'You insult me, papa!' she burst out. 'You do, you do! He is my
own Stephen, he is!'
'That may or may not be true, Elfride,' returned her father, again
uncomfortably agitated in spite of himself 'You confuse future
probabilities with present facts, - what the young man may be with
what he is. We must look at what he is, not what an improbable
degree of success in his profession may make him. The case is
this: the son of a working-man in my parish who may or may not be
able to buy me up - a youth who has not yet advanced so far into
life as to have any income of his own deserving the name, and
therefore of his father's degree as regards station - wants to be
engaged to you. His family are living in precisely the same spot
in England as yours, so throughout this county - which is the world
to us - you would always be known as the wife of Jack Smith the
mason's son, and not under any circumstances as the wife of a
London professional man. It is the drawback, not the compensating
fact, that is talked of always. There, say no more. You may
argue all night, and prove what you will; I'll stick to my words.'
Elfride looked silently and hopelessly out of the window with
large heavy eyes and wet cheeks.
'I call it great temerity - and long to call it audacity - in
Hewby,' resumed her father. 'I never heard such a thing - giving
such a hobbledehoy native of this place such an introduction to me
as he did. Naturally you were deceived as well as I was. I don't
blame you at all, so far.' He went and searched for Mr. Hewby's
original letter. 'Here's what he said to me: "Dear Sir, -
Agreeably to your request of the 18th instant, I have arranged to
survey and make drawings," et cetera. "My assistant, Mr. Stephen
Smith" - assistant, you see he called him, and naturally I
understood him to mean a sort of partner. Why didn't he say
"clerk"?'
'They never call them clerks in that profession, because they do
not write. Stephen - Mr. Smith - told me so. So that Mr. Hewby
simply used the accepted word.'
'Let me speak, please, Elfride! "My assistant, Mr. Stephen Smith,
will leave London by the early train to-morrow morning...MANY
THANKS FOR YOUR PROPOSAL TO ACCOMMODATE HIM...YOU MAY PUT EVERY
CONFIDENCE IN HIM, and may rely upon his discernment in the matter
of church architecture." Well, I repeat that Hewby ought to be
ashamed of himself for making so much of a poor lad of that sort.'
'Professional men in London,' Elfride argued, 'don't know anything
about their clerks' fathers and mothers. They have assistants who
come to their offices and shops for years, and hardly even know
where they live. What they can do - what profits they can bring
the firm - that's all London men care about. And that is helped in
him by his faculty of being uniformly pleasant.'
'Uniform pleasantness is rather a defect than a faculty. It shows
that a man hasn't sense enough to know whom to despise.'
'It shows that he acts by faith and not by sight, as those you
claim succession from directed.'
'That's some more of what he's been telling you, I suppose! Yes, I
was inclined to suspect him, because he didn't care about sauces
of any kind. I always did doubt a man's being a gentleman if his
palate had no acquired tastes. An unedified palate is the
irrepressible cloven foot of the upstart. The idea of my bringing
out a bottle of my '40 Martinez - only eleven of them left now - to
a man who didn't know it from eighteenpenny! Then the Latin line
he gave to my quotation; it was very cut-and-dried, very; or I,
who haven't looked into a classical author for the last eighteen
years, shouldn't have remembered it. Well, Elfride, you had
better go to your room; you'll get over this bit of tomfoolery in
time.'
'No, no, no, papa,' she moaned. For of all the miseries attaching
to miserable love, the worst is the misery of thinking that the
passion which is the cause of them all may cease.
'Elfride,' said her father with rough friendliness, 'I have an
excellent scheme on hand, which I cannot tell you of now. A
scheme to benefit you and me. It has been thrust upon me for some
little time - yes, thrust upon me - but I didn't dream of its value
till this afternoon, when the revelation came. I should be most
unwise to refuse to entertain it.'
'I don't like that word,' she returned wearily. 'You have lost so
much already by schemes. Is it those wretched mines again?'
'No; not a mining scheme.'
'Railways?'
'Nor railways. It is like those mysterious offers we see
advertised, by which any gentleman with no brains at all may make
so much a week without risk, trouble, or soiling his fingers.
