CHAPTER XI MISS FARRINGDON'S WILL Time speeds on his relentless track, And, though we beg on bended knees, No prophet's hand for us puts back The shadow ten degrees.

During the following winter Miss Farringdon gave unmistakable signs of that process known as "breaking-up." She had fought a good fight for many years, and the time was fast coming for her to lay down her arms and receive her reward. Elisabeth, with her usual light-heartedness, did not see the Shadow stealing nearer day by day; but Christopher was more accustomed to shadows than she was—his path had lain chiefly among them—and he knew what was coming, and longed passionately and in vain to shield Elisabeth from the inevitable. He had played the part of Providence to her in one matter: he had stood between her and himself, and had prevented her from drinking of that mingled cup of sweetness and bitterness which men call Love, thinking that she would be a happier woman if she left untasted the only form of the beverage which he was able to offer her. And possibly he was right; that she would be also a better woman in consequence, was quite another and more doubtful side of the question. But now the part of Elisabeth's Providence was no longer cast for Christopher to play; he might prevent Love with his sorrows from coming nigh her dwelling, but Death defied his protecting arm. It was good for Elisabeth to be afflicted, although Christopher would willingly have died to save her a moment's pain; and it is a blessed thing for us after all that Perfect Wisdom and Almighty Power are one.

As usual Elisabeth was so busy straining her eyes after the ideal that the real escaped her notice; and it was therefore a great shock to her when her Cousin Maria went to sleep one night in a land whose stones are of iron, and awoke next morning in a country whose pavements are of gold. For a time the girl was completely stunned by the blow; and during that period Christopher was very good to her. Afterward—when he and she had drifted far apart—Elisabeth sometimes recalled Christopher's sheltering care during the first dark days of her loneliness; and she never did so without remembering the words, "As the mountains are round about Jerusalem"; they seemed to express all that he was to her just then.

When Maria Farringdon's will was read, it was found that she had left to her cousin and adopted daughter, Elisabeth, an annuity of five hundred a year; also the income from the Osierfield and the Willows until such time as the real owner of these estates should be found. The rest of her property—together with the Osierfield and the Willows—she bequeathed upon trust for the eldest living son, if any, of her late cousin George Farringdon; and she appointed Richard Smallwood and his nephew to be her trustees and executors. The trustees were required to ascertain whether George Farringdon had left any son, and whether that son was still alive; but if, at the expiration of ten years from the death of the testator, no such son could be discovered, the whole of Miss Farringdon's estate was to become the absolute property of Elisabeth. As since the making of this will Richard had lost his faculties, the whole responsibility of finding the lost heir and of looking after the temporary heiress devolved upon Christopher's shoulders.

"And how is Mr. Bateson to-day?" asked Mrs. Hankey of Mr. Bateson's better-half, one Sunday morning not long after Miss Farringdon's death.

"Thank you, Mrs. Hankey, he is but middling, I'm sorry to say—very middling—very middling, indeed."

"That's a bad hearing. But I'm not surprised; I felt sure as something was wrong when I didn't see him in chapel this morning. I says to myself, when the first hymn was given out and him not there, 'Eh, dear!' I says, 'I'm afraid there's trouble in store for Mrs. Bateson.' It seemed so strange to see you all alone in the pew, that for a minute or two it quite gave me the creeps. What's amiss with him?"

"Rheumatism in the legs. He could hardly get out of bed this morning he was so stiff."

"Eh, dear! that's a bad thing—and particularly at his time of life. I lost a beautiful hen only yesterday from rheumatism in the legs; one of the best sitters I ever had. You remember her?—the speckled one that I got from Tetleigh, four years ago come Michaelmas. But that's the way in this world; the most missed are the first taken."

"I wonder if that's Miss Elisabeth there," said Mrs. Bateson, catching sight of a dark-robed figure in the distance. "I notice she's taken to go to church regular now Miss Farringdon isn't here to look after her. How true it is, 'When the cat's away the mice will play!'" Worship according to the methods of that branch of the Church Militant established in these kingdoms was regarded by Mrs. Bateson as a form of recreation—harmless, undoubtedly, but still recreation.

