JACK AND BESSIE.
Mrs. Buncher had made an effort to brighten up her dingy parlor since
her new lodgers took possession of it. She had washed the windows and
put up clean muslin curtains, and a white towel on the small table,
which was further ornamented by a bowl of lovely roses, which filled the
room with perfume and seemed to harmonize so perfectly with the fair
young girl sitting near the table and darning what would soon have been
a hole in the elbow of her father's coat. She had discovered it that
morning, and as soon as Neil left her sat down to her task, with her
pretty white apron partially covering her linen dress and greatly
improving her appearance. Bessie always wore aprons in the morning at
home, though Neil had more than once objected to it, as he said such
things belonged to housemaids and not to ladies.
"And I am the housemaid; I wash the dishes and lay the cloth and sweep
and dust, and an apron keeps my dress clean," Bessie had answered him,
laughingly, and when she came to London she brought her best apron with
her, and after Neil was gone put it on and commenced her task of
darning.
"Oh, if you could have a new coat; this is so worn and threadbare," she
said to her father, who was sitting near her in his dressing-gown. "I
wish Neil had sent you a coat instead of that dress to me. I do wish we
were rich! I would buy a lot of things, but first of all I would have a
drive in the park. Wasn't it grand! I wish Neil would take us, though
perhaps he has not the money of his own to pay for the carriage."
"Bessie," her father said, rousing up from the half dozing condition in
which he was most of the time when in the house, "you are hugging a
delusion with regard to Neil. He is very kind in a way, when it costs
him nothing, but he would never sacrifice his comfort or his feelings
for you or me. We are his poor relations, from the country; we are not
like his world, or that powdered piece of vanity who was with him
yesterday. It would cost him nothing to take us for a drive, for the
carriage is his mother's, but you couldn't hire him to go round that
park with us; he has that false pride, more common in women than in men,
which would keep him from it. He likes you very much--at Stoneleigh,
where there are none of his set to look on; but here in London it is
different. He might take us to many places, if he would; but he dares
not, lest he should be seen. He can send you a blue silk dress, which I
half wish you had returned; and he can come here and make your pulse
beat faster with his soft words and manner, which mean so little; but
other attentions we must not expect from him. I tell you this, my child,
because you are getting to be a woman. You were fifteen last March. You
are very beautiful, and Neil McPherson knows it, and if you had a
fortune he might seek to be more than your cousin; but as it is, don't
attach much importance to what he says and does, or be disappointed at
what he does not do."
Bessie did not reply for the great lump which had risen in her throat as
her father put into words what in part she had suspected, but tried to
fight down. She did not like to believe that Neil had a fault, and still
she felt that her father might be right, and that Neil _was_ ashamed of
them. Something in his manner since they came to London, would indicate
as much, and her heart was very sore with a sense of something lost, and
there were tears on her long eyelashes as she bent over the darn, too
much absorbed in her own thoughts to hear the step on the stairs or know
that any one was coming until there was a tap at the open door, and
looking up she saw Jack Trevellian standing before her. Mrs. Buncher,
who was her own waitress, had bidden him "go right up," and as the door
was ajar he stood for an instant on the upper landing and heard Archie
say:
"You were fifteen last March. You are very beautiful, and Neil McPherson
knows it, and if you had a fortune he might seek to be more than your
cousin, but as it is don't attach much importance to what he says and
does or be disappointed at what he does not do."
"The old cove has hit it," Jack thought; "he understands Neil to a dot.
If Bessie had a fortune he would go down before her in dead earnest;
and, perhaps, I would too, for, 'pon my soul, she has the sweetest face
I ever saw. What a lovely woman she will make."
And then, there arose before him a vision of a stately old house in the
north country, the home of the Trevellians, and in the family vault the
present owner, a white haired man of seventy-five was lying, and by his
side his puny eldest son, and also stalwart Harry, who looked as if a
broad-ax could not kill him, and he, Jack Trevellian now the bachelor
with only 500 pounds a year, and most extravagant tastes, was there as
Sir Jack, and with him this little Welsh maiden, who was bending over
the threadbare coat, and trying to force back the tears her father's
words had caused her.
