Томас Харди (Гарди)
A Pair of Blue Eyes
Chapter XXVI
‘To that last nothing under earth.’
All eyes were turned to the entrance as Stephen spoke, and the ancient-mannered conclave scrutinized him inquiringly.
‘Why, ‘tis our Stephen!’ said his father, rising from his seat; and, still retaining the frothy mug in his left hand, he swung forward his right for a grasp. ‘Your mother is expecting ye – thought you would have come afore dark. But you’ll wait and go home with me? I have all but done for the day, and was going directly.’
‘Yes, ‘tis Master Stephy, sure enough. Glad to see you so soon again, Master Smith,’ said Martin Cannister, chastening the gladness expressed in his words by a strict neutrality of countenance, in order to harmonize the feeling as much as possible with the solemnity of a family vault.
‘The same to you, Martin; and you, William,’ said Stephen, nodding around to the rest, who, having their mouths full of bread and cheese, were of necessity compelled to reply merely by compressing their eyes to friendly lines and wrinkles.
‘And who is dead?’ Stephen repeated.
‘Lady Luxellian, poor gentlewoman, as we all shall, said the under-mason. ‘Ay, and we be going to enlarge the vault to make room for her.’
‘When did she die?’
‘Early this morning,’ his father replied, with an appearance of recurring to a chronic thought. ‘Yes, this morning. Martin hev been tolling ever since, almost. There, ‘twas expected. She was very limber.’
‘Ay, poor soul, this morning,’ resumed the under-mason, a marvellously old man, whose skin seemed so much too large for his body that it would not stay in position. ‘She must know by this time whether she’s to go up or down, poor woman.’
‘What was her age?’
‘Not more than seven or eight and twenty by candlelight. But, Lord! by day ‘a was forty if ‘a were an hour.’
‘Ay, night-time or day-time makes a difference of twenty years to rich feymels,’ observed Martin.
‘She was one and thirty really,’ said John Smith. ‘I had it from them that know.’
‘Not more than that!’
‘’A looked very bad, poor lady. In faith, ye might say she was dead for years afore ‘a would own it.’
‘As my old father used to say, “dead, but wouldn’t drop down.”’
‘I seed her, poor soul,’ said a labourer from behind some removed coffins, ‘only but last Valentine’s-day of all the world. ‘A was arm in crook wi’ my lord. I says to myself, “You be ticketed Churchyard, my noble lady, although you don’t dream on’t.”’
‘I suppose my lord will write to all the other lords anointed in the nation, to let ‘em know that she that was is now no more?’
‘’Tis done and past. I see a bundle of letters go off an hour after the death. Sich wonderful black rims as they letters had – half-an-inch wide, at the very least.’
‘Too much,’ observed Martin. ‘In short, ‘tis out of the question that a human being can be so mournful as black edges half-an-inch wide. I’m sure people don’t feel more than a very narrow border when they feels most of all.’
‘And there are two little girls, are there not?’ said Stephen.
‘Nice clane little faces! – left motherless now.’
‘They used to come to Parson Swancourt’s to play with Miss Elfride when I were there,’ said William Worm. ‘Ah, they did so’s!’ The latter sentence was introduced to add the necessary melancholy to a remark which, intrinsically, could hardly be made to possess enough for the occasion. ‘Yes,’ continued Worm, ‘they’d run upstairs, they’d run down; flitting about with her everywhere. Very fond of her, they were. Ah, well!’
‘Fonder than ever they were of their mother, so ‘tis said here and there,’ added a labourer.
‘Well, you see, ‘tis natural. Lady Luxellian stood aloof from ‘em so – was so drowsy-like, that they couldn’t love her in the jolly-companion way children want to like folks. Only last winter I seed Miss Elfride talking to my lady and the two children, and Miss Elfride wiped their noses for em’ SO careful – my lady never once seeing that it wanted doing; and, naturally, children take to people that’s their best friend.’
