A Pair of Blue Eyes, by Thomas Hardy

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She was childishly full of life and spirits, though in walking up
and down with him before the other passengers, and getting noticed
by them, she was at starting rather confused, it being the first
time she had shown herself so openly under that kind of
protection. 'I expect they are envious and saying things about
us, don't you?' she would whisper to Knight with a stealthy smile.

'Oh no,' he would answer unconcernedly. 'Why should they envy us,
and what can they say?'

'Not any harm, of course,' Elfride replied, 'except such as this:
"How happy those two are! she is proud enough now." What makes it
worse,' she continued in the extremity of confidence, 'I heard
those two cricketing men say just now, "She's the nobbiest girl on
the boat." But I don't mind it, you know, Harry.'

'I should hardly have supposed you did, even if you had not told
me,' said Knight with great blandness.

She was never tired of asking her lover questions and admiring his
answers, good, bad, or indifferent as they might be. The evening
grew dark and night came on, and lights shone upon them from the
horizon and from the sky.

'Now look there ahead of us, at that halo in the air, of silvery
brightness. Watch it, and you will see what it comes to.'

She watched for a few minutes, when two white lights emerged from
the side of a hill, and showed themselves to be the origin of the
halo.

'What a dazzling brilliance! What do they mark?'

'The South Foreland: they were previously covered by the cliff.'

'What is that level line of little sparkles--a town, I suppose?'

'That's Dover.'

All this time, and later, soft sheet lightning expanded from a
cloud in their path, enkindling their faces as they paced up and
down, shining over the water, and, for a moment, showing the
horizon as a keen line.

Elfride slept soundly that night. Her first thought the next
morning was the thrilling one that Knight was as close at hand as
when they were at home at Endelstow, and her first sight, on
looking out of the cabin window, was the perpendicular face of
Beachy Head, gleaming white in a brilliant six-o'clock-in-the-
morning sun. This fair daybreak, however, soon changed its
aspect. A cold wind and a pale mist descended upon the sea, and
seemed to threaten a dreary day.

When they were nearing Southampton, Mrs. Swancourt came to say
that her husband was so ill that he wished to be put on shore
here, and left to do the remainder of the journey by land. 'He
will be perfectly well directly he treads firm ground again.
Which shall we do--go with him, or finish our voyage as we
intended?'

Elfride was comfortably housed under an umbrella which Knight was
holding over her to keep off the wind. 'Oh, don't let us go on
shore!' she said with dismay. 'It would be such a pity!'

'That's very fine,' said Mrs. Swancourt archly, as to a child.
'See, the wind has increased her colour, the sea her appetite and
spirits, and somebody her happiness. Yes, it would be a pity,
certainly.'

''Tis my misfortune to be always spoken to from a pedestal,'
sighed Elfride.

'Well, we will do as you like, Mrs. Swancourt,' said Knight, 'but----'

'I myself would rather remain on board,' interrupted the elder
lady. 'And Mr. Swancourt particularly wishes to go by himself.
So that shall settle the matter.'

The vicar, now a drab colour, was put ashore, and became as well
as ever forthwith.

Elfride, sitting alone in a retired part of the vessel, saw a
veiled woman walk aboard among the very latest arrivals at this
port. She was clothed in black silk, and carried a dark shawl
upon her arm. The woman, without looking around her, turned to
the quarter allotted to the second-cabin passengers. All the
carnation Mrs. Swancourt had complimented her step-daughter upon
possessing left Elfride's cheeks, and she trembled visibly.

She ran to the other side of the boat, where Mrs. Swancourt was
standing.

'Let us go home by railway with papa, after all,' she pleaded
earnestly. 'I would rather go with him--shall we?'

Mrs. Swancourt looked around for a moment, as if unable to decide.
'Ah,' she exclaimed, 'it is too late now. Why did not you say so
before, when we had plenty of time?'

The Juliet had at that minute let go, the engines had started, and
they were gliding slowly away from the quay. There was no help
for it but to remain, unless the Juliet could be made to put back,
and that would create a great disturbance. Elfride gave up the
idea and submitted quietly. Her happiness was sadly mutilated
now.

The woman whose presence had so disturbed her was exactly like
Mrs. Jethway. She seemed to haunt Elfride like a shadow. After
several minutes' vain endeavour to account for any design Mrs.
Jethway could have in watching her, Elfride decided to think that,
if it were the widow, the encounter was accidental. She
remembered that the widow in her restlessness was often visiting
the village near Southampton, which was her original home, and it
was possible that she chose water-transit with the idea of saving
expense.

