A Pair of Blue Eyes, by Thomas Hardy

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The place was well lighted with candles stuck in slips of wood
that were fastened to the wall. On making the descent of another
step the living inhabitants of the vault were recognizable. They
were his father the master-mason, an under-mason, Martin
Cannister, and two or three young and old labouring-men. Crowbars
and workmen's hammers were scattered about. The whole company,
sitting round on coffins which had been removed from their places,
apparently for some alteration or enlargement of the vault, were
eating bread and cheese, and drinking ale from a cup with two
handles, passed round from each to each.

'Who is dead?' Stephen inquired, stepping down.

Chapter XXVI

'To that last nothing under earth.'

All eyes were turned to the entrance as Stephen spoke, and the
ancient-mannered conclave scrutinized him inquiringly.

'Why, 'tis our Stephen!' said his father, rising from his seat;
and, still retaining the frothy mug in his left hand, he swung
forward his right for a grasp. 'Your mother is expecting ye--
thought you would have come afore dark. But you'll wait and go
home with me? I have all but done for the day, and was going
directly.'

'Yes, 'tis Master Stephy, sure enough. Glad to see you so soon
again, Master Smith,' said Martin Cannister, chastening the
gladness expressed in his words by a strict neutrality of
countenance, in order to harmonize the feeling as much as possible
with the solemnity of a family vault.

'The same to you, Martin; and you, William,' said Stephen, nodding
around to the rest, who, having their mouths full of bread and
cheese, were of necessity compelled to reply merely by compressing
their eyes to friendly lines and wrinkles.

'And who is dead?' Stephen repeated.

'Lady Luxellian, poor gentlewoman, as we all shall, said the
under-mason. 'Ay, and we be going to enlarge the vault to make
room for her.'

'When did she die?'

'Early this morning,' his father replied, with an appearance of
recurring to a chronic thought. 'Yes, this morning. Martin hev
been tolling ever since, almost. There, 'twas expected. She was
very limber.'

'Ay, poor soul, this morning,' resumed the under-mason, a
marvellously old man, whose skin seemed so much too large for his
body that it would not stay in position. 'She must know by this
time whether she's to go up or down, poor woman.'

'What was her age?'

'Not more than seven or eight and twenty by candlelight. But,
Lord! by day 'a was forty if 'a were an hour.'

'Ay, night-time or day-time makes a difference of twenty years to
rich feymels,' observed Martin.

'She was one and thirty really,' said John Smith. 'I had it from
them that know.'

'Not more than that!'

''A looked very bad, poor lady. In faith, ye might say she was
dead for years afore 'a would own it.'

'As my old father used to say, "dead, but wouldn't drop down."'

'I seed her, poor soul,' said a labourer from behind some removed
coffins, 'only but last Valentine's-day of all the world. 'A was
arm in crook wi' my lord. I says to myself, "You be ticketed
Churchyard, my noble lady, although you don't dream on't."'

'I suppose my lord will write to all the other lords anointed in
the nation, to let 'em know that she that was is now no more?'

''Tis done and past. I see a bundle of letters go off an hour
after the death. Sich wonderful black rims as they letters had--
half-an-inch wide, at the very least.'

'Too much,' observed Martin. 'In short, 'tis out of the question
that a human being can be so mournful as black edges half-an-inch
wide. I'm sure people don't feel more than a very narrow border
when they feels most of all.'

'And there are two little girls, are there not?' said Stephen.

'Nice clane little faces!--left motherless now.'

'They used to come to Parson Swancourt's to play with Miss Elfride
when I were there,' said William Worm. 'Ah, they did so's!' The
latter sentence was introduced to add the necessary melancholy to
a remark which, intrinsically, could hardly be made to possess
enough for the occasion. 'Yes,' continued Worm, 'they'd run
upstairs, they'd run down; flitting about with her everywhere.
Very fond of her, they were. Ah, well!'

'Fonder than ever they were of their mother, so 'tis said here and
there,' added a labourer.

'Well, you see, 'tis natural. Lady Luxellian stood aloof from 'em
so--was so drowsy-like, that they couldn't love her in the jolly-
companion way children want to like folks. Only last winter I
seed Miss Elfride talking to my lady and the two children, and
Miss Elfride wiped their noses for em' SO careful--my lady never
once seeing that it wanted doing; and, naturally, children take to
people that's their best friend.'

