The Vicissitudes of Bessie Fairfax Part 48

Mr. Carnegie complained that he had less of his dear Bessie's company than anybody else by reason of his own busy occupation, and one clear September morning, when the air was wonderfully fresh and sweet after a thunderstorm during the night, he asked her to come out for a last ride with him before Harry Musgrave carried her away. Bessie donned her habit and hat, and went gladly: the ride would serve as a leavetaking of some of her friends in the cottages whom otherwise she might miss.

In the village they met Miss Buff, going off to the school to hear the Bible read and teach the Catechism--works of supererogation under the new system, which Mr. Wiley had thankfully remitted to her on account of her popularity with parents and children.

"Your duty to your neighbor and your duty to G.o.d and the ten commandments--nothing else, because of the Dissenters," she explained in a bustle. "Imagine the vulgarity of an education for the poor from which the Bible may be omitted! Dreadful! I persuade the children to get certain of the psalms, proverbs, and parables by heart out of school.

Bless you! they like that; but as for teaching them such abstract knowledge as what an adverb or an isthmus is, or the height of Mont Blanc, I defy you! And it is all fudge. Will they sweep a room or make an apple-dumpling the better for it? Not they. But fix it in their minds that whatever their hands find to do they must do it with their might, and there is a chance that they will sweep into the corners and pare the apples thin. But I have no time to spare, so good-bye, good-bye!"

The general opinion of Beechhurst was with Miss Buff, who was making a stand upon the ancient ways in opposition to the superior master of Lady Latimer's selection, whose chief tendency was towards grammar, physical geography, and advanced arithmetic, which told well in the inspector's report. Miss Buff was strong also in the matter of needle, work and knitting--she would even have had the boys knit--but here she had sustained defeat.

Mr. Carnegie's first visit was to Mrs. Christie, who, since she had recovered her normal state of health, had resumed her habit of drugging and complaining. Her son was now at home, and when the doctor and Bessie rode across the green to the wheelwright's house there was the artist at work, with a companion under his white umbrella. His companion wore a maize pique dress and a crimson sash; a large leghorn hat, garnished with poppies and wheat-ears, hid her face.

"There is Miss Fairfax herself, Janey," whispered young Christie in an encouraging tone. "Don't be afraid."

Janey half raised her head and gazed at Bessie with shy, distrustful eyes. Bessie, quite unconscious, reined in Miss Hoyden under the shadow of a spreading tree to wait while the doctor paid his visit in-doors.

She perceived that there was a whispering between the two under the white umbrella, and with a pleasant recognition of the young man she looked another way. After the lapse of a few minutes he approached her, an unusual modest suffusion overspreading his pale face, and said, "Miss Fairfax, there is somebody here you once knew. She is very timid, and says she dares not claim your remembrance, because you must have thought she had forgotten you."

Bessie turned her head towards the diffident small personage who was regarding her from the distance. "Is it Janey Fricker?" she asked with a pleased, amused light in her face.

"It is Janey Christie." In fact, the artist was now making his wedding-tour, and Janey was his wife.

"Oh," said Bessie, "then this was why your portfolio was so full of sketches at Yarmouth. I wish I had known before."

Janey's face was one universal blush as she came forward and looked up in Miss Fairfax's handsome, beneficent face. There had always been an indulgent protectiveness in Bessie's manner to the master-mariner's little daughter, and it came back quite naturally. Janey expected hasty questions, perhaps reproaches, perhaps coldness, but none of these were in Bessie's way. She had never felt herself ill used by Janey, and in the joy of the sudden rencounter did not recollect that she had anything to forgive. She said how she had lived in the hope of a meeting again with Janey some day, and what a delightful thing it was to meet thus--to find that her dear little comrade at school was married to Harry Musgrave's best friend! Janey had heard from her husband all the story of Bessie's faithful love, but she was too timid and self-doubting to be very cordial or responsive. Bessie therefore talked for both--promised herself a renewal of their early friendship, and expressed an hospitable wish that Mr. Christie would bring his wife to visit them in Italy next year when he took his holiday. Christie promised that he would, and thought Miss Fairfax more than ever good and charming; but Janey was almost happier when Bessie rode away with Mr. Carnegie and she was permitted to retire into seclusion again under the white umbrella. The artist had chosen him a helpmeet who could be very devoted in private life, but who would never care for his professional honors or public reputation. Bessie heard afterward that the master-mariner was dead, and the place in her heart that he had held was now her husband's. With her own more expansive and affectionate nature she felt a genial warmth of satisfaction in the meeting, and as she trotted along with the doctor she told him about Janey at school, and thought herself most fortunate to have been riding with him that morning.

