"THE DAUGHTERS OF PHILIP"
In the market-place alone
Stood the statue carved in stone,
Watching children round her feet
Playing marbles in the street:
When she tried to join their play
They in terror fled away.
Christopher went to Australia in search of George Farringdon's son, and
Elisabeth stayed in England and cherished bitter thoughts in her heart
concerning him. That imagination of hers--which was always prone to lead
her astray--bore most terribly false witness against Christopher just
then. It portrayed him as a hard, self-righteous man, ready to sacrifice
the rest of mankind to the Moloch of what he considered to be his own
particular duty and spiritual welfare, and utterly indifferent as to how
severe was the suffering entailed on the victims of this sacrifice. And,
as Christopher was not at hand to refute the charges of Elisabeth's
libellous fancy by his own tender and unselfish personality, the accuser
took advantage of his absence to blacken him more and more.
It was all in a piece with the rest of his character, she said to
herself; he had always been cold and hard and self-contained. When his
house had been left unto him desolate by the stroke which changed his
uncle from a wise and kindly companion into a helpless and peevish
child, she had longed to help and comfort him with her sympathy; and he
had thrown it back in her face. He was too proud and too superior to
care for human affection, she supposed; and now he felt no hesitation in
first forsaking her, and then reducing her to poverty, if only by so
doing he could set himself still more firmly on the pedestal of his own
virtue. So did Elisabeth's imagination traduce Christopher; and
Elisabeth listened and believed.
At first she was haunted by memories of how good he had been to her when
her cousin Maria died, and many a time before; and she used to dream
about him at night with so much of the old trust and affection that it
took all the day to stamp out the fragrance of tenderness which her
dreams had left behind. But after a time these dreams and memories grew
fewer and less distinct, and she persuaded herself that Christopher had
never been the true and devoted friend she had once imagined him to be,
but that the kind and affectionate Chris of olden days had been merely a
creature of her own invention. There was no one to plead his cause for
him, as he was far away, and appearances were on the side of his
accuser; so he was tried in the court of Elisabeth's merciless young
judgment, and sentenced to life-long banishment from the circle of her
interests and affections. She forgot how he had comforted her in the day
of her adversity. If he had allowed her to comfort him, she would have
remembered it forever; but he had not; and in this world men must be
prepared to take the consequences of their own mistakes, even though
those mistakes be made through excess of devotion to another person.
In certain cases it may be necessary to pluck out the right eye and cut
off the right hand; but there is no foundation for supposing that the
operation will be any the less painful because of the righteous motive
inducing it. And so Christopher Thornley learned by bitter experience,
when, after many days, he returned from a fruitless search for the
missing heir, to find the countenance of Elisabeth utterly changed
toward him. She was quite civil to him--quite polite; she never
attempted to argue or quarrel with him as she had done in the old days,
and she listened patiently to all the details of his doings in
Australia; but with gracious coldness she quietly put him outside the
orbit of her life, and showed him plainly that he was now nothing more
to her than her trustee and the general manager of her works.
It was hard on Christopher--cruelly hard; yet he had no alternative but
to accept the position which Elisabeth, in the blindness of her heart,
assigned to him. Sometimes he felt the burden of his lot was almost more
than he could bear; not because of its heaviness, as he was a brave man
and a patient one, but because of the utter absence of any joy in his
life. Men and women can endure much sorrow if they have much joy as
well; it is when sorrow comes and there is no love to lighten it, that
the Hand of God lies heavy upon them; and It lay heavy upon
Christopher's soul just then. Sometimes, when he felt weary unto death
of the dreary routine of work and the still drearier routine of his
uncle's sick-room, he recalled with a bitter smile how Elisabeth used to
say that the gloom and smoke of the furnaces was really a pillar of
cloud to show how God was watching over the people at the Osierfield as
He watched over them in the wilderness. Because she had forgotten to be
gracious to him, he concluded that God had forgotten to be gracious to
him also--a not uncommon error of human wisdom; but though his heart was
wounded and his days darkened by her injustice toward him, he never
blamed her, even in his inmost thoughts. He was absolutely loyal to
Elisabeth.
