Томас Харди (Гарди)
A Pair of Blue Eyes
‘How came she to die – and away from home?’ murmured Knight.
‘Don’t you see, sir, she fell off again afore they’d been married long, and my lord took her abroad for change of scene. They were coming home, and had got as far as London, when she was taken very ill and couldn’t be moved, and there she died.’
‘Was he very fond of her?’
‘What, my lord? Oh, he was!’
‘VERY fond of her?’
‘VERY, beyond everything. Not suddenly, but by slow degrees. ‘Twas her nature to win people more when they knew her well. He’d have died for her, I believe. Poor my lord, he’s heart-broken now!’
‘The funeral is to-morrow?’
‘Yes; my husband is now at the vault with the masons, opening the steps and cleaning down the walls.’
The next day two men walked up the familiar valley from Castle Boterel to East Endelstow Church. And when the funeral was over, and every one had left the lawn-like churchyard, the pair went softly down the steps of the Luxellian vault, and under the low-groined arches they had beheld once before, lit up then as now. In the new niche of the crypt lay a rather new coffin, which had lost some of its lustre, and a newer coffin still, bright and untarnished in the slightest degree.
Beside the latter was the dark form of a man, kneeling on the damp floor, his body flung across the coffin, his hands clasped, and his whole frame seemingly given up in utter abandonment to grief. He was still young – younger, perhaps, than Knight – and even now showed how graceful was his figure and symmetrical his build. He murmured a prayer half aloud, and was quite unconscious that two others were standing within a few yards of him.
Knight and Stephen had advanced to where they once stood beside Elfride on the day all three had met there, before she had herself gone down into silence like her ancestors, and shut her bright blue eyes for ever. Not until then did they see the kneeling figure in the dim light. Knight instantly recognized the mourner as Lord Luxellian, the bereaved husband of Elfride.
They felt themselves to be intruders. Knight pressed Stephen back, and they silently withdrew as they had entered.
‘Come away,’ he said, in a broken voice. ‘We have no right to be there. Another stands before us – nearer to her than we!’
And side by side they both retraced their steps down the grey still valley to Castle Boterel.