'Be as 'twill, the woman is dead and gone, and we must make a
place for her,' said John. 'Come, lads, drink up your ale, and
we'll just rid this corner, so as to have all clear for beginning
at the wall, as soon as 'tis light to-morrow.'

Stephen then asked where Lady Luxellian was to lie.

'Here,' said his father. 'We are going to set back this wall and
make a recess; and 'tis enough for us to do before the funeral.
When my lord's mother died, she said, "John, the place must be
enlarged before another can be put in." But 'a never expected
'twould be wanted so soon. Better move Lord George first, I
suppose, Simeon?'

He pointed with his foot to a heavy coffin, covered with what had
originally been red velvet, the colour of which could only just be
distinguished now.

'Just as ye think best, Master John,' replied the shrivelled
mason. 'Ah, poor Lord George!' he continued, looking
contemplatively at the huge coffin; 'he and I were as bitter
enemies once as any could be when one is a lord and t'other only a
mortal man. Poor fellow! He'd clap his hand upon my shoulder and
cuss me as familial and neighbourly as if he'd been a common chap.
Ay, 'a cussed me up hill and 'a cussed me down; and then 'a would
rave out again, and the goold clamps of his fine new teeth would
glisten in the sun like fetters of brass, while I, being a small
man and poor, was fain to say nothing at all. Such a strappen
fine gentleman as he was too! Yes, I rather liked en sometimes.
But once now and then, when I looked at his towering height, I'd
think in my inside, "What a weight you'll be, my lord, for our
arms to lower under the aisle of Endelstow Church some day!"'

'And was he?' inquired a young labourer.

'He was. He was five hundredweight if 'a were a pound. What with
his lead, and his oak, and his handles, and his one thing and
t'other'--here the ancient man slapped his hand upon the cover
with a force that caused a rattle among the bones inside--'he half
broke my back when I took his feet to lower en down the steps
there. "Ah," saith I to John there--didn't I, John?--"that ever
one man's glory should be such a weight upon another man!" But
there, I liked my lord George sometimes.'

''Tis a strange thought,' said another, 'that while they be all
here under one roof, a snug united family o' Luxellians, they be
really scattered miles away from one another in the form of good
sheep and wicked goats, isn't it?'

'True; 'tis a thought to look at.'

'And that one, if he's gone upward, don't know what his wife is
doing no more than the man in the moon if she's gone downward.
And that some unfortunate one in the hot place is a-hollering
across to a lucky one up in the clouds, and quite forgetting their
bodies be boxed close together all the time.'

'Ay, 'tis a thought to look at, too, that I can say "Hullo!" close
to fiery Lord George, and 'a can't hear me.'

'And that I be eating my onion close to dainty Lady Jane's nose,
and she can't smell me.'

'What do 'em put all their heads one way for?' inquired a young
man.

'Because 'tis churchyard law, you simple. The law of the living
is, that a man shall be upright and down-right, and the law of the
dead is, that a man shall be east and west. Every state of society
have its laws.'

'We must break the law wi' a few of the poor souls, however.
Come, buckle to,' said the master-mason.

And they set to work anew.

The order of interment could be distinctly traced by observing the
appearance of the coffins as they lay piled around. On those
which had been standing there but a generation or two the
trappings still remained. Those of an earlier period showed bare
wood, with a few tattered rags dangling therefrom. Earlier still,
the wood lay in fragments on the floor of the niche, and the
coffin consisted of naked lead alone; whilst in the case of the
very oldest, even the lead was bulging and cracking in pieces,
revealing to the curious eye a heap of dust within. The shields
upon many were quite loose, and removable by the hand, their
lustreless surfaces still indistinctly exhibiting the name and
title of the deceased.

Overhead the groins and concavities of the arches curved in all
directions, dropping low towards the walls, where the height was
no more than sufficient to enable a person to stand upright.

The body of George the fourteenth baron, together with two or
three others, all of more recent date than the great bulk of
coffins piled there, had, for want of room, been placed at the end
of the vault on tressels, and not in niches like the others.
These it was necessary to remove, to form behind them the chamber
in which they were ultimately to be deposited. Stephen, finding
the place and proceedings in keeping with the sombre colours of
his mind, waited there still.

'Simeon, I suppose you can mind poor Lady Elfride, and how she ran
away with the actor?' said John Smith, after awhile. 'I think it
fell upon the time my father was sexton here. Let us see--where
is she?'

'Here somewhere,' returned Simeon, looking round him.

