with a fitful aversion of her face, 'I am only frightened. Put me
down, do put me down!'
'But you can't walk,' said Knight.
'You don't know that; how can you? I am only frightened, I tell
you,' she answered petulantly, and raised her hand to her
forehead. Knight then saw that she was bleeding from a severe cut
in her wrist, apparently where it had descended upon a salient
corner of the lead-work. Elfride, too, seemed to perceive and
feel this now for the first time, and for a minute nearly lost
consciousness again. Knight rapidly bound his handkerchief round
the place, and to add to the complication, the thundercloud he had
been watching began to shed some heavy drops of rain. Knight
looked up and saw the vicar striding towards the house, and Mrs.
Swancourt waddling beside him like a hard-driven duck.
'As you are so faint, it will be much better to let me carry you
down,' said Knight; 'or at any rate inside out of the rain.' But
her objection to be lifted made it impossible for him to support
her for more than five steps.
'This is folly, great folly,' he exclaimed, setting her down.
'Indeed!' she murmured, with tears in her eyes. 'I say I will not
be carried, and you say this is folly!'
'So it is.'
'No, it isn't!'
'It is folly, I think. At any rate, the origin of it all is.'
'I don't agree to it. And you needn't get so angry with me; I am
not worth it.'
'Indeed you are. You are worth the enmity of princes, as was said
of such another. Now, then, will you clasp your hands behind my
neck, that I may carry you down without hurting you?'
'No, no.'
'You had better, or I shall foreclose.'
'What's that!'
'Deprive you of your chance.'
Elfride gave a little toss.
'Now, don't writhe so when I attempt to carry you.'
'I can't help it.'
'Then submit quietly.'
'I don't care. I don't care,' she murmured in languid tones and
with closed eyes.
He took her into his arms, entered the turret, and with slow and
cautious steps descended round and round. Then, with the
gentleness of a nursing mother, he attended to the cut on her arm.
During his progress through the operations of wiping it and
binding it up anew, her face changed its aspect from pained
indifference to something like bashful interest, interspersed with
small tremors and shudders of a trifling kind.
In the centre of each pale cheek a small red spot the size of a
wafer had now made its appearance, and continued to grow larger.
Elfride momentarily expected a recurrence to the lecture on her
foolishness, but Knight said no more than this -
'Promise me NEVER to walk on that parapet again.'
'It will be pulled down soon: so I do.' In a few minutes she
continued in a lower tone, and seriously, 'You are familiar of
course, as everybody is, with those strange sensations we
sometimes have, that our life for the moment exists in duplicate.'
'That we have lived through that moment before?'
'Or shall again. Well, I felt on the tower that something similar
to that scene is again to be common to us both.'
'God forbid!' said Knight. 'Promise me that you will never again
walk on any such place on any consideration.'
'I do.'
'That such a thing has not been before, we know. That it shall
not be again, you vow. Therefore think no more of such a foolish
fancy.'
There had fallen a great deal of rain, but unaccompanied by
lightning. A few minutes longer, and the storm had ceased.
'Now, take my arm, please.'
'Oh no, it is not necessary.' This relapse into wilfulness was
because he had again connected the epithet foolish with her.
'Nonsense: it is quite necessary; it will rain again directly, and
you are not half recovered.' And without more ado Knight took her
hand, drew it under his arm, and held it there so firmly that she
could not have removed it without a struggle. Feeling like a colt
in a halter for the first time, at thus being led along, yet
afraid to be angry, it was to her great relief that she saw the
carriage coming round the corner to fetch them.
Her fall upon the roof was necessarily explained to some extent
upon their entering the house; but both forbore to mention a word
of what she had been doing to cause such an accident. During the
remainder of the afternoon Elfride was invisible; but at dinner-
time she appeared as bright as ever.
In the drawing-room, after having been exclusively engaged with
Mr. and Mrs. Swancourt through the intervening hour, Knight again
found himself thrown with Elfride. She had been looking over a
chess problem in one of the illustrated periodicals.
'You like chess, Miss Swancourt?'
'Yes. It is my favourite scientific game; indeed, excludes every
other. Do you play?'
'I have played; though not lately.'
'Challenge him, Elfride,' said the vicar heartily. 'She plays
very well for a lady, Mr. Knight.'
'Shall we play?' asked Elfride tentatively.