"For I really fear the little shy creature would never have come near me had I not fallen in with her where she could not escape," said she.

"Christie has been even less ambitious in his marriage than yourself, Bessie," was the doctor's reply. "That one-idead little woman may worship him, but she will be no help. She will not attract friends to his house, even if she be not jealous of them; and he will have to go out and leave her at home; and that is a pity, for an artist ought to live in the world."

"She is docile, but not trustful. Oh, he will tame her, and she will try to please him," said Bessie cheerfully. "She fancied that I must have forgotten her, when there was rarely a day that she did not come into my mind. And she says the same of me, yet neither of us ever wrote or made any effort to find the other out."

"Let us hope that you have both contracted a more serviceable friendship in another direction," said the doctor, and Bessie laughed. She was aware that his estimate of feminine friendship was not exalted.

About half a mile farther, where a byroad turned off towards Fairfield, the riders came upon a remarkable group in high debate over a donkey--Lady Latimer, Gampling the tinker, and the rural policeman. My lady instantly summoned Mr. Carnegie to her succor in the fray, which, to judge from her countenance and the stolid visage of the emissary of the law, was obstinate. It appeared that the policeman claimed to arrest the donkey and convey him to the pound. The dry and hungry beast had been tethered by his master in the early morning where a hedge and margin of sward bordered the domain of Admiral Parkins. Uninstructed in modern law, he broke loose and strayed along the green, cropping here and there a succulent shoot of thorn or thistle, until, when approaching repletion, he was surprised by the policeman, reprimanded, captured, and led ignominiously towards the gaol for vagrant animals--a donkey that everybody knew.

"He's took the innicent a.s.s into custody, and me he's going to summons and get fined," Gampling exclaimed, his indignation not abated by the appearance of another friend upon the scene, for a friend he still counted the doctor, though he persisted in his refusal to mend his kettles and pots and pans.

"Is not this an excess of zeal, Cobb?" remonstrated Mr. Carnegie.

"Suppose you let the a.s.s off this time, and consider him warned not to do it again?"

"Sir, my instructions is not to pa.s.s over any infringement of the new h'act. Straying is to be put down," said Cobb stiffly.

"This here a.s.s have earned his living honest a matter of eight year, and naught ever laid agen his character afore by high nor low," pleaded Gampling, growing pathetic as authority grew more stern. "Her ladyship and the doctor will speak a good word for him, and there's others as will."

"Afore the bench it may be of vally and go to lowering the fine," said the invincible exponent of the law; "I ain't nothing to do with that."

"I'll tell you where it is, Cobb," urged Gampling, swelling into anger again. "This here a.s.s knows more o' nat'ral justice than the whole boiling o' new h'acts. He'd never be the man to walk into her ladyship's garden an' eat up her flowerbeds: raason why, he'd get a jolly good hiding if he did. But he says to hisself, he says, when he sees a nice bite o' clover or a sow-thistle by the roadside: "This here's what's left for the poor, the fatherless, and the widder--it ain't much, but thank G.o.d for small mercies!'--an' he falls to. Who's he robbed, I should like to know?"

"You must ask the admiral that when you come up before the magistrates on Sat.u.r.day," rejoined Cobb severely--his professional virtue sustained, perhaps, by the presence of witnesses.

