A pair of blue eyes
“But don’t keep them. So speak out.”
“If you will not press me now, I give my word to tell you the meaning
of all this before the week is past.”
“On your honour?”
“On my honour.”
“Very well. I have had a certain suspicion, you know; and I shall be
glad to find it false. I don’t like your manner lately.”
“At the end of the week, I said, papa.”
Her father did not reply, and Elfride left the room.
She began to look out for the postman again. Three mornings later he
brought an inland letter from Stephen. It contained very little matter,
having been written in haste; but the meaning was bulky enough. Stephen
said that, having executed a commission in Liverpool, he should arrive
at his father’s house, East Endelstow, at five or six o’clock that same
evening; that he would after dusk walk on to the next village, and meet
her, if she would, in the church porch, as in the old time. He proposed
this plan because he thought it unadvisable to call formally at her
house so late in the evening; yet he could not sleep without having
seen her. The minutes would seem hours till he clasped her in his arms.
Elfride was still steadfast in her opinion that honour compelled her to
meet him. Probably the very longing to avoid him lent additional weight
to the conviction; for she was markedly one of those who sigh for the
unattainable—to whom, superlatively, a hope is pleasing because not a
possession. And she knew it so well that her intellect was inclined to
exaggerate this defect in herself.
So during the day she looked her duty steadfastly in the face; read
Wordsworth’s astringent yet depressing ode to that Deity; committed
herself to her guidance; and still felt the weight of chance desires.
But she began to take a melancholy pleasure in contemplating the
sacrifice of herself to the man whom a maidenly sense of propriety
compelled her to regard as her only possible husband. She would meet
him, and do all that lay in her power to marry him. To guard against a
relapse, a note was at once despatched to his father’s cottage for
Stephen on his arrival, fixing an hour for the interview.
Chapter XXI
“On thy cold grey stones, O sea!”
Stephen had said that he should come by way of Bristol, and thence by a
steamer to Castle Boterel, in order to avoid the long journey over the
hills from St. Launce’s. He did not know of the extension of the
railway to Camelton.
During the afternoon a thought occurred to Elfride, that from any cliff
along the shore it would be possible to see the steamer some hours
before its arrival.
She had accumulated religious force enough to do an act of
supererogation. The act was this—to go to some point of land and watch
for the ship that brought her future husband home.
It was a cloudy afternoon. Elfride was often diverted from a purpose by
a dull sky; and though she used to persuade herself that the weather
was as fine as possible on the other side of the clouds, she could not
bring about any practical result from this fancy. Now, her mood was
such that the humid sky harmonized with it.
Having ascended and passed over a hill behind the house, Elfride came
to a small stream. She used it as a guide to the coast. It was smaller
than that in her own valley, and flowed altogether at a higher level.
Bushes lined the slopes of its shallow trough; but at the bottom, where
the water ran, was a soft green carpet, in a strip two or three yards
wide.
In winter, the water flowed over the grass; in summer, as now, it
trickled along a channel in the midst.
Elfride had a sensation of eyes regarding her from somewhere. She
turned, and there was Mr. Knight. He had dropped into the valley from
the side of the hill. She felt a thrill of pleasure, and rebelliously
allowed it to exist.
“What utter loneliness to find you in!”
“I am going to the shore by tracking the stream. I believe it empties
itself not far off, in a silver thread of water, over a cascade of
great height.”
“Why do you load yourself with that heavy telescope?”
“To look over the sea with it,” she said faintly.
“I’ll carry it for you to your journey’s end.” And he took the glass
from her unresisting hands. “It cannot be half a mile further. See,
there is the water.” He pointed to a short fragment of level muddy-gray
colour, cutting against the sky.
Elfride had already scanned the small surface of ocean visible, and had
seen no ship.
They walked along in company, sometimes with the brook between them—for
it was no wider than a man’s stride—sometimes close together. The green
carpet grew swampy, and they kept higher up.
One of the two ridges between which they walked dwindled lower and
became insignificant. That on the right hand rose with their advance,
and terminated in a clearly defined edge against the light, as if it
were abruptly sawn off. A little further, and the bed of the rivulet
ended in the same fashion.
They had come to a bank breast-high, and over it the valley was no
longer to be seen. It was withdrawn cleanly and completely. In its
place was sky and boundless atmosphere; and perpendicularly down
beneath them—small and far off—lay the corrugated surface of the
Atlantic.
The small stream here found its death. Running over the precipice it
was dispersed in spray before it was half-way down, and falling like
rain upon projecting ledges, made minute grassy meadows of them. At the
bottom the water-drops soaked away amid the debris of the cliff. This
was the inglorious end of the river.
“What are you looking for? said Knight, following the direction of her
eyes.
She was gazing hard at a black object—nearer to the shore than to the
horizon—from the summit of which came a nebulous haze, stretching like
gauze over the sea.
“The Puffin, a little summer steamboat—from Bristol to Castle Boterel,”
she said. “I think that is it—look. Will you give me the glass?”
Knight pulled open the old-fashioned but powerful telescope, and handed
it to Elfride, who had looked on with heavy eyes.
