Harriet Parr - The Vicissitudes of Bessie Fairfax

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THE VICISSITUDES OF BESSIE FAIRFAX.

A NOVEL.

BY

HOLME LEE

(MISS HARRIET PARR),

AUTHOR OF "SYLVAN HOLT'S DAUGHTER," "KATHIE BRAND," ETC.

"Not what we could wish, but what we must even put up with."

PHILADELPHIA:

PORTER & COATES.

CONTENTS.

CHAP. PAGE

I. HER BIRTH AND PARENTAGE 5
II. THE LAWYER'S LETTER 10
III. THE COMMUNITY OF BEECHHURST 15
IV. A RIDE WITH THE DOCTOR 29
V. GREAT-ASH FORD 37
VI. AGAINST HER INCLINATION 46
VII. HER FATE IS SEALED 59
VIII. BESSIE'S FRIENDS AT BROOK 65
IX. FAREWELL TO THE FOREST 77
X. BESSIE GOES INTO EXILE 80
XI. SCHOOL-DAYS AT CAEN 89
XII. IN COURSE OF TIME 98
XIII. BESSIE LEARNS A FAMILY SECRET 112
XIV. ON BOARD THE "FOAM" 117
XV. A LITTLE CHAPTER BY THE WAY 124
XVI. A LOST OPPORTUNITY 127
XVII. BESSIE'S BRINGING HOME 135
XVIII. THE NEXT MORNING 145
XIX. NEIGHBORS TO ABBOTSMEAD 152
XX. PAST AND PRESENT 160
XXI. A DISCOVERY 170
XXII. PRELIMINARIES 177
XXIII. BESSIE SHOWS CHARACTER 188
XXIV. A QUIET POLICY 194
XXV. A DINNER AT BRENTWOOD 198
XXVI. A MORNING AT BRENTWOOD 209
XXVII. SOME DOUBTS AND FEARS 216
XXVIII. IN MINSTER COURT 223
XXIX. LADY LATIMER IN WOLDSHIRE 228
XXX. MY LADY REVISITS OLD SCENES 235
XXXI. A SUCCESS AND A REPULSE 241
XXXII. A HARD STRUGGLE 254
XXXIII. A VISIT TO CASTLEMOUNT 256
XXXIV. BESSIE'S PEACEMAKING 266
XXXV. ABBOTSMEAD IN SHADOW 273
XXXVI. DIPLOMATIC 282
XXXVII. SUNDAY MORNING AT BEECHHURST 285
XXXVIII. SUNDAY EVENING AT BROOK 294
XXXIX. AT FAIRFIELD 305
XL. ANOTHER RIDE WITH THE DOCTOR 311
XLI. FRIENDS AND ACQUAINTANCES 318
XLII. HOW FRIENDS MAY FALL OUT 323
XLIII. BETWEEN THEMSELVES 328
XLIV. A LONG DULL DAY 336
XLV. THE SQUIRE'S WILL 343
XLVI. TENDER AND TRUE 349
XLVII. GOODNESS PREVAILS 360
XLVIII. CERTAIN OPINIONS 365
XLIX. BESSIE'S LAST RIDE WITH THE DOCTOR 372
L. FOR BETTER, FOR WORSE 381

THE VICISSITUDES OF BESSIE FAIRFAX.

CHAPTER I.

_HER BIRTH AND PARENTAGE._

The years have come and gone at Beechhurst as elsewhere, but the results
of time and change seem to have almost passed it by. Every way out of
the scattered forest-town is still through beautiful forest-roads--roads
that cleave grand avenues, traverse black barren heaths, ford shallow
rivers, and climb over ferny knolls whence the sea is visible. The
church is unrestored, the parsonage is unimproved, the long low house
opposite is still the residence of Mr. Carnegie, the local doctor, and
looks this splendid summer morning precisely as it looked in the
splendid summer mornings long ago, when Bessie Fairfax was a little
girl, and lived there, and was very happy.

Bessie was not akin to the doctor. Her birth and parentage were on this
wise. Her father was Geoffry, the third and youngest son of Mr. Fairfax
of Abbotsmead in Woldshire. Her mother was Elizabeth, only child of the
Reverend Thomas Bulmer, vicar of Kirkham. Their marriage was a
love-match, concluded when they had something less than the experience
of forty years between them. The gentleman had his university debts
besides to begin life with, the lady had nothing. As the shortest way to
a living he went into the Church, and the birth of their daughter was
contemporary with Geoffry's ordination. His father-in-law gave him a
title for orders, and a lodging under his roof, and Mr. Fairfax
grudgingly allowed his son two hundred a year for a maintenance.

