_A VISIT TO CASTLEMOUNT._
Bessie Fairfax had been but a few days at home after the Brentwood
rejoicings when there came for her an invitation from Mrs. Chiverton to
spend a week at Castlemount. She was perfectly ready to go--more ready
to go than her grandfather was to part with her. She read him the letter
at breakfast; he said he would think about it, and at luncheon he had
not yet made up his mind. Before post-time, however, he supposed he must
let her choose her own associates, and if she chose Mrs. Chiverton for
old acquaintance' sake, he would not refuse his consent, but Mr.
Chiverton and he were not on intimate terms.
Bessie went to Castlemount under escort of Mrs. Betts. Mrs. Chiverton
was rejoiced to welcome her. "I like Miss Fairfax, because she is
honest. Her manner is a little brusque, but she has a good heart, and we
knew each other at school," was her reason given to Mr. Chiverton for
desiring Bessie's company. They got on together capitally. Mrs.
Chiverton had found her course and object in life already, and was as
deeply committed to philanthropic labors and letters as either Lady
Latimer or Lady Angleby. They were both numbered amongst her
correspondents, and she promised to outvie them in originality and
fertility of resource. What she chiefly wanted at Castlemount was a good
listener, and Bessie Fairfax, as yet unprovided with a vocation, showed
a fine turn that way. She reposed lazily at the end of Mrs. Chiverton's
encumbered writing-table, between the fire and the window, and heard her
discourse with infinite patience. Bessie was too moderate ever to join
the sisterhood of active reformers, but she had no objection to their
activity while herself safe from assaults. But when she was invited to
sign papers pledging herself to divers serious convictions she demurred.
Mrs. Chiverton said she would not urge her. Bessie gracefully
acquiesced, and Mrs. Chiverton put in a more enticing plea: "I can
scarcely expect to interest you in my occupations all at once, but they
bring to me often the most gratifying returns. Read that letter."
Bessie read that letter. "Very honeyed phrases," said she with her odd
twist of the mouth, so like her grandfather. It was from a more
practised philanthropist than the young lady to whom it was addressed,
and was in a strain of fulsome adulation, redolent of gratitude for
favors to come. Religious and benevolent egotism is impervious to the
tiny sting of sarcasm. Mrs. Chiverton looked complacently lofty, and
Bessie had not now to learn how necessary to her was the incense of
praise. Once this had provoked her contempt, but now she discerned a
certain pathos in it; she had learnt what large opportunity the craving
for homage gives to disappointment. "You cannot fail to do some good
because you mean well," she said after the perusal of more letters, more
papers and reports. "But don't call me heartless and unfeeling because
I think that distance lends enchantment to the view of some of your
pious and charitable objects."
"Oh no; I see you do not understand their necessity. I am busy at home
too. I am waging a crusade against a dreadful place called Morte, and a
cottage warfare with our own steward. These things do not interest Mr.
Chiverton, but he gives me his support. I tell him Morte must disappear
from the face of the earth, but there is a greedy old agent of Mr.
Gifford's, one Blagg, who is terribly in the way. Then I have
established a nursery in connection with the school, where the mothers
can leave their little children when they go to work in the fields."
"Do they work in the fields hereabouts?"
"Oh yes--at hoeing, weeding and stone-picking, in hay-time and harvest.
Some of them walk from Morte--four miles here and four back. There is a
widow whose husband died on the home-farm--it was thought not to answer
to let widows remain in the cottages--this woman had five young
children, and when she moved to Morte, Mr. Chiverton kindly kept her on.
I want her to live at our gates."
"And what does she earn a day?"
"Ninepence. Of course, she has help from the parish as well--two
shillings a week, I think, and a loaf for each child besides."
A queer expression flitted over Bessie's face; she drew a long breath
and stretched her arms above her head.
"Yes, I feel it is wrong: the widow of a laborer who died in Mr.
Chiverton's service, who spends all her available strength in his
service herself, ought not to be dependent on parish relief. I put it to
him one day with the query, Why God had given him such great wealth? A
little house, a garden, the keep of a cow, a pig, would have made all
the difference in the world to her, and none to him, except that her
children might have grown up stout and healthy, instead of ill-nurtured
and weakly. But you are tired. Let us go and take a few turns in the
winter-garden. It is the perfection of comfort on a windy, cold day like
this."
Bessie acceded with alacrity. Castlemount was not the building of one
generation, but it owed its chief glories to its present master. Mr.
