“Her father did fume”
Oppressed, in spite of themselves, by a foresight of impending
complications, Elfride and Stephen returned down the hill hand in hand.
At the door they paused wistfully, like children late at school.
Women accept their destiny more readily than men. Elfride had now
resigned herself to the overwhelming idea of her lover’s sorry
antecedents; Stephen had not forgotten the trifling grievance that
Elfride had known earlier admiration than his own.
“What was that young man’s name?” he inquired.
“Felix Jethway; a widow’s only son.”
“I remember the family.”
“She hates me now. She says I killed him.”
Stephen mused, and they entered the porch.
“Stephen, I love only you,” she tremulously whispered. He pressed her
fingers, and the trifling shadow passed away, to admit again the mutual
and more tangible trouble.
The study appeared to be the only room lighted up. They entered, each
with a demeanour intended to conceal the inconcealable fact that
reciprocal love was their dominant chord. Elfride perceived a man,
sitting with his back towards herself, talking to her father. She would
have retired, but Mr. Swancourt had seen her.
“Come in,” he said; “it is only Martin Cannister, come for a copy of
the register for poor Mrs. Jethway.”
Martin Cannister, the sexton, was rather a favourite with Elfride. He
used to absorb her attention by telling her of his strange experiences
in digging up after long years the bodies of persons he had known, and
recognizing them by some little sign (though in reality he had never
recognized any). He had shrewd small eyes and a great wealth of double
chin, which compensated in some measure for considerable poverty of
nose.
The appearance of a slip of paper in Cannister’s hand, and a few
shillings lying on the table in front of him, denoted that the business
had been transacted, and the tenor of their conversation went to show
that a summary of village news was now engaging the attention of
parishioner and parson.
Mr. Cannister stood up and touched his forehead over his eye with his
finger, in respectful salutation of Elfride, gave half as much salute
to Stephen (whom he, in common with other villagers, had never for a
moment recognized), then sat down again and resumed his discourse.
“Where had I got on to, sir?”
“To driving the pile,” said Mr. Swancourt.
“The pile ’twas. So, as I was saying, Nat was driving the pile in this
manner, as I might say.” Here Mr. Cannister held his walking-stick
scrupulously vertical with his left hand, and struck a blow with great
force on the knob of the stick with his right. “John was steadying the
pile so, as I might say.” Here he gave the stick a slight shake, and
looked firmly in the various eyes around to see that before proceeding
further his listeners well grasped the subject at that stage. “Well,
when Nat had struck some half-dozen blows more upon the pile, ’a
stopped for a second or two. John, thinking he had done striking, put
his hand upon the top o’ the pile to gie en a pull, and see if ’a were
firm in the ground.” Mr. Cannister spread his hand over the top of the
stick, completely covering it with his palm. “Well, so to speak, Nat
hadn’t maned to stop striking, and when John had put his hand upon the
pile, the beetle——”
“Oh dreadful!” said Elfride.
“The beetle was already coming down, you see, sir. Nat just caught
sight of his hand, but couldn’t stop the blow in time. Down came the
beetle upon poor John Smith’s hand, and squashed en to a pummy.”
“Dear me, dear me! poor fellow!” said the vicar, with an intonation
like the groans of the wounded in a pianoforte performance of the
“Battle of Prague.”
“John Smith, the master-mason?” cried Stephen hurriedly.
“Ay, no other; and a better-hearted man God A’mighty never made.”
“Is he so much hurt?”
“I have heard,” said Mr. Swancourt, not noticing Stephen, “that he has
a son in London, a very promising young fellow.”
“Oh, how he must be hurt!” repeated Stephen.
“A beetle couldn’t hurt very little. Well, sir, good-night t’ye; and
ye, sir; and you, miss, I’m sure.”
Mr. Cannister had been making unnoticeable motions of withdrawal, and
by the time this farewell remark came from his lips he was just outside
the door of the room. He tramped along the hall, stayed more than a
minute endeavouring to close the door properly, and then was lost to
their hearing.
Stephen had meanwhile turned and said to the vicar:
“Please excuse me this evening! I must leave. John Smith is my father.”
