+never before been touched by his fingers. A sudden fastidious decision
+that the pattern chosen would not suit her after all caused him to rise
+in a flurry and tear down the street to change them for others. After
+a great deal of trouble in reselecting, during which his mind became so
+bewildered that the critical faculty on objects of art seemed to have
+vacated his person altogether, Knight carried off another pair of
+ear-rings. These remained in his possession till the afternoon, when,
+after contemplating them fifty times with a growing misgiving that the
+last choice was worse than the first, he felt that no sleep would visit
+his pillow till he had improved upon his previous purchases yet again.
+In a perfect heat of vexation with himself for such tergiversation, he
+went anew to the shop-door, was absolutely ashamed to enter and give
+further trouble, went to another shop, bought a pair at an enormously
+increased price, because they seemed the very thing, asked the
+goldsmiths if they would take the other pair in exchange, was told that
+they could not exchange articles bought of another maker, paid down the
+money, and went off with the two pairs in his possession, wondering what
+on earth to do with the superfluous pair. He almost wished he could
+lose them, or that somebody would steal them, and was burdened with an
+interposing sense that, as a capable man, with true ideas of economy,
+he must necessarily sell them somewhere, which he did at last for a mere
+song. Mingled with a blank feeling of a whole day being lost to him in
+running about the city on this new and extraordinary class of errand,
+and of several pounds being lost through his bungling, was a slight
+sense of satisfaction that he had emerged for ever from his antediluvian
+ignorance on the subject of ladies' jewellery, as well as secured a
+truly artistic production at last. During the remainder of that day
+he scanned the ornaments of every lady he met with the profoundly
+experienced eye of an appraiser.
+
+Next morning Knight was again crossing St. George's Channel--not
+returning to London by the Holyhead route as he had originally intended,
+but towards Bristol--availing himself of Mr. and Mrs. Swancourt's
+invitation to revisit them on his homeward journey.
+
+We flit forward to Elfride.
+
+Woman's ruling passion--to fascinate and influence those more powerful
+than she--though operant in Elfride, was decidedly purposeless. She had
+wanted her friend Knight's good opinion from the first: how much more
+than that elementary ingredient of friendship she now desired, her fears
+would hardly allow her to think. In originally wishing to please
+the highest class of man she had ever intimately known, there was no
+disloyalty to Stephen Smith. She could not--and few women can--realize
+the possible vastness of an issue which has only an insignificant
+begetting.
+
+Her letters from Stephen were necessarily few, and her sense of fidelity
+clung to the last she had received as a wrecked mariner clings to
+flotsam. The young girl persuaded herself that she was glad Stephen
+had such a right to her hand as he had acquired (in her eyes) by the
+elopement. She beguiled herself by saying, 'Perhaps if I had not so
+committed myself I might fall in love with Mr. Knight.'
+
+All this made the week of Knight's absence very gloomy and distasteful
+to her. She retained Stephen in her prayers, and his old letters were
+re-read--as a medicine in reality, though she deceived herself into the
+belief that it was as a pleasure.
+
+These letters had grown more and more hopeful. He told her that he
+finished his work every day with a pleasant consciousness of having
+removed one more stone from the barrier which divided them. Then he drew
+images of what a fine figure they two would cut some day. People would
+turn their heads and say, 'What a prize he has won!' She was not to be
+sad about that wild runaway attempt of theirs (Elfride had repeatedly
+said that it grieved her). Whatever any other person who knew of it
+might think, he knew well enough the modesty of her nature. The only
+reproach was a gentle one for not having written quite so devotedly
+during her visit to London. Her letter had seemed to have a liveliness
+derived from other thoughts than thoughts of him.
+
+
+Knight's intention of an early return to Endelstow having originally
+been faint, his promise to do so had been fainter. He was a man who kept
+his words well to the rear of his possible actions. The vicar was rather
+surprised to see him again so soon: Mrs. Swancourt was not. Knight
+found, on meeting them all, after his arrival had been announced, that
+they had formed an intention to go to St. Leonards for a few days at the
+end of the month.
+
+No satisfactory conjuncture offered itself on this first evening of his
+return for presenting Elfride with what he had been at such pains to
+procure. He was fastidious in his reading of opportunities for such an
+intended act. The next morning chancing to break fine after a week of
+cloudy weather, it was proposed and decided that they should all drive
+to Barwith Strand, a local lion which neither Mrs. Swancourt nor Knight
+had seen. Knight scented romantic occasions from afar, and foresaw that
+such a one might be expected before the coming night.
+
+The journey was along a road by neutral green hills, upon which
+hedgerows lay trailing like ropes on a quay. Gaps in these uplands
+revealed the blue sea, flecked with a few dashes of white and a solitary
+white sail, the whole brimming up to a keen horizon which lay like a
+line ruled from hillside to hillside. Then they rolled down a pass, the
+chocolate-toned rocks forming a wall on both sides, from one of which
+fell a heavy jagged shade over half the roadway. A spout of fresh water
+burst from an occasional crevice, and pattering down upon broad green
+leaves, ran along as a rivulet at the bottom. Unkempt locks of heather
+overhung the brow of each steep, whence at divers points a bramble swung
+forth into mid-air, snatching at their head-dresses like a claw.
+
+They mounted the last crest, and the bay which was to be the end of
+their pilgrimage burst upon them. The ocean blueness deepened its colour
+as it stretched to the foot of the crags, where it terminated in a
+fringe of white--silent at this distance, though moving and heaving
+like a counterpane upon a restless sleeper. The shadowed hollows of the
+purple and brown rocks would have been called blue had not that tint
+been so entirely appropriated by the water beside them.
+
+The carriage was put up at a little cottage with a shed attached, and
+an ostler and the coachman carried the hamper of provisions down to the
+shore.
+
+Knight found his opportunity. 'I did not forget your wish,' he began,
+when they were apart from their friends.
+
+Elfride looked as if she did not understand.
+
+'And I have brought you these,' he continued, awkwardly pulling out the
+case, and opening it while holding it towards her.
+
+'O Mr. Knight!' said Elfride confusedly, and turning to a lively red; 'I
+didn't know you had any intention or meaning in what you said. I thought
+it a mere supposition. I don't want them.'
+
+A thought which had flashed into her mind gave the reply a greater
+decisiveness than it might otherwise have possessed. To-morrow was the
+day for Stephen's letter.
+
+'But will you not accept them?' Knight returned, feeling less her master
+than heretofore.
+
+'I would rather not. They are beautiful--more beautiful than any I
+have ever seen,' she answered earnestly, looking half-wishfully at the
+temptation, as Eve may have looked at the apple. 'But I don't want to
+have them, if you will kindly forgive me, Mr. Knight.'
+
+'No kindness at all,' said Mr. Knight, brought to a full stop at this
+unexpected turn of events.
+
+A silence followed. Knight held the open case, looking rather wofully
+at the glittering forms he had forsaken his orbit to procure; turning it
+about and holding it up as if, feeling his gift to be slighted by her,
+he were endeavouring to admire it very much himself.
+
+'Shut them up, and don't let me see them any longer--do!' she said
+laughingly, and with a quaint mixture of reluctance and entreaty.
+
+'Why, Elfie?'
+
+'Not Elfie to you, Mr. Knight. Oh, because I shall want them. There,
+I am silly, I know, to say that! But I have a reason for not taking
+them--now.' She kept in the last word for a moment, intending to imply
+that her refusal was finite, but somehow the word slipped out, and undid
+all the rest.
+
+'You will take them some day?'
+
+'I don't want to.'
+
+'Why don't you want to, Elfride Swancourt?'
+
+'Because I don't. I don't like to take them.'
+
+'I have read a fact of distressing significance in that,' said Knight.
+'Since you like them, your dislike to having them must be towards me?'
+
+'No, it isn't.'
+
+'What, then? Do you like me?'
+
+Elfride deepened in tint, and looked into the distance with features
+shaped to an expression of the nicest criticism as regarded her answer.
+
+'I like you pretty well,' she at length murmured mildly.
+
+'Not very much?'
+
+'You are so sharp with me, and say hard things, and so how can I?' she
+replied evasively.
+
+'You think me a fogey, I suppose?'
+
+'No, I don't--I mean I do--I don't know what I think you, I mean. Let us
+go to papa,' responded Elfride, with somewhat of a flurried delivery.
+
+'Well, I'll tell you my object in getting the present,' said Knight,
+with a composure intended to remove from her mind any possible
+impression of his being what he was--her lover. 'You see it was the very
+least I could do in common civility.'
+
+Elfride felt rather blank at this lucid statement.
+
+Knight continued, putting away the case: 'I felt as anybody naturally
+would have, you know, that my words on your choice the other day were
+invidious and unfair, and thought an apology should take a practical
+shape.'
+
+'Oh yes.'
+
+Elfride was sorry--she could not tell why--that he gave such a
+legitimate reason. It was a disappointment that he had all the time a
+cool motive, which might be stated to anybody without raising a smile.
+Had she known they were offered in that spirit, she would certainly
+have accepted the seductive gift. And the tantalizing feature was that
+perhaps he suspected her to imagine them offered as a lover's token,
+which was mortifying enough if they were not.
+
+Mrs. Swancourt came now to where they were sitting, to select a flat
+boulder for spreading their table-cloth upon, and, amid the discussion
+on that subject, the matter pending between Knight and Elfride was
+shelved for a while. He read her refusal so certainly as the bashfulness
+of a girl in a novel position, that, upon the whole, he could tolerate
+such a beginning. Could Knight have been told that it was a sense of
+fidelity struggling against new love, whilst no less assuring as to his
+ultimate victory, it might have entirely abstracted the wish to secure
+it.
+
+At the same time a slight constraint of manner was visible between
+them for the remainder of the afternoon. The tide turned, and they were
+obliged to ascend to higher ground. The day glided on to its end with
+the usual quiet dreamy passivity of such occasions--when every deed done
+and thing thought is in endeavouring to avoid doing and thinking
+more. Looking idly over the verge of a crag, they beheld their stone
+dining-table gradually being splashed upon and their crumbs and
+fragments all washed away by the incoming sea. The vicar drew a moral
+lesson from the scene; Knight replied in the same satisfied strain. And
+then the waves rolled in furiously--the neutral green-and-blue tongues
+of water slid up the slopes, and were metamorphosed into foam by a
+careless blow, falling back white and faint, and leaving trailing
+followers behind.
+
+The passing of a heavy shower was the next scene--driving them to
+shelter in a shallow cave--after which the horses were put in, and they
+started to return homeward. By the time they reached the higher levels
+the sky had again cleared, and the sunset rays glanced directly upon
+the wet uphill road they had climbed. The ruts formed by their
+carriage-wheels on the ascent--a pair of Liliputian canals--were as
+shining bars of gold, tapering to nothing in the distance. Upon this
+also they turned their backs, and night spread over the sea.
+
+The evening was chilly, and there was no moon. Knight sat close to
+Elfride, and, when the darkness rendered the position of a person a
+matter of uncertainty, particularly close. Elfride edged away.
+
+'I hope you allow me my place ungrudgingly?' he whispered.
+
+'Oh yes; 'tis the least I can do in common civility,' she said,
+accenting the words so that he might recognize them as his own returned.
+
+Both of them felt delicately balanced between two possibilities. Thus
+they reached home.
+
+To Knight this mild experience was delightful. It was to him a gentle
+innocent time--a time which, though there may not be much in it, seldom
+repeats itself in a man's life, and has a peculiar dearness when glanced
+at retrospectively. He is not inconveniently deep in love, and is lulled
+by a peaceful sense of being able to enjoy the most trivial thing with
+a childlike enjoyment. The movement of a wave, the colour of a stone,
+anything, was enough for Knight's drowsy thoughts of that day to
+precipitate themselves upon. Even the sermonizing platitudes the
+vicar had delivered himself of--chiefly because something seemed to
+be professionally required of him in the presence of a man of Knight's
+proclivities--were swallowed whole. The presence of Elfride led him not
+merely to tolerate that kind of talk from the necessities of ordinary
+courtesy; but he listened to it--took in the ideas with an enjoyable
+make-believe that they were proper and necessary, and indulged in a
+conservative feeling that the face of things was complete.
+
+Entering her room that evening Elfride found a packet for herself on
+the dressing-table. How it came there she did not know. She tremblingly
+undid the folds of white paper that covered it. Yes; it was the treasure
+of a morocco case, containing those treasures of ornament she had
+refused in the daytime.
+
+Elfride dressed herself in them for a moment, looked at herself in the
+glass, blushed red, and put them away. They filled her dreams all that
+night. Never had she seen anything so lovely, and never was it more
+clear that as an honest woman she was in duty bound to refuse them.
+Why it was not equally clear to her that duty required more vigorous
+co-ordinate conduct as well, let those who dissect her say.
+
+The next morning glared in like a spectre upon her. It was Stephen's
+letter-day, and she was bound to meet the postman--to stealthily do a
+deed she had never liked, to secure an end she now had ceased to desire.
+
+But she went.
+
+There were two letters.
+
+One was from the bank at St. Launce's, in which she had a small private
+deposit--probably something about interest. She put that in her
+pocket for a moment, and going indoors and upstairs to be safer from
+observation, tremblingly opened Stephen's.
+
+What was this he said to her?
+
+She was to go to the St. Launce's Bank and take a sum of money which
+they had received private advices to pay her.
+
+The sum was two hundred pounds.
+
+There was no check, order, or anything of the nature of guarantee. In
+fact the information amounted to this: the money was now in the St.
+Launce's Bank, standing in her name.
+
+She instantly opened the other letter. It contained a deposit-note from
+the bank for the sum of two hundred pounds which had that day been
+added to her account. Stephen's information, then, was correct, and the
+transfer made.
+
+'I have saved this in one year,' Stephen's letter went on to say, 'and
+what so proper as well as pleasant for me to do as to hand it over to
+you to keep for your use? I have plenty for myself, independently of
+this. Should you not be disposed to let it lie idle in the bank, get
+your father to invest it in your name on good security. It is a little
+present to you from your more than betrothed. He will, I think, Elfride,
+feel now that my pretensions to your hand are anything but the dream of
+a silly boy not worth rational consideration.'
+
+With a natural delicacy, Elfride, in mentioning her father's marriage,
+had refrained from all allusion to the pecuniary resources of the lady.
+
+Leaving this matter-of-fact subject, he went on, somewhat after his
+boyish manner:
+
+'Do you remember, darling, that first morning of my arrival at your
+house, when your father read at prayers the miracle of healing the sick
+of the palsy--where he is told to take up his bed and walk? I do, and I
+can now so well realize the force of that passage. The smallest piece of
+mat is the bed of the Oriental, and yesterday I saw a native perform the
+very action, which reminded me to mention it. But you are better read
+than I, and perhaps you knew all this long ago....One day I bought some
+small native idols to send home to you as curiosities, but afterwards
+finding they had been cast in England, made to look old, and shipped
+over, I threw them away in disgust.
+
+'Speaking of this reminds me that we are obliged to import all our
+house-building ironwork from England. Never was such foresight required
+to be exercised in building houses as here. Before we begin, we have
+to order every column, lock, hinge, and screw that will be required.
+We cannot go into the next street, as in London, and get them cast at
+a minute's notice. Mr. L. says somebody will have to go to England very
+soon and superintend the selection of a large order of this kind. I only
+wish I may be the man.'
+
+There before her lay the deposit-receipt for the two hundred pounds,
+and beside it the elegant present of Knight. Elfride grew cold--then her
+cheeks felt heated by beating blood. If by destroying the piece of paper
+the whole transaction could have been withdrawn from her experience, she
+would willingly have sacrificed the money it represented. She did
+not know what to do in either case. She almost feared to let the two
+articles lie in juxtaposition: so antagonistic were the interests they
+represented that a miraculous repulsion of one by the other was almost
+to be expected.
+
+That day she was seen little of. By the evening she had come to a
+resolution, and acted upon it. The packet was sealed up--with a tear
+of regret as she closed the case upon the pretty forms it
+contained--directed, and placed upon the writing-table in Knight's room.
+And a letter was written to Stephen, stating that as yet she hardly
+understood her position with regard to the money sent; but declaring
+that she was ready to fulfil her promise to marry him. After this letter
+had been written she delayed posting it--although never ceasing to feel
+strenuously that the deed must be done.
+
+Several days passed. There was another Indian letter for Elfride. Coming
+unexpectedly, her father saw it, but made no remark--why, she could not
+tell. The news this time was absolutely overwhelming. Stephen, as he
+had wished, had been actually chosen as the most fitting to execute the
+iron-work commission he had alluded to as impending. This duty completed
+he would have three months' leave. His letter continued that he should
+follow it in a week, and should take the opportunity to plainly ask
+her father to permit the engagement. Then came a page expressive of his
+delight and hers at the reunion; and finally, the information that he
+would write to the shipping agents, asking them to telegraph and tell
+her when the ship bringing him home should be in sight--knowing how
+acceptable such information would be.
+
+Elfride lived and moved now as in a dream. Knight had at first become
+almost angry at her persistent refusal of his offering--and no less with
+the manner than the fact of it. But he saw that she began to look worn
+and ill--and his vexation lessened to simple perplexity.
+
+He ceased now to remain in the house for long hours together as before,
+but made it a mere centre for antiquarian and geological excursions in
+the neighbourhood. Throw up his cards and go away he fain would have
+done, but could not. And, thus, availing himself of the privileges of
+a relative, he went in and out the premises as fancy led him--but still
+lingered on.
+
+'I don't wish to stay here another day if my presence is distasteful,'
+he said one afternoon. 'At first you used to imply that I was severe
+with you; and when I am kind you treat me unfairly.'
+
+'No, no. Don't say so.'
+
+The origin of their acquaintanceship had been such as to render their
+manner towards each other peculiar and uncommon. It was of a kind to
+cause them to speak out their minds on any feelings of objection and
+difference: to be reticent on gentler matters.
+
+'I have a good mind to go away and never trouble you again,' continued
+Knight.
+
+She said nothing, but the eloquent expression of her eyes and wan face
+was enough to reproach him for harshness.
+
+'Do you like me to be here, then?' inquired Knight gently.
+
+'Yes,' she said. Fidelity to the old love and truth to the new were
+ranged on opposite sides, and truth virtuelessly prevailed.
+
+'Then I'll stay a little longer,' said Knight.
+
+'Don't be vexed if I keep by myself a good deal, will you? Perhaps
+something may happen, and I may tell you something.'
+
+'Mere coyness,' said Knight to himself; and went away with a lighter
+heart. The trick of reading truly the enigmatical forces at work in
+women at given times, which with some men is an unerring instinct, is
+peculiar to minds less direct and honest than Knight's.
+
+The next evening, about five o'clock, before Knight had returned from
+a pilgrimage along the shore, a man walked up to the house. He was a
+messenger from Camelton, a town a few miles off, to which place the
+railway had been advanced during the summer.
+
+'A telegram for Miss Swancourt, and three and sixpence to pay for the
+special messenger.' Miss Swancourt sent out the money, signed the paper,
+and opened her letter with a trembling hand. She read:
+
+
+'Johnson, Liverpool, to Miss Swancourt, Endelstow, near Castle Boterel.
+
+'Amaryllis telegraphed off Holyhead, four o'clock. Expect will dock and
+land passengers at Canning's Basin ten o'clock to-morrow morning.'
+
+
+Her father called her into the study.
+
+'Elfride, who sent you that message?' he asked suspiciously.
+
+'Johnson.' 'Who is Johnson, for Heaven's sake?'
+
+'I don't know.'
+
+'The deuce you don't! Who is to know, then?'
+
+'I have never heard of him till now.'
+
+'That's a singular story, isn't it.'
+
+'I don't know.'
+
+'Come, come, miss! What was the telegram?'
+
+'Do you really wish to know, papa?'
+
+'Well, I do.'
+
+'Remember, I am a full-grown woman now.'
+
+'Well, what then?'
+
+'Being a woman, and not a child, I may, I think, have a secret or two.'
+
+'You will, it seems.'
+
+'Women have, as a rule.'
+
+'But don't keep them. So speak out.'
+
+'If you will not press me now, I give my word to tell you the meaning of
+all this before the week is past.'
+
+'On your honour?'
+
+'On my honour.'
+
+'Very well. I have had a certain suspicion, you know; and I shall be
+glad to find it false. I don't like your manner lately.'
+
+'At the end of the week, I said, papa.'
+
+Her father did not reply, and Elfride left the room.
+
+She began to look out for the postman again. Three mornings later he
+brought an inland letter from Stephen. It contained very little matter,
+having been written in haste; but the meaning was bulky enough. Stephen
+said that, having executed a commission in Liverpool, he should arrive
+at his father's house, East Endelstow, at five or six o'clock that same
+evening; that he would after dusk walk on to the next village, and meet
+her, if she would, in the church porch, as in the old time. He proposed
+this plan because he thought it unadvisable to call formally at her
+house so late in the evening; yet he could not sleep without having seen
+her. The minutes would seem hours till he clasped her in his arms.
+
+Elfride was still steadfast in her opinion that honour compelled her to
+meet him. Probably the very longing to avoid him lent additional weight
+to the conviction; for she was markedly one of those who sigh for the
+unattainable--to whom, superlatively, a hope is pleasing because not a
+possession. And she knew it so well that her intellect was inclined to
+exaggerate this defect in herself.
+
+So during the day she looked her duty steadfastly in the face; read
+Wordsworth's astringent yet depressing ode to that Deity; committed
+herself to her guidance; and still felt the weight of chance desires.
+
+But she began to take a melancholy pleasure in contemplating the
+sacrifice of herself to the man whom a maidenly sense of propriety
+compelled her to regard as her only possible husband. She would meet
+him, and do all that lay in her power to marry him. To guard against
+a relapse, a note was at once despatched to his father's cottage for
+Stephen on his arrival, fixing an hour for the interview.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XXI
+
+     'On thy cold grey stones, O sea!'
+
+
+Stephen had said that he should come by way of Bristol, and thence by a
+steamer to Castle Boterel, in order to avoid the long journey over the
+hills from St. Launce's. He did not know of the extension of the railway
+to Camelton.
+
+During the afternoon a thought occurred to Elfride, that from any cliff
+along the shore it would be possible to see the steamer some hours
+before its arrival.
+
+She had accumulated religious force enough to do an act of
+supererogation. The act was this--to go to some point of land and watch
+for the ship that brought her future husband home.
+
+It was a cloudy afternoon. Elfride was often diverted from a purpose by
+a dull sky; and though she used to persuade herself that the weather was
+as fine as possible on the other side of the clouds, she could not bring
+about any practical result from this fancy. Now, her mood was such that
+the humid sky harmonized with it.
+
+Having ascended and passed over a hill behind the house, Elfride came to
+a small stream. She used it as a guide to the coast. It was smaller than
+that in her own valley, and flowed altogether at a higher level. Bushes
+lined the slopes of its shallow trough; but at the bottom, where the
+water ran, was a soft green carpet, in a strip two or three yards wide.
+
+In winter, the water flowed over the grass; in summer, as now, it
+trickled along a channel in the midst.
+
+Elfride had a sensation of eyes regarding her from somewhere. She
+turned, and there was Mr. Knight. He had dropped into the valley from
+the side of the hill. She felt a thrill of pleasure, and rebelliously
+allowed it to exist.
+
+'What utter loneliness to find you in!'
+
+'I am going to the shore by tracking the stream. I believe it empties
+itself not far off, in a silver thread of water, over a cascade of great
+height.'
+
+'Why do you load yourself with that heavy telescope?'
+
+'To look over the sea with it,' she said faintly.
+
+'I'll carry it for you to your journey's end.' And he took the glass
+from her unresisting hands. 'It cannot be half a mile further. See,
+there is the water.' He pointed to a short fragment of level muddy-gray
+colour, cutting against the sky.
+
+Elfride had already scanned the small surface of ocean visible, and had
+seen no ship.
+
+They walked along in company, sometimes with the brook between them--for
+it was no wider than a man's stride--sometimes close together. The green
+carpet grew swampy, and they kept higher up.
+
+One of the two ridges between which they walked dwindled lower and
+became insignificant. That on the right hand rose with their advance,
+and terminated in a clearly defined edge against the light, as if it
+were abruptly sawn off. A little further, and the bed of the rivulet
+ended in the same fashion.
+
+They had come to a bank breast-high, and over it the valley was no
+longer to be seen. It was withdrawn cleanly and completely. In its
+place was sky and boundless atmosphere; and perpendicularly down beneath
+them--small and far off--lay the corrugated surface of the Atlantic.
+
+The small stream here found its death. Running over the precipice it was
+dispersed in spray before it was half-way down, and falling like rain
+upon projecting ledges, made minute grassy meadows of them. At the
+bottom the water-drops soaked away amid the debris of the cliff. This
+was the inglorious end of the river.
+
+'What are you looking for? said Knight, following the direction of her
+eyes.
+
+She was gazing hard at a black object--nearer to the shore than to the
+horizon--from the summit of which came a nebulous haze, stretching like
+gauze over the sea.
+
+'The Puffin, a little summer steamboat--from Bristol to Castle Boterel,'
+she said. 'I think that is it--look. Will you give me the glass?'
+
+Knight pulled open the old-fashioned but powerful telescope, and handed
+it to Elfride, who had looked on with heavy eyes.
+
+'I can't keep it up now,' she said.
+
+'Rest it on my shoulder.'
+
+'It is too high.'
+
+'Under my arm.'
+
+'Too low. You may look instead,' she murmured weakly.
+
+Knight raised the glass to his eye, and swept the sea till the Puffin
+entered its field.
+
+'Yes, it is the Puffin--a tiny craft. I can see her figure-head
+distinctly--a bird with a beak as big as its head.'
+
+'Can you see the deck?'
+
+'Wait a minute; yes, pretty clearly. And I can see the black forms
+of the passengers against its white surface. One of them has taken
+something from another--a glass, I think--yes, it is--and he is
+levelling it in this direction. Depend upon it we are conspicuous
+objects against the sky to them. Now, it seems to rain upon them, and
+they put on overcoats and open umbrellas. They vanish and go below--all
+but that one who has borrowed the glass. He is a slim young fellow, and
+still watches us.'
+
+Elfride grew pale, and shifted her little feet uneasily.
+
+Knight lowered the glass.
+
+'I think we had better return,' he said. 'That cloud which is raining on
+them may soon reach us. Why, you look ill. How is that?'
+
+'Something in the air affects my face.'
+
+'Those fair cheeks are very fastidious, I fear,' returned Knight
+tenderly. 'This air would make those rosy that were never so before, one
+would think--eh, Nature's spoilt child?'
+
+Elfride's colour returned again.
+
+'There is more to see behind us, after all,' said Knight.
+
+She turned her back upon the boat and Stephen Smith, and saw, towering
+still higher than themselves, the vertical face of the hill on the
+right, which did not project seaward so far as the bed of the valley,
+but formed the back of a small cove, and so was visible like a concave
+wall, bending round from their position towards the left.
+
+The composition of the huge hill was revealed to its backbone and marrow
+here at its rent extremity. It consisted of a vast stratification of
+blackish-gray slate, unvaried in its whole height by a single change of
+shade.
+
+It is with cliffs and mountains as with persons; they have what is
+called a presence, which is not necessarily proportionate to their
+actual bulk. A little cliff will impress you powerfully; a great one not
+at all. It depends, as with man, upon the countenance of the cliff.
+
+'I cannot bear to look at that cliff,' said Elfride. 'It has a horrid
+personality, and makes me shudder. We will go.'
+
+'Can you climb?' said Knight. 'If so, we will ascend by that path over
+the grim old fellow's brow.'
+
+'Try me,' said Elfride disdainfully. 'I have ascended steeper slopes
+than that.'
+
+From where they had been loitering, a grassy path wound along inside a
+bank, placed as a safeguard for unwary pedestrians, to the top of the
+precipice, and over it along the hill in an inland direction.
+
+'Take my arm, Miss Swancourt,' said Knight.
+
+'I can get on better without it, thank you.'
+
+When they were one quarter of the way up, Elfride stopped to take
+breath. Knight stretched out his hand.
+
+She took it, and they ascended the remaining slope together. Reaching
+the very top, they sat down to rest by mutual consent.
+
+'Heavens, what an altitude!' said Knight between his pants, and looking
+far over the sea. The cascade at the bottom of the slope appeared a mere
+span in height from where they were now.
+
+Elfride was looking to the left. The steamboat was in full view again,
+and by reason of the vast surface of sea their higher position uncovered
+it seemed almost close to the shore.
+
+'Over that edge,' said Knight, 'where nothing but vacancy appears, is a
+moving compact mass. The wind strikes the face of the rock, runs up it,
+rises like a fountain to a height far above our heads, curls over us
+in an arch, and disperses behind us. In fact, an inverted cascade is
+there--as perfect as the Niagara Falls--but rising instead of falling,
+and air instead of water. Now look here.'
+
+Knight threw a stone over the bank, aiming it as if to go onward over
+the cliff. Reaching the verge, it towered into the air like a bird,
+turned back, and alighted on the ground behind them. They themselves
+were in a dead calm.
+
+'A boat crosses Niagara immediately at the foot of the falls, where
+the water is quite still, the fallen mass curving under it. We are in
+precisely the same position with regard to our atmospheric cataract
+here. If you run back from the cliff fifty yards, you will be in a brisk
+wind. Now I daresay over the bank is a little backward current.'
+
+Knight rose and leant over the bank. No sooner was his head above it
+than his hat appeared to be sucked from his head--slipping over his
+forehead in a seaward direction.
+
+'That's the backward eddy, as I told you,' he cried, and vanished over
+the little bank after his hat.
+
+Elfride waited one minute; he did not return. She waited another, and
+there was no sign of him.
+
+A few drops of rain fell, then a sudden shower.
+
+She arose, and looked over the bank. On the other side were two or three
+yards of level ground--then a short steep preparatory slope--then the
+verge of the precipice.
+
+On the slope was Knight, his hat on his head. He was on his hands and
+knees, trying to climb back to the level ground. The rain had wetted the
+shaly surface of the incline. A slight superficial wetting of the soil
+hereabout made it far more slippery to stand on than the same soil
+thoroughly drenched. The inner substance was still hard, and was
+lubricated by the moistened film.
+
+'I find a difficulty in getting back,' said Knight.
+
+Elfride's heart fell like lead.
+
+'But you can get back?' she wildly inquired.
+
+Knight strove with all his might for two or three minutes, and the drops
+of perspiration began to bead his brow.
+
+'No, I am unable to do it,' he answered.
+
+Elfride, by a wrench of thought, forced away from her mind the sensation
+that Knight was in bodily danger. But attempt to help him she must. She
+ventured upon the treacherous incline, propped herself with the closed
+telescope, and gave him her hand before he saw her movements.
+
+'O Elfride! why did you?' said he. 'I am afraid you have only endangered
+yourself.'
+
+And as if to prove his statement, in making an endeavour by her
+assistance they both slipped lower, and then he was again stayed. His
+foot was propped by a bracket of quartz rock, balanced on the verge of
+the precipice. Fixed by this, he steadied her, her head being about a
+foot below the beginning of the slope. Elfride had dropped the glass; it
+rolled to the edge and vanished over it into a nether sky.
+
+'Hold tightly to me,' he said.
+
+She flung her arms round his neck with such a firm grasp that whilst he
+remained it was impossible for her to fall.
+
+'Don't be flurried,' Knight continued. 'So long as we stay above this
+block we are perfectly safe. Wait a moment whilst I consider what we had
+better do.'
+
+He turned his eyes to the dizzy depths beneath them, and surveyed the
+position of affairs.
+
+Two glances told him a tale with ghastly distinctness. It was that,
+unless they performed their feat of getting up the slope with the
+precision of machines, they were over the edge and whirling in mid-air.
+
+For this purpose it was necessary that he should recover the breath and
+strength which his previous efforts had cost him. So he still waited,
+and looked in the face of the enemy.
+
+The crest of this terrible natural facade passed among the neighbouring
+inhabitants as being seven hundred feet above the water it overhung.
+It had been proved by actual measurement to be not a foot less than six
+hundred and fifty.
+
+That is to say, it is nearly three times the height of Flamborough, half
+as high again as the South Foreland, a hundred feet higher than
+Beachy Head--the loftiest promontory on the east or south side of this
+island--twice the height of St. Aldhelm's, thrice as high as the Lizard,
+and just double the height of St. Bee's. One sea-bord point on the
+western coast is known to surpass it in altitude, but only by a few
+feet. This is Great Orme's Head, in Caernarvonshire.
+
+And it must be remembered that the cliff exhibits an intensifying
+feature which some of those are without--sheer perpendicularity from the
+half-tide level.
+
+Yet this remarkable rampart forms no headland: it rather walls in an
+inlet--the promontory on each side being much lower. Thus, far from
+being salient, its horizontal section is concave. The sea, rolling
+direct from the shores of North America, has in fact eaten a chasm into
+the middle of a hill, and the giant, embayed and unobtrusive, stands in
+the rear of pigmy supporters. Not least singularly, neither hill, chasm,
+nor precipice has a name. On this account I will call the precipice the
+Cliff without a Name.*
+
+     * See Preface
+
+What gave an added terror to its height was its blackness. And upon this
+dark face the beating of ten thousand west winds had formed a kind of
+bloom, which had a visual effect not unlike that of a Hambro' grape.
+Moreover it seemed to float off into the atmosphere, and inspire terror
+through the lungs.
+
+'This piece of quartz, supporting my feet, is on the very nose of
+the cliff,' said Knight, breaking the silence after his rigid stoical
+meditation. 'Now what you are to do is this. Clamber up my body till
+your feet are on my shoulders: when you are there you will, I think, be
+able to climb on to level ground.'
+
+'What will you do?'
+
+'Wait whilst you run for assistance.'
+
+'I ought to have done that in the first place, ought I not?'
+
+'I was in the act of slipping, and should have reached no stand-point
+without your weight, in all probability. But don't let us talk. Be
+brave, Elfride, and climb.'
+
+She prepared to ascend, saying, 'This is the moment I anticipated when
+on the tower. I thought it would come!'
+
+'This is not a time for superstition,' said Knight. 'Dismiss all that.'
+
+'I will,' she said humbly.
+
+'Now put your foot into my hand: next the other. That's good--well done.
+Hold to my shoulder.'
+
+She placed her feet upon the stirrup he made of his hand, and was high
+enough to get a view of the natural surface of the hill over the bank.
+
+'Can you now climb on to level ground?'
+
+'I am afraid not. I will try.'
+
+'What can you see?'
+
+'The sloping common.'
+
+'What upon it?'
+
+'Purple heather and some grass.'
+
+'Nothing more--no man or human being of any kind?'
+
+'Nobody.'
+
+'Now try to get higher in this way. You see that tuft of sea-pink above
+you. Get that well into your hand, but don't trust to it entirely. Then
+step upon my shoulder, and I think you will reach the top.'
+
+With trembling limbs she did exactly as he told her. The preternatural
+quiet and solemnity of his manner overspread upon herself, and gave her
+a courage not her own. She made a spring from the top of his shoulder,
+and was up.
+
+Then she turned to look at him.
+
+By an ill fate, the force downwards of her bound, added to his own
+weight, had been too much for the block of quartz upon which his feet
+depended. It was, indeed, originally an igneous protrusion into the
+enormous masses of black strata, which had since been worn away from the
+sides of the alien fragment by centuries of frost and rain, and now left
+it without much support.
+
+It moved. Knight seized a tuft of sea-pink with each hand.
+
+The quartz rock which had been his salvation was worse than useless now.
+It rolled over, out of sight, and away into the same nether sky that had
+engulfed the telescope.
+
+One of the tufts by which he held came out at the root, and Knight began
+to follow the quartz. It was a terrible moment. Elfride uttered a low
+wild wail of agony, bowed her head, and covered her face with her hands.
+
+Between the turf-covered slope and the gigantic perpendicular rock
+intervened a weather-worn series of jagged edges, forming a face yet
+steeper than the former slope. As he slowly slid inch by inch upon
+these, Knight made a last desperate dash at the lowest tuft of
+vegetation--the last outlying knot of starved herbage ere the rock
+appeared in all its bareness. It arrested his further descent. Knight
+was now literally suspended by his arms; but the incline of the
+brow being what engineers would call about a quarter in one, it was
+sufficient to relieve his arms of a portion of his weight, but was very
+far from offering an adequately flat face to support him.
+
+In spite of this dreadful tension of body and mind, Knight found time
+for a moment of thankfulness. Elfride was safe.
+
+She lay on her side above him--her fingers clasped. Seeing him again
+steady, she jumped upon her feet.
+
+'Now, if I can only save you by running for help!' she cried. 'Oh, I
+would have died instead! Why did you try so hard to deliver me?' And she
+turned away wildly to run for assistance.
+
+'Elfride, how long will it take you to run to Endelstow and back?'
+
+'Three-quarters of an hour.'
+
+'That won't do; my hands will not hold out ten minutes. And is there
+nobody nearer?'
+
+'No; unless a chance passer may happen to be.'
+
+'He would have nothing with him that could save me. Is there a pole or
+stick of any kind on the common?'
+
+She gazed around. The common was bare of everything but heather and
+grass.
+
+A minute--perhaps more time--was passed in mute thought by both. On a
+sudden the blank and helpless agony left her face. She vanished over the
+bank from his sight.
+
+Knight felt himself in the presence of a personalized loneliness.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XXII
+
+     'A woman's way.'
+
+
+Haggard cliffs, of every ugly altitude, are as common as sea-fowl along
+the line of coast between Exmoor and Land's End; but this outflanked and
+encompassed specimen was the ugliest of them all. Their summits are not
+safe places for scientific experiment on the principles of air-currents,
+as Knight had now found, to his dismay.
+
+He still clutched the face of the escarpment--not with the frenzied
+hold of despair, but with a dogged determination to make the most of
+his every jot of endurance, and so give the longest possible scope to
+Elfride's intentions, whatever they might be.
+
+He reclined hand in hand with the world in its infancy. Not a blade, not
+an insect, which spoke of the present, was between him and the past. The
+inveterate antagonism of these black precipices to all strugglers for
+life is in no way more forcibly suggested than by the paucity of tufts
+of grass, lichens, or confervae on their outermost ledges.
+
+Knight pondered on the meaning of Elfride's hasty disappearance, but
+could not avoid an instinctive conclusion that there existed but a
+doubtful hope for him. As far as he could judge, his sole chance of
+deliverance lay in the possibility of a rope or pole being brought; and
+this possibility was remote indeed. The soil upon these high downs was
+left so untended that they were unenclosed for miles, except by a
+casual bank or dry wall, and were rarely visited but for the purpose
+of collecting or counting the flock which found a scanty means of
+subsistence thereon.
+
+At first, when death appeared improbable, because it had never visited
+him before, Knight could think of no future, nor of anything connected
+with his past. He could only look sternly at Nature's treacherous
+attempt to put an end to him, and strive to thwart her.
+
+From the fact that the cliff formed the inner face of the segment of a
+huge cylinder, having the sky for a top and the sea for a bottom, which
+enclosed the cove to the extent of more than a semicircle, he could see
+the vertical face curving round on each side of him. He looked far down
+the facade, and realized more thoroughly how it threatened him. Grimness
+was in every feature, and to its very bowels the inimical shape was
+desolation.
+
+By one of those familiar conjunctions of things wherewith the inanimate
+world baits the mind of man when he pauses in moments of suspense,
+opposite Knight's eyes was an imbedded fossil, standing forth in low
+relief from the rock. It was a creature with eyes. The eyes, dead and
+turned to stone, were even now regarding him. It was one of the early
+crustaceans called Trilobites. Separated by millions of years in their
+lives, Knight and this underling seemed to have met in their death. It
+was the single instance within reach of his vision of anything that had
+ever been alive and had had a body to save, as he himself had now.
+
+The creature represented but a low type of animal existence, for never
+in their vernal years had the plains indicated by those numberless slaty
+layers been traversed by an intelligence worthy of the name. Zoophytes,
+mollusca, shell-fish, were the highest developments of those ancient
+dates. The immense lapses of time each formation represented had known
+nothing of the dignity of man. They were grand times, but they were mean
+times too, and mean were their relics. He was to be with the small in
+his death.
+
+Knight was a geologist; and such is the supremacy of habit over
+occasion, as a pioneer of the thoughts of men, that at this dreadful
+juncture his mind found time to take in, by a momentary sweep, the
+varied scenes that had had their day between this creature's epoch and
+his own. There is no place like a cleft landscape for bringing home such
+imaginings as these.
+
+Time closed up like a fan before him. He saw himself at one extremity
+of the years, face to face with the beginning and all the intermediate
+centuries simultaneously. Fierce men, clothed in the hides of beasts,
+and carrying, for defence and attack, huge clubs and pointed spears,
+rose from the rock, like the phantoms before the doomed Macbeth.
+They lived in hollows, woods, and mud huts--perhaps in caves of the
+neighbouring rocks. Behind them stood an earlier band. No man was there.
+Huge elephantine forms, the mastodon, the hippopotamus, the tapir,
+antelopes of monstrous size, the megatherium, and the myledon--all, for
+the moment, in juxtaposition. Further back, and overlapped by these,
+were perched huge-billed birds and swinish creatures as large as horses.
+Still more shadowy were the sinister crocodilian outlines--alligators
+and other uncouth shapes, culminating in the colossal lizard, the
+iguanodon. Folded behind were dragon forms and clouds of flying
+reptiles: still underneath were fishy beings of lower development; and
+so on, till the lifetime scenes of the fossil confronting him were
+a present and modern condition of things. These images passed before
+Knight's inner eye in less than half a minute, and he was again
+considering the actual present. Was he to die? The mental picture of
+Elfride in the world, without himself to cherish her, smote his heart
+like a whip. He had hoped for deliverance, but what could a girl do? He
+dared not move an inch. Was Death really stretching out his hand? The
+previous sensation, that it was improbable he would die, was fainter
+now.
