fault, of course; my fault. What the deuce could I be thinking of! He, a villager’s son; and we, Swancourts, connections of the Luxellians. We have been coming to nothing for centuries, and now I believe we have got there. What shall I next invite here, I wonder!’
Elfride began to cry at this very unpropitious aspect of affairs. ‘O papa, papa, forgive me and him! We care so much for one another, papa – O, so much! And what he was going to ask you is, if you will allow of an engagement between us till he is a gentleman as good as you. We are not in a hurry, dear papa; we don’t want in the least to marry now; not until he is richer. Only will you let us be engaged, because I love him so, and he loves me?’
Mr. Swancourt’s feelings were a little touched by this appeal, and he was annoyed that such should be the case. ‘Certainly not!’ he replied. He pronounced the inhibition lengthily and sonorously, so that the ‘not’ sounded like ‘n-o-o-o-t!’
‘No, no, no; don’t say it!’
‘Foh! A fine story. It is not enough that I have been deluded and disgraced by having him here, – the son of one of my village peasants, – but now I am to make him my son-in-law! Heavens above us, are you mad, Elfride?’
‘You have seen his letters come to me ever since his first visit, papa, and you knew they were a sort of – love-letters; and since he has been here you have let him be alone with me almost entirely; and you guessed, you must have guessed, what we were thinking of, and doing, and you didn’t stop him. Next to love-making comes love-winning, and you knew it would come to that, papa.’
The vicar parried this common-sense thrust. ‘I know – since you press me so – I know I did guess some childish attachment might arise between you; I own I did not take much trouble to prevent it; but I have not particularly countenanced it; and, Elfride, how can you expect that I should now? It is impossible; no father in England would hear of such a thing.’
‘But he is the same man, papa; the same in every particular; and how can he be less fit for me than he was before?’
‘He appeared a young man with well-to-do friends, and a little property; but having neither, he is another man.’
‘You inquired nothing about him?’
‘I went by Hewby’s introduction. He should have told me. So should the young man himself; of course he should. I consider it a most dishonourable thing to come into a man’s house like a treacherous I-don’t-know-what.’
‘But he was afraid to tell you, and so should I have been. He loved me too well to like to run the risk. And as to speaking of his friends on his first visit, I don’t see why he should have done so at all. He came here on business: it was no affair of ours who his parents were. And then he knew that if he told you he would never be asked here, and would perhaps never see me again. And he wanted to see me. Who can blame him for trying, by any means, to stay near me – the girl he loves? All is fair in love. I have heard you say so yourself, papa; and you yourself would have done just as he has – so would any man.’
‘And any man, on discovering what I have discovered, would also do as I do, and mend my mistake; that is, get shot of him again, as soon as the laws of hospitality will allow.’ But Mr. Swancourt then remembered that he was a Christian. ‘I would not, for the world, seem to turn him out of doors,’ he added; ‘but I think he will have the tact to see that he cannot stay long after this, with good taste.’
‘He will, because he’s a gentleman. See how graceful his manners are,’ Elfride went on; though perhaps Stephen’s manners, like the feats of Euryalus, owed their attractiveness in her eyes rather to the attractiveness of his person than to their own excellence.
‘Ay; anybody can be what you call graceful, if he lives a little time in a city, and keeps his eyes open. And he might have picked up his gentlemanliness by going to the galleries of theatres, and watching stage drawing-room manners. He reminds me of one of the worst stories I ever heard in my life.’
‘What story was that?’
‘Oh no, thank you! I wouldn’t tell you such an improper matter for the world!’
‘If his father and mother had lived in the north or east of England,’ gallantly persisted Elfride, though her sobs began to interrupt her articulation, ‘anywhere but here – you – would have – only regarded – HIM, and not THEM! His station – would have – been what – his profession makes it, – and not fixed by – his father’s humble position – at all; whom he never lives with – now. Though John Smith has saved lots of money, and is better off than we are, they say, or he couldn’t have put his son to such an expensive profession. And it is clever and – honourable – of Stephen, to be the best of his family.’
‘Yes. “Let a beast be lord of beasts, and his crib shall stand at the king’s mess.”’
‘You insult me, papa!’ she burst out. ‘You do, you do! He is my own Stephen, he is!’
‘That may or may not be true, Elfride,’ returned her father, again uncomfortably agitated in spite of himself ‘You confuse future probabilities with present facts, – what the young man may be with what he is. We must look at what he is, not what an improbable degree of success in his profession may make him. The case is this: the son of a working-man in my parish who may or may not be able to buy me up – a youth who has not yet advanced so far into life as to have any income of his own deserving the name, and therefore of his father’s degree as regards station – wants to be engaged to you. His family are living in precisely the same spot in England as yours, so throughout this county – which is the world to us – you would always be known as the wife of Jack Smith the mason’s son, and not under any circumstances as the wife of a London professional man. It is the drawback, not the compensating fact, that is talked of always. There, say no more. You may argue all night, and prove what you will; I’ll stick to my words.’
Elfride looked silently and hopelessly out of the window with large heavy eyes and wet cheeks.
‘I call it great temerity – and long to call it audacity – in Hewby,’ resumed her father. ‘I never heard such a thing – giving such a hobbledehoy native of this place such an introduction to me as he did. Naturally you were deceived as well as I was. I don’t blame you at all, so far.’ He went and searched for Mr. Hewby’s original letter. ‘Here’s what he said to me: “Dear Sir, – Agreeably to your request of the 18th instant, I have arranged to survey and make drawings,” et cetera. “My assistant, Mr. Stephen Smith,” – assistant, you see he called him, and naturally I understood him to mean a sort of partner. Why didn’t he say “clerk”?’
‘They never call them clerks in that profession, because they do not write. Stephen – Mr. Smith – told me so. So that Mr. Hewby simply used the accepted word.’
‘Let me speak, please, Elfride! My assistant, Mr. Stephen Smith, will leave London by the early train to-morrow morning…MANY THANKS FOR YOUR PROPOSAL TO ACCOMMODATE HIM…YOU MAY PUT EVERY CONFIDENCE IN HIM, and may rely upon his discernment in the matter of church architecture.” Well, I repeat that Hewby ought to be ashamed of himself for making so much of a poor lad of that sort.’
‘Professional men in London,’ Elfride argued, ‘don’t know anything about their clerks’ fathers and mothers. They have assistants who come to their offices and shops for years, and hardly even know where they live. What they can do – what profits they can bring the firm – that’s all London men care about. And that is helped in him by his faculty of being uniformly pleasant.’
‘Uniform pleasantness
