The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Vicissitudes of Bessie Fairfax
by Harriet Parr
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Title: The Vicissitudes of Bessie Fairfax
Author: Harriet Parr
(AKA Holme Lee)
Release Date: November 17, 2005 [EBook #17086]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
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The years have come and gone at Beechhurst as elsewhere, but the results of time and change seem to have almost passed it by. Every way out of the scattered forest-town is still through beautiful forest-roads—roads that cleave grand avenues, traverse black barren heaths, ford shallow rivers, and climb over ferny knolls whence the sea is visible. The church is unrestored, the parsonage is unimproved, the long low house opposite is still the residence of Mr. Carnegie, the local doctor, and looks this splendid summer morning precisely as it looked in the splendid summer mornings long ago, when Bessie Fairfax was a little girl, and lived there, and was very happy.
Bessie was not akin to the doctor. Her birth and parentage were on this wise. Her father was Geoffry, the third and youngest son of Mr. Fairfax of Abbotsmead in Woldshire. Her mother was Elizabeth, only child of the Reverend Thomas Bulmer, vicar of Kirkham. Their marriage was a love-match, concluded when they had something less than the experience of forty years between them. The gentleman had his university debts besides to begin life with, the lady had nothing. As the shortest way to a living he went into the Church, and the birth of their daughter was contemporary with Geoffry's ordination. His father-in-law gave him a title for orders, and a lodging under his roof, and Mr. Fairfax grudgingly allowed his son two hundred a year for a maintenance.
[Pg 6]The young couple were lively and handsome. They had done a foolish thing, but their friends agreed to condone their folly. Before very long a south-country benefice, the rectory of Beechhurst, was put in Geoffry's way, and he gayly removed with his wife and child to that desirable home of their own. They were poor, but they were perfectly contented. Nature is sometimes very kind in making up to people for the want of fortune by an excellent gift of good spirits and good courage. She was very kind in this way to Geoffry Fairfax and his wife Elizabeth; so kind that everybody wondered with great amazement what possessed that laughing, rosy woman to fall off in health, and die soon after the birth of a second daughter, who died also, and was buried in the same grave with her mother.
The rector was a cheerful exemplification of the adage that man is not made to live alone. He wore the willow just long enough for decency, and then married again—married another pretty, portionless young woman of no family worth mentioning. This reiterated indiscretion caused a breach with his father, and the slender allowance that had been made him was resumed. But his new wife was good to his little Bessie, and Abbotsmead was a long way off.
There were no children of this second marriage, which was lucky; for three years after, the rector himself died, leaving his widow as desolate as a clergyman's widow, totally unprovided for, can be. She had never seen any member of her husband's family, and she made no claim on Mr. Fairfax, who, for his part, acknowledged none. Bessie's near kinsfolk on her mother's side were all departed this life; there was nobody who wanted the child, or who would have regarded her in any light but an incumbrance. The rector's widow therefore kept her unquestioned; and being a woman of much sense and little pride, she moved no farther from the rectory than to a cottage-lodging in the town, where she found some teaching amongst the children of the small gentry, who then, as now, were its main population.
It was hard work for meagre reward, and perhaps she was not sorry to exchange her mourning-weeds for bride-clothes again when Mr. Carnegie asked her; for she was of a dependent, womanly character, and the doctor was well-to-do [Pg 7]and well respected, and ready with all his heart to give little Bessie a home. The child was young enough when she lost her own parents to lose all but a reflected memory of them, and cordially to adopt for a real father and mother those who so cordially adopted her.
Still, she was Bessie Fairfax, and as the doctor's house grew populous with children of his own, Bessie was curtailed of her indulgences, her learning, her leisure, and was taught betimes to make herself useful. And she did it willingly. Her temper was loving and grateful, and Mrs. Carnegie had her recompense in Bessie's unstinting helpfulness during the period when her own family was increasing year by year; sometimes at the rate of one little stranger, and sometimes at the rate of twins. The doctor received his blessings with a welcome, and a brisk assurance to his wife that the more they were the merrier. And neither Mrs. Carnegie nor Bessie presumed to think otherwise; though seven tiny trots under ten years old were a sore handful; and seven was the number Bessie kept watch and ward over like a fairy godmother in the doctor's nursery, when her own life had attained to no more than the discretion and philosophy of fifteen. The chief of them were boys—boys on the plan of their worthy father; five boys with excellent lungs and indefatigable stout legs; and two little girls no whit behind their brothers for voluble chatter and restless agility. Nobody complained, however. They had their health—that was one mercy; there was enough in the domestic exchequer to feed, clothe, and keep them all warm—that was another mercy; and as for the future, people so busy as the doctor and his wife are forced to leave that to Providence—which is the greatest mercy of all. For it is to-morrow's burden breaks the back, never the burden of to-day.
A constant regret with Mrs. Carnegie (when she had a spare moment to think of it) was her inability, from stress of annually recurring circumstances, to afford Bessie Fairfax more of an education, and especially that she was not learning to speak French and play on the piano. But Bessie felt no want of these polite accomplishments. She had no accomplished companions to put her to shame for her deficiencies. She was fond of a book, she could write an unformed, legible [Pg 8]hand, and add up a simple sum. The doctor, not a bad judge, called her a shrewd, reasonable little lass. She had mother-wit, a warm heart, and a nice face, as sweet and fresh as a bunch of roses with the dew on them, and he did not see what she wanted with talking French and playing the piano; if his wife would believe him, she would go through life quite as creditably and comfortably without any fashionable foreign airs and graces. Thus it resulted, partly from want of opportunity, and partly from want of ambition in herself, that Bessie Fairfax remained a rustic little maid, without the least tincture of modern accomplishments. Still, the doctor's wife did not forget that her dear drudge and helpful right hand was a waif of old gentry, whose restoration the chapter of accidents might bring about any day. Nor did she suffer Bessie to forget it, though Bessie was mighty indifferent, and cared as little for her gentle kindred as they cared for her. And if these gentle kindred had increased and multiplied according to the common lot, Bessie would probably never have been remembered by them to any purpose; she might have married as Mr. Carnegie's daughter, and have led an obscure, happy life, without vicissitude to the end of it, and have died leaving no story to tell.
But many things had happened at Abbotsmead since the love-match of Geoffry Fairfax and Elizabeth Bulmer. When Geoffry married, his brothers were both single men. The elder, Frederick, took to himself soon after a wife of rank and fortune; but there was no living issue of the marriage; and the lady, after a few years of eccentricity, went abroad for her health—that is, her husband was obliged to place her under restraint. Her malady was pronounced incurable, though her life might be prolonged. The second son, Laurence, had distinguished himself at Oxford, and had become a knight-errant of the Society of Antiquaries. His father said he would traverse a continent to look at one old stone. He was hardly persuaded to relinquish his liberty and choose a wife, when the failure of heirs to Frederick disconcerted the squire's expectations, and, with the proverbial ill-luck of learned men, he chose badly. His wife, from a silly, pretty shrew, matured into a most bitter scold; and a blessed man was he, when, after three years of tribulation, her temper [Pg 9]and a strong fever carried her off. His Xantippe left no child. Mr. Fairfax urged the obligations of ancient blood, old estate, and a second marriage; but Laurence had suffered conjugal felicity enough, and would no more of it. It was now that the squire first bethought himself seriously of his son Geoffry's daughter. He proposed to bring her home to Abbotsmead, and to marry her in due time to some poor young gentleman of good family, who would take her name, and give the house of Fairfax a new lease, as had been done thrice before in its long descent, by means of an heiress. The poor young man who might be so obliging was even named. Frederick and Laurence gave consent to whatever promised to mitigate their father's disappointment in themselves, and the business was put into the hands of their man of law, John Short of Norminster, than whom no man in that venerable city was more respected for sagacity and integrity.
If Mr. Fairfax had listened to John Short in times past, he would not have needed his help now. John Short had urged the propriety of recalling Bessie from Beechhurst when her father died; but no good grandmother or wise aunt survived at Kirkham to insist upon it, and the thing was not done. The man of law did not, however, revert to what was past remedy, but gave his mind to considering how his client might be extricated from his existing dilemma with least pain and offence. Mr. Fairfax had a legal right to the custody of his young kinswoman, but he had not the conscience to plead his legal right against the long-allowed use and custom of her friends. If they were reluctant to let her go, and she were reluctant to come, what then? John Short confessed that Mr. Carnegie and Bessie herself might give them trouble if they were so disposed; but he had a reasonable expectation that they would view the matter through the medium of common sense.
Thus much by way of prelude to the story of Bessie Fairfax's Vicissitudes, which date from this momentous era of her life.
"The postman! Run, Jack, and bring the letter."
The letter, said Mr. Carnegie; for the correspondence between the doctor's house and the world outside it was limited. Jack jumped off his chair at the breakfast-table and rushed to do his father's bidding.
"For mother!" cried he, returning at the speed of a small whirlwind, the epistle held aloft. Down he clapped it on the table by her plate, mounted into his chair again, and resumed the interrupted business of the hour.
Mrs. Carnegie glanced aside at the letter, read the post-mark, and reflected aloud: "Norminster—who can be writing to us from Norminster? Some of Bessie's people?"
"The shortest way would be to open the letter and see. Hand it over to me," said the doctor.
Bessie pricked her ears; but Mr. Carnegie read the letter to himself, while his wife was busy replenishing the little mugs that came up in single file incessantly for more milk. A momentary pause in the wants of her offspring gave her leisure to notice her husband's visage—a dusk-red and weather-brown visage at its best, but gathered now into extraordinary blackness. She looked, but did not speak; the doctor was the first to speak.
"It is about Bessie—from her grandfather's agent," said he with suppressed vexation as he replaced the large full sheet in its envelope.
"What about me?" cried Bessie in an explosion of natural curiosity.
"Your mother will tell you presently. Mind, boys, you are good to-day, and don't tire your sister."
So unusual an admonition made the boys stare, and everybody was hushed with a presentiment of something going to happen that nobody would approve. Mrs. Carnegie had her conjectures, not far wide of the truth, and Bessie was conscious of impatience to get the children out of the way, that she might have her curiosity appeased.
[Pg 11]The doctor discerned the insurrection of self in her face, and said, almost bitterly, "Wait till I am gone, Bessie; you will have all the rest of your life to think of it. Now, boys, you have done eating; be off, and get ready for school."
Jack and the rest cleared out of the parlor and pattered up stairs, Bessie following close on their heels, purposely deaf to her mother's voice: "You may stay, love." She was hurt and perturbed. An idea of what was impending had flashed into her mind. After all, her abrupt exit was convenient to her elders; they could discuss the circumstances more freely in her absence. Mrs. Carnegie began.
"Well, Thomas, what does this wonderful letter say? I think I can guess—Bessie is to go home?"
"Home! What place can be home to her if this is not?" rejoined the doctor, and strode across the room to shut the door on his retreating progeny, while his wife entered on the perusal of the letter.
It was from Mr. John Short, on the business that we wot of. To Mr. Carnegie it read like a cool intimation that Bessie Fairfax was wanted—was become of importance at Abbotsmead, and must break with her present associations. It would have been impossible to convey in palatable words the requisition that the lawyer was put upon making; but to Mrs. Carnegie the demand did not sound harsh, nor the manner of it insolent. She had always kept her mind in a state of preparedness for some such change, and the only sense of annoyance that smote her was for her own shortcomings—for how she had suffered Bessie to be almost a servant to her own children, and how she could neither speak French nor play on the piano.
The doctor pooh-poohed her remorse. "You have done the best for her you could, Jane. What right has her grandfather to expect anything? He left her on your hands without a penny."
"Bessie has been worth more than she costs, if that were the way to look at it. But she will have to leave us now; she will have to go."
"Yes, she will have to go. But the old gentleman shall never deny our share in her."
"The future will rest with Bessie herself."
[Pg 12]"And she has a good heart and a will of her own. She will be a woman with brains, whether she can play on the piano or not. Don't fret yourself, Jane, for any fancied neglect of Bessie."
"I am sadly grieved for her, Thomas; she will be sent to school, and what a life she will lead, dear child, so backward in her learning!"
"Nonsense! She is a bit of very good company. Wherever Bessie goes she will hold her own. She has plenty of character, and, take my word for it, character tells more in the long-run than talking French. There is the gig at the gate, and I must be off, though Bessie was starting for Woldshire by the next post. The letter is not one to be answered on the spur of the moment; acknowledge it, and say that it shall be answered shortly."
With a comfortable kiss the doctor bade his wife good-bye for the day, admonishing her not to fall a-crying with Bessie over what could not be remedied. And so he left her with the tears in her eyes already. She sat a few minutes feeling rather than reflecting, then with the lawyer's letter in her hands went up stairs, calling softly as she went, "Bessie dear, where are you?"
"Here, mother, in my own room;" and Bessie appeared in the doorway handling a scarlet feather-brush with which she was accustomed to dust her small property in books and ornaments each morning after the housemaid had performed her heavier task.
Mrs. Carnegie entered with her, and shut the door; for the two-leaved lattice was wide open, and the muslin curtains were blowing half across the tiny triangular nook under the thatch, which had been Bessie Fairfax's "own room" ever since she came to live in the doctor's house. Bessie was very fond of it, very proud of keeping it neat. There were assembled all the personal memorials of no moneysworth that had been rescued from the rectory-sale after her father's death; two miniatures, not valuable as works of art, but precious as likenesses of her parents; a faint sketch in water-colors of Kirkham Church and Parsonage House, and another sketch of Abbotsmead; an Indian work-box, a China bowl, two jars and a dish, very antiquated, and diffusing a soft perfume [Pg 13]of roses; and about a hundred and fifty volumes of books, selected by his widow from the rectory library, for their binding rather than their contents, and perhaps not very suitable for a girl's collection. But Bessie set great store by them; and though the ancient Fathers of the Church accumulated dust on their upper shelves, and the sages of Greece and Rome were truly sealed books to her, she could have given a fair account of her Shakespeare and of the Aldine Poets to a judicious catechist, and of many another book with a story besides; even of her Hume, Gibbon, Goldsmith, and Rollin, and of her Scott, perennially delightful. She was, in fact, no dunce, though she had not been disciplined in the conventional routine of education; and as for training in the higher sense, she could not have grown into a more upright or good girl under any guidance, than under that of her tender and careful mother.
And in appearance what was she like, this Bessie Fairfax, subjected so early to the caprices of fortune? It is not to be pretended that she reached the heroic standard. Mr. Carnegie said she bade fair to be very handsome, but she was at the angular age when the framework of a girl's bones might stand almost as well for a boy's, and there was, indeed, something brusque, frank, and boyish in Bessie's air and aspect at this date. She walked well, danced well, rode well—looked to the manner born when mounted on the little bay mare, which carried the doctor on his second journeys of a day, and occasionally carried Bessie in his company when he was going on a round, where, at certain points, rest and refreshment were to be had for man and beast. Her figure had not the promise of majestic height, but it was perfectly proportioned, and her face was a capital letter of introduction. Feature by feature, it was, perhaps, not classical, but never was a girl nicer looking taken altogether; the firm sweetness of her mouth, the clear candor of her blue eyes, the fair breadth of her forehead, from which her light golden-threaded hair stood off in a wavy halo, and the downy peach of her round cheeks made up a most kissable, agreeable face. And there were sense and courage in it as well as sweetness; qualities which in her peculiar circumstances would not be liable to rust for want of using.
[Pg 14]The mistiness of tears clouded Bessie's eyes when her mother, without preamble, announced the purport of the letter in her hand.
"It has come at last, Bessie, the recall that I have kept you in mind was sure to come sooner or later; not that we shall be any the less grieved to lose you, dear. Father will miss his clever little Bessie sadly,"—here the kind mother paused for emotion, and Bessie, athirst to know all, asked if she might read the letter.
The letter was not written for her reading, and Mrs. Carnegie hesitated; but Bessie's promptitude overruled her doubt in a manner not unusual with them. She took possession of the document, and sat down in the deep window-seat to study it; and she had read but a little way when there appeared signs in her face that it did not please her. Her mother knew these signs well; the stubborn set of the lips, the resolute depression of the level brows, much darker than her hair, the angry sparkle of her eyes, which never did sparkle but when her temper was ready to flash out in impetuous speech. Mrs. Carnegie spoke to forewarn her against rash declarations.
"It is of no use to say you won't, Bessie, for you must. Your father said, before he went out, that we have no choice but to let you go."
Bessie did not condescend to any rejoinder yet. She was reading over again some passage of the letter by which she felt herself peculiarly affronted. She continued to the end of it, and it was perhaps lucky that her tenderness had then so far prevailed over her wrath that she could only give way to tears of self-pity, instead of voice to the defiant words that had trembled on her tongue a minute ago.
"I did hope, dear, that you would not take it so much to heart," said her mother, comforting her. "But it is mortifying to think of being sent to school. What a pity we have let time go on till you are fifteen, and can neither speak a word of French nor play a note on the piano!"
Bessie had so often heard Mr. Carnegie's opinion of these accomplishments that her mother's regrets wore a comic aspect to her mind, and between laughing and crying she protested that she did not care, she should not try to improve [Pg 15]to please them—meaning her Woldshire kinsfolk mentioned in the lawyer's letter.
"You have good common-sense, Bessie, and I am sure you will use it," said her mother with persuasive gravity. "If you show off with your tempers, that will give a color to their notion that you have been badly brought up. You must do us and yourself what credit you can, going amongst strangers. I am not afraid for you, unless you set up your little back, and determine to be downright naughty and perverse."
Bessie's countenance was not promising as she gave ear to these premonitions. Her upper lip was short, and her nether lip pressed against it with a scorny indignation. Her back was very much up, indeed, in the moral sense indicated by her mother, and as these inauspicious moods of hers were apt to last the longer the longer they were reasoned with, her mother prudently refrained from further disquisition. She bade her go about her ordinary business as if nothing had happened, and Bessie did go about these duties with a quiet practical obedience to law and order which bore out the testimony to her good common-sense. She thought of Mr. John Short's letter, it is true, and once she stood for a minute considering the sketch of Abbotsmead which hung above her chest of drawers. "Gloomy dull old place," was her criticism on it; but even as she looked, there ensued the reflection that the sun must shine upon it sometimes, though the artist had drawn it as destitute of light and shade as the famous portrait of Queen Elizabeth, when she wished to be painted fair, and was painted merely insipid.
The lawyer's letter from Norminster had thrust aside all minor interests. Even the school-feast that was to be at the rectory that afternoon was forgotten, until the boys reminded their mother of it at dinner-time. "Bessie will take you," [Pg 16]said Mrs. Carnegie, and Bessie acquiesced. The one thing she found impossible to-day was to sit still. We will go to the school-feast with the children. The opportunity will be good for introducing to the reader a few persons of chief consideration in the rural community where Bessie Fairfax acquired some of her permanent views of life.
Beechhurst Rectory was the most charming rectory-house on the Forest. It would be delightful to add that the rector was as charming as his abode; but Beechhurst did not call itself happy in its pastor at this moment—the Rev. Askew Wiley. Mr. Wiley's immediate predecessor—the Rev. John Hutton—had been a pattern for country parsons. Hale, hearty, honest as the daylight; knowing in sport, in farming, in gardening; bred at Westminster and Oxford; the third son of a family distinguished in the Church; happily married, having sons of his own, and sufficient private fortune to make life easy both in the present and the future. Unluckily for Beechhurst, he preferred the north to the south country, and, after holding the benefice a little over one year, he exchanged it against Otterburn, a moorland border parish of Cumberland, whence Mr. Wiley had for some time past been making strenuous efforts to escape. Both were crown livings, but Otterburn stood for twice as much in the king's books as Beechhurst. Mr. Wiley was, however, willing to pay the forfeiture of half his income to get away from it. He had failed to make friends with the farmers, his principal parishioners, and the vulgar squabbles of Otterburn had grown into such a notorious scandal that the bishop was only too thankful to promote his removal. Mrs. Wiley's health was the ostensible reason, and though Otterburn knew better, Beechhurst accepted it in good faith, and gave its new rector a cordial welcome—none the less cordial that his wife came on the scene a robust and capable woman, ready and fit for parish work, and with no air of the fragile invalid it had been led to expect.
But men are shrewd on the Forest as on the Border, and the Rev. Askew Wiley was soon at a discount. His appearance was eminently clerical, but no two of his congregation formed the same opinion of what he was besides, unless the opinion that they did not like him. It was a clear case of [Pg 17]Dr. Fell; for there was nothing in his life to except to, and in his character only a deficiency of courage. Only? But stay—consider what a crop of servile faults spring from a deficiency of courage.
"He do so beat the devil about the bush that there is no knowing where to have him," was the dictum early enunciated by a village Solomon, which went on to be verified more and more, until the new rector was as much despised on the Forest as on the Border. But he had a different race to deal with. At Otterburn the rude statesmen provoked and defied him with loud contempt; at Beechhurst his congregation dwindled down to the gentlefolks, who tolerated him out of respect to his office, and to the aged poor, who received a weekly dole of bread, bequeathed by some long-ago benefactor; and these were mostly women. Mr. Carnegie was a fair sample of the men, and he made no secret of his aversion.
The Reverend Askew Wiley, see him as he paces the lawn, his supple back writhed just a little towards my lady deferentially, his head just a little on one side, lending her an ear. By the gait of him he is looking another way. Yes; for now my lady turns, he turns too, and they halt front to front; his pallid visage half averted from her observation, his glittering eyes roving with bold stealth over the populous garden, and his thin-lipped, scarlet mouth working and twisting incessantly in the covert of his thick-set beard.
My lady speaks with an impatience scarcely controlled. She is the great lady of Beechhurst, the Dowager Lady Latimer, in the local estimation a very great lady indeed; once a leader in society, now retired from it, and living obscurely on her rich dower in the Forest, with almsdeeds and works of patronage and improvement for her pleasure and her occupation. My lady always loved her own way, but she had worked harmoniously with Mr. Hutton through his year's incumbency. He was sufficient for his duties, and gave her no opportunity for the exercise of unlawful authority, no ground for encroachments, no room for interference. But it was very different with poor Mr. Wiley. Everybody knew that he was a trial to her. He could not hold his own against her propensity to dictate. He deferred to her, and contrived to thwart her, to do the very thing she would not have done, [Pg 18]and to do it in the most obnoxious way. The puzzle was—could he help it? Was he one of those tactless persons who are for ever blundering, or had he the will to assert himself, and not the pluck to do it boldly? His refuge was in round-about manœuvres, and my lady felt towards him as those intolerant Cumberland statesmen felt before their enmity made the bleak moorland too hot for him. He was called an able man, but his foibles were precisely of the sort to create in the large-hearted of the gentle sex an almost masculine antipathy to their spiritual pastor. Bessie Fairfax could not bear him, and she could render a reason. Mr. Wiley received pupils to read at his house, and he had refused to receive a dear comrade of hers. It was his rule to receive none but the sons of gentlemen. Young Musgrave was the son of a farmer on the Forest, who called cousins with the young Carnegies. As the connection was wide, perhaps the vigorous dislike of more important persons than Bessie Fairfax is sufficiently accounted for. All the world is agreed that a slight wound to men's self-love rankles much longer than a mortal injury.
It is not, however, to be supposed that the Beechhurst people spited themselves so far as to keep away from the rector's school-treat because they did not love the rector. (By the by, it was not his treat, but only buns and tea by subscription distributed in his grounds, with the privilege of admittance to the subscribers.) The orthodox gentility of the neighborhood assembled in force for the occasion when the sun shone upon it as it shone to-day, and the entertainment was an event for children of all classes. If the richer sort did not care for buns, they did for games; and the Carnegie boys were so eager to lose none of the sport that they coaxed Bessie to take time by the forelock, and presented themselves almost first on the scene. Mrs. Wiley, ready and waiting out of doors to welcome her more distinguished guests, met a trio of the little folks, in Bessie's charge, trotting round the end of the house to reach the lawn.
"Always in good time, Bessie Carnegie," said she. "But is not your mother coming?"
"No, thank you, Mrs. Wiley," said Bessie with prim decorum.
[Pg 19]"By the by, that is not your name. What is your name, Bessie?"
"Elizabeth Fairfax."
"Ah! yes; now I remember—Elizabeth Fairfax. And is your uncle pretty well? I suppose we shall see him later in the day? He ought to look in upon us before we break up. There! run away to the children in the orchard, and leave the lawn clear."
Bessie accepted her dismissal gladly, thankful to escape the catechetical ordeal that would have ensued had there been leisure for it. She was almost as shy of the rector's wife as of the rector. Mrs. Wiley had a brusque, absent manner, and it was a trick of hers to expose her young acquaintance to a fire of questions, of which she as regularly forgot the answers. She had often affronted Bessie Fairfax by asking her real name, and in the next breath calling her affably Bessie Carnegie, the doctor's step-daughter, niece or other little kinswoman whom he kept as a help in his house for charity's sake.
Bessie had but faint recollections of the rectory as her home, for since her father's death she had never gone there except as a visitor on public days. But the tradition was always in her memory that once she had lived in those pleasant rooms, had run up and down those broad sunny stairs, and played on the spacious lawns of that mossy, tree-shadowed garden. In the orchard had assembled, besides the children, a group of their ex-teachers—Miss Semple and her sister, the village dressmakers, Miss Genet, the daughter at the post-office, and the two Miss Mittens—well-behaved and well-instructed young persons whom Mr. Wiley's predecessors had been pleased to employ, but for whom Mrs. Wiley found no encouragement. She had the ordering of the school, and preferred gentlewomen for her lay-sisters. She had them, and only herself knew what trouble in keeping them punctual to their duty and in keeping the peace amongst them. There was dear fat Miss Buff, who had been right hand in succession to Mr. Fairfax, Mr. Roebuck and Mr. Hutton, who adored supremacy, and exercised it with the easy sway of long usage; she felt herself pushed on one side by that ardent young Irish recruit, Miss Thusy O'Flynn, [Pg 20]whose peculiar temper no one cared to provoke, and who ruled by the terror of it with a caprice that was trying in the last degree. Miss Buff gave way to her, but not without grumbling, appealing, and threatening to withdraw her services. But she loved her work in the school and in the choir, and could not bear to punish herself or let Miss Thusy triumph to the extent of driving her into private life; so she adhered to her charge in the hope of better days, when she would again be mistress paramount. And the same did Miss Wort—also one of the old governing body—but from higher motives, which she was not afraid to publish: she distrusted Mr. Wiley's doctrine, and she feared that he was inclined to truckle to the taste for ecclesiastical decoration manifested by certain lambs of his flock who doted on private theatricals and saw no harm in balls. She adhered to her post, that the truth might not suffer for want of a witness; and if the rising generation of girls in preposterous hats had taken her for their pattern of a laborious teacher, true to time as the school-bell itself, Mrs. Wiley's preference for young ladies over young persons would have been better justified, and Lady Latimer would not have been able to find fault with the irregular attendance of the children, to express her opinion that the school was not what it might be, and to throw out hints that she must set about reforming it unless it soon reformed itself.
Bessie Fairfax was on speaking terms with nearly everybody, and Miss Mitten called her the moment she appeared to help in setting a ring for "drop hankercher." Two of the little Carnegies merrily joined hands with the rest, and they were just about to begin, Jack being unanimously nominated as first chase for his dexterous running, when a shrill voice called to them peremptorily to desist.
"Why have you fallen out of rank? You ought to have kept your ranks until you had sung grace before tea. Get into line again quickly, for here come the buns;" and there was Miss Thusy O'Flynn, perched on a mole-hill, in an attitude of command, waving her parasol and demonstrating how they were to stand.
"The buns, indeed! It is time, I'm sure," muttered Miss Buff, substantial in purple silk and a black lace bonnet. [Pg 21]Her rival was a pretty, red-haired, resolute little girl, very prettily dressed, who showed to no disadvantage on the mole-hill. But Miss Buff could see no charm she had; she it was who had given leave for a game, to pass the time before tea. The children had been an hour in the orchard, and the feast was still delayed.
"Perhaps the kettle does not boil," suggested Miss Wort, indulgently.
"We are kept waiting for Miss O'Flynn's aunt," rejoined Miss Buff. "Here she comes, with our angelical parson, and Lady Latimer, out in the cold, walking behind them."
Bessie Fairfax looked up. Lady Latimer was her supreme admiration. She did not think that another lady so good, so gracious, so beautiful, enriched the world. If there did, that lady was not the Viscountess Poldoody. Bessie had a lively sense of fun, and the Irish dame was a figure to call a smile to a more guarded face than hers—a short squab figure that waddled, and was surmounted by a negative visage composed of pulpy, formless features, and a brown wig of false curls—glaringly false, for they were the first thing about her that fixed the eye, though there were many matters besides to fascinate an observer with leisure to look again. She seemed, however, a most free and cheerful old lady, and talked in a loud, mellow voice, with a pleasant touch of the brogue. She had been a popular Dublin singer and actress in her day—a day some forty years ago—but only Lady Latimer and herself in the rectory garden that afternoon were aware of the fact.
Grand people possessed an irresistible attraction for Mr. Wiley. The Viscountess Poldoody had taken a house in his parish for the fine season, and came to his church with her niece; he had called upon her, and now escorted her to the orchard with a fulsome assiduity which was betrayed to those who followed by the uneasy writhing of his back and shoulders. With many complimentary words he invited her to distribute the prizes to the children.
"If your ladyship will so honor them, it will be a day in their lives to remember."
"Give away the prizes? Oh yes, if ye'll show me which choild to give 'em to," replied the viscountess with a good-[Pg 22]humored readiness. Then, with a propriety of feeling which was thought very nice in her, she added, in the same natural, distinct manner, standing and looking round as she spoke:
"But is it not my Lady Latimer's right? What should I know of your children, who am only a summer visitor?"
Lady Latimer acknowledged the courteous disclaimer with that exquisite smile which had been the magic of her loveliness always. The children would appreciate the kindness of a stranger, she said; and with a perfect grace yielded the precedence, and at the same time resigned the opportunity she had always enjoyed before of giving the children a monition once a year on their duty to God, their parents, their pastors and masters, elders and betters, and neighbors in general. Whether my lady felt aggrieved or not nobody could discern; but the people about were aggrieved for her, and Miss Buff confided to a friend, in a semi-audible whisper of intense exasperation, that the rector was the biggest muff and toady that ever it had been her misfortune to know. Miss Buff, it will be perceived, liked strong terms; but, as she justly pleaded in extenuation of a taste for which she was reproached, what was the use of there being strong terms in the language if they were not to be applied on suitable occasions?
The person, however, on whom this incident made the deepest impression was Bessie Fairfax. Bessie admired Lady Latimer because she was admirable. She had listened too often to Mr. Carnegie's radical talk to have any reverence for rank and title unadorned; but her love of beauty and goodness made her look up with enthusiastic respect to the one noble lady she knew, of whom even the doctor spoke as "a great woman." The children sang their grace and sat down to tea, and Lady Latimer stood looking on, her countenance changed to a stern gravity; and Bessie, quite diverted from the active business of the feast, stood looking at her and feeling sorry. The child's long abstracted gaze ended by drawing my lady's attention. She spoke to her, and Bessie started out of her reverie, wide-awake in an instant.
"Is there nothing for you to do, Bessie Fairfax, that you stand musing? Bring me a chair into the shade of the old walnut tree over yonder. I have something to say to you. [Pg 23]Do you remember what we talked about that wet morning last winter at my house?"
"Yes, my lady," replied Bessie, and brought the chair with prompt obedience.
On the occasion alluded to Bessie had been caught in a heavy rain while riding with the doctor. He had deposited her in Lady Latimer's kitchen, to be dried and comforted by the housekeeper while he went on his farther way; and my lady coming into the culinary quarter while Bessie was there, had given her a delicious cheese-cake from a tin just hot out of the oven, and had then entered into conversation with her about her likes and dislikes, concluding with the remark that she had in her the making of an excellent National School mistress, and ought to be trained for that special walk in life. Bessie had carried home a report of what Lady Latimer had said; but neither her father nor mother admired the suggestion, and it had not been mentioned again. Now, however, being comfortably seated, my lady revived it in a serious, methodical way, Bessie standing before her listening and blushing with a confusion that increased every moment. She was thinking of the letter from Norminster, but she did not venture yet to arrest Lady Latimer's flow of advice. My lady did not discern that anything was amiss. She was accustomed to have her counsels heard with deference. From advice she passed into exhortation, assuming that Bessie was, of course, destined to some sort of work for a living—to dressmaking, teaching or service in some shape—and encouraging her to make advances for her future, that it might not overtake her unprepared. Lady Latimer had not come into the Forest until some years after the Reverend Geoffry Fairfax's death, and she had no knowledge of Bessie's birth, parentage and connections; but she had a principle against poor women pining in the shadow of gentility when they could help themselves by honest endeavors; and also, she had a plan for raising the quality of National School teaching by introducing into the ranks of the teachers young gentlewomen unprovided by fortune. She advised no more than she would have done, and all she said was good, if Bessie's circumstances had been what she assumed. But Bessie, conscious that they were about to suffer a change, felt impelled [Pg 24]at last to set Lady Latimer right. Her shy face mitigated the effect of her speech.
"I have kindred in Woldshire, my lady, who want me. I am the only child in this generation, and my grandfather Fairfax says that it is necessary for me to go back to my own people."
Lady Latimer's face suddenly reflected a tint of Bessie's. But no after-thought was in Bessie's mind, her simplicity was genuine. She esteemed it praise to be selected as a fit child to teach children; and, besides, whatever my lady had said at this period would have sounded right in Bessie's ears. When she had uttered her statement, she waited till Lady Latimer spoke.
"Do you belong to the Fairfaxes of Kirkham? Is your grandfather Richard Fairfax of Abbotsmead?" she said in a quick voice, with an inflection of surprise.
"Yes, my lady. My father was Geoffry, the third son; my mother was Elizabeth Bulmer."
"I knew Abbotsmead many years ago. It will be a great change for you. How old are you, Bessie? Fourteen, fifteen?"
"Fifteen, my lady, last birthday, the fourth of March."
Lady Latimer thought to herself, "Here is an exact little girl!" Then she said aloud, "It would have been better for you if your grandfather had recalled you when you were younger."
Bessie was prepared to hear this style of remark, and to repudiate the implication. She replied almost with warmth, "My lady, I have lost nothing by being left here. Beechhurst will always be home to me. If I had my choice I would not go to Kirkham."
Lady Latimer thought again what a nice voice Bessie had, and regarded her with a growing interest, that arose in part out of her own recollections. She questioned her concerning her father's death, and the circumstances of her adoption by Mr. and Mrs. Carnegie, and reflected that, happily, she was too simple, too much of a child yet, for any but family attachments—happily, because, though Bessie had no experience to measure it by, there would be a wide difference between her position as the doctor's adopted daughter amongst a house [Pg 25]full of children, and as heiress presumptive of Mr. Fairfax of Abbotsmead.
"Have you ever seen Abbotsmead, Bessie?" she said.
"No, my lady, I have never been in Woldshire since I was a baby. I was born at Kirkham vicarage, my grandfather Bulmer's house, but I was not a year old when we came away. I have a drawing of Abbotsmead that my mother made—it is not beautiful."
"But Abbotsmead is very beautiful—the country round about is not so delicious as the Forest, for it has less variety: it is out of sight of the sea, and the trees are not so grand, but Abbotsmead itself is a lovely spot. The house stands on a peninsula formed by a little brawling river, and in the park are the ruins that give the place its name. I remember the garden at Abbotsmead as a garden where the sun always shone."
Bessie was much cheered. "How glad I am! In my picture the sun does not shine at all. It is the color of a dark day in November."
The concise simplicity of Bessie's talk pleased Lady Latimer. She decided that Mrs. Carnegie must be a gentlewoman, and that Bessie had qualities capable of taking a fine polish. She would have held the child in conversation longer had not Mrs. Wiley come up, and after a word or two about the success of the feast, bade Bessie run away and see that her little brothers were not getting into mischief. Lady Latimer nodded her a kind dismissal, and off she went.
Six o'clock struck. By that time the buns were all eaten, the prizes were all distributed, and the cream of the company had driven or walked away, but cricket still went on in the meadow, and children's games in the orchard. One or two gentlemen had come on the scene since the fervor of the afternoon abated. Admiral Parkins, who governed Beechhurst under Lady Latimer, was taking a walk round the garden with his brother church-warden, Mr. Musgrave, and Mr. Carnegie had made his bow to the rector's wife, who was not included in his aversion for the rector. Mr. Phipps, also a gentleman of no great account in society, but a liberal supporter of the parish charities, was there—a small, grotesque man to look at, who had always an objection in his mouth. [Pg 26]Was any one praised, he mentioned a qualification; was any one blamed, he interposed a plea. He had a character for making shrewd, incisive remarks, and was called ironical, because he had a habit of dispersing flattering delusions and wilful pretences by bringing the dry light of truth to bear upon them—a gratuitous disagreeableness which was perhaps the reason why he was now perched on a tree-stump alone, casting shy, bird-like glances hither and thither—at two children quarrelling over a cracked tea-cup, at the rector halting about uncomfortably amongst the "secondary people," at his wife being instructed by Lady Latimer, at Lady Latimer herself, tired but loath to go, at Bessie Fairfax, full of spirit and forgetfulness, running at speed over the grass, a vociferous, noisy troop of children after her.
"Stop, stop, you are not to cross the lawn!" cried Mrs. Wiley. "Bessie Carnegie, what a tomboy you are! We might be sure if there was any roughness you were at the head of it."
Lady Latimer also looked austere at the infringement of respect. Bessie did not hear, and sped on till she reached the tree-stump where Mr. Phipps was resting, and touched it—the game was "tiggy-touch-wood." There she halted to take breath, her round cheeks flushed, her carnation mouth open, and her pursuers baffled.
"You are a pretty young lady!" said Mr. Phipps, not alluding to Bessie's beauty, but to her manner sarcastically. Bessie paid no heed. They were very good friends, and she cared nothing for his sharp observations. But she perceived that the rout of children was being turned back to the orchard, and made haste to follow them.
Admiral Parkins and Mr. Musgrave had foregathered with Mr. Carnegie to discuss some matters of parish finance. They drew near to Mr. Phipps and took him into the debate. It was concerning a new organ for the church, a proposed extension of the school-buildings, an addition to the master's salary, and a change of master. The present man was old-fashioned, and the spirit of educational reform had reached Beechhurst.
"If we wait until Wiley moves in the business, we may wait till doomsday. The money will be forthcoming when [Pg 27]it is shown that it is wanted," said the admiral, whose heart was larger than his income.
"Lady Latimer will not be to ask twice," said Mr. Musgrave. "Nor Mr. Phipps."
"We must invite her ladyship to take the lead," said Mr. Carnegie.
"Let us begin by remembering that, as a poor community, we have no right to perfection," said Mr. Phipps. "The voluntary taxes of the locality are increasing too fast. It is a point of social honor for all to subscribe to public improvements, and all are not gifted with a superfluity of riches. If honor is to be rendered where honor is due, let Miss Wort take the lead. Having regard to her means, she is by far the most generous donor in Beechhurst."
Mr. Phipps's proposal was felt to need no refutation. The widow's mite is such a very old story—not at all applicable to the immense operations of modern philanthropy. Besides, Miss Wort had no ambition for the glory of a leader, nor had she the figure for the post. Mr. Phipps was not speaking to be contradicted, only to be heard.
Lady Latimer, on her way to depart, came near the place where the gentlemen were grouped, and turned aside to join them, as if a sudden thought had struck her. "You are discussing our plans?" she said. "A certificated master to supersede poor old Rivett must be the first consideration in our rearrangement of the schools. The children have been sacrificed too long to his incompetence. We must be on the look-out for a superior man, and make up our minds to pay him well."
"Poor old Rivett! he has done good work in his day, but he has the fault that overtakes all of us in time," said Mr. Phipps. "For the master of a rural school like ours, I would choose just such another man—of rough common-sense, born and bred in a cottage, and with an experimental knowledge of the life of the boys he has to educate. Certificated if you please, but the less conventionalized the better."
Lady Latimer did not like Mr. Phipps—she thought there was something of the spy in his nature. She gazed beyond him, and was peremptory about her superior man—so peremptory that she had probably already fixed on the fortunate [Pg 28]individual who would enjoy her countenance. Half an hour later, when Bessie Fairfax was carrying off her reluctant brothers to supper and to bed, my lady had not said all she had to say. She was still projecting, dissenting, deciding and undoing, and the gentlemen were still listening with patient deference. She had made magnificent offers of help for the furtherance of their schemes, and had received warm acknowledgments.
"Her ladyship is bountiful as usual—for a consideration," said Mr. Phipps, emitting a long suppressed groan of weariness, when her gracious good-evening released them. Mr. Phipps revolted against my lady's yoke, the others wore it with grace. Admiral Parkins said Beechhurst would be in a poor way without her. Mr. Musgrave looked at his watch, and avowed the same opinion. Mr. Carnegie said nothing. He knew so much good of Lady Latimer that he had an almost unlimited indulgence for her. It was his disposition, indeed, to be indulgent to women, to give them all the homage and sympathy they require.
Mr. Phipps and Mr. Carnegie quitted the rectory-garden, and crossed the road to the doctor's house in company. Bessie Fairfax, worn out with the emotions and fatigues of the day, had left the children to their mother and stout Irish nurse, and had collapsed into her father's great chair in the parlor. She sprang up as the gentlemen entered, and was about to run away, when Mr. Phipps spread out his arms to arrest her flight.
"Well, Cinderella, the pumpkin-coach has not come yet to fetch you away?" said he. The application of the parable of Cinderella to her case was Mr. Phipps's favorite joke against Bessie Fairfax.
"No, but it is on the road. I hear the roll of the wheels and the crack of Raton's whip," said she with a prodigious sigh.
"So it is, Phipps—that's true! We are going to lose our Bessie," said Mr. Carnegie, drawing her upon his knee as he sat down.
"Poor little tomboy! A nice name Mrs. Wiley has fitted her with! And she is going to be a lady? I should not wonder if she liked it," said Mr. Phipps.
[Pg 29]"As if ladies were not tomboys too!" said she with wise scorn, half laughing, half pouting. Then with wistfulness: "Will it be so very different? Why should it? I hate the idea of going away from Beechhurst!" and she laid her cheek against the doctor's rough whisker with the caressing, confiding affection that made her so inexpressibly dear to him.
"Here is my big baby," said he. "A little more, and she will persuade me to say I won't part with her."
Bessie flashed out impetuously: "Do say so! do say so! If you won't part with me, I won't go. Who can make us?"
Mrs. Carnegie came into the room, serious and reasonable. She had caught Bessie's last words, and said: "If we were to let you have your own way now, Bessie dear, ten to one that you would live to reproach us with not having done our duty by you. My conscience is clear that we ought to give you up. What is your opinion, Mr. Phipps?"
"My opinion is, Mrs. Carnegie, that when the pumpkin-coach calls for Cinderella, she will jump in, kiss her hand to all friends in the Forest, and drive off to Woldshire in a delicious commotion of tearful joy and impossible expectation."
Bessie cried out vehemently against this.
"There, there!" said the doctor, as if he were tired, "that is enough. Let us proclaim a truce. I forbid the subject to be mentioned again unless I mention it. And let my word be law."
Mr. Carnegie's word, in that house, was law.
The next morning Mr. Carnegie was not in imperative haste to start on his daily circuit. The boys had to give him an account of yesterday's fun. He heard them comfortably, and rejoiced the heart of Bessie by telling her to [Pg 30]be ready to ride with him at ten o'clock—her mother could spare her. Bessie was not to wait for when the hour came. These rides with her father were ever her chief delight. She wore a round beaver hat with a rosette in front, and a habit of dark blue serge. (There had been some talk of a new one for her, but now her mother reflected that it would not be wanted.)
It was a delicate morning, the air was light and clear, the sky gray and silvery. Bessie rode Miss Hoyden, the doctor's little mare, and trotted along at a brisk pace by his stout cob Brownie. She had a sense of the keenest enjoyment in active exercise. Mr. Carnegie looked aside at her often, his dear little Bessie, thinking, but not speaking, of the separation that impended. Bessie's pleasure in the present was enough to throw that into the background. She did not analyze her sensations, but her cheeks glowed, her eyes shone, and she knew that she was happy. They were on their way to Littlemire, where Mr. Moxon lived—a poor clergyman with whom young Musgrave was reading. Almost as soon as they were clear of the village they struck into a green ride through the beeches, and cut off a great angle of the high-road, coming out again on a furzy opening dotted with old oaks, where the black pigs of the cottagers would by and by feast and grow fat on their common rights. It was a lovely, damp, perilous spot, haunted by the ghost of fever and ague. The soft, vivid turf was oozy there, and the long-rooted stones were clothed with wet, rusted moss. The few cottages of the hamlet wore deep hoods of thatch, and stood amongst prosperous orchards; one of them, a little larger than the rest, being the habitation of Mr. Moxon, the vicar of Littlemire, whose church, dame-school, and income were all of the same modest proportions as his dwelling. He had an invalid wife and no attraction for resident pupils, but he was thankful when he could get one living not too far off. Young Musgrave walked from Brook twice a week—a long four miles—to read with him.
The lad was in the vicar's parlor when Mr. Carnegie and Bessie Fairfax stopped at the gate. He came out with flushed brow and ruffled hair to keep Bessie company and hold the doctor's horse while he went up stairs with Mr. Moxon to visit his wife. That room where she lay in pain often, in weakness [Pg 31]always, was a mean, poorly-furnished room, with a window in the thatch, and just a glimpse of heaven beyond, but that glimpse was all reflected in the blessedness of her peaceful face. Mr. Moxon's threadbare coat hung loosely on his large lean frame, like the coat of a poor, negligent gentleman, such as he was. He had the reputation of being a capital scholar, but he had not made the way in the world that had been expected of him. He was vicar of Littlemire when the Reverend Geoffry Fairfax came into the Forest, and he was vicar of Littlemire still, with no prospect of promotion. Perhaps he did not seek it. His wife loved this buried nook, and he loved it for her sake. Mr. Carnegie took it often in his rides, because they called him their friend and he could help them. They had not many besides: Lady Latimer and Mr. Phipps did not forget them, but they were quite out of the way of the visiting part of the community.
"You have done with Hampton, then, Harry?" Bessie said, waiting with her comrade at the gate.
"Yes, so far as school goes, except that I shall always have a kindness for the old place and the old doctor. It was a grand thing, my winning that scholarship, Bessie."
"And now you will have your heart's desire—you will go to Oxford."
"Yes; Moxon is an Oxford man, and the old doctor says out-and-out the best classic of his acquaintance. You have not seen my prize-books yet. When are you coming to Brook, Bessie?"
"The first time I have a chance. What are the books, Harry?"
"All standard books—poetry," Harry said.
The young people's voices, chiming harmoniously, sounded in Mrs. Moxon's room. The poor suffering lady, who was extended on an inclined couch below the window, looked down at them, and saw Harry standing at Miss Hoyden's head, with docile Brownie's bridle on his left arm, and Bessie, with the fine end of her slender whip, teasing the dark fuzz of his hair. They made a pretty picture at the gate, laughing and chattering their confidences aloud.
"What did Harry Musgrave say to your news, Bessie?" her father asked as they rode away from the vicar's house.
[Pg 32]"I forgot to tell him!" cried she, pulling up and half turning round. "I had so much to hear." But Mr. Carnegie said it was not worth while to bring Harry out again from his books. How fevered the lad looked! Why did not Moxon patronize open windows?
The road they were pursuing was a gradual long ascent, which brought them in sight of the sea and of a vast expanse of rolling heath and woodland. When they reached the top of the hill they breathed their horses a few minutes and admired the view, then struck into a bridle-track across the heath, and regained the high-road about a mile from Beechhurst. Scudding along in front of them was the familiar figure of Miss Wort in her work-a-day costume—a drab cloak and poke bonnet, her back up, and limp petticoats dragging in the dust. She turned swiftly in at the neat garden-gate that had a green space before it, where numerous boles of trees, lopt of their branches, lay about in picturesque confusion. A wheelwright's shed and yard adjoined the cottage, and Mr. Carnegie, halting without dismounting, whistled loud and shrill to call attention. A wiry, gray-headed man appeared from the shed, and came forward with a rueful, humorous twinkle in his shrewd blue eyes.
"Done again, Mr. Carnegie!" said he. "The old woman's done you again. It is no good denying her physic, for physic she will have. She went to Hampton Infirmary last Saturday with a ticket from Miss Wort, and brought home two bottles o' new mixture. So you see, sir, between 'em, you're frustrated once more."
"I am not surprised. Drugging is as bad a habit as drinking, and as hard to leave off. Miss Wort has just gone in to your wife, so I will not intrude. What is your son doing at present, Christie?"
"He's about somewhere idling with his drawing-book and bits o' colors. He takes himself off whenever it is a finer day than common. Most likely he's gone to Great-Ash Ford. He's met with a mate there after his own mind—an artist chap. Was you wanting him, Mr. Carnegie?"
