Chapter XVIII
'He heard her musical pants.'
The old tower of West Endelstow Church had reached the last weeks
of its existence. It was to be replaced by a new one from the
designs of Mr. Hewby, the architect who had sent down Stephen.
Planks and poles had arrived in the churchyard, iron bars had been
thrust into the venerable crack extending down the belfry wall to
the foundation, the bells had been taken down, the owls had
forsaken this home of their forefathers, and six iconoclasts in
white fustian, to whom a cracked edifice was a species of Mumbo
Jumbo, had taken lodgings in the village previous to beginning the
actual removal of the stones.
This was the day after Knight's arrival. To enjoy for the last
time the prospect seaward from the summit, the vicar, Mrs.
Swancourt, Knight, and Elfride, all ascended the winding turret--
Mr. Swancourt stepping forward with many loud breaths, his wife
struggling along silently, but suffering none the less. They had
hardly reached the top when a large lurid cloud, palpably a
reservoir of rain, thunder, and lightning, was seen to be
advancing overhead from the north.
The two cautious elders suggested an immediate return, and
proceeded to put it in practice as regarded themselves.
'Dear me, I wish I had not come up,' exclaimed Mrs. Swancourt.
'We shall be slower than you two in going down,' the vicar said
over his shoulder, 'and so, don't you start till we are nearly at
the bottom, or you will run over us and break our necks somewhere
in the darkness of the turret.'
Accordingly Elfride and Knight waited on the leads till the
staircase should be clear. Knight was not in a talkative mood
that morning. Elfride was rather wilful, by reason of his
inattention, which she privately set down to his thinking her not
worth talking to. Whilst Knight stood watching the rise of the
cloud, she sauntered to the other side of the tower, and there
remembered a giddy feat she had performed the year before. It was
to walk round upon the parapet of the tower--which was quite
without battlement or pinnacle, and presented a smooth flat
surface about two feet wide, forming a pathway on all the four
sides. Without reflecting in the least upon what she was doing
she now stepped upon the parapet in the old way, and began walking
along.
'We are down, cousin Henry,' cried Mrs. Swancourt up the turret.
'Follow us when you like.'
Knight turned and saw Elfride beginning her elevated promenade.
His face flushed with mingled concern and anger at her rashness.
'I certainly gave you credit for more common sense,' he said.
She reddened a little and walked on.
'Miss Swancourt, I insist upon your coming down,' he exclaimed.
'I will in a minute. I am safe enough. I have done it often.'
At that moment, by reason of a slight perturbation his words had
caused in her, Elfride's foot caught itself in a little tuft of
grass growing in a joint of the stone-work, and she almost lost
her balance. Knight sprang forward with a face of horror. By
what seemed the special interposition of a considerate Providence
she tottered to the inner edge of the parapet instead of to the
outer, and reeled over upon the lead roof two or three feet below
the wall.
Knight seized her as in a vice, and he said, panting, 'That ever I
should have met a woman fool enough to do a thing of that kind!
Good God, you ought to be ashamed of yourself!'
The close proximity of the Shadow of Death had made her sick and
pale as a corpse before he spoke. Already lowered to that state,
his words completely over-powered her, and she swooned away as he
held her.
Elfride's eyes were not closed for more than forty seconds. She
opened them, and remembered the position instantly. His face had
altered its expression from stern anger to pity. But his severe
remarks had rather frightened her, and she struggled to be free.
'If you can stand, of course you may,' he said, and loosened his
arms. 'I hardly know whether most to laugh at your freak or to
chide you for its folly.'
She immediately sank upon the lead-work. Knight lifted her again.
'Are you hurt?' he said.
She murmured an incoherent expression, and tried to smile; saying,
with a fitful aversion of her face, 'I am only frightened. Put me
down, do put me down!'
'But you can't walk,' said Knight.
