The mists were creeping out of pools and swamps for their pilgrimages of the night when Stephen came up to the front door of the vicarage.
Elfride was standing on the step illuminated by a lemon-hued expanse of western sky.
"You never have been all this time looking for that earring?" she said anxiously.
"Oh no; and I have not found it."
"Never mind. Though I am much vexed; they are my prettiest. But, Stephen, what ever have you been doing--where have you been? I have been so uneasy. I feared for you, knowing not an inch of the country. I thought, suppose he has fallen over the cliff! But now I am inclined to scold you for frightening me so."
"I must speak to your father now," he said rather abruptly; "I have so much to say to him--and to you, Elfride."
"Will what you have to say endanger this nice time of ours, and is it that same shadowy secret you allude to so frequently, and will it make me unhappy?"
"Possibly."
She breathed heavily, and looked around as if for a prompter.
"Put it off till to-morrow," she said.
He involuntarily sighed too.
"No; it must come to-night. Where is your father, Elfride?"
"Somewhere in the kitchen garden, I think," she replied. "That is his favourite evening retreat. I will leave you now. Say all that"s to be said--do all there is to be done. Think of me waiting anxiously for the end." And she re-entered the house.
She waited in the drawing-room, watching the lights sink to shadows, the shadows sink to darkness, until her impatience to know what had occurred in the garden could no longer be controlled. She pa.s.sed round the shrubbery, unlatched the garden door, and skimmed with her keen eyes the whole twilighted s.p.a.ce that the four walls enclosed and sheltered: they were not there. She mounted a little ladder, which had been used for gathering fruit, and looked over the wall into the field. This field extended to the limits of the glebe, which was enclosed on that side by a privet-hedge. Under the hedge was Mr. Swancourt, walking up and down, and talking aloud--to himself, as it sounded at first. No: another voice shouted occasional replies; and this interlocutor seemed to be on the other side of the hedge. The voice, though soft in quality, was not Stephen"s.
The second speaker must have been in the long-neglected garden of an old manor-house hard by, which, together with a small estate attached, had lately been purchased by a person named Troyton, whom Elfride had never seen. Her father might have struck up an acquaintanceship with some member of that family through the privet-hedge, or a stranger to the neighbourhood might have wandered thither.
Well, there was no necessity for disturbing him.
And it seemed that, after all, Stephen had not yet made his desired communication to her father. Again she went indoors, wondering where Stephen could be. For want of something better to do, she went upstairs to her own little room. Here she sat down at the open window, and, leaning with her elbow on the table and her cheek upon her hand, she fell into meditation.
It was a hot and still August night. Every disturbance of the silence which rose to the dignity of a noise could be heard for miles, and the merest sound for a long distance. So she remained, thinking of Stephen, and wishing he had not deprived her of his company to no purpose, as it appeared. How delicate and sensitive he was, she reflected; and yet he was man enough to have a private mystery, which considerably elevated him in her eyes. Thus, looking at things with an inward vision, she lost consciousness of the flight of time.
Strange conjunctions of circ.u.mstances, particularly those of a trivial everyday kind, are so frequent in an ordinary life, that we grow used to their unaccountableness, and forget the question whether the very long odds against such juxtaposition is not almost a disproof of it being a matter of chance at all. What occurred to Elfride at this moment was a case in point. She was vividly imagining, for the twentieth time, the kiss of the morning, and putting her lips together in the position another such a one would demand, when she heard the identical operation performed on the lawn, immediately beneath her window.
A kiss--not of the quiet and stealthy kind, but decisive, loud, and smart.
Her face flushed and she looked out, but to no purpose. The dark rim of the upland drew a keen sad line against the pale glow of the sky, unbroken except where a young cedar on the lawn, that had outgrown its fellow trees, shot its pointed head across the horizon, piercing the firmamental l.u.s.tre like a sting.
It was just possible that, had any persons been standing on the gra.s.sy portions of the lawn, Elfride might have seen their dusky forms. But the shrubs, which once had merely dotted the glade, had now grown bushy and large, till they hid at least half the enclosure containing them. The kissing pair might have been behind some of these; at any rate, n.o.body was in sight.
