Part 40 (1/2)
”I know you didn't. As I told you before, if you had loved him I would have given him up to you.”
Elisabeth looked at the girl before her with wonder. What a strange thing this love was, which could make a woman forgive such a letter as that, and still cling to the man who wrote it! So there was such a place as fairyland after all, and poor little Quenelda had found it; while she, Elisabeth, had never so much as peeped through the gate. It had brought Quenelda much sorrow, it was true; but still it was good to have been there; and a chilly feeling crept across Elisabeth's heart as she realized how much she had missed in life.
”I think if one loved another person as much as that,” she said to herself, ”one would understand a little of how G.o.d feels about us.”
Aloud she said: ”Dear, what do you want me to do? I will do anything in the world that you wish.”
Quenelda seized Elisabeth's hand and kissed it. ”How good you are! And I don't deserve it a bit, for I've been horrid to you and said vile things.”
There was a vast pity in Elisabeth's eyes. ”I did you a great wrong, poor child!” she said; ”and I want to make every reparation in my power.”
”But you didn't know you were doing me a great wrong.”
”No; but I knew that I was acting below my own ideals, and n.o.body can do that without doing harm. Show me how I can give you help now? Shall I tell Cecil Farquhar that I know all?”
”Oh! no; please not. He would never forgive me for having spoiled his life, and taken away his chance of being rich.” And Quenelda's tears flowed afresh.
Elisabeth put her strong arm round the girl's slim waist. ”Don't cry, dear; I will make it all right. I will just tell him that I can't marry him because I don't love him; and he need never know that I have heard about you at all.”
And Elisabeth continued to comfort Quenelda until the pale cheeks grew pink again, and half the girl's beauty came back; and she went away at last believing in Elisabeth's power of setting everything right again, as one believes in one's mother's power of setting everything right again when one is a child.
After she had gone, Elisabeth sat down and calmly looked facts in the face; and the prospect was by no means an agreeable one. Of course there was no question now of marrying Cecil Farquhar; and in the midst of her confusion Elisabeth felt a distinct sense of relief that this at any rate was impossible. She could still go on believing in fairyland, even though she never found it; and it is always far better not to find a place than to find there is no such place at all. But she would have to give up the Willows and the Osierfield, and all the wealth and position that these had brought her; and this was a bitter draught to drink.
Elisabeth felt no doubt in her own mind that Cecil was indeed George Farringdon's son; she had guessed it when first he told her the story of his birth, and subsequent conversations with him had only served to confirm her in the belief; and it was this conviction which had influenced her to some extent in her decision to accept him. But now everything was changed. Cecil would rule at the Osierfield and Quenelda at the Willows instead of herself, and those dearly loved places would know her no more.
At this thought Elisabeth broke down. How she loved every stone of the Black Country, and how closely all her childish fancies and girlish dreams were bound up in it! Now the cloud of smoke would hang over Sedgehill, and she would not be there to interpret its message; and the sun would set beyond the distant mountains, and she would no longer catch glimpses of the country over the hills. Even the rustic seat, where she and Christopher had sat so often, would be hers no longer; and he and she would never walk together in the woods as they had so often walked as children. And as she cried softly to herself, with no one to comfort her, the memory of Christopher swept over her, and with it all the old anger against him. He would be glad to see her dethroned at last, she supposed, as that was what he had striven for all those years ago; but, perhaps, when he saw a stranger reigning at the Willows and the Osierfield in her stead, he would be sorry to find the new government so much less beneficial to the work-people than the old one had been; for Elisabeth knew Cecil quite well enough to be aware that he would spend all his money on himself and his own pleasures; and she could not help indulging in an unholy hope that, whereas she had beaten Christopher with whips, her successor would beat him with scorpions. In fact she was almost glad, for the moment, that Farquhar was so unfit for the position to which he was now called, when she realized how sorely that unfitness would try Christopher.
