A pair of blue eyes
for the remainder of the afternoon. The tide turned, and they were
obliged to ascend to higher ground. The day glided on to its end with
the usual quiet dreamy passivity of such occasions—when every deed done
and thing thought is in endeavouring to avoid doing and thinking more.
Looking idly over the verge of a crag, they beheld their stone
dining-table gradually being splashed upon and their crumbs and
fragments all washed away by the incoming sea. The vicar drew a moral
lesson from the scene; Knight replied in the same satisfied strain. And
then the waves rolled in furiously—the neutral green-and-blue tongues
of water slid up the slopes, and were metamorphosed into foam by a
careless blow, falling back white and faint, and leaving trailing
followers behind.
The passing of a heavy shower was the next scene—driving them to
shelter in a shallow cave—after which the horses were put in, and they
started to return homeward. By the time they reached the higher levels
the sky had again cleared, and the sunset rays glanced directly upon
the wet uphill road they had climbed. The ruts formed by their
carriage-wheels on the ascent—a pair of Liliputian canals—were as
shining bars of gold, tapering to nothing in the distance. Upon this
also they turned their backs, and night spread over the sea.
The evening was chilly, and there was no moon. Knight sat close to
Elfride, and, when the darkness rendered the position of a person a
matter of uncertainty, particularly close. Elfride edged away.
“I hope you allow me my place ungrudgingly?” he whispered.
“Oh yes; ’tis the least I can do in common civility,” she said,
accenting the words so that he might recognize them as his own
returned.
Both of them felt delicately balanced between two possibilities. Thus
they reached home.
To Knight this mild experience was delightful. It was to him a gentle
innocent time—a time which, though there may not be much in it, seldom
repeats itself in a man’s life, and has a peculiar dearness when
glanced at retrospectively. He is not inconveniently deep in love, and
is lulled by a peaceful sense of being able to enjoy the most trivial
thing with a childlike enjoyment. The movement of a wave, the colour of
a stone, anything, was enough for Knight’s drowsy thoughts of that day
to precipitate themselves upon. Even the sermonizing platitudes the
vicar had delivered himself of—chiefly because something seemed to be
professionally required of him in the presence of a man of Knight’s
proclivities—were swallowed whole. The presence of Elfride led him not
merely to tolerate that kind of talk from the necessities of ordinary
courtesy; but he listened to it—took in the ideas with an enjoyable
make-believe that they were proper and necessary, and indulged in a
conservative feeling that the face of things was complete.
Entering her room that evening Elfride found a packet for herself on
the dressing-table. How it came there she did not know. She tremblingly
undid the folds of white paper that covered it. Yes; it was the
treasure of a morocco case, containing those treasures of ornament she
had refused in the daytime.
Elfride dressed herself in them for a moment, looked at herself in the
glass, blushed red, and put them away. They filled her dreams all that
night. Never had she seen anything so lovely, and never was it more
clear that as an honest woman she was in duty bound to refuse them. Why
it was not equally clear to her that duty required more vigorous
co-ordinate conduct as well, let those who dissect her say.
The next morning glared in like a spectre upon her. It was Stephen’s
letter-day, and she was bound to meet the postman—to stealthily do a
deed she had never liked, to secure an end she now had ceased to
desire.
But she went.
There were two letters.
One was from the bank at St. Launce’s, in which she had a small private
deposit—probably something about interest. She put that in her pocket
for a moment, and going indoors and upstairs to be safer from
observation, tremblingly opened Stephen’s.
What was this he said to her?
She was to go to the St. Launce’s Bank and take a sum of money which
they had received private advices to pay her.
The sum was two hundred pounds.
There was no check, order, or anything of the nature of guarantee. In
fact the information amounted to this: the money was now in the St.
Launce’s Bank, standing in her name.
She instantly opened the other letter. It contained a deposit-note from
the bank for the sum of two hundred pounds which had that day been
added to her account. Stephen’s information, then, was correct, and the
transfer made.
“I have saved this in one year,” Stephen’s letter went on to say, “and
what so proper as well as pleasant for me to do as to hand it over to
you to keep for your use? I have plenty for myself, independently of
this. Should you not be disposed to let it lie idle in the bank, get
your father to invest it in your name on good security. It is a little
present to you from your more than betrothed. He will, I think,
Elfride, feel now that my pretensions to your hand are anything but the
dream of a silly boy not worth rational consideration.”
With a natural delicacy, Elfride, in mentioning her father’s marriage,
had refrained from all allusion to the pecuniary resources of the lady.
Leaving this matter-of-fact subject, he went on, somewhat after his
boyish manner:
“Do you remember, darling, that first morning of my arrival at your
house, when your father read at prayers the miracle of healing the sick
of the palsy—where he is told to take up his bed and walk? I do, and I
can now so well realize the force of that passage. The smallest piece
of mat is the bed of the Oriental, and yesterday I saw a native perform
the very action, which reminded me to mention it. But you are better
read than I, and perhaps you knew all this long ago....One day I bought
some small native idols to send home to you as curiosities, but
afterwards finding they had been cast in England, made to look old, and
shipped over, I threw them away in disgust.
