A Pair of Blue Eyes, by Thomas Hardy

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At the same time a slight constraint of manner was visible between
them for the remainder of the afternoon. The tide turned, and
they were obliged to ascend to higher ground. The day glided on
to its end with the usual quiet dreamy passivity of such
occasions--when every deed done and thing thought is in
endeavouring to avoid doing and thinking more. Looking idly over
the verge of a crag, they beheld their stone dining-table
gradually being splashed upon and their crumbs and fragments all
washed away by the incoming sea. The vicar drew a moral lesson
from the scene; Knight replied in the same satisfied strain. And
then the waves rolled in furiously--the neutral green-and-blue
tongues of water slid up the slopes, and were metamorphosed into
foam by a careless blow, falling back white and faint, and leaving
trailing followers behind.

The passing of a heavy shower was the next scene--driving them to
shelter in a shallow cave--after which the horses were put in, and
they started to return homeward. By the time they reached the
higher levels the sky had again cleared, and the sunset rays
glanced directly upon the wet uphill road they had climbed. The
ruts formed by their carriage-wheels on the ascent--a pair of
Liliputian canals--were as shining bars of gold, tapering to
nothing in the distance. Upon this also they turned their backs,
and night spread over the sea.

The evening was chilly, and there was no moon. Knight sat close
to Elfride, and, when the darkness rendered the position of a
person a matter of uncertainty, particularly close. Elfride edged
away.

'I hope you allow me my place ungrudgingly?' he whispered.

'Oh yes; 'tis the least I can do in common civility,' she said,
accenting the words so that he might recognize them as his own
returned.

Both of them felt delicately balanced between two possibilities.
Thus they reached home.

To Knight this mild experience was delightful. It was to him a
gentle innocent time--a time which, though there may not be much
in it, seldom repeats itself in a man's life, and has a peculiar
dearness when glanced at retrospectively. He is not
inconveniently deep in love, and is lulled by a peaceful sense of
being able to enjoy the most trivial thing with a childlike
enjoyment. The movement of a wave, the colour of a stone,
anything, was enough for Knight's drowsy thoughts of that day to
precipitate themselves upon. Even the sermonizing platitudes the
vicar had delivered himself of--chiefly because something seemed
to be professionally required of him in the presence of a man of
Knight's proclivities--were swallowed whole. The presence of
Elfride led him not merely to tolerate that kind of talk from the
necessities of ordinary courtesy; but he listened to it--took in
the ideas with an enjoyable make-believe that they were proper and
necessary, and indulged in a conservative feeling that the face of
things was complete.

Entering her room that evening Elfride found a packet for herself
on the dressing-table. How it came there she did not know. She
tremblingly undid the folds of white paper that covered it. Yes;
it was the treasure of a morocco case, containing those treasures
of ornament she had refused in the daytime.

Elfride dressed herself in them for a moment, looked at herself in
the glass, blushed red, and put them away. They filled her dreams
all that night. Never had she seen anything so lovely, and never
was it more clear that as an honest woman she was in duty bound to
refuse them. Why it was not equally clear to her that duty
required more vigorous co-ordinate conduct as well, let those who
dissect her say.

The next morning glared in like a spectre upon her. It was
Stephen's letter-day, and she was bound to meet the postman--to
stealthily do a deed she had never liked, to secure an end she now
had ceased to desire.

But she went.

There were two letters.

One was from the bank at St. Launce's, in which she had a small
private deposit--probably something about interest. She put that
in her pocket for a moment, and going indoors and upstairs to be
safer from observation, tremblingly opened Stephen's.

What was this he said to her?

She was to go to the St. Launce's Bank and take a sum of money
which they had received private advices to pay her.

The sum was two hundred pounds.

There was no check, order, or anything of the nature of guarantee.
In fact the information amounted to this: the money was now in the
St. Launce's Bank, standing in her name.

She instantly opened the other letter. It contained a deposit-
note from the bank for the sum of two hundred pounds which had
that day been added to her account. Stephen's information, then,
was correct, and the transfer made.

'I have saved this in one year,' Stephen's letter went on to say,
'and what so proper as well as pleasant for me to do as to hand it
over to you to keep for your use? I have plenty for myself,
independently of this. Should you not be disposed to let it lie
idle in the bank, get your father to invest it in your name on
good security. It is a little present to you from your more than
betrothed. He will, I think, Elfride, feel now that my
pretensions to your hand are anything but the dream of a silly boy
not worth rational consideration.'

