Chapter XXXVIII
'Jealousy is cruel as the grave.'
Stephen pondered not a little on this meeting with his old friend
and once-beloved exemplar. He was grieved, for amid all the
distractions of his latter years a still small voice of fidelity
to Knight had lingered on in him. Perhaps this staunchness was
because Knight ever treated him as a mere disciple--even to
snubbing him sometimes; and had at last, though unwittingly,
inflicted upon him the greatest snub of all, that of taking away
his sweetheart. The emotional side of his constitution was built
rather after a feminine than a male model; and that tremendous
wound from Knight's hand may have tended to keep alive a warmth
which solicitousness would have extinguished altogether.
Knight, on his part, was vexed, after they had parted, that he had
not taken Stephen in hand a little after the old manner. Those
words which Smith had let fall concerning somebody having a prior
claim to Elfride, would, if uttered when the man was younger, have
provoked such a query as, 'Come, tell me all about it, my lad,'
from Knight, and Stephen would straightway have delivered himself
of all he knew on the subject.
Stephen the ingenuous boy, though now obliterated externally by
Stephen the contriving man, returned to Knight's memory vividly
that afternoon. He was at present but a sojourner in London; and
after attending to the two or three matters of business which
remained to be done that day, he walked abstractedly into the
gloomy corridors of the British Museum for the half-hour previous
to their closing. That meeting with Smith had reunited the
present with the past, closing up the chasm of his absence from
England as if it had never existed, until the final circumstances
of his previous time of residence in London formed but a yesterday
to the circumstances now. The conflict that then had raged in him
concerning Elfride Swancourt revived, strengthened by its sleep.
Indeed, in those many months of absence, though quelling the
intention to make her his wife, he had never forgotten that she
was the type of woman adapted to his nature; and instead of trying
to obliterate thoughts of her altogether, he had grown to regard
them as an infirmity it was necessary to tolerate.
Knight returned to his hotel much earlier in the evening than he
would have done in the ordinary course of things. He did not care
to think whether this arose from a friendly wish to close the gap
that had slowly been widening between himself and his earliest
acquaintance, or from a hankering desire to hear the meaning of
the dark oracles Stephen had hastily pronounced, betokening that
he knew something more of Elfride than Knight had supposed.
He made a hasty dinner, inquired for Smith, and soon was ushered
into the young man's presence, whom he found sitting in front of a
comfortable fire, beside a table spread with a few scientific
periodicals and art reviews.
'I have come to you, after all,' said Knight. 'My manner was odd
this morning, and it seemed desirable to call; but that you had
too much sense to notice, Stephen, I know. Put it down to my
wanderings in France and Italy.'
'Don't say another word, but sit down. I am only too glad to see
you again.'
Stephen would hardly have cared to tell Knight just then that the
minute before Knight was announced he had been reading over some
old letters of Elfride's. They were not many; and until to-night
had been sealed up, and stowed away in a corner of his leather
trunk, with a few other mementoes and relics which had accompanied
him in his travels. The familiar sights and sounds of London, the
meeting with his friend, had with him also revived that sense of
abiding continuity with regard to Elfride and love which his
absence at the other side of the world had to some extent
suspended, though never ruptured. He at first intended only to
look over these letters on the outside; then he read one; then
another; until the whole was thus re-used as a stimulus to sad
memories. He folded them away again, placed them in his pocket,
and instead of going on with an examination into the state of the
artistic world, had remained musing on the strange circumstance
that he had returned to find Knight not the husband of Elfride
after all.
The possibility of any given gratification begets a cumulative
sense of its necessity. Stephen gave the rein to his imagination,
and felt more intensely than he had felt for many months that,
without Elfride, his life would never be any great pleasure to
himself, or honour to his Maker.
They sat by the fire, chatting on external and random subjects,
neither caring to be the first to approach the matter each most
longed to discuss. On the table with the periodicals lay two or
three pocket-books, one of them being open. Knight seeing from
the exposed page that the contents were sketches only, began
turning the leaves over carelessly with his finger. When, some
time later, Stephen was out of the room, Knight proceeded to pass
the interval by looking at the sketches more carefully.
The first crude ideas, pertaining to dwellings of all kinds, were
roughly outlined on the different pages. Antiquities had been
copied; fragments of Indian columns, colossal statues, and
outlandish ornament from the temples of Elephanta and Kenneri,
were carelessly intruded upon by outlines of modern doors,
windows, roofs, cooking-stoves, and household furniture;
everything, in short, which comes within the range of a practising
architect's experience, who travels with his eyes open. Among
these occasionally appeared rough delineations of mediaeval
subjects for carving or illumination--heads of Virgins, Saints,
and Prophets.
