CHRISTOPHER
And when perchance of all perfection
You've seen an end,
Your thoughts may turn in my direction
To find a friend.
There are two things which are absolutely necessary to the well-being of
the normal feminine mind--namely, one romantic attachment and one
comfortable friendship. Elisabeth was perfectly normal and extremely
feminine; and consequently she provided herself early with these two
aids to happiness.
In those days the object of her romantic attachment was her cousin Anne.
Anne Farringdon was one of those graceful, elegant women who appear so
much deeper than they really are. All her life she had been inspiring
devotion which she was utterly unable to fathom; and this was still the
case with regard to herself and her adoring little worshipper.
People always wondered why Anne Farringdon had never married; and
explained the mystery to their own satisfaction by conjecturing that she
had had a disappointment in her youth, and had been incapable of loving
twice. It never struck them--which was actually the case--that she had
been incapable of loving once; and that her single-blessedness was due
to no unforgotten love-story, but to the unromantic fact that among her
score of lovers she had never found a man for whom she seriously cared.
In a delicate and ladylike fashion she had flirted outrageously in her
time; but she had always broken hearts so gently, and put away the
pieces so daintily, that the owners of these hearts had never dreamed of
resenting the damage she had wrought. She had refused them with such a
world of pathos in her beautiful eyes--the Farringdon gray-blue eyes,
with thick black brows and long black lashes--that the poor souls had
never doubted her sympathy and comprehension; nor had they the slightest
idea that she was totally ignorant of the depth of the love which she
had inspired, or the bitterness of the pain which she had caused.
All the romance of Elisabeth's nature--and there was a great deal of
it--was lavished upon Anne Farringdon. If Anne smiled, Elisabeth's sky
was cloudless; if Anne sighed, Elisabeth's sky grew gray. The mere sound
of Anne's voice vibrated through the child's whole being; and every
little trifle connected with her cousin became a sacred relic in
Elisabeth's eyes.
Like every Methodist child, Elisabeth was well versed in her Bible; but,
unlike most Methodist children, she regarded it more as a poetical than
an ethical work. When she was only twelve, the sixty-eighth Psalm
thrilled her as with the sound of a trumpet; and she was completely
carried away by the glorious imagery of the Book of Isaiah, even when
she did not in the least understand its meaning. But her favourite book
was the Book of Ruth; for was not Ruth's devotion to Naomi the exact
counterpart of hers to Cousin Anne? And she used to make up long stories
in her own mind about how Cousin Anne should, by some means, lose all
her friends and all her money, and be driven out of Sedgehill and away
from the Osierfield Works; and then how Elisabeth would say, "Entreat me
not to leave thee," and would follow Cousin Anne to the ends of the
earth.
People sometimes smile at the adoration of a young girl for a woman, and
there is no doubt but that the feeling savours slightly of school-days
and bread-and-butter; but there is also no doubt that a girl who has
once felt it has learned what real love is, and that is no small item in
the lesson-book of life.
But Elisabeth had her comfortable friendship as well as her romantic
attachment; and the partner in that friendship was Christopher Thornley,
the nephew of Richard Smallwood.
In the days of his youth, when his father was still manager of the
Osierfield Works, Richard had a very pretty sister; but as Emily
Smallwood was pretty, so was she also vain, and the strict atmosphere of
her home life did not recommend itself to her taste. After many quarrels
with her stern old father (her mother having died when she was a baby),
Emily left home, and took a situation in London as governess, in the
house of some wealthy people with no pretensions to religion. For this
her father never forgave her; he called it "consorting with children of
Belial." In time she wrote to tell Richard that she was going to be
married, and that she wished to cut off entirely all communication with
her old home. After that, Richard lost sight of her for many years; but
some time after his father's death he received a letter from Emily,
begging him to come to her at once, as she was dying. He complied with
her request, and found his once beautiful sister in great poverty in a
London lodging-house. She told him that she had endured great sorrow,
having lost her husband and her five eldest children. Her husband had
never been unkind to her, she said, but he was one of the men who lack
the power either to make or to keep money; and when he found he was
foredoomed to failure in everything to which he turned his hand, he had
not the spirit to continue the fight against Fate, but turned his face
to the wall and died. She had still one child left, a fair-haired boy of
about two years old, called Christopher; to her brother's care she
confided this boy, and then she also turned her face to the wall and
died.
