“Allen-a-Dale is no baron or lord.”
The mists were creeping out of pools and swamps for their pilgrimages
of the night when Stephen came up to the front door of the vicarage.
Elfride was standing on the step illuminated by a lemon-hued expanse of
western sky.
“You never have been all this time looking for that earring?” she said
anxiously.
“Oh no; and I have not found it.”
“Never mind. Though I am much vexed; they are my prettiest. But,
Stephen, what ever have you been doing—where have you been? I have been
so uneasy. I feared for you, knowing not an inch of the country. I
thought, suppose he has fallen over the cliff! But now I am inclined to
scold you for frightening me so.”
“I must speak to your father now,” he said rather abruptly; “I have so
much to say to him—and to you, Elfride.”
“Will what you have to say endanger this nice time of ours, and is it
that same shadowy secret you allude to so frequently, and will it make
me unhappy?”
“Possibly.”
She breathed heavily, and looked around as if for a prompter.
“Put it off till to-morrow,” she said.
He involuntarily sighed too.
“No; it must come to-night. Where is your father, Elfride?”
“Somewhere in the kitchen garden, I think,” she replied. “That is his
favourite evening retreat. I will leave you now. Say all that’s to be
said—do all there is to be done. Think of me waiting anxiously for the
end.” And she re-entered the house.
She waited in the drawing-room, watching the lights sink to shadows,
the shadows sink to darkness, until her impatience to know what had
occurred in the garden could no longer be controlled. She passed round
the shrubbery, unlatched the garden door, and skimmed with her keen
eyes the whole twilighted space that the four walls enclosed and
sheltered: they were not there. She mounted a little ladder, which had
been used for gathering fruit, and looked over the wall into the field.
This field extended to the limits of the glebe, which was enclosed on
that side by a privet-hedge. Under the hedge was Mr. Swancourt, walking
up and down, and talking aloud—to himself, as it sounded at first. No:
another voice shouted occasional replies; and this interlocutor seemed
to be on the other side of the hedge. The voice, though soft in
quality, was not Stephen’s.
The second speaker must have been in the long-neglected garden of an
old manor-house hard by, which, together with a small estate attached,
had lately been purchased by a person named Troyton, whom Elfride had
never seen. Her father might have struck up an acquaintanceship with
some member of that family through the privet-hedge, or a stranger to
the neighbourhood might have wandered thither.
Well, there was no necessity for disturbing him.
And it seemed that, after all, Stephen had not yet made his desired
communication to her father. Again she went indoors, wondering where
Stephen could be. For want of something better to do, she went upstairs
to her own little room. Here she sat down at the open window, and,
leaning with her elbow on the table and her cheek upon her hand, she
fell into meditation.
It was a hot and still August night. Every disturbance of the silence
which rose to the dignity of a noise could be heard for miles, and the
merest sound for a long distance. So she remained, thinking of Stephen,
and wishing he had not deprived her of his company to no purpose, as it
appeared. How delicate and sensitive he was, she reflected; and yet he
was man enough to have a private mystery, which considerably elevated
him in her eyes. Thus, looking at things with an inward vision, she
lost consciousness of the flight of time.
Strange conjunctions of circumstances, particularly those of a trivial
everyday kind, are so frequent in an ordinary life, that we grow used
to their unaccountableness, and forget the question whether the very
long odds against such juxtaposition is not almost a disproof of it
being a matter of chance at all. What occurred to Elfride at this
moment was a case in point. She was vividly imagining, for the
twentieth time, the kiss of the morning, and putting her lips together
in the position another such a one would demand, when she heard the
identical operation performed on the lawn, immediately beneath her
window.
A kiss—not of the quiet and stealthy kind, but decisive, loud, and
smart.
Her face flushed and she looked out, but to no purpose. The dark rim of
the upland drew a keen sad line against the pale glow of the sky,
unbroken except where a young cedar on the lawn, that had outgrown its
fellow trees, shot its pointed head across the horizon, piercing the
firmamental lustre like a sting.
It was just possible that, had any persons been standing on the grassy
portions of the lawn, Elfride might have seen their dusky forms. But
the shrubs, which once had merely dotted the glade, had now grown bushy
and large, till they hid at least half the enclosure containing them.
The kissing pair might have been behind some of these; at any rate,
nobody was in sight.
