Chapter 44

_A LONG, DULL DAY._

That evening Bessie Fairfax was charming, she was _so_ happy. She was good and gracious again to Mr. Cecil Burleigh, and she was never prettier. He basked in her content, without trying to understand it--thought more than ever what a buoyant, sweet-tempered woman she would be, to give a man rest and refreshment at home, whose active life must be spent in the arid ways of the political world. Dora had her conjectures, and whispered them, but Bessie made no revelation, gave no confidences.

It must be _ages_ before her league with Harry Musgrave could be concluded, and therefore let it be still, as it had been always, suspected, but not confessed--unless she were over-urged by Harry's rival and her northern kinsfolk and friends. Then she would declare her mind, but not before. Lady Latimer asked no questions. Her woman's discernment was not at fault, but she had her own opinion of youthful constancy and early loves and early vows, and believed that when they were not to be approved they were to be most judiciously ignored.

The next day was so fully occupied with engagements made beforehand that Bessie had no chance of going again to Beechhurst, but she did not make a grief of it--she could not have made a grief of anything just then. On the last morning, however, to her dear surprise, the doctor stopped at the door for a parting word of her mother's love and his own, and their hopes that she would soon be coming amongst them again; and when she went away an hour later she went as joyous as she had come, though she knew that a report of her untoward behavior had gone before her, and that the probabilities were she would enter into an atmosphere of clouds the moment she reached Abbotsmead.

But it did not prove so. Lady Latimer had written cautiously and kindly--had not been able to give any assurance of Mr. Cecil Burleigh's success, but had a feeling that it must come to pass. Elizabeth was a sweet girl, though she had the self-will of a child; in many points she was more of a child than my lady had supposed--in her estimate of individuals, and of their weight and position in the world, for instance--but this was a fault that knowledge of the world would cure.

Mr. Fairfax was pleased to welcome his granddaughter home again, and especially pleased to see no sadness in her return. The Forest was ever so much nearer now--not out of her world at all. Bessie had travelled that road once, and would travel it again. Every experience shortens such roads, lessens such difficulties between true friends. Bessie's acquaintances came to call upon her, and she talked of the pleasure it had been to her to revisit the scenes of her childhood, of the few changes that had happened there since she came away, and of the hospitality of Lady Latimer.

The lime trees were turning yellow and thin of leaf; there was a fire all day in the octagon parlor. It was autumn in Woldshire, soon to be winter. It seemed to Bessie on her return like resuming the dull routine of a life that had gone on for a long while. Mrs. Stokes, as her nearest and most neighborly neighbor, often ran across the park of an afternoon, but Bessie's best delight was at post-time in the morning. Mr. Fairfax never came down stairs to breakfast, and she had Harry Musgrave's letters all to herself, undiscovered and undisturbed.

The squire never regained his strength or his perfect moral control, and the peculiar tempers of his previous life seemed to be exaggerated as his natural force decayed. Mr. Oliver Smith was his most frequent and welcome visitor. They talked together of events past and of friends long since dead. Perhaps this was a little wearisome and painful now and then to Mr. Oliver Smith, who retained his youthful sprightliness amidst more serious sentiments. He would have had his old friend contemplate the great future that was approaching, instead of the unalterable past.

One day he said to Bessie, "I think your grandfather wanders in his mind sometimes; I fear he is failing."

"I don't know," was her reflective answer. "His thoughts often run on his sister Dorothy and Lady Latimer: I hear him mutter to himself the same words often, 'It was a lifelong mistake, Olympia.' But that is true, is it not? He is as clear and collected as ever when he dictates to me a letter on business; he makes use of me as his secretary."

"Well, well! Let us hope, then, God may spare him to us for many years to come," said Mr. Oliver Smith, with that conventional propriety of speech which helps us through so many hard moments when feeling does not dictate anything real to say.

