Chapter 33

_A VISIT TO CASTLEMOUNT._

Bessie Fairfax had been but a few days at home after the Brentwood rejoicings when there came for her an invitation from Mrs. Chiverton to spend a week at Castlemount. She was perfectly ready to go--more ready to go than her grandfather was to part with her. She read him the letter at breakfast; he said he would think about it, and at luncheon he had not yet made up his mind. Before post-time, however, he supposed he must let her choose her own associates, and if she chose Mrs. Chiverton for old acquaintance' sake, he would not refuse his consent, but Mr. Chiverton and he were not on intimate terms.

Bessie went to Castlemount under escort of Mrs. Betts. Mrs. Chiverton was rejoiced to welcome her. "I like Miss Fairfax, because she is honest. Her manner is a little brusque, but she has a good heart, and we knew each other at school," was her reason given to Mr. Chiverton for desiring Bessie's company. They got on together capitally. Mrs. Chiverton had found her course and object in life already, and was as deeply committed to philanthropic labors and letters as either Lady Latimer or Lady Angleby. They were both numbered amongst her correspondents, and she promised to outvie them in originality and fertility of resource. What she chiefly wanted at Castlemount was a good listener, and Bessie Fairfax, as yet unprovided with a vocation, showed a fine turn that way. She reposed lazily at the end of Mrs. Chiverton's encumbered writing-table, between the fire and the window, and heard her discourse with infinite patience. Bessie was too moderate ever to join the sisterhood of active reformers, but she had no objection to their activity while herself safe from assaults. But when she was invited to sign papers pledging herself to divers serious convictions she demurred. Mrs. Chiverton said she would not urge her. Bessie gracefully acquiesced, and Mrs. Chiverton put in a more enticing plea: "I can scarcely expect to interest you in my occupations all at once, but they bring to me often the most gratifying returns. Read that letter."

Bessie read that letter. "Very honeyed phrases," said she with her odd twist of the mouth, so like her grandfather. It was from a more practised philanthropist than the young lady to whom it was addressed, and was in a strain of fulsome adulation, redolent of gratitude for favors to come. Religious and benevolent egotism is impervious to the tiny sting of sarcasm. Mrs. Chiverton looked complacently lofty, and Bessie had not now to learn how necessary to her was the incense of praise. Once this had provoked her contempt, but now she discerned a certain pathos in it; she had learnt what large opportunity the craving for homage gives to disappointment. "You cannot fail to do some good because you mean well," she said after the perusal of more letters, more papers and reports. "But don't call me heartless and unfeeling because I think that distance lends enchantment to the view of some of your pious and charitable objects."

"Oh no; I see you do not understand their necessity. I am busy at home too. I am waging a crusade against a dreadful place called Morte, and a cottage warfare with our own steward. These things do not interest Mr. Chiverton, but he gives me his support. I tell him Morte must disappear from the face of the earth, but there is a greedy old agent of Mr. Gifford's, one Blagg, who is terribly in the way. Then I have established a nursery in connection with the school, where the mothers can leave their little children when they go to work in the fields."

"Do they work in the fields hereabouts?"

"Oh yes--at hoeing, weeding and stone-picking, in hay-time and harvest. Some of them walk from Morte--four miles here and four back. There is a widow whose husband died on the home-farm--it was thought not to answer to let widows remain in the cottages--this woman had five young children, and when she moved to Morte, Mr. Chiverton kindly kept her on. I want her to live at our gates."

"And what does she earn a day?"

"Ninepence. Of course, she has help from the parish as well--two shillings a week, I think, and a loaf for each child besides."

A queer expression flitted over Bessie's face; she drew a long breath and stretched her arms above her head.

"Yes, I feel it is wrong: the widow of a laborer who died in Mr. Chiverton's service, who spends all her available strength in his service herself, ought not to be dependent on parish relief. I put it to him one day with the query, Why God had given him such great wealth? A little house, a garden, the keep of a cow, a pig, would have made all the difference in the world to her, and none to him, except that her children might have grown up stout and healthy, instead of ill-nurtured and weakly. But you are tired. Let us go and take a few turns in the winter-garden. It is the perfection of comfort on a windy, cold day like this."

