but it would be improper to be silent too long, I think,’ she said in a delicate voice, which implied that her face had grown warm. ‘I want him to know we love, Stephen. Why did you adopt as your own my thought of delay?’
‘I will explain; but I want to tell you of my secret first – to tell you now. It is two or three hours yet to bedtime. Let us walk up the hill to the church.’
Elfride passively assented, and they went from the lawn by a side wicket, and ascended into the open expanse of moonlight which streamed around the lonely edifice on the summit of the hill.
The door was locked. They turned from the porch, and walked hand in hand to find a resting-place in the churchyard. Stephen chose a flat tomb, showing itself to be newer and whiter than those around it, and sitting down himself, gently drew her hand towards him.
‘No, not there,’ she said.
‘Why not here?’
‘A mere fancy; but never mind.’ And she sat down.
‘Elfie, will you love me, in spite of everything that may be said against me?’
‘O Stephen, what makes you repeat that so continually and so sadly? You know I will. Yes, indeed,’ she said, drawing closer, ‘whatever may be said of you – and nothing bad can be – I will cling to you just the same. Your ways shall be my ways until I die.’
‘Did you ever think what my parents might be, or what society I originally moved in?’
‘No, not particularly. I have observed one or two little points in your manners which are rather quaint – no more. I suppose you have moved in the ordinary society of professional people.’
‘Supposing I have not – that none of my family have a profession except me?’
‘I don’t mind. What you are only concerns me.’
‘Where do you think I went to school – I mean, to what kind of school?’
‘Dr. Somebody’s academy,’ she said simply.
‘No. To a dame school originally, then to a national school.’
‘Only to those! Well, I love you just as much, Stephen, dear Stephen,’ she murmured tenderly, ‘I do indeed. And why should you tell me these things so impressively? What do they matter to me?’
He held her closer and proceeded:
‘What do you think my father is – does for his living, that is to say?’
‘He practises some profession or calling, I suppose.’
‘No; he is a mason.’
‘A Freemason?’
‘No; a cottager and journeyman mason.’
Elfride said nothing at first. After a while she whispered:
‘That is a strange idea to me. But never mind; what does it matter?’
‘But aren’t you angry with me for not telling you before?’
‘No, not at all. Is your mother alive?’
‘Yes.’
‘Is she a nice lady?’
‘Very – the best mother in the world. Her people had been well-to-do yeomen for centuries, but she was only a dairymaid.’
‘O Stephen!’ came from her in whispered exclamation.
‘She continued to attend to a dairy long after my father married her,’ pursued Stephen, without further hesitation. ‘And I remember very well how, when I was very young, I used to go to the milking, look on at the skimming, sleep through the churning, and make believe I helped her. Ah, that was a happy time enough!’
‘No, never – not happy.’
‘Yes, it was.’
‘I don’t see how happiness could be where the drudgery of dairy-work had to be done for a living – the hands red and chapped, and the shoes clogged…Stephen, I do own that it seems odd to regard you in the light of – of – having been so rough in your youth, and done menial things of that kind.’ (Stephen withdrew an inch or two from her side.) ‘But I DO LOVE YOU just the same,’ she continued, getting closer under his shoulder again, ‘and I don’t care anything about the past; and I see that you are all the worthier for having pushed on in the world in such a way.’
‘It is not my worthiness; it is Knight’s, who pushed me.’
‘Ah, always he – always he!’
‘Yes, and properly so. Now, Elfride, you see the reason of his teaching me by letter. I knew him years before he went to Oxford, but I had not got far enough in my reading for him to entertain the idea of helping me in classics till he left home. Then I was sent away from the village, and we very seldom met; but he kept up this system of tuition by correspondence with the greatest regularity. I will tell you all the story, but not now. There is nothing more to say now, beyond giving places, persons, and dates.’ His voice became timidly slow at this point.
‘No; don’t take trouble to say more. You are a dear honest fellow to say so much as you have; and it is not so dreadful either. It has become a normal thing that millionaires commence by going up to London with their tools at their back, and half-a-crown in their pockets. That sort of origin is getting so respected,’ she continued cheerfully, ‘that it is acquiring some of the odour of Norman ancestry.’
‘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