+
+However, Knight still clung to the cliff.
+
+To those musing weather-beaten West-country folk who pass the greater
+part of their days and nights out of doors, Nature seems to have moods
+in other than a poetical sense: predilections for certain deeds at
+certain times, without any apparent law to govern or season to account
+for them. She is read as a person with a curious temper; as one who does
+not scatter kindnesses and cruelties alternately, impartially, and in
+order, but heartless severities or overwhelming generosities in lawless
+caprice. Man's case is always that of the prodigal's favourite or the
+miser's pensioner. In her unfriendly moments there seems a feline fun
+in her tricks, begotten by a foretaste of her pleasure in swallowing the
+victim.
+
+Such a way of thinking had been absurd to Knight, but he began to adopt
+it now. He was first spitted on to a rock. New tortures followed. The
+rain increased, and persecuted him with an exceptional persistency which
+he was moved to believe owed its cause to the fact that he was in such
+a wretched state already. An entirely new order of things could be
+observed in this introduction of rain upon the scene. It rained upwards
+instead of down. The strong ascending air carried the rain-drops with
+it in its race up the escarpment, coming to him with such velocity that
+they stuck into his flesh like cold needles. Each drop was virtually a
+shaft, and it pierced him to his skin. The water-shafts seemed to lift
+him on their points: no downward rain ever had such a torturing effect.
+In a brief space he was drenched, except in two places. These were on
+the top of his shoulders and on the crown of his hat.
+
+The wind, though not intense in other situations was strong here. It
+tugged at his coat and lifted it. We are mostly accustomed to look upon
+all opposition which is not animate, as that of the stolid, inexorable
+hand of indifference, which wears out the patience more than the
+strength. Here, at any rate, hostility did not assume that slow and
+sickening form. It was a cosmic agency, active, lashing, eager for
+conquest: determination; not an insensate standing in the way.
+
+Knight had over-estimated the strength of his hands. They were getting
+weak already. 'She will never come again; she has been gone ten
+minutes,' he said to himself.
+
+This mistake arose from the unusual compression of his experiences just
+now: she had really been gone but three.
+
+'As many more minutes will be my end,' he thought.
+
+Next came another instance of the incapacity of the mind to make
+comparisons at such times.
+
+'This is a summer afternoon,' he said, 'and there can never have been
+such a heavy and cold rain on a summer day in my life before.'
+
+He was again mistaken. The rain was quite ordinary in quantity; the air
+in temperature. It was, as is usual, the menacing attitude in which they
+approached him that magnified their powers.
+
+He again looked straight downwards, the wind and the water-dashes
+lifting his moustache, scudding up his cheeks, under his eyelids,
+and into his eyes. This is what he saw down there: the surface of
+the sea--visually just past his toes, and under his feet; actually
+one-eighth of a mile, or more than two hundred yards, below them. We
+colour according to our moods the objects we survey. The sea would have
+been a deep neutral blue, had happier auspices attended the gazer it was
+now no otherwise than distinctly black to his vision. That narrow white
+border was foam, he knew well; but its boisterous tosses were so distant
+as to appear a pulsation only, and its plashing was barely audible. A
+white border to a black sea--his funeral pall and its edging.
+
+The world was to some extent turned upside down for him. Rain descended
+from below. Beneath his feet was aerial space and the unknown; above him
+was the firm, familiar ground, and upon it all that he loved best.
+
+Pitiless nature had then two voices, and two only. The nearer was the
+voice of the wind in his ears rising and falling as it mauled and thrust
+him hard or softly. The second and distant one was the moan of that
+unplummetted ocean below and afar--rubbing its restless flank against
+the Cliff without a Name.
+
+Knight perseveringly held fast. Had he any faith in Elfride? Perhaps.
+Love is faith, and faith, like a gathered flower, will rootlessly live
+on.
+
+Nobody would have expected the sun to shine on such an evening as this.
+Yet it appeared, low down upon the sea. Not with its natural golden
+fringe, sweeping the furthest ends of the landscape, not with the
+strange glare of whiteness which it sometimes puts on as an alternative
+to colour, but as a splotch of vermilion red upon a leaden ground--a red
+face looking on with a drunken leer.
+
+Most men who have brains know it, and few are so foolish as to disguise
+this fact from themselves or others, even though an ostentatious display
+may be called self-conceit. Knight, without showing it much, knew that
+his intellect was above the average. And he thought--he could not help
+thinking--that his death would be a deliberate loss to earth of good
+material; that such an experiment in killing might have been practised
+upon some less developed life.
+
+A fancy some people hold, when in a bitter mood, is that inexorable
+circumstance only tries to prevent what intelligence attempts. Renounce
+a desire for a long-contested position, and go on another tack, and
+after a while the prize is thrown at you, seemingly in disappointment
+that no more tantalizing is possible.
+
+Knight gave up thoughts of life utterly and entirely, and turned to
+contemplate the Dark Valley and the unknown future beyond. Into the
+shadowy depths of these speculations we will not follow him. Let it
+suffice to state what ensued.
+
+At that moment of taking no more thought for this life, something
+disturbed the outline of the bank above him. A spot appeared. It was the
+head of Elfride.
+
+Knight immediately prepared to welcome life again.
+
+The expression of a face consigned to utter loneliness, when a friend
+first looks in upon it, is moving in the extreme. In rowing seaward to
+a light-ship or sea-girt lighthouse, where, without any immediate terror
+of death, the inmates experience the gloom of monotonous seclusion, the
+grateful eloquence of their countenances at the greeting, expressive of
+thankfulness for the visit, is enough to stir the emotions of the most
+careless observer.
+
+Knight's upward look at Elfride was of a nature with, but far
+transcending, such an instance as this. The lines of his face had
+deepened to furrows, and every one of them thanked her visibly. His lips
+moved to the word 'Elfride,' though the emotion evolved no sound. His
+eyes passed all description in their combination of the whole diapason
+of eloquence, from lover's deep love to fellow-man's gratitude for a
+token of remembrance from one of his kind.
+
+Elfride had come back. What she had come to do he did not know. She
+could only look on at his death, perhaps. Still, she had come back, and
+not deserted him utterly, and it was much.
+
+It was a novelty in the extreme to see Henry Knight, to whom Elfride
+was but a child, who had swayed her as a tree sways a bird's nest, who
+mastered her and made her weep most bitterly at her own insignificance,
+thus thankful for a sight of her face. She looked down upon him, her
+face glistening with rain and tears. He smiled faintly.
+
+'How calm he is!' she thought. 'How great and noble he is to be so
+calm!' She would have died ten times for him then.
+
+The gliding form of the steamboat caught her eye: she heeded it no
+longer.
+
+'How much longer can you wait?' came from her pale lips and along the
+wind to his position.
+
+'Four minutes,' said Knight in a weaker voice than her own.
+
+'But with a good hope of being saved?'
+
+'Seven or eight.'
+
+He now noticed that in her arms she bore a bundle of white linen, and
+that her form was singularly attenuated. So preternaturally thin and
+flexible was Elfride at this moment, that she appeared to bend under the
+light blows of the rain-shafts, as they struck into her sides and bosom,
+and splintered into spray on her face. There is nothing like a thorough
+drenching for reducing the protuberances of clothes, but Elfride's
+seemed to cling to her like a glove.
+
+Without heeding the attack of the clouds further than by raising her
+hand and wiping away the spirts of rain when they went more particularly
+into her eyes, she sat down and hurriedly began rending the linen into
+strips. These she knotted end to end, and afterwards twisted them like
+the strands of a cord. In a short space of time she had formed a perfect
+rope by this means, six or seven yards long.
+
+'Can you wait while I bind it?' she said, anxiously extending her gaze
+down to him.
+
+'Yes, if not very long. Hope has given me a wonderful instalment of
+strength.'
+
+Elfride dropped her eyes again, tore the remaining material into narrow
+tape-like ligaments, knotted each to each as before, but on a smaller
+scale, and wound the lengthy string she had thus formed round and round
+the linen rope, which, without this binding, had a tendency to spread
+abroad.
+
+'Now,' said Knight, who, watching the proceedings intently, had by this
+time not only grasped her scheme, but reasoned further on, 'I can
+hold three minutes longer yet. And do you use the time in testing the
+strength of the knots, one by one.'
+
+She at once obeyed, tested each singly by putting her foot on the rope
+between each knot, and pulling with her hands. One of the knots slipped.
+
+'Oh, think! It would have broken but for your forethought,' Elfride
+exclaimed apprehensively.
+
+She retied the two ends. The rope was now firm in every part.
+
+'When you have let it down,' said Knight, already resuming his position
+of ruling power, 'go back from the edge of the slope, and over the bank
+as far as the rope will allow you. Then lean down, and hold the end with
+both hands.'
+
+He had first thought of a safer plan for his own deliverance, but it
+involved the disadvantage of possibly endangering her life.
+
+'I have tied it round my waist,' she cried, 'and I will lean directly
+upon the bank, holding with my hands as well.'
+
+It was the arrangement he had thought of, but would not suggest.
+
+'I will raise and drop it three times when I am behind the bank,' she
+continued, 'to signify that I am ready. Take care, oh, take the greatest
+care, I beg you!'
+
+She dropped the rope over him, to learn how much of its length it
+would be necessary to expend on that side of the bank, went back, and
+disappeared as she had done before.
+
+The rope was trailing by Knight's shoulders. In a few moments it
+twitched three times.
+
+He waited yet a second or two, then laid hold.
+
+The incline of this upper portion of the precipice, to the length only
+of a few feet, useless to a climber empty-handed, was invaluable now.
+Not more than half his weight depended entirely on the linen rope. Half
+a dozen extensions of the arms, alternating with half a dozen seizures
+of the rope with his feet, brought him up to the level of the soil.
+
+He was saved, and by Elfride.
+
+He extended his cramped limbs like an awakened sleeper, and sprang over
+the bank.
+
+At sight of him she leapt to her feet with almost a shriek of joy.
+Knight's eyes met hers, and with supreme eloquence the glance of each
+told a long-concealed tale of emotion in that short half-moment. Moved
+by an impulse neither could resist, they ran together and into each
+other's arms.
+
+At the moment of embracing, Elfride's eyes involuntarily flashed towards
+the Puffin steamboat. It had doubled the point, and was no longer to be
+seen.
+
+An overwhelming rush of exultation at having delivered the man she
+revered from one of the most terrible forms of death, shook the gentle
+girl to the centre of her soul. It merged in a defiance of duty to
+Stephen, and a total recklessness as to plighted faith. Every nerve
+of her will was now in entire subjection to her feeling--volition as a
+guiding power had forsaken her. To remain passive, as she remained now,
+encircled by his arms, was a sufficiently complete result--a glorious
+crown to all the years of her life. Perhaps he was only grateful, and
+did not love her. No matter: it was infinitely more to be even the slave
+of the greater than the queen of the less. Some such sensation as this,
+though it was not recognized as a finished thought, raced along the
+impressionable soul of Elfride.
+
+Regarding their attitude, it was impossible for two persons to go nearer
+to a kiss than went Knight and Elfride during those minutes of impulsive
+embrace in the pelting rain. Yet they did not kiss. Knight's peculiarity
+of nature was such that it would not allow him to take advantage of the
+unguarded and passionate avowal she had tacitly made.
+
+Elfride recovered herself, and gently struggled to be free.
+
+He reluctantly relinquished her, and then surveyed her from crown to
+toe. She seemed as small as an infant. He perceived whence she had
+obtained the rope.
+
+'Elfride, my Elfride!' he exclaimed in gratified amazement.
+
+'I must leave you now,' she said, her face doubling its red, with
+an expression between gladness and shame 'You follow me, but at some
+distance.'
+
+'The rain and wind pierce you through; the chill will kill you. God
+bless you for such devotion! Take my coat and put it on.'
+
+'No; I shall get warm running.'
+
+Elfride had absolutely nothing between her and the weather but her
+exterior robe or 'costume.' The door had been made upon a woman's wit,
+and it had found its way out. Behind the bank, whilst Knight reclined
+upon the dizzy slope waiting for death, she had taken off her whole
+clothing, and replaced only her outer bodice and skirt. Every thread of
+the remainder lay upon the ground in the form of a woollen and cotton
+rope.
+
+'I am used to being wet through,' she added. 'I have been drenched on
+Pansy dozens of times. Good-bye till we meet, clothed and in our right
+minds, by the fireside at home!'
+
+She then ran off from him through the pelting rain like a hare; or more
+like a pheasant when, scampering away with a lowered tail, it has a mind
+to fly, but does not. Elfride was soon out of sight.
+
+Knight felt uncomfortably wet and chilled, but glowing with fervour
+nevertheless. He fully appreciated Elfride's girlish delicacy in
+refusing his escort in the meagre habiliments she wore, yet felt
+that necessary abstraction of herself for a short half-hour as a most
+grievous loss to him.
+
+He gathered up her knotted and twisted plumage of linen, lace, and
+embroidery work, and laid it across his arm. He noticed on the ground
+an envelope, limp and wet. In endeavouring to restore this to its proper
+shape, he loosened from the envelope a piece of paper it had contained,
+which was seized by the wind in falling from Knight's hand. It was blown
+to the right, blown to the left--it floated to the edge of the cliff and
+over the sea, where it was hurled aloft. It twirled in the air, and then
+flew back over his head.
+
+Knight followed the paper, and secured it. Having done so, he looked to
+discover if it had been worth securing.
+
+The troublesome sheet was a banker's receipt for two hundred pounds,
+placed to the credit of Miss Swancourt, which the impractical girl had
+totally forgotten she carried with her.
+
+Knight folded it as carefully as its moist condition would allow, put it
+in his pocket, and followed Elfride.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XXIII
+
+     'Should auld acquaintance be forgot?'
+
+
+By this time Stephen Smith had stepped out upon the quay at Castle
+Boterel, and breathed his native air.
+
+A darker skin, a more pronounced moustache, and an incipient beard, were
+the chief additions and changes noticeable in his appearance.
+
+In spite of the falling rain, which had somewhat lessened, he took a
+small valise in his hand, and, leaving the remainder of his luggage at
+the inn, ascended the hills towards East Endelstow. This place lay in
+a vale of its own, further inland than the west village, and though so
+near it, had little of physical feature in common with the latter. East
+Endelstow was more wooded and fertile: it boasted of Lord Luxellian's
+mansion and park, and was free from those bleak open uplands which lent
+such an air of desolation to the vicinage of the coast--always excepting
+the small valley in which stood the vicarage and Mrs. Swancourt's old
+house, The Crags.
+
+Stephen had arrived nearly at the summit of the ridge when the rain
+again increased its volume, and, looking about for temporary shelter, he
+ascended a steep path which penetrated dense hazel bushes in the lower
+part of its course. Further up it emerged upon a ledge immediately over
+the turnpike-road, and sheltered by an overhanging face of rubble rock,
+with bushes above. For a reason of his own he made this spot his refuge
+from the storm, and turning his face to the left, conned the landscape
+as a book.
+
+He was overlooking the valley containing Elfride's residence.
+
+From this point of observation the prospect exhibited the peculiarity
+of being either brilliant foreground or the subdued tone of distance, a
+sudden dip in the surface of the country lowering out of sight all the
+intermediate prospect. In apparent contact with the trees and bushes
+growing close beside him appeared the distant tract, terminated suddenly
+by the brink of the series of cliffs which culminated in the tall giant
+without a name--small and unimportant as here beheld. A leaf on a bough
+at Stephen's elbow blotted out a whole hill in the contrasting district
+far away; a green bunch of nuts covered a complete upland there, and the
+great cliff itself was outvied by a pigmy crag in the bank hard by him.
+Stephen had looked upon these things hundreds of times before to-day,
+but he had never viewed them with such tenderness as now.
+
+Stepping forward in this direction yet a little further, he could see
+the tower of West Endelstow Church, beneath which he was to meet his
+Elfride that night. And at the same time he noticed, coming over the
+hill from the cliffs, a white speck in motion. It seemed first to be a
+sea-gull flying low, but ultimately proved to be a human figure, running
+with great rapidity. The form flitted on, heedless of the rain which
+had caused Stephen's halt in this place, dropped down the heathery hill,
+entered the vale, and was out of sight.
+
+Whilst he meditated upon the meaning of this phenomenon, he was
+surprised to see swim into his ken from the same point of departure
+another moving speck, as different from the first as well could be,
+insomuch that it was perceptible only by its blackness. Slowly and
+regularly it took the same course, and there was not much doubt that
+this was the form of a man. He, too, gradually descended from the upper
+levels, and was lost in the valley below.
+
+The rain had by this time again abated, and Stephen returned to the
+road. Looking ahead, he saw two men and a cart. They were soon obscured
+by the intervention of a high hedge. Just before they emerged again he
+heard voices in conversation.
+
+''A must soon be in the naibourhood, too, if so be he's a-coming,'
+said a tenor tongue, which Stephen instantly recognized as Martin
+Cannister's.
+
+''A must 'a b'lieve,' said another voice--that of Stephen's father.
+
+Stephen stepped forward, and came before them face to face. His father
+and Martin were walking, dressed in their second best suits, and beside
+them rambled along a grizzel horse and brightly painted spring-cart.
+
+'All right, Mr. Cannister; here's the lost man!' exclaimed young Smith,
+entering at once upon the old style of greeting. 'Father, here I am.'
+
+'All right, my sonny; and glad I be for't!' returned John Smith,
+overjoyed to see the young man. 'How be ye? Well, come along home, and
+don't let's bide out here in the damp. Such weather must be terrible bad
+for a young chap just come from a fiery nation like Indy; hey, naibour
+Cannister?'
+
+'Trew, trew. And about getting home his traps? Boxes, monstrous bales,
+and noble packages of foreign description, I make no doubt?'
+
+'Hardly all that,' said Stephen laughing.
+
+'We brought the cart, maning to go right on to Castle Boterel afore ye
+landed,' said his father. '"Put in the horse," says Martin. "Ay," says
+I, "so we will;" and did it straightway. Now, maybe, Martin had better
+go on wi' the cart for the things, and you and I walk home-along.'
+
+'And I shall be back a'most as soon as you. Peggy is a pretty step
+still, though time d' begin to tell upon her as upon the rest o' us.'
+
+Stephen told Martin where to find his baggage, and then continued his
+journey homeward in the company of his father.
+
+'Owing to your coming a day sooner than we first expected,' said John,
+'you'll find us in a turk of a mess, sir--"sir," says I to my own son!
+but ye've gone up so, Stephen. We've killed the pig this morning for
+ye, thinking ye'd be hungry, and glad of a morsel of fresh mate. And 'a
+won't be cut up till to-night. However, we can make ye a good supper
+of fry, which will chaw up well wi' a dab o' mustard and a few nice new
+taters, and a drop of shilling ale to wash it down. Your mother have
+scrubbed the house through because ye were coming, and dusted all
+the chimmer furniture, and bought a new basin and jug of a travelling
+crockery-woman that came to our door, and scoured the cannel-sticks, and
+claned the winders! Ay, I don't know what 'a ha'n't a done. Never were
+such a steer, 'a b'lieve.'
+
+Conversation of this kind and inquiries of Stephen for his mother's
+wellbeing occupied them for the remainder of the journey. When they
+drew near the river, and the cottage behind it, they could hear the
+master-mason's clock striking off the bygone hours of the day at
+intervals of a quarter of a minute, during which intervals Stephen's
+imagination readily pictured his mother's forefinger wandering round the
+dial in company with the minute-hand.
+
+'The clock stopped this morning, and your mother in putting en right
+seemingly,' said his father in an explanatory tone; and they went up the
+garden to the door.
+
+When they had entered, and Stephen had dutifully and warmly greeted his
+mother--who appeared in a cotton dress of a dark-blue ground, covered
+broadcast with a multitude of new and full moons, stars, and planets,
+with an occasional dash of a comet-like aspect to diversify the
+scene--the crackle of cart-wheels was heard outside, and Martin
+Cannister stamped in at the doorway, in the form of a pair of legs
+beneath a great box, his body being nowhere visible. When the luggage
+had been all taken down, and Stephen had gone upstairs to change his
+clothes, Mrs. Smith's mind seemed to recover a lost thread.
+
+'Really our clock is not worth a penny,' she said, turning to it and
+attempting to start the pendulum.
+
+'Stopped again?' inquired Martin with commiseration.
+
+'Yes, sure,' replied Mrs. Smith; and continued after the manner of
+certain matrons, to whose tongues the harmony of a subject with a casual
+mood is a greater recommendation than its pertinence to the occasion,
+'John would spend pounds a year upon the jimcrack old thing, if he
+might, in having it claned, when at the same time you may doctor it
+yourself as well. "The clock's stopped again, John," I say to him.
+"Better have en claned," says he. There's five shillings. "That clock
+grinds again," I say to en. "Better have en claned," 'a says again.
+"That clock strikes wrong, John," says I. "Better have en claned," he
+goes on. The wheels would have been polished to skeletons by this
+time if I had listened to en, and I assure you we could have bought a
+chainey-faced beauty wi' the good money we've flung away these last ten
+years upon this old green-faced mortal. And, Martin, you must be wet. My
+son is gone up to change. John is damper than I should like to be,
+but 'a calls it nothing. Some of Mrs. Swancourt's servants have been
+here--they ran in out of the rain when going for a walk--and I assure
+you the state of their bonnets was frightful.'
+
+'How's the folks? We've been over to Castle Boterel, and what wi'
+running and stopping out of the storms, my poor head is beyond
+everything! fizz, fizz fizz; 'tis frying o' fish from morning to night,'
+said a cracked voice in the doorway at this instant.
+
+'Lord so's, who's that?' said Mrs. Smith, in a private exclamation,
+and turning round saw William Worm, endeavouring to make himself look
+passing civil and friendly by overspreading his face with a large smile
+that seemed to have no connection with the humour he was in. Behind him
+stood a woman about twice his size, with a large umbrella over her head.
+This was Mrs. Worm, William's wife.
+
+'Come in, William,' said John Smith. 'We don't kill a pig every day.
+And you, likewise, Mrs. Worm. I make ye welcome. Since ye left Parson
+Swancourt, William, I don't see much of 'ee.'
+
+'No, for to tell the truth, since I took to the turn-pike-gate line,
+I've been out but little, coming to church o' Sundays not being my duty
+now, as 'twas in a parson's family, you see. However, our boy is able to
+mind the gate now, and I said, says I, "Barbara, let's call and see John
+Smith."'
+
+'I am sorry to hear yer pore head is so bad still.'
+
+'Ay, I assure you that frying o' fish is going on for nights and days.
+And, you know, sometimes 'tisn't only fish, but rashers o' bacon and
+inions. Ay, I can hear the fat pop and fizz as nateral as life; can't I,
+Barbara?'
+
+Mrs. Worm, who had been all this time engaged in closing her umbrella,
+corroborated this statement, and now, coming indoors, showed herself to
+be a wide-faced, comfortable-looking woman, with a wart upon her cheek,
+bearing a small tuft of hair in its centre.
+
+'Have ye ever tried anything to cure yer noise, Maister Worm?' inquired
+Martin Cannister.
+
+'Oh ay; bless ye, I've tried everything. Ay, Providence is a merciful
+man, and I have hoped He'd have found it out by this time, living so
+many years in a parson's family, too, as I have, but 'a don't seem to
+relieve me. Ay, I be a poor wambling man, and life's a mint o' trouble!'
+
+'True, mournful true, William Worm. 'Tis so. The world wants looking to,
+or 'tis all sixes and sevens wi' us.'
+
+'Take your things off, Mrs. Worm,' said Mrs. Smith. 'We be rather in a
+muddle, to tell the truth, for my son is just dropped in from Indy a day
+sooner than we expected, and the pig-killer is coming presently to cut
+up.'
+
+Mrs. Barbara Worm, not wishing to take any mean advantage of persons
+in a muddle by observing them, removed her bonnet and mantle with eyes
+fixed upon the flowers in the plot outside the door.
+
+'What beautiful tiger-lilies!' said Mrs. Worm.
+
+'Yes, they be very well, but such a trouble to me on account of the
+children that come here. They will go eating the berries on the stem,
+and call 'em currants. Taste wi' junivals is quite fancy, really.'
+
+'And your snapdragons look as fierce as ever.'
+
+'Well, really,' answered Mrs. Smith, entering didactically into the
+subject, 'they are more like Christians than flowers. But they make up
+well enough wi' the rest, and don't require much tending. And the same
+can be said o' these miller's wheels. 'Tis a flower I like very much,
+though so simple. John says he never cares about the flowers o' 'em,
+but men have no eye for anything neat. He says his favourite flower is
+a cauliflower. And I assure you I tremble in the springtime, for 'tis
+perfect murder.'
+
+'You don't say so, Mrs. Smith!'
+
+'John digs round the roots, you know. In goes his blundering spade,
+through roots, bulbs, everything that hasn't got a good show above
+ground, turning 'em up cut all to slices. Only the very last fall I went
+to move some tulips, when I found every bulb upside down, and the stems
+crooked round. He had turned 'em over in the spring, and the cunning
+creatures had soon found that heaven was not where it used to be.'
+
+'What's that long-favoured flower under the hedge?'
+
+'They? O Lord, they are the horrid Jacob's ladders! Instead of praising
+'em, I be mad wi' 'em for being so ready to bide where they are not
+wanted. They be very well in their way, but I do not care for things
+that neglect won't kill. Do what I will, dig, drag, scrap, pull, I get
+too many of 'em. I chop the roots: up they'll come, treble strong. Throw
+'em over hedge; there they'll grow, staring me in the face like a hungry
+dog driven away, and creep back again in a week or two the same as
+before. 'Tis Jacob's ladder here, Jacob's ladder there, and plant 'em
+where nothing in the world will grow, you get crowds of 'em in a month
+or two. John made a new manure mixen last summer, and he said, "Maria,
+now if you've got any flowers or such like, that you don't want, you may
+plant 'em round my mixen so as to hide it a bit, though 'tis not likely
+anything of much value will grow there." I thought, "There's them
+Jacob's ladders; I'll put them there, since they can't do harm in such a
+place;" and I planted the Jacob's ladders sure enough. They growed, and
+they growed, in the mixen and out of the mixen, all over the litter,
+covering it quite up. When John wanted to use it about the garden, 'a
+said, "Nation seize them Jacob's ladders of yours, Maria! They've eat
+the goodness out of every morsel of my manure, so that 'tis no better
+than sand itself!" Sure enough the hungry mortals had. 'Tis my belief
+that in the secret souls o' 'em, Jacob's ladders be weeds, and not
+flowers at all, if the truth was known.'
+
+Robert Lickpan, pig-killer and carrier, arrived at this moment. The
+fatted animal hanging in the back kitchen was cleft down the middle of
+its backbone, Mrs. Smith being meanwhile engaged in cooking supper.
+
+Between the cutting and chopping, ale was handed round, and Worm and
+the pig-killer listened to John Smith's description of the meeting with
+Stephen, with eyes blankly fixed upon the table-cloth, in order that
+nothing in the external world should interrupt their efforts to conjure
+up the scene correctly.
+
+Stephen came downstairs in the middle of the story, and after the little
+interruption occasioned by his entrance and welcome, the narrative was
+again continued, precisely as if he had not been there at all, and
+was told inclusively to him, as to somebody who knew nothing about the
+matter.
+
+'"Ay," I said, as I catched sight o' en through the brimbles, "that's
+the lad, for I d' know en by his grand-father's walk;" for 'a stapped
+out like poor father for all the world. Still there was a touch o' the
+frisky that set me wondering. 'A got closer, and I said, "That's the
+lad, for I d' know en by his carrying a black case like a travelling
+man." Still, a road is common to all the world, and there be more
+travelling men than one. But I kept my eye cocked, and I said to Martin,
+"'Tis the boy, now, for I d' know en by the wold twirl o' the stick and
+the family step." Then 'a come closer, and a' said, "All right." I could
+swear to en then.'
+
+Stephen's personal appearance was next criticised.
+
+'He d' look a deal thinner in face, surely, than when I seed en at the
+parson's, and never knowed en, if ye'll believe me,' said Martin.
+
+'Ay, there,' said another, without removing his eyes from Stephen's
+face, 'I should ha' knowed en anywhere. 'Tis his father's nose to a T.'
+
+'It has been often remarked,' said Stephen modestly.
+
+'And he's certainly taller,' said Martin, letting his glance run over
+Stephen's form from bottom to top.
+
+'I was thinking 'a was exactly the same height,' Worm replied.
+
+'Bless thy soul, that's because he's bigger round likewise.' And the
+united eyes all moved to Stephen's waist.
+
+'I be a poor wambling man, but I can make allowances,' said William
+Worm. 'Ah, sure, and how he came as a stranger and pilgrim to Parson
+Swancourt's that time, not a soul knowing en after so many years! Ay,
+life's a strange picter, Stephen: but I suppose I must say Sir to ye?'
+
+'Oh, it is not necessary at present,' Stephen replied, though mentally
+resolving to avoid the vicinity of that familiar friend as soon as he
+had made pretensions to the hand of Elfride.
+
+'Ah, well,' said Worm musingly, 'some would have looked for no less than
+a Sir. There's a sight of difference in people.'
+
+'And in pigs likewise,' observed John Smith, looking at the halved
+carcass of his own.
+
+Robert Lickpan, the pig-killer, here seemed called upon to enter the
+lists of conversation.
+
+'Yes, they've got their particular naters good-now,' he remarked
+initially. 'Many's the rum-tempered pig I've knowed.'
+
+'I don't doubt it, Master Lickpan,' answered Martin, in a tone
+expressing that his convictions, no less than good manners, demanded the
+reply.
+
+'Yes,' continued the pig-killer, as one accustomed to be heard. 'One
+that I knowed was deaf and dumb, and we couldn't make out what was the
+matter wi' the pig. 'A would eat well enough when 'a seed the trough,
+but when his back was turned, you might a-rattled the bucket all day,
+the poor soul never heard ye. Ye could play tricks upon en behind his
+back, and a' wouldn't find it out no quicker than poor deaf Grammer
+Cates. But a' fatted well, and I never seed a pig open better when a'
+was killed, and 'a was very tender eating, very; as pretty a bit of mate
+as ever you see; you could suck that mate through a quill.
+
+'And another I knowed,' resumed the killer, after quietly letting a pint
+of ale run down his throat of its own accord, and setting down the
+cup with mathematical exactness upon the spot from which he had raised
+it--'another went out of his mind.'
+
+'How very mournful!' murmured Mrs. Worm.
+
+'Ay, poor thing, 'a did! As clean out of his mind as the cleverest
+Christian could go. In early life 'a was very melancholy, and never
+seemed a hopeful pig by no means. 'Twas Andrew Stainer's pig--that's
+whose pig 'twas.'
+
+'I can mind the pig well enough,' attested John Smith.
+
+'And a pretty little porker 'a was. And you all know Farmer Buckle's
+sort? Every jack o' em suffer from the rheumatism to this day, owing to
+a damp sty they lived in when they were striplings, as 'twere.'
+
+'Well, now we'll weigh,' said John.
+
+'If so be he were not so fine, we'd weigh en whole: but as he is, we'll
+take a side at a time. John, you can mind my old joke, ey?'
+
+'I do so; though 'twas a good few years ago I first heard en.'
+
+'Yes,' said Lickpan, 'that there old familiar joke have been in our
+family for generations, I may say. My father used that joke regular at
+pig-killings for more than five and forty years--the time he followed
+the calling. And 'a told me that 'a had it from his father when he was
+quite a chiel, who made use o' en just the same at every killing more or
+less; and pig-killings were pig-killings in those days.'
+
+'Trewly they were.'
+
+'I've never heard the joke,' said Mrs. Smith tentatively.
+
+'Nor I,' chimed in Mrs. Worm, who, being the only other lady in the
+room, felt bound by the laws of courtesy to feel like Mrs. Smith in
+everything.
+
+'Surely, surely you have,' said the killer, looking sceptically at the
+benighted females. 'However, 'tisn't much--I don't wish to say it is. It
+commences like this: "Bob will tell the weight of your pig, 'a b'lieve,"
+says I. The congregation of neighbours think I mane my son Bob,
+naturally; but the secret is that I mane the bob o' the steelyard. Ha,
+ha, ha!'
+
+'Haw, haw, haw!' laughed Martin Cannister, who had heard the explanation
+of this striking story for the hundredth time.
+
+'Huh, huh, huh!' laughed John Smith, who had heard it for the
+thousandth.
+
+'Hee, hee, hee!' laughed William Worm, who had never heard it at all,
+but was afraid to say so.
+
+'Thy grandfather, Robert, must have been a wide-awake chap to make that
+story,' said Martin Cannister, subsiding to a placid aspect of delighted
+criticism.
+
+'He had a head, by all account. And, you see, as the first-born of the
+Lickpans have all been Roberts, they've all been Bobs, so the story was
+handed down to the present day.'
+
+'Poor Joseph, your second boy, will never be able to bring it out in
+company, which is rather unfortunate,' said Mrs. Worm thoughtfully.
+
+''A won't. Yes, grandfer was a clever chap, as ye say; but I knowed a
+cleverer. 'Twas my uncle Levi. Uncle Levi made a snuff-box that should
+be a puzzle to his friends to open. He used to hand en round at wedding
+parties, christenings, funerals, and in other jolly company, and let 'em
+try their skill. This extraordinary snuff-box had a spring behind that
+would push in and out--a hinge where seemed to be the cover; a slide at
+the end, a screw in front, and knobs and queer notches everywhere. One
+man would try the spring, another would try the screw, another would
+try the slide; but try as they would, the box wouldn't open. And they
+couldn't open en, and they didn't open en. Now what might you think was
+the secret of that box?'
+
+All put on an expression that their united thoughts were inadequate to
+the occasion.
+
+'Why the box wouldn't open at all. 'A were made not to open, and ye
+might have tried till the end of Revelations, 'twould have been as
+naught, for the box were glued all round.'
+
+'A very deep man to have made such a box.'
+
+'Yes. 'Twas like uncle Levi all over.'
+
+''Twas. I can mind the man very well. Tallest man ever I seed.'
+
+''A was so. He never slept upon a bedstead after he growed up a hard
+boy-chap--never could get one long enough. When 'a lived in that little
+small house by the pond, he used to have to leave open his chamber door
+every night at going to his bed, and let his feet poke out upon the
+landing.'
+
+'He's dead and gone now, nevertheless, poor man, as we all shall,'
+observed Worm, to fill the pause which followed the conclusion of Robert
+Lickpan's speech.
+
+The weighing and cutting up was pursued amid an animated discourse on
+Stephen's travels; and at the finish, the first-fruits of the day's
+slaughter, fried in onions, were then turned from the pan into a dish
+on the table, each piece steaming and hissing till it reached their very
+mouths.
+
+It must be owned that the gentlemanly son of the house looked rather
+out of place in the course of this operation. Nor was his mind
+quite philosophic enough to allow him to be comfortable with these
+old-established persons, his father's friends. He had never lived long
+at home--scarcely at all since his childhood. The presence of William
+Worm was the most awkward feature of the case, for, though Worm had left
+the house of Mr. Swancourt, the being hand-in-glove with a ci-devant
+servitor reminded Stephen too forcibly of the vicar's classification
+of himself before he went from England. Mrs. Smith was conscious of
+the defect in her arrangements which had brought about the undesired
+conjunction. She spoke to Stephen privately.
+
+'I am above having such people here, Stephen; but what could I do? And
+your father is so rough in his nature that he's more mixed up with them
+than need be.'
+
+'Never mind, mother,' said Stephen; 'I'll put up with it now.'
+
+'When we leave my lord's service, and get further up the country--as
+I hope we shall soon--it will be different. We shall be among fresh
+people, and in a larger house, and shall keep ourselves up a bit, I
+hope.'
+
+'Is Miss Swancourt at home, do you know?' Stephen inquired
+
+'Yes, your father saw her this morning.'
+
+'Do you often see her?'
+
+'Scarcely ever. Mr. Glim, the curate, calls occasionally, but the
+Swancourts don't come into the village now any more than to drive
+through it. They dine at my lord's oftener than they used. Ah, here's a
+note was brought this morning for you by a boy.'
+
+Stephen eagerly took the note and opened it, his mother watching him. He
+read what Elfride had written and sent before she started for the cliff
+that afternoon:
+
+
+'Yes; I will meet you in the church at nine to-night.--E. S.'
+
+
+'I don't know, Stephen,' his mother said meaningly, 'whe'r you still
+think about Miss Elfride, but if I were you I wouldn't concern about
+her. They say that none of old Mrs. Swancourt's money will come to her
+step-daughter.'
+
+'I see the evening has turned out fine; I am going out for a little
+while to look round the place,' he said, evading the direct query.
+'Probably by the time I return our visitors will be gone, and we'll have
+a more confidential talk.'
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XXIV
+
+     'Breeze, bird, and flower confess the hour.'
+
+
+The rain had ceased since the sunset, but it was a cloudy night; and
+the light of the moon, softened and dispersed by its misty veil, was
+distributed over the land in pale gray.
+
+A dark figure stepped from the doorway of John Smith's river-side
+cottage, and strode rapidly towards West Endelstow with a light
+footstep. Soon ascending from the lower levels he turned a corner,
+followed a cart-track, and saw the tower of the church he was in quest
+of distinctly shaped forth against the sky. In less than half an hour
+from the time of starting he swung himself over the churchyard stile.
+
+The wild irregular enclosure was as much as ever an integral part of the
+old hill. The grass was still long, the graves were shaped precisely as
+passing years chose to alter them from their orthodox form as laid down
+by Martin Cannister, and by Stephen's own grandfather before him.
+
+A sound sped into the air from the direction in which Castle Boterel
+lay. It was the striking of the church clock, distinct in the still
+atmosphere as if it had come from the tower hard by, which, wrapt in its
+solitary silentness, gave out no such sounds of life.
+
+'One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine.' Stephen
+carefully counted the strokes, though he well knew their number
+beforehand. Nine o'clock. It was the hour Elfride had herself named as
+the most convenient for meeting him.
+
+Stephen stood at the door of the porch and listened. He could have heard
+the softest breathing of any person within the porch; nobody was there.
+He went inside the doorway, sat down upon the stone bench, and waited
+with a beating heart.
+
+The faint sounds heard only accentuated the silence. The rising and
+falling of the sea, far away along the coast, was the most important.
+A minor sound was the scurr of a distant night-hawk. Among the minutest
+where all were minute were the light settlement of gossamer fragments
+floating in the air, a toad humbly labouring along through the
+grass near the entrance, the crackle of a dead leaf which a worm was
+endeavouring to pull into the earth, a waft of air, getting nearer and
+nearer, and expiring at his feet under the burden of a winged seed.
+
+Among all these soft sounds came not the only soft sound he cared to
+hear--the footfall of Elfride.
+
+For a whole quarter of an hour Stephen sat thus intent, without moving
+a muscle. At the end of that time he walked to the west front of the
+church. Turning the corner of the tower, a white form stared him in the
+face. He started back, and recovered himself. It was the tomb of young
+farmer Jethway, looking still as fresh and as new as when it was
+first erected, the white stone in which it was hewn having a singular
+weirdness amid the dark blue slabs from local quarries, of which the
+whole remaining gravestones were formed.
+
+He thought of the night when he had sat thereon with Elfride as his
+companion, and well remembered his regret that she had received, even
+unwillingly, earlier homage than his own. But his present tangible
+anxiety reduced such a feeling to sentimental nonsense in comparison;
+and he strolled on over the graves to the border of the churchyard,
+whence in the daytime could be clearly seen the vicarage and the present
+residence of the Swancourts. No footstep was discernible upon the path
+up the hill, but a light was shining from a window in the last-named
+house.
+
+Stephen knew there could be no mistake about the time or place, and no
+difficulty about keeping the engagement. He waited yet longer, passing
+from impatience into a mood which failed to take any account of the
+lapse of time. He was awakened from his reverie by Castle Boterel clock.
+
+One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, TEN.
+
+One little fall of the hammer in addition to the number it had been
+sharp pleasure to hear, and what a difference to him!
+
+He left the churchyard on the side opposite to his point of entrance,
+and went down the hill. Slowly he drew near the gate of her house. This
+he softly opened, and walked up the gravel drive to the door. Here he
+paused for several minutes.
+
+At the expiration of that time the murmured speech of a manly voice came
+out to his ears through an open window behind the corner of the house.
+This was responded to by a clear soft laugh. It was the laugh of
+Elfride.
+
+Stephen was conscious of a gnawing pain at his heart. He retreated as he
+had come. There are disappointments which wring us, and there are those
+which inflict a wound whose mark we bear to our graves. Such are so
+keen that no future gratification of the same desire can ever obliterate
+them: they become registered as a permanent loss of happiness. Such a
+one was Stephen's now: the crowning aureola of the dream had been the
+meeting here by stealth; and if Elfride had come to him only ten
+minutes after he had turned away, the disappointment would have been
+recognizable still.
+
+When the young man reached home he found there a letter which had
+arrived in his absence. Believing it to contain some reason for her
+non-appearance, yet unable to imagine one that could justify her, he
+hastily tore open the envelope.
+
+The paper contained not a word from Elfride. It was the deposit-note for
+his two hundred pounds. On the back was the form of a cheque, and this
+she had filled up with the same sum, payable to the bearer.
+
+Stephen was confounded. He attempted to divine her motive. Considering
+how limited was his knowledge of her later actions, he guessed rather
+shrewdly that, between the time of her sending the note in the morning
+and the evening's silent refusal of his gift, something had occurred
+which had caused a total change in her attitude towards him.
+
+He knew not what to do. It seemed absurd now to go to her father next
+morning, as he had purposed, and ask for an engagement with her, a
+possibility impending all the while that Elfride herself would not be
+on his side. Only one course recommended itself as wise. To wait and see
+what the days would bring forth; to go and execute his commissions in
+Birmingham; then to return, learn if anything had happened, and try what
+a meeting might do; perhaps her surprise at his backwardness would bring
+her forward to show latent warmth as decidedly as in old times.
