A Pair of Blue Eyes

On the blind was a shadow from somebody close inside it – a person in profile. The profile was unmistakably that of Stephen. It was just possible to see that his arms were uplifted, and that his hands held an article of some kind. Then another shadow appeared – also in profile – and came close to him. This was the shadow of a woman. She turned her back towards Stephen: he lifted and held out what now proved to be a shawl or mantle – placed it carefully – so carefully – round the lady; disappeared; reappeared in her front – fastened the mantle. Did he then kiss her? Surely not. Yet the motion might have been a kiss. Then both shadows swelled to colossal dimensions – grew distorted – vanished.

Two minutes elapsed.

‘Ah, Miss Swancourt! I am so glad to find you. I was looking for you,’ said a voice at her elbow – Stephen’s voice. She stepped into the passage.

‘Do you know any of the members of this establishment?’ said she.

‘Not a single one: how should I?’ he replied.

Chapter VI

‘Fare thee weel awhile!’

Simultaneously with the conclusion of Stephen’s remark, the sound of the closing of an external door in their immediate neighbourhood reached Elfride’s ears. It came from the further side of the wing containing the illuminated room. She then discerned, by the aid of the dusky departing light, a figure, whose sex was undistinguishable, walking down the gravelled path by the parterre towards the river. The figure grew fainter, and vanished under the trees.

Mr. Swancourt’s voice was heard calling out their names from a distant corridor in the body of the building. They retraced their steps, and found him with his coat buttoned up and his hat on, awaiting their advent in a mood of self-satisfaction at having brought his search to a successful close. The carriage was brought round, and without further delay the trio drove away from the mansion, under the echoing gateway arch, and along by the leafless sycamores, as the stars began to kindle their trembling lights behind the maze of branches and twigs.

No words were spoken either by youth or maiden. Her unpractised mind was completely occupied in fathoming its recent acquisition. The young man who had inspired her with such novelty of feeling, who had come directly from London on business to her father, having been brought by chance to Endelstow House had, by some means or other, acquired the privilege of approaching some lady he had found therein, and of honouring her by petits soins of a marked kind, – all in the space of half an hour.

What room were they standing in? thought Elfride. As nearly as she could guess, it was Lord Luxellian’s business-room, or office. What people were in the house? None but the governess and servants, as far as she knew, and of these he had professed a total ignorance. Had the person she had indistinctly seen leaving the house anything to do with the performance? It was impossible to say without appealing to the culprit himself, and that she would never do. The more Elfride reflected, the more certain did it appear that the meeting was a chance rencounter, and not an appointment. On the ultimate inquiry as to the individuality of the woman, Elfride at once assumed that she could not be an inferior. Stephen Smith was not the man to care about passages-at-love with women beneath him. Though gentle, ambition was visible in his kindling eyes; he evidently hoped for much; hoped indefinitely, but extensively. Elfride was puzzled, and being puzzled, was, by a natural sequence of girlish sensations, vexed with him. No more pleasure came in recognizing that from liking to attract him she was getting on to love him, boyish as he was and innocent as he had seemed.

They reached the bridge which formed a link between the eastern and western halves of the parish. Situated in a valley that was bounded outwardly by the sea, it formed a point of depression from which the road ascended with great steepness to West Endelstow and the Vicarage. There was no absolute necessity for either of them to alight, but as it was the vicar’s custom after a long journey to humour the horse in making this winding ascent, Elfride, moved by an imitative instinct, suddenly jumped out when Pleasant had just begun to adopt the deliberate stalk he associated with this portion of the road.

The young man seemed glad of any excuse for breaking the silence. ‘Why, Miss Swancourt, what a risky thing to do!’ he exclaimed, immediately following her example by jumping down on the other side.

‘Oh no, not at all,’ replied she coldly; the shadow phenomenon at Endelstow House still paramount within her.

Stephen walked along by himself for two or three minutes, wrapped in the rigid reserve dictated by her tone. Then apparently thinking that it was only for girls to pout, he came serenely round to her side, and offered his arm with Castilian gallantry, to assist her in ascending the remaining three-quarters of the steep.

