The Vicissitudes of Bessie Fairfax Part 44

The squire had certain habits of long standing--habits of coldness, distance, reserve, and he never changed materially. He survived through the ensuing autumn and winter, and finally sank during the north-easterly weather of the following spring, just two years after the death of his son Frederick. Jonquil and Macky, who had been all his life about him, were his most acceptable attendants. He did not care to have his son Laurence with him, and when the children came over it was not by his invitation. Mr. Forbes visited him almost daily, and Mr. Cecil Burleigh came down from London twice at his request. Bessie remitted no act of tender thoughtfulness; and one day, shortly before the end, he said to her, "You are a good girl, Elizabeth." She smiled and said, "Am I, grandpapa?" but his persistent coldness had brought back her shy reticence, and neither said any more. Perhaps there was compunction in the old man's mind--the cast of his countenance was continually that of regret--but there was no drawing near in heart or confidence ever again, and the squire died in the isolation of feeling with which living he had chosen to surround himself. The world, his friends, neighbors, and servants said that he died in honor respected by all who knew him; but for long and long after Bessie could never think of his death without tears--not because he had died, but because so little sorrow followed him.

CHAPTER XLV.

_THE SQUIRE'S WILL._

Throughout his life Mr. Fairfax had guided his actions by a certain rule of justice that satisfied himself. The same rule was evident in his last will. His granddaughter had given him to understand that she should return to the Forest and cast in her lot with the humble friends from amongst whom he had taken her, and the provision he made for her was consonant with that determination. He bequeathed to her a sum of five thousand pounds--a sufficient portion, as he considered, for that rank in life--and to Mr. Cecil Burleigh he bequeathed the handsome fortune that it was intended she should bring him in marriage. He had the dower without the bride, and though Lady Angleby and his sister quietly intimated to astonished friends that they had good reason to hope Miss Fairfax would ultimately be no loser by her grandfather's will, her uncle Laurence was not the only person by many who judged her unkindly and unfairly treated. But it was impossible to dispute the old squire's ability to dispose of his property, or his right to dispose of it as he pleased. He had been mainly instrumental in raising Mr. Cecil Burleigh to the position he occupied, and there was a certain obligation incurred to support him in it. If Mr. Fairfax had chosen to make a son of him, no one had a right to complain. No one did complain; the expression of opinion was extremely guarded.

Bessie was informed of the terms of her grandfather's will in the first shock of surprise; afterward her uncle Laurence reflected that it would have been wise to keep them from her, but the deed was done. She received the news without emotion: she blushed, put up her eyebrows, and smiled as she said, "Then I am a poor young woman again." She saw at once what was absurd, pathetic, vexatious in her descent from the dignity of riches, but she was not angry. She never uttered a word of blame or reproach against her grandfather, and when it was indignantly recalled to her that Mr. Cecil Burleigh was put into possession of what ought to have been hers, she answered, "There is no ought in the matter.

Grandpapa had a lively interest in Mr. Cecil Burleigh's career, for the sake of the country as well as for his own sake, and if you ask me my sentiments I must confess that I feel the money grandpapa has left him is well bestowed. It would be a shame that such a man should be hampered by mean cares and insufficient fortune."

"Oh, if you are satisfied that is enough," was the significant rejoinder, and Lady Angleby's hopes had a wider echo.

