一双蓝眼睛 英文版 A Pair of Blue Eyes
托马斯.哈代 Thomas Hardy
Chapter X
'Beneath the shelter of an aged tree.'
Stephen retraced his steps towards the cottage he had visited onlytwo or three hours previously. He drew near and under the richfoliage growing about the outskirts of Endelstow Park, the spottylights and shades from the shining moon maintaining a race overhis head and down his back in an endless gambol. When he crossedthe plank bridge and entered the garden-gate, he saw anilluminated figure coming from the enclosed plot towards the houseon the other side. It was his father, with his hand in a sling,taking a general moonlight view of the garden, and particularly ofa plot of the youngest of young turnips, previous to closing thecottage for the night.
He saluted his son with customary force. 'Hallo, Stephen! Weshould ha' been in bed in another ten minutes. Come to see what'sthe matter wi' me, I suppose, my lad?'
The doctor had come and gone, and the hand had been pronounced asinjured but slightly, though it might possibly have beenconsidered a far more serious case if Mr. Smith had been a moreimportant man. Stephen's anxious inquiry drew from his fatherwords of regret at the inconvenience to the world of his doingnothing for the next two days, rather than of concern for the painof the accident. Together they entered the house.
John Smith--brown as autumn as to skin, white as winter as toclothes--was a satisfactory specimen of the village artificer instone. In common with most rural mechanics, he had too muchindividuality to be a typical 'working-man'--a resultant of thatbeach-pebble attrition with his kind only to be experienced inlarge towns, which metamorphoses the unit Self into a fraction ofthe unit Class.
There was not the speciality in his labour which distinguishes thehandicraftsmen of towns. Though only a mason, strictly speaking,he was not above handling a brick, if bricks were the order of theday; or a slate or tile, if a roof had to be covered before thewet weather set in, and nobody was near who could do it better.Indeed, on one or two occasions in the depth of winter, when frostperemptorily forbids all use of the trowel, making foundations tosettle, stones to fly, and mortar to crumble, he had taken tofelling and sawing trees. Moreover, he had practised gardening inhis own plot for so many years that, on an emergency, he mighthave made a living by that calling.
Probably our countryman was not such an accomplished artificer ina particular direction as his town brethren in the trades. But hewas, in truth, like that clumsy pin-maker who made the whole pin,and who was despised by Adam Smith on that account and respectedby Macaulay, much more the artist nevertheless.
Appearing now, indoors, by the light of the candle, his stalwarthealthiness was a sight to see. His beard was close and knottedas that of a chiselled Hercules; his shirt sleeves were partlyrolled up, his waistcoat unbuttoned; the difference in hue betweenthe snowy linen and the ruddy arms and face contrasting like thewhite of an egg and its yolk. Mrs. Smith, on hearing them enter,advanced from the pantry.
Mrs. Smith was a matron whose countenance addressed itself to themind rather than to the eye, though not exclusively. She retainedher personal freshness even now, in the prosy afternoon-time ofher life; but what her features were primarily indicative of was asound common sense behind them; as a whole, appearing to carrywith them a sort of argumentative commentary on the world ingeneral.
The details of the accident were then rehearsed by Stephen'sfather, in the dramatic manner also common to Martin Cannister,other individuals of the neighbourhood, and the rural worldgenerally. Mrs. Smith threw in her sentiments between the acts,as Coryphaeus of the tragedy, to make the description complete.The story at last came to an end, as the longest will, and Stephendirected the conversation into another channel.
'Well, mother, they know everything about me now,' he saidquietly.
'Well done!' replied his father; 'now my mind's at peace.'
'I blame myself--I never shall forgive myself--for not tellingthem before,' continued the young man.
Mrs. Smith at this point abstracted her mind from the formersubject. 'I don't see what you have to grieve about, Stephen,'she said. 'People who accidentally get friends don't, as a firststroke, tell the history of their families.'
'Ye've done no wrong, certainly,' said his father.
'No; but I should have spoken sooner. There's more in this visitof mine than you think--a good deal more.'
'Not more than I think,' Mrs. Smith replied, lookingcontemplatively at him. Stephen blushed; and his father lookedfrom one to the other in a state of utter incomprehension.
