He had a genuine artistic reason for coming, though no such reason seemed to be required. Six and thirty old seat ends of exquisite 15th century workmanship were rapidly decaying in an aisle of the church, and it became politic to make drawings of their war-meeting contours ere they were battered past recognition in the turmoil of the so-called restoration. He entered the house at sunset, and the world was pleasant again to the two fair-haired ones. A momentary pang of disappointment had nevertheless passed through Elfride when she casually discovered that he had not come that minute post-haste from London, but had reached the neighbourhood the previous evening. Surprise would have accompanied the feeling, had she not remembered that several tourists were haunting the coast at that season, and that Stephen might have chosen to do likewise. They did little besides chat that evening, Mr Swancourt beginning to question his visitor, closely yet paternally and in good part, on his hopes and prospects from the profession he had embraced. Stephen gave vague answers. Next day it rained. In the evening, when twenty-four hours of Elfride had completely rekindled her admirers' ardour, a game of chess was proposed between them. The game had its value in helping on the developments of their future. Elfride assumed that her opponent was but a learner. She next noticed that he had a very odd way of handling the pieces when castling or taking a man. Antiscedently she would have supposed that the same performance must be gone through by all players in the same manner. She was taught by his differing action that all ordinary players, who learned the game by sight, unconsciously, touched the man in a stereotyped way. Disimpression of indescribable oddness in Stephen's touch culminated in speech when she saw him, at taking one of her bishops, push it aside with a taking man instead of lifting it as a preliminary to the move. How strangely you handled the man, Mr Smith. Who do I? I am sorry for that. Oh no, don't be sorry. It's not a matter of great enough a solo. But who taught you to play? Nobody, Miss Swancourt, he said. I learned from a book lent to me by my friend Mr Knight, the noblest man in the world. But you have seen people play. I've never seen the playing of a single game.  I have worked out many games from books and studied the reasons of the different moves, but that's all. This was a full explanation of his mannerism. But the fact that a man with a desire for chess should have grown up without being able to see or engage in a game astonished her not a little. She pondered on the circumstances for some time, looking into vacancy and hindering the play. Mr Swancourt was sitting with his eyes fixed on the board, but apparently thinking of other things. Half to himself, he said, pending the move of El Frida, quite thinnish out Quadme Manet's dipendium. Stephen replied instantly. Affare, you ask, confide, Poana sluam. Excellent, prompt, gratifying, said Mrs Swancourt with feeling, bringing down his hand upon the table and making three pawns and a knight dance over their borders by the shaking. I was musing on those words as applicable to a strange course I am steering, but enough of that.  I also apply the words to myself, said Stephen quietly. You, the last man in the world to do that, I should have thought. Come, murmured El Frida poutingly, and insinuating herself between them. Tell me all about it. Come, construe, construe. Stephen looked steadfastly into her face, and said slowly, and in a voice full of a far-off meaning that seemed quaintly premature in one so young, Quae finis, what will be the end? Ought, or quod stipendium, what fine. Mane me, awaits me. El Thare, speak out. Luan, I will pay. Come, Thaidae, with fate. Eusas, Poenus, the penalty required. The vicar who had listened with a critical compression of the lips to the school by recitation, and by reason of his imperfect hearing, had missed the marked realism of Stephen's tone in the English words. Now, he said, hesitatingly, By the by, Mr. Smith, I know you'll excuse my curiosity, though your translation was unexceptionally correct and close. You have a way of pronouncing your Latin, which to me seems most peculiar. Not that the pronunciation of a dead language is of much importance, yet your accents and quantities have a grotesque sound to my ears. I thought at first that you had acquired a way of breathing the vowels from some of the northern colleges, but it cannot be so with the quantities. What I was going to ask was, if your instructor in the classics could possibly have been an Oxford or Cambridge man. Yes, he was an Oxford man, a fellow of St. Cyprian's. Really? Oh yes, there's no doubt about it. The oddest thing I've ever heard of, said Mr. Swancourt, starting with astonishment, that the pupil of such a man, the best and cleverest man in England, called Stephen enthusiastically, that the pupil of such a man should pronounce Latin in the way you pronounce it, beats all I ever heard. How long did he instruct you? Four years. Four years? It's not so strange when I explain, Stephen hasten to say. It was done in this way, by letter. I sent him exercises and construing twice a week, and twice a week he sent them back to me corrected, with marginal notes of instruction. That's how I learned my Latin and Greek, such as it is. He's not responsible for my scanning. He has never heard me scan a line. A novel case, and a singular instance of patience, cried the vicar. Ah, in his park, not mine. Ah, Henry Knight is one in a thousand. I remember his speaking to me on this very subject of pronunciation. He says that, much to his regret, he sees a time coming when every man will pronounce even the common words of his own tongue as seems right to his own ears, and be taught none the worst for it. That the speaking age is passing away, to make room for the writing age. Both Elfride and her father had waited attentively to hear Stephen go on to what would have been the most interesting part of the story, namely what circumstances could have necessitated such an unusual method of education. But no further explanation was volunteered, and they saw, by the young man's manner of concentrating himself upon the chess board, that he was anxious to drop the subject. The game proceeded. Elfride played by rote, Stephen by thought. It was the cruelest thing to checkmate him after so much labour she considered. What was she dishonest enough to do in her compassion, to let him checkmate her? A second game followed, and being herself absolutely indifferent as to the result, her playing was above the average among women, and she knew it. She allowed him to give checkmate again. A final game, in which she adopted the Muzio gambit as her opening, was terminated by Elfride's victory at the twelfth move. Stephen looked up suspiciously. His heart was throbbing even more excitedly than was hers, which itself had quickened when she seriously set to work on this last occasion. Mr Swancourt had left the room. You have been trifling with me till now, he exclaimed, his face flushing. You did not play your best in the first two games. Elfride's guilt showed in her face. Stephen became the picture of exation and sadness, which, relishable for a moment, caused her the next instant to regret the mistake she had made. Mr Smith, forgive me, she said sweetly. I see now, though I did not at first, that what I have done seems like contempt for your skill. But indeed, I did not mean it in that sense. I could not, upon my conscience, win a victory in those first and second games, over one who fought at such a disadvantage, and so manfully. He drew a long breath, and murmured bitterly, Ah, you are cleverer than I. You can do everything, I can do nothing. Oh, Miss Swancourt, he burst out wildly, his heart swelling in his throat. I must tell you how I love you, all these months of my absence I have worshipped you. He left from his seat like the impulsive lad that he was, stood round to her side, and almost before she suspected it, his arm was round her waist, and the two sets of curls intermingled. So entirely new was full-blown love to Elfride that she trembled as much from the novelty of the emotion as from the emotion itself. Then she suddenly withdrew herself and stood upright, vexed that she had submitted unresistingly, even to this momentary pressure. She resolved to consider this demonstration as premature. You must not begin such things as those, she said with coquettish hoture, of a very transparent nature, and you must not do so again, and papa is coming. Let me kiss you, only a little one, he said with his usual delicacy, and without reading the factitions of her manner. No, not one, only on your cheek. No, for it certainly not. You care for somebody else then, I thought so. I am sure I do not. Nor for me either. How can I tell, she said simply, the simplicity lying merely in the broad outlines of her manner and speech. There were the semitone of voice and half-hidden expression of eyes, which tell the initiated, how very fragile is the ice of reserve at these times. Footsteps were heard, Mr Swancourt then entered the room, and their private calitre-quai ended. Today, after this partial revelation, Mr Swancourt proposed to drive to the cliffs beyond Targon Bay, a distance of three or four miles. Half an hour before the time of departure, a crash was heard in the back yard, and presently William Worm came in, saying partially to the world in general, partially to himself, and slightly to his auditors. I sure, that flying official by the end of William Worm, they've yet again this morning, same as ever, fizz, fizz, fizz. Your head bad again, Worm, said Mr Swancourt. What was that noise we just heard in the yard?  Ah, yes, as I, I feel as if it was my own shea, and though I've done it, and parish pay is my lot if I go from here, but I'd play am as independent as one either in there. Dear me, the shaft was a carriage broken, said Elfride. She was disappointed, Stephen doubly so. The vicar showed more warmth of temper than the accident seemed to demand, much to Stephen's uneasiness, and rather to his surprise. He had not supposed so much latent sternness could coexist with Mr Swancourt's frankness and good nature. You shall not be disappointed, said the vicar at length. It is almost too long a distance for you to walk. Elfride can trot down on her pony, and you shall have my old nag, Smith. Elfride exclaimed triumphantly. You have never seen me on horseback. Oh, you must. She looked at Stephen, and read his thoughts immediately. Ah, you don't ride, Mr Smith. I'm sorry to say I don't. Fancy a man not being able to ride, she said rather perfectly. The vicar came to his rescue. That's common enough. He has had other lessons to learn. Now I recommend this plan. Let Elfride ride on horseback, and you, Mr Smith, walk beside her. The arrangement was welcomed with secret delight by Stephen. It seemed to combine in itself all the advantages of a long, slow ramble with Elfride, without the contingent possibility of the enjoyment being spoiled by her becoming weary. The pony was saddled and brought round. Now, Mr Smith, the lady said, imperatively, coming downstairs, and appearing in a riding habit, as she always did in a change of dress, like a new addition of a delightful volume. You have a task to perform today. These earrings are my very favourite darling ones, but the worst of it is, that they have such short hooks that they are liable to be dropped if I toss my head about much, and when I am riding I can't give my mind to them. It would be doing me night service if you could keep your eyes fixed upon them, and remember them every minute of the day, and tell me directly I drop one. They have had such herbred escapes, haven't they, Unity? She continued to the parlour maid who was standing at the door. Yes, Miss, that they have, said Unity, who round-eyed commiseration. Once it was in the lane that I found one of them, pursued Elfride reflectively, and then it was by the gate to eighteen acres, Unity chimed in, and then it was on the carpet of my own room, rejoined Elfride the merrily, and then it was dangling in the embroidery of your pet goat, Miss, and then it was down your back, Miss, wasn't it?  