The young couple were lively and handsome. They had done a foolish
thing, but their friends agreed to condone their folly. Before very long
a south-country benefice, the rectory of Beechhurst, was put in
Geoffry's way, and he gayly removed with his wife and child to that
desirable home of their own. They were poor, but they were perfectly
contented. Nature is sometimes very kind in making up to people for the
want of fortune by an excellent gift of good spirits and good courage.
She was very kind in this way to Geoffry Fairfax and his wife Elizabeth;
so kind that everybody wondered with great amazement what possessed that
laughing, rosy woman to fall off in health, and die soon after the birth
of a second daughter, who died also, and was buried in the same grave
with her mother.

The rector was a cheerful exemplification of the adage that man is not
made to live alone. He wore the willow just long enough for decency, and
then married again--married another pretty, portionless young woman of
no family worth mentioning. This reiterated indiscretion caused a breach
with his father, and the slender allowance that had been made him was
resumed. But his new wife was good to his little Bessie, and Abbotsmead
was a long way off.

There were no children of this second marriage, which was lucky; for
three years after, the rector himself died, leaving his widow as
desolate as a clergyman's widow, totally unprovided for, can be. She had
never seen any member of her husband's family, and she made no claim on
Mr. Fairfax, who, for his part, acknowledged none. Bessie's near
kinsfolk on her mother's side were all departed this life; there was
nobody who wanted the child, or who would have regarded her in any light
but an incumbrance. The rector's widow therefore kept her unquestioned;
and being a woman of much sense and little pride, she moved no farther
from the rectory than to a cottage-lodging in the town, where she found
some teaching amongst the children of the small gentry, who then, as
now, were its main population.

It was hard work for meagre reward, and perhaps she was not sorry to
exchange her mourning-weeds for bride-clothes again when Mr. Carnegie
asked her; for she was of a dependent, womanly character, and the doctor
was well-to-do and well respected, and ready with all his heart to give
little Bessie a home. The child was young enough when she lost her own
parents to lose all but a reflected memory of them, and cordially to
adopt for a real father and mother those who so cordially adopted her.

Still, she was Bessie Fairfax, and as the doctor's house grew populous
with children of his own, Bessie was curtailed of her indulgences, her
learning, her leisure, and was taught betimes to make herself useful.
And she did it willingly. Her temper was loving and grateful, and Mrs.
Carnegie had her recompense in Bessie's unstinting helpfulness during
the period when her own family was increasing year by year; sometimes at
the rate of one little stranger, and sometimes at the rate of twins. The
doctor received his blessings with a welcome, and a brisk assurance to
his wife that the more they were the merrier. And neither Mrs. Carnegie
nor Bessie presumed to think otherwise; though seven tiny trots under
ten years old were a sore handful; and seven was the number Bessie kept
watch and ward over like a fairy godmother in the doctor's nursery, when
her own life had attained to no more than the discretion and philosophy
of fifteen. The chief of them were boys--boys on the plan of their
worthy father; five boys with excellent lungs and indefatigable stout
legs; and two little girls no whit behind their brothers for voluble
chatter and restless agility. Nobody complained, however. They had their
health--that was one mercy; there was enough in the domestic exchequer
to feed, clothe, and keep them all warm--that was another mercy; and as
for the future, people so busy as the doctor and his wife are forced to
leave that to Providence--which is the greatest mercy of all. For it is
to-morrow's burden breaks the back, never the burden of to-day.

A constant regret with Mrs. Carnegie (when she had a spare moment to
think of it) was her inability, from stress of annually recurring
circumstances, to afford Bessie Fairfax more of an education, and
especially that she was not learning to speak French and play on the
piano. But Bessie felt no want of these polite accomplishments. She had
no accomplished companions to put her to shame for her deficiencies. She
was fond of a book, she could write an unformed, legible hand, and add
up a simple sum. The doctor, not a bad judge, called her a shrewd,
reasonable little lass. She had mother-wit, a warm heart, and a nice
face, as sweet and fresh as a bunch of roses with the dew on them, and
he did not see what she wanted with talking French and playing the
piano; if his wife would believe him, she would go through life quite as
creditably and comfortably without any fashionable foreign airs and
graces. Thus it resulted, partly from want of opportunity, and partly
from want of ambition in herself, that Bessie Fairfax remained a rustic
little maid, without the least tincture of modern accomplishments.
Still, the doctor's wife did not forget that her dear drudge and helpful
right hand was a waif of old gentry, whose restoration the chapter of
accidents might bring about any day. Nor did she suffer Bessie to forget
it, though Bessie was mighty indifferent, and cared as little for her
gentle kindred as they cared for her. And if these gentle kindred had
increased and multiplied according to the common lot, Bessie would
probably never have been remembered by them to any purpose; she might
have married as Mr. Carnegie's daughter, and have led an obscure, happy
life, without vicissitude to the end of it, and have died leaving no
story to tell.

