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diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6833f05 --- /dev/null +++ b/.gitattributes @@ -0,0 +1,3 @@ +* text=auto +*.txt text +*.md text diff --git a/19798-8.txt b/19798-8.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..db65258 --- /dev/null +++ b/19798-8.txt @@ -0,0 +1,12304 @@ +The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Farringdons, by Ellen Thorneycroft Fowler + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: The Farringdons + +Author: Ellen Thorneycroft Fowler + +Release Date: November 13, 2006 [EBook #19798] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE FARRINGDONS *** + + + + +Produced by Chuck Greif, Sigal Alon and the Online +Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net + + + + + + + + + + + THE FARRINGDONS + BY ELLEN THORNEYCROFT FOWLER + + AUTHOR OF CONCERNING ISABEL CARNABY, A DOUBLE THREAD, ETC. + + NEW YORK + D. APPLETON AND COMPANY 1900 + COPYRIGHT, 1900, + _All rights reserved._ + + + + + DEDICATION + + + For all such readers as have chanced to be + Either in Mershire or in Arcady, + I write this book, that each may smile, and say, + "Once on a time I also passed that way." + + + + + CONTENTS + + +CHAPTER PAGE + I.--THE OSIERFIELD 1 + II.--CHRISTOPHER 12 + III.--MRS. BATESON'S TEA-PARTY 29 + IV.--SCHOOL-DAYS 51 + V.--THE MOAT HOUSE 70 + VI.--WHIT MONDAY 90 + VII.--BROADER VIEWS 114 + VIII.--GREATER THAN OUR HEARTS 137 + IX.--FELICIA FINDS HAPPINESS 156 + X.--CHANGES 187 + XI.--MISS FARRINGDON'S WILL 213 + XII.--"THE DAUGHTERS OF PHILIP" 232 + XIII.--CECIL FARQUHAR 249 + XIV.--ON THE RIVER 272 + XV.--LITTLE WILLIE 292 + XVI.--THIS SIDE OF THE HILLS 306 + XVII.--GEORGE FARRINGDON'S SON 325 +XVIII.--THE OTHER SIDE OF THE HILLS 346 + + * * * * * + + + + + THE FARRINGDONS + + + + +CHAPTER I + +THE OSIERFIELD + + They herded not with soulless swine, + Nor let strange snares their path environ: + Their only pitfall was a mine-- + Their pigs were made of iron. + + +In the middle of Sedgehill, which is in the middle of Mershire, which is +in the middle of England, there lies a narrow ridge of high table-land, +dividing, as by a straight line, the collieries and ironworks of the +great coal district from the green and pleasant scenery of the western +Midlands. Along the summit of this ridge runs the High Street of the +bleak little town of Sedgehill; so that the houses on the east side of +this street see nothing through their back windows save the huge +slag-mounds and blazing furnaces and tall chimneys of the weird and +terrible, yet withal fascinating, Black Country; while the houses on the +west side of the street have sunny gardens and fruitful orchards, +sloping down toward a fertile land of woods and streams and meadows, +bounded in the far distance by the Clee Hills and the Wrekin, and in the +farthest distance of all by the blue Welsh mountains. + +In the dark valley lying to the immediate east of Sedgehill stood the +Osierfield Works, the largest ironworks in Mershire in the good old +days when Mershire made iron for half the world. The owners of these +works were the Farringdons, and had been so for several generations. So +it came to pass that the Farringdons were the royal family of Sedgehill; +and the Osierfield Works was the circle wherein the inhabitants of that +place lived and moved. It was as natural for everybody born in Sedgehill +eventually to work at the Osierfield, as it was for him eventually to +grow into a man and to take unto himself a wife. + +The home of the Farringdons was called the Willows, and was separated by +a carriage-drive of half a mile from the town. Its lodge stood in the +High Street, on the western side; and the drive wandered through a fine +old wood, and across an undulating park, till it stopped in front of a +large square house built of gray stone. It was a handsome house inside, +with wonderful oak staircases and Adams chimneypieces; and there was an +air of great stateliness about it, and of very little luxury. For the +Farringdons were a hardy race, whose time was taken up by the making of +iron and the saving of souls; and they regarded sofas and easy-chairs in +very much the same light as they regarded theatres and strong drink, +thereby proving that their spines were as strong as their consciences +were stern. + +Moreover, the Farringdons were of "the people called Methodists"; +consequently Methodism was the established religion of Sedgehill, +possessing there that prestige which is the inalienable attribute of all +state churches. In the eyes of Sedgehill it was as necessary to +salvation to pray at the chapel as to work at the Osierfield; and the +majority of the inhabitants would as soon have thought of worshipping at +any other sanctuary as of worshipping at the beacon, a pillar which +still marks the highest point of the highest table-land in England. + +At the time when this story begins, the joint ownership of the +Osierfield and the Willows was vested in the two Miss Farringdons, the +daughters and co-heiresses of John Farringdon. John Farringdon and his +brother William had been partners, and had arranged between themselves +that William's only child, George, should marry John's eldest daughter, +Maria, and so consolidate the brothers' fortunes and their interest in +the works. But the gods--and George--saw otherwise. George was a +handsome, weak boy, who objected equally to work and to Methodism; and +as his father cared for nothing beyond those sources of interest, and +had no patience for any one who did, the two did not always see eye to +eye. Perhaps if Maria had been more unbending, things might have turned +out differently; but Methodism in its severest aspects was not more +severe than Maria Farringdon. She was a thorough gentlewoman, and +extremely clever; but tenderness was not counted among her excellencies. +George would have been fond of almost any woman who was pretty enough to +be loved and not clever enough to be feared; but his cousin Maria was +beyond even his powers of falling in love, although, to do him justice, +these powers were by no means limited. The end of it was that George +offended his father past forgiveness by running away to Australia rather +than marry Maria, and there disappeared. Years afterward a rumour +reached his people that he had married and died out there, leaving a +widow and an only son; but this rumour had not been verified, as by that +time his father and uncle were dead, and his cousins were reigning in +his stead; and it was hardly to be expected that the proud Miss +Farringdon would take much trouble concerning the woman whom her +weak-kneed kinsman had preferred to herself. + +William Farringdon left all his property and his share in the works to +his niece Maria, as some reparation for the insult which his +disinherited son had offered to her; John left his large fortune between +his two daughters, as he never had a son; so Maria and Anne Farringdon +lived at the Willows, and carried on the Osierfield with the help of +Richard Smallwood, who had been the general manager of the collieries +and ironworks belonging to the firm in their father's time, and knew as +much about iron (and most other things) as he did. Maria was a good +woman of business, and she and Richard between them made money as fast +as it had been made in the days of William and John Farringdon. Anne, on +the contrary, was a meek and gentle soul, who had no power of governing +but a perfect genius for obedience, and who was always engaged on the +Herculean task of squaring the sternest dogmas with the most indulgent +practices. + +Even in the early days of this history the Miss Farringdons were what is +called "getting on"; but the Willows was, nevertheless, not without a +youthful element in it. Close upon a dozen years ago the two sisters had +adopted the orphaned child of a second cousin, whose young widow had +died in giving birth to a posthumous daughter; and now Elisabeth +Farringdon was the light of the good ladies' eyes, though they would +have considered it harmful to her soul to let her have an inkling of +this fact. + +She was not a pretty little girl, which was a source of much sorrow of +heart to her; and she was a distinctly clever little girl, of which she +was utterly unconscious, it being an integral part of Miss Farringdon's +system of education to imbue the young with an overpowering sense of +their own inferiority and unworthiness. During the first decade of her +existence Elisabeth used frequently and earnestly to pray that her hair +might become golden and her eyes brown; but as on this score the heavens +remained as brass, and her hair continued dark brown and her eyes +blue-gray, she changed her tactics, and confined her heroine-worship to +ladies of this particular style of colouring; which showed that, even at +the age of ten, Elisabeth had her full share of adaptability. + +One day, when walking with Miss Farringdon to chapel, Elisabeth +exclaimed, _à propos_ of nothing but her own meditations, "Oh! Cousin +Maria, I do wish I was pretty!" + +Most people would have been too much afraid of the lady of the Willows +to express so frivolous a desire in her august hearing; but Elisabeth +was never afraid of anybody, and that, perhaps, was one of the reasons +why her severe kinswoman loved her so well. + +"That is a vain wish, my child. Favour is deceitful and beauty is vain; +and the Lord looketh on the heart and not on the outward appearance." + +"But I wasn't thinking of the Lord," replied Elisabeth: "I was thinking +of other people; and they love you much more if you are pretty than if +you aren't." + +"That is not so," said Miss Farringdon--and she believed she was +speaking the truth; "if you serve God and do your duty to your +neighbour, you will find plenty of people ready to love you; and +especially if you carry yourself well and never stoop." Like many +another elect lady, Cousin Maria regarded beauty of face as a vanity, +but beauty of figure as a virtue; and to this doctrine Elisabeth owed +the fact that her back always sloped in the opposite direction to the +backs of the majority of people. + +But it would have surprised Miss Farringdon to learn how little real +effect her strict Methodist training had upon Elisabeth; fortunately, +however, few elder people ever do learn how little effect their training +has upon the young committed to their charge; if it were so, life would +be too hard for the generation that has passed the hill-top. Elisabeth's +was one of those happy, pantheistic natures that possess the gift of +finding God everywhere and in everything. She early caught the Methodist +habit of self-analysis and introspection, but in her it did not +develop--as it does in more naturally religious souls--into an almost +morbid conscientiousness and self-depreciation; she merely found an +artistic and intellectual pleasure in taking the machinery of her soul +to pieces and seeing how it worked. + +In those days--and, in fact, in all succeeding ones--Elisabeth lived in +a world of imagination. There was not a nook in the garden of the +Willows which was not peopled by creatures of her fancy. At this +particular time she was greatly fascinated by the subject of heathen +mythology, as set forth in Mangnall's Questions, and had devoted herself +to the service of Pallas Athene, having learned that that goddess was +(like herself) not surpassingly beautiful, and was, moreover, +handicapped by the possession of gray eyes. Miss Farringdon would have +been horrified had she known that a portion of the wood was set apart by +Elisabeth as "Athene's Grove," and that the contents of the waste-paper +basket were daily begged from the servants by the devotee, and offered +up, by the aid of real matches, on the shrine of the goddess. + +"Have you noticed, sister," Miss Anne remarked on one occasion, "how +much more thoughtful dear Elisabeth is growing?" Miss Anne's life was +one long advertisement of other people's virtues. "She used to be +somewhat careless in letting the fires go out, and so giving the +servants the trouble to relight them; but now she is always going round +the rooms to see if more coal is required, without my ever having to +remind her." + +"It is so, and I rejoice. Carelessness in domestic matters is a grave +fault in a young girl, and I am pleased that Elisabeth has outgrown her +habit of wool-gathering, and of letting the fire go out under her very +nose without noticing it. It is a source of thanksgiving to me that the +child is so much more thoughtful and considerate in this matter than she +used to be." + +Miss Farringdon's thanksgiving, however, would have been less fervent +had she known that, for the time being, her _protégée_ had assumed the +rôle of a Vestal virgin, and that Elisabeth's care of the fires that +winter was not fulfilment of a duty but part of a game. This, however, +was Elisabeth's way; she frequently received credit for performing a +duty when she was really only taking part in a performance; which merely +meant that she possessed the artist's power of looking at duty through +the haze of idealism, and of seeing that, although it was good, it might +also be made picturesque. Elisabeth was well versed in The Pilgrim's +Progress and The Fairchild Family. The spiritual vicissitudes of Lucy, +Emily, and Henry Fairchild were to her a drama of never-failing +interest; while each besetment of the Crosbie household--which was as +carefully preserved for its particular owner as if sin were a species of +ground game--never failed to thrill her with enjoyable disgust. She +knew a great portion of the Methodist hymn-book by heart, and pondered +long over the interesting preface to that work, wondering much what +"doggerel" and "botches" could be--she inclined to the supposition that +the former were animals and the latter were diseases; but even her vivid +imagination failed to form a satisfactory representation of such queer +kittle-cattle as "feeble expletives." Every Sunday she gloated over the +frontispiece of John Wesley, in his gown and bands and white ringlets, +feeling that, though poor as a picture, it was very superior to the +letterpress; the worst illustrations being better than the best poetry, +as everybody under thirteen must know. But Elisabeth's library was not +confined to the volumes above mentioned; she regularly perused with +interest two little periodicals, called respectively Early Days and The +Juvenile Offering. The former treated of youthful saints at home; and +its white paper cover was adorned by the picture of a shepherd, +comfortably if peculiarly attired in a frock coat and top +hat--presumably to portray that it was Sunday. The latter magazine +devoted itself to histories dealing with youthful saints abroad; and its +cover was decorated with a representation of young black persons +apparently engaged in some religious exercise. In this picture the frock +coats and top hats were conspicuous by their absence. + +There were two pictures in the breakfast-room at the Willows which +occupied an important place in Elisabeth's childish imaginings. The +first hung over the mantelpiece, and was called The Centenary Meeting. +It represented a chapel full of men in suffocating cravats, turning +their backs upon the platform and looking at the public instead--a more +effective if less realistic attitude than the ordinary one of sitting +the right way about; because--as Elisabeth reasoned, and reasoned +rightly--if these gentlemen had not happened to be behind before when +their portraits were taken, nobody would ever have known whose portraits +they were. It was a source of great family pride to her that her +grandfather appeared in this galaxy of Methodist worth; but the hero of +the piece, in her eyes, was one gentleman who had managed to swarm up a +pillar and there screw himself "to the sticking-place"; and how he had +done it Elisabeth never could conceive. + +The second picture hung over the door, and was a counterfeit presentment +of John Wesley's escape from the burning rectory at Epworth. In those +days Elisabeth was so small and the picture hung so high that she could +not see it very distinctly; but it appeared to her that the boy Wesley +(whom she confused in her own mind with the infant Samuel) was flying +out of an attic window by means of flowing white wings, while a horse +was suspended in mid-air ready to carry him straight to heaven. + +Every Sunday she accompanied her cousins to East Lane Chapel, at the +other end of Sedgehill, and here she saw strange visions and dreamed +strange dreams. The distinguishing feature of this sanctuary was a sort +of reredos in oils, in memory of a dead and gone Farringdon, which +depicted a gigantic urn, surrounded by a forest of cypress, through the +shades whereof flitted "young-eyed cherubims" with dirty wings and +bilious complexions, these last mentioned blemishes being, it is but +fair to add, the fault of the atmosphere and not of the artist. For +years Elisabeth firmly believed that this altar-piece was a trustworthy +representation of heaven; and she felt, therefore, a pleasant, +proprietary interest in it, as the view of an estate to which she would +one day succeed. + +There was also a stained-glass window in East Lane Chapel, given by the +widow of a leading official. The baptismal name of the deceased had been +Jacob; and the window showed forth Jacob's Dream, as a delicate +compliment to the departed. Elisabeth delighted in this window, it was +so realistic. The patriarch lay asleep, with his head on a little white +tombstone at the foot of a solid oak staircase, which was covered with a +red carpet neatly fastened down by brass rods; while up and down this +staircase strolled fair-haired angels in long white nightgowns and +purple wings. + +Not of course then, but in after years, Elisabeth learned to understand +that this window was a type and an explanation of the power of early +Methodism, the strength whereof lay in its marvellous capacity of +adapting religion to the needs and use of everyday life, and of bringing +the infinite into the region of the homely and commonplace. We, with our +added culture and our maturer artistic perceptions, may smile at a +Jacob's Ladder formed according to the domestic architecture of the +first half of the nineteenth century; but the people to whom the other +world was so near and so real that they perceived nothing incongruous in +an ordinary stair-carpet which was being trodden by the feet of angels, +had grasped a truth which on one side touched the divine, even though on +the other it came perilously near to the grotesque. And He, Who taught +them as by parables, never misunderstood--as did certain of His +followers--their reverent irreverence; but, understanding it, saw that +it was good. + +The great day in East Lane Chapel was the Sunday School anniversary; +and in Elisabeth's childish eyes this was a feast compared with which +Christmas and Easter sank to the level of black-letter days. On these +festivals the Sunday School scholars sat all together in those parts of +the gallery adjacent to the organ, the girls wearing white frocks and +blue neckerchiefs, and the boys black suits and blue ties. The pews were +strewn with white hymn-sheets, which lay all over the chapel like snow +in Salmon, and which contained special spiritual songs more stirring in +their character than the contents of the Hymn-book; these hymns the +Sunday School children sang by themselves, while the congregation sat +swaying to and fro to the tune. And Elisabeth's soul was uplifted within +her as she listened to the children's voices; for she felt that mystical +hush which--let us hope--comes to us all at some time or other, when we +hide our faces in our mantles and feel that a Presence is passing by, +and is passing by so near to us that we have only to stretch out our +hands in order to touch it. At sundry times and in divers manners does +that wonderful sense of a Personal Touch come to men and to women. It +may be in a wayside Bethel, it may be in one of the fairest fanes of +Christendom, or it may be not in any temple made with hands: according +to the separate natures which God has given to us, so must we choose the +separate ways that will lead us to Him; and as long as there are +different natures there must be various ways. Then let each of us take +the path at the end whereof we see Him standing, always remembering that +wayfaring men, though fools, shall not err therein; and never forgetting +that--come whence and how they may--whosoever shall touch but the hem of +His garment shall be made perfectly whole. + + + + +CHAPTER II + +CHRISTOPHER + + And when perchance of all perfection + You've seen an end, + Your thoughts may turn in my direction + To find a friend. + + +There are two things which are absolutely necessary to the well-being of +the normal feminine mind--namely, one romantic attachment and one +comfortable friendship. Elisabeth was perfectly normal and extremely +feminine; and consequently she provided herself early with these two +aids to happiness. + +In those days the object of her romantic attachment was her cousin Anne. +Anne Farringdon was one of those graceful, elegant women who appear so +much deeper than they really are. All her life she had been inspiring +devotion which she was utterly unable to fathom; and this was still the +case with regard to herself and her adoring little worshipper. + +People always wondered why Anne Farringdon had never married; and +explained the mystery to their own satisfaction by conjecturing that she +had had a disappointment in her youth, and had been incapable of loving +twice. It never struck them--which was actually the case--that she had +been incapable of loving once; and that her single-blessedness was due +to no unforgotten love-story, but to the unromantic fact that among her +score of lovers she had never found a man for whom she seriously cared. +In a delicate and ladylike fashion she had flirted outrageously in her +time; but she had always broken hearts so gently, and put away the +pieces so daintily, that the owners of these hearts had never dreamed of +resenting the damage she had wrought. She had refused them with such a +world of pathos in her beautiful eyes--the Farringdon gray-blue eyes, +with thick black brows and long black lashes--that the poor souls had +never doubted her sympathy and comprehension; nor had they the slightest +idea that she was totally ignorant of the depth of the love which she +had inspired, or the bitterness of the pain which she had caused. + +All the romance of Elisabeth's nature--and there was a great deal of +it--was lavished upon Anne Farringdon. If Anne smiled, Elisabeth's sky +was cloudless; if Anne sighed, Elisabeth's sky grew gray. The mere sound +of Anne's voice vibrated through the child's whole being; and every +little trifle connected with her cousin became a sacred relic in +Elisabeth's eyes. + +Like every Methodist child, Elisabeth was well versed in her Bible; but, +unlike most Methodist children, she regarded it more as a poetical than +an ethical work. When she was only twelve, the sixty-eighth Psalm +thrilled her as with the sound of a trumpet; and she was completely +carried away by the glorious imagery of the Book of Isaiah, even when +she did not in the least understand its meaning. But her favourite book +was the Book of Ruth; for was not Ruth's devotion to Naomi the exact +counterpart of hers to Cousin Anne? And she used to make up long stories +in her own mind about how Cousin Anne should, by some means, lose all +her friends and all her money, and be driven out of Sedgehill and away +from the Osierfield Works; and then how Elisabeth would say, "Entreat me +not to leave thee," and would follow Cousin Anne to the ends of the +earth. + +People sometimes smile at the adoration of a young girl for a woman, and +there is no doubt but that the feeling savours slightly of school-days +and bread-and-butter; but there is also no doubt that a girl who has +once felt it has learned what real love is, and that is no small item in +the lesson-book of life. + +But Elisabeth had her comfortable friendship as well as her romantic +attachment; and the partner in that friendship was Christopher Thornley, +the nephew of Richard Smallwood. + +In the days of his youth, when his father was still manager of the +Osierfield Works, Richard had a very pretty sister; but as Emily +Smallwood was pretty, so was she also vain, and the strict atmosphere of +her home life did not recommend itself to her taste. After many quarrels +with her stern old father (her mother having died when she was a baby), +Emily left home, and took a situation in London as governess, in the +house of some wealthy people with no pretensions to religion. For this +her father never forgave her; he called it "consorting with children of +Belial." In time she wrote to tell Richard that she was going to be +married, and that she wished to cut off entirely all communication with +her old home. After that, Richard lost sight of her for many years; but +some time after his father's death he received a letter from Emily, +begging him to come to her at once, as she was dying. He complied with +her request, and found his once beautiful sister in great poverty in a +London lodging-house. She told him that she had endured great sorrow, +having lost her husband and her five eldest children. Her husband had +never been unkind to her, she said, but he was one of the men who lack +the power either to make or to keep money; and when he found he was +foredoomed to failure in everything to which he turned his hand, he had +not the spirit to continue the fight against Fate, but turned his face +to the wall and died. She had still one child left, a fair-haired boy of +about two years old, called Christopher; to her brother's care she +confided this boy, and then she also turned her face to the wall and +died. + +This happened a year or so before the Miss Farringdons adopted +Elisabeth; so that when that young lady appeared upon the scene, and +subsequently grew up sufficiently to require a playfellow, she found +Christopher Thornley ready to hand. He lived with his bachelor uncle in +a square red house on the east side of Sedgehill High Street, exactly +opposite to the Farringdons' lodge. It was one of those big, bald houses +with unblinking windows, that stare at you as if they had not any +eyebrows or eyelashes; and there was not even a strip of greenery +between it and the High Street. So to prevent the passers-by from +looking in and the occupants from looking out, the lower parts of the +front windows were covered with a sort of black crape mask, which put +even the sunbeams into half-mourning. + +Unlike Elisabeth, Christopher had a passion for righteousness and for +honour, but no power of artistic perception. His standard was whether +things were right or wrong, honourable or dishonourable; hers was +whether they were beautiful or ugly, pleasant or unpleasant. +Consequently the two moved along parallel lines; and she moved a great +deal more quickly than he did. Christopher had deep convictions, but was +very shy of expressing them; Elisabeth's convictions were not +particularly deep, but such as they were, all the world was welcome to +them as far as she was concerned. + +As the children grew older, one thing used much to puzzle and perplex +Christopher. Elisabeth did not seem to care about being good nearly as +much as he cared: he was always trying to do right, and she only tried +when she thought about it; nevertheless, when she did give her attention +to the matter, she had much more comforting and beautiful thoughts than +he had, which appeared rather hard. He was not yet old enough to know +that this difference between them arose from no unequal division of +divine favour, but was simply and solely a question of temperament. But +though he did not understand, he did not complain; for he had been +brought up under the shadow of the Osierfield Works, and in the fear and +love of the Farringdons; and Elisabeth, whatever her shortcomings, was a +princess of the blood. + +Christopher was a day-boy at the Grammar School at Silverhampton, a fine +old town some three miles to the north of Sedgehill; and there and back +he walked every day, wet or fine, and there he learned to be a scholar +and a gentleman, and sundry other important things. + +"Do you hear that noise?" said Elisabeth, one afternoon in the holidays, +when she was twelve and Christopher fifteen; "that's Mrs. Bateson's pig +being killed." + +"Hear it?--rather," replied Christopher, standing still in the wood to +listen. + +"Let's go and see it," Elisabeth suggested. + +Christopher looked shocked. "Well, you are a horrid girl! Nothing would +induce me to go, or to let you go either; but I'm surprised at your +being so horrid as to wish for such a thing." + +"It isn't really horridness," Elisabeth explained meekly; "it is +interest. I'm so frightfully interested in things; and I want to see +everything, just to know what it looks like." + +"Well, I call it horrid. And, what's more, if you saw it, it would make +you feel ill." + +"No; it wouldn't." + +"Then it ought to," said Christopher, who, with true masculine dulness +of perception, confounded weakness of nerve with tenderness of heart. + +Elisabeth sighed. "Nothing makes me feel ill," she replied +apologetically; "not even an accident or an after-meeting." + +Christopher could not help indulging in a certain amount of envious +admiration for an organism that could pass unmoved through such physical +and spiritual crises as these; but he was not going to let Elisabeth see +that he admired her. He considered it "unmanly" to admire girls. + +"Well, you are a rum little cove!" he said. + +"Of course, I don't want to go if you think it would be horrid of me; +but I thought we might pretend it was the execution of Mary Queen of +Scots, and find it most awfully exciting." + +"How you do go on about Mary Queen of Scots! Not long ago you were +always bothering about heathen goddesses, and now you have no thought +for anything but Mary." + +"Oh! but I'm still immensely interested in goddesses, Chris; and I do +wish, when you are doing Latin and Greek at school, you'd find out what +colour Pallas Athene's hair was. Couldn't you?" + +"No; I couldn't." + +"But you might ask one of the masters. They'd be sure to know." + +Christopher laughed the laugh of the scornful. "I say, you are a duffer +to suppose that clever men like schoolmasters bother their heads about +such rot as the colour of a woman's hair." + +"Of course, I know they wouldn't about a woman's," Elisabeth hastened to +justify herself; "but I thought perhaps they might about a goddess's." + +"It is the same thing. You've no idea what tremendously clever chaps +schoolmasters are--much too clever to take any interest in girls' and +women's concerns. Besides, they are too old for that, too--they are +generally quite thirty." + +Elisabeth was silent for a moment; and Christopher whistled as he looked +across the green valley to the sunset, without in the least knowing how +beautiful it was. But Elisabeth knew, for she possessed an innate +knowledge of many things which he would have to learn by experience. But +even she did not yet understand that because the sunset was beautiful +she felt a sudden hunger and thirst after righteousness. + +"Chris, do you think it is wicked of people to fall in love?" she asked +suddenly. + +"Not exactly wicked; more silly, I should say," replied Chris +generously. + +"Because if it is wicked, I shall give up reading tales about it." This +was a tremendous and unnatural sacrifice to principle on the part of +Elisabeth. + +Christopher turned upon her sharply. "You don't read tales that Miss +Farringdon hasn't said you may read, do you?" + +"Yes; lots. But I never read tales that she has said I mustn't read." + +"You oughtn't to read any tale till you have asked her first if you +may." + +Elisabeth's face fell. "I never thought of doing such a thing as asking +her first. Oh! Chris, you don't really think I ought to, do you? Because +she'd be sure to say no." + +"That is exactly why you ought to ask." Christopher's sense of honour +was one of his strong points. + +Then Elisabeth lost her temper. "That is you all over! You are the most +tiresome boy to have anything to do with! You are always bothering about +things being wrong, till you make them wrong. Now I hardly ever think of +it; but I can't go on doing things after you've said they are wrong, +because that would be wrong of me, don't you see? And yet it wasn't a +bit wrong of me before I knew. I hate you!" + +"I say, Betty, I'm awfully sorry lo have riled you; but you asked me." + +"I didn't ask you whether I need ask Cousin Maria, stupid! You know I +didn't. I asked you whether it was wrong to fall in love, and then you +went and dragged Cousin Maria in. I wish I'd never asked you anything; I +wish I'd never spoken to you; I wish I'd got somebody else to play with, +and then I'd never speak to you again as long as I live." + +Of course it was unwise of Christopher to condemn a weakness to which +Elisabeth was prone, and to condone one to which she was not; but no man +has learned wisdom at fifteen, and but few at fifty. + +"You are the most disagreeable boy I have ever met, and I wish I could +think of something to do to annoy you. I know what I'll do; I'll go by +myself and see Mrs. Bateson's pig, just to show you how I hate you." + +And Elisabeth flew off in the direction of Mrs. Bateson's cottage, with +the truly feminine intention of punishing the male being who had dared +to disapprove of her, by making him disapprove of her still more. Her +programme, however, was frustrated; for Mrs. Bateson herself intervened +between Elisabeth and her unholy desires, and entertained the latter +with a plate of delicious bread-and-dripping instead. Finally, that +young lady returned to her home in a more magnanimous frame of mind; and +fell asleep that night wondering if the whole male sex were as stupid as +the particular specimen with which she had to do--a problem which has +puzzled older female brains than hers. + +But poor Christopher was very unhappy. It was agony to him when his +conscience pulled him one way and Elisabeth pulled him the other; and +yet this form of torture was constantly occurring to him. He could not +bear to do what he knew was wrong, and he could not bear to vex +Elisabeth; yet Elisabeth's wishes and his own ideas of right were by no +means always synonymous. His only comfort was the knowledge that his +sovereign's anger was, as a rule, short-lived, and that he himself was +indispensable to that sovereign's happiness. This was true; but he did +not then realize that it was in his office as admiring and sympathizing +audience, and not in his person as Christopher Thornley, that he was +necessary to Elisabeth. A fuller revelation was vouchsafed to him +later. + +The next morning Elisabeth was herself again, and was quite ready to +enjoy Christopher's society and to excuse his scruples. She knew that +self of hers when she said that she wished she had somebody else to play +with, in order that she might withdraw the light of her presence from +her offending henchman. To thus punish Christopher, until she had found +some one to take his place, was a course of action which would not have +occurred to her. Elisabeth's pride could never stand in the way of her +pleasure; Christopher's, on the contrary, might. It was a remarkable +fact that after Christopher had reproved Elisabeth for some fault--which +happened neither infrequently nor unnecessarily--he was always repentant +and she forgiving; yet nine times out of ten he had been in the right +and she in the wrong. But Elisabeth's was one of those exceptionally +generous natures which can pardon the reproofs and condone the virtues +of their friends; and she bore no malice, even when Christopher had been +more obviously right than usual. But she was already enough of a woman +to adapt to her own requirements his penitence for right-doing; and on +this occasion she took advantage of his chastened demeanour to induce +him to assist her in erecting a new shrine to Athene in the wood--which +meant that she gave all the directions and he did all the work. + +"You are doing it beautifully, Chris--you really are!" she exclaimed +with delight. "We shall be able to have a splendid sacrifice this +afternoon. I've got some feathers to offer up from the fowl cook is +plucking; and they make a much better sacrifice than waste paper." + +"Why?" + +Christopher was too shy in those days to put the fact into words; +nevertheless, the fact remained that Elisabeth interested him +profoundly. She was so original, so unexpected, that she was continually +providing him with fresh food for thought. Although he was cleverer at +lessons than she was, she was by far the cleverer at play; and though he +had the finer character, hers was the stronger personality. It was +because Elisabeth was so much to him that he now and then worried her +easy-going conscience with his strictures; for, to do him justice, the +boy was no prig, and would never have dreamed of preaching to anybody +except her. But it must be remembered that Christopher had never heard +of such things as spiritual evolutions and streams of tendency: to him +right or wrong meant heaven or hell--neither more nor less; and he was +overpowered by a burning anxiety that Elisabeth should eventually go to +heaven, partly for her own sake, and partly (since human love is +stronger than dogmas and doctrines) because a heaven, uncheered by the +presence of Elisabeth, seemed a somewhat dreary place wherein to spend +one's eternity. + +"Why do feathers make a better sacrifice than paper?" repeated +Christopher, Elisabeth being so much absorbed in his work that she had +not answered his question. + +"Oh! because they smell; and it seems so much more like a real +sacrifice, somehow, if it smells." + +"I see. What ideas you do get into your head!" + +But Elisabeth's volatile thoughts had flown off in another direction. +"You really have got awfully nice-coloured hair," she remarked, Chris +having taken his cap off for the sake of coolness, as he was heated +with his toil. "I do wish I had light hair like yours. Angels, and +goddesses, and princesses, and people of that kind always have golden +hair; but only bad fairies and cruel stepmothers have nasty dark hair +like me. I think it is horrid to have dark hair." + +"I don't: I like dark hair best; and I don't think yours is half bad." +Christopher never overstated a case; but then one had the comfort of +knowing that he always meant what he said, and frequently a good deal +more. + +"Don't you really, Chris? I think it is hideous," replied Elisabeth, +taking one of her elf-locks between her fingers and examining it as if +it were a sample of material; "it is like that ugly brown seaweed which +shows which way the wind blows--no, I mean that shows whether it is +going to rain or not." + +"Never mind; I've seen lots of people with uglier hair than yours." +Chris really could be of great consolation when he tried. + +"Aren't the trees lovely when they have got all their leaves off?" said +Elisabeth, her thoughts wandering again. "I believe I like them better +now than I do in summer. Now they are like the things you wish for, and +in the summer they are like the things you get; and the things you get +are never half as nice as the things you wish for." + +This was too subtle for Christopher. "I like them best with the leaves +on; but anyhow they are nicer to look at than the chimneys that we see +from our house. You can't think how gloomy it is for your rooms to look +out on nothing but smoke and chimneys and furnaces. When you go to bed +at night it's all red, and when you get up in the morning it's all +black." + +"I should like to live in a house like that. I love the smoke and the +chimneys and the furnaces--they are all so big and strong and full of +life; and they make you think." + +"What on earth do they make you think about?" + +Elisabeth's gray eyes grew dreamy. "They make me think that the Black +Country is a wilderness that we are all travelling through; and over it +there is always the pillar of cloud by day and the pillar of fire by +night, to tell us which way to go. I make up tales to myself about the +people in the wilderness; and how they watch the pillar, and how it +keeps them from idling in their work, or selling bad iron, or doing +anything that is horrid or mean, because it is a sign to them that God +is with them, just as it used to be to the Children of Israel." + +Christopher looked up from his work. Here was the old problem: Elisabeth +did not think about religion half as much as he did, and yet the helpful +and beautiful thoughts came to her and not to him. Still, it was +comforting to know that the smoke and the glare, which he had hated, +could convey such a message; and he made up his mind not to hate them +any more. + +"And then I pretend that the people come out of the wilderness and go to +live in the country over there," Elisabeth continued, pointing to the +distant hills; "and I make up lovely tales about that country, and all +the beautiful things there. That is what is so nice about hills: you +always think there are such wonderful places on the other side of them." + +For some minutes Christopher worked silently, and Elisabeth watched him. +Then the latter said suddenly: + +"Isn't it funny that you never hate people in a morning, however much +you may have hated them the night before?" + +"Don't you?" Rapid changes of sentiment were beyond Christopher's +comprehension. He was by no means a variable person. + +"Oh! no. Last night I hated you, and made up a story in my own mind that +another really nice boy came to play with me instead of you. And I said +nice things to him, and horrid things to you; he and I played in the +wood, and you had to do lessons all by yourself at school, and had +nobody to play with. But when I woke up this morning I didn't care about +the pretending boy any more, and I wanted you." + +Christopher looked pleased; but it was not his way to express his +pleasure in words. "And so, I suppose, you came to look for me," he +said. + +"Not the first thing. Somehow it always makes you like a person better +when you have hated them for a bit, so I liked you awfully when I woke +this morning and remembered you. When you really are fond of a person, +you always want to do something to please them; so I went and told +Cousin Maria that I'd read a lot of books in the library without +thinking whether I ought to or not; but that now I wanted her to say +what I might read and what I mightn't." + +This was a course of action that Christopher could thoroughly understand +and appreciate. "Was she angry?" he asked. + +"Not a bit. That is the best of Cousin Maria--she never scolds you +unless you really deserve it; and she is very sharp at finding out +whether you deserve it or not. She said that there were a lot of books +in the library that weren't suitable for a little girl to read; but +that it wasn't naughty of me to have read what I chose, since nobody had +told me not to. And then she said it was good of me to have told her, +for she should never have found it out if I hadn't." + +"And so it was," remarked Christopher approvingly. + +"No; it wasn't--and I told her it wasn't. I told her that the goodness +was yours, because it was you that made me tell. I should never have +thought of it by myself." + +"I say, you are a regular brick!" + +Elisabeth looked puzzled. "I don't see anything brickish in saying that; +it was the truth. It was you that made me tell, you know; and it wasn't +fair for me to be praised for your goodness." + +"You really are awfully straight, for a girl," said Christopher, with +admiration; "you couldn't be straighter if you were a boy." + +This was high praise, and Elisabeth's pale little face glowed with +delight. She loved to be commended. + +"It was really very good of you to speak to Miss Farringdon about the +books," continued Christopher; "for I know you'll hate having to ask +permission before you read a tale." + +"I didn't do it out of goodness," said Elisabeth thoughtfully--"I did it +to please you; and pleasing a person you are fond of isn't goodness. I +wonder if grown-up people get to be as fond of religion as they are of +one another. I expect they do; and then they do good things just for the +sake of doing good." + +"Of course they do," replied Christopher, who was always at sea when +Elisabeth became metaphysical. + +"I suppose," she continued seriously, "that if I were really good, +religion ought to be the same to me as Cousin Anne." + +"The same as Cousin Anne! What do you mean?" + +"I mean that if I were really good, religion would give me the same sort +of feelings as Cousin Anne does." + +"What sort of feelings?" + +"Oh! they are lovely feelings," Elisabeth answered--"too lovely to +explain. Everything is a treat if Cousin Anne is there. When she speaks, +it's just like music trickling down your back; and when you do something +that you don't like to please her, you feel that you do like it." + +"Well, you are a rum little thing! I should think nobody ever thought of +all the queer things that you think of." + +"Oh! I expect everybody does," retorted Elisabeth, who was far too +healthy minded to consider herself peculiar. After another pause, she +inquired: "Do you like me, Chris?" + +"Rather! What a foolish question to ask!" Christopher replied, with a +blush, for he was always shy of talking about his feelings; and the more +he felt the shyer he became. + +But Elisabeth was not shy, and had no sympathy with anybody who was. +"How much do you like me?" she continued. + +"A lot." + +"But I want to know exactly how much." + +"Then you can't. Nobody can tell how much they like anybody. You do ask +silly questions!" + +"Yes; they can. I can tell how much I like everybody," Elisabeth +persisted. + +"How?" + +"I have a sort of thermometer in my mind, just like the big thermometer +in the hall; and I measure how much I like people by that." + +"How much do you like your Cousin Anne?" he asked. + +"Ninety-six degrees," replied Elisabeth promptly. + +"And your Cousin Maria?" + +"Sixty." + +"And Mrs. Bateson?" + +"Fifty-four." Elisabeth always knew her own mind. + +"I say, how--how--how much do you like me?" asked Christopher, with some +hesitation. + +"Sixty-two," answered Elisabeth, with no hesitation at all. + +And Christopher felt a funny, cold feeling round his loyal heart. He +grew to know the feeling well in after years, and to wonder how +Elisabeth could understand so much and yet understand so little; but at +present he was too young to understand himself. + + + + +CHAPTER III + +MRS. BATESON'S TEA-PARTY + + The best of piggie when he dies + Is not "interred with his bones," + But, in the form of porcine pies, + Blesses a world that heard his cries, + Yet heeded not those dying groans. + + +"Cousin Maria, please may I go to tea at Mrs. Bateson's with +Christopher?" said Elisabeth one day, opening the library door a little, +and endeavouring to squeeze her small person through as narrow an +aperture as possible, as is the custom with children. She never called +her playmate "Chris" in speaking to Miss Farringdon; for this latter +regarded it as actually sinful to address people by any abbreviation of +their baptismal names, just as she considered it positively immoral to +partake of any nourishment between meals. "Mrs. Bateson has killed her +pig, and there will be pork-pies for tea." + +Miss Farringdon looked over her spectacles at the restless little +figure. "Yes, my child; I see no reason why you should not. Kezia +Bateson is a God-fearing woman, and her husband has worked at the +Osierfield for forty years. I have the greatest respect for Caleb +Bateson; he is a worthy man and a good Methodist, as his father was +before him." + +"He is a very ignorant man: he says Penny-lope." + +"Says what, Elisabeth?" + +"Penny-lope. I was showing him a book the other day about Penelope--the +woman with the web, you know--and he called her Penny-lope. I didn't +like to correct him, but I said Penelope afterward as often and as loud +as I could." + +"That was very ill-bred of you. Come here, Elisabeth." + +The child came and stood by the old lady's chair, and began playing with +a bunch of seals that were suspended by a gold chain from Miss +Farringdon's waist. It was one of Elisabeth's little tricks that her +fingers were never idle when she was talking. + +"What have I taught you are the two chief ends at which every woman +should aim, my child?" + +"To be first a Christian and then a gentlewoman," quoted Elisabeth +glibly. + +"And how does a true gentlewoman show her good breeding?" + +"By never doing or saying anything that could make any one else feel +uncomfortable," Elisabeth quoted again. + +"Then do you think that to display your own knowledge by showing up +another person's ignorance would make that person feel comfortable, +Elisabeth?" + +"No, Cousin Maria." + +"Knowledge is not good breeding, remember; it is a far less important +matter. A true gentlewoman may be ignorant; but a true gentlewoman will +never be inconsiderate." + +Elisabeth hung her head. "I see." + +"If you keep your thoughts fixed upon the people to whom you are +talking, and never upon yourself, you will always have good manners, my +child. Endeavour to interest and not to impress them." + +"You mean I must talk about their things and not about mine?" + +"More than that. Make the most of any common ground between yourself and +them; make the least of any difference between yourself and them; and, +above all, keep strenuously out of sight any real or fancied superiority +you may possess over them. I always think that Saint Paul's saying, 'To +the weak became I as weak,' was the perfection of good manners." + +"I don't think I quite understand." + +Miss Farringdon spoke in parables. "Then listen to this story. There was +once a common soldier who raised himself from the ranks and earned a +commission. He was naturally very nervous the first night he dined at +the officers' mess, as he had never dined with gentlemen before, and he +was afraid of making some mistake. It happened that the wine was served +while the soup was yet on the table, and with the wine the ice. The poor +man did not know what the ice was for, so took a lump and put it in his +soup." + +Elisabeth laughed. + +"The younger officers began to giggle, as you are doing," Miss +Farringdon continued; "but the colonel, to whom the ice was handed next, +took a lump and put it in his soup also; and then the young officers did +not want to laugh any more. The colonel was a perfect gentleman." + +"It seems to me," said Elisabeth thoughtfully, "that you've got to be +good before you can be polite." + +"Politeness appears to be what goodness really is," replied Miss +Farringdon, "and is an attitude rather than an action. Fine breeding is +not the mere learning of any code of manners, any more than gracefulness +is the mere learning of any kind of physical exercise. The gentleman +apparently, as the Christian really, looks not on his own things, but on +the things of others; and the selfish person is always both unchristian +and ill-bred." + +Elisabeth gazed wistfully up into Miss Farringdon's face. "I should like +to be a real gentlewoman, Cousin Maria; do you think I ever shall be?" + +"I think it quite possible, if you bear all these maxims in mind, and if +you carry yourself properly and never stoop. I can not approve of the +careless manners of the young people of to-day, who loll upon +easy-chairs in the presence of their elders, and who slouch into a room +with constrained familiarity and awkward ease," replied Miss Farringdon, +who had never sat in an easy-chair in her life, and whose back was still +as straight as an arrow. + +So in the afternoon of that day Christopher and Elisabeth attended Mrs. +Bateson's tea-party. + +The Batesons lived in a clean little cottage on the west side of High +Street, and enjoyed a large garden to the rearward. It was a singular +fact that whereas all their windows looked upon nothing more interesting +than the smokier side of the bleak and narrow street, their pigsties +commanded a view such as can rarely be surpassed for beauty and extent +in England. But Mrs. Bateson called her front view "lively" and her back +view "dull," and congratulated herself daily upon the aspect and the +prospect of her dwelling-place. The good lady's ideas as to what +constitutes beauty in furniture were by no means behind her opinions as +to what is effective in scenery. Her kitchen was paved with bright red +tiles, which made one feel as if one were walking across a coral reef, +and was flanked on one side with a black oak dresser of unnumbered +years, covered with a brave array of blue-and-white pottery. An artist +would have revelled in this kitchen, with its delicious effects in red +and blue; but Mrs. Bateson accounted it as nothing. Her pride was +centred in her parlour and its mural decorations, which consisted +principally of a large and varied assortment of funeral-cards, neatly +framed and glazed. In addition to these there was a collection of family +portraits in daguerreotype, including an interesting representation of +Mrs. Bateson's parents sitting side by side in two straight-backed +chairs, with their whole family twining round them--a sort of Swiss +Family Laocoon; and a picture of Mr. Bateson--in the attitude of Juliet +and the attire of a local preacher--leaning over a balcony, which was +overgrown with a semi-tropical luxuriance of artificial ivy, and which +was obviously too frail to support him. But the masterpiece in Mrs. +Bateson's art-gallery was a soul-stirring illustration of the death of +the revered John Wesley. This picture was divided into two compartments: +the first represented the room at Wesley's house in City Road, with the +assembled survivors of the great man's family weeping round his bed; and +the second depicted the departing saint flying across Bunhill Fields +burying-ground in his wig and gown and bands, supported on either side +by a stalwart angel. + +As Elisabeth had surmised, the entertainment on this occasion was +pork-pie; and Mrs. Hankey, a near neighbour, had also been bidden to +share the feast. So the tea-party was a party of four, the respective +husbands of the two ladies not yet having returned from their duties at +the Osierfield. + +"I hope that you'll all make yourselves welcome," said the hostess, +after they had sat down at the festive board. "Master Christopher, my +dear, will you kindly ask a blessing?" + +Christopher asked a blessing as kindly as he could, and Mrs. Bateson +continued: + +"Well, to be sure, it is a pleasure to see you looking so tall and +strong, Master Christopher, after all your schooling. I'm not in favour +of much schooling myself, as I think it hinders young folks from +growing, and puts them off their vittles; but you give the contradiction +to that notion--doesn't he, Mrs. Hankey?" + +Mrs. Hankey shook her head. It was her rule in life never to look on the +bright side of things; she considered that to do so was what she called +"tempting Providence." Her theory appeared to be that as long as +Providence saw you were miserable, that Power was comfortable about you +and let you alone; but if Providence discovered you could bear more +sorrow than you were then bearing, you were at once supplied with that +little more. Naturally, therefore, her object was to convince Providence +that her cup of misery was full. But Mrs. Hankey had her innocent +enjoyments, in spite of the sternness of her creed. If she took light +things seriously, she took serious things lightly; so she was not +without her compensations. For instance, a Sunday evening's discourse on +future punishment and the like, with illustrations, was an unfailing +source of pure and healthful pleasure to her; while a funeral +sermon--when the chapel was hung with black, and the bereaved family +sat in state in their new mourning, and the choir sang Vital Spark as an +anthem--filled her soul with joy. So when Mrs. Bateson commented with +such unseemly cheerfulness upon Christopher's encouraging appearance, it +was but consistent of Mrs. Hankey to shake her head. + +"You can never tell," she replied--"never; often them that looks the +best feels the worst; and many's the time I've seen folks look the very +picture of health just before they was took with a mortal illness." + +"Ay, that's so," agreed the hostess; "but I think Master Christopher's +looks are the right sort; such a nice colour as he's got, too!" + +"That comes from him being so fair complexioned--it's no sign of +health," persisted Mrs. Hankey; "in fact, I mistrust those fair +complexions, especially in lads of his age. Why, he ought to be as brown +as a berry, instead of pink and white like a girl." + +"It would look hideous to have a brown face with such yellow hair as +mine," said Christopher, who naturally resented being compared to a +girl. + +"Master Christopher, don't call anything that the Lord has made hideous. +We must all be as He has formed us, however that may be," replied Mrs. +Hankey reprovingly; "and it is not our place to pass remarks upon what +He has done for the best." + +"But the Lord didn't make him with a brown face and yellow hair; that's +just the point," interrupted Elisabeth, who regarded the bullying of +Christopher as her own prerogative, and allowed no one else to indulge +in that sport unpunished. + +"No, my love; that's true enough," Mrs. Bateson said soothingly: "a +truer word than that never was spoken. But I wish you could borrow some +of Master Christopher's roses--I do, indeed. For my part, I like to see +little girls with a bit of colour in their cheeks; it looks more +cheerful-like, as you might say; and looks go a long way with some +folks, though a meek and quiet spirit is better, taking it all round." + +"Now Miss Elisabeth does look delicate, and no mistake," assented Mrs. +Hankey; "she grows too fast for her strength, I'll be bound; and her +poor mother died young, you know, so it is in the family." + +Christopher looked at Elisabeth with the quick sympathy of a sensitive +nature. He thought it would frighten her to hear Mrs. Hankey talk in +that way, and he felt that he hated Mrs. Hankey for frightening +Elisabeth. + +But Elisabeth was made after a different pattern, and was not in the +least upset by Mrs. Hankey's gloomy forebodings. She was essentially +dramatic; and, unconsciously, her first object was to attract notice. +She would have preferred to do this by means of unsurpassed beauty or +unequalled talent; but, failing these aids to distinction, an early +death-bed was an advertisement not to be despised. In her mind's eye she +saw a touching account of her short life in Early Days, winding up with +a heart-rending description of its premature close; and her mind's eye +gloated over the sight. + +The hostess gazed at her critically. "She is pale, Mrs. Hankey, there's +no doubt of that; but pale folks are often the healthiest, though they +mayn't be the handsomest. And she is wiry, is Miss Elisabeth, though she +may be thin. But is your tea to your taste, or will you take a little +more cream in it?" + +"It is quite right, thank you, Mrs. Bateson; and the pork-pie is just +beautiful. What a light hand for pastry you always have! I'm sure I've +said over and over again that I don't know your equal either for making +pastry or for engaging in prayer." + +Mrs. Bateson, as was natural, looked pleased. "I doubt if I ever made a +better batch of pies than this. When they were all ready for baking, +Bateson says to me, 'Kezia,' he says, 'them pies is a regular +picture--all so smooth and even-like, you can't tell which from +t'other.' 'Bateson,' said I, 'I've done my best with them; and if only +the Lord will be with them in the oven, they'll be the best batch of +pies this side Jordan.'" + +"And so they are," said Elisabeth; "they are perfectly lovely." + +"I'm glad you fancy them, my love; take some more, deary, it'll do you +good." + +"No, thanks; I'd rather have a wig now." And Elisabeth helped herself to +one of the three-cornered cakes, called "wigs," which are peculiar to +Mershire. + +"You always are fortunate in your pigs," Mrs. Hankey remarked; "such +fine hams and such beautiful roaded bacon I never see anywhere equal to +yours. It'll be a sad day for you, Mrs. Bateson, when swine fever comes +into the district. I know no one as'll feel it more." + +"Now you must tell us all about your niece's wedding, Mrs. Hankey," Mrs. +Bateson said--"her that was married last week. My word alive, but your +sister is wonderful fortunate in settling her daughters! That's what I +call a well-brought-up family, and no mistake. Five daughters, and each +one found peace and a pious husband before she was five-and-twenty." + +"The one before last married a Churchman," said Mrs. Hankey +apologetically, as if the union thus referred to were somewhat +morganatic in its character, and therefore no subject for pride or +congratulation. + +"Well, to be sure! Still, he may make her a good husband." + +"He may or he may not; you never can tell. It seems to me that husbands +are like new boots--you can't tell where they're going to pinch you till +it's too late to change 'em. And as for creaking, why, the boots that +are quietest in the shop are just the ones that fairly disgrace you when +you come into chapel late on a Sunday morning, and think to slip in +quietly during the first prayer; and it is pretty much the same with +husbands--those that are the meekest in the wooing are the most +masterful to live with." + +"What was the name of the Churchman your niece married?" asked Mrs. +Bateson. "I forget." + +"Wilkins--Tom Wilkins. He isn't a bad fellow in some respects--he is +steady and sober, and never keeps back a farthing of his wages for +himself; but his views are something dreadful. I can not stand them at +any price, and so I'm forever telling his wife." + +"Dear me! That's sad news, Mrs. Hankey." + +"Would you believe it, he don't hold with the good old Methodist habit +of telling out loud what the Lord has done for your soul? He says +religion should be acted up to and not talked about; but, for my part, I +can't abide such closeness." + +"Nor I," agreed Mrs. Bateson warmly; "I don't approve of treating the +Lord like a poor relation, as some folks seem to do. They'll go to His +house and they'll give Him their money; but they're fairly ashamed of +mentioning His Name in decent company." + +"Just so; and that's Tom Wilkins to the life. He's a good husband and a +regular church-goer; but as for the word that edifieth, you might as +well look for it from a naked savage as from him. Many a time have I +said to his wife, 'Tom may be a kind husband in the time of prosperity, +as I make no doubt he is--there's plenty of that sort in the world; but +you wait till the days of adversity come, and I doubt that then you'll +be wishing you'd not been in such a hurry to get married, but had waited +till you had got a good Methodist!' And so she will, I'll be bound; and +the sooner she knows it the better." + +Mrs. Bateson sighed at the gloomy prospect opening out before young Mrs. +Wilkins; then she asked: + +"How did the last daughter's wedding go off? She married a Methodist, +surely?" + +"She did, Mrs. Bateson; and a better match no mother could wish for her +daughter, not even a duchess born; he's a chapel-steward and a +master-painter, and has six men under him. There he is, driving to work +and carrying his own ladders in his own cart, like a lord, as you may +say, by day; and there he is on a Thursday evening, letting and +reletting the pews and sittings after service, like a real gentleman. As +I said to my sister, I only hope he may be spared to make Susan a good +husband; but when a man is a chapel-steward at thirty-four, and drives +his own cart, you begin to think that he is too good for this world, and +that he is almost ripe for a better one." + +"You do indeed; there's no denying that." + +"But the wedding was beautiful: I never saw its equal--never; and as for +the prayer that the minister offered up at the end of the service, I +only wish you'd been there to hear it, Mrs. Bateson, it was so +interesting and instructive. Such a lot of information in it about love +and marriage and the like as I'd never heard before; and when he +referred to the bridegroom's first wife, and drew a picture of how she'd +be waiting to welcome them both, when the time came, on the further +shore--upon my word, there wasn't a dry eye in the chapel!" And Mrs. +Hankey wiped hers at the mere remembrance of the scene. + +"But what did Susan say?" asked Elisabeth, with great interest. "I +expect she didn't want another wife to welcome them on the further +shore." + +"Oh! Miss Elisabeth, what a naughty, selfish little girl you are!" +exclaimed Susan's aunt, much shocked. "What would Miss Farringdon think +if she heard you? Why, you don't suppose, surely, that when folks get to +heaven they'll be so greedy and grasping that they'll want to keep +everything to themselves, do you? My niece is a good girl and a member +of society, and she was as pleased as anybody at the minister's +beautiful prayer." + +Elisabeth was silent, but unconvinced. + +"How is your sister herself?" inquired Mrs. Bateson. "I expect she's a +bit upset now that the fuss is all over, and she hasn't a daughter left +to bless herself with." + +Mrs. Hankey sighed cheerfully. "Well, she did seem rather low-spirited +when all the mess was cleared up, and Susan had gone off to her own +home; but I says to her, 'Never mind, Sarah, and don't you worry +yourself; now that the weddings are over, the funerals will soon begin.' +You see, you must cheer folks up a bit, Mrs. Bateson, when they're +feeling out of sorts." + +"You must indeed," agreed the lady of the house, feeling that her guest +had hit upon a happy vein of consolation; "it is dull without daughters +when you've once got accustomed to 'em, daughters being a sight more +comfortable and convenient than sons, to my mind." + +"Well, you see, daughters you can teach to know theirselves, and sons; +you can't. Though even daughters can never rest till they've got +married, more's the pity. If they knowed as much about men as I do, +they'd be thanking the Lord that He'd created them single, instead of +forever fidgeting to change the state to which they were born." + +"Well, I holds with folks getting married," argued Mrs. Bateson; "it +gives 'em something to think about between Sunday's sermon and +Thursday's baking; and if folks have nothing to think about, they think +about mischief." + +"That's true, especially if they happen to be men." + +"Why do men think about mischief more than women do?" asked Elisabeth, +who always felt hankerings after the why and wherefore of things. + +"Because, my dear, the Lord made 'em so, and it is not for us to +complain," replied Mrs. Hankey, in a tone which implied that, had the +rôle of Creator been allotted to her, the idiosyncrasies of the male sex +would have been much less marked than they are at present. "They've no +sense, men haven't; that's what is the matter with them." + +"You never spoke a truer word, Mrs. Hankey," agreed her hostess; "the +very best of them don't properly know the difference between their souls +and their stomachs; and they fancy that they are a-wrestling with their +doubts, when really it is their dinners that are a-wrestling with them. +Now take Bateson hisself, and a kinder husband or a better Methodist +never drew breath; yet so sure as he touches a bit of pork, he begins to +worn hisself about the doctrine of Election till there's no living with +him." + +"That's a man all over, to the very life," said Mrs. Hankey +sympathetically; "and he never has the sense to see what's wrong with +him, I'll be bound." + +"Not he--he wouldn't be a man if he had. And then he'll sit in the front +parlour and engage in prayer for hours at a time, till I says to him, +'Bateson,' says I, 'I'd be ashamed to go troubling the Lord with a +prayer when a pinch o' carbonate o' soda would set things straight +again.'" + +"And quite right, Mrs. Bateson; it's often a wonder to me that the Lord +has patience with men, seeing that their own wives haven't." + +"And to me, too. Now Bateson has been going on like this for thirty +years or more; yet if there's roast pork on the table, and I say a word +to put him off it, he's that hurt as never was. Why, I'm only too glad +to see him enjoying his food if no harm comes of it; but it's dreary +work seeing your husband in the Slough of Despond, especially when it's +your business to drag him out again, and most especially when you +particularly warned him against going in." + +Mrs. Hankey groaned. "The Bible says true when it tells us that men are +born to give trouble as the sparks fly upward; and it is a funny +Providence, to my mind, as ordains for women to be so bothered with 'em. +At my niece's wedding, as we were just speaking about, 'Susan,' I says, +'I wish you happiness; and I only hope you won't live to regret your +marriage as I have done mine.' For my part, I can't see what girls want +with husbands at all; they are far better without them." + +"Not they, Mrs. Hankey," replied Mrs. Bateson warmly; "any sort of a +husband is better than none, to my mind. Life is made up of naughts and +crosses; and the folks that get the crosses are better off than those +that get the naughts, though that husbands are crosses I can't pretend +to deny; but I haven't patience with single women, I haven't--they have +nothing to occupy their minds, and so they get to talking about their +health and such-like fal-lals." + +"Saint Paul didn't hold with you," said Mrs. Hankey, with reproach in +her tone; "he thought that the unmarried women minded the things of the +Lord better than the married ones." + +"Saint Paul didn't know much about the subject, and how could he be +expected to, being only a bachelor himself, poor soul? But if he'd had a +wife, she'd soon have told him what the unmarried women were thinking +about; and it wouldn't have been about the Lord, I'll be bound. Now take +Jemima Stubbs; does she mind the things of the Lord more than you and I +do, Mrs. Hankey, I should like to know?" + +"I can't say; it is not for us to judge." + +"Not she! Why, she's always worrying about that poor little brother of +hers, what's lame. I often wish that the Lord would think on him and +take him, for he's a sore burden on Jemima, he is. If you're a woman you +are bound to work for some man or another, and to see to his food and to +bear with his tantrums; and, for my part, I'd rather do it for a husband +than for a father or a brother. There's more credit in it, as you might +say." + +"There's something in that, maybe." + +"And after all, in spite of the botheration he gives, there's something +very cheerful in having a man about the house. They keep you alive, do +men. The last time I saw Jemima Stubbs she was as low as low could be. +'Jemima,' I says, 'you are out of spirits.' 'Mrs. Bateson,' says she, +'I am that. I wish I was either in love or in the cemetery, and I don't +much mind which.'" + +"Did she cry?" asked Elisabeth, who was always absorbingly interested in +any one who was in trouble. With her, to pity was to love; and it was +difficult for her ever to love where she did not pity. Christopher did +not understand this, and was careful not to appeal to Elisabeth's +sympathy for fear of depressing her. Herein, both as boy and man, he +made a great mistake. It was not as easy to depress Elisabeth as it was +to depress him; and, moreover, it was sometimes good for her to be +depressed. But he did unto her as he would she should do unto him; and, +when all is said and done, it is difficult to find a more satisfactory +rule of conduct than this. + +"Cry, lovey?" said Mrs. Bateson; "I should just think she did--fit to +break her heart." + +Thereupon Jemima Stubbs became a heroine of romance in Elisabeth's eyes, +and a new interest in her life. "I shall go and see her to-morrow," she +said, "and take her something nice for her little brother. What do you +think he would like, Mrs. Bateson?" + +"Bless the child, she is one of the Good Shepherd's own lambs!" +exclaimed Mrs. Bateson, with tears in her eyes. + +Mrs. Hankey sighed. "It is the sweetest flowers that are the readiest +for transplanting to the Better Land," she said; and once again +Christopher hated her. + +But Elisabeth was engrossed in the matter in hand. "What would he like?" +she persisted--"a new toy, or a book, or jam and cake?" + +"I should think a book, lovey; he's fair set on books, is Johnnie +Stubbs; and if you'd read a bit to him yourself, it would be a fine +treat for the lad." + +Elisabeth's eyes danced with joy. "I'll go the first thing to-morrow +morning, and read him my favourite chapter out of The Fairchild Family; +and then I'll teach him some nice games to play all by himself." + +"That's a dear young lady!" exclaimed Mrs. Bateson, in an ecstasy of +admiration. + +"Do you think Jemima will cry when I go?" + +"No, lovey; she wouldn't so far forget herself as to bother the gentry +with her troubles, surely." + +"But I shouldn't be bothered; I should be too sorry for her. I always am +frightfully interested in people who are unhappy--much more interested +than in people who are happy; and I always love everybody when I've seen +them cry. It is so easy to be happy, and so dull. But why doesn't Jemima +fall in love if she wants to?" + +"There now!" cried Mrs. Bateson, in a sort of stage aside to an +imaginary audience. "What a clever child she is! I'm sure I don't know, +dearie." + +"It is a pity that she hasn't got a Cousin Anne," said Elisabeth, her +voice trembling with sympathy. "When you've got a Cousin Anne, it makes +everything so lovely." + +"And so it does, dearie--so it does," agreed Mrs. Bateson, who did not +in the least understand what Elisabeth meant. + +On the way home, after the tea-party was over, Christopher remarked: + +"Old Mother Bateson isn't a bad sort; but I can't stand Mother Hankey." + +"Why not?" + +"She says such horrid things." He had not yet forgiven Mrs. Hankey for +her gloomy prophecies respecting Elisabeth. + +"Not horrid, Chris. She is rather stupid sometimes, and doesn't know +when things are funny; but she never means to be really horrid, I am +sure." + +"Well, I think she is an old cat," persisted Christopher. + +"The only thing I don't like about her is her gloves," added Elisabeth +thoughtfully; "they are so old they smell of biscuit. Isn't it funny +that old gloves always smell of biscuit. I wonder why?" + +"I think they do," agreed Christopher; "but nobody except you would ever +have thought of saying it. You have a knack of saying what everybody +else is thinking; and that is what makes you so amusing." + +"I'm glad you think I'm amusing; but I can't see much funniness in just +saying what is true." + +"Well, I can't explain why it is funny; but you really are simply +killing sometimes," said Christopher graciously. + +The next day, and on many succeeding ones, Elisabeth duly visited Jemima +Stubbs and the invalid boy, although Christopher entreated her not to +worry herself about them, and offered to go in her place. But he failed +to understand that Elisabeth was goaded by no depressing sense of duty, +as he would have been in similar circumstances; she went because pity +was a passion with her, and therefore she was always absorbingly +interested in any one whom she pitied. Strength and success and +such-like attributes never appealed to Elisabeth, possibly because she +herself was strong, and possessed all the qualities of the successful +person; but weakness and failure were all-powerful in enlisting her +sympathy and interest and, through these, her love. As Christopher grew +older he dreamed dreams of how in the future he should raise himself +from being only the nephew of Miss Farringdon's manager to a position of +wealth and importance; and how he should finally bring all his glories +and honours and lay them at Elisabeth's feet. His eyes were not opened +to see that Elisabeth would probably turn with careless laughter from +all such honours thus manufactured into her pavement; but if he came to +her bent and bruised and brokenhearted, crushed with failure instead of +crowned with success, her heart would never send him empty away, but +would go out to him with a passionate longing to make up to him for all +that he had missed in life. + +A few days after Mrs. Bateson's tea-party he said to Elisabeth, for +about the twentieth time: + +"I say, I wish you wouldn't tire yourself with going to read to that +Stubbs brat." + +"Tire myself? What rubbish! nothing can tire me. I never felt tired in +my life; but I shouldn't mind it just once, to see what it feels like." + +"It feels distinctly unpleasant, I can tell you. But I really do wish +you'd take more care of yourself, or else you'll get ill, or have +headaches or something--you will indeed." + +"No, I shan't; I never had a headache. That's another of the things that +I don't know what they feel like; and yet I want to know what everything +feels like--even disagreeable things." + +"You'll know fast enough, I'm afraid," replied Christopher; "but even if +it doesn't tire you, you would enjoy playing in the garden more than +reading to Johnnie Stubbs--you know you would; and I can go and read to +the little chap, if you are set on his being read to." + +"But you would much rather play in the garden than read to him; and +especially as it is your holidays, and your own reading-time will soon +begin." + +"Oh! _I_ don't matter. Never bother your head about _me_; remember I'm +all right as long as you are; and that as long as you're jolly, I'm +bound to have a good time. But it riles me to see you worrying and +overdoing yourself." + +"You don't understand, Chris; you really are awfully stupid about +understanding things. I don't go to see Jemima and Johnnie because I +hate going, and yet think I ought; I go because I am so sorry for them +both that my sorriness makes me like to go." + +But Christopher did not understand, and Elisabeth could not make him do +so. The iron of duty had entered into his childish soul; and, +unconsciously, he was always trying to come between it and Elisabeth, +and to save her from the burden of obligation which lay so heavily upon +his spirit. He was a religious boy, but his religion was of too stern a +cast to bring much joy to him; and he was passionately anxious that +Elisabeth should not be distressed in like manner. His desire was that +she should have sufficient religion to insure heaven, but not enough to +spoil earth--a not uncommon desire on behalf of their dear ones among +poor, ignorant human beings, whose love for their neighbour will surely +atone in some measure for their injustice toward God. + +"You see," Elisabeth continued, "there is nothing that makes you so fond +of people as being sorry for them. The people that are strong and happy +don't want your fondness, so it is no use giving it to them. It is the +weak, unhappy people that want you to love them, and so it is the weak, +unhappy people that you love." + +"But I don't," replied Christopher, who was always inclined to argue a +point; "when I like people, I should like them just the same as if they +went about yelling Te Deums at the top of their voices; and when I don't +like them, it wouldn't make me like them to see them dressed from head +to foot in sackcloth and ashes." + +"Oh! that's a stupid way of liking, I think." + +"It may be stupid, but it's my way." + +"Don't you like me better when I cry than when I laugh?" asked +Elisabeth, who never could resist a personal application. + +"Good gracious, no! I always like you the same; but I'd much rather you +laughed than cried--it is so much jollier for you; in fact, it makes me +positively wretched to see you cry." + +"It always vexes me," Elisabeth said thoughtfully, "to read about +tournaments, because I think it was so horrid of the Queen of Beauty to +give the prize to the knight who won." + +Christopher laughed with masculine scorn. "What nonsense! Who else could +she have given it to?" + +"Why, to the knight who lost, of course. I often make up a tale to +myself that I am the Queen of Beauty at a tournament; and when the +victorious knight rides up to me with his visor raised, I just laugh at +him, and say, 'You can have the fame and the glory and the cheers of the +crowd; that's quite enough for you!' And then I go down from my daïs, +right into the arena where the unhorsed knight is lying wounded, and +take off his helmet, and lay his head on my lap, and say, 'You shall +have the prize, because you have got nothing else!' So then that knight +becomes my knight, and always wears my colours; and that makes up to him +for having been beaten at the tournament, don't you see?" + +"It would have been a rotten sort of tournament that was carried on in +that fashion; and your prize would have been no better than a +booby-prize," persisted Christopher. + +"How silly you are! I'm glad I'm not a boy; I wouldn't have been as +stupid as a boy for anything!" + +"Don't be so cross! You must see that the knight who wins is the best +knight; chaps that are beaten are not up to much." + +"Well, they are the sort I like best; and if you had any sense you'd +like them best, too." Whereupon Elisabeth removed the light of her +offended countenance from Christopher, and dashed off in a royal rage. + +As for him, he sighed over the unreasonableness of the weaker sex, but +accepted it philosophically as one of the rules of the game; and Chris +played games far too well to have anything but contempt for any one who +rebelled against the rules of any game whatsoever. It was a man's +business, he held, not to argue about the rules, but to play the game +according to them, and to win; or, if that was out of his power, to lose +pluckily and never complain. + + + + +CHAPTER IV + +SCHOOL-DAYS + + Up to eighteen we fight with fears, + And deal with problems grave and weighty, + And smile our smiles and weep our tears, + Just as we do in after years + From eighteen up to eighty. + + +When Elisabeth was sixteen her noonday was turned into night by the +death of her beloved Cousin Anne. For some time the younger Miss +Farringdon had been in failing health; but it was her rôle to be +delicate, and so nobody felt anxious about her until it was too late for +anxiety to be of any use. She glided out of life as gracefully as she +had glided through it, trusting that the sternness of her principles +would expiate the leniency of her practice; and was probably surprised +at the discovery that it was the leniency of her practice which finally +expiated the sternness of her principles. + +She left a blank, which was never quite filled up, in the lives of her +sister Maria and her small cousin Elisabeth. The former bore her sorrow +better, on the whole, than did the latter, because she had acquired the +habit of bearing sorrow; but Elisabeth mourned with all the hopeless +misery of youth. + +"It is no use trying to make me interested in things," she sobbed in +response to Christopher's clumsy though well-meant attempts to divert +her. "I shall never be interested in anything again--never. Everything +is different now that Cousin Anne is gone away." + +"Not quite everything," said Christopher gently. + +"Yes; everything. Why, the very trees don't look the same as they used +to look, and the view isn't a bit what it used to be when she was here. +All the ordinary things seem queer and altered, just as they do when you +see them in a dream." + +"Poor little girl!" + +"And now it doesn't seem worth while for anything to look pretty. I used +to love the sunsets, but now I hate them. What is the good of their +being so beautiful and filling the sky with red and gold, if _she_ isn't +here to see them? And what is the good of trying to be good and clever +if she isn't here to be pleased with me? Oh dear! oh dear! Nothing will +ever be any good any more." + +Christopher laid an awkward hand upon Elisabeth's dark hair, and began +stroking it the wrong way. "I say, I wish you wouldn't fret so; it's +more than I can stand to see you so wretched. Isn't there anything that +I can do to make it up to you, somehow?" + +"No; nothing. Nothing will ever comfort me any more; and how could a +great, stupid boy like you make up to me for having lost her?" moaned +poor little Elisabeth, with the selfishness of absorbing grief. + +"Well, anyway, I am as fond of you as she was, for nobody could be +fonder of anybody than I am of you." + +"That doesn't help. I don't miss her so because she loved me, but +because I loved her; and I shall never, never love any one else as much +as long as I live." + +"Oh yes, you will, I expect," replied Christopher, who even then knew +Elisabeth better than she knew herself. + +"No--I shan't; and I should hate myself if I did." + +Elisabeth fretted so terribly after her Cousin Anne that she grew paler +and thinner than ever; and Miss Farringdon was afraid that the girl +would make herself really ill, in spite of her wiry constitution. After +much consultation with many friends, she decided to send Elisabeth to +school, for it was plain that she was losing her vitality through lack +of an interest in life; and school--whatever it may or may not +supply--invariably affords an unfailing amount of new interests. So +Elisabeth went to Fox How--a well-known girls' school not a hundred +miles from London--so called in memory of Dr. Arnold, according to whose +principles the school was founded and carried on. + +It would be futile to attempt to relate the history of Elisabeth +Farringdon without telling in some measure what her school-days did for +her; and it would be equally futile to endeavour to convey to the +uninitiated any idea of what that particular school meant--and still +means--to all its daughters. + +When Elisabeth had left her girlhood far behind her, the mere mention of +the name, Fox How, never failed to send thrills all through her, as God +save the Queen, and Home, sweet Home have a knack of doing; and for any +one to have ever been a pupil at Fox How, was always a sure and certain +passport to Elisabeth's interest and friendliness. The school was an +old, square, white house, standing in a walled garden; and those walls +enclosed all the multifarious interests and pleasures and loves and +rivalries and heart-searchings and soul-awakenings which go to make up +the feminine life from twelve to eighteen, and which are very much the +same in their essence, if not in their form, as those which go to make +up the feminine life from eighteen to eighty. In addition to these, the +walls enclosed two lawns and an archery-ground, a field and a pond +overgrown with water-lilies, a high mound covered with grass and trees, +and a kitchen-garden filled with all manner of herbs and pleasant +fruits--in short, it was a wonderful and extensive garden, such as one +sees now and then in some old-fashioned suburb, but which people have +neither the time nor the space to lay out nowadays. It also contained a +long, straight walk, running its whole length and shaded by impenetrable +greenery, where Elisabeth used to walk up and down, pretending that she +was a nun; and some delightful swings and see-saws, much patronized by +the said Elisabeth, which gave her a similar physical thrill to that +produced in later years by the mention of her old school. + +The gracious personality which ruled over Fox How in the days of +Elisabeth had mastered the rarely acquired fact that the word _educate_ +is derived from _educo_, to _draw out_, and not (as is generally +supposed) from _addo_, to _give to_; so the pupils there were trained to +train themselves, and learned how to learn--a far better equipment for +life and its lessons than any ready-made cloak of superficial knowledge, +which covers all individualities and fits none. There was no cramming or +forcing at Fox How; the object of the school was not to teach girls how +to be scholars, but rather how to be themselves--that is to say, the +best selves which they were capable of becoming. High character rather +than high scholarship was the end of education there; and good breeding +counted for more than correct knowledge. Not that learning was +neglected, for Elisabeth and her schoolfellows worked at their books for +eight good hours every day; but it did not form the first item on the +programme of life. + +And who can deny that the system of Fox How was the correct system of +education, at any rate, as far as girls are concerned? Unless a woman +has to earn her living by teaching, what does it matter to her how much +hydrogen there is in a drop of rain-water, or in what year Hannibal +crossed the Alps? But it will matter to her infinitely, for the +remainder of her mortal existence, whether she is one of those graceful, +sympathetic beings, whose pathway is paved by the love of Man and the +friendship of Woman; or one of that much-to-be-blamed, if +somewhat-to-be-pitied, sisterhood, who are unloved because they are +unlovely, and unlovely because they are unloved. + +It is not good for man, woman, or child to be alone; and the +companionship of girls of her own age did much toward deepening and +broadening Elisabeth's character. The easy give-and-take of perfect +equality was beneficial to her, as it is to everybody She did not forget +her Cousin Anne--the art of forgetting was never properly acquired by +Elisabeth; but new friendships and new interests sprang up out of the +grave of the old one, and changed its resting-place from a cemetery into +a garden. Elisabeth Farringdon could not be happy--could not exist, in +fact--without some absorbing affection and interest in life. There are +certain women to whom "the trivial round" and "the common task" are +all-sufficing who ask nothing more of life than that they shall always +have a dinner to order or a drawing-room to dust, and to whom the +delinquencies of the cook supply a drama of never-failing attraction and +a subject of never-ending conversation; but Elisabeth was made of other +material; vital interests and strong attachments were indispensable to +her well-being. The death of Anne Farringdon had left a cruel blank in +the young life which was none too full of human interest to begin with; +but this blank was to a great measure filled up by Elisabeth's adoration +for the beloved personage who ruled over Fox How, and by her devoted +friendship for Felicia Herbert. + +In after years she often smiled tenderly when she recalled the absolute +worship which the girls at Fox How offered to their "Dear Lady," as they +called her, and of which the "Dear Lady" herself was supremely +unconscious. It was a feeling of loyalty stronger than any ever excited +by crowned heads (unless, perhaps, by the Pope himself), as she +represented to their girlish minds the embodiment of all that was right, +as well as of all that was mighty--and represented it so perfectly that +through all their lives her pupils never dissociated herself from the +righteousness which she taught and upheld and practised. And this +attitude was wholly good for girls born in a century when it was the +fashion to sneer at hero-worship and to scoff at authority when the word +obedience in the Marriage Service was accused of redundancy, and the +custom of speaking evil of dignities was mistaken for self-respect. + +As for Felicia Herbert, she became for a time the very mainspring of +Elisabeth's life. She was a beautiful girl, with fair hair and clear-cut +features; and Elisabeth adored her with the adoration that is freely +given, as a rule, to the girl who has beauty by the girl who has not. +She was, moreover, gifted with a sweet and calm placidity, which was +very restful to Elisabeth's volatile spirit; and the latter consequently +greeted her with that passionate and thrilling friendship which is so +satisfying to the immature female soul, but which is never again +experienced by the woman who has once been taught by a man the nature of +real love. Felicia was much more religious than Elisabeth, and much more +prone to take serious views of life. The training of Fox How made for +seriousness, and in that respect Felicia entered into the spirit of the +place more profoundly than Elisabeth was capable of doing; for Elisabeth +was always tender rather than serious, and broad rather than deep. + +"I shall never go to balls when I leave school," said Felicia to her +friend one day of their last term at Fox How, as the two were sitting in +the arbour at the end of the long walk. "I don't think it is right to go +to balls." + +"Why not? There can be no harm in enjoying oneself, and I don't believe +that God ever thinks there is." + +"Not in enjoying oneself in a certain way; but the line between +religious people and worldly people ought to be clearly marked. I think +that dancing is a regular worldly amusement, and that good people should +openly show their disapproval of it by not joining in it." + +"But God wants us to enjoy ourselves," Elisabeth persisted. "And He +wouldn't really love us if He didn't." + +"God wants us to do what is right, and it doesn't matter whether we +enjoy ourselves or not." + +"But it does; it matters awfully. We can't really be good unless we are +happy." + +Felicia shook her head. "We can't really be happy unless we are good; +and if we are good we shall 'love not the world,' but shall stand apart +from it." + +"But I must love the world; I can't help loving the world, it is so +grand and beautiful and funny. I love the whole of it: all the trees and +the fields, and the towns and the cities, and the prim old people and +the dear little children. I love the places--the old places because I +have known them so long, and the new places because I have never seen +them before; and I love the people best of all. I adore people, Felicia; +don't you?" + +"No; I don't think that I do. Of course I like the people that I like; +but the others seem to me dreadfully uninteresting." + +"But they are not; they are all frightfully interesting when once you +get to know them, and see what they really are made of inside. Outsides +may seem dull; but insides are always engrossing. That's why I always +love people when once I've seen them cry, because when they cry they are +themselves, and not any make-ups." + +"How queer to like people because you have seen them cry!" + +"Well, I do. I'd do anything for a person that I had seen cry; I would +really." + +Felicia opened her large hazel eyes still wider. "What a strange idea! +It seems to me that you think too much about feelings and not enough +about principles." + +"But thinking about feelings makes you think about principles; feelings +are the only things that ever make me think about principles at all." + +After a few minutes' silence Elisabeth asked suddenly: + +"What do you mean to do with your life when you leave here and take it +up?" + +"I don't know. I suppose I shall fall in love and get married. Most +girls do. And I hope it will be with a clergyman, for I do so love +parish work." + +"I don't think I want to get married," said Elisabeth slowly, "not even +to a clergyman." + +"How queer of you! Why not?" + +"Because I want to paint pictures and to become a great artist. I feel +there is such a lot in me that I want to say, and that I must say; and I +can only say it by means of pictures. It would be dreadful to die before +you had delivered the message that you had been sent into the world to +deliver, don't you think?" + +"It would be more dreadful to die before you had found one man to whom +you would be everything, and who would be everything to you," replied +Felicia. + +"Oh! I mean to fall in love, because everybody does, and I hate to be +behindhand with things; but I shall do it just as an experience, to make +me paint better pictures. I read in a book the other day that you must +fall in love before you can become a true artist; so I mean to do so. +But it won't be as important to me as my art," said Elisabeth, who was +as yet young enough to be extremely wise. + +"Still, it must be lovely to know there is one person in the world to +whom you can tell all your thoughts, and who will understand them, and +be interested in them." + +"It must be far lovelier to know that you have the power to tell all +your thoughts to the whole world, and that the world will understand +them and be interested in them," Elisabeth persisted. + +"I don't think so. I should like to fall in love with a man who was so +much better than I, that I could lean on him and learn from him in +everything; and I should like to feel that whatever goodness or +cleverness there was in me was all owing to him, and that I was nothing +by myself, but everything with him." + +"I shouldn't. I should like to feel that I was so good and clever that I +was helping the man to be better and cleverer even than he was before." + +"I should like all my happiness and all my interest to centre in that +one particular man," said Felicia; "and to feel that he was a fairy +prince, and that I was a poor beggar-maid, who possessed nothing but his +love." + +"Oh! I shouldn't. I would rather feel that I was a young princess, and +that he was a warrior, worn-out and wounded in the battle of life; but +that my love would comfort and cheer him after all the tiresome wars +that he'd gone through. And as for whether he'd lost or won in the wars, +I shouldn't care a rap, as long as I was sure that he couldn't be happy +without me." + +"You and I never think alike about things," said Felicia sadly. + +"You old darling! What does it matter, as long as we agree in being fond +of each other?" + +At eighteen Elisabeth said farewell to Fox How with many tears, and came +back to live at the Willows with Miss Farringdon. While she had been at +school, Christopher had been first in Germany and then in America, +learning how to make iron, so that they had never met during Elisabeth's +holidays; therefore, when he beheld her transformed from a little girl +into a full-blown young lady, he straightway fell in love with her. He +was, however, sensible enough not to mention the circumstance, even to +Elisabeth herself, as he realized, as well as anybody, that the nephew +of Richard Smallwood would not be considered a fitting mate for a +daughter of the house of Farringdon; but the fact that he did not +mention the circumstance in no way prevented him from dwelling upon it +in his own mind, and deriving much pleasurable pain and much painful +pleasure therefrom. In short, he dwelt upon it so exclusively and so +persistently that it went near to breaking his heart; but that was not +until his heart was older, and therefore more capable of being broken +past mending again. + +Miss Farringdon and the people of Sedgehill were alike delighted to have +Elisabeth among them once more; she was a girl with a strong +personality; and people with strong personalities have a knack of making +themselves missed when they go away. + +"It's nice, and so it is, to have Miss Elisabeth back again," remarked +Mrs. Bateson to Mrs. Hankey; "and it makes it so much cheerfuller for +Miss Farringdon, too." + +"Maybe it'll only make it the harder for Miss Farringdon when the time +comes for Miss Elisabeth to be removed by death or by marriage; and +which'll be the best for her--poor young lady!--the Lord must decide, +for I'm sure I couldn't pass an opinion, only having tried one, and that +nothing to boast of." + +"I wonder if Miss Farringdon will leave her her fortune," said Mrs. +Bateson, who, in common with the rest of her class, was consumed with an +absorbing curiosity as to all testamentary dispositions. + +"She may, and she may not; there's no prophesying about wills. I'm +pleased to say I can generally foretell when folks is going to die, +having done a good bit of sick-nursing in my time afore I married +Hankey; but as to foretelling how they're going to leave their money, I +can no more do it than the babe unborn; nor nobody can, as ever I heard +tell on." + +"That's so, Mrs. Hankey. Wills seem to me to have been invented by the +devil for the special upsetting of the corpse's memory. Why, some of the +peaceablest folks as I've ever known--folks as wouldn't have scared a +lady-cow in their lifetime--have left wills as have sent all their +relations to the right-about, ready to bite one another's noses off. +Bateson often says to me, 'Kezia,' he says, 'call no man honest till his +will's read.' And I'll be bound he's in the right. Still, it would be +hard to see Miss Elisabeth begging her bread after the way she's been +brought up, and Miss Farringdon would never have the conscience to let +her do it." + +"Folks leave their consciences behind with their bodies," said Mrs. +Hankey; "and I've lived long enough to be surprised at nothing where +wills are concerned." + +"That is quite true," replied Mrs. Bateson. "Now take Miss Anne, for +instance: she seemed so set on Miss Elisabeth that you'd have thought +she'd have left her a trifle; but not she! All she had went to her +sister, Miss Maria, who'd got quite enough already. Miss Anne was as +sweet and gentle a lady as you'd wish to see; but her will was as hard +as the nether millstone." + +"There's nothing like a death for showing up what a family is made of." + +"There isn't. Now Mr. William Farringdon's will was a very cruel one, +according to my ideas, leaving everything to his niece and nothing to +his son. True, Mr. George was but a barber's block with no work in him, +and I'm the last to defend that; and then he didn't want to marry his +cousin, Miss Maria, for which I shouldn't blame him so much; if a man +can't choose his own wife and his own newspaper, what can he +choose?--certainly not his own victuals, for he isn't fit. But if folks +only leave their money to them that have followed their advice in +everything, most wills would be nothing but a blank sheet of paper." + +"And if they were, it wouldn't be a bad thing, Mrs. Bateson; there would +be less sorrow on some sides, and less crape on others, and far less +unpleasantness all round. For my part, I doubt if Miss Farringdon will +leave her fortune to Miss Elisabeth, and her only a cousin's child; for +when all is said and done, cousins are but elastic relations, as you may +say. The well-to-do ones are like sisters and brothers, and the poor +ones don't seem to be no connection at all." + +"Well, let's hope that Miss Elisabeth will marry, and have a husband to +work for her when Miss Farringdon is dead and gone." + +"Husbands are as uncertain as wills, Mrs. Bateson, and more sure to give +offence to them that trust in them; besides, I doubt if Miss Elisabeth +is handsome enough to get a husband. The gentry think a powerful lot of +looks in choosing a wife." + +Mrs. Bateson took up the cudgels on Elisabeth's behalf. "She mayn't be +exactly handsome--I don't pretend as she is; but she has a wonderful way +of dressing herself, and looking for all the world like a fashion-plate; +and some men have a keen eye for clothes." + +"I think nothing of fine clothes myself. Saint Peter warns us against +braiding of hair and putting on of apparel; and when all's said and done +it don't go as far as a good complexion, and we don't need any apostle +to tell us that--we can see it for ourselves." + +"And as for cleverness, there ain't her like in all Mershire," continued +Mrs. Bateson. + +"Bless you! cleverness never yet helped a woman in getting a husband, +and never will; though if she's got enough of it, it may keep her from +ever having one. I don't hold with cleverness in a woman myself; it has +always ended in mischief, from the time when the woman ate a bit of the +Tree of Knowledge, and there was such a to-do about it." + +"I wish she'd marry Mr. Christopher; he worships the very ground she +walks on, and she couldn't find a better man if she swept out all the +corners of the earth looking for one." + +"Well, at any rate, she knows all about him; that is something. I always +say that men are the same as kittens--you should take 'em straight from +their mothers, or else not take 'em at all; for, if you don't, you never +know what bad habits they may have formed or what queer tricks they will +be up to." + +"Maybe the manager's nephew ain't altogether the sort of husband you'd +expect for a Farringdon," said Mrs. Bateson thoughtfully; "I don't deny +that. But he's wonderful fond of her, Mr. Christopher is; and there's +nothing like love for smoothing things over when the oven ain't properly +heated, and the meat is done to a cinder on one side and all raw on the +other. You find that out when you're married." + +"You find a good many things out when you're married, Mrs. Bateson, and +one is that this world is a wilderness of care. But as for love, I +don't rightly know much about it, since Hankey would always rather have +had my sister Sarah than me, and only put up with me when she gave him +the pass-by, being set on marrying one of the family. I'm sure, for my +part, I wish Sarah had had him; though I've no call to say so, her +always having been a good sister to me." + +"Well, love's a fine thing; take my word for it. It keeps the men from +grumbling when nothing else will; except, of course, the grace of God," +added Mrs. Bateson piously, "though even that don't always seem to have +much effect, when things go wrong with their dinners." + +"That's because they haven't enough of it; they haven't much grace in +their hearts, as a rule, haven't men, even the best of them; and the +best of them don't often come my way. But as for Miss Elisabeth, she +isn't a regular Farringdon, as you may say--not the real daughter of the +works; and so she shouldn't take too much upon herself, expecting dukes +and ironmasters and the like to come begging to her on their bended +knees. She is only Miss Farringdon's adopted daughter, at best; and I +don't hold with adopted children, I don't; I think it is better and more +natural to be born of your own parents, like most folk are." + +"So do I," agreed Mrs. Bateson; "I'd never have adopted a child myself. +I should always have been expecting to see its parents' faults coming +out in it--so different from the peace you have with your own flesh and +blood." + +Mrs. Hankey groaned. "Your own flesh and blood may take after their +father; you never can tell." + +"So they may, Mrs. Hankey--so they may; but, as the Scripture says, it +is our duty to whip the old man out of them." + +"Just so. And that's another thing against adopted children--you'd +hesitate about punishing them enough; I don't fancy as you'd ever feel +the same pleasure in whipping 'em as you do in whipping your own. You'd +feel you ought to be polite-like, as if they was sort of visitors." + +"My children always took after my side of the house, I'm thankful to +say," said Mrs. Bateson; "so I hadn't much trouble with them." + +"I wish I could say as much; I do, indeed. But the Lord saw fit to try +me by making my son Peter the very moral of his father; as like as two +peas they are. And when you find one poor woman with such a double +portion, you are tempted to doubt the workings of Providence." + +Mrs. Bateson looked sympathetic. "That's bad for you, Mrs. Hankey!" + +"It is so; but I take up my cross and don't complain. You know what a +feeble creature Hankey is--never doing the right thing; and, when he +does, doing it at the wrong time; well, Peter is just such another. Only +the other day he was travelling by rail, and what must he do but get an +attack of the toothache? Those helpless sort of folks are always having +the toothache, if you notice." + +"So they are." + +"Peter's toothache was so bad that he must needs take a dose of some +sleeping-stuff or other--I forget the name--and fell so sound asleep +that he never woke at the station, but was put away with the carriage +into a siding. Fast asleep he was, with his handkerchief over his face +to keep the sun off, and never heard the train shunted, nor nothing." + +"Well, to be sure! Them sleeping-draughts are wonderful soothing, as +I've heard tell, but I never took one on 'em. The Lord giveth His +beloved sleep, and His givings are enough for them as are in health; but +them as are in pain want something a bit stronger, doubtless." + +"So it appears," agreed Mrs. Hankey. "Well, there lay Peter fast asleep +in the siding, with his handkerchief over his face. And one of the +porters happens to come by, and sees him, and jumps to the conclusion +that there's been a murder in the train, and that our Peter is the +corpse. So off he goes to the station-master and tells him as there's a +murdered body in one of the carriages in the siding; and the +station-master's as put out as never was." + +Mrs. Bateson's eyes and mouth opened wide in amazement and interest. +"What a tale, to be sure!" + +"And then," added Peter's mother, growing more dramatic as the story +proceeded, "the station-master sends for the police, and the police +sends for the crowner, so as everything shall be decent and in order; +and they walks in a solemn procession--with two porters carrying a +shutter--to the carriage where Peter lies, all as grand and nice as if +it was a funeral." + +"I never heard tell of such a thing in my life--never!" + +"Then the station-master opens the door with one of them state keys +which always take such a long time to open a door which you could open +with your own hands in a trice--you know 'em by sight." + +Mrs. Bateson nodded. Of course she knew them by sight; who does not? + +"And then the crowner steps forward to take the handkerchief off the +face of the body, it being the perquisite of a crowner so to do," Mrs. +Hankey continued, with the maternal regret of a mother whose son has +been within an inch of fame, and missed it; "and just picture to +yourself the vexation of them all, when it was no murdered corpse they +found, but only our Peter with an attack of the toothache!" + +"Well, I never! They must have been put about; as you would have been +yourself, Mrs. Hankey, if you'd found so little after expecting so +much." + +"In course I should; it wasn't in flesh and blood not to be, and +station-master and crowner are but mortal, like the rest of us. I assure +you, when I first heard the story, I pitied them from the bottom of my +heart." + +"And what became of Peter in the midst of it all, Mrs. Hankey?" + +"Oh! it woke him up with a vengeance; and, of course, it flustered him a +good deal, when he rightly saw how matters stood, to have to make his +excuses to all them grand gentlemen for not being a murdered corpse. But +as I says to him afterward, he'd no one but himself to blame; first for +being so troublesome as to have the toothache, and then for being so +presumptuous as to try and cure it. And his father is just the same; if +you take your eye off him for a minute he is bound to be in some +mischief or another." + +"There's no denying that husbands is troublesome, Mrs. Hankey, and sons +is worse; but all the same I stand up for 'em both, and I wish Miss +Elisabeth had got one of the one and half a dozen of the other. Mark my +words, she'll never do better, taking him all round, than Master +Christopher." + +Mrs. Hankey sighed. "I only hope she'll find it out before it is too +late, and he is either laid in an early grave or else married to a +handsomer woman, as the case may be, and both ways out of her reach. But +I doubt it. She was a dark baby, if you remember, was Miss Elisabeth; +and I never trust them as has been dark babies, and never shall." + +"And how is Peter's toothache now?" inquired Mrs. Bateson, who was a +more tender-hearted matron than Peter's mother. + +"Oh! it's no better; and I know no one more aggravating than folks who +keep sayin' they are no better when you ask 'em how they are. It always +seems so ungrateful. Only this morning I asked our Peter how his tooth +was, and he says, 'No better, mother; it was so bad in the night that I +fairly wished I was dead.' 'Don't go wishing that,' says I; 'for if you +was dead you'd have far worse pain, and it 'ud last for ever and ever.' +I really spoke quite sharp to him, I was that sick of his grumbling; but +it didn't seem to do him no good." + +"Speaking sharp seldom does do much good," Mrs. Bateson remarked +sapiently, "except to them as speaks." + + + + +CHAPTER V + +THE MOAT HOUSE + + You thought you knew me in and out + And yet you never knew + That all I ever thought about + Was you. + + +Sedgehill High Street is nothing but a part of the great high road which +leads from Silverhampton to Studley and Slipton and the other towns of +the Black Country; but it calls itself Sedgehill High Street as it +passes through the place, and so identifies itself with its environment, +after the manner of caterpillars and polar bears and other similarly +wise and adaptable beings. At the point where this road adopts the +pseudonym of the High Street, close by Sedgehill Church, a lane branches +off from it at right angles, and runs down a steep slope until it comes +to a place where it evidently experiences a difference of opinion as to +which is the better course to pursue--an experience not confined to +lanes. But in this respect lanes are happier than men and women, in that +they are able to pursue both courses, and so learn for themselves which +is the wiser one, as is the case with this particular lane. One course +leads headlong down another steep hill--so steep that unwary travellers +usually descend from their carriages to walk up or down it, and thus +are enabled to ensure relief to their horses and a chill to themselves +at the same time; for it is hot work walking up or down that sunny +precipice, and the cold winds of Mershire await one with equal gusto at +the top and at the bottom. At the foot of the hill stretches a breezy +common, wide enough to make one think "long, long thoughts"; and if the +traveller looks backward when he has crossed this common, he will see +Sedgehill Church, crowning and commanding the vast expanse, and pointing +heavenward with its slender spire to remind him, and all other wayfaring +men, that the beauty and glory of this present world is only an earnest +and a foretaste of something infinitely fairer. + +The second course of the irresolute lane is less adventurous, and +wanders peacefully through Badgering Woods, a dark and delightful spot, +once mysterious enough to be a fitting hiding-place for the age-long +slumbers of some sleeping princess. As a matter of fact, so it was; the +princess was black but comely, and her name was Coal. There she had +slept for a century of centuries, until Prince Iron needed and sought +and found her, and awakened her with the noise of his kisses. So now the +wood is not asleep any more, but is filled with the tramping of the +prince's men. The old people wring their hands and mourn that the former +things are passing away, and that Mershire's youthful beauty will soon +be forgotten; but the young people laugh and are glad, because they know +that life is greater than beauty, and that it is by her black +coalfields, and not by her green woodlands, that Mershire will save her +people from poverty, and will satisfy her poor with bread. + +When Elisabeth Farringdon was a girl, the princess was still asleep in +the heart of the wood, and no prince had yet attempted to disturb her; +and the lane passed through a forest of silence until it came to a dear +little brown stream, which, by means of a dam, was turned into a moat, +encircling one of the most ancient houses in England. The Moat House had +been vacant for some time, as the owner was a delicate man who preferred +to live abroad; and great was the interest at Sedgehill when, a year or +two after Elisabeth left school, it was reported that a stranger, Alan +Tremaine by name, had taken the Moat House for the sake of the hunting, +which was very good in that part of Mershire. + +So Alan settled there, and became one of the items which went to the +making of Elisabeth's world. He was a small, slight man, +interesting-looking rather than regularly handsome, of about +five-and-twenty, who had devoted himself to the cultivation of his +intellect and the suppression of his soul. Because his mother had been a +religious woman, he reasoned that faith was merely an amiable feminine +weakness, and because he himself was clever enough to make passable +Latin verses, he argued that no Supernatural Being could have been +clever enough to make him. + +"Have you seen the new man who has come to the Moat House?" asked +Elisabeth of Christopher. The latter had now settled down permanently at +the Osierfield, and was qualifying himself to take his uncle's place as +general manager of the works, when that uncle should retire from the +post. He was also qualifying himself to be Elisabeth's friend instead of +her lover--a far more difficult task. + +"Yes; I have seen him." + +"What is he like? I am dying to know." + +"When I saw him he was exactly like a man riding on horseback; but as he +was obviously too well-dressed to be a beggar, I have no reason to +believe that the direction in which he was riding was the one which +beggars on horseback are proverbially expected to take." + +"How silly you are! You know what I mean." + +"Perfectly. You mean that if you had seen a man riding by, at the rate +of twelve miles an hour, it would at once have formed an opinion as to +all the workings of his mind and the meditations of his heart. But my +impressions are of slower growth, and I am even dull enough to require +some foundation for them." Christopher loved to tease Elisabeth. + +"I am awfully quick in reading character," remarked that young lady, +with some pride. + +"You are. I never know which impresses me more--the rapidity with which +you form opinions, or their inaccuracy when formed." + +"I'm not as stupid as you think." + +"Pardon me, I don't think you are at all stupid; but I am always hoping +that the experience of life will make you a little stupider." + +"Don't be a goose, but tell me all you know about Mr. Tremaine." + +"I don't know much about him, except that he is well-off, that he +apparently rides about ten stone, and that he is not what people call +orthodox. By the way. I didn't discover his unorthodoxy by seeing him +ride by, as you would have done; I was told about it by some people who +know him." + +"How very interesting!" cried Elisabeth enthusiastically. "I wonder how +unorthodox he is. Do you think he doesn't believe in anything?" + +"In himself, I fancy. Even the baldest creed is usually self-embracing. +But I believe he indulges in the not unfashionable luxury of doubts. +You might attend to them, Elisabeth; you are the sort of girl who would +enjoy attending to doubts." + +"I suppose I really am too fond of arguing." + +"There you misjudge yourself. You are instructive rather than +argumentative. Saying the same thing over and over again in different +language is not arguing, you know; I should rather call it preaching, if +I were not afraid of hurting your feelings." + +"You are a very rude boy! But, anyway, I have taught you a lot of +things; you can't deny that." + +"I don't wish to deny it; I am your eternal debtor. To tell the truth, I +believe you have taught me everything I know, that is worth knowing, +except the things that you have tried to teach me. There, I must +confess, you have signally failed." + +"What have I tried to teach you?" + +"Heaps of things: that pleasure is more important than duty; that we are +sent into the world to enjoy ourselves; that the worship of art is the +only soul-satisfying form of faith; that conscience is an exhausted +force; that feelings and emotions ought to be labelled and scheduled; +that lobster is digestible; that Miss Herbert is the most attractive +woman in the world; etcetera, etcetera." + +"And what have I taught you without trying?" + +"Ah! that is a large order; and it is remarkable that the things you +have taught me are just the things that you have never learned +yourself." + +"Then I couldn't have taught them." + +"But you did; that is where your genius comes in." + +"I really am tremendously quick in judging character," repeated +Elisabeth thoughtfully; "if I met you for the first time I should know +in five minutes that you were a man with plenty of head, and heaps of +soul, and very little heart." + +"That would show wonderful penetration on your part." + +"You may laugh, but I should. Of course, as it is, it is not +particularly clever of me to understand you thoroughly; I have known you +so long." + +"Exactly; it would only be distinctly careless of you if you did not." + +"Of course it would; but I do. I could draw a map of your mind with my +eyes shut, I know it so well." + +"I wish you would. I should value it even if it were drawn with your +eyes open, though possibly in that case it might be less correct." + +"I will, if you will give me a pencil and a sheet of paper." + +Christopher produced a pencil, and tore a half-sheet off a note that he +had in his pocket. The two were walking through the wood at the Willows +at that moment, and Elisabeth straightway sat down upon a felled tree +that happened to be lying there, and began to draw. + +The young man watched her with amusement. "An extensive outline," he +remarked; "this is gratifying." + +"Oh yes! you have plenty of mind, such as it is; nobody could deny +that." + +"But why is the coast-line all irregular, with such a lot of bays and +capes and headlands?" + +"To show that you are an undecided person, and given to split hairs, and +don't always know your own opinion. First you think you'll do a thing +because it is nice; and then you think you won't do it because it is +wrong; and in the end you drop between two stools, like Mahomet's +coffin." + +"I see. And please what are the mountain-ranges that you are drawing +now?" + +"These," replied Elisabeth, covering her map with herring-bones, "are +your scruples. Like all other mountain-ranges they hinder commerce, make +pleasure difficult, and render life generally rather uphill work." +"Don't I sound exactly as if I was taking a geography class?" + +"Or conducting an Inquisition," added Christopher. + +"I thought an Inquisition was a Spanish thing that hurt." + +"So certain ignorant people say; but it was originally invented, I +believe, to eradicate error and to maintain truth." + +"I am going on with my geography class, so don't interrupt. The rivers +in this map, which are marked by a few faint lines, are narrow and +shallow; they are only found near the coast, and never cross the +interior of the country at all. These represent your feelings." + +"Very ingenious of you! And what is that enormous blotch right in the +middle of the country, which looks like London and its environs?" + +"That is your conscience; its outlying suburbs cover nearly the whole +country, you will perceive. You will also notice that there are no +seaports on the coast of my map; that shows that you are self-contained, +and that you neither send exports to, nor receive imports from, the +hearts and minds of other people." + +"What ever are those queer little castellated things round the coast +that you are drawing now?" + +"Those are floating icebergs, to show that it is a cold country. There, +my map is finished," concluded Elisabeth, half closing her eyes and +contemplating her handiwork through her eyelashes; "and I consider it a +most successful sketch." + +"It is certainly clever." + +"And true, too." + +Christopher's eyes twinkled. "Give it me," he said, stretching out his +hand; "but sign it with your name first. Not there," he added hastily, +as Elisabeth began writing a capital E in one corner; "right across the +middle." + +Elisabeth looked up in surprise. "Right across the map itself, do you +mean?" + +"Yes." + +"But it is such a long name that it will cover the whole country." + +"I know that." + +"It will spoil it." + +"I shouldn't be surprised; nevertheless, I always am in favour of +realism." + +"I don't know where the realism comes in; but I am such an obliging +person that I will do what you want," said Elisabeth, writing her name +right across the half-sheet of paper, in her usual dashing style. + +"Thank you," said Christopher, taking the paper from her; and he smiled +to himself as he saw that the name "Elisabeth Farringdon" covered the +whole of the imaginary continent from east to west. Elisabeth naturally +did not know that this was the only true image in her allegory; she was +as yet far too clever to perceive obvious things. As Chris said, it was +not when her eyes were open that she was most correct. + +"I have seen Mr. Tremaine," said Elisabeth to him, a day or two after +this. "Cousin Maria left her card upon him, and he returned her call +yesterday and found us at home. I think he is perfectly delightful." + +"You do, do you? I knew you would." + +"Why?" + +"Because, like the Athenians, you live to see or to hear some new +thing." + +"It wasn't his newness that made me like him; I liked him because he was +so interesting. I do adore interesting people! I hadn't known him five +minutes before he began to talk about really deep things; and then I +felt I had known him for ages, he was so very understanding." + +"Indeed," Christopher said drily. + +"By the time we had finished tea he understood me better than you do +after all these years. I wonder if I shall get to like him better than I +like you?" + +"I wonder, too." And he really did, with an amount of curiosity that was +positively painful. + +"Of course," remarked Elisabeth thoughtfully, "I shall always like you, +because we have been friends so long, and you are overgrown with the +lichen of old memories and associations. But you are not very +interesting in the abstract, you see; you are nice and good, but you +have not heart enough to be really thrilling." + +"Still, even if I had a heart, it is possible I might not always wear it +on my sleeve for Miss Elisabeth Farringdon to peck at." + +"Oh yes, you would; you couldn't help it. If you tried to hide it I +should see through your disguises. I have X rays in my eyes." + +"Have you? They must be a great convenience." + +"Well, at any rate, they keep me from making mistakes," Elisabeth +confessed. + +"That is fortunate for you. It is a mistake to make mistakes." + +"I remember our Dear Lady at Fox How once saying," continued the girl, +"that nothing is so good for keeping women from making mistakes as a +sense of humour." + +"I wonder if she was right?" + +"She was always right; and in that as in everything else. Have you never +noticed that it is not the women with a sense of humour who make fools +of themselves? They know better than to call a thing romantic which is +really ridiculous." + +"Possibly; but they are sometimes in danger of calling a thing +ridiculous which is really romantic; and that also is a mistake." + +"I suppose it is. I wonder which is worse--to think ridiculous things +romantic, or romantic things ridiculous? It is rather an interesting +point. Which do you think?" + +"I don't know. I never thought about it." + +"You never do think about things that really matter," exclaimed +Elisabeth, with reproof in her voice; "that is what makes you so +uninteresting to talk to. The fact is you are so wrapped up in that +tiresome old business that you never have time to attend to the deeper +things and the hidden meanings of life; but are growing into a regular +money-grubber." + +"Perhaps so; but you will have the justice to admit it isn't my own +money that I am grubbing," replied Christopher, who had only reconciled +himself to giving up all his youthful ambitions and becoming +sub-manager of the Osierfield by the thought that he might thereby in +some roundabout way serve Elisabeth. Like other schoolboys he had +dreamed his dreams, and prospected wonderful roads to success which his +feet were destined never to tread; and at first he had asked something +more of life than the Osierfield was capable of offering him. But +finally he had submitted contentedly to the inevitable, because--in +spite of all his hopes and ambitions--his boyish love for Elisabeth held +him fast; and now his manly love for Elisabeth held him faster still. +But even the chains which love had rivetted are capable of galling us +sometimes; and although we would not break them, even if we could, we +grumble at them occasionally--that is to say, if we are merely human, as +is the case with so many of us. + +"It is a great pity," Elisabeth went on, "that you deliberately narrow +yourself down to such a small world and such petty interests. It is bad +enough for old people to be practical and sensible and commonplace and +all that; but for a man as young as you are it is simply disgusting. I +can not understand you, because you really are clever and ought to know +better; but although I am your greatest friend, you never talk to me +about anything except the merest frivolities." + +Christopher bowed his head to the storm and was still--he was one of the +people who early learn the power of silence; but Elisabeth, having once +mounted her high horse, dug her spurs into her steed and rode on to +victory. In those days she was so dreadfully sure of herself that she +felt competent to teach anybody anything. + +"You laugh at me as long as I am funny and I amuse you; but the minute +I begin to talk about serious subjects--such as feelings and sentiments +and emotions--you lose your interest at once, and turn everything into a +joke. The truth is, you have so persistently suppressed your higher self +that it is dying of inanition; you'll soon have no higher self left at +all. If people don't use their hearts they don't have any, like the +Kentucky fish that can't see in the dark because they are blind, don't +you know? Now you should take a leaf out of Mr. Tremaine's book. The +first minute I saw him I knew that he was the sort of man that +cultivated his higher self; he was interested in just the things that +interest me." + +The preacher paused for breath, and looked up to see whether her sermon +was being "blessed" to her hearer; then suddenly her voice changed-- + +"What is the matter, Chris?" + +"Nothing. Why?" + +"Because you look so awfully white. I was talking so fast that I didn't +notice it; but I expect it is the heat. Do sit down on the grass and +rest a bit; it is quite dry; and I'll fan you with a big dock leaf." + +"I'm all right," replied Christopher, trying to laugh, and succeeding +but indifferently. + +"But I'm sure you are not, you are so pale; you look just as you looked +the day that I tumbled off the rick--do you remember it?--and you took +me into Mrs. Bateson's to have my head bound up. She said you'd got a +touch of the sun, and I'm afraid you've got one now." + +"Yes, I remember it well enough; but I'm all right now, Betty. Don't +worry about me." + +"But I do worry when you're ill; I always did. Don't you remember that +when you had measles and I wasn't allowed to see you, I cried myself to +sleep for three nights running, because I thought you were going to +die, and that everything would be vile without you? And then I had a +prayer-meeting about you in Mrs. Bateson's parlour, and I wrote the +hymns for it myself. The Batesons wept over them and considered them +inspired, and foretold that I should die early in consequence." And +Elisabeth laughed at the remembrance of her fame. + +Christopher laughed too. "That was hard on you! I admit that +verse-writing is a crime in a woman, but I should hardly call it a +capital offence. Still, I should like to have heard the hymns. You were +great at writing poetry in those days." + +"Wasn't I? And I used to be so proud when you said that my poems weren't +'half bad'!" + +"No wonder; that was high praise from me. But can't you recall those +hymns?" + +The hymnist puckered her forehead. "I can remember the beginning of the +opening one," she said; "it was a six-line-eights, and we sang it to a +tune called Stella; it began thus: + + "How can we sing like little birds, + And hop about among the boughs? + How can we gambol with the herds, + Or chew the cud among the cows? + How can we pop with all the weasles + Now Christopher has got the measles?" + +"Bravo!" exclaimed the subject of the hymn. "You are a born hymn-writer, +Elisabeth. The shades of Charles Wesley and Dr. Watts bow to your +obvious superiority." + +"Well, at any rate, I don't believe they ever did better at fourteen; +and it shows how anxious I was about you even then when you were ill. I +am just the same now--quite as fond of you as I was then; and you are +of me, too, aren't you?" + +"Quite." Which was perfectly true. + +"Then that's all right," said Elisabeth contentedly; "and, you see, it +is because I am so fond of you that I tell you of your faults. I think +you are so good that I want you to be quite perfect." + +"I see." + +The missionary spirit is an admirable thing; but a man rarely does it +full justice when it is displayed--toward himself--by the object of his +devotion. + +"If I wasn't so fond of you I shouldn't try to improve you." + +"Of course not; and if you were a little fonder of me you wouldn't want +to improve me. I perfectly understand." + +"Dear old Chris! You really are extremely nice in some ways; and if you +had only a little more heart you would be adorable. And I don't believe +you are naturally unfeeling, do you?" + +"No--I do not; but I sometimes wish I was." + +"Don't say that. It is only that you haven't developed that side of you +sufficiently; I feel sure the heart is there, but it is dormant. So now +you will talk more about feelings, won't you?" + +"I won't promise that. It is rather stupid to talk about things that one +doesn't understand; I am sure this is correct, for I have often heard +you say so." + +"But talking to me about your feelings might help you to understand +them, don't you see?" + +"Or might help you." + +"Oh! I don't want any help; feelings are among the few things that I can +understand without any assistance. But you are sure you are all right, +Chris, and haven't got a headache or anything?" And the anxious +expression returned to Elisabeth's face. + +"My head is very well, thank you." + +"You don't feel any pain?" + +"In my head? distinctly not." + +"You are quite well, you are certain?" + +"Perfectly certain and quite well. What a fidget you are! Apparently you +attach as much importance to rosy cheeks as Mother Hankey does." + +"A pale face and dark hair are in her eyes the infallible signs of a +depraved nature," laughed Elisabeth; "and I have both." + +"Yet you fly at me for having one, and that only for a short time. +Considering your own shortcomings, you should be more charitable." + +Elisabeth laughed again as she patted his arm in a sisterly fashion. +"Nice old boy! I am awfully glad you are all right. It would make me +miserable if anything went really wrong with you, Chris." + +"Then nothing shall go really wrong with me, and you shall not be +miserable," said Christopher stoutly; "and, therefore, it is fortunate +that I don't possess much heart--things generally go wrong with the +people who have hearts, you know, and not with the people who have not; +so we perceive how wise was the poet in remarking that whatever is is +made after the best possible pattern, or words to that effect." With +which consoling remark he took leave of his liege-lady. + +The friendship between Alan Tremaine and Elisabeth Farringdon grew apace +during the next twelve months. His mind was of the metaphysical and +speculative order, which is interesting to all women; and hers was of +the volatile and vivacious type which is attractive to some men. They +discussed everything under the sun, and some things over it; they read +the same books and compared notes afterward; they went out sketching +together, and instructed each other in the ways of art; and they +carefully examined the foundations of each other's beliefs, and +endeavoured respectively to strengthen and undermine the same. Gradually +they fell into the habit of wondering every morning whether or not they +should meet during the coming day; and of congratulating themselves +nearly every evening that they had succeeded in so meeting. + +As for Christopher, he was extremely and increasingly unhappy, and, it +must be admitted, extremely and increasingly cross in consequence. The +fact that he had not the slightest right to control Elisabeth's actions, +in no way prevented him from highly disapproving of them; and the fact +that he was too proud to express this disapproval in words, in no way +prevented him from displaying it in manner. Elisabeth was wonderfully +amiable with him, considering how very cross he was; but are we not all +amiable with people toward whom we--in our inner consciousness--know +that we are behaving badly? + +"I can not make out what you can see in that conceited ass?" he said to +her, when Alan Tremaine had been living at the Moat House for something +over a year. + +"Perhaps not; making things out never is your strong point," replied +Elisabeth suavely. + +"But he is such an ass! I'm sure the other evening, when he trotted out +his views on the Higher Criticism for your benefit, he made me feel +positively ill." + +"I found it very interesting; and if, as you say, he did it for my +benefit, he certainly succeeded in his aim." There were limits to the +patience of Elisabeth. + +"Well, how women can listen to bosh of that kind I can not imagine! What +can it matter to you what he disbelieves or why he disbelieves it? And +it is beastly cheek of him to suppose that it can." + +"But he is right in supposing it, and it does matter to me. I like to +know how old-fashioned truths accord or do not accord with modern phases +of thought." + +"Modern phases of nonsense, you mean! Well, the old-fashioned truths are +good enough for me, and I'll stick to them, if you please, in spite of +Mr. Tremaine's overwhelming arguments; and I should advise you to stick +to them, too." + +"Oh! Chris, I wish you wouldn't be so disagreeable." And Elisabeth +sighed. "It is so difficult to talk to you when you are like this." + +"I'm not disagreeable," replied Christopher mendaciously; "only I can +not let you be taken in by a stuck-up fool without trying to open your +eyes; I shouldn't be your friend if I could." And he actually believed +that this was the case. He forgot that it is not the trick of +friendship, but of love, to make "a corner" in affection, and to +monopolize the whole stock of the commodity. + +"You see," Elisabeth explained, "I am so frightfully modern, and yet I +have been brought up in such a dreadfully old-fashioned way. It was all +very well for the last generation to accept revealed truth without +understanding it, but it won't do for us." + +"Why not?" + +"Oh! because we are young and modern." + +"So were they at one time, and we shall not be so for long." + +Elisabeth sighed again. "How difficult you are! Of course, the sort of +religion that did for Cousin Maria and Mr. Smallwood won't do for Mr. +Tremaine and me. Can't you see that?" + +"I can not, I am sorry to say." + +"Their religion had no connection with their intellects." + +"Still, it changed their hearts, which I have heard is no unimportant +operation." + +"They accepted what they were told without trying to understand it," +Elisabeth continued, "which is not, after all, a high form of faith." + +"Indeed. I should have imagined that it was the highest." + +"But can't you see that to accept blindly what you are told is not half +so great as to sift it all, and to separate the chaff from the wheat, +and to find the kernel of truth in the shell of tradition?" Elisabeth +had not talked to Alan Tremaine for over a year without learning his +tricks of thought and even of expression. "Don't you think that it is +better to believe a little with the whole intellect than a great deal +apart from it?" + +Christopher looked obstinate. "I can't and don't." + +"Have you no respect for 'honest doubt'?" + +"Honest bosh!" + +Elisabeth's face flushed. "You really are too rude for anything." + +Christopher was penitent at once; he could not bear really to vex her. +"I am sorry if I was rude; but it riles me to hear you quoting +Tremaine's platitudes by the yard--such rotten platitudes as they are, +too!" + +"You don't do Mr. Tremaine justice, Chris. Even though he may have +outgrown the old faiths, he is a very good man; and he has such lovely +thoughts about truth and beauty and love and things like that." + +"His thoughts are nothing but empty windbags; for he is the type of man +who is too ignorant to accept truth, too blind to appreciate beauty, and +too selfish to be capable of loving any woman as a woman ought to be +loved." + +"I think his ideas about love are quite ideal," persisted the girl. +"Only yesterday he was abusing the selfishness of men in general, and +saying that a man who is really in love thinks of the woman he loves as +well as of himself." + +"He said that, did he? Then he was mistaken." + +Elisabeth looked surprised. "Then don't you agree with him that a man in +love thinks of the woman as well as of himself?" + +"No; I don't. A man who is really in love never thinks of himself at +all, but only of the woman. It strikes me that Master Alan Tremaine +knows precious little about the matter." + +"I think he knows a great deal. He said that love was the discovery of +the one woman whereof all other women were but types. That really was a +sweet thing to say!" + +"My dear Betty, you know no more about the matter than he does. Falling +in love doesn't merely mean that a man has found a woman who is dearer +to him than all other women, but that he has found a woman who is dearer +to him than himself." + +Elisabeth changed her ground. "I admit that he isn't what you might +call orthodox," she said--"not the sort of man who would clothe himself +in the rubric, tied on with red tape; but though he may not be a +Christian, as we count Christianity, he believes with all his heart in +an overruling Power which makes for righteousness." + +"That is very generous of him," retorted Christopher; "still, I can not +for the life of me see that the possession of three or four thousand a +year, without the trouble of earning it, gives a man the right to +patronize the Almighty." + +"You are frightfully narrow, Chris." + +"I know I am, and I am thankful for it. I had rather be as narrow as a +plumbing-line than indulge in the sickly latitudinarianism that such men +as Tremaine nickname breadth." + +"Oh! I am tired of arguing with you; you are too stupid for anything." + +"But you haven't been arguing--you have only been quoting Tremaine +verbatim; and that that may be tiring I can well believe." + +"Well, you can call it what you like; but by any other name it will +irritate you just as much, because you have such a horrid temper. Your +religion may be very orthodox, but I can not say much for its improving +qualities; it is the crossest, nastiest, narrowest, disagreeablest sort +of religion that I ever came across." + +And Elisabeth walked away in high dudgeon, leaving Christopher very +angry with himself for having been disagreeable, and still angrier with +Tremaine for having been the reverse. + + + + +CHAPTER VI + +WHIT MONDAY + + Light shadows--hardly seen as such-- + Crept softly o'er the summer land + In mute caresses, like the touch + Of some familiar hand. + + +"I want to give your work-people a treat," said Tremaine to Elisabeth, +in the early summer. + +"That is very nice of you; but this goes without saying, as you are +always planning and doing something nice. I shall be very glad for our +people to have a little pleasure, as at present the annual tea-meeting +at East Lane Chapel seems to be their one and only dissipation; and +although tea-meetings may be very well in their way, they hardly seem to +fulfil one's ideal of human joy." + +"Ah! you have touched upon a point to which I was coming," said Alan +earnestly; "it is wonderful how often our minds jump together! Not only +am I anxious to give the Osierfield people something more enjoyable than +a tea-meeting--I also wish to eliminate the tea-meeting spirit from +their idea of enjoyment." + +"How do you mean?" It was noteworthy that while Elisabeth was always +ready to teach Christopher, she was equally willing to learn from Alan. + +"I mean that I want to show people that pleasure and religion have +nothing to do with each other. It always seems to me such a mistake that +the pleasures of the poor--the innocent pleasures, of course--are +generally inseparable from religious institutions. If they attend a +tea-party, they open it with prayer; if they are taken for a country +drive, they sing hymns by the way." + +"Oh! but I think they do this because they like it, and not because they +are made to do it," said Elisabeth eagerly. + +"Not a bit of it; they do it because they are accustomed to do it, and +they feel that it is expected of them. Religion is as much a part of +their dissipation as evening dress is of ours, and just as much a purely +conventional part; and I want to teach them to dissociate the two ideas +in their own minds." + +"I doubt if you will succeed, Mr. Tremaine." + +"Yes, I shall; I invariably succeed. I have never failed in anything +yet, and I never mean to fail. And I do so want to make the poor people +enjoy themselves thoroughly. Of course, it is a good thing to have one's +pills always hidden in jam; but it must be a miserable thing to belong +to a section of society where one's jam is invariably full of pills." + +Elisabeth smiled, but did not speak; Alan was the one person of her +acquaintance to whom she would rather listen than talk. + +"It is a morbid and unhealthy habit," he went on, "to introduce religion +into everything, in the way that English people are so fond of doing. It +decreases their pleasures by casting its shadow over purely human and +natural joys; and it increases their sorrow and want by teaching them to +lean upon some hypothetical Power, instead of trying to do the best +that they can for themselves. Also it enervates their reasoning +faculties; for nothing is so detrimental to one's intellectual strength +as the habit of believing things which one knows to be impossible." + +"Then don't you believe in religion of any kind?" + +"Most certainly I do--in many religions. I believe in the religion of +art and of science and of humanity, and countless more; in fact, the +only religion I do not believe in is Christianity, because that spoils +all the rest by condemning art as fleshly, science as untrue, and +humanity as sinful. I want to bring the old Pantheism to life again, and +to teach our people to worship beauty as the Greeks worshipped it of +old; and I want you to help me." + +Elisabeth gasped as Elisha might have gasped when Elijah's mantle fell +upon him. She was as yet too young to beware of false prophets. "I +should love to make people happy," she said; "there seems to be so much +happiness in the world and so few that find it." + +"The Greeks found it; therefore, why should not the English? I mean to +teach them to find it, and I shall begin with your work-people on Whit +Monday." + +"What shall you do?" asked the girl, with intense interest. + +"It is no good taking away old lamps until you are prepared to offer new +ones in their place; therefore I shall not take away the consolations +(so called) of religion until I have shown the people a more excellent +way. I shall first show them nature, and then art--nature to arouse +their highest instincts, and art to express the same; and I am +convinced that after they have once been brought face to face with the +beautiful thus embodied, the old faiths will lose the power to move +them." + +When Whit Monday came round, the throbbing heart of the Osierfield +stopped beating, as it was obliged to stop on a bank-holiday; and the +workmen, with their wives and sweethearts, were taken by Alan Tremaine +in large brakes to Pembruge Castle, which the owner had kindly thrown +open to them, at Alan's request, for the occasion. + +It was a long drive and a wonderfully beautiful one, for the year was at +its best. All the trees had put on their new summer dresses, and never a +pair of them were of the same shade. The hedges were covered with a +wreath of white May-blossom, and seemed like interminable drifts of that +snow in summer which is as good news from a far country; and the roads +were bordered by the feathery hemlock, which covered the face of the +land as with a bridal veil. + +"Isn't the world a beautiful place?" said Elisabeth, with a sigh of +content, to Alan, who was driving her in his mail-phaeton. "I do hope +all the people will see and understand how beautiful it is." + +"They can not help seeing and understanding; beauty such as this is its +own interpreter. Surely such a glimpse of nature as we are now enjoying +does people more good than a hundred prayer-meetings in a stuffy +chapel." + +"Beauty slides into one's soul on a day like this, just as something--I +forget what--slid into the soul of the Ancient Mariner; doesn't it?" + +"Of course it does; and you will find that these people--now that they +are brought face to face with it--will be just as ready to worship +abstract beauty as ever the Greeks were. The fault has not been with the +poor for not having worshipped beauty, but with the rich for not having +shown them sufficient beauty to worship. The rich have tried to choke +them off with religion instead, because it came cheaper and was less +troublesome to produce." + +"Then do you think that the love of beauty will elevate these people +more and make them happier than Christianity has done?" + +"Most assuredly I do. Had our climate been sunnier and the fight for +existence less bitter, I believe that Christianity would have died out +in England years ago; but the worship of sorrow will always have its +attractions for the sorrowful; and the doctrine of renunciation will +never be without its charm for those unfortunate ones to whom poverty +and disease have stood sponsors, and have renounced all life's good +things in their name before ever they saw the light. Man makes his god +in his own image; and thus it comes to pass that while the strong and +joyous Greek adored Zeus on Olympus, the anæmic and neurotic Englishman +worships Christ on Calvary. Do you tell me that if people were happy +they would bow down before a stricken and crucified God? Not they. And I +want to make them so happy that they shall cease to have any desire for +a suffering Deity." + +"Well, you have made them happy enough for to-day, at any rate," said +Elisabeth, as she looked up at him with gratitude and admiration. "I saw +them all when they were starting, and there wasn't one face among them +that hadn't joy written on every feature in capital letters." + +"Then in that case they won't be troubling their minds to-day about +their religion; they will save it for the gloomy days, as we save +narcotics for times of pain. You may depend upon that." + +"I'm not so sure: their religion is more of a reality to them than you +think," Elisabeth replied. + +While Alan was thus, enjoying himself in his own fashion, his guests +were enjoying themselves in theirs; and as they drove through summer's +fairyland, they, too, talked by the way. + +"Eh! but the May-blossom's a pretty sight," exclaimed Caleb Bateson, as +the big wagonettes rolled along the country roads. "I never saw it finer +than it is this year--not in all the years I've lived in Mershire; and +Mershire's the land for May-blossom." + +"It do look pretty," agreed his wife. "I only wish Lucy Ellen was here +to see it; she was always a one for the May-blossom. Why, when she was +ever such a little girl she'd come home carrying branches of it bigger +than herself, till she looked like nothing but a walking May-pole." + +"Poor thing!" said Mrs. Hankey, who happened to be driving in the same +vehicle as the Batesons, "she'll be feeling sad and homesick to see it +all again, I'll be bound." + +Lucy Ellen's mother laughed contentedly. "Folks haven't time to feel +homesick when they've got a husband to look after; he soon takes the +place of May-blossom, bless you!" + +"You're in luck to see all your children married and settled before the +Lord has been pleased to take you," remarked Mrs. Hankey, with envy in +her voice. + +"Well, I'm glad for the two lads to have somebody to look after them, +I'm bound to say; I feel now as they've some one to air their shirts +when I'm not there, for you never can trust a man to look after +himself--never. Men have no sense to know what is good for 'em and what +is bad for 'em, poor things! But Lucy Ellen is a different thing. Of +course I'm pleased for her to have a home of her own, and such nice +furniture as she's got, too, and in such a good circuit; but when your +daughter is married you don't see her as often as you want to, and it is +no good pretending as you do." + +"That's true," agreed Caleb Bateson, with a big sigh; "and I never cease +to miss my little lass." + +"She ain't no little lass now, Mr. Bateson," argued Mrs. Hankey; "Lucy +Ellen must be forty, if she's a day." + +"So she be, Mrs. Hankey--so she be; but she is my little lass to me, all +the same, and always will be. The children never grow up to them as +loves 'em. They are always our children, just as we are always the +Lord's children; and we never leave off a-screening and a-sheltering o' +them, any more than He ever leaves off a-screening and a-sheltering of +us." + +"I'm glad to hear as Lucy Ellen has married into a good circuit. Unless +the Lord build the house we know how they labour in vain that build it; +and the Lord can't do much unless He has a good minister to help Him. I +don't deny as He _may_ work through local preachers; but I like a +regular superintendent myself, with one or more ministers under him." + +"Oh! Lucy Ellen lives in one of the best circuits in the Connexion," +said Mrs. Bateson proudly; "they have an ex-president as superintendent, +and three ministers under him, and a supernumerary as well. They never +hear the same preached more than once a month; it's something grand!" + +"Eh! it's a fine place is Craychester," added Caleb; "they held +Conference there two years ago." + +"It must be a grand thing to live in a place where they hold +Conference," remarked Mrs. Hankey. + +"It is indeed," agreed Mrs. Bateson; "Lucy Ellen said it seemed for all +the world like heaven, to see so many ministers about, all in their +black coats and white neckcloths. And then such preaching as they heard! +It isn't often young folks enjoy such privileges, and so I told her." + +"When all's said and done, there's nothing like a good sermon for giving +folks real pleasure. Nothing in this world comes up to it, and I doubt +if there'll be anything much better in the next," said Caleb; "I don't +see as how there can be." + +His friends all agreed with him, and continued, for the rest of the +drive, to discuss the respective merits of various discourses they had +been privileged to hear. + +It was a glorious day. The sky was blue, with just enough white clouds +flitting about to show how blue the blue part really was; and the +varying shadows kept passing, like the caress of some unseen yet +ever-protecting Hand, over the green nearnesses and the violet distances +of a country whose foundations seemed to be of emerald and amethyst, and +its walls and gateways of pearl. The large company from the Osierfield +drove across the breezy common at the foot of Sedgehill Ridge, and then +plunged into a network of lanes which led them, by sweet and mysterious +ways, to the great highway from the Midlands to the coast of the western +sea. On they went, past the little hamlet where the Danes and the Saxons +fought a great fight more than a thousand years ago, and which is still +called by a strange Saxon name, meaning "the burying-place of the +slain"; and the little hamlet smiled in the summer sunshine, as if with +kindly memories of those old warriors whose warfare had been +accomplished so many centuries ago, and who lie together, beneath the +white blossom, in the arms of the great peacemaker called Death, waiting +for the resurrection morning which that blossom is sent to foretell. On, +between man's walls of gray stone, till they came to God's walls of red +sandstone; and then up a steep hill to another common, where the +sweet-scented gorse made a golden pavement, and where there suddenly +burst upon their sight a view so wide and so wonderful that those who +look upon it with the seeing eye and the understanding heart catch +glimpses of the King in His beauty through the fairness of the land that +is very far off. On past the mossy stone, like an overgrown and +illiterate milestone, which marks the boundary between Mershire and +Salopshire; and then through a typical English village, noteworthy +because the rites of Mayday, with May-queen and May-pole to boot, are +still celebrated there exactly as they were celebrated some three +hundred years ago. At last they came to a picturesque wall and gateway, +built of the red stone which belongs to that part of the country, and +which has a trick of growing so much redder at evening-time that it +looks as if the cold stone were blushing with pleasure at being kissed +Good-night by the sun; and then through a wood sloping on the left side +down to a little stream, which was so busy talking to itself about its +own concerns that it had not time to leap and sparkle for the amusement +of passers-by; until they drew up in front of a quaint old castle, built +of the same stone as the outer walls and gateway. + +The family were away from home, so the whole of the castle was at the +disposal of Alan and his party, and they had permission to go wherever +they liked. The state-rooms were in front of the building and led out +of each other, so that when all the doors were open any one could see +right from one end of the castle to the other. Dinner was to be served +in the large saloon at the back, built over what was once the courtyard; +and while his servants were laying the tables with the cold viands which +they had brought with them, Alan took his guests through the state-rooms +to see the pictures, and endeavoured to carry out his plan of educating +them by pointing out to them some of the finer works of art. + +"This," he said, stopping in front of a portrait, "is a picture of Lady +Mary Wortley-Montagu, who was born here, painted by one of the first +portrait-painters of her day. I want you to look at her hands, and to +notice how exquisitely they are painted. Also I wish to call your +attention to the expression of her face. You know that it is the duty of +art to interpret nature--that is to say, to show to ordinary people +those hidden beauties and underlying meanings of common things which +they would never be able to find out for themselves; and I think that in +the expression on this woman's face the artist has shown forth, in a +most wonderful way, the dissatisfaction and bitterness of her heart. As +you look at her face you seem to see right into her soul, and to +understand how she was foredoomed by nature and temperament to ask too +much of life and to receive too little." + +"Well, to be sure!" remarked Mrs. Bateson, in an undertone, to her lord +and master; "she is a bit like our superintendent's wife, only not so +stout. And what a gown she has got on! I should say that satin is worth +five-and-six a yard if it is worth a penny. And I call it a sin and a +shame to have a dirty green parrot sitting on your shoulder when you're +wearing satin like that. If she'd had any sense she'd have fed the +animals before she put her best gown on." + +"I never could abide parrots," joined in Mrs. Hankey; "they smell so." + +"And as for her looking dissatisfied and all that," continued Mrs. +Bateson, "I for one can't see it. But if she did, it was all a pack of +rubbish. What had she to grumble at, I should like to know, with a satin +gown on at five-and-six a yard?" + +By this time Alan had moved on to another picture. "This represents an +unhappy marriage," he explained. "At first sight you see nothing but two +well-dressed people sitting at table; but as you look into the picture +you perceive the misery in the woman's face and the cruelty in the +man's, and you realize all that they mean." + +"Well, I see nothing more at second sight," whispered Mrs. Hankey; +"except that the tablecloth might have been cleaner. There's another of +your grumbling fine ladies! Now for sure she'd nothing to grumble at, +sitting so grand at table with a glass of sherry-wine to drink." + +"The husband looks a cantankerous chap," remarked Caleb. + +"Poor thing! it's his liver," said Mrs. Bateson, taking up the cudgels +as usual on behalf of the bilious and oppressed. "You can see from his +complexion that he is out of order, and that all that rich dinner will +do him no good. It was his wife's duty to see that he had something +plain to eat, with none of them sauces and fal-lals, instead of playing +the fine lady and making troubles out of nothing. I've no patience with +her!" + +"Still, he do look as if he'd a temper," persisted Mr. Bateson. + +"And if he do, Caleb, what of that? If a man in his own house hasn't the +right to show a bit of temper, I should like to know who has? I've no +patience with the women that will get married and have a man of their +own; and then cry their eyes out because the man isn't an old woman. If +they want meekness and obedience, let 'em remain single and keep lapdogs +and canaries; and leave the husbands for those as can manage 'em and +enjoy 'em, for there ain't enough to go round as it is." And Mrs. +Bateson waxed quite indignant. + +Here Tremaine took up his parable. "This weird figure, clothed in skins, +and feeding upon nothing more satisfying than locusts and wild honey, is +a type of all those who are set apart for the difficult and +unsatisfactory lot of heralds and forerunners. They see the good time +coming, and make ready the way for it, knowing all the while that its +fuller light and wider freedom are not for them; they lead their fellows +to the very borders of the promised land, conscious that their own +graves are already dug in the wilderness. No great social or political +movement has ever been carried on without their aid; and they have never +reaped the benefits of those reforms which they lived and died to +compass. Perhaps there are no sadder sights on the page of history than +those solitary figures, of all nations and all times, who have foretold +the coming of the dawn and yet died before it was yet day."' + +"Did you ever?" exclaimed Mrs. Bateson _sotto voce_; "a grown man like +that, and not to know John the Baptist when he sees him! Forerunners and +heralds indeed! Why, it's John the Baptist as large as life, and those +as don't recognise him ought to be ashamed of theirselves." + +"Lucy Ellen would have known who it was when she was three years old," +said Caleb proudly. + +"And so she ought; I'd have slapped her if she hadn't, and richly she'd +have deserved it." + +"It's a comfort as Mr. Tremaine's mother is in her grave," remarked Mrs. +Hankey, not a whit behind the others as regards shocked sensibilities; +"this would have been a sad day for her if she had been alive." + +"And it would!" agreed Mrs. Bateson warmly. "I know if one of my +children hadn't known John the Baptist by sight, I should have been that +ashamed I should never have held up my head again in this world--never!" + +Mr. Bateson endeavoured to take a charitable view of the situation. "I +expect as the poor lad's schooling was neglected through having lost his +parents; and there's some things as you never seem to master at all +except you master 'em when you're young--the Books of the Bible being +one of them." + +"My lads could say the Books of the Bible through, without stopping to +take breath, when they were six, and Lucy Ellen when she was five and a +half." + +"Well, then, Kezia, you should be all the more ready to take pity on +them poor orphans as haven't had the advantages as our children have +had." + +"So I am, Caleb; and if it had been one of the minor prophets I +shouldn't have said a word--I can't always tell Jonah myself unless +there's a whale somewhere at the back; but John the Baptist----!" + +When the inspection of the pictures had been accomplished, the company +sat down to dinner in the large saloon; and Alan was slightly +disconcerted when they opened the proceedings by singing, at the top of +their voices, "Be present at our table, Lord." Elisabeth, on seeing the +expression of his face, sorely wanted to laugh; but she stifled this +desire, as she had learned by experience that humour was not one of +Alan's strong points. Now Christopher could generally see when a thing +was funny, even when the joke was at his own expense; but Alan took life +more seriously, which--as Elisabeth assured herself--showed what a much +more earnest man than Christopher he was, in spite of his less orthodox +opinions. So she made up her mind that she would not catch Christopher's +eye on the present occasion, as she usually did when anything amused +her, because it was cruel to laugh at the frustration of poor Alan's +high-flown plans; and then naturally she looked straight at the spot +where Chris was presiding over a table, and returned his smile of +perfect comprehension. It was one of Elisabeth's peculiarities that she +invariably did the thing which she had definitely made up her mind not +to do. + +After dinner the party broke up and wandered about, in small +detachments, over the park and through the woods and by the mere, until +it was tea-time. Alan spent most of his afternoon in explaining to +Elisabeth the more excellent ways whereby the poor may be enabled to +share the pleasures of the rich; and Christopher spent most of his in +carrying Johnnie Stubbs to the mere and taking him for a row, and so +helping the crippled youth to forget for a short time that he was not as +other men are, and that it was out of pity that he, who never worked, +had been permitted to take the holiday which he could not earn. + +After tea Alan and Elisabeth were standing on the steps leading from the +saloon to the garden. + +"What a magnificent fellow that is!" exclaimed Alan, pointing to the +huge figure of Caleb Bateson, who was talking to Jemima Stubbs on the +far side of the lawn. Caleb certainly justified this admiration, for he +was a fine specimen of a Mershire puddler--and there is no finer race of +men to be found anywhere than the puddlers of Mershire. + +Elisabeth's eyes twinkled. "That is one of your anæmic and neurotic +Christians," she remarked demurely. + +Displeasure settled on Alan's brow; he greatly objected to Elisabeth's +habit of making fun of things, and had tried his best to cure her of it. +To a great extent he had succeeded (for the time being); but even yet +the cloven foot of Elisabeth's levity now and then showed itself, much +to his regret. + +"Exceptions do not disprove rules," he replied coldly. "Moreover, +Bateson is probably religious rather from the force of convention than +of conviction." Tremaine never failed to enjoy his own rounded +sentences, and this one pleased him so much that it almost succeeded in +dispelling the cloud which Elisabeth's ill-timed gibe had created. + +"He is a class-leader and a local preacher," she added. + +"Those terms convey no meaning to my mind." + +"Don't they? Well, they mean that Caleb not only loyally supports the +government of Providence, but is prepared to take office under it," +Elisabeth explained. + +Alan never quarrelled with people; he always reproved them. "You make a +great mistake--and an extremely feminine one--Miss Farringdon, in +invariably deducting general rules from individual instances. Believe +me, this is a most illogical form of reasoning, and leads to erroneous, +and sometimes dangerous, conclusions." + +Elisabeth tossed her head; she did not like to be reproved, even by Alan +Tremaine. "My conclusions are nearly always correct, anyhow," she +retorted; "and if you get to the right place, I don't see that it +matters how you go there. I never bother my head about the 'rolling +stock' or the 'permanent way' of my intuitions; I know they'll bring me +to the right conclusion, and I leave them to work out their Bradshaw for +themselves." + +In the meantime Jemima Stubbs was pouring out a recital of her +grievances into the ever-sympathetic ear of Caleb Bateson. + +"You don't seem to be enjoying yourself, my lass," he had said in his +cheery voice, laying a big hand in tender caress upon the girl's narrow +shoulders. + +"And how should I, Mr. Bateson, not having a beau nor nobody to talk +to?" she replied in her quavering treble. "What with havin' first mother +to nurse when I was a little gell, and then havin' Johnnie to look +after, I've never had time to make myself look pretty and to get a beau, +like other gells. And now I'm too old for that sort of thing, and yet +I've never had my chance, as you may say." + +"Poor lass! It's a hard life as you've had, and no mistake." + +"That it is, Mr. Bateson. Men wants gells as look pretty and make 'em +laugh; they don't care for the dull, dowdy ones, such as me; and yet how +can a gell be light-hearted and gay, I should like to know, when it's +work, work, work, all the day, and nurse, nurse, nurse, all the night? +Yet the men don't make no allowance for that--not they. They just see as +a gell is plain and stupid, and then they has nothing more to do with +her, and she can go to Jericho for all they cares." + +"You've had a hard time of it, my lass," repeated Bateson, in his full, +deep voice. + +"Right you are, Mr. Bateson; and it's made my hair gray, and my face all +wrinkles, and my hands a sight o' roughness and ugliness, till I'm a +regular old woman and a fright at that. And I'm but thirty-five now, +though no one 'ud believe it to look at me." + +"Thirty-five, are you? B'ain't you more than that, Jemima, for surely +you look more?" + +"I know I does, but I ain't; and lots o' women--them as has had easy +times and their way made smooth for them--look little more than gells +when they are thirty-five; and the men run after 'em as fast as if they +was only twenty. But I'm an old woman, I am, and I've never had time to +be a young one, and I've never had a beau nor nothing." + +"It seems now, Jemima, as if the Lord was dealing a bit hard with you; +but never you fret yourself; He'll explain it all and make it all up to +you in His own good time." + +"I only hope He may, Mr. Bateson." + +"My lass, do you remember how Saint Paul said, 'From henceforth let no +man trouble me, for I bear in my body the marks of the Lord Jesus'? Now +it seems to me that all the gray hairs and the wrinkles and the +roughness that come to us when we are working for others and doing our +duty, are nothing more nor less than the marks of the Lord Jesus." + +"That's a comfortin' view of the matter, I don't deny." + +"There are lots o' men in this world, Jemima, and still more women, who +grow old before their time working for other people; and I take it that +when folks talk o' their wrinkles, the Lord says, 'My Name shall be in +their foreheads'; and when folks talk o' their gray hairs, He says, +'They shall walk with Me in white: for they are worthy.' And why do we +mark the things that belong to us? Why, so as we can know 'em again and +can claim 'em as our own afore the whole world. And that's just why the +Lord marks us: so as all the world shall know as we are His, and so as +no man shall ever pluck us out of His Hand." + +Jemima looked gratefully up at the kindly prophet who was trying to +comfort her. "Law! Mr. Bateson, that's a consolin' way of looking at +things, and I only hope as you're right. But all the same, I'd have +liked to have had a beau of my own just for onst, like other gells. I +dessay it's very wicked o' me to feel like this, and it's enough to make +the Lord angry with me; but it don't seem to me as there's anything in +religion that quite makes up for never havin' had a beau o' your own." + +"The Lord won't be angry with you, my lass; don't you fear. He made +women and He understands 'em, and He ain't the one to blame 'em for +being as He Himself made 'em. Remember the Book says, 'as one whom his +mother comforteth'; and I hold that means as He understands women and +their troubles better than the kindest father ever could. And He won't +let His children give up things for His sake without paying them back +some thirty, some sixty, and some an hundred fold; and don't you ever +get thinking that He will." + +"As Jemima says, yours is a comfortable doctrine, Bateson, but I am +afraid you have no real foundation for your consoling belief," exclaimed +Alan Tremaine, coming up and interrupting the conversation. + +"Eh! but I have, sir, saving your presence; I know in Whom I have +believed; and what a man has once known for certain, he can never not +know again as long as he lives." + +"But Christianity is a myth, a fable. You may imagine and pretend that +it is true, but you can not know that it is." + +"But I do know, sir, begging your pardon, as well as I know you are +standing here and the sun is shining over yonder." + +Alan smiled rather scornfully: how credulous were the lower classes, he +thought in his pride of intellectual superiority. "I do not understand +how you can know a thing that has never been proved," he said. + +The giant turned and looked on his fragile frame with eyes full of a +great pity. "You do not understand, you say, sir that's just it; and I +am too foolish and ignorant to be able to explain things rightly to a +gentleman like you; but the Lord will explain it to you when He thinks +fit. You are young yet, sir, and the way stretches long before you, and +the mysteries of God are hidden from your eyes. But when you have loved +and cherished a woman as your own flesh, and when you have had little +children clinging round your knees, you'll understand rightly enough +then without needing any man to teach you." + +"My good man, do you suppose a wife and children would teach me more +than the collected wisdom of the ages?" + +"A sight more, Mr. Tremaine--a sight more. Folks don't learn the best +things from books, sir. Why, when the Lord Himself wrote the law on +tables of stone, they got broken; but when He writes it on the fleshly +tables of our hearts, it lives forever. And His Handwriting is the love +we bear for our fellow-creatures, and--through them--for Him; at least, +so it seems to me." + +"That is pure imagination and sentiment, Bateson. Very pretty and +poetic, no doubt; but it won't hold water." + +Caleb smiled indulgently. "Wait till you've got a little lass of your +own, like my Lucy Ellen, sir. Not that you'll ever have one quite as +good as her, bless her! for her equal never has been seen in this world, +and never will. But when you've got a little lass of your own, and know +as you'd be tortured to death quite cheerful-like just to save her a +minute's pain, you'll laugh at all the nonsense that's written in books, +and feel you know a sight better than all of 'em put together." + +"I don't quite see why." + +"Well, you see, sir, it's like this. When the dove came back to the ark +with the olive leaf in her mouth, Noah didn't begin sayin' how wonderful +it was for a leaf to have grown out of nothing all of a sudden, as some +folks are so fond of saying. Not he; he'd too much sense. He says to his +sons, 'Look here: a leaf here means a tree somewhere, and the sooner we +make for that tree the better!' And so it is with us. When we feel that +all at onst there's somebody that matters more to us than ourselves, we +know that this wonderful feelin' hasn't sprung out of the selfishness +that filled our hearts before, but is just a leaf off a great Tree +which is a shadow and resting-place for the whole world." + +Tremaine looked thoughtful; Caleb's childlike faith and extensive +vocabulary were alike puzzles to him. He did not understand that in +homes--however simple--where the Bible is studied until it becomes as +household words, the children are accustomed to a "well of English +undefiled"; and so, unconsciously, mould their style upon and borrow +their expressions from the Book which, even when taken only from a +literary standpoint, is the finest Book ever read by man. + +After a minute's silence he said: "I have been wondering whether it +really is any pleasure to the poor to see the homes of the rich, or +whether it only makes them dissatisfied. Now, what do you think, +Bateson?" + +"Well, sir, if it makes 'em dissatisfied it didn't ought to." + +"Perhaps not. Still, I have a good deal of sympathy with socialism +myself; and I know I should feel it very hard if I were poor, while +other men, not a whit better and probably worse than myself, were rich." + +"And so it would be hard, sir, if this was the end of everything, and it +was all haphazard, as it were; so hard that no sensible man could see it +without going clean off his head altogether. But when you rightly +understand as it's all the Master's doing, and that He knows what He's +about a sight better than we could teach Him, it makes a wonderful +difference. Whether we're rich or poor, happy or sorrowful, is His +business and He can attend to that; but whether we serve Him rightly in +the place where He has put us, is our business, and it'll take us all +our time to look after it without trying to do His work as well." + +Tremaine merely smiled, and Bateson went on-- + +"You see, sir, there's work in the world of all kinds for all sorts; and +whether they be lords and ladies, or just poor folks like we, they've +got to do the work that the Lord has set them to do, and not to go +hankering after each other's. Why, Mr. Tremaine, if at our place the +puddlers wanted to do the work of the shinglers, and the shinglers +wanted to do the work of the rollers, and the rollers wanted to do the +work of the masters, the Osierfield wouldn't be for long the biggest +ironworks in Mershire. Not it! You have to use your common sense in +religion as in everything else." + +"You think that religion is the only thing to make people contented and +happy? So do I; but I don't think that the religion to do this +effectually is Christianity." + +"No more do I, sir; that's where you make a mistake, begging your +pardon; you go confusing principles with persons. It isn't my love for +my wife that lights the fire and cooks the dinner and makes my little +home like heaven to me--it's my wife herself; it wasn't my children's +faith in their daddy that fed 'em and clothed 'em when they were too +little to work for themselves--it was me myself; and it isn't the +religion of Christ that keeps us straight in this world and makes us +ready for the next--it is Christ Himself." + +Thus the rich man and the poor man talked together, moving along +parallel lines, neither understanding, and each looking down upon the +other--Alan with the scornful pity of the scholar who has delved in the +dust of dreary negatives which generations of doubters have gradually +heaped up; and Caleb with the pitiful scorn of one who has been into the +sanctuary of God, and so learned to understand the end of these men. + +Late that night, when all the merrymakers had gone to their homes, +Tremaine sat smoking in the moonlight on the terrace of the Moat House. + +"It is strange," he said to himself, "what a hold the Christian myth has +taken upon the minds of the English people, and especially of the +working classes. I can see how its pathos might appeal to those whose +health was spoiled and whose physique was stunted by poverty and misery; +but it puzzles me to find a magnificent giant such as Bateson, a man too +strong to have nerves and too healthy to have delusions, as thoroughly +imbued with its traditions as any one. I fail to understand the secret +of its power." + +At that very moment Caleb was closing the day, as was his custom, with +family prayer, and his prayer ran thus-- + +"We beseech Thee, O Lord, look kindly upon the stranger who has this day +shown such favour unto Thy servants; pay back all that he has given us +sevenfold into his bosom. He is very young, Lord, and very ignorant and +very foolish; his eyes are holden so that he can not see the operations +of Thy Hands; but he is not very far from Thy Kingdom. Lead him, +Heavenly Father, in the way that he should go; open his eyes that he may +behold the hidden things of Thy Law; look upon him and love him, as Thou +didst aforetime another young man who had great possessions. Lord, tell +him that this earth is only Thy footstool; show him that the beauty he +sees all around him is the hem of Thy garment; and teach him that the +wisdom of this world is but foolishness with Thee. And this we beg, O +Lord, for Christ's sake. Amen." + +Thus Caleb prayed, and Alan could not hear him, and could not have +understood him even if he had heard. + +But there was One who heard, and understood. + + + + +CHAPTER VII + +BROADER VIEWS + + He proved that Man is nothing more + Than educated sod, + Forgetting that the schoolmen's lore + Is foolishness with God. + + +"Do you know what I mean to do as soon as Cousin Maria will let me?" +Elisabeth asked of Christopher, as the two were walking together--as +they walked not unfrequently--in Badgering Woods. + +"No; please tell me." + +"I mean to go up to the Slade School, and study there, and learn to be a +great artist." + +"It is sometimes a difficult lesson to learn to be great." + +"Nevertheless, I mean to learn it." The possibility of failure never +occurred to Elisabeth. "There is so much I want to teach the world, and +I feel I can only do it through my pictures; and I want to begin at +once, for fear I shouldn't get it all in before I die. There is plenty +of time, of course; I'm only twenty-one now, so that gives me forty-nine +years at the least; but forty-nine years will be none too much in which +to teach the world all that I want to teach it." + +"And what time shall you reserve for learning all that the world has to +teach you?" + +"I never thought of that. I'm afraid I sha'n't have much time for +learning." + +"Then I am afraid you won't do much good by teaching." + +Elisabeth laughed in all the arrogance of youth. "Yes, I shall; the +things you teach best are the things you know, and not the things you +have learned." + +"I am not so sure of that." + +"Surely genius does greater things than culture." + +"I grant you that culture without genius does no great things; neither, +I think, does genius without culture. Untrained genius is a terrible +waste of power. So many people seem to think that if they have a spark +of genius they can do without culture; while really it is because they +have a spark of genius that they ought to be, and are worthy to be, +cultivated to the highest point." + +"Well, anyway--culture or no culture--I mean to set the Thames on fire +some day." + +"You do, do you? Well, it is a laudable and not uncommon ambition." + +"Yes, I do; and you mustn't look so doubtful on the subject, as it isn't +pretty manners." + +"Did I look doubtful? I'm very sorry." + +"Horribly so. I know exactly what you will do, you are so shockingly +matter-of-fact. First you will prove to a demonstration that it is +utterly impossible for such an inferior being as a woman to set the +Thames on fire at all. Then--when I've done it and London is +illuminated--you will write to the papers to show that the 'flash-point' +of the river is decidedly too low, or else such an unlooked-for +catastrophe could never have occurred. Then you will get the Government +to take the matter up, and to bring a charge of arson against the New +Woman. And, finally, you will have notices put up all along the banks +from Goring to Greenwich, 'Ladies are requested not to bring +inflammatory articles near the river; the right of setting the Thames on +fire is now--as formerly--reserved specially for men.' And then you will +try to set it on fire yourself." + +"A most characteristic programme, I must confess. But now tell me; when +you have set your Thames on fire, and covered yourself with laurels, and +generally turned the world upside down, sha'n't you allow some humble +and devoted beggarman to share your kingdom with you? You might find it +a little dull alone in your glory, as you are such a sociable person." + +"Well, if I do, of course I shall let some nice man share it with me." + +"I see. You will stoop from your solitary splendour and say to the +devoted beggarman, 'Allow me to offer you the post of King Consort; it +is a mere sinecure, and confers only the semblance and not the reality +of power; but I hope you will accept it, as I have nothing better to +give you, and if you are submissive and obedient I will make you as +comfortable as I can under the circumstances.'" + +"Good gracious! I hope I am too wise ever to talk to a man in that way. +No, no, Chris; I shall find some nice man, who has seen through me all +the time and who hasn't been taken in by me, as the world has; and I +shall say to him, 'By the way, here is a small fire and a few laurel +leaves; please warm your hands at the one and wear the others in your +button-hole.' That is the proper way in which a woman should treat +fame--merely as a decoration for the man whom she has chosen." + +"O noble judge! O excellent young woman!" exclaimed Christopher. "But +what are some of the wonderful things which you are so anxious to +teach?" + +Elisabeth's mood changed at once, and her face grew serious. "I want to +teach people that they were sent into the world to be happy, and not to +be miserable; and that there is no virtue in turning their backs to the +sunshine and choosing to walk in the shade. I want to teach people that +the world is beautiful, and that it is only a superficial view that +finds it common and unclean. I want to teach people that human nature is +good and not evil, and that life is a glorious battlefield and not a +sordid struggle. In short, I want to teach people the dignity of +themselves; and there is no grander lesson." + +"Except, perhaps, the unworthiness of themselves," suggested +Christopher. + +"No, no, Chris; you are wrong to be so hard and cynical. Can't you +understand how I am longing to help the men and women I see around me, +who are dying for want of joy and beauty in their lives? It is the old +struggle between Hellenism and Hebraism--between happiness and +righteousness. We are sorely in need, here in England to-day, of the +Greek spirit of Pantheism, which found God in life and art and nature, +'as well as in sorrow and renunciation and death." + +"But it is in sorrow and renunciation and death that we need Him; and +you, who have always had everything you want, can not understand this: +no more could the Pagans and the Royalists; but the early Christians and +the persecuted Puritans could." + +"Puritanism has much to answer for in England," said Elisabeth; "we have +to thank Puritanism for teaching men that only by hurting themselves can +they please their Maker, and that God has given them tastes and hopes +and desires merely in order to mortify the same. And it is all +false--utterly false. The God of the Pagan is surely a more merciful +Being than the God of the Puritan." + +"A more indulgent Being, perhaps, but not necessarily a more merciful +one, Elisabeth. I disagree with the Puritans on many points, but I can +not help admitting that their conception of God was a fine one, even +though it erred on the side of severity. The Pagan converted the Godhead +into flesh, remember; but the Puritan exalted manhood into God." + +"Still, I never could bear the Puritans," Elisabeth went on; "they +turned the England of Queen Elizabeth--the most glorious England the +world has ever known--into one enormous Nonconformist Conscience; and +England has never been perfectly normal since. Besides, they discovered +that nature, and art, and human affection, which are really revelations +of God, were actually sins against Him. As I said before, I can never +forgive the Puritans for eradicating the beauty from holiness, and for +giving man the spirit of heaviness in place of the garment of praise." + +"I wonder if Paganism helped you much when you were poor and ill and +unhappy, and things in general had gone wrong with you. I daresay it was +very nice for the cheerful, prosperous people; but how about those who +had never got what they wanted out of life, and were never likely to get +it?" Christopher, like other people, looked at most matters from his own +individual standpoint; and his own individual standpoint was not at all +a comfortable spot just then. + +"The Greeks suffered and died as did the Jews and the Christians," +replied Elisabeth, "yet they were a joyous and light-hearted race. It is +not sorrow that saddens the world, but rather modern Christianity's +idealization of sorrow. I do not believe we should be half as miserable +as we are if we did not believe that there is virtue in misery, and that +by disowning our mercies and discarding our blessings we are currying +favour in the eyes of the Being, Who, nevertheless, has showered those +mercies and those blessings upon us." + +Thus had Alan Tremaine's influence gradually unmoored Elisabeth from the +old faiths in which she had been brought up; and he had done it so +gradually that the girl was quite unconscious of how far she had drifted +from her former anchorage. He was too well-bred ever to be blatant in +his unbelief--he would as soon have thought of attacking a man's family +to his face as of attacking his creed; but subtly and with infinite tact +he endeavoured to prove that to adapt ancient revelations to modern +requirements was merely putting new wine into old bottles and mending +old garments with new cloth; and Elisabeth was as yet too young and +inexperienced to see any fallacy in his carefully prepared arguments. + +She had nobody to help her to resist him, poor child! and she was +dazzled with the consciousness of intellectual power which his attitude +of mind appeared to take for granted. Miss Farringdon was cast in too +stern a mould to have any sympathy or patience with the blind gropings +of an undisciplined young soul; and Christopher--who generally +understood and sympathized with all Elisabeth's difficulties and +phases--was so jealous of her obvious attachment to Tremaine, and so +unhappy on account of it, that for the time being the faithful friend +was entirely swallowed up in the irate lover, sighing like one of the +Osierfield furnaces. Of course this was very unfair and tiresome of +him--nobody could deny that; but it is sometimes trying to the +amiability of even the best of men to realize that the purely mundane +and undeserved accident of want of money can shut them off entirely from +ever attaining to the best kind of happiness whereof their natures are +capable--and especially when they know that their natures are capable of +attaining and appreciating a very high standard of happiness indeed. It +may not be right to be unsociable because one is unhappy, but it is very +human and most particularly masculine; and Christopher just then was +both miserable and a man. + +There was much about Alan that was very attractive to Elisabeth: he +possessed a certain subtlety of thought and an almost feminine quickness +of perception which appealed powerfully to her imagination. Imagination +was Elisabeth's weak, as well as her strong, point. She was incapable of +seeing people as they really were; but erected a purely imaginary +edifice of character on the foundations of such attributes as her rapid +intuition either rightly or wrongly perceived them to possess. As a +rule, she thought better of her friends than they deserved--or, at any +rate, she recognised in them that ideal which they were capable of +attaining, but whereto they sometimes failed to attain. + +Life is apt to be a little hard on the women of Elisabeth's type, who +idealize their fellows until the latter lose all semblance of reality; +for experience, with its inevitable disillusionment, can not fail to put +their ideal lovers and friends far from them, and to hide their +etherealized acquaintances out of their sight; and to give instead, to +the fond, trusting souls, half-hearted lovers, semi-sincere friends, and +acquaintances who care for them only as the world can care. Poor +imaginative women--who dreamed that you had found a perfect knight and a +faithful friend, and then discovered that these were only an ordinary +selfish man and woman after all--life has many more such surprises in +store for you; and the surprises will shock you less and hurt you more +as the years roll on! But though life will have its surprises for you, +death perchance will have none; for when the secrets of all hearts are +opened, and all thwarted desires are made known, it may be that the +ordinary selfish man and woman will stand forth as the perfect knight +and faithful friend that God intended them, and you believed them, and +they tried yet failed to be; and you will be satisfied at last when you +see your beloved ones wake up after His likeness, and will smile as you +say to them, "So it is really you after all." + +Although Tremaine might be lacking in his duty toward God, he fulfilled +(in the spirit if not in the letter) his duty toward his neighbour; and +Elisabeth was fairly dazzled by his many schemes for making life easier +and happier to the people who dwelt in the darkness of the Black +Country. + +It was while he was thus figuring as her ideal hero that Elisabeth went +to stay with Felicia Herbert, near a manufacturing town in Yorkshire. +Felicia had been once or twice to the Willows, and was well acquainted +with the physical and biographical characteristics of the place; and she +cherished a profound admiration both for Miss Farringdon and Christopher +Thornley. Tremaine she had never met--he had been abroad each time that +she had visited Sedgehill--but she disapproved most heartily of his +influence upon Elisabeth, and of his views as set forth by that young +lady. Felicia had been brought up along extremely strict lines, and in a +spirit of comfortable intolerance of all forms of religion not +absolutely identical with her own; consequently, a man with no form of +religion at all was to her a very terrible monster indeed. On the +Sundays of her early youth she had perused a story treating of an +Unbeliever (always spelled with a capital U), and the punishments that +were meted out to the daughter of light who was unequally yoked with +him; and she was imbued with a strong conviction that these same +punishments were destined to fall upon Elisabeth's head, should +Elisabeth incline favourably to the (at present) hypothetical suit of +the master of the Moat House. Thus it happened that when Elisabeth came +to the Herberts', full of girlish admiration for Alan Tremaine, Felicia +did her best to ripen that admiration into love by abusing Alan in and +out of season, and by endeavouring to prove that an attachment to him +would be a soul-destroyer of the most irreparable completeness. + +"It is no use talking to me about his goodness," she said; "nobody is +good who isn't a Christian." + +"But he is good," persisted Elisabeth--"most tremendously good. The poor +people simply adore him, he does such a lot for them; and he couldn't +have lovelier thoughts and higher ideals if he were a girl instead of a +man. There must be different ways of goodness, Felicia." + +"There are not different ways of goodness; mamma says there are not, and +it is very wicked to believe that there are. I am afraid you are not +half as religious as you were at Fox How." + +"Yes, I am; but I have learned that true religion is a state of mind +rather than a code of dogmas." + +Felicia looked uncomfortable. "I wish you wouldn't talk like that; I am +sure mamma wouldn't like it--she can not bear anything that borders on +the profane." + +"I am not bordering on the profane; I am only saying what I uphold is +true. I can not take things for granted as you do; I have to think them +out for myself; and I have come to the conclusion that what a man is is +of far more importance than what a man believes." + +"But you ought not to think things like that, Elisabeth; it isn't right +to do so." + +"I can't help thinking it. I am an independent being with a mind of my +own, and I must make up that mind according to what I see going on +around me. What on earth is the good of having an intellect, if you +submit that intellect to the will of another? I wonder how you can take +your ideas all ready-made from your mother," exclaimed Elisabeth, who +just then was taking all hers ready-made from Alan Tremaine. + +"Well, I can not argue. I am not clever enough; and, besides, mamma +doesn't like us to argue upon religious subjects--she says it is +unsettling; so I will only say that I know you are wrong, and then we +will let the matter drop and talk about Christopher. How is he?" + +"Oh, he is all right, only very horrid. To tell you the truth, I am +getting to dislike Christopher." + +"Elisabeth!" Felicia's Madonna-like face became quite sorrowful. + +"Well, I am; and so would you, if he was as stand-off to you as he is to +me. I can't think what is wrong with him; but whatever I do, and however +nice I try to be to him, the North Pole is warm and neighbourly compared +with him. I'm sick of him and his unsociable ways!" + +"But you and he used to be such friends." + +"I know that; and I would be friends now if he would let me. But how can +you be friends with a man who is as reserved as the Great Pyramid and as +uncommunicative as the Sphinx, and who sticks up iron palings all round +himself, like a specimen tree in the park, so that nobody can get near +him? If a man wants a girl to like him he should be nice to her, and not +require an introduction every time they meet." + +Felicia sighed: her sweet, placid nature was apt to be overpowered by +Elisabeth's rapid changes of front. "But he used to be so fond of you," +she expostulated feebly. + +Elisabeth shrugged her shoulders. "Oh, I suppose he likes me now, in his +cold, self-satisfied way: it isn't that. What I complain of is that he +doesn't admire me enough, and I do so love to be admired." + +"Do you mean he doesn't think you are pretty?" Felicia always had to +have things fully explained to her; excess of imagination could never +lead her astray, whatever it might do to her friend. + +"Of course not; I don't see how he could, considering that I'm not: +women don't expect men to admire them for things that they don't +possess," replied Elisabeth, who had still much to learn. "What I mean +is he doesn't realize how clever I am--he despises me just as he used to +despise me when I was a little girl and he was a big boy--and that is +awfully riling when you know you are clever." + +"Is it? I would much rather a man liked me than thought I was clever." + +"I wouldn't; anybody can like you, but it takes a clever person to +appreciate cleverness. I have studied myself thoroughly, and I have +come to the conclusion that I need appreciation far more than affection: +I'm made like that." + +"I don't understand you. To me affection is everything, and I can not +live without it. If people are really fond of me, they can think me as +stupid as they like." + +Elisabeth's face grew thoughtful; she was always interested in the +analysis of herself and her friends. "How different we two are! I +couldn't forgive a person for thinking me stupid, even if I knew that +person adored me. To me no amount of affection would make up for the +lack of appreciation. I want to be understood as well as liked, and that +is where Christopher and I come across each other; he never understands +me in the least. Now that is why Mr. Tremaine and I get on so well +together; he understands and appreciates me so thoroughly." + +Felicia's pretty month fell into stern lines of disapproval. "I am sure +I should hate Mr. Tremaine if I knew him," she said. + +"Oh, no, you wouldn't--you simply couldn't, Felicia, he is so +delightful. And, what is more, he is so frightfully interesting: +whatever he says and does, he always makes you think about him. Now, +however fond you were of Chris--and he really is very good and kind in +some ways--you could never think about him: it would be such dreadfully +uninteresting thinking, if you did." + +"I don't know about that; Christopher is very comfortable and homelike, +somehow," replied Felicia. + +"So are rice-puddings and flannel petticoats, but you don't occupy your +most exalted moments in meditating upon them." + +"Do you know, Elisabeth, I sometimes think that Christopher is in love +with you." Unlike Elisabeth, Felicia never saw what did not exist, and +therefore was able sometimes to perceive what did. + +"Good gracious, what an idea! He'd simply roar with laughter at the mere +thought of such a thing! Why, Christopher isn't capable of falling in +love with anybody; he hasn't got it in him, he is so frightfully +matter-of-fact." + +Felicia looked dubious. "Then don't you think he will ever marry?" + +"Oh, yes, he'll marry fast enough--a sweet, domestic woman, who plays +the piano and does crochet-work; and he will talk to her about the price +of iron and the integrity of the empire, and will think that he is +making love, and she will think so too. And they will both of them go +down to their graves without ever finding out that the life is more than +meat or the body than raiment." + +Elisabeth was very hard on Christopher just then, and nothing that +Felicia could say succeeded in softening her. Women are apt to be hard +when they are quite young--and sometimes even later. + +Felicia Herbert was the eldest of a large family. Her parents, though +well-to-do, were not rich; and it was the dream of Mrs. Herbert's life +that her daughter's beauty should bring about a great match. She was a +good woman according to her lights, and a most excellent wife and +mother; but if she had a weakness--and who (except, of course, one's +self) is without one?