‘Ah, if I had MADE my fortune, I shouldn’t mind. But I am only a possible maker of it as yet.’
‘It is quite enough. And so THIS is what your trouble was?’
‘I thought I was doing wrong in letting you love me without telling you my story; and yet I feared to do so, Elfie. I dreaded to lose you, and I was cowardly on that account.’
‘How plain everything about you seems after this explanation! Your peculiarities in chess-playing, the pronunciation papa noticed in your Latin, your odd mixture of book-knowledge with ignorance of ordinary social accomplishments, are accounted for in a moment. And has this anything to do with what I saw at Lord Luxellian’s?’
‘What did you see?’
‘I saw the shadow of yourself putting a cloak round a lady. I was at the side door; you two were in a room with the window towards me. You came to me a moment later.’
‘She was my mother.’
‘Your mother THERE!’ She withdrew herself to look at him silently in her interest.
‘Elfride,’ said Stephen, ‘I was going to tell you the remainder to-morrow – I have been keeping it back – I must tell it now, after all. The remainder of my revelation refers to where my parents are. Where do you think they live? You know them – by sight at any rate.’
‘I know them!’ she said in suspended amazement.
‘Yes. My father is John Smith, Lord Luxellian’s master-mason, who lives under the park wall by the river.’
‘O Stephen! can it be?’
‘He built – or assisted at the building of the house you live in, years ago. He put up those stone gate piers at the lodge entrance to Lord Luxellian’s park. My grandfather planted the trees that belt in your lawn; my grandmother – who worked in the fields with him – held each tree upright whilst he filled in the earth: they told me so when I was a child. He was the sexton, too, and dug many of the graves around us.’
‘And was your unaccountable vanishing on the first morning of your arrival, and again this afternoon, a run to see your father and mother?..I understand now; no wonder you seemed to know your way about the village!’
‘No wonder. But remember, I have not lived here since I was nine years old. I then went to live with my uncle, a blacksmith, near Exonbury, in order to be able to attend a national school as a day scholar; there was none on this remote coast then. It was there I met with my friend Knight. And when I was fifteen and had been fairly educated by the school-master – and more particularly by Knight – I was put as a pupil in an architect’s office in that town, because I was skilful in the use of the pencil. A full premium was paid by the efforts of my mother and father, rather against the wishes of Lord Luxellian, who likes my father, however, and thinks a great deal of him. There I stayed till six months ago, when I obtained a situation as improver, as it is called, in a London office. That’s all of me.’
‘To think YOU, the London visitor, the town man, should have been born here, and have known this village so many years before I did. How strange – how very strange it seems to me!’ she murmured.
‘My mother curtseyed to you and your father last Sunday,’ said Stephen, with a pained smile at the thought of the incongruity. ‘And your papa said to her, “I am glad to see you so regular at church, JANE.”’
‘I remember it, but I have never spoken to her. We have only been here eighteen months, and the parish is so large.’
‘Contrast with this,’ said Stephen, with a miserable laugh, ‘your father’s belief in my “blue blood,” which is still prevalent in his mind. The first night I came, he insisted upon proving my descent from one of the most ancient west-county families, on account of my second Christian name; when the truth is, it was given me because my grandfather was assistant gardener in the Fitzmaurice-Smith family for thirty years. Having seen your face, my darling, I had not heart to contradict him, and tell him what would have cut me off from a friendly knowledge of you.’
She sighed deeply. ‘Yes, I see now how this inequality may be made to trouble us,’ she murmured, and continued in a low, sad whisper, ‘I wouldn’t have minded if they had lived far away. Papa might have consented to an engagement between us if your connection had been with villagers a hundred miles off; remoteness softens family contrasts. But he will not like – O Stephen, Stephen! what can I do?’
‘Do?’ he said tentatively, yet with heaviness. ‘Give me up; let me go back to London, and think no more of me.’
‘No, no; I cannot give you up! This hopelessness in our affairs makes me care more for you…I see what did not strike me at first. Stephen, why do we trouble? Why should papa object? An architect in London is an architect in London. Who inquires there? Nobody. We shall live there, shall we not? Why need we be so alarmed?’
‘And Elfie,’ said Stephen, his hopes kindling with hers, ‘Knight thinks nothing of my being only a cottager’s son; he says I am as worthy of his friendship as if I were a lord’s; and if I am worthy of his friendship, I am worthy of you, am I not, Elfride?’
‘I not only have never loved anybody but you,’ she said, instead of giving an answer, ‘but I have not even formed a strong friendship, such as you have for Knight. I wish you hadn’t. It diminishes me.’
‘Now, Elfride, you know better,’ he said wooingly. ‘And had you really never any sweetheart at all?’
‘None that was ever recognized by me as such.’
‘But did nobody ever love you?’
‘Yes – a man did once; very much, he said.’
‘How long ago?’
‘Oh, a long time.’
‘How long, dearest?
‘A twelvemonth.’
‘That’s not VERY long’ (rather disappointedly).
‘I said long, not very long.’
‘And did he want to marry you?’
‘I believe he did. But I didn’t see anything in him. He was not good enough, even if I had loved him.’
‘May I ask what he was?’
‘A farmer.’
‘A farmer not good enough – how much better than my family!’ Stephen murmured.
‘Where is he now?’ he continued to Elfride.
‘HERE.’
‘Here! what do you mean by that?’
‘I mean that he is here.’
‘Where here?’
‘Under us. He is under this tomb. He is dead, and we are sitting on his grave.’
‘Elfie,’ said the young man, standing up and looking at the tomb, ‘how odd and sad that revelation seems! It quite depresses me for the moment.’
‘Stephen! I didn’t wish to sit here; but you would do so.’
‘You never encouraged him?’
‘Never by look, word, or sign,’ she said solemnly. ‘He died of consumption, and was buried the day you first came.’
‘Let us go away. I don’t like standing by HIM, even if you never loved him. He was BEFORE me.’
‘Worries make you unreasonable,’ she half pouted, following Stephen at the distance of a few steps. ‘Perhaps I ought to have told you before we sat down. Yes; let us go.’
Chapter IX
‘Her father did fume’
Oppressed, in spite of themselves, by a foresight of impending complications, Elfride and Stephen returned down the hill hand in hand. At the door they paused wistfully, like children late at school.
Women accept