However, I am intending to say nothing till it is settled, though
I will just say this much, that you soon may have other fish to
fry than to think of Stephen Smith. Remember, I wish, not to be
angry, but friendly, to the young man; for your sake I'll regard
him as a friend in a certain sense. But this is enough; in a few
days you will be quite my way of thinking. There, now, go to your
bedroom. Unity shall bring you up some supper. I wish you not to
be here when he comes back.'
Chapter X
'Beneath the shelter of an aged tree.'
Stephen retraced his steps towards the cottage he had visited only
two or three hours previously. He drew near and under the rich
foliage growing about the outskirts of Endelstow Park, the spotty
lights and shades from the shining moon maintaining a race over
his head and down his back in an endless gambol. When he crossed
the plank bridge and entered the garden-gate, he saw an
illuminated figure coming from the enclosed plot towards the house
on the other side. It was his father, with his hand in a sling,
taking a general moonlight view of the garden, and particularly of
a plot of the youngest of young turnips, previous to closing the
cottage for the night.
He saluted his son with customary force. 'Hallo, Stephen! We
should ha' been in bed in another ten minutes. Come to see what's
the matter wi' me, I suppose, my lad?'
The doctor had come and gone, and the hand had been pronounced as
injured but slightly, though it might possibly have been
considered a far more serious case if Mr. Smith had been a more
important man. Stephen's anxious inquiry drew from his father
words of regret at the inconvenience to the world of his doing
nothing for the next two days, rather than of concern for the pain
of the accident. Together they entered the house.
John Smith - brown as autumn as to skin, white as winter as to
clothes - was a satisfactory specimen of the village artificer in
stone. In common with most rural mechanics, he had too much
individuality to be a typical 'working-man' - a resultant of that
beach-pebble attrition with his kind only to be experienced in
large towns, which metamorphoses the unit Self into a fraction of
the unit Class.
There was not the speciality in his labour which distinguishes the
handicraftsmen of towns. Though only a mason, strictly speaking,
he was not above handling a brick, if bricks were the order of the
day; or a slate or tile, if a roof had to be covered before the
wet weather set in, and nobody was near who could do it better.
Indeed, on one or two occasions in the depth of winter, when frost
peremptorily forbids all use of the trowel, making foundations to
settle, stones to fly, and mortar to crumble, he had taken to
felling and sawing trees. Moreover, he had practised gardening in
his own plot for so many years that, on an emergency, he might
have made a living by that calling.
Probably our countryman was not such an accomplished artificer in
a particular direction as his town brethren in the trades. But he
was, in truth, like that clumsy pin-maker who made the whole pin,
and who was despised by Adam Smith on that account and respected
by Macaulay, much more the artist nevertheless.
Appearing now, indoors, by the light of the candle, his stalwart
healthiness was a sight to see. His beard was close and knotted
as that of a chiselled Hercules; his shirt sleeves were partly
rolled up, his waistcoat unbuttoned; the difference in hue between
the snowy linen and the ruddy arms and face contrasting like the
white of an egg and its yolk. Mrs. Smith, on hearing them enter,
advanced from the pantry.
Mrs. Smith was a matron whose countenance addressed itself to the
mind rather than to the eye, though not exclusively. She retained
her personal freshness even now, in the prosy afternoon-time of
her life; but what her features were primarily indicative of was a
sound common sense behind them; as a whole, appearing to carry
with them a sort of argumentative commentary on the world in
general.
The details of the accident were then rehearsed by Stephen's
father, in the dramatic manner also common to Martin Cannister,
other individuals of the neighbourhood, and the rural world
generally. Mrs. Smith threw in her sentiments between the acts,
as Coryphaeus of the tragedy, to make the description complete.
The story at last came to an end, as the longest will, and Stephen
directed the conversation into another channel.
'Well, mother, they know everything about me now,' he said
quietly.
'Well done!' replied his father; 'now my mind's at peace.'
'I blame myself - I never shall forgive myself - for not telling
them before,' continued the young man.
Mrs. Smith at this point abstracted her mind from the former
subject. 'I don't see what you have to grieve about, Stephen,'
she said. 'People who accidentally get friends don't, as a first
stroke, tell the history of their families.'
'Ye've done no wrong, certainly,' said his father.
'No; but I should have spoken sooner. There's more in this visit
of mine than you think - a good deal more.'