Stephen was not professedly a free-hand draughtsman, but he drew
the human figure with correctness and skill. In its numerous
repetitions on the sides and edges of the leaves, Knight began to
notice a peculiarity. All the feminine saints had one type of
feature. There were large nimbi and small nimbi about their
drooping heads, but the face was always the same. That profile--
how well Knight knew that profile!
Had there been but one specimen of the familiar countenance, he
might have passed over the resemblance as accidental; but a
repetition meant more. Knight thought anew of Smith's hasty words
earlier in the day, and looked at the sketches again and again.
On the young man's entry, Knight said with palpable agitation--
'Stephen, who are those intended for?'
Stephen looked over the book with utter unconcern, 'Saints and
angels, done in my leisure moments. They were intended as designs
for the stained glass of an English church.'
'But whom do you idealize by that type of woman you always adopt
for the Virgin?'
'Nobody.'
And then a thought raced along Stephen's mind and he looked up at
his friend.
The truth is, Stephen's introduction of Elfride's lineaments had
been so unconscious that he had not at first understood his
companion's drift. The hand, like the tongue, easily acquires the
trick of repetition by rote, without calling in the mind to assist
at all; and this had been the case here. Young men who cannot
write verses about their Loves generally take to portraying them,
and in the early days of his attachment Smith had never been weary
of outlining Elfride. The lay-figure of Stephen's sketches now
initiated an adjustment of many things. Knight had recognized
her. The opportunity of comparing notes had come unsought.
'Elfride Swancourt, to whom I was engaged,' he said quietly.
'Stephen!'
'I know what you mean by speaking like that.'
'Was it Elfride? YOU the man, Stephen?'
'Yes; and you are thinking why did I conceal the fact from you
that time at Endelstow, are you not?'
'Yes, and more--more.'
'I did it for the best; blame me if you will; I did it for the
best. And now say how could I be with you afterwards as I had
been before?'
'I don't know at all; I can't say.'
Knight remained fixed in thought, and once he murmured--
'I had a suspicion this afternoon that there might be some such
meaning in your words about my taking her away. But I dismissed
it. How came you to know her?' he presently asked, in almost a
peremptory tone.
'I went down about the church; years ago now.'
'When you were with Hewby, of course, of course. Well, I can't
understand it.' His tones rose. 'I don't know what to say, your
hoodwinking me like this for so long!'
'I don't see that I have hoodwinked you at all.'
'Yes, yes, but'----
Knight arose from his seat, and began pacing up and down the room.
His face was markedly pale, and his voice perturbed, as he said--
'You did not act as I should have acted towards you under those
circumstances. I feel it deeply; and I tell you plainly, I shall
never forget it!'
'What?'
'Your behaviour at that meeting in the family vault, when I told
you we were going to be married. Deception, dishonesty,
everywhere; all the world's of a piece!'
Stephen did not much like this misconstruction of his motives,
even though it was but the hasty conclusion of a friend disturbed
by emotion.
'I could do no otherwise than I did, with due regard to her,' he
said stiffly.
'Indeed!' said Knight, in the bitterest tone of reproach. 'Nor
could you with due regard to her have married her, I suppose! I
have hoped--longed--that HE, who turns out to be YOU, would
ultimately have done that.'
'I am much obliged to you for that hope. But you talk very
mysteriously. I think I had about the best reason anybody could
have had for not doing that.'
'Oh, what reason was it?'
'That I could not.'
'You ought to have made an opportunity; you ought to do so now, in
bare justice to her, Stephen!' cried Knight, carried beyond
himself. 'That you know very well, and it hurts and wounds me
more than you dream to find you never have tried to make any
reparation to a woman of that kind--so trusting, so apt to be run
away with by her feelings--poor little fool, so much the worse for
her!'
'Why, you talk like a madman! You took her away from me, did you
not?'
'Picking up what another throws down can scarcely be called
"taking away." However, we shall not agree too well upon that
subject, so we had better part.'
'But I am quite certain you misapprehend something most
grievously,' said Stephen, shaken to the bottom of his heart.
'What have I done; tell me? I have lost Elfride, but is that such
a sin?'
'Was it her doing, or yours?'
'Was what?'
'That you parted.'
'I will tell you honestly. It was hers entirely, entirely.'