"There is a job of painting to do at my stable, but it can wait. Only tell him, and he will suit his convenience."
At this moment Miss Wort reappeared in a sort of furtive [Pg 33]hurry. She gave a timid, sidelong glance at the doctor, and then addressed Bessie. Mr. Carnegie had his eye upon her: she was the thorn in his professional flesh. She meddled with his patients—a pious woman for whom other people's souls and internal complaints supplied the excitement absent from her own condition and favorite literature. She had some superfluous income and much unoccupied time, which she devoted to promiscuous visiting and the relief (or otherwise) of her poorer and busier neighbors. Mr. Carnegie had refused to accept the plea of her good heart in excuse of her bad practice, and had denounced her, in a moment of extreme irritation, as a presumptuous and mischievous woman; and Miss Wort had publicly rejoined that she would not call in Mr. Carnegie if she were at death's door, because who could expect a blessing on the remedies of a man who was not a professor of religion? The most cordial terms they affected was an armed neutrality. The doctor was never free from suspicion of Miss Wort. Though she looked scared and deprecating, she did not shrink from responsibility, and would administer a dose of her own prescribing in even critical cases, and pacify the doubts and fears of her unlucky patient with tender assurances that if it did her no good, it could do her no harm. Men she let alone, they were safe from her: she did not pretend to know the queer intricacies of their insides; also their aversion for physic she had found to be invincible.
"Two of the pills ten minutes afore dinner-time, Miss Wort, ma'am, did you say? It is not wrote so plain on the box as it might be," cried a plaintive treble from the cottage door. The high hedge and a great bay tree hid Mr. Carnegie from Mrs. Christie's view, but Miss Wort, timorously aware of his observation, gave a guilty start, and shrieking convulsively in the direction of the voice, "Yes, yes!" rushed to the doctor's stirrup and burst into eager explanation:
"It is only Trotter's strengthening pills, Mr. Carnegie. The basis of them is iron—iron or steel. I feel positive that they will be of service to Mrs. Christie, poor thing! with that dreadful sinking at her stomach; for I have tried them myself on similar occasions. No, Mr. Carnegie, a crust of bread would not be more to the purpose. A crust of bread, indeed! [Pg 34]Dr. Thomson of Edinburgh, the famous surgeon, has the highest opinion of Trotter."
Mr. Carnegie's face was a picture of disgust. He would have felt himself culpable if he had not delivered an emphatic protest against Miss Wort's experiments. Mrs. Christie had come trembling to the gate—a pretty-featured woman, but sallow as old parchment—and the doctor addressed his expostulations to her. Many defeats had convinced him of the futility of appealing to Miss Wort.
"If you had not the digestion of an ostrich, Mrs. Christie, you would have been killed long ago," said he with severe reprobation. "You have devoured half a man's earnings, and spoilt as fine a constitution as a woman need be blessed with, by your continual drugging."
"No, Mr. Carnegie, sir—with all respect to your judgment—I never had no constitution worth naming where constitutions come," said Mrs. Christie, deeply affronted. "That everybody's witness as knew me afore ever I married into the Forest. And what has kept me up since, toiling and moiling with a husband and boys, if the drugs hasn't? I hope I'm thankful for the blessing that has been sent with them." Miss Wort purred her approval of these pious sentences.
"Some day you'll be in a hurry for an antidote, Mrs. Christie: that will be the end of taking random advice."
"Well, sir, if so I be, my William is not the man to grudge me what's called for. As you are here, Mr. Carnegie, I should wish to have an understanding whether you mean to provide me with doctor's stuff; if not, I'll look elsewhere. I've not heard that Mr. Robb sets his face against drugs yet; which it stands to reason has a use, or God Almighty wouldn't have given them."
Mr. Carnegie rode off with a curt rejoinder to Mrs. Christie that he would not supply her foolish cravings, Robb or no Robb. Miss Wort was sorry for his contempt of the divine bounties, and sought an explanation in his conduct: "Poor fellow! he has not entered a church since Easter, unless he walks over to Littlemire, which is not likely."
"If he has not entered Mr. Wiley's church, I'm with him, and so is my William," said Mrs. Christie with sudden energy. "I can't abide Mr. Wiley. Oh, he's an arrogant man! It's [Pg 35]but seldom he calls this way, and I don't care if it was seldomer; for could he have spoken plainer if it had been to a dog? 'You'd be worse if you ailed aught, Mrs. Christie,' says he, and grins. I'd been giving him an account of the poor health I enjoy. And my William heard him with his own ears when he all but named Mr. Carnegie in the pulpit, and not to his credit; so he's in the right of it to keep away. A kinder doctor there is not far nor near, for all he has such an unaccountable prejudice against what he lives by."
"But that is not Christian. We ought not to absent ourselves from the holy ordinances because the clergyman happens to offend us. We ought to bear patiently being told of our faults," urged Miss Wort, who on no account would have allowed one of the common people to impugn the spiritual authorities unrebuked: her own private judgment on doctrine was another matter.
"'Between him and thee,' yes," said Mrs. Christie, who on some points was as sensitive and acute as a well-born woman. "But it is taking a mean advantage of a man to talk at him when he can't answer; that's what my William says. For if he spoke up for himself, they'd call it brawling in church, and turn him out. He ain't liked, Miss Wort; you can't say he is, to tell truth. Not many of the gentlemen does attend church, except them as goes for the look o' the thing, like the old admiral and a few more."
Miss Wort groaned audibly, then cheered up, and with a gush of feeling assured her humble friend that it would not be so in a better world; there all would be love and perfect harmony. And so she went on her farther way. Mr. Carnegie and Bessie Fairfax, riding slowly, were still in sight. The next visit Miss Wort had proposed to pay was to a scene of genuine distress, and she saw with regret that the doctor would forestall her. He dismounted and entered a cottage by the roadside, and when she reached it the door was shut, Brownie's bridle hung on the paling, and Bessie was letting Miss Hoyden crop the sweet grass on the bank while she waited. Miss Wort determined to stay for the doctor's exit; she had remedies in her pocket for this case also.
Within the cottage there was a good-looking, motherly [Pg 36]woman, and a large-framed young man of nineteen or twenty who sat beside the fire with a ghastly face, and hands hanging down in dark despondency. He had the aspect of one rising from a terrible illness; in fact, he had just come out of prison after a month's hard labor.
"It is his mind that's worst hurt, sir," said his mother, lifting her eyes full of tears to Mr. Carnegie's kind face. "But he has a sore pain in his chest, too, that he never used to have."
"Stand up, Tom, and let me have a look at you," said the doctor, and Tom stood up, grim as death, starved, shamed, unutterably miserable.
"Mr. Wiley's been in, but all he had to say was as he hoped Tom would keep straight now, since he'd found out by unhappy experience as the way of transgressors is hard," the poor woman told her visitor, breaking into a sob as she spoke.
Mr. Carnegie considered the lad, and told him to sit down again, then turned to the window. His eye lit on Miss Wort Standing outside with downcast face, and hands as if she were praying. He tapped on the glass, and as she rushed to the door he met her with a flag of truce in the form of a requisition for aid.
"Miss Wort, I know you are a liberal soul, and here is a case where you can do some real good, if you will be guided," he said firmly. "I was going to appeal to Lady Latimer, but I have put so much on her ladyship's kindness lately—"
"Oh, Mr. Carnegie! I have a right to help here," interrupted Miss Wort. "A right, for poor Tom was years and years in my Sunday-school class; so he can't be very bad! Didn't Admiral Parkins and the other magistrates say that they would rather send his master to prison than him, if they had the power?"
"Yes; but he has done his prison now, and the pressing business is to keep him from going altogether to the deuce. I want him to have a good meal of meat three or four times a week, and light garden-work—all he is fit for now. And then we shall see what next."
"I wo'ant list and I wo'ant emigrate; I'll stop where I am and live it down," announced Tom doggedly.
[Pg 37]"Yes, yes, that is what I should expect of you, Tom," said Miss Wort. "Then you will recover everybody's good opinion."
"I don't heed folks' opinions, good or bad. I know what I know."
"Well, then, get your cap, and come home to dinner with me; it is roast mutton," said Miss Wort, as if pleading with a fractious child.
Tom rose heavily, took his cap, and followed her out. Mr. Carnegie watched them as they turned down a back lane to the village, the lathy figure of the lad towering by the head and shoulders above the poke bonnet and drab cloak of Miss Wort. He was talking with much violent gesture of arm and fist, and she was silent. But she was not ruminating physic.
"Miss Wort is like one of the old saints—she is not ashamed in any company," said Bessie Fairfax.
"If justice were satisfied with good intentions, Miss Wort would be a blameless woman," said her father.
A few minutes more brought the ride to an end at the doctor's door. And there was a messenger waiting for him with a peremptory call to a distance. It was a very rare chance indeed that he had a whole holiday. His reputation for skill stood high in the Forest, and his practice was extensive in proportion. But he had health, strength, and the heart for it; and in fact it was his prosperity that bore half the burden of his toils.
A week elapsed. Lady Latimer called twice on Mrs. Carnegie to offer counsel and countenance to Bessie Fairfax. The news that she was going to leave the doctor's house for a rise in the world spread through the village. Mrs. Wiley and Miss Buff called with the same benevolent intentions as my lady. Mrs. Carnegie felt this oppressive, but tried to believe that it was kind; Bessie grew impatient, and wished [Pg 38]she could be let alone. Mr. Phipps laughed at her, and asked if she did not enjoy her novel importance. Bessie rejoined with a scorny "No, indeed!" Mr. Phipps retaliated with a grimace of incredulity.
Mr. John Short's letter had been acknowledged, but it did not get itself answered. Mr. Carnegie said, and said again, that there was no hurry about it. In fact, he could not bear to look the loss of Bessie in the face. He took her out to ride with him twice in that seven days, and when his wife meekly urged that the affair must go on and be finished, he replied that as Kirkham had done without Bessie for fourteen years, it might well sustain her absence a little longer. Kirkham, however, having determined that it was its duty to reclaim Bessie, was moved to be imperious. As Mr. Fairfax heard nothing from his lawyer, he went into Norminster to bid him press the thing on. Mr. John Short pleaded to give the Carnegies longer law, and when Mr. Fairfax refused to see any grounds for it, he suggested a visit to Beechhurst as more appropriate than another letter.
"Who is to go? You or I?" asked the squire testily.
"Both, if you like. But you would do best to go alone, to see the little girl and the good people who have taken care of her, and to let the whole matter be transacted on a friendly footing."
Mr. Fairfax shrank from the awkwardness of the task, from the humiliation of it, and said, "Could not Short manage it by post, without a personal encounter?" Mr. Short thought not. Finally, it was agreed that if another week elapsed without bringing the promised answer from Mrs. Carnegie, they would go to Beechhurst together and settle the matter on the spot.
The doctor's procrastination stole the second seven days as it had stolen the first.
"Those people mean to make us some difficulty," said Mr. Fairfax with secret irritation.
Mr. John Short gave no encouragement to this suspicion; instead, he urged the visit to Beechhurst. "We need not give more than three days to it—one to go, one to stay, one to return," said he.
Mr. Fairfax objected that he disliked travelling in a fuss. [Pg 39]The lawyer could return when their business was accomplished; as for himself, being in the Forest, he should make a tour of it, the weather favoring. And thus the journey was settled.
There was not a lovelier spot within children's foot-range of Beechhurst than Great-Ash Ford. On a glowing midsummer day it was a perfect paradise for idlers. Not far off, yet half buried out of sight amongst its fruit trees, was a farmhouse thatched with reeds, very old, and weather-stained of all golden, brown, and orange tints. A row of silver firs was in the rear, and a sweep of the softest velvety sward stretched from its narrow domain to the river. To watch the cattle come from the farther pastures in single file across the shallow water at milking-time was as pretty a bit of pastoral as could be seen in all the Forest.
Bessie Fairfax loved this spot with a peculiar affection. Beyond the ford went a footpath, skirting the river, to the village of Brook, where young Musgrave lived—a footpath overshadowed by such giant fir trees, such beeches and vast oaks as are nowhere else in England. The Great Ash was a storm-riven fragment, but its fame continued, and its beauty in sufficient picturesqueness for artistic purposes. Many a painter had made the old russet farmhouse his summer lodging; and one was sketching now where the water had dried in its pebbly bed, and the adventurous little bare feet of Jack and Willie Carnegie were tempting an imaginary peril in quest of the lily which still whitened the stream under the bank.
It was not often that Bessie, with the children alone, wandered so far afield. But the day had beguiled them, and a furtive hope that Harry Musgrave might be coming to Beechhurst that way had given Bessie courage. He had not been met, however, when it was time to turn their faces towards home. The boys had their forest pony, and mounted him by turns. It was Tom's turn now, and Bessie was leading Jerry, and carrying the socks and boots of the other two in the skirt of her frock, gathered up in one hand. She was a little subdued, a little downcast, it might be with fatigue and the sultry air, or it might be with her present disappointment; but beyond and above all wearied sensations was the jar of unsettledness that had come into her life, and perplexed and [Pg 40]confused all its sweet simplicities. She made no haste, but lingered, and let the children linger as they pleased.
The path by the river was not properly a bridle-path, but tourists for pleasure often lost their way in the forest, and emerged upon the roads unexpectedly from such delicious, devious solitudes. Thus it befell to-day when two gentlemen on horseback overtook Bessie, where she had halted with Tom and the pony to let Jack and Willie come up. They were drying their pink toes preparatory to putting on again their shoes and stockings as the strangers rode by.
"Is this the way to Beechhurst, my little gypsy?" quoth the elder of the two, drawing rein for a moment.
Bessie looked up with a sunburnt face under her loose fair hair. "Yes, sir," said she. Then a sudden intelligence gleamed in her eyes, her cheeks blazed more hotly, and she thought to herself, "It is my grandfather!"
The gentlemen proceeded some hundred paces in silence, and then the one whom Bessie suspected as her grandfather said to the other, "Short, that is the girl herself! She has the true Fairfax face as it is painted in a score of our old portraits."
"I believe you are right, sir. Let us be certain—let us ask her name," proposed the lawyer.
Bessie's little troop were now ready to march, and they set off at a run, heedless of her cry to stop a while behind the riders, "Else we shall be in the dust of their heels," she said. Lingering would not have saved her, however; for the strangers were evidently purposed to wait until she came up. Jack was now taking his turn on Jerry, and Jerry with his head towards his stable wanted no leading or encouraging to go. He was soon up with the gentlemen and in advance of them. Next Tom and Willie trotted by and stood, hand-in-hand, gazing at the horses. Bessie's feet lagged as if leaden weights were tied to them, and her conscious air as she glanced in the face of the stranger who had addressed her before set at rest any remaining doubt of who she was.
"Are you Elizabeth Fairfax who lives with Mrs. Carnegie?" he asked in an abrupt voice—the more abrupt and loud for a certain nervousness and agitation that arose in him at the sight of the child.
[Pg 41]"Yes, sir, I am," replied Bessie, like a veritable echo of himself.
"Then, as we are travelling the same road, you will be our guide, eh?"
"The children are little; they cannot keep pace with men on horseback," said Bessie. They were a mile and a half from Beechhurst yet. Mr. John Short spoke hastily in an endeavor to promote an understanding, and blundered worse than his client: his suggestion was that they might each take up one of the bairns; but the expression of Bessie's eyes was a reminder that she might not please to trudge at their bridle, though the little and weak ones were to be carried.
"You are considering who is to take you up?" hazarded Mr. Fairfax.
Bessie recovered her countenance and said, as she would have said to any other strangers on horseback who might have invited her to be their guide on foot, "You cannot miss the way. It lies straight before you for nearly a mile over the heath; then you will come to cross-roads and a guide-post. You will be at Beechhurst long before we shall."
The gentlemen accepted their dismissal and rode on. Was Bessie mollified at all by the mechanical courtesy with which their hats were lifted at their departure? They recognized, then, that she was not the little gypsy they had hailed her. It did not enter into her imagination that they had recognized also the true Fairfax face under her dishevelled holiday locks, though she was persuaded that the one who had asked her name was her wicked grandfather: that her grandfather was a wicked man Bessie had quite made up her mind. Mr. John Short admired her behavior. It did not chafe his dignity or alarm him for the peace of his future life. But Mr. Fairfax was not a man of humor; he saw no fun whatever in his prospects with that intrepid child, who had evidently inherited not the Fairfax face only, but the warm Fairfax temper.
"Do you suppose that she guessed who we are?" he asked his man of law.
"Yes, but she did not add to that the probability that we knew that she guessed it, though she looks quick enough."
Mr. Fairfax was not flattered: "I don't love a quick [Pg 42]woman. A quick woman is always self-willed and wanting in feminine sweetness."
"There was never a Fairfax yet, man or woman, of mean understanding," said the lawyer. "Since the little girl has the family features, the chances are that she has the family brains, and no lack of wit and spirit."
Mr. Fairfax groaned. He held the not uncommon opinion that wit and spirit endanger a man's peace and rule in a house. And yet in the case of his son Laurence's Xantippe he had evidence enough that nothing in nature is so discordant and intractable as a fool. Then he fell into a silence, and turned his horse off the highway upon the margin of sward at one side of it. Mr. John Short took the other; and so Bessie and the boys soon lost sight of them.
It was a beautiful forest-road when they had crossed the heath. No hedges shut it in, but here and there the great beech trees stood in clumps or in single grace, and green rides opened vistas into cool depths of shade which had never changed but with the seasons for many ages. It was quite old-world scenery here. Neither clearings nor enclosures had been thought of, and the wild sylvan beauty had all its own perfect way. Presently there were signs of habitation. A curl of smoke from a low roof so lost in its orchard that but for that domestic flag it might have escaped observation altogether; a triangular green with a pond, geese and pigs; more thatched cottages, gardens, small fields, large hedges, high, bushy, unpruned; hedgerow trees; a lonely little chapel in a burial-ground, a woodyard, a wheelwright's shop, a guide-post pointing three ways, a blacksmith's forge at one side of the road, and an old inn opposite; cows, unkempt children; white gates, gravelled drives, chimney-pots of gentility, hidden away in bowers of foliage. Then a glimpse of the church-tower, a sweep in the road; the church and crowded churchyard, the rectory, the doctor's house, and a stone's throw off the "King's Arms" at the top of the town-street, which sloped gently all down hill. Another forge, tiled houses, shops with queer bow-windows and steps up to the half-glazed doors, where a bell rang when the latch was lifted. More white gates, more well-kept shrubberies; green lanes, roads branching, curving to right and left; and everywhere those open [Pg 43]spaces of lawn and magnificent beech trees, as if the old town had an unlimited forest-right to scatter its dwellings far and wide, just as caprice or the love of beauty might dictate.
"This is very lovely—it is a series of delightful pictures. Only to live here must be a sort of education," said Mr. Fairfax as they arrived within view of the ancient church and its precincts.
Mr. John Short saw and smelt opportunities of improvement, but he agreed that Beechhurst for picturesqueness was most desirable. Every cottage had its garden, and every garden was ablaze with flowers. Flowers love that moist sun and soil, and thrive joyfully. Gayest of the gay within its trim holly hedge was the Carnegies. The scent of roses and mignonette suffused the warm air of evening. The doctor was going about with a watering-pot, tending his beauties and favorites, while he watched for the children coming home. His name and profession, set forth on a bright brass plate, adorned the gate, from which a straight box-edged path led to the white steps of the porch. The stable entrance was at the side. Everything about the place had an air of well-doing and of means enough; and the doctor himself, whom the strangers eyed observantly from the height of their saddles, looked like his own master in all the independence of easy circumstances.
Visitors to the Forest were too numerous in summer to attract notice. Mr. Carnegie lifted his head for a moment, and then continued his assiduities to a lovely old yellow rose which had manifested delicate symptoms earlier in the season. Next to his wife and children the doctor was fond of roses. The travellers rode past to the door of the "King's Arms," and there dismounted. Half an hour after they were dining in an up-stairs, bow-windowed room which commanded a cheerful prospect up and down the village street, with a view of the church opposite and a side glance of Mr. Carnegie's premises. They witnessed the return of Bessie and the boys, and the fatherly help and reception they had. They saw the doctor lift up Bessie's face to look at her, saw him pat her on the shoulder encouragingly as she made him some brief communication, saw him open the door and send her into the house, and then hurry round to the stable to prevent the [Pg 44]boys lingering while Jerry was rubbed down. He had leisure and the heart, it seemed, for all such offices of kindness, and his voice was the signal of instant obedience.
Later in the evening they were all out in the garden—Mrs. Carnegie too. One by one the children were dismissed to bed, and when only Bessie was left, the doctor filled his pipe and had a smoke, walking to and fro under the hedge, over which he conversed at intervals with passing neighbors. His wife and Bessie sat in the porch. The only thing in all this that Mr. Fairfax could except to was the doctor's clay pipe. He denounced smoking as a low, pernicious habit; the lawyer, more tolerant, remarked that it was an increasing habit and good for the revenue, but bad for him: he believed that many a quarrel that might have ripened into a lawsuit had prematurely collapsed in the philosophy that comes of tobacco-smoke.
"Perhaps it would prepare me with equanimity to meet my adversary," said Mr. Fairfax.
Mr. John Short had not intended to give the conversation this turn. He feared that his client was working himself into an unreasonable humor, in which he would be ready to transfer to Mr. Carnegie the reproaches that were due only to himself. He was of a suspicious temper, and had already insinuated that the people who had kept his grandchild must have done it from interested and ulterior motives. The lawyer could not see this, but he did see that if Mr. Fairfax was bent on making a contest of what might be amicably arranged, no power on earth could hinder him. For though it proverbially takes two to make a quarrel, the doctor did not look as if he would disappoint a man of sharp contention if he sought it. The soft word that turns away anger would not be of his speaking.
"It will be through sheer mismanagement if there arise a hitch," Mr. John Short said. "You desire to obtain possession of the child—then you must go quietly about it. She is of an age to speak for herself, and our long neglect may well have forfeited our claim. She is not your immediate successor; there are infinite possibilities in the lives of your two sons. If the case were dragged before the courts, she might be given her choice where she would live; and if she has a heart she [Pg 45]would stay at Beechhurst, with her father's widow—and we are baulked."
"What right has a woman to call herself a man's widow when she has married again?" objected Mr. Fairfax.
"Mrs. Carnegie's acknowledgment of our letter was courteous: we are on the safe side yet," said the lawyer smoothly. "Suppose I continue the negotiation by seeking an interview with her to-morrow morning?"
"Have your own way. I am of no use, it seems. I wish I had stayed at Abbotsmead and had let you come alone."
Mr. John Short echoed the wish with all his heart, though he did not give his thoughts tongue. He began to conjecture that some new aspect of the affair had been presented to his client's mind by the encounter with Elizabeth in the Forest. And he was right. The old squire had conceived for her a sort of paradoxical love at first sight, and was become suddenly jealous of all who had an established hold on her affections. Here was the seed of an unforeseen complication, which was almost sure to become inimical to Bessie's happiness when he obtained the guidance of her life.
When Mr. Carnegie's pipe was out the sunset was past and the evening dews were falling. Nine had struck by the kitchen clock, supper was on the table, and the lamp was shedding its light through the open window.
"Come in, mother, come in, Bessie," said the doctor. "And, Bessie, let us hear over again what was your adventure this afternoon?"
Bessie sat down before her cup of new milk and slice of brown bread, and told her simple tale a second time. It had been rather pooh-poohed the first, but it had made an impression. Said Mr. Carnegie: "And you jumped to the conclusion that this gentleman unknown was your grandfather, even before he asked your name? Now to describe him."
"He came from Hampton, because he rode Jefferson's old gray mare, and the other rode the brown horse with white socks. He is a little like Admiral Parkins—neither fat nor thin. He has white hair and a red and brown color. He looks stern and as proud as Lucifer" (Mrs. Carnegie gave Bessie a reproving glance), "and his voice sounds as if he were. Perhaps he could be kind—"
[Pg 46]"You don't flatter him in his portrait, Bessie. Apparently you did not take to him?"
"Not at all. I don't believe we shall ever be friends."
"Bessie dear, you must not set your mind against Mr. Fairfax," interposed her mother. "Don't encourage her in her nonsense and prejudice, Thomas; they'll only go against her."
"Now for your grandfather's companion, Bessie: what was he like?"
"I did not notice. He was like everybody else—like Mr. Judson at the Hampton Bank."
"That would be our correspondent, the lawyer, Mr. John Short of Norminster."
Mr. Carnegie dropt the subject after this. His wife launched at him a deprecating look, as much as to say, Would there not be vexation enough for them all, without encouraging Bessie to revolt against lawful authority? The doctor, who was guided more than he knew, thereupon held his peace.
Mr. Fairfax was not a man of sentimental recollections. Nevertheless, it did occur to him, as the twilight deepened, that somewhere in the encumbered churchyard that he was looking down upon lay his son Geoffry and Geoffry's first wife, Elizabeth. He felt a very lonely old man as he thought of it. None of his sons' marriages were to boast of, but Geoffry's, as it turned out, was the least unfortunate of any—Geoffry's marriage with Elizabeth Bulmer, that is. If he had not approved of that lady, he had tolerated her—pity that he had not tolerated her a little more! The Forest climate had not suited the robust young Woldshire folk. Once Geoffry had appealed to his father to help him to change his benefice, but had experienced a harsh refusal. This was after Elizabeth had suffered from an attack of rheumatism and ague, when she longed to escape from the lovely, damp screens of the Forest to fresh Wold breezes. She died, and [Pg 47]Geoffry took another wife. Then he died of what was called in the district marsh-fever. Mr. Fairfax was not impervious to regret, but no regret would bring them to life again.
The next morning, while the dew was on the grass, he made his way into the churchyard, and sought about for Geoffry's grave. He discovered it in a corner, marked by a plain headstone and shaded by an elder bush. It was the stone Geoffry had raised in memory of his Elizabeth, and below her name his was inscribed, with the date of his death. The churchyard was all neatly kept—this grave not more neatly than the others. Mrs. Carnegie's affections had flowed into other channels, and Bessie had no turn for meditation amongst the tombs. Mr. Fairfax felt rather more forlorn after he had seen his son's last home than before, and might have sunk into a fit of melancholy but for the diversion of his mind to present matters. Just across the road Mr. Carnegie was mounting his horse for his morning ride to the union workhouse, and Bessie was at the gate seeing him off.
The little girl was not at all tired, flushed, or abstracted now. She was cheerful as a lark, fresh, fair, rosy—more like a Fairfax than ever. But when she caught sight of her grandfather over the churchyard wall, she put on her grave airs and mentioned the fact to Mr. Carnegie. Mr. John Short had written already to bespeak an interview with Bessie's guardian, and to announce the arrival of Mr. Fairfax at the "King's Arms." But at the same moment had come an imperative summons from the workhouse, and Mr. Carnegie was not the doctor to neglect a sick poor man for any business with a rich one that could wait. He had bidden his wife receive the lawyer, and was leaving her to appoint the time when Bessie directed his attention to her grandfather. With a sudden movement he turned his horse, touched his hat with his whip-handle, and said, "Sir, are you Mr. Fairfax?" The stranger assented. "Then here is our Bessie, your granddaughter, ready to make your acquaintance. My wife will see your agent. As for myself, I have an errand elsewhere this morning." With that, and a reassuring nod to Bessie, the doctor started off at a hard trot, and the two, thus summarily introduced, stood confronting one another with a wall, the road, and a gate between them. There was an absurdity [Pg 48]in the situation that Bessie felt very keenly, and blushes, mirth, and vexation flowed over her tell-tale visage as she waited holding the gate, willing to obey if her grandfather called her, or to stay till he came.
By a singular coincidence, while they were at a halt what to do or say, Lady Latimer advanced up the village street, having walked a mile from her house at Fairfield since breakfast. She was an early riser and a great walker: her life must have been half as long again as the lives of most ladies from the little portion of it she devoted to rest. She was come to Beechhurst now on some business of school, or church, or parish, which she assumed would, unless by her efforts, soon be at a deadlock. But years will tell on the most vigorous frames, and my lady looked so jaded that, if she had fallen in with Mr. Carnegie, he would have reminded her, for her health's sake, that no woman is indispensable. She gave Bessie that sweet smile which was flattering as a caress, and was about to pass on when something wistful in the child's eyes arrested her notice. She stopped and asked if there was any more news from Woldshire. Bessie's round cheeks were two roses as she replied that her grandfather Fairfax had come—that he was there at the very moment, watching them from the churchyard.
"Where?" said my lady, and turned about to see.
Mr. Fairfax knew her. He descended the steps, came out at the lych-gate, and met her. At that instant the cast of his countenance reminded Bessie of her cynical friend Mr. Phipps, and a thought crossed her mind that if Lady Latimer had not recognized her grandfather and made a movement to speak, he would not have challenged her. It would have seemed a very remote period to Bessie, but it did not seem so utterly out of date to themselves, that Richard Fairfax in his adolescence had almost run mad for love of my lady in her teens. She had not reciprocated his passion, and in a fit of desperation he had married his wife, the mother of his three sons. Perhaps the cool affection he had borne them all his life was the measure of his indifference to that poor lady, and that indifference the measure of his vindictive constancy to his first idol. They had not seen each other for many years; their courses had run far apart, and they had [Pg 49]grown old. But a woman never quite forgets to feel interested in a man who has once worshipped her, though he may long since have got up off his knees and gone and paid his devotions at other shrines. Lady Latimer had not been so blessed in her life and affections that she could afford to throw away even a flattering memory. Bessie's talk of her grandfather had brought the former things to her mind. Her face kindled at the sight of her friend, and her voice was the soul of kindness. Mr. Fairfax looked up and pitied her, and lost his likeness to Mr. Phipps. Ambitious, greedy of power, of rank, and riches—thus and thus had he once contemned her; but there was that fascinating smile, and so she would charm him if they met some day in Hades.
Bessie went in-doors to apprise her mother of the visitors who were at hand. Mr. Fairfax and Lady Latimer stood for a quarter of an hour or longer in the shade of the churchyard trees, exchanging news, the chief news being the squire's business at Beechhurst. Lady Latimer offered him her advice and countenance for his granddaughter, and assured him that Bessie had fine qualities, much simplicity, and the promise of beauty. Meanwhile Mrs. Carnegie, forewarned of the impending interview, collected herself and prepared for it. She sent Bessie into the rarely-used drawing-room to pull up the blinds and open the glass door upon the lawn; and, further to occupy the nervous moments, bade her gather a few roses for the china bowl on the round table. Bessie had just finished her task, and was standing with a lovely Devoniensis in her hand, when her grandfather appeared, supported by Lady Latimer.
Mr. Fairfax was received by Mrs. Carnegie with courtesy, but without effusion. It was the anxious desire of her heart that no ill-will should arise because of Bessie's restoration. She was one of those unaffected, reasonable, calm women whom circumstances rarely disconcert. Then her imagination was not active. She did not pensively reflect that here was her once father-in-law, but she felt comfortable in the consciousness that Bessie had on a nice clean pink gingham frock and a crimped frill round her white throat, in which she looked as pretty as she could look. Bessie's light hair, threaded with [Pg 50]gold, all crisp and wavy, and her pure bright complexion, gave her an air of health and freshness not to be surpassed. Her beauty was not too imposing—it was of everyday; and though her wicked grandfather seemed to frown at her with his bushy gray brows, and to search her through with his cold keen eyes, he was not displeased by her appearance. He was gratified that she took after his family. Bessie's expression as she regarded him again made him think of that characteristic signature of her royal namesake, "Yours, as you demean yourself, Elizabeth," and he framed a resolution to demean himself with all the humility and discretion at his command. He experienced an impulse of affection towards her stronger than anything he had ever felt for his sons: perhaps he discerned in her a more absolute strain of himself. His sons had all taken after their mother.
Mrs. Carnegie's reception propitiated Mr. Fairfax still further. She said a few words in extenuation of the delay there had been in replying to his communication through Mr. John Short; and he was able to reply, even sincerely, that he was glad it had occurred, since it had occasioned his coming to the Forest. Bessie reddened; she had an almost irresistible desire to say something gruff—she abominated these compliments. She was vexed that Lady Latimer should be their witness, and bent her brows fiercely. My lady did not understand the signs of her temper. She was only amused by the flash of that harmless fire, and serenely interposed to soothe and encourage the little girl. Oh, if she could have guessed how she was offending!
"Can you spare Bessie for a few hours, Mrs. Carnegie? If you can, I will carry her off to luncheon at Fairfield. Mr. Fairfax, whom I knew when I was not much more than her age, will perhaps come too?" said my lady, and Mr. Fairfax assented.
But tears rushed to Bessie's eyes, and she would have uttered a most decisive "No," had not Mrs. Carnegie promptly answered for her that it was a nice plan. "Your dress is quite sufficient, Bessie," added my lady, and she was sent up stairs to put on her hat. Did she stamp her angry little foot as she obeyed? Probably. And she cried, for to go to Fairfield thus was horribly against her inclination. Nevertheless, half an [Pg 51]hour later, when my lady had transacted the business that brought her to Beechhurst so opportunely, Bessie found herself walking gently along the road at her side, and on her other hand her wicked grandfather, chatting of a variety of past events in as disengaged and pleasant a fashion as an old gentleman of sixty-five, fallen unexpectedly into the company of an old friend, could do. As Bessie cooled down, she listened and began to speculate whether he might possibly be not so altogether wicked as his recent misbehavior had led her to conclude; then she began to think better things of him in a general way, but unfortunately it did not occur to her that he might possibly have conceived a liking to herself. Love, that best solvent of difficulties, was astray between them from the beginning.
Bessie was not invited to talk, but Lady Latimer gave her a kind glance at intervals. Yet for all this encouragement her heart went pit-a-pat when they came in sight of Fairfield; for about the gate was gathered a group of young ladies—to Bessie's imagination at this epoch the most formidable of created beings. There was one on horseback, a most playful, sweet Margaret, who was my lady's niece; and another, a dark-eyed, pretty thing, cuddling a brisk brown terrier—Dora and Dandy they were; and a tall, graceful Scotch lassie, who ran to meet Lady Latimer, and fondled up to her with the warmest affection; and two little girls besides, sisters to Dora, very frank to make friends. Each had some communication in haste for my lady, who, when she could get leave to speak, introduced her niece to Mr. Fairfax, and recommended Bessie to the attention of her contemporaries. Forthwith they were polite. Dora offered Dandy to Bessie's notice; Margaret courted admiration for Beauty; the others looked on with much benevolence, and made cordial remarks and lively rejoinders. Bessie was too shy to enjoy their affability; she felt awkward, and looked almost repulsively proud. The younger ones gradually subsided. Margaret had often met Bessie riding with Mr. Carnegie, and they knew each other to bow to. Bessie patted Beauty's neck and commended her—a great step towards friendliness with her mistress—and Margaret said enthusiastically, "Is she not a darling? She shall have sugar, she shall! Oh, Aunt Olympia, Beauty went [Pg 52]so well to-day!" Then to Bessie: "That is a handsome little mare you ride: what a sharp trot you go at sometimes!"
"It is my father's pace—we get over the ground fast. Miss Hoyden, she is called—she is almost thoroughbred."
"You ride, Elizabeth? That is a good hearing," said Mr. Fairfax. "You shall have a Miss Hoyden at Abbotsmead."
Bessie colored and turned her head for a moment, but said nothing. Margaret whispered that would be nice. Poor Bessie's romance was now known to the young ladies of the neighborhood, and she was more interesting to them than she knew.
Lady Latimer led the way with Mr. Fairfax up the drive overhung with flowering trees and bushes. On the steps before the open hall-door stood Mr. Wiley, whom my lady had bidden to call and stay to luncheon when his pastoral visits brought him into the vicinity of Fairfield. He caught sight of his young neighbor, Bessie Fairfax, and on the instant, with that delicious absence of tact which characterized him, he asked brusquely, "How came you here?" Bessie blushed furiously, and no one answered—no one seemed to hear but herself; so Mr. Wiley added confidentially, "It is promotion indeed to come to Fairfield. Keep humble, Bessie."
"Wait for me, Miss Fairfax," said Margaret as she dismounted. "Come to my room." And Bessie went without a word, though her lips were laughing. She was laughing at herself, at her incongruousness, at her trivial mortifications. Margaret would set her at her ease, and Bessie learnt that she had a rare charm in her hair, both from its color and the manner of its growth. It was lovely, Margaret told her, and pressed its crisp shining abundance with her hand delicately.
"That is a comfort in adverse circumstances," said Bessie with a light in her eyes. Then they ran down stairs to find the morning-room deserted and all the company gone in to luncheon.
The elders of the party were placed at a round table, a seat for Bessie being reserved by Lady Latimer. Two others were empty, into one of which dropt Margaret; the other was occupied by Mr. Bernard, the squire of the next parish, to whom Margaret was engaged. Their marriage, in fact, was [Pg 53]close at hand, and Beechhurst was already devising its rejoicings for the wedding-day.
The little girls were at a side-table, sociable and happy in under tones. Bessie believed that she might have been happy too—at any rate, not quite so miserable—if Mr. Wiley had not been there to lift his brows and intimate surprise at the honor that was done her. She hated her exaltation. She quoted inwardly, "They that are low need fear no fall," and trembled for what he might be moved to say next. There was a terrible opportunity of silence, for at first nobody talked. A crab of brobdignagian proportions engrossed the seniors. Bessie and the younger ones had roast lamb without being asked what they would take, and Bessie, all drawbacks notwithstanding, found herself capable of eating her dinner. The stillness was intense for a few minutes. Bessie glanced at one or two of the intent faces preparing crab with a close devotion to the process that assured satisfaction in the result, and then she caught Lady Latimer's eye. They both smiled, and suddenly the talk broke out all round; my lady beginning to inquire of the rector concerning young Musgrave of Brook, whether he knew him. Bessie listened with breathless interest to this mention of her dear comrade.
"Yes, I know him, in a way—a clever youth, ambitious of a college education," said Mr. Wiley. "I have tried my best to dissuade him, but his mind is bent on rising in the world. Like little Christie, the wheelwright's son, who must be an artist."
"Why discourage young Musgrave? I heard from his father a few days ago that he had won a scholarship at Hampton worth fifty pounds a year, tenable for three years."
"That is news, indeed! Moxon has coached him well: I sent him to poor Moxon. He wanted to read with me, but—you understand—I could not exactly receive him while Lord Rafferty and Mr. Duffer are in my house. So I sent him to poor Moxon, who is glad of a pupil when he can get one."
"I wish Mr. Moxon better preferment. As for young Musgrave, he must have talent. I was driving through Brook yesterday, and I called at the manor-house. The mother is a modest person of much natural dignity. The son was out. [Pg 54]I left a message that I should be glad to see him, and do something for him, if he would walk over to Fairfield."
"He will not come, I warrant," exclaimed Mr. Wiley. "He is a radical fellow, and would say, as soon as look at you, that he had no wish to be encumbered with patronage."
"He would not say so to Lady Latimer," cried Bessie Fairfax. Her voice rang clear as a bell, and quite startled the composed, refined atmosphere. Everybody looked at her with a smile. My lady exchanged a glance with her niece.
"Then young Musgrave is a friend of yours?" she said, addressing her little guest.
"We are cousins," was Bessie's unhesitating reply.
"I was not aware of it," remarked her grandfather drily.
Bessie was not daunted. Mrs. Musgrave was Mrs. Carnegie's elder sister. Young Musgrave and the young Carnegies called cousins, and while she was one of the Carnegies she was a cousin too. Besides, Harry Musgrave was the nephew of her father's second wife, and their comradeship dated from his visits to the rectory while her father was alive. She did not offer explanations, but in her own mind she peremptorily refused to deny or relinquish that cousinship. She went on eating in a dream of confusion, very rosy as to the cheeks and very downcast as to the eyes, but not at all ashamed. The little girls wondered with great amazement. Mr. Wiley did not relish his rebuke, and eyed Bessie with anything but charity. His bad genius set him expatiating further on the hazardous theme of ambition in youths of low birth and mean estate, with allusions to Brook and the wheelwright's shed that could not be misunderstood. Mr. Fairfax, observing his granddaughter, felt uneasy. Lady Latimer generalized to stop the subject. Suddenly said Bessie, flashing at the rector, and quoting Mr. Carnegie, "You attribute to class what belongs to character." Then, out of her own irrepressible indignation, she added, "Harry Musgrave is as good a gentleman as you are, and little Christie too, though he may be only a carpenter's son." (Which was not saying much for them, as Mr. Phipps remarked when he was told the story.)
Lady Latimer stood up and motioned to all the young people to come away. They vanished in retiring, some one [Pg 55]road, some another, and for the next five minutes Bessie was left with my lady alone, angry and exquisitely uncomfortable, but not half alive yet to the comic aspect of her very original behavior. She glanced with shy deprecation in Lady Latimer's face, and my lady smiled with a perfect sympathy in her sensations.
"You are not afraid to speak up for an absent friend, but silence is the best answer to such impertinences," said she, and then went on to talk of Abbotsmead and Kirkham till Bessie was almost cheated of her distressing self-consciousness.
Fairfield was a small house, but full of prettiness. Bessie Fairfax had never seen anything so like a picture as the drawing-room, gay with flowers, perfumed, airy, all graceful ease and negligent comfort. From a wide-open glass door a flight of steps descended to the rose-garden, now in its beauty. Paintings, mirrors decorated the walls; books strewed the tables. There were a hundred things, elegant, grotesque, and useless, to look at and admire. How vivid, varied, delicious life must be thus adorned! Bessie thought, and lost herself a little while in wonder and curiosity. Then she turned to Lady Latimer again. My lady had lost herself in reverie too; her countenance had an expression of weary restlessness and unsatisfied desire. No doubt she had her private cares. Bessie felt afraid, as if she had unwittingly surprised a secret.
Visitors were announced. The gentlemen came from the dining-room. Mr. Bernard and Margaret appeared from the rose-garden. So did some of the little girls, and invited Bessie down the steps. There was a general hum of voices and polite laughter. More visitors, more conversation, more effort. Bessie began to feel tired of the restraint, and looked up to her grandfather, who stood in the doorway talking to Margaret. The next minute he came to her, and said, with as much consideration as if she were a grown-up person, "You have had enough of this, Elizabeth. It is time we were returning to Beechhurst."
Margaret understood. "You wish to go? Come, then; I will take you to my room to put on your hat," said she.
They escaped unnoticed except by Lady Latimer. She followed them for a hasty minute, and began to say, "Margaret [Pg 56]I have been thinking that Bessie Fairfax will do very well to take Winny's place as bridesmaid next week, since Winny cannot possibly come."
"Oh no, no, no!" cried Bessie, clasping her hands in instant, pleading alarm.
Margaret laughed and bade her hush. "Nobody contradicts Aunt Olympia," she said in a half whisper.
"I will speak to Mr. Fairfax and arrange it at once," Lady Latimer added, and disappeared to carry out her sudden intention.
Bessie reiterated her prayer to be left alone. "You will do very well. You are very nice," rejoined Margaret, not at all understanding her objections. "White over blue and blue bonnets are the bridesmaids' colors. My cousin Winny has caught the measles. Her dress will fit you, but Aunt Olympia's maid will see to all that. You must not refuse me."
When they went down stairs Bessie found that her grandfather had accepted for her Lady Latimer's invitation, and that he had also accepted for himself an invitation to the wedding. Nor yet were the troubles of the day over.
"Are you going to walk?" said Mr. Wiley, coming out into the hall. "Then I shall have much pleasure in walking with you. Our roads are the same."
Bessie's dismay was so evident as to be ludicrous. Mr. Wiley was either very forgiving or very pachydermatous. Lady Latimer kissed her, and whispered a warning "Take care!" and she made a sign of setting a watch on her lips.
"So you will not have to be a teacher, after all, Bessie?" the judicious rector took occasion to say the moment they were clear of Fairfield. Mr. Fairfax listened. Bessie felt hot and angry: what need was there to inflict this on her grandfather? "Was it a dressmaker or a school-mistress Lady Latimer last proposed to make of you? I forget," said Mr. Wiley with an air of guileless consideration as he planted his thorn.
"I never heard that there was any idea of dressmaking: I am not fond of my needle," said Bessie curtly.
"Yes, there was. Her ladyship spoke of it to Mrs. Wiley. We hoped that you might be got into Madame Michaud's [Pg 57]establishment at Hampton to learn the business. She is first-class. My wife patronizes her."
"I wish people would mind their own business."
"There is no harm done. But the remembrance of what you have been saved from should keep you meek and lowly in spirit, Bessie. I have been grieved to-day, deeply grieved, to see that you already begin to feel uplifted." Mr. Wiley dwelt in unctuous italics on his regret, and waved his head slowly in token of his mournfulness. Bessie turned scarlet and held her peace.
"You must be very benevolent people here," said Mr. Fairfax sarcastically. "Is Mr. Carnegie so poor and helpless a man that his kind neighbors must interfere to direct his private affairs?"
Mr. Wiley's eyes glittered as he replied, parrying the thrust and returning it: "No, no, but he has a large and increasing family of his own; and with little Bessie thrown entirely on his hands besides, friends might well feel anxious how she was to be provided for—Lady Latimer especially, who interests herself for all who are in need. Her ladyship has a great notion that women should be independent."
"My father is perfectly able and perfectly willing to do everything that is necessary for his children. No one would dream of meddling with us who knew him," cried Bessie impetuously. Her voice shook, she was so annoyed that she was in tears. Mr. Fairfax took her hand, squeezed it tight, and retained it as they walked on. She felt insulted for her dear, good, generous father. She was almost sobbing as she continued in his praise: "He has insured his life for us. I have heard him say that we need never want unless by our own fault. And the little money that was left for me when my real father died has never been touched: it was put into the funds to save up and be a nest-egg for me when I marry."
Mr. Wiley's teeth gleamed his appreciation of this naïve bit of information. And even her grandfather could not forbear a smile, though he was touched. "I am convinced that you have been in good hands, Elizabeth," said he warmly. "It was not against Mr. Carnegie that any neglect of natural duty was insinuated, but against me."
[Pg 58]Bessie looked down and sighed. Mr. Wiley deprecated the charge of casting blame anywhere. Mr. Fairfax brusquely turned the conversation to matters not personal—to the forest-laws, the common-rights and enclosure acts—and Bessie kept their pace, which quickened imperceptibly, ruminating in silence her experiences of the day. Mortification mingled with self-ridicule was uppermost. To be a bridesmaid amongst the grand folks at Fairfield—could anything be more absurdly afflicting? To be a seamstress at Madame Michaud's—the odious idea of it! Poor Bessie, what a blessing to her was her gift of humor, her gift for seeing the laughable side of things and people, and especially the laughable side of herself and her trials!
Mr. Wiley was shaken off on the outskirts of the village, where a ragged, unkempt laborer met him, and insisted on exchanging civilities and conventional objections to the weather. "We wants a shower, parson."
"A shower! You're wet enough," growled Mr. Wiley with a gaze of severe reprobation. "And you were drunk on Sunday."
"Yes! I'se wet every day, and at my own expense, too," retorted the delinquent with a grin.
Mr. Fairfax and Bessie walked on to the "King's Arms," and there for the present said good-bye. Bessie ran home to tell her adventures, but on the threshold she met a check in the shape of Jack, set to watch for her return and tell her she was wanted. Mr. John Short was come, and was with Mrs. Carnegie in the drawing-room.
"I say, Bessie, you are not going away, are you?" asked the boy, laying violent hands on her when he had acquitted himself of his message. "Biddy says you are. I say you sha'n't."
Mrs. Carnegie heard her son's unabashed voice in the hall, and opening the door, she invited Bessie in.
Mr. John Short rose as Miss Fairfax entered, and bowed to her with deference. Bessie, being forbidden by her mother to retreat, sat down with ostentatious resignation to bear what was to come. But her bravado was not well enough grounded to sustain her long. The preliminaries were already concluded when she arrived, and Mrs. Carnegie was giving utterance to her usual regret that her dear little girl had not been taught to speak French or play on the piano. Mr. Fairfax's plenipotentiary looked grave. His own daughters were perfect in those accomplishments—"Indispensable to the education of a finished gentlewoman," he said.
Thereupon Bessie, still in excited spirits, delivered her mind with considerable force and freedom. "It is nonsense to talk of making me a finished gentlewoman," she added: "I don't care to be anything but a woman of sense."
Mr. John Short answered her shrewdly: "There is no reason why you should not be both, Miss Fairfax. A woman of sense considers the fitness of things. And at Abbotsmead none but gentlewomen are at home."
Bessie colored and was silent. "We have been proposing that you should go to school for a year or two, dear," said Mrs. Carnegie persuasively. Tears came into Bessie's eyes. The lawyer's letter had indeed mentioned school, but she had not anticipated that the cruel suggestion would be carried out.
