A pair of blue eyes
sudden opening of a door at the far end.
Out bounded a pair of little girls, lightly yet warmly dressed. Their
eyes were sparkling; their hair swinging about and around; their red
mouths laughing with unalloyed gladness.
“Ah, Miss Swancourt: dearest Elfie! we heard you. Are you going to stay
here? You are our little mamma, are you not—our big mamma is gone to
London,” said one.
“Let me tiss you,” said the other, in appearance very much like the
first, but to a smaller pattern.
Their pink cheeks and yellow hair were speedily intermingled with the
folds of Elfride’s dress; she then stooped and tenderly embraced them
both.
“Such an odd thing,” said Elfride, smiling, and turning to Stephen.
“They have taken it into their heads lately to call me ‘little mamma,’
because I am very fond of them, and wore a dress the other day
something like one of Lady Luxellian’s.”
These two young creatures were the Honourable Mary and the Honourable
Kate—scarcely appearing large enough as yet to bear the weight of such
ponderous prefixes. They were the only two children of Lord and Lady
Luxellian, and, as it proved, had been left at home during their
parents’ temporary absence, in the custody of nurse and governess. Lord
Luxellian was dotingly fond of the children; rather indifferent towards
his wife, since she had begun to show an inclination not to please him
by giving him a boy.
All children instinctively ran after Elfride, looking upon her more as
an unusually nice large specimen of their own tribe than as a grown-up
elder. It had now become an established rule, that whenever she met
them—indoors or out-of-doors, weekdays or Sundays—they were to be
severally pressed against her face and bosom for the space of a quarter
of a minute, and other-wise made much of on the delightful system of
cumulative epithet and caress to which unpractised girls will
occasionally abandon themselves.
A look of misgiving by the youngsters towards the door by which they
had entered directed attention to a maid-servant appearing from the
same quarter, to put an end to this sweet freedom of the poor
Honourables Mary and Kate.
“I wish you lived here, Miss Swancourt,” piped one like a melancholy
bullfinch.
“So do I,” piped the other like a rather more melancholy bullfinch.
“Mamma can’t play with us so nicely as you do. I don’t think she ever
learnt playing when she was little. When shall we come to see you?”
“As soon as you like, dears.”
“And sleep at your house all night? That’s what I mean by coming to see
you. I don’t care to see people with hats and bonnets on, and all
standing up and walking about.”
“As soon as we can get mamma’s permission you shall come and stay as
long as ever you like. Good-bye!”
The prisoners were then led off, Elfride again turning her attention to
her guest, whom she had left standing at the remote end of the gallery.
On looking around for him he was nowhere to be seen. Elfride stepped
down to the library, thinking he might have rejoined her father there.
But Mr. Swancourt, now cheerfully illuminated by a pair of candles, was
still alone, untying packets of letters and papers, and tying them up
again.
As Elfride did not stand on a sufficiently intimate footing with the
object of her interest to justify her, as a proper young lady, to
commence the active search for him that youthful impulsiveness
prompted, and as, nevertheless, for a nascent reason connected with
those divinely cut lips of his, she did not like him to be absent from
her side, she wandered desultorily back to the oak staircase, pouting
and casting her eyes about in hope of discerning his boyish figure.
Though daylight still prevailed in the rooms, the corridors were in a
depth of shadow—chill, sad, and silent; and it was only by looking
along them towards light spaces beyond that anything or anybody could
be discerned therein. One of these light spots she found to be caused
by a side-door with glass panels in the upper part. Elfride opened it,
and found herself confronting a secondary or inner lawn, separated from
the principal lawn front by a shrubbery.
And now she saw a perplexing sight. At right angles to the face of the
wing she had emerged from, and within a few feet of the door, jutted
out another wing of the mansion, lower and with less architectural
character. Immediately opposite to her, in the wall of this wing, was a
large broad window, having its blind drawn down, and illuminated by a
light in the room it screened.
On the blind was a shadow from somebody close inside it—a person in
profile. The profile was unmistakably that of Stephen. It was just
possible to see that his arms were uplifted, and that his hands held an
article of some kind. Then another shadow appeared—also in profile—and
came close to him. This was the shadow of a woman. She turned her back
towards Stephen: he lifted and held out what now proved to be a shawl
or mantle—placed it carefully—so carefully—round the lady; disappeared;
reappeared in her front—fastened the mantle. Did he then kiss her?
Surely not. Yet the motion might have been a kiss. Then both shadows
swelled to colossal dimensions—grew distorted—vanished.
Two minutes elapsed.
“Ah, Miss Swancourt! I am so glad to find you. I was looking for you,”
said a voice at her elbow—Stephen’s voice. She stepped into the
passage.
“Do you know any of the members of this establishment?” said she.
“Not a single one: how should I?” he replied.
Chapter VI
“Fare thee weel awhile!”
Simultaneously with the conclusion of Stephen’s remark, the sound of
the closing of an external door in their immediate neighbourhood
reached Elfride’s ears. It came from the further side of the wing
containing the illuminated room. She then discerned, by the aid of the
dusky departing light, a figure, whose sex was undistinguishable,
walking down the gravelled path by the parterre towards the river. The
figure grew fainter, and vanished under the trees.
