“Breeze, bird, and flower confess the hour.”
The rain had ceased since the sunset, but it was a cloudy night; and
the light of the moon, softened and dispersed by its misty veil, was
distributed over the land in pale gray.
A dark figure stepped from the doorway of John Smith’s river-side
cottage, and strode rapidly towards West Endelstow with a light
footstep. Soon ascending from the lower levels he turned a corner,
followed a cart-track, and saw the tower of the church he was in quest
of distinctly shaped forth against the sky. In less than half an hour
from the time of starting he swung himself over the churchyard stile.
The wild irregular enclosure was as much as ever an integral part of
the old hill. The grass was still long, the graves were shaped
precisely as passing years chose to alter them from their orthodox form
as laid down by Martin Cannister, and by Stephen’s own grandfather
before him.
A sound sped into the air from the direction in which Castle Boterel
lay. It was the striking of the church clock, distinct in the still
atmosphere as if it had come from the tower hard by, which, wrapt in
its solitary silentness, gave out no such sounds of life.
“One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine.” Stephen
carefully counted the strokes, though he well knew their number
beforehand. Nine o’clock. It was the hour Elfride had herself named as
the most convenient for meeting him.
Stephen stood at the door of the porch and listened. He could have
heard the softest breathing of any person within the porch; nobody was
there. He went inside the doorway, sat down upon the stone bench, and
waited with a beating heart.
The faint sounds heard only accentuated the silence. The rising and
falling of the sea, far away along the coast, was the most important. A
minor sound was the scurr of a distant night-hawk. Among the minutest
where all were minute were the light settlement of gossamer fragments
floating in the air, a toad humbly labouring along through the grass
near the entrance, the crackle of a dead leaf which a worm was
endeavouring to pull into the earth, a waft of air, getting nearer and
nearer, and expiring at his feet under the burden of a winged seed.
Among all these soft sounds came not the only soft sound he cared to
hear—the footfall of Elfride.
For a whole quarter of an hour Stephen sat thus intent, without moving
a muscle. At the end of that time he walked to the west front of the
church. Turning the corner of the tower, a white form stared him in the
face. He started back, and recovered himself. It was the tomb of young
farmer Jethway, looking still as fresh and as new as when it was first
erected, the white stone in which it was hewn having a singular
weirdness amid the dark blue slabs from local quarries, of which the
whole remaining gravestones were formed.
He thought of the night when he had sat thereon with Elfride as his
companion, and well remembered his regret that she had received, even
unwillingly, earlier homage than his own. But his present tangible
anxiety reduced such a feeling to sentimental nonsense in comparison;
and he strolled on over the graves to the border of the churchyard,
whence in the daytime could be clearly seen the vicarage and the
present residence of the Swancourts. No footstep was discernible upon
the path up the hill, but a light was shining from a window in the
last-named house.
Stephen knew there could be no mistake about the time or place, and no
difficulty about keeping the engagement. He waited yet longer, passing
from impatience into a mood which failed to take any account of the
lapse of time. He was awakened from his reverie by Castle Boterel
clock.
One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, TEN.
One little fall of the hammer in addition to the number it had been
sharp pleasure to hear, and what a difference to him!
He left the churchyard on the side opposite to his point of entrance,
and went down the hill. Slowly he drew near the gate of her house. This
he softly opened, and walked up the gravel drive to the door. Here he
paused for several minutes.
At the expiration of that time the murmured speech of a manly voice
came out to his ears through an open window behind the corner of the
house. This was responded to by a clear soft laugh. It was the laugh of
Elfride.
Stephen was conscious of a gnawing pain at his heart. He retreated as
he had come. There are disappointments which wring us, and there are
those which inflict a wound whose mark we bear to our graves. Such are
so keen that no future gratification of the same desire can ever
obliterate them: they become registered as a permanent loss of
happiness. Such a one was Stephen’s now: the crowning aureola of the
dream had been the meeting here by stealth; and if Elfride had come to
him only ten minutes after he had turned away, the disappointment would
have been recognizable still.
When the young man reached home he found there a letter which had
arrived in his absence. Believing it to contain some reason for her
non-appearance, yet unable to imagine one that could justify her, he
hastily tore open the envelope.
The paper contained not a word from Elfride. It was the deposit-note
for his two hundred pounds. On the back was the form of a cheque, and
this she had filled up with the same sum, payable to the bearer.
Stephen was confounded. He attempted to divine her motive. Considering
how limited was his knowledge of her later actions, he guessed rather
shrewdly that, between the time of her sending the note in the morning
and the evening’s silent refusal of his gift, something had occurred
which had caused a total change in her attitude towards him.
He knew not what to do. It seemed absurd now to go to her father next
morning, as he had purposed, and ask for an engagement with her, a
possibility impending all the while that Elfride herself would not be
on his side. Only one course recommended itself as wise. To wait and
see what the days would bring forth; to go and execute his commissions
in Birmingham; then to return, learn if anything had happened, and try
what a meeting might do; perhaps her surprise at his backwardness would
bring her forward to show latent warmth as decidedly as in old times.
This act of patience was in keeping only with the nature of a man
precisely of Stephen’s constitution. Nine men out of ten would perhaps
have rushed off, got into her presence, by fair means or foul, and
provoked a catastrophe of some sort. Possibly for the better, probably
for the worse.
He started for Birmingham the next morning. A day’s delay would have
made no difference; but he could not rest until he had begun and ended
the programme proposed to himself. Bodily activity will sometimes take
the sting out of anxiety as completely as assurance itself.