 11. Journey's End in Lovers' Meeting Stephen Lay watching the Great Bear Elfride was regarding a monotonous parallelogram of window lined. Neither slept that night. Early the next morning, that is to say four hours after their stolen interview, and just as the earliest servant was heard moving about, Stephen Smith went downstairs, portmanteau in hand. Throughout the night he had intended to see Mr Swancourt again, but the sharp rebuff of the previous evening rendered such an interview particularly distasteful. Perhaps there was another and less honest reason. He decided to put it off. Whatever of moral timidity or obliquity may have lain in such a decision, no perception of it was strong enough to detain him. He wrote a note in his room which stated simply that he did not feel happy in the house after Mrs Swancourt's sudden veto on what he had favoured a few hours before, but that he hoped the time would come, and that soon, when his original feelings of pleasure as Mr Swancourt's guest might be recovered. He expected to find the downstairs rooms wearing the grey and cheerless aspect that early morning gives to everything out of the sun. He found in the dining room a breakfast-lade of which somebody had just partaken. Stephen gave the maid servant his note of a due. She stated that Mr Swancourt had risen early that morning, and made an early breakfast. He was not going away that she knew of. Stephen took a cup of coffee, left the house of his love, and turned into the lane. It was so early that the shaded places still smelled like night-time, and the sunny spots had hardly felt the sun. The horizontal rays made every shallow dip in the ground to show as a well-marked hollow. Even the channel of the path was enough to throw a shade, and the very stones of the road cast tapering dashes of darkness westward, as long as jail's tent-nail. At a spot no more than a hundred yards from the vicar's residence, the lane leading dense crossed the high road. Stephen reached a point of intersection, stood still and listened. Nothing could be heard saved a lengthy murmuring line of the sea upon the adjacent shore. He looked at his watch, and then mounted a gate upon which he seated himself to await the arrival of the carrier. Whilst he sat, he heard wheels coming in two directions. The vehicle approaching on his right he soon recognized as the carriers. There were the accompanying sounds of the owner's voice and the smack of his whip, distinct in the still morning air by which he encouraged his horses up the hill. The other set of wheels sounded from the lane Stephen had just traversed. On closer observation he perceived that they were moving from the precincts of the ancient manor house adjoining the vicarage grounds. A carriage then left the entrance gates of the house, and wheeling round came fully in sight. It was a plain, travelling carriage with a small quantity of luggage, apparently a lady's. The vehicle came through the junction of the four ways half a minute before the carrier reached the same spot and crossed directly in his front, proceeding by the lane on the other side. Inside the carriage Stephen could just discern an elderly lady with a younger woman who seemed to be her maid. The road they had taken led to Strathley, a small watering-place sixteen miles north. He heard the manor house gates swing again, and looking up saw another person leaving them, and walking off in the direction of the personage. Ah, how I wish I was moving that way, felt he parenthetically. The gentleman was tall and resembled Mr. Swancourt an outline and attire. He opened the vicarage gate and went in. Mr. Swancourt then it certainly was. Instead of remaining in bed that morning Mr. Swancourt must have taken it into his head to see his new neighbour off on a journey. He must have been greatly interested in that neighbour to do such an unusual thing. The carrier's conveyance had pulled up, and Stephen now handed in his portmanteau and mounted the shafts. Who is that lady in the carriage? He inquired indifferently of Lickpand the carrier. Ah, that sir is Mrs. Trayton, a widow with a mint of money. She's the owner of all that part of Entrelstow that's not law luxeliant. Only beneath a short time she came into it by law. The owner formally was a terrible mysterious person. Never lived here, hardly ever was seen here except in the month of September, as we say. The horses were started again, and noise rendered further discourse a matter of too great exertion. Stephen crept inside under a tilt, and was soon lost in reverie. Three hours and a half of straining up hills and jogging down brought them to St. Glance's, the market town and railway station nearest to Entrelstow, and the place from which Stephen Smith had journeyed over the Downs on the, to him, memorable winter evening at the beginning of the same year. The carrier's van was so timeless to meet the starting up train which Stephen entered. Two or three hours railway travels through vertical cuttings and metamorphic rock, through oak, copses, rich and green, stretching over slopes and down delightful valleys, glens and ravines, sparkling with water like many rail-dida, and he plunged amid the hundred and fifty thousand people composing the town of Plymouth. There being some time upon his hands he left his luggage at the cloakroom, and went on foot along Bedford Street to the nearest church. Here Stephen wandered among the multifarious tombstones, and looked in at the chancel window, dreaming of something that was likely to happen by the altar there in the course of the coming month. He turned away and descended the hoe, viewed the magnificent stretch of sea and massive plamontaries of land, but without particularly discerning one feature of the very perspective. He still saw that inner prospect, the event he hoped for in Yonder Church, the wide sound, the breakwater, the lighthouse on far off Eddystone, the dark steam vessels, briggs, barks and schooners, either floating stilly or gliding with tiniest motion, whereas he dreamed then. The dreamed of event was as the reality. Soon Stephen went down from the hoe and returned to the railway station. He took his ticket and entered the London train. The day was a nearer time at Endelsovik Ridge, neither father nor daughter alluded to the departure of Stephen. Mr Swancourt's manner to order partook of the compunctious kindness that arises from a misgiving as to the justice of some previous act. Either from lack of the capacity to grasp the whole cooped rail, or from a natural endowment of certain kinds of stoicism, women are cooler than men in critical situations of the passive form. Probably in Elfride's case at least, it was blindness to the greater contingencies of the future she was preparing herself for, which enabled her to ask her father in a quiet voice if he could give her a holiday soon, to ride to St. Lawrence's and to go on to Plymouth. Now she had only once before gone alone to Plymouth, and that was in consequence of some unavoidable difficulty. Being a country girl and a good, not to say a wild horsewoman, it had been her delight to counter, without the ghost of an attendant, over the fourteen or sixteen miles of hard road intervening between their home and the station at St. Lawrence's, put up the horse and go on the remainder of the distance by train, returning in the same manner in the evening. It was then resolved that, though she had successfully accomplished this journey once, it was not to be repeated without some attendance. But Elfride must not be confounded with ordinary young feminine equestrians. The circumstances of her lonely and narrow life made it imperative that in trotting about the neighbourhoods you must trot alone or else not at all. Usage soon rendered this perfectly natural to herself. Her father, who had had other experiences, did not much like the idea of a swan court, whose pedigree could be as distinctly traced as a thread on a skin of silk, scampering over the hills like a farmer's daughter, even though he could habitually neglect her. But while it is not been able to afford her a regular attendant, and his inveterate habit of letting anything be to save himself trouble, the circumstance grew customary, and so there arose a chronic notion in the villager's minds that all ladies rode without an attendant, like Miss Swan Court, except a few who were sometimes visiting at Lord Excellions. I don't like you're going to Plymouth alone, particularly going to St. Lawrence's on horseback. Why not drive and take the man? It's not nice to be so overlooked. Worm's company would not seriously have interfered with her plans, but it was her humour to go without him. When do you want to go? said her father. She only answered, soon. I will consider, he said. Only a few days elapsed before she asked again. A letter had reached her from Stephen. It had been timed to come on that day by special arrangement between them. In it he named the earliest morning at which she could meet her at Plymouth. Her father had been on a journey to Strathley, and returned in unusual buoyancy of spirit. It was a good opportunity, and since the dismissal of Stephen, her father had been generally in a mood to make small concessions, that he might steer clear of large ones connected with that outcast lover of hers. Next Thursday week, I'm going from home in a different direction, said her father. In fact, I should leave home the night before. You might choose the same day for they wish to take up the carpets or some such thing, I think. And as I said, I don't like you to be seen in a town on horseback alone, but go with you will. Thursday week, her father had named the very day that Stephen also had named that morning as the earliest on which it would be of any use to meet her. That was about fifteen days from the day on which she had left Endelstow. Fifteen days, that fragment of duration which has acquired such an interesting individuality from its connection with the English marriage law. She involuntarily looked at her father so strangely that on becoming conscious of the look she paled with embarrassment. Her father, too, looked confused. What was he thinking of? There seemed to be a special facility offered her by a power external to herself in the circumstances that Mr. Swancourt had proposed to leave home the night previous to her wished for day. Her father seldom took long journeys, seldom slept from home, except perhaps on the night following a remote visitation. Well, she would not inquire too curiously into the reason of the opportunity. Nor did he, as would have been natural, proceed to explain it of his own accord. In matters of fact there had hitherto been no reserve between them, though they were not usually confidential in its full sense, but the diversions of their emotions on Stephen's account had produced an estrangement which at present went even to the extent of reticence on the most ordinary household topics. Elfride was almost unconsciously relieved, persuading herself that her father's reserve on his business justified her in secrecy as regarded her own, a secrecy which was necessarily a foregone decision with her. So anxious as a young conscience to discover a palliative that the ex-post facto nature of a reason is of no account in excluding it. The intervening fortnight was spent by her mostly in walking by herself among the trees and shrubs, indulging sometimes in sanguine anticipations, more far more frequently in misgivings. All her flowers seemed dull of hue. Her pets seemed to look wistfully into her eyes, as if they no longer stood in the same friendly relation to her as formerly. She wore a melancholy jewellery, gazed at sunsets, and talked to old men and women. It was the first time that she had had an inner and private world, apart from the visible one about her. She wished that her father, instead of neglecting her even more than usual, would make some advance, just one word, she would then tell all and risk Stephen's displeasure. Thus brought round to the youth again, she saw him in her fancy, standing, touching her, his eyes full of sad affection, hopelessly renouncing his attempt, because she had renounced hers, and she could not recede. On the Wednesday she was to receive another letter. She had resolved to let her father see the arrival of this one, be the consequences what they might. The dread of losing her lover by this deed of honesty prevented her acting upon the resolve. Five minutes before the postman's expected arrival, she slipped out, and down the lane to meet him. She met him immediately upon turning a sharp angle, which hit her from the view of the direction of the vicarage. The man smilingly handed one missive, and was going on to hand another, a circular from some tradesman. No, she said, take that on to the house. Why, miss, you're doing exactly what your father has done for the last fortnight. She did not comprehend. Why, come to this corner and take a letter from me every morning, all written the same handwriting, and let none others for him going on to the house. And on, the postman went. No sooner had he turned the corner behind her back than she heard her father meet and address the man. She had saved her letter by two minutes. Her