The vicar did not comprehend at first.
“What did you say?” he inquired.
“John Smith is my father,” said Stephen deliberately.
A surplus tinge of redness rose from Mr. Swancourt’s neck, and came
round over his face, the lines of his features became more firmly
defined, and his lips seemed to get thinner. It was evident that a
series of little circumstances, hitherto unheeded, were now fitting
themselves together, and forming a lucid picture in Mr. Swancourt’s
mind in such a manner as to render useless further explanation on
Stephen’s part.
“Indeed,” the vicar said, in a voice dry and without inflection.
This being a word which depends entirely upon its tone for its meaning,
Mr. Swancourt’s enunciation was equivalent to no expression at all.
“I have to go now,” said Stephen, with an agitated bearing, and a
movement as if he scarcely knew whether he ought to run off or stay
longer. “On my return, sir, will you kindly grant me a few minutes’
private conversation?”
“Certainly. Though antecedently it does not seem possible that there
can be anything of the nature of private business between us.”
Mr. Swancourt put on his straw hat, crossed the drawing-room, into
which the moonlight was shining, and stepped out of the French window
into the verandah. It required no further effort to perceive what,
indeed, reasoning might have foretold as the natural colour of a mind
whose pleasures were taken amid genealogies, good dinners, and
patrician reminiscences, that Mr. Swancourt’s prejudices were too
strong for his generosity, and that Stephen’s moments as his friend and
equal were numbered, or had even now ceased.
Stephen moved forward as if he would follow the vicar, then as if he
would not, and in absolute perplexity whither to turn himself, went
awkwardly to the door. Elfride followed lingeringly behind him. Before
he had receded two yards from the doorstep, Unity and Ann the housemaid
came home from their visit to the village.
“Have you heard anything about John Smith? The accident is not so bad
as was reported, is it?” said Elfride intuitively.
“Oh no; the doctor says it is only a bad bruise.”
“I thought so!” cried Elfride gladly.
“He says that, although Nat believes he did not check the beetle as it
came down, he must have done so without knowing it—checked it very
considerably too; for the full blow would have knocked his hand abroad,
and in reality it is only made black-and-blue like.”
“How thankful I am!” said Stephen.
The perplexed Unity looked at him with her mouth rather than with her
eyes.
“That will do, Unity,” said Elfride magisterially; and the two maids
passed on.
“Elfride, do you forgive me?” said Stephen with a faint smile. “No man
is fair in love;” and he took her fingers lightly in his own.
With her head thrown sideways in the Greuze attitude, she looked a
tender reproach at his doubt and pressed his hand. Stephen returned the
pressure threefold, then hastily went off to his father’s cottage by
the wall of Endelstow Park.
“Elfride, what have you to say to this?” inquired her father, coming up
immediately Stephen had retired.
With feminine quickness she grasped at any straw that would enable her
to plead his cause. “He had told me of it,” she faltered; “so that it
is not a discovery in spite of him. He was just coming in to tell you.”
“COMING to tell! Why hadn’t he already told? I object as much, if not
more, to his underhand concealment of this, than I do to the fact
itself. It looks very much like his making a fool of me, and of you
too. You and he have been about together, and corresponding together,
in a way I don’t at all approve of—in a most unseemly way. You should
have known how improper such conduct is. A woman can’t be too careful
not to be seen alone with I-don’t-know-whom.”
“You saw us, papa, and have never said a word.”
“My fault, of course; my fault. What the deuce could I be thinking of!
He, a villager’s son; and we, Swancourts, connections of the
Luxellians. We have been coming to nothing for centuries, and now I
believe we have got there. What shall I next invite here, I wonder!”
Elfride began to cry at this very unpropitious aspect of affairs. “O
papa, papa, forgive me and him! We care so much for one another,
papa—O, so much! And what he was going to ask you is, if you will allow
of an engagement between us till he is a gentleman as good as you. We
are not in a hurry, dear papa; we don’t want in the least to marry now;
not until he is richer. Only will you let us be engaged, because I love
him so, and he loves me?”