Here was a temptation: it was the first time in her life that Elfride had been treated as a grown-up woman in this way – offered an arm in a manner implying that she had a right to refuse it. Till to-night she had never received masculine attentions beyond those which might be contained in such homely remarks as ‘Elfride, give me your hand;’ ‘Elfride, take hold of my arm,’ from her father. Her callow heart made an epoch of the incident; she considered her array of feelings, for and against. Collectively they were for taking this offered arm; the single one of pique determined her to punish Stephen by refusing.

‘No, thank you, Mr. Smith; I can get along better by myself’

It was Elfride’s first fragile attempt at browbeating a lover. Fearing more the issue of such an undertaking than what a gentle young man might think of her waywardness, she immediately afterwards determined to please herself by reversing her statement.

‘On second thoughts, I will take it,’ she said.

They slowly went their way up the hill, a few yards behind the carriage.

‘How silent you are, Miss Swancourt!’ Stephen observed.

‘Perhaps I think you silent too,’ she returned.

‘I may have reason to be.’

‘Scarcely; it is sadness that makes people silent, and you can have none.’

‘You don’t know: I have a trouble; though some might think it less a trouble than a dilemma.’

‘What is it?’ she asked impulsively.

Stephen hesitated. ‘I might tell,’ he said; ‘at the same time, perhaps, it is as well – ’

She let go his arm and imperatively pushed it from her, tossing her head. She had just learnt that a good deal of dignity is lost by asking a question to which an answer is refused, even ever so politely; for though politeness does good service in cases of requisition and compromise, it but little helps a direct refusal. ‘I don’t wish to know anything of it; I don’t wish it,’ she went on. ‘The carriage is waiting for us at the top of the hill; we must get in;’ and Elfride flitted to the front. ‘Papa, here is your Elfride!’ she exclaimed to the dusky figure of the old gentleman, as she sprang up and sank by his side without deigning to accept aid from Stephen.

‘Ah, yes!’ uttered the vicar in artificially alert tones, awaking from a most profound sleep, and suddenly preparing to alight.

‘Why, what are you doing, papa? We are not home yet.’

‘Oh no, no; of course not; we are not at home yet,’ Mr. Swancourt said very hastily, endeavouring to dodge back to his original position with the air of a man who had not moved at all. ‘The fact is I was so lost in deep meditation that I forgot whereabouts we were.’ And in a minute the vicar was snoring again.

That evening, being the last, seemed to throw an exceptional shade of sadness over Stephen Smith, and the repeated injunctions of the vicar, that he was to come and revisit them in the summer, apparently tended less to raise his spirits than to unearth some misgiving.

He left them in the gray light of dawn, whilst the colours of earth were sombre, and the sun was yet hidden in the east. Elfride had fidgeted all night in her little bed lest none of the household should be awake soon enough to start him, and also lest she might miss seeing again the bright eyes and curly hair, to which their owner’s possession of a hidden mystery added a deeper tinge of romance. To some extent – so soon does womanly interest take a solicitous turn – she felt herself responsible for his safe conduct. They breakfasted before daylight; Mr. Swancourt, being more and more taken with his guest’s ingenuous appearance, having determined to rise early and bid him a friendly farewell. It was, however, rather to the vicar’s astonishment, that he saw Elfride walk in to the breakfast-table, candle in hand.

Whilst William Worm performed his toilet (during which performance the inmates of the vicarage were always in the habit of waiting with exemplary patience), Elfride wandered desultorily to the summer house. Stephen followed her thither. The copse-covered valley was visible from this position, a mist now lying all along its length, hiding the stream which trickled through it, though the observers themselves were in clear air.

They stood close together, leaning over the rustic balustrading which bounded the arbour on the outward side, and formed the crest of a steep slope beneath Elfride constrainedly pointed out some features of the distant uplands rising irregularly opposite. But the artistic eye was, either from nature or circumstance, very faint in Stephen now, and he only half attended to her description, as if he spared time from some other thought going on within him.

‘Well, good-bye,’ he said suddenly; ‘I must never see you again, I suppose, Miss Swancourt, in spite of invitations.’

His genuine tribulation played directly upon the delicate chords of her nature. She could afford to forgive him for a concealment or two. Moreover, the shyness which would not allow him to look her in the face lent bravery to her own eyes and tongue.

‘Oh, DO come again, Mr. Smith!’ she said prettily.

