第98章

She was my grandmother,said Elfride,vainly endeavouring to moisten her dry lips before she spoke.Elfride had then the conscience-stricken look of Guidos Magdalen,rendered upon a more childlike form.She kept her face partially away from Knight and Stephen,and set her eyes upon the sky visible outside,as if her salvation depended upon quickly reaching it.Her left hand rested lightly within Knights arm,half withdrawn,from a sense of shame at claiming him before her old lover,yet unwilling to renounce him;so that her glove merely touched his sleeve."Can one be pardoned,and retain the offence?"quoted Elfrides heart then.

Conversation seemed to have no self-sustaining power,and went on in the shape of disjointed remarks.Ones mind gets thronged with thoughts while standing so solemnly here,Knight said,in a measured quiet voice.How much has been said on death from time to time!how much we ourselves can think upon it!We may fancy each of these who lie here saying:

For Thou,to make my fall more great,Didst lift me up on high.

What comes next,Elfride?It is the Hundred-and-second Psalm I am thinking of.

Yes,I know it,she murmured,and went on in a still lower voice,seemingly afraid for any words from the emotional side of her nature to reach Stephen:

"My days,just hastening to their end,Are like an evening shade;

My beauty doth,like witherd grass,With waning lustre fade."

Well,said Knight musingly,let us leave them.Such occasions as these seem to compel us to roam outside ourselves,far away from the fragile frame we live in,and to expand till our perception grows so vast that our physical reality bears no sort of proportion to it.We look back upon the weak and minute stem on which this luxuriant growth depends,and ask,Can it be possible that such a capacity has a foundation so small?Must I again return to my daily walk in that narrow cell,a human body,where worldly thoughts can torture me?Do we not?

Yes,said Stephen and Elfride.

One has a sense of wrong,too,that such an appreciative breadth as a sentient being possesses should be committed to the frail casket of a body.What weakens ones intentions regarding the future like the thought of this?.However,let us tune ourselves to a more cheerful chord,for theres a great deal to be done yet by us all.

As Knight meditatively addressed his juniors thus,unconscious of the deception practised,for different reasons,by the severed hearts at his side,and of the scenes that had in earlier days united them,each one felt that he and she did not gain by contrast with their musing mentor.Physically not so handsome as either the youthful architect or the vicars daughter,the thoroughness and integrity of Knight illuminated his features with a dignity not even incipient in the other two.It is difficult to frame rules which shall apply to both sexes,and Elfride,an undeveloped girl,must,perhaps,hardly be laden with the moral responsibilities which attach to a man in like circumstances.The charm of woman,too,lies partly in her subtleness in matters of love.But if honesty is a virtue in itself,Elfride,having none of it now,seemed,being for being,scarcely good enough for Knight.Stephen,though deceptive for no unworthy purpose,was deceptive after all;and whatever good results grace such strategy if it succeed,it seldom draws admiration,especially when it fails.

On an ordinary occasion,had Knight been even quite alone with Stephen,he would hardly have alluded to his possible relationship to Elfride.But moved by attendant circumstances Knight was impelled to be confiding.

Stephen,he said,this lady is Miss Swancourt.I am staying at her fathers house,as you probably know.He stepped a few paces nearer to Smith,and said in a lower tone:I may as well tell you that we are engaged to be married.

Low as the words had been spoken,Elfride had heard them,and awaited Stephens reply in breathless silence,if that could be called silence where Elfrides dress,at each throb of her heart,shook and indicated it like a pulse-glass,rustling also against the wall in reply to the same throbbing.The ray of daylight which reached her face lent it a blue pallor in comparison with those of the other two.

I congratulate you,Stephen whispered;and said aloud,I know Miss Swancourt--a little.You must remember that my father is a parishioner of Mr.Swancourts.

I thought you might possibly not have lived at home since they have been here.

I have never lived at home,certainly,since that time.

I have seen Mr.Smith,faltered Elfride.

Well,there is no excuse for me.As strangers to each other I ought,I suppose,to have introduced you:as acquaintances,I

should not have stood so persistently between you.But the fact is,Smith,you seem a boy to me,even now.

Stephen appeared to have a more than previous consciousness of the intense cruelty of his fate at the present moment.He could not repress the words,uttered with a dim bitterness:

You should have said that I seemed still the rural mechanics son I am,and hence an unfit subject for the ceremony of introductions.

Oh,no,no!I wont have that.Knight endeavoured to give his reply a laughing tone in Elfrides ears,and an earnestness in Stephens:in both which efforts he signally failed,and produced a forced speech pleasant to neither.Well,let us go into the open air again;Miss Swancourt,you are particularly silent.You mustnt mind Smith.I have known him for years,as I have told you.

Yes,you have,she said.

To think she has never mentioned her knowledge of me!Smith murmured,and thought with some remorse how much her conduct resembled his own on his first arrival at her house as a stranger to the place.