The Farringdons Read online

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  THE FARRINGDONS BY ELLEN THORNEYCROFT FOWLER

  AUTHOR OF CONCERNING ISABEL CARNABY, A DOUBLE THREAD, ETC.

  NEW YORK D. APPLETON AND COMPANY 1900 COPYRIGHT, 1900, _All rights reserved._

  DEDICATION

  For all such readers as have chanced to be Either in Mershire or in Arcady, I write this book, that each may smile, and say, "Once on a time I also passed that way."

  CONTENTS

  CHAPTER PAGE I.--THE OSIERFIELD 1 II.--CHRISTOPHER 12 III.--MRS. BATESON'S TEA-PARTY 29 IV.--SCHOOL-DAYS 51 V.--THE MOAT HOUSE 70 VI.--WHIT MONDAY 90 VII.--BROADER VIEWS 114 VIII.--GREATER THAN OUR HEARTS 137 IX.--FELICIA FINDS HAPPINESS 156 X.--CHANGES 187 XI.--MISS FARRINGDON'S WILL 213 XII.--"THE DAUGHTERS OF PHILIP" 232 XIII.--CECIL FARQUHAR 249 XIV.--ON THE RIVER 272 XV.--LITTLE WILLIE 292 XVI.--THIS SIDE OF THE HILLS 306 XVII.--GEORGE FARRINGDON'S SON 325XVIII.--THE OTHER SIDE OF THE HILLS 346

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  THE FARRINGDONS

  CHAPTER I

  THE OSIERFIELD

  They herded not with soulless swine, Nor let strange snares their path environ: Their only pitfall was a mine-- Their pigs were made of iron.

  In the middle of Sedgehill, which is in the middle of Mershire, which isin the middle of England, there lies a narrow ridge of high table-land,dividing, as by a straight line, the collieries and ironworks of thegreat coal district from the green and pleasant scenery of the westernMidlands. Along the summit of this ridge runs the High Street of thebleak little town of Sedgehill; so that the houses on the east side ofthis street see nothing through their back windows save the hugeslag-mounds and blazing furnaces and tall chimneys of the weird andterrible, yet withal fascinating, Black Country; while the houses on thewest side of the street have sunny gardens and fruitful orchards,sloping down toward a fertile land of woods and streams and meadows,bounded in the far distance by the Clee Hills and the Wrekin, and in thefarthest distance of all by the blue Welsh mountains.

  In the dark valley lying to the immediate east of Sedgehill stood theOsierfield Works, the largest ironworks in Mershire in the good olddays when Mershire made iron for half the world. The owners of theseworks were the Farringdons, and had been so for several generations. Soit came to pass that the Farringdons were the royal family of Sedgehill;and the Osierfield Works was the circle wherein the inhabitants of thatplace lived and moved. It was as natural for everybody born in Sedgehilleventually to work at the Osierfield, as it was for him eventually togrow into a man and to take unto himself a wife.

  The home of the Farringdons was called the Willows, and was separated bya carriage-drive of half a mile from the town. Its lodge stood in theHigh Street, on the western side; and the drive wandered through a fineold wood, and across an undulating park, till it stopped in front of alarge square house built of gray stone. It was a handsome house inside,with wonderful oak staircases and Adams chimneypieces; and there was anair of great stateliness about it, and of very little luxury. For theFarringdons were a hardy race, whose time was taken up by the making ofiron and the saving of souls; and they regarded sofas and easy-chairs invery much the same light as they regarded theatres and strong drink,thereby proving that their spines were as strong as their conscienceswere stern.

  Moreover, the Farringdons were of "the people called Methodists";consequently Methodism was the established religion of Sedgehill,possessing there that prestige which is the inalienable attribute of allstate churches. In the eyes of Sedgehill it was as necessary tosalvation to pray at the chapel as to work at the Osierfield; and themajority of the inhabitants would as soon have thought of worshipping atany other sanctuary as of worshipping at the beacon, a pillar whichstill marks the highest point of the highest table-land in England.

