A Pair of Blue Eyes
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Stephen’s personal appearance was next criticised.
‘He d’ look a deal thinner in face, surely, than when I seed en at the parson’s, and never knowed en, if ye’ll believe me,’ said Martin.
‘Ay, there,’ said another, without removing his eyes from Stephen’s face, ‘I should ha’ knowed en anywhere. ‘Tis his father’s nose to a T.’
‘It has been often remarked,’ said Stephen modestly.
‘And he’s certainly taller,’ said Martin, letting his glance run over Stephen’s form from bottom to top.
‘I was thinking ‘a was exactly the same height,’ Worm replied.
‘Bless thy soul, that’s because he’s bigger round likewise.’ And the united eyes all moved to Stephen’s waist.
‘I be a poor wambling man, but I can make allowances,’ said William Worm. ‘Ah, sure, and how he came as a stranger and pilgrim to Parson Swancourt’s that time, not a soul knowing en after so many years! Ay, life’s a strange picter, Stephen: but I suppose I must say Sir to ye?’
‘Oh, it is not necessary at present,’ Stephen replied, though mentally resolving to avoid the vicinity of that familiar friend as soon as he had made pretensions to the hand of Elfride.
‘Ah, well,’ said Worm musingly, ‘some would have looked for no less than a Sir. There’s a sight of difference in people.’
‘And in pigs likewise,’ observed John Smith, looking at the halved carcass of his own.
Robert Lickpan, the pig-killer, here seemed called upon to enter the lists of conversation.
‘Yes, they’ve got their particular naters good-now,’ he remarked initially. ‘Many’s the rum-tempered pig I’ve knowed.’
‘I don’t doubt it, Master Lickpan,’ answered Martin, in a tone expressing that his convictions, no less than good manners, demanded the reply.
‘Yes,’ continued the pig-killer, as one accustomed to be heard. ‘One that I knowed was deaf and dumb, and we couldn’t make out what was the matter wi’ the pig. ‘A would eat well enough when ‘a seed the trough, but when his back was turned, you might a-rattled the bucket all day, the poor soul never heard ye. Ye could play tricks upon en behind his back, and a’ wouldn’t find it out no quicker than poor deaf Grammer Cates. But a’ fatted well, and I never seed a pig open better when a’ was killed, and ‘a was very tender eating, very; as pretty a bit of mate as ever you see; you could suck that mate through a quill.
‘And another I knowed,’ resumed the killer, after quietly letting a pint of ale run down his throat of its own accord, and setting down the cup with mathematical exactness upon the spot from which he had raised it – ‘another went out of his mind.’
‘How very mournful!’ murmured Mrs. Worm.
‘Ay, poor thing, ‘a did! As clean out of his mind as the cleverest Christian could go. In early life ‘a was very melancholy, and never seemed a hopeful pig by no means. ‘Twas Andrew Stainer’s pig – that’s whose pig ‘twas.’
‘I can mind the pig well enough,’ attested John Smith.
‘And a pretty little porker ‘a was. And you all know Farmer Buckle’s sort? Every jack o’ em suffer from the rheumatism to this day, owing to a damp sty they lived in when they were striplings, as ‘twere.’
‘Well, now we’ll weigh,’ said John.
‘If so be he were not so fine, we’d weigh en whole: but as he is, we’ll take a side at a time. John, you can mind my old joke, ey?’
‘I do so; though ‘twas a good few years ago I first heard en.’
‘Yes,’ said Lickpan, ‘that there old familiar joke have been in our family for generations, I may say. My father used that joke regular at pig-killings for more than five and forty years – the time he followed the calling. And ‘a told me that ‘a had it from his father when he was quite a chiel, who made use o’ en just the same at every killing more or less; and pig-killings were pig-killings in those days.’
‘Trewly they were.’
‘I’ve never heard the joke,’ said Mrs. Smith tentatively.
‘Nor I,’ chimed in Mrs. Worm, who, being the only other lady in the room, felt bound by the laws of courtesy to feel like Mrs. Smith in everything.