Mr. Swancourt’s feelings were a little touched by this appeal, and he
was annoyed that such should be the case. “Certainly not!” he replied.
He pronounced the inhibition lengthily and sonorously, so that the
“not” sounded like “n-o-o-o-t!”
“No, no, no; don’t say it!”
“Foh! A fine story. It is not enough that I have been deluded and
disgraced by having him here,—the son of one of my village
peasants,—but now I am to make him my son-in-law! Heavens above us, are
you mad, Elfride?”
“You have seen his letters come to me ever since his first visit, papa,
and you knew they were a sort of—love-letters; and since he has been
here you have let him be alone with me almost entirely; and you
guessed, you must have guessed, what we were thinking of, and doing,
and you didn’t stop him. Next to love-making comes love-winning, and
you knew it would come to that, papa.”
The vicar parried this common-sense thrust. “I know—since you press me
so—I know I did guess some childish attachment might arise between you;
I own I did not take much trouble to prevent it; but I have not
particularly countenanced it; and, Elfride, how can you expect that I
should now? It is impossible; no father in England would hear of such a
thing.”
“But he is the same man, papa; the same in every particular; and how
can he be less fit for me than he was before?”
“He appeared a young man with well-to-do friends, and a little
property; but having neither, he is another man.”
“You inquired nothing about him?”
“I went by Hewby’s introduction. He should have told me. So should the
young man himself; of course he should. I consider it a most
dishonourable thing to come into a man’s house like a treacherous
I-don’t-know-what.”
“But he was afraid to tell you, and so should I have been. He loved me
too well to like to run the risk. And as to speaking of his friends on
his first visit, I don’t see why he should have done so at all. He came
here on business: it was no affair of ours who his parents were. And
then he knew that if he told you he would never be asked here, and
would perhaps never see me again. And he wanted to see me. Who can
blame him for trying, by any means, to stay near me—the girl he loves?
All is fair in love. I have heard you say so yourself, papa; and you
yourself would have done just as he has—so would any man.”
“And any man, on discovering what I have discovered, would also do as I
do, and mend my mistake; that is, get shot of him again, as soon as the
laws of hospitality will allow.” But Mr. Swancourt then remembered that
he was a Christian. “I would not, for the world, seem to turn him out
of doors,” he added; “but I think he will have the tact to see that he
cannot stay long after this, with good taste.”
“He will, because he’s a gentleman. See how graceful his manners are,”
Elfride went on; though perhaps Stephen’s manners, like the feats of
Euryalus, owed their attractiveness in her eyes rather to the
attractiveness of his person than to their own excellence.
“Ay; anybody can be what you call graceful, if he lives a little time
in a city, and keeps his eyes open. And he might have picked up his
gentlemanliness by going to the galleries of theatres, and watching
stage drawing-room manners. He reminds me of one of the worst stories I
ever heard in my life.”
“What story was that?”
“Oh no, thank you! I wouldn’t tell you such an improper matter for the
world!”
“If his father and mother had lived in the north or east of England,”
gallantly persisted Elfride, though her sobs began to interrupt her
articulation, “anywhere but here—you—would have—only regarded—HIM, and
not THEM! His station—would have—been what—his profession makes it,—and
not fixed by—his father’s humble position—at all; whom he never lives
with—now. Though John Smith has saved lots of money, and is better off
than we are, they say, or he couldn’t have put his son to such an
expensive profession. And it is clever and—honourable—of Stephen, to be
the best of his family.”
“Yes. ‘Let a beast be lord of beasts, and his crib shall stand at the
king’s mess.’”
“You insult me, papa!” she burst out. “You do, you do! He is my own
Stephen, he is!”
“That may or may not be true, Elfride,” returned her father, again
uncomfortably agitated in spite of himself “You confuse future
probabilities with present facts,—what the young man may be with what
he is. We must look at what he is, not what an improbable degree of
success in his profession may make him. The case is this: the son of a
working-man in my parish who may or may not be able to buy me up—a
youth who has not yet advanced so far into life as to have any income
of his own deserving the name, and therefore of his father’s degree as
regards station—wants to be engaged to you. His family are living in
precisely the same spot in England as yours, so throughout this
county—which is the world to us—you would always be known as the wife
of Jack Smith the mason’s son, and not under any circumstances as the
wife of a London professional man. It is the drawback, not the
compensating fact, that is talked of always. There, say no more. You
may argue all night, and prove what you will; I’ll stick to my words.”
