A pair of blue eyes by Thomas Hardy, Chapter 21. On thy cold grey stones O.C. Stephen had said that he should come by way of Bristol, and dense by a steamer to Castle Boterel, in order to avoid the long journey over the hills from St. Lawrence's. He did not know of the extension of the railway from Camelton. During the afternoon a thought occurred to Elfride, that from any cliff along the shore it would be possible to see the steamer some hours before its arrival. She had accumulated religious force enough to do an act of super-irrigation. The act was this, to go to some point of land and watch for the ship that brought her future husband home. It was a cloudy afternoon. Elfride was often diverted from a purpose by a dull sky, and though she used to persuade herself that the weather was as fine as possible on the other side of the clouds, she could not bring about any practical result from this fancy. Now her mood was such that the humid sky harmonized with it. Having ascended and passed over a hill behind the house, Elfride came to a small stream. She used it as a guide to the coast. It was smaller than that in her own valley, and flowed altogether at a higher level. Bushes lined the slopes of its shallow trough, but at the bottom where the water ran was a soft green carpet in a strip two or three yards wide. In winter the water flowed over the grass. In summer as now it trickled along a channel in the midst. Elfride had a sensation of eyes regarding her from somewhere. She turned, and there was Mr. Knight. He had dropped into the valley from the side of the hill. She felt a thrill of pleasure, and rebelliously allowed it to exist. What other loneliness I find you in? I am going to the shore by tracking the stream. I believe it empties itself not far off in a silver thread of water, over a cascade of great height. Why do you load yourself with that heavy telescope? To look over the sea with it, she said faintly, I'll carry it for you to your journey's end. And he took the glass from her unresisting hands. It cannot be half a mile further. See there is the water. He pointed to a short fragment of level, muddy grey colour, cutting against the sky. Elfride had already scanned the small surfers of ocean visible, and had seen no ship. They walked along in company, sometimes with the brook between them, far as there was no why that a man stride, sometimes close together. The green carpet grew swampy, and they kept higher up. One of the two ridges between which they walked dwindled lower and became insignificant. That on the right hand rose with their advance, and terminated in a clearly defined edge against the light, as if it were a brookly sawn off. A little further, and the bed of the rivulet ended in the same fashion. They had come to a bank, breast high, and over it the valley was no longer to be seen. It was withdrawn cleanly and completely. In its place was sky and boundless atmosphere, and perpendicularly down beneath them, small and far off lay the corrugated surface of the Atlantic. The small stream here found its death. Running over the precipice it was dispersed in spray before it was half way down, and falling like rain upon projecting ledges made minute grassy meadows of them. At the bottom the water dropped soaked away amid the debris of the cliff. This was the inglorious end of the river. What are you looking for? said Knight, following the direction of her eyes. She was gazing hard at a black object, nearer to the shore than the horizon, from the summit of which came a nebulous haze stretching like gauze over the sea. The puffin a little summer steamboat from Bristol to Castle Bottle, she said. I think that's it. Look! Will you give me the glass? Knight pulled open the old-fashioned but powerful telescope, and handed it to Alfreda, who had looked on with heavy eyes. I can't keep it up now, she said. Rest it on my shoulder. Oh! It's too high. Under my arm. Too low. You may look instead, she murmured weakly. Knight raised the glass to his eye, and swept a seat till the puffin entered its field.   Can you see the deck? Wait a minute. Yes, pretty clearly. I can see the black forms of the passengers against the white surface. One of them has taken something from another, a glass I think. Yes, it is, and he's levelling it in this direction. Depend upon it, we are conspicuous objects against the sky to them. Now it seems to rain upon them, and they put on overcoats and open umbrellas. They vanish and go below, all but that one who has borrowed the glass. He's a slim young fellow and still watches us. Alfreda grew pale, and shifted her little feet uneasily. Knight lowered the glass. I think we had better return, he said. That cloud which is raining on them may soon reach us. Why, you look ill. How is that? Everything in the air affects my face. Those fair cheeks are very fastidious, I fear. Returned Knight tenderly. This air would make those rosy that were never so before.  Alfreda's colour returned again. There is more to see behind us, after all, said Knight. She turned her back upon the boat, and Stephen Smith, and saw towering, still higher than themselves, the vertical face of the hill on the right, which did not project seaword so far as the bed of the valley, but formed the back of a small cove, and so was visible like a concave wall, bending round from their position towards the left. The composition of the huge hill was revealed to its backbone and marrow, here at its rent extremity. It consisted of a vast stratification of blackish grey slate, unverred in its whole height by a single change of shade. It is with cliffs and mountains, as with persons. They have what is called a presence, which is not necessarily proportionate to their actual bulk. A little cliff will impress you powerfully, a great one not at all. It depends, as with a man, upon the countenance of the cliff. I cannot bear to look at that cliff, said Alfreda. It has a horrid personality and makes me shudder. We will go. When you climb, said Knight, if so, we will descend by that path over that grim old fellow's brow. Try me, said Alfreda, disdainfully. I have ascended steeper slopes than that. From where they had been loitering a grassy path wound along inside a bank, placed as a safeguard for unwary pedestrians to the top of the precipice, and over it along the hill in an inland direction. And take my arm, is swan-court, said Knight. I can get on better without it, thank you. When there were one quarter of the way up, Alfreda stopped to take a breath. Knight stretched out his hand. She took it, and they ascended the remaining slope together. Reaching the very top, they sat down to rest by mutual consent. Heavens, what an altitude, said Knight, between his pants, and looking far over the sea. The cascade at the bottom of the slope appeared a mere span and height from where they were now. Alfreda was looking to the left. The steamboat was in full view again, and by reason of the vast surface of sea the higher position uncovered it seemed almost close to the shore. Over that edge, said Knight, where nothing but vacancy appears is a moving, compact mass. The wind strikes the face of the rock, runs up it, rises like a fountain to a height far above our heads, curls over us in an arch, and disperses behind us. In fact, an inverted cascade is there, as perfect as the Niagara Falls, but rising instead of falling, and air instead of water. Now look here. Knight threw a stone over the bank, aiming it as if to go onward over the cliff. Reaching the verge it towered into the air like a bird, turned back, and lighted on the ground behind them. They themselves were in a dead calm. A boat crossed Niagara immediately at the foot of the falls, where the water is quite still, the fallen mass curving under it. We are in precisely the same position with regard to our atmospheric cataract here. If you run back from the cliff, fifty yards, you will be in a brisk wind. Now, I dare say over the bank is a little backward current. Knight knows and lent over the bank. No sooner was his head above it than his hat appeared to be sucked from his head, slipping over his forehead in a seaward direction. That's the backward Eddie, as I told you, he cried, and vanished over the little bank after his hat. Elfida waited one minute. He did not return. She waited another, and there was no sign of them. A few drops of rain fell, then a sudden shower. She arose and looked over the bank. On the other side were two or three yards of level ground, then a short steep preparatory slope, then the verge of the precipice. On the slope was Knight, his hat on his head. He was on his hands and knees trying to climb back to level ground. The rain had whetted the shaley surface of the incline. A slight superficial wetting of the soil hereabout made it far more slippery to stand on than the same soil thoroughly drenched. The inner substance was still hard and was lubricated by the moistened film. I find it difficult in getting back, said Knight. Elfida's heart felt like lead. But you can get back, she wildly inquired. Knight strove with all his might for two or three minutes, and the drops of perspiration began to bead his brow. No, I am unable to do it, he answered. Elfida, by a wrench of thought, forced away from her mind the sensation that Knight was in bodily danger. But attempt to help him, she must. She ventured upon the treacherous incline, propped herself with a closed telescope, and gave him her hand before he saw her movements. Oh, Elfida, why did you, he said? I am afraid you have only endangered yourself. And as if to prove his statement, in making an endeavour by her assistance, they both slipped lower, and then he was again staid. His foot was propped by a bracket of quartz rock balanced on the verge of the precipice. Fixed by this, he steadied her, her head being about a foot below the beginning of the slope. Elfida had dropped the glass. It rolled to the edge and banished over it into a nether sky. Hold tightly to me, he said.  Don't be flurried, Knight continued. So long as we stay above this block, we are perfectly safe. Elfida moment whilst I consider what we had better do. He turned his eyes to the dizzy depths beneath them, and surveyed the position of affairs. Two glances told him a tale with ghastly distinctness. It was that, unless they performed their feat of getting up the slope with the precision of machines, they were over the edge and whirling in mid-air. For this purpose it was necessary that he should recover the breadth and strength which his previous efforts had cost him. So he still waited and looked in the face of the enemy. The crest of this terrible natural façade passed among the neighbouring inhabitants as being seven hundred feet above the water it overhung. It had been proved by actual measurement not to be a foot less than six hundred and fifty. That is to say it is nearly three times the height of Flamborough, half as high again as the South Forland, a hundred feet higher than Beachy Head, the loftiest promenary on the east or south side of this island, twice the height of St. Aldams, thrice as high as a lizard, and just double the height of St. Bees. One seaboard point on the western coast is known to surpass it in altitude, but only by a few feet. This is Great Orm's Head in Carnarvonshire. And it must be remembered that the cliff exhibits an intensifying feature, which some of those are without. Pure perpendicularity from the half tide level. Yet this remarkable rampart forms no headland. It rather walls in an inlet, the promenary on each side being much lower, thus far from being salient, its horizontal section is concave. The sea rolling direct from the shores of North America has in fact eaten a chasm into the middle of a hill, and the giant, embayed and unobtrusive, stands in the rear of pygmy supporters. Not least singularly, neither hill, chasm, or precipice has a name. On this account I will call the precipice the cliff without a name. What gave an added terror to its height was its blackness, and upon this dark face the beating of ten thousand west winds had formed a kind of bloom which had a visual effect not unlike that of Hambros Grape. Moreover it seemed to float off into the atmosphere and inspire terror through the lungs. This piece of quartz supporting my feet is on the very nose of the cliff, said Knight, breaking the silence after his rigid, stoical meditation. Now what you are going to do is this.  