'She's a pretty piece enough,' Mrs. Smith continued, 'and verylady-like and clever too. But though she's very well fit for youas far as that is, why, mercy 'pon me, what ever do you want anywoman at all for yet?'
John made his naturally short mouth a long one, and wrinkled hisforehead, 'That's the way the wind d'blow, is it?' he said.
'Mother,' exclaimed Stephen, 'how absurdly you speak! Criticizingwhether she's fit for me or no, as if there were room for doubt onthe matter! Why, to marry her would be the great blessing of mylife--socially and practically, as well as in other respects. Nosuch good fortune as that, I'm afraid; she's too far above me.Her family doesn't want such country lads as I in it.'
'Then if they don't want you, I'd see them dead corpses before I'dwant them, and go to better families who do want you.'
'Ah, yes; but I could never put up with the distaste of beingwelcomed among such people as you mean, whilst I could getindifference among such people as hers.'
'What crazy twist o' thinking will enter your head next?' said hismother. 'And come to that, she's not a bit too high for you, oryou too low for her. See how careful I be to keep myself up. I'msure I never stop for more than a minute together to talk to anyjourneymen people; and I never invite anybody to our party o'Christmases who are not in business for themselves. And I talk toseveral toppermost carriage people that come to my lord's withoutsaying ma'am or sir to 'em, and they take it as quiet as lambs.'
'You curtseyed to the vicar, mother; and I wish you hadn't.'
'But it was before he called me by my Christian name, or he wouldhave got very little curtseying from me!' said Mrs. Smith,bridling and sparkling with vexation. 'You go on at me, Stephen,as if I were your worst enemy! What else could I do with the manto get rid of him, banging it into me and your father by side andby seam, about his greatness, and what happened when he was ayoung fellow at college, and I don't know what-all; the tongue o'en flopping round his mouth like a mop-rag round a dairy. That 'adid, didn't he, John?'
'That's about the size o't,' replied her husband.
'Every woman now-a-days,' resumed Mrs. Smith, 'if she marry atall, must expect a father-in-law of a rank lower than her father.The men have gone up so, and the women have stood still. Everyman you meet is more the dand than his father; and you are justlevel wi' her.'
'That's what she thinks herself.'
indeed! And am I better in worldly!
'It only shows her sense. I knew she was after 'ee, Stephen--Iknew it.'
'After me! Good Lord, what next!'
'And I really must say again that you ought not to be in such ahurry, and wait for a few years. You might go higher than abankrupt pa'son's girl then.'
'The fact is, mother,' said Stephen impatiently, 'you don't knowanything about it. I shall never go higher, because I don't wantto, nor should I if I lived to be a hundred. As to you sayingthat she's after me, I don't like such a remark about her, for itimplies a scheming woman, and a man worth scheming for, both ofwhich are not only untrue, but ludicrously untrue, of this case.Isn't it so, father?'
'I'm afraid I don't understand the matter well enough to gie myopinion,' said his father, in the tone of the fox who had a coldand could not smell.
'She couldn't have been very backward anyhow, considering theshort time you have known her,' said his mother. 'Well I thinkthat five years hence you'll be plenty young enough to think ofsuch things. And really she can very well afford to wait, andwill too, take my word. Living down in an out-step place likethis, I am sure she ought to be very thankful that you took noticeof her. She'd most likely have died an old maid if you hadn'tturned up.'
'All nonsense,' said Stephen, but not aloud.
'A nice little thing she is,' Mrs. Smith went on in a morecomplacent tone now that Stephen had been talked down; 'there'snot a word to say against her, I'll own. I see her sometimesdecked out like a horse going to fair, and I admire her for't. Aperfect little lady. But people can't help their thoughts, and ifshe'd learnt to make figures instead of letters when she was atschool 'twould have been better for her pocket; for as I said,there never were worse times for such as she than now.'
'Now, now, mother!' said Stephen with smiling deprecation.
'But I will!' said his mother with asperity. 'I don't read thepapers for nothing, and I know men all move up a stage bymarriage. Men of her class, that is, parsons, marry squires'daughters; squires marry lords' daughters; lords marry dukes'daughters; dukes marry queens' daughters. All stages of gentlemenmate a stage higher; and the lowest stage of gentlewomen are leftsingle, or marry out of their class.'
'But you said just now, dear mother----' retorted Stephen, unableto resist the temptation of showing his mother her inconsistency.Then he paused.
