Back Aa

Vicissitudes of Bessie Fairfax

<h3>CHAPTER XII.</h3> <h3>IN COURSE OF TIME.</h3> For days, weeks, months the memory of lost Janey Fricker haunted Bessie Fairfax with a sweet melancholy. She missed her little friend exceedingly. She did not doubt that Janey would write, would return, and even a year of silence and absence did not cure her of regret and expectation. She was of a constant as well as a faithful nature, and had a thousand kind pleas and excuses for those she loved. It was impossible to believe that Janey had forgotten her, but Janey made no sign of remembrance. Time and change! Time and change! How fast they get over the ground! how light the traces they leave behind them! At the next Christmas recess there was a great exodus of English girls. The Miss Hiloes went, and they had no successors. When Bessie wanted to talk of Janey and old days, she had to betake herself to Miss Foster. There was nobody else left who remembered Janey or her own coming to school. As the time went on letters from Beechhurst were fewer and farther between; letters from Brook she had none, nor any mention of Harry Musgrave in her mother's. Her grandfather desired to wean her from early associations, and a mixture of pride and right feeling kept the Carnegies from whatever could be misconstrued into a wish to thwart him. No one came to see her from the Forest after that rash escapade of Harry Musgrave's. Her eighteenth birthday passed, and she was still kept at school both in school-time and holidays. Madame Fournier, the genial canon, the kind curé, a few English acquaintances at Caen, a few French acquaintances at Bayeux, were very good to her. Especially she liked her visits to the canon's house in summer. Often, as the long vacation of her third year at Caen approached, she caught herself musing on the probability of her recall to England with a reluctancy full of doubts and fears. She had been so long away that she felt half forgotten, and when madame announced that once more she was to spend the autumn under her protection, she heard it without remonstrance, and, for the moment, with something like relief. But afterward, when the house was silent and the girls were all gone, the unbidden tears rose often to her eyes, and the yearning of home-sickness came upon her as strongly as in the early days of her exile. Bayeux is a triste little city, and in hot weather a perfect sun-trap between its two hills. The river runs softly hidden amongst willows, and the dust rises in light clouds with scarce a breath of air. Yet glimpses of cool beautiful green within gates and over stone walls refresh the eyes; vines drape the placid rustic nook that calls itself the library; every other window in the streets is a garland or a posy, and through the doors ajar show vistas of oleanders, magnolias, pomegranates flowering in olive-wood tubs, and making sweet lanes and hedges across tiled courts to the pleasant gloom of the old houses. Canon Fournier's house was in the neighborhood of the cathedral, and as secluded, green, and garlanded as any. Oftentimes in the day his man Launcelot watered the court-yard in agreeable zigzags. Bessie Fairfax, when she heard the cool tinkle of the shower upon the stones, always looked out to share the refreshment. The canon's salon was a double room with a portière between. Two windows gave upon the court and two upon a shaded, paved terrace, from which a broad flight of steps descended to the garden. The domain of the canon's housekeeper was at one end of this terrace, and there old Babette sat in the cool shelling peas, shredding beans, and issuing orders to Margot in the sultry atmosphere of the kitchen stove. Bessie, alone in the salon one August morning, heard the shrill monotone of her voice in the pauses of a day-dream. She had dropped her book because, try as she would to hold her attention to the story, her thoughts lost themselves continually, and were found again at every turning of the page astray somewhere about the Forest—about home. "It is very strange! I cannot help thinking of them. I wonder whether anything is happening?" she said, and yielded to the subtle influence. She began to walk to and fro the salon. She went over in her mind many scenes; she recollected incidents so trivial that they had been long ago forgotten—how Willie had broken the wooden leg of little Polly's new Dutch doll (for surgical practice), and how Polly had raised the whole house with her lamentations. And then she fell to reckoning how old the boys would be now and how big, until suddenly she caught herself laughing through tears at that cruel pang of her own when, after submitting to be the victim of Harry Musgrave's electrical experiments, he had neglected to reward her with the anticipated kiss. "I wonder whether he remembers?