When you are there you will, I think, be able to climb onto level ground. What will you do? Wait whilst you run for assistance. I ought to have done that in the first place, ought I not? I was in the act of slipping and should have reached no standpoint without your weight in all probability, but don't let us talk, be brave, Elfrida, and climb. She prepared to ascend, saying, This is the moment I anticipated when on the tower, I thought it would come. This is not a time for superstition, said Knight. Dismiss all that. I will, she said humbly. Now put your foot into my hand, next the other. That's good, well done. Hold to my shoulder. She placed her feet upon the stirrup he made of his hand, and was high enough to get a view of the natural surface of the hill over the bank. Can you now climb to level ground? I am afraid not. I will try. What can you see? The sloping common, what upon it? Purple, heather, and some grass. Nothing more, no man or human being of any kind. Nobody. Now try to get higher in this way. You see that tuft of sea-pink above you? Get that well into your hand, but don't trust to it entirely. Then step upon my shoulder, and I think you will be able to reach the top. With trembling limb she did exactly as he told her. The preternatural quiet and solemnity of his manner overspread upon herself, and gave her courage not her own. She made a spring from the top of his shoulder, and was up. Then she turned to look at him. By an ill fate the force downward of her bound, added to his own weight, had been too much for the block of quartz upon which his feet depended. It was, indeed, originally an igneous protrusion into the enormous masses of black strata, which had since been worn away from the sides of the alien fragment by centuries of frost and rain, and now left it without much support. It moved. Night sees the tuft of sea-pink with each hand. The quartz rock which had been his salvation was worse than useless now. It rolled over, out of sight, and away into the same nether sky that had engulfed the telescope. One of the tufts by which he held came out at a root, and night began to follow the quartz. It was a terrible moment.  Between the tuft-covered slope and the gigantic perpendicular rock intervened a weather-worn series of jagged edges, forming a face yet steeper than the former slope. As he slowly slid inch by inch upon these, night made a last desperate dash at the lowest tuft of vegetation, the last outlying knot of starved herbage ere the rock appeared in all its bareness. It arrested his furthest scent. Night was now literally suspended by his arms. But the incline of the brow, being what engineers would call about a quarter in one, it was sufficient to relieve his arms of a portion of his weight, but was very far from offering an adequately flat surface to support him. In spite of this dreaded tension of body and mind, night found time for a moment of thankfulness. Elfride was made safe. She lay on her side above him, her fingers clasped. Seeing him again steady, she jumped upon her feet.  Why did you try so hard to deliver me? And she turned away wildly to run for assistance. Elfride, how long will it take you to run to Endelstow and back? There's three quarters of an hour. That won't do. My hands will not hold out ten minutes. And is there nobody nearer? No, unless a chance passer may happen to be. He would have nothing with him that could save me. Is there a pole or stick of any kind in the common? She gazed around. The common was bare of everything but heather and grass. A minute, perhaps more time, was passed in mute thought by both. On a sudden, the blank and helpless agony left her face. She vanished over the bank from his sight. Knight felt himself in the presence of a personalised loneliness. A pair of blue eyes, by Thomas Hardy, Chapter 22, A Woman's Way Haggard cliffs of every ugly altitude are as common as Seafowl along the line of coast between Exmor and Land's End, but this outflanked and encompassed specimen was the ugliest of them all. Their summits are not safe places for scientific experiments on the principles of air currents as Knight had now found out to his disney. He still clutched the face of the escarpment, not with a frenzied whole of despair, but with a dogged determination to make the most of his every jot of endurance, and so give the longest possible scope to elfread his intentions, whatever they might be. He reclined hand in hand with the world in its infancy, not a blade, not an insect, which spoke of the present, was between him and the past. The inveterate antagonism of these black precipices to all struggleers for life is in no way more forcibly suggested than by the paucity of tufts of grass, lichens, or converve on their outermost ledges. Knight pondered on the meaning of Elphides' hasty disappearance, but could not avoid an instinctive conclusion that there existed but a doubtful hope for him. As far as he could judge, his sole chance of deliverance lay in the possibility of a rope or pole being brought, and this possibility was remote indeed. The soil upon these high-downs was left so untended that they were unenclosed for miles, except by a casual bank or dry wall, and were rarely visited but for the purpose of collecting or counting the flock which found a scanty means of subsistence thereon. At first, when death appeared improbable, because it had never visited him before, Knight could think of no future, nor of anything connected with his past. He could only look sternly at nature's treacherous attempt to put an end to him, and strive to thwart her. From the fact that the cliff formed the interface of the segment of a huge cylinder, having the sky for a top and the sea for a bottom, which enclosed the cove to the extent of more than a semicircle, he could see the vertical face curving round on each side of him. He looked far down the façade, and realised more thoroughly how it threatened him. Grimness was in every feature, and to its very bowels the inimical shape was desolation. By one of those familiar conjunctions of things, wherewith the inanimate world baits the mind of man, when he pauses in moments of suspense, opposite Knight's eyes was an embedded fossil, standing forth in low relief from the rock. It was a creature with eyes. The eyes, dead and turned to stone, were even now regarding him. It was one of the early crustaceans called trilobites, separated by millions of years in their lives, Knight and this underling seemed to have met in their death. It was a single instance within reach of his vision of anything that had ever been alive, and had had a body to save, as he himself had now. The creature represented but a low type of animal existence, for never in their vernal years had the planes indicated by those numberless slaty layers being traversed by an intelligence worthy of the name. Zophytes, Moluska, Shellfish, were the highest developments of those ancient dates. The immense lapses of time each formation represented had known nothing of the dignity of man. They were grand times, but they were mean times too, and mean were their relics. He was to be with the small in his death. Knight was a geologist, and such is the supremacy of habit over occasion as a pioneer of the thoughts of men, that at this dreadful juncture his mind found time to take in, by a momentary sweep, the varied scenes that had had their day between this creature's epoch and his own. There was no place like a cleft landscape for bringing home such imaginings as these. Time closed up like a fan before him. He saw himself at one extremity of the years, face to face with the beginning, and all the intermediate centuries simultaneously. Fierce men, clothed in the hides of beasts and carrying for defence and attack huge clubs and pointed spears, rose from the rock, like the phantoms before the doomed Macbeth. They lived in hollows, woods, and mud huts, perhaps in caves of the neighbouring rocks. Behind them stood an earlier band. No man was there. Huge elephantine forms, the mastodon, the hippopotamus, the tapir, antelopes of monstrous size, the megaterium, the myelodon, all for the moment in juxtaposition. Further back and overlapped bodies were perched huge billed birds and swine-ish creatures as large as horses. Still more shadowy were the sinister crocodilian outlines, alligators and other uncouth shapes, culminating in the colossal lizard, the iguanodon. Folded behind were dragon-forms and clouds of flying reptiles. Still underneath were fishy beings of lower development, and so on, till the lifetime scenes of the fossil confronting him were a present and modern condition of things. These images passed before Knight's inner eye in less than half a minute, and he was again considering the actual present. Was he to die? The mental picture of Elfride in the world, without himself to cherish her, smote his heart like a whip. He had hoped for deliverance, but what could a girl do? He dared not move an inch. Was death really stretching out his hand? The previous sensation, that it was improbably he would die, was fainter now. However, Knight still clung to the cliff. To those musing weather-beaten west-country folks who passed a greater part of their days and nights out of doors, nature seemed to have moods in other than a poetical sense, predilections for certain deeds at certain times, without any apparent law to govern or season to account for them. She is read as a person with a curious temper, as one who does not scatter kindnesses and cruelties alternately, impartially and in order, but heartless severities or overwhelming generalities in lawless caprice. Man's case is always out of the prodigal's favourite or the miser's pensioner. In her own friendly moments there seems a feline fun in her tricks, begotten by a foretaste of her pleasure in swallowing the victim. Such a way of thinking had been absurd to-night, but he began to adopt it now. He was first spitted on to a rock, new tortures followed, the rain increased, and persecuted him with an exceptional persistency which he was moved to believe owed its cause to the fact that he was in such a wretched state already. An entirely new order of things could be observed in this introduction of rain upon the scene. It rained upwards instead of down. The strong ascending air carried the rain drops with it in its race up the escarpment, coming to him with such velocity that they stuck into his flesh like cold needles. Each drop was virtually a shaft, and it pierced him to his skin. The water shaft seemed to lift him on their points. No downward rain had ever such a torturing effect. In a brief space he was drenched, except in two places. Those were on the top of his shoulders and on the crown of his hat. The wind, though not intense in other situations, was strong here. It tugged at his coat and lifted it. We are mostly accustomed to look upon all opposition, which is not animate, as that of the stolid, inexorable hand of indifference, which wears out the patience more than the strength. Here, at any rate, hostility did not assume that slow and sickening form. It was a cosmic agency, active, lashing, eager for conquest, determination, not an insensate standing in the way. Knight had overestimated the strength of his hands. They were getting weak already. She