'You don't know that; how can you? I am only frightened, I tell
you,' she answered petulantly, and raised her hand to her
forehead. Knight then saw that she was bleeding from a severe cut
in her wrist, apparently where it had descended upon a salient
corner of the lead-work. Elfride, too, seemed to perceive and
feel this now for the first time, and for a minute nearly lost
consciousness again. Knight rapidly bound his handkerchief round
the place, and to add to the complication, the thundercloud he had
been watching began to shed some heavy drops of rain. Knight
looked up and saw the vicar striding towards the house, and Mrs.
Swancourt waddling beside him like a hard-driven duck.
'As you are so faint, it will be much better to let me carry you
down,' said Knight; 'or at any rate inside out of the rain.' But
her objection to be lifted made it impossible for him to support
her for more than five steps.
'This is folly, great folly,' he exclaimed, setting her down.
'Indeed!' she murmured, with tears in her eyes. 'I say I will not
be carried, and you say this is folly!'
'So it is.'
'No, it isn't!'
'It is folly, I think. At any rate, the origin of it all is.'
'I don't agree to it. And you needn't get so angry with me; I am
not worth it.'
'Indeed you are. You are worth the enmity of princes, as was said
of such another. Now, then, will you clasp your hands behind my
neck, that I may carry you down without hurting you?'
'No, no.'
'You had better, or I shall foreclose.'
'What's that!'
'Deprive you of your chance.'
Elfride gave a little toss.
'Now, don't writhe so when I attempt to carry you.'
'I can't help it.'
'Then submit quietly.'
'I don't care. I don't care,' she murmured in languid tones and
with closed eyes.
He took her into his arms, entered the turret, and with slow and
cautious steps descended round and round. Then, with the
gentleness of a nursing mother, he attended to the cut on her arm.
During his progress through the operations of wiping it and
binding it up anew, her face changed its aspect from pained
indifference to something like bashful interest, interspersed with
small tremors and shudders of a trifling kind.
In the centre of each pale cheek a small red spot the size of a
wafer had now made its appearance, and continued to grow larger.
Elfride momentarily expected a recurrence to the lecture on her
foolishness, but Knight said no more than this--
'Promise me NEVER to walk on that parapet again.'
'It will be pulled down soon: so I do.' In a few minutes she
continued in a lower tone, and seriously, 'You are familiar of
course, as everybody is, with those strange sensations we
sometimes have, that our life for the moment exists in duplicate.'
'That we have lived through that moment before?'
'Or shall again. Well, I felt on the tower that something similar
to that scene is again to be common to us both.'
'God forbid!' said Knight. 'Promise me that you will never again
walk on any such place on any consideration.'
'I do.'
'That such a thing has not been before, we know. That it shall
not be again, you vow. Therefore think no more of such a foolish
fancy.'
There had fallen a great deal of rain, but unaccompanied by
lightning. A few minutes longer, and the storm had ceased.
'Now, take my arm, please.'
'Oh no, it is not necessary.' This relapse into wilfulness was
because he had again connected the epithet foolish with her.
'Nonsense: it is quite necessary; it will rain again directly, and
you are not half recovered.' And without more ado Knight took her
hand, drew it under his arm, and held it there so firmly that she
could not have removed it without a struggle. Feeling like a colt
in a halter for the first time, at thus being led along, yet
afraid to be angry, it was to her great relief that she saw the
carriage coming round the corner to fetch them.
Her fall upon the roof was necessarily explained to some extent
upon their entering the house; but both forbore to mention a word
of what she had been doing to cause such an accident. During the
remainder of the afternoon Elfride was invisible; but at dinner-
time she appeared as bright as ever.
In the drawing-room, after having been exclusively engaged with
Mr. and Mrs. Swancourt through the intervening hour, Knight again
found himself thrown with Elfride. She had been looking over a
chess problem in one of the illustrated periodicals.
'You like chess, Miss Swancourt?'
'Yes. It is my favourite scientific game; indeed, excludes every
other. Do you play?'
'I have played; though not lately.'
'Challenge him, Elfride,' said the vicar heartily. 'She plays
very well for a lady, Mr. Knight.'
'Shall we play?' asked Elfride tentatively.
'Oh, certainly. I shall be delighted.'
