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