A pair of blue eyes
family for generations, I may say. My father used that joke regular at
pig-killings for more than five and forty years—the time he followed
the calling. And ’a told me that ’a had it from his father when he was
quite a chiel, who made use o’ en just the same at every killing more
or less; and pig-killings were pig-killings in those days.”
“Trewly they were.”
“I’ve never heard the joke,” said Mrs. Smith tentatively.
“Nor I,” chimed in Mrs. Worm, who, being the only other lady in the
room, felt bound by the laws of courtesy to feel like Mrs. Smith in
everything.
“Surely, surely you have,” said the killer, looking sceptically at the
benighted females. “However, ’tisn’t much—I don’t wish to say it is. It
commences like this: ‘Bob will tell the weight of your pig, ’a
b’lieve,’ says I. The congregation of neighbours think I mane my son
Bob, naturally; but the secret is that I mane the bob o’ the steelyard.
Ha, ha, ha!”
“Haw, haw, haw!” laughed Martin Cannister, who had heard the
explanation of this striking story for the hundredth time.
“Huh, huh, huh!” laughed John Smith, who had heard it for the
thousandth.
“Hee, hee, hee!” laughed William Worm, who had never heard it at all,
but was afraid to say so.
“Thy grandfather, Robert, must have been a wide-awake chap to make that
story,” said Martin Cannister, subsiding to a placid aspect of
delighted criticism.
“He had a head, by all account. And, you see, as the first-born of the
Lickpans have all been Roberts, they’ve all been Bobs, so the story was
handed down to the present day.”
“Poor Joseph, your second boy, will never be able to bring it out in
company, which is rather unfortunate,” said Mrs. Worm thoughtfully.
“’A won’t. Yes, grandfer was a clever chap, as ye say; but I knowed a
cleverer. ’Twas my uncle Levi. Uncle Levi made a snuff-box that should
be a puzzle to his friends to open. He used to hand en round at wedding
parties, christenings, funerals, and in other jolly company, and let
’em try their skill. This extraordinary snuff-box had a spring behind
that would push in and out—a hinge where seemed to be the cover; a
slide at the end, a screw in front, and knobs and queer notches
everywhere. One man would try the spring, another would try the screw,
another would try the slide; but try as they would, the box wouldn’t
open. And they couldn’t open en, and they didn’t open en. Now what
might you think was the secret of that box?”
All put on an expression that their united thoughts were inadequate to
the occasion.
“Why the box wouldn’t open at all. ’A were made not to open, and ye
might have tried till the end of Revelations, ’twould have been as
naught, for the box were glued all round.”
“A very deep man to have made such a box.”
“Yes. ’Twas like uncle Levi all over.”
“’Twas. I can mind the man very well. Tallest man ever I seed.”
“’A was so. He never slept upon a bedstead after he growed up a hard
boy-chap—never could get one long enough. When ’a lived in that little
small house by the pond, he used to have to leave open his chamber door
every night at going to his bed, and let his feet poke out upon the
landing.”
“He’s dead and gone now, nevertheless, poor man, as we all shall,”
observed Worm, to fill the pause which followed the conclusion of
Robert Lickpan’s speech.
The weighing and cutting up was pursued amid an animated discourse on
Stephen’s travels; and at the finish, the first-fruits of the day’s
slaughter, fried in onions, were then turned from the pan into a dish
on the table, each piece steaming and hissing till it reached their
very mouths.
It must be owned that the gentlemanly son of the house looked rather
out of place in the course of this operation. Nor was his mind quite
philosophic enough to allow him to be comfortable with these
old-established persons, his father’s friends. He had never lived long
at home—scarcely at all since his childhood. The presence of William
Worm was the most awkward feature of the case, for, though Worm had
left the house of Mr. Swancourt, the being hand-in-glove with a
ci-devant servitor reminded Stephen too forcibly of the vicar’s
classification of himself before he went from England. Mrs. Smith was
conscious of the defect in her arrangements which had brought about the
undesired conjunction. She spoke to Stephen privately.
“I am above having such people here, Stephen; but what could I do? And
your father is so rough in his nature that he’s more mixed up with them
than need be.”
“Never mind, mother,” said Stephen; “I’ll put up with it now.”
“When we leave my lord’s service, and get further up the country—as I
hope we shall soon—it will be different. We shall be among fresh
people, and in a larger house, and shall keep ourselves up a bit, I
hope.”
“Is Miss Swancourt at home, do you know?” Stephen inquired
“Yes, your father saw her this morning.”
“Do you often see her?”
“Scarcely ever. Mr. Glim, the curate, calls occasionally, but the
Swancourts don’t come into the village now any more than to drive
through it. They dine at my lord’s oftener than they used. Ah, here’s a
note was brought this morning for you by a boy.”
Stephen eagerly took the note and opened it, his mother watching him.
He read what Elfride had written and sent before she started for the
cliff that afternoon:
“Yes; I will meet you in the church at nine to-night.—E. S.”
“I don’t know, Stephen,” his mother said meaningly, “whe’r you still
think about Miss Elfride, but if I were you I wouldn’t concern about
her. They say that none of old Mrs. Swancourt’s money will come to her
step-daughter.”