"I am a knave and a murderer," Jack thought. "Uncle Paul, and Dick, and
Hal would have to die, and little Flossie, whom I like so much, be left
alone, before all this could be;" then, with a premonitory cough, he
knocked lightly at the open door.
"Oh, Mr. Trevellian!" Bessie exclaimed, springing to her feet and
blushing scarlet. "How you frightened me! Pray walk in. I did not expect
you. I--I--am mending father's coat."
"Yes, I see," he answered, offering her his hand after he had greeted
her father with his most graceful, courtly manner. "I see you are. I
wonder now if you are doing it well. I used to have some experience in
such matters when I was roughing it in Australia. I am a beautiful
darner; let me try my hand, please;" and taking the coat from her before
she had time to recover from her astonishment, he seated himself upon a
chair and began industriously to ply the needle, while Bessie looked on
amazed.
"You see I am quite a tailor," he said, pushing his thick brown hair
back from his white forehead, and flashing upon her one of those rare
smiles with which he always obtained the mastery and made friends even
of his enemies.
How charming he was, and he never seemed to see the humble room, the
faded carpet, the dingy oil-cloth, or the coarse hair-cloth furniture
which had offended Neil and made him call the place a hole. Of course,
Jack did see them all; he could not help that, but he acted as if he had
all his life been accustomed to just such surroundings, and was so
familiar and affable that both Bessie and her father were more charmed
with him than on the previous day.
"By the way," he said at last, when the coat was mended and approved, "I
met Neil at the station; he had been here, I suppose?"
"Yes," Bessie replied, a painful flush suffusing her cheeks as she
recalled what her father had said of Neil.
"I am half afraid he has forestalled me, then," Jack continued. "I came
to ask you and your father to drive with me in the park this afternoon;
that is, if Neil is not ahead of me."
"Oh, Mr. Trevellian," Bessie cried, turning her bright face to him,
while the glad tears sprang to her eyes, and she forgot that until
yesterday she did not know there was such a person as this elegant man
making himself so much at home with them; forgot everything except the
pleasure it would be to drive with her father in Hyde Park, and "be one
of them," as she expressed it to herself.
"Then Neil has not asked you, and you will go with me?" Jack said,
addressing himself to Archie, who replied:
"If Bessie likes--yes; and I thank you so much. You are giving my
little girl a greater pleasure than you can ever guess."
Meanwhile the color had all faded from Bessie's face, leaving it very
pale, as she stood with clasped hands and wide-open eyes, looking first
at herself in the glass and then at Jack. She was thinking of her old
linen dress and hat, and of her father's clothes. Neil was ashamed of
them, her father had said, and she believed him, though it hurt her
cruelly to do so. Would not Mr. Trevellian be ashamed of them too, when
he came to realize the contrast there was between them and the people of
his set who daily frequented the park?
"What do you say, Miss McPherson? Will you go?" Jack asked, and she
answered quickly:
"I'd like it, so much; but I thought--I'm quite sure we had better not;"
and as she thus gave up the happiness she had so coveted, she burst into
tears--tears for her poverty, and tears for Neil, who had not been so
kind to them as this stranger was.
"Why, Bessie," her father said, "what is the matter? I thought you
wanted to drive."
"I do, I do," she sobbed; then, with a quick, impatient movement she
dashed the tears from her eyes which shone like stars as she lifted them
bravely to Jack Trevellian and said, with a tinge of pride in her lone:
"I should enjoy the drive more than anything else in the world, and it
was kind in you to ask us; but, Mr. Trevellian, you don't know what it
would be to you to be seen there with father and me--he in his darned
coat and I in this gown, the best I have here, or anywhere, for summer;
and then, my hat; the ribbons are all faded and poor, just as we are,
dear father and I;" and as she talked she stepped to her father's side
and wound her arms around his neck.
There was a world of pathos in the low, sweet voice which said so sadly,
"dear father and I," and it moved Jack with a strange power, bringing a
moisture to his eyes where tears had not been in years.
Mastering his weakness Jack burst into a merry laugh which was good to
hear, as he said:
"Is it the gown, and the hat, and the old darned coat? And do you think
I care for trifles like these? I tell you honestly, I would rather take
your linen gown, to drive this afternoon, with you in it, than the most
elegant dress in London and you out of it."