Stephen took Elfride's slight foot upon his hand. One, two, three, and up, she said. Unfortunately not so. He staggered and lifted, and the horse edged round, and Elfride was ultimately deposited upon the ground, rather more forcibly than was pleasant. Stephen looked all contrition. Never mind, said the vicar encouragingly, try again. It is a little accomplishment that requires some practice, although it looks so easy. Stand closer to the horse's head, Mr. Smith. Indeed, I shanked and try again, she said with a microscopic look of indignation. Worm, come here and help me to mount. Worm stepped forward, and she was in the saddle in a trice. They moved on, going for some distance in silence, the hot air of the valley being occasionally brushed from their faces by a cool breeze which wound its way along the ravines leading up from the sea. I suppose, said Stephen, that a man who can neither sit in the saddle himself, nor help another person into one, seems a useless incumbrance, but Miss Swancourt, I'll learn to do it all for your sake, I will indeed. What is so unusual in you, she said, in a didactic tone, justifiable in a horsewoman's address to a benighted walker, is that your knowledge of certain things should be combined with your ignorance of certain other things. Stephen lifted his eyes earnestly to her. You know, he said, it is simply because there are so many other things to be learned in this wide world, that I didn't trouble myself about that particular bit of knowledge. I thought it would be useless to me, but I don't think so now. I will learn riding and all connected with it, because then you will like me better. Do you like me much less for this? She looked sideways at him with critical meditation, tenderly rendered. Do I seem like Ladelle Damse and Merci, she began suddenly without replying to his question. Fancy yourself saying, Mr. Smith, I sat her on my pacing-steed, and nothing else saw all day long, for sidelong would she bend and sing a fairy song. She found me roots of really sweet, and honey-wild, and manage you. And that's all she did. No-no, said the young man, stilly, and with a rising colour. And sure in language strange she said, I love thee true. Not at all, she rejoined quickly. See how I gallop.  And Elfride started, and Stephen beheld her light-figure contracting to the dimensions of a bird, as she sank into the distance, her hair flowing. He walked on in the same direction, and for a considerable time could see no signs of her returning. Dull as a flower without a sun, he sat down upon a stone, and not for fifteen minutes was any sound of horse or rider to be heard. Then Elfride and pansy appeared on the hill in a round trot.  She turned a horse's head, Stephen arose, and they went on again. Well, what are you to say to me, Mr. Smith, after my long absence? Do you remember a question you could not exactly answer last night, whether I was more to you than anybody else, said he? I cannot exactly answer now, either. Why can't you? Because I don't know if I am more to you than anyone else. Yes indeed you are, he exclaimed in the voice of intense appreciation, at the same time gliding round and looking into her face. Eyes and eyes he murmured playfully, and she blushingly obeyed, looking back into his. And why not lips on lips, he said daringly. No, certainly not. Anybody might look, and it would be the death of me.  He expressed by a look that to kiss a hand through a glove, and that a riding glove, was not a great treat under the circumstances. There, then, I'll take my glove off. Isn't it a pretty white hand? Aye, you don't want to kiss it, and now you shall not. If I do not, may I never kiss again, you severe Elfride. You know I think more of you than I can tell, that you are my queen.  A rapid red again filled her cheeks, and she looked at him meditatively. What a proud moment it was for Elfride, then.  Stephen stealthily pounced upon her hand. No, I won't, I won't, she said intractively, and you shouldn't take me by surprise. There ensued a mild form of tussle for absolute possession of the much coveted hand, in which the boisterousness of a boy and girl was far more prominent than the dignity of a man and woman. Then Pansy became restless. Elfride recovered her position and remembered herself. You make me behave in not a nice way at all, she exclaimed, in a tone neither of pleasure nor anger, but partaking of both. I ought not to have allowed such a rump. We are too old for that sort of thing. Aye, I hope you don't think me too, too much of a creeping round sort of a man. He said in a penitent tone, conscious that he too had lost a little dignity by the proceeding.  Considering the shortness of time we have known each other, Mr. Smith, you take too much upon you. You think I am a country girl, and it doesn't matter how you behave to me. I assure you, Miss Swancourt, that I had no idea of freak in my mind.   Thus she led the way out of the lane and across some fields, in the direction of the cliffs. At the boundary of the fields nearest the sea she expressed a wish to dismount. The horse was tied to a post, and they both followed an irregular path, which ultimately terminated upon a flat ledge, passing round the face of a huge, blue-black rock at a height about midway between the sea and the topmost verge. There, far beneath and before them lay the everlasting stretch of ocean. There, upon detached rocks, were the white screaming gulls, seeming ever intent to settle, and yet always passing on. Right and left ranked the toothed and zigzag line of storm-torn heights, forming the series which culminated in the one beneath their feet. Behind the yute and maiden was a tempting alcove and seat, formed naturally by the beatling mass, and wide enough to admit two or three persons. Elfride sat down, and Stephen sat beside her. I'm afraid it is hardly proper for us to be here either, she said, half inquiringly, who we have not known each other long enough for this kind of thing, have we? Oh yes, he replied judiciously, quite long enough. How do you know? It is not length of time, but the manner in which our minutes beat that makes enough are not enough in our acquaintanceship. Yes, I see that, but I wish Papa suspected her knew what a very new thing I am doing. He does not think of it at all. Daring, Elsie, I wish we could be married. It is wrong for me to say it I know it is before you know more, but I wish we might be all the same. Do you love me deeply, deeply? No, she said in a fluster.  I didn't mean to stop you quite, she faltered with some alarm, and seeing that he still remained silent, she added more anxiously. If you say that again, perhaps I will not be quite so obstinate, if you don't like me to be. Oh, my Elfride, he exclaimed, and kissed her. It was Elfride's first kiss, and so awkward and unused was she, full of striving, no relenting. There was none of those apparent struggles to get out of the trap which only results in getting further in, no final attitude of receptivity, no easy close of shoulder to shoulder, hand upon hand, face upon face, and, in spite of coiness, the lips in the right place at the supreme moment. That graceful, though apparently accidental, falling into position, which many have noticed as precipitating the end and making sweetheart's the sweeter was not there. Why? Because experience was absent. A woman must have had many kisses before she kisses well. In fact, the art of tendering the lips for those amateury salutes follows the principles laid down in treaties on ledger domain for performing the trick called forcing a card. The card is to be shifted nimbly, withdrawn, edged under, and with all not to be offered till the moment the unsuspecting person's hand reaches the pack, this forcing to be done so modestly, and yet so coaxingly, that the person trifled with imagines he is really choosing what is in fact thrust into his hand. Well, there were no such facilities now, and Stephen was conscious of it.  And do you care for me and love me? he said. Yes. Very much. Yes. And I mustn't ask you if you'll wait for me and be my wife some day. Why not? she said naively. There is a reason why, my elf reader. Not anyone that I know of. Suppose there is something connected with me which makes it almost impossible for you to agree to be my wife, or for your father to counter in such an idea. Nothing shall make me cease to love you. No blemish can be found upon your personal nature. It is pure and generous, I know. And having that, how can I be cold to you? And shall nothing else affect us? Shall nothing beyond my nature be a part of my quality in your eyes, elfie? Nothing whatsoever, she said, with a breath of relief. Is that all? Some outside circumstance? What do I care? You can hardly judge, dear, till you know what has to be judged. For that, we will stop till we get home. I believe in you, but I cannot feel bright. Love is new and fresh to us as a Jew, and we are together. As the lovers' worlds go, this is a great deal. Stephen, I fancy I see the difference between you and me. Between men and women generally, perhaps. I am content to build happiness on any accidental basis that may lie in your hand.  Elfried, you sometimes say things which make you seem suddenly to become five years older than you are. Or than I am. And that remark is one. I couldn't think so old as that, try how I might. And no lover has ever kissed you before. Never. I knew that. You were so unused.  And I was told once, by my friend Knight, that that is an excellent fault in a woman. Now come. I must mount again, or we shall not be home by dinnertime. And they returned to where Pansy stood tethered. Instead of entrusting my way to a young man's unstable palm, she continued gaily. I prefer assure her upping stock, as the villagers call it, in the form of a gate. There. Now I am myself again. They proceeded homeward at the same walking pace. Her blitheness once steven out of his thoughtfulness, and each forgot everything but the tone of the moment. What did you love me for? she said, after a long, musing look at a flying bird. I don't know, he replied idly. Oh yes you do, insisted Elfried. Perhaps for your eyes. What of them? Now don't fix me by a light answer. What of my eyes? Oh nothing to be mentioned. They are indifferently good. Come steven, I won't have that. What did you love me for? It might have been your mouth. Well what about my mouth? I thought it was a possible mouth enough. That's not very comforting. With a pretty pout and sweet lips, but actually nothing more than what everybody has.  