But many things had happened at Abbotsmead since the love-match of
Geoffry Fairfax and Elizabeth Bulmer. When Geoffry married, his brothers
were both single men. The elder, Frederick, took to himself soon after a
wife of rank and fortune; but there was no living issue of the marriage;
and the lady, after a few years of eccentricity, went abroad for her
health--that is, her husband was obliged to place her under restraint.
Her malady was pronounced incurable, though her life might be prolonged.
The second son, Laurence, had distinguished himself at Oxford, and had
become a knight-errant of the Society of Antiquaries. His father said he
would traverse a continent to look at one old stone. He was hardly
persuaded to relinquish his liberty and choose a wife, when the failure
of heirs to Frederick disconcerted the squire's expectations, and, with
the proverbial ill-luck of learned men, he chose badly. His wife, from a
silly, pretty shrew, matured into a most bitter scold; and a blessed man
was he, when, after three years of tribulation, her temper and a strong
fever carried her off. His Xantippe left no child. Mr. Fairfax urged the
obligations of ancient blood, old estate, and a second marriage; but
Laurence had suffered conjugal felicity enough, and would no more of it.
It was now that the squire first bethought himself seriously of his son
Geoffry's daughter. He proposed to bring her home to Abbotsmead, and to
marry her in due time to some poor young gentleman of good family, who
would take her name, and give the house of Fairfax a new lease, as had
been done thrice before in its long descent, by means of an heiress. The
poor young man who might be so obliging was even named. Frederick and
Laurence gave consent to whatever promised to mitigate their father's
disappointment in themselves, and the business was put into the hands of
their man of law, John Short of Norminster, than whom no man in that
venerable city was more respected for sagacity and integrity.

If Mr. Fairfax had listened to John Short in times past, he would not
have needed his help now. John Short had urged the propriety of
recalling Bessie from Beechhurst when her father died; but no good
grandmother or wise aunt survived at Kirkham to insist upon it, and the
thing was not done. The man of law did not, however, revert to what was
past remedy, but gave his mind to considering how his client might be
extricated from his existing dilemma with least pain and offence. Mr.
Fairfax had a legal right to the custody of his young kinswoman, but he
had not the conscience to plead his legal right against the long-allowed
use and custom of her friends. If they were reluctant to let her go, and
she were reluctant to come, what then? John Short confessed that Mr.
Carnegie and Bessie herself might give them trouble if they were so
disposed; but he had a reasonable expectation that they would view the
matter through the medium of common sense.

Thus much by way of prelude to the story of Bessie Fairfax's
Vicissitudes, which date from this momentous era of her life.

CHAPTER II.

_THE LAWYER'S LETTER._

"The postman! Run, Jack, and bring the letter."

_The letter_, said Mr. Carnegie; for the correspondence between the
doctor's house and the world outside it was limited. Jack jumped off his
chair at the breakfast-table and rushed to do his father's bidding.

"For mother!" cried he, returning at the speed of a small whirlwind, the
epistle held aloft. Down he clapped it on the table by her plate,
mounted into his chair again, and resumed the interrupted business of
the hour.

Mrs. Carnegie glanced aside at the letter, read the post-mark, and
reflected aloud: "Norminster--who can be writing to us from Norminster?
Some of Bessie's people?"

"The shortest way would be to open the letter and see. Hand it over to
me," said the doctor.

Bessie pricked her ears; but Mr. Carnegie read the letter to himself,
while his wife was busy replenishing the little mugs that came up in
single file incessantly for more milk. A momentary pause in the wants of
her offspring gave her leisure to notice her husband's visage--a
dusk-red and weather-brown visage at its best, but gathered now into
extraordinary blackness. She looked, but did not speak; the doctor was
the first to speak.

"It is about Bessie--from her grandfather's agent," said he with
suppressed vexation as he replaced the large full sheet in its envelope.

"What about _me_?" cried Bessie in an explosion of natural curiosity.

"Your mother will tell you presently. Mind, boys, you are good to-day,
and don't tire your sister."

