A pair of blue eyes
Another and still more winning trait was one attaching to the corners
of her mouth. Before she made a remark these often twitched gently: not
backwards and forwards, the index of nervousness; not down upon the
jaw, the sign of determination; but palpably upwards, in precisely the
curve adopted to represent mirth in the broad caricatures of
schoolboys. Only this element in her face was expressive of anything
within the woman, but it was unmistakable. It expressed humour
subjective as well as objective—which could survey the peculiarities of
self in as whimsical a light as those of other people.
This is not all of Mrs. Swancourt. She had held out to Elfride hands
whose fingers were literally stiff with rings, signis auroque rigentes,
like Helen’s robe. These rows of rings were not worn in vanity
apparently. They were mostly antique and dull, though a few were the
reverse.
RIGHT HAND.
1st. Plainly set oval onyx, representing a devil’s head. 2nd. Green
jasper intaglio, with red veins. 3rd. Entirely gold, bearing figure of
a hideous griffin. 4th. A sea-green monster diamond, with small
diamonds round it. 5th. Antique cornelian intaglio of dancing figure of
a satyr. 6th. An angular band chased with dragons’ heads. 7th. A
facetted carbuncle accompanied by ten little twinkling emeralds; &c.
&c.
LEFT HAND.
1st. A reddish-yellow toadstone. 2nd. A heavy ring enamelled in
colours, and bearing a jacynth. 3rd. An amethystine sapphire. 4th. A
polished ruby, surrounded by diamonds. 5th. The engraved ring of an
abbess. 6th. A gloomy intaglio; &c. &c.
Beyond this rather quaint array of stone and metal Mrs. Swancourt wore
no ornament whatever.
Elfride had been favourably impressed with Mrs. Troyton at their
meeting about two months earlier; but to be pleased with a woman as a
momentary acquaintance was different from being taken with her as a
stepmother. However, the suspension of feeling was but for a moment.
Elfride decided to like her still.
Mrs. Swancourt was a woman of the world as to knowledge, the reverse as
to action, as her marriage suggested. Elfride and the lady were soon
inextricably involved in conversation, and Mr. Swancourt left them to
themselves.
“And what do you find to do with yourself here?” Mrs. Swancourt said,
after a few remarks about the wedding. “You ride, I know.”
“Yes, I ride. But not much, because papa doesn’t like my going alone.”
“You must have somebody to look after you.”
“And I read, and write a little.”
“You should write a novel. The regular resource of people who don’t go
enough into the world to live a novel is to write one.”
“I have done it,” said Elfride, looking dubiously at Mrs. Swancourt, as
if in doubt whether she would meet with ridicule there.
“That’s right. Now, then, what is it about, dear?”
“About—well, it is a romance of the Middle Ages.”
“Knowing nothing of the present age, which everybody knows about, for
safety you chose an age known neither to you nor other people. That’s
it, eh? No, no; I don’t mean it, dear.”
“Well, I have had some opportunities of studying mediaeval art and
manners in the library and private museum at Endelstow House, and I
thought I should like to try my hand upon a fiction. I know the time
for these tales is past; but I was interested in it, very much
interested.”
“When is it to appear?”
“Oh, never, I suppose.”
“Nonsense, my dear girl. Publish it, by all means. All ladies do that
sort of thing now; not for profit, you know, but as a guarantee of
mental respectability to their future husbands.”
“An excellent idea of us ladies.”
“Though I am afraid it rather resembles the melancholy ruse of throwing
loaves over castle-walls at besiegers, and suggests desperation rather
than plenty inside.”
“Did you ever try it?”
“No; I was too far gone even for that.”
“Papa says no publisher will take my book.”
“That remains to be proved. I’ll give my word, my dear, that by this
time next year it shall be printed.”
“Will you, indeed?” said Elfride, partially brightening with pleasure,
though she was sad enough in her depths. “I thought brains were the
indispensable, even if the only, qualification for admission to the
republic of letters. A mere commonplace creature like me will soon be
turned out again.”
“Oh no; once you are there you’ll be like a drop of water in a piece of
rock-crystal—your medium will dignify your commonness.”
“It will be a great satisfaction,” Elfride murmured, and thought of
Stephen, and wished she could make a great fortune by writing romances,
and marry him and live happily.
“And then we’ll go to London, and then to Paris,” said Mrs. Swancourt.
“I have been talking to your father about it. But we have first to move
into the manor-house, and we think of staying at Torquay whilst that is
going on. Meanwhile, instead of going on a honeymoon scamper by
ourselves, we have come home to fetch you, and go all together to Bath
for two or three weeks.”
Elfride assented pleasantly, even gladly; but she saw that, by this
marriage, her father and herself had ceased for ever to be the close
relations they had been up to a few weeks ago. It was impossible now to
tell him the tale of her wild elopement with Stephen Smith.
He was still snugly housed in her heart. His absence had regained for
him much of that aureola of saintship which had been nearly abstracted
during her reproachful mood on that miserable journey from London.
