Bessie's Fortune Part 45

"Wait a minute, I have something for you," she said to him, and, putting her hand into her pocket, she drew out a piece of soft white paper in which was carefully wrapped one of the curls she had cut from Bessie's head. "I brought this to you, thinking you might like it when you were far away and she was dead," she said, in a choking voice.

"Thank you, Flossie," he said, taking the package from her, "G.o.d bless you for all you are to her. Write me at Venice, Hotel New York, and tell me how she is. We shall stay there a day or two before going on to Vienna and Berlin."

He wrung her hands and walked away down the broad flight of stairs, and Flossie saw him no more.

CHAPTER III.

DEAD.

That was what Adolph, a messenger boy from the Quirinal, said to Grey three days later, when the latter accidentally met him in Florence and inquired for the young English girl who was so sick with the fever.

Adolph had left the Quirinal for Florence, his home, on the evening of the same day of Grey's departure from Rome. The next afternoon the two met accidentally on one of the bridges which cross the river Arno.

"Dead!" Grey repeated, turning white to his lips and staggering as if he had been smitten with a heavy blow. "How can she be dead? They told me she was better the morning I left. When did she die?"

"A little after twelve," the boy replied, and Grey continued:

"Did her cousin come--a young man from Naples?"

"Yes," the boy answered, "Some gentleman was there--a big swell, who swore awfully at the clerk about the bills; there was no end of a row."

"The bills! What does it mean?" Grey thought, for he had paid them all up to the time of his leaving.

Then, remembering to have heard what exorbitant sums were demanded by the proprietors of hotels when a person died in their house, he concluded that this must be the bill which Neil was disputing so hotly, and bidding good-day to the boy, he walked on across the river, with a feeling that life could never be to him again just what it had been before. On the morning when he left the hotel he had seen the nurse, and inquired after the patient, who, she reported, had slept well and seemed a little better. And now she was dead! the girl he loved so much. Dead, in all her soft beauty, with only the suns of nineteen summers upon her head. Dead in Rome, and he not there with her to take a last look at the fair face which, as he walked rapidly on through street after street, seemed close beside him, sometimes touching his own and making him s.h.i.+ver, it was so cold and dead.

"Dead and gone! Dead and gone!" he kept repeating to himself, as he tried to fancy what was pa.s.sing in the room where he had spent so many hours and where he had kissed the girl now dead and gone forever.

"If I were only there," he thought. "If I could but kiss her again and hold her hand in mine," and for a moment he felt that he must go back and take the matter away from Neil, who could swear at the expense, however great it was.

He must go back and himself carry Bessie to the old home in Wales and bury her in the nook between the father and the wall--the spot which, when he saw it last, he little dreamed would be her grave, and she so young and fair. But to go back would necessitate his telling his Aunt Lucy of the fever, and to excite in her alarm and anxiety for his safety. So he gave it up, but walked on mile after mile, until the night shades were beginning to fall, and be realized how late it was, and that his aunt must be getting anxious about him. Hailing a carriage, he was driven back to his hotel, and found, as he expected, his aunt alarmed at his protracted absence, and still more alarmed at the whiteness of his face and the strange look in his eyes. He had never told her a word of Bessie, or the fever, and he would not do so now. So he merely said he had walked too far and was tired. He should be all right in the morning, and he asked permission to retire early to his room where he could be alone with his sorrow.

They left Florence the next day, for Miss Grey, who had made a long stop there early in the winter, when on her way to Rome, was anxious to leave Italy as soon as possible, fancying that the climate did not agree with Grey, who had not seemed himself since he came from Egypt and joined her in Rome. Arrived in Venice, Grey's first act was to inquire for letters, but there was nothing from Rome, nothing from Flossie, who had promised him to write. They were too busy with their preparations for taking Bessie home. They must be on their way by this time, he thought, and with a heavy heart he journeyed on from Venice until Vienna was reached, and there, at the Hotel Metropole, he found Jack Trevellian's name registered. It would be a relief to talk to him, Grey thought. He had known Bessie, too; and Grey must speak to some one of the sorrow weighing so heavily upon him, or the burden would break him down.

That night in Jack Trevellian's room two young men sat opposite each other with only a small table between them, and on it a single wax candle, which threw a faint, glimmering light upon the white faces which looked so sadly at each other, as in dumb silence the two sat motionless for a few moments after Grey had told his news.

