The Farringdons Part 30

"What did she do with the heart?" asked Willie.

"She wanted to give it to somebody; but the strange thing was that n.o.body 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-cla.s.s 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?"

"n.o.body 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 G.o.ds 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 G.o.d 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 G.o.d Himself, and that the true artist does not learn but knows, because G.o.d has whispered to him.

There was another picture that made a sensation in that year's Academy; it was the work of an unknown artist, Cecil Farquhar by name, and was noted in the catalogue as The Daughters of Philip. It represented the "four daughters, virgins, which did prophesy" of Philip of Caesarea; but it did not set them forth in the dress and att.i.tude 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 subst.i.tute for a hearthstone, from the feminine point of view; and laurel wreaths do not make half so satisfactory a journey's end as lovers' meetings. All of which it is difficult for a man to understand, since fame is more to him than it is to a woman, and love less; therefore the knowledge of this truth proved Cecil Farquhar to be a true artist; while the able manner in which he had set it forth showed him to be also a highly gifted one. And the world is always ready to acknowledge real merit when it sees it, and to do homage to the same.

The Daughters of Philip carried a special message to the heart of Elisabeth Farringdon. She had been placed on her pinnacle, and had already begun to find how cold was the atmosphere up there, and how much more human she was than people expected and allowed for her to be. She felt like a statue set up in the market-place, that hears the children piping and mourning, and longs to dance and weep with them; but they did not ask her to do either--did not want her to do either--and if she had come down from her pedestal and begged to be allowed to play with them or comfort them, they would only have been frightened and run away.

But here at last was a man who understood what she was feeling; to whom she could tell her troubles, and who would know what she meant; and she made up her mind that before that season was over, she and the unknown artist, who had painted The Daughters of Philip, should be friends.

CHAPTER XIII

CECIL FARQUHAR

And my people ask politely How a friend I know so slightly Can be more to me than others I have liked a year or so; But they've never heard the history Of our transmigration's mystery, And they've no idea I loved you those millenniums ago.

It was the night of the Academy _soiree_ in the year of Elisabeth's triumph; she was being petted and _feted_ on all sides, and pa.s.sed 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 const.i.tutes an introduction in England--namely, the repet.i.tion 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-wors.h.i.+pping 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 ma.s.ses and cla.s.ses, 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 G.o.d!" 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.