“Not know!”
“No.”
“Why, ’tis all over town. Our worthy Mayor alluded to it in a speech at the dinner last night of the Every-Man-his-own-Maker Club.”
“And what about Stephen?” urged Mrs. Smith.
“Why, your son has been fêted by deputy-governors and Parsee princes and nobody-knows-who in India; is hand in glove with nabobs, and is to design a large palace, and cathedral, and hospitals, colleges, halls, and fortifications, by the general consent of the ruling powers, Christian and Pagan alike.”
“ ’Twas sure to come to the boy,” said Mr. Smith unassumingly.
“ ’Tis in yesterday’s St. Launce’s Chronicle; and our worthy Mayor in the chair introduced the subject into his speech last night in a masterly manner.”
“ ’Twas very good of the worthy Mayor in the chair I’m sure,” said Stephen’s mother. “I hope the boy will have the sense to keep what he’s got; but as for men, they are a simple sex. Some woman will hook him.”
“Well, Mr. and Mrs. Smith, the evening closes in, and we must be going; and remember this, that every Saturday when you come in to market, you are to make our house as your own. There will be always a teacup and saucer for you, as you know there has been for months, though you may have forgotten it. I’m a plain-speaking woman, and what I say I mean.”
When the visitors were gone, and the sun had set, and the moon’s rays were just beginning to assert themselves upon the walls of the dwelling, John Smith and his wife sat down to the newspaper they had hastily procured from the town. And when the reading was done, they considered how best to meet the new social requirements settling upon them, which Mrs. Smith considered could be done by new furniture and house enlargement alone.
“And, John, mind one thing,” she said in conclusion. “In writing to Stephen, never by any means mention the name of Elfride Swancourt again. We’ve left the place, and know no more about her except by hearsay. He seems to be getting free of her, and glad am I for it. It was a cloudy hour for him when he first set eyes upon the girl. That family’s been no good to him, first or last; so let them keep their blood to themselves if they want to. He thinks of her, I know, but not so hopelessly. So don’t try to know anything about her, and we can’t answer his questions. She may die out of his mind then.”
“That shall be it,” said John.
XXXVII
“After many days.”
Knight roamed south, under colour of studying Continental antiquities.
He paced the lofty aisles of Amiens, loitered by Ardennes Abbey, climbed into the strange towers of Laon, analyzed Noyon and Rheims. Then he went to Chartres, and examined its scaly spires and quaint carving: then he idled about Coutances. He rowed beneath the base of Mont St. Michel, and caught the varied skyline of the crumbling edifices encrusting it. St. Ouen’s, Rouen, knew him for days; so did Vezelay, Sens, and many a hallowed monument besides. Abandoning the inspection of early French art with the same purposeless haste as he had shown in undertaking it, he went further, and lingered about Ferrara, Padua, and Pisa. Satiated with medievalism, he tried the Roman Forum. Next he observed moonlight and starlight effects by the bay of Naples. He turned to Austria, became enervated and depressed on Hungarian and Bohemian plains, and was refreshed again by breezes on the declivities of the Carpathians.
Then he found himself in Greece. He visited the plain of Marathon, and strove to imagine the Persian defeat; to Mars Hill, to picture St. Paul addressing the ancient Athenians; to Thermopylae and Salamis, to run through the facts and traditions of the Second Invasion—the result of his endeavours being more or less chaotic. Knight grew as weary of these places as of all others. Then he felt the shock of an earthquake in the Ionian Islands, and went to Venice. Here he shot in gondolas up and down the winding thoroughfare of the Grand Canal, and loitered on calle and piazza at night, when the lagoons were undisturbed by a ripple, and no sound was to be heard but the stroke of the midnight clock. Afterwards he remained for weeks in the museums, galleries, and libraries of Vienna, Berlin, and Paris; and thence came home.
Time thus rolls us on to a February afternoon, divided by fifteen months from the parting of Elfride and her lover in the brown stubble field towards the sea.
Two men obviously not Londoners, and with a touch of foreignness in their look, met by accident on one of the gravel walks leading across Hyde Park. The younger, more given to looking about him than his fellow, saw and noticed the approach of his senior some time before the latter had raised his eyes from the ground, upon which they were bent in an abstracted gaze that seemed habitual with him.
“Mr. Knight—indeed it is!” exclaimed the younger man.
“Ah, Stephen Smith!” said Knight.
Simultaneous operations might now have been observed progressing in both, the result being that an expression less frank and impulsive than the first took possession of their features. It was manifest that the next words uttered were a superficial covering to constraint on both sides.
“Have you been in England long?” said Knight.
“Only two days,” said Smith.
“India ever since?”
“Nearly ever since.”
“They were making a fuss about you at St. Launce’s last year. I fancy I saw something of the sort in the papers.”
“Yes; I believe something was said about me.”
“I must congratulate you on your achievements.”
“Thanks, but they are nothing very extraordinary. A natural professional progress where there was no opposition.”
There followed that want of words which will always assert itself between nominal friends who find they have ceased to be real ones, and have not yet sunk to the level of mere acquaintance. Each looked up and down the Park. Knight may possibly have borne in mind during the intervening months Stephen’s