—girls remember such silly things." In this fancy she stood still, her bright face addressed towards the court. Through the trees over the wall appeared the gray dome of the cathedral. Launcelot came sauntering and waving his watering-can. The stout figure of the canon issued from the doorway of a small pavilion which he called his omnibus, passed along under the shadow of the wall, and out into the glowing sun. Madame entered the salon, her light quick steps ringing on the parquet, her holiday voice clear as a carol, her holiday figure gay as a showy-plumaged bird. "Ma chérie, tu n'es pas sortie? tu ne fais rien?" Bessie awoke from her reverie, and confessed that she was idle this morning, very idle and uncomfortably restless: it was the heat, she thought, and she breathed a vast sigh. Madame invited her to do something by way of relief to her ennui, and after a brief considering fit she said she would go into the cathedral, where it was the coolest, and take her sketching-block. Oh, for the moist glades of the Forest, for the soft turf under foot and the thick verdure overhead! Bessie longed for them with all her heart as she passed upon the sun-baked stones to the great door of the cathedral. The dusk of its vaulted roof was not cool and sweet like the arching of green branches, but chill with damp odors of antiquity. She sat down in one of the arcades near the portal above the steps that descend into the nave. The immense edifice seemed quite empty. The perpetual lamp burned before the altar, and wandering echoes thrilled in the upper galleries. Through a low-browed open door streamed across the aisle a flood of sunshine, and there was the sound of chisel and mallet from the same quarter, the stone-yard of the cathedral; but there was no visible worshipper—nothing to interrupt her mood of reverie. For a long while, that is. Presently chimed in with the music of chisel and mallet the ring of eager young footsteps outside, young men's footsteps, voices and dear English speech. One was freely translating from his guide-book: "The cathedral, many times destroyed, was rebuilt after the fire of 1106, and not completed until the eighteenth century. It is therefore of several styles. The length is one hundred and two mètres and the height twenty-three mètres from floor to vault." Bessie's breath came and went very fast; so did the blood in her cheeks. Surely that voice she knew. It was Harry Musgrave's voice, and this was why thoughts of the Forest had haunted her all the morning. The owner of the voice entered, and it was Harry Musgrave—he and two others, all with the fresh air of British tourists not long started on their tour, knapsack on back and walking-stick in hand. They pulled off their gray wideawakes and stared about, lowering their manly tones as they talked; stood a few minutes considering the length, breadth, height, and beauty of general effect in the nave and the choir, and then descended the steps, and in the true national spirit of inquiry walked straight to the stream of sunshine that revealed a door opening into some place unseen. Bessie, sitting in retired shade, escaped their observation. She laughed to herself with an inexpressible gladness. It was certainly not by accident that Harry was here. She would have liked to slip along the aisle in his shadow, to have called him by his name, but the presence of his two unknown companions, and some diffidence in herself, restrained her until the opportunity was gone, and he disappeared, inveigled by the sacristan into making the regular tour of the building. She knew every word he would hear, every antiquity he would admire. She saw him in the choir turning over the splendid manuscript books of Holy Writ and of the Mass which were in use in the church when the kings of England were still dukes of Normandy; saw him carried off into the crypt where is shown the pyx of those long-ago times, a curious specimen of mediæval work in brass; and after that she lost him. Would they climb the dome, those enterprising young men? Bessie took it for granted that they would. But she must see dear Harry again; and oh for a word with him! Perhaps he would seek her out—he might have learnt from her mother where she was at Bayeux—or perhaps he would not dare? Not that Harry's character had ever lacked daring where his wishes were concerned; still, recollecting the trouble that had come of his former unauthorized visit, he might deny himself for her sake. It was not probable, and Bessie would not have bidden him deny himself; she would willingly go through the same trouble again for the same treat. Why had she not taken courage to arrest his progress? How foolish, how heartless it would appear to-morrow if the chance were not renewed to her to-day! She would not have done so silly a thing three years ago—her impulse to follow him, to call out his name, would have been irresistible—but now she felt shy of him. A plague on her shyness! Bessie's little temper had the better of her for a minute or two. She was very angry with herself, would never forgive herself, she said, if by her own trivial fault she had thrown away this favor of kind Fortune. What must she do, what could she do, to retrieve her blunder? Where seek for him? How find him? She quivered, grew hot and cold again with excitement. Should she go to the Green Square?