Holme Lee

“ 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." ”

“ And judged by the eye, where love looked out, Harry's great frame, well knit and suppled by athletic sports, had a dignity, and his irregular features a beauty, that pleased her better than dainty, high-bred elegance. He had to push his way over the obstacles of poverty and obscure birth, and she was a young lady of family and fortune, but she looked up to him with as meek a humility as ever she had done when they were friends and comrades together, before her vicissitudes began and her exalted kinsfolk reclaimed her. Woldshire had not acquainted her with his equal. All the world never would. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The squire looked rather glum, Macky remarked to Mrs. Betts; and if she had been in his shoes wild horses should not have drawn her into company with that proud Lady Latimer. The golden harvest was all gone from the fields, and there was a change of hue upon the woods—yellow and red and russet mingled with their deep green. The signs of decay in the vivid life of Nature could not touch Bessie with melancholy yet—the spring-tides of youth were too strong in her—but Mr. Fairfax, glancing hither and thither over the bare, sunless landscape, said, "The winter will soon be upon us, Elizabeth. ”

“ She remembered then, with a sort of remorse, laughing at Janey's notion of a "treat." Everything goes by comparison. At this time Bessie had no experience of what it is to live by inelastic rule and rote, to be ailing and unhappy, alone in a crowd and neglected. Janey believed in Mrs. Foster's sun-baked little garden as a veritable pattern of Eden, but Bessie knew the Forest, she knew Fairfield, and almost despised that mingled patch of beauty and usefulness, of sweet odors and onions, for Mrs. Foster grew potherbs and vegetables amongst her flowers. ”

“ Lady Latimer's visage was a study of lofty disapproval: "Has he but one eye?—I thought he had two. When young ladies begin to talk of young gentlemen's fine eyes and sweet smiles, we begin to reflect. But they commonly keep such sentiments to themselves."
Dora and Bessie glanced at one another, and had the audacity to laugh. Then Mrs. Bernard laughed and shook her head. My lady colored; she felt herself in a minority, and, though she did not positively laugh, her lips parted and her air of severity melted away. Bessie had cast off all fear of her with her old belief in her perfection. ”

“ That is the joy of an artistic life—you work, but it is amongst flowers. Christie will be famous before he is thirty, and he is easy in his circumstances now: he will never be more, never rich; he is too open-handed for that. But I shall have years and years to toil and wait," Harry concluded with a melancholy, humorous fall in his voice, half mocking at himself and half pathetic, and the same was his countenance.
All the more earnestly did Bessie brighten: "You knew that, Harry, when you chose the law. But if you work amongst bookworms and cobwebs, don't you play in the sunshine?" ”

“ Everybody does not care, first and last, to love and be loved. I have been so long away from everybody who loves me that I am learning to do without it."
"Oh, my dear, don't fancy that," said Miss Burleigh, and she stroked Bessie's face and kissed her. "Some of us here are longing to love you quite as tenderly as any friends you have in the Forest." And then she bade her good-night and left her to her ruminations.
Miss Burleigh's kiss brought a blush to Bessie's face that was slow to fade even though she was alone. ”

“ One evening after some especially amusing conversation with a travelled doctor, who was great in the scientific study of botany and beetles, she said to Elizabeth when they were alone, "What a pity! what a grievous pity! There is no position brains and energy can win that Mr. Harry Musgrave might not raise himself to if his health were equal to his mental capacity. And with what dignity and fortitude he bears his condemnation to a desultory, obscure existence! I had no idea there could be so much sweet patience in a man. Do you anticipate that it will be always so?" ”

“ It would have enhanced Bessie's pleasure, though not her happiness perhaps, if she could have betaken herself to building castles in the Woldshire air, but the moment she began to indulge in reverie her thoughts flew to the Forest. No glamour of pride, enthusiasm, or any sort of delightful hope mistified her imagination as to her real indifference towards Abbotsmead. When she reached the garden she sat down amongst the roses, and gazed at the beautiful old flower-woven walls that she had admired yesterday, and felt like a visitor growing weary of the place. ”

