A Pair of Blue Eyes, by Thomas Hardy

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'Yes, miss, that they have!' said Unity with round-eyed
commiseration.

'Once 'twas in the lane that I found one of them,' pursued Elfride
reflectively.

'And then 'twas by the gate into Eighteen Acres,' Unity chimed in.

'And then 'twas on the carpet in my own room,' rejoined Elfride
merrily.

'And then 'twas dangling on the embroidery of your petticoat,
miss; and then 'twas down your back, miss, wasn't it? And oh, what
a way you was in, miss, wasn't you? my! until you found it!'

Stephen took Elfride's slight foot upon his hand: 'One, two,
three, and up!' she said.

Unfortunately not so. He staggered and lifted, and the horse
edged round; and Elfride was ultimately deposited upon the ground
rather more forcibly than was pleasant. Smith looked all
contrition.

'Never mind,' said the vicar encouragingly; 'try again! 'Tis a
little accomplishment that requires some practice, although it
looks so easy. Stand closer to the horse's head, Mr. Smith.'

'Indeed, I shan't let him try again,' said she with a microscopic
look of indignation. 'Worm, come here, and help me to mount.'
Worm stepped forward, and she was in the saddle in a trice.

Then they moved on, going for some distance in silence, the hot
air of the valley being occasionally brushed from their faces by a
cool breeze, which wound its way along ravines leading up from the
sea.

'I suppose,' said Stephen, 'that a man who can neither sit in a
saddle himself nor help another person into one seems a useless
incumbrance; but, Miss Swancourt, I'll learn to do it all for your
sake; I will, indeed.'

'What is so unusual in you,' she said, in a didactic tone
justifiable in a horsewoman's address to a benighted walker, 'is
that your knowledge of certain things should be combined with your
ignorance of certain other things.'

Stephen lifted his eyes earnestly to hers.

'You know,' he said, 'it is simply because there are so many other
things to be learnt in this wide world that I didn't trouble about
that particular bit of knowledge. I thought it would be useless
to me; but I don't think so now. I will learn riding, and all
connected with it, because then you would like me better. Do you
like me much less for this?'

She looked sideways at him with critical meditation tenderly
rendered.

'Do I seem like LA BELLE DAME SANS MERCI?' she began suddenly,
without replying to his question. 'Fancy yourself saying, Mr.
Smith:

"I sat her on my pacing steed,
And nothing else saw all day long,
For sidelong would she bend, and sing
A fairy's song,
She found me roots of relish sweet,
And honey wild, and manna dew; "

and that's all she did.'

'No, no,' said the young man stilly, and with a rising colour.

'"And sure in language strange she said,
I love thee true."'

'Not at all,' she rejoined quickly. 'See how I can gallop. Now,
Pansy, off!' And Elfride started; and Stephen beheld her light
figure contracting to the dimensions of a bird as she sank into
the distance--her hair flowing.

He walked on in the same direction, and for a considerable time
could see no signs of her returning. Dull as a flower without the
sun he sat down upon a stone, and not for fifteen minutes was any
sound of horse or rider to be heard. Then Elfride and Pansy
appeared on the hill in a round trot.

'Such a delightful scamper as we have had!' she said, her face
flushed and her eyes sparkling. She turned the horse's head,
Stephen arose, and they went on again.

'Well, what have you to say to me, Mr. Smith, after my long
absence?'

'Do you remember a question you could not exactly answer last
night--whether I was more to you than anybody else?' said he.

'I cannot exactly answer now, either.'

'Why can't you?'

'Because I don't know if I am more to you than any one else.'

'Yes, indeed, you are!' he exclaimed in a voice of intensest
appreciation, at the same time gliding round and looking into her
face.

'Eyes in eyes,' he murmured playfully; and she blushingly obeyed,
looking back into his.

'And why not lips on lips?' continued Stephen daringly.

'No, certainly not. Anybody might look; and it would be the death
of me. You may kiss my hand if you like.'

He expressed by a look that to kiss a hand through a glove, and
that a riding-glove, was not a great treat under the
circumstances.

'There, then; I'll take my glove off. Isn't it a pretty white
hand? Ah, you don't want to kiss it, and you shall not now!'

'If I do not, may I never kiss again, you severe Elfride! You know
I think more of you than I can tell; that you are my queen. I
would die for you, Elfride!'

A rapid red again filled her cheeks, and she looked at him
meditatively. What a proud moment it was for Elfride then! She
was ruling a heart with absolute despotism for the first time in
her life.

Stephen stealthily pounced upon her hand.

