IV
‘Where heaves the turf in many a mould’ring heap.’
For reasons of his own, Stephen Smith was stirring a short time after dawn the next morning. From the window of his room he could see, first, two bold escarpments sloping down together like the letter V. Towards the bottom, like liquid in a funnel, appeared the sea, gray and small. On the brow of one hill, of rather greater altitude than its neighbour, stood the church which was to be the scene of his operations. The lonely edifice was black and bare, cutting up into the sky from the very tip of the hill. It had a square mouldering tower, owning neither battlement nor pinnacle, and seemed a monolithic termination, of one substance with the ridge, rather than a structure raised thereon. Round the church ran a low wall; over-topping the wall in general level was the graveyard; not as a graveyard usually is, a fragment of landscape with its due variety of chiaro-oscuro, but a mere profile against the sky, serrated with the outlines of graves and a very few memorial stones. Not a tree could exist up there: nothing but the monotonous gray-green grass.
Five minutes after this casual survey was made his bedroom was empty, and its occupant had vanished quietly from the house.
At the end of two hours he was again in the room, looking warm and glowing. He now pursued the artistic details of dressing, which on his first rising had been entirely omitted. And a very blooming boy he looked, after that mysterious morning scamper. His mouth was a triumph of its class. It was the cleanly-cut, piquantly pursed-up mouth of William Pitt, as represented in the well or little known bust by Nollekens—a mouth which is in itself a young man’s fortune, if properly exercised. His round chin, where its upper part turned inward, still continued its perfect and full curve, seeming to press in to a point the bottom of his nether lip at their place of junction.
Once he murmured the name of Elfride. Ah, there she was! On the lawn in a plain dress, without hat or bonnet, running with a boy’s velocity, superadded to a girl’s lightness, after a tame rabbit she was endeavouring to capture, her strategic intonations of coaxing words alternating with desperate rushes so much out of keeping with them, that the hollowness of such expressions was but too evident to her pet, who darted and dodged in carefully timed counterpart.
The scene down there was altogether different from that of the hills. A thicket of shrubs and trees enclosed the favoured spot from the wilderness without; even at this time of the year the grass was luxuriant there. No wind blew inside the protecting belt of evergreens, wasting its force upon the higher and stronger trees forming the outer margin of the grove.
Then he heard a heavy person shuffling about in slippers, and calling ‘Mr. Smith!’ Smith proceeded to the study, and found Mr. Swancourt. The young man expressed his gladness to see his host downstairs.
‘Oh yes; I knew I should soon be right again. I have not made the acquaintance of gout for more than two years, and it generally goes off the second night. Well, where have you been this morning? I saw you come in just now, I think!’
‘Yes; I have been for a walk.’
‘Start early?’
‘Yes.’
‘Very early, I think?’
‘Yes, it was rather early.’
‘Which way did you go? To the sea, I suppose. Everybody goes seaward.’
‘No; I followed up the river as far as the park wall.’
‘You are different from your kind. Well, I suppose such a wild place is a novelty, and so tempted you out of bed?’
‘Not altogether a novelty. I like it.’
The youth seemed averse to explanation.
‘You must, you must; to go cock-watching the morning after a journey of fourteen or sixteen hours. But there’s no accounting for tastes, and I am glad to see that yours are no meaner. After breakfast, but not before, I shall be good for a ten miles’ walk, Master Smith.’
Certainly there seemed nothing exaggerated in that assertion. Mr. Swancourt by daylight showed himself to be a man who, in common with the other two people under his roof, had really strong claims to be considered handsome—handsome, that is, in the sense in which the moon is bright: the ravines and valleys which, on a close inspection, are seen to diversify its surface being left out of the argument. His face was of a tint that never deepened upon his cheeks nor lightened upon his forehead, but remained uniform throughout; the usual neutral salmon-colour of a man who feeds well—not to say too well—and does not think hard; every pore being in visible working order. His tout ensemble was that of a highly improved class of farmer, dressed up in the wrong clothes; that of a firm-standing perpendicular man, whose fall would have been backwards in direction if he had ever lost his balance.
The vicar’s background was at present what a vicar’s background should be, his study. Here the consistency ends. All along the chimneypiece were ranged bottles of horse, pig, and cow medicines, and against the wall was a high table, made up of the fragments of an old oak Iychgate. Upon this stood stuffed specimens of owls, divers, and gulls, and over them bunches of wheat and barley ears, labelled with the date of the year that produced them. Some cases and shelves, more or less laden with books, the prominent titles of which were Dr. Brown’s ‘Notes on the Romans,’ Dr. Smith’s ‘Notes on the Corinthians,’ and Dr. Robinson’s ‘Notes on the Galatians, Ephesians, and Philippians,’ just saved the character of the place, in spite of a girl’s doll’s-house standing above them, a marine aquarium in the window, and Elfride’s hat hanging on its corner.
‘Business, business!’ said Mr. Swancourt after breakfast. He began to find it necessary to act the part of a fly-wheel towards the somewhat irregular forces of his visitor.
They prepared to go to the church; the vicar, on second thoughts, mounting his coal-black mare to avoid exerting his foot too much at starting. Stephen said he should want a man to assist him. ‘Worm!’ the vicar shouted.
A minute or two after a voice was heard round the corner of the building, mumbling, ‘Ah, I used to be strong enough, but ’tis altered now! Well, there, I’m as independent as one here and there, even if they do write ‘squire after their names.’
‘What’s the matter?’ said the vicar, as William Worm appeared; when the remarks were repeated to him.
‘Worm says some very true things sometimes,’ Mr. Swancourt said, turning to Stephen. ‘Now, as regards that word “esquire.” Why, Mr. Smith, that word “esquire” is gone to the dogs—used on the letters of every jackanapes who has a black coat. Anything else, Worm?’
‘Ay, the folk have begun frying again!’
‘Dear me! I’m sorry to hear that.’
‘Yes,’ Worm said groaningly to Stephen, ‘I’ve got such a noise in my head that there’s no living night nor day. ’Tis just for all the world like people frying fish: fry, fry, fry, all day long in my poor head, till I don’t know whe’r I’m here or yonder. There, God A’mighty will find it out sooner or later, I hope, and relieve me.’
‘Now, my deafness,’ said Mr. Swancourt impressively, ‘is a dead silence; but William Worm’s is that of people frying fish in his head. Very remarkable,