So unusual an admonition made the boys stare, and everybody was hushed
with a presentiment of something going to happen that nobody would
approve. Mrs. Carnegie had her conjectures, not far wide of the truth,
and Bessie was conscious of impatience to get the children out of the
way, that she might have her curiosity appeased.

The doctor discerned the insurrection of self in her face, and said,
almost bitterly, "Wait till I am gone, Bessie; you will have all the
rest of your life to think of it. Now, boys, you have done eating; be
off, and get ready for school."

Jack and the rest cleared out of the parlor and pattered up stairs,
Bessie following close on their heels, purposely deaf to her mother's
voice: "You may stay, love." She was hurt and perturbed. An idea of what
was impending had flashed into her mind. After all, her abrupt exit was
convenient to her elders; they could discuss the circumstances more
freely in her absence. Mrs. Carnegie began.

"Well, Thomas, what does this wonderful letter say? I think I can
guess--Bessie is to go home?"

"Home! What place can be home to her if this is not?" rejoined the
doctor, and strode across the room to shut the door on his retreating
progeny, while his wife entered on the perusal of the letter.

It was from Mr. John Short, on the business that we wot of. To Mr.
Carnegie it read like a cool intimation that Bessie Fairfax was
wanted--was become of importance at Abbotsmead, and must break with her
present associations. It would have been impossible to convey in
palatable words the requisition that the lawyer was put upon making; but
to Mrs. Carnegie the demand did not sound harsh, nor the manner of it
insolent. She had always kept her mind in a state of preparedness for
some such change, and the only sense of annoyance that smote her was for
her own shortcomings--for how she had suffered Bessie to be almost a
servant to her own children, and how she could neither speak French nor
play on the piano.

The doctor pooh-poohed her remorse. "You have done the best for her you
could, Jane. What right has her grandfather to expect anything? He left
her on your hands without a penny."

"Bessie has been worth more than she costs, if that were the way to look
at it. But she will have to leave us now; she will have to go."

"Yes, she will have to go. But the old gentleman shall never deny our
share in her."

"The future will rest with Bessie herself."

"And she has a good heart and a will of her own. She will be a woman
with brains, whether she can play on the piano or not. Don't fret
yourself, Jane, for any fancied neglect of Bessie."

"I am sadly grieved for her, Thomas; she will be sent to school, and
what a life she will lead, dear child, so backward in her learning!"

"Nonsense! She is a bit of very good company. Wherever Bessie goes she
will hold her own. She has plenty of character, and, take my word for
it, character tells more in the long-run than talking French. There is
the gig at the gate, and I must be off, though Bessie was starting for
Woldshire by the next post. The letter is not one to be answered on the
spur of the moment; acknowledge it, and say that it shall be answered
shortly."

With a comfortable kiss the doctor bade his wife good-bye for the day,
admonishing her not to fall a-crying with Bessie over what could not be
remedied. And so he left her with the tears in her eyes already. She sat
a few minutes feeling rather than reflecting, then with the lawyer's
letter in her hands went up stairs, calling softly as she went, "Bessie
dear, where are you?"

"Here, mother, in my own room;" and Bessie appeared in the doorway
handling a scarlet feather-brush with which she was accustomed to dust
her small property in books and ornaments each morning after the
housemaid had performed her heavier task.

Mrs. Carnegie entered with her, and shut the door; for the two-leaved
lattice was wide open, and the muslin curtains were blowing half across
the tiny triangular nook under the thatch, which had been Bessie
Fairfax's "own room" ever since she came to live in the doctor's house.
Bessie was very fond of it, very proud of keeping it neat. There were
assembled all the personal memorials of no moneysworth that had been
rescued from the rectory-sale after her father's death; two miniatures,
not valuable as works of art, but precious as likenesses of her parents;
a faint sketch in water-colors of Kirkham Church and Parsonage House,
and another sketch of Abbotsmead; an Indian work-box, a China bowl, two
jars and a dish, very antiquated, and diffusing a soft perfume of
roses; and about a hundred and fifty volumes of books, selected by his
widow from the rectory library, for their binding rather than their
contents, and perhaps not very suitable for a girl's collection. But
Bessie set great store by them; and though the ancient Fathers of the
Church accumulated dust on their upper shelves, and the sages of Greece
and Rome were truly sealed books to her, she could have given a fair
account of her Shakespeare and of the Aldine Poets to a judicious
catechist, and of many another book with a story besides; even of her
Hume, Gibbon, Goldsmith, and Rollin, and of her Scott, perennially
delightful. She was, in fact, no dunce, though she had not been
disciplined in the conventional routine of education; and as for
training in the higher sense, she could not have grown into a more
upright or good girl under any guidance, than under that of her tender
and careful mother.

