_BESSIE'S LAST RIDE WITH THE DOCTOR._
Mr. Carnegie complained that he had less of his dear Bessie's company
than anybody else by reason of his own busy occupation, and one clear
September morning, when the air was wonderfully fresh and sweet after a
thunderstorm during the night, he asked her to come out for a last ride
with him before Harry Musgrave carried her away. Bessie donned her habit
and hat, and went gladly: the ride would serve as a leavetaking of some
of her friends in the cottages whom otherwise she might miss.
In the village they met Miss Buff, going off to the school to hear the
Bible read and teach the Catechism--works of supererogation under the
new system, which Mr. Wiley had thankfully remitted to her on account
of her popularity with parents and children.
"Your duty to your neighbor and your duty to God and the ten
commandments--nothing else, because of the Dissenters," she explained in
a bustle. "Imagine the vulgarity of an education for the poor from which
the Bible may be omitted! Dreadful! I persuade the children to get
certain of the psalms, proverbs, and parables by heart out of school.
Bless you! they like that; but as for teaching them such abstract
knowledge as what an adverb or an isthmus is, or the height of Mont
Blanc, I defy you! And it is all fudge. Will they sweep a room or make
an apple-dumpling the better for it? Not they. But fix it in their minds
that whatever their hands find to do they must do it with their might,
and there is a chance that they will sweep into the corners and pare the
apples thin. But I have no time to spare, so good-bye, good-bye!"
The general opinion of Beechhurst was with Miss Buff, who was making a
stand upon the ancient ways in opposition to the superior master of Lady
Latimer's selection, whose chief tendency was towards grammar, physical
geography, and advanced arithmetic, which told well in the inspector's
report. Miss Buff was strong also in the matter of needle, work and
knitting--she would even have had the boys knit--but here she had
sustained defeat.
Mr. Carnegie's first visit was to Mrs. Christie, who, since she had
recovered her normal state of health, had resumed her habit of drugging
and complaining. Her son was now at home, and when the doctor and Bessie
rode across the green to the wheelwright's house there was the artist at
work, with a companion under his white umbrella. His companion wore a
maize piqué dress and a crimson sash; a large leghorn hat, garnished
with poppies and wheat-ears, hid her face.
"There is Miss Fairfax herself, Janey," whispered young Christie in an
encouraging tone. "Don't be afraid."
Janey half raised her head and gazed at Bessie with shy, distrustful
eyes. Bessie, quite unconscious, reined in Miss Hoyden under the shadow
of a spreading tree to wait while the doctor paid his visit in-doors.
She perceived that there was a whispering between the two under the
white umbrella, and with a pleasant recognition of the young man she
looked another way. After the lapse of a few minutes he approached her,
an unusual modest suffusion overspreading his pale face, and said, "Miss
Fairfax, there is somebody here you once knew. She is very timid, and
says she dares not claim your remembrance, because you must have thought
she had forgotten you."
Bessie turned her head towards the diffident small personage who was
regarding her from the distance. "Is it Janey Fricker?" she asked with a
pleased, amused light in her face.
"It is Janey Christie." In fact, the artist was now making his
wedding-tour, and Janey was his wife.
"Oh," said Bessie, "then this was why your portfolio was so full of
sketches at Yarmouth. I wish I had known before."
Janey's face was one universal blush as she came forward and looked up
in Miss Fairfax's handsome, beneficent face. There had always been an
indulgent protectiveness in Bessie's manner to the master-mariner's
little daughter, and it came back quite naturally. Janey expected hasty
questions, perhaps reproaches, perhaps coldness, but none of these were
in Bessie's way. She had never felt herself ill used by Janey, and in
the joy of the sudden rencounter did not recollect that she had anything
to forgive. She said how she had lived in the hope of a meeting again
with Janey some day, and what a delightful thing it was to meet thus--to
find that her dear little comrade at school was married to Harry
Musgrave's best friend! Janey had heard from her husband all the story
of Bessie's faithful love, but she was too timid and self-doubting to be
very cordial or responsive. Bessie therefore talked for both--promised
herself a renewal of their early friendship, and expressed an hospitable
wish that Mr. Christie would bring his wife to visit them in Italy next
year when he took his holiday. Christie promised that he would, and
thought Miss Fairfax more than ever good and charming; but Janey was
almost happier when Bessie rode away with Mr. Carnegie and she was
permitted to retire into seclusion again under the white umbrella. The
artist had chosen him a helpmeet who could be very devoted in private
life, but who would never care for his professional honors or public
reputation. Bessie heard afterward that the master-mariner was dead,
and the place in her heart that he had held was now her husband's. With
her own more expansive and affectionate nature she felt a genial warmth
of satisfaction in the meeting, and as she trotted along with the doctor
she told him about Janey at school, and thought herself most fortunate
to have been riding with him that morning.
