A pair of blue eyes
Notwithstanding that he had concocted a great deal of paper theory on
social amenities and modern manners generally, the special ounce of
practice was wanting, and now for his life Knight could not recollect
whether it was considered correct to give a young lady personal
ornaments before a regular engagement to marry had been initiated. But
the day before leaving Dublin he looked around anxiously for a
high-class jewellery establishment, in which he purchased what he
considered would suit her best.
It was with a most awkward and unwonted feeling that after entering and
closing the door of his room he sat down, opened the morocco case, and
held up each of the fragile bits of gold-work before his eyes. Many
things had become old to the solitary man of letters, but these were
new, and he handled like a child an outcome of civilization which had
never before been touched by his fingers. A sudden fastidious decision
that the pattern chosen would not suit her after all caused him to rise
in a flurry and tear down the street to change them for others. After a
great deal of trouble in reselecting, during which his mind became so
bewildered that the critical faculty on objects of art seemed to have
vacated his person altogether, Knight carried off another pair of
ear-rings. These remained in his possession till the afternoon, when,
after contemplating them fifty times with a growing misgiving that the
last choice was worse than the first, he felt that no sleep would visit
his pillow till he had improved upon his previous purchases yet again.
In a perfect heat of vexation with himself for such tergiversation, he
went anew to the shop-door, was absolutely ashamed to enter and give
further trouble, went to another shop, bought a pair at an enormously
increased price, because they seemed the very thing, asked the
goldsmiths if they would take the other pair in exchange, was told that
they could not exchange articles bought of another maker, paid down the
money, and went off with the two pairs in his possession, wondering
what on earth to do with the superfluous pair. He almost wished he
could lose them, or that somebody would steal them, and was burdened
with an interposing sense that, as a capable man, with true ideas of
economy, he must necessarily sell them somewhere, which he did at last
for a mere song. Mingled with a blank feeling of a whole day being lost
to him in running about the city on this new and extraordinary class of
errand, and of several pounds being lost through his bungling, was a
slight sense of satisfaction that he had emerged for ever from his
antediluvian ignorance on the subject of ladies’ jewellery, as well as
secured a truly artistic production at last. During the remainder of
that day he scanned the ornaments of every lady he met with the
profoundly experienced eye of an appraiser.
Next morning Knight was again crossing St. George’s Channel—not
returning to London by the Holyhead route as he had originally
intended, but towards Bristol—availing himself of Mr. and Mrs.
Swancourt’s invitation to revisit them on his homeward journey.
We flit forward to Elfride.
Woman’s ruling passion—to fascinate and influence those more powerful
than she—though operant in Elfride, was decidedly purposeless. She had
wanted her friend Knight’s good opinion from the first: how much more
than that elementary ingredient of friendship she now desired, her
fears would hardly allow her to think. In originally wishing to please
the highest class of man she had ever intimately known, there was no
disloyalty to Stephen Smith. She could not—and few women can—realize
the possible vastness of an issue which has only an insignificant
begetting.
Her letters from Stephen were necessarily few, and her sense of
fidelity clung to the last she had received as a wrecked mariner clings
to flotsam. The young girl persuaded herself that she was glad Stephen
had such a right to her hand as he had acquired (in her eyes) by the
elopement. She beguiled herself by saying, “Perhaps if I had not so
committed myself I might fall in love with Mr. Knight.”
All this made the week of Knight’s absence very gloomy and distasteful
to her. She retained Stephen in her prayers, and his old letters were
re-read—as a medicine in reality, though she deceived herself into the
belief that it was as a pleasure.
These letters had grown more and more hopeful. He told her that he
finished his work every day with a pleasant consciousness of having
removed one more stone from the barrier which divided them. Then he
drew images of what a fine figure they two would cut some day. People
would turn their heads and say, “What a prize he has won!” She was not
to be sad about that wild runaway attempt of theirs (Elfride had
repeatedly said that it grieved her). Whatever any other person who
knew of it might think, he knew well enough the modesty of her nature.
The only reproach was a gentle one for not having written quite so
devotedly during her visit to London. Her letter had seemed to have a
liveliness derived from other thoughts than thoughts of him.
Knight’s intention of an early return to Endelstow having originally
been faint, his promise to do so had been fainter. He was a man who
kept his words well to the rear of his possible actions. The vicar was
rather surprised to see him again so soon: Mrs. Swancourt was not.
Knight found, on meeting them all, after his arrival had been
announced, that they had formed an intention to go to St. Leonards for
a few days at the end of the month.
No satisfactory conjuncture offered itself on this first evening of his
return for presenting Elfride with what he had been at such pains to
procure. He was fastidious in his reading of opportunities for such an
intended act. The next morning chancing to break fine after a week of
cloudy weather, it was proposed and decided that they should all drive
to Barwith Strand, a local lion which neither Mrs. Swancourt nor Knight
had seen. Knight scented romantic occasions from afar, and foresaw that
such a one might be expected before the coming night.
