CHAPTER V.BEATRICE BELKNAP.
That afternoon Miss Beatrice Belknap drove her pretty black ponies up the avenue to the Forrest House. Miss Beatrice, or Bee, as she was familiarly called by those who knew her best, was an orphan and an heiress, and a belle and a beauty, and twenty-one, and a distant relative of Mrs. Forrest, whom she called Cousin Mary. People said she was a little fast and a little peculiar in her ways of thinking and acting, but charged it all to the French education she had received in Paris, where she had lived from the time she was six until she was eighteen, when, according to her father’s will, she came into possession of her large fortune, and returning to America came to Rothsay, her old home, and brought with her all herdash and style, and originality of thought and character, and the Rothsayites received her gladly, and were very proud and fond of her, for there was about the bright girl a sweet graciousness of manner which won all hearts, even though they knew she was bored with their quiet town and humdrum manner of living, and that at their backs she laughed at their dress, and talk, and walk, and sometimes, I am sorry to say it, laughed at their prayers too, especially when good old Deacon Read or Sister Baker took the lead in the little chapel on the corner, where Bee was occasionally to be seen. Bee had no preference for any church unless it were St. Peter’s, in Rome, or St. Eustace, in Paris, where the music was so fine and some of the young priests so handsome. So she went where she listed, kneeling one Sunday in the square pew at St. John’s, where her father had worshiped before her, and where she had been baptized, and the Sunday following patronizing the sect called the Nazarites, because, as she expressed it, “she liked the excitement and liked to hear themholler.” And once the daring girl had “hollered” herself and had the “power,” and Sister Baker had rejoiced over the new convert who, she said, “carried with her weight and measure!” but when it was whispered about that the whole was done for effect, just to see what they would say, the Nazarites gave poor Bee the go-by, and prayed for her as that wicked trifler until it came to the building of their new church, when Bee, who was a natural carpenter, and liked nothing better than lath, and plaster, and rubbish, made the cause her own, and talked, and consulted, and paced the ground and drew a plan herself, which they finally adopted, and gave them a thousand dollars besides. Then they forgave the pretty sinner, who had so much good in her after all, and Bee and Sister Rhoda Ann Baker were the very best of friends, and more than once Rhoda Ann’s plain Nazarite bonnet had been seen in the little phaeton side by side with Bee’s stylish Paris hat, on which the good woman scarcely dared to look lest it should move her from her serene height of plainness and humility.
In spite of her faults, Beatrice was very popular, and nowhere was she more welcome than at the Forrest House, where she was beloved by Mrs. Forrest and worshiped by Rossie as a kind of divinity, though she didnot quite like all she did and said. Offers, many and varied, Beatrice had had, both at home and abroad. She might have been the wife of a senator. She might have married her music-teacher and her dancing-master. She might have been a missionary and taught the Feegee Islanders how to read. She might have been a countess in Rome, a baroness in Germany, and my lady in Edinburgh, but she had said no to them all, and felt the hardest wrench when she said it to the Feegee missionary, and for aught anybody knew, was heart-whole and fancy-free when she alighted from her phaeton at the door of Forrest House the morning after Everard’s arrival. She knew he was there, and with the spirit of coquetry so much a part of herself she had made her toilet with a direct reference to this young man whom she had not seen for more than a year, and who, when joked about marrying her, had once called herold Bee Belknap, and wondered if any one supposed he would marry his grandmother.
Miss Bee had smiled sweetly on this audacious boy who called her old and a grandmother, and had laid a wager with herself that he should some day offer himself to “old Bee Belknap,” and be refused! In case he didn’t she would build a church in Omaha and support a missionary there five years! She was much given to building churches and supporting missionaries,—this sprightly, dashing girl of twenty-one, who flashed, and sparkled, and shone in the summer sunshine, like a diamond, as she threw her reins over the backs of her two ponies, Spitfire and Starlight, and giving each of them a loving caress bade them stand still and not whisk their tails too much even if the flies did bite them. Then, with ribbons and laces streaming from her on all sides, she went fluttering up the steps and into the broad hall where Everard met her.
