Chapter 46

_TENDER AND TRUE._

Lady Latimer was in possession of all the facts and circumstances of her guest's position when she arrived at Fairfield. Her grandfather's will was notorious, and my lady did not entirely disapprove of it, as Bessie's humbler friends did, for she still cherished expectations in Mr. Cecil Burleigh's interest, and was not aware how far he was now from entertaining any on his own account. Though she had convinced herself that there was an unavowed engagement between Mr. Harry Musgrave and Miss Fairfax, she was resolved to treat it and speak of it as a very slight thing indeed, and one that must be set aside without weak tenderness. Having such clear and decided views on the affair, she was not afraid to state them even to Bessie herself.

Harry Musgrave had not yet arrived at Brook, but after a day devoted to her mother Bessie's next opportunity for a visit was devoted to Harry's mother. She mentioned to Lady Latimer where she was going, and though my lady looked stern she did not object. On Bessie's return, however, she found something to say, and cast off all reserves: "Mr. Harry Musgrave has not come, but he is coming. Had I known beforehand, I should have preferred to have you here in his absence. Elizabeth, I shall consider that young man very deficient in honorable feeling if he attempt to interfere between you and your true interest."

"That I am sure he never will," said Bessie with animation.

"He is not over-modest. If you are advised by me you will be distant with him--you will give him no advantage by which he may imagine himself encouraged. Any foolish promise that you exchanged when you were last here must be forgotten."

Bessie replied with much quiet dignity: "You know, Lady Latimer, that I was not brought up to think rank and riches essential, and the experience I have had of them has not been so enticing that I should care to sacrifice for their sake a true and tried affection. Harry Musgrave and I are dear friends, and, since you speak to me so frankly, I will tell you that we propose to be friends for life."

Lady Latimer grew very red, very angry: "Do you tell me that you will marry that young man--without birth, without means, without a profession even? What has he, or is he, that should tempt you to throw away the fine position that awaits your acceptance?"

"He has a real kindness for me, a real unselfish love, and I would rather be enriched with that than be ever so exalted. It is an old promise. I always did love Harry Musgrave, and never anybody else."

Lady Latimer fumed, walked about and sat down again: "How are you to live?"

"I don't know," said Bessie cheerfully. "Like other young people--partly on our prospects. But we do not talk of marrying yet."

"It is a relief to hear that you do not talk of marrying yet, though how you can dream of marrying young Mr. Musgrave at all, when you have Mr. Cecil Burleigh at your feet, is to me a strange, incomprehensible infatuation."

"Mr. Cecil Burleigh is not at my feet any longer. He has got up and gone back to Miss Julia Gardiner's feet, which he ought never to have left. Grandpapa's will has the effect of making two charming people happy, and I am glad of it."

"Is it possible?" said Lady Latimer in a low, chagrined voice. "Then you have lost him. I presume that you felt the strain of such high companionship too severe for you? Early habits cling very close."

"He had no fascination for me; it was an effort sometimes."

"You must have been carrying on a correspondence with Mr. Harry Musgrave all this while."

"We have corresponded during the last year," said Bessie calmly.

"I blame myself that I ever gave the opportunity for a renewal of your old friendliness. That is the secret of your wilfulness."

"I loved Harry best--that is the secret of it," said Bessie; and she turned away to close the discussion.

It was a profound mortification to Lady Latimer to hear within the week from various quarters that Mr. Cecil Burleigh was at Ryde, and to all appearance on the happiest terms with Miss Julia Gardiner. And in fact they were quietly married one morning by special license, and the next news of them was that they were travelling in the Tyrol.

It was about a week after this, when Bessie was spending a few hours with her mother, that she heard of Harry Musgrave's arrival at Brook. It was the doctor who brought the intelligence. He came into the little drawing-room where his wife and Bessie were sitting, and said, "I called at Brook in passing and saw poor Harry."

"Well, Thomas, and how is he?" inquired Mrs. Carnegie in the anxious tone a kind voice takes when asking after the health of a friend who may be in a critical way. Bessie dropped her work and looked from one to the other.

