“Love was in the next degree.”
Knight had none of those light familiarities of speech which, by
judicious touches of epigrammatic flattery, obliterate a woman’s
recollection of the speaker’s abstract opinions. So no more was said by
either on the subject of hair, eyes, or development. Elfride’s mind had
been impregnated with sentiments of her own smallness to an
uncomfortable degree of distinctness, and her discomfort was visible in
her face. The whole tendency of the conversation latterly had been to
quietly but surely disparage her; and she was fain to take Stephen into
favour in self-defence. He would not have been so unloving, she said,
as to admire an idiosyncrasy and features different from her own. True,
Stephen had declared he loved her: Mr. Knight had never done anything
of the sort. Somehow this did not mend matters, and the sensation of
her smallness in Knight’s eyes still remained. Had the position been
reversed—had Stephen loved her in spite of a differing taste, and had
Knight been indifferent in spite of her resemblance to his ideal, it
would have engendered far happier thoughts. As matters stood, Stephen’s
admiration might have its root in a blindness the result of passion.
Perhaps any keen man’s judgment was condemnatory of her.
During the remainder of Saturday they were more or less thrown with
their seniors, and no conversation arose which was exclusively their
own. When Elfride was in bed that night her thoughts recurred to the
same subject. At one moment she insisted that it was ill-natured of him
to speak so decisively as he had done; the next, that it was sterling
honesty.
“Ah, what a poor nobody I am!” she said, sighing. “People like him, who
go about the great world, don’t care in the least what I am like either
in mood or feature.”
Perhaps a man who has got thoroughly into a woman’s mind in this
manner, is half way to her heart; the distance between those two
stations is proverbially short.
“And are you really going away this week?” said Mrs. Swancourt to
Knight on the following evening, which was Sunday.
They were all leisurely climbing the hill to the church, where a last
service was now to be held at the rather exceptional time of evening
instead of in the afternoon, previous to the demolition of the ruinous
portions.
“I am intending to cross to Cork from Bristol,” returned Knight; “and
then I go on to Dublin.”
“Return this way, and stay a little longer with us,” said the vicar. “A
week is nothing. We have hardly been able to realize your presence yet.
I remember a story which——”
The vicar suddenly stopped. He had forgotten it was Sunday, and would
probably have gone on in his week-day mode of thought had not a turn in
the breeze blown the skirt of his college gown within the range of his
vision, and so reminded him. He at once diverted the current of his
narrative with the dexterity the occasion demanded.
“The story of the Levite who journeyed to Bethlehem-judah, from which I
took my text the Sunday before last, is quite to the point,” he
continued, with the pronunciation of a man who, far from having
intended to tell a week-day story a moment earlier, had thought of
nothing but Sabbath matters for several weeks. “What did he gain after
all by his restlessness? Had he remained in the city of the Jebusites,
and not been so anxious for Gibeah, none of his troubles would have
arisen.”
“But he had wasted five days already,” said Knight, closing his eyes to
the vicar’s commendable diversion. “His fault lay in beginning the
tarrying system originally.”
“True, true; my illustration fails.”
“But not the hospitality which prompted the story.”
“So you are to come just the same,” urged Mrs. Swancourt, for she had
seen an almost imperceptible fall of countenance in her stepdaughter at
Knight’s announcement.
Knight half promised to call on his return journey; but the uncertainty
with which he spoke was quite enough to fill Elfride with a regretful
interest in all he did during the few remaining hours. The curate
having already officiated twice that day in the two churches, Mr.
Swancourt had undertaken the whole of the evening service, and Knight
read the lessons for him. The sun streamed across from the dilapidated
west window, and lighted all the assembled worshippers with a golden
glow, Knight as he read being illuminated by the same mellow lustre.
Elfride at the organ regarded him with a throbbing sadness of mood
which was fed by a sense of being far removed from his sphere. As he
went deliberately through the chapter appointed—a portion of the
history of Elijah—and ascended that magnificent climax of the wind, the
earthquake, the fire, and the still small voice, his deep tones echoed
past with such apparent disregard of her existence, that his presence
inspired her with a forlorn sense of unapproachableness, which his
absence would hardly have been able to cause.