father audibly went through precisely the same performance as she had just been guilty of herself. This stealthy conduct of his was, to say the least, peculiar. Given an impulsive inconsequent girl neglected as to her inner life by her only parent, and the following forces alive within her to determine a resultant. First love acted upon by a deadly fear of separation from its object. In experience guiding onward a frantic wish to prevent the above-named issue. Misgivings as to propriety met by hope of ultimate exoneration. Indignation at parental inconsistency in first encouraging, then forbidding. A chilling sense of disobedience overpowered by a conscientious inability to brook a breaking of plighted fate with a man who, in essentials, had remained unaltered from the beginning. A blessed hope that opposition would turn an erroneous judgment, a bright fate that things would mend thereby and wind up well. Probably the result what after all have been nil had not the following few remarks been made one day at breakfast. Her father was in his old hearty spirits. He smiled to himself at stories too bad to tell, and called Elfride a little scamp for surreptitiously preserving some blind kittens that ought to have been drowned. After this expression she said to him suddenly, If Mr. Smith had been already in the family, you would not have been made wretched by discovering he had poor relations. Do you mean in the family by marriage? he said inattentively and continuing to peel his egg. The accumulating scarlet told that was her meaning, as much as the affirmative reply. I should have put up with it no doubt, Mr. Swancourt observed, so that you would not have been driven into hopeless melancholy, but have made the best of him. Elfride's erratic mind had from her youth upwards been constantly in the habit of her plexing her father by hypothetical questions based on absurd conditions. The present seemed to be cast so precisely in the mould of previous ones that, not being given to synthesis of circumstances, he answered it with customary complacency. If you were allied to a surreptitively, of course, I, nor any sensible man, should accept conditions that could not be altered, certainly not be hopelessly melancholy about it. I don't believe anything in the world would make me hopelessly melancholy, and don't let anything make you so either. I won't, papa. She cried with a serene brightness that pleased him. Certainly Mr. Swancourt must have been far from thinking that the brightness came from an exhilarating intention to hold back no longer from the mad action she had planned. In the evening he drove away towards Stratley, quite alone. It was an unusual course for him. At the door Elfride had been again almost impelled by her feelings to pour out all. Why are you going to Stratley, papa? she said, and looked at him longingly. I will tell you tomorrow when I come back, he said cheerily, not before then Elfride, thou wilt not utter what thou dost not know, and so far I will trust thee, gentle Elfride. She was repressed and hurt. I will tell you my errand to Plymouth, too, when I come back, she murmured. He went away. His jocularity made her intention seem the lighter, and his indifference made her more resolved to do as she liked. It was a familiar September sunset, dark blue fragments of cloud upon an orange-yellow sky. These sunsets used a tempter to walk towards them, as only beautiful thing tempts a near approach. She went through the field to the privet hedge, clambered into the middle of it and reclined upon the thick boughs. After looking westward for a considerable time, she blamed herself for not looking eastward to where Stephen was, and turned round. Ultimately her eyes fell upon the ground. A peculiarity was observed beneath her. A green field spread itself on each side of the hedge, one belonging to the Glebe, the other being a part of the land attached to the manor house adjoining. On the vicarage side she saw a little footpath, the distinctive and altogether exceptional feature of which consisted in its being only about ten yards long. It terminated abruptly at each end. A footpath, suddenly beginning and suddenly ending, coming from nowhere and leading nowhere, she had never seen before. Yes, she had on second thoughts. She had seen exactly such a path trodden in the front of barracks by a sentry. And this recollection explained the origin of the path here. Her father had trodden it by pacing up and down, as she had once seen him doing. Sitting on the hedge as she sat now, her eyes commanded a view of both sides of it, and a few minutes later, Elfride looked over to the manor side. Here was another sentry path. It was like the first in length, and it began and ended exactly opposite the beginning and ending of its neighbour, but it was thinner and less distinct. Two reasons existed for the difference. This one might have been trodden by a similar weight of tread to the other, exercise a less number of times, or it might have been walked on just as frequently, but by lighter feet. Probably a gentleman from Scotland Yard, had he been passing at the time, might have considered the latter alternative as more probable. Elfride thought otherwise, so far as she thought at all. But her own great-tomorrow was now imminent. All thoughts inspired by casual sights of the eye were only allowed to exercise themselves in inferior corners of her brain, previous to being banished altogether. Elfride was at length compelled to reason practically upon her undertaking. All her definite perceptions thereon, when the emotion accompanying them was abstracted, amounted to no more than these. Say an hour and three-quarters to ride to St. Lawrence's. Say half an hour at the falcon to change my dress. Say two hours waiting for some train and getting to Plymouth. Say an hour to spare before twelve o'clock. Total time from leaving Eindl's total twelve o'clock five hours. Therefore I shall have to start at seven. No surprise or sense of unwantedness entered the minds of the servants at her early ride. The monotony of life we associate with people of small incomes and districts out of the sound of the railway whistle has one exception, which puts into shade the experience of dwellers about the great centres of population, that is, in travelling. Every journey there is more or less an adventure. Adventurous hours are necessarily chosen for the most common place outing. Miss Elfride had to leave early. That was all. Elfride never went out on horseback, but she brought home something, something found or something bought. If she trotted to town or village, her burden was books. If to hills, woods, or the sea shore, it was wonderful mosses, abnormal twigs, a handkerchief of wet shells or seaweed. Once in muddy weather, when Pansy was walking with her down the street of Castle Bottle, on a fair day, a packet in front of her and a packet under her arm, an accident befell the packets, and they slipped down. On one side of her, three volumes of fiction lay kissing the mud. On the other, numerous schemes of polychromatic wools lay absorbing it. Unpleasant women smiled through windows at the mishap, the men all looked round, and a boy, who was minding a gingerbread stall whilst the owner had gone to get drunk, laughed loudly. The blue eyes turned to sapphires and the cheeks crimson with vexation. After that misadventure she set her wits to work, and was ingenious enough to invent an arrangement of small straps about the saddle by which a great deal could be safely carried thereon in a small compass. Here she now spread out and fastened a plain dark walking dress and a few other trifles of a pearl. Worm opened the gate for her, and she vanished away. One of the brightest mornings of late summer shone upon her. The heather was at its purplest, the furs at its yellowest, the grasshoppers chirped loud enough for birds, the snakes hissed like little engines, and Elfride at first felt lively. Sitting at ease upon pansy in her orthodox riding habit and nondescript hat she looked what she felt, but the mercury of those days had a trick of falling unexpectedly. First, only for one minute and ten, had she a sense of depression. Then a large cloud that had been hanging in the north like a black fleece came and placed itself between her and the sun. It helped on what was already inevitable, and she sank into a uniformity of sadness. She turned in the saddle and looked back. There were now on an open table land whose altitude still gave her a view of the sea by Eindlstow. She looked longingly at that spot. During this little revulsion of feeling pansy had been still advancing, and Elfride felt it would be absurd to turn her little mare's head the other way. Still, she thought, if I had a mamma at home, I would go back. And making one of those stealthy movements by which women let their hearts juggle with their brains, she did put the horse's head about, as if unconsciously, and went at a hand gallop towards home for more than a mile. By this time, from the inveterate habit of valuing what we have renounced directly the alternative is chosen, the thought of her forsaken Stephen recalled her, and she turned about and cantored on to St. Lawrence's again. This miserable strife of thought now began to rage in all its wildness. Overwrought and trembling, she dropped the rain upon pansy's shoulders, and vowed she would be led withered a horse would take her. Pansy slackened her pace to a walk, and walked on with her agitated burden for three or four minutes. At the expiration of this time, they came to a little byway on the right, leading down a slope to a pool of water. The pony stopped, looked towards the pool, and then advanced and stopped to drink. Elfride looked at her watch, and discovered that if she were going to reach St. Lawrence's early enough to change her dress at the falcon, and get a chance of some early train to Plymouth, and there were only two available, it was necessary to proceed at once. She was impatient. It seemed as if pansy would never stop drinking, and the repose of the pool, the idle motions of the insects and flies upon it, the placid waving of the flags, the leaf skeletons, like Genoese filigree, placidly sleeping at the bottom, by their contrast with her own turmoil, made her impatience greater. Pansy did turn at last, and went up the slope again to the high road. The pony came upon it and stood cross-wise, looking up and down. Elfride's heart throbbed erratically, and she thought, horses, if left to themselves, make for where they are best fed. Pansy will go home. Pansy turned, and walked on towards St. Lawrence's. Pansy at home during summer had little but grass to live on. After her run to St. Lawrence's, she always had a feed of corn to support her on a return journey. Therefore, being now more than half-way, she preferred St. Lawrence's. But Elfride did not remember this now. All she cared to recognise was a dreamy fancy, that today's rash action was not her own. She was disabled by her moods, and it seemed indispensable to adhere to the programme. So strangely involved are motives that, more than by her promise to Stephen, more even than by her love, she was forced on by a sense of the necessity of keeping faith with herself as promised in the inane vow of ten minutes ago. She hesitated no longer. Pansy went, like the steed of Adonis, as if she told the steps. Presently the quaint gables and jumbled roofs of St. Lawrence's were spread beneath her, and going down the hill she entered the courtyard of the falcon. Mrs. Buckle, the landlady, came to the door to meet her. The swan courts were well known here. The transition from equestrian to the ordinary guise of railway travellers had been more than once performed by father and daughter in this establishment. In less than a quarter of an hour Elfride emerged from the door in her walking dress and went to the railway. She had not told Mrs. Buckle anything else to her intentions, and was supposed to have gone out shopping. An hour and forty minutes later she was in Stephen's arms at the Plymouth station, not upon the platform in the secret retreat of a deserted waiting-room. Stephen's face bolded ill. He was pale and despondent. What's the matter? she asked. We cannot be married today, my Elfie. I ought to have known it and stayed here. In my ignorance I did not. I have the license, but it can only be used in my parish in London. I only came down last night as you know. Oh, what shall we do? she said, blankly. There's only one thing we can do, darling. What's that? Go on to London by a train just starting, and be married there tomorrow. Passengers for the eleven-five-up train take their seats, said the guard's voice on the platform. Will you go, Elfride? I will. In three minutes the train had moved off, bearing away with it Stephen and Elfride. End of Chapter 11. A Pair of Blue Eyes Chapter 12 This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Ty Kynes A Pair of Blue Eyes by Thomas Hardy Chapter 12 At you she cries and waved her lily hand. The few tattered clouds of the morning enlarged and united. The sun withdrew behind them to emerge no more that day, and the evening drew to a close in drifts of rain. The water drops beat like duck