'Why, I've got my arms round the very gentlewoman at this moment.'
He lowered the end of the coffin he was holding, wiped his face,
and throwing a morsel of rotten wood upon another as an indicator,
continued: 'That's her husband there. They was as fair a couple
as you should see anywhere round about; and a good-hearted pair
likewise. Ay, I can mind it, though I was but a chiel at the
time. She fell in love with this young man of hers, and their
banns were asked in some church in London; and the old lord her
father actually heard 'em asked the three times, and didn't notice
her name, being gabbled on wi' a host of others. When she had
married she told her father, and 'a fleed into a monstrous rage,
and said she shouldn' hae a farthing. Lady Elfride said she
didn't think of wishing it; if he'd forgie her 'twas all she
asked, and as for a living, she was content to play plays with her
husband. This frightened the old lord, and 'a gie'd 'em a house
to live in, and a great garden, and a little field or two, and a
carriage, and a good few guineas. Well, the poor thing died at
her first gossiping, and her husband--who was as tender-hearted a
man as ever eat meat, and would have died for her--went wild in
his mind, and broke his heart (so 'twas said). Anyhow, they were
buried the same day--father and mother--but the baby lived. Ay,
my lord's family made much of that man then, and put him here with
his wife, and there in the corner the man is now. The Sunday
after there was a funeral sermon: the text was, "Or ever the
silver cord be loosed, or the golden bowl be broken;" and when
'twas preaching the men drew their hands across their eyes several
times, and every woman cried out loud.'

'And what became of the baby?' said Stephen, who had frequently
heard portions of the story.

'She was brought up by her grandmother, and a pretty maid she
were. And she must needs run away with the curate--Parson
Swancourt that is now. Then her grandmother died, and the title
and everything went away to another branch of the family
altogether. Parson Swancourt wasted a good deal of his wife's
money, and she left him Miss Elfride. That trick of running away
seems to be handed down in families, like craziness or gout. And
they two women be alike as peas.'

'Which two?'

'Lady Elfride and young Miss that's alive now. The same hair and
eyes: but Miss Elfride's mother was darker a good deal.'

'Life's a strangle bubble, ye see,' said William Worm musingly.
'For if the Lord's anointment had descended upon women instead of
men, Miss Elfride would be Lord Luxellian--Lady, I mane. But as
it is, the blood is run out, and she's nothing to the Luxellian
family by law, whatever she may be by gospel.'

'I used to fancy,' said Simeon, 'when I seed Miss Elfride hugging
the little ladyships, that there was a likeness; but I suppose
'twas only my dream, for years must have altered the old family
shape.'

'And now we'll move these two, and home-along,' interposed John
Smith, reviving, as became a master, the spirit of labour, which
had showed unmistakable signs of being nearly vanquished by the
spirit of chat, 'The flagon of ale we don't want we'll let bide
here till to-morrow; none of the poor souls will touch it 'a
b'lieve.'

So the evening's work was concluded, and the party drew from the
abode of the quiet dead, closing the old iron door, and shooting
the lock loudly into the huge copper staple--an incongruous act of
imprisonment towards those who had no dreams of escape.

Chapter XXVII

'How should I greet thee?'

Love frequently dies of time alone--much more frequently of
displacement. With Elfride Swancourt, a powerful reason why the
displacement should be successful was that the new-comer was a
greater man than the first. By the side of the instructive and
piquant snubbings she received from Knight, Stephen's general
agreeableness seemed watery; by the side of Knight's spare love-
making, Stephen's continual outflow seemed lackadaisical. She had
begun to sigh for somebody further on in manhood. Stephen was
hardly enough of a man.

Perhaps there was a proneness to inconstancy in her nature--a
nature, to those who contemplate it from a standpoint beyond the
influence of that inconstancy, the most exquisite of all in its
plasticity and ready sympathies. Partly, too, Stephen's failure
to make his hold on her heart a permanent one was his too timid
habit of dispraising himself beside her--a peculiarity which,
exercised towards sensible men, stirs a kindly chord of attachment
that a marked assertiveness would leave untouched, but inevitably
leads the most sensible woman in the world to undervalue him who
practises it. Directly domineering ceases in the man, snubbing
begins in the woman; the trite but no less unfortunate fact being
that the gentler creature rarely has the capacity to appreciate
fair treatment from her natural complement. The abiding
perception of the position of Stephen's parents had, of course, a
little to do with Elfride's renunciation. To such girls poverty
may not be, as to the more worldly masses of humanity, a sin in
itself; but it is a sin, because graceful and dainty manners
seldom exist in such an atmosphere. Few women of old family can
be thoroughly taught that a fine soul may wear a smock-frock, and
an admittedly common man in one is but a worm in their eyes. John
Smith's rough hands and clothes, his wife's dialect, the necessary
narrowness of their ways, being constantly under Elfride's notice,
were not without their deflecting influence.