“Speaking of this reminds me that we are obliged to import all our
house-building ironwork from England. Never was such foresight required
to be exercised in building houses as here. Before we begin, we have to
order every column, lock, hinge, and screw that will be required. We
cannot go into the next street, as in London, and get them cast at a
minute’s notice. Mr. L. says somebody will have to go to England very
soon and superintend the selection of a large order of this kind. I
only wish I may be the man.”
There before her lay the deposit-receipt for the two hundred pounds,
and beside it the elegant present of Knight. Elfride grew cold—then her
cheeks felt heated by beating blood. If by destroying the piece of
paper the whole transaction could have been withdrawn from her
experience, she would willingly have sacrificed the money it
represented. She did not know what to do in either case. She almost
feared to let the two articles lie in juxtaposition: so antagonistic
were the interests they represented that a miraculous repulsion of one
by the other was almost to be expected.
That day she was seen little of. By the evening she had come to a
resolution, and acted upon it. The packet was sealed up—with a tear of
regret as she closed the case upon the pretty forms it
contained—directed, and placed upon the writing-table in Knight’s room.
And a letter was written to Stephen, stating that as yet she hardly
understood her position with regard to the money sent; but declaring
that she was ready to fulfil her promise to marry him. After this
letter had been written she delayed posting it—although never ceasing
to feel strenuously that the deed must be done.
Several days passed. There was another Indian letter for Elfride.
Coming unexpectedly, her father saw it, but made no remark—why, she
could not tell. The news this time was absolutely overwhelming.
Stephen, as he had wished, had been actually chosen as the most fitting
to execute the iron-work commission he had alluded to as impending.
This duty completed he would have three months’ leave. His letter
continued that he should follow it in a week, and should take the
opportunity to plainly ask her father to permit the engagement. Then
came a page expressive of his delight and hers at the reunion; and
finally, the information that he would write to the shipping agents,
asking them to telegraph and tell her when the ship bringing him home
should be in sight—knowing how acceptable such information would be.
Elfride lived and moved now as in a dream. Knight had at first become
almost angry at her persistent refusal of his offering—and no less with
the manner than the fact of it. But he saw that she began to look worn
and ill—and his vexation lessened to simple perplexity.
He ceased now to remain in the house for long hours together as before,
but made it a mere centre for antiquarian and geological excursions in
the neighbourhood. Throw up his cards and go away he fain would have
done, but could not. And, thus, availing himself of the privileges of a
relative, he went in and out the premises as fancy led him—but still
lingered on.
“I don’t wish to stay here another day if my presence is distasteful,”
he said one afternoon. “At first you used to imply that I was severe
with you; and when I am kind you treat me unfairly.”
“No, no. Don’t say so.”
The origin of their acquaintanceship had been such as to render their
manner towards each other peculiar and uncommon. It was of a kind to
cause them to speak out their minds on any feelings of objection and
difference: to be reticent on gentler matters.
“I have a good mind to go away and never trouble you again,” continued
Knight.
She said nothing, but the eloquent expression of her eyes and wan face
was enough to reproach him for harshness.
“Do you like me to be here, then?” inquired Knight gently.
“Yes,” she said. Fidelity to the old love and truth to the new were
ranged on opposite sides, and truth virtuelessly prevailed.
“Then I’ll stay a little longer,” said Knight.
“Don’t be vexed if I keep by myself a good deal, will you? Perhaps
something may happen, and I may tell you something.”
“Mere coyness,” said Knight to himself; and went away with a lighter
heart. The trick of reading truly the enigmatical forces at work in
women at given times, which with some men is an unerring instinct, is
peculiar to minds less direct and honest than Knight’s.
The next evening, about five o’clock, before Knight had returned from a
pilgrimage along the shore, a man walked up to the house. He was a
messenger from Camelton, a town a few miles off, to which place the
railway had been advanced during the summer.
“A telegram for Miss Swancourt, and three and sixpence to pay for the
special messenger.” Miss Swancourt sent out the money, signed the
paper, and opened her letter with a trembling hand. She read:
“Johnson, Liverpool, to Miss Swancourt, Endelstow, near Castle Boterel.
“Amaryllis telegraphed off Holyhead, four o’clock. Expect will dock and
land passengers at Canning’s Basin ten o’clock to-morrow morning.”
Her father called her into the study.
“Elfride, who sent you that message?” he asked suspiciously.
“Johnson.” “Who is Johnson, for Heaven’s sake?”
“I don’t know.”
“The deuce you don’t! Who is to know, then?”
“I have never heard of him till now.”
“That’s a singular story, isn’t it.”
“I don’t know.”
“Come, come, miss! What was the telegram?”
“Do you really wish to know, papa?”
“Well, I do.”
“Remember, I am a full-grown woman now.”
“Well, what then?”
“Being a woman, and not a child, I may, I think, have a secret or two.”
“You will, it seems.”
“Women have, as a rule.”