The Vicissitudes of Bessie Fairfax | Page 5

heavier task.
Mrs. Carnegie entered with her, and shut the door; for the two-leaved
lattice was wide open, and the muslin curtains were blowing half across
the tiny triangular nook under the thatch, which had been Bessie
Fairfax's "own room" ever since she came to live in the doctor's house.
Bessie was very fond of it, very proud of keeping it neat. There were
assembled all the personal memorials of no moneysworth that had been
rescued from the rectory-sale after her father's death; two miniatures,
not valuable as works of art, but precious as likenesses of her parents; a
faint sketch in water-colors of Kirkham Church and Parsonage House,
and another sketch of Abbotsmead; an Indian work-box, a China bowl,
two jars and a dish, very antiquated, and diffusing a soft perfume of
roses; and about a hundred and fifty volumes of books, selected by his
widow from the rectory library, for their binding rather than their
contents, and perhaps not very suitable for a girl's collection. But
Bessie set great store by them; and though the ancient Fathers of the
Church accumulated dust on their upper shelves, and the sages of
Greece and Rome were truly sealed books to her, she could have given
a fair account of her Shakespeare and of the Aldine Poets to a judicious
catechist, and of many another book with a story besides; even of her
Hume, Gibbon, Goldsmith, and Rollin, and of her Scott, perennially
delightful. She was, in fact, no dunce, though she had not been
disciplined in the conventional routine of education; and as for training
in the higher sense, she could not have grown into a more upright or
good girl under any guidance, than under that of her tender and careful
mother.
And in appearance what was she like, this Bessie Fairfax, subjected so
early to the caprices of fortune? It is not to be pretended that she
reached the heroic standard. Mr. Carnegie said she bade fair to be very
handsome, but she was at the angular age when the framework of a
girl's bones might stand almost as well for a boy's, and there was,
indeed, something brusque, frank, and boyish in Bessie's air and aspect
at this date. She walked well, danced well, rode well--looked to the
manner born when mounted on the little bay mare, which carried the

doctor on his second journeys of a day, and occasionally carried Bessie
in his company when he was going on a round, where, at certain points,
rest and refreshment were to be had for man and beast. Her figure had
not the promise of majestic height, but it was perfectly proportioned,
and her face was a capital letter of introduction. Feature by feature, it
was, perhaps, not classical, but never was a girl nicer looking taken
altogether; the firm sweetness of her mouth, the clear candor of her
blue eyes, the fair breadth of her forehead, from which her light
golden-threaded hair stood off in a wavy halo, and the downy peach of
her round cheeks made up a most kissable, agreeable face. And there
were sense and courage in it as well as sweetness; qualities which in
her peculiar circumstances would not be liable to rust for want of using.
The mistiness of tears clouded Bessie's eyes when her mother, without
preamble, announced the purport of the letter in her hand.
"It has come at last, Bessie, the recall that I have kept you in mind was
sure to come sooner or later; not that we shall be any the less grieved to
lose you, dear. Father will miss his clever little Bessie sadly,"--here the
kind mother paused for emotion, and Bessie, athirst to know all, asked
if she might read the letter.
The letter was not written for her reading, and Mrs. Carnegie hesitated;
but Bessie's promptitude overruled her doubt in a manner not unusual
with them. She took possession of the document, and sat down in the
deep window-seat to study it; and she had read but a little way when
there appeared signs in her face that it did not please her. Her mother
knew these signs well; the stubborn set of the lips, the resolute
depression of the level brows, much darker than her hair, the angry
sparkle of her eyes, which never did sparkle but when her temper was
ready to flash out in impetuous speech. Mrs. Carnegie spoke to
forewarn her against rash declarations.
"It is of no use to say you _won't_, Bessie, for you must. Your father
said, before he went out, that we have no choice but to let you go."
Bessie did not condescend to any rejoinder yet. She was reading over
again some passage of the letter by which she felt herself peculiarly

affronted. She continued to