Bessie's Fortune Part 40

"Yes, I know," Jack rejoined, "but there is a vast difference between you and Flossie; she is so small and she seems so young. I did not suppose she was seventeen. I have always looked upon her as a mere child to pet and not as a woman to marry."

"Then look upon her in that light now," Bessie said, but Jack only shook his head as he replied:

"I have loved you, Bessie. I shall never love another. Farewell, and G.o.d bless you."

Stooping over her, he kissed her forehead, and then walked rapidly away with her question occasionally ringing in his ears and stirring new and strange thoughts in his heart where the pain was still so heavy.

"Why don't you marry Flossie?"

CHAPTER XX.

WHAT THE McPHERSONS DID.

They did just as little as they could, at least that portion of the family which was at Vichy when the news of Archie's death was received there. This portion comprised the Hon. John and Lady Jane, for Neil had already started for Moscow with Blanche and a few other young people.

"How very inconvenient that he should die just now when we are so far from Wales. It is quite impossible for you to undertake the long journey in this hot weather; and what good could you do if you were there? You could not pretend to be sorry, and we are not able to do much for the girl; Neil's trip will take all our spare cash," Lady Jane said, as she read the telegram received from Jack, and that decided her better-half at once.

If Lady Jane said he could not go, he could not, but something of his better nature prompted him to say that he would pay the funeral expenses. This, however, he kept from his wife, who, dismissing Stoneleigh from her mind, resumed her daily routine of duties--baths at seven, music in the park at eight, breakfast at ten, gossip till one, sleeping till three, driving at four, dressing for dinner, dining at six, and going to the casino in the evening. This was her life, while the Hon. John bathed, and smoked, and read the newspapers, and called it all a confounded bore, and wished himself at home, and thought not unfrequently of Stoneleigh and what was to become of Bessie.

Meantime Neil was enjoying himself immensely. His mother had given him plenty of money, and his companions and surroundings were most agreeable to him. And still, he never for a moment swerved in his heart from Bessie; that is, he never harbored the thought that she would not one day be his wife, and he still hugged the delusion that he preferred poverty with her to riches with any other woman in all the world. But until the time arrived when he must take her and poverty, he surely might enjoy himself, and he was doing so to the best of his ability when Jack's letter came, informing him of Archie's death and of his intention to make Bessie his wife if she would have him.

Then Neil roused himself, and, telling his party what had happened, said he must start for Stoneleigh at once. Mr. McPherson was dead, and his Cousin Bessie was alone, and it was his duty to go to her; and in spite of Blanche's entreaties and his friends' protestations against it, he started immediately, and, travelling day and night, reached Stoneleigh on the afternoon of the day of Jack's departure.

With a cry of glad surprise, Bessie threw herself into his arms, and wept as she had not done since her father died.

"Oh, Neil," she sobbed, "I am so glad, I have wanted you so much, and been so wretched because you neither wrote nor came."

"But I did write you, darling, before I left Vichy, and the letter must have gone astray," he said, "and then the moment I got Jack's letter I started and came to you. Don't cry, Bessie; it hurts me to see you feel so badly. Try and be quiet, and tell me all about it, and what Grey Jerrold and Jack did and said. They were both here, I understand, and both in love with you."

Neil spoke a little sharply now, and Bessie looked inquiringly at him, as, drawing her to a seat, he sat down beside her, and with his arm around her and her head upon his breast he went on:

"Jack wrote me all about it--that he believed Grey pretty far gone, but that _he_ should get the start and ask you to be Lady Trevellian, and I believe he will do it, too; and if he does I hope you will put him down effectually, but don't for Heaven's sake, tell him of our engagement.

That must be our secret awhile longer. I cannot meet mother's disapproval just yet. Do you believe, that horrid old aunt in America wrote asking me to come out there and oversee the hands in a cotton mill. n.i.g.g.e.rs, I dare say, as I believe they are mostly that in Ma.s.sachusetts, are they not?"

Bessie did not reply to this, but said to him, quietly:

"Mr. Trevellian asked me to be his wife--here--this morning, and I told him no, and that I was plighted to you."

"Oh, Bessie, how could you have been so indiscreet. Now the news must reach mother, and my life will be a burden to me," Neil exclaimed, with so much severity in his tone that Bessie shrank a little from him as she replied:

"I had to tell him, Neil. There was no other way to make him believe I meant it, he was so much in earnest. He will not repeat it. He has too much honor in his nature for that. He is one of the best and n.o.blest men I ever knew."

