_BESSIE'S BRINGING HOME._
When Bessie Fairfax realized that the yacht was sailing away from Ryde
not to return, and carrying her quite out of reach of pursuit, her
spirits sank to zero. It was a perfect evening, and the light on the
water was lovely, but to her it was a most melancholy view--when she
could see it for the mist that obscured her vision. All her heart
desired was being left farther and farther behind, and attraction there
was none in Woldshire to which she was going. She looked at her uncle
Frederick, silent, absent, sad; she remembered her grandfather, cold,
sarcastic, severe; and every ensuing day she experienced fits of
dejection or fits of terror and repulsion, to which even the most
healthy young creatures are liable when they find themselves cut adrift
from what is dear and familiar. Happily, these fits were intermittent,
and at their worst easily diverted by what interested her on the voyage;
and she did not encourage the murky humor: she always tried to shake it
off and feel brave, and especially she made the effort as the yacht drew
towards its haven. It was her nature to struggle against gloom and pain
for a clear outlook at her horizon, and Madame Fournier had not failed
to supply her with moral precepts for sustenance when cast on the shore
of a strange and indifferent society.
The Foam touched at Hastings, at Dover, at semi-Dutch Harwich, and then
no more until it put into Scarcliffe Bay. Here Bessie's sea-adventures
ended. She went ashore and walked with her uncle on the bridge, gazing
about with frank, unsophisticated eyes. The scenery and the weather were
beautiful. Mr. Frederick Fairfax had many friends now at Scarcliffe, the
favorite sea-resort of the county people. Greetings met him on every
hand, and Bessie was taken note of. "My niece Elizabeth." Her history
was known, kindness had been bespoken for her, her prospects were
anticipated by a prescient few.
At length one acquaintance gave her uncle news: "The squire and your
brother are both in the town. I fell in with them at the bank less than
an hour ago."
"That is good luck: then we will go into the town and find them." And he
moved off with alacrity, as if in sight of the end of an irksome duty.
Bessie inquired if her uncle was going forward to Abbotsmead, to which
he replied that he was not; he was going across to Norway to make the
most of the fine weather while it lasted. He might be at horns in the
winter, but his movements were always uncertain.
Mr. Fairfax came upon them suddenly out of the library. "Eh! here you
are! We heard that the Foam was in," said he, and shook hands with his
eldest son as if he had been parted with only yesterday. Then he spoke a
few words to Bessie, rather abruptly, but with a critical observance of
her: she had outgrown his recollection, and was more of a woman than he
had anticipated. He walked on without any attempt at conversation until
they met a third, a tall man with a fair beard, whom her grandfather
named as "Your uncle Laurence, Elizabeth." And she had seen all her
Woldshire kinsmen. For a miracle, she was able to put as cool a face
upon her reception as the others did. A warm welcome would have brought
her to tears and smiles, but its quiet formality subdued emotion and set
her features like a handsome mask. She was too composed. Pride tinged
with resentment simulates dignified composure very well for a little
while, but only for a little while when there is a heart behind.
They went walking hither and thither about the steep, windy streets.
Bessie fell behind. Now and then there was an encounter with other
gentlemen, brief, energetic speech, inquiry and answer, sally and
rejoinder, all with one common subject of interest--the Norminster
election. Scarcliffe is a fine town, and there was much gay company
abroad that afternoon, but Bessie was too miserable to be amused. Her
uncle Laurence was the one of the party who was so fortunate as to
discover this. He turned round on a sudden recollection of his stranger
niece, and surprised a most desolate look on her rosy face. Bessie
confessed her feelings by the grateful humility of her reply to his
considerate proposal that they should turn in at a confectioner's they
were passing and have a cup of tea.
"My father is as full of this election as if he were going to contest
the city of Norminster himself," said he. "I hope you have a blue
bonnet? You will have to play your part. Beautiful ladies are of great
service in these affairs."
Bessie had not a blue bonnet; her bonnet was white chip and pink
may--the enemy's colors. She must put it by till the end of the war. Tea
and thick bread and butter were supplied to the hungry couple, and
about four o'clock Mr. Fairfax called for them and hurried them off to
the train. Mr. Laurence went on to Norminster, dropping the squire and
Elizabeth at Mitford Junction. Thence they had a drive of four miles
through a country of long-backed, rounded hills, ripening cornfields,
and meadows green with the rich aftermath, and full of cattle. The sky
above was high and clear, the air had a crispness that was exhilarating.
The sun set in scarlet splendor, and the reflection of its glory was
shed over the low levels of lawn, garden, and copse, which, lying on
either side of a shallow, devious river, kept still the name of
Abbotsmead that had belonged to them before the great monastery at
Kirkham was dissolved.