  At the time when this story begins, the joint ownership of theOsierfield and the Willows was vested in the two Miss Farringdons, thedaughters and co-heiresses of John Farringdon. John Farringdon and hisbrother William had been partners, and had arranged between themselvesthat William's only child, George, should marry John's eldest daughter,Maria, and so consolidate the brothers' fortunes and their interest inthe works. But the gods--and George--saw otherwise. George was ahandsome, weak boy, who objected equally to work and to Methodism; andas his father cared for nothing beyond those sources of interest, andhad no patience for any one who did, the two did not always see eye toeye. Perhaps if Maria had been more unbending, things might have turnedout differently; but Methodism in its severest aspects was not moresevere than Maria Farringdon. She was a thorough gentlewoman, andextremely clever; but tenderness was not counted among her excellencies.George would have been fond of almost any woman who was pretty enough tobe loved and not clever enough to be feared; but his cousin Maria wasbeyond even his powers of falling in love, although, to do him justice,these powers were by no means limited. The end of it was that Georgeoffended his father past forgiveness by running away to Australia ratherthan marry Maria, and there disappeared. Years afterward a rumourreached his people that he had married and died out there, leaving awidow and an only son; but this rumour had not been verified, as by thattime his father and uncle were dead, and his cousins were reigning inhis stead; and it was hardly to be expected that the proud MissFarringdon would take much trouble concerning the woman whom herweak-kneed kinsman had preferred to herself.

  William Farringdon left all his property and his share in the works tohis niece Maria, as some reparation for the insult which hisdisinherited son had offered to her; John left his large fortune betweenhis two daughters, as he never had a son; so Maria and Anne Farringdonlived at the Willows, and carried on the Osierfield with the help ofRichard Smallwood, who had been the general manager of the collieriesand ironworks belonging to the firm in their father's time, and knew asmuch about iron (and most other things) as he did. Maria was a goodwoman of business, and she and Richard between them made money as fastas it had been made in the days of William and John Farringdon. Anne, onthe contrary, was a meek and gentle soul, who had no power of governingbut a perfect genius for obedience, and who was always engaged on theHerculean task of squaring the sternest dogmas with the most indulgentpractices.

  Even in the early days of this history the Miss Farringdons were what iscalled "getting on"; but the Willows was, nevertheless, not without ayouthful element in it. Close upon a dozen years ago the two sisters hadadopted the orphaned child of a second cousin, whose young widow haddied in giving birth to a posthumous daughter; and now ElisabethFarringdon was the light of the good ladies' eyes, though they wouldhave considered it harmful to her soul to let her have an inkling ofthis fact.

  She was not a pretty little girl, which was a source of much sorrow ofheart to her; and she was a distinctly clever little girl, of which shewas utterly unconscious, it being an integral part of Miss Farringdon'ssystem of education to imbue the young with an overpowering sense oftheir own inferiority and unworthiness. During the first decade of herexistence Elisabeth used frequently and earnestly to pray that her hairmight become golden and her eyes brown; but as on this score the heavensremained as brass, and her hair continued dark brown and her eyesblue-gray, she changed her tactics, and confined her heroine-worship toladies of this particular sty
le of colouring; which showed that, even atthe age of ten, Elisabeth had her full share of adaptability.

  One day, when walking with Miss Farringdon to chapel, Elisabethexclaimed, _a propos_ of nothing but her own meditations, "Oh! CousinMaria, I do wish I was pretty!"

  Most people would have been too much afraid of the lady of the Willowsto express so frivolous a desire in her august hearing; but Elisabethwas never afraid of anybody, and that, perhaps, was one of the reasonswhy her severe kinswoman loved her so well.

  "That is a vain wish, my child. Favour is deceitful and beauty is vain;and the Lord looketh on the heart and not on the outward appearance."

  "But I wasn't thinking of the Lord," replied Elisabeth: "I was thinkingof other people; and they love you much more if you are pretty than ifyou aren't."

  "That is not so," said Miss Farringdon--and she believed she wasspeaking the truth; "if you serve God and do your duty to yourneighbour, you will find plenty of people ready to love you; andespecially if you carry yourself well and never stoop." Like manyanother elect lady, Cousin Maria regarded beauty of face as a vanity,but beauty of figure as a virtue; and to this doctrine Elisabeth owedthe fact that her back always sloped in the opposite direction to thebacks of the majority of people.

