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