--that weakness was social ambition. + +"You will understand, my dear," she said confidentially to Elisabeth, +"that it would be the greatest comfort to Mr. Herbert and myself to see +Felicia married to a God-fearing man; and, of course, if he kept his +own carriage as well we should be all the better satisfied." + +"I don't think that money really makes people happy," replied Elisabeth, +strong in the unworldliness of those who have never known what it is to +do without anything that money can buy. + +"Of course not, my dear--of course not; nothing but religion can bring +true happiness. Whenever I am tempted to be anxious about my children's +future, I always check myself by saying, 'The Lord will provide; though +I can not sometimes help hoping that the provision will be an ample one +as far as Felicia is concerned, because she is so extremely +nice-looking." + +"She is perfectly lovely!" exclaimed Elisabeth enthusiastically; "and +she gets lovelier and lovelier every time I see her. If I were to change +places with all the rich men in the world, I should never do anything +but keep on marrying Felicia." + +"Still, she could only marry one of you, my dear. But, between +ourselves, I just want to ask you a few questions about a Mr. Thornley +whom Felicia met at your house. I fancied she was a wee bit interested +in him." + +"Interested in Chris! Oh! she couldn't possibly be. No girl could be +interested in Christopher in that way." + +"Why not, my dear? Is he so unusually plain?" + +"Oh! no; he is very good-looking; but he has a good head for figures and +a poor eye for faces. In short, he is a sensible man, and girls don't +fall in love with sensible men." + +"I think you are mistaken there; I do indeed. I have known many +instances of women becoming sincerely attached to sensible men." + +"You don't know how overpoweringly sensible Christopher is. He is so +wise that he never makes a joke unless it has some point in it." + +"There is no harm in that, my dear. I never see the point of a joke +myself, I admit; but I like to know that there is one." + +"And when he goes for a walk with a girl, he never talks nonsense to +her," continued Elisabeth, "but treats her exactly as if she were his +maiden aunt." + +"But why should he talk nonsense to her? It is a great waste of time to +talk nonsense; I am not sure that it is not even a sin. Is Mr. Thornley +well off?" + +"No. His uncle, Mr. Smallwood, is the general manager of our works; and +Christopher has only his salary as sub-manager, and what his uncle may +leave him. His mother was Mr. Smallwood's sister, and married a +ne'er-do-weel-who left her penniless; at least, that is to say, if he +ever had a mother--which I sometimes doubt, as he understands women so +little." + +"Still, I think we can take that for granted," said Mrs. Herbert, +smiling with pride at having seen Elisabeth's little joke, and feeling +quite a wit herself in consequence. One of the secrets of Elisabeth's +popularity was that she had a knack of impressing the people with whom +she talked, not so much with a sense of her cleverness as with a sense +of their own. She not only talked well herself, she made other people +talk well also--a far more excellent gift. + +"So," she went on, "if his uncle hadn't adopted him, I suppose Chris +would have starved to death when he was a child; and that would have +been extremely unpleasant for him, poor boy!" + +"Ah! that would have been terrible, my dear!" exclaimed Mrs. Herbert, so +full of pity for Christopher that she was willing to give him anything +short of her firstborn. She was really a kind-hearted woman. + +Elisabeth looked out of the window at the group of stunted shrubs with +black-edged leaves which entitled Felicia's home to be called Wood Glen. +"There is one thing to be said in favour of starvation," she said +solemnly, "it would keep one from getting stout, and stoutness is the +cruellest curse of all. I'd rather be dead than stout any day." + +"My dear child, you are talking nonsense. What would be the advantage of +being thin if you were not alive?" + +"When you come to that, what would be the advantage of being alive if +you weren't thin?" retorted Elisabeth. + +"The two cases are not parallel, my dear; you see you couldn't be thin +without being alive, but you could be alive without being thin." + +"It is possible; I have come across such cases myself, but I devoutly +trust mine may never be one of them. As the hymn says, I shall always be +'content to fill a little space.'" + +"Ah! but I think the hymn doesn't mean it quite in that sense. I believe +the hymn refers rather to the greatness of one's attainments and +possessions than to one's personal bulk." + +Elisabeth opened her eyes wide with an expression of childlike +simplicity. "Do you really think so?" + +"I do, my dear. You know one must not take poetry too literally; verse +writers are allowed what is termed 'poetic license,' and are rarely, if +ever, quite accurate in their statements. I suppose it would be too +difficult for anybody to get both the truth and the rhyme to fit in, and +so the truth has to be somewhat adapted. But about Mr. Thornley, my +love; you don't think that he and Felicia are at all interested in one +another?" + +"Good gracious, no! I'm sure they are not. If they had been, I should +have spotted it and talked about it ages ago." + +"I hope you are not given to talk about such things, even if you do +perceive them," said Mrs. Herbert, with reproof in her tone; "talking +scandal is a sad habit." + +"But it isn't scandal to say that a man is in love with a woman--in +fact, it is the very opposite. It is much worse scandal never to talk +about a woman in that way, because that means that you think she is +either too old or too ugly to have a lover, and that is the worst +scandal of all. I always feel immensely tickled when I hear women +pluming themselves on the fact that they never get talked about; and I +long to say to them, 'There is nothing to be proud of in that, my dears; +it only means that the world is tacitly calling you stupid old frights.' +Why, I'd rather people found fault with me than did not talk about me at +all." + +"Then I am afraid you are not 'content to fill a little space,'" said +Mrs. Herbert severely. + +"To tell you the truth I don't think I am," replied Elisabeth, with +engaging frankness; "conceit is my besetting sin and I know it. Not +stately, scornful, dignified pride, but downright, inflated, perky, +puffed-up conceit. I have often remarked upon it to Christopher, and he +has always agreed with me." + +"But, my dear, the consciousness of a fault is surely one step toward +its cure." + +"Not it," replied Elisabeth, shaking her head; "I've always known I am +conceited, yet I get conceiteder and conceiteder every year. Bless you! +I don't want to 'fill a little space,' and I particularly don't want 'a +heart at leisure from itself'; I think that is such a dull, old-maidish +sort of thing to have--I wouldn't have one for anything. People who have +hearts at leisure from themselves always want to understudy Providence, +you will notice." + +Mrs. Herbert looked shocked. "My dear, what do you mean?" + +"I mean that really good people, who have no interests of their own, are +too fond of playing the part of Providence to other people. That their +motives are excellent I admit; they are not a bit selfish, and they +interfere with you for your own good; but they successfully accomplish +as much incurable mischief in half an hour as it would take half a dozen +professional mischief-makers at least a year to finish off +satisfactorily. If they can not mind their own business it doesn't +follow that Providence can't either, don't you see?" + +Whereupon Felicia entered the room, and the conversation was abruptly +closed; but not before Mrs. Herbert had decided that if Providence had +selected her daughter as the consoler of Christopher's sorrows, +Providence must be gently and patiently reasoned with until another and +more suitable comforter was substituted. She did not, of course, put the +matter to herself thus barely; but this was what her decision +practically amounted to. + +But although people might not be talking, as Mrs. Herbert imagined, +about Christopher and Felicia, the tongues of Sedgehill were all agog +on the subject of the evident attachment between Elisabeth Farringdon +and the master of the Moat House. + +"I'm afeared as our Miss Elisabeth is keeping company with that Mr. +Tremaine; I am indeed," Mrs. Bateson confided to her crony, Mrs. Hankey. + +Mrs. Hankey, as was her wont, groaned both in spirit and in person. "So +I've heard tell, more's the pity! Miss Elisabeth is no favourite of +mine, as you know, being so dark-complexioned as a child, and I never +could abide dark babies. I haven't much to be thankful for, I'm sure, +for the Lord has tried me sore, giving me Hankey as a husband, and such +a poor appetite as I never enjoy a meal from one year's end to another; +but one thing I can boast of, and that is my babies were all fair, with +as clear a skin as you could want to see. Still, I don't wish the young +lady no harm, it not being Christian to do so; and it is sad at her age +to be tied to a husband from which there is no outlet but the grave." + +"I don't hold with you there, Mrs. Hankey; it is dull work for the women +who have nobody to order 'em about and find fault with 'em. Why, where's +the good of taking the trouble to do a thing well, if there's no man to +blame you for it afterward? But what I want to see is Miss Elisabeth +married to Master Christopher, them two being made for one another, as +you might say." + +"He has a new heart and a nice fresh colour, has Master Christopher; +which is more than his own mother--supposing she was alive--could say +for Mr. Tremaine." + +"That is so, Mrs. Hankey. I'm afeared there isn't much religion about +him. He don't even go to church on a Sunday, let alone chapel; though +he is wonderful charitable to the poor, I must admit." + +Mrs. Hankey pursed up her mouth. "And what are works without faith, I +should like to know!" + +"Quite true--quite true; but maybe the Lord ain't quite as hard on us as +we are on one another, and makes allowances for our bringing-up and +such." + +"Maybe," replied Mrs. Hankey, in a tone which implied that she hoped her +friend was mistaken. + +"You see," continued Mrs. Bateson, "there's nothing helps you to +understand the ways of the Lord like having children of your own. Why, +afore I was married, I was for whipping every child that was contrairy +till it got good again; but after my Lucy Ellen was born, I found that +her contrairiness made me sorry for her instead of angry with her, and I +knowed as the poor little thing was feeling poorly or else she'd never +have been like that. So instead of punishing her, I just comforted her; +and the more contradictious she got, the more I knowed as she wanted +comfort. And I don't doubt but the Lord knows that the more we kick +against Him the more we need Him; and that He makes allowance +accordingly." + +"You seem to have comfortable thoughts about things; I only hope as you +are not encouraging false hopes and crying peace where there is no +peace," remarked Mrs. Hankey severely. + +But Mrs. Bateson was not affrighted. "Don't you know how ashamed you +feel when folks think better of you than you deserve? I remember years +ago, when Caleb came a-courting me, I was minded once to throw him over, +because he was full solemn to take a young maid's fancy. And when I was +debating within myself whether I'd throw him over or no, he says to me, +'Kezia, my lass,' he says, 'I'm not afeared as ye'll give me the slip, +for all your saucy ways; other folks may think you're a bit flirty, but +I know you better than they do, and I trust you with all my heart.' Do +you think I could have disappointed him after that, Mrs. Hankey? Not for +the whole world. But I was that ashamed as never was, for even having +thought of such a thing. And if we poor sinful souls feel like that, do +you think the Lord is the One to disappoint folks for thinking better of +Him than He deserves? Not He, Mrs. Hankey; I know Him better than that." + +"I only wish I could see things in such a cheerful light as you do." + +"It was only after my first baby was born that I began to understand the +Lord's ways a bit. It's wonderful how caring for other folks seems to +bring you nearer to Him--nearer even than class meetings and special +services, though I wouldn't for the world say a word against the means +of grace." + +This doctrine was too high for Mrs. Hankey; she could not attain to it, +so she wisely took refuge in a side issue. "It was fortunate for you +your eldest being a girl; if the Lord had thought fit to give me a +daughter instead of three sons, things might have been better with me," +she said, contentedly moving the burden of personal responsibility from +her own shoulders to her Maker's. + +"Don't say that, Mrs. Hankey. Daughters may be more useful in the house, +I must confess, and less mischievous all round; but they can't work as +hard for their living as the sons can when you ain't there to look after +them." + +"You don't know what it is to live in a house full of nothing but men, +with not a soul to speak to about all the queer tricks they're at, many +a time I feel like Robinson Crusoe on a desert island among a lot of +savages." + +"And I don't blame you," agreed Mrs. Bateson sympathetically; "for my +part I don't know what I should have done when Caleb and the boys were +troublesome if I couldn't have passed remarks on their behaviour to Lucy +Ellen; I missed her something terrible when first she was married for +that simple reason. You see, it takes another woman to understand how +queer a man is." + +"It does, Mrs. Bateson; you never spoke a truer word. And then think +what it must be on your death-bed to have the room full of stupid men, +tumbling over one another and upsetting the medicine-bottles and putting +everything in its wrong place. Many a time have I wished for a daughter, +if it was but to close my eyes; but the Lord has seen fit to withhold +His blessings from me, and it is not for me to complain: His ways not +being as our ways, but often quite the reverse." + +"That is so; and I wish as He'd seen fit to mate Miss Elisabeth with +Master Christopher, instead of letting her keep company with that Mr. +Tremaine." + +Mrs. Hankey shook her head ominously. "Mr. Tremaine is one that has +religious doubts." + +"Ah! that's liver," said Mrs. Bateson, her voice softening with pity; +"that comes from eating French kickshaws, and having no mother to see +that he takes a dose of soda and nitre now and then to keep his system +cool. Poor young man!" + +"I hear as he goes so far as to deny the existence of a God," continued +Mrs. Hankey. + +"All liver!" repeated Mrs. Bateson; "it often takes men like that; when +they begin to doubt the inspiration of the Scriptures you know they +will be all the better for a dose of dandelion tea; but when they go on +to deny the existence of a God, there's nothing for it but chamomile. +And I don't believe as the Lord takes their doubts any more seriously +than their wives take 'em. He knows as well as we do that the poor +things need pity more than blame, and dosing more than converting; for +He gave 'em their livers, and we only have to bear with them and return +thanks to Him for having made ours of a different pattern." + +"And what do the women as have doubts need, I should like to know?" + +"A husband and children is the best cure for them. Why, when a woman has +a husband and children to look after, and washes at home, she has no +time, bless you! to be teaching the Lord His business; she has enough to +do minding her own." + + + + +CHAPTER VIII + +GREATER THAN OUR HEARTS + + The world is weary of new tracks of thought + That lead to nought-- + Sick of quack remedies prescribed in vain + For mortal pain, + Yet still above them all one Figure stands + With outstretched Hands. + + +"Cousin Maria, do you like Alan Tremaine?" asked Elisabeth, not long +after her return from Yorkshire. + +"Like him, my dear? I neither like nor dislike persons with whom I have +as little in common as I have with Mr. Tremaine. But he strikes me as a +young man of parts, and his manners are admirable." + +"I wasn't thinking about his manners, I was thinking about his views," +said the girl, walking across the room and looking through the window at +the valley smiling in the light of the summer morning; "don't you think +they are very broad and enlightened?" + +"I daresay they are. Young persons of superior intelligence are +frequently dazzled by their own brilliance at first, and consider that +they were sent into the world specially to confute the law and the +prophets. As they grow older they learn better." + +Elisabeth began playing with the blind-cord. "I think he is awfully +clever," she remarked. + +"My dear, how often must I beg you not to use that word _awfully_, +except in its correct sense? Remember that we hold the English tongue in +trust--it belongs to the nation and not to us--and we have no more right +to profane England's language by the introduction of coined words and +slang expressions than we have to disendow her institutions or to +pollute her rivers." + +"All right; I'll try not to forget again. But you really do think Alan +is clever, don't you?" + +"He is undoubtedly intelligent, and possesses the knack of appearing +even more intelligent than he is; but at present he has not learned his +own limitations." + +"You mean that he isn't clever enough to know that he isn't cleverer," +suggested Elisabeth. + +"Well, my dear, I should never have put it in that way, but that +approximately expresses my ideas about our young friend." + +"And he is aw--I mean frightfully well off." + +Miss Farringdon looked sternly at the speaker. "Never again let me hear +you refer to the income of persons about whom you are speaking, +Elisabeth; it is a form of ill-breeding which I can not for a moment +tolerate in my house. That money is a convenience to the possessor of +it, I do not attempt to deny; but that the presence or the absence of it +should be counted as a matter of any moment (except to the man himself), +presupposes a standpoint of such vulgarity that it is impossible for me +to discuss it. And even the man himself should never talk about it; he +should merely silently recognise the fact, and regulate his plan of life +accordingly." + +"Still, I have heard quite nice people sometimes say that they can not +afford things," argued Elisabeth. + +"I do not deny that; even quite nice people make mistakes sometimes, and +well-mannered persons are not invariably well-mannered. Your quite nice +people would have been still nicer had they realized that to talk about +one's poverty--though not so bad as talking about one's wealth--is only +one degree better; and that perfect gentle-people would refer neither to +the one nor to the other." + +"I see." Elisabeth's tone was subdued. + +"I once knew a woman," continued Miss Farringdon, "who, by that accident +of wealth, which is of no interest to anybody but the possessor, was +enabled to keep a butler and two footmen; but in speaking of her +household to a friend, who was less richly endowed with worldly goods +than herself, she referred to these three functionaries as 'my +parlourmaid,' for fear of appearing to be conscious of her own +superiority in this respect. Now this woman, though kind-hearted, was +distinctly vulgar." + +"But you have always taught me that it is good manners to keep out of +sight any point on which you have the advantage over the people you are +talking to," Elisabeth persisted. "You have told me hundreds of times +that I must never show off my knowledge after other people have +displayed their ignorance; and that I must not even be obtrusively +polite after they have been obviously rude. Those are your very words, +Cousin Maria: you see I can give chapter and verse." + +"And I meant what I said, my dear. Wider knowledge and higher breeding +are signs of actual superiority, and therefore should never be flaunted. +The vulgarity in the woman I am speaking about lay in imagining that +there is any superiority in having more money than another person: there +is not. To hide the difference proved that she thought there was a +difference, and this proved that her standpoint was an essentially +plebeian one. There was no difference at all, save one of convenience; +the same sort of difference there is between people who have hot water +laid on all over their houses and those who have to carry it upstairs. +And who would be so trivial and commonplace as to talk about that?" + +Elisabeth, seeing that her cousin was in the right, wisely changed the +subject. "The Bishop of Merchester is preaching at St. Peter's Church, +in Silverhampton, on St. Peter's Day, and I have asked Alan Tremaine to +drive me over in his dog-cart to hear him." Although she had strayed +from the old paths of dogma and doctrine, Elisabeth could not eradicate +the inborn Methodist nature which hungers and thirsts after +righteousness as set forth in sermons. + +"I should like to hear him too, my dear," said Miss Farringdon, who also +had been born a Methodist. + +"Then will you come? In that case we can have our own carriage, and I +needn't bother Alan," said Elisabeth, with disappointment written in +capital letters all over her expressive face. + +"On which day is it, and at what hour?" + +"To-morrow evening at half-past six," replied the girl, knowing that +this was the hour of the evening sacrifice at East Lane Chapel, and +trusting to the power of habit and early association to avert the +addition of that third which would render two no longer any company for +each other. + +Her trust was not misplaced. "It is our weekevening service, my dear, +with the prayer-meeting after. Did you forget?" + +Elisabeth endeavoured to simulate the sudden awakening of a dormant +memory. "So it is!" + +"I see no reason why you should not go into Silverhampton to hear the +Bishop," said Miss Farringdon kindly. "I like young people to learn the +faith once delivered to the saints, from all sorts and conditions of +teachers; but I shall feel it my duty to be in my accustomed place." + +So it came to pass, one never-to-be-forgotten summer afternoon, that +Alan Tremaine drove Elisabeth Farringdon into Silverhampton to hear the +Bishop of Merchester preach. + +As soon as she was safely tucked up in the dog-cart, with no way of +escape, Elisabeth saw a look in Alan's eyes which told her that he meant +to make love to her; so with that old, old feminine instinct, which made +the prehistoric woman take to her heels when the prehistoric man began +to run after her, this daughter of the nineteenth century took refuge in +an armour of flippancy, which is the best shield yet invented for +resisting Cupid's darts. + +It was a glorious afternoon--one of those afternoons which advertise to +all the world how excellent was the lotus-eaters' method of dividing +time; and although the woods had exchanged the fresh variety of spring +for the dark green sameness of summer, the fields were gay with +haymakers, and the world still seemed full of joyous and abundant life. + +"Let's go the country way," Elisabeth had said at starting; "and then we +can come back by the town." So the two drove by Badgering Woods, and +across the wide common; and as they went they saw and felt that the +world was very good. Elisabeth was highly sensitive to the influences +of nature, and, left to herself, would have leaned toward sentiment on +such an afternoon as this; but she had seen that look in Alan's eyes, +and that was enough for her. + +"Do you know," began Tremaine, getting to work, "that I have been doing +nothing lately but thinking about you? And I have come to the conclusion +that what appeals so much to me is your strength. The sweetness which +attracts some men has no charm for me; I am one of the men who above all +things admire and reverence a strong woman, though I know that the sweet +and clinging woman is to some the ideal of feminine perfection. But +different men, of course, admire different types." + +"Exactly; there is a Latin proverb, something about tots and sentences, +which embodies that idea," suggested Elisabeth, with a nervous, girlish +laugh. + +Alan did not smile; he made it a rule never to encourage flippancy in +women. + +"It is hardly kind of you to laugh at me when I am speaking seriously," +he said, "and it would serve you right if I turned my horse's head round +and refused to let you hear your Bishop. But I will not punish you this +time; I will heap coals of fire on your head by driving on." + +"Oh! don't begin heaping coals of fire on people's head, Mr. Tremaine; +it is a dangerous habit, and those who indulge in it always get their +fingers burned in the end--just as they do when they play with edged +tools, or do something (I forget what) with their own petard." + +There was a moment's silence, and then Alan said-- + +"It makes me very unhappy when you are in a mood like this; I do not +understand it, and it seems to raise up an impassable barrier between +us." + +"Please don't be unhappy about a little thing like that; wait till you +break a front tooth, or lose your collar-stud, or have some other real +trouble to cry over. But now you are making a trouble out of nothing, +and I have no patience with people who make troubles out of nothing; it +seems to me like getting one's boots spoiled by a watering-cart when it +is dry weather; and that is a thing which makes me most frightfully +angry." + +"Do many things make you angry, I wonder?" + +"Some things and some people." + +"Tell me what sort of people make a woman of your type angry." + +Elisabeth fell into the trap; she could never resist the opportunity of +discussing herself from an outside point of view. If Alan had said +_you_, she would have snubbed him at once; but the well-chosen words, _a +woman of your type_, completely carried her away. She was not an +egotist; she was only intensely interested in herself as the single +specimen of humanity which she was able to study exhaustively. + +"I think the people who make me angry are the unresponsive people," she +replied thoughtfully; "the people who do not put their minds into the +same key as mine when I am talking to them. Don't you know the sort? +When you discuss a thing from one standpoint they persist in discussing +it from another; and as soon as you try to see it from their point of +view, they fly off to a third. It isn't so much that they differ from +you--that you would not mind; there is a certain harmony in difference +which is more effective than its unison of perfect agreement--but they +sing the same tune in another key, and the discords are excruciating. +Then the people who argue make me angry; those who argue about trifles, +I mean." + +"Ah! All you women are alike in that; you love discussion, and hate +argument. The cause of which is that you decide things by instinct +rather than by reason, and that therefore--although you know you are +right--you can not possibly prove it." + +"Then," Elisabeth continued, "I get very angry with the people who will +bother about non-essentials; who, when you have got hold of the vital +centre of a question, stray off to side issues. They are first-cousins +of the people who talk in different keys." + +"I should have said they were the same." + +"Well, perhaps they are; I believe you are right. Christopher Thornley +is one of that sort; when you are discussing one side of a thing with +him, you'll find him playing bo-peep with you round the other; and you +never can get him into the right mood at the right time. He makes me +simply furious sometimes. Do you know, I think if I were a dog I should +often bite Christopher? He makes me angry in a biting kind of way." + +Alan smiled faintly at this; jokes at Christopher's expense were +naturally more humorous than jokes at his own. "And what other sorts of +people make you angry?" he asked. + +"I'm afraid the people who make me angriest of all are the people who +won't do what I tell them. They really madden me." And Elisabeth began +to laugh. "I've got a horribly strong will, you see, and if people go +against it, I want them to be sent to the dentist's every morning, and +to the photographer's every afternoon, for the rest of their lives. Now +Christopher is one of the worst of those; I can't make him do what I +want just because I want it; he always wishes to know why I want it, +and that is so silly and tiresome of him, because nine times out of ten +I don't know myself." + +"Very trying!" + +"Christopher certainly has the knack of making me angrier than anybody +else I ever met," said Elisabeth thoughtfully. "I wonder why it is? I +suppose it must be because I have known him for so long. I can't see any +other reason. I am generally such an easy-going, good-tempered girl; but +when Christopher begins to argue and dictate and contradict, the Furies +simply aren't in it with me." + +"The excellent Thornley certainly has his limitations." + +Elisabeth's eyes flashed. She did not mind finding fault with +Christopher herself; in fact, she found such fault-finding absolutely +necessary to her well-being; but she resented any attempt on the part of +another to usurp this, her peculiar prerogative. "He is very good, all +the same," she said, "and extremely clever; and he is my greatest +friend." + +But Alan was bored by Christopher as a subject of conversation, so he +changed him for Elisabeth's self. "How loyal you are!" he exclaimed with +admiration; "it is indeed a patent of nobility to be counted among your +friends." + +The girl, having just been guilty of disloyalty, was naturally delighted +at this compliment. "You always understand and appreciate me," she said +gratefully, unconscious of the fact that it was Alan's lack of +understanding and appreciation which had aroused her gratitude just +then. Perfect comprehension--untempered by perfect love--would be a +terrible thing; mercifully for us poor mortals it does not exist. + +Alan went on: "Because I possess this patent of nobility, I am going to +presume upon my privileges and ask you to help me in my life-work; and +my life-work, as you know, is to ameliorate the condition of the poor, +and to carry to some extent the burdens which they are bound to bear." + +Elisabeth looked up at him, her face full of interest; no appeal to her +pity was ever made in vain. If people expected her to admire them, they +were frequently disappointed; if they wished her to fear them, their +wish was absolutely denied; but if they only wanted her to be sorry for +them, they were abundantly satisfied, sympathy being the keynote of her +character. She was too fastidious often to admire; she was too strong +ever to fear; but her tenderness was unfailing toward those who had once +appealed to her pity, and whose weakness had for once allowed itself to +rest upon her strength. Therefore Alan's desire to help the poor, and to +make them happier, struck the dominant chord in her nature; but +unfortunately when she raised her eyes, full of sympathetic sympathy, to +his, she encountered that look in the latter which had frightened her at +the beginning of the excursion; so she again clothed herself in her +garment of flippancy, and hardened her heart as the nether millstone. In +blissful unconsciousness Alan continued-- + +"Society is just now passing through a transition stage. The interests +of capital and labour are at war with each other; the rich and the poor +are as two armies made ready for battle, and the question is, What can +we do to bridge over the gulf between the classes, and to induce them +each to work for, instead of against, the other? It is these transition +stages which have proved the most difficult epochs in the world's +history." + +"I hate transition stages and revolutions, they are so unsettling. It +seems to me they are just like the day when your room is cleaned; and +that is the most uncomfortable day in the whole week. Don't you know it? +You go upstairs in the accustomed way, fearing nothing; but when you +open the door you find the air dark with dust and the floor with +tea-leaves, and nothing looking as it ought to look. Prone on its face +on the bed, covered with a winding-sheet, lies your overthrown +looking-glass; and underneath it, in a shapeless mass, are huddled +together all the things that you hold dearest upon earth. You thrust in +your hand to get something that you want, and it is a pure chance +whether your Bible or your button-hook rises to the surface. And it +seems to me that transition periods are just like that." + +"How volatile you are! One minute you are so serious and the next so +frivolous that I fail to follow you. I often think that you must have +some foreign blood in your veins, you are so utterly different from the +typical, stolid, shy, self-conscious English-woman." + +"I hope you don't think I was made in Germany, like cheap china and +imitation Astrakhan." + +"Heaven forbid! The Germans are more stolid and serious than the +English. But you must have a Celtic ancestor in you somewhere. Haven't +you?" + +"Well, to tell you the truth, my great-grandmother was a Manxwoman; but +we are ashamed to talk much about her, because it sounds as if she'd had +no tail." + +"Then you must have inherited your temperament from her. But now I want +to talk to you seriously about doing something for the men who work in +the coal-pits, and who--more even than the rest of their class--are shut +out from the joy and beauty of the world. Their lives not only are made +hideous, but are also shortened, by the nature of their toil. Do you +know what the average life of a miner is?" + +"Of course I do: twenty-one years." + +Alan frowned; he disapproved of jokes even more than of creeds, and +understood them equally. "Miss Farringdon, you are not behaving fairly +to me. You know what I mean well enough, but you wilfully misunderstand +my words for the sake of laughing at them. But I will make you listen, +all the same. I want to know if you will help me in my work by becoming +my wife; and I think that even you can not help answering that question +seriously." + +The laughter vanished from Elisabeth's face, as if it had been wiped out +with a sponge. "Oh! I--I don't know," she murmured lamely. + +"Then you must find out. To me it seems that you are the one woman in +all the world who was made for me. Your personality attracted me the +first moment that I met you; and our subsequent companionship has proved +that our minds habitually run in the same grooves, and that we naturally +look at things from the same standpoint. That is so, is it not?" + +"Yes." + +"The only serious difference between us seemed to be the difference of +faith. You had been trained in the doctrines of one of the strictest +sects, while I had outgrown all dogmas and thrown aside all recognised +forms of religion. So strong were my feelings on this point, that I +would not have married any woman who still clung to the worn-out and (by +me) disused traditions; but I fancy that I have succeeded in converting +you to my views, and that our ideas upon religion are now practically +identical. Is not that so?" + +Elisabeth thought for a moment. "Yes," she answered slowly; "you have +taught me that Christianity, like all the other old religions, has had +its day; and that the world is now ready for a new dispensation." + +"Exactly; and for a dispensation which shall unite the pure ethics of +the Christian to the joyous vitality of the Greek, eliminating alike the +melancholy of the one and the sensualism of the other. You agree with me +in this, do you not?" + +"You know that I do." + +"I am glad, because--as I said before--I could not bear to marry any +woman who did not see eye to eye with me on these vital matters. I love +you very dearly, Elisabeth, and it would be a great grief to me if any +question of opinion or conviction came between us; yet I do not believe +that two people could possibly be happy together--however much they +might love each other--if they were not one with each other on subjects +such as these." + +Elisabeth was silent; she was too much excited to speak. Her heart was +thumping like the great hammer at the Osierfield, and she was trembling +all over. So she held her peace as they drove up the principal street of +Silverhampton and across the King's Square to the lych-gate of St. +Peter's Church; but Alan, looking into the tell-tale face he knew so +well, was quite content. + +Yet as she sat beside Alan in St. Peter's Church that summer evening, +and thought upon what she had just done, a great sadness filled +Elisabeth's soul. The sun shone brightly through the western window, +and wrote mystic messages upon the gray stone walls; but the lights of +the east window shone pale and cold in the distant apse, where the +Figure of the Crucified gleamed white upon a foundation of emerald. And +as she looked at the Figure, which the world has wept over and +worshipped for nineteen centuries, she realized that this was the Symbol +of all that she was giving up and leaving behind her--the Sign of that +religion of love and sorrow which men call Christianity. She felt that +wisdom must be justified of her children, and not least of her, +Elisabeth Farringdon; nevertheless, she mourned for the myth which had +once made life seem fair, and death even fairer. Although she had +outgrown her belief in it, its beauty had still power to touch her +heart, if not to convince her intellect; and she sighed as she recalled +all that it had once meant, and how it had appeared to be the one +satisfactory solution to the problems which weary and perplex mankind. +Now she must face all the problems over again in the grim twilight of +dawning science, with no longer a Star of Bethlehem to show where the +answer might be found; and her spirit quailed at the pitiless prospect. +She had never understood before how much that Symbol of eternal love and +vicarious suffering had been to her, nor how puzzling would be the path +through the wilderness if there were no Crucifix at life's cross-roads +to show the traveller which way to go; and her heart grew heavier as she +took part in the sacred office of Evensong, and thought how beautiful it +all would be if only it were true. She longed to be a little child +again--a child to whom the things which are not seen are as the things +which are seen, and the things which are not as the things which are; +and she could have cried with homesickness when she remembered how +firmly she had once believed that the shadow which hung over the +Osierfield was a pillar of cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night, +to testify that God was still watching over His people, as in the days +of old. Now she knew that the pillar was only the smoke and the flame of +human industries; and the knowledge brought a load of sadness, as it +seemed to typify that there was no longer any help for the world but in +itself. + +When the Bishop ascended the pulpit, Elisabeth recalled her wandering +thoughts and set herself to listen. No one who possesses a drop of +Nonconformist blood can ever succeed in not listening to a sermon, even +if it be a poor one; and the Bishop of Merchester was one of the finest +preachers of his day. His text was, "Blessed art thou, Simon Barjona: +for flesh and blood hath not revealed it unto thee"; and he endeavoured +to set forth how it is only God who can teach men about God, and how +flesh and blood can never show us the Christ until He chooses to reveal +Himself. At first Elisabeth listened only with her mind, expecting an +intellectual treat and nothing more; but as he went on, and showed how +the Call comes in strange places and at strange times, and how when it +comes there is no resisting it, her heart began to burn within her; and +she recognised the preacher, not only as a man of divers gifts and great +powers, but as the ambassador of Christ sent direct to her soul. Then +slowly her eyes were opened, and she knew that the Figure in the east +window was no Sign of an imaginary renunciation, no Symbol of a worn-out +creed, but the portrait of a living Person, Whose Voice was calling +her, and Whose Love was constraining her, and Whose Power was enfolding +her and would not let her go. With the certainty that is too absolute +for proof, she knew in Whom she now believed; and she knew, further, +that it was not her own mind nor the preacher's words that had suddenly +shown her the truth--flesh and blood had not revealed it to her, but +Christ Himself. + +When the service was over, Elisabeth came out into the sunlight with a +strange, new, exultant feeling, such as she had never felt before. She +stood in the old churchyard, waiting for Alan to bring round the +dog-cart, and watching the sun set beyond the distant hills; and she was +conscious--how she could not explain--that the sunset was different from +any other sunset that she had ever seen. She had always loved nature +with an intense love; but now there seemed a richer gold in the parting +sunbeams--a sweeter mystery behind the far-off hills--because of that +Figure in the east window. It was as if she saw again a land which she +had always loved, and now learned for the first time that it belonged to +some one who was dear to her; a new sense of ownership mingled with the +old delight, and gave an added interest to the smallest detail. + +Then she and Alan turned their backs to the sunset, and drove along the +bleak high-road toward Sedgehill, where the reflection of the +blast-furnaces--that weird aurora borealis of the Black Country--was +already beginning to pulsate against the darkening sky. And here again +Elisabeth realized that for her the old things had passed away, and all +things had become new. She felt that her childish dream was true, and +that the crimson light was indeed a pillar of fire showing that the Lord +was in the midst of His people; but she went further now than she had +gone in her day-dreams, and knew that all the lights and shadows of life +are but pillars of cloud and of fire, forthtelling the same truth to all +who have seeing eyes and understanding hearts. + +Suddenly the silence was broken by Alan. "I have been thinking about you +during the service, and building all sorts of castles in the air which +you and I are going to inhabit together. But we must not let the old +faiths hamper us, Elisabeth; if we do, our powers will be impaired by +prejudices, and our usefulness will be limited by traditions." + +"I have something to say to you," Elisabeth replied, and her eyes shone +like stars in the twilight; "you won't understand it, but I must say it +all the same. In church to-night, for the first time in my life, I heard +God speaking to me; and I found out that religion is no string of +dogmas, but just His calling us by name." + +Tremaine looked at her pityingly. "You are overtired and overwrought by +the heat, and the excitement of the sermon has been too much for you. +But you will be all right again to-morrow, never fear." + +"I knew you wouldn't understand, and I can't explain it to you; but it +has suddenly all become quite clear to me--all the things that I have +puzzled over since I was a little child; and I know now that religion is +not our attitude toward God, but His attitude toward us." + +"Why, Elisabeth, you are saying over again all the old formulas that you +and I have refuted so often." + +"I know I am; but I never really believed in them till now. I can't +argue with you, Alan--I'm not clever enough--and besides, the best +things in the world can never be proved by argument. But I want you to +understand that the Power which you call Christianity is stronger than +human wills, or human strength, or even human love; and now that it has +once laid hold upon me, it will never let me go." + +Alan's face grew pale with anger. "I see; your old associations have +been too strong for you." + +"It isn't my old associations, or my early training, or anything +belonging to me. It isn't me at all. It is just His Voice calling me. +Can't you understand, Alan? It is not I who am doing it all--it is He." + +There was a short silence, and then Tremaine said-- + +"But I thought you loved me?" + +"I thought so too, but perhaps I was wrong; I don't know. All I know is +that this new feeling is stronger than any feeling I ever had before; +and that I can not give up my religion, whatever it may cost me." + +"I will not marry a woman who believes in the old faith." + +"And I will not marry a man who does not." + +Alan's voice grew hard. "I don't believe you ever loved me," he +complained. + +"I don't know. I thought I did; but perhaps I knew as little about love +as you know about religion. Perhaps I shall find a real love some day +which will be as different from my friendship for you as this new +knowledge is different from the religion that Cousin Maria taught me. +I'm very sorry, but I can never marry you now." + +"You would have given up your religion fast enough if you had really +cared for me," sneered Tremaine. + +Elisabeth pondered for a moment, with the old contraction of her +eyebrows. "I don't think so, because, as I told you before, it isn't +really my doing at all. It isn't that I won't give up my religion--it is +my religion that won't give up me. Supposing that a blind man wanted to +marry me on condition that I would believe, as he did, that the world is +dark: I couldn't believe it, however much I loved him. You can't not +know what you have once known, and you can't not have seen what you have +seen, however much you may wish to do so, or however much other people +may wish it." + +"You are a regular woman, in spite of all your cleverness, and I was a +fool to imagine that you would prove more intelligent in the long run +than the rest of your conventional and superstitious sex." + +"Please forgive me for hurting you," besought Elisabeth. + +"It is not only that you have hurt me, but I am so disappointed in you; +you seemed so different from other women, and now I find the difference +was merely a surface one." + +"I am so sorry," Elisabeth still pleaded. + +Tremaine laughed bitterly. "You are disappointed in yourself, I should +imagine. You posed as being so broad and modern and enlightened, and yet +you have found worn-out dogmas and hackneyed creeds too strong for you." + +Elisabeth smiled to herself. "No; but I have found the Christ," she +answered softly. + + + + +CHAPTER IX + +FELICIA FINDS HAPPINESS + + Give me that peak of cloud which fills + The sunset with its gorgeous form, + Instead of these familiar hills + That shield me from the storm. + + +After having been weighed in Elisabeth's balance and found wanting, Alan +Tremaine went abroad for a season, and Sedgehill knew him no more until +the following spring. During that time Elisabeth possessed her soul and +grew into a true woman--a woman with no smallness or meanness in her +nature, but with certain feminine weaknesses which made her all the more +lovable to those people who understood her, and all the more incongruous +and irritating to those who did not. Christopher, too, rested in an +oasis of happiness just then. He was an adept in the study of Elisabeth, +and he knew perfectly well what had passed between her and Alan, +although she flattered herself that she had kept him completely in the +dark on the subject. But Christopher was always ready to dance to +Elisabeth's piping, except when it happened to be on red-hot iron; even +then he tried to obey her bidding, and it was hardly his fault if he +failed. + +Christopher Thornley was one of those people whose temperament and +surroundings are at war with each other. Such people are not few in this +world, though they themselves are frequently quite unaware of the fact; +nevertheless, there is always an element of tragedy in their lot. By +nature he was romantic and passionate and chivalrous, endowed with an +enthusiastic admiration for beauty and an ardent longing for all forms +of joyousness; and he had been trained in a school of thought where all +merely human joys and attractions are counted as unimportant if not +sinful, and where wisdom and righteousness are held to be the two only +ends of life. Perhaps in a former existence--or in the person of some +remote ancestor--Christopher had been a knightly and devoted cavalier, +ready to lay down his life for Church and king, and in the meantime +spending his days in writing odes to his mistress's eyebrow; and now he +had been born into a strict Puritan atmosphere, where principles rather +than persons commanded men's loyalty, and where romance was held to be a +temptation of the flesh if not a snare of the devil. He possessed a +great capacity for happiness, and for enjoyment of all kinds; +consequently the dull routine of business was more distasteful to him +than to a man of coarser fibre and less fastidious tastes. Christopher +was one of the people who are specially fitted by nature to appreciate +to the full all the refinements and accessories of wealth and culture; +therefore his position at the Osierfield was more trying to him than it +would have been to nine men out of every ten. + +When spring came back again, Alan Tremaine came with it to the Moat +House; and at the same time Felicia Herbert arrived on a visit to the +Willows. Alan had enough of the woman in his nature to decide +that--Elisabeth not being meant for him--Elisabeth was not worth the +having; but, although she had not filled his life so completely as to +make it unendurable without her, she had occupied his thoughts +sufficiently to make feminine society and sympathy thenceforth a +necessity of his being. So it came to pass that when he met Felicia and +saw that she was fair, he straightway elected her to the office which +Elisabeth had created and then declined to fill; and because human +nature--and especially young human nature--is stronger even than early +training or old associations, Felicia fell in love with him in return, +in spite of (possibly because of) her former violent prejudice against +him. To expect a person to be a monster and then to find he is a man, +has very much the same effect as expecting a person to be a man and +finding him a fairy prince; we accord him our admiration for being so +much better than our fancy painted him, and we crave his forgiveness for +having allowed it to paint him in such false colours. Then we long to +make some reparation to him for our unjust judgment; and--if we happen +to be women--this reparation frequently takes the form of ordering his +dinner for the rest of his dining days, and of giving him the right to +pay our dressmakers' bills until such time as we cease to be troubled +with them. + +Consequently that particular year the spring seemed to have come +specially for the benefit of Alan and Felicia. For them the woods were +carpeted with daffodils, and the meadows were decked in living green; +for them the mountains and hills broke forth into singing, and the trees +of the field clapped their hands. Most men and women have known one +spring-time such as this in their lives, whereof all the other +spring-times were but images and types; and, maybe, even that one +spring-time was but an image and a type of the great New Year's Day +which shall be Time's to-morrow. + +But while these two were wandering together in fairyland, Elisabeth felt +distinctly left out in the cold. Felicia was her friend--Alan had been +her lover; and now they had drifted off into a strange new country, and +had shut the door in her face. There was no place for her in this +fairyland of theirs; they did not want her any longer; and although she +was too large-hearted for petty jealousies, she could not stifle that +pang of soreness with which most of us are acquainted, when our +fellow-travellers slip off by pairs into Eden, and leave us to walk +alone upon the dusty highway. + +Elisabeth could no more help flirting than some people can help +stammering. It was a pity, no doubt; but it would have been absurd to +blame her for it. She had not the slightest intention of breaking +anybody's heart; she did not take herself seriously enough to imagine +such a contingency possible; but the desire to charm was so strong +within her that she could not resist it; and she took as much trouble to +win the admiration of women as of men. Therefore, Alan and Felicia +having done with her, for the time being, she turned her attention to +Christopher; and although he fully comprehended the cause, he none the +less enjoyed the effect. He cherished no illusions concerning Elisabeth, +for the which he was perhaps to be pitied; since from love which is +founded upon an illusion, there may be an awakening; but for love which +sees its objects as they are, and still goes on loving them, there is no +conceivable cure either in this world or the world to come. + +"I'm not jealous by nature, and I think it is horrid to be +dog-in-the-mangerish," she remarked to him one sunny afternoon, when +Alan and Felicia had gone off together to Badgering Woods and left her +all alone, until Christopher happened to drop in about tea-time. He had +a way of appearing upon the scene when Elisabeth needed him, and of +effacing himself when she did not. He also had a way of smoothing down +all the little faults and trials and difficulties which beset her path, +and of making for her the rough places plain. "But I can't help feeling +it is rather dull when a man who has been in love with you suddenly +begins to be in love with another girl." + +"I can imagine that the situation has its drawbacks." + +"Not that there is any reason why he shouldn't, when you haven't been in +love with him yourself." + +"Not the slightest. Even I, whom you consider an epitome of all that is +stiff-necked and strait-laced, can see no harm in that. It seems to me a +thing that a man might do on a Sunday afternoon without in any way +jeopardizing his claim to universal respect." + +"Still it is dull for the woman; you must see that." + +"I saw it the moment I came in; nevertheless I am not prepared to state +that the dulness of the woman is a consummation so devoutly to be prayed +against. And, besides, it isn't at all dull for the other woman--the new +woman--you know." + +"And of course the other woman has to be considered." + +"I suppose she has," Christopher replied; "but I can't for the life of +me see why," he added under his breath. + +"Let's go into the garden," Elisabeth said, rising from her chair; +"nobody is in but me, and it is so stuffy to stay in the house now we +have finished tea. Cousin Maria is busy succouring the poor, and----" + +"And Miss Herbert is equally busy consoling the rich. Is that it?" + +"That is about what it comes to." + +So they went into the garden where they had played as children, and sat +down upon the rustic seat where they had sat together scores of times; +and Elisabeth thought about the great mystery of love, and Christopher +thought about the length of Elisabeth's eyelashes. + +"Do you think that Alan is in love with Felicia?" the girl asked at +last. + +"Appearances favour the supposition," replied Christopher. + +"You once said he wasn't capable of loving any woman." + +"I know I did; but that didn't in the least mean that he wasn't capable +of loving Miss Herbert." + +"She is very attractive; even you like her better than you like me," +Elisabeth remarked, looking at him through the very eyelashes about +which he was thinking. "I wonder at it, but nevertheless you do." + +"One never can explain these things. At least I never can, though you +seem to possess strange gifts of divination. I remember that you once +expounded to me that either affinity or infinity was at the root of +these matters--I forget which." + +"She is certainly good-looking," Elisabeth went on. + +"She is; her dearest friend couldn't deny that." + +"And she has sweet manners." + +"Distinctly sweet. She is the sort of girl that people call restful." + +"And a lovely temper." + +Christopher still refused to be drawn. "So I conclude. I have never +ruffled it--nor tried to ruffle it--nor even desired to ruffle it." + +"Do you like ruffling people's tempers?" + +"Some people's tempers, extremely." + +"What sort of people's?" + +"I don't know. I never schedule people into 'sorts,' as you do. The +people I care about can not be counted by 'sorts': there is one made of +each, and then the mould is broken." + +"You do like Felicia better than me, don't you?" Elisabeth asked, after +a moment's silence. + +"So you say, and as you are a specialist in these matters I think it +wise to take your statements on faith without attempting to dispute +them." + +"Chris, you are a goose!" + +"I know that--far better than you do." And Christopher sighed. + +"But I like you all the same." + +"That is highly satisfactory." + +"I believe I always liked you better than Alan," Elisabeth continued, +"only his way of talking about things dazzled me somehow. But after a +time I found out that he always said more than he meant, while you +always mean more than you say." + +"Oh! Tremaine isn't half a bad fellow: his talk is, as you say, a little +high-flown; but he takes himself in more than he takes in other people, +and he really means well." Christopher could afford to be magnanimous +toward Alan, now that Elisabeth was the reverse. + +"I remember that day at Pembruge Castle, while he was talking to me +about the troubles of the poor you were rowing Johnnie Stubbs about on +the mere. That was just the difference between you and him." + +"Oh! there wasn't much in that," replied Christopher; "if you had been +kind to me that day, and had let me talk to you, I am afraid that poor +Johnnie Stubbs would have had to remain on dry land. I merely took the +advice of the great man who said, 'If you can not do what you like, do +good.' But I'd rather have done what I liked, all the same." + +"That is just like you, Chris! You never own up to your good points." + +"Yes, I do; but I don't own up to my good points that exist solely in +your imagination." + +"You reckon up your virtues just as Cousin Maria reckons up her luggage +on a journey; she always says she has so many packages, and so many that +don't count. And your virtues seem to be added up in the same style." + +Christopher was too shy to enjoy talking about himself; nevertheless, he +was immensely pleased when Elisabeth was pleased with him. "Let us +wander back to our muttons," he said, "which, being interpreted, means +Miss Herbert and Tremaine. What sort of people are the Herberts, by the +way? Is Mrs. Herbert a lady?" + +Elisabeth thought for a moment. "She is the sort of person who +pronounces the 't' in often." + +"I know exactly; I believe 'genteel' is the most correct adjective for +that type. Is she good-looking?" + +"Very; she was the pencil sketch for Felicia." + +"About how old?" + +"It is difficult to tell. She is one of the women who are sixty in the +sun and thirty in the shade, like the thermometer in spring. I should +think she is really an easy five-and-forty, accelerated by limited means +and an exacting conscience. She is always bothering about sins and +draughts and things of that kind. I believe she thinks that everything +you do will either make your soul too hot or your body too cold." + +"You are severe on the excellent lady." + +"I try not to be, because I think she is really good in her way; but her +religion is such a dreadfully fussy kind of religion it makes me angry. +It seems to caricature the whole thing. She appears to think that +Christianity is a sort of menu of moral fancy-dishes, which one is bound +to swallow in a certain prescribed order." + +"Poor dear woman!" + +"When people like Mrs. Herbert talk about religion," Elisabeth went on, +"it is as bad as reducing the number of the fixed stars to pounds, +shillings, and pence; just as it is when people talk about love who know +nothing at all about it." + +Christopher manfully repressed a smile. "Still, I have known quite +intelligent persons do that. They make mistakes, I admit, but they don't +know that they do; and so their ignorance is of the brand which the poet +describes as bliss." + +"People who have never been in love should never talk about it," +Elisabeth sagely remarked. + +"But, on the other hand, those who have been, as a rule, can't; so who +is to conduct authorized conversations on this most interesting and +instructive subject?" + +"The people who have been through it, and so know all about it," replied +Elisabeth. + +"Allow me to point out that your wisdom for once is at fault. In the +first place, I doubt if the man who is suffering from a specific disease +is the suitable person to read a paper on the same before the College +of Surgeons; and, in the second, I should say--for the sake of +argument--that the man who has been through eternity and come out whole +at the other end, knows as much about what eternity really means +as--well, as you do. But tell me more about Mrs. Herbert and her +peculiarities." + +"She is always bothering about what she calls the 'correct thing.' She +has no peace in her life on account of her anxiety as to the etiquette +of this world and the next--first to know it and then to be guided by +it. I am sure that she wishes that the Bible had been written on the +principle of that dreadful little book called Don't, which gives you a +list of the solecisms you should avoid; she would have understood it so +much better than the present system." + +"But you would call Miss Herbert a lady, wouldn't you?" Christopher +asked. + +"Oh, yes; a perfect lady. She is even well-bred when she talks about her +love affairs; and if a woman is a lady when she talks about her love +affairs, she will be a lady in any circumstances. It is the most crucial +test out." + +"Yes; I should have called Miss Herbert a perfect lady myself."' + +"That is the effect of Fox How; it always turned out ladies, whatever +else it failed in." + +"But I thought you maintained that it failed in nothing!" + +"No more it did; but I threw that in as a sop to what's-his-name, +because you are so horribly argumentative." + +Christopher was amused. Elisabeth was a perfect _chef_ in the preparing +of such sops, as he was well aware; and although he laughed at himself +for doing it (knowing that her present graciousness to him merely meant +that she was dull, and wanted somebody to play with, and he was better +than nobody), he made these sops the principal articles of his heart's +diet, and cared for no other fare. + +"What is Mr. Herbert like?" he inquired. + +"Oh! he is a good man in his way, but a back-boneless, sweet-syrupy kind +of a Christian; one of the sort that seems to regard the Almighty as a +blindly indulgent and easily-hoodwinked Father, and Satan himself as +nothing worse than a rather crusty old bachelor uncle. You know the +type." + +"Perfectly; they always drawl, and use the adjective 'dear' in and out +of season. I quite think that among themselves they talk of 'the dear +devil.' And yet 'dear' is really quite a nice word, if only people like +that hadn't spoiled it." + +"You shouldn't let people spoil things for you in that way. That is one +of your greatest faults, Christopher; whenever you have seen a funny +side to anything you never see any other. You have too much humour and +too little tenderness; that's what's the matter with you." + +"Permit me to tender you a sincere vote of thanks for your exhaustive +and gratuitous spiritual diagnosis. To cure my faults is my duty--to +discover them, your delight." + +"Well, I'm right; and you'll find it out some day, although you make fun +of me now." + +"I say, how will Mrs. Herbert fit in Tremaine's religious views--or +rather absence of religious views--with her code of the next world's +etiquette?" asked Christopher, wisely changing the subject. + +"Oh! she'll simply decline to see them. Although, as I told you, she is +driven about entirely by her conscience, it is a well-harnessed +conscience and always wears blinkers. It shies a good deal at gnats, I +own; but it can run in double-harness with a camel, if worldly +considerations render such a course desirable. It is like a horse we +once had, which always shied violently at every puddle, but went past a +steamroller without turning a hair." + +"'By my troth, niece, thou wilt never get thee a husband if thou be so +shrewd of thy tongue,'" quoted Christopher. + +"I don't want to be too severe, but Mrs. Herbert does make me so mad. +When people put religious things in a horrid light, it makes you feel as +if they were telling unkind and untrue tales about your dearest +friends." + +"What does the good woman say that makes 'my lady Tongue' so furious?" + +"Well, she is always saying one must give up this and give up that, and +deny one's self here and deny one's self there, for the sake of +religion; and I don't believe that religion means that sort of giving up +at all. Of course, God is pleased when we do what He wishes us to do, +because He knows it is the best for us; but I don't believe He wants us +to do things when we hate doing them, just to please Him." + +"Perhaps not. Still, if one does a thing one doesn't like doing, to +please another person, one often ends by enjoying the doing of the +thing. And even if one never enjoys it, the thing has still to be done." + +"Well, if you were awfully fond of anybody, should you want them to +spend their time with you, and do what you were doing, when you knew all +the time that they didn't like being with you, but were dying to be with +some one else?" + +"Certainly not." Christopher might not know much about theology, but he +knew exactly how people felt when they were, as Elisabeth said, +"awfully fond of anybody." + +"Of course you wouldn't," the girl went on; "you would wish the person +you loved to be happy with you, and to want to be with you as much as +you wanted to be with them; and if they didn't really care to be with +you, you wouldn't thank them for unselfishness in the matter. So if an +ordinary man like you doesn't care for mere unselfishness from the +people you are really fond of, do you think that what isn't good enough +for you is good enough for God?" + +"No. But I still might want the people I was fond of to be unselfish, +not for my own sake but for theirs. The more one loves a person, the +more one wishes that person to be worthy of love; and though we don't +love people because they are perfect, we want them to be perfect because +we love them, don't you see?" + +"You aren't a very good instance, Chris, because, you see, you are +rather a reserved, cold-hearted person, and not at all affectionate; but +still you are fond of people in your own way." + +"Yes; I am fond of one or two people--but in my own way, as you say," +Christopher replied quietly. + +"And even you understand that forced and artificial devotion isn't worth +having." + +"Yes; even I understand as much as that." + +"So you will see that unselfishness and renunciation and things of that +sort are only second-best things after all, and that there is nothing of +the kind between people who really love each other, because their two +wills are merged in one, and each finds his own happiness in the +happiness of the other. And I don't believe that God wants us to give up +our wills to His in a 'Thy way not mine' kind of way; I believe He +wants the same mind to be in us that was in Christ Jesus, so that He and +we shall be wishing for the same things." + +"Wise Elisabeth, I believe that you are right." + +"And you'll see how right I am, when you really care very much for +somebody yourself. I don't mean in the jolly, comfortable way in which +you care for Mr. Smallwood and Cousin Maria and me. That's a very nice +friendly sort of caring, I admit, and keeps the world warm and homelike, +just as having a fire in the room keeps the room warm and homelike; but +it doesn't teach one much." + +Christopher smiled sadly. "Doesn't it? I should have thought that it +taught one a good deal." + +"Oh! but not as much as a lovely romantic attachment would teach +one--not as much as Alan and Felicia are teaching each other now." + +"Don't you think so?" + +"Of course I don't. Why, you've never taught me anything, Chris, though +we've always been fond of each other in the comfortable, easy fashion." + +"Then the fault has been in me, for you have taught me a great many +things, Elisabeth." + +"Because I've taken the trouble to do so. But the worst of it is that by +the time I've taught you anything, I have changed my mind about it +myself, and find I've been teaching you all wrong. And it is a bother to +begin to unteach you." + +"I wonder why. I don't think I should find it at all a bother to unteach +you certain things." + +"And it is a greater bother still to teach you all over again, and teach +you different." Elisabeth added, without attending to the last remark. + +"Thank you, I think I won't trespass on your forbearance to that extent. +Some lessons are so hard to master that life would be unbearable if one +had to learn them twice over." Christopher spoke somewhat bitterly. + +Elisabeth attended then. "What a funny thing to say! But I know what it +is--you've got a headache; I can see it in your face, and that makes you +take things so contrariwise." + +"Possibly." + +"Poor old boy! Does it hurt?" + +"Pretty considerably." + +"And have you had it long?" + +"Yes," replied Christopher with truth, and he added to himself, "ever +since I can remember, and it isn't in my head at all." + +Elisabeth stroked his sleeve affectionately. "I am so sorry." + +Christopher winced; it was when Elisabeth was affectionate that he found +his enforced silence most hard to bear. How he could have made her love +him if he had tried, he thought; and how could he find the heart to make +her love him as long as he and she were alike dependent upon Miss +Farringdon's bounty, and they had neither anything of their own? He +rejoiced that Alan Tremaine had failed to win her love; but he scorned +him as a fool for not having succeeded in doing so when he had the +chance. Had Christopher been master of the Moat House he felt he would +have managed things differently; for the most modest of men cherish a +profound contempt for the man who can not succeed in making a woman love +him when he sets about it. + +"By Jove!" he said to himself, looking into the gray eyes that were so +full of sympathy just then, "what an ass the man was to talk to such a +woman as this about art and philosophy and high-falutin' of that sort! +If I had only the means to make her happy, I would talk to her about +herself and me until she was tired of the subject--and that wouldn't be +this side Doomsday. And she thinks that I am cold-hearted!" But what he +said to Elisabeth was, "There isn't much the matter with my +head--nothing for you to worry about, I can assure you. Let us talk +about something more interesting than my unworthy self--Tremaine, for +instance." + +"I used to believe in Alan," Elisabeth confessed; "but I don't so much +now. I wonder if that is because he has left off making love to me, or +because I have seen that his ideas are so much in advance of his +actions." + +"He never did make love to me, so I always had an inkling of the truth +that his sentiments were a little over his own head. As a matter of +fact, I believe I mentioned this conviction to you more than once; but +you invariably treated it with the scorn that it doubtless deserved." + +"And yet you were right. It seems to me that you are always right, +Chris." + +"No--not always; but more often than you are, perhaps," replied +Christopher, in rather a husky voice, but with a very kindly smile. "I +am older, you see, for one thing; and I have had a harder time of it for +another, and some of the idealism has been knocked out of me." + +"But the nice thing about you is that though you always know when I am +wrong or foolish, you never seem to despise me for it." + +Despise her? Christopher laughed at the word; and yet women were +supposed to have such keen perceptions. + +"I don't care whether you are wise or foolish," he said, "as long as +you are you. That is all that matters to me." + +"And you really think I am nice?" + +"I don't see how you could well be nicer." + +"Oh! you don't know what I could do if I tried. You underrate my powers; +you always did. But you are a very restful person, Chris; when my mind +gets tired with worrying over things and trying to understand them, I +find it a perfect holiday to talk to you. You seem to take things as +they are." + +"Well, I have to, you see; and what must be must." + +"Simple natures like yours are very soothing to complex natures like +mine. When I've lived my life and worn myself out with trying to get the +utmost I can out of everything, I shall spend the first three thousand +years of eternity sitting quite still upon a fixed star without +speaking, with my legs dangling into space, and looking at you. It will +be such a nice rest, before beginning life over again." + +"Say two thousand years; you'd never be able to sit still without +speaking for more than two thousand years at the outside. By that time +you'd have pulled yourself together, and be wanting to set about +teaching the angels a thing or two. I know your ways." + +"I should enjoy that," laughed Elisabeth. + +"So would the angels, if they were anything like me." + +Elisabeth laughed again, and looked through the trees to the fields +beyond. Friends were much more comfortable than lovers, she said to +herself; Alan in his palmiest days had never been half so soothing to +her as Christopher was now. She wondered why poets and people of that +kind made so much of love and so little of friendship, since the latter +was obviously the more lasting and satisfactory of the two. Somehow the +mere presence of Christopher had quite cured the sore feeling that Alan +and Felicia had left behind them when they started for their walk +without even asking her to go with them; and she was once more sure of +the fact that she was necessary to somebody--a certainty without which +Elisabeth could not live. So her imagination took heart of grace again, +and began drawing plans for extensive castles in Spain, and arranging +social campaigns wherein she herself should be crowned with triumph. She +decided that half the delight of winning life's prizes and meeting its +fairy princes would be the telling Christopher all about them afterward; +for her belief in his exhaustless sympathy was boundless. + +"A penny for your thoughts," he said, after she had been silent for some +moments. + +"I was looking at Mrs. Bateson feeding her fowls," said Elisabeth +evasively; "and, I say, have you ever noticed that hens are just like +tea-pots, and cocks like coffee-pots? Look at them now! It seems as if +an army of breakfast services had suddenly come to life _à la_ Galatea, +and were pouring libations at Mrs. Bateson's feet." + +"It does look rather like that, I admit. But here are Miss Herbert and +Tremaine returning from their walk; let's go and meet them." + +And Elisabeth went to meet the lovers with no longer any little cobwebs +of jealousy hiding in the dark corners of her heart, Christopher's hand +having swept them all away; he had a wonderful power of exterminating +the little foxes which would otherwise have spoiled Elisabeth's vines; +and again she said to herself how much better a thing was friendship +than love, since Alan had always expected her to be interested in his +concerns, while Christopher, on the contrary, was always interested in +hers. + +It was not long after this that Elisabeth was told by Felicia of the +latter's engagement to Alan Tremaine; and Elisabeth was amazed at the +rapidity with which Felicia had assimilated her lover's views on all +subjects. Elisabeth had expected that her friend would finally sacrifice +her opinions on the altar of her feelings; she was already old enough to +be prepared for that; but she had anticipated a fierce warfare in the +soul of Felicia between the directly opposing principles of this young +lady's mother and lover. To Elisabeth's surprise, this civil war never +took place. Felicia accepted Alan's doubts as unquestioningly as she had +formerly accepted Mrs. Herbert's beliefs; and as she loved the former +more devotedly than she had ever loved the latter, she was more devout +and fervid in her agnosticism than she had ever been in her faith. She +had believed, because her mother ordered her to believe; she doubted, +because Alan desired her to doubt; her belief and unbelief being equally +the outcome of her affections rather than of her convictions. + +Mrs. Herbert likewise looked leniently upon Alan's want of orthodoxy, +and at this Elisabeth was not surprised. Possibly there are not many of +us who do not--in the private and confidential depths of our evil +hearts--regard earth in the hand as worth more than heaven in the bush, +so to speak; at any rate, Felicia's mother was not one of the bright +exceptions; and--from a purely commercial point of view--a saving faith +does not go so far as a spending income, and it is no use pretending +that it does. So Mrs. Herbert smiled upon her daughter's engagement; but +compromised with that accommodating conscience of hers by always +speaking of her prospective son-in-law as "poor Alan," just as if she +really believed, as she professed she did, that the death of the body +and the death of the soul are conditions equally to be deplored. + +"You see, my dear," she said to Elisabeth, who came to stay at Wood Glen +for Felicia's marriage, which took place in the early summer, "it is +such a comfort to Mr. Herbert and myself to know that our dear child is +so comfortably provided for. And then--although I can not altogether +countenance his opinions--poor Alan has such a good heart." + +Elisabeth, remembering that she had once been fascinated by the master +of the Moat House, was merciful. "He is an extremely interesting man to +talk to," she said; "he has thought out so many things." + +"He has, my love. And if we are tempted to rebuke him too severely for +his non-acceptance of revealed truth, we must remember that he was +deprived comparatively early in life of both his parents, and so ought +rather to be pitied than blamed," agreed Mrs. Herbert, who would +cheerfully have poured out all the vials of the Book of Revelation upon +any impecunious doubter who had dared to add the mortal sin of poverty +to the venial one of unbelief. + +"And he is really very philanthropic," Elisabeth continued; "he has done +no end of things for the work-people at the Osierfield. It is a pity +that his faith is second-rate, considering that his works are +first-class." + +"Ah! my dear, we must judge not, lest in turn we too should be judged. +Who are we, that we should say who is or who is not of the elect? It is +often those who seem to be the farthest from the kingdom that are in +truth the nearest to it." Mrs. Herbert had dismissed a kitchen-maid, +only the week before, for declining to attend her Bible-class, and +walking out with a young man instead. + +"Still, I am sorry that Alan has all those queer views," Elisabeth +persisted; "he really would be a splendid sort of person if he were only +a Christian; and it seems such a pity that--with all his learning--he +hasn't learned the one thing that really matters." + +"My love, I am ashamed to find you so censorious; it is a sad fault, +especially in the young. I would advise you to turn to the thirteenth of +First Corinthians, and see for yourself how excellent a gift is +charity--the greatest of all, according to our dear Saint Paul." + +Elisabeth sighed. She had long ago become acquainted with Mrs. Herbert's +custom of keeping religion as a thing apart, and of treating it from an +"in-another-department-if-you-please" point of view; and she felt that +Tremaine's open agnosticism was almost better--and certainly more +sincere--than this. + +But Mrs. Herbert was utterly unconscious of any secret fault on her own +part, and continued to purr contentedly to herself. "Felicia, dear +child! will certainly take an excellent position. She will be in county +society, the very thing which I have always desired for her; and she +will enter it, not on sufferance, but as one of themselves. I can not +tell you what a pleasure it is to Mr. Herbert and myself to think of our +beloved daughter as a regular county lady; it quite makes up for all the +little self-denials that we suffered in order to give her a good +education and to render her fit to take her place in society. I +shouldn't be surprised if she were even presented at Court." And the +mother's cup of happiness ran over at the mere thought of such honour +and glory. + +Felicia, too, was radiantly happy. In the first place, she was very much +in love; in the second, her world was praising her for doing well to +herself. "I can not think how a clever man like Alan ever fell in love +with such a stupid creature as me," she said to Elisabeth, not long +before the wedding. + +"Can't you? Well, I can. I don't wonder at any man's falling in love +with you, darling, you are so dear and pretty and altogether adorable." + +"But then Alan is so different from other men." + +Elisabeth was too well-mannered to smile at this; but she made a note of +it to report to Christopher afterward. She knew that he would understand +how funny it was. + +"I am simply amazed at my own happiness," Felicia continued; "and I am +so dreadfully afraid that he will be disappointed in me when he gets to +know me better, and will find out that I am not half good enough for +him--which I am not." + +"What nonsense! Why, there isn't a man living that would really be good +enough for you, Felicia." + +"Elisabeth! When I hear Alan talking, I wonder how he can put up with +silly little me at all. You see, I never was clever--not even as clever +as you are; and you, of course, aren't a millionth part as clever as +Alan. And then he has such grand thoughts, too; he is always wanting to +help other people, and to make them happier. I feel that as long as I +live I never can be half grateful enough to him for the honour he has +done me in wanting me for his wife." + +Elisabeth shrugged her shoulders; the honours that have been within our +reach are never quite so wonderful as those that have not. + +So Alan and Felicia were married with much rejoicing and ringing of +bells; and Elisabeth found it very pleasant to have her old schoolfellow +settled at the Moat House. In fact so thoroughly did she throw herself +into the interests of Felicia's new home, that she ceased to feel her +need of Christopher, and consequently neglected him somewhat. It was +only when others failed her that he was at a premium; when she found she +could do without him, she did. As for him, he loyally refrained from +blaming Elisabeth, even in his heart, and cursed Fate instead; which +really was unfair of him, considering that in this matter Elisabeth, and +not Fate, was entirely to blame. But Christopher was always ready to +find excuses for Elisabeth, whatever she might do; and this, it must be +confessed, required no mean order of ingenuity just then. Elisabeth was +as yet young enough to think lightly of the gifts that were bestowed +upon her freely and with no trouble on her part, such as bread and air +and sunshine and the like; it was reserved for her to learn later that +the things one takes for granted are the best thing life has to offer. + +It must also be remembered, for her justification, that Christopher had +never told her that he loved her "more than reason"; and it is difficult +for women to believe that any man loves them until he has told them so, +just as it is difficult for them to believe that a train is going direct +to the place appointed to it in Bradshaw, until they have been verbally +assured upon the point by two guards, six porters, and a newspaper boy. +Nevertheless, Elisabeth's ignorance--though perhaps excusable, +considering her sex--was anything but bliss to poor Christopher, and +her good-natured carelessness hurt him none the less for her not knowing +that it hurt him. + +When Felicia had been married about three months her mother came to stay +with her at the Moat House; and Elisabeth smiled to herself--and to +Christopher--as she pictured the worthy woman's delight in her +daughter's new surroundings. + +"She'll extol all Felicia's belongings as exhaustively as if she were +the Benedicite," Elisabeth said, "and she'll enumerate them as carefully +as if she were sending them to the wash. You'll find there won't be a +single one omitted--not even the second footman or the soft-water +cistern. Mrs. Herbert is one who battens on details, and she never +spares her hearers a single item." + +"It is distinctly naughty of you," Christopher replied, with the smile +that was always ready for Elisabeth's feeblest sallies, "to draw the +good soul out for the express purpose of laughing at her. I am ashamed +of you, Miss Farringdon." + +"Draw her out, my dear boy! You don't know what you are talking about. +The most elementary knowledge of Mrs. Herbert would teach you that she +requires nothing in the shape of drawing out. You have but to mention +the word 'dinner,' and the secret sins of her cook are retailed to you +in chronological order; you have but to whisper the word 'clothes,' and +the iniquities of her dressmaker's bill are laid bare before your eyes. +Should the conversation glance upon Mr. Herbert, his complete biography +becomes your own possession; and should the passing thought of childhood +appear above her mental horizon, she tells you all about her own +children as graphically as if she were editing a new edition of The +Pillars of the House. And yet you talk of drawing her out! I am afraid +you have no perceptions, Christopher." + +"Possibly not; everybody doesn't have perceptions. I am frequently +struck with clever people's lack of them." + +"Well, I'm off," replied Elisabeth, whipping up her pony, "to hear Mrs. +Herbert's outpourings on Felicia's happiness; when I come back I expect +I shall be able to write another poem on 'How does the water come down +at Lodore'--with a difference." + +And Christopher--who had met her in the High Street--smiled after the +retreating figure in sheer delight at her. How fresh and bright and +spontaneous she was, he thought, and how charmingly ignorant of the +things which she prided herself upon understanding so profoundly! He +laughed aloud as he recalled how very wise Elisabeth considered herself. +And then he wondered if life would teach her to be less sure of her own +buoyant strength, and less certain of her ultimate success in everything +she undertook; and, if it did, he felt that he should have an ugly +account to settle with life. He was willing for Fate to knock him about +as much and as hardly as she pleased, provided she would let Elisabeth +alone, and allow the girl to go on believing in herself and enjoying +herself as she was so abundantly capable of doing. By this time +Christopher was enough of a philosopher to think that it did not really +matter much in the long run whether he were happy or unhappy; but he was +not yet able to regard the thought of Elisabeth's unhappiness as +anything but a catastrophe of the most insupportable magnitude; which +showed that he had not yet sufficient philosophy to go round. + +When Elisabeth arrived at the Moat House she found Mrs. Herbert alone, +Felicia having gone out driving with her husband; and, to Elisabeth's +surprise, there was no sign of the jubilation which she had anticipated. +On the contrary, Mrs. Herbert was subdued and tired-looking. + +"I am so glad to see you, my dear," she said, kissing Elisabeth; "it is +lonely in this big house all by myself." + +"It is always rather lonely to be in state," Elisabeth replied, +returning her salute. "I wonder if kings find it lonely all by +themselves in pleasures and palaces. I expect they do, but they put up +with the loneliness for the sake of the stateliness; and you could +hardly find a statelier house than this to be lonely in, if you tried." + +"Yes; it is a beautiful place," agreed Mrs. Herbert listlessly. + +Elisabeth wondered what was wrong, but she did not ask; she knew that +Mrs. Herbert would confide in her very soon. People very rarely were +reserved with Elisabeth; she was often amazed at the rapidity with which +they opened their inmost hearts to her. Probably this accounted in some +measure for her slowness in understanding Christopher, who had made it a +point of honour not to open his inmost heart to her. + +"Don't the woods look lovely?" she said cheerfully, pretending not to +notice anything. "I can't help seeing that the trees are beautiful with +their gilt leaves, but it goes against my principles to own it, because +I do so hate the autumn. I wish we could change our four seasons for two +springs and two summers. I am so happy in the summer, and still happier +in the spring looking forward to it; but I am wretched in the winter +because I am cold, and still wretcheder in the autumn thinking that I'm +going to be even colder." + +"Yes; the woods are pretty--very pretty indeed." + +"I am so glad you have come while the leaves are still on. I wanted you +to see Felicia's home at its very best; and, at its best, it is a home +that any woman might be proud of." + +Mrs. Herbert's lip trembled. "It is indeed a most beautiful home, and I +am sure Felicia has everything to make her happy." + +"And she is happy, Mrs. Herbert; I don't think I ever saw anybody so +perfectly happy as Felicia is now. I'm afraid I could never be quite as +satisfied with any impossible ideal of a husband as she is with Alan; I +should want to quarrel with him just for the fun of the thing, and to +find out his faults for the pleasure of correcting them. A man as +faultless as Alan--I mean as faultless as Felicia considers Alan--would +bore me; but he suits her down to the ground." + +But even then Mrs. Herbert did not smile; instead of that her light blue +eyes filled with tears. "Oh! my dear," she said, with a sob in her +voice, "Felicia is ashamed of me." + +For all her high spirits, Elisabeth generally recognised tragedy when +she met it face to face; and she knew that she was meeting it now. So +she spoke very gently-- + +"My dear Mrs. Herbert, whatever do you mean? I am sure you are not very +strong, and so your nerves are out of joint, and make you imagine +things." + +"No, my love; it is no imagination on my part. I only wish it were. Who +can know Felicia as well as her mother knows her--her mother who has +worshipped her and toiled for her ever since she was a little baby? And +I, who can read her through and through, feel that she is ashamed of +me." And the tears overflowed, and rolled down Mrs. Herbert's faded +cheeks. + +Elisabeth's heart swelled with an immense pity, for her quick insight +told her that Mrs. Herbert was not mistaken; but all she said was-- + +"I think you are making mountains out of molehills. Lots of girls lose +their heads a bit when first they are married, and seem to regard +marriage as a special invention and prerogative of their own, which +entitles them to give themselves air _ad libitum_; but they soon grow +out of it." + +Mrs. Herbert shook her head sorrowfully; her tongue was loosed and she +spake plain. "Oh! it isn't like that with Felicia; I should think +nothing of that. I remember when first I was married I thought that no +unmarried woman knew anything, and that no married woman knew anything +but myself; but, as you say, I soon grew out of that. Why, I was quite +ready, after I had been married a couple of months, to teach my dear +mother all about housekeeping; and finely she laughed at me for it. But +Felicia doesn't trouble to teach me anything; she thinks it isn't worth +while." + +"Oh! I can not believe that Felicia is like that. You must be mistaken." + +"Mistaken in my own child, whom I carried in my arms as a little baby? +No, my dear; there are some things about which mothers can never be +mistaken, God help them! Do you think I did not understand when the +carriage came round to-day to take her and Alan to return Lady +Patchingham's visit, and Felicia said, 'Mamma won't go with us to-day, +Alan dear, because the wind is in the east, and it always gives her a +cold to drive in an open carriage when the wind is in the east'? Oh! I +saw plain enough that she didn't want me to go with them to Lady +Patchingham's; but I only thanked her and said I would rather stay +indoors, as it would be safer for me. When they had started I went out +and looked at the weather-cock for myself; it pointed southwest." And +the big tears rolled down faster than ever. + +Elisabeth did not know what to say; so she wisely said nothing, but took +Mrs. Herbert's hand in hers and stroked it. + +"Perhaps, my dear, I did wrong in allowing Felicia to marry a man who is +not a true believer, and this is my punishment." + +"Oh! no, no, Mrs. Herbert; I don't believe that God ever punishes for +the sake of punishing. He has to train us, and the training hurts +sometimes; but when it does, I think He minds even more than we do." + +"Well, my love, I can not say; it is not for us to inquire into the +counsels of the Almighty. But I did it for the best; I did, indeed. I +did so want Felicia to be happy." + +"I am sure you did." + +"You see, all my life I had taken an inferior position socially, and the +iron of it had entered into my soul. I daresay it was sinful of me, but +I used to mind so dreadfully when my husband and I were always asked to +second-rate parties, and introduced to second-rate people; and I longed +and prayed that my darling Felicia should be spared the misery and the +humiliation which I had had to undergo. You won't understand it, +Elisabeth. People in a good position never do; but to be alternately +snubbed and patronized all one's life, as I have been, makes social +intercourse one long-drawn-out agony to a sensitive woman. So I +prayed--how I prayed!--that my beautiful daughter should never suffer as +I have done." + +Elisabeth's eyes filled with tears; and Mrs. Herbert, encouraged by her +unspoken sympathy, proceeded-- + +"Grand people are so cruel, my dear. I daresay they don't mean to be; +but they are. And though I had borne it for myself, I felt I could not +bear it for Felicia. I thought it would kill me to see fine ladies +overlook her as they had so often overlooked me. So when Alan wanted to +marry her, and make her into a fine lady herself, I was overwhelmed with +joy; and I felt I no longer minded what I had gone through, now that I +knew no one would ever dare to be rude to my beautiful daughter. Now I +see I was wrong to set earthly blessings before spiritual ones; but I +think you understand how I felt, Elisabeth." + +"Yes, I understand; and God understands too." + +"Then don't you think He is punishing me, my dear?" + +"No; I think He is training Felicia--and perhaps you too, dear Mrs. +Herbert." + +"Oh! I wish I could think so. But you don't know what Felicia has been +to her father and me. She was such a beautiful baby that the people in +the street used to stop the nurse to ask whose child she was; and when +she grew older she never gave us a moment's trouble or anxiety. Then we +pinched and pared in order to be able to afford to send her to Fox How; +and when her education was finished there wasn't a more perfect lady in +the land than our Felicia. Oh! I was proud of her, I can tell you. And +now she is ashamed of me, her own mother! I can not help seeing that +this is God's punishment to me for letting her marry an unbeliever." And +Mrs. Herbert covered her face with her hands and burst out into bitter +sobs. + +Elisabeth took the weeping form into her strong young arms. "My poor +dear, you are doing Him an injustice, you are, indeed. I am sure He +minds even more than you do that Felicia is still so ignorant and +foolish, and He is training her in His own way. But He isn't doing it to +punish you, dear; believe me, He isn't. Why, even the ordinary human +beings who are fond of us want to cure our faults and not to punish +them," she continued, as the memory of Christopher's unfailing patience +with her suddenly came into her mind, and she recalled how often she had +hurt him, and how readily he had always forgiven her; "they are sorry +when we do wrong, but they are even sorrier when we suffer for it. And +do you think God loves us less than they do, and is quicker to punish +and slower to forgive?" + +So does the love of the brother whom we have seen help us in some +measure to understand the love of the God Whom we have not seen; for +which we owe the brother eternal thanks. + + + + +CHAPTER X + +CHANGES + + Why did you take all I said for certain + When I so gleefully threw the glove? + Couldn't you see that I made a curtain + Out of my laughter to hide my love? + + +"My dear," said Miss Farringdon, when Elisabeth came down one morning to +breakfast, "there is sad news to-day." + +Miss Farringdon was never late in a morning. She regarded early rising +as a virtue on a par with faith and charity; while to appear at the +breakfast-table after the breakfast itself had already appeared thereon +was, in her eyes, as the sin of witchcraft. + +"What is the matter?" asked Elisabeth, somewhat breathlessly. She had +run downstairs at full speed in order to enter the dining-room before +the dishes, completing her toilet as she fled; and she had only beaten +the bacon by a neck. + +"Richard Smallwood has had a paralytic stroke. Christopher sent up word +the first thing this morning." + +"Oh! I am so sorry. Mr. Smallwood is such a dear old man, and used to be +so kind to Christopher and me when we were little." + +"I am very sorry, too, Elisabeth. I have known Richard Smallwood all my +life, and he was a valued friend of my dear father's, as well as being +his right hand in all matters of business. Both my father and uncle +thought very highly of Richard's opinion, and considered that they owed +much of their commercial success to his advice and assistance." + +"Poor Christopher! I wonder if he will mind much?" + +"Of course he will mind, my dear. What a strange child you are, and what +peculiar things you say! Mr. Smallwood is Christopher's only living +relative, and when anything happens to him Christopher will be entirely +alone in the world. It is sad for any one to be quite alone; and +especially for young people, who have a natural craving for +companionship and sympathy." Miss Farringdon sighed. She had spent most +of her life in the wilderness and on the mountain-tops, and she knew how +cold was the climate and how dreary the prospect there. + +Elisabeth's eyes filled with tears, and her heart swelled with a strange +new feeling she had never felt before. For the first time in her life +Christopher (unconsciously on his part) made a direct appeal to her +pity, and her heart responded to the appeal. His perspective, from her +point of view, was suddenly changed; he was no longer the kindly, +easy-going comrade with whom she had laughed and quarrelled and made it +up again ever since she could remember, and with whom she was on a +footing of such familiar intimacy; instead, he had become a man standing +in the shadow of a great sorrow, whose solitary grief commanded her +respect and at the same time claimed her tenderness. All through +breakfast, and the prayers which followed, Elisabeth's thoughts ran on +this new Christopher, who was so much more interesting and yet so much +farther off than the old one. She wondered how he would look and what he +would say when next she saw him; and she longed to see him again, and +yet felt frightened at the thought of doing so. At prayers that morning +Miss Farringdon read the lament of David over Saul and Jonathan; and +while the words of undying pathos sounded in her ears, Elisabeth +wondered whether Christopher would mourn as David did if his uncle were +to die, and whether he would let her comfort him. + +When prayers were over, Miss Farringdon bade Elisabeth accompany her to +Mr. Smallwood's; and all the way there the girl's heart was beating so +fast that it almost choked her, with mingled fear of and tenderness for +this new Christopher who had taken the place of her old playmate. As +they sat waiting for him in the oak-panelled dining-room, a fresh wave +of pity swept over Elisabeth as she realized for the first time--though +she had sat there over and over again--what a cheerless home this was in +which to spend one's childhood and youth, and how pluckily Christopher +had always made the best of things, and had never confessed--even to +her--what a dreary lot was his. Then he came downstairs; and as she +heard his familiar footstep crossing the hall her heart beat faster than +ever, and there was a mist before her eyes; but when he entered the room +and shook hands, first with Miss Farringdon and then with her, she was +quite surprised to see that he looked very much as he always looked, +only his face was pale and his eyes heavy for want of sleep; and his +smile was as kind as ever as it lighted upon her. + +"It is very good of you to come to me so quickly," he said, addressing +Miss Farringdon but looking at Elisabeth. + +"Not at all, Christopher," replied Miss Maria; "those who have friends +must show themselves friendly, and your uncle has certainly proved +himself of the sort that sticketh closer than a brother. No son could +have done more for my father--no brother could have done more for +me--than he has done; and therefore his affliction is my affliction, and +his loss is my loss." + +"You are very kind." And Christopher's voice shook a little. + +Elisabeth did not speak. She was struggling with a feeling of +uncontrollable shyness which completely tied her usually fluent tongue. + +"Is he very ill?" Miss Farringdon asked. + +"Yes," Christopher replied, "I'm afraid it's a bad job altogether. The +doctor thinks he will last only a few days; but if he lives he will +never regain the use of his speech or of his brain; and I don't know +that life under such conditions is a boon to be desired." + +"I do not think it is. Yet we poor mortals long to keep our beloved ones +with us, even though it is but the semblance of their former selves that +remain." + +Christopher did not answer. There suddenly rushed over him the memory of +all that his uncle had been to him, and of how that uncle still treated +him as a little child; and with it came the consciousness that, when his +uncle was gone, nobody would ever treat him as a little child any more. +Life is somewhat dreary when the time comes for us to be grown-up to +everybody; so Christopher looked (and did not see) out of the window, +instead of speaking. + +"Of course," Miss Farringdon continued, "you will take his place, should +he be--as I fear is inevitable--unable to resume work at the +Osierfield; and I have such a high opinion of you, Christopher, that I +have no doubt you will do your uncle's work as well as he has done it, +and there could not be higher praise. Nevertheless, it saddens me to +know that another of the old landmarks has been swept away, and that now +I only am left of what used to be the Osierfield forty years ago. The +work may be done as well by the new hands and brains as by the old ones; +but after one has crossed the summit of the mountain and begun to go +downhill, it is sorry work exchanging old lamps for new. The new lamps +may give brighter light, perchance; but their light is too strong for +tired old eyes; and we grow homesick for the things to which we are +accustomed." And Miss Farringdon took off her spectacles and wiped them. + +There was silence for a few seconds, while Christopher manfully +struggled with his feelings and Miss Maria decorously gave vent to hers. +Christopher was vexed with himself for so nearly breaking down before +Elisabeth, and throwing the shadow of his sorrow across the sunshine of +her path. He did not know that the mother-heart in her was yearning over +him with a tenderness almost too powerful to be resisted, and that his +weakness was constraining her as his strength had never done. He was +rather surprised that she did not speak to him; but with the patient +simplicity of a strong man he accepted her behaviour without questioning +it. Her mere presence in the room somehow changed everything, and made +him feel that no world which contained Elisabeth could ever be an +entirely sorrowful world. Of course he knew nothing about the new +Christopher which had suddenly arisen above Elisabeth's horizon; he was +far too masculine to understand that his own pathos could be pathetic, +or his own suffering dramatic. It is only women--or men who have much of +the woman in their composition--who can say: + + "Here I and sorrow sit, + This is my throne; let kings come bow to it." + +The thoroughly manly man is incapable of seeing the picturesque effect +of his own misery. + +So Christopher pulled himself together and tried to talk of trivial +things; and Miss Farringdon, having walked through the dark valley +herself, knew the comfort of the commonplace therein, and fell in with +his mood, discussing nurses and remedies and domestic arrangements and +the like. Elisabeth, however, was distinctly disappointed in +Christopher, because he could bring himself down to dwell upon these +trifling matters when the Angel of Death had crossed the lintel of his +doorway only last night, and was still hovering round with overshadowing +wings. It was just like him, she said to herself, to give his attention +to surface details, and to miss the deeper thing. She had yet to learn +that it was because he felt so much, and not because he felt so little, +that Christopher found it hard to utter the inmost thoughts of his +heart. + +But when Miss Farringdon had made every possible arrangement for Mr. +Smallwood's comfort, and they rose to leave, Elisabeth's heart smote her +for her passing impatience; so she lingered behind after her cousin had +left the room, and, slipping her hand into Christopher's, she +whispered-- + +"Chris, dear, I'm so dreadfully sorry!" + +It was a poor little speech for the usually eloquent Elisabeth to make; +in cold blood she herself would have been ashamed of it; but Christopher +was quite content. For a second he forgot that he had decided not to +let Elisabeth know that he loved her until he was in a position to marry +her, and he very nearly took her in his strong arms and kissed her there +and then; but before he had time to do this, his good angel (or perhaps +his bad one, for it is often difficult to ascertain how one's two +guardian spirits divide their work) reminded him that it was his duty to +leave Elisabeth free to live her own life, unhampered by the knowledge +of a love which might possibly find no fulfilment in this world where +money is considered the one thing needful; so he merely returned the +pressure of her hand, and said in a queer, strained sort of voice-- + +"Thanks awfully, dear. It isn't half so rough on a fellow when he knows +you are sorry." And Elisabeth also was content. + +Contrary to the doctor's expectations, Richard Smallwood did not die: he +had lost all power of thought or speech, and never regained them, but +lived on for years a living corpse; and the burden of his illness lay +heavily on Christopher's young shoulders. Life was specially dark to +poor Christopher just then. His uncle's utter break-down effectually +closed the door on all chances of escape from the drudgery of the +Osierfield to a higher and wider sphere; for, until now, he had +continued to hope against hope that he might induce that uncle to start +him in some other walk of life, where the winning of Elisabeth would +enter into the region of practical politics. But now all chance of this +was over; Richard Smallwood was beyond the reach of the entreaties and +arguments which hitherto he had so firmly resisted. There was nothing +left for Christopher to do but to step into his uncle's shoes, and try +to make the best of his life as general manager of the Osierfield, +handicapped still further by the charge of that uncle, which made it +impossible for him to dream of bringing home a wife to the big old house +in the High Street. + +There was only one drop of sweetness in the bitterness of his cup--one +ray of light in the darkness of his outlook; and that was the +consciousness that he could still go on seeing and loving and serving +Elisabeth, although he might never be able to tell her he was doing so. +He hoped that she would understand; but here he was too sanguine; +Elisabeth was as yet incapable of comprehending any emotion until she +had seen it reduced to a prescription. + +So Christopher lived on in the gloomy house, and looked after his uncle +as tenderly as a mother looks after a sick child. To all intents and +purposes Richard was a child again; he could not speak or think, but he +still loved his nephew, the only one of his own flesh and blood; and he +smiled like a child every time that Christopher came into his room, and +cried like a child ever; time that Christopher went away. + +Elisabeth was very sorry for Christopher at first, and very tender +toward him; but after a time the coldness, which he felt it his duty to +show toward her in the changed state of affairs, had its natural effect, +and she decided that it was foolish to waste her sympathy upon any one +who obviously needed and valued it so little. Moreover, she had not +forgotten that strange, new feeling which disturbed her heart the +morning after Mr. Smallwood was taken ill; and she experienced, half +unconsciously, a thoroughly feminine resentment against the man who had +called into being such an emotion, and then apparently had found no use +for it. So Elisabeth in her heart of hearts was at war with +Christopher--that slumbering, smouldering sort of warfare which is +ready to break out into fire and battle at the slightest provocation; +and this state of affairs did not tend to make life any the easier for +him. He felt he could have cheerfully borne it all if only Elisabeth had +been kind and had understood; but Elisabeth did not understand him in +the least, and was consequently unkind--far more unkind than she, in her +careless, light-hearted philosophy, dreamed of. + +She, too, had her disappointments to bear just then. The artist-soul in +her had grown up, and was crying out for expression; and she vainly +prayed her cousin to let her go to the Slade School, and there learn to +develop the power that was in her. But Miss Farringdon belonged to the +generation which regarded art purely as a recreation--such as +fancy-work, croquet, and the like--and she considered that young women +should be trained for the more serious things of life; by which she +meant the ordering of suitable dinners for the rich and the +manufacturing of seemly garments for the poor. So Elisabeth had to +endure the agony which none but an artist can know--the agony of being +dumb when one has an angel-whispered secret to tell forth--of being +bound hand and foot when one has a God-sent message to write upon the +wall. + +Now and then Miss Maria took her young cousin up to town for a few +weeks, and thus Elisabeth came to have a bowing acquaintanceship with +London; but of London as an ever-fascinating, never-wearying friend she +knew nothing. There are people who tell us that "London is delightful in +the season," and that "the country is very pretty in the summer," and we +smile at them as a man would smile at those who said that his mother was +"a pleasant person," or his heart's dearest "a charming girl." Those +who know London and the country, as London and the country deserve to be +known, do not talk in this way, for they have learned that there is no +end to the wonder or the interest or the mystery of either. + +The year following Richard Smallwood's break-down, a new interest came +into Elisabeth's life. A son and heir was born at the Moat House; and +Elisabeth was one of the women who are predestined to the worship of +babies. Very tightly did the tiny fingers twine themselves round her +somewhat empty heart; for Elisabeth was meant to love much, and at +present her supply of the article was greatly in excess of the demand +made upon it. So she poured the surplus--which no one else seemed to +need--upon the innocent head of Felicia's baby; and she found that the +baby never misjudged her nor disappointed her, as older people seemed so +apt to do. One of her most devout fellow-worshippers was Mrs. Herbert, +who derived comfort from the fact that little Willie was not ashamed of +her as little Willie's mother was; so--like many a disappointed woman +before them--both Mrs. Herbert and Elisabeth discovered the healing +power which lies in the touch of a baby's hand. Felicia loved the child, +too, in her way; but she was of the type of woman to whom the husband is +always dearer than the children. But Alan's cup was filled to +overflowing, and he loved his son as he loved his own soul. + +One of Christopher's expedients for hiding the meditations of his heart +from Elisabeth's curious eyes was the discussion with her of what people +call "general subjects"; and this tried her temper to the utmost. She +regarded it as a sign of superficiality to talk of superficial things; +and she hardly ever went in to dinner with a man without arriving at +the discussion of abstract love and the second _entrée_ simultaneously. +It had never yet dawned upon her that as a rule it is because one has +not experienced a feeling that one is able to describe it; she reasoned +in the contrary direction, and came to the conclusion that those persons +have no hearts at all whose sleeves are unadorned with the same. +Therefore it was intolerable to her when Christopher--who had played +with her as a child, and had once very nearly made her grow up into a +woman--talked to her about the contents of the newspapers. + +"I never look at the papers," she answered crossly one day, in reply to +some unexceptionable and uninteresting comment of his upon such history +as was just then in the raw material; "I hate them." + +"Why do you hate them?" Christopher was surprised at her vehemence. + +"Because there is cholera in the South of France, and I never look at +the papers when there is cholera about, it frightens me so." Elisabeth +had all the pity of a thoroughly healthy person for the suffering that +could not touch her, and the unreasoning terror of a thoroughly healthy +person for the suffering which could. + +"But there is nothing to frighten you in that," said Christopher, in his +most comforting tone; "France is such a beastly dirty hole that they are +bound to have diseases going on there, such as could never trouble +clean, local-boarded, old England. And then it's so far away, too. I'd +never worry about that, if I were you." + +"Wouldn't you?" Elisabeth was at war with him, but she was not +insensible to the consolation he never failed to afford her when things +went wrong. + +"Good gracious, no! England is so well looked after, with county +councils and such, that even if an epidemic came here they'd stamp it +out like one o'clock. Don't frighten yourself with bogeys, Elisabeth, +there's a good girl!" + +"I feel just the same about newspapers now that I used to feel about +Lalla Rookh," said Elisabeth confidentially. + +Christopher was puzzled. "I'm afraid I don't see quite the connection, +but I have no doubt it is there, like Mrs. Wilfer's petticoat." + +"In Cousin Maria's copy of Lalla Rookh there is a most awful picture of +the Veiled Prophet of Khorassan; and when I was little I went nearly mad +with terror of that picture. I used to go and look at it when nobody was +about, and it frightened me more and more every time." + +"Why on earth didn't you tell me about it?" + +"I don't know. I felt I wouldn't tell anybody for worlds, but must keep +it a ghastly secret. Sometimes I used to hide the book, and try to +forget where I'd hidden it. But I never could forget, and in the end I +always went and found it, and peeped at the picture and nearly died of +terror. The mere outside of the book had a horrible fascination for me. +I used to look at it all the time I was in the drawing-room, and then +pretend I wasn't looking at it; yet if the housemaid had moved it an +inch in dusting the table where it lay, I always knew." + +"Poor little silly child! If only you'd have told me, I'd have asked +Miss Farringdon to put it away where you couldn't get at it." + +"But I couldn't have told you, Chris--I couldn't have told anybody. +There seemed to be some terrible bond between that dreadful book and me +which I was bound to keep secret. Of course it doesn't frighten me any +longer, though I shall always hate it; but the newspapers frighten me +just in the same way when there are horrible things in them." + +"Why, Betty, I am ashamed of you! And such a clever girl as you, too, to +be taken in by the romancing of penny-a-liners! They always make the +worst of things in newspapers in order to sell them." + +"Oh! then you think things aren't as bad as newspapers say?" + +"Nothing like; but they must write something for people to read, and the +more sensational it is the better people like it." + +Elisabeth was comforted; and she never knew that Christopher did not +leave the house that day without asking Miss Farringdon if, for a few +weeks, the daily paper might be delivered at the works and sent up to +the Willows afterward, as he wanted to see the trade-reports the first +thing in the morning. This was done; and sometimes Christopher +remembered to send the papers on to the house, and sometimes he did not. +On these latter occasions Miss Farringdon severely reproved him, and +told him that he would never be as capable a man as his uncle had been, +if he did not endeavour to cultivate his memory; whereat Chris was +inwardly tickled, but was outwardly very penitent and apologetic, +promising to try to be less forgetful in future. And he kept his word; +for not once--while the epidemic in the South of France lasted--did he +forget to forget to send the newspaper up to the Willows when there was +anything in it calculated to alarm the most timid reader. + +"Cousin Maria," said Elisabeth, a few days after this, "I hear that +Coulson's circus is coming to Burlingham, and I want to go and see it." + +Miss Farringdon looked up over the tops of her gold-rimmed spectacles. +"Do you, my dear? Well, I see no reason why you should not. I have been +brought up to disapprove of theatres, and I always shall disapprove of +them; but I confess I have never seen any harm in going to a circus." + +It is always interesting to note where people draw the line between +right and wrong in dealing with forms of amusement; and it is doubtful +whether two separate lines are ever quite identical in their curves. + +"Christopher could take me," Elisabeth continued; "and if he couldn't, +I'm sure Alan would." + +"I should prefer you to go with Christopher, my dear; he is more +thoughtful and dependable than Alan Tremaine. I always feel perfectly +happy about you when you have Christopher to take care of you." + +Elisabeth laughed her cousin to scorn. She did not want anybody to take +care of her, she thought; she was perfectly able to take care of +herself. But Miss Farringdon belonged to a time when single women of +forty were supposed to require careful supervision; and Elisabeth was +but four-and-twenty. + +Christopher, when consulted, fell into the arrangement with alacrity; +and it was arranged for him to take Elisabeth over to Burlingham on the +one day that Coulson's circus was on exhibition there. Elisabeth looked +forward to the treat like a child; for she was by nature extremely fond +of pleasure, and by circumstance little accustomed to it. + +Great then was her disappointment when the morning of the day arrived, +to receive a short note from Christopher saying that he was extremely +sorry to inconvenience her, but that his business engagements made it +impossible for him to take her to Burlingham that day; and adding +various apologies and hopes that she would not be too angry with him. +She had so few treats that her disappointment at losing one was really +acute for the moment; but what hurt her far more than the disappointment +was the consciousness that Chris had obeyed the calls of business rather +than her behest--had thought less of her pleasure than of the claims of +the Osierfield. All Elisabeth's pride (or was it her vanity?) rose up in +arms at the slight which Christopher had thus put upon her; and she felt +angrier with him than she had ever felt with anybody in her life before. +She began to pour out the vials of her wrath in the presence of Miss +Farringdon; but that good lady was so much pleased to find a young man +who cared more for business than for pleasure, or even for a young +woman, that she accorded Elisabeth but scant sympathy. So Elisabeth +possessed her wounded soul in extreme impatience, until such time as the +offender himself should appear upon the scene, ready to receive those +vials which had been specially prepared for his destruction. + +He duly appeared about tea-time, and found Elisabeth consuming the smoke +of her anger in the garden. + +"I hope you are not very angry with me," he began in a humble tone, +sitting down beside her on the old rustic seat; "but I found myself +obliged to disappoint you as soon as I got to the works this morning; +and I am sure you know me well enough to understand that it wasn't my +fault, and that I couldn't help myself." + +"I don't know you well enough for anything of the kind," replied +Elisabeth, flashing a pair of very bright eyes upon his discomfited +face; "but I know you well enough to understand that you are just a +mass of selfishness and horridness, and that you care for nothing but +just what interests and pleases yourself." + +Christopher was startled. "Elisabeth, you don't mean that; you know you +don't." + +"Yes; I do. I mean that I have always hated you, and that I hate you +more than ever to-day. It was just like you to care more for the +business than you did for me, and never to mind about my disappointment +as long as that nasty old ironworks was satisfied. I tell you I hate +you, and I hate the works, and I hate everything connected with you." + +Christopher looked utterly astonished. He had no idea, he said to +himself, that Elisabeth cared so much about going to Coulson's circus; +and he could not see anything in the frustration of a day's excursion to +account for such a storm of indignation as this. He did not realize that +it was the rage of a monarch whose kingdom was in a state of rebellion, +and whose dominion seemed in danger of slipping away altogether. +Elisabeth might not understand Christopher; but Christopher was not +always guiltless of misunderstanding Elisabeth. + +"And it was just like you," Elisabeth went on, "not to let me know till +the last minute, when it was too late for anything to be done. If you +had only had the consideration--I may say the mere civility--to send +word last night that your royal highness could not be bothered with me +and my affairs to-day, I could have arranged with Alan Tremaine to take +me. He is always able to turn his attention for a time from his own +pleasure to other people's." + +"But I thought I told you that it was not until I got to the works this +morning that I discovered it would be impossible for me to take you to +Burlingham to-day." + +"Then you ought to have found it out sooner." + +"Hang it all! I really can not find out things before they occur. Clever +as I am, I am not quite clever enough for that. If I were, I should soon +make my own fortune by telling other people theirs." + +But Elisabeth was too angry to be flippant. "The fact is you care for +nothing but yourself and your horrid old business. I always told you how +it would be." + +"You did. For whatever faults you may have to blame yourself, +over-indulgence toward mine will never be one of them. You can make your +conscience quite clear on that score." Christopher was as determined to +treat the quarrel lightly as Elisabeth was to deal with it on serious +grounds. + +"You have grown into a regular, commonplace, money-grubbing, business +man, with no thoughts for anything higher than making iron and money and +vulgar things like that." + +"And making you angry--that is a source of distinct pleasure to me. You +have no idea how charming you are when you are--well, for the sake of +euphony we will say slightly ruffled, Miss Elisabeth Farringdon." + +Elisabeth stamped her foot. "I wish to goodness you'd be serious +sometimes! Frivolity is positively loathsome in a man." + +"Then I repent it in dust and ashes, and shall rely upon your more +sedate and serious mind to correct this tendency in me. Besides, as you +generally blame me for erring in the opposite direction, it is a relief +to find you smiting me on the other cheek as a change. It keeps up my +mental circulation better." + +"You are both too frivolous and too serious." + +Christopher was unwise enough to laugh. "My dear child, I seem to make +what is called 'a corner' in vices; but even I can not reconcile the +conflicting ones." + +Then Elisabeth's anger settled down into the quiet stage. "If you think +it gentlemanly to disappoint a lady and then insult her, pray go on +doing so; I can only say that I don't." + +"What on earth do you mean, Elisabeth? Do you really believe that I +meant to vex you?" The laughter had entirely died out of Christopher's +face, and his voice was hoarse. + +"I don't know what you meant, and I am afraid I don't much mind. All I +know is that you did disappoint me and did insult me, and that is enough +for me. The purity of your motives is not my concern; I merely resent +the impertinence of your behaviour." + +Christopher rose from his seat; he was serious enough now. "You are +unjust to me, Elisabeth, but I can not and will not attempt to justify +myself. Good afternoon." + +For a second the misery on his face penetrated the thunder-clouds of +Elisabeth's indignation. "Won't you have some tea before you go?" she +asked. It seemed brutal--even to her outraged feelings--to send so old a +friend empty away. + +Christopher's smile was very bitter as he answered. "No, thank you. I am +afraid, after the things you have said to me, I should hardly be able +graciously to accept hospitality at your hands; and rather than accept +it ungraciously, I will not accept it at all." And he turned on his +heel and left her. + +As she watched his retreating figure, one spasm of remorse shot through +Elisabeth's heart; but it was speedily stifled by the recollection that, +for the first time in her life, Christopher had failed her, and had +shown her plainly that there were, in his eyes, more important matters +than Miss Elisabeth Farringdon and her whims and fancies. And what +woman, worthy of the name, could extend mercy to a man who had openly +displayed so flagrant a want of taste and discernment as this? Certainly +not Elisabeth, nor any other fashioned after her pattern. She felt that +she had as much right to be angry as had the prophet, when Almighty +Wisdom saw fit to save the great city in which he was not particularly +interested, and to destroy the gourd in which he was. And so, probably, +she had. + +For several days after this she kept clear of Christopher, nursing her +anger in her heart; and he was so hurt and sore from the lashing which +her tongue had given him, that he felt no inclination to come within the +radius of that tongue's bitterness again. + +But one day, when Elisabeth was sitting on the floor of the Moat House +drawing-room, playing with the baby and discussing new gowns with +Felicia between times, Alan came in and remarked-- + +"It was wise of you to give up your excursion to Coulson's circus last +week, Elisabeth; as it has turned out it was chiefly a scare, and the +case was greatly exaggerated; but it might have made you feel +uncomfortable if you had gone. I suppose you saw the notice of the +outbreak in that morning's paper, and so gave it up at the last +moment." + +Elisabeth ceased from her free translation of the baby's gurglings and +her laudable endeavours suitably to reply to the same, and gave her +whole attention to the baby's father. "I don't know what you mean. What +scare and what outbreak are you talking about?" + +"Didn't you see," replied Alan, "that there was an outbreak of cholera +at Coulson's circus, and a frightful scare all through Burlingham in +consequence? Of course the newspapers greatly exaggerated the danger, +and so increased the scare; and I don't know that I blame them for that. +I am not sure that the sensational way in which the press announces +possible dangers to the community is not a safeguard for the community +at large. To be alive to a danger is nine times out of ten to avoid a +danger; and it is far better to be more frightened than hurt than to be +more hurt than frightened--certainly for communities if not for +individuals." + +"But tell me about it. I never saw any account in the papers; and I'm +glad I didn't, for it would have frightened me out of my wits." + +"It broke out among a troupe of acrobats who had just come straight from +the South of France, and evidently brought the infection with them. They +were at once isolated, and such prompt and efficient measures were taken +to prevent the spread of the disease, that there have been no more +cases, either in the circus or in the town. Now, I should imagine, all +danger of its spreading is practically over; but, of course, it made +everybody in the neighbourhood, and everybody who had been to the +circus, very nervous and uncomfortable for a few days. The local +authorities, however, omitted no possible precaution which should assist +them in stamping out the epidemic, should those few cases have started +an epidemic--which was, of course, possible, though hardly likely." + +And then Alan proceeded to expound his views on the matter of sanitary +authorities in general and of those of Burlingham in particular, to +which Felicia listened with absorbing attention and Elisabeth did not +listen at all. + +Soon after this she took her leave; and all along the homeward walk +through Badgering Woods she was conscious of feeling ashamed of +herself--a very rare sensation with Elisabeth, and by no means an +agreeable one. She was by nature so self-reliant and so irresponsible +that she seldom regretted anything that she had done; if she had acted +wisely, all was well; and if she had not acted wisely, it was over and +done with, and what was the use of bothering any more about it? This was +her usual point of view, and it proved as a rule a most comfortable one. +But now she could not fail to see that she had been in the +wrong--hopelessly and flagrantly in the wrong--and that she had behaved +abominably to Christopher into the bargain. She had to climb down, as +other ruling powers have had to climb down before now; and the act of +climbing down is neither a becoming nor an exhilarating form of exercise +to ruling powers. But at the back of her humble contrition there was a +feeling of gladness in the knowledge that Christopher had not really +failed her after all, and that her kingdom was still her own as it had +been in her childish days; and there was also a nobler feeling of higher +joy in the consciousness that--quite apart from his attitude toward +her--Christopher was still the Christopher that she had always in her +inmost soul believed him to be; that she was not wrong in the idea she +had formed of him long ago. It is very human to be glad on our own +account when people are as fond of us as we expected them to be; but it +is divine to be glad, solely for their sakes, when they act up to their +own ideals, quite apart from us. And there was a touch of divinity in +Elisabeth's gladness just then, though the rest of her was extremely +human--and feminine at that. + +On her way home she encountered Caleb Bateson going back to work after +dinner, and she told him to ask Mr. Thornley to come up to the Willows +that afternoon, as she wanted to see him. She preferred to send a verbal +message, as by so doing she postponed for a few hours that climbing-down +process which she so much disliked; although it is frequently easier to +climb down by means of one's pen than by means of one's tongue. + +Christopher felt no pleasure in receiving her message. He was not angry +with her, although he marvelled at the unreasonableness and injustice of +a sex that thinks more of a day's pleasure than a life's devotion; he +did not know that it was over the life's devotion and not the day's +pleasure that Elisabeth had fought so hard that day; but his encounter +with her had strangely tired him, and taken the zest out of his life, +and he had no appetite for any more of such disastrous and inglorious +warfare. + +But he obeyed her mandate all the same, having learned the important +political lesson that the fact of a Government's being in the wrong is +no excuse for not obeying the orders of that Government; and he waited +for her in the drawing-room at the Willows, looking out toward the +sunset and wondering how hard upon him Elisabeth was going to be. And +his thoughts were so full of her that he did not hear her come into the +room until she clasped both her hands round his arm and looked up into +his gloomy face, saying-- + +"Oh! Chris, I'm so dreadfully ashamed of myself." + +The clouds were dispelled at once, and Christopher smiled as he had not +smiled for a week. "Never mind," he said, patting the hands that were on +his arm; "it's all right." + +But Elisabeth, having set out upon the descent, was prepared to climb +down handsomely. "It isn't all right; it's all wrong. I was simply +fiendish to you, and I shall never forgive myself--never." + +"Oh, yes; you will. And for goodness' sake don't worry over it. I'm glad +you have found out that I wasn't quite the selfish brute that I seemed; +and that's the end of the matter." + +"Dear me! no; it isn't. It is only the beginning. I want to tell you how +dreadfully sorry I am, and to ask you to forgive me." + +"I've nothing to forgive." + +"Yes, you have; lots." And Elisabeth was nearer the mark than +Christopher. + +"I haven't. Of course you were angry with me when I seemed so +disagreeable and unkind; any girl would have been," replied Chris, +forgetting how very unreasonable her anger had seemed only five minutes +ago. But five minutes can make such a difference--sometimes. + +Elisabeth cheerfully caught at this straw of comfort; she was always +ready to take a lenient view of her own shortcomings. If Christopher had +been wise he would not have encouraged such leniency; but who is wise +and in love at the same time? + +"Of course it did seem rather unkind of you," she admitted; "you see, I +thought you had thrown me over just for the sake of some tiresome +business arrangement, and that you didn't care about me and my +disappointment a bit." + +A little quiver crept into Christopher's voice. "I think you might have +known me better than that." + +"Yes, I might; in fact, I ought to have done," agreed Elisabeth with +some truth. "But why didn't you tell me the real reason?" + +"Because I thought it might worry and frighten you. Not that there +really was anything to be frightened about," Christopher hastened to +add; "but you might have imagined things, and been upset; you have such +a tremendous imagination, you know." + +"I'm afraid I have; and it sometimes imagines vain things at your +expense, Chris dear." + +"How did you find me out?" Chris asked. + +"Alan told me about the cholera scare at Burlingham, and I guessed the +rest." + +"Then Alan was an ass. What business had he to go frightening you, I +should like to know, with a lot of fiction that is just trumped up to +sell the papers?" + +"But, Chris, I want you to understand how sorry I am that I was so vile +to you. I really was vile, wasn't I?" Elisabeth was the type of woman +for whom the confessional will always have its fascinations. + +"You were distinctly down on me, I must confess; but you needn't worry +about that now." + +"And you quite forgive me?" + +"As I said before, I've nothing to forgive. You were perfectly right to +be annoyed with a man who appeared to be so careless and inconsiderate; +but I'm glad you've found out that I wasn't quite as selfish as you +thought." + +Elisabeth stroked his coat sleeve affectionately. "You are not selfish +at all, Chris; you're simply the nicest, thoughtfullest, most unselfish +person in the world; and I'm utterly wretched because I was so unkind to +you." + +"Don't be wretched, there's a dear! Your wretchedness is the one thing I +can't and won't stand; so please leave off at once." + +To Christopher remorse for wrong done would always be an agony; he had +yet to learn that to some temperaments, whereof Elisabeth's was one, it +partook of the nature of a luxury--the sort of luxury which tempts one +to pay half a guinea to be allowed to swell up one's eyes and redden +one's nose over imaginary woes in a London theatre. + +"Did you mind very much when I was so cross?" Elisabeth asked +thoughtfully. + +Christopher was torn between a loyal wish to do homage to his idol and a +laudable desire to save that idol pain. "Of course I minded pretty +considerably; but why bother about that now?" + +"Because it interests me immensely. I often think that your only fault +is that you don't mind things enough; and so, naturally, I want to find +out how great your minding capacity is." + +"I see. Your powers of scientific research are indeed remarkable; but +did it never strike you that even vivisection might be carried too +far--too far for the comfort of the vivisected, I mean; not for the +enjoyment of the vivisector?" + +"It is awfully good for people to feel things," persisted Elisabeth. + +"Is it? Well, I suppose it is good--in fact, necessary--for some poor +beggars to have their arms or legs cut off; but you can't expect me to +be consumed with envy of the same?" + +"Please tell me how much you minded," Elisabeth coaxed. + +"I can't tell you; and I wouldn't if I could. If I were a rabbit that +had been cut into living pieces to satisfy the scientific yearnings of a +learned professor, do you think I would leave behind me--for my +executors to publish and make large fortunes thereby--confidential +letters and private diaries accurately describing all the tortures I had +endured, for the recreation of the reading public in general and the +said professor in particular? Not I." + +"I should. I should leave a full, true, and particular account of all +that I had suffered, and exactly how much it hurt. It would interest the +professor most tremendously." + +Christopher shook his head. "Oh, dear! no; it wouldn't." + +"Why not?" + +"Because I should have knocked his brains out long before that for +having dared to hurt you at all." + + + + +CHAPTER XI + +MISS FARRINGDON'S WILL + + Time speeds on his relentless track, + And, though we beg on bended knees, + No prophet's hand for us puts back + The shadow ten degrees. + + +During the following winter Miss Farringdon gave unmistakable signs of +that process known as "breaking-up." She had fought a good fight for +many years, and the time was fast coming for her to lay down her arms +and receive her reward. Elisabeth, with her usual light-heartedness, did +not see the Shadow stealing nearer day by day; but Christopher was more +accustomed to shadows than she was--his path had lain chiefly among +them--and he knew what was coming, and longed passionately and in vain +to shield Elisabeth from the inevitable. He had played the part of +Providence to her in one matter: he had stood between her and himself, +and had prevented her from drinking of that mingled cup of sweetness and +bitterness which men call Love, thinking that she would be a happier +woman if she left untasted the only form of the beverage which he was +able to offer her. And possibly he was right; that she would be also a +better woman in consequence, was quite another and more doubtful side of +the question. But now the part of Elisabeth's Providence was no longer +cast for Christopher to play; he might prevent Love with his sorrows +from coming nigh her dwelling, but Death defied his protecting arm. It +was good for Elisabeth to be afflicted, although Christopher would +willingly have died to save her a moment's pain; and it is a blessed +thing for us after all that Perfect Wisdom and Almighty Power are one. + +As usual Elisabeth was so busy straining her eyes after the ideal that +the real escaped her notice; and it was therefore a great shock to her +when her Cousin Maria went to sleep one night in a land whose stones are +of iron, and awoke next morning in a country whose pavements are of +gold. For a time the girl was completely stunned by the blow; and during +that period Christopher was very good to her. Afterward--when he and she +had drifted far apart--Elisabeth sometimes recalled Christopher's +sheltering care during the first dark days of her loneliness; and she +never did so without remembering the words, "As the mountains are round +about Jerusalem"; they seemed to express all that he was to her just +then. + +When Maria Farringdon's will was read, it was found that she had left to +her cousin and adopted daughter, Elisabeth, an annuity of five hundred a +year; also the income from the Osierfield and the Willows until such +time as the real owner of these estates should be found. The rest of her +property--together with the Osierfield and the Willows--she bequeathed +upon trust for the eldest living son, if any, of her late cousin George +Farringdon; and she appointed Richard Smallwood and his nephew to be her +trustees and executors. The trustees were required to ascertain whether +George Farringdon had left any son, and whether that son was still +alive; but if, at the expiration of ten years from the death of the +testator, no such son could be discovered, the whole of Miss +Farringdon's estate was to become the absolute property of Elisabeth. As +since the making of this will Richard had lost his faculties, the whole +responsibility of finding the lost heir and of looking after the +temporary heiress devolved upon Christopher's shoulders. + +"And how is Mr. Bateson to-day?" asked Mrs. Hankey of Mr. Bateson's +better-half, one Sunday morning not long after Miss Farringdon's death. + +"Thank you, Mrs. Hankey, he is but middling, I'm sorry to say--very +middling--very middling, indeed." + +"That's a bad hearing. But I'm not surprised; I felt sure as something +was wrong when I didn't see him in chapel this morning. I says to +myself, when the first hymn was given out and him not there, 'Eh, dear!' +I says, 'I'm afraid there's trouble in store for Mrs. Bateson.' It +seemed so strange to see you all alone in the pew, that for a minute or +two it quite gave me the creeps. What's amiss with him?" + +"Rheumatism in the legs. He could hardly get out of bed this morning he +was so stiff." + +"Eh, dear! that's a bad thing--and particularly at his time of life. I +lost a beautiful hen only yesterday from rheumatism in the legs; one of +the best sitters I ever had. You remember her?--the speckled one that I +got from Tetleigh, four years ago come Michaelmas. But that's the way in +this world; the most missed are the first taken." + +"I wonder if that's Miss Elisabeth there," said Mrs. Bateson, catching +sight of a dark-robed figure in the distance. "I notice she's taken to +go to church regular now Miss Farringdon isn't here to look after her. +How true it is, 'When the cat's away the mice will play!'" Worship +according to the methods of that branch of the Church Militant +established in these kingdoms was regarded by Mrs. Bateson as a form of +recreation--harmless, undoubtedly, but still recreation. + +Mrs. Hankey shook her head. "No--that isn't her; she can't be out of +church yet. They don't go in till eleven." And she shook her head +disapprovingly. + +"Eleven's too late, to my thinking," agreed Mrs. Bateson. + +"So it is; you never spoke a truer word, Mrs. Bateson. Half-past ten is +the Lord's time--or so it used to be when I was a girl." + +"And a very good time too! Gives you the chance of getting home and +seeing to the dinner properly after chapel. At least, that is to say, if +the minister leaves off when he's finished, which is more than you can +say of all of them; if he doesn't, there's a bit of a scrimmage to get +the dinner cooked in time even now, unless you go out before the last +hymn. And I never hold with that somehow; it seems like skimping the +Lord's material, as you may say." + +"So it does. It looks as if the cares of this world and the +deceitfulness of riches had choked the good seed in a body's heart." + +"In which case it looks what it is not," said Mrs. Bateson; "for nine +times out of ten it means nothing worse than wanting to cook the +potatoes, so as the master sha'n't have no cause for grumbling, and to +boil the rice so as it sha'n't swell in the children's insides. But +that's the way with things; folks never turn out to be as bad as you +thought they were when you get to know their whys and their wherefores; +and many a poor soul as is put down as worldly is really only anxious to +make things pleasant for the master and the children." + +"Miss Elisabeth's mourning is handsome, I don't deny," said Mrs. Hankey, +reverting to a more interesting subject than false judgments in the +abstract; "but she don't look well in it--those pale folks never do +justice to good mourning, in my opinion. It seems almost a pity to waste +it on them." + +"Oh! I don't hold with you there. I think I never saw anybody look more +genteel than Miss Elisabeth does now, bless her! And the jet trimming on +her Sunday frock is something beautiful." + +"Eh! there's nothing like a bit of jet for setting off crape and +bringing the full meaning out of it, as you may say," replied Mrs. +Hankey, in mollified tones. "I don't think as you can do full justice to +crape till you put some jet again' it. It's wonderful how a bit of good +mourning helps folks to bear their sorrows; and for sure they want it in +a world so full of care as this." + +"They do; there's no doubt about that. But I can't help wishing as Miss +Elisabeth had got some bugles on that best dress of hers; there's +nothing quite comes up to bugles, to my mind." + +"There ain't; they give such a finish, as one may say, being so +rich-looking. But for my part I think Miss Elisabeth has been a bit +short with the crape, considering that Miss Farringdon was father and +mother and what-not to her. Now supposing she'd had a crape mantle with +handsome bugle fringe for Sundays; that's what I should have called +paying proper respect to the departed; instead of a short jacket with +ordinary braid on it, that you might wear for a great-uncle as hadn't +left you a penny." + +"Well, Mrs. Hankey, folks may do what they like with their own, and it's +not for such as us to sit in judgment on our betters; but I don't think +as Miss Farringdon's will gave her any claim to a crape mantle with a +bugle fringe; I don't indeed." + +"Well, to be sure, but you do speak strong on the subject!" + +"And I feel strong, too," replied Mrs. Bateson, waxing more indignant. +"There's dear Miss Elisabeth has been like an own daughter to Miss +Farringdon ever since she was a baby, and yet Miss Farringdon leaves her +fortune over Miss Elisabeth's head to some good-for-nothing young man +that nobody knows for certain ever was born. I've no patience with such +ways!" + +"It does seem a bit hard on Miss Elisabeth, I must admit, her being Miss +Farringdon's adopted child. But, as I've said before, there's nothing +like a will for making a thorough to-do." + +"It's having been engaged to Mr. George all them years ago that set her +up to it. It's wonderful how folks often turn to their old lovers when +it comes to will time." + +Mrs. Hankey looked incredulous. "Well, that beats me, I'm fain to +confess. I know if the Lord had seen fit to stop me from keeping company +with Hankey, not a brass farthing would he ever have had from me. I'd +sooner have left my savings to charity." + +"Don't say that, Mrs. Hankey; it always seems so lonely to leave money +to charity, as if you was nothing better than a foundling. But how did +you enjoy the sermon this morning?" + +"I thought that part about the punishment of the wicked was something +beautiful. But, to tell you the truth, I've lost all pleasure in Mr. +Sneyd's discourses since I heard as he wished to introduce the reading +of the Commandments into East Lane Chapel. What's the good of fine +preaching, if a minister's private life isn't up to his sermon, I should +like to know?" + +Mrs. Bateson, however, had broad views on some matters. "I don't see +much harm in reading the Commandments," she said. + +Mrs. Hankey looked shocked at her friend's laxity. "It is the thin end +of the wedge, Mrs. Bateson, and you ought to know it. Mark my words, +it's forms and ceremonies such as this that tempts our young folks away +from the chapels to the churches, like Miss Elisabeth and Master +Christopher there. They didn't read no Commandments in our chapel as +long as Miss Farringdon was alive; I should have liked to see the +minister as would have dared to suggest such a thing. She wouldn't stand +Ritualism, poor Miss Farringdon wouldn't." + +"Here we are at home," said Mrs. Bateson, stopping at her own door; "I +must go in and see how the master's getting on." + +"And I hope you'll find him better, Mrs. Bateson, I only hope so; but +you never know how things are going to turn out when folks begin to +sicken--especially at Mr. Bateson's age. And he hasn't been looking +himself for a long time. I says to Hankey only a few weeks ago, +'Hankey,' says I, 'it seems to me as if the Lord was thinking on Mr. +Bateson; I hope I may be mistaken, but that's how it appears to me.' And +so it did." + +On the afternoon of that very Sunday Christopher took Elisabeth for a +walk in Badgering Woods. The winter was departing, and a faint pink +flush on the bare trees heralded the coming of spring; and Elisabeth, +being made of material which is warranted not to fret for long, began to +feel that life was not altogether dark, and that it was just possible +she might--at the end of many years--actually enjoy things again. +Further, Christopher suited her perfectly--how perfectly she did not +know as yet--and she spent much time with him just then. + +Those of us who have ever guessed the acrostics in a weekly paper, have +learned that sometimes we find a solution to one of the lights, and say, +"This will do, if nothing better turns up before post-time on Monday"; +and at other times we chance upon an answer which we know at once, +without further research, to be indisputably the right one. It is so +with other things than acrostics: there are friends whom we feel will do +very well for us if nobody--or until somebody--better turns up; and +there are others whom we know to be just the right people for the +particular needs of our souls at that time. They are the right answers +to the questions which have been perplexing us--the correct solutions to +the problems over which we have been puzzling our brains. So it was with +Elisabeth: Christopher was the correct answer to life's current +acrostic; and as long as she was with Christopher she was content. + +"Don't you get very tired of people who have never found the fourth +dimension?" she asked him, as they sat upon a stile in Badgering Woods. + +"What do you mean by the fourth dimension? There are length and breadth +and thickness, and what comes next?" + +Christopher was pleased to find Elisabeth facing life's abstract +problems again; it proved that she was no longer overpowered by its +concrete ones. + +"I don't know what its name is," she replied, looking dreamily through +the leafless trees; "perhaps eternity would do as well as any other. But +I mean the dimension which comes after length and breadth and thickness, +and beyond them, and all round them, and which makes them seem quite +different, and much less important." + +"I think I know what you are driving at. You mean a new way of looking +at things and of measuring them--a way which makes things which ordinary +people call small, large; and things which ordinary people call large, +small." + +"Yes. People who have never been in the fourth dimension bore me, do you +know? I daresay it would bore squares to talk to straight lines, and +cubes to talk to squares; there would be so many things the one would +understand and the other wouldn't. The line wouldn't know what the +square meant by the word _across_, and the square wouldn't know what the +cube meant by the word _above_; and in the same way the three-dimension +people don't know what we are talking about when we use such words as +_religion_ and _art_ and _love_." + +"They think we are talking about going regularly to church, and +supporting picture-galleries, and making brilliant matches," suggested +Christopher. + +"Yes; that's exactly what they do think; and it makes talking to them so +difficult, and so dull." + +"When you use the word _happiness_ they imagine you are referring to an +income of four or five thousand a year; and by _success_ they mean the +permission to stand in the backwater of a fashionable London evening +party, looking at the mighty and noble, and pretending afterward that +they have spoken to the same." + +"They don't speak our language or think our thoughts," Elisabeth said; +"and the music of their whole lives is of a different order from that of +the lives of the fourth-dimension people." + +"Distinctly so; all the difference between a Sonata of Beethoven and a +song out of a pantomime." + +"I haven't much patience with the three-dimension people; have you?" +asked Elisabeth. + +"No--I'm afraid not; but I've a good deal of pity for them. They miss so +much. I always fancy that people who call pictures pretty and music +sweet must have a dreary time of it all round. But we'd better be +getting on, don't you think? It is rather chilly sitting out-of-doors, +and I don't want you to catch cold. You don't feel cold, do you?" And +Christopher's face grew quite anxious. + +"Not at all." + +"You don't seem to me to have enough furbelows and things round your +neck to keep you warm," continued he; "let me tie it up tighter, +somehow." + +And while he turned up the fur collar of her coat and hooked the highest +hook and eye, Elisabeth thought how nice it was to be petted and taken +care of; and as she walked homeward by Christopher's side, she felt like +a good little girl again. Even reigning monarchs now and then like to +have their ermine tucked round them, and to be patted on their crowns by +a protecting hand. + +As the weeks rolled on and the spring drew nearer, Elisabeth gradually +took up the thread of human interest again. Fortunately for her she was +very busy with plans for the benefit of the work-people at the +Osierfield. She started a dispensary; she opened an institute; she +inaugurated courses of lectures and entertainments for keeping the young +men out of the public-houses in the evenings; she gave to the Wesleyan +Conference a House of Rest--a sweet little house, looking over the +fields toward the sunset--where tired ministers might come and live at +ease for a time to regain health and strength; and in Sedgehill Church +she put up a beautiful east window to the memory of Maria Farringdon, +and for a sign-post to all such pilgrims as were in need of one, as the +east window in St. Peter's had once been a sign-post to herself showing +her the way to Zion. + +In all these undertakings Christopher was her right hand; and while +Elisabeth planned and paid for them, he carefully carried them out--the +hardest part of the business, and the least effective one. + +When Elisabeth had set afoot all these improvements for the benefit of +her work-people, she turned her attention to the improving of herself; +and she informed Christopher that she had decided to go up to London, +and fulfil the desire of her heart by studying art at the Slade School. + +"But you can not live by yourself in London," Christopher objected; "you +are all right here, because you have the Tremaines and other people to +look after you; but in town you would be terribly lonely; and, besides, +I don't approve of girls living in London by themselves." + +"I sha'n't be by myself. There is a house where some of the Slade pupils +live together, and I shall go there for every term, and come down here +for the vacation. It will be just like going back to school again. I +shall adore it!" + +Christopher did not like the idea at all. "Are you sure you will be +comfortable, and that they will take proper care of you?" + +"Of course they will. Grace Cobham will be there at the same time--an +old schoolfellow to whom I used to be devoted at Fox How--and she and I +will chum together. I haven't seen her for ages, as she has been +scouring Europe with her family; but now she has settled down in +England, and is going in for art." + +Christopher still looked doubtful. "It would make me miserable to think +that you weren't properly looked after and taken care of, Elisabeth." + +"Well, I shall be. And if I'm not, I shall still have you to fall back +upon." + +"But you won't have me to fall back upon; that is just the point. If you +would, I shouldn't worry about you so much; but it cuts me to the heart +to leave you among strangers. Still, the Tremaines will be here, and I +shall ask them to look after you; and I daresay they will do so all +right, though not as efficiently as I should." + +Elisabeth grew rather pale; that there would ever come a day when +Christopher would not be there to fall back upon was a contingency which +until now had never occurred to her. "Whatever are you talking about, +Chris? Why sha'n't you be here when I go up to the Slade?" + +"Because I am going to Australia." + +"To Australia? What on earth for?" It seemed to Elisabeth as if the +earth beneath her feet had suddenly decided to reverse its customary +revolution, and to transpose its poles. + +"To see if I can find George Farringdon's son, of course." + +"I thought he had been advertised for in both English and Australian +papers, and had failed to answer the advertisements." + +"So he has." + +"Then why bother any more about him?" suggested Elisabeth. + +"Because I must. If advertisement fails, I must see what personal search +will do." + +Elisabeth's lip trembled; she felt that a hemisphere uninhabited by +Christopher would be a very dreary hemisphere indeed. "Oh! Chris dear, +you needn't go yourself," she coaxed; "I simply can not spare you, and +that's the long and the short of it." + +Christopher hardened his heart. He had seen the quiver of Elisabeth's +lip, and it had almost proved too strong for him. "Hang it all! I must +go; there is nothing else to be done." + +Elisabeth's eyes filled with tears. "Please don't, Chris. It is horrid +of you to want to go and leave me when I'm so lonely and haven't got +anybody in the world but you!" + +"I don't want to go, Betty; I hate the mere idea of going. I'd give a +thousand pounds, if I could, to stop away. But I can't see that I have +any alternative. Miss Farringdon left it to me, as her trustee, to find +her heir and give up the property to him; and, as a man of honour, I +don't see how I can leave any stone unturned until I have fulfilled the +charge which she laid upon me." + +"Oh! Chris, don't go. I can't spare you." And Elisabeth stretched out +two pleading hands toward him. + +Christopher turned away from her. "I say, Betty, please don't cry," and +his voice shook; "it makes it so much harder for me; and it is hard +enough as it is--confoundedly hard!" + +"Then why do it?" + +"Because I must." + +"I don't see that; it is pure Quixotism." + +"I wish to goodness I could think that; but I can't. It appears to me a +question about which there could not be two opinions." + +The tears dried on Elisabeth's lashes. The old feeling of being at war +with Christopher, which had laid dormant for so long, now woke up again +in her heart, and inclined her to defy rather than to plead. If he cared +for duty more than for her, he did not care for her much, she said to +herself; and she was far too proud a woman ever to care for a man--even +in the way of friendship--who obviously did not care for her. Still, she +condescended to further argument. + +"If you really liked me and were my friend," she said, "not only +wouldn't you wish to go away and leave me, but you would want me to have +the money, instead of rushing all over the world in order to give it to +some tiresome young man you'd never heard of six months ago." + +"Don't you understand that it is just because I like you and am your +friend, that I can't bear you to profit by anything which has a shade of +dishonour connected with it? If I cared for you less I should be less +particular." + +"That's nonsense! But your conscience and your sense of honour always +were bugbears, Christopher, and always will be. They bored me as a +child, and they bore me now." + +Christopher winced; the nightmare of his life had been the terror of +boring Elisabeth, for he was wise enough to know that a woman may love a +man with whom she is angry, but never one by whom she is bored. + +"It is just like you," Elisabeth continued, tossing her head, "to be so +busy saving your own soul and laying up for yourself a nice little +nest-egg in heaven, that you haven't time to consider other people and +their interests and feelings." + +"I think you do me an injustice," replied Christopher quietly. He was +puzzled to find Elisabeth so bitter against him on a mere question of +money, as she was usually a most unworldly young person; again he did +not understand that she was not really fighting over the matter at +issue, but over the fact that he had put something before his friendship +for her. Once she had quarrelled with him because he seemed to think +more of his business than of her; now she was quarrelling with him +because he thought more of his duty than of her; for the truth that he +could not have loved her so much had he not loved honour more, had not +as yet been revealed to Elisabeth. + +"I don't want to be money-grubbing," she went on, "or to cling on to +things to which I have no right; though, of course, it will be rather +poor fun for me to have to give up all this," and she waved her hand in +a sweep, supposed to include the Willows and the Osierfield and all that +appertained thereto, "and to drudge along at the rate of five hundred a +year, with yesterday's dinner and last year's dress warmed up again to +feed and clothe me. But I ask you to consider whether the work-people at +the Osierfield aren't happier under my _régime_, than under the rule of +some good-for-nothing young man, who will probably spend all his income +upon himself, and go to the dogs as his father did before him." + +Christopher was cut to the quick; Elisabeth had hit the nail on the +head. After all, it was not his own interests that he felt bound to +sacrifice to the claims of honour, but hers; and it was this +consideration that made him feel the sacrifice almost beyond his power. +He knew that it was his duty to do everything he could to fulfil the +conditions of Miss Farringdon's will; he also knew that he was compelled +to do this at Elisabeth's expense and not at his own; and the twofold +knowledge well-nigh broke his heart. His misery was augmented by his +perception of how completely Elisabeth misunderstood him, and of how +little of the truth all those years of silent devotion had conveyed to +her mind; and his face was white with pain as he answered-- + +"There is no need for you to say such things as that to me, Elisabeth; +you know as well as I do that I would give my life to save you from +sorrow and to ensure your happiness; but I can not be guilty of a shabby +trick even for this. Can't you see that the very fact that I care for +you so much, makes it all the more impossible for me to do anything +shady in your name?" + +"Bosh!" rudely exclaimed Elisabeth. + +"As for the work-people," he went on, ignoring her interruption, "of +course no one will ever do as much for them as you are doing. But that +isn't the question. The fact that one man would make a better use of +money than another wouldn't justify me in robbing Peter to increase +Paul's munificence. Now would it?" + +"That's perfectly different. It is all right for you to go on +advertising for that Farringdon man in agony columns, and I shouldn't be +so silly as to make a fuss about giving up the money if he turned up. +You know that well enough. But it does seem to me to be +over-conscientious and hyper-disagreeable on your part to go off to +Australia--just when I am so lonely and want you so much--in search of +the man who is to turn me out of my kingdom and reign in my stead. I +can't think how you can want to do such a thing!" Elisabeth was fighting +desperately hard; the full power of her strong will was bent upon making +Christopher do what she wished and stay with her in England; not only +because she needed him, but because she felt that this was a Hastings or +Waterloo between them, and that if she lost this battle, her ancient +supremacy was gone forever. + +"I don't want to go and do it, heaven knows! I hate and loathe doing +anything which you don't wish me to do. But there is no question of +wanting in the matter, as far as I can see. It is a simple question +between right and wrong--between honour and dishonour--and so I really +have no alternative." + +"Then you have made up your mind to go out to Australia and turn up +every stone in order to find this George Farringdon's son?" + +"I don't see how I can help it." + +"And you don't care what becomes of me?" + +"More than I care for anything else in the world, Elisabeth. Need you +ask?" + +For one wild moment Christopher felt that he must tell Elisabeth how +passionately he would woo her, should she lose her fortune; and how he +would spend his life and his income in trying to make her happy, should +George Farringdon's son be found and she cease to be one of the greatest +heiresses in the Midlands. But he held himself back by the bitter +knowledge of how cruelly appearances were against him. He had made up +his mind to do the right thing at all costs; at least, he had not +exactly made up his mind--he saw the straight path, and the possibility +of taking any other never occurred to him. But if he succeeded in this +hateful and (to a man of his type) inevitable quest, he would not only +sacrifice Elisabeth's interests, he would also further his own by making +it possible for him to ask her to marry him--a thing which he felt he +could never do as long as she was one of the wealthiest women in +Mershire, and he was only the manager of her works. Duty is never so +difficult to certain men as when it wears the garb and carries with it +the rewards of self-interest; others, on the contrary, find that a +joint-stock company, composed of the Right and the Profitable, supplies +its passengers with a most satisfactory permanent way whereby to travel +through life. There is no doubt that these latter have by far the more +comfortable journey; but whether they are equally contented when they +have reached that journey's end, none of them have as yet returned to +tell us. + +"If somebody must go to Australia after that tiresome young man, why +need it be you?" Elisabeth persisted. "Can't you send somebody else in +your place?" + +"I am afraid I couldn't trust anybody else to sift the matter as +thoroughly as I should. I really must go, Betty. Please don't make it +too hard for me." + +"Do you mean you will still go, even though I beg you not?" + +"I am afraid I must." + +Elisabeth rose from her seat and drew herself up to her full height, as +became a dethroned and offended queen. "Then that is the end of the +matter as far as I am concerned, and it is a waste of time to discuss +it further; but I must confess that there is nothing in the world I hate +so much as a prig," she said, as she swept out of the room. + +It was her final shot, and it told. She could hardly have selected one +more admirably calculated to wound, and it went straight through +Christopher's heart. It was now obvious that she did not love him, and +never could have loved him, he assured himself, or she would not have +misjudged him so cruelly, or said such hard things to him. He did not +realize that an angry woman says not what she thinks, but what she +thinks will most hurt the man with whom she is angry. He also did not +realize--what man does?--how difficult it is for any woman to believe +that a man can care for her and disagree with her at the same time, even +though the disagreement be upon a purely impersonal question. Naturally, +when the question happens to be personal, the strain on feminine faith +is still greater--in the majority of cases too great to be borne. + +Thus Christopher and Elisabeth came to the parting of the ways. She said +to herself, "He doesn't love me because he won't do what I want, +regardless of his own ideas of duty." And he said to himself, "If I fail +to do what I consider is my duty, I am unworthy--or, rather, more +unworthy than I am in any case--to love her." Thus they moved along +parallel lines; and parallel lines never meet--except in infinity. + + + + +CHAPTER XII + +"THE DAUGHTERS OF PHILIP" + + In the market-place alone + Stood the statue carved in stone, + Watching children round her feet + Playing marbles in the street: + When she tried to join their play + They in terror fled away. + + +Christopher went to Australia in search of George Farringdon's son, and +Elisabeth stayed in England and cherished bitter thoughts in her heart +concerning him. That imagination of hers--which was always prone to lead +her astray--bore most terribly false witness against Christopher just +then. It portrayed him as a hard, self-righteous man, ready to sacrifice +the rest of mankind to the Moloch of what he considered to be his own +particular duty and spiritual welfare, and utterly indifferent as to how +severe was the suffering entailed on the victims of this sacrifice. And, +as Christopher was not at hand to refute the charges of Elisabeth's +libellous fancy by his own tender and unselfish personality, the accuser +took advantage of his absence to blacken him more and more. + +It was all in a piece with the rest of his character, she said to +herself; he had always been cold and hard and self-contained. When his +house had been left unto him desolate by the stroke which changed his +uncle from a wise and kindly companion into a helpless and peevish +child, she had longed to help and comfort him with her sympathy; and he +had thrown it back in her face. He was too proud and too superior to +care for human affection, she supposed; and now he felt no hesitation in +first forsaking her, and then reducing her to poverty, if only by so +doing he could set himself still more firmly on the pedestal of his own +virtue. So did Elisabeth's imagination traduce Christopher; and +Elisabeth listened and believed. + +At first she was haunted by memories of how good he had been to her when +her cousin Maria died, and many a time before; and she used to dream +about him at night with so much of the old trust and affection that it +took all the day to stamp out the fragrance of tenderness which her +dreams had left behind. But after a time these dreams and memories grew +fewer and less distinct, and she persuaded herself that Christopher had +never been the true and devoted friend she had once imagined him to be, +but that the kind and affectionate Chris of olden days had been merely a +creature of her own invention. There was no one to plead his cause for +him, as he was far away, and appearances were on the side of his +accuser; so he was tried in the court of Elisabeth's merciless young +judgment, and sentenced to life-long banishment from the circle of her +interests and affections. She forgot how he had comforted her in the day +of her adversity. If he had allowed her to comfort him, she would have +remembered it forever; but he had not; and in this world men must be +prepared to take the consequences of their own mistakes, even though +those mistakes be made through excess of devotion to another person. + +In certain cases it may be necessary to pluck out the right eye and cut +off the right hand; but there is no foundation for supposing that the +operation will be any the less painful because of the righteous motive +inducing it. And so Christopher Thornley learned by bitter experience, +when, after many days, he returned from a fruitless search for the +missing heir, to find the countenance of Elisabeth utterly changed +toward him. She was quite civil to him--quite polite; she never +attempted to argue or quarrel with him as she had done in the old days, +and she listened patiently to all the details of his doings in +Australia; but with gracious coldness she quietly put him outside the +orbit of her life, and showed him plainly that he was now nothing more +to her than her trustee and the general manager of her works. + +It was hard on Christopher--cruelly hard; yet he had no alternative but +to accept the position which Elisabeth, in the blindness of her heart, +assigned to him. Sometimes he felt the burden of his lot was almost more +than he could bear; not because of its heaviness, as he was a brave man +and a patient one, but because of the utter absence of any joy in his +life. Men and women can endure much sorrow if they have much joy as +well; it is when sorrow comes and there is no love to lighten it, that +the Hand of God lies heavy upon them; and It lay heavy upon +Christopher's soul just then. Sometimes, when he felt weary unto death +of the dreary routine of work and the still drearier routine of his +uncle's sick-room, he recalled with a bitter smile how Elisabeth used to +say that the gloom and smoke of the furnaces was really a pillar of +cloud to show how God was watching over the people at the Osierfield as +He watched over them in the wilderness. Because she had forgotten to be +gracious to him, he concluded that God had forgotten to be gracious to +him also--a not uncommon error of human wisdom; but though his heart was +wounded and his days darkened by her injustice toward him, he never +blamed her, even in his inmost thoughts. He was absolutely loyal to +Elisabeth. + +One grim consolation he had--and that was the conviction that he had not +won, and never could have won, Elisabeth's love; and that, therefore, +poverty or riches were matters of no moment to him. Had he felt that +temporal circumstances were the only bar between him and happiness, his +position as her paid manager would have been unendurable; but now she +had taught him that it was he himself, and not any difference in their +respective social positions, which really stood between herself and him; +and, that being so, nothing else had any power to hurt him. Wealth, +unshared by Elisabeth, would have been no better than want, he said to +himself; success, uncrowned by her, would have been equivalent to +failure. When Christopher was in Australia he succeeded in tracing +George Farringdon as far as Broken Hill, and there he found poor +George's grave. He learned that George had left a widow and one son, who +had left the place immediately after George's death; but no one could +give him any further information as to what had subsequently become of +these two. And he was obliged at last to abandon the search and return +to England, without discovering what had happened to the widow and +child. + +Some years after his nephew's fruitless journey to Australia Richard +Smallwood died; and though the old man had been nothing but a burden +during the last few years of his life, Christopher missed him sorely +when he was gone. It was something even to have a childish old man to +love him, and smile at his coming; now there was nobody belonging to +him, and he was utterly alone. + +But the years which had proved so dark to Christopher had been full of +brightness and interest to Elisabeth. She had fulfilled her intention of +studying at the Slade School, and she had succeeded in her work beyond +her wildest expectations. She was already recognised as an artist of no +mean order. Now and then she came down to the Willows, bringing Grace +Cobham with her; and the young women filled the house with company. Now +and then they two went abroad together, and satisfied their souls with +the beauty of the art of other lands. But principally they lived in +London, for the passion to be near the centre of things had come upon +Elisabeth; and when once that comes upon any one, London is the place in +which to live. People wondered that Elisabeth did not marry, and blamed +her behind her back for not making suitable hay while it was as yet +summer with her. But the artist-woman never marries for the sake of +being married--or rather for the sake of not being unmarried--as so many +of her more ordinary sisters do; her art supplies her with that +necessary interest in life, without which most women become either +invalids or shrews, and--unless she happens to meet the right man--she +can manage very well without him. + +George Farringdon's son had never turned up, in spite of all the efforts +to discover him; and by this time Elisabeth had settled down into the +belief that the Willows and the Osierfield were permanently hers. She +had long ago forgiven Christopher for setting her and her interests +aside, and going off in search of the lost heir--at least she believed +that she had; but there was always an undercurrent of bitterness in her +thoughts of him, which proved that the wound he had then dealt her had +left a scar. + +Several men had wanted to marry Elisabeth, but they had not succeeded in +winning her. She enjoyed flirting with them, and she rejoiced in their +admiration, but when they offered her their love she was frightened and +ran away. Consequently the world called her cold; and as the years +rolled on and no one touched her heart, she began to believe that the +world was right. + +"There are three great things in life," Grace Cobham said to her one +day, "art and love and religion. They really are all part of the same +thing, and none of them is perfected without the others. You have got +two, Elisabeth; but you have somehow missed the third, and without it +you will never attain to your highest possibilities. You are a good +woman, and you are a true artist; but, until you fall in love, your +religion and your art will both lack something, and will fall short of +perfection." + +"I'm afraid I'm not a falling-in-love sort of person," replied Elisabeth +meekly; "I'm extremely sorry, but such is the case." + +"It is a pity! But you may fall in love yet." + +"It's too late, I fear. You see I am over thirty; and if I haven't done +it by now, I expect I never shall do it. It is tiresome to have missed +it, I admit; and especially as you think it would make me paint better +pictures." + +"Well, I do. You paint so well now that it is a pity you don't paint +still better. I do not believe that any artist does his or her best work +until his or her nature is fully developed; and no woman's nature is +fully developed until she has been in love." + +"I have never been in love; I don't even know what it is like inside," +said Elisabeth sadly; "and I dreadfully want to know, because--looked at +from the outside--it seems interesting." + +Grace gazed at her thoughtfully. "I wonder if it is that you are too +cold to fall in love, or whether it only is that the right person hasn't +appeared." + +"I don't know. I wish I did. What do you think it feels like?" + +"I know what it feels like--and that is like nothing else this side +heaven." + +"It seems funny to get worked up in that sort of way over an ordinary +man--turning him into a revival-service or a national anthem, or +something equally thrilling and inspiring! Still, I'd do it if I could, +just from pure curiosity. I should really enjoy it. I've seen stupid +girls light up like a turnip with a candle inside, simply because some +plain young man did the inevitable, and came up into the drawing-room +after dinner; and I've seen clever women go to pieces like a linen +button at the wash, simply because some ignorant man did the inevitable, +and preferred a more foolish and better-looking woman to themselves." + +"Have you really never been in love, Elisabeth?" + +Elisabeth pondered for a moment. "No; I've sometimes thought I was, but +I've always known I wasn't." + +"I wonder at that; because you really are affectionate." + +"That is quite true; but no one has ever seemed to want as much as I had +to give," said Elisabeth, the smile dying out of her eyes; "I do so long +to be necessary to somebody--to feel that it is in my power to make +somebody perfectly happy; but nobody has ever asked enough of me." + +"You could have made the men happy who wanted to marry you," suggested +Grace. + +"No; I could have made them comfortable, and that's not the same thing." + +As Elisabeth sat alone in her own room that night, she thought about +what Grace had said, and wondered if she were really too cold ever to +experience that common yet wonderful miracle which turns earth into +heaven for most people once in their lives. She had received much love +and still more admiration in her time; but she had never been allowed to +give what she had to give, and she was essentially of the type of woman +to whom it is more blessed to give than to receive. She had never craved +to be loved, as some women crave; she had only asked to be allowed to +love as much as she was capable of loving, and the permission had been +denied her. As she looked back over her past life, she saw that it had +always been the same. She had given the adoration of her childhood to +Anne Farringdon, and Anne had not wanted it; she had given the devotion +of her girlhood to Felicia, and Felicia had not wanted it; she had given +the truest friendship of her womanhood to Christopher, and Christopher +had not wanted it. As for the men who had loved her, she had known +perfectly well that she was not essential to them; had she been, she +would have married them; but they could be happy without her--and they +were. For Grace she had the warmest sense of comradeship; but Grace's +life was so full on its own account, that Elisabeth could only be one of +many interests to her. Elisabeth was so strong and so tender, that she +could have given much to any one to whom she was absolutely necessary; +but she felt she could give of her best to no man who desired it only as +a luxury--it was too good for that. + +"It seems rather a waste of force," she said to herself, with a +whimsical smile. "I feel like Niagara, spending its strength on empty +splashings, when it might be turning thousands of electric engines and +lighting millions of electric lights, if only its power were turned in +the right direction and properly stored. I could be so much to anybody +who really needed me--I feel I could; but nobody seems to need me, so +it's no use bothering. Anyway, I have my art, and that more than +satisfies me; and I will spend my life in giving forth my strength to +the world at large, in the shape of pictures which shall help the world +to be better and happier. At least I hope so." + +And with this reflection Elisabeth endeavoured to console herself for +the non-appearance of that fairy prince, who, in her childish dreams, +had always been wounded in the tournament of life, and had turned to her +for comfort. + +The years which had passed so drearily for Christopher, had cast their +shadows also over the lives of Alan and Felicia Tremaine. When Willie +was a baby, his nurse accidentally let him fall; and the injury he then +received was so great that, as he grew older, he was never able to walk +properly, but had to punt himself about with a little crutch. This was +a terrible blow to Alan; and became all the greater as time went on, +and Felicia had no other children to share his devotion. Felicia, too, +felt it sorely; but she fretted more over the sorrow it was to her +husband than on her own account. + +There was a great friendship between Willie and Elisabeth. Weakness of +any kind always appealed to her, and he, poor child! was weak indeed. So +when Elisabeth was at the Willows and Willie at the Moat House, the two +spent much time together. He never wearied of hearing about the things +that she had pretended when she was a little girl; and she never wearied +of telling him about them. + +"And so the people, who lived among the smoke and the furnaces, followed +the pillar of cloud till it led them to the country on the other side of +the hills," said Willie one day, as he and Elisabeth were sitting on the +old rustic seat in the Willows' garden. "I remember; but tell me, what +did they find in the country over there?" And he pointed with his thin +little finger to the blue hills beyond the green valley. + +"They found everything that they wanted," replied Elisabeth. "Not the +things that other people thought would be good for them, you know; but +just the dear, foolish, impossible things that they had wanted for +themselves." + +"And did the things make them happy?" + +"Perfectly happy--much happier than the wise, desirable, sensible things +could have made them." + +"I suppose they could all walk without crutches," suggested Willie. + +"Of course they could; and they could understand everything without +being told." + +"And the other people loved them very much, and were very kind to them, +weren't they?" + +"Perhaps; but what made them so happy was that they loved the other +people and were kind to them. As long as they lived here in the smoke +and din and bustle, everybody was so busy looking after his own concerns +that nobody could be bothered with their love. There wasn't room for it, +or time for it. But in the country over the hills there was plenty of +room and plenty of time; in fact, there wasn't any room or any time for +anything else." + +"What did they have to eat?" Willie asked. + +"Everything that had been too rich for them when they were here." + +Willie sighed. "It must have been a nice country," he said. + +"It was, dear; the nicest country in the world. It was always summer +there, too, and holiday time." + +"Didn't they have any lessons to learn?" + +"No; because they'd learned them all." + +"Did they have roads and railways?" Willie made further inquiry. + +"No; only narrow green lanes, which led straight into fairyland. And the +longer you walked in them the less tired you were." + +"Tell me a story about the country over there," said Willie, nestling up +to Elisabeth; "and let there be a princess in it." + +She put her strong arm round him and held him close. "Once upon a time," +she began, "there was a princess, who lived among the smoke and the +furnaces." + +"Was she very beautiful?" + +"No; but she happened to have a heart made of real gold. That was the +only rare thing about her; otherwise she was quite a common princess." + +"What did she do with the heart?" asked Willie. + +"She wanted to give it to somebody; but the strange thing was that +nobody would have it. Several people asked her for it before they knew +it was made of real gold; but when they found that out, they began to +make excuses. One said that he'd no place in his house for such a +first-class article; it would merely make the rest of the furniture look +shabby, and he shouldn't refurnish in order to please anybody. Another +said that he wasn't going to bother himself with looking after a real +gold heart, when a silver-gilt one would serve his purpose just as well. +And a third said that solid gold plate wasn't worth the trouble of +cleaning and keeping in order, as it was sure to get scratched or bent +in the process, the precious metals being too soft for everyday use." + +"It is difficult not to scratch when you're cleaning plate," Willie +observed. "I sometimes help Simpkins, and there's only one spoon that +he'll let me clean, for fear I should scratch; and that's quite an old +one that doesn't matter. So I have to clean it over and over again. But +go on about the princess." + +"Well, then she offered her gold heart to a woman who seemed lonely and +desolate; but the woman only cared for the hearts of men, and threw back +the princess's in her face. And then somebody advised her to set it up +for auction, to go to the highest bidder, as that was generally +considered the correct thing to do with regard to well-regulated women's +hearts; but she didn't like that suggestion at all. At last the poor +princess grew tired of offering her treasure to people who didn't want +it, and so she locked it up out of sight; and then everybody said that +she hadn't a heart at all, and what a disgrace it was for a young woman +to be without one." + +"That wasn't fair!" + +"Not at all fair; but people aren't always fair on this side of the +hills, darling." + +"But they are on the other?" + +"Always; and they are never hard or cold or unsympathetic. So the +princess decided to leave the smoke and the furnaces, and to go to the +country on the other side of the hills. She travelled down into the +valley and right through it, and then across the hills beyond, and never +rested till she reached the country on the other side." + +"And what did she find when she got there?" + +Elisabeth's eyes grew dreamy. "She found a fairy prince standing on the +very borders of that country, and he said to her, 'You've come at last; +I've been such a long time waiting for you.' And the princess asked him, +'Do you happen to want such a thing as a heart of real gold?' 'I should +just think I do,' said the prince; 'I've wanted it always, and I've +never wanted anything else; but I was beginning to be afraid I was never +going to get it.' 'And I was beginning to be afraid that I was never +going to find anybody to give it to,' replied the princess. So she gave +him her heart, and he took it; and then they looked into each other's +eyes and smiled." + +"Is that the end of the story?" + +"No, dear; only the beginning." + +"Then what happened in the end?" + +"Nobody knows." + +But Willie's youthful curiosity was far from being satisfied. "What was +the fairy prince like to look at?" he inquired. + +"I don't know, darling; I've often wondered." + +And Willie had to be content with this uncertain state of affairs. So +had Elisabeth. + +For some time now she had been making small bonfires of the Thames; but +the following spring Elisabeth set the river on fire in good earnest by +her great Academy picture, The Pillar of Cloud. It was the picture of +the year; and it supplied its creator with a copious draught of that +nectar of the gods which men call fame. + +It was a fine picture, strongly painted, and was a representation of the +Black Country, with its mingled gloom and glare, and its pillar of smoke +always hanging over it. In the foreground were figures of men and women +and children, looking upward to the pillar of cloud; and, by the magic +spell of the artist, Elisabeth had succeeded in depicting on their +faces, for such who had eyes to see it, the peace of those who knew that +God was with them in their journey through the wilderness. They were +worn and weary and toil-worn, as they dwelt in the midst of the +furnaces; but, through it all, they looked up to the overshadowing cloud +and were lightened, and their faces were not ashamed. In the far +distance there was a glimpse of the sun setting behind a range of hills; +and one felt, as one gazed at the picture and strove to understand its +meaning, that the pillar of cloud was gradually leading the people +nearer and nearer to the far-off hills and the land beyond the sunset; +and that there they would find an abundant compensation for the +suffering and poverty that had blighted their lives as they toiled here +for their daily bread. + +Even those who could not understand the underlying meaning of +Elisabeth's picture, marvelled at the power and technical skill whereby +she had brought the weird mystery of the Black Country into the heart of +London, until one almost felt the breath of the furnaces as one gazed +entranced at her canvas; and those who did understand the underlying +meaning, marvelled still more that so young a woman should have learned +so much of life's hidden mysteries--forgetting that art is no +intellectual endowment, but a revelation from God Himself, and that the +true artist does not learn but knows, because God has whispered to him. + +There was another picture that made a sensation in that year's Academy; +it was the work of an unknown artist, Cecil Farquhar by name, and was +noted in the catalogue as The Daughters of Philip. It represented the +"four daughters, virgins, which did prophesy" of Philip of Cæsarea; but +it did not set them forth in the dress and attitude of inspired sibyls. +Instead of this it showed them as they were in their own home, when the +Spirit of the Lord was not upon them, but when they were ordinary girls, +with ordinary girls' interests and joys and sorrows. One of them was +braiding her magnificent black hair in front of a mirror; and another +was eagerly perusing a letter with the love-light in her eyes; a third +was weeping bitterly over a dead dove; and a fourth--the youngest--was +playing merrily with a monkey. It was a dazzling picture, brilliant with +rich Eastern draperies and warm lights; and shallow spectators wondered +what the artist meant by painting the prophetesses in such frivolous and +worldly guise; but the initiated understood how he had fathomed the +tragedy underlying the lives of most women who are set apart from their +fellows by the gift of genius. When the Spirit is upon them they +prophesy, by means of pictures or poems or stories or songs; and the +world says, "These are not as other women; they command our admiration, +but they do not crave our love: let us put them on the top of pinnacles +for high days and holidays, and not trouble them with the petty details +of everyday life." + +The world forgets that the gift of genius is a thing apart from the +woman herself, and that these women at heart are very women, as entirely +as their less gifted sisters are, and have the ordinary woman's longing +for love and laughter, and for all the little things that make life +happy. A pinnacle is a poor substitute for a hearthstone, from the +feminine point of view; and laurel wreaths do not make half so +satisfactory a journey's end as lovers' meetings. All of which it is +difficult for a man to understand, since fame is more to him than it is +to a woman, and love less; therefore the knowledge of this truth proved +Cecil Farquhar to be a true artist; while the able manner in which he +had set it forth showed him to be also a highly gifted one. And the +world is always ready to acknowledge real merit when it sees it, and to +do homage to the same. + +The Daughters of Philip carried a special message to the heart of +Elisabeth Farringdon. She had been placed on her pinnacle, and had +already begun to find how cold was the atmosphere up there, and how much +more human she was than people expected and allowed for her to be. She +felt like a statue set up in the market-place, that hears the children +piping and mourning, and longs to dance and weep with them; but they did +not ask her to do either--did not want her to do either--and if she had +come down from her pedestal and begged to be allowed to play with them +or comfort them, they would only have been frightened and run away. + +But here at last was a man who understood what she was feeling; to whom +she could tell her troubles, and who would know what she meant; and she +made up her mind that before that season was over, she and the unknown +artist, who had painted The Daughters of Philip, should be friends. + + + + +CHAPTER XIII + +CECIL FARQUHAR + + And my people ask politely + How a friend I know so slightly + Can be more to me than others I have liked a year or so; + But they've never heard the history + Of our transmigration's mystery, + And they've no idea I loved you those millenniums ago. + + +It was the night of the Academy _soirée_ in the year of Elisabeth's +triumph; she was being petted and _fêted_ on all sides, and passed +through the crowded rooms in a sort of royal progress, surrounded by an +atmosphere of praise and adulation. Of course she liked it--what woman +would not?--but she was conscious of a dull ache of sadness, at the back +of all her joy, that there was no one to share her triumph with her; no +one to whom she could say, "I care for all this, chiefly because it +makes me stronger to help you and worthier to be loved by you;" no one +who would be made happy by her whisper, "I have set the Thames ablaze in +order to make warm your fireside." + +It was as yet early in the evening when the President turned for a +moment from his duties as "official receiver" to say to her, "Miss +Farringdon, I want to present Farquhar to you. He is a rising man, and +a very good fellow into the bargain, and I know he is most anxious to be +introduced to you." + +And then the usual incantation was gone through, which constitutes an +introduction in England--namely, the repetition of two names, whereof +each person hears only his or her own (an item of information by no +means new or in any way to be desired), while the name of the other +contracting party remains shrouded in impenetrable mystery; and +Elisabeth found herself face to face with the man whom she specially +desired to meet. + +Cecil Farquhar was a remarkably handsome man, nearer forty than thirty +years of age. He was tall and graceful, with golden hair and the profile +of a Greek statue; and, in addition to these palpable charms, he +possessed the more subtle ones of a musical voice and a fascinating +manner. He treated every woman, with whom he was brought into contact, +as if she were a compound of a child and a queen; and he had a way of +looking at her and speaking to her as if she were the one woman in the +world for whom he had been waiting all his life. That women were taken +in by this half-caressing, half-worshipping manner was not altogether +their fault; perhaps it was not altogether his. Very attractive people +fall into the habit of attracting, and are frequently unconscious of, +and therefore irresponsible for, their success. + +"It is so good of you to let me be presented to you," he said to +Elisabeth, as they walked through the crowded rooms in search of a seat; +"you don't know how I have longed for it ever since I first saw pictures +of yours on these walls. And my longing was trebled when I saw your +glorious Pillar of Cloud, and read all that it was meant to teach." + +Elisabeth looked at him slyly through her long eyelashes. "How do you +know what I meant to teach? Perhaps you read your own meanings into it, +and not mine." + +Farquhar laughed, and Elisabeth thought he had the most beautiful teeth +she had ever seen. "Perhaps so; but, do you know, Miss Farringdon, I +have a shrewd suspicion that my meanings and yours are the same." + +"What meaning did you read into my picture?" asked Elisabeth, with the +dictatorial air of a woman who is accustomed to be made much of and +deferred to, as he found a seat for her in the vestibule, under a +palm-tree. + +"I read that there was only one answer to the weary problems of labour +and capital, and masses and classes, and employers and employed, and all +the other difficulties that beset and threaten any great manufacturing +community; and that this answer is to be found to-day--as it was found +by the Israelites of old--in the pillar of cloud by day and the pillar +of fire by night, and all of which that pillar is a sign and a +sacrament." + +"Yes," replied Elisabeth, and her eyes shone like stars; "I meant all +that. But how clever of you to have read it so correctly!" + +"I do not ask if you understood what my picture meant. I know you did; +for it was to you, and women such as you, that I was speaking." + +"Yes; I understood it well enough," replied Elisabeth sadly. + +"I knew you would." + +"Poor little daughters of Philip! How much happier they would have felt +if they had been just the same as all the other commonplace Jewish +maidens, and had lived ordinary women's lives!" + +"But how much happier they made other people by their great gift of +interpreting to a tired world the hidden things of God!" replied Cecil, +his face aglow with emotion. "You must never forget that, you women of +genius, with your power of making men better and women brighter by the +messages you bring to them! And isn't it a grander thing to help and +comfort the whole world, than to love, honour, and obey one particular +man?" + +"I am not sure. I used to think so, but I'm beginning to have my doubts +about it. One comforts the whole world in a slipshod, sketchy kind of +way; but one could do the particular man thoroughly!" + +"And then find he wasn't worth the doing, in all probability," added +Cecil. + +"Perhaps." And Elisabeth smiled. + +"It is delightful to be really talking to you," exclaimed Cecil; "so +delightful that I can hardly believe it is true! I have so longed to +meet you, because--ever since I first saw your pictures--I always knew +you would understand." + +"And I knew you would understand, too, as soon as I saw The Daughters of +Philip," replied Elisabeth; and her voice was very soft. + +"I think we must have known each other in a former existence," Cecil +continued; "because I do not feel a bit as if I were being introduced to +a stranger, but as if I were meeting an old friend. I have so much to +tell you about all that has happened to me since you and I played +together in the shadow of the Sphinx, or worshipped together in the +temple at Philæ; and you will be interested in it all, won't you?" + +"Of course I shall. I shall want to know how many centuries ago you +first learned what women's hearts and minds were made of, and who taught +you." + +"You taught me, dear lady, one day when we were plucking flowers +together at the foot of Olympus. Don't you remember it? You ought, as it +can't be more than two or three thousand years ago." + +"And you've never forgotten it?" + +"Never; and never shall. If I had, I shouldn't have been an artist. It +is the men who remember how they lived and loved and suffered during +their former incarnations, that paint pictures and carve statues and +sing songs; and the men who forget everything but this present world, +that make fortunes and eat dinners and govern states." + +"And what about the women?" + +"Ah! the women who forget, set their hearts upon the attainment of a +fine house and large establishment, with a husband thrown in as a +makeweight; if they succeed, the world calls them happy. While the women +who remember, wait patiently for the man who was one with them at the +beginning of the centuries, and never take any other man in his place; +if they find him, they are so happy that the world is incapable of +understanding how happy they are; and if they don't find him in this +life, they know they will in another, and they are quite content." + +"You really are very interesting," remarked Elisabeth graciously. + +"Only because you understand me; most women would think me stupid to a +degree if I talked to them in this way. But you are interesting to +everybody, even to the stupid people. Tell me about yourself. Are you +really as strong-willed and regal as the world says you are?" + +"I don't know," replied Elisabeth; "I fancy it depends a good deal upon +whom I am talking to. I find as a rule it is a good plan to let a weak +man think you are obedient, and a strong man think you are wilful, if +you want men to find you interesting." + +"And aren't you strong-minded enough to be indifferent to the fact as to +whether men find you interesting or the reverse?" + +"Oh, dear, no! I am a very old-fashioned person, and I am proud of it. +I'd even rather be an old woman than a New Woman, if I were driven to be +one or the other. I'm not a bit modern, or _fin-de-siècle_; I still +believe in God and Man, and all the other comfortable and antiquated +beliefs." + +"How nice of you! But I knew you would, though the world in general does +not give you credit for anything in the shape of warmth or tenderness; +it adores you, you know, but as a sort of glorious Snow-Queen, such as +Kay and Gerda ran after in dear Hans Andersen." + +"I am quite aware of that, and I am afraid I don't much care; though it +seems a pity to have a thing and not to get the credit for it. I +sympathize with those women who have such lovely hair that nobody +believes that it was grown on the premises; my heart is similarly +misjudged." + +"Lord Stonebridge was talking to me about you and your pictures the +other day, and he said you would be an ideal woman if only you had a +heart." + +Elisabeth shrugged her shapely shoulders. "Then you can tell him that I +think he would be an ideal man if only he had a head; but you can't +expect one person to possess all the virtues or all the organs; now can +you?" + +"I suppose not." + +"Oh! do look at that woman in white muslin and forget-me-nots, with the +kittenish manner," exclaimed Elisabeth; "I can't stand kittens of over +fifty, can you? I have made all my friends promise that if ever they see +the faintest signs of approaching kittenness in me, as I advance in +years, they will have recourse without delay to the stable-bucket, which +is the natural end of kittens." + +"Still, women should make the world think them young as long as +possible." + +"But when we are kittenish we don't make the world think we are young; +we only make it think that we think we are young, which is quite a +different thing." + +"I see," said Cecil, possessing himself of Elisabeth's fan. "Let me fan +you. I am afraid you find it rather hot here, but I doubt if we could +get a seat anywhere else if once we resigned this one." + +"We should have to be contented with the Chiltern Hundreds, I'm afraid. +Besides, I am not a bit hot; it is never too warm for me. The thing I +hate most in the world is cold; it is the one thing that makes it +impossible for me to talk, and I'm miserable when I'm not talking. I +mean to read a paper before the Royal Society some day, to prove that +the bacillus of conversation can not germinate in a temperature of less +than sixty degrees." + +"I hate being cold, too. How much alike we are!" + +"I loathe going to gorgeous parties in cold houses," continued +Elisabeth, "and having priceless dinners in fireless rooms. On such +occasions I always feel inclined to say to my hostess, as the poor do, +'Please, ma'am, may I have a coal-ticket instead of a soup-ticket, if I +mayn't have both?'" + +"You are a fine lady and I am a struggling artist, so I want you to +tell me who some of these people are," Cecil begged; "I hardly know +anybody, and I expect there is nobody here that you don't know; so +please point out to me some of the great of the earth. First, can you +tell me who that man is over there, talking to the lady in blue? He has +such a sad, kind face." + +"Oh! that is Lord Wrexham--a charming man and a bachelor. He was jilted +a long time ago by Mrs. Paul Seaton--Miss Carnaby she was then--and +people say he has never got over it. It is she that he is talking to +now." + +"How very interesting! Yes; I like his face, and I am sure he has +suffered. It is strange how women invariably behave worst to the best +men! I'm not sure that I admire her. She is very stylish and perfectly +dressed, but I don't think I should have broken my heart over her if I +had been my Lord Wrexham." + +"He was perfectly devoted to her, I believe; and she really is +attractive when you talk to her, she is so very brilliant and amusing." + +"She looks brilliant, and a little hard," was Cecil Farquhar's comment. + +"I don't think she is really hard, for she adores her husband, and +devotes all her time and all her talents to helping him politically. He +is Postmaster-General, you know; and is bound to get still higher office +some day." + +"Have they any children?" + +"No; only politics." + +"What is he like? I have never seen him." + +"He is an interesting man, and an extremely able one. I should think +that as a husband he would be too self-opinionated for my taste; but he +and his wife seem to suit each other down to the ground. Some women +like self-opinionated men." + +"I suppose they do." + +"And after all," Elisabeth went on, "if one goes in for a distinguished +husband, one must pay the price for the article. It is absurd to shoot +big game, and then expect to carry it home in a market-basket." + +"Still it annoys you when men say the same of you, and suggest that an +ordinary lump of sugar would have sweetened Antony's vinegar more +successfully than did Cleopatra's pearl. Your conversation and my art +have exhausted themselves to prove that this masculine imagination is a +delusion and a snare; yet the principle must be the same in both cases." + +"Not at all; woman's greatness is of her life a thing apart: 'tis man's +whole existence." + +"Do you think so?" asked Cecil, with that tender look of his which +expressed so much and meant so little. "You don't know how cold a man +feels when his heart is empty." + +"Paul Seaton nearly wrecked his career at the outset by writing a very +foolish and indiscreet book called Shams and Shadows; it was just a +toss-up whether he would ever get over it; but he did, and now people +have pretty nearly forgotten it," continued Elisabeth, who had never +heard the truth concerning Isabel Carnaby. + +"Who is that fat, merry woman coming in now?" + +"That is Lady Silverhampton; and the man she is laughing with is Lord +Robert Thistletown. That lovely girl on the other side of him is his +wife. Isn't she exquisite?" + +"She is indeed--a most beautiful creature. Now if Lord Wrexham had +broken his heart over her, I could have understood and almost commended +him." + +"Well, but he didn't, you see. There is nothing more remarkable than the +sort of woman that breaks men's hearts--except the sort of men that +break women's." + +"I fancy that the breakableness is in the nature of the heart itself, +and not of the iconoclast," said Cecil. + +Elisabeth looked up quickly. "Oh! I don't. I think that the person who +breaks the heart of another person must have an immense capacity for +commanding love." + +"Not at all; the person whose heart is broken has an immense capacity +for feeling love. Take your Lord Wrexham, for instance: it was not +because Miss Carnaby was strong, but because he was strong, that his +heart was broken in the encounter between them. You can see that in +their faces." + +"I don't agree with you. It was because she was more lovable than +loving--at least, as far as he was concerned--that the catastrophe +happened. A less vivid personality would have been more easily +forgotten; but if once you begin to care badly for any one with a strong +personality you're done for." + +"You are very modern, in spite of your assertion to the contrary, and +therefore very subjective. It would never occur to you to look at +anything from the objective point of view; yet at least five times out +of ten it is the correct one." + +"You mean that I am too self-willed and domineering?" laughed Elisabeth. + +"I mean that it is beside the mark to expect a reigning queen to +understand how to canvass for votes at a general election." + +"But you do think me too autocratic, don't you? You must, because +everybody does," Elisabeth persisted, with engaging candour. + +"I think you are the most charming woman I ever met in my life," replied +Cecil; and at the moment, and for at least five minutes afterward, he +really believed what he said. + +"Thank you; but you think me too fond of dominating other people, all +the same." + +"Don't say that; I could not think any evil of you, and it hurts me to +hear you even suggest that I could. But perhaps it surprises me that so +large-hearted a woman as yourself should invariably look at things from +the subjective point of view, as I am sure you do." + +"Right again, Mr. Farquhar; you really are very clever at reading +people." + +Cecil corrected her. "At reading you, you mean; you are not 'people,' if +you please. But tell me the truth: when you look at yourself from the +outside (which I know you are fond of doing, as I am fond of doing), +doesn't it surprise you to see as gifted a woman as you must know you +are, so much more prone to measure your influence upon your surroundings +than their influence upon you; and, measuring, to allow for it?" + +"Nothing that a woman does ever surprises me; and that the woman happens +to be one's self is a mere matter of detail." + +"That is a quibble, dear lady. Please answer my question." + +Elisabeth drew her eyebrows together with a puzzled expression. "I don't +think it does surprise me, because my influence on my surroundings is +greater than their influence on me. You, too, are a creator; and you +must know the almost god-like joy of making something out of nothing, +and seeing that it is good. It seems to me that when once you have +tasted that joy, you can never again doubt that you yourself are +stronger than anything outside you; and that, as the Apostle said, 'all +things are yours.'" + +"Yes; I understand that. But there is still a step further--namely, when +you become conscious that, strong as you are, there is something +stronger than yourself; and that is another person's influence upon +you." + +"I have never felt that," said Elisabeth simply. + +"Have you never known what it is to find your own individuality +swallowed up in other persons' individuality, and your own personality +merged in theirs, until--without the slightest conscious unselfishness +on your part--you cease to have a will of your own?" + +"No; and I don't want to know it. I can understand wishing to share +one's own principalities and powers with another person; but I can't +understand being willing to share another person's principalities and +powers." + +"In short," said Cecil, "you feel that you could love sufficiently to +give, but not sufficiently to receive; you would stamp your image and +superscription with pleasure upon another person's heart; but you would +allow no man to stamp his image and superscription upon yours." + +"I suppose that is so," replied Elisabeth gravely; "but I never put it +as clearly to myself as that before. Yes," she went on after a moment's +pause; "I could never care enough for any man to give up my own will to +his; I should always want to bend his to mine, and the more I liked him +the more I should want it. He could have all my powers and possessions, +and be welcome to them; but my will must always be my own; that is a +kingdom I would share with no one." + +"Ah! you are treating the question subjectively, as usual. Did it never +occur to you that you might have no say in the matter; that a man might +compel you, by force of his own charm or power or love for you, to give +up your will to his, whether you would or no?" + +Elisabeth looked him full in the face with clear, grave eyes. "No; and I +hope I may never meet such a man as long as I live. I have always been +so strong, and so proud of my strength, and so sure of myself, that I +could never forgive any one for being stronger than I, and wresting my +dominion from me." + +"Dear lady, you are a genius, and you have climbed to the summit of the +giddy pinnacle which men call success; but for all that, you are still +'an unlesson'd girl.' Believe me, the strong man armed will come some +day, and you will lower your flag and rejoice in the lowering." + +"You don't understand me, after all," said Elisabeth reproachfully. + +Cecil's smile was very pleasant. "Don't I? Yet it was I who painted The +Daughters of Philip." + +There was a moment's constrained silence; and then Elisabeth broke the +tension by saying lightly-- + +"Look! there's Lady Silverhampton coming back again. Isn't it a pity she +is so stout? I do hope I shall never be stout, for flesh is a most +difficult thing to live down." + +"You are right; there are few things in the world worse than stoutness." + +"I only know two: sin and boiled cabbage." + +"And crochet-antimacassars," added Cecil; "you're forgetting +crochet-antimacassars. I speak feelingly, because my present lodgings +are white with them; and they stick to my coat like leeches, and follow +me whithersoever I go. I am never alone from them." + +"If I were as stout as Lady Silverhampton," said Elisabeth thoughtfully, +"I should either cut myself up into building lots, or else let myself +out into market gardens: I should never go about whole; should you?" + +"Certainly not; I would rather publish myself in sections, as +dictionaries and encyclopædias do!" + +"Lady Silverhampton presented me," remarked Elisabeth, "so I always feel +a sort of god-daughterly respect for her, which enhances the pleasure of +abusing her." + +"What does it feel like to go to Court? Does it frighten you?" + +"Oh, dear! no. It would do, I daresay, if you were in plain clothes; but +trains and feathers make fine birds--with all the manners and habits of +fine birds. Peacocks couldn't hop about in gutters, and London sparrows +couldn't strut across Kensington Gardens, however much they both desired +it. So when a woman, in addition to her ordinary best clothes, is +attended by twenty-four yards of good satin which ought to be feeding +the poor, nothing really abashes her." + +"I suppose she feels like a queen." + +"Well, to tell the truth, with her train over her arm and her tulle +lappets hanging down her back, she feels like a widow carrying a +waterproof; but she thinks she looks like a duchess, and that is a very +supporting thought." + +"Tell me, who is that beautiful woman with the tall soldierly man, +coming in now?" said Farquhar. + +"Oh! those are the Le Mesuriers of Greystone; isn't she divine? And she +has the two loveliest little boys you ever saw or imagined. I'm longing +to paint them." + +"She is strikingly handsome." + +"There is a very strange story about her and her twin sister, which I'll +tell you some day." + +"You shall; but you must tell me all about yourself first, and how you +have come to know so much and learn so little." + +Elisabeth looked round at him quickly. "What do you mean?" + +"I mean that the depth of your intuition is only surpassed by the +shallowness of your experience." + +"You are very rude!" And Elisabeth drew up her head rather haughtily. + +"Forgive me; I didn't mean to be; but I was overcome by the wonder of +how complex you are--how wise on the one side, and how foolish upon the +other; but experience is merely human and very attainable, while +intuition is divine and given to few. And I was overcome by another +thought; may I tell you what that was?" + +"Yes; of course you may." + +"You won't be angry?" + +"No." + +"You will remember how we played together as children round the temple +of Philæ, and let my prehistoric memories of you be my excuse?" + +"Yes." + +"I was overcome by the thought of how glorious it would be to teach you +all the things you don't know, and how delightful it would be to see +you learn them." + +"Let us go into the next room," said Elisabeth, rising from her seat; "I +see Lady Silverhampton nodding to me, and I must go and speak to her." + +Cecil Farquhar bent his six-foot-one down to her five-foot-five. "Are +you angry with me?" he whispered. + +"I don't know; I think I am." + +"But you will let me come and see you, so that you may forgive me, won't +you?" + +"You don't deserve it." + +"Of course I don't; I shouldn't want it if I did. The things we deserve +are as unpleasant as our doctor's prescriptions. Please let me +come--because we knew each other all those centuries ago, and I haven't +forgotten you." + +"Very well, then. You'll find my address in the Red Book, and I'm always +at home on Sunday afternoons." + +As Elisabeth was whirled away into a vortex of gay and well-dressed +people, Farquhar watched her for a moment. "She is an attractive woman," +he said to himself, "though she is not as good-looking as I expected. +But there's charm about her, and breeding; and they say she has an +enormous fortune. She is certainly worth cultivating." + +Farquhar cultivated the distinguished Miss Farringdon assiduously, and +the friendship between them grew apace. Each had a certain attraction +for the other; and, in addition, they enjoyed that wonderful freemasonry +which exists among all followers of the same craft, and welds these +together in a bond almost as strong as the bond of relationship. The +artist in Farquhar was of far finer fibre than the man, as is sometimes +the case with complex natures; so that one side of him gave expression +to thoughts which the other side of him was incapable of comprehending. +He did not consciously pretend that he was better than he was, and he +really believed the truths which he preached; but when the gods serve +their nectar in earthen vessels, the vessels are apt to get more credit +than they deserve, and the gods less. + +To Elisabeth, Cecil was extremely interesting; and she +understood--better than most women would have done--the difference +between himself and his art, and how the one must not be measured by the +other. The artist attracted her greatly; she had so much sympathy with +his ways of looking at life and of interpreting truth; as for the man, +she had as yet come to no definite conclusion in her mind concerning +him; it was not easy for mankind to fascinate Elisabeth Farringdon. + +"I have come to see my mother-confessor," he said to her one Sunday +afternoon, when he dropped in to find her alone, Grace Cobham having +gone out to tea. "I have been behaving horribly all the week, and I want +you to absolve me and help me to be better and nicer." + +Elisabeth was the last woman to despise flattery of this sort; an appeal +for help of any kind never found her indifferent. + +"What have you been doing?" she asked gently. + +"It isn't so much what I have been doing as what I have been feeling. I +found myself actually liking Lady Silverhampton, simply because she is a +countess; and I was positively rude to a man I know, called Edgar Ford, +because he lives at the East End and dresses badly. What a falling-off +since the days when you and I worshipped the gods together at Philæ, +and before money and rank and railways and bicycles came into fashion! +Help me to be as I was then, dear friend." + +"How can I?" + +"By simply being yourself and letting me watch you. I always feel good +and ideal and unworldly when I am near you. Don't you know how dreadful +it is to wish to do one thing and to want to do another, and to be torn +asunder between the two?" + +Elisabeth shook her head. "No; I have never felt like that. I can +understand wanting to do different things at different times of one's +life, but I can not comprehend how one person can want to do two +opposing things at the same time." + +"Oh! I can. I can imagine doing a thing, and despising one's self at the +time for doing it, and yet not being able to help doing it." + +"I have heard other people say that, and I can't understand it." + +"Yet you are so complex; I should have thought you would," said +Farquhar. + +"Yes, I am complex; but not at the same moment. I have two distinct +natures, but the two are never on the stage at once. I don't in the +least know what St. Paul meant when he said that the evil he would not +that he did. I can quite understand doing the evil on Tuesday morning +that I would not on Monday afternoon; but I could never do anything and +disapprove of it at the same minute." + +"That is because you are so good--and so cold." + +"Am I?" + +"Yes, dear Miss Farringdon; and so amiable. You never do things in a +temper." + +"But I do; I really have got a temper of my own, though nowadays people +seem to find difficulty in believing it. I have frequently done things +in a temper before now; but as long as the temper lasts I am pleased +that I have done them, and feel that I do well to be angry. When the +temper is over, I sometimes think differently; but not till then. As I +have told you before, my will is so strong that it and I are never at +loggerheads with each other; it always rules me completely." + +Farquhar sighed. "I wish I were as strong as you are; but I am not. And +do you mean to tell me that there is no worldly side to you, either; no +side that hankers after fleshpots, even while the artist within you is +being fed with manna from heaven?" + +"No; I don't think there is," Elisabeth replied slowly. "I really do not +like people any the better for having money and titles and things like +that, and it is no use pretending that I do." + +"I do. I wish I didn't, but I can't help it. It is only you who can help +me to look at life from the ideal point of view--you whose feet are +still wet with the dew of Olympus, and in whom the Greek spirit is as +fresh as it was three thousand years ago." + +"Oh! I'm not as perfect as all that; far from it! I don't despise people +for not having rank or wealth, since rank and wealth don't happen to be +the things that interest me. But there are things that do interest +me--genius and wit and culture and charm, for instance--and I am quite +as hard on the people who lack these gifts, as ever you are on the +impecunious nobodies. I confess I am often ashamed of myself when I +realize how frightfully I look down upon stupid men and dull women, and +how utterly indifferent I am as to what becomes of them. So I really am +as great a snob as you are, though I wear my snobbery--like my rue--with +a difference." + +"Not a snob, dear lady--never a snob! There never existed a woman with +less snobbery in her composition than you have. That you are impatient +of the dull and unattractive, I admit; but so you ought to be--your own +wit and charm give you the right to despise them." + +"But they don't; that's where you make a mistake. It is as unjust to +look down on a man for not making a joke as for not making a fortune. +Though it isn't so much the people who don't make jokes that irritate +me, as the people who make poor ones. Don't you know the sort?--would-be +wits who quote a remark out of a bound Punch, and think they have been +brilliant; and who tell an anecdote crusted with antiquity, which men +learned at their mother's knees, and say that it actually happened to a +friend of theirs the week before last." + +"Oh! they are indeed terrible," agreed Cecil; "they dabble in inverted +commas as Italians dabble in garlic." + +"I never know whether to laugh at their laboured jokes or not. Of +course, it is pretty manners to do so, be the wit never so stale; but on +the other hand it encourages them in their evil habits, and seems to me +as doubtful a form of hospitality as offering a brandy-and-soda to a +confirmed drunkard." + +"Dear friend, let us never try to be funny!" + +"Amen! And, above all things, let us flee from humorous recitations," +added Elisabeth. "There are few things in the world more heart-rending +than a humorous recitation--with action. As for me, it unmans me +completely, and I quietly weep in a remote corner of the room until the +carriage comes to take me home. Therefore, I avoid such; as no woman's +eyelashes will stand a long course of humorous recitation without being +the worse for wear." + +"It seems to me after all," Cecil remarked, "that the evil that you +would not, that you do, like St. Paul and myself and sundry others, if +you despise stupid people, and know that you oughtn't to despise them, +at the same time." + +"I know I oughtn't to despise them, but I never said I didn't want to +despise them--that's just the difference. As a matter of fact, I enjoy +despising them; that is where I am really so horrid. I hide it from +them, because I hate hurting people's feelings; and I say 'How very +interesting!' out of sheer good manners when they talk to me +respectively about their cooks if they are women, and their digestions +if they are men; but all the time I am inwardly lifting up my eyes, and +patting myself on the back, and thanking heaven that I am not as they +are, and generally out-Phariseeing the veriest Pharisee that ever +breathed." + +"It is wonderful how the word 'cook' will wake into animation the most +phlegmatic of women!" + +"If they are married," added Elisabeth; "not unless. I often think when +I go up into the drawing-room at a dinner-party, I will just say the +word 'cook' to find out which of the women are married and which single. +I'm certain I should know at once, from the expression the magic word +brought to their respective faces. It is only when you have a husband +that you regard the cook as the ruling power in life for good or evil." + +There was a pause while the footman brought in tea and Elisabeth poured +it out; then Farquhar said suddenly-- + +"I feel a different man from the one that rang at your door-bell some +twenty minutes ago. The worldliness has slipped from me like a cast-off +shell; now I experience a democratic indifference to my Lady +Silverhampton, and a brotherly affection for Mr. Edgar Ford. And this is +all your doing!" + +"I don't see how that can be," laughed Elisabeth; "seeing that Lady +Silverhampton is a friend of mine, and I have never heard of Mr. Edgar +Ford." + +"But it is; it is your own unconscious influence upon me. Miss +Farringdon, you don't know what you have been and what you are to me! It +is only since I knew you that I have realized how little all outer +things really matter, and how much inner ones do; and how it is a +question of no moment who a man is, compared with what a man is. And you +will go on teaching me, won't you, and letting me sit at your feet, +until the man in me is always what now the artist in me is sometimes?" + +"I shall like to help you if I can; I am always longing to help people, +and yet so few people ever seem to want my help." And Elisabeth's eyes +grew sad. + +"I want it--more than I want anything in the world," replied Cecil; and +he really meant it, for the artist in him was uppermost just then. + +"Then you shall have it." + +"Thank you--thank you more than I can ever say." + +After a moment's silence Elisabeth asked-- + +"Are you going to Lady Silverhampton's picnic on the river to-morrow?" + +"Yes; I accepted because I thought I should be sure to meet you," +replied Cecil, who would have accepted the invitation of a countess if +it had been to meet his bitterest foe. + +"Then your forethought will be rewarded, for I am going, too," Elisabeth +said. + +And then other callers were shown in, and the conversation was brought +to an abrupt conclusion; but it left behind it a pleasant taste in the +minds of both the principals. + + + + +CHAPTER XIV + +ON THE RIVER + + For many a frivolous, festive year + I followed the path that I felt I must; + I failed to discover the road was drear, + And rather than otherwise liked the dust. + It led through a land that I knew of old, + Frequented by friendly, familiar folk, + Who bowed before Mammon, and heaped up gold, + And lived like their neighbours, and loved their joke. + + +It was a lovely summer's day when Lady Silverhampton collected her +forces at Paddingdon, conveyed them by rail as far as Reading, and then +transported them from the train to her steam-launch on the river. The +party consisted of Lady Silverhampton herself, Lord and Lady Robert +Thistletown, Lord Stonebridge, Sir Wilfred Madderley (President of the +Royal Academy), Cecil Farquhar, and Elisabeth. + +"I'm afraid you'll be frightfully crowded," said the hostess, as they +packed themselves into the dainty little launch; "but it can't be +helped. I tried to charter a P. and O. steamer for the day; but they +were all engaged, like cabs on the night of a county ball, don't you +know? And then I tried to leave somebody out so as to make the party +smaller, but there wasn't one of you that could have been spared, +except Silverhampton; so I left him at home, and decided to let the rest +of you be squeezed yet happy." + +"How dear of you!" exclaimed Lord Robert; "and I'll repay your kindness +by writing a book called How to be Happy though Squeezed." + +"The word _though_ appears redundant in that connection," Sir Wilfred +Madderley remarked. + +"Ah! that's because you aren't what is called 'a lady's man,'" Lord +Robert sighed. "I always was, especially before my unfortunate--oh! I +beg your pardon, Violet, I forgot you were here; I mean, of course, my +fortunate--marriage. I was always the sort of man that makes girls +timidly clinging when they are sitting on a sofa beside you, and +short-sighted when you are playing their accompaniments for them. I +remember once a girl sat so awfully close to me on a sofa in +mid-drawing-room, that I felt there wasn't really room for both of us; +so--like the true hero that I am--I shouted 'Save the women and +children,' and flung myself upon the tender mercies of the carpet, till +I finally struggled to the fireplace." + +"How silly you are, Bobby!" exclaimed his wife. + +"Yes, darling; I know. I've always known it; but the world didn't find +it out till I married you. Till then I was in hopes that the secret +would die with me; but after that it was fruitless to attempt to conceal +the fact any longer." + +"We're all going to be silly to-day," said the hostess; "that's part of +the treat." + +"It won't be much of a treat to some of us," Lord Robert retorted. "I +remember when I was a little chap going to have tea at the Mershire's; +and when I wanted to gather some of their most ripping orchids, Lady M. +said I might go into the garden and pick mignonette instead. 