"Shall it be an English school or a school in France?" said Mr. Short, taking the indulgent cue, to avoid offence and stave off resistance. But his affectation of meekness was more provoking than his sarcasm. Bessie fired up indignantly at such unworthy treatment.
"You are deciding and settling everything without a word to my father. How do you know that he will let me go away? I don't want to go," she said.
"That is settled, Bessie darling. You have to go—so don't get angry about it," said Mrs. Carnegie with firmness. "You may have your choice about a school at home or abroad, and [Pg 60]that is all. Now be good, and consider which you would like best."
Bessie's tears overflowed. "I hate girls!" she said with an asperity that quite shamed her mother, "they are so silly." Mr. John Short with difficulty forbore a smile. "And they don't like me!" she added with gusty wrath. "I never get on with girls, never! I don't know what to say to them. And when they find out that I can't speak French or play on the piano, they will laugh at me." Her own countenance broke into a laugh as she uttered the prediction, but she laughed with tears still in her eyes.
The lawyer nodded his head in a satisfied way. "It will all come right in time," said he. "If you can make fun of the prospect of school, the reality will not be very terrible to a young lady of your courageous temper."
Poor Bessie was grave again in an instant. She felt that she had let her fate slip out of her hands. She could not now declare her refusal to go to school at all; she could only choose what kind of school she would go to. "If it must be one or another, let it be French," she said, and rushed from the room in a tempestuous mood.
Mrs. Carnegie excused her as very affectionate, and as tired and overdone. She looked tired and overdone herself, and out of spirits as well. Mr. John Short said a few sympathetic words, and volunteered a few reasonable pledges for the future, and then took his leave—the kindest thing he could do, since thus he set the mother at liberty to go and comfort her child. Her idea of comforting and Bessie's idea of being comforted consisted, for the nonce, in having a good cry together.
When his agent came to explain to Mr. Fairfax how far he had carried his negotiations for his granddaughter's removal from Beechhurst, the squire demurred. The thorn which Mr. Wiley had planted in his conscience was rankling sorely; his pride was wounded too—perhaps that was more hurt even than his conscience—but he felt that he had much to make up to the child, not for his long neglect only, but for the indignities that she had been threatened with. She might have been apprenticed to a trade; he might have had to negotiate with some shopkeeper to cancel her indentures. He did not [Pg 61]open his mind to Mr. John Short on this matter; he kept it to himself, and made much more of it in his imagination than it deserved. Bessie had already forgotten it, except as a part of the odd medley that her life seemed coming to, and in the recollection it never vexed her; but it was like a grain of sand in her grandfather's eye whenever he reviewed the incidents of this time. He gathered from the lawyer's account of the interview how little acceptable to Bessie was the notion of being sent to school, and asked why she should not go to Abbotsmead at once?
"There is no reason why she should not go to Abbotsmead if you will have a lady in the house—a governess," said Mr. John Short.
"I will have no governess in the house; I suppose she is too young to be alone?"
"Well, yes. Mrs. Carnegie would not easily let her go unless in the assurance that she will be taken care of. She has been a good deal petted and spoiled. She is a fine character, but she would give you nothing but trouble if you took her straight home."
Lady Latimer, with whom Mr. Fairfax held further counsel, expressed much the same opinion. She approved of Elizabeth, but it was impossible to deny that she had too much self-will, that she was too much of the little mistress. She had been sovereign in the doctor's house; to fall amongst her equals in age and seniors in school would be an excellent discipline. Mr. Fairfax acquiesced, and two or three years was the term of purgatory to which Bessie heard herself condemned. It was no use crying. My lady encouraged her to anticipate that she would be very tolerably happy at school. She was strong enough not to mind its hardships; some girls suffered miserably from want of health, but she had vigor and spirits to make the best of circumstances. Bessie was flattered by this estimate of her pluck, but all the same she preferred to avert her thoughts from the contemplation of the strange future that was to begin in September. It was July now, and a respite was to be given her until September.
Mr. John Short—his business done—returned to Norminster, and Mr. Fairfax and Mr. Carnegie met. They were extremely distant in their behavior. Mr. Carnegie re[Pg 62]fused to accept any compensation for the charges Bessie had put him to, and made Mr. Fairfax wince at his information that the child had earned her living twice over by her helpfulness in his house. He did not mean to be unkind, but only to set forth his dear little Bessie's virtues.
"She will never need to go a-begging, Bessie won't," said he. "She can turn her hand to most things in a family. She has capital sense, and a warm heart for those who can win it."
Mr. Fairfax bowed solemnly, as not appreciating this catalogue of homely graces. The doctor looked very stern. He had subdued his mind to the necessity, but he felt his loss in every fibre of his affections. No one, except Bessie herself, half understood the sacrifice he was put upon making, for he loved her as fondly as if she had been his very own; and he knew that once divided from his household she never would be like his own again. But her fate was settled, and the next event in her experience seemed to set a seal upon it.
The day Mr. John Short left the Forest, Beechhurst began to set up its arches and twine its garlands for the wedding of Lady Latimer's niece. Bessie made a frantic effort to escape from the bridesmaid's honors that were thrust upon her, but met with no sympathy except from her father, and even he did not come to her rescue. He bade her never mind, it would soon be over. One sensible relief she had in the midst of her fantastic distress: Harry Musgrave was away, and would not see her in her preposterous borrowed plumes. He had gone with Mr. Moxon on a week's excursion to Wells, and would not return until after the wedding. Bessie was full of anxieties how her dear old comrade would treat her now. She found some people more distant and respectful, she did not wish that Harry should be more respectful—that would spoil their intercourse.
Jolly Miss Buff was an immense help, stay, and comfort to her little friend till through this perplexing ordeal. She was full of harmless satire. She proposed to give Bessie lessons in manners, and to teach her the court curtsey. She chuckled over her reluctance to obey commands to tea at the rectory, and flattered her with a prediction that she would enjoy the grand day of the wedding at Fairfield. "I know who the [Pg 63]bridesmaids are, and you will be the prettiest of the bunch," she assured her. "Don't distress yourself: a bridesmaid has nothing to do but to look pretty and stand to be stared at. It will be better fun at the children's feast than at the breakfast—a wedding breakfast is always slow—but you will see a host of fine people, which is amusing, and since Lady Latimer wishes it, what need you care? You are one of them, and your grandfather will be with you."
Before the day came Bessie had been wrought up to fancy that she should almost enjoy her little dignity. Its garb became her well. The Carnegie boys admired her excessively when she was dressed and set off to Fairfield, all alone in her glory, in a carriage with a pair of gray horses and a scarlet postilion; and when she walked into church, one of a beautiful bevy of half a dozen girls in a foam of white muslin and blue ribbons, Mrs. Carnegie was not quick enough to restrain Jack from pointing a stumpy little finger at her and crying out, "There's our Bessie!" Bessie with a blush and a smile the more rallied round the bride, and then looked across the church at her mother with a merry, happy face that was quite lovely.
Mr. Fairfax, who had joined the company at the church door, at this moment directed towards her the notice of a gentleman who was standing beside him. "That is Elizabeth—my little granddaughter," said he. The gentleman thus addressed said, "Oh, indeed!" and observed her with an air of interest.
Then the solemnity began. There was a bishop to marry the happy couple (Bessie supposed they were happy, though she saw the blossoms quiver on the bride's head, and the bridegroom's hand shaking when he put the ring on her finger), and it was soon done—very soon, considering that it was to last for life. They drove back to Fairfield with a clamor of bells—Beechhurst had a fine old peal—and a shrill cheering of children along the roadside. Lady Latimer looked proud and delighted, and everybody said she had made an excellent match for her charming niece.
Bessie Fairfax was in the same carriage returning as the gentleman whose attention had been called to her by her grandfather in the church. He paid her the compliment of [Pg 64]an attempt at conversation. He also sat by her at the breakfast, and was kind and patronizing: her grandfather informed her that he was a neighbor of his in Woldshire, Mr. Cecil Burleigh. Bessie blushed, and made a slight acknowledgment with her head, but had nothing to say. He was a very fine gentleman indeed, this Mr. Cecil Burleigh—tall and straight, with a dark, handsome face and an expression of ability and resolution. His age was seven-and-twenty, and he had the appearance of an accomplished citizen of the world. Not to make a mystery of him, he was the poor young gentleman of great talents and great expectations of whom the heads of families had spoken as a suitable person to marry Elizabeth Fairfax and to give the old house of Abbotsmead a new lease of life. He was a good-natured person, but he found Bessie rather heavy in hand; she was too young, she had no small talk, she was shy of such a fine gentleman. They were better amused, both of them, in the rose-garden afterward—Bessie with Dora and Dandy, and Mr. Cecil Burleigh with Miss Julia Gardiner, the most beautiful young lady, Bessie thought, that she had ever seen. She had a first impression that they were lovers.
Mr. Fairfax had been entirely satisfied by his granddaughter's behavior in her novel circumstances. Bessie was pretty and she was pleased. Nothing was expected of her either to do or to say. She had a frank, bright manner that was very taking, and a pleasant voice when she allowed it to be heard. Lady Latimer found time to smile at her once or twice, and to give her a kind, encouraging word, and when the guests began to disperse she was told that she must stay for a little dance there was to be in the evening amongst the young people in the house. She stayed, and danced every dance with as joyous a vivacity as if it had been Christmas in the long parlor at Brook and Harry Musgrave her partner; and she confessed voluntarily to her mother and Mr. Phipps afterward that she had been happy the whole day.
"You see, dear Bessie, that I was right to insist upon your going," said her mother.
"And the kettles never once bumped the earthen pot—eh?" asked Mr. Phipps mocking.
[Pg 65]"You forget," said Bessie, "I'm a little kettle myself now;" and she laughed with the gayest assurance.
That respite till September was indeed worth much to Bessie. Her mind was gently broken in to changes. Mr. Fairfax vanished from the scene, and Lady Latimer appeared on it more frequently. My lady even took upon her (out of the interest she felt in her old friend) to find a school for Bessie, and found one at Caen which everybody seemed to agree would do. The daughters of the Liberal member for Hampton were receiving their education there, and Mrs. Wiley knew the school.
It was a beautiful season in the Forest—never more beautiful—and Bessie rode with her father whenever he could go with her. Then young Musgrave came back from Wells. Perhaps it is unnecessary to repeat that Bessie was very fond of young Musgrave. It was quoted of her, when she was a fat little trot of seven years old and he a big boy of twelve, that she had cried herself to sleep because he had refused her a kiss, being absorbed in some chemical experiment that smelt abominably when her mother called her to bed. The denial was singularly unkind, and even ungrateful that evening, because Bessie had not screamed when he electrified her round, wee nose. She was still so tender at heart for him that she would probably have cried now if he had roughed her. But they were friends, the best of friends—as good as brother and sister. Harry talked of himself incessantly; but what hero to her so interesting? Not even his mother was so indulgent to his harmless vanities as Bessie, or thought him so surely predestined to be one of the great men of his day.
It was early yet to say that Harry Musgrave was born under a lucky star, but his friends did say it. He was of a most popular character, not too wise or good to dispense with indulgence, or too modest to claim it. At twelve he was a clumsy lad, bold, audacious, pleasant-humored, with a high, [Pg 66]curly, brown head, fine bright eyes, and no features to mention. At twenty he had grown up into a tall, manly fellow, who meant to have his share in the world if courage could capture it. Plenty of staying power, his schoolmasters said he had, and it was the consciousness of force in reserve that gave him much of his charm. Jealousy, envy, emulation could find no place in him; he had been premature in nothing, and still took his work at sober pace. He had a wonderful gift of concentrativeness, and a memory to match. He loved learning for its own sake far more than for the honor of excelling, and treated the favors of fortune with such cool indifference that the seers said they were sure some day to fall upon him in a shower. He had his pure enthusiasms and lofty ambitions, as what young man of large heart and powerful intellect has not? And he was now in the poetic era of life.
Bessie Fairfax had speculated much and seriously beforehand how Harry Musgrave would receive the news that she was going to be a lady. He received it with most sovereign equanimity.
"You always were a lady, and a very nice little lady, Bessie. I don't think they can mend you," said he.
The communication and flattering response were made at Brook, in the sitting-room of the farm—a spacious, half-wainscoted room, with dark polished floor, and a shabby old Persian carpet in the centre of it. A very picture-like interior it was, with the afternoon sun pouring through its vine-shaded open lattice, though time and weather-stains were on the ceiling and pale-colored walls, and its scant furniture was cumbrous, worn, and unbeautiful. The farm-house had been the manor once, and was fast falling to pieces. Mr. Musgrave's landlord was an impoverished man, but he could not sell a rood of his land, because his heir was a cousin with whom he was at feud. It was a daily trial to Mrs. Musgrave's orderly disposition that she had not a neat home about her, but its large negligence suited her husband and son. This bare sitting-room was Harry's own, and with the wild greenery outside was warm, sweet, and fresh in hot summer weather, though a few damp days filled it with odors of damp and decay. It was a cell in winter, but in July a bower.
[Pg 67]And none the less a bower for those two young people in it this afternoon. Mr. Carnegie had dropped Bessie at Brook in the morning, and young Musgrave was to escort her home in the cool of the evening. His mother and she had spent an hour together since the midday dinner, and now the son of the house had called for her. They sat one on each side of the long oak board which served young Musgrave for a study-table and stood endwise towards the middle lattice. Harry had a new poem before him, which he was tired of reading. The light and shadow played on both their faces. There was a likeness for those who could see it—the same frank courage in their countenances, the same turn for reverie in their eyes. Harry felt lazy. The heat, the drowsy hum of bees in the vine-blossoms, and the poetry-book combined, had made him languid. Then he had bethought him of his comrade. Bessie came gladly, and poured out in full recital the events that had happened to her of late. To these she added the projects and anticipations of the future.
"Dear little Bessie! she fancies she is on the eve of adventures. Terribly monotonous adventures a girl's must be!" said the conceit of masculine twenty.
"I wish I had been a boy—it must be much better fun," was the whimsical rejoinder of feminine fifteen.
"And you should have been my chum," said young Musgrave.
"That is just what I should have liked. Caen is nearer to Beechhurst than it is to Woldshire, so I shall come home for my holidays. Perhaps I shall never see you again, Harry, when I am transported to Woldshire." This with a pathetic sigh.
"Never is a long day. I shall find you out; and if I don't, you'll hear of me. I mean to be heard of, Bessie."
"Oh yes, Harry, I am sure you will. Shall you write a book? Will it be a play? They always seem to walk to London with a play in their pockets, a tragedy that the theatres won't look at; and then their troubles begin."
Young Musgrave smiled superior at Bessie's sentiment and Bessie's syntax. "There is the railway, and Oxford is on the road. I intend always to travel first-class," said he.
Bessie understood him to speak literally. "First-class! [Pg 68]Oh, but that is too grand! In the Lives they never have much money. Some are awfully poor—starving: Savage was, and Chatterton and Otway."
"Shabby, disreputable vagabonds!" answered young Musgrave lightly.
"And Samuel Johnson and ever so many more," continued Bessie, pleading his sympathy.
"There is no honor in misery; it is picturesque to read about, but it is a sorry state in reality to be very poor. Some poets have been scamps. I shall not start as the prodigal son, Bessie, for I love not swinish company nor diet of husks."
"The prodigal came home to his father, Harry."
"So he did, but I have my doubts whether he stayed."
There was a silence. Bessie had always believed in the prodigal as a good son after his repentance. Any liberty of speculation as concerning Scripture gave her pause; it was a new thing at Beechhurst and at Brook.
Young Musgrave furled over the pages of his book. A sheet of paper, written, interlined, blotted with erasures, flew out. He laid a quick hand upon it; not so quick, however, but that Bessie had caught sight of verses—verses of his own, too. She entreated him to read them. He excused himself. "Do, Harry; please do," she urged, but he was inexorable. He had read her many a fine composition before—many a poem crowded with noble words and lofty sentiments; but for once he was reserved, firm, secret. He told Bessie that she would not admire this last effort of his muse: it was a parody, an imitation of the Greek.
"Girls have no relish for humor: they don't understand it. It is sheer profanity to them," said he. Let him show her his prize-books instead.
Bessie was too humble towards Harry to be huffed. She admired the prize-books, then changed the subject, and spoke of Lady Latimer, inquiring if he had availed himself of her invitation yet to call at Fairfield.
"No," said he, "I have not called at Fairfield. What business can her ladyship have with me? I don't understand her royal message. Little Christie went to Fairfield with a portfolio of sketches in obedience to a summons of [Pg 69]that sort, and was bidden to sit down to dinner in the servants' hall while the portfolio was carried up stairs. Her ladyship bought a sketch, but the money was no salve for Christie's mortification. I have nothing to sell. I took warning by my friend, and did not go."
Again Bessie was dumb. She blushed, and did not know what to say. She would not have liked to hear that Harry had been set down to dinner in the servants' hall at Fairfield, though she had not herself been hurt by a present of a cheese-cake in the kitchen. She was perfectly aware that the farmers and upper servants in the great houses did associate as equals. Evidently the conduct of life required much discretion.
Less than a year ago young Christie had helped at the painting and graining of Lady Latimer's house. Somebody, a connoisseur in art, wandering last autumn in the Forest, had found him making a drawing of yew trees, had sought him in his home at the wheelwright's, had told him he was a genius and would do wonders. On the instant young Christie expected the greatest of all wonders to be done; he expected his friends and neighbors to believe in him on the strength of the stranger's prediction. Naturally, they preferred to reserve their judgment. He and young Musgrave had learnt their letters under the same ferule, though their paths had diverged since. Some faint reminiscence of companionship survived in young Christie's memory, and in the absence of a generous sympathy at home he went to seek it at Brook. A simple, strong attachment was the result. Young Christie was gentle, vain, sensitive, easily raised and easily depressed, a slim little fellow—a contrast to Harry Musgrave in every way. "My friend" each called the other, and their friendship was a pure joy and satisfaction to them both. Christie carried everything to Brook—hopes, feelings, fears as well as work—even his mortification at Fairfield, against a repetition of which young Musgrave offered counsel, wisdom of the ancients.
"It is art you are in pursuit of, not pomps and vanities? Then keep clear of Fairfield. The first thing for success in imaginative work is a soul unruffled: what manner of work could you do to-day? You will never paint a stroke the better for anything Lady Latimer can do for you; but lay [Pg 70]yourself open to the chafe and fret of her patronage now, and you are done for. Ten, twenty years hence, she will be harmless, because you will have the confidence of a name."
"And she will remember that she bought my first sketch; she will say she made me," said young Christie.
"You will not care then: everybody knows that a man makes himself. Phipps calls her vain-glorious; Carnegie calls her the very core of goodness. In either case you don't need her. There is only one patron for men of art and literature in these days, and that is the General Public. The times are gone by for waiting in Chesterfield's ante-room and hiding behind Cave's screen."
Harry recited all this for Bessie's instruction. Bessie was convinced that he had spoken judiciously: the safest way to avoid a fall is not to be in too much haste to climb. It is more consistent with self-respect for genius in low estate to defend its independence against the assaults of rich patrons, seeking appendages to their glory, than to accept their benefits, and complain that they are given with insolence. It is an evident fact that the possessors of rank and money value themselves as of more consequence than those whom God has endowed with other gifts and not with these. Platitudes reveal themselves to the young as novel and striking truths. Bessie ruminated these in profound silence. Harry offered her a penny for her thoughts.
"I was thinking," said she, with a sudden revelation of the practical, "that young Christie will suffer a great deal in his way through the world if he stumble at such common kindness as Lady Latimer's." And then she told the story of the cheese-cake. "I beheld my lady then as a remote and exalted sphere, where never foot of mine would come. I have entered it since by reason of belonging to an old house of gentry, and I find that I can breathe there. So may he some day, when he has earned a title to it, but he would be very uncomfortable there now."
"And so may I some day, when I have earned a title to it, but I should be very uncomfortable there now. Meanwhile we have souls above cheese-cakes, and don't choose to bear my lady's patronage."
[Pg 71]Bessie felt that she was being laughed at. She grew angry, and poured out her sentiments hot: "There is a difference between you and young Christie; you know quite well that there is, Harry. No, I sha'n't explain what it consists in. Lady Latimer meant to encourage him: to see that she thinks well enough of his sketches to buy one may influence other people to buy them. He can't live on air; and if he is to be a painter he must study. You are not going to rise in the world without working? If you went to her house, she would make you acquainted with people it might be good for you to know: it is just whether you like that sort of thing or not. I don't; I am happier at home. But men don't want to keep at home."
"Already, Bessie!" cried Harry in a rallying, reproachful tone.
"Already what, Harry? I am not giving myself airs, if that is what you mean," said she blushing.
Harry shook his head, but only half in earnest: "You are, Bessie. You are pretending to have opinions on things that you had never thought of a month ago. Give you a year amongst your grandees, and you will hold yourself above us all."
Tears filled Bessie's eyes. She was very much hurt; she did not believe that Harry could have misunderstood her so. "I shall never hold myself above anybody that I was fond of when I was little; they are more likely to forget me when I am out of sight. They have others to love." Bessie spoke in haste and excitement. She meant neither to defend herself nor to complain, but her voice imported a little pathos and tragedy into the scene. Young Musgrave instantly repented and offered atonement. "Besides," Bessie rather inconsequently ran on, "I am very fond of Lady Latimer; she has nobody of her own, so she tries to make a family in the world at large."
"All right, Bessie—then she shall adopt you. Only don't be cross, little goosey. Let us go into the garden." Young Musgrave made such a burlesque of his remorse that Bessie, wounded but skin-deep, was fain to laugh too and be friends again. And thereupon they went forth together into the bosky old garden.
What a pleasant wilderness that old garden was, even in its [Pg 72]neglected beauty! Whoever planted it loved open spaces, turf, and trees of foreign race; for there were some rare cedars, full-grown, straight, and stately, with feathered branches sweeping the grass, and strange shrubs that were masses of blossom and fountains of sweet odors. The flower-borders had run to waste; only a few impoverished roses tossed their blushing fragrance into the air, and a few low-growing, old-fashioned things made shift to live amongst the weeds. But the prettiest bit of all was the verdant natural slope, below which ran the brook that gave the village and the manor their names. The Forest is not a land of merry running waters, but little tranquil streams meander hither and thither, making cool its shades. Three superb beeches laved their silken leaves in the shallow flood, and amongst their roots were rustic seats all sheltered from sun and wind. Here had Harry Musgrave and Bessie Fairfax sat many a summer afternoon, their heads over one poetry-book, reading, whispering, drawing—lovers in a way, though they never talked of love.
"Shall we two ever walk together in this garden again, Harry?" said Bessie, breaking a sentimental silence with a sigh as she gazed at the sun-dimmed horizon.
"Many a time, I hope. I'll tell you my ambition." Young Musgrave spoke with vivacity; his eyes sparkled. "Listen, Bessie, and don't be astonished. I mean some day to buy Brook, and come to live here. That is my ambition."
Bessie was overawed. To buy Brook was a project too vast for her imagination. The traditions of its ancient glories still hung about it, and the proprietor, even in his poverty, was a power in the country. Harry proceeded with the confession of his day-dreams: "I shall pull down the house—if it does not fall down of itself before—and build it up again on the original plan, for I admire not all things new. With the garden replanted and the fine old trees left, it will be a paradise—as much of a paradise as any modern Adam can desire. And Bessie shall be my Eve."
"You will see so many Eves between now and then, Harry, that you will have forgotten me," cried Bessie.
Harry rejoined: "You are quite as likely to be carried away by a bluff Woldshire squire as I am to fall captive to other Eves."
[Pg 73]"You know, Harry, I shall always be fondest of you. We have been like real cousins. But won't you be growing rather old before you are rich enough to buy Brook?"
"If I am, you will be growing rather old too, Bessie. What do you call old—thirty?"
"Yes. Do you mean to put off life till you are thirty?"
"No. I mean to work and play every day as it comes. But one must have some great events to look forward to. My visions are of being master of Brook and of marrying Bessie. One without the other would be only half a good fortune."
"Do you care so much for me as that, Harry? I was afraid you cared for little Christie more than for me now."
"Don't be jealous of little Christie, Bessie. Surely I can like you both. There are things a girl does not understand. You belong to me as my father and mother do. I have told you everything. I have not told anybody but you what I intend about Brook—not even my mother. I want it to be our secret."
"So it shall, Harry. You'll see how I can keep it," cried Bessie delighted.
"I trust you, because I know if I make a breakdown you will not change. When I missed the English verse-prize last year (you remember, Bessie?) I had made so sure of it that I could hardly show my face at home. Mother was disappointed, but you just snuggled up to me and said, 'Never mind, Harry, I love you;' and you did not care whether I had a prize or none. And that was comfort. I made up my mind at that minute what I should do."
"Dear old Harry! I am sure your verses were the best, far away," was Bessie's response; and then she begged to hear more of what her comrade meant to do.
Harry did not want much entreating. His schemes could hardly be called castles in the air, so much of the solid and reasonable was there in the design of them. He had no expectation of success by wishing, and no trust in strokes of luck. Life is a race, and a harder race than ever. Nobody achieves great things without great labors and often great sacrifices. "The labor I shall not mind; the sacrifices I shall make pay." Harry was getting out of Bessie's depth now; a little more of poetry and romance in his views would have [Pg 74]brought them nearer to the level of her comprehension. Then he talked to her of his school, of the old doctor, that great man, of his schoolfellows, of his rivals whom he had distanced—not a depreciatory word of any of them. "I don't believe in luck for myself," he said. "But there is a sort of better and worse fortune amongst men, independent of merit. It was the narrowest shave between me and Fordyce. I would not have given sixpence for my chance of the scholarship against his, yet I won it. He is a good fellow, Fordyce: he came up and shook hands as if he had won. That was just what I wanted: I felt so happy! Now I shall go to Oxford; in a year or two I shall have pupils, and who knows but I may gain a fellowship? I shall take you to Oxford, Bessie, when the time comes."
Bessie was as proud and as pleased in this indefinite prospect as if she were bidden to pack up and start to-morrow. Harry went on to tell her what Mr. Moxon had told him, how Oxford is one of the most beautiful of cities, and one of the most famous and ancient seats of learning in the world (which she knew from her geography-book), and there, under the beeches, with the slow ripple at their feet, they sat happy as king and queen in a fairy-tale, until the shadow of Mrs. Musgrave came gliding over the grass, and her clear caressing voice broke on their ears: "Children, children, are you never coming to tea? We have called you from the window twice. And young Christie is here."
Young Christie came forward with a bow and a blush to shake hands. He had dressed himself for Sunday to come to Brook. He had an ingenuous face, but plain in feature. The perceptive faculties were heavily developed, and his eyes were fine; and his mouth and chin suggested a firmness of character.
Mr. Musgrave, who was absent at dinner, was now come home tired from Hampton. He leant back in his chair and held out a brown hand to Bessie, who took it, and a kiss with it, as part of the regular ceremony of greeting. She slipped into the chair set for her beside him, and was quite at home, for Bessie was a favorite in the same degree at Brook as Harry was at Beechhurst. Young Christie sat next to his friend [Pg 75]and opposite to Bessie. They had many things to say to each other, and Bessie compared them in her own mind silently. Harry was serene and quiet; Christie's color came and went with the animation of his talk. Harry's hands had the sunburnt hue of going ungloved, but they were the hands of a young man devoted to scholarly pursuits; Christie's were stained with his trade, which he practised of necessity still, wooing art only in his bye-hours. Harry's speech was decisive and simple; Christie's was hesitating and a little fine, a little over-careful. He was self-conscious, and as he talked he watched who listened, his restless eyes glancing often towards Bessie. But this had a twofold meaning, for while he talked of other things his faculty of observation was at work; it was always at work as an undercurrent.
Loveliness of color had a perpetual fascination for him. He was considering the tints in Bessie's hair and in the delicate, downy rose-oval of her cheeks, and the effect upon them of the sunshine flickering through the vine leaves. When the after-glow was red in the west, the dark green cloth of the window-curtain, faded to purple and orange, made a rich background for her fair head, and he beheld in his fancy a picture that some day he would reproduce. On the tea-table he had laid down a twig of maple, the leaves of which were curiously crenated by some insect, and with it a clump of moss, and a stone speckled in delicious scarlet and tawny patches of lichen-growth—bits of Nature and beauty in which he saw more than others see, and had picked up in his walk by Great-Ash Ford through the Forest to Brook.
"I live in hope of some lucky accident to give me the leisure and opportunity for study; till then I must stick to my mechanical trade of painting and graining," he was saying while his eyes roved about Bessie's face, and his fingers toyed first with the twig of maple and then with the pearled moss. "My father thinks scorn of art for a living, and predicts me repentance and starvation. I tell him we shall see; one must not expect to be a prophet in one's own country. But I am half promised a commission at the Hampton Theatre—a new drop-scene. My sketch is approved—it is a Forest view. The decision must come soon."
Everybody present wished the young fellow success. [Pg 76]"Though whether you have success or not you will have a share of happiness, because you are a dear lover of Nature, and Nature never lets her lovers go unrewarded," said Mrs. Musgrave kindly.
"Ah! but I shall not be satisfied with her obscure favors," cried little Christie airily.
"You must have applause: I don't think I care for applause," said young Musgrave; and he cut Bessie a slice of cake.
Bessie proceeded to munch it with much gravity and enjoyment—Harry's mother made excellent cakes—and the father of the house, smiling at her serious absorption, patted her on the shoulder and said, "And what does Bessie Fairfax care for?"
"Only to be loved," says Bessie without a thought.
"And that is what you will be, for love's a gift," rejoined Mr. Musgrave. "These skip-jacks who talk of setting the world on fire will be lucky if they make only blaze enough to warm themselves."
"Ay, indeed—and getting rich. Talk's cheap, but it takes a deal of money to buy land," said his wife, who had a shrewd inkling of her son's ambition, though he had not confessed it to her. "Young folks little think of the chances and changes of this mortal life, or it's a blessing they'd seek before anything else."
Bessie's face clouded at a word of changes. "Don't fret, Bessie, we'll none of us forget you," said the kind father. But this was too much for her tender heart. She pushed back her chair and ran out of the room. For the last hour the tears had been very near her eyes, and now they overflowed. Mrs. Musgrave followed to comfort her.
"To go all amongst strangers!" sobbed Bessie; and her philosophy quite failed her when that prospect recurred in its dreadful blankness. Happily, the time of night did not allow of long lamentation. Presently Harry called at the stair's foot that it was seven o'clock. And she kissed his mother and bade Brook good-bye.
The walk home was through the Forest, between twilight and moonlight. The young men talked and Bessie was silent. She had no favor towards young Christie previously, but she [Pg 77]liked his talk to-night and his devotion to Harry Musgrave, and she enrolled him henceforward amongst those friends and acquaintances of her happy childhood at Beechhurst concerning whom inquiries were to be made in writing home when she was far away.
A few days after his meeting with Bessie Fairfax at Brook, young Christie left at the doctor's door a neat, thin parcel addressed to her with his respects. Lady Latimer and Mrs. Wiley, who were still interesting themselves in her affairs, were with Mrs. Carnegie at the time, giving her some instructions in Bessie's behalf. Mrs. Carnegie was rather bothered than helped by their counsels, but she did not discourage them, because of the advantage to Bessie of having their countenance and example. Bessie, sitting apart at the farther side of the round table, untied the string and unfolded the silver paper. Then there was a blush, a smile, a cry of pleasure. At what? At a picture of herself that little Christie had painted, and begged to make an offering of. It was handed round for the inspection of the company.
"A slight thing," said Mrs. Wiley with a negligent glance. "Young Christie fishes with sprats to catch whales, as Askew told him yesterday. He brought his portfolio and a drawing of the church to show, but we did not buy anything. We are afraid that he will turn out a sad, idle fellow, going dawdling about instead of keeping to his trade. His father is much grieved."
"This is sketchy, but full of spirit," said Lady Latimer, holding the drawing at arm's length to admire.
"It is life itself! We must hear what your father says to it, Bessie," Mrs. Carnegie added in a pleased voice.
"If her father does not buy it, I will. It is a charming little picture," said my lady.
Bessie was gratified, but she hoped her father would not let anybody else possess it.
[Pg 78]"A matter of a guinea, and it will be well paid for," said the rector's wife.
No one made any rejoinder, but Mr. Carnegie gave the aspiring artist five guineas (he would not have it as a gift, which little Christie meant), and plenty of verbal encouragement besides. Lady Latimer further invited him to paint her little friends, Dora and Dandy. He accepted the commission, and fulfilled it with effort and painstaking, but not with such signal success as his portrait of Bessie. That was an inspiration. The doctor hung up the picture in the dining-room for company every day in her absence, and promised that it should keep her place for her in all their hearts and memories until she came home again.
There are not many more events to chronicle until the great event of Bessie's farewell to Beechhurst. She gave a tea-party to her friends in the Forest, a picnic tea-party at Great-Ash Ford; and on a fine morning, when the air blew fresh from the sea, she and her handsome new baggage were packed, with young Musgrave, into the back seat of the doctor's chaise, the doctor sitting in front with his man to drive. Their destination was Hampton, to take the boat for Havre. The man was to return home with the chaise in the evening. The doctor was going on to Caen, to deliver his dear little girl safely at school, and Harry was going with them for a holiday. All the Carnegie children and their mother, the servants and the house-dog, were out in the road to bid Bessie a last good-bye; the rector and his wife were watching over the hedge; and Miss Buff panted up the hill at the last moment, with fat tears running down her cheeks. She had barely time for a word, Mr. Carnegie always cutting short leave-takings. Bessie's nose was pink with tears and her eyes glittered, but she was in good heart. She looked behind her as long as she could see her mother, and Jack and Willie coursing after the chaise with damp pocket-handkerchiefs a-flutter; and then she turned her face the way she was going, and said with a shudder, "It is a beautiful, sunny morning, but for all that it is cold."
"Have my coat-sleeve, Bessie," suggested Harry, and they both laughed, then became quiet, then merry.
About two miles out of Hampton the travellers overtook [Pg 79]little Christie making the road fly behind him as he marched apace, a knapsack at his back and his chin in the air.
"Whither away so fast, young man?" shouted the doctor, hailing him.
"To Hampton Theatre," shouted Christie back again, and he flourished his hat round his head. Harry Musgrave repeated the triumphant gesture with a loud hurrah. The artist that was to be had got that commission for the new drop-scene at the theatre. His summons had come by this morning's post.
The toil-worn, dusty little figure was long in sight, for now the road ran in a direct line. Bessie wished they could have given him a lift on his journey. Harry Musgrave continued to look behind, but he said nothing. It is some men's fortune to ride cock-horse, it is some other men's to trudge afoot; but neither is the lot of the first to be envied, nor the lot of the last to be deplored. Such would probably have been his philosophy if he had spoken. Bessie, regarding externals only, and judging of things as they seemed, felt pained by the outward signs of inequality.
In point of fact, little Christie was the happiest of the three at that moment. According to his own belief, he was just about to lay hold of the key that would open for him the outer door of the Temple of Fame. After that blessed drop-scene that he was on his way to execute at Hampton, never more would he return to his mechanical painting and graining. It was an epoch that they all dated from, this shining day of September, when Bessie Fairfax bade farewell to the Forest, and little Christie set out on his career of honor with a knapsack on his back and seven guineas in his pocket. As for Harry Musgrave, his leading-strings were broken before, and he was in some sort a citizen of the world already.
The rapid action and variety of the next few days were ever after like a dream to Bessie Fairfax. A tiring day in Hampton town, a hurried walk to the docks in the sunset, the gorgeous autumnal sunset that flushed the water like fire; a splendid hour in the river, ships coming up full sail, and twilight down to the sea; a long, deep sleep. Then sunrise on rolling green waves, low cliffs, headlands of France; a vast turmoil, hubbub, and confusion of tongues; a brief excursion into Havre, by gay shops to gayer gardens, and breakfast in the gayest of glass-houses. Then embarkation on board the boat for Caen; a gentle sea-rocking; soldiers, men in blouses, women in various patterns of caps; the mouth of the Orne; fringes on the coast of fashionable resort for sea-bathers. Miles up the stream, dreary, dreary; poplars leaning aslant from the wind, low mud-banks, beds of osiers, reeds, rushes, willows; poplars standing erect as a regiment in line, as many regiments, a gray monotony of poplars; the tide flowing higher, laving the reeds, the sallows, all pallid with mist and soft driving rain. A gleam of sun on a lawn, on roses, on a conical red roof; orchards, houses here and there, with shutters closed, and the afternoon sun hot upon them; acres of market-garden, artichokes, flat fields, a bridge, rushy ditches, tall array of poplars repeated and continued endlessly.
"I think," said Bessie, "I shall hate a poplar as long as I live!"
Mr. Carnegie agreed that the scenery was not enchanting. Beautiful France is not to compare with the beautiful Forest. Harry Musgrave was in no haste with his opinion; he was looking out for Caen, that ancient and famous town of the Norman duke who conquered England. He had been reading up the guide-book and musing over history, while Bessie had been letting the poplars weigh her mind down to the brink of despondency.
A repetition of the noisy landing at Havre, despatch of [Pg 81]baggage to Madame Fournier's, everybody's heart failing for fear of that august, unknown lady. A sudden resolution on the doctor's part to delay the dread moment of consigning Bessie to the school-mistress until evening, and a descent on Thunby's hotel. A walk down the Rue St. Jean to the Place St. Pierre, and by the way a glimpse, through an open door in a venerable gateway, of a gravelled court-yard planted with sycamores and surrounded by lofty walls, draped to the summit with vines and ivy; in the distance an arcade with vistas of garden beyond lying drowsy in the sunshine, the angle of a large mansion, and fluttering lilac wreaths of wisteria over the portal.
"If this is Madame Fournier's school, it is a hushed little world," said the doctor.
Bessie beheld it with awe. There was a solemn picturesqueness in the prospect that daunted her imagination.
Harry Musgrave referred to his guide-book: "Ah, I thought so—this is the place. Bessie, Charlotte Corday lived here."
Above the rickety gateway were two rickety windows. At those windows Charlotte might have sat over her copy of Plutarch's "Lives," a ruminating republican in white muslin, before the Revolution, or have gazed at the sombre church of St. Jean across the street, in the happier days before she despised going to old-fashioned worship. Bessie looked up at them more awed than ever. "I hope her ghost does not haunt the house. Come away, Harry," she whispered.
Harry laughed at her superstition. They went forward under the irregular peaked houses, stunned at intervals by side-gusts of evil odor, till they came to the place and church of St. Pierre. The market-women in white-winged caps, who had been sitting at the receipt of custom since morning surrounded by heaps of glowing fruit and flowers, were now vociferously gathering up their fragments, their waifs and strays and remnants, to go home. The men were harnessing their horses, filling their carts. It was all a clamorous, sunny, odd sort of picture amidst the quaint and ancient buildings. Then they went into the church, into the gloom and silence out of the stir. The doctor made the young ones a sign to hush. There were women on their knees, and on the steps of the altar a priest of dignified aspect, and a file of acolytes, [Pg 82]awfully ugly, the very refuse of the species—all but one, who was a saint for beauty of countenance and devoutness of mien. Harry glanced at him and his companions as if they were beings of a strange and mysterious race; and the numerous votive offerings to "Our Lady of La Salette" and elsewhere he eyed askance with the expression of a very sound Protestant indeed. The lovely luxuriant architecture, the foliated carvings, were dim in the evening light. A young sculptor, who was engaged in the work of restoring some of these rich carvings, came down from his perch while the strangers stood to admire them.
That night by nine o'clock Bessie Fairfax was in the dortoir at Madame Fournier's—a chamber of six windows and twenty beds, narrow, hard, white, and, except her own and one other, empty. By whose advice it was that she was sent to school a week in advance of the opening she never knew. But there she was in the wilderness of a house, with only a dejected English teacher suffering from chronic face-ache, and another scholar, younger than herself, for company. The great madame was still absent at Bayeux, spending the vacation with her uncle the canon.
It was a moonlight night, and the jalousies looking upon the garden were not closed. Bessie was neither timid nor grievous, but she was desperately wide-awake. The formality of receiving her and showing her to bed had been very briefly despatched. It seemed as if she had been left at the door like a parcel, conveyed up stairs, and put away. Beechhurst was a thousand miles off, and yesterday a hundred years ago! The doctor and Harry Musgrave could hardly have walked back to Thunby's hotel before she and her new comrade were in their little beds. Now, indeed, was the Rubicon passed, and Bessie Fairfax committed to all the vicissitudes of exile. She realized the beginning thereof when she stretched her tired limbs on her unyielding mattress of straw, and recalled her dear little warm nest under the eaves at home.
Presently, from a remote couch spoke her one companion, "I am sitting up on end. What are you doing?"
"Nothing. Lying down and staring at the moon," replied Bessie, and turned her eyes in the direction of the voice.
[Pg 83]The figure sitting up on end was distinctly visible. It was clasping its knees, its long hair flowed down its back, and its face was steadily addressed to the window at the foot of its bed. "Do you care to talk?" asked the queer apparition.
"I shall not fall asleep for hours yet," said Bessie.
"Then let us have a good talk." The unconscious quoter of Dr. Johnson contributed her full share to the colloquy. She told her story, and why she was at Madame Fournier's: "Father's ship comes from Yarmouth in Norfolk. It is there we are at home, but he is nearly always at sea—to and fro to Havre and Caen, to Dunkirk and Bordeaux. It is a fine sailing ship, the Petrel. When the wind blows I think of father, though he has weathered many storms. To-night it will be beautiful on the water. I have often sailed with father." A prodigious sigh closed the paragraph, and drew from Bessie a query that perhaps she wished she was sailing with him now? She did, indeed! "He left me here because I was not well—it is three weeks since; it was the day of the emperor's fête—but I am no stronger yet. I have been left here before—once for a whole half-year. I hope it won't be so long this time; I do so miss father! My mother is dead, and he has married another wife. I believe she wishes I were dead too."
"Oh no," cried Bessie, much amazed. "I have a mother who is not really my mother, but she is as good as if she were."
"Then she is not like mine. Are women all alike? Hush! there is Miss Foster at the door—listening.... She is gone now; she didn't peep in.... Tell me, do you hear anything vulgar in my speech?"
"No—it is plain enough." It was a question odd and unexpected, and Bessie had to think before she answered it.
Her questioner mistook her reflection for hesitation, and seemed disappointed. "Ah, but you do," said she, "though you don't like to tell me so. It is provincial, very provincial, Miss Foster admits.... Next week, when the young ladies come back, I shall wish myself more than ever with father."
"What for? don't you like school?" Bessie was growing deeply interested in these random revelations.
"No. How should I? I don't belong to them. Everybody [Pg 84]slights me but madame. Miss Hiloe has set me down as quite common. It is so dreadful!"
Bessie's heart had begun to beat very hard. "Is it?" said she in a tone of apprehension. "Do they profess to despise you?"
"More than that—they do despise me; they don't know how to scorn me enough. But you are not common, so why should you be afraid? My father is a master-mariner—John Fricker of Great Yarmouth. What is yours?"
"Oh, mine was a clergyman, but he is long since dead, and my own mother too. The father and mother who have taken care of me since live at Beechhurst in the Forest, and he is a doctor. It is my grandfather who sends me here to school, and he is a country gentleman, a squire. But I like my common friends best—far!"
"If you have a squire for your grandfather you may speak as you please—Miss Hiloe will not call you common. Oh, I am shrewd enough: I know more than I tell. Miss Foster says I have the virtues of my class, but I have no business at a school like this. She wonders what Madame Fournier receives me for. Oh, I wish father may come over next month! Nobody can tell how lonely I feel sometimes. Will you call me Janey?" Janey's poor little face went down upon her knees, and there was the sound of sobs. Bessie's tender heart yearned to comfort this misery, and she would have gone over to administer a kiss, had she not been peremptorily warned not to risk it: there was the gleam of a light below the door. When that alarm was past, composure returned to the master-mariner's little daughter, and Bessie ventured to ask if the French girls were nice.
The answer sounded pettish: "There are all sorts in a school like this. Elise Finckel lives in the Place St. Pierre: they are clock and watchmakers, the Finckels. Once I went there; then Elise and Miss Hiloe made friends, and it was good-bye to me! but clanning is forbidden."
Bessie required enlightening as to what "clanning" meant. The explanation was diffuse, and branched off into so many anecdotes and illustrations that in spite of the moonlight, her nerves, her interest, and her forebodings, Bessie began to yield to the overpowering influence of sleep. The little [Pg 85]comrade, listened to no longer, ceased her prattle and napped off too.
The next sound Bessie Fairfax heard was the irregular clangor of a bell, and behold it was morning! Some one had been into the dortoir and had opened a window or two. The warm fragrant breath of sunshine and twitter of birds entered.
"So this is being at school in France? What a din!" said Bessie, stopping her ears and looking for her comrade.
That strange child was just opening a pair of sleepy eyes and exhorting herself by name: "Now, Miss Janey Fricker, you will be wise to get up without more thinking about it, or there will be a bad mark and an imposition for you, my dear. What a blessing! five dull days yet before the arrival of the tormentors!" She slipped out upon the floor, exclaiming how tired she was and how all her bones ached, till Bessie's heart ached too for pity of the delicate, sensitive morsel of humanity.
They had soup for breakfast, greasy, flavorless stuff loaded with vegetables, and bread sour with long keeping. This was terrible to Bessie. She sipped and put down her spoon, then tried again. Miss Foster, at the same table, partook of a rough decoction of coffee with milk, and a little rancid butter on the sour bread toasted.
After breakfast the two girls were told that they were permitted to go into the garden. They spent the whole morning there, and there Mr. Carnegie and Harry Musgrave found Bessie when they came to take their final leave of her. It was good and brave of the little girl not to distress them with complaints, for she was awfully hungry, and likely to be so until her dainty appetite was broken in to French school-fare. Her few tears did not signify.
Harry Musgrave said the garden was not so pretty as it appeared from the street, and the doctor made rueful allusions to convents and prisons, and was not half satisfied to leave his dear little Bessie there. The morning sun had gone off the grass. The walls were immensely lofty—the tallest trees did not overtop them. There was a weedy, weak fountain, a damp grotto, and two shrines with white images of the Blessed Mary crowned with gilt stars.
Miss Foster came into the garden the moment the visitors [Pg 86]appeared, holding one hand against the flannel that enveloped her face. She made the usual polite speeches of hope, expectation, and promise concerning the new-comer, and stayed about until the gentlemen went. Then an inexpressible flatness fell upon Bessie, and she would probably have wept in earnest, but for the sight of Janey Fricker standing aloof and gazing at her wistfully for an invitation to draw near. Somebody to succor was quite in Bessie's way; helpless, timid things felt safe under covert of her wing. It gave her a vocation at once to have this weak, ailing little girl seeking to her for protection, and she called her to come. How gladly Janey came!
"What were you thinking of just now when I lost my friends?" Bessie asked her.
"Oh, of lots of things: I can't tell you of what. Is that your brother?"
"No, he is a cousin."
"Are you very fond of him? I wonder what it feels like to have many people to love? I have no one but father."
"Harry Musgrave and I have known each other all our lives. And now you and I are going to be friends."
"If you don't find somebody you like better, as Elise Finckel did. There is the bell; it means dinner in ten minutes." Bessie was looking sorry at her new comrade's suspicion. Janey was quick to see it. "Oh, I have vexed you about Elise?" cried she in a voice of pleading distress. "When shall I learn to trust anybody again?"
Bessie smiled superior. "Very soon, I hope," said she. "You must not afflict yourself with fancies. I am not vexed; I am only sorry if you won't trust me. Let us wait and see. I feel a kindness for most people, and don't need to love one less because I love another more. I promise to keep a warm place in my heart for you always, you little mite! I have even taken to Miss Foster because I pity her. She looks so overworked, and jaded, and poor."
"It is easy to like Miss Foster when you know her. She keeps her mamma, and her salary is only twenty-five pounds a year."