'No; I won't, I won't!' she said intractably; 'and you shouldn't
take me by surprise.'

There ensued a mild form of tussle for absolute possession of the
much-coveted hand, in which the boisterousness of boy and girl was
far more prominent than the dignity of man and woman. Then Pansy
became restless. Elfride recovered her position and remembered
herself.

'You make me behave in not a nice way at all!' she exclaimed, in a
tone neither of pleasure nor anger, but partaking of both. 'I
ought not to have allowed such a romp! We are too old now for that
sort of thing.'

'I hope you don't think me too--too much of a creeping-round sort
of man,' said he in a penitent tone, conscious that he too had
lost a little dignity by the proceeding.

'You are too familiar; and I can't have it! Considering the
shortness of the time we have known each other, Mr. Smith, you
take too much upon you. You think I am a country girl, and it
doesn't matter how you behave to me!'

'I assure you, Miss Swancourt, that I had no idea of freak in my
mind. I wanted to imprint a sweet--serious kiss upon your hand;
and that's all.'

'Now, that's creeping round again! And you mustn't look into my
eyes so,' she said, shaking her head at him, and trotting on a few
paces in advance. Thus she led the way out of the lane and across
some fields in the direction of the cliffs. At the boundary of
the fields nearest the sea she expressed a wish to dismount. The
horse was tied to a post. and they both followed an irregular
path, which ultimately terminated upon a flat ledge passing round
the face of the huge blue-black rock at a height about midway
between the sea and the topmost verge. There, far beneath and
before them, lay the everlasting stretch of ocean; there, upon
detached rocks, were the white screaming gulls, seeming ever
intending to settle, and yet always passing on. Right and left
ranked the toothed and zigzag line of storm-torn heights, forming
the series which culminated in the one beneath their feet.

Behind the youth and maiden was a tempting alcove and seat, formed
naturally in the beetling mass, and wide enough to admit two or
three persons. Elfride sat down, and Stephen sat beside her.

'I am afraid it is hardly proper of us to be here, either,' she
said half inquiringly. 'We have not known each other long enough
for this kind of thing, have we!'

'Oh yes,' he replied judicially; 'quite long enough.'

'How do you know?'

'It is not length of time, but the manner in which our minutes
beat, that makes enough or not enough in our acquaintanceship.'

'Yes, I see that. But I wish papa suspected or knew what a VERY
NEW THING I am doing. He does not think of it at all.'

'Darling Elfie, I wish we could be married! It is wrong for me to
say it--I know it is--before you know more; but I wish we might
be, all the same. Do you love me deeply, deeply?'

'No!' she said in a fluster.

At this point-blank denial, Stephen turned his face away
decisively, and preserved an ominous silence; the only objects of
interest on earth for him being apparently the three or four-score
sea-birds circling in the air afar off.

'I didn't mean to stop you quite,' she faltered with some alarm;
and seeing that he still remained silent, she added more
anxiously, 'If you say that again, perhaps, I will not be quite--
quite so obstinate--if--if you don't like me to be.'

'Oh, my Elfride!' he exclaimed, and kissed her.

It was Elfride's first kiss. And so awkward and unused was she;
full of striving--no relenting. There was none of those apparent
struggles to get out of the trap which only results in getting
further in: no final attitude of receptivity: no easy close of
shoulder to shoulder, hand upon hand, face upon face, and, in
spite of coyness, the lips in the right place at the supreme
moment. That graceful though apparently accidental falling into
position, which many have noticed as precipitating the end and
making sweethearts the sweeter, was not here. Why? Because
experience was absent. A woman must have had many kisses before
she kisses well.

In fact, the art of tendering the lips for these amatory salutes
follows the principles laid down in treatises on legerdemain for
performing the trick called Forcing a Card. The card is to be
shifted nimbly, withdrawn, edged under, and withal not to be
offered till the moment the unsuspecting person's hand reaches the
pack; this forcing to be done so modestly and yet so coaxingly,
that the person trifled with imagines he is really choosing what
is in fact thrust into his hand.

Well, there were no such facilities now; and Stephen was conscious
of it--first with a momentary regret that his kiss should be
spoilt by her confused receipt of it, and then with the pleasant
perception that her awkwardness was her charm.

'And you do care for me and love me?' said he.

'Yes.'

'Very much?'

'Yes.'

'And I mustn't ask you if you'll wait for me, and be my wife some
day?'

'Why not?' she said naively.

'There is a reason why, my Elfride.'

'Not any one that I know of.'

'Suppose there is something connected with me which makes it
almost impossible for you to agree to be my wife, or for your
father to countenance such an idea?'

