A Pair of Blue Eyes, by Thomas Hardy

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If Mr. Smith had been already in the family, you would not have
been made wretched by discovering he had poor relations?'

'Do you mean in the family by marriage?' he replied inattentively,
and continuing to peel his egg.

The accumulating scarlet told that was her meaning, as much as the
affirmative reply.

'I should have put up with it, no doubt,' Mr. Swancourt observed.

'So that you would not have been driven into hopeless melancholy,
but have made the best of him?'

Elfride's erratic mind had from her youth upwards been constantly
in the habit of perplexing her father by hypothetical questions,
based on absurd conditions. The present seemed to be cast so
precisely in the mould of previous ones that, not being given to
syntheses of circumstances, he answered it with customary
complacency.

'If he were allied to us irretrievably, of course I, or any
sensible man, should accept conditions that could not be altered;
certainly not be hopelessly melancholy about it. I don't believe
anything in the world would make me hopelessly melancholy. And
don't let anything make you so, either.'

'I won't, papa,' she cried, with a serene brightness that pleased
him.

Certainly Mr. Swancourt must have been far from thinking that the
brightness came from an exhilarating intention to hold back no
longer from the mad action she had planned.

In the evening he drove away towards Stratleigh, quite alone. It
was an unusual course for him. At the door Elfride had been again
almost impelled by her feelings to pour out all.

'Why are you going to Stratleigh, papa?' she said, and looked at
him longingly.

'I will tell you to-morrow when I come back,' he said cheerily;
'not before then, Elfride. Thou wilt not utter what thou dost not
know, and so far will I trust thee, gentle Elfride.'

She was repressed and hurt.

'I will tell you my errand to Plymouth, too, when I come back,'
she murmured.

He went away. His jocularity made her intention seem the lighter,
as his indifference made her more resolved to do as she liked.

It was a familiar September sunset, dark-blue fragments of cloud
upon an orange-yellow sky. These sunsets used to tempt her to
walk towards them, as any beautiful thing tempts a near approach.
She went through the field to the privet hedge, clambered into the
middle of it, and reclined upon the thick boughs. After looking
westward for a considerable time, she blamed herself for not
looking eastward to where Stephen was, and turned round.
Ultimately her eyes fell upon the ground.

A peculiarity was observable beneath her. A green field spread
itself on each side of the hedge, one belonging to the glebe, the
other being a part of the land attached to the manor-house
adjoining. On the vicarage side she saw a little footpath, the
distinctive and altogether exceptional feature of which consisted
in its being only about ten yards long; it terminated abruptly at
each end.

A footpath, suddenly beginning and suddenly ending, coming from
nowhere and leading nowhere, she had never seen before.

Yes, she had, on second thoughts. She had seen exactly such a
path trodden in the front of barracks by the sentry.

And this recollection explained the origin of the path here. Her
father had trodden it by pacing up and down, as she had once seen
him doing.

Sitting on the hedge as she sat now, her eyes commanded a view of
both sides of it. And a few minutes later, Elfride looked over to
the manor side.

Here was another sentry path. It was like the first in length,
and it began and ended exactly opposite the beginning and ending
of its neighbour, but it was thinner, and less distinct.

Two reasons existed for the difference. This one might have been
trodden by a similar weight of tread to the other, exercised a
less number of times; or it might have been walked just as
frequently, but by lighter feet.

Probably a gentleman from Scotland-yard, had he been passing at
the time, might have considered the latter alternative as the more
probable. Elfride thought otherwise, so far as she thought at
all. But her own great To-Morrow was now imminent; all thoughts
inspired by casual sights of the eye were only allowed to exercise
themselves in inferior corners of her brain, previously to being
banished altogether.

Elfride was at length compelled to reason practically upon her
undertaking. All her definite perceptions thereon, when the
emotion accompanying them was abstracted, amounted to no more than
these:

'Say an hour and three-quarters to ride to St. Launce's.

'Say half an hour at the Falcon to change my dress.

'Say two hours waiting for some train and getting to Plymouth.

'Say an hour to spare before twelve o'clock.

'Total time from leaving Endelstow till twelve o'clock, five
hours.

'Therefore I shall have to start at seven.'

No surprise or sense of unwontedness entered the minds of the
servants at her early ride. The monotony of life we associate
with people of small incomes in districts out of the sound of the
railway whistle, has one exception, which puts into shade the
experience of dwellers about the great centres of population--that
is, in travelling. Every journey there is more or less an
adventure; adventurous hours are necessarily chosen for the most
commonplace outing. Miss Elfride had to leave early--that was
all.