"For I really fear the little shy creature would never have come near me
had I not fallen in with her where she could not escape," said she.
"Christie has been even less ambitious in his marriage than yourself,
Bessie," was the doctor's reply. "That one-idead little woman may
worship him, but she will be no help. She will not attract friends to
his house, even if she be not jealous of them; and he will have to go
out and leave her at home; and that is a pity, for an artist ought to
live in the world."
"She is docile, but not trustful. Oh, he will tame her, and she will try
to please him," said Bessie cheerfully. "She fancied that I must have
forgotten her, when there was rarely a day that she did not come into my
mind. And she says the same of me, yet neither of us ever wrote or made
any effort to find the other out."
"Let us hope that you have both contracted a more serviceable friendship
in another direction," said the doctor, and Bessie laughed. She was
aware that his estimate of feminine friendship was not exalted.
About half a mile farther, where a byroad turned off towards Fairfield,
the riders came upon a remarkable group in high debate over a
donkey--Lady Latimer, Gampling the tinker, and the rural policeman. My
lady instantly summoned Mr. Carnegie to her succor in the fray, which,
to judge from her countenance and the stolid visage of the emissary of
the law, was obstinate. It appeared that the policeman claimed to arrest
the donkey and convey him to the pound. The dry and hungry beast had
been tethered by his master in the early morning where a hedge and
margin of sward bordered the domain of Admiral Parkins. Uninstructed in
modern law, he broke loose and strayed along the green, cropping here
and there a succulent shoot of thorn or thistle, until, when
approaching repletion, he was surprised by the policeman, reprimanded,
captured, and led ignominiously towards the gaol for vagrant animals--a
donkey that everybody knew.
"He's took the innicent ass into custody, and me he's going to summons
and get fined," Gampling exclaimed, his indignation not abated by the
appearance of another friend upon the scene, for a friend he still
counted the doctor, though he persisted in his refusal to mend his
kettles and pots and pans.
"Is not this an excess of zeal, Cobb?" remonstrated Mr. Carnegie.
"Suppose you let the ass off this time, and consider him warned not to
do it again?"
"Sir, my instructions is not to pass over any infringement of the new
h'act. Straying is to be put down," said Cobb stiffly.
"This here ass have earned his living honest a matter of eight year, and
naught ever laid agen his character afore by high nor low," pleaded
Gampling, growing pathetic as authority grew more stern. "Her ladyship
and the doctor will speak a good word for him, and there's others as
will."
"Afore the bench it may be of vally and go to lowering the fine," said
the invincible exponent of the law; "I ain't nothing to do with that."
"I'll tell you where it is, Cobb," urged Gampling, swelling into anger
again. "This here ass knows more o' nat'ral justice than the whole
boiling o' new h'acts. He'd never be the man to walk into her ladyship's
garden an' eat up her flowerbeds: raason why, he'd get a jolly good
hiding if he did. But he says to hisself, he says, when he sees a nice
bite o' clover or a sow-thistle by the roadside: "This here's what's
left for the poor, the fatherless, and the widder--it ain't much, but
thank God for small mercies!'--an' he falls to. Who's he robbed, I
should like to know?"
"You must ask the admiral that when you come up before the magistrates
on Saturday," rejoined Cobb severely--his professional virtue sustained,
perhaps, by the presence of witnesses.
