Complete Works of Thomas Hardy (Illustrated) (122 page)

‘Mr. Knight, I want to tell you something,’ she said, with quiet firmness.

‘And what is it about?’ gaily returned her lover. ‘Happiness, I hope. Do not let anything keep you so sad as you seem to have been to-day.’

‘I cannot mention the matter until I tell you the whole substance of it,’ she said. ‘And that I will do to-morrow. I have been reminded of it to-day. It is about something I once did, and don’t think I ought to have done.’

This, it must be said, was rather a mild way of referring to a frantic passion and flight, which, much or little in itself, only accident had saved from being a scandal in the public eye.

Knight thought the matter some trifle, and said pleasantly:

‘Then I am not to hear the dreadful confession now?’

‘No, not now. I did not mean to-night,’ Elfride responded, with a slight decline in the firmness of her voice. ‘It is not light as you think it — it troubles me a great deal.’ Fearing now the effect of her own earnestness, she added forcedly, ‘Though, perhaps, you may think it light after all.’

‘But you have not said when it is to be?’

‘To-morrow morning. Name a time, will you, and bind me to it? I want you to fix an hour, because I am weak, and may otherwise try to get out of it.’ She added a little artificial laugh, which showed how timorous her resolution was still.

‘Well, say after breakfast — at eleven o’clock.’

‘Yes, eleven o’clock. I promise you. Bind me strictly to my word.’

CHAPTER XXVIII

    ‘I lull a fancy, trouble-tost.’

Miss Swancourt, it is eleven o’clock.’

She was looking out of her dressing-room window on the first floor, and Knight was regarding her from the terrace balustrade, upon which he had been idly sitting for some time — dividing the glances of his eye between the pages of a book in his hand, the brilliant hues of the geraniums and calceolarias, and the open window above-mentioned.

‘Yes, it is, I know. I am coming.’

He drew closer, and under the window.

‘How are you this morning, Elfride? You look no better for your long night’s rest.’

She appeared at the door shortly after, took his offered arm, and together they walked slowly down the gravel path leading to the river and away under the trees.

Her resolution, sustained during the last fifteen hours, had been to tell the whole truth, and now the moment had come.

Step by step they advanced, and still she did not speak. They were nearly at the end of the walk, when Knight broke the silence.

‘Well, what is the confession, Elfride?’

She paused a moment, drew a long breath; and this is what she said:

‘I told you one day — or rather I gave you to understand — what was not true. I fancy you thought me to mean I was nineteen my next birthday, but it was my last I was nineteen.’

The moment had been too much for her. Now that the crisis had come, no qualms of conscience, no love of honesty, no yearning to make a confidence and obtain forgiveness with a kiss, could string Elfride up to the venture. Her dread lest he should be unforgiving was heightened by the thought of yesterday’s artifice, which might possibly add disgust to his disappointment. The certainty of one more day’s affection, which she gained by silence, outvalued the hope of a perpetuity combined with the risk of all.

The trepidation caused by these thoughts on what she had intended to say shook so naturally the words she did say, that Knight never for a moment suspected them to be a last moment’s substitution. He smiled and pressed her hand warmly.

‘My dear Elfie — yes, you are now — no protestation — what a winning little woman you are, to be so absurdly scrupulous about a mere iota! Really, I never once have thought whether your nineteenth year was the last or the present. And, by George, well I may not; for it would never do for a staid fogey a dozen years older to stand upon such a trifle as that.’

‘Don’t praise me — don’t praise me! Though I prize it from your lips, I don’t deserve it now.’