+
+This act of patience was in keeping only with the nature of a man
+precisely of Stephen's constitution. Nine men out of ten would perhaps
+have rushed off, got into her presence, by fair means or foul, and
+provoked a catastrophe of some sort. Possibly for the better, probably
+for the worse.
+
+He started for Birmingham the next morning. A day's delay would have
+made no difference; but he could not rest until he had begun and ended
+the programme proposed to himself. Bodily activity will sometimes take
+the sting out of anxiety as completely as assurance itself.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XXV
+
+     'Mine own familiar friend.'
+
+
+During these days of absence Stephen lived under alternate conditions.
+Whenever his emotions were active, he was in agony. Whenever he was not
+in agony, the business in hand had driven out of his mind by sheer force
+all deep reflection on the subject of Elfride and love.
+
+By the time he took his return journey at the week's end, Stephen had
+very nearly worked himself up to an intention to call and see her face
+to face. On this occasion also he adopted his favourite route--by the
+little summer steamer from Bristol to Castle Boterel; the time saved
+by speed on the railway being wasted at junctions, and in following a
+devious course.
+
+It was a bright silent evening at the beginning of September when Smith
+again set foot in the little town. He felt inclined to linger awhile
+upon the quay before ascending the hills, having formed a romantic
+intention to go home by way of her house, yet not wishing to wander in
+its neighbourhood till the evening shades should sufficiently screen him
+from observation.
+
+And thus waiting for night's nearer approach, he watched the placid
+scene, over which the pale luminosity of the west cast a sorrowful
+monochrome, that became slowly embrowned by the dusk. A star appeared,
+and another, and another. They sparkled amid the yards and rigging
+of the two coal brigs lying alangside, as if they had been tiny lamps
+suspended in the ropes. The masts rocked sleepily to the infinitesimal
+flux of the tide, which clucked and gurgled with idle regularity in
+nooks and holes of the harbour wall.
+
+The twilight was now quite pronounced enough for his purpose; and as,
+rather sad at heart, he was about to move on, a little boat containing
+two persons glided up the middle of the harbour with the lightness of
+a shadow. The boat came opposite him, passed on, and touched the
+landing-steps at the further end. One of its occupants was a man, as
+Stephen had known by the easy stroke of the oars. When the pair ascended
+the steps, and came into greater prominence, he was enabled to discern
+that the second personage was a woman; also that she wore a white
+decoration--apparently a feather--in her hat or bonnet, which spot of
+white was the only distinctly visible portion of her clothing.
+
+Stephen remained a moment in their rear, and they passed on, when he
+pursued his way also, and soon forgot the circumstance. Having crossed
+a bridge, forsaken the high road, and entered the footpath which led
+up the vale to West Endelstow, he heard a little wicket click softly
+together some yards ahead. By the time that Stephen had reached the
+wicket and passed it, he heard another click of precisely the same
+nature from another gate yet further on. Clearly some person or persons
+were preceding him along the path, their footsteps being rendered
+noiseless by the soft carpet of turf. Stephen now walked a little
+quicker, and perceived two forms. One of them bore aloft the white
+feather he had noticed in the woman's hat on the quay: they were the
+couple he had seen in the boat. Stephen dropped a little further to the
+rear.
+
+From the bottom of the valley, along which the path had hitherto lain,
+beside the margin of the trickling streamlet, another path now diverged,
+and ascended the slope of the left-hand hill. This footway led only to
+the residence of Mrs. Swancourt and a cottage or two in its vicinity. No
+grass covered this diverging path in portions of its length, and Stephen
+was reminded that the pair in front of him had taken this route by the
+occasional rattle of loose stones under their feet. Stephen climbed in
+the same direction, but for some undefined reason he trod more softly
+than did those preceding him. His mind was unconsciously in exercise
+upon whom the woman might be--whether a visitor to The Crags, a servant,
+or Elfride. He put it to himself yet more forcibly; could the lady be
+Elfride? A possible reason for her unaccountable failure to keep the
+appointment with him returned with painful force.
+
+They entered the grounds of the house by the side wicket, whence
+the path, now wide and well trimmed, wound fantastically through the
+shrubbery to an octagonal pavilion called the Belvedere, by reason of
+the comprehensive view over the adjacent district that its green seats
+afforded. The path passed this erection and went on to the house as well
+as to the gardener's cottage on the other side, straggling thence
+to East Endelstow; so that Stephen felt no hesitation in entering a
+promenade which could scarcely be called private.
+
+He fancied that he heard the gate open and swing together again behind
+him. Turning, he saw nobody.
+
+The people of the boat came to the summer-house. One of them spoke.
+
+'I am afraid we shall get a scolding for being so late.'
+
+Stephen instantly recognised the familiar voice, richer and fuller now
+than it used to be. 'Elfride!' he whispered to himself, and held fast
+by a sapling, to steady himself under the agitation her presence caused
+him. His heart swerved from its beat; he shunned receiving the meaning
+he sought.
+
+'A breeze is rising again; how the ash tree rustles!' said Elfride.
+'Don't you hear it? I wonder what the time is.'
+
+Stephen relinquished the sapling.
+
+'I will get a light and tell you. Step into the summer-house; the air is
+quiet there.'
+
+The cadence of that voice--its peculiarity seemed to come home to him
+like that of some notes of the northern birds on his return to his
+native clime, as an old natural thing renewed, yet not particularly
+noticed as natural before that renewal.
+
+They entered the Belvedere. In the lower part it was formed of close
+wood-work nailed crosswise, and had openings in the upper by way of
+windows.
+
+The scratch of a striking light was heard, and a bright glow radiated
+from the interior of the building. The light gave birth to dancing
+leaf-shadows, stem-shadows, lustrous streaks, dots, sparkles, and
+threads of silver sheen of all imaginable variety and transience. It
+awakened gnats, which flew towards it, revealed shiny gossamer threads,
+disturbed earthworms. Stephen gave but little attention to these
+phenomena, and less time. He saw in the summer-house a strongly
+illuminated picture.
+
+First, the face of his friend and preceptor Henry Knight, between whom
+and himself an estrangement had arisen, not from any definite causes
+beyond those of absence, increasing age, and diverging sympathies.
+
+Next, his bright particular star, Elfride. The face of Elfride was more
+womanly than when she had called herself his, but as clear and healthy
+as ever. Her plenteous twines of beautiful hair were looking much as
+usual, with the exception of a slight modification in their arrangement
+in deference to the changes of fashion.
+
+Their two foreheads were close together, almost touching, and both were
+looking down. Elfride was holding her watch, Knight was holding the
+light with one hand, his left arm being round her waist. Part of the
+scene reached Stephen's eyes through the horizontal bars of woodwork,
+which crossed their forms like the ribs of a skeleton.
+
+Knight's arm stole still further round the waist of Elfride.
+
+'It is half-past eight,' she said in a low voice, which had a peculiar
+music in it, seemingly born of a thrill of pleasure at the new proof
+that she was beloved.
+
+The flame dwindled down, died away, and all was wrapped in a darkness to
+which the gloom before the illumination bore no comparison in apparent
+density. Stephen, shattered in spirit and sick to his heart's
+centre, turned away. In turning, he saw a shadowy outline behind
+the summer-house on the other side. His eyes grew accustomed to the
+darkness. Was the form a human form, or was it an opaque bush of
+juniper?
+
+The lovers arose, brushed against the laurestines, and pursued their
+way to the house. The indistinct figure had moved, and now passed across
+Smith's front. So completely enveloped was the person, that it was
+impossible to discern him or her any more than as a shape. The shape
+glided noiselessly on.
+
+Stephen stepped forward, fearing any mischief was intended to the other
+two. 'Who are you?' he said.
+
+'Never mind who I am,' answered a weak whisper from the enveloping
+folds. 'WHAT I am, may she be! Perhaps I knew well--ah, so well!--a
+youth whose place you took, as he there now takes yours. Will you let
+her break your heart, and bring you to an untimely grave, as she did the
+one before you?'
+
+'You are Mrs. Jethway, I think. What do you do here? And why do you talk
+so wildly?'
+
+'Because my heart is desolate, and nobody cares about it. May hers be so
+that brought trouble upon me!'
+
+'Silence!' said Stephen, staunch to Elfride in spite of himself. 'She
+would harm nobody wilfully, never would she! How do you come here?'
+
+'I saw the two coming up the path, and wanted to learn if she were not
+one of them. Can I help disliking her if I think of the past? Can I
+help watching her if I remember my boy? Can I help ill-wishing her if I
+well-wish him?'
+
+The bowed form went on, passed through the wicket, and was enveloped by
+the shadows of the field.
+
+Stephen had heard that Mrs. Jethway, since the death of her son, had
+become a crazed, forlorn woman; and bestowing a pitying thought
+upon her, he dismissed her fancied wrongs from his mind, but not her
+condemnation of Elfride's faithlessness. That entered into and mingled
+with the sensations his new experience had begotten. The tale told by
+the little scene he had witnessed ran parallel with the unhappy woman's
+opinion, which, however baseless it might have been antecedently, had
+become true enough as regarded himself.
+
+A slow weight of despair, as distinct from a violent paroxysm as
+starvation from a mortal shot, filled him and wrung him body and soul.
+The discovery had not been altogether unexpected, for throughout his
+anxiety of the last few days since the night in the churchyard, he had
+been inclined to construe the uncertainty unfavourably for himself. His
+hopes for the best had been but periodic interruptions to a chronic fear
+of the worst.
+
+A strange concomitant of his misery was the singularity of its form.
+That his rival should be Knight, whom once upon a time he had adored
+as a man is very rarely adored by another in modern times, and whom
+he loved now, added deprecation to sorrow, and cynicism to both. Henry
+Knight, whose praises he had so frequently trumpeted in her ears, of
+whom she had actually been jealous, lest she herself should be lessened
+in Stephen's love on account of him, had probably won her the more
+easily by reason of those very praises which he had only ceased to utter
+by her command. She had ruled him like a queen in that matter, as in
+all others. Stephen could tell by her manner, brief as had been his
+observation of it, and by her words, few as they were, that her position
+was far different with Knight. That she looked up at and adored her new
+lover from below his pedestal, was even more perceptible than that she
+had smiled down upon Stephen from a height above him.
+
+The suddenness of Elfride's renunciation of himself was food for more
+torture. To an unimpassioned outsider, it admitted of at least two
+interpretations--it might either have proceeded from an endeavour to be
+faithful to her first choice, till the lover seen absolutely overpowered
+the lover remembered, or from a wish not to lose his love till sure of
+the love of another. But to Stephen Smith the motive involved in the
+latter alternative made it untenable where Elfride was the actor.
+
+He mused on her letters to him, in which she had never mentioned a
+syllable concerning Knight. It is desirable, however, to observe that
+only in two letters could she possibly have done so. One was written
+about a week before Knight's arrival, when, though she did not mention
+his promised coming to Stephen, she had hardly a definite reason in her
+mind for neglecting to do it. In the next she did casually allude to
+Knight. But Stephen had left Bombay long before that letter arrived.
+
+Stephen looked at the black form of the adjacent house, where it cut a
+dark polygonal notch out of the sky, and felt that he hated the spot.
+He did not know many facts of the case, but could not help instinctively
+associating Elfride's fickleness with the marriage of her father, and
+their introduction to London society. He closed the iron gate bounding
+the shrubbery as noiselessly as he had opened it, and went into the
+grassy field. Here he could see the old vicarage, the house alone that
+was associated with the sweet pleasant time of his incipient love for
+Elfride. Turning sadly from the place that was no longer a nook in
+which his thoughts might nestle when he was far away, he wandered in the
+direction of the east village, to reach his father's house before they
+retired to rest.
+
+The nearest way to the cottage was by crossing the park. He did not
+hurry. Happiness frequently has reason for haste, but it is seldom
+that desolation need scramble or strain. Sometimes he paused under the
+low-hanging arms of the trees, looking vacantly on the ground.
+
+Stephen was standing thus, scarcely less crippled in thought than he was
+blank in vision, when a clear sound permeated the quiet air about him,
+and spread on far beyond. The sound was the stroke of a bell from the
+tower of East Endelstow Church, which stood in a dell not forty yards
+from Lord Luxellian's mansion, and within the park enclosure. Another
+stroke greeted his ear, and gave character to both: then came a slow
+succession of them.
+
+'Somebody is dead,' he said aloud.
+
+The death-knell of an inhabitant of the eastern parish was being tolled.
+
+An unusual feature in the tolling was that it had not been begun
+according to the custom in Endelstow and other parishes in the
+neighbourhood. At every death the sex and age of the deceased were
+announced by a system of changes. Three times three strokes signified
+that the departed one was a man; three times two, a woman; twice
+three, a boy; twice two, a girl. The regular continuity of the tolling
+suggested that it was the resumption rather than the beginning of a
+knell--the opening portion of which Stephen had not been near enough to
+hear.
+
+The momentary anxiety he had felt with regard to his parents passed
+away. He had left them in perfect health, and had any serious illness
+seized either, a communication would have reached him ere this. At the
+same time, since his way homeward lay under the churchyard yews, he
+resolved to look into the belfry in passing by, and speak a word to
+Martin Cannister, who would be there.
+
+Stephen reached the brow of the hill, and felt inclined to renounce his
+idea. His mood was such that talking to any person to whom he could not
+unburden himself would be wearisome. However, before he could put any
+inclination into effect, the young man saw from amid the trees a bright
+light shining, the rays from which radiated like needles through the
+sad plumy foliage of the yews. Its direction was from the centre of the
+churchyard.
+
+Stephen mechanically went forward. Never could there be a greater
+contrast between two places of like purpose than between this graveyard
+and that of the further village. Here the grass was carefully tended,
+and formed virtually a part of the manor-house lawn; flowers and shrubs
+being planted indiscriminately over both, whilst the few graves visible
+were mathematically exact in shape and smoothness, appearing in the
+daytime like chins newly shaven. There was no wall, the division between
+God's Acre and Lord Luxellian's being marked only by a few square
+stones set at equidistant points. Among those persons who have romantic
+sentiments on the subject of their last dwelling-place, probably the
+greater number would have chosen such a spot as this in preference to
+any other: a few would have fancied a constraint in its trim neatness,
+and would have preferred the wild hill-top of the neighbouring site,
+with Nature in her most negligent attire.
+
+The light in the churchyard he next discovered to have its source in a
+point very near the ground, and Stephen imagined it might come from a
+lantern in the interior of a partly-dug grave. But a nearer approach
+showed him that its position was immediately under the wall of the
+aisle, and within the mouth of an archway. He could now hear voices, and
+the truth of the whole matter began to dawn upon him. Walking on towards
+the opening, Smith discerned on his left hand a heap of earth,
+and before him a flight of stone steps which the removed earth had
+uncovered, leading down under the edifice. It was the entrance to a
+large family vault, extending under the north aisle.
+
+Stephen had never before seen it open, and descending one or two steps
+stooped to look under the arch. The vault appeared to be crowded with
+coffins, with the exception of an open central space, which had been
+necessarily kept free for ingress and access to the sides, round three
+of which the coffins were stacked in stone bins or niches.
+
+The place was well lighted with candles stuck in slips of wood that were
+fastened to the wall. On making the descent of another step the living
+inhabitants of the vault were recognizable. They were his father the
+master-mason, an under-mason, Martin Cannister, and two or three young
+and old labouring-men. Crowbars and workmen's hammers were scattered
+about. The whole company, sitting round on coffins which had been
+removed from their places, apparently for some alteration or enlargement
+of the vault, were eating bread and cheese, and drinking ale from a cup
+with two handles, passed round from each to each.
+
+'Who is dead?' Stephen inquired, stepping down.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XXVI
+
+     'To that last nothing under earth.'
+
+
+All eyes were turned to the entrance as Stephen spoke, and the
+ancient-mannered conclave scrutinized him inquiringly.
+
+'Why, 'tis our Stephen!' said his father, rising from his seat; and,
+still retaining the frothy mug in his left hand, he swung forward his
+right for a grasp. 'Your mother is expecting ye--thought you would have
+come afore dark. But you'll wait and go home with me? I have all but
+done for the day, and was going directly.'
+
+'Yes, 'tis Master Stephy, sure enough. Glad to see you so soon again,
+Master Smith,' said Martin Cannister, chastening the gladness expressed
+in his words by a strict neutrality of countenance, in order to
+harmonize the feeling as much as possible with the solemnity of a family
+vault.
+
+'The same to you, Martin; and you, William,' said Stephen, nodding
+around to the rest, who, having their mouths full of bread and cheese,
+were of necessity compelled to reply merely by compressing their eyes to
+friendly lines and wrinkles.
+
+'And who is dead?' Stephen repeated.
+
+'Lady Luxellian, poor gentlewoman, as we all shall, said the
+under-mason. 'Ay, and we be going to enlarge the vault to make room for
+her.'
+
+'When did she die?'
+
+'Early this morning,' his father replied, with an appearance of
+recurring to a chronic thought. 'Yes, this morning. Martin hev been
+tolling ever since, almost. There, 'twas expected. She was very limber.'
+
+'Ay, poor soul, this morning,' resumed the under-mason, a marvellously
+old man, whose skin seemed so much too large for his body that it would
+not stay in position. 'She must know by this time whether she's to go up
+or down, poor woman.'
+
+'What was her age?'
+
+'Not more than seven or eight and twenty by candlelight. But, Lord! by
+day 'a was forty if 'a were an hour.'
+
+'Ay, night-time or day-time makes a difference of twenty years to rich
+feymels,' observed Martin.
+
+'She was one and thirty really,' said John Smith. 'I had it from them
+that know.'
+
+'Not more than that!'
+
+''A looked very bad, poor lady. In faith, ye might say she was dead for
+years afore 'a would own it.'
+
+'As my old father used to say, "dead, but wouldn't drop down."'
+
+'I seed her, poor soul,' said a labourer from behind some removed
+coffins, 'only but last Valentine's-day of all the world. 'A was arm
+in crook wi' my lord. I says to myself, "You be ticketed Churchyard, my
+noble lady, although you don't dream on't."'
+
+'I suppose my lord will write to all the other lords anointed in the
+nation, to let 'em know that she that was is now no more?'
+
+''Tis done and past. I see a bundle of letters go off an hour after the
+death. Sich wonderful black rims as they letters had--half-an-inch wide,
+at the very least.'
+
+'Too much,' observed Martin. 'In short, 'tis out of the question that
+a human being can be so mournful as black edges half-an-inch wide. I'm
+sure people don't feel more than a very narrow border when they feels
+most of all.'
+
+'And there are two little girls, are there not?' said Stephen.
+
+'Nice clane little faces!--left motherless now.'
+
+'They used to come to Parson Swancourt's to play with Miss Elfride
+when I were there,' said William Worm. 'Ah, they did so's!' The latter
+sentence was introduced to add the necessary melancholy to a remark
+which, intrinsically, could hardly be made to possess enough for the
+occasion. 'Yes,' continued Worm, 'they'd run upstairs, they'd run down;
+flitting about with her everywhere. Very fond of her, they were. Ah,
+well!'
+
+'Fonder than ever they were of their mother, so 'tis said here and
+there,' added a labourer.
+
+'Well, you see, 'tis natural. Lady Luxellian stood aloof from
+'em so--was so drowsy-like, that they couldn't love her in the
+jolly-companion way children want to like folks. Only last winter I seed
+Miss Elfride talking to my lady and the two children, and Miss Elfride
+wiped their noses for em' SO careful--my lady never once seeing that it
+wanted doing; and, naturally, children take to people that's their best
+friend.'
+
+'Be as 'twill, the woman is dead and gone, and we must make a place for
+her,' said John. 'Come, lads, drink up your ale, and we'll just rid this
+corner, so as to have all clear for beginning at the wall, as soon as
+'tis light to-morrow.'
+
+Stephen then asked where Lady Luxellian was to lie.
+
+'Here,' said his father. 'We are going to set back this wall and make a
+recess; and 'tis enough for us to do before the funeral. When my lord's
+mother died, she said, "John, the place must be enlarged before another
+can be put in." But 'a never expected 'twould be wanted so soon. Better
+move Lord George first, I suppose, Simeon?'
+
+He pointed with his foot to a heavy coffin, covered with what had
+originally been red velvet, the colour of which could only just be
+distinguished now.
+
+'Just as ye think best, Master John,' replied the shrivelled mason. 'Ah,
+poor Lord George!' he continued, looking contemplatively at the huge
+coffin; 'he and I were as bitter enemies once as any could be when one
+is a lord and t'other only a mortal man. Poor fellow! He'd clap his hand
+upon my shoulder and cuss me as familial and neighbourly as if he'd been
+a common chap. Ay, 'a cussed me up hill and 'a cussed me down; and then
+'a would rave out again, and the goold clamps of his fine new teeth
+would glisten in the sun like fetters of brass, while I, being a small
+man and poor, was fain to say nothing at all. Such a strappen fine
+gentleman as he was too! Yes, I rather liked en sometimes. But once now
+and then, when I looked at his towering height, I'd think in my inside,
+"What a weight you'll be, my lord, for our arms to lower under the aisle
+of Endelstow Church some day!"'
+
+'And was he?' inquired a young labourer.
+
+'He was. He was five hundredweight if 'a were a pound. What with his
+lead, and his oak, and his handles, and his one thing and t'other'--here
+the ancient man slapped his hand upon the cover with a force that caused
+a rattle among the bones inside--'he half broke my back when I took
+his feet to lower en down the steps there. "Ah," saith I to John
+there--didn't I, John?--"that ever one man's glory should be such a
+weight upon another man!" But there, I liked my lord George sometimes.'
+
+''Tis a strange thought,' said another, 'that while they be all here
+under one roof, a snug united family o' Luxellians, they be really
+scattered miles away from one another in the form of good sheep and
+wicked goats, isn't it?'
+
+'True; 'tis a thought to look at.'
+
+'And that one, if he's gone upward, don't know what his wife is doing
+no more than the man in the moon if she's gone downward. And that some
+unfortunate one in the hot place is a-hollering across to a lucky one up
+in the clouds, and quite forgetting their bodies be boxed close together
+all the time.'
+
+'Ay, 'tis a thought to look at, too, that I can say "Hullo!" close to
+fiery Lord George, and 'a can't hear me.'
+
+'And that I be eating my onion close to dainty Lady Jane's nose, and she
+can't smell me.'
+
+'What do 'em put all their heads one way for?' inquired a young man.
+
+'Because 'tis churchyard law, you simple. The law of the living is, that
+a man shall be upright and down-right, and the law of the dead is, that
+a man shall be east and west. Every state of society have its laws.'
+
+'We must break the law wi' a few of the poor souls, however. Come,
+buckle to,' said the master-mason.
+
+And they set to work anew.
+
+The order of interment could be distinctly traced by observing the
+appearance of the coffins as they lay piled around. On those which
+had been standing there but a generation or two the trappings still
+remained. Those of an earlier period showed bare wood, with a few
+tattered rags dangling therefrom. Earlier still, the wood lay in
+fragments on the floor of the niche, and the coffin consisted of naked
+lead alone; whilst in the case of the very oldest, even the lead was
+bulging and cracking in pieces, revealing to the curious eye a heap of
+dust within. The shields upon many were quite loose, and removable by
+the hand, their lustreless surfaces still indistinctly exhibiting the
+name and title of the deceased.
+
+Overhead the groins and concavities of the arches curved in all
+directions, dropping low towards the walls, where the height was no more
+than sufficient to enable a person to stand upright.
+
+The body of George the fourteenth baron, together with two or three
+others, all of more recent date than the great bulk of coffins piled
+there, had, for want of room, been placed at the end of the vault on
+tressels, and not in niches like the others. These it was necessary to
+remove, to form behind them the chamber in which they were ultimately to
+be deposited. Stephen, finding the place and proceedings in keeping with
+the sombre colours of his mind, waited there still.
+
+'Simeon, I suppose you can mind poor Lady Elfride, and how she ran away
+with the actor?' said John Smith, after awhile. 'I think it fell upon
+the time my father was sexton here. Let us see--where is she?'
+
+'Here somewhere,' returned Simeon, looking round him.
+
+'Why, I've got my arms round the very gentlewoman at this moment.'
+He lowered the end of the coffin he was holding, wiped his face,
+and throwing a morsel of rotten wood upon another as an indicator,
+continued: 'That's her husband there. They was as fair a couple as you
+should see anywhere round about; and a good-hearted pair likewise. Ay, I
+can mind it, though I was but a chiel at the time. She fell in love with
+this young man of hers, and their banns were asked in some church in
+London; and the old lord her father actually heard 'em asked the three
+times, and didn't notice her name, being gabbled on wi' a host of
+others. When she had married she told her father, and 'a fleed into a
+monstrous rage, and said she shouldn' hae a farthing. Lady Elfride said
+she didn't think of wishing it; if he'd forgie her 'twas all she asked,
+and as for a living, she was content to play plays with her husband.
+This frightened the old lord, and 'a gie'd 'em a house to live in, and a
+great garden, and a little field or two, and a carriage, and a good
+few guineas. Well, the poor thing died at her first gossiping, and her
+husband--who was as tender-hearted a man as ever eat meat, and would
+have died for her--went wild in his mind, and broke his heart (so 'twas
+said). Anyhow, they were buried the same day--father and mother--but the
+baby lived. Ay, my lord's family made much of that man then, and put him
+here with his wife, and there in the corner the man is now. The Sunday
+after there was a funeral sermon: the text was, "Or ever the silver cord
+be loosed, or the golden bowl be broken;" and when 'twas preaching the
+men drew their hands across their eyes several times, and every woman
+cried out loud.'
+
+'And what became of the baby?' said Stephen, who had frequently heard
+portions of the story.
+
+'She was brought up by her grandmother, and a pretty maid she were. And
+she must needs run away with the curate--Parson Swancourt that is now.
+Then her grandmother died, and the title and everything went away to
+another branch of the family altogether. Parson Swancourt wasted a good
+deal of his wife's money, and she left him Miss Elfride. That trick
+of running away seems to be handed down in families, like craziness or
+gout. And they two women be alike as peas.'
+
+'Which two?'
+
+'Lady Elfride and young Miss that's alive now. The same hair and eyes:
+but Miss Elfride's mother was darker a good deal.'
+
+'Life's a strangle bubble, ye see,' said William Worm musingly. 'For
+if the Lord's anointment had descended upon women instead of men, Miss
+Elfride would be Lord Luxellian--Lady, I mane. But as it is, the blood
+is run out, and she's nothing to the Luxellian family by law, whatever
+she may be by gospel.'
+
+'I used to fancy,' said Simeon, 'when I seed Miss Elfride hugging the
+little ladyships, that there was a likeness; but I suppose 'twas only my
+dream, for years must have altered the old family shape.'
+
+'And now we'll move these two, and home-along,' interposed John Smith,
+reviving, as became a master, the spirit of labour, which had showed
+unmistakable signs of being nearly vanquished by the spirit of chat,
+'The flagon of ale we don't want we'll let bide here till to-morrow;
+none of the poor souls will touch it 'a b'lieve.'
+
+So the evening's work was concluded, and the party drew from the abode
+of the quiet dead, closing the old iron door, and shooting the lock
+loudly into the huge copper staple--an incongruous act of imprisonment
+towards those who had no dreams of escape.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XXVII
+
+     'How should I greet thee?'
+
+
+Love frequently dies of time alone--much more frequently of
+displacement. With Elfride Swancourt, a powerful reason why the
+displacement should be successful was that the new-comer was a greater
+man than the first. By the side of the instructive and piquant snubbings
+she received from Knight, Stephen's general agreeableness seemed watery;
+by the side of Knight's spare love-making, Stephen's continual outflow
+seemed lackadaisical. She had begun to sigh for somebody further on in
+manhood. Stephen was hardly enough of a man.
+
+Perhaps there was a proneness to inconstancy in her nature--a nature, to
+those who contemplate it from a standpoint beyond the influence of
+that inconstancy, the most exquisite of all in its plasticity and ready
+sympathies. Partly, too, Stephen's failure to make his hold on her heart
+a permanent one was his too timid habit of dispraising himself beside
+her--a peculiarity which, exercised towards sensible men, stirs a kindly
+chord of attachment that a marked assertiveness would leave untouched,
+but inevitably leads the most sensible woman in the world to undervalue
+him who practises it. Directly domineering ceases in the man, snubbing
+begins in the woman; the trite but no less unfortunate fact being
+that the gentler creature rarely has the capacity to appreciate fair
+treatment from her natural complement. The abiding perception of the
+position of Stephen's parents had, of course, a little to do with
+Elfride's renunciation. To such girls poverty may not be, as to the more
+worldly masses of humanity, a sin in itself; but it is a sin, because
+graceful and dainty manners seldom exist in such an atmosphere. Few
+women of old family can be thoroughly taught that a fine soul may wear a
+smock-frock, and an admittedly common man in one is but a worm in their
+eyes. John Smith's rough hands and clothes, his wife's dialect, the
+necessary narrowness of their ways, being constantly under Elfride's
+notice, were not without their deflecting influence.
+
+On reaching home after the perilous adventure by the sea-shore, Knight
+had felt unwell, and retired almost immediately. The young lady who
+had so materially assisted him had done the same, but she reappeared,
+properly clothed, about five o'clock. She wandered restlessly about the
+house, but not on account of their joint narrow escape from death. The
+storm which had torn the tree had merely bowed the reed, and with the
+deliverance of Knight all deep thought of the accident had left her. The
+mutual avowal which it had been the means of precipitating occupied a
+far longer length of her meditations.
+
+Elfride's disquiet now was on account of that miserable promise to meet
+Stephen, which returned like a spectre again and again. The perception
+of his littleness beside Knight grew upon her alarmingly. She now
+thought how sound had been her father's advice to her to give him up,
+and was as passionately desirous of following it as she had hitherto
+been averse. Perhaps there is nothing more hardening to the tone of
+young minds than thus to discover how their dearest and strongest wishes
+become gradually attuned by Time the Cynic to the very note of some
+selfish policy which in earlier days they despised.
+
+The hour of appointment came, and with it a crisis; and with the crisis
+a collapse.
+
+'God forgive me--I can't meet Stephen!' she exclaimed to herself. 'I
+don't love him less, but I love Mr. Knight more!'
+
+Yes: she would save herself from a man not fit for her--in spite of
+vows. She would obey her father, and have no more to do with Stephen
+Smith. Thus the fickle resolve showed signs of assuming the complexion
+of a virtue.
+
+The following days were passed without any definite avowal from Knight's
+lips. Such solitary walks and scenes as that witnessed by Smith in the
+summer-house were frequent, but he courted her so intangibly that to any
+but such a delicate perception as Elfride's it would have appeared no
+courtship at all. The time now really began to be sweet with her. She
+dismissed the sense of sin in her past actions, and was automatic in
+the intoxication of the moment. The fact that Knight made no actual
+declaration was no drawback. Knowing since the betrayal of his
+sentiments that love for her really existed, she preferred it for the
+present in its form of essence, and was willing to avoid for awhile the
+grosser medium of words. Their feelings having been forced to a rather
+premature demonstration, a reaction was indulged in by both.
+
+But no sooner had she got rid of her troubled conscience on the matter
+of faithlessness than a new anxiety confronted her. It was lest Knight
+should accidentally meet Stephen in the parish, and that herself should
+be the subject of discourse.
+
+Elfride, learning Knight more thoroughly, perceived that, far from
+having a notion of Stephen's precedence, he had no idea that she had
+ever been wooed before by anybody. On ordinary occasions she had a
+tongue so frank as to show her whole mind, and a mind so straightforward
+as to reveal her heart to its innermost shrine. But the time for a
+change had come. She never alluded to even a knowledge of Knight's
+friend. When women are secret they are secret indeed; and more often
+than not they only begin to be secret with the advent of a second lover.
+
+The elopement was now a spectre worse than the first, and, like the
+Spirit in Glenfinlas, it waxed taller with every attempt to lay it.
+Her natural honesty invited her to confide in Knight, and trust to his
+generosity for forgiveness: she knew also that as mere policy it would
+be better to tell him early if he was to be told at all. The longer her
+concealment the more difficult would be the revelation. But she put it
+off. The intense fear which accompanies intense love in young women
+was too strong to allow the exercise of a moral quality antagonistic to
+itself:
+
+
+   'Where love is great, the littlest doubts are fear;
+    Where little fears grow great, great love grows there.'
+
+
+The match was looked upon as made by her father and mother. The vicar
+remembered her promise to reveal the meaning of the telegram she had
+received, and two days after the scene in the summer-house, asked her
+pointedly. She was frank with him now.
+
+'I had been corresponding with Stephen Smith ever since he left England,
+till lately,' she calmly said.
+
+'What!' cried the vicar aghast; 'under the eyes of Mr. Knight, too?'
+
+'No; when I found I cared most for Mr. Knight, I obeyed you.'
+
+'You were very kind, I'm sure. When did you begin to like Mr. Knight?'
+
+'I don't see that that is a pertinent question, papa; the telegram was
+from the shipping agent, and was not sent at my request. It announced
+the arrival of the vessel bringing him home.'
+
+'Home! What, is he here?'
+
+'Yes; in the village, I believe.'
+
+'Has he tried to see you?'
+
+'Only by fair means. But don't, papa, question me so! It is torture.'
+
+'I will only say one word more,' he replied. 'Have you met him?'
+
+'I have not. I can assure you that at the present moment there is
+no more of an understanding between me and the young man you so much
+disliked than between him and you. You told me to forget him; and I have
+forgotten him.'
+
+'Oh, well; though you did not obey me in the beginning, you are a good
+girl, Elfride, in obeying me at last.'
+
+'Don't call me "good," papa,' she said bitterly; 'you don't know--and
+the less said about some things the better. Remember, Mr. Knight knows
+nothing about the other. Oh, how wrong it all is! I don't know what I am
+coming to.'
+
+'As matters stand, I should be inclined to tell him; or, at any rate,
+I should not alarm myself about his knowing. He found out the other day
+that this was the parish young Smith's father lives in--what puts you in
+such a flurry?'
+
+'I can't say; but promise--pray don't let him know! It would be my
+ruin!'
+
+'Pooh, child. Knight is a good fellow and a clever man; but at the same
+time it does not escape my perceptions that he is no great catch for
+you. Men of his turn of mind are nothing so wonderful in the way of
+husbands. If you had chosen to wait, you might have mated with a much
+wealthier man. But remember, I have not a word to say against your
+having him, if you like him. Charlotte is delighted, as you know.'
+
+'Well, papa,' she said, smiling hopefully through a sigh, 'it is nice to
+feel that in giving way to--to caring for him, I have pleased my family.
+But I am not good; oh no, I am very far from that!'
+
+'None of us are good, I am sorry to say,' said her father blandly; 'but
+girls have a chartered right to change their minds, you know. It has
+been recognized by poets from time immemorial. Catullus says, "Mulier
+cupido quod dicit amanti, in vento--" What a memory mine is! However,
+the passage is, that a woman's words to a lover are as a matter of
+course written only on wind and water. Now don't be troubled about that,
+Elfride.'
+
+'Ah, you don't know!'
+
+They had been standing on the lawn, and Knight was now seen lingering
+some way down a winding walk. When Elfride met him, it was with a much
+greater lightness of heart; things were more straightforward now. The
+responsibility of her fickleness seemed partly shifted from her own
+shoulders to her father's. Still, there were shadows.
+
+'Ah, could he have known how far I went with Stephen, and yet have
+said the same, how much happier I should be!' That was her prevailing
+thought.
+
+In the afternoon the lovers went out together on horseback for an hour
+or two; and though not wishing to be observed, by reason of the late
+death of Lady Luxellian, whose funeral had taken place very privately
+on the previous day, they yet found it necessary to pass East Endelstow
+Church.
+
+The steps to the vault, as has been stated, were on the outside of the
+building, immediately under the aisle wall. Being on horseback,
+both Knight and Elfride could overlook the shrubs which screened the
+church-yard.
+
+'Look, the vault seems still to be open,' said Knight.
+
+'Yes, it is open,' she answered
+
+'Who is that man close by it? The mason, I suppose?'
+
+'Yes.'
+
+'I wonder if it is John Smith, Stephen's father?'
+
+'I believe it is,' said Elfride, with apprehension.
+
+'Ah, and can it be? I should like to inquire how his son, my truant
+protege', is going on. And from your father's description of the vault,
+the interior must be interesting. Suppose we go in.'
+
+'Had we better, do you think? May not Lord Luxellian be there?'
+
+'It is not at all likely.'
+
+Elfride then assented, since she could do nothing else. Her heart,
+which at first had quailed in consternation, recovered itself when she
+considered the character of John Smith. A quiet unassuming man, he would
+be sure to act towards her as before those love passages with his son,
+which might have given a more pretentious mechanic airs. So without much
+alarm she took Knight's arm after dismounting, and went with him between
+and over the graves. The master-mason recognized her as she approached,
+and, as usual, lifted his hat respectfully.
+
+'I know you to be Mr. Smith, my former friend Stephen's father,' said
+Knight, directly he had scanned the embrowned and ruddy features of
+John.
+
+'Yes, sir, I b'lieve I be.'
+
+'How is your son now? I have only once heard from him since he went to
+India. I daresay you have heard him speak of me--Mr. Knight, who became
+acquainted with him some years ago in Exonbury.'
+
+'Ay, that I have. Stephen is very well, thank you, sir, and he's in
+England; in fact, he's at home. In short, sir, he's down in the vault
+there, a-looking at the departed coffins.'
+
+Elfride's heart fluttered like a butterfly.
+
+Knight looked amazed. 'Well, that is extraordinary.' he murmured. 'Did
+he know I was in the parish?'
+
+'I really can't say, sir,' said John, wishing himself out of the
+entanglement he rather suspected than thoroughly understood.
+
+'Would it be considered an intrusion by the family if we went into the
+vault?'
+
+'Oh, bless ye, no, sir; scores of folk have been stepping down. 'Tis
+left open a-purpose.'
+
+'We will go down, Elfride.'
+
+'I am afraid the air is close,' she said appealingly.
+
+'Oh no, ma'am,' said John. 'We white-limed the walls and arches the day
+'twas opened, as we always do, and again on the morning of the funeral;
+the place is as sweet as a granary.
+
+'Then I should like you to accompany me, Elfie; having originally sprung
+from the family too.'
+
+'I don't like going where death is so emphatically present. I'll stay by
+the horses whilst you go in; they may get loose.'
+
+'What nonsense! I had no idea your sentiments were so flimsily formed as
+to be perturbed by a few remnants of mortality; but stay out, if you are
+so afraid, by all means.'
+
+'Oh no, I am not afraid; don't say that.'
+
+She held miserably to his arm, thinking that, perhaps, the revelation
+might as well come at once as ten minutes later, for Stephen would be
+sure to accompany his friend to his horse.
+
+At first, the gloom of the vault, which was lighted only by a couple of
+candles, was too great to admit of their seeing anything distinctly; but
+with a further advance Knight discerned, in front of the black masses
+lining the walls, a young man standing, and writing in a pocket-book.
+
+Knight said one word: 'Stephen!'
+
+Stephen Smith, not being in such absolute ignorance of Knight's
+whereabouts as Knight had been of Smith's instantly recognized his
+friend, and knew by rote the outlines of the fair woman standing behind
+him.
+
+Stephen came forward and shook him by the hand, without speaking.
+
+'Why have you not written, my boy?' said Knight, without in any way
+signifying Elfride's presence to Stephen. To the essayist, Smith was
+still the country lad whom he had patronized and tended; one to whom
+the formal presentation of a lady betrothed to himself would have seemed
+incongruous and absurd.
+
+'Why haven't you written to me?' said Stephen.
+
+'Ah, yes. Why haven't I? why haven't we? That's always the query
+which we cannot clearly answer without an unsatisfactory sense of our
+inadequacies. However, I have not forgotten you, Smith. And now we
+have met; and we must meet again, and have a longer chat than this can
+conveniently be. I must know all you have been doing. That you have
+thriven, I know, and you must teach me the way.'
+
+Elfride stood in the background. Stephen had read the position at a
+glance, and immediately guessed that she had never mentioned his name
+to Knight. His tact in avoiding catastrophes was the chief quality which
+made him intellectually respectable, in which quality he far transcended
+Knight; and he decided that a tranquil issue out of the encounter,
+without any harrowing of the feelings of either Knight or Elfride, was
+to be attempted if possible. His old sense of indebtedness to Knight had
+never wholly forsaken him; his love for Elfride was generous now.
+
+As far as he dared look at her movements he saw that her bearing towards
+him would be dictated by his own towards her; and if he acted as a
+stranger she would do likewise as a means of deliverance. Circumstances
+favouring this course, it was desirable also to be rather reserved
+towards Knight, to shorten the meeting as much as possible.
+
+'I am afraid that my time is almost too short to allow even of such a
+pleasure,' he said. 'I leave here to-morrow. And until I start for the
+Continent and India, which will be in a fortnight, I shall have hardly a
+moment to spare.'
+
+Knight's disappointment and dissatisfied looks at this reply sent a pang
+through Stephen as great as any he had felt at the sight of Elfride. The
+words about shortness of time were literally true, but their tone was
+far from being so. He would have been gratified to talk with Knight as
+in past times, and saw as a dead loss to himself that, to save the woman
+who cared nothing for him, he was deliberately throwing away his friend.
+
+'Oh, I am sorry to hear that,' said Knight, in a changed tone. 'But
+of course, if you have weighty concerns to attend to, they must not be
+neglected. And if this is to be our first and last meeting, let me say
+that I wish you success with all my heart!' Knight's warmth revived
+towards the end; the solemn impressions he was beginning to receive
+from the scene around them abstracting from his heart as a puerility any
+momentary vexation at words. 'It is a strange place for us to meet in,'
+he continued, looking round the vault.