One grim consolation he had--and that was the conviction that he had not
won, and never could have won, Elisabeth's love; and that, therefore,
poverty or riches were matters of no moment to him. Had he felt that
temporal circumstances were the only bar between him and happiness, his
position as her paid manager would have been unendurable; but now she
had taught him that it was he himself, and not any difference in their
respective social positions, which really stood between herself and him;
and, that being so, nothing else had any power to hurt him. Wealth,
unshared by Elisabeth, would have been no better than want, he said to
himself; success, uncrowned by her, would have been equivalent to
failure. When Christopher was in Australia he succeeded in tracing
George Farringdon as far as Broken Hill, and there he found poor
George's grave. He learned that George had left a widow and one son, who
had left the place immediately after George's death; but no one could
give him any further information as to what had subsequently become of
these two. And he was obliged at last to abandon the search and return
to England, without discovering what had happened to the widow and
child.
Some years after his nephew's fruitless journey to Australia Richard
Smallwood died; and though the old man had been nothing but a burden
during the last few years of his life, Christopher missed him sorely
when he was gone. It was something even to have a childish old man to
love him, and smile at his coming; now there was nobody belonging to
him, and he was utterly alone.
But the years which had proved so dark to Christopher had been full of
brightness and interest to Elisabeth. She had fulfilled her intention of
studying at the Slade School, and she had succeeded in her work beyond
her wildest expectations. She was already recognised as an artist of no
mean order. Now and then she came down to the Willows, bringing Grace
Cobham with her; and the young women filled the house with company. Now
and then they two went abroad together, and satisfied their souls with
the beauty of the art of other lands. But principally they lived in
London, for the passion to be near the centre of things had come upon
Elisabeth; and when once that comes upon any one, London is the place in
which to live. People wondered that Elisabeth did not marry, and blamed
her behind her back for not making suitable hay while it was as yet
summer with her. But the artist-woman never marries for the sake of
being married--or rather for the sake of not being unmarried--as so many
of her more ordinary sisters do; her art supplies her with that
necessary interest in life, without which most women become either
invalids or shrews, and--unless she happens to meet the right man--she
can manage very well without him.
George Farringdon's son had never turned up, in spite of all the efforts
to discover him; and by this time Elisabeth had settled down into the
belief that the Willows and the Osierfield were permanently hers. She
had long ago forgiven Christopher for setting her and her interests
aside, and going off in search of the lost heir--at least she believed
that she had; but there was always an undercurrent of bitterness in her
thoughts of him, which proved that the wound he had then dealt her had
left a scar.
Several men had wanted to marry Elisabeth, but they had not succeeded in
winning her. She enjoyed flirting with them, and she rejoiced in their
admiration, but when they offered her their love she was frightened and
ran away. Consequently the world called her cold; and as the years
rolled on and no one touched her heart, she began to believe that the
world was right.
"There are three great things in life," Grace Cobham said to her one
day, "art and love and religion. They really are all part of the same
thing, and none of them is perfected without the others. You have got
two, Elisabeth; but you have somehow missed the third, and without it
you will never attain to your highest possibilities. You are a good
woman, and you are a true artist; but, until you fall in love, your
religion and your art will both lack something, and will fall short of
perfection."
"I'm afraid I'm not a falling-in-love sort of person," replied Elisabeth
meekly; "I'm extremely sorry, but such is the case."
"It is a pity! But you may fall in love yet."
"It's too late, I fear. You see I am over thirty; and if I haven't done
it by now, I expect I never shall do it. It is tiresome to have missed
it, I admit; and especially as you think it would make me paint better
pictures."
"Well, I do. You paint so well now that it is a pity you don't paint
still better. I do not believe that any artist does his or her best work
until his or her nature is fully developed; and no woman's nature is
fully developed until she has been in love."
"I have never been in love; I don't even know what it is like inside,"
said Elisabeth sadly; "and I dreadfully want to know, because--looked at
from the outside--it seems interesting."
Grace gazed at her thoughtfully. "I wonder if it is that you are too
cold to fall in love, or whether it only is that the right person hasn't
appeared."
"I don't know. I wish I did. What do you think it feels like?"
"I know what it feels like--and that is like nothing else this side
heaven."