Had no enigma ever been connected with her lover by his hints and absences, Elfride would never have thought of admitting into her mind a suspicion that he might be concerned in the foregoing enactment. But the reservations he at present insisted on, while they added to the mystery without which perhaps she would never have seriously loved him at all, were calculated to nourish doubts of all kinds, and with a slow flush of jealousy she asked herself, might he not be the culprit?
Elfride glided downstairs on tiptoe, and out to the precise spot on which she had parted from Stephen to enable him to speak privately to her father. Thence she wandered into all the nooks around the place from which the sound seemed to proceed--among the huge laurestines, about the tufts of pampas gra.s.ses, amid the variegated hollies, under the weeping wych-elm--n.o.body was there. Returning indoors she called "Unity!"
"She is gone to her aunt"s, to spend the evening," said Mr. Swancourt, thrusting his head out of his study door, and letting the light of his candles stream upon Elfride"s face--less revealing than, as it seemed to herself, creating the blush of uneasy perplexity that was burning upon her cheek.
"I didn"t know you were indoors, papa," she said with surprise. "Surely no light was shining from the window when I was on the lawn?" and she looked and saw that the shutters were still open.
"Oh yes, I am in," he said indifferently. "What did you want Unity for?
I think she laid supper before she went out."
"Did she?--I have not been to see--I didn"t want her for that."
Elfride scarcely knew, now that a definite reason was required, what that reason was. Her mind for a moment strayed to another subject, unimportant as it seemed. The red ember of a match was lying inside the fender, which explained that why she had seen no rays from the window was because the candles had only just been lighted.
"I"ll come directly," said the vicar. "I thought you were out somewhere with Mr. Smith."
Even the inexperienced Elfride could not help thinking that her father must be wonderfully blind if he failed to perceive what was the nascent consequence of herself and Stephen being so unceremoniously left together; wonderfully careless, if he saw it and did not think about it; wonderfully good, if, as seemed to her by far the most probable supposition, he saw it and thought about it and approved of it. These reflections were cut short by the appearance of Stephen just outside the porch, silvered about the head and shoulders with touches of moonlight, that had begun to creep through the trees.
"Has your trouble anything to do with a kiss on the lawn?" she asked abruptly, almost pa.s.sionately.
"Kiss on the lawn?"
"Yes!" she said, imperiously now.
"I didn"t comprehend your meaning, nor do I now exactly. I certainly have kissed n.o.body on the lawn, if that is really what you want to know, Elfride."
"You know nothing about such a performance?"
"Nothing whatever. What makes you ask?"
"Don"t press me to tell; it is nothing of importance. And, Stephen, you have not yet spoken to papa about our engagement?"
"No," he said regretfully, "I could not find him directly; and then I went on thinking so much of what you said about objections, refusals--bitter words possibly--ending our happiness, that I resolved to put it off till to-morrow; that gives us one more day of delight--delight of a tremulous kind."
"Yes; but it would be improper to be silent too long, I think," she said in a delicate voice, which implied that her face had grown warm. "I want him to know we love, Stephen. Why did you adopt as your own my thought of delay?"
"I will explain; but I want to tell you of my secret first--to tell you now. It is two or three hours yet to bedtime. Let us walk up the hill to the church."
Elfride pa.s.sively a.s.sented, and they went from the lawn by a side wicket, and ascended into the open expanse of moonlight which streamed around the lonely edifice on the summit of the hill.
The door was locked. They turned from the porch, and walked hand in hand to find a resting-place in the churchyard. Stephen chose a flat tomb, showing itself to be newer and whiter than those around it, and sitting down himself, gently drew her hand towards him.
"No, not there," she said.
"Why not here?"
"A mere fancy; but never mind." And she sat down.
"Elfie, will you love me, in spite of everything that may be said against me?"
"O Stephen, what makes you repeat that so continually and so sadly? You know I will. Yes, indeed," she said, drawing closer, "whatever may be said of you--and nothing bad can be--I will cling to you just the same.
Your ways shall be my ways until I die."
"Did you ever think what my parents might be, or what society I originally moved in?"