Mr. Fairfax was in good-humor now, and recovered from his momentary loss of self-possession at the sight of his granddaughter so thoroughly grown up. Also, election business at Norminster was going as he would have it, and bowling smoothly along in the quiet, early evening he had time to think of Elizabeth, sitting bolt upright in the carriage beside him. She had a pretty, pensive air, for which he saw no cause—only the excitement of novelty staved off depression—and in his sarcastic vein, with doubtful compliment, he said, "I did not expect to see you grown so tall, Elizabeth. You look as healthy as a milkmaid."
She was very quick and sensitive of feeling. She understood him perfectly, and replied that she was as healthy as a milkmaid. Then she reverted to her wistful contemplation of the landscape, and tried to think of that and not of herself, which was too pathetic.
This country was not so lovely as the Forest. It had only the beauty of high culture. Human habitations were too wide-scattered, and the trees—there were no very great trees, nor any blue glimpses of the sea. Nevertheless, when the carriage turned into the domain at a pretty rustic lodge, the overarching gloom of an avenue of limes won Bessie's admiration, and a few fir trees standing in single grace near the ruins of the abbey, which they had to pass on their way to the house, she found almost worthy to be compared with the centenarians of the Forest. The western sun was still upon the house itself. The dusk-tiled mansard roof, pierced by two rows of twinkling dormers, and crowned by solid chimney-stacks, bulked vast and shapely against the primrose sky, and the stone-shafted lower windows caught many a fiery reflection in their blackness. Through a porch broad and deep, and furnished with oaken seats, Bessie preceded her grandfather into a lofty and spacious hall, where the foot rang on the bare, polished boards, and ten generations of Fairfaxes, successive dwellers in the grand old house, looked down from the walls. It was not lighted except by the sunset, which filled it with a warm and solemn glow.
Numerous servants appeared, amongst them a plump functionary in blue satinette and a towering cap, who curtseyed to Elizabeth and spoke some words of real welcome: "I'm right glad to see you back, Miss Fairfax; these arms were the first that held you." Bessie's impulse was to fall on the neck of this kindly personage with kisses and tears, but her grandfather's cool tone intervening maintained her reserve:
"Your young mistress will be pleased to go to her room, Macky. Your reminiscences will keep till to-morrow."
Macky, instantly obedient, begged Miss Fairfax to "come this way," and conducted her through a double-leaved door that stood open to the inner hall, carpeted with crimson pile, like the wide shallow stairs that went up to the gallery surrounding the greater hall. On this gallery opened many doors of chambers long silent and deserted.
"The master ordered you the white suite," announced Macky, ushering Elizabeth into the room so called. "It has pretty prospects, and the rooms are not such wildernesses as the other state-apartments. The eldest unmarried lady of the family always occupied the white suite."
A narrow ante-room, a sitting-room, a bed-room, and off it a sleeping-closet for her maid,—this was the private lodging accorded to the new daughter of the house. Bessie gazed about, taking in a general impression of faded, delicate richness, of white and gold and sparse color, in elegant, antiquated taste, like a boudoir in an old Norman château that she had visited.
"Mrs. Betts was so thoughtful as to come on by an earlier train to get unpacked and warn us to be prepared," Macky observed in a respectful explanatory tone; and then she went on to offer her good wishes to the young lady she had nursed, in the manner of an old and trusted dependant of the family. "It is fine weather and a fine time of year, and we hope and pray all of us, Miss Fairfax, as this will be a blessed bringing-home for you and our dear master. Most of us was here servants when Mr. Geoffry, your father, went south. A cheerful, pleasant gentleman he was, and your mamma as pleasant a lady. And here is Mrs. Betts to wait on you."
Bessie thanked the old woman, and would have bidden her remain and talk on about her forgotten parents, but Macky with another curtsey retired, and Mrs. Betts, calm and peremptory, proceeded to array her young lady in her prize-day muslin dress, and sent her hastily down stairs under the guidance of a little page who loitered in the gallery. At the foot of the stairs a lean, gray-headed man in black received her, and ushered her into a beautiful octagon-shaped room, all garnished with books and brilliant with light, where her grandfather was waiting to conduct her to dinner. So much ceremony made Bessie feel as if she was acting a part in a play. Since Macky's kind greeting her spirits had risen, and her countenance had cleared marvellously.