'Nothing shall make me cease to love you: no blemish can be found
upon your personal nature. That is pure and generous, I know; and
having that, how can I be cold to you?'

'And shall nothing else affect us--shall nothing beyond my nature
be a part of my quality in your eyes, Elfie?'

'Nothing whatever,' she said with a breath of relief. 'Is that
all? Some outside circumstance? What do I care?'

'You can hardly judge, dear, till you know what has to be judged.
For that, we will stop till we get home. I believe in you, but I
cannot feel bright.'

'Love is new, and fresh to us as the dew; and we are together. As
the lover's world goes, this is a great deal. Stephen, I fancy I
see the difference between me and you--between men and women
generally, perhaps. I am content to build happiness on any
accidental basis that may lie near at hand; you are for making a
world to suit your happiness.'

'Elfride, you sometimes say things which make you seem suddenly to
become five years older than you are, or than I am; and that
remark is one. I couldn't think so OLD as that, try how I
might....And no lover has ever kissed you before?'

'Never.'

'I knew that; you were so unused. You ride well, but you don't
kiss nicely at all; and I was told once, by my friend Knight, that
that is an excellent fault in woman.'

'Now, come; I must mount again, or we shall not be home by dinner-
time.' And they returned to where Pansy stood tethered. 'Instead
of entrusting my weight to a young man's unstable palm,' she
continued gaily, 'I prefer a surer "upping-stock" (as the
villagers call it), in the form of a gate. There--now I am myself
again.'

They proceeded homeward at the same walking pace.

Her blitheness won Stephen out of his thoughtfulness, and each
forgot everything but the tone of the moment.

'What did you love me for?' she said, after a long musing look at
a flying bird.

'I don't know,' he replied idly.

'Oh yes, you do,' insisted Elfride.

'Perhaps, for your eyes.'

'What of them?--now, don't vex me by a light answer. What of my
eyes?'

'Oh, nothing to be mentioned. They are indifferently good.'

'Come, Stephen, I won't have that. What did you love me for?'

'It might have been for your mouth?'

'Well, what about my mouth?'

'I thought it was a passable mouth enough----'

'That's not very comforting.'

'With a pretty pout and sweet lips; but actually, nothing more
than what everybody has.'

'Don't make up things out of your head as you go on, there's a
dear Stephen. Now--what--did--you--love--me--for?'

'Perhaps, 'twas for your neck and hair; though I am not sure: or
for your idle blood, that did nothing but wander away from your
cheeks and back again; but I am not sure. Or your hands and arms,
that they eclipsed all other hands and arms; or your feet, that
they played about under your dress like little mice; or your
tongue, that it was of a dear delicate tone. But I am not
altogether sure.'

'Ah, that's pretty to say; but I don't care for your love, if it
made a mere flat picture of me in that way, and not being sure,
and such cold reasoning; but what you FELT I was, you know,
Stephen' (at this a stealthy laugh and frisky look into his face),
'when you said to yourself, "I'll certainly love that young
lady."'

'I never said it.'

'When you said to yourself, then, "I never will love that young
lady."'

'I didn't say that, either.'

'Then was it, "I suppose I must love that young lady?"'

'No.'

'What, then?'

''Twas much more fluctuating--not so definite.'

'Tell me; do, do.'

'It was that I ought not to think about you if I loved you truly.'

'Ah, that I don't understand. There's no getting it out of you.
And I'll not ask you ever any more--never more--to say out of the
deep reality of your heart what you loved me for.'

'Sweet tantalizer, what's the use? It comes to this sole simple
thing: That at one time I had never seen you, and I didn't love
you; that then I saw you, and I did love you. Is that enough?'

'Yes; I will make it do....I know, I think, what I love you for.
You are nice-looking, of course; but I didn't mean for that. It
is because you are so docile and gentle.'

'Those are not quite the correct qualities for a man to be loved
for,' said Stephen, in rather a dissatisfied tone of self-
criticism. 'Well, never mind. I must ask your father to allow us
to be engaged directly we get indoors. It will be for a long
time.'

'I like it the better....Stephen, don't mention it till to-
morrow.'

'Why?'

'Because, if he should object--I don't think he will; but if he
should--we shall have a day longer of happiness from our
ignorance....Well, what are you thinking of so deeply?'

'I was thinking how my dear friend Knight would enjoy this scene.
I wish he could come here.'

'You seem very much engrossed with him,' she answered, with a
jealous little toss. 'He must be an interesting man to take up so
much of your attention.'

