Complete Works of Thomas Hardy (Illustrated) (127 page)

‘DEAR MRS. JETHWAY, — I have been to visit you. I wanted much to see you, but I cannot wait any longer. I came to beg you not to execute the threats you have repeated to me. Do not, I beseech you, Mrs. Jethway, let any one know I ran away from home! It would ruin me with him, and break my heart. I will do anything for you, if you will be kind to me. In the name of our common womanhood, do not, I implore you, make a scandal of me. — Yours, E. SWANCOURT.’

She folded the note cornerwise, directed it, and placed it on the table. Then again drawing the hood over her curly head she emerged silently as she had come.

Whilst this episode had been in action at Mrs. Jethway’s cottage, Knight had gone from the dining-room into the drawing-room, and found Mrs. Swancourt there alone.

‘Elfride has vanished upstairs or somewhere,’ she said.

‘And I have been reading an article in an old number of the PRESENT that I lighted on by chance a short time ago; it is an article you once told us was yours. Well, Harry, with due deference to your literary powers, allow me to say that this effusion is all nonsense, in my opinion.’

‘What is it about?’ said Knight, taking up the paper and reading.

‘There: don’t get red about it. Own that experience has taught you to be more charitable. I have never read such unchivalrous sentiments in my life — from a man, I mean. There, I forgive you; it was before you knew Elfride.’

‘Oh yes,’ said Knight, looking up. ‘I remember now. The text of that sermon was not my own at all, but was suggested to me by a young man named Smith — the same whom I have mentioned to you as coming from this parish. I thought the idea rather ingenious at the time, and enlarged it to the weight of a few guineas, because I had nothing else in my head.’

‘Which idea do you call the text? I am curious to know that.’

‘Well, this,’ said Knight, somewhat unwillingly. ‘That experience teaches, and your sweetheart, no less than your tailor, is necessarily very imperfect in her duties, if you are her first patron: and conversely, the sweetheart who is graceful under the initial kiss must be supposed to have had some practice in the trade.’

‘And do you mean to say that you wrote that upon the strength of another man’s remark, without having tested it by practice?’

‘Yes — indeed I do.’

‘Then I think it was uncalled for and unfair. And how do you know it is true? I expect you regret it now.’

‘Since you bring me into a serious mood, I will speak candidly. I do believe that remark to be perfectly true, and, having written it, I would defend it anywhere. But I do often regret having ever written it, as well as others of the sort. I have grown older since, and I find such a tone of writing is calculated to do harm in the world. Every literary Jack becomes a gentleman if he can only pen a few indifferent satires upon womankind: women themselves, too, have taken to the trick; and so, upon the whole, I begin to be rather ashamed of my companions.’

‘Ah, Henry, you have fallen in love since and it makes a difference,’ said Mrs. Swancourt with a faint tone of banter.

‘That’s true; but that is not my reason.’

‘Having found that, in a case of your own experience, a so-called goose was a swan, it seems absurd to deny such a possibility in other men’s experiences.’

‘You can hit palpably, cousin Charlotte,’ said Knight. ‘You are like the boy who puts a stone inside his snowball, and I shall play with you no longer. Excuse me — I am going for my evening stroll.’

Though Knight had spoken jestingly, this incident and conversation had caused him a sudden depression. Coming, rather singularly, just after his discovery that Elfride had known what it was to love warmly before she had known him, his mind dwelt upon the subject, and the familiar pipe he smoked, whilst pacing up and down the shrubbery-path, failed to be a solace. He thought again of those idle words — hitherto quite forgotten — about the first kiss of a girl, and the theory seemed more than reasonable. Of course their sting now lay in their bearing on Elfride.

Elfride, under Knight’s kiss, had certainly been a very different woman from herself under Stephen’s. Whether for good or for ill, she had marvellously well learnt a betrothed lady’s part; and the fascinating finish of her deportment in this second campaign did probably arise from her unreserved encouragement of Stephen. Knight, with all the rapidity of jealous sensitiveness, pounced upon some words she had inadvertently let fall about an earring, which he had only partially understood at the time. It was during that ‘initial kiss’ by the little waterfall:

‘We must be careful. I lost the other by doing this!’

