“Are you taking notes?” she inquired with an alacrity plainly arising less from interest in the subject than from a wish to divert his thoughts from herself.
“Yes; I was making an entry. And with your permission I will complete it.” Knight then stood still and wrote. Elfride remained beside him a moment, and afterwards walked on.
“I should like to see all the secrets that are in that book,” she gaily flung back to him over her shoulder.
“I don’t think you would find much to interest you.”
“I know I should.”
“Then of course I have no more to say.”
“But I would ask this question first. Is it a book of mere facts concerning journeys and expenditure, and so on, or a book of thoughts?”
“Well, to tell the truth, it is not exactly either. It consists for the most part of jottings for articles and essays, disjointed and disconnected, of no possible interest to anybody but myself.”
“It contains, I suppose, your developed thoughts in embryo?”
“Yes.”
“If they are interesting when enlarged to the size of an article, what must they be in their concentrated form? Pure rectified spirit, above proof; before it is lowered to be fit for human consumption: ‘words that burn’ indeed.”
“Rather like a balloon before it is inflated: flabby, shapeless, dead. You could hardly read them.”
“May I try?” she said coaxingly. “I wrote my poor romance in that way—I mean in bits, out of doors—and I should like to see whether your way of entering things is the same as mine.”
“Really, that’s rather an awkward request. I suppose I can hardly refuse now you have asked so directly; but—”
“You think me ill-mannered in asking. But does not this justify me—your writing in my presence, Mr. Knight? If I had lighted upon your book by chance, it would have been different; but you stand before me, and say, ‘Excuse me,’ without caring whether I do or not, and write on, and then tell me they are not private facts but public ideas.”
“Very well, Miss Swancourt. If you really must see, the consequences be upon your own head. Remember, my advice to you is to leave my book alone.”
“But with that caution I have your permission?”
“Yes.”
She hesitated a moment, looked at his hand containing the book, then laughed, and saying, “I must see it,” withdrew it from his fingers.
Knight rambled on towards the house, leaving her standing in the path turning over the leaves. By the time he had reached the wicket-gate he saw that she had moved, and waited till she came up.
Elfride had closed the notebook, and was carrying it disdainfully by the corner between her finger and thumb; her face wore a nettled look. She silently extended the volume towards him, raising her eyes no higher than her hand was lifted.
“Take it,” said Elfride quickly. “I don’t want to read it.”
“Could you understand it?” said Knight.
“As far as I looked. But I didn’t care to read much.”
“Why, Miss Swancourt?”
“Only because I didn’t wish to—that’s all.”
“I warned you that you might not.”
“Yes, but I never supposed you would have put me there.”
“Your name is not mentioned once within the four corners.”
“Not my name—I know that.”
“Nor your description, nor anything by which anybody would recognize you.”
“Except myself. For what is this?” she exclaimed, taking it from him and opening a page. “August 7. That’s the day before yesterday. But I won’t read it,” Elfride said, closing the book again with pretty hauteur. “Why should I? I had no business to ask to see your book, and it serves me right.”
Knight hardly recollected what he had written, and turned over the book to see. He came to this:
“Aug. 7. Girl gets into her teens, and her self-consciousness is born. After a certain interval passed in infantine helplessness, it begins to act. Simple, young, and inexperienced at first. Persons of observation can tell to a nicety how old this consciousness is by the skill it has acquired in the art necessary to its success—the art of hiding itself. Generally begins career by actions which are popularly termed showing-off. Method adopted depends in each case upon the disposition, rank, residence, of the young lady attempting it. Town-bred girl will utter some moral paradox on fast men, or love. Country miss adopts the more material media of taking a ghastly fence, whistling, or making your blood run cold by appearing to risk her neck. (Mem. On Endelstow Tower.)
“An innocent vanity is of course the origin of these displays. ‘Look at me,’ say these youthful beginners in womanly artifice, without reflecting whether or not it be to their advantage to show so very much of themselves. (Amplify and correct for paper on Artless Arts.)”
“Yes, I remember now,” said Knight. “The notes were certainly suggested by your manoeuvre on the church tower. But you must not think too much of such random observations,” he continued encouragingly, as he noticed her injured looks. “A mere fancy passing through my head assumes a factitious importance to you, because it has been made permanent by being written down. All mankind think thoughts as bad as those of people they most love on earth, but such thoughts never getting embodied on paper, it becomes assumed that they never existed. I daresay that you yourself have thought some disagreeable thing or other of me, which would seem just as bad as this if written. I challenge you, now, to tell me.”
“The worst thing I have thought of you?”
“Yes.”
“I must not.”
“Oh yes.”
“I thought you were rather round-shouldered.”
Knight looked slightly redder.
“And that there was a little bald spot on the top of your head.”
“Heh-heh! Two ineradicable defects,” said Knight, there being a faint ghastliness discernible in his laugh. “They are much worse in a lady’s eye than being thought self-conscious, I suppose.”
“Ah, that’s very fine,” she said, too inexperienced to perceive her hit, and hence