+
+Stephen briefly assented, and there was a silence. The blackened coffins
+were now revealed more clearly than at first, the whitened walls and
+arches throwing them forward in strong relief. It was a scene which was
+remembered by all three as an indelible mark in their history. Knight,
+with an abstracted face, was standing between his companions, though a
+little in advance of them, Elfride being on his right hand, and Stephen
+Smith on his left. The white daylight on his right side gleamed faintly
+in, and was toned to a blueness by contrast with the yellow rays from
+the candle against the wall. Elfride, timidly shrinking back, and
+nearest the entrance, received most of the light therefrom, whilst
+Stephen was entirely in candlelight, and to him the spot of outer sky
+visible above the steps was as a steely blue patch, and nothing more.
+
+'I have been here two or three times since it was opened,' said Stephen.
+'My father was engaged in the work, you know.'
+
+'Yes. What are you doing?' Knight inquired, looking at the note-book and
+pencil Stephen held in his hand.
+
+'I have been sketching a few details in the church, and since then I
+have been copying the names from some of the coffins here. Before I left
+England I used to do a good deal of this sort of thing.'
+
+'Yes; of course. Ah, that's poor Lady Luxellian, I suppose.' Knight
+pointed to a coffin of light satin-wood, which stood on the stone
+sleepers in the new niche. 'And the remainder of the family are on this
+side. Who are those two, so snug and close together?'
+
+Stephen's voice altered slightly as he replied 'That's Lady Elfride
+Kingsmore--born Luxellian, and that is Arthur, her husband. I have heard
+my father say that they--he--ran away with her, and married her against
+the wish of her parents.'
+
+'Then I imagine this to be where you got your Christian name, Miss
+Swancourt?' said Knight, turning to her. 'I think you told me it was
+three or four generations ago that your family branched off from the
+Luxellians?'
+
+'She was my grandmother,' said Elfride, vainly endeavouring to moisten
+her dry lips before she spoke. Elfride had then the conscience-stricken
+look of Guido's Magdalen, rendered upon a more childlike form. She kept
+her face partially away from Knight and Stephen, and set her eyes upon
+the sky visible outside, as if her salvation depended upon quickly
+reaching it. Her left hand rested lightly within Knight's arm, half
+withdrawn, from a sense of shame at claiming him before her old lover,
+yet unwilling to renounce him; so that her glove merely touched
+his sleeve. '"Can one be pardoned, and retain the offence?"' quoted
+Elfride's heart then.
+
+Conversation seemed to have no self-sustaining power, and went on in
+the shape of disjointed remarks. 'One's mind gets thronged with thoughts
+while standing so solemnly here,' Knight said, in a measured quiet
+voice. 'How much has been said on death from time to time! how much we
+ourselves can think upon it! We may fancy each of these who lie here
+saying:
+
+
+    'For Thou, to make my fall more great,
+        Didst lift me up on high.'
+
+
+What comes next, Elfride? It is the Hundred-and-second Psalm I am
+thinking of.'
+
+'Yes, I know it,' she murmured, and went on in a still lower voice,
+seemingly afraid for any words from the emotional side of her nature to
+reach Stephen:
+
+
+   '"My days, just hastening to their end,
+        Are like an evening shade;
+     My beauty doth, like wither'd grass,
+        With waning lustre fade."'
+
+
+'Well,' said Knight musingly, 'let us leave them. Such occasions as
+these seem to compel us to roam outside ourselves, far away from the
+fragile frame we live in, and to expand till our perception grows so
+vast that our physical reality bears no sort of proportion to it. We
+look back upon the weak and minute stem on which this luxuriant
+growth depends, and ask, Can it be possible that such a capacity has a
+foundation so small? Must I again return to my daily walk in that narrow
+cell, a human body, where worldly thoughts can torture me? Do we not?'
+
+'Yes,' said Stephen and Elfride.
+
+'One has a sense of wrong, too, that such an appreciative breadth as a
+sentient being possesses should be committed to the frail casket of
+a body. What weakens one's intentions regarding the future like the
+thought of this?...However, let us tune ourselves to a more cheerful
+chord, for there's a great deal to be done yet by us all.'
+
+As Knight meditatively addressed his juniors thus, unconscious of the
+deception practised, for different reasons, by the severed hearts at his
+side, and of the scenes that had in earlier days united them, each one
+felt that he and she did not gain by contrast with their musing mentor.
+Physically not so handsome as either the youthful architect or the
+vicar's daughter, the thoroughness and integrity of Knight illuminated
+his features with a dignity not even incipient in the other two. It is
+difficult to frame rules which shall apply to both sexes, and Elfride,
+an undeveloped girl, must, perhaps, hardly be laden with the moral
+responsibilities which attach to a man in like circumstances. The charm
+of woman, too, lies partly in her subtleness in matters of love. But if
+honesty is a virtue in itself, Elfride, having none of it now, seemed,
+being for being, scarcely good enough for Knight. Stephen, though
+deceptive for no unworthy purpose, was deceptive after all; and
+whatever good results grace such strategy if it succeed, it seldom draws
+admiration, especially when it fails.
+
+On an ordinary occasion, had Knight been even quite alone with Stephen,
+he would hardly have alluded to his possible relationship to Elfride.
+But moved by attendant circumstances Knight was impelled to be
+confiding.
+
+'Stephen,' he said, 'this lady is Miss Swancourt. I am staying at her
+father's house, as you probably know.' He stepped a few paces nearer
+to Smith, and said in a lower tone: 'I may as well tell you that we are
+engaged to be married.'
+
+Low as the words had been spoken, Elfride had heard them, and awaited
+Stephen's reply in breathless silence, if that could be called silence
+where Elfride's dress, at each throb of her heart, shook and indicated
+it like a pulse-glass, rustling also against the wall in reply to the
+same throbbing. The ray of daylight which reached her face lent it a
+blue pallor in comparison with those of the other two.
+
+'I congratulate you,' Stephen whispered; and said aloud, 'I know Miss
+Swancourt--a little. You must remember that my father is a parishioner
+of Mr. Swancourt's.'
+
+'I thought you might possibly not have lived at home since they have
+been here.'
+
+'I have never lived at home, certainly, since that time.'
+
+'I have seen Mr. Smith,' faltered Elfride.
+
+'Well, there is no excuse for me. As strangers to each other I ought,
+I suppose, to have introduced you: as acquaintances, I should not have
+stood so persistently between you. But the fact is, Smith, you seem a
+boy to me, even now.'
+
+Stephen appeared to have a more than previous consciousness of the
+intense cruelty of his fate at the present moment. He could not repress
+the words, uttered with a dim bitterness:
+
+'You should have said that I seemed still the rural mechanic's son I am,
+and hence an unfit subject for the ceremony of introductions.'
+
+'Oh, no, no! I won't have that.' Knight endeavoured to give his reply
+a laughing tone in Elfride's ears, and an earnestness in Stephen's:
+in both which efforts he signally failed, and produced a forced speech
+pleasant to neither. 'Well, let us go into the open air again; Miss
+Swancourt, you are particularly silent. You mustn't mind Smith. I have
+known him for years, as I have told you.'
+
+'Yes, you have,' she said.
+
+'To think she has never mentioned her knowledge of me!' Smith murmured,
+and thought with some remorse how much her conduct resembled his own on
+his first arrival at her house as a stranger to the place.
+
+They ascended to the daylight, Knight taking no further notice of
+Elfride's manner, which, as usual, he attributed to the natural shyness
+of a young woman at being discovered walking with him on terms which
+left not much doubt of their meaning. Elfride stepped a little in
+advance, and passed through the churchyard.
+
+'You are changed very considerably, Smith,' said Knight, 'and I suppose
+it is no more than was to be expected. However, don't imagine that I
+shall feel any the less interest in you and your fortunes whenever you
+care to confide them to me. I have not forgotten the attachment you
+spoke of as your reason for going away to India. A London young lady,
+was it not? I hope all is prosperous?'
+
+'No: the match is broken off.'
+
+It being always difficult to know whether to express sorrow or gladness
+under such circumstances--all depending upon the character of the
+match--Knight took shelter in the safe words: 'I trust it was for the
+best.'
+
+'I hope it was. But I beg that you will not press me further: no, you
+have not pressed me--I don't mean that--but I would rather not speak
+upon the subject.'
+
+Stephen's words were hurried.
+
+Knight said no more, and they followed in the footsteps of Elfride, who
+still kept some paces in advance, and had not heard Knight's unconscious
+allusion to her. Stephen bade him adieu at the churchyard-gate without
+going outside, and watched whilst he and his sweetheart mounted their
+horses.
+
+'Good heavens, Elfride,' Knight exclaimed, 'how pale you are! I suppose
+I ought not to have taken you into that vault. What is the matter?'
+
+'Nothing,' said Elfride faintly. 'I shall be myself in a moment. All was
+so strange and unexpected down there, that it made me unwell.'
+
+'I thought you said very little. Shall I get some water?'
+
+'No, no.'
+
+'Do you think it is safe for you to mount?'
+
+'Quite--indeed it is,' she said, with a look of appeal.
+
+'Now then--up she goes!' whispered Knight, and lifted her tenderly into
+the saddle.
+
+Her old lover still looked on at the performance as he leant over the
+gate a dozen yards off. Once in the saddle, and having a firm grip of
+the reins, she turned her head as if by a resistless fascination, and
+for the first time since that memorable parting on the moor outside
+St. Launce's after the passionate attempt at marriage with him, Elfride
+looked in the face of the young man she first had loved. He was the
+youth who had called her his inseparable wife many a time, and whom she
+had even addressed as her husband. Their eyes met. Measurement of life
+should be proportioned rather to the intensity of the experience than
+to its actual length. Their glance, but a moment chronologically, was
+a season in their history. To Elfride the intense agony of reproach in
+Stephen's eye was a nail piercing her heart with a deadliness no words
+can describe. With a spasmodic effort she withdrew her eyes, urged on
+the horse, and in the chaos of perturbed memories was oblivious of any
+presence beside her. The deed of deception was complete.
+
+Gaining a knoll on which the park transformed itself into wood and
+copse, Knight came still closer to her side, and said, 'Are you better
+now, dearest?'
+
+'Oh yes.' She pressed a hand to her eyes, as if to blot out the image of
+Stephen. A vivid scarlet spot now shone with preternatural brightness in
+the centre of each cheek, leaving the remainder of her face lily-white
+as before.
+
+'Elfride,' said Knight, rather in his old tone of mentor, 'you know I
+don't for a moment chide you, but is there not a great deal of unwomanly
+weakness in your allowing yourself to be so overwhelmed by the sight of
+what, after all, is no novelty? Every woman worthy of the name should, I
+think, be able to look upon death with something like composure. Surely
+you think so too?'
+
+'Yes; I own it.'
+
+His obtuseness to the cause of her indisposition, by evidencing his
+entire freedom from the suspicion of anything behind the scenes, showed
+how incapable Knight was of deception himself, rather than any inherent
+dulness in him regarding human nature. This, clearly perceived by
+Elfride, added poignancy to her self-reproach, and she idolized him the
+more because of their difference. Even the recent sight of Stephen's
+face and the sound of his voice, which for a moment had stirred a chord
+or two of ancient kindness, were unable to keep down the adoration
+re-existent now that he was again out of view.
+
+She had replied to Knight's question hastily, and immediately went on to
+speak of indifferent subjects. After they had reached home she was apart
+from him till dinner-time. When dinner was over, and they were watching
+the dusk in the drawing-room, Knight stepped out upon the terrace.
+Elfride went after him very decisively, on the spur of a virtuous
+intention.
+
+'Mr. Knight, I want to tell you something,' she said, with quiet
+firmness.
+
+'And what is it about?' gaily returned her lover. 'Happiness, I hope. Do
+not let anything keep you so sad as you seem to have been to-day.'
+
+'I cannot mention the matter until I tell you the whole substance of
+it,' she said. 'And that I will do to-morrow. I have been reminded of
+it to-day. It is about something I once did, and don't think I ought to
+have done.'
+
+This, it must be said, was rather a mild way of referring to a frantic
+passion and flight, which, much or little in itself, only accident had
+saved from being a scandal in the public eye.
+
+Knight thought the matter some trifle, and said pleasantly:
+
+'Then I am not to hear the dreadful confession now?'
+
+'No, not now. I did not mean to-night,' Elfride responded, with a slight
+decline in the firmness of her voice. 'It is not light as you think
+it--it troubles me a great deal.' Fearing now the effect of her own
+earnestness, she added forcedly, 'Though, perhaps, you may think it
+light after all.'
+
+'But you have not said when it is to be?'
+
+'To-morrow morning. Name a time, will you, and bind me to it? I want you
+to fix an hour, because I am weak, and may otherwise try to get out of
+it.' She added a little artificial laugh, which showed how timorous her
+resolution was still.
+
+'Well, say after breakfast--at eleven o'clock.'
+
+'Yes, eleven o'clock. I promise you. Bind me strictly to my word.'
+
+
+
+Chapter XXVIII
+
+'I lull a fancy, trouble-tost.'
+
+
+Miss Swancourt, it is eleven o'clock.'
+
+She was looking out of her dressing-room window on the first floor, and
+Knight was regarding her from the terrace balustrade, upon which he had
+been idly sitting for some time--dividing the glances of his eye between
+the pages of a book in his hand, the brilliant hues of the geraniums and
+calceolarias, and the open window above-mentioned.
+
+'Yes, it is, I know. I am coming.'
+
+He drew closer, and under the window.
+
+'How are you this morning, Elfride? You look no better for your long
+night's rest.'
+
+She appeared at the door shortly after, took his offered arm, and
+together they walked slowly down the gravel path leading to the river
+and away under the trees.
+
+Her resolution, sustained during the last fifteen hours, had been to
+tell the whole truth, and now the moment had come.
+
+Step by step they advanced, and still she did not speak. They were
+nearly at the end of the walk, when Knight broke the silence.
+
+'Well, what is the confession, Elfride?'
+
+She paused a moment, drew a long breath; and this is what she said:
+
+'I told you one day--or rather I gave you to understand--what was not
+true. I fancy you thought me to mean I was nineteen my next birthday,
+but it was my last I was nineteen.'
+
+The moment had been too much for her. Now that the crisis had come,
+no qualms of conscience, no love of honesty, no yearning to make a
+confidence and obtain forgiveness with a kiss, could string Elfride up
+to the venture. Her dread lest he should be unforgiving was heightened
+by the thought of yesterday's artifice, which might possibly add disgust
+to his disappointment. The certainty of one more day's affection, which
+she gained by silence, outvalued the hope of a perpetuity combined with
+the risk of all.
+
+The trepidation caused by these thoughts on what she had intended to say
+shook so naturally the words she did say, that Knight never for a moment
+suspected them to be a last moment's substitution. He smiled and pressed
+her hand warmly.
+
+'My dear Elfie--yes, you are now--no protestation--what a winning little
+woman you are, to be so absurdly scrupulous about a mere iota! Really, I
+never once have thought whether your nineteenth year was the last or
+the present. And, by George, well I may not; for it would never do for a
+staid fogey a dozen years older to stand upon such a trifle as that.'
+
+'Don't praise me--don't praise me! Though I prize it from your lips, I
+don't deserve it now.'
+
+But Knight, being in an exceptionally genial mood, merely saw this
+distressful exclamation as modesty. 'Well,' he added, after a minute, 'I
+like you all the better, you know, for such moral precision, although
+I called it absurd.' He went on with tender earnestness: 'For, Elfride,
+there is one thing I do love to see in a woman--that is, a soul truthful
+and clear as heaven's light. I could put up with anything if I had
+that--forgive nothing if I had it not. Elfride, you have such a soul, if
+ever woman had; and having it, retain it, and don't ever listen to the
+fashionable theories of the day about a woman's privileges and natural
+right to practise wiles. Depend upon it, my dear girl, that a noble
+woman must be as honest as a noble man. I specially mean by honesty,
+fairness not only in matters of business and social detail, but in all
+the delicate dealings of love, to which the licence given to your sex
+particularly refers.'
+
+Elfride looked troublously at the trees.
+
+'Now let us go on to the river, Elfie.'
+
+'I would if I had a hat on,' she said with a sort of suppressed woe.
+
+'I will get it for you,' said Knight, very willing to purchase her
+companionship at so cheap a price. 'You sit down there a minute.' And he
+turned and walked rapidly back to the house for the article in question.
+
+Elfride sat down upon one of the rustic benches which adorned this
+portion of the grounds, and remained with her eyes upon the grass. She
+was induced to lift them by hearing the brush of light and irregular
+footsteps hard by. Passing along the path which intersected the one she
+was in and traversed the outer shrubberies, Elfride beheld the farmer's
+widow, Mrs. Jethway. Before she noticed Elfride, she paused to look at
+the house, portions of which were visible through the bushes. Elfride,
+shrinking back, hoped the unpleasant woman might go on without seeing
+her. But Mrs. Jethway, silently apostrophizing the house, with actions
+which seemed dictated by a half-overturned reason, had discerned the
+girl, and immediately came up and stood in front of her.
+
+'Ah, Miss Swancourt! Why did you disturb me? Mustn't I trespass here?'
+
+'You may walk here if you like, Mrs. Jethway. I do not disturb you.'
+
+'You disturb my mind, and my mind is my whole life; for my boy is there
+still, and he is gone from my body.'
+
+'Yes, poor young man. I was sorry when he died.'
+
+'Do you know what he died of?'
+
+'Consumption.'
+
+'Oh no, no!' said the widow. 'That word "consumption" covers a good
+deal. He died because you were his own well-agreed sweetheart, and then
+proved false--and it killed him. Yes, Miss Swancourt,' she said in an
+excited whisper, 'you killed my son!'
+
+'How can you be so wicked and foolish!' replied Elfride, rising
+indignantly. But indignation was not natural to her, and having been so
+worn and harrowed by late events, she lost any powers of defence
+that mood might have lent her. 'I could not help his loving me, Mrs.
+Jethway!'
+
+'That's just what you could have helped. You know how it began, Miss
+Elfride. Yes: you said you liked the name of Felix better than any other
+name in the parish, and you knew it was his name, and that those you
+said it to would report it to him.'
+
+'I knew it was his name--of course I did; but I am sure, Mrs. Jethway, I
+did not intend anybody to tell him.'
+
+'But you knew they would.'
+
+'No, I didn't.'
+
+'And then, after that, when you were riding on Revels-day by our house,
+and the lads were gathered there, and you wanted to dismount, when Jim
+Drake and George Upway and three or four more ran forward to hold your
+pony, and Felix stood back timid, why did you beckon to him, and say you
+would rather he held it?'
+
+'O Mrs. Jethway, you do think so mistakenly! I liked him best--that's
+why I wanted him to do it. He was gentle and nice--I always thought him
+so--and I liked him.'
+
+'Then why did you let him kiss you?'
+
+'It is a falsehood; oh, it is, it is!' said Elfride, weeping with
+desperation. 'He came behind me, and attempted to kiss me; and that was
+why I told him never to let me see him again.'
+
+'But you did not tell your father or anybody, as you would have if you
+had looked upon it then as the insult you now pretend it was.'
+
+'He begged me not to tell, and foolishly enough I did not. And I wish
+I had now. I little expected to be scourged with my own kindness. Pray
+leave me, Mrs. Jethway.' The girl only expostulated now.
+
+'Well, you harshly dismissed him, and he died. And before his body was
+cold, you took another to your heart. Then as carelessly sent him about
+his business, and took a third. And if you consider that nothing, Miss
+Swancourt,' she continued, drawing closer; 'it led on to what was very
+serious indeed. Have you forgotten the would-be runaway marriage? The
+journey to London, and the return the next day without being married,
+and that there's enough disgrace in that to ruin a woman's good name far
+less light than yours? You may have: I have not. Fickleness towards a
+lover is bad, but fickleness after playing the wife is wantonness.'
+
+'Oh, it's a wicked cruel lie! Do not say it; oh, do not!'
+
+'Does your new man know of it? I think not, or he would be no man
+of yours! As much of the story as was known is creeping about the
+neighbourhood even now; but I know more than any of them, and why should
+I respect your love?'
+
+'I defy you!' cried Elfride tempestuously. 'Do and say all you can to
+ruin me; try; put your tongue at work; I invite it! I defy you as a
+slanderous woman! Look, there he comes.' And her voice trembled greatly
+as she saw through the leaves the beloved form of Knight coming from the
+door with her hat in his hand. 'Tell him at once; I can bear it.'
+
+'Not now,' said the woman, and disappeared down the path.
+
+The excitement of her latter words had restored colour to Elfride's
+cheeks; and hastily wiping her eyes, she walked farther on, so that by
+the time her lover had overtaken her the traces of emotion had nearly
+disappeared from her face. Knight put the hat upon her head, took her
+hand, and drew it within his arm.
+
+It was the last day but one previous to their departure for St.
+Leonards; and Knight seemed to have a purpose in being much in her
+company that day. They rambled along the valley. The season was that
+period in the autumn when the foliage alone of an ordinary plantation is
+rich enough in hues to exhaust the chromatic combinations of an artist's
+palette. Most lustrous of all are the beeches, graduating from bright
+rusty red at the extremity of the boughs to a bright yellow at their
+inner parts; young oaks are still of a neutral green; Scotch firs and
+hollies are nearly blue; whilst occasional dottings of other varieties
+give maroons and purples of every tinge.
+
+The river--such as it was--here pursued its course amid flagstones as
+level as a pavement, but divided by crevices of irregular width. With
+the summer drought the torrent had narrowed till it was now but a thread
+of crystal clearness, meandering along a central channel in the rocky
+bed of the winter current. Knight scrambled through the bushes which at
+this point nearly covered the brook from sight, and leapt down upon the
+dry portion of the river bottom.
+
+'Elfride, I never saw such a sight!' he exclaimed. 'The hazels overhang
+the river's course in a perfect arch, and the floor is beautifully
+paved. The place reminds one of the passages of a cloister. Let me help
+you down.'
+
+He assisted her through the marginal underwood and down to the stones.
+They walked on together to a tiny cascade about a foot wide and high,
+and sat down beside it on the flags that for nine months in the year
+were submerged beneath a gushing bourne. From their feet trickled the
+attenuated thread of water which alone remained to tell the intent and
+reason of this leaf-covered aisle, and journeyed on in a zigzag line
+till lost in the shade.
+
+Knight, leaning on his elbow, after contemplating all this, looked
+critically at Elfride.
+
+'Does not such a luxuriant head of hair exhaust itself and get thin as
+the years go on from eighteen to eight-and-twenty?' he asked at length.
+
+'Oh no!' she said quickly, with a visible disinclination to harbour such
+a thought, which came upon her with an unpleasantness whose force it
+would be difficult for men to understand. She added afterwards, with
+smouldering uneasiness, 'Do you really think that a great abundance of
+hair is more likely to get thin than a moderate quantity?'
+
+'Yes, I really do. I believe--am almost sure, in fact--that if
+statistics could be obtained on the subject, you would find the persons
+with thin hair were those who had a superabundance originally, and that
+those who start with a moderate quantity retain it without much loss.'
+
+Elfride's troubles sat upon her face as well as in her heart. Perhaps
+to a woman it is almost as dreadful to think of losing her beauty as of
+losing her reputation. At any rate, she looked quite as gloomy as she
+had looked at any minute that day.
+
+'You shouldn't be so troubled about a mere personal adornment,' said
+Knight, with some of the severity of tone that had been customary before
+she had beguiled him into softness.
+
+'I think it is a woman's duty to be as beautiful as she can. If I were a
+scholar, I would give you chapter and verse for it from one of your own
+Latin authors. I know there is such a passage, for papa has alluded to
+it.'
+
+"'Munditiae, et ornatus, et cultus," &c.--is that it? A passage in Livy
+which is no defence at all.'
+
+'No, it is not that.'
+
+'Never mind, then; for I have a reason for not taking up my old cudgels
+against you, Elfie. Can you guess what the reason is?'
+
+'No; but I am glad to hear it,' she said thankfully. 'For it is dreadful
+when you talk so. For whatever dreadful name the weakness may deserve,
+I must candidly own that I am terrified to think my hair may ever get
+thin.'
+
+'Of course; a sensible woman would rather lose her wits than her
+beauty.'
+
+'I don't care if you do say satire and judge me cruelly. I know my hair
+is beautiful; everybody says so.'
+
+'Why, my dear Miss Swancourt,' he tenderly replied, 'I have not said
+anything against it. But you know what is said about handsome being and
+handsome doing.'
+
+'Poor Miss Handsome-does cuts but a sorry figure beside Miss Handsome-is
+in every man's eyes, your own not excepted, Mr. Knight, though it
+pleases you to throw off so,' said Elfride saucily. And lowering her
+voice: 'You ought not to have taken so much trouble to save me from
+falling over the cliff, for you don't think mine a life worth much
+trouble evidently.'
+
+'Perhaps you think mine was not worth yours.'
+
+'It was worth anybody's!'
+
+Her hand was plashing in the little waterfall, and her eyes were bent
+the same way.
+
+'You talk about my severity with you, Elfride. You are unkind to me, you
+know.'
+
+'How?' she asked, looking up from her idle occupation.
+
+'After my taking trouble to get jewellery to please you, you wouldn't
+accept it.'
+
+'Perhaps I would now; perhaps I want to.'
+
+'Do!' said Knight.
+
+And the packet was withdrawn from his pocket and presented the third
+time. Elfride took it with delight. The obstacle was rent in twain, and
+the significant gift was hers.
+
+'I'll take out these ugly ones at once,' she exclaimed, 'and I'll wear
+yours--shall I?'
+
+'I should be gratified.'
+
+Now, though it may seem unlikely, considering how far the two had gone
+in converse, Knight had never yet ventured to kiss Elfride. Far slower
+was he than Stephen Smith in matters like that. The utmost advance he
+had made in such demonstrations had been to the degree witnessed by
+Stephen in the summer-house. So Elfride's cheek being still forbidden
+fruit to him, he said impulsively.
+
+'Elfie, I should like to touch that seductive ear of yours. Those are my
+gifts; so let me dress you in them.'
+
+She hesitated with a stimulating hesitation.
+
+'Let me put just one in its place, then?'
+
+Her face grew much warmer.
+
+'I don't think it would be quite the usual or proper course,' she said,
+suddenly turning and resuming her operation of plashing in the miniature
+cataract.
+
+The stillness of things was disturbed by a bird coming to the streamlet
+to drink. After watching him dip his bill, sprinkle himself, and fly
+into a tree, Knight replied, with the courteous brusqueness she so much
+liked to hear--
+
+'Elfride, now you may as well be fair. You would mind my doing it but
+little, I think; so give me leave, do.'
+
+'I will be fair, then,' she said confidingly, and looking him full in
+the face. It was a particular pleasure to her to be able to do a little
+honesty without fear. 'I should not mind your doing so--I should like
+such an attention. My thought was, would it be right to let you?'
+
+'Then I will!' he rejoined, with that singular earnestness about a small
+matter--in the eyes of a ladies' man but a momentary peg for flirtation
+or jest--which is only found in deep natures who have been wholly unused
+to toying with womankind, and which, from its unwontedness, is in itself
+a tribute the most precious that can be rendered, and homage the most
+exquisite to be received.
+
+'And you shall,' she whispered, without reserve, and no longer mistress
+of the ceremonies. And then Elfride inclined herself towards him, thrust
+back her hair, and poised her head sideways. In doing this her arm and
+shoulder necessarily rested against his breast.
+
+At the touch, the sensation of both seemed to be concentrated at the
+point of contact. All the time he was performing the delicate manoeuvre
+Knight trembled like a young surgeon in his first operation.
+
+'Now the other,' said Knight in a whisper.
+
+'No, no.'
+
+'Why not?'
+
+'I don't know exactly.'
+
+'You must know.'
+
+'Your touch agitates me so. Let us go home.'
+
+'Don't say that, Elfride. What is it, after all? A mere nothing. Now
+turn round, dearest.'
+
+She was powerless to disobey, and turned forthwith; and then, without
+any defined intention in either's mind, his face and hers drew closer
+together; and he supported her there, and kissed her.
+
+Knight was at once the most ardent and the coolest man alive. When his
+emotions slumbered he appeared almost phlegmatic; when they were moved
+he was no less than passionate. And now, without having quite intended
+an early marriage, he put the question plainly. It came with all
+the ardour which was the accumulation of long years behind a natural
+reserve.
+
+'Elfride, when shall we be married?'
+
+The words were sweet to her; but there was a bitter in the sweet. These
+newly-overt acts of his, which had culminated in this plain question,
+coming on the very day of Mrs. Jethway's blasting reproaches, painted
+distinctly her fickleness as an enormity. Loving him in secret had not
+seemed such thorough-going inconstancy as the same love recognized and
+acted upon in the face of threats. Her distraction was interpreted by
+him at her side as the outward signs of an unwonted experience.
+
+'I don't press you for an answer now, darling,' he said, seeing she was
+not likely to give a lucid reply. 'Take your time.'
+
+Knight was as honourable a man as was ever loved and deluded by
+woman. It may be said that his blindness in love proved the point,
+for shrewdness in love usually goes with meanness in general. Once the
+passion had mastered him, the intellect had gone for naught. Knight, as
+a lover, was more single-minded and far simpler than his friend Stephen,
+who in other capacities was shallow beside him.
+
+Without saying more on the subject of their marriage, Knight held her at
+arm's length, as if she had been a large bouquet, and looked at her with
+critical affection.
+
+'Does your pretty gift become me?' she inquired, with tears of
+excitement on the fringes of her eyes.
+
+'Undoubtedly, perfectly!' said her lover, adopting a lighter tone to put
+her at her ease. 'Ah, you should see them; you look shinier than ever.
+Fancy that I have been able to improve you!'
+
+'Am I really so nice? I am glad for your sake. I wish I could see
+myself.'
+
+'You can't. You must wait till we get home.'
+
+'I shall never be able,' she said, laughing. 'Look: here's a way.'
+
+'So there is. Well done, woman's wit!'
+
+'Hold me steady!'
+
+'Oh yes.'
+
+'And don't let me fall, will you?'
+
+'By no means.'
+
+Below their seat the thread of water paused to spread out into a smooth
+small pool. Knight supported her whilst she knelt down and leant over
+it.
+
+'I can see myself. Really, try as religiously as I will, I cannot help
+admiring my appearance in them.'
+
+'Doubtless. How can you be so fond of finery? I believe you are
+corrupting me into a taste for it. I used to hate every such thing
+before I knew you.'
+
+'I like ornaments, because I want people to admire what you possess, and
+envy you, and say, "I wish I was he."'
+
+'I suppose I ought not to object after that. And how much longer are you
+going to look in there at yourself?'
+
+'Until you are tired of holding me? Oh, I want to ask you something.'
+And she turned round. 'Now tell truly, won't you? What colour of hair do
+you like best now?'
+
+Knight did not answer at the moment.
+
+'Say light, do!' she whispered coaxingly. 'Don't say dark, as you did
+that time.'
+
+'Light-brown, then. Exactly the colour of my sweetheart's.'
+
+'Really?' said Elfride, enjoying as truth what she knew to be flattery.
+
+'Yes.'
+
+'And blue eyes, too, not hazel? Say yes, say yes!'
+
+'One recantation is enough for to-day.'
+
+'No, no.'
+
+'Very well, blue eyes.' And Knight laughed, and drew her close and
+kissed her the second time, which operations he performed with the
+carefulness of a fruiterer touching a bunch of grapes so as not to
+disturb their bloom.
+
+Elfride objected to a second, and flung away her face, the movement
+causing a slight disarrangement of hat and hair. Hardly thinking what
+she said in the trepidation of the moment, she exclaimed, clapping her
+hand to her ear--
+
+'Ah, we must be careful! I lost the other earring doing like this.'
+
+No sooner did she realise the significant words than a troubled look
+passed across her face, and she shut her lips as if to keep them back.
+
+'Doing like what?' said Knight, perplexed.
+
+'Oh, sitting down out of doors,' she replied hastily.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XXIX
+
+     'Care, thou canker.'
+
+
+It is an evening at the beginning of October, and the mellowest of
+autumn sunsets irradiates London, even to its uttermost eastern end.
+Between the eye and the flaming West, columns of smoke stand up in the
+still air like tall trees. Everything in the shade is rich and misty
+blue.
+
+Mr. and Mrs. Swancourt and Elfride are looking at these lustrous and
+lurid contrasts from the window of a large hotel near London Bridge. The
+visit to their friends at St. Leonards is over, and they are staying a
+day or two in the metropolis on their way home.
+
+Knight spent the same interval of time in crossing over to Brittany
+by way of Jersey and St. Malo. He then passed through Normandy, and
+returned to London also, his arrival there having been two days later
+than that of Elfride and her parents.
+
+So the evening of this October day saw them all meeting at the
+above-mentioned hotel, where they had previously engaged apartments.
+During the afternoon Knight had been to his lodgings at Richmond to make
+a little change in the nature of his baggage; and on coming up again
+there was never ushered by a bland waiter into a comfortable room a
+happier man than Knight when shown to where Elfride and her step-mother
+were sitting after a fatiguing day of shopping.
+
+Elfride looked none the better for her change: Knight was as brown as a
+nut. They were soon engaged by themselves in a corner of the room. Now
+that the precious words of promise had been spoken, the young girl had
+no idea of keeping up her price by the system of reserve which other
+more accomplished maidens use. Her lover was with her again, and it was
+enough: she made her heart over to him entirely.
+
+Dinner was soon despatched. And when a preliminary round of conversation
+concerning their doings since the last parting had been concluded, they
+reverted to the subject of to-morrow's journey home.
+
+'That enervating ride through the myrtle climate of South Devon--how I
+dread it to-morrow!' Mrs. Swancourt was saying. 'I had hoped the weather
+would have been cooler by this time.'
+
+'Did you ever go by water?' said Knight.
+
+'Never--by never, I mean not since the time of railways.'
+
+'Then if you can afford an additional day, I propose that we do it,'
+said Knight. 'The Channel is like a lake just now. We should reach
+Plymouth in about forty hours, I think, and the boats start from just
+below the bridge here' (pointing over his shoulder eastward).
+
+'Hear, hear!' said the vicar.
+
+'It's an idea, certainly,' said his wife.
+
+'Of course these coasters are rather tubby,' said Knight. 'But you
+wouldn't mind that?'
+
+'No: we wouldn't mind.'
+
+'And the saloon is a place like the fishmarket of a ninth-rate country
+town, but that wouldn't matter?'
+
+'Oh dear, no. If we had only thought of it soon enough, we might have
+had the use of Lord Luxellian's yacht. But never mind, we'll go. We
+shall escape the worrying rattle through the whole length of London
+to-morrow morning--not to mention the risk of being killed by excursion
+trains, which is not a little one at this time of the year, if the
+papers are true.'
+
+Elfride, too, thought the arrangement delightful; and accordingly, ten
+o'clock the following morning saw two cabs crawling round by the Mint,
+and between the preternaturally high walls of Nightingale Lane towards
+the river side.
+
+The first vehicle was occupied by the travellers in person, and the
+second brought up the luggage, under the supervision of Mrs. Snewson,
+Mrs. Swancourt's maid--and for the last fortnight Elfride's also;
+for although the younger lady had never been accustomed to any such
+attendant at robing times, her stepmother forced her into a semblance of
+familiarity with one when they were away from home.
+
+Presently waggons, bales, and smells of all descriptions increased to
+such an extent that the advance of the cabs was at the slowest possible
+rate. At intervals it was necessary to halt entirely, that the heavy
+vehicles unloading in front might be moved aside, a feat which was not
+accomplished without a deal of swearing and noise. The vicar put his
+head out of the window.
+
+'Surely there must be some mistake in the way,' he said with great
+concern, drawing in his head again. 'There's not a respectable
+conveyance to be seen here except ours. I've heard that there are
+strange dens in this part of London, into which people have been
+entrapped and murdered--surely there is no conspiracy on the part of the
+cabman?'
+
+'Oh no, no. It is all right,' said Mr. Knight, who was as placid as dewy
+eve by the side of Elfride.
+
+'But what I argue from,' said the vicar, with a greater emphasis of
+uneasiness, 'are plain appearances. This can't be the highway from
+London to Plymouth by water, because it is no way at all to any place.
+We shall miss our steamer and our train too--that's what I think.'
+
+'Depend upon it we are right. In fact, here we are.'
+
+'Trimmer's Wharf,' said the cabman, opening the door.
+
+No sooner had they alighted than they perceived a tussle going on
+between the hindmost cabman and a crowd of light porters who had
+charged him in column, to obtain possession of the bags and boxes, Mrs.
+Snewson's hands being seen stretched towards heaven in the midst of the
+melee. Knight advanced gallantly, and after a hard struggle reduced the
+crowd to two, upon whose shoulders and trucks the goods vanished away in
+the direction of the water's edge with startling rapidity.
+
+Then more of the same tribe, who had run on ahead, were heard shouting
+to boatmen, three of whom pulled alongside, and two being vanquished,
+the luggage went tumbling into the remaining one.
+
+'Never saw such a dreadful scene in my life--never!' said Mr. Swancourt,
+floundering into the boat. 'Worse than Famine and Sword upon one. I
+thought such customs were confined to continental ports. Aren't you
+astonished, Elfride?'
+
+'Oh no,' said Elfride, appearing amid the dingy scene like a rainbow in
+a murky sky. 'It is a pleasant novelty, I think.'
+
+'Where in the wide ocean is our steamer?' the vicar inquired. 'I can see
+nothing but old hulks, for the life of me.'
+
+'Just behind that one,' said Knight; 'we shall soon be round under her.'
+
+The object of their search was soon after disclosed to view--a great
+lumbering form of inky blackness, which looked as if it had never known
+the touch of a paint-brush for fifty years. It was lying beside just
+such another, and the way on board was down a narrow lane of water
+between the two, about a yard and a half wide at one end, and gradually
+converging to a point. At the moment of their entry into this narrow
+passage, a brilliantly painted rival paddled down the river like a
+trotting steed, creating such a series of waves and splashes that
+their frail wherry was tossed like a teacup, and the vicar and his wife
+slanted this way and that, inclining their heads into contact with a
+Punch-and-Judy air and countenance, the wavelets striking the sides of
+the two hulls, and flapping back into their laps.
+
+'Dreadful! horrible!' Mr. Swancourt murmured privately; and said aloud,
+I thought we walked on board. I don't think really I should have come,
+if I had known this trouble was attached to it.'
+
+'If they must splash, I wish they would splash us with clean water,'
+said the old lady, wiping her dress with her handkerchief.
+
+'I hope it is perfectly safe,' continued the vicar.
+
+'O papa! you are not very brave,' cried Elfride merrily.
+
+'Bravery is only obtuseness to the perception of contingencies,' Mr.
+Swancourt severely answered.
+
+Mrs. Swancourt laughed, and Elfride laughed, and Knight laughed, in the
+midst of which pleasantness a man shouted to them from some position
+between their heads and the sky, and they found they were close to the
+Juliet, into which they quiveringly ascended.
+
+It having been found that the lowness of the tide would prevent their
+getting off for an hour, the Swancourts, having nothing else to
+do, allowed their eyes to idle upon men in blue jerseys performing
+mysterious mending operations with tar-twine; they turned to look at
+the dashes of lurid sunlight, like burnished copper stars afloat on the
+ripples, which danced into and tantalized their vision; or listened to
+the loud music of a steam-crane at work close by; or to sighing sounds
+from the funnels of passing steamers, getting dead as they grew more
+distant; or to shouts from the decks of different craft in their
+vicinity, all of them assuming the form of 'Ah-he-hay!'
+
+Half-past ten: not yet off. Mr. Swancourt breathed a breath of
+weariness, and looked at his fellow-travellers in general. Their faces
+were certainly not worth looking at. The expression 'Waiting' was
+written upon them so absolutely that nothing more could be discerned
+there. All animation was suspended till Providence should raise the
+water and let them go.
+
+'I have been thinking,' said Knight, 'that we have come amongst the
+rarest class of people in the kingdom. Of all human characteristics, a
+low opinion of the value of his own time by an individual must be among
+the strangest to find. Here we see numbers of that patient and happy
+species. Rovers, as distinct from travellers.'
+
+'But they are pleasure-seekers, to whom time is of no importance.'
+
+'Oh no. The pleasure-seekers we meet on the grand routes are more
+anxious than commercial travellers to rush on. And added to the loss of
+time in getting to their journey's end, these exceptional people take
+their chance of sea-sickness by coming this way.'
+
+'Can it be?' inquired the vicar with apprehension. 'Surely not, Mr.
+Knight, just here in our English Channel--close at our doors, as I may
+say.'
+
+'Entrance passages are very draughty places, and the Channel is like
+the rest. It ruins the temper of sailors. It has been calculated by
+philosophers that more damns go up to heaven from the Channel, in the
+course of a year, than from all the five oceans put together.'
+
+They really start now, and the dead looks of all the throng come to life
+immediately. The man who has been frantically hauling in a rope that
+bade fair to have no end ceases his labours, and they glide down the
+serpentine bends of the Thames.
+
+Anything anywhere was a mine of interest to Elfride, and so was this.
+
+'It is well enough now,' said Mrs. Swancourt, after they had passed the
+Nore, 'but I can't say I have cared for my voyage hitherto.' For being
+now in the open sea a slight breeze had sprung up, which cheered her as
+well as her two younger companions. But unfortunately it had a reverse
+effect upon the vicar, who, after turning a sort of apricot jam colour,
+interspersed with dashes of raspberry, pleaded indisposition, and
+vanished from their sight.
+
+The afternoon wore on. Mrs. Swancourt kindly sat apart by herself
+reading, and the betrothed pair were left to themselves. Elfride clung
+trustingly to Knight's arm, and proud was she to walk with him up
+and down the deck, or to go forward, and leaning with him against the
+forecastle rails, watch the setting sun gradually withdrawing itself
+over their stern into a huge bank of livid cloud with golden edges that
+rose to meet it.
