The Farringdons Part 5

Thereupon Jemima Stubbs became a heroine of romance in Elisabeth's eyes, and a new interest in her life. "I shall go and see her to-morrow," she said, "and take her something nice for her little brother. What do you think he would like, Mrs. Bateson?"

"Bless the child, she is one of the Good Shepherd's own lambs!"

exclaimed Mrs. Bateson, with tears in her eyes.

Mrs. Hankey sighed. "It is the sweetest flowers that are the readiest for transplanting to the Better Land," she said; and once again Christopher hated her.

But Elisabeth was engrossed in the matter in hand. "What would he like?"

she persisted--"a new toy, or a book, or jam and cake?"

"I should think a book, lovey; he's fair set on books, is Johnnie Stubbs; and if you'd read a bit to him yourself, it would be a fine treat for the lad."

Elisabeth's eyes danced with joy. "I'll go the first thing to-morrow morning, and read him my favourite chapter out of The Fairchild Family; and then I'll teach him some nice games to play all by himself."

"That's a dear young lady!" exclaimed Mrs. Bateson, in an ecstasy of admiration.

"Do you think Jemima will cry when I go?"

"No, lovey; she wouldn't so far forget herself as to bother the gentry with her troubles, surely."

"But I shouldn't be bothered; I should be too sorry for her. I always am frightfully interested in people who are unhappy--much more interested than in people who are happy; and I always love everybody when I've seen them cry. It is so easy to be happy, and so dull. But why doesn't Jemima fall in love if she wants to?"

"There now!" cried Mrs. Bateson, in a sort of stage aside to an imaginary audience. "What a clever child she is! I'm sure I don't know, dearie."

"It is a pity that she hasn't got a Cousin Anne," said Elisabeth, her voice trembling with sympathy. "When you've got a Cousin Anne, it makes everything so lovely."

"And so it does, dearie--so it does," agreed Mrs. Bateson, who did not in the least understand what Elisabeth meant.

On the way home, after the tea-party was over, Christopher remarked:

"Old Mother Bateson isn't a bad sort; but I can't stand Mother Hankey."

"Why not?"

"She says such horrid things." He had not yet forgiven Mrs. Hankey for her gloomy prophecies respecting Elisabeth.

"Not horrid, Chris. She is rather stupid sometimes, and doesn't know when things are funny; but she never means to be really horrid, I am sure."

"Well, I think she is an old cat," persisted Christopher.

"The only thing I don't like about her is her gloves," added Elisabeth thoughtfully; "they are so old they smell of biscuit. Isn't it funny that old gloves always smell of biscuit. I wonder why?"

"I think they do," agreed Christopher; "but n.o.body except you would ever have thought of saying it. You have a knack of saying what everybody else is thinking; and that is what makes you so amusing."

"I'm glad you think I'm amusing; but I can't see much funniness in just saying what is true."

"Well, I can't explain why it is funny; but you really are simply killing sometimes," said Christopher graciously.

The next day, and on many succeeding ones, Elisabeth duly visited Jemima Stubbs and the invalid boy, although Christopher entreated her not to worry herself about them, and offered to go in her place. But he failed to understand that Elisabeth was goaded by no depressing sense of duty, as he would have been in similar circ.u.mstances; she went because pity was a pa.s.sion with her, and therefore she was always absorbingly interested in any one whom she pitied. Strength and success and such-like attributes never appealed to Elisabeth, possibly because she herself was strong, and possessed all the qualities of the successful person; but weakness and failure were all-powerful in enlisting her sympathy and interest and, through these, her love. As Christopher grew older he dreamed dreams of how in the future he should raise himself from being only the nephew of Miss Farringdon's manager to a position of wealth and importance; and how he should finally bring all his glories and honours and lay them at Elisabeth's feet. His eyes were not opened to see that Elisabeth would probably turn with careless laughter from all such honours thus manufactured into her pavement; but if he came to her bent and bruised and brokenhearted, crushed with failure instead of crowned with success, her heart would never send him empty away, but would go out to him with a pa.s.sionate longing to make up to him for all that he had missed in life.

A few days after Mrs. Bateson's tea-party he said to Elisabeth, for about the twentieth time:

"I say, I wish you wouldn't tire yourself with going to read to that Stubbs brat."