“ The other denizen of the narrow plat was Dorothea Fairfax, at whose head and feet were white marble stones, the sculpture on them as distinct as yesterday. Bessie turned away with tears in her eyes.
"What is it?" said my lady sharply, and peered through the grate. Harry Musgrave had walked on. When Lady Latimer looked round her face was stern and cold, and the pleasant light had gone out of it. Without meeting Elizabeth's glance she spoke: "The dead are always in the right; the living always in the wrong. I had forgotten it was at Bellagio that Dorothy died. ”

“ But the prettiest bit of all was the verdant natural slope, below which ran the brook that gave the village and the manor their names. The Forest is not a land of merry running waters, but little tranquil streams meander hither and thither, making cool its shades. Three superb beeches laved their silken leaves in the shallow flood, and amongst their roots were rustic seats all sheltered from sun and wind. Here had Harry Musgrave and Bessie Fairfax sat many a summer afternoon, their heads over one poetry-book, reading, whispering, drawing—lovers in a way, though they never talked of love. ”

“ She added that he had the finest temper in the world, and that he was ardently affectionate.
Bessie smiled at this. She believed that she knew where his ardent affections were centred; and then she blushed at the tormenting recollection of how she had interpreted his assiduities to herself before making that discovery. Miss Burleigh saw the blush, seeming to see nothing, and said softly, "I envy the woman who has to pass her life with Cecil. I can imagine nothing more contenting than his society to one he loves." ”

“ Elections are no more the saturnalia they used to be in the good old times. Bessie was reminded of Bayeux and its sultry drowsiness as they passed into the green purlieus of the minster and under a low-browed archway into a spacious paved court, where the sun slept on the red-brick backs of the old houses. Mr. Laurence Fairfax's door was in the most remote corner, up a semi-circular flight of steps, guarded on either side by an iron railing. ”

“ Fairfax devoutly. "We have all something to mend in our ways. Our view of the responsibility that goes with the possession of land has been too narrow. If we could put ourselves in the laborer's place!"
"I shall mend nothing: no John Hodge shall dictate to me," cried Mr. Chiverton in a sneering fury. "A man has a right to do what he likes with his own, I presume?"
"No, he has not; and especially not when he calls a great territory in land his own," said Mr. Forbes. "That is the false principle out of which the bad practice of some of you arises. ”

“ There is more alloy of vanity and busy-bodyism in modern philanthropy than savor of charity."
"We shall never agree," cried Lady Angleby with mock despair. "Miss Fairfax, this is the way with us—your grandfather and I never meet but we fall out."
"You are not much in earnest," said Bessie. Terrible child! she had set down this great lady as a great sham.
"To live in the world and to be absolutely truthful is very difficult, is all but impossible," remarked Miss Burleigh with a mild sententiousness that sounded irrelevant, but came probably in the natural sequence of her unspoken thoughts. ”

“ I would. I should hate to be beaten by my own neglect, worse than by my rival."
Mr. Fairfax was electrified at this brusque assertion of her sentiments by his granddaughter. Her audacity seemed at least equal to her shyness. "Very good advice, Elizabeth; make him follow it," said he dryly.
"We will give him no rest when we have him at Brentwood," added Miss Burleigh. "But though he is so cool about it, I believe he is dreadfully in earnest. Are you not, Cecil?"
"I will not be beaten by my own neglect," was his rejoinder, with a glance at Bessie, blushing beautifully. ”

“ Remember you are a Fairfax. Though you may go back to the Forest, it is a delusion to imagine that you can live comfortably in the crowded household where you were happy as a child. You have been six years absent; three of them you have spent in the luxurious ease of Abbotsmead. You have acquired the tastes and habits of your own class—a very different class. You must look to me now: your pittance is not enough for the common necessaries of life."
"Not so very different a class, Uncle Laurence, and fortunately I am not in bondage to luxurious ease," Bessie said. ”