'Thank +you,' I replied in my most dignified manner, 'I can pick mignonette at +home; that's no change to me!' Now, that's the way with everything; it's +no change to some people to pick mignonette." + +"Or to some to pick orchids," added Lord Stonebridge. + +"Or to some to pick oakum." And Lord Bobby sighed again. + +"Even Elisabeth isn't going to be clever to-day," continued Lady +Silverhampton. "She promised me she wouldn't; didn't you, Elisabeth?" + +Every one looked admiringly at the subject of this remark. Elisabeth +Farringdon was the fashion just then. + +"She couldn't help being clever, however hard she tried," said the +President. + +"Couldn't I, though? Just you wait and see." + +"If you succeed in not saying one clever thing during the whole of this +picnic affair," Lord Bobby exclaimed, "I'll give you my photograph as a +reward. I've got a new one, taken sideways, which is perfectly sweet. It +has a profile like a Greek god--those really fine and antique statues, +don't you know? whose noses have been wiped out by the ages. The British +Museum teems with them, poor devils!" + +"Thank you," said Elisabeth. "I shall prize it as an incontrovertible +testimony to the fact that neither my tongue nor your nose are as sharp +as tradition reports them to be." + +Lord Bobby shook his finger warningly. "Be careful, be careful, or +you'll never get that photograph. Remember that every word you say will +be used against you, as the police are always warning me." + +"I'm a little tired to-day," Lady Silverhampton said. "I was taken in to +dinner by an intelligent man last night." + +"Then how came he to do it?" Lord Robert wondered. + +"Don't be rude, Bobby: it doesn't suit your style; and, besides, how +could he help it?" + +"Well enough. Whenever I go out to dinner I always say in an aside to my +host, 'Not Lady Silverhampton; anything but that.' And the consequence +is I never do go in to dinner with you. It isn't disagreeableness on my +part; if I could I'd do it for your sake, and put my own inclination on +one side; but I simply can't bear the intellectual strain. It's a marvel +to me how poor Silverhampton stands it as well as he does." + +"He is never exposed to it. You don't suppose I waste my own jokes on my +own husband, do you? They are far too good for home consumption, like +fish at the seaside. When fish has been up to London and returned, it is +then sold at the place where it was caught. And that's the way with my +jokes; when they have been all round London and come home to roost, I +serve them up to Silverhampton as quite fresh." + +"And he believes in their freshness? How sweet and confiding of him!" + +"He never listens to them, so it is all the same to him whether they're +fresh or not. That is why I confide so absolutely in Silverhampton; he +never listens to a word I say, and never has done." + +Lord Stonebridge amended this remark. "Except when you accepted him." + +"Certainly not; because, as a matter of fact, I refused him; but he +never listened, and so he married me. It is so restful to have a +husband who never attends to what you say! It must be dreadfully wearing +to have one who does, because then you'd never be able to tell him the +truth. And the great charm of your having a home of your own appears to +be that it is the one place where you can speak the truth." + +Lord Bobby clapped his hands. "Whatever lies disturb the street, there +must be truth at home," he ejaculated. + +"Wiser not, even there," murmured Sir Wilfred Madderley, under his +breath. + +"But you have all interrupted me, and haven't listened to what I was +telling you about my intelligent man; and if you eat my food you must +listen to my stones--it's only fair." + +"But if even your own husband doesn't think it necessary to listen to +them," Lord Bobby objected, "why should we, who have never desired to be +anything more than sisters to you?" + +"Because he doesn't eat my food--I eat his; that makes all the +difference, don't you see?" + +"Then do you listen to his stories?" + +"To every one of them every time they are told; and I know to an inch +the exact place where to laugh. But I'm going on about my man. He was +one of those instructive boring people, who will tell you the reason of +things; and he explained to me that soldiers wear khaki and polar bears +white, because if you are dressed in the same colour as the place where +you are, it looks as if you weren't there. And it has since occurred to +me that I should be a much wiser and happier woman if I always dressed +myself in the same colour as my drawing-room furniture. Then nobody +would be able to find me even in my own house. Don't you think it is +rather a neat idea?" And her ladyship looked round for the applause +which she had learned to expect as her right. + +"You are a marvellous woman!" cried Lord Stonebridge, while the others +murmured their approval. + +"I need never say 'Not at home'; callers would just come in and look +round the drawing-room and go out again, without ever seeing that I was +there at all. It really would be sweet!" + +"It seems to me to be a theory which might be adapted with benefit to +all sorts and conditions of men," said Elisabeth; "I think I shall take +out a patent for designing invisible costumes for every possible +occasion. I feel I could do it, and do it well." + +"It is adopted to a great extent even now," Sir Wilfred remarked; "I +believe that our generals wear scarlet so that they may not always be +distinguishable from the red-tape of the War Office." + +"And one must not forget," added Lord Bobby thoughtfully, "that the +benches of the House of Commons are green." + +"Now in church, of course, it would be just the other way," said Lady +Silverhampton; "I should line my pew with the same stuff as my Sunday +gown, so as to look as if I was there when I wasn't." + +Lord Stonebridge began to argue. "But that wouldn't be the other way; it +would be the same thing." + +"How stupid and accurate you are, Stonebridge! If our pew were lined +with gray chiffon like my Sunday frock, it couldn't be the same as if my +Sunday frock was made of crimson carpet like our pew. How can things +that are exactly opposite be the same? You can't prove that they are, +except by algebra; and as nobody here knows any algebra, you can't prove +it at all." + +"Yes; I can. If I say you are like a person, it is the same thing as +saying that that person is like you." + +"Not at all. If you said that I was like Connie Esdaile, I should +embrace you before the assembled company; and if you said she was like +me, she'd never forgive you as long as she lived. It is through +reasoning out things in this way that men make such idiotic mistakes." + +"Isn't it funny," Elisabeth remarked, "that if you reason a thing out +you're always wrong, and if you never reason about it at all you're +always right?" + +"Ah! but that is because you are a genius," murmured Cecil Farquhar. + +Lady Silverhampton contradicted him. "Not at all; it's because she is a +woman." + +"Well, I'd rather be a woman than a genius any day," said Elisabeth; "it +takes less keeping up." + +"You are both," said Cecil. + +"And I'm neither," added Lord Bobby; "so what's the state of the odds?" + +"Let's invent more invisible costumes," cried Lady Silverhampton; "they +interest me. Suggest another one, Elisabeth." + +"I should design a special one for lovers in the country. Don't you know +how you are always coming upon lovers in country lanes, and how hard +they try to look as if they weren't there, and how badly they succeed? I +should dress them entirely in green, faintly relieved by brown; and then +they'd look as if they were only part of the hedges and stiles." + +"How the lovers of the future will bless you!" exclaimed Lord Bobby. "I +only regret that my love-making days are over before your patent +costumes come out. I remember Sir Richard Esdaile once coming upon +Violet and me when we were spooning in the shrubbery at Esdaile Court, +and we tried in vain to efface ourselves and become as part of the +scenery. You see, it is so difficult to look exactly like two laurel +bushes, when one of you is dressed in pink muslin and the other in white +flannel." + +Lady Robert blushed becomingly. "Oh, Bobby, it wasn't pink muslin that +day; it was blue cambric." + +"That doesn't matter. There are as many laurel bushes made out of pink +muslin as out of blue cambric, when you come to that. The difficulty of +identifying one's self with one's environment (that's the correct +expression, my dear) would be the same in either costume; but Miss +Farringdon is now going, once for all, to remove that difficulty." + +"I came upon two young people in a lane not long ago," said Elisabeth, +"and the minute they saw me they began to walk in the ditches, one on +one side of the road and one on the other. Now if only they had worn my +costumes, such a damp and uncomfortable mode of going about the country +would have been unnecessary; besides, it was absurd in any case. If you +were walking with your mother-in-law you wouldn't walk as far apart as +that; you wouldn't be able to hear a word she said." + +"Ah! my dear young friend, that wouldn't matter," Lord Bobby interposed, +"nor in any way interfere with the pleasure of the walk. Really nice men +never make a fuss about little things like that. If only their +mothers-in-law are kind enough to go out walking with them, they don't +a bit mind how far off they walk. It is in questions such as this that +men are really so much more unselfish than women; because the +mothers-in-law do mind--they like us to be near enough to hear what they +say." + +"Green frocks would be very nice for the girls, especially if they were +fair," said Lady Robert thoughtfully; "but I think the men would look +rather queer in green, don't you? As if they were actors." + +"I'm afraid they would look a bit dissipated," Elisabeth assented; "like +almonds-and-raisins by daylight. By the way, I know nothing that looks +more dissipated than almonds-and-raisins by daylight." + +"Except, perhaps, one coffee-cup in the drawing-room the morning after a +dinner party," suggested Farquhar. + +Elisabeth demurred. "No; the coffee-cup is sad rather than sinful. It is +as much part and parcel of a bygone time, as the Coliseum or the ruins +of Pompeii; and the respectability of the survival of the fittest is its +own. But almonds-and-raisins are different; to a certain class of +society they represent the embodiment of refinement and luxury and +self-indulgence." + +Sir Wilfred Madderley laughed softly to himself. "I know exactly what +you mean." + +"Well, I don't agree with Miss Farringdon," Lord Bobby argued; "to my +mind almonds-and-raisins are an emblem of respectability and moral +worth, like chiffonniers and family albums and British matrons. No +really bad man would feel at home with almonds-and-raisins, I'm certain; +but I'd appoint as my trustee any man who could really enjoy them on a +Sunday afternoon. Now take Kesterton, for instance; he's the type of man +who would really appreciate them. My impression is that when his life +comes to be written, it will be found that he took almonds-and-raisins +in secret, as some men take absinthe and others opium." + +"It is scandalous to reveal the secrets of the great in this manner," +said Elisabeth, "and to lower our ideals of them!" + +"Forgive me; but still you must always have faintly suspected Kesterton +of respectability, even when you admired him most. All great men have +their weaknesses; mine is melancholy and Lord K.'s respectability, and +Shakespeare's was something quite as bad, but I can't recall just now +what it was." + +"And what is Lady K.'s?" asked the hostess. + +"Belief in Kesterton, of course, which she carries to the verge of +credulity, not to say superstition. Would you credit it? When he was at +the Exchequer she believed in his Budgets; and when he was at the War +Office she believed in his Intelligence Department; and now he is in the +Lords she believes in his pedigree, culled fresh from the Herald's +Office. Can faith go further?" + +"'A perfect woman nobly planned,'" murmured Elisabeth. + +"Precisely," continued Bobby, + + "To rule the man who rules the land, + But yet a spirit still, and damp + With something from a spirit-lamp-- + +or however the thing goes. I don't always quote quite accurately, you +will perceive! I generally improve." + +"I'm not sure that Lady Kesterton does believe in the pedigree," and +Elisabeth looked wise; "because she once went out of her way to assure +me that she did." + +Lord Bobby groaned. "I beseech you to be careful, Miss Farringdon; +you'll never get that photograph if you keep forgetting yourself like +this!" + +Elisabeth continued-- + +"If I were a man I should belong to the Herald's Office. It would be +such fun to be called a 'Red Bonnet' or a 'Green Griffin,' or some other +nice fairy-tale-ish name; and to make it one's business to unite divided +families, and to restore to deserving persons their long-lost +great-great-grandparents. Think of the unselfish joy one would feel in +saying to a worthy grocer, 'Here is your great-great-grandmother; take +her and be happy!' Or to a successful milliner, 'I have found your +mislaid grandfather; be a mother to him for the rest of your life!' It +would give one the most delicious, fairy-godmotherly sort of +satisfaction!" + +"It would," Sir Wilfred agreed. "One would feel one's self a +philanthropist of the finest water." + +"Thinking about almonds-and-raisins has made me feel hungry," exclaimed +Lady Silverhampton. "Let us have lunch! And while the servants are +laying the table, we had better get out of the boat and have a stroll. +It would be more amusing." + +So the party wandered about for a while in couples through fields +bespangled with buttercups; and it happened--not unnaturally--that Cecil +and Elisabeth found themselves together. + +"You are very quiet to-day," she said; "how is that? You are generally +such a chatty person, but to-day you out-silence the Sphinx." + +"You know the reason." + +"No; I don't. To my mind there is no reason on earth strong enough to +account for voluntary silence. So tell me." + +"I am silent because I want to talk to you; and if I can't do that, I +don't want to talk at all. But among all these grand people you seem so +far away from me. Yesterday we were such close friends; but to-day I +stretch out groping hands, and try in vain to touch you. Do you never +dream that you seek for people for a long time and find them at last; +and then, when you find them, you can not get near to them? Well, I feel +just like that to-day with you." + +Elisabeth was silent for a moment; her thoughts were far away from +Cecil. "Yes, I know that dream well," she said slowly, "I have often had +it; but I never knew that anybody had ever had it except me." And +suddenly there came over her the memory of how, long years ago, she used +to dream that dream nearly every night. It was at the time when she was +first estranged from Christopher, and when the wound of his apparent +indifference to her was still fresh. Over and over again she used to +dream that she and Christopher were once more the friends that they had +been, but with an added tenderness that their actual intercourse had +never known. Which of us has not experienced that strange +dream-tenderness--often for the most unlikely people--which hangs about +us for days after the dream has vanished, and invests the objects of it +with an interest which their living presence never aroused? In that old +dream of Elisabeth's her affection for Christopher was so great that +when he went away she followed after him, and sought him for a long time +in vain; and when at last she found him he was no longer the same +Christopher that he used to be, but there was an impassable barrier +between them which she fruitlessly struggled to break through. The agony +of the fruitless struggle always awakened her, so that she never knew +what the end of the dream was going to be. + +It was years since Elisabeth had dreamed this dream--years since she had +even remembered it--but Cecil's remark brought it all back to her, as +the scent of certain flowers brings back the memory of half-forgotten +summer days; and once again she felt herself drawn to him by that bond +of similarity which was so strong between them, and which is the most +powerfully attractive force in the world--except, perhaps, the +attractive force of contrast. It is the people who are the most like, +and the most unlike, ourselves, that we love the best; to the others we +are more or less indifferent. + +"I think you are the most sympathetic person I ever met," she added. +"You have what the Psalmist would call 'an understanding heart.'" + +"I think it is only you whom I understand, Miss Farringdon; and that +only because you and I are so much alike." + +"I should have thought you would have understood everybody, you have +such quick perceptions and such keen sympathies." Elisabeth, for all her +cleverness, had yet to learn to differentiate between the understanding +heart and the understanding head. There is but little real similarity +between the physician who makes an accurate diagnosis of one's +condition, and the friend who suffers from the identical disease. + +"No; I don't understand everybody. I don't understand all these fine +people whom we are with to-day, for instance. They seem to me so utterly +worldly and frivolous and irresponsible, that I haven't patience with +them. I daresay they look down upon me for not having blood, and I know +I look down upon them for not having brains." + +Elisabeth's eyes twinkled in spite of herself. She remembered how +completely Cecil had been out of it in the conversation on the launch; +and she wondered whether the King of Nineveh had ever invited Jonah to +the state banquets. She inclined to the belief that he had not. + +"But they have brains," was all she said. + +Cecil was undeniably cross. "They talk a lot of nonsense," he retorted +pettishly. + +"Exactly. People without brains never talk nonsense; that is just where +the difference comes in. If a man talks clever nonsense to me, I know +that man isn't a fool; it is a sure test." + +"There is nonsense and nonsense." + +"And there are fools and fools." Elisabeth spoke severely; she was +always merciless upon anything in the shape of humbug or snobbery. Maria +Farringdon's training had not been thrown away. + +"I despise mere frivolity," said Cecil loftily. + +"My dear Mr. Farquhar, there is a time for everything; and if you think +that a lunch-party on the river in the middle of the season is a +suitable occasion for discussing Lord Stonebridge's pecuniary +difficulties, or solving Lady Silverhampton's religious doubts, I can +only say that I don't." Elisabeth was irritated; she knew that Cecil was +annoyed with her friends not because they could talk smart nonsense, but +because he could not. + +"Still, you can not deny that the upper classes are frivolous," Cecil +persisted. + +"But I do deny it. I don't think that they are a bit more frivolous than +any other class, but I think they are a good deal more plucky. Each +class has its own particular virtue, and the distinguishing one of the +aristocracy seems to me to be pluck; therefore they make light of things +which other classes of society would take seriously. It isn't that they +don't feel their own sorrows and sicknesses, but they won't allow other +people to feel them; which is, after all, only a form of good manners." + +But Cecil was still rather sulky. "I belong to the middle class and I am +proud of it." + +"So do I; but identifying one's self with one class doesn't consist in +abusing all the others, any more than identifying one's self with one +church consists in abusing all the others--though some people seem to +think it does." + +"These grand people may entertain you and be pleasant to you in their +way, I don't deny; but they don't regard you as one of themselves unless +you are one," persisted Cecil, with all the bitterness of a small +nature. + +Elisabeth smiled with all the sweetness of a large one. "And why should +they? Sir Wilfred and you and I are pleasant enough to them in our own +way, but we don't regard any of them as one of ourselves unless he is +one. They don't show it, and we don't show it: we are all too +well-mannered; but we can not help knowing that they are not artists any +more than they can help knowing that we are not aristocrats. Being +conscious that certain people lack certain qualities which one happens +to possess, is not the same thing as despising those people; and I +always think it as absurd as it is customary to describe one's +consciousness of one's own qualifications as self-respect, and other +people's consciousness of theirs as pride and vanity." + +"Then aren't you ever afraid of being looked down upon?" asked Cecil, to +whom any sense of social inferiority was as gall and wormwood. + +Elisabeth gazed at him in amazement. "Good gracious, no! Such an idea +never entered into my head. I don't look down upon other people for +lacking my special gifts, so why should they look down upon me for +lacking theirs? Of course they would look down upon me and make fun of +me if I pretended to be one of them, and I should richly deserve it; +just as we look down upon and make fun of Philistines who cover their +walls with paper fans and then pretend that they are artists. Pretence +is always vulgar and always ridiculous; but I know of nothing else that +is either." + +"How splendid you are!" exclaimed Cecil, to whose artistic sense +fineness of any kind always appealed, even if it was too high for him to +attain to it. "Therefore you will not despise me for being so inferior +to you--you will only help me to grow more like you, won't you?" + +And because Cecil possessed the indefinable gift which the world calls +charm, Elisabeth straightway overlooked his shortcomings, and set +herself to assist him in correcting them. Perhaps there are few things +in life more unfair than the certain triumph of these individuals who +have the knack of gaining the affection of their fellows; or more +pathetic than the ultimate failure of those who lack this special +attribute. The race may not be to the swift, nor the battle to the +strong; but both race and battle are, nine times out of ten, to the man +or the woman who has mastered the art of first compelling devotion and +then retaining it. It was the possession of this gift on the part of +King David, that made men go in jeopardy of their lives in order to +satisfy his slightest whim; and it was because the prophet Elijah was a +solitary soul, commanding the fear rather than the love of men, that +after his great triumph he fled into the wilderness and requested for +himself that he might die. Nevertheless, it must not be forgotten that +to this lonely prophet it was granted to see visions of angels and to +hear the still small Voice; and that, therefore, there are abundant +compensations for those men and women who have not the knack of hearing +and speaking the glib interchanges of affection, current among their +more attractive fellows. There is infinite pathos in the thought of +these solitary souls, yearning to hear and to speak words of loving +greeting, and yet shut out--by some accident of mind or manner--from +doing either the one or the other; but when their turn comes to see +visions of angels and to hear the still small Voice, men need not pity +them overmuch. When once we have seen Him as He is, it will matter but +little to us whether we stood alone upon the mountain in the wind and +the earthquake and the fire, while the Lord passed by; or whether He +drew near and walked with us as we trod the busy ways of life, and was +known of us, as we sat at meat, in breaking of bread. + +As Elisabeth looked at him with eyes full of sympathy, Cecil continued-- + +"I have had such a hard life, with no one to care for me; and the +hardness of my lot has marred my character, and--through that--my art." + +"Tell me about your life," Elisabeth said softly. "I seem to know so +little of you and yet to know you so well." + +"You shall read what back-numbers I have, but most of them have been +lost, so that I have not read them myself. I really don't know who I +am, as my father died when I was a baby, and my poor mother followed him +in a few months, never having recovered from the shock of his death. I +was born in Australia, at Broken Hill, and was an only child. As far as +I can make out, my parents had no relations; or, if they had, they had +quarrelled with them all. They were very poor; and when they died, +leaving one wretched little brat behind them, some kind friends adopted +the poor beggar and carried him off to a sheep-farm, where they brought +him up among their own children." + +"Poor little lonely boy!" + +"I was lonely--more lonely than you can imagine; for, kind as they were +to me, I was naturally not as dear to them as their own children. I was +an outsider; I have always been an outsider; so, perhaps, there is some +excuse for that intense soreness on my part which you so much deprecate +whenever this fact is once more brought home to me." + +"I am sorry that I was so hard on you," said Elisabeth, in a very +penitent voice; "but it is one of my worst faults that I am always being +too hard on people. Will you forgive me?" + +"Of course I will." And Elisabeth--also possessing charm--earned +forgiveness as quickly as she had accorded it. + +"Please tell me more," she pleaded. + +"The other children were such a loud, noisy, happy-go-lucky pack, that +they completely overpowered a delicate, sensitive boy. Moreover, I +detested the life there--the roughness and unrefinement of it all." And +Cecil's eyes filled with tears at the mere remembrance of his childish +miseries. + +"Did you stay with them till you grew up?" + +"Yes; I was educated--after a fashion--with their own sons. But at last +a red-letter day dawned for me. An English artist came to stay at the +sheep-farm, and discovered that I also was among the prophets. He was a +bachelor, and he took an uncommon fancy to me; it ended in his adopting +me and bringing me to England, and making of me an artist like himself." + +"Another point of similarity between us!" Elisabeth cried; "my parents +died when I was a baby, and I also was adopted." + +"I am so glad; all the sting seems to be taken out of things if I feel I +share them with you." + +"Then where is your adopted father now?" + +"He died when I was five-and-twenty, Miss Farringdon; and left me barely +enough to keep me from abject poverty, should I not be able to make a +living by my brush." + +"And you have never learned anything more about your parents?" + +"Never; and now I expect I never shall. The friends who brought me up +told me that they believed my father came from England, and had been +connected with some business over here; but what the business was they +did not know, nor why he left it. It is almost impossible to find out +anything more, after this long lapse of time; it is over thirty years +now since my parents died. And, besides, I very much doubt whether +Farquhar was their real name at all." + +"What makes you think that?" + +"Because the name was carefully erased from the few possessions my poor +father left behind him. So now I have let the matter drop," added Cecil, +with a bitter laugh, "as it is sometimes a mistake to look up +back-numbers in the colonies; they are not invariably pleasant reading." + +Here conversation was interrupted by Lady Silverhampton's voice calling +her friends to lunch; and Cecil and Elisabeth had to join the others. + +"If any of you are tired of life," said her ladyship, as they sat down, +"I wish you'd try some of this lobster mayonnaise that my new cook has +made, and report on it. To me it looks the most promising prescription +for death by torture." + + "O bid me die, and I will dare + E'en mayonnaise for thee," + +exclaimed Lord Bobby, manfully helping himself. + +And then the talk flowed on as pleasantly and easily as the river, until +it was time to land again and return to town. But for the rest of the +day, and for many a day afterward, a certain uncomfortable suspicion +haunted Elisabeth, which she could not put away from her, try as she +would; a suspicion that, after all, her throne was not as firmly fixed +as she had hoped and had learned to believe. + + + + +CHAPTER XV + +LITTLE WILLIE + + He that beginneth may not end, + And he that breaketh can not mend. + + +The summer which brought fame to Elisabeth, brought something better +than fame to Willie Tremaine. All through the winter the child had grown +visibly feebler and frailer, and the warmer weather seemed to bring +additional weakness rather than strength. In vain did Alan try to +persuade himself that Willie was no worse this year than he had been +other years, and that he soon would be all right again. As a matter of +fact, he soon was all right again; but not in the way which his father +meant. + +Caleb Bateson's wisdom had been justified. Through his passionate love +for little Willie, Alan had drawn near to the kingdom of God; not as yet +to the extent of formulating any specific creed or attaching himself to +any special church--that was to come later; but he had learned, by the +mystery of his own fatherhood, to stretch out groping hands toward the +great Fatherhood that had called him into being; and by his own love for +his suffering child to know something of the Love that passeth +knowledge. Therefore Alan Tremaine was a better and wiser man than he +had been in times past. A strong friendship had gradually grown up +between himself and Christopher Thornley; and it was a friendship which +was good for both of them. Though Christopher never talked about his +religious beliefs, he lived them; and it is living epistles such as this +which are best known and read of all thoughtful men, and which--far more +than all the books and sermons ever written--are gradually converting +the kingdoms of this world into the kingdoms of our Lord and of His +Christ. Alan would have refuted--to his own satisfaction, if not to +Christopher's--any arguments which the latter might have brought forward +in favour of Christianity; but he could not refute the evidence of a +life which could never have been lived but for that Other Life lived in +Judæa nineteen centuries ago. Perhaps his friendship with Christopher +did as much for Alan as his love for Willie in opening his eyes to the +hidden things of God. + +The intercourse with the Tremaines was, on the other hand, of great +advantage to Christopher, as it afforded him the opportunity of meeting +and mixing with men as clever and as cultivated as himself, which is not +always easy for a lonely man in a provincial town who devotes his +loneliness to intellectual pursuits. Christopher was fast becoming one +of the most influential men in Mershire; and his able management of the +Osierfield had raised those works to a greater height of prosperity than +they had ever attained before, even in the days of William and John +Farringdon. + +But now the shadows were darkening around Alan Tremaine, as day by day +Willie gradually faded away. Felicia, too, at last awoke to the real +state of the case, and, in her way, was almost as anxious as her +husband. + +During the spring-time, as Willie's life grew shorter with the +lengthening days, the child's chiefest delight lay in visits from +Christopher. For Elisabeth's sake Christopher had always felt an +interest in little Willie. Had not her dear hands fondled the child, +before they were too busy to do anything but weave spells to charm the +whole world? And had not her warm heart enfolded him, before her success +and her fame had chilled its fires? For the sake of the Elisabeth that +used to be, Christopher would always be a friend to Willie; and he did +not find it hard to love the child for his own sake, since Christopher +had great powers of loving, and but little to expend them upon. + +As Willie continually asked for Elisabeth, Felicia wrote and told her +so; and the moment she found she was wanted, Elisabeth came down to the +Willows for a week--though her fame and the London season were alike at +their height--and went every day to see Willie at the Moat House. He +loved to have her with him, because she talked to him about things that +his parents never mentioned to him; and as these things were drawing +nearer to Willie day by day, his interest in them unconsciously +increased. He and she had long talks together about the country on the +other side of the hills, and what delightful times they would have when +they reached it: how Willie would be able to walk as much as he liked, +and Elisabeth would be able to love as much as she wanted, and life +generally would turn out to be a success--a thing which it so rarely +does on this side of the hills. + +Christopher, as a rule, kept away from the Moat House when Elisabeth +was there; he thought she did not wish to see him, and he was not the +type of man to go where he imagined he was not wanted; but one afternoon +they met there by accident, and Christopher inwardly blessed the Fate +which made him do the very thing he had so studiously refrained from +doing. He had been sitting with Tremaine, and she with Felicia and +Willie; and they met in the hall on their way out. + +"Are you going my way?" asked Elisabeth graciously, when they had shaken +hands. It was dull at Sedgehill after London, and the old flirting +spirit woke up in her and made her want to flirt with Christopher again, +in spite of all that had happened. With the born flirt--as with all born +players of games--the game itself is of more importance than the +personality of the other players; which sometimes leads to unfortunate +mistakes on the part of those players who do not rightly understand the +rules of the game. + +"Yes, Miss Farringdon, I am," said Christopher, who would have been +going Elisabeth's way had that way led him straight to ruin. With him +the personality of the player--in this case, at least--mattered +infinitely more than any game she might choose to play. As long as he +was talking to Elisabeth, he did not care a straw what they were talking +about; which showed that he really was culpably indifferent to--if not +absolutely ignorant of--the rules of the game. + +"Then we might as well walk together." And Elisabeth drew on her long +Suède gloves and leisurely opened her parasol, as they strolled down the +drive after bidding farewell to the Tremaines. + +Christopher was silent from excess of happiness. It was so wonderful to +be walking by Elisabeth's side again, and listening to her voice, and +watching the lights and shadows in those gray eyes of hers which +sometimes were so nearly blue. But Elisabeth did not understand his +silence; she translated it, as she would have translated silence on her +own part, into either boredom or ill-temper, and she resented it +accordingly. + +"You are very quiet this afternoon. Aren't you going to talk to me?" she +said; and Christopher's quick ear caught the sound of the irritation in +her voice, though he could not for the life of him imagine what he had +done to bring it there; but it served to silence him still further. + +"Yes--yes, of course I am," he said lamely; "what shall we talk about? I +am afraid there is nothing interesting to tell you about the Osierfield, +things are going on so regularly there, and so well." + +How exactly like Christopher to begin to talk about business when she +had given him the chance to talk about more interesting +subjects--herself, for instance, Elisabeth thought; but he never had a +mind above sordid details! She did not, of course, know that at that +identical moment he was wondering whether her eyes were darker than they +used to be, or whether he had forgotten their exact shade; he could +hardly have forgotten their colour, he decided, as there had never been +a day when he had not remembered them since he saw them last; so they +must actually be growing darker. + +"I'm glad of that," said Elisabeth coldly, in her most fine-ladylike +manner. + +"It was distinctly kind of you to find time to run down here, in the +midst of your London life, to see Willie! He fretted after you sadly, +and I am afraid the poor little fellow is not long for this world." And +Christopher sighed. + +Elisabeth noted the sigh and approved of it. It was a comfort to find +that the man had feelings of any sort, she said to herself, even though +only for a child; that was better than being entirely immersed in +self-interest and business affairs. + +So they talked about Willie for a time, and the conversation ran more +smoothly--almost pleasantly. + +Then they talked about books; and Elisabeth--who had grown into the +habit of thinking that nobody outside London knew anything--was +surprised to find that Christopher had read considerably more books than +she had read, and had understood them far more thoroughly. But this part +of the conversation was inclined to be stormy; since Christopher as a +rule disliked the books that Elisabeth liked, and this she persisted in +regarding as tantamount to disliking herself. + +Whereupon she became defiant, and told stories of her life in London of +which she knew Christopher would disapprove. There was nothing in the +facts that he could possibly disapprove of, so she coloured them up +until there was; and then, when she had succeeded in securing his +disapproval, she was furious with him on account of it. Which was +manifestly unfair, as Christopher in no way showed the regret which he +could not refrain from experiencing, as he listened to Elisabeth making +herself out so much more frivolous and heartless than she really was. + +"This is the first time I have had an opportunity of congratulating you +on your success," he said to her at last; "we are all very proud of it +at Sedgehill; but, believe me, there is no one who rejoices in it a +tithe as much as I do, if you will allow me to say so." + +Elisabeth was slightly mollified. She had been trying all the time, as +she was so fond of trying years ago, to divert the conversation into +more personal channels; and Christopher had been equally desirous of +keeping it out of the same. But this sounded encouraging. + +"Thank you so much," she answered; "it is very nice of you all to be +pleased with me! I always adored being admired and praised, if you +remember." + +Christopher remembered well enough; but he was not going to tell this +crushing fine lady how well he remembered. If he had not exposed his +heart for Elisabeth to peck at in the old days, he certainly was not +going to expose it now; then she would only have been scientifically +interested--now she would probably be disdainfully amused. + +"I suppose you saw my picture in this year's Academy," Elisabeth added. + +"Saw it? I should think I did. I went up to town on purpose to see it, +as I always do when you have pictures on view at any of the shows." + +"And what did you think of it?" + +Christopher was silent for a moment; then he said-- + +"Do you want me to say pretty things to you or to tell you the truth?" + +"Why, the truth, of course," replied Elisabeth, who considered that the +two things were synonymous--or at any rate ought to be. + +"And you won't be angry with me, or think me impertinent?" + +"Of course not," answered Elisabeth, who most certainly would; and +Christopher--not having yet learned wisdom--believed her. + +"I thought it was a distinctly powerful picture--a distinctly remarkable +picture--and if any one but you had painted it, I should have been +delighted with it; but somehow I felt that it was not quite up to your +mark--that you could do, and will do, better work." + +For a second Elisabeth was dumbfounded with amazement and indignation. +How dare this one man dispute the verdict of London? Then she said-- + +"In what way do you think the work could have been done better?" + +"That is just what I can't tell you; I wish I could; but I'm not an +artist, unfortunately. It seems to me that there are other people (not +many, I admit, but still some) who could have painted that picture; +while you are capable of doing work which no one else in the world could +possibly do. Naturally I want to see you do your best, and am not +satisfied when you do anything less." + +Elisabeth tossed her head. "You are very hard to please, Mr. Thornley." + +"I know I am, where your work is concerned; but that is because I have +formed such a high ideal of your powers. If I admired you less, I should +admire your work more, don't you see?" + +But Elisabeth did not see. She possessed the true artist-spirit which +craves for appreciation of its offspring more than for appreciation of +itself--a feeling which perhaps no one but an artist or a mother really +understands. Christopher, being neither, did not understand it in the +least, and erroneously concluded that adoration of the creator absolves +one from the necessity of admiration of the thing created. + +"I shall never do a better piece of work than that," Elisabeth retorted, +being imbued with the creative delusion that the latest creation is of +necessity the finest creation. No artist could work at all if he did not +believe that the work he was doing--or had just done--was the best piece +of work he had ever done or ever should do. This is because his work, +however good, always falls short of the ideal which inspired it; and, +while he is yet working, he can not disentangle the ideal from the +reality. He must be at a little distance from his work until he can do +this properly; and Elisabeth was as yet under the influence of that +creative glamour which made her see her latest picture as it should be +rather than as it was. + +"Oh, yes, you will; you will fulfil my ideal of you yet. I cherish no +doubts on that score." + +"I can't think what you see wrong in my picture," said Elisabeth +somewhat pettishly. + +"I don't see anything wrong in it. Good gracious! I must have expressed +myself badly if I conveyed such an impression to you as that, and you +would indeed be justified in writing me down an ass. I think it is a +wonderfully clever picture--so clever that nobody but you could ever +paint a cleverer one." + +"Well, I certainly couldn't. You must have formed an exaggerated +estimate of my artistic powers." + +"I think not! You can, and will, paint a distinctly better picture some +day." + +"In what way better?" + +"Ah! there you have me. But I will try to tell you what I mean, though I +speak as a fool; and if I say anything very egregious, you must let my +ignorance be my excuse, and pardon the clumsy expression of my +intentions because they are so well meant. It doesn't seem to me to be +enough for anybody to do good work; they must go further, and do the +best possible work in their power. Nothing but one's best is really +worth the doing; the cult of the second-best is always a degrading form +of worship. Even though one man's second-best be intrinsically superior +to the best work of his fellows, he has nevertheless no right to offer +it to the world. He is guilty of an injustice both to himself and the +world in so doing." + +"I don't agree with you. This is an age of results; and the world's +business is with the actual value of the thing done, rather than with +the capabilities of the man who did it." + +"You are right in calling this an age of results, Miss Farringdon; but +that is the age's weakness and not its strength. The moment men begin to +judge by results, they judge unrighteous judgment. They confound the +great man with the successful man; the saint with the famous preacher; +the poet with the writer of popular music-hall songs." + +"Then you think that we should all do our best, and not bother ourselves +too much as to results?" + +"I go further than that; I think that the mere consideration of results +incapacitates us from doing our best work at all." + +"I don't agree with you," repeated Elisabeth haughtily. But, +nevertheless, she did. + +"I daresay I am wrong; but you asked me for my candid opinion and I gave +it to you. It is a poor compliment to flatter people--far too poor ever +to be paid by me to you; and in this case the simple truth is a far +greater compliment than any flattery could be. You can imagine what a +high estimate I have formed of your powers, when so great a picture as +The Pillar of Cloud fails to satisfy me." + +The talk about her picture brought to Elisabeth's mind the remembrance +of that other picture which had been almost as popular as hers; and, +with it, the remembrance of the man who had painted it. + +"I suppose you have heard nothing more about George Farringdon's son," +she remarked, with apparent irrelevance. "I wonder if he will ever turn +up?" + +"Oh! I hardly think it is likely now; I have quite given up all ideas of +his doing so," replied Christopher cheerfully. + +"But supposing he did?" + +"In that case I am afraid he would be bound to enter into his kingdom. +But I really don't think you need worry any longer over that unpleasant +contingency, Miss Farringdon; it is too late in the day; if he were +going to appear upon the scene at all, he would have appeared before +now, I feel certain." + +"You really think so?" + +"Most assuredly I do. Besides, it will not be long before the limit of +time mentioned by your cousin is reached; and then a score of George +Farringdon's sons could not turn you out of your rights." + +For a moment Elisabeth thought she would tell Christopher about her +suspicions as to the identity of Cecil Farquhar. But it was as yet +merely a suspicion, and she knew by experience how ruthlessly +Christopher pursued the line of duty whenever that line was pointed out +to him; so she decided to hold her peace (and her property) a little +longer. But she also knew that the influence of Christopher was even yet +so strong upon her, that, when the time came, she should do the right +thing in spite of herself and in defiance of her own desires. And this +knowledge, strange to say, irritated her still further against the +innocent and unconscious Christopher. + +The walk from the Moat House to Sedgehill was a failure as far as the +re-establishment of friendly relations between Christopher and Elisabeth +was concerned, for it left her with the impression that he was less +appreciative of her and more wrapped up in himself and his own opinions +than ever; while it conveyed to his mind the idea that her success had +only served to widen the gulf between them, and that she was more +indifferent to and independent of his friendship than she had ever been +before. + +Elisabeth went back to London, and Christopher to his work again, and +little Willie drew nearer and nearer to the country on the other side of +the hills; until one day it happened that the gate which leads into that +country was left open by the angels, and Willie slipped through it and +became strong and well. His parents were left outside the gate, weeping, +and at first they refused to be comforted; but after a time Alan learned +the lesson which Willie had been sent to teach him, and saw plain. + +"Dear," he said to his wife at last, "I've got to begin life over again +so as to go the way that Willie went. The little chap made me promise to +meet him in the country over the hills, as he called it; and I've never +broken a promise to Willie and I never will. It will be difficult for +us, I know; but God will help us." + +Felicia looked at him with sad, despairing eyes. "There is no God," she +said; "you have often told me so." + +"I know I have; that was because I was such a blind fool. But now I +know that there is a God, and that you and I must serve Him together." + +"How can we serve a myth?" Felicia persisted. + +"He is no myth, Felicia. I lied to you when I told you that He was." + +And then Felicia laughed; the first time that she had laughed since +Willie's death, and it was not a pleasant laugh to hear. "Do you think +you can play pitch-and-toss with a woman's soul in that way? Well, you +can't. When I met you I believed in God as firmly as any girl believed; +but you laughed me out of my faith, and proved to me what a string of +lies and folly it all was; and then I believed in you as firmly as +before I had believed in God, and I knew that Christianity was a fable." + +Alan's face grew very white. "Good heavens! Felicia, did I do this?" + +"Of course you did, and you must take the consequences of your own +handiwork; it is too late to undo it now. Don't try to comfort me, even +if you can drug yourself, with fairy-tales about meeting Willie again. I +shall never see my little child again in this life, and there is no +other." + +"You are wrong; believe me, you are wrong." And Alan's brow was damp +with the anguish of his soul. + +"It is only what you taught me. But because you took my faith away from +me, it doesn't follow that you can give it back to me again; it has gone +forever." + +"Oh, Felicia, Felicia, may God and you and Willie forgive me, for I can +never forgive myself!" + +"I can not forgive you, because I have nothing to forgive; you did me no +wrong in opening my eyes. And God can not forgive you, because there +never was a God; so you did Him no wrong. And Willie can not forgive +you, because there is no Willie now; so you did him no wrong." + +"My dearest, it can not all have gone from you forever; it will come +back to you, and you will believe as I do." + +Felicia shook her head. "Never; it is too late. You have taken away my +Lord, and I know not where you have laid Him; and, however long I live, +I shall never find Him again." + +And she went out of the room in the patience of a great despair, and +left her husband alone with his misery. + + + + +CHAPTER XVI + +THIS SIDE OF THE HILLS + + On this side of the hills, alas! + Unrest our spirit fills; + For gold, men give us stones and brass-- + For asphodels, rank weeds and grass-- + For jewels, bits of coloured glass-- + On this side of the hills. + + +The end of July was approaching, and the season was drawing to a close. +Cecil Farquhar and Elisabeth had seen each other frequently since they +first met at the Academy _soirée_, and had fallen into the habit of +being much together; consequently the thought of parting was pleasant to +neither of them. + +"How shall I manage to live without you?" asked Cecil one day, as they +were walking across the Park together. "I shall fall from my ideals when +I am away from your influence, and again become the grovelling worlding +that I was before I met you." + +"But you mustn't do anything of the kind. I am not the keeper of your +conscience." + +"But you are, and you must be. I feel a good man and a strong one when I +am with you, and as if all things were possible to me; and now that I +have once found you, I can not and will not let you go." + +"You will have to let me go, Mr. Farquhar; for I go down to the Willows +at the end of the month, and mean to stay there for some time. I have +enjoyed my success immensely; but it has tired me rather, and made me +want to rest and be stupid again." + +"But I can not spare you," persisted Cecil; and there was real feeling +in his voice. Elisabeth represented so much to him--wealth and power and +the development of his higher nature; and although, had she been a poor +woman, he would possibly never have cherished any intention of marrying +her, his wish to do so was not entirely sordid. There are so few wishes +in the hearts of any of us which are entirely sordid or entirely ideal; +yet we find it so difficult to allow for this in judging one another. + +"Don't you understand," Farquhar went on, "all that you have been to me: +how you have awakened the best that is in me, and taught me to be +ashamed of the worst? And do you think that I shall now be content to +let you slip quietly out of my life, and to be the shallow, selfish, +worldly wretch I was before the Academy _soirée_? Not I." + +Elisabeth was silent. She could not understand herself, and this want of +comprehension on her part annoyed and disappointed her. At last all her +girlish dreams had come true; here was the fairy prince for whom she had +waited for so long--a prince of the kingdom she loved above all others, +the kingdom of art; and he came to her in the spirit in which she had +always longed for him to come--the spirit of failure and of loneliness, +begging her to make up to him for all that he had hitherto missed in +life. Yet--to her surprise--his appeal found her cold and unresponsive, +as if he were calling out for help to another woman and not to her. + +Cecil went on: "Elisabeth, won't you be my wife, and so make me into the +true artist which, with you to help me, I feel I am capable of becoming; +but of which, without you, I shall always fall short? You could do +anything with me--you know you could; you could make me into a great +artist and a good man, but without you I can be neither. Surely you will +not give me up now! You have opened to me the door of a paradise of +which I never dreamed before, and now don't shut it in my face." + +"I don't want to shut it in your face," replied Elisabeth gently; +"surely you know me better than that. But I feel that you are expecting +more of me than I can ever fulfil, and that some day you will be sadly +disappointed in me." + +"No, no; I never shall. It is not in you to disappoint anybody, you are +so strong and good and true. Tell me the truth: don't you feel that I am +as clay in your hands, and that you can do anything with me that you +choose?" + +Elisabeth looked him full in the face with her clear gray eyes. "I feel +that I could do anything with you if only I loved you enough; but I also +feel that I don't love you, and that therefore I can do nothing with you +at all. I believe with you that a strong woman can be the making of a +man she loves; but she must love him first, or else all her strength +will be of no avail." + +Farquhar's face fell. "I thought you did love me. You always seemed so +glad when I came and sorry when I left; and you enjoyed talking to me, +and we understood each other, and were happy together. Can you deny +that?" + +"No; it is all true. I never enjoyed talking with anybody more than with +you; and I certainly never in my life met any one who understood my ways +of looking at things as thoroughly as you do, nor any one who entered so +completely into all my moods. As a friend you are most satisfactory to +me, as a comrade most delightful; but I can not help thinking that love +is something more than that." + +"But it isn't," cried Cecil eagerly; "that is just where lots of women +make such a mistake. They wait and wait for love all their lives; and +find out too late that they passed him by years ago, without recognising +him, but called him by some wrong name, such as friendship and the +like." + +"I wonder if you are right." + +"I am sure that I am. Women who are at all romantic, have such +exaggerated ideas as to what love really is. Like the leper of old, they +ask for some great thing to work the wonderful miracle upon their lives; +and so they miss the simple way which would lead them to happiness." + +Elisabeth felt troubled and perplexed. "I enjoy your society," she said, +"and I adore your genius, and I pity your loneliness, and I long to help +your weakness. Is this love, do you think?" + +"Yes, yes; I am certain of it." + +"I thought it would be different," said Elisabeth sadly; "I thought that +when it did come it would transform the whole world, just as religion +does, and that all things would become new. I thought it would turn out +to be the thing that we are longing for when the beauty of nature makes +us feel sad with a longing we know not for what. I thought it would +change life's dusty paths into golden pavements, and earth's commonest +bramble-bush into a magic briar-rose." + +"And it hasn't?" + +"No; everything is just the same as it was before I met you. As far as I +can see, there is no livelier emerald twinkling in the grass of the Park +than there ever is at the end of July, and no purer sapphire melting +into the Serpentine." + +Cecil laughed lightly. "You are as absurdly romantic as a school-girl! +Surely people of our age ought to know better than still to believe in +fairyland; but, as I have told you before, you are dreadfully young for +your age in some things." + +"I suppose I am. I still do believe in fairyland--at least I did until +ten minutes ago." + +"I assure you there is no such place." + +"Not for anybody?" + +"Not for anybody over twenty-one." + +"I wish there was," said Elisabeth with a sigh. "I should have liked to +believe it was there, even if I had never found it." + +"Don't be silly, lady mine. You are so great and wise and clever that I +can not bear to hear you say foolish things. And I want us to talk about +how you are going to help me to be a great painter, and how we will sit +together as gods, and create new worlds. There is nothing that I can not +do with you to help me, Elisabeth. You must be good to me and hard upon +me at the same time. You must never let me be content with anything +short of my best, or willing to do second-rate work for the sake of +money; you must keep the sacredness of art ever before my eyes, but you +must also be very gentle to me when I am weary, and very tender to me +when I am sad; you must encourage me when my spirit fails me, and +comfort me when the world is harsh. All these things you can do, and you +are the only woman who can. Promise me, Elisabeth, that you will." + +"I can not promise anything now. You must let me think it over for a +time. I am so puzzled by it all. I thought that when the right man came +and told a woman that he loved her, she would know at once that it was +for him--and for him only--that she had been waiting all her life; and +that she would never have another doubt upon the subject, but would feel +convinced that it was settled for all time and eternity. And this is so +different!" + +Again Cecil laughed his light laugh. "I suppose girls sometimes feel +like that when they are very young; but not women of your age, +Elisabeth." + +"Well, you must let me think about it. I can not make up my mind yet." + +And for whole days and nights Elisabeth thought about it, and could come +to no definite conclusion. + +There was no doubt in her mind that she liked Cecil Farquhar infinitely +better than she had liked any of the other men who had asked her to +marry them; also that no one could possibly be more companionable to her +than he was, or more sympathetic with and interested in her work--and +this is no small thing to the man or woman who possesses the creative +faculty. Then she was lonely in her greatness, and longed for +companionship; and Cecil had touched her in her tenderest point by his +constant appeals to her to help and comfort him. Nevertheless the fact +remained that, though he interested her, he did not touch her heart; +that remained a closed door to him. But supposing that her friends were +right, and that she was too cold by nature ever to feel the ecstasies +which transfigure life for some women, should she therefore shut herself +out from ordinary domestic joys and interests? Because she was incapable +of attaining to the ideal, must the commonplace pleasures of the real +also be denied her? If the best was not for her, would it not be wise to +accept the second-best, and extract as much happiness from it as +possible? Moreover, she knew that Cecil was right when he said that she +could make of him whatsoever she wished; and this was no slight +temptation to a woman who loved power as much as Elisabeth loved it. + +There was also another consideration which had some weight with her; and +that was the impression, gradually gaining strength in her mind, that +Cecil Farquhar was George Farringdon's son. She could take no steps in +the way of proving this just then, as Christopher was away for his +holiday somewhere in the Black Forest, and nothing could be done without +him; but she intended, as soon as he returned, to tell him of her +suspicion, and to set him to discover whether or not Cecil was indeed +the lost heir. Although it never seriously occurred to Elisabeth to hold +her peace upon this matter and so keep her fortune to herself, she was +still human enough not altogether to despise a course of action which +enabled her to be rich and righteous at the same time, and to go on with +her old life at the Willows and her work among the people at the +Osierfield, even after George Farringdon's son had come into his own. + +Although the balance of Elisabeth's judgment was upon the side of Cecil +Farquhar and his suit, she could not altogether stifle--try as she +might--her sense of disappointment at finding how grossly poets and +such people had exaggerated the truth in their description of the +feeling men call love. It was all so much less exalted and so much more +commonplace than she had expected. She had long ago come to the +conclusion--from comparisons between Christopher and the men who had +wanted to marry her--that a man's friendship is a better thing than a +man's love; but she had always clung to the belief that a woman's love +would prove a better thing than a woman's friendship: yet now she +herself was in love with Cecil--at least he said that she was, and she +was inclined to agree with him--and she was bound to admit that, as an +emotion, this fell far short of her old attachment to Cousin Anne or +Christopher or even Felicia. But that was because now she was getting +old, she supposed, and her heart had lost its early warmth and +freshness; and she experienced a weary ache of regret that Cecil had not +come across her path in those dear old days when she was still young +enough to make a fairyland for herself, and to abide therein for ever. + +"The things that come too late are almost as bad as the things that +never come at all," she thought with a sigh; not knowing that there is +no such word as "too late" in God's Vocabulary. + +At the end of the week she had made up her mind to marry Cecil Farquhar. +Women, after all, can not pick and choose what lives they shall lead; +they can only take such goods as the gods choose to provide, and make +the best of the same; and if they let the possible slip while they are +waiting for the impossible, they have only themselves to blame that they +extract no good at all out of life. So she wrote to Cecil, asking him to +come and see her the following day; and then she sat down and wondered +why women are allowed to see visions and to dream dreams, if the actual +is to fall so far short of the imaginary. Brick walls and cobbled +streets are all very well in their way; but they make but dreary +dwelling-places for those who have promised themselves cities where the +walls are of jasper and the pavements of gold. "If one is doomed to live +always on this side of the hills, it is a waste of time to think too +much about the life on the other side," Elisabeth reasoned with herself, +"and I have wasted a lot of time in this way; but I can not help +wondering why we are allowed to think such lovely thoughts, and to +believe in such beautiful things, if our dreams are never to come true, +but are only to spoil us for the realities of life. Now I must bury all +my dear, silly, childish idols, as Jacob did; and I will not have any +stone to mark the place, because I want to forget where it is." + +Poor Elisabeth! The grave of what has been, may be kept green with +tears; but the grave of what never could have been, is best forgotten. +We may not hide away the dear old gnomes and pixies and fairies in +consecrated ground--that is reserved for what has once existed, and so +has the right to live again; but for what never existed we can find no +sepulchre, for it came out of nothingness, and to nothingness must it +return. + +After Elisabeth had posted her letter to Cecil, and while she was still +musing over the problem as to whether life's fulfilment must always fall +short of its promise, the drawing-room door was thrown open and a +visitor announced. Elisabeth was tired and depressed, and did not feel +in the mood for keeping up her reputation for brilliancy; so it was +with a sigh of weariness that she rose to receive Quenelda Carson, a +struggling little artist whom she had known slightly for years. But her +interest was immediately aroused when she saw that Quenelda's usually +rosy face was white with anguish, and the girl's pretty eyes swollen +with many tears. + +"What is the matter, dear?" asked Elisabeth, with that sound in her +voice which made all weak things turn to her. "You are in trouble, and +you must let me help you." + +Quenelda broke out into bitter weeping. "Oh! give him back to me--give +him back to me," she cried; "you can never love him as I do, you are too +cold and proud and brilliant." + +Elisabeth stood as if transfixed. "Whatever do you mean?" + +"You have everything," Quenelda went on, in spite of the sobs which +shook her slender frame; "you had money and position to begin with, and +everybody thought well of you and admired you and made life easy for +you. And then you came out of your world into ours, and carried away the +prizes which we had been striving after for years, and beat us on our +own ground; but we weren't jealous of you--you know that we weren't; we +were glad of your success, and proud of you, and we admired your genius +as much as the outside world did, and never minded a bit that it was +greater than ours. But even then you were not content--you must have +everything, and leave us nothing, just to satisfy your pride. You are +like the rich man who had everything, and yet took from the poor man his +one ewe lamb; and I am sure that God--if there is a God--will punish you +as He punished that rich man." + +Elisabeth turned rather pale; whatever had she done that any one dared +to say such things to her as this? "I still don't understand you," she +said. + +"I never had anything nice in my life till I met him," the girl +continued incoherently--"I had always been poor and pinched and wretched +and second-rate; even my pictures were never first-rate, though I worked +and worked all I knew to make them so. And then I met Cecil Farquhar, +and I loved him, and everything became different, and I didn't mind +being second-rate if only he would care for me. And he did; and I +thought that I should always be as happy as I was then, and that nothing +would ever be able to hurt me any more. Oh! I was so happy--so +happy--and I was such a fool, I thought it would last forever! I worked +hard and saved every penny that I could, and so did he; and we should +have been married next year if you hadn't come and spoiled it all, and +taken him away from me. And what is it to you now that you have got him? +You are too proud and cold to love him, or anybody else, and he doesn't +care for you a millionth part as much as he cares for me; yet just +because you have money and fame he has left me for you. And I love him +so--I love him so!" Here Quenelda's sobs choked her utterance, and her +torrent of words was stopped by tears. + +"Come and sit down beside me and tell me quietly what is the matter," +said Elisabeth gently; "I can do nothing and understand nothing while +you go on like this. But you are wrong in supposing that I took your +lover from you purposely; I did not even know that he was a friend of +yours. He ought to have told me." + +"No, no; he couldn't tell you. Don't you see that the temptation was +too strong for him? He cares so much for rank and money, and things like +that, my poor Cecil! And all his life he has had to do without them. So +when he met you, and realized that if he married you he would have all +the things he wanted most in the world, he couldn't resist it. The fault +was yours for tempting him, and letting him see that he could have you +for the asking; you knew him well enough to see how weak he was, and +what a hold worldly things had over him; and you ought to have allowed +for this in dealing with him." + +A great wave of self-contempt swept over Elisabeth. She, who had prided +herself upon the fact that no man was strong enough to win her love, to +be accused of openly running after a man who did not care for her but +only for her money! It was unendurable, and stung her to the quick! And +yet, through all her indignation, she recognised the justice of her +punishment. She had not done what Quenelda had reproached her for doing, +it was true; but she had deliberately lowered her ideal: she had wearied +of striving after the best, and had decided that the second-best should +suffice her; and for this she was now being chastised. No men or women +who wilfully turn away from the ideal which God has set before them, and +make to themselves graven images of the things which they know to be +unworthy, can escape the punishment which is sure, sooner or later, to +follow their apostasy; and they do well to recognise this, ere they grow +weary of waiting for the revelation from Sinai, and begin to build +altars unto false gods. For now, as of old, the idols which they make +are ground into powder, and strawed upon the water, and given them to +drink; the cup has to be drained to the dregs, and it is exceeding +bitter. + +"I still think he ought to have told me there was another woman," +Elisabeth said. + +"Not he. He knew well enough that your pride could not have endured the +thought of another woman, and that that would have spoiled his chance +with you forever. There always is another woman, you know; and you +women, who are too proud to endure the thought of her, have to be +deceived and blinded. And you have only yourselves to thank for it; if +you were a little more human and a little more tender, there would be no +necessity for deceiving you. Why, I should have loved him just the same +if there had been a hundred other women, so he always told me the truth; +but he lied to you, and it was your fault and not his that he was +obliged to lie." + +Elisabeth shuddered. It was to help such a man as this that she had been +willing to sacrifice her youthful ideals and her girlish dreams. What a +fool she had been! + +"If you do not believe me, here is his letter," Quenelda went on; "I +brought it on purpose for you to read, just to show you how little you +are to him. If you had loved him as I love him, I would have let you +keep him, because you could have given him so many of the things that he +thinks most about. But you don't. You are one of the cold, hard women, +who only care for people as long as they are good and do what you think +they ought to do; Cecil never could do what anybody thought he ought to +do for long, and then you would have despised him and grown tired of +him. But I go on loving him just the same, whatever he does; and that's +the sort of love that a man wants--at any rate, such a man as Cecil." + +Elisabeth held out her hand for the letter; she felt that speech was of +no avail at such a crisis as this; and, as she read, every word burned +itself into her soul, and hurt her pride to the quick. + + * * * * * + +"DEAREST QUENELDA" (the letter ran, in the slightly affected handwriting +which Elisabeth had learned to know so well, and to welcome with so much +interest), "I have something to say to you which it cuts me to the heart +to say, but which has to be said at all costs. We must break off our +engagement at once; for the terrible truth has at last dawned upon me +that we can never afford to marry each other, and that therefore it is +only prolonging our agony to go on with it. You know me so well, dear +little girl, that you will quite understand how the thought of life-long +poverty has proved too much for me. I am not made of such coarse fibre +as most men--those men who can face squalor and privation, and lack all +the little accessories that make life endurable, without being any the +worse for it. I am too refined, too highly strung, too sensitive, to +enter upon such a weary struggle with circumstances as my marriage with +a woman as poor as myself would entail; therefore, my darling Quenelda, +much as I love you I feel it is my duty to renounce you; and as you grow +older and wiser you will see that I am right. + +"Since I can not marry you whom I love, I have put romance and sentiment +forever out of my life; it is a bitter sacrifice for a man of my nature +to make, but it must be done; and I have decided to enter upon a +_mariage de convenance_ with Miss Farringdon, the Black Country +heiress. Of course I do not love her as I love you, my sweet--what man +could love a genius as he loves a beauty? And she is as cold as she is +clever. But I feel respect for her moral characteristics, and interest +in her mental ones; and, when youth and romance are over and done with, +that is all one need ask in a wife. As for her fortune, it will keep me +forever out of the reach of that poverty which has always so deleterious +an effect upon natures such as mine; and, being thus set above those +pecuniary anxieties which are the death of true art, I shall be able +fully to develop the power that is in me, and to do the work that I feel +myself called to do. + +"Good-bye, my sweetest. I can not write any more; my heart is breaking. +How cruel it is that poverty should have power to separate forever such +true lovers as you and I! + + "Your heartbroken + "CECIL." + +Elisabeth gave back the letter to Quenelda. "Do you mean to tell me that +you don't despise the man who sent this?" she asked. + +"No; because I love him, you see. You never did." + +"You are right there. I never loved him. I tried to love him, but I +couldn't." + +"I know you didn't. As I told you before, if you had loved him I would +have given him up to you." + +Elisabeth looked at the girl before her with wonder. What a strange +thing this love was, which could make a woman forgive such a letter as +that, and still cling to the man who wrote it! So there was such a place +as fairyland after all, and poor little Quenelda had found it; while +she, Elisabeth, had never so much as peeped through the gate. It had +brought Quenelda much sorrow, it was true; but still it was good to have +been there; and a chilly feeling crept across Elisabeth's heart as she +realized how much she had missed in life. + +"I think if one loved another person as much as that," she said to +herself, "one would understand a little of how God feels about us." +Aloud she said: "Dear, what do you want me to do? I will do anything in +the world that you wish." + +Quenelda seized Elisabeth's hand and kissed it. "How good you are! And I +don't deserve it a bit, for I've been horrid to you and said vile +things." + +There was a vast pity in Elisabeth's eyes. "I did you a great wrong, +poor child!" she said; "and I want to make every reparation in my +power." + +"But you didn't know you were doing me a great wrong." + +"No; but I knew that I was acting below my own ideals, and nobody can do +that without doing harm. Show me how I can give you help now? Shall I +tell Cecil Farquhar that I know all?" + +"Oh! no; please not. He would never forgive me for having spoiled his +life, and taken away his chance of being rich." And Quenelda's tears +flowed afresh. + +Elisabeth put her strong arm round the girl's slim waist. "Don't cry, +dear; I will make it all right. I will just tell him that I can't marry +him because I don't love him; and he need never know that I have heard +about you at all." + +And Elisabeth continued to comfort Quenelda until the pale cheeks grew +pink again, and half the girl's beauty came back; and she went away at +last believing in Elisabeth's power of setting everything right again, +as one believes in one's mother's power of setting everything right +again when one is a child. + +After she had gone, Elisabeth sat down and calmly looked facts in the +face; and the prospect was by no means an agreeable one. Of course there +was no question now of marrying Cecil Farquhar; and in the midst of her +confusion Elisabeth felt a distinct sense of relief that this at any +rate was impossible. She could still go on believing in fairyland, even +though she never found it; and it is always far better not to find a +place than to find there is no such place at all. But she would have to +give up the Willows and the Osierfield, and all the wealth and position +that these had brought her; and this was a bitter draught to drink. +Elisabeth felt no doubt in her own mind that Cecil was indeed George +Farringdon's son; she had guessed it when first he told her the story of +his birth, and subsequent conversations with him had only served to +confirm her in the belief; and it was this conviction which had +influenced her to some extent in her decision to accept him. But now +everything was changed. Cecil would rule at the Osierfield and Quenelda +at the Willows instead of herself, and those dearly loved places would +know her no more. + +At this thought Elisabeth broke down. How she loved every stone of the +Black Country, and how closely all her childish fancies and girlish +dreams were bound up in it! Now the cloud of smoke would hang over +Sedgehill, and she would not be there to interpret its message; and the +sun would set beyond the distant mountains, and she would no longer +catch glimpses of the country over the hills. Even the rustic seat, +where she and Christopher had sat so often, would be hers no longer; and +he and she would never walk together in the woods as they had so often +walked as children. And as she cried softly to herself, with no one to +comfort her, the memory of Christopher swept over her, and with it all +the old anger against him. He would be glad to see her dethroned at +last, she supposed, as that was what he had striven for all those years +ago; but, perhaps, when he saw a stranger reigning at the Willows and +the Osierfield in her stead, he would be sorry to find the new +government so much less beneficial to the work-people than the old one +had been; for Elisabeth knew Cecil quite well enough to be aware that he +would spend all his money on himself and his own pleasures; and she +could not help indulging in an unholy hope that, whereas she had beaten +Christopher with whips, her successor would beat him with scorpions. In +fact she was almost glad, for the moment, that Farquhar was so unfit for +the position to which he was now called, when she realized how sorely +that unfitness would try Christopher. + +"It will serve him right for leaving me and going off after George +Farringdon's son," she said to herself, "to discover how little worth +the finding George Farringdon's son really was! Christopher is so +self-centred, that a thing is never properly brought home to him until +it affects himself; no other person can ever convince him that he is in +the wrong. But this will affect himself; he will hate to serve under +such a man as Cecil; I know he will; because Cecil is just the type of +person that Christopher has always looked down upon, for Christopher is +a gentleman and Cecil is not. Perhaps when he finds out how inferior an +iron-master Cecil is to me, Christopher will wish that he had liked me +better and been kinder to me when he had a chance. I hope he will, and +that it will make him miserable; for those hard, self-righteous people +really deserve to be punished in the end." And Elisabeth derived so much +comfort from the prospect of Christopher's coming trials, that she +almost forgot her own. + + + + +CHAPTER XVII + +GEORGE FARRINGDON'S SON + + I need thee, Love, in peace and strife; + For, till Time's latest page be read, + No other smile could light my life + Instead. + + And even in that happier place, + Where pain is past and sorrow dead, + I could not love an angel's face + Instead. + + +That night Elisabeth wrote to Christopher Thornley, telling him that she +believed she had found George Farringdon's son at last, and asking him +to come up to London in order to facilitate the giving up of her kingdom +into the hands of the rightful owner. And, in so doing, she was +conscious of a feeling of satisfaction that Christopher should see for +himself that she was not as mercenary as he had once imagined her to be, +but that she was as ready as he had ever been to enable the king to +enjoy his own again as soon as that king appeared upon the scene. To +forsake the reigning queen in order to search for that king, was, of +course, a different matter, and one about which Elisabeth declined to +see eye to eye with her manager even now. Doubtless he had been in the +right all through, and she in the wrong, as all honourable people could +see for themselves; but when one happens to be the queen one's self, +one's perspective is apt to become blurred and one's sense of abstract +justice confused. It is so easy for all of us to judge righteous +judgment concerning matters which in no way affect ourselves. + +Elisabeth was still angry with Christopher because she had deliberately +made the worst of herself in his eyes. It was totally unjust--and +entirely feminine--to lay the blame of this on his shoulders; as a +matter of fact, he had had nothing at all to do with it. She had +purposely chosen a path of life of which she knew he would disapprove, +principally in order to annoy him; and then she had refused to forgive +him for feeling the annoyance which she had gone out of her way to +inflict. From the purely feminine standpoint her behaviour was +thoroughly consistent; a man, however, might in his ignorance have +accused her of inconsistency. But men know so little about some things! + +The following afternoon Cecil Farquhar came to see Elisabeth, as she had +bidden him; and she smiled grimly to herself as she realized the +difference between what she had intended to say to him when she told him +to come, and what she was actually going to say. As for him, he was full +of hope. Evidently Elisabeth meant to marry him and make him into a rich +man; and money was the thing he loved best in the world. Which of us +would not be happy if we thought we were about to win the thing we loved +best? And is it altogether our own fault if the thing we happen to love +best be unworthy of love, or is it only our misfortune? + +Because he was triumphant, Cecil looked handsomer than usual, for there +are few things more becoming than happiness; and as he entered the +room, radiant with that vitality which is so irresistibly attractive, +Elisabeth recognised his charm without feeling it, just as one sees +people speaking and gesticulating in the distance without hearing a word +of what is said. + +"My dear lady, you are going to say _yes_ to me; I know that you are; +you would not have sent for me if you were not, for you are far too +tender-hearted to enjoy seeing pain which you are forced to give." + +Elisabeth looked grave, and did not take his outstretched hand. "Will +you sit down?" she said; "there is much that I want to talk over with +you." + +Cecil's face fell. In a superficial way he was wonderfully quick in +interpreting moods and reading character; and he knew in a moment that, +through some influence of which he was as yet in ignorance, such slight +hold as he had once had upon Elisabeth had snapped and broken since he +saw her last. "Surely you are not going to refuse to marry me and so +spoil my life. Elisabeth, you can not be as cruel as this, after all +that we have been to each other." + +"I am going to refuse to marry you, but I am not going to spoil your +life. Believe me, I am not. There are other things in the world besides +love and marriage." + +Cecil sank down into a seat, and his chin twitched. "Then you have +played with me most abominably. The world was right when it called you a +heartless flirt, and said that you were too cold to care for anything +save pleasure and admiration. I thought I knew you better, more fool I! +But the world was right and I was wrong." + +"I don't think that we need discuss my character," said Elisabeth. She +was very angry with herself that she had placed herself in such a +position that any man dared to sit in judgment upon her; but even then +she could not elevate Cecil into the object of her indignation. + +He went on like a querulous child. "It is desperately hard on me that +you have treated me in this way! You might have snubbed me at once if +you had wished to do so, and not have made me a laughing-stock in the +eyes of the world. I made no secret of the fact that I intended to marry +you; I talked about it to everybody; and now everybody will laugh at me +for having been your dupe." + +So he had boasted to his friends of the fortune he was going to annex, +and had already openly plumed himself upon securing her money! Elisabeth +understood perfectly, and was distinctly amused. She wondered if he +would remember to remind her how she was going to elevate him by her +influence, or if the loss of her money would make him forget even to +simulate sorrow at the loss of herself. + +"I don't know what I shall do," he continued, with tears of vexation in +his eyes; "everybody is expecting our engagement to be announced, and I +can not think what excuses I shall invent. A man looks such a fool when +he has made too sure of a woman!" + +"Doubtless. But that isn't the woman's fault altogether." + +"Yes; it is. If the woman hadn't led him on, the man wouldn't have made +sure of her. You have been unutterably cruel to me--unpardonably cruel; +and I will never forgive you as long as I live." + +Elisabeth winced at this--not at Cecil's refusal to forgive her, but at +the thought that she had placed herself within the reach of his +forgiveness. But she was not penitent--she was only annoyed. Penitence +is the last experience that comes to strong-willed, light-hearted +people, such as Elisabeth; they are so sure they are right at the time, +and they so soon forget about it afterward, that they find no interval +for remorse. Elisabeth was beginning to forgive herself for having +fallen for a time from her high ideal, because she was already beginning +to forget that she had so fallen; life had taught her many things, but +she took it too easily even yet. + +"I have a story to tell you," she said; "a story that will interest you, +if you will listen." + +By this time Cecil's anger was settling down into sulkiness. "I have no +alternative, I suppose." + +Then Elisabeth told him, as briefly as she could, the story of George +Farringdon's son; and, as she spoke, she watched the sulkiness in his +face give place to interest, and the interest to hope, and the hope to +triumph, until the naughty child gradually grew once more into the +similitude of a Greek god. + +"You are right--I am sure you are right," he said when she had finished; +"it all fits in--the date and place of my birth, my parents' poverty and +friendlessness, and the mystery concerning them. Oh! you can not think +what this means to me. To be forever beyond the reach of poverty--to be +able to do whatever I like for the rest of my life--to be counted among +the great of the earth! It is wonderful--wonderful!" And he walked up +and down the room in his excitement, while his voice shook with emotion. + +"I shall have such a glorious time," he went on--"the most glorious time +man ever had! Of course, I shall not live in that horrid Black +Country--nobody could expect me to make such a sacrifice as that; but I +shall spend my winters in Italy and my summers in Mayfair, and I shall +forget that the world was ever cold and hard and cruel to me." + +Elisabeth watched him curiously. So he never even thought of her and of +what she was giving up. That his gain was her loss was a matter of no +moment to him--it did not enter into his calculations. She wondered if +he even remembered Quenelda, and what this would mean to her; she +thought not. And this was the man Elisabeth had once delighted to +honour! She could have laughed aloud as she realized what a blind fool +she had been. Were all men like this? she asked herself; for, if so, she +was glad she was too cold to fall in love. It would be terrible indeed +to lay down one's life at the feet of a creature such as this; it was +bad enough to have to lay down one's fortune there! + +Throughout the rest of the interview Cecil lived up to the estimate that +Elisabeth had just formed of his character: he never once remembered +her--never once forgot himself. She explained to him that Christopher +Thornley was the man who would manage all the business part of the +affair for him, and give up the papers, and establish his identity; and +she promised to communicate with Cecil as soon as she received an answer +to the letter she had written to Christopher informing the latter that +she believed she had at last discovered George Farringdon's son. + +Amidst all her sorrow at the anticipation of giving up her kingdom into +the hands of so unfitting a ruler as Cecil, there lurked a pleasurable +consciousness that at last Christopher would recognise her worth, when +he found how inferior her successor was to herself. It was strange how +this desire to compel the regard which she had voluntarily forfeited, +had haunted Elisabeth for so many years. Christopher had offended her +past all pardon, she said to herself; nevertheless it annoyed her to +feel that the friendship, which she had taken from him for punitive +purposes, was but a secondary consideration in his eyes after all. She +had long ago succeeded in convincing herself that the grapes of his +affection were too sour to be worth fretting after; but she still wanted +to make him admire her in spite of himself, and to realize that Miss +Elisabeth Farringdon of the Osierfield was a more important personage +than he had considered her to be. Half the pleasure of her success as an +artist had lain in the thought that this at last would convince +Christopher of her right to be admired and obeyed; but she was never +sure that it had actually done so. Through all her triumphal progress he +had been the Mordecai at her gates. She did not often see him, it is +true; but when she did, she was acutely conscious that his attitude +toward her was different from the attitude of the rest of the world, and +that--instead of offering her unlimited praise and adulation--he saw her +weaknesses as clearly now she was a great lady as he had done when she +was a little girl. + +And herein Elisabeth's intuition was not at fault; her failings were +actually more patent to Christopher than to the world at large. But here +her perception ended; and she did not see, further, that it was because +Christopher had formed such a high ideal of her, that he minded so much +when she fell short of it. She had not yet grasped the truth that +whereas the more a woman loves a man the easier she finds it to forgive +his faults, the more a man loves a woman the harder he finds it to +overlook her shortcomings. A woman merely requires the man she loves to +be true to her; while a man demands that the woman he loves shall be +true to herself--or, rather, to that ideal of her which in his own mind +he has set up and worshipped. + +Her consciousness of Christopher's disapproval of the easy-going, +Bohemian fashion in which she had chosen to walk through life, made +Elisabeth intensely angry; though she would have died rather than let +him know it. How dared this one man show himself superior to her, when +she had the world at her feet? It was insupportable! She said but little +to him, and he said still less to her, and what they did say was usually +limited to the affairs of the Osierfield; nevertheless Elisabeth +persistently weighed herself in Christopher's balances, and measured +herself according to Christopher's measures; and, as she did so, wrote +_Tekel_ opposite her own name. And for this she refused to forgive him. +She assured herself that his balances were false, and his measures +impossible, and his judgments hard in the extreme; and when she had done +so, she began to try herself thereby again, and hated him afresh because +she fell so far short of them. + +But now he was going to see her in a new light; if he declined to admire +her in prosperity, he should be compelled to respect her in adversity; +for she made up her mind she would bear her reverses like a Spartan, if +only for the sake of proving to him that she was made of better material +than he, in his calm superiority, had supposed. When he saw for himself +how plucky she could be, and how little she really cared for outside +things, he might at last discover that she was not as unworthy of his +regard as he had once assumed, and might even want to be friends with +her again; and then she would throw his friendship back again in his +face, as he had once thrown hers, and teach him that it was possible +even for self-righteous people to make mistakes which were past +repairing. It would do him a world of good, Elisabeth thought, to find +out--too late--that he had misjudged her, and that other people besides +himself had virtues and excellences; and it comforted her, in the midst +of her adversities, to contemplate the punishment which was being +reserved for Christopher, when George Farringdon's son came into his +own. And she never guessed--how could she?--that when at last George +Farringdon's son did come into his own, there would be no Christopher +Thornley serving under him at the Osierfield; and that the cup of +remorse, which she was so busily preparing, was for her own drinking and +not for Christopher's. + +Christopher's expected answer to her epistle was, however, not +forthcoming. The following morning Elisabeth received a letter from one +of the clerks at the Osierfield, informing her that Mr. Thornley +returned from his tour in Germany a week ago; and that immediately on +his return he was seized with a severe attack of pneumonia--the result +of a neglected cold--and was now lying seriously ill at his house in +Sedgehill. In order to complete the purchase of a piece of land for the +enlargement of the works, which Mr. Thornley had arranged to buy before +he went away, it was necessary (the clerk went on to say) to see the +plans of the Osierfield; and these were locked up in the private safe at +the manager's house, to which only Christopher and Elisabeth possessed +keys. Therefore, as the manager was delirious and quite incapable of +attending to business of any kind, the clerk begged Miss Farringdon to +come down at once and take the plans out of the safe; as the +negotiations could not be completed until this was done. + +For an instant the old instinct of tenderness toward any one who was +weak or suffering welled up in Elisabeth's soul, and she longed to go to +her old playmate and help and comfort him; but then came the remembrance +of how once before, long ago, she had been ready to help and comfort +Christopher, and he had wanted neither her help nor her comfort; so she +hardened her heart against him, and proudly said to herself that if +Christopher could do without her she could do without Christopher. + +That summer's day was one which Elisabeth could never forget as long as +she lived; it stood out from the rest of her life, and would so stand +out forever. We all know such days as this--days which place a gulf, +that can never be passed over, between their before and after. She +travelled down to Sedgehill by a morning train; and her heart was heavy +within her as she saw how beautiful the country looked in the summer +sunshine, and realized that the home she loved was to be taken away from +her and given to another. Somehow life had not brought her all that she +had expected from it, and yet she did not see wherein she herself had +been to blame. She had neither loved nor hoarded her money, but had used +it for the good of others to the best of her knowledge; yet it was to be +taken from her. She had not hidden her talent in a napkin, but had +cultivated it to the height of her powers; yet her fame was cold and +dreary to her, and her greatness turned to ashes in her hands. She had +been ready to give love in full measure and running over to any one who +needed it; yet her heart had asked in vain for something to fill it, and +in spite of all its longings had been sent empty away. She had failed +all along the line to get the best out of life; and yet she did not see +how she could have acted differently. Surely it was Fate, and not +herself, that was to blame for her failure. + +When she arrived at Sedgehill she drove straight to Christopher's house, +and learned from the nurse who was attending him how serious his illness +was--not so much on account of the violence of the cold which he had +taken in Germany, as from the fact that his vitality was too feeble to +resist it. But she could not guess--and there was no one to tell +her--that his vitality had been lowered by her unkindness to him, and +that it was she who had deliberately snapped the mainspring of +Christopher's life. It was no use anybody's seeing him, the nurse said, +as he was delirious and knew no one; but if he regained consciousness, +she would summon Miss Farringdon at once. + +Then Elisabeth went alone into the big, oak-panelled dining-room, with +the crape masks before its windows, and opened the safe. + +She could not find the plans at once, as she did not know exactly where +to look for them; and as she was searching for them among various +papers, she came upon a letter addressed to herself in Christopher's +handwriting. She opened it with her usual carelessness, without +perceiving that it bore the inscription "Not to be given to Miss +Farringdon until after my death"; and when she had begun to read it, she +could not have left off to save her life--being a woman. And this was +what she read: + +"MY DARLING--for so I may call you at last, since you will not read this +letter until after I am dead; + +"There are two things that I want to tell you. _First_, that I love you, +and always have loved you, and always shall love you to all eternity. +But how could I say this to you, sweetheart, in the days when my love +spelled poverty for us both? And how could I say it when you became one +of the richest women in Mershire, and I only the paid manager of your +works? Nevertheless I should have said it in time, when you had seen +more of the world and were capable of choosing your own life for +yourself, had I thought there was any chance of your caring for me; for +no man has ever loved you as I have loved you, Elisabeth, nor ever will. +You had a right to know what was yours, when you were old enough to +decide what to do with it, and to take or leave it as you thought fit; +and no one else had the right to decide this for you. But when you so +misjudged me about my journey to Australia, I understood that it was I +myself, and not my position, that stood between us; and that your nature +and mine were so different, and our ideas so far apart, that it was not +in my power to make you happy, though I would have died to do so. So I +went out of your life, for fear I should spoil it; and I have kept out +of your life ever since, because I know you are happier without me; for +I do so want you to be happy, dear. + +"There is one other thing I have to tell you: I am George Farringdon's +son. I shouldn't have bothered you with this, only I feel it is +necessary--after I am gone--for you to know the truth, lest any impostor +should turn up and take your property from you. Of course, as long as I +am alive I can keep the secret, and yet take care that no one else comes +forward in my place; and I have made a will leaving everything I possess +to you. But when I am gone, you must hold the proofs of who was really +the person who stood between you and the Farringdon property. I never +found it out until my uncle died; I believed, as everybody else +believed, that the lost heir was somewhere in Australia. But on my +uncle's death I found a confession from him--which is in this safe, +along with my parents' marriage certificate and all the other proofs of +my identity--saying how his sister told him on her death-bed that, when +George Farringdon ran away from home, he married her, and took her out +with him to Australia. They had a hard life, and lost all their children +except myself; and then my father died, leaving my poor mother almost +penniless. She survived him only long enough to come back to England, +and give her child into her brother's charge. My uncle went on to say +that he kept my identity a secret, and called me by an assumed name, as +he was afraid that Miss Farringdon would send both him and me about our +business if she knew the truth; as in those days she was very bitter +against the man who had jilted her, and would have been still bitterer +had she known he had thrown her over for the daughter of her father's +manager. When Maria Farringdon died and showed, by her will, that at +last she had forgiven her old lover, my uncle's mind was completely +gone; and it was not until after his death that I discovered the papers +which put me in possession of the facts of the case. + +"By that time I had learned, beyond all disputing, that I was too dull +and stupid ever to win your love. I only cared for money that it might +enable me to make you happy; and if you could be happier without me than +with me, who was I that I should complain? At any rate, it was given to +me to insure your happiness; and that was enough for me. And you said +that I didn't care what became of you, as long as I laid up for myself a +nice little nest-egg in heaven! Sweetheart, I think you did me an +injustice. So be happy, my dearest, with the Willows and the Osierfield +and all the dear old things which you and I have loved so well; and +remember that you must never pity me. I wanted you to be happy more than +I wanted anything else in the world, and no man is to be pitied who has +succeeded in getting what he wanted most. + + "Yours, my darling, for time and eternity, + "CHRISTOPHER FARRINGDON." + +Then at last Elisabeth's eyes were opened, and for the first time in her +life she saw clearly. So Christopher had loved her all along; she knew +the truth at last, and with it she also knew that she had always loved +him; that throughout her life's story there never had been--never could +be--any man but Christopher. Until he told her that he loved her, her +love for him had been a fountain sealed; but at his word it became a +well of living water, flooding her whole soul and turning the desert of +her life into a garden. + +At first she was overpowered with the joy of it; she was upheld by that +strange feeling of exaltation which comes to all of us when we realize +for a moment our immortality, and feel that even death itself is +powerless to hurt us. Christopher was dying, but what did that signify? +He loved her--that was the only thing that really mattered--and they +would have the whole of eternity in which to tell their love. For the +second time in her life she came face to face with the fact that there +was a stronger Will than her own guiding and ruling her; that, in spite +of all her power and ability and self-reliance, the best things in her +life were not of herself but were from outside. As long ago in St. +Peter's Church she had learned that religion was God's Voice calling to +her, she now learned that love was Christopher's voice calling to her; +and that her own strength and cleverness, of which she had been so +proud, counted for less than nothing. To her who longed to give, was +given; she who desired to love, was beloved; she who aspired to teach, +had been taught. That strong will of hers, which had once been so +dominant, had suddenly fallen down powerless; she no longer wanted to +have her own way--she wanted to have Christopher's. Her warfare against +him was at last accomplished. To the end of her days she knew she would +go on weighing herself in his balances, and measuring herself according +to his measures; but now she would do so willingly, choosing to be +guided by his wisdom rather than her own, for she no more belonged to +herself but to him. The feeling of unrest, which had oppressed her for +so many years, now fell from her like a cast-off garment. Christopher +was the answer to her life's problem, the fulfilment of her heart's +desire; and although she might be obliged to go down again into the +valley of the shadow, she could never forget that she had once stood +upon the mountain-top and had beheld the glory of the promised land. + +And she never remembered that now her fortune was secured to her, and +that the Willows and the Osierfield would always be hers; even these +were henceforth of no moment to her, save as monuments of Christopher's +love. + +So in the dingy dining-room, on that hot summer's afternoon, Elisabeth +Farringdon became a new creature. The old domineering arrogance passed +away forever; and from its ashes there arose another Elisabeth, who out +of weakness was made stronger than she had ever been in her strength--an +Elisabeth who had attained to the victory of the vanquished, and who had +tasted the triumph of defeat. But in all her exaltation she knew--though +for the moment the knowledge could not hurt her--that her heart would be +broken by Christopher's death. Through the long night of her ignorance +and self-will and unsatisfied idealism she had wrestled with the angel +that she might behold the Best, and had prayed that it might be granted +unto her to see the Vision Beautiful. At last she had prevailed; and the +day for which she had so longed was breaking, and transfiguring the +common world with its marvellous light. But the angel-hand had touched +her, and she no longer stood upright and self-reliant, but was bound to +halt and walk lamely on her way until she stood by Christopher's side +again. + +This exalted mood did not last for long. As she sat in the gloomy room +and watched the blazing sunshine forcing its way through the darkened +windows, her eye suddenly fell upon two notches cut in the doorway, +where she and Christopher had once measured themselves when they were +children; and the familiar sight of these two little notches, made by +Christopher's knife so long ago, awoke in her heart the purely human +longing for him as the friend and comrade she had known and looked up to +all her life. And with this longing came the terrible thought of how +she had hurt and misunderstood and misjudged him, and of how it was now +too late for her to make up to him in this life for all the happiness of +which she had defrauded him in her careless pride. Then, for the first +time since she was born, Elisabeth put her lips to the cup of remorse, +and found it very bitter to the taste. She had been so full of plans for +comforting mankind and helping the whole world; yet she had utterly +failed toward the only person whom it had been in her power actually to +help and comfort; and her heart echoed the wail of the most beautiful +love-song ever written--"They made me the keeper of the vineyards; but +mine own vineyard have I not kept." + +As she was sitting, bowed down in utter anguish of spirit while the +waves of remorse flooded her soul, the door opened and the nurse came +in. + +"Mr. Thornley is conscious now, and is asking for you, Miss Farringdon," +she said. + +Elisabeth started up, her face aglow with new hope. It was so natural to +her not to be cast down for long. "Oh! I am so glad. I want dreadfully +to see him, I have so much to say to him. But I'll promise not to tire +or excite him. Tell me, how long may I stay with him, Nurse, and how +quiet must I be?" + +The nurse smiled sadly. "It won't matter how long you stay or what you +say, Miss Farringdon; I don't think it is possible for anything to hurt +or help him now; for I am afraid, whatever happens, he can not possibly +recover." + +As she went upstairs Elisabeth kept saying to herself, "I am going to +see the real Christopher for the first time"; and she felt the old, shy +fear of him that she had felt long ago when Richard Smallwood was +stricken. But when she entered the room and saw the worn, white face on +the pillow, with the kind smile she knew so well, she completely forgot +her shyness, and only remembered that Christopher was in need of her, +and that she would gladly give her life for his if she could. + +"Kiss me, my darling," he said, holding out his arms; and she knew by +the look in his eyes that every word of his letter was true. "I am too +tired to pretend any more that I don't love you. And it can't matter now +whether you know or not, it is so near the end." + +Elisabeth put her strong arms round him, and kissed him as he asked. +"Chris, dear," she whispered, "I want to tell you that I love you, and +that I've always loved you, and that I always shall love you; but I've +only just found it out." + +Christopher was silent for a moment, and clasped her very close. But he +was not so much surprised as he would have been had Elisabeth made such +an astounding revelation to him in the days of his health. When one is +drawing near to the solution of the Great Mystery, one loses the power +of wondering at anything. + +"How did you find it out, my dearest?" he asked at last. + +"Through finding out that you loved me. It seems to me that my love was +always lying in the bank at your account, but until you gave a cheque +for it you couldn't get at it. And the cheque was my knowing that you +cared for me." + +"And how did you find that out, Betty?" + +"I was rummaging in the safe just now for the plans of the Osierfield, +and I came upon your letter." + +"I didn't mean you to read that while I was alive; but, all the same, I +think I am rather glad that you did." + +"And I am glad, too. I wish I hadn't always been so horrid to you, +Chris; but I believe I should have loved you all the time, if only you +had given me the chance. Still, I was horrid--dreadfully horrid; and now +it is too late to make it up to you." And Elisabeth's eyes filled with +tears. + +"Don't cry, my darling--please don't cry. And, besides, you have made it +up to me by loving me now. I am glad you understand at last, Betty; I +did so hope you would some day." + +"And you forgive me for having been so vile?" + +"There is nothing to forgive, sweetheart; it was my fault for not making +you understand; but I did it for the best, though I seem to have made a +mess of it." + +"And you like me just the same as you did before I was unkind to you?" + +"My dear, don't you know?" + +"You see, Chris, I was wanting you to be nice to me all the +time--nothing else satisfied me instead of you. And when you seemed not +to like me any longer, but to care for doing your duty more than for +being with me, I got sore and angry, and decided to punish you for +making a place for yourself in my heart and then refusing to fill it." + +"Well, you did what you decided, as you generally do; there is no doubt +of that. You were always very prone to administer justice and to +maintain truth, Elisabeth, and you certainly never spared the rod as far +as I was concerned." + +"But now I see that I was wrong; I understand that it was because you +cared so much for abstract right, that you were able to care so much +for me; a lower nature would have given me a lower love; and if only we +could go through it all again, I should want you to go to Australia +after George Farringdon's son." + +Christopher's thin fingers wandered over Elisabeth's hair; and as they +did so he remembered, with tender amusement, how often he had comforted +her on account of her dark locks. Now one or two gray hairs were +beginning to show through the brown ones, and it struck him with a pang +that he would no longer be here to comfort her on account of those; for +he knew that Elisabeth was the type of woman who would require +consolation on that score, and that he was the man who could effectually +have administered it. + +"I can see now," Elisabeth went on, "how much more important it is what +a man is than what a man says, though I used to think that words were +everything, and that people didn't feel what they didn't talk about. You +used to disappoint me because you said so little; but, all the same, +your character influenced me without my knowing it; and whatever good +there is in me, comes from my having known you and seen you live up to +your own ideals. People wonder that worldly things attract me so little, +and that my successes haven't turned my head; so they would have done, +probably, if I had never met you; but having once seen in you what the +ideal life is, I couldn't help despising lower things, though I tried my +hardest not to despise them. Nobody who had once been with you, and +looked even for a minute at life through your eyes, could ever care +again for anything that was mean or sordid or paltry. Darling, don't you +understand that my knowing you made me better than I tried to +be--better even than I wanted to be; and that all my life I shall be a +truer woman because of you?" + +But by that time the stupendous effort which Christopher had made for +Elisabeth's sake had exhausted itself, and he fell back upon his +pillows, white to the lips, and too weak to say another word. Yet not +even the great Shadow could cloud the love that shone in his eyes, as he +looked at Elisabeth's eager face, and listened to the voice for which +his soul had hungered so long. The sight of his weakness brought her +down to earth again more effectually than any words could have done; and +with an exceeding bitter cry she hid her face in her arms and sobbed +aloud-- + +"Oh! my darling, my darling, come back to me; I love you so that I can +not let you go. The angels can do quite well without you in heaven, but +I can not do without you here. Oh! Chris, don't go away and leave me, +just now that we've learned to understand one another. I'll be good all +my life, and do everything that you tell me, if only you won't go away. +My dearest, I love you so--I love you so; and I've nobody in the world +but you." + +Christopher made another great effort to take her in his arms and +comfort her; but it was too much for him, and he fainted away. + + + + +CHAPTER XVIII + +THE OTHER SIDE OF THE HILLS + + Shall I e'er love thee less fondly than now, dear? + Tell me if e'er my devotion can die? + Never until thou shalt cease to be thou, dear; + Never until I no longer am I. + + +Whether the doctors were right when they talked of the renewed desire to +live producing fresh vitality, or whether the wise man knew best after +all when he said that love is stronger than death, who can say? Anyway, +the fact remained that Christopher responded--as he had ever +responded--to Elisabeth's cry for help, and came back from the very +gates of the grave at her bidding. He had never failed her yet, and he +did not fail her now. + +The days of his recovery were wonderful days to Elisabeth. It was so +strange and new to her to be doing another person's will, and thinking +another person's thoughts, and seeing life through another person's +eyes; it completely altered the perspective of everything. And there was +nothing strained about it, which was a good thing, as Elisabeth was too +light-hearted to stand any strain for long; the old comradeship still +existed between them, giving breadth to a love which the new +relationship had made so deep. + +And it was very wonderful to Christopher, also, to find himself in the +sunshine at last after so many years of shadowland. At first the light +almost dazzled him, he was so unaccustomed to it; but as he gradually +became used to the new feeling of being happy, his nature responded to +the atmosphere of warmth and brightness, and opened as a flower in the +sun. As it was strange to Elisabeth to find herself living and moving +and having her being in another's personality, so it was strange to +Christopher to find another's personality merged in his. He had lived so +entirely for other people that it was a great change to find another +person living entirely for him; and it was a change that was wholly +beneficial. As his nature deepened Elisabeth's, so her nature expanded +his; and each was the better for the influence of the other, as each was +the complement of the other. So after a time Christopher grew almost as +light-hearted as Elisabeth, while Elisabeth grew almost as +tender-hearted as Christopher. For both of them the former things had +passed away, and all things were made new. + +It was beautiful weather, too, which helped to increase their happiness; +that still, full, green weather, which sometimes comes in the late +summer, satisfying men's souls with its peaceful perfectness; when the +year is too old to be disturbed by the restless hope of spring, too +young to be depressed by the chilling dread of autumn, and so just +touches the fringe of that eternity which has no end neither any +beginning. The fine weather hastened Christopher's recovery; and, as he +gained strength, he and Elisabeth spent much time in the old garden, +looking toward the Welsh mountains. + +"So we have come to the country on the other side of the hills at +last," she said to him, as they were watching one of the wonderful +Mershire sunsets and drinking in its beauty. "I always knew it was +there, but sometimes I gave up all hope of ever finding it for myself." + +Christopher took her hand and began playing with the capable +artist-fingers. "And is it as nice a country as you expected, +sweetheart?" + +"As nice as I expected? I should just think it is. I knew that in the +country over the hills I should find all the beautiful things I had +imagined as a child and all the lovely things I had longed for as a +woman; and that, if only I could reach it, all the fairy-tales would +come true. But now that I have reached it, I find that the fairy-tales +fell far short of the reality, and that it is a million times nicer than +I ever imagined anything could be." + +"Darling, I am glad you are so happy. But it beats me how such a stupid +fellow as I am can make you so." + +"Well, you do, and that's all that matters. Nobody can tell how they do +things; they only know that they can do them. I don't know how I can +paint pictures any more than you know how you can turn smoky ironworks +into the country over the hills. But we can, and do; which shows what +clever people we are, in spite of ourselves." + +"I think the cleverness lies with you in both cases--in your wonderful +powers of imagination, my dear." + +"Do you? Then that shows how little you know about it." + +Christopher put his arm round her. "I always was stupid, you know; you +have told me so with considerable frequency." + +"Oh! so you were; but you were never worse than stupid." + +"That's a good thing; for stupidity is a misfortune rather than a +fault." + +"Now I was worse than stupid--much worse," continued Elisabeth gravely; +"but I never was actually stupid." + +"Weren't you? Don't be too sure of that. I don't wish to hurt your +feelings, sweetheart, or to make envious rents in your panoply of +wisdom; but, do you know, you struck me now and again as being a +shade--we will not say stupid, but dense?" + +"When I thought you didn't like me because you went to Australia, you +mean?" + +"That was one of the occasions when your acumen seemed to be slightly at +fault. And there were others." + +Elisabeth looked thoughtful. "I really did think you didn't like me +then." + +"Denseness, my dear Elisabeth--distinct denseness. It would be gross +flattery to call it by any other name." + +"But you never told me you liked me." + +"If I had, and you had then thought I did not, you would have been +suffering from deafness, not denseness. You are confusing terms." + +"Well, then, I'll give in and say I was dense. But I was worse than +that: I was positively horrid as well." + +"Not horrid, Betty; you couldn't be horrid if you tried. Perhaps you +were a little hard on me; but it's all over and done with now, and you +needn't bother yourself any more about it." + +"But I ought to bother about it if I intend to make a trustworthy +step-ladder out of my dead selves to upper storeys." + +"A trustworthy fire-escape, you mean; but I won't have it. You sha'n't +have any dead selves, my dear, because I shall insist on keeping them +all alive by artificial respiration, or restoration from drowning, or +something of that kind. Not one of them shall die with my permission; +remember that. I'm much too fond of them." + +"You silly boy! You'll never train me and discipline me properly if you +go on in this way." + +"Hang it all, Betty! Who wants to train and discipline you? Certainly +not I. I am wise enough to let well--or rather perfection--alone." + +Elisabeth nestled up to Christopher. "But I'm not perfection, Chris; you +know that as well as I do." + +"Probably I shouldn't love you so much if you were; so please don't +reform, dear." + +"And you like me just as I am?" + +"Precisely. I should break my heart if you became in any way different +from what you are now." + +"But you mustn't break your heart; it belongs to me, and I won't have +you smashing up my property." + +"I gave it to you, it is true; but the copyright is still mine. The +copyright of letters that I wrote to you is mine; and I believe the law +of copyright is the same with regard to hearts as to letters." + +"Well, anyhow, I've written my name all over it." + +"I know you have; and it was very untidy of you, my dearest. Once would +have been enough to show that it belonged to you; but you weren't +content with that: you scribbled all over every available space, until +there was no room left even for advertisements; and now nobody else will +ever be able to write another name upon it as long as I live." + +"I'm glad of that; I wouldn't have anybody else's name upon it for +anything. And I'm glad that you like me just as I am, and don't want me +to be different." + +"Heaven forbid!" + +"But still I was horrid to you once, Chris, however you may try to gloss +it over. My dear, my dear, I don't know how I ever could have been +unkind to you; but I was." + +"Never mind, sweetheart; it is ancient history now, and who bothers +about ancient history? Did you ever meet anybody who fretted over the +overthrow of Carthage, or made a trouble of the siege of Troy?" + +"No," Elisabeth truthfully replied; "and I'm really nice to you now, +whatever I may have been before. Don't you think I am?" + +"I should just think you are, Betty; a thousand times nicer than I +deserve, and I am becoming most horribly conceited in consequence." + +"And, after all, I agree with the prophet Ezekiel that if people are +nice at the end, it doesn't much matter how disagreeable they have been +in the meantime. He doesn't put it quite in that way, but the sentiment +is the same. I suit you down to the ground now, don't I, Chris?" + +"You do, my darling; and up to the sky, and beyond." And Christopher +drew her still closer to him and kissed her. + +After a minute's silence Elisabeth whispered-- + +"When one is as divinely happy as this, isn't it difficult to realize +that the earth will ever be earthy again, and the butter turnipy, and +things like that? Yet they will be." + +"But never quite as earthy or quite as turnipy as they were before; +that's just the difference." + +After playing for a few minutes with Christopher's watch-chain, +Elisabeth suddenly remarked-- + +"You never really appreciated my pictures, Chris. You never did me +justice as an artist, though you did me far more than justice as a +woman. Why was that?" + +"Didn't I? I'm sorry. Nevertheless, I'm not sure that you are right. I +was always intensely interested in your pictures because they were +yours, quite apart from their own undoubted merits." + +"That was just it; you admired my pictures because they were painted by +me, while you really ought to have admired me because I had painted the +pictures." + +A look of amusement stole over Christopher's face. "Then I fell short of +your requirements, dear heart; for, as far as you and your works were +concerned, I certainly never committed the sin of worshipping the +creature rather than the creator." + +"But there was a time when I wanted you to do so." + +"As a matter of fact," said Christopher thoughtfully, "I don't believe a +man who loves a woman can ever appreciate her genius properly, because +love is greater than genius, and so the greater swallows up the less. In +the eyes of the world, her genius is the one thing which places a woman +of genius above her fellows, and the world worships it accordingly. But +in the eyes of the man who loves her, she is already placed so far above +her fellows that her genius makes no difference to her altitude. Thirty +feet makes all the difference in the height of a weather-cock, but none +at all in the distance between the earth and a fixed star." + +"What a nice thing to say! I adore you when you say things like that." + +Christopher continued: "You see, the man is interested in the woman's +works of art simply because they are hers; just as he is interested in +the rustle of her silk petticoat simply because it is hers. Possibly he +is more interested in the latter, because men can paint pictures +sometimes, and they can never rustle silk petticoats properly. You are +right in thinking that the world adores you for the sake of your +creations, while I adore your creations for the sake of you; but you +must also remember that the world would cease to worship you if your +genius began to decline, while I should love you just the same if you +took to painting sign-posts and illustrating Christmas cards--even if +you became an impressionist." + +"What a dear boy you are! You really are the greatest comfort to me. I +didn't always feel like this, but now you satisfy me completely, and +fill up every crevice of my soul. There isn't a little space anywhere in +my mind or heart or spirit that isn't simply bursting with you." And +Elisabeth laughed a low laugh of perfect contentment. + +"My darling, how I love you!" And Christopher also was content. + +Then there was another silence, which Christopher broke at last by +saying-- + +"What is the matter, Betty?" + +"There isn't anything the matter. How should there be?" + +"Oh, yes, there is. Do you think I have studied your face for over +thirty years, my dear, without knowing every shade of difference in its +expression? Have I said anything to vex you?" + +"No, no; how could I be vexed with you, Chris, when you are so good to +me? I am horrid enough, goodness knows, but not horrid enough for that." + +"Then what is it? Tell me, dear, and see if I can't help?" + +Elisabeth sighed. "I was thinking that there is really no going back, +however much we may pretend that there is. What we have done we have +done, and what we have left undone we have left undone; and there is no +blotting out the story of past years. We may write new stories, perhaps, +and try to write better ones, but the old ones are written beyond +altering, and must stand for ever. You have been divinely good to me, +Chris, and you never remind me even by a look how I hurt you and +misjudged you in the old days. But the fact remains that I did both; and +nothing can ever alter that." + +"Silly little child, it's all over and past now! I've forgotten it, and +you must forget it too." + +"I can't forget it; that's just the thing. I spoiled your life for the +best ten years of it; and now, though I would give everything that I +possess to restore those years to you, I can't restore them, or make +them up to you for the loss of them. That's what hurts so dreadfully." + +Christopher looked at her with a great pity shining in his eyes. He +longed to save from all suffering the woman he loved; but he could not +save her from the irrevocableness of her own actions, strive as he +would; which was perhaps the best thing in the world for her, and for +all of us. Human love would gladly shield us from the consequences of +what we have done; but Divine Love knows better. What we have written, +we have written on the page of life; and neither our own tears, nor the +tears of those who love us better than we love ourselves, can blot it +out. For the first time in her easy, self-confident career, Elisabeth +Farringdon was brought face to face with this merciless truth; and she +trembled before it. It was just because Christopher was so ready to +forgive her, that she found it impossible to forgive herself. + +"I always belonged to you, you see, dear," Christopher said very gently, +"and you had the right to do what you liked with your own. I had given +you the right of my own free will." + +"But you couldn't give me the right to do what was wrong. Nobody can do +that. I did what was wrong, and now I must be punished for it." + +"Not if I can help it, sweetheart. You shall never be punished for +anything if I can bear the punishment for you." + +"You can't help it, Chris; that's just the point. And I am being +punished in the way that hurts most. All my life I thought of myself, +and my own success, and how I was going to do this and that and the +other, and be happy and clever and good. But suddenly everything has +changed. I no longer care about being happy myself; I only want you to +be happy; and yet I know that for ten long years I deliberately +prevented you from being happy. Don't you see, dear, how terrible the +punishment is? The thing I care for most in the whole world is your +happiness; and the fact remains, and will always remain, that that was +the thing which I destroyed with my own hands, because I was cruel and +selfish and cold." + +"Still, I am happy enough now, Betty--happy enough to make up for all +that went before." + +"But I can never give you back those ten years," said Elisabeth, with a +sob in her voice--"never as long as I live. Oh! Chris, I see now how +horrid I was; though all the time I thought I was being so good, that I +looked down upon the women who I considered had lower ideals than I had. +I built myself an altar of stone, and offered up your life upon it, and +then commended myself when the incense rose up to heaven; and I never +found out that the sacrifice was all yours, and that there was nothing +of mine upon the altar at all." + +"Never mind, darling; there isn't going to be a yours and mine any more, +you know. All things are ours, and we are beginning a new life +together." + +Elisabeth put both arms round his neck and kissed him of her own accord. +"My dearest," she whispered, "how can I ever love you enough for being +so good to me?" + +But while Christopher and Elisabeth were walking across enchanted +ground, Cecil Farquhar was having a hard time. Elisabeth had written to +tell him the actual facts of the case almost as soon as she knew them +herself; and he could not forgive her for first raising his hopes and +then dashing them to the ground. And there is no denying that he had +somewhat against her; for she had twice played him this trick--first as +regarded herself, and then as regarded her fortune. That she had not +been altogether to blame--that she had deluded herself in both cases as +effectually as she had deluded him--was no consolation as far as he was +concerned; his egoism took no account of her motives--it only resented +the results. Quenelda did all in her power to comfort him, but she +found it uphill work. She gave him love in full measure; but, as it +happened, money and not love was the thing he most wanted, and that was +not hers to bestow. He still cared for her more than he cared for +anybody (though not for anything) else in the world; it was not that he +loved Cæsar less but Rome more, Cecil's being one of the natures to whom +Rome would always appeal more powerfully than Cæsar. His life did +consist in the things which he had; and, when these failed, nothing else +could make up to him for them. Neither Christopher nor Elisabeth was +capable of understanding how much mere money meant to Farquhar; they had +no conception of how bitter was his disappointment on knowing that he +was not, after all, the lost heir to the Farringdon property. And who +would blame them for this? Does one blame a man, who takes a dirty bone +away from a dog, for not entering into the dog's feelings on the matter? +Nevertheless, that bone is to the dog what fame is to the poet and glory +to the soldier. One can but enjoy and suffer according to one's nature. + +It happened, by an odd coincidence, that the mystery of Cecil's +parentage was cleared up shortly after Elisabeth's false alarm on that +score; and his paternal grandfather was discovered in the shape of a +retired shopkeeper at Surbiton of the name of Biggs, who had been cursed +with an unsatisfactory son. When in due time this worthy man was +gathered to his fathers, he left a comfortable little fortune to his +long-lost grandson; whereupon Cecil married Quenelda, and continued to +make art his profession, while his recreation took the form of +believing--and retailing his belief to anybody who had time and patience +to listen to it--that the Farringdons of Sedgehill had, by foul means, +ousted him from his rightful position, and that, but for their +dishonesty, he would have been one of the richest men in Mershire. And +this grievance--as is the way of grievances--never failed to be a source +of unlimited pleasure and comfort to Cecil Farquhar. + +But in the meantime, when the shock of disappointment was still fresh, +he wrote sundry scathing letters to Miss Elisabeth Farringdon, which she +in turn showed to Christopher, rousing the fury of the latter thereby. + +"He is a cad--a low cad!" exclaimed Christopher, after the perusal of +one of these epistles; "and I should like to tell him what I think of +him, and then kick him." + +Elisabeth laughed; she always enjoyed making Christopher angry. "He +wanted to marry me," she remarked, by way of adding fuel to the flames. + +"Confounded impudence on his part!" muttered Christopher. + +"But he left off when he found out that I hadn't got any money." + +"Worse impudence, confound him!" + +"Oh! I wish you could have seen him when I told him that the money was +not really mine," continued Elisabeth, bubbling over with mirth at the +recollection; "he cooled down so very quickly, and so rapidly turned his +thoughts in another direction. Don't you know what it is to bite a +gooseberry at the front door while it pops out at the back? Well, Cecil +Farquhar's love-making was just like that. It really was a fine sight!" + +"The brute!" + +"Never mind about him, dear! I'm tired of him." + +"But I do mind when people dare to be impertinent to you. I can't help +minding," Christopher persisted. + +"Then go on minding, if you want to, darling--only don't let us waste +our time in talking about him. There's such a lot to talk about that is +really important--why you said so-and-so, and how you felt when I said +so-and-so, ten years ago; and how you feel about me to-day, and whether +you like me as much this afternoon as you did this morning; and what +colour my eyes are, and what colour you think my new frock should be; +and heaps of really serious things like that." + +"All right, Betty; where shall we begin?" + +"We shall begin by making a plan. Do you know what you are going to do +this afternoon?" + +"Yes; whatever you tell me. I always do." + +"Well, then, you are coming with me to have tea at Mrs. Bateson's, just +as we used to do when we were little; and I have told her to invite Mrs. +Hankey as well, to make it seem just the same as it used to be. By the +way, is Mrs. Hankey as melancholy as ever, Chris?" + +"Quite. Time doth not breathe on her fadeless gloom, I can assure you." + +"Won't it be fun to pretend we are children again?" Elisabeth exclaimed. + +"Great fun; and I don't think it will need much pretending, do you +know?" replied Christopher, who saw deeper sometimes than Elisabeth did, +and now realized that it was only when they two became as little +children--he by ceasing to play Providence to her, and she by ceasing to +play Providence to herself--that they had at last caught glimpses of the +kingdom of heaven. + +So they walked hand in hand to Caleb Bateson's cottage, as they had so +often walked in far-off, childish days; and the cottage looked so +exactly the same as it used to look, and Caleb and his wife and Mrs. +Hankey were so little altered by the passage of time, that it seemed as +if the shadow had indeed been put back ten degrees. And so, in a way, it +was, by the new spring-time which had come to Christopher and Elisabeth. +They were both among those beloved of the gods who are destined to die +young--not in years but in spirit; her lover as well as herself was what +Elisabeth called "a fourth-dimension person," and there is no growing +old for fourth-dimension people; because it has already been given to +them to behold the vision of the cloud-clad angel, who stands upon the +sea and upon the earth and swears that there shall be time no longer. +They see him in the far distances of the sunlit hills, in the mysteries +of the unfathomed ocean, and their ears are opened to the message that +he brings; for they know that in all beauty--be it of earth, or sea, or +sky, or human souls--there is something indestructible, immortal, and +that those who have once looked upon it shall never see death. Such of +us as make our dwelling-place in the world of the three dimensions, grow +weary of the sameness and the staleness of it all, and drearily echo the +Preacher's _Vanitas vanitatum_; but such of us as have entered into the +fourth dimension, and have caught glimpses of the ideal which is +concealed in all reality, do not trouble ourselves over the flight of +time, for we know we have eternity before us; and so we are content to +wait patiently and joyfully, in sure and certain hope of that better +thing which, without us, can not be made perfect. + +It was with pride and pleasure that Mr. and Mrs. Bateson received their +guests. The double announcement that Christopher was the lost heir of +the Farringdons (for Elisabeth had insisted on his making this known), +and that he was about to marry Elisabeth, had given great delight all +through Sedgehill. The Osierfield people were proud of Elisabeth, but +they had learned to love Christopher; they had heard of her glory from +afar, but they had been eye-witnesses of the uprightness and +unselfishness and nobility of his life; and, on the whole, he was more +popular than she. Elisabeth was quite conscious of this; and--what was +more--she was glad of it. She, who had so loved popularity and +admiration, now wanted people to think more of Christopher than of her. +Once she had gloried in the thought that George Farringdon's son would +never fill her place in the hearts of the people of the Osierfield; now +her greatest happiness lay in the fact that he filled it more completely +than she could ever have done, and that at Sedgehill she would always be +second to him. + +"Deary me, but it's like old times to see Master Christopher and Miss +Elisabeth having tea with us again," exclaimed Mrs. Bateson, after Caleb +had asked a blessing; "and it seems but yesterday, Mrs. Hankey, that +they were here talking over Mrs. Perkins's wedding--your niece Susan as +was--with Master Christopher in knickers, and Miss Elisabeth's hair +down." + +Mrs. Hankey sighed her old sigh. "So it does, Mrs. Bateson--so it does; +and yet Susan has just buried her ninth." + +"And is she quite well?" asked Elisabeth cheerfully. "I remember all +about her wedding, and how immensely interested I was." + +"As well as you can expect, miss," replied Mrs. Hankey, "with eight +children on earth and one in heaven, and a husband as plays the trombone +of an evening. But that's the worst of marriage; you know what a man is +when you marry him, but you haven't a notion what he'll be that time +next year. He may take to drinking or music for all you know; and then +where's your peace of mind?" + +"You are not very encouraging," laughed Elisabeth, "considering that I +am going to be married at once." + +"Well, miss, where's the use of flattering with vain words, and crying +peace where there is no peace, I should like to know? I can only say as +I hope you'll be happy. Some are." + +Here Christopher joined in. "You mustn't discourage Miss Farringdon in +that way, or else she'll be throwing me over; and then whatever will +become of me?" + +Mrs. Hankey at once tried to make the _amende honorable_; she would not +have hurt Christopher's feelings for worlds, as she--in common with most +of the people at Sedgehill--had had practical experience of his kindness +in times of sorrow and anxiety. "Not she, sir; Miss Elisabeth's got too +much sense to go throwing anybody over--and especially at her age, when +she's hardly likely to get another beau in a hurry. Don't you go +troubling your mind about that, Master Christopher. You won't throw over +such a nice gentleman as him, will you, miss?" + +"Certainly not; though hardly on the grounds which you mention." + +"Well, miss, if you're set on marriage you're in luck to have got such a +pleasant-spoken gentleman as Master Christopher--or I should say, Mr. +Farringdon, begging his pardon. Such a fine complexion as he's got, and +never been married before, nor nothing. For my part I never thought you +would get a husband--never; and I've often passed the remark to Mr. and +Mrs. Bateson here. 'Mark my words,' I said, 'Miss Elisabeth Farringdon +will remain Elisabeth Farringdon to the end of the chapter; she's too +clever to take the fancy of the menfolk, and too pale. They want +something pink and white and silly, men do." + +"Some want one thing and some another," chimed in Mrs. Bateson, "and +they know what they want, which is more than women-folks do. Why, bless +you! girls 'll come telling you that they wouldn't marry so-and-so, not +if he was to crown 'em; and the next thing you hear is that they are +keeping company with him, and that no woman was ever so happy as them, +and that the man is such a piece of perfection that the President of the +Conference himself isn't fit to black his boots." + +"You have hit upon a great mystery, Mrs. Bateson," remarked Christopher, +"and one which has only of late been revealed to me. I used to think, in +my masculine ignorance, that if a woman appeared to dislike a man, she +would naturally refuse to marry him; but I am beginning to doubt if I +was right." + +Mrs. Bateson nodded significantly. "Wait till he asks her; that's what I +say. It's wonderful what a difference the asking makes. Women think a +sight more of a sparrow in the hand than a covey of partridges in the +bush; and I don't blame them for it; it's but natural that they should." + +"A poor thing but mine own," murmured Christopher. + +"That's not the principle at all," Elisabeth contradicted him; "you've +got hold of quite the wrong end of the stick this time." + +"I always do, in order to give you the right one; as in handing you a +knife I hold it by the blade. You so thoroughly enjoy getting hold of +the right end of a stick, Betty, that I wouldn't for worlds mar your +pleasure by seizing it myself; and your delight reaches high-water-mark +when, in addition, you see me fatuously clinging on to the ferrule." + +"Never mind what women-folk say about women-folk, Miss Elisabeth," said +Caleb Bateson kindly; "they're no judges. But my missis has the right of +it when she says that a man knows what he wants, and in general sticks +to it till he gets it. And if ever a man got what he wanted in this +world, that man's our Mr. Christopher." + +"You're right there, Bateson," agreed the master of the Osierfield; and +his eyes grew very tender as they rested upon Elisabeth. + +"And if he don't have no objection to cleverness and a pale complexion, +who shall gainsay him?" added Mrs. Hankey. "If he's content, surely it +ain't nobody's business to interfere; even though we may none of us, +Miss Elisabeth included, be as young as we was ten years ago." + +"And he is quite content, thank you," Christopher hastened to say. + +"I think you were right about women not knowing their own minds," +Elisabeth said to her hostess; "though I am bound to confess it is a +little stupid of us. But I believe the root of it is in shyness, and in +a sort of fear of the depth of our own feelings." + +"I daresay you're right, miss; and, when all's said and done, I'd sooner +hear a woman abusing a man she really likes, than see her throwing +herself at the head of a man as don't want her. That's the uptake of +all things, to my mind; I can't abide it." And Mrs. Bateson shook her +head in violent disapproval. + +Mrs. Hankey now joined in. "I remember my sister Sarah, when she was a +girl. There was a man wanted her ever so, and seemed as cut-up as never +was when she said no. She didn't know what to do with him, he was that +miserable; and yet she couldn't bring her mind to have him, because he'd +red hair and seven in family, being a widower. So she prayed the Lord to +comfort him and give him consolation. And sure enough the Lord did; for +within a month from the time as Sarah refused him, he was engaged to +Wilhelmina Gregg, our chapel-keeper's daughter. And then--would you +believe it?--Sarah went quite touchy and offended, and couldn't enjoy +her vittles, and wouldn't wear her best bonnet of a Sunday, and kept +saying as the sons of men were lighter than vanity. Which I don't deny +as they are, but that wasn't the occasion to mention it, Wilhelmina's +marriage being more the answer to prayer, as you may say, than any extra +foolishness on the man's part." + +"I should greatly have admired your sister Sarah," said Christopher; +"she was so delightfully feminine. And as for the red-headed swain, I +have no patience with him. His fickleness was intolerable." + +"Bless your heart, Master Christopher!" exclaimed Mrs. Bateson, "men are +mostly like that. Why should they waste their time fretting after some +young woman as hasn't got a civil word for them, when there are scores +and scores as has?" + +Christopher shook his head. "I can't pretend to say why; that is quite +beyond me. I only know that some of them do." + +"But they are only the nice exceptions that prove the rule," said +Elisabeth, as she and Christopher caught each other's eye. + +"No; it is she who is the nice exception," he replied. "It is only in +the case of exceptionally charming young women that such a thing ever +occurs; or rather, I should say, in the case of an exceptionally +charming young woman." + +"My wedding dress will be sent home next week," said Elisabeth to the +two matrons; "would you like to come and see it?" + +"Indeed, that we should!" they replied simultaneously. Then Mrs. Bateson +inquired: "And what is it made of, deary?" + +"White satin." + +Mrs. Hankey gazed critically at the bride-elect. "White satin is a bit +young, it seems to me; and trying, too, to them as haven't much colour." +Then cheering second thoughts inspired her. "Still, white's the proper +thing for a bride, I don't deny; and I always say 'Do what's right and +proper, and never mind looks.' The Lord doesn't look on the outward +appearance, as we all know; and it 'ud be a sight better for men if they +didn't, like Master Christopher there; there'd be fewer unhappy +marriages, mark my words. Of course, lavender isn't as trying to the +complexion as pure white; no one can say as it is; but to my mind +lavender always looks as if you've been married before; and it's no use +for folks to look greater fools than they are, as I can see." + +"Certainly not," Christopher agreed. "If there is any pretence at all, +let it be in the opposite direction, and let us all try to appear wiser +than we are!" + +"And that's easy enough for some of us, such as Hankey, for instance," +added Hankey's better half. "And there ain't as much wisdom to look at +as you could put on the point of a knife even then." + +So the women talked and the men listened--as is the way of men and women +all the world over--until tea was finished and it was time for the +guests to depart. They left amid a shower of heartfelt congratulations, +and loving wishes for the future opening out before them. Just as +Elisabeth passed through the doorway into the evening sunshine, which +was flooding the whole land and turning even the smoke-clouds into +windows of agate whereby men caught faint glimmerings of a dim glory as +yet to be revealed, she turned and held out her hands once more to her +friends. "It is very good to come back to you all, and to dwell among +mine own people," she said, her voice thrilling with emotion; "and I am +glad that Mrs. Hankey's prophecy has come true, and that Elisabeth +Farringdon will be Elisabeth Farringdon to the end of the chapter." + +THE END + + * * * * * + + +"A FRESH AND CHARMING NOVEL." + +The Last Lady of Mulberry. + +A Story of Italian New York. By HENRY WILTON THOMAS. Illustrated by Emil +Pollak. 12mo. Cloth, $1.50. + + "The Last Lady of Mulberry" is the title of a fresh and charming + novel, whose author, a new writer, Mr. Henry Wilton Thomas, has + found an unexploited field in the Italian quarter of New York. Mr. + Thomas is familiar with Italy as well as New York, and the local + color of his vivacious pictures gives his story a peculiar zest. As + a story pure and simple his novel is distinguished by originality + in motive, by a succession of striking and dramatic scenes, and by + an understanding of the motives of the characters, and a justness + and sympathy in their presentation which imparts a constant glow of + human interest to the tale. The author has a quaint and delightful + humor which will be relished by every reader. While his story deals + with actualities, it is neither depressing nor unpleasantly + realistic, like many "stories of low life," and the reader gains a + vivid impression of the sunnier aspects of life in the Italian + quarter. The book contains a series of well-studied and effective + illustrations by Mr. Emil Pollak. + +_BY THE AUTHOR OF "RED POTTAGE."_ + +=Diana Tempest.= + +A Novel. By MARY CHOLMONDELEY, author of "Red Pottage," "The Danvers +Jewels," etc. With Portrait and Sketch of the Author. 12mo. Cloth, +$1.50. + + "Of Miss Cholmondeley's clever novels, 'Diana Tempest' is quite the + cleverest."--_London Times._ + + "The novel is hard to lay by, and one likes to take it up again for + a second reading."--_Boston Literary World._ + +D. APPLETON AND COMPANY, NEW YORK. + + +DAVID HARUM. + +A Story of American Life. By Edward Noyes Westcott. 12mo. 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In David Harum, the shrewd, + whimsical, horse-trading country banker, the author has depicted a + type of character that is by no means new to fiction, but nowhere + else has it been so carefully, faithfully, and realistically + wrought out."--_The Herald_, _Syracuse_. + + "We give Edward Noyes Westcott his true place in American + letters--placing him as a humorist next to Mark Twain, as a master + of dialect above Lowell, as a descriptive writer equal to Bret + Harte, and, on the whole, as a novelist on a par with the best of + those who live and have their being in the heart of hearts of + American readers. If the author is dead--lamentable fact--his book + will live."--_Philadelphia Item_. + +D. APPLETON AND COMPANY, NEW YORK. + + +FÉLIX GRAS'S ROMANCES. + +=The White Terror.= + +A Romance. Translated from the Provençal by Mrs. Catharine A. Janvier. +Uniform with "The Reds of the Midi" and "The Terror." 16mo. 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It is commendable for several reasons: it is a book + that has been needed for a long time, it is written in a popular + and attractive style, it is accurately and profusely illustrated, + and it is by an authority on the subject of which it + treats."--_Public Opinion_. + +_FAMILIAR FLOWERS OF FIELD AND GARDEN._ By F. SCHUYLER MATHEWS. +Illustrated with 200 Drawings by the Author. 12mo. Library Edition, +cloth, $1.75; Pocket Edition, flexible morocco, $2.25. + + "A book of much value and interest, admirably arranged for the + student and the lover of flowers.... The text is full of compact + information, well selected and interestingly presented.... It seems + to us to be a most attractive handbook of its kind."--_New York + Sun_. + +D. APPLETON AND COMPANY, NEW YORK. + + +FRANK M. CHAPMAN'S BOOKS. + +=Bird Studies with a Camera.= + +With Introductory Chapters on the Outfit and Methods of the Bird +Photographer. By FRANK M. 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The book is practical as well as descriptive, and in + the opening chapters the questions of camera, lens, plates, blinds, + decoys, and other pertinent matters are fully discussed. + +=Bird-Life.= + +A Guide to the Study of our Common Birds. With 75 full-page uncolored +plates and 25 drawings in the text, by ERNEST SETON THOMPSON. Library +Edition. 12mo. Cloth, $1.75. + +=The Same=, with lithographic plates in colors. 8vo. Cloth, $5.00. + +=TEACHERS' EDITION=. Same as Library Edition, but containing an Appendix +with new matter designed for the use of teachers, and including lists of +birds for each month of the year. 12mo. Cloth, $2.00. + +=TEACHERS' MANUAL=. To accompany Portfolios of Colored Plates of +Bird-Life. Contains the same text as the Teachers' Edition of +"Bird-Life," but is without the 75 uncolored plates. Sold only with the +Portfolios, as follows: + +=Portfolio No. I=.--Permanent Residents and Winter Visitants. 32 plates. + +=Portfolio No. II=.--March and April Migrants. 34 plates. + +=Portfolio No. III=.--May Migrants, Types of Birds' Eggs, Types of +Birds' Nests from Photographs from Nature. 34 plates. Price of +Portfolios, each, $1.25; with Manual, $2.00. The three Portfolios with +Manual, $4.00. + +=Handbook of Birds of Eastern North America.= + +With nearly 200 Illustrations. 12mo. Library Edition, cloth, $3.00; +Pocket Edition, flexible morocco, $3.50. + +D. APPLETON AND COMPANY, NEW YORK. + + +By ELLEN THORNEYCROFT FOWLER. + +=A Double Thread.= 12mo. Cloth, $1.50. + +"Even more gay, clever, and bright than 'Concerning Isabel +Carnaby.'"--_Boston Herald._ + +"Abounds in excellent character study and brilliant dialogue."--_New +York Commercial Advertiser._ + +"Crowded with interesting people. One of the most enjoyable stories of +the season."--_Philadelphia Inquirer._ + +"Brilliant and witty. Shows fine insight into character."--_Minneapolis +Journal._ + +"'A Double Thread' is that rare visitor--a novel to be recommended +without reserve."--_London Literary World._ + +=Concerning Isabel Carnaby.= New edition. With Portrait and Biographical +Sketch. Cloth, $1.50. + +"Rarely does one find such a charming combination of wit and tenderness, +of brilliancy and reverence for the things that matter, as is concealed +within the covers of 'Concerning Isabel Carnaby.' It is bright without +being flippant, tender without being mawkish, and as joyous and as +wholesome as sunshine. The characters are closely studied and clearly +limned, and they are created by one who knows human nature.... It would +be hard to find its superior for all around excellence.... No one who +reads it will regret it or forget it."--_Chicago Tribune._ + +"For brilliant conversations, bits of philosophy, keenness of wit, and +full insight into human nature, 'Concerning Isabel Carnaby' is a +remarkable success."--_Boston Transcript._ + +D. APPLETON AND COMPANY, NEW YORK. + + + + + +End of Project Gutenberg's The Farringdons, by Ellen Thorneycroft Fowler + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE FARRINGDONS *** + +***** This file should be named 19798-8.txt or 19798-8.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + http://www.gutenberg.org/1/9/7/9/19798/ + +Produced by Chuck Greif, Sigal Alon and the Online +Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: The Farringdons + +Author: Ellen Thorneycroft Fowler + +Release Date: November 13, 2006 [EBook #19798] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE FARRINGDONS *** + + + + +Produced by Chuck Greif, Sigal Alon and the Online +Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net + + + + + + +</pre> + + +<p class="center"><br /><br /><img src="images/cover.jpg" alt="image_of_cover" /><br /><br /></p> + + +<table summary="title" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="8" style="border: solid 3px black;"> +<tr><td> +<table summary="title1" class="title" cellspacing="2" cellpadding="25"> +<tr><td valign="middle" align="center" style="border: solid 3px black; font-size: 200%;"><b>THE<br /> FARRINGDONS</b></td></tr> +<tr><td align="center" +style="border: solid 3px black;" +><b>BY ELLEN THORNEYCROFT FOWLER<br /> +AUTHOR OF CONCERNING ISABEL<br /> +CARNABY, A DOUBLE THREAD,<br /> +ETC.<br /><br /><br /> +<img src="images/001.png" alt="image" /><br /><br /><br /> +NEW YORK<br /> +D. APPLETON AND COMPANY<br /> +1900</b></td></tr> +</table> +</td></tr> +</table> + +<hr style="width: 5%;" /> + +<p class="center"><span class="smcap">Copyright</span>, 1900,<br /> By ELLEN +THORNEYCROFT FOWLER. <br /><i>All rights reserved.</i></p> +<hr style="width: 5%;" /> + + +<p class="center">DEDICATION</p> + + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">For all such readers as have chanced to be<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Either in Mershire or in Arcady,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">I write this book, that each may smile, and say,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">"Once on a time I also passed that way."<br /></span> +</div></div> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CONTENTS" id="CONTENTS"></a>CONTENTS</h2> + + +<table summary="toc" cellspacing="2" cellpadding="1"> +<tr><td><span class="smcap"><b>chapter</b></span></td><td> </td><td align="right"><span class="smcap"><b>page</b></span></td></tr> +<tr><td align="right"><a href="#CHAPTER_I"><b>I.</b></a></td><td align="left"><b>—<span class="smcap">The Osierfield</span> </b></td><td align="right"><a href="#Page_1"><b>1</b></a></td></tr> +<tr><td align="right"><a href="#CHAPTER_II"><b>II.</b></a></td><td align="left"><b>—<span class="smcap">Christopher</span> </b></td><td align="right"><a href="#Page_12"><b>12</b></a></td></tr> +<tr><td align="right"><a href="#CHAPTER_III"><b>III.</b></a></td><td align="left"><b>—<span class="smcap">Mrs. Bateson's tea-party</span> </b></td><td align="right"><a href="#Page_29"><b>29</b></a></td></tr> +<tr><td align="right"><a href="#CHAPTER_IV"><b>IV.</b></a></td><td align="left"><b>—<span class="smcap">School-days</span> </b></td><td align="right"><a href="#Page_51"><b>51</b></a></td></tr> +<tr><td align="right"><a href="#CHAPTER_V"><b>V.</b></a></td><td align="left"><b>—<span class="smcap">The Moat House</span> </b></td><td align="right"><a href="#Page_70"><b>70</b></a></td></tr> +<tr><td align="right"><a href="#CHAPTER_VI"><b>VI.</b></a></td><td align="left"><b>—<span class="smcap">Whit Monday</span> </b></td><td align="right"><a href="#Page_90"><b>90</b></a></td></tr> +<tr><td align="right"><a href="#CHAPTER_VII"><b>VII.</b></a></td><td align="left"><b>—<span class="smcap">Broader views</span> </b></td><td align="right"><a href="#Page_114"><b>114</b></a></td></tr> +<tr><td align="right"><a href="#CHAPTER_VIII"><b>VIII.</b></a></td><td align="left"><b>—<span class="smcap">Greater than our hearts</span> </b></td><td align="right"><a href="#Page_137"><b>137</b></a></td></tr> +<tr><td align="right"><a href="#CHAPTER_IX"><b>IX.</b></a></td><td align="left"><b>—<span class="smcap">Felicia finds happiness</span> </b></td><td align="right"><a href="#Page_156"><b>156</b></a></td></tr> +<tr><td align="right"><a href="#CHAPTER_X"><b>X.</b></a></td><td align="left"><b>—<span class="smcap">Changes</span> </b></td><td align="right"><a href="#Page_187"><b>187</b></a></td></tr> +<tr><td align="right"><a href="#CHAPTER_XI"><b>XI.</b></a></td><td align="left"><b>—<span class="smcap">Miss Farringdon's will</span> </b></td><td align="right"><a href="#Page_213"><b>213</b></a></td></tr> +<tr><td align="right"><a href="#CHAPTER_XII"><b>XII.</b></a></td><td align="left"><b>—<span class="smcap">"The daughters of Philip</span>" </b></td><td align="right"><a href="#Page_232"><b>232</b></a></td></tr> +<tr><td align="right"><a href="#CHAPTER_XIII"><b>XIII.</b></a></td><td align="left"><b>—<span class="smcap">Cecil Farquhar</span> </b></td><td align="right"><a href="#Page_249"><b>249</b></a></td></tr> +<tr><td align="right"><a href="#CHAPTER_XIV"><b>XIV.</b></a></td><td align="left"><b>—<span class="smcap">On the river</span> </b></td><td align="right"><a href="#Page_272"><b>272</b></a></td></tr> +<tr><td align="right"><a href="#CHAPTER_XV"><b>XV.</b></a></td><td align="left"><b>—<span class="smcap">Little Willie</span> </b></td><td align="right"><a href="#Page_292"><b>292</b></a></td></tr> +<tr><td align="right"><a href="#CHAPTER_XVI"><b>XVI.</b></a></td><td align="left"><b>—<span class="smcap">This side of the hills</span> </b></td><td align="right"><a href="#Page_306"><b>306</b></a></td></tr> +<tr><td align="right"><a href="#CHAPTER_XVII"><b>XVII.</b></a></td><td align="left"><b>—<span class="smcap">George Farringdon's son</span> </b></td><td align="right"><a href="#Page_325"><b>325</b></a></td></tr> +<tr><td align="right"><a href="#CHAPTER_XVIII"><b>XVIII.</b></a></td><td align="left"><b>—<span class="smcap">The other side of the hills</span> </b></td><td align="right"><a href="#Page_346"><b>346</b></a></td></tr> +</table> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1" id="Page_1">[Pg 1]</a></span></p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="THE_FARRINGDONS" id="THE_FARRINGDONS"></a>THE FARRINGDONS</h2> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_I" id="CHAPTER_I"></a><a href="#CONTENTS">CHAPTER I</a></h2> + +<h3>THE OSIERFIELD</h3> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">They herded not with soulless swine,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Nor let strange snares their path environ:<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Their only pitfall was a mine—<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Their pigs were made of iron.<br /></span> +</div></div> + + +<p>In the middle of Sedgehill, which is in the middle of Mershire, which is +in the middle of England, there lies a narrow ridge of high table-land, +dividing, as by a straight line, the collieries and ironworks of the +great coal district from the green and pleasant scenery of the western +Midlands. Along the summit of this ridge runs the High Street of the +bleak little town of Sedgehill; so that the houses on the east side of +this street see nothing through their back windows save the huge +slag-mounds and blazing furnaces and tall chimneys of the weird and +terrible, yet withal fascinating, Black Country; while the houses on the +west side of the street have sunny gardens and fruitful orchards, +sloping down toward a fertile land of woods and streams and meadows, +bounded in the far distance by the Clee Hills and the Wrekin, and in the +farthest distance of all by the blue Welsh mountains.</p> + +<p>In the dark valley lying to the immediate east of Sedgehill stood the +Osierfield Works, the largest<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2" id="Page_2">[Pg 2]</a></span> ironworks in Mershire in the good old +days when Mershire made iron for half the world. The owners of these +works were the Farringdons, and had been so for several generations. So +it came to pass that the Farringdons were the royal family of Sedgehill; +and the Osierfield Works was the circle wherein the inhabitants of that +place lived and moved. It was as natural for everybody born in Sedgehill +eventually to work at the Osierfield, as it was for him eventually to +grow into a man and to take unto himself a wife.</p> + +<p>The home of the Farringdons was called the Willows, and was separated by +a carriage-drive of half a mile from the town. Its lodge stood in the +High Street, on the western side; and the drive wandered through a fine +old wood, and across an undulating park, till it stopped in front of a +large square house built of gray stone. It was a handsome house inside, +with wonderful oak staircases and Adams chimneypieces; and there was an +air of great stateliness about it, and of very little luxury. For the +Farringdons were a hardy race, whose time was taken up by the making of +iron and the saving of souls; and they regarded sofas and easy-chairs in +very much the same light as they regarded theatres and strong drink, +thereby proving that their spines were as strong as their consciences +were stern.</p> + +<p>Moreover, the Farringdons were of "the people called Methodists"; +consequently Methodism was the established religion of Sedgehill, +possessing there that prestige which is the inalienable attribute of all +state churches. In the eyes of Sedgehill it was as necessary to +salvation to pray at the chapel as to work at the Osierfield; and the +majority of the inhabitants would as soon have thought of worshipping at +any other sanctuary as of worshipping at the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_3" id="Page_3">[Pg 3]</a></span> beacon, a pillar which +still marks the highest point of the highest table-land in England.</p> + +<p>At the time when this story begins, the joint ownership of the +Osierfield and the Willows was vested in the two Miss Farringdons, the +daughters and co-heiresses of John Farringdon. John Farringdon and his +brother William had been partners, and had arranged between themselves +that William's only child, George, should marry John's eldest daughter, +Maria, and so consolidate the brothers' fortunes and their interest in +the works. But the gods—and George—saw otherwise. George was a +handsome, weak boy, who objected equally to work and to Methodism; and +as his father cared for nothing beyond those sources of interest, and +had no patience for any one who did, the two did not always see eye to +eye. Perhaps if Maria had been more unbending, things might have turned +out differently; but Methodism in its severest aspects was not more +severe than Maria Farringdon. She was a thorough gentlewoman, and +extremely clever; but tenderness was not counted among her excellencies. +George would have been fond of almost any woman who was pretty enough to +be loved and not clever enough to be feared; but his cousin Maria was +beyond even his powers of falling in love, although, to do him justice, +these powers were by no means limited. The end of it was that George +offended his father past forgiveness by running away to Australia rather +than marry Maria, and there disappeared. Years afterward a rumour +reached his people that he had married and died out there, leaving a +widow and an only son; but this rumour had not been verified, as by that +time his father and uncle were dead, and his cousins were reigning in +his stead; and it was hardly to be expected that the proud Miss<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_4" id="Page_4">[Pg 4]</a></span> +Farringdon would take much trouble concerning the woman whom her +weak-kneed kinsman had preferred to herself.</p> + +<p>William Farringdon left all his property and his share in the works to +his niece Maria, as some reparation for the insult which his +disinherited son had offered to her; John left his large fortune between +his two daughters, as he never had a son; so Maria and Anne Farringdon +lived at the Willows, and carried on the Osierfield with the help of +Richard Smallwood, who had been the general manager of the collieries +and ironworks belonging to the firm in their father's time, and knew as +much about iron (and most other things) as he did. Maria was a good +woman of business, and she and Richard between them made money as fast +as it had been made in the days of William and John Farringdon. Anne, on +the contrary, was a meek and gentle soul, who had no power of governing +but a perfect genius for obedience, and who was always engaged on the +Herculean task of squaring the sternest dogmas with the most indulgent +practices.</p> + +<p>Even in the early days of this history the Miss Farringdons were what is +called "getting on"; but the Willows was, nevertheless, not without a +youthful element in it. Close upon a dozen years ago the two sisters had +adopted the orphaned child of a second cousin, whose young widow had +died in giving birth to a posthumous daughter; and now Elisabeth +Farringdon was the light of the good ladies' eyes, though they would +have considered it harmful to her soul to let her have an inkling of +this fact.</p> + +<p>She was not a pretty little girl, which was a source of much sorrow of +heart to her; and she was a distinctly clever little girl, of which she +was utterly <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_5" id="Page_5">[Pg 5]</a></span>unconscious, it being an integral part of Miss Farringdon's +system of education to imbue the young with an overpowering sense of +their own inferiority and unworthiness. During the first decade of her +existence Elisabeth used frequently and earnestly to pray that her hair +might become golden and her eyes brown; but as on this score the heavens +remained as brass, and her hair continued dark brown and her eyes +blue-gray, she changed her tactics, and confined her heroine-worship to +ladies of this particular style of colouring; which showed that, even at +the age of ten, Elisabeth had her full share of adaptability.</p> + +<p>One day, when walking with Miss Farringdon to chapel, Elisabeth +exclaimed, <i>à propos</i> of nothing but her own meditations, "Oh! Cousin +Maria, I do wish I was pretty!"</p> + +<p>Most people would have been too much afraid of the lady of the Willows +to express so frivolous a desire in her august hearing; but Elisabeth +was never afraid of anybody, and that, perhaps, was one of the reasons +why her severe kinswoman loved her so well.</p> + +<p>"That is a vain wish, my child. Favour is deceitful and beauty is vain; +and the Lord looketh on the heart and not on the outward appearance."</p> + +<p>"But I wasn't thinking of the Lord," replied Elisabeth: "I was thinking +of other people; and they love you much more if you are pretty than if +you aren't."</p> + +<p>"That is not so," said Miss Farringdon—and she believed she was +speaking the truth; "if you serve God and do your duty to your +neighbour, you will find plenty of people ready to love you; and +especially if you carry yourself well and never stoop." Like many +another elect lady, Cousin Maria regarded beauty of face as a vanity, +but beauty of figure as a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_6" id="Page_6">[Pg 6]</a></span> virtue; and to this doctrine Elisabeth owed +the fact that her back always sloped in the opposite direction to the +backs of the majority of people.</p> + +<p>But it would have surprised Miss Farringdon to learn how little real +effect her strict Methodist training had upon Elisabeth; fortunately, +however, few elder people ever do learn how little effect their training +has upon the young committed to their charge; if it were so, life would +be too hard for the generation that has passed the hill-top. Elisabeth's +was one of those happy, pantheistic natures that possess the gift of +finding God everywhere and in everything. She early caught the Methodist +habit of self-analysis and introspection, but in her it did not +develop—as it does in more naturally religious souls—into an almost +morbid conscientiousness and self-depreciation; she merely found an +artistic and intellectual pleasure in taking the machinery of her soul +to pieces and seeing how it worked.</p> + +<p>In those days—and, in fact, in all succeeding ones—Elisabeth lived in +a world of imagination. There was not a nook in the garden of the +Willows which was not peopled by creatures of her fancy. At this +particular time she was greatly fascinated by the subject of heathen +mythology, as set forth in Mangnall's Questions, and had devoted herself +to the service of Pallas Athene, having learned that that goddess was +(like herself) not surpassingly beautiful, and was, moreover, +handicapped by the possession of gray eyes. Miss Farringdon would have +been horrified had she known that a portion of the wood was set apart by +Elisabeth as "Athene's Grove," and that the contents of the waste-paper +basket were daily begged from the servants by the devotee, and offered +up, by the aid of real matches, on the shrine of the goddess.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_7" id="Page_7">[Pg 7]</a></span></p> + +<p>"Have you noticed, sister," Miss Anne remarked on one occasion, "how +much more thoughtful dear Elisabeth is growing?" Miss Anne's life was +one long advertisement of other people's virtues. "She used to be +somewhat careless in letting the fires go out, and so giving the +servants the trouble to relight them; but now she is always going round +the rooms to see if more coal is required, without my ever having to +remind her."</p> + +<p>"It is so, and I rejoice. Carelessness in domestic matters is a grave +fault in a young girl, and I am pleased that Elisabeth has outgrown her +habit of wool-gathering, and of letting the fire go out under her very +nose without noticing it. It is a source of thanksgiving to me that the +child is so much more thoughtful and considerate in this matter than she +used to be."</p> + +<p>Miss Farringdon's thanksgiving, however, would have been less fervent +had she known that, for the time being, her <i>protégée</i> had assumed the +rôle of a Vestal virgin, and that Elisabeth's care of the fires that +winter was not fulfilment of a duty but part of a game. This, however, +was Elisabeth's way; she frequently received credit for performing a +duty when she was really only taking part in a performance; which merely +meant that she possessed the artist's power of looking at duty through +the haze of idealism, and of seeing that, although it was good, it might +also be made picturesque. Elisabeth was well versed in The Pilgrim's +Progress and The Fairchild Family. The spiritual vicissitudes of Lucy, +Emily, and Henry Fairchild were to her a drama of never-failing +interest; while each besetment of the Crosbie household—which was as +carefully preserved for its particular owner as if sin were a species of +ground game—never<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8" id="Page_8">[Pg 8]</a></span> failed to thrill her with enjoyable disgust. She +knew a great portion of the Methodist hymn-book by heart, and pondered +long over the interesting preface to that work, wondering much what +"doggerel" and "botches" could be—she inclined to the supposition that +the former were animals and the latter were diseases; but even her vivid +imagination failed to form a satisfactory representation of such queer +kittle-cattle as "feeble expletives." Every Sunday she gloated over the +frontispiece of John Wesley, in his gown and bands and white ringlets, +feeling that, though poor as a picture, it was very superior to the +letterpress; the worst illustrations being better than the best poetry, +as everybody under thirteen must know. But Elisabeth's library was not +confined to the volumes above mentioned; she regularly perused with +interest two little periodicals, called respectively Early Days and The +Juvenile Offering. The former treated of youthful saints at home; and +its white paper cover was adorned by the picture of a shepherd, +comfortably if peculiarly attired in a frock coat and top +hat—presumably to portray that it was Sunday. The latter magazine +devoted itself to histories dealing with youthful saints abroad; and its +cover was decorated with a representation of young black persons +apparently engaged in some religious exercise. In this picture the frock +coats and top hats were conspicuous by their absence.</p> + +<p>There were two pictures in the breakfast-room at the Willows which +occupied an important place in Elisabeth's childish imaginings. The +first hung over the mantelpiece, and was called The Centenary Meeting. +It represented a chapel full of men in suffocating cravats, turning +their backs upon the platform and looking at the public instead—a more +effective if<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_9" id="Page_9">[Pg 9]</a></span> less realistic attitude than the ordinary one of sitting +the right way about; because—as Elisabeth reasoned, and reasoned +rightly—if these gentlemen had not happened to be behind before when +their portraits were taken, nobody would ever have known whose portraits +they were. It was a source of great family pride to her that her +grandfather appeared in this galaxy of Methodist worth; but the hero of +the piece, in her eyes, was one gentleman who had managed to swarm up a +pillar and there screw himself "to the sticking-place"; and how he had +done it Elisabeth never could conceive.</p> + +<p>The second picture hung over the door, and was a counterfeit presentment +of John Wesley's escape from the burning rectory at Epworth. In those +days Elisabeth was so small and the picture hung so high that she could +not see it very distinctly; but it appeared to her that the boy Wesley +(whom she confused in her own mind with the infant Samuel) was flying +out of an attic window by means of flowing white wings, while a horse +was suspended in mid-air ready to carry him straight to heaven.</p> + +<p>Every Sunday she accompanied her cousins to East Lane Chapel, at the +other end of Sedgehill, and here she saw strange visions and dreamed +strange dreams. The distinguishing feature of this sanctuary was a sort +of reredos in oils, in memory of a dead and gone Farringdon, which +depicted a gigantic urn, surrounded by a forest of cypress, through the +shades whereof flitted "young-eyed cherubims" with dirty wings and +bilious complexions, these last mentioned blemishes being, it is but +fair to add, the fault of the atmosphere and not of the artist. For +years Elisabeth firmly believed that this altar-piece was a trustworthy +representation of heaven; and she felt, therefore,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_10" id="Page_10">[Pg 10]</a></span> a pleasant, +proprietary interest in it, as the view of an estate to which she would +one day succeed.</p> + +<p>There was also a stained-glass window in East Lane Chapel, given by the +widow of a leading official. The baptismal name of the deceased had been +Jacob; and the window showed forth Jacob's Dream, as a delicate +compliment to the departed. Elisabeth delighted in this window, it was +so realistic. The patriarch lay asleep, with his head on a little white +tombstone at the foot of a solid oak staircase, which was covered with a +red carpet neatly fastened down by brass rods; while up and down this +staircase strolled fair-haired angels in long white nightgowns and +purple wings.</p> + +<p>Not of course then, but in after years, Elisabeth learned to understand +that this window was a type and an explanation of the power of early +Methodism, the strength whereof lay in its marvellous capacity of +adapting religion to the needs and use of everyday life, and of bringing +the infinite into the region of the homely and commonplace. We, with our +added culture and our maturer artistic perceptions, may smile at a +Jacob's Ladder formed according to the domestic architecture of the +first half of the nineteenth century; but the people to whom the other +world was so near and so real that they perceived nothing incongruous in +an ordinary stair-carpet which was being trodden by the feet of angels, +had grasped a truth which on one side touched the divine, even though on +the other it came perilously near to the grotesque. And He, Who taught +them as by parables, never misunderstood—as did certain of His +followers—their reverent irreverence; but, understanding it, saw that +it was good.</p> + +<p>The great day in East Lane Chapel was the Sunday <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_11" id="Page_11">[Pg 11]</a></span>School anniversary; +and in Elisabeth's childish eyes this was a feast compared with which +Christmas and Easter sank to the level of black-letter days. On these +festivals the Sunday School scholars sat all together in those parts of +the gallery adjacent to the organ, the girls wearing white frocks and +blue neckerchiefs, and the boys black suits and blue ties. The pews were +strewn with white hymn-sheets, which lay all over the chapel like snow +in Salmon, and which contained special spiritual songs more stirring in +their character than the contents of the Hymn-book; these hymns the +Sunday School children sang by themselves, while the congregation sat +swaying to and fro to the tune. And Elisabeth's soul was uplifted within +her as she listened to the children's voices; for she felt that mystical +hush which—let us hope—comes to us all at some time or other, when we +hide our faces in our mantles and feel that a Presence is passing by, +and is passing by so near to us that we have only to stretch out our +hands in order to touch it. At sundry times and in divers manners does +that wonderful sense of a Personal Touch come to men and to women. It +may be in a wayside Bethel, it may be in one of the fairest fanes of +Christendom, or it may be not in any temple made with hands: according +to the separate natures which God has given to us, so must we choose the +separate ways that will lead us to Him; and as long as there are +different natures there must be various ways. Then let each of us take +the path at the end whereof we see Him standing, always remembering that +wayfaring men, though fools, shall not err therein; and never forgetting +that—come whence and how they may—whosoever shall touch but the hem of +His garment shall be made perfectly whole.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_12" id="Page_12">[Pg 12]</a></span></p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_II" id="CHAPTER_II"></a><a href="#CONTENTS">CHAPTER II</a></h2> + +<h3>CHRISTOPHER</h3> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">And when perchance of all perfection<br /></span> +<span class="i6">You've seen an end,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Your thoughts may turn in my direction<br /></span> +<span class="i6">To find a friend.<br /></span> +</div></div> + + +<p>There are two things which are absolutely necessary to the well-being of +the normal feminine mind—namely, one romantic attachment and one +comfortable friendship. Elisabeth was perfectly normal and extremely +feminine; and consequently she provided herself early with these two +aids to happiness.</p> + +<p>In those days the object of her romantic attachment was her cousin Anne. +Anne Farringdon was one of those graceful, elegant women who appear so +much deeper than they really are. All her life she had been inspiring +devotion which she was utterly unable to fathom; and this was still the +case with regard to herself and her adoring little worshipper.</p> + +<p>People always wondered why Anne Farringdon had never married; and +explained the mystery to their own satisfaction by conjecturing that she +had had a disappointment in her youth, and had been incapable of loving +twice. It never struck them—which was actually the case—that she had +been incapable of loving once; and that her single-blessedness was due +to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_13" id="Page_13">[Pg 13]</a></span> no unforgotten love-story, but to the unromantic fact that among her +score of lovers she had never found a man for whom she seriously cared. +In a delicate and ladylike fashion she had flirted outrageously in her +time; but she had always broken hearts so gently, and put away the +pieces so daintily, that the owners of these hearts had never dreamed of +resenting the damage she had wrought. She had refused them with such a +world of pathos in her beautiful eyes—the Farringdon gray-blue eyes, +with thick black brows and long black lashes—that the poor souls had +never doubted her sympathy and comprehension; nor had they the slightest +idea that she was totally ignorant of the depth of the love which she +had inspired, or the bitterness of the pain which she had caused.</p> + +<p>All the romance of Elisabeth's nature—and there was a great deal of +it—was lavished upon Anne Farringdon. If Anne smiled, Elisabeth's sky +was cloudless; if Anne sighed, Elisabeth's sky grew gray. The mere sound +of Anne's voice vibrated through the child's whole being; and every +little trifle connected with her cousin became a sacred relic in +Elisabeth's eyes.</p> + +<p>Like every Methodist child, Elisabeth was well versed in her Bible; but, +unlike most Methodist children, she regarded it more as a poetical than +an ethical work. When she was only twelve, the sixty-eighth Psalm +thrilled her as with the sound of a trumpet; and she was completely +carried away by the glorious imagery of the Book of Isaiah, even when +she did not in the least understand its meaning. But her favourite book +was the Book of Ruth; for was not Ruth's devotion to Naomi the exact +counterpart of hers to Cousin Anne? And she used to make up long stories +in her own mind about how<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_14" id="Page_14">[Pg 14]</a></span> Cousin Anne should, by some means, lose all +her friends and all her money, and be driven out of Sedgehill and away +from the Osierfield Works; and then how Elisabeth would say, "Entreat me +not to leave thee," and would follow Cousin Anne to the ends of the +earth.</p> + +<p>People sometimes smile at the adoration of a young girl for a woman, and +there is no doubt but that the feeling savours slightly of school-days +and bread-and-butter; but there is also no doubt that a girl who has +once felt it has learned what real love is, and that is no small item in +the lesson-book of life.</p> + +<p>But Elisabeth had her comfortable friendship as well as her romantic +attachment; and the partner in that friendship was Christopher Thornley, +the nephew of Richard Smallwood.</p> + +<p>In the days of his youth, when his father was still manager of the +Osierfield Works, Richard had a very pretty sister; but as Emily +Smallwood was pretty, so was she also vain, and the strict atmosphere of +her home life did not recommend itself to her taste. After many quarrels +with her stern old father (her mother having died when she was a baby), +Emily left home, and took a situation in London as governess, in the +house of some wealthy people with no pretensions to religion. For this +her father never forgave her; he called it "consorting with children of +Belial." In time she wrote to tell Richard that she was going to be +married, and that she wished to cut off entirely all communication with +her old home. After that, Richard lost sight of her for many years; but +some time after his father's death he received a letter from Emily, +begging him to come to her at once, as she was dying. He complied with +her request, and found his once beautiful sister in great<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_15" id="Page_15">[Pg 15]</a></span> poverty in a +London lodging-house. She told him that she had endured great sorrow, +having lost her husband and her five eldest children. Her husband had +never been unkind to her, she said, but he was one of the men who lack +the power either to make or to keep money; and when he found he was +foredoomed to failure in everything to which he turned his hand, he had +not the spirit to continue the fight against Fate, but turned his face +to the wall and died. She had still one child left, a fair-haired boy of +about two years old, called Christopher; to her brother's care she +confided this boy, and then she also turned her face to the wall and +died.</p> + +<p>This happened a year or so before the Miss Farringdons adopted +Elisabeth; so that when that young lady appeared upon the scene, and +subsequently grew up sufficiently to require a playfellow, she found +Christopher Thornley ready to hand. He lived with his bachelor uncle in +a square red house on the east side of Sedgehill High Street, exactly +opposite to the Farringdons' lodge. It was one of those big, bald houses +with unblinking windows, that stare at you as if they had not any +eyebrows or eyelashes; and there was not even a strip of greenery +between it and the High Street. So to prevent the passers-by from +looking in and the occupants from looking out, the lower parts of the +front windows were covered with a sort of black crape mask, which put +even the sunbeams into half-mourning.</p> + +<p>Unlike Elisabeth, Christopher had a passion for righteousness and for +honour, but no power of artistic perception. His standard was whether +things were right or wrong, honourable or dishonourable; hers was +whether they were beautiful or ugly, pleasant or unpleasant. +Consequently the two moved<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_16" id="Page_16">[Pg 16]</a></span> along parallel lines; and she moved a great +deal more quickly than he did. Christopher had deep convictions, but was +very shy of expressing them; Elisabeth's convictions were not +particularly deep, but such as they were, all the world was welcome to +them as far as she was concerned.</p> + +<p>As the children grew older, one thing used much to puzzle and perplex +Christopher. Elisabeth did not seem to care about being good nearly as +much as he cared: he was always trying to do right, and she only tried +when she thought about it; nevertheless, when she did give her attention +to the matter, she had much more comforting and beautiful thoughts than +he had, which appeared rather hard. He was not yet old enough to know +that this difference between them arose from no unequal division of +divine favour, but was simply and solely a question of temperament. But +though he did not understand, he did not complain; for he had been +brought up under the shadow of the Osierfield Works, and in the fear and +love of the Farringdons; and Elisabeth, whatever her shortcomings, was a +princess of the blood.</p> + +<p>Christopher was a day-boy at the Grammar School at Silverhampton, a fine +old town some three miles to the north of Sedgehill; and there and back +he walked every day, wet or fine, and there he learned to be a scholar +and a gentleman, and sundry other important things.</p> + +<p>"Do you hear that noise?" said Elisabeth, one afternoon in the holidays, +when she was twelve and Christopher fifteen; "that's Mrs. Bateson's pig +being killed."</p> + +<p>"Hear it?—rather," replied Christopher, standing still in the wood to +listen.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_17" id="Page_17">[Pg 17]</a></span></p> + +<p>"Let's go and see it," Elisabeth suggested.</p> + +<p>Christopher looked shocked. "Well, you are a horrid girl! Nothing would +induce me to go, or to let you go either; but I'm surprised at your +being so horrid as to wish for such a thing."</p> + +<p>"It isn't really horridness," Elisabeth explained meekly; "it is +interest. I'm so frightfully interested in things; and I want to see +everything, just to know what it looks like."</p> + +<p>"Well, I call it horrid. And, what's more, if you saw it, it would make +you feel ill."</p> + +<p>"No; it wouldn't."</p> + +<p>"Then it ought to," said Christopher, who, with true masculine dulness +of perception, confounded weakness of nerve with tenderness of heart.</p> + +<p>Elisabeth sighed. "Nothing makes me feel ill," she replied +apologetically; "not even an accident or an after-meeting."</p> + +<p>Christopher could not help indulging in a certain amount of envious +admiration for an organism that could pass unmoved through such physical +and spiritual crises as these; but he was not going to let Elisabeth see +that he admired her. He considered it "unmanly" to admire girls.</p> + +<p>"Well, you are a rum little cove!" he said.</p> + +<p>"Of course, I don't want to go if you think it would be horrid of me; +but I thought we might pretend it was the execution of Mary Queen of +Scots, and find it most awfully exciting."</p> + +<p>"How you do go on about Mary Queen of Scots! Not long ago you were +always bothering about heathen goddesses, and now you have no thought +for anything but Mary."</p> + +<p>"Oh! but I'm still immensely interested in goddesses, Chris; and I do +wish, when you are doing<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_18" id="Page_18">[Pg 18]</a></span> Latin and Greek at school, you'd find out what +colour Pallas Athene's hair was. Couldn't you?"</p> + +<p>"No; I couldn't."</p> + +<p>"But you might ask one of the masters. They'd be sure to know."</p> + +<p>Christopher laughed the laugh of the scornful. "I say, you are a duffer +to suppose that clever men like schoolmasters bother their heads about +such rot as the colour of a woman's hair."</p> + +<p>"Of course, I know they wouldn't about a woman's," Elisabeth hastened to +justify herself; "but I thought perhaps they might about a goddess's."</p> + +<p>"It is the same thing. You've no idea what tremendously clever chaps +schoolmasters are—much too clever to take any interest in girls' and +women's concerns. Besides, they are too old for that, too—they are +generally quite thirty."</p> + +<p>Elisabeth was silent for a moment; and Christopher whistled as he looked +across the green valley to the sunset, without in the least knowing how +beautiful it was. But Elisabeth knew, for she possessed an innate +knowledge of many things which he would have to learn by experience. But +even she did not yet understand that because the sunset was beautiful +she felt a sudden hunger and thirst after righteousness.</p> + +<p>"Chris, do you think it is wicked of people to fall in love?" she asked +suddenly.</p> + +<p>"Not exactly wicked; more silly, I should say," replied Chris +generously.</p> + +<p>"Because if it is wicked, I shall give up reading tales about it." This +was a tremendous and unnatural sacrifice to principle on the part of +Elisabeth.</p> + +<p>Christopher turned upon her sharply. "You<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_19" id="Page_19">[Pg 19]</a></span> don't read tales that Miss +Farringdon hasn't said you may read, do you?"</p> + +<p>"Yes; lots. But I never read tales that she has said I mustn't read."</p> + +<p>"You oughtn't to read any tale till you have asked her first if you +may."</p> + +<p>Elisabeth's face fell. "I never thought of doing such a thing as asking +her first. Oh! Chris, you don't really think I ought to, do you? Because +she'd be sure to say no."</p> + +<p>"That is exactly why you ought to ask." Christopher's sense of honour +was one of his strong points.</p> + +<p>Then Elisabeth lost her temper. "That is you all over! You are the most +tiresome boy to have anything to do with! You are always bothering about +things being wrong, till you make them wrong. Now I hardly ever think of +it; but I can't go on doing things after you've said they are wrong, +because that would be wrong of me, don't you see? And yet it wasn't a +bit wrong of me before I knew. I hate you!"</p> + +<p>"I say, Betty, I'm awfully sorry lo have riled you; but you asked me."</p> + +<p>"I didn't ask you whether I need ask Cousin Maria, stupid! You know I +didn't. I asked you whether it was wrong to fall in love, and then you +went and dragged Cousin Maria in. I wish I'd never asked you anything; I +wish I'd never spoken to you; I wish I'd got somebody else to play with, +and then I'd never speak to you again as long as I live."</p> + +<p>Of course it was unwise of Christopher to condemn a weakness to which +Elisabeth was prone, and to condone one to which she was not; but no man +has learned wisdom at fifteen, and but few at fifty.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_20" id="Page_20">[Pg 20]</a></span></p> + +<p>"You are the most disagreeable boy I have ever met, and I wish I could +think of something to do to annoy you. I know what I'll do; I'll go by +myself and see Mrs. Bateson's pig, just to show you how I hate you."</p> + +<p>And Elisabeth flew off in the direction of Mrs. Bateson's cottage, with +the truly feminine intention of punishing the male being who had dared +to disapprove of her, by making him disapprove of her still more. Her +programme, however, was frustrated; for Mrs. Bateson herself intervened +between Elisabeth and her unholy desires, and entertained the latter +with a plate of delicious bread-and-dripping instead. Finally, that +young lady returned to her home in a more magnanimous frame of mind; and +fell asleep that night wondering if the whole male sex were as stupid as +the particular specimen with which she had to do—a problem which has +puzzled older female brains than hers.</p> + +<p>But poor Christopher was very unhappy. It was agony to him when his +conscience pulled him one way and Elisabeth pulled him the other; and +yet this form of torture was constantly occurring to him. He could not +bear to do what he knew was wrong, and he could not bear to vex +Elisabeth; yet Elisabeth's wishes and his own ideas of right were by no +means always synonymous. His only comfort was the knowledge that his +sovereign's anger was, as a rule, short-lived, and that he himself was +indispensable to that sovereign's happiness. This was true; but he did +not then realize that it was in his office as admiring and sympathizing +audience, and not in his person as Christopher Thornley, that he was +necessary to Elisabeth. A fuller revelation was vouchsafed to him +later.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_21" id="Page_21">[Pg 21]</a></span></p> + +<p>The next morning Elisabeth was herself again, and was quite ready to +enjoy Christopher's society and to excuse his scruples. She knew that +self of hers when she said that she wished she had somebody else to play +with, in order that she might withdraw the light of her presence from +her offending henchman. To thus punish Christopher, until she had found +some one to take his place, was a course of action which would not have +occurred to her. Elisabeth's pride could never stand in the way of her +pleasure; Christopher's, on the contrary, might. It was a remarkable +fact that after Christopher had reproved Elisabeth for some fault—which +happened neither infrequently nor unnecessarily—he was always repentant +and she forgiving; yet nine times out of ten he had been in the right +and she in the wrong. But Elisabeth's was one of those exceptionally +generous natures which can pardon the reproofs and condone the virtues +of their friends; and she bore no malice, even when Christopher had been +more obviously right than usual. But she was already enough of a woman +to adapt to her own requirements his penitence for right-doing; and on +this occasion she took advantage of his chastened demeanour to induce +him to assist her in erecting a new shrine to Athene in the wood—which +meant that she gave all the directions and he did all the work.</p> + +<p>"You are doing it beautifully, Chris—you really are!" she exclaimed +with delight. "We shall be able to have a splendid sacrifice this +afternoon. I've got some feathers to offer up from the fowl cook is +plucking; and they make a much better sacrifice than waste paper."</p> + +<p>"Why?"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_22" id="Page_22">[Pg 22]</a></span></p> + +<p>Christopher was too shy in those days to put the fact into words; +nevertheless, the fact remained that Elisabeth interested him +profoundly. She was so original, so unexpected, that she was continually +providing him with fresh food for thought. Although he was cleverer at +lessons than she was, she was by far the cleverer at play; and though he +had the finer character, hers was the stronger personality. It was +because Elisabeth was so much to him that he now and then worried her +easy-going conscience with his strictures; for, to do him justice, the +boy was no prig, and would never have dreamed of preaching to anybody +except her. But it must be remembered that Christopher had never heard +of such things as spiritual evolutions and streams of tendency: to him +right or wrong meant heaven or hell—neither more nor less; and he was +overpowered by a burning anxiety that Elisabeth should eventually go to +heaven, partly for her own sake, and partly (since human love is +stronger than dogmas and doctrines) because a heaven, uncheered by the +presence of Elisabeth, seemed a somewhat dreary place wherein to spend +one's eternity.</p> + +<p>"Why do feathers make a better sacrifice than paper?" repeated +Christopher, Elisabeth being so much absorbed in his work that she had +not answered his question.</p> + +<p>"Oh! because they smell; and it seems so much more like a real +sacrifice, somehow, if it smells."</p> + +<p>"I see. What ideas you do get into your head!"</p> + +<p>But Elisabeth's volatile thoughts had flown off in another direction. +"You really have got awfully nice-coloured hair," she remarked, Chris +having taken his cap off for the sake of coolness, as he was<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_23" id="Page_23">[Pg 23]</a></span> heated +with his toil. "I do wish I had light hair like yours. Angels, and +goddesses, and princesses, and people of that kind always have golden +hair; but only bad fairies and cruel stepmothers have nasty dark hair +like me. I think it is horrid to have dark hair."</p> + +<p>"I don't: I like dark hair best; and I don't think yours is half bad." +Christopher never overstated a case; but then one had the comfort of +knowing that he always meant what he said, and frequently a good deal +more.</p> + +<p>"Don't you really, Chris? I think it is hideous," replied Elisabeth, +taking one of her elf-locks between her fingers and examining it as if +it were a sample of material; "it is like that ugly brown seaweed which +shows which way the wind blows—no, I mean that shows whether it is +going to rain or not."</p> + +<p>"Never mind; I've seen lots of people with uglier hair than yours." +Chris really could be of great consolation when he tried.</p> + +<p>"Aren't the trees lovely when they have got all their leaves off?" said +Elisabeth, her thoughts wandering again. "I believe I like them better +now than I do in summer. Now they are like the things you wish for, and +in the summer they are like the things you get; and the things you get +are never half as nice as the things you wish for."</p> + +<p>This was too subtle for Christopher. "I like them best with the leaves +on; but anyhow they are nicer to look at than the chimneys that we see +from our house. You can't think how gloomy it is for your rooms to look +out on nothing but smoke and chimneys and furnaces. When you go to bed +at night it's all red, and when you get up in the morning it's all +black."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_24" id="Page_24">[Pg 24]</a></span></p> + +<p>"I should like to live in a house like that. I love the smoke and the +chimneys and the furnaces—they are all so big and strong and full of +life; and they make you think."</p> + +<p>"What on earth do they make you think about?"</p> + +<p>Elisabeth's gray eyes grew dreamy. "They make me think that the Black +Country is a wilderness that we are all travelling through; and over it +there is always the pillar of cloud by day and the pillar of fire by +night, to tell us which way to go. I make up tales to myself about the +people in the wilderness; and how they watch the pillar, and how it +keeps them from idling in their work, or selling bad iron, or doing +anything that is horrid or mean, because it is a sign to them that God +is with them, just as it used to be to the Children of Israel."</p> + +<p>Christopher looked up from his work. Here was the old problem: Elisabeth +did not think about religion half as much as he did, and yet the helpful +and beautiful thoughts came to her and not to him. Still, it was +comforting to know that the smoke and the glare, which he had hated, +could convey such a message; and he made up his mind not to hate them +any more.</p> + +<p>"And then I pretend that the people come out of the wilderness and go to +live in the country over there," Elisabeth continued, pointing to the +distant hills; "and I make up lovely tales about that country, and all +the beautiful things there. That is what is so nice about hills: you +always think there are such wonderful places on the other side of them."</p> + +<p>For some minutes Christopher worked silently, and Elisabeth watched him. +Then the latter said suddenly:</p> + +<p>"Isn't it funny that you never hate people in a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_25" id="Page_25">[Pg 25]</a></span> morning, however much +you may have hated them the night before?"</p> + +<p>"Don't you?" Rapid changes of sentiment were beyond Christopher's +comprehension. He was by no means a variable person.</p> + +<p>"Oh! no. Last night I hated you, and made up a story in my own mind that +another really nice boy came to play with me instead of you. And I said +nice things to him, and horrid things to you; he and I played in the +wood, and you had to do lessons all by yourself at school, and had +nobody to play with. But when I woke up this morning I didn't care about +the pretending boy any more, and I wanted you."</p> + +<p>Christopher looked pleased; but it was not his way to express his +pleasure in words. "And so, I suppose, you came to look for me," he +said.</p> + +<p>"Not the first thing. Somehow it always makes you like a person better +when you have hated them for a bit, so I liked you awfully when I woke +this morning and remembered you. When you really are fond of a person, +you always want to do something to please them; so I went and told +Cousin Maria that I'd read a lot of books in the library without +thinking whether I ought to or not; but that now I wanted her to say +what I might read and what I mightn't."</p> + +<p>This was a course of action that Christopher could thoroughly understand +and appreciate. "Was she angry?" he asked.</p> + +<p>"Not a bit. That is the best of Cousin Maria—she never scolds you +unless you really deserve it; and she is very sharp at finding out +whether you deserve it or not. She said that there were a lot of books +in the library that weren't suitable for a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_26" id="Page_26">[Pg 26]</a></span> little girl to read; but +that it wasn't naughty of me to have read what I chose, since nobody had +told me not to. And then she said it was good of me to have told her, +for she should never have found it out if I hadn't."</p> + +<p>"And so it was," remarked Christopher approvingly.</p> + +<p>"No; it wasn't—and I told her it wasn't. I told her that the goodness +was yours, because it was you that made me tell. I should never have +thought of it by myself."</p> + +<p>"I say, you are a regular brick!"</p> + +<p>Elisabeth looked puzzled. "I don't see anything brickish in saying that; +it was the truth. It was you that made me tell, you know; and it wasn't +fair for me to be praised for your goodness."</p> + +<p>"You really are awfully straight, for a girl," said Christopher, with +admiration; "you couldn't be straighter if you were a boy."</p> + +<p>This was high praise, and Elisabeth's pale little face glowed with +delight. She loved to be commended.</p> + +<p>"It was really very good of you to speak to Miss Farringdon about the +books," continued Christopher; "for I know you'll hate having to ask +permission before you read a tale."</p> + +<p>"I didn't do it out of goodness," said Elisabeth thoughtfully—"I did it +to please you; and pleasing a person you are fond of isn't goodness. I +wonder if grown-up people get to be as fond of religion as they are of +one another. I expect they do; and then they do good things just for the +sake of doing good."</p> + +<p>"Of course they do," replied Christopher, who was always at sea when +Elisabeth became metaphysical.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_27" id="Page_27">[Pg 27]</a></span></p> + +<p>"I suppose," she continued seriously, "that if I were really good, +religion ought to be the same to me as Cousin Anne."</p> + +<p>"The same as Cousin Anne! What do you mean?"</p> + +<p>"I mean that if I were really good, religion would give me the same sort +of feelings as Cousin Anne does."</p> + +<p>"What sort of feelings?"</p> + +<p>"Oh! they are lovely feelings," Elisabeth answered—"too lovely to +explain. Everything is a treat if Cousin Anne is there. When she speaks, +it's just like music trickling down your back; and when you do something +that you don't like to please her, you feel that you do like it."</p> + +<p>"Well, you are a rum little thing! I should think nobody ever thought of +all the queer things that you think of."</p> + +<p>"Oh! I expect everybody does," retorted Elisabeth, who was far too +healthy minded to consider herself peculiar. After another pause, she +inquired: "Do you like me, Chris?"</p> + +<p>"Rather! What a foolish question to ask!" Christopher replied, with a +blush, for he was always shy of talking about his feelings; and the more +he felt the shyer he became.</p> + +<p>But Elisabeth was not shy, and had no sympathy with anybody who was. +"How much do you like me?" she continued.</p> + +<p>"A lot."</p> + +<p>"But I want to know exactly how much."</p> + +<p>"Then you can't. Nobody can tell how much they like anybody. You do ask +silly questions!"</p> + +<p>"Yes; they can. I can tell how much I like everybody," Elisabeth +persisted.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_28" id="Page_28">[Pg 28]</a></span></p> + +<p>"How?"</p> + +<p>"I have a sort of thermometer in my mind, just like the big thermometer +in the hall; and I measure how much I like people by that."</p> + +<p>"How much do you like your Cousin Anne?" he asked.</p> + +<p>"Ninety-six degrees," replied Elisabeth promptly.</p> + +<p>"And your Cousin Maria?"</p> + +<p>"Sixty."</p> + +<p>"And Mrs. Bateson?"</p> + +<p>"Fifty-four." Elisabeth always knew her own mind.</p> + +<p>"I say, how—how—how much do you like me?" asked Christopher, with some +hesitation.</p> + +<p>"Sixty-two," answered Elisabeth, with no hesitation at all.</p> + +<p>And Christopher felt a funny, cold feeling round his loyal heart. He +grew to know the feeling well in after years, and to wonder how +Elisabeth could understand so much and yet understand so little; but at +present he was too young to understand himself.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_29" id="Page_29">[Pg 29]</a></span></p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_III" id="CHAPTER_III"></a><a href="#CONTENTS">CHAPTER III</a></h2> + +<h3>MRS. BATESON'S TEA-PARTY</h3> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">The best of piggie when he dies<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Is not "interred with his bones,"<br /></span> +<span class="i0">But, in the form of porcine pies,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Blesses a world that heard his cries,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Yet heeded not those dying groans.<br /></span> +</div></div> + + +<p>"Cousin Maria, please may I go to tea at Mrs. Bateson's with +Christopher?" said Elisabeth one day, opening the library door a little, +and endeavouring to squeeze her small person through as narrow an +aperture as possible, as is the custom with children. She never called +her playmate "Chris" in speaking to Miss Farringdon; for this latter +regarded it as actually sinful to address people by any abbreviation of +their baptismal names, just as she considered it positively immoral to +partake of any nourishment between meals. "Mrs. Bateson has killed her +pig, and there will be pork-pies for tea."</p> + +<p>Miss Farringdon looked over her spectacles at the restless little +figure. "Yes, my child; I see no reason why you should not. Kezia +Bateson is a God-fearing woman, and her husband has worked at the +Osierfield for forty years. I have the greatest respect for Caleb +Bateson; he is a worthy man and a good Methodist, as his father was +before him."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_30" id="Page_30">[Pg 30]</a></span></p> + +<p>"He is a very ignorant man: he says Penny-lope."</p> + +<p>"Says what, Elisabeth?"</p> + +<p>"Penny-lope. I was showing him a book the other day about Penelope—the +woman with the web, you know—and he called her Penny-lope. I didn't +like to correct him, but I said Penelope afterward as often and as loud +as I could."</p> + +<p>"That was very ill-bred of you. Come here, Elisabeth."</p> + +<p>The child came and stood by the old lady's chair, and began playing with +a bunch of seals that were suspended by a gold chain from Miss +Farringdon's waist. It was one of Elisabeth's little tricks that her +fingers were never idle when she was talking.</p> + +<p>"What have I taught you are the two chief ends at which every woman +should aim, my child?"</p> + +<p>"To be first a Christian and then a gentlewoman," quoted Elisabeth +glibly.</p> + +<p>"And how does a true gentlewoman show her good breeding?"</p> + +<p>"By never doing or saying anything that could make any one else feel +uncomfortable," Elisabeth quoted again.</p> + +<p>"Then do you think that to display your own knowledge by showing up +another person's ignorance would make that person feel comfortable, +Elisabeth?"</p> + +<p>"No, Cousin Maria."</p> + +<p>"Knowledge is not good breeding, remember; it is a far less important +matter. A true gentlewoman may be ignorant; but a true gentlewoman will +never be inconsiderate."</p> + +<p>Elisabeth hung her head. "I see."</p> + +<p>"If you keep your thoughts fixed upon the people<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_31" id="Page_31">[Pg 31]</a></span> to whom you are +talking, and never upon yourself, you will always have good manners, my +child. Endeavour to interest and not to impress them."</p> + +<p>"You mean I must talk about their things and not about mine?"</p> + +<p>"More than that. Make the most of any common ground between yourself and +them; make the least of any difference between yourself and them; and, +above all, keep strenuously out of sight any real or fancied superiority +you may possess over them. I always think that Saint Paul's saying, 'To +the weak became I as weak,' was the perfection of good manners."</p> + +<p>"I don't think I quite understand."</p> + +<p>Miss Farringdon spoke in parables. "Then listen to this story. There was +once a common soldier who raised himself from the ranks and earned a +commission. He was naturally very nervous the first night he dined at +the officers' mess, as he had never dined with gentlemen before, and he +was afraid of making some mistake. It happened that the wine was served +while the soup was yet on the table, and with the wine the ice. The poor +man did not know what the ice was for, so took a lump and put it in his +soup."</p> + +<p>Elisabeth laughed.</p> + +<p>"The younger officers began to giggle, as you are doing," Miss +Farringdon continued; "but the colonel, to whom the ice was handed next, +took a lump and put it in his soup also; and then the young officers did +not want to laugh any more. The colonel was a perfect gentleman."</p> + +<p>"It seems to me," said Elisabeth thoughtfully, "that you've got to be +good before you can be polite."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_32" id="Page_32">[Pg 32]</a></span></p> + +<p>"Politeness appears to be what goodness really is," replied Miss +Farringdon, "and is an attitude rather than an action. Fine breeding is +not the mere learning of any code of manners, any more than gracefulness +is the mere learning of any kind of physical exercise. The gentleman +apparently, as the Christian really, looks not on his own things, but on +the things of others; and the selfish person is always both unchristian +and ill-bred."</p> + +<p>Elisabeth gazed wistfully up into Miss Farringdon's face. "I should like +to be a real gentlewoman, Cousin Maria; do you think I ever shall be?"</p> + +<p>"I think it quite possible, if you bear all these maxims in mind, and if +you carry yourself properly and never stoop. I can not approve of the +careless manners of the young people of to-day, who loll upon +easy-chairs in the presence of their elders, and who slouch into a room +with constrained familiarity and awkward ease," replied Miss Farringdon, +who had never sat in an easy-chair in her life, and whose back was still +as straight as an arrow.</p> + +<p>So in the afternoon of that day Christopher and Elisabeth attended Mrs. +Bateson's tea-party.</p> + +<p>The Batesons lived in a clean little cottage on the west side of High +Street, and enjoyed a large garden to the rearward. It was a singular +fact that whereas all their windows looked upon nothing more interesting +than the smokier side of the bleak and narrow street, their pigsties +commanded a view such as can rarely be surpassed for beauty and extent +in England. But Mrs. Bateson called her front view "lively" and her back +view "dull," and congratulated herself daily upon the aspect and the +prospect of her dwelling-place. The good lady's ideas as to what +constitutes beauty in furniture were by no<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_33" id="Page_33">[Pg 33]</a></span> means behind her opinions as +to what is effective in scenery. Her kitchen was paved with bright red +tiles, which made one feel as if one were walking across a coral reef, +and was flanked on one side with a black oak dresser of unnumbered +years, covered with a brave array of blue-and-white pottery. An artist +would have revelled in this kitchen, with its delicious effects in red +and blue; but Mrs. Bateson accounted it as nothing. Her pride was +centred in her parlour and its mural decorations, which consisted +principally of a large and varied assortment of funeral-cards, neatly +framed and glazed. In addition to these there was a collection of family +portraits in daguerreotype, including an interesting representation of +Mrs. Bateson's parents sitting side by side in two straight-backed +chairs, with their whole family twining round them—a sort of Swiss +Family Laocoon; and a picture of Mr. Bateson—in the attitude of Juliet +and the attire of a local preacher—leaning over a balcony, which was +overgrown with a semi-tropical luxuriance of artificial ivy, and which +was obviously too frail to support him. But the masterpiece in Mrs. +Bateson's art-gallery was a soul-stirring illustration of the death of +the revered John Wesley. This picture was divided into two compartments: +the first represented the room at Wesley's house in City Road, with the +assembled survivors of the great man's family weeping round his bed; and +the second depicted the departing saint flying across Bunhill Fields +burying-ground in his wig and gown and bands, supported on either side +by a stalwart angel.</p> + +<p>As Elisabeth had surmised, the entertainment on this occasion was +pork-pie; and Mrs. Hankey, a near neighbour, had also been bidden to +share the feast.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_34" id="Page_34">[Pg 34]</a></span> So the tea-party was a party of four, the respective +husbands of the two ladies not yet having returned from their duties at +the Osierfield.</p> + +<p>"I hope that you'll all make yourselves welcome," said the hostess, +after they had sat down at the festive board. "Master Christopher, my +dear, will you kindly ask a blessing?"</p> + +<p>Christopher asked a blessing as kindly as he could, and Mrs. Bateson +continued:</p> + +<p>"Well, to be sure, it is a pleasure to see you looking so tall and +strong, Master Christopher, after all your schooling. I'm not in favour +of much schooling myself, as I think it hinders young folks from +growing, and puts them off their vittles; but you give the contradiction +to that notion—doesn't he, Mrs. Hankey?"</p> + +<p>Mrs. Hankey shook her head. It was her rule in life never to look on the +bright side of things; she considered that to do so was what she called +"tempting Providence." Her theory appeared to be that as long as +Providence saw you were miserable, that Power was comfortable about you +and let you alone; but if Providence discovered you could bear more +sorrow than you were then bearing, you were at once supplied with that +little more. Naturally, therefore, her object was to convince Providence +that her cup of misery was full. But Mrs. Hankey had her innocent +enjoyments, in spite of the sternness of her creed. If she took light +things seriously, she took serious things lightly; so she was not +without her compensations. For instance, a Sunday evening's discourse on +future punishment and the like, with illustrations, was an unfailing +source of pure and healthful pleasure to her; while a funeral +sermon—when the chapel was hung with black, and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_35" id="Page_35">[Pg 35]</a></span> the bereaved family +sat in state in their new mourning, and the choir sang Vital Spark as an +anthem—filled her soul with joy. So when Mrs. Bateson commented with +such unseemly cheerfulness upon Christopher's encouraging appearance, it +was but consistent of Mrs. Hankey to shake her head.</p> + +<p>"You can never tell," she replied—"never; often them that looks the +best feels the worst; and many's the time I've seen folks look the very +picture of health just before they was took with a mortal illness."</p> + +<p>"Ay, that's so," agreed the hostess; "but I think Master Christopher's +looks are the right sort; such a nice colour as he's got, too!"</p> + +<p>"That comes from him being so fair complexioned—it's no sign of +health," persisted Mrs. Hankey; "in fact, I mistrust those fair +complexions, especially in lads of his age. Why, he ought to be as brown +as a berry, instead of pink and white like a girl."</p> + +<p>"It would look hideous to have a brown face with such yellow hair as +mine," said Christopher, who naturally resented being compared to a +girl.</p> + +<p>"Master Christopher, don't call anything that the Lord has made hideous. +We must all be as He has formed us, however that may be," replied Mrs. +Hankey reprovingly; "and it is not our place to pass remarks upon what +He has done for the best."</p> + +<p>"But the Lord didn't make him with a brown face and yellow hair; that's +just the point," interrupted Elisabeth, who regarded the bullying of +Christopher as her own prerogative, and allowed no one else to indulge +in that sport unpunished.</p> + +<p>"No, my love; that's true enough," Mrs. Bateson said soothingly: "a +truer word than that never was spoken. But I wish you could borrow some +of Master<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_36" id="Page_36">[Pg 36]</a></span> Christopher's roses—I do, indeed. For my part, I like to see +little girls with a bit of colour in their cheeks; it looks more +cheerful-like, as you might say; and looks go a long way with some +folks, though a meek and quiet spirit is better, taking it all round."</p> + +<p>"Now Miss Elisabeth does look delicate, and no mistake," assented Mrs. +Hankey; "she grows too fast for her strength, I'll be bound; and her +poor mother died young, you know, so it is in the family."</p> + +<p>Christopher looked at Elisabeth with the quick sympathy of a sensitive +nature. He thought it would frighten her to hear Mrs. Hankey talk in +that way, and he felt that he hated Mrs. Hankey for frightening +Elisabeth.</p> + +<p>But Elisabeth was made after a different pattern, and was not in the +least upset by Mrs. Hankey's gloomy forebodings. She was essentially +dramatic; and, unconsciously, her first object was to attract notice. +She would have preferred to do this by means of unsurpassed beauty or +unequalled talent; but, failing these aids to distinction, an early +death-bed was an advertisement not to be despised. In her mind's eye she +saw a touching account of her short life in Early Days, winding up with +a heart-rending description of its premature close; and her mind's eye +gloated over the sight.</p> + +<p>The hostess gazed at her critically. "She is pale, Mrs. Hankey, there's +no doubt of that; but pale folks are often the healthiest, though they +mayn't be the handsomest. And she is wiry, is Miss Elisabeth, though she +may be thin. But is your tea to your taste, or will you take a little +more cream in it?"</p> + +<p>"It is quite right, thank you, Mrs. Bateson; and the pork-pie is just +beautiful. What a light hand for pastry you always have! I'm sure I've +said over and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_37" id="Page_37">[Pg 37]</a></span> over again that I don't know your equal either for making +pastry or for engaging in prayer."</p> + +<p>Mrs. Bateson, as was natural, looked pleased. "I doubt if I ever made a +better batch of pies than this. When they were all ready for baking, +Bateson says to me, 'Kezia,' he says, 'them pies is a regular +picture—all so smooth and even-like, you can't tell which from +t'other.' 'Bateson,' said I, 'I've done my best with them; and if only +the Lord will be with them in the oven, they'll be the best batch of +pies this side Jordan.'"</p> + +<p>"And so they are," said Elisabeth; "they are perfectly lovely."</p> + +<p>"I'm glad you fancy them, my love; take some more, deary, it'll do you +good."</p> + +<p>"No, thanks; I'd rather have a wig now." And Elisabeth helped herself to +one of the three-cornered cakes, called "wigs," which are peculiar to +Mershire.</p> + +<p>"You always are fortunate in your pigs," Mrs. Hankey remarked; "such +fine hams and such beautiful roaded bacon I never see anywhere equal to +yours. It'll be a sad day for you, Mrs. Bateson, when swine fever comes +into the district. I know no one as'll feel it more."</p> + +<p>"Now you must tell us all about your niece's wedding, Mrs. Hankey," Mrs. +Bateson said—"her that was married last week. My word alive, but your +sister is wonderful fortunate in settling her daughters! That's what I +call a well-brought-up family, and no mistake. Five daughters, and each +one found peace and a pious husband before she was five-and-twenty."</p> + +<p>"The one before last married a Churchman," said Mrs. Hankey +apologetically, as if the union thus referred to were somewhat +morganatic in its character,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_38" id="Page_38">[Pg 38]</a></span> and therefore no subject for pride or +congratulation.</p> + +<p>"Well, to be sure! Still, he may make her a good husband."</p> + +<p>"He may or he may not; you never can tell. It seems to me that husbands +are like new boots—you can't tell where they're going to pinch you till +it's too late to change 'em. And as for creaking, why, the boots that +are quietest in the shop are just the ones that fairly disgrace you when +you come into chapel late on a Sunday morning, and think to slip in +quietly during the first prayer; and it is pretty much the same with +husbands—those that are the meekest in the wooing are the most +masterful to live with."</p> + +<p>"What was the name of the Churchman your niece married?" asked Mrs. +Bateson. "I forget."</p> + +<p>"Wilkins—Tom Wilkins. He isn't a bad fellow in some respects—he is +steady and sober, and never keeps back a farthing of his wages for +himself; but his views are something dreadful. I can not stand them at +any price, and so I'm forever telling his wife."</p> + +<p>"Dear me! That's sad news, Mrs. Hankey."</p> + +<p>"Would you believe it, he don't hold with the good old Methodist habit +of telling out loud what the Lord has done for your soul? He says +religion should be acted up to and not talked about; but, for my part, I +can't abide such closeness."</p> + +<p>"Nor I," agreed Mrs. Bateson warmly; "I don't approve of treating the +Lord like a poor relation, as some folks seem to do. They'll go to His +house and they'll give Him their money; but they're fairly ashamed of +mentioning His Name in decent company."</p> + +<p>"Just so; and that's Tom Wilkins to the life.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_39" id="Page_39">[Pg 39]</a></span> He's a good husband and a +regular church-goer; but as for the word that edifieth, you might as +well look for it from a naked savage as from him. Many a time have I +said to his wife, 'Tom may be a kind husband in the time of prosperity, +as I make no doubt he is—there's plenty of that sort in the world; but +you wait till the days of adversity come, and I doubt that then you'll +be wishing you'd not been in such a hurry to get married, but had waited +till you had got a good Methodist!' And so she will, I'll be bound; and +the sooner she knows it the better."</p> + +<p>Mrs. Bateson sighed at the gloomy prospect opening out before young Mrs. +Wilkins; then she asked:</p> + +<p>"How did the last daughter's wedding go off? She married a Methodist, +surely?"</p> + +<p>"She did, Mrs. Bateson; and a better match no mother could wish for her +daughter, not even a duchess born; he's a chapel-steward and a +master-painter, and has six men under him. There he is, driving to work +and carrying his own ladders in his own cart, like a lord, as you may +say, by day; and there he is on a Thursday evening, letting and +reletting the pews and sittings after service, like a real gentleman. As +I said to my sister, I only hope he may be spared to make Susan a good +husband; but when a man is a chapel-steward at thirty-four, and drives +his own cart, you begin to think that he is too good for this world, and +that he is almost ripe for a better one."</p> + +<p>"You do indeed; there's no denying that."</p> + +<p>"But the wedding was beautiful: I never saw its equal—never; and as for +the prayer that the minister offered up at the end of the service, I +only wish you'd been there to hear it, Mrs. Bateson, it was so +interesting and instructive. Such a lot of information in it about love +and marriage and the like as I'd never<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_40" id="Page_40">[Pg 40]</a></span> heard before; and when he +referred to the bridegroom's first wife, and drew a picture of how she'd +be waiting to welcome them both, when the time came, on the further +shore—upon my word, there wasn't a dry eye in the chapel!" And Mrs. +Hankey wiped hers at the mere remembrance of the scene.</p> + +<p>"But what did Susan say?" asked Elisabeth, with great interest. "I +expect she didn't want another wife to welcome them on the further +shore."</p> + +<p>"Oh! Miss Elisabeth, what a naughty, selfish little girl you are!" +exclaimed Susan's aunt, much shocked. "What would Miss Farringdon think +if she heard you? Why, you don't suppose, surely, that when folks get to +heaven they'll be so greedy and grasping that they'll want to keep +everything to themselves, do you? My niece is a good girl and a member +of society, and she was as pleased as anybody at the minister's +beautiful prayer."</p> + +<p>Elisabeth was silent, but unconvinced.</p> + +<p>"How is your sister herself?" inquired Mrs. Bateson. "I expect she's a +bit upset now that the fuss is all over, and she hasn't a daughter left +to bless herself with."</p> + +<p>Mrs. Hankey sighed cheerfully. "Well, she did seem rather low-spirited +when all the mess was cleared up, and Susan had gone off to her own +home; but I says to her, 'Never mind, Sarah, and don't you worry +yourself; now that the weddings are over, the funerals will soon begin.' +You see, you must cheer folks up a bit, Mrs. Bateson, when they're +feeling out of sorts."</p> + +<p>"You must indeed," agreed the lady of the house, feeling that her guest +had hit upon a happy vein of consolation; "it is dull without daughters +when you've once got accustomed to 'em, daughters being<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_41" id="Page_41">[Pg 41]</a></span> a sight more +comfortable and convenient than sons, to my mind."</p> + +<p>"Well, you see, daughters you can teach to know theirselves, and sons; +you can't. Though even daughters can never rest till they've got +married, more's the pity. If they knowed as much about men as I do, +they'd be thanking the Lord that He'd created them single, instead of +forever fidgeting to change the state to which they were born."</p> + +<p>"Well, I holds with folks getting married," argued Mrs. Bateson; "it +gives 'em something to think about between Sunday's sermon and +Thursday's baking; and if folks have nothing to think about, they think +about mischief."</p> + +<p>"That's true, especially if they happen to be men."</p> + +<p>"Why do men think about mischief more than women do?" asked Elisabeth, +who always felt hankerings after the why and wherefore of things.</p> + +<p>"Because, my dear, the Lord made 'em so, and it is not for us to +complain," replied Mrs. Hankey, in a tone which implied that, had the +rôle of Creator been allotted to her, the idiosyncrasies of the male sex +would have been much less marked than they are at present. "They've no +sense, men haven't; that's what is the matter with them."</p> + +<p>"You never spoke a truer word, Mrs. Hankey," agreed her hostess; "the +very best of them don't properly know the difference between their souls +and their stomachs; and they fancy that they are a-wrestling with their +doubts, when really it is their dinners that are a-wrestling with them. +Now take Bateson hisself, and a kinder husband or a better Methodist +never drew breath; yet so sure as he touches a bit of pork, he begins to +worn hisself about the doctrine of Election till there's no living with +him."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_42" id="Page_42">[Pg 42]</a></span></p> + +<p>"That's a man all over, to the very life," said Mrs. Hankey +sympathetically; "and he never has the sense to see what's wrong with +him, I'll be bound."</p> + +<p>"Not he—he wouldn't be a man if he had. And then he'll sit in the front +parlour and engage in prayer for hours at a time, till I says to him, +'Bateson,' says I, 'I'd be ashamed to go troubling the Lord with a +prayer when a pinch o' carbonate o' soda would set things straight +again.'"</p> + +<p>"And quite right, Mrs. Bateson; it's often a wonder to me that the Lord +has patience with men, seeing that their own wives haven't."</p> + +<p>"And to me, too. Now Bateson has been going on like this for thirty +years or more; yet if there's roast pork on the table, and I say a word +to put him off it, he's that hurt as never was. Why, I'm only too glad +to see him enjoying his food if no harm comes of it; but it's dreary +work seeing your husband in the Slough of Despond, especially when it's +your business to drag him out again, and most especially when you +particularly warned him against going in."</p> + +<p>Mrs. Hankey groaned. "The Bible says true when it tells us that men are +born to give trouble as the sparks fly upward; and it is a funny +Providence, to my mind, as ordains for women to be so bothered with 'em. +At my niece's wedding, as we were just speaking about, 'Susan,' I says, +'I wish you happiness; and I only hope you won't live to regret your +marriage as I have done mine.' For my part, I can't see what girls want +with husbands at all; they are far better without them."</p> + +<p>"Not they, Mrs. Hankey," replied Mrs. Bateson warmly; "any sort of a +husband is better than none, to my mind. Life is made up of naughts and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_43" id="Page_43">[Pg 43]</a></span> +crosses; and the folks that get the crosses are better off than those +that get the naughts, though that husbands are crosses I can't pretend +to deny; but I haven't patience with single women, I haven't—they have +nothing to occupy their minds, and so they get to talking about their +health and such-like fal-lals."</p> + +<p>"Saint Paul didn't hold with you," said Mrs. Hankey, with reproach in +her tone; "he thought that the unmarried women minded the things of the +Lord better than the married ones."</p> + +<p>"Saint Paul didn't know much about the subject, and how could he be +expected to, being only a bachelor himself, poor soul? But if he'd had a +wife, she'd soon have told him what the unmarried women were thinking +about; and it wouldn't have been about the Lord, I'll be bound. Now take +Jemima Stubbs; does she mind the things of the Lord more than you and I +do, Mrs. Hankey, I should like to know?"</p> + +<p>"I can't say; it is not for us to judge."</p> + +<p>"Not she! Why, she's always worrying about that poor little brother of +hers, what's lame. I often wish that the Lord would think on him and +take him, for he's a sore burden on Jemima, he is. If you're a woman you +are bound to work for some man or another, and to see to his food and to +bear with his tantrums; and, for my part, I'd rather do it for a husband +than for a father or a brother. There's more credit in it, as you might +say."</p> + +<p>"There's something in that, maybe."</p> + +<p>"And after all, in spite of the botheration he gives, there's something +very cheerful in having a man about the house. They keep you alive, do +men. The last time I saw Jemima Stubbs she was as low as low could be. +'Jemima,' I says, 'you are out of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_44" id="Page_44">[Pg 44]</a></span> spirits.' 'Mrs. Bateson,' says she, +'I am that. I wish I was either in love or in the cemetery, and I don't +much mind which.'"</p> + +<p>"Did she cry?" asked Elisabeth, who was always absorbingly interested in +any one who was in trouble. With her, to pity was to love; and it was +difficult for her ever to love where she did not pity. Christopher did +not understand this, and was careful not to appeal to Elisabeth's +sympathy for fear of depressing her. Herein, both as boy and man, he +made a great mistake. It was not as easy to depress Elisabeth as it was +to depress him; and, moreover, it was sometimes good for her to be +depressed. But he did unto her as he would she should do unto him; and, +when all is said and done, it is difficult to find a more satisfactory +rule of conduct than this.</p> + +<p>"Cry, lovey?" said Mrs. Bateson; "I should just think she did—fit to +break her heart."</p> + +<p>Thereupon Jemima Stubbs became a heroine of romance in Elisabeth's eyes, +and a new interest in her life. "I shall go and see her to-morrow," she +said, "and take her something nice for her little brother. What do you +think he would like, Mrs. Bateson?"</p> + +<p>"Bless the child, she is one of the Good Shepherd's own lambs!" +exclaimed Mrs. Bateson, with tears in her eyes.</p> + +<p>Mrs. Hankey sighed. "It is the sweetest flowers that are the readiest +for transplanting to the Better Land," she said; and once again +Christopher hated her.</p> + +<p>But Elisabeth was engrossed in the matter in hand. "What would he like?" +she persisted—"a new toy, or a book, or jam and cake?"</p> + +<p>"I should think a book, lovey; he's fair set on<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_45" id="Page_45">[Pg 45]</a></span> books, is Johnnie +Stubbs; and if you'd read a bit to him yourself, it would be a fine +treat for the lad."</p> + +<p>Elisabeth's eyes danced with joy. "I'll go the first thing to-morrow +morning, and read him my favourite chapter out of The Fairchild Family; +and then I'll teach him some nice games to play all by himself."</p> + +<p>"That's a dear young lady!" exclaimed Mrs. Bateson, in an ecstasy of +admiration.</p> + +<p>"Do you think Jemima will cry when I go?"</p> + +<p>"No, lovey; she wouldn't so far forget herself as to bother the gentry +with her troubles, surely."</p> + +<p>"But I shouldn't be bothered; I should be too sorry for her. I always am +frightfully interested in people who are unhappy—much more interested +than in people who are happy; and I always love everybody when I've seen +them cry. It is so easy to be happy, and so dull. But why doesn't Jemima +fall in love if she wants to?"</p> + +<p>"There now!" cried Mrs. Bateson, in a sort of stage aside to an +imaginary audience. "What a clever child she is! I'm sure I don't know, +dearie."</p> + +<p>"It is a pity that she hasn't got a Cousin Anne," said Elisabeth, her +voice trembling with sympathy. "When you've got a Cousin Anne, it makes +everything so lovely."</p> + +<p>"And so it does, dearie—so it does," agreed Mrs. Bateson, who did not +in the least understand what Elisabeth meant.</p> + +<p>On the way home, after the tea-party was over, Christopher remarked:</p> + +<p>"Old Mother Bateson isn't a bad sort; but I can't stand Mother Hankey."</p> + +<p>"Why not?"</p> + +<p>"She says such horrid things." He had not yet<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_46" id="Page_46">[Pg 46]</a></span> forgiven Mrs. Hankey for +her gloomy prophecies respecting Elisabeth.</p> + +<p>"Not horrid, Chris. She is rather stupid sometimes, and doesn't know +when things are funny; but she never means to be really horrid, I am +sure."</p> + +<p>"Well, I think she is an old cat," persisted Christopher.</p> + +<p>"The only thing I don't like about her is her gloves," added Elisabeth +thoughtfully; "they are so old they smell of biscuit. Isn't it funny +that old gloves always smell of biscuit. I wonder why?"</p> + +<p>"I think they do," agreed Christopher; "but nobody except you would ever +have thought of saying it. You have a knack of saying what everybody +else is thinking; and that is what makes you so amusing."</p> + +<p>"I'm glad you think I'm amusing; but I can't see much funniness in just +saying what is true."</p> + +<p>"Well, I can't explain why it is funny; but you really are simply +killing sometimes," said Christopher graciously.</p> + +<p>The next day, and on many succeeding ones, Elisabeth duly visited Jemima +Stubbs and the invalid boy, although Christopher entreated her not to +worry herself about them, and offered to go in her place. But he failed +to understand that Elisabeth was goaded by no depressing sense of duty, +as he would have been in similar circumstances; she went because pity +was a passion with her, and therefore she was always absorbingly +interested in any one whom she pitied. Strength and success and +such-like attributes never appealed to Elisabeth, possibly because she +herself was strong, and possessed all the qualities of the successful +person; but weakness and failure were all-powerful in enlisting her +sympathy and <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_47" id="Page_47">[Pg 47]</a></span>interest and, through these, her love. As Christopher grew +older he dreamed dreams of how in the future he should raise himself +from being only the nephew of Miss Farringdon's manager to a position of +wealth and importance; and how he should finally bring all his glories +and honours and lay them at Elisabeth's feet. His eyes were not opened +to see that Elisabeth would probably turn with careless laughter from +all such honours thus manufactured into her pavement; but if he came to +her bent and bruised and brokenhearted, crushed with failure instead of +crowned with success, her heart would never send him empty away, but +would go out to him with a passionate longing to make up to him for all +that he had missed in life.</p> + +<p>A few days after Mrs. Bateson's tea-party he said to Elisabeth, for +about the twentieth time:</p> + +<p>"I say, I wish you wouldn't tire yourself with going to read to that +Stubbs brat."</p> + +<p>"Tire myself? What rubbish! nothing can tire me. I never felt tired in +my life; but I shouldn't mind it just once, to see what it feels like."</p> + +<p>"It feels distinctly unpleasant, I can tell you. But I really do wish +you'd take more care of yourself, or else you'll get ill, or have +headaches or something—you will indeed."</p> + +<p>"No, I shan't; I never had a headache. That's another of the things that +I don't know what they feel like; and yet I want to know what everything +feels like—even disagreeable things."</p> + +<p>"You'll know fast enough, I'm afraid," replied Christopher; "but even if +it doesn't tire you, you would enjoy playing in the garden more than +reading to Johnnie Stubbs—you know you would; and I can go and read to +the little chap, if you are set on his being read to."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_48" id="Page_48">[Pg 48]</a></span></p> + +<p>"But you would much rather play in the garden than read to him; and +especially as it is your holidays, and your own reading-time will soon +begin."</p> + +<p>"Oh! <i>I</i> don't matter. Never bother your head about <i>me</i>; remember I'm +all right as long as you are; and that as long as you're jolly, I'm +bound to have a good time. But it riles me to see you worrying and +overdoing yourself."</p> + +<p>"You don't understand, Chris; you really are awfully stupid about +understanding things. I don't go to see Jemima and Johnnie because I +hate going, and yet think I ought; I go because I am so sorry for them +both that my sorriness makes me like to go."</p> + +<p>But Christopher did not understand, and Elisabeth could not make him do +so. The iron of duty had entered into his childish soul; and, +unconsciously, he was always trying to come between it and Elisabeth, +and to save her from the burden of obligation which lay so heavily upon +his spirit. He was a religious boy, but his religion was of too stern a +cast to bring much joy to him; and he was passionately anxious that +Elisabeth should not be distressed in like manner. His desire was that +she should have sufficient religion to insure heaven, but not enough to +spoil earth—a not uncommon desire on behalf of their dear ones among +poor, ignorant human beings, whose love for their neighbour will surely +atone in some measure for their injustice toward God.</p> + +<p>"You see," Elisabeth continued, "there is nothing that makes you so fond +of people as being sorry for them. The people that are strong and happy +don't want your fondness, so it is no use giving it to them. It is the +weak, unhappy people that want<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_49" id="Page_49">[Pg 49]</a></span> you to love them, and so it is the weak, +unhappy people that you love."</p> + +<p>"But I don't," replied Christopher, who was always inclined to argue a +point; "when I like people, I should like them just the same as if they +went about yelling Te Deums at the top of their voices; and when I don't +like them, it wouldn't make me like them to see them dressed from head +to foot in sackcloth and ashes."</p> + +<p>"Oh! that's a stupid way of liking, I think."</p> + +<p>"It may be stupid, but it's my way."</p> + +<p>"Don't you like me better when I cry than when I laugh?" asked +Elisabeth, who never could resist a personal application.</p> + +<p>"Good gracious, no! I always like you the same; but I'd much rather you +laughed than cried—it is so much jollier for you; in fact, it makes me +positively wretched to see you cry."</p> + +<p>"It always vexes me," Elisabeth said thoughtfully, "to read about +tournaments, because I think it was so horrid of the Queen of Beauty to +give the prize to the knight who won."</p> + +<p>Christopher laughed with masculine scorn. "What nonsense! Who else could +she have given it to?"</p> + +<p>"Why, to the knight who lost, of course. I often make up a tale to +myself that I am the Queen of Beauty at a tournament; and when the +victorious knight rides up to me with his visor raised, I just laugh at +him, and say, 'You can have the fame and the glory and the cheers of the +crowd; that's quite enough for you!' And then I go down from my daïs, +right into the arena where the unhorsed knight is lying wounded, and +take off his helmet, and lay his head on my lap, and say, 'You shall +have the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_50" id="Page_50">[Pg 50]</a></span> prize, because you have got nothing else!' So then that knight +becomes my knight, and always wears my colours; and that makes up to him +for having been beaten at the tournament, don't you see?"</p> + +<p>"It would have been a rotten sort of tournament that was carried on in +that fashion; and your prize would have been no better than a +booby-prize," persisted Christopher.</p> + +<p>"How silly you are! I'm glad I'm not a boy; I wouldn't have been as +stupid as a boy for anything!"</p> + +<p>"Don't be so cross! You must see that the knight who wins is the best +knight; chaps that are beaten are not up to much."</p> + +<p>"Well, they are the sort I like best; and if you had any sense you'd +like them best, too." Whereupon Elisabeth removed the light of her +offended countenance from Christopher, and dashed off in a royal rage.</p> + +<p>As for him, he sighed over the unreasonableness of the weaker sex, but +accepted it philosophically as one of the rules of the game; and Chris +played games far too well to have anything but contempt for any one who +rebelled against the rules of any game whatsoever. It was a man's +business, he held, not to argue about the rules, but to play the game +according to them, and to win; or, if that was out of his power, to lose +pluckily and never complain.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_51" id="Page_51">[Pg 51]</a></span></p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_IV" id="CHAPTER_IV"></a><a href="#CONTENTS">CHAPTER IV</a></h2> + +<h3>SCHOOL-DAYS</h3> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Up to eighteen we fight with fears,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">And deal with problems grave and weighty,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And smile our smiles and weep our tears,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Just as we do in after years<br /></span> +<span class="i2">From eighteen up to eighty.<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>When Elisabeth was sixteen her noonday was turned into night by the +death of her beloved Cousin Anne. For some time the younger Miss +Farringdon had been in failing health; but it was her rôle to be +delicate, and so nobody felt anxious about her until it was too late for +anxiety to be of any use. She glided out of life as gracefully as she +had glided through it, trusting that the sternness of her principles +would expiate the leniency of her practice; and was probably surprised +at the discovery that it was the leniency of her practice which finally +expiated the sternness of her principles.</p> + +<p>She left a blank, which was never quite filled up, in the lives of her +sister Maria and her small cousin Elisabeth. The former bore her sorrow +better, on the whole, than did the latter, because she had acquired the +habit of bearing sorrow; but Elisabeth mourned with all the hopeless +misery of youth.</p> + +<p>"It is no use trying to make me interested in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_52" id="Page_52">[Pg 52]</a></span> things," she sobbed in +response to Christopher's clumsy though well-meant attempts to divert +her. "I shall never be interested in anything again—never. Everything +is different now that Cousin Anne is gone away."</p> + +<p>"Not quite everything," said Christopher gently.</p> + +<p>"Yes; everything. Why, the very trees don't look the same as they used +to look, and the view isn't a bit what it used to be when she was here. +All the ordinary things seem queer and altered, just as they do when you +see them in a dream."</p> + +<p>"Poor little girl!"</p> + +<p>"And now it doesn't seem worth while for anything to look pretty. I used +to love the sunsets, but now I hate them. What is the good of their +being so beautiful and filling the sky with red and gold, if <i>she</i> isn't +here to see them? And what is the good of trying to be good and clever +if she isn't here to be pleased with me? Oh dear! oh dear! Nothing will +ever be any good any more."</p> + +<p>Christopher laid an awkward hand upon Elisabeth's dark hair, and began +stroking it the wrong way. "I say, I wish you wouldn't fret so; it's +more than I can stand to see you so wretched. Isn't there anything that +I can do to make it up to you, somehow?"</p> + +<p>"No; nothing. Nothing will ever comfort me any more; and how could a +great, stupid boy like you make up to me for having lost her?" moaned +poor little Elisabeth, with the selfishness of absorbing grief.</p> + +<p>"Well, anyway, I am as fond of you as she was, for nobody could be +fonder of anybody than I am of you."</p> + +<p>"That doesn't help. I don't miss her so because<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_53" id="Page_53">[Pg 53]</a></span> she loved me, but +because I loved her; and I shall never, never love any one else as much +as long as I live."</p> + +<p>"Oh yes, you will, I expect," replied Christopher, who even then knew +Elisabeth better than she knew herself.</p> + +<p>"No—I shan't; and I should hate myself if I did."</p> + +<p>Elisabeth fretted so terribly after her Cousin Anne that she grew paler +and thinner than ever; and Miss Farringdon was afraid that the girl +would make herself really ill, in spite of her wiry constitution. After +much consultation with many friends, she decided to send Elisabeth to +school, for it was plain that she was losing her vitality through lack +of an interest in life; and school—whatever it may or may not +supply—invariably affords an unfailing amount of new interests. So +Elisabeth went to Fox How—a well-known girls' school not a hundred +miles from London—so called in memory of Dr. Arnold, according to whose +principles the school was founded and carried on.</p> + +<p>It would be futile to attempt to relate the history of Elisabeth +Farringdon without telling in some measure what her school-days did for +her; and it would be equally futile to endeavour to convey to the +uninitiated any idea of what that particular school meant—and still +means—to all its daughters.</p> + +<p>When Elisabeth had left her girlhood far behind her, the mere mention of +the name, Fox How, never failed to send thrills all through her, as God +save the Queen, and Home, sweet Home have a knack of doing; and for any +one to have ever been a pupil at Fox How, was always a sure and certain +passport to Elisabeth's interest and friendliness. The school was<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_54" id="Page_54">[Pg 54]</a></span> an +old, square, white house, standing in a walled garden; and those walls +enclosed all the multifarious interests and pleasures and loves and +rivalries and heart-searchings and soul-awakenings which go to make up +the feminine life from twelve to eighteen, and which are very much the +same in their essence, if not in their form, as those which go to make +up the feminine life from eighteen to eighty. In addition to these, the +walls enclosed two lawns and an archery-ground, a field and a pond +overgrown with water-lilies, a high mound covered with grass and trees, +and a kitchen-garden filled with all manner of herbs and pleasant +fruits—in short, it was a wonderful and extensive garden, such as one +sees now and then in some old-fashioned suburb, but which people have +neither the time nor the space to lay out nowadays. It also contained a +long, straight walk, running its whole length and shaded by impenetrable +greenery, where Elisabeth used to walk up and down, pretending that she +was a nun; and some delightful swings and see-saws, much patronized by +the said Elisabeth, which gave her a similar physical thrill to that +produced in later years by the mention of her old school.</p> + +<p>The gracious personality which ruled over Fox How in the days of +Elisabeth had mastered the rarely acquired fact that the word <i>educate</i> +is derived from <i>educo</i>, to <i>draw out</i>, and not (as is generally +supposed) from <i>addo</i>, to <i>give to</i>; so the pupils there were trained to +train themselves, and learned how to learn—a far better equipment for +life and its lessons than any ready-made cloak of superficial knowledge, +which covers all individualities and fits none. There was no cramming or +forcing at Fox How; the object of the school was not to teach girls how +to be scholars,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_55" id="Page_55">[Pg 55]</a></span> but rather how to be themselves—that is to say, the +best selves which they were capable of becoming. High character rather +than high scholarship was the end of education there; and good breeding +counted for more than correct knowledge. Not that learning was +neglected, for Elisabeth and her schoolfellows worked at their books for +eight good hours every day; but it did not form the first item on the +programme of life.</p> + +<p>And who can deny that the system of Fox How was the correct system of +education, at any rate, as far as girls are concerned? Unless a woman +has to earn her living by teaching, what does it matter to her how much +hydrogen there is in a drop of rain-water, or in what year Hannibal +crossed the Alps? But it will matter to her infinitely, for the +remainder of her mortal existence, whether she is one of those graceful, +sympathetic beings, whose pathway is paved by the love of Man and the +friendship of Woman; or one of that much-to-be-blamed, if +somewhat-to-be-pitied, sisterhood, who are unloved because they are +unlovely, and unlovely because they are unloved.</p> + +<p>It is not good for man, woman, or child to be alone; and the +companionship of girls of her own age did much toward deepening and +broadening Elisabeth's character. The easy give-and-take of perfect +equality was beneficial to her, as it is to everybody She did not forget +her Cousin Anne—the art of forgetting was never properly acquired by +Elisabeth; but new friendships and new interests sprang up out of the +grave of the old one, and changed its resting-place from a cemetery into +a garden. Elisabeth Farringdon could not be happy—could not exist, in +fact—without some absorbing affection and interest in life. There are +certain women to whom "the trivial<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_56" id="Page_56">[Pg 56]</a></span> round" and "the common task" are +all-sufficing who ask nothing more of life than that they shall always +have a dinner to order or a drawing-room to dust, and to whom the +delinquencies of the cook supply a drama of never-failing attraction and +a subject of never-ending conversation; but Elisabeth was made of other +material; vital interests and strong attachments were indispensable to +her well-being. The death of Anne Farringdon had left a cruel blank in +the young life which was none too full of human interest to begin with; +but this blank was to a great measure filled up by Elisabeth's adoration +for the beloved personage who ruled over Fox How, and by her devoted +friendship for Felicia Herbert.</p> + +<p>In after years she often smiled tenderly when she recalled the absolute +worship which the girls at Fox How offered to their "Dear Lady," as they +called her, and of which the "Dear Lady" herself was supremely +unconscious. It was a feeling of loyalty stronger than any ever excited +by crowned heads (unless, perhaps, by the Pope himself), as she +represented to their girlish minds the embodiment of all that was right, +as well as of all that was mighty—and represented it so perfectly that +through all their lives her pupils never dissociated herself from the +righteousness which she taught and upheld and practised. And this +attitude was wholly good for girls born in a century when it was the +fashion to sneer at hero-worship and to scoff at authority when the word +obedience in the Marriage Service was accused of redundancy, and the +custom of speaking evil of dignities was mistaken for self-respect.</p> + +<p>As for Felicia Herbert, she became for a time the very mainspring of +Elisabeth's life. She was a beautiful girl, with fair hair and clear-cut +features; and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_57" id="Page_57">[Pg 57]</a></span> Elisabeth adored her with the adoration that is freely +given, as a rule, to the girl who has beauty by the girl who has not. +She was, moreover, gifted with a sweet and calm placidity, which was +very restful to Elisabeth's volatile spirit; and the latter consequently +greeted her with that passionate and thrilling friendship which is so +satisfying to the immature female soul, but which is never again +experienced by the woman who has once been taught by a man the nature of +real love. Felicia was much more religious than Elisabeth, and much more +prone to take serious views of life. The training of Fox How made for +seriousness, and in that respect Felicia entered into the spirit of the +place more profoundly than Elisabeth was capable of doing; for Elisabeth +was always tender rather than serious, and broad rather than deep.</p> + +<p>"I shall never go to balls when I leave school," said Felicia to her +friend one day of their last term at Fox How, as the two were sitting in +the arbour at the end of the long walk. "I don't think it is right to go +to balls."