Read Ebook: The Farringdons by Fowler Ellen Thorneycroft

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Ebook has 1350 lines and 76831 words, and 27 pages

eny that; but it is sometimes trying to the amiability of even the best of men to realize that the purely mundane and undeserved accident of want of money can shut them off entirely from ever attaining to the best kind of happiness whereof their natures are capable--and especially when they know that their natures are capable of attaining and appreciating a very high standard of happiness indeed. It may not be right to be unsociable because one is unhappy, but it is very human and most particularly masculine; and Christopher just then was both miserable and a man.

There was much about Alan that was very attractive to Elisabeth: he possessed a certain subtlety of thought and an almost feminine quickness of perception which appealed powerfully to her imagination. Imagination was Elisabeth's weak, as well as her strong, point. She was incapable of seeing people as they really were; but erected a purely imaginary edifice of character on the foundations of such attributes as her rapid intuition either rightly or wrongly perceived them to possess. As a rule, she thought better of her friends than they deserved--or, at any rate, she recognised in them that ideal which they were capable of attaining, but whereto they sometimes failed to attain.

Life is apt to be a little hard on the women of Elisabeth's type, who idealize their fellows until the latter lose all semblance of reality; for experience, with its inevitable disillusionment, can not fail to put their ideal lovers and friends far from them, and to hide their etherealized acquaintances out of their sight; and to give instead, to the fond, trusting souls, half-hearted lovers, semi-sincere friends, and acquaintances who care for them only as the world can care. Poor imaginative women--who dreamed that you had found a perfect knight and a faithful friend, and then discovered that these were only an ordinary selfish man and woman after all--life has many more such surprises in store for you; and the surprises will shock you less and hurt you more as the years roll on! But though life will have its surprises for you, death perchance will have none; for when the secrets of all hearts are opened, and all thwarted desires are made known, it may be that the ordinary selfish man and woman will stand forth as the perfect knight and faithful friend that God intended them, and you believed them, and they tried yet failed to be; and you will be satisfied at last when you see your beloved ones wake up after His likeness, and will smile as you say to them, "So it is really you after all."

Although Tremaine might be lacking in his duty toward God, he fulfilled his duty toward his neighbour; and Elisabeth was fairly dazzled by his many schemes for making life easier and happier to the people who dwelt in the darkness of the Black Country.

It was while he was thus figuring as her ideal hero that Elisabeth went to stay with Felicia Herbert, near a manufacturing town in Yorkshire. Felicia had been once or twice to the Willows, and was well acquainted with the physical and biographical characteristics of the place; and she cherished a profound admiration both for Miss Farringdon and Christopher Thornley. Tremaine she had never met--he had been abroad each time that she had visited Sedgehill--but she disapproved most heartily of his influence upon Elisabeth, and of his views as set forth by that young lady. Felicia had been brought up along extremely strict lines, and in a spirit of comfortable intolerance of all forms of religion not absolutely identical with her own; consequently, a man with no form of religion at all was to her a very terrible monster indeed. On the Sundays of her early youth she had perused a story treating of an Unbeliever , and the punishments that were meted out to the daughter of light who was unequally yoked with him; and she was imbued with a strong conviction that these same punishments were destined to fall upon Elisabeth's head, should Elisabeth incline favourably to the hypothetical suit of the master of the Moat House. Thus it happened that when Elisabeth came to the Herberts', full of girlish admiration for Alan Tremaine, Felicia did her best to ripen that admiration into love by abusing Alan in and out of season, and by endeavouring to prove that an attachment to him would be a soul-destroyer of the most irreparable completeness.

"It is no use talking to me about his goodness," she said; "nobody is good who isn't a Christian."

"But he is good," persisted Elisabeth--"most tremendously good. The poor people simply adore him, he does such a lot for them; and he couldn't have lovelier thoughts and higher ideals if he were a girl instead of a man. There must be different ways of goodness, Felicia."

"There are not different ways of goodness; mamma says there are not, and it is very wicked to believe that there are. I am afraid you are not half as religious as you were at Fox How."

"Yes, I am; but I have learned that true religion is a state of mind rather than a code of dogmas."

Felicia looked uncomfortable. "I wish you wouldn't talk like that; I am sure mamma wouldn't like it--she can not bear anything that borders on the profane."

"I am not bordering on the profane; I am only saying what I uphold is true. I can not take things for granted as you do; I have to think them out for myself; and I have come to the conclusion that what a man is is of far more importance than what a man believes."

"But you ought not to think things like that, Elisabeth; it isn't right to do so."

"I can't help thinking it. I am an independent being with a mind of my own, and I must make up that mind according to what I see going on around me. What on earth is the good of having an intellect, if you submit that intellect to the will of another? I wonder how you can take your ideas all ready-made from your mother," exclaimed Elisabeth, who just then was taking all hers ready-made from Alan Tremaine.

"Well, I can not argue. I am not clever enough; and, besides, mamma doesn't like us to argue upon religious subjects--she says it is unsettling; so I will only say that I know you are wrong, and then we will let the matter drop and talk about Christopher. How is he?"

"Oh, he is all right, only very horrid. To tell you the truth, I am getting to dislike Christopher."

"Elisabeth!" Felicia's Madonna-like face became quite sorrowful.

"Well, I am; and so would you, if he was as stand-off to you as he is to me. I can't think what is wrong with him; but whatever I do, and however nice I try to be to him, the North Pole is warm and neighbourly compared with him. I'm sick of him and his unsociable ways!"

"But you and he used to be such friends."

"I know that; and I would be friends now if he would let me. But how can you be friends with a man who is as reserved as the Great Pyramid and as uncommunicative as the Sphinx, and who sticks up iron palings all round himself, like a specimen tree in the park, so that nobody can get near him? If a man wants a girl to like him he should be nice to her, and not require an introduction every time they meet."