"Tire myself? What rubbish! nothing can tire me. I never felt tired in my life; but I shouldn't mind it just once, to see what it feels like."

"It feels distinctly unpleasant, I can tell you. But I really do wish you'd take more care of yourself, or else you'll get ill, or have headaches or something--you will indeed."

"No, I shan't; I never had a headache. That's another of the things that I don't know what they feel like; and yet I want to know what everything feels like--even disagreeable things."

"You'll know fast enough, I'm afraid," replied Christopher; "but even if it doesn't tire you, you would enjoy playing in the garden more than reading to Johnnie Stubbs--you know you would; and I can go and read to the little chap, if you are set on his being read to."

"But you would much rather play in the garden than read to him; and especially as it is your holidays, and your own reading-time will soon begin."

"Oh! _I_ don't matter. Never bother your head about _me_; remember I'm all right as long as you are; and that as long as you're jolly, I'm bound to have a good time. But it riles me to see you worrying and overdoing yourself."

"You don't understand, Chris; you really are awfully stupid about understanding things. I don't go to see Jemima and Johnnie because I hate going, and yet think I ought; I go because I am so sorry for them both that my sorriness makes me like to go."

But Christopher did not understand, and Elisabeth could not make him do so. The iron of duty had entered into his childish soul; and, unconsciously, he was always trying to come between it and Elisabeth, and to save her from the burden of obligation which lay so heavily upon his spirit. He was a religious boy, but his religion was of too stern a cast to bring much joy to him; and he was pa.s.sionately anxious that Elisabeth should not be distressed in like manner. His desire was that she should have sufficient religion to insure heaven, but not enough to spoil earth--a not uncommon desire on behalf of their dear ones among poor, ignorant human beings, whose love for their neighbour will surely atone in some measure for their injustice toward G.o.d.

"You see," Elisabeth continued, "there is nothing that makes you so fond of people as being sorry for them. The people that are strong and happy don't want your fondness, so it is no use giving it to them. It is the weak, unhappy people that want you to love them, and so it is the weak, unhappy people that you love."

"But I don't," replied Christopher, who was always inclined to argue a point; "when I like people, I should like them just the same as if they went about yelling Te Deums at the top of their voices; and when I don't like them, it wouldn't make me like them to see them dressed from head to foot in sackcloth and ashes."

"Oh! that's a stupid way of liking, I think."

"It may be stupid, but it's my way."

"Don't you like me better when I cry than when I laugh?" asked Elisabeth, who never could resist a personal application.

"Good gracious, no! I always like you the same; but I'd much rather you laughed than cried--it is so much jollier for you; in fact, it makes me positively wretched to see you cry."

"It always vexes me," Elisabeth said thoughtfully, "to read about tournaments, because I think it was so horrid of the Queen of Beauty to give the prize to the knight who won."

Christopher laughed with masculine scorn. "What nonsense! Who else could she have given it to?"

"Why, to the knight who lost, of course. I often make up a tale to myself that I am the Queen of Beauty at a tournament; and when the victorious knight rides up to me with his visor raised, I just laugh at him, and say, 'You can have the fame and the glory and the cheers of the crowd; that's quite enough for you!' And then I go down from my das, right into the arena where the unhorsed knight is lying wounded, and take off his helmet, and lay his head on my lap, and say, 'You shall have the prize, because you have got nothing else!' So then that knight becomes my knight, and always wears my colours; and that makes up to him for having been beaten at the tournament, don't you see?"

"It would have been a rotten sort of tournament that was carried on in that fashion; and your prize would have been no better than a b.o.o.by-prize," persisted Christopher.

"How silly you are! I'm glad I'm not a boy; I wouldn't have been as stupid as a boy for anything!"

"Don't be so cross! You must see that the knight who wins is the best knight; chaps that are beaten are not up to much."

"Well, they are the sort I like best; and if you had any sense you'd like them best, too." Whereupon Elisabeth removed the light of her offended countenance from Christopher, and dashed off in a royal rage.

As for him, he sighed over the unreasonableness of the weaker s.e.x, but accepted it philosophically as one of the rules of the game; and Chris played games far too well to have anything but contempt for any one who rebelled against the rules of any game whatsoever. It was a man's business, he held, not to argue about the rules, but to play the game according to them, and to win; or, if that was out of his power, to lose pluckily and never complain.