Part 39 (1/2)
”I am sure that I am. Women who are at all romantic, have such exaggerated ideas as to what love really is. Like the leper of old, they ask for some great thing to work the wonderful miracle upon their lives; and so they miss the simple way which would lead them to happiness.”
Elisabeth felt troubled and perplexed. ”I enjoy your society,” she said, ”and I adore your genius, and I pity your loneliness, and I long to help your weakness. Is this love, do you think?”
”Yes, yes; I am certain of it.”
”I thought it would be different,” said Elisabeth sadly; ”I thought that when it did come it would transform the whole world, just as religion does, and that all things would become new. I thought it would turn out to be the thing that we are longing for when the beauty of nature makes us feel sad with a longing we know not for what. I thought it would change life's dusty paths into golden pavements, and earth's commonest bramble-bush into a magic briar-rose.”
”And it hasn't?”
”No; everything is just the same as it was before I met you. As far as I can see, there is no livelier emerald twinkling in the gra.s.s of the Park than there ever is at the end of July, and no purer sapphire melting into the Serpentine.”
Cecil laughed lightly. ”You are as absurdly romantic as a school-girl!
Surely people of our age ought to know better than still to believe in fairyland; but, as I have told you before, you are dreadfully young for your age in some things.”
”I suppose I am. I still do believe in fairyland--at least I did until ten minutes ago.”
”I a.s.sure you there is no such place.”
”Not for anybody?”
”Not for anybody over twenty-one.”
”I wish there was,” said Elisabeth with a sigh. ”I should have liked to believe it was there, even if I had never found it.”
”Don't be silly, lady mine. You are so great and wise and clever that I can not bear to hear you say foolish things. And I want us to talk about how you are going to help me to be a great painter, and how we will sit together as G.o.ds, and create new worlds. There is nothing that I can not do with you to help me, Elisabeth. You must be good to me and hard upon me at the same time. You must never let me be content with anything short of my best, or willing to do second-rate work for the sake of money; you must keep the sacredness of art ever before my eyes, but you must also be very gentle to me when I am weary, and very tender to me when I am sad; you must encourage me when my spirit fails me, and comfort me when the world is harsh. All these things you can do, and you are the only woman who can. Promise me, Elisabeth, that you will.”
”I can not promise anything now. You must let me think it over for a time. I am so puzzled by it all. I thought that when the right man came and told a woman that he loved her, she would know at once that it was for him--and for him only--that she had been waiting all her life; and that she would never have another doubt upon the subject, but would feel convinced that it was settled for all time and eternity. And this is so different!”
Again Cecil laughed his light laugh. ”I suppose girls sometimes feel like that when they are very young; but not women of your age, Elisabeth.”
”Well, you must let me think about it. I can not make up my mind yet.”
And for whole days and nights Elisabeth thought about it, and could come to no definite conclusion.
There was no doubt in her mind that she liked Cecil Farquhar infinitely better than she had liked any of the other men who had asked her to marry them; also that no one could possibly be more companionable to her than he was, or more sympathetic with and interested in her work--and this is no small thing to the man or woman who possesses the creative faculty. Then she was lonely in her greatness, and longed for companions.h.i.+p; and Cecil had touched her in her tenderest point by his constant appeals to her to help and comfort him. Nevertheless the fact remained that, though he interested her, he did not touch her heart; that remained a closed door to him. But supposing that her friends were right, and that she was too cold by nature ever to feel the ecstasies which transfigure life for some women, should she therefore shut herself out from ordinary domestic joys and interests? Because she was incapable of attaining to the ideal, must the commonplace pleasures of the real also be denied her? If the best was not for her, would it not be wise to accept the second-best, and extract as much happiness from it as possible? Moreover, she knew that Cecil was right when he said that she could make of him whatsoever she wished; and this was no slight temptation to a woman who loved power as much as Elisabeth loved it.
There was also another consideration which had some weight with her; and that was the impression, gradually gaining strength in her mind, that Cecil Farquhar was George Farringdon's son. She could take no steps in the way of proving this just then, as Christopher was away for his holiday somewhere in the Black Forest, and nothing could be done without him; but she intended, as soon as he returned, to tell him of her suspicion, and to set him to discover whether or not Cecil was indeed the lost heir. Although it never seriously occurred to Elisabeth to hold her peace upon this matter and so keep her fortune to herself, she was still human enough not altogether to despise a course of action which enabled her to be rich and righteous at the same time, and to go on with her old life at the Willows and her work among the people at the Osierfield, even after George Farringdon's son had come into his own.
Although the balance of Elisabeth's judgment was upon the side of Cecil Farquhar and his suit, she could not altogether stifle--try as she might--her sense of disappointment at finding how grossly poets and such people had exaggerated the truth in their description of the feeling men call love. It was all so much less exalted and so much more commonplace than she had expected. She had long ago come to the conclusion--from comparisons between Christopher and the men who had wanted to marry her--that a man's friends.h.i.+p is a better thing than a man's love; but she had always clung to the belief that a woman's love would prove a better thing than a woman's friends.h.i.+p: yet now she herself was in love with Cecil--at least he said that she was, and she was inclined to agree with him--and she was bound to admit that, as an emotion, this fell far short of her old attachment to Cousin Anne or Christopher or even Felicia. But that was because now she was getting old, she supposed, and her heart had lost its early warmth and freshness; and she experienced a weary ache of regret that Cecil had not come across her path in those dear old days when she was still young enough to make a fairyland for herself, and to abide therein for ever.
”The things that come too late are almost as bad as the things that never come at all,” she thought with a sigh; not knowing that there is no such word as ”too late” in G.o.d's Vocabulary.
At the end of the week she had made up her mind to marry Cecil Farquhar.
Women, after all, can not pick and choose what lives they shall lead; they can only take such goods as the G.o.ds choose to provide, and make the best of the same; and if they let the possible slip while they are waiting for the impossible, they have only themselves to blame that they extract no good at all out of life. So she wrote to Cecil, asking him to come and see her the following day; and then she sat down and wondered why women are allowed to see visions and to dream dreams, if the actual is to fall so far short of the imaginary. Brick walls and cobbled streets are all very well in their way; but they make but dreary dwelling-places for those who have promised themselves cities where the walls are of jasper and the pavements of gold. ”If one is doomed to live always on this side of the hills, it is a waste of time to think too much about the life on the other side,” Elisabeth reasoned with herself, ”and I have wasted a lot of time in this way; but I can not help wondering why we are allowed to think such lovely thoughts, and to believe in such beautiful things, if our dreams are never to come true, but are only to spoil us for the realities of life. Now I must bury all my dear, silly, childish idols, as Jacob did; and I will not have any stone to mark the place, because I want to forget where it is.”
Poor Elisabeth! The grave of what has been, may be kept green with tears; but the grave of what never could have been, is best forgotten.
We may not hide away the dear old gnomes and pixies and fairies in consecrated ground--that is reserved for what has once existed, and so has the right to live again; but for what never existed we can find no sepulchre, for it came out of nothingness, and to nothingness must it return.
After Elisabeth had posted her letter to Cecil, and while she was still musing over the problem as to whether life's fulfilment must always fall short of its promise, the drawing-room door was thrown open and a visitor announced. Elisabeth was tired and depressed, and did not feel in the mood for keeping up her reputation for brilliancy; so it was with a sigh of weariness that she rose to receive Quenelda Carson, a struggling little artist whom she had known slightly for years. But her interest was immediately aroused when she saw that Quenelda's usually rosy face was white with anguish, and the girl's pretty eyes swollen with many tears.