The dinner, to which the girls adjourned at a second summons of the bell, was as little appetizing as the breakfast had [Pg 87]been. There was the nauseous soup, a morsel of veal, a salad dressed with rank oil, a mess of sweet curd, and a dish of stewed prunes. After the fiction of dining, Miss Foster took the two pupils for a walk by the river, where groups of soldiers under shade of the trees were practising the fife and the drum. Caen seemed to be full of soldiers, marching and drilling for ever. Louise, the handsome portress at the school, frankly avowed that she did not know what the young women of her generation would do for husbands; the conscription carried away all the finest young men. Janey loved to watch the soldiers; she loved all manner of shows, and also to tell of them. She asked Bessie if she would like to hear about the emperor's fête last month; and when Bessie acquiesced, she began in a discursive narrative style by which a story can be stretched to almost any length:
"There was a military mass at St. Etienne's in the morning. I had only just left father, but Mademoiselle Adelaide took me with her, and a priest sent us up into the triforium—you understand what the triforium is? a gallery in the apse looking down on the choir. The triforium at St. Etienne's is wide enough to drive a coach and four round; at the Augustines, where we went once to see three sisters take the white veil, it is quite narrow, and without anything to prevent you falling over—a dizzy place. But I am forgetting the fête.... It was so beautiful when the doors were thrown open, and the soldiers and flags came tramping in with the sunshine, and filled the nave! The generals sat with the mayor and the prêfet in the chancel, ever so grand in their ribbons and robes and orders. The service was all music and not long: soldiers don't like long prayers. You will see them go to mass on Sunday at St. Jean's, opposite the school.... Then at night there was a procession—such a pandemonium! such a rabble-rout, with music and shouting, soldiers marching at the double, carrying blazing torches, and a cloud of paper lanterns that caught fire and flared out. We could hear the discordant riot ever so far off, and when the mob came up our street again, almost in the dark, I covered my ears. Of all horrible sounds, a mob of excited Frenchmen can make the worst. The wind in a storm at sea is nothing to it."
There was a man gathering peaches from the sunny wall [Pg 88]of a garden-house by the river. Janey finished her tale, and remarked that here fruit could be bought. Bessie, rich in the possession of a pocketful of money, was most truly glad to hear it, and a great feast of fruit ensued, with accompaniments of galette and new milk. Then the walk was continued in a circuit which brought them back to the school through the town. The return was followed by a collation of thick bread and butter and thin tea; then by a little reading aloud in Miss Foster's holiday apartment, and then by the dortoir, and another good talk in the moonlight until sleep overwhelmed the talkers. Bessie dropt off with the thought in her mind that her father and dear Harry Musgrave must be just about going on board the vessel at Havre that was to carry them to Hampton, and that when she woke up in the morning they would be on English soil once more, and riding home to Beechhurst through the dewy glades of the Forest....
This account of twenty-four hours will stand for the whole of that first week of Bessie's exile. Only the walks of an afternoon were varied. In company with dull, neuralgic Miss Foster the two pupils visited the famous stone-quarries above the town, out of which so many grand churches have been built; they compassed the shaded Cours; they investigated the museum, and Bessie was introduced to the pretty portrait of Charlotte Corday, in a simple cross-over white gown, a blue sash and mob-cap. Afterward she was made acquainted with a lady of royalist partialities, whose mother had actually known the heroine, and had lived through the terrible days of the Terror. Her tradition was that the portrait of Charlotte was imaginary, and, as to her beauty, delusive, and that the tragical young lady's moving passion was a passion for notoriety. Bessie wondered and doubted, and began to think history a most interesting study.
For another "treat," as Janey Fricker called it, they went on the Sunday to drink tea with Miss Foster at her mother's. Mrs. Foster was a widow with ideas of gentility in poverty. She was a chirping, bird-like little woman, and lived in a room as trellised as a bird-cage. The house was on the site of the old ramparts, and the garden sloped to the fosse. A magnolia blossomed in it, and delicious pears, of the sort called "Bon chrêtiens," ripened on gnarled trees. This week was, in fact, [Pg 89]a beautiful little prelude to school life, if Bessie had but known it. But her appreciation of its simple pleasures came later, when they were for ever past. She remembered then, with a sort of remorse, laughing at Janey's notion of a "treat." Everything goes by comparison. At this time Bessie had no experience of what it is to live by inelastic rule and rote, to be ailing and unhappy, alone in a crowd and neglected. Janey believed in Mrs. Foster's sun-baked little garden as a veritable pattern of Eden, but Bessie knew the Forest, she knew Fairfield, and almost despised that mingled patch of beauty and usefulness, of sweet odors and onions, for Mrs. Foster grew potherbs and vegetables amongst her flowers.
Thus Bessie's first week of exile got over, and except for a sense of being hungry now and then, she did not find herself so very miserable after all.
One morning Bessie Fairfax rose to a new sensation. "To-day the classes open, and there is an end of treats," cried Janey Fricker with a despairing resignation. "You will soon see the day-scholars, and by degrees the boarders will arrive. Madame was to come late last night, and the next news will be of Miss Hiloe. Perhaps they will appear to-morrow. Heigh-ho!"
"You are not to care for Miss Hiloe; I shall stand up for you. I have no notion of tyrants," said Bessie in a spirited way. But her feelings were very mixed, very far from comfortable. This morning it seemed more than ever cruel to have sent her to school at her age, ignorant as she was of school ways. She shuddered in anticipation of the dreadful moment when it would be publicly revealed that she could neither play on the piano nor speak a word of French. Her deficiencies had been confided to Janey in a shy, shamefaced way, and Janey, who could chatter fluently in French and play ten tunes at least, had betrayed amaze[Pg 90]ment. Afterward she had given consolation. There was one boarder who made no pretence of learning music, and several day-scholars; of course, being French, they spoke French, but not a girl of them all, not madame herself, could frame three consecutive sentences in English to be understood.
In the novelty of the situation Janey was patroness for the day. Madame Fournier had to be encountered after breakfast, and proved to be a perfectly small lady, of most intelligent countenance and kind conciliatory speech. She kissed Janey on both cheeks, and bent a penetrating pair of brown eyes on Bessie's face, which looked intensely proud in her blushing shyness. Madame had received from Mrs. Wiley (a former pupil and temporary teacher) instructions that Bessie's education and training had been of the most desultory kind, and that it was imperatively necessary to remedy her deficiencies, and give her a veneering of cultivation and a polish to fit her for the station of life to which she was called. Madame was able to judge for herself in such matters. Bessie impressed her favorably, and no humiliation was inflicted on her even as touching her ignorance of French and the piano. It was decreed that as Bessie professed no enthusiasm for music, it would be wasting time that might be more profitably employed to teach her; and a recommendation to the considerate indulgence of Mademoiselle Adelaide, who was in charge of the junior class, saved her from huffs and ridicule while going through the preliminary paces of French.
At recreation-time in the garden Janey ran up to ask how she had got on. "J'ai, tu as, il a," said Bessie, and laughed with radiant audacity. Her phantoms were already vanishing into thin air.
Not many French girls were yet present. The next noon-day they were doubled. By Saturday all were come, and answered to their names when the roll was called, the great and dreadful Miss Hiloe amongst them. They were two, Mademoiselle Ada and Mademoiselle Ellen. The younger sister was a cipher—an echo of the elder, and an example of how she ought to be worshipped. Mademoiselle Ada would be a personage wherever she was. Already her rôle in the world was adopted. She had a pale Greek face, a lofty look, and a [Pg 91]proud spirit. She was not rude to those who paid her the homage that was her due—she was, indeed, helpful and patronizing to the humble—but for a small Mordecai like Janey Fricker she had nothing but insolence and rough words. Janey would not bow down to her; in her own way Janey was as stubborn and proud as her tyrant, but she was not as strong. She was a waif by herself, and Mademoiselle Ada was obeyed, served, and honored by a large following of admirers. Bessie Fairfax did not feel drawn to enroll herself amongst them, and before the classes had been a month assembled she had rejoiced the heart of the master-mariner's little daughter with many warm, affectionate assurances that there was no one else in all the school that she loved so well as herself.
By degrees, and very quick degrees, Bessie's tremors for how she should succeed at school wore off. What fantastic distresses she would have been saved if she had known beforehand that she possessed a gift of beauty, more precious in the sight of girls than the first place in the first class, than the utmost eloquence of tongues, and the most brilliant execution on the piano! It came early to be disputed whether Mademoiselle Ada or Mademoiselle Bessie was the belle des belles; and Bessie, too, soon had her court of devoted partisans, who extolled her fair roseate complexion, blue eyes, and golden hair as lovelier far than Mademoiselle Ada's cold, severe perfection of feature. Bessie took their praises very coolly, and learnt her verbs, wrote her dictées, and labored at her thêmes with the solid perseverance of a girl who has her charms to acquire. The Miss Hiloes were not unwilling to be on good terms with her, but that, she told them, was impossible while they were so ostentatiously discourteous to her friend, Janey Fricker. When to her armor of beauty Bessie added the weapon of fearless, incisive speech, the risk of affronts was much abated. Mr. Carnegie had prophesied wisely when he said for his wife's consolation that character tells more in the long-run than talking French or playing on the piano. Her companions might like Bessie Fairfax, or they might let liking alone, but very few would venture a second time on ill-natured demonstrations either towards herself or towards any one she protected.
[Pg 92]Bessie's position in the community was established when the tug of work began. Her health and complexion triumphed over the coarse, hard fare; her habits of industry made application easy; but the dulness and monotony were sickening to her, the routine and confinement were hateful yoke and bondage. Saving one march on Sunday to the Temple under Miss Foster's escort, she went nowhere beyond the garden for weeks together. Both French and English girls were in the same case, unless some friend residing in the town or visiting it obtained leave to take them out. And nobody came for Bessie. That she should go home to Beechhurst for a Christmas holiday she had taken for granted; and while abiding the narrow discipline, and toiling at her unaccustomed tasks with conscientious diligence, that flattering anticipation made sunshine in the distance. Every falling leaf, every chill breath of advancing winter, brought it nearer. Janey and she used to talk of it half their recreation-time—by the stagnant, weedy fountain in the garden at noon, and in the twilight windows of the classe, when thoughts of the absent are sweetest. For the Petrel had not come into port at Caen since the autumn, and Janey was still left at school in daily expectation and uncertainty.
"I am only sorry, Janey, that you are not sure of going home too," said Bessie, one day, commiserating her.
"If I am not sailing with father I would rather be here. I am not so lonely since you came," responded Janey.
Then Bessie dilated on the pleasantness of the doctor's house, the excellent kindness of her father and mother, the goodness of the boys, the rejoicing there would be at her return, both amongst friends at Beechhurst and friends at Brook. Each day, after she had indulged her memory and imagination in this strain, her heart swelled with loving expectancy, and when the recess was spoken of as beginning "next week," she could hardly contain herself for joy.
What a cruel pity that such natural delightsome hopes must all collapse, all fall to the ground! It was ruled by Mr. Fairfax that his granddaughter had been absent so short a time that she need not go to England this winter season. Came a letter from Mrs. Carnegie to express the infinite disappointment at home. And there an end.
[Pg 93]"I cried for three days," Bessie afterward confessed. "It seemed that there never could befall me such another misery."
It was indeed terrible. In a day the big house was empty of scholars. Madame Fournier adjourned to Bayeux. Miss Foster went to her mother. The masters, the other teachers disappeared, all except Mademoiselle Adelaide, who was to stay in charge of the two girls for a fortnight, and then to resign her office for the same period to Miss Foster. There was a month of this heartless solitude before Bessie and Janey. Mademoiselle Adelaide bemoaned herself as their jailer, as much in prison as they. They had good grounds of complaint. A deserted school at Christmas-time is not a cheerful place.
But there was compensation preparing for Bessie.
"And when does Bessie Fairfax come?" was almost the first question of Harry Musgrave when he arrived from Oxford.
"Bessie is not to come at all," was the answer.
What was that for? He proceeded to an investigation. There was a streak of lively, strong perversity in Harry Musgrave. Remarks had been passed on his accompanying Mr. Carnegie when he conveyed Bessie to school—quite uncalled-for remarks, which had originated at Fairfield and the rectory. The impertinence of them roused Harry's temper, and, boy-like, he instantly resolved that if his dear little Bessie was kept away from home and punished on his account, he would give her meddlesome friends something to talk about by going to Caen again and seeing her in spite of them. He made out with clearness enough to satisfy his conscience that Lady Latimer and Mrs. Wiley gave themselves unnecessary anxiety about Mr. Fairfax's granddaughter, and that he was perfectly justified in circumventing their cautious tactics. He did not speak of his intention to the Carnegies, lest he should meet with a remonstrance that he would be forced to yield to; but he told his sympathizing mother that he was going to spend five pounds of his pocket-money in a run across to Normandy to see Bessie Fairfax. Mrs. Musgrave asked if it was quite wise, quite kind, for Bessie's sake. He was sure that Bessie would be glad, and he did not care who was vexed.
[Pg 94]Harry Musgrave gave himself no leisure to reconsider the matter, but went off to Hampton, to Havre, to Caen, with the lightest heart and most buoyant spirit in the world. He put up at Thunby's, and in the frosty sunshine of the next morning marched with the airs and sensations of a lover in mischief to the Rue St. Jean. Louise, that sage portress, recognized the bold young cousin of the English belle des belles, and announced him to Mademoiselle Adelaide. After a parley Bessie was permitted to receive him, to go out with him, to be as happy as three days were long. Harry told her how and why he had come, and Bessie was furiously indignant at the Wileys pretending to any concern in her affairs. Towards Lady Latimer she was more indulgent. They spent many hours in company, and told all their experiences. Harry talked of dons and proctors, of work and play, of hopes and projects, of rivals and friends. Bessie had not so much to tell: she showed him the classe and her place there, and introduced him to Janey. They visited all the public gardens and river-side walks. They were beautiful young people, and were the observed of many observers. The sagacious curé of St. Jean's, the confessor and director at the school, saw them by chance on the morning of a day when he had a mission to Bayeux. What more natural than that he should call upon Madame Fournier at her uncle the canon's house? and what more simple than that he should mention having met the English belle and her cousin of the dangerous sex?
Bessie Fairfax and Janey Fricker attended vespers regularly on Sunday afternoons at the church of St. Jean; but they were not amongst the fair penitents who whispered their peccadilloes once a fortnight in the curé's ear—he secluded in an edifice of chintz like a shower-bath, they kneeling outside the curtain with the blank eyes of the Holy Mother upon them, and the remote presence of a guardian-teacher out of hearing. But he took an interest in them. No overt act of proselytism was permitted in the school, but if an English girl liked vespers instead of the second service at the Temple, her preference was not discouraged. Bessie attended the Protestant ordinances at stated seasons, and went to vespers and benediction besides. The curé approved of her ingenuous devotion. Once upon a time there had been Fairfaxes faith[Pg 95]ful children of the Church: this young lady was an off-set of that house, its heiress and hope in this generation; it would be a holy deed to bring her, the mother perhaps of a new line, within its sacred pale.
Madame Fournier heard his communication with alarm. Already, by her ex-teacher Mrs. Wiley, this young Musgrave had been spoken against with voice of warning. Madame returned to Caen with her worthy pastor. The enterprising lover was just flown. Bessie had a sunshine face. Mademoiselle Adelaide wept that night because of the reproaches madame made her, and the following morning Bessie was invited to resume her lessons, and was mulcted of every holiday indulgence. Janey Fricker suffered with her, and for nearly a week they were all en penitence. Then Miss Foster came; madame vanished without leave-taking, as if liable to reappear at any instant, and lessons lapsed back into leisure. Bessie felt that she had been an innocent scapegrace, and Harry very venturesome; but she had so much enjoyed her "treat," and felt so much the happier for it, that, all madame's grave displeasure notwithstanding, she never was properly sorry.
Harry Musgrave returned to England as jubilant as he left Bessie. The trip, winter though it was, exhilarated him. But it behooved him to be serious when Mr. Carnegie was angry, and Mrs. Carnegie declared that she did not know how to forgive him. If his escapade were made known to Mr. Fairfax, the upshot might be a refusal to let Bessie revisit them at Beechhurst throughout the whole continuance of her school-days. And that was what came of it. Of course his escapade was communicated to Mr. Fairfax, and Madame Fournier received a letter from Abbotsmead with the intimation that the youth who had presented himself in the Rue St. Jean as a cousin of Miss Fairfax was nothing akin to her, and that if she could not be secured from his presumptuous intrusions there, she must be removed from madame's custody. They had associated together as children, but it was desirable to stay the progress of their unequal friendship as they grew up; for the youth, though well conducted and clever, was of mean origin and poor condition; so Mr. Fairfax was credibly informed. And he trusted that Madame Fournier would see the necessity of a decisive separation between them.
[Pg 96]Madame did see the necessity. With Mr. Fairfax's letter came to her hand another, a letter from the "youth" himself, but addressed to his dear Bessie. That it should ever reach her was improbable. There was the strictest quarantine for letters in the Rue St. Jean. Even letters to and from parents passed through madame's private office. She opened and read Harry Musgrave's as an obvious necessity, smiled over its boyish exaggeration, and relished its fun at her own expense, for madame was a woman of wisdom and humor. Little by little she had learnt the whole of Bessie's life and conversation from her own lips; and she felt that there was nothing to be feared from a lover of young Musgrave's type, unless he was set on mischief by the premature interposition of obstacles, of which this denial to Bessie of her Christmas holiday was an example.
However, madame had not to judge, but to act. She returned Harry Musgrave his letter, with a polite warning that such a correspondence with a girl at school was silly and not to be thought of. Harry blushed a little, felt foolish, and put the document into the fire. Madame made him confess to himself that he had gone to Caen as much for bravado as for love of Bessie. Bessie never knew of the letter, but she cherished her pretty romance in her heart, and when she was melancholy she thought of the garden at Brook, and of the beeches by the stream where they had sat and told their secrets on their farewell afternoon; and in her imagination her dear Harry was a perfect friend and lover.
That episode passed out of date. Bessie gave her mind to improvement. Discovery was made that she had a sweet singing voice, and, late in the day as it seemed to begin, she undertook to learn the piano, on the plea that it would be useful if she could only play enough to accompany herself in a song. She had her dancing-lessons, her drawing-lessons, and as much study of grammars, dictionaries, histories, geographies, and sciences-made-easy as was good for her, and every day showed her more and more what a dunce she was. Madame, however, treated her as a girl who had des moyens, and she was encouraged to believe that when she had done [Pg 97]with school she would make as creditable a figure in the world as most of her contemporaries.
How far off her début might be no one had yet inquired. Since her late experiences there was little certainty in Bessie's expectations of going to Beechhurst for the long vacation which began in July. And it was salutary that she entertained a doubt, for it mitigated disappointment when it came. About a fortnight before the breaking up madame sent for her one evening in to the salon, and with much consideration informed her that it was arranged she should go with her to Bayeux and to the sea, instead of going to England. Bessie had acquired the art of controlling her feelings, and she accepted the fiat in silence. But she felt a throb of vindictive rage against her grandfather, and said in her heart that to live in a world where such men were masters, women ought to be made of machinery. She refused to write to him, but she wrote home to Beechhurst, and asked if any of them were coming to see her. But the loving joint reply of her father and mother was that they thought it better not.
Madame Fournier was indulgent in holiday-time, and Bessie was better pleased at Bayeux than she had thought it possible to be. The canon proved to be the most genial of old clergymen. He knew all the romance of French history, and gave Bessie more instruction in their peripatetic lectures about that drowsy, ancient city than she could have learnt in a year of dull books. Then there was Queen Matilda's famous tapestry to study in the museum, a very retired, rustic nook, all embowered in vines. Bessie also practised sketching, for Bayeux is rich in bits of street scenery—gables, queer windows, gateways, flowery balconies. And she was asked into society with madame, and met the gentlefolks who kept their simple, retired state about the magnificent cathedral. Before Bayeux palled she was carried off to Luc-sur-Mer, the canon going too, also in the care of madame his niece.
Bessie's regret next to that for home was for the loneliness of Janey Fricker, left with Miss Foster in the Rue St. Jean. She wished for Janey to walk with her in the rough sea-wind, to bathe with her, and talk with her. One morning when the sun was glorious on the dancing waves, she cried out her longing for her little friend. The next day Janey arrived by the [Pg 98]diligence. Mr. Fairfax had given madame carte blanche for the holiday entertainment of his granddaughter, and madame was glad to be able to content her so easily. Luc-sur-Mer is not a place to be enthusiastic about. Its beauty is moderate—a shelving beach, a background of sand-hills, and the rocky reef of Calvados. The canon took his gentle paces with a broad-brimmed abbé from Avranches, and madame was happy in the society of a married sister from Paris. The two girls did as they pleased. They were very fond of one another, and this sentiment is enough for perfect bliss at their age. Bessie had never wavered in her protecting kindness to Janey, and Janey served her now with devotion, and promised eternal remembrance and gratitude.
When a fortnight came to an end at Luc-sur-Mer, Bessie returned to Bayeux, and Janey went back to the Rue St. Jean. Before the school reopened came into port at Caen the Petrel, and John Fricker, the master-mariner, carried away his daughter. Janey left six lines of hasty, tender adieu with Miss Foster for her friend, but no address. She only said that she was "Going to sail with father."
For days, weeks, months the memory of lost Janey Fricker haunted Bessie Fairfax with a sweet melancholy. She missed her little friend exceedingly. She did not doubt that Janey would write, would return, and even a year of silence and absence did not cure her of regret and expectation. She was of a constant as well as a faithful nature, and had a thousand kind pleas and excuses for those she loved. It was impossible to believe that Janey had forgotten her, but Janey made no sign of remembrance.
Time and change! Time and change! How fast they get over the ground! how light the traces they leave behind them! At the next Christmas recess there was a great exodus of English girls. The Miss Hiloes went, and they had no successors. [Pg 99]When Bessie wanted to talk of Janey and old days, she had to betake herself to Miss Foster. There was nobody else left who remembered Janey or her own coming to school.
As the time went on letters from Beechhurst were fewer and farther between; letters from Brook she had none, nor any mention of Harry Musgrave in her mother's. Her grandfather desired to wean her from early associations, and a mixture of pride and right feeling kept the Carnegies from whatever could be misconstrued into a wish to thwart him. No one came to see her from the Forest after that rash escapade of Harry Musgrave's. Her eighteenth birthday passed, and she was still kept at school both in school-time and holidays.
Madame Fournier, the genial canon, the kind curé, a few English acquaintances at Caen, a few French acquaintances at Bayeux, were very good to her. Especially she liked her visits to the canon's house in summer. Often, as the long vacation of her third year at Caen approached, she caught herself musing on the probability of her recall to England with a reluctancy full of doubts and fears. She had been so long away that she felt half forgotten, and when madame announced that once more she was to spend the autumn under her protection, she heard it without remonstrance, and, for the moment, with something like relief. But afterward, when the house was silent and the girls were all gone, the unbidden tears rose often to her eyes, and the yearning of home-sickness came upon her as strongly as in the early days of her exile.
Bayeux is a triste little city, and in hot weather a perfect sun-trap between its two hills. The river runs softly hidden amongst willows, and the dust rises in light clouds with scarce a breath of air. Yet glimpses of cool beautiful green within gates and over stone walls refresh the eyes; vines drape the placid rustic nook that calls itself the library; every other window in the streets is a garland or a posy, and through the doors ajar show vistas of oleanders, magnolias, pomegranates flowering in olive-wood tubs, and making sweet lanes and hedges across tiled courts to the pleasant gloom of the old houses.
Canon Fournier's house was in the neighborhood of the [Pg 100]cathedral, and as secluded, green, and garlanded as any. Oftentimes in the day his man Launcelot watered the court-yard in agreeable zigzags. Bessie Fairfax, when she heard the cool tinkle of the shower upon the stones, always looked out to share the refreshment. The canon's salon was a double room with a portière between. Two windows gave upon the court and two upon a shaded, paved terrace, from which a broad flight of steps descended to the garden. The domain of the canon's housekeeper was at one end of this terrace, and there old Babette sat in the cool shelling peas, shredding beans, and issuing orders to Margot in the sultry atmosphere of the kitchen stove. Bessie, alone in the salon one August morning, heard the shrill monotone of her voice in the pauses of a day-dream. She had dropped her book because, try as she would to hold her attention to the story, her thoughts lost themselves continually, and were found again at every turning of the page astray somewhere about the Forest—about home.
"It is very strange! I cannot help thinking of them. I wonder whether anything is happening?" she said, and yielded to the subtle influence. She began to walk to and fro the salon. She went over in her mind many scenes; she recollected incidents so trivial that they had been long ago forgotten—how Willie had broken the wooden leg of little Polly's new Dutch doll (for surgical practice), and how Polly had raised the whole house with her lamentations. And then she fell to reckoning how old the boys would be now and how big, until suddenly she caught herself laughing through tears at that cruel pang of her own when, after submitting to be the victim of Harry Musgrave's electrical experiments, he had neglected to reward her with the anticipated kiss. "I wonder whether he remembers?—girls remember such silly things." In this fancy she stood still, her bright face addressed towards the court. Through the trees over the wall appeared the gray dome of the cathedral. Launcelot came sauntering and waving his watering-can. The stout figure of the canon issued from the doorway of a small pavilion which he called his omnibus, passed along under the shadow of the wall, and out into the glowing sun. Madame entered the salon, her light quick steps ringing on the parquet, her holiday voice [Pg 101]clear as a carol, her holiday figure gay as a showy-plumaged bird.
"Ma chérie, tu n'es pas sortie? tu ne fais rien?"
Bessie awoke from her reverie, and confessed that she was idle this morning, very idle and uncomfortably restless: it was the heat, she thought, and she breathed a vast sigh. Madame invited her to do something by way of relief to her ennui, and after a brief considering fit she said she would go into the cathedral, where it was the coolest, and take her sketching-block.
Oh, for the moist glades of the Forest, for the soft turf under foot and the thick verdure overhead! Bessie longed for them with all her heart as she passed upon the sun-baked stones to the great door of the cathedral. The dusk of its vaulted roof was not cool and sweet like the arching of green branches, but chill with damp odors of antiquity. She sat down in one of the arcades near the portal above the steps that descend into the nave. The immense edifice seemed quite empty. The perpetual lamp burned before the altar, and wandering echoes thrilled in the upper galleries. Through a low-browed open door streamed across the aisle a flood of sunshine, and there was the sound of chisel and mallet from the same quarter, the stone-yard of the cathedral; but there was no visible worshipper—nothing to interrupt her mood of reverie.
For a long while, that is. Presently chimed in with the music of chisel and mallet the ring of eager young footsteps outside, young men's footsteps, voices and dear English speech. One was freely translating from his guide-book: "The cathedral, many times destroyed, was rebuilt after the fire of 1106, and not completed until the eighteenth century. It is therefore of several styles. The length is one hundred and two mètres and the height twenty-three mètres from floor to vault."
Bessie's breath came and went very fast; so did the blood in her cheeks. Surely that voice she knew. It was Harry Musgrave's voice, and this was why thoughts of the Forest had haunted her all the morning.
The owner of the voice entered, and it was Harry Musgrave—he and two others, all with the fresh air of British tourists [Pg 102]not long started on their tour, knapsack on back and walking-stick in hand. They pulled off their gray wideawakes and stared about, lowering their manly tones as they talked; stood a few minutes considering the length, breadth, height, and beauty of general effect in the nave and the choir, and then descended the steps, and in the true national spirit of inquiry walked straight to the stream of sunshine that revealed a door opening into some place unseen. Bessie, sitting in retired shade, escaped their observation. She laughed to herself with an inexpressible gladness. It was certainly not by accident that Harry was here. She would have liked to slip along the aisle in his shadow, to have called him by his name, but the presence of his two unknown companions, and some diffidence in herself, restrained her until the opportunity was gone, and he disappeared, inveigled by the sacristan into making the regular tour of the building. She knew every word he would hear, every antiquity he would admire. She saw him in the choir turning over the splendid manuscript books of Holy Writ and of the Mass which were in use in the church when the kings of England were still dukes of Normandy; saw him carried off into the crypt where is shown the pyx of those long-ago times, a curious specimen of mediæval work in brass; and after that she lost him.
Would they climb the dome, those enterprising young men? Bessie took it for granted that they would. But she must see dear Harry again; and oh for a word with him! Perhaps he would seek her out—he might have learnt from her mother where she was at Bayeux—or perhaps he would not dare? Not that Harry's character had ever lacked daring where his wishes were concerned; still, recollecting the trouble that had come of his former unauthorized visit, he might deny himself for her sake. It was not probable, and Bessie would not have bidden him deny himself; she would willingly go through the same trouble again for the same treat. Why had she not taken courage to arrest his progress? How foolish, how heartless it would appear to-morrow if the chance were not renewed to her to-day! She would not have done so silly a thing three years ago—her impulse to follow him, to call out his name, would have been irresistible—but now she felt shy of him. A plague on her shyness!
[Pg 103]Bessie's little temper had the better of her for a minute or two. She was very angry with herself, would never forgive herself, she said, if by her own trivial fault she had thrown away this favor of kind Fortune. What must she do, what could she do, to retrieve her blunder? Where seek for him? How find him? She quivered, grew hot and cold again with excitement. Should she go to the Green Square?—he was sure to visit that quarter. Then she remembered a high window in the canon's house that commanded the open spaces round the cathedral; she would go and watch from that high window. It was a long while before she arrived at this determination; she waited to see if the strangers would return to the beautiful chapter-house, to admire its fine tesselated floor and carved stalls, and its chief treasure in the exquisite ivory crucifix of the unfortunately famous princess De Lamballe; but they did not return, and then she hastened home, lest she should be too late. Launcelot was plying his water-can for the sixth time that morning when she entered the court, and she stood in an angle of shadow to feel the air of the light shower.
"Here she is, and just the same as ever!" exclaimed somebody at the salon window.
Bessie was startled into a cry of joy. It was Harry Musgrave himself. Madame Fournier had been honored with his society for quite half an hour while his little friend was loitering and longing pensively in the cathedral. All that lost, precious time! Bessie never recollected how they met, or what they said to each other in the first moments, but Babette, who witnessed the meeting through the glass door at the end of the hall which opened on the terrace, had a firm belief ever afterward that the English ladies and gentlemen embrace with a kiss after absence—a sign whether of simplicity or freedom of manners, she could not decide; so she wisely kept her witness to herself, being a sage person and of discreet experiences.
They returned into the salon together. It was full of the perfume of roses, of the wavering shadow of leaves on the floor and walls and ceiling. It looked bright and pretty, and madame, with suave benignity, explained: "I told Mr. Musgrave that it was better to wait here, and not play hide-and-seek; Bessie was sure to come soon."
[Pg 104]"I saw you in the cathedral, Harry; you passed close by me. It was so difficult not to cry out!"
"You saw me in the cathedral, and did not run up to me? Oh, Bessie!"
"There were two other gentlemen with you." Bessie, though conscious of her wickedness, saw no harm in extenuating it.
"If there had been twenty, what matter? Would I have let you pass me? If I had not found courage to seek you here—and it required some courage, and some perseverance, too—why, I should have missed you altogether."
Bessie laughed: here were they sparring as if they had parted no longer ago than yesterday! Then she blushed, and all at once they came to themselves, and began to be graver and more restrained.
"My friends are Fordyce and Craik; they have gone to study the Tapestry. I said I would look in at it later with you, Bessie: I counted on you for my guide," announced Harry with native assurance.
Bessie launched a supplicatory glance at madame, then hazarded a doubtful consent, which did not provoke a denial. After that they moved to the garden-end of the salon, and seated themselves in friendly proximity. Then Bessie asked to be told all about them at home. All about them was not a long story. The doctor's family had not arrived at the era of dispersion and changes; the three years that had been so long, full, and important to Bessie had passed in his house like three monotonous days. The same at Brook.
"The fathers and mothers, yours and mine, are not an hour altered," Harry Musgrave said. "The boys are grown. Jack is a sturdy little ruffian, as you might expect; no boy in the Forest runs through so many clothes as Jack—that's the complaint. There is a talk of sending him to sea, and he is deep in Marryat's novels for preparation."
"Poor Jack, he was a sad Pickle, but so affectionate! And Willie and the others?" queried Bessie rather mournfully.
Concerning Willie and the others there was a favorable account. Of all Bessie's old friends and acquaintances not one was lost, not one had gone away. But talk of them was [Pg 105]only preliminary to more interesting talk of themselves, modestly deferred, but well lingered over once it was begun. Harry Musgrave could not tell Bessie too much—he could not explain with too exact a precision the system of college-life, its delights and drawbacks. He had been very successful; he had won many prizes, and anticipated the distinction of a high degree—all at the cost of work. One term he had not gone up to Oxford. The doctor had ordered him to rest.
"Still, you are not quite killed with study," said Bessie gayly, rallying him. She thought the school-life of girls was as laborious as the college-life of young men, with much fewer alleviations.
"That was never my way. I can make a spurt if need be. But it is safer to keep a steady, even pace."
"And what are you going to do for a profession, Harry? Have you made up your mind yet?"
Harry had made up his mind to win a fellowship at Oxford, and then to enter himself at one of the Inns of Court and read for the bar. For physic and divinity he had no taste, but the law would suit him. Bessie was ineffably depressed by this information: what romance is there in the law for the imagination of eighteen? If Harry had said he was going to throw himself on the world as a poor author, she would have bestowed upon him a fund of interest and sympathy. To win a little of such encouragement Harry added that while waiting for briefs he might be forced to betake himself to the cultivation of light literature, of journalism, or even of parliamentary reporting: many men, now of mark, had done so. Then Bessie was better satisfied. "But oh what a prodigious wig you will want!" was her rueful conclusion.
"Have I such a Goliath head?" Harry inquired, rubbing his large hands through his crisp, abundant locks. They were as much all in a fuzz as ever, but his skin was not so gloriously tanned, and his hands were white instead of umber. Bessie noticed them: they were whiter and more delicate than her own.
Harry Musgrave had no conceit, but plenty of confidence, and he knew that his head was a very good head. It had room for plenty of brains, and Harry was of opinion that it [Pg 106]is far more desirable to be born with a fortune in brains than with the proverbial silver spoon in one's mouth. He would have laughed to scorn the vulgar notion that to be born in the purple or in a wilderness of money-bags is more than an equivalent, and would have bid you see the little value God sets on riches by observing the people to whom He gives them. Birth, he would have granted, ensures a man a long step at starting, but unless he have brains his rival without ancestors will pass him in the race for distinction. This was young Musgrave's creed at three-and-twenty. He expounded it to Bessie, who heard him with a puzzled perception of something left out. Harry, like many another man at the beginning of life, reckoned without the unforeseen.
The sum of Bessie's experiences, adventures, opinions was not long. Her mind had not matured at school as it would have done in the practical education of home. She had acquired a graceful carriage and propriety of behavior, and she had learned a little more history, with a few dates and other things that are written in books; but of current literature and current events, great or small, she had learned nothing. For seclusion a French school is like a convent. She had a sense of humor and a sense of justice—qualities not too common in the sex; and she had a few liberal notions, the seed of which had been sown during her rides with the doctor. They would probably outlive her memory for the shadowy regions of chronology. Then she had a clear and strong sentiment with regard to the oppressive manner in which her grandfather had exercised his right and power over her, which gave a tincture to her social views not the most amiable. She was confessedly happier with Madame Fournier at Bayeux than she had any anticipation of being at Abbotsmead, but she had nevertheless a feeling of injury in being kept in a state of pupilage. She had wrought up her mind to expect a recall to England when she was eighteen, and no recall had come. Harry Musgrave's inquiry when she was to leave school brought a blush to her face. She was ashamed to answer that she did not know.
"Lady Latimer should interfere for you," suggested Harry, who had not received a lively impression of her lot.
Bessie's countenance cleared with a flash, and her thoughts [Pg 107]were instantly diverted to Fairfield and its gracious mistress—that bright particular star of her childish imagination: "Oh, Harry, have you made friends with Lady Latimer?" asked she.
"I have not been to her house, because she has never asked me since that time I despised her commands, but we have a talk when we meet on the road. Her ladyship loves all manner of information, and is good enough to take an interest in my progress. I know she takes an interest in it, because she recollects what I tell her—not like our ascetic parson, who forgets whether I am at Balliol or Oriel, and whether I came out first class or fourth in moderations."
"I wish I could meet Lady Latimer on the road or anywhere! Seeing you makes me long to go home, Harry," said Bessie with a sigh. Harry protested that she ought to go home, and promised that he would speak about it—he would go to Fairfield immediately on his return to the Forest, and beg Lady Latimer to intercede in her behalf. Bessie had a doubt whether this was a judicious plan, but she did not say so. The hope of deliverance, once admitted into her mind, overcame all perplexities.
A little while and the canon came in glowing hot. "Pouf!" and he wiped his rubicund, round visage with a handkerchief as brilliant. Coming straight from the glare out of doors, he was not aware of the stranger in the salon till his eyes were used to the gloom. Then madame and Bessie effected Harry's introduction, and as Harry, with a rare wisdom, had practised colloquial French, he and the canon were soon acquainted. Once only had the old man visited England, a visit for ever memorable on account of the guinea he had paid for his first dinner in London.
"Certainly, they took you for an archbishop or for a monsigneur," said Harry, when the old story of this cruel extortion was recited to him. The canon was pleased. This explanation gave a color of flattery to his infamous wrong. And madame thought her brother had quite l'air noble.
Babette summoned them to dejeuner. Harry stayed gladly at a hint of invitation. Across the table the two young people had a full view of each other, and satisfied their eyes with gazing. Bessie looked lovely in her innocent delight, [Pg 108]and Harry had now a maturer appreciation of her loveliness. He himself had more of the student aspect, and an air of lassitude, which he ascribed, as he had been instructed, to overstrain in reading for the recent examinations. This was why he had come abroad—the surest way of taking mental rest and refreshment. Incidentally he mentioned that he had given up boating and athletic exercises, under Mr. Carnegie's direction. Bessie only smiled, and reflected that it was odd to hear of Harry Musgrave taking care of himself. One visitor from England on a day would have been enough, but by a curious coincidence, as they sat all at ease, through the open window from the court there sounded another English voice, demanding Madame Fournier and Miss Fairfax.
"Who can it be?" said Bessie, and she craned her fair neck to look, while a rosy red suffused her face from chin to brow.
The canon and madame laid down their knives and forks to listen, and involuntarily everybody's eyes turned upon Harry. He could not forbear a smile and a glance of intelligence at Bessie; for he had an instant suspicion that this new-comer was an emissary from Mr. Fairfax, and from her agitation so had she. Launcelot held a short, prompt parley at the gate, then Babette intervened, and next was audible the advance of a firm, even step into the hall, and the closing of the salon door. "Encore un beau monsieur pour mademoiselle," announced the housekeeper, and handed in a card inscribed with the name of "Mr. Cecil Burleigh," and a letter of introduction from Mr. Fairfax.
Bessie's heart went pit-a-pat while madame read the letter, and Harry feared that he would probably have to find his way to the Tapestry without a guide. Madame's countenance was inscrutable, but she said to Bessie, "Calme-toi, mon enfant," and finished her meal with extreme deliberation. Then with a perfect politeness, and an utter oblivion of the little arrangement for a walk to the library that Harry and Bessie had made, she gave him his congé in the form of a hope that he would never fail to visit her when he found himself at Caen or Bayeux. Harry accepted it with a ready apprehension of the necessity for his dismissal, and without alluding to the Tapestry made his respectful acknowledgments to [Pg 109]madame and the canon preparatory to bidding Bessie farewell.
Under the awning over the perron they said their good-byes. Bessie, frank-hearted girl, was disappointed even to the glittering of tears. "It has been very pleasant. I am so happy you came!" whispered she with a tremor.
"God bless you, dear little Bessie! Give me this for a keepsake," said Harry, and took a white, half-blown rose which she wore in the bosom of her pretty dress of lilac percale. She let him have it. Then they stood for a minute face to face and hand in hand, but the delicate perplexities of Babette, spying through her glass door, were not increased by a kiss at parting. And the young man seemed to rush away at last in sudden haste.
"Montes dans ta chambre quelques instants, Bessie," said the voice of madame. And then with a gentle, decorous dignity she entered the salon.
When madame entered the salon, Mr. Cecil Burleigh was standing at one of the windows that gave upon the court. He witnessed the departure of Harry Musgrave, and did not fail to recognize an Englishman in the best made of English clothes. The reader will probably recognize him as one of the guests at the Fairfield wedding, who had shown some attention to Bessie Fairfax on her grandfather's introduction of him as a neighbor of his in Woldshire. He was now at Bayeux by leave of Mr. Fairfax, to see the young lady and take the sense of her opinions as to whether she would prefer to remain another year at school, or to go back to England in ten days under his escort. The interval he was on his way to spend in Paris—on a private errand for the government, to a highly honorable member of which he was private secretary.
Mr. Fairfax's letter to madame announced in simple terms the object of Mr. Cecil Burleigh's mission to Bayeux, and as the gentleman recited it by word of mouth she grew freezingly formal. To lose Bessie would be a loss that she had been treating as deferred. Certainly, also, the ways of the English are odd! To send the young lady on a two days' journey with this strange gentleman, who was no relative, [Pg 110]was impossible. So well brought up as Bessie had been since she came to Caen, she would surely refuse the alternative, and decide to remain at school. Madame replied to the announcement that Miss Fairfax would appear in a few minutes, and would of course speak for herself. But Bessie was in no haste to meet the envoy from Kirkham after parting with her beloved Harry, and when a quarter of an hour had elapsed, and there was still no sign of her coming, Babette was despatched to the top of the house to bring her down to the interview.
Mr. Cecil Burleigh had taken a chair opposite the door, and he watched for its reopening with a visible and vivid interest. It opened, and Bessie walked in with that stately erectness of gait which was characteristic of the women of her race. "As upright as a Fairfax," was said of them in more senses than one. She was blushing, and her large dark blue eyes had the softness of recent tears. She curtseyed, school-girl fashion, to her grandfather's envoy, and her graceful proud humility set him instantly at a distance. His programme was to be lordly, affable, tenderly patronizing, but his dark cheek flushed, and self-possessed as he was, both by nature and habit, he was suddenly at a loss how to address this stiff princess about whom he had expected to find some rags of Cophetua still hanging. But the rags were all gone, and the little gypsy of the Forest was become a lady.
Madame intervened with needful explanations. Bessie comprehended the gist of the embassage very readily. She must take heart for an immediate encounter with her grandfather and all her other difficulties, or she must resign herself to a fourth year of exile and of school. Her mind was at once made up. Since the morning—how long ago it seemed!—an ardent wish to return to England had begun to glow in her imagination. She wanted her real life to begin. These dull, monotonous school-days were only a prelude which had gone on long enough. Therefore she said, with brief consideration, that her choice would be to return home.
"To Kirkham understand, ma chérie, not to Beechhurst," said madame softly, warningly.
"To Kirkham, so be it! Sooner or later I must go there," answered Bessie with brave resignation.
[Pg 111]Mr. Cecil Burleigh was apparently gratified by the young lady's consent, abrupt though it was. But madame's countenance fell. She was deeply disappointed at this issue. Apart from her pecuniary interest in Bessie, which was not inconsiderable, Bessie had become a source of religious concern to influential persons. And there was a favorite nephew of madame's, domiciled in Paris, about whom visionary schemes had been indulged, which now all in a moment vanished. This young nephew was to have come with his mother to Étretât only a week hence, and there the canon and Madame Fournier were to have joined them, with the beautiful English girl committed to their charge. It was now good-bye to all such plots and plans.
Bessie perceived from her face that madame was distressed, but she did not know all the reasons why. Madame had been very good to her, and Bessie felt sorry; but to leave school for home was such a natural, inevitable episode in the course of life in the Rue St. Jean that, beyond a momentary regret, she had no compunction. Mr. Cecil Burleigh proceeded to lay open his arrangements. He was on his road to Paris, where he might be detained from ten to fifteen days, but madame should receive a letter from him when the precise time of his return was fixed. After he had spoken to this effect he rose to take leave, and Bessie, blushing as she heard her own voice, originated her first remark, her first question:
"My grandfather hardly knows me. Does he expect my arrival at Kirkham with pleasure, or would he rather put it off for another year?" Madame thought she was already wavering in her determination.
"I am sure that when I have written to him he will expect your arrival with the greatest pleasure," replied Mr. Cecil Burleigh with kind emphasis, retaining Bessie's hand for a moment longer than was necessary, and relinquishing it with a cordial shake.
Bessie's blushes did not abate at the compliment implied in his answer and in his manner: he had been favorably impressed, and would send to Abbotsmead a favorable report of her. When he was gone she all in a moment recollected when and where she had seen him before, and wondered that he had not reminded her of it; but perhaps he had forgotten [Pg 112]too? She soon let go that reminiscence, and with a light heart, in anticipation of the future which had appeared in the distance so unpropitious, she talked of it to madame with a thousand random speculations, until madame was tired of the subject. And then she talked of it to Babette, who having no private disappointments in connection therewith, proved patiently and sympathetically responsive.
"Of course," said Bessie, "we shall go down the river to Havre, and then we shall cross to Hampton. I shall send them word at home, and some of them are sure to come and meet me there."
The letter was written and despatched, and in due course of post arrived an answer from Mr. Carnegie. He would come to Hampton certainly, and his wife would come with him, and perhaps one of the boys: they would come or go anywhere for a sight of their dear Bessie. But, fond, affectionate souls! they were all doomed to disappointment. Mr. Cecil Burleigh wrote earlier than was expected that he had intelligence from Kirkham to the effect that Mr. Frederick Fairfax would be at Havre with his yacht on or about a certain day, that he would come to Caen and himself take charge of his niece, and carry her home by sea—to Scarcliffe understood, for Kirkham was full twenty miles from the coast.
"Oh, how sorry I am! how sorry they will be in the Forest!" cried Bessie. "Is there no help for it?"
Madame was afraid there was no help for it—nothing for it but submission and obedience. And Bessie wrote to revoke all the cheerful promises and prospects that she had held out to her friends at Beechhurst.
Canon Fournier went to Étretât by himself, for madame was bound to escort her pupil to Caen, to prepare her for her departure to England, and with her own hands to remit her into those of her friends. Caen is suffocatingly hot in Au[Pg 113]gust—dusty, empty, dull. Mr. Frederick Fairfax's beautiful yacht, the Foam, was in port at Havre, but it was understood that a week would elapse before it could be ready to go to sea again. It had met with some misadventure and wanted repairs. Mr. Frederick Fairfax came on to Caen, and presented himself in the Rue St. Jean, where he saw Bessie in the garden. Two chairs were brought out for them, and they sat and talked to the tinkle of the old fountain. It was not much either had to say to the other. The gentleman was absent and preoccupied, like a person accustomed to solitude and long silence; even while he talked he gave Bessie the impression of being half lost in reverie. He bore some slight resemblance to his father, and his fair hair and beard were whitening already, though he appeared otherwise in the prime of life.
The day after her uncle's visit there came to Bessie a sage, matronly woman to offer her any help or information she might need in prospect of sea-adventures. Mrs. Betts was to attend upon her on board the yacht; she had decisive ways and spoke like a woman in authority. When Bessie hesitated she told her what to do. She had been in charge of Mr. Frederick Fairfax's unfortunate wife during a few weeks' cruise along the coast. The poor lady was an inmate of the asylum of the Bon Sauveur at Caen. The Foam had been many times into the port on her account during Bessie's residence in the Rue St. Jean, but, naturally enough, Mr. Frederick Fairfax had kept his visits from the knowledge of his school-girl niece. Now, however, concealment might be abandoned, for if the facts were not communicated to her here, she would be sure to hear them at Kirkham. And Mrs. Betts told her the pitiful story. Bessie was inexpressibly awed and shocked at the revelation. She had not heard a whisper of the tragedy before.
One evening in the cool Bessie walked with Miss Foster up the wide thoroughfare, at the country end of which are the old convent walls and gardens which enclose the modern buildings of the Bon Sauveur. They were not a dozen paces from the gates when the wicket was opened by a sister, and Mr. Frederick Fairfax came out. Bessie's face flushed and her eyes filled with tears of compassion.
[Pg 114]"You know where I have been, then, Elizabeth?" said he—"to visit my poor wife. She seems happier in her little room full of birds and flowers than on the yacht with me, yet the good nuns assure me she is the better for her sea-trip. The nuns are most kind."
Bessie acquiesced, and Miss Foster remarked that it was at the Bon Sauveur gentle usage of the insane had first superseded the cruel old system of restraints and terror. Mr. Frederick Fairfax shivered, stood a minute gazing dejectedly into space, and then walked on.
"He loves her," said Bessie, deeply touched. "I suppose death is a light affliction in comparison with such a separation."
The wicket was still open, the sister was still looking out. There was a glimpse of lofty houses, open windows, grapevines rich in purple clusters on the walls, and boxes of mignonette and gayer flowers upon the window-sills. Miss Foster asked Bessie if she would like to see what of the asylum was shown; and though Bessie's taste did not incline to painful studies, before she had the decision to refuse she found herself inside the gates and the sister was reciting her monotonous formula.
These tall houses in a crescent on the court were occupied by lady-boarders not suffering from mental alienation or any loss of faculty, but from decayed fortunes. The deaf and dumb, the blind, the crippled, epileptic, and insane had separate dwellings built apart in the formal luxuriant gardens. "We have patients of all nations," said the sister. "Strangers see none of these; there have been distressing recognitions." Bessie was not desirous of seeing any. She breathed more freely when she was outside the gates. It was a nightmare to imagine the agonies massed within those walls, though all is done that skill and charity can do for their alleviation.
"You will not forget us: if ever you come back to Caen, you will not forget us?" The speaker was little Mrs. Foster.