To Mr. Cecil Burleigh his old friend's bequest was a boon to be thankful for, and he was profoundly thankful. It set him above troublesome anxieties and lifted his private life into the sphere of comfort. But his first visit to Abbotsmead and first meeting with Miss Fairfax after it was communicated to him tried his courage not a little. The intimacy that had been kept up, and even improved during Mr. Fairfax's decline, had given him no grounds for hoping better success with Elizabeth as a lover than before, and yet he was convinced that in leaving him this fine fortune the squire had continued to indulge his expectations of their ultimate union. That Elizabeth would be inclined towards him in the slightest degree by the fact of his gaining the inheritance that she had forfeited, he never for one moment dreamed; the contrary might be possible, but not that. Amongst the many and important duties and interests that engaged him now he had neither leisure nor desire for sentimental philandering. He was a very busy man of the world, and wished for the rest of a home. Insensibly his best thoughts reverted to his dear Julia, never married, still his very good friend. He approved the sweet rosy face of Elizabeth Fairfax, her bright spirit and loving, unselfish disposition, but he found it impossible to flatter himself that she would ever willingly become his wife. Lady Angleby insisted that honor demanded a renewal of his offer, but Elizabeth never gave him an opportunity; and there was an end of his uncertainties when she said one day to his sister (after receiving an announcement of her own approaching marriage to Mr. Forbes), "And there is nothing now to stand between your brother and Miss Julia Gardiner. I am truly glad grandpapa left him an independence, they have been so faithful to each other."

Miss Burleigh looked up surprised, as if she thought Bessie must be laughing at them. And Bessie was laughing. "Not quite constant perhaps, but certainly faithful," she persisted. But Mr. Cecil Burleigh had probably appreciated her blossoming youth more kindly than his dear Julia had appreciated her autumnal widower. Bessie meant to convey that neither had any right to complain of the other, and that was true. Miss Burleigh carried Miss Fairfax's remarks to her brother, and after that they were privately agreed that it would be poor Julia after all.

Mr. Laurence Fairfax insisted that his niece should live at Abbotsmead, and continue in possession of the white suite until she was of age. He was her guardian, and would take no denial.

"It wants but three months to that date," she told him.

"Your home is here until you marry, Elizabeth," he rejoined in a tone that forbade contradiction. "You shall visit Lady Latimer, but subject to permission. Remember you are a Fairfax. Though you may go back to the Forest, it is a delusion to imagine that you can live comfortably in the crowded household where you were happy as a child. You have been six years absent; three of them you have spent in the luxurious ease of Abbotsmead. You have acquired the tastes and habits of your own cla.s.s--a very different cla.s.s. You must look to me now: your pittance is not enough for the common necessaries of life."

"Not so very different a cla.s.s, Uncle Laurence, and fortunately I am not in bondage to luxurious ease," Bessie said. "But I will not be perverse.

Changes come without seeking, and I am of an adaptable disposition. The other day I was supposed to be a great heiress--to-day I have no more than a bare competence."

"Not even that, but if you marry suitably you may be sure that I shall make you a suitable settlement," rejoined her kinsman. Bessie speculated in silence and many times again what her uncle Laurence might mean by "suitably," but they had no explanation, and the occasion pa.s.sed.

Bessie's little fortune was vested in the hands of trustees, and settled absolutely to her own use. She could not antic.i.p.ate her income nor make away with it, which Mr. Carnegie said was a very good thing. Beyond that remark, and a generous reminder that her old nest under the thatch was ready for her whenever she liked to return and take possession, nothing was said in the letters from Beechhurst about her grandfather's will or her new vicissitude. She had some difficulty in writing to announce her latest change to Harry Musgrave, but he wrote back promptly and decisively to set her heart at rest, telling her that to his notions her fortune was a very pretty fortune, and avowing a prejudice against being maintained by his wife: he would greatly prefer that she should be dependent upon him. Bessie, who was a loving woman far more than a proud or ambitious one, was pleased by his a.s.surance, and in answering him again she confessed that would have been her choice too. Nevertheless, she became rather impatient to see him and talk the matter over--the more so because Harry manifested little curiosity to learn anything of her family affairs unless they immediately affected herself. He told her that he should be able to go down to Brook at the end of August, and he begged her to meet him there. This she promised, and it was understood between them that if she was not invited to Fairfield she would go to the doctor's house, even though the boys might be at home for their holidays.

Bessie was long enough at Abbotsmead after her grandfather's death to realize how that event affected her own position there. The old servants had been provided for by their old master, and they left--Jonquil, Macky, Mrs. Betts, and others their contemporaries. Bessie missed their friendly faces, and dispensed with the services of a maid. Then Mrs.

