The hour of appointment came, and with it a crisis; and with the crisis a collapse.
“God forgive me—I can’t meet Stephen!” she exclaimed to herself. “I don’t love him less, but I love Mr. Knight more!”
Yes: she would save herself from a man not fit for her—in spite of vows. She would obey her father, and have no more to do with Stephen Smith. Thus the fickle resolve showed signs of assuming the complexion of a virtue.
The following days were passed without any definite avowal from Knight’s lips. Such solitary walks and scenes as that witnessed by Smith in the summerhouse were frequent, but he courted her so intangibly that to any but such a delicate perception as Elfride’s it would have appeared no courtship at all. The time now really began to be sweet with her. She dismissed the sense of sin in her past actions, and was automatic in the intoxication of the moment. The fact that Knight made no actual declaration was no drawback. Knowing since the betrayal of his sentiments that love for her really existed, she preferred it for the present in its form of essence, and was willing to avoid for awhile the grosser medium of words. Their feelings having been forced to a rather premature demonstration, a reaction was indulged in by both.
But no sooner had she got rid of her troubled conscience on the matter of faithlessness than a new anxiety confronted her. It was lest Knight should accidentally meet Stephen in the parish, and that herself should be the subject of discourse.
Elfride, learning Knight more thoroughly, perceived that, far from having a notion of Stephen’s precedence, he had no idea that she had ever been wooed before by anybody. On ordinary occasions she had a tongue so frank as to show her whole mind, and a mind so straightforward as to reveal her heart to its innermost shrine. But the time for a change had come. She never alluded to even a knowledge of Knight’s friend. When women are secret they are secret indeed; and more often than not they only begin to be secret with the advent of a second lover.
The elopement was now a spectre worse than the first, and, like the Spirit in Glenfinlas, it waxed taller with every attempt to lay it. Her natural honesty invited her to confide in Knight, and trust to his generosity for forgiveness: she knew also that as mere policy it would be better to tell him early if he was to be told at all. The longer her concealment the more difficult would be the revelation. But she put it off. The intense fear which accompanies intense love in young women was too strong to allow the exercise of a moral quality antagonistic to itself:
“Where love is great, the littlest doubts are fear;
Where little fears grow great, great love grows there.”
The match was looked upon as made by her father and mother. The vicar remembered her promise to reveal the meaning of the telegram she had received, and two days after the scene in the summerhouse, asked her pointedly. She was frank with him now.
“I had been corresponding with Stephen Smith ever since he left England, till lately,” she calmly said.
“What!” cried the vicar aghast; “under the eyes of Mr. Knight, too?”
“No; when I found I cared most for Mr. Knight, I obeyed you.”
“You were very kind, I’m sure. When did you begin to like Mr. Knight?”
“I don’t see that that is a pertinent question, papa; the telegram was from the shipping agent, and was not sent at my request. It announced the arrival of the vessel bringing him home.”
“Home! What, is he here?”
“Yes; in the village, I believe.”
“Has he tried to see you?”
“Only by fair means. But don’t, papa, question me so! It is torture.”
“I will only say one word more,” he replied. “Have you met him?”
“I have not. I can assure you that at the present moment there is no more of an understanding between me and the young man you so much disliked than between him and you. You told me to forget him; and I have forgotten him.”
“Oh, well; though you did not obey me in the beginning, you are a good girl, Elfride, in obeying me at last.”
“Don’t call me ‘good,’ papa,” she said bitterly; “you don’t know—and the less said about some things the better. Remember, Mr. Knight knows nothing about the other. Oh, how wrong it all is! I don’t know what I am coming to.”
“As matters stand, I should be inclined to tell him; or, at any rate, I should not alarm myself about his knowing. He found out the other day that this was the parish young Smith’s father lives in—what puts you in such a flurry?”
“I can’t say; but promise—pray don’t let him know! It would be my ruin!”
“Pooh, child. Knight is a good fellow and a clever man; but at the same time it does not escape my perceptions that he is no great catch for you. Men of his turn of mind are nothing so wonderful in the way of husbands. If you had chosen to wait, you might have mated with a much wealthier man. But remember, I have not a word to say against your having him, if you like him. Charlotte is delighted, as you know.”
“Well, papa,” she said, smiling hopefully through a sigh, “it is nice to feel that in giving way to—to caring for him, I have pleased my family. But I am not good; oh no, I am very far from that!”
“None of us are good, I am sorry to say,” said her father blandly; “but girls have a chartered right to change their minds, you know. It has been recognized by poets from