The doctor did not answer directly, but, addressing Bessie, he said, "You must not be shocked, my dear, when you see Harry Musgrave."

"What is the matter? I have heard nothing: is he ill again?" cried Bessie.

"He must never go back to London," said Mr. Carnegie with a great sigh.

"Is it so bad as that? Poor Harry!" said his wife in a sad, suppressed tone. Bessie said nothing: her throat ached, her eyes burnt, but she was too stunned and bewildered to inquire further, and yet she thought she had been prepared for something like this.

"He asked after you, Bessie, and when you would go to see him," the doctor went on.

"I will go now. It is not too late? he is not too tired? will he be glad?" Bessie said, all in a breath.

"Yes, he wants to talk to you; but you will have to walk all the way, dear, and alone, for I have to go the other road."

"Oh, the walk will not hurt me. And when I have seen him I will go back to Fairfield. But tell me what ails him: has he been over-working, or is it the results of his illness?" Bessie was very earnest to know all there was to be known.

"Work is not to blame: the lad was always more or less delicate, though his frame was so powerful," Mr. Carnegie said with gravity. "He is out of spirits, and he has had a warning to beware of the family complaint. That is not to say it has marked him yet--he may live for years, with care and prudence live to a good old age--but there is no public career before him; and it is a terrible prospect, this giving up and coming down, to a young fellow of his temper. His mother sits and looks at him, beats on her knee, deplores the money spent on his college education, and frets; you must try your hand at some other sort of consolation, Bessie, for that will never do. Now, if you are going, my dear, you had better start."

Mrs. Carnegie wished she could have offered herself as Bessie's companion, but she would have been an impediment rather than a help, and Bessie set out alone. She had gone that way to Brook many and many a time, but never quite alone before. It seemed, at first, strange to her to be walking across the open heath by herself, and yet she felt, somehow, as if it had all happened before--perhaps in a dream. It was a warm afternoon towards six o'clock, and the August glow of the heather in blossom spread everywhere like a purple sea. At the gate of the Forest Farm the cows were gathered, with meek patience expecting their call to the milking-shed; but after she passed under the shade of the trees beyond Great-Ash Ford she met not a creature until she came in sight of the wicket opening into the wood from the manor-garden. And there was Harry Musgrave himself.

Approaching over the turf with her light swift foot, Bessie drew quite near to him unheard, and saw him before he saw her. He had seated himself on a fallen tree, and leant his head on his hand in an easy attitude; his countenance was abstracted rather than sad, and his eyes, fixed on the violet and amber of the sky in the west, were full of tranquil watching. Bessie's voice as she cried out his name was tremulous with joy, and her face as he turned and saw her was beautiful with the flush of young love's delight.

"I was waiting for you. I knew you would come, my dear, my dear!" was his greeting. They went into the garden hand in hand, silent: they looked at each other with assured happiness. Harry said, "You are all in black, Bessie."

"Yes, for poor grandpapa: don't you remember? I will put it off to-morrow if you dislike it."

"Put it off; I _do_ dislike it: you have worn it long enough." They directed their steps to their favorite seat under the beeches, but Mrs. Musgrave, restless since her son's arrival, and ever on the watch, came down to them with a plea that they would avoid the damp ground and falling dew. The ground was dry as dust, and the sun would not set yet for a good hour.

"There is the sitting-room if you want to be by yourselves," she said plaintively. "Perhaps you'll be able to persuade Harry to show some sense, Bessie Fairfax, and feeling for his health: he won't listen to his mother."

She followed them into the spacious old room, and would have shut the lattices because the curtains were gently flapping in the evening breeze, but Harry protested: "Mother dear, let us have air--it is life and pleasure to me. After the sultry languor of town this is delicious."

"There you go, Harry, perverse as ever! He never could be made to mind a draught, Bessie; and though he has just been told that consumption is in the family, and carried off his uncle Walter--every bit as fine a young man as himself--he pays no heed. He might as well have stopped on the farm from the beginning, if this was to be the end. I am more mortified than tongue can tell."

