The Vicissitudes of Bessie Fairfax Part 25

"The old order of things will last my time."

"Changes move fast now-a-days," said Mr. Fairfax. "I should like to see a const.i.tutional remedy provided for the Giffords of the gentry before I depart. We are too near neighbors to be friends, and Morte adjoins my property."

"Gifford was brought up in a bad school--a vaporing fellow, not true to any of his obligations," said Mr. Oliver Smith.

"It is Blagg, his agent, who is responsible," began Mr. Chiverton.

Mr. Oliver Smith interrupted contemptuously: "When a landlord permits an agent to represent him without supervision, and refuses to look into the reiterated complaints of his tenants, he gives us leave to suppose that his agent does him acceptable service."

"I have remonstrated with him myself, but he is cynically indifferent to public opinion," said Mr. Forbes.

"The public opinion that condemns a man and dines with him is not of much account," said Mr. Oliver Smith, with a glance at Mr. Chiverton, the obnoxious Gifford's very good friend.

"Would you have him cut?" demanded Mr. Chiverton. "I grant you that it is a necessary precaution to have his words in black and white if he is to be bound by them--"

"You could not well say worse of a gentleman than that, Chiverton--eh?"

suggested Mr. Fairfax.

There was a minute's silence, and then Mr. Forbes spoke: "I should like our legal appointments to include advocates of the poor, men of integrity whose business it would be to watch over the rights and listen to the grievances of those cla.s.ses who live by laborious work and are helpless to resist powerful wrong. Old truth bears repeating: these are the cla.s.ses who maintain the state of the world--the laborer that holds the plough and whose talk is of bullocks, the carpenter, the smith, and the potter. All these trust to their hands, and are wise in their work, and when oppression comes they must seek to some one of leisure for justice. It is a pitiful thing to hear a poor man plead, 'Sir, what can I do?' when his heart burns with a sense of intolerable wrong, and to feel that the best advice you can give him is that he should bear it patiently."

"I call that too sentimental on your part, Forbes," remonstrated Mr.

Chiverton. "The laborers are quiet yet, and guidable as their own oxen, but look at the trades--striking everywhere. Surely your smiths and carpenters are proving themselves strong enough to protect their own interests."

"Yes, by the combination that we should all deprecate amongst our laborers--only by that. Therefore the wise will be warned in time, for such example is contagious. Many of our people have lain so long in discontent that bitter distrust has come of it, and they are ready to abandon their natural leaders for any leader who promises them more wages and less toil. If the laborers strike, Smith's and Fairfax's will probably stick to their furrows, and Gifford's will turn upon him--yours too, Chiverton, perhaps." Mr. Forbes was very bold.

"G.o.d forbid that we should come to that!" exclaimed Mr. Fairfax devoutly. "We have all something to mend in our ways. Our view of the responsibility that goes with the possession of land has been too narrow. If we could put ourselves in the laborer's place!"

"I shall mend nothing: no John Hodge shall dictate to me," cried Mr.

Chiverton in a sneering fury. "A man has a right to do what he likes with his own, I presume?"

"No, he has not; and especially not when he calls a great territory in land his own," said Mr. Forbes. "That is the false principle out of which the bad practice of some of you arises. A few have never been guided by it--they have acted on the ancient law that the land is the Lord's, and the profit of the land for all--and many more begin to acknowledge that it is a false principle by which it is not safe to be guided any longer. Pushed as far as it will go, the result is Gifford."

"And myself," added Mr. Chiverton in a quieter voice as he rose from his chair. Mr. Forbes looked at him. The old man made no sign of being affronted, and they went together into the drawing-room, where he introduced the clergyman to his wife, saying, "Here, Ada, is a gentleman who will back you in teaching me my duty to my neighbor;" and then he went over to Lady Angleby.

"You are on the side of the poor man, then, Mrs. Chiverton?" said Mr.

Forbes pleasantly. "It is certainly a legitimate sphere of female influence in country neighborhoods."

The stately bride drew her splendid dress aside to make room for him on the ottoman, and replied in a measured voice, "I am. I tell Mr.

