The Farringdons

by Ellen Thorneycroft Fowler

  CHAPTER XVI

  THIS SIDE OF THE HILLS

  On this side of the hills, alas! Unrest our spirit fills; For gold, men give us stones and brass-- For asphodels, rank weeds and grass-- For jewels, bits of coloured glass-- On this side of the hills.

  The end of July was approaching, and the season was drawing to a close.Cecil Farquhar and Elisabeth had seen each other frequently since theyfirst met at the Academy _soiree_, and had fallen into the habit ofbeing much together; consequently the thought of parting was pleasant toneither of them.

  "How shall I manage to live without you?" asked Cecil one day, as theywere walking across the Park together. "I shall fall from my ideals whenI am away from your influence, and again become the grovelling worldingthat I was before I met you."

  "But you mustn't do anything of the kind. I am not the keeper of yourconscience."

  "But you are, and you must be. I feel a good man and a strong one when Iam with you, and as if all things were possible to me; and now that Ihave once found you, I can not and will not let you go."

  "You will have to let me go, Mr. Farquhar; for I go down to the Willowsat the end of the month, and mean to stay there for some time. I haveenjoyed my success immensely; but it has tired me rather, and made mewant to rest and be stupid again."

  "But I can not spare you," persisted Cecil; and there was real feelingin his voice. Elisabeth represented so much to him--wealth and power andthe development of his higher nature; and although, had she been a poorwoman, he would possibly never have cherished any intention of marryingher, his wish to do so was not entirely sordid. There are so few wishesin the hearts of any of us which are entirely sordid or entirely ideal;yet we find it so difficult to allow for this in judging one another.

  "Don't you understand," Farquhar went on, "all that you have been to me:how you have awakened the best that is in me, and taught me to beashamed of the worst? And do you think that I shall now be content tolet you slip quietly out of my life, and to be the shallow, selfish,worldly wretch I was before the Academy _soiree_? Not I."

  Elisabeth was silent. She could not understand herself, and this want ofcomprehension on her part annoyed and disappointed her. At last all hergirlish dreams had come true; here was the fairy prince for whom she hadwaited for so long--a prince of the kingdom she loved above all others,the kingdom of art; and he came to her in the spirit in which she hadalways longed for him to come--the spirit of failure and of loneliness,begging her to make up to him for all that he had hitherto missed inlife. Yet--to her surprise--his appeal found her cold and unresponsive,as if he were calling out for help to another woman and not to her.

  Cecil went on: "Elisabeth, won't you be my wife, and so make me into thetrue artist which, with you to help me, I feel I am capable of becoming;but of which, without you, I shall always fall short? You could doanything with me--you know you could; you could make me into a greatartist and a good man, but without you I can be neither. Surely you willnot give me up now! You have opened to me the door of a paradise ofwhich I never dreamed before, and now don't shut it in my face."

  "I don't want to shut it in your face," replied Elisabeth gently;"surely you know me better than that. But I feel that you are expectingmore of me than I can ever fulfil, and that some day you will be sadlydisappointed in me."

  "No, no; I never shall. It is not in you to disappoint anybody, you areso strong and good and true. Tell me the truth: don't you feel that I amas clay in your hands, and that you can do anything with me that youchoose?"

  Elisabeth looked him full in the face with her clear gray eyes. "I feelthat I could do anything with you if only I loved you enough; but I alsofeel that I don't love you, and that therefore I can do nothing with youat all. I believe with you that a strong woman can be the making of aman she loves; but she must love him first, or else all her strengthwill be of no avail."

  Farquhar's face fell. "I thought you did love me. You always seemed soglad when I came and sorry when I left; and you enjoyed talking to me,and we understood each other, and were happy together. Can you denythat?"

  "No; it is all true. I never enjoyed talking with anybody more than withyou; and I certainly never in my life met any one who understood my waysof looking at things as thoroughly as you do, nor any one who entered socompletely into all my moods. As a friend you are most satisfactory tome, as a comrade most delightful; but I can not help thinking that loveis something more than that."