Between him and herself there had been a strong friendship since the time she first came from France, and queened it over him on the strength of her foreign style and a year’s seniority in age. From the very first she had been much at the Forrest House, and had played with Everard, and romped with him, and read with him, and driven with him, and rowed with him upon the river, and quarreled with him, too,—hot, fierce quarrels,—inwhich the girl generally had the best of it, inasmuch as her voluble French, which she hurled at him with lightning rapidity, had stunned and bewildered him; and then they had made it up, and were the best of friends, and more than one of the knowing ones in Rothsay had predicted a union some day of the Forrest and Belknap fortunes. Once, when such a possibility was hinted to Everard, who was fresh from a hot skirmish with Bee, he had, as recorded, called herold, and made mention of his grandmother, and she had sworn to be revenged, and was conscious all the time of a greater liking for the heir of Forrest House than she had felt for any man since the Feegee missionary sailed away with his Vermont school-mistress, who wore glasses, and a brown alpaca dress. Bee could have forgiven the glasses, but the brown alpaca,—never, and she pitied the missionary more than ever, thinking how he must contrast her Paris gowns, which he had said were so pretty, with that abominable brown garb of his bride.
Everard had never quite fancied the linking of his name with that of Beatrice in a matrimonial way, and it had sometimes led him to assume an indifference which he did not feel, but now, with Josephine between them as an insurmountable barrier, he could act out his real feelings of genuine liking for the gay butterfly, and he met her with an unusual degree of cordiality, which she was quick to note just as she had noted another change in him. A skillful reader of the human face, she looked in Everard’s, and saw something she could not define. It was the shadow of his secret, and she could not interpret it. She only felt that he was no longer a boy, but a man, old even as his years, and that he was very glad to see her, and looked his gladness to the full. Bee Belknap was a born coquette, and would have flirted in her coffin had the thing been possible, and now, during the moment she stood in the hall with her hand in Everard’s, she managed to make him understand how greatly improved she found him, how delighted she was to see him, and how inexpressibly dull and poky Rothsay was without him. She did not say all this in words, but she conveyed it to him with graceful gestures of her pretty hands, and sundry expressive shrugs of her shoulders, and Everard felt flattered and pleased, and for a fewmoments forgot Josephine, while he watched this brilliant creature as she flitted into the sick room, where her manner suddenly changed, and she became quiet, and gentle, and womanly, as she sat down by his mother’s side, and asked how she was, and stroked and fondled the thin, pale face, and petted the wasted hands which sought hers so gladly. Bee Belknap always did sick people good, and there was not a sick bed in all Rothsay, from the loftiest dwelling to the lowest tenant house, which she did not visit, making the rich ones more hopeful and cheerful from the effect of her strong, sympathetic nature, and dazzling, and bewildering, and gratifying the poor, with whom she often left some tangible proof of her presence.
“You do me so much good; I am always better after one of your calls,” Mrs. Forrest said to her; and then, when Bee arose to go, and said, “May I take Everard with me for a short drive?” she answered readily: “Yes, do. I shall be glad for him to get the air.”
And so Everard found himself seated at Beatrice’s side, and whirling along the road toward the village, for he wished to post his letter, and asked her to take him first to the post-office.
“What would she say if she knew?” he thought, and it seemed to him as if the letter in his pocket must burn itself through and show her the name upon it.