But Knight, being in an exceptionally genial mood, merely saw this distressful exclamation as modesty. ‘Well,’ he added, after a minute, ‘I like you all the better, you know, for such moral precision, although I called it absurd.’ He went on with tender earnestness: ‘For, Elfride, there is one thing I do love to see in a woman — that is, a soul truthful and clear as heaven’s light. I could put up with anything if I had that — forgive nothing if I had it not. Elfride, you have such a soul, if ever woman had; and having it, retain it, and don’t ever listen to the fashionable theories of the day about a woman’s privileges and natural right to practise wiles. Depend upon it, my dear girl, that a noble woman must be as honest as a noble man. I specially mean by honesty, fairness not only in matters of business and social detail, but in all the delicate dealings of love, to which the licence given to your sex particularly refers.’

Elfride looked troublously at the trees.

‘Now let us go on to the river, Elfie.’

‘I would if I had a hat on,’ she said with a sort of suppressed woe.

‘I will get it for you,’ said Knight, very willing to purchase her companionship at so cheap a price. ‘You sit down there a minute.’ And he turned and walked rapidly back to the house for the article in question.

Elfride sat down upon one of the rustic benches which adorned this portion of the grounds, and remained with her eyes upon the grass. She was induced to lift them by hearing the brush of light and irregular footsteps hard by. Passing along the path which intersected the one she was in and traversed the outer shrubberies, Elfride beheld the farmer’s widow, Mrs. Jethway. Before she noticed Elfride, she paused to look at the house, portions of which were visible through the bushes. Elfride, shrinking back, hoped the unpleasant woman might go on without seeing her. But Mrs. Jethway, silently apostrophizing the house, with actions which seemed dictated by a half-overturned reason, had discerned the girl, and immediately came up and stood in front of her.

‘Ah, Miss Swancourt! Why did you disturb me? Mustn’t I trespass here?’

‘You may walk here if you like, Mrs. Jethway. I do not disturb you.’

‘You disturb my mind, and my mind is my whole life; for my boy is there still, and he is gone from my body.’

‘Yes, poor young man. I was sorry when he died.’

‘Do you know what he died of?’

‘Consumption.’

‘Oh no, no!’ said the widow. ‘That word “consumption” covers a good deal. He died because you were his own well-agreed sweetheart, and then proved false — and it killed him. Yes, Miss Swancourt,’ she said in an excited whisper, ‘you killed my son!’

‘How can you be so wicked and foolish!’ replied Elfride, rising indignantly. But indignation was not natural to her, and having been so worn and harrowed by late events, she lost any powers of defence that mood might have lent her. ‘I could not help his loving me, Mrs. Jethway!’

‘That’s just what you could have helped. You know how it began, Miss Elfride. Yes: you said you liked the name of Felix better than any other name in the parish, and you knew it was his name, and that those you said it to would report it to him.’

‘I knew it was his name — of course I did; but I am sure, Mrs. Jethway, I did not intend anybody to tell him.’

‘But you knew they would.’

‘No, I didn’t.’

‘And then, after that, when you were riding on Revels-day by our house, and the lads were gathered there, and you wanted to dismount, when Jim Drake and George Upway and three or four more ran forward to hold your pony, and Felix stood back timid, why did you beckon to him, and say you would rather he held it?’

‘O Mrs. Jethway, you do think so mistakenly! I liked him best — that’s why I wanted him to do it. He was gentle and nice — I always thought him so — and I liked him.’

‘Then why did you let him kiss you?’

‘It is a falsehood; oh, it is, it is!’ said Elfride, weeping with desperation. ‘He came behind me, and attempted to kiss me; and that was why I told him never to let me see him again.’

‘But you did not tell your father or anybody, as you would have if you had looked upon it then as the insult you now pretend it was.’

‘He begged me not to tell, and foolishly enough I did not. And I wish I had now. I little expected to be scourged with my own kindness. Pray leave me, Mrs. Jethway.’ The girl only expostulated now.

‘Well, you harshly dismissed him, and he died. And before his body was cold, you took another to your heart. Then as carelessly sent him about his business, and took a third. And if you consider that nothing, Miss Swancourt,’ she continued, drawing closer; ‘it led on to what was very serious indeed. Have you forgotten the would-be runaway marriage? The journey to London, and the return the next day without being married, and that there’s enough disgrace in that to ruin a woman’s good name far less light than yours? You may have: I have not. Fickleness towards a lover is bad, but fickleness after playing the wife is wantonness.’