'Oh, certainly. I shall be delighted.'
The game began. Mr. Swancourt had forgotten a similar performance
with Stephen Smith the year before. Elfride had not; but she had
begun to take for her maxim the undoubted truth that the necessity
of continuing faithful to Stephen, without suspicion, dictated a
fickle behaviour almost as imperatively as fickleness itself; a
fact, however, which would give a startling advantage to the
latter quality should it ever appear.
Knight, by one of those inexcusable oversights which will
sometimes afflict the best of players, placed his rook in the arms
of one of her pawns. It was her first advantage. She looked
triumphant - even ruthless.
'By George! what was I thinking of?' said Knight quietly; and then
dismissed all concern at his accident.
'Club laws we'll have, won't we, Mr. Knight?' said Elfride
suasively.
'Oh yes, certainly,' said Mr. Knight, a thought, however, just
occurring to his mind, that he had two or three times allowed her
to replace a man on her religiously assuring him that such a move
was an absolute blunder.
She immediately took up the unfortunate rook and the contest
proceeded, Elfride having now rather the better of the game. Then
he won the exchange, regained his position, and began to press her
hard. Elfride grew flurried, and placed her queen on his
remaining rook's file.
'There - how stupid! Upon my word, I did not see your rook. Of
course nobody but a fool would have put a queen there knowingly!'
She spoke excitedly, half expecting her antagonist to give her
back the move.
'Nobody, of course,' said Knight serenely, and stretched out his
hand towards his royal victim.
'It is not very pleasant to have it taken advantage of, then,' she
said with some vexation.
'Club laws, I think you said?' returned Knight blandly, and
mercilessly appropriating the queen.
She was on the brink of pouting, but was ashamed to show it; tears
almost stood in her eyes. She had been trying so hard - so very
hard - thinking and thinking till her brain was in a whirl; and it
seemed so heartless of him to treat her so, after all.
'I think it is - - ' she began.
'What?'
- 'Unkind to take advantage of a pure mistake I make in that way.'
'I lost my rook by even a purer mistake,' said the enemy in an
inexorable tone, without lifting his eyes.
'Yes, but - - ' However, as his logic was absolutely unanswerable,
she merely registered a protest. 'I cannot endure those cold-
blooded ways of clubs and professional players, like Staunton and
Morphy. Just as if it really mattered whether you have raised
your fingers from a man or no!'
Knight smiled as pitilessly as before, and they went on in
silence.
'Checkmate,' said Knight.
'Another game,' said Elfride peremptorily, and looking very warm.
'With all my heart,' said Knight.
'Checkmate,' said Knight again at the end of forty minutes.
'Another game,' she returned resolutely.
'I'll give you the odds of a bishop,' Knight said to her kindly.
'No, thank you,' Elfride replied in a tone intended for courteous
indifference; but, as a fact, very cavalier indeed.
'Checkmate,' said her opponent without the least emotion.
Oh, the difference between Elfride's condition of mind now, and
when she purposely made blunders that Stephen Smith might win!
It was bedtime. Her mind as distracted as if it would throb
itself out of her head, she went off to her chamber, full of
mortification at being beaten time after time when she herself was
the aggressor. Having for two or three years enjoyed the
reputation throughout the globe of her father's brain - which
almost constituted her entire world - of being an excellent player,
this fiasco was intolerable; for unfortunately the person most
dogged in the belief in a false reputation is always that one, the
possessor, who has the best means of knowing that it is not true.
In bed no sleep came to soothe her; that gentle thing being the
very middle-of-summer friend in this respect of flying away at the
merest troublous cloud. After lying awake till two o'clock an
idea seemed to strike her. She softly arose, got a light, and
fetched a Chess Praxis from the library. Returning and sitting up
in bed, she diligently studied the volume till the clock struck
five, and her eyelids felt thick and heavy. She then extinguished
the light and lay down again.
'You look pale, Elfride,' said Mrs. Swancourt the next morning at
breakfast. 'Isn't she, cousin Harry?'
A young girl who is scarcely ill at all can hardly help becoming
so when regarded as such by all eyes turning upon her at the table
in obedience to some remark. Everybody looked at Elfride. She
certainly was pale.
'Am I pale?' she said with a faint smile. 'I did not sleep much.