"What is it, old fellow?" Jack had said, cheerily, as, after expressing his joy and surprise at meeting his friend so unexpectedly, and motioning him to a seat, he noticed the care-worn look upon his face and the set expression upon his mouth. "What makes you look so like a grave-yard? Crossed in love, hey? I thought it would come to that sometime, and knew you would be hard hit when hit at all. Tell me about it, do! Maybe I, too, know how it feels," and Jack laughed a little meaning laugh as he remembered the time when Bessie's blue eyes had looked at him and Bessie's voice had said, "I cannot be your wife."

"Hush, Jack!" and Grey put up his hand deprecatingly. "You don't know how you hurt me. Bessie is dead!"

"Dead! Bessie dead! Oh, Grey!" and Jack nearly leaped from his chair in his first surprise and horror; then he sat down again, and there was silence between the two for a moment, when he said, in a voice Grey would never have known as his: "When did she die? Tell me all about it, please, but tell it very slowly, word by word, or I shall not understand you. I seem to be terribly unstrung, it is so sudden and awful. Bessie dead!" and he stared at Grey with eyes which did not seem to see anything before them, but rather to be looking at something far away in the past.

And Grey, who was regarding him curiously, knew that mere friends.h.i.+p, however strong, never wore such semblance of grief as this, and there flashed upon him the conviction that, like himself, Jack too had loved the beautiful girl now lost forever to them both, while a chill ran through his veins as he thought that possibly Jack was an accepted lover, and that was why Bessie had shrunk from his words of love, as something she must not listen to. She was engaged to Jack Trevellian; nothing could be plainer, and with this conviction, which each moment gathered strength in his mind, he resolved to conceal his own heart-wound from his rival, and talk of the dead girl as if he had only been her friend. Slowly, as Jack had bidden him, he told the story of her sickness, dwelling long on Flossie Meredith's untiring devotion, but saying nothing of the services he had rendered, saying only that he was so glad he was there, as a gentleman friend was necessary at such a time and in such a place, where greed is the rule and not the exception.

"They were expecting Neil from Naples the day I left, or I should have staid," he said, and then into Jack's eyes there crept a strange, hard expression, and he wiped the perspiration from his forehead and lips, as he said:

"Neil; yes. It was his place, not yours, or mine, but, oh, Grey, if I might have seen her; if I could have held her dead hand but for a moment and kissed her dear face--"

Here Jack stopped, for his voice was choked with sobs, and ere he knew what he was doing, Grey said to him:

"Jack, you loved Bessie McPherson!"

"Yes," Jack answered him, unhesitatingly. "I do not mind telling it to you. I think I have loved her since I first saw her, a demure, old-fas.h.i.+oned little thing, in the funniest bonnet and dress you ever saw, sitting with her father, in Hyde Park, and looking at the pa.s.sers-by. I watched her for some time, wondering who she was, and then, at last, I ventured to speak to her, and standing by her chair told her who the people were, and found out who she was, and called upon her in Abingdon Road, and then she went away, but her face haunted me continually, and even the remembrance of it and of her helped me to a better life than I had lead before. You knew her mother, or rather you knew of her. Not the woman whom you saw in Rome, full of anxiety for her child, but a vain, selfish, intriguing woman, whom no good man could respect, much as he might admire her dazzling beauty. Well, she had me on her string, when I met her daughter, but something Bessie said to me made me strong to resist coils and arts which Satan himself would find it hard to withstand. I used to ride with her, and flirt with her, and bet with her, and play at her side in Monte Carlo, and let her fleece me out of money, just as she did every one with whom she came in contact; but after I knew Bessie, I broke with her mother entirely, and have never played with her or any one since for money. You remember the Christmas we spent together at Stoneleigh. You did not guess, perhaps, how much I loved her then, or that I would have asked her to be my wife if I had not been so poor. Then her father died, and you were there before me, and I was horribly jealous, for I meant she should be mine.

There was nothing in the way, I thought. Poor Hal was dead, and had left me his t.i.tle and estate. I could pour some brightness into her weary life, and two weeks after the funeral I went again to Stoneleigh and asked her to marry me."

Jack paused a moment, and leaning forward eagerly, Grey said:

"Yes, you asked her to marry you, and she consented?"

"No; oh, no" Jack groaned, "If she had, she might not now have been dead; my Bessie, whom I loved so much. She refused me, and worst of all, she told me she was plighted to Neil, her cousin."

"To Neil! Bessie plighted to Neil! That is impossible, for he is to marry Blanche Trevellian, so everybody says," Grey exclaimed, conscious of a keener pang than he had experienced when he thought Jack his rival.