Bessie acceded with alacrity. Castlemount was not the building of one generation, but it owed its chief glories to its present master. Mr. Chiverton had found it a spacious country mansion, and had converted it into a palace of luxury and a museum of art--one reason why Morte had thriven and Chiver-Chase become almost without inhabitant. Bessie Fairfax was half bewildered amongst its magnificences, but its winter-garden was to her the greatest wonder of all. She was not, however, sufficiently acclimatized to an artificial temperature to enjoy it long. "It is delicious, but as we are not hot-house ferns, a good stretch over that upland would be, perhaps, more delicious still: it is cold, but the sun shines," she said after two turns under the moist glass.

"We must not change the air too suddenly," Mrs. Chiverton objected. "The wind is very boisterous."

"There is a woman at work in it; is it your widow?" Bessie asked, pointing down a mimic orange-grove.

"Yes--poor thing! how miserably she is clothed! I must send her out one of my knitted kerchiefs."

"Oh yes, do," said Bessie; and the woollen garment being brought, she was deputed to carry it to the weeding woman.

On closer view she proved to be a lean, laborious figure, with an anxious, weather-beaten face, which cleared a little as she received the mistress's gift. It was a kerchief of thick gray wool, to cross over in front and tie behind.

"It will be a protection against the cold for my chest; I suffered with the inflammation badly last spring," she said, approving it.

"Put it on at once; it is not to be only looked at," said Bessie.

The woman proceeded to obey, but when she wanted to tie it behind she found a difficulty from a stiffness of one shoulder, and said, "It is the rheumatics, miss; one catches it being out in the wet."

"Let me tie it for you," said Bessie.

"Thank you, miss, and thank the mistress for her goodness," said the woman when it was done, gazing curiously at the young lady. And she stooped again to her task, the wind making sport with her thin and scanty skirts.

Bessie walked farther down the grove, green in the teeth of winter. She was thinking that this poor widow, work and pain included, was not less contented with her lot than herself or than the beautiful young lady who reigned at Castlemount. Yet it was a cruelly hard lot, and might be ameliorated with very little thought. "Blessed is he that considereth the poor," says the old-fashioned text, and Bessie reflected that her proud school-fellow was in the way of earning this blessing.

She was confirmed in that opinion on the following day, when the weather was more genial, and they took a drive together in the afternoon and passed through the hamlet of Morte. It had formed itself round a dilapidated farm-house, now occupied as three tenements, in one of which lived the widow. The carriage stopped in the road, and Mrs. Chiverton got out with her companion and knocked at the door. It was opened by a shrewd-visaged, respectable old woman, and revealed a clean interior, but very indigent, with the tea-table set, and on a wooden stool by the hearth a tall, fair young woman sitting, who rose and dropt a smiling curtsey to Miss Fairfax: she was Alice, the second housemaid at Abbotsmead, and waited on the white suite. She explained that Mrs. Macky had given her leave to walk over and see her mother, but she was out at work; and this was her aunt Jane, retired from service and come to live at home with her widowed sister.

An old range well polished, an oven that would not bake, and a boiler that would not hold water,--this was the fireplace. The floor was of bricks, sunken in waves and broken; through a breach in the roof of the chamber over the "house" blew the wind and leaked the rain, in spite of a sack stuffed with straw thrust between the rafters and the tiles.

"Yes, ma'am, my poor sister has lived in this place for sixteen years, and paid the rent regularly, three pounds a year: I've sent her the money since she lost her husband," said the retired servant, in reply to some question of Mrs. Chiverton's. "Blagg is such a miser that he won't spend a penny on his places; it is promise, promise for ever. And what can my poor sister do? She dar'n't affront him, for where could she go if she was turned out of this? There's a dozen would jump at it, houses is so scarce and not to be had."

"There ought to be a swift remedy for wretches like Blagg," Mrs. Chiverton indignantly exclaimed when they were clear of the foul-smelling hamlet. "Why cannot it be an item of duty for the rural police to give information of his extortion and neglect? Those poor women are robbed, and they are utterly helpless to resist it. It is a greater crime than stealing on the highway."

"Do any of grandpapa's people live at Morte?" Bessie asked.

"No, I think not; they are ours and Mr. Gifford's, and a colony of miserable gentry who exist nobody can tell how, but half their time in jail. It was a man from Morte who shot our head-keeper last September. Poor wretch! he is waiting his trial now. When I have paid a visit to Morte I always feel indifferent to my beautiful home."

Bessie Fairfax felt a sharp pang of compunction for her former hard judgment of Mrs. Chiverton. If it was ever just, time and circumstances were already reversing it. The early twilight overtook them some miles from Castlemount, but it was still clear enough to see a picturesque ivied tower not far removed from the roadside when they passed Carisfort.