Gampling besides being an itinerant tinker was also an itinerant political preacher, and seeing that he could prevail nothing by secular pleas, he betook himself to his spiritual armory, and in a voice of sour derision that made Bessie Fairfax cringe asked the doctor if he had yet received the Devil's Decalogue according to h'act of Parliament and justices' notices that might be read on every wall?--and he proceeded to recite it: "Thou shalt remove the old landmarks, and enter into the fields of the poor. Thou shalt wholly reap the corners of thy fields and gather the gleanings of thy harvest: thou shalt leave nothing for the poor and the stranger. If a wayfarer that is a-hungered pluck the ears of corn and eat, thou shalt hale him before the magistrates, and he shall be cast into prison. Thou shalt turn away thy face from every poor man, and if thy brother ask bread of thee, thou shalt give him neither money nor food."

Mr. Carnegie made a gesture to silence the tinker, for he had thrown himself into an oratorical att.i.tude, and shouted out the new commandments at the top of his voice, emphasizing each clause with his right fist brought down each time more pa.s.sionately on the palm of his left hand. But his humor had grown savage, and with his eyes glowing like hot coals in his blackened visage he went on, his tone rising to a hoa.r.s.e, hysteric yell: "Thou shalt oppress the poor, and forbid to teach the gospel in the schools, lest they learn to cry unto their G.o.d, and He hear them, and they turn again and rend thee."

"What use is there in saying the thing that is not, Gampling?" demanded Lady Latimer impetuously. "The Bible _is_ read in our schools. And if you workingmen take advantage of the privileges that you have won, you ought to be strong enough, both in and out of Parliament, to prevent any new act being made in violation of the spirit of either law or gospel."

"I can't argy with your ladyship--it would be uncivil to say you talk bosh," replied the tinker as suddenly despondent as he had been furious.

"I know that every year makes this world worse for poor honest folk to live in, an' that there's more an' more h'acts to break one's shins over. Who would ha' thowt as ever my old a.s.s could arn me a fine an'

costs o' a summons by nibbling a mouthful o' green meat on the queen's highway, G.o.d bless her! I've done."

My lady endeavored to make Gampling hear that she would pay his fine (if fined he were), but he refused to listen, and went off, shaking his head and bemoaning the hard pa.s.s the world was come to.

"It is almost incredible the power of interference that is given to the police," said Lady Latimer. "That wretched young Burt and his mother were taken up by Cobb last week and made to walk to Hampton for lying on the heath asleep in the sun; nothing else--that was their crime.

Fortunately, the magistrates had the humanity to discharge them."

"Poor souls! they are stamped for vagabonds. But young Burt will not trouble police or magistrates much longer now," said the doctor.

In fact, he had that very morning done with troubling anybody. When Mr.

Carnegie pulled up ten minutes later at the door of a forlorn hovel which was the present shelter of the once decent widow, he had no need to dismount. "Ride on, Bessie," he said softly, and Bessie rode on.

Widow Burt came out to speak to the doctor, her lean face scorched to the color of a brick, her clothing ragged, her hair unkempt, her eyes wild as the eyes of a hunted animal.

"He's gone, sir," she said, pointing in-doors to where a long, motionless figure seated in a chair was covered with a ragged patchwork quilt. The doctor nodded gravely, paused, asked if she were alone.

"Mrs. Wallop sat up with us last night--she's very good, is Mrs.

Wallop--but first thing this morning Bunny came along to fetch her to his wife, and she'd hardly got out o' sight when poor Tom stretched hisself like a bairn that's waked up and is going to drop off to sleep again, an' with one great sigh was dead. Miss Wort comes most mornings: here she is."

Yes, there was Miss Wort, plunging head foremost through the heather by way of making a short cut. She saw at a glance what had happened, and taking both the poor mother's hands in her own, she addressed the doctor with tears in her eyes and tremulous anger in her voice: "I shall always say that it is a bad and cruel thing to send boys to prison, or anybody whose temptation is hunger. How can we tell what we should do ourselves?

