Chapter IX
'Her father did fume'
Oppressed, in spite of themselves, by a foresight of impending
complications, Elfride and Stephen returned down the hill hand in
hand. At the door they paused wistfully, like children late at
school.
Women accept their destiny more readily than men. Elfride had now
resigned herself to the overwhelming idea of her lover's sorry
antecedents; Stephen had not forgotten the trifling grievance that
Elfride had known earlier admiration than his own.
'What was that young man's name?' he inquired.
'Felix Jethway; a widow's only son.'
'I remember the family.'
'She hates me now. She says I killed him.'
Stephen mused, and they entered the porch.
'Stephen, I love only you,' she tremulously whispered. He pressed
her fingers, and the trifling shadow passed away, to admit again
the mutual and more tangible trouble.
The study appeared to be the only room lighted up. They entered,
each with a demeanour intended to conceal the inconcealable fact
that reciprocal love was their dominant chord. Elfride perceived
a man, sitting with his back towards herself, talking to her
father. She would have retired, but Mr. Swancourt had seen her.
'Come in,' he said; 'it is only Martin Cannister, come for a copy
of the register for poor Mrs. Jethway.'
Martin Cannister, the sexton, was rather a favourite with Elfride.
He used to absorb her attention by telling her of his strange
experiences in digging up after long years the bodies of persons
he had known, and recognizing them by some little sign (though in
reality he had never recognized any). He had shrewd small eyes
and a great wealth of double chin, which compensated in some
measure for considerable poverty of nose.
The appearance of a slip of paper in Cannister's hand, and a few
shillings lying on the table in front of him, denoted that the
business had been transacted, and the tenor of their conversation
went to show that a summary of village news was now engaging the
attention of parishioner and parson.
Mr. Cannister stood up and touched his forehead over his eye with
his finger, in respectful salutation of Elfride, gave half as much
salute to Stephen (whom he, in common with other villagers, had
never for a moment recognized), then sat down again and resumed
his discourse.
'Where had I got on to, sir?'
'To driving the pile,' said Mr. Swancourt.
'The pile 'twas. So, as I was saying, Nat was driving the pile in
this manner, as I might say.' Here Mr. Cannister held his walking-
stick scrupulously vertical with his left hand, and struck a blow
with great force on the knob of the stick with his right. 'John
was steadying the pile so, as I might say.' Here he gave the stick
a slight shake, and looked firmly in the various eyes around to
see that before proceeding further his listeners well grasped the
subject at that stage. 'Well, when Nat had struck some half-dozen
blows more upon the pile, 'a stopped for a second or two. John,
thinking he had done striking, put his hand upon the top o' the
pile to gie en a pull, and see if 'a were firm in the ground.' Mr.
Cannister spread his hand over the top of the stick, completely
covering it with his palm. 'Well, so to speak, Nat hadn't maned
to stop striking, and when John had put his hand upon the pile,
the beetle----'
'Oh dreadful!' said Elfride.
'The beetle was already coming down, you see, sir. Nat just
caught sight of his hand, but couldn't stop the blow in time.
Down came the beetle upon poor John Smith's hand, and squashed en
to a pummy.'
'Dear me, dear me! poor fellow!' said the vicar, with an
intonation like the groans of the wounded in a pianoforte
performance of the 'Battle of Prague.'
'John Smith, the master-mason?' cried Stephen hurriedly.
'Ay, no other; and a better-hearted man God A'mighty never made.'
'Is he so much hurt?'
'I have heard,' said Mr. Swancourt, not noticing Stephen, 'that he
has a son in London, a very promising young fellow.'
'Oh, how he must be hurt!' repeated Stephen.
'A beetle couldn't hurt very little. Well, sir, good-night t'ye;
and ye, sir; and you, miss, I'm sure.'
Mr. Cannister had been making unnoticeable motions of withdrawal,
and by the time this farewell remark came from his lips he was
just outside the door of the room. He tramped along the hall,
stayed more than a minute endeavouring to close the door properly,
and then was lost to their hearing.
