A pair of blue eyes
“Oh no, no; of course not; we are not at home yet,” Mr. Swancourt said
very hastily, endeavouring to dodge back to his original position with
the air of a man who had not moved at all. “The fact is I was so lost
in deep meditation that I forgot whereabouts we were.” And in a minute
the vicar was snoring again.
That evening, being the last, seemed to throw an exceptional shade of
sadness over Stephen Smith, and the repeated injunctions of the vicar,
that he was to come and revisit them in the summer, apparently tended
less to raise his spirits than to unearth some misgiving.
He left them in the gray light of dawn, whilst the colours of earth
were sombre, and the sun was yet hidden in the east. Elfride had
fidgeted all night in her little bed lest none of the household should
be awake soon enough to start him, and also lest she might miss seeing
again the bright eyes and curly hair, to which their owner’s possession
of a hidden mystery added a deeper tinge of romance. To some extent—so
soon does womanly interest take a solicitous turn—she felt herself
responsible for his safe conduct. They breakfasted before daylight; Mr.
Swancourt, being more and more taken with his guest’s ingenuous
appearance, having determined to rise early and bid him a friendly
farewell. It was, however, rather to the vicar’s astonishment, that he
saw Elfride walk in to the breakfast-table, candle in hand.
Whilst William Worm performed his toilet (during which performance the
inmates of the vicarage were always in the habit of waiting with
exemplary patience), Elfride wandered desultorily to the summer house.
Stephen followed her thither. The copse-covered valley was visible from
this position, a mist now lying all along its length, hiding the stream
which trickled through it, though the observers themselves were in
clear air.
They stood close together, leaning over the rustic balustrading which
bounded the arbour on the outward side, and formed the crest of a steep
slope beneath Elfride constrainedly pointed out some features of the
distant uplands rising irregularly opposite. But the artistic eye was,
either from nature or circumstance, very faint in Stephen now, and he
only half attended to her description, as if he spared time from some
other thought going on within him.
“Well, good-bye,” he said suddenly; “I must never see you again, I
suppose, Miss Swancourt, in spite of invitations.”
His genuine tribulation played directly upon the delicate chords of her
nature. She could afford to forgive him for a concealment or two.
Moreover, the shyness which would not allow him to look her in the face
lent bravery to her own eyes and tongue.
“Oh, DO come again, Mr. Smith!” she said prettily.
“I should delight in it; but it will be better if I do not.”
“Why?”
“Certain circumstances in connection with me make it undesirable. Not
on my account; on yours.”
“Goodness! As if anything in connection with you could hurt me,” she
said with serene supremacy; but seeing that this plan of treatment was
inappropriate, she tuned a smaller note. “Ah, I know why you will not
come. You don’t want to. You’ll go home to London and to all the
stirring people there, and will never want to see us any more!”
“You know I have no such reason.”
“And go on writing letters to the lady you are engaged to, just as
before.”
“What does that mean? I am not engaged.”
“You wrote a letter to a Miss Somebody; I saw it in the letter-rack.”
“Pooh! an elderly woman who keeps a stationer’s shop; and it was to
tell her to keep my newspapers till I get back.”
“You needn’t have explained: it was not my business at all.” Miss
Elfride was rather relieved to hear that statement, nevertheless. “And
you won’t come again to see my father?” she insisted.
“I should like to—and to see you again, but——”
“Will you reveal to me that matter you hide?” she interrupted
petulantly.
“No; not now.”
She could not but go on, graceless as it might seem.
“Tell me this,” she importuned with a trembling mouth. “Does any
meeting of yours with a lady at Endelstow Vicarage clash with—any
interest you may take in me?”
He started a little. “It does not,” he said emphatically; and looked
into the pupils of her eyes with the confidence that only honesty can
give, and even that to youth alone.
The explanation had not come, but a gloom left her. She could not but
believe that utterance. Whatever enigma might lie in the shadow on the
blind, it was not an enigma of underhand passion.
She turned towards the house, entering it through the conservatory.
Stephen went round to the front door. Mr. Swancourt was standing on the
step in his slippers. Worm was adjusting a buckle in the harness, and
murmuring about his poor head; and everything was ready for Stephen’s
departure.
“You named August for your visit. August it shall be; that is, if you
care for the society of such a fossilized Tory,” said Mr. Swancourt.
Mr. Smith only responded hesitatingly, that he should like to come
again.
“You said you would, and you must,” insisted Elfride, coming to the
door and speaking under her father’s arm.
Whatever reason the youth may have had for not wishing to enter the
house as a guest, it no longer predominated. He promised, and bade them
adieu, and got into the pony-carriage, which crept up the slope, and
bore him out of their sight.
“I never was so much taken with anybody in my life as I am with that
young fellow—never! I cannot understand it—can’t understand it anyhow,”
said Mr. Swancourt quite energetically to himself; and went indoors.
Chapter VII
“No more of me you knew, my love!”
Stephen Smith revisited Endelstow Vicarage, agreeably to his promise.
He had a genuine artistic reason for coming, though no such reason
seemed to be required. Six-and-thirty old seat ends, of exquisite
fifteenth-century workmanship, were rapidly decaying in an aisle of the
church; and it became politic to make drawings of their worm-eaten
contours ere they were battered past recognition in the turmoil of the
so-called restoration.