shot against the window of the railway carriage containing Stephen and Elfride. The journey from Plymouth to Paddington, by even the most headlong express, allows quite enough leisure for a passion of any sort to cool. Elfride's excitement had passed off, and she sat in a kind of stupor during the latter half of the journey. She was aroused by the clanging of the maze of rails over which they traced her way at the entrance to the station. "'Is this London?' she said. "'Yes, darling,' said Stephen, in a tone of assurance, who was far from feeling. To him, no less than to her, the reality so greatly differed from the prefiguring.' She peered out as well as the window beaded with drops would allow her, and saw only the lamps, which had just been lit, blinking in the wet atmosphere, and rows of hideous, thin chimney-pipes in dim relief against the sky. She writhed uneasily, as when a thought is swelling in the mind, which must cause much pain at its deliverance in words. Elfride had known no more about the stings of evil report, than the native wildfowl knew of the effects of Crusoe's first shot. Now she saw a little further, and a little further still. The train stopped. Stephen relinquished a soft hand he had held all the day, and proceeded to assist her onto the platform. This act of alighting upon strange ground seemed all that was wanted to complete a resolution within her. She looked at her betrothed with despairing eyes. "'Oh, Stephen,' she exclaimed, "'I am so miserable. I must go home again. I must, I must forgive my wretched vacillation. I don't like it here, nor myself, nor you.' Stephen looked bewildered, and did not speak. "'Will you allow me to go home?' she implored. "'I won't trouble you to go with me. I will not be any weight upon you. Only say you will agree to my returning, that you will not hate me for it, Stephen. It is better that I should return again. Indeed it is, Stephen.' "'But we can't return now,' he said, in a deprecatory tone. "'I must, I will. How? When do you want to go? Now. Can we go at once?' The lad looked hopelessly along the platform. "'If you must go and tink it round to remain, dearest,' he said sadly, "'you shall. You shall do whatever you like, my Alfrida. But would you in reality rather go now, then stay till tomorrow, and go as my wife?' "'Yes, yes, much, anything to go now. I must, I must,' she cried. "'We ought to have done one of two things,' he answered loomily. Never to have started, or not to have returned without being married. "'I don't like to say it, Alfrida. Indeed I don't. But you must be told this, that going back unmarried may compromise your good name in the eyes of people who may hear of it. "'They will not, and I must go. Oh, Alfrida, I am too blame for bringing you away.' "'Not at all. I am the elder.' "'By a month, and what's that?' "'But never mind that now,' he looked around. "'Is there a train for Plymouth tonight?' he inquired of a guard. The guard passed on and did not speak. "'Is there a train for Plymouth tonight?' said Alfrida to another. "'Yes, Miss, the eight ten. Leave in ten minutes. You've come to the wrong platform. It's on the other side. Change your Bristol into the night-mile. Down that staircase, and on that align.' To ram down the staircase, Alfrida first, to the booking office, and into a carriage with an official standing beside the door. "'Show your tickets, please.' "'They are locked in. Men about the platform accelerate their velocities till they fly up and down like shuttles in a loom. A whistle, the waving of a flag, a human cry, a steam groan, and a way they go to Plymouth again. Just catching these words as they glide off. "'Thous do youngsters at any a run for it, and now mistake.' Alfrida found her breath. "'And you have come to, Stephen. Why did you?' "'I shall not leave you till I see you safe at St. Lawrence's. Do not think worse of me than I am, Alfrida.' And then they rattled along through the night, back again by the way they had come. The weather cleared, and the stars shone upon them. Their two or three fellow passengers sat for most of the time with eyes closed. Stephen sometimes slept. Alfrida alone was wakeful and palpitating, hour after hour. The day began to break and reveal that they were by the sea. Red rocks overhung them, and receding into distance, grew livid in the blue-gray atmosphere. The sun rose and sent penetrating shafts of light in upon their weary faces. Another hour and the world began to be busy. They waited yet a little, and the train slackened its speed in view of the platform at St. Lawrence's. She shivered and mused sadly. I did not see all the consequences, she said. Appearances are woefully against me. If anybody finds me out, I am, I suppose, disgraced. Then appearances will speak falsely, and how can that matter, even if they do? I shall be a husband sooner or later, for certain, and so prove your purity. Stephen, once in London, I ought to have married you, she said firmly. It was my only safe defence. I see more things now than I did yesterday. My only remaining chance is not to be discovered, and that we must fight for most desperately. They stepped out, Elfride pulled a thick veil over her face. A woman with red and scaly eyelids and glistening eyes was sitting on a bench just inside the office door. She fixed her eyes upon Elfride with an expression whose force it was impossible to doubt, but the meaning of which was not clear. Then upon the carriage they had left. She seemed to read a sinister story by the scene. Elfride shrank back and turned the other way. Who is that woman, said Stephen? She looked hard at you. Mrs. Jethway, a widow and mother of that young man whose tomb we sat on the other night. Stephen, she is my enemy. Would that God had had mercy enough upon me to have hidden this from her? Do not talk so hopelessly, he remonstrated. I don't think she recognised us. I pray that she did not. He put on a more vigorous mood. Now, we will go and get some breakfast. No, no, she begged. I cannot eat. I must get back to Endelstow. Elfride was as if she had grown years older than Stephen now. But you have had nothing since last night, but that cup of tea at Bristol. I can't eat, Stephen. Wine and biscuit? No. Nor tea or coffee? No. Glass of water? No. I want something that makes people strong and energetic for the present, that borrows the strength of tomorrow for use today. Leaving tomorrow without any at all for that matter, or even that would take all life away tomorrow, as long as it enabled me to get home again now. Brandy, that's what I want. That woman's eyes had eaten my heart away. You are wild, and you grieve me, darling. Must it be Brandy? Yes, if you please. How much? I don't know. I have never drunk more than a teaspoon full at once. All I know is that I want it. Don't get it at the falcon. He left her in the fields, and went to the nearest inn in that direction. Presently he returned with a small flask nearly full, and some slices of bread and butter, tin as wafers, in a paper bag. Elfride took a sip or two. Ah, it goes into my eyes, she said wearily. I can't take any more. Yes, I will. I will close my eyes. Ah, it goes to them by an inside route. I don't want to throw it away. However, she could eat, and did eat. Her chief attention was concentrated now on how to get the horse from the falcon stables without suspicion. Stephen was not allowed to accompany her into the town. She acted now upon conclusions reached without any aid from him. His power over her seemed to have departed. You had better not be seen with me, even here where I am so little known. We have begun stealthily as thieves, and we must end stealthily as thieves at all hazards. Until papa has been told by me and myself, a discovery would be terrible. Walking and gloomily talking thus, they waited till nearly nine o'clock, at which time Alfredo thought she might call it a falcon without creating much surprise. Behind the railway station was the river, spanned by an old Tudor bridge, whence the road diverged in two directions, one skirting the suburbs of the town and winding round again to the high road to Endelstow. Beside this road Stephen sat, and awaited her return from the falcon. He sat as one sitting for a portrait, motionless, watching the checkered lights and shades on the tree trunks, the children playing opposite the school previous to entering for the morning lesson, and reapers in a field afar off. The certainty of possession had not come, and there was nothing to mitigate the huge gloom. That increased with the thought of the parting now so near. At length she came trotting round to him. In appearance much as on the romantic morning of her visited at Cliff, but shorn of the radiance which glistened about her den. However her comparative immunity from further risk and trouble had considerably composed her. Alfredo's capacity for being wounded was only surpassed by her capacity for healing, which rightly or wrongly is by some considered an index of transientness of feeling in general. Alfredo, what did they say at the falcon? Nothing. Nobody seems curious about me. They knew I was a plimoth, and I have stayed there a night now and then with Miss Bicknell. I rather calculated upon that. And now parting arose like a death to these children, for it was imperative that she should start at once. Stephen walked beside her for nearly a mile. During the walk he said sadly, Elfride, four and twenty hours have passed and the thing is not done. But you have ensured that it shall be done. How have I? Oh Stephen, you ask how. Do you think I could marry another man on earth after having gone thus far with you? Have I not shone beyond possibility of doubt that I can be nobody else's? Have I not irretrievably committed myself? Pride has stood for nothing in the face of my great love. You misunderstood my turning back and I cannot explain it. It was wrong to go with you at all, and though it would have been worse to go further, it would have been better policy perhaps. Be assured of this, that whenever you have a home for me, however poor and humble, and come and claim me, I am ready. She added bitterly, when my father knows of this day's work, he may be only too glad to let me go. Perhaps he may then insist upon our marriage at once, Stephen answered, seeing a ray of hope in the very focus of her remorse. I hope he may, even if we still have to part till I am ready for you, as we intended. Elfride did not reply. You don't seem the same woman, Elfi, that you were yesterday. Nor am I, but goodbye, go back now, and she reigned the horse for parting. Oh Stephen, she cried, I feel so weak, I don't know how to meet him. Can't you, after all, come back with me? Shall I come? Elfride paused to think. No, it will not do. It is my utter foolishness that makes me say such words, but he will send for you. Say to him, continued Stephen, that we did this in the absolute despair of our minds. Tell him we don't wish him to favour us, only to deal justly with us, if he says marry now so much the better. If not, say that all may be put right by his promise to allow me to have you, when I am good enough for you, which may be soon. Say I have nothing to offer him in exchange for his treasure, the more sorry I, but all the love, and all the life, and all the labour of an honest man shall be yours. As to when this had better been told, I leave you to judge. His words made her cheerful enough to toy with her position. And if ill reports should come, Stephen, she said, smiling, why, the orange tree must save me, as it saved virgins in St George's time from the poisonous breath of the dragon. There, forgive me for forwardness, I am going. Then the boy and girl beguiled themselves with words of half-parting only. Oh, wifey, God bless you till we meet again. Till we meet again, goodbye. The pony went on, and she spoke to him no more. He saw her figure diminished, and her blue veil grow gray, saw it with the agonizing sensations of a slow death. After thus parting from a man than whom she had known no greater as yet, Elfride rode rapidly onwards, a tear being occasionally shaken from her eyes into the road. What yesterday had seemed so desirable, so promising, even trifling, had now acquired a complexion of a tragedy. She saw the rocks and sea of the neighbourhood of Endelstow, and heaved a sigh of relief. When she passed a field behind the vicarage, she heard the voices of Unity and William Worm. They were hanging carpet upon a line. Unity was uttering a sentence that concluded with, When Miss Elfride comes. When they expect her, not an evening now, she saith enough in Miss Bicknell's blesser, Elfride went round to the door. She did not knock or ring, and seeing nobody to take the horse, Elfride led her round to the yard. Slipped off the bridle and saddle, drove her towards the paddock and turned her in. Then Elfride crept in doors, and looked into all the ground floor rooms. Her father was not there. On the mantelpiece of the drawing-rooms, stood a letter addressed to her in his handwriting. She took it, and read it, as she went upstairs to change her habit. Strathley, Thursday. Dear Elfride, on second thoughts I will not return today, but only come as far as what come. I shall be at home