Bessie looked at it with interest. "That is not the dwelling-house--that is the keep," Mrs. Chiverton said. "The house faces the other way, and has the finest view in the country. It is an antiquated place, but people can be very good and happy there."

The coachman had slackened speed, and now stopped. A gentleman was hastening down the drive--Mr. Forbes, as it turned out on his nearer approach. The very person she was anxious to see! Mrs. Chiverton exclaimed; and they entered on a discussion of some plan proposed between them for the abolition of Morte.

"I can answer for Mr. Chiverton's consent. Mr. Gifford is the impracticable person. And of course it is Blagg's interest to oppose us. Can we buy Blagg out?" said the lady.

"No, no; that would be the triumph of iniquity. We must starve him out," said the clergyman.

More slowly there had followed a lady--Miss Burleigh, as Bessie now perceived. She came through the gate, and shook hands with Mrs. Chiverton before she saw who her companion in the carriage was, but when she recognized Bessie she came round and spoke to her very pleasantly: "Lady Augleby has gone to Scarcliffe to meet one of her daughters, and I have a fortnight's holiday, which I am spending at home. You have not been to Carisfort: it is such a pretty, dear old place! I hope you will come some day. I am never so happy anywhere as at Carisfort;" and she allowed Bessie to see that she included Mr. Forbes in the elements of her happiness there. Bessie was quite glad to be greeted in this friendly tone by Mr. Cecil Burleigh's sister; it was ever a distress to her to feel that she had hurt or vexed anybody. She returned to Castlemount in charming spirits.

On entering the drawing-room before dinner there was a new arrival--a slender little gentleman who knelt with one knee on the centre ottoman and turned over a volume of choice etchings. He moved his head, and Bessie saw a visage familiar in its strangeness. He laid the book down, advanced a step or two with a look of pleased intelligence, bowed and said, "Miss Fairfax!" Bessie had already recognized him. "Mr. Christie!" said she, and they shook hands with the utmost cordiality. The world is small and full of such surprises.

"Then you two are old acquaintances? Mr. Christie is here to paint my portrait," said Mrs. Chiverton.

The meeting was an agreeable episode in their visit. At dinner the young artist talked with his host of art, and Bessie learnt that he had seen Italy, Spain, Greece, that he had friends and patrons of distinction, and that he had earned success enough to set him above daily cares. Mr. Chiverton had a great opinion of his future, and there was no better judge in the circle of art-connoisseurs.

"Mr. Christie has an exquisite taste and refinement--feelings that are born in a man, and that no labor or pains can enable him to acquire," her host informed Bessie. It was these gifts that won him a commission for a portrait of the beautiful Mrs. Chiverton, though he was not professedly a painter of portraits.

After dinner, Miss Fairfax and he had a good talk of Beechhurst, of Harry Musgrave, and other places and persons interesting to both. Bessie asked after that drop-scene, at the Hampton theatre, and Mr. Christie, in nowise shy of early reminiscences, gave her an amusing account of how he worked at it. Then he spoke of Lady Latimer as a generous soul who had first given him a lift, and of Mr. Carnegie as another effectual helper. "He lent me a little money--I have long since paid it back," he whispered to Bessie. He was still plain, but his countenance was full of intelligence, and his air and manner were those of a perfectly simple, cultivated, travelled gentleman. He did salaam to nobody now, for in his brief commerce with the world he had learnt that genius has a rank of its own to which the noblest bow, and ambition he had none beyond excelling in his beloved art. Harry Musgrave was again, after long separation, his comrade in London. He said that he was very fond of Harry.

"He is my constant Sunday afternoon visitor," he told Bessie. "My painting-room looks to the river, and he enjoys the sunshine and the boats on the water. His own chambers are one degree less dismal than looking down a well."

"He works very hard, does he not?--Harry used to be a prodigious worker," said Bessie.

"Yes, he throws himself heart and soul into whatever he undertakes, whether it be work or pleasure. If he had won that fellowship the other day I should have been glad. It would have made him easier."

"I did not know he was trying for one. How sorry I am! It must be very dull studying law."

"He lightens that by writing articles for some paper--reviews of books chiefly. There are five years to be got through before he can be called to the bar--a long probation for a young fellow in his circumstances."

"Oh, Harry Musgrave was never impatient: he could always wait. I am pleased that he has taken to his pen. And what a resource you must be to each other in London, if only to tell your difficulties and disappointments!"