  "But it isn't," cried Cecil eagerly; "that is just where lots of womenmake such a mistake. They wait and wait for love all their lives; andfind out too late that they passed him by years ago, without recognisinghim, but called him by some wrong name, such as friendship and thelike."

  "I wonder if you are right."

  "I am sure that I am. Women who are at all romantic, have suchexaggerated ideas as to what love really is. Like the leper of old, theyask for some great thing to work the wonderful miracle upon their lives;and so they miss the simple way which would lead them to happiness."

  Elisabeth felt troubled and perplexed. "I enjoy your society," she said,"and I adore your genius, and I pity your loneliness, and I long to helpyour weakness. Is this love, do you think?"

  "Yes, yes; I am certain of it."

  "I thought it would be different," said Elisabeth sadly; "I thought thatwhen it did come it would transform the whole world, just as religiondoes, and that all things would become new. I thought it would turn outto be the thing that we are longing for when the beauty of nature makesus feel sad with a longing we know not for what. I thought it wouldchange life's dusty paths into golden pavements, and earth's commonestbramble-bush into a magic briar-rose."

  "And it hasn't?"

  "No; everything is just the same as it was before I met you. As far as Ican see, there is no livelier emerald twinkling in the grass of the Parkthan there ever is at the end of July, and no purer sapphire meltinginto the Serpentine."

  Cecil laughed lightly. "You are as absurdly romantic as a school-girl!Surely people of our age ought to know better than still to believe infairyland; but, as I have told you before, you are dreadfully young foryour age in some things."

  "I suppose I am. I still do believe in fairyland--at least I did untilten minutes ago."

  "I assure you there is no such place."

  "Not for anybody?"

  "Not for anybody over twenty-one."

  "I wish there was," said Elisabeth with a sigh. "I should have liked tobelieve it was there, even if I had never found it."

  "Don't be silly, lady mine. You are so great and wise and clever that Ican not bear to hear you say foolish things. And I want us to talk abouthow you are going to help me to be a great painter, and how we will sittogether as gods, and create new worlds. There is nothing that I can notdo with you to help me, Elisabeth. You must be good to me and hard uponme at the same time. You must never let me be content with anythingshort of my best, or willing to do second-rate work for the sake ofmoney; you must keep the sacredness of art ever before my eyes, but youmust also be very gentle to me when I am weary, and very tender to mewhen I am sad; you must encourage me when my spirit fails me, andcomfort me when the world is harsh. All these things you can do, and youare the only woman who can. Promise me, Elisabeth, that you will."

  "I can not promise anything now. You must let me think it over for atime. I am so puzzled by it all. I thought that when the right man cameand told a woman that he loved her, she would know at once that it wasfor him--and for him only--that she had been waiting all her life; andthat she would never have another doubt upon the subject, but would feelconvinced that it was settled for all time and eternity. And this is sodifferent!"

  Again Cecil laughed his light laugh. "I suppose girls sometimes feellike that when they are very young; but not women of your age,Elisabeth."

  "Well, you must let me think about it. I can not make up my mind yet."

  And for whole days and nights Elisabeth thought about it, and could cometo no definit
e conclusion.

  There was no doubt in her mind that she liked Cecil Farquhar infinitelybetter than she had liked any of the other men who had asked her tomarry them; also that no one could possibly be more companionable to herthan he was, or more sympathetic with and interested in her work--andthis is no small thing to the man or woman who possesses the creativefaculty. Then she was lonely in her greatness, and longed forcompanionship; and Cecil had touched her in her tenderest point by hisconstant appeals to her to help and comfort him. Nevertheless the factremained that, though he interested her, he did not touch her heart;that remained a closed door to him. But supposing that her friends wereright, and that she was too cold by nature ever to feel the ecstasieswhich transfigure life for some women, should she therefore shut herselfout from ordinary domestic joys and interests? Because she was incapableof attaining to the ideal, must the commonplace pleasures of the realalso be denied her? If the best was not for her, would it not be wise toaccept the second-best, and extract as much happiness from it aspossible? Moreover, she knew that Cecil was right when he said that shecould make of him whatsoever she wished; and this was no slighttemptation to a woman who loved power as much as Elisabeth loved it.