Bessie had learned to love Mrs. Foster's crowded, minute salon, her mixed garden of flowers and herbs; and she had learned to love the old lady too, by reason of the kindnesses [Pg 115]she had done her and her over-worked daughter. Mr. Fairfax had made his granddaughter an allowance of pocket-money so liberal that she was never at a loss for a substantial testimony of her gratitude to any one who earned it. And now her farewell visits to all who had been kind to her were paid, and she was surprised how much she was leaving that she regretted. The word had come for her to be ready at a moment's call. The yacht was in the river, her luggage was gone on board, and Mrs. Betts had completed her final arrangements for the comfort of the young lady. Only Mr. Cecil Burleigh was to wait for—that was the last news for Bessie: Mr. Cecil Burleigh was to join the yacht, and to be carried to England with her.
There were three days to wait. The time seemed long in that large vacant house, that sunburnt secluded garden, that glaring silent court. Bessie spent hours in the church. It was cool there, and close by if her summons came. The good curé saw her often, and took no notice. She was not devout. She was too facile, too philosophical of temper to have violent preferences or aversions in religion. A less sober mind than hers would have yielded to the gentle pressure of universal example, but Bessie was not of those who are given to change. She would have made an excellent Roman Catholic if she had been born and bred in that communion, but she had disappointed everybody's pious hopes and efforts for her conversion to it. She once said to the curé that holiness of life was the chief thing, and she could not make out that it was the monopoly of any creed or any sect, or any age of the world. He gave her his blessing, and, not to acknowledge a complete defeat, he told Madame Fournier that if the dear young lady met with poignant griefs and mortifications, for which there were abundant opportunities in her circumstances, he had expectations that she might then seek refuge and consolation in the tender arms of the Church. Madame did not agree with him. She had studied Bessie's character more closely, and believed that whatever her trials, her strength would always suffice for her day, and that whatever she changed she would not change her profession of faith or deny her liberal and practical Protestant principles.
There was hurry at the end, as in most departures, but it [Pg 116]was soon over, and then followed a delicious calm. The yacht was towed down the river in the beautiful cool of the evening. A pretty awning shaded the deck, and there Bessie dined daintily with her uncle and Mr. Cecil Burleigh, and for the first time in her life was served with polite assiduity. She looked very handsome and more coquettish than she had any idea of in her white dress and red capuchon, but she felt shy at being made so much of. She did not readily adapt herself to worship. Mr. Cecil Burleigh had arrived from Paris only that afternoon, and had many amusing things to tell of his pleasures and adventures there. He spoke of Paris as one who loved the gay city, and seemed in excellent spirits. If his mission had a political object, he must certainly have carried it through with triumphant success; but his talk was of balls, fêtes, plays and shows.
After they had dined Bessie was left to her memories and musings, while the gentlemen went pacing up and down the deck in earnest conversation. It was a perfect evening. The sky was full of color, scarlet, rosy, violet, primrose—changing, fading, flushing, perpetually. And before all was gray the moon had risen and was shining in silver floods upon the sea. In the mystery of moonshine Bessie lost sight of the phantom poplars that fringe the Orne. The excitement of novelty and uncertainty routed dull thoughts, and her fancy pruned its wings for a flight into the future. In the twilight came Mrs. Betts, and cut short the flight of fancy with prosy suggestions of early retirement to rest. It was easy to retire, but not so easy to sleep. Bessie's mind was astir. It became retrospective. She went over the terrors of her first coming to Caen, the dinner at Thunby's, and the weird talk of Janey Fricker in the dortoir, till melancholy overwhelmed her.
Where was Janey? Was she still sailing with her father? No news of her had ever come to the Rue St. Jean since the day she left it. It sometimes crossed Bessie's mind that Janey was no longer in the land of the living. At last, with the lulling, soft motion of a breezeless night on the water, came oblivion and sleep too sound for dreams.
Life is continuous, so we say, but here and there events happen that mark off its parts so sharply as almost to sever them. Awaking the next morning in the tiny gilded cabin of the Foam was the signal of such an event to Bessie Fairfax. She had put away childish things, and left them behind her at Caen yesterday. To-day before her, across the Channel, was a new world to be proved, and a cloudy revelation of the joys and sorrows, the hopes and fears that nourish the imagination of blooming adolescence. For a minute she did not realize where she was, and lay still, with wide-open eyes and ears perplexed, listening to the wash of the sea. There was a splendid sunshine, a sky blue as sapphire, and a lovely green ripple of waves against the glass.
The voice of Mrs. Betts brought her to herself: "I thought it best to let you sleep your sleep out, miss. The sea-air does it. The gentlemen have breakfasted two hours ago."
Bessie was sorry and ashamed. It was with a penitent face she appeared on deck. But she immediately discovered that this was not school: she had entire liberty to please and amuse herself. Perhaps if her imagination had been less engaged she might have found the voyage tedious. Mrs. Betts told her there was no knowing when they should see Scarcliffe—it depended on wind and weather and whims. The yacht was to put in at Ryde to land Mr. Cecil Burleigh; and as the regattas were going on, they might cruise off the Isle of Wight for a week, maybe, for the master was never in a hurry. In Bessie's bower there was an agreeable selection of novels, but she had many successive hours of silence to dream in when she was tired of heroes and heroines. Mr. Frederick Fairfax was the most taciturn of men, and Mr. Cecil Burleigh was constantly busy with pens, ink, and paper. In the long course of the day he did take shreds of leisure, but they were mostly devoted to cigars and meditation. Bessie observed that he was older and graver since that gay wedding at Fairfield—which of course he had a right to be, [Pg 118]for it was three years ago—but he was still and always a very handsome and distinguished personage.
In the salon of Canon Fournier at Bayeux, Bessie Fairfax had disconcerted this fine gentleman, but now the tables were turned, and on board the yacht he often disconcerted her—not of malice prepense, but for want of due consideration. No doubt she was a little unformed, ignorant girl, but her intuitive perceptions were quick, and she knew when she was depreciated and misunderstood. On a certain afternoon he read her some beautiful poetry under the awning, and was interested to know whether she had any taste for poetry. Bessie confessed that at school she had read only Racine, and felt shy of saying what she used to read at home, and he dropped the conversation. He drew the conclusion that she did not care for literature. At their first meeting it had seemed as if they might become cordial friends, but she soon grew diffident of this much-employed stranger, who always had the ill-luck to discover to her some deficiency in her education. The effect was that by the time the yacht anchored off Ryde, she had lost her ease in his society, and had become as shy as he was capricious, for she thought him a most capricious and uncertain person in temper and demeanor.
Yet it was not caprice that influenced his behavior. He was quite unconscious of the variableness that taxed her how to meet it. He approved of Bessie: he admired her—face, figure, air, voice, manner. He judged that she would probably mature into a quiet and loving woman of no very pronounced character, and there was a direct purpose in his mind to cultivate her affection and to make her his wife. He thought her a nice girl, sweet and sensible, but she did not enchant him. Perhaps he was under other magic—under other magic, but not spell-bound beyond his strength to break the charm.
Mr. Cecil Burleigh was a man of genius and of soaring ambition—well-born, well-nurtured, but as the younger son of a younger son absolutely without patrimony. At his school and his university he had won his way through a course of honors, and he would disappoint all who knew him if he did not revive the traditions of his name and go onto achieve place, power, and [Pg 119]fame. To enter Parliament was necessary for success in the career he desired to run, and the first step towards Parliament for a poor young man was a prudent marriage into a family of long standing, wide connection, and large influence in their county—so competent authorities assured him—and all these qualifications had the Fairfaxes of Kirkham, with a young heiress sufficiently eligible, besides, to dispose of. The heads on each side had spoken again, and in almost royal fashion had laid the lines for an alliance between their houses. When Mr. Cecil Burleigh took Caen in his road to Paris, it was with the distinct understanding that if Elizabeth Fairfax pleased him and he succeeded in pleasing her, a marriage between them would crown the hopes of both their families.
The gentleman had not taken long to decide that the lady would do. And now they were on the Foam together he had opportunities enough of wooing. He availed himself of a courtly grace of manner, with sometimes an air of worship, which would have been tenderness had he felt like a lover. Bessie was puzzled, and grew more and more ill at ease with him. Absorbed in work, in thought, or in idle reverie and smoke, he appeared natural and happy; he turned his attention to her, and was gay, gracious, flattering, but all with an effort. She wished he would not give himself the trouble. She hated to be made to blush and stammer in her talk; it confused her to have him look superbly in her eyes; it made her angry to have him press her hand as if he would reassure her against a doubt.
Fortunately, the time was not long, for they began to bore one another immensely. It was an exquisite morning when they anchored opposite Ryde, and the first day of the annual regatta. At breakfast Mr. Cecil Burleigh quietly announced that he would now leave the yacht, and make his way home in a few days by the ordinary conveyances. Mr. Frederick Fairfax, who was a consenting party to the family arrangement, suggested that Bessie might like to go on shore to see the town and the charming prospect from the pier and the strand. Mr. Cecil Burleigh did not second the suggestion promptly enough to avoid the suspicion that he would prefer to go alone; and Bessie, who had a most sensitive reluctance to be where she was not wanted, made haste to say that she [Pg 120]did not care to land—she was quite satisfied to see the town from the water. Thereupon the gentleman pressed the matter with so much insistance that, though she would much rather have foregone the pleasure than enjoy it under his escort, she found no polite words decisive enough for a refusal.
A white sateen dress embroidered in black and red, and a flapping leghorn hat tied down gypsy style with a crimson ribbon, was a picturesque costume, but not orthodox as a yachting costume at Ryde. Bessie had a provincial French air in spite of her English face, and Mr. Cecil Burleigh perhaps regretted that she was not more suitably equipped for making her début in his company. He had a prejudice against peculiarity in dress, and knew that it was a terrible thing to be out of the fashion and to run the gauntlet of bold eyes on Ryde pier. At the seaside the world is idle, and has nothing to do but stare and speculate. Bessie had beauty enough to be stared at for that alone, but it was not her beauty that attracted most remark; it was her cavalier and the singularity of her attire. Poor child! with her own industrious fingers had she lavishly embroidered that heathen embroidery. The gentlemen were not critically severe; the ladies looked at her, and looked again for her escort's sake, and wondered how this prodigiously fine gentleman came to have foregathered with so outlandish a blushing girl; for Bessie, when she perceived herself an object of curious observation, blushed furiously under the unmitigated fire of their gaze. And most heartily did she wish herself back again on board the Foam.
Mr. Cecil Burleigh had friends and acquaintances everywhere, and some very dear friends at this moment at Ryde. That was why he ended his yachting there. As he advanced with Bessie up the pier every minute there was an arrest, a brisk inquiry, and a reply. At last a halt that might have been a rendezvous occurred, finding of seats ensued, with general introductions, and then a settling down on pretence of watching the yachts through a glass. It was a very pretty spectacle, and Bessie was left at liberty to enjoy it, and also to take note of the many gay and fashionable folk who enrich and embellish Ryde in the season; for Mr. Cecil [Pg 121]Burleigh was entirely engrossed with another person. The party they had joined consisted of a very thin old gentleman, spruce, well brushed, and well cared for; of a languid, pale lady, some thirty years younger, who was his wife; and of two girls, their daughters. It was one of these daughters who absorbed all Mr. Cecil Burleigh's attention, and Bessie recognized her at once as that most beautiful young lady to whom he had been devoted at the Fairfield wedding. His meeting with her had quite transfigured him. He looked infinitely glad, an expression that was reflected on her countenance in a lovely light of joy. It was not necessary to be a witch to discern that there was an understanding between these two—that they loved one another. Bessie saw it and felt sympathetic, and was provoked at the recollection of her foolish conceit in being perplexed by the gentleman's elaborate courtesies to herself.
The other sister talked to her. Mr. and Mrs. Gardiner sat in silent pensiveness, according to their wont, contemplating the boats on the water. Mr. Cecil Burleigh and Julia (he called her Julia) conversed together in low but earnest tones. It seemed that they had much to communicate. Presently they crossed the pier, and stood for ever so long leaning over the railing. Bessie was not inquisitive, but she could take a lively, unselfish interest in many matters that did not concern her. When they turned round again she was somehow not surprised to see that Mr. Cecil Burleigh had a constrained air, and that the shell-pink face of the young lady was pale and distorted with emotion. Their joy and gladness had been but evanescent. She came hastily to her mother and said they would now go home to luncheon. On the way she and Mr. Cecil Burleigh followed behind the rest, but they did not speak much, or spoke only of common things.
The Gardiners had a small house in a street turning up from the Strand, a confined little house of the ordinary lodging-house sort, with a handsbreadth of gravel and shrubs in front, and from the sitting-room window up stairs a side-glance at the sea. From a few words that Mr. Gardiner dropped, Bessie learned that it was theirs for twelve months, until the following June; that it was very dear, but the [Pg 122]cheapest place they could get in Ryde fit to put their heads into; also that Ryde was chosen as their home for a year because it was cheerful for "poor papa."
Here was a family of indigent gentility, servile waiters upon the accidents of Fortune, unable to work, but not ashamed to beg, as their friends and kindred to the fourth degree could have plaintively testified. It was a mystery to common folks how they lived and got along. They were most agreeable and accomplished people, who knew everybody and went everywhere. The daughters had taste and beauty. They visited by turns at great houses, never both leaving their parents at the same time; they wore pretty, even elegant clothing, and were always ready to assist at amateur concerts, private theatricals, church festivals, and other cheerful celebrations. Miss Julia Gardiner's voice was an acquisition at an evening party; her elder sister's brilliant touch on the piano was worth an invitation to the most select entertainment. And besides this, there are rich, kind people about in the world who are always glad to give poor girls, who are also nice, a little amusement. And the Miss Gardiners were popular; they were very sweet-tempered, lady-like, useful, and charming.
Bessie Fairfax was an admirer of beauty in her own sex, and she could scarcely take her eyes from the winsome fair face of Julia. It was a very fair face, very lovely. After luncheon, at Mr. Cecil Burleigh's request, she sang a new song that was lying on the piano; and they talked of old songs which he professed to like better, which she said she had forgotten. Mr. Gardiner had not come up stairs, and Mrs. Gardiner, who had, soon disappeared. It was a narrow little room made graceful with a few plants and ornaments and the working tools of ladies; novels from the library were on the table and on the couch. A word spoken there could not be spoken in secret. By and by, Helen, the elder sister, proposed to take Bessie to the arcade. Mr. Cecil Burleigh demurred, but acceded when it was added that "mamma" would go with them. Mamma went, a weary, willing sacrifice; and in the arcade and in somebody's pretty verandah they spent the hot afternoon until six o'clock. When they returned to the house, Mr. Cecil Burleigh and Julia were still together, [Pg 123]and the new song on the desk of the piano had not been moved to make room for any other. The gentleman appeared annoyed, the lady weary and dejected. Bessie had no doubt that they were lovers who had roughnesses in the course of their true love, and she sentimentally wished them good-speed over all obstacles.
Mr. Cecil Burleigh rose as they entered, and said he would walk down the pier with Miss Fairfax to restore her to the yacht, and Mr. Gardiner bade Julia put on her hat and walk with them—it would refresh her after staying all the hot afternoon in-doors.
The pier was deserted now. The gay crowd had disappeared, the regatta was over for the day, and the band silent. The glare of sunshine had softened to a delicate amber glow, and the water was smooth, translucent as a lake. The three walked at a pace, but were overtaken and passed by two ladies in dark blue-braided serge dresses that cleared the ground as they walked and fitted close to very well made figures. Their hats were black-glazed and low-crowned, with a narrow blue ribbon lettered "Ariel" in white and gold.
"Look at those ladies," said Mr. Cecil Burleigh, suddenly breaking off his talk with Julia to speak to Bessie; "that is the proper yachting costume. You must have one before you come to Ryde in the Foam again."
Bessie blushed; perhaps he had been ashamed of her. This was a most afflicting, humiliating notion. She was delighted to see the boat from the yacht waiting to take her off. She had imagined her own dress both pretty and becoming—she knew that it had cost her months of patient embroidering. Poor Bessie! she had much to learn yet of the fitness of things, and of things in their right places. Miss Gardiner treated her as very young, and only spoke to her of her school, from which she was newly but fully and for ever emancipated. Incidentally, Bessie learned a bit of news concerning one of her early comrades there. "Ada Hiloe was at Madame Fournier's at Caen. Was it in your time? Did you know her?" she was asked, and when she said that she did, Mr. Cecil Burleigh added for information that the young lady was going to be married; so he had heard in Paris [Pg 124]from Mr. Chiverton. Julia instantly cried out, "Indeed! to whom?"
"To Mr. Chiverton himself."
"That horrid old man! Oh, can it be true?"
"He is very rich," was the quiet rejoinder, and both lapsed into silence, until they had parted with their young companion.
Mr. Cecil Burleigh carefully enveloped Bessie in a cloak, Miss Gardiner watching them. Then he bade her good-bye, with a reference to the probability of his seeing her again soon at Abbotsmead. It was a gracious good-bye, and effaced her slight discomfiture about her dress. It even left her under the agreeable impression that he liked her in a friendly way, his abrupt dicta on costume notwithstanding. A certain amount of approbation from without was essential to Bessie's inner peace. As the boat rowed off she waved her hand with rosy benignity to the two looking after her departure. Mr. Cecil Burleigh raised his hat, and they moved away.
It must not be dissimulated what very dear friends Mr. Cecil Burleigh and Miss Julia Gardiner were. They had known and loved one another for six years as neither was ever likely to love again. They had been long of convincing that a marriage was impossible between two such poor young people—the one ambitious, the other fond of pleasure. They suited to a nicety in character, in tastes, but they were agreed, at last, that there must be an end to their philandering. No engagement had ever been acknowledged. The young lady's parents had been indulgent to their constant affection so long as there was hope, and it was a fact generally recognized by Miss Julia Gardiner's friends that she cared very much for Mr. Cecil Burleigh, because she had refused two eligible offers—splendid offers for a girl in her position. A third was now open to her, and without being urgent or unkind her [Pg 125]mother sincerely wished that she would accept it. Since the morning she had made up her mind to do so.
If the circumstances of these two had been what Elizabeth Fairfax supposed, they would have spent some blessed hours together before dusk. They stayed on the pier, and they talked, not of their love—they had said all their say of love—but of Mr. Cecil Burleigh's flattering prospects. When he stated that his expectations of getting a seat in the House of Commons were based on the good-will of the Fairfax family and connections, Julia was silent for several minutes. Then she remarked in a gentle voice that Miss Fairfax was a handsome girl. Mr. Cecil Burleigh acquiesced, and added that she was also amiable and intelligent.
After that they walked home—to the dull little house in the by street, that is. Mr. Cecil Burleigh refused to go in; and when the door closed on Julia's "Good-bye, Cecil, goodbye, dear," he walked swiftly away to his hotel, with the sensations of a man who is honestly miserable, and also who has not dined.
Julia sat by the open window until very late in the hot night, and Helen with her, comforting her.
"No, the years have not been thrown away! If I live to grow old I shall still count them the best years of my life," said she with a pathetic resignation. "I may have been sometimes out of spirits, but much oftener I have been happy; what other joy have I ever had than Cecil's love? I was eighteen when we met at that ball—you remember, Nell! Dear Cecil! I adored him from the first kind word he gave me, and what a thrill I felt to-day when I saw him coming!"
"And he is to come no more?" inquired Helen softly.
"No more as of old. Of course we shall see one another as people do who live in the same world: I am not going into a nunnery. Cecil will be a great man some day, and I shall recollect with pride that for six years he loved only me. He did not mention Mr. Brotherton: I think he has heard, but if not, he will hear soon enough from other people. If we were not so awfully poor, Nell, or if poverty were not so dreadful to mamma, I never would marry—never while Cecil is a bachelor."
[Pg 126]This was how Julia Gardiner announced that she meant to succumb to the pressure of circumstances. Helen kissed her thankfully. She had been very anxious for this consummation. It would be a substantial, permanent benefit to them all if Julia married Mr. Brotherton. He had said that it should be so, and he was a gentleman of good estate, and as generous as he was wealthy, though very middle-aged, a widower with six children, and as a lover not interesting perhaps.
Mr. Cecil Burleigh also sat at an open window, but he was not provided with a confessor, only with a cigar. He had dined, and did not feel so intensely miserable as he felt an hour ago. "Dear little Julia!" He thought of her with caressing tenderness, her pretty looks, her graceful ways, her sweet affection. "There were tears in her dove's eyes when she said 'Good-bye, Cecil, good-bye, dear!'" No other woman would ever have his heart.
They had both good sense, and did not rail at evil fortune. It had done neither any mischief to be absorbed in love of the other through the most passionate years of their lives. Mrs. Gardiner had remonstrated often and kindly against their folly, but had put no decisive veto on it, in the hope that they would grow out it. And, in a manner, they had grown out of it. Six years ago, if they had been allowed, they would have married without counting the cost; but those six years had brought them experience of the world, of themselves, and of each other, and they feared the venture. If Mr. Cecil Burleigh had been without ambition, his secretaryship would have maintained them a modest home; but neither had he a mind for the exclusive retired pleasures of the domestic hearth, nor she the wish to forego the delights of society. There was no romance in poverty for Julia Gardiner. It was too familiar; it signified to her shifts, privations, expediencies, rude humiliations, and rebuffs. And that was not the life for Mr. Cecil Burleigh. Their best friends said so, and they acquiesced. From this it followed that the time was come for them to part. Julia was twenty-four. The present opportunity of settling herself by a desirable marriage lost, she might never have another—might wear away youth, beauty, expectation, until no residuum [Pg 127]were left her but bitterness and regret. She would have risked it at a word from Cecil, but that word was not spoken. He reasoned with himself that he had no right to speak it. He was not prepared to give all for love, though he keenly regretted what he resigned. He realized frankly that he lost in losing Julia a true, warm sympathizer in his aspirations, and a loving peace in his heart that had been a God's blessing to him. Oh, if there had been only a little more money between them!
He reflected on many things, but on this most, and as he reflected there came a doubt upon him whether it was well done to sever himself from the dear repose he had enjoyed in loving her—whether there might not be a more far-sighted prudence in marrying her than in letting her go. Men have to ask their wives whether life shall be a success with them or not. And Julia had been so much to him, so encouraging, such a treasure of kindness! Whatever else he might win, without her he would always miss something. His letters to her of six years were a complete history of their course. Was it probable that he would ever be able to write so to the rosy-cheeked little girl on board the Foam? Julia was equal with him, a cultivated woman and a perfect companion.
But what profit was there in going back upon it? They had determined that it must not be. In a few days he was expected at Abbotsmead: Norminster wanted to hear from him. A general election impended, and he had been requested to offer himself as a candidate in the Conservative interest for that ancient city. Mr. Fairfax was already busy in his behalf, and Mr. John Short, the Conservative lawyer, was extremely impatient for his appearance upon the stage of action.
Ryde looked beautiful the next morning from the deck of the Foam. The mainland looked beautiful too, and Bessie, gazing that way, thought how near she was to the Forest, until an irresistible longing to be there overcame her reserve. [Pg 128]She asked her uncle if the Foam was going to lie long off Ryde. Why did she inquire? Because she should like to go to Hampton by the boat, and to Beechhurst to see her friends, if only for one single night. Before her humble petition was well past her lips the tears were in her eyes, for she saw that it was not going to be granted. Mr. Frederick Fairfax never risked being put out of his way, or made to wait the convenience of others on his yachting cruises. He simply told Bessie that she could not go, and added no reason why. But almost immediately after he sent her on shore with Mrs. Betts to Morgan's to buy a proper glazed hat and to be measured for a serge dress: that was his way of diverting and consoling her.
Bessie was glad enough to be diverted from the contemplation of her disappointment. It was a very great pain indeed to be so near, and yet so cut off from all she loved. The morning was fresh on the pier, and many people were out inhaling the delicious salt breezes. A clergyman, wielding a slim umbrella and carrying a black bag and an overcoat, came lurching along. Bessie recognized Mr. Askew Wiley, and was so overjoyed to see anybody who came from home that she rushed up to him: "Oh, Mr. Wiley! how do you do? Are you going back to Beechhurst?" she cried breathless.
"Bessie Fairfax, surely? How you are grown!" said he, and shook hands. "Yes, Bessie, I am on my way now to catch the boat. If you want to hear about your people, you must turn back with me, for I have not a minute to spare."
Bessie turned back: "Will you please tell them I am on board the Foam, my uncle Frederick's yacht? I cannot get away to see them, and I don't know how long we shall stay here, but if they could come over to see me!" she urged wistfully.
"It sounds like tempting them to a wild-goose chase, Bessie. Yachts that are here to-day are gone to-morrow. By the time they arrive you may have sailed off to Cowes or to Yarmouth. But I will give your message. How came you on board a yacht?"
Bessie got no more information from the rector; he had the same catechising habit as his good wife, and wanted to know [Pg 129]her news. She gave it freely, and then they were at the end of the pier, and there was the Hampton boat ringing its bell to start. "Are you going straight home? Will you tell them at once?" Bessie ventured to say again as Mr. Wiley went down the gangway.
"Yes. I expect to find the carriage waiting for me at Hampton," was the response.
"They might even come by the afternoon boat," cried Bessie as a last word, and the rector said, "Yes."
It was with a lightened heart and spirits exhilarated that Bessie retraced her steps up the pier. "It was such a good opportunity!" said she, congratulating herself.
"Yes, if the gentleman don't forget," rejoined Mrs. Betts.
But, alas! that was just what the gentleman did. He forgot until his remembering was too late to be of any purpose. He forgot until the next Sunday when he was in the reading-desk, and saw Mrs. Carnegie sitting in front of him with a restless boy on either hand. He felt a momentary compunction, but that also, as well as the cause of it, went out of his head with the end of his sermon, and the conclusion of the matter was that he never delivered the message Bessie had given him on Ryde pier at all.
Bessie, however, having a little confidence in him, unwittingly enjoyed the pleasures of hope all that day and the next. On the second evening she was a trifle downhearted. The morning after she awoke with another prospect before her eyes—a beautiful bay, with houses fringing its shores and standing out on its cliffs, and verdure to the water's edge. Mrs. Betts told her these villages were Sandown and Shanklyn. The yacht was scudding along at a famous rate. They passed Luccombe with its few cottages nestling at the foot of the chine, then Bonchurch and Ventnor. "It would be very pleasant living at sea in fine weather, if only one had what one wants," Bessie said.
The following day the yacht was off Ryde again, and Bessie went to walk on the pier in her close-fitting serge costume and glazed hat, feeling very barefaced and evident, she assured Mrs. Betts, who tried to convince her that the style of dress was exceedingly becoming to her, and made her appear taller. Bessie was, indeed, a very pretty middle height now, and her [Pg 130]shining hair, clear-cut features, and complexion of brilliant health constituted her a very handsome girl.
Almost the first people she met were the Gardiners. "Mr. Cecil Burleigh went to London this morning," Miss Julia told her. The elder sister asked if she was coming to the flower-show in Appley Gardens in the afternoon or the regatta ball that night.
Bessie said, "No, oh, no! she had never been to a ball in her life."
"But you might go with us to the flower-show," said Julia. She thought it would please Mr. Cecil Burleigh if a little attention were shown to Miss Fairfax.
Bessie did not know what to answer: she looked at her strange clothing, and said suddenly, No, she thanked them, but she could not go. They quite understood.
Just at that moment came bearing down upon them Miss Buff, fat, loud, jolly as ever. "It is Bessie Fairfax! I was sure it was," cried she; and Bessie rushed straight into her open arms with responsive joy.
When she came to herself the Gardiners were gone. "Never mind, you are sure to meet them again; they are always about Ryde somewhere," Miss Buff said. "How delightful it is to see you, Bessie! And quite yourself! Not a bit altered—only taller!" And then they found a sheltered seat, and Bessie, still quivering with her happy surprise, began to ask questions.
"We have come from Beechhurst this morning, my niece Louy and myself," was Miss Buff's answer to the first. "We started at six, to be in time for the eight o'clock boat: the flower-show and the regatta ball have brought us. I hope you are going to both? No? What a pity! I never miss a ball for Louy if I can help it."
Bessie briefly explained herself and her circumstances, and asked when her friend had last seen any of Mr. Carnegie's family.
"I saw Mrs. Carnegie yesterday to inquire if I could do anything for her at Hampton. She looked very well."
"And did she say nothing of me?" cried Bessie in consternation.
"Not a word. She mentioned some time ago how sorry [Pg 131]they all were not to have you at home for a little while before you are carried away to Woldshire."
"Then Mr. Wiley has never given them my message! Oh, how unkind!" Bessie was fit to cry for vexation and self-reproach, for why had she not written? Why had she trusted anybody when there was a post?
"You might as well pour water into a sieve, and expect it to stay there, as expect Mr. Wiley to remember anything that does not concern himself," said Miss Buff. "But it is not too late yet, perhaps? When do you leave Ryde?"
"It is all uncertain: it is just as the wind blows and as my uncle fancies," replied Bessie despondently.
"Then write—write at once, and telegraph. Do both. There is Smith's bookstall. They will let you have a sheet of paper, and I always carry stamps." Miss Buff was prompt in action. Six lines were written for the post and one line for the telegraph, and both were despatched in ten minutes or less. "Now all is done that can be done to remedy yesterday and ensure to-morrow: some of them are certain to appear in the morning. Make your mind easy. Come back to our seat and tell me all about yourself."
Bessie's cheerfulness revived under the brisk influence of her friend, and she was ready to give an epitome of her annals, or a forecast of her hopes, or (which she much preferred) to hear the chronicles of Beechhurst. Miss Buff was the best authority for the village politics that she could have fallen in with. She knew everything that went on in the parish—not quite accurately perhaps, but accurately enough for purposes of popular information and gossip.
"Well, my dear, Miss Thusy O'Flynn is gone, for one good thing," she began with a verve that promised thoroughness. "And we are to have a new organ in the church, for another: it has been long enough talked about. Old Phipps set his face dead against it until we got the money in hand; we have got it, but not until we are all at daggers drawn. He told Lady Latimer that we ought to keep our liberal imaginations in check by a system of cash payments."
"Our friend has a disagreeable trick of being right," said Bessie laughing.
"He has his uses, but I cannot bear him. I don't know [Pg 132]who is to blame—whether it is Miss Wort or Lady Latimer—but there is no peace at Beechhurst now for begging. They have plenty of money, and little enough to do with it. I call giving the greatest of luxuries, but, bless you! giving is not all charity. Miss Wort spends a fortune in eleemosynary physic to half poison poor folks; Lady Latimer indulges herself in a variety of freaks: her last was a mechanical leg for old Bumpus, who had been happy on a wooden peg for forty years; we were all asked to subscribe, and he doesn't thank us for it. As soon as one thing is done with, up starts another that we are entreated to be interested in—things we don't care about one bit. Old Phipps protests that it is vanity and busy-bodyism. I hope I shall never grow so hard-hearted as to see a poor soul want and not help her, but I hate to be canvassed for alms on behalf of other people's benevolent objects—don't you?"
"It has never happened to me. I remember that my father used to appeal to Lady Latimer and Miss Wort when his poor patients had not fit diet. Lady Latimer was his chief Lady Bountiful."
"That may be true, but it is possible to have too much of a good thing. I love fair play. The schools, now—they were very good schools before ever she came into the Forest; yes, as far back as your father's time, Bessie Fairfax—and yet, to hear the way in which she is belauded by a certain set, one might suppose that she had been the making of them. But it is the same all the world over—a hundred hands do the work, and one name gets all the praise!" Miss Buff was growing warm over her reminiscences, but catching the spark of mischief in Bessie's eyes, she laughed, and added with great candor: "Yes, I confess there is a spice of rivalry between us, but I am very fond of her all the same."
"Oh yes. She loves to rule, but then she has the talent," pleaded Bessie.
"No, my dear, there you are mistaken. She is too fussy; she irritates people. But for the old admiral she would often get into difficulties. Beechhurst has taken to ladies' meetings and committees, and all sorts of fudge that she is the moving spirit of. I often wish we were back in the quiet, times when dear old Hutton was rector, and would not let [Pg 133]her be always interfering. I suppose it comes of this new doctrine of the equality of the sexes; but I say they never will be equal till women consent to be frights. It gives a man an immense pull over us to clap on his hat without mounting up stairs to the looking-glass: while we are getting ready to go and do a thing, he has gone and done it. You hear Lady Latimer's name at every turn, but the old admiral is the backbone of Beechhurst, as he always was, and old Phipps is his right hand."
"And Mr. Musgrave and my father?" queried Bessie.
"They do their part, but it is so unobtrusively that one forgets them; but they would be missed if they were not there. Mr. Musgrave has a great deal of influence amongst his own class—the farmers and those people. Of course, you have heard how wonderfully his son is getting on at college? Oh, my dear, what a stir there was about his running over to Normandy after you!"
"Dear Harry! I saw him again quite lately. He came to see me at Bayeux," said Bessie with a happy sigh.
"Did he? we never heard of that. He is at home now: perhaps he will come over with them to-morrow, eh?"
"I wish he would," was Bessie's frank rejoinder.
"And who else is there that you used to like? Fanny Mitten has married a clerk in the Hampton Bank, and Miss Ely is married; but she was married in London. I was in great hopes once that old Phipps would take Miss Thusy O'Flynn, and a sweet pair they would have been; but he thought better of it, and she went away as she came. Her aunt was a good old soul, and what did it matter if she was vulgar? We were very sorry to lose her contralto in the choir." Miss Buff's gossip was almost run out. Bessie remembered little Christie to inquire for him. "Little Christie—who is he? I never heard of him. Oh, the wheelwright's son who went away to be an artist! I don't know. The old man made me a garden-barrow once, and charged me enormously; and when I told him it was too dear, he said it would last me my life. Such impertinence! The common people grow very independent."
Bessie had heard the anecdote of the garden-barrow before. It spoke volumes for the peace and simplicity of Miss Buff's [Pg 134]life that she still recollected and cited this ancient grievance. A few more words of the doctor and his household, a few doubts and fears on Bessie's part that her telegram might be delayed, and a few cheery predictions on Miss Buff's, and they said good-bye, with the expression of a cordial hope that they might meet soon again, and meet in the Forest. Bessie Fairfax was amused and exhilarated by this familiar tattle about her beloved Beechhurst. It had dissipated the shadows of her three years' absence, and made home present to her once more. Nothing seems trivial that concerns places and people dear to young affections, and all the keener became her desire to be amongst them. She consulted Smith's boy as to the probable time of the arrival of her telegram at the doctor's house; she studied the table of the steamboats. She regretted bitterly that she had not written the first day at Ryde; then pleaded her own excuse because letters were a rarity for her to write, and had hitherto required a formal permission.
Mrs. Betts lingered with her long and patiently upon the pier, but the Gardiners did not come down again, and by and by Mrs. Betts, feeling the approach of dinner-time, began to look out towards the yacht. After a minute's steady observation she said, half to herself, but seriously, "I do believe they are making ready to sail. There is a boat alongside with bread and things."
"To sail! To leave Ryde! Oh, don't you think my uncle would wait a day if I begged him?" cried Bessie in acute dismay.
"No, miss—not if he has given orders and the wind keeps fair. If I was in your place, miss, I should not ask him. And as for the telegram, I should not name it. It would put Mr. Frederick out, and do no good."
Bessie did not name it. Mrs. Betts's speculation proved correct. The yacht sailed away in the afternoon. About the time when Mrs. Carnegie was hurriedly dressing to drive with her husband to Hampton over-night, to ensure not missing the mail-boat to Ryde in the morning, that gay and pleasant town was fast receding from Bessie's view. At dawn the island was out of sight, and when Mr. Carnegie, landing on the pier, sought a boat to carry him and his wife to the Foam, a boat[Pg 135]man looked up at him and said, "The Foam, sir? You'll have much ado to overtake her. She's halfway to Hastings by this time. She sailed yesterday soon after five o'clock."
Mr. and Mrs. Carnegie turned away in silence. They had nothing to do but sorrowfully to repair home again. They were more grieved at heart by this disappointment than by any that had preceded it; and all the more did they try to cheer one another.
"Don't fret, Jane: it hurts me to see you fret," said the doctor. "It was a nice thought in Bessie, but the chance was a poor one."
"We have lost her, Thomas; I fear we have lost her," said his wife. "It is unnatural to pass by our very door, so to speak, and not let us see her. But I don't blame her."
"No, no, Bessie is not to blame: Harry Musgrave can tell us better than that. It is Mr. Fairfax—his orders. He forbade her coming, or it might have been managed easily. It is a mistake. He will never win her heart so; and as for ruling her except through her affections, he will have a task. I'm sorry, for the child will not be happy."
When Mr. and Mrs. Carnegie arrived at home they found Bessie's letter that had come by post—an abrupt, warm little letter that comforted them for themselves, but troubled them for her exceedingly. "God bless her, dear child!" said her mother. "I am afraid she will cry sadly, Thomas, and nobody to say a loving word to her or give her a kiss."
"It is a pity; she will have her share of vexations. But she is young and can bear them, with all her life before her. We will answer that pretty letter, that she may have something to encourage her when she gets amongst her grand relations. I suppose it may be a week or ten days first. We have done what we could, Jane, so cheer up, and let it rest."
When Bessie Fairfax realized that the yacht was sailing away from Ryde not to return, and carrying her quite out of [Pg 136]reach of pursuit, her spirits sank to zero. It was a perfect evening, and the light on the water was lovely, but to her it was a most melancholy view—when she could see it for the mist that obscured her vision. All her heart desired was being left farther and farther behind, and attraction there was none in Woldshire to which she was going. She looked at her uncle Frederick, silent, absent, sad; she remembered her grandfather, cold, sarcastic, severe; and every ensuing day she experienced fits of dejection or fits of terror and repulsion, to which even the most healthy young creatures are liable when they find themselves cut adrift from what is dear and familiar. Happily, these fits were intermittent, and at their worst easily diverted by what interested her on the voyage; and she did not encourage the murky humor: she always tried to shake it off and feel brave, and especially she made the effort as the yacht drew towards its haven. It was her nature to struggle against gloom and pain for a clear outlook at her horizon, and Madame Fournier had not failed to supply her with moral precepts for sustenance when cast on the shore of a strange and indifferent society.
The Foam touched at Hastings, at Dover, at semi-Dutch Harwich, and then no more until it put into Scarcliffe Bay. Here Bessie's sea-adventures ended. She went ashore and walked with her uncle on the bridge, gazing about with frank, unsophisticated eyes. The scenery and the weather were beautiful. Mr. Frederick Fairfax had many friends now at Scarcliffe, the favorite sea-resort of the county people. Greetings met him on every hand, and Bessie was taken note of. "My niece Elizabeth." Her history was known, kindness had been bespoken for her, her prospects were anticipated by a prescient few.
At length one acquaintance gave her uncle news: "The squire and your brother are both in the town. I fell in with them at the bank less than an hour ago."
"That is good luck: then we will go into the town and find them." And he moved off with alacrity, as if in sight of the end of an irksome duty. Bessie inquired if her uncle was going forward to Abbotsmead, to which he replied that he was not; he was going across to Norway to make the most of the fine weather while it lasted. He might be [Pg 137]at horns in the winter, but his movements were always uncertain.
Mr. Fairfax came upon them suddenly out of the library. "Eh! here you are! We heard that the Foam was in," said he, and shook hands with his eldest son as if he had been parted with only yesterday. Then he spoke a few words to Bessie, rather abruptly, but with a critical observance of her: she had outgrown his recollection, and was more of a woman than he had anticipated. He walked on without any attempt at conversation until they met a third, a tall man with a fair beard, whom her grandfather named as "Your uncle Laurence, Elizabeth." And she had seen all her Woldshire kinsmen. For a miracle, she was able to put as cool a face upon her reception as the others did. A warm welcome would have brought her to tears and smiles, but its quiet formality subdued emotion and set her features like a handsome mask. She was too composed. Pride tinged with resentment simulates dignified composure very well for a little while, but only for a little while when there is a heart behind.
They went walking hither and thither about the steep, windy streets. Bessie fell behind. Now and then there was an encounter with other gentlemen, brief, energetic speech, inquiry and answer, sally and rejoinder, all with one common subject of interest—the Norminster election. Scarcliffe is a fine town, and there was much gay company abroad that afternoon, but Bessie was too miserable to be amused. Her uncle Laurence was the one of the party who was so fortunate as to discover this. He turned round on a sudden recollection of his stranger niece, and surprised a most desolate look on her rosy face. Bessie confessed her feelings by the grateful humility of her reply to his considerate proposal that they should turn in at a confectioner's they were passing and have a cup of tea.
"My father is as full of this election as if he were going to contest the city of Norminster himself," said he. "I hope you have a blue bonnet? You will have to play your part. Beautiful ladies are of great service in these affairs."
Bessie had not a blue bonnet; her bonnet was white chip and pink may—the enemy's colors. She must put it by till the end of the war. Tea and thick bread and butter were [Pg 138]supplied to the hungry couple, and about four o'clock Mr. Fairfax called for them and hurried them off to the train. Mr. Laurence went on to Norminster, dropping the squire and Elizabeth at Mitford Junction. Thence they had a drive of four miles through a country of long-backed, rounded hills, ripening cornfields, and meadows green with the rich aftermath, and full of cattle. The sky above was high and clear, the air had a crispness that was exhilarating. The sun set in scarlet splendor, and the reflection of its glory was shed over the low levels of lawn, garden, and copse, which, lying on either side of a shallow, devious river, kept still the name of Abbotsmead that had belonged to them before the great monastery at Kirkham was dissolved.
Mr. Fairfax was in good-humor now, and recovered from his momentary loss of self-possession at the sight of his granddaughter so thoroughly grown up. Also, election business at Norminster was going as he would have it, and bowling smoothly along in the quiet, early evening he had time to think of Elizabeth, sitting bolt upright in the carriage beside him. She had a pretty, pensive air, for which he saw no cause—only the excitement of novelty staved off depression—and in his sarcastic vein, with doubtful compliment, he said, "I did not expect to see you grown so tall, Elizabeth. You look as healthy as a milkmaid."
She was very quick and sensitive of feeling. She understood him perfectly, and replied that she was as healthy as a milkmaid. Then she reverted to her wistful contemplation of the landscape, and tried to think of that and not of herself, which was too pathetic.
This country was not so lovely as the Forest. It had only the beauty of high culture. Human habitations were too wide-scattered, and the trees—there were no very great trees, nor any blue glimpses of the sea. Nevertheless, when the carriage turned into the domain at a pretty rustic lodge, the overarching gloom of an avenue of limes won Bessie's admiration, and a few fir trees standing in single grace near the ruins of the abbey, which they had to pass on their way to the house, she found almost worthy to be compared with the centenarians of the Forest. The western sun was still upon the house itself. The dusk-tiled mansard roof, pierced by two [Pg 139]rows of twinkling dormers, and crowned by solid chimney-stacks, bulked vast and shapely against the primrose sky, and the stone-shafted lower windows caught many a fiery reflection in their blackness. Through a porch broad and deep, and furnished with oaken seats, Bessie preceded her grandfather into a lofty and spacious hall, where the foot rang on the bare, polished boards, and ten generations of Fairfaxes, successive dwellers in the grand old house, looked down from the walls. It was not lighted except by the sunset, which filled it with a warm and solemn glow.
Numerous servants appeared, amongst them a plump functionary in blue satinette and a towering cap, who curtseyed to Elizabeth and spoke some words of real welcome: "I'm right glad to see you back, Miss Fairfax; these arms were the first that held you." Bessie's impulse was to fall on the neck of this kindly personage with kisses and tears, but her grandfather's cool tone intervening maintained her reserve:
"Your young mistress will be pleased to go to her room, Macky. Your reminiscences will keep till to-morrow."
Macky, instantly obedient, begged Miss Fairfax to "come this way," and conducted her through a double-leaved door that stood open to the inner hall, carpeted with crimson pile, like the wide shallow stairs that went up to the gallery surrounding the greater hall. On this gallery opened many doors of chambers long silent and deserted.
"The master ordered you the white suite," announced Macky, ushering Elizabeth into the room so called. "It has pretty prospects, and the rooms are not such wildernesses as the other state-apartments. The eldest unmarried lady of the family always occupied the white suite."
A narrow ante-room, a sitting-room, a bed-room, and off it a sleeping-closet for her maid,—this was the private lodging accorded to the new daughter of the house. Bessie gazed about, taking in a general impression of faded, delicate richness, of white and gold and sparse color, in elegant, antiquated taste, like a boudoir in an old Norman château that she had visited.
"Mrs. Betts was so thoughtful as to come on by an earlier train to get unpacked and warn us to be prepared," Macky observed in a respectful explanatory tone; and then she went on [Pg 140]to offer her good wishes to the young lady she had nursed, in the manner of an old and trusted dependant of the family. "It is fine weather and a fine time of year, and we hope and pray all of us, Miss Fairfax, as this will be a blessed bringing-home for you and our dear master. Most of us was here servants when Mr. Geoffry, your father, went south. A cheerful, pleasant gentleman he was, and your mamma as pleasant a lady. And here is Mrs. Betts to wait on you."
Bessie thanked the old woman, and would have bidden her remain and talk on about her forgotten parents, but Macky with another curtsey retired, and Mrs. Betts, calm and peremptory, proceeded to array her young lady in her prize-day muslin dress, and sent her hastily down stairs under the guidance of a little page who loitered in the gallery. At the foot of the stairs a lean, gray-headed man in black received her, and ushered her into a beautiful octagon-shaped room, all garnished with books and brilliant with light, where her grandfather was waiting to conduct her to dinner. So much ceremony made Bessie feel as if she was acting a part in a play. Since Macky's kind greeting her spirits had risen, and her countenance had cleared marvellously.
Mr. Fairfax was standing opposite the door when she appeared. "Good God! it is Dolly!" he exclaimed, visibly startled. Dolly was his sister Dorothy, long since dead. Not only in face and figure, but in a certain lightness of movement and a buoyant swift way of stepping towards him, Elizabeth recalled her. Perhaps there was something in the simplicity of her dress too: there on the wall was a pretty miniature of her great-aunt in blue and white and golden flowing hair to witness the resemblance. Mr. Fairfax pointed it out to his granddaughter, and then they went to dinner.
It was a very formal ceremonial, and rather tedious to the newly-emancipated school-girl. Jonquil served his master when he was alone, but this evening he was reinforced by a footman in blue and silver, by way of honor to the young lady. Elizabeth faced her grandfather across a round table. A bowl-shaped chandelier holding twelve wax-lights hung from the groined ceiling above the rose-decked épergne, making a bright oasis in the centre of a room gloomy rather from the darkness of its fittings than from the insufficiency of illumi[Pg 141]nation. Under the soft lustre the plate, precious for its antique beauty, the quaint cut glass, and old blue china enriched with gold were displayed to perfection. Bessie had a taste, her eye was gratified, there was repose in all this splendor. But still she felt that odd sensation of acting in a comedy which would be over as soon as the lights were out. Suddenly she recollected the bare board in the Rue St. Jean, the coarse white platters, the hunches of sour bread, the lenten soup, the flavorless bouilli, and sighed—sighed audibly, and when her grandfather asked her why that mournful sound, she told him. Her courage never forsook her long.
"It has done you no harm to sup your share of Spartan broth; hard living is good for us young," was the squire's comment. "You never complained—your dry little letters always confessed to excellent health. When I was at school we fed roughly. The joints were cut into lumps which had all their names, and we were in honor bound not to pick and choose, but to strike with the fork and take what came up."
"Of course," said Bessie, pricked in her pride and conscience lest she should seem to be weakly complaining now—"of course we had treats sometimes. On madame's birthday we had a glass of white wine at dinner, which was roast veal and pancakes. And on our own birthdays we might have galette with sugar, if we liked to give Margotin the money."
"I trust the whole school had galette with sugar on your birthday, Elizabeth?" said her grandfather, quietly amused. He was relieved to find her younger, more child-like in her ideas, than her first appearance gave him hopes of. His manner relaxed, his tone became indulgent. When she smiled with a blush, she was his sweet sister Dolly; when her countenance fell grave again, she was the shy, touchy, uncertain little girl who had gone to Fairfield on their first acquaintance so sorely against her inclination. After Jonquil and his assistant retired, Elizabeth was invited to tell how the time had passed on board the Foam.
"Pleasantly, on the whole," she said. "The weather was so fine that we were on deck from morning till night, and often far on into the night when the moon shone. It was delightful cruising off the Isle of Wight; only I had an immense disappointment there."
[Pg 142]"What was that?" Mr. Fairfax asked, though he had a shrewd guess.
"I did not remember how easy it is to send a letter—not being used to write without leave—and I trusted Mr. Wiley, whom I met on Ryde pier going straight back to Beechhurst, with a message to them at home, which he forgot to deliver. And though I did write after, it was too late, for we left Ryde the same day. So I lost the opportunity of seeing my father and mother. It was a pity, because we were so near; and I was all the more sorry because it was my own fault."