This happened a year or so before the Miss Farringdons adopted
Elisabeth; so that when that young lady appeared upon the scene, and
subsequently grew up sufficiently to require a playfellow, she found
Christopher Thornley ready to hand. He lived with his bachelor uncle in
a square red house on the east side of Sedgehill High Street, exactly
opposite to the Farringdons' lodge. It was one of those big, bald houses
with unblinking windows, that stare at you as if they had not any
eyebrows or eyelashes; and there was not even a strip of greenery
between it and the High Street. So to prevent the passers-by from
looking in and the occupants from looking out, the lower parts of the
front windows were covered with a sort of black crape mask, which put
even the sunbeams into half-mourning.
Unlike Elisabeth, Christopher had a passion for righteousness and for
honour, but no power of artistic perception. His standard was whether
things were right or wrong, honourable or dishonourable; hers was
whether they were beautiful or ugly, pleasant or unpleasant.
Consequently the two moved along parallel lines; and she moved a great
deal more quickly than he did. Christopher had deep convictions, but was
very shy of expressing them; Elisabeth's convictions were not
particularly deep, but such as they were, all the world was welcome to
them as far as she was concerned.
As the children grew older, one thing used much to puzzle and perplex
Christopher. Elisabeth did not seem to care about being good nearly as
much as he cared: he was always trying to do right, and she only tried
when she thought about it; nevertheless, when she did give her attention
to the matter, she had much more comforting and beautiful thoughts than
he had, which appeared rather hard. He was not yet old enough to know
that this difference between them arose from no unequal division of
divine favour, but was simply and solely a question of temperament. But
though he did not understand, he did not complain; for he had been
brought up under the shadow of the Osierfield Works, and in the fear and
love of the Farringdons; and Elisabeth, whatever her shortcomings, was a
princess of the blood.
Christopher was a day-boy at the Grammar School at Silverhampton, a fine
old town some three miles to the north of Sedgehill; and there and back
he walked every day, wet or fine, and there he learned to be a scholar
and a gentleman, and sundry other important things.
"Do you hear that noise?" said Elisabeth, one afternoon in the holidays,
when she was twelve and Christopher fifteen; "that's Mrs. Bateson's pig
being killed."
"Hear it?--rather," replied Christopher, standing still in the wood to
listen.
"Let's go and see it," Elisabeth suggested.
Christopher looked shocked. "Well, you are a horrid girl! Nothing would
induce me to go, or to let you go either; but I'm surprised at your
being so horrid as to wish for such a thing."
"It isn't really horridness," Elisabeth explained meekly; "it is
interest. I'm so frightfully interested in things; and I want to see
everything, just to know what it looks like."
"Well, I call it horrid. And, what's more, if you saw it, it would make
you feel ill."
"No; it wouldn't."
"Then it ought to," said Christopher, who, with true masculine dulness
of perception, confounded weakness of nerve with tenderness of heart.
Elisabeth sighed. "Nothing makes me feel ill," she replied
apologetically; "not even an accident or an after-meeting."
Christopher could not help indulging in a certain amount of envious
admiration for an organism that could pass unmoved through such physical
and spiritual crises as these; but he was not going to let Elisabeth see
that he admired her. He considered it "unmanly" to admire girls.
"Well, you are a rum little cove!" he said.
"Of course, I don't want to go if you think it would be horrid of me;
but I thought we might pretend it was the execution of Mary Queen of
Scots, and find it most awfully exciting."
"How you do go on about Mary Queen of Scots! Not long ago you were
always bothering about heathen goddesses, and now you have no thought
for anything but Mary."
"Oh! but I'm still immensely interested in goddesses, Chris; and I do
wish, when you are doing Latin and Greek at school, you'd find out what
colour Pallas Athene's hair was. Couldn't you?"
"No; I couldn't."
"But you might ask one of the masters. They'd be sure to know."
Christopher laughed the laugh of the scornful. "I say, you are a duffer
to suppose that clever men like schoolmasters bother their heads about
such rot as the colour of a woman's hair."
"Of course, I know they wouldn't about a woman's," Elisabeth hastened to
justify herself; "but I thought perhaps they might about a goddess's."
"It is the same thing. You've no idea what tremendously clever chaps
schoolmasters are--much too clever to take any interest in girls' and
women's concerns. Besides, they are too old for that, too--they are
generally quite thirty."