+
+She was childishly full of life and spirits, though in walking up and
+down with him before the other passengers, and getting noticed by them,
+she was at starting rather confused, it being the first time she had
+shown herself so openly under that kind of protection. 'I expect they
+are envious and saying things about us, don't you?' she would whisper to
+Knight with a stealthy smile.
+
+'Oh no,' he would answer unconcernedly. 'Why should they envy us, and
+what can they say?'
+
+'Not any harm, of course,' Elfride replied, 'except such as this: "How
+happy those two are! she is proud enough now." What makes it worse,' she
+continued in the extremity of confidence, 'I heard those two cricketing
+men say just now, "She's the nobbiest girl on the boat." But I don't
+mind it, you know, Harry.'
+
+'I should hardly have supposed you did, even if you had not told me,'
+said Knight with great blandness.
+
+She was never tired of asking her lover questions and admiring his
+answers, good, bad, or indifferent as they might be. The evening grew
+dark and night came on, and lights shone upon them from the horizon and
+from the sky.
+
+'Now look there ahead of us, at that halo in the air, of silvery
+brightness. Watch it, and you will see what it comes to.'
+
+She watched for a few minutes, when two white lights emerged from the
+side of a hill, and showed themselves to be the origin of the halo.
+
+'What a dazzling brilliance! What do they mark?'
+
+'The South Foreland: they were previously covered by the cliff.'
+
+'What is that level line of little sparkles--a town, I suppose?'
+
+'That's Dover.'
+
+All this time, and later, soft sheet lightning expanded from a cloud in
+their path, enkindling their faces as they paced up and down, shining
+over the water, and, for a moment, showing the horizon as a keen line.
+
+Elfride slept soundly that night. Her first thought the next morning was
+the thrilling one that Knight was as close at hand as when they were
+at home at Endelstow, and her first sight, on looking out of the cabin
+window, was the perpendicular face of Beachy Head, gleaming white in a
+brilliant six-o'clock-in-the-morning sun. This fair daybreak, however,
+soon changed its aspect. A cold wind and a pale mist descended upon the
+sea, and seemed to threaten a dreary day.
+
+When they were nearing Southampton, Mrs. Swancourt came to say that her
+husband was so ill that he wished to be put on shore here, and left
+to do the remainder of the journey by land. 'He will be perfectly well
+directly he treads firm ground again. Which shall we do--go with him, or
+finish our voyage as we intended?'
+
+Elfride was comfortably housed under an umbrella which Knight was
+holding over her to keep off the wind. 'Oh, don't let us go on shore!'
+she said with dismay. 'It would be such a pity!'
+
+'That's very fine,' said Mrs. Swancourt archly, as to a child. 'See,
+the wind has increased her colour, the sea her appetite and spirits, and
+somebody her happiness. Yes, it would be a pity, certainly.'
+
+''Tis my misfortune to be always spoken to from a pedestal,' sighed
+Elfride.
+
+'Well, we will do as you like, Mrs. Swancourt,' said Knight, 'but----'
+
+'I myself would rather remain on board,' interrupted the elder lady.
+'And Mr. Swancourt particularly wishes to go by himself. So that shall
+settle the matter.'
+
+The vicar, now a drab colour, was put ashore, and became as well as ever
+forthwith.
+
+Elfride, sitting alone in a retired part of the vessel, saw a veiled
+woman walk aboard among the very latest arrivals at this port. She was
+clothed in black silk, and carried a dark shawl upon her arm. The
+woman, without looking around her, turned to the quarter allotted to
+the second-cabin passengers. All the carnation Mrs. Swancourt had
+complimented her step-daughter upon possessing left Elfride's cheeks,
+and she trembled visibly.
+
+She ran to the other side of the boat, where Mrs. Swancourt was
+standing.
+
+'Let us go home by railway with papa, after all,' she pleaded earnestly.
+'I would rather go with him--shall we?'
+
+Mrs. Swancourt looked around for a moment, as if unable to decide. 'Ah,'
+she exclaimed, 'it is too late now. Why did not you say so before, when
+we had plenty of time?'
+
+The Juliet had at that minute let go, the engines had started, and they
+were gliding slowly away from the quay. There was no help for it but
+to remain, unless the Juliet could be made to put back, and that would
+create a great disturbance. Elfride gave up the idea and submitted
+quietly. Her happiness was sadly mutilated now.
+
+The woman whose presence had so disturbed her was exactly like Mrs.
+Jethway. She seemed to haunt Elfride like a shadow. After several
+minutes' vain endeavour to account for any design Mrs. Jethway could
+have in watching her, Elfride decided to think that, if it were the
+widow, the encounter was accidental. She remembered that the widow in
+her restlessness was often visiting the village near Southampton, which
+was her original home, and it was possible that she chose water-transit
+with the idea of saving expense.
+
+'What is the matter, Elfride?' Knight inquired, standing before her.
+
+'Nothing more than that I am rather depressed.'
+
+'I don't much wonder at it; that wharf was depressing. We seemed
+underneath and inferior to everything around us. But we shall be in the
+sea breeze again soon, and that will freshen you, dear.'
+
+The evening closed in and dusk increased as they made way down
+Southampton Water and through the Solent. Elfride's disturbance of mind
+was such that her light spirits of the foregoing four and twenty hours
+had entirely deserted her. The weather too had grown more gloomy, for
+though the showers of the morning had ceased, the sky was covered more
+closely than ever with dense leaden clouds. How beautiful was the sunset
+when they rounded the North Foreland the previous evening! now it was
+impossible to tell within half an hour the time of the luminary's going
+down. Knight led her about, and being by this time accustomed to her
+sudden changes of mood, overlooked the necessity of a cause in regarding
+the conditions--impressionableness and elasticity.
+
+Elfride looked stealthily to the other end of the vessel. Mrs. Jethway,
+or her double, was sitting at the stern--her eye steadily regarding
+Elfride.
+
+'Let us go to the forepart,' she said quickly to Knight. 'See there--the
+man is fixing the lights for the night.'
+
+Knight assented, and after watching the operation of fixing the red and
+the green lights on the port and starboard bows, and the hoisting of
+the white light to the masthead, he walked up and down with her till
+the increase of wind rendered promenading difficult. Elfride's eyes were
+occasionally to be found furtively gazing abaft, to learn if her enemy
+were really there. Nobody was visible now.
+
+'Shall we go below?' said Knight, seeing that the deck was nearly
+deserted.
+
+'No,' she said. 'If you will kindly get me a rug from Mrs. Swancourt, I
+should like, if you don't mind, to stay here.' She had recently fancied
+the assumed Mrs. Jethway might be a first-class passenger, and dreaded
+meeting her by accident.
+
+Knight appeared with the rug, and they sat down behind a weather-cloth
+on the windward side, just as the two red eyes of the Needles glared
+upon them from the gloom, their pointed summits rising like shadowy
+phantom figures against the sky. It became necessary to go below to
+an eight-o'clock meal of nondescript kind, and Elfride was immensely
+relieved at finding no sign of Mrs. Jethway there. They again ascended,
+and remained above till Mrs. Snewson staggered up to them with the
+message that Mrs. Swancourt thought it was time for Elfride to come
+below. Knight accompanied her down, and returned again to pass a little
+more time on deck.
+
+Elfride partly undressed herself and lay down, and soon became
+unconscious, though her sleep was light. How long she had lain, she knew
+not, when by slow degrees she became cognizant of a whispering in her
+ear.
+
+'You are well on with him, I can see. Well, provoke me now, but my day
+will come, you will find.' That seemed to be the utterance, or words to
+that effect.
+
+Elfride became broad awake and terrified. She knew the words, if real,
+could be only those of one person, and that person the widow Jethway.
+
+The lamp had gone out and the place was in darkness. In the next berth
+she could hear her stepmother breathing heavily, further on Snewson
+breathing more heavily still. These were the only other legitimate
+occupants of the cabin, and Mrs. Jethway must have stealthily come in by
+some means and retreated again, or else she had entered an empty berth
+next Snewson's. The fear that this was the case increased Elfride's
+perturbation, till it assumed the dimensions of a certainty, for how
+could a stranger from the other end of the ship possibly contrive to get
+in? Could it have been a dream?
+
+Elfride raised herself higher and looked out of the window. There was
+the sea, floundering and rushing against the ship's side just by her
+head, and thence stretching away, dim and moaning, into an expanse of
+indistinctness; and far beyond all this two placid lights like rayless
+stars. Now almost fearing to turn her face inwards again, lest Mrs.
+Jethway should appear at her elbow, Elfride meditated upon whether to
+call Snewson to keep her company. 'Four bells' sounded, and she heard
+voices, which gave her a little courage. It was not worth while to call
+Snewson.
+
+At any rate Elfride could not stay there panting longer, at the risk of
+being again disturbed by that dreadful whispering. So wrapping herself
+up hurriedly she emerged into the passage, and by the aid of a faint
+light burning at the entrance to the saloon found the foot of the
+stairs, and ascended to the deck. Dreary the place was in the extreme.
+It seemed a new spot altogether in contrast with its daytime self. She
+could see the glowworm light from the binnacle, and the dim outline
+of the man at the wheel; also a form at the bows. Not another soul was
+apparent from stem to stern.
+
+Yes, there were two more--by the bulwarks. One proved to be her Harry,
+the other the mate. She was glad indeed, and on drawing closer found
+they were holding a low slow chat about nautical affairs. She ran up
+and slipped her hand through Knight's arm, partly for love, partly for
+stability.
+
+'Elfie! not asleep?' said Knight, after moving a few steps aside with
+her.
+
+'No: I cannot sleep. May I stay here? It is so dismal down there,
+and--and I was afraid. Where are we now?'
+
+'Due south of Portland Bill. Those are the lights abeam of us: look.
+A terrible spot, that, on a stormy night. And do you see a very small
+light that dips and rises to the right? That's a light-ship on the
+dangerous shoal called the Shambles, where many a good vessel has
+gone to pieces. Between it and ourselves is the Race--a place where
+antagonistic currents meet and form whirlpools--a spot which is rough in
+the smoothest weather, and terrific in a wind. That dark, dreary horizon
+we just discern to the left is the West Bay, terminated landwards by the
+Chesil Beach.'
+
+'What time is it, Harry?'
+
+'Just past two.'
+
+'Are you going below?'
+
+'Oh no; not to-night. I prefer pure air.'
+
+She fancied he might be displeased with her for coming to him at this
+unearthly hour. 'I should like to stay here too, if you will allow me,'
+she said timidly.
+
+'I want to ask you things.'
+
+'Allow you, Elfie!' said Knight, putting his arm round her and drawing
+her closer. 'I am twice as happy with you by my side. Yes: we will stay,
+and watch the approach of day.'
+
+So they again sought out the sheltered nook, and sitting down wrapped
+themselves in the rug as before.
+
+'What were you going to ask me?' he inquired, as they undulated up and
+down.
+
+'Oh, it was not much--perhaps a thing I ought not to ask,' she said
+hesitatingly. Her sudden wish had really been to discover at once
+whether he had ever before been engaged to be married. If he had, she
+would make that a ground for telling him a little of her conduct with
+Stephen. Mrs. Jethway's seeming words had so depressed the girl that
+she herself now painted her flight in the darkest colours, and longed to
+ease her burdened mind by an instant confession. If Knight had ever been
+imprudent himself, he might, she hoped, forgive all.
+
+'I wanted to ask you,' she went on, 'if--you had ever been engaged
+before.' She added tremulously, 'I hope you have--I mean, I don't mind
+at all if you have.'
+
+'No, I never was,' Knight instantly and heartily replied. 'Elfride'--and
+there was a certain happy pride in his tone--'I am twelve years older
+than you, and I have been about the world, and, in a way, into society,
+and you have not. And yet I am not so unfit for you as strict-thinking
+people might imagine, who would assume the difference in age to signify
+most surely an equal addition to my practice in love-making.'
+
+Elfride shivered.
+
+'You are cold--is the wind too much for you?'
+
+'No,' she said gloomily. The belief which had been her sheet-anchor in
+hoping for forgiveness had proved false. This account of the exceptional
+nature of his experience, a matter which would have set her rejoicing
+two years ago, chilled her now like a frost.
+
+'You don't mind my asking you?' she continued.
+
+'Oh no--not at all.'
+
+'And have you never kissed many ladies?' she whispered, hoping he would
+say a hundred at the least.
+
+The time, the circumstances, and the scene were such as to draw
+confidences from the most reserved. 'Elfride,' whispered Knight in
+reply, 'it is strange you should have asked that question. But I'll
+answer it, though I have never told such a thing before. I have been
+rather absurd in my avoidance of women. I have never given a woman a
+kiss in my life, except yourself and my mother.' The man of two and
+thirty with the experienced mind warmed all over with a boy's ingenuous
+shame as he made the confession.
+
+'What, not one?' she faltered.
+
+'No; not one.'
+
+'How very strange!'
+
+'Yes, the reverse experience may be commoner. And yet, to those who have
+observed their own sex, as I have, my case is not remarkable. Men about
+town are women's favourites--that's the postulate--and superficial
+people don't think far enough to see that there may be reserved, lonely
+exceptions.'
+
+'Are you proud of it, Harry?'
+
+'No, indeed. Of late years I have wished I had gone my ways and trod out
+my measure like lighter-hearted men. I have thought of how many happy
+experiences I may have lost through never going to woo.'
+
+'Then why did you hold aloof?'
+
+'I cannot say. I don't think it was my nature to: circumstance hindered
+me, perhaps. I have regretted it for another reason. This great
+remissness of mine has had its effect upon me. The older I have grown,
+the more distinctly have I perceived that it was absolutely preventing
+me from liking any woman who was not as unpractised as I; and I gave up
+the expectation of finding a nineteenth-century young lady in my own raw
+state. Then I found you, Elfride, and I felt for the first time that my
+fastidiousness was a blessing. And it helped to make me worthy of you.
+I felt at once that, differing as we did in other experiences, in this
+matter I resembled you. Well, aren't you glad to hear it, Elfride?'
+
+'Yes, I am,' she answered in a forced voice. 'But I always had thought
+that men made lots of engagements before they married--especially if
+they don't marry very young.'
+
+'So all women think, I suppose--and rightly, indeed, of the majority of
+bachelors, as I said before. But an appreciable minority of slow-coach
+men do not--and it makes them very awkward when they do come to the
+point. However, it didn't matter in my case.'
+
+'Why?' she asked uneasily.
+
+'Because you know even less of love-making and matrimonial
+prearrangement than I, and so you can't draw invidious comparisons if I
+do my engaging improperly.'
+
+'I think you do it beautifully!'
+
+'Thank you, dear. But,' continued Knight laughingly, 'your opinion is
+not that of an expert, which alone is of value.'
+
+Had she answered, 'Yes, it is,' half as strongly as she felt it, Knight
+might have been a little astonished.
+
+'If you had ever been engaged to be married before,' he went on, 'I
+expect your opinion of my addresses would be different. But then, I
+should not----'
+
+'Should not what, Harry?'
+
+'Oh, I was merely going to say that in that case I should never have
+given myself the pleasure of proposing to you, since your freedom from
+that experience was your attraction, darling.'
+
+'You are severe on women, are you not?'
+
+'No, I think not. I had a right to please my taste, and that was for
+untried lips. Other men than those of my sort acquire the taste as they
+get older--but don't find an Elfride----'
+
+'What horrid sound is that we hear when we pitch forward?'
+
+'Only the screw--don't find an Elfride as I did. To think that I should
+have discovered such an unseen flower down there in the West--to whom a
+man is as much as a multitude to some women, and a trip down the English
+Channel like a voyage round the world!'
+
+'And would you,' she said, and her voice was tremulous, 'have given up
+a lady--if you had become engaged to her--and then found she had had ONE
+kiss before yours--and would you have--gone away and left her?'
+
+'One kiss,--no, hardly for that.'
+
+'Two?'
+
+'Well--I could hardly say inventorially like that. Too much of that sort
+of thing certainly would make me dislike a woman. But let us confine our
+attention to ourselves, not go thinking of might have beens.'
+
+So Elfride had allowed her thoughts to 'dally with false surmise,' and
+every one of Knight's words fell upon her like a weight. After this they
+were silent for a long time, gazing upon the black mysterious sea, and
+hearing the strange voice of the restless wind. A rocking to and fro
+on the waves, when the breeze is not too violent and cold, produces a
+soothing effect even upon the most highly-wrought mind. Elfride slowly
+sank against Knight, and looking down, he found by her soft regular
+breathing that she had fallen asleep. Not wishing to disturb her, he
+continued still, and took an intense pleasure in supporting her warm
+young form as it rose and fell with her every breath.
+
+Knight fell to dreaming too, though he continued wide awake. It was
+pleasant to realize the implicit trust she placed in him, and to think
+of the charming innocence of one who could sink to sleep in so simple
+and unceremonious a manner. More than all, the musing unpractical
+student felt the immense responsibility he was taking upon himself by
+becoming the protector and guide of such a trusting creature. The quiet
+slumber of her soul lent a quietness to his own. Then she moaned, and
+turned herself restlessly. Presently her mutterings became distinct:
+
+'Don't tell him--he will not love me....I did not mean any
+disgrace--indeed I did not, so don't tell Harry. We were going to be
+married--that was why I ran away....And he says he will not have a
+kissed woman....And if you tell him he will go away, and I shall die. I
+pray have mercy--Oh!'
+
+Elfride started up wildly.
+
+The previous moment a musical ding-dong had spread into the air from
+their right hand, and awakened her.
+
+'What is it?' she exclaimed in terror.
+
+'Only "eight bells,"' said Knight soothingly. 'Don't be frightened,
+little bird, you are safe. What have you been dreaming about?'
+
+'I can't tell, I can't tell!' she said with a shudder. 'Oh, I don't know
+what to do!'
+
+'Stay quietly with me. We shall soon see the dawn now. Look, the morning
+star is lovely over there. The clouds have completely cleared off whilst
+you have been sleeping. What have you been dreaming of?'
+
+'A woman in our parish.'
+
+'Don't you like her?'
+
+'I don't. She doesn't like me. Where are we?'
+
+'About south of the Exe.'
+
+Knight said no more on the words of her dream. They watched the sky
+till Elfride grew calm, and the dawn appeared. It was mere wan lightness
+first. Then the wind blew in a changed spirit, and died away to a
+zephyr. The star dissolved into the day.
+
+'That's how I should like to die,' said Elfride, rising from her seat
+and leaning over the bulwark to watch the star's last expiring gleam.
+
+'As the lines say,' Knight replied----
+
+
+    '"To set as sets the morning star, which goes
+      Not down behind the darken'd west, nor hides
+      Obscured among the tempests of the sky,
+      But melts away into the light of heaven."'
+
+
+'Oh, other people have thought the same thing, have they? That's always
+the case with my originalities--they are original to nobody but myself.'
+
+'Not only the case with yours. When I was a young hand at reviewing
+I used to find that a frightful pitfall--dilating upon subjects I met
+with, which were novelties to me, and finding afterwards they had been
+exhausted by the thinking world when I was in pinafores.'
+
+'That is delightful. Whenever I find you have done a foolish thing I am
+glad, because it seems to bring you a little nearer to me, who have done
+many.' And Elfride thought again of her enemy asleep under the deck they
+trod.
+
+All up the coast, prominences singled themselves out from recesses. Then
+a rosy sky spread over the eastern sea and behind the low line of
+land, flinging its livery in dashes upon the thin airy clouds in that
+direction. Every projection on the land seemed now so many fingers
+anxious to catch a little of the liquid light thrown so prodigally over
+the sky, and after a fantastic time of lustrous yellows in the east, the
+higher elevations along the shore were flooded with the same hues. The
+bluff and bare contours of Start Point caught the brightest, earliest
+glow of all, and so also did the sides of its white lighthouse, perched
+upon a shelf in its precipitous front like a mediaeval saint in a niche.
+Their lofty neighbour Bolt Head on the left remained as yet ungilded,
+and retained its gray.
+
+Then up came the sun, as it were in jerks, just to seaward of the
+easternmost point of land, flinging out a Jacob's-ladder path of light
+from itself to Elfride and Knight, and coating them with rays in a few
+minutes. The inferior dignitaries of the shore--Froward Point, Berry
+Head, and Prawle--all had acquired their share of the illumination ere
+this, and at length the very smallest protuberance of wave, cliff, or
+inlet, even to the innermost recesses of the lovely valley of the Dart,
+had its portion; and sunlight, now the common possession of all, ceased
+to be the wonderful and coveted thing it had been a short half hour
+before.
+
+After breakfast, Plymouth arose into view, and grew distincter to their
+nearing vision, the Breakwater appearing like a streak of phosphoric
+light upon the surface of the sea. Elfride looked furtively around for
+Mrs. Jethway, but could discern no shape like hers. Afterwards, in the
+bustle of landing, she looked again with the same result, by which time
+the woman had probably glided upon the quay unobserved. Expanding with
+a sense of relief, Elfride waited whilst Knight looked to their luggage,
+and then saw her father approaching through the crowd, twirling his
+walking-stick to catch their attention. Elbowing their way to him they
+all entered the town, which smiled as sunny a smile upon Elfride as it
+had done between one and two years earlier, when she had entered it at
+precisely the same hour as the bride-elect of Stephen Smith.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XXX
+
+    'Vassal unto Love.'
+
+
+Elfride clung closer to Knight as day succeeded day. Whatever else might
+admit of question, there could be no dispute that the allegiance she
+bore him absorbed her whole soul and existence. A greater than Stephen
+had arisen, and she had left all to follow him.
+
+The unreserved girl was never chary of letting her lover discover how
+much she admired him. She never once held an idea in opposition to
+any one of his, or insisted on any point with him, or showed any
+independence, or held her own on any subject. His lightest whim she
+respected and obeyed as law, and if, expressing her opinion on a matter,
+he took up the subject and differed from her, she instantly threw
+down her own opinion as wrong and untenable. Even her ambiguities and
+espieglerie were but media of the same manifestation; acted charades,
+embodying the words of her prototype, the tender and susceptible
+daughter-in-law of Naomi: 'Let me find favour in thy sight, my lord; for
+that thou hast comforted me, and for that thou hast spoken friendly unto
+thine handmaid.'
+
+She was syringing the plants one wet day in the greenhouse. Knight was
+sitting under a great passion-flower observing the scene. Sometimes he
+looked out at the rain from the sky, and then at Elfride's inner rain of
+larger drops, which fell from trees and shrubs, after having previously
+hung from the twigs like small silver fruit.
+
+'I must give you something to make you think of me during this autumn
+at your chambers,' she was saying. 'What shall it be? Portraits do more
+harm than good, by selecting the worst expression of which your face is
+capable. Hair is unlucky. And you don't like jewellery.'
+
+'Something which shall bring back to my mind the many scenes we have
+enacted in this conservatory. I see what I should prize very much. That
+dwarf myrtle tree in the pot, which you have been so carefully tending.'
+
+Elfride looked thoughtfully at the myrtle.
+
+'I can carry it comfortably in my hat box,' said Knight. 'And I will put
+it in my window, and so, it being always before my eyes, I shall think
+of you continually.'
+
+It so happened that the myrtle which Knight had singled out had a
+peculiar beginning and history. It had originally been a twig worn in
+Stephen Smith's button-hole, and he had taken it thence, stuck it into
+the pot, and told her that if it grew, she was to take care of it, and
+keep it in remembrance of him when he was far away.
+
+She looked wistfully at the plant, and a sense of fairness to Smith's
+memory caused her a pang of regret that Knight should have asked for
+that very one. It seemed exceeding a common heartlessness to let it go.
+
+'Is there not anything you like better?' she said sadly. 'That is only
+an ordinary myrtle.'
+
+'No: I am fond of myrtle.' Seeing that she did not take kindly to the
+idea, he said again, 'Why do you object to my having that?'
+
+'Oh no--I don't object precisely--it was a feeling.--Ah, here's another
+cutting lately struck, and just as small--of a better kind, and with
+prettier leaves--myrtus microphylla.'
+
+'That will do nicely. Let it be put in my room, that I may not forget
+it. What romance attaches to the other?'
+
+'It was a gift to me.'
+
+The subject then dropped. Knight thought no more of the matter till, on
+entering his bedroom in the evening, he found the second myrtle placed
+upon his dressing-table as he had directed. He stood for a moment
+admiring the fresh appearance of the leaves by candlelight, and then he
+thought of the transaction of the day.
+
+Male lovers as well as female can be spoilt by too much kindness, and
+Elfride's uniform submissiveness had given Knight a rather exacting
+manner at crises, attached to her as he was. 'Why should she have
+refused the one I first chose?' he now asked himself. Even such slight
+opposition as she had shown then was exceptional enough to make itself
+noticeable. He was not vexed with her in the least: the mere variation
+of her way to-day from her usual ways kept him musing on the subject,
+because it perplexed him. 'It was a gift'--those were her words.
+Admitting it to be a gift, he thought she could hardly value a mere
+friend more than she valued him as a lover, and giving the plant into
+his charge would have made no difference. 'Except, indeed, it was the
+gift of a lover,' he murmured.
+
+'I wonder if Elfride has ever had a lover before?' he said aloud, as a
+new idea, quite. This and companion thoughts were enough to occupy him
+completely till he fell asleep--rather later than usual.
+
+The next day, when they were again alone, he said to her rather
+suddenly--
+
+'Do you love me more or less, Elfie, for what I told you on board the
+steamer?'
+
+'You told me so many things,' she returned, lifting her eyes to his and
+smiling.
+
+'I mean the confession you coaxed out of me--that I had never been in
+the position of lover before.'
+
+'It is a satisfaction, I suppose, to be the first in your heart,' she
+said to him, with an attempt to continue her smiling.
+
+'I am going to ask you a question now,' said Knight, somewhat awkwardly.
+'I only ask it in a whimsical way, you know: not with great seriousness,
+Elfride. You may think it odd, perhaps.'
+
+Elfride tried desperately to keep the colour in her face. She could not,
+though distressed to think that getting pale showed consciousness of
+deeper guilt than merely getting red.
+
+'Oh no--I shall not think that,' she said, because obliged to say
+something to fill the pause which followed her questioner's remark.
+
+'It is this: have you ever had a lover? I am almost sure you have not;
+but, have you?'
+
+'Not, as it were, a lover; I mean, not worth mentioning, Harry,' she
+faltered.
+
+Knight, overstrained in sentiment as he knew the feeling to be, felt
+some sickness of heart.
+
+'Still, he was a lover?'
+
+'Well, a sort of lover, I suppose,' she responded tardily.
+
+'A man, I mean, you know.'
+
+'Yes; but only a mere person, and----'
+
+'But truly your lover?'
+
+'Yes; a lover certainly--he was that. Yes, he might have been called my
+lover.'
+
+Knight said nothing to this for a minute or more, and kept silent time
+with his finger to the tick of the old library clock, in which room the
+colloquy was going on.
+
+'You don't mind, Harry, do you?' she said anxiously, nestling close to
+him, and watching his face.
+
+'Of course, I don't seriously mind. In reason, a man cannot object to
+such a trifle. I only thought you hadn't--that was all.'
+
+However, one ray was abstracted from the glory about her head. But
+afterwards, when Knight was wandering by himself over the bare and
+breezy hills, and meditating on the subject, that ray suddenly returned.
+For she might have had a lover, and never have cared in the least for
+him. She might have used the word improperly, and meant 'admirer' all
+the time. Of course she had been admired; and one man might have made
+his admiration more prominent than that of the rest--a very natural
+case.
+
+They were sitting on one of the garden seats when he found occasion to
+put the supposition to the test. 'Did you love that lover or admirer of
+yours ever so little, Elfie?'
+
+She murmured reluctantly, 'Yes, I think I did.'
+
+Knight felt the same faint touch of misery. 'Only a very little?' he
+said.
+
+'I am not sure how much.'
+
+'But you are sure, darling, you loved him a little?'
+
+'I think I am sure I loved him a little.'
+
+'And not a great deal, Elfie?'
+
+'My love was not supported by reverence for his powers.'
+
+'But, Elfride, did you love him deeply?' said Knight restlessly.
+
+'I don't exactly know how deep you mean by deeply.'
+
+'That's nonsense.'
+
+'You misapprehend; and you have let go my hand!' she cried, her eyes
+filling with tears. 'Harry, don't be severe with me, and don't question
+me. I did not love him as I do you. And could it be deeply if I did
+not think him cleverer than myself? For I did not. You grieve me so
+much--you can't think.'
+
+'I will not say another word about it.'
+
+'And you will not think about it, either, will you? I know you think of
+weaknesses in me after I am out of your sight; and not knowing what they
+are, I cannot combat them. I almost wish you were of a grosser nature,
+Harry; in truth I do! Or rather, I wish I could have the advantages such
+a nature in you would afford me, and yet have you as you are.'
+
+'What advantages would they be?'
+
+'Less anxiety, and more security. Ordinary men are not so delicate in
+their tastes as you; and where the lover or husband is not fastidious,
+and refined, and of a deep nature, things seem to go on better, I
+fancy--as far as I have been able to observe the world.'
+
+'Yes; I suppose it is right. Shallowness has this advantage, that you
+can't be drowned there.'
+
+'But I think I'll have you as you are; yes, I will!' she said winsomely.
+'The practical husbands and wives who take things philosophically are
+very humdrum, are they not? Yes, it would kill me quite. You please me
+best as you are.'
+
+'Even though I wish you had never cared for one before me?'
+
+'Yes. And you must not wish it. Don't!'
+
+'I'll try not to, Elfride.'
+
+So she hoped, but her heart was troubled. If he felt so deeply on this
+point, what would he say did he know all, and see it as Mrs. Jethway saw
+it? He would never make her the happiest girl in the world by taking her
+to be his own for aye. The thought enclosed her as a tomb whenever it
+presented itself to her perturbed brain. She tried to believe that Mrs.
+Jethway would never do her such a cruel wrong as to increase the bad
+appearance of her folly by innuendoes; and concluded that concealment,
+having been begun, must be persisted in, if possible. For what he might
+consider as bad as the fact, was her previous concealment of it by
+strategy.
+
+But Elfride knew Mrs. Jethway to be her enemy, and to hate her. It was
+possible she would do her worst. And should she do it, all might be
+over.
+
+Would the woman listen to reason, and be persuaded not to ruin one who
+had never intentionally harmed her?
+
+
+
+It was night in the valley between Endelstow Crags and the shore. The
+brook which trickled that way to the sea was distinct in its murmurs
+now, and over the line of its course there began to hang a white riband
+of fog. Against the sky, on the left hand of the vale, the black form of
+the church could be seen. On the other rose hazel-bushes, a few trees,
+and where these were absent, furze tufts--as tall as men--on stems
+nearly as stout as timber. The shriek of some bird was occasionally
+heard, as it flew terror-stricken from its first roost, to seek a new
+sleeping-place, where it might pass the night unmolested.
+
+In the evening shade, some way down the valley, and under a row of
+scrubby oaks, a cottage could still be discerned. It stood absolutely
+alone. The house was rather large, and the windows of some of the rooms
+were nailed up with boards on the outside, which gave a particularly
+deserted appearance to the whole erection. From the front door an
+irregular series of rough and misshapen steps, cut in the solid rock,
+led down to the edge of the streamlet, which, at their extremity,
+was hollowed into a basin through which the water trickled. This was
+evidently the means of water supply to the dweller or dwellers in the
+cottage.
+
+A light footstep was heard descending from the higher slopes of the
+hillside. Indistinct in the pathway appeared a moving female shape, who
+advanced and knocked timidly at the door. No answer being returned the
+knock was repeated, with the same result, and it was then repeated a
+third time. This also was unsuccessful.
+
+From one of the only two windows on the ground floor which were not
+boarded up came rays of light, no shutter or curtain obscuring the room
+from the eyes of a passer on the outside. So few walked that way after
+nightfall that any such means to secure secrecy were probably deemed
+unnecessary.
+
+The inequality of the rays falling upon the trees outside told that the
+light had its origin in a flickering fire only. The visitor, after the
+third knocking, stepped a little to the left in order to gain a view of
+the interior, and threw back the hood from her face. The dancing yellow
+sheen revealed the fair and anxious countenance of Elfride.
+
+Inside the house this firelight was enough to illumine the room
+distinctly, and to show that the furniture of the cottage was superior
+to what might have been expected from so unpromising an exterior. It
+also showed to Elfride that the room was empty. Beyond the light quiver
+and flap of the flames nothing moved or was audible therein.
+
+She turned the handle and entered, throwing off the cloak which
+enveloped her, under which she appeared without hat or bonnet, and
+in the sort of half-toilette country people ordinarily dine in. Then
+advancing to the foot of the staircase she called distinctly, but
+somewhat fearfully, 'Mrs. Jethway!'
+
+No answer.
+
+With a look of relief and regret combined, denoting that ease came to
+the heart and disappointment to the brain, Elfride paused for several
+minutes, as if undecided how to act. Determining to wait, she sat down
+on a chair. The minutes drew on, and after sitting on the thorns of
+impatience for half an hour, she searched her pocket, took therefrom a
+letter, and tore off the blank leaf. Then taking out a pencil she wrote
+upon the paper:
+
+
+'DEAR MRS. JETHWAY,--I have been to visit you. I wanted much to see
+you, but I cannot wait any longer. I came to beg you not to execute the
+threats you have repeated to me. Do not, I beseech you, Mrs. Jethway,
+let any one know I ran away from home! It would ruin me with him, and
+break my heart. I will do anything for you, if you will be kind to
+me. In the name of our common womanhood, do not, I implore you, make a
+scandal of me.--Yours, E. SWANCOURT.'
+
+
+She folded the note cornerwise, directed it, and placed it on the table.
+Then again drawing the hood over her curly head she emerged silently as
+she had come.
+
+Whilst this episode had been in action at Mrs. Jethway's cottage, Knight
+had gone from the dining-room into the drawing-room, and found Mrs.
+Swancourt there alone.
+
+'Elfride has vanished upstairs or somewhere,' she said.
+
+'And I have been reading an article in an old number of the PRESENT that
+I lighted on by chance a short time ago; it is an article you once told
+us was yours. Well, Harry, with due deference to your literary powers,
+allow me to say that this effusion is all nonsense, in my opinion.'
+
+'What is it about?' said Knight, taking up the paper and reading.
+
+'There: don't get red about it. Own that experience has taught you to
+be more charitable. I have never read such unchivalrous sentiments in my
+life--from a man, I mean. There, I forgive you; it was before you knew
+Elfride.'
+
+'Oh yes,' said Knight, looking up. 'I remember now. The text of that
+sermon was not my own at all, but was suggested to me by a young man
+named Smith--the same whom I have mentioned to you as coming from this
+parish. I thought the idea rather ingenious at the time, and enlarged it
+to the weight of a few guineas, because I had nothing else in my head.'
+
+'Which idea do you call the text? I am curious to know that.'
+
+'Well, this,' said Knight, somewhat unwillingly. 'That experience
+teaches, and your sweetheart, no less than your tailor, is necessarily
+very imperfect in her duties, if you are her first patron: and
+conversely, the sweetheart who is graceful under the initial kiss must
+be supposed to have had some practice in the trade.'
+
+'And do you mean to say that you wrote that upon the strength of another
+man's remark, without having tested it by practice?'
+
+'Yes--indeed I do.'
+
+'Then I think it was uncalled for and unfair. And how do you know it is
+true? I expect you regret it now.'
+
+'Since you bring me into a serious mood, I will speak candidly. I do
+believe that remark to be perfectly true, and, having written it, I
+would defend it anywhere. But I do often regret having ever written it,
+as well as others of the sort. I have grown older since, and I find such
+a tone of writing is calculated to do harm in the world. Every literary
+Jack becomes a gentleman if he can only pen a few indifferent satires
+upon womankind: women themselves, too, have taken to the trick; and so,
+upon the whole, I begin to be rather ashamed of my companions.'
+
+'Ah, Henry, you have fallen in love since and it makes a difference,'
+said Mrs. Swancourt with a faint tone of banter.
+
+'That's true; but that is not my reason.'
+
+'Having found that, in a case of your own experience, a so-called goose
+was a swan, it seems absurd to deny such a possibility in other men's
+experiences.'
+
+'You can hit palpably, cousin Charlotte,' said Knight. 'You are like the
+boy who puts a stone inside his snowball, and I shall play with you no
+longer. Excuse me--I am going for my evening stroll.'
+
+Though Knight had spoken jestingly, this incident and conversation had
+caused him a sudden depression. Coming, rather singularly, just after
+his discovery that Elfride had known what it was to love warmly before
+she had known him, his mind dwelt upon the subject, and the familiar
+pipe he smoked, whilst pacing up and down the shrubbery-path, failed
+to be a solace. He thought again of those idle words--hitherto quite
+forgotten--about the first kiss of a girl, and the theory seemed more
+than reasonable. Of course their sting now lay in their bearing on
+Elfride.
+
+Elfride, under Knight's kiss, had certainly been a very different woman
+from herself under Stephen's. Whether for good or for ill, she had
+marvellously well learnt a betrothed lady's part; and the fascinating
+finish of her deportment in this second campaign did probably arise from
+her unreserved encouragement of Stephen. Knight, with all the rapidity
+of jealous sensitiveness, pounced upon some words she had inadvertently
+let fall about an earring, which he had only partially understood at the
+time. It was during that 'initial kiss' by the little waterfall:
+
+'We must be careful. I lost the other by doing this!'
+
+A flush which had in it as much of wounded pride as of sorrow, passed
+over Knight as he thought of what he had so frequently said to her
+in his simplicity. 'I always meant to be the first comer in a woman's
+heart, fresh lips or none for me.' How childishly blind he must have
+seemed to this mere girl! How she must have laughed at him inwardly! He
+absolutely writhed as he thought of the confession she had wrung from
+him on the boat in the darkness of night. The one conception which had
+sustained his dignity when drawn out of his shell on that occasion--that
+of her charming ignorance of all such matters--how absurd it was!
+
+This man, whose imagination had been fed up to preternatural size by
+lonely study and silent observations of his kind--whose emotions had
+been drawn out long and delicate by his seclusion, like plants in a
+cellar--was now absolutely in pain. Moreover, several years of poetic
+study, and, if the truth must be told, poetic efforts, had tended
+to develop the affective side of his constitution still further, in
+proportion to his active faculties. It was his belief in the absolute
+newness of blandishment to Elfride which had constituted her primary
+charm. He began to think it was as hard to be earliest in a woman's
+heart as it was to be first in the Pool of Bethesda.
+
+That Knight should have been thus constituted: that Elfride's second
+lover should not have been one of the great mass of bustling mankind,
+little given to introspection, whose good-nature might have compensated
+for any lack of appreciativeness, was the chance of things. That her
+throbbing, self-confounding, indiscreet heart should have to defend
+itself unaided against the keen scrutiny and logical power which Knight,
+now that his suspicions were awakened, would sooner or later be sure to
+exercise against her, was her misfortune. A miserable incongruity was
+apparent in the circumstance of a strong mind practising its unerring
+archery upon a heart which the owner of that mind loved better than his
+own.
+
+Elfride's docile devotion to Knight was now its own enemy. Clinging
+to him so dependently, she taught him in time to presume upon that
+devotion--a lesson men are not slow to learn. A slight rebelliousness
+occasionally would have done him no harm, and would have been a world
+of advantage to her. But she idolized him, and was proud to be his
+bond-servant.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XXXI
+
+     'A worm i' the bud.'
+
+
+One day the reviewer said, 'Let us go to the cliffs again, Elfride;'
+and, without consulting her wishes, he moved as if to start at once.
+
+'The cliff of our dreadful adventure?' she inquired, with a shudder.
+'Death stares me in the face in the person of that cliff.'
+
+Nevertheless, so entirely had she sunk her individuality in his that the
+remark was not uttered as an expostulation, and she immediately prepared
+to accompany him.
+
+'No, not that place,' said Knight. 'It is ghastly to me, too. That
+other, I mean; what is its name?--Windy Beak.'
+
+Windy Beak was the second cliff in height along that coast, and, as is
+frequently the case with the natural features of the globe no less than
+with the intellectual features of men, it enjoyed the reputation of
+being the first. Moreover, it was the cliff to which Elfride had ridden
+with Stephen Smith, on a well-remembered morning of his summer visit.
+
+So, though thought of the former cliff had caused her to shudder at the
+perils to which her lover and herself had there been exposed, by being
+associated with Knight only it was not so objectionable as Windy Beak.
+That place was worse than gloomy, it was a perpetual reproach to her.
+
+But not liking to refuse, she said, 'It is further than the other
+cliff.'
+
+'Yes; but you can ride.'
+
+'And will you too?'
+
+'No, I'll walk.'
+
+A duplicate of her original arrangement with Stephen. Some fatality must
+be hanging over her head. But she ceased objecting.
+
+'Very well, Harry, I'll ride,' she said meekly.
+
+A quarter of an hour later she was in the saddle. But how different
+the mood from that of the former time. She had, indeed, given up her
+position as queen of the less to be vassal of the greater. Here was no
+showing off now; no scampering out of sight with Pansy, to perplex
+and tire her companion; no saucy remarks on LA BELLE DAME SANS MERCI.
+Elfride was burdened with the very intensity of her love.
+
+Knight did most of the talking along the journey. Elfride silently
+listened, and entirely resigned herself to the motions of the ambling
+horse upon which she sat, alternately rising and sinking gently, like a
+sea bird upon a sea wave.
+
+When they had reached the limit of a quadruped's possibilities in
+walking, Knight tenderly lifted her from the saddle, tied the horse, and
+rambled on with her to the seat in the rock. Knight sat down, and drew
+Elfride deftly beside him, and they looked over the sea.
+
+Two or three degrees above that melancholy and eternally level line, the
+ocean horizon, hung a sun of brass, with no visible rays, in a sky of
+ashen hue. It was a sky the sun did not illuminate or enkindle, as is
+usual at sunsets. This sheet of sky was met by the salt mass of
+gray water, flecked here and there with white. A waft of dampness
+occasionally rose to their faces, which was probably rarefied spray from
+the blows of the sea upon the foot of the cliff.