Harry stood gazing at her with a pitiful patience, and said kindly, "You fear too much, mother. I shall live to give you more trouble yet."

"Even trouble's precious if that's all my son is likely to give me. I would rather have trouble than nothing." She went out, closing the door softly as if she were leaving a sick room. Bessie felt very sorry for her, and when she looked at Harry again, and saw the expression of helpless, painful regret in his face, she could have wept for them both.

"Poor mother! she is bitterly disappointed in me, Bessie," he said, dropping into one of the huge old elbow-chairs.

"Oh, Harry, it is all her love! She will get over this, and you will repay her hurt pride another day," cried Bessie, eager to comfort him.

"Shall I, Bessie? But how? but when? We must take counsel together. They have been telling me it is selfish and a sacrifice and unmanly to bind Bessie to me now, but I see no sign that Bessie wants her freedom," he said, looking at her with laughing, wistful eyes--always with that sense of masculine triumph which Bessie's humility had encouraged.

"Oh, Harry, I want no freedom but the freedom to love and serve you!" cried she with a rush of tears and a hand held out to him. And then with an irresistible, passionate sorrow she fell on her knees beside him and hid her face on his shoulder. He put his arm round her and held her fast for several minutes, himself too moved to speak. He guessed what this sudden outburst of feeling meant: it meant that Bessie saw him so altered, saw through his quiet humor into the deep anxiety of his heart.

"I'll conceal nothing from you, Bessie: I don't think I have felt the worst of my defeat yet," were his words when he spoke at last. She listened, still on her knees: "It is a common thing to say that suspense is worse to bear than certainty, but the certainty that destroys hope and makes the future a blank is very like a millstone hanged round a man's neck to sink him in a slough of despondency. I never really believed it until Dr. Courteney told me that if I wish to save my life it must be at the cost of my ambition; that I can never be an advocate, a teacher, a preacher; that I shall have to go softly all my days, and take care that the winds don't blow on me too roughly; that I must be an exile from English fogs and cold, let me prefer home ever so dearly; that I must read only a little, and write only a little, and avoid all violent emotions, and be in fact the creature I have most despised--a poor valetudinarian, always feeling my own pulse and considering my own feelings."

"You will have to change much more before you will come to that; and I never knew you despise anybody, Harry," Bessie said with gentle deprecation. "You had a tender heart from a boy, and others feel kindly towards you."

"And come what may, my dear little Bessie will keep her faith to me?" said Harry looking down into her sweet eyes.

"Yes, Harry."

After a pause he spoke again: "You have done me good, dear; I shall rest better for having talked to you to-night. It is in the night-time that thought is terrible. For months past, ever since I was ill in the spring, the foreshadow of failure has loomed dark and close upon me like a suffocating weight--what I must do; how I must live without being a tax on my father, if I am to live; what he and my mother would feel; what old friends would say; who could or would help me to some harmless occupation; and whether I should not, for everybody's sake, be better out of the world."

"Oh, Harry, but that was faint-hearted!" said Bessie with a touch of reproach. "You forgot me, then?"

"I have had several strokes of bad luck lately, or perhaps I ought to suspect that not being in good case my work was weak. Manuscript after manuscript has been returned on my hands. Surely this was discouraging. There on the table is a roll of which I had better hopes, and I found it awaiting me here."

"May I take it to Fairfield and read it?" Bessie asked. "It is as big as a book."

"Yes; if it were printed and bound it would be a book. Read it, and let me know how it impresses you."

Bessie looked mightily glad. "If you will let me help you, Harry, you will make me happy," said she. "What is it about?"

"It is a story, for your comfort--a true story. I could not devise a plot, so I fell back on a series of pathetic facts. Life is very sad, Bessie. Why are we so fond of it?"

"We take it in detail, as we take the hours of the day and the days of the year, and it is very endurable. It has seemed to me sometimes that those whom we call fortunate are the least happy, and that the hard lot is often lifted into the sphere of blessedness. Consider Mr. and Mrs. Moxon; they appear to have nothing to be thankful for, and yet in their devotion to one another what perfect peace and consolation!"