'Well, what did I say?' And Mrs. Smith prepared her lips for a newcampaign.
Stephen, regretting that he had begun, since a volcano might bethe consequence, was obliged to go on.
'You said I wasn't out of her class just before.'
'Yes, there, there! That's you; that's my own flesh and blood.I'll warrant that you'll pick holes in everything your mothersays, if you can, Stephen. You are just like your father forthat; take anybody's part but mine. Whilst I am speaking andtalking and trying and slaving away for your good, you are waitingto catch me out in that way. So you are in her class, but 'tiswhat HER people would CALL marrying out of her class. Don't be soquarrelsome, Stephen!'
Stephen preserved a discreet silence, in which he was imitated byhis father, and for several minutes nothing was heard but theticking of the green-faced case-clock against the wall.
'I'm sure,' added Mrs. Smith in a more philosophic tone, and as aterminative speech, 'if there'd been so much trouble to get ahusband in my time as there is in these days--when you must make agod-almighty of a man to get en to hae ye--I'd have trod clay forbricks before I'd ever have lowered my dignity to marry, orthere's no bread in nine loaves.'
The discussion now dropped, and as it was getting late, Stephenbade his parents farewell for the evening, his mother none theless warmly for their sparring; for although Mrs. Smith andStephen were always contending, they were never at enmity.
offorebodings.'of his doingnothing for the next two days, rather.
'And possibly,' said Stephen, 'I may leave here altogether to-morrow; I don't know. So that if I shouldn't call again beforereturning to London, don't be alarmed, will you?'
'But didn't you come for a fortnight?' said his mother. 'Andhaven't you a month's holiday altogether? They are going to turnyou out, then?'
'Not at all. I may stay longer; I may go. If I go, you hadbetter say nothing about my having been here, for her sake. Atwhat time of the morning does the carrier pass Endelstow lane?'
'Seven o'clock.'
And then he left them. His thoughts were, that should the vicarpermit him to become engaged, to hope for an engagement, or in anyway to think of his beloved Elfride, he might stay longer. Shouldhe be forbidden to think of any such thing, he resolved to go atonce. And the latter, even to young hopefulness, seemed the moreprobable alternative.
Stephen walked back to the vicarage through the meadows, as he hadcome, surrounded by the soft musical purl of the water throughlittle weirs, the modest light of the moon, the freshening smellof the dews out-spread around. It was a time when mere seeing ismeditation, and meditation peace. Stephen was hardly philosopherenough to avail himself of Nature's offer. His constitution wasmade up of very simple particulars; was one which, rare in thespring-time of civilizations, seems to grow abundant as a nationgets older, individuality fades, and education spreads; that is,his brain had extraordinary receptive powers, and no greatcreativeness. Quickly acquiring any kind of knowledge he sawaround him, and having a plastic adaptability more common in womanthan in man, he changed colour like a chameleon as the society hefound himself in assumed a higher and more artificial tone. Hehad not many original ideas, and yet there was scarcely an idea towhich, under proper training, he could not have added arespectable co-ordinate.
He saw nothing outside himself to-night; and what he saw withinwas a weariness to his flesh. Yet to a dispassionate observer,his pretensions to Elfride, though rather premature, were far fromabsurd as marriages go, unless the accidental proximity of simplebut honest parents could be said to make them so.
The clock struck eleven when he entered the house. Elfride hadbeen waiting with scarcely a movement since he departed. Beforehe had spoken to her she caught sight of him passing into thestudy with her father. She saw that he had by some means obtainedthe private interview he desired.
A nervous headache had been growing on the excitable girl duringthe absence of Stephen, and now she could do nothing beyond goingup again to her room as she had done before. Instead of lyingdown she sat again in the darkness without closing the door, andlistened with a beating heart to every sound from downstairs. Theservants had gone to bed. She ultimately heard the two men comefrom the study and cross to the dining-room, where supper had beenlingering for more than an hour. The door was left open, and shefound that the meal, such as it was, passed off between her fatherand her lover without any remark, save commonplaces as tocucumbers and melons, their wholesomeness and culture, uttered ina stiff and formal way. It seemed to prefigure failure.
