Part 33 (2/2)
”But I do; I really have got a temper of my own, though nowadays people seem to find difficulty in believing it. I have frequently done things in a temper before now; but as long as the temper lasts I am pleased that I have done them, and feel that I do well to be angry. When the temper is over, I sometimes think differently; but not till then. As I have told you before, my will is so strong that it and I are never at loggerheads with each other; it always rules me completely.”
Farquhar sighed. ”I wish I were as strong as you are; but I am not. And do you mean to tell me that there is no worldly side to you, either; no side that hankers after fleshpots, even while the artist within you is being fed with manna from heaven?”
”No; I don't think there is,” Elisabeth replied slowly. ”I really do not like people any the better for having money and t.i.tles and things like that, and it is no use pretending that I do.”
”I do. I wish I didn't, but I can't help it. It is only you who can help me to look at life from the ideal point of view--you whose feet are still wet with the dew of Olympus, and in whom the Greek spirit is as fresh as it was three thousand years ago.”
”Oh! I'm not as perfect as all that; far from it! I don't despise people for not having rank or wealth, since rank and wealth don't happen to be the things that interest me. But there are things that do interest me--genius and wit and culture and charm, for instance--and I am quite as hard on the people who lack these gifts, as ever you are on the impecunious n.o.bodies. I confess I am often ashamed of myself when I realize how frightfully I look down upon stupid men and dull women, and how utterly indifferent I am as to what becomes of them. So I really am as great a sn.o.b as you are, though I wear my sn.o.bbery--like my rue--with a difference.”
”Not a sn.o.b, dear lady--never a sn.o.b! There never existed a woman with less sn.o.bbery in her composition than you have. That you are impatient of the dull and unattractive, I admit; but so you ought to be--your own wit and charm give you the right to despise them.”
”But they don't; that's where you make a mistake. It is as unjust to look down on a man for not making a joke as for not making a fortune.
Though it isn't so much the people who don't make jokes that irritate me, as the people who make poor ones. Don't you know the sort?--would-be wits who quote a remark out of a bound Punch, and think they have been brilliant; and who tell an anecdote crusted with antiquity, which men learned at their mother's knees, and say that it actually happened to a friend of theirs the week before last.”
”Oh! they are indeed terrible,” agreed Cecil; ”they dabble in inverted commas as Italians dabble in garlic.”
”I never know whether to laugh at their laboured jokes or not. Of course, it is pretty manners to do so, be the wit never so stale; but on the other hand it encourages them in their evil habits, and seems to me as doubtful a form of hospitality as offering a brandy-and-soda to a confirmed drunkard.”
”Dear friend, let us never try to be funny!”
”Amen! And, above all things, let us flee from humorous recitations,”
added Elisabeth. ”There are few things in the world more heart-rending than a humorous recitation--with action. As for me, it unmans me completely, and I quietly weep in a remote corner of the room until the carriage comes to take me home. Therefore, I avoid such; as no woman's eyelashes will stand a long course of humorous recitation without being the worse for wear.”
”It seems to me after all,” Cecil remarked, ”that the evil that you would not, that you do, like St. Paul and myself and sundry others, if you despise stupid people, and know that you oughtn't to despise them, at the same time.”
”I know I oughtn't to despise them, but I never said I didn't want to despise them--that's just the difference. As a matter of fact, I enjoy despising them; that is where I am really so horrid. I hide it from them, because I hate hurting people's feelings; and I say 'How very interesting!' out of sheer good manners when they talk to me respectively about their cooks if they are women, and their digestions if they are men; but all the time I am inwardly lifting up my eyes, and patting myself on the back, and thanking heaven that I am not as they are, and generally out-Phariseeing the veriest Pharisee that ever breathed.”
”It is wonderful how the word 'cook' will wake into animation the most phlegmatic of women!”
”If they are married,” added Elisabeth; ”not unless. I often think when I go up into the drawing-room at a dinner-party, I will just say the word 'cook' to find out which of the women are married and which single.
I'm certain I should know at once, from the expression the magic word brought to their respective faces. It is only when you have a husband that you regard the cook as the ruling power in life for good or evil.”
There was a pause while the footman brought in tea and Elisabeth poured it out; then Farquhar said suddenly--
”I feel a different man from the one that rang at your door-bell some twenty minutes ago. The worldliness has slipped from me like a cast-off sh.e.l.l; now I experience a democratic indifference to my Lady Silverhampton, and a brotherly affection for Mr. Edgar Ford. And this is all your doing!”
”I don't see how that can be,” laughed Elisabeth; ”seeing that Lady Silverhampton is a friend of mine, and I have never heard of Mr. Edgar Ford.”
”But it is; it is your own unconscious influence upon me. Miss Farringdon, you don't know what you have been and what you are to me! It is only since I knew you that I have realized how little all outer things really matter, and how much inner ones do; and how it is a question of no moment who a man is, compared with what a man is. And you will go on teaching me, won't you, and letting me sit at your feet, until the man in me is always what now the artist in me is sometimes?”
”I shall like to help you if I can; I am always longing to help people, and yet so few people ever seem to want my help.” And Elisabeth's eyes grew sad.
”I want it--more than I want anything in the world,” replied Cecil; and he really meant it, for the artist in him was uppermost just then.
”Then you shall have it.”
”Thank you--thank you more than I can ever say.”
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