There's a deer. Now steven, what did you love me for? Perhaps it was for your neck and hair, though I'm not sure. Or for your eyeball blood that did nothing but wander away from your cheeks and back again. But I'm not sure. Or your hands and arms, that they eclipsed all other hands and arms. Or your feet, that they played about under your dress like little mice. Or your tongue, that it was of a dear delicate tone. But I am not altogether sure. Ah, that's pretty to say, but I don't care for your love if it's made a mere flat picture of me in that way. And not being sure and such cold reasoning. But what you felt I was, you know steven.  When you said to yourself, I'll certainly love that young lady. I never said it. When you said to yourself then, I never will love that young lady. I didn't say that either. Then was it, I suppose I must love that young lady? No. But what then? It was much more fluctuating, not so definite. Tell me, do, do. It was that I ought not to think about you if I loved you truly. Ah, that I don't understand. There's no getting it out of you. And I'll not ever ask you any more, never more, to say out of the deep reality of your heart what you loved me for. Sweet tantalizer, what's the use? It comes to this so simple thing, that at one time I had never seen you and I didn't love you. And then I saw you and I did love you. Is that enough? Yes, I will make it do. I know I think what I love you for. You were nice looking of course, but I didn't mean for that. It's because you were so docile and gentle. And those are not quite the correct qualities for a man to be loved for, said Stephen, and rather a dissatisfied tone of self-criticism. Well, never mind. I must ask your father to allow us to be engaged directly when we get indoors. It would be for a long time. I like it the better, Stephen. Don't mention it till tomorrow. Why? Because if he should object, I don't think he will, but if he should, we should have a day longer of happiness from our ignorance. Well, what are you thinking of so deeply? I was thinking how my dear friend Knight would enjoy this scene. I wish he could come here.  He must be an interesting man to take up so much of your attention. Interesting, said Stephen, his face glowing with his fervour. Noble you ought to say. Oh yes, yes, I forgot, she said, satirically, the noblest man in England, as you told us last night. He's a fine fellow, laugh as you will, Miss Elfride. I know he's your hero, but what does he do, anything? He writes. What does he write? I have never heard his name. Because his personality, and that of several others like him, is absorbed into a huge wee, namely, the impalpable entity called a present, a social and literary review. Is he only a reviewer? Only, Elfie, why, I can tell you, it's a fine thing to be on the staff of the present, find it in being a novelist considerably. That's a hit at me, and my poor court of Kellyan Castle. No, Elfie, he whispered, I didn't mean that.  He writes things of a higher class than reviews, though he reviews a book occasionally. His ordinary productions are social and ethical essays, all that the present contains, which is not literary reviewing. I admit he must be talented if he writes for the present. We have it sent to us irregularly. I want Papa to be a subscriber, but he's so conservative. Now the next point in this, Mr Knight, I suppose he's a very good man. An excellent man. I shall try to be his intimate friend some day. But aren't you now? No, not so much as that, replied Stephen, as if such a supposition were extravagant. You see, it was in this way. He came originally from the same place as I, and taught me things. But I am not quite intimate with him. Shant I be glad when I get richer and better known, and hauled and not with him? Stephen's eyes sparkled. A pout began to shape itself upon a freed of soft lips. You always think of him, and like him better than you do me. No indeed, Elfride. The feeling is quite different, but I do like him, and he deserves even more affection from me than I give. You are not nice now, and you make me as jealous as possible, she exclaimed perversely. I know you will never speak to any third person of me so warmly as you do to me of him. But you don't understand, Elfride, he said, with an anxious movement. You shall know him some day. He's so brilliant. No, it isn't exactly brilliant. So thoughtful, and nor does thoughtful express him, that it would charm you to talk to him. He's a most desirable friend, and that isn't half, I could say. I don't care how good he is, I don't want to know him, because he comes between you and me.  No, dear Elfride, I love you dearly.  Stephen, suppose that I and this man, Knight of yours, were both drowning, and you could only save one of us.  Well, which? Not me. Both of you, he said, pressing her penchant hand. No, that won't do, only one of us. I cannot say, I don't know. It is disagreeable, quite a hard idea to have to handle. Aha, I know, you would save him and let me drown, drown, drown, and I don't care about your love. She had endeavored to give a playful tone to her words, but the latter speech was rather forced in its gaiting. At this point in the discussion, she trotted off to turn a corner, which was avoided by the footpath, and the road and the path reunited, at a point a little further on. On again making her appearance, she continually managed to look in the direction away from him, and left him in the cool shade of her displeasure. Stephen was soon beaten at this game of indifference, and went round and entered the range of her vision. Are you offended, Elfie? Why don't you talk? Save me, then, and let that Mr. Pleaver of yours drown. I hate him. Now, which would you? Really, Elfride, you should not press such a hard question.  Then I won't be alone with you any more, unkind to whom we so. She laughed at her own absurdity, but persisted. Come, Elfie, let's make it up and be friends. Say you would save me, then, and let him drown. I would save you, and him too. And let him drown. Come, or you don't love me, she teasingly went on. And let him drown. He ejaculated, despairingly. There, now I am yours, she said, and a woman's flush of triumph bit her eyes. Only one earing miss as I'm alive, said Unity, under entering the hall.  There, she exclaimed to Stephen, looking at him when I was full of reproach. I quite forgot, indeed, if I had only remembered. He answered, with a conscience-stricken face. She wheeled herself round, and turned into this rubbery. Stephen followed. If you had told me to watch anything, Stephen, I should have religiously done it. She capriciously went on, as soon as she heard him behind her. Forgetting is forgivable. Well, you will find it, if you want me to respect you, and to be engaged to you when we have asked Papa. She considered a moment, and added more seriously. I know now where I dropped it, Stephen. It was on the cliff. I remember a faint sensation of some change about me. But I was too absent to think of it then. And that's where it is now, and you must go and look there. I'd go at once. He strode away up the valley, under a broiling sun, and amid the death-like silence of early afternoon. He ascended with giddy-paced haste, the windy range of rocks, to where they had sat, felt and peered about the stones and crannies. But Elfride's stray jewel was nowhere to be seen. Next, Stephen slowly retraced his steps, and pausing at a crossroads to reflect a while, he left the plateau, and struck downwards across some fields, in the direction of Enderlstow House. He walked along the path by the river, without a slightest hesitation as to its bearing, apparently quite familiar with every inch of the ground. As the shadows began to lengthen and the sunlight to meadow, he passed through two wicked gates, and drew near the outskirts of Enderlstow Park. The river now ran along under the park fence, previous to entering the grove itself a little further on. Here stood a cottage, between the fence and the stream, on a slightly elevated spot of ground, round which the river took a turn. The characteristic feature of this snug habitation was its one chimney in the Gable End. Its squareness of form disguised by a huge cloak of ivy, which had grown so luxuriously and extended so far from its base as to increase the apparent bulk of the chimney to the dimensions of a tower. Some little distance from the back of the house rose the park boundary, and over this were to be seen the sycamores of the grove, making slow inclinations to the just awakening air. Stephen crossed a little wood bridge in front, went up to the cottage door and opened it without a knock or signal of any kind. Exclamations of welcome burst from some person or persons when the door was thrust ajar, followed by the scrape of chairs on a stone floor, as if pushed back by their occupiers in rising from a table. The door was closed again, and nothing now could be heard from within save a lively chatter and the rattle of plates. End of Chapter 7 A Pair of Blue Eyes Chapter 8 This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information on the volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Tyge Hines A Pair of Blue Eyes by Thomas Hardy Chapter 8 Alan Adeil is no baron or lord. The mists were creeping out of pools and swamps for their pilgrimages of the night, when Stephen came up to the front door of the vicarage. Elfrid was standing on the step, illuminated by a lemon-hued expanse of western sky. You never have been all this time looking for that earring, she said anxiously. Oh, no, and I have not found it. Never mind, though I am much vexed, they are my prettiest, but Stephen, whatever have you been doing, and where have you been? I've been so uneasy. I feared for you not knowing an inch of the country. I thought, suppose he has fallen over the cliff, but now I am inclined to scold you for frightening me so. I must speak to your father now, he said rather abruptly.  Will what you have to say endanger this nice time of ours, and is it that same shadowy secret you allude to so frequently, and will it make me unhappy? Possibly. She breathed heavily and looked round as if for a prompter. Put it off till to-morrow, she said. He involuntarily sighed, too. No, it must come to-night. Where is your father, Elfride? Somewhere in the kitchen garden, I think, she replied. That is his favourite evening retreat. I will leave you now. Say all that's to be said, and do all that's to be done. Think of me waiting anxiously for the end. And she re-entered the house. She waited in the drawing-room, watching the light sink to shadows, the shadows sink to darkness, until her impatience to know what had occurred in the garden could no longer be controlled. She passed round the shrubbery, unlatched the garden-door, and skimmed with her keen eyes the whole twilighted space that the four walls enclosed and sheltered. They were not there. She mounted a little ladder, which had been used for gathering fruit, and looked over the wall into the field. This field extended to the limits of the Gleeb, which was enclosed on that side by a privet hedge. Under the hedge was Mr. Swancourt walking up and down and talking aloud to himself, as it sounded at first. No, another voice shouted occasional replies, and this interlocutor seemed to be on the other side of the hedge. The voice, though soft in quality, was not Stevens. The second speaker must have been in the long-neglected garden of an old manor-house hard by, which, together with a small estate attached, had lately been purchased by a person named Troyton, whom Elfride had never seen. Her father might have struck up an acquaintancehip with some member of that family through the