Fairfax objected to Joss in the house, lest he should bite the children, and Janey and Ranby were not entirely at her beck and call as formerly.

The incompetent Sally, who sang a sweet cradle-song, became quite a personage and sovereign in the nursery, and was jealous of Miss Fairfax's intrusion into her domain. It was inevitable and natural, but Bessie appreciated better now the forethought of her grandfather in wis.h.i.+ng to provide her with a roof of her own. Abbotsmead under its new squire, all his learning and philosophy notwithstanding, promised to become quite a house of the world again, for his beautiful young wife was proving of a most popular character, and attracted friends about her with no effort. Instead of old Lady Angleby, the Hartwell people and the Chivertons, came the Tindals, Edens, Raymonds, Lefevres, and Wynards; and Miss Fairfax felt herself an object of curiosity amongst them as the young lady who had been all but disinherited for her obstinate refusal to marry the man of her grandfather's choice. She was generally liked, but she was not just then in the humor to cultivate anybody's intimacy.

Mrs. Stokes was still her chief resource when she was solitary.

She had a private grief and anxiety of her own, of which she could speak to none. One day her expected letter from Harry Musgrave did not come; it was the first time he had failed her since their compact was made.

She wrote herself as usual, and asked why she was neglected. In reply she received a letter, not from Harry himself, but from his friend Christie, who was nursing him through an attack of inflammation occasioned by a chill from remaining in his wet clothes after an upset on the river. She gathered from it that Harry had been ill and suffering for nearly a fortnight, but that he was better, though very weak, and that if Christie had been permitted to do as he wished, Mrs. Musgrave would have been sent for, but her son was imperative against it. He did not think it was necessary to put her to that distress and inconvenience, and as he was now in a fair way of recovery it was his particular desire that she should not be alarmed and made nervous by any information of what he had pa.s.sed through. But he would not keep it from his dear Bessie, who had greater firmness, and who might rest a.s.sured he was well cared for, as Christie had brought him to his own house, and his old woman was a capital cook--a very material comfort for a convalescent.

With a recollection of the warnings of a year and a half ago, Bessie could not but ponder this news of Harry's illness with grave distress.

She wrote to Mr. Carnegie, and enclosed the letter for his opinion. Mr.

Carnegie respected her confidence, and told her that from the name of the physician mentioned by Christie as in attendance on his patient he was in the best possible hands. She confessed to Harry what she had done, and he found no fault with her, but his next letter was in a vein of melancholy humor from beginning to end. He was going back, he said, to his dismal chambers, his law-books and his scribbling, and she was to send him a very bright letter indeed to cheer him in his solitude. How Bessie wished she could have flown herself to cheer him! And now, too, she half regretted her poverty under her grandfather's will, that deferred all hope of his rescue from London smoke and toil till he had made the means of rescue for himself. But she gave him the pleasure of knowing what she would do if she could.

Thus the summer months lapsed away. There was no hiatus in their correspondence again, but Harry told her that he had a constant fever on him and was longing for home and rest. Once he wrote from Richmond, whither he had gone with Christie, "The best fellow in the universe--love him, dear Bessie, for my sake"--and once he spoke of going to Italy for the winter, and of newspaper letters that were to pay the shot. He was sad, humorous, tender by turns, but Bessie missed something. There were allusions to the vanity of man's life and joy, now and then there was a word of philosophy for future consolation, but of present hope there was nothing. Her eyes used to grow dim over these letters: she understood that Harry was giving in, that he found his life too hard for him, and that he was trying to prepare her and himself for this great disappointment.

When Parliament rose Mr. Cecil Burleigh came down to Norminster and paid a visit to Abbotsmead. He was the bearer of an invitation to Brentwood and his sister's wedding, but Miss Fairfax was not able to accept it.

She had just accepted an invitation to Fairfield.