  But it would have surprised Miss Farringdon to learn how little realeffect her strict Methodist training had upon Elisabeth; fortunately,however, few elder people ever do learn how little effect their traininghas upon the young committed to their charge; if it were so, life wouldbe too hard for the generation that has passed the hill-top. Elisabeth'swas one of those happy, pantheistic natures that possess the gift offinding God everywhere and in everything. She early caught the Methodisthabit of self-analysis and introspection, but in her it did notdevelop--as it does in more naturally religious souls--into an almostmorbid conscientiousness and self-depreciation; she merely found anartistic and intellectual pleasure in taking the machinery of her soulto pieces and seeing how it worked.

  In those days--and, in fact, in all succeeding ones--Elisabeth lived ina world of imagination. There was not a nook in the garden of theWillows which was not peopled by creatures of her fancy. At thisparticular time she was greatly fascinated by the subject of heathenmythology, as set forth in Mangnall's Questions, and had devoted herselfto the service of Pallas Athene, having learned that that goddess was(like herself) not surpassingly beautiful, and was, moreover,handicapped by the possession of gray eyes. Miss Farringdon would havebeen horrified had she known that a portion of the wood was set apart byElisabeth as "Athene's Grove," and that the contents of the waste-paperbasket were daily begged from the servants by the devotee, and offeredup, by the aid of real matches, on the shrine of the goddess.

  "Have you noticed, sister," Miss Anne remarked on one occasion, "howmuch more thoughtful dear Elisabeth is growing?" Miss Anne's life wasone long advertisement of other people's virtues. "She used to besomewhat careless in letting the fires go out, and so giving theservants the trouble to relight them; but now she is always going roundthe rooms to see if more coal is required, without my ever having toremind her."

  "It is so, and I rejoice. Carelessness in domestic matters is a gravefault in a young girl, and I am pleased that Elisabeth has outgrown herhabit of wool-gathering, and of letting the fire go out under her verynose without noticing it. It is a source of thanksgiving to me that thechild is so much more thoughtful and considerate in this matter than sheused to be."

  Miss Farringdon's thanksgiving, however, would have been less ferventhad she known that, for the time being, her _protegee_ had assumed therole of a Vestal virgin, and that Elisabeth's care of the fires thatwinter was not fulfilment of a duty but part of a game. This, however,was Elisabeth's way; she frequently received credit for performing aduty when she was really only taking part in a performance; which merelymeant that she possessed the artist's power of looking at duty throughthe haze of idealism, and of seeing that, although it was good, it mightalso be made picturesque. Elisabeth was well versed in The Pilgrim'sProgress and The Fairchild Family. The spiritual vicissitudes of Lucy,Emily, and Henry Fairchild were to her a drama of never-failinginterest; while each besetment of the Crosbie household--which was ascarefully preserved for its particular owner as if sin were a species ofground game--never failed to thrill her with enjoyable disgust. Sheknew a great portion of the Methodist hymn-book by heart, and ponderedlong over the interesting preface to that work, wondering much what"doggerel" and "botches" could be--she inclined to the supposition thatthe former were animals and the latter were diseases; but even her vividimagination failed to form a satisfactory representation of such queerkittle-cattle as "feeble expletives." Every Sunday she gloated over thefrontispiece of John Wesley, in his gown and bands and white ringlets,feeling that, though poor as a picture, it was very superior to theletterpress; the worst illustrations being better than the best poetry,as everybody under thirteen must know. But Elisabeth's library was notconfined to the volumes above mentioned; she regularly perused withinterest two little periodicals, called respectively Early Days and TheJuvenile Offering. The former treated of youthful saints at home; andits white paper cover was adorned by the picture of a shepherd,comfortably if peculiarly attired in a frock coat and tophat--presumably to portray that it was Sunday. The latter magazinedevoted itself to histories dealing with youthful saints abroad; and itscover was decorated with a representation of young black personsapparently engaged in some religious exercise. In this picture the frockcoats and top hats were conspicuous by their absence.

  There were two pictures in the breakfast-room at the Willows whichoccupied an important place in Elisabeth's childish imaginings. Thefirst hung over the mantelpiece, and was called The Centenary Meeting.It represented a chapel full of men in suffocating cravats, turningtheir backs upon the platform and looking at the public instead--a moreeffective if less realistic attitude than the ordinary one of sittingthe right way about; because--as Elisabeth reasoned, and reasonedrightly--if these gentlemen had not happened to be behind before whentheir portraits were taken, nobody would ever have known whose portraitsthey were. It was a source of great family pride to her that hergrandfather appeared in this galaxy of Methodist worth; but the hero ofthe piece, in her eyes, was one gentleman who had managed to swarm up apillar and there screw himself "to the sticking-place"; and how he haddone it Elisabeth never could conceive.

