The Vicissitudes of Bessie Fairfax Part 47

CHAPTER XLVIII.

_CERTAIN OPINIONS_.

The house that Lady Latimer always occupied on her visits to Ryde was away from the town and the pier, amongst the green fields going out towards Binstead. It had a shaded garden down to the sea, and a landing-place of its own when the tide was in. A balcony, looking north, made the narrow drawing-room s.p.a.cious, and my lady and her despatch-box were established in a cool room below, adjoining the dining-parlor. She did not like the pier or the strand, with their shoals of company in the season, and took her drives out on the white roads to Wootton and Newport, Osborne and Cowes, commonly accompanied by some poor friend to whom a drive was an unfrequent pleasure. She never trusted herself to a small boat, and as for the wherry that bore Harry Musgrave and Elizabeth every morning flying before the wind for three delicious hours, she appreciated its boasted safety so slightly that she was always relieved to see them safe back again, whether they landed at the foot of the garden or came through the town. It was beautiful weather, with fine fresh breezes all the week, and Harry looked and felt so much like a new man at the end of it that my lady insisted on his remaining a second week, when they would all return to the Forest together. He had given her the highest satisfaction by so visibly taking the benefit of her hospitality, and had made great way in her private esteem besides.

Amongst her many friends and acquaintances then at Ryde, for every day's dinner she chose one gentleman for the sake of good talk that Mr. Harry Musgrave might not tire, and the breadth and diversity of the young man's knowledge and interests surprised her.

One evening after some especially amusing conversation with a travelled doctor, who was great in the scientific study of botany and beetles, she said to Elizabeth when they were alone, "What a pity! what a grievous pity! There is no position brains and energy can win that Mr. Harry Musgrave might not raise himself to if his health were equal to his mental capacity. And with what dignity and fort.i.tude he bears his condemnation to a desultory, obscure existence! I had no idea there could be so much sweet patience in a man. Do you antic.i.p.ate that it will be always so?"

"Harry is very happy now, and I do not look forward much or far,"

Elizabeth said quietly. "People say men are so different from women, but after all they must be more like women than like anything else. So I try sometimes to put myself in Harry's place, and I know there will be fluctuations--perhaps, even a sense of waste and blankness now and then, and a waking up of regret. But he has no envious littleness of mind and no irritability of temper: when he is feeling ill he will feel low. But our life need not be dull or restricted, and he has naturally a most enjoying humor."

"And he will have you--I think, after all, Elizabeth, you have found your vocation--to love and to serve; a blessed vocation for those called to it, but full of sorrows to those who take it up when the world and pride have disappointed them."

Elizabeth knew that my lady was reflecting on herself. They were both silent for a few minutes, and then Elizabeth went on: "Harry and I have been thinking that a yacht would be an excellent establishment for us to begin with--a yacht that would be fit to coast along France, and could be laid up at Bordeaux while we rest for the winter at Arcachon--or, if we are of a mind to go farther, that would carry us to the Mediterranean. Harry loves a city, and Bologna attracts his present curiosity: I tell him because it was once a famous school of law."

"Bologna is a most interesting city. He would be well amused there,"

said my lady. "It has a learned society, and is full of antiquities and pictures. It is in the midst of a magnificent country too. I spent a month there once with Lord Latimer, and we found the drives in the vicinity unparalleled. You cannot do better than go to Bologna. Take your yacht round to one of the Adriatic ports--to Venice. I can supply you with guide-books. I perceive that Mr. Harry Musgrave must be well entertained. A Ryde wherry with you in the morning is the perfection of entertainment, but he has an evident relish for sound masculine discourse in the evening: we must not be too exacting."

Bessie colored slightly and laughed. "I don't think that I am very exacting," she said. "I am sure whatever Harry likes he shall do, for me. I know he wants the converse of men; he cla.s.ses it with fine scenery and fresh air as one of the three delights that he most inclines to, since hard work is forbidden him. Bologna will be better than Arcachon for the winter."

"Yes, if the climate be suitable. We must find out what the climate is, or you may alter your plans again. I have not heard yet when the great event is to take place--when you are to be married."

"My father thinks that Harry should avoid the late autumn in the Forest--the fall of the leaf," Bessie began with rosy diffidence.