Had no enigma ever been connected with her lover by his hints and
absences, Elfride would never have thought of admitting into her mind a
suspicion that he might be concerned in the foregoing enactment. But
the reservations he at present insisted on, while they added to the
mystery without which perhaps she would never have seriously loved him
at all, were calculated to nourish doubts of all kinds, and with a slow
flush of jealousy she asked herself, might he not be the culprit?
Elfride glided downstairs on tiptoe, and out to the precise spot on
which she had parted from Stephen to enable him to speak privately to
her father. Thence she wandered into all the nooks around the place
from which the sound seemed to proceed—among the huge laurestines,
about the tufts of pampas grasses, amid the variegated hollies, under
the weeping wych-elm—nobody was there. Returning indoors she called
“Unity!”
“She is gone to her aunt’s, to spend the evening,” said Mr. Swancourt,
thrusting his head out of his study door, and letting the light of his
candles stream upon Elfride’s face—less revealing than, as it seemed to
herself, creating the blush of uneasy perplexity that was burning upon
her cheek.
“I didn’t know you were indoors, papa,” she said with surprise. “Surely
no light was shining from the window when I was on the lawn?” and she
looked and saw that the shutters were still open.
“Oh yes, I am in,” he said indifferently. “What did you want Unity for?
I think she laid supper before she went out.”
“Did she?—I have not been to see—I didn’t want her for that.”
Elfride scarcely knew, now that a definite reason was required, what
that reason was. Her mind for a moment strayed to another subject,
unimportant as it seemed. The red ember of a match was lying inside the
fender, which explained that why she had seen no rays from the window
was because the candles had only just been lighted.
“I’ll come directly,” said the vicar. “I thought you were out somewhere
with Mr. Smith.”
Even the inexperienced Elfride could not help thinking that her father
must be wonderfully blind if he failed to perceive what was the nascent
consequence of herself and Stephen being so unceremoniously left
together; wonderfully careless, if he saw it and did not think about
it; wonderfully good, if, as seemed to her by far the most probable
supposition, he saw it and thought about it and approved of it. These
reflections were cut short by the appearance of Stephen just outside
the porch, silvered about the head and shoulders with touches of
moonlight, that had begun to creep through the trees.
“Has your trouble anything to do with a kiss on the lawn?” she asked
abruptly, almost passionately.
“Kiss on the lawn?”
“Yes!” she said, imperiously now.
“I didn’t comprehend your meaning, nor do I now exactly. I certainly
have kissed nobody on the lawn, if that is really what you want to
know, Elfride.”
“You know nothing about such a performance?”
“Nothing whatever. What makes you ask?”
“Don’t press me to tell; it is nothing of importance. And, Stephen, you
have not yet spoken to papa about our engagement?”
“No,” he said regretfully, “I could not find him directly; and then I
went on thinking so much of what you said about objections,
refusals—bitter words possibly—ending our happiness, that I resolved to
put it off till to-morrow; that gives us one more day of
delight—delight of a tremulous kind.”
“Yes; but it would be improper to be silent too long, I think,” she
said in a delicate voice, which implied that her face had grown warm.
“I want him to know we love, Stephen. Why did you adopt as your own my
thought of delay?”
“I will explain; but I want to tell you of my secret first—to tell you
now. It is two or three hours yet to bedtime. Let us walk up the hill
to the church.”
Elfride passively assented, and they went from the lawn by a side
wicket, and ascended into the open expanse of moonlight which streamed
around the lonely edifice on the summit of the hill.
The door was locked. They turned from the porch, and walked hand in
hand to find a resting-place in the churchyard. Stephen chose a flat
tomb, showing itself to be newer and whiter than those around it, and
sitting down himself, gently drew her hand towards him.
“No, not there,” she said.
“Why not here?”
“A mere fancy; but never mind.” And she sat down.
“Elfie, will you love me, in spite of everything that may be said
against me?”
“O Stephen, what makes you repeat that so continually and so sadly? You
know I will. Yes, indeed,” she said, drawing closer, “whatever may be
said of you—and nothing bad can be—I will cling to you just the same.
Your ways shall be my ways until I die.”
“Did you ever think what my parents might be, or what society I
originally moved in?”
“No, not particularly. I have observed one or two little points in your
manners which are rather quaint—no more. I suppose you have moved in
the ordinary society of professional people.”
“Supposing I have not—that none of my family have a profession except
me?”
“I don’t mind. What you are only concerns me.”