'Not more than I think,' Mrs. Smith replied, looking
contemplatively at him. Stephen blushed; and his father looked
from one to the other in a state of utter incomprehension.
'She's a pretty piece enough,' Mrs. Smith continued, 'and very
lady-like and clever too. But though she's very well fit for you
as far as that is, why, mercy 'pon me, what ever do you want any
woman at all for yet?'
John made his naturally short mouth a long one, and wrinkled his
forehead, 'That's the way the wind d'blow, is it?' he said.
'Mother,' exclaimed Stephen, 'how absurdly you speak! Criticizing
whether she's fit for me or no, as if there were room for doubt on
the matter! Why, to marry her would be the great blessing of my
life - socially and practically, as well as in other respects. No
such good fortune as that, I'm afraid; she's too far above me.
Her family doesn't want such country lads as I in it.'
'Then if they don't want you, I'd see them dead corpses before I'd
want them, and go to better families who do want you.'
'Ah, yes; but I could never put up with the distaste of being
welcomed among such people as you mean, whilst I could get
indifference among such people as hers.'
'What crazy twist o' thinking will enter your head next?' said his
mother. 'And come to that, she's not a bit too high for you, or
you too low for her. See how careful I be to keep myself up. I'm
sure I never stop for more than a minute together to talk to any
journeymen people; and I never invite anybody to our party o'
Christmases who are not in business for themselves. And I talk to
several toppermost carriage people that come to my lord's without
saying ma'am or sir to 'em, and they take it as quiet as lambs.'
'You curtseyed to the vicar, mother; and I wish you hadn't.'
'But it was before he called me by my Christian name, or he would
have got very little curtseying from me!' said Mrs. Smith,
bridling and sparkling with vexation. 'You go on at me, Stephen,
as if I were your worst enemy! What else could I do with the man
to get rid of him, banging it into me and your father by side and
by seam, about his greatness, and what happened when he was a
young fellow at college, and I don't know what-all; the tongue o'
en flopping round his mouth like a mop-rag round a dairy. That 'a
did, didn't he, John?'
'That's about the size o't,' replied her husband.
'Every woman now-a-days,' resumed Mrs. Smith, 'if she marry at
all, must expect a father-in-law of a rank lower than her father.
The men have gone up so, and the women have stood still. Every
man you meet is more the dand than his father; and you are just
level wi' her.'
'That's what she thinks herself.'
'It only shows her sense. I knew she was after 'ee, Stephen - I
knew it.'
'After me! Good Lord, what next!'
'And I really must say again that you ought not to be in such a
hurry, and wait for a few years. You might go higher than a
bankrupt pa'son's girl then.'
'The fact is, mother,' said Stephen impatiently, 'you don't know
anything about it. I shall never go higher, because I don't want
to, nor should I if I lived to be a hundred. As to you saying
that she's after me, I don't like such a remark about her, for it
implies a scheming woman, and a man worth scheming for, both of
which are not only untrue, but ludicrously untrue, of this case.
Isn't it so, father?'
'I'm afraid I don't understand the matter well enough to gie my
opinion,' said his father, in the tone of the fox who had a cold
and could not smell.
'She couldn't have been very backward anyhow, considering the
short time you have known her,' said his mother. 'Well I think
that five years hence you'll be plenty young enough to think of
such things. And really she can very well afford to wait, and
will too, take my word. Living down in an out-step place like
this, I am sure she ought to be very thankful that you took notice
of her. She'd most likely have died an old maid if you hadn't
turned up.'
'All nonsense,' said Stephen, but not aloud.
'A nice little thing she is,' Mrs. Smith went on in a more
complacent tone now that Stephen had been talked down; 'there's
not a word to say against her, I'll own. I see her sometimes
decked out like a horse going to fair, and I admire her for't. A
perfect little lady. But people can't help their thoughts, and if
she'd learnt to make figures instead of letters when she was at
school 'twould have been better for her pocket; for as I said,
there never were worse times for such as she than now.'
'Now, now, mother!' said Stephen with smiling deprecation.
