The Farringdons Part 24

"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, n.o.body 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 suns.h.i.+ne 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 pa.s.sing 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 G.o.d-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 acquaintances.h.i.+p 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 wors.h.i.+p 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-wors.h.i.+ppers was Mrs. Herbert, who derived comfort from the fact that little Willie was not ashamed of her as little Willie's mother was; so--like many a disappointed woman before them--both Mrs. Herbert and Elisabeth discovered the healing power which lies in the touch of a baby's hand. Felicia loved the child, too, in her way; but she was of the type of woman to whom the husband is always dearer than the children. But Alan's cup was filled to overflowing, and he loved his son as he loved his own soul.

One of Christopher's expedients for hiding the meditations of his heart from Elisabeth's curious eyes was the discussion with her of what people call "general subjects"; and this tried her temper to the utmost. She regarded it as a sign of superficiality to talk of superficial things; and she hardly ever went in to dinner with a man without arriving at the discussion of abstract love and the second _entree_ simultaneously.

It had never yet dawned upon her that as a rule it is because one has not experienced a feeling that one is able to describe it; she reasoned in the contrary direction, and came to the conclusion that those persons have no hearts at all whose sleeves are unadorned with the same.

Therefore it was intolerable to her when Christopher--who had played with her as a child, and had once very nearly made her grow up into a woman--talked to her about the contents of the newspapers.

"I never look at the papers," she answered crossly one day, in reply to some unexceptionable and uninteresting comment of his upon such history as was just then in the raw material; "I hate them."

"Why do you hate them?" Christopher was surprised at her vehemence.

"Because there is cholera in the South of France, and I never look at the papers when there is cholera about, it frightens me so." Elisabeth had all the pity of a thoroughly healthy person for the suffering that could not touch her, and the unreasoning terror of a thoroughly healthy person for the suffering which could.

"But there is nothing to frighten you in that," said Christopher, in his most comforting tone; "France is such a beastly dirty hole that they are bound to have diseases going on there, such as could never trouble clean, local-boarded, old England. And then it's so far away, too. I'd never worry about that, if I were you."

"Wouldn't you?" Elisabeth was at war with him, but she was not insensible to the consolation he never failed to afford her when things went wrong.

"Good gracious, no! England is so well looked after, with county councils and such, that even if an epidemic came here they'd stamp it out like one o'clock. Don't frighten yourself with bogeys, Elisabeth, there's a good girl!"

"I feel just the same about newspapers now that I used to feel about Lalla Rookh," said Elisabeth confidentially.

Christopher was puzzled. "I'm afraid I don't see quite the connection, but I have no doubt it is there, like Mrs. Wilfer's petticoat."

"In Cousin Maria's copy of Lalla Rookh there is a most awful picture of the Veiled Prophet of Khora.s.san; and when I was little I went nearly mad with terror of that picture. I used to go and look at it when n.o.body 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 amus.e.m.e.nt; 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."