A pair of blue eyes
neglected. And if this is to be our first and last meeting, let me say
that I wish you success with all my heart!” Knight’s warmth revived
towards the end; the solemn impressions he was beginning to receive
from the scene around them abstracting from his heart as a puerility
any momentary vexation at words. “It is a strange place for us to meet
in,” he continued, looking round the vault.
Stephen briefly assented, and there was a silence. The blackened
coffins were now revealed more clearly than at first, the whitened
walls and arches throwing them forward in strong relief. It was a scene
which was remembered by all three as an indelible mark in their
history. Knight, with an abstracted face, was standing between his
companions, though a little in advance of them, Elfride being on his
right hand, and Stephen Smith on his left. The white daylight on his
right side gleamed faintly in, and was toned to a blueness by contrast
with the yellow rays from the candle against the wall. Elfride, timidly
shrinking back, and nearest the entrance, received most of the light
therefrom, whilst Stephen was entirely in candlelight, and to him the
spot of outer sky visible above the steps was as a steely blue patch,
and nothing more.
“I have been here two or three times since it was opened,” said
Stephen. “My father was engaged in the work, you know.”
“Yes. What are you doing?” Knight inquired, looking at the note-book
and pencil Stephen held in his hand.
“I have been sketching a few details in the church, and since then I
have been copying the names from some of the coffins here. Before I
left England I used to do a good deal of this sort of thing.”
“Yes; of course. Ah, that’s poor Lady Luxellian, I suppose.” Knight
pointed to a coffin of light satin-wood, which stood on the stone
sleepers in the new niche. “And the remainder of the family are on this
side. Who are those two, so snug and close together?”
Stephen’s voice altered slightly as he replied “That’s Lady Elfride
Kingsmore—born Luxellian, and that is Arthur, her husband. I have heard
my father say that they—he—ran away with her, and married her against
the wish of her parents.”
“Then I imagine this to be where you got your Christian name, Miss
Swancourt?” said Knight, turning to her. “I think you told me it was
three or four generations ago that your family branched off from the
Luxellians?”
“She was my grandmother,” said Elfride, vainly endeavouring to moisten
her dry lips before she spoke. Elfride had then the conscience-stricken
look of Guido’s Magdalen, rendered upon a more childlike form. She kept
her face partially away from Knight and Stephen, and set her eyes upon
the sky visible outside, as if her salvation depended upon quickly
reaching it. Her left hand rested lightly within Knight’s arm, half
withdrawn, from a sense of shame at claiming him before her old lover,
yet unwilling to renounce him; so that her glove merely touched his
sleeve. “‘Can one be pardoned, and retain the offence?’” quoted
Elfride’s heart then.
Conversation seemed to have no self-sustaining power, and went on in
the shape of disjointed remarks. “One’s mind gets thronged with
thoughts while standing so solemnly here,” Knight said, in a measured
quiet voice. “How much has been said on death from time to time! how
much we ourselves can think upon it! We may fancy each of these who lie
here saying:
“For Thou, to make my fall more great,
Didst lift me up on high.”
What comes next, Elfride? It is the Hundred-and-second Psalm I am
thinking of.”
“Yes, I know it,” she murmured, and went on in a still lower voice,
seemingly afraid for any words from the emotional side of her nature to
reach Stephen:
“‘My days, just hastening to their end,
Are like an evening shade;
My beauty doth, like wither’d grass,
With waning lustre fade.’”
“Well,” said Knight musingly, “let us leave them. Such occasions as
these seem to compel us to roam outside ourselves, far away from the
fragile frame we live in, and to expand till our perception grows so
vast that our physical reality bears no sort of proportion to it. We
look back upon the weak and minute stem on which this luxuriant growth
depends, and ask, Can it be possible that such a capacity has a
foundation so small? Must I again return to my daily walk in that
narrow cell, a human body, where worldly thoughts can torture me? Do we
not?”
“Yes,” said Stephen and Elfride.
“One has a sense of wrong, too, that such an appreciative breadth as a
sentient being possesses should be committed to the frail casket of a
body. What weakens one’s intentions regarding the future like the
thought of this?...However, let us tune ourselves to a more cheerful
chord, for there’s a great deal to be done yet by us all.”
As Knight meditatively addressed his juniors thus, unconscious of the
deception practised, for different reasons, by the severed hearts at
his side, and of the scenes that had in earlier days united them, each
one felt that he and she did not gain by contrast with their musing
mentor. Physically not so handsome as either the youthful architect or
the vicar’s daughter, the thoroughness and integrity of Knight
illuminated his features with a dignity not even incipient in the other
two. It is difficult to frame rules which shall apply to both sexes,
and Elfride, an undeveloped girl, must, perhaps, hardly be laden with
the moral responsibilities which attach to a man in like circumstances.
The charm of woman, too, lies partly in her subtleness in matters of
love. But if honesty is a virtue in itself, Elfride, having none of it
now, seemed, being for being, scarcely good enough for Knight. Stephen,
though deceptive for no unworthy purpose, was deceptive after all; and
whatever good results grace such strategy if it succeed, it seldom
draws admiration, especially when it fails.
