The Vicissitudes of Bessie Fairfax Part 21

"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, suns.h.i.+ny 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.

Bessie returned to Kirkham a changed creature. Her hopefulness had rallied to the front. Her mind was filled with blithe antic.i.p.ations 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, n.o.body 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 a.s.sent, 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 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 Wolds.h.i.+re 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 pa.s.sed 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 _tete-a-tete_ 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 pa.s.sing 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.

CHAPTER XXII.

_PRELIMINARIES._

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 understood one another. He was perfectly satisfied himself, and his sister Mary, who wors.h.i.+pped 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, wis.h.i.+ng 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 interest or amuse him, perhaps that was not from any fault or deficiency in herself, but from circ.u.mstances 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 gus.h.i.+ng, demonstrative women, and a gus.h.i.+ng 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 antic.i.p.ate that she might."

"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 c.u.mbrous 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 const.i.tuents 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 antic.i.p.ations of a good time coming.

While the gentlemen were thus discoursing to and fro the 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 a.s.siduities 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 pa.s.s 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 blus.h.i.+ng! 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 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 Wolds.h.i.+re 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.

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.