will never come again. She has been gone ten minutes, he said to himself. This mistake arose from the unusual compression of his experiences just now. She had really been gone but three. As many more minutes would be my end, he thought. Next came another instance of the incapacity of the mind to make comparisons at such times. This is a summer afternoon, he said, and there can never have been such a heavy and cold rain on a summer day in my life before. He again was mistaken. The rain was quite ordinary in quantity, the air and temperature. It was, as is usual, the menacing attitude in which they approached him that magnified their powers. He again looked straight downwards. The wind and the water dashes lifting his mustache, sculling up his cheeks, under his eyelids and into his eyes. This is what he saw down there. The surface of the sea visually just passed his toes and under his feet, actually one-eighth of a mile, more than two hundred yards below them. We colour, according to our moods, the objects we survey. The sea would have been a deep, neutral blue. Had happier auspices attended the Gaser, it was now no other wise than distinctly black to his vision. That narrow white border was foam. He knew well, but its boisterous tosses were so distant as to appear a pulsation only, and its plashing was barely audible, a white border to a black sea, his funeral pile and its edging. The world was to some extent turned upside down for him. Rain descended from below. Beneath his feet was aerial space and the unknown. Above him was a firm, familiar ground, and upon it all that he loved best. Pity this nature had then two voices, and only two. The nearer was the voice of the wind in his ears rising and falling as it mauled and thrust him hard or softly. The second and dissonant was the moan of that unplumbed ocean, below and afar, rubbing its restless flank against the cliff without a name. Night perseveringly held fast. Had he any faith in Elfride? Perhaps love his faith, and faith, like a gathered flower, would ruthlessly live on. Nobody would have expected the sun to shine on such an evening as this, yet it appeared, low down upon the sea, not with its natural golden fringe sweeping the furthest ends of the landscape, not with the strange glare of whiteness which it sometimes puts on as an alternative to colour, but as a splotch of vermilion red upon a leaden ground, a red face looking down with a drunken leer. Most men who have brains know it, and few are so foolish as to disguise this fact from themselves or others, even though an ostentatious display may be called self-conceit. Night, without showing it much, knew that his intellect was above the average, and he thought, he could not help thinking, that his death would be a deliberate loss to earth of good material, that such an experiment in killing might have been practised upon some less developed life. A fancy some people hold, when in a bitter mood, is that inexorable circumstance only tries to prevent what intelligence attempts, renounce the desire for a long contested position, and go on to another attack, and after a while the prize is thrown at you, seemingly in disappointment that no more tantalising is possible. Night gave up thoughts of life utterly and entirely, and turned to contemplate the dark valley and the unknown future beyond. Into the shadowy depths of these speculations we will not follow him, let it suffice to state what ensued. At that moment of taking no more thought of his life, something disturbed the outline of the bank above him, a spot appeared. It was the head of Elfride. Night immediately prepared to welcome life again. The expression of a face consigned to utter loneliness, when a friend first looks upon it, is moving in the extreme. In rowing seaward to a light ship or seagirt lighthouse, where without any immediate terror of death, the inmates experience the gloom of monotonous occlusion, the grateful eloquence of their countenances at the greeting, expressive of thankfulness for the visit, is enough to stir the emotions of the most careless observer. Night's upward look at Elfride was of a nature with but far transcending such an instance as this. The lines of his face had deepened to furrows, and every one of them tanked her visibly. His lips moved to the word Elfride, though the emotion involved no sound. His eyes passed all description in their combination of the whole diapason of eloquence, from lover's deep love to fellow man's gratitude for a token of remembrance from one of his kind. Elfride had come back. What she had come to do he did not know. She could only look on at his death perhaps. Still she had come back, and not deserted him utterly, and that was much. It was a novelty in the extreme to see Henry Night, to whom Elfride was but a child, who had swayed her as a tree sways a bird's nest, who mastered her, and made her weep most bitterly at her own insignificance, thus thankful for the sight of her face.  He smiled faintly. How calm he is, she thought. How great a noble he is to be so calm. She would have died ten times from then. The gliding form of the steamboat caught her eye. She heeded it no longer. How much longer can you wait? came from her pale lips and along the wind to his position. Four minutes, said Night, in a weaker voice than her own. But with a good hope of being saved. Seven or eight. He now noticed that in her arms she bore a bundle of white linen, and that her form was singularly attenuated. So preener naturally thin and flexible was Elfride at this moment, that she appeared to bend under the light blows of the rain shafts, as they struck into her sides and bosom, and splintered its spray into her face. There is nothing like a turd drenching for reducing the perturbances of clothes, but Elfride's seemed to cling to her like a glove. Without heeding the attack of the clouds further down by raising her hand and wiping away the spritz of rain, when they ran more particularly into her eyes, she sat down and hurriedly began rending the linen into strips. These she knotted end to end, and afterwards twisted them like the strands of a cord. In a short space of time she had formed a perfect rope by this means, six or seven yards long. Can you wait while I bind it? she said, anxiously extending her gaze down to her. Yes, if not very long. Hope has given me a wonderful instalment of strength. Elfride dropped her eyes again, tore the remaining material into narrow tape-like ligaments, knotted each to each as before, but on a smaller scale, and wound the lengthy string she had thus formed round and round the linen rope, which, without this binding, had a tendency to spread abroad. Now, said Knight, who, watching the proceedings intently, had by this time not only grasped her scheme, but reasoned further on. I can hold three minutes longer yet, and do you use the time in testing the strength of the knots one by one? She had once obeyed, tested each singly by putting her foot on the rope between each knot and pulling with her hands. One of the knots slipped. Oh, think! it would have broken but, for your forethought, Elfride exclaimed apprehensively. She retired the two ends. The rope was now firm in every part. When you have let it down, said Knight, already resuming his position of ruling power, go back from the edge of the slope and over the bank, as far as the rope will allow you, then lean down and hold the end with both hands. He had first thought of a safer plan for his own deliverance, but it involved a disadvantage of possibly endangering her life. I have tied it around my waist, she cried, and I will lean directly upon the bank holding with my hands as well. It was the arrangement he had thought of, but would not suggest. I will raise and drop it three times when I am behind the bank, she continued, to signify that I am ready.  She dropped the rope over him to learn how much of its length would be necessary to extend on that side of the bank, went back and disappeared as she had done before. The rope was trailing by Knight's shoulders. In a few moments it twitched three times. He waited yet a second or two, then laid hold. The incline of this upper portion of the precipice, to the length only of a few feet, useless to her climber empty-handed, was invaluable now. Not more than half his weight depended entirely upon the linen rope. Half a dozen extensions of the arms, alternating with half a dozen seizures of the rope with his feet, brought him up to the level of the soil. He was saved, and by Elfride. He extended his cramped limbs like an awakened sleeper and sprang over the bank. At sight of him she leapt to her feet with almost a shriek of joy. Knight's eyes met hers, and with supreme eloquence the glance of each told a long concealed tale of emotion in that short half-moment. Moved by an impulse neither could resist, they ran together and into each other's arms. At the moment of embracing, Elfride's eyes involuntarily flashed towards the puff and steamboat. It had doubled the point and was no longer to be seen. An overwhelming rush of exultation at having delivered the man she revered from one of the most terrible forms of death shook the gentle girl to the centre of her soul. It merged in a defiance of duty to Stephen, and a total recklessness as to plighted faith. Every nerve of her will was now an entire subjection to her feelings, volition as a guiding power had forsaken her. To remain passive as she remained now, encircled by his arms, was a sufficiently complete result, a glorious crown to all the years of her life. Perhaps he was only grateful and did not love her. No matter, it was infinitely more to be even the slave of the greater than the queen of the less. Some such sensation as this, though it was not recognised as a finished thought, raced along the impressionable soul of Elfride. Regarding their attitude, it was impossible for two persons to go nearer to a kiss than went night on Elfride during these moments of impulsive embrace in the pelting rain. Yet they did not kiss. Night's peculiarity of nature was such that it would not allow them to take advantage of the unguarded and passionate avowal she had tacitly made. Elfride recovered herself and gently struggled to be free. He reluctantly relinquished her, and then surveyed her from crown to toe. She seemed as small as an infant. He perceived when she hid to obtain the rope. Elfride, my Elfride, he exclaimed in gratified amazement. I must leave you now, she said, her face doubling its red, with an expression between gladness and shame. You follow me, but at some distance.  