And so it was arranged that they should go, and Jack staid on and on,
and read aloud to Bessie, and told her of his travels in the East, and
in Australia, and then, he scarcely knew how or why, he spoke of the old
Trevellian home in the north of England, near the border. Trevellian
Castle it was called, he said, and it had been in the family for years.
"I have two cousins there," he said, "or rather second cousins, Dick and
Harry, and I like them both so much, especially Hal, who is six feet
three inches high, and well proportioned. Quite a giant, in fact. Then
there is a young girl, Florence Meredith, Flossie we call her, she is so
like a playful kitten. She is not a cousin, at least to me, though she
calls me that. She is a distant relative of Sir Paul's wife, the mother
of Dick and Hal, and was adopted by her when a baby, Flossie is lovely,
and you remind me of her, except that she is much younger. She will make
a lovely woman, and somebody's heart will ache on her account one of
these days."
Jack hardly knew why he was taking to Bessie of little frolicsome
Flossie Meredith, the Irish lassie, who was not in the least like Bessie
McPherson, except that she was sweet, and loving, and true, and said
what she thought, and would have darned a coat or scrubbed the floor, if
necessary. He only knew that he liked sitting by Bessie and that if he
sat he must talk, and so he kept on and only arose to go when he heard
the rattling of tea-cups outside and guessed that Mrs. Buncher might be
preparing to bring up luncheon.
About half-past four that afternoon Mrs. Buncher was amazed to see a
smart carriage, with handsome horses and servants in livery, drive up
before her door and still more amazed to see her lodgers take their
seats in it, Bessie and her father, side by side, and Jack Trevellian
opposite them, with his back to the driver. It was a glorious June
afternoon, and the park was, if possible, gayer and more crowed than on
the previous day. The excitement incident upon the passing of the
princess had subsided, when the carriage turned in at the Marble Arch
and joined the moving throng, which Jack scarcely noticed, so absorbed
was he in watching Bessie's face as it sparkled and shone with eager
joy and excitement. How beautiful she was in spite of the brown linen
and the sleeve puffs which had so annoyed Neil, and while watching her
Jack felt his heart thrill with a strange feeling he had never
experienced before in all his intercourse with women, and found himself
mentally subtracting fifteen from thirty, and feeling rather appalled at
the result.
After they had been in the park ten minutes or more and were nearing a
curve, he saw a sudden flush in Bessie's face and a gleam of triumph in
her blue eyes as she looked ahead of her. Neil was coming from the
opposite direction, he was sure, and in a moment the McPherson turn-out
appeared, with Neil sitting as Jack sat, his back to the horses and his
mother and Blanche opposite. The latter saw Bessie first, and giving her
a haughty stare, spoke quickly to Lady Jane, whose stare was even more
haughty and supercilious. Neither bowed even to Jack, but Neil lifted
his hat with such a look of undisguised astonishment and disapproval on
his face that Jack laughed merrily, for he understood perfectly how
chagrined Neil was to see him there with Bessie. And Neil was chagrined
and out of sorts, and called himself a sneak, and a coward, while to
Jack he gave the name fool with an adjective prefixed. He did not even
hear what his mother and Blanche were saying of Bessie until he caught
the words from the former, "She has rather a pretty face;" then he
roused up and rejoined:
"Rather a pretty face! I should think she had. It is the loveliest face
I ever saw, and I'd rather have it beside me in the park than all the
faces in London!"
"Reely!" Blanche replied, with an upward turn of her nose. "Suppose you
get out and join them; there is room for you by Jack."
"I wish I could," Neil growled, and then he relapsed into silence and
scarcely spoke again until they returned to Grosvenor Square.
As soon as dinner was over he started for Abingdon road, and was told by
Mrs. Buncher, who received him with a slight increase of dignity in her
manner, as became one before whose door carriages and servants in livery
had stood twice in one day, that Mr. McPherson and the young lady had
gone to see "Pinafore" with the gentleman who took them to drive.