With a natural delicacy, Elfride, in mentioning her father's
marriage, had refrained from all allusion to the pecuniary
resources of the lady.

Leaving this matter-of-fact subject, he went on, somewhat after
his boyish manner:

'Do you remember, darling, that first morning of my arrival at
your house, when your father read at prayers the miracle of
healing the sick of the palsy--where he is told to take up his bed
and walk? I do, and I can now so well realize the force of that
passage. The smallest piece of mat is the bed of the Oriental,
and yesterday I saw a native perform the very action, which
reminded me to mention it. But you are better read than I, and
perhaps you knew all this long ago....One day I bought some small
native idols to send home to you as curiosities, but afterwards
finding they had been cast in England, made to look old, and
shipped over, I threw them away in disgust.

'Speaking of this reminds me that we are obliged to import all our
house-building ironwork from England. Never was such foresight
required to be exercised in building houses as here. Before we
begin, we have to order every column, lock, hinge, and screw that
will be required. We cannot go into the next street, as in
London, and get them cast at a minute's notice. Mr. L. says
somebody will have to go to England very soon and superintend the
selection of a large order of this kind. I only wish I may be the
man.'

There before her lay the deposit-receipt for the two hundred
pounds, and beside it the elegant present of Knight. Elfride grew
cold--then her cheeks felt heated by beating blood. If by
destroying the piece of paper the whole transaction could have
been withdrawn from her experience, she would willingly have
sacrificed the money it represented. She did not know what to do
in either case. She almost feared to let the two articles lie in
juxtaposition: so antagonistic were the interests they represented
that a miraculous repulsion of one by the other was almost to be
expected.

That day she was seen little of. By the evening she had come to a
resolution, and acted upon it. The packet was sealed up--with a
tear of regret as she closed the case upon the pretty forms it
contained--directed, and placed upon the writing-table in Knight's
room. And a letter was written to Stephen, stating that as yet
she hardly understood her position with regard to the money sent;
but declaring that she was ready to fulfil her promise to marry
him. After this letter had been written she delayed posting it--
although never ceasing to feel strenuously that the deed must be
done.

Several days passed. There was another Indian letter for Elfride.
Coming unexpectedly, her father saw it, but made no remark--why,
she could not tell. The news this time was absolutely
overwhelming. Stephen, as he had wished, had been actually chosen
as the most fitting to execute the iron-work commission he had
alluded to as impending. This duty completed he would have three
months' leave. His letter continued that he should follow it in a
week, and should take the opportunity to plainly ask her father to
permit the engagement. Then came a page expressive of his delight
and hers at the reunion; and finally, the information that he
would write to the shipping agents, asking them to telegraph and
tell her when the ship bringing him home should be in sight--
knowing how acceptable such information would be.

Elfride lived and moved now as in a dream. Knight had at first
become almost angry at her persistent refusal of his offering--and
no less with the manner than the fact of it. But he saw that she
began to look worn and ill--and his vexation lessened to simple
perplexity.

He ceased now to remain in the house for long hours together as
before, but made it a mere centre for antiquarian and geological
excursions in the neighbourhood. Throw up his cards and go away
he fain would have done, but could not. And, thus, availing
himself of the privileges of a relative, he went in and out the
premises as fancy led him--but still lingered on.

'I don't wish to stay here another day if my presence is
distasteful,' he said one afternoon. 'At first you used to imply
that I was severe with you; and when I am kind you treat me
unfairly.'

'No, no. Don't say so.'

The origin of their acquaintanceship had been such as to render
their manner towards each other peculiar and uncommon. It was of
a kind to cause them to speak out their minds on any feelings of
objection and difference: to be reticent on gentler matters.

'I have a good mind to go away and never trouble you again,'
continued Knight.

She said nothing, but the eloquent expression of her eyes and wan
face was enough to reproach him for harshness.

'Do you like me to be here, then?' inquired Knight gently.

'Yes,' she said. Fidelity to the old love and truth to the new
were ranged on opposite sides, and truth virtuelessly prevailed.

'Then I'll stay a little longer,' said Knight.

