Chapter 22

_PRELIMINARIES._

Mr. Cecil Burleigh met Bessie Fairfax again with a courteous vivacity and an air of intimate acquaintance. If he was not very glad to see her he affected gladness well, and Bessie's vivid blushes were all the welcome that was necessary to delude the witnesses into a belief that they already understood one another. He was perfectly satisfied himself, and his sister Mary, who worshipped him, thought Bessie sweetly modest and pretty. And her mind was at peace for the results.

There was a dinner-party at Abbotsmead that evening. Colonel and Mrs. Stokes came, and Mr. Forbes and his mother, who lived with him (for he was unmarried), a most agreeable old lady. It was much like other dinner-parties in the country. The guests were all of one mind on politics and the paramount importance of the landed interest, which gave a delightful unanimity to the conversation. The table was round, so that Miss Fairfax did not appear conspicuous as the lady of the house, but she was not for that the less critically observed. Happily, she was unconscious of the ordeal she underwent. She looked lovely in the face, but her dress was not the elaborate dress of the other ladies; it was still her prize-day white muslin, high to the throat and long to the wrists, with a red rose in her belt, and an antique Normandy gold cross for her sole ornament. The cross was a gift from Madame Fournier. Mr. Cecil Burleigh, being seated next to her, was most condescending in his efforts to be entertaining, and Bessie was not quite so uneasy under his affability as she had been on board the yacht. Mrs. Stokes, who had heard much of the Tory candidate, but now met him for the first time, regarded him with awe, impressed by his distinguished air and fine manners. But Bessie was more diffident than impressed. She did not talk much; everybody else was so willing to talk that it was enough for her to look charming. Once or twice her grandfather glanced towards her, wishing to hear her voice--which was a most tunable voice--in reply to her magnificent neighbor, but Bessie sat in beaming, beautiful silence, lending him her ears, and at intervals giving him a monosyllabic reply. She might certainly have done worse. She might have spoken foolishly, or she might have said what she occasionally thought in contradiction of his solemn opinions. And surely this would have been unwise? Her silence was pleasing, and he wished for nothing in her different from what she seemed. He liked her youthfulness, and approved her simplicity as an eminently teachable characteristic; and if she was not able greatly to interest or amuse him, perhaps that was not from any fault or deficiency in herself, but from circumstances over which she had no control. An old love, a true love, unwillingly relinquished, is a powerful rival.

The whole of the following day was at his service to walk and talk with Bessie if he and she pleased, but Bessie invited Miss Burleigh into her private parlor and went into seclusion. That was after breakfast, and Mr. Cecil made a tour of the stables with the squire, and saw Janey take her morning gallop. Then he spoke in praise of Janey's mistress while on board the Foam, and with all the enthusiasm at his command of his own hopes. They had not become expectations yet.

"It is uphill work with Elizabeth," said her grandfather. "She cares for none of us here."

"The harder to win the more constant to keep," replied the aspirant suitor cheerfully.

"I shall put no pressure on her. Here is your opportunity, and you must rely on yourself. She has a heart for those who can reach it, but my efforts have fallen short thus far." This was not what the squire had once thought to say.

Mr. Cecil Burleigh did not admire gushing, demonstrative women, and a gushing wife would have wearied him inexpressibly. He felt an attraction in Bessie's aloofness, and said again, "She is worth the pains she will cost to win: a few years will mature her fine intelligence and make of her a perfect companion. I admire her courageous simplicity; there is a great deal in her character to work upon."

"She is no cipher, certainly; if you are satisfied, I am," said Mr. Fairfax resignedly. "Yet it is not flattering to think that she would toss up her cap to go back to the Forest to-morrow."

"Then she is loyal in affection to very worthy people. I have heard of her Forest friends from Lady Latimer."

"Lady Latimer has a great hold on Elizabeth's imagination. It would be a good thing if she were to pay a visit to Hartwell; she might give her young devotee some valuable instructions. Elizabeth is prejudiced against me, and does not fall into her new condition so happily as I was led to anticipate that she might."

"She will wear to it. My sister Mary has an art of taming, and will help her. I prefer her indifference to an undue elation: that would argue a commonness of mind from which I imagine her to be quite free."

"She has her own way of estimating us, and treats the state and luxury of Abbotsmead as quite external to her. In her private thoughts, I fear, she treats them as cumbrous lendings that she will throw off after a season, and be gladly quit of their burden."

"Better so than in the other extreme. A girl of heart and mind cannot be expected to identify herself suddenly with the customs of a strange rank. She was early trained in the habits of a simple household, but from what I see there can have been nothing wanting of essential refinement in Mrs. Carnegie. There is a crudeness in Miss Fairfax yet--she is very young--but she will ripen sound and sweet to the core, or I am much mistaken in the quality of the green fruit."