  There was also another consideration which had some weight with her; andthat was the impression, gradually gaining strength in her mind, thatCecil Farquhar was George Farringdon's son. She could take no steps inthe way of proving this just then, as Christopher was away for hisholiday somewhere in the Black Forest, and nothing could be done withouthim; but she intended, as soon as he returned, to tell him of hersuspicion, and to set him to discover whether or not Cecil was indeedthe lost heir. Although it never seriously occurred to Elisabeth to holdher peace upon this matter and so keep her fortune to herself, she wasstill human enough not altogether to despise a course of action whichenabled her to be rich and righteous at the same time, and to go on withher old life at the Willows and her work among the people at theOsierfield, even after George Farringdon's son had come into his own.

  Although the balance of Elisabeth's judgment was upon the side of CecilFarquhar and his suit, she could not altogether stifle--try as shemight--her sense of disappointment at finding how grossly poets andsuch people had exaggerated the truth in their description of thefeeling men call love. It was all so much less exalted and so much morecommonplace than she had expected. She had long ago come to theconclusion--from comparisons between Christopher and the men who hadwanted to marry her--that a man's friendship is a better thing than aman's love; but she had always clung to the belief that a woman's lovewould prove a better thing than a woman's friendship: yet now sheherself was in love with Cecil--at least he said that she was, and shewas inclined to agree with him--and she was bound to admit that, as anemotion, this fell far short of her old attachment to Cousin Anne orChristopher or even Felicia. But that was because now she was gettingold, she supposed, and her heart had lost its early warmth andfreshness; and she experienced a weary ache of regret that Cecil had notcome across her path in those dear old days when she was still youngenough to make a fairyland for herself, and to abide therein for ever.

  "The things that come too late are almost as bad as the things thatnever come at all," she thought with a sigh; not knowing that there isno such word as "too late" in God's Vocabulary.

  At the end of the week she had made up her mind to marry Cecil Farquhar.Women, after all, can not pick and choose what lives they shall lead;they can only take such goods as the gods choose to provide, and makethe best of the same; and if they let the possible slip while they arewaiting for the impossible, they have only themselves to blame that theyextract no good at all out of life. So she wrote to Cecil, asking him tocome and see her the following day; and then she sat down and wonderedwhy women are allowed to see visions and to dream dreams, if the actualis to fall so far short of the imaginary. Brick walls and cobbledstreets are all very well in their way; but they make but drearydwelling-places for those who have promised themselves cities where thewalls are of jasper and the pavements of gold. "If one is doomed to livealways on this side of the hills, it is a waste of time to think toomuch about the life on the other side," Elisabeth reasoned with herself,"and I have wasted a lot of time in this way; but I can not helpwondering why we are allowed to think such lovely thoughts, and tobelieve in such beautiful things, if our dreams are never to come true,but are only to spoil us for the realities of life. Now I must bury allmy dear, silly, childish idols, as Jacob did; and I will not have anystone to mark the place, because I want to forget where it is."

  Poor Elisabeth! The grave of what has been, may be kept green withtears; but the grave of what never could have been, is best forgotten.We may not hide away the dear old gnomes and pixies and fairies inconsecrated ground--that is reserved for what has once existed, and sohas the right to live again; but for what never existed we can find nosepulchre, for it came out of nothingness, and to nothingness must itreturn.

  After Elisabeth had posted her letter to Cecil, and while she was stillmusing over the problem as to whether life's fulfilment must always fallshort of its promise, the drawing-room door was thrown open and avisitor announced. Elisabeth was tired and depressed, and did not feelin the mood for keeping up her reputation for brilliancy; so it waswith a sigh of weariness that she rose to receive Quenelda Carson, astruggling little artist whom she had known slightly for years. But herinterest was immediately aroused when she saw that Quenelda's usuallyrosy face was white with anguish, and the girl's pretty eyes swollenwith many tears.