I could not get rid of armies of bishops and knights, try how I
would.'
'Chess is a bad thing just before bedtime; especially for
excitable people like yourself, dear. Don't ever play late
again.'
'I'll play early instead. Cousin Knight,' she said in imitation
of Mrs. Swancourt, 'will you oblige me in something?'
'Even to half my kingdom.'
'Well, it is to play one game more.'
'When?'
'Now, instantly; the moment we have breakfasted.'
'Nonsense, Elfride,' said her father. 'Making yourself a slave to
the game like that.'
'But I want to, papa! Honestly, I am restless at having been so
ignominiously overcome. And Mr. Knight doesn't mind. So what
harm can there be?'
'Let us play, by all means, if you wish it,' said Knight.
So, when breakfast was over, the combatants withdrew to the quiet
of the library, and the door was closed. Elfride seemed to have
an idea that her conduct was rather ill-regulated and startlingly
free from conventional restraint. And worse, she fancied upon
Knight's face a slightly amused look at her proceedings.
'You think me foolish, I suppose,' she said recklessly; 'but I
want to do my very best just once, and see whether I can overcome
you.'
'Certainly: nothing more natural. Though I am afraid it is not
the plan adopted by women of the world after a defeat.'
'Why, pray?'
'Because they know that as good as overcoming is skill in effacing
recollection of being overcome, and turn their attention to that
entirely.'
'I am wrong again, of course.'
'Perhaps your wrong is more pleasing than their right.'
'I don't quite know whether you mean that, or whether you are
laughing at me,' she said, looking doubtingly at him, yet
inclining to accept the more flattering interpretation. 'I am
almost sure you think it vanity in me to think I am a match for
you. Well, if you do, I say that vanity is no crime in such a
case.'
'Well, perhaps not. Though it is hardly a virtue.'
'Oh yes, in battle! Nelson's bravery lay in his vanity.'
'Indeed! Then so did his death.'
Oh no, no! For it is written in the book of the prophet
Shakespeare -
"Fear and be slain? no worse can come to fight;
And fight and die, is death destroying death!"
And down they sat, and the contest began, Elfride having the first
move. The game progressed. Elfride's heart beat so violently
that she could not sit still. Her dread was lest he should hear
it. And he did discover it at last - some flowers upon the table
being set throbbing by its pulsations.
'I think we had better give over,' said Knight, looking at her
gently. 'It is too much for you, I know. Let us write down the
position, and finish another time.'
'No, please not,' she implored. 'I should not rest if I did not
know the result at once. It is your move.'
Ten minutes passed.
She started up suddenly. 'I know what you are doing?' she cried,
an angry colour upon her cheeks, and her eyes indignant. 'You
were thinking of letting me win to please me!'
'I don't mind owning that I was,' Knight responded phlegmatically,
and appearing all the more so by contrast with her own turmoil.
'But you must not! I won't have it.'
'Very well.'
'No, that will not do; I insist that you promise not to do any
such absurd thing. It is insulting me!'
'Very well, madam. I won't do any such absurd thing. You shall
not win.'
'That is to be proved!' she returned proudly; and the play went
on.
Nothing is now heard but the ticking of a quaint old timepiece on
the summit of a bookcase. Ten minutes pass; he captures her
knight; she takes his knight, and looks a very Rhadamanthus.
More minutes tick away; she takes his pawn and has the advantage,
showing her sense of it rather prominently.
Five minutes more: he takes her bishop: she brings things even by
taking his knight.
Three minutes: she looks bold, and takes his queen: he looks
placid, and takes hers.
Eight or ten minutes pass: he takes a pawn; she utters a little
pooh! but not the ghost of a pawn can she take in retaliation.
Ten minutes pass: he takes another pawn and says, 'Check!' She
flushes, extricates herself by capturing his bishop, and looks
triumphant. He immediately takes her bishop: she looks surprised.
Five minutes longer: she makes a dash and takes his only remaining
bishop; he replies by taking her only remaining knight.
Two minutes: he gives check; her mind is now in a painful state of
tension, and she shades her face with her hand.
Yet a few minutes more: he takes her rook and checks again. She
literally trembles now lest an artful surprise she has in store
for him shall be anticipated by the artful surprise he evidently
has in store for her.
Five minutes: 'Checkmate in two moves!' exclaims Elfride.