‘Surely, surely you have,’ said the killer, looking sceptically at the benighted females. ‘However, ‘tisn’t much – I don’t wish to say it is. It commences like this: “Bob will tell the weight of your pig, ‘a b’lieve,” says I. The congregation of neighbours think I mane my son Bob, naturally; but the secret is that I mane the bob o’ the steelyard. Ha, ha, ha!’
‘Haw, haw, haw!’ laughed Martin Cannister, who had heard the explanation of this striking story for the hundredth time.
‘Huh, huh, huh!’ laughed John Smith, who had heard it for the thousandth.
‘Hee, hee, hee!’ laughed William Worm, who had never heard it at all, but was afraid to say so.
‘Thy grandfather, Robert, must have been a wide-awake chap to make that story,’ said Martin Cannister, subsiding to a placid aspect of delighted criticism.
‘He had a head, by all account. And, you see, as the first-born of the Lickpans have all been Roberts, they’ve all been Bobs, so the story was handed down to the present day.’
‘Poor Joseph, your second boy, will never be able to bring it out in company, which is rather unfortunate,’ said Mrs. Worm thoughtfully.
‘’A won’t. Yes, grandfer was a clever chap, as ye say; but I knowed a cleverer. ‘Twas my uncle Levi. Uncle Levi made a snuff-box that should be a puzzle to his friends to open. He used to hand en round at wedding parties, christenings, funerals, and in other jolly company, and let ‘em try their skill. This extraordinary snuff-box had a spring behind that would push in and out – a hinge where seemed to be the cover; a slide at the end, a screw in front, and knobs and queer notches everywhere. One man would try the spring, another would try the screw, another would try the slide; but try as they would, the box wouldn’t open. And they couldn’t open en, and they didn’t open en. Now what might you think was the secret of that box?’
All put on an expression that their united thoughts were inadequate to the occasion.
‘Why the box wouldn’t open at all. ‘A were made not to open, and ye might have tried till the end of Revelations, ‘twould have been as naught, for the box were glued all round.’
‘A very deep man to have made such a box.’
‘Yes. ‘Twas like uncle Levi all over.’
‘’Twas. I can mind the man very well. Tallest man ever I seed.’
‘’A was so. He never slept upon a bedstead after he growed up a hard boy-chap – never could get one long enough. When ‘a lived in that little small house by the pond, he used to have to leave open his chamber door every night at going to his bed, and let his feet poke out upon the landing.’
‘He’s dead and gone now, nevertheless, poor man, as we all shall,’ observed Worm, to fill the pause which followed the conclusion of Robert Lickpan’s speech.
The weighing and cutting up was pursued amid an animated discourse on Stephen’s travels; and at the finish, the first-fruits of the day’s slaughter, fried in onions, were then turned from the pan into a dish on the table, each piece steaming and hissing till it reached their very mouths.
It must be owned that the gentlemanly son of the house looked rather out of place in the course of this operation. Nor was his mind quite philosophic enough to allow him to be comfortable with these old-established persons, his father’s friends. He had never lived long at home – scarcely at all since his childhood. The presence of William Worm was the most awkward feature of the case, for, though Worm had left the house of Mr. Swancourt, the being hand-in-glove with a ci-devant servitor reminded Stephen too forcibly of the vicar’s classification of himself before he went from England. Mrs. Smith was conscious of the defect in her arrangements which had brought about the undesired conjunction. She spoke to Stephen privately.
‘I am above having such people here, Stephen; but what could I do? And your father is so rough in his nature that he’s more mixed up with them than need be.’
‘Never mind, mother,’ said Stephen; ‘I’ll put up with it now.’
‘When we leave my lord’s service, and get further up the country – as I hope we shall soon – it will be different. We shall be among fresh people, and in a larger house, and shall keep ourselves up a bit, I hope.’
‘Is Miss Swancourt at home, do you know?’ Stephen inquired
‘Yes, your father saw her this morning.’