Gampling besides being an itinerant tinker was also an itinerant
political preacher, and seeing that he could prevail nothing by secular
pleas, he betook himself to his spiritual armory, and in a voice of sour
derision that made Bessie Fairfax cringe asked the doctor if he had yet
received the Devil's Decalogue according to h'act of Parliament and
justices' notices that might be read on every wall?--and he proceeded to
recite it: "Thou shalt remove the old landmarks, and enter into the
fields of the poor. Thou shalt wholly reap the corners of thy fields and
gather the gleanings of thy harvest: thou shalt leave nothing for the
poor and the stranger. If a wayfarer that is a-hungered pluck the ears
of corn and eat, thou shalt hale him before the magistrates, and he
shall be cast into prison. Thou shalt turn away thy face from every poor
man, and if thy brother ask bread of thee, thou shalt give him neither
money nor food."
Mr. Carnegie made a gesture to silence the tinker, for he had thrown
himself into an oratorical attitude, and shouted out the new
commandments at the top of his voice, emphasizing each clause with his
right fist brought down each time more passionately on the palm of his
left hand. But his humor had grown savage, and with his eyes glowing
like hot coals in his blackened visage he went on, his tone rising to a
hoarse, hysteric yell: "Thou shalt oppress the poor, and forbid to teach
the gospel in the schools, lest they learn to cry unto their God, and He
hear them, and they turn again and rend thee."
"What use is there in saying the thing that is not, Gampling?" demanded
Lady Latimer impetuously. "The Bible _is_ read in our schools. And if
you workingmen take advantage of the privileges that you have won, you
ought to be strong enough, both in and out of Parliament, to prevent any
new act being made in violation of the spirit of either law or gospel."
"I can't argy with your ladyship--it would be uncivil to say you talk
bosh," replied the tinker as suddenly despondent as he had been furious.
"I know that every year makes this world worse for poor honest folk to
live in, an' that there's more an' more h'acts to break one's shins
over. Who would ha' thowt as ever my old ass could arn me a fine an'
costs o' a summons by nibbling a mouthful o' green meat on the queen's
highway, God bless her! I've done."
My lady endeavored to make Gampling hear that she would pay his fine
(if fined he were), but he refused to listen, and went off, shaking his
head and bemoaning the hard pass the world was come to.
"It is almost incredible the power of interference that is given to the
police," said Lady Latimer. "That wretched young Burt and his mother
were taken up by Cobb last week and made to walk to Hampton for lying on
the heath asleep in the sun; nothing else--that was their crime.
Fortunately, the magistrates had the humanity to discharge them."
"Poor souls! they are stamped for vagabonds. But young Burt will not
trouble police or magistrates much longer now," said the doctor.
In fact, he had that very morning done with troubling anybody. When Mr.
Carnegie pulled up ten minutes later at the door of a forlorn hovel
which was the present shelter of the once decent widow, he had no need
to dismount. "Ride on, Bessie," he said softly, and Bessie rode on.
Widow Burt came out to speak to the doctor, her lean face scorched to
the color of a brick, her clothing ragged, her hair unkempt, her eyes
wild as the eyes of a hunted animal.
"He's gone, sir," she said, pointing in-doors to where a long,
motionless figure seated in a chair was covered with a ragged patchwork
quilt. The doctor nodded gravely, paused, asked if she were alone.
"Mrs. Wallop sat up with us last night--she's very good, is Mrs.
Wallop--but first thing this morning Bunny came along to fetch her to
his wife, and she'd hardly got out o' sight when poor Tom stretched
hisself like a bairn that's waked up and is going to drop off to sleep
again, an' with one great sigh was dead. Miss Wort comes most mornings:
here she is."
Yes, there was Miss Wort, plunging head foremost through the heather by
way of making a short cut. She saw at a glance what had happened, and
taking both the poor mother's hands in her own, she addressed the doctor
with tears in her eyes and tremulous anger in her voice: "I shall always
say that it is a bad and cruel thing to send boys to prison, or anybody
whose temptation is hunger. How can we tell what we should do ourselves?
We are not wiser than the Bible, and we are taught to pray God lest we
be poor and steal. Tom would never have come to be what he was but for
that dreadful month at Whitchester. Instead of shutting up village-boys
and hurting their health if they have done anything wrong, why can't
they be ordered to wear a fool's cap for a week, going about their
ordinary work? Our eyes would be on them, and they would not have a
chance of picking and stealing again; it would give us a little more
trouble at first, but not in the long run, and save taxes for prisons.