”It will serve him right for leaving me and going off after George Farringdon's son,” she said to herself, ”to discover how little worth the finding George Farringdon's son really was! Christopher is so self-centred, that a thing is never properly brought home to him until it affects himself; no other person can ever convince him that he is in the wrong. But this will affect himself; he will hate to serve under such a man as Cecil; I know he will; because Cecil is just the type of person that Christopher has always looked down upon, for Christopher is a gentleman and Cecil is not. Perhaps when he finds out how inferior an iron-master Cecil is to me, Christopher will wish that he had liked me better and been kinder to me when he had a chance. I hope he will, and that it will make him miserable; for those hard, self-righteous people really deserve to be punished in the end.” And Elisabeth derived so much comfort from the prospect of Christopher's coming trials, that she almost forgot her own.
CHAPTER XVII
GEORGE FARRINGDON'S SON
I need thee, Love, in peace and strife; For, till Time's latest page be read, No other smile could light my life Instead.
And even in that happier place, Where pain is past and sorrow dead, I could not love an angel's face Instead.
That night Elisabeth wrote to Christopher Thornley, telling him that she believed she had found George Farringdon's son at last, and asking him to come up to London in order to facilitate the giving up of her kingdom into the hands of the rightful owner. And, in so doing, she was conscious of a feeling of satisfaction that Christopher should see for himself that she was not as mercenary as he had once imagined her to be, but that she was as ready as he had ever been to enable the king to enjoy his own again as soon as that king appeared upon the scene. To forsake the reigning queen in order to search for that king, was, of course, a different matter, and one about which Elisabeth declined to see eye to eye with her manager even now. Doubtless he had been in the right all through, and she in the wrong, as all honourable people could see for themselves; but when one happens to be the queen one's self, one's perspective is apt to become blurred and one's sense of abstract justice confused. It is so easy for all of us to judge righteous judgment concerning matters which in no way affect ourselves.
Elisabeth was still angry with Christopher because she had deliberately made the worst of herself in his eyes. It was totally unjust--and entirely feminine--to lay the blame of this on his shoulders; as a matter of fact, he had had nothing at all to do with it. She had purposely chosen a path of life of which she knew he would disapprove, princ.i.p.ally in order to annoy him; and then she had refused to forgive him for feeling the annoyance which she had gone out of her way to inflict. From the purely feminine standpoint her behaviour was thoroughly consistent; a man, however, might in his ignorance have accused her of inconsistency. But men know so little about some things!
The following afternoon Cecil Farquhar came to see Elisabeth, as she had bidden him; and she smiled grimly to herself as she realized the difference between what she had intended to say to him when she told him to come, and what she was actually going to say. As for him, he was full of hope. Evidently Elisabeth meant to marry him and make him into a rich man; and money was the thing he loved best in the world. Which of us would not be happy if we thought we were about to win the thing we loved best? And is it altogether our own fault if the thing we happen to love best be unworthy of love, or is it only our misfortune?
Because he was triumphant, Cecil looked handsomer than usual, for there are few things more becoming than happiness; and as he entered the room, radiant with that vitality which is so irresistibly attractive, Elisabeth recognised his charm without feeling it, just as one sees people speaking and gesticulating in the distance without hearing a word of what is said.
”My dear lady, you are going to say _yes_ to me; I know that you are; you would not have sent for me if you were not, for you are far too tender-hearted to enjoy seeing pain which you are forced to give.”
Elisabeth looked grave, and did not take his outstretched hand. ”Will you sit down?” she said; ”there is much that I want to talk over with you.”
Cecil's face fell. In a superficial way he was wonderfully quick in interpreting moods and reading character; and he knew in a moment that, through some influence of which he was as yet in ignorance, such slight hold as he had once had upon Elisabeth had snapped and broken since he saw her last. ”Surely you are not going to refuse to marry me and so spoil my life. Elisabeth, you can not be as cruel as this, after all that we have been to each other.”