</p> + +<p>"Why not? There can be no harm in enjoying oneself, and I don't believe +that God ever thinks there is."</p> + +<p>"Not in enjoying oneself in a certain way; but the line between +religious people and worldly people ought to be clearly marked. I think +that dancing is a regular worldly amusement, and that good people should +openly show their disapproval of it by not joining in it."</p> + +<p>"But God wants us to enjoy ourselves," Elisabeth persisted. "And He +wouldn't really love us if He didn't."</p> + +<p>"God wants us to do what is right, and it doesn't matter whether we +enjoy ourselves or not."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_58" id="Page_58">[Pg 58]</a></span></p> + +<p>"But it does; it matters awfully. We can't really be good unless we are +happy."</p> + +<p>Felicia shook her head. "We can't really be happy unless we are good; +and if we are good we shall 'love not the world,' but shall stand apart +from it."</p> + +<p>"But I must love the world; I can't help loving the world, it is so +grand and beautiful and funny. I love the whole of it: all the trees and +the fields, and the towns and the cities, and the prim old people and +the dear little children. I love the places—the old places because I +have known them so long, and the new places because I have never seen +them before; and I love the people best of all. I adore people, Felicia; +don't you?"</p> + +<p>"No; I don't think that I do. Of course I like the people that I like; +but the others seem to me dreadfully uninteresting."</p> + +<p>"But they are not; they are all frightfully interesting when once you +get to know them, and see what they really are made of inside. Outsides +may seem dull; but insides are always engrossing. That's why I always +love people when once I've seen them cry, because when they cry they are +themselves, and not any make-ups."</p> + +<p>"How queer to like people because you have seen them cry!"</p> + +<p>"Well, I do. I'd do anything for a person that I had seen cry; I would +really."</p> + +<p>Felicia opened her large hazel eyes still wider. "What a strange idea! +It seems to me that you think too much about feelings and not enough +about principles."</p> + +<p>"But thinking about feelings makes you think about principles; feelings +are the only things that ever make me think about principles at all."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_59" id="Page_59">[Pg 59]</a></span></p> + +<p>After a few minutes' silence Elisabeth asked suddenly:</p> + +<p>"What do you mean to do with your life when you leave here and take it +up?"</p> + +<p>"I don't know. I suppose I shall fall in love and get married. Most +girls do. And I hope it will be with a clergyman, for I do so love +parish work."</p> + +<p>"I don't think I want to get married," said Elisabeth slowly, "not even +to a clergyman."</p> + +<p>"How queer of you! Why not?"</p> + +<p>"Because I want to paint pictures and to become a great artist. I feel +there is such a lot in me that I want to say, and that I must say; and I +can only say it by means of pictures. It would be dreadful to die before +you had delivered the message that you had been sent into the world to +deliver, don't you think?"</p> + +<p>"It would be more dreadful to die before you had found one man to whom +you would be everything, and who would be everything to you," replied +Felicia.</p> + +<p>"Oh! I mean to fall in love, because everybody does, and I hate to be +behindhand with things; but I shall do it just as an experience, to make +me paint better pictures. I read in a book the other day that you must +fall in love before you can become a true artist; so I mean to do so. +But it won't be as important to me as my art," said Elisabeth, who was +as yet young enough to be extremely wise.</p> + +<p>"Still, it must be lovely to know there is one person in the world to +whom you can tell all your thoughts, and who will understand them, and +be interested in them."</p> + +<p>"It must be far lovelier to know that you have the power to tell all +your thoughts to the whole world, and that the world will understand +them and be interested in them," Elisabeth persisted.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_60" id="Page_60">[Pg 60]</a></span></p> + +<p>"I don't think so. I should like to fall in love with a man who was so +much better than I, that I could lean on him and learn from him in +everything; and I should like to feel that whatever goodness or +cleverness there was in me was all owing to him, and that I was nothing +by myself, but everything with him."</p> + +<p>"I shouldn't. I should like to feel that I was so good and clever that I +was helping the man to be better and cleverer even than he was before."</p> + +<p>"I should like all my happiness and all my interest to centre in that +one particular man," said Felicia; "and to feel that he was a fairy +prince, and that I was a poor beggar-maid, who possessed nothing but his +love."</p> + +<p>"Oh! I shouldn't. I would rather feel that I was a young princess, and +that he was a warrior, worn-out and wounded in the battle of life; but +that my love would comfort and cheer him after all the tiresome wars +that he'd gone through. And as for whether he'd lost or won in the wars, +I shouldn't care a rap, as long as I was sure that he couldn't be happy +without me."</p> + +<p>"You and I never think alike about things," said Felicia sadly.</p> + +<p>"You old darling! What does it matter, as long as we agree in being fond +of each other?"</p> + +<p>At eighteen Elisabeth said farewell to Fox How with many tears, and came +back to live at the Willows with Miss Farringdon. While she had been at +school, Christopher had been first in Germany and then in America, +learning how to make iron, so that they had never met during Elisabeth's +holidays; therefore, when he beheld her transformed from a little girl +into a full-blown young lady, he straightway<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_61" id="Page_61">[Pg 61]</a></span> fell in love with her. He +was, however, sensible enough not to mention the circumstance, even to +Elisabeth herself, as he realized, as well as anybody, that the nephew +of Richard Smallwood would not be considered a fitting mate for a +daughter of the house of Farringdon; but the fact that he did not +mention the circumstance in no way prevented him from dwelling upon it +in his own mind, and deriving much pleasurable pain and much painful +pleasure therefrom. In short, he dwelt upon it so exclusively and so +persistently that it went near to breaking his heart; but that was not +until his heart was older, and therefore more capable of being broken +past mending again.</p> + +<p>Miss Farringdon and the people of Sedgehill were alike delighted to have +Elisabeth among them once more; she was a girl with a strong +personality; and people with strong personalities have a knack of making +themselves missed when they go away.</p> + +<p>"It's nice, and so it is, to have Miss Elisabeth back again," remarked +Mrs. Bateson to Mrs. Hankey; "and it makes it so much cheerfuller for +Miss Farringdon, too."</p> + +<p>"Maybe it'll only make it the harder for Miss Farringdon when the time +comes for Miss Elisabeth to be removed by death or by marriage; and +which'll be the best for her—poor young lady!—the Lord must decide, +for I'm sure I couldn't pass an opinion, only having tried one, and that +nothing to boast of."</p> + +<p>"I wonder if Miss Farringdon will leave her her fortune," said Mrs. +Bateson, who, in common with the rest of her class, was consumed with an +absorbing curiosity as to all testamentary dispositions.</p> + +<p>"She may, and she may not; there's no prophesying about wills. I'm +pleased to say I can generally<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_62" id="Page_62">[Pg 62]</a></span> foretell when folks is going to die, +having done a good bit of sick-nursing in my time afore I married +Hankey; but as to foretelling how they're going to leave their money, I +can no more do it than the babe unborn; nor nobody can, as ever I heard +tell on."</p> + +<p>"That's so, Mrs. Hankey. Wills seem to me to have been invented by the +devil for the special upsetting of the corpse's memory. Why, some of the +peaceablest folks as I've ever known—folks as wouldn't have scared a +lady-cow in their lifetime—have left wills as have sent all their +relations to the right-about, ready to bite one another's noses off. +Bateson often says to me, 'Kezia,' he says, 'call no man honest till his +will's read.' And I'll be bound he's in the right. Still, it would be +hard to see Miss Elisabeth begging her bread after the way she's been +brought up, and Miss Farringdon would never have the conscience to let +her do it."</p> + +<p>"Folks leave their consciences behind with their bodies," said Mrs. +Hankey; "and I've lived long enough to be surprised at nothing where +wills are concerned."</p> + +<p>"That is quite true," replied Mrs. Bateson. "Now take Miss Anne, for +instance: she seemed so set on Miss Elisabeth that you'd have thought +she'd have left her a trifle; but not she! All she had went to her +sister, Miss Maria, who'd got quite enough already. Miss Anne was as +sweet and gentle a lady as you'd wish to see; but her will was as hard +as the nether millstone."</p> + +<p>"There's nothing like a death for showing up what a family is made of."</p> + +<p>"There isn't. Now Mr. William Farringdon's will was a very cruel one, +according to my ideas,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_63" id="Page_63">[Pg 63]</a></span> leaving everything to his niece and nothing to +his son. True, Mr. George was but a barber's block with no work in him, +and I'm the last to defend that; and then he didn't want to marry his +cousin, Miss Maria, for which I shouldn't blame him so much; if a man +can't choose his own wife and his own newspaper, what can he +choose?—certainly not his own victuals, for he isn't fit. But if folks +only leave their money to them that have followed their advice in +everything, most wills would be nothing but a blank sheet of paper."</p> + +<p>"And if they were, it wouldn't be a bad thing, Mrs. Bateson; there would +be less sorrow on some sides, and less crape on others, and far less +unpleasantness all round. For my part, I doubt if Miss Farringdon will +leave her fortune to Miss Elisabeth, and her only a cousin's child; for +when all is said and done, cousins are but elastic relations, as you may +say. The well-to-do ones are like sisters and brothers, and the poor +ones don't seem to be no connection at all."</p> + +<p>"Well, let's hope that Miss Elisabeth will marry, and have a husband to +work for her when Miss Farringdon is dead and gone."</p> + +<p>"Husbands are as uncertain as wills, Mrs. Bateson, and more sure to give +offence to them that trust in them; besides, I doubt if Miss Elisabeth +is handsome enough to get a husband. The gentry think a powerful lot of +looks in choosing a wife."</p> + +<p>Mrs. Bateson took up the cudgels on Elisabeth's behalf. "She mayn't be +exactly handsome—I don't pretend as she is; but she has a wonderful way +of dressing herself, and looking for all the world like a fashion-plate; +and some men have a keen eye for clothes."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_64" id="Page_64">[Pg 64]</a></span></p> + +<p>"I think nothing of fine clothes myself. Saint Peter warns us against +braiding of hair and putting on of apparel; and when all's said and done +it don't go as far as a good complexion, and we don't need any apostle +to tell us that—we can see it for ourselves."</p> + +<p>"And as for cleverness, there ain't her like in all Mershire," continued +Mrs. Bateson.</p> + +<p>"Bless you! cleverness never yet helped a woman in getting a husband, +and never will; though if she's got enough of it, it may keep her from +ever having one. I don't hold with cleverness in a woman myself; it has +always ended in mischief, from the time when the woman ate a bit of the +Tree of Knowledge, and there was such a to-do about it."</p> + +<p>"I wish she'd marry Mr. Christopher; he worships the very ground she +walks on, and she couldn't find a better man if she swept out all the +corners of the earth looking for one."</p> + +<p>"Well, at any rate, she knows all about him; that is something. I always +say that men are the same as kittens—you should take 'em straight from +their mothers, or else not take 'em at all; for, if you don't, you never +know what bad habits they may have formed or what queer tricks they will +be up to."</p> + +<p>"Maybe the manager's nephew ain't altogether the sort of husband you'd +expect for a Farringdon," said Mrs. Bateson thoughtfully; "I don't deny +that. But he's wonderful fond of her, Mr. Christopher is; and there's +nothing like love for smoothing things over when the oven ain't properly +heated, and the meat is done to a cinder on one side and all raw on the +other. You find that out when you're married."</p> + +<p>"You find a good many things out when you're married, Mrs. Bateson, and +one is that this world is<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_65" id="Page_65">[Pg 65]</a></span> a wilderness of care. But as for love, I +don't rightly know much about it, since Hankey would always rather have +had my sister Sarah than me, and only put up with me when she gave him +the pass-by, being set on marrying one of the family. I'm sure, for my +part, I wish Sarah had had him; though I've no call to say so, her +always having been a good sister to me."</p> + +<p>"Well, love's a fine thing; take my word for it. It keeps the men from +grumbling when nothing else will; except, of course, the grace of God," +added Mrs. Bateson piously, "though even that don't always seem to have +much effect, when things go wrong with their dinners."</p> + +<p>"That's because they haven't enough of it; they haven't much grace in +their hearts, as a rule, haven't men, even the best of them; and the +best of them don't often come my way. But as for Miss Elisabeth, she +isn't a regular Farringdon, as you may say—not the real daughter of the +works; and so she shouldn't take too much upon herself, expecting dukes +and ironmasters and the like to come begging to her on their bended +knees. She is only Miss Farringdon's adopted daughter, at best; and I +don't hold with adopted children, I don't; I think it is better and more +natural to be born of your own parents, like most folk are."</p> + +<p>"So do I," agreed Mrs. Bateson; "I'd never have adopted a child myself. +I should always have been expecting to see its parents' faults coming +out in it—so different from the peace you have with your own flesh and +blood."</p> + +<p>Mrs. Hankey groaned. "Your own flesh and blood may take after their +father; you never can tell."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_66" id="Page_66">[Pg 66]</a></span></p> + +<p>"So they may, Mrs. Hankey—so they may; but, as the Scripture says, it +is our duty to whip the old man out of them."</p> + +<p>"Just so. And that's another thing against adopted children—you'd +hesitate about punishing them enough; I don't fancy as you'd ever feel +the same pleasure in whipping 'em as you do in whipping your own. You'd +feel you ought to be polite-like, as if they was sort of visitors."</p> + +<p>"My children always took after my side of the house, I'm thankful to +say," said Mrs. Bateson; "so I hadn't much trouble with them."</p> + +<p>"I wish I could say as much; I do, indeed. But the Lord saw fit to try +me by making my son Peter the very moral of his father; as like as two +peas they are. And when you find one poor woman with such a double +portion, you are tempted to doubt the workings of Providence."</p> + +<p>Mrs. Bateson looked sympathetic. "That's bad for you, Mrs. Hankey!"</p> + +<p>"It is so; but I take up my cross and don't complain. You know what a +feeble creature Hankey is—never doing the right thing; and, when he +does, doing it at the wrong time; well, Peter is just such another. Only +the other day he was travelling by rail, and what must he do but get an +attack of the toothache? Those helpless sort of folks are always having +the toothache, if you notice."</p> + +<p>"So they are."</p> + +<p>"Peter's toothache was so bad that he must needs take a dose of some +sleeping-stuff or other—I forget the name—and fell so sound asleep +that he never woke at the station, but was put away with the carriage +into a siding. Fast asleep he was, with his handkerchief over his face +to keep the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_67" id="Page_67">[Pg 67]</a></span> sun off, and never heard the train shunted, nor nothing."</p> + +<p>"Well, to be sure! Them sleeping-draughts are wonderful soothing, as +I've heard tell, but I never took one on 'em. The Lord giveth His +beloved sleep, and His givings are enough for them as are in health; but +them as are in pain want something a bit stronger, doubtless."</p> + +<p>"So it appears," agreed Mrs. Hankey. "Well, there lay Peter fast asleep +in the siding, with his handkerchief over his face. And one of the +porters happens to come by, and sees him, and jumps to the conclusion +that there's been a murder in the train, and that our Peter is the +corpse. So off he goes to the station-master and tells him as there's a +murdered body in one of the carriages in the siding; and the +station-master's as put out as never was."</p> + +<p>Mrs. Bateson's eyes and mouth opened wide in amazement and interest. +"What a tale, to be sure!"</p> + +<p>"And then," added Peter's mother, growing more dramatic as the story +proceeded, "the station-master sends for the police, and the police +sends for the crowner, so as everything shall be decent and in order; +and they walks in a solemn procession—with two porters carrying a +shutter—to the carriage where Peter lies, all as grand and nice as if +it was a funeral."</p> + +<p>"I never heard tell of such a thing in my life—never!"</p> + +<p>"Then the station-master opens the door with one of them state keys +which always take such a long time to open a door which you could open +with your own hands in a trice—you know 'em by sight."</p> + +<p>Mrs. Bateson nodded. Of course she knew them by sight; who does not?<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_68" id="Page_68">[Pg 68]</a></span></p> + +<p>"And then the crowner steps forward to take the handkerchief off the +face of the body, it being the perquisite of a crowner so to do," Mrs. +Hankey continued, with the maternal regret of a mother whose son has +been within an inch of fame, and missed it; "and just picture to +yourself the vexation of them all, when it was no murdered corpse they +found, but only our Peter with an attack of the toothache!"</p> + +<p>"Well, I never! They must have been put about; as you would have been +yourself, Mrs. Hankey, if you'd found so little after expecting so +much."</p> + +<p>"In course I should; it wasn't in flesh and blood not to be, and +station-master and crowner are but mortal, like the rest of us. I assure +you, when I first heard the story, I pitied them from the bottom of my +heart."</p> + +<p>"And what became of Peter in the midst of it all, Mrs. Hankey?"</p> + +<p>"Oh! it woke him up with a vengeance; and, of course, it flustered him a +good deal, when he rightly saw how matters stood, to have to make his +excuses to all them grand gentlemen for not being a murdered corpse. But +as I says to him afterward, he'd no one but himself to blame; first for +being so troublesome as to have the toothache, and then for being so +presumptuous as to try and cure it. And his father is just the same; if +you take your eye off him for a minute he is bound to be in some +mischief or another."</p> + +<p>"There's no denying that husbands is troublesome, Mrs. Hankey, and sons +is worse; but all the same I stand up for 'em both, and I wish Miss +Elisabeth had got one of the one and half a dozen of the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_69" id="Page_69">[Pg 69]</a></span> other. Mark my +words, she'll never do better, taking him all round, than Master +Christopher."</p> + +<p>Mrs. Hankey sighed. "I only hope she'll find it out before it is too +late, and he is either laid in an early grave or else married to a +handsomer woman, as the case may be, and both ways out of her reach. But +I doubt it. She was a dark baby, if you remember, was Miss Elisabeth; +and I never trust them as has been dark babies, and never shall."</p> + +<p>"And how is Peter's toothache now?" inquired Mrs. Bateson, who was a +more tender-hearted matron than Peter's mother.</p> + +<p>"Oh! it's no better; and I know no one more aggravating than folks who +keep sayin' they are no better when you ask 'em how they are. It always +seems so ungrateful. Only this morning I asked our Peter how his tooth +was, and he says, 'No better, mother; it was so bad in the night that I +fairly wished I was dead.' 'Don't go wishing that,' says I; 'for if you +was dead you'd have far worse pain, and it 'ud last for ever and ever.' +I really spoke quite sharp to him, I was that sick of his grumbling; but +it didn't seem to do him no good."</p> + +<p>"Speaking sharp seldom does do much good," Mrs. Bateson remarked +sapiently, "except to them as speaks."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_70" id="Page_70">[Pg 70]</a></span></p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_V" id="CHAPTER_V"></a><a href="#CONTENTS">CHAPTER V</a></h2> + +<h3>THE MOAT HOUSE</h3> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">You thought you knew me in and out<br /></span> +<span class="i4">And yet you never knew<br /></span> +<span class="i0">That all I ever thought about<br /></span> +<span class="i11">Was you.<br /></span> +</div></div> + + +<p>Sedgehill High Street is nothing but a part of the great high road which +leads from Silverhampton to Studley and Slipton and the other towns of +the Black Country; but it calls itself Sedgehill High Street as it +passes through the place, and so identifies itself with its environment, +after the manner of caterpillars and polar bears and other similarly +wise and adaptable beings. At the point where this road adopts the +pseudonym of the High Street, close by Sedgehill Church, a lane branches +off from it at right angles, and runs down a steep slope until it comes +to a place where it evidently experiences a difference of opinion as to +which is the better course to pursue—an experience not confined to +lanes. But in this respect lanes are happier than men and women, in that +they are able to pursue both courses, and so learn for themselves which +is the wiser one, as is the case with this particular lane. One course +leads headlong down another steep hill—so steep that unwary travellers +usually descend from their carriages<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_71" id="Page_71">[Pg 71]</a></span> to walk up or down it, and thus +are enabled to ensure relief to their horses and a chill to themselves +at the same time; for it is hot work walking up or down that sunny +precipice, and the cold winds of Mershire await one with equal gusto at +the top and at the bottom. At the foot of the hill stretches a breezy +common, wide enough to make one think "long, long thoughts"; and if the +traveller looks backward when he has crossed this common, he will see +Sedgehill Church, crowning and commanding the vast expanse, and pointing +heavenward with its slender spire to remind him, and all other wayfaring +men, that the beauty and glory of this present world is only an earnest +and a foretaste of something infinitely fairer.</p> + +<p>The second course of the irresolute lane is less adventurous, and +wanders peacefully through Badgering Woods, a dark and delightful spot, +once mysterious enough to be a fitting hiding-place for the age-long +slumbers of some sleeping princess. As a matter of fact, so it was; the +princess was black but comely, and her name was Coal. There she had +slept for a century of centuries, until Prince Iron needed and sought +and found her, and awakened her with the noise of his kisses. So now the +wood is not asleep any more, but is filled with the tramping of the +prince's men. The old people wring their hands and mourn that the former +things are passing away, and that Mershire's youthful beauty will soon +be forgotten; but the young people laugh and are glad, because they know +that life is greater than beauty, and that it is by her black +coalfields, and not by her green woodlands, that Mershire will save her +people from poverty, and will satisfy her poor with bread.</p> + +<p>When Elisabeth Farringdon was a girl, the princess was still asleep in +the heart of the wood, and no<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_72" id="Page_72">[Pg 72]</a></span> prince had yet attempted to disturb her; +and the lane passed through a forest of silence until it came to a dear +little brown stream, which, by means of a dam, was turned into a moat, +encircling one of the most ancient houses in England. The Moat House had +been vacant for some time, as the owner was a delicate man who preferred +to live abroad; and great was the interest at Sedgehill when, a year or +two after Elisabeth left school, it was reported that a stranger, Alan +Tremaine by name, had taken the Moat House for the sake of the hunting, +which was very good in that part of Mershire.</p> + +<p>So Alan settled there, and became one of the items which went to the +making of Elisabeth's world. He was a small, slight man, +interesting-looking rather than regularly handsome, of about +five-and-twenty, who had devoted himself to the cultivation of his +intellect and the suppression of his soul. Because his mother had been a +religious woman, he reasoned that faith was merely an amiable feminine +weakness, and because he himself was clever enough to make passable +Latin verses, he argued that no Supernatural Being could have been +clever enough to make him.</p> + +<p>"Have you seen the new man who has come to the Moat House?" asked +Elisabeth of Christopher. The latter had now settled down permanently at +the Osierfield, and was qualifying himself to take his uncle's place as +general manager of the works, when that uncle should retire from the +post. He was also qualifying himself to be Elisabeth's friend instead of +her lover—a far more difficult task.</p> + +<p>"Yes; I have seen him."</p> + +<p>"What is he like? I am dying to know."</p> + +<p>"When I saw him he was exactly like a man riding on horseback; but as he +was obviously too well-dressed<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_73" id="Page_73">[Pg 73]</a></span> to be a beggar, I have no reason to +believe that the direction in which he was riding was the one which +beggars on horseback are proverbially expected to take."</p> + +<p>"How silly you are! You know what I mean."</p> + +<p>"Perfectly. You mean that if you had seen a man riding by, at the rate +of twelve miles an hour, it would at once have formed an opinion as to +all the workings of his mind and the meditations of his heart. But my +impressions are of slower growth, and I am even dull enough to require +some foundation for them." Christopher loved to tease Elisabeth.</p> + +<p>"I am awfully quick in reading character," remarked that young lady, +with some pride.</p> + +<p>"You are. I never know which impresses me more—the rapidity with which +you form opinions, or their inaccuracy when formed."</p> + +<p>"I'm not as stupid as you think."</p> + +<p>"Pardon me, I don't think you are at all stupid; but I am always hoping +that the experience of life will make you a little stupider."</p> + +<p>"Don't be a goose, but tell me all you know about Mr. Tremaine."</p> + +<p>"I don't know much about him, except that he is well-off, that he +apparently rides about ten stone, and that he is not what people call +orthodox. By the way. I didn't discover his unorthodoxy by seeing him +ride by, as you would have done; I was told about it by some people who +know him."</p> + +<p>"How very interesting!" cried Elisabeth enthusiastically. "I wonder how +unorthodox he is. Do you think he doesn't believe in anything?"</p> + +<p>"In himself, I fancy. Even the baldest creed is usually self-embracing. +But I believe he indulges in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_74" id="Page_74">[Pg 74]</a></span> the not unfashionable luxury of doubts. +You might attend to them, Elisabeth; you are the sort of girl who would +enjoy attending to doubts."</p> + +<p>"I suppose I really am too fond of arguing."</p> + +<p>"There you misjudge yourself. You are instructive rather than +argumentative. Saying the same thing over and over again in different +language is not arguing, you know; I should rather call it preaching, if +I were not afraid of hurting your feelings."</p> + +<p>"You are a very rude boy! But, anyway, I have taught you a lot of +things; you can't deny that."</p> + +<p>"I don't wish to deny it; I am your eternal debtor. To tell the truth, I +believe you have taught me everything I know, that is worth knowing, +except the things that you have tried to teach me. There, I must +confess, you have signally failed."</p> + +<p>"What have I tried to teach you?"</p> + +<p>"Heaps of things: that pleasure is more important than duty; that we are +sent into the world to enjoy ourselves; that the worship of art is the +only soul-satisfying form of faith; that conscience is an exhausted +force; that feelings and emotions ought to be labelled and scheduled; +that lobster is digestible; that Miss Herbert is the most attractive +woman in the world; etcetera, etcetera."</p> + +<p>"And what have I taught you without trying?"</p> + +<p>"Ah! that is a large order; and it is remarkable that the things you +have taught me are just the things that you have never learned +yourself."</p> + +<p>"Then I couldn't have taught them."</p> + +<p>"But you did; that is where your genius comes in."</p> + +<p>"I really am tremendously quick in judging character," repeated +Elisabeth thoughtfully; "if I met<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_75" id="Page_75">[Pg 75]</a></span> you for the first time I should know +in five minutes that you were a man with plenty of head, and heaps of +soul, and very little heart."</p> + +<p>"That would show wonderful penetration on your part."</p> + +<p>"You may laugh, but I should. Of course, as it is, it is not +particularly clever of me to understand you thoroughly; I have known you +so long."</p> + +<p>"Exactly; it would only be distinctly careless of you if you did not."</p> + +<p>"Of course it would; but I do. I could draw a map of your mind with my +eyes shut, I know it so well."</p> + +<p>"I wish you would. I should value it even if it were drawn with your +eyes open, though possibly in that case it might be less correct."</p> + +<p>"I will, if you will give me a pencil and a sheet of paper."</p> + +<p>Christopher produced a pencil, and tore a half-sheet off a note that he +had in his pocket. The two were walking through the wood at the Willows +at that moment, and Elisabeth straightway sat down upon a felled tree +that happened to be lying there, and began to draw.</p> + +<p>The young man watched her with amusement. "An extensive outline," he +remarked; "this is gratifying."</p> + +<p>"Oh yes! you have plenty of mind, such as it is; nobody could deny +that."</p> + +<p>"But why is the coast-line all irregular, with such a lot of bays and +capes and headlands?"</p> + +<p>"To show that you are an undecided person, and given to split hairs, and +don't always know your own opinion. First you think you'll do a thing +because it is nice; and then you think you won't do it <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_76" id="Page_76">[Pg 76]</a></span>because it is +wrong; and in the end you drop between two stools, like Mahomet's +coffin."</p> + +<p>"I see. And please what are the mountain-ranges that you are drawing +now?"</p> + +<p>"These," replied Elisabeth, covering her map with herring-bones, "are +your scruples. Like all other mountain-ranges they hinder commerce, make +pleasure difficult, and render life generally rather uphill work." +"Don't I sound exactly as if I was taking a geography class?"</p> + +<p>"Or conducting an Inquisition," added Christopher.</p> + +<p>"I thought an Inquisition was a Spanish thing that hurt."</p> + +<p>"So certain ignorant people say; but it was originally invented, I +believe, to eradicate error and to maintain truth."</p> + +<p>"I am going on with my geography class, so don't interrupt. The rivers +in this map, which are marked by a few faint lines, are narrow and +shallow; they are only found near the coast, and never cross the +interior of the country at all. These represent your feelings."</p> + +<p>"Very ingenious of you! And what is that enormous blotch right in the +middle of the country, which looks like London and its environs?"</p> + +<p>"That is your conscience; its outlying suburbs cover nearly the whole +country, you will perceive. You will also notice that there are no +seaports on the coast of my map; that shows that you are self-contained, +and that you neither send exports to, nor receive imports from, the +hearts and minds of other people."</p> + +<p>"What ever are those queer little castellated things round the coast +that you are drawing now?"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_77" id="Page_77">[Pg 77]</a></span></p> + +<p>"Those are floating icebergs, to show that it is a cold country. There, +my map is finished," concluded Elisabeth, half closing her eyes and +contemplating her handiwork through her eyelashes; "and I consider it a +most successful sketch."</p> + +<p>"It is certainly clever."</p> + +<p>"And true, too."</p> + +<p>Christopher's eyes twinkled. "Give it me," he said, stretching out his +hand; "but sign it with your name first. Not there," he added hastily, +as Elisabeth began writing a capital E in one corner; "right across the +middle."</p> + +<p>Elisabeth looked up in surprise. "Right across the map itself, do you +mean?"</p> + +<p>"Yes."</p> + +<p>"But it is such a long name that it will cover the whole country."</p> + +<p>"I know that."</p> + +<p>"It will spoil it."</p> + +<p>"I shouldn't be surprised; nevertheless, I always am in favour of +realism."</p> + +<p>"I don't know where the realism comes in; but I am such an obliging +person that I will do what you want," said Elisabeth, writing her name +right across the half-sheet of paper, in her usual dashing style.</p> + +<p>"Thank you," said Christopher, taking the paper from her; and he smiled +to himself as he saw that the name "Elisabeth Farringdon" covered the +whole of the imaginary continent from east to west. Elisabeth naturally +did not know that this was the only true image in her allegory; she was +as yet far too clever to perceive obvious things. As Chris said, it was +not when her eyes were open that she was most correct.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_78" id="Page_78">[Pg 78]</a></span></p> + +<p>"I have seen Mr. Tremaine," said Elisabeth to him, a day or two after +this. "Cousin Maria left her card upon him, and he returned her call +yesterday and found us at home. I think he is perfectly delightful."</p> + +<p>"You do, do you? I knew you would."</p> + +<p>"Why?"</p> + +<p>"Because, like the Athenians, you live to see or to hear some new +thing."</p> + +<p>"It wasn't his newness that made me like him; I liked him because he was +so interesting. I do adore interesting people! I hadn't known him five +minutes before he began to talk about really deep things; and then I +felt I had known him for ages, he was so very understanding."</p> + +<p>"Indeed," Christopher said drily.</p> + +<p>"By the time we had finished tea he understood me better than you do +after all these years. I wonder if I shall get to like him better than I +like you?"</p> + +<p>"I wonder, too." And he really did, with an amount of curiosity that was +positively painful.</p> + +<p>"Of course," remarked Elisabeth thoughtfully, "I shall always like you, +because we have been friends so long, and you are overgrown with the +lichen of old memories and associations. But you are not very +interesting in the abstract, you see; you are nice and good, but you +have not heart enough to be really thrilling."</p> + +<p>"Still, even if I had a heart, it is possible I might not always wear it +on my sleeve for Miss Elisabeth Farringdon to peck at."</p> + +<p>"Oh yes, you would; you couldn't help it. If you tried to hide it I +should see through your disguises. I have X rays in my eyes."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_79" id="Page_79">[Pg 79]</a></span></p> + +<p>"Have you? They must be a great convenience."</p> + +<p>"Well, at any rate, they keep me from making mistakes," Elisabeth +confessed.</p> + +<p>"That is fortunate for you. It is a mistake to make mistakes."</p> + +<p>"I remember our Dear Lady at Fox How once saying," continued the girl, +"that nothing is so good for keeping women from making mistakes as a +sense of humour."</p> + +<p>"I wonder if she was right?"</p> + +<p>"She was always right; and in that as in everything else. Have you never +noticed that it is not the women with a sense of humour who make fools +of themselves? They know better than to call a thing romantic which is +really ridiculous."</p> + +<p>"Possibly; but they are sometimes in danger of calling a thing +ridiculous which is really romantic; and that also is a mistake."</p> + +<p>"I suppose it is. I wonder which is worse—to think ridiculous things +romantic, or romantic things ridiculous? It is rather an interesting +point. Which do you think?"</p> + +<p>"I don't know. I never thought about it."</p> + +<p>"You never do think about things that really matter," exclaimed +Elisabeth, with reproof in her voice; "that is what makes you so +uninteresting to talk to. The fact is you are so wrapped up in that +tiresome old business that you never have time to attend to the deeper +things and the hidden meanings of life; but are growing into a regular +money-grubber."</p> + +<p>"Perhaps so; but you will have the justice to admit it isn't my own +money that I am grubbing," replied Christopher, who had only reconciled +himself<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_80" id="Page_80">[Pg 80]</a></span> to giving up all his youthful ambitions and becoming +sub-manager of the Osierfield by the thought that he might thereby in +some roundabout way serve Elisabeth. Like other schoolboys he had +dreamed his dreams, and prospected wonderful roads to success which his +feet were destined never to tread; and at first he had asked something +more of life than the Osierfield was capable of offering him. But +finally he had submitted contentedly to the inevitable, because—in +spite of all his hopes and ambitions—his boyish love for Elisabeth held +him fast; and now his manly love for Elisabeth held him faster still. +But even the chains which love had rivetted are capable of galling us +sometimes; and although we would not break them, even if we could, we +grumble at them occasionally—that is to say, if we are merely human, as +is the case with so many of us.</p> + +<p>"It is a great pity," Elisabeth went on, "that you deliberately narrow +yourself down to such a small world and such petty interests. It is bad +enough for old people to be practical and sensible and commonplace and +all that; but for a man as young as you are it is simply disgusting. I +can not understand you, because you really are clever and ought to know +better; but although I am your greatest friend, you never talk to me +about anything except the merest frivolities."</p> + +<p>Christopher bowed his head to the storm and was still—he was one of the +people who early learn the power of silence; but Elisabeth, having once +mounted her high horse, dug her spurs into her steed and rode on to +victory. In those days she was so dreadfully sure of herself that she +felt competent to teach anybody anything.</p> + +<p>"You laugh at me as long as I am funny and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_81" id="Page_81">[Pg 81]</a></span> I amuse you; but the minute +I begin to talk about serious subjects—such as feelings and sentiments +and emotions—you lose your interest at once, and turn everything into a +joke. The truth is, you have so persistently suppressed your higher self +that it is dying of inanition; you'll soon have no higher self left at +all. If people don't use their hearts they don't have any, like the +Kentucky fish that can't see in the dark because they are blind, don't +you know? Now you should take a leaf out of Mr. Tremaine's book. The +first minute I saw him I knew that he was the sort of man that +cultivated his higher self; he was interested in just the things that +interest me."</p> + +<p>The preacher paused for breath, and looked up to see whether her sermon +was being "blessed" to her hearer; then suddenly her voice changed—</p> + +<p>"What is the matter, Chris?"</p> + +<p>"Nothing. Why?"</p> + +<p>"Because you look so awfully white. I was talking so fast that I didn't +notice it; but I expect it is the heat. Do sit down on the grass and +rest a bit; it is quite dry; and I'll fan you with a big dock leaf."</p> + +<p>"I'm all right," replied Christopher, trying to laugh, and succeeding +but indifferently.</p> + +<p>"But I'm sure you are not, you are so pale; you look just as you looked +the day that I tumbled off the rick—do you remember it?—and you took +me into Mrs. Bateson's to have my head bound up. She said you'd got a +touch of the sun, and I'm afraid you've got one now."</p> + +<p>"Yes, I remember it well enough; but I'm all right now, Betty. Don't +worry about me."</p> + +<p>"But I do worry when you're ill; I always did. Don't you remember that +when you had measles and I wasn't allowed to see you, I cried myself to +sleep<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_82" id="Page_82">[Pg 82]</a></span> for three nights running, because I thought you were going to +die, and that everything would be vile without you? And then I had a +prayer-meeting about you in Mrs. Bateson's parlour, and I wrote the +hymns for it myself. The Batesons wept over them and considered them +inspired, and foretold that I should die early in consequence." And +Elisabeth laughed at the remembrance of her fame.</p> + +<p>Christopher laughed too. "That was hard on you! I admit that +verse-writing is a crime in a woman, but I should hardly call it a +capital offence. Still, I should like to have heard the hymns. You were +great at writing poetry in those days."</p> + +<p>"Wasn't I? And I used to be so proud when you said that my poems weren't +'half bad'!"</p> + +<p>"No wonder; that was high praise from me. But can't you recall those +hymns?"</p> + +<p>The hymnist puckered her forehead. "I can remember the beginning of the +opening one," she said; "it was a six-line-eights, and we sang it to a +tune called Stella; it began thus:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"How can we sing like little birds,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">And hop about among the boughs?<br /></span> +<span class="i0">How can we gambol with the herds,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Or chew the cud among the cows?<br /></span> +<span class="i0">How can we pop with all the weasles<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Now Christopher has got the measles?"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>"Bravo!" exclaimed the subject of the hymn. "You are a born hymn-writer, +Elisabeth. The shades of Charles Wesley and Dr. Watts bow to your +obvious superiority."</p> + +<p>"Well, at any rate, I don't believe they ever did better at fourteen; +and it shows how anxious I was about you even then when you were ill. I +am just<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_83" id="Page_83">[Pg 83]</a></span> the same now—quite as fond of you as I was then; and you are +of me, too, aren't you?"</p> + +<p>"Quite." Which was perfectly true.</p> + +<p>"Then that's all right," said Elisabeth contentedly; "and, you see, it +is because I am so fond of you that I tell you of your faults. I think +you are so good that I want you to be quite perfect."</p> + +<p>"I see."</p> + +<p>The missionary spirit is an admirable thing; but a man rarely does it +full justice when it is displayed—toward himself—by the object of his +devotion.</p> + +<p>"If I wasn't so fond of you I shouldn't try to improve you."</p> + +<p>"Of course not; and if you were a little fonder of me you wouldn't want +to improve me. I perfectly understand."</p> + +<p>"Dear old Chris! You really are extremely nice in some ways; and if you +had only a little more heart you would be adorable. And I don't believe +you are naturally unfeeling, do you?"</p> + +<p>"No—I do not; but I sometimes wish I was."</p> + +<p>"Don't say that. It is only that you haven't developed that side of you +sufficiently; I feel sure the heart is there, but it is dormant. So now +you will talk more about feelings, won't you?"</p> + +<p>"I won't promise that. It is rather stupid to talk about things that one +doesn't understand; I am sure this is correct, for I have often heard +you say so."</p> + +<p>"But talking to me about your feelings might help you to understand +them, don't you see?"</p> + +<p>"Or might help you."</p> + +<p>"Oh! I don't want any help; feelings are among the few things that I can +understand without any assistance. But you are sure you are all right, +Chris,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_84" id="Page_84">[Pg 84]</a></span> and haven't got a headache or anything?" And the anxious +expression returned to Elisabeth's face.</p> + +<p>"My head is very well, thank you."</p> + +<p>"You don't feel any pain?"</p> + +<p>"In my head? distinctly not."</p> + +<p>"You are quite well, you are certain?"</p> + +<p>"Perfectly certain and quite well. What a fidget you are! Apparently you +attach as much importance to rosy cheeks as Mother Hankey does."</p> + +<p>"A pale face and dark hair are in her eyes the infallible signs of a +depraved nature," laughed Elisabeth; "and I have both."</p> + +<p>"Yet you fly at me for having one, and that only for a short time. +Considering your own shortcomings, you should be more charitable."</p> + +<p>Elisabeth laughed again as she patted his arm in a sisterly fashion. +"Nice old boy! I am awfully glad you are all right. It would make me +miserable if anything went really wrong with you, Chris."</p> + +<p>"Then nothing shall go really wrong with me, and you shall not be +miserable," said Christopher stoutly; "and, therefore, it is fortunate +that I don't possess much heart—things generally go wrong with the +people who have hearts, you know, and not with the people who have not; +so we perceive how wise was the poet in remarking that whatever is is +made after the best possible pattern, or words to that effect." With +which consoling remark he took leave of his liege-lady.</p> + +<p>The friendship between Alan Tremaine and Elisabeth Farringdon grew apace +during the next twelve months. His mind was of the metaphysical and +speculative order, which is interesting to all women; and hers was of +the volatile and vivacious type which is attractive to some men. They +discussed<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_85" id="Page_85">[Pg 85]</a></span> everything under the sun, and some things over it; they read +the same books and compared notes afterward; they went out sketching +together, and instructed each other in the ways of art; and they +carefully examined the foundations of each other's beliefs, and +endeavoured respectively to strengthen and undermine the same. Gradually +they fell into the habit of wondering every morning whether or not they +should meet during the coming day; and of congratulating themselves +nearly every evening that they had succeeded in so meeting.</p> + +<p>As for Christopher, he was extremely and increasingly unhappy, and, it +must be admitted, extremely and increasingly cross in consequence. The +fact that he had not the slightest right to control Elisabeth's actions, +in no way prevented him from highly disapproving of them; and the fact +that he was too proud to express this disapproval in words, in no way +prevented him from displaying it in manner. Elisabeth was wonderfully +amiable with him, considering how very cross he was; but are we not all +amiable with people toward whom we—in our inner consciousness—know +that we are behaving badly?</p> + +<p>"I can not make out what you can see in that conceited ass?" he said to +her, when Alan Tremaine had been living at the Moat House for something +over a year.</p> + +<p>"Perhaps not; making things out never is your strong point," replied +Elisabeth suavely.</p> + +<p>"But he is such an ass! I'm sure the other evening, when he trotted out +his views on the Higher Criticism for your benefit, he made me feel +positively ill."</p> + +<p>"I found it very interesting; and if, as you say,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_86" id="Page_86">[Pg 86]</a></span> he did it for my +benefit, he certainly succeeded in his aim." There were limits to the +patience of Elisabeth.</p> + +<p>"Well, how women can listen to bosh of that kind I can not imagine! What +can it matter to you what he disbelieves or why he disbelieves it? And +it is beastly cheek of him to suppose that it can."</p> + +<p>"But he is right in supposing it, and it does matter to me. I like to +know how old-fashioned truths accord or do not accord with modern phases +of thought."</p> + +<p>"Modern phases of nonsense, you mean! Well, the old-fashioned truths are +good enough for me, and I'll stick to them, if you please, in spite of +Mr. Tremaine's overwhelming arguments; and I should advise you to stick +to them, too."</p> + +<p>"Oh! Chris, I wish you wouldn't be so disagreeable." And Elisabeth +sighed. "It is so difficult to talk to you when you are like this."</p> + +<p>"I'm not disagreeable," replied Christopher mendaciously; "only I can +not let you be taken in by a stuck-up fool without trying to open your +eyes; I shouldn't be your friend if I could." And he actually believed +that this was the case. He forgot that it is not the trick of +friendship, but of love, to make "a corner" in affection, and to +monopolize the whole stock of the commodity.</p> + +<p>"You see," Elisabeth explained, "I am so frightfully modern, and yet I +have been brought up in such a dreadfully old-fashioned way. It was all +very well for the last generation to accept revealed truth without +understanding it, but it won't do for us."</p> + +<p>"Why not?"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_87" id="Page_87">[Pg 87]</a></span></p> + +<p>"Oh! because we are young and modern."</p> + +<p>"So were they at one time, and we shall not be so for long."</p> + +<p>Elisabeth sighed again. "How difficult you are! Of course, the sort of +religion that did for Cousin Maria and Mr. Smallwood won't do for Mr. +Tremaine and me. Can't you see that?"</p> + +<p>"I can not, I am sorry to say."</p> + +<p>"Their religion had no connection with their intellects."</p> + +<p>"Still, it changed their hearts, which I have heard is no unimportant +operation."</p> + +<p>"They accepted what they were told without trying to understand it," +Elisabeth continued, "which is not, after all, a high form of faith."</p> + +<p>"Indeed. I should have imagined that it was the highest."</p> + +<p>"But can't you see that to accept blindly what you are told is not half +so great as to sift it all, and to separate the chaff from the wheat, +and to find the kernel of truth in the shell of tradition?" Elisabeth +had not talked to Alan Tremaine for over a year without learning his +tricks of thought and even of expression. "Don't you think that it is +better to believe a little with the whole intellect than a great deal +apart from it?"</p> + +<p>Christopher looked obstinate. "I can't and don't."</p> + +<p>"Have you no respect for 'honest doubt'?"</p> + +<p>"Honest bosh!"</p> + +<p>Elisabeth's face flushed. "You really are too rude for anything."</p> + +<p>Christopher was penitent at once; he could not bear really to vex her. +"I am sorry if I was rude; but it riles me to hear you quoting +Tremaine's platitudes<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_88" id="Page_88">[Pg 88]</a></span> by the yard—such rotten platitudes as they are, +too!"</p> + +<p>"You don't do Mr. Tremaine justice, Chris. Even though he may have +outgrown the old faiths, he is a very good man; and he has such lovely +thoughts about truth and beauty and love and things like that."</p> + +<p>"His thoughts are nothing but empty windbags; for he is the type of man +who is too ignorant to accept truth, too blind to appreciate beauty, and +too selfish to be capable of loving any woman as a woman ought to be +loved."</p> + +<p>"I think his ideas about love are quite ideal," persisted the girl. +"Only yesterday he was abusing the selfishness of men in general, and +saying that a man who is really in love thinks of the woman he loves as +well as of himself."</p> + +<p>"He said that, did he? Then he was mistaken."</p> + +<p>Elisabeth looked surprised. "Then don't you agree with him that a man in +love thinks of the woman as well as of himself?"</p> + +<p>"No; I don't. A man who is really in love never thinks of himself at +all, but only of the woman. It strikes me that Master Alan Tremaine +knows precious little about the matter."</p> + +<p>"I think he knows a great deal. He said that love was the discovery of +the one woman whereof all other women were but types. That really was a +sweet thing to say!"</p> + +<p>"My dear Betty, you know no more about the matter than he does. Falling +in love doesn't merely mean that a man has found a woman who is dearer +to him than all other women, but that he has found a woman who is dearer +to him than himself."</p> + +<p>Elisabeth changed her ground. "I admit that<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_89" id="Page_89">[Pg 89]</a></span> he isn't what you might +call orthodox," she said—"not the sort of man who would clothe himself +in the rubric, tied on with red tape; but though he may not be a +Christian, as we count Christianity, he believes with all his heart in +an overruling Power which makes for righteousness."</p> + +<p>"That is very generous of him," retorted Christopher; "still, I can not +for the life of me see that the possession of three or four thousand a +year, without the trouble of earning it, gives a man the right to +patronize the Almighty."</p> + +<p>"You are frightfully narrow, Chris."</p> + +<p>"I know I am, and I am thankful for it. I had rather be as narrow as a +plumbing-line than indulge in the sickly latitudinarianism that such men +as Tremaine nickname breadth."</p> + +<p>"Oh! I am tired of arguing with you; you are too stupid for anything."</p> + +<p>"But you haven't been arguing—you have only been quoting Tremaine +verbatim; and that that may be tiring I can well believe."</p> + +<p>"Well, you can call it what you like; but by any other name it will +irritate you just as much, because you have such a horrid temper. Your +religion may be very orthodox, but I can not say much for its improving +qualities; it is the crossest, nastiest, narrowest, disagreeablest sort +of religion that I ever came across."</p> + +<p>And Elisabeth walked away in high dudgeon, leaving Christopher very +angry with himself for having been disagreeable, and still angrier with +Tremaine for having been the reverse.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_90" id="Page_90">[Pg 90]</a></span></p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_VI" id="CHAPTER_VI"></a><a href="#CONTENTS">CHAPTER VI</a></h2> + +<h3>WHIT MONDAY</h3> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Light shadows—hardly seen as such—<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Crept softly o'er the summer land<br /></span> +<span class="i0">In mute caresses, like the touch<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Of some familiar hand.<br /></span> +</div></div> + + +<p>"I want to give your work-people a treat," said Tremaine to Elisabeth, +in the early summer.</p> + +<p>"That is very nice of you; but this goes without saying, as you are +always planning and doing something nice. I shall be very glad for our +people to have a little pleasure, as at present the annual tea-meeting +at East Lane Chapel seems to be their one and only dissipation; and +although tea-meetings may be very well in their way, they hardly seem to +fulfil one's ideal of human joy."</p> + +<p>"Ah! you have touched upon a point to which I was coming," said Alan +earnestly; "it is wonderful how often our minds jump together! Not only +am I anxious to give the Osierfield people something more enjoyable than +a tea-meeting—I also wish to eliminate the tea-meeting spirit from +their idea of enjoyment."</p> + +<p>"How do you mean?" It was noteworthy that while Elisabeth was always +ready to teach Christopher, she was equally willing to learn from Alan.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_91" id="Page_91">[Pg 91]</a></span></p> + +<p>"I mean that I want to show people that pleasure and religion have +nothing to do with each other. It always seems to me such a mistake that +the pleasures of the poor—the innocent pleasures, of course—are +generally inseparable from religious institutions. If they attend a +tea-party, they open it with prayer; if they are taken for a country +drive, they sing hymns by the way."</p> + +<p>"Oh! but I think they do this because they like it, and not because they +are made to do it," said Elisabeth eagerly.</p> + +<p>"Not a bit of it; they do it because they are accustomed to do it, and +they feel that it is expected of them. Religion is as much a part of +their dissipation as evening dress is of ours, and just as much a purely +conventional part; and I want to teach them to dissociate the two ideas +in their own minds."</p> + +<p>"I doubt if you will succeed, Mr. Tremaine."</p> + +<p>"Yes, I shall; I invariably succeed. I have never failed in anything +yet, and I never mean to fail. And I do so want to make the poor people +enjoy themselves thoroughly. Of course, it is a good thing to have one's +pills always hidden in jam; but it must be a miserable thing to belong +to a section of society where one's jam is invariably full of pills."</p> + +<p>Elisabeth smiled, but did not speak; Alan was the one person of her +acquaintance to whom she would rather listen than talk.</p> + +<p>"It is a morbid and unhealthy habit," he went on, "to introduce religion +into everything, in the way that English people are so fond of doing. It +decreases their pleasures by casting its shadow over purely human and +natural joys; and it increases their sorrow and want by teaching them to +lean upon<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_92" id="Page_92">[Pg 92]</a></span> some hypothetical Power, instead of trying to do the best +that they can for themselves. Also it enervates their reasoning +faculties; for nothing is so detrimental to one's intellectual strength +as the habit of believing things which one knows to be impossible."</p> + +<p>"Then don't you believe in religion of any kind?"</p> + +<p>"Most certainly I do—in many religions. I believe in the religion of +art and of science and of humanity, and countless more; in fact, the +only religion I do not believe in is Christianity, because that spoils +all the rest by condemning art as fleshly, science as untrue, and +humanity as sinful. I want to bring the old Pantheism to life again, and +to teach our people to worship beauty as the Greeks worshipped it of +old; and I want you to help me."</p> + +<p>Elisabeth gasped as Elisha might have gasped when Elijah's mantle fell +upon him. She was as yet too young to beware of false prophets. "I +should love to make people happy," she said; "there seems to be so much +happiness in the world and so few that find it."</p> + +<p>"The Greeks found it; therefore, why should not the English? I mean to +teach them to find it, and I shall begin with your work-people on Whit +Monday."</p> + +<p>"What shall you do?" asked the girl, with intense interest.</p> + +<p>"It is no good taking away old lamps until you are prepared to offer new +ones in their place; therefore I shall not take away the consolations +(so called) of religion until I have shown the people a more excellent +way. I shall first show them nature, and then art—nature to arouse +their highest instincts,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_93" id="Page_93">[Pg 93]</a></span> and art to express the same; and I am +convinced that after they have once been brought face to face with the +beautiful thus embodied, the old faiths will lose the power to move +them."</p> + +<p>When Whit Monday came round, the throbbing heart of the Osierfield +stopped beating, as it was obliged to stop on a bank-holiday; and the +workmen, with their wives and sweethearts, were taken by Alan Tremaine +in large brakes to Pembruge Castle, which the owner had kindly thrown +open to them, at Alan's request, for the occasion.</p> + +<p>It was a long drive and a wonderfully beautiful one, for the year was at +its best. All the trees had put on their new summer dresses, and never a +pair of them were of the same shade. The hedges were covered with a +wreath of white May-blossom, and seemed like interminable drifts of that +snow in summer which is as good news from a far country; and the roads +were bordered by the feathery hemlock, which covered the face of the +land as with a bridal veil.</p> + +<p>"Isn't the world a beautiful place?" said Elisabeth, with a sigh of +content, to Alan, who was driving her in his mail-phaeton. "I do hope +all the people will see and understand how beautiful it is."</p> + +<p>"They can not help seeing and understanding; beauty such as this is its +own interpreter. Surely such a glimpse of nature as we are now enjoying +does people more good than a hundred prayer-meetings in a stuffy +chapel."</p> + +<p>"Beauty slides into one's soul on a day like this, just as something—I +forget what—slid into the soul of the Ancient Mariner; doesn't it?"</p> + +<p>"Of course it does; and you will find that these people—now that they +are brought face to face with<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_94" id="Page_94">[Pg 94]</a></span> it—will be just as ready to worship +abstract beauty as ever the Greeks were. The fault has not been with the +poor for not having worshipped beauty, but with the rich for not having +shown them sufficient beauty to worship. The rich have tried to choke +them off with religion instead, because it came cheaper and was less +troublesome to produce."</p> + +<p>"Then do you think that the love of beauty will elevate these people +more and make them happier than Christianity has done?"</p> + +<p>"Most assuredly I do. Had our climate been sunnier and the fight for +existence less bitter, I believe that Christianity would have died out +in England years ago; but the worship of sorrow will always have its +attractions for the sorrowful; and the doctrine of renunciation will +never be without its charm for those unfortunate ones to whom poverty +and disease have stood sponsors, and have renounced all life's good +things in their name before ever they saw the light. Man makes his god +in his own image; and thus it comes to pass that while the strong and +joyous Greek adored Zeus on Olympus, the anæmic and neurotic Englishman +worships Christ on Calvary. Do you tell me that if people were happy +they would bow down before a stricken and crucified God? Not they. And I +want to make them so happy that they shall cease to have any desire for +a suffering Deity."</p> + +<p>"Well, you have made them happy enough for to-day, at any rate," said +Elisabeth, as she looked up at him with gratitude and admiration. "I saw +them all when they were starting, and there wasn't one face among them +that hadn't joy written on every feature in capital letters."</p> + +<p>"Then in that case they won't be troubling their<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_95" id="Page_95">[Pg 95]</a></span> minds to-day about +their religion; they will save it for the gloomy days, as we save +narcotics for times of pain. You may depend upon that."</p> + +<p>"I'm not so sure: their religion is more of a reality to them than you +think," Elisabeth replied.</p> + +<p>While Alan was thus, enjoying himself in his own fashion, his guests +were enjoying themselves in theirs; and as they drove through summer's +fairyland, they, too, talked by the way.</p> + +<p>"Eh! but the May-blossom's a pretty sight," exclaimed Caleb Bateson, as +the big wagonettes rolled along the country roads. "I never saw it finer +than it is this year—not in all the years I've lived in Mershire; and +Mershire's the land for May-blossom."</p> + +<p>"It do look pretty," agreed his wife. "I only wish Lucy Ellen was here +to see it; she was always a one for the May-blossom. Why, when she was +ever such a little girl she'd come home carrying branches of it bigger +than herself, till she looked like nothing but a walking May-pole."</p> + +<p>"Poor thing!" said Mrs. Hankey, who happened to be driving in the same +vehicle as the Batesons, "she'll be feeling sad and homesick to see it +all again, I'll be bound."</p> + +<p>Lucy Ellen's mother laughed contentedly. "Folks haven't time to feel +homesick when they've got a husband to look after; he soon takes the +place of May-blossom, bless you!"</p> + +<p>"You're in luck to see all your children married and settled before the +Lord has been pleased to take you," remarked Mrs. Hankey, with envy in +her voice.</p> + +<p>"Well, I'm glad for the two lads to have somebody to look after them, +I'm bound to say; I feel now as they've some one to air their shirts +when I'm not there, for you never can trust a man to look after<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_96" id="Page_96">[Pg 96]</a></span> +himself—never. Men have no sense to know what is good for 'em and what +is bad for 'em, poor things! But Lucy Ellen is a different thing. Of +course I'm pleased for her to have a home of her own, and such nice +furniture as she's got, too, and in such a good circuit; but when your +daughter is married you don't see her as often as you want to, and it is +no good pretending as you do."</p> + +<p>"That's true," agreed Caleb Bateson, with a big sigh; "and I never cease +to miss my little lass."</p> + +<p>"She ain't no little lass now, Mr. Bateson," argued Mrs. Hankey; "Lucy +Ellen must be forty, if she's a day."</p> + +<p>"So she be, Mrs. Hankey—so she be; but she is my little lass to me, all +the same, and always will be. The children never grow up to them as +loves 'em. They are always our children, just as we are always the +Lord's children; and we never leave off a-screening and a-sheltering o' +them, any more than He ever leaves off a-screening and a-sheltering of +us."</p> + +<p>"I'm glad to hear as Lucy Ellen has married into a good circuit. Unless +the Lord build the house we know how they labour in vain that build it; +and the Lord can't do much unless He has a good minister to help Him. I +don't deny as He <i>may</i> work through local preachers; but I like a +regular superintendent myself, with one or more ministers under him."</p> + +<p>"Oh! Lucy Ellen lives in one of the best circuits in the Connexion," +said Mrs. Bateson proudly; "they have an ex-president as superintendent, +and three ministers under him, and a supernumerary as well. They never +hear the same preached more than once a month; it's something grand!"</p> + +<p>"Eh! it's a fine place is Craychester," added Caleb; "they held +Conference there two years ago."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_97" id="Page_97">[Pg 97]</a></span></p> + +<p>"It must be a grand thing to live in a place where they hold +Conference," remarked Mrs. Hankey.</p> + +<p>"It is indeed," agreed Mrs. Bateson; "Lucy Ellen said it seemed for all +the world like heaven, to see so many ministers about, all in their +black coats and white neckcloths. And then such preaching as they heard! +It isn't often young folks enjoy such privileges, and so I told her."</p> + +<p>"When all's said and done, there's nothing like a good sermon for giving +folks real pleasure. Nothing in this world comes up to it, and I doubt +if there'll be anything much better in the next," said Caleb; "I don't +see as how there can be."</p> + +<p>His friends all agreed with him, and continued, for the rest of the +drive, to discuss the respective merits of various discourses they had +been privileged to hear.</p> + +<p>It was a glorious day. The sky was blue, with just enough white clouds +flitting about to show how blue the blue part really was; and the +varying shadows kept passing, like the caress of some unseen yet +ever-protecting Hand, over the green nearnesses and the violet distances +of a country whose foundations seemed to be of emerald and amethyst, and +its walls and gateways of pearl. The large company from the Osierfield +drove across the breezy common at the foot of Sedgehill Ridge, and then +plunged into a network of lanes which led them, by sweet and mysterious +ways, to the great highway from the Midlands to the coast of the western +sea. On they went, past the little hamlet where the Danes and the Saxons +fought a great fight more than a thousand years ago, and which is still +called by a strange Saxon name, meaning "the burying-place of the +slain"; and the little hamlet smiled in the summer sunshine, as if<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_98" id="Page_98">[Pg 98]</a></span> with +kindly memories of those old warriors whose warfare had been +accomplished so many centuries ago, and who lie together, beneath the +white blossom, in the arms of the great peacemaker called Death, waiting +for the resurrection morning which that blossom is sent to foretell. On, +between man's walls of gray stone, till they came to God's walls of red +sandstone; and then up a steep hill to another common, where the +sweet-scented gorse made a golden pavement, and where there suddenly +burst upon their sight a view so wide and so wonderful that those who +look upon it with the seeing eye and the understanding heart catch +glimpses of the King in His beauty through the fairness of the land that +is very far off. On past the mossy stone, like an overgrown and +illiterate milestone, which marks the boundary between Mershire and +Salopshire; and then through a typical English village, noteworthy +because the rites of Mayday, with May-queen and May-pole to boot, are +still celebrated there exactly as they were celebrated some three +hundred years ago. At last they came to a picturesque wall and gateway, +built of the red stone which belongs to that part of the country, and +which has a trick of growing so much redder at evening-time that it +looks as if the cold stone were blushing with pleasure at being kissed +Good-night by the sun; and then through a wood sloping on the left side +down to a little stream, which was so busy talking to itself about its +own concerns that it had not time to leap and sparkle for the amusement +of passers-by; until they drew up in front of a quaint old castle, built +of the same stone as the outer walls and gateway.</p> + +<p>The family were away from home, so the whole of the castle was at the +disposal of Alan and his party, and they had permission to go wherever +they liked.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_99" id="Page_99">[Pg 99]</a></span> The state-rooms were in front of the building and led out +of each other, so that when all the doors were open any one could see +right from one end of the castle to the other. Dinner was to be served +in the large saloon at the back, built over what was once the courtyard; +and while his servants were laying the tables with the cold viands which +they had brought with them, Alan took his guests through the state-rooms +to see the pictures, and endeavoured to carry out his plan of educating +them by pointing out to them some of the finer works of art.</p> + +<p>"This," he said, stopping in front of a portrait, "is a picture of Lady +Mary Wortley-Montagu, who was born here, painted by one of the first +portrait-painters of her day. I want you to look at her hands, and to +notice how exquisitely they are painted. Also I wish to call your +attention to the expression of her face. You know that it is the duty of +art to interpret nature—that is to say, to show to ordinary people +those hidden beauties and underlying meanings of common things which +they would never be able to find out for themselves; and I think that in +the expression on this woman's face the artist has shown forth, in a +most wonderful way, the dissatisfaction and bitterness of her heart. As +you look at her face you seem to see right into her soul, and to +understand how she was foredoomed by nature and temperament to ask too +much of life and to receive too little."</p> + +<p>"Well, to be sure!" remarked Mrs. Bateson, in an undertone, to her lord +and master; "she is a bit like our superintendent's wife, only not so +stout. And what a gown she has got on! I should say that satin is worth +five-and-six a yard if it is worth a penny. And I call it a sin and a +shame to have a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_100" id="Page_100">[Pg 100]</a></span> dirty green parrot sitting on your shoulder when you're +wearing satin like that. If she'd had any sense she'd have fed the +animals before she put her best gown on."</p> + +<p>"I never could abide parrots," joined in Mrs. Hankey; "they smell so."</p> + +<p>"And as for her looking dissatisfied and all that," continued Mrs. +Bateson, "I for one can't see it. But if she did, it was all a pack of +rubbish. What had she to grumble at, I should like to know, with a satin +gown on at five-and-six a yard?"</p> + +<p>By this time Alan had moved on to another picture. "This represents an +unhappy marriage," he explained. "At first sight you see nothing but two +well-dressed people sitting at table; but as you look into the picture +you perceive the misery in the woman's face and the cruelty in the +man's, and you realize all that they mean."</p> + +<p>"Well, I see nothing more at second sight," whispered Mrs. Hankey; +"except that the tablecloth might have been cleaner. There's another of +your grumbling fine ladies! Now for sure she'd nothing to grumble at, +sitting so grand at table with a glass of sherry-wine to drink."</p> + +<p>"The husband looks a cantankerous chap," remarked Caleb.</p> + +<p>"Poor thing! it's his liver," said Mrs. Bateson, taking up the cudgels +as usual on behalf of the bilious and oppressed. "You can see from his +complexion that he is out of order, and that all that rich dinner will +do him no good. It was his wife's duty to see that he had something +plain to eat, with none of them sauces and fal-lals, instead of playing +the fine lady and making troubles out of nothing. I've no patience with +her!"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_101" id="Page_101">[Pg 101]</a></span></p> + +<p>"Still, he do look as if he'd a temper," persisted Mr. Bateson.</p> + +<p>"And if he do, Caleb, what of that? If a man in his own house hasn't the +right to show a bit of temper, I should like to know who has? I've no +patience with the women that will get married and have a man of their +own; and then cry their eyes out because the man isn't an old woman. If +they want meekness and obedience, let 'em remain single and keep lapdogs +and canaries; and leave the husbands for those as can manage 'em and +enjoy 'em, for there ain't enough to go round as it is." And Mrs. +Bateson waxed quite indignant.</p> + +<p>Here Tremaine took up his parable. "This weird figure, clothed in skins, +and feeding upon nothing more satisfying than locusts and wild honey, is +a type of all those who are set apart for the difficult and +unsatisfactory lot of heralds and forerunners. They see the good time +coming, and make ready the way for it, knowing all the while that its +fuller light and wider freedom are not for them; they lead their fellows +to the very borders of the promised land, conscious that their own +graves are already dug in the wilderness. No great social or political +movement has ever been carried on without their aid; and they have never +reaped the benefits of those reforms which they lived and died to +compass. Perhaps there are no sadder sights on the page of history than +those solitary figures, of all nations and all times, who have foretold +the coming of the dawn and yet died before it was yet day."'</p> + +<p>"Did you ever?" exclaimed Mrs. Bateson <i>sotto voce</i>; "a grown man like +that, and not to know John the Baptist when he sees him! Forerunners and +heralds indeed! Why, it's John the Baptist as large<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_102" id="Page_102">[Pg 102]</a></span> as life, and those +as don't recognise him ought to be ashamed of theirselves."</p> + +<p>"Lucy Ellen would have known who it was when she was three years old," +said Caleb proudly.</p> + +<p>"And so she ought; I'd have slapped her if she hadn't, and richly she'd +have deserved it."</p> + +<p>"It's a comfort as Mr. Tremaine's mother is in her grave," remarked Mrs. +Hankey, not a whit behind the others as regards shocked sensibilities; +"this would have been a sad day for her if she had been alive."</p> + +<p>"And it would!" agreed Mrs. Bateson warmly. "I know if one of my +children hadn't known John the Baptist by sight, I should have been that +ashamed I should never have held up my head again in this world—never!"</p> + +<p>Mr. Bateson endeavoured to take a charitable view of the situation. "I +expect as the poor lad's schooling was neglected through having lost his +parents; and there's some things as you never seem to master at all +except you master 'em when you're young—the Books of the Bible being +one of them."</p> + +<p>"My lads could say the Books of the Bible through, without stopping to +take breath, when they were six, and Lucy Ellen when she was five and a +half."</p> + +<p>"Well, then, Kezia, you should be all the more ready to take pity on +them poor orphans as haven't had the advantages as our children have +had."</p> + +<p>"So I am, Caleb; and if it had been one of the minor prophets I +shouldn't have said a word—I can't always tell Jonah myself unless +there's a whale somewhere at the back; but John the Baptist——!"</p> + +<p>When the inspection of the pictures had been accomplished, the company +sat down to dinner in the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_103" id="Page_103">[Pg 103]</a></span> large saloon; and Alan was slightly +disconcerted when they opened the proceedings by singing, at the top of +their voices, "Be present at our table, Lord." Elisabeth, on seeing the +expression of his face, sorely wanted to laugh; but she stifled this +desire, as she had learned by experience that humour was not one of +Alan's strong points. Now Christopher could generally see when a thing +was funny, even when the joke was at his own expense; but Alan took life +more seriously, which—as Elisabeth assured herself—showed what a much +more earnest man than Christopher he was, in spite of his less orthodox +opinions. So she made up her mind that she would not catch Christopher's +eye on the present occasion, as she usually did when anything amused +her, because it was cruel to laugh at the frustration of poor Alan's +high-flown plans; and then naturally she looked straight at the spot +where Chris was presiding over a table, and returned his smile of +perfect comprehension. It was one of Elisabeth's peculiarities that she +invariably did the thing which she had definitely made up her mind not +to do.</p> + +<p>After dinner the party broke up and wandered about, in small +detachments, over the park and through the woods and by the mere, until +it was tea-time. Alan spent most of his afternoon in explaining to +Elisabeth the more excellent ways whereby the poor may be enabled to +share the pleasures of the rich; and Christopher spent most of his in +carrying Johnnie Stubbs to the mere and taking him for a row, and so +helping the crippled youth to forget for a short time that he was not as +other men are, and that it was out of pity that he, who never worked, +had been permitted to take the holiday which he could not earn.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_104" id="Page_104">[Pg 104]</a></span></p> + +<p>After tea Alan and Elisabeth were standing on the steps leading from the +saloon to the garden.</p> + +<p>"What a magnificent fellow that is!" exclaimed Alan, pointing to the +huge figure of Caleb Bateson, who was talking to Jemima Stubbs on the +far side of the lawn. Caleb certainly justified this admiration, for he +was a fine specimen of a Mershire puddler—and there is no finer race of +men to be found anywhere than the puddlers of Mershire.</p> + +<p>Elisabeth's eyes twinkled. "That is one of your anæmic and neurotic +Christians," she remarked demurely.</p> + +<p>Displeasure settled on Alan's brow; he greatly objected to Elisabeth's +habit of making fun of things, and had tried his best to cure her of it. +To a great extent he had succeeded (for the time being); but even yet +the cloven foot of Elisabeth's levity now and then showed itself, much +to his regret.</p> + +<p>"Exceptions do not disprove rules," he replied coldly. "Moreover, +Bateson is probably religious rather from the force of convention than +of conviction." Tremaine never failed to enjoy his own rounded +sentences, and this one pleased him so much that it almost succeeded in +dispelling the cloud which Elisabeth's ill-timed gibe had created.</p> + +<p>"He is a class-leader and a local preacher," she added.</p> + +<p>"Those terms convey no meaning to my mind."</p> + +<p>"Don't they? Well, they mean that Caleb not only loyally supports the +government of Providence, but is prepared to take office under it," +Elisabeth explained.</p> + +<p>Alan never quarrelled with people; he always reproved them. "You make a +great mistake—and an extremely feminine one—Miss Farringdon, in +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_105" id="Page_105">[Pg 105]</a></span>invariably deducting general rules from individual instances. Believe +me, this is a most illogical form of reasoning, and leads to erroneous, +and sometimes dangerous, conclusions."</p> + +<p>Elisabeth tossed her head; she did not like to be reproved, even by Alan +Tremaine. "My conclusions are nearly always correct, anyhow," she +retorted; "and if you get to the right place, I don't see that it +matters how you go there. I never bother my head about the 'rolling +stock' or the 'permanent way' of my intuitions; I know they'll bring me +to the right conclusion, and I leave them to work out their Bradshaw for +themselves."</p> + +<p>In the meantime Jemima Stubbs was pouring out a recital of her +grievances into the ever-sympathetic ear of Caleb Bateson.</p> + +<p>"You don't seem to be enjoying yourself, my lass," he had said in his +cheery voice, laying a big hand in tender caress upon the girl's narrow +shoulders.</p> + +<p>"And how should I, Mr. Bateson, not having a beau nor nobody to talk +to?" she replied in her quavering treble. "What with havin' first mother +to nurse when I was a little gell, and then havin' Johnnie to look +after, I've never had time to make myself look pretty and to get a beau, +like other gells. And now I'm too old for that sort of thing, and yet +I've never had my chance, as you may say."</p> + +<p>"Poor lass! It's a hard life as you've had, and no mistake."</p> + +<p>"That it is, Mr. Bateson. Men wants gells as look pretty and make 'em +laugh; they don't care for the dull, dowdy ones, such as me; and yet how +can a gell be light-hearted and gay, I should like to know, when it's +work, work, work, all the day, and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_106" id="Page_106">[Pg 106]</a></span> nurse, nurse, nurse, all the night? +Yet the men don't make no allowance for that—not they. They just see as +a gell is plain and stupid, and then they has nothing more to do with +her, and she can go to Jericho for all they cares."</p> + +<p>"You've had a hard time of it, my lass," repeated Bateson, in his full, +deep voice.</p> + +<p>"Right you are, Mr. Bateson; and it's made my hair gray, and my face all +wrinkles, and my hands a sight o' roughness and ugliness, till I'm a +regular old woman and a fright at that. And I'm but thirty-five now, +though no one 'ud believe it to look at me."</p> + +<p>"Thirty-five, are you? B'ain't you more than that, Jemima, for surely +you look more?"</p> + +<p>"I know I does, but I ain't; and lots o' women—them as has had easy +times and their way made smooth for them—look little more than gells +when they are thirty-five; and the men run after 'em as fast as if they +was only twenty. But I'm an old woman, I am, and I've never had time to +be a young one, and I've never had a beau nor nothing."</p> + +<p>"It seems now, Jemima, as if the Lord was dealing a bit hard with you; +but never you fret yourself; He'll explain it all and make it all up to +you in His own good time."</p> + +<p>"I only hope He may, Mr. Bateson."</p> + +<p>"My lass, do you remember how Saint Paul said, 'From henceforth let no +man trouble me, for I bear in my body the marks of the Lord Jesus'? Now +it seems to me that all the gray hairs and the wrinkles and the +roughness that come to us when we are working for others and doing our +duty, are nothing more nor less than the marks of the Lord Jesus."</p> + +<p>"That's a comfortin' view of the matter, I don't deny."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_107" id="Page_107">[Pg 107]</a></span></p> + +<p>"There are lots o' men in this world, Jemima, and still more women, who +grow old before their time working for other people; and I take it that +when folks talk o' their wrinkles, the Lord says, 'My Name shall be in +their foreheads'; and when folks talk o' their gray hairs, He says, +'They shall walk with Me in white: for they are worthy.' And why do we +mark the things that belong to us? Why, so as we can know 'em again and +can claim 'em as our own afore the whole world. And that's just why the +Lord marks us: so as all the world shall know as we are His, and so as +no man shall ever pluck us out of His Hand."</p> + +<p>Jemima looked gratefully up at the kindly prophet who was trying to +comfort her. "Law! Mr. Bateson, that's a consolin' way of looking at +things, and I only hope as you're right. But all the same, I'd have +liked to have had a beau of my own just for onst, like other gells. I +dessay it's very wicked o' me to feel like this, and it's enough to make +the Lord angry with me; but it don't seem to me as there's anything in +religion that quite makes up for never havin' had a beau o' your own."</p> + +<p>"The Lord won't be angry with you, my lass; don't you fear. He made +women and He understands 'em, and He ain't the one to blame 'em for +being as He Himself made 'em. Remember the Book says, 'as one whom his +mother comforteth'; and I hold that means as He understands women and +their troubles better than the kindest father ever could. And He won't +let His children give up things for His sake without paying them back +some thirty, some sixty, and some an hundred fold; and don't you ever +get thinking that He will."</p> + +<p>"As Jemima says, yours is a comfortable <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_108" id="Page_108">[Pg 108]</a></span>doctrine, Bateson, but I am +afraid you have no real foundation for your consoling belief," exclaimed +Alan Tremaine, coming up and interrupting the conversation.</p> + +<p>"Eh! but I have, sir, saving your presence; I know in Whom I have +believed; and what a man has once known for certain, he can never not +know again as long as he lives."</p> + +<p>"But Christianity is a myth, a fable. You may imagine and pretend that +it is true, but you can not know that it is."</p> + +<p>"But I do know, sir, begging your pardon, as well as I know you are +standing here and the sun is shining over yonder."</p> + +<p>Alan smiled rather scornfully: how credulous were the lower classes, he +thought in his pride of intellectual superiority. "I do not understand +how you can know a thing that has never been proved," he said.</p> + +<p>The giant turned and looked on his fragile frame with eyes full of a +great pity. "You do not understand, you say, sir that's just it; and I +am too foolish and ignorant to be able to explain things rightly to a +gentleman like you; but the Lord will explain it to you when He thinks +fit. You are young yet, sir, and the way stretches long before you, and +the mysteries of God are hidden from your eyes. But when you have loved +and cherished a woman as your own flesh, and when you have had little +children clinging round your knees, you'll understand rightly enough +then without needing any man to teach you."</p> + +<p>"My good man, do you suppose a wife and children would teach me more +than the collected wisdom of the ages?"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_109" id="Page_109">[Pg 109]</a></span></p> + +<p>"A sight more, Mr. Tremaine—a sight more. Folks don't learn the best +things from books, sir. Why, when the Lord Himself wrote the law on +tables of stone, they got broken; but when He writes it on the fleshly +tables of our hearts, it lives forever. And His Handwriting is the love +we bear for our fellow-creatures, and—through them—for Him; at least, +so it seems to me."</p> + +<p>"That is pure imagination and sentiment, Bateson. Very pretty and +poetic, no doubt; but it won't hold water."</p> + +<p>Caleb smiled indulgently. "Wait till you've got a little lass of your +own, like my Lucy Ellen, sir. Not that you'll ever have one quite as +good as her, bless her! for her equal never has been seen in this world, +and never will. But when you've got a little lass of your own, and know +as you'd be tortured to death quite cheerful-like just to save her a +minute's pain, you'll laugh at all the nonsense that's written in books, +and feel you know a sight better than all of 'em put together."</p> + +<p>"I don't quite see why."</p> + +<p>"Well, you see, sir, it's like this. When the dove came back to the ark +with the olive leaf in her mouth, Noah didn't begin sayin' how wonderful +it was for a leaf to have grown out of nothing all of a sudden, as some +folks are so fond of saying. Not he; he'd too much sense. He says to his +sons, 'Look here: a leaf here means a tree somewhere, and the sooner we +make for that tree the better!' And so it is with us. When we feel that +all at onst there's somebody that matters more to us than ourselves, we +know that this wonderful feelin' hasn't sprung out of the selfishness +that filled our hearts before, but is just a leaf off a great Tree<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_110" id="Page_110">[Pg 110]</a></span> +which is a shadow and resting-place for the whole world."</p> + +<p>Tremaine looked thoughtful; Caleb's childlike faith and extensive +vocabulary were alike puzzles to him. He did not understand that in +homes—however simple—where the Bible is studied until it becomes as +household words, the children are accustomed to a "well of English +undefiled"; and so, unconsciously, mould their style upon and borrow +their expressions from the Book which, even when taken only from a +literary standpoint, is the finest Book ever read by man.</p> + +<p>After a minute's silence he said: "I have been wondering whether it +really is any pleasure to the poor to see the homes of the rich, or +whether it only makes them dissatisfied. Now, what do you think, +Bateson?"</p> + +<p>"Well, sir, if it makes 'em dissatisfied it didn't ought to."</p> + +<p>"Perhaps not. Still, I have a good deal of sympathy with socialism +myself; and I know I should feel it very hard if I were poor, while +other men, not a whit better and probably worse than myself, were rich."</p> + +<p>"And so it would be hard, sir, if this was the end of everything, and it +was all haphazard, as it were; so hard that no sensible man could see it +without going clean off his head altogether. But when you rightly +understand as it's all the Master's doing, and that He knows what He's +about a sight better than we could teach Him, it makes a wonderful +difference. Whether we're rich or poor, happy or sorrowful, is His +business and He can attend to that; but whether we serve Him rightly in +the place where He has put us, is our business, and it'll take us all +our time<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_111" id="Page_111">[Pg 111]</a></span> to look after it without trying to do His work as well."</p> + +<p>Tremaine merely smiled, and Bateson went on—</p> + +<p>"You see, sir, there's work in the world of all kinds for all sorts; and +whether they be lords and ladies, or just poor folks like we, they've +got to do the work that the Lord has set them to do, and not to go +hankering after each other's. Why, Mr. Tremaine, if at our place the +puddlers wanted to do the work of the shinglers, and the shinglers +wanted to do the work of the rollers, and the rollers wanted to do the +work of the masters, the Osierfield wouldn't be for long the biggest +ironworks in Mershire. Not it! You have to use your common sense in +religion as in everything else."</p> + +<p>"You think that religion is the only thing to make people contented and +happy? So do I; but I don't think that the religion to do this +effectually is Christianity."</p> + +<p>"No more do I, sir; that's where you make a mistake, begging your +pardon; you go confusing principles with persons. It isn't my love for +my wife that lights the fire and cooks the dinner and makes my little +home like heaven to me—it's my wife herself; it wasn't my children's +faith in their daddy that fed 'em and clothed 'em when they were too +little to work for themselves—it was me myself; and it isn't the +religion of Christ that keeps us straight in this world and makes us +ready for the next—it is Christ Himself."</p> + +<p>Thus the rich man and the poor man talked together, moving along +parallel lines, neither understanding, and each looking down upon the +other—Alan with the scornful pity of the scholar who has delved in the +dust of dreary negatives which <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_112" id="Page_112">[Pg 112]</a></span>generations of doubters have gradually +heaped up; and Caleb with the pitiful scorn of one who has been into the +sanctuary of God, and so learned to understand the end of these men.</p> + +<p>Late that night, when all the merrymakers had gone to their homes, +Tremaine sat smoking in the moonlight on the terrace of the Moat House.</p> + +<p>"It is strange," he said to himself, "what a hold the Christian myth has +taken upon the minds of the English people, and especially of the +working classes. I can see how its pathos might appeal to those whose +health was spoiled and whose physique was stunted by poverty and misery; +but it puzzles me to find a magnificent giant such as Bateson, a man too +strong to have nerves and too healthy to have delusions, as thoroughly +imbued with its traditions as any one. I fail to understand the secret +of its power."</p> + +<p>At that very moment Caleb was closing the day, as was his custom, with +family prayer, and his prayer ran thus—</p> + +<p>"We beseech Thee, O Lord, look kindly upon the stranger who has this day +shown such favour unto Thy servants; pay back all that he has given us +sevenfold into his bosom. He is very young, Lord, and very ignorant and +very foolish; his eyes are holden so that he can not see the operations +of Thy Hands; but he is not very far from Thy Kingdom. Lead him, +Heavenly Father, in the way that he should go; open his eyes that he may +behold the hidden things of Thy Law; look upon him and love him, as Thou +didst aforetime another young man who had great possessions. Lord, tell +him that this earth is only Thy footstool; show him that the beauty he +sees all around him is the hem of Thy garment; and teach<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_113" id="Page_113">[Pg 113]</a></span> him that the +wisdom of this world is but foolishness with Thee. And this we beg, O +Lord, for Christ's sake. Amen."</p> + +<p>Thus Caleb prayed, and Alan could not hear him, and could not have +understood him even if he had heard.</p> + +<p>But there was One who heard, and understood.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_114" id="Page_114">[Pg 114]</a></span></p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_VII" id="CHAPTER_VII"></a><a href="#CONTENTS">CHAPTER VII</a></h2> + +<h3>BROADER VIEWS</h3> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">He proved that Man is nothing more<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Than educated sod,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Forgetting that the schoolmen's lore<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Is foolishness with God.<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>"Do you know what I mean to do as soon as Cousin Maria will let me?" +Elisabeth asked of Christopher, as the two were walking together—as +they walked not unfrequently—in Badgering Woods.</p> + +<p>"No; please tell me."</p> + +<p>"I mean to go up to the Slade School, and study there, and learn to be a +great artist."</p> + +<p>"It is sometimes a difficult lesson to learn to be great."</p> + +<p>"Nevertheless, I mean to learn it." The possibility of failure never +occurred to Elisabeth. "There is so much I want to teach the world, and +I feel I can only do it through my pictures; and I want to begin at +once, for fear I shouldn't get it all in before I die. There is plenty +of time, of course; I'm only twenty-one now, so that gives me forty-nine +years at the least; but forty-nine years will be none too much in which +to teach the world all that I want to teach it."</p> + +<p>"And what time shall you reserve for learning all that the world has to +teach you?"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_115" id="Page_115">[Pg 115]</a></span></p> + +<p>"I never thought of that. I'm afraid I sha'n't have much time for +learning."</p> + +<p>"Then I am afraid you won't do much good by teaching."</p> + +<p>Elisabeth laughed in all the arrogance of youth. "Yes, I shall; the +things you teach best are the things you know, and not the things you +have learned."</p> + +<p>"I am not so sure of that."</p> + +<p>"Surely genius does greater things than culture."</p> + +<p>"I grant you that culture without genius does no great things; neither, +I think, does genius without culture. Untrained genius is a terrible +waste of power. So many people seem to think that if they have a spark +of genius they can do without culture; while really it is because they +have a spark of genius that they ought to be, and are worthy to be, +cultivated to the highest point."</p> + +<p>"Well, anyway—culture or no culture—I mean to set the Thames on fire +some day."</p> + +<p>"You do, do you? Well, it is a laudable and not uncommon ambition."</p> + +<p>"Yes, I do; and you mustn't look so doubtful on the subject, as it isn't +pretty manners."</p> + +<p>"Did I look doubtful? I'm very sorry."</p> + +<p>"Horribly so. I know exactly what you will do, you are so shockingly +matter-of-fact. First you will prove to a demonstration that it is +utterly impossible for such an inferior being as a woman to set the +Thames on fire at all. Then—when I've done it and London is +illuminated—you will write to the papers to show that the 'flash-point' +of the river is decidedly too low, or else such an unlooked-for +catastrophe could never have occurred. Then you will get the Government +to take the matter up, and to bring a charge of arson against the New +Woman.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_116" id="Page_116">[Pg 116]</a></span> And, finally, you will have notices put up all along the banks +from Goring to Greenwich, 'Ladies are requested not to bring +inflammatory articles near the river; the right of setting the Thames on +fire is now—as formerly—reserved specially for men.' And then you will +try to set it on fire yourself."</p> + +<p>"A most characteristic programme, I must confess. But now tell me; when +you have set your Thames on fire, and covered yourself with laurels, and +generally turned the world upside down, sha'n't you allow some humble +and devoted beggarman to share your kingdom with you? You might find it +a little dull alone in your glory, as you are such a sociable person."</p> + +<p>"Well, if I do, of course I shall let some nice man share it with me."</p> + +<p>"I see. You will stoop from your solitary splendour and say to the +devoted beggarman, 'Allow me to offer you the post of King Consort; it +is a mere sinecure, and confers only the semblance and not the reality +of power; but I hope you will accept it, as I have nothing better to +give you, and if you are submissive and obedient I will make you as +comfortable as I can under the circumstances.'"</p> + +<p>"Good gracious! I hope I am too wise ever to talk to a man in that way. +No, no, Chris; I shall find some nice man, who has seen through me all +the time and who hasn't been taken in by me, as the world has; and I +shall say to him, 'By the way, here is a small fire and a few laurel +leaves; please warm your hands at the one and wear the others in your +button-hole.' That is the proper way in which a woman should treat +fame—merely as a decoration for the man whom she has chosen."</p> + +<p>"O noble judge! O excellent young woman!"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_117" id="Page_117">[Pg 117]</a></span> exclaimed Christopher. "But +what are some of the wonderful things which you are so anxious to +teach?"</p> + +<p>Elisabeth's mood changed at once, and her face grew serious. "I want to +teach people that they were sent into the world to be happy, and not to +be miserable; and that there is no virtue in turning their backs to the +sunshine and choosing to walk in the shade. I want to teach people that +the world is beautiful, and that it is only a superficial view that +finds it common and unclean. I want to teach people that human nature is +good and not evil, and that life is a glorious battlefield and not a +sordid struggle. In short, I want to teach people the dignity of +themselves; and there is no grander lesson."</p> + +<p>"Except, perhaps, the unworthiness of themselves," suggested +Christopher.</p> + +<p>"No, no, Chris; you are wrong to be so hard and cynical. Can't you +understand how I am longing to help the men and women I see around me, +who are dying for want of joy and beauty in their lives? It is the old +struggle between Hellenism and Hebraism—between happiness and +righteousness. We are sorely in need, here in England to-day, of the +Greek spirit of Pantheism, which found God in life and art and nature, +'as well as in sorrow and renunciation and death."</p> + +<p>"But it is in sorrow and renunciation and death that we need Him; and +you, who have always had everything you want, can not understand this: +no more could the Pagans and the Royalists; but the early Christians and +the persecuted Puritans could."</p> + +<p>"Puritanism has much to answer for in England," said Elisabeth; "we have +to thank Puritanism for teaching men that only by hurting themselves can +they please their Maker, and that God has given them<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_118" id="Page_118">[Pg 118]</a></span> tastes and hopes +and desires merely in order to mortify the same. And it is all +false—utterly false. The God of the Pagan is surely a more merciful +Being than the God of the Puritan."</p> + +<p>"A more indulgent Being, perhaps, but not necessarily a more merciful +one, Elisabeth. I disagree with the Puritans on many points, but I can +not help admitting that their conception of God was a fine one, even +though it erred on the side of severity. The Pagan converted the Godhead +into flesh, remember; but the Puritan exalted manhood into God."</p> + +<p>"Still, I never could bear the Puritans," Elisabeth went on; "they +turned the England of Queen Elizabeth—the most glorious England the +world has ever known—into one enormous Nonconformist Conscience; and +England has never been perfectly normal since. Besides, they discovered +that nature, and art, and human affection, which are really revelations +of God, were actually sins against Him. As I said before, I can never +forgive the Puritans for eradicating the beauty from holiness, and for +giving man the spirit of heaviness in place of the garment of praise."</p> + +<p>"I wonder if Paganism helped you much when you were poor and ill and +unhappy, and things in general had gone wrong with you. I daresay it was +very nice for the cheerful, prosperous people; but how about those who +had never got what they wanted out of life, and were never likely to get +it?" Christopher, like other people, looked at most matters from his own +individual standpoint; and his own individual standpoint was not at all +a comfortable spot just then.</p> + +<p>"The Greeks suffered and died as did the Jews and the Christians," +replied Elisabeth, "yet they were a joyous and light-hearted race. It is +not sorrow that<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_119" id="Page_119">[Pg 119]</a></span> saddens the world, but rather modern Christianity's +idealization of sorrow. I do not believe we should be half as miserable +as we are if we did not believe that there is virtue in misery, and that +by disowning our mercies and discarding our blessings we are currying +favour in the eyes of the Being, Who, nevertheless, has showered those +mercies and those blessings upon us."</p> + +<p>Thus had Alan Tremaine's influence gradually unmoored Elisabeth from the +old faiths in which she had been brought up; and he had done it so +gradually that the girl was quite unconscious of how far she had drifted +from her former anchorage. He was too well-bred ever to be blatant in +his unbelief—he would as soon have thought of attacking a man's family +to his face as of attacking his creed; but subtly and with infinite tact +he endeavoured to prove that to adapt ancient revelations to modern +requirements was merely putting new wine into old bottles and mending +old garments with new cloth; and Elisabeth was as yet too young and +inexperienced to see any fallacy in his carefully prepared arguments.</p> + +<p>She had nobody to help her to resist him, poor child! and she was +dazzled with the consciousness of intellectual power which his attitude +of mind appeared to take for granted. Miss Farringdon was cast in too +stern a mould to have any sympathy or patience with the blind gropings +of an undisciplined young soul; and Christopher—who generally +understood and sympathized with all Elisabeth's difficulties and +phases—was so jealous of her obvious attachment to Tremaine, and so +unhappy on account of it, that for the time being the faithful friend +was entirely swallowed up in the irate lover, sighing like one of the +Osierfield furnaces. Of course this was very <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_120" id="Page_120">[Pg 120]</a></span>unfair and tiresome of +him—nobody could deny that; but it is sometimes trying to the +amiability of even the best of men to realize that the purely mundane +and undeserved accident of want of money can shut them off entirely from +ever attaining to the best kind of happiness whereof their natures are +capable—and especially when they know that their natures are capable of +attaining and appreciating a very high standard of happiness indeed. It +may not be right to be unsociable because one is unhappy, but it is very +human and most particularly masculine; and Christopher just then was +both miserable and a man.</p> + +<p>There was much about Alan that was very attractive to Elisabeth: he +possessed a certain subtlety of thought and an almost feminine quickness +of perception which appealed powerfully to her imagination. Imagination +was Elisabeth's weak, as well as her strong, point. She was incapable of +seeing people as they really were; but erected a purely imaginary +edifice of character on the foundations of such attributes as her rapid +intuition either rightly or wrongly perceived them to possess. As a +rule, she thought better of her friends than they deserved—or, at any +rate, she recognised in them that ideal which they were capable of +attaining, but whereto they sometimes failed to attain.</p> + +<p>Life is apt to be a little hard on the women of Elisabeth's type, who +idealize their fellows until the latter lose all semblance of reality; +for experience, with its inevitable disillusionment, can not fail to put +their ideal lovers and friends far from them, and to hide their +etherealized acquaintances out of their sight; and to give instead, to +the fond, trusting souls, half-hearted lovers, semi-sincere friends, and +acquaintances who care for them only as the world can care.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_121" id="Page_121">[Pg 121]</a></span> Poor +imaginative women—who dreamed that you had found a perfect knight and a +faithful friend, and then discovered that these were only an ordinary +selfish man and woman after all—life has many more such surprises in +store for you; and the surprises will shock you less and hurt you more +as the years roll on! But though life will have its surprises for you, +death perchance will have none; for when the secrets of all hearts are +opened, and all thwarted desires are made known, it may be that the +ordinary selfish man and woman will stand forth as the perfect knight +and faithful friend that God intended them, and you believed them, and +they tried yet failed to be; and you will be satisfied at last when you +see your beloved ones wake up after His likeness, and will smile as you +say to them, "So it is really you after all."</p> + +<p>Although Tremaine might be lacking in his duty toward God, he fulfilled +(in the spirit if not in the letter) his duty toward his neighbour; and +Elisabeth was fairly dazzled by his many schemes for making life easier +and happier to the people who dwelt in the darkness of the Black +Country.</p> + +<p>It was while he was thus figuring as her ideal hero that Elisabeth went +to stay with Felicia Herbert, near a manufacturing town in Yorkshire. +Felicia had been once or twice to the Willows, and was well acquainted +with the physical and biographical characteristics of the place; and she +cherished a profound admiration both for Miss Farringdon and Christopher +Thornley. Tremaine she had never met—he had been abroad each time that +she had visited Sedgehill—but she disapproved most heartily of his +influence upon Elisabeth, and of his views as set forth by that young +lady. Felicia had been brought up along extremely strict lines, and in a +spirit of comfortable<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_122" id="Page_122">[Pg 122]</a></span> intolerance of all forms of religion not +absolutely identical with her own; consequently, a man with no form of +religion at all was to her a very terrible monster indeed. On the +Sundays of her early youth she had perused a story treating of an +Unbeliever (always spelled with a capital U), and the punishments that +were meted out to the daughter of light who was unequally yoked with +him; and she was imbued with a strong conviction that these same +punishments were destined to fall upon Elisabeth's head, should +Elisabeth incline favourably to the (at present) hypothetical suit of +the master of the Moat House. Thus it happened that when Elisabeth came +to the Herberts', full of girlish admiration for Alan Tremaine, Felicia +did her best to ripen that admiration into love by abusing Alan in and +out of season, and by endeavouring to prove that an attachment to him +would be a soul-destroyer of the most irreparable completeness.</p> + +<p>"It is no use talking to me about his goodness," she said; "nobody is +good who isn't a Christian."</p> + +<p>"But he is good," persisted Elisabeth—"most tremendously good. The poor +people simply adore him, he does such a lot for them; and he couldn't +have lovelier thoughts and higher ideals if he were a girl instead of a +man. There must be different ways of goodness, Felicia."</p> + +<p>"There are not different ways of goodness; mamma says there are not, and +it is very wicked to believe that there are. I am afraid you are not +half as religious as you were at Fox How."</p> + +<p>"Yes, I am; but I have learned that true religion is a state of mind +rather than a code of dogmas."</p> + +<p>Felicia looked uncomfortable. "I wish you wouldn't talk like that; I am +sure mamma wouldn't<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_123" id="Page_123">[Pg 123]</a></span> like it—she can not bear anything that borders on +the profane."</p> + +<p>"I am not bordering on the profane; I am only saying what I uphold is +true. I can not take things for granted as you do; I have to think them +out for myself; and I have come to the conclusion that what a man is is +of far more importance than what a man believes."</p> + +<p>"But you ought not to think things like that, Elisabeth; it isn't right +to do so."</p> + +<p>"I can't help thinking it. I am an independent being with a mind of my +own, and I must make up that mind according to what I see going on +around me. What on earth is the good of having an intellect, if you +submit that intellect to the will of another? I wonder how you can take +your ideas all ready-made from your mother," exclaimed Elisabeth, who +just then was taking all hers ready-made from Alan Tremaine.</p> + +<p>"Well, I can not argue. I am not clever enough; and, besides, mamma +doesn't like us to argue upon religious subjects—she says it is +unsettling; so I will only say that I know you are wrong, and then we +will let the matter drop and talk about Christopher. How is he?"</p> + +<p>"Oh, he is all right, only very horrid. To tell you the truth, I am +getting to dislike Christopher."</p> + +<p>"Elisabeth!" Felicia's Madonna-like face became quite sorrowful.</p> + +<p>"Well, I am; and so would you, if he was as stand-off to you as he is to +me. I can't think what is wrong with him; but whatever I do, and however +nice I try to be to him, the North Pole is warm and neighbourly compared +with him. I'm sick of him and his unsociable ways!"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_124" id="Page_124">[Pg 124]</a></span></p> + +<p>"But you and he used to be such friends."</p> + +<p>"I know that; and I would be friends now if he would let me. But how can +you be friends with a man who is as reserved as the Great Pyramid and as +uncommunicative as the Sphinx, and who sticks up iron palings all round +himself, like a specimen tree in the park, so that nobody can get near +him? If a man wants a girl to like him he should be nice to her, and not +require an introduction every time they meet."</p> + +<p>Felicia sighed: her sweet, placid nature was apt to be overpowered by +Elisabeth's rapid changes of front. "But he used to be so fond of you," +she expostulated feebly.</p> + +<p>Elisabeth shrugged her shoulders. "Oh, I suppose he likes me now, in his +cold, self-satisfied way: it isn't that. What I complain of is that he +doesn't admire me enough, and I do so love to be admired."</p> + +<p>"Do you mean he doesn't think you are pretty?" Felicia always had to +have things fully explained to her; excess of imagination could never +lead her astray, whatever it might do to her friend.</p> + +<p>"Of course not; I don't see how he could, considering that I'm not: +women don't expect men to admire them for things that they don't +possess," replied Elisabeth, who had still much to learn. "What I mean +is he doesn't realize how clever I am—he despises me just as he used to +despise me when I was a little girl and he was a big boy—and that is +awfully riling when you know you are clever."</p> + +<p>"Is it? I would much rather a man liked me than thought I was clever."</p> + +<p>"I wouldn't; anybody can like you, but it takes a clever person to +appreciate cleverness. I have<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_125" id="Page_125">[Pg 125]</a></span> studied myself thoroughly, and I have +come to the conclusion that I need appreciation far more than affection: +I'm made like that."</p> + +<p>"I don't understand you. To me affection is everything, and I can not +live without it. If people are really fond of me, they can think me as +stupid as they like."</p> + +<p>Elisabeth's face grew thoughtful; she was always interested in the +analysis of herself and her friends. "How different we two are! I +couldn't forgive a person for thinking me stupid, even if I knew that +person adored me. To me no amount of affection would make up for the +lack of appreciation. I want to be understood as well as liked, and that +is where Christopher and I come across each other; he never understands +me in the least. Now that is why Mr. Tremaine and I get on so well +together; he understands and appreciates me so thoroughly."</p> + +<p>Felicia's pretty month fell into stern lines of disapproval. "I am sure +I should hate Mr. Tremaine if I knew him," she said.</p> + +<p>"Oh, no, you wouldn't—you simply couldn't, Felicia, he is so +delightful. And, what is more, he is so frightfully interesting: +whatever he says and does, he always makes you think about him. Now, +however fond you were of Chris—and he really is very good and kind in +some ways—you could never think about him: it would be such dreadfully +uninteresting thinking, if you did."</p> + +<p>"I don't know about that; Christopher is very comfortable and homelike, +somehow," replied Felicia.</p> + +<p>"So are rice-puddings and flannel petticoats, but you don't occupy your +most exalted moments in meditating upon them."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_126" id="Page_126">[Pg 126]</a></span></p> + +<p>"Do you know, Elisabeth, I sometimes think that Christopher is in love +with you." Unlike Elisabeth, Felicia never saw what did not exist, and +therefore was able sometimes to perceive what did.</p> + +<p>"Good gracious, what an idea! He'd simply roar with laughter at the mere +thought of such a thing! Why, Christopher isn't capable of falling in +love with anybody; he hasn't got it in him, he is so frightfully +matter-of-fact."</p> + +<p>Felicia looked dubious. "Then don't you think he will ever marry?"</p> + +<p>"Oh, yes, he'll marry fast enough—a sweet, domestic woman, who plays +the piano and does crochet-work; and he will talk to her about the price +of iron and the integrity of the empire, and will think that he is +making love, and she will think so too. And they will both of them go +down to their graves without ever finding out that the life is more than +meat or the body than raiment."</p> + +<p>Elisabeth was very hard on Christopher just then, and nothing that +Felicia could say succeeded in softening her. Women are apt to be hard +when they are quite young—and sometimes even later.</p> + +<p>Felicia Herbert was the eldest of a large family. Her parents, though +well-to-do, were not rich; and it was the dream of Mrs. Herbert's life +that her daughter's beauty should bring about a great match. She was a +good woman according to her lights, and a most excellent wife and +mother; but if she had a weakness—and who (except, of course, one's +self) is without one?—that weakness was social ambition.</p> + +<p>"You will understand, my dear," she said confidentially to Elisabeth, +"that it would be the greatest comfort to Mr. Herbert and myself to see +Felicia married to a God-fearing man; and, of course, if he kept<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_127" id="Page_127">[Pg 127]</a></span> his +own carriage as well we should be all the better satisfied."</p> + +<p>"I don't think that money really makes people happy," replied Elisabeth, +strong in the unworldliness of those who have never known what it is to +do without anything that money can buy.</p> + +<p>"Of course not, my dear—of course not; nothing but religion can bring +true happiness. Whenever I am tempted to be anxious about my children's +future, I always check myself by saying, 'The Lord will provide; though +I can not sometimes help hoping that the provision will be an ample one +as far as Felicia is concerned, because she is so extremely +nice-looking."</p> + +<p>"She is perfectly lovely!" exclaimed Elisabeth enthusiastically; "and +she gets lovelier and lovelier every time I see her. If I were to change +places with all the rich men in the world, I should never do anything +but keep on marrying Felicia."</p> + +<p>"Still, she could only marry one of you, my dear. But, between +ourselves, I just want to ask you a few questions about a Mr. Thornley +whom Felicia met at your house. I fancied she was a wee bit interested +in him."</p> + +<p>"Interested in Chris! Oh! she couldn't possibly be. No girl could be +interested in Christopher in that way."</p> + +<p>"Why not, my dear? Is he so unusually plain?"</p> + +<p>"Oh! no; he is very good-looking; but he has a good head for figures and +a poor eye for faces. In short, he is a sensible man, and girls don't +fall in love with sensible men."</p> + +<p>"I think you are mistaken there; I do indeed. I have known many +instances of women becoming sincerely attached to sensible men."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_128" id="Page_128">[Pg 128]</a></span></p> + +<p>"You don't know how overpoweringly sensible Christopher is. He is so +wise that he never makes a joke unless it has some point in it."</p> + +<p>"There is no harm in that, my dear. I never see the point of a joke +myself, I admit; but I like to know that there is one."</p> + +<p>"And when he goes for a walk with a girl, he never talks nonsense to +her," continued Elisabeth, "but treats her exactly as if she were his +maiden aunt."</p> + +<p>"But why should he talk nonsense to her? It is a great waste of time to +talk nonsense; I am not sure that it is not even a sin. Is Mr. Thornley +well off?"</p> + +<p>"No. His uncle, Mr. Smallwood, is the general manager of our works; and +Christopher has only his salary as sub-manager, and what his uncle may +leave him. His mother was Mr. Smallwood's sister, and married a +ne'er-do-weel-who left her penniless; at least, that is to say, if he +ever had a mother—which I sometimes doubt, as he understands women so +little."</p> + +<p>"Still, I think we can take that for granted," said Mrs. Herbert, +smiling with pride at having seen Elisabeth's little joke, and feeling +quite a wit herself in consequence. One of the secrets of Elisabeth's +popularity was that she had a knack of impressing the people with whom +she talked, not so much with a sense of her cleverness as with a sense +of their own. She not only talked well herself, she made other people +talk well also—a far more excellent gift.</p> + +<p>"So," she went on, "if his uncle hadn't adopted him, I suppose Chris +would have starved to death when he was a child; and that would have +been extremely unpleasant for him, poor boy!"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_129" id="Page_129">[Pg 129]</a></span></p> + +<p>"Ah! that would have been terrible, my dear!" exclaimed Mrs. Herbert, so +full of pity for Christopher that she was willing to give him anything +short of her firstborn. She was really a kind-hearted woman.</p> + +<p>Elisabeth looked out of the window at the group of stunted shrubs with +black-edged leaves which entitled Felicia's home to be called Wood Glen. +"There is one thing to be said in favour of starvation," she said +solemnly, "it would keep one from getting stout, and stoutness is the +cruellest curse of all. I'd rather be dead than stout any day."</p> + +<p>"My dear child, you are talking nonsense. What would be the advantage of +being thin if you were not alive?"</p> + +<p>"When you come to that, what would be the advantage of being alive if +you weren't thin?" retorted Elisabeth.</p> + +<p>"The two cases are not parallel, my dear; you see you couldn't be thin +without being alive, but you could be alive without being thin."</p> + +<p>"It is possible; I have come across such cases myself, but I devoutly +trust mine may never be one of them. As the hymn says, I shall always be +'content to fill a little space.'"</p> + +<p>"Ah! but I think the hymn doesn't mean it quite in that sense. I believe +the hymn refers rather to the greatness of one's attainments and +possessions than to one's personal bulk."</p> + +<p>Elisabeth opened her eyes wide with an expression of childlike +simplicity. "Do you really think so?"</p> + +<p>"I do, my dear. You know one must not take poetry too literally; verse +writers are allowed what is termed 'poetic license,' and are rarely, if +ever,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_130" id="Page_130">[Pg 130]</a></span> quite accurate in their statements. I suppose it would be too +difficult for anybody to get both the truth and the rhyme to fit in, and +so the truth has to be somewhat adapted. But about Mr. Thornley, my +love; you don't think that he and Felicia are at all interested in one +another?"</p> + +<p>"Good gracious, no! I'm sure they are not. If they had been, I should +have spotted it and talked about it ages ago."</p> + +<p>"I hope you are not given to talk about such things, even if you do +perceive them," said Mrs. Herbert, with reproof in her tone; "talking +scandal is a sad habit."</p> + +<p>"But it isn't scandal to say that a man is in love with a woman—in +fact, it is the very opposite. It is much worse scandal never to talk +about a woman in that way, because that means that you think she is +either too old or too ugly to have a lover, and that is the worst +scandal of all. I always feel immensely tickled when I hear women +pluming themselves on the fact that they never get talked about; and I +long to say to them, 'There is nothing to be proud of in that, my dears; +it only means that the world is tacitly calling you stupid old frights.' +Why, I'd rather people found fault with me than did not talk about me at +all."</p> + +<p>"Then I am afraid you are not 'content to fill a little space,'" said +Mrs. Herbert severely.</p> + +<p>"To tell you the truth I don't think I am," replied Elisabeth, with +engaging frankness; "conceit is my besetting sin and I know it. Not +stately, scornful, dignified pride, but downright, inflated, perky, +puffed-up conceit. I have often remarked upon it to Christopher, and he +has always agreed with me."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_131" id="Page_131">[Pg 131]</a></span></p> + +<p>"But, my dear, the consciousness of a fault is surely one step toward +its cure."</p> + +<p>"Not it," replied Elisabeth, shaking her head; "I've always known I am +conceited, yet I get conceiteder and conceiteder every year. Bless you! +I don't want to 'fill a little space,' and I particularly don't want 'a +heart at leisure from itself'; I think that is such a dull, old-maidish +sort of thing to have—I wouldn't have one for anything. People who have +hearts at leisure from themselves always want to understudy Providence, +you will notice."</p> + +<p>Mrs. Herbert looked shocked. "My dear, what do you mean?"</p> + +<p>"I mean that really good people, who have no interests of their own, are +too fond of playing the part of Providence to other people. That their +motives are excellent I admit; they are not a bit selfish, and they +interfere with you for your own good; but they successfully accomplish +as much incurable mischief in half an hour as it would take half a dozen +professional mischief-makers at least a year to finish off +satisfactorily. If they can not mind their own business it doesn't +follow that Providence can't either, don't you see?"</p> + +<p>Whereupon Felicia entered the room, and the conversation was abruptly +closed; but not before Mrs. Herbert had decided that if Providence had +selected her daughter as the consoler of Christopher's sorrows, +Providence must be gently and patiently reasoned with until another and +more suitable comforter was substituted. She did not, of course, put the +matter to herself thus barely; but this was what her decision +practically amounted to.</p> + +<p>But although people might not be talking, as Mrs. Herbert imagined, +about Christopher and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_132" id="Page_132">[Pg 132]</a></span> Felicia, the tongues of Sedgehill were all agog +on the subject of the evident attachment between Elisabeth Farringdon +and the master of the Moat House.</p> + +<p>"I'm afeared as our Miss Elisabeth is keeping company with that Mr. +Tremaine; I am indeed," Mrs. Bateson confided to her crony, Mrs. Hankey.</p> + +<p>Mrs. Hankey, as was her wont, groaned both in spirit and in person. "So +I've heard tell, more's the pity! Miss Elisabeth is no favourite of +mine, as you know, being so dark-complexioned as a child, and I never +could abide dark babies. I haven't much to be thankful for, I'm sure, +for the Lord has tried me sore, giving me Hankey as a husband, and such +a poor appetite as I never enjoy a meal from one year's end to another; +but one thing I can boast of, and that is my babies were all fair, with +as clear a skin as you could want to see. Still, I don't wish the young +lady no harm, it not being Christian to do so; and it is sad at her age +to be tied to a husband from which there is no outlet but the grave."</p> + +<p>"I don't hold with you there, Mrs. Hankey; it is dull work for the women +who have nobody to order 'em about and find fault with 'em. Why, where's +the good of taking the trouble to do a thing well, if there's no man to +blame you for it afterward? But what I want to see is Miss Elisabeth +married to Master Christopher, them two being made for one another, as +you might say."</p> + +<p>"He has a new heart and a nice fresh colour, has Master Christopher; +which is more than his own mother—supposing she was alive—could say +for Mr. Tremaine."</p> + +<p>"That is so, Mrs. Hankey. I'm afeared there isn't much religion about +him. He don't even go to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_133" id="Page_133">[Pg 133]</a></span> church on a Sunday, let alone chapel; though +he is wonderful charitable to the poor, I must admit."</p> + +<p>Mrs. Hankey pursed up her mouth. "And what are works without faith, I +should like to know!"</p> + +<p>"Quite true—quite true; but maybe the Lord ain't quite as hard on us as +we are on one another, and makes allowances for our bringing-up and +such."</p> + +<p>"Maybe," replied Mrs. Hankey, in a tone which implied that she hoped her +friend was mistaken.</p> + +<p>"You see," continued Mrs. Bateson, "there's nothing helps you to +understand the ways of the Lord like having children of your own. Why, +afore I was married, I was for whipping every child that was contrairy +till it got good again; but after my Lucy Ellen was born, I found that +her contrairiness made me sorry for her instead of angry with her, and I +knowed as the poor little thing was feeling poorly or else she'd never +have been like that. So instead of punishing her, I just comforted her; +and the more contradictious she got, the more I knowed as she wanted +comfort. And I don't doubt but the Lord knows that the more we kick +against Him the more we need Him; and that He makes allowance +accordingly."</p> + +<p>"You seem to have comfortable thoughts about things; I only hope as you +are not encouraging false hopes and crying peace where there is no +peace," remarked Mrs. Hankey severely.</p> + +<p>But Mrs. Bateson was not affrighted. "Don't you know how ashamed you +feel when folks think better of you than you deserve? I remember years +ago, when Caleb came a-courting me, I was minded once to throw him over, +because he was full solemn to take a young maid's fancy. And when I was +debating within myself whether I'd throw him over or<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_134" id="Page_134">[Pg 134]</a></span> no, he says to me, +'Kezia, my lass,' he says, 'I'm not afeared as ye'll give me the slip, +for all your saucy ways; other folks may think you're a bit flirty, but +I know you better than they do, and I trust you with all my heart.' Do +you think I could have disappointed him after that, Mrs. Hankey? Not for +the whole world. But I was that ashamed as never was, for even having +thought of such a thing. And if we poor sinful souls feel like that, do +you think the Lord is the One to disappoint folks for thinking better of +Him than He deserves? Not He, Mrs. Hankey; I know Him better than that."</p> + +<p>"I only wish I could see things in such a cheerful light as you do."</p> + +<p>"It was only after my first baby was born that I began to understand the +Lord's ways a bit. It's wonderful how caring for other folks seems to +bring you nearer to Him—nearer even than class meetings and special +services, though I wouldn't for the world say a word against the means +of grace."</p> + +<p>This doctrine was too high for Mrs. Hankey; she could not attain to it, +so she wisely took refuge in a side issue. "It was fortunate for you +your eldest being a girl; if the Lord had thought fit to give me a +daughter instead of three sons, things might have been better with me," +she said, contentedly moving the burden of personal responsibility from +her own shoulders to her Maker's.</p> + +<p>"Don't say that, Mrs. Hankey. Daughters may be more useful in the house, +I must confess, and less mischievous all round; but they can't work as +hard for their living as the sons can when you ain't there to look after +them."</p> + +<p>"You don't know what it is to live in a house full of nothing but men, +with not a soul to speak<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_135" id="Page_135">[Pg 135]</a></span> to about all the queer tricks they're at, many +a time I feel like Robinson Crusoe on a desert island among a lot of +savages."</p> + +<p>"And I don't blame you," agreed Mrs. Bateson sympathetically; "for my +part I don't know what I should have done when Caleb and the boys were +troublesome if I couldn't have passed remarks on their behaviour to Lucy +Ellen; I missed her something terrible when first she was married for +that simple reason. You see, it takes another woman to understand how +queer a man is."</p> + +<p>"It does, Mrs. Bateson; you never spoke a truer word. And then think +what it must be on your death-bed to have the room full of stupid men, +tumbling over one another and upsetting the medicine-bottles and putting +everything in its wrong place. Many a time have I wished for a daughter, +if it was but to close my eyes; but the Lord has seen fit to withhold +His blessings from me, and it is not for me to complain: His ways not +being as our ways, but often quite the reverse."</p> + +<p>"That is so; and I wish as He'd seen fit to mate Miss Elisabeth with +Master Christopher, instead of letting her keep company with that Mr. +Tremaine."</p> + +<p>Mrs. Hankey shook her head ominously. "Mr. Tremaine is one that has +religious doubts."</p> + +<p>"Ah! that's liver," said Mrs. Bateson, her voice softening with pity; +"that comes from eating French kickshaws, and having no mother to see +that he takes a dose of soda and nitre now and then to keep his system +cool. Poor young man!"</p> + +<p>"I hear as he goes so far as to deny the existence of a God," continued +Mrs. Hankey.</p> + +<p>"All liver!" repeated Mrs. Bateson; "it often takes men like that; when +they begin to doubt the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_136" id="Page_136">[Pg 136]</a></span> inspiration of the Scriptures you know they +will be all the better for a dose of dandelion tea; but when they go on +to deny the existence of a God, there's nothing for it but chamomile. +And I don't believe as the Lord takes their doubts any more seriously +than their wives take 'em. He knows as well as we do that the poor +things need pity more than blame, and dosing more than converting; for +He gave 'em their livers, and we only have to bear with them and return +thanks to Him for having made ours of a different pattern."</p> + +<p>"And what do the women as have doubts need, I should like to know?"</p> + +<p>"A husband and children is the best cure for them. Why, when a woman has +a husband and children to look after, and washes at home, she has no +time, bless you! to be teaching the Lord His business; she has enough to +do minding her own."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_137" id="Page_137">[Pg 137]</a></span></p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_VIII" id="CHAPTER_VIII"></a><a href="#CONTENTS">CHAPTER VIII</a></h2> + +<h3>GREATER THAN OUR HEARTS</h3> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">The world is weary of new tracks of thought<br /></span> +<span class="i10">That lead to nought—<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Sick of quack remedies prescribed in vain<br /></span> +<span class="i10">For mortal pain,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Yet still above them all one Figure stands<br /></span> +<span class="i10">With outstretched Hands.<br /></span> +</div></div> + + +<p>"Cousin Maria, do you like Alan Tremaine?" asked Elisabeth, not long +after her return from Yorkshire.</p> + +<p>"Like him, my dear? I neither like nor dislike persons with whom I have +as little in common as I have with Mr. Tremaine. But he strikes me as a +young man of parts, and his manners are admirable."</p> + +<p>"I wasn't thinking about his manners, I was thinking about his views," +said the girl, walking across the room and looking through the window at +the valley smiling in the light of the summer morning; "don't you think +they are very broad and enlightened?"</p> + +<p>"I daresay they are. Young persons of superior intelligence are +frequently dazzled by their own brilliance at first, and consider that +they were sent into the world specially to confute the law and the +prophets. As they grow older they learn better."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_138" id="Page_138">[Pg 138]</a></span></p> + +<p>Elisabeth began playing with the blind-cord. "I think he is awfully +clever," she remarked.</p> + +<p>"My dear, how often must I beg you not to use that word <i>awfully</i>, +except in its correct sense? Remember that we hold the English tongue in +trust—it belongs to the nation and not to us—and we have no more right +to profane England's language by the introduction of coined words and +slang expressions than we have to disendow her institutions or to +pollute her rivers."</p> + +<p>"All right; I'll try not to forget again. But you really do think Alan +is clever, don't you?"</p> + +<p>"He is undoubtedly intelligent, and possesses the knack of appearing +even more intelligent than he is; but at present he has not learned his +own limitations."</p> + +<p>"You mean that he isn't clever enough to know that he isn't cleverer," +suggested Elisabeth.</p> + +<p>"Well, my dear, I should never have put it in that way, but that +approximately expresses my ideas about our young friend."</p> + +<p>"And he is aw—I mean frightfully well off."</p> + +<p>Miss Farringdon looked sternly at the speaker. "Never again let me hear +you refer to the income of persons about whom you are speaking, +Elisabeth; it is a form of ill-breeding which I can not for a moment +tolerate in my house. That money is a convenience to the possessor of +it, I do not attempt to deny; but that the presence or the absence of it +should be counted as a matter of any moment (except to the man himself), +presupposes a standpoint of such vulgarity that it is impossible for me +to discuss it. And even the man himself should never talk about it; he +should merely silently recognise the fact, and regulate his plan of life +accordingly."</p> + +<p>"Still, I have heard quite nice people sometimes<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_139" id="Page_139">[Pg 139]</a></span> say that they can not +afford things," argued Elisabeth.</p> + +<p>"I do not deny that; even quite nice people make mistakes sometimes, and +well-mannered persons are not invariably well-mannered. Your quite nice +people would have been still nicer had they realized that to talk about +one's poverty—though not so bad as talking about one's wealth—is only +one degree better; and that perfect gentle-people would refer neither to +the one nor to the other."</p> + +<p>"I see." Elisabeth's tone was subdued.</p> + +<p>"I once knew a woman," continued Miss Farringdon, "who, by that accident +of wealth, which is of no interest to anybody but the possessor, was +enabled to keep a butler and two footmen; but in speaking of her +household to a friend, who was less richly endowed with worldly goods +than herself, she referred to these three functionaries as 'my +parlourmaid,' for fear of appearing to be conscious of her own +superiority in this respect. Now this woman, though kind-hearted, was +distinctly vulgar."</p> + +<p>"But you have always taught me that it is good manners to keep out of +sight any point on which you have the advantage over the people you are +talking to," Elisabeth persisted. "You have told me hundreds of times +that I must never show off my knowledge after other people have +displayed their ignorance; and that I must not even be obtrusively +polite after they have been obviously rude. Those are your very words, +Cousin Maria: you see I can give chapter and verse."</p> + +<p>"And I meant what I said, my dear. Wider knowledge and higher breeding +are signs of actual superiority, and therefore should never be flaunted. +The vulgarity in the woman I am speaking about<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_140" id="Page_140">[Pg 140]</a></span> lay in imagining that +there is any superiority in having more money than another person: there +is not. To hide the difference proved that she thought there was a +difference, and this proved that her standpoint was an essentially +plebeian one. There was no difference at all, save one of convenience; +the same sort of difference there is between people who have hot water +laid on all over their houses and those who have to carry it upstairs. +And who would be so trivial and commonplace as to talk about that?"</p> + +<p>Elisabeth, seeing that her cousin was in the right, wisely changed the +subject. "The Bishop of Merchester is preaching at St. Peter's Church, +in Silverhampton, on St. Peter's Day, and I have asked Alan Tremaine to +drive me over in his dog-cart to hear him." Although she had strayed +from the old paths of dogma and doctrine, Elisabeth could not eradicate +the inborn Methodist nature which hungers and thirsts after +righteousness as set forth in sermons.</p> + +<p>"I should like to hear him too, my dear," said Miss Farringdon, who also +had been born a Methodist.</p> + +<p>"Then will you come? In that case we can have our own carriage, and I +needn't bother Alan," said Elisabeth, with disappointment written in +capital letters all over her expressive face.</p> + +<p>"On which day is it, and at what hour?"</p> + +<p>"To-morrow evening at half-past six," replied the girl, knowing that +this was the hour of the evening sacrifice at East Lane Chapel, and +trusting to the power of habit and early association to avert the +addition of that third which would render two no longer any company for +each other.</p> + +<p>Her trust was not misplaced. "It is our <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_141" id="Page_141">[Pg 141]</a></span>weekevening service, my dear, +with the prayer-meeting after. Did you forget?"</p> + +<p>Elisabeth endeavoured to simulate the sudden awakening of a dormant +memory. "So it is!"</p> + +<p>"I see no reason why you should not go into Silverhampton to hear the +Bishop," said Miss Farringdon kindly. "I like young people to learn the +faith once delivered to the saints, from all sorts and conditions of +teachers; but I shall feel it my duty to be in my accustomed place."</p> + +<p>So it came to pass, one never-to-be-forgotten summer afternoon, that +Alan Tremaine drove Elisabeth Farringdon into Silverhampton to hear the +Bishop of Merchester preach.</p> + +<p>As soon as she was safely tucked up in the dog-cart, with no way of +escape, Elisabeth saw a look in Alan's eyes which told her that he meant +to make love to her; so with that old, old feminine instinct, which made +the prehistoric woman take to her heels when the prehistoric man began +to run after her, this daughter of the nineteenth century took refuge in +an armour of flippancy, which is the best shield yet invented for +resisting Cupid's darts.</p> + +<p>It was a glorious afternoon—one of those afternoons which advertise to +all the world how excellent was the lotus-eaters' method of dividing +time; and although the woods had exchanged the fresh variety of spring +for the dark green sameness of summer, the fields were gay with +haymakers, and the world still seemed full of joyous and abundant life.</p> + +<p>"Let's go the country way," Elisabeth had said at starting; "and then we +can come back by the town." So the two drove by Badgering Woods, and +across the wide common; and as they went they saw and felt that the +world was very good. Elisabeth<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_142" id="Page_142">[Pg 142]</a></span> was highly sensitive to the influences +of nature, and, left to herself, would have leaned toward sentiment on +such an afternoon as this; but she had seen that look in Alan's eyes, +and that was enough for her.</p> + +<p>"Do you know," began Tremaine, getting to work, "that I have been doing +nothing lately but thinking about you? And I have come to the conclusion +that what appeals so much to me is your strength. The sweetness which +attracts some men has no charm for me; I am one of the men who above all +things admire and reverence a strong woman, though I know that the sweet +and clinging woman is to some the ideal of feminine perfection. But +different men, of course, admire different types."</p> + +<p>"Exactly; there is a Latin proverb, something about tots and sentences, +which embodies that idea," suggested Elisabeth, with a nervous, girlish +laugh.</p> + +<p>Alan did not smile; he made it a rule never to encourage flippancy in +women.</p> + +<p>"It is hardly kind of you to laugh at me when I am speaking seriously," +he said, "and it would serve you right if I turned my horse's head round +and refused to let you hear your Bishop. But I will not punish you this +time; I will heap coals of fire on your head by driving on."</p> + +<p>"Oh! don't begin heaping coals of fire on people's head, Mr. Tremaine; +it is a dangerous habit, and those who indulge in it always get their +fingers burned in the end—just as they do when they play with edged +tools, or do something (I forget what) with their own petard."</p> + +<p>There was a moment's silence, and then Alan said—</p> + +<p>"It makes me very unhappy when you are in a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_143" id="Page_143">[Pg 143]</a></span> mood like this; I do not +understand it, and it seems to raise up an impassable barrier between +us."</p> + +<p>"Please don't be unhappy about a little thing like that; wait till you +break a front tooth, or lose your collar-stud, or have some other real +trouble to cry over. But now you are making a trouble out of nothing, +and I have no patience with people who make troubles out of nothing; it +seems to me like getting one's boots spoiled by a watering-cart when it +is dry weather; and that is a thing which makes me most frightfully +angry."</p> + +<p>"Do many things make you angry, I wonder?"</p> + +<p>"Some things and some people."</p> + +<p>"Tell me what sort of people make a woman of your type angry."</p> + +<p>Elisabeth fell into the trap; she could never resist the opportunity of +discussing herself from an outside point of view. If Alan had said +<i>you</i>, she would have snubbed him at once; but the well-chosen words, <i>a +woman of your type</i>, completely carried her away. She was not an +egotist; she was only intensely interested in herself as the single +specimen of humanity which she was able to study exhaustively.</p> + +<p>"I think the people who make me angry are the unresponsive people," she +replied thoughtfully; "the people who do not put their minds into the +same key as mine when I am talking to them. Don't you know the sort? +When you discuss a thing from one standpoint they persist in discussing +it from another; and as soon as you try to see it from their point of +view, they fly off to a third. It isn't so much that they differ from +you—that you would not mind; there is a certain harmony in difference +which is more effective than its unison of perfect agreement—but they +sing the same tune in another key, and the discords<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_144" id="Page_144">[Pg 144]</a></span> are excruciating. +Then the people who argue make me angry; those who argue about trifles, +I mean."</p> + +<p>"Ah! All you women are alike in that; you love discussion, and hate +argument. The cause of which is that you decide things by instinct +rather than by reason, and that therefore—although you know you are +right—you can not possibly prove it."</p> + +<p>"Then," Elisabeth continued, "I get very angry with the people who will +bother about non-essentials; who, when you have got hold of the vital +centre of a question, stray off to side issues. They are first-cousins +of the people who talk in different keys."</p> + +<p>"I should have said they were the same."</p> + +<p>"Well, perhaps they are; I believe you are right. Christopher Thornley +is one of that sort; when you are discussing one side of a thing with +him, you'll find him playing bo-peep with you round the other; and you +never can get him into the right mood at the right time. He makes me +simply furious sometimes. Do you know, I think if I were a dog I should +often bite Christopher? He makes me angry in a biting kind of way."</p> + +<p>Alan smiled faintly at this; jokes at Christopher's expense were +naturally more humorous than jokes at his own. "And what other sorts of +people make you angry?" he asked.</p> + +<p>"I'm afraid the people who make me angriest of all are the people who +won't do what I tell them. They really madden me." And Elisabeth began +to laugh. "I've got a horribly strong will, you see, and if people go +against it, I want them to be sent to the dentist's every morning, and +to the photographer's every afternoon, for the rest of their lives. Now +Christopher is one of the worst of those; I can't make him do what I +want just because I want<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_145" id="Page_145">[Pg 145]</a></span> it; he always wishes to know why I want it, +and that is so silly and tiresome of him, because nine times out of ten +I don't know myself."</p> + +<p>"Very trying!"</p> + +<p>"Christopher certainly has the knack of making me angrier than anybody +else I ever met," said Elisabeth thoughtfully. "I wonder why it is? I +suppose it must be because I have known him for so long. I can't see any +other reason. I am generally such an easy-going, good-tempered girl; but +when Christopher begins to argue and dictate and contradict, the Furies +simply aren't in it with me."</p> + +<p>"The excellent Thornley certainly has his limitations."</p> + +<p>Elisabeth's eyes flashed. She did not mind finding fault with +Christopher herself; in fact, she found such fault-finding absolutely +necessary to her well-being; but she resented any attempt on the part of +another to usurp this, her peculiar prerogative. "He is very good, all +the same," she said, "and extremely clever; and he is my greatest +friend."</p> + +<p>But Alan was bored by Christopher as a subject of conversation, so he +changed him for Elisabeth's self. "How loyal you are!" he exclaimed with +admiration; "it is indeed a patent of nobility to be counted among your +friends."</p> + +<p>The girl, having just been guilty of disloyalty, was naturally delighted +at this compliment. "You always understand and appreciate me," she said +gratefully, unconscious of the fact that it was Alan's lack of +understanding and appreciation which had aroused her gratitude just +then. Perfect comprehension—untempered by perfect love—would be a +terrible thing; mercifully for us poor mortals it does not exist.</p> + +<p>Alan went on: "Because I possess this patent of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_146" id="Page_146">[Pg 146]</a></span> nobility, I am going to +presume upon my privileges and ask you to help me in my life-work; and +my life-work, as you know, is to ameliorate the condition of the poor, +and to carry to some extent the burdens which they are bound to bear."</p> + +<p>Elisabeth looked up at him, her face full of interest; no appeal to her +pity was ever made in vain. If people expected her to admire them, they +were frequently disappointed; if they wished her to fear them, their +wish was absolutely denied; but if they only wanted her to be sorry for +them, they were abundantly satisfied, sympathy being the keynote of her +character. She was too fastidious often to admire; she was too strong +ever to fear; but her tenderness was unfailing toward those who had once +appealed to her pity, and whose weakness had for once allowed itself to +rest upon her strength. Therefore Alan's desire to help the poor, and to +make them happier, struck the dominant chord in her nature; but +unfortunately when she raised her eyes, full of sympathetic sympathy, to +his, she encountered that look in the latter which had frightened her at +the beginning of the excursion; so she again clothed herself in her +garment of flippancy, and hardened her heart as the nether millstone. In +blissful unconsciousness Alan continued—</p> + +<p>"Society is just now passing through a transition stage. The interests +of capital and labour are at war with each other; the rich and the poor +are as two armies made ready for battle, and the question is, What can +we do to bridge over the gulf between the classes, and to induce them +each to work for, instead of against, the other? It is these transition +stages which have proved the most difficult epochs in the world's +history."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_147" id="Page_147">[Pg 147]</a></span></p> + +<p>"I hate transition stages and revolutions, they are so unsettling. It +seems to me they are just like the day when your room is cleaned; and +that is the most uncomfortable day in the whole week. Don't you know it? +You go upstairs in the accustomed way, fearing nothing; but when you +open the door you find the air dark with dust and the floor with +tea-leaves, and nothing looking as it ought to look. Prone on its face +on the bed, covered with a winding-sheet, lies your overthrown +looking-glass; and underneath it, in a shapeless mass, are huddled +together all the things that you hold dearest upon earth. You thrust in +your hand to get something that you want, and it is a pure chance +whether your Bible or your button-hook rises to the surface. And it +seems to me that transition periods are just like that."</p> + +<p>"How volatile you are! One minute you are so serious and the next so +frivolous that I fail to follow you. I often think that you must have +some foreign blood in your veins, you are so utterly different from the +typical, stolid, shy, self-conscious English-woman."</p> + +<p>"I hope you don't think I was made in Germany, like cheap china and +imitation Astrakhan."</p> + +<p>"Heaven forbid! The Germans are more stolid and serious than the +English. But you must have a Celtic ancestor in you somewhere. Haven't +you?"</p> + +<p>"Well, to tell you the truth, my great-grandmother was a Manxwoman; but +we are ashamed to talk much about her, because it sounds as if she'd had +no tail."</p> + +<p>"Then you must have inherited your temperament from her. But now I want +to talk to you seriously about doing something for the men who work<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_148" id="Page_148">[Pg 148]</a></span> in +the coal-pits, and who—more even than the rest of their class—are shut +out from the joy and beauty of the world. Their lives not only are made +hideous, but are also shortened, by the nature of their toil. Do you +know what the average life of a miner is?"</p> + +<p>"Of course I do: twenty-one years."</p> + +<p>Alan frowned; he disapproved of jokes even more than of creeds, and +understood them equally. "Miss Farringdon, you are not behaving fairly +to me. You know what I mean well enough, but you wilfully misunderstand +my words for the sake of laughing at them. But I will make you listen, +all the same. I want to know if you will help me in my work by becoming +my wife; and I think that even you can not help answering that question +seriously."</p> + +<p>The laughter vanished from Elisabeth's face, as if it had been wiped out +with a sponge. "Oh! I—I don't know," she murmured lamely.</p> + +<p>"Then you must find out. To me it seems that you are the one woman in +all the world who was made for me. Your personality attracted me the +first moment that I met you; and our subsequent companionship has proved +that our minds habitually run in the same grooves, and that we naturally +look at things from the same standpoint. That is so, is it not?"</p> + +<p>"Yes."</p> + +<p>"The only serious difference between us seemed to be the difference of +faith. You had been trained in the doctrines of one of the strictest +sects, while I had outgrown all dogmas and thrown aside all recognised +forms of religion. So strong were my feelings on this point, that I +would not have married any woman who still clung to the worn-out and (by +me)<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_149" id="Page_149">[Pg 149]</a></span> disused traditions; but I fancy that I have succeeded in converting +you to my views, and that our ideas upon religion are now practically +identical. Is not that so?"</p> + +<p>Elisabeth thought for a moment. "Yes," she answered slowly; "you have +taught me that Christianity, like all the other old religions, has had +its day; and that the world is now ready for a new dispensation."</p> + +<p>"Exactly; and for a dispensation which shall unite the pure ethics of +the Christian to the joyous vitality of the Greek, eliminating alike the +melancholy of the one and the sensualism of the other. You agree with me +in this, do you not?"</p> + +<p>"You know that I do."</p> + +<p>"I am glad, because—as I said before—I could not bear to marry any +woman who did not see eye to eye with me on these vital matters. I love +you very dearly, Elisabeth, and it would be a great grief to me if any +question of opinion or conviction came between us; yet I do not believe +that two people could possibly be happy together—however much they +might love each other—if they were not one with each other on subjects +such as these."</p> + +<p>Elisabeth was silent; she was too much excited to speak. Her heart was +thumping like the great hammer at the Osierfield, and she was trembling +all over. So she held her peace as they drove up the principal street of +Silverhampton and across the King's Square to the lych-gate of St. +Peter's Church; but Alan, looking into the tell-tale face he knew so +well, was quite content.</p> + +<p>Yet as she sat beside Alan in St. Peter's Church that summer evening, +and thought upon what she had just done, a great sadness filled +Elisabeth's soul.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_150" id="Page_150">[Pg 150]</a></span> The sun shone brightly through the western window, +and wrote mystic messages upon the gray stone walls; but the lights of +the east window shone pale and cold in the distant apse, where the +Figure of the Crucified gleamed white upon a foundation of emerald. And +as she looked at the Figure, which the world has wept over and +worshipped for nineteen centuries, she realized that this was the Symbol +of all that she was giving up and leaving behind her—the Sign of that +religion of love and sorrow which men call Christianity. She felt that +wisdom must be justified of her children, and not least of her, +Elisabeth Farringdon; nevertheless, she mourned for the myth which had +once made life seem fair, and death even fairer. Although she had +outgrown her belief in it, its beauty had still power to touch her +heart, if not to convince her intellect; and she sighed as she recalled +all that it had once meant, and how it had appeared to be the one +satisfactory solution to the problems which weary and perplex mankind. +Now she must face all the problems over again in the grim twilight of +dawning science, with no longer a Star of Bethlehem to show where the +answer might be found; and her spirit quailed at the pitiless prospect. +She had never understood before how much that Symbol of eternal love and +vicarious suffering had been to her, nor how puzzling would be the path +through the wilderness if there were no Crucifix at life's cross-roads +to show the traveller which way to go; and her heart grew heavier as she +took part in the sacred office of Evensong, and thought how beautiful it +all would be if only it were true. She longed to be a little child +again—a child to whom the things which are not seen are as the things +which are seen, and the things which are not as the things<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_151" id="Page_151">[Pg 151]</a></span> which are; +and she could have cried with homesickness when she remembered how +firmly she had once believed that the shadow which hung over the +Osierfield was a pillar of cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night, +to testify that God was still watching over His people, as in the days +of old. Now she knew that the pillar was only the smoke and the flame of +human industries; and the knowledge brought a load of sadness, as it +seemed to typify that there was no longer any help for the world but in +itself.</p> + +<p>When the Bishop ascended the pulpit, Elisabeth recalled her wandering +thoughts and set herself to listen. No one who possesses a drop of +Nonconformist blood can ever succeed in not listening to a sermon, even +if it be a poor one; and the Bishop of Merchester was one of the finest +preachers of his day. His text was, "Blessed art thou, Simon Barjona: +for flesh and blood hath not revealed it unto thee"; and he endeavoured +to set forth how it is only God who can teach men about God, and how +flesh and blood can never show us the Christ until He chooses to reveal +Himself. At first Elisabeth listened only with her mind, expecting an +intellectual treat and nothing more; but as he went on, and showed how +the Call comes in strange places and at strange times, and how when it +comes there is no resisting it, her heart began to burn within her; and +she recognised the preacher, not only as a man of divers gifts and great +powers, but as the ambassador of Christ sent direct to her soul. Then +slowly her eyes were opened, and she knew that the Figure in the east +window was no Sign of an imaginary renunciation, no Symbol of a worn-out +creed, but the portrait of a living Person, Whose Voice was calling<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_152" id="Page_152">[Pg 152]</a></span> +her, and Whose Love was constraining her, and Whose Power was enfolding +her and would not let her go. With the certainty that is too absolute +for proof, she knew in Whom she now believed; and she knew, further, +that it was not her own mind nor the preacher's words that had suddenly +shown her the truth—flesh and blood had not revealed it to her, but +Christ Himself.</p> + +<p>When the service was over, Elisabeth came out into the sunlight with a +strange, new, exultant feeling, such as she had never felt before. She +stood in the old churchyard, waiting for Alan to bring round the +dog-cart, and watching the sun set beyond the distant hills; and she was +conscious—how she could not explain—that the sunset was different from +any other sunset that she had ever seen. She had always loved nature +with an intense love; but now there seemed a richer gold in the parting +sunbeams—a sweeter mystery behind the far-off hills—because of that +Figure in the east window. It was as if she saw again a land which she +had always loved, and now learned for the first time that it belonged to +some one who was dear to her; a new sense of ownership mingled with the +old delight, and gave an added interest to the smallest detail.</p> + +<p>Then she and Alan turned their backs to the sunset, and drove along the +bleak high-road toward Sedgehill, where the reflection of the +blast-furnaces—that weird aurora borealis of the Black Country—was +already beginning to pulsate against the darkening sky. And here again +Elisabeth realized that for her the old things had passed away, and all +things had become new. She felt that her childish dream was true, and +that the crimson light was indeed a pillar of fire showing that the Lord +was in the midst<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_153" id="Page_153">[Pg 153]</a></span> of His people; but she went further now than she had +gone in her day-dreams, and knew that all the lights and shadows of life +are but pillars of cloud and of fire, forthtelling the same truth to all +who have seeing eyes and understanding hearts.</p> + +<p>Suddenly the silence was broken by Alan. "I have been thinking about you +during the service, and building all sorts of castles in the air which +you and I are going to inhabit together. But we must not let the old +faiths hamper us, Elisabeth; if we do, our powers will be impaired by +prejudices, and our usefulness will be limited by traditions."</p> + +<p>"I have something to say to you," Elisabeth replied, and her eyes shone +like stars in the twilight; "you won't understand it, but I must say it +all the same. In church to-night, for the first time in my life, I heard +God speaking to me; and I found out that religion is no string of +dogmas, but just His calling us by name."</p> + +<p>Tremaine looked at her pityingly. "You are overtired and overwrought by +the heat, and the excitement of the sermon has been too much for you. +But you will be all right again to-morrow, never fear."</p> + +<p>"I knew you wouldn't understand, and I can't explain it to you; but it +has suddenly all become quite clear to me—all the things that I have +puzzled over since I was a little child; and I know now that religion is +not our attitude toward God, but His attitude toward us."</p> + +<p>"Why, Elisabeth, you are saying over again all the old formulas that you +and I have refuted so often."</p> + +<p>"I know I am; but I never really believed in them till now. I can't +argue with you, Alan—I'm not clever enough—and besides, the best +things in the world can never be proved by argument. But I want you<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_154" id="Page_154">[Pg 154]</a></span> to +understand that the Power which you call Christianity is stronger than +human wills, or human strength, or even human love; and now that it has +once laid hold upon me, it will never let me go."</p> + +<p>Alan's face grew pale with anger. "I see; your old associations have +been too strong for you."</p> + +<p>"It isn't my old associations, or my early training, or anything +belonging to me. It isn't me at all. It is just His Voice calling me. +Can't you understand, Alan? It is not I who am doing it all—it is He."</p> + +<p>There was a short silence, and then Tremaine said—</p> + +<p>"But I thought you loved me?"</p> + +<p>"I thought so too, but perhaps I was wrong; I don't know. All I know is +that this new feeling is stronger than any feeling I ever had before; +and that I can not give up my religion, whatever it may cost me."</p> + +<p>"I will not marry a woman who believes in the old faith."</p> + +<p>"And I will not marry a man who does not."</p> + +<p>Alan's voice grew hard. "I don't believe you ever loved me," he +complained.</p> + +<p>"I don't know. I thought I did; but perhaps I knew as little about love +as you know about religion. Perhaps I shall find a real love some day +which will be as different from my friendship for you as this new +knowledge is different from the religion that Cousin Maria taught me. +I'm very sorry, but I can never marry you now."</p> + +<p>"You would have given up your religion fast enough if you had really +cared for me," sneered Tremaine.</p> + +<p>Elisabeth pondered for a moment, with the old<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_155" id="Page_155">[Pg 155]</a></span> contraction of her +eyebrows. "I don't think so, because, as I told you before, it isn't +really my doing at all. It isn't that I won't give up my religion—it is +my religion that won't give up me. Supposing that a blind man wanted to +marry me on condition that I would believe, as he did, that the world is +dark: I couldn't believe it, however much I loved him. You can't not +know what you have once known, and you can't not have seen what you have +seen, however much you may wish to do so, or however much other people +may wish it."</p> + +<p>"You are a regular woman, in spite of all your cleverness, and I was a +fool to imagine that you would prove more intelligent in the long run +than the rest of your conventional and superstitious sex."</p> + +<p>"Please forgive me for hurting you," besought Elisabeth.</p> + +<p>"It is not only that you have hurt me, but I am so disappointed in you; +you seemed so different from other women, and now I find the difference +was merely a surface one."</p> + +<p>"I am so sorry," Elisabeth still pleaded.</p> + +<p>Tremaine laughed bitterly. "You are disappointed in yourself, I should +imagine. You posed as being so broad and modern and enlightened, and yet +you have found worn-out dogmas and hackneyed creeds too strong for you."</p> + +<p>Elisabeth smiled to herself. "No; but I have found the Christ," she +answered softly.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_156" id="Page_156">[Pg 156]</a></span></p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_IX" id="CHAPTER_IX"></a><a href="#CONTENTS">CHAPTER IX</a></h2> + +<h3>FELICIA FINDS HAPPINESS</h3> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Give me that peak of cloud which fills<br /></span> +<span class="i2">The sunset with its gorgeous form,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Instead of these familiar hills<br /></span> +<span class="i2">That shield me from the storm.<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>After having been weighed in Elisabeth's balance and found wanting, Alan +Tremaine went abroad for a season, and Sedgehill knew him no more until +the following spring. During that time Elisabeth possessed her soul and +grew into a true woman—a woman with no smallness or meanness in her +nature, but with certain feminine weaknesses which made her all the more +lovable to those people who understood her, and all the more incongruous +and irritating to those who did not. Christopher, too, rested in an +oasis of happiness just then. He was an adept in the study of Elisabeth, +and he knew perfectly well what had passed between her and Alan, +although she flattered herself that she had kept him completely in the +dark on the subject. But Christopher was always ready to dance to +Elisabeth's piping, except when it happened to be on red-hot iron; even +then he tried to obey her bidding, and it was hardly his fault if he +failed.</p> + +<p>Christopher Thornley was one of those people<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_157" id="Page_157">[Pg 157]</a></span> whose temperament and +surroundings are at war with each other. Such people are not few in this +world, though they themselves are frequently quite unaware of the fact; +nevertheless, there is always an element of tragedy in their lot. By +nature he was romantic and passionate and chivalrous, endowed with an +enthusiastic admiration for beauty and an ardent longing for all forms +of joyousness; and he had been trained in a school of thought where all +merely human joys and attractions are counted as unimportant if not +sinful, and where wisdom and righteousness are held to be the two only +ends of life. Perhaps in a former existence—or in the person of some +remote ancestor—Christopher had been a knightly and devoted cavalier, +ready to lay down his life for Church and king, and in the meantime +spending his days in writing odes to his mistress's eyebrow; and now he +had been born into a strict Puritan atmosphere, where principles rather +than persons commanded men's loyalty, and where romance was held to be a +temptation of the flesh if not a snare of the devil. He possessed a +great capacity for happiness, and for enjoyment of all kinds; +consequently the dull routine of business was more distasteful to him +than to a man of coarser fibre and less fastidious tastes. Christopher +was one of the people who are specially fitted by nature to appreciate +to the full all the refinements and accessories of wealth and culture; +therefore his position at the Osierfield was more trying to him than it +would have been to nine men out of every ten.</p> + +<p>When spring came back again, Alan Tremaine came with it to the Moat +House; and at the same time Felicia Herbert arrived on a visit to the +Willows. Alan had enough of the woman in his nature to decide +that—Elisabeth not being meant for<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_158" id="Page_158">[Pg 158]</a></span> him—Elisabeth was not worth the +having; but, although she had not filled his life so completely as to +make it unendurable without her, she had occupied his thoughts +sufficiently to make feminine society and sympathy thenceforth a +necessity of his being. So it came to pass that when he met Felicia and +saw that she was fair, he straightway elected her to the office which +Elisabeth had created and then declined to fill; and because human +nature—and especially young human nature—is stronger even than early +training or old associations, Felicia fell in love with him in return, +in spite of (possibly because of) her former violent prejudice against +him. To expect a person to be a monster and then to find he is a man, +has very much the same effect as expecting a person to be a man and +finding him a fairy prince; we accord him our admiration for being so +much better than our fancy painted him, and we crave his forgiveness for +having allowed it to paint him in such false colours. Then we long to +make some reparation to him for our unjust judgment; and—if we happen +to be women—this reparation frequently takes the form of ordering his +dinner for the rest of his dining days, and of giving him the right to +pay our dressmakers' bills until such time as we cease to be troubled +with them.</p> + +<p>Consequently that particular year the spring seemed to have come +specially for the benefit of Alan and Felicia. For them the woods were +carpeted with daffodils, and the meadows were decked in living green; +for them the mountains and hills broke forth into singing, and the trees +of the field clapped their hands. Most men and women have known one +spring-time such as this in their lives, whereof all the other +spring-times were but images and types;<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_159" id="Page_159">[Pg 159]</a></span> and, maybe, even that one +spring-time was but an image and a type of the great New Year's Day +which shall be Time's to-morrow.</p> + +<p>But while these two were wandering together in fairyland, Elisabeth felt +distinctly left out in the cold. Felicia was her friend—Alan had been +her lover; and now they had drifted off into a strange new country, and +had shut the door in her face. There was no place for her in this +fairyland of theirs; they did not want her any longer; and although she +was too large-hearted for petty jealousies, she could not stifle that +pang of soreness with which most of us are acquainted, when our +fellow-travellers slip off by pairs into Eden, and leave us to walk +alone upon the dusty highway.</p> + +<p>Elisabeth could no more help flirting than some people can help +stammering. It was a pity, no doubt; but it would have been absurd to +blame her for it. She had not the slightest intention of breaking +anybody's heart; she did not take herself seriously enough to imagine +such a contingency possible; but the desire to charm was so strong +within her that she could not resist it; and she took as much trouble to +win the admiration of women as of men. Therefore, Alan and Felicia +having done with her, for the time being, she turned her attention to +Christopher; and although he fully comprehended the cause, he none the +less enjoyed the effect. He cherished no illusions concerning Elisabeth, +for the which he was perhaps to be pitied; since from love which is +founded upon an illusion, there may be an awakening; but for love which +sees its objects as they are, and still goes on loving them, there is no +conceivable cure either in this world or the world to come.</p> + +<p>"I'm not jealous by nature, and I think it is <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_160" id="Page_160">[Pg 160]</a></span>horrid to be +dog-in-the-mangerish," she remarked to him one sunny afternoon, when +Alan and Felicia had gone off together to Badgering Woods and left her +all alone, until Christopher happened to drop in about tea-time. He had +a way of appearing upon the scene when Elisabeth needed him, and of +effacing himself when she did not. He also had a way of smoothing down +all the little faults and trials and difficulties which beset her path, +and of making for her the rough places plain. "But I can't help feeling +it is rather dull when a man who has been in love with you suddenly +begins to be in love with another girl."</p> + +<p>"I can imagine that the situation has its drawbacks."</p> + +<p>"Not that there is any reason why he shouldn't, when you haven't been in +love with him yourself."</p> + +<p>"Not the slightest. Even I, whom you consider an epitome of all that is +stiff-necked and strait-laced, can see no harm in that. It seems to me a +thing that a man might do on a Sunday afternoon without in any way +jeopardizing his claim to universal respect."</p> + +<p>"Still it is dull for the woman; you must see that."</p> + +<p>"I saw it the moment I came in; nevertheless I am not prepared to state +that the dulness of the woman is a consummation so devoutly to be prayed +against. And, besides, it isn't at all dull for the other woman—the new +woman—you know."</p> + +<p>"And of course the other woman has to be considered."</p> + +<p>"I suppose she has," Christopher replied; "but I can't for the life of +me see why," he added under his breath.</p> + +<p>"Let's go into the garden," Elisabeth said, rising from her chair; +"nobody is in but me, and it is so<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_161" id="Page_161">[Pg 161]</a></span> stuffy to stay in the house now we +have finished tea. Cousin Maria is busy succouring the poor, and——"</p> + +<p>"And Miss Herbert is equally busy consoling the rich. Is that it?"</p> + +<p>"That is about what it comes to."</p> + +<p>So they went into the garden where they had played as children, and sat +down upon the rustic seat where they had sat together scores of times; +and Elisabeth thought about the great mystery of love, and Christopher +thought about the length of Elisabeth's eyelashes.</p> + +<p>"Do you think that Alan is in love with Felicia?" the girl asked at +last.</p> + +<p>"Appearances favour the supposition," replied Christopher.</p> + +<p>"You once said he wasn't capable of loving any woman."</p> + +<p>"I know I did; but that didn't in the least mean that he wasn't capable +of loving Miss Herbert."</p> + +<p>"She is very attractive; even you like her better than you like me," +Elisabeth remarked, looking at him through the very eyelashes about +which he was thinking. "I wonder at it, but nevertheless you do."</p> + +<p>"One never can explain these things. At least I never can, though you +seem to possess strange gifts of divination. I remember that you once +expounded to me that either affinity or infinity was at the root of +these matters—I forget which."</p> + +<p>"She is certainly good-looking," Elisabeth went on.</p> + +<p>"She is; her dearest friend couldn't deny that."</p> + +<p>"And she has sweet manners."</p> + +<p>"Distinctly sweet. She is the sort of girl that people call restful."</p> + +<p>"And a lovely temper."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_162" id="Page_162">[Pg 162]</a></span></p> + +<p>Christopher still refused to be drawn. "So I conclude. I have never +ruffled it—nor tried to ruffle it—nor even desired to ruffle it."</p> + +<p>"Do you like ruffling people's tempers?"</p> + +<p>"Some people's tempers, extremely."</p> + +<p>"What sort of people's?"</p> + +<p>"I don't know. I never schedule people into 'sorts,' as you do. The +people I care about can not be counted by 'sorts': there is one made of +each, and then the mould is broken."</p> + +<p>"You do like Felicia better than me, don't you?" Elisabeth asked, after +a moment's silence.</p> + +<p>"So you say, and as you are a specialist in these matters I think it +wise to take your statements on faith without attempting to dispute +them."</p> + +<p>"Chris, you are a goose!"</p> + +<p>"I know that—far better than you do." And Christopher sighed.</p> + +<p>"But I like you all the same."</p> + +<p>"That is highly satisfactory."</p> + +<p>"I believe I always liked you better than Alan," Elisabeth continued, +"only his way of talking about things dazzled me somehow. But after a +time I found out that he always said more than he meant, while you +always mean more than you say."</p> + +<p>"Oh! Tremaine isn't half a bad fellow: his talk is, as you say, a little +high-flown; but he takes himself in more than he takes in other people, +and he really means well." Christopher could afford to be magnanimous +toward Alan, now that Elisabeth was the reverse.</p> + +<p>"I remember that day at Pembruge Castle, while he was talking to me +about the troubles of the poor you were rowing Johnnie Stubbs about on +the mere. That was just the difference between you and him."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_163" id="Page_163">[Pg 163]</a></span></p> + +<p>"Oh! there wasn't much in that," replied Christopher; "if you had been +kind to me that day, and had let me talk to you, I am afraid that poor +Johnnie Stubbs would have had to remain on dry land. I merely took the +advice of the great man who said, 'If you can not do what you like, do +good.' But I'd rather have done what I liked, all the same."</p> + +<p>"That is just like you, Chris! You never own up to your good points."</p> + +<p>"Yes, I do; but I don't own up to my good points that exist solely in +your imagination."</p> + +<p>"You reckon up your virtues just as Cousin Maria reckons up her luggage +on a journey; she always says she has so many packages, and so many that +don't count. And your virtues seem to be added up in the same style."</p> + +<p>Christopher was too shy to enjoy talking about himself; nevertheless, he +was immensely pleased when Elisabeth was pleased with him. "Let us +wander back to our muttons," he said, "which, being interpreted, means +Miss Herbert and Tremaine. What sort of people are the Herberts, by the +way? Is Mrs. Herbert a lady?"</p> + +<p>Elisabeth thought for a moment. "She is the sort of person who +pronounces the 't' in often."</p> + +<p>"I know exactly; I believe 'genteel' is the most correct adjective for +that type. Is she good-looking?"</p> + +<p>"Very; she was the pencil sketch for Felicia."</p> + +<p>"About how old?"</p> + +<p>"It is difficult to tell. She is one of the women who are sixty in the +sun and thirty in the shade, like the thermometer in spring. I should +think she is really an easy five-and-forty, accelerated by limited means +and an exacting conscience. She is always<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_164" id="Page_164">[Pg 164]</a></span> bothering about sins and +draughts and things of that kind. I believe she thinks that everything +you do will either make your soul too hot or your body too cold."</p> + +<p>"You are severe on the excellent lady."</p> + +<p>"I try not to be, because I think she is really good in her way; but her +religion is such a dreadfully fussy kind of religion it makes me angry. +It seems to caricature the whole thing. She appears to think that +Christianity is a sort of menu of moral fancy-dishes, which one is bound +to swallow in a certain prescribed order."</p> + +<p>"Poor dear woman!"</p> + +<p>"When people like Mrs. Herbert talk about religion," Elisabeth went on, +"it is as bad as reducing the number of the fixed stars to pounds, +shillings, and pence; just as it is when people talk about love who know +nothing at all about it."</p> + +<p>Christopher manfully repressed a smile. "Still, I have known quite +intelligent persons do that. They make mistakes, I admit, but they don't +know that they do; and so their ignorance is of the brand which the poet +describes as bliss."</p> + +<p>"People who have never been in love should never talk about it," +Elisabeth sagely remarked.</p> + +<p>"But, on the other hand, those who have been, as a rule, can't; so who +is to conduct authorized conversations on this most interesting and +instructive subject?"</p> + +<p>"The people who have been through it, and so know all about it," replied +Elisabeth.</p> + +<p>"Allow me to point out that your wisdom for once is at fault. In the +first place, I doubt if the man who is suffering from a specific disease +is the suitable person to read a paper on the same before the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_165" id="Page_165">[Pg 165]</a></span> College +of Surgeons; and, in the second, I should say—for the sake of +argument—that the man who has been through eternity and come out whole +at the other end, knows as much about what eternity really means +as—well, as you do. But tell me more about Mrs. Herbert and her +peculiarities."</p> + +<p>"She is always bothering about what she calls the 'correct thing.' She +has no peace in her life on account of her anxiety as to the etiquette +of this world and the next—first to know it and then to be guided by +it. I am sure that she wishes that the Bible had been written on the +principle of that dreadful little book called Don't, which gives you a +list of the solecisms you should avoid; she would have understood it so +much better than the present system."</p> + +<p>"But you would call Miss Herbert a lady, wouldn't you?" Christopher +asked.</p> + +<p>"Oh, yes; a perfect lady. She is even well-bred when she talks about her +love affairs; and if a woman is a lady when she talks about her love +affairs, she will be a lady in any circumstances. It is the most crucial +test out."</p> + +<p>"Yes; I should have called Miss Herbert a perfect lady myself."'</p> + +<p>"That is the effect of Fox How; it always turned out ladies, whatever +else it failed in."</p> + +<p>"But I thought you maintained that it failed in nothing!"</p> + +<p>"No more it did; but I threw that in as a sop to what's-his-name, +because you are so horribly argumentative."</p> + +<p>Christopher was amused. Elisabeth was a perfect <i>chef</i> in the preparing +of such sops, as he was well aware; and although he laughed at himself +for doing it (knowing that her present graciousness to him<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_166" id="Page_166">[Pg 166]</a></span> merely meant +that she was dull, and wanted somebody to play with, and he was better +than nobody), he made these sops the principal articles of his heart's +diet, and cared for no other fare.</p> + +<p>"What is Mr. Herbert like?" he inquired.</p> + +<p>"Oh! he is a good man in his way, but a back-boneless, sweet-syrupy kind +of a Christian; one of the sort that seems to regard the Almighty as a +blindly indulgent and easily-hoodwinked Father, and Satan himself as +nothing worse than a rather crusty old bachelor uncle. You know the +type."</p> + +<p>"Perfectly; they always drawl, and use the adjective 'dear' in and out +of season. I quite think that among themselves they talk of 'the dear +devil.' And yet 'dear' is really quite a nice word, if only people like +that hadn't spoiled it."</p> + +<p>"You shouldn't let people spoil things for you in that way. That is one +of your greatest faults, Christopher; whenever you have seen a funny +side to anything you never see any other. You have too much humour and +too little tenderness; that's what's the matter with you."</p> + +<p>"Permit me to tender you a sincere vote of thanks for your exhaustive +and gratuitous spiritual diagnosis. To cure my faults is my duty—to +discover them, your delight."</p> + +<p>"Well, I'm right; and you'll find it out some day, although you make fun +of me now."</p> + +<p>"I say, how will Mrs. Herbert fit in Tremaine's religious views—or +rather absence of religious views—with her code of the next world's +etiquette?" asked Christopher, wisely changing the subject.</p> + +<p>"Oh! she'll simply decline to see them. Although, as I told you, she is +driven about entirely by her conscience, it is a well-harnessed +conscience and always<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_167" id="Page_167">[Pg 167]</a></span> wears blinkers. It shies a good deal at gnats, I +own; but it can run in double-harness with a camel, if worldly +considerations render such a course desirable. It is like a horse we +once had, which always shied violently at every puddle, but went past a +steamroller without turning a hair."</p> + +<p>"'By my troth, niece, thou wilt never get thee a husband if thou be so +shrewd of thy tongue,'" quoted Christopher.</p> + +<p>"I don't want to be too severe, but Mrs. Herbert does make me so mad. +When people put religious things in a horrid light, it makes you feel as +if they were telling unkind and untrue tales about your dearest +friends."</p> + +<p>"What does the good woman say that makes 'my lady Tongue' so furious?"</p> + +<p>"Well, she is always saying one must give up this and give up that, and +deny one's self here and deny one's self there, for the sake of +religion; and I don't believe that religion means that sort of giving up +at all. Of course, God is pleased when we do what He wishes us to do, +because He knows it is the best for us; but I don't believe He wants us +to do things when we hate doing them, just to please Him."</p> + +<p>"Perhaps not. Still, if one does a thing one doesn't like doing, to +please another person, one often ends by enjoying the doing of the +thing. And even if one never enjoys it, the thing has still to be done."</p> + +<p>"Well, if you were awfully fond of anybody, should you want them to +spend their time with you, and do what you were doing, when you knew all +the time that they didn't like being with you, but were dying to be with +some one else?"</p> + +<p>"Certainly not." Christopher might not know much about theology, but he +knew exactly how <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_168" id="Page_168">[Pg 168]</a></span>people felt when they were, as Elisabeth said, +"awfully fond of anybody."</p> + +<p>"Of course you wouldn't," the girl went on; "you would wish the person +you loved to be happy with you, and to want to be with you as much as +you wanted to be with them; and if they didn't really care to be with +you, you wouldn't thank them for unselfishness in the matter. So if an +ordinary man like you doesn't care for mere unselfishness from the +people you are really fond of, do you think that what isn't good enough +for you is good enough for God?"</p> + +<p>"No. But I still might want the people I was fond of to be unselfish, +not for my own sake but for theirs. The more one loves a person, the +more one wishes that person to be worthy of love; and though we don't +love people because they are perfect, we want them to be perfect because +we love them, don't you see?"</p> + +<p>"You aren't a very good instance, Chris, because, you see, you are +rather a reserved, cold-hearted person, and not at all affectionate; but +still you are fond of people in your own way."</p> + +<p>"Yes; I am fond of one or two people—but in my own way, as you say," +Christopher replied quietly.</p> + +<p>"And even you understand that forced and artificial devotion isn't worth +having."</p> + +<p>"Yes; even I understand as much as that."</p> + +<p>"So you will see that unselfishness and renunciation and things of that +sort are only second-best things after all, and that there is nothing of +the kind between people who really love each other, because their two +wills are merged in one, and each finds his own happiness in the +happiness of the other. And I don't believe that God wants us to give up +our wills to His in a 'Thy way not mine' kind of way; I <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_169" id="Page_169">[Pg 169]</a></span>believe He +wants the same mind to be in us that was in Christ Jesus, so that He and +we shall be wishing for the same things."</p> + +<p>"Wise Elisabeth, I believe that you are right."</p> + +<p>"And you'll see how right I am, when you really care very much for +somebody yourself. I don't mean in the jolly, comfortable way in which +you care for Mr. Smallwood and Cousin Maria and me. That's a very nice +friendly sort of caring, I admit, and keeps the world warm and homelike, +just as having a fire in the room keeps the room warm and homelike; but +it doesn't teach one much."</p> + +<p>Christopher smiled sadly. "Doesn't it? I should have thought that it +taught one a good deal."</p> + +<p>"Oh! but not as much as a lovely romantic attachment would teach +one—not as much as Alan and Felicia are teaching each other now."</p> + +<p>"Don't you think so?"</p> + +<p>"Of course I don't. Why, you've never taught me anything, Chris, though +we've always been fond of each other in the comfortable, easy fashion."</p> + +<p>"Then the fault has been in me, for you have taught me a great many +things, Elisabeth."</p> + +<p>"Because I've taken the trouble to do so. But the worst of it is that by +the time I've taught you anything, I have changed my mind about it +myself, and find I've been teaching you all wrong. And it is a bother to +begin to unteach you."</p> + +<p>"I wonder why. I don't think I should find it at all a bother to unteach +you certain things."</p> + +<p>"And it is a greater bother still to teach you all over again, and teach +you different." Elisabeth added, without attending to the last remark.</p> + +<p>"Thank you, I think I won't trespass on your forbearance to that extent. +Some lessons are so<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_170" id="Page_170">[Pg 170]</a></span> hard to master that life would be unbearable if one +had to learn them twice over." Christopher spoke somewhat bitterly.</p> + +<p>Elisabeth attended then. "What a funny thing to say! But I know what it +is—you've got a headache; I can see it in your face, and that makes you +take things so contrariwise."</p> + +<p>"Possibly."</p> + +<p>"Poor old boy! Does it hurt?"</p> + +<p>"Pretty considerably."</p> + +<p>"And have you had it long?"</p> + +<p>"Yes," replied Christopher with truth, and he added to himself, "ever +since I can remember, and it isn't in my head at all."</p> + +<p>Elisabeth stroked his sleeve affectionately. "I am so sorry."</p> + +<p>Christopher winced; it was when Elisabeth was affectionate that he found +his enforced silence most hard to bear. How he could have made her love +him if he had tried, he thought; and how could he find the heart to make +her love him as long as he and she were alike dependent upon Miss +Farringdon's bounty, and they had neither anything of their own? He +rejoiced that Alan Tremaine had failed to win her love; but he scorned +him as a fool for not having succeeded in doing so when he had the +chance. Had Christopher been master of the Moat House he felt he would +have managed things differently; for the most modest of men cherish a +profound contempt for the man who can not succeed in making a woman love +him when he sets about it.</p> + +<p>"By Jove!" he said to himself, looking into the gray eyes that were so +full of sympathy just then, "what an ass the man was to talk to such a +woman as this about art and philosophy and high-falutin' of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_171" id="Page_171">[Pg 171]</a></span> that sort! +If I had only the means to make her happy, I would talk to her about +herself and me until she was tired of the subject—and that wouldn't be +this side Doomsday. And she thinks that I am cold-hearted!" But what he +said to Elisabeth was, "There isn't much the matter with my +head—nothing for you to worry about, I can assure you. Let us talk +about something more interesting than my unworthy self—Tremaine, for +instance."</p> + +<p>"I used to believe in Alan," Elisabeth confessed; "but I don't so much +now. I wonder if that is because he has left off making love to me, or +because I have seen that his ideas are so much in advance of his +actions."</p> + +<p>"He never did make love to me, so I always had an inkling of the truth +that his sentiments were a little over his own head. As a matter of +fact, I believe I mentioned this conviction to you more than once; but +you invariably treated it with the scorn that it doubtless deserved."</p> + +<p>"And yet you were right. It seems to me that you are always right, +Chris."</p> + +<p>"No—not always; but more often than you are, perhaps," replied +Christopher, in rather a husky voice, but with a very kindly smile. "I +am older, you see, for one thing; and I have had a harder time of it for +another, and some of the idealism has been knocked out of me."</p> + +<p>"But the nice thing about you is that though you always know when I am +wrong or foolish, you never seem to despise me for it."</p> + +<p>Despise her? Christopher laughed at the word; and yet women were +supposed to have such keen perceptions.</p> + +<p>"I don't care whether you are wise or foolish,"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_172" id="Page_172">[Pg 172]</a></span> he said, "as long as +you are you. That is all that matters to me."</p> + +<p>"And you really think I am nice?"</p> + +<p>"I don't see how you could well be nicer."</p> + +<p>"Oh! you don't know what I could do if I tried. You underrate my powers; +you always did. But you are a very restful person, Chris; when my mind +gets tired with worrying over things and trying to understand them, I +find it a perfect holiday to talk to you. You seem to take things as +they are."</p> + +<p>"Well, I have to, you see; and what must be must."</p> + +<p>"Simple natures like yours are very soothing to complex natures like +mine. When I've lived my life and worn myself out with trying to get the +utmost I can out of everything, I shall spend the first three thousand +years of eternity sitting quite still upon a fixed star without +speaking, with my legs dangling into space, and looking at you. It will +be such a nice rest, before beginning life over again."</p> + +<p>"Say two thousand years; you'd never be able to sit still without +speaking for more than two thousand years at the outside. By that time +you'd have pulled yourself together, and be wanting to set about +teaching the angels a thing or two. I know your ways."</p> + +<p>"I should enjoy that," laughed Elisabeth.</p> + +<p>"So would the angels, if they were anything like me."</p> + +<p>Elisabeth laughed again, and looked through the trees to the fields +beyond. Friends were much more comfortable than lovers, she said to +herself; Alan in his palmiest days had never been half so soothing to +her as Christopher was now. She wondered why poets and people of that +kind made so much of love and so little of friendship, since the latter +was <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_173" id="Page_173">[Pg 173]</a></span>obviously the more lasting and satisfactory of the two. Somehow the +mere presence of Christopher had quite cured the sore feeling that Alan +and Felicia had left behind them when they started for their walk +without even asking her to go with them; and she was once more sure of +the fact that she was necessary to somebody—a certainty without which +Elisabeth could not live. So her imagination took heart of grace again, +and began drawing plans for extensive castles in Spain, and arranging +social campaigns wherein she herself should be crowned with triumph. She +decided that half the delight of winning life's prizes and meeting its +fairy princes would be the telling Christopher all about them afterward; +for her belief in his exhaustless sympathy was boundless.</p> + +<p>"A penny for your thoughts," he said, after she had been silent for some +moments.</p> + +<p>"I was looking at Mrs. Bateson feeding her fowls," said Elisabeth +evasively; "and, I say, have you ever noticed that hens are just like +tea-pots, and cocks like coffee-pots? Look at them now! It seems as if +an army of breakfast services had suddenly come to life <i>à la</i> Galatea, +and were pouring libations at Mrs. Bateson's feet."</p> + +<p>"It does look rather like that, I admit. But here are Miss Herbert and +Tremaine returning from their walk; let's go and meet them."</p> + +<p>And Elisabeth went to meet the lovers with no longer any little cobwebs +of jealousy hiding in the dark corners of her heart, Christopher's hand +having swept them all away; he had a wonderful power of exterminating +the little foxes which would otherwise have spoiled Elisabeth's vines; +and again she said to herself how much better a thing was friendship +than love, since Alan had always expected her to be <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_174" id="Page_174">[Pg 174]</a></span>interested in his +concerns, while Christopher, on the contrary, was always interested in +hers.</p> + +<p>It was not long after this that Elisabeth was told by Felicia of the +latter's engagement to Alan Tremaine; and Elisabeth was amazed at the +rapidity with which Felicia had assimilated her lover's views on all +subjects. Elisabeth had expected that her friend would finally sacrifice +her opinions on the altar of her feelings; she was already old enough to +be prepared for that; but she had anticipated a fierce warfare in the +soul of Felicia between the directly opposing principles of this young +lady's mother and lover. To Elisabeth's surprise, this civil war never +took place. Felicia accepted Alan's doubts as unquestioningly as she had +formerly accepted Mrs. Herbert's beliefs; and as she loved the former +more devotedly than she had ever loved the latter, she was more devout +and fervid in her agnosticism than she had ever been in her faith. She +had believed, because her mother ordered her to believe; she doubted, +because Alan desired her to doubt; her belief and unbelief being equally +the outcome of her affections rather than of her convictions.</p> + +<p>Mrs. Herbert likewise looked leniently upon Alan's want of orthodoxy, +and at this Elisabeth was not surprised. Possibly there are not many of +us who do not—in the private and confidential depths of our evil +hearts—regard earth in the hand as worth more than heaven in the bush, +so to speak; at any rate, Felicia's mother was not one of the bright +exceptions; and—from a purely commercial point of view—a saving faith +does not go so far as a spending income, and it is no use pretending +that it does. So Mrs. Herbert smiled upon her daughter's engagement; but +compromised with that accommodating<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_175" id="Page_175">[Pg 175]</a></span> conscience of hers by always +speaking of her prospective son-in-law as "poor Alan," just as if she +really believed, as she professed she did, that the death of the body +and the death of the soul are conditions equally to be deplored.</p> + +<p>"You see, my dear," she said to Elisabeth, who came to stay at Wood Glen +for Felicia's marriage, which took place in the early summer, "it is +such a comfort to Mr. Herbert and myself to know that our dear child is +so comfortably provided for. And then—although I can not altogether +countenance his opinions—poor Alan has such a good heart."</p> + +<p>Elisabeth, remembering that she had once been fascinated by the master +of the Moat House, was merciful. "He is an extremely interesting man to +talk to," she said; "he has thought out so many things."</p> + +<p>"He has, my love. And if we are tempted to rebuke him too severely for +his non-acceptance of revealed truth, we must remember that he was +deprived comparatively early in life of both his parents, and so ought +rather to be pitied than blamed," agreed Mrs. Herbert, who would +cheerfully have poured out all the vials of the Book of Revelation upon +any impecunious doubter who had dared to add the mortal sin of poverty +to the venial one of unbelief.</p> + +<p>"And he is really very philanthropic," Elisabeth continued; "he has done +no end of things for the work-people at the Osierfield. It is a pity +that his faith is second-rate, considering that his works are +first-class."</p> + +<p>"Ah! my dear, we must judge not, lest in turn we too should be judged. +Who are we, that we should say who is or who is not of the elect? It is<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_176" id="Page_176">[Pg 176]</a></span> +often those who seem to be the farthest from the kingdom that are in +truth the nearest to it." Mrs. Herbert had dismissed a kitchen-maid, +only the week before, for declining to attend her Bible-class, and +walking out with a young man instead.</p> + +<p>"Still, I am sorry that Alan has all those queer views," Elisabeth +persisted; "he really would be a splendid sort of person if he were only +a Christian; and it seems such a pity that—with all his learning—he +hasn't learned the one thing that really matters."</p> + +<p>"My love, I am ashamed to find you so censorious; it is a sad fault, +especially in the young. I would advise you to turn to the thirteenth of +First Corinthians, and see for yourself how excellent a gift is +charity—the greatest of all, according to our dear Saint Paul."</p> + +<p>Elisabeth sighed. She had long ago become acquainted with Mrs. Herbert's +custom of keeping religion as a thing apart, and of treating it from an +"in-another-department-if-you-please" point of view; and she felt that +Tremaine's open agnosticism was almost better—and certainly more +sincere—than this.</p> + +<p>But Mrs. Herbert was utterly unconscious of any secret fault on her own +part, and continued to purr contentedly to herself. "Felicia, dear +child! will certainly take an excellent position. She will be in county +society, the very thing which I have always desired for her; and she +will enter it, not on sufferance, but as one of themselves. I can not +tell you what a pleasure it is to Mr. Herbert and myself to think of our +beloved daughter as a regular county lady; it quite makes up for all the +little self-denials that we suffered in order to give her a good +education and to render her fit to take her place in society.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_177" id="Page_177">[Pg 177]</a></span> I +shouldn't be surprised if she were even presented at Court." And the +mother's cup of happiness ran over at the mere thought of such honour +and glory.</p> + +<p>Felicia, too, was radiantly happy. In the first place, she was very much +in love; in the second, her world was praising her for doing well to +herself. "I can not think how a clever man like Alan ever fell in love +with such a stupid creature as me," she said to Elisabeth, not long +before the wedding.</p> + +<p>"Can't you? Well, I can. I don't wonder at any man's falling in love +with you, darling, you are so dear and pretty and altogether adorable."</p> + +<p>"But then Alan is so different from other men."</p> + +<p>Elisabeth was too well-mannered to smile at this; but she made a note of +it to report to Christopher afterward. She knew that he would understand +how funny it was.</p> + +<p>"I am simply amazed at my own happiness," Felicia continued; "and I am +so dreadfully afraid that he will be disappointed in me when he gets to +know me better, and will find out that I am not half good enough for +him—which I am not."</p> + +<p>"What nonsense! Why, there isn't a man living that would really be good +enough for you, Felicia."</p> + +<p>"Elisabeth! When I hear Alan talking, I wonder how he can put up with +silly little me at all. You see, I never was clever—not even as clever +as you are; and you, of course, aren't a millionth part as clever as +Alan. And then he has such grand thoughts, too; he is always wanting to +help other people, and to make them happier. I feel that as long as I +live I never can be half grateful enough to him for the honour he has +done me in wanting me for his wife."</p> + +<p>Elisabeth shrugged her shoulders; the honours<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_178" id="Page_178">[Pg 178]</a></span> that have been within our +reach are never quite so wonderful as those that have not.</p> + +<p>So Alan and Felicia were married with much rejoicing and ringing of +bells; and Elisabeth found it very pleasant to have her old schoolfellow +settled at the Moat House. In fact so thoroughly did she throw herself +into the interests of Felicia's new home, that she ceased to feel her +need of Christopher, and consequently neglected him somewhat. It was +only when others failed her that he was at a premium; when she found she +could do without him, she did. As for him, he loyally refrained from +blaming Elisabeth, even in his heart, and cursed Fate instead; which +really was unfair of him, considering that in this matter Elisabeth, and +not Fate, was entirely to blame. But Christopher was always ready to +find excuses for Elisabeth, whatever she might do; and this, it must be +confessed, required no mean order of ingenuity just then. Elisabeth was +as yet young enough to think lightly of the gifts that were bestowed +upon her freely and with no trouble on her part, such as bread and air +and sunshine and the like; it was reserved for her to learn later that +the things one takes for granted are the best thing life has to offer.</p> + +<p>It must also be remembered, for her justification, that Christopher had +never told her that he loved her "more than reason"; and it is difficult +for women to believe that any man loves them until he has told them so, +just as it is difficult for them to believe that a train is going direct +to the place appointed to it in Bradshaw, until they have been verbally +assured upon the point by two guards, six porters, and a newspaper boy. +Nevertheless, Elisabeth's ignorance—though perhaps excusable, +considering her sex—was anything<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_179" id="Page_179">[Pg 179]</a></span> but bliss to poor Christopher, and +her good-natured carelessness hurt him none the less for her not knowing +that it hurt him.</p> + +<p>When Felicia had been married about three months her mother came to stay +with her at the Moat House; and Elisabeth smiled to herself—and to +Christopher—as she pictured the worthy woman's delight in her +daughter's new surroundings.</p> + +<p>"She'll extol all Felicia's belongings as exhaustively as if she were +the Benedicite," Elisabeth said, "and she'll enumerate them as carefully +as if she were sending them to the wash. You'll find there won't be a +single one omitted—not even the second footman or the soft-water +cistern. Mrs. Herbert is one who battens on details, and she never +spares her hearers a single item."</p> + +<p>"It is distinctly naughty of you," Christopher replied, with the smile +that was always ready for Elisabeth's feeblest sallies, "to draw the +good soul out for the express purpose of laughing at her. I am ashamed +of you, Miss Farringdon."</p> + +<p>"Draw her out, my dear boy! You don't know what you are talking about. +The most elementary knowledge of Mrs. Herbert would teach you that she +requires nothing in the shape of drawing out. You have but to mention +the word 'dinner,' and the secret sins of her cook are retailed to you +in chronological order; you have but to whisper the word 'clothes,' and +the iniquities of her dressmaker's bill are laid bare before your eyes. +Should the conversation glance upon Mr. Herbert, his complete biography +becomes your own possession; and should the passing thought of childhood +appear above her mental horizon, she tells you all about her own +children as graphically as if she were editing a new edition<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_180" id="Page_180">[Pg 180]</a></span> of The +Pillars of the House. And yet you talk of drawing her out! I am afraid +you have no perceptions, Christopher."</p> + +<p>"Possibly not; everybody doesn't have perceptions. I am frequently +struck with clever people's lack of them."</p> + +<p>"Well, I'm off," replied Elisabeth, whipping up her pony, "to hear Mrs. +Herbert's outpourings on Felicia's happiness; when I come back I expect +I shall be able to write another poem on 'How does the water come down +at Lodore'—with a difference."</p> + +<p>And Christopher—who had met her in the High Street—smiled after the +retreating figure in sheer delight at her. How fresh and bright and +spontaneous she was, he thought, and how charmingly ignorant of the +things which she prided herself upon understanding so profoundly! He +laughed aloud as he recalled how very wise Elisabeth considered herself. +And then he wondered if life would teach her to be less sure of her own +buoyant strength, and less certain of her ultimate success in everything +she undertook; and, if it did, he felt that he should have an ugly +account to settle with life. He was willing for Fate to knock him about +as much and as hardly as she pleased, provided she would let Elisabeth +alone, and allow the girl to go on believing in herself and enjoying +herself as she was so abundantly capable of doing. By this time +Christopher was enough of a philosopher to think that it did not really +matter much in the long run whether he were happy or unhappy; but he was +not yet able to regard the thought of Elisabeth's unhappiness as +anything but a catastrophe of the most insupportable magnitude; which +showed that he had not yet sufficient philosophy to go round.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_181" id="Page_181">[Pg 181]</a></span></p> + +<p>When Elisabeth arrived at the Moat House she found Mrs. Herbert alone, +Felicia having gone out driving with her husband; and, to Elisabeth's +surprise, there was no sign of the jubilation which she had anticipated. +On the contrary, Mrs. Herbert was subdued and tired-looking.</p> + +<p>"I am so glad to see you, my dear," she said, kissing Elisabeth; "it is +lonely in this big house all by myself."</p> + +<p>"It is always rather lonely to be in state," Elisabeth replied, +returning her salute. "I wonder if kings find it lonely all by +themselves in pleasures and palaces. I expect they do, but they put up +with the loneliness for the sake of the stateliness; and you could +hardly find a statelier house than this to be lonely in, if you tried."</p> + +<p>"Yes; it is a beautiful place," agreed Mrs. Herbert listlessly.</p> + +<p>Elisabeth wondered what was wrong, but she did not ask; she knew that +Mrs. Herbert would confide in her very soon. People very rarely were +reserved with Elisabeth; she was often amazed at the rapidity with which +they opened their inmost hearts to her. Probably this accounted in some +measure for her slowness in understanding Christopher, who had made it a +point of honour not to open his inmost heart to her.</p> + +<p>"Don't the woods look lovely?" she said cheerfully, pretending not to +notice anything. "I can't help seeing that the trees are beautiful with +their gilt leaves, but it goes against my principles to own it, because +I do so hate the autumn. I wish we could change our four seasons for two +springs and two summers. I am so happy in the summer, and still happier +in the spring looking forward to it; but I am<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_182" id="Page_182">[Pg 182]</a></span> wretched in the winter +because I am cold, and still wretcheder in the autumn thinking that I'm +going to be even colder."</p> + +<p>"Yes; the woods are pretty—very pretty indeed."</p> + +<p>"I am so glad you have come while the leaves are still on. I wanted you +to see Felicia's home at its very best; and, at its best, it is a home +that any woman might be proud of."</p> + +<p>Mrs. Herbert's lip trembled. "It is indeed a most beautiful home, and I +am sure Felicia has everything to make her happy."</p> + +<p>"And she is happy, Mrs. Herbert; I don't think I ever saw anybody so +perfectly happy as Felicia is now. I'm afraid I could never be quite as +satisfied with any impossible ideal of a husband as she is with Alan; I +should want to quarrel with him just for the fun of the thing, and to +find out his faults for the pleasure of correcting them. A man as +faultless as Alan—I mean as faultless as Felicia considers Alan—would +bore me; but he suits her down to the ground."</p> + +<p>But even then Mrs. Herbert did not smile; instead of that her light blue +eyes filled with tears. "Oh! my dear," she said, with a sob in her +voice, "Felicia is ashamed of me."</p> + +<p>For all her high spirits, Elisabeth generally recognised tragedy when +she met it face to face; and she knew that she was meeting it now. So +she spoke very gently—</p> + +<p>"My dear Mrs. Herbert, whatever do you mean? I am sure you are not very +strong, and so your nerves are out of joint, and make you imagine +things."</p> + +<p>"No, my love; it is no imagination on my part. I only wish it were. Who +can know Felicia as well as her mother knows her—her mother who has +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_183" id="Page_183">[Pg 183]</a></span>worshipped her and toiled for her ever since she was a little baby? And +I, who can read her through and through, feel that she is ashamed of +me." And the tears overflowed, and rolled down Mrs. Herbert's faded +cheeks.</p> + +<p>Elisabeth's heart swelled with an immense pity, for her quick insight +told her that Mrs. Herbert was not mistaken; but all she said was—</p> + +<p>"I think you are making mountains out of molehills. Lots of girls lose +their heads a bit when first they are married, and seem to regard +marriage as a special invention and prerogative of their own, which +entitles them to give themselves air <i>ad libitum</i>; but they soon grow +out of it."</p> + +<p>Mrs. Herbert shook her head sorrowfully; her tongue was loosed and she +spake plain. "Oh! it isn't like that with Felicia; I should think +nothing of that. I remember when first I was married I thought that no +unmarried woman knew anything, and that no married woman knew anything +but myself; but, as you say, I soon grew out of that. Why, I was quite +ready, after I had been married a couple of months, to teach my dear +mother all about housekeeping; and finely she laughed at me for it. But +Felicia doesn't trouble to teach me anything; she thinks it isn't worth +while."</p> + +<p>"Oh! I can not believe that Felicia is like that. You must be mistaken."</p> + +<p>"Mistaken in my own child, whom I carried in my arms as a little baby? +No, my dear; there are some things about which mothers can never be +mistaken, God help them! Do you think I did not understand when the +carriage came round to-day to take her and Alan to return Lady +Patchingham's visit, and Felicia said, 'Mamma won't go with us to-day,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_184" id="Page_184">[Pg 184]</a></span> +Alan dear, because the wind is in the east, and it always gives her a +cold to drive in an open carriage when the wind is in the east'? Oh! I +saw plain enough that she didn't want me to go with them to Lady +Patchingham's; but I only thanked her and said I would rather stay +indoors, as it would be safer for me. When they had started I went out +and looked at the weather-cock for myself; it pointed southwest." And +the big tears rolled down faster than ever.</p> + +<p>Elisabeth did not know what to say; so she wisely said nothing, but took +Mrs. Herbert's hand in hers and stroked it.</p> + +<p>"Perhaps, my dear, I did wrong in allowing Felicia to marry a man who is +not a true believer, and this is my punishment."</p> + +<p>"Oh! no, no, Mrs. Herbert; I don't believe that God ever punishes for +the sake of punishing. He has to train us, and the training hurts +sometimes; but when it does, I think He minds even more than we do."</p> + +<p>"Well, my love, I can not say; it is not for us to inquire into the +counsels of the Almighty. But I did it for the best; I did, indeed. I +did so want Felicia to be happy."</p> + +<p>"I am sure you did."</p> + +<p>"You see, all my life I had taken an inferior position socially, and the +iron of it had entered into my soul. I daresay it was sinful of me, but +I used to mind so dreadfully when my husband and I were always asked to +second-rate parties, and introduced to second-rate people; and I longed +and prayed that my darling Felicia should be spared the misery and the +humiliation which I had had to undergo. You won't understand it, +Elisabeth. People in a good position never do; but to be alternately +snubbed and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_185" id="Page_185">[Pg 185]</a></span> patronized all one's life, as I have been, makes social +intercourse one long-drawn-out agony to a sensitive woman. So I +prayed—how I prayed!—that my beautiful daughter should never suffer as +I have done."</p> + +<p>Elisabeth's eyes filled with tears; and Mrs. Herbert, encouraged by her +unspoken sympathy, proceeded—</p> + +<p>"Grand people are so cruel, my dear. I daresay they don't mean to be; +but they are. And though I had borne it for myself, I felt I could not +bear it for Felicia. I thought it would kill me to see fine ladies +overlook her as they had so often overlooked me. So when Alan wanted to +marry her, and make her into a fine lady herself, I was overwhelmed with +joy; and I felt I no longer minded what I had gone through, now that I +knew no one would ever dare to be rude to my beautiful daughter. Now I +see I was wrong to set earthly blessings before spiritual ones; but I +think you understand how I felt, Elisabeth."</p> + +<p>"Yes, I understand; and God understands too."</p> + +<p>"Then don't you think He is punishing me, my dear?"</p> + +<p>"No; I think He is training Felicia—and perhaps you too, dear Mrs. +Herbert."</p> + +<p>"Oh! I wish I could think so. But you don't know what Felicia has been +to her father and me. She was such a beautiful baby that the people in +the street used to stop the nurse to ask whose child she was; and when +she grew older she never gave us a moment's trouble or anxiety. Then we +pinched and pared in order to be able to afford to send her to Fox How; +and when her education was finished there wasn't a more perfect lady in +the land than our Felicia. Oh! I was proud of her, I can tell you. And<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_186" id="Page_186">[Pg 186]</a></span> +now she is ashamed of me, her own mother! I can not help seeing that +this is God's punishment to me for letting her marry an unbeliever." And +Mrs. Herbert covered her face with her hands and burst out into bitter +sobs.</p> + +<p>Elisabeth took the weeping form into her strong young arms. "My poor +dear, you are doing Him an injustice, you are, indeed. I am sure He +minds even more than you do that Felicia is still so ignorant and +foolish, and He is training her in His own way. But He isn't doing it to +punish you, dear; believe me, He isn't. Why, even the ordinary human +beings who are fond of us want to cure our faults and not to punish +them," she continued, as the memory of Christopher's unfailing patience +with her suddenly came into her mind, and she recalled how often she had +hurt him, and how readily he had always forgiven her; "they are sorry +when we do wrong, but they are even sorrier when we suffer for it. And +do you think God loves us less than they do, and is quicker to punish +and slower to forgive?"</p> + +<p>So does the love of the brother whom we have seen help us in some +measure to understand the love of the God Whom we have not seen; for +which we owe the brother eternal thanks.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_187" id="Page_187">[Pg 187]</a></span></p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_X" id="CHAPTER_X"></a><a href="#CONTENTS">CHAPTER X</a></h2> + +<h3>CHANGES</h3> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Why did you take all I said for certain<br /></span> +<span class="i2">When I so gleefully threw the glove?<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Couldn't you see that I made a curtain<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Out of my laughter to hide my love?<br /></span> +</div></div> + + +<p>"My dear," said Miss Farringdon, when Elisabeth came down one morning to +breakfast, "there is sad news to-day."</p> + +<p>Miss Farringdon was never late in a morning. She regarded early rising +as a virtue on a par with faith and charity; while to appear at the +breakfast-table after the breakfast itself had already appeared thereon +was, in her eyes, as the sin of witchcraft.</p> + +<p>"What is the matter?" asked Elisabeth, somewhat breathlessly. She had +run downstairs at full speed in order to enter the dining-room before +the dishes, completing her toilet as she fled; and she had only beaten +the bacon by a neck.</p> + +<p>"Richard Smallwood has had a paralytic stroke. Christopher sent up word +the first thing this morning."</p> + +<p>"Oh! I am so sorry. Mr. Smallwood is such a dear old man, and used to be +so kind to Christopher and me when we were little."</p> + +<p>"I am very sorry, too, Elisabeth. I have known<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_188" id="Page_188">[Pg 188]</a></span> Richard Smallwood all my +life, and he was a valued friend of my dear father's, as well as being +his right hand in all matters of business. Both my father and uncle +thought very highly of Richard's opinion, and considered that they owed +much of their commercial success to his advice and assistance."</p> + +<p>"Poor Christopher! I wonder if he will mind much?"</p> + +<p>"Of course he will mind, my dear. What a strange child you are, and what +peculiar things you say! Mr. Smallwood is Christopher's only living +relative, and when anything happens to him Christopher will be entirely +alone in the world. It is sad for any one to be quite alone; and +especially for young people, who have a natural craving for +companionship and sympathy." Miss Farringdon sighed. She had spent most +of her life in the wilderness and on the mountain-tops, and she knew how +cold was the climate and how dreary the prospect there.</p> + +<p>Elisabeth's eyes filled with tears, and her heart swelled with a strange +new feeling she had never felt before. For the first time in her life +Christopher (unconsciously on his part) made a direct appeal to her +pity, and her heart responded to the appeal. His perspective, from her +point of view, was suddenly changed; he was no longer the kindly, +easy-going comrade with whom she had laughed and quarrelled and made it +up again ever since she could remember, and with whom she was on a +footing of such familiar intimacy; instead, he had become a man standing +in the shadow of a great sorrow, whose solitary grief commanded her +respect and at the same time claimed her tenderness. All through +breakfast, and the prayers which followed, Elisabeth's thoughts ran on +this new Christopher, who was so much more <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_189" id="Page_189">[Pg 189]</a></span>interesting and yet so much +farther off than the old one. She wondered how he would look and what he +would say when next she saw him; and she longed to see him again, and +yet felt frightened at the thought of doing so. At prayers that morning +Miss Farringdon read the lament of David over Saul and Jonathan; and +while the words of undying pathos sounded in her ears, Elisabeth +wondered whether Christopher would mourn as David did if his uncle were +to die, and whether he would let her comfort him.</p> + +<p>When prayers were over, Miss Farringdon bade Elisabeth accompany her to +Mr. Smallwood's; and all the way there the girl's heart was beating so +fast that it almost choked her, with mingled fear of and tenderness for +this new Christopher who had taken the place of her old playmate. As +they sat waiting for him in the oak-panelled dining-room, a fresh wave +of pity swept over Elisabeth as she realized for the first time—though +she had sat there over and over again—what a cheerless home this was in +which to spend one's childhood and youth, and how pluckily Christopher +had always made the best of things, and had never confessed—even to +her—what a dreary lot was his. Then he came downstairs; and as she +heard his familiar footstep crossing the hall her heart beat faster than +ever, and there was a mist before her eyes; but when he entered the room +and shook hands, first with Miss Farringdon and then with her, she was +quite surprised to see that he looked very much as he always looked, +only his face was pale and his eyes heavy for want of sleep; and his +smile was as kind as ever as it lighted upon her.</p> + +<p>"It is very good of you to come to me so quickly," he said, addressing +Miss Farringdon but looking at Elisabeth.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_190" id="Page_190">[Pg 190]</a></span></p> + +<p>"Not at all, Christopher," replied Miss Maria; "those who have friends +must show themselves friendly, and your uncle has certainly proved +himself of the sort that sticketh closer than a brother. No son could +have done more for my father—no brother could have done more for +me—than he has done; and therefore his affliction is my affliction, and +his loss is my loss."</p> + +<p>"You are very kind." And Christopher's voice shook a little.</p> + +<p>Elisabeth did not speak. She was struggling with a feeling of +uncontrollable shyness which completely tied her usually fluent tongue.</p> + +<p>"Is he very ill?" Miss Farringdon asked.</p> + +<p>"Yes," Christopher replied, "I'm afraid it's a bad job altogether. The +doctor thinks he will last only a few days; but if he lives he will +never regain the use of his speech or of his brain; and I don't know +that life under such conditions is a boon to be desired."</p> + +<p>"I do not think it is. Yet we poor mortals long to keep our beloved ones +with us, even though it is but the semblance of their former selves that +remain."</p> + +<p>Christopher did not answer. There suddenly rushed over him the memory of +all that his uncle had been to him, and of how that uncle still treated +him as a little child; and with it came the consciousness that, when his +uncle was gone, nobody would ever treat him as a little child any more. +Life is somewhat dreary when the time comes for us to be grown-up to +everybody; so Christopher looked (and did not see) out of the window, +instead of speaking.