ELIZABETH GIVES ADVICE
“I’VE seen the interloper,” said Elizabeth.
She was walking with John by the river. He had called for her at the
Green Man, and had proposed a walk.
“Yes?” said John. There was enquiry in his tone.
“He isn’t,” said Elizabeth, “in the remotest degree what I imagined
him, except for his size. He--well, it is extraordinarily difficult to
describe him.”
“You feel that?”
“There’s something so childlike about him,” pursued Elizabeth. “If I
were to attempt to put into words what I mean, he seems to me like a
child, who had started out to get something, entirely sure that he
wanted it; and then, when he found it in his grasp, he discovered it to
be totally different from what he imagined it. He expected a sort of
toy, and he has found an enormous responsibility. He doesn’t know what
to make of it. He is utterly perplexed, and it hasn’t occurred to him
that the simplest plan would be to renounce it.”
John opened eyes of wonder.
“I always knew you were shrewd, my dear Elizabeth,” he remarked, “but
how you have arrived at these conclusions in so brief a space of time,
beats me altogether.”
“Then you think I’m right?” she demanded.
“I am pretty sure of it. But the thing is, that he sees the
responsibility without exactly recognizing it, and, as you say, the
simple way out of the difficulty hasn’t occurred to him in consequence.”
Elizabeth mused, looking at the running water.
“But that’s not all,” she went on. “There’s more I can’t fathom. These
are merely material difficulties to grapple with. He is faced with
something deeper. You can call me absurd if you like. I daresay I am
being a little _exalté_, but he has a look in his eyes as if he had
caught a glimpse of the Vision Beautiful, and he is a bit bewildered.”
“Oh, no,” said John quietly, “I’ll not call you absurd.”
Elizabeth cast a quick look at him and lapsed into silence. The second
problem was already absorbing her vastly more than the first. It was
infinitely greater, the issue infinitely more important. To the first
problem, when David had once grasped it fairly, there was so simple a
solution, did he but choose to take it. In any case, however, it was,
to her mind, on another plane. It didn’t belong to the same category
as this second problem. Of course you may say that the mental problem
existed solely in Elizabeth’s imagination. But then she did not think
it did; nor, you will realize, did John.
Suddenly she spoke again, and quite irrelevantly to her former remarks.
“What particular interest has--Sir David, I suppose I must call him, in
dress clothes?”
“Dress clothes?” queried John bewildered.
“Dress clothes,” reiterated Elizabeth. “I happened to say--quite idly,
you understand,--that you’d sooner go without your dinner than not
dress for it. He asked me if I meant that, and when I replied that I
did, I saw at once that, far from being the little trivial matter I had
believed it, it was, to him, of the most vital and grave importance.”
“Oh, my dear Elizabeth!” John’s eyebrows went up. He gazed at his
sister in comical dismay.
“Well?” demanded Elizabeth. “You would.”
“Oh, I daresay,” said John ruefully. “But--well, the man hasn’t a dress
suit. Apparently he doesn’t possess such a thing, and Father Maloney
swore that it was an entirely unnecessary article in the country.
Corin and I dined at Delancey Castle in morning dress to keep him in
countenance. And now you--” he broke off.
Contrition, profound and utter contrition, wrote itself on Elizabeth’s
face.
“I ought to have guessed there was something momentous in the
question,” she said remorsefully, “and yet how could I! How small I
must have made him feel!”
“And what a cheat he must think Father Maloney!” said John grimly.
“He’ll believe we were all laughing at him in our sleeves.”
“You needn’t rub it in,” groaned Elizabeth. “These kind of horrid
little _contretemps_ make one feel guiltier and more remorseful than
quite a good-sized venial sin. You needn’t tell me I’ve no business to
feel like that. Of course I haven’t. But kindly remember it’s only in
my feelings and not in my reason, I’m experiencing the sensation. What
can I do? Tell him I was only joking?”
