_GREAT-ASH FORD._
A week elapsed. Lady Latimer called twice on Mrs. Carnegie to offer
counsel and countenance to Bessie Fairfax. The news that she was going
to leave the doctor's house for a rise in the world spread through the
village. Mrs. Wiley and Miss Buff called with the same benevolent
intentions as my lady. Mrs. Carnegie felt this oppressive, but tried to
believe that it was kind; Bessie grew impatient, and wished she could
be let alone. Mr. Phipps laughed at her, and asked if she did not enjoy
her novel importance. Bessie rejoined with a scorny "No, indeed!" Mr.
Phipps retaliated with a grimace of incredulity.
Mr. John Short's letter had been acknowledged, but it did not get itself
answered. Mr. Carnegie said, and said again, that there was no hurry
about it. In fact, he could not bear to look the loss of Bessie in the
face. He took her out to ride with him twice in that seven days, and
when his wife meekly urged that the affair must go on and be finished,
he replied that as Kirkham had done without Bessie for fourteen years,
it might well sustain her absence a little longer. Kirkham, however,
having determined that it was its duty to reclaim Bessie, was moved to
be imperious. As Mr. Fairfax heard nothing from his lawyer, he went into
Norminster to bid him press the thing on. Mr. John Short pleaded to give
the Carnegies longer law, and when Mr. Fairfax refused to see any
grounds for it, he suggested a visit to Beechhurst as more appropriate
than another letter.
"Who is to go? You or I?" asked the squire testily.
"Both, if you like. But you would do best to go alone, to see the little
girl and the good people who have taken care of her, and to let the
whole matter be transacted on a friendly footing."
Mr. Fairfax shrank from the awkwardness of the task, from the
humiliation of it, and said, "Could not Short manage it by post, without
a personal encounter?" Mr. Short thought not. Finally, it was agreed
that if another week elapsed without bringing the promised answer from
Mrs. Carnegie, they would go to Beechhurst together and settle the
matter on the spot.
The doctor's procrastination stole the second seven days as it had
stolen the first.
"Those people mean to make us some difficulty," said Mr. Fairfax with
secret irritation.
Mr. John Short gave no encouragement to this suspicion; instead, he
urged the visit to Beechhurst. "We need not give more than three days to
it--one to go, one to stay, one to return," said he.
Mr. Fairfax objected that he disliked travelling in a fuss. The lawyer
could return when their business was accomplished; as for himself, being
in the Forest, he should make a tour of it, the weather favoring. And
thus the journey was settled.
* * * * *
There was not a lovelier spot within children's foot-range of Beechhurst
than Great-Ash Ford. On a glowing midsummer day it was a perfect
paradise for idlers. Not far off, yet half buried out of sight amongst
its fruit trees, was a farmhouse thatched with reeds, very old, and
weather-stained of all golden, brown, and orange tints. A row of silver
firs was in the rear, and a sweep of the softest velvety sward stretched
from its narrow domain to the river. To watch the cattle come from the
farther pastures in single file across the shallow water at milking-time
was as pretty a bit of pastoral as could be seen in all the Forest.
Bessie Fairfax loved this spot with a peculiar affection. Beyond the
ford went a footpath, skirting the river, to the village of Brook, where
young Musgrave lived--a footpath overshadowed by such giant fir trees,
such beeches and vast oaks as are nowhere else in England. The Great Ash
was a storm-riven fragment, but its fame continued, and its beauty in
sufficient picturesqueness for artistic purposes. Many a painter had
made the old russet farmhouse his summer lodging; and one was sketching
now where the water had dried in its pebbly bed, and the adventurous
little bare feet of Jack and Willie Carnegie were tempting an imaginary
peril in quest of the lily which still whitened the stream under the
bank.
It was not often that Bessie, with the children alone, wandered so far
afield. But the day had beguiled them, and a furtive hope that Harry
Musgrave might be coming to Beechhurst that way had given Bessie
courage. He had not been met, however, when it was time to turn their
faces towards home. The boys had their forest pony, and mounted him by
turns. It was Tom's turn now, and Bessie was leading Jerry, and carrying
the socks and boots of the other two in the skirt of her frock, gathered
up in one hand. She was a little subdued, a little downcast, it might be
with fatigue and the sultry air, or it might be with her present
disappointment; but beyond and above all wearied sensations was the jar
of unsettledness that had come into her life, and perplexed and
confused all its sweet simplicities. She made no haste, but lingered,
and let the children linger as they pleased.
