Chapter 27

_SOME DOUBTS AND FEARS_.

Sir Edward Lucas was a gentleman for whom Lady Angleby had a considerable degree of favor: it was a pity he was so young, otherwise he might have done for Mary. Poor Mary! Mr. Forbes and she had a long, obstinate kindness for each other, but Lady Angleby stood in the way: Mr. Forbes did not satisfy any of her requirements. Besides, if she gave Mary up, who was to live with her at Brentwood? Therefore Mr. Forbes and Miss Burleigh, after a six years' engagement, still played at patience. She did not drive into Norminster that afternoon. "Mr. Fairfax and Cecil will be glad of a seat back," said she, and stood excused.

Sir Edward Lucas had more pleasure in facing his contemporary: Miss Fairfax he regarded as his contemporary. He was smitten with a lively admiration for her, and in course of the drive he sought her advice on important matters. Lady Angleby began to instruct him on what he ought to do for the improvement of his fine house at Longdown, but he wanted to talk rather of a new interest--the mineral wealth still waiting development on his property at Hippesley Moor.

"Now, what should you do, Miss Fairfax, supposing you had to earn your bread by a labor always horribly disagreeable and never unattended by danger?" he asked with great eagerness.

Bessie had not a doubt of what she should do: "I should work as hard as ever I could for the shortest possible time that would keep me in bread."

"Just so," said Sir Edward rubbing his hands. "So would I. Now, will that principle work amongst colliers? I am going to open a pit at Hippesley Moor, where the coal is of excellent quality. It is a fresh start, and I shall try to carry out your principle, Miss Fairfax; I am convinced that it is excellent and Christian."

_Christian!_ Bessie's blue eyes widened with laughing alarm. "Oh, had you not better consult somebody of greater experience?" cried she.

Lady Angleby approved her modesty, and with smiling indulgence remarked, "I should think so, indeed!"

"No, no: experience is always for sticking to grooves," said Sir Edward. "I like Miss Fairfax's idea. It is shrewd--it goes to the root of the difficulty. We must get it out in detail. Now, if in three days' hard work the collier can earn the week's wages of an agricultural laborer and more--and he can--we have touched the reason why he takes so many play-days. It would be a very sharp spur of necessity indeed that would drive me into a coal-pit at all; and nothing would keep me there one hour after necessity was satisfied. I shall take into consideration the instinct of our common humanity that craves for some sweetness in life, and as far as I am able it shall be gratified. Now, the other three days: what shall be their occupation? Idleness will not do."

"No, I should choose to have a garden and work in the sun," said Bessie, catching some of his spirit.

"And I should choose to tend some sort of live-stock. In the way of minor industries I am convinced that a great deal may be put in their way only by taking thought. I shall lay parcels of land together for spade cultivation--the men will have a market at their own doors; then poultry farms--"

"Not forgetting the cock-pit for Sunday amusement," interrupted Lady Angleby sarcastically. "You are too Utopian, Sir Edward. Your colony will be a dismal failure and disappointment if you conduct it on such a sentimental plan."

Sir Edward colored. He had a love of approbation, and her ladyship was an authority. He sought to propitiate her better opinion, and resumed: "There shall be no inexorable rule. A man may work his six days in the pit if it be his good-will, but he shall have the chance of a decent existence above ground if he refuse to live in darkness and peril more than three or four. Schools and institutes are very good things in their place, and I shall not neglect to provide them, but I do not expect that more than a slender minority of my colliers will ever trouble the reading-room much. Let them feed pigs and grow roses."

"They will soon not know what they want. The common people grow more exacting every day--even our servants. You will have some fine stories of trouble and vexation to tell us before long."

Sir Edward looked discouraged, and Bessie Fairfax, with her impulsive kind heart, exclaimed, "No, no! In all labor there is profit, and if you work at doing your best for those who depend on your land, you will not be disappointed. Men are not all ungrateful."

Sir Edward certainly was not. He thanked Miss Fairfax energetically, and just then the carriage stopped at the "George." Mr. Fairfax and Mr. Cecil Burleigh came out in the most cheerful good-humor, and Mr. Cecil Burleigh began to tell Bessie that she did not know how much she had done for him by securing Buller's vote; it had drawn others after it. Bessie was delighted, and was not withheld by any foolish shyness from proclaiming that her mind was set on his winning his election.

