A pair of blue eyes
would be a scandal to a washerwoman’s daughter? Come along, madam;
come!”
“She is so weary!” said Knight, in a voice of intensest anguish. “Mr.
Swancourt, don’t be harsh with her—let me beg of you to be tender with
her, and love her!”
“To you, sir,” said Mr. Swancourt, turning to him as if by the sheer
pressure of circumstances, “I have little to say. I can only remark,
that the sooner I can retire from your presence the better I shall be
pleased. Why you could not conduct your courtship of my daughter like
an honest man, I do not know. Why she—a foolish inexperienced
girl—should have been tempted to this piece of folly, I do not know.
Even if she had not known better than to leave her home, you might
have, I should think.”
“It is not his fault: he did not tempt me, papa! I came.”
“If you wished the marriage broken off, why didn’t you say so plainly?
If you never intended to marry, why could you not leave her alone? Upon
my soul, it grates me to the heart to be obliged to think so ill of a
man I thought my friend!”
Knight, soul-sick and weary of his life, did not arouse himself to
utter a word in reply. How should he defend himself when his defence
was the accusation of Elfride? On that account he felt a miserable
satisfaction in letting her father go on thinking and speaking
wrongfully. It was a faint ray of pleasure straying into the great
gloominess of his brain to think that the vicar might never know but
that he, as her lover, tempted her away, which seemed to be the form
Mr. Swancourt’s misapprehension had taken.
“Now, are you coming?” said Mr. Swancourt to her again. He took her
unresisting hand, drew it within his arm, and led her down the stairs.
Knight’s eyes followed her, the last moment begetting in him a frantic
hope that she would turn her head. She passed on, and never looked
back.
He heard the door open—close again. The wheels of a cab grazed the
kerbstone, a murmured direction followed. The door was slammed
together, the wheels moved, and they rolled away.
From that hour of her reappearance a dreadful conflict raged within the
breast of Henry Knight. His instinct, emotion, affectiveness—or
whatever it may be called—urged him to stand forward, seize upon
Elfride, and be her cherisher and protector through life. Then came the
devastating thought that Elfride’s childlike, unreasoning, and
indiscreet act in flying to him only proved that the proprieties must
be a dead letter with her; that the unreserve, which was really
artlessness without ballast, meant indifference to decorum; and what so
likely as that such a woman had been deceived in the past? He said to
himself, in a mood of the bitterest cynicism: “The suspicious discreet
woman who imagines dark and evil things of all her fellow-creatures is
far too shrewd to be deluded by man: trusting beings like Elfride are
the women who fall.”
Hours and days went by, and Knight remained inactive. Lengthening time,
which made fainter the heart-awakening power of her presence,
strengthened the mental ability to reason her down. Elfride loved him,
he knew, and he could not leave off loving her but marry her he would
not. If she could but be again his own Elfride—the woman she had seemed
to be—but that woman was dead and buried, and he knew her no more! And
how could he marry this Elfride, one who, if he had originally seen her
as she was, would have been barely an interesting pitiable acquaintance
in his eyes—no more?
It cankered his heart to think he was confronted by the closest
instance of a worse state of things than any he had assumed in the
pleasant social philosophy and satire of his essays.
The moral rightness of this man’s life was worthy of all praise; but in
spite of some intellectual acumen, Knight had in him a modicum of that
wrongheadedness which is mostly found in scrupulously honest people.
With him, truth seemed too clean and pure an abstraction to be so
hopelessly churned in with error as practical persons find it. Having
now seen himself mistaken in supposing Elfride to be peerless, nothing
on earth could make him believe she was not so very bad after all.
He lingered in town a fortnight, doing little else than vibrate between
passion and opinions. One idea remained intact—that it was better
Elfride and himself should not meet.
When he surveyed the volumes on his shelves—few of which had been
opened since Elfride first took possession of his heart—their untouched
and orderly arrangement reproached him as an apostate from the old
faith of his youth and early manhood. He had deserted those
never-failing friends, so they seemed to say, for an unstable delight
in a ductile woman, which had ended all in bitterness. The spirit of
self-denial, verging on asceticism, which had ever animated Knight in
old times, announced itself as having departed with the birth of love,
with it having gone the self-respect which had compensated for the lack
of self-gratification. Poor little Elfride, instead of holding, as
formerly, a place in his religion, began to assume the hue of a
temptation. Perhaps it was human and correctly natural that Knight
never once thought whether he did not owe her a little sacrifice for
her unchary devotion in saving his life.
With a consciousness of having thus, like Antony, kissed away kingdoms
and provinces, he next considered how he had revealed his higher
secrets and intentions to her, an unreserve he would never have allowed
himself with any man living. How was it that he had not been able to
refrain from telling her of adumbrations heretofore locked in the
closest strongholds of his mind?
Knight’s was a robust intellect, which could escape outside the
atmosphere of heart, and perceive that his own love, as well as other
people’s, could be reduced by change of scene and circumstances. At the
same time the perception was a superimposed sorrow:
“O last regret, regret can die!”
But being convinced that the death of this regret was the best thing
for him, he did not long shrink from attempting it. He closed his
chambers, suspended his connection with editors, and left London for
the Continent. Here we will leave him to wander without purpose, beyond
the nominal one of encouraging obliviousness of Elfride.
