The Vicissitudes of Bessie Fairfax | Page 7

had been led to expect.
But men are shrewd on the Forest as on the Border, and the Rev.
Askew Wiley was soon at a discount. His appearance was eminently
clerical, but no two of his congregation formed the same opinion of
what he was besides, unless the opinion that they did not like him. It
was a clear case of Dr. Fell; for there was nothing in his life to except
to, and in his character only a deficiency of courage. _Only?_ But
stay--consider what a crop of servile faults spring from a deficiency of
courage.
"He do so beat the devil about the bush that there is no knowing where
to have him," was the dictum early enunciated by a village Solomon,
which went on to be verified more and more, until the new rector was
as much despised on the Forest as on the Border. But he had a different
race to deal with. At Otterburn the rude statesmen provoked and defied
him with loud contempt; at Beechhurst his congregation dwindled
down to the gentlefolks, who tolerated him out of respect to his office,
and to the aged poor, who received a weekly dole of bread, bequeathed
by some long-ago benefactor; and these were mostly women. Mr.
Carnegie was a fair sample of the men, and he made no secret of his
aversion.
The Reverend Askew Wiley, see him as he paces the lawn, his supple
back writhed just a little towards my lady deferentially, his head just a
little on one side, lending her an ear. By the gait of him he is looking
another way. Yes; for now my lady turns, he turns too, and they halt
front to front; his pallid visage half averted from her observation, his
glittering eyes roving with bold stealth over the populous garden, and
his thin-lipped, scarlet mouth working and twisting incessantly in the
covert of his thick-set beard.
My lady speaks with an impatience scarcely controlled. She is the great
lady of Beechhurst, the Dowager Lady Latimer, in the local estimation

a very great lady indeed; once a leader in society, now retired from it,
and living obscurely on her rich dower in the Forest, with almsdeeds
and works of patronage and improvement for her pleasure and her
occupation. My lady always loved her own way, but she had worked
harmoniously with Mr. Hutton through his year's incumbency. He was
sufficient for his duties, and gave her no opportunity for the exercise of
unlawful authority, no ground for encroachments, no room for
interference. But it was very different with poor Mr. Wiley. Everybody
knew that he was a trial to her. He could not hold his own against her
propensity to dictate. He deferred to her, and contrived to thwart her, to
do the very thing she would not have done, and to do it in the most
obnoxious way. The puzzle was--could he help it? Was he one of those
tactless persons who are for ever blundering, or had he the will to assert
himself, and not the pluck to do it boldly? His refuge was in
round-about manoeuvres, and my lady felt towards him as those
intolerant Cumberland statesmen felt before their enmity made the
bleak moorland too hot for him. He was called an able man, but his
foibles were precisely of the sort to create in the large-hearted of the
gentle sex an almost masculine antipathy to their spiritual pastor.
Bessie Fairfax could not bear him, and she could render a reason. Mr.
Wiley received pupils to read at his house, and he had refused to
receive a dear comrade of hers. It was his rule to receive none but the
sons of gentlemen. Young Musgrave was the son of a farmer on the
Forest, who called cousins with the young Carnegies. As the
connection was wide, perhaps the vigorous dislike of more important
persons than Bessie Fairfax is sufficiently accounted for. All the world
is agreed that a slight wound to men's self-love rankles much longer
than a mortal injury.
It is not, however, to be supposed that the Beechhurst people spited
themselves so far as to keep away from the rector's school-treat because
they did not love the rector. (By the by, it was not his treat, but only
buns and tea by subscription distributed in his grounds, with the
privilege of admittance to the subscribers.) The orthodox gentility of
the neighborhood assembled in force for the occasion when the sun
shone upon it as it shone to-day, and the entertainment was an event for
children of all classes. If the richer sort did not care for buns, they did

for games; and the Carnegie boys were so eager to lose none of the
sport that they coaxed Bessie to take time by the