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,