+
+Elfride wished it could be a longer time ago that she had sat there
+with Stephen as her lover, and agreed to be his wife. The significant
+closeness of that time to the present was another item to add to the
+list of passionate fears which were chronic with her now.
+
+Yet Knight was very tender this evening, and sustained her close to him
+as they sat.
+
+Not a word had been uttered by either since sitting down, when Knight
+said musingly, looking still afar--
+
+'I wonder if any lovers in past years ever sat here with arms locked, as
+we do now. Probably they have, for the place seems formed for a seat.'
+
+Her recollection of a well-known pair who had, and the much-talked-of
+loss which had ensued therefrom, and how the young man had been sent
+back to look for the missing article, led Elfride to glance down to her
+side, and behind her back. Many people who lose a trinket involuntarily
+give a momentary look for it in passing the spot ever so long
+afterwards. They do not often find it. Elfride, in turning her head, saw
+something shine weakly from a crevice in the rocky sedile. Only for a
+few minutes during the day did the sun light the alcove to its innermost
+rifts and slits, but these were the minutes now, and its level rays did
+Elfride the good or evil turn of revealing the lost ornament.
+
+Elfride's thoughts instantly reverted to the words she had
+unintentionally uttered upon what had been going on when the earring was
+lost. And she was immediately seized with a misgiving that Knight, on
+seeing the object, would be reminded of her words. Her instinctive act
+therefore was to secure it privately.
+
+It was so deep in the crack that Elfride could not pull it out with her
+hand, though she made several surreptitious trials.
+
+'What are you doing, Elfie?' said Knight, noticing her attempts, and
+looking behind him likewise.
+
+She had relinquished the endeavour, but too late.
+
+Knight peered into the joint from which her hand had been withdrawn, and
+saw what she had seen. He instantly took a penknife from his pocket,
+and by dint of probing and scraping brought the earring out upon open
+ground.
+
+'It is not yours, surely?' he inquired.
+
+'Yes, it is,' she said quietly.
+
+'Well, that is a most extraordinary thing, that we should find it like
+this!' Knight then remembered more circumstances; 'What, is it the one
+you have told me of?'
+
+'Yes.'
+
+The unfortunate remark of hers at the kiss came into his mind, if eyes
+were ever an index to be trusted. Trying to repress the words he yet
+spoke on the subject, more to obtain assurance that what it had seemed
+to imply was not true than from a wish to pry into bygones.
+
+'Were you really engaged to be married to that lover?' he said, looking
+straight forward at the sea again.
+
+'Yes--but not exactly. Yet I think I was.'
+
+'O Elfride, engaged to be married!' he murmured.
+
+'It would have been called a--secret engagement, I suppose. But don't
+look so disappointed; don't blame me.'
+
+'No, no.'
+
+'Why do you say "No, no," in such a way? Sweetly enough, but so barely?'
+
+Knight made no direct reply to this. 'Elfride, I told you once,' he
+said, following out his thoughts, 'that I never kissed a woman as a
+sweetheart until I kissed you. A kiss is not much, I suppose, and it
+happens to few young people to be able to avoid all blandishments
+and attentions except from the one they afterwards marry. But I have
+peculiar weaknesses, Elfride; and because I have led a peculiar life, I
+must suffer for it, I suppose. I had hoped--well, what I had no right to
+hope in connection with you. You naturally granted your former lover the
+privileges you grant me.'
+
+A 'yes' came from her like the last sad whisper of a breeze.
+
+'And he used to kiss you--of course he did.'
+
+'Yes.'
+
+'And perhaps you allowed him a more free manner in his love-making than
+I have shown in mine.'
+
+'No, I did not.' This was rather more alertly spoken.
+
+'But he adopted it without being allowed?'
+
+'Yes.'
+
+'How much I have made of you, Elfride, and how I have kept aloof!' said
+Knight in deep and shaken tones. 'So many days and hours as I have hoped
+in you--I have feared to kiss you more than those two times. And he made
+no scruples to...'
+
+She crept closer to him and trembled as if with cold. Her dread that the
+whole story, with random additions, would become known to him, caused
+her manner to be so agitated that Knight was alarmed and perplexed into
+stillness. The actual innocence which made her think so fearfully of
+what, as the world goes, was not a great matter, magnified her apparent
+guilt. It may have said to Knight that a woman who was so flurried in
+the preliminaries must have a dreadful sequel to her tale.
+
+'I know,' continued Knight, with an indescribable drag of manner and
+intonation,--'I know I am absurdly scrupulous about you--that I want you
+too exclusively mine. In your past before you knew me--from your very
+cradle--I wanted to think you had been mine. I would make you mine by
+main force. Elfride,' he went on vehemently, 'I can't help this jealousy
+over you! It is my nature, and must be so, and I HATE the fact that you
+have been caressed before: yes hate it!'
+
+She drew a long deep breath, which was half a sob. Knight's face was
+hard, and he never looked at her at all, still fixing his gaze far out
+to sea, which the sun had now resigned to the shade. In high places it
+is not long from sunset to night, dusk being in a measure banished, and
+though only evening where they sat, it had been twilight in the
+valleys for half an hour. Upon the dull expanse of sea there gradually
+intensified itself into existence the gleam of a distant light-ship.
+
+'When that lover first kissed you, Elfride was it in such a place as
+this?'
+
+'Yes, it was.'
+
+'You don't tell me anything but what I wring out of you. Why is that?
+Why have you suppressed all mention of this when casual confidences of
+mine should have suggested confidence in return? On board the Juliet,
+why were you so secret? It seems like being made a fool of, Elfride, to
+think that, when I was teaching you how desirable it was that we should
+have no secrets from each other, you were assenting in words, but in act
+contradicting me. Confidence would have been so much more promising for
+our happiness. If you had had confidence in me, and told me willingly, I
+should--be different. But you suppress everything, and I shall question
+you. Did you live at Endelstow at that time?'
+
+'Yes,' she said faintly.
+
+'Where were you when he first kissed you?'
+
+'Sitting in this seat.'
+
+'Ah, I thought so!' said Knight, rising and facing her.
+
+'And that accounts for everything--the exclamation which you explained
+deceitfully, and all! Forgive the harsh word, Elfride--forgive it.' He
+smiled a surface smile as he continued: 'What a poor mortal I am to play
+second fiddle in everything and to be deluded by fibs!'
+
+'Oh, don't say it; don't, Harry!'
+
+'Where did he kiss you besides here?'
+
+'Sitting on--a tomb in the--churchyard--and other places,' she answered
+with slow recklessness.
+
+'Never mind, never mind,' he exclaimed, on seeing her tears and
+perturbation. 'I don't want to grieve you. I don't care.'
+
+But Knight did care.
+
+'It makes no difference, you know,' he continued, seeing she did not
+reply.
+
+'I feel cold,' said Elfride. 'Shall we go home?'
+
+'Yes; it is late in the year to sit long out of doors: we ought to be
+off this ledge before it gets too dark to let us see our footing. I
+daresay the horse is impatient.'
+
+Knight spoke the merest commonplace to her now. He had hoped to the
+last moment that she would have volunteered the whole story of her first
+attachment. It grew more and more distasteful to him that she should
+have a secret of this nature. Such entire confidence as he had pictured
+as about to exist between himself and the innocent young wife who had
+known no lover's tones save his--was this its beginning? He lifted
+her upon the horse, and they went along constrainedly. The poison of
+suspicion was doing its work well.
+
+An incident occurred on this homeward journey which was long remembered
+by both, as adding shade to shadow. Knight could not keep from his
+mind the words of Adam's reproach to Eve in PARADISE LOST, and at last
+whispered them to himself--
+
+
+    'Fool'd and beguiled: by him thou, I by thee!'
+
+
+'What did you say?' Elfride inquired timorously.
+
+'It was only a quotation.'
+
+They had now dropped into a hollow, and the church tower made its
+appearance against the pale evening sky, its lower part being hidden by
+some intervening trees. Elfride, being denied an answer, was looking at
+the tower and trying to think of some contrasting quotation she might
+use to regain his tenderness. After a little thought she said in winning
+tones--
+
+"Thou hast been my hope, and a strong tower for me against the enemy."'
+
+They passed on. A few minutes later three or four birds were seen to fly
+out of the tower.
+
+'The strong tower moves,' said Knight, with surprise.
+
+A corner of the square mass swayed forward, sank, and vanished. A loud
+rumble followed, and a cloud of dust arose where all had previously been
+so clear.
+
+'The church restorers have done it!' said Elfride.
+
+At this minute Mr. Swancourt was seen approaching them. He came up with
+a bustling demeanour, apparently much engrossed by some business in
+hand.
+
+'We have got the tower down!' he exclaimed. 'It came rather quicker
+than we intended it should. The first idea was to take it down stone by
+stone, you know. In doing this the crack widened considerably, and it
+was not believed safe for the men to stand upon the walls any longer.
+Then we decided to undermine it, and three men set to work at the
+weakest corner this afternoon. They had left off for the evening,
+intending to give the final blow to-morrow morning, and had been home
+about half an hour, when down it came. A very successful job--a very
+fine job indeed. But he was a tough old fellow in spite of the crack.'
+Here Mr. Swancourt wiped from his face the perspiration his excitement
+had caused him.
+
+'Poor old tower!' said Elfride.
+
+'Yes, I am sorry for it,' said Knight. 'It was an interesting piece of
+antiquity--a local record of local art.'
+
+'Ah, but my dear sir, we shall have a new one, expostulated Mr.
+Swancourt; 'a splendid tower--designed by a first-rate London man--in
+the newest style of Gothic art, and full of Christian feeling.'
+
+'Indeed!' said Knight.
+
+'Oh yes. Not in the barbarous clumsy architecture of this neighbourhood;
+you see nothing so rough and pagan anywhere else in England. When
+the men are gone, I would advise you to go and see the church before
+anything further is done to it. You can now sit in the chancel, and look
+down the nave through the west arch, and through that far out to sea. In
+fact,' said Mr. Swancourt significantly, 'if a wedding were performed
+at the altar to-morrow morning, it might be witnessed from the deck of
+a ship on a voyage to the South Seas, with a good glass. However, after
+dinner, when the moon has risen, go up and see for yourselves.'
+
+Knight assented with feverish readiness. He had decided within the last
+few minutes that he could not rest another night without further talk
+with Elfride upon the subject which now divided them: he was determined
+to know all, and relieve his disquiet in some way. Elfride would gladly
+have escaped further converse alone with him that night, but it seemed
+inevitable.
+
+Just after moonrise they left the house. How little any expectation
+of the moonlight prospect--which was the ostensible reason of their
+pilgrimage--had to do with Knight's real motive in getting the gentle
+girl again upon his arm, Elfride no less than himself well knew.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XXXII
+
+    'Had I wist before I kist'
+
+
+It was now October, and the night air was chill. After looking to see
+that she was well wrapped up, Knight took her along the hillside path
+they had ascended so many times in each other's company, when doubt was
+a thing unknown. On reaching the church they found that one side of the
+tower was, as the vicar had stated, entirely removed, and lying in the
+shape of rubbish at their feet. The tower on its eastern side still
+was firm, and might have withstood the shock of storms and the siege
+of battering years for many a generation even now. They entered by the
+side-door, went eastward, and sat down by the altar-steps.
+
+The heavy arch spanning the junction of tower and nave formed to-night
+a black frame to a distant misty view, stretching far westward. Just
+outside the arch came the heap of fallen stones, then a portion of
+moonlit churchyard, then the wide and convex sea behind. It was a
+coup-d'oeil which had never been possible since the mediaeval masons
+first attached the old tower to the older church it dignified, and
+hence must be supposed to have had an interest apart from that of simple
+moonlight on ancient wall and sea and shore--any mention of which has by
+this time, it is to be feared, become one of the cuckoo-cries which are
+heard but not regarded. Rays of crimson, blue, and purple shone upon the
+twain from the east window behind them, wherein saints and angels vied
+with each other in primitive surroundings of landscape and sky, and
+threw upon the pavement at the sitters' feet a softer reproduction of
+the same translucent hues, amid which the shadows of the two living
+heads of Knight and Elfride were opaque and prominent blots. Presently
+the moon became covered by a cloud, and the iridescence died away.
+
+'There, it is gone!' said Knight. 'I've been thinking, Elfride, that
+this place we sit on is where we may hope to kneel together soon. But I
+am restless and uneasy, and you know why.'
+
+Before she replied the moonlight returned again, irradiating that
+portion of churchyard within their view. It brightened the near part
+first, and against the background which the cloud-shadow had not yet
+uncovered stood, brightest of all, a white tomb--the tomb of young
+Jethway.
+
+Knight, still alive on the subject of Elfride's secret, thought of her
+words concerning the kiss that it once had occurred on a tomb in this
+churchyard.
+
+'Elfride,' he said, with a superficial archness which did not half cover
+an undercurrent of reproach, 'do you know, I think you might have told
+me voluntarily about that past--of kisses and betrothing--without giving
+me so much uneasiness and trouble. Was that the tomb you alluded to as
+having sat on with him?'
+
+She waited an instant. 'Yes,' she said.
+
+The correctness of his random shot startled Knight; though, considering
+that almost all the other memorials in the churchyard were upright
+headstones upon which nobody could possibly sit, it was not so
+wonderful.
+
+Elfride did not even now go on with the explanation her exacting lover
+wished to have, and her reticence began to irritate him as before. He
+was inclined to read her a lecture.
+
+'Why don't you tell me all?' he said somewhat indignantly. 'Elfride,
+there is not a single subject upon which I feel more strongly than upon
+this--that everything ought to be cleared up between two persons before
+they become husband and wife. See how desirable and wise such a
+course is, in order to avoid disagreeable contingencies in the form of
+discoveries afterwards. For, Elfride, a secret of no importance at all
+may be made the basis of some fatal misunderstanding only because it is
+discovered, and not confessed. They say there never was a couple of whom
+one had not some secret the other never knew or was intended to know.
+This may or may not be true; but if it be true, some have been happy in
+spite rather than in consequence of it. If a man were to see another
+man looking significantly at his wife, and she were blushing crimson and
+appearing startled, do you think he would be so well satisfied with, for
+instance, her truthful explanation that once, to her great annoyance,
+she accidentally fainted into his arms, as if she had said it
+voluntarily long ago, before the circumstance occurred which forced it
+from her? Suppose that admirer you spoke of in connection with the tomb
+yonder should turn up, and bother me. It would embitter our lives, if I
+were then half in the dark, as I am now!'
+
+Knight spoke the latter sentences with growing force.
+
+'It cannot be,' she said.
+
+'Why not?' he asked sharply.
+
+Elfride was distressed to find him in so stern a mood, and she trembled.
+In a confusion of ideas, probably not intending a wilful prevarication,
+she answered hurriedly--
+
+'If he's dead, how can you meet him?'
+
+'Is he dead? Oh, that's different altogether!' said Knight, immensely
+relieved. 'But, let me see--what did you say about that tomb and him?'
+
+'That's his tomb,' she continued faintly.
+
+'What! was he who lies buried there the man who was your lover?' Knight
+asked in a distinct voice.
+
+'Yes; and I didn't love him or encourage him.'
+
+'But you let him kiss you--you said so, you know, Elfride.'
+
+She made no reply.
+
+'Why,' said Knight, recollecting circumstances by degrees, 'you surely
+said you were in some degree engaged to him--and of course you were if
+he kissed you. And now you say you never encouraged him. And I have been
+fancying you said--I am almost sure you did--that you were sitting with
+him ON that tomb. Good God!' he cried, suddenly starting up in anger,
+'are you telling me untruths? Why should you play with me like this?
+I'll have the right of it. Elfride, we shall never be happy! There's
+a blight upon us, or me, or you, and it must be cleared off before we
+marry.' Knight moved away impetuously as if to leave her.
+
+She jumped up and clutched his arm
+
+'Don't go, Harry--don't!
+
+'Tell me, then,' said Knight sternly. 'And remember this, no more fibs,
+or, upon my soul, I shall hate you. Heavens! that I should come to this,
+to be made a fool of by a girl's untruths----'
+
+'Don't, don't treat me so cruelly! O Harry, Harry, have pity, and
+withdraw those dreadful words! I am truthful by nature--I am--and I
+don't know how I came to make you misunderstand! But I was frightened!'
+She quivered so in her perturbation that she shook him with her {Note:
+sentence incomplete in text.}
+
+'Did you say you were sitting on that tomb?' he asked moodily.
+
+'Yes; and it was true.'
+
+'Then how, in the name of Heaven, can a man sit upon his own tomb?'
+
+'That was another man. Forgive me, Harry, won't you?'
+
+'What, a lover in the tomb and a lover on it?'
+
+'Oh--Oh--yes!'
+
+'Then there were two before me?
+
+'I--suppose so.'
+
+'Now, don't be a silly woman with your supposing--I hate all that,' said
+Knight contemptuously almost. 'Well, we learn strange things. I
+don't know what I might have done--no man can say into what shape
+circumstances may warp him--but I hardly think I should have had the
+conscience to accept the favours of a new lover whilst sitting over the
+poor remains of the old one; upon my soul, I don't.' Knight, in moody
+meditation, continued looking towards the tomb, which stood staring them
+in the face like an avenging ghost.
+
+'But you wrong me--Oh, so grievously!' she cried. 'I did not meditate
+any such thing: believe me, Harry, I did not. It only happened so--quite
+of itself.'
+
+'Well, I suppose you didn't INTEND such a thing,' he said. 'Nobody ever
+does,' he sadly continued.
+
+'And him in the grave I never once loved.'
+
+'I suppose the second lover and you, as you sat there, vowed to be
+faithful to each other for ever?'
+
+Elfride only replied by quick heavy breaths, showing she was on the
+brink of a sob.
+
+'You don't choose to be anything but reserved, then?' he said
+imperatively.
+
+'Of course we did,' she responded.
+
+'"Of course!" You seem to treat the subject very lightly?'
+
+'It is past, and is nothing to us now.'
+
+'Elfride, it is a nothing which, though it may make a careless man
+laugh, cannot but make a genuine one grieve. It is a very gnawing pain.
+Tell me straight through--all of it.'
+
+'Never. O Harry! how can you expect it when so little of it makes you so
+harsh with me?'
+
+'Now, Elfride, listen to this. You know that what you have told only
+jars the subtler fancies in one, after all. The feeling I have about it
+would be called, and is, mere sentimentality; and I don't want you to
+suppose that an ordinary previous engagement of a straightforward kind
+would make any practical difference in my love, or my wish to make you
+my wife. But you seem to have more to tell, and that's where the wrong
+is. Is there more?'
+
+'Not much more,' she wearily answered.
+
+Knight preserved a grave silence for a minute. '"Not much more,"' he
+said at last. 'I should think not, indeed!' His voice assumed a low and
+steady pitch. 'Elfride, you must not mind my saying a strange-sounding
+thing, for say it I shall. It is this: that if there WERE much more
+to add to an account which already includes all the particulars that
+a broken marriage engagement could possibly include with propriety, it
+must be some exceptional thing which might make it impossible for me or
+any one else to love you and marry you.'
+
+Knight's disturbed mood led him much further than he would have gone
+in a quieter moment. And, even as it was, had she been assertive to any
+degree he would not have been so peremptory; and had she been a stronger
+character--more practical and less imaginative--she would have made more
+use of her position in his heart to influence him. But the confiding
+tenderness which had won him is ever accompanied by a sort of
+self-committal to the stream of events, leading every such woman to
+trust more to the kindness of fate for good results than to any argument
+of her own.
+
+'Well, well,' he murmured cynically; 'I won't say it is your fault:
+it is my ill-luck, I suppose. I had no real right to question
+you--everybody would say it was presuming. But when we have
+misunderstood, we feel injured by the subject of our misunderstanding.
+You never said you had had nobody else here making love to you, so why
+should I blame you? Elfride, I beg your pardon.'
+
+'No, no! I would rather have your anger than that cool aggrieved
+politeness. Do drop that, Harry! Why should you inflict that upon me? It
+reduces me to the level of a mere acquaintance.'
+
+'You do that with me. Why not confidence for confidence?'
+
+'Yes; but I didn't ask you a single question with regard to your past:
+I didn't wish to know about it. All I cared for was that, wherever you
+came from, whatever you had done, whoever you had loved, you were mine
+at last. Harry, if originally you had known I had loved, would you never
+have cared for me?'
+
+'I won't quite say that. Though I own that the idea of your
+inexperienced state had a great charm for me. But I think this: that if
+I had known there was any phase of your past love you would refuse to
+reveal if I asked to know it, I should never have loved you.'
+
+Elfride sobbed bitterly. 'Am I such a--mere characterless toy--as to
+have no attrac--tion in me, apart from--freshness? Haven't I brains?
+You said--I was clever and ingenious in my thoughts, and--isn't that
+anything? Have I not some beauty? I think I have a little--and I know
+I have--yes, I do! You have praised my voice, and my manner, and my
+accomplishments. Yet all these together are so much rubbish because
+I--accidentally saw a man before you!'
+
+'Oh, come, Elfride. "Accidentally saw a man" is very cool. You loved
+him, remember.'
+
+--'And loved him a little!'
+
+'And refuse now to answer the simple question how it ended. Do you
+refuse still, Elfride?'
+
+'You have no right to question me so--you said so. It is unfair. Trust
+me as I trust you.'
+
+'That's not at all.'
+
+'I shall not love you if you are so cruel. It is cruel to me to argue
+like this.'
+
+'Perhaps it is. Yes, it is. I was carried away by my feeling for you.
+Heaven knows that I didn't mean to; but I have loved you so that I have
+used you badly.'
+
+'I don't mind it, Harry!' she instantly answered, creeping up and
+nestling against him; 'and I will not think at all that you used me
+harshly if you will forgive me, and not be vexed with me any more? I do
+wish I had been exactly as you thought I was, but I could not help it,
+you know. If I had only known you had been coming, what a nunnery I
+would have lived in to have been good enough for you!'
+
+'Well, never mind,' said Knight; and he turned to go. He endeavoured
+to speak sportively as they went on. 'Diogenes Laertius says that
+philosophers used voluntarily to deprive themselves of sight to be
+uninterrupted in their meditations. Men, becoming lovers, ought to do
+the same thing.'
+
+'Why?--but never mind--I don't want to know. Don't speak laconically to
+me,' she said with deprecation.
+
+'Why? Because they would never then be distracted by discovering their
+idol was second-hand.'
+
+She looked down and sighed; and they passed out of the crumbling old
+place, and slowly crossed to the churchyard entrance. Knight was not
+himself, and he could not pretend to be. She had not told all.
+
+He supported her lightly over the stile, and was practically as
+attentive as a lover could be. But there had passed away a glory, and
+the dream was not as it had been of yore. Perhaps Knight was not shaped
+by Nature for a marrying man. Perhaps his lifelong constraint towards
+women, which he had attributed to accident, was not chance after
+all, but the natural result of instinctive acts so minute as to be
+undiscernible even by himself. Or whether the rough dispelling of
+any bright illusion, however imaginative, depreciates the real and
+unexaggerated brightness which appertains to its basis, one cannot say.
+Certain it was that Knight's disappointment at finding himself second
+or third in the field, at Elfride's momentary equivoque, and at her
+reluctance to be candid, brought him to the verge of cynicism.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XXXIII
+
+     'O daughter of Babylon, wasted with misery.'
+
+
+A habit of Knight's, when not immediately occupied with Elfride--to walk
+by himself for half an hour or so between dinner and bedtime--had become
+familiar to his friends at Endelstow, Elfride herself among them. When
+he had helped her over the stile, she said gently, 'If you wish to take
+your usual turn on the hill, Harry, I can run down to the house alone.'
+
+'Thank you, Elfie; then I think I will.'
+
+Her form diminished to blackness in the moonlight, and Knight, after
+remaining upon the churchyard stile a few minutes longer, turned back
+again towards the building. His usual course was now to light a cigar or
+pipe, and indulge in a quiet meditation. But to-night his mind was too
+tense to bethink itself of such a solace. He merely walked round to the
+site of the fallen tower, and sat himself down upon some of the
+large stones which had composed it until this day, when the chain of
+circumstance originated by Stephen Smith, while in the employ of Mr.
+Hewby, the London man of art, had brought about its overthrow.
+
+Pondering on the possible episodes of Elfride's past life, and on how
+he had supposed her to have had no past justifying the name, he sat and
+regarded the white tomb of young Jethway, now close in front of him.
+The sea, though comparatively placid, could as usual be heard from this
+point along the whole distance between promontories to the right and
+left, floundering and entangling itself among the insulated stacks of
+rock which dotted the water's edge--the miserable skeletons of tortured
+old cliffs that would not even yet succumb to the wear and tear of the
+tides.
+
+As a change from thoughts not of a very cheerful kind, Knight attempted
+exertion. He stood up, and prepared to ascend to the summit of
+the ruinous heap of stones, from which a more extended outlook was
+obtainable than from the ground. He stretched out his arm to seize the
+projecting arris of a larger block than ordinary, and so help himself
+up, when his hand lighted plump upon a substance differing in the
+greatest possible degree from what he had expected to seize--hard stone.
+It was stringy and entangled, and trailed upon the stone. The
+deep shadow from the aisle wall prevented his seeing anything here
+distinctly, and he began guessing as a necessity. 'It is a tressy
+species of moss or lichen,' he said to himself.
+
+But it lay loosely over the stone.
+
+'It is a tuft of grass,' he said.
+
+But it lacked the roughness and humidity of the finest grass.
+
+'It is a mason's whitewash-brush.'
+
+Such brushes, he remembered, were more bristly; and however much used in
+repairing a structure, would not be required in pulling one down.
+
+He said, 'It must be a thready silk fringe.'
+
+He felt further in. It was somewhat warm. Knight instantly felt somewhat
+cold.
+
+To find the coldness of inanimate matter where you expect warmth is
+startling enough; but a colder temperature than that of the body being
+rather the rule than the exception in common substances, it hardly
+conveys such a shock to the system as finding warmth where utter
+frigidity is anticipated.
+
+'God only knows what it is,' he said.
+
+He felt further, and in the course of a minute put his hand upon a human
+head. The head was warm, but motionless. The thready mass was the hair
+of the head--long and straggling, showing that the head was a woman's.
+
+Knight in his perplexity stood still for a moment, and collected his
+thoughts. The vicar's account of the fall of the tower was that the
+workmen had been undermining it all the day, and had left in the evening
+intending to give the finishing stroke the next morning. Half an hour
+after they had gone the undermined angle came down. The woman who was
+half buried, as it seemed, must have been beneath it at the moment of
+the fall.
+
+Knight leapt up and began endeavouring to remove the rubbish with his
+hands. The heap overlying the body was for the most part fine and
+dusty, but in immense quantity. It would be a saving of time to run for
+assistance. He crossed to the churchyard wall, and hastened down the
+hill.
+
+A little way down an intersecting road passed over a small ridge, which
+now showed up darkly against the moon, and this road here formed a
+kind of notch in the sky-line. At the moment that Knight arrived at the
+crossing he beheld a man on this eminence, coming towards him. Knight
+turned aside and met the stranger.
+
+'There has been an accident at the church,' said Knight, without
+preface. 'The tower has fallen on somebody, who has been lying there
+ever since. Will you come and help?'
+
+'That I will,' said the man.
+
+'It is a woman,' said Knight, as they hurried back, 'and I think we two
+are enough to extricate her. Do you know of a shovel?'
+
+'The grave-digging shovels are about somewhere. They used to stay in the
+tower.'
+
+'And there must be some belonging to the workmen.'
+
+They searched about, and in an angle of the porch found three carefully
+stowed away. Going round to the west end Knight signified the spot of
+the tragedy.
+
+'We ought to have brought a lantern,' he exclaimed. 'But we may be able
+to do without.' He set to work removing the superincumbent mass.
+
+The other man, who looked on somewhat helplessly at first, now followed
+the example of Knight's activity, and removed the larger stones which
+were mingled with the rubbish. But with all their efforts it was
+quite ten minutes before the body of the unfortunate creature could be
+extricated. They lifted her as carefully as they could, breathlessly
+carried her to Felix Jethway's tomb, which was only a few steps
+westward, and laid her thereon.
+
+'Is she dead indeed?' said the stranger.
+
+'She appears to be,' said Knight. 'Which is the nearest house? The
+vicarage, I suppose.'
+
+'Yes; but since we shall have to call a surgeon from Castle Boterel, I
+think it would be better to carry her in that direction, instead of away
+from the town.'
+
+'And is it not much further to the first house we come to going that
+way, than to the vicarage or to The Crags?'
+
+'Not much,' the stranger replied.
+
+'Suppose we take her there, then. And I think the best way to do it
+would be thus, if you don't mind joining hands with me.'
+
+'Not in the least; I am glad to assist.'
+
+Making a kind of cradle, by clasping their hands crosswise under the
+inanimate woman, they lifted her, and walked on side by side down a path
+indicated by the stranger, who appeared to know the locality well.
+
+'I had been sitting in the church for nearly an hour,' Knight resumed,
+when they were out of the churchyard. 'Afterwards I walked round to the
+site of the fallen tower, and so found her. It is painful to think I
+unconsciously wasted so much time in the very presence of a perishing,
+flying soul.'
+
+'The tower fell at dusk, did it not? quite two hours ago, I think?'
+
+'Yes. She must have been there alone. What could have been her object in
+visiting the churchyard then?
+
+'It is difficult to say.' The stranger looked inquiringly into the
+reclining face of the motionless form they bore. 'Would you turn her
+round for a moment, so that the light shines on her face?' he said.
+
+They turned her face to the moon, and the man looked closer into her
+features. 'Why, I know her!' he exclaimed.
+
+'Who is she?'
+
+'Mrs. Jethway. And the cottage we are taking her to is her own. She is
+a widow; and I was speaking to her only this afternoon. I was at Castle
+Boterel post-office, and she came there to post a letter. Poor soul! Let
+us hurry on.'
+
+'Hold my wrist a little tighter. Was not that tomb we laid her on the
+tomb of her only son?'
+
+'Yes, it was. Yes, I see it now. She was there to visit the tomb. Since
+the death of that son she has been a desolate, desponding woman, always
+bewailing him. She was a farmer's wife, very well educated--a governess
+originally, I believe.'
+
+Knight's heart was moved to sympathy. His own fortunes seemed in some
+strange way to be interwoven with those of this Jethway family, through
+the influence of Elfride over himself and the unfortunate son of that
+house. He made no reply, and they still walked on.
+
+'She begins to feel heavy,' said the stranger, breaking the silence.
+
+'Yes, she does,' said Knight; and after another pause added, 'I think I
+have met you before, though where I cannot recollect. May I ask who you
+are?'
+
+'Oh yes. I am Lord Luxellian. Who are you?'
+
+'I am a visitor at The Crags--Mr. Knight.'
+
+'I have heard of you, Mr. Knight.'
+
+'And I of you, Lord Luxellian. I am glad to meet you.'
+
+'I may say the same. I am familiar with your name in print.'
+
+'And I with yours. Is this the house?'
+
+'Yes.'
+
+The door was locked. Knight, reflecting a moment, searched the pocket
+of the lifeless woman, and found therein a large key which, on being
+applied to the door, opened it easily. The fire was out, but the
+moonlight entered the quarried window, and made patterns upon the floor.
+The rays enabled them to see that the room into which they had entered
+was pretty well furnished, it being the same room that Elfride had
+visited alone two or three evenings earlier. They deposited their still
+burden on an old-fashioned couch which stood against the wall, and
+Knight searched about for a lamp or candle. He found a candle on a
+shelf, lighted it, and placed it on the table.
+
+Both Knight and Lord Luxellian examined the pale countenance
+attentively, and both were nearly convinced that there was no hope. No
+marks of violence were visible in the casual examination they made.
+
+'I think that as I know where Doctor Granson lives,' said Lord
+Luxellian, 'I had better run for him whilst you stay here.'
+
+Knight agreed to this. Lord Luxellian then went off, and his hurrying
+footsteps died away. Knight continued bending over the body, and a few
+minutes longer of careful scrutiny perfectly satisfied him that
+the woman was far beyond the reach of the lancet and the drug. Her
+extremities were already beginning to get stiff and cold. Knight covered
+her face, and sat down.
+
+The minutes went by. The essayist remained musing on all the occurrences
+of the night. His eyes were directed upon the table, and he had seen
+for some time that writing-materials were spread upon it. He now noticed
+these more particularly: there were an inkstand, pen, blotting-book,
+and note-paper. Several sheets of paper were thrust aside from the rest,
+upon which letters had been begun and relinquished, as if their form had
+not been satisfactory to the writer. A stick of black sealing-wax
+and seal were there too, as if the ordinary fastening had not been
+considered sufficiently secure. The abandoned sheets of paper lying as
+they did open upon the table, made it possible, as he sat, to read the
+few words written on each. One ran thus:
+
+
+'SIR,--As a woman who was once blest with a dear son of her own, I
+implore you to accept a warning----'
+
+
+Another:
+
+
+'SIR,--If you will deign to receive warning from a stranger before it is
+too late to alter your course, listen to----'
+
+
+The third:
+
+
+'SIR,--With this letter I enclose to you another which, unaided by any
+explanation from me, tells a startling tale. I wish, however, to add a
+few words to make your delusion yet more clear to you----'
+
+
+
+It was plain that, after these renounced beginnings, a fourth letter had
+been written and despatched, which had been deemed a proper one. Upon
+the table were two drops of sealing-wax, the stick from which they were
+taken having been laid down overhanging the edge of the table; the end
+of it drooped, showing that the wax was placed there whilst warm.
+There was the chair in which the writer had sat, the impression of the
+letter's address upon the blotting-paper, and the poor widow who had
+caused these results lying dead hard by. Knight had seen enough to
+lead him to the conclusion that Mrs. Jethway, having matter of great
+importance to communicate to some friend or acquaintance, had written
+him a very careful letter, and gone herself to post it; that she had not
+returned to the house from that time of leaving it till Lord Luxellian
+and himself had brought her back dead.
+
+The unutterable melancholy of the whole scene, as he waited on, silent
+and alone, did not altogether clash with the mood of Knight, even though
+he was the affianced of a fair and winning girl, and though so lately he
+had been in her company. Whilst sitting on the remains of the demolished
+tower he had defined a new sensation; that the lengthened course of
+inaction he had lately been indulging in on Elfride's account might
+probably not be good for him as a man who had work to do. It could
+quickly be put an end to by hastening on his marriage with her.
+
+Knight, in his own opinion, was one who had missed his mark by excessive
+aiming. Having now, to a great extent, given up ideal ambitions, he
+wished earnestly to direct his powers into a more practical channel,
+and thus correct the introspective tendencies which had never brought
+himself much happiness, or done his fellow-creatures any great good.
+To make a start in this new direction by marriage, which, since knowing
+Elfride, had been so entrancing an idea, was less exquisite to-night.
+That the curtailment of his illusion regarding her had something to do
+with the reaction, and with the return of his old sentiments on wasting
+time, is more than probable. Though Knight's heart had so greatly
+mastered him, the mastery was not so complete as to be easily maintained
+in the face of a moderate intellectual revival.
+
+His reverie was broken by the sound of wheels, and a horse's tramp.
+The door opened to admit the surgeon, Lord Luxellian, and a Mr. Coole,
+coroner for the division (who had been attending at Castle Boterel that
+very day, and was having an after-dinner chat with the doctor when Lord
+Luxellian arrived); next came two female nurses and some idlers.
+
+Mr. Granson, after a cursory examination, pronounced the woman dead from
+suffocation, induced by intense pressure on the respiratory organs;
+and arrangements were made that the inquiry should take place on the
+following morning, before the return of the coroner to St. Launce's.
+
+Shortly afterwards the house of the widow was deserted by all its living
+occupants, and she abode in death, as she had in her life during the
+past two years, entirely alone.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XXXIV
+
+   'Yea, happy shall he be that rewardeth thee as thou hast served us.'
+
+
+Sixteen hours had passed. Knight was entering the ladies' boudoir at The
+Crags, upon his return from attending the inquest touching the death of
+Mrs. Jethway. Elfride was not in the apartment.
+
+Mrs. Swancourt made a few inquiries concerning the verdict and
+collateral circumstances. Then she said--
+
+'The postman came this morning the minute after you left the house.
+There was only one letter for you, and I have it here.'
+
+She took a letter from the lid of her workbox, and handed it to him.
+Knight took the missive abstractedly, but struck by its appearance
+murmured a few words and left the room.
+
+The letter was fastened with a black seal, and the handwriting in which
+it was addressed had lain under his eyes, long and prominently, only the
+evening before.
+
+Knight was greatly agitated, and looked about for a spot where he might
+be secure from interruption. It was the season of heavy dews, which
+lay on the herbage in shady places all the day long; nevertheless, he
+entered a small patch of neglected grass-plat enclosed by the shrubbery,
+and there perused the letter, which he had opened on his way thither.
+
+The handwriting, the seal, the paper, the introductory words, all had
+told on the instant that the letter had come to him from the hands of
+the widow Jethway, now dead and cold. He had instantly understood that
+the unfinished notes which caught his eye yesternight were intended for
+nobody but himself. He had remembered some of the words of Elfride
+in her sleep on the steamer, that somebody was not to tell him of
+something, or it would be her ruin--a circumstance hitherto deemed so
+trivial and meaningless that he had well-nigh forgotten it. All these
+things infused into him an emotion intense in power and supremely
+distressing in quality. The paper in his hand quivered as he read:
+
+
+'THE VALLEY, ENDELSTOW.
+
+'SIR,--A woman who has not much in the world to lose by any censure this
+act may bring upon her, wishes to give you some hints concerning a lady
+you love. If you will deign to accept a warning before it is too late,
+you will notice what your correspondent has to say.
+
+'You are deceived. Can such a woman as this be worthy?
+
+'One who encouraged an honest youth to love her, then slighted him, so
+that he died.
+
+'One who next took a man of no birth as a lover, who was forbidden the
+house by her father.
+
+'One who secretly left her home to be married to that man, met him, and
+went with him to London.
+
+'One who, for some reason or other, returned again unmarried.
+
+'One who, in her after-correspondence with him, went so far as to
+address him as her husband.
+
+'One who wrote the enclosed letter to ask me, who better than anybody
+else knows the story, to keep the scandal a secret.
+
+'I hope soon to be beyond the reach of either blame or praise. But
+before removing me God has put it in my power to avenge the death of my
+son.
+
+'GERTRUDE JETHWAY.'
+
+
+The letter enclosed was the note in pencil that Elfride had written in
+Mrs. Jethway's cottage:
+
+
+'DEAR MRS. JETHWAY,--I have been to visit you. I wanted much to see
+you, but I cannot wait any longer. I came to beg you not to execute the
+threats you have repeated to me. Do not, I beseech you, Mrs. Jethway,
+let any one know I ran away from home! It would ruin me with him, and
+break my heart. I will do anything for you, if you will be kind to
+me. In the name of our common womanhood, do not, I implore you, make a
+scandal of me.--Yours,
+
+'E. SWANCOURT.
+
+
+Knight turned his head wearily towards the house. The ground rose
+rapidly on nearing the shrubbery in which he stood, raising it almost to
+a level with the first floor of The Crags. Elfride's dressing-room
+lay in the salient angle in this direction, and it was lighted by two
+windows in such a position that, from Knight's standing-place, his sight
+passed through both windows, and raked the room. Elfride was there;
+she was pausing between the two windows, looking at her figure in
+the cheval-glass. She regarded herself long and attentively in front;
+turned, flung back her head, and observed the reflection over her
+shoulder.
+
+Nobody can predicate as to her object or fancy; she may have done the
+deed in the very abstraction of deep sadness. She may have been moaning
+from the bottom of her heart, 'How unhappy am I!' But the impression
+produced on Knight was not a good one. He dropped his eyes moodily. The
+dead woman's letter had a virtue in the accident of its juncture far
+beyond any it intrinsically exhibited. Circumstance lent to evil words a
+ring of pitiless justice echoing from the grave. Knight could not endure
+their possession. He tore the letter into fragments.
+
+He heard a brushing among the bushes behind, and turning his head he saw
+Elfride following him. The fair girl looked in his face with a wistful
+smile of hope, too forcedly hopeful to displace the firmly established
+dread beneath it. His severe words of the previous night still sat heavy
+upon her.
+
+'I saw you from my window, Harry,' she said timidly.
+
+'The dew will make your feet wet,' he observed, as one deaf.
+
+'I don't mind it.'
+
+'There is danger in getting wet feet.'
+
+'Yes...Harry, what is the matter?'
+
+'Oh, nothing. Shall I resume the serious conversation I had with you
+last night? No, perhaps not; perhaps I had better not.'
+
+'Oh, I cannot tell! How wretched it all is! Ah, I wish you were your own
+dear self again, and had kissed me when I came up! Why didn't you ask me
+for one? why don't you now?'
+
+'Too free in manner by half,' he heard murmur the voice within him.
+
+'It was that hateful conversation last night,' she went on. 'Oh, those
+words! Last night was a black night for me.'
+
+'Kiss!--I hate that word! Don't talk of kissing, for God's sake! I
+should think you might with advantage have shown tact enough to keep
+back that word "kiss," considering those you have accepted.'
+
+She became very pale, and a rigid and desolate charactery took
+possession of her face. That face was so delicate and tender in
+appearance now, that one could fancy the pressure of a finger upon it
+would cause a livid spot.
+
+Knight walked on, and Elfride with him, silent and unopposing. He opened
+a gate, and they entered a path across a stubble-field.
+
+'Perhaps I intrude upon you?' she said as he closed the gate. 'Shall I
+go away?'
+
+'No. Listen to me, Elfride.' Knight's voice was low and unequal.