—he was sure to visit that quarter. Then she remembered a high window in the canon's house that commanded the open spaces round the cathedral; she would go and watch from that high window. It was a long while before she arrived at this determination; she waited to see if the strangers would return to the beautiful chapter-house, to admire its fine tesselated floor and carved stalls, and its chief treasure in the exquisite ivory crucifix of the unfortunately famous princess De Lamballe; but they did not return, and then she hastened home, lest she should be too late. Launcelot was plying his water-can for the sixth time that morning when she entered the court, and she stood in an angle of shadow to feel the air of the light shower. "Here she is, and just the same as ever!" exclaimed somebody at the salon window. Bessie was startled into a cry of joy. It was Harry Musgrave himself. Madame Fournier had been honored with his society for quite half an hour while his little friend was loitering and longing pensively in the cathedral. All that lost, precious time! Bessie never recollected how they met, or what they said to each other in the first moments, but Babette, who witnessed the meeting through the glass door at the end of the hall which opened on the terrace, had a firm belief ever afterward that the English ladies and gentlemen embrace with a kiss after absence—a sign whether of simplicity or freedom of manners, she could not decide; so she wisely kept her witness to herself, being a sage person and of discreet experiences. They returned into the salon together. It was full of the perfume of roses, of the wavering shadow of leaves on the floor and walls and ceiling. It looked bright and pretty, and madame, with suave benignity, explained: "I told Mr. Musgrave that it was better to wait here, and not play hide-and-seek; Bessie was sure to come soon." "I saw you in the cathedral, Harry; you passed close by me. It was so difficult not to cry out!" "You saw me in the cathedral, and did not run up to me? Oh, Bessie!" "There were two other gentlemen with you." Bessie, though conscious of her wickedness, saw no harm in extenuating it. "If there had been twenty, what matter? Would I have let you pass me? If I had not found courage to seek you here—and it required some courage, and some perseverance, too—why, I should have missed you altogether." Bessie laughed: here were they sparring as if they had parted no longer ago than yesterday! Then she blushed, and all at once they came to themselves, and began to be graver and more restrained. "My friends are Fordyce and Craik; they have gone to study the Tapestry. I said I would look in at it later with you, Bessie: I counted on you for my guide," announced Harry with native assurance. Bessie launched a supplicatory glance at madame, then hazarded a doubtful consent, which did not provoke a denial. After that they moved to the garden-end of the salon, and seated themselves in friendly proximity. Then Bessie asked to be told all about them at home. All about them was not a long story. The doctor's family had not arrived at the era of dispersion and changes; the three years that had been so long, full, and important to Bessie had passed in his house like three monotonous days. The same at Brook. "The fathers and mothers, yours and mine, are not an hour altered," Harry Musgrave said. "The boys are grown. Jack is a sturdy little ruffian, as you might expect; no boy in the Forest runs through so many clothes as Jack—that's the complaint. There is a talk of sending him to sea, and he is deep in Marryat's novels for preparation." "Poor Jack, he was a sad Pickle, but so affectionate! And Willie and the others?" queried Bessie rather mournfully. Concerning Willie and the others there was a favorable account. Of all Bessie's old friends and acquaintances not one was lost, not one had gone away. But talk of them was only preliminary to more interesting talk of themselves, modestly deferred, but well lingered over once it was begun. Harry Musgrave could not tell Bessie too much—he could not explain with too exact a precision the system of college-life, its delights and drawbacks. He had been very successful; he had won many prizes, and anticipated the distinction of a high degree—all at the cost of work. One term he had not gone up to Oxford. The doctor had ordered him to rest. "Still, you are not quite killed with study," said Bessie gayly, rallying him. She thought the school-life of girls was as laborious as the college-life of young men, with much fewer alleviations. "That was never my way. I can make a spurt if need be. But it is safer to keep a steady, even pace." "And what are you going to do for a profession, Harry? Have you made up your mind yet?" Harry had made up his mind to win a fellowship at Oxford, and then to enter himself at one of the Inns of Court and read for the bar. For physic and divinity he had no taste, but the law would suit him. Bessie was ineffably depressed by this information: what romance is there in the law for the imagination of eighteen? If Harry had said he was going to throw himself on the world as a poor author, she would have bestowed upon him a fund of interest and sympathy. To win a little of such encouragement Harry added that while waiting for briefs he might be forced to betake himself to the cultivation of light literature, of journalism, or even of parliamentary reporting: many men, now of mark, had done so. Then Bessie