_BESSIE SHOWS CHARACTER._
At breakfast, Mr. Fairfax handed a letter to Bessie. "From home, from my
mother," said she in a glad undertone, and instantly, without apology,
opened and read it. Mr. Cecil Burleigh took a furtive observation of her
while she was thus occupied. What a good countenance she had! how the
slight emotion of her lips and the lustrous shining under her dark
eyelashes enhanced her beauty! It was a letter to make her happy, to
give her a light heart to go to Brentwood with. Mrs. Carnegie was always
sympathetic, cheerful, and loving in her letters. She encouraged her
dear Bessie to reconcile herself to absence, and attach herself to her
new home by cultivating all its sources of interest, and especially the
affection of her grandfather. She gave her much tender, reasonable
advice for her guidance, and she gave her good news: they were all well
at home and at Brook, and Harry Musgrave had come out in honors at
Oxford. The sunshine of pure content irradiated Bessie's face. She
looked up; she wanted to communicate her joy. Her grandfather looked up
at the same moment, and their eyes met.
"Would you like to read it? It is from my mother," she said, holding out
the letter with an impulse to be good to him.
"I can trust you with your correspondence, Elizabeth," was his reply.
She drew back her hand quickly, and laid down the letter by her plate.
She sipped her tea, her throat aching, her eyes swimming. The squire
began to talk rather fast and loud, and in a few minutes, the meal being
over, he pushed away his chair and left the room.
"The train we go into Norminster by reaches Mitford Junction at ten
thirty-five," observed Mr. Cecil Burleigh.
Bessie rose and vanished with a mutinous air, which made him laugh and
whisper to his sister, as she disappeared, that the young lady had a
rare spirit. Mr. Fairfax was in the hall. She went swiftly up to him,
and laying a hand on his arm, said, in a quivering, resolute voice,
"Read my letter, grandpapa. If you will not recognize those I have the
best right to love, we shall be strangers always, you and I."
"Come up stairs: I will read your letter," said the old man shortly, and
he mounted to her parlor, she still keeping her hold on his arm. He
stood at her table and read it, and laid it down without a word, but,
glancing aside at her pleasing face, he was moved to kiss her, and then
promptly effected his escape from her tyranny. He was not displeased,
and Bessie was triumphant.
"Now we can begin to be friends," she cried softly, clapping her hands.
"I refuse to be frightened. I shall always tell him my news, and make
him listen. If he is sarcastic, I won't care. He will respect me if I
assert my right to be respected, and maintain that my father and mother
at Beechhurst have the first and best claim on my love. He shall not
recognize them as belonging only to my past life; he shall acknowledge
them as belonging to me always. And Harry too!"
These strong resolutions arising out of that letter from the Forest
exhilarated Bessie exceedingly. There was perhaps more guile in her than
was manifest on slight acquaintance, but it was the guile of a wise,
warm heart. All trace of emotion had passed away when she came down
stairs, and when her grandfather, assisting her into the carriage,
squeezed her fingers confidentially, her new, all-pervading sense of
happiness was confirmed and established. And the courage that happiness
inspires was hers too.
At Mitford Junction, Colonel and Mrs. Stokes and Mr. Oliver Smith joined
their party, and they travelled to Norminster together. The old city was
going quietly about its business much as usual when they drove through
the streets to the "George," where Mr. Cecil Burleigh was to meet his
committee and address the electors out of the big middle bow-window.
Miss Jocund's shop was nearly opposite to the inn, and thither the
ladies at once adjourned, that Bessie might assume her blue bonnet. The
others were already handsomely provided. Miss Jocund was quite at
liberty to attend to them at this early hour of the day--her "gentleman"
had not come in yet--and she conducted them to her show-room over the
shop with the complacent alacrity of a milliner confident that she is
about to give supreme satisfaction. And indeed Mrs. Stokes cried out
with rapture, the instant the bonnet filled her eye, that it was "A
sweet little bonnet--blue crape and white marabouts!"
Bessie smiled most becomingly as it was tried on, and blushed at herself
in the glass. "But a shower of rain will spoil it," she objected,
nodding the downy white feathers that topped the brim. She was
proceeding philosophically to tie the glossy broad strings in a bow
under her round chin when Miss Jocund stepped hastily to the rescue, and
Mrs. Betts entered with a curtsey, and a blue silk slip on her arm.
"What next?" Bessie demanded of the waiting-woman in rosy consternation.