The journey was along a road by neutral green hills, upon which
hedgerows lay trailing like ropes on a quay. Gaps in these uplands
revealed the blue sea, flecked with a few dashes of white and a
solitary white sail, the whole brimming up to a keen horizon which lay
like a line ruled from hillside to hillside. Then they rolled down a
pass, the chocolate-toned rocks forming a wall on both sides, from one
of which fell a heavy jagged shade over half the roadway. A spout of
fresh water burst from an occasional crevice, and pattering down upon
broad green leaves, ran along as a rivulet at the bottom. Unkempt locks
of heather overhung the brow of each steep, whence at divers points a
bramble swung forth into mid-air, snatching at their head-dresses like
a claw.
They mounted the last crest, and the bay which was to be the end of
their pilgrimage burst upon them. The ocean blueness deepened its
colour as it stretched to the foot of the crags, where it terminated in
a fringe of white—silent at this distance, though moving and heaving
like a counterpane upon a restless sleeper. The shadowed hollows of the
purple and brown rocks would have been called blue had not that tint
been so entirely appropriated by the water beside them.
The carriage was put up at a little cottage with a shed attached, and
an ostler and the coachman carried the hamper of provisions down to the
shore.
Knight found his opportunity. “I did not forget your wish,” he began,
when they were apart from their friends.
Elfride looked as if she did not understand.
“And I have brought you these,” he continued, awkwardly pulling out the
case, and opening it while holding it towards her.
“O Mr. Knight!” said Elfride confusedly, and turning to a lively red;
“I didn’t know you had any intention or meaning in what you said. I
thought it a mere supposition. I don’t want them.”
A thought which had flashed into her mind gave the reply a greater
decisiveness than it might otherwise have possessed. To-morrow was the
day for Stephen’s letter.
“But will you not accept them?” Knight returned, feeling less her
master than heretofore.
“I would rather not. They are beautiful—more beautiful than any I have
ever seen,” she answered earnestly, looking half-wishfully at the
temptation, as Eve may have looked at the apple. “But I don’t want to
have them, if you will kindly forgive me, Mr. Knight.”
“No kindness at all,” said Mr. Knight, brought to a full stop at this
unexpected turn of events.
A silence followed. Knight held the open case, looking rather wofully
at the glittering forms he had forsaken his orbit to procure; turning
it about and holding it up as if, feeling his gift to be slighted by
her, he were endeavouring to admire it very much himself.
“Shut them up, and don’t let me see them any longer—do!” she said
laughingly, and with a quaint mixture of reluctance and entreaty.
“Why, Elfie?”
“Not Elfie to you, Mr. Knight. Oh, because I shall want them. There, I
am silly, I know, to say that! But I have a reason for not taking
them—now.” She kept in the last word for a moment, intending to imply
that her refusal was finite, but somehow the word slipped out, and
undid all the rest.
“You will take them some day?”
“I don’t want to.”
“Why don’t you want to, Elfride Swancourt?”
“Because I don’t. I don’t like to take them.”
“I have read a fact of distressing significance in that,” said Knight.
“Since you like them, your dislike to having them must be towards me?”
“No, it isn’t.”
“What, then? Do you like me?”
Elfride deepened in tint, and looked into the distance with features
shaped to an expression of the nicest criticism as regarded her answer.
“I like you pretty well,” she at length murmured mildly.
“Not very much?”
“You are so sharp with me, and say hard things, and so how can I?” she
replied evasively.
“You think me a fogey, I suppose?”
“No, I don’t—I mean I do—I don’t know what I think you, I mean. Let us
go to papa,” responded Elfride, with somewhat of a flurried delivery.
“Well, I’ll tell you my object in getting the present,” said Knight,
with a composure intended to remove from her mind any possible
impression of his being what he was—her lover. “You see it was the very
least I could do in common civility.”
Elfride felt rather blank at this lucid statement.
Knight continued, putting away the case: “I felt as anybody naturally
would have, you know, that my words on your choice the other day were
invidious and unfair, and thought an apology should take a practical
shape.”
“Oh yes.”
Elfride was sorry—she could not tell why—that he gave such a legitimate
reason. It was a disappointment that he had all the time a cool motive,
which might be stated to anybody without raising a smile. Had she known
they were offered in that spirit, she would certainly have accepted the
seductive gift. And the tantalizing feature was that perhaps he
suspected her to imagine them offered as a lover’s token, which was
mortifying enough if they were not.
Mrs. Swancourt came now to where they were sitting, to select a flat
boulder for spreading their table-cloth upon, and, amid the discussion
on that subject, the matter pending between Knight and Elfride was
shelved for a while. He read her refusal so certainly as the
bashfulness of a girl in a novel position, that, upon the whole, he
could tolerate such a beginning. Could Knight have been told that it
was a sense of fidelity struggling against new love, whilst no less
assuring as to his ultimate victory, it might have entirely abstracted
the wish to secure it.
At the same time a slight constraint of manner was visible between them