‘Be as ‘twill, the woman is dead and gone, and we must make a place for her,’ said John. ‘Come, lads, drink up your ale, and we’ll just rid this corner, so as to have all clear for beginning at the wall, as soon as ‘tis light to-morrow.’
Stephen then asked where Lady Luxellian was to lie.
‘Here,’ said his father. ‘We are going to set back this wall and make a recess; and ‘tis enough for us to do before the funeral. When my lord’s mother died, she said, “John, the place must be enlarged before another can be put in.” But ‘a never expected ‘twould be wanted so soon. Better move Lord George first, I suppose, Simeon?’
He pointed with his foot to a heavy coffin, covered with what had originally been red velvet, the colour of which could only just be distinguished now.
‘Just as ye think best, Master John,’ replied the shrivelled mason. ‘Ah, poor Lord George!’ he continued, looking contemplatively at the huge coffin; ‘he and I were as bitter enemies once as any could be when one is a lord and t’other only a mortal man. Poor fellow! He’d clap his hand upon my shoulder and cuss me as familial and neighbourly as if he’d been a common chap. Ay, ‘a cussed me up hill and ‘a cussed me down; and then ‘a would rave out again, and the goold clamps of his fine new teeth would glisten in the sun like fetters of brass, while I, being a small man and poor, was fain to say nothing at all. Such a strappen fine gentleman as he was too! Yes, I rather liked en sometimes. But once now and then, when I looked at his towering height, I’d think in my inside, “What a weight you’ll be, my lord, for our arms to lower under the aisle of Endelstow Church some day!”’
‘And was he?’ inquired a young labourer.
‘He was. He was five hundredweight if ‘a were a pound. What with his lead, and his oak, and his handles, and his one thing and t’other’ – here the ancient man slapped his hand upon the cover with a force that caused a rattle among the bones inside – ‘he half broke my back when I took his feet to lower en down the steps there. “Ah,” saith I to John there – didn’t I, John? – “that ever one man’s glory should be such a weight upon another man!” But there, I liked my lord George sometimes.’
‘’Tis a strange thought,’ said another, ‘that while they be all here under one roof, a snug united family o’ Luxellians, they be really scattered miles away from one another in the form of good sheep and wicked goats, isn’t it?’
‘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 lustreless surfaces still indistinctly exhibiting the name and title 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 sexton 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 title 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 proneness 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 assertiveness 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 masses 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-shore, Knight had felt unwell, and retired almost immediately. The young lady who had so materially assisted 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 passionately 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.
‘God 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 assuming the complexion of a virtue.
The following days were passed 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?’
‘Only by fair means. But don’t, papa, question me so! It is torture.’
‘I will only say one word more,’ he replied. ‘Have you met him?’
‘I have not. I can assure you that at the present moment there is no more of an understanding between me and the young man you so much disliked than between him and you. You told me to forget him; and I have forgotten him.’
‘Oh, well; though you did not obey me in the beginning, you are a good girl, Elfride, in obeying me at last.’
‘Don’t call me “good,” papa,’ she said bitterly; ‘you don’t know – and the less said about some things the better. Remember, Mr. Knight knows nothing about the other. Oh, how wrong it all is! I don’t know what I am coming to.’
‘As matters stand, I should be inclined to tell him; or, at any rate, I should not alarm myself about his knowing. He found out the other day that this was the parish young Smith’s father lives in – what puts you in such a flurry?’
‘I can’t say; but promise – pray don’t let him know! It would be my ruin!’
‘Pooh, child. Knight is a good fellow and a clever man; but at the same time it does not escape my perceptions that he is no great catch for you. Men of his turn of mind are nothing so wonderful in the way of husbands. If you had chosen to wait, you might have mated with a much wealthier man. But remember, I have not a word to say against your having him, if you like him. Charlotte is delighted, as you know.’
‘Well, papa,’ she said, smiling hopefully through a sigh, ‘it is nice to feel that in giving way to – to caring for him, I have pleased my family. But I am not good; oh no, I am very far from that!’