Mr. Fairfax was silent for a few minutes after this bold confession. He had interdicted any communication with the Forest, as Mr. Carnegie prevised. He did not, however, consider it necessary to provoke Bessie's ire by telling her that he was responsible for her immense disappointment. He let that pass, and when he spoke again it was to draw her out on the more important subject of what progress Mr. Cecil Burleigh had made in her interest. It was truly vexatious, but as Bessie told her simple tale she was conscious that her color rose and deepened slowly to a burning blush. Why? She vehemently assured herself that she did not care a straw for Mr. Cecil Burleigh, that she disliked him rather than otherwise, yet at the mere sound of his name she blushed. Perhaps it was because she dreaded lest anybody should suspect the mistake her vanity had made before. Her grandfather gave her one acute glance, and was satisfied that this business also went well.
"Mr. Cecil Burleigh left the yacht at Ryde. It was the first day of the regatta when we anchored there, and we landed and saw the town," was all Bessie said in words, but her self-betrayal was eloquent.
"We—what do you mean by we? Did your uncle Frederick land?" asked the squire, not caring in the least to know.
"No—only Mr. Cecil Burleigh and myself. We went to the house of some friends of his where we had lunch; and afterward Mrs. Gardiner and one of the young ladies took me to the Arcade. My uncle never landed at all from the day we left Caen till we arrived at Scarcliffe. Mrs. Betts went into Harwich with me. That is a very quaint old town, [Pg 143]but nothing in England looks so battered and decayed as the French cities do."
Mr. Fairfax knew all about Miss Julia Gardiner, and Elizabeth's information that Mr. Cecil Burleigh had called on the family in Ryde caused him to reflect. It was very imprudent to take Elizabeth with him—very imprudent indeed; of course, the squire could not know how little he was to blame. To take her mind off the incident that seriously annoyed himself, he asked what troubles Caen had seen, and Bessie, thankful to discourse of something not confusing, answered him like a book:
"Oh, many. It is very impoverished and dilapidated. The revocation of the Edict of Nantes ruined its trade. Its principal merchants were Huguenots: there are still amongst the best families some of the Reformed religion. Then in the great Revolution it suffered again; the churches were desecrated, and turned to all manner of common uses; some are being restored, but I myself have seen straw hoisted in at a church window, beautiful with flamboyant tracery in the arch, the shafts below being partly broken away."
Mr. Fairfax remarked that France was too prone to violent remedies; then reverting to the subjects uppermost in his thoughts, he said, "Elections and politics cannot have much interest for you yet, Elizabeth, but probably you have heard that Mr. Cecil Burleigh is going to stand for Norminster?"
"Yes; he spoke of it to my uncle Frederick. He is a very liberal Conservative, from what I heard him say. There was a famous contest for Hampton when I was not more than twelve years old: we went to see the members chaired. My father was orange—the Carnegies are almost radicals; they supported Mr. Hiloe—and we wore orange rosettes."
"A most unbecoming color! You must take up with blue now; blue is the only wear for a Fairfax. Most men might wear motley for a sign of their convictions. Let us return to the octagon parlor; it is cheerful with a fire after dinner. At Abbotsmead there are not many evenings when a fire is not acceptable at dusk."
The fire was very acceptable; it was very composing and pleasant. Bright flashes of flame kindled and reddened the fragrant dry pine chips and played about the lightly-piled [Pg 144]logs. Mr. Fairfax took his own commodious chair on one side of the hearth, facing the uncurtained windows; a low seat confronted him for Bessie. Both were inclined to be silent, for both were full of thought. The rich color and gilding of the volumes that filled the dwarf bookcases caught the glow, as did innumerable pretty objects besides—water-color drawings on the walls, mirrors that reflected the landscape outside, statuettes in shrines of crimson fluted silk—but the prettiest object by far in this dainty lady's chamber was still Bessie Fairfax, in her white raiment and rippled, shining hair.
This was her grandfather's reflection, and again that impulse to love her that he had felt at Beechhurst long ago began to sway his feelings. It was on the cards that he might become to her a most indulgent, fond old man; but then Elizabeth must be submissive, and do his will in great things if he allowed her to rule in small. Bessie had dropt her mask and showed her bright face, at peace for the moment; but it was shadowed again by the resurrection of all her wrongs when her grandfather said on bidding her good-night, "Perhaps, Elizabeth, the assurance that will tend most to promote your comfort at Abbotsmead, to begin with, is that you have a perfect right to be here."
Her astonishment was too genuine to be hidden. Did her grandfather imagine that she was flattered by her domicile in his grand house? It was exile to her quite as much as the old school at Caen. Nothing had ever occurred to shake her original conviction that she was cruelly used in being separated from her friends in the Forest. They were her family—not these strangers. Bessie dropped him her embarrassed school-girl's curtsey, and said, "Good-night, sir"—not even a Thank you! Mr. Fairfax thought her manner abrupt, but he did not know the depth and tenacity of her resentment, or he would have recognized the blunder he had committed in bringing her into Woldshire with unsatisfied longings after old, familiar scenes.
Bessie was of a thoroughly healthy nature and warmly affectionate. She felt very lonely and unfriended; she wished that her grandfather had said he was glad to have her at Abbotsmead, instead of telling her that she had a right to be [Pg 145]there; but she was also very tired, and sleep soon prevailed over both sweet and bitter fancies. Premature resolutions she made none; she had been warned against them by Madame Fournier as mischievous impediments to making the best of life, which is so much less often "what we could wish than what we must even put up with."
Perplexities and distressed feelings notwithstanding, Bessie Fairfax awoke at an early hour perfectly rested and refreshed. In the east the sun was rising in glory. A soft, bluish haze hung about the woods, a thick dew whitened the grass. She rose to look out of the window.
"It is going to be a lovely day," she said, and coiled herself in a cushioned chair to watch the dawn advancing.
All the world was hushed and silent yet. Slowly the light spread over the gardens, over the meadows and cornfields, chasing away the shadows and revealing the hues of shrub and flower. A reach of the river stole into view, and the red roof of an old mill on its banks. Then there was a musical, monotonous, reiterated call not far off which roused the cattle, and brought them wending leisurely towards the milking-shed. The crowing of cocks near and more remote, the chirping of little birds under the eaves, began and increased. A laborer, then another, on their way to work, passed within sight along a field-path leading to the mill; a troop of reapers came by the same road. Then there was the pleasant sound of sharpening a scythe, and Bessie saw a gardener on the lawn stoop to his task.
She returned to her pillow, and slept again until she was awakened by somebody coming to her bedside. It was Mrs. Betts, bearing in her hands one of those elegant china services for a solitary cup of tea which have popularized that indulgence amongst ladies.
"What is it?" Bessie asked, gazing with a puzzled air at [Pg 146]the tiny turquoise-blue vessels. "Tea? I am going to get up to breakfast."
"Certainly, miss, I hope so. But it is a custom with many young ladies to have a cup of tea before dressing."
"I will touch my bell if I want anything. No—no tea, thank you," responded Bessie; and the waiting-woman felt herself dismissed. Bessie chose to make and unmake her toilette alone. It was easy to see that her education had not been that of a young lady of quality, for she was quite independent of her maid; but Mrs. Betts was a woman of experience and made allowance for her, convinced that, give her time, she would be helpless and exacting enough.
Mr. Fairfax and his granddaughter met in the inner hall with a polite "Good-morning." Elizabeth looked shyly proud, but sweet as a dewy rose. The door of communication with the great hall was thrown wide open. It was all in cool shade, redolent of fresh air and the perfume of flowers. Jonquil waited to usher them to breakfast, which was laid in the room where they had dined last night.
Mr. Fairfax was never a talker, but he made an effort on behalf of Bessie, with whom it was apparently good manners not to speak until she was spoken to. "What will you do, Elizabeth, by way of making acquaintance with your home? Will you have Macky with her legends of family history and go over the house, or will you take a turn outside with me and visit the stables?"
Bessie knew which it was her duty to prefer, and fortunately her duty tallied with her inclination; her countenance beamed, and she said, "I will go out with you, if you please."
"You ride, I know. There is a nice little filly breaking in for you: you must name her, as she is to be yours."
"May I call her Janey?"
"Janey! Was that the name of Mr. Carnegie's little mare?"
"No; she was Miss Hoyden. Janey was the name of my first friend at school. She went away soon, and I have never heard of her since. But I shall: I often think of her."
"You have a constant memory, Elizabeth—not the best memory for your happiness. What are you eating? Only bread and butter. Will you have no sardines, bacon, eggs, honey? Nothing! A very abstemious young lady! You [Pg 147]have done with school, and may wean yourself from school-fare."
Breakfast over, Mrs. Betts brought her young lady's leghorn hat and a pair of new Limerick gauntlet-gloves—nice enough for Sunday in Bessie's modest opinion, but as they were presented for common wear she put them on and said nothing. Mr. Fairfax conducted his granddaughter to his private room, which had a lobby and porch into the garden, and twenty paces along the wall a door into the stable-yard. The groom who had the nice little filly in charge to train was just bringing her out of her stable.
"There is your Janey, Elizabeth," said her grandfather.
"Oh, what a darling!" cried Bessie in a voice that pleased him, as the pretty creature began to dance and prance and sidle and show off her restive caprices, making the groom's mounting her for some minutes impracticable.
"It is only her play, miss—she ain't no vice at all," the man said, pleading her excuses. "She'll be as dossil as dossil can be when I've give her a gallop. But this is her of a morning—so fresh there's no holding her."
Another groom had come to aid, and at length the first was seated firm in the saddle, with a flowing skirt to mimic the lady that Janey was to carry. And with a good deal of manœuvring they got safe out of the yard.
"You would like to follow and see? Come, then," said the squire, and led Bessie by a short cut across the gardens to the park. Janey was flying like the wind over the level turf, but she was well under guidance, and when her rider brought her round to the spot where Mr. Fairfax and the young lady stood to watch, she quite bore out his encomium on her docility. She allowed Bessie to stroke her neck, and even took from her hand an apple which the groom produced from a private store of encouragement and reward in his pocket.
"It will be well to give her a good breathing before Miss Fairfax mounts her, Ranby," said his master, walking round her approvingly. Then to Bessie he said, "Do you know enough of horses not to count rashness courage, Elizabeth?"
"I am ready to take your word or Ranby's for what is venturesome," was Bessie's moderate reply. "My father taught me to ride as soon as I could sit, so that I have no [Pg 148]fear. But I am out of practice, for I have never ridden since I went to Caen."
"You must have a new habit: you shall have a heavy one for the winter, and ride to the meet with me occasionally. I suppose you have never done that?"
"Mr. Musgrave once took me to see the hounds throw off. I rode Harry's pony that day. I was staying at Brook for a week."
Mr. Fairfax knew who "Mr. Musgrave" was and who "Harry" was, but Bessie did not recollect that he knew. However, as he asked no explanation of them, she volunteered none, and they returned to the gardens.
The cultivated grounds of Abbotsmead extended round three sides of the house. On the west, where the principal entrance was, an outer semicircle of lime trees, formed by the extension of the avenue, enclosed a belt of evergreens, and in the middle of the drive rose a mound over which spread a magnificent cedar. The great hall was the central portion of the building, lighted by two lofty, square-headed windows on either side of the door; the advanced wings that flanked it had corresponding bays of exquisite proportions, which were the end-windows of the great drawing-room and the old banqueting-room. The former was continued along the south, with one bay very wide and deep, and on either side of it a smaller bay, all preserving their dim glazing after the old Venetian pattern. Beyond the drawing-room was the modern adaptation of the wing which contained the octagon parlor and dining-room: from the outside the harmony of construction was not disturbed. The library adjoined the banqueting-room on the north, and overlooked a fine expanse where the naturalization of American trees and shrubs had been the hobby of the Fairfaxes for more than one generation. The flower-garden was formed in terraces on the south, and was a mixture of Italian and old English taste. The walls were a mingled tapestry of roses, jessamine, sweet clematis, and all climbing plants hardy enough to bear the rigors of the northern winter. Trimmed in though ever so closely in the fall of the year, in the summer it bushed and blossomed out into a wantonly luxuriant, delicious variety of color and fragrance. If here and there a bit of gray stone showed through the [Pg 149]mass, it seemed only to enhance the loveliness of the leaf and flower-work.
Bessie Fairfax stood to admire its glowing intricacy, and with a remarkable effort of candor exclaimed, "I think this is as pretty as anything in the Forest—as pretty as Fairfield or the manor-house at Brook;" which amused her grandfather, for the south front of the old mansion-house of Abbotsmead was one of the most grandly picturesque specimens of domestic architecture to be found in the kingdom.
In such perambulations time slips away fast. The squire looked at his watch. It was eleven o'clock; at half-past he was due at a magistrate's meeting two miles off; he must leave Bessie to amuse herself until luncheon at two. Bessie was contented to be left. She replied that she would now go indoors and write to her mother. Her grandfather paused an instant on her answer, then nodded acquiescence and went away in haste. Was he disappointed that she said nothing spontaneous? Bessie did not give that a thought, but she said in her letter, "I do believe that my grandfather wishes me to be happy here"—a possibility which had not struck her until she took a pen in her hand, and set about reflecting what news she had to communicate to her dear friends at Beechhurst. This brilliant era of her vicissitudes was undoubtedly begun with a little aversion.
In the absence of her young lady, Mrs. Betts had unpacked and carefully disposed of Bessie's limited possessions.
"Your wardrobe will not give me much trouble, miss," said the waiting-woman, with sly, good-humored allusion to the extent of it.
"No," answered Bessie, misunderstanding her in perfect simplicity. "You will find all in order. At school we mended our clothes and darned our stockings punctually every week."
"Did you really do this beautiful darning, miss? It is the finest darning I ever met with—not to say it was lace." Mrs. Betts spoke more seriously, as she held up to view a pair of filmy Lille thread stockings which had sustained considerable dilapidation and repair.
"Yes. They were not worth the trouble. Mademoiselle Adelaide made us wear Lille thread on dancing-days that we [Pg 150]might never want stockings to mend. She had a passion for darning. She taught us to graft also: you will find one pair of black silk grafted toe and heel. I have thought them much too precious ever to wear since. I keep them for a curiosity."
On the tables in Bessie's sitting-room were set out her humble appliances for work, for writing—an enamelled white box with cut-steel ornaments, much scratched; a capacious oval basket with a quilted red silk cover, much faded; a limp Russia-leather blotting-book wrapped in silver paper (Harry Musgrave had presented it to Bessie on her going into exile, and she had cherished it too dearly to expose it to the risk of blots at school). "I think," said she, "I shall begin to use it now."
She released it from its envelope, smelt it, and laid it down comfortably in front of the Sevres china inkstand. All the permanent furniture of the writing-table was of Sevres china. Bessie thought it grotesque, and had no notion of the value of it.
"The big basket may be put aside?" suggested Mrs. Betts, and her young lady did not gainsay her. But when the shabby little white enamelled box was threatened, she commanded that that should be left—she had had it so long she could not bear to part with it. It had been the joint-gift of Mr. and Mrs. Carnegie on her twelfth birthday.
Released, at length, from Mrs. Betts's respectful, observant presence, Bessie began to look about her and consider her new habitation. A sense of exaltation and a sense of bondage possessed her. These pretty, quaint rooms were hers, then? It was not a day-dream—it was real. She was at Abbotsmead—at Kirkham. Her true home-nest under the eaves at Beechhurst was hundreds of miles away: farther still was the melancholy garden in the Rue St. Jean.
Opposite the parlor window was the fireplace, the lofty mantelshelf being surmounted by a circular mirror, so inclined as to reflect the landscape outside. Upon the panelled walls hung numerous specimens of the elegant industry of Bessie's predecessors—groups of flowers embroidered on tarnished white satin; shepherds and shepherdesses with shell-pink painted faces and raiment of needlework in many colors; pallid sketches of scenery; crayon portraits of youths and [Pg 151]maidens of past generations, none younger than fifty years ago. There was a bookcase of white wood ruled with gold lines, like the spindly chairs and tables, and here Bessie could study, if she pleased, the literary tastes of ancient ladies, matrons and virgins, long since departed this life in the odor of gentility and sanctity. The volumes were in bindings rich and solid, and the purchase or presentation of each had probably been an event. Bessie took down here and there one. Those ladies who spent their graceful leisure at embroidery-frames were students of rather stiff books. Locke On the Conduct of the Human Understanding and Paley's Evidences of the Christian Religion Bessie took down and promptly restored; also the Sermons of Dr. Barrow and the Essays of Dr. Goldsmith. The Letters of Mrs. Katherine Talbot and Mrs. Elizabeth Carter engaged her only a few minutes, and the novels of Miss Edgeworth not much longer. The most modern volumes in the collection were inscribed with the name of "Dorothy Fairfax," who reigned in the days of Byron and Wordsworth, Keats and Shelley, and had through them (from the contents of three white vellum-covered volumes of extracts in her autograph) learnt to love the elder poets whose works in quarto populated the library. To Bessie these volumes became a treasure out of which she filled her mind with songs and ballads, lays and lyrics. The third volume had a few blank pages at the end, and these were the last lines in it:
Twice over Bessie read this, then to herself repeated it aloud—all with thoughts of her friends in the Forest.
The next minute her fortitude gave way, tears rushed to her eyes, Madame Fournier's precepts vanished out of remembrance, and she cried like a child wanting its mother. In which unhappy condition Mrs. Betts discovered her, sitting upon the floor, when the little page came flying to announce luncheon and visitors. It was two o'clock already.
Some recent duties of Mrs. Betts's service had given her, on occasion, an authoritative manner, and she was impelled to use it when she witnessed the forlornness of her young lady. "I am surprised that you should give way, miss," said she. "In the middle of the day, too, when callers are always liable, and your dear, good grandpapa expects a smiling face! To make your eyes as red as a ferret—"
"Indeed, they are not!" cried Bessie, and rose and ran to the looking-glass.
Mrs. Betts smiled at the effect of her tactics, and persevered: "Let me see, miss: because if it is plain you have been fretting, you had better make an excuse and stop up stairs. But the master will be vexed." Bessie turned and submitted her countenance to inspection. "There was never a complexion yet that was improved by fretting," was the waiting-woman's severe insinuation. "You must wait five minutes, and let the air from the window blow on you. Really, miss, you are too old to cry."
Bessie offered no rejoinder; she was ashamed. The imperative necessity of controlling the tender emotions had been sternly inculcated by Madame Fournier. "Now shall I do?" she humbly asked, feeling the temperature of her cheeks with her cool hands.
Mrs. Betts judiciously hesitated, then, speaking in a milder voice, said, "Yes—perhaps it would not be noticed. But tears was the very mischief for eyes—that Miss Fairfax might take her word for. And it was old Lady Angleby and her niece, one of the Miss Burleighs, who were down stairs."
Bessie blushed consciously, appealed to the looking-glass again, adjusted her mind to her duty, and descended to the octagon parlor. The rose was no worse for the shower. Mr. Fairfax was there, standing with his back to the fireplace, and lending his ears to an argument that was being slowly enunciated by the noble matron who filled his chair. A younger lady, yet not very young, who was seated languidly with her back to the light, acknowledged Bessie's entrance [Pg 153]with a smile that invited her approach. "I think," she said, "you know my brother Cecil?" and so they were introduced.
For several minutes yet Lady Angleby's eloquence oozed on (her theme was female emancipation), the squire listening with an inscrutable countenance. "Now, I hope you feel convinced," was her triumphant conclusion. Mr. Fairfax did not say whether he was convinced or not. He seemed to observe that Elizabeth had come in, and begged to present his granddaughter to her ladyship. Elizabeth made her pretty curtsey, and was received with condescension, and felt, on a sudden, a most unmannerly inclination to laugh, which she dissembled under a girlish animation and alacrity in talk. The squire was pleased that she manifested none of the stupid shyness of new young-ladyhood, though in the presence of one of the most formidable of county magnates. Elizabeth did not know that Lady Angleby was formidable, but she saw that she was immense, and her sense of humor was stirred by the instant perception that her self-consequence was as enormous as her bulk. But Miss Burleigh experienced a thrill of alarm. The possibility of being made fun of by a little simple girl had never suggested itself to the mind of her august relative, but there was always the risk that her native shrewdness might wake up some day from the long torpor induced by the homage paid to her rank, and discover the humiliating fact that she was not always imposing. By good luck for Miss Fairfax's favor with her, Pascal's maxim recurred to her memory—that though it is not necessary to respect grand people it is necessary to bow to them—and her temptation to be merry at Lady Angleby's expense was instantly controlled. Miss Burleigh could not but make a note of her sarcastic humor as a decidedly objectionable, and even dangerous, trait in the young lady's character. That she dissembled it so admirably was, however, to her credit. After his first movement of satisfaction the squire was himself perplexed. Elizabeth's spirits were lively and capricious, she was joyous-tempered, but she would not dare to quiz; he must be mistaken. In fact, she had not yet acquired the suppressed manner and deferential tone to her betters which are the perpetuation of that ancient rule of etiquette by which inferiors are guarded against affecting to be equal in talk [Pg 154]with the mighty. Mr. Fairfax proposed rather abruptly to go in to luncheon. Jonquil had announced it five minutes ago.
"She is beautiful! beautiful! I am charmed. We shall have her with us—a beautiful young woman would popularize our cause beyond anything. But how would Cecil approve of that?" whispered Lady Angleby as she toiled into the adjoining room with the help of her host's arm.
"Mr. Cecil Burleigh is wise and prudent. He will know how to temporize with the vagaries of his womankind," said the squire. But he was highly gratified by the complimentary appreciation of his granddaughter.
"Vagaries, indeed! The surest signs of sound and healthy progress that have shown themselves in this generation."
Lady Angleby mounted her hobby. She was that queer modern development, a democrat skin-deep, born and bred in feudal state, clothed in purple and fine linen, faring sumptuously every day, and devoted colloquially to the regeneration of the middle classes. The lower classes might now be trusted to take care of themselves (with the help of the government and the philanthropists), but such large discovery was being made of frivolity, ignorance, and helplessness amongst the young women of the great intermediate body of the people that Lady Angleby and a few select friends had determined, looking for the blessing of Providence on their endeavors, to take them under their patronage.
"It is," she said, "a most hopeful thing to see the discontent that is stirring amongst young women in this age, because an essential preliminary to their improvement is the conviction that they have the capacity for a freer, nobler life than that to which they are bound by obsolete domestic traditions. Let us put within the reach of every young girl an education that shall really develop her character and her faculties. Why should the education of girls be arrested at eighteen, and the apprenticeship of their brothers be continued to one-and-twenty?" This query was launched into the air, but Lady Angleby's prominent blue eyes seemed to appeal to Bessie, who was visibly dismayed at the personal nature of the suggestion.
Mr. Fairfax smiled and bade her speak, and then laugh[Pg 155]ing, she said, "Because at eighteen girls tire of grammar and dictionaries and precepts for the conduct of life. We are women, and want to try life itself."
"And what do you know to fit you for life?" said Lady Angleby firmly.
"Nothing, except by instinct and precept."
"Exactly so. And where is your experience? You have none. Girls plunge into life at eighteen destitute of experience—weak, foolish, ignorant of men and themselves. No wonder the world is encumbered with so many helpless poor creatures as it is."
"I should not like to live with only girls till one-and-twenty. What experience could we teach each other?" said Bessie, rather at sea. A notion flashed across her that Lady Angleby might be talking nonsense, but as her grandfather seemed to listen with deference, she could not be sure.
"Girls ought to be trained in logic, geometry, and physical science to harden their mental fibre; and how can they be so trained if their education is to cease at eighteen?" Then with a modest tribute to her own undeveloped capacities, the great lady cried, "Oh, what I might have done if I had enjoyed the advantages I claim for others!"
"You don't know. You have never yet been thrown on your own resources," said Bessie with an air of infinite suggestion.
Lady Angleby stared in cold astonishment, but Bessie preserved her gay self-possession. Lady Angleby's cold stare was to most persons utterly confusing. Miss Burleigh, an inattentive listener (perhaps because her state of being was always that of a passive listener), gently observed that she had no idea what any of them would do if they were thrown on their own resources.
"No idea is ever expected from you, Mary," said her aunt, and turned her stony regard upon the poor lady, causing her to collapse with a silent shiver. Bessie felt indignant. What was this towering old woman, with her theory of feminine freedom and practice of feminine tyranny? There was a momentary hush, and then Lady Angleby with pompous complacency resumed, addressing the squire:
"Our large scheme cannot be carried into effect without [Pg 156]the general concurrence of the classes we propose to benefit, but our pet plan for proving to what women may be raised demands the concurrence of only a few influential persons. I am sanguine that the government will yield to our representations, and make us a grant for the foundation of a college to be devoted to their higher education. We ask for twenty thousand pounds."
"I hope the government will have more wit," Mr. Fairfax exclaimed, his rallying tone taking the sting out of his words. "The private hobbies of you noble ladies must be supported out of your private purses, at the expense of more selfish whims."
"There is nothing so unjust as prejudice, unless it be jealousy," exclaimed Lady Angleby with delicious unreason. "You would keep women in subjection."
Mr. Fairfax laughed, and assented to the proposition. "You clamor for the high education of a few at the cost of the many; is that fair?" he continued. "High education is a luxury for those who can afford it—a rich endowment for the small minority who have the power of mind to acquire it; and no more to be provided for that small minority out of the national exchequer than silk attire for our conspicuous beauties."
"I shall never convert you into an advocate for the elevation of the sex. You sustain the old cry—the inferiority of woman's intellect."
"'The earth giveth much mould whereof earthen vessels are made, but little dust that gold cometh of.' High education exists already for the wealthy, and commercial enterprise will increase the means of it as the demand increases. If you see a grain of gold in the dust of common life, and likely to be lost there, rescue it for the crucible, but most such grains of gold find out the way to refine themselves. As for gilding the earthen pots, I take leave to think that it would be labor wasted—that they are, in fact, more serviceable without ornament, plain, well-baked clay. Help those who are helpless and protect those who are weak as much as you please, but don't vex the strong and capable with idle interference. Leave the middle classes to supply their wants in their own way—they know them best, and have gumption enough—and [Pg 157]stick we to the ancient custom of providing for the sick and needy."
"The ancient custom is good, and is not neglected, but the modern fashion is better."
"That I contest. There is more alloy of vanity and busy-bodyism in modern philanthropy than savor of charity."
"We shall never agree," cried Lady Angleby with mock despair. "Miss Fairfax, this is the way with us—your grandfather and I never meet but we fall out."
"You are not much in earnest," said Bessie. Terrible child! she had set down this great lady as a great sham.
"To live in the world and to be absolutely truthful is very difficult, is all but impossible," remarked Miss Burleigh with a mild sententiousness that sounded irrelevant, but came probably in the natural sequence of her unspoken thoughts.
"When you utter maxims like your famous progenitor you should give us his nod too, Mary," said her aunt. Then she suddenly inquired of Mr. Fairfax, "When do you expect Cecil?"
"Next week. He must address the electors at Norminster on Thursday. I hope he will arrive here on Tuesday."
Lady Angleby looked full in Bessie's face, which was instantly overspread by a haughty blush. Miss Burleigh looked anywhere else. And both drew the same conclusion—that the young lady's imagination was all on fire, and that her heart would not be slow to yield and melt in the combustion. The next move was back to the octagon parlor. The young people walked to the open window; the elders had communications to exchange that might or might not concern them, but which they were not invited to hear. They leant on the sill and talked low. Miss Burleigh began the conversation by remarking that Miss Fairfax must find Abbotsmead very strange, being but just escaped from school.
"It is strange, but one grows used to any place very soon," Bessie answered.
"You have no companion, and Mr. Fairfax sets his face against duennas. What shall you do next week?"
"What I am bid," said Bessie laconically. "My grandfather has bespoken for me the good offices of Mrs. Stokes as guide to the choice of a blue bonnet; the paramount duty of my [Pg 158]life at present seems to be to conform myself to the political views of Mr. Cecil Burleigh in the color of my ribbons. I have great pleasure in doing so, for blue is my color, and suits me."
Miss Burleigh had a good heart, and let Bessie's little bravado pass. "Are you interested in the coming election? I cannot think of anything else. My brother's career may almost be said to depend on his success."
"Then I hope he will win."
"Your kind good wishes should help him. You will come and stay at Brentwood?"
"Brentwood? what is Brentwood?"
"My aunt's house. It is only two miles out of Norminster. My aunt was so impatient to see you that she refused to wait one day. Cecil will often be with us, for my father's house is at Carisfort—too far off."
"I am at my grandfather's commands. I have not a friend here. I know no one, and have even to find out the ways and manners of my new world. Do you live at Brentwood?"
"Yes. My home is with my aunt. I shall be glad, very glad, to give you any help or direction that you like to ask for. Mrs. Stokes has a charming taste in dress, and is a dear little woman. You could not have a nicer friend; and she is well married, which is always an advantage in a girl's friend. You will like Colonel Stokes too."
In the course of the afternoon Bessie had the opportunity of judging for herself. Colonel Stokes brought his wife to call upon her. Their residence was close by Abbotsmead, at the Abbey Lodge, restored by Mr. Fairfax for their occupation. Colonel Stokes was old enough to be his wife's father, and young enough to be her hero and companion. She was a plump little lady, full of spirits and loving-kindness. Bessie considered her, and decided that she was of her own age, but Mrs. Stokes had two boys at home to contradict that. She looked so girlish still in her sage matronhood because she was happy, gay, contented with her life, because her eyes were blue and limpid as deep lake water, and her cheeks round and fresh as half-blown roses ungathered. Her dress was as dainty as herself, and merited the eulogium that Miss Burleigh had passed upon it.
[Pg 159]"You are going to be so kind as to introduce me to a good milliner at Norminster?" Bessie said after a few polite preliminaries.
"Yes—to Miss Jocund, who will be delighted to make your acquaintance. I shall tell her to take pains with you, but there will be no need to tell her that; she always does take pains with girls who promise to do her credit. I am afraid there is not time to send to Paris for the blue bonnet you must wear next Thursday, but she will make you something nice; you may trust her. This wonderful election is the event of the day. We have resolved that Mr. Cecil Burleigh shall head the poll."
"How shall you ensure his triumph? Are you going to canvass for him?"
"No, no, that is out of date. But Lady Angleby threatens that she will leave Brentwood, and never employ a Norminster tradesman again if they are so ungrateful as to refuse their support to her nephew. They are radicals every one."
"And is not she also a radical? She talks of the emancipation of women by keeping them at school till one-and-twenty, of the elevation of the masses, and the mutual improvement of everybody not in the peerage."
"You are making game of her, like my Arthur. No, she is not a radical; that is all her hum. I believe Lord Angleby was something of the sort, but I don't understand much about politics."
"Only for the present occasion we are blue?" said Bessie airily.
"Yes—all blue," echoed Mrs. Stokes. "Sky-blue," and they both laughed.
"You must agree at what hour you will go into Norminster on Monday—the half-past-eleven train is the best," Colonel Stokes said.
"Cannot we go to-morrow?" his wife asked.
"No, it is Saturday, market-day;" and his suggestion was adopted.
When the visit was over, in the pleasantness of the late afternoon, Bessie walked through the gardens and across the park with these neighbors to Abbotsmead. A belt of shrubbery and a sunk fence divided the grounds of the lodge from [Pg 160]the park, and there was easy communication by a rustic bridge and a wicket left on the latch. "I hope you will come often to and fro, and that you will seek me whenever you want me. This is the shortest way," Mrs. Stokes said to her. Bessie thanked her, and then walked back to the house, taking her time, and thinking what a long while ago it was since yesterday.
Yesterday! Only yesterday she was on board the Foam that had brought her from France, that had passed by the Forest—no longer ago than yesterday, yet as far off already as a year ago.
Thinking of it, she fell into a melancholy that belonged to her character. She was tired with the incidents of the day. At dinner Mr. Fairfax seemed to miss something that had charmed him the night before. She answered when he spoke, but her gayety was under eclipse. They were both relieved when the evening came to an end. Bessie was glad to escape to solitude, and her grandfather experienced a sense of vague disappointment, but he supposed he must have patience. Even Jonquil observed the difference, and was sorry that this bright young lady who had come into the house should enter so soon into its clouds; he was grieved too that his dear old master, who betrayed an unwonted humility in his desire to please her, should not at once find his reward in her affection. Bessie was not conscious that it would have been any boon to him. She had no rule yet to measure the present by except the past, and her experience of his usage in the past did not invite her tenderness. A reasonable and mild behavior was all she supposed to be required of her. Anything else—whether for better or worse—would be spontaneous. She could not affect either love or dislike, and how far she could dissemble either she had yet to learn.
The next morning Bessie was left entirely at liberty to amuse herself. Mr. Fairfax had breakfasted alone, and was [Pg 161]gone to Norminster before she came down stairs. Jonquil made the communication. Bessie wondered whether it was often so, and whether she would have to make out the greater part of the days for herself. But she said nothing; some feeling that she did not reason about told her that there must be no complaining here, let the days be what they might. She wrote a long letter to Madame Fournier, and then went out of doors, having declined Mrs. Betts's proposed attendance.
"Where is the village?" she asked a boy who was sweeping up fallen leaves from the still dewy lawn. He pointed her the way to go. "And the church and parsonage?" she added.
"They be all together, miss, a piece beyond the lodge."
With an object in view Bessie could feel interested. She was going to see her mother's home, the house where she was herself born; and on the road she began to question whether she had any kinsfolk on her mother's side. Mrs. Carnegie had once told her that she believed not—unless there were descendants of her grandfather Bulmer's only brother in America, whither he had emigrated as a young man; but she had never heard of any. A cousin of some sort would have been most acceptable to Bessie in her dignified isolation. She did not naturally love solitude.
The way across the park by which she had been directed brought her out upon the high-road—a very pleasant road at that spot, with a fir wood climbing a shallow hill opposite, bounded by a low stone fence, all crusted with moss and lichen, age and weather.
For nearly half a mile along the roadside lay an irregular open space of broken ground with fine scattered trees upon it, and close turf where primroses were profuse in spring. An old woman was sitting in the shade knitting and tending a little black cow that cropped the sweet moist grass. Only for the sake of speaking Bessie asked again her way to the village.
"Keep straight on, miss, you can't miss it," said the old woman, and gazed up at her inquisitively.
So Bessie kept straight on until she came to the ivy-covered walls of the lodge; the porch opened upon the road, and [Pg 162]Colonel Stokes was standing outside in conversation with another gentleman, who was the vicar of Kirkham, Mr. Forbes. Bessie went on when she had passed them, shyly disconcerted, for Colonel Stokes had come forward with an air of surprise and had asked her if she was lost. Perhaps it was unusual for young ladies to walk alone here? She did not know.
The gentlemen watched her out of sight. "Miss Fairfax, of course," said the vicar. "She walks admirably—I like to see that."
"A handsome girl," said Colonel Stokes. And then they reverted to their interrupted discussion, the approaching election at Norminster. The clergyman was very keen about it, the old Indian officer was almost indifferent.
Meanwhile Bessie reached the church—a very ancient church, spacious and simple, with a square tower and a porch that was called Norman. The graveyard surrounded it. A flagged pathway led from the gate between the grassy mounds to the door, which stood open that the Saturday sun might drive out the damp vapors of the week. She went in and saw whitewashed walls; thick round pillars between the nave and aisles; deep-sunken windows dim with fragmentary pieces of colored glass, and all more or less out of the perpendicular; a worm-eaten oak-screen separating the chancel and a solemn enclosure, erst a chapel, now the Fairfax pew; a loft where the choir sat in front for divine service, with fiddle and bassoon, and the school-children sat behind, all under the eye of the parson and his clerk, who was also the school-master.
In the chancel were several monuments to the memory of defunct pastors. The oldest was very old, and the inscription in Latin on brass; the newest was to Bessie's grandfather—the "Reverend Thomas Bulmer, for forty-six years vicar of this parish." From the dates he had married late, for he had died in a good old age in the same year as his daughter Elizabeth, and only two months before her. In smaller letters below the inscription-in-chief it was recorded that his wife Letitia was buried at Torquay in Cornwall, and that this monument was erected to their pious memory by their only child—"Elizabeth, the wife of the Reverend Geoffry Fairfax, rector of Beechhurst in the county of Hants."
[Pg 163]All gone—not one left! Bessie pondered over this epitome of family history, and thought within herself that it was not without cause she felt alone here. With a shiver she returned into the sunshine and proceeded up the public road. The vicarage was a little low house, very humble in its externals, roofed with fluted tiles, and the walls covered to the height of the chamber windows with green latticework and creepers. It stood in a spacious garden and orchard, and had outbuildings at a little distance on the same homely plan. The living was in the gift of Abbotsmead, and the Fairfaxes had not been moved to house their pastor, with his three hundred a year, in a residence fit for a bishop. It was a simple, pleasant, rustic spot. The lower windows were open, so was the door under the porch. Bessie saw that it could not have undergone any material change since the summer days of twenty years ago, when her father, a bright young fellow fresh from college, went to read there of a morning with the learned vicar, and fell in love with his pretty Elizabeth, and wooed and won her.
Bessie, imperfectly informed, exaggerated the resentment with which Mr. Fairfax had visited his offending son. It was never an active resentment, but merely a contemptuous acceptance of his irrevocable act. He said, "Geoffry has married to his taste. His wife is used to a plain way of living; they will be more useful in a country parish living on so, free from the temptations of superfluous means." And he gave the young couple a bare pittance. Time might have brought him relenting, but time does not always reserve us opportunities. And here was Bessie Fairfax considering the sorrows and early deaths of her parents, charging them to her grandfather's account, and confirming herself in her original judgment that he was a hard and cruel man.
The village of Kirkham was a sinuous wide street of homesteads and cottages within gardens, and having a green open border to the road where geese and pigs, cows and children, pastured indiscriminately. It was the old order of things where one man was master. The gardens had, for the most part, a fine show of fragrant flowers, the hedges were neatly trimmed, the fruit trees were ripening abundantly. Of children, fat and ruddy, clean and well clothed, there were many [Pg 164]playing about, for their mothers were gone to Norminster market, and there was no school on Saturday. Bessie spoke to nobody, and nobody spoke to her. Some of the children dropt her a curtsey, but the majority only stared at her as a stranger. She felt, somehow, as if she would never be anything else but a stranger here. When she had passed through the village to the end of it, where the "Chequers," the forge, and the wheelwright's shed stood, she came to a wide common. Looking across it, she saw the river, and found her way home by the mill and the harvest-fields.
It would have enhanced Bessie's pleasure, though not her happiness perhaps, if she could have betaken herself to building castles in the Woldshire air, but the moment she began to indulge in reverie her thoughts flew to the Forest. No glamour of pride, enthusiasm, or any sort of delightful hope mistified her imagination as to her real indifference towards Abbotsmead. When she reached the garden she sat down amongst the roses, and gazed at the beautiful old flower-woven walls that she had admired yesterday, and felt like a visitor growing weary of the place. Even while her bodily eyes were upon it, her mind's eye was filled with a vision of the green slopes of the wilderness garden at Brook, and the beeches laving their shadows in the sweet running water.
"I believe I am homesick," she said. "I cannot care for this place. I should have had a better chance of taking to it kindly if my grandfather had let me go home for a little while. Everything is an effort here." And it is to be feared that she gave way again, and fretted in a manner that Madame Fournier would have grieved to see. But there was no help for it; her heart was sore, and tears relieved it.
Mr. Fairfax was at home to dinner. He returned from Norminster jaded and out of spirits. Now, Bessie, though she did not love him (though she felt it a duty to assert and reassert that fact to herself, lest she should forget it), felt oddly pained when she looked into his face and saw that he was dull; to be dull signified to be unhappy in Bessie's vocabulary. But timidity tied her tongue. It was not until Jonquil had left them to themselves that they attempted any [Pg 165]conversation. Then Mr. Fairfax remarked, "You have been making a tour of investigation, Elizabeth: you have been into the village?"
Bessie said that she had, and that she had gone into the church. Then all at once an impulse came upon her to ask, "Why did you let my parents go so far away? was it so very wrong in them to marry?"
"No, not wrong at all. It is written, 'A man shall leave his father and mother, and cleave unto his wife,'" was the baffling reply she got, and it silenced her. And not for that occasion only.
When Bessie retired into the octagon parlor her grandfather stayed behind. He had been to see Mr. John Short that day, and had heard that a new aspect had come over the electioneering sky. The Radicals had received an impetus from some quarter unknown, and were preparing to make such a hard fight for the representation of Norminster that the triumph of the Tory party was seriously threatened. This news had vexed him, but it was not of that he meditated chiefly when he was left alone. It was of Bessie. He had founded certain pleasurable expectations upon her, and he felt that these expectations were losing their bloom. He could not fail to recollect her quietness of last night, when he noticed the languor of her eyes, the dejection of her mouth, and the effort it was to her to speak. The question concerning her parents had aroused the slumbering ache of old remembrance, and had stung him anew with a sense of her condemnation. A feeling akin to remorse visited him as he sat considering, and by degrees realizing, what he had done to her, and was doing; but he had his motive, he had his object in it, and the motive had seemed to justify the means until he came to see her face to face. Contact with her warm, distinct humanity began immediately to work a change in his mind. Absent, he had decided that he could dispose of her as he would. Present, he recognized that she would have a voice, and probably a casting voice, in the disposal of herself. He might sever her from her friends in the Forest, but he would not thereby attach her to friends and kinsfolk in the north. His last wanton act of selfish unkindness, in refusing to let her see her old home in passing, was [Pg 166]evidently producing its effect in silent grieving, in resentment and revolt.
All his life long Mr. Fairfax had coveted affection, and had missed the way to win it. No one had ever really loved him except his sister Dorothy—so he believed; and Elizabeth was so like Dorothy in the face, in her air, her voice, her gestures, that his heart went out to her with a yearning that was almost pain. But when he looked at her, she looked at him again like Dorothy alienated—like Dorothy grown strange. It was a very curious revival out of the far past. When he was a young man and Lady Latimer was a girl, there had been a prospect of a double marriage between their families, but the day that destroyed one hope destroyed both, and Dorothy Fairfax died of that grief. Elizabeth, with her tear-worn eyes, was Dorothy's sad self to-night, only the eyes did not seek his friendly. They were gazing at pictures in the fire when he rejoined her, and though Bessie moved and raised her head in courteous recognition of his coming, there was something of avoidance in her manner, as if she shrank from his inspection. Perhaps she did; she had no desire to parade her distresses or to reproach him with them. She meant to be good—only give her time. But she must have time.
There was a book of photographs on the table that Frederick Fairfax and his wife had collected during their wedding-tour on the Continent. It was during the early days of the art, and the pictures were as blurred and faded as their lives had since become. Bessie was turning them over with languid interest, when her grandfather, perceiving how she was employed, said he could show her some foreign views that would please her better than those dim photographs. He unlocked a drawer in the writing-table and produced half a dozen little sketch-books, his own and his sister Dorothy's during their frequent travels together. It seemed that their practice had been to make an annual tour.
While Bessie examined the contents of the sketch-books, her grandfather stood behind her looking over her shoulder, and now and then saying a few words in explanation, though most of the scenes were named and dated. They were water-[Pg 167]color drawings—bits of landscape, picturesque buildings, grotesque and quaint figures, odd incidents of foreign life, all touched with tender humor, and evidently by a strong and skilful hand; and flowers, singly or in groups, full of a delicate fancy. In the last volume of the series there were no more flowers; the scenes were of snow-peaks and green hills, of wonderful lake-water, and boats with awnings like the hood of a tilted cart; and the sky was that of Italy.
"Oh, these are lovely, but why are there no more flowers?" said Bessie thoughtlessly.
"Dorothy had given up going out then," said her grandfather in a low, strained voice.
Bessie caught her breath as she turned the next page, and came on a roughly washed-in mound of earth under an old wall where a white cross was set. A sudden mist clouded her sight, and then a tear fell on the paper.
"That is where she was buried—at Bellagio on Lake Como," said Mr. Fairfax, and moved away.
Bessie continued to gaze at the closing page for several minutes without seeing it; then she turned back the leaves preceding, and read them again, as it were, in the sad light of the end. It was half a feint to hide or overcome her emotion, for her imagination had figured to her that last mournful journey. Her grandfather saw how she was affected—saw the trembling of her hand as she paused upon the sketches and the furtive winking away of her tears. Dear Bessie! smiles and tears were so easy to her yet. If she had dared to yield to a natural impulse, she would have shut the melancholy record and have run to comfort him—would have clasped her hands round his arm and laid her cheek against his shoulder, and have said, "Oh, poor grandpapa!" with most genuine pity and sympathy. But he stood upon the hearth with his back to the fire, erect, stiff as a ramrod, with gloom in his eyes and lips compressed, and anything in the way of a caress would probably have amazed more than it would have flattered him. Bessie therefore refrained herself, and for ever so long there was silence in the room, except for the ticking of the clock on the chimney-piece and the occasional dropping of the ashes from the bars. At last she left looking at the sketches and mechanically reverted to the photographs [Pg 168]upon which Mr. Fairfax came out of his reverie and spoke again. She was weary, but the evening was now almost over.
"I do not like those sun-pictures. They are not permanent, and a water-color drawing is more pleasing to begin with. You can draw a little, Elizabeth? Have you any sketches about Caen or Bayeux?"
Bessie modestly said that she had, and went to bring them; school-girl fashion, she wished to exhibit her work, and to hear that the money spent on her neglected education had not been all spent in vain. Her grandfather was graciously inclined to commend her productions. He told her that she had a nice touch, and that it was quite worth her while to cultivate her talent. "It will add a great interest to your travels when you have the chance of travelling," he said; "for, like life itself, travelling has many blank spaces that a taste for sketching agreeably fills up. Ten o'clock already? Yes—good-night."
The following morning Mr. Fairfax and Bessie walked to church together. Along the road everybody acknowledged the squire with bow or curtsey, and the little children stood respectfully at gaze as he passed. He returned the civility of all by lifting a forefinger to his hat, though he spoke to none, and Bessie was led to understand that he had the confidence of his people, and that he probably deserved it. For a sign that there was no bitterness in his own feelings, each token of regard was noted by her with satisfaction.
At the lodge Colonel and Mrs. Stokes joined them, and Mrs. Stokes's bright eyes frankly appreciated the elegant simplicity of Bessie's attire, her chip bonnet and daisies, her dress of French spun silk, white and violet striped, and perfectly fitting Paris gloves. She nodded meaningly to Bessie, and Bessie smiled back her full comprehension that the survey was satisfactory and pleasing.
Some old customs still prevailed at Kirkham. The humble congregation was settled in church before the squire entered his red-curtained pew, and sat quiet after sermon until the squire went out. Bessie's thoughts roved often during the service. Mr. Forbes read apace, and the clerk sang out the responses like an echo with no time to lose. There had been [Pg 169]a death in the village during the past week, and the event was now commemorated by a dirge in which the children's shrill treble was supported by the majority of the congregation. The sermon also took up the moral of life and death. It was short and pithy; perhaps it was familiar, and none the less useful for that. Mr. Forbes was not concerned to lead his people into new ways; he believed the old were better. Work and pray, fear God and keep His commandments, love your neighbor, and meddle not with those who are given to change,—these were his cardinal points, from which he brought to bear on their consciences much powerful doctrine and purifying precept. He was a man of high courage and robust faith, who practised what he preached, and bore that cheerful countenance which is a sign of a heart in prosperity.
After service Colonel and Mrs. Stokes walked home with Mr. Fairfax and Bessie, lunched at Abbotsmead, and lounged about the garden afterward. This was an institution. Sunday is long in country houses, and good neighbors help one another to get rid of it. The Stokes's boys came in the afternoon, to Bessie's great joy; they made a noisy playground of the garden, and behaved just like Jack and Tom and Willie Carnegie, kicking up their heels and laughing at nothing.
"There are no more gooseberries," cried their mother, catching the younger of the two, a bluff copy of herself, and offering him to Bessie to kiss. Bessie kissed him heartily. "You are fond of children, I can see," said her new friend.
"I like a houseful! Oh, when have I had a nice kiss at a boy's hard, round cheeks? Not for years! years! I have five little brothers and two sisters at home."
Mrs. Stokes regarded Bessie with a touched surprise, but she asked no questions; she knew her story in a general inaccurate way. The boy gazed in her face with a pretty lovingness, rubbed his nose suddenly against hers, wrestled himself out of her embrace, and ran away. "When you feel as if you want a good kiss, come to my house," said his mother, her blue eyes shining tenderly. "It must be dreadful to miss little children when you have lived with them. I could not bear it. Abbotsmead always looks to me like a great dull splendid prison."
