A pair of blue eyes
The Swancourts were well known here. The transition from equestrian to
the ordinary guise of railway travellers had been more than once
performed by father and daughter in this establishment.
In less than a quarter of an hour Elfride emerged from the door in her
walking dress, and went to the railway. She had not told Mrs. Buckle
anything as to her intentions, and was supposed to have gone out
shopping.
An hour and forty minutes later, and she was in Stephen’s arms at the
Plymouth station. Not upon the platform—in the secret retreat of a
deserted waiting-room.
Stephen’s face boded ill. He was pale and despondent.
“What is the matter?” she asked.
“We cannot be married here to-day, my Elfie! I ought to have known it
and stayed here. In my ignorance I did not. I have the licence, but it
can only be used in my parish in London. I only came down last night,
as you know.”
“What shall we do?” she said blankly.
“There’s only one thing we can do, darling.”
“What’s that?”
“Go on to London by a train just starting, and be married there
to-morrow.”
“Passengers for the 11.5 up-train take their seats!” said a guard’s
voice on the platform.
“Will you go, Elfride?”
“I will.”
In three minutes the train had moved off, bearing away with it Stephen
and Elfride.
Chapter XII
“Adieu! she cries, and waved her lily hand.”
The few tattered clouds of the morning enlarged and united, the sun
withdrew behind them to emerge no more that day, and the evening drew
to a close in drifts of rain. The water-drops beat like duck shot
against the window of the railway-carriage containing Stephen and
Elfride.
The journey from Plymouth to Paddington, by even the most headlong
express, allows quite enough leisure for passion of any sort to cool.
Elfride’s excitement had passed off, and she sat in a kind of stupor
during the latter half of the journey. She was aroused by the clanging
of the maze of rails over which they traced their way at the entrance
to the station.
Is this London?” she said.
“Yes, darling,” said Stephen in a tone of assurance he was far from
feeling. To him, no less than to her, the reality so greatly differed
from the prefiguring.
She peered out as well as the window, beaded with drops, would allow
her, and saw only the lamps, which had just been lit, blinking in the
wet atmosphere, and rows of hideous zinc chimney-pipes in dim relief
against the sky. She writhed uneasily, as when a thought is swelling in
the mind which must cause much pain at its deliverance in words.
Elfride had known no more about the stings of evil report than the
native wild-fowl knew of the effects of Crusoe’s first shot. Now she
saw a little further, and a little further still.
The train stopped. Stephen relinquished the soft hand he had held all
the day, and proceeded to assist her on to the platform.
This act of alighting upon strange ground seemed all that was wanted to
complete a resolution within her.
She looked at her betrothed with despairing eyes.
“O Stephen,” she exclaimed, “I am so miserable! I must go home again—I
must—I must! Forgive my wretched vacillation. I don’t like it here—nor
myself—nor you!”
Stephen looked bewildered, and did not speak.
“Will you allow me to go home?” she implored. “I won’t trouble you to
go with me. I will not be any weight upon you; only say you will agree
to my returning; that you will not hate me for it, Stephen! It is
better that I should return again; indeed it is, Stephen.”
“But we can’t return now,” he said in a deprecatory tone.
“I must! I will!”
“How? When do you want to go?”
“Now. Can we go at once?”
The lad looked hopelessly along the platform.
“If you must go, and think it wrong to remain, dearest,” said he sadly,
“you shall. You shall do whatever you like, my Elfride. But would you
in reality rather go now than stay till to-morrow, and go as my wife?”
“Yes, yes—much—anything to go now. I must; I must!” she cried.
“We ought to have done one of two things,” he answered gloomily. “Never
to have started, or not to have returned without being married. I don’t
like to say it, Elfride—indeed I don’t; but you must be told this, that
going back unmarried may compromise your good name in the eyes of
people who may hear of it.”
“They will not; and I must go.”
“O Elfride! I am to blame for bringing you away.”
“Not at all. I am the elder.”
“By a month; and what’s that? But never mind that now.” He looked
around. “Is there a train for Plymouth to-night?” he inquired of a
guard. The guard passed on and did not speak.
“Is there a train for Plymouth to-night?” said Elfride to another.
“Yes, miss; the 8.10—leaves in ten minutes. You have come to the wrong
platform; it is the other side. Change at Bristol into the night mail.
Down that staircase, and under the line.”
They ran down the staircase—Elfride first—to the booking-office, and
into a carriage with an official standing beside the door. “Show your
tickets, please.” They are locked in—men about the platform accelerate
their velocities till they fly up and down like shuttles in a loom—a
whistle—the waving of a flag—a human cry—a steam groan—and away they go
to Plymouth again, just catching these words as they glide off:
“Those two youngsters had a near run for it, and no mistake!”
Elfride found her breath.
“And have you come too, Stephen? Why did you?”
“I shall not leave you till I see you safe at St. Launce’s. Do not
think worse of me than I am, Elfride.”
And then they rattled along through the night, back again by the way
they had come. The weather cleared, and the stars shone in upon them.
Their two or three fellow-passengers sat for most of the time with
closed eyes. Stephen sometimes slept; Elfride alone was wakeful and
palpitating hour after hour.
