A pair of blue eyes
Endelstow Church, and you and I stood by the font. Far away in the
chancel Lord Luxellian was standing alone, cold and impassive, and
utterly unlike his usual self: but I knew it was he. Inside the altar
rail stood a strange clergyman with his book open. He looked up and
said to Lord Luxellian, ‘Where’s the bride?’ Lord Luxellian said,
‘There’s no bride.’ At that moment somebody came in at the door, and I
knew her to be Lady Luxellian who died. He turned and said to her, ‘I
thought you were in the vault below us; but that could have only been a
dream of mine. Come on.’ Then she came on. And in brushing between us
she chilled me so with cold that I exclaimed, ‘The life is gone out of
me!’ and, in the way of dreams, I awoke. But here we are at Camelton.”
They were slowly entering the station.
“What are you going to do?” said Knight. “Do you really intend to call
on the Swancourts?”
“By no means. I am going to make inquiries first. I shall stay at the
Luxellian Arms to-night. You will go right on to Endelstow, I suppose,
at once?”
“I can hardly do that at this time of the day. Perhaps you are not
aware that the family—her father, at any rate—is at variance with me as
much as with you.
“I didn’t know it.”
“And that I cannot rush into the house as an old friend any more than
you can. Certainly I have the privileges of a distant relationship,
whatever they may be.”
Knight let down the window, and looked ahead. “There are a great many
people at the station,” he said. “They seem all to be on the look-out
for us.”
When the train stopped, the half-estranged friends could perceive by
the lamplight that the assemblage of idlers enclosed as a kernel a
group of men in black cloaks. A side gate in the platform railing was
open, and outside this stood a dark vehicle, which they could not at
first characterize. Then Knight saw on its upper part forms against the
sky like cedars by night, and knew the vehicle to be a hearse. Few
people were at the carriage doors to meet the passengers—the majority
had congregated at this upper end. Knight and Stephen alighted, and
turned for a moment in the same direction.
The sombre van, which had accompanied them all day from London, now
began to reveal that their destination was also its own. It had been
drawn up exactly opposite the open gate. The bystanders all fell back,
forming a clear lane from the gateway to the van, and the men in cloaks
entered the latter conveyance.
“They are labourers, I fancy,” said Stephen. “Ah, it is strange; but I
recognize three of them as Endelstow men. Rather remarkable this.”
Presently they began to come out, two and two; and under the rays of
the lamp they were seen to bear between them a light-coloured coffin of
satin-wood, brightly polished, and without a nail. The eight men took
the burden upon their shoulders, and slowly crossed with it over to the
gate.
Knight and Stephen went outside, and came close to the procession as it
moved off. A carriage belonging to the cortege turned round close to a
lamp. The rays shone in upon the face of the vicar of Endelstow, Mr.
Swancourt—looking many years older than when they had last seen him.
Knight and Stephen involuntarily drew back.
Knight spoke to a bystander. “What has Mr. Swancourt to do with that
funeral?”
“He is the lady’s father,” said the bystander.
“What lady’s father?” said Knight, in a voice so hollow that the man
stared at him.
“The father of the lady in the coffin. She died in London, you know,
and has been brought here by this train. She is to be taken home
to-night, and buried to-morrow.”
Knight stood staring blindly at where the hearse had been; as if he saw
it, or some one, there. Then he turned, and beheld the lithe form of
Stephen bowed down like that of an old man. He took his young friend’s
arm, and led him away from the light.
Chapter XL
“Welcome, proud lady.”
Half an hour has passed. Two miserable men are wandering in the
darkness up the miles of road from Camelton to Endelstow.
“Has she broken her heart?” said Henry Knight. “Can it be that I have
killed her? I was bitter with her, Stephen, and she has died! And may
God have NO mercy upon me!”
“How can you have killed her more than I?”
“Why, I went away from her—stole away almost—and didn’t tell her I
should not come again; and at that last meeting I did not kiss her
once, but let her miserably go. I have been a fool—a fool! I wish the
most abject confession of it before crowds of my countrymen could in
any way make amends to my darling for the intense cruelty I have shown
her!”
“YOUR darling!” said Stephen, with a sort of laugh. “Any man can say
that, I suppose; any man can. I know this, she was MY darling before
she was yours; and after too. If anybody has a right to call her his
own, it is I.”
“You talk like a man in the dark; which is what you are. Did she ever
do anything for you? Risk her name, for instance, for you?”
Yes, she did,” said Stephen emphatically.
“Not entirely. Did she ever live for you—prove she could not live
without you—laugh and weep for you?”
“Yes.”
“Never! Did she ever risk her life for you—no! My darling did for me.”
“Then it was in kindness only. When did she risk her life for you?”
“To save mine on the cliff yonder. The poor child was with me looking
at the approach of the Puffin steamboat, and I slipped down. We both
had a narrow escape. I wish we had died there!”
“Ah, but wait,” Stephen pleaded with wet eyes. “She went on that cliff
to see me arrive home: she had promised it. She told me she would
months before. And would she have gone there if she had not cared for
me at all?”
“You have an idea that Elfride died for you, no doubt,” said Knight,
with a mournful sarcasm too nerveless to support itself.
“Never mind. If we find that—that she died yours, I’ll say no more
ever.”