[Pg 170]"My grandfather makes it as pleasant to me as he can; I don't repine," said Bessie quickly. "He has given me a beautiful little filly to ride, but she is not quite trained yet; and I shall beg him to let me have a companionable dog; I love a dog."
The church-bells began to ring for afternoon service. Mrs. Stokes shook her head at Bessie's query: nobody ever went, she said, but servants and poor people. Evening service there was none, and Mr. Forbes dined with the squire; that also was an institution. The gentlemen talked of parochial matters, and Bessie, wisely inferring that they could talk more freely in her absence, left them to themselves and retreated to her private parlor, to read a little and dream a great deal of her friends in the Forest.
At dusk there was a loud jangling indoors and out, and Mrs. Betts summoned her young lady down stairs. She met her grandfather and Mr. Forbes issuing from the dining-room, and they passed together into the hall, where the servants of the house stood on parade to receive their pastor and master. They were assembled for prayers. Once a week, after supper, this compliment was paid to the Almighty—a remnant of ancient custom which the squire refused to alter or amend. When Bessie had assisted at this ceremony she had gone through the whole duty of the day, and her reflection on her experience since she came to Abbotsmead was that life as a pageant must be dull—duller than life as a toil.
While Bessie Fairfax was pronouncing the web of her fortunes dull, Fate was spinning some mingled threads to throw into the pattern and give it intricacy and liveliness. The next day Mrs. Stokes chaperoned her to Norminster in quest of that blue bonnet. Mrs. Betts went also, and had a world of shopping to help in on behalf of her young mistress. They drove from the station first to the chief tailor's in High [Pg 171]street, the ladies' habitmaker, then to the fashionable hosier, the fashionable haberdasher. By three o'clock Bessie felt herself flagging. What did she want with so many fine clothes? she inquired of Mrs. Stokes with an air of appeal. She was learning that to get up only one character in life as a pageant involves weariness, labor, pains, and money.
"You are going to stay at Brentwood," rejoined her chaperone conclusively.
"And is it so dull at Brentwood that dressing is a resource?" Bessie demurred.
"Wait and see. You will have pleasant occupation enough, I should think. Most girls would call this an immense treat. But if you are really tired we will go to Miss Jocund now. Mrs. Betts can choose ribbons and gloves."
Miss Jocund was a large-featured woman of a grave and wise countenance. She read the newspaper in intervals of business, and was reading it now with her glasses on. Lowering the paper, she recognized a favorite customer in Mrs. Stokes, and laid the news by, but with reluctance. Duty forbade, however, that this lady should be remitted to an assistant.
"I am sorry to disturb you, Miss Jocund, but it is important—it is about a bonnet," cried Mrs. Stokes gayly. "I have brought you Miss Fairfax of Abbotsmead. I am sure you will make her something quite lovely."
Miss Jocund took off her glasses, and gave Bessie a deliberate, discerning look-over. "Very happy, ma'am, indeed. Blue, of course?" she said. Bessie acquiesced. "Any taste, any style?" the milliner further queried.
"Yes. Give me always simplicity and no imitations," was the unhesitating, concise reply.
"Miss Fairfax and I understand one another. Anything more to-day, ladies?" Bessie and Mrs. Stokes considered for a moment, and then said they would not detain Miss Jocund any longer from her newspaper. "Ah, ladies! who can exist altogether on chiffons?" rejoined the milliner, half apologetically. "I do love my Times—I call it my 'gentleman.' I cannot live without my gentleman. Yes, ladies, he does smell of tobacco. That is because he spends a day and night in the bar-parlor of the Shakespeare Tavern before he visits me. [Pg 172]So do evil communications corrupt good manners. The door, Miss Lawson. Good-afternoon, ladies."
"You must not judge of Miss Jocund as a milliner and nothing more," her chaperone instructed Bessie when they had left the shop. "She is a lady herself. Her father was Dr. Jocund, the best physician in Norminster when you could find him sober. He died, and left his daughter with only debts for a fortune; she turned milliner, and has paid every sixpence of them."
Where were they to go next? Bessie recollected that her uncle Laurence lived in the vicinity of the minster, and that she had an errand to him from her grandfather. She had undertaken it cheerfully, feeling that it would be a pleasure to see her kind uncle Laurence again. There was a warmth of geniality about him that was absent from her uncle Frederick and her grandfather, and she had decided that if she was to have any friend amongst her kinsfolk, her uncle Laurence would be that friend. She was sure that her father, whom she barely knew, had been most like him.
It was not far to Minster Court, and they directed their steps that way. The streets of Norminster still preserve much of their picturesque antiquity, but they are dull, undeniably dull, except on the occasion of assizes, races, fairs, and the annual assembling of the yeomanry and militia. Elections are no more the saturnalia they used to be in the good old times. Bessie was reminded of Bayeux and its sultry drowsiness as they passed into the green purlieus of the minster and under a low-browed archway into a spacious paved court, where the sun slept on the red-brick backs of the old houses. Mr. Laurence Fairfax's door was in the most remote corner, up a semi-circular flight of steps, guarded on either side by an iron railing.
As the two ladies approached the steps a young countrywoman came down them, saying in a mingled strain of persuasion and threat, "Come, Master Justus: if you don't come along this minute, I'll tell your granma." And a naughty invisible voice made an answer with lisping defiance, "Well, go, Sally, go. Be quick! go before your shoes wear out."
Mrs. Stokes, rounding her pretty eyes and pretty mouth, cried softly, "Oh, what a very rude little boy!" And the [Pg 173]very rude little boy appeared in sight, hustled coaxingly behind by the stout respectable housekeeper of Mr. Laurence Fairfax. When he saw the strange ladies he stood stock-still and gazed at them as bold as Hector, and they gazed at him again in mute amazement—a cherub of four years old or thereabouts, with big blue eyes and yellow curls. When he had satisfied himself with gazing, he descended the steps and set off suddenly at a run for the archway. The housekeeper had a flushed, uneasy smile on her face as she recognized Mrs. Stokes—a smile of amused consternation, which the little lady's shocked grimace provoked. Bessie herself laughed in looking at her again, and the housekeeper rallied her composure enough to say, "Oh, the self-will and naughtiness there is in boys, ma'am! But you know it, having boys of your own!"
"Too well, Mrs. Burrage, too well! Is Mr. Laurence Fairfax at home?"
"I am sorry to say that he is not, ma'am. May I make bold to ask if the young lady is Miss Fairfax from Abbotsmead, that was expected?"
Bessie confessed to her identity, and while Mrs. Stokes wrote the name of Miss Fairfax on one of her own visiting-cards (for Bessie was still unprovided), Burrage begged, as an old servant of the house, to offer her best wishes and to inquire after the health of the squire. They were interrupted by that rude little boy, who came running back into the court with Sally in pursuit. He was shouting too at the top of his voice, and making its solemn echoes ring again. Burrage with sudden gravity watched what would ensue. Capture ensued, and a second evasion into the street. Burrage shook her head, as who would say that Sally's riotous charge was far beyond her control—which indubitably he was—and Bessie forgot her errand entirely. Whose was that little boy, the picture of herself? Mrs. Stokes recovered her countenance. They turned to go, and were halfway across the court when the housekeeper called after them in haste: "Ladies, ladies! my master has come in by the garden way, if you will be pleased to return?" and they returned, neither of them by word or look affording to the other any intimation of her profound reflections.
[Pg 174]Mr. Laurence Fairfax received his visitors with a frank welcome, and bade Burrage bring them a cup of tea. Mrs. Stokes soon engaged him in easy chat, but Bessie sat by in perplexed rumination, trying to reconcile the existence of that little flaxen-haired boy with her preconceived notions of her bachelor uncle. The view of him had let in a light upon her future that pleased while it confused her. The reason it pleased her she would discern as her thoughts cleared. At this moment she was dazzled by a series of surprises. First, by the sight of that cherub, and then by the order that reigned through this quaint and narrow house where her learned kinsman lived. They had come up a winding stair into a large, light hall, lined with books and peopled by marble sages on pedestals, from which opened two doors—the one into a small red parlor where the philosopher ate, the other into a long room looking to the garden and the minster, furnished with the choicest collections of his travelled youth. The "omnibus" of Canon Fournier used to be all dusty disorder. Bessie's silence and her vagrant eyes misled her uncle into the supposition that his old stones, old canvases, and ponderous quartoes interested her curiosity, and noticing that they settled at length, with an intelligent scrutiny, on some object beyond him, he asked what it was, and moved to see.
Nothing rich, nothing rare or ancient—only the tail and woolly hind-quarters of a toy lamb extruded from the imperfectly closed door of a cupboard below a bookcase. Instantly he jumped up and went to shut the cupboard; but first he must open it to thrust in the lamb, and out it tumbled bodily, and after it a wagon with red wheels and black-spotted horses harnessed thereto. As he awkwardly restored them, Mrs. Stokes never moved a muscle, but Bessie smiled irrepressibly and in her uncle's face as he returned to his seat with a fine confusion blushing thereon. At that moment Burrage came in with the tea. No doubt Mrs. Stokes was equally astonished to see a nursery-cupboard in a philosopher's study, but she could turn her discourse to circumstances with more skill than her unworldly companion, and she resumed the thread of their interrupted chat with perfect composure. Mr. Laurence Fairfax could not, however, take her cue, and he rose with readiness at the first movement of the ladies to go. He [Pg 175]began to say to Bessie that she must make his house her home when she wanted to come to Norminster, and that he should always be glad of her company. Bessie thanked him, and as she looked up in his benevolent face there was a pure friendliness in her eyes that he responded to by a warm pressure of her hand. And as he closed the door upon them he dismissed his sympathetic niece with a most kind and kinsman-like nod.
Mrs. Stokes began to laugh when they were clear of the house: "A pretty discovery! Mr. Laurence Fairfax has a little playfellow: suppose he should turn out to be a married man?" cried she under her breath. "So that is the depth of his philosophy! My Arthur will be mightily amused."
"What a darling little naughty boy that was!" whispered Bessie, also laughing. "How I should like to have him at Abbotsmead! What fun it would be!"
"Mind, you don't mention him at Abbotsmead. Mr. Fairfax will be the last to hear of him; the mother must be some unpresentable person. If Mr. Laurence Fairfax is married, it will be so much the worse for you."
"Nothing in the way of little Fairfax boys can be the worse for me," was Bessie's airy, pleasant rejoinder. And she felt exhilarated as by a sudden, sunshiny break in the cloudy monotony of her horizon.
Mr. Laurence Fairfax returned to his study when he had parted with his visitors, and there he found Burrage awaiting him. "Sir," she said with a gravity befitting the occasion, "I must tell you that Master Justus has been seen by those two ladies."
"And Master Justus's pet lamb and cart and horses," quoth her master as seriously. "You had thrown the toys into the cupboard too hastily, or you had not fastened the door, and the lamb's legs stuck out. Miss Fairfax made a note of them."
"Ah, sir, if you would but let Mr. John Short speak before the story gets round to your respected father the wrong way!" pleaded Burrage. Mr. Laurence Fairfax did not answer her. She said no more, but shook her head and went away, leaving him to his reflections, which were more mischievous than the reflections of philosophers are commonly supposed to be.
[Pg 176]Bessie returned to Kirkham a changed creature. Her hopefulness had rallied to the front. Her mind was filled with blithe anticipations founded on that dear little naughty boy and his incongruous cupboard of playthings in her uncle's study.
If there was a boy for heir to Abbotsmead, nobody would want her; she might go back to the Forest. Secrets and mysteries always come out in the end. She had sagacity enough to know that she must not speak of what she had seen; if the little boy was openly to be spoken of, he would have been named to her. But she might speculate about him as much as she pleased in the recesses of her fancy. And oh what a comfort was that!
Mr. Fairfax at dinner observed her revived animation, and asked for an account of her doings in Norminster. Then, and not till then, did Bessie recollect his message to her uncle Laurence, and penitently confessed her forgetfulness, unable to confess the occasion of it. "It is of no importance; I took the precaution of writing to him this afternoon," said her grandfather dryly, and Bessie's confusion was doubled. She thought he would never have any confidence in her again. Presently he said, "This is the last evening we shall be alone for some time, Elizabeth. Mr. Cecil Burleigh and his sister Mary, whom you have seen, will arrive to-morrow, and on Thursday you will go with me to Lady Angleby's for a few nights. I trust you will be able to make a friend of Miss Burleigh."
To this long speech Bessie gave her attention and a submissive assent, followed by a rather silly wish: "I wish it was to Lady Latimer's we were going instead of to Lady Angleby's; I don't like Lady Angleby."
"That does not much matter if you preserve the same measure of courtesy toward her as if you did," rejoined her grandfather. "It is unnecessary to announce your preferences and prejudices by word of mouth, and it would be unpardonable to obtrude them by your behavior. It is not of obligation that because she is a grand lady you should esteem her, but it is of obligation that you should curtsey to her; you understand me? Do not let your ironical humor mislead you into forgetting the first principle of good manners—to [Pg 177]render to all their due." Mr. Fairfax also had read Pascal.
Bessie's cheeks burned under this severe admonition, but she did not attempt to extenuate her fault, and after a brief silence her grandfather said, to make peace, "It is not impossible that your longing to see Lady Latimer may be gratified. She still comes into Woldshire at intervals, and she will take an interest in Mr. Cecil Burleigh's election." But Bessie felt too much put down to trust herself to speak again, and the rest of the meal passed in a constrained quiet.
This was not the way towards a friendly and affectionate understanding. Nevertheless, Bessie was not so crushed as she would have been but for the vision of that unexplained cherub who had usurped the regions of her imagination. If the time present wearied her, she had gained a wide outlook to a beyond that was bright enough to dream of, to inspire her with hope, and sustain her against oppression. Mr. Fairfax discerned that she felt her bonds more easy—perhaps expecting the time when they would be loosed. His conjectures for a reason why were grounded on the confidential propensities of women, and the probability that Mrs. Stokes, during their long tête-à-tête that day, had divulged the plots for her wooing and wedding. How far wide of the mark these conjectures were he would learn by and by. Meanwhile, as the effect of the unknown magic was to make her gayer, more confident, and more interested in passing events, he was well pleased. His preference was for sweet acquiescence in women, but, for an exception, he liked his granddaughter best when she was least afraid of him.
Mr. Cecil Burleigh met Bessie Fairfax again with a courteous vivacity and an air of intimate acquaintance. If he was not very glad to see her he affected gladness well, and Bessie's vivid blushes were all the welcome that was necessary to delude the witnesses into a belief that they already [Pg 178]understood one another. He was perfectly satisfied himself, and his sister Mary, who worshipped him, thought Bessie sweetly modest and pretty. And her mind was at peace for the results.
There was a dinner-party at Abbotsmead that evening. Colonel and Mrs. Stokes came, and Mr. Forbes and his mother, who lived with him (for he was unmarried), a most agreeable old lady. It was much like other dinner-parties in the country. The guests were all of one mind on politics and the paramount importance of the landed interest, which gave a delightful unanimity to the conversation. The table was round, so that Miss Fairfax did not appear conspicuous as the lady of the house, but she was not for that the less critically observed. Happily, she was unconscious of the ordeal she underwent. She looked lovely in the face, but her dress was not the elaborate dress of the other ladies; it was still her prize-day white muslin, high to the throat and long to the wrists, with a red rose in her belt, and an antique Normandy gold cross for her sole ornament. The cross was a gift from Madame Fournier. Mr. Cecil Burleigh, being seated next to her, was most condescending in his efforts to be entertaining, and Bessie was not quite so uneasy under his affability as she had been on board the yacht. Mrs. Stokes, who had heard much of the Tory candidate, but now met him for the first time, regarded him with awe, impressed by his distinguished air and fine manners. But Bessie was more diffident than impressed. She did not talk much; everybody else was so willing to talk that it was enough for her to look charming. Once or twice her grandfather glanced towards her, wishing to hear her voice—which was a most tunable voice—in reply to her magnificent neighbor, but Bessie sat in beaming, beautiful silence, lending him her ears, and at intervals giving him a monosyllabic reply. She might certainly have done worse. She might have spoken foolishly, or she might have said what she occasionally thought in contradiction of his solemn opinions. And surely this would have been unwise? Her silence was pleasing, and he wished for nothing in her different from what she seemed. He liked her youthfulness, and approved her simplicity as an eminently teachable characteristic; and if she was not able greatly to [Pg 179]interest or amuse him, perhaps that was not from any fault or deficiency in herself, but from circumstances over which she had no control. An old love, a true love, unwillingly relinquished, is a powerful rival.
The whole of the following day was at his service to walk and talk with Bessie if he and she pleased, but Bessie invited Miss Burleigh into her private parlor and went into seclusion. That was after breakfast, and Mr. Cecil made a tour of the stables with the squire, and saw Janey take her morning gallop. Then he spoke in praise of Janey's mistress while on board the Foam, and with all the enthusiasm at his command of his own hopes. They had not become expectations yet.
"It is uphill work with Elizabeth," said her grandfather. "She cares for none of us here."
"The harder to win the more constant to keep," replied the aspirant suitor cheerfully.
"I shall put no pressure on her. Here is your opportunity, and you must rely on yourself. She has a heart for those who can reach it, but my efforts have fallen short thus far." This was not what the squire had once thought to say.
Mr. Cecil Burleigh did not admire gushing, demonstrative women, and a gushing wife would have wearied him inexpressibly. He felt an attraction in Bessie's aloofness, and said again, "She is worth the pains she will cost to win: a few years will mature her fine intelligence and make of her a perfect companion. I admire her courageous simplicity; there is a great deal in her character to work upon."
"She is no cipher, certainly; if you are satisfied, I am," said Mr. Fairfax resignedly. "Yet it is not flattering to think that she would toss up her cap to go back to the Forest to-morrow."
"Then she is loyal in affection to very worthy people. I have heard of her Forest friends from Lady Latimer."
"Lady Latimer has a great hold on Elizabeth's imagination. It would be a good thing if she were to pay a visit to Hartwell; she might give her young devotee some valuable instructions. Elizabeth is prejudiced against me, and does not fall into her new condition so happily as I was led to anticipate that she might."
[Pg 180]"She will wear to it. My sister Mary has an art of taming, and will help her. I prefer her indifference to an undue elation: that would argue a commonness of mind from which I imagine her to be quite free."
"She has her own way of estimating us, and treats the state and luxury of Abbotsmead as quite external to her. In her private thoughts, I fear, she treats them as cumbrous lendings that she will throw off after a season, and be gladly quit of their burden."
"Better so than in the other extreme. A girl of heart and mind cannot be expected to identify herself suddenly with the customs of a strange rank. She was early trained in the habits of a simple household, but from what I see there can have been nothing wanting of essential refinement in Mrs. Carnegie. There is a crudeness in Miss Fairfax yet—she is very young—but she will ripen sound and sweet to the core, or I am much mistaken in the quality of the green fruit."
The squire replied that he had no reason to believe his granddaughter was otherwise than a good girl. And with that they left discussing her and fell upon the election. Mr. Cecil Burleigh had a good courage for the encounter, but he also had received intimations not to make too sure of his success. The Fairfax influence had been so long in abeyance, so long only a name in Norminster, that Mr. John Short began to quake the moment he began to test it. Once upon a time Norminster had returned a Fairfax as a matter of course, but for a generation its tendencies had been more and more towards Liberalism, and at the last election it had returned its old Whig member at the head of the poll, and in lieu of its old Tory member a native lawyer, one Bradley, who professed Radicalism on the hustings, but pruned his opinions in the House to the useful working pattern of a supporter of the ministry. This prudent gentleman was considered by a majority of his constituents not to have played fair, and it was as against him, traitor and turncoat, that the old Tories and moderate Conservatives were going to try to bring in Mr. Cecil Burleigh. Both sides were prepared to spend money, and Norminster was enjoying lively anticipations of a good time coming.
While the gentlemen were thus discoursing to and fro the [Pg 181]terrace under the library window, Miss Burleigh in Bessie's parlor was instructing her of her brother's political views. It is to be feared that Bessie was less interested than the subject deserved, and also less interested in the proprietor of the said views than his sister supposed her to be. She listened respectfully, however, and did not answer very much at random, considering that she was totally ignorant beforehand of all that was being explained to her. At length she said, "I must begin to read the newspapers. I know much better what happened in the days of Queen Elizabeth than what has happened in my own lifetime;" and then Miss Burleigh left politics, and began to speak of her brother's personal ambition and personal qualities; to relate anecdotes of his signal success at Eton and at Oxford; to expatiate on her own devotion to him, and the great expectations founded by all his family upon his high character and splendid abilities. She added that he had the finest temper in the world, and that he was ardently affectionate.
Bessie smiled at this. She believed that she knew where his ardent affections were centred; and then she blushed at the tormenting recollection of how she had interpreted his assiduities to herself before making that discovery. Miss Burleigh saw the blush, seeming to see nothing, and said softly, "I envy the woman who has to pass her life with Cecil. I can imagine nothing more contenting than his society to one he loves."
Bessie's blush was perpetuated. She would have liked to mention Miss Julia Gardiner, but she felt a restraining delicacy in speaking of what had come to her knowledge in such a casual way, and more than ever ashamed of her own ridiculous mistake. Suddenly she broke out with an odd query, at the same moment clapping her hands to her traitorous cheeks: "Do you ever blush at your own foolish fancies? Oh, how tiresome it is to have a trick of blushing! I wish I could get over it."
"It is a trick we get over quite early enough. The fancies girls blush at are so innocent. I have had none of that pretty sort for a long while."
Miss Burleigh looked sympathetic and amused. Bessie was silent for a few minutes and full of thought. Presently, in a [Pg 182]musing, meditative voice, she said, "Ambition! I suppose all men who have force enough to do great things long for an opportunity to do them; and that we call ambition. Harry Musgrave is ambitious. He is going to be a lawyer. What can a famous lawyer become?"
"Lord chancellor, the highest civil dignity under the Crown."
"Then I shall set my mind on seeing Harry lord chancellor," cried Bessie with bold conclusion.
"And when he retires from office, though he may have held it for ever so short a time, he will have a pension of five thousand a year."
"How pleasant! What a grateful country! Then he will be able to buy Brook and spend his holidays there. Dear old Harry! We were like brother and sister once, and I feel as if I had a right to be proud of him, as you are of your brother Cecil. Women have no chance of being ambitious on their own account, have they?"
"Oh yes. Women are as ambitious of rank, riches, and power as men are; and some are ambitious of doing what they imagine to be great deeds. You will probably meet one at Brentwood, a most beautiful lady she is—a Mrs. Chiverton."
Bessie's countenance flashed: "She was a Miss Hiloe, was she not—Ada Hiloe? I knew her. She was at Madame Fournier's—she and a younger sister—during my first year there."
"Then you will be glad to meet again. She was married in Paris only the other day, and has come into Woldshire a bride. They say she is showing herself a prodigy of benevolence round her husband's magnificent seat already: she married him that she might have the power to do good with his immense wealth. There must always be some self-sacrifice in a lofty ambition, but hers is a sacrifice that few women could endure to pay."
Bessie held her peace. She had been instructed how all but impossible it is to live in the world and be absolutely truthful; and what perplexed her in this new character of her old school-fellow she therefore supposed to be the veil of glamour which the world requires to have thrown over an ugly, naked truth.
[Pg 183]About eleven o'clock the two young ladies walked out across the park towards the lodge, to pay a visit to Mrs. Stokes. Then they walked on to the village, and home again by the mill. The morning seemed long drawn out. Then followed luncheon, and after it Mr. Cecil Burleigh drove in an open carriage with Bessie and his sister to Hartwell. The afternoon was very clear and pleasant, and the scenery sufficiently varied. On the road Bessie learnt that Hartwell was the early home of Lady Latimer, and still the residence of her bachelor brother and two maiden sisters.
The very name of Lady Latimer acted like a spell on Bessie. She had been rather silent and reserved until she heard it, and then all at once she roused up into a vivid interest. Mr. Cecil Burleigh studied her more attentively than he had done hitherto. Miss Burleigh said, "Lady Latimer is another of our ambitious women. Miss Fairfax fancies women can have no ambition on their own account, Cecil. I have been telling her of Mrs. Chiverton."
"And what does Miss Fairfax say of Mrs. Chiverton's ambition?" asked Mr. Cecil Burleigh.
"Nothing," rejoined Bessie. But her delicate lip and nostril expressed a great deal.
The man of the world preferred her reticence to the wisest speech. He mused for several minutes before he spoke again himself. Then he gave air to some of his reflections: "Lady Latimer has great qualities. Her marriage was the blunder of her youth. Her girlish imagination was dazzled by the name of a lord and the splendor of Umpleby. It remains to be considered that she was not one of the melting sort, and that she made her life noble."
Here Miss Burleigh took up the story: "That is true. But she would have made it more noble if she had been faithful to her first love—to your grandfather, Miss Fairfax."
Bessie colored. "Oh, were they fond of each other when they were young?" she asked wondering.
"Your grandfather was devoted to her. He had just succeeded to Abbotsmead. All the world thought it would be a match, and great promotion for her too, when she met Lord Latimer. He was sixty and she was nineteen, and they lived [Pg 184]together thirty-seven years, for he survived into quite extreme old age."
"And she had no children, and my grandfather married somebody else?" said Bessie with a plaintive fall in her voice.
"She had no children, and your grandfather married somebody else. Lady Latimer was a most excellent wife to her old tyrant."
Bessie looked sorrowful: "Was he a tyrant? I wonder whether she ever pities herself for the love she threw away? She is quite alone—she would give anything that people should love her now, I have heard them say in the Forest."
"That is the revenge that slighted love so often takes. But she must have satisfaction in her life too. She was always more proud than tender, except perhaps to her friend, Dorothy Fairfax. You have heard of your great-aunt Dorothy?"
"Yes. I have succeeded to her rooms, to her books. My grandfather says I remind him of her."
"Dorothy Fairfax never forgave Lady Latimer. They had been familiar friends, and there was a double separation. Oh, it is quite a romance! My aunt, Lady Angleby, could tell you all about it, for she was quite one with them at Abbotsmead and Hartwell in those days; indeed, the intimacy has never been interrupted. And you know Lady Latimer—you admire her?"
"I used to admire her enthusiastically. I should like to see her again."
After this there was silence until the drive ended at Hartwell. Bessie was meditating on the glimpse she had got into the pathetic past of her grandfather's life, and Mr. Cecil Burleigh and his sister were meditating upon her.
Hartwell was a modest brick house within a garden skirting the road. It had a retired air, as of a poor gentleman's house whose slender fortunes limit his tastes: Mr. Oliver Smith's fortunes were very slender, and he shared them with two maiden sisters. The shrubs were well grown and the grass was well kept, but there was no show of the gorgeous scentless flowers which make the gardens of the wealthy so gay and splendid in summer. Ivy clothed the walls, and old-[Pg 185]fashioned flowers bloomed all the year round in the borders, but it was not a very cheerful garden in the afternoon.
Two elderly ladies were pacing the lawn arm-in-arm, with straw hats tilted over their noses, when the Abbotsmead carriage stopped at the gate. They stood an instant to see whose it was, and then hurried forward to welcome their visitors.
"This is very kind, Mr. Cecil, very kind, Miss Mary; but you always are kind in remembering old friends," said the elder, Miss Juliana, and then was silent, gazing at Bessie.
"This is Miss Fairfax," said Mr. Cecil Burleigh. "Lady Latimer has no doubt named her in her letters."
"Ah! yes, yes—what am I dreaming about? Charlotte," turning to her sister, "who is she like?"
"She is like poor Dorothy," was the answer in a tremulous, solemn voice. "What will Oliver say?"
"How long is it since Lady Latimer saw you, my dear?" asked Miss Juliana.
"Three years. I have not been home to the Forest since I left it to go to school in France."
"Ah! Then that accounts for our sister not having mentioned to us your wonderful resemblance to your great-aunt, Dorothy Fairfax. Three years alter and refine a child's chubby face into a young woman's face."
Miss Juliana seemed to be thrown into irretrievable confusion by Bessie's apparition and her own memory. She was quite silent as she led the way to the house, walking between Mr. Cecil Burleigh and his sister. Miss Charlotte walked behind with Bessie, and remarked that she was pleased to have a link of acquaintance with her already by means of Lady Latimer. Bessie asked whether Lady Latimer was likely soon to come into Woldshire.
"We have not heard that she has any present intention of visiting us. Her visits are few and far between," was the formal reply.
"I wish she would. When I was a little girl she was my ideal of all that is grand, gracious, and lovely," said Bessie.
Bessie's little outbreak had done her good, had set her tongue at liberty. Her self-consciousness was growing less obtrusive. Mr. Cecil Burleigh explained to her the legal process of an election for a member of Parliament, and Miss [Pg 186]Burleigh sat by in satisfied silence, observing the quick intelligence of her face and the flattered interest in her brother's. At the park gates, Mr. Fairfax, returning from a visit to one of his farmsteads where building was in progress, met the carriage and got in. His first question was what Mr. Oliver Smith had said about the coming election, and whether he would be in Norminster the following day.
The news about Buller troubled him no little, to judge by his countenance, but he did not say much beyond an exclamation that they would carry the contest through, let it cost what it might. "We have been looking forward to this contest ever since Bradley was returned five years ago; we will not be so faint-hearted as to yield without a battle. If we are defeated again, we may count Norminster lost to the Conservative interest."
"Oh, don't talk of defeat! We shall be far more likely to win if we refuse to contemplate the possibility of defeat," cried Bessie with girlish vivacity.
Mr. Cecil Burleigh laughed and said, "Miss Fairfax is right. She will wear my colors and I will adopt her logic, and, ostrich-like, refuse to see the perils that threaten me."
"No, no," remonstrated Bessie casting off her shy reserve under encouragement. "So far from hiding your face, you must make it familiar in every street in Norminster. You must seek if you would find, and ask if you would have. I would. I should hate to be beaten by my own neglect, worse than by my rival."
Mr. Fairfax was electrified at this brusque assertion of her sentiments by his granddaughter. Her audacity seemed at least equal to her shyness. "Very good advice, Elizabeth; make him follow it," said he dryly.
"We will give him no rest when we have him at Brentwood," added Miss Burleigh. "But though he is so cool about it, I believe he is dreadfully in earnest. Are you not, Cecil?"
"I will not be beaten by my own neglect," was his rejoinder, with a glance at Bessie, blushing beautifully.
They did not relapse into constraint any more that day. There was no addition to the company at dinner, and the evening being genially warm, they enjoyed it in the garden. [Pg 187]Mr. Cecil Burleigh and Miss Fairfax even strolled as far as the ruins in the park, and on the way he enlightened her respecting some of his opinions, tastes, and prejudices. She heard him attentively, and found him very instructive. His clever conversation was a compliment to which, as a bright girl, she was not insensible. His sister had detailed to him her behavior on her introduction to Lady Angleby, and had deplored her lively sense of the ridiculous. Miss Burleigh had the art of taming that her brother credited her with, and Elizabeth was already at ease and happy with her—free to be herself, as she felt, and not always on guard and measuring her words; and the more of her character that she revealed, the better Miss Burleigh liked her. Her gayety of temper was very attractive when it was kept within due bounds, and she had a most sweet docility of tractableness when approached with caution. At the close of the evening she retired to her white parlor with a rather exalted feeling of responsibility, having promised, at Mr. Cecil Burleigh's instigation, to study certain essays of Lord Bacon on government and seditions in states for the informing of her mind. She took the volume down from Dorothy Fairfax's bookshelf, and laid it on her table for a reminder. Miss Burleigh saw it there in the morning.
"Ah, dear Cecil! He will try to make you very wise and learned," said she, nodding her head and smiling significantly. "But never mind: he waltzes to perfection, and delights in a ball, no man more."
"Does he?" cried Bessie, amused and laughing. "That potent, grave, and reverend signor can condescend, then, to frivolities! Oh, when shall we have a ball that I may waltz with him?"
"Soon, if all go successfully at the election. Lady Angleby will give a ball if Cecil win and you ask her."
"I ask her! But I should never dare."
"She will be only too glad of the opportunity, and you may dare anything with her when she is pleased. She has always been dear Cecil's fast friend, and his triumph will be hers. She will want to celebrate it joyously, and nothing is really so joyous as a good dance. We will have a good dance."
At breakfast, Mr. Fairfax handed a letter to Bessie. "From home, from my mother," said she in a glad undertone, and instantly, without apology, opened and read it. Mr. Cecil Burleigh took a furtive observation of her while she was thus occupied. What a good countenance she had! how the slight emotion of her lips and the lustrous shining under her dark eyelashes enhanced her beauty! It was a letter to make her happy, to give her a light heart to go to Brentwood with. Mrs. Carnegie was always sympathetic, cheerful, and loving in her letters. She encouraged her dear Bessie to reconcile herself to absence, and attach herself to her new home by cultivating all its sources of interest, and especially the affection of her grandfather. She gave her much tender, reasonable advice for her guidance, and she gave her good news: they were all well at home and at Brook, and Harry Musgrave had come out in honors at Oxford. The sunshine of pure content irradiated Bessie's face. She looked up; she wanted to communicate her joy. Her grandfather looked up at the same moment, and their eyes met.
"Would you like to read it? It is from my mother," she said, holding out the letter with an impulse to be good to him.
"I can trust you with your correspondence, Elizabeth," was his reply.
She drew back her hand quickly, and laid down the letter by her plate. She sipped her tea, her throat aching, her eyes swimming. The squire began to talk rather fast and loud, and in a few minutes, the meal being over, he pushed away his chair and left the room.
"The train we go into Norminster by reaches Mitford Junction at ten thirty-five," observed Mr. Cecil Burleigh.
Bessie rose and vanished with a mutinous air, which made him laugh and whisper to his sister, as she disappeared, that the young lady had a rare spirit. Mr. Fairfax was in the hall. She went swiftly up to him, and laying a hand on his [Pg 189]arm, said, in a quivering, resolute voice, "Read my letter, grandpapa. If you will not recognize those I have the best right to love, we shall be strangers always, you and I."
"Come up stairs: I will read your letter," said the old man shortly, and he mounted to her parlor, she still keeping her hold on his arm. He stood at her table and read it, and laid it down without a word, but, glancing aside at her pleasing face, he was moved to kiss her, and then promptly effected his escape from her tyranny. He was not displeased, and Bessie was triumphant.
"Now we can begin to be friends," she cried softly, clapping her hands. "I refuse to be frightened. I shall always tell him my news, and make him listen. If he is sarcastic, I won't care. He will respect me if I assert my right to be respected, and maintain that my father and mother at Beechhurst have the first and best claim on my love. He shall not recognize them as belonging only to my past life; he shall acknowledge them as belonging to me always. And Harry too!"
These strong resolutions arising out of that letter from the Forest exhilarated Bessie exceedingly. There was perhaps more guile in her than was manifest on slight acquaintance, but it was the guile of a wise, warm heart. All trace of emotion had passed away when she came down stairs, and when her grandfather, assisting her into the carriage, squeezed her fingers confidentially, her new, all-pervading sense of happiness was confirmed and established. And the courage that happiness inspires was hers too.
At Mitford Junction, Colonel and Mrs. Stokes and Mr. Oliver Smith joined their party, and they travelled to Norminster together. The old city was going quietly about its business much as usual when they drove through the streets to the "George," where Mr. Cecil Burleigh was to meet his committee and address the electors out of the big middle bow-window. Miss Jocund's shop was nearly opposite to the inn, and thither the ladies at once adjourned, that Bessie might assume her blue bonnet. The others were already handsomely provided. Miss Jocund was quite at liberty to attend to them at this early hour of the day—her "gentleman" had not come in yet—and she conducted them to her [Pg 190]show-room over the shop with the complacent alacrity of a milliner confident that she is about to give supreme satisfaction. And indeed Mrs. Stokes cried out with rapture, the instant the bonnet filled her eye, that it was "A sweet little bonnet—blue crape and white marabouts!"
Bessie smiled most becomingly as it was tried on, and blushed at herself in the glass. "But a shower of rain will spoil it," she objected, nodding the downy white feathers that topped the brim. She was proceeding philosophically to tie the glossy broad strings in a bow under her round chin when Miss Jocund stepped hastily to the rescue, and Mrs. Betts entered with a curtsey, and a blue silk slip on her arm. "What next?" Bessie demanded of the waiting-woman in rosy consternation.
"I am afraid we must trouble you, Miss Fairfax, but not much, I hope," insinuated Miss Jocund with a queer, deprecating humility. "There is a good half hour to spare. Since Eve put on a little cool foliage, female dress has developed so extensively that it is necessary to try some ladies on six times to avoid a misfit. But your figure is perfectly proportioned, and I resolved, for once, to chance it on my knowledge of anatomy, supplemented by an embroidered dress from your wardrobe. If you will be so kind: a stitch here and a stitch there, and my delightful duty is accomplished."
Miss Jocund's speeches had always a touch of mockery, and Bessie, being in excellent spirits, laughed good-humoredly, but denied her request. "No, no," said she, "I will not be so kind. Your lovely blue bonnet would be thrown away if I did not look pleasant under it, and how could I look pleasant after the painful ordeal of trying on?"
Mrs. Stokes, with raised eyebrows, was about to remonstrate, Mrs. Betts, with flushed dismay, was about to argue, when Miss Jocund interposed; she entered into the young lady's sentiments: "Miss Fairfax has spoken, and Miss Fairfax is right. A pleasant look is the glory of a woman's face, and without a pleasant look, if I were a single gentleman a woman might wear a coal-scuttle for me."
At this crisis there occurred a scuffle and commotion on the stairs, and Bessie recognized a voice she had heard elsewhere—a loud, ineffectual voice—pleading, "Master Justus, [Pg 191]Master Justus, you are not to go to your granny in the show-room;" and in Master Justus bounced—lovely, delicious, in the whitest of frilly pinafores and most boisterous of naughty humors.
Bessie Fairfax stooped down and opened her arms with rapturous invitation. "Come, oh, you bonnie boy!" and she caught him up, shook him, kissed him, tickled him, with an exuberant fun that he evidently shared, and frantically retaliated by pulling down her hair.
This was very agreeable to Bessie, but Miss Jocund looked like an angry sphinx, and as the defeated nurse appeared she said with suppressed excitement, "Sally, how often must I warn you to keep the boy out of the show-room? Carry him away." The flaxen cherub was born off kicking and howling; Bessie looked as if she were being punished herself, Mrs. Stokes stood confounded, Mrs. Betts turned red. Only Miss Burleigh seemed unaffected, and inquired simply whose that little boy was. "Mine, ma'am," replied the milliner with an emphasis that forbade further question. But Miss Burleigh's reflective powers were awakened.
Mrs. Betts, that woman of resources and experience, standing with the blue silk slip half dropt on the Scotch carpet at her feet, reverted to the interrupted business of the hour as if there had been no break. "And if, when it comes to dressing this evening at Lady Angleby's, there's not a thing that fits?" she bitterly suggested.
"I will answer for it that everything fits," said Miss Jocund, recovering herself with more effort. "I have worked on true principles. But"—with a persuasive inclination towards Bessie—"if Miss Fairfax will condescend to inspect my productions, she will gratify me and herself also."
As she spoke Miss Jocund threw open the door of an adjoining room, where the said productions were elaborately laid out, and Mrs. Stokes ran in to have the first view. Miss Burleigh followed. Bessie, with a rather unworthy distrust, refused to advance beyond the doorway; but, looking in, she beheld clouds upon clouds of blue and white puffery, tulle and tarletan, and shining breadths of silk of the same delicate hues, with fans, gloves, bows, wreaths, shoes, ribbons, sashes, laces—a portentous confusion. After a few seconds of dis[Pg 192]turbed contemplation, during which she was lending an ear to the remote shrieks of that darling boy, she said—and surely it was provoking!—"The half would be better than the whole. I am sorry for you, Mrs. Betts, if you are to have all those works of art on your mind till they are worn out."
"Indeed, miss, if you don't show more feeling, my mind will give way," retorted Mrs. Betts. "It is the first time in my long experience that ever a young lady so set me at defiance as to refuse to try on new dresses. And all one's credit at stake upon her appearance! In a great house like Brentwood, too!"
Those piercing cries continued to rise higher and higher. Miss Jocund, with a vexed exclamation, dropped some piece of finery on which she was beginning to dilate, and vanished by another door. In a minute the noise was redoubled with a passionate intensity. Bessie's eyes filled; she knew that old-fashioned discipline was being administered, and her heart ached dreadfully. She even offered to rush to the rescue, but Mrs. Betts intercepted her with a stern "Better let me do up your hair, miss," while Mrs. Stokes, moved by sympathetic tenderness, whispered, "Stop your ears; it is necessary, quite necessary, now and then, I assure you." Oh, did not Bessie know? had she not little brothers? When there was silence, Miss Jocund returned, and without allusion to the nursery tragedy resumed her task of displaying the fruits of her toils.
Bessie, with a yearning sigh, composed herself, laid hands on her blue bonnet while nobody was observing, and moved away to an open window in the show-room that commanded the street. Deliberately she tied the strings in the fashion that pleased her, and seated herself to look out where a few men and boys were collecting on the edge of the pavement to await the appearance of the Conservative candidate at the bow-window over the portico of the "George." Presently, Mrs. Stokes joined her, shaking her head, and saying with demure rebuke, "You naughty girl! And this is all you care for pretty things?" Miss Burleigh, with more real seriousness, hoped that the pretty things would be right. Miss Jocund came forward with a natural professional anxiety to hear their opinions, and when she saw the bonnet-strings tied clasped her hands in acute regret, but said nothing. Mrs. [Pg 193]Betts, a picture of injured virtue, held herself aloof beyond the sea of finery, gazing across it at her insensible young mistress with eyes of mournful indignation. Bessie felt herself the object of general misunderstanding and reproach, and was stirred up to extenuate her untoward behavior in a strain of mischievous sarcasm.
"Don't look so distressed, all of you," she pleaded. "How can I interest myself to-day in anything but Mr. Cecil Burleigh's address to the electors of Norminster and my own new bonnet?"
"That is very becoming, for a consolation," said the milliner with an affronted air.
"I think it is," rejoined Bessie coolly. "And if you will not bedizen me with artificial flowers, and will exonerate me from wearing dresses that crackle, I shall be happy. Did you not promise to give me simplicity and no imitations, Miss Jocund?"
"I cannot deny it, Miss Fairfax. Natural leaves and flowers are my taste, and graceful soft outlines of drapery; but when it is the mode to wear tall wreaths of painted calico, and to be bustled off in twenty yards of stiff, cheap tarletan, most ladies conform to the mode, on the axiom that they might as well be out of the world as out of the fashion. And nothing comes up so ugly and outrageous but there are some who will have it in the very extreme."
"I am quite aware of the pains many women take to be displeasing, but I thought you understood that was not 'my style, my taste,'" said Bessie, quoting the milliner's curt query at their first interview.
"I understand now, Miss Fairfax, that there are things here you would rather be without. I will not pack up the tarletan skirts and artificial flowers. With the two morning silks and two dinner silks, and the tulle over the blue slip for a possible dance, perhaps you will be able to go through your visit to Brentwood?"
"I trust so," said Bessie. "But if I need anything more I will write to you."
There was an odd pause of silence, in which Bessie looked out of the window, and the rest looked at one another with a furtive, defeated, amused acknowledgment that this young [Pg 194]lady, so ignorant of the world, knew how to take her own part, and would not be controlled in the exercise of her senses by any irregular, usurped authority. Mrs. Betts saw her day-dream of perquisites vanish. Both she and Miss Jocund had got their lesson, and they remembered it.
A welcome interruption came with the sound of swift wheels and high-stepping horses in the street, and the ladies pressed forward to see. "Lady Angleby's carriage," said Miss Burleigh as it whirled past and drew up at the "George." She was now in haste to be gone and join her aunt, but Bessie lingered at the window to witness the great lady's reception by the gentlemen who came out of the inn to meet her. Mr. Cecil Burleigh was foremost, and Mr. Fairfax, Mr. Oliver Smith, Mr. Forbes, and several more, yet strangers to Bessie, supported him. One who bowed with extreme deference she recognized, at a second glance, as Mr. John Short, her grandfather's companion on his memorable visit to Beechhurst, which resulted in her severance from that dear home of her childhood. The sight of him brought back some vexed recollections, but she sighed and shook them off, and on Miss Burleigh's again inviting her to come away to the "George" to Lady Angleby, she rose and followed her.
"Look pleasant," said Miss Jocund, standing by the door as Bessie went out, and Bessie laughed and was obedient.
Lady Angleby received Bessie Fairfax with a gracious affability, and if Bessie had desired to avail herself of the privilege there was a cheek offered her to kiss, but she did not appear to see it. Her mind was running on that boy, and her countenance was blithe as sunshine. Mr. Laurence Fairfax came forward to shake hands, and Mr. John Short respectfully claimed her acquaintance. They were in a smaller room, adjoining the committee-room, where the majority of the gentlemen had assembled, and Bessie said to Miss Bur[Pg 195]leigh, "We should see and hear better in Miss Jocund's window;" but Miss Burleigh showed her that Miss Jocund's window was already filled, and that the gathering on the pavement was increasing. Soon after twelve it increased fast, with the workmen halting during a few minutes of their hour's release for dinner, but it never became a crowd, and the affair was much flatter than Bessie had expected. The new candidate was introduced by Mr. Oliver Smith, who spoke very briefly, and then made way for the candidate himself. Bessie could not see Mr. Cecil Burleigh, nor hear his words, but she observed that he was listened to, and jeeringly questioned only twice, and on both occasions his answer was received with cheers.
"You will read his speech in the Norminster Gazette on Saturday, or he will tell you the substance of it," Miss Burleigh said. "Extremes meet in politics as in other things, and much of Cecil's creed will suit the root-and-branch men as well as the fanatics of his own party." Bessie wondered a little, but said nothing; she had thought moderation Mr. Cecil Burleigh's characteristic.
A school of young ladies passed without difficulty behind the scanty throng, and five minutes after the speaking was over the street was empty.
"Buller was not there," said Mr. John Short to Mr. Oliver Smith, and from the absence of mirth amongst the gentlemen, Bessie conjectured that there was a general sense of failure and disappointment.
Mr. Cecil Burleigh preserved his dignified composure, and came up to Bessie, who said, "This is only the beginning?"
"Only the beginning—the real work is all to do," said he, and entered into a low-toned exposition thereof quite calmly.
It was at this moment that Mr. John Short, happening to cast an eye upon the two, received one of those happy inspirations that visit in emergency men of superior resources and varied experience. At Lady Angleby's behest the pretty ladies in blue bonnets set out to shop, pay calls in the town, and show their colors, and the agent attached himself to the party. They all left the "George" together, but it was not long before they divided, and Mr. Cecil Burleigh and Bessie, having nowhere particular where they wished to go, wandered [Pg 196]towards the minster. Mr. John Short, without considering whether his company might be acceptable, adhered to them, and at length boldly suggested that they were not far from the thoroughfare in which the "Red Lion" was situated, and that a word from the aspirant candidate to Buller might not be thrown away.
It was the hour of the afternoon when the host of the "Red Lion" sat at the receipt of news and custom, smoking his pipe after dinner in the shade of an old elm tree by his own door. He was a burly man, with a becoming sense of his importance and weight in the world, and as honest a desire to do his share in mending it as his betters. He was not to be bought by any of the usual methods of electioneering sale and barter, but he had a soft place in his heart that Mr. John Short knew of, and was not therefore to be relinquished as altogether invulnerable.
Mr. Cecil Burleigh could not affect the jocose and familiar, but perhaps his plain way of address was a higher compliment to the publican's understanding. "Is it true, Buller, that you balance about voting again for Bradley? Think of it, and see if you cannot return to the old flag," was all he said.
"Sir, I mean to think of it," replied Buller with equal directness. "I'm pleased with what I hear of you, and I like a gentleman, but Bradley explains his puzzling conduct very plausibly: it is no use being factious and hindering business in the House, as he says. And it can't be denied that there's Tory members in the House as factious as any of them pestilent Radical chaps that get up strikes out of doors. I'm not saying that you would be one of them, sir."
"I hope not. For no party considerations would I hinder any advance or reform that I believe to be for the good of the country."
"I am glad to hear it, sir; you would be what we call an independent member. My opinion is, sir, that sound progress feels its way and takes one step at a time, and if it tries to go too fast it overleaps itself."
Mr. Cecil Burleigh was not prepared for political disquisition on the pavement in front of the "Red Lion," but he pondered an instant on Mr. Buller's platitude as if it were a new revelation, and then said with quiet cordiality, "Well, [Pg 197]think of it, and if you decide to give me your support, it will be the more valuable as being given on conviction. Good-day to you, Buller."
The publican had risen, and laid aside his pipe. "Good-day to you, sir," said he, and as Bessie inclined her fair head to him also, he bowed with more confusion and pleasure than could have been expected from the host of a popular tavern.