The path by the river was not properly a bridle-path, but tourists for
pleasure often lost their way in the forest, and emerged upon the roads
unexpectedly from such delicious, devious solitudes. Thus it befell
to-day when two gentlemen on horseback overtook Bessie, where she had
halted with Tom and the pony to let Jack and Willie come up. They were
drying their pink toes preparatory to putting on again their shoes and
stockings as the strangers rode by.
"Is this the way to Beechhurst, my little gypsy?" quoth the elder of the
two, drawing rein for a moment.
Bessie looked up with a sunburnt face under her loose fair hair. "Yes,
sir," said she. Then a sudden intelligence gleamed in her eyes, her
cheeks blazed more hotly, and she thought to herself, "It is my
grandfather!"
The gentlemen proceeded some hundred paces in silence, and then the one
whom Bessie suspected as her grandfather said to the other, "Short, that
is the girl herself! She has the true Fairfax face as it is painted in a
score of our old portraits."
"I believe you are right, sir. Let us be certain--let us ask her name,"
proposed the lawyer.
Bessie's little troop were now ready to march, and they set off at a
run, heedless of her cry to stop a while behind the riders, "Else we
shall be in the dust of their heels," she said. Lingering would not have
saved her, however; for the strangers were evidently purposed to wait
until she came up. Jack was now taking his turn on Jerry, and Jerry with
his head towards his stable wanted no leading or encouraging to go. He
was soon up with the gentlemen and in advance of them. Next Tom and
Willie trotted by and stood, hand-in-hand, gazing at the horses.
Bessie's feet lagged as if leaden weights were tied to them, and her
conscious air as she glanced in the face of the stranger who had
addressed her before set at rest any remaining doubt of who she was.
"Are you Elizabeth Fairfax who lives with Mrs. Carnegie?" he asked in an
abrupt voice--the more abrupt and loud for a certain nervousness and
agitation that arose in him at the sight of the child.
"Yes, sir, I am," replied Bessie, like a veritable echo of himself.
"Then, as we are travelling the same road, you will be our guide, eh?"
"The children are little; they cannot keep pace with men on horseback,"
said Bessie. They were a mile and a half from Beechhurst yet. Mr. John
Short spoke hastily in an endeavor to promote an understanding, and
blundered worse than his client: his suggestion was that they might each
take up one of the bairns; but the expression of Bessie's eyes was a
reminder that she might not please to trudge at their bridle, though the
little and weak ones were to be carried.
"You are considering who is to take you up?" hazarded Mr. Fairfax.
Bessie recovered her countenance and said, as she would have said to any
other strangers on horseback who might have invited her to be their
guide on foot, "You cannot miss the way. It lies straight before you for
nearly a mile over the heath; then you will come to cross-roads and a
guide-post. You will be at Beechhurst long before we shall."
The gentlemen accepted their dismissal and rode on. Was Bessie mollified
at all by the mechanical courtesy with which their hats were lifted at
their departure? They recognized, then, that she was not the little
gypsy they had hailed her. It did not enter into her imagination that
they had recognized also the true Fairfax face under her dishevelled
holiday locks, though she was persuaded that the one who had asked her
name was her wicked grandfather: that her grandfather was a wicked man
Bessie had quite made up her mind. Mr. John Short admired her behavior.
It did not chafe his dignity or alarm him for the peace of his future
life. But Mr. Fairfax was not a man of humor; he saw no fun whatever in
his prospects with that intrepid child, who had evidently inherited not
the Fairfax face only, but the warm Fairfax temper.
"Do you suppose that she guessed who we are?" he asked his man of law.
"Yes, but she did not add to that the probability that we knew that she
guessed it, though she looks quick enough."
Mr. Fairfax was not flattered: "I don't love a quick woman. A quick
woman is always self-willed and wanting in feminine sweetness."
"There was never a Fairfax yet, man or woman, of mean understanding,"
said the lawyer. "Since the little girl has the family features, the
chances are that she has the family brains, and no lack of wit and
spirit."
