A pair of blue eyes
“Well, I think you were rather unfairly treated by the PRESENT, I
certainly do. Writing a heavy review like that upon an elegant trifle
like the COURT OF KELLYON CASTLE was absurd.”
“What?” said Elfride, opening her eyes. “Was I reviewed in the
PRESENT?”
“Oh yes; didn’t you see it? Why, it was four or five months ago!”
“No, I never saw it. How sorry I am! What a shame of my publishers!
They promised to send me every notice that appeared.”
“Ah, then, I am almost afraid I have been giving you disagreeable
information, intentionally withheld out of courtesy. Depend upon it
they thought no good would come of sending it, and so would not pain
you unnecessarily.”
“Oh no; I am indeed glad you have told me, Lord Luxellian. It is quite
a mistaken kindness on their part. Is the review so much against me?”
she inquired tremulously.
“No, no; not that exactly—though I almost forget its exact purport now.
It was merely—merely sharp, you know—ungenerous, I might say. But
really my memory does not enable me to speak decidedly.”
“We’ll drive to the PRESENT office, and get one directly; shall we,
papa?”
“If you are so anxious, dear, we will, or send. But to-morrow will do.”
“And do oblige me in a little matter now, Elfride,” said Lord Luxellian
warmly, and looking as if he were sorry he had brought news that
disturbed her. “I am in reality sent here as a special messenger by my
little Polly and Katie to ask you to come into our carriage with them
for a short time. I am just going to walk across into Piccadilly, and
my wife is left alone with them. I am afraid they are rather spoilt
children; but I have half promised them you shall come.”
The steps were let down, and Elfride was transferred—to the intense
delight of the little girls, and to the mild interest of loungers with
red skins and long necks, who cursorily eyed the performance with their
walking-sticks to their lips, occasionally laughing from far down their
throats and with their eyes, their mouths not being concerned in the
operation at all. Lord Luxellian then told the coachman to drive on,
lifted his hat, smiled a smile that missed its mark and alighted on a
total stranger, who bowed in bewilderment. Lord Luxellian looked long
at Elfride.
The look was a manly, open, and genuine look of admiration; a momentary
tribute of a kind which any honest Englishman might have paid to
fairness without being ashamed of the feeling, or permitting it to
encroach in the slightest degree upon his emotional obligations as a
husband and head of a family. Then Lord Luxellian turned away, and
walked musingly to the upper end of the promenade.
Mr. Swancourt had alighted at the same time with Elfride, crossing over
to the Row for a few minutes to speak to a friend he recognized there;
and his wife was thus left sole tenant of the carriage.
Now, whilst this little act had been in course of performance, there
stood among the promenading spectators a man of somewhat different
description from the rest. Behind the general throng, in 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