Mr. Swancourt’s voice was heard calling out their names from a distant
corridor in the body of the building. They retraced their steps, and
found him with his coat buttoned up and his hat on, awaiting their
advent in a mood of self-satisfaction at having brought his search to a
successful close. The carriage was brought round, and without further
delay the trio drove away from the mansion, under the echoing gateway
arch, and along by the leafless sycamores, as the stars began to kindle
their trembling lights behind the maze of branches and twigs.
No words were spoken either by youth or maiden. Her unpractised mind
was completely occupied in fathoming its recent acquisition. The young
man who had inspired her with such novelty of feeling, who had come
directly from London on business to her father, having been brought by
chance to Endelstow House had, by some means or other, acquired the
privilege of approaching some lady he had found therein, and of
honouring her by petits soins of a marked kind,—all in the space of
half an hour.
What room were they standing in? thought Elfride. As nearly as she
could guess, it was Lord Luxellian’s business-room, or office. What
people were in the house? None but the governess and servants, as far
as she knew, and of these he had professed a total ignorance. Had the
person she had indistinctly seen leaving the house anything to do with
the performance? It was impossible to say without appealing to the
culprit himself, and that she would never do. The more Elfride
reflected, the more certain did it appear that the meeting was a chance
rencounter, and not an appointment. On the ultimate inquiry as to the
individuality of the woman, Elfride at once assumed that she could not
be an inferior. Stephen Smith was not the man to care about
passages-at-love with women beneath him. Though gentle, ambition was
visible in his kindling eyes; he evidently hoped for much; hoped
indefinitely, but extensively. Elfride was puzzled, and being puzzled,
was, by a natural sequence of girlish sensations, vexed with him. No
more pleasure came in recognizing that from liking to attract him she
was getting on to love him, boyish as he was and innocent as he had
seemed.
They reached the bridge which formed a link between the eastern and
western halves of the parish. Situated in a valley that was bounded
outwardly by the sea, it formed a point of depression from which the
road ascended with great steepness to West Endelstow and the Vicarage.
There was no absolute necessity for either of them to alight, but as it
was the vicar’s custom after a long journey to humour the horse in
making this winding ascent, Elfride, moved by an imitative instinct,
suddenly jumped out when Pleasant had just begun to adopt the
deliberate stalk he associated with this portion of the road.
The young man seemed glad of any excuse for breaking the silence. “Why,
Miss Swancourt, what a risky thing to do!” he exclaimed, immediately
following her example by jumping down on the other side.
“Oh no, not at all,” replied she coldly; the shadow phenomenon at
Endelstow House still paramount within her.
Stephen walked along by himself for two or three minutes, wrapped in
the rigid reserve dictated by her tone. Then apparently thinking that
it was only for girls to pout, he came serenely round to her side, and
offered his arm with Castilian gallantry, to assist her in ascending
the remaining three-quarters of the steep.
Here was a temptation: it was the first time in her life that Elfride
had been treated as a grown-up woman in this way—offered an arm in a
manner implying that she had a right to refuse it. Till to-night she
had never received masculine attentions beyond those which might be
contained in such homely remarks as “Elfride, give me your hand;”
“Elfride, take hold of my arm,” from her father. Her callow heart made
an epoch of the incident; she considered her array of feelings, for and
against. Collectively they were for taking this offered arm; the single
one of pique determined her to punish Stephen by refusing.
“No, thank you, Mr. Smith; I can get along better by myself”
It was Elfride’s first fragile attempt at browbeating a lover. Fearing
more the issue of such an undertaking than what a gentle young man
might think of her waywardness, she immediately afterwards determined
to please herself by reversing her statement.
“On second thoughts, I will take it,” she said.
They slowly went their way up the hill, a few yards behind the
carriage.
“How silent you are, Miss Swancourt!” Stephen observed.
“Perhaps I think you silent too,” she returned.
“I may have reason to be.”
“Scarcely; it is sadness that makes people silent, and you can have
none.”
“You don’t know: I have a trouble; though some might think it less a
trouble than a dilemma.”
“What is it?” she asked impulsively.
Stephen hesitated. “I might tell,” he said; “at the same time, perhaps,
it is as well——”
She let go his arm and imperatively pushed it from her, tossing her
head. She had just learnt that a good deal of dignity is lost by asking
a question to which an answer is refused, even ever so politely; for
though politeness does good service in cases of requisition and
compromise, it but little helps a direct refusal. “I don’t wish to know
anything of it; I don’t wish it,” she went on. “The carriage is waiting
for us at the top of the hill; we must get in;” and Elfride flitted to
the front. “Papa, here is your Elfride!” she exclaimed to the dusky
figure of the old gentleman, as she sprang up and sank by his side
without deigning to accept aid from Stephen.
“Ah, yes!” uttered the vicar in artificially alert tones, awaking from
a most profound sleep, and suddenly preparing to alight.
“Why, what are you doing, papa? We are not home yet.”