Chapter 43

_BETWEEN THEMSELVES._

It was on this day, when Bessie Fairfax's happiness primed her with courage to resist my lady's imperious will, that Harry Musgrave learnt for a certainty he had a rival. The rector was his informant. Mr. Wiley overtook Harry sauntering in the Forest, and asked him how he did, adding that he regretted to hear from his mother that there was a doubt of his being able to continue his law-studies in London, and reminding him of his own unheeded warnings against his ambition to rise in the world.

"Oh, I shall pull through, I trust," replied the young man, betraying no disquiet. "My mother is a little fanciful, as mothers often are. You must not encourage her anxieties."

"You look strong enough, but appearances are sometimes deceptive. Take care of yourself--health is before everything. It was a pity you did not win that fellowship: I don't know how you mean to live after you have got your call to the bar. You clever young fellows who rise from the ranks expect to carry the world before you, but it is a much harder matter than you think. Your father cannot make you much of an allowance?"

Harry knew the rector's tactless way too well to be affronted now by any remark he might make or any question he might ask. "My father has a liberal mind," he said good-humoredly. "And a man hopes for briefs sooner or later."

"It is mostly later, unless he have singular ability or good connexions. You must marry a solicitor's daughter," said the rector, flourishing his stick. Harry said he would try to dispense with violent expedients. They walked on a minute or two in silence, and then Mr. Wiley said: "You have seen Miss Fairfax, of course?--she is on a visit at Fairfield."

"Yes. She has been at Brook," replied Harry with reticent coolness. "We all thought her looking remarkably well."

"Yes, beautiful--very much improved indeed. My wife was quite astonished, but she has been living in the very best society. And have you seen Mr. Cecil Burleigh?"

Harry made answer that he had dined at Fairfield one evening, and had met Mr. Cecil Burleigh there.

"Miss Fairfax's friends must be glad she is going to marry so well--so suitably in every point of view. It is an excellent match, and, I understand from Lady Latimer, all but settled. She is delighted, for they are both immense favorites with her."

Harry Musgrave was dumb. Yet he did not believe what he heard--he could not believe it, remembering Bessie's kind, pretty looks. Why, her very voice had another, softer tone when she spoke to him; his name was music from her lips. The rector went on, explaining the fame and anticipated future of Mr. Cecil Burleigh in a vaguely confidential manner, until they came to a spot where two ways met, and Harry abruptly said, "I was going to Littlemire to call on Mr. Moxon, and this is my road." He held out his hand, and was moving off when Mr. Wiley's visage put on a solemn shade of warning:

"It will carry you through Marsh-End. I would avoid Marsh-End just now if I were you--a nasty, dangerous place. The fever is never long absent. I don't go there myself at present."

But Harry said there was a chance, then, that he might meet with his old tutor in the hamlet, and he started away, eager to be alone and to escape from the rector's observation, for he knew that he was betraying himself. He went swiftly along under the sultry shade in a confused whirl of sensations. His confidence had suddenly failed him. He had counted on Bessie Fairfax for his comrade since he was a boy; the idea of her was woven into all his pleasant recollections of the past and all his expectations in the future. Since that Sunday evening in the old sitting-room at Brook her sweet, womanly figure had been the centre of his thoughts, his reveries. He had imagined difficulties, obstacles, but none with her. This real difficulty, this tangible obstacle, in the shape of Mr. Cecil Burleigh, a suitor chosen by her family and supported by Lady Latimer, gave him pause. He could not affect to despise Mr. Cecil Burleigh, but he vowed a vow that he would not be cheated of his dear little Bessie unless by her own consent. Was it possible that he was deceived in her--that he and she mistook her old childish affection for the passion that is strong as death? No--no, it could not be. If there was truth in her eyes, in her voice, she loved him as dearly as he loved her, though never a word of love had been spoken between them. The young man wrought himself up into such a state of agitation and excitement that he never reached Marsh-End nor saw Mr. Moxon at all that day. He turned, and bent his steps by a circuitous path to a woodland nook where he had left his friend Christie at work a couple of hours ago.

"Back again so soon? Then you did not find Moxon at home," said the artist, scarcely lifting an eye from the canvas.

Harry flung himself on the ground beside his friend and delivered his mind of its new burden. Christie now condescended to look at him and to say calmly, "It is always well to know what threatens us, but there is no need to exaggerate facts. Mr. Cecil Burleigh is a rival you may be proud to defeat; Miss Fairfax will please herself, and I think you are a match for him. You have the start."