Chiverton had found it a spacious country mansion, and had converted it
into a palace of luxury and a museum of art--one reason why Morte had
thriven and Chiver-Chase become almost without inhabitant. Bessie
Fairfax was half bewildered amongst its magnificences, but its
winter-garden was to her the greatest wonder of all. She was not,
however, sufficiently acclimatized to an artificial temperature to enjoy
it long. "It is delicious, but as we are not hot-house ferns, a good
stretch over that upland would be, perhaps, more delicious still: it is
cold, but the sun shines," she said after two turns under the moist
glass.
"We must not change the air too suddenly," Mrs. Chiverton objected. "The
wind is very boisterous."
"There is a woman at work in it; is it your widow?" Bessie asked,
pointing down a mimic orange-grove.
"Yes--poor thing! how miserably she is clothed! I must send her out one
of my knitted kerchiefs."
"Oh yes, do," said Bessie; and the woollen garment being brought, she
was deputed to carry it to the weeding woman.
On closer view she proved to be a lean, laborious figure, with an
anxious, weather-beaten face, which cleared a little as she received the
mistress's gift. It was a kerchief of thick gray wool, to cross over in
front and tie behind.
"It will be a protection against the cold for my chest; I suffered with
the inflammation badly last spring," she said, approving it.
"Put it on at once; it is not to be only looked at," said Bessie.
The woman proceeded to obey, but when she wanted to tie it behind she
found a difficulty from a stiffness of one shoulder, and said, "It is
the rheumatics, miss; one catches it being out in the wet."
"Let me tie it for you," said Bessie.
"Thank you, miss, and thank the mistress for her goodness," said the
woman when it was done, gazing curiously at the young lady. And she
stooped again to her task, the wind making sport with her thin and
scanty skirts.
Bessie walked farther down the grove, green in the teeth of winter. She
was thinking that this poor widow, work and pain included, was not less
contented with her lot than herself or than the beautiful young lady who
reigned at Castlemount. Yet it was a cruelly hard lot, and might be
ameliorated with very little thought. "Blessed is he that considereth
the poor," says the old-fashioned text, and Bessie reflected that her
proud school-fellow was in the way of earning this blessing.
She was confirmed in that opinion on the following day, when the weather
was more genial, and they took a drive together in the afternoon and
passed through the hamlet of Morte. It had formed itself round a
dilapidated farm-house, now occupied as three tenements, in one of which
lived the widow. The carriage stopped in the road, and Mrs. Chiverton
got out with her companion and knocked at the door. It was opened by a
shrewd-visaged, respectable old woman, and revealed a clean interior,
but very indigent, with the tea-table set, and on a wooden stool by the
hearth a tall, fair young woman sitting, who rose and dropt a smiling
curtsey to Miss Fairfax: she was Alice, the second housemaid at
Abbotsmead, and waited on the white suite. She explained that Mrs. Macky
had given her leave to walk over and see her mother, but she was out at
work; and this was her aunt Jane, retired from service and come to live
at home with her widowed sister.
An old range well polished, an oven that would not bake, and a boiler
that would not hold water,--this was the fireplace. The floor was of
bricks, sunken in waves and broken; through a breach in the roof of the
chamber over the "house" blew the wind and leaked the rain, in spite of
a sack stuffed with straw thrust between the rafters and the tiles.
"Yes, ma'am, my poor sister has lived in this place for sixteen years,
and paid the rent regularly, three pounds a year: I've sent her the
money since she lost her husband," said the retired servant, in reply to
some question of Mrs. Chiverton's. "Blagg is such a miser that he won't
spend a penny on his places; it is promise, promise for ever. And what
can my poor sister do? She dar'n't affront him, for where could she go
if she was turned out of this? There's a dozen would jump at it, houses
is so scarce and not to be had."
"There ought to be a swift remedy for wretches like Blagg," Mrs.
Chiverton indignantly exclaimed when they were clear of the
foul-smelling hamlet. "Why cannot it be an item of duty for the rural
police to give information of his extortion and neglect? Those poor
women are robbed, and they are utterly helpless to resist it. It is a
greater crime than stealing on the highway."
"Do any of grandpapa's people live at Morte?" Bessie asked.
"No, I think not; they are ours and Mr. Gifford's, and a colony of
miserable gentry who exist nobody can tell how, but half their time in
jail. It was a man from Morte who shot our head-keeper last September.
Poor wretch! he is waiting his trial now. When I have paid a visit to
Morte I always feel indifferent to my beautiful home."
Bessie Fairfax felt a sharp pang of compunction for her former hard
judgment of Mrs. Chiverton. If it was ever just, time and circumstances
were already reversing it. The early twilight overtook them some miles
from Castlemount, but it was still clear enough to see a picturesque
ivied tower not far removed from the roadside when they passed
Carisfort.
