Part 28 (1/2)

”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 advertis.e.m.e.nts.”

”So he has.”

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

”Because I must. If advertis.e.m.e.nt 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 friends.h.i.+p--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 rus.h.i.+ng 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 friends.h.i.+p 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 _regime_, 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.