'Don't be vexed if I keep by myself a good deal, will you? Perhaps
something may happen, and I may tell you something.'

'Mere coyness,' said Knight to himself; and went away with a
lighter heart. The trick of reading truly the enigmatical forces
at work in women at given times, which with some men is an
unerring instinct, is peculiar to minds less direct and honest
than Knight's.

The next evening, about five o'clock, before Knight had returned
from a pilgrimage along the shore, a man walked up to the house.
He was a messenger from Camelton, a town a few miles off, to which
place the railway had been advanced during the summer.

'A telegram for Miss Swancourt, and three and sixpence to pay for
the special messenger.' Miss Swancourt sent out the money, signed
the paper, and opened her letter with a trembling hand. She read:

'Johnson, Liverpool, to Miss Swancourt, Endelstow, near Castle
Boterel.

'Amaryllis telegraphed off Holyhead, four o'clock. Expect will
dock and land passengers at Canning's Basin ten o'clock to-morrow
morning.'

Her father called her into the study.

'Elfride, who sent you that message?' he asked suspiciously.

'Johnson.'
'Who is Johnson, for Heaven's sake?'

'I don't know.'

'The deuce you don't! Who is to know, then?'

'I have never heard of him till now.'

'That's a singular story, isn't it.'

'I don't know.'

'Come, come, miss! What was the telegram?'

'Do you really wish to know, papa?'

'Well, I do.'

'Remember, I am a full-grown woman now.'

'Well, what then?'

'Being a woman, and not a child, I may, I think, have a secret or
two.'

'You will, it seems.'

'Women have, as a rule.'

'But don't keep them. So speak out.'

'If you will not press me now, I give my word to tell you the
meaning of all this before the week is past.'

'On your honour?'

'On my honour.'

'Very well. I have had a certain suspicion, you know; and I shall
be glad to find it false. I don't like your manner lately.'

'At the end of the week, I said, papa.'

Her father did not reply, and Elfride left the room.

She began to look out for the postman again. Three mornings later
he brought an inland letter from Stephen. It contained very
little matter, having been written in haste; but the meaning was
bulky enough. Stephen said that, having executed a commission in
Liverpool, he should arrive at his father's house, East Endelstow,
at five or six o'clock that same evening; that he would after dusk
walk on to the next village, and meet her, if she would, in the
church porch, as in the old time. He proposed this plan because
he thought it unadvisable to call formally at her house so late in
the evening; yet he could not sleep without having seen her. The
minutes would seem hours till he clasped her in his arms.

Elfride was still steadfast in her opinion that honour compelled
her to meet him. Probably the very longing to avoid him lent
additional weight to the conviction; for she was markedly one of
those who sigh for the unattainable--to whom, superlatively, a
hope is pleasing because not a possession. And she knew it so
well that her intellect was inclined to exaggerate this defect in
herself.

So during the day she looked her duty steadfastly in the face;
read Wordsworth's astringent yet depressing ode to that Deity;
committed herself to her guidance; and still felt the weight of
chance desires.

But she began to take a melancholy pleasure in contemplating the
sacrifice of herself to the man whom a maidenly sense of propriety
compelled her to regard as her only possible husband. She would
meet him, and do all that lay in her power to marry him. To guard
against a relapse, a note was at once despatched to his father's
cottage for Stephen on his arrival, fixing an hour for the
interview.

Chapter XXI

'On thy cold grey stones, O sea!'

Stephen had said that he should come by way of Bristol, and thence
by a steamer to Castle Boterel, in order to avoid the long journey
over the hills from St. Launce's. He did not know of the
extension of the railway to Camelton.

During the afternoon a thought occurred to Elfride, that from any
cliff along the shore it would be possible to see the steamer some
hours before its arrival.

She had accumulated religious force enough to do an act of
supererogation. The act was this--to go to some point of land and
watch for the ship that brought her future husband home.

It was a cloudy afternoon. Elfride was often diverted from a
purpose by a dull sky; and though she used to persuade herself
that the weather was as fine as possible on the other side of the
clouds, she could not bring about any practical result from this
fancy. Now, her mood was such that the humid sky harmonized with
it.

Having ascended and passed over a hill behind the house, Elfride
came to a small stream. She used it as a guide to the coast. It
was smaller than that in her own valley, and flowed altogether at
a higher level. Bushes lined the slopes of its shallow trough;
but at the bottom, where the water ran, was a soft green carpet,
in a strip two or three yards wide.

