the rear of the chairs, and leaning against the trunk of a tree,
he looked at Elfride with quiet and critical interest.
Three points about this unobtrusive person showed promptly to the
exercised eye that he was not a Row man pur sang. First, an
irrepressible wrinkle or two in the waist of his frock-coat -
denoting that he had not damned his tailor sufficiently to drive
that tradesman up to the orthodox high pressure of cunning
workmanship. Second, a slight slovenliness of umbrella,
occasioned by its owner's habit of resting heavily upon it, and
using it as a veritable walking-stick, instead of letting its
point touch the ground in the most coquettish of kisses, as is the
proper Row manner to do. Third, and chief reason, that try how
you might, you could scarcely help supposing, on looking at his
face, that your eyes were not far from a well-finished mind,
instead of the well-finished skin et praeterea nihil, which is by
rights the Mark of the Row.
The probability is that, had not Mrs. Swancourt been left alone in
her carriage under the tree, this man would have remained in his
unobserved seclusion. But seeing her thus, he came round to the
front, stooped under the rail, and stood beside the carriage-door.
Mrs. Swancourt looked reflectively at him for a quarter of a
minute, then held out her hand laughingly:
'Why, Henry Knight - of course it is! My - second - third - fourth
cousin - what shall I say? At any rate, my kinsman.'
'Yes, one of a remnant not yet cut off. I scarcely was certain of
you, either, from where I was standing.'
'I have not seen you since you first went to Oxford; consider the
number of years! You know, I suppose, of my marriage?'
And there sprang up a dialogue concerning family matters of birth,
death, and marriage, which it is not necessary to detail. Knight
presently inquired:
'The young lady who changed into the other carriage is, then, your
stepdaughter?'
'Yes, Elfride. You must know her.'
'And who was the lady in the carriage Elfride entered; who had an
ill-defined and watery look, as if she were only the reflection of
herself in a pool?'
'Lady Luxellian; very weakly, Elfride says. My husband is
remotely connected with them; but there is not much intimacy on
account of - - . However, Henry, you'll come and see us, of
course. 24 Chevron Square. Come this week. We shall only be in
town a week or two longer.'
'Let me see. I've got to run up to Oxford to-morrow, where I
shall be for several days; so that I must, I fear, lose the
pleasure of seeing you in London this year.'
'Then come to Endelstow; why not return with us?'
'I am afraid if I were to come before August I should have to
leave again in a day or two. I should be delighted to be with you
at the beginning of that month; and I could stay a nice long time.
I have thought of going westward all the summer.'
'Very well. Now remember that's a compact. And won't you wait
now and see Mr. Swancourt? He will not be away ten minutes
longer.'
'No; I'll beg to be excused; for I must get to my chambers again
this evening before I go home; indeed, I ought to have been there
now - I have such a press of matters to attend to just at present.
You will explain to him, please. Good-bye.'
'And let us know the day of your appearance as soon as you can.'
'I will'
Chapter XV
'A wandering voice.'
Though sheer and intelligible griefs are not charmed away by being
confided to mere acquaintances, the process is a palliative to
certain ill-humours. Among these, perplexed vexation is one - a
species of trouble which, like a stream, gets shallower by the
simple operation of widening it in any quarter.
On the evening of the day succeeding that of the meeting in the
Park, Elfride and Mrs. Swancourt were engaged in conversation in
the dressing-room of the latter. Such a treatment of such a case
was in course of adoption here.
Elfride had just before received an affectionate letter from
Stephen Smith in Bombay, which had been forwarded to her from
Endelstow. But since this is not the case referred to, it is not
worth while to pry further into the contents of the letter than to
discover that, with rash though pardonable confidence in coming
times, he addressed her in high spirits as his darling future
wife. Probably there cannot be instanced a briefer and surer rule-
of-thumb test of a man's temperament - sanguine or cautious - than
this: did he or does he ante-date the word wife in corresponding
with a sweet-heart he honestly loves?
She had taken this epistle into her own room, read a little of it,
then SAVED the rest for to-morrow, not wishing to be so
extravagant as to consume the pleasure all at once. Nevertheless,
she could not resist the wish to enjoy yet a little more, so out
came the letter again, and in spite of misgivings as to
prodigality the whole was devoured. The letter was finally
reperused and placed in her pocket.
