The steps were let down, and Elfride was transferred--to the intense delight of the little girls, and to the mild interest of loungers with red skins and long necks, who cursorily eyed the performance with their walking-sticks to their lips, occasionally laughing from far down their throats and with their eyes, their mouths not being concerned in the operation at all. Lord Luxellian then told the coachman to drive on, lifted his hat, smiled a smile that missed its mark and alighted on a total stranger, who bowed in bewilderment. Lord Luxellian looked long at Elfride.
The look was a manly, open, and genuine look of admiration; a momentary tribute of a kind which any honest Englishman might have paid to fairness without being ashamed of the feeling, or permitting it to encroach in the slightest degree upon his emotional obligations as a husband and head of a family. Then Lord Luxellian turned away, and walked musingly to the upper end of the promenade.
Mr. Swancourt had alighted at the same time with Elfride, crossing over to the Row for a few minutes to speak to a friend he recognized there; and his wife was thus left sole tenant of the carriage.
Now, whilst this little act had been in course of performance, there stood among the promenading spectators a man of somewhat different description from the rest. Behind the general throng, in the rear of the chairs, and leaning against the trunk of a tree, he looked at Elfride with quiet and critical interest.
Three points about this un.o.btrusive person showed promptly to the exercised eye that he was not a Row man pur sang. First, an irrepressible wrinkle or two in the waist of his frock-coat--denoting that he had not d.a.m.ned his tailor sufficiently to drive that tradesman up to the orthodox high pressure of cunning workmanship. Second, a slight slovenliness of umbrella, occasioned by its owner"s habit of resting heavily upon it, and using it as a veritable walking-stick, instead of letting its point touch the ground in the most coquettish of kisses, as is the proper Row manner to do. Third, and chief reason, that try how you might, you could scarcely help supposing, on looking at his face, that your eyes were not far from a well-finished mind, instead of the well-finished skin et praeterea nihil, which is by rights the Mark of the Row.
The probability is that, had not Mrs. Swancourt been left alone in her carriage under the tree, this man would have remained in his un.o.bserved seclusion. But seeing her thus, he came round to the front, stooped under the rail, and stood beside the carriage-door.
Mrs. Swancourt looked reflectively at him for a quarter of a minute, then held out her hand laughingly:
"Why, Henry Knight--of course it is! My--second--third--fourth cousin--what shall I say? At any rate, my kinsman."
"Yes, one of a remnant not yet cut off. I scarcely was certain of you, either, from where I was standing."
"I have not seen you since you first went to Oxford; consider the number of years! You know, I suppose, of my marriage?"
And there sprang up a dialogue concerning family matters of birth, death, and marriage, which it is not necessary to detail. Knight presently inquired:
"The young lady who changed into the other carriage is, then, your stepdaughter?"
"Yes, Elfride. You must know her."
"And who was the lady in the carriage Elfride entered; who had an ill-defined and watery look, as if she were only the reflection of herself in a pool?"
"Lady Luxellian; very weakly, Elfride says. My husband is remotely connected with them; but there is not much intimacy on account of----.
However, Henry, you"ll come and see us, of course. 24 Chevron Square.
Come this week. We shall only be in town a week or two longer."
"Let me see. I"ve got to run up to Oxford to-morrow, where I shall be for several days; so that I must, I fear, lose the pleasure of seeing you in London this year."
"Then come to Endelstow; why not return with us?"
"I am afraid if I were to come before August I should have to leave again in a day or two. I should be delighted to be with you at the beginning of that month; and I could stay a nice long time. I have thought of going westward all the summer."
"Very well. Now remember that"s a compact. And won"t you wait now and see Mr. Swancourt? He will not be away ten minutes longer."
"No; I"ll beg to be excused; for I must get to my chambers again this evening before I go home; indeed, I ought to have been there now--I have such a press of matters to attend to just at present. You will explain to him, please. Good-bye."
"And let us know the day of your appearance as soon as you can."
"I will"
Chapter XV
"A wandering voice."
Though sheer and intelligible griefs are not charmed away by being confided to mere acquaintances, the process is a palliative to certain ill-humours. Among these, perplexed vexation is one--a species of trouble which, like a stream, gets shallower by the simple operation of widening it in any quarter.
On the evening of the day succeeding that of the meeting in the Park, Elfride and Mrs. Swancourt were engaged in conversation in the dressing-room of the latter. Such a treatment of such a case was in course of adoption here.
Elfride had just before received an affectionate letter from Stephen Smith in Bombay, which had been forwarded to her from Endelstow. But since this is not the case referred to, it is not worth while to pry further into the contents of the letter than to discover that, with rash though pardonable confidence in coming times, he addressed her in high spirits as his darling future wife. Probably there cannot be instanced a briefer and surer rule-of-thumb test of a man"s temperament--sanguine or cautious--than this: did he or does he ante-date the word wife in corresponding with a sweet-heart he honestly loves?