In winter, the water flowed over the grass; in summer, as now, it
trickled along a channel in the midst.

Elfride had a sensation of eyes regarding her from somewhere. She
turned, and there was Mr. Knight. He had dropped into the valley
from the side of the hill. She felt a thrill of pleasure, and
rebelliously allowed it to exist.

'What utter loneliness to find you in!'

'I am going to the shore by tracking the stream. I believe it
empties itself not far off, in a silver thread of water, over a
cascade of great height.'

'Why do you load yourself with that heavy telescope?'

'To look over the sea with it,' she said faintly.

'I'll carry it for you to your journey's end.' And he took the
glass from her unresisting hands. 'It cannot be half a mile
further. See, there is the water.' He pointed to a short fragment
of level muddy-gray colour, cutting against the sky.

Elfride had already scanned the small surface of ocean visible,
and had seen no ship.

They walked along in company, sometimes with the brook between
them--for it was no wider than a man's stride--sometimes close
together. The green carpet grew swampy, and they kept higher up.

One of the two ridges between which they walked dwindled lower and
became insignificant. That on the right hand rose with their
advance, and terminated in a clearly defined edge against the
light, as if it were abruptly sawn off. A little further, and the
bed of the rivulet ended in the same fashion.

They had come to a bank breast-high, and over it the valley was no
longer to be seen. It was withdrawn cleanly and completely. In
its place was sky and boundless atmosphere; and perpendicularly
down beneath them--small and far off--lay the corrugated surface
of the Atlantic.

The small stream here found its death. Running over the precipice
it was dispersed in spray before it was half-way down, and falling
like rain upon projecting ledges, made minute grassy meadows of
them. At the bottom the water-drops soaked away amid the debris
of the cliff. This was the inglorious end of the river.

'What are you looking for? said Knight, following the direction of
her eyes.

She was gazing hard at a black object--nearer to the shore than to
the horizon--from the summit of which came a nebulous haze,
stretching like gauze over the sea.

'The Puffin, a little summer steamboat--from Bristol to Castle
Boterel,' she said. 'I think that is it--look. Will you give me
the glass?'

Knight pulled open the old-fashioned but powerful telescope, and
handed it to Elfride, who had looked on with heavy eyes.

'I can't keep it up now,' she said.

'Rest it on my shoulder.'

'It is too high.'

'Under my arm.'

'Too low. You may look instead,' she murmured weakly.

Knight raised the glass to his eye, and swept the sea till the
Puffin entered its field.

'Yes, it is the Puffin--a tiny craft. I can see her figure-head
distinctly--a bird with a beak as big as its head.'

'Can you see the deck?'

"Wait a minute; yes, pretty clearly. And I can see the black
forms of the passengers against its white surface. One of them
has taken something from another--a glass, I think--yes, it is--
and he is levelling it in this direction. Depend upon it we are
conspicuous objects against the sky to them. Now, it seems to
rain upon them, and they put on overcoats and open umbrellas.
They vanish and go below--all but that one who has borrowed the
glass. He is a slim young fellow, and still watches us.'

Elfride grew pale, and shifted her little feet uneasily.

Knight lowered the glass.

'I think we had better return,' he said. 'That cloud which is
raining on them may soon reach us. Why, you look ill. How is
that?'

'Something in the air affects my face.'

'Those fair cheeks are very fastidious, I fear,' returned Knight
tenderly. 'This air would make those rosy that were never so
before, one would think--eh, Nature's spoilt child?'

Elfride's colour returned again.

'There is more to see behind us, after all,' said Knight.

She turned her back upon the boat and Stephen Smith, and saw,
towering still higher than themselves, the vertical face of the
hill on the right, which did not project seaward so far as the bed
of the valley, but formed the back of a small cove, and so was
visible like a concave wall, bending round from their position
towards the left.

The composition of the huge hill was revealed to its backbone and
marrow here at its rent extremity. It consisted of a vast
stratification of blackish-gray slate, unvaried in its whole
height by a single change of shade.

It is with cliffs and mountains as with persons; they have what is
called a presence, which is not necessarily proportionate to their
actual bulk. A little cliff will impress you powerfully; a great
one not at all. It depends, as with man, upon the countenance of
the cliff.