Bessie looked at it with interest. "That is not the dwelling-house--that
is the keep," Mrs. Chiverton said. "The house faces the other way, and
has the finest view in the country. It is an antiquated place, but
people can be very good and happy there."
The coachman had slackened speed, and now stopped. A gentleman was
hastening down the drive--Mr. Forbes, as it turned out on his nearer
approach. The very person she was anxious to see! Mrs. Chiverton
exclaimed; and they entered on a discussion of some plan proposed
between them for the abolition of Morte.
"I can answer for Mr. Chiverton's consent. Mr. Gifford is the
impracticable person. And of course it is Blagg's interest to oppose us.
Can we buy Blagg out?" said the lady.
"No, no; that would be the triumph of iniquity. We must starve him out,"
said the clergyman.
More slowly there had followed a lady--Miss Burleigh, as Bessie now
perceived. She came through the gate, and shook hands with Mrs.
Chiverton before she saw who her companion in the carriage was, but when
she recognized Bessie she came round and spoke to her very pleasantly:
"Lady Augleby has gone to Scarcliffe to meet one of her daughters, and
I have a fortnight's holiday, which I am spending at home. You have not
been to Carisfort: it is such a pretty, dear old place! I hope you will
come some day. I am never so happy anywhere as at Carisfort;" and she
allowed Bessie to see that she included Mr. Forbes in the elements of
her happiness there. Bessie was quite glad to be greeted in this
friendly tone by Mr. Cecil Burleigh's sister; it was ever a distress to
her to feel that she had hurt or vexed anybody. She returned to
Castlemount in charming spirits.
On entering the drawing-room before dinner there was a new arrival--a
slender little gentleman who knelt with one knee on the centre ottoman
and turned over a volume of choice etchings. He moved his head, and
Bessie saw a visage familiar in its strangeness. He laid the book down,
advanced a step or two with a look of pleased intelligence, bowed and
said, "Miss Fairfax!" Bessie had already recognized him. "Mr. Christie!"
said she, and they shook hands with the utmost cordiality. The world is
small and full of such surprises.
"Then you two are old acquaintances? Mr. Christie is here to paint my
portrait," said Mrs. Chiverton.
The meeting was an agreeable episode in their visit. At dinner the young
artist talked with his host of art, and Bessie learnt that he had seen
Italy, Spain, Greece, that he had friends and patrons of distinction,
and that he had earned success enough to set him above daily cares. Mr.
Chiverton had a great opinion of his future, and there was no better
judge in the circle of art-connoisseurs.
"Mr. Christie has an exquisite taste and refinement--feelings that are
born in a man, and that no labor or pains can enable him to acquire,"
her host informed Bessie. It was these gifts that won him a commission
for a portrait of the beautiful Mrs. Chiverton, though he was not
professedly a painter of portraits.
After dinner, Miss Fairfax and he had a good talk of Beechhurst, of
Harry Musgrave, and other places and persons interesting to both. Bessie
asked after that drop-scene, at the Hampton theatre, and Mr. Christie,
in nowise shy of early reminiscences, gave her an amusing account of how
he worked at it. Then he spoke of Lady Latimer as a generous soul who
had first given him a lift, and of Mr. Carnegie as another effectual
helper. "He lent me a little money--I have long since paid it back," he
whispered to Bessie. He was still plain, but his countenance was full of
intelligence, and his air and manner were those of a perfectly simple,
cultivated, travelled gentleman. He did salaam to nobody now, for in his
brief commerce with the world he had learnt that genius has a rank of
its own to which the noblest bow, and ambition he had none beyond
excelling in his beloved art. Harry Musgrave was again, after long
separation, his comrade in London. He said that he was very fond of
Harry.
"He is my constant Sunday afternoon visitor," he told Bessie. "My
painting-room looks to the river, and he enjoys the sunshine and the
boats on the water. His own chambers are one degree less dismal than
looking down a well."
"He works very hard, does he not?--Harry used to be a prodigious
worker," said Bessie.
"Yes, he throws himself heart and soul into whatever he undertakes,
whether it be work or pleasure. If he had won that fellowship the other
day I should have been glad. It would have made him easier."
"I did not know he was trying for one. How sorry I am! It must be very
dull studying law."
"He lightens that by writing articles for some paper--reviews of books
chiefly. There are five years to be got through before he can be called
to the bar--a long probation for a young fellow in his circumstances."
"Oh, Harry Musgrave was never impatient: he could always wait. I am
pleased that he has taken to his pen. And what a resource you must be to
each other in London, if only to tell your difficulties and
disappointments!"