'What was her reason?'
'I can hardly say. But I'll tell the story without reserve.'
Stephen until to-day had unhesitatingly held that she grew tired
of him and turned to Knight; but he did not like to advance the
statement now, or even to think the thought. To fancy otherwise
accorded better with the hope to which Knight's estrangement had
given birth: that love for his friend was not the direct cause,
but a result of her suspension of love for himself.
'Such a matter must not be allowed to breed discord between us,'
Knight returned, relapsing into a manner which concealed all his
true feeling, as if confidence now was intolerable. 'I do see
that your reticence towards me in the vault may have been dictated
by prudential considerations.' He concluded artificially, 'It was
a strange thing altogether; but not of much importance, I suppose,
at this distance of time; and it does not concern me now, though I
don't mind hearing your story.'
These words from Knight, uttered with such an air of renunciation
and apparent indifference, prompted Smith to speak on--perhaps
with a little complacency--of his old secret engagement to
Elfride. He told the details of its origin, and the peremptory
words and actions of her father to extinguish their love.
Knight persevered in the tone and manner of a disinterested
outsider. It had become more than ever imperative to screen his
emotions from Stephen's eye; the young man would otherwise be less
frank, and their meeting would be again embittered. What was the
use of untoward candour?
Stephen had now arrived at the point in his ingenuous narrative
where he left the vicarage because of her father's manner.
Knight's interest increased. Their love seemed so innocent and
childlike thus far.
'It is a nice point in casuistry,' he observed, 'to decide whether
you were culpable or not in not telling Swancourt that your
friends were parishioners of his. It was only human nature to
hold your tongue under the circumstances. Well, what was the
result of your dismissal by him?'
'That we agreed to be secretly faithful. And to insure this we
thought we would marry.'
Knight's suspense and agitation rose higher when Stephen entered
upon this phase of the subject.
'Do you mind telling on?' he said, steadying his manner of speech.
'Oh, not at all.'
Then Stephen gave in full the particulars of the meeting with
Elfride at the railway station; the necessity they were under of
going to London, unless the ceremony were to be postponed. The
long journey of the afternoon and evening; her timidity and
revulsion of feeling; its culmination on reaching London; the
crossing over to the down-platform and their immediate departure
again, solely in obedience to her wish; the journey all night;
their anxious watching for the dawn; their arrival at St. Launce's
at last--were detailed. And he told how a village woman named
Jethway was the only person who recognized them, either going or
coming; and how dreadfully this terrified Elfride. He told how he
waited in the fields whilst this then reproachful sweetheart went
for her pony, and how the last kiss he ever gave her was given a
mile out of the town, on the way to Endelstow.
These things Stephen related with a will. He believed that in
doing so he established word by word the reasonableness of his
claim to Elfride.
'Curse her! curse that woman!--that miserable letter that parted
us! O God!'
Knight began pacing the room again, and uttered this at further
end.
'What did you say?' said Stephen, turning round.
'Say? Did I say anything? Oh, I was merely thinking about your
story, and the oddness of my having a fancy for the same woman
afterwards. And that now I--I have forgotten her almost; and
neither of us care about her, except just as a friend, you know,
eh?'
Knight still continued at the further end of the room, somewhat in
shadow.
'Exactly,' said Stephen, inwardly exultant, for he was really
deceived by Knight's off-hand manner.
Yet he was deceived less by the completeness of Knight's disguise
than by the persuasive power which lay in the fact that Knight had
never before deceived him in anything. So this supposition that
his companion had ceased to love Elfride was an enormous
lightening of the weight which had turned the scale against him.
'Admitting that Elfride COULD love another man after you,' said
the elder, under the same varnish of careless criticism, 'she was
none the worse for that experience.'
'The worse? Of course she was none the worse.'
'Did you ever think it a wild and thoughtless thing for her to
do?'
'Indeed, I never did,' said Stephen. 'I persuaded her. She saw
no harm in it until she decided to return, nor did I; nor was
there, except to the extent of indiscretion.'
'Directly she thought it was wrong she would go no further?'
'That was it. I had just begun to think it wrong too.'
'Such a childish escapade might have been misrepresented by any
evil-disposed person, might it not?'
'It might; but I never heard that it was. Nobody who really knew
all the circumstances would have done otherwise than smile. If
all the world had known it, Elfride would still have remained the
only one who thought her action a sin. Poor child, she always
persisted in thinking so, and was frightened more than enough.'
