A Pair of Blue Eyes, by Thomas Hardy
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Thomas Hardy >> A Pair of Blue Eyes, by Thomas Hardy
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'I am going indoors,' said Knight. 'You will not follow me,
Elfride; I wish you not to.'
'Oh no; indeed, I will not.'
'And then I am going to Castle Boterel. Good-bye.'
He spoke the farewell as if it were but for the day--lightly, as
he had spoken such temporary farewells many times before--and she
seemed to understand it as such. Knight had not the power to tell
her plainly that he was going for ever; he hardly knew for certain
that he was: whether he should rush back again upon the current of
an irresistible emotion, or whether he could sufficiently conquer
himself, and her in him, to establish that parting as a supreme
farewell, and present himself to the world again as no woman's.
Ten minutes later he had left the house, leaving directions that
if he did not return in the evening his luggage was to be sent to
his chambers in London, whence he intended to write to Mr.
Swancourt as to the reasons of his sudden departure. He descended
the valley, and could not forbear turning his head. He saw the
stubble-field, and a slight girlish figure in the midst of it--up
against the sky. Elfride, docile as ever, had hardly moved a
step, for he had said, Remain. He looked and saw her again--he
saw her for weeks and months. He withdrew his eyes from the
scene, swept his hand across them, as if to brush away the sight,
breathed a low groan, and went on.
Chapter XXXV
'And wilt thou leave me thus?--say nay--say nay!'
The scene shifts to Knight's chambers in Bede's Inn. It was late
in the evening of the day following his departure from Endelstow.
A drizzling rain descended upon London, forming a humid and dreary
halo over every well-lighted street. The rain had not yet been
prevalent long enough to give to rapid vehicles that clear and
distinct rattle which follows the thorough washing of the stones
by a drenching rain, but was just sufficient to make footway and
roadway slippery, adhesive, and clogging to both feet and wheels.
Knight was standing by the fire, looking into its expiring embers,
previously to emerging from his door for a dreary journey home to
Richmond. His hat was on, and the gas turned off. The blind of
the window overlooking the alley was not drawn down; and with the
light from beneath, which shone over the ceiling of the room,
came, in place of the usual babble, only the reduced clatter and
quick speech which were the result of necessity rather than
choice.
Whilst he thus stood, waiting for the expiration of the few
minutes that were wanting to the time for his catching the train,
a light tapping upon the door mingled with the other sounds that
reached his ears. It was so faint at first that the outer noises
were almost sufficient to drown it. Finding it repeated Knight
crossed the lobby, crowded with books and rubbish, and opened the
door.
A woman, closely muffled up, but visibly of fragile build, was
standing on the landing under the gaslight. She sprang forward,
flung her arms round Knight's neck, and uttered a low cry--
'O Harry, Harry, you are killing me! I could not help coming.
Don't send me away--don't! Forgive your Elfride for coming--I love
you so!'
Knight's agitation and astonishment mastered him for a few
moments.
'Elfride!' he cried, 'what does this mean? What have you done?'
'Do not hurt me and punish me--Oh, do not! I couldn't help coming;
it was killing me. Last night, when you did not come back, I
could not bear it--I could not! Only let me be with you, and see
your face, Harry; I don't ask for more.'
Her eyelids were hot, heavy, and thick with excessive weeping, and
the delicate rose-red of her cheeks was disfigured and inflamed by
the constant chafing of the handkerchief in wiping her many tears.
'Who is with you? Have you come alone?' he hurriedly inquired.
'Yes. When you did not come last night, I sat up hoping you would
come--and the night was all agony--and I waited on and on, and you
did not come! Then when it was morning, and your letter said you
were gone, I could not endure it; and I ran away from them to St.
Launce's, and came by the train. And I have been all day
travelling to you, and you won't make me go away again, will you,
Harry, because I shall always love you till I die?'
'Yet it is wrong for you to stay. O Elfride! what have you
committed yourself to? It is ruin to your good name to run to me
like this! Has not your first experience been sufficient to keep
you from these things?'
'My name! Harry, I shall soon die, and what good will my name be
to me then? Oh, could I but be the man and you the woman, I would
not leave you for such a little fault as mine! Do not think it was
so vile a thing in me to run away with him. Ah, how I wish you
could have run away with twenty women before you knew me, that I
might show you I would think it no fault, but be glad to get you
after them all, so that I had you! If you only knew me through and
through, how true I am, Harry. Cannot I be yours? Say you love me
just the same, and don't let me be separated from you again, will
you? I cannot bear it--all the long hours and days and nights
going on, and you not there, but away because you hate me!'
