The Vicissitudes of Bessie Fairfax Part 32

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 grat.i.tude 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 G.o.d 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 s.p.a.cious 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 gla.s.s.

"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 pa.s.sed 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 n.o.body 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 circ.u.mstances 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 pa.s.sed 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 n.o.body now, for in his brief commerce with the world he had learnt that genius has a rank of its own to which the n.o.blest 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 circ.u.mstances."