by Thomas Hardy
Knight argued from Elfride’s unwontedness of manner, which was matter of fact, to an unwontedness in love, which was matter of inference only. Incredules les plus credules. ‘Elfride,’ he said, ‘had hardly looked upon a man till she saw me.’
He had never forgotten his severity to her because she preferred ornament to edification, and had since excused her a hundred times by thinking how natural to womankind was a love of adornment, and how necessary became a mild infusion of personal vanity to complete the delicate and fascinating dye of the feminine mind. So at the end of the week’s absence, which had brought him as far as Dublin, he resolved to curtail his tour, return to Endelstow, and commit himself by making a reality of the hypothetical offer of that Sunday evening.
Notwithstanding that he had concocted a great deal of paper theory on social amenities and modern manners generally, the special ounce of practice was wanting, and now for his life Knight could not recollect whether it was considered correct to give a young lady personal ornaments before a regular engagement to marry had been initiated. But the day before leaving Dublin he looked around anxiously for a high-class jewellery establishment, in which he purchased what he considered would suit her best.
It was with a most awkward and unwonted feeling that after entering and closing the door of his room he sat down, opened the morocco case, and held up each of the fragile bits of gold-work before his eyes. Many things had become old to the solitary man of letters, but these were new, and he handled like a child an outcome of civilization which had never before been touched by his fingers. A sudden fastidious decision that the pattern chosen would not suit her after all caused him to rise in a flurry and tear down the street to change them for others. After a great deal of trouble in reselecting, during which his mind became so bewildered that the critical faculty on objects of art seemed to have vacated his person altogether, Knight carried off another pair of ear-rings. These remained in his possession till the afternoon, when, after contemplating them fifty times with a growing misgiving that the last choice was worse than the first, he felt that no sleep would visit his pillow till he had improved upon his previous purchases yet again. In a perfect heat of vexation with himself for such tergiversation, he went anew to the shop-door, was absolutely ashamed to enter and give further trouble, went to another shop, bought a pair at an enormously increased price, because they seemed the very thing, asked the goldsmiths if they would take the other pair in exchange, was told that they could not exchange articles bought of another maker, paid down the money, and went off with the two pairs in his possession, wondering what on earth to do with the superfluous pair. He almost wished he could lose them, or that somebody would steal them, and was burdened with an interposing sense that, as a capable man, with true ideas of economy, he must necessarily sell them somewhere, which he did at last for a mere song. Mingled with a blank feeling of a whole day being lost to him in running about the city on this new and extraordinary class of errand, and of several pounds being lost through his bungling, was a slight sense of satisfaction that he had emerged for ever from his antediluvian ignorance on the subject of ladies’ jewellery, as well as secured a truly artistic production at last. During the remainder of that day he scanned the ornaments of every lady he met with the profoundly experienced eye of an appraiser.
Next morning Knight was again crossing St. George’s Channel — not returning to London by the Holyhead route as he had originally intended, but towards Bristol — availing himself of Mr. and Mrs. Swancourt’s invitation to revisit them on his homeward journey.
We flit forward to Elfride.
Woman’s ruling passion — to fascinate and influence those more powerful than she — though operant in Elfride, was decidedly purposeless. She had wanted her friend Knight’s good opinion from the first: how much more than that elementary ingredient of friendship she now desired, her fears would hardly allow her to think. In originally wishing to please the highest class of man she had ever intimately known, there was no disloyalty to Stephen Smith. She could not — and few women can — realise the possible vastness of an issue which has only an insignificant begetting.
Her letters from Stephen were necessarily few, and her sense of fidelity clung to the last she had received as a wrecked mariner clings to flotsam. The young girl persuaded herself that she was glad Stephen had such a right to her hand as he had acquired (in her eyes) by the elopement. She beguiled herself by saying, ‘Perhaps if I had not so committed myself I might fall in love with Mr. Knight.’
All this made the week of Knight’s absence very gloomy and distasteful to her. She retained Stephen in her prayers, and his old letters were re-read — as a medicine in reality, though she deceived herself into the belief that it was as a pleasure.
These letters had grown more and more hopeful. He told her that he finished his work every day with a pleasant consciousness of having removed one more stone from the barrier which divided them. Then he drew images of what a fine figure they two would cut some day. People would turn their heads and say, ‘What a prize he has won!’ She was not to be sad about that wild runaway attempt of theirs (Elfride had repeatedly said that it grieved her). Whatever any other person who knew of it might think, he knew well enough the modesty of her nature. The only reproach was a gentle one for not having written quite so devotedly during her visit to London. Her letter had seemed to have a liveliness derived from other thoughts than thoughts of him.
Knight’s intention of an early return to Endelstow having originally been faint, his promise to do so had been fainter. He was a man who kept his words well to the rear of his possible actions. The vicar was rather surprised to see him again so soon: Mrs. Swancourt was not. Knight found, on meeting them all, after his arrival had been announced, that they had formed an intention to go to St. Leonards for a few days at the end of the month.