'Not hate you, Elfride,' he said gently, and supported her with
his arm. 'But you cannot stay here now--just at present, I mean.'
'I suppose I must not--I wish I might. I am afraid that if--you
lose sight of me--something dark will happen, and we shall not
meet again. Harry, if I am not good enough to be your wife, I
wish I could be your servant and live with you, and not be sent
away never to see you again. I don't mind what it is except
that!'
'No, I cannot send you away: I cannot. God knows what dark future
may arise out of this evening's work; but I cannot send you away!
You must sit down, and I will endeavour to collect my thoughts and
see what had better be done.
At that moment a loud knocking at the house door was heard by
both, accompanied by a hurried ringing of the bell that echoed
from attic to basement. The door was quickly opened, and after a
few hasty words of converse in the hall, heavy footsteps ascended
the stairs.
The face of Mr. Swancourt, flushed, grieved, and stern, appeared
round the landing of the staircase. He came higher up, and stood
beside them. Glancing over and past Knight with silent
indignation, he turned to the trembling girl.
'O Elfride! and have I found you at last? Are these your tricks,
madam? When will you get rid of your idiocies, and conduct
yourself like a decent woman? Is my family name and house to be
disgraced by acts that would be a scandal to a washerwoman's
daughter? Come along, madam; come!'
'She is so weary!' said Knight, in a voice of intensest anguish.
'Mr. Swancourt, don't be harsh with her--let me beg of you to be
tender with her, and love her!'
'To you, sir,' said Mr. Swancourt, turning to him as if by the
sheer pressure of circumstances, 'I have little to say. I can
only remark, that the sooner I can retire from your presence the
better I shall be pleased. Why you could not conduct your
courtship of my daughter like an honest man, I do not know. Why
she--a foolish inexperienced girl--should have been tempted to
this piece of folly, I do not know. Even if she had not known
better than to leave her home, you might have, I should think.'
'It is not his fault: he did not tempt me, papa! I came.'
'If you wished the marriage broken off, why didn't you say so
plainly? If you never intended to marry, why could you not leave
her alone? Upon my soul, it grates me to the heart to be obliged
to think so ill of a man I thought my friend!'
Knight, soul-sick and weary of his life, did not arouse himself to
utter a word in reply. How should he defend himself when his
defence was the accusation of Elfride? On that account he felt a
miserable satisfaction in letting her father go on thinking and
speaking wrongfully. It was a faint ray of pleasure straying into
the great gloominess of his brain to think that the vicar might
never know but that he, as her lover, tempted her away, which
seemed to be the form Mr. Swancourt's misapprehension had taken.
'Now, are you coming?' said Mr. Swancourt to her again. He took
her unresisting hand, drew it within his arm, and led her down the
stairs. Knight's eyes followed her, the last moment begetting in
him a frantic hope that she would turn her head. She passed on,
and never looked back.
He heard the door open--close again. The wheels of a cab grazed
the kerbstone, a murmured direction followed. The door was
slammed together, the wheels moved, and they rolled away.
From that hour of her reappearance a dreadful conflict raged
within the breast of Henry Knight. His instinct, emotion,
affectiveness--or whatever it may be called--urged him to stand
forward, seize upon Elfride, and be her cherisher and protector
through life. Then came the devastating thought that Elfride's
childlike, unreasoning, and indiscreet act in flying to him only
proved that the proprieties must be a dead letter with her; that
the unreserve, which was really artlessness without ballast, meant
indifference to decorum; and what so likely as that such a woman
had been deceived in the past? He said to himself, in a mood of
the bitterest cynicism: 'The suspicious discreet woman who
imagines dark and evil things of all her fellow-creatures is far
too shrewd to be deluded by man: trusting beings like Elfride are
the women who fall.'
Hours and days went by, and Knight remained inactive. Lengthening
time, which made fainter the heart-awakening power of her
presence, strengthened the mental ability to reason her down.
Elfride loved him, he knew, and he could not leave off loving her
but marry her he would not. If she could but be again his own
Elfride--the woman she had seemed to be--but that woman was dead
and buried, and he knew her no more! And how could he marry this
Elfride, one who, if he had originally seen her as she was, would
have been barely an interesting pitiable acquaintance in his eyes--
no more?
It cankered his heart to think he was confronted by the closest
instance of a worse state of things than any he had assumed in the
pleasant social philosophy and satire of his essays.
