by Thomas Hardy
No sooner had he turned the corner behind her back than she heard her father meet and address the man. She had saved her letter by two minutes. Her father audibly went through precisely the same performance as she had just been guilty of herself.
This stealthy conduct of his was, to say the least, peculiar.
Given an impulsive inconsequent girl, neglected as to her inner life by her only parent, and the following forces alive within her; to determine a resultant:
First love acted upon by a deadly fear of separation from its object: inexperience, guiding onward a frantic wish to prevent the above-named issue: misgivings as to propriety, met by hope of ultimate exoneration: indignation at parental inconsistency in first encouraging, then forbidding: a chilling sense of disobedience, overpowered by a conscientious inability to brook a breaking of plighted faith with a man who, in essentials, had remained unaltered from the beginning: a blessed hope that opposition would turn an erroneous judgement: a bright faith that things would mend thereby, and wind up well.
Probably the result would, after all, have been nil, had not the following few remarks been made one day at breakfast.
Her father was in his old hearty spirits. He smiled to himself at stories too bad to tell, and called Elfride a little scamp for surreptitiously preserving some blind kittens that ought to have been drowned. After this expression, she said to him suddenly:
‘If Mr. Smith had been already in the family, you would not have been made wretched by discovering he had poor relations?’
‘Do you mean in the family by marriage?’ he replied inattentively, and continuing to peel his egg.
The accumulating scarlet told that was her meaning, as much as the affirmative reply.
‘I should have put up with it, no doubt,’ Mr. Swancourt observed.
‘So that you would not have been driven into hopeless melancholy, but have made the best of him?’
Elfride’s erratic mind had from her youth upwards been constantly in the habit of perplexing her father by hypothetical questions, based on absurd conditions. The present seemed to be cast so precisely in the mould of previous ones that, not being given to syntheses of circumstances, he answered it with customary complacency.
‘If he were allied to us irretrievably, of course I, or any sensible man, should accept conditions that could not be altered; certainly not be hopelessly melancholy about it. I don’t believe anything in the world would make me hopelessly melancholy. And don’t let anything make you so, either.’
‘I won’t, papa,’ she cried, with a serene brightness that pleased him.
Certainly Mr. Swancourt must have been far from thinking that the brightness came from an exhilarating intention to hold back no longer from the mad action she had planned.
In the evening he drove away towards Stratleigh, quite alone. It was an unusual course for him. At the door Elfride had been again almost impelled by her feelings to pour out all.
‘Why are you going to Stratleigh, papa?’ she said, and looked at him longingly.
‘I will tell you to-morrow when I come back,’ he said cheerily; ‘not before then, Elfride. Thou wilt not utter what thou dost not know, and so far will I trust thee, gentle Elfride.’
She was repressed and hurt.
‘I will tell you my errand to Plymouth, too, when I come back,’ she murmured.
He went away. His jocularity made her intention seem the lighter, as his indifference made her more resolved to do as she liked.
It was a familiar September sunset, dark-blue fragments of cloud upon an orange-yellow sky. These sunsets used to tempt her to walk towards them, as any beautiful thing tempts a near approach. She went through the field to the privet hedge, clambered into the middle of it, and reclined upon the thick boughs. After looking westward for a considerable time, she blamed herself for not looking eastward to where Stephen was, and turned round. Ultimately her eyes fell upon the ground.
A peculiarity was observable beneath her. A green field spread itself on each side of the hedge, one belonging to the glebe, the other being a part of the land attached to the manor-house adjoining. On the vicarage side she saw a little footpath, the distinctive and altogether exceptional feature of which consisted in its being only about ten yards long; it terminated abruptly at each end.
A footpath, suddenly beginning and suddenly ending, coming from nowhere and leading nowhere, she had never seen before.
Yes, she had, on second thoughts. She had seen exactly such a path trodden in the front of barracks by the sentry.
And this recollection explained the origin of the path here. Her father had trodden it by pacing up and down, as she had once seen him doing.
