“After many days.”
Knight roamed south, under colour of studying Continental antiquities.
He paced the lofty aisles of Amiens, loitered by Ardennes Abbey,
climbed into the strange towers of Laon, analyzed Noyon and Rheims.
Then he went to Chartres, and examined its scaly spires and quaint
carving then he idled about Coutances. He rowed beneath the base of
Mont St. Michel, and caught the varied skyline of the crumbling
edifices encrusting it. St. Ouen’s, Rouen, knew him for days; so did
Vezelay, Sens, and many a hallowed monument besides. Abandoning the
inspection of early French art with the same purposeless haste as he
had shown in undertaking it, he went further, and lingered about
Ferrara, Padua, and Pisa. Satiated with mediævalism, he tried the Roman
Forum. Next he observed moonlight and starlight effects by the bay of
Naples. He turned to Austria, became enervated and depressed on
Hungarian and Bohemian plains, and was refreshed again by breezes on
the declivities of the Carpathians.
Then he found himself in Greece. He visited the plain of Marathon, and
strove to imagine the Persian defeat; to Mars Hill, to picture St. Paul
addressing the ancient Athenians; to Thermopylae and Salamis, to run
through the facts and traditions of the Second Invasion—the result of
his endeavours being more or less chaotic. Knight grew as weary of
these places as of all others. Then he felt the shock of an earthquake
in the Ionian Islands, and went to Venice. Here he shot in gondolas up
and down the winding thoroughfare of the Grand Canal, and loitered on
calle and piazza at night, when the lagunes were undisturbed by a
ripple, and no sound was to be heard but the stroke of the midnight
clock. Afterwards he remained for weeks in the museums, galleries, and
libraries of Vienna, Berlin, and Paris; and thence came home.
Time thus rolls us on to a February afternoon, divided by fifteen
months from the parting of Elfride and her lover in the brown stubble
field towards the sea.
Two men obviously not Londoners, and with a touch of foreignness in
their look, met by accident on one of the gravel walks leading across
Hyde Park. The younger, more given to looking about him than his
fellow, saw and noticed the approach of his senior some time before the
latter had raised his eyes from the ground, upon which they were bent
in an abstracted gaze that seemed habitual with him.
“Mr. Knight—indeed it is!” exclaimed the younger man.
“Ah, Stephen Smith!” said Knight.
Simultaneous operations might now have been observed progressing in
both, the result being that an expression less frank and impulsive than
the first took possession of their features. It was manifest that the
next words uttered were a superficial covering to constraint on both
sides.
“Have you been in England long?” said Knight.
“Only two days,” said Smith.
“India ever since?”
“Nearly ever since.”
“They were making a fuss about you at St. Launce’s last year. I fancy I
saw something of the sort in the papers.”
“Yes; I believe something was said about me.”
“I must congratulate you on your achievements.”
“Thanks, but they are nothing very extraordinary. A natural
professional progress where there was no opposition.”
There followed that want of words which will always assert itself
between nominal friends who find they have ceased to be real ones, and
have not yet sunk to the level of mere acquaintance. Each looked up and
down the Park. Knight may possibly have borne in mind during the
intervening months Stephen’s manner towards him the last time they had
met, and may have encouraged his former interest in Stephen’s welfare
to die out of him as misplaced. Stephen certainly was full of the
feelings begotten by the belief that Knight had taken away the woman he
loved so well.
Stephen Smith then asked a question, adopting a certain recklessness of
manner and tone to hide, if possible, the fact that the subject was a
much greater one to him than his friend had ever supposed.
“Are you married?”
“I am not.”
Knight spoke in an indescribable tone of bitterness that was almost
moroseness.
“And I never shall be,” he added decisively. “Are you?”
“No,” said Stephen, sadly and quietly, like a man in a sick-room.
Totally ignorant whether or not Knight knew of his own previous claims
upon Elfride, he yet resolved to hazard a few more words upon the topic
which had an aching fascination for him even now.
“Then your engagement to Miss Swancourt came to nothing,” he said. “You
remember I met you with her once?”
Stephen’s voice gave way a little here, in defiance of his firmest will
to the contrary. Indian affairs had not yet lowered those emotions down
to the point of control.