</p> + +<p>"Of course," Miss Farringdon continued, "you will take his place, should +he be—as I fear is <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_191" id="Page_191">[Pg 191]</a></span>inevitable—unable to resume work at the +Osierfield; and I have such a high opinion of you, Christopher, that I +have no doubt you will do your uncle's work as well as he has done it, +and there could not be higher praise. Nevertheless, it saddens me to +know that another of the old landmarks has been swept away, and that now +I only am left of what used to be the Osierfield forty years ago. The +work may be done as well by the new hands and brains as by the old ones; +but after one has crossed the summit of the mountain and begun to go +downhill, it is sorry work exchanging old lamps for new. The new lamps +may give brighter light, perchance; but their light is too strong for +tired old eyes; and we grow homesick for the things to which we are +accustomed." And Miss Farringdon took off her spectacles and wiped them.</p> + +<p>There was silence for a few seconds, while Christopher manfully +struggled with his feelings and Miss Maria decorously gave vent to hers. +Christopher was vexed with himself for so nearly breaking down before +Elisabeth, and throwing the shadow of his sorrow across the sunshine of +her path. He did not know that the mother-heart in her was yearning over +him with a tenderness almost too powerful to be resisted, and that his +weakness was constraining her as his strength had never done. He was +rather surprised that she did not speak to him; but with the patient +simplicity of a strong man he accepted her behaviour without questioning +it. Her mere presence in the room somehow changed everything, and made +him feel that no world which contained Elisabeth could ever be an +entirely sorrowful world. Of course he knew nothing about the new +Christopher which had suddenly arisen above Elisabeth's horizon; he was +far too masculine to understand that his own<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_192" id="Page_192">[Pg 192]</a></span> pathos could be pathetic, +or his own suffering dramatic. It is only women—or men who have much of +the woman in their composition—who can say:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i8">"Here I and sorrow sit,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">This is my throne; let kings come bow to it."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>The thoroughly manly man is incapable of seeing the picturesque effect +of his own misery.</p> + +<p>So Christopher pulled himself together and tried to talk of trivial +things; and Miss Farringdon, having walked through the dark valley +herself, knew the comfort of the commonplace therein, and fell in with +his mood, discussing nurses and remedies and domestic arrangements and +the like. Elisabeth, however, was distinctly disappointed in +Christopher, because he could bring himself down to dwell upon these +trifling matters when the Angel of Death had crossed the lintel of his +doorway only last night, and was still hovering round with overshadowing +wings. It was just like him, she said to herself, to give his attention +to surface details, and to miss the deeper thing. She had yet to learn +that it was because he felt so much, and not because he felt so little, +that Christopher found it hard to utter the inmost thoughts of his +heart.</p> + +<p>But when Miss Farringdon had made every possible arrangement for Mr. +Smallwood's comfort, and they rose to leave, Elisabeth's heart smote her +for her passing impatience; so she lingered behind after her cousin had +left the room, and, slipping her hand into Christopher's, she +whispered—</p> + +<p>"Chris, dear, I'm so dreadfully sorry!"</p> + +<p>It was a poor little speech for the usually eloquent Elisabeth to make; +in cold blood she herself would have been ashamed of it; but Christopher +was<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_193" id="Page_193">[Pg 193]</a></span> quite content. For a second he forgot that he had decided not to +let Elisabeth know that he loved her until he was in a position to marry +her, and he very nearly took her in his strong arms and kissed her there +and then; but before he had time to do this, his good angel (or perhaps +his bad one, for it is often difficult to ascertain how one's two +guardian spirits divide their work) reminded him that it was his duty to +leave Elisabeth free to live her own life, unhampered by the knowledge +of a love which might possibly find no fulfilment in this world where +money is considered the one thing needful; so he merely returned the +pressure of her hand, and said in a queer, strained sort of voice—</p> + +<p>"Thanks awfully, dear. It isn't half so rough on a fellow when he knows +you are sorry." And Elisabeth also was content.</p> + +<p>Contrary to the doctor's expectations, Richard Smallwood did not die: he +had lost all power of thought or speech, and never regained them, but +lived on for years a living corpse; and the burden of his illness lay +heavily on Christopher's young shoulders. Life was specially dark to +poor Christopher just then. His uncle's utter break-down effectually +closed the door on all chances of escape from the drudgery of the +Osierfield to a higher and wider sphere; for, until now, he had +continued to hope against hope that he might induce that uncle to start +him in some other walk of life, where the winning of Elisabeth would +enter into the region of practical politics. But now all chance of this +was over; Richard Smallwood was beyond the reach of the entreaties and +arguments which hitherto he had so firmly resisted. There was nothing +left for Christopher to do but to step into his uncle's shoes, and try +to make the best of his life<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_194" id="Page_194">[Pg 194]</a></span> as general manager of the Osierfield, +handicapped still further by the charge of that uncle, which made it +impossible for him to dream of bringing home a wife to the big old house +in the High Street.</p> + +<p>There was only one drop of sweetness in the bitterness of his cup—one +ray of light in the darkness of his outlook; and that was the +consciousness that he could still go on seeing and loving and serving +Elisabeth, although he might never be able to tell her he was doing so. +He hoped that she would understand; but here he was too sanguine; +Elisabeth was as yet incapable of comprehending any emotion until she +had seen it reduced to a prescription.</p> + +<p>So Christopher lived on in the gloomy house, and looked after his uncle +as tenderly as a mother looks after a sick child. To all intents and +purposes Richard was a child again; he could not speak or think, but he +still loved his nephew, the only one of his own flesh and blood; and he +smiled like a child every time that Christopher came into his room, and +cried like a child ever; time that Christopher went away.</p> + +<p>Elisabeth was very sorry for Christopher at first, and very tender +toward him; but after a time the coldness, which he felt it his duty to +show toward her in the changed state of affairs, had its natural effect, +and she decided that it was foolish to waste her sympathy upon any one +who obviously needed and valued it so little. Moreover, she had not +forgotten that strange, new feeling which disturbed her heart the +morning after Mr. Smallwood was taken ill; and she experienced, half +unconsciously, a thoroughly feminine resentment against the man who had +called into being such an emotion, and then apparently had found no use +for it. So Elisabeth in her heart of hearts was at war with +Christopher—that<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_195" id="Page_195">[Pg 195]</a></span> slumbering, smouldering sort of warfare which is +ready to break out into fire and battle at the slightest provocation; +and this state of affairs did not tend to make life any the easier for +him. He felt he could have cheerfully borne it all if only Elisabeth had +been kind and had understood; but Elisabeth did not understand him in +the least, and was consequently unkind—far more unkind than she, in her +careless, light-hearted philosophy, dreamed of.</p> + +<p>She, too, had her disappointments to bear just then. The artist-soul in +her had grown up, and was crying out for expression; and she vainly +prayed her cousin to let her go to the Slade School, and there learn to +develop the power that was in her. But Miss Farringdon belonged to the +generation which regarded art purely as a recreation—such as +fancy-work, croquet, and the like—and she considered that young women +should be trained for the more serious things of life; by which she +meant the ordering of suitable dinners for the rich and the +manufacturing of seemly garments for the poor. So Elisabeth had to +endure the agony which none but an artist can know—the agony of being +dumb when one has an angel-whispered secret to tell forth—of being +bound hand and foot when one has a God-sent message to write upon the +wall.</p> + +<p>Now and then Miss Maria took her young cousin up to town for a few +weeks, and thus Elisabeth came to have a bowing acquaintanceship with +London; but of London as an ever-fascinating, never-wearying friend she +knew nothing. There are people who tell us that "London is delightful in +the season," and that "the country is very pretty in the summer," and we +smile at them as a man would smile at those who said that his mother was +"a pleasant person," or his<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_196" id="Page_196">[Pg 196]</a></span> heart's dearest "a charming girl." Those +who know London and the country, as London and the country deserve to be +known, do not talk in this way, for they have learned that there is no +end to the wonder or the interest or the mystery of either.</p> + +<p>The year following Richard Smallwood's break-down, a new interest came +into Elisabeth's life. A son and heir was born at the Moat House; and +Elisabeth was one of the women who are predestined to the worship of +babies. Very tightly did the tiny fingers twine themselves round her +somewhat empty heart; for Elisabeth was meant to love much, and at +present her supply of the article was greatly in excess of the demand +made upon it. So she poured the surplus—which no one else seemed to +need—upon the innocent head of Felicia's baby; and she found that the +baby never misjudged her nor disappointed her, as older people seemed so +apt to do. One of her most devout fellow-worshippers was Mrs. Herbert, +who derived comfort from the fact that little Willie was not ashamed of +her as little Willie's mother was; so—like many a disappointed woman +before them—both Mrs. Herbert and Elisabeth discovered the healing +power which lies in the touch of a baby's hand. Felicia loved the child, +too, in her way; but she was of the type of woman to whom the husband is +always dearer than the children. But Alan's cup was filled to +overflowing, and he loved his son as he loved his own soul.</p> + +<p>One of Christopher's expedients for hiding the meditations of his heart +from Elisabeth's curious eyes was the discussion with her of what people +call "general subjects"; and this tried her temper to the utmost. She +regarded it as a sign of superficiality to talk of superficial things; +and she hardly ever went<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_197" id="Page_197">[Pg 197]</a></span> in to dinner with a man without arriving at +the discussion of abstract love and the second <i>entrée</i> simultaneously. +It had never yet dawned upon her that as a rule it is because one has +not experienced a feeling that one is able to describe it; she reasoned +in the contrary direction, and came to the conclusion that those persons +have no hearts at all whose sleeves are unadorned with the same. +Therefore it was intolerable to her when Christopher—who had played +with her as a child, and had once very nearly made her grow up into a +woman—talked to her about the contents of the newspapers.</p> + +<p>"I never look at the papers," she answered crossly one day, in reply to +some unexceptionable and uninteresting comment of his upon such history +as was just then in the raw material; "I hate them."</p> + +<p>"Why do you hate them?" Christopher was surprised at her vehemence.</p> + +<p>"Because there is cholera in the South of France, and I never look at +the papers when there is cholera about, it frightens me so." Elisabeth +had all the pity of a thoroughly healthy person for the suffering that +could not touch her, and the unreasoning terror of a thoroughly healthy +person for the suffering which could.</p> + +<p>"But there is nothing to frighten you in that," said Christopher, in his +most comforting tone; "France is such a beastly dirty hole that they are +bound to have diseases going on there, such as could never trouble +clean, local-boarded, old England. And then it's so far away, too. I'd +never worry about that, if I were you."</p> + +<p>"Wouldn't you?" Elisabeth was at war with him, but she was not +insensible to the consolation he never failed to afford her when things +went wrong.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_198" id="Page_198">[Pg 198]</a></span></p> + +<p>"Good gracious, no! England is so well looked after, with county +councils and such, that even if an epidemic came here they'd stamp it +out like one o'clock. Don't frighten yourself with bogeys, Elisabeth, +there's a good girl!"</p> + +<p>"I feel just the same about newspapers now that I used to feel about +Lalla Rookh," said Elisabeth confidentially.</p> + +<p>Christopher was puzzled. "I'm afraid I don't see quite the connection, +but I have no doubt it is there, like Mrs. Wilfer's petticoat."</p> + +<p>"In Cousin Maria's copy of Lalla Rookh there is a most awful picture of +the Veiled Prophet of Khorassan; and when I was little I went nearly mad +with terror of that picture. I used to go and look at it when nobody was +about, and it frightened me more and more every time."</p> + +<p>"Why on earth didn't you tell me about it?"</p> + +<p>"I don't know. I felt I wouldn't tell anybody for worlds, but must keep +it a ghastly secret. Sometimes I used to hide the book, and try to +forget where I'd hidden it. But I never could forget, and in the end I +always went and found it, and peeped at the picture and nearly died of +terror. The mere outside of the book had a horrible fascination for me. +I used to look at it all the time I was in the drawing-room, and then +pretend I wasn't looking at it; yet if the housemaid had moved it an +inch in dusting the table where it lay, I always knew."</p> + +<p>"Poor little silly child! If only you'd have told me, I'd have asked +Miss Farringdon to put it away where you couldn't get at it."</p> + +<p>"But I couldn't have told you, Chris—I couldn't have told anybody. +There seemed to be some terrible bond between that dreadful book and me +which<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_199" id="Page_199">[Pg 199]</a></span> I was bound to keep secret. Of course it doesn't frighten me any +longer, though I shall always hate it; but the newspapers frighten me +just in the same way when there are horrible things in them."</p> + +<p>"Why, Betty, I am ashamed of you! And such a clever girl as you, too, to +be taken in by the romancing of penny-a-liners! They always make the +worst of things in newspapers in order to sell them."</p> + +<p>"Oh! then you think things aren't as bad as newspapers say?"</p> + +<p>"Nothing like; but they must write something for people to read, and the +more sensational it is the better people like it."</p> + +<p>Elisabeth was comforted; and she never knew that Christopher did not +leave the house that day without asking Miss Farringdon if, for a few +weeks, the daily paper might be delivered at the works and sent up to +the Willows afterward, as he wanted to see the trade-reports the first +thing in the morning. This was done; and sometimes Christopher +remembered to send the papers on to the house, and sometimes he did not. +On these latter occasions Miss Farringdon severely reproved him, and +told him that he would never be as capable a man as his uncle had been, +if he did not endeavour to cultivate his memory; whereat Chris was +inwardly tickled, but was outwardly very penitent and apologetic, +promising to try to be less forgetful in future. And he kept his word; +for not once—while the epidemic in the South of France lasted—did he +forget to forget to send the newspaper up to the Willows when there was +anything in it calculated to alarm the most timid reader.</p> + +<p>"Cousin Maria," said Elisabeth, a few days after<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_200" id="Page_200">[Pg 200]</a></span> this, "I hear that +Coulson's circus is coming to Burlingham, and I want to go and see it."</p> + +<p>Miss Farringdon looked up over the tops of her gold-rimmed spectacles. +"Do you, my dear? Well, I see no reason why you should not. I have been +brought up to disapprove of theatres, and I always shall disapprove of +them; but I confess I have never seen any harm in going to a circus."</p> + +<p>It is always interesting to note where people draw the line between +right and wrong in dealing with forms of amusement; and it is doubtful +whether two separate lines are ever quite identical in their curves.</p> + +<p>"Christopher could take me," Elisabeth continued; "and if he couldn't, +I'm sure Alan would."</p> + +<p>"I should prefer you to go with Christopher, my dear; he is more +thoughtful and dependable than Alan Tremaine. I always feel perfectly +happy about you when you have Christopher to take care of you."</p> + +<p>Elisabeth laughed her cousin to scorn. She did not want anybody to take +care of her, she thought; she was perfectly able to take care of +herself. But Miss Farringdon belonged to a time when single women of +forty were supposed to require careful supervision; and Elisabeth was +but four-and-twenty.</p> + +<p>Christopher, when consulted, fell into the arrangement with alacrity; +and it was arranged for him to take Elisabeth over to Burlingham on the +one day that Coulson's circus was on exhibition there. Elisabeth looked +forward to the treat like a child; for she was by nature extremely fond +of pleasure, and by circumstance little accustomed to it.</p> + +<p>Great then was her disappointment when the morning of the day arrived, +to receive a short note from Christopher saying that he was extremely +sorry to inconvenience her, but that his business <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_201" id="Page_201">[Pg 201]</a></span>engagements made it +impossible for him to take her to Burlingham that day; and adding +various apologies and hopes that she would not be too angry with him. +She had so few treats that her disappointment at losing one was really +acute for the moment; but what hurt her far more than the disappointment +was the consciousness that Chris had obeyed the calls of business rather +than her behest—had thought less of her pleasure than of the claims of +the Osierfield. All Elisabeth's pride (or was it her vanity?) rose up in +arms at the slight which Christopher had thus put upon her; and she felt +angrier with him than she had ever felt with anybody in her life before. +She began to pour out the vials of her wrath in the presence of Miss +Farringdon; but that good lady was so much pleased to find a young man +who cared more for business than for pleasure, or even for a young +woman, that she accorded Elisabeth but scant sympathy. So Elisabeth +possessed her wounded soul in extreme impatience, until such time as the +offender himself should appear upon the scene, ready to receive those +vials which had been specially prepared for his destruction.</p> + +<p>He duly appeared about tea-time, and found Elisabeth consuming the smoke +of her anger in the garden.</p> + +<p>"I hope you are not very angry with me," he began in a humble tone, +sitting down beside her on the old rustic seat; "but I found myself +obliged to disappoint you as soon as I got to the works this morning; +and I am sure you know me well enough to understand that it wasn't my +fault, and that I couldn't help myself."</p> + +<p>"I don't know you well enough for anything of the kind," replied +Elisabeth, flashing a pair of very bright eyes upon his discomfited +face; "but I know<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_202" id="Page_202">[Pg 202]</a></span> you well enough to understand that you are just a +mass of selfishness and horridness, and that you care for nothing but +just what interests and pleases yourself."</p> + +<p>Christopher was startled. "Elisabeth, you don't mean that; you know you +don't."</p> + +<p>"Yes; I do. I mean that I have always hated you, and that I hate you +more than ever to-day. It was just like you to care more for the +business than you did for me, and never to mind about my disappointment +as long as that nasty old ironworks was satisfied. I tell you I hate +you, and I hate the works, and I hate everything connected with you."</p> + +<p>Christopher looked utterly astonished. He had no idea, he said to +himself, that Elisabeth cared so much about going to Coulson's circus; +and he could not see anything in the frustration of a day's excursion to +account for such a storm of indignation as this. He did not realize that +it was the rage of a monarch whose kingdom was in a state of rebellion, +and whose dominion seemed in danger of slipping away altogether. +Elisabeth might not understand Christopher; but Christopher was not +always guiltless of misunderstanding Elisabeth.</p> + +<p>"And it was just like you," Elisabeth went on, "not to let me know till +the last minute, when it was too late for anything to be done. If you +had only had the consideration—I may say the mere civility—to send +word last night that your royal highness could not be bothered with me +and my affairs to-day, I could have arranged with Alan Tremaine to take +me. He is always able to turn his attention for a time from his own +pleasure to other people's."</p> + +<p>"But I thought I told you that it was not until I got to the works this +morning that I discovered it<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_203" id="Page_203">[Pg 203]</a></span> would be impossible for me to take you to +Burlingham to-day."</p> + +<p>"Then you ought to have found it out sooner."</p> + +<p>"Hang it all! I really can not find out things before they occur. Clever +as I am, I am not quite clever enough for that. If I were, I should soon +make my own fortune by telling other people theirs."</p> + +<p>But Elisabeth was too angry to be flippant. "The fact is you care for +nothing but yourself and your horrid old business. I always told you how +it would be."</p> + +<p>"You did. For whatever faults you may have to blame yourself, +over-indulgence toward mine will never be one of them. You can make your +conscience quite clear on that score." Christopher was as determined to +treat the quarrel lightly as Elisabeth was to deal with it on serious +grounds.</p> + +<p>"You have grown into a regular, commonplace, money-grubbing, business +man, with no thoughts for anything higher than making iron and money and +vulgar things like that."</p> + +<p>"And making you angry—that is a source of distinct pleasure to me. You +have no idea how charming you are when you are—well, for the sake of +euphony we will say slightly ruffled, Miss Elisabeth Farringdon."</p> + +<p>Elisabeth stamped her foot. "I wish to goodness you'd be serious +sometimes! Frivolity is positively loathsome in a man."</p> + +<p>"Then I repent it in dust and ashes, and shall rely upon your more +sedate and serious mind to correct this tendency in me. Besides, as you +generally blame me for erring in the opposite direction, it is a relief +to find you smiting me on the other cheek<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_204" id="Page_204">[Pg 204]</a></span> as a change. It keeps up my +mental circulation better."</p> + +<p>"You are both too frivolous and too serious."</p> + +<p>Christopher was unwise enough to laugh. "My dear child, I seem to make +what is called 'a corner' in vices; but even I can not reconcile the +conflicting ones."</p> + +<p>Then Elisabeth's anger settled down into the quiet stage. "If you think +it gentlemanly to disappoint a lady and then insult her, pray go on +doing so; I can only say that I don't."</p> + +<p>"What on earth do you mean, Elisabeth? Do you really believe that I +meant to vex you?" The laughter had entirely died out of Christopher's +face, and his voice was hoarse.</p> + +<p>"I don't know what you meant, and I am afraid I don't much mind. All I +know is that you did disappoint me and did insult me, and that is enough +for me. The purity of your motives is not my concern; I merely resent +the impertinence of your behaviour."</p> + +<p>Christopher rose from his seat; he was serious enough now. "You are +unjust to me, Elisabeth, but I can not and will not attempt to justify +myself. Good afternoon."</p> + +<p>For a second the misery on his face penetrated the thunder-clouds of +Elisabeth's indignation. "Won't you have some tea before you go?" she +asked. It seemed brutal—even to her outraged feelings—to send so old a +friend empty away.</p> + +<p>Christopher's smile was very bitter as he answered. "No, thank you. I am +afraid, after the things you have said to me, I should hardly be able +graciously to accept hospitality at your hands; and rather than accept +it ungraciously, I will not<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_205" id="Page_205">[Pg 205]</a></span> accept it at all." And he turned on his +heel and left her.</p> + +<p>As she watched his retreating figure, one spasm of remorse shot through +Elisabeth's heart; but it was speedily stifled by the recollection that, +for the first time in her life, Christopher had failed her, and had +shown her plainly that there were, in his eyes, more important matters +than Miss Elisabeth Farringdon and her whims and fancies. And what +woman, worthy of the name, could extend mercy to a man who had openly +displayed so flagrant a want of taste and discernment as this? Certainly +not Elisabeth, nor any other fashioned after her pattern. She felt that +she had as much right to be angry as had the prophet, when Almighty +Wisdom saw fit to save the great city in which he was not particularly +interested, and to destroy the gourd in which he was. And so, probably, +she had.</p> + +<p>For several days after this she kept clear of Christopher, nursing her +anger in her heart; and he was so hurt and sore from the lashing which +her tongue had given him, that he felt no inclination to come within the +radius of that tongue's bitterness again.</p> + +<p>But one day, when Elisabeth was sitting on the floor of the Moat House +drawing-room, playing with the baby and discussing new gowns with +Felicia between times, Alan came in and remarked—</p> + +<p>"It was wise of you to give up your excursion to Coulson's circus last +week, Elisabeth; as it has turned out it was chiefly a scare, and the +case was greatly exaggerated; but it might have made you feel +uncomfortable if you had gone. I suppose you saw the notice of the +outbreak in that morning's paper, and so gave it up at the last +moment."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_206" id="Page_206">[Pg 206]</a></span></p> + +<p>Elisabeth ceased from her free translation of the baby's gurglings and +her laudable endeavours suitably to reply to the same, and gave her +whole attention to the baby's father. "I don't know what you mean. What +scare and what outbreak are you talking about?"</p> + +<p>"Didn't you see," replied Alan, "that there was an outbreak of cholera +at Coulson's circus, and a frightful scare all through Burlingham in +consequence? Of course the newspapers greatly exaggerated the danger, +and so increased the scare; and I don't know that I blame them for that. +I am not sure that the sensational way in which the press announces +possible dangers to the community is not a safeguard for the community +at large. To be alive to a danger is nine times out of ten to avoid a +danger; and it is far better to be more frightened than hurt than to be +more hurt than frightened—certainly for communities if not for +individuals."</p> + +<p>"But tell me about it. I never saw any account in the papers; and I'm +glad I didn't, for it would have frightened me out of my wits."</p> + +<p>"It broke out among a troupe of acrobats who had just come straight from +the South of France, and evidently brought the infection with them. They +were at once isolated, and such prompt and efficient measures were taken +to prevent the spread of the disease, that there have been no more +cases, either in the circus or in the town. Now, I should imagine, all +danger of its spreading is practically over; but, of course, it made +everybody in the neighbourhood, and everybody who had been to the +circus, very nervous and uncomfortable for a few days. The local +authorities, however, omitted no possible precaution which should assist +them in stamping out the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_207" id="Page_207">[Pg 207]</a></span> epidemic, should those few cases have started +an epidemic—which was, of course, possible, though hardly likely."</p> + +<p>And then Alan proceeded to expound his views on the matter of sanitary +authorities in general and of those of Burlingham in particular, to +which Felicia listened with absorbing attention and Elisabeth did not +listen at all.</p> + +<p>Soon after this she took her leave; and all along the homeward walk +through Badgering Woods she was conscious of feeling ashamed of +herself—a very rare sensation with Elisabeth, and by no means an +agreeable one. She was by nature so self-reliant and so irresponsible +that she seldom regretted anything that she had done; if she had acted +wisely, all was well; and if she had not acted wisely, it was over and +done with, and what was the use of bothering any more about it? This was +her usual point of view, and it proved as a rule a most comfortable one. +But now she could not fail to see that she had been in the +wrong—hopelessly and flagrantly in the wrong—and that she had behaved +abominably to Christopher into the bargain. She had to climb down, as +other ruling powers have had to climb down before now; and the act of +climbing down is neither a becoming nor an exhilarating form of exercise +to ruling powers. But at the back of her humble contrition there was a +feeling of gladness in the knowledge that Christopher had not really +failed her after all, and that her kingdom was still her own as it had +been in her childish days; and there was also a nobler feeling of higher +joy in the consciousness that—quite apart from his attitude toward +her—Christopher was still the Christopher that she had always in her +inmost soul believed him to be; that she was not wrong in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_208" id="Page_208">[Pg 208]</a></span> the idea she +had formed of him long ago. It is very human to be glad on our own +account when people are as fond of us as we expected them to be; but it +is divine to be glad, solely for their sakes, when they act up to their +own ideals, quite apart from us. And there was a touch of divinity in +Elisabeth's gladness just then, though the rest of her was extremely +human—and feminine at that.</p> + +<p>On her way home she encountered Caleb Bateson going back to work after +dinner, and she told him to ask Mr. Thornley to come up to the Willows +that afternoon, as she wanted to see him. She preferred to send a verbal +message, as by so doing she postponed for a few hours that climbing-down +process which she so much disliked; although it is frequently easier to +climb down by means of one's pen than by means of one's tongue.</p> + +<p>Christopher felt no pleasure in receiving her message. He was not angry +with her, although he marvelled at the unreasonableness and injustice of +a sex that thinks more of a day's pleasure than a life's devotion; he +did not know that it was over the life's devotion and not the day's +pleasure that Elisabeth had fought so hard that day; but his encounter +with her had strangely tired him, and taken the zest out of his life, +and he had no appetite for any more of such disastrous and inglorious +warfare.</p> + +<p>But he obeyed her mandate all the same, having learned the important +political lesson that the fact of a Government's being in the wrong is +no excuse for not obeying the orders of that Government; and he waited +for her in the drawing-room at the Willows, looking out toward the +sunset and wondering how hard upon him Elisabeth was going to be. And +his thoughts were so full of her that he<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_209" id="Page_209">[Pg 209]</a></span> did not hear her come into the +room until she clasped both her hands round his arm and looked up into +his gloomy face, saying—</p> + +<p>"Oh! Chris, I'm so dreadfully ashamed of myself."</p> + +<p>The clouds were dispelled at once, and Christopher smiled as he had not +smiled for a week. "Never mind," he said, patting the hands that were on +his arm; "it's all right."</p> + +<p>But Elisabeth, having set out upon the descent, was prepared to climb +down handsomely. "It isn't all right; it's all wrong. I was simply +fiendish to you, and I shall never forgive myself—never."</p> + +<p>"Oh, yes; you will. And for goodness' sake don't worry over it. I'm glad +you have found out that I wasn't quite the selfish brute that I seemed; +and that's the end of the matter."</p> + +<p>"Dear me! no; it isn't. It is only the beginning. I want to tell you how +dreadfully sorry I am, and to ask you to forgive me."</p> + +<p>"I've nothing to forgive."</p> + +<p>"Yes, you have; lots." And Elisabeth was nearer the mark than +Christopher.</p> + +<p>"I haven't. Of course you were angry with me when I seemed so +disagreeable and unkind; any girl would have been," replied Chris, +forgetting how very unreasonable her anger had seemed only five minutes +ago. But five minutes can make such a difference—sometimes.</p> + +<p>Elisabeth cheerfully caught at this straw of comfort; she was always +ready to take a lenient view of her own shortcomings. If Christopher had +been wise he would not have encouraged such leniency; but who is wise +and in love at the same time?</p> + +<p>"Of course it did seem rather unkind of you,"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_210" id="Page_210">[Pg 210]</a></span> she admitted; "you see, I +thought you had thrown me over just for the sake of some tiresome +business arrangement, and that you didn't care about me and my +disappointment a bit."</p> + +<p>A little quiver crept into Christopher's voice. "I think you might have +known me better than that."</p> + +<p>"Yes, I might; in fact, I ought to have done," agreed Elisabeth with +some truth. "But why didn't you tell me the real reason?"</p> + +<p>"Because I thought it might worry and frighten you. Not that there +really was anything to be frightened about," Christopher hastened to +add; "but you might have imagined things, and been upset; you have such +a tremendous imagination, you know."</p> + +<p>"I'm afraid I have; and it sometimes imagines vain things at your +expense, Chris dear."</p> + +<p>"How did you find me out?" Chris asked.</p> + +<p>"Alan told me about the cholera scare at Burlingham, and I guessed the +rest."</p> + +<p>"Then Alan was an ass. What business had he to go frightening you, I +should like to know, with a lot of fiction that is just trumped up to +sell the papers?"</p> + +<p>"But, Chris, I want you to understand how sorry I am that I was so vile +to you. I really was vile, wasn't I?" Elisabeth was the type of woman +for whom the confessional will always have its fascinations.</p> + +<p>"You were distinctly down on me, I must confess; but you needn't worry +about that now."</p> + +<p>"And you quite forgive me?"</p> + +<p>"As I said before, I've nothing to forgive. You were perfectly right to +be annoyed with a man who appeared to be so careless and inconsiderate; +but<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_211" id="Page_211">[Pg 211]</a></span> I'm glad you've found out that I wasn't quite as selfish as you +thought."</p> + +<p>Elisabeth stroked his coat sleeve affectionately. "You are not selfish +at all, Chris; you're simply the nicest, thoughtfullest, most unselfish +person in the world; and I'm utterly wretched because I was so unkind to +you."</p> + +<p>"Don't be wretched, there's a dear! Your wretchedness is the one thing I +can't and won't stand; so please leave off at once."</p> + +<p>To Christopher remorse for wrong done would always be an agony; he had +yet to learn that to some temperaments, whereof Elisabeth's was one, it +partook of the nature of a luxury—the sort of luxury which tempts one +to pay half a guinea to be allowed to swell up one's eyes and redden +one's nose over imaginary woes in a London theatre.</p> + +<p>"Did you mind very much when I was so cross?" Elisabeth asked +thoughtfully.</p> + +<p>Christopher was torn between a loyal wish to do homage to his idol and a +laudable desire to save that idol pain. "Of course I minded pretty +considerably; but why bother about that now?"</p> + +<p>"Because it interests me immensely. I often think that your only fault +is that you don't mind things enough; and so, naturally, I want to find +out how great your minding capacity is."</p> + +<p>"I see. Your powers of scientific research are indeed remarkable; but +did it never strike you that even vivisection might be carried too +far—too far for the comfort of the vivisected, I mean; not for the +enjoyment of the vivisector?"</p> + +<p>"It is awfully good for people to feel things," persisted Elisabeth.</p> + +<p>"Is it? Well, I suppose it is good—in fact,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_212" id="Page_212">[Pg 212]</a></span> necessary—for some poor +beggars to have their arms or legs cut off; but you can't expect me to +be consumed with envy of the same?"</p> + +<p>"Please tell me how much you minded," Elisabeth coaxed.</p> + +<p>"I can't tell you; and I wouldn't if I could. If I were a rabbit that +had been cut into living pieces to satisfy the scientific yearnings of a +learned professor, do you think I would leave behind me—for my +executors to publish and make large fortunes thereby—confidential +letters and private diaries accurately describing all the tortures I had +endured, for the recreation of the reading public in general and the +said professor in particular? Not I."</p> + +<p>"I should. I should leave a full, true, and particular account of all +that I had suffered, and exactly how much it hurt. It would interest the +professor most tremendously."</p> + +<p>Christopher shook his head. "Oh, dear! no; it wouldn't."</p> + +<p>"Why not?"</p> + +<p>"Because I should have knocked his brains out long before that for +having dared to hurt you at all."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_213" id="Page_213">[Pg 213]</a></span></p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XI" id="CHAPTER_XI"></a><a href="#CONTENTS">CHAPTER XI</a></h2> + +<h3>MISS FARRINGDON'S WILL</h3> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Time speeds on his relentless track,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">And, though we beg on bended knees,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">No prophet's hand for us puts back<br /></span> +<span class="i2">The shadow ten degrees.<br /></span> +</div></div> + + +<p>During the following winter Miss Farringdon gave unmistakable signs of +that process known as "breaking-up." She had fought a good fight for +many years, and the time was fast coming for her to lay down her arms +and receive her reward. Elisabeth, with her usual light-heartedness, did +not see the Shadow stealing nearer day by day; but Christopher was more +accustomed to shadows than she was—his path had lain chiefly among +them—and he knew what was coming, and longed passionately and in vain +to shield Elisabeth from the inevitable. He had played the part of +Providence to her in one matter: he had stood between her and himself, +and had prevented her from drinking of that mingled cup of sweetness and +bitterness which men call Love, thinking that she would be a happier +woman if she left untasted the only form of the beverage which he was +able to offer her. And possibly he was right; that she would be also a +better woman in consequence, was quite another and more doubtful side of +the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_214" id="Page_214">[Pg 214]</a></span>question. But now the part of Elisabeth's Providence was no longer +cast for Christopher to play; he might prevent Love with his sorrows +from coming nigh her dwelling, but Death defied his protecting arm. It +was good for Elisabeth to be afflicted, although Christopher would +willingly have died to save her a moment's pain; and it is a blessed +thing for us after all that Perfect Wisdom and Almighty Power are one.</p> + +<p>As usual Elisabeth was so busy straining her eyes after the ideal that +the real escaped her notice; and it was therefore a great shock to her +when her Cousin Maria went to sleep one night in a land whose stones are +of iron, and awoke next morning in a country whose pavements are of +gold. For a time the girl was completely stunned by the blow; and during +that period Christopher was very good to her. Afterward—when he and she +had drifted far apart—Elisabeth sometimes recalled Christopher's +sheltering care during the first dark days of her loneliness; and she +never did so without remembering the words, "As the mountains are round +about Jerusalem"; they seemed to express all that he was to her just +then.</p> + +<p>When Maria Farringdon's will was read, it was found that she had left to +her cousin and adopted daughter, Elisabeth, an annuity of five hundred a +year; also the income from the Osierfield and the Willows until such +time as the real owner of these estates should be found. The rest of her +property—together with the Osierfield and the Willows—she bequeathed +upon trust for the eldest living son, if any, of her late cousin George +Farringdon; and she appointed Richard Smallwood and his nephew to be her +trustees and executors. The trustees were <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_215" id="Page_215">[Pg 215]</a></span>required to ascertain whether +George Farringdon had left any son, and whether that son was still +alive; but if, at the expiration of ten years from the death of the +testator, no such son could be discovered, the whole of Miss +Farringdon's estate was to become the absolute property of Elisabeth. As +since the making of this will Richard had lost his faculties, the whole +responsibility of finding the lost heir and of looking after the +temporary heiress devolved upon Christopher's shoulders.</p> + +<p>"And how is Mr. Bateson to-day?" asked Mrs. Hankey of Mr. Bateson's +better-half, one Sunday morning not long after Miss Farringdon's death.</p> + +<p>"Thank you, Mrs. Hankey, he is but middling, I'm sorry to say—very +middling—very middling, indeed."</p> + +<p>"That's a bad hearing. But I'm not surprised; I felt sure as something +was wrong when I didn't see him in chapel this morning. I says to +myself, when the first hymn was given out and him not there, 'Eh, dear!' +I says, 'I'm afraid there's trouble in store for Mrs. Bateson.' It +seemed so strange to see you all alone in the pew, that for a minute or +two it quite gave me the creeps. What's amiss with him?"</p> + +<p>"Rheumatism in the legs. He could hardly get out of bed this morning he +was so stiff."</p> + +<p>"Eh, dear! that's a bad thing—and particularly at his time of life. I +lost a beautiful hen only yesterday from rheumatism in the legs; one of +the best sitters I ever had. You remember her?—the speckled one that I +got from Tetleigh, four years ago come Michaelmas. But that's the way in +this world; the most missed are the first taken."</p> + +<p>"I wonder if that's Miss Elisabeth there," said Mrs. Bateson, catching +sight of a dark-robed figure<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_216" id="Page_216">[Pg 216]</a></span> in the distance. "I notice she's taken to +go to church regular now Miss Farringdon isn't here to look after her. +How true it is, 'When the cat's away the mice will play!'" Worship +according to the methods of that branch of the Church Militant +established in these kingdoms was regarded by Mrs. Bateson as a form of +recreation—harmless, undoubtedly, but still recreation.</p> + +<p>Mrs. Hankey shook her head. "No—that isn't her; she can't be out of +church yet. They don't go in till eleven." And she shook her head +disapprovingly.</p> + +<p>"Eleven's too late, to my thinking," agreed Mrs. Bateson.</p> + +<p>"So it is; you never spoke a truer word, Mrs. Bateson. Half-past ten is +the Lord's time—or so it used to be when I was a girl."</p> + +<p>"And a very good time too! Gives you the chance of getting home and +seeing to the dinner properly after chapel. At least, that is to say, if +the minister leaves off when he's finished, which is more than you can +say of all of them; if he doesn't, there's a bit of a scrimmage to get +the dinner cooked in time even now, unless you go out before the last +hymn. And I never hold with that somehow; it seems like skimping the +Lord's material, as you may say."</p> + +<p>"So it does. It looks as if the cares of this world and the +deceitfulness of riches had choked the good seed in a body's heart."</p> + +<p>"In which case it looks what it is not," said Mrs. Bateson; "for nine +times out of ten it means nothing worse than wanting to cook the +potatoes, so as the master sha'n't have no cause for grumbling, and to +boil the rice so as it sha'n't swell in the children's<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_217" id="Page_217">[Pg 217]</a></span> insides. But +that's the way with things; folks never turn out to be as bad as you +thought they were when you get to know their whys and their wherefores; +and many a poor soul as is put down as worldly is really only anxious to +make things pleasant for the master and the children."</p> + +<p>"Miss Elisabeth's mourning is handsome, I don't deny," said Mrs. Hankey, +reverting to a more interesting subject than false judgments in the +abstract; "but she don't look well in it—those pale folks never do +justice to good mourning, in my opinion. It seems almost a pity to waste +it on them."</p> + +<p>"Oh! I don't hold with you there. I think I never saw anybody look more +genteel than Miss Elisabeth does now, bless her! And the jet trimming on +her Sunday frock is something beautiful."</p> + +<p>"Eh! there's nothing like a bit of jet for setting off crape and +bringing the full meaning out of it, as you may say," replied Mrs. +Hankey, in mollified tones. "I don't think as you can do full justice to +crape till you put some jet again' it. It's wonderful how a bit of good +mourning helps folks to bear their sorrows; and for sure they want it in +a world so full of care as this."</p> + +<p>"They do; there's no doubt about that. But I can't help wishing as Miss +Elisabeth had got some bugles on that best dress of hers; there's +nothing quite comes up to bugles, to my mind."</p> + +<p>"There ain't; they give such a finish, as one may say, being so +rich-looking. But for my part I think Miss Elisabeth has been a bit +short with the crape, considering that Miss Farringdon was father and +mother and what-not to her. Now supposing she'd had a crape mantle with +handsome bugle fringe for Sundays; that's what I should have called +paying<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_218" id="Page_218">[Pg 218]</a></span> proper respect to the departed; instead of a short jacket with +ordinary braid on it, that you might wear for a great-uncle as hadn't +left you a penny."</p> + +<p>"Well, Mrs. Hankey, folks may do what they like with their own, and it's +not for such as us to sit in judgment on our betters; but I don't think +as Miss Farringdon's will gave her any claim to a crape mantle with a +bugle fringe; I don't indeed."</p> + +<p>"Well, to be sure, but you do speak strong on the subject!"</p> + +<p>"And I feel strong, too," replied Mrs. Bateson, waxing more indignant. +"There's dear Miss Elisabeth has been like an own daughter to Miss +Farringdon ever since she was a baby, and yet Miss Farringdon leaves her +fortune over Miss Elisabeth's head to some good-for-nothing young man +that nobody knows for certain ever was born. I've no patience with such +ways!"</p> + +<p>"It does seem a bit hard on Miss Elisabeth, I must admit, her being Miss +Farringdon's adopted child. But, as I've said before, there's nothing +like a will for making a thorough to-do."</p> + +<p>"It's having been engaged to Mr. George all them years ago that set her +up to it. It's wonderful how folks often turn to their old lovers when +it comes to will time."</p> + +<p>Mrs. Hankey looked incredulous. "Well, that beats me, I'm fain to +confess. I know if the Lord had seen fit to stop me from keeping company +with Hankey, not a brass farthing would he ever have had from me. I'd +sooner have left my savings to charity."</p> + +<p>"Don't say that, Mrs. Hankey; it always seems so lonely to leave money +to charity, as if you was nothing better than a foundling. But how did +you enjoy the sermon this morning?"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_219" id="Page_219">[Pg 219]</a></span></p> + +<p>"I thought that part about the punishment of the wicked was something +beautiful. But, to tell you the truth, I've lost all pleasure in Mr. +Sneyd's discourses since I heard as he wished to introduce the reading +of the Commandments into East Lane Chapel. What's the good of fine +preaching, if a minister's private life isn't up to his sermon, I should +like to know?"</p> + +<p>Mrs. Bateson, however, had broad views on some matters. "I don't see +much harm in reading the Commandments," she said.</p> + +<p>Mrs. Hankey looked shocked at her friend's laxity. "It is the thin end +of the wedge, Mrs. Bateson, and you ought to know it. Mark my words, +it's forms and ceremonies such as this that tempts our young folks away +from the chapels to the churches, like Miss Elisabeth and Master +Christopher there. They didn't read no Commandments in our chapel as +long as Miss Farringdon was alive; I should have liked to see the +minister as would have dared to suggest such a thing. She wouldn't stand +Ritualism, poor Miss Farringdon wouldn't."</p> + +<p>"Here we are at home," said Mrs. Bateson, stopping at her own door; "I +must go in and see how the master's getting on."</p> + +<p>"And I hope you'll find him better, Mrs. Bateson, I only hope so; but +you never know how things are going to turn out when folks begin to +sicken—especially at Mr. Bateson's age. And he hasn't been looking +himself for a long time. I says to Hankey only a few weeks ago, +'Hankey,' says I, 'it seems to me as if the Lord was thinking on Mr. +Bateson; I hope I may be mistaken, but that's how it appears to me.' And +so it did."</p> + +<p>On the afternoon of that very Sunday <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_220" id="Page_220">[Pg 220]</a></span>Christopher took Elisabeth for a +walk in Badgering Woods. The winter was departing, and a faint pink +flush on the bare trees heralded the coming of spring; and Elisabeth, +being made of material which is warranted not to fret for long, began to +feel that life was not altogether dark, and that it was just possible +she might—at the end of many years—actually enjoy things again. +Further, Christopher suited her perfectly—how perfectly she did not +know as yet—and she spent much time with him just then.</p> + +<p>Those of us who have ever guessed the acrostics in a weekly paper, have +learned that sometimes we find a solution to one of the lights, and say, +"This will do, if nothing better turns up before post-time on Monday"; +and at other times we chance upon an answer which we know at once, +without further research, to be indisputably the right one. It is so +with other things than acrostics: there are friends whom we feel will do +very well for us if nobody—or until somebody—better turns up; and +there are others whom we know to be just the right people for the +particular needs of our souls at that time. They are the right answers +to the questions which have been perplexing us—the correct solutions to +the problems over which we have been puzzling our brains. So it was with +Elisabeth: Christopher was the correct answer to life's current +acrostic; and as long as she was with Christopher she was content.</p> + +<p>"Don't you get very tired of people who have never found the fourth +dimension?" she asked him, as they sat upon a stile in Badgering Woods.</p> + +<p>"What do you mean by the fourth dimension? There are length and breadth +and thickness, and what comes next?"</p> + +<p>Christopher was pleased to find Elisabeth facing<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_221" id="Page_221">[Pg 221]</a></span> life's abstract +problems again; it proved that she was no longer overpowered by its +concrete ones.</p> + +<p>"I don't know what its name is," she replied, looking dreamily through +the leafless trees; "perhaps eternity would do as well as any other. But +I mean the dimension which comes after length and breadth and thickness, +and beyond them, and all round them, and which makes them seem quite +different, and much less important."</p> + +<p>"I think I know what you are driving at. You mean a new way of looking +at things and of measuring them—a way which makes things which ordinary +people call small, large; and things which ordinary people call large, +small."</p> + +<p>"Yes. People who have never been in the fourth dimension bore me, do you +know? I daresay it would bore squares to talk to straight lines, and +cubes to talk to squares; there would be so many things the one would +understand and the other wouldn't. The line wouldn't know what the +square meant by the word <i>across</i>, and the square wouldn't know what the +cube meant by the word <i>above</i>; and in the same way the three-dimension +people don't know what we are talking about when we use such words as +<i>religion</i> and <i>art</i> and <i>love</i>."</p> + +<p>"They think we are talking about going regularly to church, and +supporting picture-galleries, and making brilliant matches," suggested +Christopher.</p> + +<p>"Yes; that's exactly what they do think; and it makes talking to them so +difficult, and so dull."</p> + +<p>"When you use the word <i>happiness</i> they imagine you are referring to an +income of four or five thousand a year; and by <i>success</i> they mean the +permission to stand in the backwater of a fashionable London evening +party, looking at the mighty and noble,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_222" id="Page_222">[Pg 222]</a></span> and pretending afterward that +they have spoken to the same."</p> + +<p>"They don't speak our language or think our thoughts," Elisabeth said; +"and the music of their whole lives is of a different order from that of +the lives of the fourth-dimension people."</p> + +<p>"Distinctly so; all the difference between a Sonata of Beethoven and a +song out of a pantomime."</p> + +<p>"I haven't much patience with the three-dimension people; have you?" +asked Elisabeth.</p> + +<p>"No—I'm afraid not; but I've a good deal of pity for them. They miss so +much. I always fancy that people who call pictures pretty and music +sweet must have a dreary time of it all round. But we'd better be +getting on, don't you think? It is rather chilly sitting out-of-doors, +and I don't want you to catch cold. You don't feel cold, do you?" And +Christopher's face grew quite anxious.</p> + +<p>"Not at all."</p> + +<p>"You don't seem to me to have enough furbelows and things round your +neck to keep you warm," continued he; "let me tie it up tighter, +somehow."</p> + +<p>And while he turned up the fur collar of her coat and hooked the highest +hook and eye, Elisabeth thought how nice it was to be petted and taken +care of; and as she walked homeward by Christopher's side, she felt like +a good little girl again. Even reigning monarchs now and then like to +have their ermine tucked round them, and to be patted on their crowns by +a protecting hand.</p> + +<p>As the weeks rolled on and the spring drew nearer, Elisabeth gradually +took up the thread of human interest again. Fortunately for her she was +very busy with plans for the benefit of the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_223" id="Page_223">[Pg 223]</a></span>work-people at the +Osierfield. She started a dispensary; she opened an institute; she +inaugurated courses of lectures and entertainments for keeping the young +men out of the public-houses in the evenings; she gave to the Wesleyan +Conference a House of Rest—a sweet little house, looking over the +fields toward the sunset—where tired ministers might come and live at +ease for a time to regain health and strength; and in Sedgehill Church +she put up a beautiful east window to the memory of Maria Farringdon, +and for a sign-post to all such pilgrims as were in need of one, as the +east window in St. Peter's had once been a sign-post to herself showing +her the way to Zion.</p> + +<p>In all these undertakings Christopher was her right hand; and while +Elisabeth planned and paid for them, he carefully carried them out—the +hardest part of the business, and the least effective one.</p> + +<p>When Elisabeth had set afoot all these improvements for the benefit of +her work-people, she turned her attention to the improving of herself; +and she informed Christopher that she had decided to go up to London, +and fulfil the desire of her heart by studying art at the Slade School.</p> + +<p>"But you can not live by yourself in London," Christopher objected; "you +are all right here, because you have the Tremaines and other people to +look after you; but in town you would be terribly lonely; and, besides, +I don't approve of girls living in London by themselves."</p> + +<p>"I sha'n't be by myself. There is a house where some of the Slade pupils +live together, and I shall go there for every term, and come down here +for the vacation. It will be just like going back to school again. I +shall adore it!"</p> + +<p>Christopher did not like the idea at all. "Are<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_224" id="Page_224">[Pg 224]</a></span> you sure you will be +comfortable, and that they will take proper care of you?"</p> + +<p>"Of course they will. Grace Cobham will be there at the same time—an +old schoolfellow to whom I used to be devoted at Fox How—and she and I +will chum together. I haven't seen her for ages, as she has been +scouring Europe with her family; but now she has settled down in +England, and is going in for art."</p> + +<p>Christopher still looked doubtful. "It would make me miserable to think +that you weren't properly looked after and taken care of, Elisabeth."</p> + +<p>"Well, I shall be. And if I'm not, I shall still have you to fall back +upon."</p> + +<p>"But you won't have me to fall back upon; that is just the point. If you +would, I shouldn't worry about you so much; but it cuts me to the heart +to leave you among strangers. Still, the Tremaines will be here, and I +shall ask them to look after you; and I daresay they will do so all +right, though not as efficiently as I should."</p> + +<p>Elisabeth grew rather pale; that there would ever come a day when +Christopher would not be there to fall back upon was a contingency which +until now had never occurred to her. "Whatever are you talking about, +Chris? Why sha'n't you be here when I go up to the Slade?"</p> + +<p>"Because I am going to Australia."</p> + +<p>"To Australia? What on earth for?" It seemed to Elisabeth as if the +earth beneath her feet had suddenly decided to reverse its customary +revolution, and to transpose its poles.</p> + +<p>"To see if I can find George Farringdon's son, of course."</p> + +<p>"I thought he had been advertised for in both<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_225" id="Page_225">[Pg 225]</a></span> English and Australian +papers, and had failed to answer the advertisements."</p> + +<p>"So he has."</p> + +<p>"Then why bother any more about him?" suggested Elisabeth.</p> + +<p>"Because I must. If advertisement fails, I must see what personal search +will do."</p> + +<p>Elisabeth's lip trembled; she felt that a hemisphere uninhabited by +Christopher would be a very dreary hemisphere indeed. "Oh! Chris dear, +you needn't go yourself," she coaxed; "I simply can not spare you, and +that's the long and the short of it."</p> + +<p>Christopher hardened his heart. He had seen the quiver of Elisabeth's +lip, and it had almost proved too strong for him. "Hang it all! I must +go; there is nothing else to be done."</p> + +<p>Elisabeth's eyes filled with tears. "Please don't, Chris. It is horrid +of you to want to go and leave me when I'm so lonely and haven't got +anybody in the world but you!"</p> + +<p>"I don't want to go, Betty; I hate the mere idea of going. I'd give a +thousand pounds, if I could, to stop away. But I can't see that I have +any alternative. Miss Farringdon left it to me, as her trustee, to find +her heir and give up the property to him; and, as a man of honour, I +don't see how I can leave any stone unturned until I have fulfilled the +charge which she laid upon me."</p> + +<p>"Oh! Chris, don't go. I can't spare you." And Elisabeth stretched out +two pleading hands toward him.</p> + +<p>Christopher turned away from her. "I say, Betty, please don't cry," and +his voice shook; "it makes it so much harder for me; and it is hard +enough as it is—confoundedly hard!"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_226" id="Page_226">[Pg 226]</a></span></p> + +<p>"Then why do it?"</p> + +<p>"Because I must."</p> + +<p>"I don't see that; it is pure Quixotism."</p> + +<p>"I wish to goodness I could think that; but I can't. It appears to me a +question about which there could not be two opinions."</p> + +<p>The tears dried on Elisabeth's lashes. The old feeling of being at war +with Christopher, which had laid dormant for so long, now woke up again +in her heart, and inclined her to defy rather than to plead. If he cared +for duty more than for her, he did not care for her much, she said to +herself; and she was far too proud a woman ever to care for a man—even +in the way of friendship—who obviously did not care for her. Still, she +condescended to further argument.</p> + +<p>"If you really liked me and were my friend," she said, "not only +wouldn't you wish to go away and leave me, but you would want me to have +the money, instead of rushing all over the world in order to give it to +some tiresome young man you'd never heard of six months ago."</p> + +<p>"Don't you understand that it is just because I like you and am your +friend, that I can't bear you to profit by anything which has a shade of +dishonour connected with it? If I cared for you less I should be less +particular."</p> + +<p>"That's nonsense! But your conscience and your sense of honour always +were bugbears, Christopher, and always will be. They bored me as a +child, and they bore me now."</p> + +<p>Christopher winced; the nightmare of his life had been the terror of +boring Elisabeth, for he was wise enough to know that a woman may love a +man with whom she is angry, but never one by whom she is bored.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_227" id="Page_227">[Pg 227]</a></span></p> + +<p>"It is just like you," Elisabeth continued, tossing her head, "to be so +busy saving your own soul and laying up for yourself a nice little +nest-egg in heaven, that you haven't time to consider other people and +their interests and feelings."</p> + +<p>"I think you do me an injustice," replied Christopher quietly. He was +puzzled to find Elisabeth so bitter against him on a mere question of +money, as she was usually a most unworldly young person; again he did +not understand that she was not really fighting over the matter at +issue, but over the fact that he had put something before his friendship +for her. Once she had quarrelled with him because he seemed to think +more of his business than of her; now she was quarrelling with him +because he thought more of his duty than of her; for the truth that he +could not have loved her so much had he not loved honour more, had not +as yet been revealed to Elisabeth.</p> + +<p>"I don't want to be money-grubbing," she went on, "or to cling on to +things to which I have no right; though, of course, it will be rather +poor fun for me to have to give up all this," and she waved her hand in +a sweep, supposed to include the Willows and the Osierfield and all that +appertained thereto, "and to drudge along at the rate of five hundred a +year, with yesterday's dinner and last year's dress warmed up again to +feed and clothe me. But I ask you to consider whether the work-people at +the Osierfield aren't happier under my <i>régime</i>, than under the rule of +some good-for-nothing young man, who will probably spend all his income +upon himself, and go to the dogs as his father did before him."</p> + +<p>Christopher was cut to the quick; Elisabeth had<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_228" id="Page_228">[Pg 228]</a></span> hit the nail on the +head. After all, it was not his own interests that he felt bound to +sacrifice to the claims of honour, but hers; and it was this +consideration that made him feel the sacrifice almost beyond his power. +He knew that it was his duty to do everything he could to fulfil the +conditions of Miss Farringdon's will; he also knew that he was compelled +to do this at Elisabeth's expense and not at his own; and the twofold +knowledge well-nigh broke his heart. His misery was augmented by his +perception of how completely Elisabeth misunderstood him, and of how +little of the truth all those years of silent devotion had conveyed to +her mind; and his face was white with pain as he answered—</p> + +<p>"There is no need for you to say such things as that to me, Elisabeth; +you know as well as I do that I would give my life to save you from +sorrow and to ensure your happiness; but I can not be guilty of a shabby +trick even for this. Can't you see that the very fact that I care for +you so much, makes it all the more impossible for me to do anything +shady in your name?"</p> + +<p>"Bosh!" rudely exclaimed Elisabeth.</p> + +<p>"As for the work-people," he went on, ignoring her interruption, "of +course no one will ever do as much for them as you are doing. But that +isn't the question. The fact that one man would make a better use of +money than another wouldn't justify me in robbing Peter to increase +Paul's munificence. Now would it?"</p> + +<p>"That's perfectly different. It is all right for you to go on +advertising for that Farringdon man in agony columns, and I shouldn't be +so silly as to make a fuss about giving up the money if he turned up. +You know that well enough. But it does seem<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_229" id="Page_229">[Pg 229]</a></span> to me to be +over-conscientious and hyper-disagreeable on your part to go off to +Australia—just when I am so lonely and want you so much—in search of +the man who is to turn me out of my kingdom and reign in my stead. I +can't think how you can want to do such a thing!" Elisabeth was fighting +desperately hard; the full power of her strong will was bent upon making +Christopher do what she wished and stay with her in England; not only +because she needed him, but because she felt that this was a Hastings or +Waterloo between them, and that if she lost this battle, her ancient +supremacy was gone forever.</p> + +<p>"I don't want to go and do it, heaven knows! I hate and loathe doing +anything which you don't wish me to do. But there is no question of +wanting in the matter, as far as I can see. It is a simple question +between right and wrong—between honour and dishonour—and so I really +have no alternative."</p> + +<p>"Then you have made up your mind to go out to Australia and turn up +every stone in order to find this George Farringdon's son?"</p> + +<p>"I don't see how I can help it."</p> + +<p>"And you don't care what becomes of me?"</p> + +<p>"More than I care for anything else in the world, Elisabeth. Need you +ask?"</p> + +<p>For one wild moment Christopher felt that he must tell Elisabeth how +passionately he would woo her, should she lose her fortune; and how he +would spend his life and his income in trying to make her happy, should +George Farringdon's son be found and she cease to be one of the greatest +heiresses in the Midlands. But he held himself back by the bitter +knowledge of how cruelly appearances were against him. He had made up +his mind to do the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_230" id="Page_230">[Pg 230]</a></span> right thing at all costs; at least, he had not +exactly made up his mind—he saw the straight path, and the possibility +of taking any other never occurred to him. But if he succeeded in this +hateful and (to a man of his type) inevitable quest, he would not only +sacrifice Elisabeth's interests, he would also further his own by making +it possible for him to ask her to marry him—a thing which he felt he +could never do as long as she was one of the wealthiest women in +Mershire, and he was only the manager of her works. Duty is never so +difficult to certain men as when it wears the garb and carries with it +the rewards of self-interest; others, on the contrary, find that a +joint-stock company, composed of the Right and the Profitable, supplies +its passengers with a most satisfactory permanent way whereby to travel +through life. There is no doubt that these latter have by far the more +comfortable journey; but whether they are equally contented when they +have reached that journey's end, none of them have as yet returned to +tell us.</p> + +<p>"If somebody must go to Australia after that tiresome young man, why +need it be you?" Elisabeth persisted. "Can't you send somebody else in +your place?"</p> + +<p>"I am afraid I couldn't trust anybody else to sift the matter as +thoroughly as I should. I really must go, Betty. Please don't make it +too hard for me."</p> + +<p>"Do you mean you will still go, even though I beg you not?"</p> + +<p>"I am afraid I must."</p> + +<p>Elisabeth rose from her seat and drew herself up to her full height, as +became a dethroned and offended queen. "Then that is the end of the +matter as far as I am concerned, and it is a waste of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_231" id="Page_231">[Pg 231]</a></span> time to discuss +it further; but I must confess that there is nothing in the world I hate +so much as a prig," she said, as she swept out of the room.</p> + +<p>It was her final shot, and it told. She could hardly have selected one +more admirably calculated to wound, and it went straight through +Christopher's heart. It was now obvious that she did not love him, and +never could have loved him, he assured himself, or she would not have +misjudged him so cruelly, or said such hard things to him. He did not +realize that an angry woman says not what she thinks, but what she +thinks will most hurt the man with whom she is angry. He also did not +realize—what man does?—how difficult it is for any woman to believe +that a man can care for her and disagree with her at the same time, even +though the disagreement be upon a purely impersonal question. Naturally, +when the question happens to be personal, the strain on feminine faith +is still greater—in the majority of cases too great to be borne.</p> + +<p>Thus Christopher and Elisabeth came to the parting of the ways. She said +to herself, "He doesn't love me because he won't do what I want, +regardless of his own ideas of duty." And he said to himself, "If I fail +to do what I consider is my duty, I am unworthy—or, rather, more +unworthy than I am in any case—to love her." Thus they moved along +parallel lines; and parallel lines never meet—except in infinity.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_232" id="Page_232">[Pg 232]</a></span></p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XII" id="CHAPTER_XII"></a><a href="#CONTENTS">CHAPTER XII</a></h2> + +<h3>"THE DAUGHTERS OF PHILIP"</h3> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">In the market-place alone<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Stood the statue carved in stone,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Watching children round her feet<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Playing marbles in the street:<br /></span> +<span class="i0">When she tried to join their play<br /></span> +<span class="i0">They in terror fled away.<br /></span> +</div></div> + + +<p>Christopher went to Australia in search of George Farringdon's son, and +Elisabeth stayed in England and cherished bitter thoughts in her heart +concerning him. That imagination of hers—which was always prone to lead +her astray—bore most terribly false witness against Christopher just +then. It portrayed him as a hard, self-righteous man, ready to sacrifice +the rest of mankind to the Moloch of what he considered to be his own +particular duty and spiritual welfare, and utterly indifferent as to how +severe was the suffering entailed on the victims of this sacrifice. And, +as Christopher was not at hand to refute the charges of Elisabeth's +libellous fancy by his own tender and unselfish personality, the accuser +took advantage of his absence to blacken him more and more.</p> + +<p>It was all in a piece with the rest of his character, she said to +herself; he had always been cold and hard<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_233" id="Page_233">[Pg 233]</a></span> and self-contained. When his +house had been left unto him desolate by the stroke which changed his +uncle from a wise and kindly companion into a helpless and peevish +child, she had longed to help and comfort him with her sympathy; and he +had thrown it back in her face. He was too proud and too superior to +care for human affection, she supposed; and now he felt no hesitation in +first forsaking her, and then reducing her to poverty, if only by so +doing he could set himself still more firmly on the pedestal of his own +virtue. So did Elisabeth's imagination traduce Christopher; and +Elisabeth listened and believed.</p> + +<p>At first she was haunted by memories of how good he had been to her when +her cousin Maria died, and many a time before; and she used to dream +about him at night with so much of the old trust and affection that it +took all the day to stamp out the fragrance of tenderness which her +dreams had left behind. But after a time these dreams and memories grew +fewer and less distinct, and she persuaded herself that Christopher had +never been the true and devoted friend she had once imagined him to be, +but that the kind and affectionate Chris of olden days had been merely a +creature of her own invention. There was no one to plead his cause for +him, as he was far away, and appearances were on the side of his +accuser; so he was tried in the court of Elisabeth's merciless young +judgment, and sentenced to life-long banishment from the circle of her +interests and affections. She forgot how he had comforted her in the day +of her adversity. If he had allowed her to comfort him, she would have +remembered it forever; but he had not; and in this world men must be +prepared to take the consequences of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_234" id="Page_234">[Pg 234]</a></span> their own mistakes, even though +those mistakes be made through excess of devotion to another person.</p> + +<p>In certain cases it may be necessary to pluck out the right eye and cut +off the right hand; but there is no foundation for supposing that the +operation will be any the less painful because of the righteous motive +inducing it. And so Christopher Thornley learned by bitter experience, +when, after many days, he returned from a fruitless search for the +missing heir, to find the countenance of Elisabeth utterly changed +toward him. She was quite civil to him—quite polite; she never +attempted to argue or quarrel with him as she had done in the old days, +and she listened patiently to all the details of his doings in +Australia; but with gracious coldness she quietly put him outside the +orbit of her life, and showed him plainly that he was now nothing more +to her than her trustee and the general manager of her works.</p> + +<p>It was hard on Christopher—cruelly hard; yet he had no alternative but +to accept the position which Elisabeth, in the blindness of her heart, +assigned to him. Sometimes he felt the burden of his lot was almost more +than he could bear; not because of its heaviness, as he was a brave man +and a patient one, but because of the utter absence of any joy in his +life. Men and women can endure much sorrow if they have much joy as +well; it is when sorrow comes and there is no love to lighten it, that +the Hand of God lies heavy upon them; and It lay heavy upon +Christopher's soul just then. Sometimes, when he felt weary unto death +of the dreary routine of work and the still drearier routine of his +uncle's sick-room, he recalled with a bitter smile how Elisabeth used to +say that the gloom and smoke<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_235" id="Page_235">[Pg 235]</a></span> of the furnaces was really a pillar of +cloud to show how God was watching over the people at the Osierfield as +He watched over them in the wilderness. Because she had forgotten to be +gracious to him, he concluded that God had forgotten to be gracious to +him also—a not uncommon error of human wisdom; but though his heart was +wounded and his days darkened by her injustice toward him, he never +blamed her, even in his inmost thoughts. He was absolutely loyal to +Elisabeth.</p> + +<p>One grim consolation he had—and that was the conviction that he had not +won, and never could have won, Elisabeth's love; and that, therefore, +poverty or riches were matters of no moment to him. Had he felt that +temporal circumstances were the only bar between him and happiness, his +position as her paid manager would have been unendurable; but now she +had taught him that it was he himself, and not any difference in their +respective social positions, which really stood between herself and him; +and, that being so, nothing else had any power to hurt him. Wealth, +unshared by Elisabeth, would have been no better than want, he said to +himself; success, uncrowned by her, would have been equivalent to +failure. When Christopher was in Australia he succeeded in tracing +George Farringdon as far as Broken Hill, and there he found poor +George's grave. He learned that George had left a widow and one son, who +had left the place immediately after George's death; but no one could +give him any further information as to what had subsequently become of +these two. And he was obliged at last to abandon the search and return +to England, without discovering what had happened to the widow and +child.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_236" id="Page_236">[Pg 236]</a></span></p> + +<p>Some years after his nephew's fruitless journey to Australia Richard +Smallwood died; and though the old man had been nothing but a burden +during the last few years of his life, Christopher missed him sorely +when he was gone. It was something even to have a childish old man to +love him, and smile at his coming; now there was nobody belonging to +him, and he was utterly alone.</p> + +<p>But the years which had proved so dark to Christopher had been full of +brightness and interest to Elisabeth. She had fulfilled her intention of +studying at the Slade School, and she had succeeded in her work beyond +her wildest expectations. She was already recognised as an artist of no +mean order. Now and then she came down to the Willows, bringing Grace +Cobham with her; and the young women filled the house with company. Now +and then they two went abroad together, and satisfied their souls with +the beauty of the art of other lands. But principally they lived in +London, for the passion to be near the centre of things had come upon +Elisabeth; and when once that comes upon any one, London is the place in +which to live. People wondered that Elisabeth did not marry, and blamed +her behind her back for not making suitable hay while it was as yet +summer with her. But the artist-woman never marries for the sake of +being married—or rather for the sake of not being unmarried—as so many +of her more ordinary sisters do; her art supplies her with that +necessary interest in life, without which most women become either +invalids or shrews, and—unless she happens to meet the right man—she +can manage very well without him.</p> + +<p>George Farringdon's son had never turned up, in spite of all the efforts +to discover him; and by this<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_237" id="Page_237">[Pg 237]</a></span> time Elisabeth had settled down into the +belief that the Willows and the Osierfield were permanently hers. She +had long ago forgiven Christopher for setting her and her interests +aside, and going off in search of the lost heir—at least she believed +that she had; but there was always an undercurrent of bitterness in her +thoughts of him, which proved that the wound he had then dealt her had +left a scar.</p> + +<p>Several men had wanted to marry Elisabeth, but they had not succeeded in +winning her. She enjoyed flirting with them, and she rejoiced in their +admiration, but when they offered her their love she was frightened and +ran away. Consequently the world called her cold; and as the years +rolled on and no one touched her heart, she began to believe that the +world was right.</p> + +<p>"There are three great things in life," Grace Cobham said to her one +day, "art and love and religion. They really are all part of the same +thing, and none of them is perfected without the others. You have got +two, Elisabeth; but you have somehow missed the third, and without it +you will never attain to your highest possibilities. You are a good +woman, and you are a true artist; but, until you fall in love, your +religion and your art will both lack something, and will fall short of +perfection."</p> + +<p>"I'm afraid I'm not a falling-in-love sort of person," replied Elisabeth +meekly; "I'm extremely sorry, but such is the case."</p> + +<p>"It is a pity! But you may fall in love yet."</p> + +<p>"It's too late, I fear. You see I am over thirty; and if I haven't done +it by now, I expect I never shall do it. It is tiresome to have missed +it, I admit; and especially as you think it would make me paint better +pictures."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_238" id="Page_238">[Pg 238]</a></span></p> + +<p>"Well, I do. You paint so well now that it is a pity you don't paint +still better. I do not believe that any artist does his or her best work +until his or her nature is fully developed; and no woman's nature is +fully developed until she has been in love."</p> + +<p>"I have never been in love; I don't even know what it is like inside," +said Elisabeth sadly; "and I dreadfully want to know, because—looked at +from the outside—it seems interesting."</p> + +<p>Grace gazed at her thoughtfully. "I wonder if it is that you are too +cold to fall in love, or whether it only is that the right person hasn't +appeared."</p> + +<p>"I don't know. I wish I did. What do you think it feels like?"</p> + +<p>"I know what it feels like—and that is like nothing else this side +heaven."</p> + +<p>"It seems funny to get worked up in that sort of way over an ordinary +man—turning him into a revival-service or a national anthem, or +something equally thrilling and inspiring! Still, I'd do it if I could, +just from pure curiosity. I should really enjoy it. I've seen stupid +girls light up like a turnip with a candle inside, simply because some +plain young man did the inevitable, and came up into the drawing-room +after dinner; and I've seen clever women go to pieces like a linen +button at the wash, simply because some ignorant man did the inevitable, +and preferred a more foolish and better-looking woman to themselves."</p> + +<p>"Have you really never been in love, Elisabeth?"</p> + +<p>Elisabeth pondered for a moment. "No; I've sometimes thought I was, but +I've always known I wasn't."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_239" id="Page_239">[Pg 239]</a></span></p> + +<p>"I wonder at that; because you really are affectionate."</p> + +<p>"That is quite true; but no one has ever seemed to want as much as I had +to give," said Elisabeth, the smile dying out of her eyes; "I do so long +to be necessary to somebody—to feel that it is in my power to make +somebody perfectly happy; but nobody has ever asked enough of me."</p> + +<p>"You could have made the men happy who wanted to marry you," suggested +Grace.</p> + +<p>"No; I could have made them comfortable, and that's not the same thing."</p> + +<p>As Elisabeth sat alone in her own room that night, she thought about +what Grace had said, and wondered if she were really too cold ever to +experience that common yet wonderful miracle which turns earth into +heaven for most people once in their lives. She had received much love +and still more admiration in her time; but she had never been allowed to +give what she had to give, and she was essentially of the type of woman +to whom it is more blessed to give than to receive. She had never craved +to be loved, as some women crave; she had only asked to be allowed to +love as much as she was capable of loving, and the permission had been +denied her. As she looked back over her past life, she saw that it had +always been the same. She had given the adoration of her childhood to +Anne Farringdon, and Anne had not wanted it; she had given the devotion +of her girlhood to Felicia, and Felicia had not wanted it; she had given +the truest friendship of her womanhood to Christopher, and Christopher +had not wanted it. As for the men who had loved her, she had known +perfectly well that she was not essential to them; had she been, she +would have married<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_240" id="Page_240">[Pg 240]</a></span> them; but they could be happy without her—and they +were. For Grace she had the warmest sense of comradeship; but Grace's +life was so full on its own account, that Elisabeth could only be one of +many interests to her. Elisabeth was so strong and so tender, that she +could have given much to any one to whom she was absolutely necessary; +but she felt she could give of her best to no man who desired it only as +a luxury—it was too good for that.</p> + +<p>"It seems rather a waste of force," she said to herself, with a +whimsical smile. "I feel like Niagara, spending its strength on empty +splashings, when it might be turning thousands of electric engines and +lighting millions of electric lights, if only its power were turned in +the right direction and properly stored. I could be so much to anybody +who really needed me—I feel I could; but nobody seems to need me, so +it's no use bothering. Anyway, I have my art, and that more than +satisfies me; and I will spend my life in giving forth my strength to +the world at large, in the shape of pictures which shall help the world +to be better and happier. At least I hope so."</p> + +<p>And with this reflection Elisabeth endeavoured to console herself for +the non-appearance of that fairy prince, who, in her childish dreams, +had always been wounded in the tournament of life, and had turned to her +for comfort.</p> + +<p>The years which had passed so drearily for Christopher, had cast their +shadows also over the lives of Alan and Felicia Tremaine. When Willie +was a baby, his nurse accidentally let him fall; and the injury he then +received was so great that, as he grew older, he was never able to walk +properly, but had to punt himself about with a little crutch. This was +a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_241" id="Page_241">[Pg 241]</a></span> terrible blow to Alan; and became all the greater as time went on, +and Felicia had no other children to share his devotion. Felicia, too, +felt it sorely; but she fretted more over the sorrow it was to her +husband than on her own account.</p> + +<p>There was a great friendship between Willie and Elisabeth. Weakness of +any kind always appealed to her, and he, poor child! was weak indeed. So +when Elisabeth was at the Willows and Willie at the Moat House, the two +spent much time together. He never wearied of hearing about the things +that she had pretended when she was a little girl; and she never wearied +of telling him about them.</p> + +<p>"And so the people, who lived among the smoke and the furnaces, followed +the pillar of cloud till it led them to the country on the other side of +the hills," said Willie one day, as he and Elisabeth were sitting on the +old rustic seat in the Willows' garden. "I remember; but tell me, what +did they find in the country over there?" And he pointed with his thin +little finger to the blue hills beyond the green valley.</p> + +<p>"They found everything that they wanted," replied Elisabeth. "Not the +things that other people thought would be good for them, you know; but +just the dear, foolish, impossible things that they had wanted for +themselves."</p> + +<p>"And did the things make them happy?"</p> + +<p>"Perfectly happy—much happier than the wise, desirable, sensible things +could have made them."</p> + +<p>"I suppose they could all walk without crutches," suggested Willie.</p> + +<p>"Of course they could; and they could understand everything without +being told."</p> + +<p>"And the other people loved them very much, and were very kind to them, +weren't they?"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_242" id="Page_242">[Pg 242]</a></span></p> + +<p>"Perhaps; but what made them so happy was that they loved the other +people and were kind to them. As long as they lived here in the smoke +and din and bustle, everybody was so busy looking after his own concerns +that nobody could be bothered with their love. There wasn't room for it, +or time for it. But in the country over the hills there was plenty of +room and plenty of time; in fact, there wasn't any room or any time for +anything else."</p> + +<p>"What did they have to eat?" Willie asked.</p> + +<p>"Everything that had been too rich for them when they were here."</p> + +<p>Willie sighed. "It must have been a nice country," he said.</p> + +<p>"It was, dear; the nicest country in the world. It was always summer +there, too, and holiday time."</p> + +<p>"Didn't they have any lessons to learn?"</p> + +<p>"No; because they'd learned them all."</p> + +<p>"Did they have roads and railways?" Willie made further inquiry.</p> + +<p>"No; only narrow green lanes, which led straight into fairyland. And the +longer you walked in them the less tired you were."</p> + +<p>"Tell me a story about the country over there," said Willie, nestling up +to Elisabeth; "and let there be a princess in it."</p> + +<p>She put her strong arm round him and held him close. "Once upon a time," +she began, "there was a princess, who lived among the smoke and the +furnaces."</p> + +<p>"Was she very beautiful?"</p> + +<p>"No; but she happened to have a heart made of real gold. That was the +only rare thing about her; otherwise she was quite a common princess."</p> + +<p>"What did she do with the heart?" asked Willie.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_243" id="Page_243">[Pg 243]</a></span></p> + +<p>"She wanted to give it to somebody; but the strange thing was that +nobody would have it. Several people asked her for it before they knew +it was made of real gold; but when they found that out, they began to +make excuses. One said that he'd no place in his house for such a +first-class article; it would merely make the rest of the furniture look +shabby, and he shouldn't refurnish in order to please anybody. Another +said that he wasn't going to bother himself with looking after a real +gold heart, when a silver-gilt one would serve his purpose just as well. +And a third said that solid gold plate wasn't worth the trouble of +cleaning and keeping in order, as it was sure to get scratched or bent +in the process, the precious metals being too soft for everyday use."</p> + +<p>"It is difficult not to scratch when you're cleaning plate," Willie +observed. "I sometimes help Simpkins, and there's only one spoon that +he'll let me clean, for fear I should scratch; and that's quite an old +one that doesn't matter. So I have to clean it over and over again. But +go on about the princess."</p> + +<p>"Well, then she offered her gold heart to a woman who seemed lonely and +desolate; but the woman only cared for the hearts of men, and threw back +the princess's in her face. And then somebody advised her to set it up +for auction, to go to the highest bidder, as that was generally +considered the correct thing to do with regard to well-regulated women's +hearts; but she didn't like that suggestion at all. At last the poor +princess grew tired of offering her treasure to people who didn't want +it, and so she locked it up out of sight; and then everybody said that +she hadn't a heart at all, and what a <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_244" id="Page_244">[Pg 244]</a></span>disgrace it was for a young woman +to be without one."</p> + +<p>"That wasn't fair!"</p> + +<p>"Not at all fair; but people aren't always fair on this side of the +hills, darling."</p> + +<p>"But they are on the other?"</p> + +<p>"Always; and they are never hard or cold or unsympathetic. So the +princess decided to leave the smoke and the furnaces, and to go to the +country on the other side of the hills. She travelled down into the +valley and right through it, and then across the hills beyond, and never +rested till she reached the country on the other side."</p> + +<p>"And what did she find when she got there?"</p> + +<p>Elisabeth's eyes grew dreamy. "She found a fairy prince standing on the +very borders of that country, and he said to her, 'You've come at last; +I've been such a long time waiting for you.' And the princess asked him, +'Do you happen to want such a thing as a heart of real gold?' 'I should +just think I do,' said the prince; 'I've wanted it always, and I've +never wanted anything else; but I was beginning to be afraid I was never +going to get it.' 'And I was beginning to be afraid that I was never +going to find anybody to give it to,' replied the princess. So she gave +him her heart, and he took it; and then they looked into each other's +eyes and smiled."</p> + +<p>"Is that the end of the story?"</p> + +<p>"No, dear; only the beginning."</p> + +<p>"Then what happened in the end?"</p> + +<p>"Nobody knows."</p> + +<p>But Willie's youthful curiosity was far from being satisfied. "What was +the fairy prince like to look at?" he inquired.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_245" id="Page_245">[Pg 245]</a></span></p> + +<p>"I don't know, darling; I've often wondered."</p> + +<p>And Willie had to be content with this uncertain state of affairs. So +had Elisabeth.</p> + +<p>For some time now she had been making small bonfires of the Thames; but +the following spring Elisabeth set the river on fire in good earnest by +her great Academy picture, The Pillar of Cloud. It was the picture of +the year; and it supplied its creator with a copious draught of that +nectar of the gods which men call fame.</p> + +<p>It was a fine picture, strongly painted, and was a representation of the +Black Country, with its mingled gloom and glare, and its pillar of smoke +always hanging over it. In the foreground were figures of men and women +and children, looking upward to the pillar of cloud; and, by the magic +spell of the artist, Elisabeth had succeeded in depicting on their +faces, for such who had eyes to see it, the peace of those who knew that +God was with them in their journey through the wilderness. They were +worn and weary and toil-worn, as they dwelt in the midst of the +furnaces; but, through it all, they looked up to the overshadowing cloud +and were lightened, and their faces were not ashamed. In the far +distance there was a glimpse of the sun setting behind a range of hills; +and one felt, as one gazed at the picture and strove to understand its +meaning, that the pillar of cloud was gradually leading the people +nearer and nearer to the far-off hills and the land beyond the sunset; +and that there they would find an abundant compensation for the +suffering and poverty that had blighted their lives as they toiled here +for their daily bread.</p> + +<p>Even those who could not understand the underlying meaning of +Elisabeth's picture, marvelled at<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_246" id="Page_246">[Pg 246]</a></span> the power and technical skill whereby +she had brought the weird mystery of the Black Country into the heart of +London, until one almost felt the breath of the furnaces as one gazed +entranced at her canvas; and those who did understand the underlying +meaning, marvelled still more that so young a woman should have learned +so much of life's hidden mysteries—forgetting that art is no +intellectual endowment, but a revelation from God Himself, and that the +true artist does not learn but knows, because God has whispered to him.</p> + +<p>There was another picture that made a sensation in that year's Academy; +it was the work of an unknown artist, Cecil Farquhar by name, and was +noted in the catalogue as The Daughters of Philip. It represented the +"four daughters, virgins, which did prophesy" of Philip of Cæsarea; but +it did not set them forth in the dress and attitude of inspired sibyls. +Instead of this it showed them as they were in their own home, when the +Spirit of the Lord was not upon them, but when they were ordinary girls, +with ordinary girls' interests and joys and sorrows. One of them was +braiding her magnificent black hair in front of a mirror; and another +was eagerly perusing a letter with the love-light in her eyes; a third +was weeping bitterly over a dead dove; and a fourth—the youngest—was +playing merrily with a monkey. It was a dazzling picture, brilliant with +rich Eastern draperies and warm lights; and shallow spectators wondered +what the artist meant by painting the prophetesses in such frivolous and +worldly guise; but the initiated understood how he had fathomed the +tragedy underlying the lives of most women who are set apart from their +fellows by the gift of genius. When the Spirit is upon them they +prophesy, by<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_247" id="Page_247">[Pg 247]</a></span> means of pictures or poems or stories or songs; and the +world says, "These are not as other women; they command our admiration, +but they do not crave our love: let us put them on the top of pinnacles +for high days and holidays, and not trouble them with the petty details +of everyday life."</p> + +<p>The world forgets that the gift of genius is a thing apart from the +woman herself, and that these women at heart are very women, as entirely +as their less gifted sisters are, and have the ordinary woman's longing +for love and laughter, and for all the little things that make life +happy. A pinnacle is a poor substitute for a hearthstone, from the +feminine point of view; and laurel wreaths do not make half so +satisfactory a journey's end as lovers' meetings. All of which it is +difficult for a man to understand, since fame is more to him than it is +to a woman, and love less; therefore the knowledge of this truth proved +Cecil Farquhar to be a true artist; while the able manner in which he +had set it forth showed him to be also a highly gifted one. And the +world is always ready to acknowledge real merit when it sees it, and to +do homage to the same.</p> + +<p>The Daughters of Philip carried a special message to the heart of +Elisabeth Farringdon. She had been placed on her pinnacle, and had +already begun to find how cold was the atmosphere up there, and how much +more human she was than people expected and allowed for her to be. She +felt like a statue set up in the market-place, that hears the children +piping and mourning, and longs to dance and weep with them; but they did +not ask her to do either—did not want her to do either—and if she had +come down from her pedestal and begged to be allowed to play with them +or comfort them,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_248" id="Page_248">[Pg 248]</a></span> they would only have been frightened and run away.</p> + +<p>But here at last was a man who understood what she was feeling; to whom +she could tell her troubles, and who would know what she meant; and she +made up her mind that before that season was over, she and the unknown +artist, who had painted The Daughters of Philip, should be friends.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_249" id="Page_249">[Pg 249]</a></span></p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XIII" id="CHAPTER_XIII"></a><a href="#CONTENTS">CHAPTER XIII</a></h2> + +<h3>CECIL FARQUHAR</h3> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i8">And my people ask politely<br /></span> +<span class="i8">How a friend I know so slightly<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Can be more to me than others I have liked a year or so;<br /></span> +<span class="i8">But they've never heard the history<br /></span> +<span class="i8">Of our transmigration's mystery,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And they've no idea I loved you those millenniums ago.<br /></span> +</div></div> + + +<p>It was the night of the Academy <i>soirée</i> in the year of Elisabeth's +triumph; she was being petted and <i>fêted</i> on all sides, and passed +through the crowded rooms in a sort of royal progress, surrounded by an +atmosphere of praise and adulation. Of course she liked it—what woman +would not?—but she was conscious of a dull ache of sadness, at the back +of all her joy, that there was no one to share her triumph with her; no +one to whom she could say, "I care for all this, chiefly because it +makes me stronger to help you and worthier to be loved by you;" no one +who would be made happy by her whisper, "I have set the Thames ablaze in +order to make warm your fireside."</p> + +<p>It was as yet early in the evening when the President turned for a +moment from his duties as "official receiver" to say to her, "Miss +Farringdon, I want to present Farquhar to you. He is a rising man, and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_250" id="Page_250">[Pg 250]</a></span> +a very good fellow into the bargain, and I know he is most anxious to be +introduced to you."</p> + +<p>And then the usual incantation was gone through, which constitutes an +introduction in England—namely, the repetition of two names, whereof +each person hears only his or her own (an item of information by no +means new or in any way to be desired), while the name of the other +contracting party remains shrouded in impenetrable mystery; and +Elisabeth found herself face to face with the man whom she specially +desired to meet.</p> + +<p>Cecil Farquhar was a remarkably handsome man, nearer forty than thirty +years of age. He was tall and graceful, with golden hair and the profile +of a Greek statue; and, in addition to these palpable charms, he +possessed the more subtle ones of a musical voice and a fascinating +manner. He treated every woman, with whom he was brought into contact, +as if she were a compound of a child and a queen; and he had a way of +looking at her and speaking to her as if she were the one woman in the +world for whom he had been waiting all his life. That women were taken +in by this half-caressing, half-worshipping manner was not altogether +their fault; perhaps it was not altogether his. Very attractive people +fall into the habit of attracting, and are frequently unconscious of, +and therefore irresponsible for, their success.</p> + +<p>"It is so good of you to let me be presented to you," he said to +Elisabeth, as they walked through the crowded rooms in search of a seat; +"you don't know how I have longed for it ever since I first saw pictures +of yours on these walls. And my longing was trebled when I saw your +glorious Pillar of Cloud, and read all that it was meant to teach."</p> + +<p>Elisabeth looked at him slyly through her long<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_251" id="Page_251">[Pg 251]</a></span> eyelashes. "How do you +know what I meant to teach? Perhaps you read your own meanings into it, +and not mine."</p> + +<p>Farquhar laughed, and Elisabeth thought he had the most beautiful teeth +she had ever seen. "Perhaps so; but, do you know, Miss Farringdon, I +have a shrewd suspicion that my meanings and yours are the same."</p> + +<p>"What meaning did you read into my picture?" asked Elisabeth, with the +dictatorial air of a woman who is accustomed to be made much of and +deferred to, as he found a seat for her in the vestibule, under a +palm-tree.</p> + +<p>"I read that there was only one answer to the weary problems of labour +and capital, and masses and classes, and employers and employed, and all +the other difficulties that beset and threaten any great manufacturing +community; and that this answer is to be found to-day—as it was found +by the Israelites of old—in the pillar of cloud by day and the pillar +of fire by night, and all of which that pillar is a sign and a +sacrament."</p> + +<p>"Yes," replied Elisabeth, and her eyes shone like stars; "I meant all +that. But how clever of you to have read it so correctly!"</p> + +<p>"I do not ask if you understood what my picture meant. I know you did; +for it was to you, and women such as you, that I was speaking."</p> + +<p>"Yes; I understood it well enough," replied Elisabeth sadly.</p> + +<p>"I knew you would."</p> + +<p>"Poor little daughters of Philip! How much happier they would have felt +if they had been just the same as all the other commonplace Jewish +maidens, and had lived ordinary women's lives!"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_252" id="Page_252">[Pg 252]</a></span></p> + +<p>"But how much happier they made other people by their great gift of +interpreting to a tired world the hidden things of God!" replied Cecil, +his face aglow with emotion. "You must never forget that, you women of +genius, with your power of making men better and women brighter by the +messages you bring to them! And isn't it a grander thing to help and +comfort the whole world, than to love, honour, and obey one particular +man?"</p> + +<p>"I am not sure. I used to think so, but I'm beginning to have my doubts +about it. One comforts the whole world in a slipshod, sketchy kind of +way; but one could do the particular man thoroughly!"</p> + +<p>"And then find he wasn't worth the doing, in all probability," added +Cecil.</p> + +<p>"Perhaps." And Elisabeth smiled.</p> + +<p>"It is delightful to be really talking to you," exclaimed Cecil; "so +delightful that I can hardly believe it is true! I have so longed to +meet you, because—ever since I first saw your pictures—I always knew +you would understand."</p> + +<p>"And I knew you would understand, too, as soon as I saw The Daughters of +Philip," replied Elisabeth; and her voice was very soft.</p> + +<p>"I think we must have known each other in a former existence," Cecil +continued; "because I do not feel a bit as if I were being introduced to +a stranger, but as if I were meeting an old friend. I have so much to +tell you about all that has happened to me since you and I played +together in the shadow of the Sphinx, or worshipped together in the +temple at Philæ; and you will be interested in it all, won't you?"</p> + +<p>"Of course I shall. I shall want to know how<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_253" id="Page_253">[Pg 253]</a></span> many centuries ago you +first learned what women's hearts and minds were made of, and who taught +you."</p> + +<p>"You taught me, dear lady, one day when we were plucking flowers +together at the foot of Olympus. Don't you remember it? You ought, as it +can't be more than two or three thousand years ago."</p> + +<p>"And you've never forgotten it?"</p> + +<p>"Never; and never shall. If I had, I shouldn't have been an artist. It +is the men who remember how they lived and loved and suffered during +their former incarnations, that paint pictures and carve statues and +sing songs; and the men who forget everything but this present world, +that make fortunes and eat dinners and govern states."</p> + +<p>"And what about the women?"</p> + +<p>"Ah! the women who forget, set their hearts upon the attainment of a +fine house and large establishment, with a husband thrown in as a +makeweight; if they succeed, the world calls them happy. While the women +who remember, wait patiently for the man who was one with them at the +beginning of the centuries, and never take any other man in his place; +if they find him, they are so happy that the world is incapable of +understanding how happy they are; and if they don't find him in this +life, they know they will in another, and they are quite content."</p> + +<p>"You really are very interesting," remarked Elisabeth graciously.</p> + +<p>"Only because you understand me; most women would think me stupid to a +degree if I talked to them in this way. But you are interesting to +everybody, even to the stupid people. Tell me about yourself. Are you +really as strong-willed and regal as the world says you are?"</p> + +<p>"I don't know," replied Elisabeth; "I fancy it<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_254" id="Page_254">[Pg 254]</a></span> depends a good deal upon +whom I am talking to. I find as a rule it is a good plan to let a weak +man think you are obedient, and a strong man think you are wilful, if +you want men to find you interesting."</p> + +<p>"And aren't you strong-minded enough to be indifferent to the fact as to +whether men find you interesting or the reverse?"</p> + +<p>"Oh, dear, no! I am a very old-fashioned person, and I am proud of it. +I'd even rather be an old woman than a New Woman, if I were driven to be +one or the other. I'm not a bit modern, or <i>fin-de-siècle</i>; I still +believe in God and Man, and all the other comfortable and antiquated +beliefs."</p> + +<p>"How nice of you! But I knew you would, though the world in general does +not give you credit for anything in the shape of warmth or tenderness; +it adores you, you know, but as a sort of glorious Snow-Queen, such as +Kay and Gerda ran after in dear Hans Andersen."</p> + +<p>"I am quite aware of that, and I am afraid I don't much care; though it +seems a pity to have a thing and not to get the credit for it. I +sympathize with those women who have such lovely hair that nobody +believes that it was grown on the premises; my heart is similarly +misjudged."</p> + +<p>"Lord Stonebridge was talking to me about you and your pictures the +other day, and he said you would be an ideal woman if only you had a +heart."</p> + +<p>Elisabeth shrugged her shapely shoulders. "Then you can tell him that I +think he would be an ideal man if only he had a head; but you can't +expect one person to possess all the virtues or all the organs; now can +you?"</p> + +<p>"I suppose not."</p> + +<p>"Oh! do look at that woman in white muslin<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_255" id="Page_255">[Pg 255]</a></span> and forget-me-nots, with the +kittenish manner," exclaimed Elisabeth; "I can't stand kittens of over +fifty, can you? I have made all my friends promise that if ever they see +the faintest signs of approaching kittenness in me, as I advance in +years, they will have recourse without delay to the stable-bucket, which +is the natural end of kittens."</p> + +<p>"Still, women should make the world think them young as long as +possible."</p> + +<p>"But when we are kittenish we don't make the world think we are young; +we only make it think that we think we are young, which is quite a +different thing."</p> + +<p>"I see," said Cecil, possessing himself of Elisabeth's fan. "Let me fan +you. I am afraid you find it rather hot here, but I doubt if we could +get a seat anywhere else if once we resigned this one."</p> + +<p>"We should have to be contented with the Chiltern Hundreds, I'm afraid. +Besides, I am not a bit hot; it is never too warm for me. The thing I +hate most in the world is cold; it is the one thing that makes it +impossible for me to talk, and I'm miserable when I'm not talking. I +mean to read a paper before the Royal Society some day, to prove that +the bacillus of conversation can not germinate in a temperature of less +than sixty degrees."</p> + +<p>"I hate being cold, too. How much alike we are!"</p> + +<p>"I loathe going to gorgeous parties in cold houses," continued +Elisabeth, "and having priceless dinners in fireless rooms. On such +occasions I always feel inclined to say to my hostess, as the poor do, +'Please, ma'am, may I have a coal-ticket instead of a soup-ticket, if I +mayn't have both?'"</p> + +<p>"You are a fine lady and I am a struggling artist,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_256" id="Page_256">[Pg 256]</a></span> so I want you to +tell me who some of these people are," Cecil begged; "I hardly know +anybody, and I expect there is nobody here that you don't know; so +please point out to me some of the great of the earth. First, can you +tell me who that man is over there, talking to the lady in blue? He has +such a sad, kind face."</p> + +<p>"Oh! that is Lord Wrexham—a charming man and a bachelor. He was jilted +a long time ago by Mrs. Paul Seaton—Miss Carnaby she was then—and +people say he has never got over it. It is she that he is talking to +now."</p> + +<p>"How very interesting! Yes; I like his face, and I am sure he has +suffered. It is strange how women invariably behave worst to the best +men! I'm not sure that I admire her. She is very stylish and perfectly +dressed, but I don't think I should have broken my heart over her if I +had been my Lord Wrexham."</p> + +<p>"He was perfectly devoted to her, I believe; and she really is +attractive when you talk to her, she is so very brilliant and amusing."</p> + +<p>"She looks brilliant, and a little hard," was Cecil Farquhar's comment.</p> + +<p>"I don't think she is really hard, for she adores her husband, and +devotes all her time and all her talents to helping him politically. He +is Postmaster-General, you know; and is bound to get still higher office +some day."</p> + +<p>"Have they any children?"</p> + +<p>"No; only politics."</p> + +<p>"What is he like? I have never seen him."</p> + +<p>"He is an interesting man, and an extremely able one. I should think +that as a husband he would be too self-opinionated for my taste; but he +and his wife<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_257" id="Page_257">[Pg 257]</a></span> seem to suit each other down to the ground. Some women +like self-opinionated men."</p> + +<p>"I suppose they do."</p> + +<p>"And after all," Elisabeth went on, "if one goes in for a distinguished +husband, one must pay the price for the article. It is absurd to shoot +big game, and then expect to carry it home in a market-basket."</p> + +<p>"Still it annoys you when men say the same of you, and suggest that an +ordinary lump of sugar would have sweetened Antony's vinegar more +successfully than did Cleopatra's pearl. Your conversation and my art +have exhausted themselves to prove that this masculine imagination is a +delusion and a snare; yet the principle must be the same in both cases."</p> + +<p>"Not at all; woman's greatness is of her life a thing apart: 'tis man's +whole existence."</p> + +<p>"Do you think so?" asked Cecil, with that tender look of his which +expressed so much and meant so little. "You don't know how cold a man +feels when his heart is empty."</p> + +<p>"Paul Seaton nearly wrecked his career at the outset by writing a very +foolish and indiscreet book called Shams and Shadows; it was just a +toss-up whether he would ever get over it; but he did, and now people +have pretty nearly forgotten it," continued Elisabeth, who had never +heard the truth concerning Isabel Carnaby.</p> + +<p>"Who is that fat, merry woman coming in now?"</p> + +<p>"That is Lady Silverhampton; and the man she is laughing with is Lord +Robert Thistletown. That lovely girl on the other side of him is his +wife. Isn't she exquisite?"</p> + +<p>"She is indeed—a most beautiful creature. Now<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_258" id="Page_258">[Pg 258]</a></span> if Lord Wrexham had +broken his heart over her, I could have understood and almost commended +him."</p> + +<p>"Well, but he didn't, you see. There is nothing more remarkable than the +sort of woman that breaks men's hearts—except the sort of men that +break women's."</p> + +<p>"I fancy that the breakableness is in the nature of the heart itself, +and not of the iconoclast," said Cecil.</p> + +<p>Elisabeth looked up quickly. "Oh! I don't. I think that the person who +breaks the heart of another person must have an immense capacity for +commanding love."</p> + +<p>"Not at all; the person whose heart is broken has an immense capacity +for feeling love. Take your Lord Wrexham, for instance: it was not +because Miss Carnaby was strong, but because he was strong, that his +heart was broken in the encounter between them. You can see that in +their faces."</p> + +<p>"I don't agree with you. It was because she was more lovable than +loving—at least, as far as he was concerned—that the catastrophe +happened. A less vivid personality would have been more easily +forgotten; but if once you begin to care badly for any one with a strong +personality you're done for."</p> + +<p>"You are very modern, in spite of your assertion to the contrary, and +therefore very subjective. It would never occur to you to look at +anything from the objective point of view; yet at least five times out +of ten it is the correct one."</p> + +<p>"You mean that I am too self-willed and domineering?" laughed Elisabeth.</p> + +<p>"I mean that it is beside the mark to expect a reigning queen to +understand how to canvass for votes at a general election."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_259" id="Page_259">[Pg 259]</a></span></p> + +<p>"But you do think me too autocratic, don't you? You must, because +everybody does," Elisabeth persisted, with engaging candour.</p> + +<p>"I think you are the most charming woman I ever met in my life," replied +Cecil; and at the moment, and for at least five minutes afterward, he +really believed what he said.</p> + +<p>"Thank you; but you think me too fond of dominating other people, all +the same."</p> + +<p>"Don't say that; I could not think any evil of you, and it hurts me to +hear you even suggest that I could. But perhaps it surprises me that so +large-hearted a woman as yourself should invariably look at things from +the subjective point of view, as I am sure you do."</p> + +<p>"Right again, Mr. Farquhar; you really are very clever at reading +people."</p> + +<p>Cecil corrected her. "At reading you, you mean; you are not 'people,' if +you please. But tell me the truth: when you look at yourself from the +outside (which I know you are fond of doing, as I am fond of doing), +doesn't it surprise you to see as gifted a woman as you must know you +are, so much more prone to measure your influence upon your surroundings +than their influence upon you; and, measuring, to allow for it?"</p> + +<p>"Nothing that a woman does ever surprises me; and that the woman happens +to be one's self is a mere matter of detail."</p> + +<p>"That is a quibble, dear lady. Please answer my question."</p> + +<p>Elisabeth drew her eyebrows together with a puzzled expression. "I don't +think it does surprise me, because my influence on my surroundings is +greater than their influence on me. You, too, are a creator;<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_260" id="Page_260">[Pg 260]</a></span> and you +must know the almost god-like joy of making something out of nothing, +and seeing that it is good. It seems to me that when once you have +tasted that joy, you can never again doubt that you yourself are +stronger than anything outside you; and that, as the Apostle said, 'all +things are yours.'"</p> + +<p>"Yes; I understand that. But there is still a step further—namely, when +you become conscious that, strong as you are, there is something +stronger than yourself; and that is another person's influence upon +you."</p> + +<p>"I have never felt that," said Elisabeth simply.</p> + +<p>"Have you never known what it is to find your own individuality +swallowed up in other persons' individuality, and your own personality +merged in theirs, until—without the slightest conscious unselfishness +on your part—you cease to have a will of your own?"</p> + +<p>"No; and I don't want to know it. I can understand wishing to share +one's own principalities and powers with another person; but I can't +understand being willing to share another person's principalities and +powers."</p> + +<p>"In short," said Cecil, "you feel that you could love sufficiently to +give, but not sufficiently to receive; you would stamp your image and +superscription with pleasure upon another person's heart; but you would +allow no man to stamp his image and superscription upon yours."</p> + +<p>"I suppose that is so," replied Elisabeth gravely; "but I never put it +as clearly to myself as that before. Yes," she went on after a moment's +pause; "I could never care enough for any man to give up my own will to +his; I should always want to bend his to mine, and the more I liked him +the more I should<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_261" id="Page_261">[Pg 261]</a></span> want it. He could have all my powers and possessions, +and be welcome to them; but my will must always be my own; that is a +kingdom I would share with no one."</p> + +<p>"Ah! you are treating the question subjectively, as usual. Did it never +occur to you that you might have no say in the matter; that a man might +compel you, by force of his own charm or power or love for you, to give +up your will to his, whether you would or no?"</p> + +<p>Elisabeth looked him full in the face with clear, grave eyes. "No; and I +hope I may never meet such a man as long as I live. I have always been +so strong, and so proud of my strength, and so sure of myself, that I +could never forgive any one for being stronger than I, and wresting my +dominion from me."</p> + +<p>"Dear lady, you are a genius, and you have climbed to the summit of the +giddy pinnacle which men call success; but for all that, you are still +'an unlesson'd girl.' Believe me, the strong man armed will come some +day, and you will lower your flag and rejoice in the lowering."</p> + +<p>"You don't understand me, after all," said Elisabeth reproachfully.</p> + +<p>Cecil's smile was very pleasant. "Don't I? Yet it was I who painted The +Daughters of Philip."</p> + +<p>There was a moment's constrained silence; and then Elisabeth broke the +tension by saying lightly—</p> + +<p>"Look! there's Lady Silverhampton coming back again. Isn't it a pity she +is so stout? I do hope I shall never be stout, for flesh is a most +difficult thing to live down."</p> + +<p>"You are right; there are few things in the world worse than stoutness."</p> + +<p>"I only know two: sin and boiled cabbage."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_262" id="Page_262">[Pg 262]</a></span></p> + +<p>"And crochet-antimacassars," added Cecil; "you're forgetting +crochet-antimacassars. I speak feelingly, because my present lodgings +are white with them; and they stick to my coat like leeches, and follow +me whithersoever I go. I am never alone from them."</p> + +<p>"If I were as stout as Lady Silverhampton," said Elisabeth thoughtfully, +"I should either cut myself up into building lots, or else let myself +out into market gardens: I should never go about whole; should you?"</p> + +<p>"Certainly not; I would rather publish myself in sections, as +dictionaries and encyclopædias do!"</p> + +<p>"Lady Silverhampton presented me," remarked Elisabeth, "so I always feel +a sort of god-daughterly respect for her, which enhances the pleasure of +abusing her."</p> + +<p>"What does it feel like to go to Court? Does it frighten you?"</p> + +<p>"Oh, dear! no. It would do, I daresay, if you were in plain clothes; but +trains and feathers make fine birds—with all the manners and habits of +fine birds. Peacocks couldn't hop about in gutters, and London sparrows +couldn't strut across Kensington Gardens, however much they both desired +it. So when a woman, in addition to her ordinary best clothes, is +attended by twenty-four yards of good satin which ought to be feeding +the poor, nothing really abashes her."</p> + +<p>"I suppose she feels like a queen."</p> + +<p>"Well, to tell the truth, with her train over her arm and her tulle +lappets hanging down her back, she feels like a widow carrying a +waterproof; but she thinks she looks like a duchess, and that is a very +supporting thought."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_263" id="Page_263">[Pg 263]</a></span></p> + +<p>"Tell me, who is that beautiful woman with the tall soldierly man, +coming in now?" said Farquhar.</p> + +<p>"Oh! those are the Le Mesuriers of Greystone; isn't she divine? And she +has the two loveliest little boys you ever saw or imagined. I'm longing +to paint them."</p> + +<p>"She is strikingly handsome."</p> + +<p>"There is a very strange story about her and her twin sister, which I'll +tell you some day."</p> + +<p>"You shall; but you must tell me all about yourself first, and how you +have come to know so much and learn so little."</p> + +<p>Elisabeth looked round at him quickly. "What do you mean?"</p> + +<p>"I mean that the depth of your intuition is only surpassed by the +shallowness of your experience."</p> + +<p>"You are very rude!" And Elisabeth drew up her head rather haughtily.</p> + +<p>"Forgive me; I didn't mean to be; but I was overcome by the wonder of +how complex you are—how wise on the one side, and how foolish upon the +other; but experience is merely human and very attainable, while +intuition is divine and given to few. And I was overcome by another +thought; may I tell you what that was?"</p> + +<p>"Yes; of course you may."</p> + +<p>"You won't be angry?"</p> + +<p>"No."</p> + +<p>"You will remember how we played together as children round the temple +of Philæ, and let my prehistoric memories of you be my excuse?"</p> + +<p>"Yes."</p> + +<p>"I was overcome by the thought of how glorious it would be to teach you +all the things you don't<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_264" id="Page_264">[Pg 264]</a></span> know, and how delightful it would be to see +you learn them."</p> + +<p>"Let us go into the next room," said Elisabeth, rising from her seat; "I +see Lady Silverhampton nodding to me, and I must go and speak to her."</p> + +<p>Cecil Farquhar bent his six-foot-one down to her five-foot-five. "Are +you angry with me?" he whispered.</p> + +<p>"I don't know; I think I am."</p> + +<p>"But you will let me come and see you, so that you may forgive me, won't +you?"</p> + +<p>"You don't deserve it."</p> + +<p>"Of course I don't; I shouldn't want it if I did. The things we deserve +are as unpleasant as our doctor's prescriptions. Please let me +come—because we knew each other all those centuries ago, and I haven't +forgotten you."</p> + +<p>"Very well, then. You'll find my address in the Red Book, and I'm always +at home on Sunday afternoons."</p> + +<p>As Elisabeth was whirled away into a vortex of gay and well-dressed +people, Farquhar watched her for a moment. "She is an attractive woman," +he said to himself, "though she is not as good-looking as I expected. +But there's charm about her, and breeding; and they say she has an +enormous fortune. She is certainly worth cultivating."</p> + +<p>Farquhar cultivated the distinguished Miss Farringdon assiduously, and +the friendship between them grew apace. Each had a certain attraction +for the other; and, in addition, they enjoyed that wonderful freemasonry +which exists among all followers of the same craft, and welds these +together in a bond almost as strong as the bond of relationship. The +artist in Farquhar was of far finer fibre than the man,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_265" id="Page_265">[Pg 265]</a></span> as is sometimes +the case with complex natures; so that one side of him gave expression +to thoughts which the other side of him was incapable of comprehending. +He did not consciously pretend that he was better than he was, and he +really believed the truths which he preached; but when the gods serve +their nectar in earthen vessels, the vessels are apt to get more credit +than they deserve, and the gods less.</p> + +<p>To Elisabeth, Cecil was extremely interesting; and she +understood—better than most women would have done—the difference +between himself and his art, and how the one must not be measured by the +other. The artist attracted her greatly; she had so much sympathy with +his ways of looking at life and of interpreting truth; as for the man, +she had as yet come to no definite conclusion in her mind concerning +him; it was not easy for mankind to fascinate Elisabeth Farringdon.</p> + +<p>"I have come to see my mother-confessor," he said to her one Sunday +afternoon, when he dropped in to find her alone, Grace Cobham having +gone out to tea. "I have been behaving horribly all the week, and I want +you to absolve me and help me to be better and nicer."</p> + +<p>Elisabeth was the last woman to despise flattery of this sort; an appeal +for help of any kind never found her indifferent.</p> + +<p>"What have you been doing?" she asked gently.</p> + +<p>"It isn't so much what I have been doing as what I have been feeling. I +found myself actually liking Lady Silverhampton, simply because she is a +countess; and I was positively rude to a man I know, called Edgar Ford, +because he lives at the East End and dresses badly. What a falling-off +since the days when<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_266" id="Page_266">[Pg 266]</a></span> you and I worshipped the gods together at Philæ, +and before money and rank and railways and bicycles came into fashion! +Help me to be as I was then, dear friend."</p> + +<p>"How can I?"</p> + +<p>"By simply being yourself and letting me watch you. I always feel good +and ideal and unworldly when I am near you. Don't you know how dreadful +it is to wish to do one thing and to want to do another, and to be torn +asunder between the two?"</p> + +<p>Elisabeth shook her head. "No; I have never felt like that. I can +understand wanting to do different things at different times of one's +life, but I can not comprehend how one person can want to do two +opposing things at the same time."</p> + +<p>"Oh! I can. I can imagine doing a thing, and despising one's self at the +time for doing it, and yet not being able to help doing it."</p> + +<p>"I have heard other people say that, and I can't understand it."</p> + +<p>"Yet you are so complex; I should have thought you would," said +Farquhar.</p> + +<p>"Yes, I am complex; but not at the same moment. I have two distinct +natures, but the two are never on the stage at once. I don't in the +least know what St. Paul meant when he said that the evil he would not +that he did. I can quite understand doing the evil on Tuesday morning +that I would not on Monday afternoon; but I could never do anything and +disapprove of it at the same minute."</p> + +<p>"That is because you are so good—and so cold."</p> + +<p>"Am I?"</p> + +<p>"Yes, dear Miss Farringdon; and so amiable. You never do things in a +temper."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_267" id="Page_267">[Pg 267]</a></span></p> + +<p>"But I do; I really have got a temper of my own, though nowadays people +seem to find difficulty in believing it. I have frequently done things +in a temper before now; but as long as the temper lasts I am pleased +that I have done them, and feel that I do well to be angry. When the +temper is over, I sometimes think differently; but not till then. As I +have told you before, my will is so strong that it and I are never at +loggerheads with each other; it always rules me completely."</p> + +<p>Farquhar sighed. "I wish I were as strong as you are; but I am not. And +do you mean to tell me that there is no worldly side to you, either; no +side that hankers after fleshpots, even while the artist within you is +being fed with manna from heaven?"</p> + +<p>"No; I don't think there is," Elisabeth replied slowly. "I really do not +like people any the better for having money and titles and things like +that, and it is no use pretending that I do."</p> + +<p>"I do. I wish I didn't, but I can't help it. It is only you who can help +me to look at life from the ideal point of view—you whose feet are +still wet with the dew of Olympus, and in whom the Greek spirit is as +fresh as it was three thousand years ago."</p> + +<p>"Oh! I'm not as perfect as all that; far from it! I don't despise people +for not having rank or wealth, since rank and wealth don't happen to be +the things that interest me. But there are things that do interest +me—genius and wit and culture and charm, for instance—and I am quite +as hard on the people who lack these gifts, as ever you are on the +impecunious nobodies. I confess I am often ashamed of myself when I +realize how frightfully I look down upon stupid men and dull women, and +how utterly indifferent I am as to what becomes of them. So I really am<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_268" id="Page_268">[Pg 268]</a></span> +as great a snob as you are, though I wear my snobbery—like my rue—with +a difference."</p> + +<p>"Not a snob, dear lady—never a snob! There never existed a woman with +less snobbery in her composition than you have. That you are impatient +of the dull and unattractive, I admit; but so you ought to be—your own +wit and charm give you the right to despise them."</p> + +<p>"But they don't; that's where you make a mistake. It is as unjust to +look down on a man for not making a joke as for not making a fortune. +Though it isn't so much the people who don't make jokes that irritate +me, as the people who make poor ones. Don't you know the sort?—would-be +wits who quote a remark out of a bound Punch, and think they have been +brilliant; and who tell an anecdote crusted with antiquity, which men +learned at their mother's knees, and say that it actually happened to a +friend of theirs the week before last."</p> + +<p>"Oh! they are indeed terrible," agreed Cecil; "they dabble in inverted +commas as Italians dabble in garlic."</p> + +<p>"I never know whether to laugh at their laboured jokes or not. Of +course, it is pretty manners to do so, be the wit never so stale; but on +the other hand it encourages them in their evil habits, and seems to me +as doubtful a form of hospitality as offering a brandy-and-soda to a +confirmed drunkard."</p> + +<p>"Dear friend, let us never try to be funny!"</p> + +<p>"Amen! And, above all things, let us flee from humorous recitations," +added Elisabeth. "There are few things in the world more heart-rending +than a humorous recitation—with action. As for me, it unmans me +completely, and I quietly weep in a remote corner of the room until the +carriage comes to take<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_269" id="Page_269">[Pg 269]</a></span> me home. Therefore, I avoid such; as no woman's +eyelashes will stand a long course of humorous recitation without being +the worse for wear."</p> + +<p>"It seems to me after all," Cecil remarked, "that the evil that you +would not, that you do, like St. Paul and myself and sundry others, if +you despise stupid people, and know that you oughtn't to despise them, +at the same time."</p> + +<p>"I know I oughtn't to despise them, but I never said I didn't want to +despise them—that's just the difference. As a matter of fact, I enjoy +despising them; that is where I am really so horrid. I hide it from +them, because I hate hurting people's feelings; and I say 'How very +interesting!' out of sheer good manners when they talk to me +respectively about their cooks if they are women, and their digestions +if they are men; but all the time I am inwardly lifting up my eyes, and +patting myself on the back, and thanking heaven that I am not as they +are, and generally out-Phariseeing the veriest Pharisee that ever +breathed."</p> + +<p>"It is wonderful how the word 'cook' will wake into animation the most +phlegmatic of women!"</p> + +<p>"If they are married," added Elisabeth; "not unless. I often think when +I go up into the drawing-room at a dinner-party, I will just say the +word 'cook' to find out which of the women are married and which single. +I'm certain I should know at once, from the expression the magic word +brought to their respective faces. It is only when you have a husband +that you regard the cook as the ruling power in life for good or evil."</p> + +<p>There was a pause while the footman brought in tea and Elisabeth poured +it out; then Farquhar said suddenly<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_270" id="Page_270">[Pg 270]</a></span>—</p> + +<p>"I feel a different man from the one that rang at your door-bell some +twenty minutes ago. The worldliness has slipped from me like a cast-off +shell; now I experience a democratic indifference to my Lady +Silverhampton, and a brotherly affection for Mr. Edgar Ford. And this is +all your doing!"</p> + +<p>"I don't see how that can be," laughed Elisabeth; "seeing that Lady +Silverhampton is a friend of mine, and I have never heard of Mr. Edgar +Ford."</p> + +<p>"But it is; it is your own unconscious influence upon me. Miss +Farringdon, you don't know what you have been and what you are to me! It +is only since I knew you that I have realized how little all outer +things really matter, and how much inner ones do; and how it is a +question of no moment who a man is, compared with what a man is. And you +will go on teaching me, won't you, and letting me sit at your feet, +until the man in me is always what now the artist in me is sometimes?"</p> + +<p>"I shall like to help you if I can; I am always longing to help people, +and yet so few people ever seem to want my help." And Elisabeth's eyes +grew sad.</p> + +<p>"I want it—more than I want anything in the world," replied Cecil; and +he really meant it, for the artist in him was uppermost just then.</p> + +<p>"Then you shall have it."</p> + +<p>"Thank you—thank you more than I can ever say."</p> + +<p>After a moment's silence Elisabeth asked—</p> + +<p>"Are you going to Lady Silverhampton's picnic on the river to-morrow?"</p> + +<p>"Yes; I accepted because I thought I should be sure to meet you," +replied Cecil, who would have<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_271" id="Page_271">[Pg 271]</a></span> accepted the invitation of a countess if +it had been to meet his bitterest foe.</p> + +<p>"Then your forethought will be rewarded, for I am going, too," Elisabeth +said.</p> + +<p>And then other callers were shown in, and the conversation was brought +to an abrupt conclusion; but it left behind it a pleasant taste in the +minds of both the principals.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_272" id="Page_272">[Pg 272]</a></span></p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XIV" id="CHAPTER_XIV"></a><a href="#CONTENTS">CHAPTER XIV</a></h2> + +<h3>ON THE RIVER</h3> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">For many a frivolous, festive year<br /></span> +<span class="i2">I followed the path that I felt I must;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">I failed to discover the road was drear,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">And rather than otherwise liked the dust.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">It led through a land that I knew of old,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Frequented by friendly, familiar folk,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Who bowed before Mammon, and heaped up gold,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">And lived like their neighbours, and loved their joke.<br /></span> +</div></div> + + +<p>It was a lovely summer's day when Lady Silverhampton collected her +forces at Paddingdon, conveyed them by rail as far as Reading, and then +transported them from the train to her steam-launch on the river. The +party consisted of Lady Silverhampton herself, Lord and Lady Robert +Thistletown, Lord Stonebridge, Sir Wilfred Madderley (President of the +Royal Academy), Cecil Farquhar, and Elisabeth.</p> + +<p>"I'm afraid you'll be frightfully crowded," said the hostess, as they +packed themselves into the dainty little launch; "but it can't be +helped. I tried to charter a P. and O. steamer for the day; but they +were all engaged, like cabs on the night of a county ball, don't you +know? And then I tried to leave somebody out so as to make the party +smaller, but there wasn't one of you that could have been spared,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_273" id="Page_273">[Pg 273]</a></span> +except Silverhampton; so I left him at home, and decided to let the rest +of you be squeezed yet happy."</p> + +<p>"How dear of you!" exclaimed Lord Robert; "and I'll repay your kindness +by writing a book called How to be Happy though Squeezed."</p> + +<p>"The word <i>though</i> appears redundant in that connection," Sir Wilfred +Madderley remarked.</p> + +<p>"Ah! that's because you aren't what is called 'a lady's man,'" Lord +Robert sighed. "I always was, especially before my unfortunate—oh! I +beg your pardon, Violet, I forgot you were here; I mean, of course, my +fortunate—marriage. I was always the sort of man that makes girls +timidly clinging when they are sitting on a sofa beside you, and +short-sighted when you are playing their accompaniments for them. I +remember once a girl sat so awfully close to me on a sofa in +mid-drawing-room, that I felt there wasn't really room for both of us; +so—like the true hero that I am—I shouted 'Save the women and +children,' and flung myself upon the tender mercies of the carpet, till +I finally struggled to the fireplace."</p> + +<p>"How silly you are, Bobby!" exclaimed his wife.</p> + +<p>"Yes, darling; I know. I've always known it; but the world didn't find +it out till I married you. Till then I was in hopes that the secret +would die with me; but after that it was fruitless to attempt to conceal +the fact any longer."</p> + +<p>"We're all going to be silly to-day," said the hostess; "that's part of +the treat."</p> + +<p>"It won't be much of a treat to some of us," Lord Robert retorted. "I +remember when I was a little chap going to have tea at the Mershire's; +and when I wanted to gather some of their most ripping orchids, Lady M. +said I might go into the garden and pick mignonette instead. 'Thank +you,' I replied in my<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_274" id="Page_274">[Pg 274]</a></span> most dignified manner, 'I can pick mignonette at +home; that's no change to me!' Now, that's the way with everything; it's +no change to some people to pick mignonette."</p> + +<p>"Or to some to pick orchids," added Lord Stonebridge.</p> + +<p>"Or to some to pick oakum." And Lord Bobby sighed again.</p> + +<p>"Even Elisabeth isn't going to be clever to-day," continued Lady +Silverhampton. "She promised me she wouldn't; didn't you, Elisabeth?"</p> + +<p>Every one looked admiringly at the subject of this remark. Elisabeth +Farringdon was the fashion just then.</p> + +<p>"She couldn't help being clever, however hard she tried," said the +President.</p> + +<p>"Couldn't I, though? Just you wait and see."</p> + +<p>"If you succeed in not saying one clever thing during the whole of this +picnic affair," Lord Bobby exclaimed, "I'll give you my photograph as a +reward. I've got a new one, taken sideways, which is perfectly sweet. It +has a profile like a Greek god—those really fine and antique statues, +don't you know? whose noses have been wiped out by the ages. The British +Museum teems with them, poor devils!"</p> + +<p>"Thank you," said Elisabeth. "I shall prize it as an incontrovertible +testimony to the fact that neither my tongue nor your nose are as sharp +as tradition reports them to be."</p> + +<p>Lord Bobby shook his finger warningly. "Be careful, be careful, or +you'll never get that photograph. Remember that every word you say will +be used against you, as the police are always warning me."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_275" id="Page_275">[Pg 275]</a></span></p> + +<p>"I'm a little tired to-day," Lady Silverhampton said. "I was taken in to +dinner by an intelligent man last night."</p> + +<p>"Then how came he to do it?" Lord Robert wondered.</p> + +<p>"Don't be rude, Bobby: it doesn't suit your style; and, besides, how +could he help it?"</p> + +<p>"Well enough. Whenever I go out to dinner I always say in an aside to my +host, 'Not Lady Silverhampton; anything but that.' And the consequence +is I never do go in to dinner with you. It isn't disagreeableness on my +part; if I could I'd do it for your sake, and put my own inclination on +one side; but I simply can't bear the intellectual strain. It's a marvel +to me how poor Silverhampton stands it as well as he does."</p> + +<p>"He is never exposed to it. You don't suppose I waste my own jokes on my +own husband, do you? They are far too good for home consumption, like +fish at the seaside. When fish has been up to London and returned, it is +then sold at the place where it was caught. And that's the way with my +jokes; when they have been all round London and come home to roost, I +serve them up to Silverhampton as quite fresh."</p> + +<p>"And he believes in their freshness? How sweet and confiding of him!"</p> + +<p>"He never listens to them, so it is all the same to him whether they're +fresh or not. That is why I confide so absolutely in Silverhampton; he +never listens to a word I say, and never has done."</p> + +<p>Lord Stonebridge amended this remark. "Except when you accepted him."</p> + +<p>"Certainly not; because, as a matter of fact, I refused him; but he +never listened, and so he <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_276" id="Page_276">[Pg 276]</a></span>married me. It is so restful to have a +husband who never attends to what you say! It must be dreadfully wearing +to have one who does, because then you'd never be able to tell him the +truth. And the great charm of your having a home of your own appears to +be that it is the one place where you can speak the truth."</p> + +<p>Lord Bobby clapped his hands. "Whatever lies disturb the street, there +must be truth at home," he ejaculated.</p> + +<p>"Wiser not, even there," murmured Sir Wilfred Madderley, under his +breath.</p> + +<p>"But you have all interrupted me, and haven't listened to what I was +telling you about my intelligent man; and if you eat my food you must +listen to my stones—it's only fair."</p> + +<p>"But if even your own husband doesn't think it necessary to listen to +them," Lord Bobby objected, "why should we, who have never desired to be +anything more than sisters to you?"</p> + +<p>"Because he doesn't eat my food—I eat his; that makes all the +difference, don't you see?"</p> + +<p>"Then do you listen to his stories?"</p> + +<p>"To every one of them every time they are told; and I know to an inch +the exact place where to laugh. But I'm going on about my man. He was +one of those instructive boring people, who will tell you the reason of +things; and he explained to me that soldiers wear khaki and polar bears +white, because if you are dressed in the same colour as the place where +you are, it looks as if you weren't there. And it has since occurred to +me that I should be a much wiser and happier woman if I always dressed +myself in the same colour as my drawing-room furniture. Then nobody +would be able to find me even<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_277" id="Page_277">[Pg 277]</a></span> in my own house. Don't you think it is +rather a neat idea?" And her ladyship looked round for the applause +which she had learned to expect as her right.</p> + +<p>"You are a marvellous woman!" cried Lord Stonebridge, while the others +murmured their approval.</p> + +<p>"I need never say 'Not at home'; callers would just come in and look +round the drawing-room and go out again, without ever seeing that I was +there at all. It really would be sweet!"</p> + +<p>"It seems to me to be a theory which might be adapted with benefit to +all sorts and conditions of men," said Elisabeth; "I think I shall take +out a patent for designing invisible costumes for every possible +occasion. I feel I could do it, and do it well."</p> + +<p>"It is adopted to a great extent even now," Sir Wilfred remarked; "I +believe that our generals wear scarlet so that they may not always be +distinguishable from the red-tape of the War Office."</p> + +<p>"And one must not forget," added Lord Bobby thoughtfully, "that the +benches of the House of Commons are green."</p> + +<p>"Now in church, of course, it would be just the other way," said Lady +Silverhampton; "I should line my pew with the same stuff as my Sunday +gown, so as to look as if I was there when I wasn't."</p> + +<p>Lord Stonebridge began to argue. "But that wouldn't be the other way; it +would be the same thing."</p> + +<p>"How stupid and accurate you are, Stonebridge! If our pew were lined +with gray chiffon like my Sunday frock, it couldn't be the same as if my +Sunday frock was made of crimson carpet like our pew.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_278" id="Page_278">[Pg 278]</a></span> How can things +that are exactly opposite be the same? You can't prove that they are, +except by algebra; and as nobody here knows any algebra, you can't prove +it at all."</p> + +<p>"Yes; I can. If I say you are like a person, it is the same thing as +saying that that person is like you."</p> + +<p>"Not at all. If you said that I was like Connie Esdaile, I should +embrace you before the assembled company; and if you said she was like +me, she'd never forgive you as long as she lived. It is through +reasoning out things in this way that men make such idiotic mistakes."</p> + +<p>"Isn't it funny," Elisabeth remarked, "that if you reason a thing out +you're always wrong, and if you never reason about it at all you're +always right?"</p> + +<p>"Ah! but that is because you are a genius," murmured Cecil Farquhar.</p> + +<p>Lady Silverhampton contradicted him. "Not at all; it's because she is a +woman."</p> + +<p>"Well, I'd rather be a woman than a genius any day," said Elisabeth; "it +takes less keeping up."</p> + +<p>"You are both," said Cecil.</p> + +<p>"And I'm neither," added Lord Bobby; "so what's the state of the odds?"</p> + +<p>"Let's invent more invisible costumes," cried Lady Silverhampton; "they +interest me. Suggest another one, Elisabeth."</p> + +<p>"I should design a special one for lovers in the country. Don't you know +how you are always coming upon lovers in country lanes, and how hard +they try to look as if they weren't there, and how badly they succeed? I +should dress them entirely in green, faintly relieved by brown; and then +they'd look as if they were only part of the hedges and stiles."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_279" id="Page_279">[Pg 279]</a></span></p> + +<p>"How the lovers of the future will bless you!" exclaimed Lord Bobby. "I +only regret that my love-making days are over before your patent +costumes come out. I remember Sir Richard Esdaile once coming upon +Violet and me when we were spooning in the shrubbery at Esdaile Court, +and we tried in vain to efface ourselves and become as part of the +scenery. You see, it is so difficult to look exactly like two laurel +bushes, when one of you is dressed in pink muslin and the other in white +flannel."</p> + +<p>Lady Robert blushed becomingly. "Oh, Bobby, it wasn't pink muslin that +day; it was blue cambric."</p> + +<p>"That doesn't matter. There are as many laurel bushes made out of pink +muslin as out of blue cambric, when you come to that. The difficulty of +identifying one's self with one's environment (that's the correct +expression, my dear) would be the same in either costume; but Miss +Farringdon is now going, once for all, to remove that difficulty."</p> + +<p>"I came upon two young people in a lane not long ago," said Elisabeth, +"and the minute they saw me they began to walk in the ditches, one on +one side of the road and one on the other. Now if only they had worn my +costumes, such a damp and uncomfortable mode of going about the country +would have been unnecessary; besides, it was absurd in any case. If you +were walking with your mother-in-law you wouldn't walk as far apart as +that; you wouldn't be able to hear a word she said."</p> + +<p>"Ah! my dear young friend, that wouldn't matter," Lord Bobby interposed, +"nor in any way interfere with the pleasure of the walk. Really nice men +never make a fuss about little things like that. If only their +mothers-in-law are kind enough to go out<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_280" id="Page_280">[Pg 280]</a></span> walking with them, they don't +a bit mind how far off they walk. It is in questions such as this that +men are really so much more unselfish than women; because the +mothers-in-law do mind—they like us to be near enough to hear what they +say."</p> + +<p>"Green frocks would be very nice for the girls, especially if they were +fair," said Lady Robert thoughtfully; "but I think the men would look +rather queer in green, don't you? As if they were actors."</p> + +<p>"I'm afraid they would look a bit dissipated," Elisabeth assented; "like +almonds-and-raisins by daylight. By the way, I know nothing that looks +more dissipated than almonds-and-raisins by daylight."</p> + +<p>"Except, perhaps, one coffee-cup in the drawing-room the morning after a +dinner party," suggested Farquhar.</p> + +<p>Elisabeth demurred. "No; the coffee-cup is sad rather than sinful. It is +as much part and parcel of a bygone time, as the Coliseum or the ruins +of Pompeii; and the respectability of the survival of the fittest is its +own. But almonds-and-raisins are different; to a certain class of +society they represent the embodiment of refinement and luxury and +self-indulgence."</p> + +<p>Sir Wilfred Madderley laughed softly to himself. "I know exactly what +you mean."</p> + +<p>"Well, I don't agree with Miss Farringdon," Lord Bobby argued; "to my +mind almonds-and-raisins are an emblem of respectability and moral +worth, like chiffonniers and family albums and British matrons. No +really bad man would feel at home with almonds-and-raisins, I'm certain; +but I'd appoint as my trustee any man who could really enjoy<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_281" id="Page_281">[Pg 281]</a></span> them on a +Sunday afternoon. Now take Kesterton, for instance; he's the type of man +who would really appreciate them. My impression is that when his life +comes to be written, it will be found that he took almonds-and-raisins +in secret, as some men take absinthe and others opium."</p> + +<p>"It is scandalous to reveal the secrets of the great in this manner," +said Elisabeth, "and to lower our ideals of them!"</p> + +<p>"Forgive me; but still you must always have faintly suspected Kesterton +of respectability, even when you admired him most. All great men have +their weaknesses; mine is melancholy and Lord K.'s respectability, and +Shakespeare's was something quite as bad, but I can't recall just now +what it was."</p> + +<p>"And what is Lady K.'s?" asked the hostess.</p> + +<p>"Belief in Kesterton, of course, which she carries to the verge of +credulity, not to say superstition. Would you credit it? When he was at +the Exchequer she believed in his Budgets; and when he was at the War +Office she believed in his Intelligence Department; and now he is in the +Lords she believes in his pedigree, culled fresh from the Herald's +Office. Can faith go further?"</p> + +<p>"'A perfect woman nobly planned,'" murmured Elisabeth.</p> + +<p>"Precisely," continued Bobby,</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"To rule the man who rules the land,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">But yet a spirit still, and damp<br /></span> +<span class="i0">With something from a spirit-lamp—<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>or however the thing goes. I don't always quote quite accurately, you +will perceive! I generally improve."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_282" id="Page_282">[Pg 282]</a></span></p> + +<p>"I'm not sure that Lady Kesterton does believe in the pedigree," and +Elisabeth looked wise; "because she once went out of her way to assure +me that she did."</p> + +<p>Lord Bobby groaned. "I beseech you to be careful, Miss Farringdon; +you'll never get that photograph if you keep forgetting yourself like +this!"</p> + +<p>Elisabeth continued—</p> + +<p>"If I were a man I should belong to the Herald's Office. It would be +such fun to be called a 'Red Bonnet' or a 'Green Griffin,' or some other +nice fairy-tale-ish name; and to make it one's business to unite divided +families, and to restore to deserving persons their long-lost +great-great-grandparents. Think of the unselfish joy one would feel in +saying to a worthy grocer, 'Here is your great-great-grandmother; take +her and be happy!' Or to a successful milliner, 'I have found your +mislaid grandfather; be a mother to him for the rest of your life!' It +would give one the most delicious, fairy-godmotherly sort of +satisfaction!"</p> + +<p>"It would," Sir Wilfred agreed. "One would feel one's self a +philanthropist of the finest water."</p> + +<p>"Thinking about almonds-and-raisins has made me feel hungry," exclaimed +Lady Silverhampton. "Let us have lunch! And while the servants are +laying the table, we had better get out of the boat and have a stroll. +It would be more amusing."</p> + +<p>So the party wandered about for a while in couples through fields +bespangled with buttercups; and it happened—not unnaturally—that Cecil +and Elisabeth found themselves together.</p> + +<p>"You are very quiet to-day," she said; "how is that? You are generally +such a chatty person, but to-day you out-silence the Sphinx."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_283" id="Page_283">[Pg 283]</a></span></p> + +<p>"You know the reason."</p> + +<p>"No; I don't. To my mind there is no reason on earth strong enough to +account for voluntary silence. So tell me."</p> + +<p>"I am silent because I want to talk to you; and if I can't do that, I +don't want to talk at all. But among all these grand people you seem so +far away from me. Yesterday we were such close friends; but to-day I +stretch out groping hands, and try in vain to touch you. Do you never +dream that you seek for people for a long time and find them at last; +and then, when you find them, you can not get near to them? Well, I feel +just like that to-day with you."</p> + +<p>Elisabeth was silent for a moment; her thoughts were far away from +Cecil. "Yes, I know that dream well," she said slowly, "I have often had +it; but I never knew that anybody had ever had it except me." And +suddenly there came over her the memory of how, long years ago, she used +to dream that dream nearly every night. It was at the time when she was +first estranged from Christopher, and when the wound of his apparent +indifference to her was still fresh. Over and over again she used to +dream that she and Christopher were once more the friends that they had +been, but with an added tenderness that their actual intercourse had +never known. Which of us has not experienced that strange +dream-tenderness—often for the most unlikely people—which hangs about +us for days after the dream has vanished, and invests the objects of it +with an interest which their living presence never aroused? In that old +dream of Elisabeth's her affection for Christopher was so great that +when he went away she followed after him, and sought him for a long time +in vain; and when at last she found him he was no longer the same +Christopher that he<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_284" id="Page_284">[Pg 284]</a></span> used to be, but there was an impassable barrier +between them which she fruitlessly struggled to break through. The agony +of the fruitless struggle always awakened her, so that she never knew +what the end of the dream was going to be.</p> + +<p>It was years since Elisabeth had dreamed this dream—years since she had +even remembered it—but Cecil's remark brought it all back to her, as +the scent of certain flowers brings back the memory of half-forgotten +summer days; and once again she felt herself drawn to him by that bond +of similarity which was so strong between them, and which is the most +powerfully attractive force in the world—except, perhaps, the +attractive force of contrast. It is the people who are the most like, +and the most unlike, ourselves, that we love the best; to the others we +are more or less indifferent.</p> + +<p>"I think you are the most sympathetic person I ever met," she added. +"You have what the Psalmist would call 'an understanding heart.'"</p> + +<p>"I think it is only you whom I understand, Miss Farringdon; and that +only because you and I are so much alike."</p> + +<p>"I should have thought you would have understood everybody, you have +such quick perceptions and such keen sympathies." Elisabeth, for all her +cleverness, had yet to learn to differentiate between the understanding +heart and the understanding head. There is but little real similarity +between the physician who makes an accurate diagnosis of one's +condition, and the friend who suffers from the identical disease.</p> + +<p>"No; I don't understand everybody. I don't understand all these fine +people whom we are with to-day, for instance. They seem to me so utterly +worldly and frivolous and irresponsible, that I haven't<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_285" id="Page_285">[Pg 285]</a></span> patience with +them. I daresay they look down upon me for not having blood, and I know +I look down upon them for not having brains."</p> + +<p>Elisabeth's eyes twinkled in spite of herself. She remembered how +completely Cecil had been out of it in the conversation on the launch; +and she wondered whether the King of Nineveh had ever invited Jonah to +the state banquets. She inclined to the belief that he had not.</p> + +<p>"But they have brains," was all she said.</p> + +<p>Cecil was undeniably cross. "They talk a lot of nonsense," he retorted +pettishly.</p> + +<p>"Exactly. People without brains never talk nonsense; that is just where +the difference comes in. If a man talks clever nonsense to me, I know +that man isn't a fool; it is a sure test."</p> + +<p>"There is nonsense and nonsense."</p> + +<p>"And there are fools and fools." Elisabeth spoke severely; she was +always merciless upon anything in the shape of humbug or snobbery. Maria +Farringdon's training had not been thrown away.</p> + +<p>"I despise mere frivolity," said Cecil loftily.</p> + +<p>"My dear Mr. Farquhar, there is a time for everything; and if you think +that a lunch-party on the river in the middle of the season is a +suitable occasion for discussing Lord Stonebridge's pecuniary +difficulties, or solving Lady Silverhampton's religious doubts, I can +only say that I don't." Elisabeth was irritated; she knew that Cecil was +annoyed with her friends not because they could talk smart nonsense, but +because he could not.</p> + +<p>"Still, you can not deny that the upper classes are frivolous," Cecil +persisted.</p> + +<p>"But I do deny it. I don't think that they are a bit more frivolous than +any other class, but I think<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_286" id="Page_286">[Pg 286]</a></span> they are a good deal more plucky. Each +class has its own particular virtue, and the distinguishing one of the +aristocracy seems to me to be pluck; therefore they make light of things +which other classes of society would take seriously. It isn't that they +don't feel their own sorrows and sicknesses, but they won't allow other +people to feel them; which is, after all, only a form of good manners."</p> + +<p>But Cecil was still rather sulky. "I belong to the middle class and I am +proud of it."</p> + +<p>"So do I; but identifying one's self with one class doesn't consist in +abusing all the others, any more than identifying one's self with one +church consists in abusing all the others—though some people seem to +think it does."</p> + +<p>"These grand people may entertain you and be pleasant to you in their +way, I don't deny; but they don't regard you as one of themselves unless +you are one," persisted Cecil, with all the bitterness of a small +nature.</p> + +<p>Elisabeth smiled with all the sweetness of a large one. "And why should +they? Sir Wilfred and you and I are pleasant enough to them in our own +way, but we don't regard any of them as one of ourselves unless he is +one. They don't show it, and we don't show it: we are all too +well-mannered; but we can not help knowing that they are not artists any +more than they can help knowing that we are not aristocrats. Being +conscious that certain people lack certain qualities which one happens +to possess, is not the same thing as despising those people; and I +always think it as absurd as it is customary to describe one's +consciousness of one's own qualifications as self-respect, and other +people's consciousness of theirs as pride and vanity."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_287" id="Page_287">[Pg 287]</a></span></p> + +<p>"Then aren't you ever afraid of being looked down upon?" asked Cecil, to +whom any sense of social inferiority was as gall and wormwood.</p> + +<p>Elisabeth gazed at him in amazement. "Good gracious, no! Such an idea +never entered into my head. I don't look down upon other people for +lacking my special gifts, so why should they look down upon me for +lacking theirs? Of course they would look down upon me and make fun of +me if I pretended to be one of them, and I should richly deserve it; +just as we look down upon and make fun of Philistines who cover their +walls with paper fans and then pretend that they are artists. Pretence +is always vulgar and always ridiculous; but I know of nothing else that +is either."</p> + +<p>"How splendid you are!" exclaimed Cecil, to whose artistic sense +fineness of any kind always appealed, even if it was too high for him to +attain to it. "Therefore you will not despise me for being so inferior +to you—you will only help me to grow more like you, won't you?"</p> + +<p>And because Cecil possessed the indefinable gift which the world calls +charm, Elisabeth straightway overlooked his shortcomings, and set +herself to assist him in correcting them. Perhaps there are few things +in life more unfair than the certain triumph of these individuals who +have the knack of gaining the affection of their fellows; or more +pathetic than the ultimate failure of those who lack this special +attribute. The race may not be to the swift, nor the battle to the +strong; but both race and battle are, nine times out of ten, to the man +or the woman who has mastered the art of first compelling devotion and +then retaining it. It was the possession of this gift on the part of +King David, that made men go in jeopardy<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_288" id="Page_288">[Pg 288]</a></span> of their lives in order to +satisfy his slightest whim; and it was because the prophet Elijah was a +solitary soul, commanding the fear rather than the love of men, that +after his great triumph he fled into the wilderness and requested for +himself that he might die. Nevertheless, it must not be forgotten that +to this lonely prophet it was granted to see visions of angels and to +hear the still small Voice; and that, therefore, there are abundant +compensations for those men and women who have not the knack of hearing +and speaking the glib interchanges of affection, current among their +more attractive fellows. There is infinite pathos in the thought of +these solitary souls, yearning to hear and to speak words of loving +greeting, and yet shut out—by some accident of mind or manner—from +doing either the one or the other; but when their turn comes to see +visions of angels and to hear the still small Voice, men need not pity +them overmuch. When once we have seen Him as He is, it will matter but +little to us whether we stood alone upon the mountain in the wind and +the earthquake and the fire, while the Lord passed by; or whether He +drew near and walked with us as we trod the busy ways of life, and was +known of us, as we sat at meat, in breaking of bread.</p> + +<p>As Elisabeth looked at him with eyes full of sympathy, Cecil continued—</p> + +<p>"I have had such a hard life, with no one to care for me; and the +hardness of my lot has marred my character, and—through that—my art."</p> + +<p>"Tell me about your life," Elisabeth said softly. "I seem to know so +little of you and yet to know you so well."</p> + +<p>"You shall read what back-numbers I have, but most of them have been +lost, so that I have not read<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_289" id="Page_289">[Pg 289]</a></span> them myself. I really don't know who I +am, as my father died when I was a baby, and my poor mother followed him +in a few months, never having recovered from the shock of his death. I +was born in Australia, at Broken Hill, and was an only child. As far as +I can make out, my parents had no relations; or, if they had, they had +quarrelled with them all. They were very poor; and when they died, +leaving one wretched little brat behind them, some kind friends adopted +the poor beggar and carried him off to a sheep-farm, where they brought +him up among their own children."</p> + +<p>"Poor little lonely boy!"</p> + +<p>"I was lonely—more lonely than you can imagine; for, kind as they were +to me, I was naturally not as dear to them as their own children. I was +an outsider; I have always been an outsider; so, perhaps, there is some +excuse for that intense soreness on my part which you so much deprecate +whenever this fact is once more brought home to me."</p> + +<p>"I am sorry that I was so hard on you," said Elisabeth, in a very +penitent voice; "but it is one of my worst faults that I am always being +too hard on people. Will you forgive me?"</p> + +<p>"Of course I will." And Elisabeth—also possessing charm—earned +forgiveness as quickly as she had accorded it.</p> + +<p>"Please tell me more," she pleaded.</p> + +<p>"The other children were such a loud, noisy, happy-go-lucky pack, that +they completely overpowered a delicate, sensitive boy. Moreover, I +detested the life there—the roughness and unrefinement of it all." And +Cecil's eyes filled with tears at the mere remembrance of his childish +miseries.</p> + +<p>"Did you stay with them till you grew up?"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_290" id="Page_290">[Pg 290]</a></span></p> + +<p>"Yes; I was educated—after a fashion—with their own sons. But at last +a red-letter day dawned for me. An English artist came to stay at the +sheep-farm, and discovered that I also was among the prophets. He was a +bachelor, and he took an uncommon fancy to me; it ended in his adopting +me and bringing me to England, and making of me an artist like himself."</p> + +<p>"Another point of similarity between us!" Elisabeth cried; "my parents +died when I was a baby, and I also was adopted."</p> + +<p>"I am so glad; all the sting seems to be taken out of things if I feel I +share them with you."</p> + +<p>"Then where is your adopted father now?"</p> + +<p>"He died when I was five-and-twenty, Miss Farringdon; and left me barely +enough to keep me from abject poverty, should I not be able to make a +living by my brush."</p> + +<p>"And you have never learned anything more about your parents?"</p> + +<p>"Never; and now I expect I never shall. The friends who brought me up +told me that they believed my father came from England, and had been +connected with some business over here; but what the business was they +did not know, nor why he left it. It is almost impossible to find out +anything more, after this long lapse of time; it is over thirty years +now since my parents died. And, besides, I very much doubt whether +Farquhar was their real name at all."</p> + +<p>"What makes you think that?"</p> + +<p>"Because the name was carefully erased from the few possessions my poor +father left behind him. So now I have let the matter drop," added Cecil, +with a bitter laugh, "as it is sometimes a mistake to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_291" id="Page_291">[Pg 291]</a></span> look up +back-numbers in the colonies; they are not invariably pleasant reading."</p> + +<p>Here conversation was interrupted by Lady Silverhampton's voice calling +her friends to lunch; and Cecil and Elisabeth had to join the others.</p> + +<p>"If any of you are tired of life," said her ladyship, as they sat down, +"I wish you'd try some of this lobster mayonnaise that my new cook has +made, and report on it. To me it looks the most promising prescription +for death by torture."</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"O bid me die, and I will dare<br /></span> +<span class="i0">E'en mayonnaise for thee,"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>exclaimed Lord Bobby, manfully helping himself.</p> + +<p>And then the talk flowed on as pleasantly and easily as the river, until +it was time to land again and return to town. But for the rest of the +day, and for many a day afterward, a certain uncomfortable suspicion +haunted Elisabeth, which she could not put away from her, try as she +would; a suspicion that, after all, her throne was not as firmly fixed +as she had hoped and had learned to believe.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_292" id="Page_292">[Pg 292]</a></span></p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XV" id="CHAPTER_XV"></a><a href="#CONTENTS">CHAPTER XV</a></h2> + +<h3>LITTLE WILLIE</h3> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">He that beginneth may not end,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And he that breaketh can not mend.<br /></span> +</div></div> + + +<p>The summer which brought fame to Elisabeth, brought something better +than fame to Willie Tremaine. All through the winter the child had grown +visibly feebler and frailer, and the warmer weather seemed to bring +additional weakness rather than strength. In vain did Alan try to +persuade himself that Willie was no worse this year than he had been +other years, and that he soon would be all right again. As a matter of +fact, he soon was all right again; but not in the way which his father +meant.</p> + +<p>Caleb Bateson's wisdom had been justified. Through his passionate love +for little Willie, Alan had drawn near to the kingdom of God; not as yet +to the extent of formulating any specific creed or attaching himself to +any special church—that was to come later; but he had learned, by the +mystery of his own fatherhood, to stretch out groping hands toward the +great Fatherhood that had called him into being; and by his own love for +his suffering child to know something of the Love that passeth +knowledge. Therefore Alan Tremaine was a better<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_293" id="Page_293">[Pg 293]</a></span> and wiser man than he +had been in times past. A strong friendship had gradually grown up +between himself and Christopher Thornley; and it was a friendship which +was good for both of them. Though Christopher never talked about his +religious beliefs, he lived them; and it is living epistles such as this +which are best known and read of all thoughtful men, and which—far more +than all the books and sermons ever written—are gradually converting +the kingdoms of this world into the kingdoms of our Lord and of His +Christ. Alan would have refuted—to his own satisfaction, if not to +Christopher's—any arguments which the latter might have brought forward +in favour of Christianity; but he could not refute the evidence of a +life which could never have been lived but for that Other Life lived in +Judæa nineteen centuries ago. Perhaps his friendship with Christopher +did as much for Alan as his love for Willie in opening his eyes to the +hidden things of God.</p> + +<p>The intercourse with the Tremaines was, on the other hand, of great +advantage to Christopher, as it afforded him the opportunity of meeting +and mixing with men as clever and as cultivated as himself, which is not +always easy for a lonely man in a provincial town who devotes his +loneliness to intellectual pursuits. Christopher was fast becoming one +of the most influential men in Mershire; and his able management of the +Osierfield had raised those works to a greater height of prosperity than +they had ever attained before, even in the days of William and John +Farringdon.</p> + +<p>But now the shadows were darkening around Alan Tremaine, as day by day +Willie gradually faded away. Felicia, too, at last awoke to the real +state<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_294" id="Page_294">[Pg 294]</a></span> of the case, and, in her way, was almost as anxious as her +husband.</p> + +<p>During the spring-time, as Willie's life grew shorter with the +lengthening days, the child's chiefest delight lay in visits from +Christopher. For Elisabeth's sake Christopher had always felt an +interest in little Willie. Had not her dear hands fondled the child, +before they were too busy to do anything but weave spells to charm the +whole world? And had not her warm heart enfolded him, before her success +and her fame had chilled its fires? For the sake of the Elisabeth that +used to be, Christopher would always be a friend to Willie; and he did +not find it hard to love the child for his own sake, since Christopher +had great powers of loving, and but little to expend them upon.</p> + +<p>As Willie continually asked for Elisabeth, Felicia wrote and told her +so; and the moment she found she was wanted, Elisabeth came down to the +Willows for a week—though her fame and the London season were alike at +their height—and went every day to see Willie at the Moat House. He +loved to have her with him, because she talked to him about things that +his parents never mentioned to him; and as these things were drawing +nearer to Willie day by day, his interest in them unconsciously +increased. He and she had long talks together about the country on the +other side of the hills, and what delightful times they would have when +they reached it: how Willie would be able to walk as much as he liked, +and Elisabeth would be able to love as much as she wanted, and life +generally would turn out to be a success—a thing which it so rarely +does on this side of the hills.</p> + +<p>Christopher, as a rule, kept away from the Moat<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_295" id="Page_295">[Pg 295]</a></span> House when Elisabeth +was there; he thought she did not wish to see him, and he was not the +type of man to go where he imagined he was not wanted; but one afternoon +they met there by accident, and Christopher inwardly blessed the Fate +which made him do the very thing he had so studiously refrained from +doing. He had been sitting with Tremaine, and she with Felicia and +Willie; and they met in the hall on their way out.</p> + +<p>"Are you going my way?" asked Elisabeth graciously, when they had shaken +hands. It was dull at Sedgehill after London, and the old flirting +spirit woke up in her and made her want to flirt with Christopher again, +in spite of all that had happened. With the born flirt—as with all born +players of games—the game itself is of more importance than the +personality of the other players; which sometimes leads to unfortunate +mistakes on the part of those players who do not rightly understand the +rules of the game.</p> + +<p>"Yes, Miss Farringdon, I am," said Christopher, who would have been +going Elisabeth's way had that way led him straight to ruin. With him +the personality of the player—in this case, at least—mattered +infinitely more than any game she might choose to play. As long as he +was talking to Elisabeth, he did not care a straw what they were talking +about; which showed that he really was culpably indifferent to—if not +absolutely ignorant of—the rules of the game.</p> + +<p>"Then we might as well walk together." And Elisabeth drew on her long +Suède gloves and leisurely opened her parasol, as they strolled down the +drive after bidding farewell to the Tremaines.</p> + +<p>Christopher was silent from excess of happiness.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_296" id="Page_296">[Pg 296]</a></span> It was so wonderful to +be walking by Elisabeth's side again, and listening to her voice, and +watching the lights and shadows in those gray eyes of hers which +sometimes were so nearly blue. But Elisabeth did not understand his +silence; she translated it, as she would have translated silence on her +own part, into either boredom or ill-temper, and she resented it +accordingly.</p> + +<p>"You are very quiet this afternoon. Aren't you going to talk to me?" she +said; and Christopher's quick ear caught the sound of the irritation in +her voice, though he could not for the life of him imagine what he had +done to bring it there; but it served to silence him still further.</p> + +<p>"Yes—yes, of course I am," he said lamely; "what shall we talk about? I +am afraid there is nothing interesting to tell you about the Osierfield, +things are going on so regularly there, and so well."</p> + +<p>How exactly like Christopher to begin to talk about business when she +had given him the chance to talk about more interesting +subjects—herself, for instance, Elisabeth thought; but he never had a +mind above sordid details! She did not, of course, know that at that +identical moment he was wondering whether her eyes were darker than they +used to be, or whether he had forgotten their exact shade; he could +hardly have forgotten their colour, he decided, as there had never been +a day when he had not remembered them since he saw them last; so they +must actually be growing darker.</p> + +<p>"I'm glad of that," said Elisabeth coldly, in her most fine-ladylike +manner.</p> + +<p>"It was distinctly kind of you to find time to run down here, in the +midst of your London life, to see<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_297" id="Page_297">[Pg 297]</a></span> Willie! He fretted after you sadly, +and I am afraid the poor little fellow is not long for this world." And +Christopher sighed.</p> + +<p>Elisabeth noted the sigh and approved of it. It was a comfort to find +that the man had feelings of any sort, she said to herself, even though +only for a child; that was better than being entirely immersed in +self-interest and business affairs.</p> + +<p>So they talked about Willie for a time, and the conversation ran more +smoothly—almost pleasantly.</p> + +<p>Then they talked about books; and Elisabeth—who had grown into the +habit of thinking that nobody outside London knew anything—was +surprised to find that Christopher had read considerably more books than +she had read, and had understood them far more thoroughly. But this part +of the conversation was inclined to be stormy; since Christopher as a +rule disliked the books that Elisabeth liked, and this she persisted in +regarding as tantamount to disliking herself.</p> + +<p>Whereupon she became defiant, and told stories of her life in London of +which she knew Christopher would disapprove. There was nothing in the +facts that he could possibly disapprove of, so she coloured them up +until there was; and then, when she had succeeded in securing his +disapproval, she was furious with him on account of it. Which was +manifestly unfair, as Christopher in no way showed the regret which he +could not refrain from experiencing, as he listened to Elisabeth making +herself out so much more frivolous and heartless than she really was.</p> + +<p>"This is the first time I have had an opportunity of congratulating you +on your success," he said to her at last; "we are all very proud of it +at Sedgehill;<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_298" id="Page_298">[Pg 298]</a></span> but, believe me, there is no one who rejoices in it a +tithe as much as I do, if you will allow me to say so."</p> + +<p>Elisabeth was slightly mollified. She had been trying all the time, as +she was so fond of trying years ago, to divert the conversation into +more personal channels; and Christopher had been equally desirous of +keeping it out of the same. But this sounded encouraging.</p> + +<p>"Thank you so much," she answered; "it is very nice of you all to be +pleased with me! I always adored being admired and praised, if you +remember."</p> + +<p>Christopher remembered well enough; but he was not going to tell this +crushing fine lady how well he remembered. If he had not exposed his +heart for Elisabeth to peck at in the old days, he certainly was not +going to expose it now; then she would only have been scientifically +interested—now she would probably be disdainfully amused.</p> + +<p>"I suppose you saw my picture in this year's Academy," Elisabeth added.</p> + +<p>"Saw it? I should think I did. I went up to town on purpose to see it, +as I always do when you have pictures on view at any of the shows."</p> + +<p>"And what did you think of it?"</p> + +<p>Christopher was silent for a moment; then he said—</p> + +<p>"Do you want me to say pretty things to you or to tell you the truth?"</p> + +<p>"Why, the truth, of course," replied Elisabeth, who considered that the +two things were synonymous—or at any rate ought to be.</p> + +<p>"And you won't be angry with me, or think me impertinent?"</p> + +<p>"Of course not," answered Elisabeth, who most<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_299" id="Page_299">[Pg 299]</a></span> certainly would; and +Christopher—not having yet learned wisdom—believed her.</p> + +<p>"I thought it was a distinctly powerful picture—a distinctly remarkable +picture—and if any one but you had painted it, I should have been +delighted with it; but somehow I felt that it was not quite up to your +mark—that you could do, and will do, better work."</p> + +<p>For a second Elisabeth was dumbfounded with amazement and indignation. +How dare this one man dispute the verdict of London? Then she said—</p> + +<p>"In what way do you think the work could have been done better?"</p> + +<p>"That is just what I can't tell you; I wish I could; but I'm not an +artist, unfortunately. It seems to me that there are other people (not +many, I admit, but still some) who could have painted that picture; +while you are capable of doing work which no one else in the world could +possibly do. Naturally I want to see you do your best, and am not +satisfied when you do anything less."</p> + +<p>Elisabeth tossed her head. "You are very hard to please, Mr. Thornley."</p> + +<p>"I know I am, where your work is concerned; but that is because I have +formed such a high ideal of your powers. If I admired you less, I should +admire your work more, don't you see?"</p> + +<p>But Elisabeth did not see. She possessed the true artist-spirit which +craves for appreciation of its offspring more than for appreciation of +itself—a feeling which perhaps no one but an artist or a mother really +understands. Christopher, being neither, did not understand it in the +least, and erroneously concluded that adoration of the creator absolves +one from the necessity of admiration of the thing created.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_300" id="Page_300">[Pg 300]</a></span></p> + +<p>"I shall never do a better piece of work than that," Elisabeth retorted, +being imbued with the creative delusion that the latest creation is of +necessity the finest creation. No artist could work at all if he did not +believe that the work he was doing—or had just done—was the best piece +of work he had ever done or ever should do. This is because his work, +however good, always falls short of the ideal which inspired it; and, +while he is yet working, he can not disentangle the ideal from the +reality. He must be at a little distance from his work until he can do +this properly; and Elisabeth was as yet under the influence of that +creative glamour which made her see her latest picture as it should be +rather than as it was.</p> + +<p>"Oh, yes, you will; you will fulfil my ideal of you yet. I cherish no +doubts on that score."</p> + +<p>"I can't think what you see wrong in my picture," said Elisabeth +somewhat pettishly.</p> + +<p>"I don't see anything wrong in it. Good gracious! I must have expressed +myself badly if I conveyed such an impression to you as that, and you +would indeed be justified in writing me down an ass. I think it is a +wonderfully clever picture—so clever that nobody but you could ever +paint a cleverer one."</p> + +<p>"Well, I certainly couldn't. You must have formed an exaggerated +estimate of my artistic powers."</p> + +<p>"I think not! You can, and will, paint a distinctly better picture some +day."</p> + +<p>"In what way better?"</p> + +<p>"Ah! there you have me. But I will try to tell you what I mean, though I +speak as a fool; and if I say anything very egregious, you must let my +ignorance be my excuse, and pardon the clumsy <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_301" id="Page_301">[Pg 301]</a></span>expression of my +intentions because they are so well meant. It doesn't seem to me to be +enough for anybody to do good work; they must go further, and do the +best possible work in their power. Nothing but one's best is really +worth the doing; the cult of the second-best is always a degrading form +of worship. Even though one man's second-best be intrinsically superior +to the best work of his fellows, he has nevertheless no right to offer +it to the world. He is guilty of an injustice both to himself and the +world in so doing."</p> + +<p>"I don't agree with you. This is an age of results; and the world's +business is with the actual value of the thing done, rather than with +the capabilities of the man who did it."</p> + +<p>"You are right in calling this an age of results, Miss Farringdon; but +that is the age's weakness and not its strength. The moment men begin to +judge by results, they judge unrighteous judgment. They confound the +great man with the successful man; the saint with the famous preacher; +the poet with the writer of popular music-hall songs."</p> + +<p>"Then you think that we should all do our best, and not bother ourselves +too much as to results?"</p> + +<p>"I go further than that; I think that the mere consideration of results +incapacitates us from doing our best work at all."</p> + +<p>"I don't agree with you," repeated Elisabeth haughtily. But, +nevertheless, she did.</p> + +<p>"I daresay I am wrong; but you asked me for my candid opinion and I gave +it to you. It is a poor compliment to flatter people—far too poor ever +to be paid by me to you; and in this case the simple truth is a far +greater compliment than any flattery could be. You can imagine what a +high estimate I have<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_302" id="Page_302">[Pg 302]</a></span> formed of your powers, when so great a picture as +The Pillar of Cloud fails to satisfy me."</p> + +<p>The talk about her picture brought to Elisabeth's mind the remembrance +of that other picture which had been almost as popular as hers; and, +with it, the remembrance of the man who had painted it.</p> + +<p>"I suppose you have heard nothing more about George Farringdon's son," +she remarked, with apparent irrelevance. "I wonder if he will ever turn +up?"</p> + +<p>"Oh! I hardly think it is likely now; I have quite given up all ideas of +his doing so," replied Christopher cheerfully.</p> + +<p>"But supposing he did?"</p> + +<p>"In that case I am afraid he would be bound to enter into his kingdom. +But I really don't think you need worry any longer over that unpleasant +contingency, Miss Farringdon; it is too late in the day; if he were +going to appear upon the scene at all, he would have appeared before +now, I feel certain."</p> + +<p>"You really think so?"</p> + +<p>"Most assuredly I do. Besides, it will not be long before the limit of +time mentioned by your cousin is reached; and then a score of George +Farringdon's sons could not turn you out of your rights."</p> + +<p>For a moment Elisabeth thought she would tell Christopher about her +suspicions as to the identity of Cecil Farquhar. But it was as yet +merely a suspicion, and she knew by experience how ruthlessly +Christopher pursued the line of duty whenever that line was pointed out +to him; so she decided to hold her peace (and her property) a little +longer. But she also knew that the influence of Christopher was even yet +so strong upon her, that, when the time<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_303" id="Page_303">[Pg 303]</a></span> came, she should do the right +thing in spite of herself and in defiance of her own desires. And this +knowledge, strange to say, irritated her still further against the +innocent and unconscious Christopher.</p> + +<p>The walk from the Moat House to Sedgehill was a failure as far as the +re-establishment of friendly relations between Christopher and Elisabeth +was concerned, for it left her with the impression that he was less +appreciative of her and more wrapped up in himself and his own opinions +than ever; while it conveyed to his mind the idea that her success had +only served to widen the gulf between them, and that she was more +indifferent to and independent of his friendship than she had ever been +before.</p> + +<p>Elisabeth went back to London, and Christopher to his work again, and +little Willie drew nearer and nearer to the country on the other side of +the hills; until one day it happened that the gate which leads into that +country was left open by the angels, and Willie slipped through it and +became strong and well. His parents were left outside the gate, weeping, +and at first they refused to be comforted; but after a time Alan learned +the lesson which Willie had been sent to teach him, and saw plain.</p> + +<p>"Dear," he said to his wife at last, "I've got to begin life over again +so as to go the way that Willie went. The little chap made me promise to +meet him in the country over the hills, as he called it; and I've never +broken a promise to Willie and I never will. It will be difficult for +us, I know; but God will help us."</p> + +<p>Felicia looked at him with sad, despairing eyes. "There is no God," she +said; "you have often told me so."</p> + +<p>"I know I have; that was because I was such a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_304" id="Page_304">[Pg 304]</a></span> blind fool. But now I +know that there is a God, and that you and I must serve Him together."</p> + +<p>"How can we serve a myth?" Felicia persisted.</p> + +<p>"He is no myth, Felicia. I lied to you when I told you that He was."</p> + +<p>And then Felicia laughed; the first time that she had laughed since +Willie's death, and it was not a pleasant laugh to hear. "Do you think +you can play pitch-and-toss with a woman's soul in that way? Well, you +can't. When I met you I believed in God as firmly as any girl believed; +but you laughed me out of my faith, and proved to me what a string of +lies and folly it all was; and then I believed in you as firmly as +before I had believed in God, and I knew that Christianity was a fable."</p> + +<p>Alan's face grew very white. "Good heavens! Felicia, did I do this?"</p> + +<p>"Of course you did, and you must take the consequences of your own +handiwork; it is too late to undo it now. Don't try to comfort me, even +if you can drug yourself, with fairy-tales about meeting Willie again. I +shall never see my little child again in this life, and there is no +other."</p> + +<p>"You are wrong; believe me, you are wrong." And Alan's brow was damp +with the anguish of his soul.</p> + +<p>"It is only what you taught me. But because you took my faith away from +me, it doesn't follow that you can give it back to me again; it has gone +forever."</p> + +<p>"Oh, Felicia, Felicia, may God and you and Willie forgive me, for I can +never forgive myself!"</p> + +<p>"I can not forgive you, because I have nothing to forgive; you did me no +wrong in opening my eyes. And God can not forgive you, because there<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_305" id="Page_305">[Pg 305]</a></span> +never was a God; so you did Him no wrong. And Willie can not forgive +you, because there is no Willie now; so you did him no wrong."</p> + +<p>"My dearest, it can not all have gone from you forever; it will come +back to you, and you will believe as I do."</p> + +<p>Felicia shook her head. "Never; it is too late. You have taken away my +Lord, and I know not where you have laid Him; and, however long I live, +I shall never find Him again."</p> + +<p>And she went out of the room in the patience of a great despair, and +left her husband alone with his misery.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_306" id="Page_306">[Pg 306]</a></span></p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XVI" id="CHAPTER_XVI"></a><a href="#CONTENTS">CHAPTER XVI</a></h2> + +<h3>THIS SIDE OF THE HILLS</h3> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">On this side of the hills, alas!<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Unrest our spirit fills;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">For gold, men give us stones and brass—<br /></span> +<span class="i0">For asphodels, rank weeds and grass—<br /></span> +<span class="i0">For jewels, bits of coloured glass—<br /></span> +<span class="i2">On this side of the hills.<br /></span> +</div></div> + + +<p>The end of July was approaching, and the season was drawing to a close. +Cecil Farquhar and Elisabeth had seen each other frequently since they +first met at the Academy <i>soirée</i>, and had fallen into the habit of +being much together; consequently the thought of parting was pleasant to +neither of them.</p> + +<p>"How shall I manage to live without you?" asked Cecil one day, as they +were walking across the Park together. "I shall fall from my ideals when +I am away from your influence, and again become the grovelling worlding +that I was before I met you."</p> + +<p>"But you mustn't do anything of the kind. I am not the keeper of your +conscience."</p> + +<p>"But you are, and you must be. I feel a good man and a strong one when I +am with you, and as if all things were possible to me; and now that I +have once found you, I can not and will not let you go."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_307" id="Page_307">[Pg 307]</a></span></p> + +<p>"You will have to let me go, Mr. Farquhar; for I go down to the Willows +at the end of the month, and mean to stay there for some time. I have +enjoyed my success immensely; but it has tired me rather, and made me +want to rest and be stupid again."</p> + +<p>"But I can not spare you," persisted Cecil; and there was real feeling +in his voice. Elisabeth represented so much to him—wealth and power and +the development of his higher nature; and although, had she been a poor +woman, he would possibly never have cherished any intention of marrying +her, his wish to do so was not entirely sordid. There are so few wishes +in the hearts of any of us which are entirely sordid or entirely ideal; +yet we find it so difficult to allow for this in judging one another.</p> + +<p>"Don't you understand," Farquhar went on, "all that you have been to me: +how you have awakened the best that is in me, and taught me to be +ashamed of the worst? And do you think that I shall now be content to +let you slip quietly out of my life, and to be the shallow, selfish, +worldly wretch I was before the Academy <i>soirée</i>? Not I."</p> + +<p>Elisabeth was silent. She could not understand herself, and this want of +comprehension on her part annoyed and disappointed her. At last all her +girlish dreams had come true; here was the fairy prince for whom she had +waited for so long—a prince of the kingdom she loved above all others, +the kingdom of art; and he came to her in the spirit in which she had +always longed for him to come—the spirit of failure and of loneliness, +begging her to make up to him for all that he had hitherto missed in +life. Yet—to her surprise—his appeal found her cold and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_308" id="Page_308">[Pg 308]</a></span> unresponsive, +as if he were calling out for help to another woman and not to her.</p> + +<p>Cecil went on: "Elisabeth, won't you be my wife, and so make me into the +true artist which, with you to help me, I feel I am capable of becoming; +but of which, without you, I shall always fall short? You could do +anything with me—you know you could; you could make me into a great +artist and a good man, but without you I can be neither. Surely you will +not give me up now! You have opened to me the door of a paradise of +which I never dreamed before, and now don't shut it in my face."</p> + +<p>"I don't want to shut it in your face," replied Elisabeth gently; +"surely you know me better than that. But I feel that you are expecting +more of me than I can ever fulfil, and that some day you will be sadly +disappointed in me."</p> + +<p>"No, no; I never shall. It is not in you to disappoint anybody, you are +so strong and good and true. Tell me the truth: don't you feel that I am +as clay in your hands, and that you can do anything with me that you +choose?"</p> + +<p>Elisabeth looked him full in the face with her clear gray eyes. "I feel +that I could do anything with you if only I loved you enough; but I also +feel that I don't love you, and that therefore I can do nothing with you +at all. I believe with you that a strong woman can be the making of a +man she loves; but she must love him first, or else all her strength +will be of no avail."</p> + +<p>Farquhar's face fell. "I thought you did love me. You always seemed so +glad when I came and sorry when I left; and you enjoyed talking to me, +and we understood each other, and were happy together. Can you deny +that?"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_309" id="Page_309">[Pg 309]</a></span></p> + +<p>"No; it is all true. I never enjoyed talking with anybody more than with +you; and I certainly never in my life met any one who understood my ways +of looking at things as thoroughly as you do, nor any one who entered so +completely into all my moods. As a friend you are most satisfactory to +me, as a comrade most delightful; but I can not help thinking that love +is something more than that."</p> + +<p>"But it isn't," cried Cecil eagerly; "that is just where lots of women +make such a mistake. They wait and wait for love all their lives; and +find out too late that they passed him by years ago, without recognising +him, but called him by some wrong name, such as friendship and the +like."</p> + +<p>"I wonder if you are right."</p> + +<p>"I am sure that I am. Women who are at all romantic, have such +exaggerated ideas as to what love really is. Like the leper of old, they +ask for some great thing to work the wonderful miracle upon their lives; +and so they miss the simple way which would lead them to happiness."</p> + +<p>Elisabeth felt troubled and perplexed. "I enjoy your society," she said, +"and I adore your genius, and I pity your loneliness, and I long to help +your weakness. Is this love, do you think?"</p> + +<p>"Yes, yes; I am certain of it."</p> + +<p>"I thought it would be different," said Elisabeth sadly; "I thought that +when it did come it would transform the whole world, just as religion +does, and that all things would become new. I thought it would turn out +to be the thing that we are longing for when the beauty of nature makes +us feel sad with a longing we know not for what. I thought it would +change life's dusty paths into<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_310" id="Page_310">[Pg 310]</a></span> golden pavements, and earth's commonest +bramble-bush into a magic briar-rose."</p> + +<p>"And it hasn't?"</p> + +<p>"No; everything is just the same as it was before I met you. As far as I +can see, there is no livelier emerald twinkling in the grass of the Park +than there ever is at the end of July, and no purer sapphire melting +into the Serpentine."</p> + +<p>Cecil laughed lightly. "You are as absurdly romantic as a school-girl! +Surely people of our age ought to know better than still to believe in +fairyland; but, as I have told you before, you are dreadfully young for +your age in some things."</p> + +<p>"I suppose I am. I still do believe in fairyland—at least I did until +ten minutes ago."</p> + +<p>"I assure you there is no such place."</p> + +<p>"Not for anybody?"</p> + +<p>"Not for anybody over twenty-one."</p> + +<p>"I wish there was," said Elisabeth with a sigh. "I should have liked to +believe it was there, even if I had never found it."</p> + +<p>"Don't be silly, lady mine. You are so great and wise and clever that I +can not bear to hear you say foolish things. And I want us to talk about +how you are going to help me to be a great painter, and how we will sit +together as gods, and create new worlds. There is nothing that I can not +do with you to help me, Elisabeth. You must be good to me and hard upon +me at the same time. You must never let me be content with anything +short of my best, or willing to do second-rate work for the sake of +money; you must keep the sacredness of art ever before my eyes, but you +must also be very gentle to me when I am weary, and very tender to me +when I am sad; you must encourage<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_311" id="Page_311">[Pg 311]</a></span> me when my spirit fails me, and +comfort me when the world is harsh. All these things you can do, and you +are the only woman who can. Promise me, Elisabeth, that you will."</p> + +<p>"I can not promise anything now. You must let me think it over for a +time. I am so puzzled by it all. I thought that when the right man came +and told a woman that he loved her, she would know at once that it was +for him—and for him only—that she had been waiting all her life; and +that she would never have another doubt upon the subject, but would feel +convinced that it was settled for all time and eternity. And this is so +different!"</p> + +<p>Again Cecil laughed his light laugh. "I suppose girls sometimes feel +like that when they are very young; but not women of your age, +Elisabeth."</p> + +<p>"Well, you must let me think about it. I can not make up my mind yet."</p> + +<p>And for whole days and nights Elisabeth thought about it, and could come +to no definite conclusion.</p> + +<p>There was no doubt in her mind that she liked Cecil Farquhar infinitely +better than she had liked any of the other men who had asked her to +marry them; also that no one could possibly be more companionable to her +than he was, or more sympathetic with and interested in her work—and +this is no small thing to the man or woman who possesses the creative +faculty. Then she was lonely in her greatness, and longed for +companionship; and Cecil had touched her in her tenderest point by his +constant appeals to her to help and comfort him. Nevertheless the fact +remained that, though he interested her, he did not touch her heart; +that remained a closed door to him. But supposing that her friends were<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_312" id="Page_312">[Pg 312]</a></span> +right, and that she was too cold by nature ever to feel the ecstasies +which transfigure life for some women, should she therefore shut herself +out from ordinary domestic joys and interests? Because she was incapable +of attaining to the ideal, must the commonplace pleasures of the real +also be denied her? If the best was not for her, would it not be wise to +accept the second-best, and extract as much happiness from it as +possible? Moreover, she knew that Cecil was right when he said that she +could make of him whatsoever she wished; and this was no slight +temptation to a woman who loved power as much as Elisabeth loved it.</p> + +<p>There was also another consideration which had some weight with her; and +that was the impression, gradually gaining strength in her mind, that +Cecil Farquhar was George Farringdon's son. She could take no steps in +the way of proving this just then, as Christopher was away for his +holiday somewhere in the Black Forest, and nothing could be done without +him; but she intended, as soon as he returned, to tell him of her +suspicion, and to set him to discover whether or not Cecil was indeed +the lost heir. Although it never seriously occurred to Elisabeth to hold +her peace upon this matter and so keep her fortune to herself, she was +still human enough not altogether to despise a course of action which +enabled her to be rich and righteous at the same time, and to go on with +her old life at the Willows and her work among the people at the +Osierfield, even after George Farringdon's son had come into his own.</p> + +<p>Although the balance of Elisabeth's judgment was upon the side of Cecil +Farquhar and his suit, she could not altogether stifle—try as she +might—her<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_313" id="Page_313">[Pg 313]</a></span> sense of disappointment at finding how grossly poets and +such people had exaggerated the truth in their description of the +feeling men call love. It was all so much less exalted and so much more +commonplace than she had expected. She had long ago come to the +conclusion—from comparisons between Christopher and the men who had +wanted to marry her—that a man's friendship is a better thing than a +man's love; but she had always clung to the belief that a woman's love +would prove a better thing than a woman's friendship: yet now she +herself was in love with Cecil—at least he said that she was, and she +was inclined to agree with him—and she was bound to admit that, as an +emotion, this fell far short of her old attachment to Cousin Anne or +Christopher or even Felicia. But that was because now she was getting +old, she supposed, and her heart had lost its early warmth and +freshness; and she experienced a weary ache of regret that Cecil had not +come across her path in those dear old days when she was still young +enough to make a fairyland for herself, and to abide therein for ever.</p> + +<p>"The things that come too late are almost as bad as the things that +never come at all," she thought with a sigh; not knowing that there is +no such word as "too late" in God's Vocabulary.</p> + +<p>At the end of the week she had made up her mind to marry Cecil Farquhar. +Women, after all, can not pick and choose what lives they shall lead; +they can only take such goods as the gods choose to provide, and make +the best of the same; and if they let the possible slip while they are +waiting for the impossible, they have only themselves to blame that they +extract no good at all out of life. So she wrote to Cecil, asking him to +come and see her<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_314" id="Page_314">[Pg 314]</a></span> the following day; and then she sat down and wondered +why women are allowed to see visions and to dream dreams, if the actual +is to fall so far short of the imaginary. Brick walls and cobbled +streets are all very well in their way; but they make but dreary +dwelling-places for those who have promised themselves cities where the +walls are of jasper and the pavements of gold. "If one is doomed to live +always on this side of the hills, it is a waste of time to think too +much about the life on the other side," Elisabeth reasoned with herself, +"and I have wasted a lot of time in this way; but I can not help +wondering why we are allowed to think such lovely thoughts, and to +believe in such beautiful things, if our dreams are never to come true, +but are only to spoil us for the realities of life. Now I must bury all +my dear, silly, childish idols, as Jacob did; and I will not have any +stone to mark the place, because I want to forget where it is."</p> + +<p>Poor Elisabeth! The grave of what has been, may be kept green with +tears; but the grave of what never could have been, is best forgotten. +We may not hide away the dear old gnomes and pixies and fairies in +consecrated ground—that is reserved for what has once existed, and so +has the right to live again; but for what never existed we can find no +sepulchre, for it came out of nothingness, and to nothingness must it +return.</p> + +<p>After Elisabeth had posted her letter to Cecil, and while she was still +musing over the problem as to whether life's fulfilment must always fall +short of its promise, the drawing-room door was thrown open and a +visitor announced. Elisabeth was tired and depressed, and did not feel +in the mood for keeping up her reputation for brilliancy; so it was<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_315" id="Page_315">[Pg 315]</a></span> +with a sigh of weariness that she rose to receive Quenelda Carson, a +struggling little artist whom she had known slightly for years. But her +interest was immediately aroused when she saw that Quenelda's usually +rosy face was white with anguish, and the girl's pretty eyes swollen +with many tears.</p> + +<p>"What is the matter, dear?" asked Elisabeth, with that sound in her +voice which made all weak things turn to her. "You are in trouble, and +you must let me help you."</p> + +<p>Quenelda broke out into bitter weeping. "Oh! give him back to me—give +him back to me," she cried; "you can never love him as I do, you are too +cold and proud and brilliant."</p> + +<p>Elisabeth stood as if transfixed. "Whatever do you mean?"</p> + +<p>"You have everything," Quenelda went on, in spite of the sobs which +shook her slender frame; "you had money and position to begin with, and +everybody thought well of you and admired you and made life easy for +you. And then you came out of your world into ours, and carried away the +prizes which we had been striving after for years, and beat us on our +own ground; but we weren't jealous of you—you know that we weren't; we +were glad of your success, and proud of you, and we admired your genius +as much as the outside world did, and never minded a bit that it was +greater than ours. But even then you were not content—you must have +everything, and leave us nothing, just to satisfy your pride. You are +like the rich man who had everything, and yet took from the poor man his +one ewe lamb; and I am sure that God—if there is a God—will punish you +as He punished that rich man."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_316" id="Page_316">[Pg 316]</a></span></p> + +<p>Elisabeth turned rather pale; whatever had she done that any one dared +to say such things to her as this? "I still don't understand you," she +said.</p> + +<p>"I never had anything nice in my life till I met him," the girl +continued incoherently—"I had always been poor and pinched and wretched +and second-rate; even my pictures were never first-rate, though I worked +and worked all I knew to make them so. And then I met Cecil Farquhar, +and I loved him, and everything became different, and I didn't mind +being second-rate if only he would care for me. And he did; and I +thought that I should always be as happy as I was then, and that nothing +would ever be able to hurt me any more. Oh! I was so happy—so +happy—and I was such a fool, I thought it would last forever! I worked +hard and saved every penny that I could, and so did he; and we should +have been married next year if you hadn't come and spoiled it all, and +taken him away from me. And what is it to you now that you have got him? +You are too proud and cold to love him, or anybody else, and he doesn't +care for you a millionth part as much as he cares for me; yet just +because you have money and fame he has left me for you. And I love him +so—I love him so!" Here Quenelda's sobs choked her utterance, and her +torrent of words was stopped by tears.</p> + +<p>"Come and sit down beside me and tell me quietly what is the matter," +said Elisabeth gently; "I can do nothing and understand nothing while +you go on like this. But you are wrong in supposing that I took your +lover from you purposely; I did not even know that he was a friend of +yours. He ought to have told me."</p> + +<p>"No, no; he couldn't tell you. Don't you see<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_317" id="Page_317">[Pg 317]</a></span> that the temptation was +too strong for him? He cares so much for rank and money, and things like +that, my poor Cecil! And all his life he has had to do without them. So +when he met you, and realized that if he married you he would have all +the things he wanted most in the world, he couldn't resist it. The fault +was yours for tempting him, and letting him see that he could have you +for the asking; you knew him well enough to see how weak he was, and +what a hold worldly things had over him; and you ought to have allowed +for this in dealing with him."</p> + +<p>A great wave of self-contempt swept over Elisabeth. She, who had prided +herself upon the fact that no man was strong enough to win her love, to +be accused of openly running after a man who did not care for her but +only for her money! It was unendurable, and stung her to the quick! And +yet, through all her indignation, she recognised the justice of her +punishment. She had not done what Quenelda had reproached her for doing, +it was true; but she had deliberately lowered her ideal: she had wearied +of striving after the best, and had decided that the second-best should +suffice her; and for this she was now being chastised. No men or women +who wilfully turn away from the ideal which God has set before them, and +make to themselves graven images of the things which they know to be +unworthy, can escape the punishment which is sure, sooner or later, to +follow their apostasy; and they do well to recognise this, ere they grow +weary of waiting for the revelation from Sinai, and begin to build +altars unto false gods. For now, as of old, the idols which they make +are ground into powder, and strawed upon the water, and given them to +drink;<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_318" id="Page_318">[Pg 318]</a></span> the cup has to be drained to the dregs, and it is exceeding +bitter.</p> + +<p>"I still think he ought to have told me there was another woman," +Elisabeth said.</p> + +<p>"Not he. He knew well enough that your pride could not have endured the +thought of another woman, and that that would have spoiled his chance +with you forever. There always is another woman, you know; and you +women, who are too proud to endure the thought of her, have to be +deceived and blinded. And you have only yourselves to thank for it; if +you were a little more human and a little more tender, there would be no +necessity for deceiving you. Why, I should have loved him just the same +if there had been a hundred other women, so he always told me the truth; +but he lied to you, and it was your fault and not his that he was +obliged to lie."</p> + +<p>Elisabeth shuddered. It was to help such a man as this that she had been +willing to sacrifice her youthful ideals and her girlish dreams. What a +fool she had been!</p> + +<p>"If you do not believe me, here is his letter," Quenelda went on; "I +brought it on purpose for you to read, just to show you how little you +are to him. If you had loved him as I love him, I would have let you +keep him, because you could have given him so many of the things that he +thinks most about. But you don't. You are one of the cold, hard women, +who only care for people as long as they are good and do what you think +they ought to do; Cecil never could do what anybody thought he ought to +do for long, and then you would have despised him and grown tired of +him. But I go on loving him just the same, whatever he does; and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_319" id="Page_319">[Pg 319]</a></span> that's +the sort of love that a man wants—at any rate, such a man as Cecil."</p> + +<p>Elisabeth held out her hand for the letter; she felt that speech was of +no avail at such a crisis as this; and, as she read, every word burned +itself into her soul, and hurt her pride to the quick.</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p>"<span class="smcap">Dearest Quenelda</span>" (the letter ran, in the slightly affected handwriting +which Elisabeth had learned to know so well, and to welcome with so much +interest), "I have something to say to you which it cuts me to the heart +to say, but which has to be said at all costs. We must break off our +engagement at once; for the terrible truth has at last dawned upon me +that we can never afford to marry each other, and that therefore it is +only prolonging our agony to go on with it. You know me so well, dear +little girl, that you will quite understand how the thought of life-long +poverty has proved too much for me. I am not made of such coarse fibre +as most men—those men who can face squalor and privation, and lack all +the little accessories that make life endurable, without being any the +worse for it. I am too refined, too highly strung, too sensitive, to +enter upon such a weary struggle with circumstances as my marriage with +a woman as poor as myself would entail; therefore, my darling Quenelda, +much as I love you I feel it is my duty to renounce you; and as you grow +older and wiser you will see that I am right.</p> + +<p>"Since I can not marry you whom I love, I have put romance and sentiment +forever out of my life; it is a bitter sacrifice for a man of my nature +to make, but it must be done; and I have decided to enter upon a +<i>mariage de convenance</i> with Miss Farringdon,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_320" id="Page_320">[Pg 320]</a></span> the Black Country +heiress. Of course I do not love her as I love you, my sweet—what man +could love a genius as he loves a beauty? And she is as cold as she is +clever. But I feel respect for her moral characteristics, and interest +in her mental ones; and, when youth and romance are over and done with, +that is all one need ask in a wife. As for her fortune, it will keep me +forever out of the reach of that poverty which has always so deleterious +an effect upon natures such as mine; and, being thus set above those +pecuniary anxieties which are the death of true art, I shall be able +fully to develop the power that is in me, and to do the work that I feel +myself called to do.</p> + +<p>"Good-bye, my sweetest. I can not write any more; my heart is breaking. +How cruel it is that poverty should have power to separate forever such +true lovers as you and I!</p> + +<p class="sign"> +"Your heartbroken<br /> +"<span class="smcap">Cecil.</span>"</p> + +<p>Elisabeth gave back the letter to Quenelda. "Do you mean to tell me that +you don't despise the man who sent this?" she asked.</p> + +<p>"No; because I love him, you see. You never did."</p> + +<p>"You are right there. I never loved him. I tried to love him, but I +couldn't."</p> + +<p>"I know you didn't. As I told you before, if you had loved him I would +have given him up to you."</p> + +<p>Elisabeth looked at the girl before her with wonder. What a strange +thing this love was, which could make a woman forgive such a letter as +that, and still cling to the man who wrote it! So there was such a place +as fairyland after all, and poor little<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_321" id="Page_321">[Pg 321]</a></span> Quenelda had found it; while +she, Elisabeth, had never so much as peeped through the gate. It had +brought Quenelda much sorrow, it was true; but still it was good to have +been there; and a chilly feeling crept across Elisabeth's heart as she +realized how much she had missed in life.</p> + +<p>"I think if one loved another person as much as that," she said to +herself, "one would understand a little of how God feels about us." +Aloud she said: "Dear, what do you want me to do? I will do anything in +the world that you wish."</p> + +<p>Quenelda seized Elisabeth's hand and kissed it. "How good you are! And I +don't deserve it a bit, for I've been horrid to you and said vile +things."</p> + +<p>There was a vast pity in Elisabeth's eyes. "I did you a great wrong, +poor child!" she said; "and I want to make every reparation in my +power."</p> + +<p>"But you didn't know you were doing me a great wrong."</p> + +<p>"No; but I knew that I was acting below my own ideals, and nobody can do +that without doing harm. Show me how I can give you help now? Shall I +tell Cecil Farquhar that I know all?"</p> + +<p>"Oh! no; please not. He would never forgive me for having spoiled his +life, and taken away his chance of being rich." And Quenelda's tears +flowed afresh.</p> + +<p>Elisabeth put her strong arm round the girl's slim waist. "Don't cry, +dear; I will make it all right. I will just tell him that I can't marry +him because I don't love him; and he need never know that I have heard +about you at all."</p> + +<p>And Elisabeth continued to comfort Quenelda until the pale cheeks grew +pink again, and half the girl's beauty came back; and she went away at +last<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_322" id="Page_322">[Pg 322]</a></span> believing in Elisabeth's power of setting everything right again, +as one believes in one's mother's power of setting everything right +again when one is a child.</p> + +<p>After she had gone, Elisabeth sat down and calmly looked facts in the +face; and the prospect was by no means an agreeable one. Of course there +was no question now of marrying Cecil Farquhar; and in the midst of her +confusion Elisabeth felt a distinct sense of relief that this at any +rate was impossible. She could still go on believing in fairyland, even +though she never found it; and it is always far better not to find a +place than to find there is no such place at all. But she would have to +give up the Willows and the Osierfield, and all the wealth and position +that these had brought her; and this was a bitter draught to drink. +Elisabeth felt no doubt in her own mind that Cecil was indeed George +Farringdon's son; she had guessed it when first he told her the story of +his birth, and subsequent conversations with him had only served to +confirm her in the belief; and it was this conviction which had +influenced her to some extent in her decision to accept him. But now +everything was changed. Cecil would rule at the Osierfield and Quenelda +at the Willows instead of herself, and those dearly loved places would +know her no more.</p> + +<p>At this thought Elisabeth broke down. How she loved every stone of the +Black Country, and how closely all her childish fancies and girlish +dreams were bound up in it! Now the cloud of smoke would hang over +Sedgehill, and she would not be there to interpret its message; and the +sun would set beyond the distant mountains, and she would no longer +catch glimpses of the country over the hills.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_323" id="Page_323">[Pg 323]</a></span> Even the rustic seat, +where she and Christopher had sat so often, would be hers no longer; and +he and she would never walk together in the woods as they had so often +walked as children. And as she cried softly to herself, with no one to +comfort her, the memory of Christopher swept over her, and with it all +the old anger against him. He would be glad to see her dethroned at +last, she supposed, as that was what he had striven for all those years +ago; but, perhaps, when he saw a stranger reigning at the Willows and +the Osierfield in her stead, he would be sorry to find the new +government so much less beneficial to the work-people than the old one +had been; for Elisabeth knew Cecil quite well enough to be aware that he +would spend all his money on himself and his own pleasures; and she +could not help indulging in an unholy hope that, whereas she had beaten +Christopher with whips, her successor would beat him with scorpions. In +fact she was almost glad, for the moment, that Farquhar was so unfit for +the position to which he was now called, when she realized how sorely +that unfitness would try Christopher.</p> + +<p>"It will serve him right for leaving me and going off after George +Farringdon's son," she said to herself, "to discover how little worth +the finding George Farringdon's son really was! Christopher is so +self-centred, that a thing is never properly brought home to him until +it affects himself; no other person can ever convince him that he is in +the wrong. But this will affect himself; he will hate to serve under +such a man as Cecil; I know he will; because Cecil is just the type of +person that Christopher has always looked down upon, for Christopher is +a gentleman and Cecil is not. Perhaps when he finds out how <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_324" id="Page_324">[Pg 324]</a></span>inferior an +iron-master Cecil is to me, Christopher will wish that he had liked me +better and been kinder to me when he had a chance. I hope he will, and +that it will make him miserable; for those hard, self-righteous people +really deserve to be punished in the end." And Elisabeth derived so much +comfort from the prospect of Christopher's coming trials, that she +almost forgot her own.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_325" id="Page_325">[Pg 325]</a></span></p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XVII" id="CHAPTER_XVII"></a><a href="#CONTENTS">CHAPTER XVII</a></h2> + +<h3>GEORGE FARRINGDON'S SON</h3> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">I need thee, Love, in peace and strife;<br /></span> +<span class="i2">For, till Time's latest page be read,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">No other smile could light my life<br /></span> +<span class="i10">Instead.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">And even in that happier place,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Where pain is past and sorrow dead,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">I could not love an angel's face<br /></span> +<span class="i10">Instead.<br /></span> +</div></div> + + +<p>That night Elisabeth wrote to Christopher Thornley, telling him that she +believed she had found George Farringdon's son at last, and asking him +to come up to London in order to facilitate the giving up of her kingdom +into the hands of the rightful owner. And, in so doing, she was +conscious of a feeling of satisfaction that Christopher should see for +himself that she was not as mercenary as he had once imagined her to be, +but that she was as ready as he had ever been to enable the king to +enjoy his own again as soon as that king appeared upon the scene. To +forsake the reigning queen in order to search for that king, was, of +course, a different matter, and one about which Elisabeth declined to +see eye to eye with her manager even now. Doubtless he had been in the +right all through, and she in the wrong, as all<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_326" id="Page_326">[Pg 326]</a></span> honourable people could +see for themselves; but when one happens to be the queen one's self, +one's perspective is apt to become blurred and one's sense of abstract +justice confused. It is so easy for all of us to judge righteous +judgment concerning matters which in no way affect ourselves.