Elisabeth was silent for a moment; and Christopher whistled as he looked
across the green valley to the sunset, without in the least knowing how
beautiful it was. But Elisabeth knew, for she possessed an innate
knowledge of many things which he would have to learn by experience. But
even she did not yet understand that because the sunset was beautiful
she felt a sudden hunger and thirst after righteousness.
"Chris, do you think it is wicked of people to fall in love?" she asked
suddenly.
"Not exactly wicked; more silly, I should say," replied Chris
generously.
"Because if it is wicked, I shall give up reading tales about it." This
was a tremendous and unnatural sacrifice to principle on the part of
Elisabeth.
Christopher turned upon her sharply. "You don't read tales that Miss
Farringdon hasn't said you may read, do you?"
"Yes; lots. But I never read tales that she has said I mustn't read."
"You oughtn't to read any tale till you have asked her first if you
may."
Elisabeth's face fell. "I never thought of doing such a thing as asking
her first. Oh! Chris, you don't really think I ought to, do you? Because
she'd be sure to say no."
"That is exactly why you ought to ask." Christopher's sense of honour
was one of his strong points.
Then Elisabeth lost her temper. "That is you all over! You are the most
tiresome boy to have anything to do with! You are always bothering about
things being wrong, till you make them wrong. Now I hardly ever think of
it; but I can't go on doing things after you've said they are wrong,
because that would be wrong of me, don't you see? And yet it wasn't a
bit wrong of me before I knew. I hate you!"
"I say, Betty, I'm awfully sorry lo have riled you; but you asked me."
"I didn't ask you whether I need ask Cousin Maria, stupid! You know I
didn't. I asked you whether it was wrong to fall in love, and then you
went and dragged Cousin Maria in. I wish I'd never asked you anything; I
wish I'd never spoken to you; I wish I'd got somebody else to play with,
and then I'd never speak to you again as long as I live."
Of course it was unwise of Christopher to condemn a weakness to which
Elisabeth was prone, and to condone one to which she was not; but no man
has learned wisdom at fifteen, and but few at fifty.
"You are the most disagreeable boy I have ever met, and I wish I could
think of something to do to annoy you. I know what I'll do; I'll go by
myself and see Mrs. Bateson's pig, just to show you how I hate you."
And Elisabeth flew off in the direction of Mrs. Bateson's cottage, with
the truly feminine intention of punishing the male being who had dared
to disapprove of her, by making him disapprove of her still more. Her
programme, however, was frustrated; for Mrs. Bateson herself intervened
between Elisabeth and her unholy desires, and entertained the latter
with a plate of delicious bread-and-dripping instead. Finally, that
young lady returned to her home in a more magnanimous frame of mind; and
fell asleep that night wondering if the whole male sex were as stupid as
the particular specimen with which she had to do--a problem which has
puzzled older female brains than hers.
But poor Christopher was very unhappy. It was agony to him when his
conscience pulled him one way and Elisabeth pulled him the other; and
yet this form of torture was constantly occurring to him. He could not
bear to do what he knew was wrong, and he could not bear to vex
Elisabeth; yet Elisabeth's wishes and his own ideas of right were by no
means always synonymous. His only comfort was the knowledge that his
sovereign's anger was, as a rule, short-lived, and that he himself was
indispensable to that sovereign's happiness. This was true; but he did
not then realize that it was in his office as admiring and sympathizing
audience, and not in his person as Christopher Thornley, that he was
necessary to Elisabeth. A fuller revelation was vouchsafed to him
later.
The next morning Elisabeth was herself again, and was quite ready to
enjoy Christopher's society and to excuse his scruples. She knew that
self of hers when she said that she wished she had somebody else to play
with, in order that she might withdraw the light of her presence from
her offending henchman. To thus punish Christopher, until she had found
some one to take his place, was a course of action which would not have
occurred to her. Elisabeth's pride could never stand in the way of her
pleasure; Christopher's, on the contrary, might. It was a remarkable
fact that after Christopher had reproved Elisabeth for some fault--which
happened neither infrequently nor unnecessarily--he was always repentant
and she forgiving; yet nine times out of ten he had been in the right
and she in the wrong. But Elisabeth's was one of those exceptionally
generous natures which can pardon the reproofs and condone the virtues
of their friends; and she bore no malice, even when Christopher had been
more obviously right than usual. But she was already enough of a woman
to adapt to her own requirements his penitence for right-doing; and on
this occasion she took advantage of his chastened demeanour to induce
him to assist her in erecting a new shrine to Athene in the wood--which
meant that she gave all the directions and he did all the work.