God bless you for such devotion. Take my coat and put it on. No, I shall get warm running. Elfride had absolutely nothing between her and the weather but her exterior robe or costume. The door had been made upon a woman's wit, and it had found its way out. Behind the bank, whilst night reclined upon the dizzy slope waiting for death, she had taken off her whole clothing and replaced only her outer bodice and skirt. Every thread of the remainder lay upon the ground in the form of a woollen and cotton rope. I am used to being wet through, she added. I have been drenched on pansy dozens of times. Goodbye to, we meet, clothed and in our right minds by the fireside at home. She then ran off from them through the pelting rain like a hair, or more like a pheasant when, scampering away with a lower tail, it has a mind to fly but does not. Elfride was soon out of sight. Night felt uncomfortably wet and chilled, but glowing with fervour nevertheless, he fully appreciated Elfride's girlish delicacy in refusing his escort. In the meager habiliments she wore, yet felt that necessary abstraction of herself for a short half hour was the most grievous loss to him. He gathered her knotted and twisted plumage of linen, lace and embroidery work, and laid it across his arm. He noticed on the ground an envelope, limp and wet. In endeavouring to restore this to its proper shape, he loosened from the envelope a piece of paper it had contained, which was seized by the wind and falling from Night's hand. It was blown to the right, blown to the left, it floated to the edge of the cliff and over the sea, where it was hurled aloft. It twirled in the air and then flew back over his head. Night followed the paper and secured it. Having done so, he looked to discover if it had been worth securing. The troublesome sheet was a bankers receipt for £200 placed to the credit of Miss Swancourt, which the impractical girl had totally forgotten she carried with her. Night folded it as carefully as its moist condition would allow, put it in his pocket, and followed Elfride. a pair of blue eyes by Thomas Harley Chapter 23 Should old acquaintance be forgot? By this time Stephen Smith had stepped out upon the key at Castle Bottle and breathed his native air. A darker skin, a more pronounced moustache, and an incipient beard, were the chief additions and changes noticeable to his appearance. In spite of the falling rain, which had somewhat lessened, he took a small release in his hand, and leaving the remainder of his luggage at the inn, ascended the hills towards East Enderlstow. This place lay in avail of its own, further inland than the West Village, and though so near it, had little of physical feature in common with the latter. East Enderlstow was more wooded than fertile. It boasted of Lord Luxellian's mansion and park, and was free from those bleak open-up lands, which lent such an air of desolation to the visenage of the coast, always accepting the small valley in which stood the vicarage and Mrs. Swancourt's old house, the crags. Stephen had arrived nearly at the summit of the ridge, when the rain again increased its volume, and, looking about for temporary shelter, he ascended a steep path, which penetrated dense hazel bushes at the lower part of its course. Further up, it emerged upon a ledge, immediately over the turnpike road, and sheltered by an overhanging face of rubble-rock with bushes above it. For a reason of his own, he made this spot his refuge from the storm, and, turning his face to the left, conned the landscape as a book. He was overlooking the valley containing Alfreda's residence. From this point of observation the prospect exhibited the peculiarity of being either brilliant foreground or the subdued tone of distance, a sudden dip in the surface of the country, lowering out of sight all intermediate prospect. An apparent contact with the trees and bushes growing close beside them, appeared the distant tract, terminated suddenly by the brink of the series of cliffs which culminated in the tall giant without a name, small and unimportant as here beheld. A leaf on a bow at Stephen's elbow blotted out a whole hill in the contrasting district far away. A green bunch of nuts covered a complete upland there, and the great cliff itself was outfired by a pygmy crag in the banked hard by him. Stephen had looked upon these things hundreds of times before today, but he had never viewed them with such tenderness as now. Stepping forward in this direction yet a little further, he could see the tower of West Endrelstow Church, beneath which he was to meet his elf leader that night. At the same time he noticed, coming over the hills and the cliffs, a white speck in motion. It seemed first to be a seagull flying low, but ultimately proved to be a human figure, running with great rapidity. The form flitted on, heedless of the rain which had caused Stephen's halt in this place, dropped down the heathery hill, entered the veil, and was out of sight. Whilst he meditated upon the meaning of this phenomenon, he was surprised to see swim into his ken from the same point of departure, another moving speck, as different from the first as well could be, in so much that it was perceptible only by its blackness. Slowly and regularly it took the same course, and there was not much doubt that this was the form of a man. He too gradually descended from the upper levels and was lost in the valley below. The rain had by this time again abated, and Stephen returned to the road. Looking ahead he saw two men and a cart. They were soon obscured by the intervention of a high hedge. Just before they emerged again he heard voices in conversation. That must feel me in the neighborhood too, if he's a common, said a tenor tongue which Stephen instantly recognised as Martin Canisters. That must, I believe, said another voice, that of Stephen's father. Stephen stepped forward and came before them face to face. His father and Martin were walking, dressed in their second best suits, and beside them rambled along a grizzled horse and brightly painted spring cart. All right, Mr Canister, here's the lost man, exclaimed young Smith, entering at once upon the old style of greeting. Father, here I am. All right, my sonny, and glad I be for it, returned John Smith, overjoyed to see the young man. How be ye? Well, come along home and don't let us bide out here in the damp. Such weather must be terrible bad for a young chap, just come from a fiery nation like Indy, eh, neighbour Canister? True, true, and about getting home his traps. Boxes, monstrous bales, and novel packages of foreign description I meet no doubt. Hardly all that, said Stephen, laughing. We brought the cart, maining to go right on, to Castle Butterill, before he landed, said his father. Put in the horse, says Martin. I, says I, so we will, and did it straight away. Now, maybe Martin had better go on with the cart for the things, and you and I walk home along. And I shall be back almost as soon as you. Peggy's a pretty step still, though time to begin to tell upon her as upon the rest of us. Stephen told Martin where to find his baggage, and then continued his journey homeward in the company of his father. I went here coming a day sooner than we first expected, said John. You'll find us in the torque of a mess, sir. Sir, says I to my own son, but you've gone up so, Stephen.  However, we can make you a good supper of fry, which will chop up well with a dab of mustard and a few nice new taters, and a drop of shilling ale to wash it down. Your mother would have scrubbed the house through because you were coming, and dusted all the chimmer furniture, and bought a new basin and jug of a travelling crockery woman that came to our door, and scoured the candlesticks and cleaned the windows. I, I don't know what I hadn't done. Never were such a steer, I believe. Conversation of this kind, and inquiries of Stephen for his mother's well-being, occupied them for the remainder of the journey. When they drew near the river, when they drew near the river, and the cottage behind it, they could hear the master mason's clock striking off to bygone hours of the day at intervals of quarter of a minute, during which interval Stephen's imagination readily pictured his mother's forefinger wandering around the dial in company with the minute hand. The clock stopped this morning, and your mother is putting in rate, seemingly, said his father, in an explanatory tone, and they went up the garden to the door. When they had entered, and Stephen had dutifully and warmly greeted his mother, who appeared in a cotton dress of a dark blue ground, covered broadcast with a multitude of new and full moons, stars and planets, with an occasional dash of a comet-like aspect to diversify the scene. The crackle of cartwheels was heard outside, and Mark and Canister stamped in at the doorway, in the form of a pair of legs beneath a great box, his body being nowhere visible. When the luggage had been all taken down, and Stephen had gone upstairs to change his clothes, Mrs. Smith's mind seemed to recover a lost thread. Really, our clock's not worth a penny, she said, turning to it and attempting to start the pendulum. Stopped again, inquired Martin with commiseration. Sure, replied Mrs. Smith, and continued after the manner of certain matrons, to whose tongues the harmony of a subject with a casual mood is a greater recommendation than its pertinence to the occasion. John would spend pounds a year upon that Jim crackle thing, if he might, in having it cleaned, when, at the same time, you may doctor it yourself as well. The clock stopped again, John, I say to him. Better haven't cleaned, says he, there's voice shillings. That clock grinds again, I say to him. Better haven't cleaned, I says again. That clock strikes wrong, John, says I. Better haven't cleaned, he goes on. The wheels would have been polished to skeletons by this time, if I'd listened to him.  And, Martin, you must be wet. My son has gone up to change. John has dampened it, I should like to be, but it calls it nothing. Some of Mrs. Swanko's servants have been here. They ran in out with the rain when going for a walk, and I assure you, the state of their bonnets was frightful. How are the folks? We've been over the castle bottle, and what we're running, and stopping out with the storm, my poor head is beyond everything. Fizz, fizz, fizz. Tis throwing a fish for mornin' to-night, said a cracked voice in the doorway at his instant. Lord Sos, who's that? said Mrs. Smith, in a private exclamation, and turning around saw William Worm, endeavouring to make himself look passing, civil and friendly, by overspreading his face with a large smile, that seemed to have no connection with the humour he was in. Behind him stood a woman about twice his size, with a large umbrella over her head. This was Mrs. Worm, William's wife. Come in, William, said John Smith.  I knew likewise, Mrs. Worm, I make you welcome. Since she left passing Swanko, William, I don't see much of he. No, for to tell the truth, since I took to the torn play gate-line, I'd been out but a little. Coming to church this Sunday has not been my duty now as twos in Parsons family, you see. However, our boy is able to wind the gate now, and I said, says I, Barbara, let's go and see John Smith.  Hi, I assure you that throwing a fish is going on for nights and days, and you know, sometimes it isn't only fish, but rashers of bacon and onions, and I can hear the fat poppin' fizz as natural as life. Can't I, Barbara? Mrs. Worm, who had been all this time engaged in closing an umbrella, corroborated this statement, and now, coming in door, showed herself to be a wide-faced, comfortable-looking woman, with a wart upon her cheek, bearing a small, tough tough hair in its centre.  Master Worm, inquired Markham Canister. Ah, yes, blessy, I tried everything. I, Providence, is a merciful man, and I have hoped he'd have found it out by this time, living so many years in a person's family too, as I have, but it don't seem to relieve me. I, I be a poor, wambler man, and nice and minted true. True, more for true, William Worm, so it is. The world won't look into what is all sixes and sevens with us. Take your things off, Mrs. Worm, said Mrs. Smith. We'd be rather in the muddle to tell the truth, for my son has just dropped in from India day-to-day than we'd expected, and the pig-killer is coming presently to cut up. Mrs. Barbara Worm, not wishing to take any mean advantage of persons in a muddle by observing them, removed her bonnet and mantel, with eyes fixed upon the flowers and the plot outside the door. What beautiful tiger lilies, said Mrs. Worm. Yes, they be very well, but such the trouble on me on account of the chilling that come here. They were go eatin' the berries on the stem and call them currants. Tastes with children is quite fancy, really. And your snap-dragons look as fierce as ever. Well, really, answered Mrs. Smith, entering didactically into the subject. They are more like Christians than flowers. Both they make up well enough with the rest, and don't require much tending. And the same can be said of these miller's wheels. To the flower I like very much, though so simple. John says he never cares about the flowers on them, but men have no eye for anything neat. He says his favourite flowers is a cauliflower, and they assure you I tremble in the springtime for its perfect mortar. You don't say so, Mrs. Smith. John digs round the roots, you know. In goes his blundering spade through roots, bowls, and everything that hasn't got a good show above ground, turning them up cut all to slices. Only the very last fall I went to move some tulips, and I found every bulb upside down, and the stems crooked round. He had them turned over in the spring, and the cunning creatures had soon found that heaven was not where it used to be. What's that long-favourite flower under the edge? They, oh Lord, they are the horrid Jacob's ladders. Instead of praising them, I'd be mad at them for being so ready to bide where they are not wanted. They'd be very well in their way, but I do not care for things that neglect won't kill. Do what it will, dig, drag, scrap, pull, I get too many of them.  