The day began to break, and revealed that they were by the sea. Red
rocks overhung them, and, receding into distance, grew livid in the
blue grey atmosphere. The sun rose, and sent penetrating shafts of
light in upon their weary faces. Another hour, and the world began to
be busy. They waited yet a little, and the train slackened its speed in
view of the platform at St. Launce’s.
She shivered, and mused sadly.
“I did not see all the consequences,” she said. “Appearances are
wofully against me. If anybody finds me out, I am, I suppose,
disgraced.”
“Then appearances will speak falsely; and how can that matter, even if
they do? I shall be your husband sooner or later, for certain, and so
prove your purity.”
“Stephen, once in London I ought to have married you,” she said firmly.
“It was my only safe defence. I see more things now than I did
yesterday. My only remaining chance is not to be discovered; and that
we must fight for most desperately.”
They stepped out. Elfride pulled a thick veil over her face.
A woman with red and scaly eyelids and glistening eyes was sitting on a
bench just inside the office-door. She fixed her eyes upon Elfride with
an expression whose force it was impossible to doubt, but the meaning
of which was not clear; then upon the carriage they had left. She
seemed to read a sinister story in the scene.
Elfride shrank back, and turned the other way.
“Who is that woman?” said Stephen. “She looked hard at you.”
“Mrs. Jethway—a widow, and mother of that young man whose tomb we sat
on the other night. Stephen, she is my enemy. Would that God had had
mercy enough upon me to have hidden this from HER!”
“Do not talk so hopelessly,” he remonstrated. “I don’t think she
recognized us.”
“I pray that she did not.”
He put on a more vigorous mood.
“Now, we will go and get some breakfast.”
“No, no!” she begged. “I cannot eat. I MUST get back to Endelstow.”
Elfride was as if she had grown years older than Stephen now.
“But you have had nothing since last night but that cup of tea at
Bristol.”
“I can’t eat, Stephen.”
“Wine and biscuit?”
“No.”
“Nor tea, nor coffee?”
“No.”
“A glass of water?”
“No. I want something that makes people strong and energetic for the
present, that borrows the strength of to-morrow for use to-day—leaving
to-morrow without any at all for that matter; or even that would take
all life away to-morrow, so long as it enabled me to get home again
now. Brandy, that’s what I want. That woman’s eyes have eaten my heart
away!”
“You are wild; and you grieve me, darling. Must it be brandy?”
“Yes, if you please.”
“How much?”
“I don’t know. I have never drunk more than a teaspoonful at once. All
I know is that I want it. Don’t get it at the Falcon.”
He left her in the fields, and went to the nearest inn in that
direction. Presently he returned with a small flask nearly full, and
some slices of bread-and-butter, thin as wafers, in a paper-bag.
Elfride took a sip or two.
“It goes into my eyes,” she said wearily. “I can’t take any more. Yes,
I will; I will close my eyes. Ah, it goes to them by an inside route. I
don’t want it; throw it away.”
However, she could eat, and did eat. Her chief attention was
concentrated upon how to get the horse from the Falcon stables without
suspicion. Stephen was not allowed to accompany her into the town. She
acted now upon conclusions reached without any aid from him: his power
over her seemed to have departed.
“You had better not be seen with me, even here where I am so little
known. We have begun stealthily as thieves, and we must end stealthily
as thieves, at all hazards. Until papa has been told by me myself, a
discovery would be terrible.”
Walking and gloomily talking thus they waited till nearly nine o’clock,
at which time Elfride thought she might call at the Falcon without
creating much surprise. Behind the railway-station was the river,
spanned by an old Tudor bridge, whence the road diverged in two
directions, one skirting the suburbs of the town, and winding round
again into the high-road to Endelstow. Beside this road Stephen sat,
and awaited her return from the Falcon.
He sat as one sitting for a portrait, motionless, watching the
chequered lights and shades on the tree-trunks, the children playing
opposite the school previous to entering for the morning lesson, the
reapers in a field afar off. The certainty of possession had not come,
and there was nothing to mitigate the youth’s gloom, that increased
with the thought of the parting now so near.
At length she came trotting round to him, in appearance much as on the
romantic morning of their visit to the cliff, but shorn of the radiance
which glistened about her then. However, her comparative immunity from
further risk and trouble had considerably composed her. Elfride’s
capacity for being wounded was only surpassed by her capacity for
healing, which rightly or wrongly is by some considered an index of
transientness of feeling in general.
“Elfride, what did they say at the Falcon?”
“Nothing. Nobody seemed curious about me. They knew I went to Plymouth,
and I have stayed there a night now and then with Miss Bicknell. I
rather calculated upon that.”
And now parting arose like a death to these children, for it was
imperative that she should start at once. Stephen walked beside her for
nearly a mile. During the walk he said sadly:
“Elfride, four-and-twenty hours have passed, and the thing is not
done.”
“But you have insured that it shall be done.”
“How have I?”
“O Stephen, you ask how! Do you think I could marry another man on
earth after having gone thus far with you? Have I not shown beyond
possibility of doubt that I can be nobody else’s? Have I not
irretrievably committed myself?—pride has stood for nothing in the face
of my great love. You misunderstood my turning back, and I cannot
explain it. It was wrong to go with you at all; and though it would