‘Do you often see her?’
‘Scarcely ever. Mr. Glim, the curate, calls occasionally, but the Swancourts don’t come into the village now any more than to drive through it. They dine at my lord’s oftener than they used. Ah, here’s a note was brought this morning for you by a boy.’
Stephen eagerly took the note and opened it, his mother watching him. He read what Elfride had written and sent before she started for the cliff that afternoon:
‘Yes; I will meet you in the church at nine to-night. – E. S.’
‘I don’t know, Stephen,’ his mother said meaningly, ‘whe’r you still think about Miss Elfride, but if I were you I wouldn’t concern about her. They say that none of old Mrs. Swancourt’s money will come to her step-daughter.’
‘I see the evening has turned out fine; I am going out for a little while to look round the place,’ he said, evading the direct query. ‘Probably by the time I return our visitors will be gone, and we’ll have a more confidential talk.’
Chapter XXIV
‘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.
Chapter XXV
‘Mine own familiar friend.’
During these days of absence Stephen lived under alternate conditions. Whenever his emotions were active, he was in agony. Whenever he was not in agony, the business in hand had driven out of his mind by sheer force all deep reflection on the subject of Elfride and love.
By the time he took his return journey at the week’s end, Stephen had very nearly worked himself up to an intention to call and see her face to face. On this occasion also he adopted his favourite route – by the little summer steamer from Bristol to Castle Boterel; the time saved by speed on the railway being wasted at junctions, and in following a devious course.
It was a bright silent evening at the beginning of September when Smith again set foot in the little town. He felt inclined to linger awhile upon the quay before ascending the hills, having formed a romantic intention to go home by way of her house, yet not wishing to wander in its neighbourhood till the evening shades should sufficiently screen him from observation.
And thus waiting for night’s nearer approach, he watched the placid scene, over which the pale luminosity of the west cast a sorrowful monochrome, that became slowly embrowned by the dusk. A star appeared, and another, and another. They sparkled amid the yards and rigging of the two coal brigs lying alangside, as if they had been tiny lamps suspended in the ropes. The masts rocked sleepily to the infinitesimal flux of the tide, which clucked and gurgled with idle regularity in nooks and holes of the harbour wall.
The twilight was now quite pronounced enough for his purpose; and as, rather sad at heart, he was about to move on, a little boat containing two persons glided up the middle of the harbour with the lightness of a shadow. The boat came opposite him, passed on, and touched the landing-steps at the further end. One of its occupants was a man, as Stephen had known by the easy stroke of the oars. When the pair ascended the steps, and came into greater prominence, he was enabled to discern that the second personage was a woman; also that she wore a white decoration – apparently a feather – in her hat or bonnet, which spot of white was the only distinctly visible portion of her clothing.
Stephen remained a moment in their rear, and they passed on, when he pursued his way also, and soon forgot the circumstance. Having crossed a bridge, forsaken the high road, and entered the footpath which led up the vale to West Endelstow, he heard a little wicket click softly together some yards ahead. By the time that Stephen had reached the wicket and passed it, he heard another click of precisely the same nature from another gate yet further on. Clearly some person or persons were preceding him along the path, their footsteps being rendered noiseless by the soft carpet of turf. Stephen now walked a little quicker, and perceived two forms. One of them bore aloft the white feather he had noticed in the woman’s hat on the quay: they were the couple he had seen in the boat. Stephen dropped a little further to the rear.
From the bottom of the valley, along which the path had hitherto lain, beside the margin of the trickling streamlet, another path now diverged, and ascended the slope of the left-hand hill. This footway led only to the residence of Mrs. Swancourt and a cottage or two in its vicinity. No grass covered this diverging path in portions of its length, and Stephen was reminded that the pair in front of him had taken this route by the occasional rattle of loose stones under their feet. Stephen climbed in the same direction, but for some undefined reason he trod more softly than did those preceding him. His mind was unconsciously in exercise upon whom the woman might be – whether a visitor to The Crags, a servant, or Elfride. He put it to himself yet more forcibly; could the lady be Elfride? A possible reason for her unaccountable failure to keep the appointment with him returned with painful force.