What was this? Also a newspaper for Elfride, which she had
overlooked in her hurry to open the letter. It was the old number
of the PRESENT, containing the article upon her book, forwarded as
had been requested.
Elfride had hastily read it through, shrunk perceptibly smaller,
and had then gone with the paper in her hand to Mrs. Swancourt's
dressing-room, to lighten or at least modify her vexation by a
discriminating estimate from her stepmother.
She was now looking disconsolately out of the window.
'Never mind, my child,' said Mrs. Swancourt after a careful
perusal of the matter indicated. 'I don't see that the review is
such a terrible one, after all. Besides, everybody has forgotten
about it by this time. I'm sure the opening is good enough for
any book ever written. Just listen - it sounds better read aloud
than when you pore over it silently: "THE COURT OF KELLYON CASTLE.
A ROMANCE OF THE MIDDLE AGES. BY ERNEST FIELD. In the belief
that we were for a while escaping the monotonous repetition of
wearisome details in modern social scenery, analyses of
uninteresting character, or the unnatural unfoldings of a
sensation plot, we took this volume into our hands with a feeling
of pleasure. We were disposed to beguile ourselves with the fancy
that some new change might possibly be rung upon donjon keeps,
chain and plate armour, deeply scarred cheeks, tender maidens
disguised as pages, to which we had not listened long ago." Now,
that's a very good beginning, in my opinion, and one to be proud
of having brought out of a man who has never seen you.'
'Ah, yes,' murmured Elfride wofully. 'But, then, see further on!'
'Well the next bit is rather unkind, I must own,' said Mrs.
Swancourt, and read on. '"Instead of this we found ourselves in
the hands of some young lady, hardly arrived at years of
discretion, to judge by the silly device it has been thought worth
while to adopt on the title-page, with the idea of disguising her
sex."'
'I am not "silly"!' said Elfride indignantly. 'He might have
called me anything but that.'
'You are not, indeed. Well: - "Hands of a young lady...whose
chapters are simply devoted to impossible tournaments, towers, and
escapades, which read like flat copies of like scenes in the
stories of Mr. G. P. R. James, and the most unreal portions of
IVANHOE. The bait is so palpably artificial that the most
credulous gudgeon turns away." Now, my dear, I don't see overmuch
to complain of in that. It proves that you were clever enough to
make him think of Sir Walter Scott, which is a great deal.'
'Oh yes; though I cannot romance myself, I am able to remind him
of those who can!' Elfride intended to hurl these words
sarcastically at her invisible enemy, but as she had no more
satirical power than a wood-pigeon, they merely fell in a pretty
murmur from lips shaped to a pout.
'Certainly: and that's something. Your book is good enough to be
bad in an ordinary literary manner, and doesn't stand by itself in
a melancholy position altogether worse than assailable. - "That
interest in an historical romance may nowadays have any chance of
being sustained, it is indispensable that the reader find himself
under the guidance of some nearly extinct species of legendary,
who, in addition to an impulse towards antiquarian research and an
unweakened faith in the mediaeval halo, shall possess an inventive
faculty in which delicacy of sentiment is far overtopped by a
power of welding to stirring incident a spirited variety of the
elementary human passions." Well, that long-winded effusion
doesn't refer to you at all, Elfride, merely something put in to
fill up. Let me see, when does he come to you again;...not till
the very end, actually. Here you are finally polished off:
'"But to return to the little work we have used as the text of
this article. We are far from altogether disparaging the author's
powers. She has a certain versatility that enables her to use
with effect a style of narration peculiar to herself, which may be
called a murmuring of delicate emotional trifles, the particular
gift of those to whom the social sympathies of a peaceful time are
as daily food. Hence, where matters of domestic experience, and
the natural touches which make people real, can be introduced
without anachronisms too striking, she is occasionally felicitous;
and upon the whole we feel justified in saying that the book will
bear looking into for the sake of those portions which have
nothing whatever to do with the story."
'Well, I suppose it is intended for satire; but don't think
anything more of it now, my dear. It is seven o'clock.' And Mrs.
Swancourt rang for her maid.