Mrs. Hankey shook her head. "No—that isn't her; she can't be out of church yet. They don't go in till eleven." And she shook her head disapprovingly.

"Eleven's too late, to my thinking," agreed Mrs. Bateson.

"So it is; you never spoke a truer word, Mrs. Bateson. Half-past ten is the Lord's time—or so it used to be when I was a girl."

"And a very good time too! Gives you the chance of getting home and seeing to the dinner properly after chapel. At least, that is to say, if the minister leaves off when he's finished, which is more than you can say of all of them; if he doesn't, there's a bit of a scrimmage to get the dinner cooked in time even now, unless you go out before the last hymn. And I never hold with that somehow; it seems like skimping the Lord's material, as you may say."

"So it does. It looks as if the cares of this world and the deceitfulness of riches had choked the good seed in a body's heart."

"In which case it looks what it is not," said Mrs. Bateson; "for nine times out of ten it means nothing worse than wanting to cook the potatoes, so as the master sha'n't have no cause for grumbling, and to boil the rice so as it sha'n't swell in the children's insides. But that's the way with things; folks never turn out to be as bad as you thought they were when you get to know their whys and their wherefores; and many a poor soul as is put down as worldly is really only anxious to make things pleasant for the master and the children."

"Miss Elisabeth's mourning is handsome, I don't deny," said Mrs. Hankey, reverting to a more interesting subject than false judgments in the abstract; "but she don't look well in it—those pale folks never do justice to good mourning, in my opinion. It seems almost a pity to waste it on them."

"Oh! I don't hold with you there. I think I never saw anybody look more genteel than Miss Elisabeth does now, bless her! And the jet trimming on her Sunday frock is something beautiful."

"Eh! there's nothing like a bit of jet for setting off crape and bringing the full meaning out of it, as you may say," replied Mrs. Hankey, in mollified tones. "I don't think as you can do full justice to crape till you put some jet again' it. It's wonderful how a bit of good mourning helps folks to bear their sorrows; and for sure they want it in a world so full of care as this."

"They do; there's no doubt about that. But I can't help wishing as Miss Elisabeth had got some bugles on that best dress of hers; there's nothing quite comes up to bugles, to my mind."

"There ain't; they give such a finish, as one may say, being so rich-looking. But for my part I think Miss Elisabeth has been a bit short with the crape, considering that Miss Farringdon was father and mother and what-not to her. Now supposing she'd had a crape mantle with handsome bugle fringe for Sundays; that's what I should have called paying proper respect to the departed; instead of a short jacket with ordinary braid on it, that you might wear for a great-uncle as hadn't left you a penny."

"Well, Mrs. Hankey, folks may do what they like with their own, and it's not for such as us to sit in judgment on our betters; but I don't think as Miss Farringdon's will gave her any claim to a crape mantle with a bugle fringe; I don't indeed."

"Well, to be sure, but you do speak strong on the subject!"

"And I feel strong, too," replied Mrs. Bateson, waxing more indignant. "There's dear Miss Elisabeth has been like an own daughter to Miss Farringdon ever since she was a baby, and yet Miss Farringdon leaves her fortune over Miss Elisabeth's head to some good-for-nothing young man that nobody knows for certain ever was born. I've no patience with such ways!"

"It does seem a bit hard on Miss Elisabeth, I must admit, her being Miss Farringdon's adopted child. But, as I've said before, there's nothing like a will for making a thorough to-do."

"It's having been engaged to Mr. George all them years ago that set her up to it. It's wonderful how folks often turn to their old lovers when it comes to will time."

Mrs. Hankey looked incredulous. "Well, that beats me, I'm fain to confess. I know if the Lord had seen fit to stop me from keeping company with Hankey, not a brass farthing would he ever have had from me. I'd sooner have left my savings to charity."