“I see the evening has turned out fine; I am going out for a little
while to look round the place,” he said, evading the direct query.
“Probably by the time I return our visitors will be gone, and we’ll
have a more confidential talk.”
Chapter XXIV
“Breeze, bird, and flower confess the hour.”
The rain had ceased since the sunset, but it was a cloudy night; and
the light of the moon, softened and dispersed by its misty veil, was
distributed over the land in pale gray.
A dark figure stepped from the doorway of John Smith’s river-side
cottage, and strode rapidly towards West Endelstow with a light
footstep. Soon ascending from the lower levels he turned a corner,
followed a cart-track, and saw the tower of the church he was in quest
of distinctly shaped forth against the sky. In less than half an hour
from the time of starting he swung himself over the churchyard stile.
The wild irregular enclosure was as much as ever an integral part of
the old hill. The grass was still long, the graves were shaped
precisely as passing years chose to alter them from their orthodox form
as laid down by Martin Cannister, and by Stephen’s own grandfather
before him.
A sound sped into the air from the direction in which Castle Boterel
lay. It was the striking of the church clock, distinct in the still
atmosphere as if it had come from the tower hard by, which, wrapt in
its solitary silentness, gave out no such sounds of life.
“One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine.” Stephen
carefully counted the strokes, though he well knew their number
beforehand. Nine o’clock. It was the hour Elfride had herself named as
the most convenient for meeting him.
Stephen stood at the door of the porch and listened. He could have
heard the softest breathing of any person within the porch; nobody was
there. He went inside the doorway, sat down upon the stone bench, and
waited with a beating heart.
The faint sounds heard only accentuated the silence. The rising and
falling of the sea, far away along the coast, was the most important. A
minor sound was the scurr of a distant night-hawk. Among the minutest
where all were minute were the light settlement of gossamer fragments
floating in the air, a toad humbly labouring along through the grass
near the entrance, the crackle of a dead leaf which a worm was
endeavouring to pull into the earth, a waft of air, getting nearer and
nearer, and expiring at his feet under the burden of a winged seed.
Among all these soft sounds came not the only soft sound he cared to
hear—the footfall of Elfride.
For a whole quarter of an hour Stephen sat thus intent, without moving
a muscle. At the end of that time he walked to the west front of the
church. Turning the corner of the tower, a white form stared him in the
face. He started back, and recovered himself. It was the tomb of young
farmer Jethway, looking still as fresh and as new as when it was first
erected, the white stone in which it was hewn having a singular
weirdness amid the dark blue slabs from local quarries, of which the
whole remaining gravestones were formed.
He thought of the night when he had sat thereon with Elfride as his
companion, and well remembered his regret that she had received, even
unwillingly, earlier homage than his own. But his present tangible
anxiety reduced such a feeling to sentimental nonsense in comparison;
and he strolled on over the graves to the border of the churchyard,
whence in the daytime could be clearly seen the vicarage and the
present residence of the Swancourts. No footstep was discernible upon
the path up the hill, but a light was shining from a window in the
last-named house.
Stephen knew there could be no mistake about the time or place, and no
difficulty about keeping the engagement. He waited yet longer, passing
from impatience into a mood which failed to take any account of the
lapse of time. He was awakened from his reverie by Castle Boterel
clock.
One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, TEN.
One little fall of the hammer in addition to the number it had been
sharp pleasure to hear, and what a difference to him!
He left the churchyard on the side opposite to his point of entrance,
and went down the hill. Slowly he drew near the gate of her house. This
he softly opened, and walked up the gravel drive to the door. Here he
paused for several minutes.
At the expiration of that time the murmured speech of a manly voice
came out to his ears through an open window behind the corner of the
house. This was responded to by a clear soft laugh. It was the laugh of
Elfride.
Stephen was conscious of a gnawing pain at his heart. He retreated as
he had come. There are disappointments which wring us, and there are
those which inflict a wound whose mark we bear to our graves. Such are
so keen that no future gratification of the same desire can ever
obliterate them: they become registered as a permanent loss of
happiness. Such a one was Stephen’s now: the crowning aureola of the
dream had been the meeting here by stealth; and if Elfride had come to
him only ten minutes after he had turned away, the disappointment would
have been recognizable still.
When the young man reached home he found there a letter which had
arrived in his absence. Believing it to contain some reason for her
non-appearance, yet unable to imagine one that could justify her, he
hastily tore open the envelope.
The paper contained not a word from Elfride. It was the deposit-note
for his two hundred pounds. On the back was the form of a cheque, and
this she had filled up with the same sum, payable to the bearer.
Stephen was confounded. He attempted to divine her motive. Considering
how limited was his knowledge of her later actions, he guessed rather
shrewdly that, between the time of her sending the note in the morning
and the evening’s silent refusal of his gift, something had occurred
which had caused a total change in her attitude towards him.
He knew not what to do. It seemed absurd now to go to her father next
morning, as he had purposed, and ask for an engagement with her, a
possibility impending all the while that Elfride herself would not be