A pair of blue eyes
That first repast in Endelstow Vicarage was a very agreeable one to
young Stephen Smith. The table was spread, as Elfride had suggested to
her father, with the materials for the heterogeneous meal called high
tea—a class of refection welcome to all when away from men and towns,
and particularly attractive to youthful palates. The table was prettily
decked with winter flowers and leaves, amid which the eye was greeted
by chops, chicken, pie, &c., and two huge pasties overhanging the sides
of the dish with a cheerful aspect of abundance.
At the end, towards the fireplace, appeared the tea-service, of
old-fashioned Worcester porcelain, and behind this arose the slight
form of Elfride, attempting to add matronly dignity to the movement of
pouring out tea, and to have a weighty and concerned look in matters of
marmalade, honey, and clotted cream. Having made her own meal before he
arrived, she found to her embarrassment that there was nothing left for
her to do but talk when not assisting him. She asked him if he would
excuse her finishing a letter she had been writing at a side-table,
and, after sitting down to it, tingled with a sense of being grossly
rude. However, seeing that he noticed nothing personally wrong in her,
and that he too was embarrassed when she attentively watched his cup to
refill it, Elfride became better at ease; and when furthermore he
accidentally kicked the leg of the table, and then nearly upset his
tea-cup, just as schoolboys did, she felt herself mistress of the
situation, and could talk very well. In a few minutes ingenuousness and
a common term of years obliterated all recollection that they were
strangers just met. Stephen began to wax eloquent on extremely slight
experiences connected with his professional pursuits; and she, having
no experiences to fall back upon, recounted with much animation stories
that had been related to her by her father, which would have astonished
him had he heard with what fidelity of action and tone they were
rendered. Upon the whole, a very interesting picture of
Sweet-and-Twenty was on view that evening in Mr. Swancourt’s house.
Ultimately Stephen had to go upstairs and talk loud to the vicar,
receiving from him between his puffs a great many apologies for calling
him so unceremoniously to a stranger’s bedroom. “But,” continued Mr.
Swancourt, “I felt that I wanted to say a few words to you before the
morning, on the business of your visit. One’s patience gets exhausted
by staying a prisoner in bed all day through a sudden freak of one’s
enemy—new to me, though—for I have known very little of gout as yet.
However, he’s gone to my other toe in a very mild manner, and I expect
he’ll slink off altogether by the morning. I hope you have been well
attended to downstairs?”
“Perfectly. And though it is unfortunate, and I am sorry to see you
laid up, I beg you will not take the slightest notice of my being in
the house the while.”
“I will not. But I shall be down to-morrow. My daughter is an excellent
doctor. A dose or two of her mild mixtures will fetch me round quicker
than all the drug stuff in the world. Well, now about the church
business. Take a seat, do. We can’t afford to stand upon ceremony in
these parts as you see, and for this reason, that a civilized human
being seldom stays long with us; and so we cannot waste time in
approaching him, or he will be gone before we have had the pleasure of
close acquaintance. This tower of ours is, as you will notice, entirely
gone beyond the possibility of restoration; but the church itself is
well enough. You should see some of the churches in this county. Floors
rotten: ivy lining the walls.”
“Dear me!”
“Oh, that’s nothing. The congregation of a neighbour of mine, whenever
a storm of rain comes on during service, open their umbrellas and hold
them up till the dripping ceases from the roof. Now, if you will kindly
bring me those papers and letters you see lying on the table, I will
show you how far we have got.”
Stephen crossed the room to fetch them, and the vicar seemed to notice
more particularly the slim figure of his visitor.
“I suppose you are quite competent?” he said.
“Quite,” said the young man, colouring slightly.
“You are very young, I fancy—I should say you are not more than
nineteen?”
I am nearly twenty-one.”
“Exactly half my age; I am forty-two.”
“By the way,” said Mr. Swancourt, after some conversation, “you said
your whole name was Stephen Fitzmaurice, and that your grandfather came
originally from Caxbury. Since I have been speaking, it has occurred to
me that I know something of you. You belong to a well-known ancient
county family—not ordinary Smiths in the least.”
“I don’t think we have any of their blood in our veins.”
“Nonsense! you must. Hand me the ‘Landed Gentry.’ Now, let me see.
There, Stephen Fitzmaurice Smith—he lies in St. Mary’s Church, doesn’t
he? Well, out of that family Sprang the Leaseworthy Smiths, and
collaterally came General Sir Stephen Fitzmaurice Smith of Caxbury——”
“Yes; I have seen his monument there,” shouted Stephen. “But there is
no connection between his family and mine: there cannot be.”
“There is none, possibly, to your knowledge. But look at this, my dear
sir,” said the vicar, striking his fist upon the bedpost for emphasis.
“Here are you, Stephen Fitzmaurice Smith, living in London, but
springing from Caxbury. Here in this book is a genealogical tree of the
Stephen Fitzmaurice Smiths of Caxbury Manor. You may be only a family
of professional men now—I am not inquisitive: I don’t ask questions of
that kind; it is not in me to do so—but it is as plain as the nose in
your face that there’s your origin! And, Mr. Smith, I congratulate you
upon your blood; blue blood, sir; and, upon my life, a very desirable
colour, as the world goes.”
