Mr. Swancourt was sitting with his eyes fixed on the board, but apparently thinking of other things. Half to himself he said, pending the move of Elfride:
‘“Quae finis aut quod me manet stipendium?”’
Stephen replied instantly:
‘“Effare: jussas cum fide poenas luam.”’
‘Excellent – prompt – gratifying!’ said Mr. Swancourt with feeling, bringing down his hand upon the table, and making three pawns and a knight dance over their borders by the shaking. ‘I was musing on those words as applicable to a strange course I am steering – but enough of that. I am delighted with you, Mr. Smith, for it is so seldom in this desert that I meet with a man who is gentleman and scholar enough to continue a quotation, however trite it may be.’
‘I also apply the words to myself,’ said Stephen quietly.
‘You? The last man in the world to do that, I should have thought.’
‘Come,’ murmured Elfride poutingly, and insinuating herself between them, ‘tell me all about it. Come, construe, construe!’
Stephen looked steadfastly into her face, and said slowly, and in a voice full of a far-off meaning that seemed quaintly premature in one so young:
‘Quae finis WHAT WILL BE THE END, aut OR, quod stipendium WHAT FINE, manet me AWAITS ME? Effare SPEAK OUT; luam I WILL PAY, cum fide WITH FAITH, jussas poenas THE PENALTY REQUIRED.’
The vicar, who had listened with a critical compression of the lips to this school-boy recitation, and by reason of his imperfect hearing had missed the marked realism of Stephen’s tone in the English words, now said hesitatingly: ‘By the bye, Mr. Smith (I know you’ll excuse my curiosity), though your translation was unexceptionably correct and close, you have a way of pronouncing your Latin which to me seems most peculiar. Not that the pronunciation of a dead language is of much importance; yet your accents and quantities have a grotesque sound to my ears. I thought first that you had acquired your way of breathing the vowels from some of the northern colleges; but it cannot be so with the quantities. What I was going to ask was, if your instructor in the classics could possibly have been an Oxford or Cambridge man?’
‘Yes; he was an Oxford man – Fellow of St. Cyprian’s.’
‘Really?’
‘Oh yes; there’s no doubt about it.
‘The oddest thing ever I heard of!’ said Mr. Swancourt, starting with astonishment. ‘That the pupil of such a man – ’
‘The best and cleverest man in England!’ cried Stephen enthusiastically.
‘That the pupil of such a man should pronounce Latin in the way you pronounce it beats all I ever heard. How long did he instruct you?’
‘Four years.’
‘Four years!’
‘It is not so strange when I explain,’ Stephen hastened to say. ‘It was done in this way – by letter. I sent him exercises and construing twice a week, and twice a week he sent them back to me corrected, with marginal notes of instruction. That is how I learnt my Latin and Greek, such as it is. He is not responsible for my scanning. He has never heard me scan a line.’
‘A novel case, and a singular instance of patience!’ cried the vicar.
‘On his part, not on mine. Ah, Henry Knight is one in a thousand! I remember his speaking to me on this very subject of pronunciation. He says that, much to his regret, he sees a time coming when every man will pronounce even the common words of his own tongue as seems right in his own ears, and be thought none the worse for it; that the speaking age is passing away, to make room for the writing age.’
Both Elfride and her father had waited attentively to hear Stephen go on to what would have been the most interesting part of the story, namely, what circumstances could have necessitated such an unusual method of education. But no further explanation was volunteered; and they saw, by the young man’s manner of concentrating himself upon the chess-board, that he was anxious to drop the subject.
The game proceeded. Elfride played by rote; Stephen by thought. It was the cruellest thing to checkmate him after so much labour, she considered. What was she dishonest enough to do in her compassion? To let him checkmate her. A second game followed; and being herself absolutely indifferent as to the result (her playing was above the average among women, and she knew it), she allowed him to give checkmate again. A final game, in which she adopted the Muzio gambit as her opening, was terminated by Elfride’s victory at the twelfth move.
Stephen looked up suspiciously. His heart was throbbing even more excitedly than was hers, which itself had quickened when she seriously set to work on this last occasion. Mr. Swancourt had left the room.
‘You have been trifling with me till now!’ he exclaimed, his face flushing. ‘You did not play your best in the first two games?’
Elfride’s guilt showed in her face. Stephen became the picture of vexation and sadness, which, relishable for a moment, caused her the next instant to regret the mistake she had made.
‘Mr. Smith, forgive me!’ she said sweetly. ‘I see now, though I did not at first, that what I have done seems like contempt for your skill. But, indeed, I did not mean it in that sense. I could not, upon my conscience, win a victory in those first and second games over one who fought at such a disadvantage and so manfully.’
He drew a long breath, and murmured bitterly, ‘Ah, you are cleverer than I. You can do everything – I can do nothing! O Miss Swancourt!’ he burst out wildly, his heart swelling in his throat, ‘I must tell you how I love you! All these months of my absence I have worshipped you.’
He leapt from his seat like the impulsive lad that he was, slid round to her side, and almost before she suspected it his arm was round her waist, and the two sets of curls intermingled.
So entirely new was full-blown love to Elfride, that she trembled as much from the novelty of the emotion as from the emotion itself. Then she suddenly withdrew herself and stood upright, vexed that she had submitted unresistingly even to his momentary pressure. She resolved to consider this demonstration as premature.
‘You must not begin such things as those,’ she said with coquettish hauteur of a very transparent nature ‘And – you must not do so again – and papa is coming.’
‘Let me kiss you – only a little one,’ he said with his usual delicacy, and without reading the factitiousness of her manner.
‘No; not one.’
‘Only on your cheek?’
‘No.’
‘Forehead?’
‘Certainly not.’
‘You care for somebody else, then? Ah, I thought so!’
‘I am sure I do not.’
‘Nor for me either?’
‘How can I tell?’ she said simply, the simplicity lying merely in the broad outlines of her manner and speech. There were the semitone of voice and half-hidden expression of eyes which tell the initiated how very fragile is the ice of reserve at these times.
Footsteps were heard. Mr. Swancourt then entered the room, and their private colloquy ended.
The day after this partial revelation, Mr. Swancourt proposed a drive to the cliffs beyond Targan Bay, a distance of three or four miles.
Half an hour before the time of departure a crash was heard in the back yard, and presently Worm came in, saying partly to the world in general, partly to himself, and slightly to his auditors:
‘Ay, ay, sure! That frying of fish will be the end of William Worm. They be at it again this morning – same as ever – fizz, fizz, fizz!’
‘Your head bad again, Worm?’ said Mr. Swancourt. ‘What