"The deuce they have!" Neil muttered and hailing a cab he too drove to
the theater, and securing the best seat he could at that late hour,
looked over the house till he found the party he was searching for,
Archie, in his threadbare coat, and high, standing collar, looking a
little bored for himself, but pleased for Bessie, whose face was radiant
as she watched the progress of the play.
For once Neil forgot the puffs and the linen gown, and thought only of
the exquisitely beautiful face and rippling golden hair, for Bessie's
head was uncovered, and Neil saw that she received quite as much
admiration from the fashionable crowd as did Little Buttercup or the
Captain's daughter, and that Jack looked supremely happy and nodded to
his friends here and there as if to call their attention to the girl
beside him.
"Confound him!" Neil thought. "What business has he to take charge of
Bessie in this way? I'll not allow it!"
But Jack had the inside track and kept it, in spite of Neil; and during
the ten days Bessie remained in London he took her everywhere, and when
she left he knew much more of some parts of the city than he did before.
Never in his life had he visited the Tower, which he looked upon as a
place frequented only by Americans or country people; but as, after the
park, this was the spot of all others which Bessie wished to see, he
went there with her, and joining the party waiting for their ranks to be
full, followed the pompous beefeater up stairs and down stairs, and into
the lady's chamber, and saw the steps by the water-gate where Elizabeth
sat down when she landed there a prisoner to her sister, and saw the
thumb-screws and other instruments of torture, and more fire-arms and
bayonets grouped in the shape of sunflowers and roses than he had
supposed were in the world, and climbed to the little room where
Guilford Dudley was imprisoned, and stared stupidly at the name of Jane
cut upon the wall, and looked down the staircase under which it was said
the murdered princes were thrown, and horrified Bessie by asking who all
these people were he had been hearing about.
"Of course I knew once," he said. "Such things were thrashed into me at
school, but hanged if I have them and their history at my tongue's end,
as you have. Are you not tired to death?" he asked, pantingly, and
fanning himself with his soft hat as they left the gloomy building, and,
after looking at the spot where Ann Boleyn and Lady Jane Grey were
beheaded, went back to the office where they dismissed their guide.
It was a scorchingly hot day, and Jack was perspiring at every pore, but
Bessie was fresh and bright as ever, and eager to go to the Abbey and
the Parliament House, and possibly _somewhere else_, and Jack obeyed her
with an inward groan, and went where she wished to go, and marveled at
her knowledge of and interest in everything pertaining to Westminster
and its surroundings. Never in his life had Jack Trevellian been as
tired as he was that night, with a back which ached so hard that he
actually bought a plaster for it next morning, and, thus strengthened
and fortified, started again on his mission. Kensington Museum, the
British Museum, the National Gallery, Crystal Palace, Hampton Court, and
the Queen's Stables were all visited by turn, and then they went for a
day to Alexandra Palace, and saw an opera, a play, a ballot, two
circuses, and rope-walking, all for a shilling, which to Bessie's frugal
mind was best of all.
That night Jack was more worn out than ever, and his back ached worse
than after the Tower, and though Bessie was to leave the next day for
home, he did not go to Abingdon Road in the evening, but went to bed
instead, and deferred his good-by until the morrow. So Neil had the
field to himself, and made good use of his opportunity. Together he and
Bessie walked in the Kensington gardens until they were tired, and then
they sat side by side on one of the many seats in a retired part of the
grounds, and Neil told her how sorry he was that she was going home, and
how lonely he should be without her.
"Ye-es," Bessie said, doubtfully. "I think you will survive;" and then
he burst out, impulsively; "I say, Bessie, I don't want you to think me
a cad and a sneak, when you go back to Stoneleigh. Don't you suppose I'd
like to have taken you round just as well--yes, better than Jack,
confound him?"
"Why didn't you then? I would rather have gone with you," Bessie said,
beginning to relent at once toward the handsome, good-for-nothing Neil,
who had his arm around her, and was looking into her face with his dark,
expressive eyes.
"Why didn't I?" he answered. "I am going to tell you why I didn't, and
why Jack did. He is his own master, with money to do as he likes, and no
one to question or nag him at home; while I am _not_ my own master at
all, and have no money except what mother chooses to give me, and that
is not much. Father, you know, is poor, and mother holds the purse,
which is not a large one, and keeps me awful short at times, especially
after paying my Oxford bills and a few debts I contracted the last year.