"Don't say that, Mrs. Hankey; it always seems so lonely to leave money to charity, as if you was nothing better than a foundling. But how did you enjoy the sermon this morning?"

"I thought that part about the punishment of the wicked was something beautiful. But, to tell you the truth, I've lost all pleasure in Mr. Sneyd's discourses since I heard as he wished to introduce the reading of the Commandments into East Lane Chapel. What's the good of fine preaching, if a minister's private life isn't up to his sermon, I should like to know?"

Mrs. Bateson, however, had broad views on some matters. "I don't see much harm in reading the Commandments," she said.

Mrs. Hankey looked shocked at her friend's laxity. "It is the thin end of the wedge, Mrs. Bateson, and you ought to know it. Mark my words, it's forms and ceremonies such as this that tempts our young folks away from the chapels to the churches, like Miss Elisabeth and Master Christopher there. They didn't read no Commandments in our chapel as long as Miss Farringdon was alive; I should have liked to see the minister as would have dared to suggest such a thing. She wouldn't stand Ritualism, poor Miss Farringdon wouldn't."

"Here we are at home," said Mrs. Bateson, stopping at her own door; "I must go in and see how the master's getting on."

"And I hope you'll find him better, Mrs. Bateson, I only hope so; but you never know how things are going to turn out when folks begin to sicken—especially at Mr. Bateson's age. And he hasn't been looking himself for a long time. I says to Hankey only a few weeks ago, 'Hankey,' says I, 'it seems to me as if the Lord was thinking on Mr. Bateson; I hope I may be mistaken, but that's how it appears to me.' And so it did."

On the afternoon of that very Sunday Christopher took Elisabeth for a walk in Badgering Woods. The winter was departing, and a faint pink flush on the bare trees heralded the coming of spring; and Elisabeth, being made of material which is warranted not to fret for long, began to feel that life was not altogether dark, and that it was just possible she might—at the end of many years—actually enjoy things again. Further, Christopher suited her perfectly—how perfectly she did not know as yet—and she spent much time with him just then.

Those of us who have ever guessed the acrostics in a weekly paper, have learned that sometimes we find a solution to one of the lights, and say, "This will do, if nothing better turns up before post-time on Monday"; and at other times we chance upon an answer which we know at once, without further research, to be indisputably the right one. It is so with other things than acrostics: there are friends whom we feel will do very well for us if nobody—or until somebody—better turns up; and there are others whom we know to be just the right people for the particular needs of our souls at that time. They are the right answers to the questions which have been perplexing us—the correct solutions to the problems over which we have been puzzling our brains. So it was with Elisabeth: Christopher was the correct answer to life's current acrostic; and as long as she was with Christopher she was content.

"Don't you get very tired of people who have never found the fourth dimension?" she asked him, as they sat upon a stile in Badgering Woods.

"What do you mean by the fourth dimension? There are length and breadth and thickness, and what comes next?"

Christopher was pleased to find Elisabeth facing life's abstract problems again; it proved that she was no longer overpowered by its concrete ones.

"I don't know what its name is," she replied, looking dreamily through the leafless trees; "perhaps eternity would do as well as any other. But I mean the dimension which comes after length and breadth and thickness, and beyond them, and all round them, and which makes them seem quite different, and much less important."

"I think I know what you are driving at. You mean a new way of looking at things and of measuring them—a way which makes things which ordinary people call small, large; and things which ordinary people call large, small."

"Yes. People who have never been in the fourth dimension bore me, do you know? I daresay it would bore squares to talk to straight lines, and cubes to talk to squares; there would be so many things the one would understand and the other wouldn't. The line wouldn't know what the square meant by the word across, and the square wouldn't know what the cube meant by the word above; and in the same way the three-dimension people don't know what we are talking about when we use such words as religion and art and love."

"They think we are talking about going regularly to church, and supporting picture-galleries, and making brilliant matches," suggested Christopher.

"Yes; that's exactly what they do think; and it makes talking to them so difficult, and so dull."

