A Pair of Blue Eyes, by Thomas Hardy

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Knight stopped as if he had fallen into a train of thought, and
Stephen looked with affectionate awe at a master whose mind, he
believed, could swallow up at one meal all that his own head
contained.

There was affective sympathy, but no great intellectual
fellowship, between Knight and Stephen Smith. Knight had seen his
young friend when the latter was a cherry-cheeked happy boy, had
been interested in him, had kept his eye upon him, and generously
helped the lad to books, till the mere connection of patronage
grew to acquaintance, and that ripened to friendship. And so,
though Smith was not at all the man Knight would have deliberately
chosen as a friend--or even for one of a group of a dozen friends--
he somehow was his friend. Circumstance, as usual, did it all.
How many of us can say of our most intimate alter ego, leaving
alone friends of the outer circle, that he is the man we should
have chosen, as embodying the net result after adding up all the
points in human nature that we love, and principles we hold, and
subtracting all that we hate? The man is really somebody we got to
know by mere physical juxtaposition long maintained, and was taken
into our confidence, and even heart, as a makeshift.

'And what do you think of her?' Stephen ventured to say, after a
silence.

'Taking her merits on trust from you,' said Knight, 'as we do
those of the Roman poets of whom we know nothing but that they
lived, I still think she will not stick to you through, say, three
years of absence in India.'

'But she will!' cried Stephen desperately. 'She is a girl all
delicacy and honour. And no woman of that kind, who has committed
herself so into a man's hands as she has into mine, could possibly
marry another.'

'How has she committed herself?' asked Knight cunously.

Stephen did not answer. Knight had looked on his love so
sceptically that it would not do to say all that he had intended
to say by any means.

'Well, don't tell,' said Knight. 'But you are begging the
question, which is, I suppose, inevitable in love.'

'And I'll tell you another thing,' the younger man pleaded. 'You
remember what you said to me once about women receiving a kiss.
Don't you? Why, that instead of our being charmed by the
fascination of their bearing at such a time, we should immediately
doubt them if their confusion has any GRACE in it--that awkward
bungling was the true charm of the occasion, implying that we are
the first who has played such a part with them.'

'It is true, quite,' said Knight musingly.

It often happened that the disciple thus remembered the lessons of
the master long after the master himself had forgotten them.

'Well, that was like her!' cried Stephen triumphantly. 'She was
in such a flurry that she didn't know what she was doing.'

'Splendid, splendid!' said Knight soothingly. 'So that all I have
to say is, that if you see a good opening in Bombay there's no
reason why you should not go without troubling to draw fine
distinctions as to reasons. No man fully realizes what opinions
he acts upon, or what his actions mean.'

'Yes; I go to Bombay. I'll write a note here, if you don't mind.'

'Sleep over it--it is the best plan--and write to-morrow.
Meantime, go there to that window and sit down, and look at my
Humanity Show. I am going to dine out this evening, and have to
dress here out of my portmanteau. I bring up my things like this
to save the trouble of going down to my place at Richmond and back
again.'

Knight then went to the middle of the room and flung open his
portmanteau, and Stephen drew near the window. The streak of
sunlight had crept upward, edged away, and vanished; the zoophytes
slept: a dusky gloom pervaded the room. And now another volume of
light shone over the window.

'There!' said Knight, 'where is there in England a spectacle to
equal that? I sit there and watch them every night before I go
home. Softly open the sash.'

Beneath them was an alley running up to the wall, and thence
turning sideways and passing under an arch, so that Knight's back
window was immediately over the angle, and commanded a view of the
alley lengthwise. Crowds--mostly of women--were surging,
bustling, and pacing up and down. Gaslights glared from butchers'
stalls, illuminating the lumps of flesh to splotches of orange and
vermilion, like the wild colouring of Turner's later pictures,
whilst the purl and babble of tongues of every pitch and mood was
to this human wild-wood what the ripple of a brook is to the
natural forest.

Nearly ten minutes passed. Then Knight also came to the window.

'Well, now, I call a cab and vanish down the street in the
direction of Berkeley Square,' he said, buttoning his waistcoat
and kicking his morning suit into a corner. Stephen rose to
leave.

'What a heap of literature!' remarked the young man, taking a
final longing survey round the room, as if to abide there for ever
would be the great pleasure of his life, yet feeling that he had
almost outstayed his welcome-while. His eyes rested upon an arm-
chair piled full of newspapers, magazines, and bright new volumes
in green and red.

'Yes,' said Knight, also looking at them and breathing a sigh of
weariness; 'something must be done with several of them soon, I
suppose. Stephen, you needn't hurry away for a few minutes, you
know, if you want to stay; I am not quite ready. Overhaul those
volumes whilst I put on my coat, and I'll walk a little way with
you.'

Stephen sat down beside the arm-chair and began to tumble the
books about. Among the rest he found a novelette in one volume,
THE COURT OF KELLYON CASTLE. By Ernest Field.

'Are you going to review this?' inquired Stephen with apparent
unconcern, and holding up Elfride's effusion.

'Which? Oh, that! I may--though I don't do much light reviewing
now. But it is reviewable.'

'How do you mean?'

Knight never liked to be asked what he meant. 'Mean! I mean that
the majority of books published are neither good enough nor bad
enough to provoke criticism, and that that book does provoke it.'

'By its goodness or its badness?' Stephen said with some anxiety
on poor little Elfride's score.

'Its badness. It seems to be written by some girl in her teens.'

Stephen said not another word. He did not care to speak plainly
of Elfride after that unfortunate slip his tongue had made in
respect of her having committed herself; and, apart from that,
Knight's severe--almost dogged and self-willed--honesty in
criticizing was unassailable by the humble wish of a youthful
friend like Stephen.

Knight was now ready. Turning off the gas, and slamming together
the door, they went downstairs and into the street.

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.'

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