was better satisfied. "But oh what a prodigious wig you will want!" was her rueful conclusion. "Have I such a Goliath head?" Harry inquired, rubbing his large hands through his crisp, abundant locks. They were as much all in a fuzz as ever, but his skin was not so gloriously tanned, and his hands were white instead of umber. Bessie noticed them: they were whiter and more delicate than her own. Harry Musgrave had no conceit, but plenty of confidence, and he knew that his head was a very good head. It had room for plenty of brains, and Harry was of opinion that it is far more desirable to be born with a fortune in brains than with the proverbial silver spoon in one's mouth. He would have laughed to scorn the vulgar notion that to be born in the purple or in a wilderness of money-bags is more than an equivalent, and would have bid you see the little value God sets on riches by observing the people to whom He gives them. Birth, he would have granted, ensures a man a long step at starting, but unless he have brains his rival without ancestors will pass him in the race for distinction. This was young Musgrave's creed at three-and-twenty. He expounded it to Bessie, who heard him with a puzzled perception of something left out. Harry, like many another man at the beginning of life, reckoned without the unforeseen. The sum of Bessie's experiences, adventures, opinions was not long. Her mind had not matured at school as it would have done in the practical education of home. She had acquired a graceful carriage and propriety of behavior, and she had learned a little more history, with a few dates and other things that are written in books; but of current literature and current events, great or small, she had learned nothing. For seclusion a French school is like a convent. She had a sense of humor and a sense of justice—qualities not too common in the sex; and she had a few liberal notions, the seed of which had been sown during her rides with the doctor. They would probably outlive her memory for the shadowy regions of chronology. Then she had a clear and strong sentiment with regard to the oppressive manner in which her grandfather had exercised his right and power over her, which gave a tincture to her social views not the most amiable. She was confessedly happier with Madame Fournier at Bayeux than she had any anticipation of being at Abbotsmead, but she had nevertheless a feeling of injury in being kept in a state of pupilage. She had wrought up her mind to expect a recall to England when she was eighteen, and no recall had come. Harry Musgrave's inquiry when she was to leave school brought a blush to her face. She was ashamed to answer that she did not know. "Lady Latimer should interfere for you," suggested Harry, who had not received a lively impression of her lot. Bessie's countenance cleared with a flash, and her thoughts were instantly diverted to Fairfield and its gracious mistress—that bright particular star of her childish imagination: "Oh, Harry, have you made friends with Lady Latimer?" asked she. "I have not been to her house, because she has never asked me since that time I despised her commands, but we have a talk when we meet on the road. Her ladyship loves all manner of information, and is good enough to take an interest in my progress. I know she takes an interest in it, because she recollects what I tell her—not like our ascetic parson, who forgets whether I am at Balliol or Oriel, and whether I came out first class or fourth in moderations." "I wish I could meet Lady Latimer on the road or anywhere! Seeing you makes me long to go home, Harry," said Bessie with a sigh. Harry protested that she ought to go home, and promised that he would speak about it—he would go to Fairfield immediately on his return to the Forest, and beg Lady Latimer to intercede in her behalf. Bessie had a doubt whether this was a judicious plan, but she did not say so. The hope of deliverance, once admitted into her mind, overcame all perplexities. A little while and the canon came in glowing hot. "Pouf!" and he wiped his rubicund, round visage with a handkerchief as brilliant. Coming straight from the glare out of doors, he was not aware of the stranger in the salon till his eyes were used to the gloom. Then madame and Bessie effected Harry's introduction, and as Harry, with a rare wisdom, had practised colloquial French, he and the canon were soon acquainted. Once only had the old man visited England, a visit for ever memorable on account of the guinea he had paid for his first dinner in London. "Certainly, they took you for an archbishop or for a monsigneur," said Harry, when the old story of this cruel extortion was recited to him. The canon was pleased. This explanation gave a color of flattery to his infamous wrong. And madame thought her brother had quite l'air noble. Babette summoned them to dejeuner. Harry stayed gladly at a hint of invitation. Across the table the two young people had a full view of each other, and satisfied their eyes with gazing. Bessie looked lovely in her innocent delight, and Harry had now a maturer appreciation of her loveliness. He himself had more of the student aspect, and an air of lassitude, which he ascribed, as