At the same time, turning her face for a moment to catch the glory of
the dying sun as it fell on his form, her eyes were arrested by the
shape and aspect of a woman in the west gallery. It was the bleak
barren countenance of the widow Jethway, whom Elfride had not seen much
of since the morning of her return with Stephen Smith. Possessing the
smallest of competencies, this unhappy woman appeared to spend her life
in journeyings between Endelstow Churchyard and that of a village near
Southampton, where her father and mother were laid.
She had not attended the service here for a considerable time, and she
now seemed to have a reason for her choice of seat. From the gallery
window the tomb of her son was plainly visible—standing as the nearest
object in a prospect which was closed outwardly by the changeless
horizon of the sea.
The streaming rays, too, flooded her face, now bent towards Elfride
with a hard and bitter expression that the solemnity of the place
raised to a tragic dignity it did not intrinsically possess. The girl
resumed her normal attitude with an added disquiet.
Elfride’s emotion was cumulative, and after a while would assert itself
on a sudden. A slight touch was enough to set it free—a poem, a sunset,
a cunningly contrived chord of music, a vague imagining, being the
usual accidents of its exhibition. The longing for Knight’s respect,
which was leading up to an incipient yearning for his love, made the
present conjuncture a sufficient one. Whilst kneeling down previous to
leaving, when the sunny streaks had gone upward to the roof, and the
lower part of the church was in soft shadow, she could not help
thinking of Coleridge’s morbid poem “The Three Graves,” and shuddering
as she wondered if Mrs. Jethway were cursing her, she wept as if her
heart would break.
They came out of church just as the sun went down, leaving the
landscape like a platform from which an eloquent speaker has retired,
and nothing remains for the audience to do but to rise and go home. Mr.
and Mrs. Swancourt went off in the carriage, Knight and Elfride
preferring to walk, as the skilful old matchmaker had imagined. They
descended the hill together.
“I liked your reading, Mr. Knight,” Elfride presently found herself
saying. “You read better than papa.”
“I will praise anybody that will praise me. You played excellently,
Miss Swancourt, and very correctly.”
“Correctly—yes.”
“It must be a great pleasure to you to take an active part in the
service.”
“I want to be able to play with more feeling. But I have not a good
selection of music, sacred or secular. I wish I had a nice little
music-library—well chosen, and that the only new pieces sent me were
those of genuine merit.”
“I am glad to hear such a wish from you. It is extraordinary how many
women have no honest love of music as an end and not as a means, even
leaving out those who have nothing in them. They mostly like it for its
accessories. I have never met a woman who loves music as do ten or a
dozen men I know.”
“How would you draw the line between women with something and women
with nothing in them?”
“Well,” said Knight, reflecting a moment, “I mean by nothing in them
those who don’t care about anything solid. This is an instance: I knew
a man who had a young friend in whom he was much interested; in fact,
they were going to be married. She was seemingly poetical, and he
offered her a choice of two editions of the British poets, which she
pretended to want badly. He said, ‘Which of them would you like best
for me to send?’ She said, ‘A pair of the prettiest earrings in Bond
Street, if you don’t mind, would be nicer than either.’ Now I call her
a girl with not much in her but vanity; and so do you, I daresay.”
“Oh yes,” replied Elfride with an effort.
Happening to catch a glimpse of her face as she was speaking, and
noticing that her attempt at heartiness was a miserable failure, he
appeared to have misgivings.
“You, Miss Swancourt, would not, under such circumstances, have
preferred the nicknacks?”
“No, I don’t think I should, indeed,” she stammered.
“I’ll put it to you,” said the inflexible Knight. “Which will you have
of these two things of about equal value—the well-chosen little library
of the best music you spoke of—bound in morocco, walnut case, lock and
key—or a pair of the very prettiest earrings in Bond Street windows?”
“Of course the music,” Elfride replied with forced earnestness.
