"No, not particularly. I have observed one or two little points in your manners which are rather quaint--no more. I suppose you have moved in the ordinary society of professional people."
"Supposing I have not--that none of my family have a profession except me?"
"I don"t mind. What you are only concerns me."
"Where do you think I went to school--I mean, to what kind of school?"
"Dr. Somebody"s academy," she said simply.
"No. To a dame school originally, then to a national school."
"Only to those! Well, I love you just as much, Stephen, dear Stephen,"
she murmured tenderly, "I do indeed. And why should you tell me these things so impressively? What do they matter to me?"
He held her closer and proceeded:
"What do you think my father is--does for his living, that is to say?"
"He practises some profession or calling, I suppose."
"No; he is a mason."
"A Freemason?"
"No; a cottager and journeyman mason."
Elfride said nothing at first. After a while she whispered:
"That is a strange idea to me. But never mind; what does it matter?"
"But aren"t you angry with me for not telling you before?"
"No, not at all. Is your mother alive?"
"Yes."
"Is she a nice lady?"
"Very--the best mother in the world. Her people had been well-to-do yeomen for centuries, but she was only a dairymaid."
"O Stephen!" came from her in whispered exclamation.
"She continued to attend to a dairy long after my father married her,"
pursued Stephen, without further hesitation. "And I remember very well how, when I was very young, I used to go to the milking, look on at the skimming, sleep through the churning, and make believe I helped her. Ah, that was a happy time enough!"
"No, never--not happy."
"Yes, it was."
"I don"t see how happiness could be where the drudgery of dairy-work had to be done for a living--the hands red and chapped, and the shoes clogged....Stephen, I do own that it seems odd to regard you in the light of--of--having been so rough in your youth, and done menial things of that kind." (Stephen withdrew an inch or two from her side.) "But I DO LOVE YOU just the same," she continued, getting closer under his shoulder again, "and I don"t care anything about the past; and I see that you are all the worthier for having pushed on in the world in such a way."
"It is not my worthiness; it is Knight"s, who pushed me."
"Ah, always he--always he!"
"Yes, and properly so. Now, Elfride, you see the reason of his teaching me by letter. I knew him years before he went to Oxford, but I had not got far enough in my reading for him to entertain the idea of helping me in cla.s.sics till he left home. Then I was sent away from the village, and we very seldom met; but he kept up this system of tuition by correspondence with the greatest regularity. I will tell you all the story, but not now. There is nothing more to say now, beyond giving places, persons, and dates." His voice became timidly slow at this point.
"No; don"t take trouble to say more. You are a dear honest fellow to say so much as you have; and it is not so dreadful either. It has become a normal thing that millionaires commence by going up to London with their tools at their back, and half-a-crown in their pockets. That sort of origin is getting so respected," she continued cheerfully, "that it is acquiring some of the odour of Norman ancestry."
"Ah, if I had MADE my fortune, I shouldn"t mind. But I am only a possible maker of it as yet."
"It is quite enough. And so THIS is what your trouble was?"
"I thought I was doing wrong in letting you love me without telling you my story; and yet I feared to do so, Elfie. I dreaded to lose you, and I was cowardly on that account."
"How plain everything about you seems after this explanation! Your peculiarities in chess-playing, the p.r.o.nunciation papa noticed in your Latin, your odd mixture of book-knowledge with ignorance of ordinary social accomplishments, are accounted for in a moment. And has this anything to do with what I saw at Lord Luxellian"s?"
"What did you see?"
"I saw the shadow of yourself putting a cloak round a lady. I was at the side door; you two were in a room with the window towards me. You came to me a moment later."
"She was my mother."
"Your mother THERE!" She withdrew herself to look at him silently in her interest.
"Elfride," said Stephen, "I was going to tell you the remainder to-morrow--I have been keeping it back--I must tell it now, after all.
The remainder of my revelation refers to where my parents are. Where do you think they live? You know them--by sight at any rate."
"I know them!" she said in suspended amazement.
"Yes. My father is John Smith, Lord Luxellian"s master-mason, who lives under the park wall by the river."
"O Stephen! can it be?"
"He built--or a.s.sisted at the building of the house you live in, years ago. He put up those stone gate piers at the lodge entrance to Lord Luxellian"s park. My grandfather planted the trees that belt in your lawn; my grandmother--who worked in the fields with him--held each tree upright whilst he filled in the earth: they told me so when I was a child. He was the s.e.xton, too, and dug many of the graves around us."
"And was your unaccountable vanishing on the first morning of your arrival, and again this afternoon, a run to see your father and mother?...I understand now; no wonder you seemed to know your way about the village!"
"No wonder. But remember, I have not lived here since I was nine years old. I then went to live with my uncle, a blacksmith, near Exonbury, in order to be able to attend a national school as a day scholar; there was none on this remote coast then. It was there I met with my friend Knight. And when I was fifteen and had been fairly educated by the school-master--and more particularly by Knight--I was put as a pupil in an architect"s office in that town, because I was skilful in the use of the pencil. A full premium was paid by the efforts of my mother and father, rather against the wishes of Lord Luxellian, who likes my father, however, and thinks a great deal of him. There I stayed till six months ago, when I obtained a situation as improver, as it is called, in a London office. That"s all of me."
"To think YOU, the London visitor, the town man, should have been born here, and have known this village so many years before I did. How strange--how very strange it seems to me!" she murmured.
"My mother curtseyed to you and your father last Sunday," said Stephen, with a pained smile at the thought of the incongruity. "And your papa said to her, "I am glad to see you so regular at church, JANE.""
"I remember it, but I have never spoken to her. We have only been here eighteen months, and the parish is so large."
"Contrast with this," said Stephen, with a miserable laugh, "your father"s belief in my "blue blood," which is still prevalent in his mind. The first night I came, he insisted upon proving my descent from one of the most ancient west-county families, on account of my second Christian name; when the truth is, it was given me because my grandfather was a.s.sistant gardener in the Fitzmaurice-Smith family for thirty years. Having seen your face, my darling, I had not heart to contradict him, and tell him what would have cut me off from a friendly knowledge of you."
She sighed deeply. "Yes, I see now how this inequality may be made to trouble us," she murmured, and continued in a low, sad whisper, "I wouldn"t have minded if they had lived far away. Papa might have consented to an engagement between us if your connection had been with villagers a hundred miles off; remoteness softens family contrasts. But he will not like--O Stephen, Stephen! what can I do?"