Mr. Fairfax was in good-humor now, and recovered from his momentary loss
of self-possession at the sight of his granddaughter so thoroughly grown
up. Also, election business at Norminster was going as he would have it,
and bowling smoothly along in the quiet, early evening he had time to
think of Elizabeth, sitting bolt upright in the carriage beside him. She
had a pretty, pensive air, for which he saw no cause--only the
excitement of novelty staved off depression--and in his sarcastic vein,
with doubtful compliment, he said, "I did not expect to see you grown so
tall, Elizabeth. You look as healthy as a milkmaid."
She was very quick and sensitive of feeling. She understood him
perfectly, and replied that she _was_ as healthy as a milkmaid. Then she
reverted to her wistful contemplation of the landscape, and tried to
think of that and not of herself, which was too pathetic.
This country was not so lovely as the Forest. It had only the beauty of
high culture. Human habitations were too wide-scattered, and the
trees--there were no very great trees, nor any blue glimpses of the sea.
Nevertheless, when the carriage turned into the domain at a pretty
rustic lodge, the overarching gloom of an avenue of limes won Bessie's
admiration, and a few fir trees standing in single grace near the ruins
of the abbey, which they had to pass on their way to the house, she
found almost worthy to be compared with the centenarians of the Forest.
The western sun was still upon the house itself. The dusk-tiled mansard
roof, pierced by two rows of twinkling dormers, and crowned by solid
chimney-stacks, bulked vast and shapely against the primrose sky, and
the stone-shafted lower windows caught many a fiery reflection in their
blackness. Through a porch broad and deep, and furnished with oaken
seats, Bessie preceded her grandfather into a lofty and spacious hall,
where the foot rang on the bare, polished boards, and ten generations of
Fairfaxes, successive dwellers in the grand old house, looked down from
the walls. It was not lighted except by the sunset, which filled it with
a warm and solemn glow.
Numerous servants appeared, amongst them a plump functionary in blue
satinette and a towering cap, who curtseyed to Elizabeth and spoke some
words of real welcome: "I'm right glad to see you back, Miss Fairfax;
these arms were the first that held you." Bessie's impulse was to fall
on the neck of this kindly personage with kisses and tears, but her
grandfather's cool tone intervening maintained her reserve:
"Your young mistress will be pleased to go to her room, Macky. Your
reminiscences will keep till to-morrow."
Macky, instantly obedient, begged Miss Fairfax to "come this way," and
conducted her through a double-leaved door that stood open to the inner
hall, carpeted with crimson pile, like the wide shallow stairs that went
up to the gallery surrounding the greater hall. On this gallery opened
many doors of chambers long silent and deserted.
"The master ordered you the white suite," announced Macky, ushering
Elizabeth into the room so called. "It has pretty prospects, and the
rooms are not such wildernesses as the other state-apartments. The
eldest unmarried lady of the family always occupied the white suite."
A narrow ante-room, a sitting-room, a bed-room, and off it a
sleeping-closet for her maid,--this was the private lodging accorded to
the new daughter of the house. Bessie gazed about, taking in a general
impression of faded, delicate richness, of white and gold and sparse
color, in elegant, antiquated taste, like a boudoir in an old Norman
château that she had visited.
"Mrs. Betts was so thoughtful as to come on by an earlier train to get
unpacked and warn us to be prepared," Macky observed in a respectful
explanatory tone; and then she went on to offer her good wishes to the
young lady she had nursed, in the manner of an old and trusted dependant
of the family. "It is fine weather and a fine time of year, and we hope
and pray all of us, Miss Fairfax, as this will be a blessed
bringing-home for you and our dear master. Most of us was here servants
when Mr. Geoffry, your father, went south. A cheerful, pleasant
gentleman he was, and your mamma as pleasant a lady. And here is Mrs.
Betts to wait on you."
Bessie thanked the old woman, and would have bidden her remain and talk
on about her forgotten parents, but Macky with another curtsey retired,
and Mrs. Betts, calm and peremptory, proceeded to array her young lady
in her prize-day muslin dress, and sent her hastily down stairs under
the guidance of a little page who loitered in the gallery. At the foot
of the stairs a lean, gray-headed man in black received her, and ushered
her into a beautiful octagon-shaped room, all garnished with books and
brilliant with light, where her grandfather was waiting to conduct her
to dinner. So much ceremony made Bessie feel as if she was acting a part
in a play. Since Macky's kind greeting her spirits had risen, and her
countenance had cleared marvellously.