he had been instructed, to overstrain in reading for the recent examinations. This was why he had come abroad—the surest way of taking mental rest and refreshment. Incidentally he mentioned that he had given up boating and athletic exercises, under Mr. Carnegie's direction. Bessie only smiled, and reflected that it was odd to hear of Harry Musgrave taking care of himself. One visitor from England on a day would have been enough, but by a curious coincidence, as they sat all at ease, through the open window from the court there sounded another English voice, demanding Madame Fournier and Miss Fairfax. "Who can it be?" said Bessie, and she craned her fair neck to look, while a rosy red suffused her face from chin to brow. The canon and madame laid down their knives and forks to listen, and involuntarily everybody's eyes turned upon Harry. He could not forbear a smile and a glance of intelligence at Bessie; for he had an instant suspicion that this new-comer was an emissary from Mr. Fairfax, and from her agitation so had she. Launcelot held a short, prompt parley at the gate, then Babette intervened, and next was audible the advance of a firm, even step into the hall, and the closing of the salon door. "Encore un beau monsieur pour mademoiselle," announced the housekeeper, and handed in a card inscribed with the name of "Mr. Cecil Burleigh," and a letter of introduction from Mr. Fairfax. Bessie's heart went pit-a-pat while madame read the letter, and Harry feared that he would probably have to find his way to the Tapestry without a guide. Madame's countenance was inscrutable, but she said to Bessie, "Calme-toi, mon enfant," and finished her meal with extreme deliberation. Then with a perfect politeness, and an utter oblivion of the little arrangement for a walk to the library that Harry and Bessie had made, she gave him his congé in the form of a hope that he would never fail to visit her when he found himself at Caen or Bayeux. Harry accepted it with a ready apprehension of the necessity for his dismissal, and without alluding to the Tapestry made his respectful acknowledgments to madame and the canon preparatory to bidding Bessie farewell. Under the awning over the perron they said their good-byes. Bessie, frank-hearted girl, was disappointed even to the glittering of tears. "It has been very pleasant. I am so happy you came!" whispered she with a tremor. "God bless you, dear little Bessie! Give me this for a keepsake," said Harry, and took a white, half-blown rose which she wore in the bosom of her pretty dress of lilac percale. She let him have it. Then they stood for a minute face to face and hand in hand, but the delicate perplexities of Babette, spying through her glass door, were not increased by a kiss at parting. And the young man seemed to rush away at last in sudden haste. "Montes dans ta chambre quelques instants, Bessie," said the voice of madame. And then with a gentle, decorous dignity she entered the salon. When madame entered the salon, Mr. Cecil Burleigh was standing at one of the windows that gave upon the court. He witnessed the departure of Harry Musgrave, and did not fail to recognize an Englishman in the best made of English clothes. The reader will probably recognize him as one of the guests at the Fairfield wedding, who had shown some attention to Bessie Fairfax on her grandfather's introduction of him as a neighbor of his in Woldshire. He was now at Bayeux by leave of Mr. Fairfax, to see the young lady and take the sense of her opinions as to whether she would prefer to remain another year at school, or to go back to England in ten days under his escort. The interval he was on his way to spend in Paris—on a private errand for the government, to a highly honorable member of which he was private secretary. Mr. Fairfax's letter to madame announced in simple terms the object of Mr. Cecil Burleigh's mission to Bayeux, and as the gentleman recited it by word of mouth she grew freezingly formal. To lose Bessie would be a loss that she had been treating as deferred. Certainly, also, the ways of the English are odd! To send the young lady on a two days' journey with this strange gentleman, who was no relative, was impossible. So well brought up as Bessie had been since she came to Caen, she would surely refuse the alternative, and decide to remain at school. Madame replied to the announcement that Miss Fairfax would appear in a few minutes, and would of course speak for herself. But Bessie was in no haste to meet the envoy from Kirkham after parting with her beloved Harry, and when a quarter of an hour had elapsed, and there was still no sign of her coming, Babette was despatched to the top of the house to bring her down to the interview. Mr. Cecil Burleigh had taken a chair opposite the door, and he watched for its reopening with a visible and vivid interest. It opened, and Bessie walked in with that stately erectness of gait which was characteristic of the women of her race. "As upright as a Fairfax," was said of them in more senses than one. She was blushing, and her large dark blue eyes had the softness of recent tears. She curtseyed, school-girl fashion, to her grandfather's envoy, and her graceful proud humility set him instantly at a distance. His programme was to be lordly, affable, tenderly patronizing, but his dark cheek flushed, and self-possessed as he was, both by nature and habit, he was suddenly at a loss how to address this stiff princess about whom he had expected to find some rags of Cophetua still hanging. But the rags were all gone, and the little gypsy of the Forest was become a lady. Madame intervened with needful explanations. Bessie comprehended the gist of the embassage very readily. She must take heart for an immediate encounter with her grandfather and all her other difficulties, or she must resign herself to a fourth year of exile and of school. Her mind was at once made up. Since the morning—how long ago it seemed!