"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 n.o.body), he made these sops the princ.i.p.al 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, G.o.d 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 G.o.d?"
"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 G.o.d 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 trespa.s.s 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 a.s.s 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 a.s.sure 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."