Stephen had meanwhile turned and said to the vicar:
'Please excuse me this evening! I must leave. John Smith is my
father.'
The vicar did not comprehend at first.
'What did you say?' he inquired.
'John Smith is my father,' said Stephen deliberately.
A surplus tinge of redness rose from Mr. Swancourt's neck, and
came round over his face, the lines of his features became more
firmly defined, and his lips seemed to get thinner. It was
evident that a series of little circumstances, hitherto unheeded,
were now fitting themselves together, and forming a lucid picture
in Mr. Swancourt's mind in such a manner as to render useless
further explanation on Stephen's part.
'Indeed,' the vicar said, in a voice dry and without inflection.
This being a word which depends entirely upon its tone for its
meaning, Mr. Swancourt's enunciation was equivalent to no
expression at all.
'I have to go now,' said Stephen, with an agitated bearing, and a
movement as if he scarcely knew whether he ought to run off or
stay longer. 'On my return, sir, will you kindly grant me a few
minutes' private conversation?'
'Certainly. Though antecedently it does not seem possible that
there can be anything of the nature of private business between
us.'
Mr. Swancourt put on his straw hat, crossed the drawing-room, into
which the moonlight was shining, and stepped out of the French
window into the verandah. It required no further effort to
perceive what, indeed, reasoning might have foretold as the
natural colour of a mind whose pleasures were taken amid
genealogies, good dinners, and patrician reminiscences, that Mr.
Swancourt's prejudices were too strong for his generosity, and
that Stephen's moments as his friend and equal were numbered, or
had even now ceased.
Stephen moved forward as if he would follow the vicar, then as if
he would not, and in absolute perplexity whither to turn himself,
went awkwardly to the door. Elfride followed lingeringly behind
him. Before he had receded two yards from the doorstep, Unity and
Ann the housemaid came home from their visit to the village.
'Have you heard anything about John Smith? The accident is not so
bad as was reported, is it?' said Elfride intuitively.
'Oh no; the doctor says it is only a bad bruise.'
'I thought so!' cried Elfride gladly.
'He says that, although Nat believes he did not check the beetle
as it came down, he must have done so without knowing it--checked
it very considerably too; for the full blow would have knocked his
hand abroad, and in reality it is only made black-and-blue like.'
'How thankful I am!' said Stephen.
The perplexed Unity looked at him with her mouth rather than with
her eyes.
'That will do, Unity,' said Elfride magisterially; and the two
maids passed on.
'Elfride, do you forgive me?' said Stephen with a faint smile.
'No man is fair in love;' and he took her fingers lightly in his
own.
With her head thrown sideways in the Greuze attitude, she looked a
tender reproach at his doubt and pressed his hand. Stephen
returned the pressure threefold, then hastily went off to his
father's cottage by the wall of Endelstow Park.
'Elfride, what have you to say to this?' inquired her father,
coming up immediately Stephen had retired.
With feminine quickness she grasped at any straw that would enable
her to plead his cause. 'He had told me of it,' she faltered; 'so
that it is not a discovery in spite of him. He was just coming in
to tell you.'
'COMING to tell! Why hadn't he already told? I object as much, if
not more, to his underhand concealment of this, than I do to the
fact itself. It looks very much like his making a fool of me, and
of you too. You and he have been about together, and
corresponding together, in a way I don't at all approve of--in a
most unseemly way. You should have known how improper such
conduct is. A woman can't be too careful not to be seen alone
with I-don't-know-whom.'
'You saw us, papa, and have never said a word.'
'My fault, of course; my fault. What the deuce could I be
thinking of! He, a villager's son; and we, Swancourts, connections
of the Luxellians. We have been coming to nothing for centuries,
and now I believe we have got there. What shall I next invite
here, I wonder!'
Elfride began to cry at this very unpropitious aspect of affairs.
'O papa, papa, forgive me and him! We care so much for one
another, papa--O, so much! And what he was going to ask you is, if
you will allow of an engagement between us till he is a gentleman
as good as you. We are not in a hurry, dear papa; we don't want
in the least to marry now; not until he is richer. Only will you
let us be engaged, because I love him so, and he loves me?'