"Oh, Bessie, but it is a dreadful fate!" said Harry. "Poor Moxon! who began life with as fine hopes and as solid grounds for them as any man,--there he is vegetating at Littlemire still, his mind chiefly taken up with thinking whether his sick wife will be a little more or a little less suffering to-day than she was yesterday."

"I saw them last week, and could have envied them. She is as near an angel as a woman can be; and he was very contented in the garden, giving lessons to a village boy in whom he has discovered a genius for mathematics. He talked of nothing else."

"Poor boy! poor genius! And are we to grow after the Moxons' pattern, Bessie--meek, patient, heavenly?" said Harry.

"By the time our hair is white, Harry, I have no objection, but there is a long meanwhile," replied Bessie with brave uplooking face. "We have love between us and about us, and that is the first thing. The best pleasures are the cheapest--we burden life with too many needless cares. You may do as much good in an obscure groove of the world as you might do if your name was in all men's mouths. I don't believe that I admire very successful people."

"That is lucky for us both, since I am a poor fellow whose health has given way--who is never likely to have any success at all."

"You don't know, Harry; but this is not the time to remember pride and ambition--it is the time to recover all the health and strength you can; and with them hope and power will return. What do you most enjoy in the absence of work?"

"Fresh air, fine scenery, and the converse of men. To live plainly is no hardship to me; it would be a great hardship to fall on lower associations, which is the common destiny of the poor and decayed scholar. You will save me, Bessie?"

"Indeed I will!" And on this they clasped hands fervently.

"Bessie, can we go to Italy together this winter? I dare not go alone: I must have you to take care of me," pleaded Harry.

"I will take care of you, Harry." Bessie was smiling, tearful, blushing, and Harry said she was a dear, good girl, and he thanked her.

After that there was some exposition of ways and means, and Bessie, growing rosier and rosier, told Harry the story of that famous nest-egg, concerning which she had been put to the blush before. He was very glad to hear of it--very glad indeed, and much relieved, for it would make that easy which he had been dwelling on as most of all desirable, but hampered with difficulties that he could not himself remove. To see him cheer up at this practical point was delightful to Bessie; it was like his generous warm heart, equally open to give and to receive. She felt almost too happy, and blessed the simple forethought of the doctor which would justify them in remitting all care and anxiety to a future at least two years off, and afford Harry leisure and opportunity to regain his health and courage, and look about him for another vocation than that he had chosen originally.

"And you will find it, Harry, and perhaps you will love it better than London and dusty law. I am sure I shall," prophesied Bessie gayly.

Harry laughed at her obstinate prejudice; she pointed out that the result had proved it a shrewd prejudice; and then they fell upon Italy and talked travel-talk with the sanguine anticipations of young people endowed with limitless curiosity and a genuine taste for simple pleasures and each other's society. Harry's classical learning would be everywhere available for the enhancement of these pleasures.

At this stage of their previsions Mrs. Musgrave intervened, and Bessie became conscious that the shades of evening were stealing over the landscape. Mrs. Musgrave had on her bonnet, and was prepared to walk with Bessie on the road to Fairfield until they should meet Mr. Musgrave returning from Hampton, who would accompany her the rest of the way. Harry wished to go in his mother's stead, but she was peremptory in bidding him stay where he was, and Bessie supported her. "No, Harry, not to-night--another time," she said, and he yielded at once.

"I'm sure his mother thanks you," said Mrs. Musgrave as they went out. "He was so jaded this morning when he arrived that the tears came into his eyes at a word, and Mr. Carnegie said that showed how thoroughly done he is."

Tears in Harry's eyes! Bessie thought of him with a most pitiful tenderness. "Oh," she said, "we must all be good to him: he does not look so ill to me as he looks tired. We must keep up his spirits and his hope for himself. I see no cause for despair."

"You are young, Bessie Fairfax, and it is easy for you to hope that everything will turn out for the best, but it is a sore trial for his father and me to have our expectation taken away. If Harry would have been advised when he left college, he would never have gone to London. But it is no use talking of that now. I wish we could see what he is to do for a living; he will fret his heart out doing nothing at Brook."