'If you can,' says Knight.
'Oh, I have miscalculated; that is cruel!'
'Checkmate,' says Knight; and the victory is won.
Elfride arose and turned away without letting him see her face.
Once in the hall she ran upstairs and into her room, and flung
herself down upon her bed, weeping bitterly.
'Where is Elfride?' said her father at luncheon.
Knight listened anxiously for the answer. He had been hoping to
see her again before this time.
'She isn't well, sir,' was the reply.
Mrs. Swancourt rose and left the room, going upstairs to Elfride's
apartment.
At the door was Unity, who occupied in the new establishment a
position between young lady's maid and middle-housemaid.
'She is sound asleep, ma'am,' Unity whispered.
Mrs. Swancourt opened the door. Elfride was lying full-dressed on
the bed, her face hot and red, her arms thrown abroad. At
intervals of a minute she tossed restlessly from side to side, and
indistinctly moaned words used in the game of chess.
Mrs. Swancourt had a turn for doctoring, and felt her pulse. It
was twanging like a harp-string, at the rate of nearly a hundred
and fifty a minute. Softly moving the sleeping girl to a little
less cramped position, she went downstairs again.
'She is asleep now,' said Mrs. Swancourt. 'She does not seem very
well. Cousin Knight, what were you thinking of? her tender brain
won't bear cudgelling like your great head. You should have
strictly forbidden her to play again.'
In truth, the essayist's experience of the nature of young women
was far less extensive than his abstract knowledge of them led
himself and others to believe. He could pack them into sentences
like a workman, but practically was nowhere.
'I am indeed sorry,' said Knight, feeling even more than he
expressed. 'But surely, the young lady knows best what is good
for her!'
'Bless you, that's just what she doesn't know. She never thinks
of such things, does she, Christopher? Her father and I have to
command her and keep her in order, as you would a child. She will
say things worthy of a French epigrammatist, and act like a robin
in a greenhouse. But I think we will send for Dr. Granson - there
can be no harm.'
A man was straightway despatched on horseback to Castle Boterel,
and the gentleman known as Dr. Granson came in the course of the
afternoon. He pronounced her nervous system to be in a decided
state of disorder; forwarded some soothing draught, and gave
orders that on no account whatever was she to play chess again.
The next morning Knight, much vexed with himself, waited with a
curiously compounded feeling for her entry to breakfast. The
women servants came in to prayers at irregular intervals, and as
each entered, he could not, to save his life, avoid turning his
head with the hope that she might be Elfride. Mr. Swancourt began
reading without waiting for her. Then somebody glided in
noiselessly; Knight softly glanced up: it was only the little
kitchen-maid. Knight thought reading prayers a bore.
He went out alone, and for almost the first time failed to
recognize that holding converse with Nature's charms was not
solitude. On nearing the house again he perceived his young
friend crossing a slope by a path which ran into the one he was
following in the angle of the field. Here they met. Elfride was
at once exultant and abashed: coming into his presence had upon
her the effect of entering a cathedral.
Knight had his note-book in his hand, and had, in fact, been in
the very act of writing therein when they came in view of each
other. He left off in the midst of a sentence, and proceeded to
inquire warmly concerning her state of health. She said she was
perfectly well, and indeed had never looked better. Her health
was as inconsequent as her actions. Her lips were red, WITHOUT
the polish that cherries have, and their redness margined with the
white skin in a clearly defined line, which had nothing of jagged
confusion in it. Altogether she stood as the last person in the
world to be knocked over by a game of chess, because too
ephemeral-looking to play one.
'Are you taking notes?' she inquired with an alacrity plainly
arising less from interest in the subject than from a wish to
divert his thoughts from herself.
'Yes; I was making an entry. And with your permission I will
complete it.' Knight then stood still and wrote. Elfride remained
beside him a moment, and afterwards walked on.
'I should like to see all the secrets that are in that book,' she
gaily flung back to him over her shoulder.
'I don't think you would find much to interest you.'
'I know I should.'
'Then of course I have no more to say.'
'But I would ask this question first. Is it a book of mere facts
concerning journeys and expenditure, and so on, or a book of
thoughts?'
'Well, to tell the truth, it is not exactly either. It consists
for the most part of jottings for articles and essays, disjointed
and disconnected, of no possible interest to anybody but myself.'
