“And what became of the baby?” said Stephen, who had frequently heard portions of the story.
“She was brought up by her grandmother, and a pretty maid she were. And she must needs run away with the curate—Parson Swancourt that is now. Then her grandmother died, and the title and everything went away to another branch of the family altogether. Parson Swancourt wasted a good deal of his wife’s money, and she left him Miss Elfride. That trick of running away seems to be handed down in families, like craziness or gout. And they two women be alike as peas.”
“Which two?”
“Lady Elfride and young Miss that’s alive now. The same hair and eyes: but Miss Elfride’s mother was darker a good deal.”
“Life’s a strangle bubble, ye see,” said William Worm musingly. “For if the Lord’s anointment had descended upon women instead of men, Miss Elfride would be Lord Luxellian—Lady, I mane. But as it is, the blood is run out, and she’s nothing to the Luxellian family by law, whatever she may be by gospel.”
“I used to fancy,” said Simeon, “when I seed Miss Elfride hugging the little ladyships, that there was a likeness; but I suppose ’twas only my dream, for years must have altered the old family shape.”
“And now we’ll move these two, and home-along,” interposed John Smith, reviving, as became a master, the spirit of labour, which had showed unmistakable signs of being nearly vanquished by the spirit of chat. “The flagon of ale we don’t want we’ll let bide here till tomorrow; none of the poor souls will touch it ’a b’lieve.”
So the evening’s work was concluded, and the party drew from the abode of the quiet dead, closing the old iron door, and shooting the lock loudly into the huge copper staple—an incongruous act of imprisonment towards those who had no dreams of escape.
XXVII
“How should I greet thee?”
Love frequently dies of time alone—much more frequently of displacement. With Elfride Swancourt, a powerful reason why the displacement should be successful was that the newcomer was a greater man than the first. By the side of the instructive and piquant snubbings she received from Knight, Stephen’s general agreeableness seemed watery; by the side of Knight’s spare lovemaking, Stephen’s continual outflow seemed lackadaisical. She had begun to sigh for somebody further on in manhood. Stephen was hardly enough of a man.
Perhaps there was a proneness to inconstancy in her nature—a nature, to those who contemplate it from a standpoint beyond the influence of that inconstancy, the most exquisite of all in its plasticity and ready sympathies. Partly, too, Stephen’s failure to make his hold on her heart a permanent one was his too timid habit of dispraising himself beside her—a peculiarity which, exercised towards sensible men, stirs a kindly chord of attachment that a marked assertiveness would leave untouched, but inevitably leads the most sensible woman in the world to undervalue him who practises it. Directly domineering ceases in the man, snubbing begins in the woman; the trite but no less unfortunate fact being that the gentler creature rarely has the capacity to appreciate fair treatment from her natural complement. The abiding perception of the position of Stephen’s parents had, of course, a little to do with Elfride’s renunciation. To such girls poverty may not be, as to the more worldly masses of humanity, a sin in itself; but it is a sin, because graceful and dainty manners seldom exist in such an atmosphere. Few women of old family can be thoroughly taught that a fine soul may wear a smock-frock, and an admittedly common man in one is but a worm in their eyes. John Smith’s rough hands and clothes, his wife’s dialect, the necessary narrowness of their ways, being constantly under Elfride’s notice, were not without their deflecting influence.
On reaching home after the perilous adventure by the seashore, Knight had felt unwell, and retired almost immediately. The young lady who had so materially assisted him had done the same, but she reappeared, properly clothed, about five o’clock. She wandered restlessly about the house, but not on account of their joint narrow escape from death. The storm which had torn the tree had merely bowed the reed, and with the deliverance of Knight all deep thought of the accident had left her. The mutual avowal which it had been the means of precipitating occupied a far longer length of her meditations.
Elfride’s disquiet now was on account of that miserable promise to meet Stephen, which returned like a spectre again and again. The perception of his littleness beside Knight grew upon her alarmingly. She now thought how sound had been her father’s advice to her to give him up, and was as passionately desirous of following it as she had hitherto been averse. Perhaps there is nothing
