第89章

Stephen knew there could be no mistake about the time or place,and no difficulty about keeping the engagement.He waited yet longer,passing from impatience into a mood which failed to take any account of the lapse of time.He was awakened from his reverie by Castle Boterel clock.

One,two,three,four,five,six,seven,eight,nine,TEN .

One little fall of the hammer in addition to the number it had been sharp pleasure to hear,and what a difference to him!

He left the churchyard on the side opposite to his point of entrance,and went down the hill.Slowly he drew near the gate of her house.This he softly opened,and walked up the gravel drive to the door.Here he paused for several minutes.

At the expiration of that time the murmured speech of a manly voice came out to his ears through an open window behind the corner of the house.This was responded to by a clear soft laugh.

It was the laugh of Elfride.

Stephen was conscious of a gnawing pain at his heart.He retreated as he had come.There are disappointments which wring us,and there are those which inflict a wound whose mark we bear to our graves.Such are so keen that no future gratification of the same desire can ever obliterate them:they become registered as a permanent loss of happiness.Such a one was Stephens now:the crowning aureola of the dream had been the meeting here by stealth;and if Elfride had come to him only ten minutes after he had turned away,the disappointment would have been recognizable still.

When the young man reached home he found there a letter which had arrived in his absence.Believing it to contain some reason for her non-appearance,yet unable to imagine one that could justify her,he hastily tore open the envelope.

The paper contained not a word from Elfride.It was the deposit-note for his two hundred pounds.On the back was the form of a cheque,and this she had filled up with the same sum,payable to the bearer.

Stephen was confounded.He attempted to divine her motive.

Considering how limited was his knowledge of her later actions,he guessed rather shrewdly that,between the time of her sending the note in the morning and the evenings silent refusal of his gift,something had occurred which had caused a total change in her attitude towards him.

He knew not what to do.It seemed absurd now to go to her father next morning,as he had purposed,and ask for an engagement with her,a possibility impending all the while that Elfride herself would not be on his side.Only one course recommended itself as wise.To wait and see what the days would bring forth;to go and execute his commissions in Birmingham;then to return,learn if anything had happened,and try what a meeting might do;perhaps her surprise at his backwardness would bring her forward to show latent warmth as decidedly as in old times.

This act of patience was in keeping only with the nature of a man precisely of Stephens constitution.Nine men out of ten would perhaps have rushed off,got into her presence,by fair means or foul,and provoked a catastrophe of some sort.Possibly for the better,probably for the worse.

He started for Birmingham the next morning.A days delay would have made no difference;but he could not rest until he had begun and ended the programme proposed to himself.Bodily activity will sometimes take the sting out of anxiety as completely as assurance itself.