‘None of us are good, I am sorry to say,’ said her father blandly; ‘but girls have a chartered right to change their minds, you know. It has been recognized by poets from time immemorial. Catullus says, “Mulier cupido quod dicit amanti, in vento – ” What a memory mine is! However, the passage is, that a woman’s words to a lover are as a matter of course written only on wind and water. Now don’t be troubled about that, Elfride.’
‘Ah, you don’t know!’
They had been standing on the lawn, and Knight was now seen lingering some way down a winding walk. When Elfride met him, it was with a much greater lightness of heart; things were more straightforward now. The responsibility of her fickleness seemed partly shifted from her own shoulders to her father’s. Still, there were shadows.
‘Ah, could he have known how far I went with Stephen, and yet have said the same, how much happier I should be!’ That was her prevailing thought.
In the afternoon the lovers went out together on horseback for an hour or two; and though not wishing to be observed, by reason of the late death of Lady Luxellian, whose funeral had taken place very privately on the previous day, they yet found it necessary to pass East Endelstow Church.
The steps to the vault, as has been stated, were on the outside of the building, immediately under the aisle wall. Being on horseback, both Knight and Elfride could overlook the shrubs which screened the church-yard.
‘Look, the vault seems still to be open,’ said Knight.
‘Yes, it is open,’ she answered
‘Who is that man close by it? The mason, I suppose?’
‘Yes.’
‘I wonder if it is John Smith, Stephen’s father?’
‘I believe it is,’ said Elfride, with apprehension.
‘Ah, and can it be? I should like to inquire how his son, my truant protege’, is going on. And from your father’s description of the vault, the interior must be interesting. Suppose we go in.’
‘Had we better, do you think? May not Lord Luxellian be there?’
‘It is not at all likely.’
Elfride then assented, since she could do nothing else. Her heart, which at first had quailed in consternation, recovered itself when she considered the character of John Smith. A quiet unassuming man, he would be sure to act towards her as before those love passages with his son, which might have given a more pretentious mechanic airs. So without much alarm she took Knight’s arm after dismounting, and went with him between and over the graves. The master-mason recognized her as she approached, and, as usual, lifted his hat respectfully.
‘I know you to be Mr. Smith, my former friend Stephen’s father,’ said Knight, directly he had scanned the embrowned and ruddy features of John.
‘Yes, sir, I b’lieve I be.’
‘How is your son now? I have only once heard from him since he went to India. I daresay you have heard him speak of me – Mr. Knight, who became acquainted with him some years ago in Exonbury.’
‘Ay, that I have. Stephen is very well, thank you, sir, and he’s in England; in fact, he’s at home. In short, sir, he’s down in the vault there, a-looking at the departed coffins.’
Elfride’s heart fluttered like a butterfly.
Knight looked amazed. ‘Well, that is extraordinary.’ he murmured. ‘Did he know I was in the parish?’
‘I really can’t say, sir,’ said John, wishing himself out of the entanglement he rather suspected than thoroughly understood.
‘Would it be considered an intrusion by the family if we went into the vault?’
‘Oh, bless ye, no, sir; scores of folk have been stepping down. ‘Tis left open a-purpose.’
‘We will go down, Elfride.’
‘I am afraid the air is close,’ she said appealingly.
‘Oh no, ma’am,’ said John. ‘We white-limed the walls and arches the day ‘twas opened, as we always do, and again on the morning of the funeral; the place is as sweet as a granary.
‘Then I should like you to accompany me, Elfie; having originally sprung from the family too.’
‘I don’t like going where death is so emphatically present. I’ll stay by the horses whilst you go in; they may get loose.’
‘What nonsense! I had no idea your sentiments were so flimsily formed as to be perturbed by a few remnants of mortality; but stay out, if you are so afraid, by all means.’
‘Oh no, I am not afraid; don’t say that.’
She held miserably to his arm, thinking that, perhaps, the revelation might as well come at once as ten minutes later, for Stephen would be sure to accompany his friend to his horse.
At first, the gloom of the vault, which was lighted only by a couple of candles, was too great to admit of their seeing anything distinctly; but with a further advance Knight discerned, in front of the black masses lining the walls, a young man standing, and writing in a pocket-book.