Attack is more piquant than concord. Stephen's letter was
concerning nothing but oneness with her: the review was the very
reverse. And a stranger with neither name nor shape, age nor
appearance, but a mighty voice, is naturally rather an interesting
novelty to a lady he chooses to address. When Elfride fell asleep
that night she was loving the writer of the letter, but thinking
of the writer of that article.
Chapter XVI
'Then fancy shapes - as fancy can.'
On a day about three weeks later, the Swancourt trio were sitting
quietly in the drawing-room of The Crags, Mrs. Swancourt's house
at Endelstow, chatting, and taking easeful survey of their
previous month or two of town - a tangible weariness even to people
whose acquaintances there might be counted on the fingers.
A mere season in London with her practised step-mother had so
advanced Elfride's perceptions, that her courtship by Stephen
seemed emotionally meagre, and to have drifted back several years
into a childish past. In regarding our mental experiences, as in
visual observation, our own progress reads like a dwindling of
that we progress from.
She was seated on a low chair, looking over her romance with
melancholy interest for the first time since she had become
acquainted with the remarks of the PRESENT thereupon.
'Still thinking of that reviewer, Elfie?'
'Not of him personally; but I am thinking of his opinion. Really,
on looking into the volume after this long time has elapsed, he
seems to have estimated one part of it fairly enough.'
'No, no; I wouldn't show the white feather now! Fancy that of all
people in the world the writer herself should go over to the
enemy. How shall Monmouth's men fight when Monmouth runs away?'
'I don't do that. But I think he is right in some of his
arguments, though wrong in others. And because he has some claim
to my respect I regret all the more that he should think so
mistakenly of my motives in one or two instances. It is more
vexing to be misunderstood than to be misrepresented; and he
misunderstands me. I cannot be easy whilst a person goes to rest
night after night attributing to me intentions I never had.'
'He doesn't know your name, or anything about you. And he has
doubtless forgotten there is such a book in existence by this
time.'
'I myself should certainly like him to be put right upon one or
two matters,' said the vicar, who had hitherto been silent. 'You
see, critics go on writing, and are never corrected or argued
with, and therefore are never improved.'
'Papa,' said Elfride brightening, 'write to him!'
'I would as soon write to him as look at him, for the matter of
that,' said Mr. Swancourt.
'Do! And say, the young person who wrote the book did not adopt a
masculine pseudonym in vanity or conceit, but because she was
afraid it would be thought presumptuous to publish her name, and
that she did not mean the story for such as he, but as a sweetener
of history for young people, who might thereby acquire a taste for
what went on in their own country hundreds of years ago, and be
tempted to dive deeper into the subject. Oh, there is so much to
explain; I wish I might write myself!'
'Now, Elfie, I'll tell you what we will do,' answered Mr.
Swancourt, tickled with a sort of bucolic humour at the idea of
criticizing the critic. 'You shall write a clear account of what
he is wrong in, and I will copy it and send it as mine.'
'Yes, now, directly!' said Elfride, jumping up. 'When will you
send it, papa? '
'Oh, in a day or two, I suppose,' he returned. Then the vicar
paused and slightly yawned, and in the manner of elderly people
began to cool from his ardour for the undertaking now that it came
to the point. 'But, really, it is hardly worth while,' he said.
'O papa!' said Elfride, with much disappointment. 'You said you
would, and now you won't. That is not fair!'
'But how can we send it if we don't know whom to send it to?'
'If you really want to send such a thing it can easily be done,'
said Mrs. Swancourt, coming to her step-daughter's rescue. 'An
envelope addressed, "To the Critic of THE COURT OF KELLYON CASTLE,
care of the Editor of the PRESENT," would find him.'
'Yes, I suppose it would.'
'Why not write your answer yourself, Elfride?' Mrs. Swancourt
inquired.
'I might,' she said hesitatingly; 'and send it anonymously: that
would be treating him as he has treated me.'
'No use in the world!'
'But I don't like to let him know my exact name. Suppose I put my
initials only? The less you are known the more you are thought
of.'
'Yes; you might do that.'
Elfride set to work there and then. Her one desire for the last
fortnight seemed likely to be realized. As happens with sensitive
and secluded minds, a continual dwelling upon the subject had
magnified to colossal proportions the space she assumed herself to
occupy or to have occupied in the occult critic's mind. At noon
and at night she had been pestering herself with endeavours to
perceive more distinctly his conception of her as a woman apart
from an author: whether he really despised her; whether he thought
more or less of her than of ordinary young women who never
ventured into the fire of criticism at all. Now she would have
the satisfaction of feeling that at any rate he knew her true
intent in crossing his path, and annoying him so by her
performance, and be taught perhaps to despise it a little less.
