Chapter XIV
'We frolic while 'tis May.'
It has now to be realized that nearly three-quarters of a year
have passed away. In place of the autumnal scenery which formed a
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 had 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 few years ago, that he
arrived on the scene. Building and engineering partook of the
general impetus. Speculation moved with an accelerated velocity
every successive day, 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'
escapade with 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 a slow nature was imbibing a misfortune little by little,
she had swallowed the whole agony of it at a draught and was
brightening again. She could slough off a 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 disliked 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 ladies staying at
Torquay as had been arranged, the vicar going to and fro.
Mrs. Swancourt considerably enlarged Elfride'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 were all 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 midsummer afternoon, in a
melon-frame atmosphere and beneath a violet sky. The Swancourt
equipage formed one in 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 Elfride, who, like AEneas at Carthage, was full
of admiration for the brilliant scene, 'you will find that our
companionless state 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 as these--
not to the narratives told by my neighbours' tongues, but by their
faces--the advantage of which is, that whether I am in Row,
Boulevard, Rialto, or Prado, they all speak the same language. I
may have acquired some skill in this practice through 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.'
'Ay, that they will,' said Mr. Swancourt corroboratively. 'I have
known labouring men at Endelstow and other farms who had 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 a hundred other sights
and sounds which people with watches in their pockets never know
the existence of, they are able to pronounce 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--do!' said the ladies.
'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 persons 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 braying of his
ass and the temper of his wife.'
Elfride laughed.
'Exactly,' said Mrs. Swancourt. 'And in just the way that those
learnt the signs of nature, I have learnt the language of her
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 class of mamma 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 professed 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 vicar, 'you see as much in faces as
Mr. Puff saw in Lord Burleigh's nod.'
Elfride could not but admire the beauty of her fellow
countrywomen, especially since herself and her own few
acquaintances had always been slightly sunburnt 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 in 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 petals and the pink of her handsome cheeks are
equally from Nature's hand to the eyes of the most casual
observer.'
'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, utilizing the sway of her landau by looking around only when
her head is swung forward, with a passive pride which forbids a
resistance to the force of circumstance. Look at the pretty pout
on the mouths of that family there, retaining no traces of being
arranged beforehand, so well is it done. Look at the demure close
of the little fists holding the parasols; the tiny alert thumb,
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 an accident, which makes the
thing so attractive. There's the red book lying on the opposite
seat, 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 the walkers, and above all the look 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.'
'Piph-ph-ph--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 the time 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 am 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 mustn't say "gentlemen" nowadays,' her stepmother
answered in the tones of arch concern that 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 here.'
'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 geldings, who
advanced in an indifferently zealous trot, very daintily
performed, and occasionally shrugged divers 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 a good-natured commercial traveller of
the superior class. Beside him 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 gallant elevation of his hat. Then the two children held
up their arms to Elfride, and laughed gleefully.
'Who is that?'
'Why, Lord Luxellian, isn't it?' said Mrs. Swancourt, who with the
vicar had been seated with her back towards them.
'Yes,' replied Elfride. 'He is the one man of those I have seen
here whom I consider handsomer than papa.'
'Thank you, dear,' said Mr. Swancourt.
'Yes; but your father is so much older. When Lord Luxellian gets
a little further on in life, he won't be half so good-looking as
our man.'
'Thank you, dear, likewise,' said Mr. Swancourt.
'See,' exclaimed Elfride, still looking towards them, 'how 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
Luxellian'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 is 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 twelvemonth.'
The carriages were now nearer together, and there was an exchange
of more familiar greetings between the two families. Then the
Luxellians crossed over and drew up under the plane-trees, just in
the rear of the Swancourts. Lord Luxellian alighted, and came
forward with a musical laugh.
It was his attraction as a man. People liked him for those tones,
and forgot that he had no talents. Acquaintances remembered Mr.
Swancourt by his manner; they remembered Stephen Smith by his
face, Lord Luxellian by his laugh.
Mr. Swancourt made some friendly remarks--among others things upon
the heat.
'Yes,' said Lord Luxellian, 'we were driving by a furrier's window
this afternoon, and the sight filled us all with such a sense of
suffocation that we were glad to get away. Ha-ha!' He turned to
Elfride. 'Miss Swancourt, I have hardly seen or spoken to you
since your literary feat was made public. I had no idea a chiel
was taking notes down at quiet Endelstow, 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, said it was nothing to speak
of, &c. &c.
'Well, I think you were rather unfairly treated by the PRESENT, I
certainly do. Writing a heavy review like that upon an elegant
trifle like the COURT OF KELLYON 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 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
pain you unnecessarily.'
'Oh no; I am indeed glad you have told me, Lord Luxellian. It is
quite a mistaken kindness on their part. Is the review so much
against me?' she inquired tremulously.
'No, no; not that exactly--though I almost forget its 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 office, and get one directly; shall
we, papa?'
'If you are so anxious, dear, we will, or send. But to-morrow
will do.'
'And do oblige me in a little matter now, Elfride,' said Lord
Luxellian warmly, and looking as if he were sorry he had brought
news that disturbed her. 'I am in reality sent here as a special
messenger by my little Polly and Katie to ask you to come into our
carriage with them for a short time. I am just going to walk
across into Piccadilly, and my wife is left alone with them. I am
afraid they are rather spoilt children; but I have half promised
them you shall come.'
The steps were let down, and Elfride was transferred--to the
intense delight of the little girls, and to the mild interest of
loungers with red skins and long necks, who cursorily 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
Luxellian 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 Luxellian looked long
at Elfride.
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 Luxellian turned away, and walked musingly to the upper end
of the promenade.
Mr. Swancourt had alighted at the same time with Elfride, crossing
over to the Row for a few minutes to speak to a friend he
recognized 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 Elfride with quiet and critical interest.
Three points about this unobtrusive person showed promptly to the
exercised eye that he was not a Row man pur sang. First, an
irrepressible 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 Row manner to do. Third, and chief reason, that try how
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 et praeterea nihil, which is by
rights the Mark of the Row.
The probability is that, had not Mrs. Swancourt 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. Swancourt 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; consider the
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 it is not necessary to detail. Knight
presently inquired:
'The young lady who changed into the other carriage is, then, your
stepdaughter?'
'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 with them; but there is not much intimacy on
account of----. However, Henry, you'll come and see us, of
course. 24 Chevron Square. Come this week. We shall only be in
town a week or two longer.'
'Let me see. I've got to run up to Oxford to-morrow, 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; why not return with us?'
'I am afraid 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 that month; and I could stay a nice long time.
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 will not be away ten minutes
longer.'
'No; I'll 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. Good-bye.'
'And let us know the day of your appearance as soon as you can.'
'I will'