“It was broken off,” came quickly from Knight. “Engagements to marry
often end like that—for better or for worse.”
“Yes; so they do. And what have you been doing lately?”
“Doing? Nothing.”
“Where have you been?”
“I can hardly tell you. In the main, going about Europe; and it may
perhaps interest you to know that I have been attempting the serious
study of Continental art of the Middle Ages. My notes on each example I
visited are at your service. They are of no use to me.”
“I shall be glad with them....Oh, travelling far and near!”
“Not far,” said Knight, with moody carelessness. “You know, I daresay,
that sheep occasionally become giddy—hydatids in the head, ’tis called,
in which their brains become eaten up, and the animal exhibits the
strange peculiarity of walking round and round in a circle continually.
I have travelled just in the same way—round and round like a giddy
ram.”
The reckless, bitter, and rambling style in which Knight talked, as if
rather to vent his images than to convey any ideas to Stephen, struck
the young man painfully. His former friend’s days had become cankered
in some way: Knight was a changed man. He himself had changed much, but
not as Knight had changed.
“Yesterday I came home,” continued Knight, “without having, to the best
of my belief, imbibed half-a-dozen ideas worth retaining.”
“You out-Hamlet Hamlet in morbidness of mood,” said Stephen, with
regretful frankness.
Knight made no reply.
“Do you know,” Stephen continued, “I could almost have sworn that you
would be married before this time, from what I saw?”
Knight’s face grew harder. “Could you?” he said.
Stephen was powerless to forsake the depressing, luring subject.
“Yes; and I simply wonder at it.”
“Whom did you expect me to marry?”
“Her I saw you with.”
“Thank you for that wonder.”
“Did she jilt you?”
“Smith, now one word to you,” Knight returned steadily. “Don’t you ever
question me on that subject. I have a reason for making this request,
mind. And if you do question me, you will not get an answer.”
“Oh, I don’t for a moment wish to ask what is unpleasant to you—not I.
I had a momentary feeling that I should like to explain something on my
side, and hear a similar explanation on yours. But let it go, let it
go, by all means.”
“What would you explain?”
“I lost the woman I was going to marry: you have not married as you
intended. We might have compared notes.”
“I have never asked you a word about your case.”
“I know that.”
“And the inference is obvious.”
“Quite so.”
“The truth is, Stephen, I have doggedly resolved never to allude to the
matter—for which I have a very good reason.”
“Doubtless. As good a reason as you had for not marrying her.”
“You talk insidiously. I had a good one—a miserably good one!”
Smith’s anxiety urged him to venture one more question.
“Did she not love you enough?” He drew his breath in a slow and
attenuated stream, as he waited in timorous hope for the answer.
“Stephen, you rather strain ordinary courtesy in pressing questions of
that kind after what I have said. I cannot understand you at all. I
must go on now.”
“Why, good God!” exclaimed Stephen passionately, “you talk as if you
hadn’t at all taken her away from anybody who had better claims to her
than you!”
“What do you mean by that?” said Knight, with a puzzled air. “What have
you heard?”
“Nothing. I too must go on. Good-day.”
“If you will go,” said Knight, reluctantly now, “you must, I suppose. I
am sure I cannot understand why you behave so.”
“Nor I why you do. I have always been grateful to you, and as far as I
am concerned we need never have become so estranged as we have.”
“And have I ever been anything but well-disposed towards you, Stephen?
Surely you know that I have not! The system of reserve began with you:
you know that.”
“No, no! You altogether mistake our position. You were always from the
first reserved to me, though I was confidential to you. That was, I
suppose, the natural issue of our differing positions in life. And when
I, the pupil, became reserved like you, the master, you did not like
it. However, I was going to ask you to come round and see me.”
“Where are you staying?”
“At the Grosvenor Hotel, Pimlico.”
“So am I.”
“That’s convenient, not to say odd. Well, I am detained in London for a
day or two; then I am going down to see my father and mother, who live
at St. Launce’s now. Will you see me this evening?”
“I may; but I will not promise. I was wishing to be alone for an hour
or two; but I shall know where to find you, at any rate. Good-bye.”