—an ardent wish to return to England had begun to glow in her imagination. She wanted her real life to begin. These dull, monotonous school-days were only a prelude which had gone on long enough. Therefore she said, with brief consideration, that her choice would be to return home. "To Kirkham understand, ma chérie, not to Beechhurst," said madame softly, warningly. "To Kirkham, so be it! Sooner or later I must go there," answered Bessie with brave resignation. Mr. Cecil Burleigh was apparently gratified by the young lady's consent, abrupt though it was. But madame's countenance fell. She was deeply disappointed at this issue. Apart from her pecuniary interest in Bessie, which was not inconsiderable, Bessie had become a source of religious concern to influential persons. And there was a favorite nephew of madame's, domiciled in Paris, about whom visionary schemes had been indulged, which now all in a moment vanished. This young nephew was to have come with his mother to Étretât only a week hence, and there the canon and Madame Fournier were to have joined them, with the beautiful English girl committed to their charge. It was now good-bye to all such plots and plans. Bessie perceived from her face that madame was distressed, but she did not know all the reasons why. Madame had been very good to her, and Bessie felt sorry; but to leave school for home was such a natural, inevitable episode in the course of life in the Rue St. Jean that, beyond a momentary regret, she had no compunction. Mr. Cecil Burleigh proceeded to lay open his arrangements. He was on his road to Paris, where he might be detained from ten to fifteen days, but madame should receive a letter from him when the precise time of his return was fixed. After he had spoken to this effect he rose to take leave, and Bessie, blushing as she heard her own voice, originated her first remark, her first question: "My grandfather hardly knows me. Does he expect my arrival at Kirkham with pleasure, or would he rather put it off for another year?" Madame thought she was already wavering in her determination. "I am sure that when I have written to him he will expect your arrival with the greatest pleasure," replied Mr. Cecil Burleigh with kind emphasis, retaining Bessie's hand for a moment longer than was necessary, and relinquishing it with a cordial shake. Bessie's blushes did not abate at the compliment implied in his answer and in his manner: he had been favorably impressed, and would send to Abbotsmead a favorable report of her. When he was gone she all in a moment recollected when and where she had seen him before, and wondered that he had not reminded her of it; but perhaps he had forgotten too? She soon let go that reminiscence, and with a light heart, in anticipation of the future which had appeared in the distance so unpropitious, she talked of it to madame with a thousand random speculations, until madame was tired of the subject. And then she talked of it to Babette, who having no private disappointments in connection therewith, proved patiently and sympathetically responsive. "Of course," said Bessie, "we shall go down the river to Havre, and then we shall cross to Hampton. I shall send them word at home, and some of them are sure to come and meet me there." The letter was written and despatched, and in due course of post arrived an answer from Mr. Carnegie. He would come to Hampton certainly, and his wife would come with him, and perhaps one of the boys: they would come or go anywhere for a sight of their dear Bessie. But, fond, affectionate souls! they were all doomed to disappointment. Mr. Cecil Burleigh wrote earlier than was expected that he had intelligence from Kirkham to the effect that Mr. Frederick Fairfax would be at Havre with his yacht on or about a certain day, that he would come to Caen and himself take charge of his niece, and carry her home by sea—to Scarcliffe understood, for Kirkham was full twenty miles from the coast. "Oh, how sorry I am! how sorry they will be in the Forest!" cried Bessie. "Is there no help for it?" Madame was afraid there was no help for it—nothing for it but submission and obedience. And Bessie wrote to revoke all the cheerful promises and prospects that she had held out to her friends at Beechhurst. <hr /> <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

1 of 2

2 of 2

Update Required To play the media you will need to either update your browser to a recent version or update your Flash plugin.