Mr. Fairfax was standing opposite the door when she appeared. "Good God!
it is Dolly!" he exclaimed, visibly startled. Dolly was his sister
Dorothy, long since dead. Not only in face and figure, but in a certain
lightness of movement and a buoyant swift way of stepping towards him,
Elizabeth recalled her. Perhaps there was something in the simplicity of
her dress too: there on the wall was a pretty miniature of her
great-aunt in blue and white and golden flowing hair to witness the
resemblance. Mr. Fairfax pointed it out to his granddaughter, and then
they went to dinner.
It was a very formal ceremonial, and rather tedious to the
newly-emancipated school-girl. Jonquil served his master when he was
alone, but this evening he was reinforced by a footman in blue and
silver, by way of honor to the young lady. Elizabeth faced her
grandfather across a round table. A bowl-shaped chandelier holding
twelve wax-lights hung from the groined ceiling above the rose-decked
_épergne_, making a bright oasis in the centre of a room gloomy rather
from the darkness of its fittings than from the insufficiency of
illumination. Under the soft lustre the plate, precious for its antique
beauty, the quaint cut glass, and old blue china enriched with gold were
displayed to perfection. Bessie had a taste, her eye was gratified,
there was repose in all this splendor. But still she felt that odd
sensation of acting in a comedy which would be over as soon as the
lights were out. Suddenly she recollected the bare board in the Rue St.
Jean, the coarse white platters, the hunches of sour bread, the lenten
soup, the flavorless _bouilli_, and sighed--sighed audibly, and when her
grandfather asked her why that mournful sound, she told him. Her courage
never forsook her long.
"It has done you no harm to sup your share of Spartan broth; hard living
is good for us young," was the squire's comment. "You never
complained--your dry little letters always confessed to excellent
health. When I was at school we fed roughly. The joints were cut into
lumps which had all their names, and we were in honor bound not to pick
and choose, but to strike with the fork and take what came up."
"Of course," said Bessie, pricked in her pride and conscience lest she
should seem to be weakly complaining now--"of course we had treats
sometimes. On madame's birthday we had a glass of white wine at dinner,
which was roast veal and pancakes. And on our own birthdays we might
have _galette_ with sugar, if we liked to give Margotin the money."
"I trust the whole school had _galette_ with sugar on your birthday,
Elizabeth?" said her grandfather, quietly amused. He was relieved to
find her younger, more child-like in her ideas, than her first
appearance gave him hopes of. His manner relaxed, his tone became
indulgent. When she smiled with a blush, she was his sweet sister Dolly;
when her countenance fell grave again, she was the shy, touchy,
uncertain little girl who had gone to Fairfield on their first
acquaintance so sorely against her inclination. After Jonquil and his
assistant retired, Elizabeth was invited to tell how the time had passed
on board the Foam.
"Pleasantly, on the whole," she said. "The weather was so fine that we
were on deck from morning till night, and often far on into the night
when the moon shone. It was delightful cruising off the Isle of Wight;
only I had an immense disappointment there."
"What was that?" Mr. Fairfax asked, though he had a shrewd guess.
"I did not remember how easy it is to send a letter--not being used to
write without leave--and I trusted Mr. Wiley, whom I met on Ryde pier
going straight back to Beechhurst, with a message to them at home, which
he forgot to deliver. And though I did write after, it was too late, for
we left Ryde the same day. So I lost the opportunity of seeing my father
and mother. It was a pity, because we were so near; and I was all the
more sorry because it was my own fault."
Mr. Fairfax was silent for a few minutes after this bold confession. He
had interdicted any communication with the Forest, as Mr. Carnegie
prevised. He did not, however, consider it necessary to provoke Bessie's
ire by telling her that he was responsible for her immense
disappointment. He let that pass, and when he spoke again it was to draw
her out on the more important subject of what progress Mr. Cecil
Burleigh had made in her interest. It was truly vexatious, but as Bessie
told her simple tale she was conscious that her color rose and deepened
slowly to a burning blush. Why? She vehemently assured herself that she
did not care a straw for Mr. Cecil Burleigh, that she disliked him
rather than otherwise, yet at the mere sound of his name she blushed.
Perhaps it was because she dreaded lest anybody should suspect the
mistake her vanity had made before. Her grandfather gave her one acute
glance, and was satisfied that this business also went well.
"Mr. Cecil Burleigh left the yacht at Ryde. It was the first day of the
regatta when we anchored there, and we landed and saw the town," was all
Bessie said in words, but her self-betrayal was eloquent.
"We--what do you mean by _we_? Did your uncle Frederick land?" asked the
squire, not caring in the least to know.