Mr. Fairfax groaned. He held the not uncommon opinion that wit and
spirit endanger a man's peace and rule in a house. And yet in the case
of his son Laurence's Xantippe he had evidence enough that nothing in
nature is so discordant and intractable as a fool. Then he fell into a
silence, and turned his horse off the highway upon the margin of sward
at one side of it. Mr. John Short took the other; and so Bessie and the
boys soon lost sight of them.
It was a beautiful forest-road when they had crossed the heath. No
hedges shut it in, but here and there the great beech trees stood in
clumps or in single grace, and green rides opened vistas into cool
depths of shade which had never changed but with the seasons for many
ages. It was quite old-world scenery here. Neither clearings nor
enclosures had been thought of, and the wild sylvan beauty had all its
own perfect way. Presently there were signs of habitation. A curl of
smoke from a low roof so lost in its orchard that but for that domestic
flag it might have escaped observation altogether; a triangular green
with a pond, geese and pigs; more thatched cottages, gardens, small
fields, large hedges, high, bushy, unpruned; hedgerow trees; a lonely
little chapel in a burial-ground, a woodyard, a wheelwright's shop, a
guide-post pointing three ways, a blacksmith's forge at one side of the
road, and an old inn opposite; cows, unkempt children; white gates,
gravelled drives, chimney-pots of gentility, hidden away in bowers of
foliage. Then a glimpse of the church-tower, a sweep in the road; the
church and crowded churchyard, the rectory, the doctor's house, and a
stone's throw off the "King's Arms" at the top of the town-street, which
sloped gently all down hill. Another forge, tiled houses, shops with
queer bow-windows and steps up to the half-glazed doors, where a bell
rang when the latch was lifted. More white gates, more well-kept
shrubberies; green lanes, roads branching, curving to right and left;
and everywhere those open spaces of lawn and magnificent beech trees,
as if the old town had an unlimited forest-right to scatter its
dwellings far and wide, just as caprice or the love of beauty might
dictate.
"This is very lovely--it is a series of delightful pictures. Only to
live here must be a sort of education," said Mr. Fairfax as they arrived
within view of the ancient church and its precincts.
Mr. John Short saw and smelt opportunities of improvement, but he agreed
that Beechhurst for picturesqueness was most desirable. Every cottage
had its garden, and every garden was ablaze with flowers. Flowers love
that moist sun and soil, and thrive joyfully. Gayest of the gay within
its trim holly hedge was the Carnegies. The scent of roses and
mignonette suffused the warm air of evening. The doctor was going about
with a watering-pot, tending his beauties and favorites, while he
watched for the children coming home. His name and profession, set forth
on a bright brass plate, adorned the gate, from which a straight
box-edged path led to the white steps of the porch. The stable entrance
was at the side. Everything about the place had an air of well-doing and
of means enough; and the doctor himself, whom the strangers eyed
observantly from the height of their saddles, looked like his own master
in all the independence of easy circumstances.
Visitors to the Forest were too numerous in summer to attract notice.
Mr. Carnegie lifted his head for a moment, and then continued his
assiduities to a lovely old yellow rose which had manifested delicate
symptoms earlier in the season. Next to his wife and children the doctor
was fond of roses. The travellers rode past to the door of the "King's
Arms," and there dismounted. Half an hour after they were dining in an
up-stairs, bow-windowed room which commanded a cheerful prospect up and
down the village street, with a view of the church opposite and a side
glance of Mr. Carnegie's premises. They witnessed the return of Bessie
and the boys, and the fatherly help and reception they had. They saw the
doctor lift up Bessie's face to look at her, saw him pat her on the
shoulder encouragingly as she made him some brief communication, saw him
open the door and send her into the house, and then hurry round to the
stable to prevent the boys lingering while Jerry was rubbed down. He
had leisure and the heart, it seemed, for all such offices of kindness,
and his voice was the signal of instant obedience.
Later in the evening they were all out in the garden--Mrs. Carnegie too.