'What is the matter, Elfride?' Knight inquired, standing before
her.

'Nothing more than that I am rather depressed.'

'I don't much wonder at it; that wharf was depressing. We seemed
underneath and inferior to everything around us. But we shall be
in the sea breeze again soon, and that will freshen you, dear.'

The evening closed in and dusk increased as they made way down
Southampton Water and through the Solent. Elfride's disturbance
of mind was such that her light spirits of the foregoing four and
twenty hours had entirely deserted her. The weather too had grown
more gloomy, for though the showers of the morning had ceased, the
sky was covered more closely than ever with dense leaden clouds.
How beautiful was the sunset when they rounded the North Foreland
the previous evening! now it was impossible to tell within half an
hour the time of the luminary's going down. Knight led her about,
and being by this time accustomed to her sudden changes of mood,
overlooked the necessity of a cause in regarding the conditions--
impressionableness and elasticity.

Elfride looked stealthily to the other end of the vessel. Mrs.
Jethway, or her double, was sitting at the stern--her eye steadily
regarding Elfride.

'Let us go to the forepart,' she said quickly to Knight. 'See
there--the man is fixing the lights for the night.'

Knight assented, and after watching the operation of fixing the
red and the green lights on the port and starboard bows, and the
hoisting of the white light to the masthead, he walked up and down
with her till the increase of wind rendered promenading difficult.
Elfride's eyes were occasionally to be found furtively gazing
abaft, to learn if her enemy were really there. Nobody was
visible now.

'Shall we go below?' said Knight, seeing that the deck was nearly
deserted.

'No,' she said. 'If you will kindly get me a rug from Mrs.
Swancourt, I should like, if you don't mind, to stay here.' She
had recently fancied the assumed Mrs. Jethway might be a first-
class passenger, and dreaded meeting her by accident.

Knight appeared with the rug, and they sat down behind a weather-
cloth on the windward side, just as the two red eyes of the
Needles glared upon them from the gloom, their pointed summits
rising like shadowy phantom figures against the sky. It became
necessary to go below to an eight-o'clock meal of nondescript
kind, and Elfride was immensely relieved at finding no sign of
Mrs. Jethway there. They again ascended, and remained above till
Mrs. Snewson staggered up to them with the message that Mrs.
Swancourt thought it was time for Elfride to come below. Knight
accompanied her down, and returned again to pass a little more
time on deck.

Elfride partly undressed herself and lay down, and soon became
unconscious, though her sleep was light How long she had lain, she
knew not, when by slow degrees she became cognizant of a
whispering in her ear.

'You are well on with him, I can see. Well, provoke me now, but
my day will come, you will find.' That seemed to be the utterance,
or words to that effect.

Elfride became broad awake and terrified. She knew the words, if
real, could be only those of one person, and that person the widow
Jethway.

The lamp had gone out and the place was in darkness. In the next
berth she could hear her stepmother breathing heavily, further on
Snewson breathing more heavily still. These were the only other
legitimate occupants of the cabin, and Mrs. Jethway must have
stealthily come in by some means and retreated again, or else she
had entered an empty berth next Snewson's. The fear that this was
the case increased Elfride's perturbation, till it assumed the
dimensions of a certainty, for how could a stranger from the other
end of the ship possibly contrive to get in? Could it have been a
dream?

Elfride raised herself higher and looked out of the window. There
was the sea, floundering and rushing against the ship's side just
by her head, and thence stretching away, dim and moaning, into an
expanse of indistinctness; and far beyond all this two placid
lights like rayless stars. Now almost fearing to turn her face
inwards again, lest Mrs. Jethway should appear at her elbow,
Elfride meditated upon whether to call Snewson to keep her
company. 'Four bells ' sounded, and she heard voices, which gave
her a little courage. It was not worth while to call Snewson.

At any rate Elfride could not stay there panting longer, at the
risk of being again disturbed by that dreadful whispering. So
wrapping herself up hurriedly she emerged into the passage, and by
the aid of a faint light burning at the entrance to the saloon
found the foot of the stairs, and ascended to the deck. Dreary
the place was in the extreme. It seemed a new spot altogether in
contrast with its daytime self. She could see the glowworm light
from the binnacle, and the dim outline of the man at the wheel;
also a form at the bows. Not another soul was apparent from stem
to stern.