'But I will!' said his mother with asperity. 'I don't read the
papers for nothing, and I know men all move up a stage by
marriage. Men of her class, that is, parsons, marry squires'
daughters; squires marry lords' daughters; lords marry dukes'
daughters; dukes marry queens' daughters. All stages of gentlemen
mate a stage higher; and the lowest stage of gentlewomen are left
single, or marry out of their class.'
'But you said just now, dear mother - - ' retorted Stephen, unable
to resist the temptation of showing his mother her inconsistency.
Then he paused.
'Well, what did I say?' And Mrs. Smith prepared her lips for a new
campaign.
Stephen, regretting that he had begun, since a volcano might be
the consequence, was obliged to go on.
'You said I wasn't out of her class just before.'
'Yes, there, there! That's you; that's my own flesh and blood.
I'll warrant that you'll pick holes in everything your mother
says, if you can, Stephen. You are just like your father for
that; take anybody's part but mine. Whilst I am speaking and
talking and trying and slaving away for your good, you are waiting
to catch me out in that way. So you are in her class, but 'tis
what HER people would CALL marrying out of her class. Don't be so
quarrelsome, Stephen!'
Stephen preserved a discreet silence, in which he was imitated by
his father, and for several minutes nothing was heard but the
ticking of the green-faced case-clock against the wall.
'I'm sure,' added Mrs. Smith in a more philosophic tone, and as a
terminative speech, 'if there'd been so much trouble to get a
husband in my time as there is in these days - when you must make a
god-almighty of a man to get en to hae ye - I'd have trod clay for
bricks before I'd ever have lowered my dignity to marry, or
there's no bread in nine loaves.'
The discussion now dropped, and as it was getting late, Stephen
bade his parents farewell for the evening, his mother none the
less warmly for their sparring; for although Mrs. Smith and
Stephen were always contending, they were never at enmity.
'And possibly,' said Stephen, 'I may leave here altogether to-
morrow; I don't know. So that if I shouldn't call again before
returning to London, don't be alarmed, will you?'
'But didn't you come for a fortnight?' said his mother. 'And
haven't you a month's holiday altogether? They are going to turn
you out, then?'
'Not at all. I may stay longer; I may go. If I go, you had
better say nothing about my having been here, for her sake. At
what time of the morning does the carrier pass Endelstow lane?'
'Seven o'clock.'
And then he left them. His thoughts were, that should the vicar
permit him to become engaged, to hope for an engagement, or in any
way to think of his beloved Elfride, he might stay longer. Should
he be forbidden to think of any such thing, he resolved to go at
once. And the latter, even to young hopefulness, seemed the more
probable alternative.
Stephen walked back to the vicarage through the meadows, as he had
come, surrounded by the soft musical purl of the water through
little weirs, the modest light of the moon, the freshening smell
of the dews out-spread around. It was a time when mere seeing is
meditation, and meditation peace. Stephen was hardly philosopher
enough to avail himself of Nature's offer. His constitution was
made up of very simple particulars; was one which, rare in the
spring-time of civilizations, seems to grow abundant as a nation
gets older, individuality fades, and education spreads; that is,
his brain had extraordinary receptive powers, and no great
creativeness. Quickly acquiring any kind of knowledge he saw
around him, and having a plastic adaptability more common in woman
than in man, he changed colour like a chameleon as the society he
found himself in assumed a higher and more artificial tone. He
had not many original ideas, and yet there was scarcely an idea to
which, under proper training, he could not have added a
respectable co-ordinate.
He saw nothing outside himself to-night; and what he saw within
was a weariness to his flesh. Yet to a dispassionate observer,
his pretensions to Elfride, though rather premature, were far from
absurd as marriages go, unless the accidental proximity of simple
but honest parents could be said to make them so.
The clock struck eleven when he entered the house. Elfride had
been waiting with scarcely a movement since he departed. Before
he had spoken to her she caught sight of him passing into the
study with her father. She saw that he had by some means obtained
the private interview he desired.
A nervous headache had been growing on the excitable girl during
the absence of Stephen, and now she could do nothing beyond going
up again to her room as she had done before. Instead of lying
down she sat again in the darkness without closing the door, and
listened with a beating heart to every sound from downstairs. The
servants had gone to bed. She ultimately heard the two men come
from the study and cross to the dining-room, where supper had been
lingering for more than an hour. The door was left open, and she
found that the meal, such as it was, passed off between her father
and her lover without any remark, save commonplaces as to
cucumbers and melons, their wholesomeness and culture, uttered in
a stiff and formal way. It seemed to prefigure failure.