People would say, 'There goes a poor thief,' and they would be sorry for
him, and wonder why he did it; and we ought to look after our own
things. And then, if they turned out incorrigible, they might be shut up
or sent out of the way of temptation. Oh, if those who have the power
were only a little more considerate, and would learn to put themselves
in their place!"
Mr. Carnegie said that Miss Wort's queer suggestion was capable of
development, and there was too much sending of poor and young people to
prison for light offences--offences of ignorance often, for which a
reprimand and compensation would be enough. Bessie had never seen him
more saddened.
Their next and last visit was to Littlemire. Mr. Moxon was in his
garden, working without his coat. He came forward, putting the
threadbare garment on, and begged Miss Fairfax to go up stairs and see
his wife. This was one of her good days, as she called the days when the
aching weariness of her perpetual confinement was a degree abated, and
she welcomed her visitor with a cry of plaintive joy, kissed her, gazed
at her fondly through glittering tears.
Bessie did not know that she had been loved so much. Girl-like, she had
brought her tribute of flowers to the invalid's room, had wondered at
this half-paralyzed life that was surrounded by such an atmosphere of
peace; and when, during her last visit, she had realized what a
compensation for all sorrow was this peace, she had not yet understood
what an ardor of sympathy kept the poor sufferer's heart warm towards
those whose brighter lot had nothing in common with her own.
"Oh, my love," she said in a sweet, thrilling voice, "dear Harry
Musgrave has been to tell me of his happiness. I am so glad for you
both--so very, very glad!" She did not pause to let Bessie respond, but
ran on with her recollections of Harry since he was a boy and came first
to read with her husband. "His thoughtfulness was really quite
beautiful; he never forgot to be kind. Oh, my dear, you may thoroughly
rely on his fine, affectionate temper. Rarely did he come to a lesson
without bringing me some message from his mother and little present in
his hand--a few flowers, a spring chicken, some nice fruit, a partridge.
This queer rustic scaffold for my books and work, Harry constructed it
himself, and I would not exchange it for the most elegant and ingenious
of whatnots. I could do nothing for him but listen to his long thoughts
and aspirations: that was when you were out of hearing, and he could
neither talk nor write to his dear little Bessie."
"It was a great gap, but it did not make us strangers," said Bessie.
"When he went to Oxford he sent us word of his arrival, and how he liked
his college and his tutor--matters that were as interesting to us as if
he had been our own. And when he found how welcome his letters were, he
wrote to Mr. Moxon often, and sent him any report or pamphlet that he
thought might please him; and several times he gave himself the trouble
both at the Bodleian and in London to search for and copy out extracts
from works that Mr. Moxon wanted and had no means of procuring here. You
can have no idea how helpful he has been to my husband in such things.
Poor fellow! what a grief it was to us that term he had to stay away
from Oxford on account of his health! Already we began to fear for the
future, but his buoyant spirit would not anticipate any permanent
hindrance to his progress; and that check did make him more prudent. But
it is not to be; he sees himself cut short of the career where he
planned to be famous; he gives way, however, to neither anger nor
repining. Oh, my love! that I could win you to believe that if you clasp
this cross to your heart, as the gift of Him who cannot err, you will
never feel it a burden!"
Bessie smiled. She did not feel it a burden now, and Harry was not
abandoned to carry its weight alone. She did not speak: she was not apt
at the expression of her religious feelings, but they were sincere as
far as life had taught her. She could have lent her ears for a long
while to Harry Musgrave's praises without growing weary, but the vicar
now appeared, followed by the doctor, talking in a high, cheerful voice
of that discovery he had made of a remarkable mathematical genius in
Littlemire: "A most practical fellow, a wonderful hard head--will turn
out an enterprising engineer, an inventor, perhaps; has the patience of
Job himself, and an infinite genius for taking pains."
Bessie recollected rather pathetically having once heard the sanguine,
good vicar use very similar terms in speaking of her beloved Harry.