‘I should delight in it; but it will be better if I do not.’

‘Why?’

‘Certain circumstances in connection with me make it undesirable. Not on my account; on yours.’

‘Goodness! As if anything in connection with you could hurt me,’ she said with serene supremacy; but seeing that this plan of treatment was inappropriate, she tuned a smaller note. ‘Ah, I know why you will not come. You don’t want to. You’ll go home to London and to all the stirring people there, and will never want to see us any more!’

‘You know I have no such reason.’

‘And go on writing letters to the lady you are engaged to, just as before.’

‘What does that mean? I am not engaged.’

‘You wrote a letter to a Miss Somebody; I saw it in the letter-rack.’

‘Pooh! an elderly woman who keeps a stationer’s shop; and it was to tell her to keep my newspapers till I get back.’

‘You needn’t have explained: it was not my business at all.’ Miss Elfride was rather relieved to hear that statement, nevertheless. ‘And you won’t come again to see my father?’ she insisted.

‘I should like to – and to see you again, but – ’

‘Will you reveal to me that matter you hide?’ she interrupted petulantly.

‘No; not now.’

She could not but go on, graceless as it might seem.

‘Tell me this,’ she importuned with a trembling mouth. ‘Does any meeting of yours with a lady at Endelstow Vicarage clash with – any interest you may take in me?’

He started a little. ‘It does not,’ he said emphatically; and looked into the pupils of her eyes with the confidence that only honesty can give, and even that to youth alone.

The explanation had not come, but a gloom left her. She could not but believe that utterance. Whatever enigma might lie in the shadow on the blind, it was not an enigma of underhand passion.

She turned towards the house, entering it through the conservatory. Stephen went round to the front door. Mr. Swancourt was standing on the step in his slippers. Worm was adjusting a buckle in the harness, and murmuring about his poor head; and everything was ready for Stephen’s departure.

‘You named August for your visit. August it shall be; that is, if you care for the society of such a fossilized Tory,’ said Mr. Swancourt.

Mr. Smith only responded hesitatingly, that he should like to come again.

‘You said you would, and you must,’ insisted Elfride, coming to the door and speaking under her father’s arm.

Whatever reason the youth may have had for not wishing to enter the house as a guest, it no longer predominated. He promised, and bade them adieu, and got into the pony-carriage, which crept up the slope, and bore him out of their sight.

‘I never was so much taken with anybody in my life as I am with that young fellow – never! I cannot understand it – can’t understand it anyhow,’ said Mr. Swancourt quite energetically to himself; and went indoors.

Chapter VII

‘No more of me you knew, my love!’

Stephen Smith revisited Endelstow Vicarage, agreeably to his promise. He had a genuine artistic reason for coming, though no such reason seemed to be required. Six-and-thirty old seat ends, of exquisite fifteenth-century workmanship, were rapidly decaying in an aisle of the church; and it became politic to make drawings of their worm-eaten contours ere they were battered past recognition in the turmoil of the so-called restoration.

He entered the house at sunset, and the world was pleasant again to the two fair-haired ones. A momentary pang of disappointment had, nevertheless, passed through Elfride when she casually discovered that he had not come that minute post-haste from London, but had reached the neighbourhood the previous evening. Surprise would have accompanied the feeling, had she not remembered that several tourists were haunting the coast at this season, and that Stephen might have chosen to do likewise.

They did little besides chat that evening, Mr. Swancourt beginning to question his visitor, closely yet paternally, and in good part, on his hopes and prospects from the profession he had embraced. Stephen gave vague answers. The next day it rained. In the evening, when twenty-four hours of Elfride had completely rekindled her admirer’s ardour, a game of chess was proposed between them.

The game had its value in helping on the developments of their future.

Elfride soon perceived that her opponent was but a learner. She next noticed that he had a very odd way of handling the pieces when castling or taking a man. Antecedently she would have supposed that the same performance must be gone through by all players in the same manner; she was taught by his differing action that all ordinary players, who learn the game by sight, unconsciously touch the men in a stereotyped way. This impression of indescribable oddness in Stephen’s touch culminated in speech when she saw him, at the taking of one of her bishops, push it aside with the taking man instead of lifting it as a preliminary to the move.

‘How strangely you handle the men, Mr. Smith!’