"Oh yes, I am in all Musgrave's secrets, and he in mine," said Christie. "A bachelor in chambers has not a superfluity of wants; he is short of money now and then, but that is very much the case with all of us."

Bessie laughed carelessly. "Poor Harry!" said she, and recollected the tragical and pathetic stories of the poets that they used to discuss, and of which they used to think so differently. She did not reflect how much temptation was implied in the words that told her Harry was short of money now and then. A degree of hardship to begin with was nothing more than all her heroes had encountered, and their biography had commonly succeeded in showing that they were the better for it--unless, indeed, they were so unlucky as to die of it--but Harry had far too much force of character ever to suffer himself to be beaten; in all her visions he was brave, steadfast, persistent, and triumphant. She said so to Mr. Christie, adding that they had been like brother and sister when they were children, and she felt as if she had a right to be interested in whatever concerned him. Mr. Christie looked on the carpet and said, "Yes, yes," he remembered what friends and comrades they were--almost inseparable; and he had heard Harry say, not so very long ago, that he wished Miss Fairfax was still at hand when his spirits flagged, for she used to hearten him more than anybody else ever did. Bessie was too much gratified by this reminiscence to think of asking what the discouragements were that caused Harry to wish for her.

The next day Mrs. Chiverton's portrait was begun, and the artist was as happy as the day was long. His temper was excellent unless he were interrupted at his work, and this Mr. Chiverton took care should not happen when he was at home. But one morning in his absence Mr. Gifford called on business, and was so obstinate to take no denial that Mrs. Chiverton permitted him to come and speak with her in the picture-gallery, where she was giving the artist a sitting. Bessie Fairfax, who had the tact never to be in the way, was there also, turning over his portfolio of sketches (some sketches on the beach at Yarmouth greatly interested her), but she looked up with curiosity when the visitor entered, for she knew his reputation.

He was a fat man of middle age, with a thin voice and jerky manner. "I had Forbes yesterday, Mrs. Chiverton, to speak to me in your name," he announced. "Do you know him for the officious fellow he is, for ever meddling in other people's matters? For ten years he has pestered me about Morte, which is no concern of mine."

"I beg your pardon, Mr. Gifford, it is very much your concern," Mrs. Chiverton said with calm deliberation. "Eleven laborers, employed by farmers on your estate, representing with their families over thirty souls, live in hovels at Morte owned by you or your agent Blagg. They are unfit for human habitation. Mr. Chiverton has given orders for the erection of groups of cottages sufficient to house the men employed on our farms, and they will be removed to them in the spring. But Mr. Fairfax and other gentlemen who also own land in the bad neighborhood of Morte object to the hovels our men vacate being left as a harbor for the ragamuffinery of the district. They require to have them cleared away; most of these, again, are in Blagg's hands."

"The remedy is obvious: those gentlemen do not desire to be munificent at Blagg's expense--let them purchase his property. No doubt he has his price."

"Yes, Mr. Gifford, but a most extortionate price. And it is said he cannot sell without your consent."

Mr. Gifford grew very red, and with stammering elocution repelled the implication: "Blagg wants nobody's consent but his own. The fact is, the tenements pay better to keep than they would pay to sell; naturally, he prefers to keep them."

"But if you would follow Mr. Chiverton's example, and let the whole place be cleared of its more respectable inhabitants at one blow, he would lose that inducement."

Mr. Gifford laughed, amazed at this suggestion--so like a woman, as he afterwards said. "Blagg has served me many years--I have the highest respect for him. I cannot see that I am called on to conspire against his interests."

Mrs. Chiverton's countenance had lost its serenity, and would not soon recover it, but Bessie Fairfax could hardly believe her ears when the artist muttered, "Somebody take that chattering fool away;" and up he jumped, cast down his palette, and rushed out of the gallery. Mrs. Chiverton looked after him and whispered to Bessie, "What is it?" "Work over for the day," whispered Bessie again, controlling an inclination to laugh. "The temperament of genius disturbed by the intrusion of unpleasant circumstances." Mrs. Chiverton was sorry; perhaps a walk in the park would recompose the little man. There he was, tearing over the grass towards the lake. Then she turned to Mr. Gifford and resumed the discussion of Morte, with a warning of the terrible responsibility he incurred by maintaining that nest of vice and fever; but as it was barren of results it need not be continued.

The next day the painter worked without interruption.