by tomorrow afternoon, and bring a friend with me, yours in haste, C.S. After making a quick toilet, she felt more revived, though still suffering from a headache. On going out of the door, she met Unity at the top of the stair. Oh, Miss Elfride! We said to Miss Elfride to her spirit. We didn't dream of you not coming home last, now you didn't say anything about staying. I intended to come home the same evening, but altered my plan. I wished I hadn't afterwards. Papa will be angry, I suppose. You better not tell him this, said Unity. I do fear to, she murmured. Unity, would you just begin telling him when he comes home? Wah, and get you into trouble. I deserve it. No indeed I won't, said Unity. It's not such a mighty matter, Miss. I said to myself, Master's taking the holiday, and because he's not been kind lately to Miss Elfride, she is imitating him. Well, do what you like, and now will you bring me some luncheon? After satisfying an appetite which the fresh marine air had given her in its victory over an agitated mind, she put on her hat and went to the garden and summer house. She sat down and lent with her head in a corner. Here she fell asleep. Half awake she hurriedly looked at the time. She had been there three hours. At the same moment she heard the outer gate swing together, and wheels sweep round the entrance, some prior noise from the same source having probably been the cause of her awake. Next her father's voice was heard calling William Worm. Elfride passed along a walk towards the house behind the belt of shrubs. She heard a tongue holding converse with her father, which was not that of either of the servants. Her father and the stranger were laughing together. Then there was a rustling of silk, and Mr Swancourt and his companion, or companions, to all seeming entered the door of the house, for nothing more of them was audible. Elfride had turned back to meditate on what friends these could be, when she heard footsteps, and her father exclaiming behind her. No, Elfride, there you are. I hope you got on well. Elfride's heart smote her, and she did not speak. Come back to the summer house a minute, continued Mr Swancourt. I have to tell you of that I promised to. They entered the summer house, and stood leaning over the knotty woodwork of the balustrade. Now, said her father radiantly, guess what I have to say. He seemed to be regarding his own existence so intently, that he took no interest in nor even saw the complexion of hers. I cannot, papa, she said sadly. Try, dear. I would rather not indeed. You are tired. You look worn. The ride was too much for you. Well, this is what I went away for. I went to be married. Married, she faltered, and could hardly check an involuntary, so to die, a moment after, and her resolve to confess perished like a bubble. Yes, to whom do you think? Mrs Troyton, the new owner of the state over the hedge, and of the old manor house. It was only finally settled between us when I went to Strathley a few days ago. He lowered his voice to a sly tone of merriment. Now, as your stepmother, you'll find she's not much to look at, though a good deal to listen to. She's twenty years older than myself, for one thing. You forget that I know her. She called here once, after we had been, and found her away from home. Of course, of course. Well, whatever her looks are, she's as excellent a woman as ever breathed. She has had lately left her as absolute property three thousand five hundred a year, besides the device of this estate. And, by the way, a large legacy came to her in satisfaction of Dower, as it is called. Three thousand five hundred a year? Ha-ha, and a large, well, a fair size mansion in town, and a pedigree as long as my walking stick, though that bears evidence of being rather a rate-up affair, done since the family got rich. People do these things now as they build ruins on maiden estates and cast antiques at Birmingham. Elfride merely listened and said nothing. He continued more quietly and impressively. Yes, Elfride. She is wealthy in comparison with us, though with very few connections. However, she will introduce you to the world a little. We are going to exchange her house in Baker Street for one at Kensington, for your sake. Everybody is going there now, she says. At Easter's, we shall fly down to town for the usual three months. I shall have a cure, of course, by that time. Elfride, I am past love, you know, and I honestly confess that I married her for your sake. Why, a woman of her standing should have thrown herself away upon me, God knows. But I suppose her age and plainness were too pronounced for a town man. With your good looks, if you now play your cards well, you may marry anybody. Of course, the little triathlons will be necessary, but there's nothing to stand between you and a husband with a title, that I can see. Lady Luxelian was only a squire's daughter. Now, don't you see how foolish that old fancy was? But come, she's indoors waiting to see you. It is as good as play to, continued the vicar, as they walked towards the house. I courted her through the privet hedge over yonder. Not entirely, you know, but we used to walk there all the evening. Nearly every evening at last. But my need didn't tell you the details now. Everything was terribly matter of fact. I assure you. At last, the day I saw her at Stratley, we determined to settle it off hand. And you never said a word to me, replied Elfride, not reproachfully, either in tone or thought. Indeed, her feeling was the very reverse of reproachful. She felt relieved and even thankful. Where confidence had not been given, how could confidence be expected? Her father mistook her dispassionateness for a veil of politeness over a sense of ill-usage. I am not altogether to blame, he said. There were two or three reasons for secrecy. One was the recent death of her relative, the Testator, although that did not apply to you. But remember, Elfride, he continued in a stiffer tone. You had mixed yourself up so foolishly with those low people, the smiths, and it was just two when Mrs. Troiton and myself were beginning to understand each other. That I resolved to say nothing even to you. How did I know how far you had gone with them and their son? You might have made a point of taking tea with them every day for all I knew. Elfride swallowed her feelings as best she could, and languidly, though flatly, asked the question. Did you kiss Mrs. Troiton on the lawn about three weeks ago? That evening I came into the study and found you who just had candles in. Mr. Swancourt looked rather red and abashed, as middle-aged lovers are apt to do when caught in the tricks of younger ones. Well, yes, I think I did, he stammered. Just to please her, you know. And then, recovering himself, he laughed heartily. And this was what your Horatio quotation referred to. It was, Elfride. They stepped into the drawing-room from the veranda. At that moment Mrs. Swancourt came downstairs and entered the same room by the door. Here, Charlotte, is my little Elfride, said Mr. Swancourt, with the increased affection of tone, often adopted towards relations when newly produced. Poor Elfride, not knowing what to do, did nothing at all, but stood receptive of all that came to her by sight, hearing, and touch. Mrs. Swancourt moved forward, took her step-daughter's hand, and then kissed her. Ah, darling! she exclaimed, good-humourly. You didn't think when you showed a strange old woman over the conservatory a month or two ago, and explained the flowers to her so prettily, that she would soon be here in new colours? Nor did she, I'm sure. The new mother had been truthfully enough described by Mr. Swancourt. She was not physically attractive, she was dark, very dark in complexion, portly in figure, and with a plentiful residium of hair in the proportion of half a dozen white ones to half a dozen black ones, though the latter were indeed black. No further observed she was not a woman to like, but there was more to see. To the most superficial critic, it was apparent that she made no attempt to disguise her age. She looked sixty at the first glance, and close acquaintanceship never proved her older. Another and still more winning trade was one attaching to the corners of her mouth. Before she made a remark, these often twitched gently, not backwards and forwards, the index of nervousness, not down upon the jaw the sign of determination, but palpably upwards, and precisely the curve adopted to represent mirth in the broad caricatures of schoolboys. Only this element in her face was expressive of anything within the woman, but it was unmistakable. It expressed humour, subjective as well as objective, which could survey the peculiarities of self in as whimsical a light as those of other people. This is not all of Mrs. Swancourt. She had held out to Elfride hands whose fingers were literally stiff with rings, sickness or a curigentes like Helen's robes. These rows of rings were not worn in vanity, apparently. They were mostly antique and dull, though a few were the reverse. Right hand. First, plainly set oval onyx, representing a devil's head. Second, green jasper intaglio with red veins. Third, entirely gold, bearing figure of a hideous griffin. Fourth, a sea-green monster diamond with small diamonds around it. Fifth, antique carnelian intaglio of dancing figure of a satire. Sixth, an angular band chased with dragon's heads. Seventh, a faceted carbuncle accompanied by ten little twinkling emeralds and etc. etc. Left hand. First, a reddish yellow toadstone. Second, a heavy ring enameled in colours and bearing a jascent. Third, an amethystine sapphire. Fourth, a polished ruby surrounded by diamonds. Fifth, the engraved ring of a nabbes. Sixth, a gloomy intaglio and etc. etc. Beyond this rather quaint array of stone and metal, Mrs. Swancourt wore no ornament whatever. Elfride had been favourably impressed with Mrs. Troiton at their meeting about two months earlier, but to be pleased with a woman as a momentary acquaintance was different from being taken with her as a stepmother. However, the suspension of feeling was just for a moment. Elfride decided to like her still. Mrs. Swancourt was a woman of the world as to knowledge, the reverse as to action, as her marriage suggested. Elfride and the lady were soon inextricably involved in conversation, and Mrs. Swancourt left them to themselves. And what do you find to do with yourself here? Mrs. Swancourt said after a few remarks about the wedding. You ride, I know? Yes, I ride, but not much, because papa doesn't like my going alone. There you must have somebody to look after you. And I read and write a little. You should write a novel. The regular resource of people who don't go enough into the world to live a novel is to write one. I have done it, said Elfride, looking dubiously at Mrs. Swancourt, as if in doubt whether she should meet with ridicule here. That's right, now then. What is it about, dear? About? Well, it's the romance of the Middle Ages. Ah, knowing nothing of the present age which everybody knows about, for safety you choose an age known neither to you nor to other people. That's it, eh? No, no, I don't mean it, dear. Well, I have had some opportunities of studying medieval art and manners in the library and private museum at Endelstow House, and I thought I should like to try my hand upon a fiction. Another time for these tales has passed, but I was interested in it, very much interested. When is it to appear? Oh, never, I suppose. Nonsense, my dear girl, publish it by all means. All ladies do that sort of thing now, not for profit, you know, but as a guarantee of mental respectability to their future husbands. An excellent idea of us ladies. Though I am afraid it rather resembles the melancholy ruse of throwing loaves over cattled walls at besiegers, and suggests desperation rather than plenty inside. Did you ever try it? No, I was too far gone even for that. Papa says no publisher will take my book. That remains to be proved. I'll give my word, my dear, that by this time next year it shall be printed. Will you, indeed, said Elfride, partially brightening with pleasure, though she was sad enough in her depths. I thought brains were the indispensable, even if the only, qualification for admission to the Republic of Letters. A mere commonplace creature like me will soon be turned out again. Oh, no, once you were there you'd be like a drop of water in a piece of rock crystal, your medium will dignify your commoness. It would be great satisfaction, Elfride murmured, and thought of Stephen, and wished she could make a great fortune by writing long masses, and marry him and live happily. And then we'll go to London, and then to Paris, said Mrs. Swancourt. I have been talking to your father about it. But we have first to move to the manor house, and we think of staying at Torquay while that is going on. Meanwhile, instead of going on a honeymoon scamper by ourselves, we have come home to fetch you, and go all together to Bath for two or three weeks. Elfride assented pleasantly, even gladly, but she saw that by this marriage her father and herself had ceased, forever, to be the close relations they had been up to a few weeks ago. It is impossible now to