The game began. Mr. Swancourt had forgotten a similar performance
with Stephen Smith the year before. Elfride had not; but she had
begun to take for her maxim the undoubted truth that the necessity
of continuing faithful to Stephen, without suspicion, dictated a
fickle behaviour almost as imperatively as fickleness itself; a
fact, however, which would give a startling advantage to the
latter quality should it ever appear.
Knight, by one of those inexcusable oversights which will
sometimes afflict the best of players, placed his rook in the arms
of one of her pawns. It was her first advantage. She looked
triumphant--even ruthless.
'By George! what was I thinking of?' said Knight quietly; and then
dismissed all concern at his accident.
'Club laws we'll have, won't we, Mr. Knight?' said Elfride
suasively.
'Oh yes, certainly,' said Mr. Knight, a thought, however, just
occurring to his mind, that he had two or three times allowed her
to replace a man on her religiously assuring him that such a move
was an absolute blunder.
She immediately took up the unfortunate rook and the contest
proceeded, Elfride having now rather the better of the game. Then
he won the exchange, regained his position, and began to press her
hard. Elfride grew flurried, and placed her queen on his
remaining rook's file.
'There--how stupid! Upon my word, I did not see your rook. Of
course nobody but a fool would have put a queen there knowingly!'
She spoke excitedly, half expecting her antagonist to give her
back the move.
'Nobody, of course,' said Knight serenely, and stretched out his
hand towards his royal victim.
'It is not very pleasant to have it taken advantage of, then,' she
said with some vexation.
'Club laws, I think you said?' returned Knight blandly, and
mercilessly appropriating the queen.
She was on the brink of pouting, but was ashamed to show it; tears
almost stood in her eyes. She had been trying so hard--so very
hard--thinking and thinking till her brain was in a whirl; and it
seemed so heartless of him to treat her so, after all.
'I think it is----' she began.
'What?'
--'Unkind to take advantage of a pure mistake I make in that way.'
'I lost my rook by even a purer mistake,' said the enemy in an
inexorable tone, without lifting his eyes.
'Yes, but----' However, as his logic was absolutely unanswerable,
she merely registered a protest. 'I cannot endure those cold-
blooded ways of clubs and professional players, like Staunton and
Morphy. Just as if it really mattered whether you have raised
your fingers from a man or no!'
Knight smiled as pitilessly as before, and they went on in
silence.
'Checkmate,' said Knight.
'Another game,' said Elfride peremptorily, and looking very warm.
'With all my heart,' said Knight.
'Checkmate,' said Knight again at the end of forty minutes.
'Another game,' she returned resolutely.
'I'll give you the odds of a bishop,' Knight said to her kindly.
'No, thank you,' Elfride replied in a tone intended for courteous
indifference; but, as a fact, very cavalier indeed.
'Checkmate,' said her opponent without the least emotion.
Oh, the difference between Elfride's condition of mind now, and
when she purposely made blunders that Stephen Smith might win!
It was bedtime. Her mind as distracted as if it would throb
itself out of her head, she went off to her chamber, full of
mortification at being beaten time after time when she herself was
the aggressor. Having for two or three years enjoyed the
reputation throughout the globe of her father's brain--which
almost constituted her entire world--of being an excellent player,
this fiasco was intolerable; for unfortunately the person most
dogged in the belief in a false reputation is always that one, the
possessor, who has the best means of knowing that it is not true.
In bed no sleep came to soothe her; that gentle thing being the
very middle-of-summer friend in this respect of flying away at the
merest troublous cloud. After lying awake till two o'clock an
idea seemed to strike her. She softly arose, got a light, and
fetched a Chess Praxis from the library. Returning and sitting up
in bed, she diligently studied the volume till the clock struck
five, and her eyelids felt thick and heavy. She then extinguished
the light and lay down again.
'You look pale, Elfride,' said Mrs. Swancourt the next morning at
breakfast. 'Isn't she, cousin Harry?'