The squire replied that he had no reason to believe his granddaughter was otherwise than a good girl. And with that they left discussing her and fell upon the election. Mr. Cecil Burleigh had a good courage for the encounter, but he also had received intimations not to make too sure of his success. The Fairfax influence had been so long in abeyance, so long only a name in Norminster, that Mr. John Short began to quake the moment he began to test it. Once upon a time Norminster had returned a Fairfax as a matter of course, but for a generation its tendencies had been more and more towards Liberalism, and at the last election it had returned its old Whig member at the head of the poll, and in lieu of its old Tory member a native lawyer, one Bradley, who professed Radicalism on the hustings, but pruned his opinions in the House to the useful working pattern of a supporter of the ministry. This prudent gentleman was considered by a majority of his constituents not to have played fair, and it was as against him, traitor and turncoat, that the old Tories and moderate Conservatives were going to try to bring in Mr. Cecil Burleigh. Both sides were prepared to spend money, and Norminster was enjoying lively anticipations of a good time coming.

While the gentlemen were thus discoursing to and fro the terrace under the library window, Miss Burleigh in Bessie's parlor was instructing her of her brother's political views. It is to be feared that Bessie was less interested than the subject deserved, and also less interested in the proprietor of the said views than his sister supposed her to be. She listened respectfully, however, and did not answer very much at random, considering that she was totally ignorant beforehand of all that was being explained to her. At length she said, "I must begin to read the newspapers. I know much better what happened in the days of Queen Elizabeth than what has happened in my own lifetime;" and then Miss Burleigh left politics, and began to speak of her brother's personal ambition and personal qualities; to relate anecdotes of his signal success at Eton and at Oxford; to expatiate on her own devotion to him, and the great expectations founded by all his family upon his high character and splendid abilities. She added that he had the finest temper in the world, and that he was ardently affectionate.

Bessie smiled at this. She believed that she knew where his ardent affections were centred; and then she blushed at the tormenting recollection of how she had interpreted his assiduities to herself before making that discovery. Miss Burleigh saw the blush, seeming to see nothing, and said softly, "I envy the woman who has to pass her life with Cecil. I can imagine nothing more contenting than his society to one he loves."

Bessie's blush was perpetuated. She would have liked to mention Miss Julia Gardiner, but she felt a restraining delicacy in speaking of what had come to her knowledge in such a casual way, and more than ever ashamed of her own ridiculous mistake. Suddenly she broke out with an odd query, at the same moment clapping her hands to her traitorous cheeks: "Do you ever blush at your own foolish fancies? Oh, how tiresome it is to have a trick of blushing! I wish I could get over it."

"It is a trick we get over quite early enough. The fancies girls blush at are so innocent. I have had none of that pretty sort for a long while."

Miss Burleigh looked sympathetic and amused. Bessie was silent for a few minutes and full of thought. Presently, in a musing, meditative voice, she said, "Ambition! I suppose all men who have force enough to do great things long for an opportunity to do them; and that we call ambition. Harry Musgrave is ambitious. He is going to be a lawyer. What can a famous lawyer become?"

"Lord chancellor, the highest civil dignity under the Crown."

"Then I shall set my mind on seeing Harry lord chancellor," cried Bessie with bold conclusion.

"And when he retires from office, though he may have held it for ever so short a time, he will have a pension of five thousand a year."

"How pleasant! What a grateful country! Then he will be able to buy Brook and spend his holidays there. Dear old Harry! We were like brother and sister once, and I feel as if I had a right to be proud of him, as you are of your brother Cecil. Women have no chance of being ambitious on their own account, have they?"

"Oh yes. Women are as ambitious of rank, riches, and power as men are; and some are ambitious of doing what they imagine to be great deeds. You will probably meet one at Brentwood, a most beautiful lady she is--a Mrs. Chiverton."

Bessie's countenance flashed: "She was a Miss Hiloe, was she not--Ada Hiloe? I knew her. She was at Madame Fournier's--she and a younger sister--during my first year there."

"Then you will be glad to meet again. She was married in Paris only the other day, and has come into Woldshire a bride. They say she is showing herself a prodigy of benevolence round her husband's magnificent seat already: she married him that she might have the power to do good with his immense wealth. There must always be some self-sacrifice in a lofty ambition, but hers is a sacrifice that few women could endure to pay."

Bessie held her peace. She had been instructed how all but impossible it is to live in the world and be absolutely truthful; and what perplexed her in this new character of her old school-fellow she therefore supposed to be the veil of glamour which the world requires to have thrown over an ugly, naked truth.