CHAPTER XLVI.

_TENDER AND TRUE._

Lady Latimer was in possession of all the facts and circ.u.mstances of her guest's position when she arrived at Fairfield. Her grandfather's will was notorious, and my lady did not entirely disapprove of it, as Bessie's humbler friends did, for she still cherished expectations in Mr. Cecil Burleigh's interest, and was not aware how far he was now from entertaining any on his own account. Though she had convinced herself that there was an unavowed engagement between Mr. Harry Musgrave and Miss Fairfax, she was resolved to treat it and speak of it as a very slight thing indeed, and one that must be set aside without weak tenderness. Having such clear and decided views on the affair, she was not afraid to state them even to Bessie herself.

Harry Musgrave had not yet arrived at Brook, but after a day devoted to her mother Bessie's next opportunity for a visit was devoted to Harry's mother. She mentioned to Lady Latimer where she was going, and though my lady looked stern she did not object. On Bessie's return, however, she found something to say, and cast off all reserves: "Mr. Harry Musgrave has not come, but he is coming. Had I known beforehand, I should have preferred to have you here in his absence. Elizabeth, I shall consider that young man very deficient in honorable feeling if he attempt to interfere between you and your true interest."

"That I am sure he never will," said Bessie with animation.

"He is not over-modest. If you are advised by me you will be distant with him--you will give him no advantage by which he may imagine himself encouraged. Any foolish promise that you exchanged when you were last here must be forgotten."

Bessie replied with much quiet dignity: "You know, Lady Latimer, that I was not brought up to think rank and riches essential, and the experience I have had of them has not been so enticing that I should care to sacrifice for their sake a true and tried affection. Harry Musgrave and I are dear friends, and, since you speak to me so frankly, I will tell you that we propose to be friends for life."

Lady Latimer grew very red, very angry: "Do you tell me that you will marry that young man--without birth, without means, without a profession even? What has he, or is he, that should tempt you to throw away the fine position that awaits your acceptance?"

"He has a real kindness for me, a real unselfish love, and I would rather be enriched with that than be ever so exalted. It is an old promise. I always did love Harry Musgrave, and never anybody else."

Lady Latimer fumed, walked about and sat down again: "How are you to live?"

"I don't know," said Bessie cheerfully. "Like other young people--partly on our prospects. But we do not talk of marrying yet."

"It is a relief to hear that you do not talk of marrying yet, though how you can dream of marrying young Mr. Musgrave at all, when you have Mr.

Cecil Burleigh at your feet, is to me a strange, incomprehensible infatuation."

"Mr. Cecil Burleigh is not at my feet any longer. He has got up and gone back to Miss Julia Gardiner's feet, which he ought never to have left.

Grandpapa's will has the effect of making two charming people happy, and I am glad of it."

"Is it possible?" said Lady Latimer in a low, chagrined voice. "Then you have lost him. I presume that you felt the strain of such high companions.h.i.+p too severe for you? Early habits cling very close."

"He had no fascination for me; it was an effort sometimes."

"You must have been carrying on a correspondence with Mr. Harry Musgrave all this while."

"We have corresponded during the last year," said Bessie calmly.

"I blame myself that I ever gave the opportunity for a renewal of your old friendliness. That is the secret of your wilfulness."

"I loved Harry best--that is the secret of it," said Bessie; and she turned away to close the discussion.

It was a profound mortification to Lady Latimer to hear within the week from various quarters that Mr. Cecil Burleigh was at Ryde, and to all appearance on the happiest terms with Miss Julia Gardiner. And in fact they were quietly married one morning by special license, and the next news of them was that they were travelling in the Tyrol.

It was about a week after this, when Bessie was spending a few hours with her mother, that she heard of Harry Musgrave's arrival at Brook. It was the doctor who brought the intelligence. He came into the little drawing-room where his wife and Bessie were sitting, and said, "I called at Brook in pa.s.sing and saw poor Harry."