"You are doing it beautifully, Chris--you really are!" she exclaimed
with delight. "We shall be able to have a splendid sacrifice this
afternoon. I've got some feathers to offer up from the fowl cook is
plucking; and they make a much better sacrifice than waste paper."
"Why?"
Christopher was too shy in those days to put the fact into words;
nevertheless, the fact remained that Elisabeth interested him
profoundly. She was so original, so unexpected, that she was continually
providing him with fresh food for thought. Although he was cleverer at
lessons than she was, she was by far the cleverer at play; and though he
had the finer character, hers was the stronger personality. It was
because Elisabeth was so much to him that he now and then worried her
easy-going conscience with his strictures; for, to do him justice, the
boy was no prig, and would never have dreamed of preaching to anybody
except her. But it must be remembered that Christopher had never heard
of such things as spiritual evolutions and streams of tendency: to him
right or wrong meant heaven or hell--neither more nor less; and he was
overpowered by a burning anxiety that Elisabeth should eventually go to
heaven, partly for her own sake, and partly (since human love is
stronger than dogmas and doctrines) because a heaven, uncheered by the
presence of Elisabeth, seemed a somewhat dreary place wherein to spend
one's eternity.
"Why do feathers make a better sacrifice than paper?" repeated
Christopher, Elisabeth being so much absorbed in his work that she had
not answered his question.
"Oh! because they smell; and it seems so much more like a real
sacrifice, somehow, if it smells."
"I see. What ideas you do get into your head!"
But Elisabeth's volatile thoughts had flown off in another direction.
"You really have got awfully nice-coloured hair," she remarked, Chris
having taken his cap off for the sake of coolness, as he was heated
with his toil. "I do wish I had light hair like yours. Angels, and
goddesses, and princesses, and people of that kind always have golden
hair; but only bad fairies and cruel stepmothers have nasty dark hair
like me. I think it is horrid to have dark hair."
"I don't: I like dark hair best; and I don't think yours is half bad."
Christopher never overstated a case; but then one had the comfort of
knowing that he always meant what he said, and frequently a good deal
more.
"Don't you really, Chris? I think it is hideous," replied Elisabeth,
taking one of her elf-locks between her fingers and examining it as if
it were a sample of material; "it is like that ugly brown seaweed which
shows which way the wind blows--no, I mean that shows whether it is
going to rain or not."
"Never mind; I've seen lots of people with uglier hair than yours."
Chris really could be of great consolation when he tried.
"Aren't the trees lovely when they have got all their leaves off?" said
Elisabeth, her thoughts wandering again. "I believe I like them better
now than I do in summer. Now they are like the things you wish for, and
in the summer they are like the things you get; and the things you get
are never half as nice as the things you wish for."
This was too subtle for Christopher. "I like them best with the leaves
on; but anyhow they are nicer to look at than the chimneys that we see
from our house. You can't think how gloomy it is for your rooms to look
out on nothing but smoke and chimneys and furnaces. When you go to bed
at night it's all red, and when you get up in the morning it's all
black."
"I should like to live in a house like that. I love the smoke and the
chimneys and the furnaces--they are all so big and strong and full of
life; and they make you think."
"What on earth do they make you think about?"
Elisabeth's gray eyes grew dreamy. "They make me think that the Black
Country is a wilderness that we are all travelling through; and over it
there is always the pillar of cloud by day and the pillar of fire by
night, to tell us which way to go. I make up tales to myself about the
people in the wilderness; and how they watch the pillar, and how it
keeps them from idling in their work, or selling bad iron, or doing
anything that is horrid or mean, because it is a sign to them that God
is with them, just as it used to be to the Children of Israel."
Christopher looked up from his work. Here was the old problem: Elisabeth
did not think about religion half as much as he did, and yet the helpful
and beautiful thoughts came to her and not to him. Still, it was
comforting to know that the smoke and the glare, which he had hated,
could convey such a message; and he made up his mind not to hate them
any more.
"And then I pretend that the people come out of the wilderness and go to
live in the country over there," Elisabeth continued, pointing to the
distant hills; "and I make up lovely tales about that country, and all
the beautiful things there. That is what is so nice about hills: you
always think there are such wonderful places on the other side of them."
For some minutes Christopher worked silently, and Elisabeth watched him.
Then the latter said suddenly:
"Isn't it funny that you never hate people in a morning, however much
you may have hated them the night before?"