privet hedge, or a stranger to the neighbourhood might have wandered dither. Well, there was no necessity for disturbing him. And it seemed that, after all, Stevens had not yet made his desired communication to her father. Again she went indoors, wondering where Stevens could be. For want of something better to do, she went upstairs to her own little room. Here she sat down at the opened window, and, leaning with her elbow on the table and her cheek upon her hand, she fell into meditation. It was a hot and still August night. Every disturbance of the silence which rose to the dignity of a noise could be heard for miles, and the nearest sound for a long distance. So she remained, thinking of Stevens, and wishing that he had not a private of his company to no purpose, as it appeared. How delicate and sensitive he was, she reflected, and yet he was man enough to have a private mystery which considerably elevated him in her eyes. Thus, looking at things with an inward vision, she lost consciousness of the flight of time. Strange conjunctions of circumstances, particularly those of a trivial, everyday kind, are so frequent in an ordinary life that we grow used to their unaccountableness, and forget to question whether the very long odds against such juxtaposition is not almost a disproof of it being a matter of chance at all. What occurred to Elfride at this moment was a case in point. She was vividly imagining for the twentieth time the kiss of the morning, and putting her lips together in the position another such one would demand, when she heard the identical operation performed on the lawn immediately beneath her window. A kiss, not of the quiet and stealthy kind, but the size of, loud and smart. Her face flushed and she looked out, but to no purpose. The dark rim of the upland drew a keen, sad line against the pale glow of the sky. Unbroken, except where a young cedar on the lawn that had outgrown its fellow trees, shot its pointed head across the horizon, piercing the firmamental duster like a sting. It was just possible that had any persons been standing on the grassy portions of the lawn, Elfride might have seen their dusky forms. But the shrubs, which once had merely dotted the lad, had now grown bushy and large, till they heard at least half the enclosure containing them. The kissing pair might have been behind some of these, and anyway nobody was in sight. Had no enigma ever been connected with her lover by his hints and absences, Elfride would never have thought of admitting into her mind a suspicion that he might be concerned in the foregoing enactment. But the reservations he had present insisted on, while they added to the mystery without which perhaps she would never have seriously loved them at all, were calculated to nourish doubts of all kind, and with a slow flush of jealousy, she asked herself, might he not be the culprit? Elfride glided downstairs on tiptoe and out to the precise spot on which she had parted from Stephen to enable him to speak privately to her father. Thence she wandered into all the nooks around the place, from which the sound seemed to proceed. Among the huge loristines, about the tufts of pompous grass, amid the variegated hollies, under the weeping witch-elm, nobody was there. Returning indoors she called, Unity.  I didn't know you were indoors, papa, she said with surprise. Surely no light was shining from the window when I was on the lawn. She looked and saw that the shutters were still open. Oh, yes, I'm in, he said it differently. Well, what did you want Unity for? I think she laid supper before she went out. Did she? I have not been to say. I didn't want her for that. Elfride scarcely knew, now that a definite reason was required, what that reason was. Her mind, for a moment, strayed to another subject, unimportant as it seemed. The red ember of the match was lying inside the fender, which explained that why she had seen no rays from the window was because the candles had only just been lighted. I'll come directly, said the vicar. I thought you were out somewhere with Mr Smith. Even the inexperienced Elfride could not help thinking that her father must be wonderfully blind if he failed to perceive what was the nascent consequence of herself and Stephen being so unceremoniously left together. Wonderfully careless, if he saw it and did not think about it, and wonderfully good, if, as seemed to her by far the most probable supposition, he saw it and thought about it and approved of it. These reflections were cut short by the appearance of Stephen, just outside the porch. Silvered about the head and shoulders with touches of moonlight that had begun to creep through the trees.  She asked abruptly, almost passionately. Kiss on a lawn? Yes, she said imperiously now. I didn't comprehend your meaning, nor do I now exactly. I certainly have kissed nobody on the lawn if that dreamy what you want to know, Elfride. You know nothing about such a performance? Nothing, whatever. What makes you ask? Don't press me to tell. It's nothing of importance. And Stephen, you have not spoken yet to papa about her engagement. No, he said regretfully. I could not find him directly. And then I went on thinking so much of what you said about objections, refusals, bitter words, possibly ending our happiness, that I resolved to put it off till tomorrow. That gives us one more day of delight. Delight of a tremulous kind. Yes, but it would bring him proper to be silent too long, I think, she said in a delicate voice, which implied that her face had grown worn. I want him to know we love Stephen. Why did you adopt it to your own, my thought of the day? I will explain, but I want to tell you of my secret first. To tell you now. It's two or three hours yet to bedtime. Let us walk up the hill to the church. Elfride passively ascended, and they went from the lawn by a side wicket, and ascended into the open expanse of moonlight, which streamed round the lonely edifice on the summit of the hill. The door was locked. They turned from the porch and walked hand in hand to find a resting place in the church yard. Stephen chose a flat tomb, showing itself to be newer and whiter than those around it, and sitting down himself gently drew her hands towards them. No, not there, she said. Why not here? A mere fancy, but never mind, and she sat down. Elfride, when you doubt me in spite of everything that may be said against me. Oh, Stephen, what makes you repeat that so continually and so sadly? You know I will. Yes indeed, she said, drawing closer. Whatever may be said of you, and nothing bad can be. I will cling to you just the same.  Did you ever think what my parents might be, or what society I originally moved in? No, not particularly. I have observed one or two little points in your manners, which I rather quaint. No more. I suppose you have moved in the ordinary society of professional people. Supposing I had not, that none of my family have a profession except me. I don't mind. What you are only concerns me. Where do you think I went to school? I mean, to what kind of school? Doctor, somebody's academy, she said simply. No, to a Dame school originally, and then to a national school. Only to those? Well, I love you just as much, Stephen, dear Stephen. She murmured tenderly. I do indeed. And why she did tell me these things so impressively? What do they matter to me? He held her closer and proceeded. What do you think my father is? Does for a living that is to say. He practices some professional calling, I suppose. No, he's a mason. A freemason. No, a cottager and journeyman mason. Elfriedus said nothing at first. After a while she whispered. It's a strange idea to me. But never mind. Well, what does it matter?  No, not at all. Is your mother alive? Yes. Is she a nice lady? Very, the best mother in the world. Her people had been well to do yeomen for centuries, but she was only a dairymaid. Oh, Stephen came from her in a whispered exclamation. She continued to attend the dairy long after my father married her, pursued Stephen, without further hesitation. And I remember very well how, when I was very young, I used to go to the milking, look on at the skimming, and sleep through the journey, and make believe that I helped her. That was a happy time enough. No, never, not happy. Oh, yes, it was. I don't see how happiness could be where the drudgery or dairy work had to be done for a living, the hands red and chapped, and the shoes clogged Stephen. I do own that it seems odd to regard you in the light of having been so rough in your youth, and unmeanial things of that kind. Stephen withdrew an inch or two from her side. But I do love you really just the same, she continued, getting closer under her shoulder again. And I don't care anything about the past. And I see that you were all the worthier for having pushed on in the world in such a way. It's not my worthiness, it's Knight's who pushed me. Ah, always he, always he. Yes, and properly so, now I feel that you see the reason for his teaching me by letter. I knew him years before he went to Oxford, but I had not got far enough on in my reading for him to entertain the idea of helping me in classics till he left home. Then I was sent away from the village, and we very seldom met. But he kept up his system of tuition by correspondence with the greatest regularity. I'll tell you all the story, but not now. There's nothing more to say now besides giving places, persons, and dates. His voice became timidly slow at this point. No, don't take trouble to say more. You are a dear, honest fellow to say as much as you have, and it is not so dreadful either.  That sort of origin is getting so respected, she continued cheerfully, that it is acquiring some of the order of norm and ancestry. Ah, if I had made my fortune I shouldn't mind, but I'm only a possible maker of it as yet. That is quite enough, and so this is what your trouble was. I thought I was doing wrong in letting you love me without telling you my story, and yet I feared to do so. I dreaded to lose you, and I was cowardly on that account. How plain everything about you seems after this explanation, your peculiarities and plain chess, the pronunciation Pappan orders in your Latin, your odd mixture of book knowledge, with ignorance of ordinary social accomplishments, and accounted for in a moment. And has this anything to do with what I saw at Lord Los Aliens? Well, what did you see? I saw the shadow of yourself putting a cloak round the lady. I was at the side door, and you two were in a room with the window towards me. You came to me a moment later. She was my mother. Your mother, there! She withdrew herself to look at him silently in her interest. Elfride, said Stephen, I was going to tell you to remain there tomorrow. I've been keeping it back, but I must tell it now after all. The remainder of my revelation refers to where my parents are. Where do you think they live? You know them by sight at any rate. I know them, she said, in suspended amazement. Yes, my father is John Smith, Lord Los Aliens' master mason, who lives under the park wall by the river. Oh, Stephen, can it be? He built or assisted at the building of the house you live in years ago. He put up those two gate-peers at the large entrance to Lord Los Aliens' park. My grandfather planted the trees that belt in your lawn. My grandmother, who worked in the fields with him, held each tree upright whilst he filled in the air. They told me so when I was a child. He was sextant, too, and dug many of the graves around us. And was your unaccountable vanishing on the first morning of your arrival, and again this afternoon, run to see your father and mother? Oh, I understand now. No wonder you seem to know your way about the village. And no wonder. But remember, I had not lived here since I was nine years old. I then went to live with my uncle, a blacksmith near Exembury, in order to be able to attend a national school as a day scholar. There was none on this remote coast, then. It was there I met my friend Knight, and when I was fifteen, and had been fairly educated by the schoolmaster, and more particularly by Knight, I was put as a pupil in an architect's office in that town, because I was skillful in the use of a pencil. A full premium was paid by the efforts of my mother and father, rather against the wishes of Lord Luxelion, who likes my father, however, and thinks a great deal of him. There I stayed till six months ago, when I obtained the situation as a prover, as it is called, in a London office. Well, that's all of me. To think you, the London visitor and townman, should have been born here, and to have known this village so many years before I did. How strange. How very strange it seems to me, she murmured.  