We are not wiser than the Bible, and we are taught to pray G.o.d lest we be poor and steal. Tom would never have come to be what he was but for that dreadful month at Whitchester. Instead of shutting up village-boys and hurting their health if they have done anything wrong, why can't they be ordered to wear a fool's cap for a week, going about their ordinary work? Our eyes would be on them, and they would not have a chance of picking and stealing again; it would give us a little more trouble at first, but not in the long run, and save taxes for prisons.

People would say, 'There goes a poor thief,' and they would be sorry for him, and wonder why he did it; and we ought to look after our own things. And then, if they turned out incorrigible, they might be shut up or sent out of the way of temptation. Oh, if those who have the power were only a little more considerate, and would learn to put themselves in their place!"

Mr. Carnegie said that Miss Wort's queer suggestion was capable of development, and there was too much sending of poor and young people to prison for light offences--offences of ignorance often, for which a reprimand and compensation would be enough. Bessie had never seen him more saddened.

Their next and last visit was to Littlemire. Mr. Moxon was in his garden, working without his coat. He came forward, putting the threadbare garment on, and begged Miss Fairfax to go up stairs and see his wife. This was one of her good days, as she called the days when the aching weariness of her perpetual confinement was a degree abated, and she welcomed her visitor with a cry of plaintive joy, kissed her, gazed at her fondly through glittering tears.

Bessie did not know that she had been loved so much. Girl-like, she had brought her tribute of flowers to the invalid's room, had wondered at this half-paralyzed life that was surrounded by such an atmosphere of peace; and when, during her last visit, she had realized what a compensation for all sorrow was this peace, she had not yet understood what an ardor of sympathy kept the poor sufferer's heart warm towards those whose brighter lot had nothing in common with her own.

"Oh, my love," she said in a sweet, thrilling voice, "dear Harry Musgrave has been to tell me of his happiness. I am so glad for you both--so very, very glad!" She did not pause to let Bessie respond, but ran on with her recollections of Harry since he was a boy and came first to read with her husband. "His thoughtfulness was really quite beautiful; he never forgot to be kind. Oh, my dear, you may thoroughly rely on his fine, affectionate temper. Rarely did he come to a lesson without bringing me some message from his mother and little present in his hand--a few flowers, a spring chicken, some nice fruit, a partridge.

This queer rustic scaffold for my books and work, Harry constructed it himself, and I would not exchange it for the most elegant and ingenious of whatnots. I could do nothing for him but listen to his long thoughts and aspirations: that was when you were out of hearing, and he could neither talk nor write to his dear little Bessie."

"It was a great gap, but it did not make us strangers," said Bessie.

"When he went to Oxford he sent us word of his arrival, and how he liked his college and his tutor--matters that were as interesting to us as if he had been our own. And when he found how welcome his letters were, he wrote to Mr. Moxon often, and sent him any report or pamphlet that he thought might please him; and several times he gave himself the trouble both at the Bodleian and in London to search for and copy out extracts from works that Mr. Moxon wanted and had no means of procuring here. You can have no idea how helpful he has been to my husband in such things.

Poor fellow! what a grief it was to us that term he had to stay away from Oxford on account of his health! Already we began to fear for the future, but his buoyant spirit would not antic.i.p.ate any permanent hindrance to his progress; and that check did make him more prudent. But it is not to be; he sees himself cut short of the career where he planned to be famous; he gives way, however, to neither anger nor repining. Oh, my love! that I could win you to believe that if you clasp this cross to your heart, as the gift of Him who cannot err, you will never feel it a burden!"

Bessie smiled. She did not feel it a burden now, and Harry was not abandoned to carry its weight alone. She did not speak: she was not apt at the expression of her religious feelings, but they were sincere as far as life had taught her. She could have lent her ears for a long while to Harry Musgrave's praises without growing weary, but the vicar now appeared, followed by the doctor, talking in a high, cheerful voice of that discovery he had made of a remarkable mathematical genius in Littlemire: "A most practical fellow, a wonderful hard head--will turn out an enterprising engineer, an inventor, perhaps; has the patience of Job himself, and an infinite genius for taking pains."

Bessie recollected rather pathetically having once heard the sanguine, good vicar use very similar terms in speaking of her beloved Harry.