Mr. Swancourt's feelings were a little touched by this appeal, and
he was annoyed that such should be the case. 'Certainly not!' he
replied. He pronounced the inhibition lengthily and sonorously,
so that the 'not' sounded like 'n-o-o-o-t!'
'No, no, no; don't say it!'
'Foh! A fine story. It is not enough that I have been deluded and
disgraced by having him here,--the son of one of my village
peasants,--but now I am to make him my son-in-law! Heavens above
us, are you mad, Elfride?'
'You have seen his letters come to me ever since his first visit,
papa, and you knew they were a sort of--love-letters; and since he
has been here you have let him be alone with me almost entirely;
and you guessed, you must have guessed, what we were thinking of,
and doing, and you didn't stop him. Next to love-making comes
love-winning, and you knew it would come to that, papa.'
The vicar parried this common-sense thrust. 'I know--since you
press me so--I know I did guess some childish attachment might
arise between you; I own I did not take much trouble to prevent
it; but I have not particularly countenanced it; and, Elfride, how
can you expect that I should now? It is impossible; no father in
England would hear of such a thing.'
'But he is the same man, papa; the same in every particular; and
how can he be less fit for me than he was before?'
'He appeared a young man with well-to-do friends, and a little
property; but having neither, he is another man.'
'You inquired nothing about him?'
'I went by Hewby's introduction. He should have told me. So
should the young man himself; of course he should. I consider it
a most dishonourable thing to come into a man's house like a
treacherous I-don't-know-what.'
'But he was afraid to tell you, and so should I have been. He
loved me too well to like to run the risk. And as to speaking of
his friends on his first visit, I don't see why he should have
done so at all. He came here on business: it was no affair of
ours who his parents were. And then he knew that if he told you
he would never be asked here, and would perhaps never see me
again. And he wanted to see me. Who can blame him for trying, by
any means, to stay near me--the girl he loves? All is fair in
love. I have heard you say so yourself, papa; and you yourself
would have done just as he has--so would any man.'
'And any man, on discovering what I have discovered, would also do
as I do, and mend my mistake; that is, get shot of him again, as
soon as the laws of hospitality will allow.' But Mr. Swancourt
then remembered that he was a Christian. 'I would not, for the
world, seem to turn him out of doors,' he added; 'but I think he
will have the tact to see that he cannot stay long after this,
with good taste.'
'He will, because he's a gentleman. See how graceful his manners
are,' Elfride went on; though perhaps Stephen's manners, like the
feats of Euryalus, owed their attractiveness in her eyes rather to
the attractiveness of his person than to their own excellence.
'Ay; anybody can be what you call graceful, if he lives a little
time in a city, and keeps his eyes open. And he might have picked
up his gentlemanliness by going to the galleries of theatres, and
watching stage drawing-room manners. He reminds me of one of the
worst stories I ever heard in my life.'
'What story was that?'
'Oh no, thank you! I wouldn't tell you such an improper matter for
the world!'
'If his father and mother had lived in the north or east of
England,' gallantly persisted Elfride, though her sobs began to
interrupt her articulation, 'anywhere but here--you--would have--
only regarded--HIM, and not THEM! His station--would have--been
what--his profession makes it,--and not fixed by--his father's
humble position--at all; whom he never lives with--now. Though
John Smith has saved lots of money, and is better off than we are,
they say, or he couldn't have put his son to such an expensive
profession. And it is clever and--honourable--of Stephen, to be
the best of his family.'
'Yes. "Let a beast be lord of beasts, and his crib shall stand at
the king's mess."'
'You insult me, papa!' she burst out. 'You do, you do! He is my
own Stephen, he is!'