There would have been no end of a row if I had asked her for money to
spend on you and your father."
"Does she then hate us so much?" Bessie asked, and Neil replied:
"She cannot hate you, as she does not know you; but, you see, she is
prejudiced against your mother and visits her anger upon your innocent
head. I wanted her to call upon you and invite you to our house, and I
wanted to take you to drive in the park, but I could not; my hands were
tied. Do you suppose it was pleasant for me to see Jack Trevellian doing
what I ought to have done?"
"No," Bessie replied, beginning to feel a great pity for Neil, who had
suffered so much. "No, and I am glad you have told me, for I thought--I
feared you were ashamed of us, and it hurt me a little."
There was a tremor in her voice which made Neil tighten the clasp of his
arm around her, while he bent his head so low that his hair touched her
forehead, as he exclaimed:
"Ashamed of you, Bessie! Never! How could I be ashamed of the dearest,
sweetest little cousin a man ever had? I tell you I am the victim of
circumstances!"
And bending his head still lower, "the victim of circumstances" kissed
the girlish lips, which kissed him back again in token of
reconciliation, and restored faith in him.
Poor, tired Jack, dreaming that night that he was a circus-rider and
jumping through a hoop for Bessie's pleasure, would have felt that all
his fatigue and back ache, and the plaster which caused him so much
discomfort, might have been spared, or at least were wasted on the girl
with whom the kiss given in the deepening twilight was more powerful
than all he had done for her, could he have known of that scene in the
gardens. But he did not know of it, and at a comparatively early hour
next morning he was at Mrs. Buncher's, where Bessie greeted him with her
sweetest smile and thanked him again for all he had done for them.
"Don't speak of it, I beg; it is so very little, I only wish there was
really something I could do to prove my willingness to serve you," he
said.
They were standing alone by the window looking into the street, and as
Jack said this there came a troubled look on Bessie's face, find after
waiting a moment, she said:
"There is something you can do, if you will: something which will please
me very much, and prove you the good man I believe you to be."
"Command me, and it is done," Jack said; and Bessie continued:
"If you ever meet mother again at Monte Carlo, or anywhere, don't play
with her for money; promise me this."
"I promise," Jack answered, unhesitatingly; and, emboldened by his
promptness, Bessie went on:
"And, oh, Mr. Trevellian, if you would never again play with any one for
money, even the smallest sum. It is gambling just the same; it is
wicked; it leads to so much that is bad. It was my grandfather's ruin,
and he knew it and repented bitterly, for it left his son nothing but
poverty, and that is why we are so poor, father and I; gambling did it
all."
There were tears in Bessie's eyes, and they went straight to Jack's
heart. He was not an inveterate gambler, though he had lost and won
large sums at Monte Carlo and Baden Baden, when the tables were open
there, and, like most Englishmen, he never played whist that something
was not staked; it gave zest to the game, which to him would be very
insipid without it: but Bessie's eyes could have made him face the
cannon's mouth, if need be, and he said to her at once:
"I promise that, too. I will never play again for money with anyone,
but for my reward you must let me visit you at Stoneleigh sometime."
"Oh, yes, you may," she answered, "but I warn you it is a poor place to
come to, with only old Anthony and Dorothy to do anything. I have to
work, and you may have to work, too, and do other things than mending
father's coat."
She spoke playfully, and Jack declared his readiness to sift cinders, or
scour knives, or do anything, if she would let him come. Just then Neil
arrived, not altogether pleased to find Jack there before him, standing
close to Bessie, who was looking very happy. The two young men went with
her to the station, where they vied with each other in showing her
attention. Jack held her traveling-bag, and her parasol and fan, and
band-box containing the white chip hat, and Neil held her shawl, and
umbrella, and paper bag of biscuits and seed cakes which Mrs. Buncher
had given her to eat upon the road, and when at last she was gone, and
they walked out of the station into the noisy street, each felt that the
brightness of the summer day had changed, and that something
inexpressibly sweet had been taken from them.