A flush which had in it as much of wounded pride as of sorrow, passed over Knight as he thought of what he had so frequently said to her in his simplicity. ‘I always meant to be the first comer in a woman’s heart, fresh lips or none for me.’ How childishly blind he must have seemed to this mere girl! How she must have laughed at him inwardly! He absolutely writhed as he thought of the confession she had wrung from him on the boat in the darkness of night. The one conception which had sustained his dignity when drawn out of his shell on that occasion — that of her charming ignorance of all such matters — how absurd it was!

This man, whose imagination had been fed up to preternatural size by lonely study and silent observations of his kind — whose emotions had been drawn out long and delicate by his seclusion, like plants in a cellar — was now absolutely in pain. Moreover, several years of poetic study, and, if the truth must be told, poetic efforts, had tended to develop the affective side of his constitution still further, in proportion to his active faculties. It was his belief in the absolute newness of blandishment to Elfride which had constituted her primary charm. He began to think it was as hard to be earliest in a woman’s heart as it was to be first in the Pool of Bethesda.

That Knight should have been thus constituted: that Elfride’s second lover should not have been one of the great mass of bustling mankind, little given to introspection, whose good-nature might have compensated for any lack of appreciativeness, was the chance of things. That her throbbing, self-confounding, indiscreet heart should have to defend itself unaided against the keen scrutiny and logical power which Knight, now that his suspicions were awakened, would sooner or later be sure to exercise against her, was her misfortune. A miserable incongruity was apparent in the circumstance of a strong mind practising its unerring archery upon a heart which the owner of that mind loved better than his own.

Elfride’s docile devotion to Knight was now its own enemy. Clinging to him so dependently, she taught him in time to presume upon that devotion — a lesson men are not slow to learn. A slight rebelliousness occasionally would have done him no harm, and would have been a world of advantage to her. But she idolized him, and was proud to be his bond-servant.

CHAPTER XXXI

     ‘A worm i’ the bud.’

One day the reviewer said, ‘Let us go to the cliffs again, Elfride;’ and, without consulting her wishes, he moved as if to start at once.

‘The cliff of our dreadful adventure?’ she inquired, with a shudder. ‘Death stares me in the face in the person of that cliff.’

Nevertheless, so entirely had she sunk her individuality in his that the remark was not uttered as an expostulation, and she immediately prepared to accompany him.

‘No, not that place,’ said Knight. ‘It is ghastly to me, too. That other, I mean; what is its name? — Windy Beak.’

Windy Beak was the second cliff in height along that coast, and, as is frequently the case with the natural features of the globe no less than with the intellectual features of men, it enjoyed the reputation of being the first. Moreover, it was the cliff to which Elfride had ridden with Stephen Smith, on a well-remembered morning of his summer visit.

So, though thought of the former cliff had caused her to shudder at the perils to which her lover and herself had there been exposed, by being associated with Knight only it was not so objectionable as Windy Beak. That place was worse than gloomy, it was a perpetual reproach to her.

But not liking to refuse, she said, ‘It is further than the other cliff.’

‘Yes; but you can ride.’

‘And will you too?’

‘No, I’ll walk.’

A duplicate of her original arrangement with Stephen. Some fatality must be hanging over her head. But she ceased objecting.

‘Very well, Harry, I’ll ride,’ she said meekly.

A quarter of an hour later she was in the saddle. But how different the mood from that of the former time. She had, indeed, given up her position as queen of the less to be vassal of the greater. Here was no showing off now; no scampering out of sight with Pansy, to perplex and tire her companion; no saucy remarks on LA BELLE DAME SANS MERCI. Elfride was burdened with the very intensity of her love.

Knight did most of the talking along the journey. Elfride silently listened, and entirely resigned herself to the motions of the ambling horse upon which she sat, alternately rising and sinking gently, like a sea bird upon a sea wave.

When they had reached the limit of a quadruped’s possibilities in walking, Knight tenderly lifted her from the saddle, tied the horse, and rambled on with her to the seat in the rock. Knight sat down, and drew Elfride deftly beside him, and they looked over the sea.