'That may or may not be true, Elfride,' returned her father, again
uncomfortably agitated in spite of himself 'You confuse future
probabilities with present facts,--what the young man may be with
what he is. We must look at what he is, not what an improbable
degree of success in his profession may make him. The case is
this: the son of a working-man in my parish who may or may not be
able to buy me up--a youth who has not yet advanced so far into
life as to have any income of his own deserving the name, and
therefore of his father's degree as regards station--wants to be
engaged to you. His family are living in precisely the same spot
in England as yours, so throughout this county--which is the world
to us--you would always be known as the wife of Jack Smith the
mason's son, and not under any circumstances as the wife of a
London professional man. It is the drawback, not the compensating
fact, that is talked of always. There, say no more. You may
argue all night, and prove what you will; I'll stick to my words.'
Elfride looked silently and hopelessly out of the window with
large heavy eyes and wet cheeks.
'I call it great temerity--and long to call it audacity--in
Hewby,' resumed her father. 'I never heard such a thing--giving
such a hobbledehoy native of this place such an introduction to me
as he did. Naturally you were deceived as well as I was. I don't
blame you at all, so far.' He went and searched for Mr. Hewby's
original letter. 'Here's what he said to me: "Dear Sir,--
Agreeably to your request of the 18th instant, I have arranged to
survey and make drawings," et cetera. "My assistant, Mr. Stephen
Smith"--assistant, you see he called him, and naturally I
understood him to mean a sort of partner. Why didn't he say
"clerk"?'
'They never call them clerks in that profession, because they do
not write. Stephen--Mr. Smith--told me so. So that Mr. Hewby
simply used the accepted word.'
'Let me speak, please, Elfride! "My assistant, Mr. Stephen Smith,
will leave London by the early train to-morrow morning...MANY
THANKS FOR YOUR PROPOSAL TO ACCOMMODATE HIM...YOU MAY PUT EVERY
CONFIDENCE IN HIM, and may rely upon his discernment in the matter
of church architecture." Well, I repeat that Hewby ought to be
ashamed of himself for making so much of a poor lad of that sort.'
'Professional men in London,' Elfride argued, 'don't know anything
about their clerks' fathers and mothers. They have assistants who
come to their offices and shops for years, and hardly even know
where they live. What they can do--what profits they can bring
the firm--that's all London men care about. And that is helped in
him by his faculty of being uniformly pleasant.'
'Uniform pleasantness is rather a defect than a faculty. It shows
that a man hasn't sense enough to know whom to despise.'
'It shows that he acts by faith and not by sight, as those you
claim succession from directed.'
'That's some more of what he's been telling you, I suppose! Yes, I
was inclined to suspect him, because he didn't care about sauces
of any kind. I always did doubt a man's being a gentleman if his
palate had no acquired tastes. An unedified palate is the
irrepressible cloven foot of the upstart. The idea of my bringing
out a bottle of my '40 Martinez--only eleven of them left now--to
a man who didn't know it from eighteenpenny! Then the Latin line
he gave to my quotation; it was very cut-and-dried, very; or I,
who haven't looked into a classical author for the last eighteen
years, shouldn't have remembered it. Well, Elfride, you had
better go to your room; you'll get over this bit of tomfoolery in
time.'
'No, no, no, papa,' she moaned. For of all the miseries attaching
to miserable love, the worst is the misery of thinking that the
passion which is the cause of them all may cease.
'Elfride,' said her father with rough friendliness, 'I have an
excellent scheme on hand, which I cannot tell you of now. A
scheme to benefit you and me. It has been thrust upon me for some
little time--yes, thrust upon me--but I didn't dream of its value
till this afternoon, when the revelation came. I should be most
unwise to refuse to entertain it.'
'I don't like that word,' she returned wearily. 'You have lost so
much already by schemes. Is it those wretched mines again?'
'No; not a mining scheme.'
'Railways?'
'Nor railways. It is like those mysterious offers we see
advertised, by which any gentleman with no brains at all may make
so much a week without risk, trouble, or soiling his fingers.
However, I am intending to say nothing till it is settled, though
I will just say this much, that you soon may have other fish to
fry than to think of Stephen Smith. Remember, I wish, not to be
angry, but friendly, to the young man; for your sake I'll regard
him as a friend in a certain sense. But this is enough; in a few
days you will be quite my way of thinking. There, now, go to your
bedroom. Unity shall bring you up some supper. I wish you not to
be here when he comes back.'
