"True; "tis a thought to look at."
"And that one, if he"s gone upward, don"t know what his wife is doing no more than the man in the moon if she"s gone downward. And that some unfortunate one in the hot place is a-hollering across to a lucky one up in the clouds, and quite forgetting their bodies be boxed close together all the time."
"Ay, "tis a thought to look at, too, that I can say "Hullo!" close to fiery Lord George, and "a can"t hear me."
"And that I be eating my onion close to dainty Lady Jane"s nose, and she can"t smell me."
"What do "em put all their heads one way for?" inquired a young man.
"Because "tis churchyard law, you simple. The law of the living is, that a man shall be upright and down-right, and the law of the dead is, that a man shall be east and west. Every state of society have its laws."
"We must break the law wi" a few of the poor souls, however. Come, buckle to," said the master-mason.
And they set to work anew.
The order of interment could be distinctly traced by observing the appearance of the coffins as they lay piled around. On those which had been standing there but a generation or two the trappings still remained. Those of an earlier period showed bare wood, with a few tattered rags dangling therefrom. Earlier still, the wood lay in fragments on the floor of the niche, and the coffin consisted of naked lead alone; whilst in the case of the very oldest, even the lead was bulging and cracking in pieces, revealing to the curious eye a heap of dust within. The shields upon many were quite loose, and removable by the hand, their l.u.s.treless surfaces still indistinctly exhibiting the name and t.i.tle of the deceased.
Overhead the groins and concavities of the arches curved in all directions, dropping low towards the walls, where the height was no more than sufficient to enable a person to stand upright.
The body of George the fourteenth baron, together with two or three others, all of more recent date than the great bulk of coffins piled there, had, for want of room, been placed at the end of the vault on tressels, and not in niches like the others. These it was necessary to remove, to form behind them the chamber in which they were ultimately to be deposited. Stephen, finding the place and proceedings in keeping with the sombre colours of his mind, waited there still.
"Simeon, I suppose you can mind poor Lady Elfride, and how she ran away with the actor?" said John Smith, after awhile. "I think it fell upon the time my father was s.e.xton here. Let us see--where is she?"
"Here somewhere," returned Simeon, looking round him.
"Why, I"ve got my arms round the very gentlewoman at this moment."
He lowered the end of the coffin he was holding, wiped his face, and throwing a morsel of rotten wood upon another as an indicator, continued: "That"s her husband there. They was as fair a couple as you should see anywhere round about; and a good-hearted pair likewise. Ay, I can mind it, though I was but a chiel at the time. She fell in love with this young man of hers, and their banns were asked in some church in London; and the old lord her father actually heard "em asked the three times, and didn"t notice her name, being gabbled on wi" a host of others. When she had married she told her father, and "a fleed into a monstrous rage, and said she shouldn" hae a farthing. Lady Elfride said she didn"t think of wishing it; if he"d forgie her "twas all she asked, and as for a living, she was content to play plays with her husband.
This frightened the old lord, and "a gie"d "em a house to live in, and a great garden, and a little field or two, and a carriage, and a good few guineas. Well, the poor thing died at her first gossiping, and her husband--who was as tender-hearted a man as ever eat meat, and would have died for her--went wild in his mind, and broke his heart (so "twas said). Anyhow, they were buried the same day--father and mother--but the baby lived. Ay, my lord"s family made much of that man then, and put him here with his wife, and there in the corner the man is now. The Sunday after there was a funeral sermon: the text was, "Or ever the silver cord be loosed, or the golden bowl be broken;" and when "twas preaching the men drew their hands across their eyes several times, and every woman cried out loud."
"And what became of the baby?" said Stephen, who had frequently heard portions of the story.
"She was brought up by her grandmother, and a pretty maid she were. And she must needs run away with the curate--Parson Swancourt that is now.
Then her grandmother died, and the t.i.tle and everything went away to another branch of the family altogether. Parson Swancourt wasted a good deal of his wife"s money, and she left him Miss Elfride. That trick of running away seems to be handed down in families, like craziness or gout. And they two women be alike as peas."
"Which two?"
"Lady Elfride and young Miss that"s alive now. The same hair and eyes: but Miss Elfride"s mother was darker a good deal."
"Life"s a strangle bubble, ye see," said William Worm musingly. "For if the Lord"s anointment had descended upon women instead of men, Miss Elfride would be Lord Luxellian--Lady, I mane. But as it is, the blood is run out, and she"s nothing to the Luxellian family by law, whatever she may be by gospel."
"I used to fancy," said Simeon, "when I seed Miss Elfride hugging the little ladyships, that there was a likeness; but I suppose "twas only my dream, for years must have altered the old family shape."
"And now we"ll move these two, and home-along," interposed John Smith, reviving, as became a master, the spirit of labour, which had showed unmistakable signs of being nearly vanquished by the spirit of chat, "The flagon of ale we don"t want we"ll let bide here till to-morrow; none of the poor souls will touch it "a b"lieve."
So the evening"s work was concluded, and the party drew from the abode of the quiet dead, closing the old iron door, and shooting the lock loudly into the huge copper staple--an incongruous act of imprisonment towards those who had no dreams of escape.
Chapter XXVII
"How should I greet thee?"