  "What is the matter, dear?" asked Elisabeth, with that sound in hervoice which made all weak things turn to her. "You are in trouble, andyou must let me help you."

  Quenelda broke out into bitter weeping. "Oh! give him back to me--givehim back to me," she cried; "you can never love him as I do, you are toocold and proud and brilliant."

  Elisabeth stood as if transfixed. "Whatever do you mean?"

  "You have everything," Quenelda went on, in spite of the sobs whichshook her slender frame; "you had money and position to begin with, andeverybody thought well of you and admired you and made life easy foryou. And then you came out of your world into ours, and carried away theprizes which we had been striving after for years, and beat us on ourown ground; but we weren't jealous of you--you know that we weren't; wewere glad of your success, and proud of you, and we admired your geniusas much as the outside world did, and never minded a bit that it wasgreater than ours. But even then you were not content--you must haveeverything, and leave us nothing, just to satisfy your pride. You arelike the rich man who had everything, and yet took from the poor man hisone ewe lamb; and I am sure that God--if there is a God--will punish youas He punished that rich man."

  Elisabeth turned rather pale; whatever had she done that any one daredto say such things to her as this? "I still don't understand you," shesaid.

  "I never had anything nice in my life till I met him," the girlcontinued incoherently--"I had always been poor and pinched and wretchedand second-rate; even my pictures were never first-rate, though I workedand worked all I knew to make them so. And then I met Cecil Farquhar,and I loved him, and everything became different, and I didn't mindbeing second-rate if only he would care for me. And he did; and Ithought that I should always be as happy as I was then, and that nothingwould ever be able to hurt me any more. Oh! I was so happy--sohappy--and I was such a fool, I thought it would last forever! I workedhard and saved every penny that I could, and so did he; and we shouldhave been married next year if you hadn't come and spoiled it all, andtaken him away from me. And what is it to you now that you have got him?You are too proud and cold to love him, or anybody else, and he doesn'tcare for you a millionth part as much as he cares for me; yet justbecause you have money and fame he has left me for you. And I love himso--I love him so!" Here Quenelda's sobs choked her utterance, and hertorrent of words was stopped by tears.

  "Come and sit down beside me and tell me quietly what is the matter,"said Elisabeth gently; "I can do nothing an
d understand nothing whileyou go on like this. But you are wrong in supposing that I took yourlover from you purposely; I did not even know that he was a friend ofyours. He ought to have told me."

  "No, no; he couldn't tell you. Don't you see that the temptation wastoo strong for him? He cares so much for rank and money, and things likethat, my poor Cecil! And all his life he has had to do without them. Sowhen he met you, and realized that if he married you he would have allthe things he wanted most in the world, he couldn't resist it. The faultwas yours for tempting him, and letting him see that he could have youfor the asking; you knew him well enough to see how weak he was, andwhat a hold worldly things had over him; and you ought to have allowedfor this in dealing with him."

  A great wave of self-contempt swept over Elisabeth. She, who had pridedherself upon the fact that no man was strong enough to win her love, tobe accused of openly running after a man who did not care for her butonly for her money! It was unendurable, and stung her to the quick! Andyet, through all her indignation, she recognised the justice of herpunishment. She had not done what Quenelda had reproached her for doing,it was true; but she had deliberately lowered her ideal: she had weariedof striving after the best, and had decided that the second-best shouldsuffice her; and for this she was now being chastised. No men or womenwho wilfully turn away from the ideal which God has set before them, andmake to themselves graven images of the things which they know to beunworthy, can escape the punishment which is sure, sooner or later, tofollow their apostasy; and they do well to recognise this, ere they growweary of waiting for the revelation from Sinai, and begin to buildaltars unto false gods. For now, as of old, the idols which they makeare ground into powder, and strawed upon the water, and given them todrink; the cup has to be drained to the dregs, and it is exceedingbitter.

  "I still think he ought to have told me there was another woman,"Elisabeth said.