On reaching home after the perilous adventure by the sea-shore,
Knight had felt unwell, and retired almost immediately. The young
lady who had so materially assisted him had done the same, but she
reappeared, properly clothed, about five o'clock. She wandered
restlessly about the house, but not on account of their joint
narrow escape from death. The storm which had torn the tree had
merely bowed the reed, and with the deliverance of Knight all deep
thought of the accident had left her. The mutual avowal which it
had been the means of precipitating occupied a far longer length
of her meditations.

Elfride's disquiet now was on account of that miserable promise to
meet Stephen, which returned like a spectre again and again. The
perception of his littleness beside Knight grew upon her
alarmingly. She now thought how sound had been her father's
advice to her to give him up, and was as passionately desirous of
following it as she had hitherto been averse. Perhaps there is
nothing more hardening to the tone of young minds than thus to
discover how their dearest and strongest wishes become gradually
attuned by Time the Cynic to the very note of some selfish policy
which in earlier days they despised.

The hour of appointment came, and with it a crisis; and with the
crisis a collapse.

'God forgive me--I can't meet Stephen!' she exclaimed to herself.
'I don't love him less, but I love Mr. Knight more!'

Yes: she would save herself from a man not fit for her--in spite
of vows. She would obey her father, and have no more to do with
Stephen Smith. Thus the fickle resolve showed signs of assuming
the complexion of a virtue.

The following days were passed without any definite avowal from
Knight's lips. Such solitary walks and scenes as that witnessed
by Smith in the summer-house were frequent, but he courted her so
intangibly that to any but such a delicate perception as Elfride's
it would have appeared no courtship at all. The time now really
began to be sweet with her. She dismissed the sense of sin in her
past actions, and was automatic in the intoxication of the moment.
The fact that Knight made no actual declaration was no drawback.
Knowing since the betrayal of his sentiments that love for her
really existed, she preferred it for the present in its form of
essence, and was willing to avoid for awhile the grosser medium of
words. Their feelings having been forced to a rather premature
demonstration, a reaction was indulged in by both.

But no sooner had she got rid of her troubled conscience on the
matter of faithlessness than a new anxiety confronted her. It was
lest Knight should accidentally meet Stephen in the parish, and
that herself should be the subject of discourse.

Elfride, learning Knight more thoroughly, perceived that, far
from having a notion of Stephen's precedence, he had no idea that
she had ever been wooed before by anybody. On ordinary occasions
she had a tongue so frank as to show her whole mind, and a mind so
straightforward as to reveal her heart to its innermost shrine.
But the time for a change had come. She never alluded to even a
knowledge of Knight's friend. When women are secret they are
secret indeed; and more often than not they only begin to be
secret with the advent of a second lover.

The elopement was now a spectre worse than the first, and, like
the Spirit in Glenfinlas, it waxed taller with every attempt to
lay it. Her natural honesty invited her to confide in Knight, and
trust to his generosity for forgiveness: she knew also that as
mere policy it would be better to tell him early if he was to be
told at all. The longer her concealment the more difficult would
be the revelation. But she put it off. The intense fear which
accompanies intense love in young women was too strong to allow
the exercise of a moral quality antagonistic to itself:

'Where love is great, the littlest doubts are fear;
Where little fears grow great, great love grows there.'

The match was looked upon as made by her father and mother. The
vicar remembered her promise to reveal the meaning of the telegram
she had received, and two days after the scene in the summer-
house, asked her pointedly. She was frank with him now.

'I had been corresponding with Stephen Smith ever since he left
England, till lately,' she calmly said.

'What!' cried the vicar aghast; 'under the eyes of Mr. Knight,
too?'

'No; when I found I cared most for Mr. Knight, I obeyed you.'

'You were very kind, I'm sure. When did you begin to like Mr.
Knight?'

'I don't see that that is a pertinent question, papa; the telegram
was from the shipping agent, and was not sent at my request. It
announced the arrival of the vessel bringing him home.'

'Home! What, is he here?'

'Yes; in the village, I believe.'