"You ought to take these two young people into your counsels, Cecil; they have some wonderful devices for the promotion of contentment amongst coal-miners," said Lady Angleby. Mr. Fairfax glanced in his granddaughter's innocent, rosy face, and shook hands with Sir Edward as he got out of the carriage. Mr. Cecil Burleigh said that wisdom was not the monopoly of age, and then he inquired where they were going.

They were going to call at the manor on Lady Eden, and to wind up with a visit to Mr. Laurence Fairfax in the Minster Court. Mr. Fairfax said he would meet them there, and the same said Mr. Cecil Burleigh. Sir Edward Lucas stood halting on the inn-steps, wistfully hoping for a bidding to come too. Lady Angleby was even kinder than his hopes; she asked if he had any engagement for the evening, and when he answered in the negative she invited him to come and dine at Brentwood again. He accepted with joy unfeigned.

When the ladies reached Minster Court only Mr. Cecil Burleigh had arrived there. Lady Angleby was impatient to hear some private details of the canvass, and took her nephew aside to talk of it. Mr. Laurence Fairfax began to ask Bessie how long she was to stay at Brentwood. "Until Monday," Bessie said; and her eyes roved unconsciously to the cupboard under the bookcase where the toys lived, but it was fast shut and locked, and gave no sign of its hid treasures. Her uncle's eyes followed hers, and with a significant smile he said, if she pleased, he would request her grandfather to leave her with him for a few days, adding that he would find her some young companions. Bessie professed that she would like it very much, and when Mr. Fairfax came in the request was preferred and cordially granted. The squire was in high good-humor with his granddaughter and all the world just now.

Bessie went away from Minster Court with jubilant anticipations of what might happen during the proposed visit to her uncle's house. One thing she felt sure of: she would become better acquainted with that darling cherub of a boy, and the vision she made of it shed quite a glow on the prospect. She told Miss Burleigh when she returned to Brentwood that she was not going out of reach on Monday; she was going to stay a few days with her uncle Laurence in Minster Court.

"Cecil will be so glad!" said his devoted sister.

"There are no more Bullers to conquer, are there?" Bessie asked, turning her face aside.

"I hope not. Oh no! Cecil begins to be tolerably sure of his election, and he will have you to thank for it. Mr. John Short blesses you every hour of the day."

Bessie laughed lightly. "I did good unconsciously, and blush to find it fame," said she.

A fear that her brother's success with Miss Fairfax might be doubtful, though his election was sure, flashed at that instant into Miss Burleigh's mind. Bessie's manner was not less charming, but it was much more intrepid, and at intervals there was a strain of fun in it--of mischief and mockery. Was it the subacid flavor of girlish caprice, which might very well subsist in combination with her sweetness, or was it sheer insensibility? Time would show, but Miss Burleigh retained a lurking sense of uneasiness akin to that she had experienced when she detected in Miss Fairfax, at their first meeting, an inclination to laugh at her aunt--an uneasiness difficult to conceal and dangerous to confess. Not for the world would she, at this stage of the affair, have revealed her anxiety to her brother, who held the even tenor of his way, whatever he felt--never obtrusive and never negligent. He treated Bessie like the girl of sense she was, with courtesy, but without compliments or any idle banter; and Bessie certainly began to enjoy his society. He improved on acquaintance, and made the hours pass much more pleasantly at Brentwood when he was there than they passed in his absence. This was promising. The evening's dinner-party would have been undeniably heavy without the leaven of his wit, for Mr. Logger, that well-known political writer, had arrived from London in the course of the afternoon, and Lady Angleby and he discoursed with so much solemn allusion and innuendo on the affairs of the nation that it was like listening surreptitiously at a cabinet council. Sir Edward Lucas was quite silent and oppressed.

Coming into the morning-room after breakfast on the following day armed with a roll of papers, Mr. Logger announced, "I met our excellent friend Lady Latimer at Summerhay last week; she is immensely interested in the education movement."

