“Each to the loved one’s side.”
The friends and rivals breakfasted together the next morning. Not a
word was said on either side upon the matter discussed the previous
evening so glibly and so hollowly. Stephen was absorbed the greater
part of the time in wishing he were not forced to stay in town yet
another day.
“I don’t intend to leave for St. Launce’s till to-morrow, as you know,”
he said to Knight at the end of the meal. “What are you going to do
with yourself to-day?”
“I have an engagement just before ten,” said Knight deliberately; “and
after that time I must call upon two or three people.”
“I’ll look for you this evening,” said Stephen.
“Yes, do. You may as well come and dine with me; that is, if we can
meet. I may not sleep in London to-night; in fact, I am absolutely
unsettled as to my movements yet. However, the first thing I am going
to do is to get my baggage shifted from this place to Bede’s Inn.
Good-bye for the present. I’ll write, you know, if I can’t meet you.”
It now wanted a quarter to nine o’clock. When Knight was gone, Stephen
felt yet more impatient of the circumstance that another day would have
to drag itself away wearily before he could set out for that spot of
earth whereon a soft thought of him might perhaps be nourished still.
On a sudden he admitted to his mind the possibility that the engagement
he was waiting in town to keep might be postponed without much harm.
It was no sooner perceived than attempted. Looking at his watch, he
found it wanted forty minutes to the departure of the ten o’clock train
from Paddington, which left him a surplus quarter of an hour before it
would be necessary to start for the station.
Scribbling a hasty note or two—one putting off the business meeting,
another to Knight apologizing for not being able to see him in the
evening—paying his bill, and leaving his heavier luggage to follow him
by goods-train, he jumped into a cab and rattled off to the Great
Western Station.
Shortly afterwards he took his seat in the railway carriage.
The guard paused on his whistle, to let into the next compartment to
Smith’s a man of whom Stephen had caught but a hasty glimpse as he ran
across the platform at the last moment.
Smith sank back into the carriage, stilled by perplexity. The man was
like Knight—astonishingly like him. Was it possible it could be he? To
have got there he must have driven like the wind to Bede’s Inn, and
hardly have alighted before starting again. No, it could not be he;
that was not his way of doing things.
During the early part of the journey Stephen Smith’s thoughts busied
themselves till his brain seemed swollen. One subject was concerning
his own approaching actions. He was a day earlier than his letter to
his parents had stated, and his arrangement with them had been that
they should meet him at Plymouth; a plan which pleased the worthy
couple beyond expression. Once before the same engagement had been
made, which he had then quashed by ante-dating his arrival. This time
he would go right on to Castle Boterel; ramble in that well-known
neighbourhood during the evening and next morning, making inquiries;
and return to Plymouth to meet them as arranged—a contrivance which
would leave their cherished project undisturbed, relieving his own
impatience also.
At Chippenham there was a little waiting, and some loosening and
attaching of carriages.
Stephen looked out. At the same moment another man’s head emerged from
the adjoining window. Each looked in the other’s face.
Knight and Stephen confronted one another.
“You here!” said the younger man.
“Yes. It seems that you are too,” said Knight, strangely.
“Yes.”
The selfishness of love and the cruelty of jealousy were fairly
exemplified at this moment. Each of the two men looked at his friend as
he had never looked at him before. Each was TROUBLED at the other’s
presence.
“I thought you said you were not coming till to-morrow,” remarked
Knight.
“I did. It was an afterthought to come to-day. This journey was your
engagement, then?”
“No, it was not. This is an afterthought of mine too. I left a note to
explain it, and account for my not being able to meet you this evening
as we arranged.”
“So did I for you.”
“You don’t look well: you did not this morning.”
“I have a headache. You are paler to-day than you were.”
“I, too, have been suffering from headache. We have to wait here a few
minutes, I think.”
They walked up and down the platform, each one more and more
embarrassingly concerned with the awkwardness of his friend’s presence.
They reached the end of the footway, and paused in sheer
absent-mindedness. Stephen’s vacant eyes rested upon the operations of
some porters, who were shifting a dark and curious-looking van from the
rear of the train, to shunt another which was between it and the fore
part of the train. This operation having been concluded, the two
friends returned to the side of their carriage.
“Will you come in here?” said Knight, not very warmly.
“I have my rug and portmanteau and umbrella with me: it is rather
bothering to move now,” said Stephen reluctantly. “Why not you come
here?”
“I have my traps too. It is hardly worth while to shift them, for I
shall see you again, you know.”
“Oh, yes.”
And each got into his own place. Just at starting, a man on the
platform held up his hands and stopped the train.
Stephen looked out to see what was the matter.
One of the officials was exclaiming to another, “That carriage should
have been attached again. Can’t you see it is for the main line? Quick!
What fools there are in the world!”
“What a confounded nuisance these stoppages are!” exclaimed Knight
impatiently, looking out from his compartment. “What is it?”