And your papa said to her, I'm glad to see you so regular at church, Jane. I remember it, but I've never spoken to her. We've only been here eighteen months, and the parish is so large. Contrast with this, said Stephen, with a miserable laugh. Your father's belief in my blue blood, which is still prevalent in his mind. The first night I came, he insisted upon proving my descent from one of the most ancient West County families, on account of my second Christian name, when the truth is, it was given me because my grandfather was assistant garner in the Fitzmore and Smiths family for thirty years. Having seen your face, my darling, I had not the heart to contradict him, and tell him what would have cut me off from a friendly knowledge of you. She sighed deeply. Yes, I've seen how this inequality may be made to trouble us, she murmured, and continued in a low, sad whisper. I wouldn't have minded if they had lived far away. Papa might have consented to an engagement between us if your connection had been with villagers a hundred miles off, remoteness softens family contrasts. But he will not like, oh Stephen, Stephen, what can I do? Do, he said tentatively, yet with heaviness. Give me up. Let me go back to London and think no more of me. No, no, I cannot give you up. This hopelessness in our affairs makes me care more for you. I see what did not strike me at first. Stephen, why do we trouble? Well, why should Papa object? An architect in London is an architect in London. Who inquires there? Nobody. We shall live there, shall we not? Why need we be so alarmed? And Elfie, said Stephen, his hopes kindling with hers. Nighting's nothing of my being only a cottager's son. He says I am as worthy of his friendship as if I were a Lord's.  Am I not, Elfie? Not only have I never loved anybody but you, she said, instead of giving an answer. But I have not even formed a strong friendship, such as you have with Knight. I wish you hadn't. It diminishes me. Now, Elfie, you know better, he said, wooing me. And had you really never any sweetheart at all? None that was ever recognised by me as such. But did nobody ever love you? Yes, a man did once, very much, he said. How long ago? Oh, a long time. How long, dearest? A twelve-month. That's not very long, rather disappointingly. I said long, not very long. And did he want to marry you? I believe he did, but I didn't see anything in him. He was not good enough, even if I had loved him. May I ask what he was? A farmer. A farmer, not good enough. How much better than my family, Stephen murmured. Where is he now, he continued well, Frida? Here. Here, what do you mean by that? I mean that he is here. Where here? Under us. He is under this tomb. He is dead, and we are sitting on his grave. Elfie, said the young man, standing up and looking at the tomb. How odd and sad that revelation seems. It quite depresses me for the moment. Stephen, I didn't wish to sit here, but you would do so. You never encouraged them. Never, by luck, word or sign, she said solemnly. He died of consumption, and was buried on the day you first came. Let us go away. I don't like standing by him, even if you never loved him. He was before me. Worries make you unreasonable, she hath pouted, following Stephen at the distance of a few steps. Perhaps I ought to have told you before we sat down. Yes, let us go. End of chapter 8. A pair of blue eyes, chapter 9. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Tyge Hines. A pair of blue eyes, by Thomas Hardy, chapter 9. Her father did fume. Oppressed in spite of themselves by a foresight of impending complications, Elfride and Stephen returned down the hill hand in hand. At the door they paused wistfully like children late at school. Women accept their destiny more readily than men. Elfride had now resigned herself to the overwhelming idea of her lover's sorry antecedents. Stephen had not forgotten the trifling grievance that Elfride had known earlier admiration than his own. What was that young man's name? He inquired. Felix Jethway, a widow's only son. I remember the family. She hates me now. She says I killed him. Stephen mused, and they entered the porch. Stephen, I love only you, she tremulously whispered. He pressed her fingers, and a trifling shadow passed away, to admit again the mutual and more tangible trouble. The study appeared to be the only room lighted up. They entered, each with the demeanor intended to conceal the impending to conceal the inconceivable fact that reciprocal love was their dominant chord. Elfride perceived the man, sitting with his back towards herself, talking to her father. She would have retired, but Mr. Swancott had seen her. Come in, he said. It's only Martin Canister come for a copy of the register for poor Mrs. Jethway. Martin Canister, the sexton, was rather a favourite with Elfride. He used to absorb her attention by telling her of his strange experiences in digging up after long years the bodies of persons he had known, and recognising them by some little sign, though in reality he had never recognised any. He had shrewd, small eyes, and a great wealth of double chin, which compensated in some measure for considerable poverty of nose. The appearance of a slip of paper in Canister's hand, and a few shillings lying on the table in front of him, denoted that the business had been transacted, and the tenor of their conversation went to show that a summary of village news was now engaging the attention of parishioner and parson. Mr. Canister stood up and touched his forehead over his eye with his finger, in respectful salutation of Elfride, gave half as much salute to Stephen, whom he, in common with other villagers, had never for a moment recognised, then sat down again and resumed his discourse. Where had I got to, sir? To driving the pile, said Mr. Swancourt. The pile was. So, as I was saying, that was driving the pile in this manner, as I might say. Here Mr. Canister held his walking stick scrupulously vertical with his left hand, and struck a blow with great force on the knob of the stick with his right. John was steady in the pile so, as I might say. Here he gave the stick a slight shake, and looked firmly in the various eyes around, to see that before proceeding further his listeners well grasped the subject of that stage. Well, when that had struck some half dozen blows more upon the pile, had stopped for a second or two. John, tinking that he had done striking, put his hand upon the top of the pile, to give him a pull, and see if it were firm in the ground. Mr. Canister spread his hand over the top of the stick, completely covering it with his palm. Well, so to speak, that hadn't meant to stop striking, and when John had put his hand upon the pile, the beetle, oh dreadful, said Elfride. The beetle was already coming down, you see, sir. That just cost sight of his hand, but couldn't stop the blowing time. Down came the beetle upon poor John Smith's hand, and squashed into a pummy. Dear me, dear me, poor fellow! said the vicar, with an intonation like the groans of the wounded, in a pianoforte performance of the Battle of Prague. John Smith, the master mason, cried Stephen hurriedly. All right, no other, and a better-outed man got him what he never made. Is he so much hurt? I have heard, said Mr. Swancourt, not noticing Stephen, and that he has a son in London, a very promising young fellow. Oh, how he must be hurt, repeated Stephen. The beetle couldn't hurt very little. Well, sir, good night ye, and to you, sir, and you, Miss, I'm sure. Mr. Canister had been making unnoticeable motions of withdrawal, and by the time this farewell remark came from his lips, he was just outside the door of the room. He tramped along the hall, stayed more than a minute endeavouring to close the door properly, and then was lost to their hearing. Stephen had meanwhile turned and said to the vicar, please excuse me this evening, I must leave. John Smith is my father. The vicar did not comprehend at first. Oh, that did you say? he inquired. John Smith is my father, said Stephen deliberately. A surplus tinge of redness rose from Mr. Swancourt's neck, and came round over his face. The lines of his features became more firmly defined, and his lips seemed to get thinner. It was evident that a series of little circumstances, hitherto unheeded, were now fitting themselves together, and forming a lucid picture in Mr. Swancourt's mind in such a manner as to render useless further explanation on Stephen's part. Indeed, said the vicar, in a voice dry and without inflection. This being a word which depends entirely upon its tone for its meaning, Mr. Swancourt's annunciation was equivalent to no expression at all. I have to go now, said Stephen, with an agitated bearing, and a movement as if he scarcely knew whether he ought to run off or stay longer. On my return, sir, would you gladly grant me a few minutes' private conversation? And certainly, though antecedently it doesn't seem possible that there can be anything of the nature of private business between us, Mr. Swancourt put on his straw hat, crossed the drawing-room into which the moonlight was shining, and stepped out of the French window into the veranda. It required no further effort to perceive what, indeed, reasoning might have foretold as the natural colour of a mind whose pleasures were taken amid genealogies, good dinners, and patrician reminiscences, that Mr. Swancourt's prejudices were too strong for his generosity, and that Stephen's moments as his friend and equal were numbered, or had even now ceased. Stephen moved forward as if he would follow the vicar, then as if he would not, and in absolute perplexity with her to turn himself went awkwardly to the door, as Frida followed lingeringly behind him. Before he had receded two yards from the doorstep, Unity and Anne, the housemaid, came home from their visit to the village. Have you heard anything about John Smith? The accident is not so bad as was reported, said Elfrida intuitively. Oh, no, the doctor says there's only a bad bruise. I thought so, cried Elfrida gladly. He says that though not believes he did not check the beetle as it came down, he must have done so without knowing it, checked it very considerably too, for the full blow would have knocked his hand abroad, and in reality it's only