She had taken this epistle into her own room, read a little of it, then SAVED the rest for to-morrow, not wishing to be so extravagant as to consume the pleasure all at once. Nevertheless, she could not resist the wish to enjoy yet a little more, so out came the letter again, and in spite of misgivings as to prodigality the whole was devoured. The letter was finally reperused and placed in her pocket.
What was this? Also a newspaper for Elfride, which she had overlooked in her hurry to open the letter. It was the old number of the PRESENT, containing the article upon her book, forwarded as had been requested.
Elfride had hastily read it through, shrunk perceptibly smaller, and had then gone with the paper in her hand to Mrs. Swancourt"s dressing-room, to lighten or at least modify her vexation by a discriminating estimate from her stepmother.
She was now looking disconsolately out of the window.
"Never mind, my child," said Mrs. Swancourt after a careful perusal of the matter indicated. "I don"t see that the review is such a terrible one, after all. Besides, everybody has forgotten about it by this time.
I"m sure the opening is good enough for any book ever written. Just listen--it sounds better read aloud than when you pore over it silently: "THE COURT OF KELLYON CASTLE. A ROMANCE OF THE MIDDLE AGES. BY ERNEST FIELD. In the belief that we were for a while escaping the monotonous repet.i.tion of wearisome details in modern social scenery, a.n.a.lyses of uninteresting character, or the unnatural unfoldings of a sensation plot, we took this volume into our hands with a feeling of pleasure. We were disposed to beguile ourselves with the fancy that some new change might possibly be rung upon donjon keeps, chain and plate armour, deeply scarred cheeks, tender maidens disguised as pages, to which we had not listened long ago." Now, that"s a very good beginning, in my opinion, and one to be proud of having brought out of a man who has never seen you."
"Ah, yes," murmured Elfride wofully. "But, then, see further on!"
"Well the next bit is rather unkind, I must own," said Mrs. Swancourt, and read on. ""Instead of this we found ourselves in the hands of some young lady, hardly arrived at years of discretion, to judge by the silly device it has been thought worth while to adopt on the t.i.tle-page, with the idea of disguising her s.e.x.""
"I am not "silly"!" said Elfride indignantly. "He might have called me anything but that."
"You are not, indeed. Well:--"Hands of a young lady...whose chapters are simply devoted to impossible tournaments, towers, and escapades, which read like flat copies of like scenes in the stories of Mr. G. P. R.
James, and the most unreal portions of IVANHOE. The bait is so palpably artificial that the most credulous gudgeon turns away." Now, my dear, I don"t see overmuch to complain of in that. It proves that you were clever enough to make him think of Sir Walter Scott, which is a great deal."
"Oh yes; though I cannot romance myself, I am able to remind him of those who can!" Elfride intended to hurl these words sarcastically at her invisible enemy, but as she had no more satirical power than a wood-pigeon, they merely fell in a pretty murmur from lips shaped to a pout.
"Certainly: and that"s something. Your book is good enough to be bad in an ordinary literary manner, and doesn"t stand by itself in a melancholy position altogether worse than a.s.sailable.--"That interest in an historical romance may nowadays have any chance of being sustained, it is indispensable that the reader find himself under the guidance of some nearly extinct species of legendary, who, in addition to an impulse towards antiquarian research and an unweakened faith in the mediaeval halo, shall possess an inventive faculty in which delicacy of sentiment is far overtopped by a power of welding to stirring incident a spirited variety of the elementary human pa.s.sions." Well, that long-winded effusion doesn"t refer to you at all, Elfride, merely something put in to fill up. Let me see, when does he come to you again;...not till the very end, actually. Here you are finally polished off:
""But to return to the little work we have used as the text of this article. We are far from altogether disparaging the author"s powers. She has a certain versatility that enables her to use with effect a style of narration peculiar to herself, which may be called a murmuring of delicate emotional trifles, the particular gift of those to whom the social sympathies of a peaceful time are as daily food. Hence, where matters of domestic experience, and the natural touches which make people real, can be introduced without anachronisms too striking, she is occasionally felicitous; and upon the whole we feel justified in saying that the book will bear looking into for the sake of those portions which have nothing whatever to do with the story."
"Well, I suppose it is intended for satire; but don"t think anything more of it now, my dear. It is seven o"clock." And Mrs. Swancourt rang for her maid.
Attack is more piquant than concord. Stephen"s letter was concerning nothing but oneness with her: the review was the very reverse. And a stranger with neither name nor shape, age nor appearance, but a mighty voice, is naturally rather an interesting novelty to a lady he chooses to address. When Elfride fell asleep that night she was loving the writer of the letter, but thinking of the writer of that article.
Chapter XVI
"Then fancy shapes--as fancy can."
On a day about three weeks later, the Swancourt trio were sitting quietly in the drawing-room of The Crags, Mrs. Swancourt"s house at Endelstow, chatting, and taking easeful survey of their previous month or two of town--a tangible weariness even to people whose acquaintances there might be counted on the fingers.