Sitting on the hedge as she sat now, her eyes commanded a view of both sides of it. And a few minutes later, Elfride looked over to the manor side.
Here was another sentry path. It was like the first in length, and it began and ended exactly opposite the beginning and ending of its neighbour, but it was thinner, and less distinct.
Two reasons existed for the difference. This one might have been trodden by a similar weight of tread to the other, exercised a less number of times; or it might have been walked just as frequently, but by lighter feet.
Probably a gentleman from Scotland-yard, had he been passing at the time, might have considered the latter alternative as the more probable. Elfride thought otherwise, so far as she thought at all. But her own great To-Morrow was now imminent; all thoughts inspired by casual sights of the eye were only allowed to exercise themselves in inferior corners of her brain, previously to being banished altogether.
Elfride was at length compelled to reason practically upon her undertaking. All her definite perceptions thereon, when the emotion accompanying them was abstracted, amounted to no more than these:
‘Say an hour and three-quarters to ride to St. Launce’s.
‘Say half an hour at the Falcon to change my dress.
‘Say two hours waiting for some train and getting to Plymouth.
‘Say an hour to spare before twelve o’clock.
‘Total time from leaving Endelstow till twelve o’clock, five hours.
‘Therefore I shall have to start at seven.’
No surprise or sense of unwontedness entered the minds of the servants at her early ride. The monotony of life we associate with people of small incomes in districts out of the sound of the railway whistle, has one exception, which puts into shade the experience of dwellers about the great centres of population — that is, in travelling. Every journey there is more or less an adventure; adventurous hours are necessarily chosen for the most commonplace outing. Miss Elfride had to leave early — that was all.
Elfride never went out on horseback but she brought home something — something found, or something bought. If she trotted to town or village, her burden was books. If to hills, woods, or the seashore, it was wonderful mosses, abnormal twigs, a handkerchief of wet shells or seaweed.
Once, in muddy weather, when Pansy was walking with her down the street of Castle Boterel, on a fair-day, a packet in front of her and a packet under her arm, an accident befell the packets, and they slipped down. On one side of her, three volumes of fiction lay kissing the mud; on the other numerous skeins of polychromatic wools lay absorbing it. Unpleasant women smiled through windows at the mishap, the men all looked round, and a boy, who was minding a ginger-bread stall whilst the owner had gone to get drunk, laughed loudly. The blue eyes turned to sapphires, and the cheeks crimsoned with vexation.
After that misadventure she set her wits to work, and was ingenious enough to invent an arrangement of small straps about the saddle, by which a great deal could be safely carried thereon, in a small compass. Here she now spread out and fastened a plain dark walking-dress and a few other trifles of apparel. Worm opened the gate for her, and she vanished away.
One of the brightest mornings of late summer shone upon her. The heather was at its purplest, the furze at its yellowest, the grasshoppers chirped lou
d enough for birds, the snakes hissed like little engines, and Elfride at first felt lively. Sitting at ease upon Pansy, in her orthodox riding-habit and nondescript hat, she looked what she felt. But the mercury of those days had a trick of falling unexpectedly. First, only for one minute in ten had she a sense of depression. Then a large cloud, that had been hanging in the north like a black fleece, came and placed itself between her and the sun. It helped on what was already inevitable, and she sank into a uniformity of sadness.
She turned in the saddle and looked back. They were now on an open table-land, whose altitude still gave her a view of the sea by Endelstow. She looked longingly at that spot.
During this little revulsion of feeling Pansy had been still advancing, and Elfride felt it would be absurd to turn her little mare’s head the other way. ‘Still,’ she thought, ‘if I had a mamma at home I WOULD go back!’
And making one of those stealthy movements by which women let their hearts juggle with their brains, she did put the horse’s head about, as if unconsciously, and went at a hand-gallop towards home for more than a mile. By this time, from the inveterate habit of valuing what we have renounced directly the alternative is chosen, the thought of her forsaken Stephen recalled her, and she turned about, and cantered on to St. Launce’s again.