Tis Jacob's ladder here, Jacob's ladder there, and plant them where nothing in the world will grow, you get crowds of them in a month or two. John made new, newer mixing last summer, and he said, Maria, now if you've got any flowers or such like you don't want, you may plant them around my mixing so as to hide it a bit, though tis not likely anything of much value will grow there. I thought there's them Jacob's ladders. I put them there, since they can't do harm in such a place, and I planted the Jacob's ladders sure enough. They growled and growled, in the mixing, and out with the mixing, all over the litter, covering it quite up. When John wanted to use it about the garden, he said, nation sees them Jacob's ladders of yours, Maria. They've eat the goodness out of every muscle in my manure, so that it is no better than sand itself. Sure enough, the hungry mortals had. Tis my belief that in the secret souls of them, Jacob's ladders be weeds, and not flowers at all, if the truth was known. Robert Lickpan, pig-killer and carrier, arrived at his moment. The fatted animal hanging in the back kitchen was cleft down the middle of its backbone, Mrs. Smith being meanwhile engaged in cooking supper. Between the cutting and chopping, Ale was handed round, and Worm and the pig-killer listened to John Smith's description of the meeting with Stephen, with eyes blankly fixed upon the tablecloth, in order that nothing in the external world should interrupt their efforts to conjure up the scene correctly. Stephen came downstairs in the middle of the story, and after a little interruption occasioned by his entrance and welcome, the narrative was again continued, precisely as if he had not been there at all, and was told inclusively to him, as to somebody who knew nothing about the matter. Why, I said, as I catch sighted and through the brimbles, that's the lad, for he'd known by his grandfather's walk, for his stepped-outly poor father for all the world. Still, there was a touch of the frisky that set me wondering. I got closer, and I said, that's the lad, for he'd known by his carrying a black case like a traveller man. Still, the road is common to all the world, and there'll be more traveller men than one. But I kept my eye cocked, and I said to Martin, to the boy now, for he'd known by the old twirl of the stick and the family step. Then it came closer, and I said, all right, I could swear to him then. Stephen's personal appearance was next criticised. He'd a look of the old thinner in the face, surely, than when I see'd that the Parsons had never known him, if you'll believe me, said Martin. Ah, there said another, without removing his eyes from Stephen's face, I should have known him anywhere, to his father's nose to a T. It has often been remarked, said Stephen, modestly. And he certainly taller, said Martin, letting his lance run over Stephen's form from bottom to top. Though he was thinking it was exactly the same weight, William Worm replied. Bless thy soul, that's because he's bigger round likewise, and the united eyes all move to Stephen's waist. Might be a poor wambler man, but I can make allowances, said William Worm. Ah, sure, and how he came as a stranger and pilgrim to pass and swan-course that time, not a soul known on after so many years. Aye, life's a strange pickter, Stephen, but I suppose I will say sort ye. Oh, it's not necessary at present, Stephen replied, though mentally resolving to avoid the vicinity of that familiar friend, as soon as he had made pretensions to the hand of Elfride. Ah, well, said Worm musingly. Some would have looked for no less than a sore, there's a sight of difference in people. And a pig's light-wise, observed John Smith, looking at the halved carcass of his own. Robert Lickpan, the pig-killer, here seemed called upon to enter the lists of conversation. Yes, they've got their particular knitters good now, he remarked initially. Many's the rum-tempered pig I knowed. I don't doubt it's Master Lickpan, answered Martin in a tone expressing that his convictions, no less than good manners demanded the reply. Yes, continued the pig-killer, as is one accustomed to be heard. One that I knowed was deaf and dumb, and we couldn't make out what was the matter with the pig. I would eat well enough when I saw the trough, but when his back was torn, you might have rattled the bucket all day, the poor soul never urged ye. You could play tricks upon him behind his back, and I wouldn't find out no quicker than poor deaf grammar-kates, but I fatted well, and I never seen a pig open better when I was killed, and it was very tender-eating, very, as pretty a bit in me as ever you did see.  And another I knowed, resumed the killer after quietly letting a pint of ale run down his throat of his own accord, and setting down the cup with a mathematical exactness upon the spot from which he had raised it. Another went out with his mind. How very mournful murmured Mrs. Worm. Ah, poor thing he did, as clean out was mind as a cleverest Christian could go.  Oh, you could mine that pig well enough, attested John Smith, and a pretty little porker it was.  Well, now we'd weigh, said John. If so be he were not so fine, he'd weigh and hold, but, as he is, we'd take a side at a time. John, can you mind my old joke, eh? They do so, though, it was a good few years ago I first heard them. Yes, said Lick Pan. That, their old familiar joke, have been in our family for generations, I may say.  And they told me that I had it from his father, when he was quite a child, who made use of them just the same at every killing more or less. And pig killings were pig killings in those days. Truly they were. I've never heard a joke, said Mrs. Smith tentatively. Nor I, child Mrs. Worm, who, being the only other lady in the room, felt bound by the laws of courtesy to feel like Mrs. Smith in everything. Surely, surely you have, said the killer, looking skeptically at the benighted females. However, it isn't much, I don't wish to say it is. It commences like this. Bob will tell the weight of your pig, I believe, says I. The congregation of neighbours think I may in my son Bob naturally, but the secret is that I mean Bob or the steel yard. Laugh, Mark and canister would have heard the explanation of a striking story for the hundredth time. Laugh, John Smith, who had heard it for the thousandth. Laugh, William Worm, who had never heard it at all, but was afraid to say so. Thy grandfather, Robert, must have been a wide awake chap to make that story, said Mark and canister, subsiding to a placid aspect of delighted criticism. He had a head, by all accounts, and, you see, as the first born of the lickpans of all been Roberts, they've all been Bob's, so the story was handed down to the present day. Poor Joseph, your second boy, will never be able to bring it out in company, which is rather unfortunate, said Mrs Worm, thoughtfully. I won't. Yes, grandfather was a clever chap, as he say, but I know the cleverer, was my Uncle Levi. Uncle Levi made a snuff-box that should be a puzzle to his friends to open. He used a handin' around at wedding parties, christens, funerals, and another jolly company, and let them try their scale.  One man would try the spring, another would try the screw, another would try the slide, but try, as they would, the box wouldn't open. And they couldn't open it, and they didn't open it. Now, what were you think was the secret of that box? All put on an expression that a united thoughts were inadequate to the occasion. Why, the box wouldn't open at all, and were made not to open, and you might have tried to the end of revelations. It would have been as not, for the box were glued all round. A very deep man who had made such a box. Yes, it was like Uncle Levi all over. Twas, I can mind the man very well. Tallest man I ever seen. Ah, what so? He never slept upon a bedstead after he rolled up a hard boy-chop. Never could get one long enough. When it lived in that little small outbid upon, he used to have to leave open his chamber door every night, and go into his bed, and let his feet poke out upon the landing. Ah, he's dead and gone now. Nevertheless, poor man, as we all shall, observed William Worm to fill the pause which followed the conclusion of Robert Lickpant's speech. The weighing and cutting up was pursued amid an animated discourse on Stephen's travels, and, at the finish, the first fruits of the day's slaughter, fried in onions, were then turned from the pan into a dish on the table, each piece steaming and hissing till it reached their very mouths. It must be owned that the gentlemanly son of the house looked rather out of place in the course of this operation, nor was his mind quite philosophic enough to allow him to be comfortable with these old established persons, his father's friends. He had never lived long at home, scarcely at all since his childhood. The presence of William Worm was the most awkward feature of the case, for although Worm had left the house of Mr. Swancourt, the being hand and low with a sigh-deaven servitor reminded Stephen too forcibly of the vicar's classification of himself before he went from England. Mrs. Smith was conscious of the defect in her arrangements which had brought about the undesired conjunction. She spoke to Stephen privately. I am above such people here, Stephen, but what could I do?  Never mind, mother, said Stephen, I'll put up with it now. When we leave my lord's service, and get further up the country as I hope we shall soon, it'll be different. We shall be among fresh people in the larger house, and shall keep ourselves up a bit, I hope. Is Mrs. Swancourt still at home, do you know? Stephen inquired. Yes, your father saw her this morning. Do you often see her? Scarcely ever. Mr. Clem, the curate, calls occasionally, but the Swancourt's don't come into the village now any more than to drive through it. They dine on me lord's oftener than they used to. Ah, here's a note which brought this morning for you, will-boy. Stephen eagerly took the note and opened it, his mother watching him. He read what Elfride had written and sent before she started off with a cliff that afternoon. Yes, I will meet you in the church at nine tonight. I don't know, Stephen, his mother said meaningly, where you still think about Miss Elfride, but if I were you I wouldn't concern about her. They say that none of old Mrs. Swancourt's money will come to her step-daughter. I see the evening has turned out fine. I'm going out for a little while to look around the place, he said, evading the direct query. Probably by the time I return our visitors will be gone and we'll have a more confidential talk. End of Chapter 23. Breeze, bird, and flower confess the hour. The rain had ceased since the sunset, but it was a cloudy night, and the light of the moon, softened and dispersed by its misty veil, was distributed over the land in pale grey. A dark figure stepped from the doorway of John Smith's Riverside Cottage and strode rapidly towards West Endelstow with a light footstep. Soon ascending from the lower levels he turned a corner, followed a cart-track, and saw the tower of the church he was in quest of distinctly shaped forth against the sky. In less than half an hour from the time of starting he swung himself over the churchyard style. The wild irregular enclosure was as much as ever an integral part of the old hill. The grass was still long. The graves were shaped precisely as passing years chose to alter them from their orthodox form as laid down by Martin Canister and by Stephen's own grandfather before him. A sound sped into the air from the direction in which castled butterell lay. It was a striking of the church clock, distinct in the still atmosphere as if it had come from the tower hard by, which, wrapped in its solitary silentness, gave out no such sounds of life. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine. Stephen carefully counted the strokes, though he knew well their number beforehand, nine o'clock. It was the hour Elfrida had herself named as the most convenient for meeting him. Stephen stood at the door of the porch and listened. He could have heard the softest breathing of any person within the porch. Nobody was there. He went inside the doorway, sat down upon the stone bench, and waited with a beating heart. The faint sounds heard only accentuated the silence. The rising and falling of the sea, far away along the coast, was the most important. A minor sound was the scar of a distant night-hawk. Among the minutest, where all were minute, were the light settlement of gossamer fragments floating in the air. A toad, humbly laboring along through the grass near the entrance. The crackle of a dead leaf, which a worm was endeavouring to pull into the earth. A waft of air, getting nearer and nearer, and expiring at its feet under the burden of a winged seed. Among all these soft sounds came not the only soft sound he cared to hear, the footfall of Elfrida. For a whole quarter of an hour Stephen sat thus intent without moving a muscle. At the end of that time he walked to the west front of the church. Turning the corner of the tower, a white form stared him in the face. He started back and recovered himself. It was a tomb of young farmer Jetway, looking still as fresh and as new as when it was first erected, the white stone in which it was hewn having a singular weirdness amid the dark blue slabs from local quarries, of which the whole remaining gravestones were formed. He thought of the night when he had sat there on with Elfrida as his companion, and well remembered his regret that she had received even unwillingly earlier homage than his own. But his present tangible anxiety reduced such a feeling to sentimental nonsense and comparison, and he strolled on over the graves to the border of the churchyard, whence in the daytime could be clearly seen the vicarage and the present residence of the swan-courts. No footstep was discernable upon the path up the hill, but a light was shining for a window in the last named house. Stephen knew there could be no mistake about the time or place, and no difficulty about keeping the engagement. He waited yet longer, passing from impatience into a mood which failed to take account of the lapse of time. He was awakened from his reverie by castle-bottle or clock. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten. One little fall of the hammer, in addition to the number it had been sharp pleasure to hear, and what a difference to him. He left the churchyard on the side opposite to his point of entrance, and went down the hill. Slowly he drew near the gate of her house. This he softly opened, and walked up the gravel-drive to the door. Here he paused for several minutes. At the expiration of that time the murmured speech of a manly voice came to his ears through an open window behind the corner of the house. This was responded to by a clear, soft laugh. It was a laugh of Elfride. Stephen was conscious of a gnawing pain in his heart. He retreated as he had come. There were disappointments which ring us, and there are those which inflict a wound whose mark we bear to our graves. Such are so keen that no future gratification of the same desire can ever obliterate them. They become registered as a permanent loss of happiness. Such a one was Stephen's now. The crowning Oriola of the dream had been the meeting here by stealth, and if Elfride had come to him only ten minutes after he had turned away, the disappointment would have been recognisable still. When the young man reached home he found there a letter which had arrived in his absence. Believing it to contain some reason for her non-appearance yet unable to imagine one that could justify her, he hastily tore open the envelope. The paper contained not a word from Elfride. It was the deposit note for his two hundred pounds. On the back was the form of a check, and this she had filled up with the same sum payable to the bearer. Stephen was confounded. He attempted to divine her motive. Considering how limited was his knowledge of her later actions, he guessed rather shrewdly that between the time of her sending the note in the morning and the evening silent refusal of his gift something had occurred which had caused a total change in her attitude towards him. He knew not what to do. It seemed absurd now to go to her father next morning, as he had purposed, and ask for an engagement with her, a possibility impending all the while that Elfride herself would not be on his side. Only one course recommended itself as wise, to wait and see what the days would bring forth. To go and execute his commission in Birmingham, then to return, learn of anything that happened, and try what a meeting might do. Perhaps her surprise at his backwardness would bring her forward to show latent warmth as decidedly as in old times. This act of patience was in keeping only with the nature of a man precisely of Stephen's constitution. Nine men out of ten would perhaps have rushed off, got into a presence by fair means or foul, and provoked a catastrophe of some sort. Possibly for the better, probably for the worse. He started for Birmingham next morning. A day's delay would have made no difference, but he could not rest until he had begun and ended the programme proposed to himself. Bodily activity will sometimes take the sting out of an anxiety, as completely as assurance itself. A Pair of Blue Eyes by Thomas Hardy Chapter 25 Mine Own Familiar Friend During these days of absence Stephen lived under alternate conditions. Whenever his emotions were active he was in agony. Whenever he was not in agony the business in hand had driven out of his mind by sheer force all deep reflection on the subject of Elfride and love. By the time he took his return journey at the week's end Stephen had very nearly worked himself up to an intention to call and see her face to face. On this occasion also he adopted his favourite route by the little summer steamer from Bristol to Castlebottle, the time saved by speed on the railway being wasted at junctions and in following a devious course. It was a bright silent evening at the beginning of September when Smith again set foot in the little town. He felt inclined to linger a while upon the key before sending the hills, having formed a romantic intention to go home by way of her house, yet not wishing to wander in its neighbourhood till evening shades should sufficiently screen him from observation. And thus waiting for night's nearer approach he watched the placid scene, over which the pale luminosity of the west cast a sorrowful monochrome that became slowly and browned by the dusk. A star appeared, and another, and another. They sparkled amid the yards and rigging of the two coal-rigs lying alongside, as if to have been tiny lamps suspended in ropes. The masts rocked steeply to the infinitesimal flux of the tide, which clucked and gurgled with idle regularity in nooks and holes of the harbour wall. The twilight was now quite pronounced enough for his purpose, and as, rather sad at heart, he was about to move on, a little boat containing two persons glided up the middle of the harbour with the lightness of a shadow. The boat came opposite him, passed on, and touched the landing-steps at the further end. One of its occupants was a man as Stephen had known by the easy stroke of the oars. When the pair ascended the steps and came into greater prominence, he was unable to discern that the second personage was a woman, also that she wore a white decoration, apparently a feather, in her hat or bonnet, which spot of white was the only distinctly visible portion of her clothing. Stephen remained a moment in the rear, and they passed on, when he pursued his way also, and soon forgot the circumstance. Having crossed the bridge, forsaken the high road, and entered the footpath which led up the veil to West Endelstow, he heard a little wicked click softly together some yards ahead. By the time that Stephen had reached a wicked and passed it, he heard another click of precisely the same nature from another gate yet further on. Clearly some person or persons were preceding him along the path, their footsteps being rendered noiseless by the soft carpet of turf. Stephen now walked a little quicker, and perceived two forms. One of them bore aloft a white feathery and notice in the woman's hat on the key. They were the couple he had seen in the boat. Stephen dropped a little further to the rear. From the bottom of the valley along which the path had hitherto lain, beside the margin of the trickling streamlet, another path now diverged, and ascended the slope of the left-hand hill. This footway led only to the residence of Mrs. Swancourt and the cottage or two in its vicinity. No grass covered this diverging path in portions of its length, and Stephen was reminded that the pair in front of him had taken this route, but the occasional rattle of loose stones under their feet. Stephen climbed in the same direction, but for some undefined reason he trod more softly than did those preceding him. His mind was unconsciously in exercise upon whom the woman might be, whether revisited a crags, a servant, or Elfride. He put it to himself yet more forcibly. Could the lady be Elfride? A possible reason for her unaccountable failure to keep the appointment with him returned with painful force. They entered the grounds of the house by the side wicket, whence the path, now wide and well trimmed, wound fantastically through the shrubbery to an octagonal pavilion called the Belvedere, by reason of the comprehensive view over the adjacent district that its green seats afforded. The path passed this erection and went on to the house, as well as to the gardener's cottage on the other side, straggling dense to East Endelstow, so that Stephen felt no hesitation in entering a promenade, which could scarcely be called private. He fancied that he heard a gate open and swing together again behind him, turning he saw nobody. The people of the boat came to the summer house, one of them spoke. I am afraid we shall get a scolding for being late. Stephen instantly recognised the familiar voice, richer and fuller now than it used to be. Elfride, he whispered to himself, and held fast by his sapling to steady himself under the agitation her presence caused him. His heart swerved from its beat, his shone receiving the meaning he sought. A breeze is rising again, how the ash-tree rustles, said Elfride. Don't you hear it? I wonder what the time is. Stephen relinquished his sapling. I will get alight and tell you. Step into the summer house, the air is quiet there. The cadence of that voice, its peculiarity seemed to come home