Elfride never went out on horseback but she brought home
something--something found, or something bought. If she trotted
to town or village, her burden was books. If to hills, woods, or
the seashore, it was wonderful mosses, abnormal twigs, a
handkerchief of wet shells or seaweed.

Once, in muddy weather, when Pansy was walking with her down the
street of Castle Boterel, on a fair-day, a packet in front of her
and a packet under her arm, an accident befell the packets, and
they slipped down. On one side of her, three volumes of fiction
lay kissing the mud; on the other numerous skeins of polychromatic
wools lay absorbing it. Unpleasant women smiled through windows
at the mishap, the men all looked round, and a boy, who was
minding a ginger-bread stall whilst the owner had gone to get
drunk, laughed loudly. The blue eyes turned to sapphires, and the
cheeks crimsoned with vexation.

After that misadventure she set her wits to work, and was
ingenious enough to invent an arrangement of small straps about
the saddle, by which a great deal could be safely carried thereon,
in a small compass. Here she now spread out and fastened a plain
dark walking-dress and a few other trifles of apparel. Worm
opened the gate for her, and she vanished away.

One of the brightest mornings of late summer shone upon her. The
heather was at its purplest, the furze at its yellowest, the
grasshoppers chirped loud enough for birds, the snakes hissed like
little engines, and Elfride at first felt lively. Sitting at ease
upon Pansy, in her orthodox riding-habit and nondescript hat, she
looked what she felt. But the mercury of those days had a trick
of falling unexpectedly. First, only for one minute in ten had
she a sense of depression. Then a large cloud, that had been
hanging in the north like a black fleece, came and placed itself
between her and the sun. It helped on what was already
inevitable, and she sank into a uniformity of sadness.

She turned in the saddle and looked back. They were now on an
open table-land, whose altitude still gave her a view of the sea
by Endelstow. She looked longingly at that spot.

During this little revulsion of feeling Pansy had been still
advancing, and Elfride felt it would be absurd to turn her little
mare's head the other way. 'Still,' she thought, 'if I had a
mamma at home I WOULD go back!'

And making one of those stealthy movements by which women let
their hearts juggle with their brains, she did put the horse's
head about, as if unconsciously, and went at a hand-gallop towards
home for more than a mile. By this time, from the inveterate
habit of valuing what we have renounced directly the alternative
is chosen, the thought of her forsaken Stephen recalled her, and
she turned about, and cantered on to St. Launce's again.

This miserable strife of thought now began to rage in all its
wildness. Overwrought and trembling, she dropped the rein upon
Pansy's shoulders, and vowed she would be led whither the horse
would take her.

Pansy slackened her pace to a walk, and walked on with her
agitated burden for three or four minutes. At the expiration of
this time they had come to a little by-way on the right, leading
down a slope to a pool of water. The pony stopped, looked towards
the pool, and then advanced and stooped to drink.

Elfride looked at her watch and discovered that if she were going
to reach St. Launce's early enough to change her dress at the
Falcon, and get a chance of some early train to Plymouth--there
were only two available--it was necessary to proceed at once.

She was impatient. It seemed as if Pansy would never stop
drinking; and the repose of the pool, the idle motions of the
insects and flies upon it, the placid waving of the flags, the
leaf-skeletons, like Genoese filigree, placidly sleeping at the
bottom, by their contrast with her own turmoil made her impatience
greater.

Pansy did turn at last, and went up the slope again to the high-
road. The pony came upon it, and stood cross-wise, looking up and
down. Elfride's heart throbbed erratically, and she thought,
'Horses, if left to themselves, make for where they are best fed.
Pansy will go home.'

Pansy turned and walked on towards St. Launce's

Pansy at home, during summer, had little but grass to live on.
After a run to St. Launce's she always had a feed of corn to
support her on the return journey. Therefore, being now more than
half way, she preferred St. Launce's.

But Elfride did not remember this now. All she cared to recognize
was a dreamy fancy that to-day's rash action was not her own. She
was disabled by her moods, and it seemed indispensable to adhere
to the programme. So strangely involved are motives that, more
than by her promise to Stephen, more even than by her love, she
was forced on by a sense of the necessity of keeping faith with
herself, as promised in the inane vow of ten minutes ago.