Shortly afterwards Stephen came upstairs to his bedroom, and wasalmost immediately followed by her father, who also retired forthe night. Not inclined to get a light, she partly undressed andsat on the bed, where she remained in pained thought for sometime, possibly an hour. Then rising to close her door previouslyto fully unrobing, she saw a streak of light shining across thelanding. Her father's door was shut, and he could be heardsnoring regularly. The light came from Stephen's room, and theslight sounds also coming thence emphatically denoted what he wasdoing. In the perfect silence she could hear the closing of a lidand the clicking of a lock,--he was fastening his hat-box. Thenthe buckling of straps and the click of another key,--he wassecuring his portmanteau. With trebled foreboding she opened herdoor softly, and went towards his. One sensation pervaded her todistraction. Stephen, her handsome youth and darling, was goingaway, and she might never see him again except in secret and insadness--perhaps never more. At any rate, she could no longerwait till the morning to hear the result of the interview, as shehad intended. She flung her dressing-gown round her, tappedlightly at his door, and whispered 'Stephen!' He came instantly,opened the door, and stepped out.
'Tell me; are we to hope?'
He replied in a disturbed whisper, and a tear approached itsoutlet, though none fell.
'I am not to think of such a preposterous thing--that's what hesaid. And I am going to-morrow. I should have called you up tobid you good-bye.'
'But he didn't say you were to go--O Stephen, he didn't say that?'
'No; not in words. But I cannot stay.'
'Oh, don't, don't go! Do come and let us talk. Let us come downto the drawing-room for a few minutes; he will hear us here.'
She preceded him down the staircase with the taper light in herhand, looking unnaturally tall and thin in the long dove-coloureddressing-gown she wore. She did not stop to think of thepropriety or otherwise of this midnight interview under suchcircumstances. She thought that the tragedy of her life wasbeginning, and, for the first time almost, felt that her existencemight have a grave side, the shade of which enveloped and renderedinvisible the delicate gradations of custom and punctilio.Elfride softly opened the drawing-room door and they both went in.When she had placed the candle on the table, he enclosed her withhis arms, dried her eyes with his handkerchief, and kissed theirlids.
'Stephen, it is over--happy love is over; and there is no moresunshine now!'
'I will make a fortune, and come to you, and have you. Yes, Iwill!'
'Papa will never hear of it--never--never! You don't know him. Ido. He is either biassed in favour of a thing, or prejudicedagainst it. Argument is powerless against either feeling.'
'No; I won't think of him so,' said Stephen. 'If I appear beforehim some time hence as a man of established name, he will acceptme--I know he will. He is not a wicked man.'
'No, he is not wicked. But you say "some time hence," as if itwere no time. To you, among bustle and excitement, it will becomparatively a short time, perhaps; oh, to me, it will be itsreal length trebled! Every summer will be a year--autumn a year--winter a year! O Stephen! and you may forget me!'
Forget: that was, and is, the real sting of waiting to fond-hearted woman. The remark awoke in Stephen the converse fear.'You, too, may be persuaded to give me up, when time has made mefainter in your memory. For, remember, your love for me must benourished in secret; there will be no long visits from me tosupport you. Circumstances will always tend to obliterate me.'
'Stephen,' she said, filled with her own misgivings, and unheedinghis last words, 'there are beautiful women where you live--ofcourse I know there are--and they may win you away from me.' Hertears came visibly as she drew a mental picture of hisfaithlessness. 'And it won't be your fault,' she continued,looking into the candle with doleful eyes. 'No! You will thinkthat our family don't want you, and get to include me with them.And there will be a vacancy in your heart, and some others will belet in.'
'I could not, I would not. Elfie, do not be so full offorebodings.'
'Oh yes, they will,' she replied. 'And you will look at them, notcaring at first, and then you will look and be interested, andafter a while you will think, "Ah, they know all about city life,and assemblies, and coteries, and the manners of the titled, andpoor little Elfie, with all the fuss that's made about her havingme, doesn't know about anything but a little house and a fewcliffs and a space of sea, far away." And then you'll be moreinterested in them, and they'll make you have them instead of me,on purpose to be cruel to me because I am silly, and they areclever and hate me. And I hate them, too; yes, I do!'