to him, like that of some notes of the northern birds on his return to his native climb, as an old natural thing renewed, yet not particularly noticed as natural before that renewal. They entered the Belvedere. In the lower part it was formed of close woodwork-nailed cross-wides, and had openings in the upper by way of windows. The scratch of a striking light was heard, and a bright glow radiated from the interior of the building. The light gave birth to dancing leaf shadows, stem shadows, lustrous streaks, dots, sparkles, and threads of silver sheen, of all imaginable variety and transience. It awakened gnats which flew towards it, revealed shiny, gossamer threads, and disturbed earthworms. Stephen gave but little attention to these phenomena, and blessed time. He saw in the summer house a strongly illuminated picture. First the face of his friend and preceptor Henry Knight, between whom and himself an estrangement had arisen, not for many definite causes, beyond those of absence, increasing age, and diverging sympathies. Next, his bright particular star, Elfride. The face of Elfride was more womanly than when she had called herself his, but as clear and healthy as ever. Her plentious twines of beautiful hair were looking much as usual, with the exception of a slight modification in their arrangement, in deference to the changes of fashion. The two foreheads were close together, almost touching, and both were looking down. Elfride was holding her watch. Knight was holding the light with one hand, his left arm being round her waist. Part of the scene reached Stephen's eyes through the horizontal bars of woodwork, which crossed their forms like the ribs of a skeleton. Knight's arm stole still further round the waist of Elfride. It is half-parasite, she said, in a low voice, which had a peculiar music in it, seemingly born of a thrill of pleasure, at the new proof that she was beloved. The flame dwindled down, died away, and all was wrapped in a darkness, to which the gloom before the illumination bore no comparison in apparent density.  In turning he saw a shadowy outline behind the summer-house, on the other side. His eyes grew accustomed to the darkness. Was the form a human form, or was it an opaque bush of juniper? The lovers arose, brushed against the lower stains, and pursued away to the house. The indistinct figure had moved, and now passed across Smith's front. So completely enveloped was the person, that it was impossible to discern him or her any more than as a shape. The shape glided noiselessly on. Stephen stepped forward, fearing any mischief was intended to the other two. Who are you, he said? Never mind who I am, answered a weak whisper from the developing falls. What I am may she be. Perhaps I knew well, ah, so well, a youth whose place you took, as he there now takes yours.  You are Mrs. Jethway, I think. What do you do here, and why do you talk so wildly? Because my heart is desolate, and nobody cares about it. May hers be so that brought trouble upon me. Silence! said Stephen, staunch to her freedom in spite of himself. She would harm nobody willfully. Never would she. How do you come here? I saw the two of them coming up the path, and wanted to learn if she were not one of them. Can I help dislike in her, if I think of the past? Can I help watch in her, if I remember my boy? Can I help ill-wishing her, if I well wish him? The bowed form went on, passed through the wicket, and was enveloped by the shadows of the field. Stephen had heard that Mrs. Jethway, since the death of her son, had become a crazed, forlorn woman, and, bestowing a pitying thought upon her, he dismissed her fancy drunks from his mind, but not her condemnation of her freedom's faithlessness. That entered into, and mingled with, the sensations his new experience had begotten. The tale, told by the little scene he had witnessed, ran parallel with the unhappy woman's opinion, which, however basis it might have been antecedently, had become true enough as regarded himself. A slow weight of despair, as distinct from a violent paroxysm as starvation from a mortal shot, filled him and wrung him body and soul. The discovery had not been altogether unexpected, for throughout his anxiety of the last few days, since the night in the churchyard, he had been inclined to construe the uncertainty unfavorably for himself. His hopes for the best had been but periodic interruptions to a chronic fear of the worst. A strange concomitant of his misery was the singularity of its form. That his rival should be Knight, whom, once upon a time, he had adored, as a man is very rarely adored by another in modern times, and whom, he loved now, added deprecation to sorrow and cynicism to both. Henry Knight, whose praises he had so frequently trumpeted in her ears, of whom she had actually been jealous, lest she herself should be lessened in Stephen's love and account of him, had probably won her the more easily by reason of those very praises which he had only ceased to utter by her command. She had ruled him like a queen in that matter, as in all others. Stephen could tell by her manner, brief as had been his observation of it, and, by her words, few as they were, that her position was far different with Knight. That she looked up at and adored her new lover from below his pedestal was even more perceptible than that she had smiled down upon Stephen from a height above him. The suddenness of Elfride's renunciation of himself was food for more torture. To an unimpassioned outsider it admitted of at least two interpretations. It might either have preceded from an endeavour to be faithful to her first choice, till the lover seen absolutely overpowered the lover remembered, or from a wish not to lose his love till sure of the love of another. But to Stephen Smith the motive involved in the latter alternative made it untenable where Elfride was the actor. He mused on her letters to him, in which she had never mentioned a syllable concerning Knight. It is desirable, however, to observe that only in two letters could she possibly have done so. One was written about a week before Knight's arrival, when, though she did not mention his promise coming to Stephen, she had hardly a definite reason in her mind for neglecting to do it. In the next she did casually allure to Knight, but Stephen had left Bombay long before that letter arrived. Stephen looked at the black form of the adjacent house, where it cut a dark polygonal notch out of the sky, and felt that he hated the spot. He did not know many facts of the case, but could not help instinctively associating Elfride's fickleness with the marriage of her father, and their introduction into London's society. He closed the iron gate bound in the shrubbery as noiselessly as he had opened it, and went into the grassy field. Here he could see the old vicarage, the house alone that was associated with the sweetest, pleasant time of his incipient love for Elfride. Turning sadly from the place that was no longer a nook in which his thoughts might nestle when he was far away, he wandered in the direction of the east village, to reach his father's house before they retired to rest. The newest way to the cottage was by crossing the park. He did not hurry. Happiness frequently has reason for haste, but it is seldom that desolation needs scramble or strain. Sometimes he paused under the low-hanging arms of the trees, looking vacantly on the ground. Stephen was standing thus scarcely less crippled and thought than he was blank in vision, when a clear sound permeated the quiet air about him, and spread on far beyond. The sound was a stroke of a bell from the tower of East Endalstow Church, which stood in a dell not forty yards from Lord Luxellian's mansion and within the park enclosure. Another stroke greeted his ear, and gave character to both, then came a slow succession of them. Somebody is dead, he said aloud. The dead knell of an inhabitant of the eastern parish was being told. An unusual feature in the tolling was that it had not begun according to the custom in Endalstow and other parishes in the neighbourhood. At every death the sex and age of the deceased were announced by a system of changes. Three times three strokes signified that a departed one was a man, three times two a woman, twice three a boy, twice two a girl. The regular continuity of the tolling suggested that it was a resumption rather than the beginning of a knell, the opening portion of which Stephen had not been near enough to hear. The momentary anxiety he felt with regard to his parents passed away. He had left them in perfect health, and had any serious illness seized either, a communication would have reached him ere this. At the same time, since his way home were lay under the churchyard use, he resolved to look into the belfry and passing by and speak a word to Martin Canister, who would be there. Stephen reached the brow of the hill and sent an client who renounced his idea. His mood was such that talking to any person to whom he could not unburden himself would be wearisome. However, before he could put any inclination into effect, the young man saw from amid the trees a bright light shining, the rays from which radiated, like needles, through the sad, plumy foliage of the use. Its direction was in the centre of the churchyard. Stephen mechanically went forward. Never could there be greater contrast between two places of like purpose than between this graveyard and that of the further village. Here the grass was carefully tended, and formed virtually a part of the manor-house lawn, flowers and shrubs being planted indiscriminately over both, whilst the few graves visible were mathematically exact in shape and smoothness, appearing in the day-time like chins newly shaven. There was no wall, the division between God's acre and Lord Luxellian's, being marked only by a few square stones set at equidistant points. Among those persons who have romantic sentiments on the subject of their last dwelling-place, probably the greater number would have chosen such a spot as this in preference to any other. A few would have fancied a constraint in its trim-needness, and would have prepared the wild hill-top of the neighbouring site, with nature in our most negligent attire. The light in the churchyard he next discovered was to have its source in a point very near the ground, and Stephen imagined it might come from a lantern in the interior of a party dug grave. But a nearer report showed him that its position was immediately under the wall of the aisle, and within the mouth of an archway. He could now hear voices, and the truth of the whole matter began to dawn upon him. Walking on towards the opening, Smith discerned on his left hand a heap of earth, and before him a flight of stone steps which the removed earth had uncovered, leading down under the elephant's. It was the entrance to a large family vault, extending under the north aisle. Stephen had never before seen it open, and in descending one or two steps, stooped to look under the arch. The vault appeared to be crowded with coffins, with the exception of an open central space, which had been necessarily kept free for ingress and access to the sides, round three of which the coffins were stacked in stone bins or niches. The place was well lighted with candles stuck in slips of wood that were fastened to the walls. On making the descent of another step, the living inhabitants of the vault were recognizable. They were his father, the master Mason, an under-Mason, Martin Canister, and two or three young and old laboring men. Clobbers and workmen's hammers were scattered about. The whole company, sitting round on coffins, which had been removed from their places, apparently for some alteration or enlargement of the vault, were eating bread and cheese, and drinking ale from a cup with two handles, passed round from each to each. Who is dead? Stephen inquired, stepping down. To that last nothing, under earth. All eyes returned to the entrance as Stephen spoke, and the ancient mannered conclave scrutinized them inquiringly. Wait, is our Stephen, said his father, rising from his seat, and still retaining the frothy mug in his left hand, he swung forward his right for a grasp.  