Shortly afterwards Stephen came upstairs to his bedroom, and was
almost immediately followed by her father, who also retired for
the night. Not inclined to get a light, she partly undressed and
sat on the bed, where she remained in pained thought for some
time, possibly an hour. Then rising to close her door previously
to fully unrobing, she saw a streak of light shining across the
landing. Her father's door was shut, and he could be heard
snoring regularly. The light came from Stephen's room, and the
slight sounds also coming thence emphatically denoted what he was
doing. In the perfect silence she could hear the closing of a lid
and the clicking of a lock, - he was fastening his hat-box. Then
the buckling of straps and the click of another key, - he was
securing his portmanteau. With trebled foreboding she opened her
door softly, and went towards his. One sensation pervaded her to
distraction. Stephen, her handsome youth and darling, was going
away, and she might never see him again except in secret and in
sadness - perhaps never more. At any rate, she could no longer
wait till the morning to hear the result of the interview, as she
had intended. She flung her dressing-gown round her, tapped
lightly at his door, and whispered 'Stephen!' He came instantly,
opened the door, and stepped out.
'Tell me; are we to hope?'
He replied in a disturbed whisper, and a tear approached its
outlet, though none fell.
'I am not to think of such a preposterous thing - that's what he
said. And I am going to-morrow. I should have called you up to
bid you good-bye.'
'But he didn't say you were to go - O Stephen, he didn't say that?'
'No; not in words. But I cannot stay.'
'Oh, don't, don't go! Do come and let us talk. Let us come down
to the drawing-room for a few minutes; he will hear us here.'
She preceded him down the staircase with the taper light in her
hand, looking unnaturally tall and thin in the long dove-coloured
dressing-gown she wore. She did not stop to think of the
propriety or otherwise of this midnight interview under such
circumstances. She thought that the tragedy of her life was
beginning, and, for the first time almost, felt that her existence
might have a grave side, the shade of which enveloped and rendered
invisible the delicate gradations of custom and punctilio.
Elfride softly opened the drawing-room door and they both went in.
When she had placed the candle on the table, he enclosed her with
his arms, dried her eyes with his handkerchief, and kissed their
lids.
'Stephen, it is over - happy love is over; and there is no more
sunshine now!'
'I will make a fortune, and come to you, and have you. Yes, I
will!'
'Papa will never hear of it - never - never! You don't know him. I
do. He is either biassed in favour of a thing, or prejudiced
against it. Argument is powerless against either feeling.'
'No; I won't think of him so,' said Stephen. 'If I appear before
him some time hence as a man of established name, he will accept
me - I know he will. He is not a wicked man.'
'No, he is not wicked. But you say "some time hence," as if it
were no time. To you, among bustle and excitement, it will be
comparatively a short time, perhaps; oh, to me, it will be its
real length trebled! Every summer will be a year - autumn a year -
winter a year! O Stephen! and you may forget me!'
Forget: that was, and is, the real sting of waiting to fond-
hearted woman. The remark awoke in Stephen the converse fear.
'You, too, may be persuaded to give me up, when time has made me
fainter in your memory. For, remember, your love for me must be
nourished in secret; there will be no long visits from me to
support you. Circumstances will always tend to obliterate me.'
'Stephen,' she said, filled with her own misgivings, and unheeding
his last words, 'there are beautiful women where you live - of
course I know there are - and they may win you away from me.' Her
tears came visibly as she drew a mental picture of his
faithlessness. 'And it won't be your fault,' she continued,
looking into the candle with doleful eyes. 'No! You will think
that our family don't want you, and get to include me with them.
And there will be a vacancy in your heart, and some others will be
let in.'
'I could not, I would not. Elfie, do not be so full of
forebodings.'
'Oh yes, they will,' she replied. 'And you will look at them, not
caring at first, and then you will look and be interested, and
after a while you will think, "Ah, they know all about city life,
and assemblies, and coteries, and the manners of the titled, and
poor little Elfie, with all the fuss that's made about her having
me, doesn't know about anything but a little house and a few
cliffs and a space of sea, far away." And then you'll be more
interested in them, and they'll make you have them instead of me,
on purpose to be cruel to me because I am silly, and they are
clever and hate me. And I hate them, too; yes, I do!'