Mr. John Short lingered behind, and as the beautiful young people retired out of hearing, admiringly watched by the publican, the lawyer plied his insinuating craft and whispered, "You are always a good-natured man, Buller. Look at those two—No election, no wedding."
"You don't say so!" ejaculated Buller with kindly sympathy in his voice. "A pretty pair, indeed, to run in a curricle! I should think now his word's as good as his bond—eh? Egad, then, I'll give 'em a plumper!"
The agent shook hands with him on it delighted. "You are a man of your word too, Buller. I thank you," he said with fervor, and felt that this form of bribery and corruption had many excuses besides its success. He did not intend to divulge by what means the innkeeper's pledge had been obtained, lest his chief might not quite like it, and with a few nods, becks, and half-words he ensured Buller's silence on the delicate family arrangement that he had so prematurely confided to his ear. And then he went back to the "George" with the approving conscience of an agent who has done his master good secret service without risking any impeachment of his honor. He fully expected that time would make his words true. Unless in that confidence, Mr. Short was not the man to have spoken them, even to win an election.
Mr. Cecil Burleigh and Miss Fairfax strolled a little farther, and then retraced their steps to the minster, and went in to hear the anthem. Presently appeared in the distance Mr. Fairfax and Miss Burleigh, and when the music was over signed to them to come away. Lady Angleby was waiting in the carriage at the great south door to take them home, and in the beautiful light of the declining afternoon they drove out of the town to Brentwood—a big, square, convenient old house, surrounded by a pleasant garden divided from the high-road by a belt of trees.
[Pg 198]Mrs. Betts was already installed in the chamber allotted to her young lady, and had spread out the pretty new clothes she was to wear. She was deeply serious, and not disposed to say much after her morning's lesson. Bessie had apparently dismissed the recollection of it. She came in all good-humor and cheerfulness. She hummed a soft little tune, and for the first time submitted patiently to the assiduities of the experienced waiting-woman. Mrs. Betts did not fail to make her own reflections thereupon, and to interpret favorably Miss Fairfax's evidently happy preoccupation.
There was rejoicing at Brentwood that evening. All the guests staying in the house were assembled in the drawing-room before dinner, when Mr. Oliver Smith, who had retained quarters at the "George," walked in with an appearance of high satisfaction, and immediately began to say, "I bring you good news. Buller has made up his mind to do the right thing, Burleigh, and give you a plumper. He hailed my cab as I was passing the 'Red Lion' on my road here, and told me his decision. Do you carry witchcraft about with you?"
"Buller could not resist the old name and the old colors. Miss Fairfax is my witchcraft," said Mr. Cecil Burleigh with a profound bow to Bessie, in gay acknowledgment of her unconscious services.
Bessie blushed with pleasure, and said, "Indeed, I never opened my mouth."
"Oh, charms work in silence," said Mr. Oliver Smith.
Lady Angleby was delighted; Mr. Fairfax looked gratified, and gave his granddaughter an approving nod.
The next and last arrivals were Mr. and Mrs. Chiverton. Mr. Chiverton was known to all present, but the bride was a stranger except to one or two. She was attired in rich white silk—in full dress—so terribly trying to the majority of women, and Bessie Fairfax's first thought on seeing her again [Pg 199]was how much less beautiful she was than in her simple percale dresses at school. She did not notice Bessie at once, but when their eyes met and Bessie smiled, she ran to embrace her with expansive cordiality. Bessie, her beaming comeliness notwithstanding, could assume in an instant a touch-me-not air, and gave her hand only, though that with a kind frankness; and then they sat down and talked of Caen.
Mrs. Chiverton's report as a woman of extraordinary beauty and virtue had preceded her into her husband's country, but to the general observer Miss Fairfax was much more pleasing. She also wore full dress—white relieved with blue—but she was also able to wear it with a grace; for her arms were lovely, and all her contours fair, rounded, and dimpled, while Mrs. Chiverton's tall frame, though very stately, was very bony, and her little head and pale, classical face, her brown hair not abundant, and eyes too cold and close together, with that expression of intense pride which is a character in itself, required a taste cultivated amidst statuary to appreciate. This taste Mr. Chiverton possessed, and his wife satisfied it perfectly.
Bessie looked at Mr. Chiverton with curiosity, and looked quickly away again, retaining an impression of a cur-like face with a fixed sneer upon it. He was not engaged in conversation at the time; he was contemplating his handsome wife with critical admiration, as he might have contemplated a new acquisition in his gallery of antique marbles. In his eyes the little girl beside her was a mere golden-haired, rosy, plump rustic, who served as a foil to his wife's Minerva-like beauty.
Lady Angleby was great lady enough to have her own by-laws of etiquette in her own house, and her nephew was assigned to take Miss Fairfax to dinner. They sat side by side, and were wonderfully sociable at one end of the table, with the hostess and Mr. Fairfax facing them at the other. Besides the guests already introduced, there was one other gentleman, very young—Sir Edward Lucas—whose privilege it was to escort Mrs. Chiverton. Mr. Forbes gave his arm to Miss Burleigh. Mr. Chiverton and Mr. Oliver Smith had no ladies: Lady Angleby liked a preponderance of gentlemen at her entertainments. Everybody talked and was pleasant, and Bessie Fairfax felt almost at ease, so fast does confidence grow [Pg 200]in the warm atmosphere of courtesy and kindness. When the ladies retired to the drawing-room she was bidden to approach Lady Angleby's footstool, and treated caressingly; while Mrs. Chiverton was allowed to converse on philanthropic missions with Miss Burleigh, who yawned behind her fan and marvelled at the splendor of the bride's jewels.
In the dining-room conversation became more animated when the gentlemen were left to themselves. Mr. Chiverton loved to take the lead. He had said little during dinner, but now he began to talk with vivacity, and was heard with the attention that must be paid to an old man possessed of enormous wealth and the centre of great connexions. He was accustomed to this deference, and cared perhaps for none other. He had a vast contempt for his fellow-creatures, and was himself almost universally detested. But he could bear it, sustained by the bitter tonic of his own numerous aversions. One chief aversion was present at this moment in the elegant person of Mr. Oliver Smith. Mr. Oliver Smith was called not too strong in the head, but he was good, and possessed the irresistible influence of goodness. Mr. Chiverton hated his mild tenacity. His own temper was purely despotic. He had represented a division of the county for several years, and had finally retired from Parliament in dudgeon at the success of the Liberal party and policy. After some general remarks on the approaching election, came up the problem of reconciling the quarrel between labor and capital, then already growing to such proportions that the whole community, alarmed, foresaw that it might have ere long to suffer with the disputants. The immediate cause of the reference was the fact of a great landowner named Gifford having asked for soldiers from Norminster to aid his farmers in gathering in the harvest, which was both early and abundant. The request had been granted. The dearth of labor on his estates arose from various causes, but primarily from there not being cottages enough to house the laborers, his father and he having both pursued the policy of driving them to a distance to keep down the rates.
"The penuriousness of rich men is a constant surprise to me," said Mr. Forbes. "Dunghill cottages are not so frequent as they were, but there are still a vast number too [Pg 201]many. When old Gifford made a solitude round him, Blagg built those reed-thatched hovels at Morte which contribute more poor rogues to the quarter sessions than all the surrounding parishes. That strip of debatable land is the seedbed of crime and misery: the laborers take refuge in the hamlet, and herd together as animals left to their own choice never do herd; but their walk to and from their work is shortened by one half, and they have their excuse. We should probably do the same ourselves."
"The cottages of the small proprietors are always the worst," remarked Mr. Chiverton.
"If you and Gifford would combine to rebuild the houses you have allowed to decay or have pulled down, Morte would soon be left to the owls and the bats," said the clergyman. "By far the larger majority of the men are employed on your farms, and it is no longer for your advantage that their strength should be spent in walking miles to work—if ever it was. You will have to do it. While Jack was left in brute ignorance, it was possible to satisfy him with brute comforts and control him with brute discipline; but teach Jack the alphabet, and he becomes as shrewd as his master. He begins to consider what he is worth, and to readjust the proportion between his work and his wages—to reflect that the larger share of the profit is, perhaps, due to himself, seeing that he reaps by his own toil and sweat, and his master reaps by the toil and sweat of a score."
Mr. Chiverton had manifested signs of impatience and irritability during Mr. Forbes's address, and he now said, with his peculiar snarl for which he was famous, "Once upon a time there was a great redistribution of land in Egypt, and the fifth part of the increase was given to Pharaoh, and the other four parts were left to be food to the sowers. If Providence would graciously send us a universal famine, we might all begin again on a new foundation."
"Oh, we cannot wait for that—we must do something meanwhile," said Sir Edward Lucas, understanding him literally. "I expect we shall have to manage our land less exclusively with an eye to our own revenue from it."
Mr. Chiverton testily interrupted the young man's words of wisdom: "The fact is, Jack wants to be master himself. [Pg 202]Strikes in the manufacturing towns are not unnatural—we know how those mercantile people grind their hands—but since it has come to strikes amongst colliers and miners, I tremble at the prospect for the country. The spirit of insubordination will spread and spread until the very plough-boys in the field are infected."
"A good thing, too, and the sooner the better," said Mr. Oliver Smith.
"No, no!" cried Mr. Fairfax, but Mr. Forbes said that was what they were coming to. Sir Edward Lucas listened hard. He was fresh from Oxford, where boating and athletic exercises had been his chief study. His father was lately dead, and the administration of a great estate had devolved upon him. His desire was to do his duty by it, and he had to learn how, that prospect not having been prepared for in his education, further than by initiation in the field-sports followed by gentlemen.
Mr. Chiverton turned on Mr. Oliver Smith with his snarl: "Your conduct as a landowner being above reproach, you can afford to look on with complacency while the rest of the world are being set by the ears."
Mr. Oliver Smith had very little land, but as all there knew what he had as well as he knew himself, he did not wince. He rejoined: "As a class, we have had a long opportunity for winning the confidence of the peasants; some of us have used it—others of us have neglected it and abused it. If the people these last have held lordship over revolt and transfer their allegiance to other masters, to demagogues hired in the streets, who shall blame them?"
"Suppose we all rise above reproach: I mean to try," said Sir Edward Lucas with an eagerness of interest that showed his good-will. "Then if my people can find a better master, let them go."
Mr. Cecil Burleigh turned to the young man: "It depends upon yourself whether they shall find a better master or not. Resolve that they shall not. Consider your duty to the land and those upon it as the vocation of your life, and you will run a worthy career."
Sir Edward was at once gratified and silenced. Mr. Cecil Burleigh's reputation was greater yet than his achievement, [Pg 203]but a man's possibilities impress the young and enthusiastic even more than his successes accomplished.
"You hold subversive views, Burleigh—views to which the public mind is not educated up, nor will be in this generation," said Mr. Chiverton. "The old order of things will last my time."
"Changes move fast now-a-days," said Mr. Fairfax. "I should like to see a constitutional remedy provided for the Giffords of the gentry before I depart. We are too near neighbors to be friends, and Morte adjoins my property."
"Gifford was brought up in a bad school—a vaporing fellow, not true to any of his obligations," said Mr. Oliver Smith.
"It is Blagg, his agent, who is responsible," began Mr. Chiverton.
Mr. Oliver Smith interrupted contemptuously: "When a landlord permits an agent to represent him without supervision, and refuses to look into the reiterated complaints of his tenants, he gives us leave to suppose that his agent does him acceptable service."
"I have remonstrated with him myself, but he is cynically indifferent to public opinion," said Mr. Forbes.
"The public opinion that condemns a man and dines with him is not of much account," said Mr. Oliver Smith, with a glance at Mr. Chiverton, the obnoxious Gifford's very good friend.
"Would you have him cut?" demanded Mr. Chiverton. "I grant you that it is a necessary precaution to have his words in black and white if he is to be bound by them—"
"You could not well say worse of a gentleman than that, Chiverton—eh?" suggested Mr. Fairfax.
There was a minute's silence, and then Mr. Forbes spoke: "I should like our legal appointments to include advocates of the poor, men of integrity whose business it would be to watch over the rights and listen to the grievances of those classes who live by laborious work and are helpless to resist powerful wrong. Old truth bears repeating: these are the classes who maintain the state of the world—the laborer that holds the plough and whose talk is of bullocks, the carpenter, the smith, and the potter. All these trust to their hands, and [Pg 204]are wise in their work, and when oppression comes they must seek to some one of leisure for justice. It is a pitiful thing to hear a poor man plead, 'Sir, what can I do?' when his heart burns with a sense of intolerable wrong, and to feel that the best advice you can give him is that he should bear it patiently."
"I call that too sentimental on your part, Forbes," remonstrated Mr. Chiverton. "The laborers are quiet yet, and guidable as their own oxen, but look at the trades—striking everywhere. Surely your smiths and carpenters are proving themselves strong enough to protect their own interests."
"Yes, by the combination that we should all deprecate amongst our laborers—only by that. Therefore the wise will be warned in time, for such example is contagious. Many of our people have lain so long in discontent that bitter distrust has come of it, and they are ready to abandon their natural leaders for any leader who promises them more wages and less toil. If the laborers strike, Smith's and Fairfax's will probably stick to their furrows, and Gifford's will turn upon him—yours too, Chiverton, perhaps." Mr. Forbes was very bold.
"God forbid that we should come to that!" exclaimed Mr. Fairfax devoutly. "We have all something to mend in our ways. Our view of the responsibility that goes with the possession of land has been too narrow. If we could put ourselves in the laborer's place!"
"I shall mend nothing: no John Hodge shall dictate to me," cried Mr. Chiverton in a sneering fury. "A man has a right to do what he likes with his own, I presume?"
"No, he has not; and especially not when he calls a great territory in land his own," said Mr. Forbes. "That is the false principle out of which the bad practice of some of you arises. A few have never been guided by it—they have acted on the ancient law that the land is the Lord's, and the profit of the land for all—and many more begin to acknowledge that it is a false principle by which it is not safe to be guided any longer. Pushed as far as it will go, the result is Gifford."
"And myself," added Mr. Chiverton in a quieter voice as he rose from his chair. Mr. Forbes looked at him. The old man made no sign of being affronted, and they went together into the drawing-room, where he introduced the clergyman [Pg 205]to his wife, saying, "Here, Ada, is a gentleman who will back you in teaching me my duty to my neighbor;" and then he went over to Lady Angleby.
"You are on the side of the poor man, then, Mrs. Chiverton?" said Mr. Forbes pleasantly. "It is certainly a legitimate sphere of female influence in country neighborhoods."
The stately bride drew her splendid dress aside to make room for him on the ottoman, and replied in a measured voice, "I am. I tell Mr. Chiverton that he does not satisfy the reasonable expectations of his people. I hope to persuade him to a more liberal policy of management on his immense estates; his revenue from them is very large. It distresses me to be surrounded by a discontented tenantry, as it would do to be waited on by discontented servants. A bad cottage is an eyesore on a rich man's land, and I shall not rest until I get all Chiver-Chase cleared of bad cottages and picturesquely inconvenient old farmsteads. The people appeal to me already."
Bessie Fairfax had come up while her old school-fellow was gratifying Mr. Forbes's ears with her admirable sentiments. She could not forbear a smile at the candid assertion of power they implied, and as Mr. Forbes smiled too with a twinkle of amused surprise, Bessie said sportively, "And if Mr. Chiverton is rebellious and won't take them away, then what shall you do?"
Mrs. Chiverton was dumb; perhaps this probability had not occurred to her ruling mind. Mr. Forbes begged to know what Miss Fairfax herself would do under such circumstances. Bessie considered a minute with her pretty chin in the air, and then said, "I would not wear my diamonds. Oh, I would find out a way to bring him to reason!"
A delicate color suffused Mrs. Chiverton's face, and she looked proudly at Bessie, standing in her bright freedom before her. Bessie caught her breath; she saw that she had given pain, and was sorry: "You don't care for my nonsense—you remember me at school," she whispered, and laid her hand impulsively on the slim folded hands of the young married lady.
"I remember that you found something to laugh at in almost everything—it is your way," said Mrs. Chiverton coldly, [Pg 206]and as her flush subsided she appeared paler than before. She was so evidently hurt by something understood or imagined in Bessie's innocent raillery that Bessie, abashed herself, drew back her hand, and as Mr. Forbes began to speak with becoming seriousness she took the opportunity of gliding away to join Miss Burleigh in the glazed verandah.
It was a dark, warm night, but the moon that was rising above the trees gradually illumined it, and made the garden mysterious with masses of shadow, black against the silver light. In the distance rose the ghostly towers of the cathedral. Miss Burleigh feared that the grass was too wet for them to walk upon it, but they paced the verandah until Mr. Cecil Burleigh found them and the rising hum of conversation in the drawing-room announced the appearance of the other gentlemen. Miss Burleigh then went back to the company, and there was an opportunity for kind words and soft whisperings between the two who were left, if either had been thereto inclined; but Bessie's frank, girlish good-humor made lovers' pretences impossible, and while Mr. Cecil Burleigh felt every hour that he liked her better, he felt it more difficult to imply it in his behavior. Bessie, on her side, fully possessed with the idea that she knew the lady of his love, was fast throwing off all sense of embarrassment in his kindness to herself; while onlookers, predisposed to believe what they wished, interpreted her growing ease as an infallible sign that his progress with her was both swift and sure.
They were still at the glass door of the verandah when Mrs. Chiverton sought Bessie to bid her good-night. She seemed to have forgotten her recent offence, and said, "You will come and see me, Miss Fairfax, will you not? We ought to be friends here."
"Oh yes," cried Bessie, who, when compunction touched her, was ready to make liberal amends, "I shall be very glad."
Mrs. Chiverton went away satisfied. The other guests not staying in the house soon followed, and when all were gone there was some discussion of the bride amongst those who were left. They were of one consent that she was very handsome and that her jewels were most magnificent.
"But no one envies her, I hope?" said Lady Angleby.
[Pg 207]"You do not admire her motive for the marriage? Perhaps you do not believe in it?" said Mr. Cecil Burleigh.
"I quite believe that she does, but I do not commend her example for imitation."
Miss Burleigh, lingering a few minutes in Miss Fairfax's room when they went up stairs, delivered her mind on the matter. "My poor ambition flies low," she said. "I could be content to give love for love, and do my duty in the humblest station God might call me to, but not for any sake could I go into the house of bondage where no love is. Poor Mrs. Chiverton!"
Bessie made a very unsentimental reply: "Poor Mrs. Chiverton, indeed! Oh, but she does not want our pity! That old man is a slave to her, just as the girls were at school. She adores power, and if she is allowed to help and patronize people, she will be perfectly happy in her way. Everybody does not care, first and last, to love and be loved. I have been so long away from everybody who loves me that I am learning to do without it."
"Oh, my dear, don't fancy that," said Miss Burleigh, and she stroked Bessie's face and kissed her. "Some of us here are longing to love you quite as tenderly as any friends you have in the Forest." And then she bade her good-night and left her to her ruminations.
Miss Burleigh's kiss brought a blush to Bessie's face that was slow to fade even though she was alone. She sat thinking, her hands clasped, her eyes dreamily fixed on the flame of the candle. Some incidents on board the Foam recurred to her mind, and the blush burnt more hotly. Then, with a sigh, she said to herself, "It is pleasant here, everybody is good to me, but I wish I could wake up at Beechhurst to-morrow morning, and have a ride with my father, and mend socks with my mother in the afternoon. There one felt safe."
There was a knock at the door, and Mrs. Betts entered, complacent with the flattering things that had been said of her young lady in the steward's room, and willing to repeat them on the smallest encouragement: "Miss Jocund is really cleverer than could have been supposed, miss. Your white silk fits most beautiful," she began.
"I was not conscious of being newly dressed to-night, so [Pg 208]her work must be successful," replied Bessie, untying the black velvet round her fair throat. Mrs. Betts took occasion to suggest that a few more ornaments would not be amiss. "I don't care for ornaments—I am fond of my old cross," Bessie said, laying it in the rosy palm of her hand. Then looking up with a melancholy, reflective smile, she said, "All the shining stones in the world would not tempt me to sacrifice my liberty." Mrs. Chiverton was in her thoughts, and Lady Latimer.
Mrs. Betts had a shrewd discernment, and she was beginning to understand her young lady's character, and to respect it. She had herself a vein of feeling deeper than the surface; she had seen those she loved suffer, and she spoke in reply to Miss Fairfax with heartfelt solemnity: "It is a true thing, miss, and nobody has better cause than me to know it, that happiness does not belong to rank and riches. It belongs nowhere for certain, but them that are good have most of it. For let the course of their lives run ever so contrary, they have a peace within, given by One above, that the proud and craving never have. Mr. Frederick's wife—she bears the curse that has been in her family for generations, but she had a pious bringing-up, and, poor lady! though her wits forsook her, her best comfort never did."
"Some day, Mrs. Betts, I shall ask you to tell me her story," Bessie said.
"There is not much to tell, miss. She was the second Miss Lovel (her sister and she were co-heiresses)—not to say a beauty, but a sweet young lady, and there was a true attachment between her and Mr. Frederick. It was in this very house they met—in this very house he slept after that ball where he asked her to marry him. It is not telling secrets to tell how happy she was. Your grandfather, the old squire, would have been better pleased had it been some other lady, because of what was in the blood, but he did not offer to stop it, and they lived at Abbotsmead after they were married. The house was all new done-up to welcome her; that octagon parlor was her design. She brought Mr. Frederick a great fortune, and they loved one another dearly, but it did not last long. She had a baby, and lost it, and was never quite herself after. Poor thing! poor thing!"
[Pg 209]"And my uncle Laurence's wife," said Bessie, not to dwell on that tragedy of which she knew the issue.
"Oh! Mr. Laurence's wife!" said Mrs. Betts in a quite changed tone. "I never pitied a gentleman more. Folks who don't know ladies fancy they speak and behave pretty always, but that lady would grind her teeth in her rages, and make us fly before her—him too. She would throw whatever was in her reach. She was a deal madder and more dangerous in her fits of passion than poor Mrs. Frederick: she, poor dear! had a delusion that she was quite destitute and dependent on charity, and when she could get out she would go to the cottages and beg a bit of bread. A curious delusion, miss, but it did not distress her, for she called herself one of God's poor, and was persuaded He would take care of her. But it was very distressing to those she belonged to. Twice she was lost. She wandered away so far once that it was a month and over before we got her back. She was found in Edinburgh. After that Mr. Frederick consented to her being taken care of: he never would before."
"Oh, Mrs. Betts, don't tell me any more, or it will haunt me."
"Life's a sorrowful tale, miss, at best, unless we have love here and a hope beyond."
Brentwood was a comfortable house to stay in for visitors who never wanted a moment's repose. Lady Angleby lived in the midst of her guests—must have their interest, their sympathy in all her occupations, and she was never without a press of work and correspondence. Bessie Fairfax by noon next day felt herself weary without having done anything but listen with folded hands to tedious dissertations on matters political and social that had no interest for her. Since ten o'clock Mr. Cecil Burleigh and Mr. Fairfax had withdrawn themselves, and were gone into Norminster, and Miss Burleigh sat, a patient victim, with two dark hollows under [Pg 210]her eyes—bearing up with a smile while ready to sink with fatigue. The gentlemen did not return to luncheon, but a caller dropped in—a clergyman, Mr. Jones; and Miss Burleigh took the opportunity of his entrance to vanish, making a sign to Miss Fairfax to come too. They went into the garden, where they were met by a vivacious, pretty old lady, Miss Hague, a former governess of Miss Burleigh, who now acted as assistant secretary to Lady Angleby.
"Your enemy, Mr. Jones, is in the drawing-room with my aunt," Miss Burleigh told her. "Quite by chance—he was not asked."
"Oh, let him stay. It is a study to see him amble about her ladyship with the airs and graces of a favorite, and then to witness his condescension to inferior persons like me," said Miss Hague. "I'll go to your room, Mary, and take off my bonnet."
"Do, dear. We have only just escaped into the fresh air, and are making the most of our liberty."
Miss Hague lodged within a stone's throw of Brentwood, and Lady Angleby was good in bidding her go to luncheon whenever she felt disposed. She was disposed as seldom as courtesy allowed, for, though very poor, she was a gentlewoman of independent spirit, and her ladyship sometimes forgot it. She was engaged seeking some report amongst her papers when Miss Hague entered, but she gave her a nod of welcome. Mr. Jones said, "Ah, Miss Hague," with superior affability, and luncheon was announced.
Lady Angleby had to give and hear opinions on a variety of subjects while they were at table. Middle-class female education Mr. Jones had not gone into. He listened and was instructed, and supposed that it might easily be made better; nevertheless, he had observed that the best taught amongst his candidates for confirmation came from the shopkeeping class, where the parents still gave their children religious lessons at home. Then ladies of refined habits and delicate feelings as mistresses of elementary schools—that was a new idea to him. A certain robustness seemed, perhaps, more desirable; teaching a crowd of imperfectly washed little boys and girls was not fancy-work; also he believed that essential propriety existed to the full as much amongst the young [Pg 211]women now engaged as amongst young ladies. If the object was to create a class of rural school-mistresses who would take social rank with the curate, he thought it a mistake; a school-mistress ought not to be above drinking her cup of tea in a tidy cottage with the parents of her pupils: he should prefer a capable young woman in a clean holland apron with pockets, and no gloves, to any poor young lady of genteel tastes who would expect to associate on equal terms with his wife and daughters. Then, cookery for the poor. Here Mr. Jones fell inadvertently into a trap. He said that the chief want amongst the poor was something to cook: there was very little spending in twelve shillings a week, or even in fifteen and eighteen, with a family to house, clothe, and feed. Lady Angleby held a quite opposite view. She said that a helpless thriftlessness was at the root of the matter. She had printed and largely distributed a little book of receipts, for which many people had thanked her. Mr. Jones knew the little book, and had heard his wife say that Lady Angleby's receipt for stewed rabbits was well enough, but that her receipt for hares stewed with onions was hares spoilt; and where were poor people to get hares unless they went out poaching?
"I assure your ladyship that agrimony tea is still drunk amongst our widows, and an ounce of shop-tea is kept for home-coming sons and daughters grown proud in service. They gather the herb in the autumn, and dry it in bunches for the winter's use. And many is the laborer who lets his children swallow the lion's share of his Sunday bit of meat because the wife says it makes them strong, and children have not the sense not to want all they see. Any economical reform amongst the extravagant classes that would leave more and better food within reach of the hard-working classes would be highly beneficial to both. Sometimes I wish we could return to that sumptuary law of Queen Elizabeth which commanded the rich to eat fish and fast from flesh-meat certain days of the week." Here Mr. Jones too abruptly paused. Lady Angleby had grown exceedingly red in the face; Bessie Fairfax had grown rosy too, with suppressed reflections on the prize-stature to which her hostess had attained in sixty years of high feeding. Queen Elizabeth's pious fast might have been kept by her with much advantage to her figure.
[Pg 212]Poor Mr. Jones had confused himself as well as Lady Angleby, but the return to the drawing-room created an opportune diversion. He took up an illustrated paper with a scene from a new play, and after studying it for a few minutes began to denounce the amusements of the gay world in the tone of a man who has known nothing of them, but has let his imagination run into very queer illusions. This passed harmless. Nobody was concerned to defend the actor's vocation where nobody followed it; but Mr. Jones was next so ill-advised as to turn to Miss Hague, and say with a supercilious air that since they last met he had been trying to read a novel, which he mentioned by name—a masterpiece of modern fiction—and really he could not see the good of such works. Miss Hague and he had disagreed on this subject before. She was an inveterate novel-reader, and claimed kindred with a star of chief magnitude in the profession, and to speak lightly of light literature in her presence always brought her out warmly and vigorously in defence and praise of it.
"No good in such works, Mr. Jones!" cried she. "My hair is gray, and this is a solemn fact: for the conduct of life I have found far more counsel and comfort in novels than in sermons, in week-day books than in Sunday preachers!"
There was a startled silence. Miss Burleigh extended a gentle hand to stop the impetuous old lady, but the words were spoken, and she could only intervene as moderator: "Novels show us ourselves at a distance, as it were. I think they are good both for instruction and reproof. The best of them are but the Scripture parables in modern masquerade. Here is one—the Prodigal Son of the nineteenth century, going out into the world, wasting his substance with riotous living, suffering, repenting, returning, and rejoiced over."
"Our Lord made people think: I am not aware that novels make people think," said Mr. Jones with cool contempt.
"Apply your mind to the study of either of these books—Mr. Thackeray's or George Eliot's—and you will not find all its powers too much for their appreciation," said Miss Hague.
Mr. Jones made a slight grimace: "Pray excuse the comparison, Miss Hague, but you remind me of a groom of mine [Pg 213]whom I sent up to the Great Exhibition. When he came home again all he had to say was, 'Oh, sir, the saddlery was beautiful!'"
"Nothing like leather!" laughed Lady Angleby.
"He showed his wit—he spoke of what he understood," said Miss Hague. "You undertake to despise light literature, of which avowedly you know nothing. Tell me: of the little books and tracts that you circulate, which are the most popular?"
"The tales and stories; they are thumbed and blackened when the serious pages are left unread," Mr. Jones admitted.
"It is the same with the higher-class periodicals that come to us from D'Oyley's library," said Lady Angleby, pointing to the brown, buff, orange, green, and purple magazines that furnished her round-table. "The novels are well read, so are the social essays and the bits of gossiping biography; but dry chapters of exploration, science, discovery, and politics are tasted, and no more: the first page or two may be opened, and the rest as often as not are uncut. And as they come to Brentwood, so, but for myself, they would go away. The young people prefer the stories, and with rare exceptions it is the same with their elders. The fact is worth considering. A puff of secular air, to blow away the vapor of sanctity in which the clergy envelop themselves, might be salutary at intervals. All fresh air is a tonic."
Mr. Jones repeated his slight grimace, and said, "Will Miss Hague be so kind as to tell me what a sermon ought to be? I will sit at her feet with all humility."
"With arrogant humility!—with the pride that apes humility," cried Miss Hague with cheerful irreverence. "I don't pretend to teach you sermon-making: I only tell you that, such as sermons mostly are, precious little help or comfort can be derived from them."
Mr. Jones again made his characteristic grimace, expressive of the contempt for secular opinion with which he was morally so well cushioned, but he had a kind heart and refrained from crushing his poor old opponent with too severe a rejoinder. He granted that some novels might be harmless, and such as he would not object to see in the hands of his daughters; but as a general rule he had a prejudice against fiction; [Pg 214]and as for theatres, he would have them all shut up, for he was convinced that thousands of young men and women might date their ruin from their first visit to a theatre: he could tell them many anecdotes in support of his assertions. Fortunately, it was three o'clock. The butler brought in letters by the afternoon post, and the anecdotes had to be deferred to a more convenient season. The clergyman took his leave.
Lady Angleby glanced through her sheaf of correspondence, and singled out one letter. "From dear Lady Latimer," she said, and tore it open. But as she read her countenance became exceedingly irate, and at the end she tossed it over to Miss Hague: "There is the answer to your application." The old lady did not raise her eyes immediately after its perusal, and Miss Burleigh took it kindly out of her hand, saying, "Let me see." Then Lady Angleby broke out: "I do not want anybody to teach me what is my duty, I hope."
Miss Hague now looked up, and Bessie Fairfax's kind heart ached to see her bright eyes glittering as she faltered, "I think it is a very kind letter. I wish more people were of Lady Latimer's opinion. I do not wish to enter the Governesses' Asylum: it would take me quite away from all the places and people I am fond of. I might never see any of you again."
"How often must I tell you that it is not necessary you should go into the asylum? You may be elected to one of the out-pensions if we can collect votes enough. As for Lady Latimer reserving her vote for really friendless persons, it is like her affectation of superior virtue." Lady Angleby spoke and looked as if she were highly incensed.
Miss Hague was trembling all over, and begging that nothing more might be said on the subject.
"But there is no time to lose," said her patroness, still more angrily. "If you do not press on with your applications, you will be too late: everybody will be engaged for the election in November. The voting-list is on my writing-table—the names I know are marked. Go on with the letters in order, and I will sign them when I return from my drive."
Miss Fairfax's face was so pitiful and inquisitive that the substance of Lady Latimer's letter was repeated to her. It [Pg 215]was to the effect that Miss Hague's former pupils were of great and wealthy condition for the most part, and that they ought not to let her appeal to public charity, but to subscribe a sufficient pension for her amongst themselves; and out of the respect in which she herself held her, Lady Latimer offered five pounds annually towards it. "And I think that is right," said Bessie warmly. "If you were my old governess, Miss Hague, I should be only too glad to subscribe."
"Well, my dear young lady, I was your father's governess and your uncles' until they went to a preparatory school for Eton: from Frederick's being four years old to Geoffry's being ten, I lived at Abbotsmead," said Miss Hague. "And here is another of my boys," she added as the door opened and Sir Edward Lucas was announced.
"Then I will do what my father would have done had he been alive," said Bessie. "Perhaps my uncle Laurence will too."
"What were you saying of me, dear Hoddydoddy?" asked Sir Edward, turning to the old lady when he had paid his devoirs to the rest.
The matter being explained to him, he was eager to contribute his fraction. "Then leave the final arrangement to me," said Lady Angleby. "I will settle what is to be done. You need not write any more of those letters, Miss Hague, and I trust these enthusiastic young people will not tire of what they have undertaken. It is right, but if everybody did what is right on such occasions there would be little use for benevolent institutions. Sir Edward, we were going to drive into Norminster: will you take a seat in my carriage?"
Sir Edward would be delighted; and Miss Hague, released from her ladyship's desk, went home happy, and in the midst of doubts and fears lest she had hurt the feelings of Mr. Jones wept the soft tears of grateful old age that meets with unexpected kindness. The resolute expression of her sentiments by Miss Fairfax had inspired her with confidence, and she longed to see that young lady again. In the letter of thanks she wrote to Lady Latimer she did not fail to mention how her judgment and example had been supported by that young disciple; and Lady Latimer, revolving the news with pleasure, began to think of paying a visit to Woldshire.
Sir Edward Lucas was a gentleman for whom Lady Angleby had a considerable degree of favor: it was a pity he was so young, otherwise he might have done for Mary. Poor Mary! Mr. Forbes and she had a long, obstinate kindness for each other, but Lady Angleby stood in the way: Mr. Forbes did not satisfy any of her requirements. Besides, if she gave Mary up, who was to live with her at Brentwood? Therefore Mr. Forbes and Miss Burleigh, after a six years' engagement, still played at patience. She did not drive into Norminster that afternoon. "Mr. Fairfax and Cecil will be glad of a seat back," said she, and stood excused.
Sir Edward Lucas had more pleasure in facing his contemporary: Miss Fairfax he regarded as his contemporary. He was smitten with a lively admiration for her, and in course of the drive he sought her advice on important matters. Lady Angleby began to instruct him on what he ought to do for the improvement of his fine house at Longdown, but he wanted to talk rather of a new interest—the mineral wealth still waiting development on his property at Hippesley Moor.
"Now, what should you do, Miss Fairfax, supposing you had to earn your bread by a labor always horribly disagreeable and never unattended by danger?" he asked with great eagerness.
Bessie had not a doubt of what she should do: "I should work as hard as ever I could for the shortest possible time that would keep me in bread."
"Just so," said Sir Edward rubbing his hands. "So would I. Now, will that principle work amongst colliers? I am going to open a pit at Hippesley Moor, where the coal is of excellent quality. It is a fresh start, and I shall try to carry out your principle, Miss Fairfax; I am convinced that it is excellent and Christian."
Christian! Bessie's blue eyes widened with laughing alarm. "Oh, had you not better consult somebody of greater experience?" cried she.
[Pg 217]Lady Angleby approved her modesty, and with smiling indulgence remarked, "I should think so, indeed!"
"No, no: experience is always for sticking to grooves," said Sir Edward. "I like Miss Fairfax's idea. It is shrewd—it goes to the root of the difficulty. We must get it out in detail. Now, if in three days' hard work the collier can earn the week's wages of an agricultural laborer and more—and he can—we have touched the reason why he takes so many play-days. It would be a very sharp spur of necessity indeed that would drive me into a coal-pit at all; and nothing would keep me there one hour after necessity was satisfied. I shall take into consideration the instinct of our common humanity that craves for some sweetness in life, and as far as I am able it shall be gratified. Now, the other three days: what shall be their occupation? Idleness will not do."
"No, I should choose to have a garden and work in the sun," said Bessie, catching some of his spirit.
"And I should choose to tend some sort of live-stock. In the way of minor industries I am convinced that a great deal may be put in their way only by taking thought. I shall lay parcels of land together for spade cultivation—the men will have a market at their own doors; then poultry farms—"
"Not forgetting the cock-pit for Sunday amusement," interrupted Lady Angleby sarcastically. "You are too Utopian, Sir Edward. Your colony will be a dismal failure and disappointment if you conduct it on such a sentimental plan."
Sir Edward colored. He had a love of approbation, and her ladyship was an authority. He sought to propitiate her better opinion, and resumed: "There shall be no inexorable rule. A man may work his six days in the pit if it be his good-will, but he shall have the chance of a decent existence above ground if he refuse to live in darkness and peril more than three or four. Schools and institutes are very good things in their place, and I shall not neglect to provide them, but I do not expect that more than a slender minority of my colliers will ever trouble the reading-room much. Let them feed pigs and grow roses."
"They will soon not know what they want. The common people grow more exacting every day—even our servants. [Pg 218]You will have some fine stories of trouble and vexation to tell us before long."
Sir Edward looked discouraged, and Bessie Fairfax, with her impulsive kind heart, exclaimed, "No, no! In all labor there is profit, and if you work at doing your best for those who depend on your land, you will not be disappointed. Men are not all ungrateful."
Sir Edward certainly was not. He thanked Miss Fairfax energetically, and just then the carriage stopped at the "George." Mr. Fairfax and Mr. Cecil Burleigh came out in the most cheerful good-humor, and Mr. Cecil Burleigh began to tell Bessie that she did not know how much she had done for him by securing Buller's vote; it had drawn others after it. Bessie was delighted, and was not withheld by any foolish shyness from proclaiming that her mind was set on his winning his election.
"You ought to take these two young people into your counsels, Cecil; they have some wonderful devices for the promotion of contentment amongst coal-miners," said Lady Angleby. Mr. Fairfax glanced in his granddaughter's innocent, rosy face, and shook hands with Sir Edward as he got out of the carriage. Mr. Cecil Burleigh said that wisdom was not the monopoly of age, and then he inquired where they were going.
They were going to call at the manor on Lady Eden, and to wind up with a visit to Mr. Laurence Fairfax in the Minster Court. Mr. Fairfax said he would meet them there, and the same said Mr. Cecil Burleigh. Sir Edward Lucas stood halting on the inn-steps, wistfully hoping for a bidding to come too. Lady Angleby was even kinder than his hopes; she asked if he had any engagement for the evening, and when he answered in the negative she invited him to come and dine at Brentwood again. He accepted with joy unfeigned.
When the ladies reached Minster Court only Mr. Cecil Burleigh had arrived there. Lady Angleby was impatient to hear some private details of the canvass, and took her nephew aside to talk of it. Mr. Laurence Fairfax began to ask Bessie how long she was to stay at Brentwood. "Until Monday," Bessie said; and her eyes roved unconsciously to [Pg 219]the cupboard under the bookcase where the toys lived, but it was fast shut and locked, and gave no sign of its hid treasures. Her uncle's eyes followed hers, and with a significant smile he said, if she pleased, he would request her grandfather to leave her with him for a few days, adding that he would find her some young companions. Bessie professed that she would like it very much, and when Mr. Fairfax came in the request was preferred and cordially granted. The squire was in high good-humor with his granddaughter and all the world just now.
Bessie went away from Minster Court with jubilant anticipations of what might happen during the proposed visit to her uncle's house. One thing she felt sure of: she would become better acquainted with that darling cherub of a boy, and the vision she made of it shed quite a glow on the prospect. She told Miss Burleigh when she returned to Brentwood that she was not going out of reach on Monday; she was going to stay a few days with her uncle Laurence in Minster Court.
"Cecil will be so glad!" said his devoted sister.
"There are no more Bullers to conquer, are there?" Bessie asked, turning her face aside.
"I hope not. Oh no! Cecil begins to be tolerably sure of his election, and he will have you to thank for it. Mr. John Short blesses you every hour of the day."
Bessie laughed lightly. "I did good unconsciously, and blush to find it fame," said she.
A fear that her brother's success with Miss Fairfax might be doubtful, though his election was sure, flashed at that instant into Miss Burleigh's mind. Bessie's manner was not less charming, but it was much more intrepid, and at intervals there was a strain of fun in it—of mischief and mockery. Was it the subacid flavor of girlish caprice, which might very well subsist in combination with her sweetness, or was it sheer insensibility? Time would show, but Miss Burleigh retained a lurking sense of uneasiness akin to that she had experienced when she detected in Miss Fairfax, at their first meeting, an inclination to laugh at her aunt—an uneasiness difficult to conceal and dangerous to confess. Not for the world would she, at this stage of the affair, have revealed her anxiety to [Pg 220]her brother, who held the even tenor of his way, whatever he felt—never obtrusive and never negligent. He treated Bessie like the girl of sense she was, with courtesy, but without compliments or any idle banter; and Bessie certainly began to enjoy his society. He improved on acquaintance, and made the hours pass much more pleasantly at Brentwood when he was there than they passed in his absence. This was promising. The evening's dinner-party would have been undeniably heavy without the leaven of his wit, for Mr. Logger, that well-known political writer, had arrived from London in the course of the afternoon, and Lady Angleby and he discoursed with so much solemn allusion and innuendo on the affairs of the nation that it was like listening surreptitiously at a cabinet council. Sir Edward Lucas was quite silent and oppressed.
Coming into the morning-room after breakfast on the following day armed with a roll of papers, Mr. Logger announced, "I met our excellent friend Lady Latimer at Summerhay last week; she is immensely interested in the education movement."
Mr. Fairfax and Mr. Cecil Burleigh instantly discovered that it was time they were gone into the town, and with one compunctious glance at Bessie, of which she did not yet know the meaning, they vanished. The roll in Mr. Logger's hand was an article in manuscript on that education movement in which he had stated that his friend Lady Latimer was so immensely interested; and he had the cruelty to propose to read it to the ladies here. He did read it, his hostess listening with gratified approval and keeping a controlling eye on Miss Fairfax, who, when she saw what impended, would have escaped had she been able. Miss Burleigh bore it as she bore everything—with smiling resignation—but she enjoyed the vivacity of Bessie's declaration afterward that the lecture was unpardonable.
"What a shockingly vain old gentleman! Could we not have waited to read his article in print?" said she.
"Probably it will never be in print. He toadies my aunt, who likes to be credited with a literary taste, but Cecil says people laugh at him; he is not of any weight, either literary [Pg 221]or political, though he has great pretensions. We shall have him for a week at least, and I have no doubt he has brought manuscript to last the whole time."
Bessie was so uncomfortably candid as to cry out that she was glad, then, her visit would soon be over; and then she tried to extenuate her plain-speaking, not very skilfully.
Miss Burleigh accepted her plea with a gentleness that reproached her: "We hoped that you would be happy at Brentwood with Cecil here; his company is generally supposed to make any place delightful. He is exceedingly dear to us all; no one knows how good he is until they have lived with him a long while."
"Oh, I am sure he is good; I like him much better now than I did at first; but if he runs away to Norminster and leaves us a helpless prey to Mr. Logger, that is not delightful," rejoined Bessie winsomely.
Miss Burleigh kissed and forgave her, acknowledged that it was the reverse of delightful, and conveyed an intimation to her brother by which he profited. Mr. Logger favored the ladies with another reading on Sunday afternoon—an essay on sermons, and twice as long as one. Mr. Jones should have been there: this essay was much heavier artillery than Miss Hague's little paper-winged arrows. In the middle of it, just at the moment when endurance became agony and release bliss, Mr. Cecil Burleigh entered and invited Miss Fairfax to walk into the town to minster prayers, and Bessie went so gladly that his sister was quite consoled in being left to hear Mr. Logger to an end.
The two were about to ascend the minster steps when they espied Mr. Fairfax in the distance, and turned to meet him. He had been lunching with his son. At the first glance Bessie knew that her grandfather had suffered an overwhelming surprise since he went out in the morning. Mr. Cecil Burleigh also perceived that something was amiss, and not to distress his friend by inopportune remark, he said where he and Miss Fairfax were going.
"Go—go, by all means," said the squire. "Perhaps you may overtake me as you return: I shall walk slowly, and I want a word with Short as I pass his house." With this he went on, and the young people entered the minster, thinking [Pg 222]but not speaking of what they could not but observe—his manifest bewilderment and pre-occupation.
On the road home they did not, however, overtake Mr. Fairfax. He reached Brentwood before them, and was closeted with Lady Angleby for some considerable time previous to dinner. Her ladyship was not agreeable without effort that evening, and there was indeed a perceptible cloud over everybody but Mr. Logger. Whatever the secret, it had been communicated to Mr. Cecil Burleigh and his sister, and it affected them all more or less uncomfortably. Bessie guessed what had happened—that her grandfather had seen his son Laurence's little playfellow, and that there had been an important revelation.
Bessie was right. Mr. Laurence Fairfax had Master Justus on his lap when his father unexpectedly walked into his garden. There was a lady in blue amongst the flowers who vanished; and the incompetent Sally, with something in her arms, who also hastily retired, but not unseen, either her or her burden. Master Justus held his ground with baby audacity, and the old squire recognized a strong young shoot of the Fairfax stock. One or two sharp exclamations and astounded queries elicited from Mr. Laurence Fairfax that he had been five years married to the lady in blue—a niece of Dr. Jocund—and that the bold little boy was his own, and another in the nurse's arms. Mr. Fairfax did not refuse to sit at meat with his son, though the chubby boy sat opposite, but he declined all conversation on the subject beyond the bald fact, and expressed no desire to be made acquainted with his newly-discovered daughter-in-law. Indeed, at a hint of it he jerked out a peremptory negative, and left the house without any more reference to the matter. Mr. Laurence Fairfax feared that it would be long before his father would darken his doors again, but it was a sensible relief to have got his secret told, and not to have had any angry, unpardonable words about it. The squire said little, but those who knew him knew perfectly that he might be silent and all the more indignant. And undoubtedly he was indignant. Of his three sons, Laurence had been always the one preferred; and this was his usage of him, his confidence in him!
Mr. Fairfax did not withdraw his consent to Elizabeth's staying in Norminster with her uncle Laurence, and on Monday afternoon she and Mrs. Betts were transferred from Brentwood to Minster Court. On the first evening Mr. John Short dined there, but no one else. He made Miss Fairfax happy by talking of the Forest, which he had revisited more than once since the famous first occasion. After dinner the two gentlemen remained together a long while, and Bessie amused herself alone in the study. She cast many a look towards the toy-cupboard, and was strongly tempted to peep, but did not; and in the morning her virtue had its reward. It was a little after eleven o'clock when Burrage threw open the door of the study where she was sitting with her uncle and announced "The dear children, sir," in a matter-of-fact tone, as if they were daily visitors.
Bessie's back was to the door. She blushed and turned round with brightened eyes, and there, behold! was that sweet little boy in a blue poplin tunic, and a second little boy, a year smaller, in a white embroidered frock and scarlet sash! The voice of the incompetent Sally was heard in final exhortation, "Now, mind you be good, Master Justus!" and Master Justus ran straight to the philosopher and saluted him imperatively as "Dada!" which honorable title the other little boy echoed in an imperfect lisp, with an eager desire to be taken up and kissed. The desire was abundantly gratified, and then Mr. Laurence Fairfax said, "This is Laury," and offered him to Bessie for a repetition of the ceremonial.
Bessie could not have told why, but her eyes filled as she took him into her lap and took off his pretty hat to see his shining curly locks. Master Justus was already at the cupboard dragging out the toys, and her uncle stood and looked down at her with a pleased, benevolent face. "Of course they are my cousins?" said Bessie simply, and quite as simply he said "Yes."
This was all the interrogatory. But games ensued in which [Pg 224]Bessie was brought to her knees and a seat on the carpet, and had the beautiful propriety of her hair as sadly disarranged as in her gypsy childhood amongst the rough Carnegie boys. Mrs. Betts put it tidy again before luncheon, after the children were gone. Mrs. Betts had fathomed the whole mystery, and would have been sympathetic about it had not her young lady manifested an invincible gayety. Bessie hardly knew herself for joy. She wanted very much to hear the romantic story that must belong to those bonny children, but she felt that she must wait her uncle's time to tell it. Happily for her peace, the story was not long delayed: she learnt it that evening.
This was the scene in Mr. Laurence Fairfax's study. He was seated at ease in his great leathern chair, and perched on his knee, with one arm round his neck and a ripe pomegranate cheek pressed against his ear, was that winsome little lady in blue who was to be known henceforward as the philosopher's wife: if she had not been so exquisitely pretty