tell him the tale of a wild elopement with Stephen Smith. He was still snugly housed in her heart. His absence had regained for him much of that Oriola of saintship, which had been nearly abstracted during her approachable mood on that miserable journey from London. Rapture is often cooled by contact with its cause, especially if under awkward conditions. And that last experience with Stephen had done anything but make him shine in her eyes. His very kindness in netting a return was an offence. Elfride had her sex's love of sheer force in a man, however ill-directed, and at that critical juncture in London, Stephen's only chance of retaining the ascendancy over her that his face and not his parts had acquired for him would have been by doing what for one thing he was too youthful to undertake, that was dragging her by the wrist to the rails of some altar, and peremptorily marrying her. The size of action is seen by appreciative minds to be frequently objectless, and sometimes fatal, but decision, however suicidal, has more charm for a woman than the most unequivocal Fabian success. However, some of the unpleasant accessories of that occasion were now out of sight again, and Stephen had resumed not a few of his fancy colors. End of Chapter 12 A Pair of Blue Eyes Chapter 13 This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information at a volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Tyge Hines. A Pair of Blue Eyes by Thomas Hardy Chapter 13 He said in order many proverbs. It is London in October two months further on in the story. Beads Inn has this peculiarity, that it faces, receives from, and discharges into a bustling third affair, speaking only of wealth and respectability, whilst its post-air and a butt's on as crowded and poverty-stricken in network of alleys as are to be found anywhere in the metropolis. The moral consequences are, first, that those who occupy chambers in the Inn may see a great deal of shortless humanity's habits and enjoyments, without doing more than look down from a back window, and second, they may hear some wholesome though unpleasant social reminders, through the medium of a harsh voice and unequal footsteps, the echo of a blow or fall which originates in the person of some drunkard or wife-beater, as he crosses and interferes with the quiet of the square. Characters of this kind frequently pass through the Inn from a little foxhole of an alley at the back, but they never loiter there. It is hardly necessary to state that all the sights and movements proper to the Inn are most orderly. On the fine October evening, on which we follow Stephen Smith to this place, a placid porter is sitting on a stool under a sycamore tree in the midst, with a little cane in his hand. We notice the thick coat of sot upon the branches, hanging underneath them in flakes as in a chimney. The blackness of these bows does not at present improve the tree, nearly forsaken by its leaves as it is, but in the spring their green, fresh beauty is made doubly beautiful by the contrast. Within the railings is a flower garden of respectable dailies and chrysanthemums, where a man is sweeping the leaves from the grass. Stephen selects a dory and ascends an old, though wide wooden staircase, with moulded balusters and handrail, which, in a country manor house, will be considered a noteworthy specimen of Renaissance workmanship. He reaches a door on the first floor, over which is painted in black letters, Mr. Henry Knight, barrister at law, being understood but not expressed. The wall is thick, and there is a door at its inner and outer face. The other one happens to be a jar, and Stephen goes to the other and taps. Come in, from a distant penetraria. First was a small anti-roam, divided from the inner apartment by a wainscotted archway two or three yards wide. Across this archway hung a pair of dark green curtains, making a mystery of all within the arch, except a spasmodic scratching of a quill pen. Here was grouped a chaotic assemblage of articles, mainly old-framed prints and paintings, leaning edgewise against the wall like roofing slates in the builder's yard. All the books visible here were folios too big to be stolen, some lying on a heavy oak table in one corner, some on the floor among the pictures. The whole intermingled with old coats, hats, umbrellas and walking sticks. Stephen pushed aside the curtain, and before him sat a man riding away as if his life depended upon it, which it did. A man of thirty in a speckled coat with dark brown hair, curly beard, and crisp mustache, the latter running into the beard on each side of the mouth, and as usual hiding the real expression of that organ under a chronic aspect of impassivity. Ah, my dear fellow! I knew it was you! said Knight, looking up with a smile and holding out his hand. Knight's mouth and eyes came to view now. Both features were good, and had the peculiarity of appearing younger and fresher than the brow and face they belonged to, which were getting sickly door by the unmistakable pale cast. The mouth had not quite relinquished retundity of curve for the firm angularities of middle life, and the eyes, though keen, permeated rather than penetrated, what they had lost at their boy-time brightness by a dozen years of hard reading, lending a quietness to their gaze, which suited them well. A lady would have said there was a smell of tobacco in the room, a man that there was not. Knight did not rise. He looked at a time-piece on the mantel-shelf, then turned again to his letters, pointing to a chair. Well, I am glad you have come. I only returned to town yesterday. Now, don't speak, Stephen, for ten minutes. I have just that time to delay post. At the eleventh minute I am your man. Stephen sat down as if this kind of reception was by no means new, and away went Knight's pen, beating up and down like a ship in a storm. Cicero calls the library the soul of the house. Here the house was all soul. Portions of the floor and half the wall-space were taken up by book-shells, ordinary and extraordinary, the remaining parts together with brackets, side-tables, etc., being occupied by castes, statuettes, medallions, and plaques of various descriptions, picked up by the owner in his wandering through France and Italy. One stream-only of evening sunlight came into the room from a window quite in the corner, overlooking a court, an aquarium stood in the window. It was a dull, parallelepipidon enough for living creatures at most hours of the day, but for a few moments in the evening, as now, an errant kindly ray lighted up and warmed a little world therein. When the many-coloured zoo-fights opened and put forth their arms, the weeds acquired a rich transparency, the shells gleamed of a more golden yellow, and the timid community expressed gladness more plainly than in words. Within the prescribed ten minutes Knight flung down his pen, rang for the boy to take the letters to the post, and at the closing of the door exclaimed, There, thank God that's done. Now, Stephen, pull your chair round and tell me what you've been doing all this time. Have you kept up your Greek? No. How's that? I haven't enough spare time. That's nonsense. Well, I have done a great many things, if not that, and I have done one extraordinary thing. Knight turned full upon Stephen. Aha! Now then, let me look into your face and put two and two together, and make a shrewd guess. Stephen changed to a redder colour. Why, Smith, said night after holding him rigidly by his shoulders, and keenly scrutinising his countenance for a minute in silence, you have fallen in love. Well, the fact is, now out with it. But seeing that Stephen looked rather distressed, he changed to a kindly tone. Now, Smith, my lad, you know me well enough by this time, or you ought to, and you know very well that if you choose to give me a detailed account of the phenomenon within you, I shall listen. If you don't, I am the last man in the world who care to hear it. I'll tell this much. I have fallen in love, and I want to be married. Night looked ominous as this past Stephen's lips. Don't judge me before you have heard more, cried Stephen anxiously, seeing the change in his friend's countenance. I don't judge. Does your mother know about it? Nothing definite. Father? No, but I'll tell you. The young person—come, let's dreadfully un-gallant, but perhaps I understand the frame of mind a little, so go on. Your sweetheart. She is rather higher in the world than I am, as it should be. And her father won't hear of it as I now stand. Not an uncommon case. And now comes what I want your advice upon. Something has happened at her house, which makes it out of the question first to ask her father again now, so we are keeping silent. In the meantime, an architect in India has just written to Mr. Hube to ask whether he could find for him a young assistant willing to go over to Bombay to prepare drawings for work formally done by the engineers. The salary he offers is three hundred and fifty rupees a month, or about thirty-five pounds. Hube has mentioned it to me, and I have been to Dr. Ray, who says I shall acclimatize without much illness. Now, would you go? You mean to say because it's a possible road to the young lady? Yes. I was thinking I could go over and make a little money, and then come back and ask for her. I had the option of practicing for myself after a year. Would you be staunch? Oh, yes, forever, to the end of her life. And how do you know? Why, how do people know? Of course you will. Knight lent back in his chair. Now, though I know her thoroughly, as she exists in your heart, Stephen, I don't know her in the flesh. All I want to ask is, is this idea of going to India based entirely upon a belief in her fidelity? Yes, I should not go if it were not for her. Well, Stephen, you have put me in a rather awkward position. If I give my true sentiments, I shall hurt your feelings. If I don't, I shall hurt my own judgment. And remember, I don't know much about women. And but you have had attachments, although you tell me very little about them. And I only hope you'll continue to prosper till I tell you more. Stephen winced at this rap. I have never formed a deep attachment, continued Knight. I have never found a woman worth it. Nor have I been once engaged to be married. You write as if you have been engaged a hundred times, if I may be allowed to say so. Said Stephen in an injured tone. Yes, that may be true. But, my dear Stephen, it is only those who half know a thing that write about it. Those who know thoroughly don't take the trouble. All I know about women, or men either, is a mass of generalities. I plod along, and occasionally lift my eyes and skim the weltering surface of mankind, lying between me and the horizon, as a crow might. No more. Knight stopped as if he had fallen into a train of thought, and Stephen looked with affection at all, at a master whose mind, he believed, could swallow up at one meal all that his own head contained. There was effective sympathy, but no great intellectual fellowship, between Knight and Stephen Smith. Knight had seen his young friend, when the latter was a cherry-cheeked, happy boy, had been interested in him, and kept his eye upon him, and generously helped the lad to books, till the mere connection of patronage grew to acquaintance, and that ripened to friendship. And so, though Smith was not at all the man Knight would have deliberately chosen as a friend, or even for one of a group of a dozen friends, he somehow was his friend. Circumstance, as usual, did it all. How many of us can say, of our most intimate alter ego, leaving alone friends of the outer circle, that he is the man we should have chosen, as embodying the net result, after adding up all the points in human nature that we love, and principles we hold, and subtracting all that we hate. The man is really somebody we got to know by mere physical juxtaposition, long maintained, and was taken into our confidence and even heart as a makeshift. And what do you think of her? Stephen mentioned to say after a silence. Taking her merit and trust from you, said Knight, as we do those of the Roman poets of whom we know nothing but that they lived, I still think she will not stick to you through, say, three years of absence in India. But she will, cried Stephen desperately. She is a girl all delicacy and honour, and no woman of that kind who has committed herself so into a man's hands as she has into mine could possibly marry another. How has she committed herself? asks Knight curiously. Stephen did not answer. Knight had looked on his love so skeptically that it would not do to say all that he had intended to say by any means. Well, don't tell, said Knight, but you are begging the question, which is, I suppose, inevitable in love. And I'll tell you another thing, the younger man pleaded. You remember what you said to me once about women receiving a kiss? Don't you? Why, that instead of our being charmed by the fascination of their bearing at such a time, we should immediately doubt them if their confusion has any grace in it, that awkward bungling was the true charm of the occasion, implying that we were the first to have played such a part with them. It's true, quite, said