'Interesting!' said Stephen, his face glowing with his fervour;
'noble, you ought to say.'

'Oh yes, yes; I forgot,' she said half satirically. 'The noblest
man in England, as you told us last night.'

'He is a fine fellow, laugh as you will, Miss Elfie.'

'I know he is your hero. But what does he do? anything?'

'He writes.'

'What does he write? I have never heard of his name.'

'Because his personality, and that of several others like him, is
absorbed into a huge WE, namely, the impalpable entity called the
PRESENT--a social and literary Review.'

'Is he only a reviewer?'

'ONLY, Elfie! Why, I can tell you it is a fine thing to be on the
staff of the PRESENT. Finer than being a novelist considerably.'

'That's a hit at me, and my poor COURT OF KELLYON CASTLE.'

'No, Elfride,' he whispered; 'I didn't mean that. I mean that he
is really a literary man of some eminence, and not altogether a
reviewer. He writes things of a higher class than reviews, though
he reviews a book occasionally. His ordinary productions are
social and ethical essays--all that the PRESENT contains which is
not literary reviewing.'

'I admit he must be talented if he writes for the PRESENT. We
have it sent to us irregularly. I want papa to be a subscriber,
but he's so conservative. Now the next point in this Mr. Knight--
I suppose he is a very good man.'

'An excellent man. I shall try to be his intimate friend some
day.'

'But aren't you now?'

'No; not so much as that,' replied Stephen, as if such a
supposition were extravagant. 'You see, it was in this way--he
came originally from the same place as I, and taught me things;
but I am not intimate with him. Shan't I be glad when I get
richer and better known, and hob and nob with him!' Stephen's eyes
sparkled.

A pout began to shape itself upon Elfride's soft lips. 'You think
always of him, and like him better than you do me!'

'No, indeed, Elfride. The feeling is different quite. But I do
like him, and he deserves even more affection from me than I
give.'

'You are not nice now, and you make me as jealous as possible!'
she exclaimed perversely. 'I know you will never speak to any
third person of me so warmly as you do to me of him.'

'But you don't understand, Elfride,' he said with an anxious
movement. 'You shall know him some day. He is so brilliant--no,
it isn't exactly brilliant; so thoughtful--nor does thoughtful
express him--that it would charm you to talk to him. He's a most
desirable friend, and that isn't half I could say.'

'I don't care how good he is; I don't want to know him, because he
comes between me and you. You think of him night and day, ever so
much more than of anybody else; and when you are thinking of him,
I am shut out of your mind.'

'No, dear Elfride; I love you dearly.'

'And I don't like you to tell me so warmly about him when you are
in the middle of loving me. Stephen, suppose that I and this man
Knight of yours were both drowning, and you could only save one of
us----'

'Yes--the stupid old proposition--which would I save?

'Well, which? Not me.'

'Both of you,' he said, pressing her pendent hand.

'No, that won't do; only one of us.'

'I cannot say; I don't know. It is disagreeable--quite a horrid
idea to have to handle.'

'A-ha, I know. You would save him, and let me drown, drown,
drown; and I don't care about your love!'

She had endeavoured to give a playful tone to her words, but the
latter speech was rather forced in its gaiety.

At this point in the discussion she trotted off to turn a corner
which was avoided by the footpath, the road and the path reuniting
at a point a little further on. On again making her appearance
she continually managed to look in a direction away from him, and
left him in the cool shade of her displeasure. Stephen was soon
beaten at this game of indifference. He went round and entered
the range of her vision.

'Are you offended, Elfie? Why don't you talk?'

'Save me, then, and let that Mr. Clever of yours drown. I hate
him. Now, which would you?'

'Really, Elfride, you should not press such a hard question. It
is ridiculous.'

'Then I won't be alone with you any more. Unkind, to wound me
so!' She laughed at her own absurdity but persisted.

'Come, Elfie, let's make it up and be friends.'

'Say you would save me, then, and let him drown.'

'I would save you--and him too.'

'And let him drown. Come, or you don't love me!' she teasingly
went on.

'And let him drown,' he ejaculated despairingly.

'There; now I am yours!' she said, and a woman's flush of triumph
lit her eyes.

'Only one earring, miss, as I'm alive,' said Unity on their
entering the hall.

With a face expressive of wretched misgiving, Elfride's hand flew
like an arrow to her ear.

'There!' she exclaimed to Stephen, looking at him with eyes full
of reproach.

'I quite forgot, indeed. If I had only remembered!' he answered,
with a conscience-stricken face.

