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."'