"That was just it; you admired my pictures because they were painted by me, while you really ought to have admired me because I had painted the pictures."
A look of amus.e.m.e.nt stole over Christopher"s face. "Then I fell short of your requirements, dear heart; for, as far as you and your works were concerned, I certainly never committed the sin of worshipping the creature rather than the creator."
"But there was a time when I wanted you to do so."
"As a matter of fact," said Christopher thoughtfully, "I don"t believe a man who loves a woman can ever appreciate her genius properly, because love is greater than genius, and so the greater swallows up the less. In the eyes of the world, her genius is the one thing which places a woman of genius above her fellows, and the world worships it accordingly. But in the eyes of the man who loves her, she is already placed so far above her fellows that her genius makes no difference to her alt.i.tude. Thirty feet makes all the difference in the height of a weather-c.o.c.k, but none at all in the distance between the earth and a fixed star."
"What a nice thing to say! I adore you when you say things like that."
Christopher continued: "You see, the man is interested in the woman"s works of art simply because they are hers; just as he is interested in the rustle of her silk petticoat simply because it is hers. Possibly he is more interested in the latter, because men can paint pictures sometimes, and they can never rustle silk petticoats properly. You are right in thinking that the world adores you for the sake of your creations, while I adore your creations for the sake of you; but you must also remember that the world would cease to worship you if your genius began to decline, while I should love you just the same if you took to painting sign-posts and ill.u.s.trating Christmas cards--even if you became an impressionist."
"What a dear boy you are! You really are the greatest comfort to me. I didn"t always feel like this, but now you satisfy me completely, and fill up every crevice of my soul. There isn"t a little s.p.a.ce anywhere in my mind or heart or spirit that isn"t simply bursting with you." And Elisabeth laughed a low laugh of perfect contentment.
"My darling, how I love you!" And Christopher also was content.
Then there was another silence, which Christopher broke at last by saying--
"What is the matter, Betty?"
"There isn"t anything the matter. How should there be?"
"Oh, yes, there is. Do you think I have studied your face for over thirty years, my dear, without knowing every shade of difference in its expression? Have I said anything to vex you?"
"No, no; how could I be vexed with you, Chris, when you are so good to me? I am horrid enough, goodness knows, but not horrid enough for that."
"Then what is it? Tell me, dear, and see if I can"t help?"
Elisabeth sighed. "I was thinking that there is really no going back, however much we may pretend that there is. What we have done we have done, and what we have left undone we have left undone; and there is no blotting out the story of past years. We may write new stories, perhaps, and try to write better ones, but the old ones are written beyond altering, and must stand for ever. You have been divinely good to me, Chris, and you never remind me even by a look how I hurt you and misjudged you in the old days. But the fact remains that I did both; and nothing can ever alter that."
"Silly little child, it"s all over and past now! I"ve forgotten it, and you must forget it too."
"I can"t forget it; that"s just the thing. I spoiled your life for the best ten years of it; and now, though I would give everything that I possess to restore those years to you, I can"t restore them, or make them up to you for the loss of them. That"s what hurts so dreadfully."
Christopher looked at her with a great pity shining in his eyes. He longed to save from all suffering the woman he loved; but he could not save her from the irrevocableness of her own actions, strive as he would; which was perhaps the best thing in the world for her, and for all of us. Human love would gladly shield us from the consequences of what we have done; but Divine Love knows better. What we have written, we have written on the page of life; and neither our own tears, nor the tears of those who love us better than we love ourselves, can blot it out. For the first time in her easy, self-confident career, Elisabeth Farringdon was brought face to face with this merciless truth; and she trembled before it. It was just because Christopher was so ready to forgive her, that she found it impossible to forgive herself.
"I always belonged to you, you see, dear," Christopher said very gently, "and you had the right to do what you liked with your own. I had given you the right of my own free will."
"But you couldn"t give me the right to do what was wrong. n.o.body can do that. I did what was wrong, and now I must be punished for it."
"Not if I can help it, sweetheart. You shall never be punished for anything if I can bear the punishment for you."
"You can"t help it, Chris; that"s just the point. And I am being punished in the way that hurts most. All my life I thought of myself, and my own success, and how I was going to do this and that and the other, and be happy and clever and good. But suddenly everything has changed. I no longer care about being happy myself; I only want you to be happy; and yet I know that for ten long years I deliberately prevented you from being happy. Don"t you see, dear, how terrible the punishment is? The thing I care for most in the whole world is your happiness; and the fact remains, and will always remain, that that was the thing which I destroyed with my own hands, because I was cruel and selfish and cold."
"Still, I am happy enough now, Betty--happy enough to make up for all that went before."
"But I can never give you back those ten years," said Elisabeth, with a sob in her voice--"never as long as I live. Oh! Chris, I see now how horrid I was; though all the time I thought I was being so good, that I looked down upon the women who I considered had lower ideals than I had.
I built myself an altar of stone, and offered up your life upon it, and then commended myself when the incense rose up to heaven; and I never found out that the sacrifice was all yours, and that there was nothing of mine upon the altar at all."
"Never mind, darling; there isn"t going to be a yours and mine any more, you know. All things are ours, and we are beginning a new life together."
Elisabeth put both arms round his neck and kissed him of her own accord.
"My dearest," she whispered, "how can I ever love you enough for being so good to me?"