About eleven o'clock the two young ladies walked out across the park towards the lodge, to pay a visit to Mrs. Stokes. Then they walked on to the village, and home again by the mill. The morning seemed long drawn out. Then followed luncheon, and after it Mr. Cecil Burleigh drove in an open carriage with Bessie and his sister to Hartwell. The afternoon was very clear and pleasant, and the scenery sufficiently varied. On the road Bessie learnt that Hartwell was the early home of Lady Latimer, and still the residence of her bachelor brother and two maiden sisters.

The very name of Lady Latimer acted like a spell on Bessie. She had been rather silent and reserved until she heard it, and then all at once she roused up into a vivid interest. Mr. Cecil Burleigh studied her more attentively than he had done hitherto. Miss Burleigh said, "Lady Latimer is another of our ambitious women. Miss Fairfax fancies women can have no ambition on their own account, Cecil. I have been telling her of Mrs. Chiverton."

"And what does Miss Fairfax say of Mrs. Chiverton's ambition?" asked Mr. Cecil Burleigh.

"Nothing," rejoined Bessie. But her delicate lip and nostril expressed a great deal.

The man of the world preferred her reticence to the wisest speech. He mused for several minutes before he spoke again himself. Then he gave air to some of his reflections: "Lady Latimer has great qualities. Her marriage was the blunder of her youth. Her girlish imagination was dazzled by the name of a lord and the splendor of Umpleby. It remains to be considered that she was not one of the melting sort, and that she made her life noble."

Here Miss Burleigh took up the story: "That is true. But she would have made it more noble if she had been faithful to her first love--to your grandfather, Miss Fairfax."

Bessie colored. "Oh, were they fond of each other when they were young?" she asked wondering.

"Your grandfather was devoted to her. He had just succeeded to Abbotsmead. All the world thought it would be a match, and great promotion for her too, when she met Lord Latimer. He was sixty and she was nineteen, and they lived together thirty-seven years, for he survived into quite extreme old age."

"And she had no children, and my grandfather married somebody else?" said Bessie with a plaintive fall in her voice.

"She had no children, and your grandfather married somebody else. Lady Latimer was a most excellent wife to her old tyrant."

Bessie looked sorrowful: "Was he a tyrant? I wonder whether she ever pities herself for the love she threw away? She is quite alone--she would give anything that people should love her now, I have heard them say in the Forest."

"That is the revenge that slighted love so often takes. But she must have satisfaction in her life too. She was always more proud than tender, except perhaps to her friend, Dorothy Fairfax. You have heard of your great-aunt Dorothy?"

"Yes. I have succeeded to her rooms, to her books. My grandfather says I remind him of her."

"Dorothy Fairfax never forgave Lady Latimer. They had been familiar friends, and there was a double separation. Oh, it is quite a romance! My aunt, Lady Angleby, could tell you all about it, for she was quite one with them at Abbotsmead and Hartwell in those days; indeed, the intimacy has never been interrupted. And you know Lady Latimer--you admire her?"

"I used to admire her enthusiastically. I should like to see her again."

After this there was silence until the drive ended at Hartwell. Bessie was meditating on the glimpse she had got into the pathetic past of her grandfather's life, and Mr. Cecil Burleigh and his sister were meditating upon her.

Hartwell was a modest brick house within a garden skirting the road. It had a retired air, as of a poor gentleman's house whose slender fortunes limit his tastes: Mr. Oliver Smith's fortunes were very slender, and he shared them with two maiden sisters. The shrubs were well grown and the grass was well kept, but there was no show of the gorgeous scentless flowers which make the gardens of the wealthy so gay and splendid in summer. Ivy clothed the walls, and old-fashioned flowers bloomed all the year round in the borders, but it was not a very cheerful garden in the afternoon.

Two elderly ladies were pacing the lawn arm-in-arm, with straw hats tilted over their noses, when the Abbotsmead carriage stopped at the gate. They stood an instant to see whose it was, and then hurried forward to welcome their visitors.

"This is very kind, Mr. Cecil, very kind, Miss Mary; but you always are kind in remembering old friends," said the elder, Miss Juliana, and then was silent, gazing at Bessie.

"This is Miss Fairfax," said Mr. Cecil Burleigh. "Lady Latimer has no doubt named her in her letters."

"Ah! yes, yes--what am I dreaming about? Charlotte," turning to her sister, "who is she like?"

"She is like poor Dorothy," was the answer in a tremulous, solemn voice. "What will Oliver say?"

"How long is it since Lady Latimer saw you, my dear?" asked Miss Juliana.

"Three years. I have not been home to the Forest since I left it to go to school in France."