'Has he tried to see you?'

'Only by fair means. But don't, papa, question me so! It is
torture.'

'I will only say one word more,' he replied. 'Have you met him?'

'I have not. I can assure you that at the present moment there is
no more of an understanding between me and the young man you so
much disliked than between him and you. You told me to forget
him; and I have forgotten him.'

'Oh, well; though you did not obey me in the beginning, you are a
good girl, Elfride, in obeying me at last.'

'Don't call me "good," papa,' she said bitterly; 'you don't know--
and the less said about some things the better. Remember, Mr.
Knight knows nothing about the other. Oh, how wrong it all is! I
don't know what I am coming to.'

'As matters stand, I should be inclined to tell him; or, at any
rate, I should not alarm myself about his knowing. He found out
the other day that this was the parish young Smith's father lives
in--what puts you in such a flurry?'

'I can't say; but promise--pray don't let him know! It would be my
ruin!'

'Pooh, child. Knight is a good fellow and a clever man; but at
the same time it does not escape my perceptions that he is no
great catch for you. Men of his turn of mind are nothing so
wonderful in the way of husbands. If you had chosen to wait, you
might have mated with a much wealthier man. But remember, I have
not a word to say against your having him, if you like him.
Charlotte is delighted, as you know.'

'Well, papa,' she said, smiling hopefully through a sigh, 'it is
nice to feel that in giving way to--to caring for him, I have
pleased my family. But I am not good; oh no, I am very far from
that!'

'None of us are good, I am sorry to say,' said her father blandly;
'but girls have a chartered right to change their minds, you know.
It has been recognized by poets from time immemorial. Catullus
says, "Mulier cupido quod dicit amanti, in vento--' What a memory
mine is! However, the passage is, that a woman's words to a lover
are as a matter of course written only on wind and water. Now
don't be troubled about that, Elfride.'

'Ah, you don't know!'

They had been standing on the lawn, and Knight was now seen
lingering some way down a winding walk. When Elfride met him, it
was with a much greater lightness of heart; things were more
straightforward now. The responsibility of her fickleness seemed
partly shifted from her own shoulders to her father's. Still,
there were shadows.

'Ah, could he have known how far I went with Stephen, and yet have
said the same, how much happier I should be!' That was her
prevailing thought.

In the afternoon the lovers went out together on horseback for an
hour or two; and though not wishing to be observed, by reason of
the late death of Lady Luxellian, whose funeral had taken place
very privately on the previous day, they yet found it necessary to
pass East Endelstow Church.

The steps to the vault, as has been stated, were on the outside of
the building, immediately under the aisle wall. Being on
horseback, both Knight and Elfride could overlook the shrubs which
screened the church-yard.

'Look, the vault seems still to be open,' said Knight.

'Yes, it is open,' she answered

'Who is that man close by it? The mason, I suppose?'

'Yes.'

'I wonder if it is John Smith, Stephen's father?'

'I believe it is,' said Elfride, with apprehension.

'Ah, and can it be? I should like to inquire how his son, my
truant protege', is going on. And from your father's description
of the vault, the interior must be interesting. Suppose we go
in.'

'Had we better, do you think? May not Lord Luxellian be there?'

'It is not at all likely.'

Elfride then assented, since she could do nothing else. Her
heart, which at first had quailed in consternation, recovered
itself when she considered the character of John Smith. A quiet
unassuming man, he would be sure to act towards her as before
those love passages with his son, which might have given a more
pretentious mechanic airs. So without much alarm she took
Knight's arm after dismounting, and went with him between and over
the graves. The master-mason recognized her as she approached,
and, as usual, lifted his hat respectfully.

'I know you to be Mr. Smith, my former friend Stephen's father,'
said Knight, directly he had scanned the embrowned and ruddy
features of John.

'Yes, sir, I b'lieve I be.'

'How is your son now? I have only once heard from him since he
went to India. I daresay you have heard him speak of me--Mr.
Knight, who became acquainted with him some years ago in
Exonbury.'

'Ay, that I have. Stephen is very well, thank you, sir, and he's
in England; in fact, he's at home. In short, sir, he's down in
the vault there, a-looking at the departed coffins.'

Elfride's heart fluttered like a butterfly.

Knight looked amazed. 'Well, that is extraordinary.' he murmured.
'Did he know I was in the parish?'

'I really can't say, sir,' said John, wishing himself out of the
entanglement he rather suspected than thoroughly understood.

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