Thought you would have come before dark. Go and wait and go home with me. They've all but done for the day, and was going directly. Yes, to Master Steve, he sure enough, glad to see you so soon again, Master Smith, said Martin Canister, chastening the gladness expressed in his words, by a strict neutrality of countenance, in order to harmonize the feeling as much as possible with the solemnity of a family vault.  And who is dead? repeated Stephen. Lady Luxellian, poor gentle woman, as we all shall, said the under mason, I, and we be going to another vault to make room for her. When did she die? Early this morning, his father replied, with an appearance of recurring to a conic thought. Yes, this morning, Martin had been told never since, almost. There, it was expected, she was very limber. I, poor soul, this morning, resumed the under mason, a marvellously old man, whose skin seemed so much too large for his body that it would not stay in position. She must know by his time whether she to go up or down, poor woman. What was her age? Not more than seven or eight and twenty by candle-ly, but lord, by day there was forty if there were an hour. I, night-time or day-time, makes a difference of twenty years to rich females, observed Martin. She was one and thirty, really, said John Smith. I had it from them that know. Not more than that. I looked very bad, poor lady. In fact, you might say she was dead for years before she would own it. As my old father used to say, dead, but wouldn't drop down. I, see, there, poor soul, said a labourer from behind some removed coffins, only but last Valentine's Day of all the world. I was arm and crook with my lord. I said to myself, You be ticketed to churchyard, my noble lady, though you don't dream on it. I suppose my lord will write to all them other lords anointed in the nation, and let him know that she that was is now no more. She's done them past. I see a bundle of letters go off an hour after the death, such wonderful black rims as they letters had. Half an inch wide, at the very least. Too much, observed Martin. In short, it is out with a question that a human being can be so mournful, as black edge is half an inch wide. I'm sure people don't feel more than a very narrow border when they feel most of all. And there are two little girls at a knot, said Stephen. Nice plain little faces left motherless now. They used to come to pass and swan-court to play with Miss Elfride when I were there, said William Worm. Ah, they did so's. The latter sentence was introduced to add the necessary melancholy to a remark, which intrinsically could hardly be made to possess enough for the occasion. Yes, continued Worm. They'd run upstairs, they'd run down, flitting about with her everywhere. Very fond of where they were. Ah, well. Fondering every where of her mother, so to say, there and there, out of the labourer. Well, you see, it is natural. Lady Luxelian stood aloof from him so. So drowsy-like that they couldn't love her in the jolly companion way, children want to like folks. Only last winter I see Miss Elfride talking to Milady and the two children. And Miss Elfride wiped their noses for him so careful. Milady never once seen that I wanted to, and naturally, children take the people as their best friends. Be as twill, the woman is dead and gone, and we must make a place for her, said John. Come, lads, drink up your ale, and we'll just rid this corner, so as to have all clear for beginning at the wall, as soon as tis light tomorrow. Stephen then asked where Lady Luxelian was to lie. Here, said his father, we'll only set back this wall and make a recess, and tis enough for us to do before the funeral. When Milady's mother died, she said, John, the place must be enlarged before Milady can be put in, but I never expect it to be wanted so soon. Better move Lord George first, I suppose, Simeon. He pointed with his foot to a heavy coffin, covered with what had originally been red velvet, the colour of which could only just be distinguished now. Just as he tinked best, Master John, replied the shriveled mason, ah, poor Lord George, he continued, looking contemplatively at the huge coffin. He and I were as bitter enemies once as any could be, when one is a lord and her only immortal man, poor fellow. He clapped his hand upon me shoulder, and cussed me as familial and neighbourly as if he had been a common chap. Aye, I cussed me up hill, and I cussed me down, and then I would rave out again, and the gold clamped with his fine new teak would glisten in the sun, like feathers of brass, while I, being a small man and poor, was feigned to say nothing at all, such a strapping fine gentleman as he was too. Yes, I'd rather lighten sometimes, but once, now and then, when I looked at his towering eye, I tinked in my inside. Well, wait you be, my lord, for our arms to lower under the oil of end so short some day. And was he, inquired the young labourer? He was. He was five hundred weight if he were a pound, what was led, and his oak, and his handles, and his one-ting and other. Here the ancient man slapped his hand upon the cover with a force that caused a rattle among the bones inside. He half broke my back when I took his feet to lowering down the steps there. Ah, said I to John there. Didn't I, John? That ever one man's lorry should be such a weight upon another man. But there, I like my lord, George, sometimes. "'Tis a strange thought,' said another. That while they be all here under one roof, a snow-united family of luxelians, they be really scattered miles away from one another, in the form of good sheep and wicked goats. Isn't it? True, it's a thought to look at. And that one, if he's gone upward, don't know what his ways is doing no more than the man on the moon if she's gone downward. And that someone fortunate one in the hot place is a hollerin' across to a lucky one, up in the clouds, and quite forgettin' their bodies be boxed close together all the time. I tis a thought to look at too, that I can say, "'Hello,' close to fiery lord George, and I can't hear me. And that may be my onion close to dainty lady Jane's nose, and she can't smell me. What do I put other heads one way for?' inquired a young man. "'Because this churchyard law is simple, the law of the living is that a man shall be upright and downright, and the law of the dead is that a man shall be east and west. Every state of society has its laws. We must break the law with a few of these poor souls, however. Come, buckle to it,' said the master Mason. And they set to work anew. The order of internment could be distinctly traced by observing the appearance of the coffins as they lay piled around. And those which had been standing there but a generation or two, the trappings still remained. Those of an earlier period showed bare wood, with a few tattered rags dangling therefrom. Earlier still, the wood lay in fragments on the floor of the niche, and the coffin consisted of naked lead alone. Whilst in the case of the very oldest, even the lead was bulging and cracking in pieces, revealing to the curious eye a heap of dust within. The shields upon many were quite loose and removable by the hand, their lustreless surface still indistinctly exhibiting the name and title of the deceased. Overhead, the grinds and concavities of the arches curved in all directions, dropping low towards the walls, where the height was no more sufficient than to enable a person to stand upright. The body of George the 14th Baron, together with two or three others, all of more recent date than the great bulk of coffins piled there, had, for want of room, been placed at the end of the vault on trestles and not in niches like the others. These it was necessary to remove, to form behind them the chamber in which there were ultimately to be deposited. Stephen, finding the place and proceedings in keeping with the somber colours of his mind, waited there still. Simeon, I suppose you can mind poor Lady Elfride, and how she ran away with the actor. Said John Smith after a while. I think it fell upon the time my father was sexed in here. Let us say, where is she? Here somewhere, returned Simeon looking around him. Well, you've got my arms round a very gentle woman at this moment. He lowered the end of the coffin he was holding, wiped his face, and throwing a morsel of rotten wood upon another as an indicator, continued. That's our husband there. There was as fair a couple as you should see anywhere round about, and a good-hearted pair likewise. Aye, I could mind it though, I was but a child at the time. She fell in love with this young man of hers, and her bands were asked in some church in London, and the old lord, her father, actually heard them, asked three times, and didn't know his name, being gabbled on by a host of others. And when she had married, she told her father, and had fled into a monstrous rage, and said she shouldn't have a farthing. Lady Elfride said she didn't think of wishing it. If he'd forgive her, it was all she asked, and as for a living she was content to play plays with her husband. This frightened the old lord, and had given him a house to live in, and a great garden, and a little field or two, and a carriage, and a good few guineas. Well, the poor thing died at our first gossiping, and our husband, who was as tender-hearted a man as ever to eat meat, and would have died far when wild in his mind, and broke his heart, so it was said. Anyhow, they were buried the same day, mother and father, but the baby lived. Aye, my lord's family made much of that man then, and put him here with his wife, and there in the corner is the man now. The Sunday after there was a funeral sermon, the text was, Are ever the silver core be loosed, or the golden ball be broken?  And what became of the baby? said Stephen, who had frequently heard portions of the story. She was brought up by her grandmother, and at pretty age she were, and she must needs run away with the cure it, Parsons swancourt that is now. Then her grandmother died, and the title and everything went away to another branch of the family altogether. Parsons swancourt wasted a good deal of his wife's money, and she left him, Miss Elfride. That trick of running away seems to be handed down on families like craziness or gout, and they too women be as alike as peas. Which two? Lady Elfride and young Miss that's alive now, the same hair and eyes, but Miss Elfride's mother was darker a good deal. Life's a strange bubble, you see, said William Warren amusingly. For if the law's anointment had descended upon women instead of men, Miss Elfride would be Lord Luxellian, lady or man, but as tears the blood has run out, and she'd known to the Luxellian family my law, whatever she may be by gospel. I used to fancy, said Simeon, when I seeed Miss Elfride a hug on the little ladies hips, that there was a likeness, though I supposed was only my dream, for years must have altered a family shape. And now we'll move these two and home along, interposed John Smith, reviving as became a master the spirit of labour, which had showed unmistakable signs of being nearly vanquished by the spirit of chat. The flag on the veil we don't want, we let Boyd hear it until tomorrow. None of the poor souls will touch it, I believe. So the evening's work was concluded, and the party drew from the abode of the quiet dead, closing the iron door, and shooting the lock loudly into the huge copper staple, and incongruous act of imprisonment towards those who had no dream of escape. End of chapter 26