Her impulsive words had power to impress him at any rate with the
recognition of the uncertainty of all that is not accomplished.
And, worse than that general feeling, there of course remained the
sadness which arose from the special features of his own case.
However remote a desired issue may be, the mere fact of having
entered the groove which leads to it, cheers to some extent with a
sense of accomplishment. Had Mr. Swancourt consented to an
engagement of no less length than ten years, Stephen would have
been comparatively cheerful in waiting; they would have felt that
they were somewhere on the road to Cupid's garden. But, with a
possibility of a shorter probation, they had not as yet any
prospect of the beginning; the zero of hope had yet to be reached.
Mr. Swancourt would have to revoke his formidable words before the
waiting for marriage could even set in. And this was despair.
'I wish we could marry now,' murmured Stephen, as an impossible
fancy.
'So do I,' said she also, as if regarding an idle dream. ''Tis
the only thing that ever does sweethearts good!'
'Secretly would do, would it not, Elfie?'
'Yes, secretly would do; secretly would indeed be best,' she said,
and went on reflectively: 'All we want is to render it absolutely
impossible for any future circumstance to upset our future
intention of being happy together; not to begin being happy now.'
'Exactly,' he murmured in a voice and manner the counterpart of
hers. 'To marry and part secretly, and live on as we are living
now; merely to put it out of anybody's power to force you away
from me, dearest.'
'Or you away from me, Stephen.'
'Or me from you. It is possible to conceive a force of
circumstance strong enough to make any woman in the world marry
against her will: no conceivable pressure, up to torture or
starvation, can make a woman once married to her lover anybody
else's wife.'
Now up to this point the idea of an immediate secret marriage had
been held by both as an untenable hypothesis, wherewith simply to
beguile a miserable moment. During a pause which followed
Stephen's last remark, a fascinating perception, then an alluring
conviction, flashed along the brain of both. The perception was
that an immediate marriage COULD be contrived; the conviction that
such an act, in spite of its daring, its fathomless results, its
deceptiveness, would be preferred by each to the life they must
lead under any other conditions.
The youth spoke first, and his voice trembled with the magnitude
of the conception he was cherishing. 'How strong we should feel,
Elfride! going on our separate courses as before, without the fear
of ultimate separation! O Elfride! think of it; think of it!'
It is certain that the young girl's love for Stephen received a
fanning from her father's opposition which made it blaze with a
dozen times the intensity it would have exhibited if left alone.
Never were conditions more favourable for developing a girl's
first passing fancy for a handsome boyish face - a fancy rooted in
inexperience and nourished by seclusion - into a wild unreflecting
passion fervid enough for anything. All the elements of such a
development were there, the chief one being hopelessness - a
necessary ingredient always to perfect the mixture of feelings
united under the name of loving to distraction.
'We would tell papa soon, would we not?' she inquired timidly.
'Nobody else need know. He would then be convinced that hearts
cannot be played with; love encouraged be ready to grow, love
discouraged be ready to die, at a moment's notice. Stephen, do
you not think that if marriages against a parent's consent are
ever justifiable, they are when young people have been favoured up
to a point, as we have, and then have had that favour suddenly
withdrawn?'
'Yes. It is not as if we had from the beginning acted in
opposition to your papa's wishes. Only think, Elfie, how pleasant
he was towards me but six hours ago! He liked me, praised me,
never objected to my being alone with you.'
'I believe he MUST like you now,' she cried. 'And if he found
that you irremediably belonged to me, he would own it and help
you. 'O Stephen, Stephen,' she burst out again, as the
remembrance of his packing came afresh to her mind, 'I cannot bear
your going away like this! It is too dreadful. All I have been
expecting miserably killed within me like this!'
Stephen flushed hot with impulse. 'I will not be a doubt to you -
thought of you shall not be a misery to me!' he said. 'We will be
wife and husband before we part for long!'
She hid her face on his shoulder. 'Anything to make SURE!' she
whispered.
'I did not like to propose it immediately,' continued Stephen.