“Where do you think I went to school—I mean, to what kind of school?”
“Dr. Somebody’s academy,” she said simply.
“No. To a dame school originally, then to a national school.”
“Only to those! Well, I love you just as much, Stephen, dear Stephen,”
she murmured tenderly, “I do indeed. And why should you tell me these
things so impressively? What do they matter to me?”
He held her closer and proceeded:
“What do you think my father is—does for his living, that is to say?”
“He practises some profession or calling, I suppose.”
“No; he is a mason.”
“A Freemason?”
“No; a cottager and journeyman mason.”
Elfride said nothing at first. After a while she whispered:
“That is a strange idea to me. But never mind; what does it matter?”
“But aren’t you angry with me for not telling you before?”
“No, not at all. Is your mother alive?”
“Yes.”
“Is she a nice lady?”
“Very—the best mother in the world. Her people had been well-to-do
yeomen for centuries, but she was only a dairymaid.”
“O Stephen!” came from her in whispered exclamation.
“She continued to attend to a dairy long after my father married her,”
pursued Stephen, without further hesitation. “And I remember very well
how, when I was very young, I used to go to the milking, look on at the
skimming, sleep through the churning, and make believe I helped her.
Ah, that was a happy time enough!”
“No, never—not happy.”
“Yes, it was.”
“I don’t see how happiness could be where the drudgery of dairy-work
had to be done for a living—the hands red and chapped, and the shoes
clogged....Stephen, I do own that it seems odd to regard you in the
light of—of—having been so rough in your youth, and done menial things
of that kind.” (Stephen withdrew an inch or two from her side.) “But I
DO LOVE YOU just the same,” she continued, getting closer under his
shoulder again, “and I don’t care anything about the past; and I see
that you are all the worthier for having pushed on in the world in such
a way.”
“It is not my worthiness; it is Knight’s, who pushed me.”
“Ah, always he—always he!”
“Yes, and properly so. Now, Elfride, you see the reason of his teaching
me by letter. I knew him years before he went to Oxford, but I had not
got far enough in my reading for him to entertain the idea of helping
me in classics till he left home. Then I was sent away from the
village, and we very seldom met; but he kept up this system of tuition
by correspondence with the greatest regularity. I will tell you all the
story, but not now. There is nothing more to say now, beyond giving
places, persons, and dates.” His voice became timidly slow at this
point.
“No; don’t take trouble to say more. You are a dear honest fellow to
say so much as you have; and it is not so dreadful either. It has
become a normal thing that millionaires commence by going up to London
with their tools at their back, and half-a-crown in their pockets. That
sort of origin is getting so respected,” she continued cheerfully,
“that it is acquiring some of the odour of Norman ancestry.”
“Ah, if I had MADE my fortune, I shouldn’t mind. But I am only a
possible maker of it as yet.”
“It is quite enough. And so THIS is what your trouble was?”
“I thought I was doing wrong in letting you love me without telling you
my story; and yet I feared to do so, Elfie. I dreaded to lose you, and
I was cowardly on that account.”
“How plain everything about you seems after this explanation! Your
peculiarities in chess-playing, the pronunciation papa noticed in your
Latin, your odd mixture of book-knowledge with ignorance of ordinary
social accomplishments, are accounted for in a moment. And has this
anything to do with what I saw at Lord Luxellian’s?”
“What did you see?”
“I saw the shadow of yourself putting a cloak round a lady. I was at
the side door; you two were in a room with the window towards me. You
came to me a moment later.”
“She was my mother.”
“Your mother THERE!” She withdrew herself to look at him silently in
her interest.
“Elfride,” said Stephen, “I was going to tell you the remainder
to-morrow—I have been keeping it back—I must tell it now, after all.
The remainder of my revelation refers to where my parents are. Where do
you think they live? You know them—by sight at any rate.”
“I know them!” she said in suspended amazement.
“Yes. My father is John Smith, Lord Luxellian’s master-mason, who lives
under the park wall by the river.”
“O Stephen! can it be?”
“He built—or assisted at the building of the house you live in, years
ago. He put up those stone gate piers at the lodge entrance to Lord
Luxellian’s park. My grandfather planted the trees that belt in your
lawn; my grandmother—who worked in the fields with him—held each tree
upright whilst he filled in the earth: they told me so when I was a
child. He was the sexton, too, and dug many of the graves around us.”
