The Farringdons

by Ellen Thorneycroft Fowler

But when Miss Farringdon had made every possible arrangement for Mr. Smallwood's comfort, and they rose to leave, Elisabeth's heart smote her for her passing impatience; so she lingered behind after her cousin had left the room, and, slipping her hand into Christopher's, she whispered—

"Chris, dear, I'm so dreadfully sorry!"

It was a poor little speech for the usually eloquent Elisabeth to make; in cold blood she herself would have been ashamed of it; but Christopher was quite content. For a second he forgot that he had decided not to let Elisabeth know that he loved her until he was in a position to marry her, and he very nearly took her in his strong arms and kissed her there and then; but before he had time to do this, his good angel (or perhaps his bad one, for it is often difficult to ascertain how one's two guardian spirits divide their work) reminded him that it was his duty to leave Elisabeth free to live her own life, unhampered by the knowledge of a love which might possibly find no fulfilment in this world where money is considered the one thing needful; so he merely returned the pressure of her hand, and said in a queer, strained sort of voice—

"Thanks awfully, dear. It isn't half so rough on a fellow when he knows you are sorry." And Elisabeth also was content.

Contrary to the doctor's expectations, Richard Smallwood did not die: he had lost all power of thought or speech, and never regained them, but lived on for years a living corpse; and the burden of his illness lay heavily on Christopher's young shoulders. Life was specially dark to poor Christopher just then. His uncle's utter break-down effectually closed the door on all chances of escape from the drudgery of the Osierfield to a higher and wider sphere; for, until now, he had continued to hope against hope that he might induce that uncle to start him in some other walk of life, where the winning of Elisabeth would enter into the region of practical politics. But now all chance of this was over; Richard Smallwood was beyond the reach of the entreaties and arguments which hitherto he had so firmly resisted. There was nothing left for Christopher to do but to step into his uncle's shoes, and try to make the best of his life as general manager of the Osierfield, handicapped still further by the charge of that uncle, which made it impossible for him to dream of bringing home a wife to the big old house in the High Street.

There was only one drop of sweetness in the bitterness of his cup—one ray of light in the darkness of his outlook; and that was the consciousness that he could still go on seeing and loving and serving Elisabeth, although he might never be able to tell her he was doing so. He hoped that she would understand; but here he was too sanguine; Elisabeth was as yet incapable of comprehending any emotion until she had seen it reduced to a prescription.

So Christopher lived on in the gloomy house, and looked after his uncle as tenderly as a mother looks after a sick child. To all intents and purposes Richard was a child again; he could not speak or think, but he still loved his nephew, the only one of his own flesh and blood; and he smiled like a child every time that Christopher came into his room, and cried like a child ever; time that Christopher went away.

Elisabeth was very sorry for Christopher at first, and very tender toward him; but after a time the coldness, which he felt it his duty to show toward her in the changed state of affairs, had its natural effect, and she decided that it was foolish to waste her sympathy upon any one who obviously needed and valued it so little. Moreover, she had not forgotten that strange, new feeling which disturbed her heart the morning after Mr. Smallwood was taken ill; and she experienced, half unconsciously, a thoroughly feminine resentment against the man who had called into being such an emotion, and then apparently had found no use for it. So Elisabeth in her heart of hearts was at war with Christopher—that slumbering, smouldering sort of warfare which is ready to break out into fire and battle at the slightest provocation; and this state of affairs did not tend to make life any the easier for him. He felt he could have cheerfully borne it all if only Elisabeth had been kind and had understood; but Elisabeth did not understand him in the least, and was consequently unkind—far more unkind than she, in her careless, light-hearted philosophy, dreamed of.

She, too, had her disappointments to bear just then. The artist-soul in her had grown up, and was crying out for expression; and she vainly prayed her cousin to let her go to the Slade School, and there learn to develop the power that was in her. But Miss Farringdon belonged to the generation which regarded art purely as a recreation—such as fancy-work, croquet, and the like—and she considered that young women should be trained for the more serious things of life; by which she meant the ordering of suitable dinners for the rich and the manufacturing of seemly garments for the poor. So Elisabeth had to endure the agony which none but an artist can know—the agony of being dumb when one has an angel-whispered secret to tell forth—of being bound hand and foot when one has a God-sent message to write upon the wall.

Now and then Miss Maria took her young cousin up to town for a few weeks, and thus Elisabeth came to have a bowing acquaintanceship with London; but of London as an ever-fascinating, never-wearying friend she knew nothing. There are people who tell us that "London is delightful in the season," and that "the country is very pretty in the summer," and we smile at them as a man would smile at those who said that his mother was "a pleasant person," or his heart's dearest "a charming girl." Those who know London and the country, as London and the country deserve to be known, do not talk in this way, for they have learned that there is no end to the wonder or the interest or the mystery of either.