A young girl who is scarcely ill at all can hardly help becoming
so when regarded as such by all eyes turning upon her at the table
in obedience to some remark. Everybody looked at Elfride. She
certainly was pale.
'Am I pale?' she said with a faint smile. 'I did not sleep much.
I could not get rid of armies of bishops and knights, try how I
would.'
'Chess is a bad thing just before bedtime; especially for
excitable people like yourself, dear. Don't ever play late
again.'
'I'll play early instead. Cousin Knight,' she said in imitation
of Mrs. Swancourt, 'will you oblige me in something?'
'Even to half my kingdom.'
'Well, it is to play one game more.'
'When?'
'Now, instantly; the moment we have breakfasted.'
'Nonsense, Elfride,' said her father. 'Making yourself a slave to
the game like that.'
'But I want to, papa! Honestly, I am restless at having been so
ignominiously overcome. And Mr. Knight doesn't mind. So what
harm can there be?'
'Let us play, by all means, if you wish it,' said Knight.
So, when breakfast was over, the combatants withdrew to the quiet
of the library, and the door was closed. Elfride seemed to have
an idea that her conduct was rather ill-regulated and startlingly
free from conventional restraint. And worse, she fancied upon
Knight's face a slightly amused look at her proceedings.
'You think me foolish, I suppose,' she said recklessly; 'but I
want to do my very best just once, and see whether I can overcome
you.'
'Certainly: nothing more natural. Though I am afraid it is not
the plan adopted by women of the world after a defeat.'
'Why, pray?'
'Because they know that as good as overcoming is skill in effacing
recollection of being overcome, and turn their attention to that
entirely.'
'I am wrong again, of course.'
'Perhaps your wrong is more pleasing than their right.'
'I don't quite know whether you mean that, or whether you are
laughing at me,' she said, looking doubtingly at him, yet
inclining to accept the more flattering interpretation. 'I am
almost sure you think it vanity in me to think I am a match for
you. Well, if you do, I say that vanity is no crime in such a
case.'
'Well, perhaps not. Though it is hardly a virtue.'
'Oh yes, in battle! Nelson's bravery lay in his vanity.'
'Indeed! Then so did his death.'
Oh no, no! For it is written in the book of the prophet
Shakespeare--
"Fear and be slain? no worse can come to fight;
And fight and die, is death destroying death!"
And down they sat, and the contest began, Elfride having the first
move. The game progressed. Elfride's heart beat so violently
that she could not sit still. Her dread was lest he should hear
it. And he did discover it at last--some flowers upon the table
being set throbbing by its pulsations.
'I think we had better give over,' said Knight, looking at her
gently. 'It is too much for you, I know. Let us write down the
position, and finish another time.'
'No, please not,' she implored. 'I should not rest if I did not
know the result at once. It is your move.'
Ten minutes passed.
She started up suddenly. 'I know what you are doing?' she cried,
an angry colour upon her cheeks, and her eyes indignant. 'You
were thinking of letting me win to please me!'
'I don't mind owning that I was,' Knight responded phlegmatically,
and appearing all the more so by contrast with her own turmoil.
'But you must not! I won't have it.'
'Very well.'
'No, that will not do; I insist that you promise not to do any
such absurd thing. It is insulting me!'
'Very well, madam. I won't do any such absurd thing. You shall
not win.'
'That is to be proved!' she returned proudly; and the play went
on.
Nothing is now heard but the ticking of a quaint old timepiece on
the summit of a bookcase. Ten minutes pass; he captures her
knight; she takes his knight, and looks a very Rhadamanthus.
More minutes tick away; she takes his pawn and has the advantage,
showing her sense of it rather prominently.
Five minutes more: he takes her bishop: she brings things even by
taking his knight.
Three minutes: she looks bold, and takes his queen: he looks
placid, and takes hers.
Eight or ten minutes pass: he takes a pawn; she utters a little
pooh! but not the ghost of a pawn can she take in retaliation.
Ten minutes pass: he takes another pawn and says, 'Check!' She
flushes, extricates herself by capturing his bishop, and looks
triumphant. He immediately takes her bishop: she looks surprised.
