A pair of blue eyes
betrayal of his sentiments that love for her really existed, she
preferred it for the present in its form of essence, and was willing to
avoid for awhile the grosser medium of words. Their feelings having
been forced to a rather premature demonstration, a reaction was
indulged in by both.
But no sooner had she got rid of her troubled conscience on the matter
of faithlessness than a new anxiety confronted her. It was lest Knight
should accidentally meet Stephen in the parish, and that herself should
be the subject of discourse.
Elfride, learning Knight more thoroughly, perceived that, far from
having a notion of Stephen’s precedence, he had no idea that she had
ever been wooed before by anybody. On ordinary occasions she had a
tongue so frank as to show her whole mind, and a mind so
straightforward as to reveal her heart to its innermost shrine. But the
time for a change had come. She never alluded to even a knowledge of
Knight’s friend. When women are secret they are secret indeed; and more
often than not they only begin to be secret with the advent of a second
lover.
The elopement was now a spectre worse than the first, and, like the
Spirit in Glenfinlas, it waxed taller with every attempt to lay it. Her
natural honesty invited her to confide in Knight, and trust to his
generosity for forgiveness: she knew also that as mere policy it would
be better to tell him early if he was to be told at all. The longer her
concealment the more difficult would be the revelation. But she put it
off. The intense fear which accompanies intense love in young women was
too strong to allow the exercise of a moral quality antagonistic to
itself:
“Where love is great, the littlest doubts are fear;
Where little fears grow great, great love grows there.”
The match was looked upon as made by her father and mother. The vicar
remembered her promise to reveal the meaning of the telegram she had
received, and two days after the scene in the summer-house, asked her
pointedly. She was frank with him now.
“I had been corresponding with Stephen Smith ever since he left
England, till lately,” she calmly said.
“What!” cried the vicar aghast; “under the eyes of Mr. Knight, too?”
“No; when I found I cared most for Mr. Knight, I obeyed you.”
“You were very kind, I’m sure. When did you begin to like Mr. Knight?”
“I don’t see that that is a pertinent question, papa; the telegram was
from the shipping agent, and was not sent at my request. It announced
the arrival of the vessel bringing him home.”
“Home! What, is he here?”
“Yes; in the village, I believe.”
“Has he tried to see you?”
“Only by fair means. But don’t, papa, question me so! It is torture.”
“I will only say one word more,” he replied. “Have you met him?”
“I have not. I can assure you that at the present moment there is no
more of an understanding between me and the young man you so much
disliked than between him and you. You told me to forget him; and I
have forgotten him.”
“Oh, well; though you did not obey me in the beginning, you are a good
girl, Elfride, in obeying me at last.”
“Don’t call me ‘good,’ papa,” she said bitterly; “you don’t know—and
the less said about some things the better. Remember, Mr. Knight knows
nothing about the other. Oh, how wrong it all is! I don’t know what I
am coming to.”
“As matters stand, I should be inclined to tell him; or, at any rate, I
should not alarm myself about his knowing. He found out the other day
that this was the parish young Smith’s father lives in—what puts you in
such a flurry?”
“I can’t say; but promise—pray don’t let him know! It would be my
ruin!”
“Pooh, child. Knight is a good fellow and a clever man; but at the same
time it does not escape my perceptions that he is no great catch for
you. Men of his turn of mind are nothing so wonderful in the way of
husbands. If you had chosen to wait, you might have mated with a much
wealthier man. But remember, I have not a word to say against your
having him, if you like him. Charlotte is delighted, as you know.”
“Well, papa,” she said, smiling hopefully through a sigh, “it is nice
to feel that in giving way to—to caring for him, I have pleased my
family. But I am not good; oh no, I am very far from that!”
“None of us are good, I am sorry to say,” said her father blandly; “but
girls have a chartered right to change their minds, you know. It has
been recognized by poets from time immemorial. Catullus says, ‘Mulier
cupido quod dicit amanti, in vento—’ What a memory mine is! However,
the passage is, that a woman’s words to a lover are as a matter of
course written only on wind and water. Now don’t be troubled about
that, Elfride.”
“Ah, you don’t know!”
They had been standing on the lawn, and Knight was now seen lingering
some way down a winding walk. When Elfride met him, it was with a much
greater lightness of heart; things were more straightforward now. The
responsibility of her fickleness seemed partly shifted from her own
shoulders to her father’s. Still, there were shadows.
“Ah, could he have known how far I went with Stephen, and yet have said
the same, how much happier I should be!” That was her prevailing
thought.
In the afternoon the lovers went out together on horseback for an hour
or two; and though not wishing to be observed, by reason of the late
death of Lady Luxellian, whose funeral had taken place very privately
on the previous day, they yet found it necessary to pass East Endelstow
Church.
The steps to the vault, as has been stated, were on the outside of the
building, immediately under the aisle wall. Being on horseback, both
Knight and Elfride could overlook the shrubs which screened the
church-yard.
“Look, the vault seems still to be open,” said Knight.
“Yes, it is open,” she answered
“Who is that man close by it? The mason, I suppose?”
“Yes.”
“I wonder if it is John Smith, Stephen’s father?”