They entered the grounds of the house by the side wicket, whence the path, now wide and well trimmed, wound fantastically through the shrubbery to an octagonal pavilion called the Belvedere, by reason of the comprehensive view over the adjacent district that its green seats afforded. The path passed this erection and went on to the house as well as to the gardener’s cottage on the other side, straggling thence to East Endelstow; so that Stephen felt no hesitation in entering a promenade which could scarcely be called private.
He fancied that he heard the gate open and swing together again behind him. Turning, he saw nobody.
The people of the boat came to the summer-house. One of them spoke.
‘I am afraid we shall get a scolding for being so late.’
Stephen instantly recognised the familiar voice, richer and fuller now than it used to be. ‘Elfride!’ he whispered to himself, and held fast by a sapling, to steady himself under the agitation her presence caused him. His heart swerved from its beat; he shunned receiving the meaning he sought.
‘A breeze is rising again; how the ash tree rustles!’ said Elfride. ‘Don’t you hear it? I wonder what the time is.’
Stephen relinquished the sapling.
‘I will get a light and tell you. Step into the summer-house; the air is quiet there.’
The cadence of that voice – its peculiarity seemed to come home to him like that of some notes of the northern birds on his return to his native clime, as an old natural thing renewed, yet not particularly noticed as natural before that renewal.
They entered the Belvedere. In the lower part it was formed of close wood-work nailed crosswise, and had openings in the upper by way of windows.
The scratch of a striking light was heard, and a bright glow radiated from the interior of the building. The light gave birth to dancing leaf-shadows, stem-shadows, lustrous streaks, dots, sparkles, and threads of silver sheen of all imaginable variety and transience. It awakened gnats, which flew towards it, revealed shiny gossamer threads, disturbed earthworms. Stephen gave but little attention to these phenomena, and less time. He saw in the summer-house a strongly illuminated picture.
First, the face of his friend and preceptor Henry Knight, between whom and himself an estrangement had arisen, not from any definite causes beyond those of absence, increasing age, and diverging sympathies.
Next, his bright particular star, Elfride. The face of Elfride was more womanly than when she had called herself his, but as clear and healthy as ever. Her plenteous twines of beautiful hair were looking much as usual, with the exception of a slight modification in their arrangement in deference to the changes of fashion.
Their two foreheads were close together, almost touching, and both were looking down. Elfride was holding her watch, Knight was holding the light with one hand, his left arm being round her waist. Part of the scene reached Stephen’s eyes through the horizontal bars of woodwork, which crossed their forms like the ribs of a skeleton.
Knight’s arm stole still further round the waist of Elfride.
‘It is half-past eight,’ she said in a low voice, which had a peculiar music in it, seemingly born of a thrill of pleasure at the new proof that she was beloved.
The flame dwindled down, died away, and all was wrapped in a darkness to which the gloom before the illumination bore no comparison in apparent density. Stephen, shattered in spirit and sick to his heart’s centre, turned away. In turning, he saw a shadowy outline behind the summer-house on the other side. His eyes grew accustomed to the darkness. Was the form a human form, or was it an opaque bush of juniper?
The lovers arose, brushed against the laurestines, and pursued their way to the house. The indistinct figure had moved, and now passed across Smith’s front. So completely enveloped was the person, that it was impossible to discern him or her any more than as a shape. The shape glided noiselessly on.
Stephen stepped forward, fearing any mischief was intended to the other two. ‘Who are you?’ he said.
‘Never mind who I am,’ answered a weak whisper from the enveloping folds. ‘WHAT I am, may she be! Perhaps I knew well – ah, so well! – a youth whose place you took, as he there now takes yours. Will you let her break your heart, and bring you to an untimely grave, as she did the one before you?’