“ To watch the cattle come from the farther pastures in single file across the shallow water at milking-time was as pretty a bit of pastoral as could be seen in all the Forest.
Bessie Fairfax loved this spot with a peculiar affection. Beyond the ford went a footpath, skirting the river, to the village of Brook, where young Musgrave lived—a footpath overshadowed by such giant fir trees, such beeches and vast oaks as are nowhere else in England. The Great Ash was a storm-riven fragment, but its fame continued, and its beauty in sufficient picturesqueness for artistic purposes. ”

“ I felt very much insulted that he should suppose me such a child as not to know that he did not care for me; it was not in that way he had courted Miss Julia Gardiner."
"It is a much commoner thing than you imagine for a man [Pg 293] to be unable to marry as his heart would dictate. But he is not for that to remain single all his life, is he?" said Mrs. Carnegie.
"Perhaps not; I should respect him more if he did. I will remain single all my life unless I find somebody to love me first and best," said Bessie with the airy assurance of the romantic age. ”

“ Good-bye."
Bessie went back to Harry over his work rather saddened. "I do love Lady Latimer, Harry—her very faults and her foibles," she said. "I must have it by inheritance."
"If you had expressed a wish, perhaps she would not have gone so suddenly. She appears to have no object in life but to serve other people even while she rules them. Don't look so melancholy: she is not unhappy—she is not to be pitied." ”

“ Betts, a picture of injured virtue, held herself aloof beyond the sea of finery, gazing across it at her insensible young mistress with eyes of mournful indignation. Bessie felt herself the object of general misunderstanding and reproach, and was stirred up to extenuate her untoward behavior in a strain of mischievous sarcasm.
"Don't look so distressed, all of you," she pleaded. "How can I interest myself to-day in anything but Mr. Cecil Burleigh's address to the electors of Norminster and my own new bonnet?"
"That is very becoming, for a consolation," said the milliner with an affronted air. ”

“ Two elderly ladies were pacing the lawn arm-in-arm, with straw hats tilted over their noses, when the Abbotsmead carriage stopped at the gate. They stood an instant to see whose it was, and then hurried forward to welcome their visitors.
"This is very kind, Mr. Cecil, very kind, Miss Mary; but you always are kind in remembering old friends," said the elder, Miss Juliana, and then was silent, gazing at Bessie.
"This is Miss Fairfax," said Mr. Cecil Burleigh. "Lady Latimer has no doubt named her in her letters." ”

“ Bessie proceeded to munch it with much gravity and enjoyment—Harry's mother made excellent cakes—and the father of the house, smiling at her serious absorption, patted her on the shoulder and said, "And what does Bessie Fairfax care for?"
"Only to be loved," says Bessie without a thought.
"And that is what you will be, for love's a gift," rejoined Mr. Musgrave. "These skip-jacks who talk of setting the world on fire will be lucky if they make only blaze enough to warm themselves." ”

“ Every way out of the scattered forest-town is still through beautiful forest-roads—roads that cleave grand avenues, traverse black barren heaths, ford shallow rivers, and climb over ferny knolls whence the sea is visible. The church is unrestored, the parsonage is unimproved, the long low house opposite is still the residence of Mr. Carnegie, the local doctor, and looks this splendid summer morning precisely as it looked in the splendid summer mornings long ago, when Bessie Fairfax was a little girl, and lived there, and was very happy. ”

“ Harry talked of dons and proctors, of work and play, of hopes and projects, of rivals and friends. Bessie had not so much to tell: she showed him the classe and her place there, and introduced him to Janey. They visited all the public gardens and river-side walks. They were beautiful young people, and were the observed of many observers. The sagacious curé of St. Jean's, the confessor and director at the school, saw them by chance on the morning of a day when he had a mission to Bayeux. What more natural than that he should call upon Madame Fournier at her uncle the canon's house? ”