Mr. Fairfax and Mr. Cecil Burleigh instantly discovered that it was time they were gone into the town, and with one compunctious glance at Bessie, of which she did not yet know the meaning, they vanished. The roll in Mr. Logger's hand was an article in manuscript on that education movement in which he had stated that his friend Lady Latimer was so immensely interested; and he had the cruelty to propose to read it to the ladies here. He did read it, his hostess listening with gratified approval and keeping a controlling eye on Miss Fairfax, who, when she saw what impended, would have escaped had she been able. Miss Burleigh bore it as she bore everything--with smiling resignation--but she enjoyed the vivacity of Bessie's declaration afterward that the lecture was unpardonable.

"What a shockingly vain old gentleman! Could we not have waited to read his article in print?" said she.

"Probably it will never be in print. He toadies my aunt, who likes to be credited with a literary taste, but Cecil says people laugh at him; he is not of any weight, either literary or political, though he has great pretensions. We shall have him for a week at least, and I have no doubt he has brought manuscript to last the whole time."

Bessie was so uncomfortably candid as to cry out that she was glad, then, her visit would soon be over; and then she tried to extenuate her plain-speaking, not very skilfully.

Miss Burleigh accepted her plea with a gentleness that reproached her: "We hoped that you would be happy at Brentwood with Cecil here; his company is generally supposed to make any place delightful. He is exceedingly dear to us all; no one knows how good he is until they have lived with him a long while."

"Oh, I am sure he is good; I like him much better now than I did at first; but if he runs away to Norminster and leaves us a helpless prey to Mr. Logger, that is not delightful," rejoined Bessie winsomely.

Miss Burleigh kissed and forgave her, acknowledged that it was the reverse of delightful, and conveyed an intimation to her brother by which he profited. Mr. Logger favored the ladies with another reading on Sunday afternoon--an essay on sermons, and twice as long as one. Mr. Jones should have been there: this essay was much heavier artillery than Miss Hague's little paper-winged arrows. In the middle of it, just at the moment when endurance became agony and release bliss, Mr. Cecil Burleigh entered and invited Miss Fairfax to walk into the town to minster prayers, and Bessie went so gladly that his sister was quite consoled in being left to hear Mr. Logger to an end.

The two were about to ascend the minster steps when they espied Mr. Fairfax in the distance, and turned to meet him. He had been lunching with his son. At the first glance Bessie knew that her grandfather had suffered an overwhelming surprise since he went out in the morning. Mr. Cecil Burleigh also perceived that something was amiss, and not to distress his friend by inopportune remark, he said where he and Miss Fairfax were going.

"Go--go, by all means," said the squire. "Perhaps you may overtake me as you return: I shall walk slowly, and I want a word with Short as I pass his house." With this he went on, and the young people entered the minster, thinking but not speaking of what they could not but observe--his manifest bewilderment and pre-occupation.

On the road home they did not, however, overtake Mr. Fairfax. He reached Brentwood before them, and was closeted with Lady Angleby for some considerable time previous to dinner. Her ladyship was not agreeable without effort that evening, and there was indeed a perceptible cloud over everybody but Mr. Logger. Whatever the secret, it had been communicated to Mr. Cecil Burleigh and his sister, and it affected them all more or less uncomfortably. Bessie guessed what had happened--that her grandfather had seen his son Laurence's little playfellow, and that there had been an important revelation.

Bessie was right. Mr. Laurence Fairfax had Master Justus on his lap when his father unexpectedly walked into his garden. There was a lady in blue amongst the flowers who vanished; and the incompetent Sally, with something in her arms, who also hastily retired, but not unseen, either her or her burden. Master Justus held his ground with baby audacity, and the old squire recognized a strong young shoot of the Fairfax stock. One or two sharp exclamations and astounded queries elicited from Mr. Laurence Fairfax that he had been five years married to the lady in blue--a niece of Dr. Jocund--and that the bold little boy was his own, and another in the nurse's arms. Mr. Fairfax did not refuse to sit at meat with his son, though the chubby boy sat opposite, but he declined all conversation on the subject beyond the bald fact, and expressed no desire to be made acquainted with his newly-discovered daughter-in-law. Indeed, at a hint of it he jerked out a peremptory negative, and left the house without any more reference to the matter. Mr. Laurence Fairfax feared that it would be long before his father would darken his doors again, but it was a sensible relief to have got his secret told, and not to have had any angry, unpardonable words about it. The squire said little, but those who knew him knew perfectly that he might be silent and all the more indignant. And undoubtedly he was indignant. Of his three sons, Laurence had been always the one preferred; and this was his usage of him, his confidence in him!