Five minutes longer: she makes a dash and takes his only remaining
bishop; he replies by taking her only remaining knight.
Two minutes: he gives check; her mind is now in a painful state of
tension, and she shades her face with her hand.
Yet a few minutes more: he takes her rook and checks again. She
literally trembles now lest an artful surprise she has in store
for him shall be anticipated by the artful surprise he evidently
has in store for her.
Five minutes: 'Checkmate in two moves!' exclaims Elfride.
'If you can,' says Knight.
'Oh, I have miscalculated; that is cruel!'
'Checkmate,' says Knight; and the victory is won.
Elfride arose and turned away without letting him see her face.
Once in the hall she ran upstairs and into her room, and flung
herself down upon her bed, weeping bitterly.
'Where is Elfride?' said her father at luncheon.
Knight listened anxiously for the answer. He had been hoping to
see her again before this time.
'She isn't well, sir,' was the reply.
Mrs. Swancourt rose and left the room, going upstairs to Elfride's
apartment.
At the door was Unity, who occupied in the new establishment a
position between young lady's maid and middle-housemaid.
'She is sound asleep, ma'am,' Unity whispered.
Mrs. Swancourt opened the door. Elfride was lying full-dressed on
the bed, her face hot and red, her arms thrown abroad. At
intervals of a minute she tossed restlessly from side to side, and
indistinctly moaned words used in the game of chess.
Mrs. Swancourt had a turn for doctoring, and felt her pulse. It
was twanging like a harp-string, at the rate of nearly a hundred
and fifty a minute. Softly moving the sleeping girl to a little
less cramped position, she went downstairs again.
'She is asleep now,' said Mrs. Swancourt. 'She does not seem very
well. Cousin Knight, what were you thinking of? her tender brain
won't bear cudgelling like your great head. You should have
strictly forbidden her to play again.'
In truth, the essayist's experience of the nature of young women
was far less extensive than his abstract knowledge of them led
himself and others to believe. He could pack them into sentences
like a workman, but practically was nowhere.
'I am indeed sorry,' said Knight, feeling even more than he
expressed. 'But surely, the young lady knows best what is good
for her!'
'Bless you, that's just what she doesn't know. She never thinks
of such things, does she, Christopher? Her father and I have to
command her and keep her in order, as you would a child. She will
say things worthy of a French epigrammatist, and act like a robin
in a greenhouse. But I think we will send for Dr. Granson--there
can be no harm.'
A man was straightway despatched on horseback to Castle Boterel,
and the gentleman known as Dr. Granson came in the course of the
afternoon. He pronounced her nervous system to be in a decided
state of disorder; forwarded some soothing draught, and gave
orders that on no account whatever was she to play chess again.
The next morning Knight, much vexed with himself, waited with a
curiously compounded feeling for her entry to breakfast. The
women servants came in to prayers at irregular intervals, and as
each entered, he could not, to save his life, avoid turning his
head with the hope that she might be Elfride. Mr. Swancourt began
reading without waiting for her. Then somebody glided in
noiselessly; Knight softly glanced up: it was only the little
kitchen-maid. Knight thought reading prayers a bore.
He went out alone, and for almost the first time failed to
recognize that holding converse with Nature's charms was not
solitude. On nearing the house again he perceived his young
friend crossing a slope by a path which ran into the one he was
following in the angle of the field. Here they met. Elfride was
at once exultant and abashed: coming into his presence had upon
her the effect of entering a cathedral.
Knight had his note-book in his hand, and had, in fact, been in
the very act of writing therein when they came in view of each
other. He left off in the midst of a sentence, and proceeded to
inquire warmly concerning her state of health. She said she was
perfectly well, and indeed had never looked better. Her health
was as inconsequent as her actions. Her lips were red, WITHOUT
the polish that cherries have, and their redness margined with the
white skin in a clearly defined line, which had nothing of jagged
confusion in it. Altogether she stood as the last person in the
world to be knocked over by a game of chess, because too
ephemeral-looking to play one.