“And if we find she died yours, I’ll say no more.”
“Very well—so it shall be.”
The dark clouds into which the sun had sunk had begun to drop rain in
an increasing volume.
“Can we wait somewhere here till this shower is over?” said Stephen
desultorily.
“As you will. But it is not worth while. We’ll hear the particulars,
and return. Don’t let people know who we are. I am not much now.”
They had reached a point at which the road branched into two—just
outside the west village, one fork of the diverging routes passing into
the latter place, the other stretching on to East Endelstow. Having
come some of the distance by the footpath, they now found that the
hearse was only a little in advance of them.
“I fancy it has turned off to East Endelstow. Can you see?”
“I cannot. You must be mistaken.”
Knight and Stephen entered the village. A bar of fiery light lay across
the road, proceeding from the half-open door of a smithy, in which
bellows were heard blowing and a hammer ringing. The rain had
increased, and they mechanically turned for shelter towards the warm
and cosy scene.
Close at their heels came another man, without over-coat or umbrella,
and with a parcel under his arm.
“A wet evening,” he said to the two friends, and passed by them. They
stood in the outer penthouse, but the man went in to the fire.
The smith ceased his blowing, and began talking to the man who had
entered.
“I have walked all the way from Camelton,” said the latter. “Was
obliged to come to-night, you know.”
He held the parcel, which was a flat one, towards the firelight, to
learn if the rain had penetrated it. Resting it edgewise on the forge,
he supported it perpendicularly with one hand, wiping his face with the
handkerchief he held in the other.
“I suppose you know what I’ve got here?” he observed to the smith.
“No, I don’t,” said the smith, pausing again on his bellows.
“As the rain’s not over, I’ll show you,” said the bearer.
He laid the thin and broad package, which had acute angles in different
directions, flat upon the anvil, and the smith blew up the fire to give
him more light. First, after untying the package, a sheet of brown
paper was removed: this was laid flat. Then he unfolded a piece of
baize: this also he spread flat on the paper. The third covering was a
wrapper of tissue paper, which was spread out in its turn. The
enclosure was revealed, and he held it up for the smith’s inspection.
“Oh—I see!” said the smith, kindling with a chastened interest, and
drawing close. “Poor young lady—ah, terrible melancholy thing—so soon
too!”
Knight and Stephen turned their heads and looked.
“And what’s that?” continued the smith.
“That’s the coronet—beautifully finished, isn’t it? Ah, that cost some
money!”
“’Tis as fine a bit of metal work as ever I see—that ’tis.”
“It came from the same people as the coffin, you know, but was not
ready soon enough to be sent round to the house in London yesterday.
I’ve got to fix it on this very night.”
The carefully-packed articles were a coffin-plate and coronet.
Knight and Stephen came forward. The undertaker’s man, on seeing them
look for the inscription, civilly turned it round towards them, and
each read, almost at one moment, by the ruddy light of the coals:
E L F R I D E,
Wife of Spenser Hugo Luxellian,
Fifteenth Baron Luxellian:
Died February 10, 18—.
They read it, and read it, and read it again—Stephen and Knight—as if
animated by one soul. Then Stephen put his hand upon Knight’s arm, and
they retired from the yellow glow, further, further, till the chill
darkness enclosed them round, and the quiet sky asserted its presence
overhead as a dim grey sheet of blank monotony.
“Where shall we go?” said Stephen.
“I don’t know.”
A long silence ensued....“Elfride married!” said Stephen then in a thin
whisper, as if he feared to let the assertion loose on the world.
“False,” whispered Knight.
“And dead. Denied us both. I hate ‘false’—I hate it!”
Knight made no answer.
Nothing was heard by them now save the slow measurement of time by
their beating pulses, the soft touch of the dribbling rain upon their
clothes, and the low purr of the blacksmith’s bellows hard by.
“Shall we follow Elfie any further?” Stephen said.
“No: let us leave her alone. She is beyond our love, and let her be
beyond our reproach. Since we don’t know half the reasons that made her
do as she did, Stephen, how can we say, even now, that she was not pure
and true in heart?” Knight’s voice had now become mild and gentle as a
child’s. He went on: “Can we call her ambitious? No. Circumstance has,
as usual, overpowered her purposes—fragile and delicate as she—liable
to be overthrown in a moment by the coarse elements of accident. I know
that’s it,—don’t you?”
“It may be—it must be. Let us go on.”
They began to bend their steps towards Castle Boterel, whither they had
sent their bags from Camelton. They wandered on in silence for many
minutes. Stephen then paused, and lightly put his hand within Knight’s
arm.
“I wonder how she came to die,” he said in a broken whisper. “Shall we
return and learn a little more?”
They turned back again, and entering Endelstow a second time, came to a
door which was standing open. It was that of an inn called the Welcome
Home, and the house appeared to have been recently repaired and
entirely modernized. The name too was not that of the same landlord as
formerly, but Martin Cannister’s.
Knight and Smith entered. The inn was quite silent, and they followed
the passage till they reached the kitchen, where a huge fire was
burning, which roared up the chimney, and sent over the floor, ceiling,
and newly-whitened walls a glare so intense as to make the candle quite
a secondary light. A woman in a white apron and black gown was standing
there alone behind a cleanly-scrubbed deal table. Stephen first, and