Four days later an envelope, directed to Miss Swancourt in a
strange hand, made its appearance from the post-bag.
'0h,' said Elfride, her heart sinking within her. 'Can it be from
that man - a lecture for impertinence? And actually one for Mrs.
Swancourt in the same hand-writing!' She feared to open hers.
'Yet how can he know my name? No; it is somebody else.'
'Nonsense!' said her father grimly. 'You sent your initials, and
the Directory was available. Though he wouldn't have taken the
trouble to look there unless he had been thoroughly savage with
you. I thought you wrote with rather more asperity than simple
literary discussion required.' This timely clause was introduced
to save the character of the vicar's judgment under any issue of
affairs.
'Well, here I go,' said Elfride, desperately tearing open the
seal.
'To be sure, of course,' exclaimed Mrs. Swancourt; and looking up
from her own letter. 'Christopher, I quite forgot to tell you,
when I mentioned that I had seen my distant relative, Harry
Knight, that I invited him here for whatever length of time he
could spare. And now he says he can come any day in August.'
'Write, and say the first of the month,' replied the
indiscriminate vicar.
She read om 'Goodness me - and that isn't all. He is actually the
reviewer of Elfride's book. How absurd, to be sure! I had no idea
he reviewed novels or had anything to do with the PRESENT. He is
a barrister - and I thought he only wrote in the Quarterlies. Why,
Elfride, you have brought about an odd entanglement! What does he
say to you?'
Elfride had put down her letter with a dissatisfied flush on her
face. 'I don't know. The idea of his knowing my name and all
about me!...Why, he says nothing particular, only this -
'"MY DEAR MADAM, - Though I am sorry that my remarks should have
seemed harsh to you, it is a pleasure to find that they have been
the means of bringing forth such an ingeniously argued reply.
Unfortunately, it is so long since I wrote my review, that my
memory does not serve me sufficiently to say a single word in my
defence, even supposing there remains one to be said, which is
doubtful. You, will find from a letter I have written to Mrs.
Swancourt, that we are not such strangers to each other as we have
been imagining. Possibly, I may have the pleasure of seeing you
soon, when any argument you choose to advance shall receive all
the attention it deserves."
'That is dim sarcasm - I know it is.'
'Oh no, Elfride.'
'And then, his remarks didn't seem harsh - I mean I did not say
so.'
'He thinks you are in a frightful temper,' said Mr. Swancourt,
chuckling in undertones.
'And he will come and see me, and find the authoress as
contemptible in speech as she has been impertinent in manner. I
do heartily wish I had never written a word to him!'
'Never mind,' said Mrs. Swancourt, also laughing in low quiet
jerks; 'it will make the meeting such a comical affair, and afford
splendid by-play for your father and myself. The idea of our
running our heads against Harry Knight all the time! I cannot get
over that.'
The vicar had immediately remembered the name to be that of
Stephen Smith's preceptor and friend; but having ceased to concern
himself in the matter he made no remark to that effect,
consistently forbearing to allude to anything which could restore
recollection of the (to him) disagreeable mistake with regard to
poor Stephen's lineage and position. Elfride had of course
perceived the same thing, which added to the complication of
relationship a mesh that her stepmother knew nothing of.
The identification scarcely heightened Knight's attractions now,
though a twelvemonth ago she would only have cared to see him for
the interest he possessed as Stephen's friend. Fortunately for
Knight's advent, such a reason for welcome had only begun to be
awkward to her at a time when the interest he had acquired on his
own account made it no longer necessary.
These coincidences, in common with all relating to him, tended to
keep Elfride's mind upon the stretch concerning Knight. As was
her custom when upon the horns of a dilemma, she walked off by
herself among the laurel bushes, and there, standing still and
splitting up a leaf without removing it from its stalk, fetched
back recollections of Stephen's frequent words in praise of his
friend, and wished she had listened more attentively. Then, still
pulling the leaf, she would blush at some fancied mortification
that would accrue to her from his words when they met, in
consequence of her intrusiveness, as she now considered it, in
writing to him.