“You are quite certain?” he said emphatically.
“Quite,” she faltered; “if I could for certain buy the earrings
afterwards.”
Knight, somewhat blamably, keenly enjoyed sparring with the palpitating
mobile creature, whose excitable nature made any such thing a species
of cruelty.
He looked at her rather oddly, and said, “Fie!”
“Forgive me,” she said, laughing a little, a little frightened, and
blushing very deeply.
“Ah, Miss Elfie, why didn’t you say at first, as any firm woman would
have said, I am as bad as she, and shall choose the same?”
“I don’t know,” said Elfride wofully, and with a distressful smile.
“I thought you were exceptionally musical?”
“So I am, I think. But the test is so severe—quite painful.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Music doesn’t do any real good, or rather——”
“That IS a thing to say, Miss Swancourt! Why, what——”
“You don’t understand! you don’t understand!”
“Why, what conceivable use is there in jimcrack jewellery?”
“No, no, no, no!” she cried petulantly; “I didn’t mean what you think.
I like the music best, only I like——”
“Earrings better—own it!” he said in a teasing tone. “Well, I think I
should have had the moral courage to own it at once, without pretending
to an elevation I could not reach.”
Like the French soldiery, Elfride was not brave when on the defensive.
So it was almost with tears in her eyes that she answered desperately:
“My meaning is, that I like earrings best just now, because I lost one
of my prettiest pair last year, and papa said he would not buy any
more, or allow me to myself, because I was careless; and now I wish I
had some like them—that’s what my meaning is—indeed it is, Mr. Knight.”
“I am afraid I have been very harsh and rude,” said Knight, with a look
of regret at seeing how disturbed she was. “But seriously, if women
only knew how they ruin their good looks by such appurtenances, I am
sure they would never want them.”
“They were lovely, and became me so!”
“Not if they were like the ordinary hideous things women stuff their
ears with nowadays—like the governor of a steam-engine, or a pair of
scales, or gold gibbets and chains, and artists’ palettes, and
compensation pendulums, and Heaven knows what besides.”
“No; they were not one of those things. So pretty—like this,” she said
with eager animation. And she drew with the point of her parasol an
enlarged view of one of the lamented darlings, to a scale that would
have suited a giantess half-a-mile high.
“Yes, very pretty—very,” said Knight dryly. “How did you come to lose
such a precious pair of articles?”
“I only lost one—nobody ever loses both at the same time.”
She made this remark with embarrassment, and a nervous movement of the
fingers. Seeing that the loss occurred whilst Stephen Smith was
attempting to kiss her for the first time on the cliff, her confusion
was hardly to be wondered at. The question had been awkward, and
received no direct answer.
Knight seemed not to notice her manner.
“Oh, nobody ever loses both—I see. And certainly the fact that it was a
case of loss takes away all odour of vanity from your choice.”
“As I never know whether you are in earnest, I don’t now,” she said,
looking up inquiringly at the hairy face of the oracle. And coming
gallantly to her own rescue, “If I really seem vain, it is that I am
only vain in my ways—not in my heart. The worst women are those vain in
their hearts, and not in their ways.”
“An adroit distinction. Well, they are certainly the more objectionable
of the two,” said Knight.
“Is vanity a mortal or a venial sin? You know what life is: tell me.”
“I am very far from knowing what life is. A just conception of life is
too large a thing to grasp during the short interval of passing through
it.”
“Will the fact of a woman being fond of jewellery be likely to make her
life, in its higher sense, a failure?”
“Nobody’s life is altogether a failure.”
“Well, you know what I mean, even though my words are badly selected
and commonplace,” she said impatiently. “Because I utter commonplace
words, you must not suppose I think only commonplace thoughts. My poor
stock of words are like a limited number of rough moulds I have to cast
all my materials in, good and bad; and the novelty or delicacy of the
substance is often lost in the coarse triteness of the form.”
“Very well; I’ll believe that ingenious representation. As to the
subject in hand—lives which are failures—you need not trouble yourself.