'Are you taking notes?' she inquired with an alacrity plainly
arising less from interest in the subject than from a wish to
divert his thoughts from herself.
'Yes; I was making an entry. And with your permission I will
complete it.' Knight then stood still and wrote. Elfride remained
beside him a moment, and afterwards walked on.
'I should like to see all the secrets that are in that book,' she
gaily flung back to him over her shoulder.
'I don't think you would find much to interest you.'
'I know I should.'
'Then of course I have no more to say.'
'But I would ask this question first. Is it a book of mere facts
concerning journeys and expenditure, and so on, or a book of
thoughts?'
'Well, to tell the truth, it is not exactly either. It consists
for the most part of jottings for articles and essays, disjointed
and disconnected, of no possible interest to anybody but myself.'
'It contains, I suppose, your developed thoughts in embryo?'
'Yes.'
'If they are interesting when enlarged to the size of an article,
what must they be in their concentrated form? Pure rectified
spirit, above proof; before it is lowered to be fit for human
consumption: "words that burn" indeed.'
'Rather like a balloon before it is inflated: flabby, shapeless,
dead. You could hardly read them.'
'May I try?' she said coaxingly. 'I wrote my poor romance in that
way--I mean in bits, out of doors--and I should like to see
whether your way of entering things is the same as mine.'
'Really, that's rather an awkward request. I suppose I can hardly
refuse now you have asked so directly; but----'
'You think me ill-mannered in asking. But does not this justify
me--your writing in my presence, Mr. Knight? If I had lighted upon
your book by chance, it would have been different; but you stand
before me, and say, "Excuse me," without caring whether I do or
not, and write on, and then tell me they are not private facts but
public ideas.'
'Very well, Miss Swancourt. If you really must see, the
consequences be upon your own head. Remember, my advice to you is
to leave my book alone.'
'But with that caution I have your permission?'
'Yes.'
She hesitated a moment, looked at his hand containing the book,
then laughed, and saying, 'I must see it,' withdrew it from his
fingers.
Knight rambled on towards the house, leaving her standing in the
path turning over the leaves. By the time he had reached the
wicket-gate he saw that she had moved, and waited till she came
up.
Elfride had closed the note-book, and was carrying it disdainfully
by the corner between her finger and thumb; her face wore a
nettled look. She silently extended the volume towards him,
raising her eyes no higher than her hand was lifted.
'Take it,' said Elfride quickly. 'I don't want to read it.'
'Could you understand it?' said Knight.
'As far as I looked. But I didn't care to read much.'
'Why, Miss Swancourt?'
'Only because I didn't wish to--that's all.'
'I warned you that you might not.'
'Yes, but I never supposed you would have put me there.'
'Your name is not mentioned once within the four corners.'
'Not my name--I know that.'
'Nor your description, nor anything by which anybody would
recognize you.'
'Except myself. For what is this?' she exclaimed, taking it from
him and opening a page. 'August 7. That's the day before
yesterday. But I won't read it,' Elfride said, closing the book
again with pretty hauteur. 'Why should I? I had no business to
ask to see your hook, and it serves me right.'
Knight hardly recollected what he had written, and turned over the
book to see. He came to this:
'Aug. 7. Girl gets into her teens, and her self-consciousness is
born. After a certain interval passed in infantine helplessness
it begins to act. Simple, young, and inexperienced at first.
Persons of observation can tell to a nicety how old this
consciousness is by the skill it has acquired in the art necessary
to its success--the art of hiding itself. Generally begins career
by actions which are popularly termed showing-off. Method adopted
depends in each case upon the disposition, rank, residence, of the
young lady attempting it. Town-bred girl will utter some moral
paradox on fast men, or love. Country miss adopts the more
material media of taking a ghastly fence, whistling, or making
your blood run cold by appearing to risk her neck. (MEM. On
Endelstow Tower.)
'An innocent vanity is of course the origin of these displays.
"Look at me," say these youthful beginners in womanly artifice,
without reflecting whether or not it be to their advantage to show
so very much of themselves. (Amplify and correct for paper on
Artless Arts.)'