The next development of her meditations was the subject of what
this man's personal appearance might be - was he tall or short,
dark or fair, gay or grim? She would have asked Mrs. Swancourt but
for the risk she might thereby incur of some teasing remark being
returned. Ultimately Elfride would say, 'Oh, what a plague that
reviewer is to me!' and turn her face to where she imagined India
lay, and murmur to herself, 'Ah, my little husband, what are you
doing now? Let me see, where are you - south, east, where? Behind
that hill, ever so far behind!'
Chapter XVII
'Her welcome, spoke in faltering phrase.'
'There is Henry Knight, I declare!' said Mrs. Swancourt one day.
They were gazing from the jutting angle of a wild enclosure not
far from The Crags, which almost overhung the valley already
described as leading up from the sea and little port of Castle
Boterel. The stony escarpment upon which they stood had the
contour of a man's face, and it was covered with furze as with a
beard. People in the field above were preserved from an
accidental roll down these prominences and hollows by a hedge on
the very crest, which was doing that kindly service for Elfride
and her mother now.
Scrambling higher into the hedge and stretching her neck further
over the furze, Elfride beheld the individual signified. He was
walking leisurely along the little green path at the bottom,
beside the stream, a satchel slung upon his left hip, a stout
walking-stick in his hand, and a brown-holland sun-hat upon his
head. The satchel was worn and old, and the outer polished
surface of the leather was cracked and peeling off.
Knight having arrived over the hills to Castle Boterel upon the
top of a crazy omnibus, preferred to walk the remaining two miles
up the valley, leaving his luggage to be brought on.
Behind him wandered, helter-skelter, a boy of whom Knight had
briefly inquired the way to Endelstow; and by that natural law of
physics which causes lesser bodies to gravitate towards the
greater, this boy had kept near to Knight, and trotted like a
little dog close at his heels, whistling as he went, with his eyes
fixed upon Knight's boots as they rose and fell.
When they had reached a point precisely opposite that in which
Mrs. and Miss Swancourt lay in ambush, Knight stopped and turned
round.
'Look here, my boy,' he said.
The boy parted his lips, opened his eyes, and answered nothing.
'Here's sixpence for you, on condition that you don't again come
within twenty yards of my heels, all the way up the valley.'
The boy, who apparently had not known he had been looking at
Knight's heels at all, took the sixpence mechanically, and Knight
went on again, wrapt in meditation.
'A nice voice,' Elfride thought; 'but what a singular temper!'
'Now we must get indoors before he ascends the slope,' said Mrs.
Swancourt softly. And they went across by a short cut over a
stile, entering the lawn by a side door, and so on to the house.
Mr. Swancourt had gone into the village with the curate, and
Elfride felt too nervous to await their visitor's arrival in the
drawing-room with Mrs. Swancourt. So that when the elder lady
entered, Elfride made some pretence of perceiving a new variety of
crimson geranium, and lingered behind among the flower beds.
There was nothing gained by this, after all, she thought; and a
few minutes after boldly came into the house by the glass side-
door. She walked along the corridor, and entered the drawing-
room. Nobody was there.
A window at the angle of the room opened directly into an
octagonal conservatory, enclosing the corner of the building.
From the conservatory came voices in conversation - Mrs.
Swancourt's and the stranger's.
She had expected him to talk brilliantly. To her surprise he was
asking questions in quite a learner's manner, on subjects
connected with the flowers and shrubs that she had known for
years. When after the lapse of a few minutes he spoke at some
length, she considered there was a hard square decisiveness in the
shape of his sentences, as if, unlike her own and Stephen's, they
were not there and then newly constructed, but were drawn forth
from a large store ready-made. They were now approaching the
window to come in again.
'That is a flesh-coloured variety,' said Mrs. Swancourt. 'But
oleanders, though they are such bulky shrubs, are so very easily
wounded as to be unprunable - giants with the sensitiveness of
young ladies. Oh, here is Elfride!'
Elfride looked as guilty and crestfallen as Lady Teazle at the
dropping of the screen. Mrs. Swancourt presented him half
comically, and Knight in a minute or two placed himself beside the
young lady.