'It contains, I suppose, your developed thoughts in embryo?'
'Yes.'
'If they are interesting when enlarged to the size of an article,
what must they be in their concentrated form? Pure rectified
spirit, above proof; before it is lowered to be fit for human
consumption: "words that burn" indeed.'
'Rather like a balloon before it is inflated: flabby, shapeless,
dead. You could hardly read them.'
'May I try?' she said coaxingly. 'I wrote my poor romance in that
way - I mean in bits, out of doors - and I should like to see
whether your way of entering things is the same as mine.'
'Really, that's rather an awkward request. I suppose I can hardly
refuse now you have asked so directly; but - - '
'You think me ill-mannered in asking. But does not this justify
me - your writing in my presence, Mr. Knight? If I had lighted upon
your book by chance, it would have been different; but you stand
before me, and say, "Excuse me," without caring whether I do or
not, and write on, and then tell me they are not private facts but
public ideas.'
'Very well, Miss Swancourt. If you really must see, the
consequences be upon your own head. Remember, my advice to you is
to leave my book alone.'
'But with that caution I have your permission?'
'Yes.'
She hesitated a moment, looked at his hand containing the book,
then laughed, and saying, 'I must see it,' withdrew it from his
fingers.
Knight rambled on towards the house, leaving her standing in the
path turning over the leaves. By the time he had reached the
wicket-gate he saw that she had moved, and waited till she came
up.
Elfride had closed the note-book, and was carrying it disdainfully
by the corner between her finger and thumb; her face wore a
nettled look. She silently extended the volume towards him,
raising her eyes no higher than her hand was lifted.
'Take it,' said Elfride quickly. 'I don't want to read it.'
'Could you understand it?' said Knight.
'As far as I looked. But I didn't care to read much.'
'Why, Miss Swancourt?'
'Only because I didn't wish to - that's all.'
'I warned you that you might not.'
'Yes, but I never supposed you would have put me there.'
'Your name is not mentioned once within the four corners.'
'Not my name - I know that.'
'Nor your description, nor anything by which anybody would
recognize you.'
'Except myself. For what is this?' she exclaimed, taking it from
him and opening a page. 'August 7. That's the day before
yesterday. But I won't read it,' Elfride said, closing the book
again with pretty hauteur. 'Why should I? I had no business to
ask to see your hook, and it serves me right.'
Knight hardly recollected what he had written, and turned over the
book to see. He came to this:
'Aug. 7. Girl gets into her teens, and her self-consciousness is
born. After a certain interval passed in infantine helplessness
it begins to act. Simple, young, and inexperienced at first.
Persons of observation can tell to a nicety how old this
consciousness is by the skill it has acquired in the art necessary
to its success - the art of hiding itself. Generally begins career
by actions which are popularly termed showing-off. Method adopted
depends in each case upon the disposition, rank, residence, of the
young lady attempting it. Town-bred girl will utter some moral
paradox on fast men, or love. Country miss adopts the more
material media of taking a ghastly fence, whistling, or making
your blood run cold by appearing to risk her neck. (MEM. On
Endelstow Tower.)
'An innocent vanity is of course the origin of these displays.
"Look at me," say these youthful beginners in womanly artifice,
without reflecting whether or not it be to their advantage to show
so very much of themselves. (Amplify and correct for paper on
Artless Arts.)'
'Yes, I remember now,' said Knight. 'The notes were certainly
suggested by your manoeuvre on the church tower. But you must not
think too much of such random observations,' he continued
encouragingly, as he noticed her injured looks. 'A mere fancy
passing through my head assumes a factitious importance to you,
because it has been made permanent by being written down. All
mankind think thoughts as bad as those of people they most love on
earth, but such thoughts never getting embodied on paper, it
becomes assumed that they never existed. I daresay that you
yourself have thought some disagreeable thing or other of me,
which would seem just as bad as this if written. I challenge you,
now, to tell me.'
'The worst thing I have thought of you?'
'Yes.'
'I must not.'
'Oh yes.'
'I thought you were rather round-shouldered.'
Knight looked slightly redder.
'And that there was a little bald spot on the top of your head.'
'Heh-heh! Two ineradicable defects,' said Knight, there being a
faint ghastliness discernible in his laugh. 'They are much worse
in a lady's eye than being thought self-conscious, I suppose.'