+'I have been honest with you: will you be so with me? If
+any--strange--connection has existed between yourself and a predecessor
+of mine, tell it now. It is better that I know it now, even though the
+knowledge should part us, than that I should discover it in time to
+come. And suspicions have been awakened in me. I think I will not say
+how, because I despise the means. A discovery of any mystery of your
+past would embitter our lives.'
+
+Knight waited with a slow manner of calmness. His eyes were sad and
+imperative. They went farther along the path.
+
+'Will you forgive me if I tell you all?' she exclaimed entreatingly.
+
+'I can't promise; so much depends upon what you have to tell.'
+
+Elfride could not endure the silence which followed.
+
+'Are you not going to love me?' she burst out. 'Harry, Harry, love me,
+and speak as usual! Do; I beseech you, Harry!'
+
+'Are you going to act fairly by me?' said Knight, with rising anger; 'or
+are you not? What have I done to you that I should be put off like this?
+Be caught like a bird in a springe; everything intended to be hidden
+from me! Why is it, Elfride? That's what I ask you.'
+
+In their agitation they had left the path, and were wandering among the
+wet and obstructive stubble, without knowing or heeding it.
+
+'What have I done?' she faltered.
+
+'What? How can you ask what, when you know so well? You KNOW that I have
+designedly been kept in ignorance of something attaching to you, which,
+had I known of it, might have altered all my conduct; and yet you say,
+what?'
+
+She drooped visibly, and made no answer.
+
+'Not that I believe in malicious letter-writers and whisperers; not I.
+I don't know whether I do or don't: upon my soul, I can't tell. I know
+this: a religion was building itself upon you in my heart. I looked
+into your eyes, and thought I saw there truth and innocence as pure and
+perfect as ever embodied by God in the flesh of woman. Perfect truth is
+too much to expect, but ordinary truth I WILL HAVE or nothing at all.
+Just say, then; is the matter you keep back of the gravest importance,
+or is it not?'
+
+'I don't understand all your meaning. If I have hidden anything from
+you, it has been because I loved you so, and I feared--feared--to lose
+you.'
+
+'Since you are not given to confidence, I want to ask you some plain
+questions. Have I your permission?'
+
+'Yes,' she said, and there came over her face a weary resignation. 'Say
+the harshest words you can; I will bear them!'
+
+'There is a scandal in the air concerning you, Elfride; and I cannot
+even combat it without knowing definitely what it is. It may not refer
+to you entirely, or even at all.' Knight trifled in the very bitterness
+of his feeling. 'In the time of the French Revolution, Pariseau, a
+ballet-master, was beheaded by mistake for Parisot, a captain of
+the King's Guard. I wish there was another "E. Swancourt" in the
+neighbourhood. Look at this.'
+
+He handed her the letter she had written and left on the table at Mrs.
+Jethway's. She looked over it vacantly.
+
+'It is not so much as it seems!' she pleaded. 'It seems wickedly
+deceptive to look at now, but it had a much more natural origin than you
+think. My sole wish was not to endanger our love. O Harry! that was all
+my idea. It was not much harm.'
+
+'Yes, yes; but independently of the poor miserable creature's remarks,
+it seems to imply--something wrong.'
+
+'What remarks?'
+
+'Those she wrote me--now torn to pieces. Elfride, DID you run away
+with a man you loved?--that was the damnable statement. Has such an
+accusation life in it--really, truly, Elfride?'
+
+'Yes,' she whispered.
+
+Knight's countenance sank. 'To be married to him?' came huskily from his
+lips.
+
+'Yes. Oh, forgive me! I had never seen you, Harry.'
+
+'To London?'
+
+'Yes; but I----'
+
+'Answer my questions; say nothing else, Elfride Did you ever
+deliberately try to marry him in secret?'
+
+'No; not deliberately.'
+
+'But did you do it?'
+
+A feeble red passed over her face.
+
+'Yes,' she said.
+
+'And after that--did you--write to him as your husband; and did he
+address you as his wife?'
+
+'Listen, listen! It was----'
+
+'Do answer me; only answer me!'
+
+'Then, yes, we did.' Her lips shook; but it was with some little dignity
+that she continued: 'I would gladly have told you; for I knew and know I
+had done wrong. But I dared not; I loved you too well. Oh, so well! You
+have been everything in the world to me--and you are now. Will you not
+forgive me?'
+
+It is a melancholy thought, that men who at first will not allow the
+verdict of perfection they pronounce upon their sweethearts or wives
+to be disturbed by God's own testimony to the contrary, will, once
+suspecting their purity, morally hang them upon evidence they would be
+ashamed to admit in judging a dog.
+
+The reluctance to tell, which arose from Elfride's simplicity in
+thinking herself so much more culpable than she really was, had been
+doing fatal work in Knight's mind. The man of many ideas, now that
+his first dream of impossible things was over, vibrated too far in
+the contrary direction; and her every movement of feature--every
+tremor--every confused word--was taken as so much proof of her
+unworthiness.
+
+'Elfride, we must bid good-bye to compliment,' said Knight: 'we must
+do without politeness now. Look in my face, and as you believe in God
+above, tell me truly one thing more. Were you away alone with him?'
+
+'Yes.'
+
+'Did you return home the same day on which you left it?'
+
+'No.'
+
+The word fell like a bolt, and the very land and sky seemed to suffer.
+Knight turned aside. Meantime Elfride's countenance wore a look
+indicating utter despair of being able to explain matters so that they
+would seem no more than they really were,--a despair which not only
+relinquishes the hope of direct explanation, but wearily gives up all
+collateral chances of extenuation.
+
+The scene was engraved for years on the retina of Knight's eye: the
+dead and brown stubble, the weeds among it, the distant belt of beeches
+shutting out the view of the house, the leaves of which were now red and
+sick to death.
+
+'You must forget me,' he said. 'We shall not marry, Elfride.'
+
+How much anguish passed into her soul at those words from him was told
+by the look of supreme torture she wore.
+
+'What meaning have you, Harry? You only say so, do you?'
+
+She looked doubtingly up at him, and tried to laugh, as if the unreality
+of his words must be unquestionable.
+
+'You are not in earnest, I know--I hope you are not? Surely I belong to
+you, and you are going to keep me for yours?'
+
+'Elfride, I have been speaking too roughly to you; I have said what I
+ought only to have thought. I like you; and let me give you a word of
+advice. Marry your man as soon as you can. However weary of each other
+you may feel, you belong to each other, and I am not going to step
+between you. Do you think I would--do you think I could for a moment? If
+you cannot marry him now, and another makes you his wife, do not reveal
+this secret to him after marriage, if you do not before. Honesty would
+be damnation then.'
+
+Bewildered by his expressions, she exclaimed--
+
+'No, no; I will not be a wife unless I am yours; and I must be yours!'
+
+'If we had married----'
+
+'But you don't MEAN--that--that--you will go away and leave me, and not
+be anything more to me--oh, you don't!'
+
+Convulsive sobs took all nerve out of her utterance. She checked them,
+and continued to look in his face for the ray of hope that was not to be
+found there.
+
+'I am going indoors,' said Knight. 'You will not follow me, Elfride; I
+wish you not to.'
+
+'Oh no; indeed, I will not.'
+
+'And then I am going to Castle Boterel. Good-bye.'
+
+He spoke the farewell as if it were but for the day--lightly, as he had
+spoken such temporary farewells many times before--and she seemed to
+understand it as such. Knight had not the power to tell her plainly that
+he was going for ever; he hardly knew for certain that he was: whether
+he should rush back again upon the current of an irresistible emotion,
+or whether he could sufficiently conquer himself, and her in him, to
+establish that parting as a supreme farewell, and present himself to the
+world again as no woman's.
+
+Ten minutes later he had left the house, leaving directions that if he
+did not return in the evening his luggage was to be sent to his chambers
+in London, whence he intended to write to Mr. Swancourt as to the
+reasons of his sudden departure. He descended the valley, and could not
+forbear turning his head. He saw the stubble-field, and a slight girlish
+figure in the midst of it--up against the sky. Elfride, docile as ever,
+had hardly moved a step, for he had said, Remain. He looked and saw her
+again--he saw her for weeks and months. He withdrew his eyes from
+the scene, swept his hand across them, as if to brush away the sight,
+breathed a low groan, and went on.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XXXV
+
+     'And wilt thou leave me thus?--say nay--say nay!'
+
+
+The scene shifts to Knight's chambers in Bede's Inn. It was late in the
+evening of the day following his departure from Endelstow. A drizzling
+rain descended upon London, forming a humid and dreary halo over every
+well-lighted street. The rain had not yet been prevalent long enough to
+give to rapid vehicles that clear and distinct rattle which follows
+the thorough washing of the stones by a drenching rain, but was just
+sufficient to make footway and roadway slippery, adhesive, and clogging
+to both feet and wheels.
+
+Knight was standing by the fire, looking into its expiring embers,
+previously to emerging from his door for a dreary journey home to
+Richmond. His hat was on, and the gas turned off. The blind of the
+window overlooking the alley was not drawn down; and with the light from
+beneath, which shone over the ceiling of the room, came, in place of the
+usual babble, only the reduced clatter and quick speech which were the
+result of necessity rather than choice.
+
+Whilst he thus stood, waiting for the expiration of the few minutes that
+were wanting to the time for his catching the train, a light tapping
+upon the door mingled with the other sounds that reached his ears. It
+was so faint at first that the outer noises were almost sufficient to
+drown it. Finding it repeated Knight crossed the lobby, crowded with
+books and rubbish, and opened the door.
+
+A woman, closely muffled up, but visibly of fragile build, was standing
+on the landing under the gaslight. She sprang forward, flung her arms
+round Knight's neck, and uttered a low cry--
+
+'O Harry, Harry, you are killing me! I could not help coming. Don't send
+me away--don't! Forgive your Elfride for coming--I love you so!'
+
+Knight's agitation and astonishment mastered him for a few moments.
+
+'Elfride!' he cried, 'what does this mean? What have you done?'
+
+'Do not hurt me and punish me--Oh, do not! I couldn't help coming; it
+was killing me. Last night, when you did not come back, I could not bear
+it--I could not! Only let me be with you, and see your face, Harry; I
+don't ask for more.'
+
+Her eyelids were hot, heavy, and thick with excessive weeping, and
+the delicate rose-red of her cheeks was disfigured and inflamed by the
+constant chafing of the handkerchief in wiping her many tears.
+
+'Who is with you? Have you come alone?' he hurriedly inquired.
+
+'Yes. When you did not come last night, I sat up hoping you would
+come--and the night was all agony--and I waited on and on, and you did
+not come! Then when it was morning, and your letter said you were gone,
+I could not endure it; and I ran away from them to St. Launce's, and
+came by the train. And I have been all day travelling to you, and you
+won't make me go away again, will you, Harry, because I shall always
+love you till I die?'
+
+'Yet it is wrong for you to stay. O Elfride! what have you committed
+yourself to? It is ruin to your good name to run to me like this!
+Has not your first experience been sufficient to keep you from these
+things?'
+
+'My name! Harry, I shall soon die, and what good will my name be to me
+then? Oh, could I but be the man and you the woman, I would not leave
+you for such a little fault as mine! Do not think it was so vile a thing
+in me to run away with him. Ah, how I wish you could have run away with
+twenty women before you knew me, that I might show you I would think it
+no fault, but be glad to get you after them all, so that I had you! If
+you only knew me through and through, how true I am, Harry. Cannot I be
+yours? Say you love me just the same, and don't let me be separated from
+you again, will you? I cannot bear it--all the long hours and days and
+nights going on, and you not there, but away because you hate me!'
+
+'Not hate you, Elfride,' he said gently, and supported her with his arm.
+'But you cannot stay here now--just at present, I mean.'
+
+'I suppose I must not--I wish I might. I am afraid that if--you lose
+sight of me--something dark will happen, and we shall not meet again.
+Harry, if I am not good enough to be your wife, I wish I could be your
+servant and live with you, and not be sent away never to see you again.
+I don't mind what it is except that!'
+
+'No, I cannot send you away: I cannot. God knows what dark future may
+arise out of this evening's work; but I cannot send you away! You must
+sit down, and I will endeavour to collect my thoughts and see what had
+better be done.
+
+At that moment a loud knocking at the house door was heard by both,
+accompanied by a hurried ringing of the bell that echoed from attic to
+basement. The door was quickly opened, and after a few hasty words of
+converse in the hall, heavy footsteps ascended the stairs.
+
+The face of Mr. Swancourt, flushed, grieved, and stern, appeared round
+the landing of the staircase. He came higher up, and stood beside them.
+Glancing over and past Knight with silent indignation, he turned to the
+trembling girl.
+
+'O Elfride! and have I found you at last? Are these your tricks, madam?
+When will you get rid of your idiocies, and conduct yourself like a
+decent woman? Is my family name and house to be disgraced by acts that
+would be a scandal to a washerwoman's daughter? Come along, madam;
+come!'
+
+'She is so weary!' said Knight, in a voice of intensest anguish. 'Mr.
+Swancourt, don't be harsh with her--let me beg of you to be tender with
+her, and love her!'
+
+'To you, sir,' said Mr. Swancourt, turning to him as if by the sheer
+pressure of circumstances, 'I have little to say. I can only remark,
+that the sooner I can retire from your presence the better I shall be
+pleased. Why you could not conduct your courtship of my daughter like an
+honest man, I do not know. Why she--a foolish inexperienced girl--should
+have been tempted to this piece of folly, I do not know. Even if she
+had not known better than to leave her home, you might have, I should
+think.'
+
+'It is not his fault: he did not tempt me, papa! I came.'
+
+'If you wished the marriage broken off, why didn't you say so plainly?
+If you never intended to marry, why could you not leave her alone? Upon
+my soul, it grates me to the heart to be obliged to think so ill of a
+man I thought my friend!'
+
+Knight, soul-sick and weary of his life, did not arouse himself to utter
+a word in reply. How should he defend himself when his defence was the
+accusation of Elfride? On that account he felt a miserable satisfaction
+in letting her father go on thinking and speaking wrongfully. It was a
+faint ray of pleasure straying into the great gloominess of his brain to
+think that the vicar might never know but that he, as her lover, tempted
+her away, which seemed to be the form Mr. Swancourt's misapprehension
+had taken.
+
+'Now, are you coming?' said Mr. Swancourt to her again. He took her
+unresisting hand, drew it within his arm, and led her down the stairs.
+Knight's eyes followed her, the last moment begetting in him a frantic
+hope that she would turn her head. She passed on, and never looked back.
+
+He heard the door open--close again. The wheels of a cab grazed the
+kerbstone, a murmured direction followed. The door was slammed together,
+the wheels moved, and they rolled away.
+
+
+From that hour of her reappearance a dreadful conflict raged within
+the breast of Henry Knight. His instinct, emotion, affectiveness--or
+whatever it may be called--urged him to stand forward, seize upon
+Elfride, and be her cherisher and protector through life. Then came
+the devastating thought that Elfride's childlike, unreasoning, and
+indiscreet act in flying to him only proved that the proprieties must be
+a dead letter with her; that the unreserve, which was really artlessness
+without ballast, meant indifference to decorum; and what so likely as
+that such a woman had been deceived in the past? He said to himself,
+in a mood of the bitterest cynicism: 'The suspicious discreet woman who
+imagines dark and evil things of all her fellow-creatures is far too
+shrewd to be deluded by man: trusting beings like Elfride are the women
+who fall.'
+
+Hours and days went by, and Knight remained inactive. Lengthening
+time, which made fainter the heart-awakening power of her presence,
+strengthened the mental ability to reason her down. Elfride loved him,
+he knew, and he could not leave off loving her but marry her he would
+not. If she could but be again his own Elfride--the woman she had seemed
+to be--but that woman was dead and buried, and he knew her no more! And
+how could he marry this Elfride, one who, if he had originally seen her
+as she was, would have been barely an interesting pitiable acquaintance
+in his eyes--no more?
+
+It cankered his heart to think he was confronted by the closest instance
+of a worse state of things than any he had assumed in the pleasant
+social philosophy and satire of his essays.
+
+The moral rightness of this man's life was worthy of all praise; but in
+spite of some intellectual acumen, Knight had in him a modicum of that
+wrongheadedness which is mostly found in scrupulously honest people.
+With him, truth seemed too clean and pure an abstraction to be so
+hopelessly churned in with error as practical persons find it. Having
+now seen himself mistaken in supposing Elfride to be peerless, nothing
+on earth could make him believe she was not so very bad after all.
+
+He lingered in town a fortnight, doing little else than vibrate between
+passion and opinions. One idea remained intact--that it was better
+Elfride and himself should not meet.
+
+When he surveyed the volumes on his shelves--few of which had been
+opened since Elfride first took possession of his heart--their untouched
+and orderly arrangement reproached him as an apostate from the old faith
+of his youth and early manhood. He had deserted those never-failing
+friends, so they seemed to say, for an unstable delight in a ductile
+woman, which had ended all in bitterness. The spirit of self-denial,
+verging on asceticism, which had ever animated Knight in old times,
+announced itself as having departed with the birth of love, with it
+having gone the self-respect which had compensated for the lack
+of self-gratification. Poor little Elfride, instead of holding,
+as formerly, a place in his religion, began to assume the hue of a
+temptation. Perhaps it was human and correctly natural that Knight
+never once thought whether he did not owe her a little sacrifice for her
+unchary devotion in saving his life.
+
+With a consciousness of having thus, like Antony, kissed away kingdoms
+and provinces, he next considered how he had revealed his higher secrets
+and intentions to her, an unreserve he would never have allowed himself
+with any man living. How was it that he had not been able to refrain
+from telling her of adumbrations heretofore locked in the closest
+strongholds of his mind?
+
+Knight's was a robust intellect, which could escape outside the
+atmosphere of heart, and perceive that his own love, as well as other
+people's, could be reduced by change of scene and circumstances. At the
+same time the perception was a superimposed sorrow:
+
+
+      'O last regret, regret can die!'
+
+
+But being convinced that the death of this regret was the best thing for
+him, he did not long shrink from attempting it. He closed his chambers,
+suspended his connection with editors, and left London for the
+Continent. Here we will leave him to wander without purpose, beyond the
+nominal one of encouraging obliviousness of Elfride.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XXXVI
+
+     'The pennie's the jewel that beautifies a'.'
+
+
+'I can't think what's coming to these St. Launce's people at all at
+all.'
+
+'With their "How-d'ye-do's," do you mean?'
+
+'Ay, with their "How-d'ye-do's," and shaking of hands, asking me in, and
+tender inquiries for you, John.'
+
+These words formed part of a conversation between John Smith and
+his wife on a Saturday evening in the spring which followed Knight's
+departure from England. Stephen had long since returned to India; and
+the persevering couple themselves had migrated from Lord Luxellian's
+park at Endelstow to a comfortable roadside dwelling about a mile out of
+St. Launce's, where John had opened a small stone and slate yard in his
+own name.
+
+'When we came here six months ago,' continued Mrs. Smith, 'though I
+had paid ready money so many years in the town, my friskier shopkeepers
+would only speak over the counter. Meet 'em in the street half-an-hour
+after, and they'd treat me with staring ignorance of my face.'
+
+'Look through ye as through a glass winder?'
+
+'Yes, the brazen ones would. The quiet and cool ones would glance over
+the top of my head, past my side, over my shoulder, but never meet my
+eye. The gentle-modest would turn their faces south if I were coming
+east, flit down a passage if I were about to halve the pavement with
+them. There was the spruce young bookseller would play the same tricks;
+the butcher's daughters; the upholsterer's young men. Hand in glove
+when doing business out of sight with you; but caring nothing for a' old
+woman when playing the genteel away from all signs of their trade.'
+
+'True enough, Maria.'
+
+'Well, to-day 'tis all different. I'd no sooner got to market than Mrs.
+Joakes rushed up to me in the eyes of the town and said, "My dear Mrs.
+Smith, now you must be tired with your walk! Come in and have some
+lunch! I insist upon it; knowing you so many years as I have! Don't you
+remember when we used to go looking for owls' feathers together in the
+Castle ruins?" There's no knowing what you may need, so I answered the
+woman civilly. I hadn't got to the corner before that thriving young
+lawyer, Sweet, who's quite the dandy, ran after me out of breath. "Mrs.
+Smith," he says, "excuse my rudeness, but there's a bramble on the tail
+of your dress, which you've dragged in from the country; allow me to
+pull it off for you." If you'll believe me, this was in the very front
+of the Town Hall. What's the meaning of such sudden love for a' old
+woman?'
+
+'Can't say; unless 'tis repentance.'
+
+'Repentance! was there ever such a fool as you. John? Did anybody ever
+repent with money in's pocket and fifty years to live?'
+
+'Now, I've been thinking too,' said John, passing over the query as
+hardly pertinent, 'that I've had more loving-kindness from folks to-day
+than I ever have before since we moved here. Why, old Alderman Tope
+walked out to the middle of the street where I was, to shake hands with
+me--so 'a did. Having on my working clothes, I thought 'twas odd. Ay,
+and there was young Werrington.'
+
+'Who's he?'
+
+'Why, the man in Hill Street, who plays and sells flutes, trumpets, and
+fiddles, and grand pehanners. He was talking to Egloskerry, that very
+small bachelor-man with money in the funds. I was going by, I'm sure,
+without thinking or expecting a nod from men of that glib kidney when in
+my working clothes----'
+
+'You always will go poking into town in your working clothes. Beg you to
+change how I will, 'tis no use.'
+
+'Well, however, I was in my working clothes. Werrington saw me. "Ah, Mr.
+Smith! a fine morning; excellent weather for building," says he, out as
+loud and friendly as if I'd met him in some deep hollow, where he could
+get nobody else to speak to at all. 'Twas odd: for Werrington is one of
+the very ringleaders of the fast class.'
+
+At that moment a tap came to the door. The door was immediately opened
+by Mrs. Smith in person.
+
+'You'll excuse us, I'm sure, Mrs. Smith, but this beautiful spring
+weather was too much for us. Yes, and we could stay in no longer; and I
+took Mrs. Trewen upon my arm directly we'd had a cup of tea, and out we
+came. And seeing your beautiful crocuses in such a bloom, we've taken
+the liberty to enter. We'll step round the garden, if you don't mind.'
+
+'Not at all,' said Mrs. Smith; and they walked round the garden.
+She lifted her hands in amazement directly their backs were turned.
+'Goodness send us grace!'
+
+'Who be they?' said her husband.
+
+'Actually Mr. Trewen, the bank-manager, and his wife.'
+
+John Smith, staggered in mind, went out of doors and looked over the
+garden gate, to collect his ideas. He had not been there two minutes
+when wheels were heard, and a carriage and pair rolled along the road.
+A distinguished-looking lady, with the demeanour of a duchess, reclined
+within. When opposite Smith's gate she turned her head, and instantly
+commanded the coachman to stop.
+
+'Ah, Mr. Smith, I am glad to see you looking so well. I could not help
+stopping a moment to congratulate you and Mrs. Smith upon the happiness
+you must enjoy. Joseph, you may drive on.'
+
+And the carriage rolled away towards St. Launce's.
+
+Out rushed Mrs. Smith from behind a laurel-bush, where she had stood
+pondering.
+
+'Just going to touch my hat to her,' said John; 'just for all the world
+as I would have to poor Lady Luxellian years ago.'
+
+'Lord! who is she?'
+
+'The public-house woman--what's her name? Mrs.--Mrs.--at the Falcon.'
+
+'Public-house woman. The clumsiness of the Smith family! You MIGHT say
+the landlady of the Falcon Hotel, since we are in for politeness. The
+people are ridiculous enough, but give them their due.'
+
+The possibility is that Mrs. Smith was getting mollified, in spite of
+herself, by these remarkably friendly phenomena among the people of St.
+Launce's. And in justice to them it was quite desirable that she should
+do so. The interest which the unpractised ones of this town expressed so
+grotesquely was genuine of its kind, and equal in intrinsic worth to the
+more polished smiles of larger communities.
+
+By this time Mr. and Mrs. Trewen were returning from the garden.
+
+'I'll ask 'em flat,' whispered John to his wife. 'I'll say, "We be in a
+fog--you'll excuse my asking a question, Mr. and Mrs. Trewen. How is it
+you all be so friendly to-day?" Hey? 'Twould sound right and sensible,
+wouldn't it?'
+
+'Not a word! Good mercy, when will the man have manners!'
+
+'It must be a proud moment for you, I am sure, Mr. and Mrs. Smith, to
+have a son so celebrated,' said the bank-manager advancing.
+
+'Ah, 'tis Stephen--I knew it!' said Mrs. Smith triumphantly to herself.
+
+'We don't know particulars,' said John.
+
+'Not know!'
+
+'No.'
+
+'Why, 'tis all over town. Our worthy Mayor alluded to it in a speech at
+the dinner last night of the Every-Man-his-own-Maker Club.'
+
+'And what about Stephen?' urged Mrs. Smith.
+
+'Why, your son has been feted by deputy-governors and Parsee princes
+and nobody-knows-who in India; is hand in glove with nabobs, and is to
+design a large palace, and cathedral, and hospitals, colleges, halls,
+and fortifications, by the general consent of the ruling powers,
+Christian and Pagan alike.'
+
+''Twas sure to come to the boy,' said Mr. Smith unassumingly.
+
+''Tis in yesterday's St. Launce's Chronicle; and our worthy Mayor in the
+chair introduced the subject into his speech last night in a masterly
+manner.'
+
+''Twas very good of the worthy Mayor in the chair I'm sure,' said
+Stephen's mother. 'I hope the boy will have the sense to keep what he's
+got; but as for men, they are a simple sex. Some woman will hook him.'
+
+'Well, Mr. and Mrs. Smith, the evening closes in, and we must be going;
+and remember this, that every Saturday when you come in to market, you
+are to make our house as your own. There will be always a tea-cup and
+saucer for you, as you know there has been for months, though you may
+have forgotten it. I'm a plain-speaking woman, and what I say I mean.'
+
+When the visitors were gone, and the sun had set, and the moon's rays
+were just beginning to assert themselves upon the walls of the dwelling,
+John Smith and his wife sat dawn to the newspaper they had hastily
+procured from the town. And when the reading was done, they considered
+how best to meet the new social requirements settling upon them,
+which Mrs. Smith considered could be done by new furniture and house
+enlargement alone.
+
+'And, John, mind one thing,' she said in conclusion. 'In writing to
+Stephen, never by any means mention the name of Elfride Swancourt again.
+We've left the place, and know no more about her except by hearsay. He
+seems to be getting free of her, and glad am I for it. It was a cloudy
+hour for him when he first set eyes upon the girl. That family's been no
+good to him, first or last; so let them keep their blood to themselves
+if they want to. He thinks of her, I know, but not so hopelessly. So
+don't try to know anything about her, and we can't answer his questions.
+She may die out of his mind then.'
+
+'That shall be it,' said John.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XXXVII
+
+     'After many days.'
+
+
+Knight roamed south, under colour of studying Continental antiquities.
+
+He paced the lofty aisles of Amiens, loitered by Ardennes Abbey, climbed
+into the strange towers of Laon, analyzed Noyon and Rheims. Then he went
+to Chartres, and examined its scaly spires and quaint carving then he
+idled about Coutances. He rowed beneath the base of Mont St. Michel, and
+caught the varied skyline of the crumbling edifices encrusting it.
+St. Ouen's, Rouen, knew him for days; so did Vezelay, Sens, and many a
+hallowed monument besides. Abandoning the inspection of early French art
+with the same purposeless haste as he had shown in undertaking it, he
+went further, and lingered about Ferrara, Padua, and Pisa. Satiated with
+mediaevalism, he tried the Roman Forum. Next he observed moonlight and
+starlight effects by the bay of Naples. He turned to Austria, became
+enervated and depressed on Hungarian and Bohemian plains, and was
+refreshed again by breezes on the declivities of the Carpathians.
+
+Then he found himself in Greece. He visited the plain of Marathon, and
+strove to imagine the Persian defeat; to Mars Hill, to picture St. Paul
+addressing the ancient Athenians; to Thermopylae and Salamis, to run
+through the facts and traditions of the Second Invasion--the result of
+his endeavours being more or less chaotic. Knight grew as weary of these
+places as of all others. Then he felt the shock of an earthquake in the
+Ionian Islands, and went to Venice. Here he shot in gondolas up and down
+the winding thoroughfare of the Grand Canal, and loitered on calle and
+piazza at night, when the lagunes were undisturbed by a ripple, and no
+sound was to be heard but the stroke of the midnight clock. Afterwards
+he remained for weeks in the museums, galleries, and libraries of
+Vienna, Berlin, and Paris; and thence came home.
+
+Time thus rolls us on to a February afternoon, divided by fifteen months
+from the parting of Elfride and her lover in the brown stubble field
+towards the sea.
+
+Two men obviously not Londoners, and with a touch of foreignness in
+their look, met by accident on one of the gravel walks leading across
+Hyde Park. The younger, more given to looking about him than his fellow,
+saw and noticed the approach of his senior some time before the latter
+had raised his eyes from the ground, upon which they were bent in an
+abstracted gaze that seemed habitual with him.
+
+'Mr. Knight--indeed it is!' exclaimed the younger man.
+
+'Ah, Stephen Smith!' said Knight.
+
+Simultaneous operations might now have been observed progressing in
+both, the result being that an expression less frank and impulsive than
+the first took possession of their features. It was manifest that the
+next words uttered were a superficial covering to constraint on both
+sides.
+
+'Have you been in England long?' said Knight.
+
+'Only two days,' said Smith.
+
+'India ever since?'
+
+'Nearly ever since.'
+
+'They were making a fuss about you at St. Launce's last year. I fancy I
+saw something of the sort in the papers.'
+
+'Yes; I believe something was said about me.'
+
+'I must congratulate you on your achievements.'
+
+'Thanks, but they are nothing very extraordinary. A natural professional
+progress where there was no opposition.'
+
+There followed that want of words which will always assert itself
+between nominal friends who find they have ceased to be real ones, and
+have not yet sunk to the level of mere acquaintance. Each looked up
+and down the Park. Knight may possibly have borne in mind during the
+intervening months Stephen's manner towards him the last time they had
+met, and may have encouraged his former interest in Stephen's welfare to
+die out of him as misplaced. Stephen certainly was full of the feelings
+begotten by the belief that Knight had taken away the woman he loved so
+well.
+
+Stephen Smith then asked a question, adopting a certain recklessness of
+manner and tone to hide, if possible, the fact that the subject was a
+much greater one to him than his friend had ever supposed.
+
+'Are you married?'
+
+'I am not.'
+
+Knight spoke in an indescribable tone of bitterness that was almost
+moroseness.
+
+'And I never shall be,' he added decisively. 'Are you?'
+
+'No,' said Stephen, sadly and quietly, like a man in a sick-room.
+Totally ignorant whether or not Knight knew of his own previous claims
+upon Elfride, he yet resolved to hazard a few more words upon the topic
+which had an aching fascination for him even now.
+
+'Then your engagement to Miss Swancourt came to nothing,' he said. 'You
+remember I met you with her once?'
+
+Stephen's voice gave way a little here, in defiance of his firmest will
+to the contrary. Indian affairs had not yet lowered those emotions down
+to the point of control.
+
+'It was broken off,' came quickly from Knight. 'Engagements to marry
+often end like that--for better or for worse.'
+
+'Yes; so they do. And what have you been doing lately?'
+
+'Doing? Nothing.'
+
+'Where have you been?'
+
+'I can hardly tell you. In the main, going about Europe; and it may
+perhaps interest you to know that I have been attempting the serious
+study of Continental art of the Middle Ages. My notes on each example I
+visited are at your service. They are of no use to me.'
+
+'I shall be glad with them....Oh, travelling far and near!'
+
+'Not far,' said Knight, with moody carelessness. 'You know, I daresay,
+that sheep occasionally become giddy--hydatids in the head, 'tis called,
+in which their brains become eaten up, and the animal exhibits the
+strange peculiarity of walking round and round in a circle continually.
+I have travelled just in the same way--round and round like a giddy
+ram.'
+
+The reckless, bitter, and rambling style in which Knight talked, as if
+rather to vent his images than to convey any ideas to Stephen, struck
+the young man painfully. His former friend's days had become cankered in
+some way: Knight was a changed man. He himself had changed much, but not
+as Knight had changed.
+
+'Yesterday I came home,' continued Knight, 'without having, to the best
+of my belief, imbibed half-a-dozen ideas worth retaining.'
+
+'You out-Hamlet Hamlet in morbidness of mood,' said Stephen, with
+regretful frankness.
+
+Knight made no reply.
+
+'Do you know,' Stephen continued, 'I could almost have sworn that you
+would be married before this time, from what I saw?'
+
+Knight's face grew harder. 'Could you?' he said.
+
+Stephen was powerless to forsake the depressing, luring subject.
+
+'Yes; and I simply wonder at it.'
+
+'Whom did you expect me to marry?'
+
+'Her I saw you with.'
+
+'Thank you for that wonder.'
+
+'Did she jilt you?'
+
+'Smith, now one word to you,' Knight returned steadily. 'Don't you ever
+question me on that subject. I have a reason for making this request,
+mind. And if you do question me, you will not get an answer.'
+
+'Oh, I don't for a moment wish to ask what is unpleasant to you--not I.
+I had a momentary feeling that I should like to explain something on my
+side, and hear a similar explanation on yours. But let it go, let it go,
+by all means.'
+
+'What would you explain?'
+
+'I lost the woman I was going to marry: you have not married as you
+intended. We might have compared notes.'
+
+'I have never asked you a word about your case.'
+
+'I know that.'
+
+'And the inference is obvious.'
+
+'Quite so.'
+
+'The truth is, Stephen, I have doggedly resolved never to allude to the
+matter--for which I have a very good reason.'
+
+'Doubtless. As good a reason as you had for not marrying her.'
+
+'You talk insidiously. I had a good one--a miserably good one!'
+
+Smith's anxiety urged him to venture one more question.
+
+'Did she not love you enough?' He drew his breath in a slow and
+attenuated stream, as he waited in timorous hope for the answer.
+
+'Stephen, you rather strain ordinary courtesy in pressing questions of
+that kind after what I have said. I cannot understand you at all. I must
+go on now.'
+
+'Why, good God!' exclaimed Stephen passionately, 'you talk as if you
+hadn't at all taken her away from anybody who had better claims to her
+than you!'
+
+'What do you mean by that?' said Knight, with a puzzled air. 'What have
+you heard?'
+
+'Nothing. I too must go on. Good-day.'
+
+'If you will go,' said Knight, reluctantly now, 'you must, I suppose. I
+am sure I cannot understand why you behave so.'
+
+'Nor I why you do. I have always been grateful to you, and as far as I
+am concerned we need never have become so estranged as we have.'
+
+'And have I ever been anything but well-disposed towards you, Stephen?
+Surely you know that I have not! The system of reserve began with you:
+you know that.'
+
+'No, no! You altogether mistake our position. You were always from the
+first reserved to me, though I was confidential to you. That was, I
+suppose, the natural issue of our differing positions in life. And when
+I, the pupil, became reserved like you, the master, you did not like it.
+However, I was going to ask you to come round and see me.'
+
+'Where are you staying?'
+
+'At the Grosvenor Hotel, Pimlico.'
+
+'So am I.'
+
+'That's convenient, not to say odd. Well, I am detained in London for a
+day or two; then I am going down to see my father and mother, who live
+at St. Launce's now. Will you see me this evening?'
+
+'I may; but I will not promise. I was wishing to be alone for an hour or
+two; but I shall know where to find you, at any rate. Good-bye.'
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XXXVIII
+
+     'Jealousy is cruel as the grave.'
+
+
+Stephen pondered not a little on this meeting with his old friend and
+once-beloved exemplar. He was grieved, for amid all the distractions of
+his latter years a still small voice of fidelity to Knight had lingered
+on in him. Perhaps this staunchness was because Knight ever treated him
+as a mere disciple--even to snubbing him sometimes; and had at last,
+though unwittingly, inflicted upon him the greatest snub of all, that of
+taking away his sweetheart. The emotional side of his constitution was
+built rather after a feminine than a male model; and that tremendous
+wound from Knight's hand may have tended to keep alive a warmth which
+solicitousness would have extinguished altogether.
+
+Knight, on his part, was vexed, after they had parted, that he had not
+taken Stephen in hand a little after the old manner. Those words which
+Smith had let fall concerning somebody having a prior claim to Elfride,
+would, if uttered when the man was younger, have provoked such a query
+as, 'Come, tell me all about it, my lad,' from Knight, and Stephen would
+straightway have delivered himself of all he knew on the subject.
+
+Stephen the ingenuous boy, though now obliterated externally by Stephen
+the contriving man, returned to Knight's memory vividly that afternoon.
+He was at present but a sojourner in London; and after attending to the
+two or three matters of business which remained to be done that day, he
+walked abstractedly into the gloomy corridors of the British Museum for
+the half-hour previous to their closing. That meeting with Smith had
+reunited the present with the past, closing up the chasm of his absence
+from England as if it had never existed, until the final circumstances
+of his previous time of residence in London formed but a yesterday
+to the circumstances now. The conflict that then had raged in him
+concerning Elfride Swancourt revived, strengthened by its sleep. Indeed,
+in those many months of absence, though quelling the intention to make
+her his wife, he had never forgotten that she was the type of woman
+adapted to his nature; and instead of trying to obliterate thoughts
+of her altogether, he had grown to regard them as an infirmity it was
+necessary to tolerate.
+
+Knight returned to his hotel much earlier in the evening than he would
+have done in the ordinary course of things. He did not care to think
+whether this arose from a friendly wish to close the gap that had slowly
+been widening between himself and his earliest acquaintance, or from
+a hankering desire to hear the meaning of the dark oracles Stephen had
+hastily pronounced, betokening that he knew something more of Elfride
+than Knight had supposed.
+
+He made a hasty dinner, inquired for Smith, and soon was ushered
+into the young man's presence, whom he found sitting in front of
+a comfortable fire, beside a table spread with a few scientific
+periodicals and art reviews.
+
+'I have come to you, after all,' said Knight. 'My manner was odd this
+morning, and it seemed desirable to call; but that you had too much
+sense to notice, Stephen, I know. Put it down to my wanderings in France
+and Italy.'
+
+'Don't say another word, but sit down. I am only too glad to see you
+again.'
+
+Stephen would hardly have cared to tell Knight just then that the minute
+before Knight was announced he had been reading over some old letters
+of Elfride's. They were not many; and until to-night had been sealed
+up, and stowed away in a corner of his leather trunk, with a few other
+mementoes and relics which had accompanied him in his travels. The
+familiar sights and sounds of London, the meeting with his friend, had
+with him also revived that sense of abiding continuity with regard to
+Elfride and love which his absence at the other side of the world had to
+some extent suspended, though never ruptured. He at first intended
+only to look over these letters on the outside; then he read one; then
+another; until the whole was thus re-used as a stimulus to sad memories.
+He folded them away again, placed them in his pocket, and instead of
+going on with an examination into the state of the artistic world, had
+remained musing on the strange circumstance that he had returned to find
+Knight not the husband of Elfride after all.
+
+The possibility of any given gratification begets a cumulative sense of
+its necessity. Stephen gave the rein to his imagination, and felt more
+intensely than he had felt for many months that, without Elfride, his
+life would never be any great pleasure to himself, or honour to his
+Maker.
+
+They sat by the fire, chatting on external and random subjects, neither
+caring to be the first to approach the matter each most longed
+to discuss. On the table with the periodicals lay two or three
+pocket-books, one of them being open. Knight seeing from the exposed
+page that the contents were sketches only, began turning the leaves over
+carelessly with his finger. When, some time later, Stephen was out
+of the room, Knight proceeded to pass the interval by looking at the
+sketches more carefully.
+
+The first crude ideas, pertaining to dwellings of all kinds, were
+roughly outlined on the different pages. Antiquities had been copied;
+fragments of Indian columns, colossal statues, and outlandish ornament
+from the temples of Elephanta and Kenneri, were carelessly intruded
+upon by outlines of modern doors, windows, roofs, cooking-stoves, and
+household furniture; everything, in short, which comes within the range
+of a practising architect's experience, who travels with his eyes
+open. Among these occasionally appeared rough delineations of mediaeval
+subjects for carving or illumination--heads of Virgins, Saints, and
+Prophets.
+
+Stephen was not professedly a free-hand draughtsman, but he drew the
+human figure with correctness and skill. In its numerous repetitions on
+the sides and edges of the leaves, Knight began to notice a peculiarity.
+All the feminine saints had one type of feature. There were large nimbi
+and small nimbi about their drooping heads, but the face was always the
+same. That profile--how well Knight knew that profile!
+
+Had there been but one specimen of the familiar countenance, he might
+have passed over the resemblance as accidental; but a repetition meant
+more. Knight thought anew of Smith's hasty words earlier in the day, and
+looked at the sketches again and again.
+
+On the young man's entry, Knight said with palpable agitation--
+
+'Stephen, who are those intended for?'
+
+Stephen looked over the book with utter unconcern, 'Saints and angels,
+done in my leisure moments. They were intended as designs for the
+stained glass of an English church.'
+
+'But whom do you idealize by that type of woman you always adopt for the
+Virgin?'
+
+'Nobody.'
+
+And then a thought raced along Stephen's mind and he looked up at his
+friend.
+
+The truth is, Stephen's introduction of Elfride's lineaments had been so
+unconscious that he had not at first understood his companion's drift.
+The hand, like the tongue, easily acquires the trick of repetition by
+rote, without calling in the mind to assist at all; and this had been
+the case here. Young men who cannot write verses about their Loves
+generally take to portraying them, and in the early days of his
+attachment Smith had never been weary of outlining Elfride. The
+lay-figure of Stephen's sketches now initiated an adjustment of many
+things. Knight had recognized her. The opportunity of comparing notes
+had come unsought.
+
+'Elfride Swancourt, to whom I was engaged,' he said quietly.
+
+'Stephen!'
+
+'I know what you mean by speaking like that.'
+
+'Was it Elfride? YOU the man, Stephen?'