‘Do I? I am sorry for that.’

‘Oh no – don’t be sorry; it is not a matter great enough for sorrow. But who taught you to play?’

‘Nobody, Miss Swancourt,’ he said. ‘I learnt from a book lent me by my friend Mr. Knight, the noblest man in the world.’

‘But you have seen people play?’

‘I have never seen the playing of a single game. This is the first time I ever had the opportunity of playing with a living opponent. I have worked out many games from books, and studied the reasons of the different moves, but that is all.’

This was a full explanation of his mannerism; but the fact that a man with the desire for chess should have grown up without being able to see or engage in a game astonished her not a little. She pondered on the circumstance for some time, looking into vacancy and hindering the play.

Mr. Swancourt was sitting with his eyes fixed on the board, but apparently thinking of other things. Half to himself he said, pending the move of Elfride:

‘“Quae finis aut quod me manet stipendium?”’

Stephen replied instantly:

‘“Effare: jussas cum fide poenas luam.”’

‘Excellent – prompt – gratifying!’ said Mr. Swancourt with feeling, bringing down his hand upon the table, and making three pawns and a knight dance over their borders by the shaking. ‘I was musing on those words as applicable to a strange course I am steering – but enough of that. I am delighted with you, Mr. Smith, for it is so seldom in this desert that I meet with a man who is gentleman and scholar enough to continue a quotation, however trite it may be.’

‘I also apply the words to myself,’ said Stephen quietly.

‘You? The last man in the world to do that, I should have thought.’

‘Come,’ murmured Elfride poutingly, and insinuating herself between them, ‘tell me all about it. Come, construe, construe!’

Stephen looked steadfastly into her face, and said slowly, and in a voice full of a far-off meaning that seemed quaintly premature in one so young:

‘Quae finis WHAT WILL BE THE END, aut OR, quod stipendium WHAT FINE, manet me AWAITS ME? Effare SPEAK OUT; luam I WILL PAY, cum fide WITH FAITH, jussas poenas THE PENALTY REQUIRED.’

The vicar, who had listened with a critical compression of the lips to this school-boy recitation, and by reason of his imperfect hearing had missed the marked realism of Stephen’s tone in the English words, now said hesitatingly: ‘By the bye, Mr. Smith (I know you’ll excuse my curiosity), though your translation was unexceptionably correct and close, you have a way of pronouncing your Latin which to me seems most peculiar. Not that the pronunciation of a dead language is of much importance; yet your accents and quantities have a grotesque sound to my ears. I thought first that you had acquired your way of breathing the vowels from some of the northern colleges; but it cannot be so with the quantities. What I was going to ask was, if your instructor in the classics could possibly have been an Oxford or Cambridge man?’

‘Yes; he was an Oxford man – Fellow of St. Cyprian’s.’

‘Really?’

‘Oh yes; there’s no doubt about it.

‘The oddest thing ever I heard of!’ said Mr. Swancourt, starting with astonishment. ‘That the pupil of such a man – ’

‘The best and cleverest man in England!’ cried Stephen enthusiastically.

‘That the pupil of such a man should pronounce Latin in the way you pronounce it beats all I ever heard. How long did he instruct you?’

‘Four years.’

‘Four years!’

‘It is not so strange when I explain,’ Stephen hastened to say. ‘It was done in this way – by letter. I sent him exercises and construing twice a week, and twice a week he sent them back to me corrected, with marginal notes of instruction. That is how I learnt my Latin and Greek, such as it is. He is not responsible for my scanning. He has never heard me scan a line.’

‘A novel case, and a singular instance of patience!’ cried the vicar.

‘On his part, not on mine. Ah, Henry Knight is one in a thousand! I remember his speaking to me on this very subject of pronunciation. He says that, much to his regret, he sees a time coming when every man will pronounce even the common words of his own tongue as seems right in his own ears, and be thought none the worse for it; that the speaking age is passing away, to make room for the writing age.’

Both Elfride and her father had waited attentively to hear Stephen go on to what would have been the most interesting part of the story, namely, what circumstances could have necessitated such an unusual method of education. But no further explanation was volunteered; and they saw, by the young man’s manner of concentrating himself upon the chess-board, that he was anxious to drop the subject.