made black and blue like. Oh, how thankful I am, said Stephen. The perplexed Unity looked at him with her mouth rather than with her eyes. That will do, Unity, said Elfrida magisterially, and the two maids passed on. Elfrida, do you forgive me, said Stephen with a faint smile. No man is fair in love, and he took her fingers lightly in his own. With her head thrown sideways in the grue's attitude, she looked a tender approach at his doubt and pressed his hand. Stephen returned the pressure threefold, then hastily went off to his father's cottage by the wall of Endlstow Park. Elfrida, what have you to say to this, inquired her father coming up immediately, Stephen had retired. With feminine quickness she grasped at any straw that would enable her to plead his cause. He had told me of it, she faltered, so that it is not a discovery in spite of him. He was just coming in to tell you. Coming to tell? Why hadn't he told already? I object as much, if not more, to his underhand concealment of this, than I do to the fact itself. It looks very much like he's making a fool of me, and of you too. You and he have been about together and corresponding together. In a way I don't at all approve of, in a most unseemly way. You should have known how improper such conduct is. A woman can't be too careful not to be seen alone when I don't know whom. You saw us, papa, and have never said a word. Ah, my fault, of course. My fault. What the deuce could I be thinking of? He, a villager's son, and we, swan-courts, connections of the Luxellians. We have been coming to nothing for centuries, and now I believe we have got there. What shall I next invite here, I wonder? Elfrida began to cry at this very unpropitious aspect of affairs. Oh, papa, papa, forgive me and him. We care so much for one another, papa. Oh, so much. And what he was going to ask you is, if you will allow an engagement between us till he is a gentleman as good as you. We are not in a hurry, dear papa. We don't want in the least to marry now, not until he is richer. Only will you let us be engaged, because I love him so, and he loves me. Hey. Mr. Swan-courts' feelings were a little touched by this appeal, and he was annoyed that such should be the case. Certainly not, he replied. He pronounced the inhibition lengthily and sonnously, so that the not sounded like not. No, no, no, don't say it. Oh, a fine story. It is not good enough that I have been deluded and disgraced by having him here, the son of one of my village peasants, but now I want to make him my son-in-law. Heaven's above us, are you mad, Elfride? You have seen his letters come to me ever since his first visit, papa, and you knew they were a sort of love letters, and since he has been here you have let him be alone with me almost entirely, and you guessed, you must have guessed, what we were thinking of and doing, and you didn't stop him. Next to love-making comes love-winning, and you knew it would come to that, papa. The vicar parry this common sense thrust. I know, since you pressed me so, I know I did get some childish attachment might arise between you. I own I did not take much trouble to prevent it, but I have not particularly countenanced it. And, Elfride, how can you expect that I should now? It is impossible. No father in England would hear of such a thing. But he is the same man, papa, the same in every particular, and how can he be less fit for me than he was before? He appeared a young man with well-to-do friends, and a little property, but, having neither, he is another man. You inquired nothing about him. I went by Hume's introduction. He should have told me. So should the young man himself. Of course he should. I consider it a most dishonourable thing to come into a man's house like a treacherous I don't know what. But he was afraid to tell you, and so should I have been. He loved me too well to like to run the risk, and that's his speaking of his friends on his first visit. I don't see why he should have done so at all. He came here on business. It was no affair of ours who his parents were. And then he knew that if he told you he would never be asked here, and would perhaps never see me again. And he wanted to see me. Who can blame him for trying, by any means, to stay near me, the girl he loves? All is fair in love. I have heard you say so yourself, papa, and you yourself would have done just as he has. So would any man. And any man, on discovering what I have discovered, would also do as I do, and then my mistake. That is, get shot of him again, as soon as the laws of hospitality will allow. But Mrs. Swancourt then remembered that he was a Christian. I would not for the world seem to turn him out of doors, he added. But I think he will have the tact to see that he cannot stay long after this, with good taste. He will, because he is a gentleman. See how graceful his manners are. Elfrida went on, though perhaps Stephen's manners, like the feats of Urielis, owe their attractiveness in her eyes, rather to the attractiveness of his person than to their own excellence. Ah, anybody can be what you call graceful, if he lives a little time in a city and keeps his eyes open, and he might have picked up his gentleness by going to the galleries of theatres, and watching stage drawing-room manners. He reminds me of one of the worst stories I ever heard in my life. What story was that? Oh, no, thank you. I wouldn't tell you such an improper matter for the world. If his father and mother had lived in the north or east of England, gallantly persisted Elfrida, though her sobs began to interrupt her articulation, anywhere but here you would have only regarded him and not them. His station would have been what his profession makes it, and not fixed by his father's humble position at all, whom he never lives with now. Though John Smith had saved lots of money, and is better off than we are, they say, or he couldn't have put a son to such an expensive profession, and it is clever and honourable of Stephen to be the best of his family. Yes, let a beast be Lord of Beasts, and his crib shall stand at the king's mess. You insult me, papa! she burst out.  That may or may not be true, Elfrida, returned her father again, uncomfortably agitated in spite of himself. You confuse future probabilities with present facts, what the young man may be with what he is. We must look at what he is, not at what an improbable degree of success in his profession may make him. The case is this, the son of a working man in my parish, who may or may not be able to buy me up, a youth who has not yet advanced so far in life as to have any income of his own deserving the name, and therefore of his father's degree as regards station, wants to be engaged to you. His family are living in precisely the same spot in England as yours, so throughout this country, which is the world to us, you would always be known as the wife of Jack Smith, the Mason's son, and not under any circumstances as the wife of a London professional man. It is a drawback, not the compensating fact that is always talked of. There, say no more, you may argue all night and prove what you will, I'll stick to my words. Elfrida looked silently and hopelessly out of the window with large, heavy eyes and wet cheeks. I call it great humility, and long to call it audacity, in Hubey, resumed her father. I never heard such a thing, giving such a hobbly, high native of this place such an introduction to me as he did. Naturally you were deceived as well as I was. I don't blame you at all so far. He went and searched for Mr. Hubey's original letter. Here's what he said to me. Dear sir, and agreeable to your request of the 18th Incident I have arranged to survey and make drawings, et cetera. My assistant, Mr. Stephen Smith. Assistant, you see he called him, and naturally I understood him to mean a sort of partner. Why didn't he say clerk? They never call them clerks in that profession because they do not write. Stephen, Mr. Smith, told me so, so that Mr. Hubey simply used the accepted word. Let me speak please, Elfrida. My assistant, Mr. Stephen Smith, will leave London by the early train tomorrow morning. Many thanks for your proposal to accommodate him. You may put every confidence in him, and may rely upon his discernment in the matter of church architecture. Well, I repeat that Hubey ought to be ashamed of himself for making so much of a poor lad of that sort. Professional men in London, Elfrida argued, don't know anything about their clerks' fathers and mothers. They have assistants who come to their offices and shops for years, and hardly even know where they live. What they can do, what profits they can bring to the firm, that's all London men care about. And that is helped in him by his faculty of being uniformly pleasant. Uniform pleasantness is rather an effect than a faculty. It shows that a man hasn't sense enough to know whom to despise. It shows he acts by faith and not by sight, as those you claim succession from directed. And that's some more of what he's been telling you, I suppose. Yes, I was inclined to suspect him, because he didn't care about sources of any kind. I always did doubt a man's being a gentleman, if his palate had no acquired tastes. An unedified pallet is the irrepressible cloven foot of the upstart, the idea of my bringing out my bottle of forty martiness. Only eleven of them left now, to a man who didn't know it from eighteen penny. Then the Latin line he gave to my quotation, it was very cut and dried, very, or I, you haven't looked at a classical author for the last eighteen years, shouldn't have remembered it. Well, Elfrida, you had better go to your room. You'll get over this bit of tomfoolery in time. No, no, no, papa, she moaned. Far of all the miseries attaching to miserable love, the worst is the misery of thinking that the passion which is the cause of them all may cease. Elfrida, said her father with rough friendliness, I have an excellent scheme on hand which I cannot tell you of now. A scheme to benefit you and me.  