Love frequently dies of time alone--much more frequently of displacement. With Elfride Swancourt, a powerful reason why the displacement should be successful was that the new-comer was a greater man than the first. By the side of the instructive and piquant snubbings she received from Knight, Stephen"s general agreeableness seemed watery; by the side of Knight"s spare love-making, Stephen"s continual outflow seemed lackadaisical. She had begun to sigh for somebody further on in manhood. Stephen was hardly enough of a man.
Perhaps there was a p.r.o.neness to inconstancy in her nature--a nature, to those who contemplate it from a standpoint beyond the influence of that inconstancy, the most exquisite of all in its plasticity and ready sympathies. Partly, too, Stephen"s failure to make his hold on her heart a permanent one was his too timid habit of dispraising himself beside her--a peculiarity which, exercised towards sensible men, stirs a kindly chord of attachment that a marked a.s.sertiveness would leave untouched, but inevitably leads the most sensible woman in the world to undervalue him who practises it. Directly domineering ceases in the man, snubbing begins in the woman; the trite but no less unfortunate fact being that the gentler creature rarely has the capacity to appreciate fair treatment from her natural complement. The abiding perception of the position of Stephen"s parents had, of course, a little to do with Elfride"s renunciation. To such girls poverty may not be, as to the more worldly ma.s.ses of humanity, a sin in itself; but it is a sin, because graceful and dainty manners seldom exist in such an atmosphere. Few women of old family can be thoroughly taught that a fine soul may wear a smock-frock, and an admittedly common man in one is but a worm in their eyes. John Smith"s rough hands and clothes, his wife"s dialect, the necessary narrowness of their ways, being constantly under Elfride"s notice, were not without their deflecting influence.
On reaching home after the perilous adventure by the sea-sh.o.r.e, Knight had felt unwell, and retired almost immediately. The young lady who had so materially a.s.sisted him had done the same, but she reappeared, properly clothed, about five o"clock. She wandered restlessly about the house, but not on account of their joint narrow escape from death. The storm which had torn the tree had merely bowed the reed, and with the deliverance of Knight all deep thought of the accident had left her. The mutual avowal which it had been the means of precipitating occupied a far longer length of her meditations.
Elfride"s disquiet now was on account of that miserable promise to meet Stephen, which returned like a spectre again and again. The perception of his littleness beside Knight grew upon her alarmingly. She now thought how sound had been her father"s advice to her to give him up, and was as pa.s.sionately desirous of following it as she had hitherto been averse. Perhaps there is nothing more hardening to the tone of young minds than thus to discover how their dearest and strongest wishes become gradually attuned by Time the Cynic to the very note of some selfish policy which in earlier days they despised.
The hour of appointment came, and with it a crisis; and with the crisis a collapse.
"G.o.d forgive me--I can"t meet Stephen!" she exclaimed to herself. "I don"t love him less, but I love Mr. Knight more!"
Yes: she would save herself from a man not fit for her--in spite of vows. She would obey her father, and have no more to do with Stephen Smith. Thus the fickle resolve showed signs of a.s.suming the complexion of a virtue.
The following days were pa.s.sed without any definite avowal from Knight"s lips. Such solitary walks and scenes as that witnessed by Smith in the summer-house were frequent, but he courted her so intangibly that to any but such a delicate perception as Elfride"s it would have appeared no courtship at all. The time now really began to be sweet with her. She dismissed the sense of sin in her past actions, and was automatic in the intoxication of the moment. The fact that Knight made no actual declaration was no drawback. Knowing since the betrayal of his sentiments that love for her really existed, she preferred it for the present in its form of essence, and was willing to avoid for awhile the grosser medium of words. Their feelings having been forced to a rather premature demonstration, a reaction was indulged in by both.
But no sooner had she got rid of her troubled conscience on the matter of faithlessness than a new anxiety confronted her. It was lest Knight should accidentally meet Stephen in the parish, and that herself should be the subject of discourse.
Elfride, learning Knight more thoroughly, perceived that, far from having a notion of Stephen"s precedence, he had no idea that she had ever been wooed before by anybody. On ordinary occasions she had a tongue so frank as to show her whole mind, and a mind so straightforward as to reveal her heart to its innermost shrine. But the time for a change had come. She never alluded to even a knowledge of Knight"s friend. When women are secret they are secret indeed; and more often than not they only begin to be secret with the advent of a second lover.
The elopement was now a spectre worse than the first, and, like the Spirit in Glenfinlas, it waxed taller with every attempt to lay it.
Her natural honesty invited her to confide in Knight, and trust to his generosity for forgiveness: she knew also that as mere policy it would be better to tell him early if he was to be told at all. The longer her concealment the more difficult would be the revelation. But she put it off. The intense fear which accompanies intense love in young women was too strong to allow the exercise of a moral quality antagonistic to itself:
"Where love is great, the littlest doubts are fear; Where little fears grow great, great love grows there."
The match was looked upon as made by her father and mother. The vicar remembered her promise to reveal the meaning of the telegram she had received, and two days after the scene in the summer-house, asked her pointedly. She was frank with him now.
"I had been corresponding with Stephen Smith ever since he left England, till lately," she calmly said.
"What!" cried the vicar aghast; "under the eyes of Mr. Knight, too?"
"No; when I found I cared most for Mr. Knight, I obeyed you."
"You were very kind, I"m sure. When did you begin to like Mr. Knight?"
"I don"t see that that is a pertinent question, papa; the telegram was from the shipping agent, and was not sent at my request. It announced the arrival of the vessel bringing him home."
"Home! What, is he here?"
"Yes; in the village, I believe."
"Has he tried to see you?"