“I believe it is,” said Elfride, with apprehension.
“Ah, and can it be? I should like to inquire how his son, my truant
protegé, is going on. And from your father’s description of the vault,
the interior must be interesting. Suppose we go in.”
“Had we better, do you think? May not Lord Luxellian be there?”
“It is not at all likely.”
Elfride then assented, since she could do nothing else. Her heart,
which at first had quailed in consternation, recovered itself when she
considered the character of John Smith. A quiet unassuming man, he
would be sure to act towards her as before those love passages with his
son, which might have given a more pretentious mechanic airs. So
without much alarm she took Knight’s arm after dismounting, and went
with him between and over the graves. The master-mason recognized her
as she approached, and, as usual, lifted his hat respectfully.
“I know you to be Mr. Smith, my former friend Stephen’s father,” said
Knight, directly he had scanned the embrowned and ruddy features of
John.
“Yes, sir, I b’lieve I be.”
“How is your son now? I have only once heard from him since he went to
India. I daresay you have heard him speak of me—Mr. Knight, who became
acquainted with him some years ago in Exonbury.”
“Ay, that I have. Stephen is very well, thank you, sir, and he’s in
England; in fact, he’s at home. In short, sir, he’s down in the vault
there, a-looking at the departed coffins.”
Elfride’s heart fluttered like a butterfly.
Knight looked amazed. “Well, that is extraordinary.” he murmured. “Did
he know I was in the parish?”
“I really can’t say, sir,” said John, wishing himself out of the
entanglement he rather suspected than thoroughly understood.
“Would it be considered an intrusion by the family if we went into the
vault?”
“Oh, bless ye, no, sir; scores of folk have been stepping down. ’Tis
left open a-purpose.”
“We will go down, Elfride.”
“I am afraid the air is close,” she said appealingly.
“Oh no, ma’am,” said John. “We white-limed the walls and arches the day
’twas opened, as we always do, and again on the morning of the funeral;
the place is as sweet as a granary.
“Then I should like you to accompany me, Elfie; having originally
sprung from the family too.”
“I don’t like going where death is so emphatically present. I’ll stay
by the horses whilst you go in; they may get loose.”
“What nonsense! I had no idea your sentiments were so flimsily formed
as to be perturbed by a few remnants of mortality; but stay out, if you
are so afraid, by all means.”
“Oh no, I am not afraid; don’t say that.”
She held miserably to his arm, thinking that, perhaps, the revelation
might as well come at once as ten minutes later, for Stephen would be
sure to accompany his friend to his horse.
At first, the gloom of the vault, which was lighted only by a couple of
candles, was too great to admit of their seeing anything distinctly;
but with a further advance Knight discerned, in front of the black
masses lining the walls, a young man standing, and writing in a
pocket-book.
Knight said one word: “Stephen!”
Stephen Smith, not being in such absolute ignorance of Knight’s
whereabouts as Knight had been of Smith’s instantly recognized his
friend, and knew by rote the outlines of the fair woman standing behind
him.
Stephen came forward and shook him by the hand, without speaking.
“Why have you not written, my boy?” said Knight, without in any way
signifying Elfride’s presence to Stephen. To the essayist, Smith was
still the country lad whom he had patronized and tended; one to whom
the formal presentation of a lady betrothed to himself would have
seemed incongruous and absurd.
“Why haven’t you written to me?” said Stephen.
“Ah, yes. Why haven’t I? why haven’t we? That’s always the query which
we cannot clearly answer without an unsatisfactory sense of our
inadequacies. However, I have not forgotten you, Smith. And now we have
met; and we must meet again, and have a longer chat than this can
conveniently be. I must know all you have been doing. That you have
thriven, I know, and you must teach me the way.”
Elfride stood in the background. Stephen had read the position at a
glance, and immediately guessed that she had never mentioned his name
to Knight. His tact in avoiding catastrophes was the chief quality
which made him intellectually respectable, in which quality he far
transcended Knight; and he decided that a tranquil issue out of the
encounter, without any harrowing of the feelings of either Knight or
Elfride, was to be attempted if possible. His old sense of indebtedness
to Knight had never wholly forsaken him; his love for Elfride was
generous now.
As far as he dared look at her movements he saw that her bearing
towards him would be dictated by his own towards her; and if he acted
as a stranger she would do likewise as a means of deliverance.
Circumstances favouring this course, it was desirable also to be rather
reserved towards Knight, to shorten the meeting as much as possible.
“I am afraid that my time is almost too short to allow even of such a
pleasure,” he said. “I leave here to-morrow. And until I start for the
Continent and India, which will be in a fortnight, I shall have hardly
a moment to spare.”
Knight’s disappointment and dissatisfied looks at this reply sent a
pang through Stephen as great as any he had felt at the sight of
Elfride. The words about shortness of time were literally true, but
their tone was far from being so. He would have been gratified to talk
with Knight as in past times, and saw as a dead loss to himself that,
to save the woman who cared nothing for him, he was deliberately
throwing away his friend.
“Oh, I am sorry to hear that,” said Knight, in a changed tone. “But of
course, if you have weighty concerns to attend to, they must not be