The Vicissitudes of Bessie Fairfax Part 45

"Well, Thomas, and how is he?" inquired Mrs. Carnegie in the anxious tone a kind voice takes when asking after the health of a friend who may be in a critical way. Bessie dropped her work and looked from one to the other.

The doctor did not answer directly, but, addressing Bessie, he said, "You must not be shocked, my dear, when you see Harry Musgrave."

"What is the matter? I have heard nothing: is he ill again?" cried Bessie.

"He must never go back to London," said Mr. Carnegie with a great sigh.

"Is it so bad as that? Poor Harry!" said his wife in a sad, suppressed tone. Bessie said nothing: her throat ached, her eyes burnt, but she was too stunned and bewildered to inquire further, and yet she thought she had been prepared for something like this.

"He asked after you, Bessie, and when you would go to see him," the doctor went on.

"I will go now. It is not too late? he is not too tired? will he be glad?" Bessie said, all in a breath.

"Yes, he wants to talk to you; but you will have to walk all the way, dear, and alone, for I have to go the other road."

"Oh, the walk will not hurt me. And when I have seen him I will go back to Fairfield. But tell me what ails him: has he been over-working, or is it the results of his illness?" Bessie was very earnest to know all there was to be known.

"Work is not to blame: the lad was always more or less delicate, though his frame was so powerful," Mr. Carnegie said with gravity. "He is out of spirits, and he has had a warning to beware of the family complaint.

That is not to say it has marked him yet--he may live for years, with care and prudence live to a good old age--but there is no public career before him; and it is a terrible prospect, this giving up and coming down, to a young fellow of his temper. His mother sits and looks at him, beats on her knee, deplores the money spent on his college education, and frets; you must try your hand at some other sort of consolation, Bessie, for that will never do. Now, if you are going, my dear, you had better start."

Mrs. Carnegie wished she could have offered herself as Bessie's companion, but she would have been an impediment rather than a help, and Bessie set out alone. She had gone that way to Brook many and many a time, but never quite alone before. It seemed, at first, strange to her to be walking across the open heath by herself, and yet she felt, somehow, as if it had all happened before--perhaps in a dream. It was a warm afternoon towards six o'clock, and the August glow of the heather in blossom spread everywhere like a purple sea. At the gate of the Forest Farm the cows were gathered, with meek patience expecting their call to the milking-shed; but after she pa.s.sed under the shade of the trees beyond Great-Ash Ford she met not a creature until she came in sight of the wicket opening into the wood from the manor-garden. And there was Harry Musgrave himself.

Approaching over the turf with her light swift foot, Bessie drew quite near to him unheard, and saw him before he saw her. He had seated himself on a fallen tree, and leant his head on his hand in an easy att.i.tude; his countenance was abstracted rather than sad, and his eyes, fixed on the violet and amber of the sky in the west, were full of tranquil watching. Bessie's voice as she cried out his name was tremulous with joy, and her face as he turned and saw her was beautiful with the flush of young love's delight.

"I was waiting for you. I knew you would come, my dear, my dear!" was his greeting. They went into the garden hand in hand, silent: they looked at each other with a.s.sured happiness. Harry said, "You are all in black, Bessie."

"Yes, for poor grandpapa: don't you remember? I will put it off to-morrow if you dislike it."

"Put it off; I _do_ dislike it: you have worn it long enough." They directed their steps to their favorite seat under the beeches, but Mrs.

Musgrave, restless since her son's arrival, and ever on the watch, came down to them with a plea that they would avoid the damp ground and falling dew. The ground was dry as dust, and the sun would not set yet for a good hour.

"There is the sitting-room if you want to be by yourselves," she said plaintively. "Perhaps you'll be able to persuade Harry to show some sense, Bessie Fairfax, and feeling for his health: he won't listen to his mother."

She followed them into the s.p.a.cious old room, and would have shut the lattices because the curtains were gently flapping in the evening breeze, but Harry protested: "Mother dear, let us have air--it is life and pleasure to me. After the sultry languor of town this is delicious."

"There you go, Harry, perverse as ever! He never could be made to mind a draught, Bessie; and though he has just been told that consumption is in the family, and carried off his uncle Walter--every bit as fine a young man as himself--he pays no heed. He might as well have stopped on the farm from the beginning, if this was to be the end. I am more mortified than tongue can tell."

Harry stood gazing at her with a pitiful patience, and said kindly, "You fear too much, mother. I shall live to give you more trouble yet."

"Even trouble's precious if that's all my son is likely to give me. I would rather have trouble than nothing." She went out, closing the door softly as if she were leaving a sick room. Bessie felt very sorry for her, and when she looked at Harry again, and saw the expression of helpless, painful regret in his face, she could have wept for them both.

"Poor mother! she is bitterly disappointed in me, Bessie," he said, dropping into one of the huge old elbow-chairs.

"Oh, Harry, it is all her love! She will get over this, and you will repay her hurt pride another day," cried Bessie, eager to comfort him.

"Shall I, Bessie? But how? but when? We must take counsel together.