She wheeled herself round, and turned into the shrubbery. Stephen
followed.

'If you had told me to watch anything, Stephen, I should have
religiously done it,' she capriciously went on, as soon as she
heard him behind her.

'Forgetting is forgivable.'

'Well, you will find it, if you want me to respect you and be
engaged to you when we have asked papa.' She considered a moment,
and added more seriously, 'I know now where I dropped it, Stephen.
It was on the cliff. I remember a faint sensation of some change
about me, but I was too absent to think of it then. And that's
where it is now, and you must go and look there.'

'I'll go at once.'

And he strode away up the valley, under a broiling sun and amid
the deathlike silence of early afternoon. He ascended, with
giddy-paced haste, the windy range of rocks to where they had sat,
felt and peered about the stones and crannies, but Elfride's stray
jewel was nowhere to be seen. Next Stephen slowly retraced his
steps, and, pausing at a cross-road to reflect a while, he left
the plateau and struck downwards across some fields, in the
direction of Endelstow House.

He walked along the path by the river without the slightest
hesitation as to its bearing, apparently quite familiar with every
inch of the ground. As the shadows began to lengthen and the
sunlight to mellow, he passed through two wicket-gates, and drew
near the outskirts of Endelstow Park. The river now ran along
under the park fence, previous to entering the grove itself, a
little further on.

Here stood a cottage, between the fence and the stream, on a
slightly elevated spot of ground, round which the river took a
turn. The characteristic feature of this snug habitation was its
one chimney in the gable end, its squareness of form disguised by
a huge cloak of ivy, which had grown so luxuriantly and extended
so far from its base, as to increase the apparent bulk of the
chimney to the dimensions of a tower. Some little distance from
the back of the house rose the park boundary, and over this were
to be seen the sycamores of the grove, making slow inclinations to
the just-awakening air.

Stephen crossed the little wood bridge in front, went up to the
cottage door, and opened it without knock or signal of any kind.

Exclamations of welcome burst from some person or persons when the
door was thrust ajar, followed by the scrape of chairs on a stone
floor, as if pushed back by their occupiers in rising from a
table. The door was closed again, and nothing could now be heard
from within, save a lively chatter and the rattle of plates.

Chapter VIII

'Allen-a-Dale is no baron or lord.'

The mists were creeping out of pools and swamps for their
pilgrimages of the night when Stephen came up to the front door of
the vicarage. Elfride was standing on the step illuminated by a
lemon-hued expanse of western sky.

'You never have been all this time looking for that earring?' she
said anxiously.

'Oh no; and I have not found it.'

'Never mind. Though I am much vexed; they are my prettiest. But,
Stephen, what ever have you been doing--where have you been? I
have been so uneasy. I feared for you, knowing not an inch of the
country. I thought, suppose he has fallen over the cliff! But now
I am inclined to scold you for frightening me so.'

'I must speak to your father now,' he said rather abruptly; 'I
have so much to say to him--and to you, Elfride.'

'Will what you have to say endanger this nice time of ours, and is
it that same shadowy secret you allude to so frequently, and will
it make me unhappy?'

'Possibly.'

She breathed heavily, and looked around as if for a prompter.

'Put it off till to-morrow,' she said.

He involuntarily sighed too.

'No; it must come to-night. Where is your father, Elfride?'

'Somewhere in the kitchen garden, I think,' she replied. 'That is
his favourite evening retreat. I will leave you now. Say all
that's to be said--do all there is to be done. Think of me
waiting anxiously for the end.' And she re-entered the house.

She waited in the drawing-room, watching the lights sink to
shadows, the shadows sink to darkness, until her impatience to
know what had occurred in the garden could no longer be
controlled. She passed round the shrubbery, unlatched the garden
door, and skimmed with her keen eyes the whole twilighted space
that the four walls enclosed and sheltered: they were not there.
She mounted a little ladder, which had been used for gathering
fruit, and looked over the wall into the field. This field
extended to the limits of the glebe, which was enclosed on that
side by a privet-hedge. Under the hedge was Mr. Swancourt,
walking up and down, and talking aloud--to himself, as it sounded
at first. No: another voice shouted occasional replies ; and this
interlocutor seemed to be on the other side of the hedge. The
voice, though soft in quality, was not Stephen's.

The second speaker must have been in the long-neglected garden of
an old manor-house hard by, which, together with a small estate
attached, had lately been purchased by a person named Troyton,
whom Elfride had never seen. Her father might have struck up an
acquaintanceship with some member of that family through the
privet-hedge, or a stranger to the neighbourhood might have
wandered thither.

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