She hesitated no longer. Pansy went, like the steed of Adonis, as
if she told the steps. Presently the quaint gables and jumbled
roofs of St. Launce's were spread beneath her, and going down the
hill she entered the courtyard of the Falcon. Mrs. Buckle, the
landlady, came to the door to meet her.

The Swancourts were well known here. The transition from
equestrian to the ordinary guise of railway travellers had been
more than once performed by father and daughter in this
establishment.

In less than a quarter of an hour Elfride emerged from the door in
her walking dress, and went to the railway. She had not told Mrs.
Buckle anything as to her intentions, and was supposed to have
gone out shopping.

An hour and forty minutes later, and she was in Stephen's arms at
the Plymouth station. Not upon the platform--in the secret
retreat of a deserted waiting-room.

Stephen's face boded ill. He was pale and despondent.

What is the matter?' she asked.

'We cannot be married here to-day, my Elfie! I ought to have known
it and stayed here. In my ignorance I did not. I have the
licence, but it can only be used in my parish in London. I only
came down last night, as you know.'

'What shall we do?' she said blankly.

'There's only one thing we can do, darling.'

'What's that?'

'Go on to London by a train just starting, and be married there
to-morrow.'

'Passengers for the 11.5 up-train take their seats!' said a
guard's voice on the platform.

'Will you go, Elfride?'

'I will.'

In three minutes the train had moved off, bearing away with it
Stephen and Elfride.

Chapter XII

'Adieu! she cries, and waved her lily hand.'

The few tattered clouds of the morning enlarged and united, the
sun withdrew behind them to emerge no more that day, and the
evening drew to a close in drifts of rain. The water-drops beat
like duck shot against the window of the railway-carriage
containing Stephen and Elfride.

The journey from Plymouth to Paddington, by even the most headlong
express, allows quite enough leisure for passion of any sort to
cool. Elfride's excitement had passed off, and she sat in a kind
of stupor during the latter half of the journey. She was aroused
by the clanging of the maze of rails over which they traced their
way at the entrance to the station.

Is this London?' she said.

'Yes, darling,' said Stephen in a tone of assurance he was far
from feeling. To him, no less than to her, the reality so greatly
differed from the prefiguring.

She peered out as well as the window, beaded with drops, would
allow her, and saw only the lamps, which had just been lit,
blinking in the wet atmosphere, and rows of hideous zinc chimney-
pipes in dim relief against the sky. She writhed uneasily, as
when a thought is swelling in the mind which must cause much pain
at its deliverance in words. Elfride had known no more about the
stings of evil report than the native wild-fowl knew of the
effects of Crusoe's first shot. Now she saw a little further, and
a little further still.

The train stopped. Stephen relinquished the soft hand he had held
all the day, and proceeded to assist her on to the platform.

This act of alighting upon strange ground seemed all that was
wanted to complete a resolution within her.

She looked at her betrothed with despairing eyes.

'O Stephen,' she exclaimed, 'I am so miserable! I must go home
again--I must--I must! Forgive my wretched vacillation. I don't
like it here--nor myself--nor you!'

Stephen looked bewildered, and did not speak.

'Will you allow me to go home?' she implored. 'I won't trouble
you to go with me. I will not be any weight upon you; only say
you will agree to my returning; that you will not hate me for it,
Stephen! It is better that I should return again; indeed it is,
Stephen.'

'But we can't return now,' he said in a deprecatory tone.

'I must! I will!'

'How? When do you want to go?'

'Now. Can we go at once?'

The lad looked hopelessly along the platform.

'If you must go, and think it wrong to remain, dearest,' said he
sadly, 'you shall. You shall do whatever you like, my Elfride.
But would you in reality rather go now than stay till to-morrow,
and go as my wife?'

'Yes, yes--much--anything to go now. I must; I must!' she cried.

'We ought to have done one of two things,' he answered gloomily.
'Never to have started, or not to have returned without being
married. I don't like to say it, Elfride--indeed I don't; but you
must be told this, that going back unmarried may compromise your
good name in the eyes of people who may hear of it.'

'They will not; and I must go.'

'O Elfride! I am to blame for bringing you away.'

'Not at all. I am the elder.'

'By a month; and what's that? But never mind that now.' He looked
around. 'Is there a train for Plymouth to-night?' he inquired of
a guard. The guard passed on and did not speak.