“That singular carriage we saw has been unfastened from our train by
mistake, it seems,” said Stephen.
He was watching the process of attaching it. The van or carriage, which
he now recognized as having seen at Paddington before they started, was
rich and solemn rather than gloomy in aspect. It seemed to be quite
new, and of modern design, and its impressive personality attracted the
notice of others beside himself. He beheld it gradually wheeled forward
by two men on each side: slower and more sadly it seemed to approach:
then a slight concussion, and they were connected with it, and off
again.
Stephen sat all the afternoon pondering upon the reason of Knight’s
unexpected reappearance. Was he going as far as Castle Boterel? If so,
he could only have one object in view—a visit to Elfride. And what an
idea it seemed!
At Plymouth Smith partook of a little refreshment, and then went round
to the side from which the train started for Camelton, the new station
near Castle Boterel and Endelstow.
Knight was already there.
Stephen walked up and stood beside him without speaking. Two men at
this moment crept out from among the wheels of the waiting train.
“The carriage is light enough,” said one in a grim tone. “Light as
vanity; full of nothing.”
“Nothing in size, but a good deal in signification,” said the other, a
man of brighter mind and manners.
Smith then perceived that to their train was attached that same
carriage of grand and dark aspect which had haunted them all the way
from London.
“You are going on, I suppose?” said Knight, turning to Stephen, after
idly looking at the same object.
“Yes.”
“We may as well travel together for the remaining distance, may we
not?”
“Certainly we will;” and they both entered the same door.
Evening drew on apace. It chanced to be the eve of St. Valentine’s—that
bishop of blessed memory to youthful lovers—and the sun shone low under
the rim of a thick hard cloud, decorating the eminences of the
landscape with crowns of orange fire. As the train changed its
direction on a curve, the same rays stretched in through the window,
and coaxed open Knight’s half-closed eyes.
“You will get out at St. Launce’s, I suppose?” he murmured.
“No,” said Stephen, “I am not expected till to-morrow.” Knight was
silent.
“And you—are you going to Endelstow?” said the younger man pointedly.
“Since you ask, I can do no less than say I am, Stephen,” continued
Knight slowly, and with more resolution of manner than he had shown all
the day. “I am going to Endelstow to see if Elfride Swancourt is still
free; and if so, to ask her to be my wife.”
“So am I,” said Stephen Smith.
“I think you’ll lose your labour,” Knight returned with decision.
“Naturally you do.” There was a strong accent of bitterness in
Stephen’s voice. “You might have said HOPE instead of THINK,” he added.
“I might have done no such thing. I gave you my opinion. Elfride
Swancourt may have loved you once, no doubt, but it was when she was so
young that she hardly knew her own mind.”
“Thank you,” said Stephen laconically. “She knew her mind as well as I
did. We are the same age. If you hadn’t interfered——”
“Don’t say that—don’t say it, Stephen! How can you make out that I
interfered? Be just, please!”
“Well,” said his friend, “she was mine before she was yours—you know
that! And it seemed a hard thing to find you had got her, and that if
it had not been for you, all might have turned out well for me.”
Stephen spoke with a swelling heart, and looked out of the window to
hide the emotion that would make itself visible upon his face.
“It is absurd,” said Knight in a kinder tone, “for you to look at the
matter in that light. What I tell you is for your good. You naturally
do not like to realize the truth—that her liking for you was only a
girl’s first fancy, which has no root ever.”
“It is not true!” said Stephen passionately. “It was you put me out.
And now you’ll be pushing in again between us, and depriving me of my
chance again! My right, that’s what it is! How ungenerous of you to
come anew and try to take her away from me! When you had won her, I did
not interfere; and you might, I think, Mr. Knight, do by me as I did by
you!”
“Don’t ‘Mr.’ me; you are as well in the world as I am now.”
“First love is deepest; and that was mine.”
“Who told you that?” said Knight superciliously.
“I had her first love. And it was through me that you and she parted. I
can guess that well enough.”
“It was. And if I were to explain to you in what way that operated in
parting us, I should convince you that you do quite wrong in intruding
upon her—that, as I said at first, your labour will be lost. I don’t
choose to explain, because the particulars are painful. But if you
won’t listen to me, go on, for Heaven’s sake. I don’t care what you do,
my boy.”
“You have no right to domineer over me as you do. Just because, when I
was a lad, I was accustomed to look up to you as a master, and you
helped me a little, for which I was grateful to you and have loved you,
you assume too much now, and step in before me. It is cruel—it is
unjust—of you to injure me so!”
Knight showed himself keenly hurt at this. “Stephen, those words are
untrue and unworthy of any man, and they are unworthy of you. You know
you wrong me. If you have ever profited by any instruction of mine, I
am only too glad to know it. You know it was given ungrudgingly, and
that I have never once looked upon it as making you in any way a debtor
to me.”
Stephen’s naturally gentle nature was touched, and it was in a troubled
voice that he said, “Yes, yes. I am unjust in that—I own it.”