Elfride looked silently and hopelessly out of the window with large
heavy eyes and wet cheeks.
“I call it great temerity—and long to call it audacity—in Hewby,”
resumed her father. “I never heard such a thing—giving such a
hobbledehoy native of this place such an introduction to me as he did.
Naturally you were deceived as well as I was. I don’t blame you at all,
so far.” He went and searched for Mr. Hewby’s original letter. “Here’s
what he said to me: ‘Dear Sir,—Agreeably to your request of the 18th
instant, I have arranged to survey and make drawings,’ et cetera. ‘My
assistant, Mr. Stephen Smith,’—assistant, you see he called him, and
naturally I understood him to mean a sort of partner. Why didn’t he say
‘clerk’?”
“They never call them clerks in that profession, because they do not
write. Stephen—Mr. Smith—told me so. So that Mr. Hewby simply used the
accepted word.”
“Let me speak, please, Elfride! My assistant, Mr. Stephen Smith, will
leave London by the early train to-morrow morning...MANY THANKS FOR
YOUR PROPOSAL TO ACCOMMODATE HIM...YOU MAY PUT EVERY CONFIDENCE IN HIM,
and may rely upon his discernment in the matter of church
architecture.’ Well, I repeat that Hewby ought to be ashamed of himself
for making so much of a poor lad of that sort.”
“Professional men in London,” Elfride argued, “don’t know anything
about their clerks’ fathers and mothers. They have assistants who come
to their offices and shops for years, and hardly even know where they
live. What they can do—what profits they can bring the firm—that’s all
London men care about. And that is helped in him by his faculty of
being uniformly pleasant.”
“Uniform pleasantness is rather a defect than a faculty. It shows that
a man hasn’t sense enough to know whom to despise.”
“It shows that he acts by faith and not by sight, as those you claim
succession from directed.”
“That’s some more of what he’s been telling you, I suppose! Yes, I was
inclined to suspect him, because he didn’t care about sauces of any
kind. I always did doubt a man’s being a gentleman if his palate had no
acquired tastes. An unedified palate is the irrepressible cloven foot
of the upstart. The idea of my bringing out a bottle of my “40
Martinez—only eleven of them left now—to a man who didn’t know it from
eighteenpenny! Then the Latin line he gave to my quotation; it was very
cut-and-dried, very; or I, who haven’t looked into a classical author
for the last eighteen years, shouldn’t have remembered it. Well,
Elfride, you had better go to your room; you’ll get over this bit of
tomfoolery in time.”
“No, no, no, papa,” she moaned. For of all the miseries attaching to
miserable love, the worst is the misery of thinking that the passion
which is the cause of them all may cease.
“Elfride,” said her father with rough friendliness, “I have an
excellent scheme on hand, which I cannot tell you of now. A scheme to
benefit you and me. It has been thrust upon me for some little
time—yes, thrust upon me—but I didn’t dream of its value till this
afternoon, when the revelation came. I should be most unwise to refuse
to entertain it.”
“I don’t like that word,” she returned wearily. “You have lost so much
already by schemes. Is it those wretched mines again?”
“No; not a mining scheme.”
“Railways?”
“Nor railways. It is like those mysterious offers we see advertised, by
which any gentleman with no brains at all may make so much a week
without risk, trouble, or soiling his fingers. However, I am intending
to say nothing till it is settled, though I will just say this much,
that you soon may have other fish to fry than to think of Stephen
Smith. Remember, I wish, not to be angry, but friendly, to the young
man; for your sake I’ll regard him as a friend in a certain sense. But
this is enough; in a few days you will be quite my way of thinking.
There, now, go to your bedroom. Unity shall bring you up some supper. I
wish you not to be here when he comes back.”