Bessie was very earnest in her defense of Jack, and Neil grew angry at once.

"Maybe you prefer him to me?" he said. "By Jove, I do not blame you if it is so. You'd better be Lady Trevellian, with plenty of money, than plain Mrs. Neil McPherson, not knowing where I the next meal is to come from. Say the word and I will set you free, though it breaks my heart to do it."

No wonder if Bessie felt that Neil's presence was productive of more pain than pleasure, or if for a moment she felt keenly the contrast between his manner and Jack's. But Neil's mood soon changed, and winding his arm around her, and kissing her fondly, he called himself a brute and a savage to wound her so, and talked of their future, when he could be always with her, and worked himself up to the point of proposing marriage at once--a private marriage, of course, which must be kept secret for an indefinite length of time, during which she would live at Stoneleigh, and he would visit her often. But Bessie shrank from this proposal, and when Neil asked what she was to do there alone, she answered that she could do very well until her mother came, and then they would manage together somehow on the little there was left, and if nothing better offered she could go out as governess to small children.

But this plan Neil repudiated with scorn. His wife must never be a governess, never earn her own bread! The idea was preposterous; and then he talked of the bright future before them if they waited patiently, and how happy he would make her; and in the morning he left her and went back to London, and she was alone again, and looking anxiously forward to news from her mother, and the day after Neil left a letter came from Daisy with the blackest and deepest of borders, and Bessie opened it eagerly to learn where she was, and when she was coming home.

CHAPTER XXI.

WHAT DAISY DID.

She flirted with every man on the s.h.i.+p who would flirt with her. Even Allen Browne was not insensible to her charms. During the last few months he had developed amazingly, and had put on all the airs of a first-cla.s.s dandy. He parted his hair in the middle, carried an eye-gla.s.s and a cane, wore a long overcoat, and pants so tight that it was a matter of speculation with his friends how he ever got into them, or being in, how he ever got out! His last purchase in London had been a pair of pointed shoes, which were just coming into vogue, as was the species of the male gender called "dudes."

"A dudle I call 'em, and think 'em too shaller for, anything," was Mrs.

Rossiter-Browne's comment, and she looked a little askance at her son, wondering how he would impress the Ridgevillians at home, and especially what Miss Boughton would think of him. "I wouldn't make a 'tarnel fool of myself if 'twas the fas.h.i.+on," she said to him when the pointed toes appeared.

But Allen had his own ideas, and, encouraged by Daisy, who, though wonderfully amused at his appearance, told him he was "_tout-a-fait parisien_," he followed his own inclinations, and, arrayed in all his finery, made himself the laughing-stock of the pa.s.sengers. But he did not care so long as Daisy smiled upon him, and allowed him to attend her. He walked with her on deck and brought her chair for her, and her shawl, and rug, and wrapped her feet carefully, and held the umbrella over her head to screen her from the wind, and hovered over her constantly, leaving his mother to stagger, or rather crawl up the stairs as best she could, with her rug, and shawl, and waterproof, and saw her umbrella turned inside out, and carried out to sea, without offering her any a.s.sistance, even when, as she expressed it, she was "sick enough to die."

Augusta did not need his attentions, for Lord Hardy devoted himself to her, and nothing which Daisy could do availed to lure him from her side.

Once when Allen said to her that "Hardy seemed pretty hard hit with Gus," her lip curled scornfully, but she dared not express her real feelings and say how little the Irish lord cared for the girl herself.

She must not offend the Rossiter-Brownes, and she smiled sweetly upon her rival, and called her "Gussie dear," and flattered Mrs. Browne, and made eyes at Mr. Browne, and asked him to _bet_ for her in the smoking-room, where he spent most of his time with a set of men who are always there, smoking, drinking, joking, and betting upon the daily speed of the s.h.i.+p, or any other trivial thing to pa.s.s away the time. So, while his son flirted with the fair lady on deck, Mr. Browne bet for her in the smoking-room with so good success, that when the losses and gains were footed up she found herself richer by one hundred and fifty dollars than when she left Liverpool. Mrs. Browne did not believe in betting. It was as bad as gambling, she said. And Daisy admitted it, but said, with, tears in her eyes, that it would do so much good to Bessie and her sick husband, to whom she should send every farthing as soon as she reached New York.