+
+'Yes; and you are thinking why did I conceal the fact from you that time
+at Endelstow, are you not?'
+
+'Yes, and more--more.'
+
+'I did it for the best; blame me if you will; I did it for the best. And
+now say how could I be with you afterwards as I had been before?'
+
+'I don't know at all; I can't say.'
+
+Knight remained fixed in thought, and once he murmured--
+
+'I had a suspicion this afternoon that there might be some such meaning
+in your words about my taking her away. But I dismissed it. How came you
+to know her?' he presently asked, in almost a peremptory tone.
+
+'I went down about the church; years ago now.'
+
+'When you were with Hewby, of course, of course. Well, I can't
+understand it.' His tones rose. 'I don't know what to say, your
+hoodwinking me like this for so long!'
+
+'I don't see that I have hoodwinked you at all.'
+
+'Yes, yes, but'----
+
+Knight arose from his seat, and began pacing up and down the room. His
+face was markedly pale, and his voice perturbed, as he said--
+
+'You did not act as I should have acted towards you under those
+circumstances. I feel it deeply; and I tell you plainly, I shall never
+forget it!'
+
+'What?'
+
+'Your behaviour at that meeting in the family vault, when I told you
+we were going to be married. Deception, dishonesty, everywhere; all the
+world's of a piece!'
+
+Stephen did not much like this misconstruction of his motives, even
+though it was but the hasty conclusion of a friend disturbed by emotion.
+
+'I could do no otherwise than I did, with due regard to her,' he said
+stiffly.
+
+'Indeed!' said Knight, in the bitterest tone of reproach. 'Nor could
+you with due regard to her have married her, I suppose! I have
+hoped--longed--that HE, who turns out to be YOU, would ultimately have
+done that.'
+
+'I am much obliged to you for that hope. But you talk very mysteriously.
+I think I had about the best reason anybody could have had for not doing
+that.'
+
+'Oh, what reason was it?'
+
+'That I could not.'
+
+'You ought to have made an opportunity; you ought to do so now, in bare
+justice to her, Stephen!' cried Knight, carried beyond himself. 'That
+you know very well, and it hurts and wounds me more than you dream to
+find you never have tried to make any reparation to a woman of that
+kind--so trusting, so apt to be run away with by her feelings--poor
+little fool, so much the worse for her!'
+
+'Why, you talk like a madman! You took her away from me, did you not?'
+
+'Picking up what another throws down can scarcely be called "taking
+away." However, we shall not agree too well upon that subject, so we had
+better part.'
+
+'But I am quite certain you misapprehend something most grievously,'
+said Stephen, shaken to the bottom of his heart. 'What have I done; tell
+me? I have lost Elfride, but is that such a sin?'
+
+'Was it her doing, or yours?'
+
+'Was what?'
+
+'That you parted.'
+
+'I will tell you honestly. It was hers entirely, entirely.'
+
+'What was her reason?'
+
+'I can hardly say. But I'll tell the story without reserve.'
+
+Stephen until to-day had unhesitatingly held that she grew tired of him
+and turned to Knight; but he did not like to advance the statement now,
+or even to think the thought. To fancy otherwise accorded better with
+the hope to which Knight's estrangement had given birth: that love for
+his friend was not the direct cause, but a result of her suspension of
+love for himself.
+
+'Such a matter must not be allowed to breed discord between us,' Knight
+returned, relapsing into a manner which concealed all his true feeling,
+as if confidence now was intolerable. 'I do see that your reticence
+towards me in the vault may have been dictated by prudential
+considerations.' He concluded artificially, 'It was a strange thing
+altogether; but not of much importance, I suppose, at this distance of
+time; and it does not concern me now, though I don't mind hearing your
+story.'
+
+These words from Knight, uttered with such an air of renunciation and
+apparent indifference, prompted Smith to speak on--perhaps with a
+little complacency--of his old secret engagement to Elfride. He told
+the details of its origin, and the peremptory words and actions of her
+father to extinguish their love.
+
+Knight persevered in the tone and manner of a disinterested outsider.
+It had become more than ever imperative to screen his emotions from
+Stephen's eye; the young man would otherwise be less frank, and their
+meeting would be again embittered. What was the use of untoward candour?
+
+Stephen had now arrived at the point in his ingenuous narrative where
+he left the vicarage because of her father's manner. Knight's interest
+increased. Their love seemed so innocent and childlike thus far.
+
+'It is a nice point in casuistry,' he observed, 'to decide whether you
+were culpable or not in not telling Swancourt that your friends were
+parishioners of his. It was only human nature to hold your tongue under
+the circumstances. Well, what was the result of your dismissal by him?'
+
+'That we agreed to be secretly faithful. And to insure this we thought
+we would marry.'
+
+Knight's suspense and agitation rose higher when Stephen entered upon
+this phase of the subject.
+
+'Do you mind telling on?' he said, steadying his manner of speech.
+
+'Oh, not at all.'
+
+Then Stephen gave in full the particulars of the meeting with Elfride at
+the railway station; the necessity they were under of going to London,
+unless the ceremony were to be postponed. The long journey of the
+afternoon and evening; her timidity and revulsion of feeling; its
+culmination on reaching London; the crossing over to the down-platform
+and their immediate departure again, solely in obedience to her wish;
+the journey all night; their anxious watching for the dawn; their
+arrival at St. Launce's at last--were detailed. And he told how a
+village woman named Jethway was the only person who recognized them,
+either going or coming; and how dreadfully this terrified Elfride. He
+told how he waited in the fields whilst this then reproachful sweetheart
+went for her pony, and how the last kiss he ever gave her was given a
+mile out of the town, on the way to Endelstow.
+
+These things Stephen related with a will. He believed that in doing so
+he established word by word the reasonableness of his claim to Elfride.
+
+'Curse her! curse that woman!--that miserable letter that parted us! O
+God!'
+
+Knight began pacing the room again, and uttered this at further end.
+
+'What did you say?' said Stephen, turning round.
+
+'Say? Did I say anything? Oh, I was merely thinking about your story,
+and the oddness of my having a fancy for the same woman afterwards. And
+that now I--I have forgotten her almost; and neither of us care about
+her, except just as a friend, you know, eh?'
+
+Knight still continued at the further end of the room, somewhat in
+shadow.
+
+'Exactly,' said Stephen, inwardly exultant, for he was really deceived
+by Knight's off-hand manner.
+
+Yet he was deceived less by the completeness of Knight's disguise than
+by the persuasive power which lay in the fact that Knight had never
+before deceived him in anything. So this supposition that his companion
+had ceased to love Elfride was an enormous lightening of the weight
+which had turned the scale against him.
+
+'Admitting that Elfride COULD love another man after you,' said the
+elder, under the same varnish of careless criticism, 'she was none the
+worse for that experience.'
+
+'The worse? Of course she was none the worse.'
+
+'Did you ever think it a wild and thoughtless thing for her to do?'
+
+'Indeed, I never did,' said Stephen. 'I persuaded her. She saw no harm
+in it until she decided to return, nor did I; nor was there, except to
+the extent of indiscretion.'
+
+'Directly she thought it was wrong she would go no further?'
+
+'That was it. I had just begun to think it wrong too.'
+
+'Such a childish escapade might have been misrepresented by any
+evil-disposed person, might it not?'
+
+'It might; but I never heard that it was. Nobody who really knew all the
+circumstances would have done otherwise than smile. If all the world had
+known it, Elfride would still have remained the only one who thought her
+action a sin. Poor child, she always persisted in thinking so, and was
+frightened more than enough.'
+
+'Stephen, do you love her now?'
+
+'Well, I like her; I always shall, you know,' he said evasively, and
+with all the strategy love suggested. 'But I have not seen her for so
+long that I can hardly be expected to love her. Do you love her still?'
+
+'How shall I answer without being ashamed? What fickle beings we
+men are, Stephen! Men may love strongest for a while, but women love
+longest. I used to love her--in my way, you know.'
+
+'Yes, I understand. Ah, and I used to love her in my way. In fact,
+I loved her a good deal at one time; but travel has a tendency to
+obliterate early fancies.'
+
+'It has--it has, truly.'
+
+Perhaps the most extraordinary feature in this conversation was the
+circumstance that, though each interlocutor had at first his suspicions
+of the other's abiding passion awakened by several little acts, neither
+would allow himself to see that his friend might now be speaking
+deceitfully as well as he.
+
+'Stephen.' resumed Knight, 'now that matters are smooth between us, I
+think I must leave you. You won't mind my hurrying off to my quarters?'
+
+'You'll stay to some sort of supper surely? didn't you come to dinner!'
+
+'You must really excuse me this once.'
+
+'Then you'll drop in to breakfast to-morrow.'
+
+'I shall be rather pressed for time.'
+
+'An early breakfast, which shall interfere with nothing?'
+
+'I'll come,' said Knight, with as much readiness as it was possible to
+graft upon a huge stock of reluctance. 'Yes, early; eight o'clock say,
+as we are under the same roof.'
+
+'Any time you like. Eight it shall be.'
+
+And Knight left him. To wear a mask, to dissemble his feelings as he
+had in their late miserable conversation, was such torture that he could
+support it no longer. It was the first time in Knight's life that he
+had ever been so entirely the player of a part. And the man he had thus
+deceived was Stephen, who had docilely looked up to him from youth as a
+superior of unblemished integrity.
+
+He went to bed, and allowed the fever of his excitement to rage
+uncontrolled. Stephen--it was only he who was the rival--only Stephen!
+There was an anti-climax of absurdity which Knight, wretched and
+conscience-stricken as he was, could not help recognizing. Stephen was
+but a boy to him. Where the great grief lay was in perceiving that the
+very innocence of Elfride in reading her little fault as one so grave
+was what had fatally misled him. Had Elfride, with any degree of
+coolness, asserted that she had done no harm, the poisonous breath of
+the dead Mrs. Jethway would have been inoperative. Why did he not
+make his little docile girl tell more? If on that subject he had only
+exercised the imperativeness customary with him on others, all might
+have been revealed. It smote his heart like a switch when he remembered
+how gently she had borne his scourging speeches, never answering him
+with a single reproach, only assuring him of her unbounded love.
+
+Knight blessed Elfride for her sweetness, and forgot her fault. He
+pictured with a vivid fancy those fair summer scenes with her. He
+again saw her as at their first meeting, timid at speaking, yet in her
+eagerness to be explanatory borne forward almost against her will.
+How she would wait for him in green places, without showing any of the
+ordinary womanly affectations of indifference! How proud she was to be
+seen walking with him, bearing legibly in her eyes the thought that he
+was the greatest genius in the world!
+
+He formed a resolution; and after that could make pretence of slumber no
+longer. Rising and dressing himself, he sat down and waited for day.
+
+That night Stephen was restless too. Not because of the unwontedness
+of a return to English scenery; not because he was about to meet his
+parents, and settle down for awhile to English cottage life. He was
+indulging in dreams, and for the nonce the warehouses of Bombay and the
+plains and forts of Poonah were but a shadow's shadow. His dream was
+based on this one atom of fact: Elfride and Knight had become separated,
+and their engagement was as if it had never been. Their rupture must
+have occurred soon after Stephen's discovery of the fact of their union;
+and, Stephen went on to think, what so probable as that a return of her
+errant affection to himself was the cause?
+
+Stephen's opinions in this matter were those of a lover, and not the
+balanced judgment of an unbiassed spectator. His naturally sanguine
+spirit built hope upon hope, till scarcely a doubt remained in his mind
+that her lingering tenderness for him had in some way been perceived by
+Knight, and had provoked their parting.
+
+To go and see Elfride was the suggestion of impulses it was impossible
+to withstand. At any rate, to run down from St. Launce's to Castle
+Poterel, a distance of less than twenty miles, and glide like a ghost
+about their old haunts, making stealthy inquiries about her, would be a
+fascinating way of passing the first spare hours after reaching home on
+the day after the morrow.
+
+He was now a richer man than heretofore, standing on his own bottom; and
+the definite position in which he had rooted himself nullified old local
+distinctions. He had become illustrious, even sanguine clarus, judging
+from the tone of the worthy Mayor of St. Launce's.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XXXIX
+
+     'Each to the loved one's side.'
+
+
+The friends and rivals breakfasted together the next morning. Not a word
+was said on either side upon the matter discussed the previous evening
+so glibly and so hollowly. Stephen was absorbed the greater part of the
+time in wishing he were not forced to stay in town yet another day.
+
+'I don't intend to leave for St. Launce's till to-morrow, as you know,'
+he said to Knight at the end of the meal. 'What are you going to do with
+yourself to-day?'
+
+'I have an engagement just before ten,' said Knight deliberately; 'and
+after that time I must call upon two or three people.'
+
+'I'll look for you this evening,' said Stephen.
+
+'Yes, do. You may as well come and dine with me; that is, if we can
+meet. I may not sleep in London to-night; in fact, I am absolutely
+unsettled as to my movements yet. However, the first thing I am going to
+do is to get my baggage shifted from this place to Bede's Inn. Good-bye
+for the present. I'll write, you know, if I can't meet you.'
+
+It now wanted a quarter to nine o'clock. When Knight was gone, Stephen
+felt yet more impatient of the circumstance that another day would have
+to drag itself away wearily before he could set out for that spot of
+earth whereon a soft thought of him might perhaps be nourished still. On
+a sudden he admitted to his mind the possibility that the engagement he
+was waiting in town to keep might be postponed without much harm.
+
+It was no sooner perceived than attempted. Looking at his watch, he
+found it wanted forty minutes to the departure of the ten o'clock train
+from Paddington, which left him a surplus quarter of an hour before it
+would be necessary to start for the station.
+
+Scribbling a hasty note or two--one putting off the business meeting,
+another to Knight apologizing for not being able to see him in the
+evening--paying his bill, and leaving his heavier luggage to follow
+him by goods-train, he jumped into a cab and rattled off to the Great
+Western Station.
+
+Shortly afterwards he took his seat in the railway carriage.
+
+The guard paused on his whistle, to let into the next compartment to
+Smith's a man of whom Stephen had caught but a hasty glimpse as he ran
+across the platform at the last moment.
+
+Smith sank back into the carriage, stilled by perplexity. The man was
+like Knight--astonishingly like him. Was it possible it could be he?
+To have got there he must have driven like the wind to Bede's Inn, and
+hardly have alighted before starting again. No, it could not be he; that
+was not his way of doing things.
+
+During the early part of the journey Stephen Smith's thoughts busied
+themselves till his brain seemed swollen. One subject was concerning
+his own approaching actions. He was a day earlier than his letter to
+his parents had stated, and his arrangement with them had been that
+they should meet him at Plymouth; a plan which pleased the worthy couple
+beyond expression. Once before the same engagement had been made, which
+he had then quashed by ante-dating his arrival. This time he would go
+right on to Castle Boterel; ramble in that well-known neighbourhood
+during the evening and next morning, making inquiries; and return to
+Plymouth to meet them as arranged--a contrivance which would leave their
+cherished project undisturbed, relieving his own impatience also.
+
+At Chippenham there was a little waiting, and some loosening and
+attaching of carriages.
+
+Stephen looked out. At the same moment another man's head emerged from
+the adjoining window. Each looked in the other's face.
+
+Knight and Stephen confronted one another.
+
+'You here!' said the younger man.
+
+'Yes. It seems that you are too,' said Knight, strangely.
+
+'Yes.'
+
+The selfishness of love and the cruelty of jealousy were fairly
+exemplified at this moment. Each of the two men looked at his friend
+as he had never looked at him before. Each was TROUBLED at the other's
+presence.
+
+'I thought you said you were not coming till to-morrow,' remarked
+Knight.
+
+'I did. It was an afterthought to come to-day. This journey was your
+engagement, then?'
+
+'No, it was not. This is an afterthought of mine too. I left a note to
+explain it, and account for my not being able to meet you this evening
+as we arranged.'
+
+'So did I for you.'
+
+'You don't look well: you did not this morning.'
+
+'I have a headache. You are paler to-day than you were.'
+
+'I, too, have been suffering from headache. We have to wait here a few
+minutes, I think.'
+
+They walked up and down the platform, each one more and more
+embarrassingly concerned with the awkwardness of his friend's
+presence. They reached the end of the footway, and paused in sheer
+absent-mindedness. Stephen's vacant eyes rested upon the operations of
+some porters, who were shifting a dark and curious-looking van from the
+rear of the train, to shunt another which was between it and the fore
+part of the train. This operation having been concluded, the two friends
+returned to the side of their carriage.
+
+'Will you come in here?' said Knight, not very warmly.
+
+'I have my rug and portmanteau and umbrella with me: it is rather
+bothering to move now,' said Stephen reluctantly. 'Why not you come
+here?'
+
+'I have my traps too. It is hardly worth while to shift them, for I
+shall see you again, you know.'
+
+'Oh, yes.'
+
+And each got into his own place. Just at starting, a man on the platform
+held up his hands and stopped the train.
+
+Stephen looked out to see what was the matter.
+
+One of the officials was exclaiming to another, 'That carriage should
+have been attached again. Can't you see it is for the main line? Quick!
+What fools there are in the world!'
+
+'What a confounded nuisance these stoppages are!' exclaimed Knight
+impatiently, looking out from his compartment. 'What is it?'
+
+'That singular carriage we saw has been unfastened from our train by
+mistake, it seems,' said Stephen.
+
+He was watching the process of attaching it. The van or carriage, which
+he now recognized as having seen at Paddington before they started, was
+rich and solemn rather than gloomy in aspect. It seemed to be quite
+new, and of modern design, and its impressive personality attracted the
+notice of others beside himself. He beheld it gradually wheeled forward
+by two men on each side: slower and more sadly it seemed to approach:
+then a slight concussion, and they were connected with it, and off
+again.
+
+Stephen sat all the afternoon pondering upon the reason of Knight's
+unexpected reappearance. Was he going as far as Castle Boterel? If so,
+he could only have one object in view--a visit to Elfride. And what an
+idea it seemed!
+
+At Plymouth Smith partook of a little refreshment, and then went round
+to the side from which the train started for Camelton, the new station
+near Castle Boterel and Endelstow.
+
+Knight was already there.
+
+Stephen walked up and stood beside him without speaking. Two men at this
+moment crept out from among the wheels of the waiting train.
+
+'The carriage is light enough,' said one in a grim tone. 'Light as
+vanity; full of nothing.'
+
+'Nothing in size, but a good deal in signification,' said the other, a
+man of brighter mind and manners.
+
+Smith then perceived that to their train was attached that same carriage
+of grand and dark aspect which had haunted them all the way from London.
+
+'You are going on, I suppose?' said Knight, turning to Stephen, after
+idly looking at the same object.
+
+'Yes.'
+
+'We may as well travel together for the remaining distance, may we not?'
+
+'Certainly we will;' and they both entered the same door.
+
+Evening drew on apace. It chanced to be the eve of St. Valentine's--that
+bishop of blessed memory to youthful lovers--and the sun shone low under
+the rim of a thick hard cloud, decorating the eminences of the landscape
+with crowns of orange fire. As the train changed its direction on a
+curve, the same rays stretched in through the window, and coaxed open
+Knight's half-closed eyes.
+
+'You will get out at St. Launce's, I suppose?' he murmured.
+
+'No,' said Stephen, 'I am not expected till to-morrow.' Knight was
+silent.
+
+'And you--are you going to Endelstow?' said the younger man pointedly.
+
+'Since you ask, I can do no less than say I am, Stephen,' continued
+Knight slowly, and with more resolution of manner than he had shown all
+the day. 'I am going to Endelstow to see if Elfride Swancourt is still
+free; and if so, to ask her to be my wife.'
+
+'So am I,' said Stephen Smith.
+
+'I think you'll lose your labour,' Knight returned with decision.
+
+'Naturally you do.' There was a strong accent of bitterness in Stephen's
+voice. 'You might have said HOPE instead of THINK,' he added.
+
+'I might have done no such thing. I gave you my opinion. Elfride
+Swancourt may have loved you once, no doubt, but it was when she was so
+young that she hardly knew her own mind.'
+
+'Thank you,' said Stephen laconically. 'She knew her mind as well as I
+did. We are the same age. If you hadn't interfered----'
+
+'Don't say that--don't say it, Stephen! How can you make out that I
+interfered? Be just, please!'
+
+'Well,' said his friend, 'she was mine before she was yours--you know
+that! And it seemed a hard thing to find you had got her, and that if
+it had not been for you, all might have turned out well for me.' Stephen
+spoke with a swelling heart, and looked out of the window to hide the
+emotion that would make itself visible upon his face.
+
+'It is absurd,' said Knight in a kinder tone, 'for you to look at the
+matter in that light. What I tell you is for your good. You naturally do
+not like to realize the truth--that her liking for you was only a girl's
+first fancy, which has no root ever.'
+
+'It is not true!' said Stephen passionately. 'It was you put me out. And
+now you'll be pushing in again between us, and depriving me of my chance
+again! My right, that's what it is! How ungenerous of you to come
+anew and try to take her away from me! When you had won her, I did not
+interfere; and you might, I think, Mr. Knight, do by me as I did by
+you!'
+
+'Don't "Mr." me; you are as well in the world as I am now.'
+
+'First love is deepest; and that was mine.'
+
+'Who told you that?' said Knight superciliously.
+
+'I had her first love. And it was through me that you and she parted. I
+can guess that well enough.'
+
+'It was. And if I were to explain to you in what way that operated in
+parting us, I should convince you that you do quite wrong in intruding
+upon her--that, as I said at first, your labour will be lost. I don't
+choose to explain, because the particulars are painful. But if you won't
+listen to me, go on, for Heaven's sake. I don't care what you do, my
+boy.'
+
+'You have no right to domineer over me as you do. Just because, when
+I was a lad, I was accustomed to look up to you as a master, and you
+helped me a little, for which I was grateful to you and have loved
+you, you assume too much now, and step in before me. It is cruel--it is
+unjust--of you to injure me so!'
+
+Knight showed himself keenly hurt at this. 'Stephen, those words are
+untrue and unworthy of any man, and they are unworthy of you. You know
+you wrong me. If you have ever profited by any instruction of mine, I am
+only too glad to know it. You know it was given ungrudgingly, and that I
+have never once looked upon it as making you in any way a debtor to me.'
+
+Stephen's naturally gentle nature was touched, and it was in a troubled
+voice that he said, 'Yes, yes. I am unjust in that--I own it.'
+
+'This is St. Launce's Station, I think. Are you going to get out?'
+
+Knight's manner of returning to the matter in hand drew Stephen again
+into himself. 'No; I told you I was going to Endelstow,' he resolutely
+replied.
+
+Knight's features became impassive, and he said no more. The train
+continued rattling on, and Stephen leant back in his corner and closed
+his eyes. The yellows of evening had turned to browns, the dusky
+shades thickened, and a flying cloud of dust occasionally stroked the
+window--borne upon a chilling breeze which blew from the north-east.
+The previously gilded but now dreary hills began to lose their daylight
+aspects of rotundity, and to become black discs vandyked against the
+sky, all nature wearing the cloak that six o'clock casts over the
+landscape at this time of the year.
+
+Stephen started up in bewilderment after a long stillness, and it was
+some time before he recollected himself.
+
+'Well, how real, how real!' he exclaimed, brushing his hand across his
+eyes.
+
+'What is?' said Knight.
+
+'That dream. I fell asleep for a few minutes, and have had a dream--the
+most vivid I ever remember.'
+
+He wearily looked out into the gloom. They were now drawing near to
+Camelton. The lighting of the lamps was perceptible through the veil of
+evening--each flame starting into existence at intervals, and blinking
+weakly against the gusts of wind.
+
+'What did you dream?' said Knight moodily.
+
+'Oh, nothing to be told. 'Twas a sort of incubus. There is never
+anything in dreams.'
+
+'I hardly supposed there was.'
+
+'I know that. However, what I so vividly dreamt was this, since you
+would like to hear. It was the brightest of bright mornings at East
+Endelstow Church, and you and I stood by the font. Far away in the
+chancel Lord Luxellian was standing alone, cold and impassive, and
+utterly unlike his usual self: but I knew it was he. Inside the altar
+rail stood a strange clergyman with his book open. He looked up and said
+to Lord Luxellian, "Where's the bride?" Lord Luxellian said, "There's no
+bride." At that moment somebody came in at the door, and I knew her to
+be Lady Luxellian who died. He turned and said to her, "I thought you
+were in the vault below us; but that could have only been a dream of
+mine. Come on." Then she came on. And in brushing between us she chilled
+me so with cold that I exclaimed, "The life is gone out of me!" and, in
+the way of dreams, I awoke. But here we are at Camelton.'
+
+They were slowly entering the station.
+
+'What are you going to do?' said Knight. 'Do you really intend to call
+on the Swancourts?'
+
+'By no means. I am going to make inquiries first. I shall stay at the
+Luxellian Arms to-night. You will go right on to Endelstow, I suppose,
+at once?'
+
+'I can hardly do that at this time of the day. Perhaps you are not aware
+that the family--her father, at any rate--is at variance with me as much
+as with you.
+
+'I didn't know it.'
+
+'And that I cannot rush into the house as an old friend any more than
+you can. Certainly I have the privileges of a distant relationship,
+whatever they may be.'
+
+Knight let down the window, and looked ahead. 'There are a great many
+people at the station,' he said. 'They seem all to be on the look-out
+for us.'
+
+When the train stopped, the half-estranged friends could perceive by the
+lamplight that the assemblage of idlers enclosed as a kernel a group of
+men in black cloaks. A side gate in the platform railing was open,
+and outside this stood a dark vehicle, which they could not at first
+characterize. Then Knight saw on its upper part forms against the sky
+like cedars by night, and knew the vehicle to be a hearse. Few people
+were at the carriage doors to meet the passengers--the majority had
+congregated at this upper end. Knight and Stephen alighted, and turned
+for a moment in the same direction.
+
+The sombre van, which had accompanied them all day from London, now
+began to reveal that their destination was also its own. It had been
+drawn up exactly opposite the open gate. The bystanders all fell back,
+forming a clear lane from the gateway to the van, and the men in cloaks
+entered the latter conveyance.
+
+'They are labourers, I fancy,' said Stephen. 'Ah, it is strange; but I
+recognize three of them as Endelstow men. Rather remarkable this.'
+
+Presently they began to come out, two and two; and under the rays of
+the lamp they were seen to bear between them a light-coloured coffin of
+satin-wood, brightly polished, and without a nail. The eight men took
+the burden upon their shoulders, and slowly crossed with it over to the
+gate.
+
+Knight and Stephen went outside, and came close to the procession as it
+moved off. A carriage belonging to the cortege turned round close to
+a lamp. The rays shone in upon the face of the vicar of Endelstow, Mr.
+Swancourt--looking many years older than when they had last seen him.
+Knight and Stephen involuntarily drew back.
+
+Knight spoke to a bystander. 'What has Mr. Swancourt to do with that
+funeral?'
+
+'He is the lady's father,' said the bystander.
+
+'What lady's father?' said Knight, in a voice so hollow that the man
+stared at him.
+
+'The father of the lady in the coffin. She died in London, you know, and
+has been brought here by this train. She is to be taken home to-night,
+and buried to-morrow.'
+
+Knight stood staring blindly at where the hearse had been; as if he saw
+it, or some one, there. Then he turned, and beheld the lithe form of
+Stephen bowed down like that of an old man. He took his young friend's
+arm, and led him away from the light.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XL
+
+     'Welcome, proud lady.'
+
+
+Half an hour has passed. Two miserable men are wandering in the darkness
+up the miles of road from Camelton to Endelstow.
+
+'Has she broken her heart?' said Henry Knight. 'Can it be that I have
+killed her? I was bitter with her, Stephen, and she has died! And may
+God have NO mercy upon me!'
+
+'How can you have killed her more than I?'
+
+'Why, I went away from her--stole away almost--and didn't tell her I
+should not come again; and at that last meeting I did not kiss her once,
+but let her miserably go. I have been a fool--a fool! I wish the most
+abject confession of it before crowds of my countrymen could in any way
+make amends to my darling for the intense cruelty I have shown her!'
+
+'YOUR darling!' said Stephen, with a sort of laugh. 'Any man can say
+that, I suppose; any man can. I know this, she was MY darling before she
+was yours; and after too. If anybody has a right to call her his own, it
+is I.'
+
+'You talk like a man in the dark; which is what you are. Did she ever do
+anything for you? Risk her name, for instance, for you?'
+
+Yes, she did,' said Stephen emphatically.
+
+'Not entirely. Did she ever live for you--prove she could not live
+without you--laugh and weep for you?'
+
+'Yes.'
+
+'Never! Did she ever risk her life for you--no! My darling did for me.'
+
+'Then it was in kindness only. When did she risk her life for you?'
+
+'To save mine on the cliff yonder. The poor child was with me looking at
+the approach of the Puffin steamboat, and I slipped down. We both had a
+narrow escape. I wish we had died there!'
+
+'Ah, but wait,' Stephen pleaded with wet eyes. 'She went on that cliff
+to see me arrive home: she had promised it. She told me she would months
+before. And would she have gone there if she had not cared for me at
+all?'
+
+'You have an idea that Elfride died for you, no doubt,' said Knight,
+with a mournful sarcasm too nerveless to support itself.
+
+'Never mind. If we find that--that she died yours, I'll say no more
+ever.'
+
+'And if we find she died yours, I'll say no more.'
+
+'Very well--so it shall be.'
+
+The dark clouds into which the sun had sunk had begun to drop rain in an
+increasing volume.
+
+'Can we wait somewhere here till this shower is over?' said Stephen
+desultorily.
+
+'As you will. But it is not worth while. We'll hear the particulars, and
+return. Don't let people know who we are. I am not much now.'
+
+They had reached a point at which the road branched into two--just
+outside the west village, one fork of the diverging routes passing into
+the latter place, the other stretching on to East Endelstow. Having come
+some of the distance by the footpath, they now found that the hearse was
+only a little in advance of them.
+
+'I fancy it has turned off to East Endelstow. Can you see?'
+
+'I cannot. You must be mistaken.'
+
+Knight and Stephen entered the village. A bar of fiery light lay across
+the road, proceeding from the half-open door of a smithy, in which
+bellows were heard blowing and a hammer ringing. The rain had increased,
+and they mechanically turned for shelter towards the warm and cosy
+scene.
+
+Close at their heels came another man, without over-coat or umbrella,
+and with a parcel under his arm.
+
+'A wet evening,' he said to the two friends, and passed by them. They
+stood in the outer penthouse, but the man went in to the fire.
+
+The smith ceased his blowing, and began talking to the man who had
+entered.
+
+'I have walked all the way from Camelton,' said the latter. 'Was obliged
+to come to-night, you know.'
+
+He held the parcel, which was a flat one, towards the firelight, to
+learn if the rain had penetrated it. Resting it edgewise on the forge,
+he supported it perpendicularly with one hand, wiping his face with the
+handkerchief he held in the other.
+
+'I suppose you know what I've got here?' he observed to the smith.
+
+'No, I don't,' said the smith, pausing again on his bellows.
+
+'As the rain's not over, I'll show you,' said the bearer.
+
+He laid the thin and broad package, which had acute angles in different
+directions, flat upon the anvil, and the smith blew up the fire to give
+him more light. First, after untying the package, a sheet of brown paper
+was removed: this was laid flat. Then he unfolded a piece of baize: this
+also he spread flat on the paper. The third covering was a wrapper
+of tissue paper, which was spread out in its turn. The enclosure was
+revealed, and he held it up for the smith's inspection.
+
+'Oh--I see!' said the smith, kindling with a chastened interest, and
+drawing close. 'Poor young lady--ah, terrible melancholy thing--so soon
+too!'
+
+Knight and Stephen turned their heads and looked.
+
+'And what's that?' continued the smith.
+
+'That's the coronet--beautifully finished, isn't it? Ah, that cost some
+money!'
+
+''Tis as fine a bit of metal work as ever I see--that 'tis.'
+
+'It came from the same people as the coffin, you know, but was not ready
+soon enough to be sent round to the house in London yesterday. I've got
+to fix it on this very night.'
+
+The carefully-packed articles were a coffin-plate and coronet.
+
+Knight and Stephen came forward. The undertaker's man, on seeing them
+look for the inscription, civilly turned it round towards them, and each
+read, almost at one moment, by the ruddy light of the coals:
+
+
+           E L F R I D E,
+           Wife of Spenser Hugo Luxellian,
+           Fifteenth Baron Luxellian:
+           Died February 10, 18--.
+
+
+They read it, and read it, and read it again--Stephen and Knight--as if
+animated by one soul. Then Stephen put his hand upon Knight's arm, and
+they retired from the yellow glow, further, further, till the chill
+darkness enclosed them round, and the quiet sky asserted its presence
+overhead as a dim grey sheet of blank monotony.
+
+'Where shall we go?' said Stephen.
+
+'I don't know.'
+
+A long silence ensued....'Elfride married!' said Stephen then in a thin
+whisper, as if he feared to let the assertion loose on the world.
+
+'False,' whispered Knight.
+
+'And dead. Denied us both. I hate "false"--I hate it!'
+
+Knight made no answer.
+
+Nothing was heard by them now save the slow measurement of time by their
+beating pulses, the soft touch of the dribbling rain upon their clothes,
+and the low purr of the blacksmith's bellows hard by.
+
+'Shall we follow Elfie any further?' Stephen said.
+
+'No: let us leave her alone. She is beyond our love, and let her be
+beyond our reproach. Since we don't know half the reasons that made her
+do as she did, Stephen, how can we say, even now, that she was not pure
+and true in heart?' Knight's voice had now become mild and gentle as a
+child's. He went on: 'Can we call her ambitious? No. Circumstance has,
+as usual, overpowered her purposes--fragile and delicate as she--liable
+to be overthrown in a moment by the coarse elements of accident. I know
+that's it,--don't you?'
+
+'It may be--it must be. Let us go on.'
+
+They began to bend their steps towards Castle Boterel, whither they
+had sent their bags from Camelton. They wandered on in silence for many
+minutes. Stephen then paused, and lightly put his hand within Knight's
+arm.
+
+'I wonder how she came to die,' he said in a broken whisper. 'Shall we
+return and learn a little more?'
+
+They turned back again, and entering Endelstow a second time, came to a
+door which was standing open. It was that of an inn called the Welcome
+Home, and the house appeared to have been recently repaired and entirely
+modernized. The name too was not that of the same landlord as formerly,
+but Martin Cannister's.
+
+Knight and Smith entered. The inn was quite silent, and they followed
+the passage till they reached the kitchen, where a huge fire was
+burning, which roared up the chimney, and sent over the floor, ceiling,
+and newly-whitened walls a glare so intense as to make the candle quite
+a secondary light. A woman in a white apron and black gown was standing
+there alone behind a cleanly-scrubbed deal table. Stephen first, and
+Knight afterwards, recognized her as Unity, who had been parlour-maid at
+the vicarage and young lady's-maid at the Crags.
+
+'Unity,' said Stephen softly, 'don't you know me?'
+
+She looked inquiringly a moment, and her face cleared up.
+
+'Mr. Smith--ay, that it is!' she said. 'And that's Mr. Knight. I beg you
+to sit down. Perhaps you know that since I saw you last I have married
+Martin Cannister.'
+
+'How long have you been married?'
+
+'About five months. We were married the same day that my dear Miss Elfie
+became Lady Luxellian.' Tears appeared in Unity's eyes, and filled them,
+and fell down her cheek, in spite of efforts to the contrary.
+
+The pain of the two men in resolutely controlling themselves when thus
+exampled to admit relief of the same kind was distressing. They both
+turned their backs and walked a few steps away.
+
+Then Unity said, 'Will you go into the parlour, gentlemen?'
+
+'Let us stay here with her,' Knight whispered, and turning said, 'No; we
+will sit here. We want to rest and dry ourselves here for a time, if you
+please.'
+
+That evening the sorrowing friends sat with their hostess beside the
+large fire, Knight in the recess formed by the chimney breast, where he
+was in shade. And by showing a little confidence they won hers, and
+she told them what they had stayed to hear--the latter history of poor
+Elfride.
+
+'One day--after you, Mr. Knight, left us for the last time--she was
+missed from the Crags, and her father went after her, and brought her
+home ill. Where she went to, I never knew--but she was very unwell for
+weeks afterwards. And she said to me that she didn't care what became of
+her, and she wished she could die. When she was better, I said she would
+live to be married yet, and she said then, "Yes; I'll do anything
+for the benefit of my family, so as to turn my useless life to some
+practical account." Well, it began like this about Lord Luxellian
+courting her. The first Lady Luxellian had died, and he was in great
+trouble because the little girls were left motherless. After a while
+they used to come and see her in their little black frocks, for they
+liked her as well or better than their own mother---that's true.
+They used to call her "little mamma." These children made her a shade
+livelier, but she was not the girl she had been--I could see that--and
+she grew thinner a good deal. Well, my lord got to ask the Swancourts
+oftener and oftener to dinner--nobody else of his acquaintance--and at
+last the vicar's family were backwards and forwards at all hours of the
+day. Well, people say that the little girls asked their father to let
+Miss Elfride come and live with them, and that he said perhaps he would
+if they were good children. However, the time went on, and one day I
+said, "Miss Elfride, you don't look so well as you used to; and though
+nobody else seems to notice it I do." She laughed a little, and said, "I
+shall live to be married yet, as you told me."
+
+'"Shall you, miss? I am glad to hear that," I said.
+
+'"Whom do you think I am going to be married to?" she said again.
+
+'"Mr. Knight, I suppose," said I.
+
+'"Oh!" she cried, and turned off so white, and afore I could get to her
+she had sunk down like a heap of clothes, and fainted away. Well, then,
+she came to herself after a time, and said, "Unity, now we'll go on with
+our conversation."
+
+'"Better not to-day, miss," I said.
+
+'"Yes, we will," she said. "Whom do you think I am going to be married
+to?"
+
+'"I don't know," I said this time.
+
+'"Guess," she said.
+
+'"'Tisn't my lord, is it?" says I.
+
+'"Yes, 'tis," says she, in a sick wild way.
+
+'"But he don't come courting much," I said.
+
+"'Ah! you don't know," she said, and told me 'twas going to be in
+October. After that she freshened up a bit--whether 'twas with the
+thought of getting away from home or not, I don't know. For, perhaps, I
+may as well speak plainly, and tell you that her home was no home to her
+now. Her father was bitter to her and harsh upon her; and though Mrs.
+Swancourt was well enough in her way, 'twas a sort of cold politeness
+that was not worth much, and the little thing had a worrying time of it
+altogether. About a month before the wedding, she and my lord and the
+two children used to ride about together upon horseback, and a very
+pretty sight they were; and if you'll believe me, I never saw him once
+with her unless the children were with her too--which made the courting
+so strange-looking. Ay, and my lord is so handsome, you know, so that at
+last I think she rather liked him; and I have seen her smile and blush a
+bit at things he said. He wanted her the more because the children did,
+for everybody could see that she would be a most tender mother to them,
+and friend and playmate too. And my lord is not only handsome, but
+a splendid courter, and up to all the ways o't. So he made her the
+beautifullest presents; ah, one I can mind--a lovely bracelet, with
+diamonds and emeralds. Oh, how red her face came when she saw it! The
+old roses came back to her cheeks for a minute or two then. I helped
+dress her the day we both were married--it was the last service I did
+her, poor child! When she was ready, I ran upstairs and slipped on my
+own wedding gown, and away they went, and away went Martin and I; and no
+sooner had my lord and my lady been married than the parson married us.
+It was a very quiet pair of weddings--hardly anybody knew it. Well,
+hope will hold its own in a young heart, if so be it can; and my lady
+freshened up a bit, for my lord was SO handsome and kind.'
+
+'How came she to die--and away from home?' murmured Knight.
+
+'Don't you see, sir, she fell off again afore they'd been married long,
+and my lord took her abroad for change of scene. They were coming home,
+and had got as far as London, when she was taken very ill and couldn't
+be moved, and there she died.'
+
+'Was he very fond of her?'
+
+'What, my lord? Oh, he was!'
+
+'VERY fond of her?'
+
+'VERY, beyond everything. Not suddenly, but by slow degrees. 'Twas her
+nature to win people more when they knew her well. He'd have died for
+her, I believe. Poor my lord, he's heart-broken now!'
+
+'The funeral is to-morrow?'
+
+'Yes; my husband is now at the vault with the masons, opening the steps
+and cleaning down the walls.'
+
+
+The next day two men walked up the familiar valley from Castle Boterel
+to East Endelstow Church. And when the funeral was over, and every one
+had left the lawn-like churchyard, the pair went softly down the steps
+of the Luxellian vault, and under the low-groined arches they had beheld
+once before, lit up then as now. In the new niche of the crypt lay a
+rather new coffin, which had lost some of its lustre, and a newer coffin
+still, bright and untarnished in the slightest degree.
+
+Beside the latter was the dark form of a man, kneeling on the damp
+floor, his body flung across the coffin, his hands clasped, and his
+whole frame seemingly given up in utter abandonment to grief. He was
+still young--younger, perhaps, than Knight--and even now showed how
+graceful was his figure and symmetrical his build. He murmured a prayer
+half aloud, and was quite unconscious that two others were standing
+within a few yards of him.
+
+Knight and Stephen had advanced to where they once stood beside Elfride
+on the day all three had met there, before she had herself gone down
+into silence like her ancestors, and shut her bright blue eyes for ever.
+Not until then did they see the kneeling figure in the dim light. Knight
+instantly recognized the mourner as Lord Luxellian, the bereaved husband
+of Elfride.
+
+They felt themselves to be intruders. Knight pressed Stephen back, and
+they silently withdrew as they had entered.
+
+'Come away,' he said, in a broken voice. 'We have no right to be there.
+Another stands before us--nearer to her than we!'
+
+And side by side they both retraced their steps down the grey still
+valley to Castle Boterel.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of A Pair of Blue Eyes, by Thomas Hardy
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