Chiverton that he does not satisfy the reasonable expectations of his people. I hope to persuade him to a more liberal policy of management on his immense estates; his revenue from them is very large. It distresses me to be surrounded by a discontented tenantry, as it would do to be waited on by discontented servants. A bad cottage is an eyesore on a rich man's land, and I shall not rest until I get all Chiver-Chase cleared of bad cottages and picturesquely inconvenient old farmsteads.

The people appeal to me already."

Bessie Fairfax had come up while her old school-fellow was gratifying Mr. Forbes's ears with her admirable sentiments. She could not forbear a smile at the candid a.s.sertion of power they implied, and as Mr. Forbes smiled too with a twinkle of amused surprise, Bessie said sportively, "And if Mr. Chiverton is rebellious and won't take them away, then what shall you do?"

Mrs. Chiverton was dumb; perhaps this probability had not occurred to her ruling mind. Mr. Forbes begged to know what Miss Fairfax herself would do under such circ.u.mstances. Bessie considered a minute with her pretty chin in the air, and then said, "I would not wear my diamonds.

Oh, I would find out a way to bring him to reason!"

A delicate color suffused Mrs. Chiverton's face, and she looked proudly at Bessie, standing in her bright freedom before her. Bessie caught her breath; she saw that she had given pain, and was sorry: "You don't care for my nonsense--you remember me at school," she whispered, and laid her hand impulsively on the slim folded hands of the young married lady.

"I remember that you found something to laugh at in almost everything--it is your way," said Mrs. Chiverton coldly, and as her flush subsided she appeared paler than before. She was so evidently hurt by something understood or imagined in Bessie's innocent raillery that Bessie, abashed herself, drew back her hand, and as Mr. Forbes began to speak with becoming seriousness she took the opportunity of gliding away to join Miss Burleigh in the glazed verandah.

It was a dark, warm night, but the moon that was rising above the trees gradually illumined it, and made the garden mysterious with ma.s.ses of shadow, black against the silver light. In the distance rose the ghostly towers of the cathedral. Miss Burleigh feared that the gra.s.s was too wet for them to walk upon it, but they paced the verandah until Mr. Cecil Burleigh found them and the rising hum of conversation in the drawing-room announced the appearance of the other gentlemen. Miss Burleigh then went back to the company, and there was an opportunity for kind words and soft whisperings between the two who were left, if either had been thereto inclined; but Bessie's frank, girlish good-humor made lovers' pretences impossible, and while Mr. Cecil Burleigh felt every hour that he liked her better, he felt it more difficult to imply it in his behavior. Bessie, on her side, fully possessed with the idea that she knew the lady of his love, was fast throwing off all sense of embarra.s.sment in his kindness to herself; while onlookers, predisposed to believe what they wished, interpreted her growing ease as an infallible sign that his progress with her was both swift and sure.

They were still at the gla.s.s door of the verandah when Mrs. Chiverton sought Bessie to bid her good-night. She seemed to have forgotten her recent offence, and said, "You will come and see me, Miss Fairfax, will you not? We ought to be friends here."

"Oh yes," cried Bessie, who, when compunction touched her, was ready to make liberal amends, "I shall be very glad."

Mrs. Chiverton went away satisfied. The other guests not staying in the house soon followed, and when all were gone there was some discussion of the bride amongst those who were left. They were of one consent that she was very handsome and that her jewels were most magnificent.

"But no one envies her, I hope?" said Lady Angleby.

"You do not admire her motive for the marriage? Perhaps you do not believe in it?" said Mr. Cecil Burleigh.

"I quite believe that she does, but I do not commend her example for imitation."

Miss Burleigh, lingering a few minutes in Miss Fairfax's room when they went up stairs, delivered her mind on the matter. "My poor ambition flies low," she said. "I could be content to give love for love, and do my duty in the humblest station G.o.d might call me to, but not for any sake could I go into the house of bondage where no love is. Poor Mrs.

Chiverton!"

Bessie made a very unsentimental reply: "Poor Mrs. Chiverton, indeed!

Oh, but she does not want our pity! That old man is a slave to her, just as the girls were at school. She adores power, and if she is allowed to help and patronize people, she will be perfectly happy in her way.