"But you have made no preparations? And there are the settlements!"

exclaimed Lady Latimer, anxiously.

"Our preparations are going on. My uncle Laurence and Mr. Carnegie will be our trustees; they have consulted Harry, I know, and the settlements are in progress. Oh, there will be no difficulty."

"But the wedding will be at Abbotsmead, since Mr. Laurence Fairfax gives his countenance?" Lady Latimer suggested interrogatively.

Bessie's blush deepened: "No. I have promised Harry that it shall be at Beechhurst, and very quiet. Therefore when we return to the Forest I shall have to ask you to leave me at the doctor's house."

Lady Latimer was silent and astonished. Then she said with emphasis: "Elizabeth, I cannot approve of that plan. If you will not go to Abbotsmead, why not be married from Fairfield? I shall be glad to render you every a.s.sistance."

"You are very, very kind, but Harry would not like it," pleaded Bessie.

"You are too indulgent, Elizabeth. Harry would not like it, indeed! Why should he have everything his own way?"

"Oh, Lady Latimer, I am sure you would not have the heart to cross him yourself!" cried Bessie.

My lady looked up at her sharply, but Elizabeth's face was quite serious: "He has rallied wonderfully during the week--rallied both his strength and his spirits. It is fortunate he has that buoyancy. Every girl loves a gay wedding."

"It would be peculiarly distasteful to Harry under the circ.u.mstances, and I would not give him pain for the world," Bessie said warmly.

"He is as well able to bear a little contradiction as the rest of us,"

said Lady Latimer, looking lofty. "In my day the lady was consulted. Now everything must be arranged to accommodate the gentleman. I'm sure we are grown very humble!"

Bessie looked meekly on the carpet and did not belie my lady's words.

Something in her air was provoking--perhaps that very meekness, in certain lights so foreign to her character--for Lady Latimer colored, and continued in her frostiest tone: "If you are ashamed of the connection you are forming, that justifies your not inviting the world to look on at your wedding, which ought to be an hour of pride and triumph to a girl."

Bessie's meekness vanished in a blush: "And it will be an hour of triumph to me. Ashamed! Harry Musgrave is to me the best and dearest heart that breathes," she exclaimed; and my lady was too well advised to prolong the argument, especially as she felt that it would be useless.

Harry Musgrave was not grudging of his grat.i.tude for real kindness, and though, when he was in his stronger mood, Lady Latimer was perhaps still disposed to huff him, the next hour she was as good as she knew how to be. The visit to the island was productive of excellent results in the way of a better understanding, and my lady made no more opposition to Elizabeth's leaving her and taking up her abode in Mr. Carnegie's house until her marriage.

For a day or two the triangular nest under the thatch felt small and confined to Bessie, but one morning the rustic sweetness of honeysuckle blowing in at the open lattice awoke in her memory a thousand happy childish recollections and brought back all the dear home-feelings. Then Harry Musgrave was more like his original self here than elsewhere.

Insensibly he fell into his easy boyish pleasantry of manner, and announced himself as more secure of his fate when he found Bessie sitting in company with a work-basket in the pretty, low, old-fashioned drawing-room, perfumed with roses overflowing the china bowl. Bessie had a perfect notion of the fitness of things, and as simplicity of dress seemed best suited to her beauty in that place, she attired herself in her plainest and most becoming gown, and Harry looked her over approvingly and called her his dear little Bessie again. The doctor, her mother, the children, every early friend out of the house, was glad, and congratulated her upon her return to the Forest and to them. And now and then, in the dreamy length of the days when she sat thinking, all the interval of time and all the change of scene, circ.u.mstance, and faces since she first went away appeared to her like a dream of the night when it is gone.

Of course she had to listen to the moralities of this last vicissitude from her various friends.

Said Miss Buff confidentially, "There is a vast deal more in surroundings, Bessie, than people like to admit. We are all under their influence. If we had seen you at Abbotsmead, we might have pitied your sacrifice, but when we see you at the doctor's in your sprigged cambric dresses, and your beautiful wavy hair in the style we remember, it seems the most right and natural thing in the world that you should marry Mr.