“This is St. Launce’s Station, I think. Are you going to get out?”
Knight’s manner of returning to the matter in hand drew Stephen again
into himself. “No; I told you I was going to Endelstow,” he resolutely
replied.
Knight’s features became impassive, and he said no more. The train
continued rattling on, and Stephen leant back in his corner and closed
his eyes. The yellows of evening had turned to browns, the dusky shades
thickened, and a flying cloud of dust occasionally stroked the
window—borne upon a chilling breeze which blew from the north-east. The
previously gilded but now dreary hills began to lose their daylight
aspects of rotundity, and to become black discs vandyked against the
sky, all nature wearing the cloak that six o’clock casts over the
landscape at this time of the year.
Stephen started up in bewilderment after a long stillness, and it was
some time before he recollected himself.
“Well, how real, how real!” he exclaimed, brushing his hand across his
eyes.
“What is?” said Knight.
“That dream. I fell asleep for a few minutes, and have had a dream—the
most vivid I ever remember.”
He wearily looked out into the gloom. They were now drawing near to
Camelton. The lighting of the lamps was perceptible through the veil of
evening—each flame starting into existence at intervals, and blinking
weakly against the gusts of wind.
“What did you dream?” said Knight moodily.
“Oh, nothing to be told. ’Twas a sort of incubus. There is never
anything in dreams.”
“I hardly supposed there was.”
“I know that. However, what I so vividly dreamt was this, since you
would like to hear. It was the brightest of bright mornings at East
Endelstow Church, and you and I stood by the font. Far away in the
chancel Lord Luxellian was standing alone, cold and impassive, and
utterly unlike his usual self: but I knew it was he. Inside the altar
rail stood a strange clergyman with his book open. He looked up and
said to Lord Luxellian, ‘Where’s the bride?’ Lord Luxellian said,
‘There’s no bride.’ At that moment somebody came in at the door, and I
knew her to be Lady Luxellian who died. He turned and said to her, ‘I
thought you were in the vault below us; but that could have only been a
dream of mine. Come on.’ Then she came on. And in brushing between us
she chilled me so with cold that I exclaimed, ‘The life is gone out of
me!’ and, in the way of dreams, I awoke. But here we are at Camelton.”
They were slowly entering the station.
“What are you going to do?” said Knight. “Do you really intend to call
on the Swancourts?”
“By no means. I am going to make inquiries first. I shall stay at the
Luxellian Arms to-night. You will go right on to Endelstow, I suppose,
at once?”
“I can hardly do that at this time of the day. Perhaps you are not
aware that the family—her father, at any rate—is at variance with me as
much as with you.
“I didn’t know it.”
“And that I cannot rush into the house as an old friend any more than
you can. Certainly I have the privileges of a distant relationship,
whatever they may be.”
Knight let down the window, and looked ahead. “There are a great many
people at the station,” he said. “They seem all to be on the look-out
for us.”
When the train stopped, the half-estranged friends could perceive by
the lamplight that the assemblage of idlers enclosed as a kernel a
group of men in black cloaks. A side gate in the platform railing was
open, and outside this stood a dark vehicle, which they could not at
first characterize. Then Knight saw on its upper part forms against the
sky like cedars by night, and knew the vehicle to be a hearse. Few
people were at the carriage doors to meet the passengers—the majority
had congregated at this upper end. Knight and Stephen alighted, and
turned for a moment in the same direction.
The sombre van, which had accompanied them all day from London, now
began to reveal that their destination was also its own. It had been
drawn up exactly opposite the open gate. The bystanders all fell back,
forming a clear lane from the gateway to the van, and the men in cloaks
entered the latter conveyance.
“They are labourers, I fancy,” said Stephen. “Ah, it is strange; but I
recognize three of them as Endelstow men. Rather remarkable this.”
Presently they began to come out, two and two; and under the rays of
the lamp they were seen to bear between them a light-coloured coffin of
satin-wood, brightly polished, and without a nail. The eight men took
the burden upon their shoulders, and slowly crossed with it over to the
gate.
Knight and Stephen went outside, and came close to the procession as it
moved off. A carriage belonging to the cortege turned round close to a
lamp. The rays shone in upon the face of the vicar of Endelstow, Mr.
Swancourt—looking many years older than when they had last seen him.
Knight and Stephen involuntarily drew back.
Knight spoke to a bystander. “What has Mr. Swancourt to do with that
funeral?”
“He is the lady’s father,” said the bystander.
“What lady’s father?” said Knight, in a voice so hollow that the man
stared at him.
“The father of the lady in the coffin. She died in London, you know,
and has been brought here by this train. She is to be taken home
to-night, and buried to-morrow.”
Knight stood staring blindly at where the hearse had been; as if he saw
it, or some one, there. Then he turned, and beheld the lithe form of
Stephen bowed down like that of an old man. He took his young friend’s
arm, and led him away from the light.