No satisfactory conjuncture offered itself on this first evening of his return for presenting Elfride with what he had been at such pains to procure. He was fastidious in his reading of opportunities for such an intended act. The next morning chancing to break fine after a week of cloudy weather, it was proposed and decided that they should all drive to Barwith Strand, a local lion which neither Mrs. Swancourt nor Knight had seen. Knight scented romantic occasions from afar, and foresaw that such a one might be expected before the coming night.
The journey was along a road by neutral green hills, upon which hedgerows lay trailing like ropes on a quay. Gaps in these uplands revealed the blue sea, flecked with a few dashes of white and a solitary white sail, the whole brimming up to a keen horizon which lay like a line ruled from hillside to hillside. Then they rolled down a pass, the chocolate-toned rocks forming a wall on both sides, from one of which fell a heavy jagged shade over half the roadway. A spout of fresh water burst from an occasional crevice, and pattering down upon broad green leaves, ran along as a rivulet at the bottom. Unkempt locks of heather overhung the brow of each steep, whence at divers points a bramble swung forth into mid-air, snatching at their head-dresses like a claw.
They mounted the last crest, and the bay which was to be the end of their pilgrimage burst upon them. The ocean blueness deepened its colour as it stretched to the foot of the crags, where it terminated in a fringe of white — silent at this distance, though moving and heaving like a counterpane upon a restless sleeper. The shadowed hollows of the purple and brown rocks would have been called blue had not that tint been so entirely appropriated by the water beside them.
The carriage was put up at a little cottage with a shed attached, and an ostler and the coachman carried the hamper of provisions down to the shore.
Knight found his opportunity. ‘I did not forget your wish,’ he began, when they were apart from their friends.
Elfride looked as if she did not understand.
‘And I have brought you these,’ he continued, awkwardly pulling out the case, and opening it while holding it towards her.
‘O Mr. Knight!’ said Elfride co
nfusedly, and turning to a lively red; ‘I didn’t know you had any intention or meaning in what you said. I thought it a mere supposition. I don’t want them.’
A thought which had flashed into her mind gave the reply a greater decisiveness than it might otherwise have possessed. To-morrow was the day for Stephen’s letter.
‘But will you not accept them?’ Knight returned, feeling less her master than heretofore.
‘I would rather not. They are beautiful — more beautiful than any I have ever seen,’ she answered earnestly, looking half-wishfully at the temptation, as Eve may have looked at the apple. ‘But I don’t want to have them, if you will kindly forgive me, Mr. Knight.’
‘No kindness at all,’ said Mr. Knight, brought to a full stop at this unexpected turn of events.
A silence followed. Knight held the open case, looking rather wofully at the glittering forms he had forsaken his orbit to procure; turning it about and holding it up as if, feeling his gift to be slighted by her, he were endeavouring to admire it very much himself.
‘Shut them up, and don’t let me see them any longer — do!’ she said laughingly, and with a quaint mixture of reluctance and entreaty.
‘Why, Elfie?’
‘Not Elfie to you, Mr. Knight. Oh, because I shall want them. There, I am silly, I know, to say that! But I have a reason for not taking them — now.’ She kept in the last word for a moment, intending to imply that her refusal was finite, but somehow the word slipped out, and undid all the rest.
‘You will take them some day?’
‘I don’t want to.’
‘Why don’t you want to, Elfride Swancourt?’
‘Because I don’t. I don’t like to take them.’
‘I have read a fact of distressing significance in that,’ said Knight. ‘Since you like them, your dislike to having them must be towards me?’
‘No, it isn’t.’
‘What, then? Do you like me?’
Elfride deepened in tint, and looked into the distance with features shaped to an expression of the nicest criticism as regarded her answer.
‘I like you pretty well,’ she at length murmured mildly.
‘Not very much?’
‘You are so sharp with me, and say hard things, and so how can I?’ she replied evasively.
‘You think me a fogey, I suppose?’
‘No, I don’t — I mean I do — I don’t know what I think you, I mean. Let us go to papa,’ responded Elfride, with somewhat of a flurried delivery.
‘Well, I’ll tell you my object in getting the present,’ said Knight, with a composure intended to remove from her mind any possible impression of his being what he was — her lover. ‘You see it was the very least I could do in common civility.’
Elfride felt rather blank at this lucid statement.
Knight continued, putting away the case: ‘I felt as anybody naturally would have, you know, that my words on your choice the other day were invidious and unfair, and thought an apology should take a practical shape.’
‘Oh yes.’
Elfride was sorry — she could not tell why — that he gave such a legitimate reason. It was a disappointment that he had all the time a cool motive, which might be stated to anybody without raising a smile. Had she known they were offered in that spirit, she would certainly have accepted the seductive gift. And the tantalising feature was that perhaps he suspected her to imagine them offered as a lover’s token, which was mortifying enough if they were not.
Mrs. Swancourt came now to where they were sitting, to select a flat boulder for spreading their table-cloth upon, and, amid the discussion on that subject, the matter pending between Knight and Elfride was shelved for a while. He read her refusal so certainly as the bashfulness of a girl in a novel position, that, upon the whole, he could tolerate such a beginning. Could Knight have been told that it was a sense of fidelity struggling against new love, whilst no less assuring as to his ultimate victory, it might have entirely abstracted the wish to secure it.