The voyage had been unusually long, but this was their last day out. New York was in sight, and in her most becoming attire Daisy stood upon the deck, looking eagerly at the, to her, new world, and wholly unconscious of the shock awaiting her on the sh.o.r.e which they were slowly nearing.

At last the s.h.i.+p reached the dock, the plank was thrown out, and a throng of pa.s.sengers crowed the gangway.

"Is Mrs. Archibald McPherson on board?" was shouted through the s.h.i.+p, and in a flutter of expectation Daisy went forward, announcing herself as the lady in question. "A telegram has been waiting for you more than a week," was the response, as the officer placed in her hand the yellow missive whose purport he knew.

"A message for me! Where could it have come from, I wonder," Daisy said, as, without a suspicion of the truth, she broke the seal and read:

"STONELEIGH, June ----.

"Your husband died this morning, quietly and peacefully. Bessie well, but very tired.

"GREY JERROLD."

"Oh-h! Archie, my husband!" Daisy cried, bitterly as she sank down into a chair and covered her face with her hands, while over her for a moment there swept a great wave of regret for the man she had loved in the days when she was innocent and young, and not the hard, selfish woman of the world that she was now. "Archie is dead, dead!" she moaned, as the Rossiter-Brownes gathered around her, together with Lord Hardy, who took the telegram from her and read it aloud, while he, too, experienced a throb of pain for the man he had known so long and esteemed so highly, even while he despised him for his weakness in suffering his wife to lead the life she had.

How vividly it all came back to him--the day when he first saw Archibald McPherson, the fair English boy, for he was scarcely more than that, with his young girl-wife, so innocent and lovely then. And she was lovely still and he pitied her, for he believed her grief genuine, mingled as it must be with remorse for the past, and laying his hand on her bowed head, he said to her, kindly:

"I am very sorry for you, and if I can do anything for you, do not hesitate to command me."

Alas for poor weak human nature when perverted from its better side! The sound of Teddy's voice, so different from what it had been before during the voyage, awoke a throb in Daisy's heart, which she would not like to have confessed to those around her. She was free now, and who knew that she might not one day be mistress of that handsome place in Ireland, Lord Hardy's home, if she only played her cards well. Surely that low-born Yankee girl, Augusta Browne, could never be her rival, even if she had money. Such was the thought which flashed like lightning through Daisy's mind as she felt the touch of Lord Hardy's hand and heard his sympathetic voice.

Her first impulse, when she read the telegram, had been that she must go back to Bessie in the first s.h.i.+p which sailed, but now her decision was reversed. Archie was dead and buried. She could do no good to him, and she might as well stay a little while, especially as she knew Lord Hardy had accepted Mrs. Browne's invitation to spend a few days with them at the Ridge House. It would never do to abandon the field to Augusta, she reflected, but her tears flowed just as fast, and, to do her justice, there was a sense of bitter pain in her heart, as she sat with her head bowed down, while the Brownes and Lord Hardy stood around trying to comfort her. Mrs. Browne offered her sal-volatile and called her "my poor dear;" Augusta put her arms around her neck; Allen fanned her gently, and Lord Hardy asked what he could do, while Mr. Browne said it was "plaguey hard on her, but somebody must go and see to them confounded custom-house chaps, or they would have every dud out of the ten trunks, and there'd be a pretty how-d'ye-do."

Thus reminded of what had been a terror to her all the voyage, Mrs.

Browne suggested that Daisy should leave the s.h.i.+p and sit on the wharf with "Gusty to attend to her, while she helped her husband pull through."

It was in vain that Mr. Browne protested against any help, telling his better-half to mind her business, and saying that she'd only upset everything with her fussiness and red face. But Mrs. Browne would not listen. She was not going to let him lie. She had given him numerous lectures on that point during the voyage, and had always ended them with the a.s.sertion that she wouldn't pay duty either! Just what she meant to do she did not know, but she went with her husband to the field of combat, and was soon hotly engaged with three officers, who, seeing her nervousness and hearing her excited voice, scented mischief, of course, and notwithstanding that she declared she was Mrs. Rossiter-Browne, of Ridgeville, a church member in good standing, and asked if they thought she would do a thing she believed was wrong, they answered that her idea of wrong and theirs might not agree, and they went to the bottom of her largest trunk, and found the silk dress she had bought for her friend, Mrs. Boughton, who had told her "to get one _worth_ four dollars a yard, but not to give over two, and on no account pay duty."