“And was your unaccountable vanishing on the first morning of your
arrival, and again this afternoon, a run to see your father and
mother?...I understand now; no wonder you seemed to know your way about
the village!”
“No wonder. But remember, I have not lived here since I was nine years
old. I then went to live with my uncle, a blacksmith, near Exonbury, in
order to be able to attend a national school as a day scholar; there
was none on this remote coast then. It was there I met with my friend
Knight. And when I was fifteen and had been fairly educated by the
school-master—and more particularly by Knight—I was put as a pupil in
an architect’s office in that town, because I was skilful in the use of
the pencil. A full premium was paid by the efforts of my mother and
father, rather against the wishes of Lord Luxellian, who likes my
father, however, and thinks a great deal of him. There I stayed till
six months ago, when I obtained a situation as improver, as it is
called, in a London office. That’s all of me.”
“To think YOU, the London visitor, the town man, should have been born
here, and have known this village so many years before I did. How
strange—how very strange it seems to me!” she murmured.
“My mother curtseyed to you and your father last Sunday,” said Stephen,
with a pained smile at the thought of the incongruity. “And your papa
said to her, ‘I am glad to see you so regular at church, JANE.’”
“I remember it, but I have never spoken to her. We have only been here
eighteen months, and the parish is so large.”
“Contrast with this,” said Stephen, with a miserable laugh, “your
father’s belief in my ‘blue blood,’ which is still prevalent in his
mind. The first night I came, he insisted upon proving my descent from
one of the most ancient west-county families, on account of my second
Christian name; when the truth is, it was given me because my
grandfather was assistant gardener in the Fitzmaurice-Smith family for
thirty years. Having seen your face, my darling, I had not heart to
contradict him, and tell him what would have cut me off from a friendly
knowledge of you.”
She sighed deeply. “Yes, I see now how this inequality may be made to
trouble us,” she murmured, and continued in a low, sad whisper, “I
wouldn’t have minded if they had lived far away. Papa might have
consented to an engagement between us if your connection had been with
villagers a hundred miles off; remoteness softens family contrasts. But
he will not like—O Stephen, Stephen! what can I do?”
“Do?” he said tentatively, yet with heaviness. “Give me up; let me go
back to London, and think no more of me.”
“No, no; I cannot give you up! This hopelessness in our affairs makes
me care more for you....I see what did not strike me at first. Stephen,
why do we trouble? Why should papa object? An architect in London is an
architect in London. Who inquires there? Nobody. We shall live there,
shall we not? Why need we be so alarmed?”
“And Elfie,” said Stephen, his hopes kindling with hers, “Knight thinks
nothing of my being only a cottager’s son; he says I am as worthy of
his friendship as if I were a lord’s; and if I am worthy of his
friendship, I am worthy of you, am I not, Elfride?”
“I not only have never loved anybody but you,” she said, instead of
giving an answer, “but I have not even formed a strong friendship, such
as you have for Knight. I wish you hadn’t. It diminishes me.”
“Now, Elfride, you know better,” he said wooingly. “And had you really
never any sweetheart at all?”
“None that was ever recognized by me as such.”
“But did nobody ever love you?”
“Yes—a man did once; very much, he said.”
“How long ago?”
“Oh, a long time.”
“How long, dearest?
“A twelvemonth.”
“That’s not VERY long” (rather disappointedly).
“I said long, not very long.”
“And did he want to marry you?”
“I believe he did. But I didn’t see anything in him. He was not good
enough, even if I had loved him.”
“May I ask what he was?”
“A farmer.”
“A farmer not good enough—how much better than my family!” Stephen
murmured.
“Where is he now?” he continued to Elfride.
“HERE.”
“Here! what do you mean by that?”
“I mean that he is here.”
“Where here?”
“Under us. He is under this tomb. He is dead, and we are sitting on his
grave.”
“Elfie,” said the young man, standing up and looking at the tomb, “how
odd and sad that revelation seems! It quite depresses me for the
moment.”
“Stephen! I didn’t wish to sit here; but you would do so.”
“You never encouraged him?”
“Never by look, word, or sign,” she said solemnly. “He died of
consumption, and was buried the day you first came.”
“Let us go away. I don’t like standing by HIM, even if you never loved
him. He was BEFORE me.”
“Worries make you unreasonable,” she half pouted, following Stephen at
the distance of a few steps. “Perhaps I ought to have told you before
we sat down. Yes; let us go.”