The moral rightness of this man's life was worthy of all praise;
but in spite of some intellectual acumen, Knight had in him a
modicum of that wrongheadedness which is mostly found in
scrupulously honest people. With him, truth seemed too clean and
pure an abstraction to be so hopelessly churned in with error as
practical persons find it. Having now seen himself mistaken in
supposing Elfride to be peerless, nothing on earth could make him
believe she was not so very bad after all.
He lingered in town a fortnight, doing little else than vibrate
between passion and opinions. One idea remained intact--that it
was better Elfride and himself should not meet.
When he surveyed the volumes on his shelves--few of which had been
opened since Elfride first took possession of his heart--their
untouched and orderly arrangement reproached him as an apostate
from the old faith of his youth and early manhood. He had
deserted those never-failing friends, so they seemed to say, for
an unstable delight in a ductile woman, which had ended all in
bitterness. The spirit of self-denial, verging on asceticism,
which had ever animated Knight in old times, announced itself as
having departed with the birth of love, with it having gone the
self-respect which had compensated for the lack of self-
gratification. Poor little Elfride, instead of holding, as
formerly, a place in his religion, began to assume the hue of a
temptation. Perhaps it was human and correctly natural that
Knight never once thought whether he did not owe her a little
sacrifice for her unchary devotion in saving his life.
With a consciousness of having thus, like Antony, kissed away
kingdoms and provinces, he next considered how he had revealed his
higher secrets and intentions to her, an unreserve he would never
have allowed himself with any man living. How was it that he had
not been able to refrain from telling her of adumbrations
heretofore locked in the closest strongholds of his mind?
Knight's was a robust intellect, which could escape outside the
atmosphere of heart, and perceive that his own love, as well as
other people's, could be reduced by change of scene and
circumstances. At the same time the perception was a superimposed
sorrow:
'O last regret, regret can die!'
But being convinced that the death of this regret was the best
thing for him, he did not long shrink from attempting it. He
closed his chambers, suspended his connection with editors, and
left London for the Continent. Here we will leave him to wander
without purpose, beyond the nominal one of encouraging
obliviousness of Elfride.
Chapter XXXVI
'The pennie's the jewel that beautifies a'.'
'I can't think what's coming to these St. Launce's people at all
at all.'
'With their "How-d'ye-do's," do you mean?'
'Ay, with their "How-d'ye-do's," and shaking of hands, asking me
in, and tender inquiries for you, John.'
These words formed part of a conversation between John Smith and
his wife on a Saturday evening in the spring which followed
Knight's departure from England. Stephen had long since returned
to India; and the persevering couple themselves had migrated from
Lord Luxellian's park at Endelstow to a comfortable roadside
dwelling about a mile out of St. Launce's, where John had opened a
small stone and slate yard in his own name.
'When we came here six months ago,' continued Mrs. Smith, 'though
I had paid ready money so many years in the town, my friskier
shopkeepers would only speak over the counter. Meet 'em in the
street half-an-hour after, and they'd treat me with staring
ignorance of my face.'
'Look through ye as through a glass winder?'
'Yes, the brazen ones would. The quiet and cool ones would glance
over the top of my head, past my side, over my shoulder, but never
meet my eye. The gentle-modest would turn their faces south if I
were coming east, flit down a passage if I were about to halve the
pavement with them. There was the spruce young bookseller would
play the same tricks; the butcher's daughters; the upholsterer's
young men. Hand in glove when doing business out of sight with
you; but caring nothing for a' old woman when playing the genteel
away from all signs of their trade.'
'True enough, Maria.'
'Well, to-day 'tis all different. I'd no sooner got to market
than Mrs. Joakes rushed up to me in the eyes of the town and said,
"My dear Mrs. Smith, now you must be tired with your walk! Come in
and have some lunch! I insist upon it; knowing you so many years
as I have! Don't you remember when we used to go looking for owls'
feathers together in the Castle ruins?" There's no knowing what
you may need, so I answered the woman civilly. I hadn't got to
the corner before that thriving young lawyer, Sweet, who's quite
the dandy, ran after me out of breath. "Mrs. Smith," he says,
"excuse my rudeness, but there's a bramble on the tail of your
dress, which you've dragged in from the country; allow me to pull
it off for you." If you'll believe me, this was in the very front
of the Town Hall. What's the meaning of such sudden love for a'
old woman?'
'Can't say; unless 'tis repentance.'
'Repentance! was there ever such a fool as you. John? Did anybody
ever repent with money in's pocket and fifty years to live?'