On an ordinary occasion, had Knight been even quite alone with Stephen,
he would hardly have alluded to his possible relationship to Elfride.
But moved by attendant circumstances Knight was impelled to be
confiding.
“Stephen,” he said, “this lady is Miss Swancourt. I am staying at her
father’s house, as you probably know.” He stepped a few paces nearer to
Smith, and said in a lower tone: “I may as well tell you that we are
engaged to be married.”
Low as the words had been spoken, Elfride had heard them, and awaited
Stephen’s reply in breathless silence, if that could be called silence
where Elfride’s dress, at each throb of her heart, shook and indicated
it like a pulse-glass, rustling also against the wall in reply to the
same throbbing. The ray of daylight which reached her face lent it a
blue pallor in comparison with those of the other two.
“I congratulate you,” Stephen whispered; and said aloud, “I know Miss
Swancourt—a little. You must remember that my father is a parishioner
of Mr. Swancourt’s.”
“I thought you might possibly not have lived at home since they have
been here.”
“I have never lived at home, certainly, since that time.”
“I have seen Mr. Smith,” faltered Elfride.
“Well, there is no excuse for me. As strangers to each other I ought, I
suppose, to have introduced you: as acquaintances, I should not have
stood so persistently between you. But the fact is, Smith, you seem a
boy to me, even now.”
Stephen appeared to have a more than previous consciousness of the
intense cruelty of his fate at the present moment. He could not repress
the words, uttered with a dim bitterness:
“You should have said that I seemed still the rural mechanic’s son I
am, and hence an unfit subject for the ceremony of introductions.”
“Oh, no, no! I won’t have that.” Knight endeavoured to give his reply a
laughing tone in Elfride’s ears, and an earnestness in Stephen’s: in
both which efforts he signally failed, and produced a forced speech
pleasant to neither. “Well, let us go into the open air again; Miss
Swancourt, you are particularly silent. You mustn’t mind Smith. I have
known him for years, as I have told you.”
“Yes, you have,” she said.
“To think she has never mentioned her knowledge of me!” Smith murmured,
and thought with some remorse how much her conduct resembled his own on
his first arrival at her house as a stranger to the place.
They ascended to the daylight, Knight taking no further notice of
Elfride’s manner, which, as usual, he attributed to the natural shyness
of a young woman at being discovered walking with him on terms which
left not much doubt of their meaning. Elfride stepped a little in
advance, and passed through the churchyard.
“You are changed very considerably, Smith,” said Knight, “and I suppose
it is no more than was to be expected. However, don’t imagine that I
shall feel any the less interest in you and your fortunes whenever you
care to confide them to me. I have not forgotten the attachment you
spoke of as your reason for going away to India. A London young lady,
was it not? I hope all is prosperous?”
“No: the match is broken off.”
It being always difficult to know whether to express sorrow or gladness
under such circumstances—all depending upon the character of the
match—Knight took shelter in the safe words: “I trust it was for the
best.”
“I hope it was. But I beg that you will not press me further: no, you
have not pressed me—I don’t mean that—but I would rather not speak upon
the subject.”
Stephen’s words were hurried.
Knight said no more, and they followed in the footsteps of Elfride, who
still kept some paces in advance, and had not heard Knight’s
unconscious allusion to her. Stephen bade him adieu at the
churchyard-gate without going outside, and watched whilst he and his
sweetheart mounted their horses.
“Good heavens, Elfride,” Knight exclaimed, “how pale you are! I suppose
I ought not to have taken you into that vault. What is the matter?”
“Nothing,” said Elfride faintly. “I shall be myself in a moment. All
was so strange and unexpected down there, that it made me unwell.”
“I thought you said very little. Shall I get some water?”
“No, no.”
“Do you think it is safe for you to mount?”
“Quite—indeed it is,” she said, with a look of appeal.
“Now then—up she goes!” whispered Knight, and lifted her tenderly into
the saddle.
Her old lover still looked on at the performance as he leant over the
gate a dozen yards off. Once in the saddle, and having a firm grip of
the reins, she turned her head as if by a resistless fascination, and
for the first time since that memorable parting on the moor outside St.
Launce’s after the passionate attempt at marriage with him, Elfride
looked in the face of the young man she first had loved. He was the
youth who had called her his inseparable wife many a time, and whom she
had even addressed as her husband. Their eyes met. Measurement of life
should be proportioned rather to the intensity of the experience than
to its actual length. Their glance, but a moment chronologically, was a
season in their history. To Elfride the intense agony of reproach in
Stephen’s eye was a nail piercing her heart with a deadliness no words
can describe. With a spasmodic effort she withdrew her eyes, urged on
the horse, and in the chaos of perturbed memories was oblivious of any
presence beside her. The deed of deception was complete.
Gaining a knoll on which the park transformed itself into wood and
copse, Knight came still closer to her side, and said, “Are you better
now, dearest?”
“Oh yes.” She pressed a hand to her eyes, as if to blot out the image
of Stephen. A vivid scarlet spot now shone with preternatural
brightness in the centre of each cheek, leaving the remainder of her
face lily-white as before.
“Elfride,” said Knight, rather in his old tone of mentor, “you know I