A complexity of instincts checked Elfride's conventional smiles of
complaisance and hospitality; and, to make her still less
comfortable, Mrs. Swancourt immediately afterwards left them
together to seek her husband. Mr. Knight, however, did not seem
at all incommoded by his feelings, and he said with light
easefulness:
'So, Miss Swancourt, I have met you at last. You escaped me by a
few minutes only when we were in London.'
'Yes. I found that you had seen Mrs. Swancourt.'
'And now reviewer and reviewed are face to face,' he added
unconcernedly.
'Yes: though the fact of your being a relation of Mrs. Swancourt's
takes off the edge of it. It was strange that you should be one
of her family all the time.' Elfride began to recover herself now,
and to look into Knight's face. 'I was merely anxious to let you
know my REAL meaning in writing the book - extremely anxious.'
'I can quite understand the wish; and I was gratified that my
remarks should have reached home. They very seldom do, I am
afraid.'
Elfride drew herself in. Here he was, sticking to his opinions as
firmly as if friendship and politeness did not in the least
require an immediate renunciation of them.
'You made me very uneasy and sorry by writing such things!' she
murmured, suddenly dropping the mere cacueterie of a fashionable
first introduction, and speaking with some of the dudgeon of a
child towards a severe schoolmaster.
'That is rather the object of honest critics in such a case. Not
to cause unnecessary sorrow, but: "To make you sorry after a
proper manner, that ye may receive damage by us in nothing," as a
powerful pen once wrote to the Gentiles. Are you going to write
another romance?'
'Write another?' she said. 'That somebody may pen a condemnation
and "nail't wi' Scripture" again, as you do now, Mr. Knight?'
'You may do better next time,' he said placidly: 'I think you
will. But I would advise you to confine yourself to domestic
scenes.'
'Thank you. But never again!'
'Well, you may be right. That a young woman has taken to writing
is not by any means the best thing to hear about her.'
'What is the best?'
'I prefer not to say.'
'Do you know? Then, do tell me, please.'
'Well' - (Knight was evidently changing his meaning) - 'I suppose to
hear that she has married.'
Elfride hesitated. 'And what when she has been married?' she said
at last, partly in order to withdraw her own person from the
argument.
'Then to hear no more about her. It is as Smeaton said of his
lighthouse: her greatest real praise, when the novelty of her
inauguration has worn off, is that nothing happens to keep the
talk of her alive.'
'Yes, I see,' said Elfride softly and thoughtfully. 'But of
course it is different quite with men. Why don't you write
novels, Mr. Knight?'
'Because I couldn't write one that would interest anybody.'
'Why?'
'For several reasons. It requires a judicious omission of your
real thoughts to make a novel popular, for one thing.'
'Is that really necessary? Well, I am sure you could learn to do
that with practice,' said Elfride with an ex-cathedra air, as
became a person who spoke from experience in the art. 'You would
make a great name for certain,' she continued.
'So many people make a name nowadays, that it is more
distinguished to remain in obscurity.'
'Tell me seriously - apart from the subject - why don't you write a
volume instead of loose articles?' she insisted.
'Since you are pleased to make me talk of myself, I will tell you
seriously,' said Knight, not less amused at this catechism by his
young friend than he was interested in her appearance. 'As I have
implied, I have not the wish. And if I had the wish, I could not
now concentrate sufficiently. We all have only our one cruse of
energy given us to make the best of. And where that energy has
been leaked away week by week, quarter by quarter, as mine has for
the last nine or ten years, there is not enough dammed back behind
the mill at any given period to supply the force a complete book
on any subject requires. Then there is the self-confidence and
waiting power. Where quick results have grown customary, they are
fatal to a lively faith in the future.'
'Yes, I comprehend; and so you choose to write in fragments?'
'No, I don't choose to do it in the sense you mean; choosing from
a whole world of professions, all possible. It was by the
constraint of accident merely. Not that I object to the
accident.'
'Why don't you object - I mean, why do you feel so quiet about
things?' Elfride was half afraid to question him so, but her
intense curiosity to see what the inside of literary Mr. Knight
was like, kept her going on.
Knight certainly did not mind being frank with her. Instances of
this trait in men who are not without feeling, but are reticent
from habit, may be recalled by all of us. When they find a
listener who can by no possibility make use of them, rival them,
or condemn them, reserved and even suspicious men of the world
become frank, keenly enjoying the inner side of their frankness.