Yes, there were two more--by the bulwarks. One proved to be her
Harry, the other the mate. She was glad indeed, and on drawing
closer found they were holding a low slow chat about nautical
affairs. She ran up and slipped her hand through Knight's arm,
partly for love, partly for stability.

'Elfie! not asleep?' said Knight, after moving a few steps aside
with her.

'No: I cannot sleep. May I stay here? It is so dismal down there,
and--and I was afraid. Where are we now?'

'Due south of Portland Bill. Those are the lights abeam of us:
look. A terrible spot, that, on a stormy night. And do you see a
very small light that dips and rises to the right? That's a light-
ship on the dangerous shoal called the Shambles, where many a good
vessel has gone to pieces. Between it and ourselves is the Race--
a place where antagonistic currents meet and form whirlpools--a
spot which is rough in the smoothest weather, and terrific in a
wind. That dark, dreary horizon we just discern to the left is
the West Bay, terminated landwards by the Chesil Beach.'

'What time is it, Harry?'

'Just past two.'

'Are you going below?'

'Oh no; not to-night. I prefer pure air.'

She fancied he might be displeased with her for coming to him at
this unearthly hour. 'I should like to stay here too, if you will
allow me,' she said timidly.

'I want to ask you things.'

'Allow you, Elfie!' said Knight, putting his arm round her and
drawing her closer. 'I am twice as happy with you by my side.
Yes: we will stay, and watch the approach of day.'

So they again sought out the sheltered nook, and sitting down
wrapped themselves in the rug as before.

'What were you going to ask me?' he inquired, as they undulated up
and down.

'Oh, it was not much--perhaps a thing I ought not to ask,' she
said hesitatingly. Her sudden wish had really been to discover at
once whether he had ever before been engaged to be married. If he
had, she would make that a ground for telling him a little of her
conduct with Stephen. Mrs. Jethway's seeming words had so
depressed the girl that she herself now painted her flight in the
darkest colours, and longed to ease her burdened mind by an
instant confession. If Knight had ever been imprudent himself, he
might, she hoped, forgive all.

'I wanted to ask you,' she went on, 'if--you had ever been engaged
before.' She added tremulously, 'I hope you have--I mean, I don't
mind at all if you have.'

'No, I never was,' Knight instantly and heartily replied.
'Elfride'--and there was a certain happy pride in his tone--'I am
twelve years older than you, and I have been about the world, and,
in a way, into society, and you have not. And yet I am not so
unfit for you as strict-thinking people might imagine, who would
assume the difference in age to signify most surely an equal
addition to my practice in love-making.'

Elfride shivered.

'You are cold--is the wind too much for you?'

'No,' she said gloomily. The belief which had been her sheet-
anchor in hoping for forgiveness had proved false. This account
of the exceptional nature of his experience, a matter which would
have set her rejoicing two years ago, chilled her now like a
frost.

'You don't mind my asking you?' she continued.

'Oh no--not at all.'

'And have you never kissed many ladies?' she whispered, hoping he
would say a hundred at the least.

The time, the circumstances, and the scene were such as to draw
confidences from the most reserved. 'Elfride,' whispered Knight
in reply, 'it is strange you should have asked that question. But
I'll answer it, though I have never told such a thing before. I
have been rather absurd in my avoidance of women. I have never
given a woman a kiss in my life, except yourself and my mother.'
The man of two and thirty with the experienced mind warmed all
over with a boy's ingenuous shame as he made the confession.

'What, not one?' she faltered.

'No; not one.'

'How very strange!'

'Yes, the reverse experience may be commoner. And yet, to those
who have observed their own sex, as I have, my case is not
remarkable. Men about town are women's favourites--that's the
postulate--and superficial people don't think far enough to see
that there may be reserved, lonely exceptions.'

'Are you proud of it, Harry?'

'No, indeed. Of late years I have wished I had gone my ways and
trod out my measure like lighter-hearted men. I have thought of
how many happy experiences I may have lost through never going to
woo.'

'Then why did you hold aloof?'