  The second picture hung over the door, and was a counterfeit presentmentof John Wesley's escape from the burning rectory at Epworth. In thosedays Elisabeth was so small and the picture hung so high that she couldnot see it very distinctly; but it appeared to her that the boy Wesley(whom she confused in her own mind with the infant Samuel) was flyingout of an attic window by means of flowing white wings, while a horsewas suspended in mid-air ready to carry him straight to heaven.

  Every Sunday she accompanied her cousins to East Lane Chapel, at theother end of Sedgehill, and here she saw strange visions and dreamedstrange dreams. The distinguishing feature of this sanctuary was a sortof reredos in oils, in memory of a dead and gone Farringdon, whichdepicted a gigantic urn, surrounded by a forest of cypress, through theshades whereof flitted "young-eyed cherubims" with dirty wings andbilious complexions, these last mentioned blemishes being, it is butfair to add, the fault of the atmosphere and not of the artist. Foryears Elisabeth firmly believed that this altar-piece was a trustworthyrepresentation of heaven; and she felt, therefore, a pleasant,proprietary interest in it, as the view of an estate to which she wouldone day succeed.

  There was also a stained-glass window in East Lane Chapel, given by thewidow of a leading official. The baptismal name of the deceased had beenJacob; and the window showed forth Jacob's Dream, as a delicatecompliment to the departed. Elisabeth delighted in this window, it wasso realistic. The patriarch lay asleep, with his head on a little whitetombstone at the foot of a solid oak staircase, which was covered with ared carpet neatly fastened down by brass rods; while up and down thisstaircase strolled fair-haired ang
els in long white nightgowns andpurple wings.

  Not of course then, but in after years, Elisabeth learned to understandthat this window was a type and an explanation of the power of earlyMethodism, the strength whereof lay in its marvellous capacity ofadapting religion to the needs and use of everyday life, and of bringingthe infinite into the region of the homely and commonplace. We, with ouradded culture and our maturer artistic perceptions, may smile at aJacob's Ladder formed according to the domestic architecture of thefirst half of the nineteenth century; but the people to whom the otherworld was so near and so real that they perceived nothing incongruous inan ordinary stair-carpet which was being trodden by the feet of angels,had grasped a truth which on one side touched the divine, even though onthe other it came perilously near to the grotesque. And He, Who taughtthem as by parables, never misunderstood--as did certain of Hisfollowers--their reverent irreverence; but, understanding it, saw thatit was good.

  The great day in East Lane Chapel was the Sunday School anniversary;and in Elisabeth's childish eyes this was a feast compared with whichChristmas and Easter sank to the level of black-letter days. On thesefestivals the Sunday School scholars sat all together in those parts ofthe gallery adjacent to the organ, the girls wearing white frocks andblue neckerchiefs, and the boys black suits and blue ties. The pews werestrewn with white hymn-sheets, which lay all over the chapel like snowin Salmon, and which contained special spiritual songs more stirring intheir character than the contents of the Hymn-book; these hymns theSunday School children sang by themselves, while the congregation satswaying to and fro to the tune. And Elisabeth's soul was uplifted withinher as she listened to the children's voices; for she felt that mysticalhush which--let us hope--comes to us all at some time or other, when wehide our faces in our mantles and feel that a Presence is passing by,and is passing by so near to us that we have only to stretch out ourhands in order to touch it. At sundry times and in divers manners doesthat wonderful sense of a Personal Touch come to men and to women. Itmay be in a wayside Bethel, it may be in one of the fairest fanes ofChristendom, or it may be not in any temple made with hands: accordingto the separate natures which God has given to us, so must we choose theseparate ways that will lead us to Him; and as long as there aredifferent natures there must be various ways. Then let each of us takethe path at the end whereof we see Him standing, always remembering thatwayfaring men, though fools, shall not err therein; and never forgettingthat--come whence and how they may--whosoever shall touch but the hem ofHis garment shall be made perfectly whole.