This miserable strife of thought now began to rage in all its wildness. Overwrought and trembling, she dropped the rein upon Pansy’s shoulders, and vowed she would be led whither the horse would take her.
Pansy slackened her pace to a walk, and walked on with her agitated burden for three or four minutes. At the expiration of this time they had come to a little by-way on the right, leading down a slope to a pool of water. The pony stopped, looked towards the pool, and then advanced and stooped to drink.
Elfride looked at her watch and discovered that if she were going to reach St. Launce’s early enough to change her dress at the Falcon, and get a chance of some early train to Plymouth — there were only two available — it was necessary to proceed at once.
She was impatient. It seemed as if Pansy would never stop drinking; and the repose of the pool, the idle motions of the insects and flies upon it, the placid waving of the flags, the leaf-skeletons, like Genoese filigree, placidly sleeping at the bottom, by their contrast with her own turmoil made her impatience greater.
Pansy did turn at last, and went up the slope again to the high-road. The pony came upon it, and stood cross-wise, looking up and down. Elfride’s heart throbbed erratically, and she thought, ‘Horses, if left to themselves, make for where they are best fed. Pansy will go home.’
Pansy turned and walked on towards St. Launce’s
Pansy at home, during summer, had little but grass to live on. After a run to St. Launce’s she always had a feed of corn to support her on the return journey. Therefore, being now more than half way, she preferred St. Launce’s.
But Elfride did not remember this now. All she cared to recognize was a dreamy fancy that to-day’s rash action was not her own. She was disabled by her moods, and it seemed indispensable to adhere to the programme. So strangely involved are motives that, more than by her promise to Stephen, more even than by her love, she was forced on by a sense of the necessity of keeping faith with herself, as promised in the inane vow of ten minutes ago.
She hesitated no longer. Pansy went, like the steed of Adonis, as if she told the steps. Presently the quaint gables and jumbled roofs of St. Launce’s were spread beneath her, and going down the hill she entered the courtyard of the Falcon. Mrs. Buckle, the landlady, came to the door to meet her.
The Swancourts were well known here. The transition from equestrian to the ordinary guise of railway travellers had been more than once performed by father and daughter in this establishment.
In less than a quarter of an hour Elfride emerged from the door in her walking dress, and went to the railway. She had not told Mrs. Buckle anything as to her intentions, and was supposed to have gone out shopping.
An hour and forty minutes later, and she was in Stephen’s arms at the Plymouth station. Not upon the platform — in the secret retreat of a deserted waiting-room.
Stephen’s face boded ill. He was pale and despondent.
‘What is the matter?’ she asked.
‘We cannot be married here to-day, my Elfie! I ought to have known it and stayed here. In my ignorance I did not. I have the licence, but it can only be used in my parish in London. I only came down last night, as you know.’
‘What shall we do?’ she said blankly.
‘There’s only one thing we can do, darling.’
‘What’s that?’
‘Go on to London by a train just starting, and be married there to-morrow.’
‘Passengers for the 11.5 up-train take their seats!’ said a guard’s voice on the platform.
‘Will you go, Elfride?’
‘I will.’
In three minutes the train had moved off, bearing away with it Stephen and Elfride.
CHAPTER XII
‘Adieu! she cries, and waved her lily hand.’
The few tattered clouds of the morning enlarged and united, the sun withdrew behind them to emerge no more that day, and the evening drew to a close in drifts of rain. The water-drops beat like duck shot against the window of the railway-carriage containing Stephen and Elfride.
The journey from Plymouth to Paddington, by even the most headlong express, allows quite enough leisure for passion of any sort to cool. Elfride’s excitement had passed off, and she sat in a kind of stupor during the latter half of the journey. She was aroused by the clanging of the maze of rails over which they traced their way at the entrance to the station.