Everybody does not care, first and last, to love and be loved. I have been so long away from everybody who loves me that I am learning to do without it."

"Oh, my dear, don't fancy that," said Miss Burleigh, and she stroked Bessie's face and kissed her. "Some of us here are longing to love you quite as tenderly as any friends you have in the Forest." And then she bade her good-night and left her to her ruminations.

Miss Burleigh's kiss brought a blush to Bessie's face that was slow to fade even though she was alone. She sat thinking, her hands clasped, her eyes dreamily fixed on the flame of the candle. Some incidents on board the Foam recurred to her mind, and the blush burnt more hotly. Then, with a sigh, she said to herself, "It is pleasant here, everybody is good to me, but I wish I could wake up at Beechhurst to-morrow morning, and have a ride with my father, and mend socks with my mother in the afternoon. There one felt _safe_."

There was a knock at the door, and Mrs. Betts entered, complacent with the flattering things that had been said of her young lady in the steward's room, and willing to repeat them on the smallest encouragement: "Miss Jocund is really cleverer than could have been supposed, miss. Your white silk fits most beautiful," she began.

"I was not conscious of being newly dressed to-night, so her work must be successful," replied Bessie, untying the black velvet round her fair throat. Mrs. Betts took occasion to suggest that a few more ornaments would not be amiss. "I don't care for ornaments--I am fond of my old cross," Bessie said, laying it in the rosy palm of her hand. Then looking up with a melancholy, reflective smile, she said, "All the shining stones in the world would not tempt me to sacrifice my liberty."

Mrs. Chiverton was in her thoughts, and Lady Latimer.

Mrs. Betts had a shrewd discernment, and she was beginning to understand her young lady's character, and to respect it. She had herself a vein of feeling deeper than the surface; she had seen those she loved suffer, and she spoke in reply to Miss Fairfax with heartfelt solemnity: "It is a true thing, miss, and n.o.body has better cause than me to know it, that happiness does not belong to rank and riches. It belongs nowhere for certain, but them that are good have most of it. For let the course of their lives run ever so contrary, they have a peace within, given by One above, that the proud and craving never have. Mr. Frederick's wife--she bears the curse that has been in her family for generations, but she had a pious bringing-up, and, poor lady! though her wits forsook her, her best comfort never did."

"Some day, Mrs. Betts, I shall ask you to tell me her story," Bessie said.

"There is not much to tell, miss. She was the second Miss Lovel (her sister and she were co-heiresses)--not to say a beauty, but a sweet young lady, and there was a true attachment between her and Mr.

Frederick. It was in this very house they met--in this very house he slept after that ball where he asked her to marry him. It is not telling secrets to tell how happy she was. Your grandfather, the old squire, would have been better pleased had it been some other lady, because of what was in the blood, but he did not offer to stop it, and they lived at Abbotsmead after they were married. The house was all new done-up to welcome her; that octagon parlor was her design. She brought Mr.

Frederick a great fortune, and they loved one another dearly, but it did not last long. She had a baby, and lost it, and was never quite herself after. Poor thing! poor thing!"

"And my uncle Laurence's wife," said Bessie, not to dwell on that tragedy of which she knew the issue.

"Oh! Mr. Laurence's wife!" said Mrs. Betts in a quite changed tone. "I never pitied a gentleman more. Folks who don't know ladies fancy they speak and behave pretty always, but that lady would grind her teeth in her rages, and make us fly before her--him too. She would throw whatever was in her reach. She was a deal madder and more dangerous in her fits of pa.s.sion than poor Mrs. Frederick: she, poor dear! had a delusion that she was quite dest.i.tute and dependent on charity, and when she could get out she would go to the cottages and beg a bit of bread. A curious delusion, miss, but it did not distress her, for she called herself one of G.o.d's poor, and was persuaded He would take care of her. But it was very distressing to those she belonged to. Twice she was lost. She wandered away so far once that it was a month and over before we got her back. She was found in Edinburgh. After that Mr. Frederick consented to her being taken care of: he never would before."

"Oh, Mrs. Betts, don't tell me any more, or it will haunt me."

"Life's a sorrowful tale, miss, at best, unless we have love here and a hope beyond."