The Farringdons Part 28

"To Australia? What on earth for?" It seemed to Elisabeth as if the earth beneath her feet had suddenly decided to reverse its customary revolution, and to transpose its poles.

"To see if I can find George Farringdon's son, of course."

"I thought he had been advertised for in both English and Australian papers, and had failed to answer the advertis.e.m.e.nts."

"So he has."

"Then why bother any more about him?" suggested Elisabeth.

"Because I must. If advertis.e.m.e.nt fails, I must see what personal search will do."

Elisabeth's lip trembled; she felt that a hemisphere uninhabited by Christopher would be a very dreary hemisphere indeed. "Oh! Chris dear, you needn't go yourself," she coaxed; "I simply can not spare you, and that's the long and the short of it."

Christopher hardened his heart. He had seen the quiver of Elisabeth's lip, and it had almost proved too strong for him. "Hang it all! I must go; there is nothing else to be done."

Elisabeth's eyes filled with tears. "Please don't, Chris. It is horrid of you to want to go and leave me when I'm so lonely and haven't got anybody in the world but you!"

"I don't want to go, Betty; I hate the mere idea of going. I'd give a thousand pounds, if I could, to stop away. But I can't see that I have any alternative. Miss Farringdon left it to me, as her trustee, to find her heir and give up the property to him; and, as a man of honour, I don't see how I can leave any stone unturned until I have fulfilled the charge which she laid upon me."

"Oh! Chris, don't go. I can't spare you." And Elisabeth stretched out two pleading hands toward him.

Christopher turned away from her. "I say, Betty, please don't cry," and his voice shook; "it makes it so much harder for me; and it is hard enough as it is--confoundedly hard!"

"Then why do it?"

"Because I must."

"I don't see that; it is pure Quixotism."

"I wish to goodness I could think that; but I can't. It appears to me a question about which there could not be two opinions."

The tears dried on Elisabeth's lashes. The old feeling of being at war with Christopher, which had laid dormant for so long, now woke up again in her heart, and inclined her to defy rather than to plead. If he cared for duty more than for her, he did not care for her much, she said to herself; and she was far too proud a woman ever to care for a man--even in the way of friendship--who obviously did not care for her. Still, she condescended to further argument.

"If you really liked me and were my friend," she said, "not only wouldn't you wish to go away and leave me, but you would want me to have the money, instead of rushing all over the world in order to give it to some tiresome young man you'd never heard of six months ago."

"Don't you understand that it is just because I like you and am your friend, that I can't bear you to profit by anything which has a shade of dishonour connected with it? If I cared for you less I should be less particular."

"That's nonsense! But your conscience and your sense of honour always were bugbears, Christopher, and always will be. They bored me as a child, and they bore me now."

Christopher winced; the nightmare of his life had been the terror of boring Elisabeth, for he was wise enough to know that a woman may love a man with whom she is angry, but never one by whom she is bored.

"It is just like you," Elisabeth continued, tossing her head, "to be so busy saving your own soul and laying up for yourself a nice little nest-egg in heaven, that you haven't time to consider other people and their interests and feelings."

"I think you do me an injustice," replied Christopher quietly. He was puzzled to find Elisabeth so bitter against him on a mere question of money, as she was usually a most unworldly young person; again he did not understand that she was not really fighting over the matter at issue, but over the fact that he had put something before his friendship for her. Once she had quarrelled with him because he seemed to think more of his business than of her; now she was quarrelling with him because he thought more of his duty than of her; for the truth that he could not have loved her so much had he not loved honour more, had not as yet been revealed to Elisabeth.

"I don't want to be money-grubbing," she went on, "or to cling on to things to which I have no right; though, of course, it will be rather poor fun for me to have to give up all this," and she waved her hand in a sweep, supposed to include the Willows and the Osierfield and all that appertained thereto, "and to drudge along at the rate of five hundred a year, with yesterday's dinner and last year's dress warmed up again to feed and clothe me. But I ask you to consider whether the work-people at the Osierfield aren't happier under my _regime_, than under the rule of some good-for-nothing young man, who will probably spend all his income upon himself, and go to the dogs as his father did before him."

Christopher was cut to the quick; Elisabeth had hit the nail on the head. After all, it was not his own interests that he felt bound to sacrifice to the claims of honour, but hers; and it was this consideration that made him feel the sacrifice almost beyond his power.

