Part 43 (1/2)

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 pa.s.s 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, G.o.d 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 suns.h.i.+ny 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 a.s.sure 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 suns.h.i.+ne.

CHAPTER XLIV.

_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 a.s.surance of Mr. Cecil Burleigh's success, but had a feeling that it must come to pa.s.s. 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.