第40章

Elfride was almost unconsciously relieved,persuading herself that her fathers reserve on his business justified her in secrecy as regarded her own--a secrecy which was necessarily a foregone decision with her.So anxious is a young conscience to discover a palliative,that the ex post facto nature of a reason is of no account in excluding it.

The intervening fortnight was spent by her mostly in walking by herself among the shrubs and trees,indulging sometimes in sanguine anticipations;more,far more frequently,in misgivings.

All her flowers seemed dull of hue;her pets seemed to look wistfully into her eyes,as if they no longer stood in the same friendly relation to her as formerly.She wore melancholy jewellery,gazed at sunsets,and talked to old men and women.It was the first time that she had had an inner and private world apart from the visible one about her.She wished that her father,instead of neglecting her even more than usual,would make some advance--just one word;she would then tell all,and risk Stephens displeasure.Thus brought round to the youth again,she saw him in her fancy,standing,touching her,his eyes full of sad affection,hopelessly renouncing his attempt because she had renounced hers;and she could not recede.

On the Wednesday she was to receive another letter.She had resolved to let her father see the arrival of this one,be the consequences what they might:the dread of losing her lover by this deed of honesty prevented her acting upon the resolve.Five minutes before the postmans expected arrival she slipped out,and down the lane to meet him.She met him immediately upon turning a sharp angle,which hid her from view in the direction of the vicarage.The man smilingly handed one missive,and was going on to hand another,a circular from some tradesman.

No,she said;take that on to the house.

Why,miss,you are doing what your father has done for the last fortnight.

She did not comprehend.

Why,come to this corner,and take a letter of me every morning,all writ in the same handwriting,and letting any others for him go on to the house.And on the postman went.

No sooner had he turned the corner behind her back than she heard her father meet and address the man.She had saved her letter by two minutes.Her father audibly went through precisely the same performance as she had just been guilty of herself.

This stealthy conduct of his was,to say the least,peculiar.

Given an impulsive inconsequent girl,neglected as to her inner life by her only parent,and the following forces alive within her;to determine a resultant:

First love acted upon by a deadly fear of separation from its object:inexperience,guiding onward a frantic wish to prevent the above-named issue:misgivings as to propriety,met by hope of ultimate exoneration:indignation at parental inconsistency in first encouraging,then forbidding:a chilling sense of disobedience,overpowered by a conscientious inability to brook a breaking of plighted faith with a man who,in essentials,had remained unaltered from the beginning:a blessed hope that opposition would turn an erroneous judgement:a bright faith that things would mend thereby,and wind up well.

Probably the result would,after all,have been nil,had not the following few remarks been made one day at breakfast.

Her father was in his old hearty spirits.He smiled to himself at stories too bad to tell,and called Elfride a little scamp for surreptitiously preserving some blind kittens that ought to have been drowned.After this expression,she said to him suddenly:

If Mr.Smith had been already in the family,you would not have been made wretched by discovering he had poor relations?

Do you mean in the family by marriage?he replied inattentively,and continuing to peel his egg.

The accumulating scarlet told that was her meaning,as much as the affirmative reply.

I should have put up with it,no doubt,Mr.Swancourt observed.

So that you would not have been driven into hopeless melancholy,but have made the best of him?

Elfrides erratic mind had from her youth upwards been constantly in the habit of perplexing her father by hypothetical questions,based on absurd conditions.The present seemed to be cast so precisely in the mould of previous ones that,not being given to syntheses of circumstances,he answered it with customary complacency.

If he were allied to us irretrievably,of course I,or any sensible man,should accept conditions that could not be altered;certainly not be hopelessly melancholy about it.I dont believe anything in the world would make me hopelessly melancholy.And dont let anything make you so,either.

I wont,papa,she cried,with a serene brightness that pleased him.

Certainly Mr.Swancourt must have been far from thinking that the brightness came from an exhilarating intention to hold back no longer from the mad action she had planned.

In the evening he drove away towards Stratleigh,quite alone.It was an unusual course for him.At the door Elfride had been again almost impelled by her feelings to pour out all.

Why are you going to Stratleigh,papa?she said,and looked at him longingly.

I will tell you to-morrow when I come back,he said cheerily;not before then,Elfride.Thou wilt not utter what thou dost not know,and so far will I trust thee,gentle Elfride.

She was repressed and hurt.

I will tell you my errand to Plymouth,too,when I come back,she murmured.

He went away.His jocularity made her intention seem the lighter,as his indifference made her more resolved to do as she liked.

It was a familiar September sunset,dark-blue fragments of cloud upon an orange-yellow sky.These sunsets used to tempt her to walk towards them,as any beautiful thing tempts a near approach.

She went through the field to the privet hedge,clambered into the middle of it,and reclined upon the thick boughs.After looking westward for a considerable time,she blamed herself for not looking eastward to where Stephen was,and turned round.