He knew that it was his duty to do everything he could to fulfil the conditions of Miss Farringdon's will; he also knew that he was compelled to do this at Elisabeth's expense and not at his own; and the twofold knowledge well-nigh broke his heart. His misery was augmented by his perception of how completely Elisabeth misunderstood him, and of how little of the truth all those years of silent devotion had conveyed to her mind; and his face was white with pain as he answered--

"There is no need for you to say such things as that to me, Elisabeth; you know as well as I do that I would give my life to save you from sorrow and to ensure your happiness; but I can not be guilty of a shabby trick even for this. Can't you see that the very fact that I care for you so much, makes it all the more impossible for me to do anything shady in your name?"

"Bosh!" rudely exclaimed Elisabeth.

"As for the work-people," he went on, ignoring her interruption, "of course no one will ever do as much for them as you are doing. But that isn't the question. The fact that one man would make a better use of money than another wouldn't justify me in robbing Peter to increase Paul's munificence. Now would it?"

"That's perfectly different. It is all right for you to go on advertising for that Farringdon man in agony columns, and I shouldn't be so silly as to make a fuss about giving up the money if he turned up.

You know that well enough. But it does seem to me to be over-conscientious and hyper-disagreeable on your part to go off to Australia--just when I am so lonely and want you so much--in search of the man who is to turn me out of my kingdom and reign in my stead. I can't think how you can want to do such a thing!" Elisabeth was fighting desperately hard; the full power of her strong will was bent upon making Christopher do what she wished and stay with her in England; not only because she needed him, but because she felt that this was a Hastings or Waterloo between them, and that if she lost this battle, her ancient supremacy was gone forever.

"I don't want to go and do it, heaven knows! I hate and loathe doing anything which you don't wish me to do. But there is no question of wanting in the matter, as far as I can see. It is a simple question between right and wrong--between honour and dishonour--and so I really have no alternative."

"Then you have made up your mind to go out to Australia and turn up every stone in order to find this George Farringdon's son?"

"I don't see how I can help it."

"And you don't care what becomes of me?"

"More than I care for anything else in the world, Elisabeth. Need you ask?"

For one wild moment Christopher felt that he must tell Elisabeth how pa.s.sionately he would woo her, should she lose her fortune; and how he would spend his life and his income in trying to make her happy, should George Farringdon's son be found and she cease to be one of the greatest heiresses in the Midlands. But he held himself back by the bitter knowledge of how cruelly appearances were against him. He had made up his mind to do the right thing at all costs; at least, he had not exactly made up his mind--he saw the straight path, and the possibility of taking any other never occurred to him. But if he succeeded in this hateful and (to a man of his type) inevitable quest, he would not only sacrifice Elisabeth's interests, he would also further his own by making it possible for him to ask her to marry him--a thing which he felt he could never do as long as she was one of the wealthiest women in Mershire, and he was only the manager of her works. Duty is never so difficult to certain men as when it wears the garb and carries with it the rewards of self-interest; others, on the contrary, find that a joint-stock company, composed of the Right and the Profitable, supplies its pa.s.sengers with a most satisfactory permanent way whereby to travel through life. There is no doubt that these latter have by far the more comfortable journey; but whether they are equally contented when they have reached that journey's end, none of them have as yet returned to tell us.

"If somebody must go to Australia after that tiresome young man, why need it be you?" Elisabeth persisted. "Can't you send somebody else in your place?"

"I am afraid I couldn't trust anybody else to sift the matter as thoroughly as I should. I really must go, Betty. Please don't make it too hard for me."

"Do you mean you will still go, even though I beg you not?"

"I am afraid I must."

Elisabeth rose from her seat and drew herself up to her full height, as became a dethroned and offended queen. "Then that is the end of the matter as far as I am concerned, and it is a waste of time to discuss it further; but I must confess that there is nothing in the world I hate so much as a prig," she said, as she swept out of the room.

It was her final shot, and it told. She could hardly have selected one more admirably calculated to wound, and it went straight through Christopher's heart. It was now obvious that she did not love him, and never could have loved him, he a.s.sured himself, or she would not have misjudged him so cruelly, or said such hard things to him. He did not realize that an angry woman says not what she thinks, but what she thinks will most hurt the man with whom she is angry. He also did not realize--what man does?--how difficult it is for any woman to believe that a man can care for her and disagree with her at the same time, even though the disagreement be upon a purely impersonal question. Naturally, when the question happens to be personal, the strain on feminine faith is still greater--in the majority of cases too great to be borne.

Thus Christopher and Elisabeth came to the parting of the ways. She said to herself, "He doesn't love me because he won't do what I want, regardless of his own ideas of duty." And he said to himself, "If I fail to do what I consider is my duty, I am unworthy--or, rather, more unworthy than I am in any case--to love her." Thus they moved along parallel lines; and parallel lines never meet--except in infinity.

CHAPTER XII

"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 p.r.o.ne 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.