'Stephen, do you love her now?'
'Well, I like her; I always shall, you know,' he said evasively,
and with all the strategy love suggested. 'But I have not seen
her for so long that I can hardly be expected to love her. Do you
love her still?'
'How shall I answer without being ashamed? What fickle beings we
men are, Stephen! Men may love strongest for a while, but women
love longest. I used to love her--in my way, you know.'
'Yes, I understand. Ah, and I used to love her in my way. In
fact, I loved her a good deal at one time; but travel has a
tendency to obliterate early fancies.'
'It has--it has, truly.'
Perhaps the most extraordinary feature in this conversation was
the circumstance that, though each interlocutor had at first his
suspicions of the other's abiding passion awakened by several
little acts, neither would allow himself to see that his friend
might now be speaking deceitfully as well as he.
'Stephen.' resumed Knight, 'now that matters are smooth between
us, I think I must leave you. You won't mind my hurrying off to
my quarters?'
'You'll stay to some sort of supper surely? didn't you come to
dinner!'
'You must really excuse me this once.'
'Then you'll drop in to breakfast to-morrow.'
'I shall be rather pressed for time.'
'An early breakfast, which shall interfere with nothing?'
'I'll come,' said Knight, with as much readiness as it was
possible to graft upon a huge stock of reluctance. 'Yes, early;
eight o'clock say, as we are under the same roof.'
'Any time you like. Eight it shall be.'
And Knight left him. To wear a mask, to dissemble his feelings as
he had in their late miserable conversation, was such torture that
he could support it no longer. It was the first time in Knight's
life that he had ever been so entirely the player of a part. And
the man he had thus deceived was Stephen, who had docilely looked
up to him from youth as a superior of unblemished integrity.
He went to bed, and allowed the fever of his excitement to rage
uncontrolled. Stephen--it was only he who was the rival--only
Stephen! There was an anti-climax of absurdity which Knight,
wretched and conscience-stricken as he was, could not help
recognizing. Stephen was but a boy to him. Where the great grief
lay was in perceiving that the very innocence of Elfride in
reading her little fault as one so grave was what had fatally
misled him. Had Elfride, with any degree of coolness, asserted
that she had done no harm, the poisonous breath of the dead Mrs.
Jethway would have been inoperative. Why did he not make his
little docile girl tell more? If on that subject he had only
exercised the imperativeness customary with him on others, all
might have been revealed. It smote his heart like a switch when
he remembered how gently she had borne his scourging speeches,
never answering him with a single reproach, only assuring him of
her unbounded love.
Knight blessed Elfride for her sweetness, and forgot her fault.
He pictured with a vivid fancy those fair summer scenes with her.
He again saw her as at their first meeting, timid at speaking, yet
in her eagerness to be explanatory borne forward almost against
her will. How she would wait for him in green places, without
showing any of the ordinary womanly affectations of indifference!
How proud she was to be seen walking with him, bearing legibly in
her eyes the thought that he was the greatest genius in the world!
He formed a resolution; and after that could make pretence of
slumber no longer. Rising and dressing himself, he sat down and
waited for day.
That night Stephen was restless too. Not because of the
unwontedness of a return to English scenery; not because he was
about to meet his parents, and settle down for awhile to English
cottage life. He was indulging in dreams, and for the nonce the
warehouses of Bombay and the plains and forts of Poonah were but a
shadow's shadow. His dream was based on this one atom of fact:
Elfride and Knight had become separated, and their engagement was
as if it had never been. Their rupture must have occurred soon
after Stephen's discovery of the fact of their union; and, Stephen
went on to think, what so probable as that a return of her errant
affection to himself was the cause?
Stephen's opinions in this matter were those of a lover, and not
the balanced judgment of an unbiassed spectator. His naturally
sanguine spirit built hope upon hope, till scarcely a doubt
remained in his mind that her lingering tenderness for him had in
some way been perceived by Knight, and had provoked their parting.
To go and see Elfride was the suggestion of impulses it was
impossible to withstand. At any rate, to run down from St.
Launce's to Castle Poterel, a distance of less than twenty miles,
and glide like a ghost about their old haunts, making stealthy
inquiries about her, would be a fascinating way of passing the
first spare hours after reaching home on the day after the morrow.
He was now a richer man than heretofore, standing on his own
bottom; and the definite position in which he had rooted himself
nullified old local distinctions. He had become illustrious, even
sanguine clarus, judging from the tone of the worthy Mayor of St.
Launce's.