“He’ll not believe you,” John assured her, “though certainly your
remark was, I trust, not intended to be taken in deadly earnest.
Perhaps,” continued John hopefully, “it may open his eyes a little more
to his unsuitability for the position of head of Delancey Castle.”
“It may,” said Elizabeth succinctly, “but all the same I wish I hadn’t
lent a hand to the operation. It’s nearly as bad as forcing open the
eyes of a two-days-old kitten. I’d far sooner have left the business to
time.”
“Time,” remarked John gloomily, “is an old cheat. You never know what
he will be up to. He has a way of contracting hours into briefest
seconds when you want their full value, and of expanding them into an
eternity when you’ve no use for them. Oh! he’s a wily beggar is Time.”
Elizabeth laughed.
“What is it?” she asked. “Hadn’t you better make a clean breast of it?”
“Of what?” demanded John evasively.
“The exact manner of Time’s trickery,” responded Elizabeth. “Or
anything else you please. Of course I know there’s something on your
mind.”
“You profess to be a reader of minds?”
“Not a bit of it,” smiled Elizabeth. “Only, having eyes in my head,
I use them. Also, having been endowed with a certain amount of
intelligence I use that also. And adding the two together----”
“You have guessed?” queried John.
“A dim guess,” said Elizabeth, “and one which will find no outlet in
speech without further proof.”
She sat down on a tree trunk.
“Let us rest,” said she.
John stretched himself on the grass at her feet.
“Well,” he said, “perhaps your guess is right.”
“There is someone?” she demanded, promptly forgetting her former
announcement.
John nodded.
“Ah!” Elizabeth’s eyes gleamed. “And of course it can only be the one
someone. I am glad.”
“So would I be,” returned John, “if it weren’t such a one-sided affair.”
“You mean that she doesn’t--” Elizabeth broke off, dismay in voice and
eyes.
“Oh, I don’t know,” said John gloomily. “How can I tell? She’s
friendly, she’s--she’s adorable, but--” He flung out his hand, as who
should say, “And there’s the whole of it.”
“You haven’t asked her?”
“Asked her!” John’s tone was almost scornful. “Where’s your intuition,
my dear sister? Wouldn’t you see me in permanent radiant joy, or black
despair, if I had? As it is, I am swinging from the one to the other,
and the swing of the pendulum stays down infinitely longer than it
stays up. There’s old Time at his games.” He pulled at the rushes by
the river bank.
“But,” quoth Elizabeth calmly, “why don’t you ask her?”
“Ask her! I have not known her a fortnight yet. I have only seen her
eight times.”
“It has been enough for you,” said Elizabeth, still calmly.
“For me, yes,” allowed John. “But for her! There’s the crux of the
matter. What have I got to offer her?” His tone was despairing.
Elizabeth looked at him. There was the gleam of a tender smile in her
eyes.
“Just the one thing,” she said softly, “that is of the smallest value.
Yourself.”
“But--” began John.
Elizabeth interrupted him.
“Listen,” she said, and there was a curious earnestness in her voice,
“if she doesn’t care for you yourself, nothing else you could offer
would have the smallest value in her eyes. At least, not if she’s the
woman I take her to be. And she must be that woman, or I don’t for a
moment believe you would love her. Oh, John, dear, don’t you understand
that women, the right kind of women, don’t want the external things a
man can give? They want him himself, and the things that are part of
him, the things without which he wouldn’t be himself at all. I mean
love, loyalty, friendship. I don’t believe the majority of people have
a notion how important the last is. That is why there are so few ideal
marriages.”
“Hum!” mused John.
“It’s true,” said Elizabeth.
“Then what is your advice?” demanded John.
“Ask her, of course.” Elizabeth’s tone was refreshingly certain.
“You can’t expect her to propose, can you? How do you know that Time
isn’t playing exactly the same tricks with her? Ask her,” reiterated
Elizabeth, “at the very first opportune moment.”
“That,” said John laughing ruefully, “is precisely what I have been
waiting for.”