"I am afraid we must trouble you, Miss Fairfax, but not much, I hope,"
insinuated Miss Jocund with a queer, deprecating humility. "There is a
good half hour to spare. Since Eve put on a little cool foliage, female
dress has developed so extensively that it is necessary to try some
ladies on six times to avoid a misfit. But your figure is perfectly
proportioned, and I resolved, for once, to chance it on my knowledge of
anatomy, supplemented by an embroidered dress from your wardrobe. If you
_will_ be _so_ kind: a stitch here and a stitch there, and my delightful
duty is accomplished."
Miss Jocund's speeches had always a touch of mockery, and Bessie, being
in excellent spirits, laughed good-humoredly, but denied her request.
"No, no," said she, "I will not be so kind. Your lovely blue bonnet
would be thrown away if I did not look pleasant under it, and how could
I look pleasant after the painful ordeal of trying on?"
Mrs. Stokes, with raised eyebrows, was about to remonstrate, Mrs. Betts,
with flushed dismay, was about to argue, when Miss Jocund interposed;
she entered into the young lady's sentiments: "Miss Fairfax has spoken,
and Miss Fairfax is right. A pleasant look is the glory of a woman's
face, and without a pleasant look, if I were a single gentleman a woman
might wear a coal-scuttle for me."
At this crisis there occurred a scuffle and commotion on the stairs, and
Bessie recognized a voice she had heard elsewhere--a loud, ineffectual
voice--pleading, "Master Justus, Master Justus, you are not to go to
your granny in the show-room;" and in Master Justus bounced--lovely,
delicious, in the whitest of frilly pinafores and most boisterous of
naughty humors.
Bessie Fairfax stooped down and opened her arms with rapturous
invitation. "Come, oh, you bonnie boy!" and she caught him up, shook
him, kissed him, tickled him, with an exuberant fun that he evidently
shared, and frantically retaliated by pulling down her hair.
This was very agreeable to Bessie, but Miss Jocund looked like an angry
sphinx, and as the defeated nurse appeared she said with suppressed
excitement, "Sally, how often must I warn you to keep the boy out of the
show-room? Carry him away." The flaxen cherub was born off kicking and
howling; Bessie looked as if she were being punished herself, Mrs.
Stokes stood confounded, Mrs. Betts turned red. Only Miss Burleigh
seemed unaffected, and inquired simply whose that little boy was.
"_Mine_, ma'am," replied the milliner with an emphasis that forbade
further question. But Miss Burleigh's reflective powers were awakened.
Mrs. Betts, that woman of resources and experience, standing with the
blue silk slip half dropt on the Scotch carpet at her feet, reverted to
the interrupted business of the hour as if there had been no break. "And
if, when it comes to dressing this evening at Lady Angleby's, there's
not a thing that fits?" she bitterly suggested.
"I will answer for it that everything fits," said Miss Jocund,
recovering herself with more effort. "I have worked on true principles.
But"--with a persuasive inclination towards Bessie--"if Miss Fairfax
will condescend to inspect my productions, she will gratify me and
herself also."
As she spoke Miss Jocund threw open the door of an adjoining room, where
the said productions were elaborately laid out, and Mrs. Stokes ran in
to have the first view. Miss Burleigh followed. Bessie, with a rather
unworthy distrust, refused to advance beyond the doorway; but, looking
in, she beheld clouds upon clouds of blue and white puffery, tulle and
tarletan, and shining breadths of silk of the same delicate hues, with
fans, gloves, bows, wreaths, shoes, ribbons, sashes, laces--a portentous
confusion. After a few seconds of disturbed contemplation, during which
she was lending an ear to the remote shrieks of that darling boy, she
said--and surely it was provoking!--"The half would be better than the
whole. I am sorry for you, Mrs. Betts, if you are to have all those
works of art on your mind till they are worn out."
"Indeed, miss, if you don't show more feeling, my mind will give way,"
retorted Mrs. Betts. "It is the first time in my long experience that
ever a young lady so set me at defiance as to refuse to try on new
dresses. And all one's credit at stake upon her appearance! In a great
house like Brentwood, too!"