Knight musingly. It often happened that the disciple thus remembered the lessons of the master, long after the master himself had forgotten them. Well, that was like her, cried Stephen triumphantly. She was in such a flurry that she didn't know what she was doing. Splendid! Splendid! said Knight soothingly. So that all I have to say is that if you see a good opening in Bombay, there's no reason why you should not go, without troubling to draw fine distinctions as to reasons. No man fully realises what opinions he acts upon, or what his actions mean. Yes, I go to Bombay. I write a note here, if you don't mind. I'll sleep over at its best plan, and right tomorrow. Meantime, go there to that window and sit down, and look at my humanity show. I'm going to dine out this evening, and have to dress here out of my portmanteau. I bring my things up like this to save the trouble of going down to my place at Richmond and back again. Knight then went to the middle of the room, and flung open his portmanteau, and Stephen drew near the window. The streak of sunlight had crept upward, edged away, and vanished. The zoo-fights slept. A dusky gloom pervaded the room. And now another volume of light shone over the window. There, said Knight, where is there in England a spectacle to equal that? I sit here and watch them every night before I go home, softly open the sash. Beneath them was an alley running up to the wall, and dense turning sideways and passing under an arch, so that Knight's back window was immediately over the angle, and commanded a view of the alley lengthwise. Crowds, mostly of women, were surging, bustling, and pacing up and down. Gaslights glared from butcher stalls, illuminating the lumps of flesh to splotches of orange and vermilion, like the wild colouring of Turner's later pictures, whilst the pearl and babble of tongues of every pitch and mood was to this human wild wood what a ripple of a brook is to the natural forest. Nearly ten minutes passed, then Knight also came to the window. Well, now I call a cabin vanish down the street in the direction of Berkeley Square. He said, buttoning his waistcoat and kicking his morning suit into a corner. Stephen rose to leave. What a heap of literature! remarked the young man, taking a final longing survey around the room, as if to abide there forever would be the great pleasure of his life, yet feeling that he had almost outstayed his welcome while. His eyes rested upon an armchair, piled full of newspapers, magazines, and bright new volumes in green and red. Yes, at night, also looking at them, and breathing a sigh of weariness. Something must be done with several of them soon, I suppose. Stephen, you needn't hurry away for a few minutes, you know. If you want to stay, I am not quite ready. Overhaul those volumes whilst I put on my coat, and I'll walk a little way with you. Stephen sat down beside the armchair, and began to tumble the books about. Among the rest he found a novelette in Munvalium, the Court of Kellyan Castle by Ernest Field. Are you going to review this? inquired Stephen with apparent unconcern, and holding up Belphine as a fusion. Which, though that, I may, though I don't do much like reviewing now, but it is reviewable. And how do you mean? Night never liked to be asked what he meant. Mean? I mean that the majority of books published are neither good enough nor bad enough to provoke criticism, and that that book does provoke it. By its goodness or its badness? Stephen said with some anxiety on poor little Elfride's score. Oh, its badness! It seems to be written by some girl in her teens. Stephen said not another word. He did not care to speak plainly of Elfride after that unfortunate slip his tongue had made in respect of her having committed herself. And, apart from that, Night's severe, almost dogged and self-willed honesty and criticising was unassailable by the humble wish of a youthful friend like Stephen. Night was now ready. Turning off the gas and slamming together the door, they went downstairs and into the street. End of Chapter 13 A Pair of Blue Eyes, Chapter 14 This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information on the volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Ty Hines. A Pair of Blue Eyes by Thomas Hardy, Chapter 14. We frolic while it is May. It is now to be realised that nearly three-quarters of the year have passed away. In place of the autumnal scenery which formed the setting to the previous enactments, we have the culminating blooms of summer in the year following. Stephen is in India, slaving away at an office in Bombay, occasionally going up the country on professional errands, and wondering why people who have been there longer than he complained so much of the effect of the climate upon their constitutions. Never had a young man a finer start than seemed now to present itself to Stephen. It was just in that exceptional heyday of prosperity which shone over Bombay some years ago that he arrived on the scene, building an engineering part hook of the general impetus. Speculation moved with an accelerated velocity every successive day, and the only disagreeable contingency connected with it being the possibility of a collapse. Elfride had never told her father of the four and twenty hours escapaded Stephen, nor had it to her knowledge come to his ears by any other route. It was a secret trouble and grief to the girl for a short time, and Stephen's departure was another ingredient in her sorrow. But Elfride possessed special facilities for getting rid of trouble after a decent interval. Whilst the slow nature was unbibing of misfortune little by little, she had swallowed the whole agony of it out of draft, and was brightening again. She could slow off all sadness and replace it by a hope, as easily as a lizard renews a diseased limb. And two such excellent distractions had presented themselves. One was bringing out the romance and looking for notices in the papers, which, though they had been significantly short so far, had served to divert her thoughts. The other was migrating from the vicarage to the more commodious old house of Mrs. Swancourt's, overlooking the same valley. Mr. Swancourt at first is like the idea of being transplanted to feminine soil, but the obvious advantages of such an accession of dignity reconciled him to the change. So there was a radical move, the two young ladies staying at Torquay, as had been arranged, and the vicar going to and fro. Mrs. Swancourt considerably enlarged Alfrida's ideas in an aristocratic direction, and she began to forgive her father for his politic marriage. Certainly, in a worldly sense, a handsome face at three and forty had never served a man in better stead. The new house at Kensington was ready, and they all were in town. The Hyde Park shrubs had been transplanted as usual, the chairs ranked in line, the grass edgings trimmed, the roads made to look as if they were suffering from a heavy thunderstorm, carriages had been called for by the easeful, horses by the brisk, and the drive and row were again the groove of gaiety for an hour. We gaze upon the spectacle at six o'clock on this mid-summer afternoon, in a melon-frame atmosphere and beneath a violet sky. The Swancourt Equipage formed one of the stream. Mrs. Swancourt was a talker of talk of the incisive kind, which her low musical voice, the only beautiful point in the old woman, prevented from being wearisome. Now, she said to Alfrida, who, like Anais at Cartage, was full of admiration for the brilliant scene, you will find that our companion estate will give us, as it does everybody, an extraordinary power in reading the features of our fellow creatures here. I always am a listener in such places at ease, not to the narratives told by the neighbour's tongues, but by their faces, the advantage of which is that whether I'm in row, boulevard, rialto, or prado, they all speak the same language. I may have acquired some skill in this practice, true having been an ugly, lonely woman for so many years with nobody to give me information, a thing you will not consider strange when the parallel case is borne in mind, how truly people who have no clocks will tell the time of day. I, that they will, said Mrs. Swancourt corroboratively, I have known labouring men at Endelstow and other farms, who have framed complete systems of observation for that purpose, by means of shadows, winds, clouds, the movements of sheep and oxen, the singing of birds, the crowing of cocks, and the hundred other sights and sounds which people would watch as in their pocket never know the existence of. They are able to pronounce them within ten minutes of the hour, almost at any required instant. That reminds me of an old story, which I'm afraid is too bad, too bad to repeat. Here the vicar shook his head and laughed inwardly. Tell it, too, said the ladies. Aye, I mustn't quite tell it. That's absurd, said Mrs. Swancourt. It was only about a man who, by the same careful system of observation, was known to deceive people for more than two years into the belief that he kept a barometer by stealth. So exactly did he foretell all changes in the weather by the bring of his ass and the temper of his wife. Elfride laughed. Exactly, said Mrs. Swancourt, and in just the same way that those learned signs of nature, I have learned the language of their illegitimate sister, artificiality, and the fibbing of eyes, the contempt of nose tips, the indignation of back hair, the laughter of clothes, the cynicism of footsteps, and the various emotions lying in walking stick twirls, hat liftings, the elevation of parasols, the carriage of umbrellas, become as A, B, C to me. Just look at that daughter's sister's class of a mama in the carriage across there. She continued to Elfride, pointing with merely a turn of her eye. The absorbing self-consciousness of her position that is shown by her countenance is most humiliating to a lover of one's country. You would hardly believe, would you, that members of a fashionable world, whose profess zero is far above the highest degree of the humble, could be so ignorant of the elementary instincts of reticence. How? Why, to bear on their faces as plainly as on a phylactery, the inscription. Do pray, look at the coronet on my panels. Really, Charlotte, said the vaker, you see as much in faces as Mr. Puff saw in Lord Burley's nod. Elfride could not but admire the beauty of her fellow country-women, especially since herself and her own few acquaintances had always been slightly sunburned or marked on the back of the hands by a bramble scratch at this time of the year. And what lovely flowers and leaves they wear on their bonnets, she exclaimed. Oh, yes, returned Mrs. Swancourt. Some of them are even more striking in colour than any real ones. Look at that beautiful rose worn by the lady inside the rails. Elegant, vine tendrils introduced upon the stem as an improvement upon prickles, and all growing so naturally just over her ear. I say, growing advisedly, for the pink of the petal and the pink of her handsome cheeks are equally from nature's hand to the eyes of the most casual observer. Oh, but praise them a little, they do deserve it, said generous Elfride. Well, I do. See how the duchess of waves to and fro in her seat, utilising the sway of her land-o by looking around, only when her head swung forward with a passive pride which forbids a resistance to the force of circumstance. Look at the pretty pelt on the mouths of that family there, retaining no traces of being arranged beforehand, so well as it done. Look at the mure clothes of the little fists holding the parasols, the tiny, alert tom, sticking up erect against the ivory stem, as knowing as can be the satin of the parasol, invariably matching the complexion of the face beneath it, yet seemingly by accident, which makes the thing so attractive. There's the red buck lying on the seat opposite, bespeaking the vast numbers of their acquaintance, and I particularly admire the aspect of that abundantly daughtered woman on the other side. I mean, her look of unconsciousness that the girls are stared at by walkers, and above all the looks of the girls themselves, losing their gaze in the depths of handsome men's eyes, without appearing to notice whether they are observing masculine eyes or the leaves of the trees. There's praise for you, but I am only jesting, child, you know that. Oh, how warm it is to be sure, said Mr. Swancourt, as if his mind were a long distance from all he saw. I declare that my watch is so hot that I can scarcely bear to touch it to see what time it is, and all the world smells like the inside of a hat. How the men stare at you, Elfride, said the elder lady. You will kill me quite, I'm afraid. Kill you? As a diamond kills an opal in the same setting. I have noticed several ladies and gentlemen looking at me, said Elfride Artlessly, showing her pleasure at being observed. My dear, you must not say gentlemen nowadays. Her stepmother answered, In the tones of art's concern so well became her ugliness. We have handed over gentlemen to the lower middle class, where the word is still to be heard at tradesmen's balls and provincial tea parties, I believe. It is done with ear. What must I say then? Ladies