They have been telling me it is selfish and a sacrifice and unmanly to bind Bessie to me now, but I see no sign that Bessie wants her freedom,"

he said, looking at her with laughing, wistful eyes--always with that sense of masculine triumph which Bessie's humility had encouraged.

"Oh, Harry, I want no freedom but the freedom to love and serve you!"

cried she with a rush of tears and a hand held out to him. And then with an irresistible, pa.s.sionate sorrow she fell on her knees beside him and hid her face on his shoulder. He put his arm round her and held her fast for several minutes, himself too moved to speak. He guessed what this sudden outburst of feeling meant: it meant that Bessie saw him so altered, saw through his quiet humor into the deep anxiety of his heart.

"I'll conceal nothing from you, Bessie: I don't think I have felt the worst of my defeat yet," were his words when he spoke at last. She listened, still on her knees: "It is a common thing to say that suspense is worse to bear than certainty, but the certainty that destroys hope and makes the future a blank is very like a millstone hanged round a man's neck to sink him in a slough of despondency. I never really believed it until Dr. Courteney told me that if I wish to save my life it must be at the cost of my ambition; that I can never be an advocate, a teacher, a preacher; that I shall have to go softly all my days, and take care that the winds don't blow on me too roughly; that I must be an exile from English fogs and cold, let me prefer home ever so dearly; that I must read only a little, and write only a little, and avoid all violent emotions, and be in fact the creature I have most despised--a poor valetudinarian, always feeling my own pulse and considering my own feelings."

"You will have to change much more before you will come to that; and I never knew you despise anybody, Harry," Bessie said with gentle deprecation. "You had a tender heart from a boy, and others feel kindly towards you."

"And come what may, my dear little Bessie will keep her faith to me?"

said Harry looking down into her sweet eyes.

"Yes, Harry."

After a pause he spoke again: "You have done me good, dear; I shall rest better for having talked to you to-night. It is in the night-time that thought is terrible. For months past, ever since I was ill in the spring, the foreshadow of failure has loomed dark and close upon me like a suffocating weight--what I must do; how I must live without being a tax on my father, if I am to live; what he and my mother would feel; what old friends would say; who could or would help me to some harmless occupation; and whether I should not, for everybody's sake, be better out of the world."

"Oh, Harry, but that was faint-hearted!" said Bessie with a touch of reproach. "You forgot me, then?"

"I have had several strokes of bad luck lately, or perhaps I ought to suspect that not being in good case my work was weak. Ma.n.u.script after ma.n.u.script has been returned on my hands. Surely this was discouraging.

There on the table is a roll of which I had better hopes, and I found it awaiting me here."

"May I take it to Fairfield and read it?" Bessie asked. "It is as big as a book."

"Yes; if it were printed and bound it would be a book. Read it, and let me know how it impresses you."

Bessie looked mightily glad. "If you will let me help you, Harry, you will make me happy," said she. "What is it about?"

"It is a story, for your comfort--a true story. I could not devise a plot, so I fell back on a series of pathetic facts. Life is very sad, Bessie. Why are we so fond of it?"

"We take it in detail, as we take the hours of the day and the days of the year, and it is very endurable. It has seemed to me sometimes that those whom we call fortunate are the least happy, and that the hard lot is often lifted into the sphere of blessedness. Consider Mr. and Mrs.

Moxon; they appear to have nothing to be thankful for, and yet in their devotion to one another what perfect peace and consolation!"

"Oh, Bessie, but it is a dreadful fate!" said Harry. "Poor Moxon! who began life with as fine hopes and as solid grounds for them as any man,--there he is vegetating at Littlemire still, his mind chiefly taken up with thinking whether his sick wife will be a little more or a little less suffering to-day than she was yesterday."

"I saw them last week, and could have envied them. She is as near an angel as a woman can be; and he was very contented in the garden, giving lessons to a village boy in whom he has discovered a genius for mathematics. He talked of nothing else."

"Poor boy! poor genius! And are we to grow after the Moxons' pattern, Bessie--meek, patient, heavenly?" said Harry.

"By the time our hair is white, Harry, I have no objection, but there is a long meanwhile," replied Bessie with brave uplooking face. "We have love between us and about us, and that is the first thing. The best pleasures are the cheapest--we burden life with too many needless cares.

You may do as much good in an obscure groove of the world as you might do if your name was in all men's mouths. I don't believe that I admire very successful people."

"That is lucky for us both, since I am a poor fellow whose health has given way--who is never likely to have any success at all."

"You don't know, Harry; but this is not the time to remember pride and ambition--it is the time to recover all the health and strength you can; and with them hope and power will return. What do you most enjoy in the absence of work?"

"Fresh air, fine scenery, and the converse of men. To live plainly is no hards.h.i.+p to me; it would be a great hards.h.i.+p to fall on lower a.s.sociations, which is the common destiny of the poor and decayed scholar. You will save me, Bessie?"

"Indeed I will!" And on this they clasped hands fervently.

"Bessie, can we go to Italy together this winter? I dare not go alone: I must have you to take care of me," pleaded Harry.

"I will take care of you, Harry." Bessie was smiling, tearful, blus.h.i.+ng, and Harry said she was a dear, good girl, and he thanked her.