"I know Bessie is fond of me, but she is a simple, warm-hearted girl, and is fond of all of us," said Harry with a reflective air.

"I had no idea you were so modest. Probably she has a slight preference for _you_." Christie went on painting, and now and then a telling touch accentuated his sentiments.

Harry hearkened, and grew more composed. "I wish I had her own assurance of it," said he.

"You had better ask her," said Christie.

After this they were silent for a considerable space, and the picture made progress. Then Harry began again, summing up his disadvantages: "Is it fair to ask her? Here am I, of no account as to family or fortune, and under a cloud as to the future, if my mother and Carnegie are justified in their warnings--and sometimes it comes over me that they are--why, Christie, what have I to offer her? Nothing, nothing but my presumptuous self."

"Let her be judge: women have to put up with a little presumption in a lover."

"Would it not be great presumption? Consider her relations and friends, her rank and its concomitants. I cannot tell how much she has learnt to value them, how necessary they have become to her. Lady Latimer, who was good to me until the other day, is shutting her doors against me now as too contemptible."

"Not at all. The despotic old lady shuts her doors against you because she is afraid of you."

"What have I to urge except that I love her?"

"The best of pleas. Don't fear too much. Give her leave to love you by avowing your love--that is what a girl waits for: if you let her go back to Woldshire without an understanding between yourselves, she will think you care for your own pride more than for her."

"I wish she were little Bessie at Beechhurst again, and all her finery blown to the winds. I have not seen her for five days."

"That must be your own fault. You don't want an ambassador? If you do, there's the post."

Harry was silent again. He was chiefly raising objections for the pleasure of hearing them contradicted; of course he was not aware of half the objections that might have been cited against him as an aspirant to the hand of Miss Fairfax. In the depth of his heart there was a tenacious conviction that Bessie Fairfax loved him best in the world--with a love that had grown with her growth and strengthened with her strength, and would maintain itself independent of his failure or success in life. But oh, that word _failure_! It touched him with a dreadful chill. He turned pale at it, and resolutely averted his mind from the idea.

He left young Christie with as little ceremony as he had rejoined him, and walked home to Brook, entering the garden from the wood. The first sight that met him was Bessie Fairfax standing alone under the beeches. At the moment he thought it was an illusion, for she was all in bluish-gray amongst the shadows; but at the sound of the gate she turned quickly and came forward to meet him.

"I was just beginning to feel disappointed," said she impulsively. "Lady Latimer brought me over to say good-bye, and we were told you had gone to Littlemire. She is in the sitting-room with your mother. I came out here."

Harry's face flushed so warmly that he had no need to express his joy in words. What a lucky event it was that he had met Mr. Wiley, and had been turned back from his visit to his old tutor! He was fatigued with excitement and his hurried walk, and he invited Bessie to sit with him under the beeches where they used to sit watching the little stream as it ran by at their feet. Bessie was nothing loath--she was thinking that this was the last time they should meet for who could tell how long--and she complied with all her old child-like submission to him, and a certain sweet appealing womanly dignity, which, without daunting Harry at all, compelled him to remember that she was not any longer a child.

The young people were not visible from the sitting-room. Lady Latimer's head was turned another way when Harry and Bessie met, but the instant she missed her young charge she got up and looked out of the lattice. The boles and sweeping branches of the great beeches hid the figures at their feet, and Mrs. Musgrave, observing that dear Bessie was very fond of the manor-garden, and had probably strolled into the wilderness, my lady accepted the explanation and resumed her seat and her patience.

Meanwhile, Harry did not waste his precious opportunity. He had this advantage, that when he saw Bessie he saw only the fair face that he worshipped, and thought nothing of her adventitious belongings, while in her absence he saw her surrounded by them, and himself set at a vast conventional distance. He said that the four years since she left Beechhurst seemed but as one day, now they were together again in the old familiar places, and she replied that she was glad he thought so, for she thought so too. "I still call the Forest home, though I do not pine in exile. I return to it the day after to-morrow," she told him.

"Good little philosophical Bessie!" cried Harry, and relapsed into his normal state of masculine superiority.

Then they talked of themselves, past, present, and future--now with animation, now again with dropped and saddened voices. The afternoon sun twinkled in the many-paned lattices of the old house in the background, and the brook sang on as it had sung from immemorial days before a stone of the house was built. Harry gazed rather mournfully at the ivied walls during one of their sudden silences, and then he told Bessie that the proprietor was ill, and the manor would have a new owner by and by.

