"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 furtivehurry. 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!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 youarehere, 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'sbut 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;thereall 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, motherlywoman, 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. "Aright, 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.
"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 wishedshe 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.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 andconfused 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.
"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 quickwoman. 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 openspaces 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 theboys 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 shewould 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 hecouldbe kind—"
"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, andGeoffry 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 absurdityin 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 wasthereat 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 hadgrown 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 withgold, 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 anhour 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 wentso 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 thatwouldbe 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 cameyouhere?" 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, wasclose 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.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 oneroad, 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, "MargaretI 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'sestablishment 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 thisnaïvebit 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."
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'rewetenough," 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.
"Thatissettled, 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, andthat 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 notopen 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 refused 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 thebridesmaids 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 ofan 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,hewas 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.