The game proceeded. Elfride played by rote; Stephen by thought. It was the cruellest thing to checkmate him after so much labour, she considered. What was she dishonest enough to do in her compassion? To let him checkmate her. A second game followed; and being herself absolutely indifferent as to the result (her playing was above the average among women, and she knew it), she allowed him to give checkmate again. A final game, in which she adopted the Muzio gambit as her opening, was terminated by Elfride’s victory at the twelfth move.

Stephen looked up suspiciously. His heart was throbbing even more excitedly than was hers, which itself had quickened when she seriously set to work on this last occasion. Mr. Swancourt had left the room.

‘You have been trifling with me till now!’ he exclaimed, his face flushing. ‘You did not play your best in the first two games?’

Elfride’s guilt showed in her face. Stephen became the picture of vexation and sadness, which, relishable for a moment, caused her the next instant to regret the mistake she had made.

‘Mr. Smith, forgive me!’ she said sweetly. ‘I see now, though I did not at first, that what I have done seems like contempt for your skill. But, indeed, I did not mean it in that sense. I could not, upon my conscience, win a victory in those first and second games over one who fought at such a disadvantage and so manfully.’

He drew a long breath, and murmured bitterly, ‘Ah, you are cleverer than I. You can do everything – I can do nothing! O Miss Swancourt!’ he burst out wildly, his heart swelling in his throat, ‘I must tell you how I love you! All these months of my absence I have worshipped you.’

He leapt from his seat like the impulsive lad that he was, slid round to her side, and almost before she suspected it his arm was round her waist, and the two sets of curls intermingled.

So entirely new was full-blown love to Elfride, that she trembled as much from the novelty of the emotion as from the emotion itself. Then she suddenly withdrew herself and stood upright, vexed that she had submitted unresistingly even to his momentary pressure. She resolved to consider this demonstration as premature.

‘You must not begin such things as those,’ she said with coquettish hauteur of a very transparent nature ‘And – you must not do so again – and papa is coming.’

‘Let me kiss you – only a little one,’ he said with his usual delicacy, and without reading the factitiousness of her manner.

‘No; not one.’

‘Only on your cheek?’

‘No.’

‘Forehead?’

‘Certainly not.’

‘You care for somebody else, then? Ah, I thought so!’

‘I am sure I do not.’

‘Nor for me either?’

‘How can I tell?’ she said simply, the simplicity lying merely in the broad outlines of her manner and speech. There were the semitone of voice and half-hidden expression of eyes which tell the initiated how very fragile is the ice of reserve at these times.

Footsteps were heard. Mr. Swancourt then entered the room, and their private colloquy ended.

The day after this partial revelation, Mr. Swancourt proposed a drive to the cliffs beyond Targan Bay, a distance of three or four miles.

Half an hour before the time of departure a crash was heard in the back yard, and presently Worm came in, saying partly to the world in general, partly to himself, and slightly to his auditors:

‘Ay, ay, sure! That frying of fish will be the end of William Worm. They be at it again this morning – same as ever – fizz, fizz, fizz!’

‘Your head bad again, Worm?’ said Mr. Swancourt. ‘What was that noise we heard in the yard?’

‘Ay, sir, a weak wambling man am I; and the frying have been going on in my poor head all through the long night and this morning as usual; and I was so dazed wi’ it that down fell a piece of leg-wood across the shaft of the pony-shay, and splintered it off. “Ay,” says I, “I feel it as if ‘twas my own shay; and though I’ve done it, and parish pay is my lot if I go from here, perhaps I am as independent as one here and there.”’

‘Dear me, the shaft of the carriage broken!’ cried Elfride. She was disappointed: Stephen doubly so. The vicar showed more warmth of temper than the accident seemed to demand, much to Stephen’s uneasiness and rather to his surprise. He had not supposed so much latent sternness could co-exist with Mr. Swancourt’s frankness and good-nature.

‘You shall not be disappointed,’ said the vicar at length. ‘It is almost too long a distance for you to walk. Elfride can trot down on her pony, and you shall have my old nag, Smith.’

Elfride exclaimed triumphantly, ‘You have never seen me on horseback – Oh, you must!’ She looked at Stephen and read his thoughts immediately. ‘Ah, you don’t ride, Mr. Smith?’