But while Christopher and Elisabeth were walking across enchanted ground, Cecil Farquhar was having a hard time. Elisabeth had written to tell him the actual facts of the case almost as soon as she knew them herself; and he could not forgive her for first raising his hopes and then dashing them to the ground. And there is no denying that he had somewhat against her; for she had twice played him this trick--first as regarded herself, and then as regarded her fortune. That she had not been altogether to blame--that she had deluded herself in both cases as effectually as she had deluded him--was no consolation as far as he was concerned; his egoism took no account of her motives--it only resented the results. Quenelda did all in her power to comfort him, but she found it uphill work. She gave him love in full measure; but, as it happened, money and not love was the thing he most wanted, and that was not hers to bestow. He still cared for her more than he cared for anybody (though not for anything) else in the world; it was not that he loved Caesar less but Rome more, Cecil"s being one of the natures to whom Rome would always appeal more powerfully than Caesar. His life did consist in the things which he had; and, when these failed, nothing else could make up to him for them. Neither Christopher nor Elisabeth was capable of understanding how much mere money meant to Farquhar; they had no conception of how bitter was his disappointment on knowing that he was not, after all, the lost heir to the Farringdon property. And who would blame them for this? Does one blame a man, who takes a dirty bone away from a dog, for not entering into the dog"s feelings on the matter?
Nevertheless, that bone is to the dog what fame is to the poet and glory to the soldier. One can but enjoy and suffer according to one"s nature.
It happened, by an odd coincidence, that the mystery of Cecil"s parentage was cleared up shortly after Elisabeth"s false alarm on that score; and his paternal grandfather was discovered in the shape of a retired shopkeeper at Surbiton of the name of Biggs, who had been cursed with an unsatisfactory son. When in due time this worthy man was gathered to his fathers, he left a comfortable little fortune to his long-lost grandson; whereupon Cecil married Quenelda, and continued to make art his profession, while his recreation took the form of believing--and retailing his belief to anybody who had time and patience to listen to it--that the Farringdons of Sedgehill had, by foul means, ousted him from his rightful position, and that, but for their dishonesty, he would have been one of the richest men in Mershire. And this grievance--as is the way of grievances--never failed to be a source of unlimited pleasure and comfort to Cecil Farquhar.
But in the meantime, when the shock of disappointment was still fresh, he wrote sundry scathing letters to Miss Elisabeth Farringdon, which she in turn showed to Christopher, rousing the fury of the latter thereby.
"He is a cad--a low cad!" exclaimed Christopher, after the perusal of one of these epistles; "and I should like to tell him what I think of him, and then kick him."
Elisabeth laughed; she always enjoyed making Christopher angry. "He wanted to marry me," she remarked, by way of adding fuel to the flames.
"Confounded impudence on his part!" muttered Christopher.
"But he left off when he found out that I hadn"t got any money."
"Worse impudence, confound him!"
"Oh! I wish you could have seen him when I told him that the money was not really mine," continued Elisabeth, bubbling over with mirth at the recollection; "he cooled down so very quickly, and so rapidly turned his thoughts in another direction. Don"t you know what it is to bite a gooseberry at the front door while it pops out at the back? Well, Cecil Farquhar"s love-making was just like that. It really was a fine sight!"
"The brute!"
"Never mind about him, dear! I"m tired of him."
"But I do mind when people dare to be impertinent to you. I can"t help minding," Christopher persisted.
"Then go on minding, if you want to, darling--only don"t let us waste our time in talking about him. There"s such a lot to talk about that is really important--why you said so-and-so, and how you felt when I said so-and-so, ten years ago; and how you feel about me to-day, and whether you like me as much this afternoon as you did this morning; and what colour my eyes are, and what colour you think my new frock should be; and heaps of really serious things like that."
"All right, Betty; where shall we begin?"
"We shall begin by making a plan. Do you know what you are going to do this afternoon?"
"Yes; whatever you tell me. I always do."
"Well, then, you are coming with me to have tea at Mrs. Bateson"s, just as we used to do when we were little; and I have told her to invite Mrs.
Hankey as well, to make it seem just the same as it used to be. By the way, is Mrs. Hankey as melancholy as ever, Chris?"
"Quite. Time doth not breathe on her fadeless gloom, I can a.s.sure you."
"Won"t it be fun to pretend we are children again?" Elisabeth exclaimed.
"Great fun; and I don"t think it will need much pretending, do you know?" replied Christopher, who saw deeper sometimes than Elisabeth did, and now realized that it was only when they two became as little children--he by ceasing to play Providence to her, and she by ceasing to play Providence to herself--that they had at last caught glimpses of the kingdom of heaven.
So they walked hand in hand to Caleb Bateson"s cottage, as they had so often walked in far-off, childish days; and the cottage looked so exactly the same as it used to look, and Caleb and his wife and Mrs.
Hankey were so little altered by the pa.s.sage of time, that it seemed as if the shadow had indeed been put back ten degrees. And so, in a way, it was, by the new spring-time which had come to Christopher and Elisabeth.
They were both among those beloved of the G.o.ds who are destined to die young--not in years but in spirit; her lover as well as herself was what Elisabeth called "a fourth-dimension person," and there is no growing old for fourth-dimension people; because it has already been given to them to behold the vision of the cloud-clad angel, who stands upon the sea and upon the earth and swears that there shall be time no longer.