A pair of blue eyes
why do we trouble? Why should papa object? An architect in London is an
architect in London. Who inquires there? Nobody. We shall live there,
shall we not? Why need we be so alarmed?”
“And Elfie,” said Stephen, his hopes kindling with hers, “Knight thinks
nothing of my being only a cottager’s son; he says I am as worthy of
his friendship as if I were a lord’s; and if I am worthy of his
friendship, I am worthy of you, am I not, Elfride?”
“I not only have never loved anybody but you,” she said, instead of
giving an answer, “but I have not even formed a strong friendship, such
as you have for Knight. I wish you hadn’t. It diminishes me.”
“Now, Elfride, you know better,” he said wooingly. “And had you really
never any sweetheart at all?”
“None that was ever recognized by me as such.”
“But did nobody ever love you?”
“Yes—a man did once; very much, he said.”
“How long ago?”
“Oh, a long time.”
“How long, dearest?
“A twelvemonth.”
“That’s not VERY long” (rather disappointedly).
“I said long, not very long.”
“And did he want to marry you?”
“I believe he did. But I didn’t see anything in him. He was not good
enough, even if I had loved him.”
“May I ask what he was?”
“A farmer.”
“A farmer not good enough—how much better than my family!” Stephen
murmured.
“Where is he now?” he continued to Elfride.
“HERE.”
“Here! what do you mean by that?”
“I mean that he is here.”
“Where here?”
“Under us. He is under this tomb. He is dead, and we are sitting on his
grave.”
“Elfie,” said the young man, standing up and looking at the tomb, “how
odd and sad that revelation seems! It quite depresses me for the
moment.”
“Stephen! I didn’t wish to sit here; but you would do so.”
“You never encouraged him?”
“Never by look, word, or sign,” she said solemnly. “He died of
consumption, and was buried the day you first came.”
“Let us go away. I don’t like standing by HIM, even if you never loved
him. He was BEFORE me.”
“Worries make you unreasonable,” she half pouted, following Stephen at
the distance of a few steps. “Perhaps I ought to have told you before
we sat down. Yes; let us go.”
Chapter IX
“Her father did fume”
Oppressed, in spite of themselves, by a foresight of impending
complications, Elfride and Stephen returned down the hill hand in hand.
At the door they paused wistfully, like children late at school.
Women accept their destiny more readily than men. Elfride had now
resigned herself to the overwhelming idea of her lover’s sorry
antecedents; Stephen had not forgotten the trifling grievance that
Elfride had known earlier admiration than his own.
“What was that young man’s name?” he inquired.
“Felix Jethway; a widow’s only son.”
“I remember the family.”
“She hates me now. She says I killed him.”
Stephen mused, and they entered the porch.
“Stephen, I love only you,” she tremulously whispered. He pressed her
fingers, and the trifling shadow passed away, to admit again the mutual
and more tangible trouble.
The study appeared to be the only room lighted up. They entered, each
with a demeanour intended to conceal the inconcealable fact that
reciprocal love was their dominant chord. Elfride perceived a man,
sitting with his back towards herself, talking to her father. She would
have retired, but Mr. Swancourt had seen her.
“Come in,” he said; “it is only Martin Cannister, come for a copy of
the register for poor Mrs. Jethway.”
Martin Cannister, the sexton, was rather a favourite with Elfride. He
used to absorb her attention by telling her of his strange experiences
in digging up after long years the bodies of persons he had known, and
recognizing them by some little sign (though in reality he had never
recognized any). He had shrewd small eyes and a great wealth of double
chin, which compensated in some measure for considerable poverty of
nose.
The appearance of a slip of paper in Cannister’s hand, and a few
shillings lying on the table in front of him, denoted that the business
had been transacted, and the tenor of their conversation went to show
that a summary of village news was now engaging the attention of
parishioner and parson.
Mr. Cannister stood up and touched his forehead over his eye with his
finger, in respectful salutation of Elfride, gave half as much salute
to Stephen (whom he, in common with other villagers, had never for a
moment recognized), then sat down again and resumed his discourse.
“Where had I got on to, sir?”
“To driving the pile,” said Mr. Swancourt.
“The pile ’twas. So, as I was saying, Nat was driving the pile in this
manner, as I might say.” Here Mr. Cannister held his walking-stick
scrupulously vertical with his left hand, and struck a blow with great
force on the knob of the stick with his right. “John was steadying the
pile so, as I might say.” Here he gave the stick a slight shake, and
looked firmly in the various eyes around to see that before proceeding
further his listeners well grasped the subject at that stage. “Well,
when Nat had struck some half-dozen blows more upon the pile, ’a
stopped for a second or two. John, thinking he had done striking, put
his hand upon the top o’ the pile to gie en a pull, and see if ’a were
firm in the ground.” Mr. Cannister spread his hand over the top of the
stick, completely covering it with his palm. “Well, so to speak, Nat
hadn’t maned to stop striking, and when John had put his hand upon the
pile, the beetle——”
“Oh dreadful!” said Elfride.
“The beetle was already coming down, you see, sir. Nat just caught
sight of his hand, but couldn’t stop the blow in time. Down came the
beetle upon poor John Smith’s hand, and squashed en to a pummy.”
“Dear me, dear me! poor fellow!” said the vicar, with an intonation
like the groans of the wounded in a pianoforte performance of the
“Battle of Prague.”