"Ah! Then that accounts for our sister not having mentioned to us your wonderful resemblance to your great-aunt, Dorothy Fairfax. Three years alter and refine a child's chubby face into a young woman's face."

Miss Juliana seemed to be thrown into irretrievable confusion by Bessie's apparition and her own memory. She was quite silent as she led the way to the house, walking between Mr. Cecil Burleigh and his sister. Miss Charlotte walked behind with Bessie, and remarked that she was pleased to have a link of acquaintance with her already by means of Lady Latimer. Bessie asked whether Lady Latimer was likely soon to come into Woldshire.

"We have not heard that she has any present intention of visiting us. Her visits are few and far between," was the formal reply.

"I wish she would. When I was a little girl she was my ideal of all that is grand, gracious, and lovely," said Bessie.

Bessie's little outbreak had done her good, had set her tongue at liberty. Her self-consciousness was growing less obtrusive. Mr. Cecil Burleigh explained to her the legal process of an election for a member of Parliament, and Miss Burleigh sat by in satisfied silence, observing the quick intelligence of her face and the flattered interest in her brother's. At the park gates, Mr. Fairfax, returning from a visit to one of his farmsteads where building was in progress, met the carriage and got in. His first question was what Mr. Oliver Smith had said about the coming election, and whether he would be in Norminster the following day.

The news about Buller troubled him no little, to judge by his countenance, but he did not say much beyond an exclamation that they would carry the contest through, let it cost what it might. "We have been looking forward to this contest ever since Bradley was returned five years ago; we will not be so faint-hearted as to yield without a battle. If we are defeated again, we may count Norminster lost to the Conservative interest."

"Oh, don't talk of defeat! We shall be far more likely to win if we refuse to contemplate the possibility of defeat," cried Bessie with girlish vivacity.

Mr. Cecil Burleigh laughed and said, "Miss Fairfax is right. She will wear my colors and I will adopt her logic, and, ostrich-like, refuse to see the perils that threaten me."

"No, no," remonstrated Bessie casting off her shy reserve under encouragement. "So far from hiding your face, you must make it familiar in every street in Norminster. You must seek if you would find, and ask if you would have. I would. I should hate to be beaten by my own neglect, worse than by my rival."

Mr. Fairfax was electrified at this brusque assertion of her sentiments by his granddaughter. Her audacity seemed at least equal to her shyness. "Very good advice, Elizabeth; make him follow it," said he dryly.

"We will give him no rest when we have him at Brentwood," added Miss Burleigh. "But though he is so cool about it, I believe he is dreadfully in earnest. Are you not, Cecil?"

"I will not be beaten by my own neglect," was his rejoinder, with a glance at Bessie, blushing beautifully.

They did not relapse into constraint any more that day. There was no addition to the company at dinner, and the evening being genially warm, they enjoyed it in the garden. Mr. Cecil Burleigh and Miss Fairfax even strolled as far as the ruins in the park, and on the way he enlightened her respecting some of his opinions, tastes, and prejudices. She heard him attentively, and found him very instructive. His clever conversation was a compliment to which, as a bright girl, she was not insensible. His sister had detailed to him her behavior on her introduction to Lady Angleby, and had deplored her lively sense of the ridiculous. Miss Burleigh had the art of taming that her brother credited her with, and Elizabeth was already at ease and happy with her--free to be herself, as she felt, and not always on guard and measuring her words; and the more of her character that she revealed, the better Miss Burleigh liked her. Her gayety of temper was very attractive when it was kept within due bounds, and she had a most sweet docility of tractableness when approached with caution. At the close of the evening she retired to her white parlor with a rather exalted feeling of responsibility, having promised, at Mr. Cecil Burleigh's instigation, to study certain essays of Lord Bacon on government and seditions in states for the informing of her mind. She took the volume down from Dorothy Fairfax's bookshelf, and laid it on her table for a reminder. Miss Burleigh saw it there in the morning.

"Ah, dear Cecil! He will try to make you very wise and learned," said she, nodding her head and smiling significantly. "But never mind: he waltzes to perfection, and delights in a ball, no man more."

"Does he?" cried Bessie, amused and laughing. "That potent, grave, and reverend signor can condescend, then, to frivolities! Oh, when shall we have a ball that I may waltz with him?"

"Soon, if all go successfully at the election. Lady Angleby will give a ball if Cecil win and you ask her."

"_I_ ask her! But I should never dare."

"She will be only too glad of the opportunity, and you may dare anything with her when she is pleased. She has always been dear Cecil's fast friend, and his triumph will be hers. She will want to celebrate it joyously, and nothing is really so joyous as a good dance. We will have a good dance."