"Oh yes, I am in all Musgrave's secrets, and he in mine," said Christie.
"A bachelor in chambers has not a superfluity of wants; he is short of
money now and then, but that is very much the case with all of us."
Bessie laughed carelessly. "Poor Harry!" said she, and recollected the
tragical and pathetic stories of the poets that they used to discuss,
and of which they used to think so differently. She did not reflect how
much temptation was implied in the words that told her Harry was short
of money now and then. A degree of hardship to begin with was nothing
more than all her heroes had encountered, and their biography had
commonly succeeded in showing that they were the better for it--unless,
indeed, they were so unlucky as to die of it--but Harry had far too much
force of character ever to suffer himself to be beaten; in all her
visions he was brave, steadfast, persistent, and triumphant. She said so
to Mr. Christie, adding that they had been like brother and sister when
they were children, and she felt as if she had a right to be interested
in whatever concerned him. Mr. Christie looked on the carpet and said,
"Yes, yes," he remembered what friends and comrades they were--almost
inseparable; and he had heard Harry say, not so very long ago, that he
wished Miss Fairfax was still at hand when his spirits flagged, for she
used to hearten him more than anybody else ever did. Bessie was too much
gratified by this reminiscence to think of asking what the
discouragements were that caused Harry to wish for her.
The next day Mrs. Chiverton's portrait was begun, and the artist was as
happy as the day was long. His temper was excellent unless he were
interrupted at his work, and this Mr. Chiverton took care should not
happen when he was at home. But one morning in his absence Mr. Gifford
called on business, and was so obstinate to take no denial that Mrs.
Chiverton permitted him to come and speak with her in the
picture-gallery, where she was giving the artist a sitting. Bessie
Fairfax, who had the tact never to be in the way, was there also,
turning over his portfolio of sketches (some sketches on the beach at
Yarmouth greatly interested her), but she looked up with curiosity when
the visitor entered, for she knew his reputation.
He was a fat man of middle age, with a thin voice and jerky manner. "I
had Forbes yesterday, Mrs. Chiverton, to speak to me in your name," he
announced. "Do you know him for the officious fellow he is, for ever
meddling in other people's matters? For ten years he has pestered me
about Morte, which is no concern of mine."
"I beg your pardon, Mr. Gifford, it is very much your concern," Mrs.
Chiverton said with calm deliberation. "Eleven laborers, employed by
farmers on your estate, representing with their families over thirty
souls, live in hovels at Morte owned by you or your agent Blagg. They
are unfit for human habitation. Mr. Chiverton has given orders for the
erection of groups of cottages sufficient to house the men employed on
our farms, and they will be removed to them in the spring. But Mr.
Fairfax and other gentlemen who also own land in the bad neighborhood of
Morte object to the hovels our men vacate being left as a harbor for the
ragamuffinery of the district. They require to have them cleared away;
most of these, again, are in Blagg's hands."
"The remedy is obvious: those gentlemen do not desire to be munificent
at Blagg's expense--let them purchase his property. No doubt he has his
price."
"Yes, Mr. Gifford, but a most extortionate price. And it is said he
cannot sell without your consent."
Mr. Gifford grew very red, and with stammering elocution repelled the
implication: "Blagg wants nobody's consent but his own. The fact is, the
tenements pay better to keep than they would pay to sell; naturally, he
prefers to keep them."
"But if you would follow Mr. Chiverton's example, and let the whole
place be cleared of its more respectable inhabitants at one blow, he
would lose that inducement."
Mr. Gifford laughed, amazed at this suggestion--so like a woman, as he
afterwards said. "Blagg has served me many years--I have the highest
respect for him. I cannot see that I am called on to conspire against
his interests."
Mrs. Chiverton's countenance had lost its serenity, and would not soon
recover it, but Bessie Fairfax could hardly believe her ears when the
artist muttered, "Somebody take that chattering fool away;" and up he
jumped, cast down his palette, and rushed out of the gallery. Mrs.
Chiverton looked after him and whispered to Bessie, "What is it?" "Work
over for the day," whispered Bessie again, controlling an inclination to
laugh. "The temperament of genius disturbed by the intrusion of
unpleasant circumstances." Mrs. Chiverton was sorry; perhaps a walk in
the park would recompose the little man. There he was, tearing over the
grass towards the lake. Then she turned to Mr. Gifford and resumed the
discussion of Morte, with a warning of the terrible responsibility he
incurred by maintaining that nest of vice and fever; but as it was
barren of results it need not be continued.
The next day the painter worked without interruption.