ABBOTSMEAD IN SHADOW.
Mr. Fairfax's letters were brought to him, and after glancing cursorily through the batch, he gathered them all up and went off to his private room. Bessie conjectured that he would be busy for the rest of the afternoon, and she took a walk in the park until dusk, when she returned to the house and retired to her own parlor. The dressing-bell rang at a quarter to seven, as usual, and Mrs. Betts came to assist at her young lady's toilet. Being dressed, Bessie descended to the octagon room, which she found empty.
It was a fine, frosty night, and the sky was full of stars. She put aside a curtain and looked out into the wintry garden, feeling more than ever alone and desolate amidst the grandeur of her home. It seemed as if the last unkindness she had suffered was the worst of all, and her heart yearned painfully towards her friends in the Forest. Oh, for their simple, warm affection! She would have liked to be sitting with her mother in the old-fashioned dining-room at Beechhurst, listening for the doctor's return and the clink of Miss Hoyden's hoofs on the hard frozen road, as they had listened often in the winters long ago. She forgot herself in that reverie, and scarcely noticed that the door had been opened and shut again until her grandfather spoke from the hearth, saying that Jonquil had announced dinner.
The amiable disposition in which the squire had come home appeared to have passed off completely. Bessie had seen him often crabbed and sarcastic, but never so irritable as he was that evening. Nothing went right, from the soup to the dessert, and Jonquil even stirred the fire amiss. Some matter in his correspondence had put him out. But as he made no allusion to his grievance, Bessie was of course blind and deaf to his untoward symptoms. The next day he went to Norminster to see Mr. John Short, and came back in no better humor—in a worse humor if possible—and Mrs. Stokes whispered to Bessie the explanation of it.
Mr. Fairfax had inherited a lawsuit with a small estate in Durham, bequeathed to him by a distant connexion, and this suit, after being for years a blister on his peace, had been finally decided against him. The estate was lost, and the plague of the suit with it, but there were large costs to pay and the time was inconvenient.
"Your grandfather contributed heavily to the election of Mr. Cecil Burleigh in the prospect of an event which it seems is not to be," concluded the little lady with reproachful significance. "My Arthur told me all about it (Mr. Fairfax consults him on everything); and now there are I don't know how many thousands to pay in the shape of back rents, interest, and costs, but it is an immense sum."
Bessie was sorry, very sorry, and showed it with so much sense and sympathy that her grandfather presently revealed his vexations to her himself, and having once mentioned them, he found her a resource to complain to again. She hoped that he would get over his defeat the sooner for talking of it, but he did not. He was utterly convinced that he had right on his side, and he wanted a new trial, from which Mr. John Short could hardly dissuade him. The root of his profound annoyance was that Abbotsmead must be encumbered to pay for the lost suit, unless his son Frederick, who had ready money accumulated from the unspent fortune of his wife, would come to the rescue. In answer to his father's appeal Frederick wrote back that a certain considerable sum which he mentioned was at his service, but as for the bulk of his wife's fortune, he intended it to revert to her family. Mr. Laurence Fairfax made, through the lawyer, an offer of further help to keep Abbotsmead clear of mortgages, and with the bitter remark that it was Laurence's interest to do so, the squire accepted his offer.
So much at this crisis did Bessie hear of money and the burden and anxiety of great estates that she thought poverty must be far preferable. The squire developed a positively bad temper under his worries. And he was not irritable only: by degrees he became ill, and yet would have no advice. Jonquil was greatly troubled about him, and when he refused to mount his horse one splendid hunting morning in February, though he was all equipped and ready, Bessie also began to wonder what ailed him besides crossness, for he was a man of strong constitution and not subject to fanciful infirmities.
Early in March, Mr. Frederick Fairfax wrote home that his Russian tour was accomplished, and that he was impatient to be on board his yacht again. The weather was exceedingly rough and tempestuous later in the month, and the squire, watching the wrack of the storm on the wolds, often expressed anxiety lest his son should be rash and venturesome enough to trust himself out of port in such weather. Everybody was relieved when April opened with sunny showers and the long and severe winter seemed to be at an end. It had not made Bessie more in love with her life at Abbotsmead: there had, indeed, been times of inexpressible dreariness in it very trying to her fortitude. With the dawning of brighter days in spring she could not but think of the Forest with fresh longing, and she watched each morning's post for the arrival of that invitation to Fairfield which Lady Latimer had promised to send. At length it came, and after brief demur received a favorable answer. The squire had a mortified consciousness that his granddaughter's life was not very cheerful, and, though he did not refuse her wish, he was unable to grant it heartily. However, the fact of his consent overcame the manner of it, and Bessie was enjoying the pleasures of anticipation, and writing ecstatically to her mother, when an event happened that threw Abbotsmead into mourning and changed the bent even of her desires.
One chilly evening after dinner, when she had retreated to the octagon parlor, and was dreaming by the fireside in the dusk alone, Jonquil, with visage white as a ghost, ushered in Mr. John Short. He had walked over from Mitford Junction, in the absence of any vehicle to bring him on, and was jaded and depressed, though with an air of forced composure. As Jonquil withdrew to seek his master the lawyer advanced into the firelight, and Bessie saw at once that he came on some sad errand. Her grandfather had gone, she believed, to look after his favorite hunter, which had met with a severe sprain a week ago; but she was not sure, for he had been more and more restless for some time past, had taken to walking at unaccustomed hours, to neglecting his correspondence, leaving letters for days unopened, and betraying various other signs of a mind unsettled and disturbed. It had appeared to Bessie that he was always in a state of distressed expectancy, but what for she had no idea. The appearance of Mr. John Short without previous notice suggested new vexation connected with the lawsuit, but when she asked if he were again the messenger of bad news, he startled her with a much more tragical announcement.