and men, always. At this moment appeared in the stream of vehicles moving in the contrary direction a chariot, presenting in its general surface the rich indigo hue of a midnight sky. The wheels and margins being picked out in delicate lines of ultramarine. The servants' liveries were dark blue coats and silver lace, and breeches of neutral Indian red. The whole concern formed an organic whole, and moved along behind a pair of dark chestnut gelings, who advanced in an indifferently zealous trot, very daintily performed, and occasionally shrugged diverse points of their veiny surface, as if they were rather above the business. In this sat a gentleman, with no decided characteristics more than that he somewhat resembled the good-natured commercial traveller of the superior class, beside whom was a lady with skim milky eyes and complexion, belonging to the interesting class of women, where that class merges in the sickly, her greatest pleasure being apparently to enjoy nothing. Opposite this pair sat two little girls in white hats and blue feathers. The lady saw Elfride smiled and bowed, and touched her husband's elbow, who turned and received Elfride's movement of recognition with a glant elevation of his hat. Then the two children held up their arms to Elfride and laughed gleefully. Who is that? White Lord Luxelian, isn't it? said Mrs. Swancourt, who with a vicar had been seated with her back towards them. Yes, replied Elfride. He's the one man of these I have seen here whom I consider handsome more than papa. Hmm, thank you, dear, said Mr. Swancourt. Yes, but your father is so much older, when Lord Luxelian gets a little further on in life, he won't be half so good-looking as our man. Well, thank you, dear likewise, said Mr. Swancourt. See? exclaimed Elfride, still looking towards them, had those little dears want me. Actually, one of them is crying for me to come. We were talking of bracelets just now. Look at Lady Luxelian's, said Mrs. Swancourt, as that Baroness lifted up her arm to support one of the children. It is slipping up her arm, too large by half. I hate to see daylight between a bracelet and a wrist. I wonder women haven't better taste. It's not on that account indeed, Elfride expostulated. It is that her arm has got thin, poor thing. You cannot think how much she has altered in this last twelve month. The carriages were now nearer together, and there was an exchange of more familiar greetings between the two families. Then the Luxelians crossed over and drew up under the plain trees, just in the rear of the Swancourt's. Lord Luxelian elighted and came forward with a musical laugh. It was his attraction as a man. People liked him for those tones, and forgot he had no talents. Acquaintances remembered Mrs. Swancourt by his manner. They remembered Stephen Smith by his face, Lord Luxelian by his laugh. Mrs. Swancourt made some friendly remarks, among other things, upon the heat. Yes, said Lord Luxelian. We were driving by a furrier's window this afternoon, and the sight filled us all with such sense of suffocation that we were glad to get away. He turned to Elfride. Mrs. Swancourt, I have hardly seen or spoken to you since your literary feat was made public. I had no idea a child was making notes down at quiet end or so, or I should certainly have put myself and friends upon our best behaviour. Swancourt, why didn't you give me a hint? Elfride fluttered, blushed, laughed, and said it was nothing to speak of, etc. etc. Well, I think you were rather unfairly treated in the present. I certainly do. Writing a heavy review like that upon an elegant trifle like the court of Kellion Castle was absurd. What, said Elfride, opening her eyes, was I reviewed in the present? Oh, yes, didn't you see it? Why, it was four or five months ago. No, I never saw it. How sorry I am. What a shame of my publishers. They promised to send me every notice that appeared. Ah, then I am almost afraid that I have been giving you disagreeable information intentionally withheld out of courtesy. Depend upon it, they thought no good would come of sending it, and so would not pay anyone necessarily. Oh, no, I am glad indeed you have told me, Lord Augellion. It's quite a mistaken kindness on their part. Is the review so much against me? She required tremulously. No, no, not that exactly. Though I almost forget it's the exact purport now. It was merely, merely sharp. You know, ungenerous I might say. But really, my memory does not enable me to speak decidedly. We'll drive to the present offices and get one directly, shall we, papa? If you're so anxious, dear, we will, nor send, but to-morrow we'll do. And do oblige me in a little matter now, well, Friede, said Lord Augellion, warmly and looking as if you were sorry he had brought the news that disturbed her. I am, in reality, sent here as a special messenger by my little Kate and Polly to ask you to come into our carriage with them for a short time. I am just going for a walk across the Piccadilly, and my wife is left alone with them. I am afraid they are rather spoilt children, but I have half promised them they'd you'll come. The steps were let down and now Friede was transferred to the intense delight of the little girls, and to the mild interest of loungers with red skins and long necks, who curiously eyed the performance with their walking sticks to their lips, occasionally laughing from far down their throats and with their eyes, their mouths not being concerned in the operation at all. Lord Augellion then told the coachman to drive on, lifted his hat, smiled a smile that missed its mark, and alighted on a total stranger, who bowed in bewilderment. Lord Augellion looked long at Friede. The look was a manly, open, and genuine look of admiration. A momentary tribute of a kind, which any honest Englishman might have paid to fairness, without being ashamed of the feeling, or permitting it to encroach, in the slightest degree upon his emotional obligations as a husband and head of a family, then Lord Augellion turned away and walked amusingly to the upper end of the promenade. Mr Swancourt had alighted at the same time with Alfreda, crossing over to the row for a few minutes to speak to a friend he recognised there, and his wife was thus left sole tenant of the carriage. Now, whilst this little act had been in course of performance, there stood among the promenading spectators a man of somewhat different description from the rest. Behind the general throng, in the rear of the chairs, and leaning against the trunk of a tree, he looked at Alfreda with quiet and critical interest. Three points about his unobtrusive person showed promptly to the exercise eye that he was not a raw man, pure sang. First, an inoppressable wrinkle or two in the waist of his frock coat, denoting that he had not damned his tailor sufficiently to drive that tradesman up to the orthodox high pressure of cunning workmanship. Second, a slight slovenliness of umbrella, occasioned by its owner's habit of resting heavily upon it, and using it as a veritable walking stick, instead of letting its point touch the ground in the most coquettish of kisses, as is the proper role-manner to do. Third and chief reason, that try as you might, you could scarcely help supposing, on looking at his face, that your eyes were not far from a well finished mind, instead of the well-finished skin at Pateria Nihil, which is by rights the mark of the role. The probability is that, had not Mrs. Onecourt been left alone in her carriage under the tree, this man would have remained in his unobserved seclusion. But seeing her thus, he came round to the front, stooped under the rail, and stood beside the carriage door. Mrs. Onecourt looked reflectively at him for a quarter of a minute, then held out her hand laughingly. Why, Henry Knight, of course it is, my second, third, fourth cousin, what shall I say, at any rate, my kinsman? Yes, one of a remnant not yet cut off. I scarcely was certain of you, either, from where I was standing. I have not seen you since you first went to Oxford, considered a number of years. You know, I suppose, of my marriage. And there sprang up a dialogue concerning family matters of birth, death and marriage, which is not necessary to detail. Knight presently inquired. The young lady who changed into their carriages, then, your step-daughter. Yes, Elfride, you must know her. And who was the lady in the carriage Elfride entered, who had an ill-defined and watery look, as if she were only the reflection of herself in a pool? Lady Luxellian, very weakly, Elfride says. My husband is remotely connected to them, but there is not much intimacy on account of. However, Henry, you will come and see us, of course. Twenty-four Chevron Square. Come this week, or she'll only be in town a week or two longer. Let me see. I've got to run to Oxford tomorrow, where I shall be for several days, so that I must, I fear, lose the pleasure of seeing you in London this year. Then come to Endelstow, for why not return with us? I am afraid that if I were to come before August I should have to leave again in a day or two. I should be delighted to be with you at the beginning of the month, and I could stay a nice long time, and I have thought of going westward all the summer. Very well. Now, remember, that's a compact, and won't you wait now and see Mr Swancourt? He'll not be away ten minutes longer. No, I beg to be excused, for I must get to my chambers again this evening before I go home. Indeed, I ought to have been there now. I have such a press of matters to attend to just at present. You will explain to him, please. Goodbye. And let us know the day of your appearance as soon as you can. I will. End of Chapter 14. A Pair of Blue Eyes, Chapter 15. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Tyge Hines. A Pair of Blue Eyes by Thomas Hardy, Chapter 15. A Wondering Voice Though sheer and intelligible griefs are not charmed away by being confided to mere acquaintances, the process is appalliative to certain ill-humours. Among these, perplex vexation is one, a species of trouble which, like a stream, gets shallower by the simple operation of widening it in any quarter. On the evening of the day succeeding that of the meeting in the park, Elfride and Mrs. Swancourt were engaged in conversation in the dressing room of the latter. Such a treatment of such a case was in course of adoption here. Elfride had just before received an affectionate letter from Stephen Smith in Bombay, which had been forwarded to her from Endelstow. But since this is not the case referred to, it is not worthwhile to pry further into the contents of the letter, than to discover that with rash though pardonable confidence in coming times, he addressed her in high spirits as his darling future wife. Probably there cannot be instanced a briefer and sure a rule of thumb test of a man's temperament, sanguine or cautious, than this. Did he or does he antidate the word wife in corresponding with a sweetheart he honestly loves? She had taken this epistle to her own room, read a little of it, then saved the rest for to-morrow, not wishing to be so extravagant as to consume the pleasure all at once. Nevertheless she could not resist the wish to enjoy yet a little more, so out came the letter again, and in spite of misgivings as to prodigality the whole was devoured. The letter was finally re-perused and placed in her pocket. What was this? Also a newspaper for Elfride, which she had overlooked in a hurry to open the letter. It was the old number of the present containing the article upon her book, forwarded as had been requested. Elfride had hastily read through it, shrunk perceptibly smaller, and then gone with the paper in her hand to Mrs. Swancourt's dressing room, to lighten or at least modify her vexation by a discriminating estimate from her stepmother. She was now looking disconsolidately out of the window. Never mind, my child, said Mrs. Swancourt, after a careful perusal of the matter indicated. I don't see that the review is such a terrible one after all, besides, everybody has forgotten about it by this time. I'm sure the opening is good enough for any book ever written. Just listen, it sounds better read aloud than when you pull over it silently. The Court of Kellyan Castle, the Romance of the Middle Ages, by Ernest Field In the belief that we were for a while escaping the monotonous repetition of weary some details in modern social scenery, analyses of uninteresting character, or the unnatural unfoldings of a sensation plot, we took this volume into our hands with a feeling of pleasure. We were disposed to beguile ourselves with the fancies that some new change might possibly be rung upon Don John Keeps, chain and plate armour, deeply scarred cheeks, tender maidens disguised as pages, to which we had not listened long ago. Now that's a very good beginning, in my opinion, and one to be proud of having brought out of a man who has never seen you. Ah, yes, murmurly Elfrida, woefully, but then see further on. Well, the next bit is rather unkind, I must own, said Mrs Swancourt, and read on. Instead of this, we found ourselves in the hands of some young lady, hardly arrived at years of discretion, to judge by the silly device