"Oh, Mrs. Musgrave, with a quire of paper and one of your gray goosequills Harry will be preserved from the mischief of doing nothing. You must let me come over and cheer him sometimes."

"If things had turned out different with my poor son, all might have been different. You have a good, affectionate disposition, Bessie, and there is nobody Harry prizes as he prizes you; but a young man whose health is indifferent and who has no prospects--what is that for a young lady?" Mrs. Musgrave began to cry.

"Don't cry, dear Mrs. Musgrave; if you cry, that will hurt Harry worse than anything," said Bessie energetically. "He feels his disappointment more for his father and you than for himself. His health is not so bad but that it will mend; and as for his prospects, it is not wise to impress upon him that the cloud he is under now may never disperse. 'A cheerful heart doeth good like a medicine.' Have a cheerful heart again. It will come with trying."

They had not yet met Mr. Musgrave, though they were nearly a mile on the road, but Bessie would not permit the poor mother to walk any farther with her. They parted with a kiss. "And God for ever bless you, Bessie Fairfax, if you have it in your heart to be to Harry what nobody else can be," said his mother, laying her tremulous hands on the girl's shoulders. Bessie kissed her again and went on her way rejoicing. This was one of the happiest hours her life had ever known. She was not tempted to dwell wantonly on the dark side of events present, and there were so many brighter possibilities in the future that she could entirely act out the divine precept to let the morrow take thought for the things of itself.

When Bessie Fairfax reached Fairfield, Roberts informed her in a depressed manner that her ladyship was waiting dinner. Bessie started at this view of her impolite absence, and hastened to the drawing-room to apologize. But Lady Latimer coldly waived her explanations, and Bessie felt very self-reproachful until an idea occurred to her what she would do. After a brief retreat and rapid toilet she reappeared with Harry's manuscript in her hand, and with simple craft displaying the roll, she said, "This is for us to read--a true story. It is not in print yet, but Mr. Harry Musgrave writes a plain hand. We are to give him our opinion of it. I believe that, after all, he will be a poor author--one of my heroes, Lady Latimer."

"One of your heroes, Elizabeth? There is nothing very heroic in Mr. Logger," rejoined my lady softening, and holding out her hand for the manuscript. "Is the young man very ill?"

"No, no--not so ill that we need fear his dying inglorious without giving the world something to remember him by, but discouraged by the dicta of friends and physicians, who consign him to idleness and obscurity for a year or two."

"Which idleness and obscurity I presume it is your wish to alleviate?" said Lady Latimer with half-contemptuous resignation. "Come to dinner now: we will read your hero's story afterward."

Lady Latimer's personal interests were so few that it was a necessity for her generous soul to adopt the interests of other people. She kept Bessie reading until eleven o'clock, when she was dismissed to bed and ordered to leave the manuscript below, lest she should sit up and read it when she ought to be asleep. But what Bessie might not do my lady was quite at liberty to do herself, and she made an end of the tale before she retired. And not only that. She wrote to Mr. Logger to recommend a publisher, and to ask how proper payment could be assured to a young and unknown author. She described the story to the veteran critic as a sad, pretty story of true love (which people go on believing in), sensibly written, without serious flaws of taste or grammar, and really worth reading if one had nothing else to do. In the morning she informed Bessie of what she had done. Bessie was not quite sure that Harry would feel gratified at being placed under the protection of her ladyship and Mr. Logger; but as she could not well revoke the letter that was written, she said nothing against it, and Lady Latimer was busy and happy for a week in the expectation that she was doing something for "the unfortunate young man." But at the week's end Mr. Logger dashed her confidence with the answer that he had not been able to meet with any publisher willing to pay money down for a sad, pretty story of true love by an unknown author: sad, pretty stories of true love were a drug in the literary market. She was grievously disappointed. Bessie was the same, and as she had confessed a hope to Harry, she had to carry to him the tidings of failure. If he was sorry, it was for her regret, but they soon began to talk of other things. They had agreed that if good luck came they would be glad, and if bad luck they would pass it lightly over.