  "Not he. He knew well enough that your pride could not have endured thethought of another woman, and that that would have spoiled his chancewith you forever. There always is another woman, you know; and youwomen, who are too proud to endure the thought of her, have to bedeceived and blinded. And you have only yourselves to thank for it; ifyou were a little more human and a little more tender, there would be nonecessity for deceiving you. Why, I should have loved him just the sameif there had been a hundred other women, so he always told me the truth;but he lied to you, and it was your fault and not his that he wasobliged to lie."

  Elisabeth shuddered. It was to help such a man as this that she had beenwilling to sacrifice her youthful ideals and her girlish dreams. What afool she had been!

  "If you do not believe me, here is his letter," Quenelda went on; "Ibrought it on purpose for you to read, just to show you how little youare to him. If you had loved him as I love him, I would have let youkeep him, because you could have given him so many of the things that hethinks most about. But you don't. You are one of the cold, hard women,who only care for people as long as they are good and do what you thinkthey ought to do; Cecil never could do what anybody thought he ought todo for long, and then you would have despised him and grown tired ofhim. But I go on loving him just the same, whatever he does; and that'sthe sort of love that a man wants--at any rate, such a man as Cecil."

  Elisabeth held out her hand for the letter; she felt that speech was ofno avail at such a crisis as this; and, as she read, every word burneditself into her soul, and hurt her pride to the quick.

  * * * * *

  "DEAREST QUENELDA" (the letter ran, in the slightly affected handwritingwhich Elisabeth had learned to know so well, and to welcome with so muchinterest), "I have something to say to you which it cuts me to the heartto say, but which has to be said at all costs. We must break off ourengagement at once; for the terrible truth has at last dawned upon methat we can never afford to marry each other, and that therefore it isonly prolonging our agony to go on with it. You know me so well, dearlittle girl, that you will quite understand how the thought of life-longpoverty has proved too much for me. I am not made of such coarse fibreas most men--those men who can face squalor and privation, and lack allthe little accessories that make life endurable, without being any theworse for it. I am too refined, too highly strung, too sensitive, toenter upon such a weary struggle with circumstances as my marriage witha woman as poor as myself would entail; therefore, my darling Quenelda,much as I love you I feel it is my duty to renounce you; and as you growolder and wiser you will see that I am right.

  "Since I can not marry you whom I love, I have put romance and sentimentforever out of my life; it is a bitter sacrifice for a man of my natureto make, but it must be done; and I have decided to enter upon a_mariage de convenance_ with Miss Farringdon, the Black Countryheiress. Of course I do not love her as I love you, my sweet--what mancould love a genius as he loves a beauty? And she is as cold as she isclever. But I feel respect for her moral characteristics, and interestin her mental ones; and, when youth and romance are over and done with,that is all one need ask in a wife. As for her fortune, it will keep meforever out of the reach of that poverty which has always so deleteriousan effect upon natures such as mine; and, being thus set above thosepecuniary anxieties which are the death of true art, I shall be ablefully to develop the power that is in me, and to do the work that I feelmyself called to do.

  "Good-bye, my sweetest. I can not write any more; my heart is breaking.How cruel it is that poverty should have power to separate forever suchtrue lovers as you and I!

  "Your heartbroken "CECIL."

  Elisabeth gave back the letter to Quenelda. "Do you mean to tell me thatyou don't despise the man who sent this?" she asked.

  "No; because I love him, you see. You never did."

  "You are right there. I never loved him. I tried to love him, but Icouldn't."

  "I know you didn't. As I told you before, if you had loved him I wouldhave given him up to you."

  Elisabeth looked at the girl before her with wonder. What a strangething this love was, which could make a woman forgive such a letter asthat, and still cling to the man who wrote it! So there was such a placeas fairyland after all, and poor little Quenelda had found it; whileshe, Elisabeth, had never so much as peeped through the gate. It hadbrought Quenelda much sorrow, it was true; but still it was good to havebeen there; and a chilly feeling crept across Elisabeth's heart as sherealized how much she had missed in life.

  "I think if one loved another person as much as that," she said toherself, "one would understand a little of how God feels about us."Aloud she said: "Dear, what do you want me to do? I will do anything inthe world that you wish."