'It seemed to me - it seems to me now - like trying to catch you - a
girl better in the world than I.'
'Not that, indeed! And am I better in worldly station? What's the
use of have beens? We may have been something once; we are nothing
now.'
Then they whispered long and earnestly together; Stephen
hesitatingly proposing this and that plan, Elfride modifying them,
with quick breathings, and hectic flush, and unnaturally bright
eyes. It was two o'clock before an arrangement was finally
concluded.
She then told him to leave her, giving him his light to go up to
his own room. They parted with an agreement not to meet again in
the morning. After his door had been some time closed he heard
her softly gliding into her chamber.
Chapter XI
'Journeys end in lovers meeting.'
Stephen lay watching the Great Bear; Elfride was regarding a
monotonous parallelogram of window blind. Neither slept that
night.
Early the next morning - that is to say, four hours after their
stolen interview, and just as the earliest servant was heard
moving about - Stephen Smith went downstairs, portmanteau in hand.
Throughout the night he had intended to see Mr. Swancourt again,
but the sharp rebuff of the previous evening rendered such an
interview particularly distasteful. Perhaps there was another and
less honest reason. He decided to put it off. Whatever of moral
timidity or obliquity may have lain in such a decision, no
perception of it was strong enough to detain him. He wrote a note
in his room, which stated simply that he did not feel happy in the
house after Mr. Swancourt's sudden veto on what he had favoured a
few hours before; but that he hoped a time would come, and that
soon, when his original feelings of pleasure as Mr. Swancourt's
guest might be recovered.
He expected to find the downstairs rooms wearing the gray and
cheerless aspect that early morning gives to everything out of the
sun. He found in the dining room a breakfast laid, of which
somebody had just partaken.
Stephen gave the maid-servant his note of adieu. She stated that
Mr. Swancourt had risen early that morning, and made an early
breakfast. He was not going away that she knew of.
Stephen took a cup of coffee, left the house of his love, and
turned into the lane. It was so early that the shaded places
still smelt like night time, and the sunny spots had hardly felt
the sun. The horizontal rays made every shallow dip in the ground
to show as a well-marked hollow. Even the channel of the path was
enough to throw shade, and the very stones of the road cast
tapering dashes of darkness westward, as long as Jael's tent-nail.
At a spot not more than a hundred yards from the vicar's residence
the lane leading thence crossed the high road. Stephen reached
the point of intersection, stood still and listened. Nothing
could be heard save the lengthy, murmuring line of the sea upon
the adjacent shore. He looked at his watch, and then mounted a
gate upon which he seated himself, to await the arrival of the
carrier. Whilst he sat he heard wheels coming in two directions.
The vehicle approaching on his right he soon recognized as the
carrier's. There were the accompanying sounds of the owner's
voice and the smack of his whip, distinct in the still morning
air, by which he encouraged his horses up the hill.
The other set of wheels sounded from the lane Stephen had just
traversed. On closer observation, he perceived that they were
moving from the precincts of the ancient manor-house adjoining the
vicarage grounds. A carriage then left the entrance gates of the
house, and wheeling round came fully in sight. It was a plain
travelling carriage, with a small quantity of luggage, apparently
a lady's. The vehicle came to the junction of the four ways half-
a-minute before the carrier reached the same spot, and crossed
directly in his front, proceeding by the lane on the other side.
Inside the carriage Stephen could just discern an elderly lady
with a younger woman, who seemed to be her maid. The road they
had taken led to Stratleigh, a small watering-place sixteen miles
north.
He heard the manor-house gates swing again, and looking up saw
another person leaving them, and walking off in the direction of
the parsonage. 'Ah, how much I wish I were moving that way!' felt
he parenthetically. The gentleman was tall, and resembled Mr.
Swancourt in outline and attire. He opened the vicarage gate and
went in. Mr. Swancourt, then, it certainly was. Instead of
remaining in bed that morning Mr. Swancourt must have taken it
into his head to see his new neighbour off on a journey. He must
have been greatly interested in that neighbour to do such an
unusual thing.
The carrier's conveyance had pulled up, and Stephen now handed in
his portmanteau and mounted the shafts. 'Who is that lady in the
carriage?' he inquired indifferently of Lickpan the carrier.