'I cannot say. I don't think it was my nature to: circumstance
hindered me, perhaps. I have regretted it for another reason.
This great remissness of mine has had its effect upon me. The
older I have grown, the more distinctly have I perceived that it
was absolutely preventing me from liking any woman who was not as
unpractised as I; and I gave up the expectation of finding a
nineteenth-century young lady in my own raw state. Then I found
you, Elfride, and l felt for the first time that my fastidiousness
was a blessing. And it helped to make me worthy of you. I felt
at once that, differing as we did in other experiences, in this
matter I resembled you. Well, aren't you glad to hear it,
Elfride?'

'Yes, I am,' she answered in a forced voice. 'But I always had
thought that men made lots of engagements before they married--
especially if they don't marry very young.'

'So all women think, I suppose--and rightly, indeed, of the
majority of bachelors, as I said before. But an appreciable
minority of slow-coach men do not--and it makes them very awkward
when they do come to the point. However, it didn't matter in my
case.'

'Why?' she asked uneasily.

'Because you know even less of love-making and matrimonial
prearrangement than I, and so you can't draw invidious comparisons
if I do my engaging improperly.'

'I think you do it beautifully!'

'Thank you, dear. But,' continued Knight laughingly, 'your
opinion is not that of an expert, which alone is of value.'

Had she answered, 'Yes, it is,' half as strongly as she felt it,
Knight might have been a little astonished.

'If you had ever been engaged to be married before,' he went on,
'I expect your opinion of my addresses would be different. But
then, I should not----'

'Should not what, Harry?'

'Oh, I was merely going to say that in that case I should never
have given myself the pleasure of proposing to you, since your
freedom from that experience was your attraction, darling.'

'You are severe on women, are you not?'

'No, I think not. I had a right to please my taste, and that was
for untried lips. Other men than those of my sort acquire the
taste as they get older--but don't find an Elfride----'

'What horrid sound is that we hear when we pitch forward?'

'Only the screw--don't find an Elfride as I did. To think that I
should have discovered such an unseen flower down there in the
West--to whom a man is as much as a multitude to some women, and a
trip down the English Channel like a voyage round the world!'

'And would you,' she said, and her voice was tremulous, 'have
given up a lady--if you had become engaged to her--and then found
she had had ONE kiss before yours--and would you have--gone away
and left her?'

'One kiss,--no, hardly for that.'

'Two?'

'Well--I could hardly say inventorially like that. Too much of
that sort of thing certainly would make me dislike a woman. But
let us confine our attention to ourselves, not go thinking of
might have beens.'

So Elfride had allowed her thoughts to 'dally with false surmise,'
and every one of Knight's words fell upon her like a weight.
After this they were silent for a long time, gazing upon the black
mysterious sea, and hearing the strange voice of the restless
wind. A rocking to and fro on the waves, when the breeze is not
too violent and cold, produces a soothing effect even upon the
most highly-wrought mind. Elfride slowly sank against Knight, and
looking down, he found by her soft regular breathing that she had
fallen asleep. Not wishing to disturb her, he continued still,
and took an intense pleasure in supporting her warm young form as
it rose and fell with her every breath.

Knight fell to dreaming too, though he continued wide awake. It
was pleasant to realize the implicit trust she placed in him, and
to think of the charming innocence of one who could sink to sleep
in so simple and unceremonious a manner. More than all, the
musing unpractical student felt the immense responsibility he was
taking upon himself by becoming the protector and guide of such a
trusting creature. The quiet slumber of her soul lent a quietness
to his own. Then she moaned, and turned herself restlessly.
Presently her mutterings became distinct:

'Don't tell him--he will not love me....I did not mean any
disgrace--indeed I did not, so don't tell Harry. We were going to
be married--that was why I ran away....And he says he will not
have a kissed woman....And if you tell him he will go away, and I
shall die. I pray have mercy--Oh!'

Elfride started up wildly.

The previous moment a musical ding-dong had spread into the air
from their right hand, and awakened her.

'What is it?' she exclaimed in terror.

'Only "eight bells,"' said Knight soothingly. 'Don't be
frightened, little bird, you are safe. What have you been
dreaming about?'

'I can't tell, I can't tell!' she said with a shudder. 'Oh, I
don't know what to do!'

'Stay quietly with me. We shall soon see the dawn now. Look, the
morning star is lovely over there. The clouds have completely
cleared off whilst you have been sleeping. What have you been
dreaming of?'

'A woman in our parish.'

'Don't you like her?'

'I don't. She doesn't like me. Where are we?'

'About south of the Exe.'

Knight said no more on the words of her dream. They watched the
sky till Elfride grew calm, and the dawn appeared. It was mere
wan lightness first. Then the wind blew in a changed spirit, and
died away to a zephyr. The star dissolved into the day.