'Now, I've been thinking too,' said John, passing over the query
as hardly pertinent, 'that I've had more loving-kindness from
folks to-day than I ever have before since we moved here. Why,
old Alderman Tope walked out to the middle of the street where I
was, to shake hands with me--so 'a did. Having on my working
clothes, I thought 'twas odd. Ay, and there was young
Werrington.'
'Who's he?'
'Why, the man in Hill Street, who plays and sells flutes,
trumpets, and fiddles, and grand pehanners. He was talking to
Egloskerry, that very small bachelor-man with money in the funds.
I was going by, I'm sure, without thinking or expecting a nod from
men of that glib kidney when in my working clothes----'
'You always will go poking into town in your working clothes. Beg
you to change how I will, 'tis no use.'
'Well, however, I was in my working clothes. Werrington saw me.
"Ah, Mr. Smith! a fine morning; excellent weather for building,"
says he, out as loud and friendly as if I'd met him in some deep
hollow, where he could get nobody else to speak to at all. 'Twas
odd: for Werrington is one of the very ringleaders of the fast
class.'
At that moment a tap came to the door. The door was immediately
opened by Mrs. Smith in person.
'You'll excuse us, I'm sure, Mrs. Smith, but this beautiful spring
weather was too much for us. Yes, and we could stay in no longer;
and I took Mrs. Trewen upon my arm directly we'd had a cup of tea,
and out we came. And seeing your beautiful crocuses in such a
bloom, we've taken the liberty to enter. We'll step round the
garden, if you don't mind.'
'Not at all,' said Mrs. Smith; and they walked round the garden.
She lifted her hands in amazement directly their backs were
turned. 'Goodness send us grace!'
Who be they?' said her husband.
'Actually Mr. Trewen, the bank-manager, and his wife.'
John Smith, staggered in mind, went out of doors and looked over
the garden gate, to collect his ideas. He had not been there two
minutes when wheels were heard, and a carriage and pair rolled
along the road. A distinguished-looking lady, with the demeanour
of a duchess, reclined within. When opposite Smith's gate she
turned her head, and instantly commanded the coachman to stop.
'Ah, Mr. Smith, I am glad to see you looking so well. I could not
help stopping a moment to congratulate you and Mrs. Smith upon the
happiness you must enjoy. Joseph, you may drive on.'
And the carriage rolled away towards St. Launce's.
Out rushed Mrs. Smith from behind a laurel-bush, where she had
stood pondering.
'Just going to touch my hat to her,' said John; 'just for all the
world as I would have to poor Lady Luxellian years ago.'
'Lord! who is she?'
'The public-house woman--what's her name? Mrs.--Mrs.--at the
Falcon.'
'Public-house woman. The clumsiness of the Smith family! You
MIGHT say the landlady of the Falcon Hotel, since we are in for
politeness. The people are ridiculous enough, but give them their
due.'
The possibility is that Mrs. Smith was getting mollified, in spite
of herself, by these remarkably friendly phenomena among the
people of St. Launce's. And in justice to them it was quite
desirable that she should do so. The interest which the
unpractised ones of this town expressed so grotesquely was genuine
of its kind, and equal in intrinsic worth to the more polished
smiles of larger communities.
By this time Mr. and Mrs. Trewen were returning from the garden.
'I'll ask 'em flat,' whispered John to his wife. 'I'll say, "We
be in a fog--you'll excuse my asking a question, Mr. and Mrs.
Trewen. How is it you all be so friendly to-day?" Hey? 'Twould
sound right and sensible, wouldn't it?'
'Not a word! Good mercy, when will the man have manners!'
'It must be a proud moment for you, I am sure, Mr. and Mrs. Smith,
to have a son so celebrated,' said the bank-manager advancing.
'Ah, 'tis Stephen--I knew it!' said Mrs. Smith triumphantly to
herself.
'We don't know particulars,' said John.
'Not know!'
'No.'
'Why, 'tis all over town. Our worthy Mayor alluded to it in a
speech at the dinner last night of the Every-Man-his-own-Maker
Club.'
'And what about Stephen?' urged Mrs. Smith.
'Why, your son has been feted by deputy-governors and Parsee
princes and nobody-knows-who in India; is hand in glove with
nabobs, and is to design a large palace, and cathedral, and
hospitals, colleges, halls, and fortifications, by the general
consent of the ruling powers, Christian and Pagan alike.'
''Twas sure to come to the boy,' said Mr. Smith unassumingly.
