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                         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. Cloth, $1.50.

     "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."--_The Critic_, _New York_.

     "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."--_The World_,
     _Cleveland_.

     "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."--_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.


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. Cloth,
$1.50.

     "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."--_Philadelphia Times_.

=The Terror.=

A Romance of the French Revolution. Uniform with "The Reds of the Midi."
Translated by Mrs. Catharine A. Janvier. 16mo. Cloth, $1.50.

     "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."--_Brooklyn
     Eagle_.

=The Reds of the Midi.=

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.

     "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. APPLETON AND COMPANY, NEW YORK.





End of Project Gutenberg's The Farringdons, by Ellen Thorneycroft Fowler