'Why I don't mind the accidental constraint,' he replied, 'is
because, in making beginnings, a chance limitation of direction is
often better than absolute freedom.'
'I see - that is, I should if I quite understood what all those
generalities mean.'
'Why, this: That an arbitrary foundation for one's work, which no
length of thought can alter, leaves the attention free to fix
itself on the work itself, and make the best of it.'
'Lateral compression forcing altitude, as would be said in that
tongue,' she said mischievously. 'And I suppose where no limit
exists, as in the case of a rich man with a wide taste who wants
to do something, it will be better to choose a limit capriciously
than to have none.'
'Yes,' he said meditatively. 'I can go as far as that.'
'Well,' resumed Elfride, 'I think it better for a man's nature if
he does nothing in particular.'
'There is such a case as being obliged to.'
'Yes, yes; I was speaking of when you are not obliged for any
other reason than delight in the prospect of fame. I have thought
many times lately that a thin widespread happiness, commencing
now, and of a piece with the days of your life, is preferable to
an anticipated heap far away in the future, and none now.'
'Why, that's the very thing I said just now as being the principle
of all ephemeral doers like myself.'
'Oh, I am sorry to have parodied you,' she said with some
confusion. 'Yes, of course. That is what you meant about not
trying to be famous.' And she added, with the quickness of
conviction characteristic of her mind: 'There is much littleness
in trying to be great. A man must think a good deal of himself,
and be conceited enough to believe in himself, before he tries at
all.'
'But it is soon enough to say there is harm in a man's thinking a
good deal of himself when it is proved he has been thinking wrong,
and too soon then sometimes. Besides, we should not conclude that
a man who strives earnestly for success does so with a strong
sense of his own merit. He may see how little success has to do
with merit, and his motive may be his very humility.'
This manner of treating her rather provoked Elfride. No sooner
did she agree with him than he ceased to seem to wish it, and took
the other side. 'Ah,' she thought inwardly, 'I shall have nothing
to do with a man of this kind, though he is our visitor.'
'I think you will find,' resumed Knight, pursuing the conversation
more for the sake of finishing off his thoughts on the subject
than for engaging her attention, 'that in actual life it is merely
a matter of instinct with men - this trying to push on. They awake
to a recognition that they have, without premeditation, begun to
try a little, and they say to themselves, "Since I have tried thus
much, I will try a little more." They go on because they have
begun.'
Elfride, in her turn, was not particularly attending to his words
at this moment. She had, unconsciously to herself, a way of
seizing any point in the remarks of an interlocutor which
interested her, and dwelling upon it, and thinking thoughts of her
own thereupon, totally oblivious of all that he might say in
continuation. On such occasions she artlessly surveyed the person
speaking; and then there was a time for a painter. Her eyes
seemed to look at you, and past you, as you were then, into your
future; and past your future into your eternity - not reading it,
but gazing in an unused, unconscious way - her mind still clinging
to its original thought.
This is how she was looking at Knight.
Suddenly Elfride became conscious of what she was doing, and was
painfully confused.
'What were you so intent upon in me?' he inquired.
'As far as I was thinking of you at all, I was thinking how clever
you are,' she said, with a want of premeditation that was
startling in its honesty and simplicity.
Feeling restless now that she had so unwittingly spoken, she arose
and stepped to the window, having heard the voices of her father
and Mrs. Swancourt coming up below the terrace. 'Here they are,'
she said, going out. Knight walked out upon the lawn behind her.
She stood upon the edge of the terrace, close to the stone
balustrade, and looked towards the sun, hanging over a glade just
now fair as Tempe's vale, up which her father was walking.
Knight could not help looking at her. The sun was within ten
degrees of the horizon, and its warm light flooded her face and
heightened the bright rose colour of her cheeks to a vermilion
red, their moderate pink hue being only seen in its natural tone
where the cheek curved round into shadow. The ends of her hanging
hair softly dragged themselves backwards and forwards upon her
shoulder as each faint breeze thrust against or relinquished it.
Fringes and ribbons of her dress, moved by the same breeze, licked
like tongues upon the parts around them, and fluttering forward
from shady folds caught likewise their share of the lustrous
orange glow.