Anybody’s life may be just as romantic and strange and interesting if
he or she fails as if he or she succeed. All the difference is, that
the last chapter is wanting in the story. If a man of power tries to do
a great deed, and just falls short of it by an accident not his fault,
up to that time his history had as much in it as that of a great man
who has done his great deed. It is whimsical of the world to hold that
particulars of how a lad went to school and so on should be as an
interesting romance or as nothing to them, precisely in proportion to
his after renown.”
They were walking between the sunset and the moonrise. With the
dropping of the sun a nearly full moon had begun to raise itself. Their
shadows, as cast by the western glare, showed signs of becoming
obliterated in the interest of a rival pair in the opposite direction
which the moon was bringing to distinctness.
“I consider my life to some extent a failure,” said Knight again after
a pause, during which he had noticed the antagonistic shadows.
“You! How?”
“I don’t precisely know. But in some way I have missed the mark.”
“Really? To have done it is not much to be sad about, but to feel that
you have done it must be a cause of sorrow. Am I right?”
“Partly, though not quite. For a sensation of being profoundly
experienced serves as a sort of consolation to people who are conscious
of having taken wrong turnings. Contradictory as it seems, there is
nothing truer than that people who have always gone right don’t know
half as much about the nature and ways of going right as those do who
have gone wrong. However, it is not desirable for me to chill your
summer-time by going into this.”
“You have not told me even now if I am really vain.”
“If I say Yes, I shall offend you; if I say No, you’ll think I don’t
mean it,” he replied, looking curiously into her face.
“Ah, well,” she replied, with a little breath of distress, “‘That which
is exceeding deep, who will find it out?’ I suppose I must take you as
I do the Bible—find out and understand all I can; and on the strength
of that, swallow the rest in a lump, by simple faith. Think me vain, if
you will. Worldly greatness requires so much littleness to grow up in,
that an infirmity more or less is not a matter for regret.”
“As regards women, I can’t say,” answered Knight carelessly; “but it is
without doubt a misfortune for a man who has a living to get, to be
born of a truly noble nature. A high soul will bring a man to the
workhouse; so you may be right in sticking up for vanity.”
“No, no, I don’t do that,” she said regretfully.
Mr. Knight, when you are gone, will you send me something you have
written? I think I should like to see whether you write as you have
lately spoken, or in your better mood. Which is your true self—the
cynic you have been this evening, or the nice philosopher you were up
to to-night?”
“Ah, which? You know as well as I.”
Their conversation detained them on the lawn and in the portico till
the stars blinked out. Elfride flung back her head, and said idly—
“There’s a bright star exactly over me.”
“Each bright star is overhead somewhere.”
“Is it? Oh yes, of course. Where is that one?” and she pointed with her
finger.
“That is poised like a white hawk over one of the Cape Verde Islands.”
“And that?”
“Looking down upon the source of the Nile.”
“And that lonely quiet-looking one?”
“He watches the North Pole, and has no less than the whole equator for
his horizon. And that idle one low down upon the ground, that we have
almost rolled away from, is in India—over the head of a young friend of
mine, who very possibly looks at the star in our zenith, as it hangs
low upon his horizon, and thinks of it as marking where his true love
dwells.”
Elfride glanced at Knight with misgiving. Did he mean her? She could
not see his features; but his attitude seemed to show unconsciousness.
“The star is over MY head,” she said with hesitation.
“Or anybody else’s in England.”
“Oh yes, I see:” she breathed her relief.
“His parents, I believe, are natives of this county. I don’t know them,
though I have been in correspondence with him for many years till
lately. Fortunately or unfortunately for him he fell in love, and then
went to Bombay. Since that time I have heard very little of him.”
Knight went no further in his volunteered statement, and though Elfride
at one moment was inclined to profit by the lessons in honesty he had
just been giving her, the flesh was weak, and the intention dispersed
into silence. There seemed a reproach in Knight’s blind words, and yet
she was not able to clearly define any disloyalty that she had been
guilty of.