Yes, thrust upon me. But I didn't dream of its value until this afternoon, when the revelation came. I should be most unwise to refuse to entertain it. I don't like that word, she returned warily. You have lost so much already by schemes. Is it those wretched minds again? No, not a mining scheme. Railways. No railways. It is like those mysterious offers we see advertised, by which any gentleman with no brains at all, may make so much a week without risk, trouble, or soiling his fingers. However, I am intended to say nothing till it is settled, though I will just say this much, that you may have other fish to fry than to think of Stephen Smith. Remember, I wish not to be angry, but friendly to the young man. For your sake, I regard him as a friend in a certain sense. But this is enough. In a few days, you will be quite my way of thinking. There, now, go to your bedroom. Unity shall bring you up some supper. I wish you not to be here when he comes back. End of chapter 9. A pair of blue eyes. Chapter 10. This is a Librivox recording. All Librivox recordings are in the public domain. For more information on the volunteer, please visit Librivox.org. Recording by Tyge Hines. A pair of blue eyes by Thomas Hardy. Chapter 10. Beneath the Shelter of an Aged Tree. Stephen retraced his steps toward the cottage he had visited only two or three hours previously. He drew near and under the rich foliage going about the outskirts of Endle's Though Park, the spotty lights and shades from the shining moon, maintaining a race over his head and down his back in an endless gamble. When he crossed the plank bridge and entered the garden gate, he saw an illuminated figure coming from the enclosed spot towards the house on the other side. It was his father, with his hand in the sling, taking a general moonlight view of the garden, and particularly of a plot of the youngest of young turnips, previous to closing the cottage for the night. He salutes with his son with customary force. Hello, Stephen. We should have been in bed in another ten minutes. Come to see what's the matter with me, I suppose, milad. The doctor had come and gone, and the hand had been pronounced as injured but slightly, though it might possibly have been considered a far more serious case if Mr. Smith had been a more important man. Stephen's anxious inquiry drew from his father words of regret at the inconvenience to the world of his doing nothing for the next two days, rather than of concern for the pain of the accident. Together they entered the house. John Smith, brown as autumn to skin, white as winter as the clothes, was a satisfactory specimen of the village artist of earth and stone. In common with most rural mechanics, he had too much individuality to be a typical working man, a resultant of that beach pebble attrition with his kind only to be experienced in large towns which metamorphoses the unit self into a fraction of the unit class. There was not the speciality in his labour which distinguishes the handicraftsmen of towns, though only a mason, strictly speaking, he was not above handling a brick, if bricks were the order of the day, or a slater tile if a roof had to be covered before the wet weather set in, and nobody was near who could do it better. Indeed, on one or two occasions in the depth of winter, when frost peremptively forbids all use of the trowel, making foundations to settle, stones to fly, and mortar to crumble, he had taken to felling and sawing trees. Moreover, he had practiced gardening and his own plot for so many years that on an emergency he might have made a living by that calling. Probably our countryman was not such an accomplished artistefer in a particular direction as his town brethren in the trades, but he was in truth like that clumsy pinmaker who made the whole pin, who was despised by Adam Smith on that account and respected by Macaulay, much more the artist, nevertheless. Appearing now indoors by the light of the candle, his stalwart healthiness was a sight to see, his beard was close and knotted as that of a chiselled Hercules, his shirt sleeves were partly rolled up, his waistcoat unbuttoned, the difference in hue between the snowy linen and the ruby arms and face contrasting like the white of an egg and a joke. Mrs. Smith, on hearing the mentor, advanced from the pantry. Mrs. Smith was a matron whose countenance addressed itself to the mind rather than the eye, though not exclusively. She retained her personal freshness even now in the prosy afternoon time of her life, but what her features were primarily indicative of was a sound common sense behind them, as a whole appearing to carry with them a sort of argumentative commentary on the world in general. The details of the accident were then rehearsed by Stephen's father, in the dramatic manner also common in Martin Canister, other individuals of the neighbourhood and the rural world generally. Mrs. Smith threw in her sentiments between the acts as courier faeces of the tragedy to make the descriptions complete. The story at last came to an end as the longest will, and Stephen directed the conversation into another channel. Well, mother, they know everything about me now, he said quietly. Well done, replied his father, now my mind's at peace. I blame myself, I shall never forgive myself for not telling them before, continued the young man. Mrs. Smith, at this point, abstracted her mind from the former subject. I don't see what you have to grieve about Stephen, she said. People who accidentally get friends don't, as for stroke, tell the history of their families. You've done no wrong, certainly, said his father. No, but I should have spoken sooner. There is more to this visit of mine than you think, and a good deal more. Not more than I think, replied Mrs. Smith, looking contemplatively at him. Stephen blushed, and his father looked from one to the other in a state of uttering comprehension. She's a pretty piece enough, Mrs. Smith continued, and very ladylike and clever too, but though she's very well fit for you as far as that is, why mercy pun me, whatever do you want any woman for at all yet? John made his naturally short mouth, a long one, and wrinkled his forehead. Oh, that's the way to wind a blow, is it? he said. Mother, exclaimed Stephen, how absurdly you speak, criticising whether she's fit for me or no, as if there were room for doubt on that matter. Why, to marry her would be the great blessing of my life, socially and practically, as well as in other respects. No such good fortune as that, I'm afraid, she's too far above me. Her family doesn't want such country lads as I in it. Then, if they don't want you, I'd see them dead corpses before I'd want them, and go to better families who do want you. Ah, yes, but I could never put up with the distaste of being welcomed among such people as you mean, whilst I could get indifference among people such as hers.  She how careful I keep myself up. I'm sure I never stop for more than a minute together to talk to any journeymen people, and I never invite anybody to our Christmas parties who are not in business for themselves. And I talk to several top or most carriage people that come to my lords without saying ma'am or sort to them, and they take it as quite as lambs. You curtsy to the vicar mother, and I wish you hadn't. But that was before he called me my Christian name, or he wouldn't have got very little curtsy in from me, said Mrs. Smith, bridling and sparkling with vexation.  What else could I do with the man to get rid of him, banging it into me and your father by sight and by seam, about his greatness, and what happened when he was a young fellow of a college, and I don't know what all, their tongue of them flapping around about like a mop rag around the dairy. That I did, didn't he, John? That's about the size of it, replied her husband. Every woman nowadays, resumed Mrs. Smith, if she marries at all, must expect a father not of a rank lower than her father. The men have gone up so, and the women have stood still.  That's what she thinks herself. It only shows her sense. I knew she was actually Stephen, I knew it. After me, good lord, what next? And I really must say again that you are not to be in such a hurry and wait a few years. You might go higher than a bankrupt person's girl then. The fact is, mother, said Stephen impatiently, you don't know anything about it. I shall never go higher because I don't want to, nor should I if I live to be a hundred. As to you saying that she's after me, I don't like such a remark about her, for it implies a scheming woman, and a man worth scheming for, both of which are not only untrue, but ludicously untrue, of this case. Isn't it so, father? I'm afraid I don't understand the manner well enough to give my opinion, said his father, in the tone of the fox who had a cold and could not smell. She couldn't have been very backward anyhow, considering the short time you've known her, said his mother. Well, I think that five years hence you'll be plenty young enough to think of such things, and really, she can afford to wait a little. And will, too, take my word. Living down in an outstepped place like this, I'm sure she ought to be very thankful you took notes of her. She'd most likely have done it an old maid if you hadn't turned up. All nonsense, said Stephen, but not allowed. Had I said the things she is, Mrs. Smith went on in a more complacent tone, now that Stephen had been talked down. There's not a word to say against her alone.  But people can't help their thoughts, and if she'd learned to make figures instead of letters when she was at school, it would have been the better for her pocket. For, as I said, they never wear worse times for such as she- Then now? Now, now, mother, said Stephen, with smiling deprecation. But I will, said his mother with asperity. I don't read the papers for nothing, and I know men all move up a stave by marriage. Men of her class, that is.  All stages of gentlemen make the stage higher, and the lowest stage of gentle women are left single or marry out of their class. But you said just now, dear mother, retorted Stephen, unable to resist the temptation of showing his mother her inconsistency. Then he paused. Well, what did I say? And Mrs. Smith prepared her lips for a new campaign. Stephen, regretting that he had begun, since a volcano might be the consequence, was obliged to go on. You said I wasn't out of her class just before.  I warn't that you'll pick hold in everything your mother says if you can, Stephen. You're just like your father for that. Take anybody's part but mine. Whilst I'm speaking and talking and trying and slaving away for your good, you're waiting to catch me out in that way. So you are in her class. But is what her people would call marrying out of her class. Don't be so quarrelsome, Stephen. Stephen preserved a discreet silence, in which he was imitated by his father, and for several minutes nothing was heard but the ticking of the green-faced case-clock against the wall. I'm sure, added Mrs. Smith in a more philosophic tone, and as a terminative speech, if there'd been so much trouble to get Oswin in my time as there is these days, when you must make a god almighty of a man to get him to have you, I'd have trod play for bricks before I'd ever lowered my dignity to marry, or there's no bread in nine loaves. The discussion now dropped, and as it was getting late, Stephen bade his parents farewell for the evening. His mother, nonetheless warmly for their sparring, for although Mrs. Smith and Stephen were always contending, they were never at enmity. And possibly, said Stephen, I may leave here all together tomorrow, but I don't know, so that if I shouldn't call again before returning to London, don't be alarmed, will you? But didn't you come for a thought? And he said his mother, and having you one month's holiday all together. They're going to turn you out then. Not at all. I may stay longer. I may go. If I go, you'd better say nothing about my having been here, for her sake. At what time of the morning does the carrier pass end in Stolene? Seven o'clock. And then he left them. His thoughts were, that should the vicar permit him to become engaged, to hope for an engagement, or in any way to think of his beloved Elfride, he might stay longer. Should he be forbidden to think of any such thing, he resolved to go at once, and the latter, even to young hopefulness, seemed a more probable alternative. Stephen walked back to the vicarage through the meadows, as he had come, surrounded by the soft musical pearl of the water through the little weirs, the modest light of the moon, the freshening smell of the Jews outspread around. It was a time when mere seeing is meditation, and meditation peace. Stephen was hardly philosopher enough to avail himself of nature's offer. His constitution was made up of very simple particulars, was one which, rare in the springtime of civilizations, seemed to grow abundant as the nation gets older. Individuality fades, and education