it has been taught worthwhile to adopt on the title page, with the idea of disguising her sex. I am not silly, said Elfrida indignantly, he might have called me anything but that. You are not indeed. Well, hands of a young lady, whose chapters are simply devoted to impossible tournaments, towers and escapades, which read like flat copies of the scene of the stories of Mr. G. P. R. James, and the most unreal portions of Ivanhoe, the bait is so palpably artificial that the most credulous Guggen turns away. Now, my dear, I don't see over much to complain of in that. It proves that you are clever enough to make him think of Sir Water Scott, which is a great deal. Oh, yes, though, I cannot romance myself if I am able to remind them of those who can. Elfrida intended to hurl these words sarcastically at her invisible enemy, but that she had no more satirical power than a wood pigeon. They merely fell in a pretty murmur from her lips, shaped to a pout. Certainly, and that's something, your book is good enough to be bad in an ordinary literary manner, and doesn't stand by itself in a melancholy position altogether worse than assailable. That interest in historical romance may nowadays have any chance of being sustained. It is indispensable that the reader find himself under the guidance of some nearly extinct species of legendary, who, in an addition to impulse towards antiquarian research and an unweakened faith in the medieval halo, shall possess an inventive faculty in which delicacy of sentiment is far overtopped by a power of welding to stirring incident, a spirited variety of the elementary human passions. Well, that long-winded effusion doesn't refer to you at all, Elfrida. It's merely something put in to fill it up. Let me see. When does he come to you again? Not till the very end, actually. Oh, here you are, finally polished off. But to return to the little work we have just used as a text for this article, we are far from altogether disparaging the author's powers. She has a certain versatility that enables her to use with effect a style of narration peculiar to herself, which may be called a murmuring of delicate emotional trifles. The particular gift of those to whom the social sympathies of a peaceful time are as daily food. Hence, where matters of domestic experience and the natural touches which make people real can be introduced without anachronisms too striking, she is occasionally felicitous, and upon the whole we feel justified in saying that the book will bear looking into, for the sake of those portions, which have nothing whatsoever to do with the story. Well, I suppose it's intended for satire, but don't think anything more of it now, my dear. It is seven o'clock, and Mrs. Juancourt rang for her maid. Attack is more peak-wand than concourt. Stephen's letter was concerning nothing but oneness with her. The review was the very reverse, and a stranger with neither name nor shape, age nor appearance, but a mighty voice, is naturally a rather interesting novelty to a lady he chooses to address. When Elfride fell asleep that night, she was loving the writer of the letter, but thinking of the writer of the article. End of Chapter 15 A Pair of Blue Eyes, Chapter 16 This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Tyge Hines. A Pair of Blue Eyes by Thomas Hardy, Chapter 16 Then Fancy Shapes as Fancy Can On a day about three weeks later, the Juancourt trio were sitting quietly in the drawing in which the crags, Mrs. Juancourt's house at Endelstow, chatting and taking easeful survey of their previous month or two of town, a tangible weariness even to people whose acquaintances there might be counted on the fingers. A mere season in London with her practised stepmother had so advanced Elfride's perceptions that her courtship by Stephen seemed emotionally meagre and to have drifted back several years to a childish past. In regarding our mental experiences as in visual observation our own progress reeds like a dwindling of that we progress from. She was seated on a low chair overlooking her romance with melancholy interest for the first time since she had become acquainted with the remarks of the present thereupon. Still thinking of that reviewer, Elfi? Not of him personally, but I am thinking of his opinion. Really, on looking into the volume after this long time has elapsed he seems to have estimated one part of it fairly enough. No, no, I wouldn't show the white feather now. Fancy that of all people in the world the writer herself should go over to the enemy. How shall Monmouth's men fight when Monmouth runs away? I don't do that, but I think he is right in some of his arguments and though wrong in others, and because he has some claim to my respect I regret all the more that he should think so mistakenly of my modus in one or two instances. It is more vexing to be misunderstood than to be misrepresented, and he misunderstands me. I cannot be easy whilst a person goes to rest night after night attributing to me intentions I never had. He doesn't know your name or anything about you, and he has doubtless forgotten there is such a book in existence by this time. I myself should certainly like him to be put right upon one or two matters, said the vicar, who had hitherto been silent. You see, critics go on writing, and are never corrected or argued with, and therefore are never improved. Papa, said Alfreda Brightney, write to him. I should soon write to him as look at him for the matter of that, said Mr. Swancourt. Do, and say, the young person who wrote the book did not adopt a masculine pseudonym in vanity or conceit, but because she was afraid it would be taught presumptuous to publish her name, and that she did not mean the story for such as he, but as a sweetener of history for young people, who might thereby acquire a taste for what went on in their own country hundreds of years ago, and be tempted to dive deeper into the subject. Oh, there's so much to explain. I wish I might write it myself. Now, Elfie, I'll tell you what we shall do, answered Mr. Swancourt, tickled with a sort of bucolic humour at the idea of criticising the critic. You shall write a clear account of what he's wrong in, and I will copy it and send it as mine. Yes, now, directly, said Alfreda, jumping up. When will you send it, Papa? Oh, in a day or two, I suppose, he returned. Then the vicar paused and yawned slightly, and in the manner of elderly people began to cool from his ardour for the undertaking, now that it had become the point. But really, it was hardly worthwhile, he said. Oh, Papa, said Elfride, with much disappointment. You said you would, and now you won't. That is not fair. But how can we send it, if we don't know who to send it to? If you really want to send such a thing, it can easily be done, said Mrs. Swancourt, coming to her stepdaughter's rescue. An envelope addressed to the critic of the court of Kellion Castle, care of, the editor of the present, would find him. Yes, I suppose it would. Why not write your answer yourself, Elfride, Mrs. Swancourt inquired. I might, she said, hesitatingly, and send it anonymously. That would be treating him, as he treated me. No use in the world. But I don't like to let him know my exact name. Suppose I put my initials only, the less you were known, the more you were thought of. Yes, you might do that. Elfride is set to work there and then. Her one desire for the last fortnight seemed likely to be realized. As happens with sensitive and secluded minds, a continual dwelling upon the subject had magnified to colossal proportions, the space she assumed herself to occupy, or to have occupied, in the occult critic's mind. At noon and at night she had been pestering herself with endeavours to perceive more distinctly his conception of her as a woman, apart from an author, whether he really despised her, whether he taught more or less of her than of ordinary young women, who never ventured into the fire of criticism at all. Now she would have the satisfaction of feeling that, at any rate, he knew her true intent in crossing his path, and annoying him so by her performance, and be taught perhaps to despise it a little less. Four days later an envelope directed to Mrs. Swancourt in a strange hand made its appearance from the post-bag. Oh! said Elfride, her heart's sinking within her. Can it be from that man, a lecture for impertinence, and actually one for Mrs. Swancourt in the same handwriting? She feared to open hers. Yet how can he know my name? No, it is somebody else. Nonsense! said her father grimly. You sent your initials, and the directory was available, though we wouldn't have taken the trouble to look there unless he had been thoroughly savage with you. I thought you wrote with rather more disparity than simple literary discussion required. This timely clause was introduced to say the character of the vicar's judgment under any issue of affairs. Well, here I go, said Elfride, desperately tearing open the seal. To be sure, of course, exclaimed Mrs. Swancourt, and looking up from her own letter. Christopher, I quite forgot to tell you, when I mentioned that I had seen my distant relative, Harry Knight, that I invited him here for whatever length of time he could spare, and now he says he can come any day in August. Right, and say the first of the month, replied the indiscriminate vicar. She read on. Goodness me, and that isn't all. He is actually the reviewer of Elfride's book. How absurd, to be sure. I had no idea he reviews novels or had anything to do with the present. He is a barrister, and I thought he only wrote in the quarterlies. Why, Elfride, you have brought about an odd entanglement. What does he say to you? Elfride had put down her letter with a dissatisfied flush on her face. I don't know. The idea of his knowing my name and all about me. Why, he says nothing in particular, only this. My dear madam, though I am sorry that my remark should have seemed harsh to you, it is a pleasure to find that I have been the means of bringing forth such an ingeniously argued reply. Unfortunately it is so long since I wrote my review that my memory does not serve me sufficiently to say a single word in my defence, even supposing there remains one to be said, which is doubtful. You will find from a letter I have written to Mrs Swancourt that we are not such strangers to each other as we have been imagining. Possibly I may have the pleasure of seeing you soon. When any argument you choose to advance shall receive all the attention it deserves. That is dim sarcasm, I know it is. Oh, no, Elfride. And then his remarks didn't seem harsh, I mean I did not say so. He thinks you were in a frightful temper, said Mrs Swancourt, chuckling in undertones. And he will come and see me and find the authorous, as contemptible in speech as she has been impertinent in manner. Oh, I do heartily wish I had never written a word to him. Never mind, said Mrs Swancourt, also laughing in low, quiet jerks. It will make the meaning so much a comical affair, and the forts splendid byplay for your father and myself. Oh, the idea of our running our heads against Henry Knight after all this time. I cannot get over that. The vicar had immediately remembered the name to be that of Stephen Smith's preceptor and friend. But having ceased to concern himself in the matter, he made no remark to that effect. Consistently for bearing to allude to anything, which could restore recollection of the, to him, disagreeable mistake with regard to poor Stephen's lineage and position. Elfride had, of course, perceived the same thing, which added to the complication of relationship a mesh that her stepmother knew nothing of. The identification scarcely heightened Knight's attractions now, though a twelve-month ago she would only have cared to see him for the interest he possessed the Stephen's friend. Fortunately for Knight's event, such a reason for welcome had only begun to be awkward to her, at a time when the interest he had acquired on his own account made it no longer necessary. These coincidences, in common with all relating to him, tended to keep Elfride's mind upon the stretch concerning Knight. As was her custom, when upon the horns of a dilemma, she walked off by herself among the laurel bushes, and there, standing still and splitting up a leaf without removing it from its stalk, fetched back recollections of Stephen's frequent words and praise of his friend, and wished she had listened more attentively. Then, still pulling the leaf, she would blush at some fancied mortification that would accrue to her from his words when they met, in consequence of her intrusiveness, as she now considered it, in writing to him. The next development of her meditations was the subject of what this man's personal appearance might be. Was he tall or short, dark or fair, gay or grim? She would have asked Mrs. Swancourt but for the risks she might thereby incur of some teasing remark being returned. Ultimately, Elfride would say, oh, what a plague this reviewer is to me, and turn her face to where she imagined India lay, and moreover to herself. Ah, my little husband, what are you doing now? Let me see, where are you, south, east, where? Behind that hill, ever so far behind. End of chapter 16