"Don't you?" Rapid changes of sentiment were beyond Christopher's
comprehension. He was by no means a variable person.
"Oh! no. Last night I hated you, and made up a story in my own mind that
another really nice boy came to play with me instead of you. And I said
nice things to him, and horrid things to you; he and I played in the
wood, and you had to do lessons all by yourself at school, and had
nobody to play with. But when I woke up this morning I didn't care about
the pretending boy any more, and I wanted you."
Christopher looked pleased; but it was not his way to express his
pleasure in words. "And so, I suppose, you came to look for me," he
said.
"Not the first thing. Somehow it always makes you like a person better
when you have hated them for a bit, so I liked you awfully when I woke
this morning and remembered you. When you really are fond of a person,
you always want to do something to please them; so I went and told
Cousin Maria that I'd read a lot of books in the library without
thinking whether I ought to or not; but that now I wanted her to say
what I might read and what I mightn't."
This was a course of action that Christopher could thoroughly understand
and appreciate. "Was she angry?" he asked.
"Not a bit. That is the best of Cousin Maria--she never scolds you
unless you really deserve it; and she is very sharp at finding out
whether you deserve it or not. She said that there were a lot of books
in the library that weren't suitable for a little girl to read; but
that it wasn't naughty of me to have read what I chose, since nobody had
told me not to. And then she said it was good of me to have told her,
for she should never have found it out if I hadn't."
"And so it was," remarked Christopher approvingly.
"No; it wasn't--and I told her it wasn't. I told her that the goodness
was yours, because it was you that made me tell. I should never have
thought of it by myself."
"I say, you are a regular brick!"
Elisabeth looked puzzled. "I don't see anything brickish in saying that;
it was the truth. It was you that made me tell, you know; and it wasn't
fair for me to be praised for your goodness."
"You really are awfully straight, for a girl," said Christopher, with
admiration; "you couldn't be straighter if you were a boy."
This was high praise, and Elisabeth's pale little face glowed with
delight. She loved to be commended.
"It was really very good of you to speak to Miss Farringdon about the
books," continued Christopher; "for I know you'll hate having to ask
permission before you read a tale."
"I didn't do it out of goodness," said Elisabeth thoughtfully--"I did it
to please you; and pleasing a person you are fond of isn't goodness. I
wonder if grown-up people get to be as fond of religion as they are of
one another. I expect they do; and then they do good things just for the
sake of doing good."
"Of course they do," replied Christopher, who was always at sea when
Elisabeth became metaphysical.
"I suppose," she continued seriously, "that if I were really good,
religion ought to be the same to me as Cousin Anne."
"The same as Cousin Anne! What do you mean?"
"I mean that if I were really good, religion would give me the same sort
of feelings as Cousin Anne does."
"What sort of feelings?"
"Oh! they are lovely feelings," Elisabeth answered--"too lovely to
explain. Everything is a treat if Cousin Anne is there. When she speaks,
it's just like music trickling down your back; and when you do something
that you don't like to please her, you feel that you do like it."
"Well, you are a rum little thing! I should think nobody ever thought of
all the queer things that you think of."
"Oh! I expect everybody does," retorted Elisabeth, who was far too
healthy minded to consider herself peculiar. After another pause, she
inquired: "Do you like me, Chris?"
"Rather! What a foolish question to ask!" Christopher replied, with a
blush, for he was always shy of talking about his feelings; and the more
he felt the shyer he became.
But Elisabeth was not shy, and had no sympathy with anybody who was.
"How much do you like me?" she continued.
"A lot."
"But I want to know exactly how much."
"Then you can't. Nobody can tell how much they like anybody. You do ask
silly questions!"
"Yes; they can. I can tell how much I like everybody," Elisabeth
persisted.
"How?"
"I have a sort of thermometer in my mind, just like the big thermometer
in the hall; and I measure how much I like people by that."
"How much do you like your Cousin Anne?" he asked.
"Ninety-six degrees," replied Elisabeth promptly.
"And your Cousin Maria?"
"Sixty."
"And Mrs. Bateson?"
"Fifty-four." Elisabeth always knew her own mind.
"I say, how--how--how much do you like me?" asked Christopher, with some
hesitation.
"Sixty-two," answered Elisabeth, with no hesitation at all.
And Christopher felt a funny, cold feeling round his loyal heart. He
grew to know the feeling well in after years, and to wonder how
Elisabeth could understand so much and yet understand so little; but at
present he was too young to understand himself.