</p> + +<p>Elisabeth was still angry with Christopher because she had deliberately +made the worst of herself in his eyes. It was totally unjust—and +entirely feminine—to lay the blame of this on his shoulders; as a +matter of fact, he had had nothing at all to do with it. She had +purposely chosen a path of life of which she knew he would disapprove, +principally in order to annoy him; and then she had refused to forgive +him for feeling the annoyance which she had gone out of her way to +inflict. From the purely feminine standpoint her behaviour was +thoroughly consistent; a man, however, might in his ignorance have +accused her of inconsistency. But men know so little about some things!</p> + +<p>The following afternoon Cecil Farquhar came to see Elisabeth, as she had +bidden him; and she smiled grimly to herself as she realized the +difference between what she had intended to say to him when she told him +to come, and what she was actually going to say. As for him, he was full +of hope. Evidently Elisabeth meant to marry him and make him into a rich +man; and money was the thing he loved best in the world. Which of us +would not be happy if we thought we were about to win the thing we loved +best? And is it altogether our own fault if the thing we happen to love +best be unworthy of love, or is it only our misfortune?</p> + +<p>Because he was triumphant, Cecil looked handsomer than usual, for there +are few things more be<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_327" id="Page_327">[Pg 327]</a></span>coming than happiness; and as he entered the +room, radiant with that vitality which is so irresistibly attractive, +Elisabeth recognised his charm without feeling it, just as one sees +people speaking and gesticulating in the distance without hearing a word +of what is said.</p> + +<p>"My dear lady, you are going to say <i>yes</i> to me; I know that you are; +you would not have sent for me if you were not, for you are far too +tender-hearted to enjoy seeing pain which you are forced to give."</p> + +<p>Elisabeth looked grave, and did not take his outstretched hand. "Will +you sit down?" she said; "there is much that I want to talk over with +you."</p> + +<p>Cecil's face fell. In a superficial way he was wonderfully quick in +interpreting moods and reading character; and he knew in a moment that, +through some influence of which he was as yet in ignorance, such slight +hold as he had once had upon Elisabeth had snapped and broken since he +saw her last. "Surely you are not going to refuse to marry me and so +spoil my life. Elisabeth, you can not be as cruel as this, after all +that we have been to each other."</p> + +<p>"I am going to refuse to marry you, but I am not going to spoil your +life. Believe me, I am not. There are other things in the world besides +love and marriage."</p> + +<p>Cecil sank down into a seat, and his chin twitched. "Then you have +played with me most abominably. The world was right when it called you a +heartless flirt, and said that you were too cold to care for anything +save pleasure and admiration. I thought I knew you better, more fool I! +But the world was right and I was wrong."</p> + +<p>"I don't think that we need discuss my character," <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_328" id="Page_328">[Pg 328]</a></span>said Elisabeth. She +was very angry with herself that she had placed herself in such a +position that any man dared to sit in judgment upon her; but even then +she could not elevate Cecil into the object of her indignation.</p> + +<p>He went on like a querulous child. "It is desperately hard on me that +you have treated me in this way! You might have snubbed me at once if +you had wished to do so, and not have made me a laughing-stock in the +eyes of the world. I made no secret of the fact that I intended to marry +you; I talked about it to everybody; and now everybody will laugh at me +for having been your dupe."</p> + +<p>So he had boasted to his friends of the fortune he was going to annex, +and had already openly plumed himself upon securing her money! Elisabeth +understood perfectly, and was distinctly amused. She wondered if he +would remember to remind her how she was going to elevate him by her +influence, or if the loss of her money would make him forget even to +simulate sorrow at the loss of herself.</p> + +<p>"I don't know what I shall do," he continued, with tears of vexation in +his eyes; "everybody is expecting our engagement to be announced, and I +can not think what excuses I shall invent. A man looks such a fool when +he has made too sure of a woman!"</p> + +<p>"Doubtless. But that isn't the woman's fault altogether."</p> + +<p>"Yes; it is. If the woman hadn't led him on, the man wouldn't have made +sure of her. You have been unutterably cruel to me—unpardonably cruel; +and I will never forgive you as long as I live."</p> + +<p>Elisabeth winced at this—not at Cecil's refusal to forgive her, but at +the thought that she had<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_329" id="Page_329">[Pg 329]</a></span> placed herself within the reach of his +forgiveness. But she was not penitent—she was only annoyed. Penitence +is the last experience that comes to strong-willed, light-hearted +people, such as Elisabeth; they are so sure they are right at the time, +and they so soon forget about it afterward, that they find no interval +for remorse. Elisabeth was beginning to forgive herself for having +fallen for a time from her high ideal, because she was already beginning +to forget that she had so fallen; life had taught her many things, but +she took it too easily even yet.</p> + +<p>"I have a story to tell you," she said; "a story that will interest you, +if you will listen."</p> + +<p>By this time Cecil's anger was settling down into sulkiness. "I have no +alternative, I suppose."</p> + +<p>Then Elisabeth told him, as briefly as she could, the story of George +Farringdon's son; and, as she spoke, she watched the sulkiness in his +face give place to interest, and the interest to hope, and the hope to +triumph, until the naughty child gradually grew once more into the +similitude of a Greek god.</p> + +<p>"You are right—I am sure you are right," he said when she had finished; +"it all fits in—the date and place of my birth, my parents' poverty and +friendlessness, and the mystery concerning them. Oh! you can not think +what this means to me. To be forever beyond the reach of poverty—to be +able to do whatever I like for the rest of my life—to be counted among +the great of the earth! It is wonderful—wonderful!" And he walked up +and down the room in his excitement, while his voice shook with emotion.</p> + +<p>"I shall have such a glorious time," he went on—"the most glorious time +man ever had! Of course, I shall not live in that horrid Black +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_330" id="Page_330">[Pg 330]</a></span>Country—nobody could expect me to make such a sacrifice as that; but I +shall spend my winters in Italy and my summers in Mayfair, and I shall +forget that the world was ever cold and hard and cruel to me."</p> + +<p>Elisabeth watched him curiously. So he never even thought of her and of +what she was giving up. That his gain was her loss was a matter of no +moment to him—it did not enter into his calculations. She wondered if +he even remembered Quenelda, and what this would mean to her; she +thought not. And this was the man Elisabeth had once delighted to +honour! She could have laughed aloud as she realized what a blind fool +she had been. Were all men like this? she asked herself; for, if so, she +was glad she was too cold to fall in love. It would be terrible indeed +to lay down one's life at the feet of a creature such as this; it was +bad enough to have to lay down one's fortune there!</p> + +<p>Throughout the rest of the interview Cecil lived up to the estimate that +Elisabeth had just formed of his character: he never once remembered +her—never once forgot himself. She explained to him that Christopher +Thornley was the man who would manage all the business part of the +affair for him, and give up the papers, and establish his identity; and +she promised to communicate with Cecil as soon as she received an answer +to the letter she had written to Christopher informing the latter that +she believed she had at last discovered George Farringdon's son.</p> + +<p>Amidst all her sorrow at the anticipation of giving up her kingdom into +the hands of so unfitting a ruler as Cecil, there lurked a pleasurable +consciousness that at last Christopher would recognise her worth, when +he found how inferior her successor was to herself. It was strange how +this desire to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_331" id="Page_331">[Pg 331]</a></span> compel the regard which she had voluntarily forfeited, +had haunted Elisabeth for so many years. Christopher had offended her +past all pardon, she said to herself; nevertheless it annoyed her to +feel that the friendship, which she had taken from him for punitive +purposes, was but a secondary consideration in his eyes after all. She +had long ago succeeded in convincing herself that the grapes of his +affection were too sour to be worth fretting after; but she still wanted +to make him admire her in spite of himself, and to realize that Miss +Elisabeth Farringdon of the Osierfield was a more important personage +than he had considered her to be. Half the pleasure of her success as an +artist had lain in the thought that this at last would convince +Christopher of her right to be admired and obeyed; but she was never +sure that it had actually done so. Through all her triumphal progress he +had been the Mordecai at her gates. She did not often see him, it is +true; but when she did, she was acutely conscious that his attitude +toward her was different from the attitude of the rest of the world, and +that—instead of offering her unlimited praise and adulation—he saw her +weaknesses as clearly now she was a great lady as he had done when she +was a little girl.</p> + +<p>And herein Elisabeth's intuition was not at fault; her failings were +actually more patent to Christopher than to the world at large. But here +her perception ended; and she did not see, further, that it was because +Christopher had formed such a high ideal of her, that he minded so much +when she fell short of it. She had not yet grasped the truth that +whereas the more a woman loves a man the easier she finds it to forgive +his faults, the more a man<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_332" id="Page_332">[Pg 332]</a></span> loves a woman the harder he finds it to +overlook her shortcomings. A woman merely requires the man she loves to +be true to her; while a man demands that the woman he loves shall be +true to herself—or, rather, to that ideal of her which in his own mind +he has set up and worshipped.</p> + +<p>Her consciousness of Christopher's disapproval of the easy-going, +Bohemian fashion in which she had chosen to walk through life, made +Elisabeth intensely angry; though she would have died rather than let +him know it. How dared this one man show himself superior to her, when +she had the world at her feet? It was insupportable! She said but little +to him, and he said still less to her, and what they did say was usually +limited to the affairs of the Osierfield; nevertheless Elisabeth +persistently weighed herself in Christopher's balances, and measured +herself according to Christopher's measures; and, as she did so, wrote +<i>Tekel</i> opposite her own name. And for this she refused to forgive him. +She assured herself that his balances were false, and his measures +impossible, and his judgments hard in the extreme; and when she had done +so, she began to try herself thereby again, and hated him afresh because +she fell so far short of them.</p> + +<p>But now he was going to see her in a new light; if he declined to admire +her in prosperity, he should be compelled to respect her in adversity; +for she made up her mind she would bear her reverses like a Spartan, if +only for the sake of proving to him that she was made of better material +than he, in his calm superiority, had supposed. When he saw for himself +how plucky she could be, and how little she really cared for outside +things, he might at last discover that she was not as unworthy of his +regard<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_333" id="Page_333">[Pg 333]</a></span> as he had once assumed, and might even want to be friends with +her again; and then she would throw his friendship back again in his +face, as he had once thrown hers, and teach him that it was possible +even for self-righteous people to make mistakes which were past +repairing. It would do him a world of good, Elisabeth thought, to find +out—too late—that he had misjudged her, and that other people besides +himself had virtues and excellences; and it comforted her, in the midst +of her adversities, to contemplate the punishment which was being +reserved for Christopher, when George Farringdon's son came into his +own. And she never guessed—how could she?—that when at last George +Farringdon's son did come into his own, there would be no Christopher +Thornley serving under him at the Osierfield; and that the cup of +remorse, which she was so busily preparing, was for her own drinking and +not for Christopher's.</p> + +<p>Christopher's expected answer to her epistle was, however, not +forthcoming. The following morning Elisabeth received a letter from one +of the clerks at the Osierfield, informing her that Mr. Thornley +returned from his tour in Germany a week ago; and that immediately on +his return he was seized with a severe attack of pneumonia—the result +of a neglected cold—and was now lying seriously ill at his house in +Sedgehill. In order to complete the purchase of a piece of land for the +enlargement of the works, which Mr. Thornley had arranged to buy before +he went away, it was necessary (the clerk went on to say) to see the +plans of the Osierfield; and these were locked up in the private safe at +the manager's house, to which only Christopher and Elisabeth possessed +keys. Therefore, as the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_334" id="Page_334">[Pg 334]</a></span>manager was delirious and quite incapable of +attending to business of any kind, the clerk begged Miss Farringdon to +come down at once and take the plans out of the safe; as the +negotiations could not be completed until this was done.</p> + +<p>For an instant the old instinct of tenderness toward any one who was +weak or suffering welled up in Elisabeth's soul, and she longed to go to +her old playmate and help and comfort him; but then came the remembrance +of how once before, long ago, she had been ready to help and comfort +Christopher, and he had wanted neither her help nor her comfort; so she +hardened her heart against him, and proudly said to herself that if +Christopher could do without her she could do without Christopher.</p> + +<p>That summer's day was one which Elisabeth could never forget as long as +she lived; it stood out from the rest of her life, and would so stand +out forever. We all know such days as this—days which place a gulf, +that can never be passed over, between their before and after. She +travelled down to Sedgehill by a morning train; and her heart was heavy +within her as she saw how beautiful the country looked in the summer +sunshine, and realized that the home she loved was to be taken away from +her and given to another. Somehow life had not brought her all that she +had expected from it, and yet she did not see wherein she herself had +been to blame. She had neither loved nor hoarded her money, but had used +it for the good of others to the best of her knowledge; yet it was to be +taken from her. She had not hidden her talent in a napkin, but had +cultivated it to the height of her powers; yet her fame was cold and +dreary to her, and her greatness turned to ashes in her hands. She had<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_335" id="Page_335">[Pg 335]</a></span> +been ready to give love in full measure and running over to any one who +needed it; yet her heart had asked in vain for something to fill it, and +in spite of all its longings had been sent empty away. She had failed +all along the line to get the best out of life; and yet she did not see +how she could have acted differently. Surely it was Fate, and not +herself, that was to blame for her failure.</p> + +<p>When she arrived at Sedgehill she drove straight to Christopher's house, +and learned from the nurse who was attending him how serious his illness +was—not so much on account of the violence of the cold which he had +taken in Germany, as from the fact that his vitality was too feeble to +resist it. But she could not guess—and there was no one to tell +her—that his vitality had been lowered by her unkindness to him, and +that it was she who had deliberately snapped the mainspring of +Christopher's life. It was no use anybody's seeing him, the nurse said, +as he was delirious and knew no one; but if he regained consciousness, +she would summon Miss Farringdon at once.</p> + +<p>Then Elisabeth went alone into the big, oak-panelled dining-room, with +the crape masks before its windows, and opened the safe.</p> + +<p>She could not find the plans at once, as she did not know exactly where +to look for them; and as she was searching for them among various +papers, she came upon a letter addressed to herself in Christopher's +handwriting. She opened it with her usual carelessness, without +perceiving that it bore the inscription "Not to be given to Miss +Farringdon until after my death"; and when she had begun to read it, she +could not have left off to save her life—being a woman. And this was +what she read:<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_336" id="Page_336">[Pg 336]</a></span></p> + +<p>"<span class="smcap">My Darling</span>—for so I may call you at last, since you will not read this +letter until after I am dead;</p> + +<p>"There are two things that I want to tell you. <i>First</i>, that I love you, +and always have loved you, and always shall love you to all eternity. +But how could I say this to you, sweetheart, in the days when my love +spelled poverty for us both? And how could I say it when you became one +of the richest women in Mershire, and I only the paid manager of your +works? Nevertheless I should have said it in time, when you had seen +more of the world and were capable of choosing your own life for +yourself, had I thought there was any chance of your caring for me; for +no man has ever loved you as I have loved you, Elisabeth, nor ever will. +You had a right to know what was yours, when you were old enough to +decide what to do with it, and to take or leave it as you thought fit; +and no one else had the right to decide this for you. But when you so +misjudged me about my journey to Australia, I understood that it was I +myself, and not my position, that stood between us; and that your nature +and mine were so different, and our ideas so far apart, that it was not +in my power to make you happy, though I would have died to do so. So I +went out of your life, for fear I should spoil it; and I have kept out +of your life ever since, because I know you are happier without me; for +I do so want you to be happy, dear.</p> + +<p>"There is one other thing I have to tell you: I am George Farringdon's +son. I shouldn't have bothered you with this, only I feel it is +necessary—after I am gone—for you to know the truth, lest any impostor +should turn up and take your property<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_337" id="Page_337">[Pg 337]</a></span> from you. Of course, as long as I +am alive I can keep the secret, and yet take care that no one else comes +forward in my place; and I have made a will leaving everything I possess +to you. But when I am gone, you must hold the proofs of who was really +the person who stood between you and the Farringdon property. I never +found it out until my uncle died; I believed, as everybody else +believed, that the lost heir was somewhere in Australia. But on my +uncle's death I found a confession from him—which is in this safe, +along with my parents' marriage certificate and all the other proofs of +my identity—saying how his sister told him on her death-bed that, when +George Farringdon ran away from home, he married her, and took her out +with him to Australia. They had a hard life, and lost all their children +except myself; and then my father died, leaving my poor mother almost +penniless. She survived him only long enough to come back to England, +and give her child into her brother's charge. My uncle went on to say +that he kept my identity a secret, and called me by an assumed name, as +he was afraid that Miss Farringdon would send both him and me about our +business if she knew the truth; as in those days she was very bitter +against the man who had jilted her, and would have been still bitterer +had she known he had thrown her over for the daughter of her father's +manager. When Maria Farringdon died and showed, by her will, that at +last she had forgiven her old lover, my uncle's mind was completely +gone; and it was not until after his death that I discovered the papers +which put me in possession of the facts of the case.</p> + +<p>"By that time I had learned, beyond all disputing, that I was too dull +and stupid ever to win<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_338" id="Page_338">[Pg 338]</a></span> your love. I only cared for money that it might +enable me to make you happy; and if you could be happier without me than +with me, who was I that I should complain? At any rate, it was given to +me to insure your happiness; and that was enough for me. And you said +that I didn't care what became of you, as long as I laid up for myself a +nice little nest-egg in heaven! Sweetheart, I think you did me an +injustice. So be happy, my dearest, with the Willows and the Osierfield +and all the dear old things which you and I have loved so well; and +remember that you must never pity me. I wanted you to be happy more than +I wanted anything else in the world, and no man is to be pitied who has +succeeded in getting what he wanted most.</p> + +<p class="sign"> +"Yours, my darling, for time and eternity,<br /> +"<span class="smcap">Christopher Farringdon.</span>"</p> + +<p>Then at last Elisabeth's eyes were opened, and for the first time in her +life she saw clearly. So Christopher had loved her all along; she knew +the truth at last, and with it she also knew that she had always loved +him; that throughout her life's story there never had been—never could +be—any man but Christopher. Until he told her that he loved her, her +love for him had been a fountain sealed; but at his word it became a +well of living water, flooding her whole soul and turning the desert of +her life into a garden.</p> + +<p>At first she was overpowered with the joy of it; she was upheld by that +strange feeling of exaltation which comes to all of us when we realize +for a moment our immortality, and feel that even death itself is +powerless to hurt us. Christopher was dying, but what did that signify? +He loved her—that was the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_339" id="Page_339">[Pg 339]</a></span> only thing that really mattered—and they +would have the whole of eternity in which to tell their love. For the +second time in her life she came face to face with the fact that there +was a stronger Will than her own guiding and ruling her; that, in spite +of all her power and ability and self-reliance, the best things in her +life were not of herself but were from outside. As long ago in St. +Peter's Church she had learned that religion was God's Voice calling to +her, she now learned that love was Christopher's voice calling to her; +and that her own strength and cleverness, of which she had been so +proud, counted for less than nothing. To her who longed to give, was +given; she who desired to love, was beloved; she who aspired to teach, +had been taught. That strong will of hers, which had once been so +dominant, had suddenly fallen down powerless; she no longer wanted to +have her own way—she wanted to have Christopher's. Her warfare against +him was at last accomplished. To the end of her days she knew she would +go on weighing herself in his balances, and measuring herself according +to his measures; but now she would do so willingly, choosing to be +guided by his wisdom rather than her own, for she no more belonged to +herself but to him. The feeling of unrest, which had oppressed her for +so many years, now fell from her like a cast-off garment. Christopher +was the answer to her life's problem, the fulfilment of her heart's +desire; and although she might be obliged to go down again into the +valley of the shadow, she could never forget that she had once stood +upon the mountain-top and had beheld the glory of the promised land.</p> + +<p>And she never remembered that now her fortune was secured to her, and +that the Willows and the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_340" id="Page_340">[Pg 340]</a></span> Osierfield would always be hers; even these +were henceforth of no moment to her, save as monuments of Christopher's +love.</p> + +<p>So in the dingy dining-room, on that hot summer's afternoon, Elisabeth +Farringdon became a new creature. The old domineering arrogance passed +away forever; and from its ashes there arose another Elisabeth, who out +of weakness was made stronger than she had ever been in her strength—an +Elisabeth who had attained to the victory of the vanquished, and who had +tasted the triumph of defeat. But in all her exaltation she knew—though +for the moment the knowledge could not hurt her—that her heart would be +broken by Christopher's death. Through the long night of her ignorance +and self-will and unsatisfied idealism she had wrestled with the angel +that she might behold the Best, and had prayed that it might be granted +unto her to see the Vision Beautiful. At last she had prevailed; and the +day for which she had so longed was breaking, and transfiguring the +common world with its marvellous light. But the angel-hand had touched +her, and she no longer stood upright and self-reliant, but was bound to +halt and walk lamely on her way until she stood by Christopher's side +again.</p> + +<p>This exalted mood did not last for long. As she sat in the gloomy room +and watched the blazing sunshine forcing its way through the darkened +windows, her eye suddenly fell upon two notches cut in the doorway, +where she and Christopher had once measured themselves when they were +children; and the familiar sight of these two little notches, made by +Christopher's knife so long ago, awoke in her heart the purely human +longing for him as the friend and comrade she had known and looked up to +all<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_341" id="Page_341">[Pg 341]</a></span> her life. And with this longing came the terrible thought of how +she had hurt and misunderstood and misjudged him, and of how it was now +too late for her to make up to him in this life for all the happiness of +which she had defrauded him in her careless pride. Then, for the first +time since she was born, Elisabeth put her lips to the cup of remorse, +and found it very bitter to the taste. She had been so full of plans for +comforting mankind and helping the whole world; yet she had utterly +failed toward the only person whom it had been in her power actually to +help and comfort; and her heart echoed the wail of the most beautiful +love-song ever written—"They made me the keeper of the vineyards; but +mine own vineyard have I not kept."</p> + +<p>As she was sitting, bowed down in utter anguish of spirit while the +waves of remorse flooded her soul, the door opened and the nurse came +in.</p> + +<p>"Mr. Thornley is conscious now, and is asking for you, Miss Farringdon," +she said.</p> + +<p>Elisabeth started up, her face aglow with new hope. It was so natural to +her not to be cast down for long. "Oh! I am so glad. I want dreadfully +to see him, I have so much to say to him. But I'll promise not to tire +or excite him. Tell me, how long may I stay with him, Nurse, and how +quiet must I be?"</p> + +<p>The nurse smiled sadly. "It won't matter how long you stay or what you +say, Miss Farringdon; I don't think it is possible for anything to hurt +or help him now; for I am afraid, whatever happens, he can not possibly +recover."</p> + +<p>As she went upstairs Elisabeth kept saying to herself, "I am going to +see the real Christopher for the first time"; and she felt the old, shy +fear of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_342" id="Page_342">[Pg 342]</a></span> him that she had felt long ago when Richard Smallwood was +stricken. But when she entered the room and saw the worn, white face on +the pillow, with the kind smile she knew so well, she completely forgot +her shyness, and only remembered that Christopher was in need of her, +and that she would gladly give her life for his if she could.</p> + +<p>"Kiss me, my darling," he said, holding out his arms; and she knew by +the look in his eyes that every word of his letter was true. "I am too +tired to pretend any more that I don't love you. And it can't matter now +whether you know or not, it is so near the end."</p> + +<p>Elisabeth put her strong arms round him, and kissed him as he asked. +"Chris, dear," she whispered, "I want to tell you that I love you, and +that I've always loved you, and that I always shall love you; but I've +only just found it out."</p> + +<p>Christopher was silent for a moment, and clasped her very close. But he +was not so much surprised as he would have been had Elisabeth made such +an astounding revelation to him in the days of his health. When one is +drawing near to the solution of the Great Mystery, one loses the power +of wondering at anything.</p> + +<p>"How did you find it out, my dearest?" he asked at last.</p> + +<p>"Through finding out that you loved me. It seems to me that my love was +always lying in the bank at your account, but until you gave a cheque +for it you couldn't get at it. And the cheque was my knowing that you +cared for me."</p> + +<p>"And how did you find that out, Betty?"</p> + +<p>"I was rummaging in the safe just now for the plans of the Osierfield, +and I came upon your letter."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_343" id="Page_343">[Pg 343]</a></span></p> + +<p>"I didn't mean you to read that while I was alive; but, all the same, I +think I am rather glad that you did."</p> + +<p>"And I am glad, too. I wish I hadn't always been so horrid to you, +Chris; but I believe I should have loved you all the time, if only you +had given me the chance. Still, I was horrid—dreadfully horrid; and now +it is too late to make it up to you." And Elisabeth's eyes filled with +tears.</p> + +<p>"Don't cry, my darling—please don't cry. And, besides, you have made it +up to me by loving me now. I am glad you understand at last, Betty; I +did so hope you would some day."</p> + +<p>"And you forgive me for having been so vile?"</p> + +<p>"There is nothing to forgive, sweetheart; it was my fault for not making +you understand; but I did it for the best, though I seem to have made a +mess of it."</p> + +<p>"And you like me just the same as you did before I was unkind to you?"</p> + +<p>"My dear, don't you know?"</p> + +<p>"You see, Chris, I was wanting you to be nice to me all the +time—nothing else satisfied me instead of you. And when you seemed not +to like me any longer, but to care for doing your duty more than for +being with me, I got sore and angry, and decided to punish you for +making a place for yourself in my heart and then refusing to fill it."</p> + +<p>"Well, you did what you decided, as you generally do; there is no doubt +of that. You were always very prone to administer justice and to +maintain truth, Elisabeth, and you certainly never spared the rod as far +as I was concerned."</p> + +<p>"But now I see that I was wrong; I understand that it was because you +cared so much for abstract<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_344" id="Page_344">[Pg 344]</a></span> right, that you were able to care so much +for me; a lower nature would have given me a lower love; and if only we +could go through it all again, I should want you to go to Australia +after George Farringdon's son."</p> + +<p>Christopher's thin fingers wandered over Elisabeth's hair; and as they +did so he remembered, with tender amusement, how often he had comforted +her on account of her dark locks. Now one or two gray hairs were +beginning to show through the brown ones, and it struck him with a pang +that he would no longer be here to comfort her on account of those; for +he knew that Elisabeth was the type of woman who would require +consolation on that score, and that he was the man who could effectually +have administered it.</p> + +<p>"I can see now," Elisabeth went on, "how much more important it is what +a man is than what a man says, though I used to think that words were +everything, and that people didn't feel what they didn't talk about. You +used to disappoint me because you said so little; but, all the same, +your character influenced me without my knowing it; and whatever good +there is in me, comes from my having known you and seen you live up to +your own ideals. People wonder that worldly things attract me so little, +and that my successes haven't turned my head; so they would have done, +probably, if I had never met you; but having once seen in you what the +ideal life is, I couldn't help despising lower things, though I tried my +hardest not to despise them. Nobody who had once been with you, and +looked even for a minute at life through your eyes, could ever care +again for anything that was mean or sordid or paltry. Darling, don't you +understand that my knowing you<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_345" id="Page_345">[Pg 345]</a></span> made me better than I tried to +be—better even than I wanted to be; and that all my life I shall be a +truer woman because of you?"</p> + +<p>But by that time the stupendous effort which Christopher had made for +Elisabeth's sake had exhausted itself, and he fell back upon his +pillows, white to the lips, and too weak to say another word. Yet not +even the great Shadow could cloud the love that shone in his eyes, as he +looked at Elisabeth's eager face, and listened to the voice for which +his soul had hungered so long. The sight of his weakness brought her +down to earth again more effectually than any words could have done; and +with an exceeding bitter cry she hid her face in her arms and sobbed +aloud—</p> + +<p>"Oh! my darling, my darling, come back to me; I love you so that I can +not let you go. The angels can do quite well without you in heaven, but +I can not do without you here. Oh! Chris, don't go away and leave me, +just now that we've learned to understand one another. I'll be good all +my life, and do everything that you tell me, if only you won't go away. +My dearest, I love you so—I love you so; and I've nobody in the world +but you."</p> + +<p>Christopher made another great effort to take her in his arms and +comfort her; but it was too much for him, and he fainted away.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_346" id="Page_346">[Pg 346]</a></span></p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XVIII" id="CHAPTER_XVIII"></a><a href="#CONTENTS">CHAPTER XVIII</a></h2> + +<h3>THE OTHER SIDE OF THE HILLS</h3> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Shall I e'er love thee less fondly than now, dear?<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Tell me if e'er my devotion can die?<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Never until thou shalt cease to be thou, dear;<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Never until I no longer am I.<br /></span> +</div></div> + + +<p>Whether the doctors were right when they talked of the renewed desire to +live producing fresh vitality, or whether the wise man knew best after +all when he said that love is stronger than death, who can say? Anyway, +the fact remained that Christopher responded—as he had ever +responded—to Elisabeth's cry for help, and came back from the very +gates of the grave at her bidding. He had never failed her yet, and he +did not fail her now.</p> + +<p>The days of his recovery were wonderful days to Elisabeth. It was so +strange and new to her to be doing another person's will, and thinking +another person's thoughts, and seeing life through another person's +eyes; it completely altered the perspective of everything. And there was +nothing strained about it, which was a good thing, as Elisabeth was too +light-hearted to stand any strain for long; the old comradeship still +existed between them, giving breadth to a love which the new +relationship had made so deep.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_347" id="Page_347">[Pg 347]</a></span></p> + +<p>And it was very wonderful to Christopher, also, to find himself in the +sunshine at last after so many years of shadowland. At first the light +almost dazzled him, he was so unaccustomed to it; but as he gradually +became used to the new feeling of being happy, his nature responded to +the atmosphere of warmth and brightness, and opened as a flower in the +sun. As it was strange to Elisabeth to find herself living and moving +and having her being in another's personality, so it was strange to +Christopher to find another's personality merged in his. He had lived so +entirely for other people that it was a great change to find another +person living entirely for him; and it was a change that was wholly +beneficial. As his nature deepened Elisabeth's, so her nature expanded +his; and each was the better for the influence of the other, as each was +the complement of the other. So after a time Christopher grew almost as +light-hearted as Elisabeth, while Elisabeth grew almost as +tender-hearted as Christopher. For both of them the former things had +passed away, and all things were made new.</p> + +<p>It was beautiful weather, too, which helped to increase their happiness; +that still, full, green weather, which sometimes comes in the late +summer, satisfying men's souls with its peaceful perfectness; when the +year is too old to be disturbed by the restless hope of spring, too +young to be depressed by the chilling dread of autumn, and so just +touches the fringe of that eternity which has no end neither any +beginning. The fine weather hastened Christopher's recovery; and, as he +gained strength, he and Elisabeth spent much time in the old garden, +looking toward the Welsh mountains.</p> + +<p>"So we have come to the country on the other<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_348" id="Page_348">[Pg 348]</a></span> side of the hills at +last," she said to him, as they were watching one of the wonderful +Mershire sunsets and drinking in its beauty. "I always knew it was +there, but sometimes I gave up all hope of ever finding it for myself."</p> + +<p>Christopher took her hand and began playing with the capable +artist-fingers. "And is it as nice a country as you expected, +sweetheart?"</p> + +<p>"As nice as I expected? I should just think it is. I knew that in the +country over the hills I should find all the beautiful things I had +imagined as a child and all the lovely things I had longed for as a +woman; and that, if only I could reach it, all the fairy-tales would +come true. But now that I have reached it, I find that the fairy-tales +fell far short of the reality, and that it is a million times nicer than +I ever imagined anything could be."</p> + +<p>"Darling, I am glad you are so happy. But it beats me how such a stupid +fellow as I am can make you so."</p> + +<p>"Well, you do, and that's all that matters. Nobody can tell how they do +things; they only know that they can do them. I don't know how I can +paint pictures any more than you know how you can turn smoky ironworks +into the country over the hills. But we can, and do; which shows what +clever people we are, in spite of ourselves."</p> + +<p>"I think the cleverness lies with you in both cases—in your wonderful +powers of imagination, my dear."</p> + +<p>"Do you? Then that shows how little you know about it."</p> + +<p>Christopher put his arm round her. "I always was stupid, you know; you +have told me so with considerable frequency."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_349" id="Page_349">[Pg 349]</a></span></p> + +<p>"Oh! so you were; but you were never worse than stupid."</p> + +<p>"That's a good thing; for stupidity is a misfortune rather than a +fault."</p> + +<p>"Now I was worse than stupid—much worse," continued Elisabeth gravely; +"but I never was actually stupid."</p> + +<p>"Weren't you? Don't be too sure of that. I don't wish to hurt your +feelings, sweetheart, or to make envious rents in your panoply of +wisdom; but, do you know, you struck me now and again as being a +shade—we will not say stupid, but dense?"</p> + +<p>"When I thought you didn't like me because you went to Australia, you +mean?"</p> + +<p>"That was one of the occasions when your acumen seemed to be slightly at +fault. And there were others."</p> + +<p>Elisabeth looked thoughtful. "I really did think you didn't like me +then."</p> + +<p>"Denseness, my dear Elisabeth—distinct denseness. It would be gross +flattery to call it by any other name."</p> + +<p>"But you never told me you liked me."</p> + +<p>"If I had, and you had then thought I did not, you would have been +suffering from deafness, not denseness. You are confusing terms."</p> + +<p>"Well, then, I'll give in and say I was dense. But I was worse than +that: I was positively horrid as well."</p> + +<p>"Not horrid, Betty; you couldn't be horrid if you tried. Perhaps you +were a little hard on me; but it's all over and done with now, and you +needn't bother yourself any more about it."</p> + +<p>"But I ought to bother about it if I intend to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_350" id="Page_350">[Pg 350]</a></span> make a trustworthy +step-ladder out of my dead selves to upper storeys."</p> + +<p>"A trustworthy fire-escape, you mean; but I won't have it. You sha'n't +have any dead selves, my dear, because I shall insist on keeping them +all alive by artificial respiration, or restoration from drowning, or +something of that kind. Not one of them shall die with my permission; +remember that. I'm much too fond of them."</p> + +<p>"You silly boy! You'll never train me and discipline me properly if you +go on in this way."</p> + +<p>"Hang it all, Betty! Who wants to train and discipline you? Certainly +not I. I am wise enough to let well—or rather perfection—alone."</p> + +<p>Elisabeth nestled up to Christopher. "But I'm not perfection, Chris; you +know that as well as I do."</p> + +<p>"Probably I shouldn't love you so much if you were; so please don't +reform, dear."</p> + +<p>"And you like me just as I am?"</p> + +<p>"Precisely. I should break my heart if you became in any way different +from what you are now."</p> + +<p>"But you mustn't break your heart; it belongs to me, and I won't have +you smashing up my property."</p> + +<p>"I gave it to you, it is true; but the copyright is still mine. The +copyright of letters that I wrote to you is mine; and I believe the law +of copyright is the same with regard to hearts as to letters."</p> + +<p>"Well, anyhow, I've written my name all over it."</p> + +<p>"I know you have; and it was very untidy of you, my dearest. Once would +have been enough to show that it belonged to you; but you weren't +content with that: you scribbled all over every available<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_351" id="Page_351">[Pg 351]</a></span> space, until +there was no room left even for advertisements; and now nobody else will +ever be able to write another name upon it as long as I live."</p> + +<p>"I'm glad of that; I wouldn't have anybody else's name upon it for +anything. And I'm glad that you like me just as I am, and don't want me +to be different."</p> + +<p>"Heaven forbid!"</p> + +<p>"But still I was horrid to you once, Chris, however you may try to gloss +it over. My dear, my dear, I don't know how I ever could have been +unkind to you; but I was."</p> + +<p>"Never mind, sweetheart; it is ancient history now, and who bothers +about ancient history? Did you ever meet anybody who fretted over the +overthrow of Carthage, or made a trouble of the siege of Troy?"</p> + +<p>"No," Elisabeth truthfully replied; "and I'm really nice to you now, +whatever I may have been before. Don't you think I am?"</p> + +<p>"I should just think you are, Betty; a thousand times nicer than I +deserve, and I am becoming most horribly conceited in consequence."</p> + +<p>"And, after all, I agree with the prophet Ezekiel that if people are +nice at the end, it doesn't much matter how disagreeable they have been +in the meantime. He doesn't put it quite in that way, but the sentiment +is the same. I suit you down to the ground now, don't I, Chris?"</p> + +<p>"You do, my darling; and up to the sky, and beyond." And Christopher +drew her still closer to him and kissed her.</p> + +<p>After a minute's silence Elisabeth whispered—</p> + +<p>"When one is as divinely happy as this, isn't it difficult to realize +that the earth will ever be earthy<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_352" id="Page_352">[Pg 352]</a></span> again, and the butter turnipy, and +things like that? Yet they will be."</p> + +<p>"But never quite as earthy or quite as turnipy as they were before; +that's just the difference."</p> + +<p>After playing for a few minutes with Christopher's watch-chain, +Elisabeth suddenly remarked—</p> + +<p>"You never really appreciated my pictures, Chris. You never did me +justice as an artist, though you did me far more than justice as a +woman. Why was that?"</p> + +<p>"Didn't I? I'm sorry. Nevertheless, I'm not sure that you are right. I +was always intensely interested in your pictures because they were +yours, quite apart from their own undoubted merits."</p> + +<p>"That was just it; you admired my pictures because they were painted by +me, while you really ought to have admired me because I had painted the +pictures."</p> + +<p>A look of amusement stole over Christopher's face. "Then I fell short of +your requirements, dear heart; for, as far as you and your works were +concerned, I certainly never committed the sin of worshipping the +creature rather than the creator."</p> + +<p>"But there was a time when I wanted you to do so."</p> + +<p>"As a matter of fact," said Christopher thoughtfully, "I don't believe a +man who loves a woman can ever appreciate her genius properly, because +love is greater than genius, and so the greater swallows up the less. In +the eyes of the world, her genius is the one thing which places a woman +of genius above her fellows, and the world worships it accordingly. But +in the eyes of the man who loves her, she is already placed so far above +her fellows that her genius makes no difference to her altitude.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_353" id="Page_353">[Pg 353]</a></span> Thirty +feet makes all the difference in the height of a weather-cock, but none +at all in the distance between the earth and a fixed star."</p> + +<p>"What a nice thing to say! I adore you when you say things like that."</p> + +<p>Christopher continued: "You see, the man is interested in the woman's +works of art simply because they are hers; just as he is interested in +the rustle of her silk petticoat simply because it is hers. Possibly he +is more interested in the latter, because men can paint pictures +sometimes, and they can never rustle silk petticoats properly. You are +right in thinking that the world adores you for the sake of your +creations, while I adore your creations for the sake of you; but you +must also remember that the world would cease to worship you if your +genius began to decline, while I should love you just the same if you +took to painting sign-posts and illustrating Christmas cards—even if +you became an impressionist."</p> + +<p>"What a dear boy you are! You really are the greatest comfort to me. I +didn't always feel like this, but now you satisfy me completely, and +fill up every crevice of my soul. There isn't a little space anywhere in +my mind or heart or spirit that isn't simply bursting with you." And +Elisabeth laughed a low laugh of perfect contentment.</p> + +<p>"My darling, how I love you!" And Christopher also was content.</p> + +<p>Then there was another silence, which Christopher broke at last by +saying—</p> + +<p>"What is the matter, Betty?"</p> + +<p>"There isn't anything the matter. How should there be?"</p> + +<p>"Oh, yes, there is. Do you think I have studied<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_354" id="Page_354">[Pg 354]</a></span> your face for over +thirty years, my dear, without knowing every shade of difference in its +expression? Have I said anything to vex you?"</p> + +<p>"No, no; how could I be vexed with you, Chris, when you are so good to +me? I am horrid enough, goodness knows, but not horrid enough for that."</p> + +<p>"Then what is it? Tell me, dear, and see if I can't help?"</p> + +<p>Elisabeth sighed. "I was thinking that there is really no going back, +however much we may pretend that there is. What we have done we have +done, and what we have left undone we have left undone; and there is no +blotting out the story of past years. We may write new stories, perhaps, +and try to write better ones, but the old ones are written beyond +altering, and must stand for ever. You have been divinely good to me, +Chris, and you never remind me even by a look how I hurt you and +misjudged you in the old days. But the fact remains that I did both; and +nothing can ever alter that."</p> + +<p>"Silly little child, it's all over and past now! I've forgotten it, and +you must forget it too."</p> + +<p>"I can't forget it; that's just the thing. I spoiled your life for the +best ten years of it; and now, though I would give everything that I +possess to restore those years to you, I can't restore them, or make +them up to you for the loss of them. That's what hurts so dreadfully."</p> + +<p>Christopher looked at her with a great pity shining in his eyes. He +longed to save from all suffering the woman he loved; but he could not +save her from the irrevocableness of her own actions, strive as he +would; which was perhaps the best thing in the world for her, and for +all of us. Human love would gladly shield us from the consequences of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_355" id="Page_355">[Pg 355]</a></span> +what we have done; but Divine Love knows better. What we have written, +we have written on the page of life; and neither our own tears, nor the +tears of those who love us better than we love ourselves, can blot it +out. For the first time in her easy, self-confident career, Elisabeth +Farringdon was brought face to face with this merciless truth; and she +trembled before it. It was just because Christopher was so ready to +forgive her, that she found it impossible to forgive herself.</p> + +<p>"I always belonged to you, you see, dear," Christopher said very gently, +"and you had the right to do what you liked with your own. I had given +you the right of my own free will."</p> + +<p>"But you couldn't give me the right to do what was wrong. Nobody can do +that. I did what was wrong, and now I must be punished for it."</p> + +<p>"Not if I can help it, sweetheart. You shall never be punished for +anything if I can bear the punishment for you."</p> + +<p>"You can't help it, Chris; that's just the point. And I am being +punished in the way that hurts most. All my life I thought of myself, +and my own success, and how I was going to do this and that and the +other, and be happy and clever and good. But suddenly everything has +changed. I no longer care about being happy myself; I only want you to +be happy; and yet I know that for ten long years I deliberately +prevented you from being happy. Don't you see, dear, how terrible the +punishment is? The thing I care for most in the whole world is your +happiness; and the fact remains, and will always remain, that that was +the thing which I destroyed with my own hands, because I was cruel and +selfish and cold."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_356" id="Page_356">[Pg 356]</a></span></p> + +<p>"Still, I am happy enough now, Betty—happy enough to make up for all +that went before."</p> + +<p>"But I can never give you back those ten years," said Elisabeth, with a +sob in her voice—"never as long as I live. Oh! Chris, I see now how +horrid I was; though all the time I thought I was being so good, that I +looked down upon the women who I considered had lower ideals than I had. +I built myself an altar of stone, and offered up your life upon it, and +then commended myself when the incense rose up to heaven; and I never +found out that the sacrifice was all yours, and that there was nothing +of mine upon the altar at all."</p> + +<p>"Never mind, darling; there isn't going to be a yours and mine any more, +you know. All things are ours, and we are beginning a new life +together."</p> + +<p>Elisabeth put both arms round his neck and kissed him of her own accord. +"My dearest," she whispered, "how can I ever love you enough for being +so good to me?"</p> + +<p>But while Christopher and Elisabeth were walking across enchanted +ground, Cecil Farquhar was having a hard time. Elisabeth had written to +tell him the actual facts of the case almost as soon as she knew them +herself; and he could not forgive her for first raising his hopes and +then dashing them to the ground. And there is no denying that he had +somewhat against her; for she had twice played him this trick—first as +regarded herself, and then as regarded her fortune. That she had not +been altogether to blame—that she had deluded herself in both cases as +effectually as she had deluded him—was no consolation as far as he was +concerned; his egoism took no account of her motives—it only resented +the results. Quenelda did all in her power to comfort him, but<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_357" id="Page_357">[Pg 357]</a></span> she +found it uphill work. She gave him love in full measure; but, as it +happened, money and not love was the thing he most wanted, and that was +not hers to bestow. He still cared for her more than he cared for +anybody (though not for anything) else in the world; it was not that he +loved Cæsar less but Rome more, Cecil's being one of the natures to whom +Rome would always appeal more powerfully than Cæsar. His life did +consist in the things which he had; and, when these failed, nothing else +could make up to him for them. Neither Christopher nor Elisabeth was +capable of understanding how much mere money meant to Farquhar; they had +no conception of how bitter was his disappointment on knowing that he +was not, after all, the lost heir to the Farringdon property. And who +would blame them for this? Does one blame a man, who takes a dirty bone +away from a dog, for not entering into the dog's feelings on the matter? +Nevertheless, that bone is to the dog what fame is to the poet and glory +to the soldier. One can but enjoy and suffer according to one's nature.</p> + +<p>It happened, by an odd coincidence, that the mystery of Cecil's +parentage was cleared up shortly after Elisabeth's false alarm on that +score; and his paternal grandfather was discovered in the shape of a +retired shopkeeper at Surbiton of the name of Biggs, who had been cursed +with an unsatisfactory son. When in due time this worthy man was +gathered to his fathers, he left a comfortable little fortune to his +long-lost grandson; whereupon Cecil married Quenelda, and continued to +make art his profession, while his recreation took the form of +believing—and retailing his belief to anybody who had time and patience +to listen to it—that the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_358" id="Page_358">[Pg 358]</a></span>Farringdons of Sedgehill had, by foul means, +ousted him from his rightful position, and that, but for their +dishonesty, he would have been one of the richest men in Mershire. And +this grievance—as is the way of grievances—never failed to be a source +of unlimited pleasure and comfort to Cecil Farquhar.</p> + +<p>But in the meantime, when the shock of disappointment was still fresh, +he wrote sundry scathing letters to Miss Elisabeth Farringdon, which she +in turn showed to Christopher, rousing the fury of the latter thereby.</p> + +<p>"He is a cad—a low cad!" exclaimed Christopher, after the perusal of +one of these epistles; "and I should like to tell him what I think of +him, and then kick him."</p> + +<p>Elisabeth laughed; she always enjoyed making Christopher angry. "He +wanted to marry me," she remarked, by way of adding fuel to the flames.</p> + +<p>"Confounded impudence on his part!" muttered Christopher.</p> + +<p>"But he left off when he found out that I hadn't got any money."</p> + +<p>"Worse impudence, confound him!"</p> + +<p>"Oh! I wish you could have seen him when I told him that the money was +not really mine," continued Elisabeth, bubbling over with mirth at the +recollection; "he cooled down so very quickly, and so rapidly turned his +thoughts in another direction. Don't you know what it is to bite a +gooseberry at the front door while it pops out at the back? Well, Cecil +Farquhar's love-making was just like that. It really was a fine sight!"</p> + +<p>"The brute!"</p> + +<p>"Never mind about him, dear! I'm tired of him."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_359" id="Page_359">[Pg 359]</a></span></p> + +<p>"But I do mind when people dare to be impertinent to you. I can't help +minding," Christopher persisted.</p> + +<p>"Then go on minding, if you want to, darling—only don't let us waste +our time in talking about him. There's such a lot to talk about that is +really important—why you said so-and-so, and how you felt when I said +so-and-so, ten years ago; and how you feel about me to-day, and whether +you like me as much this afternoon as you did this morning; and what +colour my eyes are, and what colour you think my new frock should be; +and heaps of really serious things like that."</p> + +<p>"All right, Betty; where shall we begin?"</p> + +<p>"We shall begin by making a plan. Do you know what you are going to do +this afternoon?"</p> + +<p>"Yes; whatever you tell me. I always do."</p> + +<p>"Well, then, you are coming with me to have tea at Mrs. Bateson's, just +as we used to do when we were little; and I have told her to invite Mrs. +Hankey as well, to make it seem just the same as it used to be. By the +way, is Mrs. Hankey as melancholy as ever, Chris?"</p> + +<p>"Quite. Time doth not breathe on her fadeless gloom, I can assure you."</p> + +<p>"Won't it be fun to pretend we are children again?" Elisabeth exclaimed.</p> + +<p>"Great fun; and I don't think it will need much pretending, do you +know?" replied Christopher, who saw deeper sometimes than Elisabeth did, +and now realized that it was only when they two became as little +children—he by ceasing to play Providence to her, and she by ceasing to +play Providence to herself—that they had at last caught glimpses of the +kingdom of heaven.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_360" id="Page_360">[Pg 360]</a></span></p> + +<p>So they walked hand in hand to Caleb Bateson's cottage, as they had so +often walked in far-off, childish days; and the cottage looked so +exactly the same as it used to look, and Caleb and his wife and Mrs. +Hankey were so little altered by the passage of time, that it seemed as +if the shadow had indeed been put back ten degrees. And so, in a way, it +was, by the new spring-time which had come to Christopher and Elisabeth. +They were both among those beloved of the gods who are destined to die +young—not in years but in spirit; her lover as well as herself was what +Elisabeth called "a fourth-dimension person," and there is no growing +old for fourth-dimension people; because it has already been given to +them to behold the vision of the cloud-clad angel, who stands upon the +sea and upon the earth and swears that there shall be time no longer. +They see him in the far distances of the sunlit hills, in the mysteries +of the unfathomed ocean, and their ears are opened to the message that +he brings; for they know that in all beauty—be it of earth, or sea, or +sky, or human souls—there is something indestructible, immortal, and +that those who have once looked upon it shall never see death. Such of +us as make our dwelling-place in the world of the three dimensions, grow +weary of the sameness and the staleness of it all, and drearily echo the +Preacher's <i>Vanitas vanitatum</i>; but such of us as have entered into the +fourth dimension, and have caught glimpses of the ideal which is +concealed in all reality, do not trouble ourselves over the flight of +time, for we know we have eternity before us; and so we are content to +wait patiently and joyfully, in sure and certain hope of that better +thing which, without us, can not be made perfect.</p> + +<p>It was with pride and pleasure that Mr. and Mrs.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_361" id="Page_361">[Pg 361]</a></span> Bateson received their +guests. The double announcement that Christopher was the lost heir of +the Farringdons (for Elisabeth had insisted on his making this known), +and that he was about to marry Elisabeth, had given great delight all +through Sedgehill. The Osierfield people were proud of Elisabeth, but +they had learned to love Christopher; they had heard of her glory from +afar, but they had been eye-witnesses of the uprightness and +unselfishness and nobility of his life; and, on the whole, he was more +popular than she. Elisabeth was quite conscious of this; and—what was +more—she was glad of it. She, who had so loved popularity and +admiration, now wanted people to think more of Christopher than of her. +Once she had gloried in the thought that George Farringdon's son would +never fill her place in the hearts of the people of the Osierfield; now +her greatest happiness lay in the fact that he filled it more completely +than she could ever have done, and that at Sedgehill she would always be +second to him.</p> + +<p>"Deary me, but it's like old times to see Master Christopher and Miss +Elisabeth having tea with us again," exclaimed Mrs. Bateson, after Caleb +had asked a blessing; "and it seems but yesterday, Mrs. Hankey, that +they were here talking over Mrs. Perkins's wedding—your niece Susan as +was—with Master Christopher in knickers, and Miss Elisabeth's hair +down."</p> + +<p>Mrs. Hankey sighed her old sigh. "So it does, Mrs. Bateson—so it does; +and yet Susan has just buried her ninth."</p> + +<p>"And is she quite well?" asked Elisabeth cheerfully. "I remember all +about her wedding, and how immensely interested I was."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_362" id="Page_362">[Pg 362]</a></span></p> + +<p>"As well as you can expect, miss," replied Mrs. Hankey, "with eight +children on earth and one in heaven, and a husband as plays the trombone +of an evening. But that's the worst of marriage; you know what a man is +when you marry him, but you haven't a notion what he'll be that time +next year. He may take to drinking or music for all you know; and then +where's your peace of mind?"</p> + +<p>"You are not very encouraging," laughed Elisabeth, "considering that I +am going to be married at once."</p> + +<p>"Well, miss, where's the use of flattering with vain words, and crying +peace where there is no peace, I should like to know? I can only say as +I hope you'll be happy. Some are."</p> + +<p>Here Christopher joined in. "You mustn't discourage Miss Farringdon in +that way, or else she'll be throwing me over; and then whatever will +become of me?"</p> + +<p>Mrs. Hankey at once tried to make the <i>amende honorable</i>; she would not +have hurt Christopher's feelings for worlds, as she—in common with most +of the people at Sedgehill—had had practical experience of his kindness +in times of sorrow and anxiety. "Not she, sir; Miss Elisabeth's got too +much sense to go throwing anybody over—and especially at her age, when +she's hardly likely to get another beau in a hurry. Don't you go +troubling your mind about that, Master Christopher. You won't throw over +such a nice gentleman as him, will you, miss?"</p> + +<p>"Certainly not; though hardly on the grounds which you mention."</p> + +<p>"Well, miss, if you're set on marriage you're in luck to have got such a +pleasant-spoken gentleman as Master Christopher—or I should say, Mr.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_363" id="Page_363">[Pg 363]</a></span> +Farringdon, begging his pardon. Such a fine complexion as he's got, and +never been married before, nor nothing. For my part I never thought you +would get a husband—never; and I've often passed the remark to Mr. and +Mrs. Bateson here. 'Mark my words,' I said, 'Miss Elisabeth Farringdon +will remain Elisabeth Farringdon to the end of the chapter; she's too +clever to take the fancy of the menfolk, and too pale. They want +something pink and white and silly, men do."</p> + +<p>"Some want one thing and some another," chimed in Mrs. Bateson, "and +they know what they want, which is more than women-folks do. Why, bless +you! girls 'll come telling you that they wouldn't marry so-and-so, not +if he was to crown 'em; and the next thing you hear is that they are +keeping company with him, and that no woman was ever so happy as them, +and that the man is such a piece of perfection that the President of the +Conference himself isn't fit to black his boots."</p> + +<p>"You have hit upon a great mystery, Mrs. Bateson," remarked Christopher, +"and one which has only of late been revealed to me. I used to think, in +my masculine ignorance, that if a woman appeared to dislike a man, she +would naturally refuse to marry him; but I am beginning to doubt if I +was right."</p> + +<p>Mrs. Bateson nodded significantly. "Wait till he asks her; that's what I +say. It's wonderful what a difference the asking makes. Women think a +sight more of a sparrow in the hand than a covey of partridges in the +bush; and I don't blame them for it; it's but natural that they should."</p> + +<p>"A poor thing but mine own," murmured Christopher.</p> + +<p>"That's not the principle at all," Elisabeth <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_364" id="Page_364">[Pg 364]</a></span>contradicted him; "you've +got hold of quite the wrong end of the stick this time."</p> + +<p>"I always do, in order to give you the right one; as in handing you a +knife I hold it by the blade. You so thoroughly enjoy getting hold of +the right end of a stick, Betty, that I wouldn't for worlds mar your +pleasure by seizing it myself; and your delight reaches high-water-mark +when, in addition, you see me fatuously clinging on to the ferrule."</p> + +<p>"Never mind what women-folk say about women-folk, Miss Elisabeth," said +Caleb Bateson kindly; "they're no judges. But my missis has the right of +it when she says that a man knows what he wants, and in general sticks +to it till he gets it. And if ever a man got what he wanted in this +world, that man's our Mr. Christopher."</p> + +<p>"You're right there, Bateson," agreed the master of the Osierfield; and +his eyes grew very tender as they rested upon Elisabeth.</p> + +<p>"And if he don't have no objection to cleverness and a pale complexion, +who shall gainsay him?" added Mrs. Hankey. "If he's content, surely it +ain't nobody's business to interfere; even though we may none of us, +Miss Elisabeth included, be as young as we was ten years ago."</p> + +<p>"And he is quite content, thank you," Christopher hastened to say.</p> + +<p>"I think you were right about women not knowing their own minds," +Elisabeth said to her hostess; "though I am bound to confess it is a +little stupid of us. But I believe the root of it is in shyness, and in +a sort of fear of the depth of our own feelings."</p> + +<p>"I daresay you're right, miss; and, when all's said and done, I'd sooner +hear a woman abusing a man she really likes, than see her throwing +herself at<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_365" id="Page_365">[Pg 365]</a></span> the head of a man as don't want her. That's the uptake of +all things, to my mind; I can't abide it." And Mrs. Bateson shook her +head in violent disapproval.</p> + +<p>Mrs. Hankey now joined in. "I remember my sister Sarah, when she was a +girl. There was a man wanted her ever so, and seemed as cut-up as never +was when she said no. She didn't know what to do with him, he was that +miserable; and yet she couldn't bring her mind to have him, because he'd +red hair and seven in family, being a widower. So she prayed the Lord to +comfort him and give him consolation. And sure enough the Lord did; for +within a month from the time as Sarah refused him, he was engaged to +Wilhelmina Gregg, our chapel-keeper's daughter. And then—would you +believe it?—Sarah went quite touchy and offended, and couldn't enjoy +her vittles, and wouldn't wear her best bonnet of a Sunday, and kept +saying as the sons of men were lighter than vanity. Which I don't deny +as they are, but that wasn't the occasion to mention it, Wilhelmina's +marriage being more the answer to prayer, as you may say, than any extra +foolishness on the man's part."</p> + +<p>"I should greatly have admired your sister Sarah," said Christopher; +"she was so delightfully feminine. And as for the red-headed swain, I +have no patience with him. His fickleness was intolerable."</p> + +<p>"Bless your heart, Master Christopher!" exclaimed Mrs. Bateson, "men are +mostly like that. Why should they waste their time fretting after some +young woman as hasn't got a civil word for them, when there are scores +and scores as has?"</p> + +<p>Christopher shook his head. "I can't pretend<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_366" id="Page_366">[Pg 366]</a></span> to say why; that is quite +beyond me. I only know that some of them do."</p> + +<p>"But they are only the nice exceptions that prove the rule," said +Elisabeth, as she and Christopher caught each other's eye.</p> + +<p>"No; it is she who is the nice exception," he replied. "It is only in +the case of exceptionally charming young women that such a thing ever +occurs; or rather, I should say, in the case of an exceptionally +charming young woman."</p> + +<p>"My wedding dress will be sent home next week," said Elisabeth to the +two matrons; "would you like to come and see it?"</p> + +<p>"Indeed, that we should!" they replied simultaneously. Then Mrs. Bateson +inquired: "And what is it made of, deary?"</p> + +<p>"White satin."</p> + +<p>Mrs. Hankey gazed critically at the bride-elect. "White satin is a bit +young, it seems to me; and trying, too, to them as haven't much colour." +Then cheering second thoughts inspired her. "Still, white's the proper +thing for a bride, I don't deny; and I always say 'Do what's right and +proper, and never mind looks.' The Lord doesn't look on the outward +appearance, as we all know; and it 'ud be a sight better for men if they +didn't, like Master Christopher there; there'd be fewer unhappy +marriages, mark my words. Of course, lavender isn't as trying to the +complexion as pure white; no one can say as it is; but to my mind +lavender always looks as if you've been married before; and it's no use +for folks to look greater fools than they are, as I can see."</p> + +<p>"Certainly not," Christopher agreed. "If there is any pretence at all, +let it be in the opposite direction, and let us all try to appear wiser +than we are!"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_367" id="Page_367">[Pg 367]</a></span></p> + +<p>"And that's easy enough for some of us, such as Hankey, for instance," +added Hankey's better half. "And there ain't as much wisdom to look at +as you could put on the point of a knife even then."</p> + +<p>So the women talked and the men listened—as is the way of men and women +all the world over—until tea was finished and it was time for the +guests to depart. They left amid a shower of heartfelt congratulations, +and loving wishes for the future opening out before them. Just as +Elisabeth passed through the doorway into the evening sunshine, which +was flooding the whole land and turning even the smoke-clouds into +windows of agate whereby men caught faint glimmerings of a dim glory as +yet to be revealed, she turned and held out her hands once more to her +friends. "It is very good to come back to you all, and to dwell among +mine own people," she said, her voice thrilling with emotion; "and I am +glad that Mrs. Hankey's prophecy has come true, and that Elisabeth +Farringdon will be Elisabeth Farringdon to the end of the chapter."</p> + +<h3>THE END</h3> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + + +<h3>"A FRESH AND CHARMING NOVEL."</h3> + +<p>The Last Lady of Mulberry.</p> + +<p>A Story of Italian New York. By <span class="smcap">Henry Wilton Thomas</span>. Illustrated by Emil +Pollak. 12mo. Cloth, $1.50.</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"The Last Lady of Mulberry" is the title of a fresh and charming +novel, whose author, a new writer, Mr. Henry Wilton Thomas, has +found an unexploited field in the Italian quarter of New York. Mr. +Thomas is familiar with Italy as well as New York, and the local +color of his vivacious pictures gives his story a peculiar zest. As +a story pure and simple his novel is distinguished by originality +in motive, by a succession of striking and dramatic scenes, and by +an understanding of the motives of the characters, and a justness +and sympathy in their presentation which imparts a constant glow of +human interest to the tale. The author has a quaint and delightful +humor which will be relished by every reader. While his story deals +with actualities, it is neither depressing nor unpleasantly +realistic, like many "stories of low life," and the reader gains a +vivid impression of the sunnier aspects of life in the Italian +quarter. The book contains a series of well-studied and effective +illustrations by Mr. Emil Pollak.</p></div> + +<p><i>BY THE AUTHOR OF "RED POTTAGE."</i></p> + +<p><b>Diana Tempest.</b></p> + +<p>A Novel. By <span class="smcap">Mary Cholmondeley</span>, author of "Red Pottage," "The Danvers +Jewels," etc. With Portrait and Sketch of the Author. 12mo. Cloth, +$1.50.</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"Of Miss Cholmondeley's clever novels, 'Diana Tempest' is quite the +cleverest."—<i>London Times.</i></p> + +<p>"The novel is hard to lay by, and one likes to take it up again for +a second reading."—<i>Boston Literary World.</i></p></div> + +<p class="center">D. APPLETON AND COMPANY, NEW YORK.</p> + + +<h3>DAVID HARUM.</h3> + +<p>A Story of American Life. By Edward Noyes Westcott. 12mo. Cloth, $1.50.</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"David Harum deserves to be known by all good Americans; he is one +of them in boundless energy, in large-heartedness, in shrewdness, +and in humor."—<i>The Critic</i>, <i>New York</i>.</p> + +<p>"We have in the character of David Harum a perfectly clean and +beautiful study, one of those true natures that every one, man, +woman, or child, is the better for knowing."—<i>The World</i>, +<i>Cleveland</i>.</p> + +<p>"The book continues to be talked of increasingly. It seems to grow +in public favor, and this, after all, is the true test of +merit."—<i>The Tribune</i>, <i>Chicago</i>.</p> + +<p>"A thoroughly interesting bit of fiction, with a well-defined plot, +a slender but easily followed 'love' interest, some bold and finely +sketched character drawing, and a perfect gold mine of shrewd, +dialectic philosophy."—<i>The Call</i>, <i>San Francisco</i>.</p> + +<p>"The newsboys on the street can talk of 'David Harum,' but scarcely +a week ago we heard an intelligent girl of fifteen, in a house +which entertains the best of the daily papers and the weekly +reviews, ask, 'Who is Kipling?'"—<i>The Literary World</i>, <i>Boston</i>.</p> + +<p>"A masterpiece of character painting. In David Harum, the shrewd, +whimsical, horse-trading country banker, the author has depicted a +type of character that is by no means new to fiction, but nowhere +else has it been so carefully, faithfully, and realistically +wrought out."—<i>The Herald</i>, <i>Syracuse</i>.</p> + +<p>"We give Edward Noyes Westcott his true place in American +letters—placing him as a humorist next to Mark Twain, as a master +of dialect above Lowell, as a descriptive writer equal to Bret +Harte, and, on the whole, as a novelist on a par with the best of +those who live and have their being in the heart of hearts of +American readers. If the author is dead—lamentable fact—his book +will live."—<i>Philadelphia Item</i>.</p></div> + + +<p class="center">D. APPLETON AND COMPANY, NEW YORK.</p> + + +<h3>FÉLIX GRAS'S ROMANCES.</h3> + +<p><b>The White Terror.</b></p> + +<p>A Romance. Translated from the Provençal by Mrs. Catharine A. Janvier. +Uniform with "The Reds of the Midi" and "The Terror." 16mo. Cloth, +$1.50.</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"No one has done this kind of work with finer poetic grasp or more +convincing truthfulness than Félix Gras.... This new volume has the +spontaneity, the vividness, the intensity of Interest of a great +historical romance."—<i>Philadelphia Times</i>.</p></div> + +<p><b>The Terror.</b></p> + +<p>A Romance of the French Revolution. Uniform with "The Reds of the Midi." +Translated by Mrs. Catharine A. Janvier. 16mo. Cloth, $1.50.</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"If Félix Gras had never done any other work than this novel, it +would at once give him a place in the front rank of the writers of +to-day.... 'The Terror' is a story that deserves to be widely read, +for, while it is of thrilling interest, holding the reader's +attention closely, there is about it a literary quality that makes +it worthy of something more than a careless perusal."—<i>Brooklyn +Eagle</i>.</p></div> + +<p><b>The Reds of the Midi.</b></p> + +<p>An episode of the French Revolution. Translated from the Provençal by +Mrs. Catharine A. Janvier. With an Introduction by Thomas A. Janvier. +With Frontispiece. 16mo. Cloth, $1.50.</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"I have read with great and sustained interest 'The Reds of the +South,' which you were good enough to present to me. Though a work +of fiction, it aims at painting the historical features, and such +works if faithfully executed throw more light than many so-called +histories on the true roots and causes of the Revolution, which are +so widely and so gravely misunderstood. As a novel it seems to me +to be written with great skill."—<i>William E. Gladstone</i>.</p></div> + +<p class="center">D. APPLETON AND COMPANY, NEW YORK.</p> + + +<h3>BOOKS BY ANTHONY HOPE</h3> + +<p><b>The King's Mirror.</b></p> + +<p>Illustrated. 12mo. Cloth, $1.50.</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"Mr. Hope has never given more sustained proof of his cleverness +than in 'The King's Mirror.' In elegance, delicacy, and tact it +ranks with the best of his previous novels, while in the wide range +of its portraiture and the subtlety of its analysis it surpasses +all his earlier ventures."—<i>London Spectator</i>.</p> + +<p>"Mr. Anthony Hope is at his best in this new novel. He returns in +some measure to the color and atmosphere of 'The Prisoner of +Zenda.' ...A strong book, charged with close analysis and exquisite +irony; a book full of pathos and moral fiber—in short, a book to +be read."—<i>London Chronicle</i>.</p> + +<p>"A story of absorbing interest and one that will add greatly to the +author's reputation.... Told with all the brilliancy and charm +which we have come to associate with Mr. Anthony Hope's +work."—<i>London Literary World</i>.</p></div> + +<p><b>The Chronicles of Count Antonio.</b></p> + +<p>With Photogravure Frontispiece by S. W. Van Schaick. 12mo. Cloth, $1.50.</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"No adventures were ever better worth recounting than are those of +Antonio of Monte Velluto, a very Bayard among outlaws.... To all +those whose pulses still stir at the recital of deeds of high +courage, we may recommend this book.... The chronicle conveys the +emotion of heroic adventure, and is picturesquely +written."—<i>London Daily News</i>.</p> + +<p>"It has literary merits all its own, of a deliberate and rather +deep order.... In point of execution 'The Chronicles of Count +Antonio' is the best work that Mr. Hope has yet done. The design is +clearer, the workmanship more elaborate, the style more +colored."—<i>Westminster Gazette</i>.</p></div> + +<p><b>The God in the Car.</b></p> + +<p>New edition, uniform with "The Chronicles of Count Antonio." 12mo. +Cloth, $1.25.</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"'The God in the Car' is just as clever, just as distinguished in +style, just as full of wit, and of what nowadays some persons like +better than wit—allusiveness—as any of his stories. It is +saturated with the modern atmosphere; is not only a very clever but +a very strong story; in some respects, we think, the strongest Mr. +Hope has yet written."—<i>London Speaker</i>.</p> + +<p>"A very remarkable book, deserving of critical analysis impossible +within our limit; brilliant, but not superficial; well considered, +but not elaborated; constructed with the proverbial art that +conceals, but yet allows itself to be enjoyed by readers to whom +fine literary method is a keen pleasure."—<i>London World</i>.</p></div> + +<p class="center">D. APPLETON AND COMPANY, NEW YORK. D. APPLETON AND COMPANY'S +PUBLICATIONS.</p> + + +<h3><span class="smcap">By</span> A. CONAN DOYLE.</h3> + +<p>Uniform edition. 12mo. Cloth, $1.50 per volume.</p> + + +<p><i>A DUET, WITH AN OCCASIONAL CHORUS.</i></p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"Charming is the one word to describe this volume adequately. Dr. +Doyle's crisp style and his rare wit and refined humor, utilized +with cheerful art that is perfect of its kind, fill these chapters +with joy and gladness for the reader."—<i>Philadelphia Press</i>.</p> + +<p>"Bright, brave, simple, natural, delicate. It is the most artistic +and most original thing that its author has done.... We can +heartily recommend 'A Duet' to all classes of readers. It is a good +book to put into the hands of the young of either sex. It will +interest the general reader, and it should delight the critic, for +it is a work of art. This story taken with the best of his previous +work gives Dr. Doyle a very high place in modern +letters."—<i>Chicago Times-Herald</i>.</p></div> + +<p><i>UNCLE BERNAC. A Romance of the Empire.</i></p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"Simple, clear, and well defined.... Spirited in movement all the +way through.... A fine example of clear analytical force."—<i>Boston +Herald</i>.</p></div> + +<p><i>THE EXPLOITS OF BRIGADIER GERARD.</i></p> + +<p><i>A Romance of the Life of a Typical Napoleonic Soldier.</i></p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"Good, stirring tales are they.... Remind one of those adventures +indulged in by 'The Three Musketeers.' ... Written with a dash and +swing that here and there carry one away."—<i>New York Mail and +Express</i>.</p></div> + + +<p><i>RODNEY STONE.</i></p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"A notable and very brilliant work of genius."—<i>London Speaker</i>.</p> + +<p>"Dr. Doyle's novel is crowded with an amazing amount of incident +and excitement.... He does not write history, but shows us the +human side of his great men, living and moving in an atmosphere +charged with the spirit of the hard-living, hard-fighting +Anglo-Saxon."—<i>New York Critic</i>.</p></div> + + +<p><i>ROUND THE RED LAMP.</i></p> + +<p><i>Being Facts and Fancies of Medical Life.</i></p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"A strikingly realistic and decidedly original contribution to +modern literature."—<i>Boston Saturday Evening Gazette</i>.</p></div> + + +<p><i>THE STARK MUNRO LETTERS.</i></p> + +<p>Being a Series of Twelve Letters written by Stark Munro, M. B., to his +friend and former fellow-student, Herbert Swanborough, of Lowell, +Massachusetts, during the years 1881-1884.</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"Cullingworth, ... a much more interesting creation than Sherlock +Holmes, and I pray Dr. Doyle to give us more of him."—<i>Richard le +Gallienne, in the London Star</i>.</p></div> + +<p class="center">D. APPLETON AND COMPANY, NEW YORK.</p> + + +<h3>BOOKS BY ALLEN RAINE.</h3> + +<p>Each, 12mo, cloth, $1.00; paper, 50 cents.</p> + +<p><b>Garthowen: A Welsh Idyl.</b></p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"Wales has long waited for her novelist, but he seems to have come +at last in the person of Mr. Allen Raine, who has at once proved +himself a worthy interpreter and exponent of the romantic spirit of +his country."—<i>London Daily Mail</i>.</p></div> + + +<p><b>By Berwen Banks.</b></p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"Mr. Raine enters into the lives and traditions of the people, and +herein lies the charm of his stories."—<i>Chicago Tribune</i>.</p> + +<p>"Interesting from the beginning, and grows more so as it +proceeds."—<i>San Francisco Bulletin</i>.</p> + +<p>"It has the same grace of style, strength of description, and +dainty sweetness of its predecessors."—<i>Boston Saturday Evening +Gazette</i>.</p></div> + + +<p><b>Torn Sails.</b></p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"It is a little idyl of humble life and enduring love, laid bare +before us, very real and pure, which in its telling shows us some +strong points of Welsh character—the pride, the hasty temper, the +quick dying out of wrath.... We call this a well-written story, +interesting alike through its romance and its glimpses into another +life than ours."—<i>Detroit Free Press</i>.</p> + +<p>"Allen Raine's work is in the right direction and worthy of all +honor."—<i>Boston Budget</i>.</p></div> + + +<p><b>Mifanwy: A Welsh Singer.</b></p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"Simple in all its situations, the story is worked up in that +touching and quaint strain which never grows wearisome no matter +how often the lights and shadows of love are introduced. It rings +true, and does not tax the imagination."—<i>Boston Herald</i>.</p> + +<p>"One of the most charming tales that has come to us of +late."—<i>Brooklyn Eagle</i>.</p></div> + +<p class="center">D. APPLETON AND COMPANY, NEW YORK. D. APPLETON AND COMPANY'S +PUBLICATIONS.</p> + +<p><i>FAMILIAR LIFE IN FIELD AND FOREST.</i></p> + +<p>By <span class="smcap">F. Schuyler Mathews</span>. Uniform with "Familiar Flowers," "Familiar +Trees," and "Familiar Features of the Roadside." With many +Illustrations. 12mo. Cloth, $1.75.</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>The great popularity of Mr. F. Schuyler Mathews's charmingly +illustrated books upon flowers, trees, and roadside life insures a +cordial reception for his forthcoming book, which describes the +animals, reptiles, insects, and birds commonly met with in the +country. His book will be found a most convenient and interesting +guide to an acquaintance with common wild creatures.</p></div> + + +<p><i>FAMILIAR FEATURES OF THE ROADSIDE.</i></p> + +<p>By <span class="smcap">F. Schuyler Mathews</span>, author of "Familiar Flowers of Field and +Garden," "Familiar Trees and their Leaves," etc. With 130 Illustrations +by the Author. 12mo. Cloth, $1.75.</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"Which one of us, whether afoot, awheel, on horseback, or in +comfortable carriage, has not whiled away the time by glancing +about? How many of us, however, have taken in the details of what +charms us? We see the flowering fields and budding woods, listen to +the notes of birds and frogs, the hum of some big bumblebee, but +how much do we know of what we sense? These questions, these doubts +have occurred to all of us, and it is to answer them that Mr. +Mathews sets forth. It is to his credit that he succeeds so well. +He puts before us in chronological order the flowers, birds, and +beasts we meet on our highway and byway travels, tells us how to +recognize them, what they are really like, and gives us at once +charming drawings in words and lines, for Mr. Mathews is his own +illustrator."—<i>Boston Journal</i>.</p></div> + +<p><i>FAMILIAR TREES AND THEIR LEAVES.</i></p> + +<p>By <span class="smcap">F. Schuyler Mathews</span>, author of "Familiar Flowers of Field and +Garden," "The Beautiful Flower Garden," etc. Illustrated with over 200 +Drawings from Nature by the Author, and giving the botanical names and +habitat of each tree and recording the precise character and coloring of +its leafage. 12mo. Cloth, $1.75.</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"It is not often that we find a book which deserves such unreserved +commendation. It is commendable for several reasons: it is a book +that has been needed for a long time, it is written in a popular +and attractive style, it is accurately and profusely illustrated, +and it is by an authority on the subject of which it +treats."—<i>Public Opinion</i>.</p></div> + +<p><i>FAMILIAR FLOWERS OF FIELD AND GARDEN.</i> By <span class="smcap">F. Schuyler Mathews</span>. +Illustrated with 200 Drawings by the Author. 12mo. Library Edition, +cloth, $1.75; Pocket Edition, flexible morocco, $2.25.</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"A book of much value and interest, admirably arranged for the +student and the lover of flowers.... The text is full of compact +information, well selected and interestingly presented.... It seems +to us to be a most attractive handbook of its kind."—<i>New York +Sun</i>.</p></div> + +<p class="center">D. APPLETON AND COMPANY, NEW YORK.</p> + + +<h3>FRANK M. CHAPMAN'S BOOKS.</h3> + +<p><b>Bird Studies with a Camera.</b></p> + +<p>With Introductory Chapters on the Outfit and Methods of the Bird +Photographer. By <span class="smcap">Frank M. Chapman</span>, Assistant Curator of Vertebrate +Zoology in the American Museum of Natural History; Author of "Handbook +of Birds of Eastern North America" and "Bird-Life." Illustrated with +over 100 Photographs from Nature by the Author. 12mo. Cloth.</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>Bird students and photographers will find that this book possesses +for them a unique interest and value. It contains fascinating +accounts of the habits of some of our common birds and descriptions +of the largest bird colonies existing in eastern North America; +while its author's phenomenal success in photographing birds in +Nature not only lends to the illustrations the charm of realism, +but makes the book a record of surprising achievements with the +camera. Several of these illustrations have been described by +experts as "the most remarkable photographs of wild life we have +ever seen." The book is practical as well as descriptive, and in +the opening chapters the questions of camera, lens, plates, blinds, +decoys, and other pertinent matters are fully discussed.</p></div> + +<p><b>Bird-Life.</b></p> + +<p>A Guide to the Study of our Common Birds. With 75 full-page uncolored +plates and 25 drawings in the text, by <span class="smcap">Ernest Seton Thompson</span>. Library +Edition. 12mo. Cloth, $1.75.</p> + +<p><b>The Same</b>, with lithographic plates in colors. 8vo. Cloth, $5.00.</p> + +<p><b>TEACHERS' EDITION</b>. Same as Library Edition, but containing an Appendix +with new matter designed for the use of teachers, and including lists of +birds for each month of the year. 12mo. Cloth, $2.00.</p> + +<p><b>TEACHERS' MANUAL</b>. To accompany Portfolios of Colored Plates of +Bird-Life. Contains the same text as the Teachers' Edition of +"Bird-Life," but is without the 75 uncolored plates. Sold only with the +Portfolios, as follows:</p> + +<p><b>Portfolio No. I</b>.—Permanent Residents and Winter Visitants. 32 plates.</p> + +<p><b>Portfolio No. II</b>.—March and April Migrants. 34 plates.</p> + +<p><b>Portfolio No. III</b>.—May Migrants, Types of Birds' Eggs, Types of Birds' +Nests from Photographs from Nature. 34 plates. Price of Portfolios, +each, $1.25; with Manual, $2.00. The three Portfolios with Manual, +$4.00.</p> + +<p><b>Handbook of Birds of Eastern North America.</b></p> + +<p>With nearly 200 Illustrations. 12mo. Library Edition, cloth, $3.00; +Pocket Edition, flexible morocco, $3.50.</p> + +<p class="center">D. APPLETON AND COMPANY, NEW YORK.</p> + + +<p>By ELLEN THORNEYCROFT FOWLER.</p> + +<p><b>A Double Thread.</b> 12mo. Cloth, $1.50.</p> + +<p>"Even more gay, clever, and bright than 'Concerning Isabel +Carnaby.'"—<i>Boston Herald.</i></p> + +<p>"Abounds in excellent character study and brilliant dialogue."—<i>New +York Commercial Advertiser.</i></p> + +<p>"Crowded with interesting people. One of the most enjoyable stories of +the season."—<i>Philadelphia Inquirer.</i></p> + +<p>"Brilliant and witty. Shows fine insight into character."—<i>Minneapolis +Journal.</i></p> + +<p>"'A Double Thread' is that rare visitor—a novel to be recommended +without reserve."—<i>London Literary World.</i></p> + +<p><b>Concerning Isabel Carnaby.</b> New edition. With Portrait and Biographical +Sketch. Cloth, $1.50.</p> + +<p>"Rarely does one find such a charming combination of wit and tenderness, +of brilliancy and reverence for the things that matter, as is concealed +within the covers of 'Concerning Isabel Carnaby.' It is bright without +being flippant, tender without being mawkish, and as joyous and as +wholesome as sunshine. The characters are closely studied and clearly +limned, and they are created by one who knows human nature.... It would +be hard to find its superior for all around excellence.... No one who +reads it will regret it or forget it."—<i>Chicago Tribune.</i></p> + +<p>"For brilliant conversations, bits of philosophy, keenness of wit, and +full insight into human nature, 'Concerning Isabel Carnaby' is a +remarkable success."—<i>Boston Transcript.</i></p> + +<p class="center">D. APPLETON AND COMPANY, NEW YORK.</p> + + + + + + + + +<pre> + + + + + +End of Project Gutenberg's The Farringdons, by Ellen Thorneycroft Fowler + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE FARRINGDONS *** + +***** This file should be named 19798-h.htm or 19798-h.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + http://www.gutenberg.org/1/9/7/9/19798/ + +Produced by Chuck Greif, Sigal Alon and the Online +Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: The Farringdons + +Author: Ellen Thorneycroft Fowler + +Release Date: November 13, 2006 [EBook #19798] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE FARRINGDONS *** + + + + +Produced by Chuck Greif, Sigal Alon and the Online +Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net + + + + + + + + + + + THE FARRINGDONS + BY ELLEN THORNEYCROFT FOWLER + + AUTHOR OF CONCERNING ISABEL CARNABY, A DOUBLE THREAD, ETC. + + NEW YORK + D. APPLETON AND COMPANY 1900 + COPYRIGHT, 1900, + _All rights reserved._ + + + + + DEDICATION + + + For all such readers as have chanced to be + Either in Mershire or in Arcady, + I write this book, that each may smile, and say, + "Once on a time I also passed that way." + + + + + CONTENTS + + +CHAPTER PAGE + I.--THE OSIERFIELD 1 + II.--CHRISTOPHER 12 + III.--MRS. BATESON'S TEA-PARTY 29 + IV.--SCHOOL-DAYS 51 + V.--THE MOAT HOUSE 70 + VI.--WHIT MONDAY 90 + VII.--BROADER VIEWS 114 + VIII.--GREATER THAN OUR HEARTS 137 + IX.--FELICIA FINDS HAPPINESS 156 + X.--CHANGES 187 + XI.--MISS FARRINGDON'S WILL 213 + XII.--"THE DAUGHTERS OF PHILIP" 232 + XIII.--CECIL FARQUHAR 249 + XIV.--ON THE RIVER 272 + XV.--LITTLE WILLIE 292 + XVI.--THIS SIDE OF THE HILLS 306 + XVII.--GEORGE FARRINGDON'S SON 325 +XVIII.--THE OTHER SIDE OF THE HILLS 346 + + * * * * * + + + + + THE FARRINGDONS + + + + +CHAPTER I + +THE OSIERFIELD + + They herded not with soulless swine, + Nor let strange snares their path environ: + Their only pitfall was a mine-- + Their pigs were made of iron. + + +In the middle of Sedgehill, which is in the middle of Mershire, which is +in the middle of England, there lies a narrow ridge of high table-land, +dividing, as by a straight line, the collieries and ironworks of the +great coal district from the green and pleasant scenery of the western +Midlands. Along the summit of this ridge runs the High Street of the +bleak little town of Sedgehill; so that the houses on the east side of +this street see nothing through their back windows save the huge +slag-mounds and blazing furnaces and tall chimneys of the weird and +terrible, yet withal fascinating, Black Country; while the houses on the +west side of the street have sunny gardens and fruitful orchards, +sloping down toward a fertile land of woods and streams and meadows, +bounded in the far distance by the Clee Hills and the Wrekin, and in the +farthest distance of all by the blue Welsh mountains. + +In the dark valley lying to the immediate east of Sedgehill stood the +Osierfield Works, the largest ironworks in Mershire in the good old +days when Mershire made iron for half the world. The owners of these +works were the Farringdons, and had been so for several generations. So +it came to pass that the Farringdons were the royal family of Sedgehill; +and the Osierfield Works was the circle wherein the inhabitants of that +place lived and moved. It was as natural for everybody born in Sedgehill +eventually to work at the Osierfield, as it was for him eventually to +grow into a man and to take unto himself a wife. + +The home of the Farringdons was called the Willows, and was separated by +a carriage-drive of half a mile from the town. Its lodge stood in the +High Street, on the western side; and the drive wandered through a fine +old wood, and across an undulating park, till it stopped in front of a +large square house built of gray stone. It was a handsome house inside, +with wonderful oak staircases and Adams chimneypieces; and there was an +air of great stateliness about it, and of very little luxury. For the +Farringdons were a hardy race, whose time was taken up by the making of +iron and the saving of souls; and they regarded sofas and easy-chairs in +very much the same light as they regarded theatres and strong drink, +thereby proving that their spines were as strong as their consciences +were stern. + +Moreover, the Farringdons were of "the people called Methodists"; +consequently Methodism was the established religion of Sedgehill, +possessing there that prestige which is the inalienable attribute of all +state churches. In the eyes of Sedgehill it was as necessary to +salvation to pray at the chapel as to work at the Osierfield; and the +majority of the inhabitants would as soon have thought of worshipping at +any other sanctuary as of worshipping at the beacon, a pillar which +still marks the highest point of the highest table-land in England. + +At the time when this story begins, the joint ownership of the +Osierfield and the Willows was vested in the two Miss Farringdons, the +daughters and co-heiresses of John Farringdon. John Farringdon and his +brother William had been partners, and had arranged between themselves +that William's only child, George, should marry John's eldest daughter, +Maria, and so consolidate the brothers' fortunes and their interest in +the works. But the gods--and George--saw otherwise. George was a +handsome, weak boy, who objected equally to work and to Methodism; and +as his father cared for nothing beyond those sources of interest, and +had no patience for any one who did, the two did not always see eye to +eye. Perhaps if Maria had been more unbending, things might have turned +out differently; but Methodism in its severest aspects was not more +severe than Maria Farringdon. She was a thorough gentlewoman, and +extremely clever; but tenderness was not counted among her excellencies. +George would have been fond of almost any woman who was pretty enough to +be loved and not clever enough to be feared; but his cousin Maria was +beyond even his powers of falling in love, although, to do him justice, +these powers were by no means limited. The end of it was that George +offended his father past forgiveness by running away to Australia rather +than marry Maria, and there disappeared. Years afterward a rumour +reached his people that he had married and died out there, leaving a +widow and an only son; but this rumour had not been verified, as by that +time his father and uncle were dead, and his cousins were reigning in +his stead; and it was hardly to be expected that the proud Miss +Farringdon would take much trouble concerning the woman whom her +weak-kneed kinsman had preferred to herself. + +William Farringdon left all his property and his share in the works to +his niece Maria, as some reparation for the insult which his +disinherited son had offered to her; John left his large fortune between +his two daughters, as he never had a son; so Maria and Anne Farringdon +lived at the Willows, and carried on the Osierfield with the help of +Richard Smallwood, who had been the general manager of the collieries +and ironworks belonging to the firm in their father's time, and knew as +much about iron (and most other things) as he did. Maria was a good +woman of business, and she and Richard between them made money as fast +as it had been made in the days of William and John Farringdon. Anne, on +the contrary, was a meek and gentle soul, who had no power of governing +but a perfect genius for obedience, and who was always engaged on the +Herculean task of squaring the sternest dogmas with the most indulgent +practices. + +Even in the early days of this history the Miss Farringdons were what is +called "getting on"; but the Willows was, nevertheless, not without a +youthful element in it. Close upon a dozen years ago the two sisters had +adopted the orphaned child of a second cousin, whose young widow had +died in giving birth to a posthumous daughter; and now Elisabeth +Farringdon was the light of the good ladies' eyes, though they would +have considered it harmful to her soul to let her have an inkling of +this fact. + +She was not a pretty little girl, which was a source of much sorrow of +heart to her; and she was a distinctly clever little girl, of which she +was utterly unconscious, it being an integral part of Miss Farringdon's +system of education to imbue the young with an overpowering sense of +their own inferiority and unworthiness. During the first decade of her +existence Elisabeth used frequently and earnestly to pray that her hair +might become golden and her eyes brown; but as on this score the heavens +remained as brass, and her hair continued dark brown and her eyes +blue-gray, she changed her tactics, and confined her heroine-worship to +ladies of this particular style of colouring; which showed that, even at +the age of ten, Elisabeth had her full share of adaptability. + +One day, when walking with Miss Farringdon to chapel, Elisabeth +exclaimed, _a propos_ of nothing but her own meditations, "Oh! Cousin +Maria, I do wish I was pretty!" + +Most people would have been too much afraid of the lady of the Willows +to express so frivolous a desire in her august hearing; but Elisabeth +was never afraid of anybody, and that, perhaps, was one of the reasons +why her severe kinswoman loved her so well. + +"That is a vain wish, my child. Favour is deceitful and beauty is vain; +and the Lord looketh on the heart and not on the outward appearance." + +"But I wasn't thinking of the Lord," replied Elisabeth: "I was thinking +of other people; and they love you much more if you are pretty than if +you aren't." + +"That is not so," said Miss Farringdon--and she believed she was +speaking the truth; "if you serve God and do your duty to your +neighbour, you will find plenty of people ready to love you; and +especially if you carry yourself well and never stoop." Like many +another elect lady, Cousin Maria regarded beauty of face as a vanity, +but beauty of figure as a virtue; and to this doctrine Elisabeth owed +the fact that her back always sloped in the opposite direction to the +backs of the majority of people. + +But it would have surprised Miss Farringdon to learn how little real +effect her strict Methodist training had upon Elisabeth; fortunately, +however, few elder people ever do learn how little effect their training +has upon the young committed to their charge; if it were so, life would +be too hard for the generation that has passed the hill-top. Elisabeth's +was one of those happy, pantheistic natures that possess the gift of +finding God everywhere and in everything. She early caught the Methodist +habit of self-analysis and introspection, but in her it did not +develop--as it does in more naturally religious souls--into an almost +morbid conscientiousness and self-depreciation; she merely found an +artistic and intellectual pleasure in taking the machinery of her soul +to pieces and seeing how it worked. + +In those days--and, in fact, in all succeeding ones--Elisabeth lived in +a world of imagination. There was not a nook in the garden of the +Willows which was not peopled by creatures of her fancy. At this +particular time she was greatly fascinated by the subject of heathen +mythology, as set forth in Mangnall's Questions, and had devoted herself +to the service of Pallas Athene, having learned that that goddess was +(like herself) not surpassingly beautiful, and was, moreover, +handicapped by the possession of gray eyes. Miss Farringdon would have +been horrified had she known that a portion of the wood was set apart by +Elisabeth as "Athene's Grove," and that the contents of the waste-paper +basket were daily begged from the servants by the devotee, and offered +up, by the aid of real matches, on the shrine of the goddess. + +"Have you noticed, sister," Miss Anne remarked on one occasion, "how +much more thoughtful dear Elisabeth is growing?" Miss Anne's life was +one long advertisement of other people's virtues. "She used to be +somewhat careless in letting the fires go out, and so giving the +servants the trouble to relight them; but now she is always going round +the rooms to see if more coal is required, without my ever having to +remind her." + +"It is so, and I rejoice. Carelessness in domestic matters is a grave +fault in a young girl, and I am pleased that Elisabeth has outgrown her +habit of wool-gathering, and of letting the fire go out under her very +nose without noticing it. It is a source of thanksgiving to me that the +child is so much more thoughtful and considerate in this matter than she +used to be." + +Miss Farringdon's thanksgiving, however, would have been less fervent +had she known that, for the time being, her _protegee_ had assumed the +role of a Vestal virgin, and that Elisabeth's care of the fires that +winter was not fulfilment of a duty but part of a game. This, however, +was Elisabeth's way; she frequently received credit for performing a +duty when she was really only taking part in a performance; which merely +meant that she possessed the artist's power of looking at duty through +the haze of idealism, and of seeing that, although it was good, it might +also be made picturesque. Elisabeth was well versed in The Pilgrim's +Progress and The Fairchild Family. The spiritual vicissitudes of Lucy, +Emily, and Henry Fairchild were to her a drama of never-failing +interest; while each besetment of the Crosbie household--which was as +carefully preserved for its particular owner as if sin were a species of +ground game--never failed to thrill her with enjoyable disgust. She +knew a great portion of the Methodist hymn-book by heart, and pondered +long over the interesting preface to that work, wondering much what +"doggerel" and "botches" could be--she inclined to the supposition that +the former were animals and the latter were diseases; but even her vivid +imagination failed to form a satisfactory representation of such queer +kittle-cattle as "feeble expletives." Every Sunday she gloated over the +frontispiece of John Wesley, in his gown and bands and white ringlets, +feeling that, though poor as a picture, it was very superior to the +letterpress; the worst illustrations being better than the best poetry, +as everybody under thirteen must know. But Elisabeth's library was not +confined to the volumes above mentioned; she regularly perused with +interest two little periodicals, called respectively Early Days and The +Juvenile Offering. The former treated of youthful saints at home; and +its white paper cover was adorned by the picture of a shepherd, +comfortably if peculiarly attired in a frock coat and top +hat--presumably to portray that it was Sunday. The latter magazine +devoted itself to histories dealing with youthful saints abroad; and its +cover was decorated with a representation of young black persons +apparently engaged in some religious exercise. In this picture the frock +coats and top hats were conspicuous by their absence. + +There were two pictures in the breakfast-room at the Willows which +occupied an important place in Elisabeth's childish imaginings. The +first hung over the mantelpiece, and was called The Centenary Meeting. +It represented a chapel full of men in suffocating cravats, turning +their backs upon the platform and looking at the public instead--a more +effective if less realistic attitude than the ordinary one of sitting +the right way about; because--as Elisabeth reasoned, and reasoned +rightly--if these gentlemen had not happened to be behind before when +their portraits were taken, nobody would ever have known whose portraits +they were. It was a source of great family pride to her that her +grandfather appeared in this galaxy of Methodist worth; but the hero of +the piece, in her eyes, was one gentleman who had managed to swarm up a +pillar and there screw himself "to the sticking-place"; and how he had +done it Elisabeth never could conceive. + +The second picture hung over the door, and was a counterfeit presentment +of John Wesley's escape from the burning rectory at Epworth. In those +days Elisabeth was so small and the picture hung so high that she could +not see it very distinctly; but it appeared to her that the boy Wesley +(whom she confused in her own mind with the infant Samuel) was flying +out of an attic window by means of flowing white wings, while a horse +was suspended in mid-air ready to carry him straight to heaven. + +Every Sunday she accompanied her cousins to East Lane Chapel, at the +other end of Sedgehill, and here she saw strange visions and dreamed +strange dreams. The distinguishing feature of this sanctuary was a sort +of reredos in oils, in memory of a dead and gone Farringdon, which +depicted a gigantic urn, surrounded by a forest of cypress, through the +shades whereof flitted "young-eyed cherubims" with dirty wings and +bilious complexions, these last mentioned blemishes being, it is but +fair to add, the fault of the atmosphere and not of the artist. For +years Elisabeth firmly believed that this altar-piece was a trustworthy +representation of heaven; and she felt, therefore, a pleasant, +proprietary interest in it, as the view of an estate to which she would +one day succeed. + +There was also a stained-glass window in East Lane Chapel, given by the +widow of a leading official. The baptismal name of the deceased had been +Jacob; and the window showed forth Jacob's Dream, as a delicate +compliment to the departed. Elisabeth delighted in this window, it was +so realistic. The patriarch lay asleep, with his head on a little white +tombstone at the foot of a solid oak staircase, which was covered with a +red carpet neatly fastened down by brass rods; while up and down this +staircase strolled fair-haired angels in long white nightgowns and +purple wings. + +Not of course then, but in after years, Elisabeth learned to understand +that this window was a type and an explanation of the power of early +Methodism, the strength whereof lay in its marvellous capacity of +adapting religion to the needs and use of everyday life, and of bringing +the infinite into the region of the homely and commonplace. We, with our +added culture and our maturer artistic perceptions, may smile at a +Jacob's Ladder formed according to the domestic architecture of the +first half of the nineteenth century; but the people to whom the other +world was so near and so real that they perceived nothing incongruous in +an ordinary stair-carpet which was being trodden by the feet of angels, +had grasped a truth which on one side touched the divine, even though on +the other it came perilously near to the grotesque. And He, Who taught +them as by parables, never misunderstood--as did certain of His +followers--their reverent irreverence; but, understanding it, saw that +it was good. + +The great day in East Lane Chapel was the Sunday School anniversary; +and in Elisabeth's childish eyes this was a feast compared with which +Christmas and Easter sank to the level of black-letter days. On these +festivals the Sunday School scholars sat all together in those parts of +the gallery adjacent to the organ, the girls wearing white frocks and +blue neckerchiefs, and the boys black suits and blue ties. The pews were +strewn with white hymn-sheets, which lay all over the chapel like snow +in Salmon, and which contained special spiritual songs more stirring in +their character than the contents of the Hymn-book; these hymns the +Sunday School children sang by themselves, while the congregation sat +swaying to and fro to the tune. And Elisabeth's soul was uplifted within +her as she listened to the children's voices; for she felt that mystical +hush which--let us hope--comes to us all at some time or other, when we +hide our faces in our mantles and feel that a Presence is passing by, +and is passing by so near to us that we have only to stretch out our +hands in order to touch it. At sundry times and in divers manners does +that wonderful sense of a Personal Touch come to men and to women. It +may be in a wayside Bethel, it may be in one of the fairest fanes of +Christendom, or it may be not in any temple made with hands: according +to the separate natures which God has given to us, so must we choose the +separate ways that will lead us to Him; and as long as there are +different natures there must be various ways. Then let each of us take +the path at the end whereof we see Him standing, always remembering that +wayfaring men, though fools, shall not err therein; and never forgetting +that--come whence and how they may--whosoever shall touch but the hem of +His garment shall be made perfectly whole. + + + + +CHAPTER II + +CHRISTOPHER + + And when perchance of all perfection + You've seen an end, + Your thoughts may turn in my direction + To find a friend. + + +There are two things which are absolutely necessary to the well-being of +the normal feminine mind--namely, one romantic attachment and one +comfortable friendship. Elisabeth was perfectly normal and extremely +feminine; and consequently she provided herself early with these two +aids to happiness. + +In those days the object of her romantic attachment was her cousin Anne. +Anne Farringdon was one of those graceful, elegant women who appear so +much deeper than they really are. All her life she had been inspiring +devotion which she was utterly unable to fathom; and this was still the +case with regard to herself and her adoring little worshipper. + +People always wondered why Anne Farringdon had never married; and +explained the mystery to their own satisfaction by conjecturing that she +had had a disappointment in her youth, and had been incapable of loving +twice. It never struck them--which was actually the case--that she had +been incapable of loving once; and that her single-blessedness was due +to no unforgotten love-story, but to the unromantic fact that among her +score of lovers she had never found a man for whom she seriously cared. +In a delicate and ladylike fashion she had flirted outrageously in her +time; but she had always broken hearts so gently, and put away the +pieces so daintily, that the owners of these hearts had never dreamed of +resenting the damage she had wrought. She had refused them with such a +world of pathos in her beautiful eyes--the Farringdon gray-blue eyes, +with thick black brows and long black lashes--that the poor souls had +never doubted her sympathy and comprehension; nor had they the slightest +idea that she was totally ignorant of the depth of the love which she +had inspired, or the bitterness of the pain which she had caused. + +All the romance of Elisabeth's nature--and there was a great deal of +it--was lavished upon Anne Farringdon. If Anne smiled, Elisabeth's sky +was cloudless; if Anne sighed, Elisabeth's sky grew gray. The mere sound +of Anne's voice vibrated through the child's whole being; and every +little trifle connected with her cousin became a sacred relic in +Elisabeth's eyes. + +Like every Methodist child, Elisabeth was well versed in her Bible; but, +unlike most Methodist children, she regarded it more as a poetical than +an ethical work. When she was only twelve, the sixty-eighth Psalm +thrilled her as with the sound of a trumpet; and she was completely +carried away by the glorious imagery of the Book of Isaiah, even when +she did not in the least understand its meaning. But her favourite book +was the Book of Ruth; for was not Ruth's devotion to Naomi the exact +counterpart of hers to Cousin Anne? And she used to make up long stories +in her own mind about how Cousin Anne should, by some means, lose all +her friends and all her money, and be driven out of Sedgehill and away +from the Osierfield Works; and then how Elisabeth would say, "Entreat me +not to leave thee," and would follow Cousin Anne to the ends of the +earth. + +People sometimes smile at the adoration of a young girl for a woman, and +there is no doubt but that the feeling savours slightly of school-days +and bread-and-butter; but there is also no doubt that a girl who has +once felt it has learned what real love is, and that is no small item in +the lesson-book of life. + +But Elisabeth had her comfortable friendship as well as her romantic +attachment; and the partner in that friendship was Christopher Thornley, +the nephew of Richard Smallwood. + +In the days of his youth, when his father was still manager of the +Osierfield Works, Richard had a very pretty sister; but as Emily +Smallwood was pretty, so was she also vain, and the strict atmosphere of +her home life did not recommend itself to her taste. After many quarrels +with her stern old father (her mother having died when she was a baby), +Emily left home, and took a situation in London as governess, in the +house of some wealthy people with no pretensions to religion. For this +her father never forgave her; he called it "consorting with children of +Belial." In time she wrote to tell Richard that she was going to be +married, and that she wished to cut off entirely all communication with +her old home. After that, Richard lost sight of her for many years; but +some time after his father's death he received a letter from Emily, +begging him to come to her at once, as she was dying. He complied with +her request, and found his once beautiful sister in great poverty in a +London lodging-house. She told him that she had endured great sorrow, +having lost her husband and her five eldest children. Her husband had +never been unkind to her, she said, but he was one of the men who lack +the power either to make or to keep money; and when he found he was +foredoomed to failure in everything to which he turned his hand, he had +not the spirit to continue the fight against Fate, but turned his face +to the wall and died. She had still one child left, a fair-haired boy of +about two years old, called Christopher; to her brother's care she +confided this boy, and then she also turned her face to the wall and +died. + +This happened a year or so before the Miss Farringdons adopted +Elisabeth; so that when that young lady appeared upon the scene, and +subsequently grew up sufficiently to require a playfellow, she found +Christopher Thornley ready to hand. He lived with his bachelor uncle in +a square red house on the east side of Sedgehill High Street, exactly +opposite to the Farringdons' lodge. It was one of those big, bald houses +with unblinking windows, that stare at you as if they had not any +eyebrows or eyelashes; and there was not even a strip of greenery +between it and the High Street. So to prevent the passers-by from +looking in and the occupants from looking out, the lower parts of the +front windows were covered with a sort of black crape mask, which put +even the sunbeams into half-mourning. + +Unlike Elisabeth, Christopher had a passion for righteousness and for +honour, but no power of artistic perception. His standard was whether +things were right or wrong, honourable or dishonourable; hers was +whether they were beautiful or ugly, pleasant or unpleasant. +Consequently the two moved along parallel lines; and she moved a great +deal more quickly than he did. Christopher had deep convictions, but was +very shy of expressing them; Elisabeth's convictions were not +particularly deep, but such as they were, all the world was welcome to +them as far as she was concerned. + +As the children grew older, one thing used much to puzzle and perplex +Christopher. Elisabeth did not seem to care about being good nearly as +much as he cared: he was always trying to do right, and she only tried +when she thought about it; nevertheless, when she did give her attention +to the matter, she had much more comforting and beautiful thoughts than +he had, which appeared rather hard. He was not yet old enough to know +that this difference between them arose from no unequal division of +divine favour, but was simply and solely a question of temperament. But +though he did not understand, he did not complain; for he had been +brought up under the shadow of the Osierfield Works, and in the fear and +love of the Farringdons; and Elisabeth, whatever her shortcomings, was a +princess of the blood. + +Christopher was a day-boy at the Grammar School at Silverhampton, a fine +old town some three miles to the north of Sedgehill; and there and back +he walked every day, wet or fine, and there he learned to be a scholar +and a gentleman, and sundry other important things. + +"Do you hear that noise?" said Elisabeth, one afternoon in the holidays, +when she was twelve and Christopher fifteen; "that's Mrs. Bateson's pig +being killed." + +"Hear it?--rather," replied Christopher, standing still in the wood to +listen. + +"Let's go and see it," Elisabeth suggested. + +Christopher looked shocked. "Well, you are a horrid girl! Nothing would +induce me to go, or to let you go either; but I'm surprised at your +being so horrid as to wish for such a thing." + +"It isn't really horridness," Elisabeth explained meekly; "it is +interest. I'm so frightfully interested in things; and I want to see +everything, just to know what it looks like." + +"Well, I call it horrid. And, what's more, if you saw it, it would make +you feel ill." + +"No; it wouldn't." + +"Then it ought to," said Christopher, who, with true masculine dulness +of perception, confounded weakness of nerve with tenderness of heart. + +Elisabeth sighed. "Nothing makes me feel ill," she replied +apologetically; "not even an accident or an after-meeting." + +Christopher could not help indulging in a certain amount of envious +admiration for an organism that could pass unmoved through such physical +and spiritual crises as these; but he was not going to let Elisabeth see +that he admired her. He considered it "unmanly" to admire girls. + +"Well, you are a rum little cove!" he said. + +"Of course, I don't want to go if you think it would be horrid of me; +but I thought we might pretend it was the execution of Mary Queen of +Scots, and find it most awfully exciting." + +"How you do go on about Mary Queen of Scots! Not long ago you were +always bothering about heathen goddesses, and now you have no thought +for anything but Mary." + +"Oh! but I'm still immensely interested in goddesses, Chris; and I do +wish, when you are doing Latin and Greek at school, you'd find out what +colour Pallas Athene's hair was. Couldn't you?" + +"No; I couldn't." + +"But you might ask one of the masters. They'd be sure to know." + +Christopher laughed the laugh of the scornful. "I say, you are a duffer +to suppose that clever men like schoolmasters bother their heads about +such rot as the colour of a woman's hair." + +"Of course, I know they wouldn't about a woman's," Elisabeth hastened to +justify herself; "but I thought perhaps they might about a goddess's." + +"It is the same thing. You've no idea what tremendously clever chaps +schoolmasters are--much too clever to take any interest in girls' and +women's concerns. Besides, they are too old for that, too--they are +generally quite thirty." + +Elisabeth was silent for a moment; and Christopher whistled as he looked +across the green valley to the sunset, without in the least knowing how +beautiful it was. But Elisabeth knew, for she possessed an innate +knowledge of many things which he would have to learn by experience. But +even she did not yet understand that because the sunset was beautiful +she felt a sudden hunger and thirst after righteousness. + +"Chris, do you think it is wicked of people to fall in love?" she asked +suddenly. + +"Not exactly wicked; more silly, I should say," replied Chris +generously. + +"Because if it is wicked, I shall give up reading tales about it." This +was a tremendous and unnatural sacrifice to principle on the part of +Elisabeth. + +Christopher turned upon her sharply. "You don't read tales that Miss +Farringdon hasn't said you may read, do you?" + +"Yes; lots. But I never read tales that she has said I mustn't read." + +"You oughtn't to read any tale till you have asked her first if you +may." + +Elisabeth's face fell. "I never thought of doing such a thing as asking +her first. Oh! Chris, you don't really think I ought to, do you? Because +she'd be sure to say no." + +"That is exactly why you ought to ask." Christopher's sense of honour +was one of his strong points. + +Then Elisabeth lost her temper. "That is you all over! You are the most +tiresome boy to have anything to do with! You are always bothering about +things being wrong, till you make them wrong. Now I hardly ever think of +it; but I can't go on doing things after you've said they are wrong, +because that would be wrong of me, don't you see? And yet it wasn't a +bit wrong of me before I knew. I hate you!" + +"I say, Betty, I'm awfully sorry lo have riled you; but you asked me." + +"I didn't ask you whether I need ask Cousin Maria, stupid! You know I +didn't. I asked you whether it was wrong to fall in love, and then you +went and dragged Cousin Maria in. I wish I'd never asked you anything; I +wish I'd never spoken to you; I wish I'd got somebody else to play with, +and then I'd never speak to you again as long as I live." + +Of course it was unwise of Christopher to condemn a weakness to which +Elisabeth was prone, and to condone one to which she was not; but no man +has learned wisdom at fifteen, and but few at fifty. + +"You are the most disagreeable boy I have ever met, and I wish I could +think of something to do to annoy you. I know what I'll do; I'll go by +myself and see Mrs. Bateson's pig, just to show you how I hate you." + +And Elisabeth flew off in the direction of Mrs. Bateson's cottage, with +the truly feminine intention of punishing the male being who had dared +to disapprove of her, by making him disapprove of her still more. Her +programme, however, was frustrated; for Mrs. Bateson herself intervened +between Elisabeth and her unholy desires, and entertained the latter +with a plate of delicious bread-and-dripping instead. Finally, that +young lady returned to her home in a more magnanimous frame of mind; and +fell asleep that night wondering if the whole male sex were as stupid as +the particular specimen with which she had to do--a problem which has +puzzled older female brains than hers. + +But poor Christopher was very unhappy. It was agony to him when his +conscience pulled him one way and Elisabeth pulled him the other; and +yet this form of torture was constantly occurring to him. He could not +bear to do what he knew was wrong, and he could not bear to vex +Elisabeth; yet Elisabeth's wishes and his own ideas of right were by no +means always synonymous. His only comfort was the knowledge that his +sovereign's anger was, as a rule, short-lived, and that he himself was +indispensable to that sovereign's happiness. This was true; but he did +not then realize that it was in his office as admiring and sympathizing +audience, and not in his person as Christopher Thornley, that he was +necessary to Elisabeth. A fuller revelation was vouchsafed to him +later. + +The next morning Elisabeth was herself again, and was quite ready to +enjoy Christopher's society and to excuse his scruples. She knew that +self of hers when she said that she wished she had somebody else to play +with, in order that she might withdraw the light of her presence from +her offending henchman. To thus punish Christopher, until she had found +some one to take his place, was a course of action which would not have +occurred to her. Elisabeth's pride could never stand in the way of her +pleasure; Christopher's, on the contrary, might. It was a remarkable +fact that after Christopher had reproved Elisabeth for some fault--which +happened neither infrequently nor unnecessarily--he was always repentant +and she forgiving; yet nine times out of ten he had been in the right +and she in the wrong. But Elisabeth's was one of those exceptionally +generous natures which can pardon the reproofs and condone the virtues +of their friends; and she bore no malice, even when Christopher had been +more obviously right than usual. But she was already enough of a woman +to adapt to her own requirements his penitence for right-doing; and on +this occasion she took advantage of his chastened demeanour to induce +him to assist her in erecting a new shrine to Athene in the wood--which +meant that she gave all the directions and he did all the work. + +"You are doing it beautifully, Chris--you really are!" she exclaimed +with delight. "We shall be able to have a splendid sacrifice this +afternoon. I've got some feathers to offer up from the fowl cook is +plucking; and they make a much better sacrifice than waste paper." + +"Why?" + +Christopher was too shy in those days to put the fact into words; +nevertheless, the fact remained that Elisabeth interested him +profoundly. She was so original, so unexpected, that she was continually +providing him with fresh food for thought. Although he was cleverer at +lessons than she was, she was by far the cleverer at play; and though he +had the finer character, hers was the stronger personality. It was +because Elisabeth was so much to him that he now and then worried her +easy-going conscience with his strictures; for, to do him justice, the +boy was no prig, and would never have dreamed of preaching to anybody +except her. But it must be remembered that Christopher had never heard +of such things as spiritual evolutions and streams of tendency: to him +right or wrong meant heaven or hell--neither more nor less; and he was +overpowered by a burning anxiety that Elisabeth should eventually go to +heaven, partly for her own sake, and partly (since human love is +stronger than dogmas and doctrines) because a heaven, uncheered by the +presence of Elisabeth, seemed a somewhat dreary place wherein to spend +one's eternity. + +"Why do feathers make a better sacrifice than paper?" repeated +Christopher, Elisabeth being so much absorbed in his work that she had +not answered his question. + +"Oh! because they smell; and it seems so much more like a real +sacrifice, somehow, if it smells." + +"I see. What ideas you do get into your head!" + +But Elisabeth's volatile thoughts had flown off in another direction. +"You really have got awfully nice-coloured hair," she remarked, Chris +having taken his cap off for the sake of coolness, as he was heated +with his toil. "I do wish I had light hair like yours. Angels, and +goddesses, and princesses, and people of that kind always have golden +hair; but only bad fairies and cruel stepmothers have nasty dark hair +like me. I think it is horrid to have dark hair." + +"I don't: I like dark hair best; and I don't think yours is half bad." +Christopher never overstated a case; but then one had the comfort of +knowing that he always meant what he said, and frequently a good deal +more. + +"Don't you really, Chris? I think it is hideous," replied Elisabeth, +taking one of her elf-locks between her fingers and examining it as if +it were a sample of material; "it is like that ugly brown seaweed which +shows which way the wind blows--no, I mean that shows whether it is +going to rain or not." + +"Never mind; I've seen lots of people with uglier hair than yours." +Chris really could be of great consolation when he tried. + +"Aren't the trees lovely when they have got all their leaves off?" said +Elisabeth, her thoughts wandering again. "I believe I like them better +now than I do in summer. Now they are like the things you wish for, and +in the summer they are like the things you get; and the things you get +are never half as nice as the things you wish for." + +This was too subtle for Christopher. "I like them best with the leaves +on; but anyhow they are nicer to look at than the chimneys that we see +from our house. You can't think how gloomy it is for your rooms to look +out on nothing but smoke and chimneys and furnaces. When you go to bed +at night it's all red, and when you get up in the morning it's all +black." + +"I should like to live in a house like that. I love the smoke and the +chimneys and the furnaces--they are all so big and strong and full of +life; and they make you think." + +"What on earth do they make you think about?" + +Elisabeth's gray eyes grew dreamy. "They make me think that the Black +Country is a wilderness that we are all travelling through; and over it +there is always the pillar of cloud by day and the pillar of fire by +night, to tell us which way to go. I make up tales to myself about the +people in the wilderness; and how they watch the pillar, and how it +keeps them from idling in their work, or selling bad iron, or doing +anything that is horrid or mean, because it is a sign to them that God +is with them, just as it used to be to the Children of Israel." + +Christopher looked up from his work. Here was the old problem: Elisabeth +did not think about religion half as much as he did, and yet the helpful +and beautiful thoughts came to her and not to him. Still, it was +comforting to know that the smoke and the glare, which he had hated, +could convey such a message; and he made up his mind not to hate them +any more. + +"And then I pretend that the people come out of the wilderness and go to +live in the country over there," Elisabeth continued, pointing to the +distant hills; "and I make up lovely tales about that country, and all +the beautiful things there. That is what is so nice about hills: you +always think there are such wonderful places on the other side of them." + +For some minutes Christopher worked silently, and Elisabeth watched him. +Then the latter said suddenly: + +"Isn't it funny that you never hate people in a morning, however much +you may have hated them the night before?" + +"Don't you?" Rapid changes of sentiment were beyond Christopher's +comprehension. He was by no means a variable person. + +"Oh! no. Last night I hated you, and made up a story in my own mind that +another really nice boy came to play with me instead of you. And I said +nice things to him, and horrid things to you; he and I played in the +wood, and you had to do lessons all by yourself at school, and had +nobody to play with. But when I woke up this morning I didn't care about +the pretending boy any more, and I wanted you." + +Christopher looked pleased; but it was not his way to express his +pleasure in words. "And so, I suppose, you came to look for me," he +said. + +"Not the first thing. Somehow it always makes you like a person better +when you have hated them for a bit, so I liked you awfully when I woke +this morning and remembered you. When you really are fond of a person, +you always want to do something to please them; so I went and told +Cousin Maria that I'd read a lot of books in the library without +thinking whether I ought to or not; but that now I wanted her to say +what I might read and what I mightn't." + +This was a course of action that Christopher could thoroughly understand +and appreciate. "Was she angry?" he asked. + +"Not a bit. That is the best of Cousin Maria--she never scolds you +unless you really deserve it; and she is very sharp at finding out +whether you deserve it or not. She said that there were a lot of books +in the library that weren't suitable for a little girl to read; but +that it wasn't naughty of me to have read what I chose, since nobody had +told me not to. And then she said it was good of me to have told her, +for she should never have found it out if I hadn't." + +"And so it was," remarked Christopher approvingly. + +"No; it wasn't--and I told her it wasn't. I told her that the goodness +was yours, because it was you that made me tell. I should never have +thought of it by myself." + +"I say, you are a regular brick!" + +Elisabeth looked puzzled. "I don't see anything brickish in saying that; +it was the truth. It was you that made me tell, you know; and it wasn't +fair for me to be praised for your goodness." + +"You really are awfully straight, for a girl," said Christopher, with +admiration; "you couldn't be straighter if you were a boy." + +This was high praise, and Elisabeth's pale little face glowed with +delight. She loved to be commended. + +"It was really very good of you to speak to Miss Farringdon about the +books," continued Christopher; "for I know you'll hate having to ask +permission before you read a tale." + +"I didn't do it out of goodness," said Elisabeth thoughtfully--"I did it +to please you; and pleasing a person you are fond of isn't goodness. I +wonder if grown-up people get to be as fond of religion as they are of +one another. I expect they do; and then they do good things just for the +sake of doing good." + +"Of course they do," replied Christopher, who was always at sea when +Elisabeth became metaphysical. + +"I suppose," she continued seriously, "that if I were really good, +religion ought to be the same to me as Cousin Anne." + +"The same as Cousin Anne! What do you mean?" + +"I mean that if I were really good, religion would give me the same sort +of feelings as Cousin Anne does." + +"What sort of feelings?" + +"Oh! they are lovely feelings," Elisabeth answered--"too lovely to +explain. Everything is a treat if Cousin Anne is there. When she speaks, +it's just like music trickling down your back; and when you do something +that you don't like to please her, you feel that you do like it." + +"Well, you are a rum little thing! I should think nobody ever thought of +all the queer things that you think of." + +"Oh! I expect everybody does," retorted Elisabeth, who was far too +healthy minded to consider herself peculiar. After another pause, she +inquired: "Do you like me, Chris?" + +"Rather! What a foolish question to ask!" Christopher replied, with a +blush, for he was always shy of talking about his feelings; and the more +he felt the shyer he became. + +But Elisabeth was not shy, and had no sympathy with anybody who was. +"How much do you like me?" she continued. + +"A lot." + +"But I want to know exactly how much." + +"Then you can't. Nobody can tell how much they like anybody. You do ask +silly questions!" + +"Yes; they can. I can tell how much I like everybody," Elisabeth +persisted. + +"How?" + +"I have a sort of thermometer in my mind, just like the big thermometer +in the hall; and I measure how much I like people by that." + +"How much do you like your Cousin Anne?" he asked. + +"Ninety-six degrees," replied Elisabeth promptly. + +"And your Cousin Maria?" + +"Sixty." + +"And Mrs. Bateson?" + +"Fifty-four." Elisabeth always knew her own mind. + +"I say, how--how--how much do you like me?" asked Christopher, with some +hesitation. + +"Sixty-two," answered Elisabeth, with no hesitation at all. + +And Christopher felt a funny, cold feeling round his loyal heart. He +grew to know the feeling well in after years, and to wonder how +Elisabeth could understand so much and yet understand so little; but at +present he was too young to understand himself. + + + + +CHAPTER III + +MRS. BATESON'S TEA-PARTY + + The best of piggie when he dies + Is not "interred with his bones," + But, in the form of porcine pies, + Blesses a world that heard his cries, + Yet heeded not those dying groans. + + +"Cousin Maria, please may I go to tea at Mrs. Bateson's with +Christopher?" said Elisabeth one day, opening the library door a little, +and endeavouring to squeeze her small person through as narrow an +aperture as possible, as is the custom with children. She never called +her playmate "Chris" in speaking to Miss Farringdon; for this latter +regarded it as actually sinful to address people by any abbreviation of +their baptismal names, just as she considered it positively immoral to +partake of any nourishment between meals. "Mrs. Bateson has killed her +pig, and there will be pork-pies for tea." + +Miss Farringdon looked over her spectacles at the restless little +figure. "Yes, my child; I see no reason why you should not. Kezia +Bateson is a God-fearing woman, and her husband has worked at the +Osierfield for forty years. I have the greatest respect for Caleb +Bateson; he is a worthy man and a good Methodist, as his father was +before him." + +"He is a very ignorant man: he says Penny-lope." + +"Says what, Elisabeth?" + +"Penny-lope. I was showing him a book the other day about Penelope--the +woman with the web, you know--and he called her Penny-lope. I didn't +like to correct him, but I said Penelope afterward as often and as loud +as I could." + +"That was very ill-bred of you. Come here, Elisabeth." + +The child came and stood by the old lady's chair, and began playing with +a bunch of seals that were suspended by a gold chain from Miss +Farringdon's waist. It was one of Elisabeth's little tricks that her +fingers were never idle when she was talking. + +"What have I taught you are the two chief ends at which every woman +should aim, my child?" + +"To be first a Christian and then a gentlewoman," quoted Elisabeth +glibly. + +"And how does a true gentlewoman show her good breeding?" + +"By never doing or saying anything that could make any one else feel +uncomfortable," Elisabeth quoted again. + +"Then do you think that to display your own knowledge by showing up +another person's ignorance would make that person feel comfortable, +Elisabeth?" + +"No, Cousin Maria." + +"Knowledge is not good breeding, remember; it is a far less important +matter. A true gentlewoman may be ignorant; but a true gentlewoman will +never be inconsiderate." + +Elisabeth hung her head. "I see." + +"If you keep your thoughts fixed upon the people to whom you are +talking, and never upon yourself, you will always have good manners, my +child. Endeavour to interest and not to impress them." + +"You mean I must talk about their things and not about mine?" + +"More than that. Make the most of any common ground between yourself and +them; make the least of any difference between yourself and them; and, +above all, keep strenuously out of sight any real or fancied superiority +you may possess over them. I always think that Saint Paul's saying, 'To +the weak became I as weak,' was the perfection of good manners." + +"I don't think I quite understand." + +Miss Farringdon spoke in parables. "Then listen to this story. There was +once a common soldier who raised himself from the ranks and earned a +commission. He was naturally very nervous the first night he dined at +the officers' mess, as he had never dined with gentlemen before, and he +was afraid of making some mistake. It happened that the wine was served +while the soup was yet on the table, and with the wine the ice. The poor +man did not know what the ice was for, so took a lump and put it in his +soup." + +Elisabeth laughed. + +"The younger officers began to giggle, as you are doing," Miss +Farringdon continued; "but the colonel, to whom the ice was handed next, +took a lump and put it in his soup also; and then the young officers did +not want to laugh any more. The colonel was a perfect gentleman." + +"It seems to me," said Elisabeth thoughtfully, "that you've got to be +good before you can be polite." + +"Politeness appears to be what goodness really is," replied Miss +Farringdon, "and is an attitude rather than an action. Fine breeding is +not the mere learning of any code of manners, any more than gracefulness +is the mere learning of any kind of physical exercise. The gentleman +apparently, as the Christian really, looks not on his own things, but on +the things of others; and the selfish person is always both unchristian +and ill-bred." + +Elisabeth gazed wistfully up into Miss Farringdon's face. "I should like +to be a real gentlewoman, Cousin Maria; do you think I ever shall be?" + +"I think it quite possible, if you bear all these maxims in mind, and if +you carry yourself properly and never stoop. I can not approve of the +careless manners of the young people of to-day, who loll upon +easy-chairs in the presence of their elders, and who slouch into a room +with constrained familiarity and awkward ease," replied Miss Farringdon, +who had never sat in an easy-chair in her life, and whose back was still +as straight as an arrow. + +So in the afternoon of that day Christopher and Elisabeth attended Mrs. +Bateson's tea-party. + +The Batesons lived in a clean little cottage on the west side of High +Street, and enjoyed a large garden to the rearward. It was a singular +fact that whereas all their windows looked upon nothing more interesting +than the smokier side of the bleak and narrow street, their pigsties +commanded a view such as can rarely be surpassed for beauty and extent +in England. But Mrs. Bateson called her front view "lively" and her back +view "dull," and congratulated herself daily upon the aspect and the +prospect of her dwelling-place. The good lady's ideas as to what +constitutes beauty in furniture were by no means behind her opinions as +to what is effective in scenery. Her kitchen was paved with bright red +tiles, which made one feel as if one were walking across a coral reef, +and was flanked on one side with a black oak dresser of unnumbered +years, covered with a brave array of blue-and-white pottery. An artist +would have revelled in this kitchen, with its delicious effects in red +and blue; but Mrs. Bateson accounted it as nothing. Her pride was +centred in her parlour and its mural decorations, which consisted +principally of a large and varied assortment of funeral-cards, neatly +framed and glazed. In addition to these there was a collection of family +portraits in daguerreotype, including an interesting representation of +Mrs. Bateson's parents sitting side by side in two straight-backed +chairs, with their whole family twining round them--a sort of Swiss +Family Laocoon; and a picture of Mr. Bateson--in the attitude of Juliet +and the attire of a local preacher--leaning over a balcony, which was +overgrown with a semi-tropical luxuriance of artificial ivy, and which +was obviously too frail to support him. But the masterpiece in Mrs. +Bateson's art-gallery was a soul-stirring illustration of the death of +the revered John Wesley. This picture was divided into two compartments: +the first represented the room at Wesley's house in City Road, with the +assembled survivors of the great man's family weeping round his bed; and +the second depicted the departing saint flying across Bunhill Fields +burying-ground in his wig and gown and bands, supported on either side +by a stalwart angel. + +As Elisabeth had surmised, the entertainment on this occasion was +pork-pie; and Mrs. Hankey, a near neighbour, had also been bidden to +share the feast. So the tea-party was a party of four, the respective +husbands of the two ladies not yet having returned from their duties at +the Osierfield. + +"I hope that you'll all make yourselves welcome," said the hostess, +after they had sat down at the festive board. "Master Christopher, my +dear, will you kindly ask a blessing?" + +Christopher asked a blessing as kindly as he could, and Mrs. Bateson +continued: + +"Well, to be sure, it is a pleasure to see you looking so tall and +strong, Master Christopher, after all your schooling. I'm not in favour +of much schooling myself, as I think it hinders young folks from +growing, and puts them off their vittles; but you give the contradiction +to that notion--doesn't he, Mrs. Hankey?" + +Mrs. Hankey shook her head. It was her rule in life never to look on the +bright side of things; she considered that to do so was what she called +"tempting Providence." Her theory appeared to be that as long as +Providence saw you were miserable, that Power was comfortable about you +and let you alone; but if Providence discovered you could bear more +sorrow than you were then bearing, you were at once supplied with that +little more. Naturally, therefore, her object was to convince Providence +that her cup of misery was full. But Mrs. Hankey had her innocent +enjoyments, in spite of the sternness of her creed. If she took light +things seriously, she took serious things lightly; so she was not +without her compensations. For instance, a Sunday evening's discourse on +future punishment and the like, with illustrations, was an unfailing +source of pure and healthful pleasure to her; while a funeral +sermon--when the chapel was hung with black, and the bereaved family +sat in state in their new mourning, and the choir sang Vital Spark as an +anthem--filled her soul with joy. So when Mrs. Bateson commented with +such unseemly cheerfulness upon Christopher's encouraging appearance, it +was but consistent of Mrs. Hankey to shake her head. + +"You can never tell," she replied--"never; often them that looks the +best feels the worst; and many's the time I've seen folks look the very +picture of health just before they was took with a mortal illness." + +"Ay, that's so," agreed the hostess; "but I think Master Christopher's +looks are the right sort; such a nice colour as he's got, too!" + +"That comes from him being so fair complexioned--it's no sign of +health," persisted Mrs. Hankey; "in fact, I mistrust those fair +complexions, especially in lads of his age. Why, he ought to be as brown +as a berry, instead of pink and white like a girl." + +"It would look hideous to have a brown face with such yellow hair as +mine," said Christopher, who naturally resented being compared to a +girl. + +"Master Christopher, don't call anything that the Lord has made hideous. +We must all be as He has formed us, however that may be," replied Mrs. +Hankey reprovingly; "and it is not our place to pass remarks upon what +He has done for the best." + +"But the Lord didn't make him with a brown face and yellow hair; that's +just the point," interrupted Elisabeth, who regarded the bullying of +Christopher as her own prerogative, and allowed no one else to indulge +in that sport unpunished. + +"No, my love; that's true enough," Mrs. Bateson said soothingly: "a +truer word than that never was spoken. But I wish you could borrow some +of Master Christopher's roses--I do, indeed. For my part, I like to see +little girls with a bit of colour in their cheeks; it looks more +cheerful-like, as you might say; and looks go a long way with some +folks, though a meek and quiet spirit is better, taking it all round." + +"Now Miss Elisabeth does look delicate, and no mistake," assented Mrs. +Hankey; "she grows too fast for her strength, I'll be bound; and her +poor mother died young, you know, so it is in the family." + +Christopher looked at Elisabeth with the quick sympathy of a sensitive +nature. He thought it would frighten her to hear Mrs. Hankey talk in +that way, and he felt that he hated Mrs. Hankey for frightening +Elisabeth. + +But Elisabeth was made after a different pattern, and was not in the +least upset by Mrs. Hankey's gloomy forebodings. She was essentially +dramatic; and, unconsciously, her first object was to attract notice. +She would have preferred to do this by means of unsurpassed beauty or +unequalled talent; but, failing these aids to distinction, an early +death-bed was an advertisement not to be despised. In her mind's eye she +saw a touching account of her short life in Early Days, winding up with +a heart-rending description of its premature close; and her mind's eye +gloated over the sight. + +The hostess gazed at her critically. "She is pale, Mrs. Hankey, there's +no doubt of that; but pale folks are often the healthiest, though they +mayn't be the handsomest. And she is wiry, is Miss Elisabeth, though she +may be thin. But is your tea to your taste, or will you take a little +more cream in it?" + +"It is quite right, thank you, Mrs. Bateson; and the pork-pie is just +beautiful. What a light hand for pastry you always have! I'm sure I've +said over and over again that I don't know your equal either for making +pastry or for engaging in prayer." + +Mrs. Bateson, as was natural, looked pleased. "I doubt if I ever made a +better batch of pies than this. When they were all ready for baking, +Bateson says to me, 'Kezia,' he says, 'them pies is a regular +picture--all so smooth and even-like, you can't tell which from +t'other.' 'Bateson,' said I, 'I've done my best with them; and if only +the Lord will be with them in the oven, they'll be the best batch of +pies this side Jordan.'" + +"And so they are," said Elisabeth; "they are perfectly lovely." + +"I'm glad you fancy them, my love; take some more, deary, it'll do you +good." + +"No, thanks; I'd rather have a wig now." And Elisabeth helped herself to +one of the three-cornered cakes, called "wigs," which are peculiar to +Mershire. + +"You always are fortunate in your pigs," Mrs. Hankey remarked; "such +fine hams and such beautiful roaded bacon I never see anywhere equal to +yours. It'll be a sad day for you, Mrs. Bateson, when swine fever comes +into the district. I know no one as'll feel it more." + +"Now you must tell us all about your niece's wedding, Mrs. Hankey," Mrs. +Bateson said--"her that was married last week. My word alive, but your +sister is wonderful fortunate in settling her daughters! That's what I +call a well-brought-up family, and no mistake. Five daughters, and each +one found peace and a pious husband before she was five-and-twenty." + +"The one before last married a Churchman," said Mrs. Hankey +apologetically, as if the union thus referred to were somewhat +morganatic in its character, and therefore no subject for pride or +congratulation. + +"Well, to be sure! Still, he may make her a good husband." + +"He may or he may not; you never can tell. It seems to me that husbands +are like new boots--you can't tell where they're going to pinch you till +it's too late to change 'em. And as for creaking, why, the boots that +are quietest in the shop are just the ones that fairly disgrace you when +you come into chapel late on a Sunday morning, and think to slip in +quietly during the first prayer; and it is pretty much the same with +husbands--those that are the meekest in the wooing are the most +masterful to live with." + +"What was the name of the Churchman your niece married?" asked Mrs. +Bateson. "I forget." + +"Wilkins--Tom Wilkins. He isn't a bad fellow in some respects--he is +steady and sober, and never keeps back a farthing of his wages for +himself; but his views are something dreadful. I can not stand them at +any price, and so I'm forever telling his wife." + +"Dear me! That's sad news, Mrs. Hankey." + +"Would you believe it, he don't hold with the good old Methodist habit +of telling out loud what the Lord has done for your soul? He says +religion should be acted up to and not talked about; but, for my part, I +can't abide such closeness." + +"Nor I," agreed Mrs. Bateson warmly; "I don't approve of treating the +Lord like a poor relation, as some folks seem to do. They'll go to His +house and they'll give Him their money; but they're fairly ashamed of +mentioning His Name in decent company." + +"Just so; and that's Tom Wilkins to the life. He's a good husband and a +regular church-goer; but as for the word that edifieth, you might as +well look for it from a naked savage as from him. Many a time have I +said to his wife, 'Tom may be a kind husband in the time of prosperity, +as I make no doubt he is--there's plenty of that sort in the world; but +you wait till the days of adversity come, and I doubt that then you'll +be wishing you'd not been in such a hurry to get married, but had waited +till you had got a good Methodist!' And so she will, I'll be bound; and +the sooner she knows it the better." + +Mrs. Bateson sighed at the gloomy prospect opening out before young Mrs. +Wilkins; then she asked: + +"How did the last daughter's wedding go off? She married a Methodist, +surely?" + +"She did, Mrs. Bateson; and a better match no mother could wish for her +daughter, not even a duchess born; he's a chapel-steward and a +master-painter, and has six men under him. There he is, driving to work +and carrying his own ladders in his own cart, like a lord, as you may +say, by day; and there he is on a Thursday evening, letting and +reletting the pews and sittings after service, like a real gentleman. As +I said to my sister, I only hope he may be spared to make Susan a good +husband; but when a man is a chapel-steward at thirty-four, and drives +his own cart, you begin to think that he is too good for this world, and +that he is almost ripe for a better one." + +"You do indeed; there's no denying that." + +"But the wedding was beautiful: I never saw its equal--never; and as for +the prayer that the minister offered up at the end of the service, I +only wish you'd been there to hear it, Mrs. Bateson, it was so +interesting and instructive. Such a lot of information in it about love +and marriage and the like as I'd never heard before; and when he +referred to the bridegroom's first wife, and drew a picture of how she'd +be waiting to welcome them both, when the time came, on the further +shore--upon my word, there wasn't a dry eye in the chapel!" And Mrs. +Hankey wiped hers at the mere remembrance of the scene. + +"But what did Susan say?" asked Elisabeth, with great interest. "I +expect she didn't want another wife to welcome them on the further +shore." + +"Oh! Miss Elisabeth, what a naughty, selfish little girl you are!" +exclaimed Susan's aunt, much shocked. "What would Miss Farringdon think +if she heard you? Why, you don't suppose, surely, that when folks get to +heaven they'll be so greedy and grasping that they'll want to keep +everything to themselves, do you? My niece is a good girl and a member +of society, and she was as pleased as anybody at the minister's +beautiful prayer." + +Elisabeth was silent, but unconvinced. + +"How is your sister herself?" inquired Mrs. Bateson. "I expect she's a +bit upset now that the fuss is all over, and she hasn't a daughter left +to bless herself with." + +Mrs. Hankey sighed cheerfully. "Well, she did seem rather low-spirited +when all the mess was cleared up, and Susan had gone off to her own +home; but I says to her, 'Never mind, Sarah, and don't you worry +yourself; now that the weddings are over, the funerals will soon begin.' +You see, you must cheer folks up a bit, Mrs. Bateson, when they're +feeling out of sorts." + +"You must indeed," agreed the lady of the house, feeling that her guest +had hit upon a happy vein of consolation; "it is dull without daughters +when you've once got accustomed to 'em, daughters being a sight more +comfortable and convenient than sons, to my mind." + +"Well, you see, daughters you can teach to know theirselves, and sons; +you can't. Though even daughters can never rest till they've got +married, more's the pity. If they knowed as much about men as I do, +they'd be thanking the Lord that He'd created them single, instead of +forever fidgeting to change the state to which they were born." + +"Well, I holds with folks getting married," argued Mrs. Bateson; "it +gives 'em something to think about between Sunday's sermon and +Thursday's baking; and if folks have nothing to think about, they think +about mischief." + +"That's true, especially if they happen to be men." + +"Why do men think about mischief more than women do?" asked Elisabeth, +who always felt hankerings after the why and wherefore of things. + +"Because, my dear, the Lord made 'em so, and it is not for us to +complain," replied Mrs. Hankey, in a tone which implied that, had the +role of Creator been allotted to her, the idiosyncrasies of the male sex +would have been much less marked than they are at present. "They've no +sense, men haven't; that's what is the matter with them." + +"You never spoke a truer word, Mrs. Hankey," agreed her hostess; "the +very best of them don't properly know the difference between their souls +and their stomachs; and they fancy that they are a-wrestling with their +doubts, when really it is their dinners that are a-wrestling with them. +Now take Bateson hisself, and a kinder husband or a better Methodist +never drew breath; yet so sure as he touches a bit of pork, he begins to +worn hisself about the doctrine of Election till there's no living with +him." + +"That's a man all over, to the very life," said Mrs. Hankey +sympathetically; "and he never has the sense to see what's wrong with +him, I'll be bound." + +"Not he--he wouldn't be a man if he had. And then he'll sit in the front +parlour and engage in prayer for hours at a time, till I says to him, +'Bateson,' says I, 'I'd be ashamed to go troubling the Lord with a +prayer when a pinch o' carbonate o' soda would set things straight +again.'" + +"And quite right, Mrs. Bateson; it's often a wonder to me that the Lord +has patience with men, seeing that their own wives haven't." + +"And to me, too. Now Bateson has been going on like this for thirty +years or more; yet if there's roast pork on the table, and I say a word +to put him off it, he's that hurt as never was. Why, I'm only too glad +to see him enjoying his food if no harm comes of it; but it's dreary +work seeing your husband in the Slough of Despond, especially when it's +your business to drag him out again, and most especially when you +particularly warned him against going in." + +Mrs. Hankey groaned. "The Bible says true when it tells us that men are +born to give trouble as the sparks fly upward; and it is a funny +Providence, to my mind, as ordains for women to be so bothered with 'em. +At my niece's wedding, as we were just speaking about, 'Susan,' I says, +'I wish you happiness; and I only hope you won't live to regret your +marriage as I have done mine.' For my part, I can't see what girls want +with husbands at all; they are far better without them." + +"Not they, Mrs. Hankey," replied Mrs. Bateson warmly; "any sort of a +husband is better than none, to my mind. Life is made up of naughts and +crosses; and the folks that get the crosses are better off than those +that get the naughts, though that husbands are crosses I can't pretend +to deny; but I haven't patience with single women, I haven't--they have +nothing to occupy their minds, and so they get to talking about their +health and such-like fal-lals." + +"Saint Paul didn't hold with you," said Mrs. Hankey, with reproach in +her tone; "he thought that the unmarried women minded the things of the +Lord better than the married ones." + +"Saint Paul didn't know much about the subject, and how could he be +expected to, being only a bachelor himself, poor soul? But if he'd had a +wife, she'd soon have told him what the unmarried women were thinking +about; and it wouldn't have been about the Lord, I'll be bound. Now take +Jemima Stubbs; does she mind the things of the Lord more than you and I +do, Mrs. Hankey, I should like to know?" + +"I can't say; it is not for us to judge." + +"Not she! Why, she's always worrying about that poor little brother of +hers, what's lame. I often wish that the Lord would think on him and +take him, for he's a sore burden on Jemima, he is. If you're a woman you +are bound to work for some man or another, and to see to his food and to +bear with his tantrums; and, for my part, I'd rather do it for a husband +than for a father or a brother. There's more credit in it, as you might +say." + +"There's something in that, maybe." + +"And after all, in spite of the botheration he gives, there's something +very cheerful in having a man about the house. They keep you alive, do +men. The last time I saw Jemima Stubbs she was as low as low could be. +'Jemima,' I says, 'you are out of spirits.' 'Mrs. Bateson,' says she, +'I am that. I wish I was either in love or in the cemetery, and I don't +much mind which.'" + +"Did she cry?" asked Elisabeth, who was always absorbingly interested in +any one who was in trouble. With her, to pity was to love; and it was +difficult for her ever to love where she did not pity. Christopher did +not understand this, and was careful not to appeal to Elisabeth's +sympathy for fear of depressing her. Herein, both as boy and man, he +made a great mistake. It was not as easy to depress Elisabeth as it was +to depress him; and, moreover, it was sometimes good for her to be +depressed. But he did unto her as he would she should do unto him; and, +when all is said and done, it is difficult to find a more satisfactory +rule of conduct than this. + +"Cry, lovey?" said Mrs. Bateson; "I should just think she did--fit to +break her heart." + +Thereupon Jemima Stubbs became a heroine of romance in Elisabeth's eyes, +and a new interest in her life. "I shall go and see her to-morrow," she +said, "and take her something nice for her little brother. What do you +think he would like, Mrs. Bateson?" + +"Bless the child, she is one of the Good Shepherd's own lambs!" +exclaimed Mrs. Bateson, with tears in her eyes. + +Mrs. Hankey sighed. "It is the sweetest flowers that are the readiest +for transplanting to the Better Land," she said; and once again +Christopher hated her. + +But Elisabeth was engrossed in the matter in hand. "What would he like?" +she persisted--"a new toy, or a book, or jam and cake?" + +"I should think a book, lovey; he's fair set on books, is Johnnie +Stubbs; and if you'd read a bit to him yourself, it would be a fine +treat for the lad." + +Elisabeth's eyes danced with joy. "I'll go the first thing to-morrow +morning, and read him my favourite chapter out of The Fairchild Family; +and then I'll teach him some nice games to play all by himself." + +"That's a dear young lady!" exclaimed Mrs. Bateson, in an ecstasy of +admiration. + +"Do you think Jemima will cry when I go?" + +"No, lovey; she wouldn't so far forget herself as to bother the gentry +with her troubles, surely." + +"But I shouldn't be bothered; I should be too sorry for her. I always am +frightfully interested in people who are unhappy--much more interested +than in people who are happy; and I always love everybody when I've seen +them cry. It is so easy to be happy, and so dull. But why doesn't Jemima +fall in love if she wants to?" + +"There now!" cried Mrs. Bateson, in a sort of stage aside to an +imaginary audience. "What a clever child she is! I'm sure I don't know, +dearie." + +"It is a pity that she hasn't got a Cousin Anne," said Elisabeth, her +voice trembling with sympathy. "When you've got a Cousin Anne, it makes +everything so lovely." + +"And so it does, dearie--so it does," agreed Mrs. Bateson, who did not +in the least understand what Elisabeth meant. + +On the way home, after the tea-party was over, Christopher remarked: + +"Old Mother Bateson isn't a bad sort; but I can't stand Mother Hankey." + +"Why not?" + +"She says such horrid things." He had not yet forgiven Mrs. Hankey for +her gloomy prophecies respecting Elisabeth. + +"Not horrid, Chris. She is rather stupid sometimes, and doesn't know +when things are funny; but she never means to be really horrid, I am +sure." + +"Well, I think she is an old cat," persisted Christopher. + +"The only thing I don't like about her is her gloves," added Elisabeth +thoughtfully; "they are so old they smell of biscuit. Isn't it funny +that old gloves always smell of biscuit. I wonder why?" + +"I think they do," agreed Christopher; "but nobody except you would ever +have thought of saying it. You have a knack of saying what everybody +else is thinking; and that is what makes you so amusing." + +"I'm glad you think I'm amusing; but I can't see much funniness in just +saying what is true." + +"Well, I can't explain why it is funny; but you really are simply +killing sometimes," said Christopher graciously. + +The next day, and on many succeeding ones, Elisabeth duly visited Jemima +Stubbs and the invalid boy, although Christopher entreated her not to +worry herself about them, and offered to go in her place. But he failed +to understand that Elisabeth was goaded by no depressing sense of duty, +as he would have been in similar circumstances; she went because pity +was a passion with her, and therefore she was always absorbingly +interested in any one whom she pitied. Strength and success and +such-like attributes never appealed to Elisabeth, possibly because she +herself was strong, and possessed all the qualities of the successful +person; but weakness and failure were all-powerful in enlisting her +sympathy and interest and, through these, her love. As Christopher grew +older he dreamed dreams of how in the future he should raise himself +from being only the nephew of Miss Farringdon's manager to a position of +wealth and importance; and how he should finally bring all his glories +and honours and lay them at Elisabeth's feet. His eyes were not opened +to see that Elisabeth would probably turn with careless laughter from +all such honours thus manufactured into her pavement; but if he came to +her bent and bruised and brokenhearted, crushed with failure instead of +crowned with success, her heart would never send him empty away, but +would go out to him with a passionate longing to make up to him for all +that he had missed in life. + +A few days after Mrs. Bateson's tea-party he said to Elisabeth, for +about the twentieth time: + +"I say, I wish you wouldn't tire yourself with going to read to that +Stubbs brat." + +"Tire myself? What rubbish! nothing can tire me. I never felt tired in +my life; but I shouldn't mind it just once, to see what it feels like." + +"It feels distinctly unpleasant, I can tell you. But I really do wish +you'd take more care of yourself, or else you'll get ill, or have +headaches or something--you will indeed." + +"No, I shan't; I never had a headache. That's another of the things that +I don't know what they feel like; and yet I want to know what everything +feels like--even disagreeable things." + +"You'll know fast enough, I'm afraid," replied Christopher; "but even if +it doesn't tire you, you would enjoy playing in the garden more than +reading to Johnnie Stubbs--you know you would; and I can go and read to +the little chap, if you are set on his being read to." + +"But you would much rather play in the garden than read to him; and +especially as it is your holidays, and your own reading-time will soon +begin." + +"Oh! _I_ don't matter. Never bother your head about _me_; remember I'm +all right as long as you are; and that as long as you're jolly, I'm +bound to have a good time. But it riles me to see you worrying and +overdoing yourself." + +"You don't understand, Chris; you really are awfully stupid about +understanding things. I don't go to see Jemima and Johnnie because I +hate going, and yet think I ought; I go because I am so sorry for them +both that my sorriness makes me like to go." + +But Christopher did not understand, and Elisabeth could not make him do +so. The iron of duty had entered into his childish soul; and, +unconsciously, he was always trying to come between it and Elisabeth, +and to save her from the burden of obligation which lay so heavily upon +his spirit. He was a religious boy, but his religion was of too stern a +cast to bring much joy to him; and he was passionately anxious that +Elisabeth should not be distressed in like manner. His desire was that +she should have sufficient religion to insure heaven, but not enough to +spoil earth--a not uncommon desire on behalf of their dear ones among +poor, ignorant human beings, whose love for their neighbour will surely +atone in some measure for their injustice toward God. + +"You see," Elisabeth continued, "there is nothing that makes you so fond +of people as being sorry for them. The people that are strong and happy +don't want your fondness, so it is no use giving it to them. It is the +weak, unhappy people that want you to love them, and so it is the weak, +unhappy people that you love." + +"But I don't," replied Christopher, who was always inclined to argue a +point; "when I like people, I should like them just the same as if they +went about yelling Te Deums at the top of their voices; and when I don't +like them, it wouldn't make me like them to see them dressed from head +to foot in sackcloth and ashes." + +"Oh! that's a stupid way of liking, I think." + +"It may be stupid, but it's my way." + +"Don't you like me better when I cry than when I laugh?" asked +Elisabeth, who never could resist a personal application. + +"Good gracious, no! I always like you the same; but I'd much rather you +laughed than cried--it is so much jollier for you; in fact, it makes me +positively wretched to see you cry." + +"It always vexes me," Elisabeth said thoughtfully, "to read about +tournaments, because I think it was so horrid of the Queen of Beauty to +give the prize to the knight who won." + +Christopher laughed with masculine scorn. "What nonsense! Who else could +she have given it to?" + +"Why, to the knight who lost, of course. I often make up a tale to +myself that I am the Queen of Beauty at a tournament; and when the +victorious knight rides up to me with his visor raised, I just laugh at +him, and say, 'You can have the fame and the glory and the cheers of the +crowd; that's quite enough for you!' And then I go down from my dais, +right into the arena where the unhorsed knight is lying wounded, and +take off his helmet, and lay his head on my lap, and say, 'You shall +have the prize, because you have got nothing else!' So then that knight +becomes my knight, and always wears my colours; and that makes up to him +for having been beaten at the tournament, don't you see?" + +"It would have been a rotten sort of tournament that was carried on in +that fashion; and your prize would have been no better than a +booby-prize," persisted Christopher. + +"How silly you are! I'm glad I'm not a boy; I wouldn't have been as +stupid as a boy for anything!" + +"Don't be so cross! You must see that the knight who wins is the best +knight; chaps that are beaten are not up to much." + +"Well, they are the sort I like best; and if you had any sense you'd +like them best, too." Whereupon Elisabeth removed the light of her +offended countenance from Christopher, and dashed off in a royal rage. + +As for him, he sighed over the unreasonableness of the weaker sex, but +accepted it philosophically as one of the rules of the game; and Chris +played games far too well to have anything but contempt for any one who +rebelled against the rules of any game whatsoever. It was a man's +business, he held, not to argue about the rules, but to play the game +according to them, and to win; or, if that was out of his power, to lose +pluckily and never complain. + + + + +CHAPTER IV + +SCHOOL-DAYS + + Up to eighteen we fight with fears, + And deal with problems grave and weighty, + And smile our smiles and weep our tears, + Just as we do in after years + From eighteen up to eighty. + + +When Elisabeth was sixteen her noonday was turned into night by the +death of her beloved Cousin Anne. For some time the younger Miss +Farringdon had been in failing health; but it was her role to be +delicate, and so nobody felt anxious about her until it was too late for +anxiety to be of any use. She glided out of life as gracefully as she +had glided through it, trusting that the sternness of her principles +would expiate the leniency of her practice; and was probably surprised +at the discovery that it was the leniency of her practice which finally +expiated the sternness of her principles. + +She left a blank, which was never quite filled up, in the lives of her +sister Maria and her small cousin Elisabeth. The former bore her sorrow +better, on the whole, than did the latter, because she had acquired the +habit of bearing sorrow; but Elisabeth mourned with all the hopeless +misery of youth. + +"It is no use trying to make me interested in things," she sobbed in +response to Christopher's clumsy though well-meant attempts to divert +her. "I shall never be interested in anything again--never. Everything +is different now that Cousin Anne is gone away." + +"Not quite everything," said Christopher gently. + +"Yes; everything. Why, the very trees don't look the same as they used +to look, and the view isn't a bit what it used to be when she was here. +All the ordinary things seem queer and altered, just as they do when you +see them in a dream." + +"Poor little girl!" + +"And now it doesn't seem worth while for anything to look pretty. I used +to love the sunsets, but now I hate them. What is the good of their +being so beautiful and filling the sky with red and gold, if _she_ isn't +here to see them? And what is the good of trying to be good and clever +if she isn't here to be pleased with me? Oh dear! oh dear! Nothing will +ever be any good any more." + +Christopher laid an awkward hand upon Elisabeth's dark hair, and began +stroking it the wrong way. "I say, I wish you wouldn't fret so; it's +more than I can stand to see you so wretched. Isn't there anything that +I can do to make it up to you, somehow?" + +"No; nothing. Nothing will ever comfort me any more; and how could a +great, stupid boy like you make up to me for having lost her?" moaned +poor little Elisabeth, with the selfishness of absorbing grief. + +"Well, anyway, I am as fond of you as she was, for nobody could be +fonder of anybody than I am of you." + +"That doesn't help. I don't miss her so because she loved me, but +because I loved her; and I shall never, never love any one else as much +as long as I live." + +"Oh yes, you will, I expect," replied Christopher, who even then knew +Elisabeth better than she knew herself. + +"No--I shan't; and I should hate myself if I did." + +Elisabeth fretted so terribly after her Cousin Anne that she grew paler +and thinner than ever; and Miss Farringdon was afraid that the girl +would make herself really ill, in spite of her wiry constitution. After +much consultation with many friends, she decided to send Elisabeth to +school, for it was plain that she was losing her vitality through lack +of an interest in life; and school--whatever it may or may not +supply--invariably affords an unfailing amount of new interests. So +Elisabeth went to Fox How--a well-known girls' school not a hundred +miles from London--so called in memory of Dr. Arnold, according to whose +principles the school was founded and carried on. + +It would be futile to attempt to relate the history of Elisabeth +Farringdon without telling in some measure what her school-days did for +her; and it would be equally futile to endeavour to convey to the +uninitiated any idea of what that particular school meant--and still +means--to all its daughters. + +When Elisabeth had left her girlhood far behind her, the mere mention of +the name, Fox How, never failed to send thrills all through her, as God +save the Queen, and Home, sweet Home have a knack of doing; and for any +one to have ever been a pupil at Fox How, was always a sure and certain +passport to Elisabeth's interest and friendliness. The school was an +old, square, white house, standing in a walled garden; and those walls +enclosed all the multifarious interests and pleasures and loves and +rivalries and heart-searchings and soul-awakenings which go to make up +the feminine life from twelve to eighteen, and which are very much the +same in their essence, if not in their form, as those which go to make +up the feminine life from eighteen to eighty. In addition to these, the +walls enclosed two lawns and an archery-ground, a field and a pond +overgrown with water-lilies, a high mound covered with grass and trees, +and a kitchen-garden filled with all manner of herbs and pleasant +fruits--in short, it was a wonderful and extensive garden, such as one +sees now and then in some old-fashioned suburb, but which people have +neither the time nor the space to lay out nowadays. It also contained a +long, straight walk, running its whole length and shaded by impenetrable +greenery, where Elisabeth used to walk up and down, pretending that she +was a nun; and some delightful swings and see-saws, much patronized by +the said Elisabeth, which gave her a similar physical thrill to that +produced in later years by the mention of her old school. + +The gracious personality which ruled over Fox How in the days of +Elisabeth had mastered the rarely acquired fact that the word _educate_ +is derived from _educo_, to _draw out_, and not (as is generally +supposed) from _addo_, to _give to_; so the pupils there were trained to +train themselves, and learned how to learn--a far better equipment for +life and its lessons than any ready-made cloak of superficial knowledge, +which covers all individualities and fits none. There was no cramming or +forcing at Fox How; the object of the school was not to teach girls how +to be scholars, but rather how to be themselves--that is to say, the +best selves which they were capable of becoming. High character rather +than high scholarship was the end of education there; and good breeding +counted for more than correct knowledge. Not that learning was +neglected, for Elisabeth and her schoolfellows worked at their books for +eight good hours every day; but it did not form the first item on the +programme of life. + +And who can deny that the system of Fox How was the correct system of +education, at any rate, as far as girls are concerned? Unless a woman +has to earn her living by teaching, what does it matter to her how much +hydrogen there is in a drop of rain-water, or in what year Hannibal +crossed the Alps? But it will matter to her infinitely, for the +remainder of her mortal existence, whether she is one of those graceful, +sympathetic beings, whose pathway is paved by the love of Man and the +friendship of Woman; or one of that much-to-be-blamed, if +somewhat-to-be-pitied, sisterhood, who are unloved because they are +unlovely, and unlovely because they are unloved. + +It is not good for man, woman, or child to be alone; and the +companionship of girls of her own age did much toward deepening and +broadening Elisabeth's character. The easy give-and-take of perfect +equality was beneficial to her, as it is to everybody She did not forget +her Cousin Anne--the art of forgetting was never properly acquired by +Elisabeth; but new friendships and new interests sprang up out of the +grave of the old one, and changed its resting-place from a cemetery into +a garden. Elisabeth Farringdon could not be happy--could not exist, in +fact--without some absorbing affection and interest in life. There are +certain women to whom "the trivial round" and "the common task" are +all-sufficing who ask nothing more of life than that they shall always +have a dinner to order or a drawing-room to dust, and to whom the +delinquencies of the cook supply a drama of never-failing attraction and +a subject of never-ending conversation; but Elisabeth was made of other +material; vital interests and strong attachments were indispensable to +her well-being. The death of Anne Farringdon had left a cruel blank in +the young life which was none too full of human interest to begin with; +but this blank was to a great measure filled up by Elisabeth's adoration +for the beloved personage who ruled over Fox How, and by her devoted +friendship for Felicia Herbert. + +In after years she often smiled tenderly when she recalled the absolute +worship which the girls at Fox How offered to their "Dear Lady," as they +called her, and of which the "Dear Lady" herself was supremely +unconscious. It was a feeling of loyalty stronger than any ever excited +by crowned heads (unless, perhaps, by the Pope himself), as she +represented to their girlish minds the embodiment of all that was right, +as well as of all that was mighty--and represented it so perfectly that +through all their lives her pupils never dissociated herself from the +righteousness which she taught and upheld and practised. And this +attitude was wholly good for girls born in a century when it was the +fashion to sneer at hero-worship and to scoff at authority when the word +obedience in the Marriage Service was accused of redundancy, and the +custom of speaking evil of dignities was mistaken for self-respect. + +As for Felicia Herbert, she became for a time the very mainspring of +Elisabeth's life. She was a beautiful girl, with fair hair and clear-cut +features; and Elisabeth adored her with the adoration that is freely +given, as a rule, to the girl who has beauty by the girl who has not. +She was, moreover, gifted with a sweet and calm placidity, which was +very restful to Elisabeth's volatile spirit; and the latter consequently +greeted her with that passionate and thrilling friendship which is so +satisfying to the immature female soul, but which is never again +experienced by the woman who has once been taught by a man the nature of +real love. Felicia was much more religious than Elisabeth, and much more +prone to take serious views of life. The training of Fox How made for +seriousness, and in that respect Felicia entered into the spirit of the +place more profoundly than Elisabeth was capable of doing; for Elisabeth +was always tender rather than serious, and broad rather than deep. + +"I shall never go to balls when I leave school," said Felicia to her +friend one day of their last term at Fox How, as the two were sitting in +the arbour at the end of the long walk. "I don't think it is right to go +to balls." + +"Why not? There can be no harm in enjoying oneself, and I don't believe +that God ever thinks there is." + +"Not in enjoying oneself in a certain way; but the line between +religious people and worldly people ought to be clearly marked. I think +that dancing is a regular worldly amusement, and that good people should +openly show their disapproval of it by not joining in it." + +"But God wants us to enjoy ourselves," Elisabeth persisted. "And He +wouldn't really love us if He didn't." + +"God wants us to do what is right, and it doesn't matter whether we +enjoy ourselves or not." + +"But it does; it matters awfully. We can't really be good unless we are +happy." + +Felicia shook her head. "We can't really be happy unless we are good; +and if we are good we shall 'love not the world,' but shall stand apart +from it." + +"But I must love the world; I can't help loving the world, it is so +grand and beautiful and funny. I love the whole of it: all the trees and +the fields, and the towns and the cities, and the prim old people and +the dear little children. I love the places--the old places because I +have known them so long, and the new places because I have never seen +them before; and I love the people best of all. I adore people, Felicia; +don't you?" + +"No; I don't think that I do. Of course I like the people that I like; +but the others seem to me dreadfully uninteresting." + +"But they are not; they are all frightfully interesting when once you +get to know them, and see what they really are made of inside. Outsides +may seem dull; but insides are always engrossing. That's why I always +love people when once I've seen them cry, because when they cry they are +themselves, and not any make-ups." + +"How queer to like people because you have seen them cry!" + +"Well, I do. I'd do anything for a person that I had seen cry; I would +really." + +Felicia opened her large hazel eyes still wider. "What a strange idea! +It seems to me that you think too much about feelings and not enough +about principles." + +"But thinking about feelings makes you think about principles; feelings +are the only things that ever make me think about principles at all." + +After a few minutes' silence Elisabeth asked suddenly: + +"What do you mean to do with your life when you leave here and take it +up?" + +"I don't know. I suppose I shall fall in love and get married. Most +girls do. And I hope it will be with a clergyman, for I do so love +parish work." + +"I don't think I want to get married," said Elisabeth slowly, "not even +to a clergyman." + +"How queer of you! Why not?" + +"Because I want to paint pictures and to become a great artist. I feel +there is such a lot in me that I want to say, and that I must say; and I +can only say it by means of pictures. It would be dreadful to die before +you had delivered the message that you had been sent into the world to +deliver, don't you think?" + +"It would be more dreadful to die before you had found one man to whom +you would be everything, and who would be everything to you," replied +Felicia. + +"Oh! I mean to fall in love, because everybody does, and I hate to be +behindhand with things; but I shall do it just as an experience, to make +me paint better pictures. I read in a book the other day that you must +fall in love before you can become a true artist; so I mean to do so. +But it won't be as important to me as my art," said Elisabeth, who was +as yet young enough to be extremely wise. + +"Still, it must be lovely to know there is one person in the world to +whom you can tell all your thoughts, and who will understand them, and +be interested in them." + +"It must be far lovelier to know that you have the power to tell all +your thoughts to the whole world, and that the world will understand +them and be interested in them," Elisabeth persisted. + +"I don't think so. I should like to fall in love with a man who was so +much better than I, that I could lean on him and learn from him in +everything; and I should like to feel that whatever goodness or +cleverness there was in me was all owing to him, and that I was nothing +by myself, but everything with him." + +"I shouldn't. I should like to feel that I was so good and clever that I +was helping the man to be better and cleverer even than he was before." + +"I should like all my happiness and all my interest to centre in that +one particular man," said Felicia; "and to feel that he was a fairy +prince, and that I was a poor beggar-maid, who possessed nothing but his +love." + +"Oh! I shouldn't. I would rather feel that I was a young princess, and +that he was a warrior, worn-out and wounded in the battle of life; but +that my love would comfort and cheer him after all the tiresome wars +that he'd gone through. And as for whether he'd lost or won in the wars, +I shouldn't care a rap, as long as I was sure that he couldn't be happy +without me." + +"You and I never think alike about things," said Felicia sadly. + +"You old darling! What does it matter, as long as we agree in being fond +of each other?" + +At eighteen Elisabeth said farewell to Fox How with many tears, and came +back to live at the Willows with Miss Farringdon. While she had been at +school, Christopher had been first in Germany and then in America, +learning how to make iron, so that they had never met during Elisabeth's +holidays; therefore, when he beheld her transformed from a little girl +into a full-blown young lady, he straightway fell in love with her. He +was, however, sensible enough not to mention the circumstance, even to +Elisabeth herself, as he realized, as well as anybody, that the nephew +of Richard Smallwood would not be considered a fitting mate for a +daughter of the house of Farringdon; but the fact that he did not +mention the circumstance in no way prevented him from dwelling upon it +in his own mind, and deriving much pleasurable pain and much painful +pleasure therefrom. In short, he dwelt upon it so exclusively and so +persistently that it went near to breaking his heart; but that was not +until his heart was older, and therefore more capable of being broken +past mending again. + +Miss Farringdon and the people of Sedgehill were alike delighted to have +Elisabeth among them once more; she was a girl with a strong +personality; and people with strong personalities have a knack of making +themselves missed when they go away. + +"It's nice, and so it is, to have Miss Elisabeth back again," remarked +Mrs. Bateson to Mrs. Hankey; "and it makes it so much cheerfuller for +Miss Farringdon, too." + +"Maybe it'll only make it the harder for Miss Farringdon when the time +comes for Miss Elisabeth to be removed by death or by marriage; and +which'll be the best for her--poor young lady!--the Lord must decide, +for I'm sure I couldn't pass an opinion, only having tried one, and that +nothing to boast of." + +"I wonder if Miss Farringdon will leave her her fortune," said Mrs. +Bateson, who, in common with the rest of her class, was consumed with an +absorbing curiosity as to all testamentary dispositions. + +"She may, and she may not; there's no prophesying about wills. I'm +pleased to say I can generally foretell when folks is going to die, +having done a good bit of sick-nursing in my time afore I married +Hankey; but as to foretelling how they're going to leave their money, I +can no more do it than the babe unborn; nor nobody can, as ever I heard +tell on." + +"That's so, Mrs. Hankey. Wills seem to me to have been invented by the +devil for the special upsetting of the corpse's memory. Why, some of the +peaceablest folks as I've ever known--folks as wouldn't have scared a +lady-cow in their lifetime--have left wills as have sent all their +relations to the right-about, ready to bite one another's noses off. +Bateson often says to me, 'Kezia,' he says, 'call no man honest till his +will's read.' And I'll be bound he's in the right. Still, it would be +hard to see Miss Elisabeth begging her bread after the way she's been +brought up, and Miss Farringdon would never have the conscience to let +her do it." + +"Folks leave their consciences behind with their bodies," said Mrs. +Hankey; "and I've lived long enough to be surprised at nothing where +wills are concerned." + +"That is quite true," replied Mrs. Bateson. "Now take Miss Anne, for +instance: she seemed so set on Miss Elisabeth that you'd have thought +she'd have left her a trifle; but not she! All she had went to her +sister, Miss Maria, who'd got quite enough already. Miss Anne was as +sweet and gentle a lady as you'd wish to see; but her will was as hard +as the nether millstone." + +"There's nothing like a death for showing up what a family is made of." + +"There isn't. Now Mr. William Farringdon's will was a very cruel one, +according to my ideas, leaving everything to his niece and nothing to +his son. True, Mr. George was but a barber's block with no work in him, +and I'm the last to defend that; and then he didn't want to marry his +cousin, Miss Maria, for which I shouldn't blame him so much; if a man +can't choose his own wife and his own newspaper, what can he +choose?--certainly not his own victuals, for he isn't fit. But if folks +only leave their money to them that have followed their advice in +everything, most wills would be nothing but a blank sheet of paper." + +"And if they were, it wouldn't be a bad thing, Mrs. Bateson; there would +be less sorrow on some sides, and less crape on others, and far less +unpleasantness all round. For my part, I doubt if Miss Farringdon will +leave her fortune to Miss Elisabeth, and her only a cousin's child; for +when all is said and done, cousins are but elastic relations, as you may +say. The well-to-do ones are like sisters and brothers, and the poor +ones don't seem to be no connection at all." + +"Well, let's hope that Miss Elisabeth will marry, and have a husband to +work for her when Miss Farringdon is dead and gone." + +"Husbands are as uncertain as wills, Mrs. Bateson, and more sure to give +offence to them that trust in them; besides, I doubt if Miss Elisabeth +is handsome enough to get a husband. The gentry think a powerful lot of +looks in choosing a wife." + +Mrs. Bateson took up the cudgels on Elisabeth's behalf. "She mayn't be +exactly handsome--I don't pretend as she is; but she has a wonderful way +of dressing herself, and looking for all the world like a fashion-plate; +and some men have a keen eye for clothes." + +"I think nothing of fine clothes myself. Saint Peter warns us against +braiding of hair and putting on of apparel; and when all's said and done +it don't go as far as a good complexion, and we don't need any apostle +to tell us that--we can see it for ourselves." + +"And as for cleverness, there ain't her like in all Mershire," continued +Mrs. Bateson. + +"Bless you! cleverness never yet helped a woman in getting a husband, +and never will; though if she's got enough of it, it may keep her from +ever having one. I don't hold with cleverness in a woman myself; it has +always ended in mischief, from the time when the woman ate a bit of the +Tree of Knowledge, and there was such a to-do about it." + +"I wish she'd marry Mr. Christopher; he worships the very ground she +walks on, and she couldn't find a better man if she swept out all the +corners of the earth looking for one." + +"Well, at any rate, she knows all about him; that is something. I always +say that men are the same as kittens--you should take 'em straight from +their mothers, or else not take 'em at all; for, if you don't, you never +know what bad habits they may have formed or what queer tricks they will +be up to." + +"Maybe the manager's nephew ain't altogether the sort of husband you'd +expect for a Farringdon," said Mrs. Bateson thoughtfully; "I don't deny +that. But he's wonderful fond of her, Mr. Christopher is; and there's +nothing like love for smoothing things over when the oven ain't properly +heated, and the meat is done to a cinder on one side and all raw on the +other. You find that out when you're married." + +"You find a good many things out when you're married, Mrs. Bateson, and +one is that this world is a wilderness of care. But as for love, I +don't rightly know much about it, since Hankey would always rather have +had my sister Sarah than me, and only put up with me when she gave him +the pass-by, being set on marrying one of the family. I'm sure, for my +part, I wish Sarah had had him; though I've no call to say so, her +always having been a good sister to me." + +"Well, love's a fine thing; take my word for it. It keeps the men from +grumbling when nothing else will; except, of course, the grace of God," +added Mrs. Bateson piously, "though even that don't always seem to have +much effect, when things go wrong with their dinners." + +"That's because they haven't enough of it; they haven't much grace in +their hearts, as a rule, haven't men, even the best of them; and the +best of them don't often come my way. But as for Miss Elisabeth, she +isn't a regular Farringdon, as you may say--not the real daughter of the +works; and so she shouldn't take too much upon herself, expecting dukes +and ironmasters and the like to come begging to her on their bended +knees. She is only Miss Farringdon's adopted daughter, at best; and I +don't hold with adopted children, I don't; I think it is better and more +natural to be born of your own parents, like most folk are." + +"So do I," agreed Mrs. Bateson; "I'd never have adopted a child myself. +I should always have been expecting to see its parents' faults coming +out in it--so different from the peace you have with your own flesh and +blood." + +Mrs. Hankey groaned. "Your own flesh and blood may take after their +father; you never can tell." + +"So they may, Mrs. Hankey--so they may; but, as the Scripture says, it +is our duty to whip the old man out of them." + +"Just so. And that's another thing against adopted children--you'd +hesitate about punishing them enough; I don't fancy as you'd ever feel +the same pleasure in whipping 'em as you do in whipping your own. You'd +feel you ought to be polite-like, as if they was sort of visitors." + +"My children always took after my side of the house, I'm thankful to +say," said Mrs. Bateson; "so I hadn't much trouble with them." + +"I wish I could say as much; I do, indeed. But the Lord saw fit to try +me by making my son Peter the very moral of his father; as like as two +peas they are. And when you find one poor woman with such a double +portion, you are tempted to doubt the workings of Providence." + +Mrs. Bateson looked sympathetic. "That's bad for you, Mrs. Hankey!" + +"It is so; but I take up my cross and don't complain. You know what a +feeble creature Hankey is--never doing the right thing; and, when he +does, doing it at the wrong time; well, Peter is just such another. Only +the other day he was travelling by rail, and what must he do but get an +attack of the toothache? Those helpless sort of folks are always having +the toothache, if you notice." + +"So they are." + +"Peter's toothache was so bad that he must needs take a dose of some +sleeping-stuff or other--I forget the name--and fell so sound asleep +that he never woke at the station, but was put away with the carriage +into a siding. Fast asleep he was, with his handkerchief over his face +to keep the sun off, and never heard the train shunted, nor nothing." + +"Well, to be sure! Them sleeping-draughts are wonderful soothing, as +I've heard tell, but I never took one on 'em. The Lord giveth His +beloved sleep, and His givings are enough for them as are in health; but +them as are in pain want something a bit stronger, doubtless." + +"So it appears," agreed Mrs. Hankey. "Well, there lay Peter fast asleep +in the siding, with his handkerchief over his face. And one of the +porters happens to come by, and sees him, and jumps to the conclusion +that there's been a murder in the train, and that our Peter is the +corpse. So off he goes to the station-master and tells him as there's a +murdered body in one of the carriages in the siding; and the +station-master's as put out as never was." + +Mrs. Bateson's eyes and mouth opened wide in amazement and interest. +"What a tale, to be sure!" + +"And then," added Peter's mother, growing more dramatic as the story +proceeded, "the station-master sends for the police, and the police +sends for the crowner, so as everything shall be decent and in order; +and they walks in a solemn procession--with two porters carrying a +shutter--to the carriage where Peter lies, all as grand and nice as if +it was a funeral." + +"I never heard tell of such a thing in my life--never!" + +"Then the station-master opens the door with one of them state keys +which always take such a long time to open a door which you could open +with your own hands in a trice--you know 'em by sight." + +Mrs. Bateson nodded. Of course she knew them by sight; who does not? + +"And then the crowner steps forward to take the handkerchief off the +face of the body, it being the perquisite of a crowner so to do," Mrs. +Hankey continued, with the maternal regret of a mother whose son has +been within an inch of fame, and missed it; "and just picture to +yourself the vexation of them all, when it was no murdered corpse they +found, but only our Peter with an attack of the toothache!" + +"Well, I never! They must have been put about; as you would have been +yourself, Mrs. Hankey, if you'd found so little after expecting so +much." + +"In course I should; it wasn't in flesh and blood not to be, and +station-master and crowner are but mortal, like the rest of us. I assure +you, when I first heard the story, I pitied them from the bottom of my +heart." + +"And what became of Peter in the midst of it all, Mrs. Hankey?" + +"Oh! it woke him up with a vengeance; and, of course, it flustered him a +good deal, when he rightly saw how matters stood, to have to make his +excuses to all them grand gentlemen for not being a murdered corpse. But +as I says to him afterward, he'd no one but himself to blame; first for +being so troublesome as to have the toothache, and then for being so +presumptuous as to try and cure it. And his father is just the same; if +you take your eye off him for a minute he is bound to be in some +mischief or another." + +"There's no denying that husbands is troublesome, Mrs. Hankey, and sons +is worse; but all the same I stand up for 'em both, and I wish Miss +Elisabeth had got one of the one and half a dozen of the other. Mark my +words, she'll never do better, taking him all round, than Master +Christopher." + +Mrs. Hankey sighed. "I only hope she'll find it out before it is too +late, and he is either laid in an early grave or else married to a +handsomer woman, as the case may be, and both ways out of her reach. But +I doubt it. She was a dark baby, if you remember, was Miss Elisabeth; +and I never trust them as has been dark babies, and never shall." + +"And how is Peter's toothache now?" inquired Mrs. Bateson, who was a +more tender-hearted matron than Peter's mother. + +"Oh! it's no better; and I know no one more aggravating than folks who +keep sayin' they are no better when you ask 'em how they are. It always +seems so ungrateful. Only this morning I asked our Peter how his tooth +was, and he says, 'No better, mother; it was so bad in the night that I +fairly wished I was dead.' 'Don't go wishing that,' says I; 'for if you +was dead you'd have far worse pain, and it 'ud last for ever and ever.' +I really spoke quite sharp to him, I was that sick of his grumbling; but +it didn't seem to do him no good." + +"Speaking sharp seldom does do much good," Mrs. Bateson remarked +sapiently, "except to them as speaks." + + + + +CHAPTER V + +THE MOAT HOUSE + + You thought you knew me in and out + And yet you never knew + That all I ever thought about + Was you. + + +Sedgehill High Street is nothing but a part of the great high road which +leads from Silverhampton to Studley and Slipton and the other towns of +the Black Country; but it calls itself Sedgehill High Street as it +passes through the place, and so identifies itself with its environment, +after the manner of caterpillars and polar bears and other similarly +wise and adaptable beings. At the point where this road adopts the +pseudonym of the High Street, close by Sedgehill Church, a lane branches +off from it at right angles, and runs down a steep slope until it comes +to a place where it evidently experiences a difference of opinion as to +which is the better course to pursue--an experience not confined to +lanes. But in this respect lanes are happier than men and women, in that +they are able to pursue both courses, and so learn for themselves which +is the wiser one, as is the case with this particular lane. One course +leads headlong down another steep hill--so steep that unwary travellers +usually descend from their carriages to walk up or down it, and thus +are enabled to ensure relief to their horses and a chill to themselves +at the same time; for it is hot work walking up or down that sunny +precipice, and the cold winds of Mershire await one with equal gusto at +the top and at the bottom. At the foot of the hill stretches a breezy +common, wide enough to make one think "long, long thoughts"; and if the +traveller looks backward when he has crossed this common, he will see +Sedgehill Church, crowning and commanding the vast expanse, and pointing +heavenward with its slender spire to remind him, and all other wayfaring +men, that the beauty and glory of this present world is only an earnest +and a foretaste of something infinitely fairer. + +The second course of the irresolute lane is less adventurous, and +wanders peacefully through Badgering Woods, a dark and delightful spot, +once mysterious enough to be a fitting hiding-place for the age-long +slumbers of some sleeping princess. As a matter of fact, so it was; the +princess was black but comely, and her name was Coal. There she had +slept for a century of centuries, until Prince Iron needed and sought +and found her, and awakened her with the noise of his kisses. So now the +wood is not asleep any more, but is filled with the tramping of the +prince's men. The old people wring their hands and mourn that the former +things are passing away, and that Mershire's youthful beauty will soon +be forgotten; but the young people laugh and are glad, because they know +that life is greater than beauty, and that it is by her black +coalfields, and not by her green woodlands, that Mershire will save her +people from poverty, and will satisfy her poor with bread. + +When Elisabeth Farringdon was a girl, the princess was still asleep in +the heart of the wood, and no prince had yet attempted to disturb her; +and the lane passed through a forest of silence until it came to a dear +little brown stream, which, by means of a dam, was turned into a moat, +encircling one of the most ancient houses in England. The Moat House had +been vacant for some time, as the owner was a delicate man who preferred +to live abroad; and great was the interest at Sedgehill when, a year or +two after Elisabeth left school, it was reported that a stranger, Alan +Tremaine by name, had taken the Moat House for the sake of the hunting, +which was very good in that part of Mershire. + +So Alan settled there, and became one of the items which went to the +making of Elisabeth's world. He was a small, slight man, +interesting-looking rather than regularly handsome, of about +five-and-twenty, who had devoted himself to the cultivation of his +intellect and the suppression of his soul. Because his mother had been a +religious woman, he reasoned that faith was merely an amiable feminine +weakness, and because he himself was clever enough to make passable +Latin verses, he argued that no Supernatural Being could have been +clever enough to make him. + +"Have you seen the new man who has come to the Moat House?" asked +Elisabeth of Christopher. The latter had now settled down permanently at +the Osierfield, and was qualifying himself to take his uncle's place as +general manager of the works, when that uncle should retire from the +post. He was also qualifying himself to be Elisabeth's friend instead of +her lover--a far more difficult task. + +"Yes; I have seen him." + +"What is he like? I am dying to know." + +"When I saw him he was exactly like a man riding on horseback; but as he +was obviously too well-dressed to be a beggar, I have no reason to +believe that the direction in which he was riding was the one which +beggars on horseback are proverbially expected to take." + +"How silly you are! You know what I mean." + +"Perfectly. You mean that if you had seen a man riding by, at the rate +of twelve miles an hour, it would at once have formed an opinion as to +all the workings of his mind and the meditations of his heart. But my +impressions are of slower growth, and I am even dull enough to require +some foundation for them." Christopher loved to tease Elisabeth. + +"I am awfully quick in reading character," remarked that young lady, +with some pride. + +"You are. I never know which impresses me more--the rapidity with which +you form opinions, or their inaccuracy when formed." + +"I'm not as stupid as you think." + +"Pardon me, I don't think you are at all stupid; but I am always hoping +that the experience of life will make you a little stupider." + +"Don't be a goose, but tell me all you know about Mr. Tremaine." + +"I don't know much about him, except that he is well-off, that he +apparently rides about ten stone, and that he is not what people call +orthodox. By the way. I didn't discover his unorthodoxy by seeing him +ride by, as you would have done; I was told about it by some people who +know him." + +"How very interesting!" cried Elisabeth enthusiastically. "I wonder how +unorthodox he is. Do you think he doesn't believe in anything?" + +"In himself, I fancy. Even the baldest creed is usually self-embracing. +But I believe he indulges in the not unfashionable luxury of doubts. +You might attend to them, Elisabeth; you are the sort of girl who would +enjoy attending to doubts." + +"I suppose I really am too fond of arguing." + +"There you misjudge yourself. You are instructive rather than +argumentative. Saying the same thing over and over again in different +language is not arguing, you know; I should rather call it preaching, if +I were not afraid of hurting your feelings." + +"You are a very rude boy! But, anyway, I have taught you a lot of +things; you can't deny that." + +"I don't wish to deny it; I am your eternal debtor. To tell the truth, I +believe you have taught me everything I know, that is worth knowing, +except the things that you have tried to teach me. There, I must +confess, you have signally failed." + +"What have I tried to teach you?" + +"Heaps of things: that pleasure is more important than duty; that we are +sent into the world to enjoy ourselves; that the worship of art is the +only soul-satisfying form of faith; that conscience is an exhausted +force; that feelings and emotions ought to be labelled and scheduled; +that lobster is digestible; that Miss Herbert is the most attractive +woman in the world; etcetera, etcetera." + +"And what have I taught you without trying?" + +"Ah! that is a large order; and it is remarkable that the things you +have taught me are just the things that you have never learned +yourself." + +"Then I couldn't have taught them." + +"But you did; that is where your genius comes in." + +"I really am tremendously quick in judging character," repeated +Elisabeth thoughtfully; "if I met you for the first time I should know +in five minutes that you were a man with plenty of head, and heaps of +soul, and very little heart." + +"That would show wonderful penetration on your part." + +"You may laugh, but I should. Of course, as it is, it is not +particularly clever of me to understand you thoroughly; I have known you +so long." + +"Exactly; it would only be distinctly careless of you if you did not." + +"Of course it would; but I do. I could draw a map of your mind with my +eyes shut, I know it so well." + +"I wish you would. I should value it even if it were drawn with your +eyes open, though possibly in that case it might be less correct." + +"I will, if you will give me a pencil and a sheet of paper." + +Christopher produced a pencil, and tore a half-sheet off a note that he +had in his pocket. The two were walking through the wood at the Willows +at that moment, and Elisabeth straightway sat down upon a felled tree +that happened to be lying there, and began to draw. + +The young man watched her with amusement. "An extensive outline," he +remarked; "this is gratifying." + +"Oh yes! you have plenty of mind, such as it is; nobody could deny +that." + +"But why is the coast-line all irregular, with such a lot of bays and +capes and headlands?" + +"To show that you are an undecided person, and given to split hairs, and +don't always know your own opinion. First you think you'll do a thing +because it is nice; and then you think you won't do it because it is +wrong; and in the end you drop between two stools, like Mahomet's +coffin." + +"I see. And please what are the mountain-ranges that you are drawing +now?" + +"These," replied Elisabeth, covering her map with herring-bones, "are +your scruples. Like all other mountain-ranges they hinder commerce, make +pleasure difficult, and render life generally rather uphill work." +"Don't I sound exactly as if I was taking a geography class?" + +"Or conducting an Inquisition," added Christopher. + +"I thought an Inquisition was a Spanish thing that hurt." + +"So certain ignorant people say; but it was originally invented, I +believe, to eradicate error and to maintain truth." + +"I am going on with my geography class, so don't interrupt. The rivers +in this map, which are marked by a few faint lines, are narrow and +shallow; they are only found near the coast, and never cross the +interior of the country at all. These represent your feelings." + +"Very ingenious of you! And what is that enormous blotch right in the +middle of the country, which looks like London and its environs?" + +"That is your conscience; its outlying suburbs cover nearly the whole +country, you will perceive. You will also notice that there are no +seaports on the coast of my map; that shows that you are self-contained, +and that you neither send exports to, nor receive imports from, the +hearts and minds of other people." + +"What ever are those queer little castellated things round the coast +that you are drawing now?" + +"Those are floating icebergs, to show that it is a cold country. There, +my map is finished," concluded Elisabeth, half closing her eyes and +contemplating her handiwork through her eyelashes; "and I consider it a +most successful sketch." + +"It is certainly clever." + +"And true, too." + +Christopher's eyes twinkled. "Give it me," he said, stretching out his +hand; "but sign it with your name first. Not there," he added hastily, +as Elisabeth began writing a capital E in one corner; "right across the +middle." + +Elisabeth looked up in surprise. "Right across the map itself, do you +mean?" + +"Yes." + +"But it is such a long name that it will cover the whole country." + +"I know that." + +"It will spoil it." + +"I shouldn't be surprised; nevertheless, I always am in favour of +realism." + +"I don't know where the realism comes in; but I am such an obliging +person that I will do what you want," said Elisabeth, writing her name +right across the half-sheet of paper, in her usual dashing style. + +"Thank you," said Christopher, taking the paper from her; and he smiled +to himself as he saw that the name "Elisabeth Farringdon" covered the +whole of the imaginary continent from east to west. Elisabeth naturally +did not know that this was the only true image in her allegory; she was +as yet far too clever to perceive obvious things. As Chris said, it was +not when her eyes were open that she was most correct. + +"I have seen Mr. Tremaine," said Elisabeth to him, a day or two after +this. "Cousin Maria left her card upon him, and he returned her call +yesterday and found us at home. I think he is perfectly delightful." + +"You do, do you? I knew you would." + +"Why?" + +"Because, like the Athenians, you live to see or to hear some new +thing." + +"It wasn't his newness that made me like him; I liked him because he was +so interesting. I do adore interesting people! I hadn't known him five +minutes before he began to talk about really deep things; and then I +felt I had known him for ages, he was so very understanding." + +"Indeed," Christopher said drily. + +"By the time we had finished tea he understood me better than you do +after all these years. I wonder if I shall get to like him better than I +like you?" + +"I wonder, too." And he really did, with an amount of curiosity that was +positively painful. + +"Of course," remarked Elisabeth thoughtfully, "I shall always like you, +because we have been friends so long, and you are overgrown with the +lichen of old memories and associations. But you are not very +interesting in the abstract, you see; you are nice and good, but you +have not heart enough to be really thrilling." + +"Still, even if I had a heart, it is possible I might not always wear it +on my sleeve for Miss Elisabeth Farringdon to peck at." + +"Oh yes, you would; you couldn't help it. If you tried to hide it I +should see through your disguises. I have X rays in my eyes." + +"Have you? They must be a great convenience." + +"Well, at any rate, they keep me from making mistakes," Elisabeth +confessed. + +"That is fortunate for you. It is a mistake to make mistakes." + +"I remember our Dear Lady at Fox How once saying," continued the girl, +"that nothing is so good for keeping women from making mistakes as a +sense of humour." + +"I wonder if she was right?" + +"She was always right; and in that as in everything else. Have you never +noticed that it is not the women with a sense of humour who make fools +of themselves? They know better than to call a thing romantic which is +really ridiculous." + +"Possibly; but they are sometimes in danger of calling a thing +ridiculous which is really romantic; and that also is a mistake." + +"I suppose it is. I wonder which is worse--to think ridiculous things +romantic, or romantic things ridiculous? It is rather an interesting +point. Which do you think?" + +"I don't know. I never thought about it." + +"You never do think about things that really matter," exclaimed +Elisabeth, with reproof in her voice; "that is what makes you so +uninteresting to talk to. The fact is you are so wrapped up in that +tiresome old business that you never have time to attend to the deeper +things and the hidden meanings of life; but are growing into a regular +money-grubber." + +"Perhaps so; but you will have the justice to admit it isn't my own +money that I am grubbing," replied Christopher, who had only reconciled +himself to giving up all his youthful ambitions and becoming +sub-manager of the Osierfield by the thought that he might thereby in +some roundabout way serve Elisabeth. Like other schoolboys he had +dreamed his dreams, and prospected wonderful roads to success which his +feet were destined never to tread; and at first he had asked something +more of life than the Osierfield was capable of offering him. But +finally he had submitted contentedly to the inevitable, because--in +spite of all his hopes and ambitions--his boyish love for Elisabeth held +him fast; and now his manly love for Elisabeth held him faster still. +But even the chains which love had rivetted are capable of galling us +sometimes; and although we would not break them, even if we could, we +grumble at them occasionally--that is to say, if we are merely human, as +is the case with so many of us. + +"It is a great pity," Elisabeth went on, "that you deliberately narrow +yourself down to such a small world and such petty interests. It is bad +enough for old people to be practical and sensible and commonplace and +all that; but for a man as young as you are it is simply disgusting. I +can not understand you, because you really are clever and ought to know +better; but although I am your greatest friend, you never talk to me +about anything except the merest frivolities." + +Christopher bowed his head to the storm and was still--he was one of the +people who early learn the power of silence; but Elisabeth, having once +mounted her high horse, dug her spurs into her steed and rode on to +victory. In those days she was so dreadfully sure of herself that she +felt competent to teach anybody anything. + +"You laugh at me as long as I am funny and I amuse you; but the minute +I begin to talk about serious subjects--such as feelings and sentiments +and emotions--you lose your interest at once, and turn everything into a +joke. The truth is, you have so persistently suppressed your higher self +that it is dying of inanition; you'll soon have no higher self left at +all. If people don't use their hearts they don't have any, like the +Kentucky fish that can't see in the dark because they are blind, don't +you know? Now you should take a leaf out of Mr. Tremaine's book. The +first minute I saw him I knew that he was the sort of man that +cultivated his higher self; he was interested in just the things that +interest me." + +The preacher paused for breath, and looked up to see whether her sermon +was being "blessed" to her hearer; then suddenly her voice changed-- + +"What is the matter, Chris?" + +"Nothing. Why?" + +"Because you look so awfully white. I was talking so fast that I didn't +notice it; but I expect it is the heat. Do sit down on the grass and +rest a bit; it is quite dry; and I'll fan you with a big dock leaf." + +"I'm all right," replied Christopher, trying to laugh, and succeeding +but indifferently. + +"But I'm sure you are not, you are so pale; you look just as you looked +the day that I tumbled off the rick--do you remember it?