Knight said one word: ‘Stephen!’
Stephen Smith, not being in such absolute ignorance of Knight’s whereabouts as Knight had been of Smith’s instantly recognized his friend, and knew by rote the outlines of the fair woman standing behind him.
Stephen came forward and shook him by the hand, without speaking.
‘Why have you not written, my boy?’ said Knight, without in any way signifying Elfride’s presence to Stephen. To the essayist, Smith was still the country lad whom he had patronized and tended; one to whom the formal presentation of a lady betrothed to himself would have seemed incongruous and absurd.
‘Why haven’t you written to me?’ said Stephen.
‘Ah, yes. Why haven’t I? why haven’t we? That’s always the query which we cannot clearly answer without an unsatisfactory sense of our inadequacies. However, I have not forgotten you, Smith. And now we have met; and we must meet again, and have a longer chat than this can conveniently be. I must know all you have been doing. That you have thriven, I know, and you must teach me the way.’
Elfride stood in the background. Stephen had read the position at a glance, and immediately guessed that she had never mentioned his name to Knight. His tact in avoiding catastrophes was the chief quality which made him intellectually respectable, in which quality he far transcended Knight; and he decided that a tranquil issue out of the encounter, without any harrowing of the feelings of either Knight or Elfride, was to be attempted if possible. His old sense of indebtedness to Knight had never wholly forsaken him; his love for Elfride was generous now.
As far as he dared look at her movements he saw that her bearing towards him would be dictated by his own towards her; and if he acted as a stranger she would do likewise as a means of deliverance. Circumstances favouring this course, it was desirable also to be rather reserved towards Knight, to shorten the meeting as much as possible.
‘I am afraid that my time is almost too short to allow even of such a pleasure,’ he said. ‘I leave here to-morrow. And until I start for the Continent and India, which will be in a fortnight, I shall have hardly a moment to spare.’
Knight’s disappointment and dissatisfied looks at this reply sent a pang through Stephen as great as any he had felt at the sight of Elfride. The words about shortness of time were literally true, but their tone was far from being so. He would have been gratified to talk with Knight as in past times, and saw as a dead loss to himself that, to save the woman who cared nothing for him, he was deliberately throwing away his friend.
‘Oh, I am sorry to hear that,’ said Knight, in a changed tone. ‘But of course, if you have weighty concerns to attend to, they must not be neglected. And if this is to be our first and last meeting, let me say that I wish you success with all my heart!’ Knight’s warmth revived towards the end; the solemn impressions he was beginning to receive from the scene around them abstracting from his heart as a puerility any momentary vexation at words. ‘It is a strange place for us to meet in,’ he continued, looking round the vault.
Stephen briefly assented, and there was a silence. The blackened coffins were now revealed more clearly than at first, the whitened walls and arches throwing them forward in strong relief. It was a scene which was remembered by all three as an indelible mark in their history. Knight, with an abstracted face, was standing between his companions, though a little in advance of them, Elfride being on his right hand, and Stephen Smith on his left. The white daylight on his right side gleamed faintly in, and was toned to a blueness by contrast with the yellow rays from the candle against the wall. Elfride, timidly shrinking back, and nearest the entrance, received most of the light therefrom, whilst Stephen was entirely in candlelight, and to him the spot of outer sky visible above the steps was as a steely blue patch, and nothing more.
‘I have been here two or three times since it was opened,’ said Stephen. ‘My father was engaged in the work, you know.’
‘Yes. What are you doing?’ Knight inquired, looking at the note-book and pencil Stephen held in his hand.
‘I have been sketching a few details in the church, and since then I have been copying the names from some of the coffins here. Before I left England I used to do a good deal of this sort of thing.’
‘Yes; of course. Ah, that’s poor Lady Luxellian, I suppose.’ Knight pointed to a coffin of light satin-wood, which stood on the stone sleepers in the new niche. ‘And the remainder of the family are on this side. Who are those two, so snug and close together?’