‘Oh, it’s a wicked cruel lie! Do not say it; oh, do not!’

‘Does your new man know of it? I think not, or he would be no man of yours! As much of the story as was known is creeping about the neighbourhood even now; but I know more than any of them, and why should I respect your love?’

‘I defy you!’ cried Elfride tempestuously. ‘Do and say all you can to ruin me; try; put your tongue at work; I invite it! I defy you as a slanderous woman! Look, there he comes.’ And her voice trembled greatly as she saw through the leaves the beloved form of Knight coming from the door with her hat in his hand. ‘Tell him at once; I can bear it.’

‘Not now,’ said the woman, and disappeared down the path.

The excitement of her latter words had restored colour to Elfride’s cheeks; and hastily wiping her eyes, she walked farther on, so that by the time her lover had overtaken her the traces of emotion had nearly disappeared from her face. Knight put the hat upon her head, took her hand, and drew it within his arm.

It was the last day but one previous to their departure for St. Leonards; and Knight seemed to have a purpose in being much in her company that day. They rambled along the valley. The season was that period in the autumn when the foliage alone of an ordinary plantation is rich enough in hues to exhaust the chromatic combinations of an artist’s palette. Most lustrous of all are the beeches, graduating from bright rusty red at the extremity of the boughs to a bright yellow at their inner parts; young oaks are still of a neutral green; Scotch firs and hollies are nearly blue; whilst occasional dottings of other varieties give maroons and purples of every tinge.

The river — such as it was — here pursued its course amid flagstones as level as a pavement, but divided by crevices of irregular width. With the summer drought the torrent had narrowed till it was now but a thread of crystal clearness, meandering along a central channel in the rocky bed of the winter current. Knight scrambled through the bushes which at this point nearly covered the brook from sight, and leapt down upon the dry portion of the river bottom.

‘Elfride, I never saw such a sight!’ he exclaimed. ‘The hazels overhang the river’s course in a perfect arch, and the floor is beautifully paved. The place reminds one of the passages of a cloister. Let me help you down.’

He assisted her through the marginal underwood and down to the stones. They walked on together to a tiny cascade about a foot wide and high, and sat down beside it on the flags that for nine months in the year were submerged beneath a gushing bourne. From their feet trickled the attenuated thread of water which alone remained to tell the intent and reason of this leaf-covered aisle, and journeyed on in a zigzag line till lost in the shade.

Knight, leaning on his elbow, after contemplating all this, looked critically at Elfride.

‘Does not such a luxuriant head of hair exhaust itself and get thin as the years go on from eighteen to eight-and-twenty?’ he asked at length.

‘Oh no!’ she said quickly, with a visible disinclination to harbour such a thought, which came upon her with an unpleasantness whose force it would be difficult for men to understand. She added afterwards, with smouldering uneasiness, ‘Do you really think that a great abundance of hair is more likely to get thin than a moderate quantity?’

‘Yes, I really do. I believe — am almost sure, in fact — that if statistics could be obtained on the subject, you would find the persons with thin hair were those who had a superabundance originally, and that those who start with a moderate quantity retain it without much loss.’

Elfride’s troubles sat upon her face as well as in her heart. Perhaps to a woman it is almost as dreadful to think of losing her beauty as of losing her reputation. At any rate, she looked quite as gloomy as she had looked at any minute that day.

‘You shouldn’t be so troubled about a mere personal adornment,’ said Knight, with some of the severity of tone that had been customary before she had beguiled him into softness.

‘I think it is a woman’s duty to be as beautiful as she can. If I were a scholar, I would give you chapter and verse for it from one of your own Latin authors. I know there is such a passage, for papa has alluded to it.’