Those piercing cries continued to rise higher and higher. Miss Jocund,
with a vexed exclamation, dropped some piece of finery on which she was
beginning to dilate, and vanished by another door. In a minute the noise
was redoubled with a passionate intensity. Bessie's eyes filled; she
knew that old-fashioned discipline was being administered, and her heart
ached dreadfully. She even offered to rush to the rescue, but Mrs. Betts
intercepted her with a stern "Better let me do up your hair, miss,"
while Mrs. Stokes, moved by sympathetic tenderness, whispered, "Stop
your ears; it is necessary, _quite_ necessary, now and then, I assure
you." Oh, did not Bessie know? had she not little brothers? When there
was silence, Miss Jocund returned, and without allusion to the nursery
tragedy resumed her task of displaying the fruits of her toils.
Bessie, with a yearning sigh, composed herself, laid hands on her blue
bonnet while nobody was observing, and moved away to an open window in
the show-room that commanded the street. Deliberately she tied the
strings in the fashion that pleased her, and seated herself to look out
where a few men and boys were collecting on the edge of the pavement to
await the appearance of the Conservative candidate at the bow-window
over the portico of the "George." Presently, Mrs. Stokes joined her,
shaking her head, and saying with demure rebuke, "You naughty girl! And
this is all you care for pretty things?" Miss Burleigh, with more real
seriousness, hoped that the pretty things would be right. Miss Jocund
came forward with a natural professional anxiety to hear their opinions,
and when she saw the bonnet-strings tied clasped her hands in acute
regret, but said nothing. Mrs. Betts, a picture of injured virtue, held
herself aloof beyond the sea of finery, gazing across it at her
insensible young mistress with eyes of mournful indignation. Bessie felt
herself the object of general misunderstanding and reproach, and was
stirred up to extenuate her untoward behavior in a strain of mischievous
sarcasm.
"Don't look so distressed, all of you," she pleaded. "How can I interest
myself to-day in anything but Mr. Cecil Burleigh's address to the
electors of Norminster and my own new bonnet?"
"_That_ is very becoming, for a consolation," said the milliner with an
affronted air.
"I think it is," rejoined Bessie coolly. "And if you will not bedizen me
with artificial flowers, and will exonerate me from wearing dresses that
crackle, I shall be happy. Did you not promise to give me simplicity and
no imitations, Miss Jocund?"
"I cannot deny it, Miss Fairfax. Natural leaves and flowers are my
taste, and graceful soft outlines of drapery; but when it is the mode to
wear tall wreaths of painted calico, and to be bustled off in twenty
yards of stiff, cheap tarletan, most ladies conform to the mode, on the
axiom that they might as well be out of the world as out of the fashion.
And nothing comes up so ugly and outrageous but there are some who will
have it in the very extreme."
"I am quite aware of the pains many women take to be displeasing, but I
thought you understood that was not 'my style, my taste,'" said Bessie,
quoting the milliner's curt query at their first interview.
"I understand now, Miss Fairfax, that there are things here you would
rather be without. I will not pack up the tarletan skirts and artificial
flowers. With the two morning silks and two dinner silks, and the tulle
over the blue slip for a possible dance, perhaps you will be able to go
through your visit to Brentwood?"
"I trust so," said Bessie. "But if I need anything more I will write to
you."
There was an odd pause of silence, in which Bessie looked out of the
window, and the rest looked at one another with a furtive, defeated,
amused acknowledgment that this young lady, so ignorant of the world,
knew how to take her own part, and would not be controlled in the
exercise of her senses by any irregular, usurped authority. Mrs. Betts
saw her day-dream of perquisites vanish. Both she and Miss Jocund had
got their lesson, and they remembered it.
A welcome interruption came with the sound of swift wheels and
high-stepping horses in the street, and the ladies pressed forward to
see. "Lady Angleby's carriage," said Miss Burleigh as it whirled past
and drew up at the "George." She was now in haste to be gone and join
her aunt, but Bessie lingered at the window to witness the great lady's
reception by the gentlemen who came out of the inn to meet her. Mr.
Cecil Burleigh was foremost, and Mr. Fairfax, Mr. Oliver Smith, Mr.
Forbes, and several more, yet strangers to Bessie, supported him. One
who bowed with extreme deference she recognized, at a second glance, as
Mr. John Short, her grandfather's companion on his memorable visit to
Beechhurst, which resulted in her severance from that dear home of her
childhood. The sight of him brought back some vexed recollections, but
she sighed and shook them off, and on Miss Burleigh's again inviting her
to come away to the "George" to Lady Angleby, she rose and followed her.
"Look pleasant," said Miss Jocund, standing by the door as Bessie went
out, and Bessie laughed and was obedient.