“I wish you could congratulate me upon some more tangible quality,”
said the younger man, sadly no less than modestly.
“Nonsense! that will come with time. You are young: all your life is
before you. Now look—see how far back in the mists of antiquity my own
family of Swancourt have a root. Here, you see,” he continued, turning
to the page, “is Geoffrey, the one among my ancestors who lost a barony
because he would cut his joke. Ah, it’s the sort of us! But the story
is too long to tell now. Ay, I’m a poor man—a poor gentleman, in fact:
those I would be friends with, won’t be friends with me; those who are
willing to be friends with me, I am above being friends with. Beyond
dining with a neighbouring incumbent or two, and an occasional
chat—sometimes dinner—with Lord Luxellian, a connection of mine, I am
in absolute solitude—absolute.”
“You have your studies, your books, and your—daughter.”
“Oh yes, yes; and I don’t complain of poverty. Canto coram latrone.
Well, Mr. Smith, don’t let me detain you any longer in a sick room. Ha!
that reminds me of a story I once heard in my younger days.” Here the
vicar began a series of small private laughs, and Stephen looked
inquiry. “Oh, no, no! it is too bad—too bad to tell!” continued Mr.
Swancourt in undertones of grim mirth. “Well, go downstairs; my
daughter must do the best she can with you this evening. Ask her to
sing to you—she plays and sings very nicely. Good-night; I feel as if I
had known you for five or six years. I’ll ring for somebody to show you
down.”
“Never mind,” said Stephen, “I can find the way.” And he went
downstairs, thinking of the delightful freedom of manner in the remoter
counties in comparison with the reserve of London.
“I forgot to tell you that my father was rather deaf,” said Elfride
anxiously, when Stephen entered the little drawing-room.
“Never mind; I know all about it, and we are great friends,” the man of
business replied enthusiastically. “And, Miss Swancourt, will you
kindly sing to me?”
To Miss Swancourt this request seemed, what in fact it was,
exceptionally point-blank; though she guessed that her father had some
hand in framing it, knowing, rather to her cost, of his unceremonious
way of utilizing her for the benefit of dull sojourners. At the same
time, as Mr. Smith’s manner was too frank to provoke criticism, and his
age too little to inspire fear, she was ready—not to say pleased—to
accede. Selecting from the canterbury some old family ditties, that in
years gone by had been played and sung by her mother, Elfride sat down
to the pianoforte, and began, “’Twas on the evening of a winter’s day,”
in a pretty contralto voice.
“Do you like that old thing, Mr. Smith?” she said at the end.
“Yes, I do much,” said Stephen—words he would have uttered, and
sincerely, to anything on earth, from glee to requiem, that she might
have chosen.
“You shall have a little one by De Leyre, that was given me by a young
French lady who was staying at Endelstow House:
“‘Je l’ai planté, je l’ai vu naître,
Ce beau rosier où les oiseaux,’ &c.;
and then I shall want to give you my own favourite for the very last,
Shelley’s ‘When the lamp is shattered,’ as set to music by my poor
mother. I so much like singing to anybody who _really_ cares to hear
me.”
Every woman who makes a permanent impression on a man is usually
recalled to his mind’s eye as she appeared in one particular scene,
which seems ordained to be her special form of manifestation throughout
the pages of his memory. As the patron Saint has her attitude and
accessories in mediaeval illumination, so the sweetheart may be said to
have hers upon the table of her true Love’s fancy, without which she is
rarely introduced there except by effort; and this though she may, on
further acquaintance, have been observed in many other phases which one
would imagine to be far more appropriate to love’s young dream.
Miss Elfride’s image chose the form in which she was beheld during
these minutes of singing, for her permanent attitude of visitation to
Stephen’s eyes during his sleeping and waking hours in after days. The
profile is seen of a young woman in a pale gray silk dress with
trimmings of swan’s-down, and opening up from a point in front, like a
waistcoat without a shirt; the cool colour contrasting admirably with
the warm bloom of her neck and face. The furthermost candle on the
piano comes immediately in a line with her head, and half invisible
itself, forms the accidentally frizzled hair into a nebulous haze of
light, surrounding her crown like an aureola. Her hands are in their
place on the keys, her lips parted, and trilling forth, in a tender
diminuendo, the closing words of the sad apostrophe:
“O Love, who bewailest
The frailty of all things here,
Why choose you the frailest
For your cradle, your home, and your bier!”
Her head is forward a little, and her eyes directed keenly upward to
the top of the page of music confronting her. Then comes a rapid look
into Stephen’s face, and a still more rapid look back again to her
business, her face having dropped its sadness, and acquired a certain
expression of mischievous archness the while; which lingered there for
some time, but was never developed into a positive smile of flirtation.
Stephen suddenly shifted his position from her right hand to her left,
where there was just room enough for a small ottoman to stand between
the piano and the corner of the room. Into this nook he squeezed
himself, and gazed wistfully up into Elfride’s face. So long and so
earnestly gazed he, that her cheek deepened to a more and more crimson
tint as each line was added to her song. Concluding, and pausing
motionless after the last word for a minute or two, she ventured to
look at him again. His features wore an expression of unutterable
heaviness.
“You don’t hear many songs, do you, Mr. Smith, to take so much notice
of these of mine?”