After having been weighed in Elisabeth's balance and found wanting, Alan Tremaine went abroad for a season, and Sedgehill knew him no more until the following spring. During that time Elisabeth possessed her soul and grew into a true woman—a woman with no smallness or meanness in her nature, but with certain feminine weaknesses which made her all the more lovable to those people who understood her, and all the more incongruous and irritating to those who did not. Christopher, too, rested in an oasis of happiness just then. He was an adept in the study of Elisabeth, and he knew perfectly well what had passed between her and Alan, although she flattered herself that she had kept him completely in the dark on the subject. But Christopher was always ready to dance to Elisabeth's piping, except when it happened to be on red-hot iron; even then he tried to obey her bidding, and it was hardly his fault if he failed.
Christopher Thornley was one of those people whose temperament and surroundings are at war with each other. Such people are not few in this world, though they themselves are frequently quite unaware of the fact; nevertheless, there is always an element of tragedy in their lot. By nature he was romantic and passionate and chivalrous, endowed with an enthusiastic admiration for beauty and an ardent longing for all forms of joyousness; and he had been trained in a school of thought where all merely human joys and attractions are counted as unimportant if not sinful, and where wisdom and righteousness are held to be the two only ends of life. Perhaps in a former existence—or in the person of some remote ancestor—Christopher had been a knightly and devoted cavalier, ready to lay down his life for Church and king, and in the meantime spending his days in writing odes to his mistress's eyebrow; and now he had been born into a strict Puritan atmosphere, where principles rather than persons commanded men's loyalty, and where romance was held to be a temptation of the flesh if not a snare of the devil. He possessed a great capacity for happiness, and for enjoyment of all kinds; consequently the dull routine of business was more distasteful to him than to a man of coarser fibre and less fastidious tastes. Christopher was one of the people who are specially fitted by nature to appreciate to the full all the refinements and accessories of wealth and culture; therefore his position at the Osierfield was more trying to him than it would have been to nine men out of every ten.
When spring came back again, Alan Tremaine came with it to the Moat House; and at the same time Felicia Herbert arrived on a visit to the Willows. Alan had enough of the woman in his nature to decide that—Elisabeth not being meant for him—Elisabeth was not worth the having; but, although she had not filled his life so completely as to make it unendurable without her, she had occupied his thoughts sufficiently to make feminine society and sympathy thenceforth a necessity of his being. So it came to pass that when he met Felicia and saw that she was fair, he straightway elected her to the office which Elisabeth had created and then declined to fill; and because human nature—and especially young human nature—is stronger even than early training or old associations, Felicia fell in love with him in return, in spite of (possibly because of) her former violent prejudice against him. To expect a person to be a monster and then to find he is a man, has very much the same effect as expecting a person to be a man and finding him a fairy prince; we accord him our admiration for being so much better than our fancy painted him, and we crave his forgiveness for having allowed it to paint him in such false colours. Then we long to make some reparation to him for our unjust judgment; and—if we happen to be women—this reparation frequently takes the form of ordering his dinner for the rest of his dining days, and of giving him the right to pay our dressmakers' bills until such time as we cease to be troubled with them.
Consequently that particular year the spring seemed to have come specially for the benefit of Alan and Felicia. For them the woods were carpeted with daffodils, and the meadows were decked in living green; for them the mountains and hills broke forth into singing, and the trees of the field clapped their hands. Most men and women have known one spring-time such as this in their lives, whereof all the other spring-times were but images and types; and, maybe, even that one spring-time was but an image and a type of the great New Year's Day which shall be Time's to-morrow.
But while these two were wandering together in fairyland, Elisabeth felt distinctly left out in the cold. Felicia was her friend—Alan had been her lover; and now they had drifted off into a strange new country, and had shut the door in her face. There was no place for her in this fairyland of theirs; they did not want her any longer; and although she was too large-hearted for petty jealousies, she could not stifle that pang of soreness with which most of us are acquainted, when our fellow-travellers slip off by pairs into Eden, and leave us to walk alone upon the dusty highway.
Elisabeth could no more help flirting than some people can help stammering. It was a pity, no doubt; but it would have been absurd to blame her for it. She had not the slightest intention of breaking anybody's heart; she did not take herself seriously enough to imagine such a contingency possible; but the desire to charm was so strong within her that she could not resist it; and she took as much trouble to win the admiration of women as of men. Therefore, Alan and Felicia having done with her, for the time being, she turned her attention to Christopher; and although he fully comprehended the cause, he none the less enjoyed the effect. He cherished no illusions concerning Elisabeth, for the which he was perhaps to be pitied; since from love which is founded upon an illusion, there may be an awakening; but for love which sees its objects as they are, and still goes on loving them, there is no conceivable cure either in this world or the world to come.
"I'm not jealous by nature, and I think it is horrid to be dog-in-the-mangerish," she remarked to him one sunny afternoon, when Alan and Felicia had gone off together to Badgering Woods and left her all alone, until Christopher happened to drop in about tea-time. He had a way of appearing upon the scene when Elisabeth needed him, and of effacing himself when she did not. He also had a way of smoothing down all the little faults and trials and difficulties which beset her path, and of making for her the rough places plain. "But I can't help feeling it is rather dull when a man who has been in love with you suddenly begins to be in love with another girl."
"I can imagine that the situation has its drawbacks."
"Not that there is any reason why he shouldn't, when you haven't been in love with him yourself."
"Not the slightest. Even I, whom you consider an epitome of all that is stiff-necked and strait-laced, can see no harm in that. It seems to me a thing that a man might do on a Sunday afternoon without in any way jeopardizing his claim to universal respect."