'Ah, that's very fine,' she said, too inexperienced to perceive
her hit, and hence not quite disposed to forgive his notes. 'You
alluded to me in that entry as if I were such a child, too.
Everybody does that. I cannot understand it. I am quite a woman,
you know. How old do you think I am?'
'How old? Why, seventeen, I should say. All girls are seventeen.'
'You are wrong. I am nearly nineteen. Which class of women do
you like best, those who seem younger, or those who seem older
than they are?'
'Off-hand I should be inclined to say those who seem older.'
So it was not Elfride's class.
'But it is well known,' she said eagerly, and there was something
touching in the artless anxiety to be thought much of which she
revealed by her words, 'that the slower a nature is to develop,
the richer the nature. Youths and girls who are men and women
before they come of age are nobodies by the time that backward
people have shown their full compass.'
'Yes,' said Knight thoughtfully. 'There is really something in
that remark. But at the risk of offence I must remind you that
you there take it for granted that the woman behind her time at a
given age has not reached the end of her tether. Her backwardness
may be not because she is slow to develop, but because she soon
exhausted her capacity for developing.'
Elfride looked disappointed. By this time they were indoors.
Mrs. Swancourt, to whom match-making by any honest means was meat
and drink, had now a little scheme of that nature concerning this
pair. The morning-room, in which they both expected to find her,
was empty; the old lady having, for the above reason, vacated it
by the second door as they entered by the first.
Knight went to the chimney-piece, and carelessly surveyed two
portraits on ivory.
'Though these pink ladies had very rudimentary features, judging
by what I see here,' he observed, 'they had unquestionably
beautiful heads of hair.'
'Yes; and that is everything,' said Elfride, possibly conscious of
her own, possibly not.
'Not everything; though a great deal, certainly.'
'Which colour do you like best?' she ventured to ask.
'More depends on its abundance than on its colour.'
'Abundances being equal, may I inquire your favourite colour?'
'Dark.'
'I mean for women,' she said, with the minutest fall of
countenance, and a hope that she had been misunderstood.
'So do I,' Knight replied.
It was impossible for any man not to know the colour of Elfride's
hair. In women who wear it plainly such a feature may be
overlooked by men not given to ocular intentness. But hers was
always in the way. You saw her hair as far as you could see her
sex, and knew that it was the palest brown. She knew instantly
that Knight, being perfectly aware of this, had an independent
standard of admiration in the matter.
Elfride was thoroughly vexed. She could not but be struck with
the honesty of his opinions, and the worst of it was, that the
more they went against her, the more she respected them. And now,
like a reckless gambler, she hazarded her last and best treasure.
Her eyes: they were her all now.
'What coloured eyes do you like best, Mr. Knight?' she said
slowly.
'Honestly, or as a compliment?'
'Of course honestly; I don't want anybody's compliment!'
And yet Elfride knew otherwise: that a compliment or word of
approval from that man then would have been like a well to a
famished Arab.
'I prefer hazel,' he said serenely.
She had played and lost again.
Chapter XIX
'Love was in the next degree.'
Knight had none of those light familiarities of speech which, by
judicious touches of epigrammatic flattery, obliterate a woman's
recollection of the speaker's abstract opinions. So no more was
said by either on the subject of hair, eyes, or development.
Elfride's mind had been impregnated with sentiments of her own
smallness to an uncomfortable degree of distinctness, and her
discomfort was visible in her face. The whole tendency of the
conversation latterly had been to quietly but surely disparage
her; and she was fain to take Stephen into favour in self-defence.
He would not have been so unloving, she said, as to admire an
idiosyncrasy and features different from her own. True, Stephen
had declared he loved her: Mr. Knight had never done anything of
the sort. Somehow this did not mend matters, and the sensation of
her smallness in Knight's eyes still remained. Had the position
been reversed - had Stephen loved her in spite of a differing
taste, and had Knight been indifferent in spite of her resemblance
to his ideal, it would have engendered far happier thoughts. As
matters stood, Stephen's admiration might have its root in a
blindness the result of passion. Perhaps any keen man's judgment
was condemnatory of her.
During the remainder of Saturday they were more or less thrown
with their seniors, and no conversation arose which was
exclusively their own. When Elfride was in bed that night her
thoughts recurred to the same subject. At one moment she insisted
that it was ill-natured of him to speak so decisively as he had
done; the next, that it was sterling honesty.
