第38章

Journeys end in lovers meeting.

Stephen lay watching the Great Bear;Elfride was regarding a monotonous parallelogram of window blind.Neither slept that night.

Early the next morning--that is to say,four hours after their stolen interview,and just as the earliest servant was heard moving about--Stephen Smith went downstairs,portmanteau in hand.

Throughout the night he had intended to see Mr.Swancourt again,but the sharp rebuff of the previous evening rendered such an interview particularly distasteful.Perhaps there was another and less honest reason.He decided to put it off.Whatever of moral timidity or obliquity may have lain in such a decision,no perception of it was strong enough to detain him.He wrote a note in his room,which stated simply that he did not feel happy in the house after Mr.Swancourts sudden veto on what he had favoured a few hours before;but that he hoped a time would come,and that soon,when his original feelings of pleasure as Mr.Swancourts guest might be recovered.

He expected to find the downstairs rooms wearing the gray and cheerless aspect that early morning gives to everything out of the sun.He found in the dining room a breakfast laid,of which somebody had just partaken.

Stephen gave the maid-servant his note of adieu.She stated that Mr.Swancourt had risen early that morning,and made an early breakfast.He was not going away that she knew of.

Stephen took a cup of coffee,left the house of his love,and turned into the lane.It was so early that the shaded places still smelt like night time,and the sunny spots had hardly felt the sun.The horizontal rays made every shallow dip in the ground to show as a well-marked hollow.Even the channel of the path was enough to throw shade,and the very stones of the road cast tapering dashes of darkness westward,as long as Jaels tent-nail.

At a spot not more than a hundred yards from the vicars residence the lane leading thence crossed the high road.Stephen reached the point of intersection,stood still and listened.Nothing could be heard save the lengthy,murmuring line of the sea upon the adjacent shore.He looked at his watch,and then mounted a gate upon which he seated himself,to await the arrival of the carrier.Whilst he sat he heard wheels coming in two directions.

The vehicle approaching on his right he soon recognized as the carriers.There were the accompanying sounds of the owners voice and the smack of his whip,distinct in the still morning air,by which he encouraged his horses up the hill.

The other set of wheels sounded from the lane Stephen had just traversed.On closer observation,he perceived that they were moving from the precincts of the ancient manor-house adjoining the vicarage grounds.A carriage then left the entrance gates of the house,and wheeling round came fully in sight.It was a plain travelling carriage,with a small quantity of luggage,apparently a ladys.The vehicle came to the junction of the four ways half-

a-minute before the carrier reached the same spot,and crossed directly in his front,proceeding by the lane on the other side.

Inside the carriage Stephen could just discern an elderly lady with a younger woman,who seemed to be her maid.The road they had taken led to Stratleigh,a small watering-place sixteen miles north.

He heard the manor-house gates swing again,and looking up saw another person leaving them,and walking off in the direction of the parsonage.Ah,how much I wish I were moving that way!felt he parenthetically.The gentleman was tall,and resembled Mr.

Swancourt in outline and attire.He opened the vicarage gate and went in.Mr.Swancourt,then,it certainly was.Instead of remaining in bed that morning Mr.Swancourt must have taken it into his head to see his new neighbour off on a journey.He must have been greatly interested in that neighbour to do such an unusual thing.

The carriers conveyance had pulled up,and Stephen now handed in his portmanteau and mounted the shafts.Who is that lady in the carriage?he inquired indifferently of Lickpan the carrier.

That,sir,is Mrs.Troyton,a widder wia mint omoney.Shes the owner of all that part of Endelstow that is not Lord Luxellians.Only been here a short time;she came into it by law.The owner formerly was a terrible mysterious party--never lived here--hardly ever was seen here except in the month of September,as I might say.

The horses were started again,and noise rendered further discourse a matter of too great exertion.Stephen crept inside under the tilt,and was soon lost in reverie.

Three hours and a half of straining up hills and jogging down brought them to St.Launces,the market town and railway station nearest to Endelstow,and the place from which Stephen Smith had journeyed over the downs on the,to him,memorable winter evening at the beginning of the same year.The carriers van was so timed as to meet a starting up-train,which Stephen entered.Two or three hoursrailway travel through vertical cuttings in metamorphic rock,through oak copses rich and green,stretching over slopes and down delightful valleys,glens,and ravines,sparkling with water like many-rilled Ida,and he plunged amid the hundred and fifty thousand people composing the town of Plymouth.