Thomas Hardy

A Pair of Blue Eyes Thomas Hardy

Elfride Swancourt was a girl whose emotions lay very near the surface. Their naturemore precisely, and as modified by the creeping hours of time, was known only to thosewho watched the circumstances of her history. Personally, she was the combination of very interesting particulars, whose rarity, however, lay in the combination itself rather than in the individual elements combined. Asa matter of fact, you did not see the form and substance of her features when conversingwith her; and this charming power of preventing a material study of her lineaments by aninterlocutor, originated not in the cloaking effect of a well-formed manner (for her mannerwas childish and scarcely formed), but in the attractive crudeness of the remarksthemselves. She had lived all her life in retirement-the monstrari gigito of idle men hadnot flattered her, and at the age of nineteen or twenty she was no further on in socialconsciousness than an urban young lady of fifteen. One point in her, however, you did notice: that was her eyes. In them was seen asublimation of all of her; it was not necessary to look further: there she lived. These eyes were blue; blue as autumn distance-blue as the blue we see between theretreating mouldings of hills and woody slopes on a sunny September morning. A mistyand shady blue, that had no beginning or surface, and was looked INTO rather than AT. As to her presence, it was not powerful; it was weak. Some women can make theirpersonality pervade the atmosphere of a whole banqueting hall; Elfride's was no morepervasive than that of a kitten. Elfride had as her own the thoughtfulness which appears in the face of the Madonnadella Sedia, without its rapture: the warmth and spirit of the type of woman's feature mostcommon to the beauties-mortal and immortal-of Rubens, without their insistentfleshiness. The characteristic expression of the female faces of Correggio-that of theyearning human thoughts that lie too deep for tears-was hers sometimes, but seldomunder ordinary conditions