'Ah, what a poor nobody I am!' she said, sighing. 'People like
him, who go about the great world, don't care in the least what I
am like either in mood or feature.'
Perhaps a man who has got thoroughly into a woman's mind in this
manner, is half way to her heart; the distance between those two
stations is proverbially short.
'And are you really going away this week?' said Mrs. Swancourt to
Knight on the following evening, which was Sunday.
They were all leisurely climbing the hill to the church, where a
last service was now to be held at the rather exceptional time of
evening instead of in the afternoon, previous to the demolition of
the ruinous portions.
'I am intending to cross to Cork from Bristol,' returned Knight;
'and then I go on to Dublin.'
'Return this way, and stay a little longer with us,' said the
vicar. 'A week is nothing. We have hardly been able to realize
your presence yet. I remember a story which - - '
The vicar suddenly stopped. He had forgotten it was Sunday, and
would probably have gone on in his week-day mode of thought had
not a turn in the breeze blown the skirt of his college gown
within the range of his vision, and so reminded him. He at once
diverted the current of his narrative with the dexterity the
occasion demanded.
'The story of the Levite who journeyed to Bethlehem-judah, from
which I took my text the Sunday before last, is quite to the
point,' he continued, with the pronunciation of a man who, far
from having intended to tell a week-day story a moment earlier,
had thought of nothing but Sabbath matters for several weeks.
'What did he gain after all by his restlessness? Had he remained
in the city of the Jebusites, and not been so anxious for Gibeah,
none of his troubles would have arisen.'
'But he had wasted five days already,' said Knight, closing his
eyes to the vicar's commendable diversion. 'His fault lay in
beginning the tarrying system originally.'
'True, true; my illustration fails.'
'But not the hospitality which prompted the story.'
'So you are to come just the same,' urged Mrs. Swancourt, for she
had seen an almost imperceptible fall of countenance in her
stepdaughter at Knight's announcement.
Knight half promised to call on his return journey; but the
uncertainty with which he spoke was quite enough to fill Elfride
with a regretful interest in all he did during the few remaining
hours. The curate having already officiated twice that day in the
two churches, Mr. Swancourt had undertaken the whole of the
evening service, and Knight read the lessons for him. The sun
streamed across from the dilapidated west window, and lighted all
the assembled worshippers with a golden glow, Knight as he read
being illuminated by the same mellow lustre. Elfride at the organ
regarded him with a throbbing sadness of mood which was fed by a
sense of being far removed from his sphere. As he went
deliberately through the chapter appointed - a portion of the
history of Elijah - and ascended that magnificent climax of the
wind, the earthquake, the fire, and the still small voice, his
deep tones echoed past with such apparent disregard of her
existence, that his presence inspired her with a forlorn sense of
unapproachableness, which his absence would hardly have been able
to cause.
At the same time, turning her face for a moment to catch the glory
of the dying sun as it fell on his form, her eyes were arrested by
the shape and aspect of a woman in the west gallery. It was the
bleak barren countenance of the widow Jethway, whom Elfride had
not seen much of since the morning of her return with Stephen
Smith. Possessing the smallest of competencies, this unhappy
woman appeared to spend her life in journeyings between Endelstow
Churchyard and that of a village near Southampton, where her
father and mother were laid.
She had not attended the service here for a considerable time, and
she now seemed to have a reason for her choice of seat. From the
gallery window the tomb of her son was plainly visible - standing
as the nearest object in a prospect which was closed outwardly by
the changeless horizon of the sea.
The streaming rays, too, flooded her face, now bent towards
Elfride with a hard and bitter expression that the solemnity of
the place raised to a tragic dignity it did not intrinsically
possess. The girl resumed her normal attitude with an added
disquiet.
Elfride's emotion was cumulative, and after a while would assert
itself on a sudden. A slight touch was enough to set it free - a
poem, a sunset, a cunningly contrived chord of music, a vague
imagining, being the usual accidents of its exhibition. The
longing for Knight's respect, which was leading up to an incipient
yearning for his love, made the present conjuncture a sufficient
one. Whilst kneeling down previous to leaving, when the sunny
streaks had gone upward to the roof, and the lower part of the
church was in soft shadow, she could not help thinking of
Coleridge's morbid poem 'The Three Graves,' and shuddering as she
wondered if Mrs. Jethway were cursing her, she wept as if her
heart would break.