Two or three degrees above that melancholy and eternally level line, the ocean horizon, hung a sun of brass, with no visible rays, in a sky of ashen hue. It was a sky the sun did not illuminate or enkindle, as is usual at sunsets. This sheet of sky was met by the salt mass of gray water, flecked here and there with white. A waft of dampness occasionally rose to their faces, which was probably rarefied spray from the blows of the sea upon the foot of the cliff.

Elfride wished it could be a longer time ago that she had sat there with Stephen as her lover, and agreed to be his wife. The significant closeness of that time to the present was another item to add to the list of passionate fears which were chronic with her now.

Yet Knight was very tender this evening, and sustained her close to him as they sat.

Not a word had been uttered by either since sitting down, when Knight said musingly, looking still afar —

‘I wonder if any lovers in past years ever sat here with arms locked, as we do now. Probably they have, for the place seems formed for a seat.’

Her recollection of a well-known pair who had, and the much-talked-of loss which had ensued therefrom, and how the young man had been sent back to look for the missing article, led Elfride to glance down to her side, and behind her back. Many people who lose a trinket involuntarily give a momentary look for it in passing the spot ever so long afterwards. They do not often find it. Elfride, in turning her head, saw something shine weakly from a crevice in the rocky sedile. Only for a few minutes during the day did the sun light the alcove to its innermost rifts and slits, but these were the minutes now, and its level rays did Elfride the good or evil turn of revealing the lost ornament.

Elfride’s thoughts instantly reverted to the words she had unintentionally uttered upon what had been going on when the earring was lost. And she was immediately seized with a misgiving that Knight, on seeing the object, would be reminded of her words. Her instinctive act therefore was to secure it privately.

It was so deep in the crack that Elfride could not pull it out with her hand, though she made several surreptitious trials.

‘What are you doing, Elfie?’ said Knight, noticing her attempts, and looking behind him likewise.

She had relinquished the endeavour, but too late.

Knight peered into the joint from which her hand had been withdrawn, and saw what she had seen. He instantly took a penknife from his pocket, and by dint of probing and scraping brought the earring out upon open ground.

‘It is not yours, surely?’ he inquired.

‘Yes, it is,’ she said quietly.

‘Well, that is a most extraordinary thing, that we should find it like this!’ Knight then remembered more circumstances; ‘What, is it the one you have told me of?’

‘Yes.’

The unfortunate remark of hers at the kiss came into his mind, if eyes were ever an index to be trusted. Trying to repress the words he yet spoke on the subject, more to obtain assurance that what it had seemed to imply was not true than from a wish to pry into bygones.

‘Were you really engaged to be married to that lover?’ he said, looking straight forward at the sea again.

‘Yes — but not exactly. Yet I think I was.’

‘O Elfride, engaged to be married!’ he murmured.

‘It would have been called a — secret engagement, I suppose. But don’t look so disappointed; don’t blame me.’

‘No, no.’

‘Why do you say “No, no,” in such a way? Sweetly enough, but so barely?’

Knight made no direct reply to this. ‘Elfride, I told you once,’ he said, following out his thoughts, ‘that I never kissed a woman as a sweetheart until I kissed you. A kiss is not much, I suppose, and it happens to few young people to be able to avoid all blandishments and attentions except from the one they afterwards marry. But I have peculiar weaknesses, Elfride; and because I have led a peculiar life, I must suffer for it, I suppose. I had hoped — well, what I had no right to hope in connection with you. You naturally granted your former lover the privileges you grant me.’

A ‘yes’ came from her like the last sad whisper of a breeze.

‘And he used to kiss you — of course he did.’

‘Yes.’

‘And perhaps you allowed him a more free manner in his love-making than I have shown in mine.’

‘No, I did not.’ This was rather more alertly spoken.

‘But he adopted it without being allowed?’

‘Yes.’

‘How much I have made of you, Elfride, and how I have kept aloof!’ said Knight in deep and shaken tones. ‘So many days and hours as I have hoped in you — I have feared to kiss you more than those two times. And he made no scruples to...’