"It seems funny to get worked up in that sort of way over an ordinary
man--turning him into a revival-service or a national anthem, or
something equally thrilling and inspiring! Still, I'd do it if I could,
just from pure curiosity. I should really enjoy it. I've seen stupid
girls light up like a turnip with a candle inside, simply because some
plain young man did the inevitable, and came up into the drawing-room
after dinner; and I've seen clever women go to pieces like a linen
button at the wash, simply because some ignorant man did the inevitable,
and preferred a more foolish and better-looking woman to themselves."
"Have you really never been in love, Elisabeth?"
Elisabeth pondered for a moment. "No; I've sometimes thought I was, but
I've always known I wasn't."
"I wonder at that; because you really are affectionate."
"That is quite true; but no one has ever seemed to want as much as I had
to give," said Elisabeth, the smile dying out of her eyes; "I do so long
to be necessary to somebody--to feel that it is in my power to make
somebody perfectly happy; but nobody has ever asked enough of me."
"You could have made the men happy who wanted to marry you," suggested
Grace.
"No; I could have made them comfortable, and that's not the same thing."
As Elisabeth sat alone in her own room that night, she thought about
what Grace had said, and wondered if she were really too cold ever to
experience that common yet wonderful miracle which turns earth into
heaven for most people once in their lives. She had received much love
and still more admiration in her time; but she had never been allowed to
give what she had to give, and she was essentially of the type of woman
to whom it is more blessed to give than to receive. She had never craved
to be loved, as some women crave; she had only asked to be allowed to
love as much as she was capable of loving, and the permission had been
denied her. As she looked back over her past life, she saw that it had
always been the same. She had given the adoration of her childhood to
Anne Farringdon, and Anne had not wanted it; she had given the devotion
of her girlhood to Felicia, and Felicia had not wanted it; she had given
the truest friendship of her womanhood to Christopher, and Christopher
had not wanted it. As for the men who had loved her, she had known
perfectly well that she was not essential to them; had she been, she
would have married them; but they could be happy without her--and they
were. For Grace she had the warmest sense of comradeship; but Grace's
life was so full on its own account, that Elisabeth could only be one of
many interests to her. Elisabeth was so strong and so tender, that she
could have given much to any one to whom she was absolutely necessary;
but she felt she could give of her best to no man who desired it only as
a luxury--it was too good for that.
"It seems rather a waste of force," she said to herself, with a
whimsical smile. "I feel like Niagara, spending its strength on empty
splashings, when it might be turning thousands of electric engines and
lighting millions of electric lights, if only its power were turned in
the right direction and properly stored. I could be so much to anybody
who really needed me--I feel I could; but nobody seems to need me, so
it's no use bothering. Anyway, I have my art, and that more than
satisfies me; and I will spend my life in giving forth my strength to
the world at large, in the shape of pictures which shall help the world
to be better and happier. At least I hope so."
And with this reflection Elisabeth endeavoured to console herself for
the non-appearance of that fairy prince, who, in her childish dreams,
had always been wounded in the tournament of life, and had turned to her
for comfort.
The years which had passed so drearily for Christopher, had cast their
shadows also over the lives of Alan and Felicia Tremaine. When Willie
was a baby, his nurse accidentally let him fall; and the injury he then
received was so great that, as he grew older, he was never able to walk
properly, but had to punt himself about with a little crutch. This was
a terrible blow to Alan; and became all the greater as time went on,
and Felicia had no other children to share his devotion. Felicia, too,
felt it sorely; but she fretted more over the sorrow it was to her
husband than on her own account.
There was a great friendship between Willie and Elisabeth. Weakness of
any kind always appealed to her, and he, poor child! was weak indeed. So
when Elisabeth was at the Willows and Willie at the Moat House, the two
spent much time together. He never wearied of hearing about the things
that she had pretended when she was a little girl; and she never wearied
of telling him about them.
"And so the people, who lived among the smoke and the furnaces, followed
the pillar of cloud till it led them to the country on the other side of
the hills," said Willie one day, as he and Elisabeth were sitting on the
old rustic seat in the Willows' garden. "I remember; but tell me, what
did they find in the country over there?" And he pointed with his thin
little finger to the blue hills beyond the green valley.
"They found everything that they wanted," replied Elisabeth. "Not the
things that other people thought would be good for them, you know; but
just the dear, foolish, impossible things that they had wanted for
themselves."
"And did the things make them happy?"
"Perfectly happy--much happier than the wise, desirable, sensible things
could have made them."