'Is there a train for Plymouth to-night?' said Elfride to another.

'Yes, miss; the 8.10--leaves in ten minutes. You have come to the
wrong platform; it is the other side. Change at Bristol into the
night mail. Down that staircase, and under the line.'

They ran down the staircase--Elfride first--to the booking-office,
and into a carriage with an official standing beside the door.
'Show your tickets, please.' They are locked in--men about the
platform accelerate their velocities till they fly up and down
like shuttles in a loom--a whistle--the waving of a flag--a human
cry--a steam groan--and away they go to Plymouth again, just
catching these words as they glide off:

'Those two youngsters had a near run for it, and no mistake!'

Elfride found her breath.

'And have you come too, Stephen? Why did you?'

'I shall not leave you till I see you safe at St. Launce's. Do
not think worse of me than I am, Elfride.'

And then they rattled along through the night, back again by the
way they had come. The weather cleared, and the stars shone in
upon them. Their two or three fellow-passengers sat for most of
the time with closed eyes. Stephen sometimes slept; Elfride alone
was wakeful and palpitating hour after hour.

The day began to break, and revealed that they were by the sea.
Red rocks overhung them, and, receding into distance, grew livid
in the blue grey atmosphere. The sun rose, and sent penetrating
shafts of light in upon their weary faces. Another hour, and the
world began to be busy. They waited yet a little, and the train
slackened its speed in view of the platform at St. Launce's.

She shivered, and mused sadly.

'I did not see all the consequences,' she said. 'Appearances are
wofully against me. If anybody finds me out, I am, I suppose,
disgraced.'

'Then appearances will speak falsely; and how can that matter,
even if they do? I shall be your husband sooner or later, for
certain, and so prove your purity.'

'Stephen, once in London I ought to have married you,' she said
firmly. 'It was my only safe defence. I see more things now than
I did yesterday. My only remaining chance is not to be
discovered; and that we must fight for most desperately.'

They stepped out. Elfride pulled a thick veil over her face.

A woman with red and scaly eyelids and glistening eyes was sitting
on a bench just inside the office-door. She fixed her eyes upon
Elfride with an expression whose force it was impossible to doubt,
but the meaning of which was not clear; then upon the carriage
they had left. She seemed to read a sinister story in the scene.

Elfride shrank back, and turned the other way.

'Who is that woman?' said Stephen. 'She looked hard at you.'

'Mrs. Jethway--a widow, and mother of that young man whose tomb we
sat on the other night. Stephen, she is my enemy. Would that God
had had mercy enough upon me to have hidden this from HER!'

'Do not talk so hopelessly,' he remonstrated. 'I don't think she
recognized us.'

'I pray that she did not.'

He put on a more vigorous mood.

'Now, we will go and get some breakfast.'

'No, no!' she begged. 'I cannot eat. I MUST get back to
Endelstow.'

Elfride was as if she had grown years older than Stephen now.

'But you have had nothing since last night but that cup of tea at
Bristol.'

'I can't eat, Stephen.'

'Wine and biscuit?'

'No.'

'Nor tea, nor coffee?'

'No.'

'A glass of water?'

'No. I want something that makes people strong and energetic for
the present, that borrows the strength of to-morrow for use to-
day--leaving to-morrow without any at all for that matter; or even
that would take all life away to-morrow, so long as it enabled me
to get home again now. Brandy, that's what I want. That woman's
eyes have eaten my heart away!'

'You are wild; and you grieve me, darling. Must it be brandy?'

'Yes, if you please.'

'How much?'

'I don't know. I have never drunk more than a teaspoonful at
once. All I know is that I want it. Don't get it at the Falcon.'

He left her in the fields, and went to the nearest inn in that
direction. Presently he returned with a small flask nearly full,
and some slices of bread-and-butter, thin as wafers, in a paper-
bag. Elfride took a sip or two.

'It goes into my eyes,' she said wearily. 'I can't take any more.
Yes, I will; I will close my eyes. Ah, it goes to them by an
inside route. I don't want it; throw it away.'

However, she could eat, and did eat. Her chief attention was
concentrated upon how to get the horse from the Falcon stables
without suspicion. Stephen was not allowed to accompany her into
the town. She acted now upon conclusions reached without any aid
from him: his power over her seemed to have departed.

'You had better not be seen with me, even here where I am so
little known. We have begun stealthily as thieves, and we must
end stealthily as thieves, at all hazards. Until papa has been
told by me myself, a discovery would be terrible.'