'Yes, I remember now,' said Knight. 'The notes were certainly
suggested by your manoeuvre on the church tower. But you must not
think too much of such random observations,' he continued
encouragingly, as he noticed her injured looks. 'A mere fancy
passing through my head assumes a factitious importance to you,
because it has been made permanent by being written down. All
mankind think thoughts as bad as those of people they most love on
earth, but such thoughts never getting embodied on paper, it
becomes assumed that they never existed. I daresay that you
yourself have thought some disagreeable thing or other of me,
which would seem just as bad as this if written. I challenge you,
now, to tell me.'
'The worst thing I have thought of you?'
'Yes.'
'I must not.'
'Oh yes.'
'I thought you were rather round-shouldered.'
Knight looked slightly redder.
'And that there was a little bald spot on the top of your head.'
'Heh-heh! Two ineradicable defects,' said Knight, there being a
faint ghastliness discernible in his laugh. 'They are much worse
in a lady's eye than being thought self-conscious, I suppose.'
'Ah, that's very fine,' she said, too inexperienced to perceive
her hit, and hence not quite disposed to forgive his notes. 'You
alluded to me in that entry as if I were such a child, too.
Everybody does that. I cannot understand it. I am quite a woman,
you know. How old do you think I am?'
'How old? Why, seventeen, I should say. All girls are seventeen.'
'You are wrong. I am nearly nineteen. Which class of women do
you like best, those who seem younger, or those who seem older
than they are?'
'Off-hand I should be inclined to say those who seem older.'
So it was not Elfride's class.
'But it is well known,' she said eagerly, and there was something
touching in the artless anxiety to be thought much of which she
revealed by her words, 'that the slower a nature is to develop,
the richer the nature. Youths and girls who are men and women
before they come of age are nobodies by the time that backward
people have shown their full compass.'
'Yes,' said Knight thoughtfully. 'There is really something in
that remark. But at the risk of offence I must remind you that
you there take it for granted that the woman behind her time at a
given age has not reached the end of her tether. Her backwardness
may be not because she is slow to develop, but because she soon
exhausted her capacity for developing.'
Elfride looked disappointed. By this time they were indoors.
Mrs. Swancourt, to whom match-making by any honest means was meat
and drink, had now a little scheme of that nature concerning this
pair. The morning-room, in which they both expected to find her,
was empty; the old lady having, for the above reason, vacated it
by the second door as they entered by the first.
Knight went to the chimney-piece, and carelessly surveyed two
portraits on ivory.
'Though these pink ladies had very rudimentary features, judging
by what I see here,' he observed, 'they had unquestionably
beautiful heads of hair.'
'Yes; and that is everything,' said Elfride, possibly conscious of
her own, possibly not.
'Not everything; though a great deal, certainly.'
'Which colour do you like best?' she ventured to ask.
'More depends on its abundance than on its colour.'
'Abundances being equal, may I inquire your favourite colour?'
'Dark.'
'I mean for women,' she said, with the minutest fall of
countenance, and a hope that she had been misunderstood.
'So do I,' Knight replied.
It was impossible for any man not to know the colour of Elfride's
hair. In women who wear it plainly such a feature may be
overlooked by men not given to ocular intentness. But hers was
always in the way. You saw her hair as far as you could see her
sex, and knew that it was the palest brown. She knew instantly
that Knight, being perfectly aware of this, had an independent
standard of admiration in the matter.
Elfride was thoroughly vexed. She could not but be struck with
the honesty of his opinions, and the worst of it was, that the
more they went against her, the more she respected them. And now,
like a reckless gambler, she hazarded her last and best treasure.
Her eyes: they were her all now.
'What coloured eyes do you like best, Mr. Knight?' she said
slowly.
'Honestly, or as a compliment?'
'Of course honestly; I don't want anybody's compliment!'
And yet Elfride knew otherwise: that a compliment or word of
approval from that man then would have been like a well to a
famished Arab.
'I prefer hazel,' he said serenely.
She had played and lost again.
