evening, being the last, seemed to throw an exceptional shade of sadness over Stephen Smith, and the repeated injunctions of the vicar, that he was to come and revisit them in the summer, apparently tended less to raise his spirits than to unearth some misgiving.
He left them in the gray light of dawn, whilst the colours of earth were sombre, and the sun was yet hidden in the east. Elfride had fidgeted all night in her little bed lest none of the household should be awake soon enough to start him, and also lest she might miss seeing again the bright eyes and curly hair, to which their owner’s possession of a hidden mystery added a deeper tinge of romance. To some extent – so soon does womanly interest take a solicitous turn – she felt herself responsible for his safe conduct. They breakfasted before daylight; Mr. Swancourt, being more and more taken with his guest’s ingenuous appearance, having determined to rise early and bid him a friendly farewell. It was, however, rather to the vicar’s astonishment, that he saw Elfride walk in to the breakfast-table, candle in hand.
Whilst William Worm performed his toilet (during which performance the inmates of the vicarage were always in the habit of waiting with exemplary patience), Elfride wandered desultorily to the summer house. Stephen followed her thither. The copse-covered valley was visible from this position, a mist now lying all along its length, hiding the stream which trickled through it, though the observers themselves were in clear air.
They stood close together, leaning over the rustic balustrading which bounded the arbour on the outward side, and formed the crest of a steep slope beneath Elfride constrainedly pointed out some features of the distant uplands rising irregularly opposite. But the artistic eye was, either from nature or circumstance, very faint in Stephen now, and he only half attended to her description, as if he spared time from some other thought going on within him.
‘Well, good-bye,’ he said suddenly; ‘I must never see you again, I suppose, Miss Swancourt, in spite of invitations.’
His genuine tribulation played directly upon the delicate chords of her nature. She could afford to forgive him for a concealment or two. Moreover, the shyness which would not allow him to look her in the face lent bravery to her own eyes and tongue.
‘Oh, DO come again, Mr. Smith!’ she said prettily.
‘I should delight in it; but it will be better if I do not.’
‘Why?’
‘Certain circumstances in connection with me make it undesirable. Not on my account; on yours.’
‘Goodness! As if anything in connection with you could hurt me,’ she said with serene supremacy; but seeing that this plan of treatment was inappropriate, she tuned a smaller note. ‘Ah, I know why you will not come. You don’t want to. You’ll go home to London and to all the stirring people there, and will never want to see us any more!’
‘You know I have no such reason.’
‘And go on writing letters to the lady you are engaged to, just as before.’
‘What does that mean? I am not engaged.’
‘You wrote a letter to a Miss Somebody; I saw it in the letter-rack.’
‘Pooh! an elderly woman who keeps a stationer’s shop; and it was to tell her to keep my newspapers till I get back.’
‘You needn’t have explained: it was not my business at all.’ Miss Elfride was rather relieved to hear that statement, nevertheless. ‘And you won’t come again to see my father?’ she insisted.
‘I should like to – and to see you again, but – ’
‘Will you reveal to me that matter you hide?’ she interrupted petulantly.
‘No; not now.’
She could not but go on, graceless as it might seem.
‘Tell me this,’ she importuned with a trembling mouth. ‘Does any meeting of yours with a lady at Endelstow Vicarage clash with – any interest you may take in me?’
He started a little. ‘It does not,’ he said emphatically; and looked into the pupils of her eyes with the confidence that only honesty can give, and even that to youth alone.
The explanation had not come, but a gloom left her. She could not but believe that utterance. Whatever enigma might lie in the shadow on the blind, it was not an enigma of underhand passion.
She turned towards the house, entering it through the conservatory. Stephen went round to the front door. Mr. Swancourt was standing on the step in his slippers. Worm was adjusting a buckle in the harness, and murmuring about his poor head; and everything was ready for Stephen’s departure.
‘You named August for your visit. August it shall be; that is, if you care for the society of such a fossilized Tory,’ said Mr. Swancourt.
Mr. Smith only responded hesitatingly, that he should like to come again.
‘You said you would, and you must,’ insisted Elfride, coming to the door and speaking under her father’s arm.
Whatever reason the youth may have had for not wishing to enter the house as a guest, it no longer predominated. He promised, and bade them adieu, and got into the pony-carriage, which crept up the slope, and bore him out of their sight.
‘I never was so much taken with anybody in my life as I am with that young fellow – never! I cannot understand it – can’t understand it anyhow,’ said Mr. Swancourt quite energetically to himself; and went indoors.
Chapter VII
‘No more of me you knew, my love!’
Stephen Smith revisited Endelstow Vicarage, agreeably to his promise. He had a genuine artistic reason for coming, though no such reason seemed to be required. Six-and-thirty old seat ends, of exquisite fifteenth-century workmanship, were rapidly decaying in an aisle of the church; and it became politic to make drawings of their worm-eaten contours ere they were battered past recognition in the turmoil of the so-called restoration.
He entered the house at sunset, and the world was pleasant again to the two fair-haired ones. A momentary pang of disappointment had, nevertheless, passed through Elfride when she casually discovered that he had not come that minute post-haste from London, but had reached the neighbourhood the previous evening. Surprise would have accompanied the feeling, had she not remembered that several tourists were haunting the coast at this season, and that Stephen might have chosen to do likewise.
They did little besides chat that evening, Mr. Swancourt beginning to question his visitor, closely yet paternally, and in good part, on his hopes and prospects from the profession he had embraced. Stephen gave vague answers. The next day it rained. In the evening, when twenty-four hours of Elfride had completely rekindled her admirer’s ardour, a game of chess was proposed between them.
The game had its value in helping on the developments of their future.
Elfride soon perceived that her opponent was but a learner. She next noticed that he had a very odd way of handling the pieces when castling or taking a man. Antecedently she would have supposed that the same performance must be gone through by all players in the same manner; she was taught by his differing action that all ordinary players, who learn the game by sight, unconsciously touch the men in a stereotyped way. This impression of indescribable oddness in Stephen’s touch culminated in speech when she saw him, at the taking of one of her bishops, push it aside with the taking man instead of lifting it as a preliminary to the move.
‘How strangely you handle the men, Mr. Smith!’
‘Do I? I am sorry for that.’
‘Oh no – don’t be sorry; it is not a matter great enough for sorrow. But who taught you to play?’
‘Nobody, Miss Swancourt,’ he said. ‘I learnt from a book lent me by my friend Mr. Knight, the noblest man in the world.’
‘But you have seen people play?’
‘I have never seen the playing of a single game. This is the first time I ever had the opportunity of playing with a living opponent. I have worked