“John Smith, the master-mason?” cried Stephen hurriedly.
“Ay, no other; and a better-hearted man God A’mighty never made.”
“Is he so much hurt?”
“I have heard,” said Mr. Swancourt, not noticing Stephen, “that he has
a son in London, a very promising young fellow.”
“Oh, how he must be hurt!” repeated Stephen.
“A beetle couldn’t hurt very little. Well, sir, good-night t’ye; and
ye, sir; and you, miss, I’m sure.”
Mr. Cannister had been making unnoticeable motions of withdrawal, and
by the time this farewell remark came from his lips he was just outside
the door of the room. He tramped along the hall, stayed more than a
minute endeavouring to close the door properly, and then was lost to
their hearing.
Stephen had meanwhile turned and said to the vicar:
“Please excuse me this evening! I must leave. John Smith is my father.”
The vicar did not comprehend at first.
“What did you say?” he inquired.
“John Smith is my father,” said Stephen deliberately.
A surplus tinge of redness rose from Mr. Swancourt’s neck, and came
round over his face, the lines of his features became more firmly
defined, and his lips seemed to get thinner. It was evident that a
series of little circumstances, hitherto unheeded, were now fitting
themselves together, and forming a lucid picture in Mr. Swancourt’s
mind in such a manner as to render useless further explanation on
Stephen’s part.
“Indeed,” the vicar said, in a voice dry and without inflection.
This being a word which depends entirely upon its tone for its meaning,
Mr. Swancourt’s enunciation was equivalent to no expression at all.
“I have to go now,” said Stephen, with an agitated bearing, and a
movement as if he scarcely knew whether he ought to run off or stay
longer. “On my return, sir, will you kindly grant me a few minutes’
private conversation?”
“Certainly. Though antecedently it does not seem possible that there
can be anything of the nature of private business between us.”
Mr. Swancourt put on his straw hat, crossed the drawing-room, into
which the moonlight was shining, and stepped out of the French window
into the verandah. It required no further effort to perceive what,
indeed, reasoning might have foretold as the natural colour of a mind
whose pleasures were taken amid genealogies, good dinners, and
patrician reminiscences, that Mr. Swancourt’s prejudices were too
strong for his generosity, and that Stephen’s moments as his friend and
equal were numbered, or had even now ceased.
Stephen moved forward as if he would follow the vicar, then as if he
would not, and in absolute perplexity whither to turn himself, went
awkwardly to the door. Elfride followed lingeringly behind him. Before
he had receded two yards from the doorstep, Unity and Ann the housemaid
came home from their visit to the village.
“Have you heard anything about John Smith? The accident is not so bad
as was reported, is it?” said Elfride intuitively.
“Oh no; the doctor says it is only a bad bruise.”
“I thought so!” cried Elfride gladly.
“He says that, although Nat believes he did not check the beetle as it
came down, he must have done so without knowing it—checked it very
considerably too; for the full blow would have knocked his hand abroad,
and in reality it is only made black-and-blue like.”
“How thankful I am!” said Stephen.
The perplexed Unity looked at him with her mouth rather than with her
eyes.
“That will do, Unity,” said Elfride magisterially; and the two maids
passed on.
“Elfride, do you forgive me?” said Stephen with a faint smile. “No man
is fair in love;” and he took her fingers lightly in his own.
With her head thrown sideways in the Greuze attitude, she looked a
tender reproach at his doubt and pressed his hand. Stephen returned the
pressure threefold, then hastily went off to his father’s cottage by
the wall of Endelstow Park.
“Elfride, what have you to say to this?” inquired her father, coming up
immediately Stephen had retired.
With feminine quickness she grasped at any straw that would enable her
to plead his cause. “He had told me of it,” she faltered; “so that it
is not a discovery in spite of him. He was just coming in to tell you.”
“COMING to tell! Why hadn’t he already told? I object as much, if not
more, to his underhand concealment of this, than I do to the fact
itself. It looks very much like his making a fool of me, and of you
too. You and he have been about together, and corresponding together,
in a way I don’t at all approve of—in a most unseemly way. You should
have known how improper such conduct is. A woman can’t be too careful
not to be seen alone with I-don’t-know-whom.”
“You saw us, papa, and have never said a word.”
“My fault, of course; my fault. What the deuce could I be thinking of!
He, a villager’s son; and we, Swancourts, connections of the
Luxellians. We have been coming to nothing for centuries, and now I
believe we have got there. What shall I next invite here, I wonder!”
Elfride began to cry at this very unpropitious aspect of affairs. “O
papa, papa, forgive me and him! We care so much for one another,
papa—O, so much! And what he was going to ask you is, if you will allow
of an engagement between us till he is a gentleman as good as you. We
are not in a hurry, dear papa; we don’t want in the least to marry now;
not until he is richer. Only will you let us be engaged, because I love
him so, and he loves me?”
Mr. Swancourt’s feelings were a little touched by this appeal, and he
was annoyed that such should be the case. “Certainly not!” he replied.
He pronounced the inhibition lengthily and sonorously, so that the
“not” sounded like “n-o-o-o-t!”
“No, no, no; don’t say it!”
“Foh! A fine story. It is not enough that I have been deluded and
disgraced by having him here,—the son of one of my village
peasants,—but now I am to make him my son-in-law! Heavens above us, are
you mad, Elfride?”