  Quenelda seized Elisabeth's hand and kissed it. "How good you are! And Idon't deserve it a bit, for I've been horrid to you and said vilethings."

  There was a vast pity in Elisabeth's eyes. "I did you a great wrong,poor child!" she said; "and I want to make every reparation in mypower."

  "But you didn't know you were doing me a great wrong."

  "No; but I knew that I was acting below my own ideals, and nobody can dothat without doing harm. Show me how I can give you help now? Shall Itell Cecil Farquhar that I know all?"

  "Oh! no; please not. He would never forgive me for having spoiled hislife, and taken away his chance of being rich." And Quenelda's tearsflowed afresh.

  Elisabeth put her strong arm round the girl's slim waist. "Don't cry,dear; I will make it all right. I will just tell him that I can't marryhim because I don't love him; and he need never know that I have heardabout you at all."

  And Elisabeth continued to comfort Quenelda until the pale cheeks grewpink again, and half the girl's beauty came back; and she went away atlast believing in Elisabeth's power of setting everything right again,as one believes in one's mother's power of setting everything rightagain when one is a child.

  After she had gone, Elisabeth sat down and calmly looked facts in theface; and the prospect was by no means an agreeable one. Of course therewas no questio
n now of marrying Cecil Farquhar; and in the midst of herconfusion Elisabeth felt a distinct sense of relief that this at anyrate was impossible. She could still go on believing in fairyland, eventhough she never found it; and it is always far better not to find aplace than to find there is no such place at all. But she would have togive up the Willows and the Osierfield, and all the wealth and positionthat these had brought her; and this was a bitter draught to drink.Elisabeth felt no doubt in her own mind that Cecil was indeed GeorgeFarringdon's son; she had guessed it when first he told her the story ofhis birth, and subsequent conversations with him had only served toconfirm her in the belief; and it was this conviction which hadinfluenced her to some extent in her decision to accept him. But noweverything was changed. Cecil would rule at the Osierfield and Queneldaat the Willows instead of herself, and those dearly loved places wouldknow her no more.

  At this thought Elisabeth broke down. How she loved every stone of theBlack Country, and how closely all her childish fancies and girlishdreams were bound up in it! Now the cloud of smoke would hang overSedgehill, and she would not be there to interpret its message; and thesun would set beyond the distant mountains, and she would no longercatch glimpses of the country over the hills. Even the rustic seat,where she and Christopher had sat so often, would be hers no longer; andhe and she would never walk together in the woods as they had so oftenwalked as children. And as she cried softly to herself, with no one tocomfort her, the memory of Christopher swept over her, and with it allthe old anger against him. He would be glad to see her dethroned atlast, she supposed, as that was what he had striven for all those yearsago; but, perhaps, when he saw a stranger reigning at the Willows andthe Osierfield in her stead, he would be sorry to find the newgovernment so much less beneficial to the work-people than the old onehad been; for Elisabeth knew Cecil quite well enough to be aware that hewould spend all his money on himself and his own pleasures; and shecould not help indulging in an unholy hope that, whereas she had beatenChristopher with whips, her successor would beat him with scorpions. Infact she was almost glad, for the moment, that Farquhar was so unfit forthe position to which he was now called, when she realized how sorelythat unfitness would try Christopher.

  "It will serve him right for leaving me and going off after GeorgeFarringdon's son," she said to herself, "to discover how little worththe finding George Farringdon's son really was! Christopher is soself-centred, that a thing is never properly brought home to him untilit affects himself; no other person can ever convince him that he is inthe wrong. But this will affect himself; he will hate to serve undersuch a man as Cecil; I know he will; because Cecil is just the type ofperson that Christopher has always looked down upon, for Christopher isa gentleman and Cecil is not. Perhaps when he finds out how inferior aniron-master Cecil is to me, Christopher will wish that he had liked mebetter and been kinder to me when he had a chance. I hope he will, andthat it will make him miserable; for those hard, self-righteous peoplereally deserve to be punished in the end." And Elisabeth derived so muchcomfort from the prospect of Christopher's coming trials, that shealmost forgot her own.