And in appearance what was she like, this Bessie Fairfax, subjected so
early to the caprices of fortune? It is not to be pretended that she
reached the heroic standard. Mr. Carnegie said she bade fair to be very
handsome, but she was at the angular age when the framework of a girl's
bones might stand almost as well for a boy's, and there was, indeed,
something brusque, frank, and boyish in Bessie's air and aspect at this
date. She walked well, danced well, rode well--looked to the manner born
when mounted on the little bay mare, which carried the doctor on his
second journeys of a day, and occasionally carried Bessie in his company
when he was going on a round, where, at certain points, rest and
refreshment were to be had for man and beast. Her figure had not the
promise of majestic height, but it was perfectly proportioned, and her
face was a capital letter of introduction. Feature by feature, it was,
perhaps, not classical, but never was a girl nicer looking taken
altogether; the firm sweetness of her mouth, the clear candor of her
blue eyes, the fair breadth of her forehead, from which her light
golden-threaded hair stood off in a wavy halo, and the downy peach of
her round cheeks made up a most kissable, agreeable face. And there were
sense and courage in it as well as sweetness; qualities which in her
peculiar circumstances would not be liable to rust for want of using.

The mistiness of tears clouded Bessie's eyes when her mother, without
preamble, announced the purport of the letter in her hand.

"It has come at last, Bessie, the recall that I have kept you in mind
was sure to come sooner or later; not that we shall be any the less
grieved to lose you, dear. Father will miss his clever little Bessie
sadly,"--here the kind mother paused for emotion, and Bessie, athirst to
know all, asked if she might read the letter.

The letter was not written for her reading, and Mrs. Carnegie hesitated;
but Bessie's promptitude overruled her doubt in a manner not unusual
with them. She took possession of the document, and sat down in the deep
window-seat to study it; and she had read but a little way when there
appeared signs in her face that it did not please her. Her mother knew
these signs well; the stubborn set of the lips, the resolute depression
of the level brows, much darker than her hair, the angry sparkle of her
eyes, which never did sparkle but when her temper was ready to flash out
in impetuous speech. Mrs. Carnegie spoke to forewarn her against rash
declarations.

"It is of no use to say you _won't_, Bessie, for you _must_. Your father
said, before he went out, that we have no choice but to let you go."

Bessie did not condescend to any rejoinder yet. She was reading over
again some passage of the letter by which she felt herself peculiarly
affronted. She continued to the end of it, and it was perhaps lucky that
her tenderness had then so far prevailed over her wrath that she could
only give way to tears of self-pity, instead of voice to the defiant
words that had trembled on her tongue a minute ago.

"I did hope, dear, that you would not take it so much to heart," said
her mother, comforting her. "But it is mortifying to think of being sent
to school. What a pity we have let time go on till you are fifteen, and
can neither speak a word of French nor play a note on the piano!"

Bessie had so often heard Mr. Carnegie's opinion of these
accomplishments that her mother's regrets wore a comic aspect to her
mind, and between laughing and crying she protested that she did not
care, she should not try to improve to please _them_--meaning her
Woldshire kinsfolk mentioned in the lawyer's letter.

"You have good common-sense, Bessie, and I am sure you will use it,"
said her mother with persuasive gravity. "If you show off with your
tempers, that will give a color to their notion that you have been badly
brought up. You must do us and yourself what credit you can, going
amongst strangers. I am not afraid for you, unless you set up your
little back, and determine to be downright naughty and perverse."

Bessie's countenance was not promising as she gave ear to these
premonitions. Her upper lip was short, and her nether lip pressed
against it with a scorny indignation. Her back was very much up, indeed,
in the moral sense indicated by her mother, and as these inauspicious
moods of hers were apt to last the longer the longer they were reasoned
with, her mother prudently refrained from further disquisition. She bade
her go about her ordinary business as if nothing had happened, and
Bessie did go about these duties with a quiet practical obedience to law
and order which bore out the testimony to her good common-sense. She
thought of Mr. John Short's letter, it is true, and once she stood for a
minute considering the sketch of Abbotsmead which hung above her chest
of drawers. "Gloomy dull old place," was her criticism on it; but even
as she looked, there ensued the reflection that the sun _must_ shine
upon it sometimes, though the artist had drawn it as destitute of light
and shade as the famous portrait of Queen Elizabeth, when she wished to
be painted fair, and was painted merely insipid.

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