Her impulsive words had power to impress him at any rate with therecognition of the uncertainty of all that is not accomplished.And, worse than that general feeling, there of course remained thesadness which arose from the special features of his own case.However remote a desired issue may be, the mere fact of havingentered the groove which leads to it, cheers to some extent with asense of accomplishment. Had Mr. Swancourt consented to anengagement of no less length than ten years, Stephen would havebeen comparatively cheerful in waiting; they would have felt thatthey were somewhere on the road to Cupid's garden. But, with apossibility of a shorter probation, they had not as yet anyprospect of the beginning; the zero of hope had yet to be reached.Mr. Swancourt would have to revoke his formidable words before thewaiting for marriage could even set in. And this was despair.
'I wish we could marry now,' murmured Stephen, as an impossiblefancy.
'So do I,' said she also, as if regarding an idle dream. ''Tisthe only thing that ever does sweethearts good!'
'Secretly would do, would it not, Elfie?'
'Yes, secretly would do; secretly would indeed be best,' she said,and went on reflectively: 'All we want is to render it absolutelyimpossible for any future circumstance to upset our futureintention of being happy together; not to begin being happy now.'
'Exactly,' he murmured in a voice and manner the counterpart ofhers. 'To marry and part secretly, and live on as we are livingnow; merely to put it out of anybody's power to force you awayfrom me, dearest.'
'Or you away from me, Stephen.'
'Or me from you. It is possible to conceive a force ofcircumstance strong enough to make any woman in the world marryagainst her will: no conceivable pressure, up to torture orstarvation, can make a woman once married to her lover anybodyelse's wife.'
Now up to this point the idea of an immediate secret marriage hadbeen held by both as an untenable hypothesis, wherewith simply tobeguile a miserable moment. During a pause which followedStephen's last remark, a fascinating perception, then an alluringconviction, flashed along the brain of both. The perception wasthat an immediate marriage COULD be contrived; the conviction thatsuch an act, in spite of its daring, its fathomless results, itsdeceptiveness, would be preferred by each to the life they mustlead under any other conditions.
The youth spoke first, and his voice trembled with the magnitudeof the conception he was cherishing. 'How strong we should feel,Elfride! going on our separate courses as before, without the fearof ultimate separation! O Elfride! think of it; think of it!'
It is certain that the young girl's love for Stephen received afanning from her father's opposition which made it blaze with adozen times the intensity it would have exhibited if left alone.Never were conditions more favourable for developing a girl'sfirst passing fancy for a handsome boyish face--a fancy rooted ininexperience and nourished by seclusion--into a wild unreflectingpassion fervid enough for anything. All the elements of such adevelopment were there, the chief one being hopelessness--anecessary ingredient always to perfect the mixture of feelingsunited under the name of loving to distraction.
'We would tell papa soon, would we not?' she inquired timidly.'Nobody else need know. He would then be convinced that heartscannot be played with; love encouraged be ready to grow, lovediscouraged be ready to die, at a moment's notice. Stephen, doyou not think that if marriages against a parent's consent areever justifiable, they are when young people have been favoured upto a point, as we have, and then have had that favour suddenlywithdrawn?'
'Yes. It is not as if we had from the beginning acted inopposition to your papa's wishes. Only think, Elfie, how pleasanthe was towards me but six hours ago! He liked me, praised me,never objected to my being alone with you.'
'I believe he MUST like you now,' she cried. 'And if he foundthat you irremediably belonged to me, he would own it and helpyou. 'O Stephen, Stephen,' she burst out again, as theremembrance of his packing came afresh to her mind, 'I cannot bearyour going away like this! It is too dreadful. All I have beenexpecting miserably killed within me like this!'
Stephen flushed hot with impulse. 'I will not be a doubt to you--thought of you shall not be a misery to me!' he said. 'We will bewife and husband before we part for long!'
She hid her face on his shoulder. 'Anything to make SURE!' shewhispered.
'I did not like to propose it immediately,' continued Stephen.'It seemed to me--it seems to me now--like trying to catch you--agirl better in the world than I.'
'Not that, indeed! And am I better in worldly station? What's theuse of have beens? We may have been something once; we are nothingnow.'
Then they whispered long and earnestly together; Stephenhesitatingly proposing this and that plan, Elfride modifying them,with quick breathings, and hectic flush, and unnaturally brighteyes. It was two o'clock before an arrangement was finallyconcluded.