Rapture is often cooled by contact with its cause, especially if under
awkward conditions. And that last experience with Stephen had done
anything but make him shine in her eyes. His very kindness in letting
her return was his offence. Elfride had her sex’s love of sheer force
in a man, however ill-directed; and at that critical juncture in London
Stephen’s only chance of retaining the ascendancy over her that his
face and not his parts had acquired for him, would have been by doing
what, for one thing, he was too youthful to undertake—that was,
dragging her by the wrist to the rails of some altar, and peremptorily
marrying her. Decisive action is seen by appreciative minds to be
frequently objectless, and sometimes fatal; but decision, however
suicidal, has more charm for a woman than the most unequivocal Fabian
success.
However, some of the unpleasant accessories of that occasion were now
out of sight again, and Stephen had resumed not a few of his fancy
colours.
Chapter XIII
“He set in order many proverbs.”
It is London in October—two months further on in the story.
Bede’s Inn has this peculiarity, that it faces, receives from, and
discharges into a bustling thoroughfare speaking only of wealth and
respectability, whilst its postern abuts on as crowded and
poverty-stricken a network of alleys as are to be found anywhere in the
metropolis. The moral consequences are, first, that those who occupy
chambers in the Inn may see a great deal of shirtless humanity’s habits
and enjoyments without doing more than look down from a back window;
and second they may hear wholesome though unpleasant social reminders
through the medium of a harsh voice, an unequal footstep, the echo of a
blow or a fall, which originates in the person of some drunkard or
wife-beater, as he crosses and interferes with the quiet of the square.
Characters of this kind frequently pass through the Inn from a little
foxhole of an alley at the back, but they never loiter there.
It is hardly necessary to state that all the sights and movements
proper to the Inn are most orderly. On the fine October evening on
which we follow Stephen Smith to this place, a placid porter is sitting
on a stool under a sycamore-tree in the midst, with a little cane in
his hand. We notice the thick coat of soot upon the branches, hanging
underneath them in flakes, as in a chimney. The blackness of these
boughs does not at present improve the tree—nearly forsaken by its
leaves as it is—but in the spring their green fresh beauty is made
doubly beautiful by the contrast. Within the railings is a
flower-garden of respectable dahlias and chrysanthemums, where a man is
sweeping the leaves from the grass.
Stephen selects a doorway, and ascends an old though wide wooden
staircase, with moulded balusters and handrail, which in a country
manor-house would be considered a noteworthy specimen of Renaissance
workmanship. He reaches a door on the first floor, over which is
painted, in black letters, “Mr. Henry Knight”—“Barrister-at-law” being
understood but not expressed. The wall is thick, and there is a door at
its outer and inner face. The outer one happens to be ajar: Stephen
goes to the other, and taps.
“Come in!” from distant penetralia.
First was a small anteroom, divided from the inner apartment by a
wainscoted archway two or three yards wide. Across this archway hung a
pair of dark-green curtains, making a mystery of all within the arch
except the spasmodic scratching of a quill pen. Here was grouped a
chaotic assemblage of articles—mainly old framed prints and
paintings—leaning edgewise against the wall, like roofing slates in a
builder’s yard. All the books visible here were folios too big to be
stolen—some lying on a heavy oak table in one corner, some on the floor
among the pictures, the whole intermingled with old coats, hats,
umbrellas, and walking-sticks.
Stephen pushed aside the curtain, and before him sat a man writing away
as if his life depended upon it—which it did.
A man of thirty in a speckled coat, with dark brown hair, curly beard,
and crisp moustache: the latter running into the beard on each side of
the mouth, and, as usual, hiding the real expression of that organ
under a chronic aspect of impassivity.
“Ah, my dear fellow, I knew ’twas you,” said Knight, looking up with a
smile, and holding out his hand.
Knight’s mouth and eyes came to view now. Both features were good, and
had the peculiarity of appearing younger and fresher than the brow and
face they belonged to, which were getting sicklied o’er by the
unmistakable pale cast. The mouth had not quite relinquished rotundity
of curve for the firm angularities of middle life; and the eyes, though
keen, permeated rather than penetrated: what they had lost of their
boy-time brightness by a dozen years of hard reading lending a
quietness to their gaze which suited them well.
A lady would have said there was a smell of tobacco in the room: a man
that there was not.
Knight did not rise. He looked at a timepiece on the mantelshelf, then
turned again to his letters, pointing to a chair.
“Well, I am glad you have come. I only returned to town yesterday; now,
don’t speak, Stephen, for ten minutes; I have just that time to the
late post. At the eleventh minute, I’m your man.”
Stephen sat down as if this kind of reception was by no means new, and
away went Knight’s pen, beating up and down like a ship in a storm.
Cicero called the library the soul of the house; here the house was all
soul. Portions of the floor, and half the wall-space, were taken up by
book-shelves ordinary and extraordinary; the remaining parts, together
with brackets, side-tables, &c., being occupied by casts, statuettes,
medallions, and plaques of various descriptions, picked up by the owner
in his wanderings through France and Italy.
One stream only of evening sunlight came into the room from a window
quite in the corner, overlooking a court. An aquarium stood in the
window. It was a dull parallelopipedon enough for living creatures at
most hours of the day; but for a few minutes in the evening, as now, an
errant, kindly ray lighted up and warmed the little world therein, when
the many-coloured zoophytes opened and put forth their arms, the weeds
acquired a rich transparency, the shells gleamed of a more golden