spreads. That is, his brain had extraordinary receptive powers, and no great creativeness. Quickly acquiring any kind of knowledge he saw around him, and having a plastic adaptability more common in moment than in man, he changed colour like a chameleon, as the society he found himself in assumed a higher and more artificial tone. He had not many original ideas, and yet there was scarcely an idea to which, under proper training, he could not have added a respectable co-ordinate. He saw nothing outside himself tonight, and what he saw within was a weariness to his flesh. Yet, to a dispassionate observer, his pretensions to Elfride, though rather premature, were far from absurd, as marriages go, unless the accidental proximity of simple but honest parents could be said to make them so. The clock struck eleven when he entered the house. Elfride had been waiting with scarcely a movement since he departed. Before he had spoken to her, she caught sight of him passing into the study with her father. She saw that he had, by some means, obtained the private interview he desired. A nervous headache had been growing on the excitable girl during the absence of Stephen, and now she could do nothing beyond going up again to her room as she had done before. Instead of lying down, she sat again in the darkness without closing the door, and listening with a beating heart to every sound from downstairs, the servants had gone to bed. She ultimately heard the two men come from the study and cross to the dining room. Where supper had been lingering for more than an hour. The door was left open, and she found that the meals, such as it was, passed off between her father and her lover, without any remorse, save common places as to cucumbers and melons, their wholesomeness and culture, offered in a stiff and formal way. It seemed to prefigure failure. Shortly afterwards Stephen came upstairs to his bedroom and was almost immediately followed by her father, who also retired for the night. Not inclined to get a light, she partly undressed and sat on the bed, where she remained in pain taught for some time, possibly an hour. Then, rising to close the door previously to fully unrobing, she saw a streak of light shining across the landing. Her father's door was shut, and he could be heard snoring regularly. The light came from Stephen's room, and the slight sounds also coming dense emphatically denoted what he was doing. In the perfect silence she could hear the closing of a lid and the clicking of a lock. He was fastening his hat-box. Then the buckling of straps and the click of another key. He was securing his portmanteau. With trebles foreboding she opened her door softly and went towards his. One sensation pervaded her to a distraction. Stephen, her handsome youth and darling, was going away, and she might never see him again, except in secret and in sadness. Perhaps never more. At any rate, she could no longer wait till the morning to hear the result of the interview, as she had intended. She flung her dressing-gown round her, tapped lightly at his door, and whispered, Stephen. He came instantly, opened the door, and stepped down. Tell me, are we to hope? He replied in a disturbed whisper, and a tear approached his outlet, though none fell. I am not to think of such a preposterous thing, that's what he said, and I am going to moral. I should have called you up to bid you goodbye. But he didn't say you were to go. Oh, Stephen, he didn't say that. No, not in words, but I cannot stay. Oh, don't go, don't go. Dude, come and let's talk. Let us come down to the drawing room for a few minutes. He will hear us here. She proceeded him downstairs with the tape or light in her hand, looking unnaturally tall and thin in the long dove-coloured dressing-gown she wore. She did not stop to think of the propriety or otherwise at this midnight interview under such circumstances. She thought that a tragedy of her life was beginning, and for the first time almost, felt that her existence might have a grave side, the shade of which enveloped and rendered invisible to delicate gradations of custom and punctilio. Elfride softly opened the drawing room door, and they both went in. When she had placed the candle on the table, he enclosed her with his arms, dried her eyes with his handkerchief, and kissed her lids. Stephen, it is over. Happy love is over, and there is no more sunshine now.  Yes, I will. Papa will never hear of it. Never, never. You don't know him. I do. And he is either biased in favour of a thing, or prejudiced against it. Argument is powerless against either feeling. No, I won't think of him so, said Stephen. If I appear before him some time hence, as a man of established name, he will accept me. I know he will. He's not a wicked man. No, he's not wicked. But you say some time hence, as if it were no time. To you, among bustle and excitement, it will be comparatively a short time, perhaps. Oh, to me it will be at real length, trebled. Every summer will be a year, autumn a year, winter a year. Oh, Stephen, you may forget me. Forget. That was, and is, the real sting of waiting to fond-hearted woman. The remark awoken, Stephen, the converse fear. You, too, may be persuaded to give me up, when time has made me fainter in your memory. For remember, your love for me must be nourished in secret. There will be no long visits for me to support you. Circumstances will always tend to obliterate me. Stephen, she said, filled with her own misgivings, and unheeding his last words. There are beautiful women where you live, of course I know there are. And they may win you away from me. Her tears came visibly as she drew a mental picture of her statelessness. And it won't be your fault, she continued, looking into the candle with dull full eyes. No, you will think that our family don't want you, and get to include me with them. And there will be a vacancy in your heart, and some others will be let in. I could not, I would not, Elphie.  Oh, yes they will, she replied. And you will look at them, not caring at first, and then you will look and be interested, and after a while you will think, ah, they know all about city life with assemblies and coteries and the manners of the titled.   Her impulsive words had power to impress them at any rate with the recognition of the uncertainty of all that was not accomplished. And, worse than that, general feeling, there of course remains a sadness, which arose from the special features of his own case. However remote a desired issue may be, the mere fact of having entered a groove which leads to it, cheers to some extent with a sense of accomplishment. Had Mr. Swan Court consented to an engagement of no less length than ten years, Stephen would have been comparatively cheerful in waiting. They would have felt that they were somewhere on the road to Cupid's garden. But, with a possibility of a shorter probation, they had not as yet any prospect of the beginning. The zero of hope had yet to be reached. Mr. Swan Court would have to revoke his formidable words before the waiting for marriage could even set in, and this was despair. I wish we could marry now, wherewith Stephen, as an impossible fancy. So do I, she said also, as if regarding an idle dream, to the only thing that ever does sweetheart's good. Secretly would do, would it not, Elfride? Yes, secretly would do. Secretly would indeed be best, she said, and went on reflectedly. All we want is to render it absolutely impossible for any future circumstance to upset our future intention of being happy together, not to begin being happy now. Exactly, he murmured, in a voice and mannered the counterpart of hers, to marry and part secretly, and live on as we're living now, merely to put it out of anybody's power to force you away from me, dearest. Or are you away from me, Stephen? Or me from you? It is possible to conceive a force of circumstances strong enough to make any woman in the world marry against her will. No conceivable pressure, up to torture or starvation, can make a woman once married to or lover anybody else's wife. Now, up to this point, the idea of an immediate secret marriage had been held by both as an untenable hypothesis, wherewith simply to be guile a miserable moment. During a pause which followed Stephen's last remark, a fascinating perception, then an alluring conviction, flashed along the brain of both. The perception was that an immediate marriage could be contrived, the conviction that such an act, that such an act, in spite of its daring, its fathomless results, its deceptiveness, would be preferred by each to the life they must lead under any other conditions. The youth spoke first, and his voice trembled with the magnitude of the conception he was cherishing. How strong we should feel, Elfride, going on her separate courses as before, without the fear of ultimate separation. Oh, Elfride, think of it. Think of it. It is certain that a young girl's love for Stephen received a fanning from her father's opposition, which made it blaze with a dozen times the intensity it would have exhibited if left alone. Never were conditions more favourable for developing a girl's first passing fancy for a handsome boy's face, a fancy rooted in an experience and nourished by seclusion, into a wild, under-flething passion, fervent enough for anything. All the elements of such a development were there, the chief one being hopelessness, a necessary ingredient always to perfect the mixture of feelings united under the name of loving to distraction. We would help her soon, would we not? she inquired timidly. Nobody else need know. He would then be convinced that hearts cannot be played with. Love encouraged to be ready to grow, love discouraged to be ready to die at a moment's notice. Stephen, do you not think that if marriages against the parents consent are ever justifiable? They are, when young people have been favoured up to a point, as we have, and then have had that favour suddenly withdrawn. Yes, it is not as if we had from the beginning acted in opposition to your papa's wishes. Only think, Elfie, how pleasant he was towards me but six hours ago. He liked me, he praised me, never objected to my being alone with you. I believe he must like you now, she cried, and if he found out that you irredeemably belonged to me, he would own it and help you. Oh Stephen, Stephen, she burst out again, as the remembrance of his packing came afresh to our mind. I cannot bear your going away like this, it is too dreadful. All I have been expecting miserably killed within me like this. Stephen flushed heart with impulse.  We will be wife and husband before we part for long. She hid her face in his shoulder, and eating to make sure, she whispered. I did not like to propose it immediately, continued Stephen. It seemed to me, it seems to me now, like trying to catch you, a girl better in the world than I. Not that indeed, and am I better in worldly station? What's the use of had-beens? We may have been something once, we are nothing now. Then they whispered long and earnestly together, Stephen hesitatingly proposing this plan and that plan, Elfriedum modifying them with quick breathings and hectic flush, and unnaturally bright eyes. It was too at clock before an arrangement was finally concluded. She then told him to leave her, giving him his light to go to his own room. They parted with an agreement not to meet again in the morning. After his door had been sometimes closed, he heard her softly gliding into her chamber. End of chapter 10