He entered the house at sunset, and the world was pleasant again to the
two fair-haired ones. A momentary pang of disappointment had,
nevertheless, passed through Elfride when she casually discovered that
he had not come that minute post-haste from London, but had reached the
neighbourhood the previous evening. Surprise would have accompanied the
feeling, had she not remembered that several tourists were haunting the
coast at this season, and that Stephen might have chosen to do
likewise.
They did little besides chat that evening, Mr. Swancourt beginning to
question his visitor, closely yet paternally, and in good part, on his
hopes and prospects from the profession he had embraced. Stephen gave
vague answers. The next day it rained. In the evening, when twenty-four
hours of Elfride had completely rekindled her admirer’s ardour, a game
of chess was proposed between them.
The game had its value in helping on the developments of their future.
Elfride soon perceived that her opponent was but a learner. She next
noticed that he had a very odd way of handling the pieces when castling
or taking a man. Antecedently she would have supposed that the same
performance must be gone through by all players in the same manner; she
was taught by his differing action that all ordinary players, who learn
the game by sight, unconsciously touch the men in a stereotyped way.
This impression of indescribable oddness in Stephen’s touch culminated
in speech when she saw him, at the taking of one of her bishops, push
it aside with the taking man instead of lifting it as a preliminary to
the move.
“How strangely you handle the men, Mr. Smith!”
“Do I? I am sorry for that.”
“Oh no—don’t be sorry; it is not a matter great enough for sorrow. But
who taught you to play?”
“Nobody, Miss Swancourt,” he said. “I learnt from a book lent me by my
friend Mr. Knight, the noblest man in the world.”
“But you have seen people play?”
“I have never seen the playing of a single game. This is the first time
I ever had the opportunity of playing with a living opponent. I have
worked out many games from books, and studied the reasons of the
different moves, but that is all.”
This was a full explanation of his mannerism; but the fact that a man
with the desire for chess should have grown up without being able to
see or engage in a game astonished her not a little. She pondered on
the circumstance for some time, looking into vacancy and hindering the
play.
Mr. Swancourt was sitting with his eyes fixed on the board, but
apparently thinking of other things. Half to himself he said, pending
the move of Elfride:
“‘Quae finis aut quod me manet stipendium?’”
Stephen replied instantly:
“‘Effare: jussas cum fide poenas luam.’”
“Excellent—prompt—gratifying!” said Mr. Swancourt with feeling,
bringing down his hand upon the table, and making three pawns and a
knight dance over their borders by the shaking. “I was musing on those
words as applicable to a strange course I am steering—but enough of
that. I am delighted with you, Mr. Smith, for it is so seldom in this
desert that I meet with a man who is gentleman and scholar enough to
continue a quotation, however trite it may be.”
“I also apply the words to myself,” said Stephen quietly.
“You? The last man in the world to do that, I should have thought.”
“Come,” murmured Elfride poutingly, and insinuating herself between
them, “tell me all about it. Come, construe, construe!”
Stephen looked steadfastly into her face, and said slowly, and in a
voice full of a far-off meaning that seemed quaintly premature in one
so young:
“Quae finis WHAT WILL BE THE END, aut OR, quod stipendium WHAT FINE,
manet me AWAITS ME? Effare SPEAK OUT; luam I WILL PAY, cum fide WITH
FAITH, jussas poenas THE PENALTY REQUIRED.”
The vicar, who had listened with a critical compression of the lips to
this school-boy recitation, and by reason of his imperfect hearing had
missed the marked realism of Stephen’s tone in the English words, now
said hesitatingly: “By the bye, Mr. Smith (I know you’ll excuse my
curiosity), though your translation was unexceptionably correct and
close, you have a way of pronouncing your Latin which to me seems most
peculiar. Not that the pronunciation of a dead language is of much
importance; yet your accents and quantities have a grotesque sound to
my ears. I thought first that you had acquired your way of breathing
the vowels from some of the northern colleges; but it cannot be so with
the quantities. What I was going to ask was, if your instructor in the
classics could possibly have been an Oxford or Cambridge man?”
“Yes; he was an Oxford man—Fellow of St. Cyprian’s.”
“Really?”
“Oh yes; there’s no doubt about it.
“The oddest thing ever I heard of!” said Mr. Swancourt, starting with
astonishment. “That the pupil of such a man——”
“The best and cleverest man in England!” cried Stephen
enthusiastically.
“That the pupil of such a man should pronounce Latin in the way you
pronounce it beats all I ever heard. How long did he instruct you?”
“Four years.”
“Four years!”
“It is not so strange when I explain,” Stephen hastened to say. “It was
done in this way—by letter. I sent him exercises and construing twice a
week, and twice a week he sent them back to me corrected, with marginal
notes of instruction. That is how I learnt my Latin and Greek, such as
it is. He is not responsible for my scanning. He has never heard me
scan a line.”
“A novel case, and a singular instance of patience!” cried the vicar.
“On his part, not on mine. Ah, Henry Knight is one in a thousand! I
remember his speaking to me on this very subject of pronunciation. He