''Tis in yesterday's St. Launce's Chronicle; and our worthy Mayor
in the chair introduced the subject into his speech last night in
a masterly manner.'
''Twas very good of the worthy Mayor in the chair I'm sure,' said
Stephen's mother. 'I hope the boy will have the sense to keep
what he's got; but as for men, they are a simple sex. Some woman
will hook him.'
'Well, Mr. and Mrs. Smith, the evening closes in, and we must be
going; and remember this, that every Saturday when you come in to
market, you are to make our house as your own. There will be
always a tea-cup and saucer for you, as you know there has been
for months, though you may have forgotten it. I'm a plain-
speaking woman, and what I say I mean.'
When the visitors were gone, and the sun had set, and the moon's
rays were just beginning to assert themselves upon the walls of
the dwelling, John Smith and his wife sat dawn to the newspaper
they had hastily procured from the town. And when the reading was
done, they considered how best to meet the new social requirements
settling upon them, which Mrs. Smith considered could be done by
new furniture and house enlargement alone.
'And, John, mind one thing,' she said in conclusion. 'In writing
to Stephen, never by any means mention the name of Elfride
Swancourt again. We've left the place, and know no more about her
except by hearsay. He seems to be getting free of her, and glad
am I for it. It was a cloudy hour for him when he first set eyes
upon the girl. That family's been no good to him, first or last;
so let them keep their blood to themselves if they want to. He
thinks of her, I know, but not so hopelessly. So don't try to
know anything about her, and we can't answer his questions. She
may die out of his mind then.'
'That shall be it,' said John.
Chapter XXXVII
'After many days.'
Knight roamed south, under colour of studying Continental
antiquities.
He paced the lofty aisles of Amiens, loitered by Ardennes Abbey,
climbed into the strange towers of Laon, analyzed Noyon and
Rheims. Then he went to Chartres, and examined its scaly spires
and quaint carving then he idled about Coutances. He rowed
beneath the base of Mont St. Michel, and caught the varied skyline
of the crumbling edifices encrusting it. St. Ouen's, Rouen, knew
him for days; so did Vezelay, Sens, and many a hallowed monument
besides. Abandoning the inspection of early French art with the
same purposeless haste as he had shown in undertaking it, he went
further, and lingered about Ferrara, Padua, and Pisa. Satiated
with mediaevalism, he tried the Roman Forum. Next he observed
moonlight and starlight effects by the bay of Naples. He turned
to Austria, became enervated and depressed on Hungarian and
Bohemian plains, and was refreshed again by breezes on the
declivities of the Carpathians.
Then he found himself in Greece. He visited the plain of
Marathon, and strove to imagine the Persian defeat; to Mars Hill,
to picture St. Paul addressing the ancient Athenians; to
Thermopylae and Salamis, to run through the facts and traditions
of the Second Invasion--the result of his endeavours being more or
less chaotic. Knight grew as weary of these places as of all
others. Then he felt the shock of an earthquake in the Ionian
Islands, and went to Venice. Here he shot in gondolas up and down
the winding thoroughfare of the Grand Canal, and loitered on calle
and piazza at night, when the lagunes were undisturbed by a
ripple, and no sound was to be heard but the stroke of the
midnight clock. Afterwards he remained for weeks in the museums,
galleries, and libraries of Vienna, Berlin, and Paris; and thence
came home.
Time thus rolls us on to a February afternoon, divided by fifteen
months from the parting of Elfride and her lover in the brown
stubble field towards the sea.
Two men obviously not Londoners, and with a touch of foreignness
in their look, met by accident on one of the gravel walks leading
across Hyde Park. The younger, more given to looking about him
than his fellow, saw and noticed the approach of his senior some
time before the latter had raised his eyes from the ground, upon
which they were bent in an abstracted gaze that seemed habitual
with him.
'Mr. Knight--indeed it is!' exclaimed the younger man.
'Ah, Stephen Smith!' said Knight.
Simultaneous operations might now have been observed progressing
in both, the result being that an expression less frank and
impulsive than the first took possession of their features. It
was manifest that the next words uttered were a superficial
covering to constraint on both sides.
'Have you been in England long?' said Knight.
'Only two days,' said Smith. India ever since?'
'Nearly ever since.'
'They were making a fuss about you at St. Launce's last year. I
fancy I saw something of the sort in the papers.'
'Yes; I believe something was said about me.'
'I must congratulate you on your achievements.'
'Thanks, but they are nothing very extraordinary. A natural
professional progress where there was no opposition.'
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