A PAIR OF BLUE EYES

Echoes of Existence

Syed Mustahsan

शालीन

Shalini chauhan

अभय शंकर पाठक, संपादक, कृषि एवं किसान कल्याण मंत्रालय, भारत सरकार

ABHAY SHANKAR PATHAK, MINISTRY OF AGRICULTURE & FARMERS' WELFARE's Diary

विजय बहादुर की जीवन गाथा

Bhupender Singh

The Serpent and The Rope

Raja rao

(1)

A PAIR OF BLUE EYES

Thomas Hardy

Life’s Little Ironies

Thomas Hardy

The Return of Sherlock Holmes

Arthur Conan Doyle

THE WATSONS

Jane Austen

Parts

PREFACE

The following chapters were written at a time when the craze for indiscriminate church-restoration had just reached the remotest nooks of western England, where the wild and tragic features of the coa

Chapter I

“A fair vestal, throned in the west” Elfride Swancourt was a girl whose emotions lay very near the surface. Their nature more precisely, and as modified by the creeping hours of time, was known only

Chapter II

“’Twas on the evening of a winter’s day.” When two or three additional hours had merged the same afternoon in evening, some moving outlines might have been observed against the sky on the summit of a

Chapter III

“Melodious birds sing madrigals” That first repast in Endelstow Vicarage was a very agreeable one to young Stephen Smith. The table was spread, as Elfride had suggested to her father, with the materi

Chapter 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 bo

Chapter V

“Bosom’d high in tufted trees.” It was breakfast time. As seen from the vicarage dining-room, which took a warm tone of light from the fire, the weather and scene outside seemed to have stereotyped

Chapter VI

“Fare thee weel awhile!” Simultaneously with the conclusion of Stephen’s remark, the sound of the closing of an external door in their immediate neighbourhood reached Elfride’s ears. It came from the

Chapter VII

“No more of me you knew, my love!” Stephen Smith revisited Endelstow Vicarage, agreeably to his promise. He had a genuine artistic reason for coming, though no such reason seemed to be required. Six-

Chapter VIII

“Allen-a-Dale is no baron or lord.” The mists were creeping out of pools and swamps for their pilgrimages of the night when Stephen came up to the front door of the vicarage. Elfride was standing on

Chapter IX

“Her father did fume” Oppressed, in spite of themselves, by a foresight of impending complications, Elfride and Stephen returned down the hill hand in hand. At the door they paused wistfully, like ch

Chapter X

“Beneath the shelter of an aged tree.” Stephen retraced his steps towards the cottage he had visited only two or three hours previously. He drew near and under the rich foliage growing about the outs

Chapter XI

“Journeys end in lovers meeting.” Stephen lay watching the Great Bear; Elfride was regarding a monotonous parallelogram of window blind. Neither slept that night. Early the next morning—that is to s

Chapter XII

“Adieu! she cries, and waved her lily hand.” The few tattered clouds of the morning enlarged and united, the sun withdrew behind them to emerge no more that day, and the evening drew to a close in dr

Chapter XIII

“He set in order many proverbs.” It is London in October—two months further on in the story. Bede’s Inn has this peculiarity, that it faces, receives from, and discharges into a bustling thoroughfar

Chapter XIV

“We frolic while ’tis May.” It has now to be realized that nearly three-quarters of a year have passed away. In place of the autumnal scenery which formed a setting to the previous enactments, we hav

Chapter XV

“A wandering voice.” Though sheer and intelligible griefs are not charmed away by being confided to mere acquaintances, the process is a palliative to certain ill-humours. Among these, perplexed vexa

Chapter XVI

“Then fancy shapes—as fancy can.” On a day about three weeks later, the Swancourt trio were sitting quietly in the drawing-room of The Crags, Mrs. Swancourt’s house at Endelstow, chatting, and taking

Chapter XVII

“Her welcome, spoke in faltering phrase.” “There is Henry Knight, I declare!” said Mrs. Swancourt one day. They were gazing from the jutting angle of a wild enclosure not far from The Crags, which a

Chapter XVIII

“He heard her musical pants.” The old tower of West Endelstow Church had reached the last weeks of its existence. It was to be replaced by a new one from the designs of Mr. Hewby, the architect who h