Chapter XXXVI
“The pennie’s the jewel that beautifies a’.”
“I can’t think what’s coming to these St. Launce’s people at all at
all.”
“With their ‘How-d’ye-do’s,’ do you mean?”
“Ay, with their ‘How-d’ye-do’s,’ and shaking of hands, asking me in,
and tender inquiries for you, John.”
These words formed part of a conversation between John Smith and his
wife on a Saturday evening in the spring which followed Knight’s
departure from England. Stephen had long since returned to India; and
the persevering couple themselves had migrated from Lord Luxellian’s
park at Endelstow to a comfortable roadside dwelling about a mile out
of St. Launce’s, where John had opened a small stone and slate yard in
his own name.
“When we came here six months ago,” continued Mrs. Smith, “though I had
paid ready money so many years in the town, my friskier shopkeepers
would only speak over the counter. Meet ’em in the street half-an-hour
after, and they’d treat me with staring ignorance of my face.”
“Look through ye as through a glass winder?”
“Yes, the brazen ones would. The quiet and cool ones would glance over
the top of my head, past my side, over my shoulder, but never meet my
eye. The gentle-modest would turn their faces south if I were coming
east, flit down a passage if I were about to halve the pavement with
them. There was the spruce young bookseller would play the same tricks;
the butcher’s daughters; the upholsterer’s young men. Hand in glove
when doing business out of sight with you; but caring nothing for a’
old woman when playing the genteel away from all signs of their trade.”
“True enough, Maria.”
“Well, to-day ’tis all different. I’d no sooner got to market than Mrs.
Joakes rushed up to me in the eyes of the town and said, ‘My dear Mrs.
Smith, now you must be tired with your walk! Come in and have some
lunch! I insist upon it; knowing you so many years as I have! Don’t you
remember when we used to go looking for owls’ feathers together in the
Castle ruins?’ There’s no knowing what you may need, so I answered the
woman civilly. I hadn’t got to the corner before that thriving young
lawyer, Sweet, who’s quite the dandy, ran after me out of breath. ‘Mrs.
Smith,’ he says, ‘excuse my rudeness, but there’s a bramble on the tail
of your dress, which you’ve dragged in from the country; allow me to
pull it off for you.’ If you’ll believe me, this was in the very front
of the Town Hall. What’s the meaning of such sudden love for a’ old
woman?”
“Can’t say; unless ’tis repentance.”
“Repentance! was there ever such a fool as you. John? Did anybody ever
repent with money in’s pocket and fifty years to live?”
“Now, I’ve been thinking too,” said John, passing over the query as
hardly pertinent, “that I’ve had more loving-kindness from folks to-day
than I ever have before since we moved here. Why, old Alderman Tope
walked out to the middle of the street where I was, to shake hands with
me—so ’a did. Having on my working clothes, I thought ’twas odd. Ay,
and there was young Werrington.”
“Who’s he?”
“Why, the man in Hill Street, who plays and sells flutes, trumpets, and
fiddles, and grand pehanners. He was talking to Egloskerry, that very
small bachelor-man with money in the funds. I was going by, I’m sure,
without thinking or expecting a nod from men of that glib kidney when
in my working clothes——”
“You always will go poking into town in your working clothes. Beg you
to change how I will, ’tis no use.”
“Well, however, I was in my working clothes. Werrington saw me. ‘Ah,
Mr. Smith! a fine morning; excellent weather for building,’ says he,
out as loud and friendly as if I’d met him in some deep hollow, where
he could get nobody else to speak to at all. ’Twas odd: for Werrington
is one of the very ringleaders of the fast class.”
At that moment a tap came to the door. The door was immediately opened
by Mrs. Smith in person.
“You’ll excuse us, I’m sure, Mrs. Smith, but this beautiful spring
weather was too much for us. Yes, and we could stay in no longer; and I
took Mrs. Trewen upon my arm directly we’d had a cup of tea, and out we
came. And seeing your beautiful crocuses in such a bloom, we’ve taken
the liberty to enter. We’ll step round the garden, if you don’t mind.”
“Not at all,” said Mrs. Smith; and they walked round the garden. She
lifted her hands in amazement directly their backs were turned.
“Goodness send us grace!”
“Who be they?” said her husband.
“Actually Mr. Trewen, the bank-manager, and his wife.”
John Smith, staggered in mind, went out of doors and looked over the
garden gate, to collect his ideas. He had not been there two minutes
when wheels were heard, and a carriage and pair rolled along the road.
A distinguished-looking lady, with the demeanour of a duchess, reclined
within. When opposite Smith’s gate she turned her head, and instantly
commanded the coachman to stop.
“Ah, Mr. Smith, I am glad to see you looking so well. I could not help
stopping a moment to congratulate you and Mrs. Smith upon the happiness
you must enjoy. Joseph, you may drive on.”
And the carriage rolled away towards St. Launce’s.
Out rushed Mrs. Smith from behind a laurel-bush, where she had stood
pondering.
“Just going to touch my hat to her,” said John; “just for all the world
as I would have to poor Lady Luxellian years ago.”
“Lord! who is she?”
“The public-house woman—what’s her name? Mrs.—Mrs.—at the Falcon.”
“Public-house woman. The clumsiness of the Smith family! You MIGHT say