'That's how I should like to die,' said Elfride, rising from her
seat and leaning over the bulwark to watch the star's last
expiring gleam.

'As the lines say,' Knight replied----

'"To set as sets the morning star, which goes
Not down behind the darken'd west, nor hides
Obscured among the tempests of the sky,
But melts away into the light of heaven."'

'Oh, other people have thought the same thing, have they? That's
always the case with my originalities--they are original to nobody
but myself.'

'Not only the case with yours. When I was a young hand at
reviewing I used to find that a frightful pitfall--dilating upon
subjects I met with, which were novelties to me, and finding
afterwards they had been exhausted by the thinking world when I
was in pinafores.'

'That is delightful. Whenever I find you have done a foolish
thing I am glad, because it seems to bring you a little nearer to
me, who have done many.' And Elfride thought again of her enemy
asleep under the deck they trod.

All up the coast, prominences singled themselves out from
recesses. Then a rosy sky spread over the eastern sea and behind
the low line of land, flinging its livery in dashes upon the thin
airy clouds in that direction. Every projection on the land
seemed now so many fingers anxious to catch a little of the liquid
light thrown so prodigally over the sky, and after a fantastic
time of lustrous yellows in the east, the higher elevations along
the shore were flooded with the same hues. The bluff and bare
contours of Start Point caught the brightest, earliest glow of
all, and so also did the sides of its white lighthouse, perched
upon a shelf in its precipitous front like a mediaeval saint in a
niche. Their lofty neighbour Bolt Head on the left remained as
yet ungilded, and retained its gray.

Then up came the sun, as it were in jerks, just to seaward of the
easternmost point of land, flinging out a Jacob's-ladder path of
light from itself to Elfride and Knight, and coating them with
rays in a few minutes. The inferior dignitaries of the shore--
Froward Point, Berry Head, and Prawle--all had acquired their
share of the illumination ere this, and at length the very
smallest protuberance of wave, cliff, or inlet, even to the
innermost recesses of the lovely valley of the Dart, had its
portion; and sunlight, now the common possession of all, ceased to
be the wonderful and coveted thing it had been a short half hour
before.

After breakfast, Plymouth arose into view, and grew distincter to
their nearing vision, the Breakwater appearing like a streak of
phosphoric light upon the surface of the sea. Elfride looked
furtively around for Mrs. Jethway, but could discern no shape like
hers. Afterwards, in the bustle of landing, she looked again with
the same result, by which time the woman had probably glided upon
the quay unobserved. Expanding with a sense of relief, Elfride
waited whilst Knight looked to their luggage, and then saw her
father approaching through the crowd, twirling his walking-stick
to catch their attention. Elbowing their way to him they all
entered the town, which smiled as sunny a smile upon Elfride as it
had done between one and two years earlier, when she had entered
it at precisely the same hour as the bride-elect of Stephen Smith.

Chapter XXX

'Vassal unto Love.'

Elfride clung closer to Knight as day succeeded day. Whatever
else might admit of question, there could be no dispute that the
allegiance she bore him absorbed her whole soul and existence. A
greater than Stephen had arisen, and she had left all to follow
him.

The unreserved girl was never chary of letting her lover discover
how much she admired him. She never once held an idea in
opposition to any one of his, or insisted on any point with him,
or showed any independence, or held her own on any subject. His
lightest whim she respected and obeyed as law, and if, expressing
her opinion on a matter, he took up the subject and differed from
her, she instantly threw down her own opinion as wrong and
untenable. Even her ambiguities and espieglerie were but media of
the same manifestation; acted charades, embodying the words of her
prototype, the tender and susceptible daughter-in-law of Naomi:
'Let me find favour in thy sight, my lord; for that thou hast
comforted me, and for that thou hast spoken friendly unto thine
handmaid.'

She was syringing the plants one wet day in the greenhouse.
Knight was sitting under a great passion-flower observing the
scene. Sometimes he looked out at the rain from the sky, and then
at Elfride's inner rain of larger drops, which fell from trees and
shrubs, after having previously hung from the twigs like small
silver fruit.

'I must give you something to make you think of me during this
autumn at your chambers,' she was saying. 'What shall it be?
Portraits do more harm than good, by selecting the worst
expression of which your face is capable. Hair is unlucky. And
you don't like jewellery.'

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