--and you took +me into Mrs. Bateson's to have my head bound up. She said you'd got a +touch of the sun, and I'm afraid you've got one now." + +"Yes, I remember it well enough; but I'm all right now, Betty. Don't +worry about me." + +"But I do worry when you're ill; I always did. Don't you remember that +when you had measles and I wasn't allowed to see you, I cried myself to +sleep for three nights running, because I thought you were going to +die, and that everything would be vile without you? And then I had a +prayer-meeting about you in Mrs. Bateson's parlour, and I wrote the +hymns for it myself. The Batesons wept over them and considered them +inspired, and foretold that I should die early in consequence." And +Elisabeth laughed at the remembrance of her fame. + +Christopher laughed too. "That was hard on you! I admit that +verse-writing is a crime in a woman, but I should hardly call it a +capital offence. Still, I should like to have heard the hymns. You were +great at writing poetry in those days." + +"Wasn't I? And I used to be so proud when you said that my poems weren't +'half bad'!" + +"No wonder; that was high praise from me. But can't you recall those +hymns?" + +The hymnist puckered her forehead. "I can remember the beginning of the +opening one," she said; "it was a six-line-eights, and we sang it to a +tune called Stella; it began thus: + + "How can we sing like little birds, + And hop about among the boughs? + How can we gambol with the herds, + Or chew the cud among the cows? + How can we pop with all the weasles + Now Christopher has got the measles?" + +"Bravo!" exclaimed the subject of the hymn. "You are a born hymn-writer, +Elisabeth. The shades of Charles Wesley and Dr. Watts bow to your +obvious superiority." + +"Well, at any rate, I don't believe they ever did better at fourteen; +and it shows how anxious I was about you even then when you were ill. I +am just the same now--quite as fond of you as I was then; and you are +of me, too, aren't you?" + +"Quite." Which was perfectly true. + +"Then that's all right," said Elisabeth contentedly; "and, you see, it +is because I am so fond of you that I tell you of your faults. I think +you are so good that I want you to be quite perfect." + +"I see." + +The missionary spirit is an admirable thing; but a man rarely does it +full justice when it is displayed--toward himself--by the object of his +devotion. + +"If I wasn't so fond of you I shouldn't try to improve you." + +"Of course not; and if you were a little fonder of me you wouldn't want +to improve me. I perfectly understand." + +"Dear old Chris! You really are extremely nice in some ways; and if you +had only a little more heart you would be adorable. And I don't believe +you are naturally unfeeling, do you?" + +"No--I do not; but I sometimes wish I was." + +"Don't say that. It is only that you haven't developed that side of you +sufficiently; I feel sure the heart is there, but it is dormant. So now +you will talk more about feelings, won't you?" + +"I won't promise that. It is rather stupid to talk about things that one +doesn't understand; I am sure this is correct, for I have often heard +you say so." + +"But talking to me about your feelings might help you to understand +them, don't you see?" + +"Or might help you." + +"Oh! I don't want any help; feelings are among the few things that I can +understand without any assistance. But you are sure you are all right, +Chris, and haven't got a headache or anything?" And the anxious +expression returned to Elisabeth's face. + +"My head is very well, thank you." + +"You don't feel any pain?" + +"In my head? distinctly not." + +"You are quite well, you are certain?" + +"Perfectly certain and quite well. What a fidget you are! Apparently you +attach as much importance to rosy cheeks as Mother Hankey does." + +"A pale face and dark hair are in her eyes the infallible signs of a +depraved nature," laughed Elisabeth; "and I have both." + +"Yet you fly at me for having one, and that only for a short time. +Considering your own shortcomings, you should be more charitable." + +Elisabeth laughed again as she patted his arm in a sisterly fashion. +"Nice old boy! I am awfully glad you are all right. It would make me +miserable if anything went really wrong with you, Chris." + +"Then nothing shall go really wrong with me, and you shall not be +miserable," said Christopher stoutly; "and, therefore, it is fortunate +that I don't possess much heart--things generally go wrong with the +people who have hearts, you know, and not with the people who have not; +so we perceive how wise was the poet in remarking that whatever is is +made after the best possible pattern, or words to that effect." With +which consoling remark he took leave of his liege-lady. + +The friendship between Alan Tremaine and Elisabeth Farringdon grew apace +during the next twelve months. His mind was of the metaphysical and +speculative order, which is interesting to all women; and hers was of +the volatile and vivacious type which is attractive to some men. They +discussed everything under the sun, and some things over it; they read +the same books and compared notes afterward; they went out sketching +together, and instructed each other in the ways of art; and they +carefully examined the foundations of each other's beliefs, and +endeavoured respectively to strengthen and undermine the same. Gradually +they fell into the habit of wondering every morning whether or not they +should meet during the coming day; and of congratulating themselves +nearly every evening that they had succeeded in so meeting. + +As for Christopher, he was extremely and increasingly unhappy, and, it +must be admitted, extremely and increasingly cross in consequence. The +fact that he had not the slightest right to control Elisabeth's actions, +in no way prevented him from highly disapproving of them; and the fact +that he was too proud to express this disapproval in words, in no way +prevented him from displaying it in manner. Elisabeth was wonderfully +amiable with him, considering how very cross he was; but are we not all +amiable with people toward whom we--in our inner consciousness--know +that we are behaving badly? + +"I can not make out what you can see in that conceited ass?" he said to +her, when Alan Tremaine had been living at the Moat House for something +over a year. + +"Perhaps not; making things out never is your strong point," replied +Elisabeth suavely. + +"But he is such an ass! I'm sure the other evening, when he trotted out +his views on the Higher Criticism for your benefit, he made me feel +positively ill." + +"I found it very interesting; and if, as you say, he did it for my +benefit, he certainly succeeded in his aim." There were limits to the +patience of Elisabeth. + +"Well, how women can listen to bosh of that kind I can not imagine! What +can it matter to you what he disbelieves or why he disbelieves it? And +it is beastly cheek of him to suppose that it can." + +"But he is right in supposing it, and it does matter to me. I like to +know how old-fashioned truths accord or do not accord with modern phases +of thought." + +"Modern phases of nonsense, you mean! Well, the old-fashioned truths are +good enough for me, and I'll stick to them, if you please, in spite of +Mr. Tremaine's overwhelming arguments; and I should advise you to stick +to them, too." + +"Oh! Chris, I wish you wouldn't be so disagreeable." And Elisabeth +sighed. "It is so difficult to talk to you when you are like this." + +"I'm not disagreeable," replied Christopher mendaciously; "only I can +not let you be taken in by a stuck-up fool without trying to open your +eyes; I shouldn't be your friend if I could." And he actually believed +that this was the case. He forgot that it is not the trick of +friendship, but of love, to make "a corner" in affection, and to +monopolize the whole stock of the commodity. + +"You see," Elisabeth explained, "I am so frightfully modern, and yet I +have been brought up in such a dreadfully old-fashioned way. It was all +very well for the last generation to accept revealed truth without +understanding it, but it won't do for us." + +"Why not?" + +"Oh! because we are young and modern." + +"So were they at one time, and we shall not be so for long." + +Elisabeth sighed again. "How difficult you are! Of course, the sort of +religion that did for Cousin Maria and Mr. Smallwood won't do for Mr. +Tremaine and me. Can't you see that?" + +"I can not, I am sorry to say." + +"Their religion had no connection with their intellects." + +"Still, it changed their hearts, which I have heard is no unimportant +operation." + +"They accepted what they were told without trying to understand it," +Elisabeth continued, "which is not, after all, a high form of faith." + +"Indeed. I should have imagined that it was the highest." + +"But can't you see that to accept blindly what you are told is not half +so great as to sift it all, and to separate the chaff from the wheat, +and to find the kernel of truth in the shell of tradition?" Elisabeth +had not talked to Alan Tremaine for over a year without learning his +tricks of thought and even of expression. "Don't you think that it is +better to believe a little with the whole intellect than a great deal +apart from it?" + +Christopher looked obstinate. "I can't and don't." + +"Have you no respect for 'honest doubt'?" + +"Honest bosh!" + +Elisabeth's face flushed. "You really are too rude for anything." + +Christopher was penitent at once; he could not bear really to vex her. +"I am sorry if I was rude; but it riles me to hear you quoting +Tremaine's platitudes by the yard--such rotten platitudes as they are, +too!" + +"You don't do Mr. Tremaine justice, Chris. Even though he may have +outgrown the old faiths, he is a very good man; and he has such lovely +thoughts about truth and beauty and love and things like that." + +"His thoughts are nothing but empty windbags; for he is the type of man +who is too ignorant to accept truth, too blind to appreciate beauty, and +too selfish to be capable of loving any woman as a woman ought to be +loved." + +"I think his ideas about love are quite ideal," persisted the girl. +"Only yesterday he was abusing the selfishness of men in general, and +saying that a man who is really in love thinks of the woman he loves as +well as of himself." + +"He said that, did he? Then he was mistaken." + +Elisabeth looked surprised. "Then don't you agree with him that a man in +love thinks of the woman as well as of himself?" + +"No; I don't. A man who is really in love never thinks of himself at +all, but only of the woman. It strikes me that Master Alan Tremaine +knows precious little about the matter." + +"I think he knows a great deal. He said that love was the discovery of +the one woman whereof all other women were but types. That really was a +sweet thing to say!" + +"My dear Betty, you know no more about the matter than he does. Falling +in love doesn't merely mean that a man has found a woman who is dearer +to him than all other women, but that he has found a woman who is dearer +to him than himself." + +Elisabeth changed her ground. "I admit that he isn't what you might +call orthodox," she said--"not the sort of man who would clothe himself +in the rubric, tied on with red tape; but though he may not be a +Christian, as we count Christianity, he believes with all his heart in +an overruling Power which makes for righteousness." + +"That is very generous of him," retorted Christopher; "still, I can not +for the life of me see that the possession of three or four thousand a +year, without the trouble of earning it, gives a man the right to +patronize the Almighty." + +"You are frightfully narrow, Chris." + +"I know I am, and I am thankful for it. I had rather be as narrow as a +plumbing-line than indulge in the sickly latitudinarianism that such men +as Tremaine nickname breadth." + +"Oh! I am tired of arguing with you; you are too stupid for anything." + +"But you haven't been arguing--you have only been quoting Tremaine +verbatim; and that that may be tiring I can well believe." + +"Well, you can call it what you like; but by any other name it will +irritate you just as much, because you have such a horrid temper. Your +religion may be very orthodox, but I can not say much for its improving +qualities; it is the crossest, nastiest, narrowest, disagreeablest sort +of religion that I ever came across." + +And Elisabeth walked away in high dudgeon, leaving Christopher very +angry with himself for having been disagreeable, and still angrier with +Tremaine for having been the reverse. + + + + +CHAPTER VI + +WHIT MONDAY + + Light shadows--hardly seen as such-- + Crept softly o'er the summer land + In mute caresses, like the touch + Of some familiar hand. + + +"I want to give your work-people a treat," said Tremaine to Elisabeth, +in the early summer. + +"That is very nice of you; but this goes without saying, as you are +always planning and doing something nice. I shall be very glad for our +people to have a little pleasure, as at present the annual tea-meeting +at East Lane Chapel seems to be their one and only dissipation; and +although tea-meetings may be very well in their way, they hardly seem to +fulfil one's ideal of human joy." + +"Ah! you have touched upon a point to which I was coming," said Alan +earnestly; "it is wonderful how often our minds jump together! Not only +am I anxious to give the Osierfield people something more enjoyable than +a tea-meeting--I also wish to eliminate the tea-meeting spirit from +their idea of enjoyment." + +"How do you mean?" It was noteworthy that while Elisabeth was always +ready to teach Christopher, she was equally willing to learn from Alan. + +"I mean that I want to show people that pleasure and religion have +nothing to do with each other. It always seems to me such a mistake that +the pleasures of the poor--the innocent pleasures, of course--are +generally inseparable from religious institutions. If they attend a +tea-party, they open it with prayer; if they are taken for a country +drive, they sing hymns by the way." + +"Oh! but I think they do this because they like it, and not because they +are made to do it," said Elisabeth eagerly. + +"Not a bit of it; they do it because they are accustomed to do it, and +they feel that it is expected of them. Religion is as much a part of +their dissipation as evening dress is of ours, and just as much a purely +conventional part; and I want to teach them to dissociate the two ideas +in their own minds." + +"I doubt if you will succeed, Mr. Tremaine." + +"Yes, I shall; I invariably succeed. I have never failed in anything +yet, and I never mean to fail. And I do so want to make the poor people +enjoy themselves thoroughly. Of course, it is a good thing to have one's +pills always hidden in jam; but it must be a miserable thing to belong +to a section of society where one's jam is invariably full of pills." + +Elisabeth smiled, but did not speak; Alan was the one person of her +acquaintance to whom she would rather listen than talk. + +"It is a morbid and unhealthy habit," he went on, "to introduce religion +into everything, in the way that English people are so fond of doing. It +decreases their pleasures by casting its shadow over purely human and +natural joys; and it increases their sorrow and want by teaching them to +lean upon some hypothetical Power, instead of trying to do the best +that they can for themselves. Also it enervates their reasoning +faculties; for nothing is so detrimental to one's intellectual strength +as the habit of believing things which one knows to be impossible." + +"Then don't you believe in religion of any kind?" + +"Most certainly I do--in many religions. I believe in the religion of +art and of science and of humanity, and countless more; in fact, the +only religion I do not believe in is Christianity, because that spoils +all the rest by condemning art as fleshly, science as untrue, and +humanity as sinful. I want to bring the old Pantheism to life again, and +to teach our people to worship beauty as the Greeks worshipped it of +old; and I want you to help me." + +Elisabeth gasped as Elisha might have gasped when Elijah's mantle fell +upon him. She was as yet too young to beware of false prophets. "I +should love to make people happy," she said; "there seems to be so much +happiness in the world and so few that find it." + +"The Greeks found it; therefore, why should not the English? I mean to +teach them to find it, and I shall begin with your work-people on Whit +Monday." + +"What shall you do?" asked the girl, with intense interest. + +"It is no good taking away old lamps until you are prepared to offer new +ones in their place; therefore I shall not take away the consolations +(so called) of religion until I have shown the people a more excellent +way. I shall first show them nature, and then art--nature to arouse +their highest instincts, and art to express the same; and I am +convinced that after they have once been brought face to face with the +beautiful thus embodied, the old faiths will lose the power to move +them." + +When Whit Monday came round, the throbbing heart of the Osierfield +stopped beating, as it was obliged to stop on a bank-holiday; and the +workmen, with their wives and sweethearts, were taken by Alan Tremaine +in large brakes to Pembruge Castle, which the owner had kindly thrown +open to them, at Alan's request, for the occasion. + +It was a long drive and a wonderfully beautiful one, for the year was at +its best. All the trees had put on their new summer dresses, and never a +pair of them were of the same shade. The hedges were covered with a +wreath of white May-blossom, and seemed like interminable drifts of that +snow in summer which is as good news from a far country; and the roads +were bordered by the feathery hemlock, which covered the face of the +land as with a bridal veil. + +"Isn't the world a beautiful place?" said Elisabeth, with a sigh of +content, to Alan, who was driving her in his mail-phaeton. "I do hope +all the people will see and understand how beautiful it is." + +"They can not help seeing and understanding; beauty such as this is its +own interpreter. Surely such a glimpse of nature as we are now enjoying +does people more good than a hundred prayer-meetings in a stuffy +chapel." + +"Beauty slides into one's soul on a day like this, just as something--I +forget what--slid into the soul of the Ancient Mariner; doesn't it?" + +"Of course it does; and you will find that these people--now that they +are brought face to face with it--will be just as ready to worship +abstract beauty as ever the Greeks were. The fault has not been with the +poor for not having worshipped beauty, but with the rich for not having +shown them sufficient beauty to worship. The rich have tried to choke +them off with religion instead, because it came cheaper and was less +troublesome to produce." + +"Then do you think that the love of beauty will elevate these people +more and make them happier than Christianity has done?" + +"Most assuredly I do. Had our climate been sunnier and the fight for +existence less bitter, I believe that Christianity would have died out +in England years ago; but the worship of sorrow will always have its +attractions for the sorrowful; and the doctrine of renunciation will +never be without its charm for those unfortunate ones to whom poverty +and disease have stood sponsors, and have renounced all life's good +things in their name before ever they saw the light. Man makes his god +in his own image; and thus it comes to pass that while the strong and +joyous Greek adored Zeus on Olympus, the anaemic and neurotic Englishman +worships Christ on Calvary. Do you tell me that if people were happy +they would bow down before a stricken and crucified God? Not they. And I +want to make them so happy that they shall cease to have any desire for +a suffering Deity." + +"Well, you have made them happy enough for to-day, at any rate," said +Elisabeth, as she looked up at him with gratitude and admiration. "I saw +them all when they were starting, and there wasn't one face among them +that hadn't joy written on every feature in capital letters." + +"Then in that case they won't be troubling their minds to-day about +their religion; they will save it for the gloomy days, as we save +narcotics for times of pain. You may depend upon that." + +"I'm not so sure: their religion is more of a reality to them than you +think," Elisabeth replied. + +While Alan was thus, enjoying himself in his own fashion, his guests +were enjoying themselves in theirs; and as they drove through summer's +fairyland, they, too, talked by the way. + +"Eh! but the May-blossom's a pretty sight," exclaimed Caleb Bateson, as +the big wagonettes rolled along the country roads. "I never saw it finer +than it is this year--not in all the years I've lived in Mershire; and +Mershire's the land for May-blossom." + +"It do look pretty," agreed his wife. "I only wish Lucy Ellen was here +to see it; she was always a one for the May-blossom. Why, when she was +ever such a little girl she'd come home carrying branches of it bigger +than herself, till she looked like nothing but a walking May-pole." + +"Poor thing!" said Mrs. Hankey, who happened to be driving in the same +vehicle as the Batesons, "she'll be feeling sad and homesick to see it +all again, I'll be bound." + +Lucy Ellen's mother laughed contentedly. "Folks haven't time to feel +homesick when they've got a husband to look after; he soon takes the +place of May-blossom, bless you!" + +"You're in luck to see all your children married and settled before the +Lord has been pleased to take you," remarked Mrs. Hankey, with envy in +her voice. + +"Well, I'm glad for the two lads to have somebody to look after them, +I'm bound to say; I feel now as they've some one to air their shirts +when I'm not there, for you never can trust a man to look after +himself--never. Men have no sense to know what is good for 'em and what +is bad for 'em, poor things! But Lucy Ellen is a different thing. Of +course I'm pleased for her to have a home of her own, and such nice +furniture as she's got, too, and in such a good circuit; but when your +daughter is married you don't see her as often as you want to, and it is +no good pretending as you do." + +"That's true," agreed Caleb Bateson, with a big sigh; "and I never cease +to miss my little lass." + +"She ain't no little lass now, Mr. Bateson," argued Mrs. Hankey; "Lucy +Ellen must be forty, if she's a day." + +"So she be, Mrs. Hankey--so she be; but she is my little lass to me, all +the same, and always will be. The children never grow up to them as +loves 'em. They are always our children, just as we are always the +Lord's children; and we never leave off a-screening and a-sheltering o' +them, any more than He ever leaves off a-screening and a-sheltering of +us." + +"I'm glad to hear as Lucy Ellen has married into a good circuit. Unless +the Lord build the house we know how they labour in vain that build it; +and the Lord can't do much unless He has a good minister to help Him. I +don't deny as He _may_ work through local preachers; but I like a +regular superintendent myself, with one or more ministers under him." + +"Oh! Lucy Ellen lives in one of the best circuits in the Connexion," +said Mrs. Bateson proudly; "they have an ex-president as superintendent, +and three ministers under him, and a supernumerary as well. They never +hear the same preached more than once a month; it's something grand!" + +"Eh! it's a fine place is Craychester," added Caleb; "they held +Conference there two years ago." + +"It must be a grand thing to live in a place where they hold +Conference," remarked Mrs. Hankey. + +"It is indeed," agreed Mrs. Bateson; "Lucy Ellen said it seemed for all +the world like heaven, to see so many ministers about, all in their +black coats and white neckcloths. And then such preaching as they heard! +It isn't often young folks enjoy such privileges, and so I told her." + +"When all's said and done, there's nothing like a good sermon for giving +folks real pleasure. Nothing in this world comes up to it, and I doubt +if there'll be anything much better in the next," said Caleb; "I don't +see as how there can be." + +His friends all agreed with him, and continued, for the rest of the +drive, to discuss the respective merits of various discourses they had +been privileged to hear. + +It was a glorious day. The sky was blue, with just enough white clouds +flitting about to show how blue the blue part really was; and the +varying shadows kept passing, like the caress of some unseen yet +ever-protecting Hand, over the green nearnesses and the violet distances +of a country whose foundations seemed to be of emerald and amethyst, and +its walls and gateways of pearl. The large company from the Osierfield +drove across the breezy common at the foot of Sedgehill Ridge, and then +plunged into a network of lanes which led them, by sweet and mysterious +ways, to the great highway from the Midlands to the coast of the western +sea. On they went, past the little hamlet where the Danes and the Saxons +fought a great fight more than a thousand years ago, and which is still +called by a strange Saxon name, meaning "the burying-place of the +slain"; and the little hamlet smiled in the summer sunshine, as if with +kindly memories of those old warriors whose warfare had been +accomplished so many centuries ago, and who lie together, beneath the +white blossom, in the arms of the great peacemaker called Death, waiting +for the resurrection morning which that blossom is sent to foretell. On, +between man's walls of gray stone, till they came to God's walls of red +sandstone; and then up a steep hill to another common, where the +sweet-scented gorse made a golden pavement, and where there suddenly +burst upon their sight a view so wide and so wonderful that those who +look upon it with the seeing eye and the understanding heart catch +glimpses of the King in His beauty through the fairness of the land that +is very far off. On past the mossy stone, like an overgrown and +illiterate milestone, which marks the boundary between Mershire and +Salopshire; and then through a typical English village, noteworthy +because the rites of Mayday, with May-queen and May-pole to boot, are +still celebrated there exactly as they were celebrated some three +hundred years ago. At last they came to a picturesque wall and gateway, +built of the red stone which belongs to that part of the country, and +which has a trick of growing so much redder at evening-time that it +looks as if the cold stone were blushing with pleasure at being kissed +Good-night by the sun; and then through a wood sloping on the left side +down to a little stream, which was so busy talking to itself about its +own concerns that it had not time to leap and sparkle for the amusement +of passers-by; until they drew up in front of a quaint old castle, built +of the same stone as the outer walls and gateway. + +The family were away from home, so the whole of the castle was at the +disposal of Alan and his party, and they had permission to go wherever +they liked. The state-rooms were in front of the building and led out +of each other, so that when all the doors were open any one could see +right from one end of the castle to the other. Dinner was to be served +in the large saloon at the back, built over what was once the courtyard; +and while his servants were laying the tables with the cold viands which +they had brought with them, Alan took his guests through the state-rooms +to see the pictures, and endeavoured to carry out his plan of educating +them by pointing out to them some of the finer works of art. + +"This," he said, stopping in front of a portrait, "is a picture of Lady +Mary Wortley-Montagu, who was born here, painted by one of the first +portrait-painters of her day. I want you to look at her hands, and to +notice how exquisitely they are painted. Also I wish to call your +attention to the expression of her face. You know that it is the duty of +art to interpret nature--that is to say, to show to ordinary people +those hidden beauties and underlying meanings of common things which +they would never be able to find out for themselves; and I think that in +the expression on this woman's face the artist has shown forth, in a +most wonderful way, the dissatisfaction and bitterness of her heart. As +you look at her face you seem to see right into her soul, and to +understand how she was foredoomed by nature and temperament to ask too +much of life and to receive too little." + +"Well, to be sure!" remarked Mrs. Bateson, in an undertone, to her lord +and master; "she is a bit like our superintendent's wife, only not so +stout. And what a gown she has got on! I should say that satin is worth +five-and-six a yard if it is worth a penny. And I call it a sin and a +shame to have a dirty green parrot sitting on your shoulder when you're +wearing satin like that. If she'd had any sense she'd have fed the +animals before she put her best gown on." + +"I never could abide parrots," joined in Mrs. Hankey; "they smell so." + +"And as for her looking dissatisfied and all that," continued Mrs. +Bateson, "I for one can't see it. But if she did, it was all a pack of +rubbish. What had she to grumble at, I should like to know, with a satin +gown on at five-and-six a yard?" + +By this time Alan had moved on to another picture. "This represents an +unhappy marriage," he explained. "At first sight you see nothing but two +well-dressed people sitting at table; but as you look into the picture +you perceive the misery in the woman's face and the cruelty in the +man's, and you realize all that they mean." + +"Well, I see nothing more at second sight," whispered Mrs. Hankey; +"except that the tablecloth might have been cleaner. There's another of +your grumbling fine ladies! Now for sure she'd nothing to grumble at, +sitting so grand at table with a glass of sherry-wine to drink." + +"The husband looks a cantankerous chap," remarked Caleb. + +"Poor thing! it's his liver," said Mrs. Bateson, taking up the cudgels +as usual on behalf of the bilious and oppressed. "You can see from his +complexion that he is out of order, and that all that rich dinner will +do him no good. It was his wife's duty to see that he had something +plain to eat, with none of them sauces and fal-lals, instead of playing +the fine lady and making troubles out of nothing. I've no patience with +her!" + +"Still, he do look as if he'd a temper," persisted Mr. Bateson. + +"And if he do, Caleb, what of that? If a man in his own house hasn't the +right to show a bit of temper, I should like to know who has? I've no +patience with the women that will get married and have a man of their +own; and then cry their eyes out because the man isn't an old woman. If +they want meekness and obedience, let 'em remain single and keep lapdogs +and canaries; and leave the husbands for those as can manage 'em and +enjoy 'em, for there ain't enough to go round as it is." And Mrs. +Bateson waxed quite indignant. + +Here Tremaine took up his parable. "This weird figure, clothed in skins, +and feeding upon nothing more satisfying than locusts and wild honey, is +a type of all those who are set apart for the difficult and +unsatisfactory lot of heralds and forerunners. They see the good time +coming, and make ready the way for it, knowing all the while that its +fuller light and wider freedom are not for them; they lead their fellows +to the very borders of the promised land, conscious that their own +graves are already dug in the wilderness. No great social or political +movement has ever been carried on without their aid; and they have never +reaped the benefits of those reforms which they lived and died to +compass. Perhaps there are no sadder sights on the page of history than +those solitary figures, of all nations and all times, who have foretold +the coming of the dawn and yet died before it was yet day."' + +"Did you ever?" exclaimed Mrs. Bateson _sotto voce_; "a grown man like +that, and not to know John the Baptist when he sees him! Forerunners and +heralds indeed! Why, it's John the Baptist as large as life, and those +as don't recognise him ought to be ashamed of theirselves." + +"Lucy Ellen would have known who it was when she was three years old," +said Caleb proudly. + +"And so she ought; I'd have slapped her if she hadn't, and richly she'd +have deserved it." + +"It's a comfort as Mr. Tremaine's mother is in her grave," remarked Mrs. +Hankey, not a whit behind the others as regards shocked sensibilities; +"this would have been a sad day for her if she had been alive." + +"And it would!" agreed Mrs. Bateson warmly. "I know if one of my +children hadn't known John the Baptist by sight, I should have been that +ashamed I should never have held up my head again in this world--never!" + +Mr. Bateson endeavoured to take a charitable view of the situation. "I +expect as the poor lad's schooling was neglected through having lost his +parents; and there's some things as you never seem to master at all +except you master 'em when you're young--the Books of the Bible being +one of them." + +"My lads could say the Books of the Bible through, without stopping to +take breath, when they were six, and Lucy Ellen when she was five and a +half." + +"Well, then, Kezia, you should be all the more ready to take pity on +them poor orphans as haven't had the advantages as our children have +had." + +"So I am, Caleb; and if it had been one of the minor prophets I +shouldn't have said a word--I can't always tell Jonah myself unless +there's a whale somewhere at the back; but John the Baptist----!" + +When the inspection of the pictures had been accomplished, the company +sat down to dinner in the large saloon; and Alan was slightly +disconcerted when they opened the proceedings by singing, at the top of +their voices, "Be present at our table, Lord." Elisabeth, on seeing the +expression of his face, sorely wanted to laugh; but she stifled this +desire, as she had learned by experience that humour was not one of +Alan's strong points. Now Christopher could generally see when a thing +was funny, even when the joke was at his own expense; but Alan took life +more seriously, which--as Elisabeth assured herself--showed what a much +more earnest man than Christopher he was, in spite of his less orthodox +opinions. So she made up her mind that she would not catch Christopher's +eye on the present occasion, as she usually did when anything amused +her, because it was cruel to laugh at the frustration of poor Alan's +high-flown plans; and then naturally she looked straight at the spot +where Chris was presiding over a table, and returned his smile of +perfect comprehension. It was one of Elisabeth's peculiarities that she +invariably did the thing which she had definitely made up her mind not +to do. + +After dinner the party broke up and wandered about, in small +detachments, over the park and through the woods and by the mere, until +it was tea-time. Alan spent most of his afternoon in explaining to +Elisabeth the more excellent ways whereby the poor may be enabled to +share the pleasures of the rich; and Christopher spent most of his in +carrying Johnnie Stubbs to the mere and taking him for a row, and so +helping the crippled youth to forget for a short time that he was not as +other men are, and that it was out of pity that he, who never worked, +had been permitted to take the holiday which he could not earn. + +After tea Alan and Elisabeth were standing on the steps leading from the +saloon to the garden. + +"What a magnificent fellow that is!" exclaimed Alan, pointing to the +huge figure of Caleb Bateson, who was talking to Jemima Stubbs on the +far side of the lawn. Caleb certainly justified this admiration, for he +was a fine specimen of a Mershire puddler--and there is no finer race of +men to be found anywhere than the puddlers of Mershire. + +Elisabeth's eyes twinkled. "That is one of your anaemic and neurotic +Christians," she remarked demurely. + +Displeasure settled on Alan's brow; he greatly objected to Elisabeth's +habit of making fun of things, and had tried his best to cure her of it. +To a great extent he had succeeded (for the time being); but even yet +the cloven foot of Elisabeth's levity now and then showed itself, much +to his regret. + +"Exceptions do not disprove rules," he replied coldly. "Moreover, +Bateson is probably religious rather from the force of convention than +of conviction." Tremaine never failed to enjoy his own rounded +sentences, and this one pleased him so much that it almost succeeded in +dispelling the cloud which Elisabeth's ill-timed gibe had created. + +"He is a class-leader and a local preacher," she added. + +"Those terms convey no meaning to my mind." + +"Don't they? Well, they mean that Caleb not only loyally supports the +government of Providence, but is prepared to take office under it," +Elisabeth explained. + +Alan never quarrelled with people; he always reproved them. "You make a +great mistake--and an extremely feminine one--Miss Farringdon, in +invariably deducting general rules from individual instances. Believe +me, this is a most illogical form of reasoning, and leads to erroneous, +and sometimes dangerous, conclusions." + +Elisabeth tossed her head; she did not like to be reproved, even by Alan +Tremaine. "My conclusions are nearly always correct, anyhow," she +retorted; "and if you get to the right place, I don't see that it +matters how you go there. I never bother my head about the 'rolling +stock' or the 'permanent way' of my intuitions; I know they'll bring me +to the right conclusion, and I leave them to work out their Bradshaw for +themselves." + +In the meantime Jemima Stubbs was pouring out a recital of her +grievances into the ever-sympathetic ear of Caleb Bateson. + +"You don't seem to be enjoying yourself, my lass," he had said in his +cheery voice, laying a big hand in tender caress upon the girl's narrow +shoulders. + +"And how should I, Mr. Bateson, not having a beau nor nobody to talk +to?" she replied in her quavering treble. "What with havin' first mother +to nurse when I was a little gell, and then havin' Johnnie to look +after, I've never had time to make myself look pretty and to get a beau, +like other gells. And now I'm too old for that sort of thing, and yet +I've never had my chance, as you may say." + +"Poor lass! It's a hard life as you've had, and no mistake." + +"That it is, Mr. Bateson. Men wants gells as look pretty and make 'em +laugh; they don't care for the dull, dowdy ones, such as me; and yet how +can a gell be light-hearted and gay, I should like to know, when it's +work, work, work, all the day, and nurse, nurse, nurse, all the night? +Yet the men don't make no allowance for that--not they. They just see as +a gell is plain and stupid, and then they has nothing more to do with +her, and she can go to Jericho for all they cares." + +"You've had a hard time of it, my lass," repeated Bateson, in his full, +deep voice. + +"Right you are, Mr. Bateson; and it's made my hair gray, and my face all +wrinkles, and my hands a sight o' roughness and ugliness, till I'm a +regular old woman and a fright at that. And I'm but thirty-five now, +though no one 'ud believe it to look at me." + +"Thirty-five, are you? B'ain't you more than that, Jemima, for surely +you look more?" + +"I know I does, but I ain't; and lots o' women--them as has had easy +times and their way made smooth for them--look little more than gells +when they are thirty-five; and the men run after 'em as fast as if they +was only twenty. But I'm an old woman, I am, and I've never had time to +be a young one, and I've never had a beau nor nothing." + +"It seems now, Jemima, as if the Lord was dealing a bit hard with you; +but never you fret yourself; He'll explain it all and make it all up to +you in His own good time." + +"I only hope He may, Mr. Bateson." + +"My lass, do you remember how Saint Paul said, 'From henceforth let no +man trouble me, for I bear in my body the marks of the Lord Jesus'? Now +it seems to me that all the gray hairs and the wrinkles and the +roughness that come to us when we are working for others and doing our +duty, are nothing more nor less than the marks of the Lord Jesus." + +"That's a comfortin' view of the matter, I don't deny." + +"There are lots o' men in this world, Jemima, and still more women, who +grow old before their time working for other people; and I take it that +when folks talk o' their wrinkles, the Lord says, 'My Name shall be in +their foreheads'; and when folks talk o' their gray hairs, He says, +'They shall walk with Me in white: for they are worthy.' And why do we +mark the things that belong to us? Why, so as we can know 'em again and +can claim 'em as our own afore the whole world. And that's just why the +Lord marks us: so as all the world shall know as we are His, and so as +no man shall ever pluck us out of His Hand." + +Jemima looked gratefully up at the kindly prophet who was trying to +comfort her. "Law! Mr. Bateson, that's a consolin' way of looking at +things, and I only hope as you're right. But all the same, I'd have +liked to have had a beau of my own just for onst, like other gells. I +dessay it's very wicked o' me to feel like this, and it's enough to make +the Lord angry with me; but it don't seem to me as there's anything in +religion that quite makes up for never havin' had a beau o' your own." + +"The Lord won't be angry with you, my lass; don't you fear. He made +women and He understands 'em, and He ain't the one to blame 'em for +being as He Himself made 'em. Remember the Book says, 'as one whom his +mother comforteth'; and I hold that means as He understands women and +their troubles better than the kindest father ever could. And He won't +let His children give up things for His sake without paying them back +some thirty, some sixty, and some an hundred fold; and don't you ever +get thinking that He will." + +"As Jemima says, yours is a comfortable doctrine, Bateson, but I am +afraid you have no real foundation for your consoling belief," exclaimed +Alan Tremaine, coming up and interrupting the conversation. + +"Eh! but I have, sir, saving your presence; I know in Whom I have +believed; and what a man has once known for certain, he can never not +know again as long as he lives." + +"But Christianity is a myth, a fable. You may imagine and pretend that +it is true, but you can not know that it is." + +"But I do know, sir, begging your pardon, as well as I know you are +standing here and the sun is shining over yonder." + +Alan smiled rather scornfully: how credulous were the lower classes, he +thought in his pride of intellectual superiority. "I do not understand +how you can know a thing that has never been proved," he said. + +The giant turned and looked on his fragile frame with eyes full of a +great pity. "You do not understand, you say, sir that's just it; and I +am too foolish and ignorant to be able to explain things rightly to a +gentleman like you; but the Lord will explain it to you when He thinks +fit. You are young yet, sir, and the way stretches long before you, and +the mysteries of God are hidden from your eyes. But when you have loved +and cherished a woman as your own flesh, and when you have had little +children clinging round your knees, you'll understand rightly enough +then without needing any man to teach you." + +"My good man, do you suppose a wife and children would teach me more +than the collected wisdom of the ages?" + +"A sight more, Mr. Tremaine--a sight more. Folks don't learn the best +things from books, sir. Why, when the Lord Himself wrote the law on +tables of stone, they got broken; but when He writes it on the fleshly +tables of our hearts, it lives forever. And His Handwriting is the love +we bear for our fellow-creatures, and--through them--for Him; at least, +so it seems to me." + +"That is pure imagination and sentiment, Bateson. Very pretty and +poetic, no doubt; but it won't hold water." + +Caleb smiled indulgently. "Wait till you've got a little lass of your +own, like my Lucy Ellen, sir. Not that you'll ever have one quite as +good as her, bless her! for her equal never has been seen in this world, +and never will. But when you've got a little lass of your own, and know +as you'd be tortured to death quite cheerful-like just to save her a +minute's pain, you'll laugh at all the nonsense that's written in books, +and feel you know a sight better than all of 'em put together." + +"I don't quite see why." + +"Well, you see, sir, it's like this. When the dove came back to the ark +with the olive leaf in her mouth, Noah didn't begin sayin' how wonderful +it was for a leaf to have grown out of nothing all of a sudden, as some +folks are so fond of saying. Not he; he'd too much sense. He says to his +sons, 'Look here: a leaf here means a tree somewhere, and the sooner we +make for that tree the better!' And so it is with us. When we feel that +all at onst there's somebody that matters more to us than ourselves, we +know that this wonderful feelin' hasn't sprung out of the selfishness +that filled our hearts before, but is just a leaf off a great Tree +which is a shadow and resting-place for the whole world." + +Tremaine looked thoughtful; Caleb's childlike faith and extensive +vocabulary were alike puzzles to him. He did not understand that in +homes--however simple--where the Bible is studied until it becomes as +household words, the children are accustomed to a "well of English +undefiled"; and so, unconsciously, mould their style upon and borrow +their expressions from the Book which, even when taken only from a +literary standpoint, is the finest Book ever read by man. + +After a minute's silence he said: "I have been wondering whether it +really is any pleasure to the poor to see the homes of the rich, or +whether it only makes them dissatisfied. Now, what do you think, +Bateson?" + +"Well, sir, if it makes 'em dissatisfied it didn't ought to." + +"Perhaps not. Still, I have a good deal of sympathy with socialism +myself; and I know I should feel it very hard if I were poor, while +other men, not a whit better and probably worse than myself, were rich." + +"And so it would be hard, sir, if this was the end of everything, and it +was all haphazard, as it were; so hard that no sensible man could see it +without going clean off his head altogether. But when you rightly +understand as it's all the Master's doing, and that He knows what He's +about a sight better than we could teach Him, it makes a wonderful +difference. Whether we're rich or poor, happy or sorrowful, is His +business and He can attend to that; but whether we serve Him rightly in +the place where He has put us, is our business, and it'll take us all +our time to look after it without trying to do His work as well." + +Tremaine merely smiled, and Bateson went on-- + +"You see, sir, there's work in the world of all kinds for all sorts; and +whether they be lords and ladies, or just poor folks like we, they've +got to do the work that the Lord has set them to do, and not to go +hankering after each other's. Why, Mr. Tremaine, if at our place the +puddlers wanted to do the work of the shinglers, and the shinglers +wanted to do the work of the rollers, and the rollers wanted to do the +work of the masters, the Osierfield wouldn't be for long the biggest +ironworks in Mershire. Not it! You have to use your common sense in +religion as in everything else." + +"You think that religion is the only thing to make people contented and +happy? So do I; but I don't think that the religion to do this +effectually is Christianity." + +"No more do I, sir; that's where you make a mistake, begging your +pardon; you go confusing principles with persons. It isn't my love for +my wife that lights the fire and cooks the dinner and makes my little +home like heaven to me--it's my wife herself; it wasn't my children's +faith in their daddy that fed 'em and clothed 'em when they were too +little to work for themselves--it was me myself; and it isn't the +religion of Christ that keeps us straight in this world and makes us +ready for the next--it is Christ Himself." + +Thus the rich man and the poor man talked together, moving along +parallel lines, neither understanding, and each looking down upon the +other--Alan with the scornful pity of the scholar who has delved in the +dust of dreary negatives which generations of doubters have gradually +heaped up; and Caleb with the pitiful scorn of one who has been into the +sanctuary of God, and so learned to understand the end of these men. + +Late that night, when all the merrymakers had gone to their homes, +Tremaine sat smoking in the moonlight on the terrace of the Moat House. + +"It is strange," he said to himself, "what a hold the Christian myth has +taken upon the minds of the English people, and especially of the +working classes. I can see how its pathos might appeal to those whose +health was spoiled and whose physique was stunted by poverty and misery; +but it puzzles me to find a magnificent giant such as Bateson, a man too +strong to have nerves and too healthy to have delusions, as thoroughly +imbued with its traditions as any one. I fail to understand the secret +of its power." + +At that very moment Caleb was closing the day, as was his custom, with +family prayer, and his prayer ran thus-- + +"We beseech Thee, O Lord, look kindly upon the stranger who has this day +shown such favour unto Thy servants; pay back all that he has given us +sevenfold into his bosom. He is very young, Lord, and very ignorant and +very foolish; his eyes are holden so that he can not see the operations +of Thy Hands; but he is not very far from Thy Kingdom. Lead him, +Heavenly Father, in the way that he should go; open his eyes that he may +behold the hidden things of Thy Law; look upon him and love him, as Thou +didst aforetime another young man who had great possessions. Lord, tell +him that this earth is only Thy footstool; show him that the beauty he +sees all around him is the hem of Thy garment; and teach him that the +wisdom of this world is but foolishness with Thee. And this we beg, O +Lord, for Christ's sake. Amen." + +Thus Caleb prayed, and Alan could not hear him, and could not have +understood him even if he had heard. + +But there was One who heard, and understood. + + + + +CHAPTER VII + +BROADER VIEWS + + He proved that Man is nothing more + Than educated sod, + Forgetting that the schoolmen's lore + Is foolishness with God. + + +"Do you know what I mean to do as soon as Cousin Maria will let me?" +Elisabeth asked of Christopher, as the two were walking together--as +they walked not unfrequently--in Badgering Woods. + +"No; please tell me." + +"I mean to go up to the Slade School, and study there, and learn to be a +great artist." + +"It is sometimes a difficult lesson to learn to be great." + +"Nevertheless, I mean to learn it." The possibility of failure never +occurred to Elisabeth. "There is so much I want to teach the world, and +I feel I can only do it through my pictures; and I want to begin at +once, for fear I shouldn't get it all in before I die. There is plenty +of time, of course; I'm only twenty-one now, so that gives me forty-nine +years at the least; but forty-nine years will be none too much in which +to teach the world all that I want to teach it." + +"And what time shall you reserve for learning all that the world has to +teach you?" + +"I never thought of that. I'm afraid I sha'n't have much time for +learning." + +"Then I am afraid you won't do much good by teaching." + +Elisabeth laughed in all the arrogance of youth. "Yes, I shall; the +things you teach best are the things you know, and not the things you +have learned." + +"I am not so sure of that." + +"Surely genius does greater things than culture." + +"I grant you that culture without genius does no great things; neither, +I think, does genius without culture. Untrained genius is a terrible +waste of power. So many people seem to think that if they have a spark +of genius they can do without culture; while really it is because they +have a spark of genius that they ought to be, and are worthy to be, +cultivated to the highest point." + +"Well, anyway--culture or no culture--I mean to set the Thames on fire +some day." + +"You do, do you? Well, it is a laudable and not uncommon ambition." + +"Yes, I do; and you mustn't look so doubtful on the subject, as it isn't +pretty manners." + +"Did I look doubtful? I'm very sorry." + +"Horribly so. I know exactly what you will do, you are so shockingly +matter-of-fact. First you will prove to a demonstration that it is +utterly impossible for such an inferior being as a woman to set the +Thames on fire at all. Then--when I've done it and London is +illuminated--you will write to the papers to show that the 'flash-point' +of the river is decidedly too low, or else such an unlooked-for +catastrophe could never have occurred. Then you will get the Government +to take the matter up, and to bring a charge of arson against the New +Woman. And, finally, you will have notices put up all along the banks +from Goring to Greenwich, 'Ladies are requested not to bring +inflammatory articles near the river; the right of setting the Thames on +fire is now--as formerly--reserved specially for men.' And then you will +try to set it on fire yourself." + +"A most characteristic programme, I must confess. But now tell me; when +you have set your Thames on fire, and covered yourself with laurels, and +generally turned the world upside down, sha'n't you allow some humble +and devoted beggarman to share your kingdom with you? You might find it +a little dull alone in your glory, as you are such a sociable person." + +"Well, if I do, of course I shall let some nice man share it with me." + +"I see. You will stoop from your solitary splendour and say to the +devoted beggarman, 'Allow me to offer you the post of King Consort; it +is a mere sinecure, and confers only the semblance and not the reality +of power; but I hope you will accept it, as I have nothing better to +give you, and if you are submissive and obedient I will make you as +comfortable as I can under the circumstances.'" + +"Good gracious! I hope I am too wise ever to talk to a man in that way. +No, no, Chris; I shall find some nice man, who has seen through me all +the time and who hasn't been taken in by me, as the world has; and I +shall say to him, 'By the way, here is a small fire and a few laurel +leaves; please warm your hands at the one and wear the others in your +button-hole.' That is the proper way in which a woman should treat +fame--merely as a decoration for the man whom she has chosen." + +"O noble judge! O excellent young woman!" exclaimed Christopher. "But +what are some of the wonderful things which you are so anxious to +teach?" + +Elisabeth's mood changed at once, and her face grew serious. "I want to +teach people that they were sent into the world to be happy, and not to +be miserable; and that there is no virtue in turning their backs to the +sunshine and choosing to walk in the shade. I want to teach people that +the world is beautiful, and that it is only a superficial view that +finds it common and unclean. I want to teach people that human nature is +good and not evil, and that life is a glorious battlefield and not a +sordid struggle. In short, I want to teach people the dignity of +themselves; and there is no grander lesson." + +"Except, perhaps, the unworthiness of themselves," suggested +Christopher. + +"No, no, Chris; you are wrong to be so hard and cynical. Can't you +understand how I am longing to help the men and women I see around me, +who are dying for want of joy and beauty in their lives? It is the old +struggle between Hellenism and Hebraism--between happiness and +righteousness. We are sorely in need, here in England to-day, of the +Greek spirit of Pantheism, which found God in life and art and nature, +'as well as in sorrow and renunciation and death." + +"But it is in sorrow and renunciation and death that we need Him; and +you, who have always had everything you want, can not understand this: +no more could the Pagans and the Royalists; but the early Christians and +the persecuted Puritans could." + +"Puritanism has much to answer for in England," said Elisabeth; "we have +to thank Puritanism for teaching men that only by hurting themselves can +they please their Maker, and that God has given them tastes and hopes +and desires merely in order to mortify the same. And it is all +false--utterly false. The God of the Pagan is surely a more merciful +Being than the God of the Puritan." + +"A more indulgent Being, perhaps, but not necessarily a more merciful +one, Elisabeth. I disagree with the Puritans on many points, but I can +not help admitting that their conception of God was a fine one, even +though it erred on the side of severity. The Pagan converted the Godhead +into flesh, remember; but the Puritan exalted manhood into God." + +"Still, I never could bear the Puritans," Elisabeth went on; "they +turned the England of Queen Elizabeth--the most glorious England the +world has ever known--into one enormous Nonconformist Conscience; and +England has never been perfectly normal since. Besides, they discovered +that nature, and art, and human affection, which are really revelations +of God, were actually sins against Him. As I said before, I can never +forgive the Puritans for eradicating the beauty from holiness, and for +giving man the spirit of heaviness in place of the garment of praise." + +"I wonder if Paganism helped you much when you were poor and ill and +unhappy, and things in general had gone wrong with you. I daresay it was +very nice for the cheerful, prosperous people; but how about those who +had never got what they wanted out of life, and were never likely to get +it?" Christopher, like other people, looked at most matters from his own +individual standpoint; and his own individual standpoint was not at all +a comfortable spot just then. + +"The Greeks suffered and died as did the Jews and the Christians," +replied Elisabeth, "yet they were a joyous and light-hearted race. It is +not sorrow that saddens the world, but rather modern Christianity's +idealization of sorrow. I do not believe we should be half as miserable +as we are if we did not believe that there is virtue in misery, and that +by disowning our mercies and discarding our blessings we are currying +favour in the eyes of the Being, Who, nevertheless, has showered those +mercies and those blessings upon us." + +Thus had Alan Tremaine's influence gradually unmoored Elisabeth from the +old faiths in which she had been brought up; and he had done it so +gradually that the girl was quite unconscious of how far she had drifted +from her former anchorage. He was too well-bred ever to be blatant in +his unbelief--he would as soon have thought of attacking a man's family +to his face as of attacking his creed; but subtly and with infinite tact +he endeavoured to prove that to adapt ancient revelations to modern +requirements was merely putting new wine into old bottles and mending +old garments with new cloth; and Elisabeth was as yet too young and +inexperienced to see any fallacy in his carefully prepared arguments. + +She had nobody to help her to resist him, poor child! and she was +dazzled with the consciousness of intellectual power which his attitude +of mind appeared to take for granted. Miss Farringdon was cast in too +stern a mould to have any sympathy or patience with the blind gropings +of an undisciplined young soul; and Christopher--who generally +understood and sympathized with all Elisabeth's difficulties and +phases--was so jealous of her obvious attachment to Tremaine, and so +unhappy on account of it, that for the time being the faithful friend +was entirely swallowed up in the irate lover, sighing like one of the +Osierfield furnaces. Of course this was very unfair and tiresome of +him--nobody could deny that; but it is sometimes trying to the +amiability of even the best of men to realize that the purely mundane +and undeserved accident of want of money can shut them off entirely from +ever attaining to the best kind of happiness whereof their natures are +capable--and especially when they know that their natures are capable of +attaining and appreciating a very high standard of happiness indeed. It +may not be right to be unsociable because one is unhappy, but it is very +human and most particularly masculine; and Christopher just then was +both miserable and a man. + +There was much about Alan that was very attractive to Elisabeth: he +possessed a certain subtlety of thought and an almost feminine quickness +of perception which appealed powerfully to her imagination. Imagination +was Elisabeth's weak, as well as her strong, point. She was incapable of +seeing people as they really were; but erected a purely imaginary +edifice of character on the foundations of such attributes as her rapid +intuition either rightly or wrongly perceived them to possess. As a +rule, she thought better of her friends than they deserved--or, at any +rate, she recognised in them that ideal which they were capable of +attaining, but whereto they sometimes failed to attain. + +Life is apt to be a little hard on the women of Elisabeth's type, who +idealize their fellows until the latter lose all semblance of reality; +for experience, with its inevitable disillusionment, can not fail to put +their ideal lovers and friends far from them, and to hide their +etherealized acquaintances out of their sight; and to give instead, to +the fond, trusting souls, half-hearted lovers, semi-sincere friends, and +acquaintances who care for them only as the world can care. Poor +imaginative women--who dreamed that you had found a perfect knight and a +faithful friend, and then discovered that these were only an ordinary +selfish man and woman after all--life has many more such surprises in +store for you; and the surprises will shock you less and hurt you more +as the years roll on! But though life will have its surprises for you, +death perchance will have none; for when the secrets of all hearts are +opened, and all thwarted desires are made known, it may be that the +ordinary selfish man and woman will stand forth as the perfect knight +and faithful friend that God intended them, and you believed them, and +they tried yet failed to be; and you will be satisfied at last when you +see your beloved ones wake up after His likeness, and will smile as you +say to them, "So it is really you after all." + +Although Tremaine might be lacking in his duty toward God, he fulfilled +(in the spirit if not in the letter) his duty toward his neighbour; and +Elisabeth was fairly dazzled by his many schemes for making life easier +and happier to the people who dwelt in the darkness of the Black +Country. + +It was while he was thus figuring as her ideal hero that Elisabeth went +to stay with Felicia Herbert, near a manufacturing town in Yorkshire. +Felicia had been once or twice to the Willows, and was well acquainted +with the physical and biographical characteristics of the place; and she +cherished a profound admiration both for Miss Farringdon and Christopher +Thornley. Tremaine she had never met--he had been abroad each time that +she had visited Sedgehill--but she disapproved most heartily of his +influence upon Elisabeth, and of his views as set forth by that young +lady. Felicia had been brought up along extremely strict lines, and in a +spirit of comfortable intolerance of all forms of religion not +absolutely identical with her own; consequently, a man with no form of +religion at all was to her a very terrible monster indeed. On the +Sundays of her early youth she had perused a story treating of an +Unbeliever (always spelled with a capital U), and the punishments that +were meted out to the daughter of light who was unequally yoked with +him; and she was imbued with a strong conviction that these same +punishments were destined to fall upon Elisabeth's head, should +Elisabeth incline favourably to the (at present) hypothetical suit of +the master of the Moat House. Thus it happened that when Elisabeth came +to the Herberts', full of girlish admiration for Alan Tremaine, Felicia +did her best to ripen that admiration into love by abusing Alan in and +out of season, and by endeavouring to prove that an attachment to him +would be a soul-destroyer of the most irreparable completeness. + +"It is no use talking to me about his goodness," she said; "nobody is +good who isn't a Christian." + +"But he is good," persisted Elisabeth--"most tremendously good. The poor +people simply adore him, he does such a lot for them; and he couldn't +have lovelier thoughts and higher ideals if he were a girl instead of a +man. There must be different ways of goodness, Felicia." + +"There are not different ways of goodness; mamma says there are not, and +it is very wicked to believe that there are. I am afraid you are not +half as religious as you were at Fox How." + +"Yes, I am; but I have learned that true religion is a state of mind +rather than a code of dogmas." + +Felicia looked uncomfortable. "I wish you wouldn't talk like that; I am +sure mamma wouldn't like it--she can not bear anything that borders on +the profane." + +"I am not bordering on the profane; I am only saying what I uphold is +true. I can not take things for granted as you do; I have to think them +out for myself; and I have come to the conclusion that what a man is is +of far more importance than what a man believes." + +"But you ought not to think things like that, Elisabeth; it isn't right +to do so." + +"I can't help thinking it. I am an independent being with a mind of my +own, and I must make up that mind according to what I see going on +around me. What on earth is the good of having an intellect, if you +submit that intellect to the will of another? I wonder how you can take +your ideas all ready-made from your mother," exclaimed Elisabeth, who +just then was taking all hers ready-made from Alan Tremaine. + +"Well, I can not argue. I am not clever enough; and, besides, mamma +doesn't like us to argue upon religious subjects--she says it is +unsettling; so I will only say that I know you are wrong, and then we +will let the matter drop and talk about Christopher. How is he?" + +"Oh, he is all right, only very horrid. To tell you the truth, I am +getting to dislike Christopher." + +"Elisabeth!" Felicia's Madonna-like face became quite sorrowful. + +"Well, I am; and so would you, if he was as stand-off to you as he is to +me. I can't think what is wrong with him; but whatever I do, and however +nice I try to be to him, the North Pole is warm and neighbourly compared +with him. I'm sick of him and his unsociable ways!" + +"But you and he used to be such friends." + +"I know that; and I would be friends now if he would let me. But how can +you be friends with a man who is as reserved as the Great Pyramid and as +uncommunicative as the Sphinx, and who sticks up iron palings all round +himself, like a specimen tree in the park, so that nobody can get near +him? If a man wants a girl to like him he should be nice to her, and not +require an introduction every time they meet." + +Felicia sighed: her sweet, placid nature was apt to be overpowered by +Elisabeth's rapid changes of front. "But he used to be so fond of you," +she expostulated feebly. + +Elisabeth shrugged her shoulders. "Oh, I suppose he likes me now, in his +cold, self-satisfied way: it isn't that. What I complain of is that he +doesn't admire me enough, and I do so love to be admired." + +"Do you mean he doesn't think you are pretty?" Felicia always had to +have things fully explained to her; excess of imagination could never +lead her astray, whatever it might do to her friend. + +"Of course not; I don't see how he could, considering that I'm not: +women don't expect men to admire them for things that they don't +possess," replied Elisabeth, who had still much to learn. "What I mean +is he doesn't realize how clever I am--he despises me just as he used to +despise me when I was a little girl and he was a big boy--and that is +awfully riling when you know you are clever." + +"Is it? I would much rather a man liked me than thought I was clever." + +"I wouldn't; anybody can like you, but it takes a clever person to +appreciate cleverness. I have studied myself thoroughly, and I have +come to the conclusion that I need appreciation far more than affection: +I'm made like that." + +"I don't understand you. To me affection is everything, and I can not +live without it. If people are really fond of me, they can think me as +stupid as they like." + +Elisabeth's face grew thoughtful; she was always interested in the +analysis of herself and her friends. "How different we two are! I +couldn't forgive a person for thinking me stupid, even if I knew that +person adored me. To me no amount of affection would make up for the +lack of appreciation. I want to be understood as well as liked, and that +is where Christopher and I come across each other; he never understands +me in the least. Now that is why Mr. Tremaine and I get on so well +together; he understands and appreciates me so thoroughly." + +Felicia's pretty month fell into stern lines of disapproval. "I am sure +I should hate Mr. Tremaine if I knew him," she said. + +"Oh, no, you wouldn't--you simply couldn't, Felicia, he is so +delightful. And, what is more, he is so frightfully interesting: +whatever he says and does, he always makes you think about him. Now, +however fond you were of Chris--and he really is very good and kind in +some ways--you could never think about him: it would be such dreadfully +uninteresting thinking, if you did." + +"I don't know about that; Christopher is very comfortable and homelike, +somehow," replied Felicia. + +"So are rice-puddings and flannel petticoats, but you don't occupy your +most exalted moments in meditating upon them." + +"Do you know, Elisabeth, I sometimes think that Christopher is in love +with you." Unlike Elisabeth, Felicia never saw what did not exist, and +therefore was able sometimes to perceive what did. + +"Good gracious, what an idea! He'd simply roar with laughter at the mere +thought of such a thing! Why, Christopher isn't capable of falling in +love with anybody; he hasn't got it in him, he is so frightfully +matter-of-fact." + +Felicia looked dubious. "Then don't you think he will ever marry?" + +"Oh, yes, he'll marry fast enough--a sweet, domestic woman, who plays +the piano and does crochet-work; and he will talk to her about the price +of iron and the integrity of the empire, and will think that he is +making love, and she will think so too. And they will both of them go +down to their graves without ever finding out that the life is more than +meat or the body than raiment." + +Elisabeth was very hard on Christopher just then, and nothing that +Felicia could say succeeded in softening her. Women are apt to be hard +when they are quite young--and sometimes even later. + +Felicia Herbert was the eldest of a large family. Her parents, though +well-to-do, were not rich; and it was the dream of Mrs. Herbert's life +that her daughter's beauty should bring about a great match. She was a +good woman according to her lights, and a most excellent wife and +mother; but if she had a weakness--and who (except, of course, one's +self) is without one?--that weakness was social ambition. + +"You will understand, my dear," she said confidentially to Elisabeth, +"that it would be the greatest comfort to Mr. Herbert and myself to see +Felicia married to a God-fearing man; and, of course, if he kept his +own carriage as well we should be all the better satisfied." + +"I don't think that money really makes people happy," replied Elisabeth, +strong in the unworldliness of those who have never known what it is to +do without anything that money can buy. + +"Of course not, my dear--of course not; nothing but religion can bring +true happiness. Whenever I am tempted to be anxious about my children's +future, I always check myself by saying, 'The Lord will provide; though +I can not sometimes help hoping that the provision will be an ample one +as far as Felicia is concerned, because she is so extremely +nice-looking." + +"She is perfectly lovely!" exclaimed Elisabeth enthusiastically; "and +she gets lovelier and lovelier every time I see her. If I were to change +places with all the rich men in the world, I should never do anything +but keep on marrying Felicia." + +"Still, she could only marry one of you, my dear. But, between +ourselves, I just want to ask you a few questions about a Mr. Thornley +whom Felicia met at your house. I fancied she was a wee bit interested +in him." + +"Interested in Chris! Oh! she couldn't possibly be. No girl could be +interested in Christopher in that way." + +"Why not, my dear? Is he so unusually plain?" + +"Oh! no; he is very good-looking; but he has a good head for figures and +a poor eye for faces. In short, he is a sensible man, and girls don't +fall in love with sensible men." + +"I think you are mistaken there; I do indeed. I have known many +instances of women becoming sincerely attached to sensible men." + +"You don't know how overpoweringly sensible Christopher is. He is so +wise that he never makes a joke unless it has some point in it." + +"There is no harm in that, my dear. I never see the point of a joke +myself, I admit; but I like to know that there is one." + +"And when he goes for a walk with a girl, he never talks nonsense to +her," continued Elisabeth, "but treats her exactly as if she were his +maiden aunt." + +"But why should he talk nonsense to her? It is a great waste of time to +talk nonsense; I am not sure that it is not even a sin. Is Mr. Thornley +well off?" + +"No. His uncle, Mr. Smallwood, is the general manager of our works; and +Christopher has only his salary as sub-manager, and what his uncle may +leave him. His mother was Mr. Smallwood's sister, and married a +ne'er-do-weel-who left her penniless; at least, that is to say, if he +ever had a mother--which I sometimes doubt, as he understands women so +little." + +"Still, I think we can take that for granted," said Mrs. Herbert, +smiling with pride at having seen Elisabeth's little joke, and feeling +quite a wit herself in consequence. One of the secrets of Elisabeth's +popularity was that she had a knack of impressing the people with whom +she talked, not so much with a sense of her cleverness as with a sense +of their own. She not only talked well herself, she made other people +talk well also--a far more excellent gift. + +"So," she went on, "if his uncle hadn't adopted him, I suppose Chris +would have starved to death when he was a child; and that would have +been extremely unpleasant for him, poor boy!" + +"Ah! that would have been terrible, my dear!" exclaimed Mrs. Herbert, so +full of pity for Christopher that she was willing to give him anything +short of her firstborn. She was really a kind-hearted woman. + +Elisabeth looked out of the window at the group of stunted shrubs with +black-edged leaves which entitled Felicia's home to be called Wood Glen. +"There is one thing to be said in favour of starvation," she said +solemnly, "it would keep one from getting stout, and stoutness is the +cruellest curse of all. I'd rather be dead than stout any day." + +"My dear child, you are talking nonsense. What would be the advantage of +being thin if you were not alive?" + +"When you come to that, what would be the advantage of being alive if +you weren't thin?" retorted Elisabeth. + +"The two cases are not parallel, my dear; you see you couldn't be thin +without being alive, but you could be alive without being thin." + +"It is possible; I have come across such cases myself, but I devoutly +trust mine may never be one of them. As the hymn says, I shall always be +'content to fill a little space.'" + +"Ah! but I think the hymn doesn't mean it quite in that sense. I believe +the hymn refers rather to the greatness of one's attainments and +possessions than to one's personal bulk." + +Elisabeth opened her eyes wide with an expression of childlike +simplicity. "Do you really think so?" + +"I do, my dear. You know one must not take poetry too literally; verse +writers are allowed what is termed 'poetic license,' and are rarely, if +ever, quite accurate in their statements. I suppose it would be too +difficult for anybody to get both the truth and the rhyme to fit in, and +so the truth has to be somewhat adapted. But about Mr. Thornley, my +love; you don't think that he and Felicia are at all interested in one +another?" + +"Good gracious, no! I'm sure they are not. If they had been, I should +have spotted it and talked about it ages ago." + +"I hope you are not given to talk about such things, even if you do +perceive them," said Mrs. Herbert, with reproof in her tone; "talking +scandal is a sad habit." + +"But it isn't scandal to say that a man is in love with a woman--in +fact, it is the very opposite. It is much worse scandal never to talk +about a woman in that way, because that means that you think she is +either too old or too ugly to have a lover, and that is the worst +scandal of all. I always feel immensely tickled when I hear women +pluming themselves on the fact that they never get talked about; and I +long to say to them, 'There is nothing to be proud of in that, my dears; +it only means that the world is tacitly calling you stupid old frights.' +Why, I'd rather people found fault with me than did not talk about me at +all." + +"Then I am afraid you are not 'content to fill a little space,'" said +Mrs. Herbert severely. + +"To tell you the truth I don't think I am," replied Elisabeth, with +engaging frankness; "conceit is my besetting sin and I know it. Not +stately, scornful, dignified pride, but downright, inflated, perky, +puffed-up conceit. I have often remarked upon it to Christopher, and he +has always agreed with me." + +"But, my dear, the consciousness of a fault is surely one step toward +its cure." + +"Not it," replied Elisabeth, shaking her head; "I've always known I am +conceited, yet I get conceiteder and conceiteder every year. Bless you! +I don't want to 'fill a little space,' and I particularly don't want 'a +heart at leisure from itself'; I think that is such a dull, old-maidish +sort of thing to have--I wouldn't have one for anything. People who have +hearts at leisure from themselves always want to understudy Providence, +you will notice." + +Mrs. Herbert looked shocked. "My dear, what do you mean?" + +"I mean that really good people, who have no interests of their own, are +too fond of playing the part of Providence to other people. That their +motives are excellent I admit; they are not a bit selfish, and they +interfere with you for your own good; but they successfully accomplish +as much incurable mischief in half an hour as it would take half a dozen +professional mischief-makers at least a year to finish off +satisfactorily. If they can not mind their own business it doesn't +follow that Providence can't either, don't you see?" + +Whereupon Felicia entered the room, and the conversation was abruptly +closed; but not before Mrs. Herbert had decided that if Providence had +selected her daughter as the consoler of Christopher's sorrows, +Providence must be gently and patiently reasoned with until another and +more suitable comforter was substituted. She did not, of course, put the +matter to herself thus barely; but this was what her decision +practically amounted to. + +But although people might not be talking, as Mrs. Herbert imagined, +about Christopher and Felicia, the tongues of Sedgehill were all agog +on the subject of the evident attachment between Elisabeth Farringdon +and the master of the Moat House. + +"I'm afeared as our Miss Elisabeth is keeping company with that Mr. +Tremaine; I am indeed," Mrs. Bateson confided to her crony, Mrs. Hankey. + +Mrs. Hankey, as was her wont, groaned both in spirit and in person. "So +I've heard tell, more's the pity! Miss Elisabeth is no favourite of +mine, as you know, being so dark-complexioned as a child, and I never +could abide dark babies. I haven't much to be thankful for, I'm sure, +for the Lord has tried me sore, giving me Hankey as a husband, and such +a poor appetite as I never enjoy a meal from one year's end to another; +but one thing I can boast of, and that is my babies were all fair, with +as clear a skin as you could want to see. Still, I don't wish the young +lady no harm, it not being Christian to do so; and it is sad at her age +to be tied to a husband from which there is no outlet but the grave." + +"I don't hold with you there, Mrs. Hankey; it is dull work for the women +who have nobody to order 'em about and find fault with 'em. Why, where's +the good of taking the trouble to do a thing well, if there's no man to +blame you for it afterward? But what I want to see is Miss Elisabeth +married to Master Christopher, them two being made for one another, as +you might say." + +"He has a new heart and a nice fresh colour, has Master Christopher; +which is more than his own mother--supposing she was alive--could say +for Mr. Tremaine." + +"That is so, Mrs. Hankey. I'm afeared there isn't much religion about +him. He don't even go to church on a Sunday, let alone chapel; though +he is wonderful charitable to the poor, I must admit." + +Mrs. Hankey pursed up her mouth. "And what are works without faith, I +should like to know!" + +"Quite true--quite true; but maybe the Lord ain't quite as hard on us as +we are on one another, and makes allowances for our bringing-up and +such." + +"Maybe," replied Mrs. Hankey, in a tone which implied that she hoped her +friend was mistaken. + +"You see," continued Mrs. Bateson, "there's nothing helps you to +understand the ways of the Lord like having children of your own. Why, +afore I was married, I was for whipping every child that was contrairy +till it got good again; but after my Lucy Ellen was born, I found that +her contrairiness made me sorry for her instead of angry with her, and I +knowed as the poor little thing was feeling poorly or else she'd never +have been like that. So instead of punishing her, I just comforted her; +and the more contradictious she got, the more I knowed as she wanted +comfort. And I don't doubt but the Lord knows that the more we kick +against Him the more we need Him; and that He makes allowance +accordingly." + +"You seem to have comfortable thoughts about things; I only hope as you +are not encouraging false hopes and crying peace where there is no +peace," remarked Mrs. Hankey severely. + +But Mrs. Bateson was not affrighted. "Don't you know how ashamed you +feel when folks think better of you than you deserve? I remember years +ago, when Caleb came a-courting me, I was minded once to throw him over, +because he was full solemn to take a young maid's fancy. And when I was +debating within myself whether I'd throw him over or no, he says to me, +'Kezia, my lass,' he says, 'I'm not afeared as ye'll give me the slip, +for all your saucy ways; other folks may think you're a bit flirty, but +I know you better than they do, and I trust you with all my heart.' Do +you think I could have disappointed him after that, Mrs. Hankey? Not for +the whole world. But I was that ashamed as never was, for even having +thought of such a thing. And if we poor sinful souls feel like that, do +you think the Lord is the One to disappoint folks for thinking better of +Him than He deserves? Not He, Mrs. Hankey; I know Him better than that." + +"I only wish I could see things in such a cheerful light as you do." + +"It was only after my first baby was born that I began to understand the +Lord's ways a bit. It's wonderful how caring for other folks seems to +bring you nearer to Him--nearer even than class meetings and special +services, though I wouldn't for the world say a word against the means +of grace." + +This doctrine was too high for Mrs. Hankey; she could not attain to it, +so she wisely took refuge in a side issue. "It was fortunate for you +your eldest being a girl; if the Lord had thought fit to give me a +daughter instead of three sons, things might have been better with me," +she said, contentedly moving the burden of personal responsibility from +her own shoulders to her Maker's. + +"Don't say that, Mrs. Hankey. Daughters may be more useful in the house, +I must confess, and less mischievous all round; but they can't work as +hard for their living as the sons can when you ain't there to look after +them." + +"You don't know what it is to live in a house full of nothing but men, +with not a soul to speak to about all the queer tricks they're at, many +a time I feel like Robinson Crusoe on a desert island among a lot of +savages." + +"And I don't blame you," agreed Mrs. Bateson sympathetically; "for my +part I don't know what I should have done when Caleb and the boys were +troublesome if I couldn't have passed remarks on their behaviour to Lucy +Ellen; I missed her something terrible when first she was married for +that simple reason. You see, it takes another woman to understand how +queer a man is." + +"It does, Mrs. Bateson; you never spoke a truer word. And then think +what it must be on your death-bed to have the room full of stupid men, +tumbling over one another and upsetting the medicine-bottles and putting +everything in its wrong place. Many a time have I wished for a daughter, +if it was but to close my eyes; but the Lord has seen fit to withhold +His blessings from me, and it is not for me to complain: His ways not +being as our ways, but often quite the reverse." + +"That is so; and I wish as He'd seen fit to mate Miss Elisabeth with +Master Christopher, instead of letting her keep company with that Mr. +Tremaine." + +Mrs. Hankey shook her head ominously. "Mr. Tremaine is one that has +religious doubts." + +"Ah! that's liver," said Mrs. Bateson, her voice softening with pity; +"that comes from eating French kickshaws, and having no mother to see +that he takes a dose of soda and nitre now and then to keep his system +cool. Poor young man!" + +"I hear as he goes so far as to deny the existence of a God," continued +Mrs. Hankey. + +"All liver!" repeated Mrs. Bateson; "it often takes men like that; when +they begin to doubt the inspiration of the Scriptures you know they +will be all the better for a dose of dandelion tea; but when they go on +to deny the existence of a God, there's nothing for it but chamomile. +And I don't believe as the Lord takes their doubts any more seriously +than their wives take 'em. He knows as well as we do that the poor +things need pity more than blame, and dosing more than converting; for +He gave 'em their livers, and we only have to bear with them and return +thanks to Him for having made ours of a different pattern." + +"And what do the women as have doubts need, I should like to know?" + +"A husband and children is the best cure for them. Why, when a woman has +a husband and children to look after, and washes at home, she has no +time, bless you! to be teaching the Lord His business; she has enough to +do minding her own." + + + + +CHAPTER VIII + +GREATER THAN OUR HEARTS + + The world is weary of new tracks of thought + That lead to nought-- + Sick of quack remedies prescribed in vain + For mortal pain, + Yet still above them all one Figure stands + With outstretched Hands. + + +"Cousin Maria, do you like Alan Tremaine?" asked Elisabeth, not long +after her return from Yorkshire. + +"Like him, my dear? I neither like nor dislike persons with whom I have +as little in common as I have with Mr. Tremaine. But he strikes me as a +young man of parts, and his manners are admirable." + +"I wasn't thinking about his manners, I was thinking about his views," +said the girl, walking across the room and looking through the window at +the valley smiling in the light of the summer morning; "don't you think +they are very broad and enlightened?" + +"I daresay they are. Young persons of superior intelligence are +frequently dazzled by their own brilliance at first, and consider that +they were sent into the world specially to confute the law and the +prophets. As they grow older they learn better." + +Elisabeth began playing with the blind-cord. "I think he is awfully +clever," she remarked. + +"My dear, how often must I beg you not to use that word _awfully_, +except in its correct sense? Remember that we hold the English tongue in +trust--it belongs to the nation and not to us--and we have no more right +to profane England's language by the introduction of coined words and +slang expressions than we have to disendow her institutions or to +pollute her rivers." + +"All right; I'll try not to forget again. But you really do think Alan +is clever, don't you?" + +"He is undoubtedly intelligent, and possesses the knack of appearing +even more intelligent than he is; but at present he has not learned his +own limitations." + +"You mean that he isn't clever enough to know that he isn't cleverer," +suggested Elisabeth. + +"Well, my dear, I should never have put it in that way, but that +approximately expresses my ideas about our young friend." + +"And he is aw--I mean frightfully well off." + +Miss Farringdon looked sternly at the speaker. "Never again let me hear +you refer to the income of persons about whom you are speaking, +Elisabeth; it is a form of ill-breeding which I can not for a moment +tolerate in my house. That money is a convenience to the possessor of +it, I do not attempt to deny; but that the presence or the absence of it +should be counted as a matter of any moment (except to the man himself), +presupposes a standpoint of such vulgarity that it is impossible for me +to discuss it. And even the man himself should never talk about it; he +should merely silently recognise the fact, and regulate his plan of life +accordingly." + +"Still, I have heard quite nice people sometimes say that they can not +afford things," argued Elisabeth. + +"I do not deny that; even quite nice people make mistakes sometimes, and +well-mannered persons are not invariably well-mannered. Your quite nice +people would have been still nicer had they realized that to talk about +one's poverty--though not so bad as talking about one's wealth--is only +one degree better; and that perfect gentle-people would refer neither to +the one nor to the other." + +"I see." Elisabeth's tone was subdued. + +"I once knew a woman," continued Miss Farringdon, "who, by that accident +of wealth, which is of no interest to anybody but the possessor, was +enabled to keep a butler and two footmen; but in speaking of her +household to a friend, who was less richly endowed with worldly goods +than herself, she referred to these three functionaries as 'my +parlourmaid,' for fear of appearing to be conscious of her own +superiority in this respect. Now this woman, though kind-hearted, was +distinctly vulgar." + +"But you have always taught me that it is good manners to keep out of +sight any point on which you have the advantage over the people you are +talking to," Elisabeth persisted. "You have told me hundreds of times +that I must never show off my knowledge after other people have +displayed their ignorance; and that I must not even be obtrusively +polite after they have been obviously rude. Those are your very words, +Cousin Maria: you see I can give chapter and verse." + +"And I meant what I said, my dear. Wider knowledge and higher breeding +are signs of actual superiority, and therefore should never be flaunted. +The vulgarity in the woman I am speaking about lay in imagining that +there is any superiority in having more money than another person: there +is not. To hide the difference proved that she thought there was a +difference, and this proved that her standpoint was an essentially +plebeian one. There was no difference at all, save one of convenience; +the same sort of difference there is between people who have hot water +laid on all over their houses and those who have to carry it upstairs. +And who would be so trivial and commonplace as to talk about that?" + +Elisabeth, seeing that her cousin was in the right, wisely changed the +subject. "The Bishop of Merchester is preaching at St. Peter's Church, +in Silverhampton, on St. Peter's Day, and I have asked Alan Tremaine to +drive me over in his dog-cart to hear him." Although she had strayed +from the old paths of dogma and doctrine, Elisabeth could not eradicate +the inborn Methodist nature which hungers and thirsts after +righteousness as set forth in sermons. + +"I should like to hear him too, my dear," said Miss Farringdon, who also +had been born a Methodist. + +"Then will you come? In that case we can have our own carriage, and I +needn't bother Alan," said Elisabeth, with disappointment written in +capital letters all over her expressive face. + +"On which day is it, and at what hour?" + +"To-morrow evening at half-past six," replied the girl, knowing that +this was the hour of the evening sacrifice at East Lane Chapel, and +trusting to the power of habit and early association to avert the +addition of that third which would render two no longer any company for +each other. + +Her trust was not misplaced. "It is our weekevening service, my dear, +with the prayer-meeting after. Did you forget?" + +Elisabeth endeavoured to simulate the sudden awakening of a dormant +memory. "So it is!" + +"I see no reason why you should not go into Silverhampton to hear the +Bishop," said Miss Farringdon kindly. "I like young people to learn the +faith once delivered to the saints, from all sorts and conditions of +teachers; but I shall feel it my duty to be in my accustomed place." + +So it came to pass, one never-to-be-forgotten summer afternoon, that +Alan Tremaine drove Elisabeth Farringdon into Silverhampton to hear the +Bishop of Merchester preach. + +As soon as she was safely tucked up in the dog-cart, with no way of +escape, Elisabeth saw a look in Alan's eyes which told her that he meant +to make love to her; so with that old, old feminine instinct, which made +the prehistoric woman take to her heels when the prehistoric man began +to run after her, this daughter of the nineteenth century took refuge in +an armour of flippancy, which is the best shield yet invented for +resisting Cupid's darts. + +It was a glorious afternoon--one of those afternoons which advertise to +all the world how excellent was the lotus-eaters' method of dividing +time; and although the woods had exchanged the fresh variety of spring +for the dark green sameness of summer, the fields were gay with +haymakers, and the world still seemed full of joyous and abundant life. + +"Let's go the country way," Elisabeth had said at starting; "and then we +can come back by the town." So the two drove by Badgering Woods, and +across the wide common; and as they went they saw and felt that the +world was very good. Elisabeth was highly sensitive to the influences +of nature, and, left to herself, would have leaned toward sentiment on +such an afternoon as this; but she had seen that look in Alan's eyes, +and that was enough for her. + +"Do you know," began Tremaine, getting to work, "that I have been doing +nothing lately but thinking about you? And I have come to the conclusion +that what appeals so much to me is your strength. The sweetness which +attracts some men has no charm for me; I am one of the men who above all +things admire and reverence a strong woman, though I know that the sweet +and clinging woman is to some the ideal of feminine perfection. But +different men, of course, admire different types." + +"Exactly; there is a Latin proverb, something about tots and sentences, +which embodies that idea," suggested Elisabeth, with a nervous, girlish +laugh. + +Alan did not smile; he made it a rule never to encourage flippancy in +women. + +"It is hardly kind of you to laugh at me when I am speaking seriously," +he said, "and it would serve you right if I turned my horse's head round +and refused to let you hear your Bishop. But I will not punish you this +time; I will heap coals of fire on your head by driving on." + +"Oh! don't begin heaping coals of fire on people's head, Mr. Tremaine; +it is a dangerous habit, and those who indulge in it always get their +fingers burned in the end--just as they do when they play with edged +tools, or do something (I forget what) with their own petard." + +There was a moment's silence, and then Alan said-- + +"It makes me very unhappy when you are in a mood like this; I do not +understand it, and it seems to raise up an impassable barrier between +us." + +"Please don't be unhappy about a little thing like that; wait till you +break a front tooth, or lose your collar-stud, or have some other real +trouble to cry over. But now you are making a trouble out of nothing, +and I have no patience with people who make troubles out of nothing; it +seems to me like getting one's boots spoiled by a watering-cart when it +is dry weather; and that is a thing which makes me most frightfully +angry." + +"Do many things make you angry, I wonder?" + +"Some things and some people." + +"Tell me what sort of people make a woman of your type angry." + +Elisabeth fell into the trap; she could never resist the opportunity of +discussing herself from an outside point of view. If Alan had said +_you_, she would have snubbed him at once; but the well-chosen words, _a +woman of your type_, completely carried her away. She was not an +egotist; she was only intensely interested in herself as the single +specimen of humanity which she was able to study exhaustively. + +"I think the people who make me angry are the unresponsive people," she +replied thoughtfully; "the people who do not put their minds into the +same key as mine when I am talking to them. Don't you know the sort? +When you discuss a thing from one standpoint they persist in discussing +it from another; and as soon as you try to see it from their point of +view, they fly off to a third. It isn't so much that they differ from +you--that you would not mind; there is a certain harmony in difference +which is more effective than its unison of perfect agreement--but they +sing the same tune in another key, and the discords are excruciating. +Then the people who argue make me angry; those who argue about trifles, +I mean." + +"Ah! All you women are alike in that; you love discussion, and hate +argument. The cause of which is that you decide things by instinct +rather than by reason, and that therefore--although you know you are +right--you can not possibly prove it." + +"Then," Elisabeth continued, "I get very angry with the people who will +bother about non-essentials; who, when you have got hold of the vital +centre of a question, stray off to side issues. They are first-cousins +of the people who talk in different keys." + +"I should have said they were the same." + +"Well, perhaps they are; I believe you are right. Christopher Thornley +is one of that sort; when you are discussing one side of a thing with +him, you'll find him playing bo-peep with you round the other; and you +never can get him into the right mood at the right time. He makes me +simply furious sometimes. Do you know, I think if I were a dog I should +often bite Christopher? He makes me angry in a biting kind of way." + +Alan smiled faintly at this; jokes at Christopher's expense were +naturally more humorous than jokes at his own. "And what other sorts of +people make you angry?" he asked. + +"I'm afraid the people who make me angriest of all are the people who +won't do what I tell them. They really madden me." And Elisabeth began +to laugh. "I've got a horribly strong will, you see, and if people go +against it, I want them to be sent to the dentist's every morning, and +to the photographer's every afternoon, for the rest of their lives. Now +Christopher is one of the worst of those; I can't make him do what I +want just because I want it; he always wishes to know why I want it, +and that is so silly and tiresome of him, because nine times out of ten +I don't know myself." + +"Very trying!" + +"Christopher certainly has the knack of making me angrier than anybody +else I ever met," said Elisabeth thoughtfully. "I wonder why it is? I +suppose it must be because I have known him for so long. I can't see any +other reason. I am generally such an easy-going, good-tempered girl; but +when Christopher begins to argue and dictate and contradict, the Furies +simply aren't in it with me." + +"The excellent Thornley certainly has his limitations." + +Elisabeth's eyes flashed. She did not mind finding fault with +Christopher herself; in fact, she found such fault-finding absolutely +necessary to her well-being; but she resented any attempt on the part of +another to usurp this, her peculiar prerogative. "He is very good, all +the same," she said, "and extremely clever; and he is my greatest +friend." + +But Alan was bored by Christopher as a subject of conversation, so he +changed him for Elisabeth's self. "How loyal you are!" he exclaimed with +admiration; "it is indeed a patent of nobility to be counted among your +friends." + +The girl, having just been guilty of disloyalty, was naturally delighted +at this compliment. "You always understand and appreciate me," she said +gratefully, unconscious of the fact that it was Alan's lack of +understanding and appreciation which had aroused her gratitude just +then. Perfect comprehension--untempered by perfect love--would be a +terrible thing; mercifully for us poor mortals it does not exist. + +Alan went on: "Because I possess this patent of nobility, I am going to +presume upon my privileges and ask you to help me in my life-work; and +my life-work, as you know, is to ameliorate the condition of the poor, +and to carry to some extent the burdens which they are bound to bear." + +Elisabeth looked up at him, her face full of interest; no appeal to her +pity was ever made in vain. If people expected her to admire them, they +were frequently disappointed; if they wished her to fear them, their +wish was absolutely denied; but if they only wanted her to be sorry for +them, they were abundantly satisfied, sympathy being the keynote of her +character. She was too fastidious often to admire; she was too strong +ever to fear; but her tenderness was unfailing toward those who had once +appealed to her pity, and whose weakness had for once allowed itself to +rest upon her strength. Therefore Alan's desire to help the poor, and to +make them happier, struck the dominant chord in her nature; but +unfortunately when she raised her eyes, full of sympathetic sympathy, to +his, she encountered that look in the latter which had frightened her at +the beginning of the excursion; so she again clothed herself in her +garment of flippancy, and hardened her heart as the nether millstone. In +blissful unconsciousness Alan continued-- + +"Society is just now passing through a transition stage. The interests +of capital and labour are at war with each other; the rich and the poor +are as two armies made ready for battle, and the question is, What can +we do to bridge over the gulf between the classes, and to induce them +each to work for, instead of against, the other? It is these transition +stages which have proved the most difficult epochs in the world's +history." + +"I hate transition stages and revolutions, they are so unsettling. It +seems to me they are just like the day when your room is cleaned; and +that is the most uncomfortable day in the whole week. Don't you know it? +You go upstairs in the accustomed way, fearing nothing; but when you +open the door you find the air dark with dust and the floor with +tea-leaves, and nothing looking as it ought to look. Prone on its face +on the bed, covered with a winding-sheet, lies your overthrown +looking-glass; and underneath it, in a shapeless mass, are huddled +together all the things that you hold dearest upon earth. You thrust in +your hand to get something that you want, and it is a pure chance +whether your Bible or your button-hook rises to the surface. And it +seems to me that transition periods are just like that." + +"How volatile you are! One minute you are so serious and the next so +frivolous that I fail to follow you. I often think that you must have +some foreign blood in your veins, you are so utterly different from the +typical, stolid, shy, self-conscious English-woman." + +"I hope you don't think I was made in Germany, like cheap china and +imitation Astrakhan." + +"Heaven forbid! The Germans are more stolid and serious than the +English. But you must have a Celtic ancestor in you somewhere. Haven't +you?" + +"Well, to tell you the truth, my great-grandmother was a Manxwoman; but +we are ashamed to talk much about her, because it sounds as if she'd had +no tail." + +"Then you must have inherited your temperament from her. But now I want +to talk to you seriously about doing something for the men who work in +the coal-pits, and who--more even than the rest of their class--are shut +out from the joy and beauty of the world. Their lives not only are made +hideous, but are also shortened, by the nature of their toil. Do you +know what the average life of a miner is?" + +"Of course I do: twenty-one years." + +Alan frowned; he disapproved of jokes even more than of creeds, and +understood them equally. "Miss Farringdon, you are not behaving fairly +to me. You know what I mean well enough, but you wilfully misunderstand +my words for the sake of laughing at them. But I will make you listen, +all the same. I want to know if you will help me in my work by becoming +my wife; and I think that even you can not help answering that question +seriously." + +The laughter vanished from Elisabeth's face, as if it had been wiped out +with a sponge. "Oh! I--I don't know," she murmured lamely. + +"Then you must find out. To me it seems that you are the one woman in +all the world who was made for me. Your personality attracted me the +first moment that I met you; and our subsequent companionship has proved +that our minds habitually run in the same grooves, and that we naturally +look at things from the same standpoint. That is so, is it not?" + +"Yes." + +"The only serious difference between us seemed to be the difference of +faith. You had been trained in the doctrines of one of the strictest +sects, while I had outgrown all dogmas and thrown aside all recognised +forms of religion. So strong were my feelings on this point, that I +would not have married any woman who still clung to the worn-out and (by +me) disused traditions; but I fancy that I have succeeded in converting +you to my views, and that our ideas upon religion are now practically +identical. Is not that so?" + +Elisabeth thought for a moment. "Yes," she answered slowly; "you have +taught me that Christianity, like all the other old religions, has had +its day; and that the world is now ready for a new dispensation." + +"Exactly; and for a dispensation which shall unite the pure ethics of +the Christian to the joyous vitality of the Greek, eliminating alike the +melancholy of the one and the sensualism of the other. You agree with me +in this, do you not?" + +"You know that I do." + +"I am glad, because--as I said before--I could not bear to marry any +woman who did not see eye to eye with me on these vital matters. I love +you very dearly, Elisabeth, and it would be a great grief to me if any +question of opinion or conviction came between us; yet I do not believe +that two people could possibly be happy together--however much they +might love each other--if they were not one with each other on subjects +such as these." + +Elisabeth was silent; she was too much excited to speak. Her heart was +thumping like the great hammer at the Osierfield, and she was trembling +all over. So she held her peace as they drove up the principal street of +Silverhampton and across the King's Square to the lych-gate of St. +Peter's Church; but Alan, looking into the tell-tale face he knew so +well, was quite content. + +Yet as she sat beside Alan in St. Peter's Church that summer evening, +and thought upon what she had just done, a great sadness filled +Elisabeth's soul. The sun shone brightly through the western window, +and wrote mystic messages upon the gray stone walls; but the lights of +the east window shone pale and cold in the distant apse, where the +Figure of the Crucified gleamed white upon a foundation of emerald. And +as she looked at the Figure, which the world has wept over and +worshipped for nineteen centuries, she realized that this was the Symbol +of all that she was giving up and leaving behind her--the Sign of that +religion of love and sorrow which men call Christianity. She felt that +wisdom must be justified of her children, and not least of her, +Elisabeth Farringdon; nevertheless, she mourned for the myth which had +once made life seem fair, and death even fairer. Although she had +outgrown her belief in it, its beauty had still power to touch her +heart, if not to convince her intellect; and she sighed as she recalled +all that it had once meant, and how it had appeared to be the one +satisfactory solution to the problems which weary and perplex mankind. +Now she must face all the problems over again in the grim twilight of +dawning science, with no longer a Star of Bethlehem to show where the +answer might be found; and her spirit quailed at the pitiless prospect. +She had never understood before how much that Symbol of eternal love and +vicarious suffering had been to her, nor how puzzling would be the path +through the wilderness if there were no Crucifix at life's cross-roads +to show the traveller which way to go; and her heart grew heavier as she +took part in the sacred office of Evensong, and thought how beautiful it +all would be if only it were true. She longed to be a little child +again--a child to whom the things which are not seen are as the things +which are seen, and the things which are not as the things which are; +and she could have cried with homesickness when she remembered how +firmly she had once believed that the shadow which hung over the +Osierfield was a pillar of cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night, +to testify that God was still watching over His people, as in the days +of old. Now she knew that the pillar was only the smoke and the flame of +human industries; and the knowledge brought a load of sadness, as it +seemed to typify that there was no longer any help for the world but in +itself. + +When the Bishop ascended the pulpit, Elisabeth recalled her wandering +thoughts and set herself to listen. No one who possesses a drop of +Nonconformist blood can ever succeed in not listening to a sermon, even +if it be a poor one; and the Bishop of Merchester was one of the finest +preachers of his day. His text was, "Blessed art thou, Simon Barjona: +for flesh and blood hath not revealed it unto thee"; and he endeavoured +to set forth how it is only God who can teach men about God, and how +flesh and blood can never show us the Christ until He chooses to reveal +Himself. At first Elisabeth listened only with her mind, expecting an +intellectual treat and nothing more; but as he went on, and showed how +the Call comes in strange places and at strange times, and how when it +comes there is no resisting it, her heart began to burn within her; and +she recognised the preacher, not only as a man of divers gifts and great +powers, but as the ambassador of Christ sent direct to her soul. Then +slowly her eyes were opened, and she knew that the Figure in the east +window was no Sign of an imaginary renunciation, no Symbol of a worn-out +creed, but the portrait of a living Person, Whose Voice was calling +her, and Whose Love was constraining her, and Whose Power was enfolding +her and would not let her go. With the certainty that is too absolute +for proof, she knew in Whom she now believed; and she knew, further, +that it was not her own mind nor the preacher's words that had suddenly +shown her the truth--flesh and blood had not revealed it to her, but +Christ Himself. + +When the service was over, Elisabeth came out into the sunlight with a +strange, new, exultant feeling, such as she had never felt before. She +stood in the old churchyard, waiting for Alan to bring round the +dog-cart, and watching the sun set beyond the distant hills; and she was +conscious--how she could not explain--that the sunset was different from +any other sunset that she had ever seen. She had always loved nature +with an intense love; but now there seemed a richer gold in the parting +sunbeams--a sweeter mystery behind the far-off hills--because of that +Figure in the east window. It was as if she saw again a land which she +had always loved, and now learned for the first time that it belonged to +some one who was dear to her; a new sense of ownership mingled with the +old delight, and gave an added interest to the smallest detail. + +Then she and Alan turned their backs to the sunset, and drove along the +bleak high-road toward Sedgehill, where the reflection of the +blast-furnaces--that weird aurora borealis of the Black Country--was +already beginning to pulsate against the darkening sky. And here again +Elisabeth realized that for her the old things had passed away, and all +things had become new. She felt that her childish dream was true, and +that the crimson light was indeed a pillar of fire showing that the Lord +was in the midst of His people; but she went further now than she had +gone in her day-dreams, and knew that all the lights and shadows of life +are but pillars of cloud and of fire, forthtelling the same truth to all +who have seeing eyes and understanding hearts. + +Suddenly the silence was broken by Alan. "I have been thinking about you +during the service, and building all sorts of castles in the air which +you and I are going to inhabit together. But we must not let the old +faiths hamper us, Elisabeth; if we do, our powers will be impaired by +prejudices, and our usefulness will be limited by traditions." + +"I have something to say to you," Elisabeth replied, and her eyes shone +like stars in the twilight; "you won't understand it, but I must say it +all the same. In church to-night, for the first time in my life, I heard +God speaking to me; and I found out that religion is no string of +dogmas, but just His calling us by name." + +Tremaine looked at her pityingly. "You are overtired and overwrought by +the heat, and the excitement of the sermon has been too much for you. +But you will be all right again to-morrow, never fear." + +"I knew you wouldn't understand, and I can't explain it to you; but it +has suddenly all become quite clear to me--all the things that I have +puzzled over since I was a little child; and I know now that religion is +not our attitude toward God, but His attitude toward us." + +"Why, Elisabeth, you are saying over again all the old formulas that you +and I have refuted so often." + +"I know I am; but I never really believed in them till now. I can't +argue with you, Alan--I'm not clever enough--and besides, the best +things in the world can never be proved by argument. But I want you to +understand that the Power which you call Christianity is stronger than +human wills, or human strength, or even human love; and now that it has +once laid hold upon me, it will never let me go." + +Alan's face grew pale with anger. "I see; your old associations have +been too strong for you." + +"It isn't my old associations, or my early training, or anything +belonging to me. It isn't me at all. It is just His Voice calling me. +Can't you understand, Alan? It is not I who am doing it all--it is He." + +There was a short silence, and then Tremaine said-- + +"But I thought you loved me?" + +"I thought so too, but perhaps I was wrong; I don't know. All I know is +that this new feeling is stronger than any feeling I ever had before; +and that I can not give up my religion, whatever it may cost me." + +"I will not marry a woman who believes in the old faith." + +"And I will not marry a man who does not." + +Alan's voice grew hard. "I don't believe you ever loved me," he +complained. + +"I don't know. I thought I did; but perhaps I knew as little about love +as you know about religion. Perhaps I shall find a real love some day +which will be as different from my friendship for you as this new +knowledge is different from the religion that Cousin Maria taught me. +I'm very sorry, but I can never marry you now." + +"You would have given up your religion fast enough if you had really +cared for me," sneered Tremaine. + +Elisabeth pondered for a moment, with the old contraction of her +eyebrows. "I don't think so, because, as I told you before, it isn't +really my doing at all. It isn't that I won't give up my religion--it is +my religion that won't give up me. Supposing that a blind man wanted to +marry me on condition that I would believe, as he did, that the world is +dark: I couldn't believe it, however much I loved him. You can't not +know what you have once known, and you can't not have seen what you have +seen, however much you may wish to do so, or however much other people +may wish it." + +"You are a regular woman, in spite of all your cleverness, and I was a +fool to imagine that you would prove more intelligent in the long run +than the rest of your conventional and superstitious sex." + +"Please forgive me for hurting you," besought Elisabeth. + +"It is not only that you have hurt me, but I am so disappointed in you; +you seemed so different from other women, and now I find the difference +was merely a surface one." + +"I am so sorry," Elisabeth still pleaded. + +Tremaine laughed bitterly. "You are disappointed in yourself, I should +imagine. You posed as being so broad and modern and enlightened, and yet +you have found worn-out dogmas and hackneyed creeds too strong for you." + +Elisabeth smiled to herself. "No; but I have found the Christ," she +answered softly. + + + + +CHAPTER IX + +FELICIA FINDS HAPPINESS + + Give me that peak of cloud which fills + The sunset with its gorgeous form, + Instead of these familiar hills + That shield me from the storm. + + +After having been weighed in Elisabeth's balance and found wanting, Alan +Tremaine went abroad for a season, and Sedgehill knew him no more until +the following spring. During that time Elisabeth possessed her soul and +grew into a true woman--a woman with no smallness or meanness in her +nature, but with certain feminine weaknesses which made her all the more +lovable to those people who understood her, and all the more incongruous +and irritating to those who did not. Christopher, too, rested in an +oasis of happiness just then. He was an adept in the study of Elisabeth, +and he knew perfectly well what had passed between her and Alan, +although she flattered herself that she had kept him completely in the +dark on the subject. But Christopher was always ready to dance to +Elisabeth's piping, except when it happened to be on red-hot iron; even +then he tried to obey her bidding, and it was hardly his fault if he +failed. + +Christopher Thornley was one of those people whose temperament and +surroundings are at war with each other. Such people are not few in this +world, though they themselves are frequently quite unaware of the fact; +nevertheless, there is always an element of tragedy in their lot. By +nature he was romantic and passionate and chivalrous, endowed with an +enthusiastic admiration for beauty and an ardent longing for all forms +of joyousness; and he had been trained in a school of thought where all +merely human joys and attractions are counted as unimportant if not +sinful, and where wisdom and righteousness are held to be the two only +ends of life. Perhaps in a former existence--or in the person of some +remote ancestor--Christopher had been a knightly and devoted cavalier, +ready to lay down his life for Church and king, and in the meantime +spending his days in writing odes to his mistress's eyebrow; and now he +had been born into a strict Puritan atmosphere, where principles rather +than persons commanded men's loyalty, and where romance was held to be a +temptation of the flesh if not a snare of the devil. He possessed a +great capacity for happiness, and for enjoyment of all kinds; +consequently the dull routine of business was more distasteful to him +than to a man of coarser fibre and less fastidious tastes. Christopher +was one of the people who are specially fitted by nature to appreciate +to the full all the refinements and accessories of wealth and culture; +therefore his position at the Osierfield was more trying to him than it +would have been to nine men out of every ten. + +When spring came back again, Alan Tremaine came with it to the Moat +House; and at the same time Felicia Herbert arrived on a visit to the +Willows. Alan had enough of the woman in his nature to decide +that--Elisabeth not being meant for him--Elisabeth was not worth the +having; but, although she had not filled his life so completely as to +make it unendurable without her, she had occupied his thoughts +sufficiently to make feminine society and sympathy thenceforth a +necessity of his being. So it came to pass that when he met Felicia and +saw that she was fair, he straightway elected her to the office which +Elisabeth had created and then declined to fill; and because human +nature--and especially young human nature--is stronger even than early +training or old associations, Felicia fell in love with him in return, +in spite of (possibly because of) her former violent prejudice against +him. To expect a person to be a monster and then to find he is a man, +has very much the same effect as expecting a person to be a man and +finding him a fairy prince; we accord him our admiration for being so +much better than our fancy painted him, and we crave his forgiveness for +having allowed it to paint him in such false colours. Then we long to +make some reparation to him for our unjust judgment; and--if we happen +to be women--this reparation frequently takes the form of ordering his +dinner for the rest of his dining days, and of giving him the right to +pay our dressmakers' bills until such time as we cease to be troubled +with them. + +Consequently that particular year the spring seemed to have come +specially for the benefit of Alan and Felicia. For them the woods were +carpeted with daffodils, and the meadows were decked in living green; +for them the mountains and hills broke forth into singing, and the trees +of the field clapped their hands. Most men and women have known one +spring-time such as this in their lives, whereof all the other +spring-times were but images and types; and, maybe, even that one +spring-time was but an image and a type of the great New Year's Day +which shall be Time's to-morrow. + +But while these two were wandering together in fairyland, Elisabeth felt +distinctly left out in the cold. Felicia was her friend--Alan had been +her lover; and now they had drifted off into a strange new country, and +had shut the door in her face. There was no place for her in this +fairyland of theirs; they did not want her any longer; and although she +was too large-hearted for petty jealousies, she could not stifle that +pang of soreness with which most of us are acquainted, when our +fellow-travellers slip off by pairs into Eden, and leave us to walk +alone upon the dusty highway. + +Elisabeth could no more help flirting than some people can help +stammering. It was a pity, no doubt; but it would have been absurd to +blame her for it. She had not the slightest intention of breaking +anybody's heart; she did not take herself seriously enough to imagine +such a contingency possible; but the desire to charm was so strong +within her that she could not resist it; and she took as much trouble to +win the admiration of women as of men. Therefore, Alan and Felicia +having done with her, for the time being, she turned her attention to +Christopher; and although he fully comprehended the cause, he none the +less enjoyed the effect. He cherished no illusions concerning Elisabeth, +for the which he was perhaps to be pitied; since from love which is +founded upon an illusion, there may be an awakening; but for love which +sees its objects as they are, and still goes on loving them, there is no +conceivable cure either in this world or the world to come. + +"I'm not jealous by nature, and I think it is horrid to be +dog-in-the-mangerish," she remarked to him one sunny afternoon, when +Alan and Felicia had gone off together to Badgering Woods and left her +all alone, until Christopher happened to drop in about tea-time. He had +a way of appearing upon the scene when Elisabeth needed him, and of +effacing himself when she did not. He also had a way of smoothing down +all the little faults and trials and difficulties which beset her path, +and of making for her the rough places plain. "But I can't help feeling +it is rather dull when a man who has been in love with you suddenly +begins to be in love with another girl." + +"I can imagine that the situation has its drawbacks." + +"Not that there is any reason why he shouldn't, when you haven't been in +love with him yourself." + +"Not the slightest. Even I, whom you consider an epitome of all that is +stiff-necked and strait-laced, can see no harm in that. It seems to me a +thing that a man might do on a Sunday afternoon without in any way +jeopardizing his claim to universal respect." + +"Still it is dull for the woman; you must see that." + +"I saw it the moment I came in; nevertheless I am not prepared to state +that the dulness of the woman is a consummation so devoutly to be prayed +against. And, besides, it isn't at all dull for the other woman--the new +woman--you know." + +"And of course the other woman has to be considered." + +"I suppose she has," Christopher replied; "but I can't for the life of +me see why," he added under his breath. + +"Let's go into the garden," Elisabeth said, rising from her chair; +"nobody is in but me, and it is so stuffy to stay in the house now we +have finished tea. Cousin Maria is busy succouring the poor, and----" + +"And Miss Herbert is equally busy consoling the rich. Is that it?" + +"That is about what it comes to." + +So they went into the garden where they had played as children, and sat +down upon the rustic seat where they had sat together scores of times; +and Elisabeth thought about the great mystery of love, and Christopher +thought about the length of Elisabeth's eyelashes. + +"Do you think that Alan is in love with Felicia?" the girl asked at +last. + +"Appearances favour the supposition," replied Christopher. + +"You once said he wasn't capable of loving any woman." + +"I know I did; but that didn't in the least mean that he wasn't capable +of loving Miss Herbert." + +"She is very attractive; even you like her better than you like me," +Elisabeth remarked, looking at him through the very eyelashes about +which he was thinking. "I wonder at it, but nevertheless you do." + +"One never can explain these things. At least I never can, though you +seem to possess strange gifts of divination. I remember that you once +expounded to me that either affinity or infinity was at the root of +these matters--I forget which." + +"She is certainly good-looking," Elisabeth went on. + +"She is; her dearest friend couldn't deny that." + +"And she has sweet manners." + +"Distinctly sweet. She is the sort of girl that people call restful." + +"And a lovely temper." + +Christopher still refused to be drawn. "So I conclude. I have never +ruffled it--nor tried to ruffle it--nor even desired to ruffle it." + +"Do you like ruffling people's tempers?" + +"Some people's tempers, extremely." + +"What sort of people's?" + +"I don't know. I never schedule people into 'sorts,' as you do. The +people I care about can not be counted by 'sorts': there is one made of +each, and then the mould is broken." + +"You do like Felicia better than me, don't you?" Elisabeth asked, after +a moment's silence. + +"So you say, and as you are a specialist in these matters I think it +wise to take your statements on faith without attempting to dispute +them." + +"Chris, you are a goose!" + +"I know that--far better than you do." And Christopher sighed. + +"But I like you all the same." + +"That is highly satisfactory." + +"I believe I always liked you better than Alan," Elisabeth continued, +"only his way of talking about things dazzled me somehow. But after a +time I found out that he always said more than he meant, while you +always mean more than you say." + +"Oh! Tremaine isn't half a bad fellow: his talk is, as you say, a little +high-flown; but he takes himself in more than he takes in other people, +and he really means well." Christopher could afford to be magnanimous +toward Alan, now that Elisabeth was the reverse. + +"I remember that day at Pembruge Castle, while he was talking to me +about the troubles of the poor you were rowing Johnnie Stubbs about on +the mere. That was just the difference between you and him." + +"Oh! there wasn't much in that," replied Christopher; "if you had been +kind to me that day, and had let me talk to you, I am afraid that poor +Johnnie Stubbs would have had to remain on dry land. I merely took the +advice of the great man who said, 'If you can not do what you like, do +good.' But I'd rather have done what I liked, all the same." + +"That is just like you, Chris! You never own up to your good points." + +"Yes, I do; but I don't own up to my good points that exist solely in +your imagination." + +"You reckon up your virtues just as Cousin Maria reckons up her luggage +on a journey; she always says she has so many packages, and so many that +don't count. And your virtues seem to be added up in the same style." + +Christopher was too shy to enjoy talking about himself; nevertheless, he +was immensely pleased when Elisabeth was pleased with him. "Let us +wander back to our muttons," he said, "which, being interpreted, means +Miss Herbert and Tremaine. What sort of people are the Herberts, by the +way? Is Mrs. Herbert a lady?" + +Elisabeth thought for a moment. "She is the sort of person who +pronounces the 't' in often." + +"I know exactly; I believe 'genteel' is the most correct adjective for +that type. Is she good-looking?" + +"Very; she was the pencil sketch for Felicia." + +"About how old?" + +"It is difficult to tell. She is one of the women who are sixty in the +sun and thirty in the shade, like the thermometer in spring. I should +think she is really an easy five-and-forty, accelerated by limited means +and an exacting conscience. She is always bothering about sins and +draughts and things of that kind. I believe she thinks that everything +you do will either make your soul too hot or your body too cold." + +"You are severe on the excellent lady." + +"I try not to be, because I think she is really good in her way; but her +religion is such a dreadfully fussy kind of religion it makes me angry. +It seems to caricature the whole thing. She appears to think that +Christianity is a sort of menu of moral fancy-dishes, which one is bound +to swallow in a certain prescribed order." + +"Poor dear woman!" + +"When people like Mrs. Herbert talk about religion," Elisabeth went on, +"it is as bad as reducing the number of the fixed stars to pounds, +shillings, and pence; just as it is when people talk about love who know +nothing at all about it." + +Christopher manfully repressed a smile. "Still, I have known quite +intelligent persons do that. They make mistakes, I admit, but they don't +know that they do; and so their ignorance is of the brand which the poet +describes as bliss." + +"People who have never been in love should never talk about it," +Elisabeth sagely remarked. + +"But, on the other hand, those who have been, as a rule, can't; so who +is to conduct authorized conversations on this most interesting and +instructive subject?" + +"The people who have been through it, and so know all about it," replied +Elisabeth. + +"Allow me to point out that your wisdom for once is at fault. In the +first place, I doubt if the man who is suffering from a specific disease +is the suitable person to read a paper on the same before the College +of Surgeons; and, in the second, I should say--for the sake of +argument--that the man who has been through eternity and come out whole +at the other end, knows as much about what eternity really means +as--well, as you do. But tell me more about Mrs. Herbert and her +peculiarities." + +"She is always bothering about what she calls the 'correct thing.' She +has no peace in her life on account of her anxiety as to the etiquette +of this world and the next--first to know it and then to be guided by +it. I am sure that she wishes that the Bible had been written on the +principle of that dreadful little book called Don't, which gives you a +list of the solecisms you should avoid; she would have understood it so +much better than the present system." + +"But you would call Miss Herbert a lady, wouldn't you?" Christopher +asked. + +"Oh, yes; a perfect lady. She is even well-bred when she talks about her +love affairs; and if a woman is a lady when she talks about her love +affairs, she will be a lady in any circumstances. It is the most crucial +test out." + +"Yes; I should have called Miss Herbert a perfect lady myself."' + +"That is the effect of Fox How; it always turned out ladies, whatever +else it failed in." + +"But I thought you maintained that it failed in nothing!" + +"No more it did; but I threw that in as a sop to what's-his-name, +because you are so horribly argumentative." + +Christopher was amused. Elisabeth was a perfect _chef_ in the preparing +of such sops, as he was well aware; and although he laughed at himself +for doing it (knowing that her present graciousness to him merely meant +that she was dull, and wanted somebody to play with, and he was better +than nobody), he made these sops the principal articles of his heart's +diet, and cared for no other fare. + +"What is Mr. Herbert like?" he inquired. + +"Oh! he is a good man in his way, but a back-boneless, sweet-syrupy kind +of a Christian; one of the sort that seems to regard the Almighty as a +blindly indulgent and easily-hoodwinked Father, and Satan himself as +nothing worse than a rather crusty old bachelor uncle. You know the +type." + +"Perfectly; they always drawl, and use the adjective 'dear' in and out +of season. I quite think that among themselves they talk of 'the dear +devil.' And yet 'dear' is really quite a nice word, if only people like +that hadn't spoiled it." + +"You shouldn't let people spoil things for you in that way. That is one +of your greatest faults, Christopher; whenever you have seen a funny +side to anything you never see any other. You have too much humour and +too little tenderness; that's what's the matter with you." + +"Permit me to tender you a sincere vote of thanks for your exhaustive +and gratuitous spiritual diagnosis. To cure my faults is my duty--to +discover them, your delight." + +"Well, I'm right; and you'll find it out some day, although you make fun +of me now." + +"I say, how will Mrs. Herbert fit in Tremaine's religious views--or +rather absence of religious views--with her code of the next world's +etiquette?" asked Christopher, wisely changing the subject. + +"Oh! she'll simply decline to see them. Although, as I told you, she is +driven about entirely by her conscience, it is a well-harnessed +conscience and always wears blinkers. It shies a good deal at gnats, I +own; but it can run in double-harness with a camel, if worldly +considerations render such a course desirable. It is like a horse we +once had, which always shied violently at every puddle, but went past a +steamroller without turning a hair." + +"'By my troth, niece, thou wilt never get thee a husband if thou be so +shrewd of thy tongue,'" quoted Christopher. + +"I don't want to be too severe, but Mrs. Herbert does make me so mad. +When people put religious things in a horrid light, it makes you feel as +if they were telling unkind and untrue tales about your dearest +friends." + +"What does the good woman say that makes 'my lady Tongue' so furious?" + +"Well, she is always saying one must give up this and give up that, and +deny one's self here and deny one's self there, for the sake of +religion; and I don't believe that religion means that sort of giving up +at all. Of course, God is pleased when we do what He wishes us to do, +because He knows it is the best for us; but I don't believe He wants us +to do things when we hate doing them, just to please Him." + +"Perhaps not. Still, if one does a thing one doesn't like doing, to +please another person, one often ends by enjoying the doing of the +thing. And even if one never enjoys it, the thing has still to be done." + +"Well, if you were awfully fond of anybody, should you want them to +spend their time with you, and do what you were doing, when you knew all +the time that they didn't like being with you, but were dying to be with +some one else?" + +"Certainly not." Christopher might not know much about theology, but he +knew exactly how people felt when they were, as Elisabeth said, +"awfully fond of anybody." + +"Of course you wouldn't," the girl went on; "you would wish the person +you loved to be happy with you, and to want to be with you as much as +you wanted to be with them; and if they didn't really care to be with +you, you wouldn't thank them for unselfishness in the matter. So if an +ordinary man like you doesn't care for mere unselfishness from the +people you are really fond of, do you think that what isn't good enough +for you is good enough for God?" + +"No. But I still might want the people I was fond of to be unselfish, +not for my own sake but for theirs. The more one loves a person, the +more one wishes that person to be worthy of love; and though we don't +love people because they are perfect, we want them to be perfect because +we love them, don't you see?" + +"You aren't a very good instance, Chris, because, you see, you are +rather a reserved, cold-hearted person, and not at all affectionate; but +still you are fond of people in your own way." + +"Yes; I am fond of one or two people--but in my own way, as you say," +Christopher replied quietly. + +"And even you understand that forced and artificial devotion isn't worth +having." + +"Yes; even I understand as much as that." + +"So you will see that unselfishness and renunciation and things of that +sort are only second-best things after all, and that there is nothing of +the kind between people who really love each other, because their two +wills are merged in one, and each finds his own happiness in the +happiness of the other. And I don't believe that God wants us to give up +our wills to His in a 'Thy way not mine' kind of way; I believe He +wants the same mind to be in us that was in Christ Jesus, so that He and +we shall be wishing for the same things." + +"Wise Elisabeth, I believe that you are right." + +"And you'll see how right I am, when you really care very much for +somebody yourself. I don't mean in the jolly, comfortable way in which +you care for Mr. Smallwood and Cousin Maria and me. That's a very nice +friendly sort of caring, I admit, and keeps the world warm and homelike, +just as having a fire in the room keeps the room warm and homelike; but +it doesn't teach one much." + +Christopher smiled sadly. "Doesn't it? I should have thought that it +taught one a good deal." + +"Oh! but not as much as a lovely romantic attachment would teach +one--not as much as Alan and Felicia are teaching each other now." + +"Don't you think so?" + +"Of course I don't. Why, you've never taught me anything, Chris, though +we've always been fond of each other in the comfortable, easy fashion." + +"Then the fault has been in me, for you have taught me a great many +things, Elisabeth." + +"Because I've taken the trouble to do so. But the worst of it is that by +the time I've taught you anything, I have changed my mind about it +myself, and find I've been teaching you all wrong. And it is a bother to +begin to unteach you." + +"I wonder why. I don't think I should find it at all a bother to unteach +you certain things." + +"And it is a greater bother still to teach you all over again, and teach +you different." Elisabeth added, without attending to the last remark. + +"Thank you, I think I won't trespass on your forbearance to that extent. +Some lessons are so hard to master that life would be unbearable if one +had to learn them twice over." Christopher spoke somewhat bitterly. + +Elisabeth attended then. "What a funny thing to say! But I know what it +is--you've got a headache; I can see it in your face, and that makes you +take things so contrariwise." + +"Possibly." + +"Poor old boy! Does it hurt?" + +"Pretty considerably." + +"And have you had it long?" + +"Yes," replied Christopher with truth, and he added to himself, "ever +since I can remember, and it isn't in my head at all." + +Elisabeth stroked his sleeve affectionately. "I am so sorry." + +Christopher winced; it was when Elisabeth was affectionate that he found +his enforced silence most hard to bear. How he could have made her love +him if he had tried, he thought; and how could he find the heart to make +her love him as long as he and she were alike dependent upon Miss +Farringdon's bounty, and they had neither anything of their own? He +rejoiced that Alan Tremaine had failed to win her love; but he scorned +him as a fool for not having succeeded in doing so when he had the +chance. Had Christopher been master of the Moat House he felt he would +have managed things differently; for the most modest of men cherish a +profound contempt for the man who can not succeed in making a woman love +him when he sets about it. + +"By Jove!" he said to himself, looking into the gray eyes that were so +full of sympathy just then, "what an ass the man was to talk to such a +woman as this about art and philosophy and high-falutin' of that sort! +If I had only the means to make her happy, I would talk to her about +herself and me until she was tired of the subject--and that wouldn't be +this side Doomsday. And she thinks that I am cold-hearted!" But what he +said to Elisabeth was, "There isn't much the matter with my +head--nothing for you to worry about, I can assure you. Let us talk +about something more interesting than my unworthy self--Tremaine, for +instance." + +"I used to believe in Alan," Elisabeth confessed; "but I don't so much +now. I wonder if that is because he has left off making love to me, or +because I have seen that his ideas are so much in advance of his +actions." + +"He never did make love to me, so I always had an inkling of the truth +that his sentiments were a little over his own head. As a matter of +fact, I believe I mentioned this conviction to you more than once; but +you invariably treated it with the scorn that it doubtless deserved." + +"And yet you were right. It seems to me that you are always right, +Chris." + +"No--not always; but more often than you are, perhaps," replied +Christopher, in rather a husky voice, but with a very kindly smile. "I +am older, you see, for one thing; and I have had a harder time of it for +another, and some of the idealism has been knocked out of me." + +"But the nice thing about you is that though you always know when I am +wrong or foolish, you never seem to despise me for it." + +Despise her? Christopher laughed at the word; and yet women were +supposed to have such keen perceptions. + +"I don't care whether you are wise or foolish," he said, "as long as +you are you. That is all that matters to me." + +"And you really think I am nice?" + +"I don't see how you could well be nicer." + +"Oh! you don't know what I could do if I tried. You underrate my powers; +you always did. But you are a very restful person, Chris; when my mind +gets tired with worrying over things and trying to understand them, I +find it a perfect holiday to talk to you. You seem to take things as +they are." + +"Well, I have to, you see; and what must be must." + +"Simple natures like yours are very soothing to complex natures like +mine. When I've lived my life and worn myself out with trying to get the +utmost I can out of everything, I shall spend the first three thousand +years of eternity sitting quite still upon a fixed star without +speaking, with my legs dangling into space, and looking at you. It will +be such a nice rest, before beginning life over again." + +"Say two thousand years; you'd never be able to sit still without +speaking for more than two thousand years at the outside. By that time +you'd have pulled yourself together, and be wanting to set about +teaching the angels a thing or two. I know your ways." + +"I should enjoy that," laughed Elisabeth. + +"So would the angels, if they were anything like me." + +Elisabeth laughed again, and looked through the trees to the fields +beyond. Friends were much more comfortable than lovers, she said to +herself; Alan in his palmiest days had never been half so soothing to +her as Christopher was now. She wondered why poets and people of that +kind made so much of love and so little of friendship, since the latter +was obviously the more lasting and satisfactory of the two. Somehow the +mere presence of Christopher had quite cured the sore feeling that Alan +and Felicia had left behind them when they started for their walk +without even asking her to go with them; and she was once more sure of +the fact that she was necessary to somebody--a certainty without which +Elisabeth could not live. So her imagination took heart of grace again, +and began drawing plans for extensive castles in Spain, and arranging +social campaigns wherein she herself should be crowned with triumph. She +decided that half the delight of winning life's prizes and meeting its +fairy princes would be the telling Christopher all about them afterward; +for her belief in his exhaustless sympathy was boundless. + +"A penny for your thoughts," he said, after she had been silent for some +moments. + +"I was looking at Mrs. Bateson feeding her fowls," said Elisabeth +evasively; "and, I say, have you ever noticed that hens are just like +tea-pots, and cocks like coffee-pots? Look at them now! It seems as if +an army of breakfast services had suddenly come to life _a la_ Galatea, +and were pouring libations at Mrs. Bateson's feet." + +"It does look rather like that, I admit. But here are Miss Herbert and +Tremaine returning from their walk; let's go and meet them." + +And Elisabeth went to meet the lovers with no longer any little cobwebs +of jealousy hiding in the dark corners of her heart, Christopher's hand +having swept them all away; he had a wonderful power of exterminating +the little foxes which would otherwise have spoiled Elisabeth's vines; +and again she said to herself how much better a thing was friendship +than love, since Alan had always expected her to be interested in his +concerns, while Christopher, on the contrary, was always interested in +hers. + +It was not long after this that Elisabeth was told by Felicia of the +latter's engagement to Alan Tremaine; and Elisabeth was amazed at the +rapidity with which Felicia had assimilated her lover's views on all +subjects. Elisabeth had expected that her friend would finally sacrifice +her opinions on the altar of her feelings; she was already old enough to +be prepared for that; but she had anticipated a fierce warfare in the +soul of Felicia between the directly opposing principles of this young +lady's mother and lover. To Elisabeth's surprise, this civil war never +took place. Felicia accepted Alan's doubts as unquestioningly as she had +formerly accepted Mrs. Herbert's beliefs; and as she loved the former +more devotedly than she had ever loved the latter, she was more devout +and fervid in her agnosticism than she had ever been in her faith. She +had believed, because her mother ordered her to believe; she doubted, +because Alan desired her to doubt; her belief and unbelief being equally +the outcome of her affections rather than of her convictions. + +Mrs. Herbert likewise looked leniently upon Alan's want of orthodoxy, +and at this Elisabeth was not surprised. Possibly there are not many of +us who do not--in the private and confidential depths of our evil +hearts--regard earth in the hand as worth more than heaven in the bush, +so to speak; at any rate, Felicia's mother was not one of the bright +exceptions; and--from a purely commercial point of view--a saving faith +does not go so far as a spending income, and it is no use pretending +that it does. So Mrs. Herbert smiled upon her daughter's engagement; but +compromised with that accommodating conscience of hers by always +speaking of her prospective son-in-law as "poor Alan," just as if she +really believed, as she professed she did, that the death of the body +and the death of the soul are conditions equally to be deplored. + +"You see, my dear," she said to Elisabeth, who came to stay at Wood Glen +for Felicia's marriage, which took place in the early summer, "it is +such a comfort to Mr. Herbert and myself to know that our dear child is +so comfortably provided for. And then--although I can not altogether +countenance his opinions--poor Alan has such a good heart." + +Elisabeth, remembering that she had once been fascinated by the master +of the Moat House, was merciful. "He is an extremely interesting man to +talk to," she said; "he has thought out so many things." + +"He has, my love. And if we are tempted to rebuke him too severely for +his non-acceptance of revealed truth, we must remember that he was +deprived comparatively early in life of both his parents, and so ought +rather to be pitied than blamed," agreed Mrs. Herbert, who would +cheerfully have poured out all the vials of the Book of Revelation upon +any impecunious doubter who had dared to add the mortal sin of poverty +to the venial one of unbelief. + +"And he is really very philanthropic," Elisabeth continued; "he has done +no end of things for the work-people at the Osierfield. It is a pity +that his faith is second-rate, considering that his works are +first-class." + +"Ah! my dear, we must judge not, lest in turn we too should be judged. +Who are we, that we should say who is or who is not of the elect? It is +often those who seem to be the farthest from the kingdom that are in +truth the nearest to it." Mrs. Herbert had dismissed a kitchen-maid, +only the week before, for declining to attend her Bible-class, and +walking out with a young man instead. + +"Still, I am sorry that Alan has all those queer views," Elisabeth +persisted; "he really would be a splendid sort of person if he were only +a Christian; and it seems such a pity that--with all his learning--he +hasn't learned the one thing that really matters." + +"My love, I am ashamed to find you so censorious; it is a sad fault, +especially in the young. I would advise you to turn to the thirteenth of +First Corinthians, and see for yourself how excellent a gift is +charity--the greatest of all, according to our dear Saint Paul." + +Elisabeth sighed. She had long ago become acquainted with Mrs. Herbert's +custom of keeping religion as a thing apart, and of treating it from an +"in-another-department-if-you-please" point of view; and she felt that +Tremaine's open agnosticism was almost better--and certainly more +sincere--than this. + +But Mrs. Herbert was utterly unconscious of any secret fault on her own +part, and continued to purr contentedly to herself. "Felicia, dear +child! will certainly take an excellent position. She will be in county +society, the very thing which I have always desired for her; and she +will enter it, not on sufferance, but as one of themselves. I can not +tell you what a pleasure it is to Mr. Herbert and myself to think of our +beloved daughter as a regular county lady; it quite makes up for all the +little self-denials that we suffered in order to give her a good +education and to render her fit to take her place in society. I +shouldn't be surprised if she were even presented at Court." And the +mother's cup of happiness ran over at the mere thought of such honour +and glory. + +Felicia, too, was radiantly happy. In the first place, she was very much +in love; in the second, her world was praising her for doing well to +herself. "I can not think how a clever man like Alan ever fell in love +with such a stupid creature as me," she said to Elisabeth, not long +before the wedding. + +"Can't you? Well, I can. I don't wonder at any man's falling in love +with you, darling, you are so dear and pretty and altogether adorable." + +"But then Alan is so different from other men." + +Elisabeth was too well-mannered to smile at this; but she made a note of +it to report to Christopher afterward. She knew that he would understand +how funny it was. + +"I am simply amazed at my own happiness," Felicia continued; "and I am +so dreadfully afraid that he will be disappointed in me when he gets to +know me better, and will find out that I am not half good enough for +him--which I am not." + +"What nonsense! Why, there isn't a man living that would really be good +enough for you, Felicia." + +"Elisabeth! When I hear Alan talking, I wonder how he can put up with +silly little me at all. You see, I never was clever--not even as clever +as you are; and you, of course, aren't a millionth part as clever as +Alan. And then he has such grand thoughts, too; he is always wanting to +help other people, and to make them happier. I feel that as long as I +live I never can be half grateful enough to him for the honour he has +done me in wanting me for his wife." + +Elisabeth shrugged her shoulders; the honours that have been within our +reach are never quite so wonderful as those that have not. + +So Alan and Felicia were married with much rejoicing and ringing of +bells; and Elisabeth found it very pleasant to have her old schoolfellow +settled at the Moat House. In fact so thoroughly did she throw herself +into the interests of Felicia's new home, that she ceased to feel her +need of Christopher, and consequently neglected him somewhat. It was +only when others failed her that he was at a premium; when she found she +could do without him, she did. As for him, he loyally refrained from +blaming Elisabeth, even in his heart, and cursed Fate instead; which +really was unfair of him, considering that in this matter Elisabeth, and +not Fate, was entirely to blame. But Christopher was always ready to +find excuses for Elisabeth, whatever she might do; and this, it must be +confessed, required no mean order of ingenuity just then. Elisabeth was +as yet young enough to think lightly of the gifts that were bestowed +upon her freely and with no trouble on her part, such as bread and air +and sunshine and the like; it was reserved for her to learn later that +the things one takes for granted are the best thing life has to offer. + +It must also be remembered, for her justification, that Christopher had +never told her that he loved her "more than reason"; and it is difficult +for women to believe that any man loves them until he has told them so, +just as it is difficult for them to believe that a train is going direct +to the place appointed to it in Bradshaw, until they have been verbally +assured upon the point by two guards, six porters, and a newspaper boy. +Nevertheless, Elisabeth's ignorance--though perhaps excusable, +considering her sex--was anything but bliss to poor Christopher, and +her good-natured carelessness hurt him none the less for her not knowing +that it hurt him. + +When Felicia had been married about three months her mother came to stay +with her at the Moat House; and Elisabeth smiled to herself--and to +Christopher--as she pictured the worthy woman's delight in her +daughter's new surroundings. + +"She'll extol all Felicia's belongings as exhaustively as if she were +the Benedicite," Elisabeth said, "and she'll enumerate them as carefully +as if she were sending them to the wash. You'll find there won't be a +single one omitted--not even the second footman or the soft-water +cistern. Mrs. Herbert is one who battens on details, and she never +spares her hearers a single item." + +"It is distinctly naughty of you," Christopher replied, with the smile +that was always ready for Elisabeth's feeblest sallies, "to draw the +good soul out for the express purpose of laughing at her. I am ashamed +of you, Miss Farringdon." + +"Draw her out, my dear boy! You don't know what you are talking about. +The most elementary knowledge of Mrs. Herbert would teach you that she +requires nothing in the shape of drawing out. You have but to mention +the word 'dinner,' and the secret sins of her cook are retailed to you +in chronological order; you have but to whisper the word 'clothes,' and +the iniquities of her dressmaker's bill are laid bare before your eyes. +Should the conversation glance upon Mr. Herbert, his complete biography +becomes your own possession; and should the passing thought of childhood +appear above her mental horizon, she tells you all about her own +children as graphically as if she were editing a new edition of The +Pillars of the House. And yet you talk of drawing her out! I am afraid +you have no perceptions, Christopher." + +"Possibly not; everybody doesn't have perceptions. I am frequently +struck with clever people's lack of them." + +"Well, I'm off," replied Elisabeth, whipping up her pony, "to hear Mrs. +Herbert's outpourings on Felicia's happiness; when I come back I expect +I shall be able to write another poem on 'How does the water come down +at Lodore'--with a difference." + +And Christopher--who had met her in the High Street--smiled after the +retreating figure in sheer delight at her. How fresh and bright and +spontaneous she was, he thought, and how charmingly ignorant of the +things which she prided herself upon understanding so profoundly! He +laughed aloud as he recalled how very wise Elisabeth considered herself. +And then he wondered if life would teach her to be less sure of her own +buoyant strength, and less certain of her ultimate success in everything +she undertook; and, if it did, he felt that he should have an ugly +account to settle with life. He was willing for Fate to knock him about +as much and as hardly as she pleased, provided she would let Elisabeth +alone, and allow the girl to go on believing in herself and enjoying +herself as she was so abundantly capable of doing. By this time +Christopher was enough of a philosopher to think that it did not really +matter much in the long run whether he were happy or unhappy; but he was +not yet able to regard the thought of Elisabeth's unhappiness as +anything but a catastrophe of the most insupportable magnitude; which +showed that he had not yet sufficient philosophy to go round. + +When Elisabeth arrived at the Moat House she found Mrs. Herbert alone, +Felicia having gone out driving with her husband; and, to Elisabeth's +surprise, there was no sign of the jubilation which she had anticipated. +On the contrary, Mrs. Herbert was subdued and tired-looking. + +"I am so glad to see you, my dear," she said, kissing Elisabeth; "it is +lonely in this big house all by myself." + +"It is always rather lonely to be in state," Elisabeth replied, +returning her salute. "I wonder if kings find it lonely all by +themselves in pleasures and palaces. I expect they do, but they put up +with the loneliness for the sake of the stateliness; and you could +hardly find a statelier house than this to be lonely in, if you tried." + +"Yes; it is a beautiful place," agreed Mrs. Herbert listlessly. + +Elisabeth wondered what was wrong, but she did not ask; she knew that +Mrs. Herbert would confide in her very soon. People very rarely were +reserved with Elisabeth; she was often amazed at the rapidity with which +they opened their inmost hearts to her. Probably this accounted in some +measure for her slowness in understanding Christopher, who had made it a +point of honour not to open his inmost heart to her. + +"Don't the woods look lovely?" she said cheerfully, pretending not to +notice anything. "I can't help seeing that the trees are beautiful with +their gilt leaves, but it goes against my principles to own it, because +I do so hate the autumn. I wish we could change our four seasons for two +springs and two summers. I am so happy in the summer, and still happier +in the spring looking forward to it; but I am wretched in the winter +because I am cold, and still wretcheder in the autumn thinking that I'm +going to be even colder." + +"Yes; the woods are pretty--very pretty indeed." + +"I am so glad you have come while the leaves are still on. I wanted you +to see Felicia's home at its very best; and, at its best, it is a home +that any woman might be proud of." + +Mrs. Herbert's lip trembled. "It is indeed a most beautiful home, and I +am sure Felicia has everything to make her happy." + +"And she is happy, Mrs. Herbert; I don't think I ever saw anybody so +perfectly happy as Felicia is now. I'm afraid I could never be quite as +satisfied with any impossible ideal of a husband as she is with Alan; I +should want to quarrel with him just for the fun of the thing, and to +find out his faults for the pleasure of correcting them. A man as +faultless as Alan--I mean as faultless as Felicia considers Alan--would +bore me; but he suits her down to the ground." + +But even then Mrs. Herbert did not smile; instead of that her light blue +eyes filled with tears. "Oh! my dear," she said, with a sob in her +voice, "Felicia is ashamed of me." + +For all her high spirits, Elisabeth generally recognised tragedy when +she met it face to face; and she knew that she was meeting it now. So +she spoke very gently-- + +"My dear Mrs. Herbert, whatever do you mean? I am sure you are not very +strong, and so your nerves are out of joint, and make you imagine +things." + +"No, my love; it is no imagination on my part. I only wish it were. Who +can know Felicia as well as her mother knows her--her mother who has +worshipped her and toiled for her ever since she was a little baby? And +I, who can read her through and through, feel that she is ashamed of +me." And the tears overflowed, and rolled down Mrs. Herbert's faded +cheeks. + +Elisabeth's heart swelled with an immense pity, for her quick insight +told her that Mrs. Herbert was not mistaken; but all she said was-- + +"I think you are making mountains out of molehills. Lots of girls lose +their heads a bit when first they are married, and seem to regard +marriage as a special invention and prerogative of their own, which +entitles them to give themselves air _ad libitum_; but they soon grow +out of it." + +Mrs. Herbert shook her head sorrowfully; her tongue was loosed and she +spake plain. "Oh! it isn't like that with Felicia; I should think +nothing of that. I remember when first I was married I thought that no +unmarried woman knew anything, and that no married woman knew anything +but myself; but, as you say, I soon grew out of that. Why, I was quite +ready, after I had been married a couple of months, to teach my dear +mother all about housekeeping; and finely she laughed at me for it. But +Felicia doesn't trouble to teach me anything; she thinks it isn't worth +while." + +"Oh! I can not believe that Felicia is like that. You must be mistaken." + +"Mistaken in my own child, whom I carried in my arms as a little baby? +No, my dear; there are some things about which mothers can never be +mistaken, God help them! Do you think I did not understand when the +carriage came round to-day to take her and Alan to return Lady +Patchingham's visit, and Felicia said, 'Mamma won't go with us to-day, +Alan dear, because the wind is in the east, and it always gives her a +cold to drive in an open carriage when the wind is in the east'? Oh! I +saw plain enough that she didn't want me to go with them to Lady +Patchingham's; but I only thanked her and said I would rather stay +indoors, as it would be safer for me. When they had started I went out +and looked at the weather-cock for myself; it pointed southwest." And +the big tears rolled down faster than ever. + +Elisabeth did not know what to say; so she wisely said nothing, but took +Mrs. Herbert's hand in hers and stroked it. + +"Perhaps, my dear, I did wrong in allowing Felicia to marry a man who is +not a true believer, and this is my punishment." + +"Oh! no, no, Mrs. Herbert; I don't believe that God ever punishes for +the sake of punishing. He has to train us, and the training hurts +sometimes; but when it does, I think He minds even more than we do." + +"Well, my love, I can not say; it is not for us to inquire into the +counsels of the Almighty. But I did it for the best; I did, indeed. I +did so want Felicia to be happy." + +"I am sure you did." + +"You see, all my life I had taken an inferior position socially, and the +iron of it had entered into my soul. I daresay it was sinful of me, but +I used to mind so dreadfully when my husband and I were always asked to +second-rate parties, and introduced to second-rate people; and I longed +and prayed that my darling Felicia should be spared the misery and the +humiliation which I had had to undergo. You won't understand it, +Elisabeth. People in a good position never do; but to be alternately +snubbed and patronized all one's life, as I have been, makes social +intercourse one long-drawn-out agony to a sensitive woman. So I +prayed--how I prayed!--that my beautiful daughter should never suffer as +I have done." + +Elisabeth's eyes filled with tears; and Mrs. Herbert, encouraged by her +unspoken sympathy, proceeded-- + +"Grand people are so cruel, my dear. I daresay they don't mean to be; +but they are. And though I had borne it for myself, I felt I could not +bear it for Felicia. I thought it would kill me to see fine ladies +overlook her as they had so often overlooked me. So when Alan wanted to +marry her, and make her into a fine lady herself, I was overwhelmed with +joy; and I felt I no longer minded what I had gone through, now that I +knew no one would ever dare to be rude to my beautiful daughter. Now I +see I was wrong to set earthly blessings before spiritual ones; but I +think you understand how I felt, Elisabeth." + +"Yes, I understand; and God understands too." + +"Then don't you think He is punishing me, my dear?" + +"No; I think He is training Felicia--and perhaps you too, dear Mrs. +Herbert." + +"Oh! I wish I could think so. But you don't know what Felicia has been +to her father and me. She was such a beautiful baby that the people in +the street used to stop the nurse to ask whose child she was; and when +she grew older she never gave us a moment's trouble or anxiety. Then we +pinched and pared in order to be able to afford to send her to Fox How; +and when her education was finished there wasn't a more perfect lady in +the land than our Felicia. Oh! I was proud of her, I can tell you. And +now she is ashamed of me, her own mother! I can not help seeing that +this is God's punishment to me for letting her marry an unbeliever." And +Mrs. Herbert covered her face with her hands and burst out into bitter +sobs. + +Elisabeth took the weeping form into her strong young arms. "My poor +dear, you are doing Him an injustice, you are, indeed. I am sure He +minds even more than you do that Felicia is still so ignorant and +foolish, and He is training her in His own way. But He isn't doing it to +punish you, dear; believe me, He isn't. Why, even the ordinary human +beings who are fond of us want to cure our faults and not to punish +them," she continued, as the memory of Christopher's unfailing patience +with her suddenly came into her mind, and she recalled how often she had +hurt him, and how readily he had always forgiven her; "they are sorry +when we do wrong, but they are even sorrier when we suffer for it. And +do you think God loves us less than they do, and is quicker to punish +and slower to forgive?" + +So does the love of the brother whom we have seen help us in some +measure to understand the love of the God Whom we have not seen; for +which we owe the brother eternal thanks. + + + + +CHAPTER X + +CHANGES + + Why did you take all I said for certain + When I so gleefully threw the glove? + Couldn't you see that I made a curtain + Out of my laughter to hide my love? + + +"My dear," said Miss Farringdon, when Elisabeth came down one morning to +breakfast, "there is sad news to-day." + +Miss Farringdon was never late in a morning. She regarded early rising +as a virtue on a par with faith and charity; while to appear at the +breakfast-table after the breakfast itself had already appeared thereon +was, in her eyes, as the sin of witchcraft. + +"What is the matter?" asked Elisabeth, somewhat breathlessly. She had +run downstairs at full speed in order to enter the dining-room before +the dishes, completing her toilet as she fled; and she had only beaten +the bacon by a neck. + +"Richard Smallwood has had a paralytic stroke. Christopher sent up word +the first thing this morning." + +"Oh! I am so sorry. Mr. Smallwood is such a dear old man, and used to be +so kind to Christopher and me when we were little." + +"I am very sorry, too, Elisabeth. I have known Richard Smallwood all my +life, and he was a valued friend of my dear father's, as well as being +his right hand in all matters of business. Both my father and uncle +thought very highly of Richard's opinion, and considered that they owed +much of their commercial success to his advice and assistance." + +"Poor Christopher! I wonder if he will mind much?" + +"Of course he will mind, my dear. What a strange child you are, and what +peculiar things you say! Mr. Smallwood is Christopher's only living +relative, and when anything happens to him Christopher will be entirely +alone in the world. It is sad for any one to be quite alone; and +especially for young people, who have a natural craving for +companionship and sympathy." Miss Farringdon sighed. She had spent most +of her life in the wilderness and on the mountain-tops, and she knew how +cold was the climate and how dreary the prospect there. + +Elisabeth's eyes filled with tears, and her heart swelled with a strange +new feeling she had never felt before. For the first time in her life +Christopher (unconsciously on his part) made a direct appeal to her +pity, and her heart responded to the appeal. His perspective, from her +point of view, was suddenly changed; he was no longer the kindly, +easy-going comrade with whom she had laughed and quarrelled and made it +up again ever since she could remember, and with whom she was on a +footing of such familiar intimacy; instead, he had become a man standing +in the shadow of a great sorrow, whose solitary grief commanded her +respect and at the same time claimed her tenderness. All through +breakfast, and the prayers which followed, Elisabeth's thoughts ran on +this new Christopher, who was so much more interesting and yet so much +farther off than the old one. She wondered how he would look and what he +would say when next she saw him; and she longed to see him again, and +yet felt frightened at the thought of doing so. At prayers that morning +Miss Farringdon read the lament of David over Saul and Jonathan; and +while the words of undying pathos sounded in her ears, Elisabeth +wondered whether Christopher would mourn as David did if his uncle were +to die, and whether he would let her comfort him. + +When prayers were over, Miss Farringdon bade Elisabeth accompany her to +Mr. Smallwood's; and all the way there the girl's heart was beating so +fast that it almost choked her, with mingled fear of and tenderness for +this new Christopher who had taken the place of her old playmate. As +they sat waiting for him in the oak-panelled dining-room, a fresh wave +of pity swept over Elisabeth as she realized for the first time--though +she had sat there over and over again--what a cheerless home this was in +which to spend one's childhood and youth, and how pluckily Christopher +had always made the best of things, and had never confessed--even to +her--what a dreary lot was his. Then he came downstairs; and as she +heard his familiar footstep crossing the hall her heart beat faster than +ever, and there was a mist before her eyes; but when he entered the room +and shook hands, first with Miss Farringdon and then with her, she was +quite surprised to see that he looked very much as he always looked, +only his face was pale and his eyes heavy for want of sleep; and his +smile was as kind as ever as it lighted upon her. + +"It is very good of you to come to me so quickly," he said, addressing +Miss Farringdon but looking at Elisabeth. + +"Not at all, Christopher," replied Miss Maria; "those who have friends +must show themselves friendly, and your uncle has certainly proved +himself of the sort that sticketh closer than a brother. No son could +have done more for my father--no brother could have done more for +me--than he has done; and therefore his affliction is my affliction, and +his loss is my loss." + +"You are very kind." And Christopher's voice shook a little. + +Elisabeth did not speak. She was struggling with a feeling of +uncontrollable shyness which completely tied her usually fluent tongue. + +"Is he very ill?" Miss Farringdon asked. + +"Yes," Christopher replied, "I'm afraid it's a bad job altogether. The +doctor thinks he will last only a few days; but if he lives he will +never regain the use of his speech or of his brain; and I don't know +that life under such conditions is a boon to be desired." + +"I do not think it is. Yet we poor mortals long to keep our beloved ones +with us, even though it is but the semblance of their former selves that +remain." + +Christopher did not answer. There suddenly rushed over him the memory of +all that his uncle had been to him, and of how that uncle still treated +him as a little child; and with it came the consciousness that, when his +uncle was gone, nobody would ever treat him as a little child any more. +Life is somewhat dreary when the time comes for us to be grown-up to +everybody; so Christopher looked (and did not see) out of the window, +instead of speaking. + +"Of course," Miss Farringdon continued, "you will take his place, should +he be--as I fear is inevitable--unable to resume work at the +Osierfield; and I have such a high opinion of you, Christopher, that I +have no doubt you will do your uncle's work as well as he has done it, +and there could not be higher praise. Nevertheless, it saddens me to +know that another of the old landmarks has been swept away, and that now +I only am left of what used to be the Osierfield forty years ago. The +work may be done as well by the new hands and brains as by the old ones; +but after one has crossed the summit of the mountain and begun to go +downhill, it is sorry work exchanging old lamps for new. The new lamps +may give brighter light, perchance; but their light is too strong for +tired old eyes; and we grow homesick for the things to which we are +accustomed." And Miss Farringdon took off her spectacles and wiped them. + +There was silence for a few seconds, while Christopher manfully +struggled with his feelings and Miss Maria decorously gave vent to hers. +Christopher was vexed with himself for so nearly breaking down before +Elisabeth, and throwing the shadow of his sorrow across the sunshine of +her path. He did not know that the mother-heart in her was yearning over +him with a tenderness almost too powerful to be resisted, and that his +weakness was constraining her as his strength had never done. He was +rather surprised that she did not speak to him; but with the patient +simplicity of a strong man he accepted her behaviour without questioning +it. Her mere presence in the room somehow changed everything, and made +him feel that no world which contained Elisabeth could ever be an +entirely sorrowful world. Of course he knew nothing about the new +Christopher which had suddenly arisen above Elisabeth's horizon; he was +far too masculine to understand that his own pathos could be pathetic, +or his own suffering dramatic. It is only women--or men who have much of +the woman in their composition--who can say: + + "Here I and sorrow sit, + This is my throne; let kings come bow to it." + +The thoroughly manly man is incapable of seeing the picturesque effect +of his own misery. + +So Christopher pulled himself together and tried to talk of trivial +things; and Miss Farringdon, having walked through the dark valley +herself, knew the comfort of the commonplace therein, and fell in with +his mood, discussing nurses and remedies and domestic arrangements and +the like. Elisabeth, however, was distinctly disappointed in +Christopher, because he could bring himself down to dwell upon these +trifling matters when the Angel of Death had crossed the lintel of his +doorway only last night, and was still hovering round with overshadowing +wings. It was just like him, she said to herself, to give his attention +to surface details, and to miss the deeper thing. She had yet to learn +that it was because he felt so much, and not because he felt so little, +that Christopher found it hard to utter the inmost thoughts of his +heart. + +But when Miss Farringdon had made every possible arrangement for Mr. +Smallwood's comfort, and they rose to leave, Elisabeth's heart smote her +for her passing impatience; so she lingered behind after her cousin had +left the room, and, slipping her hand into Christopher's, she +whispered-- + +"Chris, dear, I'm so dreadfully sorry!" + +It was a poor little speech for the usually eloquent Elisabeth to make; +in cold blood she herself would have been ashamed of it; but Christopher +was quite content. For a second he forgot that he had decided not to +let Elisabeth know that he loved her until he was in a position to marry +her, and he very nearly took her in his strong arms and kissed her there +and then; but before he had time to do this, his good angel (or perhaps +his bad one, for it is often difficult to ascertain how one's two +guardian spirits divide their work) reminded him that it was his duty to +leave Elisabeth free to live her own life, unhampered by the knowledge +of a love which might possibly find no fulfilment in this world where +money is considered the one thing needful; so he merely returned the +pressure of her hand, and said in a queer, strained sort of voice-- + +"Thanks awfully, dear. It isn't half so rough on a fellow when he knows +you are sorry." And Elisabeth also was content. + +Contrary to the doctor's expectations, Richard Smallwood did not die: he +had lost all power of thought or speech, and never regained them, but +lived on for years a living corpse; and the burden of his illness lay +heavily on Christopher's young shoulders. Life was specially dark to +poor Christopher just then. His uncle's utter break-down effectually +closed the door on all chances of escape from the drudgery of the +Osierfield to a higher and wider sphere; for, until now, he had +continued to hope against hope that he might induce that uncle to start +him in some other walk of life, where the winning of Elisabeth would +enter into the region of practical politics. But now all chance of this +was over; Richard Smallwood was beyond the reach of the entreaties and +arguments which hitherto he had so firmly resisted. There was nothing +left for Christopher to do but to step into his uncle's shoes, and try +to make the best of his life as general manager of the Osierfield, +handicapped still further by the charge of that uncle, which made it +impossible for him to dream of bringing home a wife to the big old house +in the High Street. + +There was only one drop of sweetness in the bitterness of his cup--one +ray of light in the darkness of his outlook; and that was the +consciousness that he could still go on seeing and loving and serving +Elisabeth, although he might never be able to tell her he was doing so. +He hoped that she would understand; but here he was too sanguine; +Elisabeth was as yet incapable of comprehending any emotion until she +had seen it reduced to a prescription. + +So Christopher lived on in the gloomy house, and looked after his uncle +as tenderly as a mother looks after a sick child. To all intents and +purposes Richard was a child again; he could not speak or think, but he +still loved his nephew, the only one of his own flesh and blood; and he +smiled like a child every time that Christopher came into his room, and +cried like a child ever; time that Christopher went away. + +Elisabeth was very sorry for Christopher at first, and very tender +toward him; but after a time the coldness, which he felt it his duty to +show toward her in the changed state of affairs, had its natural effect, +and she decided that it was foolish to waste her sympathy upon any one +who obviously needed and valued it so little. Moreover, she had not +forgotten that strange, new feeling which disturbed her heart the +morning after Mr. Smallwood was taken ill; and she experienced, half +unconsciously, a thoroughly feminine resentment against the man who had +called into being such an emotion, and then apparently had found no use +for it. So Elisabeth in her heart of hearts was at war with +Christopher--that slumbering, smouldering sort of warfare which is +ready to break out into fire and battle at the slightest provocation; +and this state of affairs did not tend to make life any the easier for +him. He felt he could have cheerfully borne it all if only Elisabeth had +been kind and had understood; but Elisabeth did not understand him in +the least, and was consequently unkind--far more unkind than she, in her +careless, light-hearted philosophy, dreamed of. + +She, too, had her disappointments to bear just then. The artist-soul in +her had grown up, and was crying out for expression; and she vainly +prayed her cousin to let her go to the Slade School, and there learn to +develop the power that was in her. But Miss Farringdon belonged to the +generation which regarded art purely as a recreation--such as +fancy-work, croquet, and the like--and she considered that young women +should be trained for the more serious things of life; by which she +meant the ordering of suitable dinners for the rich and the +manufacturing of seemly garments for the poor. So Elisabeth had to +endure the agony which none but an artist can know--the agony of being +dumb when one has an angel-whispered secret to tell forth--of being +bound hand and foot when one has a God-sent message to write upon the +wall. + +Now and then Miss Maria took her young cousin up to town for a few +weeks, and thus Elisabeth came to have a bowing acquaintanceship with +London; but of London as an ever-fascinating, never-wearying friend she +knew nothing. There are people who tell us that "London is delightful in +the season," and that "the country is very pretty in the summer," and we +smile at them as a man would smile at those who said that his mother was +"a pleasant person," or his heart's dearest "a charming girl." Those +who know London and the country, as London and the country deserve to be +known, do not talk in this way, for they have learned that there is no +end to the wonder or the interest or the mystery of either. + +The year following Richard Smallwood's break-down, a new interest came +into Elisabeth's life. A son and heir was born at the Moat House; and +Elisabeth was one of the women who are predestined to the worship of +babies. Very tightly did the tiny fingers twine themselves round her +somewhat empty heart; for Elisabeth was meant to love much, and at +present her supply of the article was greatly in excess of the demand +made upon it. So she poured the surplus--which no one else seemed to +need--upon the innocent head of Felicia's baby; and she found that the +baby never misjudged her nor disappointed her, as older people seemed so +apt to do. One of her most devout fellow-worshippers was Mrs. Herbert, +who derived comfort from the fact that little Willie was not ashamed of +her as little Willie's mother was; so--like many a disappointed woman +before them--both Mrs. Herbert and Elisabeth discovered the healing +power which lies in the touch of a baby's hand. Felicia loved the child, +too, in her way; but she was of the type of woman to whom the husband is +always dearer than the children. But Alan's cup was filled to +overflowing, and he loved his son as he loved his own soul. + +One of Christopher's expedients for hiding the meditations of his heart +from Elisabeth's curious eyes was the discussion with her of what people +call "general subjects"; and this tried her temper to the utmost. She +regarded it as a sign of superficiality to talk of superficial things; +and she hardly ever went in to dinner with a man without arriving at +the discussion of abstract love and the second _entree_ simultaneously. +It had never yet dawned upon her that as a rule it is because one has +not experienced a feeling that one is able to describe it; she reasoned +in the contrary direction, and came to the conclusion that those persons +have no hearts at all whose sleeves are unadorned with the same. +Therefore it was intolerable to her when Christopher--who had played +with her as a child, and had once very nearly made her grow up into a +woman--talked to her about the contents of the newspapers. + +"I never look at the papers," she answered crossly one day, in reply to +some unexceptionable and uninteresting comment of his upon such history +as was just then in the raw material; "I hate them." + +"Why do you hate them?" Christopher was surprised at her vehemence. + +"Because there is cholera in the South of France, and I never look at +the papers when there is cholera about, it frightens me so." Elisabeth +had all the pity of a thoroughly healthy person for the suffering that +could not touch her, and the unreasoning terror of a thoroughly healthy +person for the suffering which could. + +"But there is nothing to frighten you in that," said Christopher, in his +most comforting tone; "France is such a beastly dirty hole that they are +bound to have diseases going on there, such as could never trouble +clean, local-boarded, old England. And then it's so far away, too. I'd +never worry about that, if I were you." + +"Wouldn't you?" Elisabeth was at war with him, but she was not +insensible to the consolation he never failed to afford her when things +went wrong. + +"Good gracious, no! England is so well looked after, with county +councils and such, that even if an epidemic came here they'd stamp it +out like one o'clock. Don't frighten yourself with bogeys, Elisabeth, +there's a good girl!" + +"I feel just the same about newspapers now that I used to feel about +Lalla Rookh," said Elisabeth confidentially. + +Christopher was puzzled. "I'm afraid I don't see quite the connection, +but I have no doubt it is there, like Mrs. Wilfer's petticoat." + +"In Cousin Maria's copy of Lalla Rookh there is a most awful picture of +the Veiled Prophet of Khorassan; and when I was little I went nearly mad +with terror of that picture. I used to go and look at it when nobody was +about, and it frightened me more and more every time." + +"Why on earth didn't you tell me about it?" + +"I don't know. I felt I wouldn't tell anybody for worlds, but must keep +it a ghastly secret. Sometimes I used to hide the book, and try to +forget where I'd hidden it. But I never could forget, and in the end I +always went and found it, and peeped at the picture and nearly died of +terror. The mere outside of the book had a horrible fascination for me. +I used to look at it all the time I was in the drawing-room, and then +pretend I wasn't looking at it; yet if the housemaid had moved it an +inch in dusting the table where it lay, I always knew." + +"Poor little silly child! If only you'd have told me, I'd have asked +Miss Farringdon to put it away where you couldn't get at it." + +"But I couldn't have told you, Chris--I couldn't have told anybody. +There seemed to be some terrible bond between that dreadful book and me +which I was bound to keep secret. Of course it doesn't frighten me any +longer, though I shall always hate it; but the newspapers frighten me +just in the same way when there are horrible things in them." + +"Why, Betty, I am ashamed of you! And such a clever girl as you, too, to +be taken in by the romancing of penny-a-liners! They always make the +worst of things in newspapers in order to sell them." + +"Oh! then you think things aren't as bad as newspapers say?" + +"Nothing like; but they must write something for people to read, and the +more sensational it is the better people like it." + +Elisabeth was comforted; and she never knew that Christopher did not +leave the house that day without asking Miss Farringdon if, for a few +weeks, the daily paper might be delivered at the works and sent up to +the Willows afterward, as he wanted to see the trade-reports the first +thing in the morning. This was done; and sometimes Christopher +remembered to send the papers on to the house, and sometimes he did not. +On these latter occasions Miss Farringdon severely reproved him, and +told him that he would never be as capable a man as his uncle had been, +if he did not endeavour to cultivate his memory; whereat Chris was +inwardly tickled, but was outwardly very penitent and apologetic, +promising to try to be less forgetful in future. And he kept his word; +for not once--while the epidemic in the South of France lasted--did he +forget to forget to send the newspaper up to the Willows when there was +anything in it calculated to alarm the most timid reader. + +"Cousin Maria," said Elisabeth, a few days after this, "I hear that +Coulson's circus is coming to Burlingham, and I want to go and see it." + +Miss Farringdon looked up over the tops of her gold-rimmed spectacles. +"Do you, my dear? Well, I see no reason why you should not. I have been +brought up to disapprove of theatres, and I always shall disapprove of +them; but I confess I have never seen any harm in going to a circus." + +It is always interesting to note where people draw the line between +right and wrong in dealing with forms of amusement; and it is doubtful +whether two separate lines are ever quite identical in their curves. + +"Christopher could take me," Elisabeth continued; "and if he couldn't, +I'm sure Alan would." + +"I should prefer you to go with Christopher, my dear; he is more +thoughtful and dependable than Alan Tremaine. I always feel perfectly +happy about you when you have Christopher to take care of you." + +Elisabeth laughed her cousin to scorn. She did not want anybody to take +care of her, she thought; she was perfectly able to take care of +herself. But Miss Farringdon belonged to a time when single women of +forty were supposed to require careful supervision; and Elisabeth was +but four-and-twenty. + +Christopher, when consulted, fell into the arrangement with alacrity; +and it was arranged for him to take Elisabeth over to Burlingham on the +one day that Coulson's circus was on exhibition there. Elisabeth looked +forward to the treat like a child; for she was by nature extremely fond +of pleasure, and by circumstance little accustomed to it. + +Great then was her disappointment when the morning of the day arrived, +to receive a short note from Christopher saying that he was extremely +sorry to inconvenience her, but that his business engagements made it +impossible for him to take her to Burlingham that day; and adding +various apologies and hopes that she would not be too angry with him. +She had so few treats that her disappointment at losing one was really +acute for the moment; but what hurt her far more than the disappointment +was the consciousness that Chris had obeyed the calls of business rather +than her behest--had thought less of her pleasure than of the claims of +the Osierfield. All Elisabeth's pride (or was it her vanity?) rose up in +arms at the slight which Christopher had thus put upon her; and she felt +angrier with him than she had ever felt with anybody in her life before. +She began to pour out the vials of her wrath in the presence of Miss +Farringdon; but that good lady was so much pleased to find a young man +who cared more for business than for pleasure, or even for a young +woman, that she accorded Elisabeth but scant sympathy. So Elisabeth +possessed her wounded soul in extreme impatience, until such time as the +offender himself should appear upon the scene, ready to receive those +vials which had been specially prepared for his destruction. + +He duly appeared about tea-time, and found Elisabeth consuming the smoke +of her anger in the garden. + +"I hope you are not very angry with me," he began in a humble tone, +sitting down beside her on the old rustic seat; "but I found myself +obliged to disappoint you as soon as I got to the works this morning; +and I am sure you know me well enough to understand that it wasn't my +fault, and that I couldn't help myself." + +"I don't know you well enough for anything of the kind," replied +Elisabeth, flashing a pair of very bright eyes upon his discomfited +face; "but I know you well enough to understand that you are just a +mass of selfishness and horridness, and that you care for nothing but +just what interests and pleases yourself." + +Christopher was startled. "Elisabeth, you don't mean that; you know you +don't." + +"Yes; I do. I mean that I have always hated you, and that I hate you +more than ever to-day. It was just like you to care more for the +business than you did for me, and never to mind about my disappointment +as long as that nasty old ironworks was satisfied. I tell you I hate +you, and I hate the works, and I hate everything connected with you." + +Christopher looked utterly astonished. He had no idea, he said to +himself, that Elisabeth cared so much about going to Coulson's circus; +and he could not see anything in the frustration of a day's excursion to +account for such a storm of indignation as this. He did not realize that +it was the rage of a monarch whose kingdom was in a state of rebellion, +and whose dominion seemed in danger of slipping away altogether. +Elisabeth might not understand Christopher; but Christopher was not +always guiltless of misunderstanding Elisabeth. + +"And it was just like you," Elisabeth went on, "not to let me know till +the last minute, when it was too late for anything to be done. If you +had only had the consideration--I may say the mere civility--to send +word last night that your royal highness could not be bothered with me +and my affairs to-day, I could have arranged with Alan Tremaine to take +me. He is always able to turn his attention for a time from his own +pleasure to other people's." + +"But I thought I told you that it was not until I got to the works this +morning that I discovered it would be impossible for me to take you to +Burlingham to-day." + +"Then you ought to have found it out sooner." + +"Hang it all! I really can not find out things before they occur. Clever +as I am, I am not quite clever enough for that. If I were, I should soon +make my own fortune by telling other people theirs." + +But Elisabeth was too angry to be flippant. "The fact is you care for +nothing but yourself and your horrid old business. I always told you how +it would be." + +"You did. For whatever faults you may have to blame yourself, +over-indulgence toward mine will never be one of them. You can make your +conscience quite clear on that score." Christopher was as determined to +treat the quarrel lightly as Elisabeth was to deal with it on serious +grounds. + +"You have grown into a regular, commonplace, money-grubbing, business +man, with no thoughts for anything higher than making iron and money and +vulgar things like that." + +"And making you angry--that is a source of distinct pleasure to me. You +have no idea how charming you are when you are--well, for the sake of +euphony we will say slightly ruffled, Miss Elisabeth Farringdon." + +Elisabeth stamped her foot. "I wish to goodness you'd be serious +sometimes! Frivolity is positively loathsome in a man." + +"Then I repent it in dust and ashes, and shall rely upon your more +sedate and serious mind to correct this tendency in me. Besides, as you +generally blame me for erring in the opposite direction, it is a relief +to find you smiting me on the other cheek as a change. It keeps up my +mental circulation better." + +"You are both too frivolous and too serious." + +Christopher was unwise enough to laugh. "My dear child, I seem to make +what is called 'a corner' in vices; but even I can not reconcile the +conflicting ones." + +Then Elisabeth's anger settled down into the quiet stage. "If you think +it gentlemanly to disappoint a lady and then insult her, pray go on +doing so; I can only say that I don't." + +"What on earth do you mean, Elisabeth? Do you really believe that I +meant to vex you?" The laughter had entirely died out of Christopher's +face, and his voice was hoarse. + +"I don't know what you meant, and I am afraid I don't much mind. All I +know is that you did disappoint me and did insult me, and that is enough +for me. The purity of your motives is not my concern; I merely resent +the impertinence of your behaviour." + +Christopher rose from his seat; he was serious enough now. "You are +unjust to me, Elisabeth, but I can not and will not attempt to justify +myself. Good afternoon." + +For a second the misery on his face penetrated the thunder-clouds of +Elisabeth's indignation. "Won't you have some tea before you go?" she +asked. It seemed brutal--even to her outraged feelings--to send so old a +friend empty away. + +Christopher's smile was very bitter as he answered. "No, thank you. I am +afraid, after the things you have said to me, I should hardly be able +graciously to accept hospitality at your hands; and rather than accept +it ungraciously, I will not accept it at all." And he turned on his +heel and left her. + +As she watched his retreating figure, one spasm of remorse shot through +Elisabeth's heart; but it was speedily stifled by the recollection that, +for the first time in her life, Christopher had failed her, and had +shown her plainly that there were, in his eyes, more important matters +than Miss Elisabeth Farringdon and her whims and fancies. And what +woman, worthy of the name, could extend mercy to a man who had openly +displayed so flagrant a want of taste and discernment as this? Certainly +not Elisabeth, nor any other fashioned after her pattern. She felt that +she had as much right to be angry as had the prophet, when Almighty +Wisdom saw fit to save the great city in which he was not particularly +interested, and to destroy the gourd in which he was. And so, probably, +she had. + +For several days after this she kept clear of Christopher, nursing her +anger in her heart; and he was so hurt and sore from the lashing which +her tongue had given him, that he felt no inclination to come within the +radius of that tongue's bitterness again. + +But one day, when Elisabeth was sitting on the floor of the Moat House +drawing-room, playing with the baby and discussing new gowns with +Felicia between times, Alan came in and remarked-- + +"It was wise of you to give up your excursion to Coulson's circus last +week, Elisabeth; as it has turned out it was chiefly a scare, and the +case was greatly exaggerated; but it might have made you feel +uncomfortable if you had gone. I suppose you saw the notice of the +outbreak in that morning's paper, and so gave it up at the last +moment." + +Elisabeth ceased from her free translation of the baby's gurglings and +her laudable endeavours suitably to reply to the same, and gave her +whole attention to the baby's father. "I don't know what you mean. What +scare and what outbreak are you talking about?" + +"Didn't you see," replied Alan, "that there was an outbreak of cholera +at Coulson's circus, and a frightful scare all through Burlingham in +consequence? Of course the newspapers greatly exaggerated the danger, +and so increased the scare; and I don't know that I blame them for that. +I am not sure that the sensational way in which the press announces +possible dangers to the community is not a safeguard for the community +at large. To be alive to a danger is nine times out of ten to avoid a +danger; and it is far better to be more frightened than hurt than to be +more hurt than frightened--certainly for communities if not for +individuals." + +"But tell me about it. I never saw any account in the papers; and I'm +glad I didn't, for it would have frightened me out of my wits." + +"It broke out among a troupe of acrobats who had just come straight from +the South of France, and evidently brought the infection with them. They +were at once isolated, and such prompt and efficient measures were taken +to prevent the spread of the disease, that there have been no more +cases, either in the circus or in the town. Now, I should imagine, all +danger of its spreading is practically over; but, of course, it made +everybody in the neighbourhood, and everybody who had been to the +circus, very nervous and uncomfortable for a few days. The local +authorities, however, omitted no possible precaution which should assist +them in stamping out the epidemic, should those few cases have started +an epidemic--which was, of course, possible, though hardly likely." + +And then Alan proceeded to expound his views on the matter of sanitary +authorities in general and of those of Burlingham in particular, to +which Felicia listened with absorbing attention and Elisabeth did not +listen at all. + +Soon after this she took her leave; and all along the homeward walk +through Badgering Woods she was conscious of feeling ashamed of +herself--a very rare sensation with Elisabeth, and by no means an +agreeable one. She was by nature so self-reliant and so irresponsible +that she seldom regretted anything that she had done; if she had acted +wisely, all was well; and if she had not acted wisely, it was over and +done with, and what was the use of bothering any more about it? This was +her usual point of view, and it proved as a rule a most comfortable one. +But now she could not fail to see that she had been in the +wrong--hopelessly and flagrantly in the wrong--and that she had behaved +abominably to Christopher into the bargain. She had to climb down, as +other ruling powers have had to climb down before now; and the act of +climbing down is neither a becoming nor an exhilarating form of exercise +to ruling powers. But at the back of her humble contrition there was a +feeling of gladness in the knowledge that Christopher had not really +failed her after all, and that her kingdom was still her own as it had +been in her childish days; and there was also a nobler feeling of higher +joy in the consciousness that--quite apart from his attitude toward +her--Christopher was still the Christopher that she had always in her +inmost soul believed him to be; that she was not wrong in the idea she +had formed of him long ago. It is very human to be glad on our own +account when people are as fond of us as we expected them to be; but it +is divine to be glad, solely for their sakes, when they act up to their +own ideals, quite apart from us. And there was a touch of divinity in +Elisabeth's gladness just then, though the rest of her was extremely +human--and feminine at that. + +On her way home she encountered Caleb Bateson going back to work after +dinner, and she told him to ask Mr. Thornley to come up to the Willows +that afternoon, as she wanted to see him. She preferred to send a verbal +message, as by so doing she postponed for a few hours that climbing-down +process which she so much disliked; although it is frequently easier to +climb down by means of one's pen than by means of one's tongue. + +Christopher felt no pleasure in receiving her message. He was not angry +with her, although he marvelled at the unreasonableness and injustice of +a sex that thinks more of a day's pleasure than a life's devotion; he +did not know that it was over the life's devotion and not the day's +pleasure that Elisabeth had fought so hard that day; but his encounter +with her had strangely tired him, and taken the zest out of his life, +and he had no appetite for any more of such disastrous and inglorious +warfare. + +But he obeyed her mandate all the same, having learned the important +political lesson that the fact of a Government's being in the wrong is +no excuse for not obeying the orders of that Government; and he waited +for her in the drawing-room at the Willows, looking out toward the +sunset and wondering how hard upon him Elisabeth was going to be. And +his thoughts were so full of her that he did not hear her come into the +room until she clasped both her hands round his arm and looked up into +his gloomy face, saying-- + +"Oh! Chris, I'm so dreadfully ashamed of myself." + +The clouds were dispelled at once, and Christopher smiled as he had not +smiled for a week. "Never mind," he said, patting the hands that were on +his arm; "it's all right." + +But Elisabeth, having set out upon the descent, was prepared to climb +down handsomely. "It isn't all right; it's all wrong. I was simply +fiendish to you, and I shall never forgive myself--never." + +"Oh, yes; you will. And for goodness' sake don't worry over it. I'm glad +you have found out that I wasn't quite the selfish brute that I seemed; +and that's the end of the matter." + +"Dear me! no; it isn't. It is only the beginning. I want to tell you how +dreadfully sorry I am, and to ask you to forgive me." + +"I've nothing to forgive." + +"Yes, you have; lots." And Elisabeth was nearer the mark than +Christopher. + +"I haven't. Of course you were angry with me when I seemed so +disagreeable and unkind; any girl would have been," replied Chris, +forgetting how very unreasonable her anger had seemed only five minutes +ago. But five minutes can make such a difference--sometimes. + +Elisabeth cheerfully caught at this straw of comfort; she was always +ready to take a lenient view of her own shortcomings. If Christopher had +been wise he would not have encouraged such leniency; but who is wise +and in love at the same time? + +"Of course it did seem rather unkind of you," she admitted; "you see, I +thought you had thrown me over just for the sake of some tiresome +business arrangement, and that you didn't care about me and my +disappointment a bit." + +A little quiver crept into Christopher's voice. "I think you might have +known me better than that." + +"Yes, I might; in fact, I ought to have done," agreed Elisabeth with +some truth. "But why didn't you tell me the real reason?" + +"Because I thought it might worry and frighten you. Not that there +really was anything to be frightened about," Christopher hastened to +add; "but you might have imagined things, and been upset; you have such +a tremendous imagination, you know." + +"I'm afraid I have; and it sometimes imagines vain things at your +expense, Chris dear." + +"How did you find me out?" Chris asked. + +"Alan told me about the cholera scare at Burlingham, and I guessed the +rest." + +"Then Alan was an ass. What business had he to go frightening you, I +should like to know, with a lot of fiction that is just trumped up to +sell the papers?" + +"But, Chris, I want you to understand how sorry I am that I was so vile +to you. I really was vile, wasn't I?" Elisabeth was the type of woman +for whom the confessional will always have its fascinations. + +"You were distinctly down on me, I must confess; but you needn't worry +about that now." + +"And you quite forgive me?" + +"As I said before, I've nothing to forgive. You were perfectly right to +be annoyed with a man who appeared to be so careless and inconsiderate; +but I'm glad you've found out that I wasn't quite as selfish as you +thought." + +Elisabeth stroked his coat sleeve affectionately. "You are not selfish +at all, Chris; you're simply the nicest, thoughtfullest, most unselfish +person in the world; and I'm utterly wretched because I was so unkind to +you." + +"Don't be wretched, there's a dear! Your wretchedness is the one thing I +can't and won't stand; so please leave off at once." + +To Christopher remorse for wrong done would always be an agony; he had +yet to learn that to some temperaments, whereof Elisabeth's was one, it +partook of the nature of a luxury--the sort of luxury which tempts one +to pay half a guinea to be allowed to swell up one's eyes and redden +one's nose over imaginary woes in a London theatre. + +"Did you mind very much when I was so cross?" Elisabeth asked +thoughtfully. + +Christopher was torn between a loyal wish to do homage to his idol and a +laudable desire to save that idol pain. "Of course I minded pretty +considerably; but why bother about that now?" + +"Because it interests me immensely. I often think that your only fault +is that you don't mind things enough; and so, naturally, I want to find +out how great your minding capacity is." + +"I see. Your powers of scientific research are indeed remarkable; but +did it never strike you that even vivisection might be carried too +far--too far for the comfort of the vivisected, I mean; not for the +enjoyment of the vivisector?" + +"It is awfully good for people to feel things," persisted Elisabeth. + +"Is it? Well, I suppose it is good--in fact, necessary--for some poor +beggars to have their arms or legs cut off; but you can't expect me to +be consumed with envy of the same?" + +"Please tell me how much you minded," Elisabeth coaxed. + +"I can't tell you; and I wouldn't if I could. If I were a rabbit that +had been cut into living pieces to satisfy the scientific yearnings of a +learned professor, do you think I would leave behind me--for my +executors to publish and make large fortunes thereby--confidential +letters and private diaries accurately describing all the tortures I had +endured, for the recreation of the reading public in general and the +said professor in particular? Not I." + +"I should. I should leave a full, true, and particular account of all +that I had suffered, and exactly how much it hurt. It would interest the +professor most tremendously." + +Christopher shook his head. "Oh, dear! no; it wouldn't." + +"Why not?" + +"Because I should have knocked his brains out long before that for +having dared to hurt you at all." + + + + +CHAPTER XI + +MISS FARRINGDON'S WILL + + Time speeds on his relentless track, + And, though we beg on bended knees, + No prophet's hand for us puts back + The shadow ten degrees. + + +During the following winter Miss Farringdon gave unmistakable signs of +that process known as "breaking-up." She had fought a good fight for +many years, and the time was fast coming for her to lay down her arms +and receive her reward. Elisabeth, with her usual light-heartedness, did +not see the Shadow stealing nearer day by day; but Christopher was more +accustomed to shadows than she was--his path had lain chiefly among +them--and he knew what was coming, and longed passionately and in vain +to shield Elisabeth from the inevitable. He had played the part of +Providence to her in one matter: he had stood between her and himself, +and had prevented her from drinking of that mingled cup of sweetness and +bitterness which men call Love, thinking that she would be a happier +woman if she left untasted the only form of the beverage which he was +able to offer her. And possibly he was right; that she would be also a +better woman in consequence, was quite another and more doubtful side of +the question. But now the part of Elisabeth's Providence was no longer +cast for Christopher to play; he might prevent Love with his sorrows +from coming nigh her dwelling, but Death defied his protecting arm. It +was good for Elisabeth to be afflicted, although Christopher would +willingly have died to save her a moment's pain; and it is a blessed +thing for us after all that Perfect Wisdom and Almighty Power are one. + +As usual Elisabeth was so busy straining her eyes after the ideal that +the real escaped her notice; and it was therefore a great shock to her +when her Cousin Maria went to sleep one night in a land whose stones are +of iron, and awoke next morning in a country whose pavements are of +gold. For a time the girl was completely stunned by the blow; and during +that period Christopher was very good to her. Afterward--when he and she +had drifted far apart--Elisabeth sometimes recalled Christopher's +sheltering care during the first dark days of her loneliness; and she +never did so without remembering the words, "As the mountains are round +about Jerusalem"; they seemed to express all that he was to her just +then. + +When Maria Farringdon's will was read, it was found that she had left to +her cousin and adopted daughter, Elisabeth, an annuity of five hundred a +year; also the income from the Osierfield and the Willows until such +time as the real owner of these estates should be found. The rest of her +property--together with the Osierfield and the Willows--she bequeathed +upon trust for the eldest living son, if any, of her late cousin George +Farringdon; and she appointed Richard Smallwood and his nephew to be her +trustees and executors. The trustees were required to ascertain whether +George Farringdon had left any son, and whether that son was still +alive; but if, at the expiration of ten years from the death of the +testator, no such son could be discovered, the whole of Miss +Farringdon's estate was to become the absolute property of Elisabeth. As +since the making of this will Richard had lost his faculties, the whole +responsibility of finding the lost heir and of looking after the +temporary heiress devolved upon Christopher's shoulders. + +"And how is Mr. Bateson to-day?" asked Mrs. Hankey of Mr. Bateson's +better-half, one Sunday morning not long after Miss Farringdon's death. + +"Thank you, Mrs. Hankey, he is but middling, I'm sorry to say--very +middling--very middling, indeed." + +"That's a bad hearing. But I'm not surprised; I felt sure as something +was wrong when I didn't see him in chapel this morning. I says to +myself, when the first hymn was given out and him not there, 'Eh, dear!' +I says, 'I'm afraid there's trouble in store for Mrs. Bateson.' It +seemed so strange to see you all alone in the pew, that for a minute or +two it quite gave me the creeps. What's amiss with him?" + +"Rheumatism in the legs. He could hardly get out of bed this morning he +was so stiff." + +"Eh, dear! that's a bad thing--and particularly at his time of life. I +lost a beautiful hen only yesterday from rheumatism in the legs; one of +the best sitters I ever had. You remember her?--the speckled one that I +got from Tetleigh, four years ago come Michaelmas. But that's the way in +this world; the most missed are the first taken." + +"I wonder if that's Miss Elisabeth there," said Mrs. Bateson, catching +sight of a dark-robed figure in the distance. "I notice she's taken to +go to church regular now Miss Farringdon isn't here to look after her. +How true it is, 'When the cat's away the mice will play!'" Worship +according to the methods of that branch of the Church Militant +established in these kingdoms was regarded by Mrs. Bateson as a form of +recreation--harmless, undoubtedly, but still recreation. + +Mrs. Hankey shook her head. "No--that isn't her; she can't be out of +church yet. They don't go in till eleven." And she shook her head +disapprovingly. + +"Eleven's too late, to my thinking," agreed Mrs. Bateson. + +"So it is; you never spoke a truer word, Mrs. Bateson. Half-past ten is +the Lord's time--or so it used to be when I was a girl." + +"And a very good time too! Gives you the chance of getting home and +seeing to the dinner properly after chapel. At least, that is to say, if +the minister leaves off when he's finished, which is more than you can +say of all of them; if he doesn't, there's a bit of a scrimmage to get +the dinner cooked in time even now, unless you go out before the last +hymn. And I never hold with that somehow; it seems like skimping the +Lord's material, as you may say." + +"So it does. It looks as if the cares of this world and the +deceitfulness of riches had choked the good seed in a body's heart." + +"In which case it looks what it is not," said Mrs. Bateson; "for nine +times out of ten it means nothing worse than wanting to cook the +potatoes, so as the master sha'n't have no cause for grumbling, and to +boil the rice so as it sha'n't swell in the children's insides. But +that's the way with things; folks never turn out to be as bad as you +thought they were when you get to know their whys and their wherefores; +and many a poor soul as is put down as worldly is really only anxious to +make things pleasant for the master and the children." + +"Miss Elisabeth's mourning is handsome, I don't deny," said Mrs. Hankey, +reverting to a more interesting subject than false judgments in the +abstract; "but she don't look well in it--those pale folks never do +justice to good mourning, in my opinion. It seems almost a pity to waste +it on them." + +"Oh! I don't hold with you there. I think I never saw anybody look more +genteel than Miss Elisabeth does now, bless her! And the jet trimming on +her Sunday frock is something beautiful." + +"Eh! there's nothing like a bit of jet for setting off crape and +bringing the full meaning out of it, as you may say," replied Mrs. +Hankey, in mollified tones. "I don't think as you can do full justice to +crape till you put some jet again' it. It's wonderful how a bit of good +mourning helps folks to bear their sorrows; and for sure they want it in +a world so full of care as this." + +"They do; there's no doubt about that. But I can't help wishing as Miss +Elisabeth had got some bugles on that best dress of hers; there's +nothing quite comes up to bugles, to my mind." + +"There ain't; they give such a finish, as one may say, being so +rich-looking. But for my part I think Miss Elisabeth has been a bit +short with the crape, considering that Miss Farringdon was father and +mother and what-not to her. Now supposing she'd had a crape mantle with +handsome bugle fringe for Sundays; that's what I should have called +paying proper respect to the departed; instead of a short jacket with +ordinary braid on it, that you might wear for a great-uncle as hadn't +left you a penny." + +"Well, Mrs. Hankey, folks may do what they like with their own, and it's +not for such as us to sit in judgment on our betters; but I don't think +as Miss Farringdon's will gave her any claim to a crape mantle with a +bugle fringe; I don't indeed." + +"Well, to be sure, but you do speak strong on the subject!" + +"And I feel strong, too," replied Mrs. Bateson, waxing more indignant. +"There's dear Miss Elisabeth has been like an own daughter to Miss +Farringdon ever since she was a baby, and yet Miss Farringdon leaves her +fortune over Miss Elisabeth's head to some good-for-nothing young man +that nobody knows for certain ever was born. I've no patience with such +ways!" + +"It does seem a bit hard on Miss Elisabeth, I must admit, her being Miss +Farringdon's adopted child. But, as I've said before, there's nothing +like a will for making a thorough to-do." + +"It's having been engaged to Mr. George all them years ago that set her +up to it. It's wonderful how folks often turn to their old lovers when +it comes to will time." + +Mrs. Hankey looked incredulous. "Well, that beats me, I'm fain to +confess. I know if the Lord had seen fit to stop me from keeping company +with Hankey, not a brass farthing would he ever have had from me. I'd +sooner have left my savings to charity." + +"Don't say that, Mrs. Hankey; it always seems so lonely to leave money +to charity, as if you was nothing better than a foundling. But how did +you enjoy the sermon this morning?" + +"I thought that part about the punishment of the wicked was something +beautiful. But, to tell you the truth, I've lost all pleasure in Mr. +Sneyd's discourses since I heard as he wished to introduce the reading +of the Commandments into East Lane Chapel. What's the good of fine +preaching, if a minister's private life isn't up to his sermon, I should +like to know?" + +Mrs. Bateson, however, had broad views on some matters. "I don't see +much harm in reading the Commandments," she said. + +Mrs. Hankey looked shocked at her friend's laxity. "It is the thin end +of the wedge, Mrs. Bateson, and you ought to know it. Mark my words, +it's forms and ceremonies such as this that tempts our young folks away +from the chapels to the churches, like Miss Elisabeth and Master +Christopher there. They didn't read no Commandments in our chapel as +long as Miss Farringdon was alive; I should have liked to see the +minister as would have dared to suggest such a thing. She wouldn't stand +Ritualism, poor Miss Farringdon wouldn't." + +"Here we are at home," said Mrs. Bateson, stopping at her own door; "I +must go in and see how the master's getting on." + +"And I hope you'll find him better, Mrs. Bateson, I only hope so; but +you never know how things are going to turn out when folks begin to +sicken--especially at Mr. Bateson's age. And he hasn't been looking +himself for a long time. I says to Hankey only a few weeks ago, +'Hankey,' says I, 'it seems to me as if the Lord was thinking on Mr. +Bateson; I hope I may be mistaken, but that's how it appears to me.' And +so it did." + +On the afternoon of that very Sunday Christopher took Elisabeth for a +walk in Badgering Woods. The winter was departing, and a faint pink +flush on the bare trees heralded the coming of spring; and Elisabeth, +being made of material which is warranted not to fret for long, began to +feel that life was not altogether dark, and that it was just possible +she might--at the end of many years--actually enjoy things again. +Further, Christopher suited her perfectly--how perfectly she did not +know as yet--and she spent much time with him just then. + +Those of us who have ever guessed the acrostics in a weekly paper, have +learned that sometimes we find a solution to one of the lights, and say, +"This will do, if nothing better turns up before post-time on Monday"; +and at other times we chance upon an answer which we know at once, +without further research, to be indisputably the right one. It is so +with other things than acrostics: there are friends whom we feel will do +very well for us if nobody--or until somebody--better turns up; and +there are others whom we know to be just the right people for the +particular needs of our souls at that time. They are the right answers +to the questions which have been perplexing us--the correct solutions to +the problems over which we have been puzzling our brains. So it was with +Elisabeth: Christopher was the correct answer to life's current +acrostic; and as long as she was with Christopher she was content. + +"Don't you get very tired of people who have never found the fourth +dimension?" she asked him, as they sat upon a stile in Badgering Woods. + +"What do you mean by the fourth dimension? There are length and breadth +and thickness, and what comes next?" + +Christopher was pleased to find Elisabeth facing life's abstract +problems again; it proved that she was no longer overpowered by its +concrete ones. + +"I don't know what its name is," she replied, looking dreamily through +the leafless trees; "perhaps eternity would do as well as any other. But +I mean the dimension which comes after length and breadth and thickness, +and beyond them, and all round them, and which makes them seem quite +different, and much less important." + +"I think I know what you are driving at. You mean a new way of looking +at things and of measuring them--a way which makes things which ordinary +people call small, large; and things which ordinary people call large, +small." + +"Yes. People who have never been in the fourth dimension bore me, do you +know? I daresay it would bore squares to talk to straight lines, and +cubes to talk to squares; there would be so many things the one would +understand and the other wouldn't. The line wouldn't know what the +square meant by the word _across_, and the square wouldn't know what the +cube meant by the word _above_; and in the same way the three-dimension +people don't know what we are talking about when we use such words as +_religion_ and _art_ and _love_." + +"They think we are talking about going regularly to church, and +supporting picture-galleries, and making brilliant matches," suggested +Christopher. + +"Yes; that's exactly what they do think; and it makes talking to them so +difficult, and so dull." + +"When you use the word _happiness_ they imagine you are referring to an +income of four or five thousand a year; and by _success_ they mean the +permission to stand in the backwater of a fashionable London evening +party, looking at the mighty and noble, and pretending afterward that +they have spoken to the same." + +"They don't speak our language or think our thoughts," Elisabeth said; +"and the music of their whole lives is of a different order from that of +the lives of the fourth-dimension people." + +"Distinctly so; all the difference between a Sonata of Beethoven and a +song out of a pantomime." + +"I haven't much patience with the three-dimension people; have you?" +asked Elisabeth. + +"No--I'm afraid not; but I've a good deal of pity for them. They miss so +much. I always fancy that people who call pictures pretty and music +sweet must have a dreary time of it all round. But we'd better be +getting on, don't you think? It is rather chilly sitting out-of-doors, +and I don't want you to catch cold. You don't feel cold, do you?" And +Christopher's face grew quite anxious. + +"Not at all." + +"You don't seem to me to have enough furbelows and things round your +neck to keep you warm," continued he; "let me tie it up tighter, +somehow." + +And while he turned up the fur collar of her coat and hooked the highest +hook and eye, Elisabeth thought how nice it was to be petted and taken +care of; and as she walked homeward by Christopher's side, she felt like +a good little girl again. Even reigning monarchs now and then like to +have their ermine tucked round them, and to be patted on their crowns by +a protecting hand. + +As the weeks rolled on and the spring drew nearer, Elisabeth gradually +took up the thread of human interest again. Fortunately for her she was +very busy with plans for the benefit of the work-people at the +Osierfield. She started a dispensary; she opened an institute; she +inaugurated courses of lectures and entertainments for keeping the young +men out of the public-houses in the evenings; she gave to the Wesleyan +Conference a House of Rest--a sweet little house, looking over the +fields toward the sunset--where tired ministers might come and live at +ease for a time to regain health and strength; and in Sedgehill Church +she put up a beautiful east window to the memory of Maria Farringdon, +and for a sign-post to all such pilgrims as were in need of one, as the +east window in St. Peter's had once been a sign-post to herself showing +her the way to Zion. + +In all these undertakings Christopher was her right hand; and while +Elisabeth planned and paid for them, he carefully carried them out--the +hardest part of the business, and the least effective one. + +When Elisabeth had set afoot all these improvements for the benefit of +her work-people, she turned her attention to the improving of herself; +and she informed Christopher that she had decided to go up to London, +and fulfil the desire of her heart by studying art at the Slade School. + +"But you can not live by yourself in London," Christopher objected; "you +are all right here, because you have the Tremaines and other people to +look after you; but in town you would be terribly lonely; and, besides, +I don't approve of girls living in London by themselves." + +"I sha'n't be by myself. There is a house where some of the Slade pupils +live together, and I shall go there for every term, and come down here +for the vacation. It will be just like going back to school again. I +shall adore it!" + +Christopher did not like the idea at all. "Are you sure you will be +comfortable, and that they will take proper care of you?" + +"Of course they will. Grace Cobham will be there at the same time--an +old schoolfellow to whom I used to be devoted at Fox How--and she and I +will chum together. I haven't seen her for ages, as she has been +scouring Europe with her family; but now she has settled down in +England, and is going in for art." + +Christopher still looked doubtful. "It would make me miserable to think +that you weren't properly looked after and taken care of, Elisabeth." + +"Well, I shall be. And if I'm not, I shall still have you to fall back +upon." + +"But you won't have me to fall back upon; that is just the point. If you +would, I shouldn't worry about you so much; but it cuts me to the heart +to leave you among strangers. Still, the Tremaines will be here, and I +shall ask them to look after you; and I daresay they will do so all +right, though not as efficiently as I should." + +Elisabeth grew rather pale; that there would ever come a day when +Christopher would not be there to fall back upon was a contingency which +until now had never occurred to her. "Whatever are you talking about, +Chris? Why sha'n't you be here when I go up to the Slade?" + +"Because I am going to Australia." + +"To Australia? What on earth for?" It seemed to Elisabeth as if the +earth beneath her feet had suddenly decided to reverse its customary +revolution, and to transpose its poles. + +"To see if I can find George Farringdon's son, of course." + +"I thought he had been advertised for in both English and Australian +papers, and had failed to answer the advertisements." + +"So he has." + +"Then why bother any more about him?" suggested Elisabeth. + +"Because I must. If advertisement fails, I must see what personal search +will do." + +Elisabeth's lip trembled; she felt that a hemisphere uninhabited by +Christopher would be a very dreary hemisphere indeed. "Oh! Chris dear, +you needn't go yourself," she coaxed; "I simply can not spare you, and +that's the long and the short of it." + +Christopher hardened his heart. He had seen the quiver of Elisabeth's +lip, and it had almost proved too strong for him. "Hang it all! I must +go; there is nothing else to be done." + +Elisabeth's eyes filled with tears. "Please don't, Chris. It is horrid +of you to want to go and leave me when I'm so lonely and haven't got +anybody in the world but you!" + +"I don't want to go, Betty; I hate the mere idea of going. I'd give a +thousand pounds, if I could, to stop away. But I can't see that I have +any alternative. Miss Farringdon left it to me, as her trustee, to find +her heir and give up the property to him; and, as a man of honour, I +don't see how I can leave any stone unturned until I have fulfilled the +charge which she laid upon me." + +"Oh! Chris, don't go. I can't spare you." And Elisabeth stretched out +two pleading hands toward him. + +Christopher turned away from her. "I say, Betty, please don't cry," and +his voice shook; "it makes it so much harder for me; and it is hard +enough as it is--confoundedly hard!" + +"Then why do it?" + +"Because I must." + +"I don't see that; it is pure Quixotism." + +"I wish to goodness I could think that; but I can't. It appears to me a +question about which there could not be two opinions." + +The tears dried on Elisabeth's lashes. The old feeling of being at war +with Christopher, which had laid dormant for so long, now woke up again +in her heart, and inclined her to defy rather than to plead. If he cared +for duty more than for her, he did not care for her much, she said to +herself; and she was far too proud a woman ever to care for a man--even +in the way of friendship--who obviously did not care for her. Still, she +condescended to further argument. + +"If you really liked me and were my friend," she said, "not only +wouldn't you wish to go away and leave me, but you would want me to have +the money, instead of rushing all over the world in order to give it to +some tiresome young man you'd never heard of six months ago." + +"Don't you understand that it is just because I like you and am your +friend, that I can't bear you to profit by anything which has a shade of +dishonour connected with it? If I cared for you less I should be less +particular." + +"That's nonsense! But your conscience and your sense of honour always +were bugbears, Christopher, and always will be. They bored me as a +child, and they bore me now." + +Christopher winced; the nightmare of his life had been the terror of +boring Elisabeth, for he was wise enough to know that a woman may love a +man with whom she is angry, but never one by whom she is bored. + +"It is just like you," Elisabeth continued, tossing her head, "to be so +busy saving your own soul and laying up for yourself a nice little +nest-egg in heaven, that you haven't time to consider other people and +their interests and feelings." + +"I think you do me an injustice," replied Christopher quietly. He was +puzzled to find Elisabeth so bitter against him on a mere question of +money, as she was usually a most unworldly young person; again he did +not understand that she was not really fighting over the matter at +issue, but over the fact that he had put something before his friendship +for her. Once she had quarrelled with him because he seemed to think +more of his business than of her; now she was quarrelling with him +because he thought more of his duty than of her; for the truth that he +could not have loved her so much had he not loved honour more, had not +as yet been revealed to Elisabeth. + +"I don't want to be money-grubbing," she went on, "or to cling on to +things to which I have no right; though, of course, it will be rather +poor fun for me to have to give up all this," and she waved her hand in +a sweep, supposed to include the Willows and the Osierfield and all that +appertained thereto, "and to drudge along at the rate of five hundred a +year, with yesterday's dinner and last year's dress warmed up again to +feed and clothe me. But I ask you to consider whether the work-people at +the Osierfield aren't happier under my _regime_, than under the rule of +some good-for-nothing young man, who will probably spend all his income +upon himself, and go to the dogs as his father did before him." + +Christopher was cut to the quick; Elisabeth had hit the nail on the +head. After all, it was not his own interests that he felt bound to +sacrifice to the claims of honour, but hers; and it was this +consideration that made him feel the sacrifice almost beyond his power. +He knew that it was his duty to do everything he could to fulfil the +conditions of Miss Farringdon's will; he also knew that he was compelled +to do this at Elisabeth's expense and not at his own; and the twofold +knowledge well-nigh broke his heart. His misery was augmented by his +perception of how completely Elisabeth misunderstood him, and of how +little of the truth all those years of silent devotion had conveyed to +her mind; and his face was white with pain as he answered-- + +"There is no need for you to say such things as that to me, Elisabeth; +you know as well as I do that I would give my life to save you from +sorrow and to ensure your happiness; but I can not be guilty of a shabby +trick even for this. Can't you see that the very fact that I care for +you so much, makes it all the more impossible for me to do anything +shady in your name?" + +"Bosh!" rudely exclaimed Elisabeth. + +"As for the work-people," he went on, ignoring her interruption, "of +course no one will ever do as much for them as you are doing. But that +isn't the question. The fact that one man would make a better use of +money than another wouldn't justify me in robbing Peter to increase +Paul's munificence. Now would it?" + +"That's perfectly different. It is all right for you to go on +advertising for that Farringdon man in agony columns, and I shouldn't be +so silly as to make a fuss about giving up the money if he turned up. +You know that well enough. But it does seem to me to be +over-conscientious and hyper-disagreeable on your part to go off to +Australia--just when I am so lonely and want you so much--in search of +the man who is to turn me out of my kingdom and reign in my stead. I +can't think how you can want to do such a thing!" Elisabeth was fighting +desperately hard; the full power of her strong will was bent upon making +Christopher do what she wished and stay with her in England; not only +because she needed him, but because she felt that this was a Hastings or +Waterloo between them, and that if she lost this battle, her ancient +supremacy was gone forever. + +"I don't want to go and do it, heaven knows! I hate and loathe doing +anything which you don't wish me to do. But there is no question of +wanting in the matter, as far as I can see. It is a simple question +between right and wrong--between honour and dishonour--and so I really +have no alternative." + +"Then you have made up your mind to go out to Australia and turn up +every stone in order to find this George Farringdon's son?" + +"I don't see how I can help it." + +"And you don't care what becomes of me?" + +"More than I care for anything else in the world, Elisabeth. Need you +ask?" + +For one wild moment Christopher felt that he must tell Elisabeth how +passionately he would woo her, should she lose her fortune; and how he +would spend his life and his income in trying to make her happy, should +George Farringdon's son be found and she cease to be one of the greatest +heiresses in the Midlands. But he held himself back by the bitter +knowledge of how cruelly appearances were against him. He had made up +his mind to do the right thing at all costs; at least, he had not +exactly made up his mind--he saw the straight path, and the possibility +of taking any other never occurred to him. But if he succeeded in this +hateful and (to a man of his type) inevitable quest, he would not only +sacrifice Elisabeth's interests, he would also further his own by making +it possible for him to ask her to marry him--a thing which he felt he +could never do as long as she was one of the wealthiest women in +Mershire, and he was only the manager of her works. Duty is never so +difficult to certain men as when it wears the garb and carries with it +the rewards of self-interest; others, on the contrary, find that a +joint-stock company, composed of the Right and the Profitable, supplies +its passengers with a most satisfactory permanent way whereby to travel +through life. There is no doubt that these latter have by far the more +comfortable journey; but whether they are equally contented when they +have reached that journey's end, none of them have as yet returned to +tell us. + +"If somebody must go to Australia after that tiresome young man, why +need it be you?" Elisabeth persisted. "Can't you send somebody else in +your place?" + +"I am afraid I couldn't trust anybody else to sift the matter as +thoroughly as I should. I really must go, Betty. Please don't make it +too hard for me." + +"Do you mean you will still go, even though I beg you not?" + +"I am afraid I must." + +Elisabeth rose from her seat and drew herself up to her full height, as +became a dethroned and offended queen. "Then that is the end of the +matter as far as I am concerned, and it is a waste of time to discuss +it further; but I must confess that there is nothing in the world I hate +so much as a prig," she said, as she swept out of the room. + +It was her final shot, and it told. She could hardly have selected one +more admirably calculated to wound, and it went straight through +Christopher's heart. It was now obvious that she did not love him, and +never could have loved him, he assured himself, or she would not have +misjudged him so cruelly, or said such hard things to him. He did not +realize that an angry woman says not what she thinks, but what she +thinks will most hurt the man with whom she is angry. He also did not +realize--what man does?