Chapter XIX

“Love was in the next degree.” Knight had none of those light familiarities of speech which, by judicious touches of epigrammatic flattery, obliterate a woman’s recollection of the speaker’s abstract

Chapter XX

“A distant dearness in the hill.” Knight turned his back upon the parish of Endelstow, and crossed over to Cork. One day of absence superimposed itself on another, and proportionately weighted his h

Chapter XXI

“On thy cold grey stones, O sea!” Stephen had said that he should come by way of Bristol, and thence by a steamer to Castle Boterel, in order to avoid the long journey over the hills from St. Launce’

Chapter XXII

“A woman’s way.” Haggard cliffs, of every ugly altitude, are as common as sea-fowl along the line of coast between Exmoor and Land’s End; but this outflanked and encompassed specimen was the ugliest

Chapter XXIII

“Should auld acquaintance be forgot?” By this time Stephen Smith had stepped out upon the quay at Castle Boterel, and breathed his native air. A darker skin, a more pronounced moustache, and an inci

Chapter XXIV

“Breeze, bird, and flower confess the hour.” The rain had ceased since the sunset, but it was a cloudy night; and the light of the moon, softened and dispersed by its misty veil, was distributed over

Chapter XXV

“Mine own familiar friend.” During these days of absence Stephen lived under alternate conditions. Whenever his emotions were active, he was in agony. Whenever he was not in agony, the business in ha

Chapter XXVI

“To that last nothing under earth.” All eyes were turned to the entrance as Stephen spoke, and the ancient-mannered conclave scrutinized him inquiringly. “Why, ’tis our Stephen!” said his father, ri

Chapter XXVII

“How should I greet thee?” Love frequently dies of time alone—much more frequently of displacement. With Elfride Swancourt, a powerful reason why the displacement should be successful was that the ne

Chapter XXVIII

“I lull a fancy, trouble-tost.” Miss Swancourt, it is eleven o’clock.” She was looking out of her dressing-room window on the first floor, and Knight was regarding her from the terrace balustrade, u

Chapter XXIX

“Care, thou canker.” It is an evening at the beginning of October, and the mellowest of autumn sunsets irradiates London, even to its uttermost eastern end. Between the eye and the flaming West, colu

Chapter XXX

“Vassal unto Love.” Elfride clung closer to Knight as day succeeded day. Whatever else might admit of question, there could be no dispute that the allegiance she bore him absorbed her whole soul and

Chapter XXXI

“A worm i’ the bud.” One day the reviewer said, “Let us go to the cliffs again, Elfride;” and, without consulting her wishes, he moved as if to start at once. “The cliff of our dreadful adventure?”

Chapter XXXII

“Had I wist before I kist” It was now October, and the night air was chill. After looking to see that she was well wrapped up, Knight took her along the hillside path they had ascended so many times

Chapter XXXIII

“O daughter of Babylon, wasted with misery.” A habit of Knight’s, when not immediately occupied with Elfride—to walk by himself for half an hour or so between dinner and bedtime—had become familiar t

Chapter XXXIV

“Yea, happy shall he be that rewardeth thee as thou hast served us.” Sixteen hours had passed. Knight was entering the ladies’ boudoir at The Crags, upon his return from attending the inquest touchin

Chapter XXXV

“And wilt thou leave me thus?—say nay—say nay!” The scene shifts to Knight’s chambers in Bede’s Inn. It was late in the evening of the day following his departure from Endelstow. A drizzling rain des

Chapter XXXVI

“The pennie’s the jewel that beautifies a’.” “I can’t think what’s coming to these St. Launce’s people at all at all.” “With their ‘How-d’ye-do’s,’ do you mean?” “Ay, with their ‘How-d’ye-do’s,’ an

Chapter XXXVII

“After many days.” Knight roamed south, under colour of studying Continental antiquities. He paced the lofty aisles of Amiens, loitered by Ardennes Abbey, climbed into the strange towers of Laon, an

Chapter XXXVIII

“Jealousy is cruel as the grave.” Stephen pondered not a little on this meeting with his old friend and once-beloved exemplar. He was grieved, for amid all the distractions of his latter years a stil

Chapter XXXIX

“Each to the loved one’s side.” The friends and rivals breakfasted together the next morning. Not a word was said on either side upon the matter discussed the previous evening so glibly and so hollow

Chapter XL