"When you use the word happiness they imagine you are referring to an income of four or five thousand a year; and by success they mean the permission to stand in the backwater of a fashionable London evening party, looking at the mighty and noble, and pretending afterward that they have spoken to the same."

"They don't speak our language or think our thoughts," Elisabeth said; "and the music of their whole lives is of a different order from that of the lives of the fourth-dimension people."

"Distinctly so; all the difference between a Sonata of Beethoven and a song out of a pantomime."

"I haven't much patience with the three-dimension people; have you?" asked Elisabeth.

"No—I'm afraid not; but I've a good deal of pity for them. They miss so much. I always fancy that people who call pictures pretty and music sweet must have a dreary time of it all round. But we'd better be getting on, don't you think? It is rather chilly sitting out-of-doors, and I don't want you to catch cold. You don't feel cold, do you?" And Christopher's face grew quite anxious.

"Not at all."

"You don't seem to me to have enough furbelows and things round your neck to keep you warm," continued he; "let me tie it up tighter, somehow."

And while he turned up the fur collar of her coat and hooked the highest hook and eye, Elisabeth thought how nice it was to be petted and taken care of; and as she walked homeward by Christopher's side, she felt like a good little girl again. Even reigning monarchs now and then like to have their ermine tucked round them, and to be patted on their crowns by a protecting hand.

As the weeks rolled on and the spring drew nearer, Elisabeth gradually took up the thread of human interest again. Fortunately for her she was very busy with plans for the benefit of the work-people at the Osierfield. She started a dispensary; she opened an institute; she inaugurated courses of lectures and entertainments for keeping the young men out of the public-houses in the evenings; she gave to the Wesleyan Conference a House of Rest—a sweet little house, looking over the fields toward the sunset—where tired ministers might come and live at ease for a time to regain health and strength; and in Sedgehill Church she put up a beautiful east window to the memory of Maria Farringdon, and for a sign-post to all such pilgrims as were in need of one, as the east window in St. Peter's had once been a sign-post to herself showing her the way to Zion.

In all these undertakings Christopher was her right hand; and while Elisabeth planned and paid for them, he carefully carried them out—the hardest part of the business, and the least effective one.

When Elisabeth had set afoot all these improvements for the benefit of her work-people, she turned her attention to the improving of herself; and she informed Christopher that she had decided to go up to London, and fulfil the desire of her heart by studying art at the Slade School.

"But you can not live by yourself in London," Christopher objected; "you are all right here, because you have the Tremaines and other people to look after you; but in town you would be terribly lonely; and, besides, I don't approve of girls living in London by themselves."

"I sha'n't be by myself. There is a house where some of the Slade pupils live together, and I shall go there for every term, and come down here for the vacation. It will be just like going back to school again. I shall adore it!"

Christopher did not like the idea at all. "Are you sure you will be comfortable, and that they will take proper care of you?"

"Of course they will. Grace Cobham will be there at the same time—an old schoolfellow to whom I used to be devoted at Fox How—and she and I will chum together. I haven't seen her for ages, as she has been scouring Europe with her family; but now she has settled down in England, and is going in for art."

Christopher still looked doubtful. "It would make me miserable to think that you weren't properly looked after and taken care of, Elisabeth."

"Well, I shall be. And if I'm not, I shall still have you to fall back upon."

"But you won't have me to fall back upon; that is just the point. If you would, I shouldn't worry about you so much; but it cuts me to the heart to leave you among strangers. Still, the Tremaines will be here, and I shall ask them to look after you; and I daresay they will do so all right, though not as efficiently as I should."

Elisabeth grew rather pale; that there would ever come a day when Christopher would not be there to fall back upon was a contingency which until now had never occurred to her. "Whatever are you talking about, Chris? Why sha'n't you be here when I go up to the Slade?"

"Because I am going to Australia."

"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 advertisements."

"So he has."

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

"Because I must. If advertisement 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 rÉgime, 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 passionately 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 passengers 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 assured 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.

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