Concerning Isabel Carnaby

by Ellen Thorneycroft Fowler

I'll take your part when you are wrong;
I'll fight your battles to the end;
I'll listen when you sing a song,
And never count your tales too long;
Because you are my friend.

It has a very pretty effect in dancing the Lancers when the dancers "set to corners"; but when our hearts, and the affections thereof, take it upon themselves to perform this particular figure, the effect is not so satisfactory. Yet it is a figure towards the dancing of which these members much incline. Therefore it happened that while Alice Martin was breaking her heart for love of Paul Seaton, Edgar Ford was breaking his for love of Alice Martin.

Surely Fate—when Fate is pleased to be ironical—displays a most ingenious and whimsical sense of humour. And it happened that Fate was just now sharpening this particular sense at the expense of Mr. and Mrs. Martin. This worthy couple generally liked things to be done at their expense, it sounded so lavish and princely; but this was carrying matters a little too far.

Paul, being poor, was anathema to Mr. and Mrs. Martin; and Edgar, being rich, was their hearts' desire; and yet Alice loved Paul and was indifferent to Edgar; and in consequence there appeared that disturbing little hollow in Alice's pretty cheek.

The Fords were the most important people in Chayford, and had been rich merchants there for several generations. Edgar's great-grandfather was a friend of John Wesley's; and the great little man had preached the gospel under the huge cedar on the lawn of Chayford House. Consequently at Chayford Chapel the Fords sat in the farthest-back pew, this being ever considered the most august seat—the Woolsack in fact—of Methodist chapels; and their place in the sanctuary was rendered yet more glorious by a brazen fence, wherefrom dangled a sort of short, red moreen petticoat, which ran all along the top of their pew, and so screened the prayers of the Ford family from the prying and plebeian eyes of the rest of the congregation. Mrs. Ford pronounced the "Open Sesame" at all the Wesleyan bazaars and sales-of-work within a radius of ten miles round Chayford; and on such occasions she was specially introduced to the divine notice by the officiating minister under the pseudonym of "an handmaid". As a child Edgar had no idea what this expression exactly meant (neither, perhaps, had the officiating minister), but he felt extremely proud of his mother when he heard her alluded to in this way; and when the minister's prayer was more than usually embracing, and included Edgar himself under the title of "her offspring," Edgar's spiritual arrogance knew no bounds.

If the Seatons were as the salt of Methodism, the Fords were as the cream of it. Their social position fitted them for this life, and their religious fervour for the next. They neither hated the world as did Mark Seaton, nor worshipped it as did Caleb Martin. On the whole they very fairly rendered to Cæsar the things that were Cæsar's, and to God the things that were God's; and to do this, men must know something about Cæsar and also something about God.

Edgar was now the only child of the house of Ford, two little sisters having exchanged earth for heaven, and taken their mother's heart along with them. Like all Nonconformists, Edgar Ford inclined to overscrupulousness rather than to laxity. He was ready to sacrifice everything to his principles—which was right; but he sometimes mistook his prejudices for his principles—which was tiresome. Looked at in the light of eternity, Edgar's conduct was always eminently satisfactory; but looked at in the light of earth, it was sometimes a little trying. A college friend of his once said that "Ford was suffering from fatty degeneration of the conscience"; and Edgar's conscience certainly was abnormally enlarged. When great issues were at stake, this extreme and sensitive conscientiousness made Edgar Ford a prince among men; but when one was dealing with less important matters, and lawfulness was not so much the question to be considered as expediency, Edgar's custom of hair-splitting was somewhat paralyzing in its effects. He would hardly let himself do right for fear of doing wrong; which morbid introspection was partly the result of a Puritan training and ancestry, and partly of a delicate digestion.

For the rest, Edgar was "a proper man as one shall see in a summer's day". He was fair and slight and good-looking; and the shyness and sensitiveness which caused his own feelings to be so often hurt, made him specially careful not to hurt other people's. He did not talk much; but always left one with the impression that he had been extremely interesting, though one could not recall a word that he had said. His silence was more interesting than most men's conversation; and his pride less aggressive than most men's humility. Yet he was very silent and excessively proud. For people in general he cared not at all; he was too shy to understand and too sensitive to defy them; but for the few for whom he did care, his patience was exhaustless and his love unfailing; nothing that they might do could estrange them from him.

Martha once remarked, "When Master Edgar dies of old age, Master Paul will shake in his shoes"; which was her cheerful and picturesque way of notifying the fact that Edgar was Paul's senior by only a few months. Owing to this similarity of age and diversity of temperament, a firm friendship had sprung up between the two boys, which grew with their growth and strengthened with their strength.

In every respect these two differed from each other. While Paul knew neither shyness nor self-consciousness, Edgar was a prey to both; while Paul took out his own feelings and examined them and talked about them, Edgar kept his shut up in the secret chambers of his soul. Paul was more sure of himself when he was in the wrong than Edgar was when he was in the right; and while Paul was inclined to ride rough-shod over other people, Edgar was as tender as the tenderest woman. When Paul made up his mind to take a certain path, he took it all the more determinedly if there were lions in the way, and regarded the worsting of these interfering beasts as the best part of the sport; but if there were lions in Edgar's way, he hesitated about taking that path at all—not because he was afraid of lions, or of anything else under the sun save sin, but because he regarded the presence of these "fearful wild-fowl" as a divine intimation that such a path was not for his treading. Consequently Paul possessed the elements of success, if by success one means fame and wealth and the getting of one's own way; while Edgar's was one of the natures foredoomed to failure, if by failure one means nothing in this world but knowledge of the truth, and in the world to come life everlasting. Which are the common interpretations of the words success and failure as used among men.