Chapter 16

_A LOST OPPORTUNITY._

Ryde looked beautiful the next morning from the deck of the Foam. The mainland looked beautiful too, and Bessie, gazing that way, thought how near she was to the Forest, until an irresistible longing to be there overcame her reserve. She asked her uncle if the Foam was going to lie long off Ryde. Why did she inquire? Because she should like to go to Hampton by the boat, and to Beechhurst to see her friends, if only for one single night. Before her humble petition was well past her lips the tears were in her eyes, for she saw that it was not going to be granted. Mr. Frederick Fairfax never risked being put out of his way, or made to wait the convenience of others on his yachting cruises. He simply told Bessie that she could not go, and added no reason why. But almost immediately after he sent her on shore with Mrs. Betts to Morgan's to buy a proper glazed hat and to be measured for a serge dress: that was his way of diverting and consoling her.

Bessie was glad enough to be diverted from the contemplation of her disappointment. It was a very great pain indeed to be so near, and yet so cut off from all she loved. The morning was fresh on the pier, and many people were out inhaling the delicious salt breezes. A clergyman, wielding a slim umbrella and carrying a black bag and an overcoat, came lurching along. Bessie recognized Mr. Askew Wiley, and was so overjoyed to see anybody who came from home that she rushed up to him: "Oh, Mr. Wiley! how do you do? Are you going back to Beechhurst?" she cried breathless.

"Bessie Fairfax, surely? How you are grown!" said he, and shook hands. "Yes, Bessie, I am on my way now to catch the boat. If you want to hear about your people, you must turn back with me, for I have not a minute to spare."

Bessie turned back: "Will you please tell them I am on board the Foam, my uncle Frederick's yacht? I cannot get away to see them, and I don't know how long we shall stay here, but if they could come over to see me!" she urged wistfully.

"It sounds like tempting them to a wild-goose chase, Bessie. Yachts that are here to-day are gone to-morrow. By the time they arrive you may have sailed off to Cowes or to Yarmouth. But I will give your message. How came you on board a yacht?"

Bessie got no more information from the rector; he had the same catechising habit as his good wife, and wanted to know her news. She gave it freely, and then they were at the end of the pier, and there was the Hampton boat ringing its bell to start. "Are you going straight home? Will you tell them at once?" Bessie ventured to say again as Mr. Wiley went down the gangway.

"Yes. I expect to find the carriage waiting for me at Hampton," was the response.

"They might even come by the afternoon boat," cried Bessie as a last word, and the rector said, "Yes."

It was with a lightened heart and spirits exhilarated that Bessie retraced her steps up the pier. "It was such a good opportunity!" said she, congratulating herself.

"Yes, if the gentleman don't forget," rejoined Mrs. Betts.

But, alas! that was just what the gentleman did. He forgot until his remembering was too late to be of any purpose. He forgot until the next Sunday when he was in the reading-desk, and saw Mrs. Carnegie sitting in front of him with a restless boy on either hand. He felt a momentary compunction, but that also, as well as the cause of it, went out of his head with the end of his sermon, and the conclusion of the matter was that he never delivered the message Bessie had given him on Ryde pier at all.

Bessie, however, having a little confidence in him, unwittingly enjoyed the pleasures of hope all that day and the next. On the second evening she was a trifle downhearted. The morning after she awoke with another prospect before her eyes--a beautiful bay, with houses fringing its shores and standing out on its cliffs, and verdure to the water's edge. Mrs. Betts told her these villages were Sandown and Shanklyn. The yacht was scudding along at a famous rate. They passed Luccombe with its few cottages nestling at the foot of the chine, then Bonchurch and Ventnor. "It would be very pleasant living at sea in fine weather, if only one had what one wants," Bessie said.

The following day the yacht was off Ryde again, and Bessie went to walk on the pier in her close-fitting serge costume and glazed hat, feeling very barefaced and evident, she assured Mrs. Betts, who tried to convince her that the style of dress was exceedingly becoming to her, and made her appear taller. Bessie was, indeed, a very pretty middle height now, and her shining hair, clear-cut features, and complexion of brilliant health constituted her a very handsome girl.

Almost the first people she met were the Gardiners. "Mr. Cecil Burleigh went to London this morning," Miss Julia told her. The elder sister asked if she was coming to the flower-show in Appley Gardens in the afternoon or the regatta ball that night.

Bessie said, "No, oh, no! she had never been to a ball in her life."

"But you might go with us to the flower-show," said Julia. She thought it would please Mr. Cecil Burleigh if a little attention were shown to Miss Fairfax.

Bessie did not know what to answer: she looked at her strange clothing, and said suddenly, No, she thanked them, but she could not go. They quite understood.

Just at that moment came bearing down upon them Miss Buff, fat, loud, jolly as ever. "It _is_ Bessie Fairfax! I was sure it was," cried she; and Bessie rushed straight into her open arms with responsive joy.