Bessie dwelt for some days after on that pious aspiration of her grandfather's old friend, but the ache and tedium of life did not return upon her. Her sense of duty and natural affection were very strong. She told herself that if it were her lot to watch for many years beside this dwindling flame, it was a lot of God's giving, not of her own seeking, and therefore good. The letters that came to her from Beechhurst and Caen breathed nothing but encouragement to love and patience, and Harry Musgrave's letters were a perpetual fount of refreshment. What delightful letters they were! He told, her whatever he thought would interest or amuse her or make his life palpable to her. He sent her books, he sent her proof-sheets to be read and returned: if Bessie had not loved him so devotedly and all that belonged to him, she might have thought his literature a tax on her leisure. It was a wonder to all who knew her (without knowing her secret fund of joy) what a cheerful countenance she wore through this dreary period of her youth. Within the house she had no support but the old servants, and little change or variety from without. Those kind old ladies, Miss Juliana and Miss Charlotte Smith, were very good in coming to see her, and always indulged her in a talk of Lady Latimer and Fairfield; Miss Burleigh visited her occasionally for a day, but Lady Angleby kept out of the shadow on principle--she could not bear to see it lengthening. She enjoyed life very much, and would not be reminded of death if she could help it. Her nephew spent Christmas at Norminster, and paid more than one visit to Abbotsmead. Miss Fairfax was as glad as ever to see him. He came like a breath of fresh air from the living outer world, and made no pretensions to what he knew she had not to give. The engagement between Miss Julia Gardiner and Mr. Brotherton had fallen through, for some reason that was never fully explained, and Miss Burleigh began to think her dear brother would marry poor Julia after all.

Another of Bessie's pleasures was a day in Minster Court. One evening she brought home a photograph of the three boys, and the old squire put on his spectacles to look at it. She had ceased to urge reconciliation, but she still hoped for it earnestly; and it came in time, but not at all as she expected. One day--it was in the early spring--she was called to her grandfather's room, and there she found Mr. John Short sitting in council and looking exceedingly discontented. The table was strewn with parchments and papers, and she was invited to take a seat in front of the confusion. Then an abrupt question was put to her: Would she prefer to have settled upon her the Abbey Lodge, which Colonel Stokes now occupied as a yearly tenant, or a certain house in the suburbs of Norminster going out towards Brentwood?

"In what event?" she asked, coloring confusedly.

"In the event of my death or your own establishment in life," said her grandfather. "Your uncle Laurence will bring his family here, and I do not imagine that you will choose to be one with them long; you will prefer a home of your own."

The wave of color passed from Bessie's face. "Dear grandpapa, don't talk of such remote events; it is time enough to think of changes and decide when the time comes," said she.

"That is no answer, Elizabeth. Prudent people make their arrangements in anticipation of changes, and their will in anticipation of death. Speak plainly: do you like the lodge as a residence, or the vicinity of Norminster?"

"Dear grandpapa, if you were no longer here I should go home to the Forest," Bessie said, and grew very pale.

The old squire neither moved nor spoke for several minutes. He stared out of the window, then he glanced at the lawyer and said, "You hear, Short? now you will be convinced. She has not taken root enough to care to live here any longer. She will go back to the Forest; all this time she has been in exile, and cut off from those whom alone she loves. Why should I keep her waiting at Abbotsmead for a release that may be slow to come? Go now, Elizabeth, go now, if to stay wearies you;" and he waved her to the door imperatively.

Bessie rose trembling and left the room, tears and indignation struggling for the mastery. "Oh, grandpapa! why will you say such things?" was all her remonstrance, but she felt that there are some wrongs in this life very hard to bear.

Mr. John Short sat mute for some time after the young lady's departure. The squire gloomed sorrowfully: "From first to last my course is nothing but disappointment."

"I wish, sir, that you could be prevailed on to see Mr. Laurence?" suggested the lawyer. "His wife is a very good little lady, and the boys you might be proud of. Pray, sir, give yourself that chance of happiness for your closing days."

"I had other plans. There will be no marriage, Short: I understand Elizabeth. In warning me that she will return to the Forest when I am gone, she just tells me that my hopes of her and Burleigh are all moonshine. Well, let Laurence come. Let him come and take possession with his children; they can leave me my corner of the house in peace. I shall not need it very long. And Elizabeth can go _home_ when she pleases."

Mr. Fairfax's resentment was very bitter against Bessie, at first, for the frank exposition she had made of her future intentions. She had meant no unkindness, but simple honesty. He did not take it so, and when her customary duty and service brought her next into his presence he made her feel how deeply she had offended. He rejected her offer to read to him, put aside her helping hand, and said he would have Jonquil to assist him; she need not remain. He uttered no accusation against her and no reproach; he gave her no opportunity of softening her abrupt announcement; he just set her at a distance, as it were, and made himself unapproachable. Bessie betook herself in haste to her white parlor, to hide the blinding tears in her eyes and the mortification in her heart. "And he wonders that so few love him!" she said to herself, not without anger even in her pitiful yearning to be friends again.