--how difficult it is for any woman to believe +that a man can care for her and disagree with her at the same time, even +though the disagreement be upon a purely impersonal question. Naturally, +when the question happens to be personal, the strain on feminine faith +is still greater--in the majority of cases too great to be borne. + +Thus Christopher and Elisabeth came to the parting of the ways. She said +to herself, "He doesn't love me because he won't do what I want, +regardless of his own ideas of duty." And he said to himself, "If I fail +to do what I consider is my duty, I am unworthy--or, rather, more +unworthy than I am in any case--to love her." Thus they moved along +parallel lines; and parallel lines never meet--except in infinity. + + + + +CHAPTER XII + +"THE DAUGHTERS OF PHILIP" + + In the market-place alone + Stood the statue carved in stone, + Watching children round her feet + Playing marbles in the street: + When she tried to join their play + They in terror fled away. + + +Christopher went to Australia in search of George Farringdon's son, and +Elisabeth stayed in England and cherished bitter thoughts in her heart +concerning him. That imagination of hers--which was always prone to lead +her astray--bore most terribly false witness against Christopher just +then. It portrayed him as a hard, self-righteous man, ready to sacrifice +the rest of mankind to the Moloch of what he considered to be his own +particular duty and spiritual welfare, and utterly indifferent as to how +severe was the suffering entailed on the victims of this sacrifice. And, +as Christopher was not at hand to refute the charges of Elisabeth's +libellous fancy by his own tender and unselfish personality, the accuser +took advantage of his absence to blacken him more and more. + +It was all in a piece with the rest of his character, she said to +herself; he had always been cold and hard and self-contained. When his +house had been left unto him desolate by the stroke which changed his +uncle from a wise and kindly companion into a helpless and peevish +child, she had longed to help and comfort him with her sympathy; and he +had thrown it back in her face. He was too proud and too superior to +care for human affection, she supposed; and now he felt no hesitation in +first forsaking her, and then reducing her to poverty, if only by so +doing he could set himself still more firmly on the pedestal of his own +virtue. So did Elisabeth's imagination traduce Christopher; and +Elisabeth listened and believed. + +At first she was haunted by memories of how good he had been to her when +her cousin Maria died, and many a time before; and she used to dream +about him at night with so much of the old trust and affection that it +took all the day to stamp out the fragrance of tenderness which her +dreams had left behind. But after a time these dreams and memories grew +fewer and less distinct, and she persuaded herself that Christopher had +never been the true and devoted friend she had once imagined him to be, +but that the kind and affectionate Chris of olden days had been merely a +creature of her own invention. There was no one to plead his cause for +him, as he was far away, and appearances were on the side of his +accuser; so he was tried in the court of Elisabeth's merciless young +judgment, and sentenced to life-long banishment from the circle of her +interests and affections. She forgot how he had comforted her in the day +of her adversity. If he had allowed her to comfort him, she would have +remembered it forever; but he had not; and in this world men must be +prepared to take the consequences of their own mistakes, even though +those mistakes be made through excess of devotion to another person. + +In certain cases it may be necessary to pluck out the right eye and cut +off the right hand; but there is no foundation for supposing that the +operation will be any the less painful because of the righteous motive +inducing it. And so Christopher Thornley learned by bitter experience, +when, after many days, he returned from a fruitless search for the +missing heir, to find the countenance of Elisabeth utterly changed +toward him. She was quite civil to him--quite polite; she never +attempted to argue or quarrel with him as she had done in the old days, +and she listened patiently to all the details of his doings in +Australia; but with gracious coldness she quietly put him outside the +orbit of her life, and showed him plainly that he was now nothing more +to her than her trustee and the general manager of her works. + +It was hard on Christopher--cruelly hard; yet he had no alternative but +to accept the position which Elisabeth, in the blindness of her heart, +assigned to him. Sometimes he felt the burden of his lot was almost more +than he could bear; not because of its heaviness, as he was a brave man +and a patient one, but because of the utter absence of any joy in his +life. Men and women can endure much sorrow if they have much joy as +well; it is when sorrow comes and there is no love to lighten it, that +the Hand of God lies heavy upon them; and It lay heavy upon +Christopher's soul just then. Sometimes, when he felt weary unto death +of the dreary routine of work and the still drearier routine of his +uncle's sick-room, he recalled with a bitter smile how Elisabeth used to +say that the gloom and smoke of the furnaces was really a pillar of +cloud to show how God was watching over the people at the Osierfield as +He watched over them in the wilderness. Because she had forgotten to be +gracious to him, he concluded that God had forgotten to be gracious to +him also--a not uncommon error of human wisdom; but though his heart was +wounded and his days darkened by her injustice toward him, he never +blamed her, even in his inmost thoughts. He was absolutely loyal to +Elisabeth. + +One grim consolation he had--and that was the conviction that he had not +won, and never could have won, Elisabeth's love; and that, therefore, +poverty or riches were matters of no moment to him. Had he felt that +temporal circumstances were the only bar between him and happiness, his +position as her paid manager would have been unendurable; but now she +had taught him that it was he himself, and not any difference in their +respective social positions, which really stood between herself and him; +and, that being so, nothing else had any power to hurt him. Wealth, +unshared by Elisabeth, would have been no better than want, he said to +himself; success, uncrowned by her, would have been equivalent to +failure. When Christopher was in Australia he succeeded in tracing +George Farringdon as far as Broken Hill, and there he found poor +George's grave. He learned that George had left a widow and one son, who +had left the place immediately after George's death; but no one could +give him any further information as to what had subsequently become of +these two. And he was obliged at last to abandon the search and return +to England, without discovering what had happened to the widow and +child. + +Some years after his nephew's fruitless journey to Australia Richard +Smallwood died; and though the old man had been nothing but a burden +during the last few years of his life, Christopher missed him sorely +when he was gone. It was something even to have a childish old man to +love him, and smile at his coming; now there was nobody belonging to +him, and he was utterly alone. + +But the years which had proved so dark to Christopher had been full of +brightness and interest to Elisabeth. She had fulfilled her intention of +studying at the Slade School, and she had succeeded in her work beyond +her wildest expectations. She was already recognised as an artist of no +mean order. Now and then she came down to the Willows, bringing Grace +Cobham with her; and the young women filled the house with company. Now +and then they two went abroad together, and satisfied their souls with +the beauty of the art of other lands. But principally they lived in +London, for the passion to be near the centre of things had come upon +Elisabeth; and when once that comes upon any one, London is the place in +which to live. People wondered that Elisabeth did not marry, and blamed +her behind her back for not making suitable hay while it was as yet +summer with her. But the artist-woman never marries for the sake of +being married--or rather for the sake of not being unmarried--as so many +of her more ordinary sisters do; her art supplies her with that +necessary interest in life, without which most women become either +invalids or shrews, and--unless she happens to meet the right man--she +can manage very well without him. + +George Farringdon's son had never turned up, in spite of all the efforts +to discover him; and by this time Elisabeth had settled down into the +belief that the Willows and the Osierfield were permanently hers. She +had long ago forgiven Christopher for setting her and her interests +aside, and going off in search of the lost heir--at least she believed +that she had; but there was always an undercurrent of bitterness in her +thoughts of him, which proved that the wound he had then dealt her had +left a scar. + +Several men had wanted to marry Elisabeth, but they had not succeeded in +winning her. She enjoyed flirting with them, and she rejoiced in their +admiration, but when they offered her their love she was frightened and +ran away. Consequently the world called her cold; and as the years +rolled on and no one touched her heart, she began to believe that the +world was right. + +"There are three great things in life," Grace Cobham said to her one +day, "art and love and religion. They really are all part of the same +thing, and none of them is perfected without the others. You have got +two, Elisabeth; but you have somehow missed the third, and without it +you will never attain to your highest possibilities. You are a good +woman, and you are a true artist; but, until you fall in love, your +religion and your art will both lack something, and will fall short of +perfection." + +"I'm afraid I'm not a falling-in-love sort of person," replied Elisabeth +meekly; "I'm extremely sorry, but such is the case." + +"It is a pity! But you may fall in love yet." + +"It's too late, I fear. You see I am over thirty; and if I haven't done +it by now, I expect I never shall do it. It is tiresome to have missed +it, I admit; and especially as you think it would make me paint better +pictures." + +"Well, I do. You paint so well now that it is a pity you don't paint +still better. I do not believe that any artist does his or her best work +until his or her nature is fully developed; and no woman's nature is +fully developed until she has been in love." + +"I have never been in love; I don't even know what it is like inside," +said Elisabeth sadly; "and I dreadfully want to know, because--looked at +from the outside--it seems interesting." + +Grace gazed at her thoughtfully. "I wonder if it is that you are too +cold to fall in love, or whether it only is that the right person hasn't +appeared." + +"I don't know. I wish I did. What do you think it feels like?" + +"I know what it feels like--and that is like nothing else this side +heaven." + +"It seems funny to get worked up in that sort of way over an ordinary +man--turning him into a revival-service or a national anthem, or +something equally thrilling and inspiring! Still, I'd do it if I could, +just from pure curiosity. I should really enjoy it. I've seen stupid +girls light up like a turnip with a candle inside, simply because some +plain young man did the inevitable, and came up into the drawing-room +after dinner; and I've seen clever women go to pieces like a linen +button at the wash, simply because some ignorant man did the inevitable, +and preferred a more foolish and better-looking woman to themselves." + +"Have you really never been in love, Elisabeth?" + +Elisabeth pondered for a moment. "No; I've sometimes thought I was, but +I've always known I wasn't." + +"I wonder at that; because you really are affectionate." + +"That is quite true; but no one has ever seemed to want as much as I had +to give," said Elisabeth, the smile dying out of her eyes; "I do so long +to be necessary to somebody--to feel that it is in my power to make +somebody perfectly happy; but nobody has ever asked enough of me." + +"You could have made the men happy who wanted to marry you," suggested +Grace. + +"No; I could have made them comfortable, and that's not the same thing." + +As Elisabeth sat alone in her own room that night, she thought about +what Grace had said, and wondered if she were really too cold ever to +experience that common yet wonderful miracle which turns earth into +heaven for most people once in their lives. She had received much love +and still more admiration in her time; but she had never been allowed to +give what she had to give, and she was essentially of the type of woman +to whom it is more blessed to give than to receive. She had never craved +to be loved, as some women crave; she had only asked to be allowed to +love as much as she was capable of loving, and the permission had been +denied her. As she looked back over her past life, she saw that it had +always been the same. She had given the adoration of her childhood to +Anne Farringdon, and Anne had not wanted it; she had given the devotion +of her girlhood to Felicia, and Felicia had not wanted it; she had given +the truest friendship of her womanhood to Christopher, and Christopher +had not wanted it. As for the men who had loved her, she had known +perfectly well that she was not essential to them; had she been, she +would have married them; but they could be happy without her--and they +were. For Grace she had the warmest sense of comradeship; but Grace's +life was so full on its own account, that Elisabeth could only be one of +many interests to her. Elisabeth was so strong and so tender, that she +could have given much to any one to whom she was absolutely necessary; +but she felt she could give of her best to no man who desired it only as +a luxury--it was too good for that. + +"It seems rather a waste of force," she said to herself, with a +whimsical smile. "I feel like Niagara, spending its strength on empty +splashings, when it might be turning thousands of electric engines and +lighting millions of electric lights, if only its power were turned in +the right direction and properly stored. I could be so much to anybody +who really needed me--I feel I could; but nobody seems to need me, so +it's no use bothering. Anyway, I have my art, and that more than +satisfies me; and I will spend my life in giving forth my strength to +the world at large, in the shape of pictures which shall help the world +to be better and happier. At least I hope so." + +And with this reflection Elisabeth endeavoured to console herself for +the non-appearance of that fairy prince, who, in her childish dreams, +had always been wounded in the tournament of life, and had turned to her +for comfort. + +The years which had passed so drearily for Christopher, had cast their +shadows also over the lives of Alan and Felicia Tremaine. When Willie +was a baby, his nurse accidentally let him fall; and the injury he then +received was so great that, as he grew older, he was never able to walk +properly, but had to punt himself about with a little crutch. This was +a terrible blow to Alan; and became all the greater as time went on, +and Felicia had no other children to share his devotion. Felicia, too, +felt it sorely; but she fretted more over the sorrow it was to her +husband than on her own account. + +There was a great friendship between Willie and Elisabeth. Weakness of +any kind always appealed to her, and he, poor child! was weak indeed. So +when Elisabeth was at the Willows and Willie at the Moat House, the two +spent much time together. He never wearied of hearing about the things +that she had pretended when she was a little girl; and she never wearied +of telling him about them. + +"And so the people, who lived among the smoke and the furnaces, followed +the pillar of cloud till it led them to the country on the other side of +the hills," said Willie one day, as he and Elisabeth were sitting on the +old rustic seat in the Willows' garden. "I remember; but tell me, what +did they find in the country over there?" And he pointed with his thin +little finger to the blue hills beyond the green valley. + +"They found everything that they wanted," replied Elisabeth. "Not the +things that other people thought would be good for them, you know; but +just the dear, foolish, impossible things that they had wanted for +themselves." + +"And did the things make them happy?" + +"Perfectly happy--much happier than the wise, desirable, sensible things +could have made them." + +"I suppose they could all walk without crutches," suggested Willie. + +"Of course they could; and they could understand everything without +being told." + +"And the other people loved them very much, and were very kind to them, +weren't they?" + +"Perhaps; but what made them so happy was that they loved the other +people and were kind to them. As long as they lived here in the smoke +and din and bustle, everybody was so busy looking after his own concerns +that nobody could be bothered with their love. There wasn't room for it, +or time for it. But in the country over the hills there was plenty of +room and plenty of time; in fact, there wasn't any room or any time for +anything else." + +"What did they have to eat?" Willie asked. + +"Everything that had been too rich for them when they were here." + +Willie sighed. "It must have been a nice country," he said. + +"It was, dear; the nicest country in the world. It was always summer +there, too, and holiday time." + +"Didn't they have any lessons to learn?" + +"No; because they'd learned them all." + +"Did they have roads and railways?" Willie made further inquiry. + +"No; only narrow green lanes, which led straight into fairyland. And the +longer you walked in them the less tired you were." + +"Tell me a story about the country over there," said Willie, nestling up +to Elisabeth; "and let there be a princess in it." + +She put her strong arm round him and held him close. "Once upon a time," +she began, "there was a princess, who lived among the smoke and the +furnaces." + +"Was she very beautiful?" + +"No; but she happened to have a heart made of real gold. That was the +only rare thing about her; otherwise she was quite a common princess." + +"What did she do with the heart?" asked Willie. + +"She wanted to give it to somebody; but the strange thing was that +nobody would have it. Several people asked her for it before they knew +it was made of real gold; but when they found that out, they began to +make excuses. One said that he'd no place in his house for such a +first-class article; it would merely make the rest of the furniture look +shabby, and he shouldn't refurnish in order to please anybody. Another +said that he wasn't going to bother himself with looking after a real +gold heart, when a silver-gilt one would serve his purpose just as well. +And a third said that solid gold plate wasn't worth the trouble of +cleaning and keeping in order, as it was sure to get scratched or bent +in the process, the precious metals being too soft for everyday use." + +"It is difficult not to scratch when you're cleaning plate," Willie +observed. "I sometimes help Simpkins, and there's only one spoon that +he'll let me clean, for fear I should scratch; and that's quite an old +one that doesn't matter. So I have to clean it over and over again. But +go on about the princess." + +"Well, then she offered her gold heart to a woman who seemed lonely and +desolate; but the woman only cared for the hearts of men, and threw back +the princess's in her face. And then somebody advised her to set it up +for auction, to go to the highest bidder, as that was generally +considered the correct thing to do with regard to well-regulated women's +hearts; but she didn't like that suggestion at all. At last the poor +princess grew tired of offering her treasure to people who didn't want +it, and so she locked it up out of sight; and then everybody said that +she hadn't a heart at all, and what a disgrace it was for a young woman +to be without one." + +"That wasn't fair!" + +"Not at all fair; but people aren't always fair on this side of the +hills, darling." + +"But they are on the other?" + +"Always; and they are never hard or cold or unsympathetic. So the +princess decided to leave the smoke and the furnaces, and to go to the +country on the other side of the hills. She travelled down into the +valley and right through it, and then across the hills beyond, and never +rested till she reached the country on the other side." + +"And what did she find when she got there?" + +Elisabeth's eyes grew dreamy. "She found a fairy prince standing on the +very borders of that country, and he said to her, 'You've come at last; +I've been such a long time waiting for you.' And the princess asked him, +'Do you happen to want such a thing as a heart of real gold?' 'I should +just think I do,' said the prince; 'I've wanted it always, and I've +never wanted anything else; but I was beginning to be afraid I was never +going to get it.' 'And I was beginning to be afraid that I was never +going to find anybody to give it to,' replied the princess. So she gave +him her heart, and he took it; and then they looked into each other's +eyes and smiled." + +"Is that the end of the story?" + +"No, dear; only the beginning." + +"Then what happened in the end?" + +"Nobody knows." + +But Willie's youthful curiosity was far from being satisfied. "What was +the fairy prince like to look at?" he inquired. + +"I don't know, darling; I've often wondered." + +And Willie had to be content with this uncertain state of affairs. So +had Elisabeth. + +For some time now she had been making small bonfires of the Thames; but +the following spring Elisabeth set the river on fire in good earnest by +her great Academy picture, The Pillar of Cloud. It was the picture of +the year; and it supplied its creator with a copious draught of that +nectar of the gods which men call fame. + +It was a fine picture, strongly painted, and was a representation of the +Black Country, with its mingled gloom and glare, and its pillar of smoke +always hanging over it. In the foreground were figures of men and women +and children, looking upward to the pillar of cloud; and, by the magic +spell of the artist, Elisabeth had succeeded in depicting on their +faces, for such who had eyes to see it, the peace of those who knew that +God was with them in their journey through the wilderness. They were +worn and weary and toil-worn, as they dwelt in the midst of the +furnaces; but, through it all, they looked up to the overshadowing cloud +and were lightened, and their faces were not ashamed. In the far +distance there was a glimpse of the sun setting behind a range of hills; +and one felt, as one gazed at the picture and strove to understand its +meaning, that the pillar of cloud was gradually leading the people +nearer and nearer to the far-off hills and the land beyond the sunset; +and that there they would find an abundant compensation for the +suffering and poverty that had blighted their lives as they toiled here +for their daily bread. + +Even those who could not understand the underlying meaning of +Elisabeth's picture, marvelled at the power and technical skill whereby +she had brought the weird mystery of the Black Country into the heart of +London, until one almost felt the breath of the furnaces as one gazed +entranced at her canvas; and those who did understand the underlying +meaning, marvelled still more that so young a woman should have learned +so much of life's hidden mysteries--forgetting that art is no +intellectual endowment, but a revelation from God Himself, and that the +true artist does not learn but knows, because God has whispered to him. + +There was another picture that made a sensation in that year's Academy; +it was the work of an unknown artist, Cecil Farquhar by name, and was +noted in the catalogue as The Daughters of Philip. It represented the +"four daughters, virgins, which did prophesy" of Philip of Caesarea; but +it did not set them forth in the dress and attitude of inspired sibyls. +Instead of this it showed them as they were in their own home, when the +Spirit of the Lord was not upon them, but when they were ordinary girls, +with ordinary girls' interests and joys and sorrows. One of them was +braiding her magnificent black hair in front of a mirror; and another +was eagerly perusing a letter with the love-light in her eyes; a third +was weeping bitterly over a dead dove; and a fourth--the youngest--was +playing merrily with a monkey. It was a dazzling picture, brilliant with +rich Eastern draperies and warm lights; and shallow spectators wondered +what the artist meant by painting the prophetesses in such frivolous and +worldly guise; but the initiated understood how he had fathomed the +tragedy underlying the lives of most women who are set apart from their +fellows by the gift of genius. When the Spirit is upon them they +prophesy, by means of pictures or poems or stories or songs; and the +world says, "These are not as other women; they command our admiration, +but they do not crave our love: let us put them on the top of pinnacles +for high days and holidays, and not trouble them with the petty details +of everyday life." + +The world forgets that the gift of genius is a thing apart from the +woman herself, and that these women at heart are very women, as entirely +as their less gifted sisters are, and have the ordinary woman's longing +for love and laughter, and for all the little things that make life +happy. A pinnacle is a poor substitute for a hearthstone, from the +feminine point of view; and laurel wreaths do not make half so +satisfactory a journey's end as lovers' meetings. All of which it is +difficult for a man to understand, since fame is more to him than it is +to a woman, and love less; therefore the knowledge of this truth proved +Cecil Farquhar to be a true artist; while the able manner in which he +had set it forth showed him to be also a highly gifted one. And the +world is always ready to acknowledge real merit when it sees it, and to +do homage to the same. + +The Daughters of Philip carried a special message to the heart of +Elisabeth Farringdon. She had been placed on her pinnacle, and had +already begun to find how cold was the atmosphere up there, and how much +more human she was than people expected and allowed for her to be. She +felt like a statue set up in the market-place, that hears the children +piping and mourning, and longs to dance and weep with them; but they did +not ask her to do either--did not want her to do either--and if she had +come down from her pedestal and begged to be allowed to play with them +or comfort them, they would only have been frightened and run away. + +But here at last was a man who understood what she was feeling; to whom +she could tell her troubles, and who would know what she meant; and she +made up her mind that before that season was over, she and the unknown +artist, who had painted The Daughters of Philip, should be friends. + + + + +CHAPTER XIII + +CECIL FARQUHAR + + And my people ask politely + How a friend I know so slightly + Can be more to me than others I have liked a year or so; + But they've never heard the history + Of our transmigration's mystery, + And they've no idea I loved you those millenniums ago. + + +It was the night of the Academy _soiree_ in the year of Elisabeth's +triumph; she was being petted and _feted_ on all sides, and passed +through the crowded rooms in a sort of royal progress, surrounded by an +atmosphere of praise and adulation. Of course she liked it--what woman +would not?--but she was conscious of a dull ache of sadness, at the back +of all her joy, that there was no one to share her triumph with her; no +one to whom she could say, "I care for all this, chiefly because it +makes me stronger to help you and worthier to be loved by you;" no one +who would be made happy by her whisper, "I have set the Thames ablaze in +order to make warm your fireside." + +It was as yet early in the evening when the President turned for a +moment from his duties as "official receiver" to say to her, "Miss +Farringdon, I want to present Farquhar to you. He is a rising man, and +a very good fellow into the bargain, and I know he is most anxious to be +introduced to you." + +And then the usual incantation was gone through, which constitutes an +introduction in England--namely, the repetition of two names, whereof +each person hears only his or her own (an item of information by no +means new or in any way to be desired), while the name of the other +contracting party remains shrouded in impenetrable mystery; and +Elisabeth found herself face to face with the man whom she specially +desired to meet. + +Cecil Farquhar was a remarkably handsome man, nearer forty than thirty +years of age. He was tall and graceful, with golden hair and the profile +of a Greek statue; and, in addition to these palpable charms, he +possessed the more subtle ones of a musical voice and a fascinating +manner. He treated every woman, with whom he was brought into contact, +as if she were a compound of a child and a queen; and he had a way of +looking at her and speaking to her as if she were the one woman in the +world for whom he had been waiting all his life. That women were taken +in by this half-caressing, half-worshipping manner was not altogether +their fault; perhaps it was not altogether his. Very attractive people +fall into the habit of attracting, and are frequently unconscious of, +and therefore irresponsible for, their success. + +"It is so good of you to let me be presented to you," he said to +Elisabeth, as they walked through the crowded rooms in search of a seat; +"you don't know how I have longed for it ever since I first saw pictures +of yours on these walls. And my longing was trebled when I saw your +glorious Pillar of Cloud, and read all that it was meant to teach." + +Elisabeth looked at him slyly through her long eyelashes. "How do you +know what I meant to teach? Perhaps you read your own meanings into it, +and not mine." + +Farquhar laughed, and Elisabeth thought he had the most beautiful teeth +she had ever seen. "Perhaps so; but, do you know, Miss Farringdon, I +have a shrewd suspicion that my meanings and yours are the same." + +"What meaning did you read into my picture?" asked Elisabeth, with the +dictatorial air of a woman who is accustomed to be made much of and +deferred to, as he found a seat for her in the vestibule, under a +palm-tree. + +"I read that there was only one answer to the weary problems of labour +and capital, and masses and classes, and employers and employed, and all +the other difficulties that beset and threaten any great manufacturing +community; and that this answer is to be found to-day--as it was found +by the Israelites of old--in the pillar of cloud by day and the pillar +of fire by night, and all of which that pillar is a sign and a +sacrament." + +"Yes," replied Elisabeth, and her eyes shone like stars; "I meant all +that. But how clever of you to have read it so correctly!" + +"I do not ask if you understood what my picture meant. I know you did; +for it was to you, and women such as you, that I was speaking." + +"Yes; I understood it well enough," replied Elisabeth sadly. + +"I knew you would." + +"Poor little daughters of Philip! How much happier they would have felt +if they had been just the same as all the other commonplace Jewish +maidens, and had lived ordinary women's lives!" + +"But how much happier they made other people by their great gift of +interpreting to a tired world the hidden things of God!" replied Cecil, +his face aglow with emotion. "You must never forget that, you women of +genius, with your power of making men better and women brighter by the +messages you bring to them! And isn't it a grander thing to help and +comfort the whole world, than to love, honour, and obey one particular +man?" + +"I am not sure. I used to think so, but I'm beginning to have my doubts +about it. One comforts the whole world in a slipshod, sketchy kind of +way; but one could do the particular man thoroughly!" + +"And then find he wasn't worth the doing, in all probability," added +Cecil. + +"Perhaps." And Elisabeth smiled. + +"It is delightful to be really talking to you," exclaimed Cecil; "so +delightful that I can hardly believe it is true! I have so longed to +meet you, because--ever since I first saw your pictures--I always knew +you would understand." + +"And I knew you would understand, too, as soon as I saw The Daughters of +Philip," replied Elisabeth; and her voice was very soft. + +"I think we must have known each other in a former existence," Cecil +continued; "because I do not feel a bit as if I were being introduced to +a stranger, but as if I were meeting an old friend. I have so much to +tell you about all that has happened to me since you and I played +together in the shadow of the Sphinx, or worshipped together in the +temple at Philae; and you will be interested in it all, won't you?" + +"Of course I shall. I shall want to know how many centuries ago you +first learned what women's hearts and minds were made of, and who taught +you." + +"You taught me, dear lady, one day when we were plucking flowers +together at the foot of Olympus. Don't you remember it? You ought, as it +can't be more than two or three thousand years ago." + +"And you've never forgotten it?" + +"Never; and never shall. If I had, I shouldn't have been an artist. It +is the men who remember how they lived and loved and suffered during +their former incarnations, that paint pictures and carve statues and +sing songs; and the men who forget everything but this present world, +that make fortunes and eat dinners and govern states." + +"And what about the women?" + +"Ah! the women who forget, set their hearts upon the attainment of a +fine house and large establishment, with a husband thrown in as a +makeweight; if they succeed, the world calls them happy. While the women +who remember, wait patiently for the man who was one with them at the +beginning of the centuries, and never take any other man in his place; +if they find him, they are so happy that the world is incapable of +understanding how happy they are; and if they don't find him in this +life, they know they will in another, and they are quite content." + +"You really are very interesting," remarked Elisabeth graciously. + +"Only because you understand me; most women would think me stupid to a +degree if I talked to them in this way. But you are interesting to +everybody, even to the stupid people. Tell me about yourself. Are you +really as strong-willed and regal as the world says you are?" + +"I don't know," replied Elisabeth; "I fancy it depends a good deal upon +whom I am talking to. I find as a rule it is a good plan to let a weak +man think you are obedient, and a strong man think you are wilful, if +you want men to find you interesting." + +"And aren't you strong-minded enough to be indifferent to the fact as to +whether men find you interesting or the reverse?" + +"Oh, dear, no! I am a very old-fashioned person, and I am proud of it. +I'd even rather be an old woman than a New Woman, if I were driven to be +one or the other. I'm not a bit modern, or _fin-de-siecle_; I still +believe in God and Man, and all the other comfortable and antiquated +beliefs." + +"How nice of you! But I knew you would, though the world in general does +not give you credit for anything in the shape of warmth or tenderness; +it adores you, you know, but as a sort of glorious Snow-Queen, such as +Kay and Gerda ran after in dear Hans Andersen." + +"I am quite aware of that, and I am afraid I don't much care; though it +seems a pity to have a thing and not to get the credit for it. I +sympathize with those women who have such lovely hair that nobody +believes that it was grown on the premises; my heart is similarly +misjudged." + +"Lord Stonebridge was talking to me about you and your pictures the +other day, and he said you would be an ideal woman if only you had a +heart." + +Elisabeth shrugged her shapely shoulders. "Then you can tell him that I +think he would be an ideal man if only he had a head; but you can't +expect one person to possess all the virtues or all the organs; now can +you?" + +"I suppose not." + +"Oh! do look at that woman in white muslin and forget-me-nots, with the +kittenish manner," exclaimed Elisabeth; "I can't stand kittens of over +fifty, can you? I have made all my friends promise that if ever they see +the faintest signs of approaching kittenness in me, as I advance in +years, they will have recourse without delay to the stable-bucket, which +is the natural end of kittens." + +"Still, women should make the world think them young as long as +possible." + +"But when we are kittenish we don't make the world think we are young; +we only make it think that we think we are young, which is quite a +different thing." + +"I see," said Cecil, possessing himself of Elisabeth's fan. "Let me fan +you. I am afraid you find it rather hot here, but I doubt if we could +get a seat anywhere else if once we resigned this one." + +"We should have to be contented with the Chiltern Hundreds, I'm afraid. +Besides, I am not a bit hot; it is never too warm for me. The thing I +hate most in the world is cold; it is the one thing that makes it +impossible for me to talk, and I'm miserable when I'm not talking. I +mean to read a paper before the Royal Society some day, to prove that +the bacillus of conversation can not germinate in a temperature of less +than sixty degrees." + +"I hate being cold, too. How much alike we are!" + +"I loathe going to gorgeous parties in cold houses," continued +Elisabeth, "and having priceless dinners in fireless rooms. On such +occasions I always feel inclined to say to my hostess, as the poor do, +'Please, ma'am, may I have a coal-ticket instead of a soup-ticket, if I +mayn't have both?'" + +"You are a fine lady and I am a struggling artist, so I want you to +tell me who some of these people are," Cecil begged; "I hardly know +anybody, and I expect there is nobody here that you don't know; so +please point out to me some of the great of the earth. First, can you +tell me who that man is over there, talking to the lady in blue? He has +such a sad, kind face." + +"Oh! that is Lord Wrexham--a charming man and a bachelor. He was jilted +a long time ago by Mrs. Paul Seaton--Miss Carnaby she was then--and +people say he has never got over it. It is she that he is talking to +now." + +"How very interesting! Yes; I like his face, and I am sure he has +suffered. It is strange how women invariably behave worst to the best +men! I'm not sure that I admire her. She is very stylish and perfectly +dressed, but I don't think I should have broken my heart over her if I +had been my Lord Wrexham." + +"He was perfectly devoted to her, I believe; and she really is +attractive when you talk to her, she is so very brilliant and amusing." + +"She looks brilliant, and a little hard," was Cecil Farquhar's comment. + +"I don't think she is really hard, for she adores her husband, and +devotes all her time and all her talents to helping him politically. He +is Postmaster-General, you know; and is bound to get still higher office +some day." + +"Have they any children?" + +"No; only politics." + +"What is he like? I have never seen him." + +"He is an interesting man, and an extremely able one. I should think +that as a husband he would be too self-opinionated for my taste; but he +and his wife seem to suit each other down to the ground. Some women +like self-opinionated men." + +"I suppose they do." + +"And after all," Elisabeth went on, "if one goes in for a distinguished +husband, one must pay the price for the article. It is absurd to shoot +big game, and then expect to carry it home in a market-basket." + +"Still it annoys you when men say the same of you, and suggest that an +ordinary lump of sugar would have sweetened Antony's vinegar more +successfully than did Cleopatra's pearl. Your conversation and my art +have exhausted themselves to prove that this masculine imagination is a +delusion and a snare; yet the principle must be the same in both cases." + +"Not at all; woman's greatness is of her life a thing apart: 'tis man's +whole existence." + +"Do you think so?" asked Cecil, with that tender look of his which +expressed so much and meant so little. "You don't know how cold a man +feels when his heart is empty." + +"Paul Seaton nearly wrecked his career at the outset by writing a very +foolish and indiscreet book called Shams and Shadows; it was just a +toss-up whether he would ever get over it; but he did, and now people +have pretty nearly forgotten it," continued Elisabeth, who had never +heard the truth concerning Isabel Carnaby. + +"Who is that fat, merry woman coming in now?" + +"That is Lady Silverhampton; and the man she is laughing with is Lord +Robert Thistletown. That lovely girl on the other side of him is his +wife. Isn't she exquisite?" + +"She is indeed--a most beautiful creature. Now if Lord Wrexham had +broken his heart over her, I could have understood and almost commended +him." + +"Well, but he didn't, you see. There is nothing more remarkable than the +sort of woman that breaks men's hearts--except the sort of men that +break women's." + +"I fancy that the breakableness is in the nature of the heart itself, +and not of the iconoclast," said Cecil. + +Elisabeth looked up quickly. "Oh! I don't. I think that the person who +breaks the heart of another person must have an immense capacity for +commanding love." + +"Not at all; the person whose heart is broken has an immense capacity +for feeling love. Take your Lord Wrexham, for instance: it was not +because Miss Carnaby was strong, but because he was strong, that his +heart was broken in the encounter between them. You can see that in +their faces." + +"I don't agree with you. It was because she was more lovable than +loving--at least, as far as he was concerned--that the catastrophe +happened. A less vivid personality would have been more easily +forgotten; but if once you begin to care badly for any one with a strong +personality you're done for." + +"You are very modern, in spite of your assertion to the contrary, and +therefore very subjective. It would never occur to you to look at +anything from the objective point of view; yet at least five times out +of ten it is the correct one." + +"You mean that I am too self-willed and domineering?" laughed Elisabeth. + +"I mean that it is beside the mark to expect a reigning queen to +understand how to canvass for votes at a general election." + +"But you do think me too autocratic, don't you? You must, because +everybody does," Elisabeth persisted, with engaging candour. + +"I think you are the most charming woman I ever met in my life," replied +Cecil; and at the moment, and for at least five minutes afterward, he +really believed what he said. + +"Thank you; but you think me too fond of dominating other people, all +the same." + +"Don't say that; I could not think any evil of you, and it hurts me to +hear you even suggest that I could. But perhaps it surprises me that so +large-hearted a woman as yourself should invariably look at things from +the subjective point of view, as I am sure you do." + +"Right again, Mr. Farquhar; you really are very clever at reading +people." + +Cecil corrected her. "At reading you, you mean; you are not 'people,' if +you please. But tell me the truth: when you look at yourself from the +outside (which I know you are fond of doing, as I am fond of doing), +doesn't it surprise you to see as gifted a woman as you must know you +are, so much more prone to measure your influence upon your surroundings +than their influence upon you; and, measuring, to allow for it?" + +"Nothing that a woman does ever surprises me; and that the woman happens +to be one's self is a mere matter of detail." + +"That is a quibble, dear lady. Please answer my question." + +Elisabeth drew her eyebrows together with a puzzled expression. "I don't +think it does surprise me, because my influence on my surroundings is +greater than their influence on me. You, too, are a creator; and you +must know the almost god-like joy of making something out of nothing, +and seeing that it is good. It seems to me that when once you have +tasted that joy, you can never again doubt that you yourself are +stronger than anything outside you; and that, as the Apostle said, 'all +things are yours.'" + +"Yes; I understand that. But there is still a step further--namely, when +you become conscious that, strong as you are, there is something +stronger than yourself; and that is another person's influence upon +you." + +"I have never felt that," said Elisabeth simply. + +"Have you never known what it is to find your own individuality +swallowed up in other persons' individuality, and your own personality +merged in theirs, until--without the slightest conscious unselfishness +on your part--you cease to have a will of your own?" + +"No; and I don't want to know it. I can understand wishing to share +one's own principalities and powers with another person; but I can't +understand being willing to share another person's principalities and +powers." + +"In short," said Cecil, "you feel that you could love sufficiently to +give, but not sufficiently to receive; you would stamp your image and +superscription with pleasure upon another person's heart; but you would +allow no man to stamp his image and superscription upon yours." + +"I suppose that is so," replied Elisabeth gravely; "but I never put it +as clearly to myself as that before. Yes," she went on after a moment's +pause; "I could never care enough for any man to give up my own will to +his; I should always want to bend his to mine, and the more I liked him +the more I should want it. He could have all my powers and possessions, +and be welcome to them; but my will must always be my own; that is a +kingdom I would share with no one." + +"Ah! you are treating the question subjectively, as usual. Did it never +occur to you that you might have no say in the matter; that a man might +compel you, by force of his own charm or power or love for you, to give +up your will to his, whether you would or no?" + +Elisabeth looked him full in the face with clear, grave eyes. "No; and I +hope I may never meet such a man as long as I live. I have always been +so strong, and so proud of my strength, and so sure of myself, that I +could never forgive any one for being stronger than I, and wresting my +dominion from me." + +"Dear lady, you are a genius, and you have climbed to the summit of the +giddy pinnacle which men call success; but for all that, you are still +'an unlesson'd girl.' Believe me, the strong man armed will come some +day, and you will lower your flag and rejoice in the lowering." + +"You don't understand me, after all," said Elisabeth reproachfully. + +Cecil's smile was very pleasant. "Don't I? Yet it was I who painted The +Daughters of Philip." + +There was a moment's constrained silence; and then Elisabeth broke the +tension by saying lightly-- + +"Look! there's Lady Silverhampton coming back again. Isn't it a pity she +is so stout? I do hope I shall never be stout, for flesh is a most +difficult thing to live down." + +"You are right; there are few things in the world worse than stoutness." + +"I only know two: sin and boiled cabbage." + +"And crochet-antimacassars," added Cecil; "you're forgetting +crochet-antimacassars. I speak feelingly, because my present lodgings +are white with them; and they stick to my coat like leeches, and follow +me whithersoever I go. I am never alone from them." + +"If I were as stout as Lady Silverhampton," said Elisabeth thoughtfully, +"I should either cut myself up into building lots, or else let myself +out into market gardens: I should never go about whole; should you?" + +"Certainly not; I would rather publish myself in sections, as +dictionaries and encyclopaedias do!" + +"Lady Silverhampton presented me," remarked Elisabeth, "so I always feel +a sort of god-daughterly respect for her, which enhances the pleasure of +abusing her." + +"What does it feel like to go to Court? Does it frighten you?" + +"Oh, dear! no. It would do, I daresay, if you were in plain clothes; but +trains and feathers make fine birds--with all the manners and habits of +fine birds. Peacocks couldn't hop about in gutters, and London sparrows +couldn't strut across Kensington Gardens, however much they both desired +it. So when a woman, in addition to her ordinary best clothes, is +attended by twenty-four yards of good satin which ought to be feeding +the poor, nothing really abashes her." + +"I suppose she feels like a queen." + +"Well, to tell the truth, with her train over her arm and her tulle +lappets hanging down her back, she feels like a widow carrying a +waterproof; but she thinks she looks like a duchess, and that is a very +supporting thought." + +"Tell me, who is that beautiful woman with the tall soldierly man, +coming in now?" said Farquhar. + +"Oh! those are the Le Mesuriers of Greystone; isn't she divine? And she +has the two loveliest little boys you ever saw or imagined. I'm longing +to paint them." + +"She is strikingly handsome." + +"There is a very strange story about her and her twin sister, which I'll +tell you some day." + +"You shall; but you must tell me all about yourself first, and how you +have come to know so much and learn so little." + +Elisabeth looked round at him quickly. "What do you mean?" + +"I mean that the depth of your intuition is only surpassed by the +shallowness of your experience." + +"You are very rude!" And Elisabeth drew up her head rather haughtily. + +"Forgive me; I didn't mean to be; but I was overcome by the wonder of +how complex you are--how wise on the one side, and how foolish upon the +other; but experience is merely human and very attainable, while +intuition is divine and given to few. And I was overcome by another +thought; may I tell you what that was?" + +"Yes; of course you may." + +"You won't be angry?" + +"No." + +"You will remember how we played together as children round the temple +of Philae, and let my prehistoric memories of you be my excuse?" + +"Yes." + +"I was overcome by the thought of how glorious it would be to teach you +all the things you don't know, and how delightful it would be to see +you learn them." + +"Let us go into the next room," said Elisabeth, rising from her seat; "I +see Lady Silverhampton nodding to me, and I must go and speak to her." + +Cecil Farquhar bent his six-foot-one down to her five-foot-five. "Are +you angry with me?" he whispered. + +"I don't know; I think I am." + +"But you will let me come and see you, so that you may forgive me, won't +you?" + +"You don't deserve it." + +"Of course I don't; I shouldn't want it if I did. The things we deserve +are as unpleasant as our doctor's prescriptions. Please let me +come--because we knew each other all those centuries ago, and I haven't +forgotten you." + +"Very well, then. You'll find my address in the Red Book, and I'm always +at home on Sunday afternoons." + +As Elisabeth was whirled away into a vortex of gay and well-dressed +people, Farquhar watched her for a moment. "She is an attractive woman," +he said to himself, "though she is not as good-looking as I expected. +But there's charm about her, and breeding; and they say she has an +enormous fortune. She is certainly worth cultivating." + +Farquhar cultivated the distinguished Miss Farringdon assiduously, and +the friendship between them grew apace. Each had a certain attraction +for the other; and, in addition, they enjoyed that wonderful freemasonry +which exists among all followers of the same craft, and welds these +together in a bond almost as strong as the bond of relationship. The +artist in Farquhar was of far finer fibre than the man, as is sometimes +the case with complex natures; so that one side of him gave expression +to thoughts which the other side of him was incapable of comprehending. +He did not consciously pretend that he was better than he was, and he +really believed the truths which he preached; but when the gods serve +their nectar in earthen vessels, the vessels are apt to get more credit +than they deserve, and the gods less. + +To Elisabeth, Cecil was extremely interesting; and she +understood--better than most women would have done--the difference +between himself and his art, and how the one must not be measured by the +other. The artist attracted her greatly; she had so much sympathy with +his ways of looking at life and of interpreting truth; as for the man, +she had as yet come to no definite conclusion in her mind concerning +him; it was not easy for mankind to fascinate Elisabeth Farringdon. + +"I have come to see my mother-confessor," he said to her one Sunday +afternoon, when he dropped in to find her alone, Grace Cobham having +gone out to tea. "I have been behaving horribly all the week, and I want +you to absolve me and help me to be better and nicer." + +Elisabeth was the last woman to despise flattery of this sort; an appeal +for help of any kind never found her indifferent. + +"What have you been doing?" she asked gently. + +"It isn't so much what I have been doing as what I have been feeling. I +found myself actually liking Lady Silverhampton, simply because she is a +countess; and I was positively rude to a man I know, called Edgar Ford, +because he lives at the East End and dresses badly. What a falling-off +since the days when you and I worshipped the gods together at Philae, +and before money and rank and railways and bicycles came into fashion! +Help me to be as I was then, dear friend." + +"How can I?" + +"By simply being yourself and letting me watch you. I always feel good +and ideal and unworldly when I am near you. Don't you know how dreadful +it is to wish to do one thing and to want to do another, and to be torn +asunder between the two?" + +Elisabeth shook her head. "No; I have never felt like that. I can +understand wanting to do different things at different times of one's +life, but I can not comprehend how one person can want to do two +opposing things at the same time." + +"Oh! I can. I can imagine doing a thing, and despising one's self at the +time for doing it, and yet not being able to help doing it." + +"I have heard other people say that, and I can't understand it." + +"Yet you are so complex; I should have thought you would," said +Farquhar. + +"Yes, I am complex; but not at the same moment. I have two distinct +natures, but the two are never on the stage at once. I don't in the +least know what St. Paul meant when he said that the evil he would not +that he did. I can quite understand doing the evil on Tuesday morning +that I would not on Monday afternoon; but I could never do anything and +disapprove of it at the same minute." + +"That is because you are so good--and so cold." + +"Am I?" + +"Yes, dear Miss Farringdon; and so amiable. You never do things in a +temper." + +"But I do; I really have got a temper of my own, though nowadays people +seem to find difficulty in believing it. I have frequently done things +in a temper before now; but as long as the temper lasts I am pleased +that I have done them, and feel that I do well to be angry. When the +temper is over, I sometimes think differently; but not till then. As I +have told you before, my will is so strong that it and I are never at +loggerheads with each other; it always rules me completely." + +Farquhar sighed. "I wish I were as strong as you are; but I am not. And +do you mean to tell me that there is no worldly side to you, either; no +side that hankers after fleshpots, even while the artist within you is +being fed with manna from heaven?" + +"No; I don't think there is," Elisabeth replied slowly. "I really do not +like people any the better for having money and titles and things like +that, and it is no use pretending that I do." + +"I do. I wish I didn't, but I can't help it. It is only you who can help +me to look at life from the ideal point of view--you whose feet are +still wet with the dew of Olympus, and in whom the Greek spirit is as +fresh as it was three thousand years ago." + +"Oh! I'm not as perfect as all that; far from it! I don't despise people +for not having rank or wealth, since rank and wealth don't happen to be +the things that interest me. But there are things that do interest +me--genius and wit and culture and charm, for instance--and I am quite +as hard on the people who lack these gifts, as ever you are on the +impecunious nobodies. I confess I am often ashamed of myself when I +realize how frightfully I look down upon stupid men and dull women, and +how utterly indifferent I am as to what becomes of them. So I really am +as great a snob as you are, though I wear my snobbery--like my rue--with +a difference." + +"Not a snob, dear lady--never a snob! There never existed a woman with +less snobbery in her composition than you have. That you are impatient +of the dull and unattractive, I admit; but so you ought to be--your own +wit and charm give you the right to despise them." + +"But they don't; that's where you make a mistake. It is as unjust to +look down on a man for not making a joke as for not making a fortune. +Though it isn't so much the people who don't make jokes that irritate +me, as the people who make poor ones. Don't you know the sort?--would-be +wits who quote a remark out of a bound Punch, and think they have been +brilliant; and who tell an anecdote crusted with antiquity, which men +learned at their mother's knees, and say that it actually happened to a +friend of theirs the week before last." + +"Oh! they are indeed terrible," agreed Cecil; "they dabble in inverted +commas as Italians dabble in garlic." + +"I never know whether to laugh at their laboured jokes or not. Of +course, it is pretty manners to do so, be the wit never so stale; but on +the other hand it encourages them in their evil habits, and seems to me +as doubtful a form of hospitality as offering a brandy-and-soda to a +confirmed drunkard." + +"Dear friend, let us never try to be funny!" + +"Amen! And, above all things, let us flee from humorous recitations," +added Elisabeth. "There are few things in the world more heart-rending +than a humorous recitation--with action. As for me, it unmans me +completely, and I quietly weep in a remote corner of the room until the +carriage comes to take me home. Therefore, I avoid such; as no woman's +eyelashes will stand a long course of humorous recitation without being +the worse for wear." + +"It seems to me after all," Cecil remarked, "that the evil that you +would not, that you do, like St. Paul and myself and sundry others, if +you despise stupid people, and know that you oughtn't to despise them, +at the same time." + +"I know I oughtn't to despise them, but I never said I didn't want to +despise them--that's just the difference. As a matter of fact, I enjoy +despising them; that is where I am really so horrid. I hide it from +them, because I hate hurting people's feelings; and I say 'How very +interesting!' out of sheer good manners when they talk to me +respectively about their cooks if they are women, and their digestions +if they are men; but all the time I am inwardly lifting up my eyes, and +patting myself on the back, and thanking heaven that I am not as they +are, and generally out-Phariseeing the veriest Pharisee that ever +breathed." + +"It is wonderful how the word 'cook' will wake into animation the most +phlegmatic of women!" + +"If they are married," added Elisabeth; "not unless. I often think when +I go up into the drawing-room at a dinner-party, I will just say the +word 'cook' to find out which of the women are married and which single. +I'm certain I should know at once, from the expression the magic word +brought to their respective faces. It is only when you have a husband +that you regard the cook as the ruling power in life for good or evil." + +There was a pause while the footman brought in tea and Elisabeth poured +it out; then Farquhar said suddenly-- + +"I feel a different man from the one that rang at your door-bell some +twenty minutes ago. The worldliness has slipped from me like a cast-off +shell; now I experience a democratic indifference to my Lady +Silverhampton, and a brotherly affection for Mr. Edgar Ford. And this is +all your doing!" + +"I don't see how that can be," laughed Elisabeth; "seeing that Lady +Silverhampton is a friend of mine, and I have never heard of Mr. Edgar +Ford." + +"But it is; it is your own unconscious influence upon me. Miss +Farringdon, you don't know what you have been and what you are to me! It +is only since I knew you that I have realized how little all outer +things really matter, and how much inner ones do; and how it is a +question of no moment who a man is, compared with what a man is. And you +will go on teaching me, won't you, and letting me sit at your feet, +until the man in me is always what now the artist in me is sometimes?" + +"I shall like to help you if I can; I am always longing to help people, +and yet so few people ever seem to want my help." And Elisabeth's eyes +grew sad. + +"I want it--more than I want anything in the world," replied Cecil; and +he really meant it, for the artist in him was uppermost just then. + +"Then you shall have it." + +"Thank you--thank you more than I can ever say." + +After a moment's silence Elisabeth asked-- + +"Are you going to Lady Silverhampton's picnic on the river to-morrow?" + +"Yes; I accepted because I thought I should be sure to meet you," +replied Cecil, who would have accepted the invitation of a countess if +it had been to meet his bitterest foe. + +"Then your forethought will be rewarded, for I am going, too," Elisabeth +said. + +And then other callers were shown in, and the conversation was brought +to an abrupt conclusion; but it left behind it a pleasant taste in the +minds of both the principals. + + + + +CHAPTER XIV + +ON THE RIVER + + For many a frivolous, festive year + I followed the path that I felt I must; + I failed to discover the road was drear, + And rather than otherwise liked the dust. + It led through a land that I knew of old, + Frequented by friendly, familiar folk, + Who bowed before Mammon, and heaped up gold, + And lived like their neighbours, and loved their joke. + + +It was a lovely summer's day when Lady Silverhampton collected her +forces at Paddingdon, conveyed them by rail as far as Reading, and then +transported them from the train to her steam-launch on the river. The +party consisted of Lady Silverhampton herself, Lord and Lady Robert +Thistletown, Lord Stonebridge, Sir Wilfred Madderley (President of the +Royal Academy), Cecil Farquhar, and Elisabeth. + +"I'm afraid you'll be frightfully crowded," said the hostess, as they +packed themselves into the dainty little launch; "but it can't be +helped. I tried to charter a P. and O. steamer for the day; but they +were all engaged, like cabs on the night of a county ball, don't you +know? And then I tried to leave somebody out so as to make the party +smaller, but there wasn't one of you that could have been spared, +except Silverhampton; so I left him at home, and decided to let the rest +of you be squeezed yet happy." + +"How dear of you!" exclaimed Lord Robert; "and I'll repay your kindness +by writing a book called How to be Happy though Squeezed." + +"The word _though_ appears redundant in that connection," Sir Wilfred +Madderley remarked. + +"Ah! that's because you aren't what is called 'a lady's man,'" Lord +Robert sighed. "I always was, especially before my unfortunate--oh! I +beg your pardon, Violet, I forgot you were here; I mean, of course, my +fortunate--marriage. I was always the sort of man that makes girls +timidly clinging when they are sitting on a sofa beside you, and +short-sighted when you are playing their accompaniments for them. I +remember once a girl sat so awfully close to me on a sofa in +mid-drawing-room, that I felt there wasn't really room for both of us; +so--like the true hero that I am--I shouted 'Save the women and +children,' and flung myself upon the tender mercies of the carpet, till +I finally struggled to the fireplace." + +"How silly you are, Bobby!" exclaimed his wife. + +"Yes, darling; I know. I've always known it; but the world didn't find +it out till I married you. Till then I was in hopes that the secret +would die with me; but after that it was fruitless to attempt to conceal +the fact any longer." + +"We're all going to be silly to-day," said the hostess; "that's part of +the treat." + +"It won't be much of a treat to some of us," Lord Robert retorted. "I +remember when I was a little chap going to have tea at the Mershire's; +and when I wanted to gather some of their most ripping orchids, Lady M. +said I might go into the garden and pick mignonette instead. 'Thank +you,' I replied in my most dignified manner, 'I can pick mignonette at +home; that's no change to me!' Now, that's the way with everything; it's +no change to some people to pick mignonette." + +"Or to some to pick orchids," added Lord Stonebridge. + +"Or to some to pick oakum." And Lord Bobby sighed again. + +"Even Elisabeth isn't going to be clever to-day," continued Lady +Silverhampton. "She promised me she wouldn't; didn't you, Elisabeth?" + +Every one looked admiringly at the subject of this remark. Elisabeth +Farringdon was the fashion just then. + +"She couldn't help being clever, however hard she tried," said the +President. + +"Couldn't I, though? Just you wait and see." + +"If you succeed in not saying one clever thing during the whole of this +picnic affair," Lord Bobby exclaimed, "I'll give you my photograph as a +reward. I've got a new one, taken sideways, which is perfectly sweet. It +has a profile like a Greek god--those really fine and antique statues, +don't you know? whose noses have been wiped out by the ages. The British +Museum teems with them, poor devils!" + +"Thank you," said Elisabeth. "I shall prize it as an incontrovertible +testimony to the fact that neither my tongue nor your nose are as sharp +as tradition reports them to be." + +Lord Bobby shook his finger warningly. "Be careful, be careful, or +you'll never get that photograph. Remember that every word you say will +be used against you, as the police are always warning me." + +"I'm a little tired to-day," Lady Silverhampton said. "I was taken in to +dinner by an intelligent man last night." + +"Then how came he to do it?" Lord Robert wondered. + +"Don't be rude, Bobby: it doesn't suit your style; and, besides, how +could he help it?" + +"Well enough. Whenever I go out to dinner I always say in an aside to my +host, 'Not Lady Silverhampton; anything but that.' And the consequence +is I never do go in to dinner with you. It isn't disagreeableness on my +part; if I could I'd do it for your sake, and put my own inclination on +one side; but I simply can't bear the intellectual strain. It's a marvel +to me how poor Silverhampton stands it as well as he does." + +"He is never exposed to it. You don't suppose I waste my own jokes on my +own husband, do you? They are far too good for home consumption, like +fish at the seaside. When fish has been up to London and returned, it is +then sold at the place where it was caught. And that's the way with my +jokes; when they have been all round London and come home to roost, I +serve them up to Silverhampton as quite fresh." + +"And he believes in their freshness? How sweet and confiding of him!" + +"He never listens to them, so it is all the same to him whether they're +fresh or not. That is why I confide so absolutely in Silverhampton; he +never listens to a word I say, and never has done." + +Lord Stonebridge amended this remark. "Except when you accepted him." + +"Certainly not; because, as a matter of fact, I refused him; but he +never listened, and so he married me. It is so restful to have a +husband who never attends to what you say! It must be dreadfully wearing +to have one who does, because then you'd never be able to tell him the +truth. And the great charm of your having a home of your own appears to +be that it is the one place where you can speak the truth." + +Lord Bobby clapped his hands. "Whatever lies disturb the street, there +must be truth at home," he ejaculated. + +"Wiser not, even there," murmured Sir Wilfred Madderley, under his +breath. + +"But you have all interrupted me, and haven't listened to what I was +telling you about my intelligent man; and if you eat my food you must +listen to my stones--it's only fair." + +"But if even your own husband doesn't think it necessary to listen to +them," Lord Bobby objected, "why should we, who have never desired to be +anything more than sisters to you?" + +"Because he doesn't eat my food--I eat his; that makes all the +difference, don't you see?" + +"Then do you listen to his stories?" + +"To every one of them every time they are told; and I know to an inch +the exact place where to laugh. But I'm going on about my man. He was +one of those instructive boring people, who will tell you the reason of +things; and he explained to me that soldiers wear khaki and polar bears +white, because if you are dressed in the same colour as the place where +you are, it looks as if you weren't there. And it has since occurred to +me that I should be a much wiser and happier woman if I always dressed +myself in the same colour as my drawing-room furniture. Then nobody +would be able to find me even in my own house. Don't you think it is +rather a neat idea?" And her ladyship looked round for the applause +which she had learned to expect as her right. + +"You are a marvellous woman!" cried Lord Stonebridge, while the others +murmured their approval. + +"I need never say 'Not at home'; callers would just come in and look +round the drawing-room and go out again, without ever seeing that I was +there at all. It really would be sweet!" + +"It seems to me to be a theory which might be adapted with benefit to +all sorts and conditions of men," said Elisabeth; "I think I shall take +out a patent for designing invisible costumes for every possible +occasion. I feel I could do it, and do it well." + +"It is adopted to a great extent even now," Sir Wilfred remarked; "I +believe that our generals wear scarlet so that they may not always be +distinguishable from the red-tape of the War Office." + +"And one must not forget," added Lord Bobby thoughtfully, "that the +benches of the House of Commons are green." + +"Now in church, of course, it would be just the other way," said Lady +Silverhampton; "I should line my pew with the same stuff as my Sunday +gown, so as to look as if I was there when I wasn't." + +Lord Stonebridge began to argue. "But that wouldn't be the other way; it +would be the same thing." + +"How stupid and accurate you are, Stonebridge! If our pew were lined +with gray chiffon like my Sunday frock, it couldn't be the same as if my +Sunday frock was made of crimson carpet like our pew. How can things +that are exactly opposite be the same? You can't prove that they are, +except by algebra; and as nobody here knows any algebra, you can't prove +it at all." + +"Yes; I can. If I say you are like a person, it is the same thing as +saying that that person is like you." + +"Not at all. If you said that I was like Connie Esdaile, I should +embrace you before the assembled company; and if you said she was like +me, she'd never forgive you as long as she lived. It is through +reasoning out things in this way that men make such idiotic mistakes." + +"Isn't it funny," Elisabeth remarked, "that if you reason a thing out +you're always wrong, and if you never reason about it at all you're +always right?" + +"Ah! but that is because you are a genius," murmured Cecil Farquhar. + +Lady Silverhampton contradicted him. "Not at all; it's because she is a +woman." + +"Well, I'd rather be a woman than a genius any day," said Elisabeth; "it +takes less keeping up." + +"You are both," said Cecil. + +"And I'm neither," added Lord Bobby; "so what's the state of the odds?" + +"Let's invent more invisible costumes," cried Lady Silverhampton; "they +interest me. Suggest another one, Elisabeth." + +"I should design a special one for lovers in the country. Don't you know +how you are always coming upon lovers in country lanes, and how hard +they try to look as if they weren't there, and how badly they succeed? I +should dress them entirely in green, faintly relieved by brown; and then +they'd look as if they were only part of the hedges and stiles." + +"How the lovers of the future will bless you!" exclaimed Lord Bobby. "I +only regret that my love-making days are over before your patent +costumes come out. I remember Sir Richard Esdaile once coming upon +Violet and me when we were spooning in the shrubbery at Esdaile Court, +and we tried in vain to efface ourselves and become as part of the +scenery. You see, it is so difficult to look exactly like two laurel +bushes, when one of you is dressed in pink muslin and the other in white +flannel." + +Lady Robert blushed becomingly. "Oh, Bobby, it wasn't pink muslin that +day; it was blue cambric." + +"That doesn't matter. There are as many laurel bushes made out of pink +muslin as out of blue cambric, when you come to that. The difficulty of +identifying one's self with one's environment (that's the correct +expression, my dear) would be the same in either costume; but Miss +Farringdon is now going, once for all, to remove that difficulty." + +"I came upon two young people in a lane not long ago," said Elisabeth, +"and the minute they saw me they began to walk in the ditches, one on +one side of the road and one on the other. Now if only they had worn my +costumes, such a damp and uncomfortable mode of going about the country +would have been unnecessary; besides, it was absurd in any case. If you +were walking with your mother-in-law you wouldn't walk as far apart as +that; you wouldn't be able to hear a word she said." + +"Ah! my dear young friend, that wouldn't matter," Lord Bobby interposed, +"nor in any way interfere with the pleasure of the walk. Really nice men +never make a fuss about little things like that. If only their +mothers-in-law are kind enough to go out walking with them, they don't +a bit mind how far off they walk. It is in questions such as this that +men are really so much more unselfish than women; because the +mothers-in-law do mind--they like us to be near enough to hear what they +say." + +"Green frocks would be very nice for the girls, especially if they were +fair," said Lady Robert thoughtfully; "but I think the men would look +rather queer in green, don't you? As if they were actors." + +"I'm afraid they would look a bit dissipated," Elisabeth assented; "like +almonds-and-raisins by daylight. By the way, I know nothing that looks +more dissipated than almonds-and-raisins by daylight." + +"Except, perhaps, one coffee-cup in the drawing-room the morning after a +dinner party," suggested Farquhar. + +Elisabeth demurred. "No; the coffee-cup is sad rather than sinful. It is +as much part and parcel of a bygone time, as the Coliseum or the ruins +of Pompeii; and the respectability of the survival of the fittest is its +own. But almonds-and-raisins are different; to a certain class of +society they represent the embodiment of refinement and luxury and +self-indulgence." + +Sir Wilfred Madderley laughed softly to himself. "I know exactly what +you mean." + +"Well, I don't agree with Miss Farringdon," Lord Bobby argued; "to my +mind almonds-and-raisins are an emblem of respectability and moral +worth, like chiffonniers and family albums and British matrons. No +really bad man would feel at home with almonds-and-raisins, I'm certain; +but I'd appoint as my trustee any man who could really enjoy them on a +Sunday afternoon. Now take Kesterton, for instance; he's the type of man +who would really appreciate them. My impression is that when his life +comes to be written, it will be found that he took almonds-and-raisins +in secret, as some men take absinthe and others opium." + +"It is scandalous to reveal the secrets of the great in this manner," +said Elisabeth, "and to lower our ideals of them!" + +"Forgive me; but still you must always have faintly suspected Kesterton +of respectability, even when you admired him most. All great men have +their weaknesses; mine is melancholy and Lord K.'s respectability, and +Shakespeare's was something quite as bad, but I can't recall just now +what it was." + +"And what is Lady K.'s?" asked the hostess. + +"Belief in Kesterton, of course, which she carries to the verge of +credulity, not to say superstition. Would you credit it? When he was at +the Exchequer she believed in his Budgets; and when he was at the War +Office she believed in his Intelligence Department; and now he is in the +Lords she believes in his pedigree, culled fresh from the Herald's +Office. Can faith go further?" + +"'A perfect woman nobly planned,'" murmured Elisabeth. + +"Precisely," continued Bobby, + + "To rule the man who rules the land, + But yet a spirit still, and damp + With something from a spirit-lamp-- + +or however the thing goes. I don't always quote quite accurately, you +will perceive! I generally improve." + +"I'm not sure that Lady Kesterton does believe in the pedigree," and +Elisabeth looked wise; "because she once went out of her way to assure +me that she did." + +Lord Bobby groaned. "I beseech you to be careful, Miss Farringdon; +you'll never get that photograph if you keep forgetting yourself like +this!" + +Elisabeth continued-- + +"If I were a man I should belong to the Herald's Office. It would be +such fun to be called a 'Red Bonnet' or a 'Green Griffin,' or some other +nice fairy-tale-ish name; and to make it one's business to unite divided +families, and to restore to deserving persons their long-lost +great-great-grandparents. Think of the unselfish joy one would feel in +saying to a worthy grocer, 'Here is your great-great-grandmother; take +her and be happy!' Or to a successful milliner, 'I have found your +mislaid grandfather; be a mother to him for the rest of your life!' It +would give one the most delicious, fairy-godmotherly sort of +satisfaction!" + +"It would," Sir Wilfred agreed. "One would feel one's self a +philanthropist of the finest water." + +"Thinking about almonds-and-raisins has made me feel hungry," exclaimed +Lady Silverhampton. "Let us have lunch! And while the servants are +laying the table, we had better get out of the boat and have a stroll. +It would be more amusing." + +So the party wandered about for a while in couples through fields +bespangled with buttercups; and it happened--not unnaturally--that Cecil +and Elisabeth found themselves together. + +"You are very quiet to-day," she said; "how is that? You are generally +such a chatty person, but to-day you out-silence the Sphinx." + +"You know the reason." + +"No; I don't. To my mind there is no reason on earth strong enough to +account for voluntary silence. So tell me." + +"I am silent because I want to talk to you; and if I can't do that, I +don't want to talk at all. But among all these grand people you seem so +far away from me. Yesterday we were such close friends; but to-day I +stretch out groping hands, and try in vain to touch you. Do you never +dream that you seek for people for a long time and find them at last; +and then, when you find them, you can not get near to them? Well, I feel +just like that to-day with you." + +Elisabeth was silent for a moment; her thoughts were far away from +Cecil. "Yes, I know that dream well," she said slowly, "I have often had +it; but I never knew that anybody had ever had it except me." And +suddenly there came over her the memory of how, long years ago, she used +to dream that dream nearly every night. It was at the time when she was +first estranged from Christopher, and when the wound of his apparent +indifference to her was still fresh. Over and over again she used to +dream that she and Christopher were once more the friends that they had +been, but with an added tenderness that their actual intercourse had +never known. Which of us has not experienced that strange +dream-tenderness--often for the most unlikely people--which hangs about +us for days after the dream has vanished, and invests the objects of it +with an interest which their living presence never aroused? In that old +dream of Elisabeth's her affection for Christopher was so great that +when he went away she followed after him, and sought him for a long time +in vain; and when at last she found him he was no longer the same +Christopher that he used to be, but there was an impassable barrier +between them which she fruitlessly struggled to break through. The agony +of the fruitless struggle always awakened her, so that she never knew +what the end of the dream was going to be. + +It was years since Elisabeth had dreamed this dream--years since she had +even remembered it--but Cecil's remark brought it all back to her, as +the scent of certain flowers brings back the memory of half-forgotten +summer days; and once again she felt herself drawn to him by that bond +of similarity which was so strong between them, and which is the most +powerfully attractive force in the world--except, perhaps, the +attractive force of contrast. It is the people who are the most like, +and the most unlike, ourselves, that we love the best; to the others we +are more or less indifferent. + +"I think you are the most sympathetic person I ever met," she added. +"You have what the Psalmist would call 'an understanding heart.'" + +"I think it is only you whom I understand, Miss Farringdon; and that +only because you and I are so much alike." + +"I should have thought you would have understood everybody, you have +such quick perceptions and such keen sympathies." Elisabeth, for all her +cleverness, had yet to learn to differentiate between the understanding +heart and the understanding head. There is but little real similarity +between the physician who makes an accurate diagnosis of one's +condition, and the friend who suffers from the identical disease. + +"No; I don't understand everybody. I don't understand all these fine +people whom we are with to-day, for instance. They seem to me so utterly +worldly and frivolous and irresponsible, that I haven't patience with +them. I daresay they look down upon me for not having blood, and I know +I look down upon them for not having brains." + +Elisabeth's eyes twinkled in spite of herself. She remembered how +completely Cecil had been out of it in the conversation on the launch; +and she wondered whether the King of Nineveh had ever invited Jonah to +the state banquets. She inclined to the belief that he had not. + +"But they have brains," was all she said. + +Cecil was undeniably cross. "They talk a lot of nonsense," he retorted +pettishly. + +"Exactly. People without brains never talk nonsense; that is just where +the difference comes in. If a man talks clever nonsense to me, I know +that man isn't a fool; it is a sure test." + +"There is nonsense and nonsense." + +"And there are fools and fools." Elisabeth spoke severely; she was +always merciless upon anything in the shape of humbug or snobbery. Maria +Farringdon's training had not been thrown away. + +"I despise mere frivolity," said Cecil loftily. + +"My dear Mr. Farquhar, there is a time for everything; and if you think +that a lunch-party on the river in the middle of the season is a +suitable occasion for discussing Lord Stonebridge's pecuniary +difficulties, or solving Lady Silverhampton's religious doubts, I can +only say that I don't." Elisabeth was irritated; she knew that Cecil was +annoyed with her friends not because they could talk smart nonsense, but +because he could not. + +"Still, you can not deny that the upper classes are frivolous," Cecil +persisted. + +"But I do deny it. I don't think that they are a bit more frivolous than +any other class, but I think they are a good deal more plucky. Each +class has its own particular virtue, and the distinguishing one of the +aristocracy seems to me to be pluck; therefore they make light of things +which other classes of society would take seriously. It isn't that they +don't feel their own sorrows and sicknesses, but they won't allow other +people to feel them; which is, after all, only a form of good manners." + +But Cecil was still rather sulky. "I belong to the middle class and I am +proud of it." + +"So do I; but identifying one's self with one class doesn't consist in +abusing all the others, any more than identifying one's self with one +church consists in abusing all the others--though some people seem to +think it does." + +"These grand people may entertain you and be pleasant to you in their +way, I don't deny; but they don't regard you as one of themselves unless +you are one," persisted Cecil, with all the bitterness of a small +nature. + +Elisabeth smiled with all the sweetness of a large one. "And why should +they? Sir Wilfred and you and I are pleasant enough to them in our own +way, but we don't regard any of them as one of ourselves unless he is +one. They don't show it, and we don't show it: we are all too +well-mannered; but we can not help knowing that they are not artists any +more than they can help knowing that we are not aristocrats. Being +conscious that certain people lack certain qualities which one happens +to possess, is not the same thing as despising those people; and I +always think it as absurd as it is customary to describe one's +consciousness of one's own qualifications as self-respect, and other +people's consciousness of theirs as pride and vanity." + +"Then aren't you ever afraid of being looked down upon?" asked Cecil, to +whom any sense of social inferiority was as gall and wormwood. + +Elisabeth gazed at him in amazement. "Good gracious, no! Such an idea +never entered into my head. I don't look down upon other people for +lacking my special gifts, so why should they look down upon me for +lacking theirs? Of course they would look down upon me and make fun of +me if I pretended to be one of them, and I should richly deserve it; +just as we look down upon and make fun of Philistines who cover their +walls with paper fans and then pretend that they are artists. Pretence +is always vulgar and always ridiculous; but I know of nothing else that +is either." + +"How splendid you are!" exclaimed Cecil, to whose artistic sense +fineness of any kind always appealed, even if it was too high for him to +attain to it. "Therefore you will not despise me for being so inferior +to you--you will only help me to grow more like you, won't you?" + +And because Cecil possessed the indefinable gift which the world calls +charm, Elisabeth straightway overlooked his shortcomings, and set +herself to assist him in correcting them. Perhaps there are few things +in life more unfair than the certain triumph of these individuals who +have the knack of gaining the affection of their fellows; or more +pathetic than the ultimate failure of those who lack this special +attribute. The race may not be to the swift, nor the battle to the +strong; but both race and battle are, nine times out of ten, to the man +or the woman who has mastered the art of first compelling devotion and +then retaining it. It was the possession of this gift on the part of +King David, that made men go in jeopardy of their lives in order to +satisfy his slightest whim; and it was because the prophet Elijah was a +solitary soul, commanding the fear rather than the love of men, that +after his great triumph he fled into the wilderness and requested for +himself that he might die. Nevertheless, it must not be forgotten that +to this lonely prophet it was granted to see visions of angels and to +hear the still small Voice; and that, therefore, there are abundant +compensations for those men and women who have not the knack of hearing +and speaking the glib interchanges of affection, current among their +more attractive fellows. There is infinite pathos in the thought of +these solitary souls, yearning to hear and to speak words of loving +greeting, and yet shut out--by some accident of mind or manner--from +doing either the one or the other; but when their turn comes to see +visions of angels and to hear the still small Voice, men need not pity +them overmuch. When once we have seen Him as He is, it will matter but +little to us whether we stood alone upon the mountain in the wind and +the earthquake and the fire, while the Lord passed by; or whether He +drew near and walked with us as we trod the busy ways of life, and was +known of us, as we sat at meat, in breaking of bread. + +As Elisabeth looked at him with eyes full of sympathy, Cecil continued-- + +"I have had such a hard life, with no one to care for me; and the +hardness of my lot has marred my character, and--through that--my art." + +"Tell me about your life," Elisabeth said softly. "I seem to know so +little of you and yet to know you so well." + +"You shall read what back-numbers I have, but most of them have been +lost, so that I have not read them myself. I really don't know who I +am, as my father died when I was a baby, and my poor mother followed him +in a few months, never having recovered from the shock of his death. I +was born in Australia, at Broken Hill, and was an only child. As far as +I can make out, my parents had no relations; or, if they had, they had +quarrelled with them all. They were very poor; and when they died, +leaving one wretched little brat behind them, some kind friends adopted +the poor beggar and carried him off to a sheep-farm, where they brought +him up among their own children." + +"Poor little lonely boy!" + +"I was lonely--more lonely than you can imagine; for, kind as they were +to me, I was naturally not as dear to them as their own children. I was +an outsider; I have always been an outsider; so, perhaps, there is some +excuse for that intense soreness on my part which you so much deprecate +whenever this fact is once more brought home to me." + +"I am sorry that I was so hard on you," said Elisabeth, in a very +penitent voice; "but it is one of my worst faults that I am always being +too hard on people. Will you forgive me?" + +"Of course I will." And Elisabeth--also possessing charm--earned +forgiveness as quickly as she had accorded it. + +"Please tell me more," she pleaded. + +"The other children were such a loud, noisy, happy-go-lucky pack, that +they completely overpowered a delicate, sensitive boy. Moreover, I +detested the life there--the roughness and unrefinement of it all." And +Cecil's eyes filled with tears at the mere remembrance of his childish +miseries. + +"Did you stay with them till you grew up?" + +"Yes; I was educated--after a fashion--with their own sons. But at last +a red-letter day dawned for me. An English artist came to stay at the +sheep-farm, and discovered that I also was among the prophets. He was a +bachelor, and he took an uncommon fancy to me; it ended in his adopting +me and bringing me to England, and making of me an artist like himself." + +"Another point of similarity between us!" Elisabeth cried; "my parents +died when I was a baby, and I also was adopted." + +"I am so glad; all the sting seems to be taken out of things if I feel I +share them with you." + +"Then where is your adopted father now?" + +"He died when I was five-and-twenty, Miss Farringdon; and left me barely +enough to keep me from abject poverty, should I not be able to make a +living by my brush." + +"And you have never learned anything more about your parents?" + +"Never; and now I expect I never shall. The friends who brought me up +told me that they believed my father came from England, and had been +connected with some business over here; but what the business was they +did not know, nor why he left it. It is almost impossible to find out +anything more, after this long lapse of time; it is over thirty years +now since my parents died. And, besides, I very much doubt whether +Farquhar was their real name at all." + +"What makes you think that?" + +"Because the name was carefully erased from the few possessions my poor +father left behind him. So now I have let the matter drop," added Cecil, +with a bitter laugh, "as it is sometimes a mistake to look up +back-numbers in the colonies; they are not invariably pleasant reading." + +Here conversation was interrupted by Lady Silverhampton's voice calling +her friends to lunch; and Cecil and Elisabeth had to join the others. + +"If any of you are tired of life," said her ladyship, as they sat down, +"I wish you'd try some of this lobster mayonnaise that my new cook has +made, and report on it. To me it looks the most promising prescription +for death by torture." + + "O bid me die, and I will dare + E'en mayonnaise for thee," + +exclaimed Lord Bobby, manfully helping himself. + +And then the talk flowed on as pleasantly and easily as the river, until +it was time to land again and return to town. But for the rest of the +day, and for many a day afterward, a certain uncomfortable suspicion +haunted Elisabeth, which she could not put away from her, try as she +would; a suspicion that, after all, her throne was not as firmly fixed +as she had hoped and had learned to believe. + + + + +CHAPTER XV + +LITTLE WILLIE + + He that beginneth may not end, + And he that breaketh can not mend. + + +The summer which brought fame to Elisabeth, brought something better +than fame to Willie Tremaine. All through the winter the child had grown +visibly feebler and frailer, and the warmer weather seemed to bring +additional weakness rather than strength. In vain did Alan try to +persuade himself that Willie was no worse this year than he had been +other years, and that he soon would be all right again. As a matter of +fact, he soon was all right again; but not in the way which his father +meant. + +Caleb Bateson's wisdom had been justified. Through his passionate love +for little Willie, Alan had drawn near to the kingdom of God; not as yet +to the extent of formulating any specific creed or attaching himself to +any special church--that was to come later; but he had learned, by the +mystery of his own fatherhood, to stretch out groping hands toward the +great Fatherhood that had called him into being; and by his own love for +his suffering child to know something of the Love that passeth +knowledge. Therefore Alan Tremaine was a better and wiser man than he +had been in times past. A strong friendship had gradually grown up +between himself and Christopher Thornley; and it was a friendship which +was good for both of them. Though Christopher never talked about his +religious beliefs, he lived them; and it is living epistles such as this +which are best known and read of all thoughtful men, and which--far more +than all the books and sermons ever written--are gradually converting +the kingdoms of this world into the kingdoms of our Lord and of His +Christ. Alan would have refuted--to his own satisfaction, if not to +Christopher's--any arguments which the latter might have brought forward +in favour of Christianity; but he could not refute the evidence of a +life which could never have been lived but for that Other Life lived in +Judaea nineteen centuries ago. Perhaps his friendship with Christopher +did as much for Alan as his love for Willie in opening his eyes to the +hidden things of God. + +The intercourse with the Tremaines was, on the other hand, of great +advantage to Christopher, as it afforded him the opportunity of meeting +and mixing with men as clever and as cultivated as himself, which is not +always easy for a lonely man in a provincial town who devotes his +loneliness to intellectual pursuits. Christopher was fast becoming one +of the most influential men in Mershire; and his able management of the +Osierfield had raised those works to a greater height of prosperity than +they had ever attained before, even in the days of William and John +Farringdon. + +But now the shadows were darkening around Alan Tremaine, as day by day +Willie gradually faded away. Felicia, too, at last awoke to the real +state of the case, and, in her way, was almost as anxious as her +husband. + +During the spring-time, as Willie's life grew shorter with the +lengthening days, the child's chiefest delight lay in visits from +Christopher. For Elisabeth's sake Christopher had always felt an +interest in little Willie. Had not her dear hands fondled the child, +before they were too busy to do anything but weave spells to charm the +whole world? And had not her warm heart enfolded him, before her success +and her fame had chilled its fires? For the sake of the Elisabeth that +used to be, Christopher would always be a friend to Willie; and he did +not find it hard to love the child for his own sake, since Christopher +had great powers of loving, and but little to expend them upon. + +As Willie continually asked for Elisabeth, Felicia wrote and told her +so; and the moment she found she was wanted, Elisabeth came down to the +Willows for a week--though her fame and the London season were alike at +their height--and went every day to see Willie at the Moat House. He +loved to have her with him, because she talked to him about things that +his parents never mentioned to him; and as these things were drawing +nearer to Willie day by day, his interest in them unconsciously +increased. He and she had long talks together about the country on the +other side of the hills, and what delightful times they would have when +they reached it: how Willie would be able to walk as much as he liked, +and Elisabeth would be able to love as much as she wanted, and life +generally would turn out to be a success--a thing which it so rarely +does on this side of the hills. + +Christopher, as a rule, kept away from the Moat House when Elisabeth +was there; he thought she did not wish to see him, and he was not the +type of man to go where he imagined he was not wanted; but one afternoon +they met there by accident, and Christopher inwardly blessed the Fate +which made him do the very thing he had so studiously refrained from +doing. He had been sitting with Tremaine, and she with Felicia and +Willie; and they met in the hall on their way out. + +"Are you going my way?" asked Elisabeth graciously, when they had shaken +hands. It was dull at Sedgehill after London, and the old flirting +spirit woke up in her and made her want to flirt with Christopher again, +in spite of all that had happened. With the born flirt--as with all born +players of games--the game itself is of more importance than the +personality of the other players; which sometimes leads to unfortunate +mistakes on the part of those players who do not rightly understand the +rules of the game. + +"Yes, Miss Farringdon, I am," said Christopher, who would have been +going Elisabeth's way had that way led him straight to ruin. With him +the personality of the player--in this case, at least--mattered +infinitely more than any game she might choose to play. As long as he +was talking to Elisabeth, he did not care a straw what they were talking +about; which showed that he really was culpably indifferent to--if not +absolutely ignorant of--the rules of the game. + +"Then we might as well walk together." And Elisabeth drew on her long +Suede gloves and leisurely opened her parasol, as they strolled down the +drive after bidding farewell to the Tremaines. + +Christopher was silent from excess of happiness. It was so wonderful to +be walking by Elisabeth's side again, and listening to her voice, and +watching the lights and shadows in those gray eyes of hers which +sometimes were so nearly blue. But Elisabeth did not understand his +silence; she translated it, as she would have translated silence on her +own part, into either boredom or ill-temper, and she resented it +accordingly. + +"You are very quiet this afternoon. Aren't you going to talk to me?" she +said; and Christopher's quick ear caught the sound of the irritation in +her voice, though he could not for the life of him imagine what he had +done to bring it there; but it served to silence him still further. + +"Yes--yes, of course I am," he said lamely; "what shall we talk about? I +am afraid there is nothing interesting to tell you about the Osierfield, +things are going on so regularly there, and so well." + +How exactly like Christopher to begin to talk about business when she +had given him the chance to talk about more interesting +subjects--herself, for instance, Elisabeth thought; but he never had a +mind above sordid details! She did not, of course, know that at that +identical moment he was wondering whether her eyes were darker than they +used to be, or whether he had forgotten their exact shade; he could +hardly have forgotten their colour, he decided, as there had never been +a day when he had not remembered them since he saw them last; so they +must actually be growing darker. + +"I'm glad of that," said Elisabeth coldly, in her most fine-ladylike +manner. + +"It was distinctly kind of you to find time to run down here, in the +midst of your London life, to see Willie! He fretted after you sadly, +and I am afraid the poor little fellow is not long for this world." And +Christopher sighed. + +Elisabeth noted the sigh and approved of it. It was a comfort to find +that the man had feelings of any sort, she said to herself, even though +only for a child; that was better than being entirely immersed in +self-interest and business affairs. + +So they talked about Willie for a time, and the conversation ran more +smoothly--almost pleasantly. + +Then they talked about books; and Elisabeth--who had grown into the +habit of thinking that nobody outside London knew anything--was +surprised to find that Christopher had read considerably more books than +she had read, and had understood them far more thoroughly. But this part +of the conversation was inclined to be stormy; since Christopher as a +rule disliked the books that Elisabeth liked, and this she persisted in +regarding as tantamount to disliking herself. + +Whereupon she became defiant, and told stories of her life in London of +which she knew Christopher would disapprove. There was nothing in the +facts that he could possibly disapprove of, so she coloured them up +until there was; and then, when she had succeeded in securing his +disapproval, she was furious with him on account of it. Which was +manifestly unfair, as Christopher in no way showed the regret which he +could not refrain from experiencing, as he listened to Elisabeth making +herself out so much more frivolous and heartless than she really was. + +"This is the first time I have had an opportunity of congratulating you +on your success," he said to her at last; "we are all very proud of it +at Sedgehill; but, believe me, there is no one who rejoices in it a +tithe as much as I do, if you will allow me to say so." + +Elisabeth was slightly mollified. She had been trying all the time, as +she was so fond of trying years ago, to divert the conversation into +more personal channels; and Christopher had been equally desirous of +keeping it out of the same. But this sounded encouraging. + +"Thank you so much," she answered; "it is very nice of you all to be +pleased with me! I always adored being admired and praised, if you +remember." + +Christopher remembered well enough; but he was not going to tell this +crushing fine lady how well he remembered. If he had not exposed his +heart for Elisabeth to peck at in the old days, he certainly was not +going to expose it now; then she would only have been scientifically +interested--now she would probably be disdainfully amused. + +"I suppose you saw my picture in this year's Academy," Elisabeth added. + +"Saw it? I should think I did. I went up to town on purpose to see it, +as I always do when you have pictures on view at any of the shows." + +"And what did you think of it?" + +Christopher was silent for a moment; then he said-- + +"Do you want me to say pretty things to you or to tell you the truth?" + +"Why, the truth, of course," replied Elisabeth, who considered that the +two things were synonymous--or at any rate ought to be. + +"And you won't be angry with me, or think me impertinent?" + +"Of course not," answered Elisabeth, who most certainly would; and +Christopher--not having yet learned wisdom--believed her. + +"I thought it was a distinctly powerful picture--a distinctly remarkable +picture--and if any one but you had painted it, I should have been +delighted with it; but somehow I felt that it was not quite up to your +mark--that you could do, and will do, better work." + +For a second Elisabeth was dumbfounded with amazement and indignation. +How dare this one man dispute the verdict of London? Then she said-- + +"In what way do you think the work could have been done better?" + +"That is just what I can't tell you; I wish I could; but I'm not an +artist, unfortunately. It seems to me that there are other people (not +many, I admit, but still some) who could have painted that picture; +while you are capable of doing work which no one else in the world could +possibly do. Naturally I want to see you do your best, and am not +satisfied when you do anything less." + +Elisabeth tossed her head. "You are very hard to please, Mr. Thornley." + +"I know I am, where your work is concerned; but that is because I have +formed such a high ideal of your powers. If I admired you less, I should +admire your work more, don't you see?" + +But Elisabeth did not see. She possessed the true artist-spirit which +craves for appreciation of its offspring more than for appreciation of +itself--a feeling which perhaps no one but an artist or a mother really +understands. Christopher, being neither, did not understand it in the +least, and erroneously concluded that adoration of the creator absolves +one from the necessity of admiration of the thing created. + +"I shall never do a better piece of work than that," Elisabeth retorted, +being imbued with the creative delusion that the latest creation is of +necessity the finest creation. No artist could work at all if he did not +believe that the work he was doing--or had just done--was the best piece +of work he had ever done or ever should do. This is because his work, +however good, always falls short of the ideal which inspired it; and, +while he is yet working, he can not disentangle the ideal from the +reality. He must be at a little distance from his work until he can do +this properly; and Elisabeth was as yet under the influence of that +creative glamour which made her see her latest picture as it should be +rather than as it was. + +"Oh, yes, you will; you will fulfil my ideal of you yet. I cherish no +doubts on that score." + +"I can't think what you see wrong in my picture," said Elisabeth +somewhat pettishly. + +"I don't see anything wrong in it. Good gracious! I must have expressed +myself badly if I conveyed such an impression to you as that, and you +would indeed be justified in writing me down an ass. I think it is a +wonderfully clever picture--so clever that nobody but you could ever +paint a cleverer one." + +"Well, I certainly couldn't. You must have formed an exaggerated +estimate of my artistic powers." + +"I think not! You can, and will, paint a distinctly better picture some +day." + +"In what way better?" + +"Ah! there you have me. But I will try to tell you what I mean, though I +speak as a fool; and if I say anything very egregious, you must let my +ignorance be my excuse, and pardon the clumsy expression of my +intentions because they are so well meant. It doesn't seem to me to be +enough for anybody to do good work; they must go further, and do the +best possible work in their power. Nothing but one's best is really +worth the doing; the cult of the second-best is always a degrading form +of worship. Even though one man's second-best be intrinsically superior +to the best work of his fellows, he has nevertheless no right to offer +it to the world. He is guilty of an injustice both to himself and the +world in so doing." + +"I don't agree with you. This is an age of results; and the world's +business is with the actual value of the thing done, rather than with +the capabilities of the man who did it." + +"You are right in calling this an age of results, Miss Farringdon; but +that is the age's weakness and not its strength. The moment men begin to +judge by results, they judge unrighteous judgment. They confound the +great man with the successful man; the saint with the famous preacher; +the poet with the writer of popular music-hall songs." + +"Then you think that we should all do our best, and not bother ourselves +too much as to results?" + +"I go further than that; I think that the mere consideration of results +incapacitates us from doing our best work at all." + +"I don't agree with you," repeated Elisabeth haughtily. But, +nevertheless, she did. + +"I daresay I am wrong; but you asked me for my candid opinion and I gave +it to you. It is a poor compliment to flatter people--far too poor ever +to be paid by me to you; and in this case the simple truth is a far +greater compliment than any flattery could be. You can imagine what a +high estimate I have formed of your powers, when so great a picture as +The Pillar of Cloud fails to satisfy me." + +The talk about her picture brought to Elisabeth's mind the remembrance +of that other picture which had been almost as popular as hers; and, +with it, the remembrance of the man who had painted it. + +"I suppose you have heard nothing more about George Farringdon's son," +she remarked, with apparent irrelevance. "I wonder if he will ever turn +up?" + +"Oh! I hardly think it is likely now; I have quite given up all ideas of +his doing so," replied Christopher cheerfully. + +"But supposing he did?" + +"In that case I am afraid he would be bound to enter into his kingdom. +But I really don't think you need worry any longer over that unpleasant +contingency, Miss Farringdon; it is too late in the day; if he were +going to appear upon the scene at all, he would have appeared before +now, I feel certain." + +"You really think so?" + +"Most assuredly I do. Besides, it will not be long before the limit of +time mentioned by your cousin is reached; and then a score of George +Farringdon's sons could not turn you out of your rights." + +For a moment Elisabeth thought she would tell Christopher about her +suspicions as to the identity of Cecil Farquhar. But it was as yet +merely a suspicion, and she knew by experience how ruthlessly +Christopher pursued the line of duty whenever that line was pointed out +to him; so she decided to hold her peace (and her property) a little +longer. But she also knew that the influence of Christopher was even yet +so strong upon her, that, when the time came, she should do the right +thing in spite of herself and in defiance of her own desires. And this +knowledge, strange to say, irritated her still further against the +innocent and unconscious Christopher. + +The walk from the Moat House to Sedgehill was a failure as far as the +re-establishment of friendly relations between Christopher and Elisabeth +was concerned, for it left her with the impression that he was less +appreciative of her and more wrapped up in himself and his own opinions +than ever; while it conveyed to his mind the idea that her success had +only served to widen the gulf between them, and that she was more +indifferent to and independent of his friendship than she had ever been +before. + +Elisabeth went back to London, and Christopher to his work again, and +little Willie drew nearer and nearer to the country on the other side of +the hills; until one day it happened that the gate which leads into that +country was left open by the angels, and Willie slipped through it and +became strong and well. His parents were left outside the gate, weeping, +and at first they refused to be comforted; but after a time Alan learned +the lesson which Willie had been sent to teach him, and saw plain. + +"Dear," he said to his wife at last, "I've got to begin life over again +so as to go the way that Willie went. The little chap made me promise to +meet him in the country over the hills, as he called it; and I've never +broken a promise to Willie and I never will. It will be difficult for +us, I know; but God will help us." + +Felicia looked at him with sad, despairing eyes. "There is no God," she +said; "you have often told me so." + +"I know I have; that was because I was such a blind fool. But now I +know that there is a God, and that you and I must serve Him together." + +"How can we serve a myth?" Felicia persisted. + +"He is no myth, Felicia. I lied to you when I told you that He was." + +And then Felicia laughed; the first time that she had laughed since +Willie's death, and it was not a pleasant laugh to hear. "Do you think +you can play pitch-and-toss with a woman's soul in that way? Well, you +can't. When I met you I believed in God as firmly as any girl believed; +but you laughed me out of my faith, and proved to me what a string of +lies and folly it all was; and then I believed in you as firmly as +before I had believed in God, and I knew that Christianity was a fable." + +Alan's face grew very white. "Good heavens! Felicia, did I do this?" + +"Of course you did, and you must take the consequences of your own +handiwork; it is too late to undo it now. Don't try to comfort me, even +if you can drug yourself, with fairy-tales about meeting Willie again. I +shall never see my little child again in this life, and there is no +other." + +"You are wrong; believe me, you are wrong." And Alan's brow was damp +with the anguish of his soul. + +"It is only what you taught me. But because you took my faith away from +me, it doesn't follow that you can give it back to me again; it has gone +forever." + +"Oh, Felicia, Felicia, may God and you and Willie forgive me, for I can +never forgive myself!" + +"I can not forgive you, because I have nothing to forgive; you did me no +wrong in opening my eyes. And God can not forgive you, because there +never was a God; so you did Him no wrong. And Willie can not forgive +you, because there is no Willie now; so you did him no wrong." + +"My dearest, it can not all have gone from you forever; it will come +back to you, and you will believe as I do." + +Felicia shook her head. "Never; it is too late. You have taken away my +Lord, and I know not where you have laid Him; and, however long I live, +I shall never find Him again." + +And she went out of the room in the patience of a great despair, and +left her husband alone with his misery. + + + + +CHAPTER XVI + +THIS SIDE OF THE HILLS + + On this side of the hills, alas! + Unrest our spirit fills; + For gold, men give us stones and brass-- + For asphodels, rank weeds and grass-- + For jewels, bits of coloured glass-- + On this side of the hills. + + +The end of July was approaching, and the season was drawing to a close. +Cecil Farquhar and Elisabeth had seen each other frequently since they +first met at the Academy _soiree_, and had fallen into the habit of +being much together; consequently the thought of parting was pleasant to +neither of them. + +"How shall I manage to live without you?" asked Cecil one day, as they +were walking across the Park together. "I shall fall from my ideals when +I am away from your influence, and again become the grovelling worlding +that I was before I met you." + +"But you mustn't do anything of the kind. I am not the keeper of your +conscience." + +"But you are, and you must be. I feel a good man and a strong one when I +am with you, and as if all things were possible to me; and now that I +have once found you, I can not and will not let you go." + +"You will have to let me go, Mr. Farquhar; for I go down to the Willows +at the end of the month, and mean to stay there for some time. I have +enjoyed my success immensely; but it has tired me rather, and made me +want to rest and be stupid again." + +"But I can not spare you," persisted Cecil; and there was real feeling +in his voice. Elisabeth represented so much to him--wealth and power and +the development of his higher nature; and although, had she been a poor +woman, he would possibly never have cherished any intention of marrying +her, his wish to do so was not entirely sordid. There are so few wishes +in the hearts of any of us which are entirely sordid or entirely ideal; +yet we find it so difficult to allow for this in judging one another. + +"Don't you understand," Farquhar went on, "all that you have been to me: +how you have awakened the best that is in me, and taught me to be +ashamed of the worst? And do you think that I shall now be content to +let you slip quietly out of my life, and to be the shallow, selfish, +worldly wretch I was before the Academy _soiree_? Not I." + +Elisabeth was silent. She could not understand herself, and this want of +comprehension on her part annoyed and disappointed her. At last all her +girlish dreams had come true; here was the fairy prince for whom she had +waited for so long--a prince of the kingdom she loved above all others, +the kingdom of art; and he came to her in the spirit in which she had +always longed for him to come--the spirit of failure and of loneliness, +begging her to make up to him for all that he had hitherto missed in +life. Yet--to her surprise--his appeal found her cold and unresponsive, +as if he were calling out for help to another woman and not to her. + +Cecil went on: "Elisabeth, won't you be my wife, and so make me into the +true artist which, with you to help me, I feel I am capable of becoming; +but of which, without you, I shall always fall short? You could do +anything with me--you know you could; you could make me into a great +artist and a good man, but without you I can be neither. Surely you will +not give me up now! You have opened to me the door of a paradise of +which I never dreamed before, and now don't shut it in my face." + +"I don't want to shut it in your face," replied Elisabeth gently; +"surely you know me better than that. But I feel that you are expecting +more of me than I can ever fulfil, and that some day you will be sadly +disappointed in me." + +"No, no; I never shall. It is not in you to disappoint anybody, you are +so strong and good and true. Tell me the truth: don't you feel that I am +as clay in your hands, and that you can do anything with me that you +choose?" + +Elisabeth looked him full in the face with her clear gray eyes. "I feel +that I could do anything with you if only I loved you enough; but I also +feel that I don't love you, and that therefore I can do nothing with you +at all. I believe with you that a strong woman can be the making of a +man she loves; but she must love him first, or else all her strength +will be of no avail." + +Farquhar's face fell. "I thought you did love me. You always seemed so +glad when I came and sorry when I left; and you enjoyed talking to me, +and we understood each other, and were happy together. Can you deny +that?" + +"No; it is all true. I never enjoyed talking with anybody more than with +you; and I certainly never in my life met any one who understood my ways +of looking at things as thoroughly as you do, nor any one who entered so +completely into all my moods. As a friend you are most satisfactory to +me, as a comrade most delightful; but I can not help thinking that love +is something more than that." + +"But it isn't," cried Cecil eagerly; "that is just where lots of women +make such a mistake. They wait and wait for love all their lives; and +find out too late that they passed him by years ago, without recognising +him, but called him by some wrong name, such as friendship and the +like." + +"I wonder if you are right." + +"I am sure that I am. Women who are at all romantic, have such +exaggerated ideas as to what love really is. Like the leper of old, they +ask for some great thing to work the wonderful miracle upon their lives; +and so they miss the simple way which would lead them to happiness." + +Elisabeth felt troubled and perplexed. "I enjoy your society," she said, +"and I adore your genius, and I pity your loneliness, and I long to help +your weakness. Is this love, do you think?" + +"Yes, yes; I am certain of it." + +"I thought it would be different," said Elisabeth sadly; "I thought that +when it did come it would transform the whole world, just as religion +does, and that all things would become new. I thought it would turn out +to be the thing that we are longing for when the beauty of nature makes +us feel sad with a longing we know not for what. I thought it would +change life's dusty paths into golden pavements, and earth's commonest +bramble-bush into a magic briar-rose." + +"And it hasn't?" + +"No; everything is just the same as it was before I met you. As far as I +can see, there is no livelier emerald twinkling in the grass of the Park +than there ever is at the end of July, and no purer sapphire melting +into the Serpentine." + +Cecil laughed lightly. "You are as absurdly romantic as a school-girl! +Surely people of our age ought to know better than still to believe in +fairyland; but, as I have told you before, you are dreadfully young for +your age in some things." + +"I suppose I am. I still do believe in fairyland--at least I did until +ten minutes ago." + +"I assure you there is no such place." + +"Not for anybody?" + +"Not for anybody over twenty-one." + +"I wish there was," said Elisabeth with a sigh. "I should have liked to +believe it was there, even if I had never found it." + +"Don't be silly, lady mine. You are so great and wise and clever that I +can not bear to hear you say foolish things. And I want us to talk about +how you are going to help me to be a great painter, and how we will sit +together as gods, and create new worlds. There is nothing that I can not +do with you to help me, Elisabeth. You must be good to me and hard upon +me at the same time. You must never let me be content with anything +short of my best, or willing to do second-rate work for the sake of +money; you must keep the sacredness of art ever before my eyes, but you +must also be very gentle to me when I am weary, and very tender to me +when I am sad; you must encourage me when my spirit fails me, and +comfort me when the world is harsh. All these things you can do, and you +are the only woman who can. Promise me, Elisabeth, that you will." + +"I can not promise anything now. You must let me think it over for a +time. I am so puzzled by it all. I thought that when the right man came +and told a woman that he loved her, she would know at once that it was +for him--and for him only--that she had been waiting all her life; and +that she would never have another doubt upon the subject, but would feel +convinced that it was settled for all time and eternity. And this is so +different!" + +Again Cecil laughed his light laugh. "I suppose girls sometimes feel +like that when they are very young; but not women of your age, +Elisabeth." + +"Well, you must let me think about it. I can not make up my mind yet." + +And for whole days and nights Elisabeth thought about it, and could come +to no definite conclusion. + +There was no doubt in her mind that she liked Cecil Farquhar infinitely +better than she had liked any of the other men who had asked her to +marry them; also that no one could possibly be more companionable to her +than he was, or more sympathetic with and interested in her work--and +this is no small thing to the man or woman who possesses the creative +faculty. Then she was lonely in her greatness, and longed for +companionship; and Cecil had touched her in her tenderest point by his +constant appeals to her to help and comfort him. Nevertheless the fact +remained that, though he interested her, he did not touch her heart; +that remained a closed door to him. But supposing that her friends were +right, and that she was too cold by nature ever to feel the ecstasies +which transfigure life for some women, should she therefore shut herself +out from ordinary domestic joys and interests? Because she was incapable +of attaining to the ideal, must the commonplace pleasures of the real +also be denied her? If the best was not for her, would it not be wise to +accept the second-best, and extract as much happiness from it as +possible? Moreover, she knew that Cecil was right when he said that she +could make of him whatsoever she wished; and this was no slight +temptation to a woman who loved power as much as Elisabeth loved it. + +There was also another consideration which had some weight with her; and +that was the impression, gradually gaining strength in her mind, that +Cecil Farquhar was George Farringdon's son. She could take no steps in +the way of proving this just then, as Christopher was away for his +holiday somewhere in the Black Forest, and nothing could be done without +him; but she intended, as soon as he returned, to tell him of her +suspicion, and to set him to discover whether or not Cecil was indeed +the lost heir. Although it never seriously occurred to Elisabeth to hold +her peace upon this matter and so keep her fortune to herself, she was +still human enough not altogether to despise a course of action which +enabled her to be rich and righteous at the same time, and to go on with +her old life at the Willows and her work among the people at the +Osierfield, even after George Farringdon's son had come into his own. + +Although the balance of Elisabeth's judgment was upon the side of Cecil +Farquhar and his suit, she could not altogether stifle--try as she +might--her sense of disappointment at finding how grossly poets and +such people had exaggerated the truth in their description of the +feeling men call love. It was all so much less exalted and so much more +commonplace than she had expected. She had long ago come to the +conclusion--from comparisons between Christopher and the men who had +wanted to marry her--that a man's friendship is a better thing than a +man's love; but she had always clung to the belief that a woman's love +would prove a better thing than a woman's friendship: yet now she +herself was in love with Cecil--at least he said that she was, and she +was inclined to agree with him--and she was bound to admit that, as an +emotion, this fell far short of her old attachment to Cousin Anne or +Christopher or even Felicia. But that was because now she was getting +old, she supposed, and her heart had lost its early warmth and +freshness; and she experienced a weary ache of regret that Cecil had not +come across her path in those dear old days when she was still young +enough to make a fairyland for herself, and to abide therein for ever. + +"The things that come too late are almost as bad as the things that +never come at all," she thought with a sigh; not knowing that there is +no such word as "too late" in God's Vocabulary. + +At the end of the week she had made up her mind to marry Cecil Farquhar. +Women, after all, can not pick and choose what lives they shall lead; +they can only take such goods as the gods choose to provide, and make +the best of the same; and if they let the possible slip while they are +waiting for the impossible, they have only themselves to blame that they +extract no good at all out of life. So she wrote to Cecil, asking him to +come and see her the following day; and then she sat down and wondered +why women are allowed to see visions and to dream dreams, if the actual +is to fall so far short of the imaginary. Brick walls and cobbled +streets are all very well in their way; but they make but dreary +dwelling-places for those who have promised themselves cities where the +walls are of jasper and the pavements of gold. "If one is doomed to live +always on this side of the hills, it is a waste of time to think too +much about the life on the other side," Elisabeth reasoned with herself, +"and I have wasted a lot of time in this way; but I can not help +wondering why we are allowed to think such lovely thoughts, and to +believe in such beautiful things, if our dreams are never to come true, +but are only to spoil us for the realities of life. Now I must bury all +my dear, silly, childish idols, as Jacob did; and I will not have any +stone to mark the place, because I want to forget where it is." + +Poor Elisabeth! The grave of what has been, may be kept green with +tears; but the grave of what never could have been, is best forgotten. +We may not hide away the dear old gnomes and pixies and fairies in +consecrated ground--that is reserved for what has once existed, and so +has the right to live again; but for what never existed we can find no +sepulchre, for it came out of nothingness, and to nothingness must it +return. + +After Elisabeth had posted her letter to Cecil, and while she was still +musing over the problem as to whether life's fulfilment must always fall +short of its promise, the drawing-room door was thrown open and a +visitor announced. Elisabeth was tired and depressed, and did not feel +in the mood for keeping up her reputation for brilliancy; so it was +with a sigh of weariness that she rose to receive Quenelda Carson, a +struggling little artist whom she had known slightly for years. But her +interest was immediately aroused when she saw that Quenelda's usually +rosy face was white with anguish, and the girl's pretty eyes swollen +with many tears. + +"What is the matter, dear?" asked Elisabeth, with that sound in her +voice which made all weak things turn to her. "You are in trouble, and +you must let me help you." + +Quenelda broke out into bitter weeping. "Oh! give him back to me--give +him back to me," she cried; "you can never love him as I do, you are too +cold and proud and brilliant." + +Elisabeth stood as if transfixed. "Whatever do you mean?" + +"You have everything," Quenelda went on, in spite of the sobs which +shook her slender frame; "you had money and position to begin with, and +everybody thought well of you and admired you and made life easy for +you. And then you came out of your world into ours, and carried away the +prizes which we had been striving after for years, and beat us on our +own ground; but we weren't jealous of you--you know that we weren't; we +were glad of your success, and proud of you, and we admired your genius +as much as the outside world did, and never minded a bit that it was +greater than ours. But even then you were not content--you must have +everything, and leave us nothing, just to satisfy your pride. You are +like the rich man who had everything, and yet took from the poor man his +one ewe lamb; and I am sure that God--if there is a God--will punish you +as He punished that rich man." + +Elisabeth turned rather pale; whatever had she done that any one dared +to say such things to her as this? "I still don't understand you," she +said. + +"I never had anything nice in my life till I met him," the girl +continued incoherently--"I had always been poor and pinched and wretched +and second-rate; even my pictures were never first-rate, though I worked +and worked all I knew to make them so. And then I met Cecil Farquhar, +and I loved him, and everything became different, and I didn't mind +being second-rate if only he would care for me. And he did; and I +thought that I should always be as happy as I was then, and that nothing +would ever be able to hurt me any more. Oh! I was so happy--so +happy--and I was such a fool, I thought it would last forever! I worked +hard and saved every penny that I could, and so did he; and we should +have been married next year if you hadn't come and spoiled it all, and +taken him away from me. And what is it to you now that you have got him? +You are too proud and cold to love him, or anybody else, and he doesn't +care for you a millionth part as much as he cares for me; yet just +because you have money and fame he has left me for you. And I love him +so--I love him so!" Here Quenelda's sobs choked her utterance, and her +torrent of words was stopped by tears. + +"Come and sit down beside me and tell me quietly what is the matter," +said Elisabeth gently; "I can do nothing and understand nothing while +you go on like this. But you are wrong in supposing that I took your +lover from you purposely; I did not even know that he was a friend of +yours. He ought to have told me." + +"No, no; he couldn't tell you. Don't you see that the temptation was +too strong for him? He cares so much for rank and money, and things like +that, my poor Cecil! And all his life he has had to do without them. So +when he met you, and realized that if he married you he would have all +the things he wanted most in the world, he couldn't resist it. The fault +was yours for tempting him, and letting him see that he could have you +for the asking; you knew him well enough to see how weak he was, and +what a hold worldly things had over him; and you ought to have allowed +for this in dealing with him." + +A great wave of self-contempt swept over Elisabeth. She, who had prided +herself upon the fact that no man was strong enough to win her love, to +be accused of openly running after a man who did not care for her but +only for her money! It was unendurable, and stung her to the quick! And +yet, through all her indignation, she recognised the justice of her +punishment. She had not done what Quenelda had reproached her for doing, +it was true; but she had deliberately lowered her ideal: she had wearied +of striving after the best, and had decided that the second-best should +suffice her; and for this she was now being chastised. No men or women +who wilfully turn away from the ideal which God has set before them, and +make to themselves graven images of the things which they know to be +unworthy, can escape the punishment which is sure, sooner or later, to +follow their apostasy; and they do well to recognise this, ere they grow +weary of waiting for the revelation from Sinai, and begin to build +altars unto false gods. For now, as of old, the idols which they make +are ground into powder, and strawed upon the water, and given them to +drink; the cup has to be drained to the dregs, and it is exceeding +bitter. + +"I still think he ought to have told me there was another woman," +Elisabeth said. + +"Not he. He knew well enough that your pride could not have endured the +thought of another woman, and that that would have spoiled his chance +with you forever. There always is another woman, you know; and you +women, who are too proud to endure the thought of her, have to be +deceived and blinded. And you have only yourselves to thank for it; if +you were a little more human and a little more tender, there would be no +necessity for deceiving you. Why, I should have loved him just the same +if there had been a hundred other women, so he always told me the truth; +but he lied to you, and it was your fault and not his that he was +obliged to lie." + +Elisabeth shuddered. It was to help such a man as this that she had been +willing to sacrifice her youthful ideals and her girlish dreams. What a +fool she had been! + +"If you do not believe me, here is his letter," Quenelda went on; "I +brought it on purpose for you to read, just to show you how little you +are to him. If you had loved him as I love him, I would have let you +keep him, because you could have given him so many of the things that he +thinks most about. But you don't. You are one of the cold, hard women, +who only care for people as long as they are good and do what you think +they ought to do; Cecil never could do what anybody thought he ought to +do for long, and then you would have despised him and grown tired of +him. But I go on loving him just the same, whatever he does; and that's +the sort of love that a man wants--at any rate, such a man as Cecil." + +Elisabeth held out her hand for the letter; she felt that speech was of +no avail at such a crisis as this; and, as she read, every word burned +itself into her soul, and hurt her pride to the quick. + + * * * * * + +"DEAREST QUENELDA" (the letter ran, in the slightly affected handwriting +which Elisabeth had learned to know so well, and to welcome with so much +interest), "I have something to say to you which it cuts me to the heart +to say, but which has to be said at all costs. We must break off our +engagement at once; for the terrible truth has at last dawned upon me +that we can never afford to marry each other, and that therefore it is +only prolonging our agony to go on with it. You know me so well, dear +little girl, that you will quite understand how the thought of life-long +poverty has proved too much for me. I am not made of such coarse fibre +as most men--those men who can face squalor and privation, and lack all +the little accessories that make life endurable, without being any the +worse for it. I am too refined, too highly strung, too sensitive, to +enter upon such a weary struggle with circumstances as my marriage with +a woman as poor as myself would entail; therefore, my darling Quenelda, +much as I love you I feel it is my duty to renounce you; and as you grow +older and wiser you will see that I am right. + +"Since I can not marry you whom I love, I have put romance and sentiment +forever out of my life; it is a bitter sacrifice for a man of my nature +to make, but it must be done; and I have decided to enter upon a +_mariage de convenance_ with Miss Farringdon, the Black Country +heiress. Of course I do not love her as I love you, my sweet--what man +could love a genius as he loves a beauty? And she is as cold as she is +clever. But I feel respect for her moral characteristics, and interest +in her mental ones; and, when youth and romance are over and done with, +that is all one need ask in a wife. As for her fortune, it will keep me +forever out of the reach of that poverty which has always so deleterious +an effect upon natures such as mine; and, being thus set above those +pecuniary anxieties which are the death of true art, I shall be able +fully to develop the power that is in me, and to do the work that I feel +myself called to do. + +"Good-bye, my sweetest. I can not write any more; my heart is breaking. +How cruel it is that poverty should have power to separate forever such +true lovers as you and I! + + "Your heartbroken + "CECIL." + +Elisabeth gave back the letter to Quenelda. "Do you mean to tell me that +you don't despise the man who sent this?" she asked. + +"No; because I love him, you see. You never did." + +"You are right there. I never loved him. I tried to love him, but I +couldn't." + +"I know you didn't. As I told you before, if you had loved him I would +have given him up to you." + +Elisabeth looked at the girl before her with wonder. What a strange +thing this love was, which could make a woman forgive such a letter as +that, and still cling to the man who wrote it! So there was such a place +as fairyland after all, and poor little Quenelda had found it; while +she, Elisabeth, had never so much as peeped through the gate. It had +brought Quenelda much sorrow, it was true; but still it was good to have +been there; and a chilly feeling crept across Elisabeth's heart as she +realized how much she had missed in life. + +"I think if one loved another person as much as that," she said to +herself, "one would understand a little of how God feels about us." +Aloud she said: "Dear, what do you want me to do? I will do anything in +the world that you wish." + +Quenelda seized Elisabeth's hand and kissed it. "How good you are! And I +don't deserve it a bit, for I've been horrid to you and said vile +things." + +There was a vast pity in Elisabeth's eyes. "I did you a great wrong, +poor child!" she said; "and I want to make every reparation in my +power." + +"But you didn't know you were doing me a great wrong." + +"No; but I knew that I was acting below my own ideals, and nobody can do +that without doing harm. Show me how I can give you help now? Shall I +tell Cecil Farquhar that I know all?" + +"Oh! no; please not. He would never forgive me for having spoiled his +life, and taken away his chance of being rich." And Quenelda's tears +flowed afresh. + +Elisabeth put her strong arm round the girl's slim waist. "Don't cry, +dear; I will make it all right. I will just tell him that I can't marry +him because I don't love him; and he need never know that I have heard +about you at all." + +And Elisabeth continued to comfort Quenelda until the pale cheeks grew +pink again, and half the girl's beauty came back; and she went away at +last believing in Elisabeth's power of setting everything right again, +as one believes in one's mother's power of setting everything right +again when one is a child. + +After she had gone, Elisabeth sat down and calmly looked facts in the +face; and the prospect was by no means an agreeable one. Of course there +was no question now of marrying Cecil Farquhar; and in the midst of her +confusion Elisabeth felt a distinct sense of relief that this at any +rate was impossible. She could still go on believing in fairyland, even +though she never found it; and it is always far better not to find a +place than to find there is no such place at all. But she would have to +give up the Willows and the Osierfield, and all the wealth and position +that these had brought her; and this was a bitter draught to drink. +Elisabeth felt no doubt in her own mind that Cecil was indeed George +Farringdon's son; she had guessed it when first he told her the story of +his birth, and subsequent conversations with him had only served to +confirm her in the belief; and it was this conviction which had +influenced her to some extent in her decision to accept him. But now +everything was changed. Cecil would rule at the Osierfield and Quenelda +at the Willows instead of herself, and those dearly loved places would +know her no more. + +At this thought Elisabeth broke down. How she loved every stone of the +Black Country, and how closely all her childish fancies and girlish +dreams were bound up in it! Now the cloud of smoke would hang over +Sedgehill, and she would not be there to interpret its message; and the +sun would set beyond the distant mountains, and she would no longer +catch glimpses of the country over the hills. Even the rustic seat, +where she and Christopher had sat so often, would be hers no longer; and +he and she would never walk together in the woods as they had so often +walked as children. And as she cried softly to herself, with no one to +comfort her, the memory of Christopher swept over her, and with it all +the old anger against him. He would be glad to see her dethroned at +last, she supposed, as that was what he had striven for all those years +ago; but, perhaps, when he saw a stranger reigning at the Willows and +the Osierfield in her stead, he would be sorry to find the new +government so much less beneficial to the work-people than the old one +had been; for Elisabeth knew Cecil quite well enough to be aware that he +would spend all his money on himself and his own pleasures; and she +could not help indulging in an unholy hope that, whereas she had beaten +Christopher with whips, her successor would beat him with scorpions. In +fact she was almost glad, for the moment, that Farquhar was so unfit for +the position to which he was now called, when she realized how sorely +that unfitness would try Christopher. + +"It will serve him right for leaving me and going off after George +Farringdon's son," she said to herself, "to discover how little worth +the finding George Farringdon's son really was! Christopher is so +self-centred, that a thing is never properly brought home to him until +it affects himself; no other person can ever convince him that he is in +the wrong. But this will affect himself; he will hate to serve under +such a man as Cecil; I know he will; because Cecil is just the type of +person that Christopher has always looked down upon, for Christopher is +a gentleman and Cecil is not. Perhaps when he finds out how inferior an +iron-master Cecil is to me, Christopher will wish that he had liked me +better and been kinder to me when he had a chance. I hope he will, and +that it will make him miserable; for those hard, self-righteous people +really deserve to be punished in the end." And Elisabeth derived so much +comfort from the prospect of Christopher's coming trials, that she +almost forgot her own. + + + + +CHAPTER XVII + +GEORGE FARRINGDON'S SON + + I need thee, Love, in peace and strife; + For, till Time's latest page be read, + No other smile could light my life + Instead. + + And even in that happier place, + Where pain is past and sorrow dead, + I could not love an angel's face + Instead. + + +That night Elisabeth wrote to Christopher Thornley, telling him that she +believed she had found George Farringdon's son at last, and asking him +to come up to London in order to facilitate the giving up of her kingdom +into the hands of the rightful owner. And, in so doing, she was +conscious of a feeling of satisfaction that Christopher should see for +himself that she was not as mercenary as he had once imagined her to be, +but that she was as ready as he had ever been to enable the king to +enjoy his own again as soon as that king appeared upon the scene. To +forsake the reigning queen in order to search for that king, was, of +course, a different matter, and one about which Elisabeth declined to +see eye to eye with her manager even now. Doubtless he had been in the +right all through, and she in the wrong, as all honourable people could +see for themselves; but when one happens to be the queen one's self, +one's perspective is apt to become blurred and one's sense of abstract +justice confused. It is so easy for all of us to judge righteous +judgment concerning matters which in no way affect ourselves. + +Elisabeth was still angry with Christopher because she had deliberately +made the worst of herself in his eyes. It was totally unjust--and +entirely feminine--to lay the blame of this on his shoulders; as a +matter of fact, he had had nothing at all to do with it. She had +purposely chosen a path of life of which she knew he would disapprove, +principally in order to annoy him; and then she had refused to forgive +him for feeling the annoyance which she had gone out of her way to +inflict. From the purely feminine standpoint her behaviour was +thoroughly consistent; a man, however, might in his ignorance have +accused her of inconsistency. But men know so little about some things! + +The following afternoon Cecil Farquhar came to see Elisabeth, as she had +bidden him; and she smiled grimly to herself as she realized the +difference between what she had intended to say to him when she told him +to come, and what she was actually going to say. As for him, he was full +of hope. Evidently Elisabeth meant to marry him and make him into a rich +man; and money was the thing he loved best in the world. Which of us +would not be happy if we thought we were about to win the thing we loved +best? And is it altogether our own fault if the thing we happen to love +best be unworthy of love, or is it only our misfortune? + +Because he was triumphant, Cecil looked handsomer than usual, for there +are few things more becoming than happiness; and as he entered the +room, radiant with that vitality which is so irresistibly attractive, +Elisabeth recognised his charm without feeling it, just as one sees +people speaking and gesticulating in the distance without hearing a word +of what is said. + +"My dear lady, you are going to say _yes_ to me; I know that you are; +you would not have sent for me if you were not, for you are far too +tender-hearted to enjoy seeing pain which you are forced to give." + +Elisabeth looked grave, and did not take his outstretched hand. "Will +you sit down?" she said; "there is much that I want to talk over with +you." + +Cecil's face fell. In a superficial way he was wonderfully quick in +interpreting moods and reading character; and he knew in a moment that, +through some influence of which he was as yet in ignorance, such slight +hold as he had once had upon Elisabeth had snapped and broken since he +saw her last. "Surely you are not going to refuse to marry me and so +spoil my life. Elisabeth, you can not be as cruel as this, after all +that we have been to each other." + +"I am going to refuse to marry you, but I am not going to spoil your +life. Believe me, I am not. There are other things in the world besides +love and marriage." + +Cecil sank down into a seat, and his chin twitched. "Then you have +played with me most abominably. The world was right when it called you a +heartless flirt, and said that you were too cold to care for anything +save pleasure and admiration. I thought I knew you better, more fool I! +But the world was right and I was wrong." + +"I don't think that we need discuss my character," said Elisabeth. She +was very angry with herself that she had placed herself in such a +position that any man dared to sit in judgment upon her; but even then +she could not elevate Cecil into the object of her indignation. + +He went on like a querulous child. "It is desperately hard on me that +you have treated me in this way! You might have snubbed me at once if +you had wished to do so, and not have made me a laughing-stock in the +eyes of the world. I made no secret of the fact that I intended to marry +you; I talked about it to everybody; and now everybody will laugh at me +for having been your dupe." + +So he had boasted to his friends of the fortune he was going to annex, +and had already openly plumed himself upon securing her money! Elisabeth +understood perfectly, and was distinctly amused. She wondered if he +would remember to remind her how she was going to elevate him by her +influence, or if the loss of her money would make him forget even to +simulate sorrow at the loss of herself. + +"I don't know what I shall do," he continued, with tears of vexation in +his eyes; "everybody is expecting our engagement to be announced, and I +can not think what excuses I shall invent. A man looks such a fool when +he has made too sure of a woman!" + +"Doubtless. But that isn't the woman's fault altogether." + +"Yes; it is. If the woman hadn't led him on, the man wouldn't have made +sure of her. You have been unutterably cruel to me--unpardonably cruel; +and I will never forgive you as long as I live." + +Elisabeth winced at this--not at Cecil's refusal to forgive her, but at +the thought that she had placed herself within the reach of his +forgiveness. But she was not penitent--she was only annoyed. Penitence +is the last experience that comes to strong-willed, light-hearted +people, such as Elisabeth; they are so sure they are right at the time, +and they so soon forget about it afterward, that they find no interval +for remorse. Elisabeth was beginning to forgive herself for having +fallen for a time from her high ideal, because she was already beginning +to forget that she had so fallen; life had taught her many things, but +she took it too easily even yet. + +"I have a story to tell you," she said; "a story that will interest you, +if you will listen." + +By this time Cecil's anger was settling down into sulkiness. "I have no +alternative, I suppose." + +Then Elisabeth told him, as briefly as she could, the story of George +Farringdon's son; and, as she spoke, she watched the sulkiness in his +face give place to interest, and the interest to hope, and the hope to +triumph, until the naughty child gradually grew once more into the +similitude of a Greek god. + +"You are right--I am sure you are right," he said when she had finished; +"it all fits in--the date and place of my birth, my parents' poverty and +friendlessness, and the mystery concerning them. Oh! you can not think +what this means to me. To be forever beyond the reach of poverty--to be +able to do whatever I like for the rest of my life--to be counted among +the great of the earth! It is wonderful--wonderful!" And he walked up +and down the room in his excitement, while his voice shook with emotion. + +"I shall have such a glorious time," he went on--"the most glorious time +man ever had! Of course, I shall not live in that horrid Black +Country--nobody could expect me to make such a sacrifice as that; but I +shall spend my winters in Italy and my summers in Mayfair, and I shall +forget that the world was ever cold and hard and cruel to me." + +Elisabeth watched him curiously. So he never even thought of her and of +what she was giving up. That his gain was her loss was a matter of no +moment to him--it did not enter into his calculations. She wondered if +he even remembered Quenelda, and what this would mean to her; she +thought not. And this was the man Elisabeth had once delighted to +honour! She could have laughed aloud as she realized what a blind fool +she had been. Were all men like this? she asked herself; for, if so, she +was glad she was too cold to fall in love. It would be terrible indeed +to lay down one's life at the feet of a creature such as this; it was +bad enough to have to lay down one's fortune there! + +Throughout the rest of the interview Cecil lived up to the estimate that +Elisabeth had just formed of his character: he never once remembered +her--never once forgot himself. She explained to him that Christopher +Thornley was the man who would manage all the business part of the +affair for him, and give up the papers, and establish his identity; and +she promised to communicate with Cecil as soon as she received an answer +to the letter she had written to Christopher informing the latter that +she believed she had at last discovered George Farringdon's son. + +Amidst all her sorrow at the anticipation of giving up her kingdom into +the hands of so unfitting a ruler as Cecil, there lurked a pleasurable +consciousness that at last Christopher would recognise her worth, when +he found how inferior her successor was to herself. It was strange how +this desire to compel the regard which she had voluntarily forfeited, +had haunted Elisabeth for so many years. Christopher had offended her +past all pardon, she said to herself; nevertheless it annoyed her to +feel that the friendship, which she had taken from him for punitive +purposes, was but a secondary consideration in his eyes after all. She +had long ago succeeded in convincing herself that the grapes of his +affection were too sour to be worth fretting after; but she still wanted +to make him admire her in spite of himself, and to realize that Miss +Elisabeth Farringdon of the Osierfield was a more important personage +than he had considered her to be. Half the pleasure of her success as an +artist had lain in the thought that this at last would convince +Christopher of her right to be admired and obeyed; but she was never +sure that it had actually done so. Through all her triumphal progress he +had been the Mordecai at her gates. She did not often see him, it is +true; but when she did, she was acutely conscious that his attitude +toward her was different from the attitude of the rest of the world, and +that--instead of offering her unlimited praise and adulation--he saw her +weaknesses as clearly now she was a great lady as he had done when she +was a little girl. + +And herein Elisabeth's intuition was not at fault; her failings were +actually more patent to Christopher than to the world at large. But here +her perception ended; and she did not see, further, that it was because +Christopher had formed such a high ideal of her, that he minded so much +when she fell short of it. She had not yet grasped the truth that +whereas the more a woman loves a man the easier she finds it to forgive +his faults, the more a man loves a woman the harder he finds it to +overlook her shortcomings. A woman merely requires the man she loves to +be true to her; while a man demands that the woman he loves shall be +true to herself--or, rather, to that ideal of her which in his own mind +he has set up and worshipped. + +Her consciousness of Christopher's disapproval of the easy-going, +Bohemian fashion in which she had chosen to walk through life, made +Elisabeth intensely angry; though she would have died rather than let +him know it. How dared this one man show himself superior to her, when +she had the world at her feet? It was insupportable! She said but little +to him, and he said still less to her, and what they did say was usually +limited to the affairs of the Osierfield; nevertheless Elisabeth +persistently weighed herself in Christopher's balances, and measured +herself according to Christopher's measures; and, as she did so, wrote +_Tekel_ opposite her own name. And for this she refused to forgive him. +She assured herself that his balances were false, and his measures +impossible, and his judgments hard in the extreme; and when she had done +so, she began to try herself thereby again, and hated him afresh because +she fell so far short of them. + +But now he was going to see her in a new light; if he declined to admire +her in prosperity, he should be compelled to respect her in adversity; +for she made up her mind she would bear her reverses like a Spartan, if +only for the sake of proving to him that she was made of better material +than he, in his calm superiority, had supposed. When he saw for himself +how plucky she could be, and how little she really cared for outside +things, he might at last discover that she was not as unworthy of his +regard as he had once assumed, and might even want to be friends with +her again; and then she would throw his friendship back again in his +face, as he had once thrown hers, and teach him that it was possible +even for self-righteous people to make mistakes which were past +repairing. It would do him a world of good, Elisabeth thought, to find +out--too late--that he had misjudged her, and that other people besides +himself had virtues and excellences; and it comforted her, in the midst +of her adversities, to contemplate the punishment which was being +reserved for Christopher, when George Farringdon's son came into his +own. And she never guessed--how could she?--that when at last George +Farringdon's son did come into his own, there would be no Christopher +Thornley serving under him at the Osierfield; and that the cup of +remorse, which she was so busily preparing, was for her own drinking and +not for Christopher's. + +Christopher's expected answer to her epistle was, however, not +forthcoming. The following morning Elisabeth received a letter from one +of the clerks at the Osierfield, informing her that Mr. Thornley +returned from his tour in Germany a week ago; and that immediately on +his return he was seized with a severe attack of pneumonia--the result +of a neglected cold--and was now lying seriously ill at his house in +Sedgehill. In order to complete the purchase of a piece of land for the +enlargement of the works, which Mr. Thornley had arranged to buy before +he went away, it was necessary (the clerk went on to say) to see the +plans of the Osierfield; and these were locked up in the private safe at +the manager's house, to which only Christopher and Elisabeth possessed +keys. Therefore, as the manager was delirious and quite incapable of +attending to business of any kind, the clerk begged Miss Farringdon to +come down at once and take the plans out of the safe; as the +negotiations could not be completed until this was done. + +For an instant the old instinct of tenderness toward any one who was +weak or suffering welled up in Elisabeth's soul, and she longed to go to +her old playmate and help and comfort him; but then came the remembrance +of how once before, long ago, she had been ready to help and comfort +Christopher, and he had wanted neither her help nor her comfort; so she +hardened her heart against him, and proudly said to herself that if +Christopher could do without her she could do without Christopher. + +That summer's day was one which Elisabeth could never forget as long as +she lived; it stood out from the rest of her life, and would so stand +out forever. We all know such days as this--days which place a gulf, +that can never be passed over, between their before and after. She +travelled down to Sedgehill by a morning train; and her heart was heavy +within her as she saw how beautiful the country looked in the summer +sunshine, and realized that the home she loved was to be taken away from +her and given to another. Somehow life had not brought her all that she +had expected from it, and yet she did not see wherein she herself had +been to blame. She had neither loved nor hoarded her money, but had used +it for the good of others to the best of her knowledge; yet it was to be +taken from her. She had not hidden her talent in a napkin, but had +cultivated it to the height of her powers; yet her fame was cold and +dreary to her, and her greatness turned to ashes in her hands. She had +been ready to give love in full measure and running over to any one who +needed it; yet her heart had asked in vain for something to fill it, and +in spite of all its longings had been sent empty away. She had failed +all along the line to get the best out of life; and yet she did not see +how she could have acted differently. Surely it was Fate, and not +herself, that was to blame for her failure. + +When she arrived at Sedgehill she drove straight to Christopher's house, +and learned from the nurse who was attending him how serious his illness +was--not so much on account of the violence of the cold which he had +taken in Germany, as from the fact that his vitality was too feeble to +resist it. But she could not guess--and there was no one to tell +her--that his vitality had been lowered by her unkindness to him, and +that it was she who had deliberately snapped the mainspring of +Christopher's life. It was no use anybody's seeing him, the nurse said, +as he was delirious and knew no one; but if he regained consciousness, +she would summon Miss Farringdon at once. + +Then Elisabeth went alone into the big, oak-panelled dining-room, with +the crape masks before its windows, and opened the safe. + +She could not find the plans at once, as she did not know exactly where +to look for them; and as she was searching for them among various +papers, she came upon a letter addressed to herself in Christopher's +handwriting. She opened it with her usual carelessness, without +perceiving that it bore the inscription "Not to be given to Miss +Farringdon until after my death"; and when she had begun to read it, she +could not have left off to save her life--being a woman. And this was +what she read: + +"MY DARLING--for so I may call you at last, since you will not read this +letter until after I am dead; + +"There are two things that I want to tell you. _First_, that I love you, +and always have loved you, and always shall love you to all eternity. +But how could I say this to you, sweetheart, in the days when my love +spelled poverty for us both? And how could I say it when you became one +of the richest women in Mershire, and I only the paid manager of your +works? Nevertheless I should have said it in time, when you had seen +more of the world and were capable of choosing your own life for +yourself, had I thought there was any chance of your caring for me; for +no man has ever loved you as I have loved you, Elisabeth, nor ever will. +You had a right to know what was yours, when you were old enough to +decide what to do with it, and to take or leave it as you thought fit; +and no one else had the right to decide this for you. But when you so +misjudged me about my journey to Australia, I understood that it was I +myself, and not my position, that stood between us; and that your nature +and mine were so different, and our ideas so far apart, that it was not +in my power to make you happy, though I would have died to do so. So I +went out of your life, for fear I should spoil it; and I have kept out +of your life ever since, because I know you are happier without me; for +I do so want you to be happy, dear. + +"There is one other thing I have to tell you: I am George Farringdon's +son. I shouldn't have bothered you with this, only I feel it is +necessary--after I am gone--for you to know the truth, lest any impostor +should turn up and take your property from you. Of course, as long as I +am alive I can keep the secret, and yet take care that no one else comes +forward in my place; and I have made a will leaving everything I possess +to you. But when I am gone, you must hold the proofs of who was really +the person who stood between you and the Farringdon property. I never +found it out until my uncle died; I believed, as everybody else +believed, that the lost heir was somewhere in Australia. But on my +uncle's death I found a confession from him--which is in this safe, +along with my parents' marriage certificate and all the other proofs of +my identity--saying how his sister told him on her death-bed that, when +George Farringdon ran away from home, he married her, and took her out +with him to Australia. They had a hard life, and lost all their children +except myself; and then my father died, leaving my poor mother almost +penniless. She survived him only long enough to come back to England, +and give her child into her brother's charge. My uncle went on to say +that he kept my identity a secret, and called me by an assumed name, as +he was afraid that Miss Farringdon would send both him and me about our +business if she knew the truth; as in those days she was very bitter +against the man who had jilted her, and would have been still bitterer +had she known he had thrown her over for the daughter of her father's +manager. When Maria Farringdon died and showed, by her will, that at +last she had forgiven her old lover, my uncle's mind was completely +gone; and it was not until after his death that I discovered the papers +which put me in possession of the facts of the case. + +"By that time I had learned, beyond all disputing, that I was too dull +and stupid ever to win your love. I only cared for money that it might +enable me to make you happy; and if you could be happier without me than +with me, who was I that I should complain? At any rate, it was given to +me to insure your happiness; and that was enough for me. And you said +that I didn't care what became of you, as long as I laid up for myself a +nice little nest-egg in heaven! Sweetheart, I think you did me an +injustice. So be happy, my dearest, with the Willows and the Osierfield +and all the dear old things which you and I have loved so well; and +remember that you must never pity me. I wanted you to be happy more than +I wanted anything else in the world, and no man is to be pitied who has +succeeded in getting what he wanted most. + + "Yours, my darling, for time and eternity, + "CHRISTOPHER FARRINGDON." + +Then at last Elisabeth's eyes were opened, and for the first time in her +life she saw clearly. So Christopher had loved her all along; she knew +the truth at last, and with it she also knew that she had always loved +him; that throughout her life's story there never had been--never could +be--any man but Christopher. Until he told her that he loved her, her +love for him had been a fountain sealed; but at his word it became a +well of living water, flooding her whole soul and turning the desert of +her life into a garden. + +At first she was overpowered with the joy of it; she was upheld by that +strange feeling of exaltation which comes to all of us when we realize +for a moment our immortality, and feel that even death itself is +powerless to hurt us. Christopher was dying, but what did that signify? +He loved her--that was the only thing that really mattered--and they +would have the whole of eternity in which to tell their love. For the +second time in her life she came face to face with the fact that there +was a stronger Will than her own guiding and ruling her; that, in spite +of all her power and ability and self-reliance, the best things in her +life were not of herself but were from outside. As long ago in St. +Peter's Church she had learned that religion was God's Voice calling to +her, she now learned that love was Christopher's voice calling to her; +and that her own strength and cleverness, of which she had been so +proud, counted for less than nothing. To her who longed to give, was +given; she who desired to love, was beloved; she who aspired to teach, +had been taught. That strong will of hers, which had once been so +dominant, had suddenly fallen down powerless; she no longer wanted to +have her own way--she wanted to have Christopher's. Her warfare against +him was at last accomplished. To the end of her days she knew she would +go on weighing herself in his balances, and measuring herself according +to his measures; but now she would do so willingly, choosing to be +guided by his wisdom rather than her own, for she no more belonged to +herself but to him. The feeling of unrest, which had oppressed her for +so many years, now fell from her like a cast-off garment. Christopher +was the answer to her life's problem, the fulfilment of her heart's +desire; and although she might be obliged to go down again into the +valley of the shadow, she could never forget that she had once stood +upon the mountain-top and had beheld the glory of the promised land. + +And she never remembered that now her fortune was secured to her, and +that the Willows and the Osierfield would always be hers; even these +were henceforth of no moment to her, save as monuments of Christopher's +love. + +So in the dingy dining-room, on that hot summer's afternoon, Elisabeth +Farringdon became a new creature. The old domineering arrogance passed +away forever; and from its ashes there arose another Elisabeth, who out +of weakness was made stronger than she had ever been in her strength--an +Elisabeth who had attained to the victory of the vanquished, and who had +tasted the triumph of defeat. But in all her exaltation she knew--though +for the moment the knowledge could not hurt her--that her heart would be +broken by Christopher's death. Through the long night of her ignorance +and self-will and unsatisfied idealism she had wrestled with the angel +that she might behold the Best, and had prayed that it might be granted +unto her to see the Vision Beautiful. At last she had prevailed; and the +day for which she had so longed was breaking, and transfiguring the +common world with its marvellous light. But the angel-hand had touched +her, and she no longer stood upright and self-reliant, but was bound to +halt and walk lamely on her way until she stood by Christopher's side +again. + +This exalted mood did not last for long. As she sat in the gloomy room +and watched the blazing sunshine forcing its way through the darkened +windows, her eye suddenly fell upon two notches cut in the doorway, +where she and Christopher had once measured themselves when they were +children; and the familiar sight of these two little notches, made by +Christopher's knife so long ago, awoke in her heart the purely human +longing for him as the friend and comrade she had known and looked up to +all her life. And with this longing came the terrible thought of how +she had hurt and misunderstood and misjudged him, and of how it was now +too late for her to make up to him in this life for all the happiness of +which she had defrauded him in her careless pride. Then, for the first +time since she was born, Elisabeth put her lips to the cup of remorse, +and found it very bitter to the taste. She had been so full of plans for +comforting mankind and helping the whole world; yet she had utterly +failed toward the only person whom it had been in her power actually to +help and comfort; and her heart echoed the wail of the most beautiful +love-song ever written--"They made me the keeper of the vineyards; but +mine own vineyard have I not kept." + +As she was sitting, bowed down in utter anguish of spirit while the +waves of remorse flooded her soul, the door opened and the nurse came +in. + +"Mr. Thornley is conscious now, and is asking for you, Miss Farringdon," +she said. + +Elisabeth started up, her face aglow with new hope. It was so natural to +her not to be cast down for long. "Oh! I am so glad. I want dreadfully +to see him, I have so much to say to him. But I'll promise not to tire +or excite him. Tell me, how long may I stay with him, Nurse, and how +quiet must I be?" + +The nurse smiled sadly. "It won't matter how long you stay or what you +say, Miss Farringdon; I don't think it is possible for anything to hurt +or help him now; for I am afraid, whatever happens, he can not possibly +recover." + +As she went upstairs Elisabeth kept saying to herself, "I am going to +see the real Christopher for the first time"; and she felt the old, shy +fear of him that she had felt long ago when Richard Smallwood was +stricken. But when she entered the room and saw the worn, white face on +the pillow, with the kind smile she knew so well, she completely forgot +her shyness, and only remembered that Christopher was in need of her, +and that she would gladly give her life for his if she could. + +"Kiss me, my darling," he said, holding out his arms; and she knew by +the look in his eyes that every word of his letter was true. "I am too +tired to pretend any more that I don't love you. And it can't matter now +whether you know or not, it is so near the end." + +Elisabeth put her strong arms round him, and kissed him as he asked. +"Chris, dear," she whispered, "I want to tell you that I love you, and +that I've always loved you, and that I always shall love you; but I've +only just found it out." + +Christopher was silent for a moment, and clasped her very close. But he +was not so much surprised as he would have been had Elisabeth made such +an astounding revelation to him in the days of his health. When one is +drawing near to the solution of the Great Mystery, one loses the power +of wondering at anything. + +"How did you find it out, my dearest?" he asked at last. + +"Through finding out that you loved me. It seems to me that my love was +always lying in the bank at your account, but until you gave a cheque +for it you couldn't get at it. And the cheque was my knowing that you +cared for me." + +"And how did you find that out, Betty?" + +"I was rummaging in the safe just now for the plans of the Osierfield, +and I came upon your letter." + +"I didn't mean you to read that while I was alive; but, all the same, I +think I am rather glad that you did." + +"And I am glad, too. I wish I hadn't always been so horrid to you, +Chris; but I believe I should have loved you all the time, if only you +had given me the chance. Still, I was horrid--dreadfully horrid; and now +it is too late to make it up to you." And Elisabeth's eyes filled with +tears. + +"Don't cry, my darling--please don't cry. And, besides, you have made it +up to me by loving me now. I am glad you understand at last, Betty; I +did so hope you would some day." + +"And you forgive me for having been so vile?" + +"There is nothing to forgive, sweetheart; it was my fault for not making +you understand; but I did it for the best, though I seem to have made a +mess of it." + +"And you like me just the same as you did before I was unkind to you?" + +"My dear, don't you know?" + +"You see, Chris, I was wanting you to be nice to me all the +time--nothing else satisfied me instead of you. And when you seemed not +to like me any longer, but to care for doing your duty more than for +being with me, I got sore and angry, and decided to punish you for +making a place for yourself in my heart and then refusing to fill it." + +"Well, you did what you decided, as you generally do; there is no doubt +of that. You were always very prone to administer justice and to +maintain truth, Elisabeth, and you certainly never spared the rod as far +as I was concerned." + +"But now I see that I was wrong; I understand that it was because you +cared so much for abstract right, that you were able to care so much +for me; a lower nature would have given me a lower love; and if only we +could go through it all again, I should want you to go to Australia +after George Farringdon's son." + +Christopher's thin fingers wandered over Elisabeth's hair; and as they +did so he remembered, with tender amusement, how often he had comforted +her on account of her dark locks. Now one or two gray hairs were +beginning to show through the brown ones, and it struck him with a pang +that he would no longer be here to comfort her on account of those; for +he knew that Elisabeth was the type of woman who would require +consolation on that score, and that he was the man who could effectually +have administered it. + +"I can see now," Elisabeth went on, "how much more important it is what +a man is than what a man says, though I used to think that words were +everything, and that people didn't feel what they didn't talk about. You +used to disappoint me because you said so little; but, all the same, +your character influenced me without my knowing it; and whatever good +there is in me, comes from my having known you and seen you live up to +your own ideals. People wonder that worldly things attract me so little, +and that my successes haven't turned my head; so they would have done, +probably, if I had never met you; but having once seen in you what the +ideal life is, I couldn't help despising lower things, though I tried my +hardest not to despise them. Nobody who had once been with you, and +looked even for a minute at life through your eyes, could ever care +again for anything that was mean or sordid or paltry. Darling, don't you +understand that my knowing you made me better than I tried to +be--better even than I wanted to be; and that all my life I shall be a +truer woman because of you?" + +But by that time the stupendous effort which Christopher had made for +Elisabeth's sake had exhausted itself, and he fell back upon his +pillows, white to the lips, and too weak to say another word. Yet not +even the great Shadow could cloud the love that shone in his eyes, as he +looked at Elisabeth's eager face, and listened to the voice for which +his soul had hungered so long. The sight of his weakness brought her +down to earth again more effectually than any words could have done; and +with an exceeding bitter cry she hid her face in her arms and sobbed +aloud-- + +"Oh! my darling, my darling, come back to me; I love you so that I can +not let you go. The angels can do quite well without you in heaven, but +I can not do without you here. Oh! Chris, don't go away and leave me, +just now that we've learned to understand one another. I'll be good all +my life, and do everything that you tell me, if only you won't go away. +My dearest, I love you so--I love you so; and I've nobody in the world +but you." + +Christopher made another great effort to take her in his arms and +comfort her; but it was too much for him, and he fainted away. + + + + +CHAPTER XVIII + +THE OTHER SIDE OF THE HILLS + + Shall I e'er love thee less fondly than now, dear? + Tell me if e'er my devotion can die? + Never until thou shalt cease to be thou, dear; + Never until I no longer am I. + + +Whether the doctors were right when they talked of the renewed desire to +live producing fresh vitality, or whether the wise man knew best after +all when he said that love is stronger than death, who can say? Anyway, +the fact remained that Christopher responded--as he had ever +responded--to Elisabeth's cry for help, and came back from the very +gates of the grave at her bidding. He had never failed her yet, and he +did not fail her now. + +The days of his recovery were wonderful days to Elisabeth. It was so +strange and new to her to be doing another person's will, and thinking +another person's thoughts, and seeing life through another person's +eyes; it completely altered the perspective of everything. And there was +nothing strained about it, which was a good thing, as Elisabeth was too +light-hearted to stand any strain for long; the old comradeship still +existed between them, giving breadth to a love which the new +relationship had made so deep. + +And it was very wonderful to Christopher, also, to find himself in the +sunshine at last after so many years of shadowland. At first the light +almost dazzled him, he was so unaccustomed to it; but as he gradually +became used to the new feeling of being happy, his nature responded to +the atmosphere of warmth and brightness, and opened as a flower in the +sun. As it was strange to Elisabeth to find herself living and moving +and having her being in another's personality, so it was strange to +Christopher to find another's personality merged in his. He had lived so +entirely for other people that it was a great change to find another +person living entirely for him; and it was a change that was wholly +beneficial. As his nature deepened Elisabeth's, so her nature expanded +his; and each was the better for the influence of the other, as each was +the complement of the other. So after a time Christopher grew almost as +light-hearted as Elisabeth, while Elisabeth grew almost as +tender-hearted as Christopher. For both of them the former things had +passed away, and all things were made new. + +It was beautiful weather, too, which helped to increase their happiness; +that still, full, green weather, which sometimes comes in the late +summer, satisfying men's souls with its peaceful perfectness; when the +year is too old to be disturbed by the restless hope of spring, too +young to be depressed by the chilling dread of autumn, and so just +touches the fringe of that eternity which has no end neither any +beginning. The fine weather hastened Christopher's recovery; and, as he +gained strength, he and Elisabeth spent much time in the old garden, +looking toward the Welsh mountains. + +"So we have come to the country on the other side of the hills at +last," she said to him, as they were watching one of the wonderful +Mershire sunsets and drinking in its beauty. "I always knew it was +there, but sometimes I gave up all hope of ever finding it for myself." + +Christopher took her hand and began playing with the capable +artist-fingers. "And is it as nice a country as you expected, +sweetheart?" + +"As nice as I expected? I should just think it is. I knew that in the +country over the hills I should find all the beautiful things I had +imagined as a child and all the lovely things I had longed for as a +woman; and that, if only I could reach it, all the fairy-tales would +come true. But now that I have reached it, I find that the fairy-tales +fell far short of the reality, and that it is a million times nicer than +I ever imagined anything could be." + +"Darling, I am glad you are so happy. But it beats me how such a stupid +fellow as I am can make you so." + +"Well, you do, and that's all that matters. Nobody can tell how they do +things; they only know that they can do them. I don't know how I can +paint pictures any more than you know how you can turn smoky ironworks +into the country over the hills. But we can, and do; which shows what +clever people we are, in spite of ourselves." + +"I think the cleverness lies with you in both cases--in your wonderful +powers of imagination, my dear." + +"Do you? Then that shows how little you know about it." + +Christopher put his arm round her. "I always was stupid, you know; you +have told me so with considerable frequency." + +"Oh! so you were; but you were never worse than stupid." + +"That's a good thing; for stupidity is a misfortune rather than a +fault." + +"Now I was worse than stupid--much worse," continued Elisabeth gravely; +"but I never was actually stupid." + +"Weren't you? Don't be too sure of that. I don't wish to hurt your +feelings, sweetheart, or to make envious rents in your panoply of +wisdom; but, do you know, you struck me now and again as being a +shade--we will not say stupid, but dense?" + +"When I thought you didn't like me because you went to Australia, you +mean?" + +"That was one of the occasions when your acumen seemed to be slightly at +fault. And there were others." + +Elisabeth looked thoughtful. "I really did think you didn't like me +then." + +"Denseness, my dear Elisabeth--distinct denseness. It would be gross +flattery to call it by any other name." + +"But you never told me you liked me." + +"If I had, and you had then thought I did not, you would have been +suffering from deafness, not denseness. You are confusing terms." + +"Well, then, I'll give in and say I was dense. But I was worse than +that: I was positively horrid as well." + +"Not horrid, Betty; you couldn't be horrid if you tried. Perhaps you +were a little hard on me; but it's all over and done with now, and you +needn't bother yourself any more about it." + +"But I ought to bother about it if I intend to make a trustworthy +step-ladder out of my dead selves to upper storeys." + +"A trustworthy fire-escape, you mean; but I won't have it. You sha'n't +have any dead selves, my dear, because I shall insist on keeping them +all alive by artificial respiration, or restoration from drowning, or +something of that kind. Not one of them shall die with my permission; +remember that. I'm much too fond of them." + +"You silly boy! You'll never train me and discipline me properly if you +go on in this way." + +"Hang it all, Betty! Who wants to train and discipline you? Certainly +not I. I am wise enough to let well--or rather perfection--alone." + +Elisabeth nestled up to Christopher. "But I'm not perfection, Chris; you +know that as well as I do." + +"Probably I shouldn't love you so much if you were; so please don't +reform, dear." + +"And you like me just as I am?" + +"Precisely. I should break my heart if you became in any way different +from what you are now." + +"But you mustn't break your heart; it belongs to me, and I won't have +you smashing up my property." + +"I gave it to you, it is true; but the copyright is still mine. The +copyright of letters that I wrote to you is mine; and I believe the law +of copyright is the same with regard to hearts as to letters." + +"Well, anyhow, I've written my name all over it." + +"I know you have; and it was very untidy of you, my dearest. Once would +have been enough to show that it belonged to you; but you weren't +content with that: you scribbled all over every available space, until +there was no room left even for advertisements; and now nobody else will +ever be able to write another name upon it as long as I live." + +"I'm glad of that; I wouldn't have anybody else's name upon it for +anything. And I'm glad that you like me just as I am, and don't want me +to be different." + +"Heaven forbid!" + +"But still I was horrid to you once, Chris, however you may try to gloss +it over. My dear, my dear, I don't know how I ever could have been +unkind to you; but I was." + +"Never mind, sweetheart; it is ancient history now, and who bothers +about ancient history? Did you ever meet anybody who fretted over the +overthrow of Carthage, or made a trouble of the siege of Troy?" + +"No," Elisabeth truthfully replied; "and I'm really nice to you now, +whatever I may have been before. Don't you think I am?" + +"I should just think you are, Betty; a thousand times nicer than I +deserve, and I am becoming most horribly conceited in consequence." + +"And, after all, I agree with the prophet Ezekiel that if people are +nice at the end, it doesn't much matter how disagreeable they have been +in the meantime. He doesn't put it quite in that way, but the sentiment +is the same. I suit you down to the ground now, don't I, Chris?" + +"You do, my darling; and up to the sky, and beyond." And Christopher +drew her still closer to him and kissed her. + +After a minute's silence Elisabeth whispered-- + +"When one is as divinely happy as this, isn't it difficult to realize +that the earth will ever be earthy again, and the butter turnipy, and +things like that? Yet they will be." + +"But never quite as earthy or quite as turnipy as they were before; +that's just the difference." + +After playing for a few minutes with Christopher's watch-chain, +Elisabeth suddenly remarked-- + +"You never really appreciated my pictures, Chris. You never did me +justice as an artist, though you did me far more than justice as a +woman. Why was that?" + +"Didn't I? I'm sorry. Nevertheless, I'm not sure that you are right. I +was always intensely interested in your pictures because they were +yours, quite apart from their own undoubted merits." + +"That was just it; you admired my pictures because they were painted by +me, while you really ought to have admired me because I had painted the +pictures." + +A look of amusement stole over Christopher's face. "Then I fell short of +your requirements, dear heart; for, as far as you and your works were +concerned, I certainly never committed the sin of worshipping the +creature rather than the creator." + +"But there was a time when I wanted you to do so." + +"As a matter of fact," said Christopher thoughtfully, "I don't believe a +man who loves a woman can ever appreciate her genius properly, because +love is greater than genius, and so the greater swallows up the less. In +the eyes of the world, her genius is the one thing which places a woman +of genius above her fellows, and the world worships it accordingly. But +in the eyes of the man who loves her, she is already placed so far above +her fellows that her genius makes no difference to her altitude. Thirty +feet makes all the difference in the height of a weather-cock, but none +at all in the distance between the earth and a fixed star." + +"What a nice thing to say! I adore you when you say things like that." + +Christopher continued: "You see, the man is interested in the woman's +works of art simply because they are hers; just as he is interested in +the rustle of her silk petticoat simply because it is hers. Possibly he +is more interested in the latter, because men can paint pictures +sometimes, and they can never rustle silk petticoats properly. You are +right in thinking that the world adores you for the sake of your +creations, while I adore your creations for the sake of you; but you +must also remember that the world would cease to worship you if your +genius began to decline, while I should love you just the same if you +took to painting sign-posts and illustrating Christmas cards--even if +you became an impressionist." + +"What a dear boy you are! You really are the greatest comfort to me. I +didn't always feel like this, but now you satisfy me completely, and +fill up every crevice of my soul. There isn't a little space anywhere in +my mind or heart or spirit that isn't simply bursting with you." And +Elisabeth laughed a low laugh of perfect contentment. + +"My darling, how I love you!" And Christopher also was content. + +Then there was another silence, which Christopher broke at last by +saying-- + +"What is the matter, Betty?" + +"There isn't anything the matter. How should there be?" + +"Oh, yes, there is. Do you think I have studied your face for over +thirty years, my dear, without knowing every shade of difference in its +expression? Have I said anything to vex you?" + +"No, no; how could I be vexed with you, Chris, when you are so good to +me? I am horrid enough, goodness knows, but not horrid enough for that." + +"Then what is it? Tell me, dear, and see if I can't help?" + +Elisabeth sighed. "I was thinking that there is really no going back, +however much we may pretend that there is. What we have done we have +done, and what we have left undone we have left undone; and there is no +blotting out the story of past years. We may write new stories, perhaps, +and try to write better ones, but the old ones are written beyond +altering, and must stand for ever. You have been divinely good to me, +Chris, and you never remind me even by a look how I hurt you and +misjudged you in the old days. But the fact remains that I did both; and +nothing can ever alter that." + +"Silly little child, it's all over and past now! I've forgotten it, and +you must forget it too." + +"I can't forget it; that's just the thing. I spoiled your life for the +best ten years of it; and now, though I would give everything that I +possess to restore those years to you, I can't restore them, or make +them up to you for the loss of them. That's what hurts so dreadfully." + +Christopher looked at her with a great pity shining in his eyes. He +longed to save from all suffering the woman he loved; but he could not +save her from the irrevocableness of her own actions, strive as he +would; which was perhaps the best thing in the world for her, and for +all of us. Human love would gladly shield us from the consequences of +what we have done; but Divine Love knows better. What we have written, +we have written on the page of life; and neither our own tears, nor the +tears of those who love us better than we love ourselves, can blot it +out. For the first time in her easy, self-confident career, Elisabeth +Farringdon was brought face to face with this merciless truth; and she +trembled before it. It was just because Christopher was so ready to +forgive her, that she found it impossible to forgive herself. + +"I always belonged to you, you see, dear," Christopher said very gently, +"and you had the right to do what you liked with your own. I had given +you the right of my own free will." + +"But you couldn't give me the right to do what was wrong. Nobody can do +that. I did what was wrong, and now I must be punished for it." + +"Not if I can help it, sweetheart. You shall never be punished for +anything if I can bear the punishment for you." + +"You can't help it, Chris; that's just the point. And I am being +punished in the way that hurts most. All my life I thought of myself, +and my own success, and how I was going to do this and that and the +other, and be happy and clever and good. But suddenly everything has +changed. I no longer care about being happy myself; I only want you to +be happy; and yet I know that for ten long years I deliberately +prevented you from being happy. Don't you see, dear, how terrible the +punishment is? The thing I care for most in the whole world is your +happiness; and the fact remains, and will always remain, that that was +the thing which I destroyed with my own hands, because I was cruel and +selfish and cold." + +"Still, I am happy enough now, Betty--happy enough to make up for all +that went before." + +"But I can never give you back those ten years," said Elisabeth, with a +sob in her voice--"never as long as I live. Oh! Chris, I see now how +horrid I was; though all the time I thought I was being so good, that I +looked down upon the women who I considered had lower ideals than I had. +I built myself an altar of stone, and offered up your life upon it, and +then commended myself when the incense rose up to heaven; and I never +found out that the sacrifice was all yours, and that there was nothing +of mine upon the altar at all." + +"Never mind, darling; there isn't going to be a yours and mine any more, +you know. All things are ours, and we are beginning a new life +together." + +Elisabeth put both arms round his neck and kissed him of her own accord. +"My dearest," she whispered, "how can I ever love you enough for being +so good to me?" + +But while Christopher and Elisabeth were walking across enchanted +ground, Cecil Farquhar was having a hard time. Elisabeth had written to +tell him the actual facts of the case almost as soon as she knew them +herself; and he could not forgive her for first raising his hopes and +then dashing them to the ground. And there is no denying that he had +somewhat against her; for she had twice played him this trick--first as +regarded herself, and then as regarded her fortune. That she had not +been altogether to blame--that she had deluded herself in both cases as +effectually as she had deluded him--was no consolation as far as he was +concerned; his egoism took no account of her motives--it only resented +the results. Quenelda did all in her power to comfort him, but she +found it uphill work. She gave him love in full measure; but, as it +happened, money and not love was the thing he most wanted, and that was +not hers to bestow. He still cared for her more than he cared for +anybody (though not for anything) else in the world; it was not that he +loved Caesar less but Rome more, Cecil's being one of the natures to whom +Rome would always appeal more powerfully than Caesar. His life did +consist in the things which he had; and, when these failed, nothing else +could make up to him for them. Neither Christopher nor Elisabeth was +capable of understanding how much mere money meant to Farquhar; they had +no conception of how bitter was his disappointment on knowing that he +was not, after all, the lost heir to the Farringdon property. And who +would blame them for this? Does one blame a man, who takes a dirty bone +away from a dog, for not entering into the dog's feelings on the matter? +Nevertheless, that bone is to the dog what fame is to the poet and glory +to the soldier. One can but enjoy and suffer according to one's nature. + +It happened, by an odd coincidence, that the mystery of Cecil's +parentage was cleared up shortly after Elisabeth's false alarm on that +score; and his paternal grandfather was discovered in the shape of a +retired shopkeeper at Surbiton of the name of Biggs, who had been cursed +with an unsatisfactory son. When in due time this worthy man was +gathered to his fathers, he left a comfortable little fortune to his +long-lost grandson; whereupon Cecil married Quenelda, and continued to +make art his profession, while his recreation took the form of +believing--and retailing his belief to anybody who had time and patience +to listen to it--that the Farringdons of Sedgehill had, by foul means, +ousted him from his rightful position, and that, but for their +dishonesty, he would have been one of the richest men in Mershire. And +this grievance--as is the way of grievances--never failed to be a source +of unlimited pleasure and comfort to Cecil Farquhar. + +But in the meantime, when the shock of disappointment was still fresh, +he wrote sundry scathing letters to Miss Elisabeth Farringdon, which she +in turn showed to Christopher, rousing the fury of the latter thereby. + +"He is a cad--a low cad!" exclaimed Christopher, after the perusal of +one of these epistles; "and I should like to tell him what I think of +him, and then kick him." + +Elisabeth laughed; she always enjoyed making Christopher angry. "He +wanted to marry me," she remarked, by way of adding fuel to the flames. + +"Confounded impudence on his part!" muttered Christopher. + +"But he left off when he found out that I hadn't got any money." + +"Worse impudence, confound him!" + +"Oh! I wish you could have seen him when I told him that the money was +not really mine," continued Elisabeth, bubbling over with mirth at the +recollection; "he cooled down so very quickly, and so rapidly turned his +thoughts in another direction. Don't you know what it is to bite a +gooseberry at the front door while it pops out at the back? Well, Cecil +Farquhar's love-making was just like that. It really was a fine sight!" + +"The brute!" + +"Never mind about him, dear! I'm tired of him." + +"But I do mind when people dare to be impertinent to you. I can't help +minding," Christopher persisted. + +"Then go on minding, if you want to, darling--only don't let us waste +our time in talking about him. There's such a lot to talk about that is +really important--why you said so-and-so, and how you felt when I said +so-and-so, ten years ago; and how you feel about me to-day, and whether +you like me as much this afternoon as you did this morning; and what +colour my eyes are, and what colour you think my new frock should be; +and heaps of really serious things like that." + +"All right, Betty; where shall we begin?" + +"We shall begin by making a plan. Do you know what you are going to do +this afternoon?" + +"Yes; whatever you tell me. I always do." + +"Well, then, you are coming with me to have tea at Mrs. Bateson's, just +as we used to do when we were little; and I have told her to invite Mrs. +Hankey as well, to make it seem just the same as it used to be. By the +way, is Mrs. Hankey as melancholy as ever, Chris?" + +"Quite. Time doth not breathe on her fadeless gloom, I can assure you." + +"Won't it be fun to pretend we are children again?" Elisabeth exclaimed. + +"Great fun; and I don't think it will need much pretending, do you +know?" replied Christopher, who saw deeper sometimes than Elisabeth did, +and now realized that it was only when they two became as little +children--he by ceasing to play Providence to her, and she by ceasing to +play Providence to herself--that they had at last caught glimpses of the +kingdom of heaven. + +So they walked hand in hand to Caleb Bateson's cottage, as they had so +often walked in far-off, childish days; and the cottage looked so +exactly the same as it used to look, and Caleb and his wife and Mrs. +Hankey were so little altered by the passage of time, that it seemed as +if the shadow had indeed been put back ten degrees. And so, in a way, it +was, by the new spring-time which had come to Christopher and Elisabeth. +They were both among those beloved of the gods who are destined to die +young--not in years but in spirit; her lover as well as herself was what +Elisabeth called "a fourth-dimension person," and there is no growing +old for fourth-dimension people; because it has already been given to +them to behold the vision of the cloud-clad angel, who stands upon the +sea and upon the earth and swears that there shall be time no longer. +They see him in the far distances of the sunlit hills, in the mysteries +of the unfathomed ocean, and their ears are opened to the message that +he brings; for they know that in all beauty--be it of earth, or sea, or +sky, or human souls--there is something indestructible, immortal, and +that those who have once looked upon it shall never see death. Such of +us as make our dwelling-place in the world of the three dimensions, grow +weary of the sameness and the staleness of it all, and drearily echo the +Preacher's _Vanitas vanitatum_; but such of us as have entered into the +fourth dimension, and have caught glimpses of the ideal which is +concealed in all reality, do not trouble ourselves over the flight of +time, for we know we have eternity before us; and so we are content to +wait patiently and joyfully, in sure and certain hope of that better +thing which, without us, can not be made perfect. + +It was with pride and pleasure that Mr. and Mrs. Bateson received their +guests. The double announcement that Christopher was the lost heir of +the Farringdons (for Elisabeth had insisted on his making this known), +and that he was about to marry Elisabeth, had given great delight all +through Sedgehill. The Osierfield people were proud of Elisabeth, but +they had learned to love Christopher; they had heard of her glory from +afar, but they had been eye-witnesses of the uprightness and +unselfishness and nobility of his life; and, on the whole, he was more +popular than she. Elisabeth was quite conscious of this; and--what was +more--she was glad of it. She, who had so loved popularity and +admiration, now wanted people to think more of Christopher than of her. +Once she had gloried in the thought that George Farringdon's son would +never fill her place in the hearts of the people of the Osierfield; now +her greatest happiness lay in the fact that he filled it more completely +than she could ever have done, and that at Sedgehill she would always be +second to him. + +"Deary me, but it's like old times to see Master Christopher and Miss +Elisabeth having tea with us again," exclaimed Mrs. Bateson, after Caleb +had asked a blessing; "and it seems but yesterday, Mrs. Hankey, that +they were here talking over Mrs. Perkins's wedding--your niece Susan as +was--with Master Christopher in knickers, and Miss Elisabeth's hair +down." + +Mrs. Hankey sighed her old sigh. "So it does, Mrs. Bateson--so it does; +and yet Susan has just buried her ninth." + +"And is she quite well?" asked Elisabeth cheerfully. "I remember all +about her wedding, and how immensely interested I was." + +"As well as you can expect, miss," replied Mrs. Hankey, "with eight +children on earth and one in heaven, and a husband as plays the trombone +of an evening. But that's the worst of marriage; you know what a man is +when you marry him, but you haven't a notion what he'll be that time +next year. He may take to drinking or music for all you know; and then +where's your peace of mind?" + +"You are not very encouraging," laughed Elisabeth, "considering that I +am going to be married at once." + +"Well, miss, where's the use of flattering with vain words, and crying +peace where there is no peace, I should like to know? I can only say as +I hope you'll be happy. Some are." + +Here Christopher joined in. "You mustn't discourage Miss Farringdon in +that way, or else she'll be throwing me over; and then whatever will +become of me?" + +Mrs. Hankey at once tried to make the _amende honorable_; she would not +have hurt Christopher's feelings for worlds, as she--in common with most +of the people at Sedgehill--had had practical experience of his kindness +in times of sorrow and anxiety. "Not she, sir; Miss Elisabeth's got too +much sense to go throwing anybody over--and especially at her age, when +she's hardly likely to get another beau in a hurry. Don't you go +troubling your mind about that, Master Christopher. You won't throw over +such a nice gentleman as him, will you, miss?" + +"Certainly not; though hardly on the grounds which you mention." + +"Well, miss, if you're set on marriage you're in luck to have got such a +pleasant-spoken gentleman as Master Christopher--or I should say, Mr. +Farringdon, begging his pardon. Such a fine complexion as he's got, and +never been married before, nor nothing. For my part I never thought you +would get a husband--never; and I've often passed the remark to Mr. and +Mrs. Bateson here. 'Mark my words,' I said, 'Miss Elisabeth Farringdon +will remain Elisabeth Farringdon to the end of the chapter; she's too +clever to take the fancy of the menfolk, and too pale. They want +something pink and white and silly, men do." + +"Some want one thing and some another," chimed in Mrs. Bateson, "and +they know what they want, which is more than women-folks do. Why, bless +you! girls 'll come telling you that they wouldn't marry so-and-so, not +if he was to crown 'em; and the next thing you hear is that they are +keeping company with him, and that no woman was ever so happy as them, +and that the man is such a piece of perfection that the President of the +Conference himself isn't fit to black his boots." + +"You have hit upon a great mystery, Mrs. Bateson," remarked Christopher, +"and one which has only of late been revealed to me. I used to think, in +my masculine ignorance, that if a woman appeared to dislike a man, she +would naturally refuse to marry him; but I am beginning to doubt if I +was right." + +Mrs. Bateson nodded significantly. "Wait till he asks her; that's what I +say. It's wonderful what a difference the asking makes. Women think a +sight more of a sparrow in the hand than a covey of partridges in the +bush; and I don't blame them for it; it's but natural that they should." + +"A poor thing but mine own," murmured Christopher. + +"That's not the principle at all," Elisabeth contradicted him; "you've +got hold of quite the wrong end of the stick this time." + +"I always do, in order to give you the right one; as in handing you a +knife I hold it by the blade. You so thoroughly enjoy getting hold of +the right end of a stick, Betty, that I wouldn't for worlds mar your +pleasure by seizing it myself; and your delight reaches high-water-mark +when, in addition, you see me fatuously clinging on to the ferrule." + +"Never mind what women-folk say about women-folk, Miss Elisabeth," said +Caleb Bateson kindly; "they're no judges. But my missis has the right of +it when she says that a man knows what he wants, and in general sticks +to it till he gets it. And if ever a man got what he wanted in this +world, that man's our Mr. Christopher." + +"You're right there, Bateson," agreed the master of the Osierfield; and +his eyes grew very tender as they rested upon Elisabeth. + +"And if he don't have no objection to cleverness and a pale complexion, +who shall gainsay him?" added Mrs. Hankey. "If he's content, surely it +ain't nobody's business to interfere; even though we may none of us, +Miss Elisabeth included, be as young as we was ten years ago." + +"And he is quite content, thank you," Christopher hastened to say. + +"I think you were right about women not knowing their own minds," +Elisabeth said to her hostess; "though I am bound to confess it is a +little stupid of us. But I believe the root of it is in shyness, and in +a sort of fear of the depth of our own feelings." + +"I daresay you're right, miss; and, when all's said and done, I'd sooner +hear a woman abusing a man she really likes, than see her throwing +herself at the head of a man as don't want her. That's the uptake of +all things, to my mind; I can't abide it." And Mrs. Bateson shook her +head in violent disapproval. + +Mrs. Hankey now joined in. "I remember my sister Sarah, when she was a +girl. There was a man wanted her ever so, and seemed as cut-up as never +was when she said no. She didn't know what to do with him, he was that +miserable; and yet she couldn't bring her mind to have him, because he'd +red hair and seven in family, being a widower. So she prayed the Lord to +comfort him and give him consolation. And sure enough the Lord did; for +within a month from the time as Sarah refused him, he was engaged to +Wilhelmina Gregg, our chapel-keeper's daughter. And then--would you +believe it?--Sarah went quite touchy and offended, and couldn't enjoy +her vittles, and wouldn't wear her best bonnet of a Sunday, and kept +saying as the sons of men were lighter than vanity. Which I don't deny +as they are, but that wasn't the occasion to mention it, Wilhelmina's +marriage being more the answer to prayer, as you may say, than any extra +foolishness on the man's part." + +"I should greatly have admired your sister Sarah," said Christopher; +"she was so delightfully feminine. And as for the red-headed swain, I +have no patience with him. His fickleness was intolerable." + +"Bless your heart, Master Christopher!" exclaimed Mrs. Bateson, "men are +mostly like that. Why should they waste their time fretting after some +young woman as hasn't got a civil word for them, when there are scores +and scores as has?" + +Christopher shook his head. "I can't pretend to say why; that is quite +beyond me. I only know that some of them do." + +"But they are only the nice exceptions that prove the rule," said +Elisabeth, as she and Christopher caught each other's eye. + +"No; it is she who is the nice exception," he replied. "It is only in +the case of exceptionally charming young women that such a thing ever +occurs; or rather, I should say, in the case of an exceptionally +charming young woman." + +"My wedding dress will be sent home next week," said Elisabeth to the +two matrons; "would you like to come and see it?" + +"Indeed, that we should!" they replied simultaneously. Then Mrs. Bateson +inquired: "And what is it made of, deary?" + +"White satin." + +Mrs. Hankey gazed critically at the bride-elect. "White satin is a bit +young, it seems to me; and trying, too, to them as haven't much colour." +Then cheering second thoughts inspired her. "Still, white's the proper +thing for a bride, I don't deny; and I always say 'Do what's right and +proper, and never mind looks.' The Lord doesn't look on the outward +appearance, as we all know; and it 'ud be a sight better for men if they +didn't, like Master Christopher there; there'd be fewer unhappy +marriages, mark my words. Of course, lavender isn't as trying to the +complexion as pure white; no one can say as it is; but to my mind +lavender always looks as if you've been married before; and it's no use +for folks to look greater fools than they are, as I can see." + +"Certainly not," Christopher agreed. "If there is any pretence at all, +let it be in the opposite direction, and let us all try to appear wiser +than we are!" + +"And that's easy enough for some of us, such as Hankey, for instance," +added Hankey's better half. "And there ain't as much wisdom to look at +as you could put on the point of a knife even then." + +So the women talked and the men listened--as is the way of men and women +all the world over--until tea was finished and it was time for the +guests to depart. They left amid a shower of heartfelt congratulations, +and loving wishes for the future opening out before them. Just as +Elisabeth passed through the doorway into the evening sunshine, which +was flooding the whole land and turning even the smoke-clouds into +windows of agate whereby men caught faint glimmerings of a dim glory as +yet to be revealed, she turned and held out her hands once more to her +friends. "It is very good to come back to you all, and to dwell among +mine own people," she said, her voice thrilling with emotion; "and I am +glad that Mrs. Hankey's prophecy has come true, and that Elisabeth +Farringdon will be Elisabeth Farringdon to the end of the chapter." + +THE END + + * * * * * + + +"A FRESH AND CHARMING NOVEL." + +The Last Lady of Mulberry. + +A Story of Italian New York. By HENRY WILTON THOMAS. Illustrated by Emil +Pollak. 12mo. Cloth, $1.50. + + "The Last Lady of Mulberry" is the title of a fresh and charming + novel, whose author, a new writer, Mr. Henry Wilton Thomas, has + found an unexploited field in the Italian quarter of New York. Mr. + Thomas is familiar with Italy as well as New York, and the local + color of his vivacious pictures gives his story a peculiar zest. As + a story pure and simple his novel is distinguished by originality + in motive, by a succession of striking and dramatic scenes, and by + an understanding of the motives of the characters, and a justness + and sympathy in their presentation which imparts a constant glow of + human interest to the tale. The author has a quaint and delightful + humor which will be relished by every reader. While his story deals + with actualities, it is neither depressing nor unpleasantly + realistic, like many "stories of low life," and the reader gains a + vivid impression of the sunnier aspects of life in the Italian + quarter. The book contains a series of well-studied and effective + illustrations by Mr. Emil Pollak. + +_BY THE AUTHOR OF "RED POTTAGE."_ + +=Diana Tempest.= + +A Novel. By MARY CHOLMONDELEY, author of "Red Pottage," "The Danvers +Jewels," etc. With Portrait and Sketch of the Author. 12mo. Cloth, +$1.50. + + "Of Miss Cholmondeley's clever novels, 'Diana Tempest' is quite the + cleverest."--_London Times._ + + "The novel is hard to lay by, and one likes to take it up again for + a second reading."--_Boston Literary World._ + +D. APPLETON AND COMPANY, NEW YORK. + + +DAVID HARUM. + +A Story of American Life. By Edward Noyes Westcott. 12mo. 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It seems to grow + in public favor, and this, after all, is the true test of + merit."--_The Tribune_, _Chicago_. + + "A thoroughly interesting bit of fiction, with a well-defined plot, + a slender but easily followed 'love' interest, some bold and finely + sketched character drawing, and a perfect gold mine of shrewd, + dialectic philosophy."--_The Call_, _San Francisco_. + + "The newsboys on the street can talk of 'David Harum,' but scarcely + a week ago we heard an intelligent girl of fifteen, in a house + which entertains the best of the daily papers and the weekly + reviews, ask, 'Who is Kipling?'"--_The Literary World_, _Boston_. + + "A masterpiece of character painting. In David Harum, the shrewd, + whimsical, horse-trading country banker, the author has depicted a + type of character that is by no means new to fiction, but nowhere + else has it been so carefully, faithfully, and realistically + wrought out."--_The Herald_, _Syracuse_. + + "We give Edward Noyes Westcott his true place in American + letters--placing him as a humorist next to Mark Twain, as a master + of dialect above Lowell, as a descriptive writer equal to Bret + Harte, and, on the whole, as a novelist on a par with the best of + those who live and have their being in the heart of hearts of + American readers. If the author is dead--lamentable fact--his book + will live."--_Philadelphia Item_. + +D. APPLETON AND COMPANY, NEW YORK. + + +FELIX GRAS'S ROMANCES. + +=The White Terror.= + +A Romance. Translated from the Provencal by Mrs. Catharine A. Janvier. +Uniform with "The Reds of the Midi" and "The Terror." 16mo. 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With an Introduction by Thomas A. Janvier. +With Frontispiece. 16mo. Cloth, $1.50. + + "I have read with great and sustained interest 'The Reds of the + South,' which you were good enough to present to me. Though a work + of fiction, it aims at painting the historical features, and such + works if faithfully executed throw more light than many so-called + histories on the true roots and causes of the Revolution, which are + so widely and so gravely misunderstood. As a novel it seems to me + to be written with great skill."--_William E. Gladstone_. + +D. APPLETON AND COMPANY, NEW YORK. + + +BOOKS BY ANTHONY HOPE + +=The King's Mirror.= + +Illustrated. 12mo. Cloth, $1.50. + + "Mr. Hope has never given more sustained proof of his cleverness + than in 'The King's Mirror.' In elegance, delicacy, and tact it + ranks with the best of his previous novels, while in the wide range + of its portraiture and the subtlety of its analysis it surpasses + all his earlier ventures."--_London Spectator_. + + "Mr. Anthony Hope is at his best in this new novel. He returns in + some measure to the color and atmosphere of 'The Prisoner of + Zenda.' ...A strong book, charged with close analysis and exquisite + irony; a book full of pathos and moral fiber--in short, a book to + be read."--_London Chronicle_. + + "A story of absorbing interest and one that will add greatly to the + author's reputation.... Told with all the brilliancy and charm + which we have come to associate with Mr. Anthony Hope's + work."--_London Literary World_. + +=The Chronicles of Count Antonio.= + +With Photogravure Frontispiece by S. W. Van Schaick. 12mo. Cloth, $1.50. + + "No adventures were ever better worth recounting than are those of + Antonio of Monte Velluto, a very Bayard among outlaws.... To all + those whose pulses still stir at the recital of deeds of high + courage, we may recommend this book.... The chronicle conveys the + emotion of heroic adventure, and is picturesquely + written."--_London Daily News_. + + "It has literary merits all its own, of a deliberate and rather + deep order.... In point of execution 'The Chronicles of Count + Antonio' is the best work that Mr. Hope has yet done. The design is + clearer, the workmanship more elaborate, the style more + colored."--_Westminster Gazette_. + +=The God in the Car.= + +New edition, uniform with "The Chronicles of Count Antonio." 12mo. +Cloth, $1.25. + + "'The God in the Car' is just as clever, just as distinguished in + style, just as full of wit, and of what nowadays some persons like + better than wit--allusiveness--as any of his stories. It is + saturated with the modern atmosphere; is not only a very clever but + a very strong story; in some respects, we think, the strongest Mr. + Hope has yet written."--_London Speaker_. + + "A very remarkable book, deserving of critical analysis impossible + within our limit; brilliant, but not superficial; well considered, + but not elaborated; constructed with the proverbial art that + conceals, but yet allows itself to be enjoyed by readers to whom + fine literary method is a keen pleasure."--_London World_. + +D. APPLETON AND COMPANY, NEW YORK. D. APPLETON AND COMPANY'S +PUBLICATIONS. + + +BY A. CONAN DOYLE. + +Uniform edition. 12mo. Cloth, $1.50 per volume. + +_A DUET, WITH AN OCCASIONAL CHORUS._ + + "Charming is the one word to describe this volume adequately. Dr. + Doyle's crisp style and his rare wit and refined humor, utilized + with cheerful art that is perfect of its kind, fill these chapters + with joy and gladness for the reader."--_Philadelphia Press_. + + "Bright, brave, simple, natural, delicate. It is the most artistic + and most original thing that its author has done.... We can + heartily recommend 'A Duet' to all classes of readers. It is a good + book to put into the hands of the young of either sex. It will + interest the general reader, and it should delight the critic, for + it is a work of art. This story taken with the best of his previous + work gives Dr. Doyle a very high place in modern + letters."--_Chicago Times-Herald_. + +_UNCLE BERNAC. A Romance of the Empire._ + + "Simple, clear, and well defined.... Spirited in movement all the + way through.... A fine example of clear analytical force."--_Boston + Herald_. + +_THE EXPLOITS OF BRIGADIER GERARD._ + +_A Romance of the Life of a Typical Napoleonic Soldier._ + + "Good, stirring tales are they.... Remind one of those adventures + indulged in by 'The Three Musketeers.' ... Written with a dash and + swing that here and there carry one away."--_New York Mail and + Express_. + +_RODNEY STONE._ + + "A notable and very brilliant work of genius."--_London Speaker_. + + "Dr. Doyle's novel is crowded with an amazing amount of incident + and excitement.... He does not write history, but shows us the + human side of his great men, living and moving in an atmosphere + charged with the spirit of the hard-living, hard-fighting + Anglo-Saxon."--_New York Critic_. + +_ROUND THE RED LAMP._ + +_Being Facts and Fancies of Medical Life._ + + "A strikingly realistic and decidedly original contribution to + modern literature."--_Boston Saturday Evening Gazette_. + + +_THE STARK MUNRO LETTERS._ + +Being a Series of Twelve Letters written by Stark Munro, M. B., to his +friend and former fellow-student, Herbert Swanborough, of Lowell, +Massachusetts, during the years 1881-1884. + + "Cullingworth, ... a much more interesting creation than Sherlock + Holmes, and I pray Dr. Doyle to give us more of him."--_Richard le + Gallienne, in the London Star_. + +D. APPLETON AND COMPANY, NEW YORK. + + +BOOKS BY ALLEN RAINE. + +Each, 12mo, cloth, $1.00; paper, 50 cents. + +=Garthowen: A Welsh Idyl.= + + "Wales has long waited for her novelist, but he seems to have come + at last in the person of Mr. Allen Raine, who has at once proved + himself a worthy interpreter and exponent of the romantic spirit of + his country."--_London Daily Mail_. + + +=By Berwen Banks.= + + "Mr. Raine enters into the lives and traditions of the people, and + herein lies the charm of his stories."--_Chicago Tribune_. + + "Interesting from the beginning, and grows more so as it + proceeds."--_San Francisco Bulletin_. + + "It has the same grace of style, strength of description, and + dainty sweetness of its predecessors."--_Boston Saturday Evening + Gazette_. + +=Torn Sails.= + + "It is a little idyl of humble life and enduring love, laid bare + before us, very real and pure, which in its telling shows us some + strong points of Welsh character--the pride, the hasty temper, the + quick dying out of wrath.... We call this a well-written story, + interesting alike through its romance and its glimpses into another + life than ours."--_Detroit Free Press_. + + "Allen Raine's work is in the right direction and worthy of all + honor."--_Boston Budget_. + + +=Mifanwy: A Welsh Singer.= + + "Simple in all its situations, the story is worked up in that + touching and quaint strain which never grows wearisome no matter + how often the lights and shadows of love are introduced. It rings + true, and does not tax the imagination."--_Boston Herald_. + + "One of the most charming tales that has come to us of + late."--_Brooklyn Eagle_. + +D. APPLETON AND COMPANY, NEW YORK. D. APPLETON AND COMPANY'S +PUBLICATIONS. + +_FAMILIAR LIFE IN FIELD AND FOREST._ + +By F. SCHUYLER MATHEWS. Uniform with "Familiar Flowers," "Familiar +Trees," and "Familiar Features of the Roadside." With many +Illustrations. 12mo. Cloth, $1.75. + + The great popularity of Mr. F. Schuyler Mathews's charmingly + illustrated books upon flowers, trees, and roadside life insures a + cordial reception for his forthcoming book, which describes the + animals, reptiles, insects, and birds commonly met with in the + country. His book will be found a most convenient and interesting + guide to an acquaintance with common wild creatures. + +_FAMILIAR FEATURES OF THE ROADSIDE._ + +By F. SCHUYLER MATHEWS, author of "Familiar Flowers of Field and +Garden," "Familiar Trees and their Leaves," etc. With 130 Illustrations +by the Author. 12mo. Cloth, $1.75. + + "Which one of us, whether afoot, awheel, on horseback, or in + comfortable carriage, has not whiled away the time by glancing + about? How many of us, however, have taken in the details of what + charms us? We see the flowering fields and budding woods, listen to + the notes of birds and frogs, the hum of some big bumblebee, but + how much do we know of what we sense? These questions, these doubts + have occurred to all of us, and it is to answer them that Mr. + Mathews sets forth. It is to his credit that he succeeds so well. + He puts before us in chronological order the flowers, birds, and + beasts we meet on our highway and byway travels, tells us how to + recognize them, what they are really like, and gives us at once + charming drawings in words and lines, for Mr. Mathews is his own + illustrator."--_Boston Journal_. + +_FAMILIAR TREES AND THEIR LEAVES._ + +By F. SCHUYLER MATHEWS, author of "Familiar Flowers of Field and +Garden," "The Beautiful Flower Garden," etc. Illustrated with over 200 +Drawings from Nature by the Author, and giving the botanical names and +habitat of each tree and recording the precise character and coloring of +its leafage. 12mo. Cloth, $1.75. + + "It is not often that we find a book which deserves such unreserved + commendation. It is commendable for several reasons: it is a book + that has been needed for a long time, it is written in a popular + and attractive style, it is accurately and profusely illustrated, + and it is by an authority on the subject of which it + treats."--_Public Opinion_. + +_FAMILIAR FLOWERS OF FIELD AND GARDEN._ By F. SCHUYLER MATHEWS. +Illustrated with 200 Drawings by the Author. 12mo. Library Edition, +cloth, $1.75; Pocket Edition, flexible morocco, $2.25. + + "A book of much value and interest, admirably arranged for the + student and the lover of flowers.... The text is full of compact + information, well selected and interestingly presented.... It seems + to us to be a most attractive handbook of its kind."--_New York + Sun_. + +D. APPLETON AND COMPANY, NEW YORK. + + +FRANK M. CHAPMAN'S BOOKS. + +=Bird Studies with a Camera.= + +With Introductory Chapters on the Outfit and Methods of the Bird +Photographer. By FRANK M. CHAPMAN, Assistant Curator of Vertebrate +Zoology in the American Museum of Natural History; Author of "Handbook +of Birds of Eastern North America" and "Bird-Life." Illustrated with +over 100 Photographs from Nature by the Author. 12mo. Cloth. + + Bird students and photographers will find that this book possesses + for them a unique interest and value. It contains fascinating + accounts of the habits of some of our common birds and descriptions + of the largest bird colonies existing in eastern North America; + while its author's phenomenal success in photographing birds in + Nature not only lends to the illustrations the charm of realism, + but makes the book a record of surprising achievements with the + camera. Several of these illustrations have been described by + experts as "the most remarkable photographs of wild life we have + ever seen." The book is practical as well as descriptive, and in + the opening chapters the questions of camera, lens, plates, blinds, + decoys, and other pertinent matters are fully discussed. + +=Bird-Life.= + +A Guide to the Study of our Common Birds. With 75 full-page uncolored +plates and 25 drawings in the text, by ERNEST SETON THOMPSON. Library +Edition. 12mo. Cloth, $1.75. + +=The Same=, with lithographic plates in colors. 8vo. Cloth, $5.00. + +=TEACHERS' EDITION=. Same as Library Edition, but containing an Appendix +with new matter designed for the use of teachers, and including lists of +birds for each month of the year. 12mo. Cloth, $2.00. + +=TEACHERS' MANUAL=. To accompany Portfolios of Colored Plates of +Bird-Life. Contains the same text as the Teachers' Edition of +"Bird-Life," but is without the 75 uncolored plates. Sold only with the +Portfolios, as follows: + +=Portfolio No. I=.--Permanent Residents and Winter Visitants. 32 plates. + +=Portfolio No. II=.--March and April Migrants. 34 plates. + +=Portfolio No. III=.--May Migrants, Types of Birds' Eggs, Types of +Birds' Nests from Photographs from Nature. 34 plates. Price of +Portfolios, each, $1.25; with Manual, $2.00. The three Portfolios with +Manual, $4.00. + +=Handbook of Birds of Eastern North America.= + +With nearly 200 Illustrations. 12mo. Library Edition, cloth, $3.00; +Pocket Edition, flexible morocco, $3.50. + +D. APPLETON AND COMPANY, NEW YORK. + + +By ELLEN THORNEYCROFT FOWLER. + +=A Double Thread.= 12mo. Cloth, $1.50. + +"Even more gay, clever, and bright than 'Concerning Isabel +Carnaby.'"--_Boston Herald._ + +"Abounds in excellent character study and brilliant dialogue."--_New +York Commercial Advertiser._ + +"Crowded with interesting people. One of the most enjoyable stories of +the season."--_Philadelphia Inquirer._ + +"Brilliant and witty. Shows fine insight into character."--_Minneapolis +Journal._ + +"'A Double Thread' is that rare visitor--a novel to be recommended +without reserve."--_London Literary World._ + +=Concerning Isabel Carnaby.= New edition. With Portrait and Biographical +Sketch. Cloth, $1.50. + +"Rarely does one find such a charming combination of wit and tenderness, +of brilliancy and reverence for the things that matter, as is concealed +within the covers of 'Concerning Isabel Carnaby.' It is bright without +being flippant, tender without being mawkish, and as joyous and as +wholesome as sunshine. The characters are closely studied and clearly +limned, and they are created by one who knows human nature.... It would +be hard to find its superior for all around excellence.... No one who +reads it will regret it or forget it."--_Chicago Tribune._ + +"For brilliant conversations, bits of philosophy, keenness of wit, and +full insight into human nature, 'Concerning Isabel Carnaby' is a +remarkable success."--_Boston Transcript._ + +D. 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