"I suppose they could all walk without crutches," suggested Willie.
"Of course they could; and they could understand everything without
being told."
"And the other people loved them very much, and were very kind to them,
weren't they?"
"Perhaps; but what made them so happy was that they loved the other
people and were kind to them. As long as they lived here in the smoke
and din and bustle, everybody was so busy looking after his own concerns
that nobody could be bothered with their love. There wasn't room for it,
or time for it. But in the country over the hills there was plenty of
room and plenty of time; in fact, there wasn't any room or any time for
anything else."
"What did they have to eat?" Willie asked.
"Everything that had been too rich for them when they were here."
Willie sighed. "It must have been a nice country," he said.
"It was, dear; the nicest country in the world. It was always summer
there, too, and holiday time."
"Didn't they have any lessons to learn?"
"No; because they'd learned them all."
"Did they have roads and railways?" Willie made further inquiry.
"No; only narrow green lanes, which led straight into fairyland. And the
longer you walked in them the less tired you were."
"Tell me a story about the country over there," said Willie, nestling up
to Elisabeth; "and let there be a princess in it."
She put her strong arm round him and held him close. "Once upon a time,"
she began, "there was a princess, who lived among the smoke and the
furnaces."
"Was she very beautiful?"
"No; but she happened to have a heart made of real gold. That was the
only rare thing about her; otherwise she was quite a common princess."
"What did she do with the heart?" asked Willie.
"She wanted to give it to somebody; but the strange thing was that
nobody would have it. Several people asked her for it before they knew
it was made of real gold; but when they found that out, they began to
make excuses. One said that he'd no place in his house for such a
first-class article; it would merely make the rest of the furniture look
shabby, and he shouldn't refurnish in order to please anybody. Another
said that he wasn't going to bother himself with looking after a real
gold heart, when a silver-gilt one would serve his purpose just as well.
And a third said that solid gold plate wasn't worth the trouble of
cleaning and keeping in order, as it was sure to get scratched or bent
in the process, the precious metals being too soft for everyday use."
"It is difficult not to scratch when you're cleaning plate," Willie
observed. "I sometimes help Simpkins, and there's only one spoon that
he'll let me clean, for fear I should scratch; and that's quite an old
one that doesn't matter. So I have to clean it over and over again. But
go on about the princess."
"Well, then she offered her gold heart to a woman who seemed lonely and
desolate; but the woman only cared for the hearts of men, and threw back
the princess's in her face. And then somebody advised her to set it up
for auction, to go to the highest bidder, as that was generally
considered the correct thing to do with regard to well-regulated women's
hearts; but she didn't like that suggestion at all. At last the poor
princess grew tired of offering her treasure to people who didn't want
it, and so she locked it up out of sight; and then everybody said that
she hadn't a heart at all, and what a disgrace it was for a young woman
to be without one."
"That wasn't fair!"
"Not at all fair; but people aren't always fair on this side of the
hills, darling."
"But they are on the other?"
"Always; and they are never hard or cold or unsympathetic. So the
princess decided to leave the smoke and the furnaces, and to go to the
country on the other side of the hills. She travelled down into the
valley and right through it, and then across the hills beyond, and never
rested till she reached the country on the other side."
"And what did she find when she got there?"
Elisabeth's eyes grew dreamy. "She found a fairy prince standing on the
very borders of that country, and he said to her, 'You've come at last;
I've been such a long time waiting for you.' And the princess asked him,
'Do you happen to want such a thing as a heart of real gold?' 'I should
just think I do,' said the prince; 'I've wanted it always, and I've
never wanted anything else; but I was beginning to be afraid I was never
going to get it.' 'And I was beginning to be afraid that I was never
going to find anybody to give it to,' replied the princess. So she gave
him her heart, and he took it; and then they looked into each other's
eyes and smiled."
"Is that the end of the story?"
"No, dear; only the beginning."
"Then what happened in the end?"
"Nobody knows."
But Willie's youthful curiosity was far from being satisfied. "What was
the fairy prince like to look at?" he inquired.
"I don't know, darling; I've often wondered."
And Willie had to be content with this uncertain state of affairs. So
had Elisabeth.
