Beyond this rather quaint array of stone and metal Mrs. Swancourt wore no ornament whatever.
Elfride had been favourably impressed with Mrs. Troyton at their meeting about two months earlier; but to be pleased with a woman as a momentary acquaintance was different from being taken with her as a stepmother. However, the suspension of feeling was but for a moment. Elfride decided to like her still.
Mrs. Swancourt was a woman of the world as to knowledge, the reverse as to action, as her marriage suggested. Elfride and the lady were soon inextricably involved in conversation, and Mr. Swancourt left them to themselves.
“And what do you find to do with yourself here?” Mrs. Swancourt said, after a few remarks about the wedding. “You ride, I know.”
“Yes, I ride. But not much, because papa doesn’t like my going alone.”
“You must have somebody to look after you.”
“And I read, and write a little.”
“You should write a novel. The regular resource of people who don’t go enough into the world to live a novel is to write one.”
“I have done it,” said Elfride, looking dubiously at Mrs. Swancourt, as if in doubt whether she would meet with ridicule there.
“That’s right. Now, then, what is it about, dear?”
“About—well, it is a romance of the Middle Ages.”
“Knowing nothing of the present age, which everybody knows about, for safety you chose an age known neither to you nor other people. That’s it, eh? No, no; I don’t mean it, dear.”
“Well, I have had some opportunities of studying medieval art and manners in the library and private museum at Endelstow House, and I thought I should like to try my hand upon a fiction. I know the time for these tales is past; but I was interested in it, very much interested.”
“When is it to appear?”
“Oh, never, I suppose.”
“Nonsense, my dear girl. Publish it, by all means. All ladies do that sort of thing now; not for profit, you know, but as a guarantee of mental respectability to their future husbands.”
“An excellent idea of us ladies.”
“Though I am afraid it rather resembles the melancholy ruse of throwing loaves over castle-walls at besiegers, and suggests desperation rather than plenty inside.”
“Did you ever try it?”
“No; I was too far gone even for that.”
“Papa says no publisher will take my book.”
“That remains to be proved. I’ll give my word, my dear, that by this time next year it shall be printed.”
“Will you, indeed?” said Elfride, partially brightening with pleasure, though she was sad enough in her depths. “I thought brains were the indispensable, even if the only, qualification for admission to the republic of letters. A mere commonplace creature like me will soon be turned out again.”
“Oh no; once you are there you’ll be like a drop of water in a piece of rock-crystal—your medium will dignify your commonness.”
“It will be a great satisfaction,” Elfride murmured, and thought of Stephen, and wished she could make a great fortune by writing romances, and marry him and live happily.
“And then we’ll go to London, and then to Paris,” said Mrs. Swancourt. “I have been talking to your father about it. But we have first to move into the manor-house, and we think of staying at Torquay whilst that is going on. Meanwhile, instead of going on a honeymoon scamper by ourselves, we have come home to fetch you, and go all together to Bath for two or three weeks.”
Elfride assented pleasantly, even gladly; but she saw that, by this marriage, her father and herself had ceased forever to be the close relations they had been up to a few weeks ago. It was impossible now to tell him the tale of her wild elopement with Stephen Smith.
He was still snugly housed in her heart. His absence had regained for him much of that aureola of saintship which had been nearly abstracted during her reproachful mood on that miserable journey from London. Rapture is often cooled by contact with its cause, especially if under awkward conditions. And that last experience with Stephen had done anything but make him shine in her eyes. His very kindness in letting her return was his offence. Elfride had her sex’s love of sheer force in a man, however ill-directed; and at that critical juncture in London Stephen’s only chance of retaining the ascendancy over her that his face and not his parts had acquired for him, would have been by doing what, for one thing, he was too youthful to undertake—that was, dragging her by the wrist to the rails of some altar, and peremptorily marrying her. Decisive action is seen by appreciative minds to be frequently objectless, and sometimes fatal; but decision, however suicidal, has more charm for a woman than the most unequivocal Fabian success.
However, some of the unpleasant accessories of that occasion were now out of sight again, and Stephen had resumed not a few of his fancy colours.
XIII
“He set in order many proverbs.”
It is London in October—two months further on in the story.
Bede’s Inn has this peculiarity, that it faces, receives from, and discharges into a bustling thoroughfare speaking only of wealth and respectability, whilst its postern abuts on as crowded and poverty-stricken a network of alleys as are to be found anywhere in the metropolis. The moral consequences are, first, that those who occupy chambers in the Inn may see a great deal of shirtless humanity’s habits and enjoyments without doing more than look down from a back window; and second they may hear wholesome though unpleasant social reminders through the medium of a harsh voice, an unequal footstep, the echo of a blow or a fall, which originates in the person of some drunkard or wife-beater, as he crosses and interferes with the quiet of the square. Characters of this kind frequently pass through the Inn from a little foxhole of an alley at the back, but they never loiter there.
It is hardly necessary to state that all the