Walking and gloomily talking thus they waited till nearly nine
o'clock, at which time Elfride thought she might call at the
Falcon without creating much surprise. Behind the railway-station
was the river, spanned by an old Tudor bridge, whence the road
diverged in two directions, one skirting the suburbs of the town,
and winding round again into the high-road to Endelstow. Beside
this road Stephen sat, and awaited her return from the Falcon.

He sat as one sitting for a portrait, motionless, watching the
chequered lights and shades on the tree-trunks, the children
playing opposite the school previous to entering for the morning
lesson, the reapers in a field afar off. The certainty of
possession had not come, and there was nothing to mitigate the
youth's gloom, that increased with the thought of the parting now
so near.

At length she came trotting round to him, in appearance much as on
the romantic morning of their visit to the cliff, but shorn of the
radiance which glistened about her then. However, her comparative
immunity from further risk and trouble had considerably composed
her. Elfride's capacity for being wounded was only surpassed by
her capacity for healing, which rightly or wrongly is by some
considered an index of transientness of feeling in general.

'Elfride, what did they say at the Falcon?'

'Nothing. Nobody seemed curious about me. They knew I went to
Plymouth, and I have stayed there a night now and then with Miss
Bicknell. I rather calculated upon that.'

And now parting arose like a death to these children, for it was
imperative that she should start at once. Stephen walked beside
her for nearly a mile. During the walk he said sadly:

'Elfride, four-and-twenty hours have passed, and the thing is not
done.'

'But you have insured that it shall be done.'

'How have I?'

'O Stephen, you ask how! Do you think I could marry another man on
earth after having gone thus far with you? Have I not shown beyond
possibility of doubt that I can be nobody else's? Have I not
irretrievably committed myself?--pride has stood for nothing in
the face of my great love. You misunderstood my turning back, and
I cannot explain it. It was wrong to go with you at all; and
though it would have been worse to go further, it would have been
better policy, perhaps. Be assured of this, that whenever you
have a home for me--however poor and humble--and come and claim
me, I am ready.' She added bitterly, 'When my father knows of this
day's work, he may be only too glad to let me go.'

'Perhaps he may, then, insist upon our marriage at once!' Stephen
answered, seeing a ray of hope in the very focus of her remorse.
'I hope he may, even if we had still to part till I am ready for
you, as we intended.'

Elfride did not reply.

'You don't seem the same woman, Elfie, that you were yesterday.'

'Nor am I. But good-bye. Go back now.' And she reined the horse
for parting. 'O Stephen,' she cried, 'I feel so weak! I don't
know how to meet him. Cannot you, after all, come back with me?'

'Shall I come?'

Elfride paused to think.

'No; it will not do. It is my utter foolishness that makes me say
such words. But he will send for you.'

'Say to him,' continued Stephen, 'that we did this in the absolute
despair of our minds. Tell him we don't wish him to favour us--
only to deal justly with us. If he says, marry now, so much the
better. If not, say that all may be put right by his promise to
allow me to have you when I am good enough for you--which may be
soon. Say I have nothing to offer him in exchange for his
treasure--the more sorry I; but all the love, and all the life,
and all the labour of an honest man shall be yours. As to when
this had better be told, I leave you to judge.'

His words made her cheerful enough to toy with her position.

'And if ill report should come, Stephen,' she said smiling, 'why,
the orange-tree must save me, as it saved virgins in St. George's
time from the poisonous breath of the dragon. There, forgive me
for forwardness: I am going.'

Then the boy and girl beguiled themselves with words of half-
parting only.

'Own wifie, God bless you till we meet again!'

'Till we meet again, good-bye!'

And the pony went on, and she spoke to him no more. He saw her
figure diminish and her blue veil grow gray--saw it with the
agonizing sensations of a slow death.

After thus parting from a man than whom she had known none greater
as yet, Elfride rode rapidly onwards, a tear being occasionally
shaken from her eyes into the road. What yesterday had seemed so
desirable, so promising, even trifling, had now acquired the
complexion of a tragedy.

She saw the rocks and sea in the neighbourhood of Endelstow, and
heaved a sigh of relief

When she passed a field behind the vicarage she heard the voices
of Unity and William Worm. They were hanging a carpet upon a
line. Unity was uttering a sentence that concluded with 'when
Miss Elfride comes.'

'When d'ye expect her?'

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