'That, sir, is Mrs. Troyton, a widder wi' a mint o' money. She's
the owner of all that part of Endelstow that is not Lord
Luxellian's. Only been here a short time; she came into it by
law. The owner formerly was a terrible mysterious party - never
lived here - hardly ever was seen here except in the month of
September, as I might say.'
The horses were started again, and noise rendered further
discourse a matter of too great exertion. Stephen crept inside
under the tilt, and was soon lost in reverie.
Three hours and a half of straining up hills and jogging down
brought them to St. Launce's, the market town and railway station
nearest to Endelstow, and the place from which Stephen Smith had
journeyed over the downs on the, to him, memorable winter evening
at the beginning of the same year. The carrier's van was so timed
as to meet a starting up-train, which Stephen entered. Two or
three hours' railway travel through vertical cuttings in
metamorphic rock, through oak copses rich and green, stretching
over slopes and down delightful valleys, glens, and ravines,
sparkling with water like many-rilled Ida, and he plunged amid the
hundred and fifty thousand people composing the town of Plymouth.
There being some time upon his hands he left his luggage at the
cloak-room, and went on foot along Bedford Street to the nearest
church. Here Stephen wandered among the multifarious tombstones
and looked in at the chancel window, dreaming of something that
was likely to happen by the altar there in the course of the
coming month. He turned away and ascended the Hoe, viewed the
magnificent stretch of sea and massive promontories of land, but
without particularly discerning one feature of the varied
perspective. He still saw that inner prospect - the event he hoped
for in yonder church. The wide Sound, the Breakwater, the light-
house on far-off Eddystone, the dark steam vessels, brigs,
barques, and schooners, either floating stilly, or gliding with
tiniest motion, were as the dream, then; the dreamed-of event was
as the reality.
Soon Stephen went down from the Hoe, and returned to the railway
station. He took his ticket, and entered the London train.
That day was an irksome time at Endelstow vicarage. Neither
father nor daughter alluded to the departure of Stephen. Mr.
Swancourt's manner towards her partook of the compunctious
kindness that arises from a misgiving as to the justice of some
previous act.
Either from lack of the capacity to grasp the whole coup d'oeil,
or from a natural endowment for certain kinds of stoicism, women
are cooler than men in critical situations of the passive form.
Probably, in Elfride's case at least, it was blindness to the
greater contingencies of the future she was preparing for herself,
which enabled her to ask her father in a quiet voice if he could
give her a holiday soon, to ride to St. Launce's and go on to
Plymouth.
Now, she had only once before gone alone to Plymouth, and that was
in consequence of some unavoidable difficulty. Being a country
girl, and a good, not to say a wild, horsewoman, it had been her
delight to canter, without the ghost of an attendant, over the
fourteen or sixteen miles of hard road intervening between their
home and the station at St. Launce's, put up the horse, and go on
the remainder of the distance by train, returning in the same
manner in the evening. It was then resolved that, though she had
successfully accomplished this journey once, it was not to be
repeated without some attendance.
But Elfride must not be confounded with ordinary young feminine
equestrians. The circumstances of her lonely and narrow life made
it imperative that in trotting about the neighbourhood she must
trot alone or else not at all. Usage soon rendered this perfectly
natural to herself. Her father, who had had other experiences,
did not much like the idea of a Swancourt, whose pedigree could be
as distinctly traced as a thread in a skein of silk, scampering
over the hills like a farmer's daughter, even though he could
habitually neglect her. But what with his not being able to
afford her a regular attendant, and his inveterate habit of
letting anything be to save himself trouble, the circumstance grew
customary. And so there arose a chronic notion in the villagers'
minds that all ladies rode without an attendant, like Miss
Swancourt, except a few who were sometimes visiting at Lord
Luxellian's.
'I don't like your going to Plymouth alone, particularly going to
St. Launce's on horseback. Why not drive, and take the man?'
'It is not nice to be so overlooked.' Worm's company would not
seriously have interfered with her plans, but it was her humour to
go without him.
'When do you want to go?' said her father.
She only answered, 'Soon.'
'I will consider,' he said.
Only a few days elapsed before she asked again. A letter had
reached her from Stephen. It had been timed to come on that day
by special arrangement between them. In it he named the earliest