One by one the children were dismissed to bed, and when only Bessie was
left, the doctor filled his pipe and had a smoke, walking to and fro
under the hedge, over which he conversed at intervals with passing
neighbors. His wife and Bessie sat in the porch. The only thing in all
this that Mr. Fairfax could except to was the doctor's clay pipe. He
denounced smoking as a low, pernicious habit; the lawyer, more tolerant,
remarked that it was an increasing habit and good for the revenue, but
bad for him: he believed that many a quarrel that might have ripened
into a lawsuit had prematurely collapsed in the philosophy that comes of
tobacco-smoke.
"Perhaps it would prepare me with equanimity to meet my adversary," said
Mr. Fairfax.
Mr. John Short had not intended to give the conversation this turn. He
feared that his client was working himself into an unreasonable humor,
in which he would be ready to transfer to Mr. Carnegie the reproaches
that were due only to himself. He was of a suspicious temper, and had
already insinuated that the people who had kept his grandchild must have
done it from interested and ulterior motives. The lawyer could not see
this, but he did see that if Mr. Fairfax was bent on making a contest of
what might be amicably arranged, no power on earth could hinder him. For
though it proverbially takes two to make a quarrel, the doctor did not
look as if he would disappoint a man of sharp contention if he sought
it. The soft word that turns away anger would not be of his speaking.
"It will be through sheer mismanagement if there arise a hitch," Mr.
John Short said. "You desire to obtain possession of the child--then you
must go quietly about it. She is of an age to speak for herself, and our
long neglect may well have forfeited our claim. She is not your
immediate successor; there are infinite possibilities in the lives of
your two sons. If the case were dragged before the courts, she might be
given her choice where she would live; and if she has a heart she would
stay at Beechhurst, with her father's widow--and we are baulked."
"What right has a woman to call herself a man's widow when she has
married again?" objected Mr. Fairfax.
"Mrs. Carnegie's acknowledgment of our letter was courteous: we are on
the safe side yet," said the lawyer smoothly. "Suppose I continue the
negotiation by seeking an interview with her to-morrow morning?"
"Have your own way. I am of no use, it seems. I wish I had stayed at
Abbotsmead and had let you come alone."
Mr. John Short echoed the wish with all his heart, though he did not
give his thoughts tongue. He began to conjecture that some new aspect of
the affair had been presented to his client's mind by the encounter with
Elizabeth in the Forest. And he was right. The old squire had conceived
for her a sort of paradoxical love at first sight, and was become
suddenly jealous of all who had an established hold on her affections.
Here was the seed of an unforeseen complication, which was almost sure
to become inimical to Bessie's happiness when he obtained the guidance
of her life.
When Mr. Carnegie's pipe was out the sunset was past and the evening
dews were falling. Nine had struck by the kitchen clock, supper was on
the table, and the lamp was shedding its light through the open window.
"Come in, mother, come in, Bessie," said the doctor. "And, Bessie, let
us hear over again what was your adventure this afternoon?"
Bessie sat down before her cup of new milk and slice of brown bread, and
told her simple tale a second time. It had been rather pooh-poohed the
first, but it had made an impression. Said Mr. Carnegie: "And you jumped
to the conclusion that this gentleman unknown was your grandfather, even
before he asked your name? Now to describe him."
"He came from Hampton, because he rode Jefferson's old gray mare, and
the other rode the brown horse with white socks. He is a little like
Admiral Parkins--neither fat nor thin. He has white hair and a red and
brown color. He looks stern and as proud as Lucifer" (Mrs. Carnegie gave
Bessie a reproving glance), "and his voice sounds as if he were. Perhaps
he _could_ be kind--"
"You don't flatter him in his portrait, Bessie. Apparently you did not
take to him?"
"Not at all. I don't believe we shall ever be friends."
"Bessie dear, you must not set your mind against Mr. Fairfax,"
interposed her mother. "Don't encourage her in her nonsense and
prejudice, Thomas; they'll only go against her."
"Now for your grandfather's companion, Bessie: what was he like?"
"I did not notice. He was like everybody else--like Mr. Judson at the
Hampton Bank."
"That would be our correspondent, the lawyer, Mr. John Short of
Norminster."
Mr. Carnegie dropt the subject after this. His wife launched at him a
deprecating look, as much as to say, Would there not be vexation enough
for them all, without encouraging Bessie to revolt against lawful
authority? The doctor, who was guided more than he knew, thereupon held
his peace.