"No--only Mr. Cecil Burleigh and myself. We went to the house of some
friends of his where we had lunch; and afterward Mrs. Gardiner and one
of the young ladies took me to the Arcade. My uncle never landed at all
from the day we left Caen till we arrived at Scarcliffe. Mrs. Betts went
into Harwich with me. That is a very quaint old town, but nothing in
England looks so battered and decayed as the French cities do."
Mr. Fairfax knew all about Miss Julia Gardiner, and Elizabeth's
information that Mr. Cecil Burleigh had called on the family in Ryde
caused him to reflect. It was very imprudent to take Elizabeth with
him--very imprudent indeed; of course, the squire could not know how
little he was to blame. To take her mind off the incident that seriously
annoyed himself, he asked what troubles Caen had seen, and Bessie,
thankful to discourse of something not confusing, answered him like a
book:
"Oh, many. It is very impoverished and dilapidated. The revocation of
the Edict of Nantes ruined its trade. Its principal merchants were
Huguenots: there are still amongst the best families some of the
Reformed religion. Then in the great Revolution it suffered again; the
churches were desecrated, and turned to all manner of common uses; some
are being restored, but I myself have seen straw hoisted in at a church
window, beautiful with flamboyant tracery in the arch, the shafts below
being partly broken away."
Mr. Fairfax remarked that France was too prone to violent remedies; then
reverting to the subjects uppermost in his thoughts, he said, "Elections
and politics cannot have much interest for you yet, Elizabeth, but
probably you have heard that Mr. Cecil Burleigh is going to stand for
Norminster?"
"Yes; he spoke of it to my uncle Frederick. He is a very liberal
Conservative, from what I heard him say. There was a famous contest for
Hampton when I was not more than twelve years old: we went to see the
members chaired. My father was orange--the Carnegies are almost
radicals; they supported Mr. Hiloe--and we wore orange rosettes."
"A most unbecoming color! You must take up with blue now; blue is the
only wear for a Fairfax. Most men might wear motley for a sign of their
convictions. Let us return to the octagon parlor; it is cheerful with a
fire after dinner. At Abbotsmead there are not many evenings when a fire
is not acceptable at dusk."
The fire was very acceptable; it was very composing and pleasant. Bright
flashes of flame kindled and reddened the fragrant dry pine chips and
played about the lightly-piled logs. Mr. Fairfax took his own
commodious chair on one side of the hearth, facing the uncurtained
windows; a low seat confronted him for Bessie. Both were inclined to be
silent, for both were full of thought. The rich color and gilding of the
volumes that filled the dwarf bookcases caught the glow, as did
innumerable pretty objects besides--water-color drawings on the walls,
mirrors that reflected the landscape outside, statuettes in shrines of
crimson fluted silk--but the prettiest object by far in this dainty
lady's chamber was still Bessie Fairfax, in her white raiment and
rippled, shining hair.
This was her grandfather's reflection, and again that impulse to love
her that he had felt at Beechhurst long ago began to sway his feelings.
It was on the cards that he might become to her a most indulgent, fond
old man; but then Elizabeth must be submissive, and do his will in great
things if he allowed her to rule in small. Bessie had dropt her mask and
showed her bright face, at peace for the moment; but it was shadowed
again by the resurrection of all her wrongs when her grandfather said on
bidding her good-night, "Perhaps, Elizabeth, the assurance that will
tend most to promote your comfort at Abbotsmead, to begin with, is that
you have a perfect right to be here."
Her astonishment was too genuine to be hidden. Did her grandfather
imagine that she was flattered by her domicile in his grand house? It
was exile to her quite as much as the old school at Caen. Nothing had
ever occurred to shake her original conviction that she was cruelly used
in being separated from her friends in the Forest. _They_ were her
family--not these strangers. Bessie dropped him her embarrassed
school-girl's curtsey, and said, "Good-night, sir"--not even a Thank
you! Mr. Fairfax thought her manner abrupt, but he did not know the
depth and tenacity of her resentment, or he would have recognized the
blunder he had committed in bringing her into Woldshire with unsatisfied
longings after old, familiar scenes.
Bessie was of a thoroughly healthy nature and warmly affectionate. She
felt very lonely and unfriended; she wished that her grandfather had
said he was glad to have her at Abbotsmead, instead of telling her that
she had a _right_ to be there; but she was also very tired, and sleep
soon prevailed over both sweet and bitter fancies. Premature resolutions
she made none; she had been warned against them by Madame Fournier as
mischievous impediments to making the best of life, which is so much
less often "what we could wish than what we must even put up with."