"And everybody is right," Jack replied: "he will marry Blanche, but he was engaged to Bessie under the promise of strictest secrecy until his mother, who had threatened to disinherit him, was reconciled, or he found something which would support him without any effort on his part, Neil McPherson would never exert himself, or deny himself either, even for the woman he loved, and, Grey, I speak the truth when I tell you that I would rather know that Bessie was dead than to see her Neil's wife."

Grey did not answer, but something in the pallor of his face and the expression of his eyes, struck Jack suddenly, and stretching his hand across the table he said, very low and very sadly:

"Jerrold, you loved her, too. I see it in your face."

"Yes," Grey answered him, "I loved her, too, and would have given years of my life to have saved her, though not for Neil. Better far as it is--better for her, I mean, though our lives are wrecked; at least, mine is; but for you there may still be a happy future, and on the ashes of the dead love a new one may arise to bless you."

"Never!" Jack answered, emphatically; then after a moment, as if his thoughts had followed Grey's, he asked:

"Do you know how long Mrs. Meredith intends remaining in Rome, or where she expects to go after leaving there?"

Grey replied that he did not, while a faint smile played round his mouth, as he looked at his friend, who detected the smile, and comprehending its meaning, said, with a heightened color:

"I know you are thinking of Flossie. Bessie thought of her, too, and asked why I did not marry her. But that will never be, though, she is as bright and beautiful an Irish la.s.sie as ever gladdened the eyes of man and the castle is so lonesome without her buzzing about and stirring up things generally, that I have serious thoughts of inviting her grandmother, to take up her abode there, so I can have Flossie back. The servants adore her. But she will never be my wife. She would tire and worry me to death with her restlessness and activity. When I lost Bessie I lost everything, and have nothing left but her memory--not even a flower which she has worn."

Grey hesitated a moment, then taking from his pocket the package which Flossie had given him, he opened it, and holding to view the long silken curl, said to Jack:

"Flossie cut this from Bessie's head when the fever was at its height, and though there is not in the world gold enough to buy it from me, I will divide with you," and parting it carefully he laid one-half of it upon Jack's hand, around which it seemed to cling with a loving tenacity. It was strange how vividly that wavy hair brought Bessie back to the young men who had loved her so much, and who, at sight of it, broke down entirely, and laying their heads upon the table, cried for a moment, as only strong men can cry, for the dear little girl who, they felt sure, was lying in her grave in far off Stoneleigh.

CHAPTER IV.

POOR DAISY.

Four weeks pa.s.sed away, and Grey, with his Aunt Lucy, was journeying through Russia, bearing with him a sense of loss and pain. The mails were very irregular, and he had never heard a word either from Flossie or Neil, nor had he written to them. He could not yet bring himself to speak of Bessie, even upon paper, though he sometimes felt a little aggrieved that Neil did not write to him and tell him of his loss. And so the weeks went on, and one day, toward the middle of April, when the English skies were at their best and the hyacinths and crocuses were blooming in the yew-shaded garden at Stoneleigh, a little band of mourners went down the broad graveled walk to the inclosure, where in the narrow s.p.a.ce between Archie's grave and the wall another grave was made, and there in silence and in tears they buried--not Bessie--but her mother, poor, weak, frivolous Daisy, who had succ.u.mbed to the fever and died after a three weeks' illness.

Bessie was not dead, as the messenger boy had reported to Grey in Florence, but the young girl from America, sick on the same floor, had died about noon on the day of Grey's departure, and with his rather limited knowledge of English the boy had mistaken her for Bessie. And as her brother had arrived that morning and had sworn roundly at the frightful bill presented to him, the boy had naturally confounded this party with the one for whom Grey inquired, and thus had been the cause of much needless pain and sorrow to both Jack Trevellian and Grey. Neil had come from Naples on the morning train, very tired and worn with his trip to Egypt, and a good deal out of sorts because of a letter received from his mother in Naples in which she rated him soundly for his extravagance, telling him he must economize, and that the check she sent him--a very small one--must suffice until his return to England, where she confidently expected him to marry Cousin Blanche before the season was over.

"I hear," she wrote in conclusion, "that the widow of Archibald McPherson is in Rome with her daughter, but I trust you will not allow them to entangle you in any way. The mother will fleece you out of every farthing you have, while the daughter--well I do not know her, so will not say what she may do; only keep clear of them both and shun that crafty woman as you would the plague."