Is this London?’ she said.
‘Yes, darling,’ said Stephen in a tone of assurance he was far from feeling. To him, no less than to her, the reality so greatly differed from the prefiguring.
She peered out as well as the window, beaded with drops, would allow her, and saw only the lamps, which had just been lit, blinking in the wet atmosphere, and rows of hideous zinc chimney-pipes in dim relief against the sky. She writhed uneasily, as when a thought is swelling in the mind which must cause much pain at its deliverance in words. Elfride had known no more about the stings of evil report than the native wild-fowl knew of the effects of Crusoe’s first shot. Now she saw a little further, and a little further still.
The train stopped. Stephen relinquished the soft hand he had held all the day, and proceeded to assist her on to the platform.
This act of alighting upon strange ground seemed all that was wanted to complete a resolution within her.
She looked at her betrothed with despairing eyes.
‘O Stephen,’ she exclaimed, ‘I am so miserable! I must go home again — I must — I must! Forgive my wretched vacillation. I don’t like it here — nor myself — nor you!’
Stephen looked bewildered, and did not speak.
‘Will you allow me to go home?’ she implored. ‘I won’t trouble you to go with me. I will not be any weight upon you; only say you will agree to my returning; that you will not hate me for it, Stephen! It is better that I should return again; indeed it is, Stephen.’
‘But we can’t return now,’ he said in a deprecatory tone.
‘I must! I will!’
‘How? When do you want to go?’
‘Now. Can we go at once?’
The lad looked hopelessly along the platform.
‘If you must go, and think it wrong to remain, dearest,’ said he sadly, ‘you shall. You shall do whatever you like, my Elfride. But would you in reality rather go now than stay till to-morrow, and go as my wife?’
‘Yes, yes — much — anything to go now. I must; I must!’ she cried.
‘We ought to have done one of two things,’ he answered gloomily. ‘Never to have started, or not to have returned without being married. I don’t like to say it, Elfride — indeed I don’t; but you must be told this, that going back unmarried may compromise your good name in
the eyes of people who may hear of it.’
‘They will not; and I must go.’
‘O Elfride! I am to blame for bringing you away.’
‘Not at all. I am the elder.’
‘By a month; and what’s that? But never mind that now.’ He looked around. ‘Is there a train for Plymouth to-night?’ he inquired of a guard. The guard passed on and did not speak.
‘Is there a train for Plymouth to-night?’ said Elfride to another.
‘Yes, miss; the 8.10 — leaves in ten minutes. You have come to the wrong platform; it is the other side. Change at Bristol into the night mail. Down that staircase, and under the line.’
They ran down the staircase — Elfride first — to the booking-office, and into a carriage with an official standing beside the door. ‘Show your tickets, please.’ They are locked in — men about the platform accelerate their velocities till they fly up and down like shuttles in a loom — a whistle — the waving of a flag — a human cry — a steam groan — and away they go to Plymouth again, just catching these words as they glide off:
‘Those two youngsters had a near run for it, and no mistake!’
Elfride found her breath.
‘And have you come too, Stephen? Why did you?’
‘I shall not leave you till I see you safe at St. Launce’s. Do not think worse of me than I am, Elfride.’
And then they rattled along through the night, back again by the way they had come. The weather cleared, and the stars shone in upon them. Their two or three fellow-passengers sat for most of the time with closed eyes. Stephen sometimes slept; Elfride alone was wakeful and palpitating hour after hour.
The day began to break, and revealed that they were by the sea. Red rocks overhung them, and, receding into distance, grew livid in the blue grey atmosphere. The sun rose, and sent penetrating shafts of light in upon their weary faces. Another hour, and the world began to be busy. They waited yet a little, and the train slackened its speed in view of the platform at St. Launce’s.
She shivered, and mused sadly.
‘I did not see all the consequences,’ she said. ‘Appearances are wofully against me. If anybody finds me out, I am, I suppose, disgraced.’