For some time now she had been making small bonfires of the Thames; but
the following spring Elisabeth set the river on fire in good earnest by
her great Academy picture, The Pillar of Cloud. It was the picture of
the year; and it supplied its creator with a copious draught of that
nectar of the gods which men call fame.
It was a fine picture, strongly painted, and was a representation of the
Black Country, with its mingled gloom and glare, and its pillar of smoke
always hanging over it. In the foreground were figures of men and women
and children, looking upward to the pillar of cloud; and, by the magic
spell of the artist, Elisabeth had succeeded in depicting on their
faces, for such who had eyes to see it, the peace of those who knew that
God was with them in their journey through the wilderness. They were
worn and weary and toil-worn, as they dwelt in the midst of the
furnaces; but, through it all, they looked up to the overshadowing cloud
and were lightened, and their faces were not ashamed. In the far
distance there was a glimpse of the sun setting behind a range of hills;
and one felt, as one gazed at the picture and strove to understand its
meaning, that the pillar of cloud was gradually leading the people
nearer and nearer to the far-off hills and the land beyond the sunset;
and that there they would find an abundant compensation for the
suffering and poverty that had blighted their lives as they toiled here
for their daily bread.
Even those who could not understand the underlying meaning of
Elisabeth's picture, marvelled at the power and technical skill whereby
she had brought the weird mystery of the Black Country into the heart of
London, until one almost felt the breath of the furnaces as one gazed
entranced at her canvas; and those who did understand the underlying
meaning, marvelled still more that so young a woman should have learned
so much of life's hidden mysteries--forgetting that art is no
intellectual endowment, but a revelation from God Himself, and that the
true artist does not learn but knows, because God has whispered to him.
There was another picture that made a sensation in that year's Academy;
it was the work of an unknown artist, Cecil Farquhar by name, and was
noted in the catalogue as The Daughters of Philip. It represented the
"four daughters, virgins, which did prophesy" of Philip of Cæsarea; but
it did not set them forth in the dress and attitude of inspired sibyls.
Instead of this it showed them as they were in their own home, when the
Spirit of the Lord was not upon them, but when they were ordinary girls,
with ordinary girls' interests and joys and sorrows. One of them was
braiding her magnificent black hair in front of a mirror; and another
was eagerly perusing a letter with the love-light in her eyes; a third
was weeping bitterly over a dead dove; and a fourth--the youngest--was
playing merrily with a monkey. It was a dazzling picture, brilliant with
rich Eastern draperies and warm lights; and shallow spectators wondered
what the artist meant by painting the prophetesses in such frivolous and
worldly guise; but the initiated understood how he had fathomed the
tragedy underlying the lives of most women who are set apart from their
fellows by the gift of genius. When the Spirit is upon them they
prophesy, by means of pictures or poems or stories or songs; and the
world says, "These are not as other women; they command our admiration,
but they do not crave our love: let us put them on the top of pinnacles
for high days and holidays, and not trouble them with the petty details
of everyday life."
The world forgets that the gift of genius is a thing apart from the
woman herself, and that these women at heart are very women, as entirely
as their less gifted sisters are, and have the ordinary woman's longing
for love and laughter, and for all the little things that make life
happy. A pinnacle is a poor substitute for a hearthstone, from the
feminine point of view; and laurel wreaths do not make half so
satisfactory a journey's end as lovers' meetings. All of which it is
difficult for a man to understand, since fame is more to him than it is
to a woman, and love less; therefore the knowledge of this truth proved
Cecil Farquhar to be a true artist; while the able manner in which he
had set it forth showed him to be also a highly gifted one. And the
world is always ready to acknowledge real merit when it sees it, and to
do homage to the same.
The Daughters of Philip carried a special message to the heart of
Elisabeth Farringdon. She had been placed on her pinnacle, and had
already begun to find how cold was the atmosphere up there, and how much
more human she was than people expected and allowed for her to be. She
felt like a statue set up in the market-place, that hears the children
piping and mourning, and longs to dance and weep with them; but they did
not ask her to do either--did not want her to do either--and if she had
come down from her pedestal and begged to be allowed to play with them
or comfort them, they would only have been frightened and run away.
But here at last was a man who understood what she was feeling; to whom
she could tell her troubles, and who would know what she meant; and she
made up her mind that before that season was over, she and the unknown
artist, who had painted The Daughters of Philip, should be friends.