When she came to herself the Gardiners were gone. "Never mind, you are sure to meet them again; they are always about Ryde somewhere," Miss Buff said. "How delightful it is to see you, Bessie! And quite yourself! Not a bit altered--only taller!" And then they found a sheltered seat, and Bessie, still quivering with her happy surprise, began to ask questions.

"We have come from Beechhurst this morning, my niece Louy and myself," was Miss Buff's answer to the first. "We started at six, to be in time for the eight o'clock boat: the flower-show and the regatta ball have brought us. I hope you are going to both? No? What a pity! I never miss a ball for Louy if I can help it."

Bessie briefly explained herself and her circumstances, and asked when her friend had last seen any of Mr. Carnegie's family.

"I saw Mrs. Carnegie yesterday to inquire if I could do anything for her at Hampton. She looked very well."

"And did she say nothing of me?" cried Bessie in consternation.

"Not a word. She mentioned some time ago how sorry they all were not to have you at home for a little while before you are carried away to Woldshire."

"Then Mr. Wiley has never given them my message! Oh, how unkind!" Bessie was fit to cry for vexation and self-reproach, for why had she not written? Why had she trusted anybody when there was a post?

"You might as well pour water into a sieve, and expect it to stay there, as expect Mr. Wiley to remember anything that does not concern himself," said Miss Buff. "But it is not too late yet, perhaps? When do you leave Ryde?"

"It is all uncertain: it is just as the wind blows and as my uncle fancies," replied Bessie despondently.

"Then write--write at once, and telegraph. Do both. There is Smith's bookstall. They will let you have a sheet of paper, and I always carry stamps." Miss Buff was prompt in action. Six lines were written for the post and one line for the telegraph, and both were despatched in ten minutes or less. "Now all is done that can be done to remedy yesterday and ensure to-morrow: some of them are certain to appear in the morning. Make your mind easy. Come back to our seat and tell me all about yourself."

Bessie's cheerfulness revived under the brisk influence of her friend, and she was ready to give an epitome of her annals, or a forecast of her hopes, or (which she much preferred) to hear the chronicles of Beechhurst. Miss Buff was the best authority for the village politics that she could have fallen in with. She knew everything that went on in the parish--not quite accurately perhaps, but accurately enough for purposes of popular information and gossip.

"Well, my dear, Miss Thusy O'Flynn is gone, for one good thing," she began with a _verve_ that promised thoroughness. "And we are to have a new organ in the church, for another: it has been long enough talked about. Old Phipps set his face dead against it until we got the money in hand; we have got it, but not until we are all at daggers drawn. He told Lady Latimer that we ought to keep our liberal imaginations in check by a system of cash payments."

"Our friend has a disagreeable trick of being right," said Bessie laughing.

"He has his uses, but I cannot bear him. I don't know who is to blame--whether it is Miss Wort or Lady Latimer--but there is no peace at Beechhurst now for begging. They have plenty of money, and little enough to do with it. I call _giving_ the greatest of luxuries, but, bless you! giving is not all charity. Miss Wort spends a fortune in eleemosynary physic to half poison poor folks; Lady Latimer indulges herself in a variety of freaks: her last was a mechanical leg for old Bumpus, who had been happy on a wooden peg for forty years; we were all asked to subscribe, and he doesn't thank us for it. As soon as one thing is done with, up starts another that we are entreated to be interested in--things we don't care about one bit. Old Phipps protests that it is vanity and busy-bodyism. I hope I shall never grow so hard-hearted as to see a poor soul want and not help her, but I hate to be canvassed for alms on behalf of other people's benevolent objects--don't you?"

"It has never happened to me. I remember that my father used to appeal to Lady Latimer and Miss Wort when his poor patients had not fit diet. Lady Latimer was his chief Lady Bountiful."

"That may be true, but it is possible to have too much of a good thing. I love fair play. The schools, now--they were very good schools before ever she came into the Forest; yes, as far back as your father's time, Bessie Fairfax--and yet, to hear the way in which she is belauded by a certain set, one might suppose that she had been the making of them. But it is the same all the world over--a hundred hands do the work, and one name gets all the praise!" Miss Buff was growing warm over her reminiscences, but catching the spark of mischief in Bessie's eyes, she laughed, and added with great candor: "Yes, I confess there is a spice of rivalry between us, but I am very fond of her all the same."

"Oh yes. She loves to rule, but then she has the talent," pleaded Bessie.

"No, my dear, there you are mistaken. She is too fussy; she irritates people. But for the old admiral she would often get into difficulties. Beechhurst has taken to ladies' meetings and committees, and all sorts of fudge that she is the moving spirit of. I often wish we were back in the quiet, times when dear old Hutton was rector, and would not let her be always interfering. I suppose it comes of this new doctrine of the equality of the sexes; but I say they never will be equal till women consent to be frights. It gives a man an immense pull over us to clap on his hat without mounting up stairs to the looking-glass: while we are getting ready to go and do a thing, he has gone and done it. You hear Lady Latimer's name at every turn, but the old admiral is the backbone of Beechhurst, as he always was, and old Phipps is his right hand."