Felicia sighed: her sweet, placid nature was apt to be overpowered by Elisabeth's rapid changes of front. "But he used to be so fond of you," she expostulated feebly.

Elisabeth shrugged her shoulders. "Oh, I suppose he likes me now, in his cold, self-satisfied way: it isn't that. What I complain of is that he doesn't admire me enough, and I do so love to be admired."

"Do you mean he doesn't think you are pretty?" Felicia always had to have things fully explained to her; excess of imagination could never lead her astray, whatever it might do to her friend.

"Of course not; I don't see how he could, considering that I'm not: women don't expect men to admire them for things that they don't possess," replied Elisabeth, who had still much to learn. "What I mean is he doesn't realize how clever I am--he despises me just as he used to despise me when I was a little girl and he was a big boy--and that is awfully riling when you know you are clever."

"Is it? I would much rather a man liked me than thought I was clever."

"I wouldn't; anybody can like you, but it takes a clever person to appreciate cleverness. I have studied myself thoroughly, and I have come to the conclusion that I need appreciation far more than affection: I'm made like that."

"I don't understand you. To me affection is everything, and I can not live without it. If people are really fond of me, they can think me as stupid as they like."

Elisabeth's face grew thoughtful; she was always interested in the analysis of herself and her friends. "How different we two are! I couldn't forgive a person for thinking me stupid, even if I knew that person adored me. To me no amount of affection would make up for the lack of appreciation. I want to be understood as well as liked, and that is where Christopher and I come across each other; he never understands me in the least. Now that is why Mr. Tremaine and I get on so well together; he understands and appreciates me so thoroughly."

Felicia's pretty month fell into stern lines of disapproval. "I am sure I should hate Mr. Tremaine if I knew him," she said.

"Oh, no, you wouldn't--you simply couldn't, Felicia, he is so delightful. And, what is more, he is so frightfully interesting: whatever he says and does, he always makes you think about him. Now, however fond you were of Chris--and he really is very good and kind in some ways--you could never think about him: it would be such dreadfully uninteresting thinking, if you did."

"I don't know about that; Christopher is very comfortable and homelike, somehow," replied Felicia.

"So are rice-puddings and flannel petticoats, but you don't occupy your most exalted moments in meditating upon them."

"Do you know, Elisabeth, I sometimes think that Christopher is in love with you." Unlike Elisabeth, Felicia never saw what did not exist, and therefore was able sometimes to perceive what did.

"Good gracious, what an idea! He'd simply roar with laughter at the mere thought of such a thing! Why, Christopher isn't capable of falling in love with anybody; he hasn't got it in him, he is so frightfully matter-of-fact."

Felicia looked dubious. "Then don't you think he will ever marry?"

"Oh, yes, he'll marry fast enough--a sweet, domestic woman, who plays the piano and does crochet-work; and he will talk to her about the price of iron and the integrity of the empire, and will think that he is making love, and she will think so too. And they will both of them go down to their graves without ever finding out that the life is more than meat or the body than raiment."

Elisabeth was very hard on Christopher just then, and nothing that Felicia could say succeeded in softening her. Women are apt to be hard when they are quite young--and sometimes even later.

Felicia Herbert was the eldest of a large family. Her parents, though well-to-do, were not rich; and it was the dream of Mrs. Herbert's life that her daughter's beauty should bring about a great match. She was a good woman according to her lights, and a most excellent wife and mother; but if she had a weakness--and who is without one?--that weakness was social ambition.

"You will understand, my dear," she said confidentially to Elisabeth, "that it would be the greatest comfort to Mr. Herbert and myself to see Felicia married to a God-fearing man; and, of course, if he kept his own carriage as well we should be all the better satisfied."

"I don't think that money really makes people happy," replied Elisabeth, strong in the unworldliness of those who have never known what it is to do without anything that money can buy.

"Of course not, my dear--of course not; nothing but religion can bring true happiness. Whenever I am tempted to be anxious about my children's future, I always check myself by saying, 'The Lord will provide; though I can not sometimes help hoping that the provision will be an ample one as far as Felicia is concerned, because she is so extremely nice-looking."

"She is perfectly lovely!" exclaimed Elisabeth enthusiastically; "and she gets lovelier and lovelier every time I see her. If I were to change places with all the rich men in the world, I should never do anything but keep on marrying Felicia."

"Still, she could only marry one of you, my dear. But, between ourselves, I just want to ask you a few questions about a Mr. Thornley whom Felicia met at your house. I fancied she was a wee bit interested in him."

"Interested in Chris! Oh! she couldn't possibly be. No girl could be interested in Christopher in that way."

"Why not, my dear? Is he so unusually plain?"

"Oh! no; he is very good-looking; but he has a good head for figures and a poor eye for faces. In short, he is a sensible man, and girls don't fall in love with sensible men."

"I think you are mistaken there; I do indeed. I have known many instances of women becoming sincerely attached to sensible men."

"You don't know how overpoweringly sensible Christopher is. He is so wise that he never makes a joke unless it has some point in it."

"There is no harm in that, my dear. I never see the point of a joke myself, I admit; but I like to know that there is one."

"And when he goes for a walk with a girl, he never talks nonsense to her," continued Elisabeth, "but treats her exactly as if she were his maiden aunt."

"But why should he talk nonsense to her? It is a great waste of time to talk nonsense; I am not sure that it is not even a sin. Is Mr. Thornley well off?"

"No. His uncle, Mr. Smallwood, is the general manager of our works; and Christopher has only his salary as sub-manager, and what his uncle may leave him. His mother was Mr. Smallwood's sister, and married a ne'er-do-weel-who left her penniless; at least, that is to say, if he ever had a mother--which I sometimes doubt, as he understands women so little."

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