A week of alienation followed this scene, and Bessie was never more miserable. Day by day she tried to resume her loving care of her grandfather, and day by day she was coldly repulsed. Jonquil, Macky, Mrs. Betts, all sympathized in silence; their young lady was less easy to condole with now than when she was fresh from school. The old squire was as wretched as he made his granddaughter. He had given permission for his son to come to Abbotsmead, and he seemed in no haste to embrace the permission. When he came at last, he brought little Justus with him, but he had to say that it was only for a few hours. In fact, his wife was extremely unwilling to abandon their happy, independent home in the Minster Court, and he was equally unwilling to force her inclination. Mr. Fairfax replied, "You know best," and gazed at his grandson, who, from between his father's knees, gazed at him again without any advance towards good-fellowship. A formal reconciliation ensued, but that was all. For the kindness that springs out of a warm, affectionate nature the old squire had to look to Elizabeth, and without any violent transition they glided back into their former habits and relations. Bessie was saddened a little by her late experiences, but she was not quite new to the lesson that the world is a place of unsatisfied hopes and defeated intentions.

Mr. John Short was often to and fro between Abbotsmead and Norminster during that summer, and an idea prevailed in the household that the squire was altering his will again. His son Frederick had died intestate, and the squire had taken possession of what he left. The poor lady in seclusion at Caen died also about this time, and a large addition was made to Mr. Fairfax's income--so large that his loss by the Durham lawsuit was more than balanced. The lawyer looked far from pleasant while transacting his client's business. It was true that Mr. Frederick Fairfax had left no will, but he had expressed certain distinct intentions, and these intentions, to the indignant astonishment of many persons, his father would not carry out. Mr. Forbes talked to him of the sacredness of his son's wishes, but the squire had a purpose for the money, and was obstinate in his refusal to relinquish it. Some people decided that thus he meant to enrich his granddaughter without impoverishing Abbotsmead for his successor, but Mr. John Short's manner to the young lady was tinctured with a respectful compassion that did not augur well for her prospects.

Bessie paid very little heed to the speculations of which she could not fail to hear something. So long as her grandfather was tolerably kind to her she asked no more from the present, and she left the future to take care of itself. But it cannot be averred that he was invariably kind. There seemed to lurk in his mind a sense of injury, which he visited upon her in sarcastic gibes and allusions to the Forest, taunting her with impatience to have done with him and begone to her dearer friends. Bessie resented this for a little while, but by and by she ceased to be affected, and treated it as the pettishness of a sick old man, never used to be considerate for others. He kept her very much confined and gave her scant thanks for her care of him. If Mr. Cecil Burleigh admired patience and forbearance in a woman, he had the opportunity of studying a fair example of both in her. He pitied her secretly, but she put on no martyr-airs. "It is nothing. Oh no, grandpapa is not difficult--it is only his way. Most people are testy when they are ill," she would plead, and she believed what she said. The early sense of repulsion and disappointment once overcome, she was too sensible to bewail the want of unselfish affection where it had never existed before.

The squire had certain habits of long standing--habits of coldness, distance, reserve, and he never changed materially. He survived through the ensuing autumn and winter, and finally sank during the north-easterly weather of the following spring, just two years after the death of his son Frederick. Jonquil and Macky, who had been all his life about him, were his most acceptable attendants. He did not care to have his son Laurence with him, and when the children came over it was not by his invitation. Mr. Forbes visited him almost daily, and Mr. Cecil Burleigh came down from London twice at his request. Bessie remitted no act of tender thoughtfulness; and one day, shortly before the end, he said to her, "You are a good girl, Elizabeth." She smiled and said, "Am I, grandpapa?" but his persistent coldness had brought back her shy reticence, and neither said any more. Perhaps there was compunction in the old man's mind--the cast of his countenance was continually that of regret--but there was no drawing near in heart or confidence ever again, and the squire died in the isolation of feeling with which living he had chosen to surround himself. The world, his friends, neighbors, and servants said that he died in honor respected by all who knew him; but for long and long after Bessie could never think of his death without tears--not because he had died, but because so little sorrow followed him.