"And Mr. Musgrave and my father?" queried Bessie.

"They do their part, but it is so unobtrusively that one forgets them; but they would be missed if they were not there. Mr. Musgrave has a great deal of influence amongst his own class--the farmers and those people. Of course, you have heard how wonderfully his son is getting on at college? Oh, my dear, what a stir there was about his running over to Normandy after you!"

"Dear Harry! I saw him again quite lately. He came to see me at Bayeux," said Bessie with a happy sigh.

"Did he? we never heard of that. He is at home now: perhaps he will come over with them to-morrow, eh?"

"I wish he would," was Bessie's frank rejoinder.

"And who else is there that you used to like? Fanny Mitten has married a clerk in the Hampton Bank, and Miss Ely is married; but she was married in London. I was in great hopes once that old Phipps would take Miss Thusy O'Flynn, and a sweet pair they would have been; but he thought better of it, and she went away as she came. Her aunt was a good old soul, and what did it matter if she was vulgar? We were very sorry to lose her contralto in the choir." Miss Buff's gossip was almost run out. Bessie remembered little Christie to inquire for him. "Little Christie--who is he? I never heard of him. Oh, the wheelwright's son who went away to be an artist! I don't know. The old man made me a garden-barrow once, and charged me enormously; and when I told him it was too dear, he said it would last me my life. Such impertinence! The common people grow very independent."

Bessie had heard the anecdote of the garden-barrow before. It spoke volumes for the peace and simplicity of Miss Buff's life that she still recollected and cited this ancient grievance. A few more words of the doctor and his household, a few doubts and fears on Bessie's part that her telegram might be delayed, and a few cheery predictions on Miss Buff's, and they said good-bye, with the expression of a cordial hope that they might meet soon again, and meet in the Forest. Bessie Fairfax was amused and exhilarated by this familiar tattle about her beloved Beechhurst. It had dissipated the shadows of her three years' absence, and made home present to her once more. Nothing seems trivial that concerns places and people dear to young affections, and all the keener became her desire to be amongst them. She consulted Smith's boy as to the probable time of the arrival of her telegram at the doctor's house; she studied the table of the steamboats. She regretted bitterly that she had not written the first day at Ryde; then pleaded her own excuse because letters were a rarity for her to write, and had hitherto required a formal permission.

Mrs. Betts lingered with her long and patiently upon the pier, but the Gardiners did not come down again, and by and by Mrs. Betts, feeling the approach of dinner-time, began to look out towards the yacht. After a minute's steady observation she said, half to herself, but seriously, "I do believe they are making ready to sail. There is a boat alongside with bread and things."

"To sail! To leave Ryde! Oh, don't you think my uncle would wait a day if I begged him?" cried Bessie in acute dismay.

"No, miss--not if he has given orders and the wind keeps fair. If I was in your place, miss, I should not ask him. And as for the telegram, I should not name it. It would put Mr. Frederick out, and do no good."

Bessie did not name it. Mrs. Betts's speculation proved correct. The yacht sailed away in the afternoon. About the time when Mrs. Carnegie was hurriedly dressing to drive with her husband to Hampton over-night, to ensure not missing the mail-boat to Ryde in the morning, that gay and pleasant town was fast receding from Bessie's view. At dawn the island was out of sight, and when Mr. Carnegie, landing on the pier, sought a boat to carry him and his wife to the Foam, a boatman looked up at him and said, "The Foam, sir? You'll have much ado to overtake her. She's halfway to Hastings by this time. She sailed yesterday soon after five o'clock."

Mr. and Mrs. Carnegie turned away in silence. They had nothing to do but sorrowfully to repair home again. They were more grieved at heart by this disappointment than by any that had preceded it; and all the more did they try to cheer one another.

"Don't fret, Jane: it hurts me to see you fret," said the doctor. "It was a nice thought in Bessie, but the chance was a poor one."

"We have lost her, Thomas; I fear we have lost her," said his wife. "It is unnatural to pass by our very door, so to speak, and not let us see her. But I don't blame her."

"No, no, Bessie is not to blame: Harry Musgrave can tell us better than that. It is Mr. Fairfax--his orders. He forbade her coming, or it might have been managed easily. It is a mistake. He will never win her heart so; and as for ruling her except through her affections, he will have a task. I'm sorry, for the child will not be happy."

When Mr. and Mrs. Carnegie arrived at home they found Bessie's letter that had come by post--an abrupt, warm little letter that comforted them for themselves, but troubled them for her exceedingly. "God bless her, dear child!" said her mother. "I am afraid she will cry sadly, Thomas, and nobody to say a loving word to her or give her a kiss."

"It is a pity; she will have her share of vexations. But she is young and can bear them, with all her life before her. We will answer that pretty letter, that she may have something to encourage her when she gets amongst her grand relations. I suppose it may be a week or ten days first. We have done what we could, Jane, so cheer up, and let it rest."