'I cannot bear to look at that cliff,' said Elfride. 'It has a
horrid personality, and makes me shudder. We will go.'

'Can you climb?' said Knight. 'If so, we will ascend by that path
over the grim old fellow's brow.'

'Try me,' said Elfride disdainfully. 'I have ascended steeper
slopes than that.'

From where they had been loitering, a grassy path wound along
inside a bank, placed as a safeguard for unwary pedestrians, to
the top of the precipice, and over it along the hill in an inland
direction.

'Take my arm, Miss Swancourt,' said Knight.

'I can get on better without it, thank you.'

When they were one quarter of the way up, Elfride stopped to take
breath. Knight stretched out his hand.

She took it, and they ascended the remaining slope together.
Reaching the very top, they sat down to rest by mutual consent.

'Heavens, what an altitude!' said Knight between his pants, and
looking far over the sea. The cascade at the bottom of the slope
appeared a mere span in height from where they were now.

Elfride was looking to the left. The steamboat was in full view
again, and by reason of the vast surface of sea their higher
position uncovered it seemed almost close to the shore.

'Over that edge,' said Knight, 'where nothing but vacancy appears,
is a moving compact mass. The wind strikes the face of the rock,
runs up it, rises like a fountain to a height far above our heads,
curls over us in an arch, and disperses behind us. In fact, an
inverted cascade is there--as perfect as the Niagara Falls--but
rising instead of falling, and air instead of water. Now look
here.'

Knight threw a stone over the bank, aiming it as if to go onward
over the cliff. Reaching the verge, it towered into the air like
a bird, turned back, and alighted on the ground behind them. They
themselves were in a dead calm.

'A boat crosses Niagara immediately at the foot of the falls,
where the water is quite still, the fallen mass curving under it.
We are in precisely the same position with regard to our
atmospheric cataract here. If you run back from the cliff fifty
yards, you will be in a brisk wind. Now I daresay over the bank
is a little backward current.'

Knight rose and leant over the bank. No sooner was his head above
it than his hat appeared to be sucked from his head--slipping over
his forehead in a seaward direction.

'That's the backward eddy, as I told you,' he cried, and vanished
over the little bank after his hat.

Elfride waited one minute; he did not return. She waited another,
and there was no sign of him.

A few drops of rain fell, then a sudden shower.

She arose, and looked over the bank. On the other side were two
or three yards of level ground--then a short steep preparatory
slope--then the verge of the precipice.

On the slope was Knight, his hat on his head. He was on his hands
and knees, trying to climb back to the level ground. The rain had
wetted the shaly surface of the incline. A slight superficial
wetting of the soil hereabout made it far more slippery to stand
on than the same soil thoroughly drenched. The inner substance
was still hard, and was lubricated by the moistened film.

'I find a difficulty in getting back,' said Knight.

Elfride's heart fell like lead.

'But you can get back?' she wildly inquired.

Knight strove with all his might for two or three minutes, and the
drops of perspiration began to bead his brow.

'No, I am unable to do it,' he answered.

Elfride, by a wrench of thought, forced away from her mind the
sensation that Knight was in bodily danger. But attempt to help
him she must. She ventured upon the treacherous incline, propped
herself with the closed telescope, and gave him her hand before he
saw her movements.

'O Elfride! why did you?' said he. 'I am afraid you have only
endangered yourself.'

And as if to prove his statement, in making an endeavour by her
assistance they both slipped lower, and then he was again stayed.
His foot was propped by a bracket of quartz rock, balanced on the
verge of the precipice. Fixed by this, he steadied her, her head
being about a foot below the beginning of the slope. Elfride had
dropped the glass; it rolled to the edge and vanished over it into
a nether sky.

'Hold tightly to me,' he said.

She flung her arms round his neck with such a firm grasp that
whilst he remained it was impossible for her to fall.

'Don't be flurried,' Knight continued. 'So long as we stay above
this block we are perfectly safe. Wait a moment whilst I consider
what we had better do.'

He turned his eyes to the dizzy depths beneath them, and surveyed
the position of affairs.

Two glances told him a tale with ghastly distinctness. It was
that, unless they performed their feat of getting up the slope
with the precision of machines, they were over the edge and
whirling in mid-air.

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