They came out of church just as the sun went down, leaving the
landscape like a platform from which an eloquent speaker has
retired, and nothing remains for the audience to do but to rise
and go home. Mr. and Mrs. Swancourt went off in the carriage,
Knight and Elfride preferring to walk, as the skilful old
matchmaker had imagined. They descended the hill together.
'I liked your reading, Mr. Knight,' Elfride presently found
herself saying. 'You read better than papa.'
'I will praise anybody that will praise me. You played
excellently, Miss Swancourt, and very correctly.'
'Correctly - yes.'
'It must be a great pleasure to you to take an active part in the
service.'
'I want to be able to play with more feeling. But I have not a
good selection of music, sacred or secular. I wish I had a nice
little music-library - well chosen, and that the only new pieces
sent me were those of genuine merit.'
'I am glad to hear such a wish from you. It is extraordinary how
many women have no honest love of music as an end and not as a
means, even leaving out those who have nothing in them. They
mostly like it for its accessories. I have never met a woman who
loves music as do ten or a dozen men I know.'
'How would you draw the line between women with something and
women with nothing in them?'
'Well,' said Knight, reflecting a moment, 'I mean by nothing in
them those who don't care about anything solid. This is an
instance: I knew a man who had a young friend in whom he was much
interested; in fact, they were going to be married. She was
seemingly poetical, and he offered her a choice of two editions of
the British poets, which she pretended to want badly. He said,
"Which of them would you like best for me to send?" She said, "A
pair of the prettiest earrings in Bond Street, if you don't mind,
would be nicer than either." Now I call her a girl with not much
in her but vanity; and so do you, I daresay.'
'Oh yes,' replied Elfride with an effort.
Happening to catch a glimpse of her face as she was speaking, and
noticing that her attempt at heartiness was a miserable failure,
he appeared to have misgivings.
'You, Miss Swancourt, would not, under such circumstances, have
preferred the nicknacks?'
'No, I don't think I should, indeed,' she stammered.
'I'll put it to you,' said the inflexible Knight. 'Which will you
have of these two things of about equal value - the well-chosen
little library of the best music you spoke of - bound in morocco,
walnut case, lock and key - or a pair of the very prettiest
earrings in Bond Street windows?'
'Of course the music,' Elfride replied with forced earnestness.
'You are quite certain?' he said emphatically.
'Quite,' she faltered; 'if I could for certain buy the earrings
afterwards.'
Knight, somewhat blamably, keenly enjoyed sparring with the
palpitating mobile creature, whose excitable nature made any such
thing a species of cruelty.
He looked at her rather oddly, and said, 'Fie!'
'Forgive me,' she said, laughing a little, a little frightened,
and blushing very deeply.
'Ah, Miss Elfie, why didn't you say at first, as any firm woman
would have said, I am as bad as she, and shall choose the same?'
'I don't know,' said Elfride wofully, and with a distressful
smile.
'I thought you were exceptionally musical?'
'So I am, I think. But the test is so severe - quite painful.'
'I don't understand.'
'Music doesn't do any real good, or rather - - '
'That IS a thing to say, Miss Swancourt! Why, what - - '
'You don't understand! you don't understand!'
'Why, what conceivable use is there in jimcrack jewellery?'
'No, no, no, no!' she cried petulantly; 'I didn't mean what you
think. I like the music best, only I like - - '
'Earrings better - own it!' he said in a teasing tone. 'Well, I
think I should have had the moral courage to own it at once,
without pretending to an elevation I could not reach.'
Like the French soldiery, Elfride was not brave when on the
defensive. So it was almost with tears in her eyes that she
answered desperately:
'My meaning is, that I like earrings best just now, because I lost
one of my prettiest pair last year, and papa said he would not buy
any more, or allow me to myself, because I was careless; and now I
wish I had some like them - that's what my meaning is - indeed it
is, Mr. Knight.'
'I am afraid I have been very harsh and rude,' said Knight, with a
look of regret at seeing how disturbed she was. 'But seriously,
if women only knew how they ruin their good looks by such
appurtenances, I am sure they would never want them.'
'They were lovely, and became me so!'