"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 youto 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 oldcontraction 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.
Give me that peak of cloud which fillsThe sunset with its gorgeous form,Instead of these familiar hillsThat shield me from the storm.
Give me that peak of cloud which fillsThe sunset with its gorgeous form,Instead of these familiar hillsThat 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 peoplewhose 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 forhim—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 ishorrid 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 sostuffy 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 alwaysbothering 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 theCollege 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 perfectchefin 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 himmerely 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 alwayswears 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 howpeople 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; Ibelieve 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 sohard 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' ofthat 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 wasobviously 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 lifeà laGalatea, 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 beinterested 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 accommodatingconscience 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 isoften 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 honoursthat 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 anythingbut 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 editionof 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 amwretched 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 hasworshipped 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 airad 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 andpatronized 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. Andnow 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.