Chapter 26 - A Pair of Blue Eyes

A PAIR OF BLUE EYES by Thomas Hardy Chapter XXVI TO THAT LAST NOTHING UNDER EARTH All eyes were turned to the entrance as Stephen spoke, and the ancient-mannered conclave scrutinised him inquiringly. "'Why, it is 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's expecting ye. Thought you would have come before dark. Go ye to wait and go home with me. We have all but done for the day, and was going directly.' "'Yes, to Master Stevie, sure enough. Glad to see you so soon again, Master Smith,' said Martin Canister, chastening the gladness expressed in his words by a strict neutrality of countenance, in order to harmonise 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?' repeated Stephen. "'Lady Luxellian, poor gentlewoman, as we all shall,' said the under-mason. "'Aye, and we be going to a nice 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 has been tolling ever since, almost. Fair to his expectation, she was very limber. "'Aye, poor soul, this morning,' resumed the under-mason, a marvelously 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 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 I was forty, if I were an hour.' "'Aye, night-time or day-time makes a difference of twenty years to rich females,' observed Martin. "'She was one-and-thirty, really,' said John Smith. "'I had it from them that no—' "'Not more than that.' "'I look very bad, poor lady. In fate you might say she was dead for years afore she would own it. As my old father used to say, dead but wouldn't drop down.' "'I see her, poor soul,' said the labourer, from behind some removed coffins. "'Only but last Valentine's Day of all the world. I was arm and crook with my lord. I says to myself, you be taking the churchyard, my noble lady, though you don't dream on it. I suppose my lord will write to all the mother-lords anointed in the nation, and let him know that she that was is now no more. "'Tis done and past. If I see a bundle of letters go off an hour after the death, such 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 feel's most of all.' "'And there are two little girls, are there not?' said Stephen. Nice, slain little faces, left motherless now. "'They used to come to Parson Swancourt 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 her mother, so tis said here and there,' added the labourer. "'Well, you see, tis natural.' Lady Luxellian stood aloof from him so, 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 him so careful, my lady never once seeing that I wanted to, and, naturally, children take the people as their best friends.' "'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 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're 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 I never expected to 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 you think best, Master John,' replied the shriveled 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 hudder only a mortal man. Poor fellow! He'd clap his hand upon my shoulder, and cuss me as familial and knavery as if he had been a common chap. Aye, I cussed me uphill, and I cussed me down, and then I would rave out again, and the gold like feathers of brass, while I, being a small man and poor, was fain to say nothing at all. Such a strapping fine gentleman as he was, too—yes, I rather liked him sometimes. But once, now and then, when I looked at his towering eye, I tinked in my inside,—'What a weight you'll be, my lord, for our arms to lower under the Isle of Endel so short some day!' "'And was he?' inquired the young labourer. "'He was. He was five hundred weight, if he were a pound. What with his lead, and his oak, and his andals, and his one thing and hudder!' 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 him down the steps there. Ah, sayeth I to John there—didn't I, John?—that ever one man's glory should be such a weight "'Tis a strange thought,' said another,—'that while they be all here under one roof, a snug united family of Lugzellians, they be really scattered miles away from one another, in the form of good sheep and wicked goats, isn't it?' "'True. It's 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 on 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, Hello! Close to fiery Lord George, and it can't hear me. And I'll be eating my onion close to dainty Lady Jane's nose, and she can't smell me.' "'What do I put all their heads one way for?' inquired the young man. "'Because this churchyard law is simple. The law of the living is, that a man should be upright and downright, and the law of the dead is, that a man should be east and west. Every state of society have its laws.' "'We must break the law with a few of these poor souls, however. Come, buckle to it,' 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 surface 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 sufficient than to enable a person to stand upright. The body of George XIV. 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 trestles, 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 a while. "'I think it fell upon the time my father was sexting her. Let us see. Where is she?' "'Here somewhere,' returned Simeon, looking around him. "'Why, I've got my arms round a very gentle woman 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. Aye, I can mind it, though I was but a child at the time. She fell in love with this young man of hers, and their bands were asked in some church in London. And the old lord, her father, actually heard them asked three times, and didn't notice her name, being gabbled on with a host of others. And when she had married, she told her father, and hath fleed into a monstrous rage, and said she shouldn't have a farting. Lady Elfride said she didn't think of wishing it. If he'd forgive her, t'was all she asked, and, as for a living, she was content to play plays with her husband. This frightened the old lord, and he'd give them 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 t'was said. Anyhow, they were buried the same day, mother and father, 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 is the man now. The Sunday after there was a funeral sermon. The text was, Or ever the silver cord be loosed, or the golden ball be broken. And when t'was preaching, the men drew their hands cross their eyes several times, and every woman cried out aloud. 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 means 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 as 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 strange bubble, you 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 or But, as tis, 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 see'd Miss Elfride huggin' the little ladyship, that there was a likeness. But I suppose it was only my dream, for years must have altered the family's 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. A flag and a veil we don't want. We'll let Boyd hear till to-morrow. None of the poor souls will touch it, I believe.' So the evening's work was concluded, and the party drew from the abode of the quiet dead, closing the iron door, and shooting the lock loudly into the huge copper staple. An incongruous act of imprisonment towards those who had no dream of escape. End of chapter 26