Mr. Swancourt shouted out a welcome to Knight from a distance of
about thirty yards, and after a few preliminary words proceeded to
a conversation of deep earnestness on Knight's fine old family
name, and theories as to lineage and intermarriage connected
therewith. Knight's portmanteau having in the meantime arrived,
they soon retired to prepare for dinner, which had been postponed
two hours later than the usual time of that meal.
An arrival was an event in the life of Elfride, now that they were
again in the country, and that of Knight necessarily an engrossing
one. And that evening she went to bed for the first time without
thinking of Stephen at all.
Chapter XVIII
'He heard her musical pants.'
The old tower of West Endelstow Church had reached the last weeks
of its existence. It was to be replaced by a new one from the
designs of Mr. Hewby, the architect who had sent down Stephen.
Planks and poles had arrived in the churchyard, iron bars had been
thrust into the venerable crack extending down the belfry wall to
the foundation, the bells had been taken down, the owls had
forsaken this home of their forefathers, and six iconoclasts in
white fustian, to whom a cracked edifice was a species of Mumbo
Jumbo, had taken lodgings in the village previous to beginning the
actual removal of the stones.
This was the day after Knight's arrival. To enjoy for the last
time the prospect seaward from the summit, the vicar, Mrs.
Swancourt, Knight, and Elfride, all ascended the winding turret -
Mr. Swancourt stepping forward with many loud breaths, his wife
struggling along silently, but suffering none the less. They had
hardly reached the top when a large lurid cloud, palpably a
reservoir of rain, thunder, and lightning, was seen to be
advancing overhead from the north.
The two cautious elders suggested an immediate return, and
proceeded to put it in practice as regarded themselves.
'Dear me, I wish I had not come up,' exclaimed Mrs. Swancourt.
'We shall be slower than you two in going down,' the vicar said
over his shoulder, 'and so, don't you start till we are nearly at
the bottom, or you will run over us and break our necks somewhere
in the darkness of the turret.'
Accordingly Elfride and Knight waited on the leads till the
staircase should be clear. Knight was not in a talkative mood
that morning. Elfride was rather wilful, by reason of his
inattention, which she privately set down to his thinking her not
worth talking to. Whilst Knight stood watching the rise of the
cloud, she sauntered to the other side of the tower, and there
remembered a giddy feat she had performed the year before. It was
to walk round upon the parapet of the tower - which was quite
without battlement or pinnacle, and presented a smooth flat
surface about two feet wide, forming a pathway on all the four
sides. Without reflecting in the least upon what she was doing
she now stepped upon the parapet in the old way, and began walking
along.
'We are down, cousin Henry,' cried Mrs. Swancourt up the turret.
'Follow us when you like.'
Knight turned and saw Elfride beginning her elevated promenade.
His face flushed with mingled concern and anger at her rashness.
'I certainly gave you credit for more common sense,' he said.
She reddened a little and walked on.
'Miss Swancourt, I insist upon your coming down,' he exclaimed.
'I will in a minute. I am safe enough. I have done it often.'
At that moment, by reason of a slight perturbation his words had
caused in her, Elfride's foot caught itself in a little tuft of
grass growing in a joint of the stone-work, and she almost lost
her balance. Knight sprang forward with a face of horror. By
what seemed the special interposition of a considerate Providence
she tottered to the inner edge of the parapet instead of to the
outer, and reeled over upon the lead roof two or three feet below
the wall.
Knight seized her as in a vice, and he said, panting, 'That ever I
should have met a woman fool enough to do a thing of that kind!
Good God, you ought to be ashamed of yourself!'
The close proximity of the Shadow of Death had made her sick and
pale as a corpse before he spoke. Already lowered to that state,
his words completely over-powered her, and she swooned away as he
held her.
Elfride's eyes were not closed for more than forty seconds. She
opened them, and remembered the position instantly. His face had
altered its expression from stern anger to pity. But his severe
remarks had rather frightened her, and she struggled to be free.
'If you can stand, of course you may,' he said, and loosened his
arms. 'I hardly know whether most to laugh at your freak or to
chide you for its folly.'
She immediately sank upon the lead-work. Knight lifted her again.
'Are you hurt?' he said.
She murmured an incoherent expression, and tried to smile; saying,