At the same time a slight constraint of manner was visible between them for the remainder of the afternoon. The tide turned, and they were obliged to ascend to higher ground. The day glided on to its end with the usual quiet dreamy passivity of such occasions — when every deed done and thing thought is in endeavouring to avoid doing and thinking more. Looking idly over the verge of a crag, they beheld their stone dining-table gradually being splashed upon and their crumbs and fragments all washed away by the incoming sea. The vicar drew a moral lesson from the scene; Knight replied in the same satisfied strain. And then the waves rolled in furiously — the neutral green-and-blue tongues of water slid up the slopes, and were metamorphosed into foam by a careless blow, falling back white and faint, and leaving trailing followers behind.
The passing of a heavy shower was the next scene — driving them to shelter in a shallow cave — after which the horses were put in, and they started to return homeward. By the time they reached the higher levels the sky had again cleared, and the sunset rays glanced directly upon the wet uphill road they had climbed. The ruts formed by their carriage-wheels on the ascent — a pair of Liliputian canals — were as shining bars of gold, tapering to nothing in the distance. Upon this also they turned their backs, and night spread over the sea.
The evening was chilly, and there was no moon. Knight sat close to Elfride, and, when the darkness rendered the position of a person a matter of uncertainty, particularly close. Elfride edged away.
‘I hope you allow me my place ungrudgingly?’ he whispered.
‘Oh yes; ‘tis the least I can do in common civility,’ she said, accenting the words so that he might recognize them as his own returned.
Both of them felt delicately balanced between two possibilities. Thus they reached home.
To Knight this mild experience was delightful. It was to him a gentle innocent time — a time which, though there may not be much in it, seldom repeats itself in a man’s life, and has a peculiar dearness when glanced at retrospectively. He is not inconveniently deep in love, and is lulled by a peaceful sense of being able to enjoy the most trivial thing with a childlike enjoyment. The movement of a wave, the colour of a stone, anything, was enough for Knight’s drowsy thoughts of that day to precipitate themselves upon. Even the sermonizing platitudes the vicar had delivered himself of — chiefly because something seemed to be professionally required of him in the presence of a man of Knight’s proclivities — were swallowed whole. The presence of Elfride led him not merely to tolerate that kind of talk from the necessities of ordinary courtesy; but he listened to it — took in the ideas with an enjoyable make-believe that they were proper and necessary, and indulged in a conservative feeling that the face of things was complete.
Entering her room that evening Elfride found a packet for herself on the dressing-table. How it came there she did not know. She tremblingly undid the folds of white paper that covered it. Yes; it was the treasure of a morocco case, containing those treasures of ornament she had refused in the daytime.
Elfride dressed herself in them for a moment, looked at herself in the glass, blushed red, and put them away. They filled her dreams all that night. Never had she seen anything so lovely, and never was it more clear that as an honest woman she was in duty bound to refuse them. Why it was not equally clear to her that duty required more vigorous co-ordinate conduct as well, let those who dissect her say.
The next morning glared in like a spectre upon her. It was Stephen’s letter-day, and she was bound to meet the postman — to stealthily do a deed she had never liked, to secure an end she now had ceased to desire.
But she went.
There were two letters.
One was from the bank at St. Launce’s, in which she had a small private deposit — probably something about interest. She put that in her pocket for a moment, and going indoors and upstairs to be safer from observation, tremblingly opened Stephen’s.
What was this he said to her?
She was to go
to the St. Launce’s Bank and take a sum of money which they had received private advices to pay her.
The sum was two hundred pounds.
There was no check, order, or anything of the nature of guarantee. In fact the information amounted to this: the money was now in the St. Launce’s Bank, standing in her name.
She instantly opened the other letter. It contained a deposit-note from the bank for the sum of two hundred pounds which had that day been added to her account. Stephen’s information, then, was correct, and the transfer made.
‘I have saved this in one year,’ Stephen’s letter went on to say, ‘and what so proper as well as pleasant for me to do as to hand it over to you to keep for your use? I have plenty for myself, independently of this. Should you not be disposed to let it lie idle in the bank, get your father to invest it in your name on good security. It is a little present to you from your more than betrothed. He will, I think, Elfride, feel now that my pretensions to your hand are anything but the dream of a silly boy not worth rational consideration.’
With a natural delicacy, Elfride, in mentioning her father’s marriage, had refrained from all allusion to the pecuniary resources of the lady.
Leaving this matter-of-fact subject, he went on, somewhat after his boyish manner:
‘Do you remember, darling, that first morning of my arrival at your house, when your father read at prayers the miracle of healing the sick of the palsy — where he is told to take up his bed and walk? I do, and I can now so well realise the force of that passage. The smallest piece of mat is the bed of the Oriental, and yesterday I saw a native perform the very action, which reminded me to mention it. But you are better read than I, and perhaps you knew all this long ago....One day I bought some small native idols to send home to you as curiosities, but afterwards finding they had been cast in England, made to look old, and shipped over, I threw them away in disgust.