“I can’t keep it up now,” she said.
“Rest it on my shoulder.”
“It is too high.”
“Under my arm.”
“Too low. You may look instead,” she murmured weakly.
Knight raised the glass to his eye, and swept the sea till the Puffin
entered its field.
“Yes, it is the Puffin—a tiny craft. I can see her figure-head
distinctly—a bird with a beak as big as its head.”
“Can you see the deck?”
“Wait a minute; yes, pretty clearly. And I can see the black forms of
the passengers against its white surface. One of them has taken
something from another—a glass, I think—yes, it is—and he is levelling
it in this direction. Depend upon it we are conspicuous objects against
the sky to them. Now, it seems to rain upon them, and they put on
overcoats and open umbrellas. They vanish and go below—all but that one
who has borrowed the glass. He is a slim young fellow, and still
watches us.”
Elfride grew pale, and shifted her little feet uneasily.
Knight lowered the glass.
“I think we had better return,” he said. “That cloud which is raining
on them may soon reach us. Why, you look ill. How is that?”
“Something in the air affects my face.”
“Those fair cheeks are very fastidious, I fear,” returned Knight
tenderly. “This air would make those rosy that were never so before,
one would think—eh, Nature’s spoilt child?”
Elfride’s colour returned again.
“There is more to see behind us, after all,” said Knight.
She turned her back upon the boat and Stephen Smith, and saw, towering
still higher than themselves, the vertical face of the hill on the
right, which did not project seaward so far as the bed of the valley,
but formed the back of a small cove, and so was visible like a concave
wall, bending round from their position towards the left.
The composition of the huge hill was revealed to its backbone and
marrow here at its rent extremity. It consisted of a vast
stratification of blackish-gray slate, unvaried in its whole height by
a single change of shade.
It is with cliffs and mountains as with persons; they have what is
called a presence, which is not necessarily proportionate to their
actual bulk. A little cliff will impress you powerfully; a great one
not at all. It depends, as with man, upon the countenance of the cliff.
“I cannot bear to look at that cliff,” said Elfride. “It has a horrid
personality, and makes me shudder. We will go.”
“Can you climb?” said Knight. “If so, we will ascend by that path over
the grim old fellow’s brow.”
“Try me,” said Elfride disdainfully. “I have ascended steeper slopes
than that.”
From where they had been loitering, a grassy path wound along inside a
bank, placed as a safeguard for unwary pedestrians, to the top of the
precipice, and over it along the hill in an inland direction.
“Take my arm, Miss Swancourt,” said Knight.
“I can get on better without it, thank you.”
When they were one quarter of the way up, Elfride stopped to take
breath. Knight stretched out his hand.
She took it, and they ascended the remaining slope together. Reaching
the very top, they sat down to rest by mutual consent.
“Heavens, what an altitude!” said Knight between his pants, and looking
far over the sea. The cascade at the bottom of the slope appeared a
mere span in height from where they were now.
Elfride was looking to the left. The steamboat was in full view again,
and by reason of the vast surface of sea their higher position
uncovered it seemed almost close to the shore.
“Over that edge,” said Knight, “where nothing but vacancy appears, is a
moving compact mass. The wind strikes the face of the rock, runs up it,
rises like a fountain to a height far above our heads, curls over us in
an arch, and disperses behind us. In fact, an inverted cascade is
there—as perfect as the Niagara Falls—but rising instead of falling,
and air instead of water. Now look here.”
Knight threw a stone over the bank, aiming it as if to go onward over
the cliff. Reaching the verge, it towered into the air like a bird,
turned back, and alighted on the ground behind them. They themselves
were in a dead calm.
“A boat crosses Niagara immediately at the foot of the falls, where the
water is quite still, the fallen mass curving under it. We are in
precisely the same position with regard to our atmospheric cataract
here. If you run back from the cliff fifty yards, you will be in a
brisk wind. Now I daresay over the bank is a little backward current.”
Knight rose and leant over the bank. No sooner was his head above it
than his hat appeared to be sucked from his head—slipping over his
forehead in a seaward direction.
“That’s the backward eddy, as I told you,” he cried, and vanished over
the little bank after his hat.
Elfride waited one minute; he did not return. She waited another, and
there was no sign of him.
A few drops of rain fell, then a sudden shower.
She arose, and looked over the bank. On the other side were two or
three yards of level ground—then a short steep preparatory slope—then
the verge of the precipice.
On the slope was Knight, his hat on his head. He was on his hands and
knees, trying to climb back to the level ground. The rain had wetted
the shaly surface of the incline. A slight superficial wetting of the
soil hereabout made it far more slippery to stand on than the same soil
thoroughly drenched. The inner substance was still hard, and was
lubricated by the moistened film.
“I find a difficulty in getting back,” said Knight.
Elfride’s heart fell like lead.
“But you can get back?” she wildly inquired.
Knight strove with all his might for two or three minutes, and the
drops of perspiration began to bead his brow.
“No, I am unable to do it,” he answered.
Elfride, by a wrench of thought, forced away from her mind the