"I trust he will not want to turn out my father and mother and pull it down, but he is an improving landlord, and has built some excellent ugly farmsteads on his other property. I have a clinging to it, and the doctor says it would be well for me had I been born and bred in almost any other place."

Bessie sighed, and said deprecatingly, "Harry, you look as strong as a castle. If it was Mr. Christie they were always warning, I should not wonder, but _you_!"

"But _me_! Little Christie looks as though a good puff of wind might blow him away, and he is as tough as a pin-wire. I stand like a tower, and they tell me the foundations are sinking. It sounds like a fable to frighten me."

"Harry dear, it is not serious; don't believe it. Everybody has to take a little care. You must give up London and hard study if they try you. We will all help you to bear the disappointment: I know it would be cruel, but if you must, you must! Leaning towers, I've heard, stand hundreds of years, and serve their purpose as well as towers that stand erect."

"Ah, Bessie, cunning little comforter! Tell me which is the worse--a life that is a failure or death?" said Harry, watching the gyrations of a straw that the eddies of the rivulet were whirling by.

"Oh, death, death--there is no remedy for death." Bessie shuddered. There was repulsion in her face as well as awe.

Harry felt surprised: this was his own feeling, but women, he thought, had more natural resignation. Not so, however, his young comrade. She loved life, and hoped to see good days. He reminded her that she had lost both her parents early.

"Yes," she said, "but my other father and mother prevented me suffering from their loss. I scarcely recollect it, I was such a happy child. It would be different now if any of those, young like myself, that I have grown up with and love very much, were to pass out of sight, and I had to think that nowhere in the world could I find them any more."

"It would touch you more personally. There was a young fellow drowned at Oxford whom I knew: we were aghast for a day, but the next we were on the river again. I recollect how bitterly you cried the morning your father was buried; all the afternoon you refused to be comforted, even by a sweet black puppy that I had brought over for the purpose, but in the evening you took to it and carried it about in your pinafore. Oh, God and time are very good to us. We lose one love, another steps in to fill the void, and soon we do not remember that ever there was a void."

Bessie was gazing straight away into heaven, her eyes full of sunshiny tears, thoughts of the black puppy struggling with more pathetic thoughts. "We are very dismal, Harry," said she presently. "Is the moral of it how easily we should be consoled for each other's loss? Would you not pity me if I died? I should almost die of your death, I think."

"And if I am to live and never do any good, never to be famous, Bessie? If I come to you some day beaten and jaded--no honors and glories, as I used to promise--"

"Why, Harry, unless it were your mother no one would be kinder to you than I would," she said with exquisite tenderness, turning to look in his face, for he spoke in a strained, low voice as if it hurt him.

He took her hands, she not refusing to yield them, and said, "It is my belief that we are as fond of each other as ever we were, Bessie, and that neither of us will ever care half so much for anybody else?"

"It is my belief too, Harry." Bessie's eyes shone and her tongue trembled, but how happy she was! And he bowed his head for several minutes in silence.

There was a rustling in the bushes behind them, a bird perhaps, but the noise recalled them to the present world--that and a whisper from Bessie, smiling again for pure content: "Harry dear, we must not make fools of ourselves now; my lady might descend upon us at any moment."

Harry sighed, and looked up with great content. "It is a compact, Bessie," said he, holding out his right hand.

"Trust me, Harry," said she, and laid hers softly in his open palm.

Mrs. Musgrave's voice was heard from the sitting-room window: "Bessie! Bessie dear! where are you?--Lady Latimer wishes to go. Make haste--come in." A bit of Bessie's blue-gray dress had betrayed her whereabouts. And lo! the two young people emerged from the shelter of the trees, and quite at their leisure sauntered up the lawn, talking with a sweet gay confidence, just as they used to talk when they were boy and girl, and Bessie came to tea at Brook, and they were the best friends in the world. Harry's mother guessed in a moment what had happened. Lady Latimer caught one glance and loftily averted her observation.

They had to go round to the hall-door, and they did not hurry themselves. They took time to assure one another how deep was their happiness, their mutual confidence--to promise a frequent exchange of letters, and to fear that they would not meet again before Bessie left Fairfield. Lady Latimer was seated in the carriage when they appeared in sight. Bessie got in meekly, and was bidden to be quicker. She smiled at Harry, who looked divinely glad, and as they drove off rapidly recollected that she had not said good-bye to his mother.

"Never mind--Harry will explain," she said aloud: evidently her thoughts were astray.

"Explain what? I am afraid there are many things that need explanation," said my lady austerely, and not another word until they reached home. But Bessie's heart was in perfect peace, and her countenance reflected nothing but the sunshine.