And then he fell to comparing the two girls with each other, and wondering why he should feel so much more natural, as if in his own atmosphere and on his good behavior, with Beatrice than he did with Josephine. Both were beautiful; both were piquant and bright, but still there was a difference. Beatrice never for a moment allowed him to forget that she was a lady and he a gentleman; never approached to anything like coarseness, and he would as soon have thought of insulting his mother as to have taken the slightest familiarity either by word or act with Bee. Josephine, on the contrary, allowed great latitude of word and action, and by her free-and-easy manner often led him into doing and saying things for which he would have blushed with shame had Beatrice, or even Rossie Hastings, been there to see and hear. Had Josephine lived in New York, or any other city, she would have added one more to that large class of peoplewho laugh at our time-honored notions of propriety and true, pure womanhood, and on the broad platform of liberality and freedom sacrifice all that is sweetest and best in their sex. As a matter of course her influence over Everard was not good, and he had imbibed so much of the subtle poison that some of his sensibilities were blunted, and he was beginning to think that his early ideas were prudish and nonsensical. But there was something about Rosamond and Beatrice both which worked as an antidote to the poison, and as he rode along with the latter, and listened to her light, graceful badinage, in which there was nothing approaching to vulgarity, he was conscious of feeling more respect for himself than he had felt in many a day.
They had left the village now, and were out upon the smooth river road, where they came upon a young M. D. of Rothsay, who was jogging leisurely along in his high sulky, behind his old sorrel mare. Beatrice knew the doctor well, and more than once they had driven side by side amid a shower of dust, along that fine, broad road, and now, when she saw him and his sorry-looking nag, the spirit of mischief and frolic awoke within her, and she could no more refrain from some saucy remark concerning his beast and challenging him to a trial of speed than she could keep from breathing. Another moment and they were off like the wind, and to Bee’s great surprise old Jenny, the sorrel mare, who, in her long-past youth had been a racer and swept the stakes at Cincinnati, and who now at the sound of battle felt her old blood rise, kept neck to neck with the fleet horses, Spitfire and Starlight. At last old Jenny shot past them, and in her excitement Beatrice rose, and standing upright, urged her ponies on until Jenny’s wind gave out, and Starlight and Spitfire were far ahead and rushing down the turnpike at a break-neck speed, which rocked the light phaeton from side to side and seemed almost to lift it from the ground. It was a decided runaway now, and people stopped to look after the mad horses and the excited but not in the least frightened girl, who, still standing upright, with her hat hanging down her back and her wig a little awry, kept them with a firm hand straight in the road, and said to the white-faced man beside her, when he, too, sprang up to take the reins:“Sit down and keep quiet. I’ll see you safely through. We can surely ride as fast as they can run. I rather enjoy it.”
And so she did until they came to a point where the road turned with the river, and where in the bend a little school-house stood. It was just recess, and a troop of boys came crowding out, whooping and yelling as only boys can whoop and yell, when they saw the ponies, who, really frightened now, shied suddenly, and reared high in the air. After that came chaos and darkness to Everard, and the next he knew he was lying on the grass, with his head in Bee’s lap, and the blood flowing from a deep gash in his forehead, just above the left eye. This she was stanching with her handkerchief, and bathing his face with the water the boys brought her in a tin dipper from the school-house. Far off in the distance the ponies were still running, and scattered at intervals along the road were fragments of the broken phaeton, together with Bee’s bonnet, and, worse than all, her wig. But Bee did not know that she had lost it, or care for her ruined phaeton. She did not know or care for anything, except that Everard Forrest was lying upon the grass as white and still as if he were really dead. But Everard was not dead, and the doctor, who soon came up with the panting, mortified Jennie, said it was only a flesh wound, from which nothing serious would result. Then Bee thought of her hair, which a boy had rescued from a playful puppy who was doing his best to tear it in pieces. The sight of her wig made Bee herself again, and with many a merry joke at her own expense, she mounted into a farmer’s wagon with Everard, and bade the driver take them back to the Forrest House.
It was Rossie who met them first, her black eyes growing troubled and anxious when she saw the bandage on Everard’s head. But he assured her it was nothing, while Bee laughed over the adventure, and when the judge would have censured his son, took all the blame upon herself, and then, promising to call again in the evening, went in search of her truant horses.