Harry Musgrave--no condescension in it. But I did not _quite_ feel that while you were at Fairfield, though I commended your resolution to have your own way. Now that you are here you are just Bessie Fairfax--only the doctor's little daughter. And that goes in proof of what I always maintain--that grand people, where they are not known, ought never to divest themselves of the outward and visible signs of their grandness; for Nature has not been bountiful to them all with either wit or sense, manners or beauty, though there are toadies everywhere able to discern in them the virtues and graces suitable to their rank."

"Lady Latimer looks her part upon the stage," said Bessie.

"But how many don't! The countess of Harbro', for instance; who that did not know her would take her for anything but a common person? Insolent woman she is! She found fault with the choir to me last Sunday, as if I were a singing-mistress and she paid my salary. Has old Phipps confessed how you have astonished him and falsified his predictions?"

"I am not aware that I have done anything to astonish anybody. I fancied that I had pleased Mr. Phipps rather than otherwise," said Bessie with a quiet smile.

"And so you have. He is gratified that a young lady of quality should have the pluck to make a marriage of affection in a rank so far below her own, considering nothing but the personal worth of the man she marries."

"I have never been able to discover the hard and fast conventional lines that are supposed to separate ranks. There is an affectation in these matters which practically deludes n.o.body. A liberal education and the refinements of wealth are too extensively diffused for those whose pride it is that they have done nothing but vegetate on one spot of land for generations to hold themselves aloof as a superior caste. The pretensions of some of them are evident, but only evident to be ridiculous--like the pretensions of those who, newly enriched by trade, decline all but what they describe as carriage-company."

"The poor gentry are eager enough to marry money, but that does not prevent them sneering at the way the money is made," Miss Buff said.

"Even Lady Latimer herself, speaking of the family who have taken Admiral Parkins's house for three months, said it was a pity they should come to a place like Beechhurst, for the gentlefolk would not call upon them, and they would feel themselves above a.s.sociating with the tradespeople. They are the great tea-dealers in Cheapside."

"Oh, if they are not vulgar and ostentatious, Lady Latimer will soon forget her prejudice against the tea."

"And invite them to her garden-parties like the rest of us? No doubt she will; she likes to know everybody. Then some connection with other people of her acquaintance will come out, or she will learn that they are influential with the charitable inst.i.tutions by reason of their handsome donations, or that they have an uncle high in the Church, or a daughter married into the brewing interest. Oh, the ramifications of society are infinite, and it is safest not to lay too much stress on the tea to begin with."

"Much the safest," Mr. Phipps, who had just come in, agreed. "The tea-dealer is very rich, and money (we have Solomon's word for it) is a defence. He is not aware of needing her ladyship's patronage. I expect, Miss Fairfax, that, drifting up and down and to and fro in your vicissitudes, you have found all cla.s.ses much more alike than different?"

"Yes. The refinements and vulgarities are the monopoly of no degree; only I think the conceit of moral superiority is common to us all," said Bessie, and she laughed.

"And well it may be, since the axiom that _n.o.blesse oblige_ has fallen into desuetude, and the word of a gentleman is no more to swear by than a huckster's. Tom and Jerry's wives go to court, and the arbitrary edict of fashion const.i.tutes the latest barbaric importation _bon ton_ for a season. I have been giving Harry Musgrave the benefit of my wanderings in Italy thirty years ago, and he is so enchanted that you will have to turn gypsy again next spring, Miss Fairfax."

"It will suit me exactly--a mule or an ox-cart instead of the train, byways for highways, and sauntering for speed. Did I not tell you long ago, Mr. Phipps, that the gypsy wildness was in the Fairfax blood, and that some day it would be my fate to travel ever so far and wide, and to come home again browner than any berry?"

"Why, you see, Miss Fairfax, the wisest seer is occasionally blind, and you are that rare bird, a consistent woman. Knowing the great lady you most admired, I feared for you some fatal act of imitation. But, thank G.o.d! you have had grace given you to appreciate a simple-minded, lovable fellow, who will take you out of conventional bonds, and help you to bend your life round in a perfect circle. You are the happiest woman it has been my lot to meet with."

Bessie did not speak, but she looked up gratefully in the face of her old friend.

CHAPTER XLIX.

_BESSIE'S LAST RIDE WITH THE DOCTOR._