Bessie's Fortune Part 57

Grey had come to Allington from Springfield, where he had been on business for his father, and both Lucy and Miss McPherson knew that he was coming, and had chosen that day for Bessie's visit to the park, and had purposely talked before her of his probable marriage, in order to test the nature of Bessie's feelings for him.

"We cannot be mistaken," Miss McPherson said to Lucy, after Bessie had left them; "but let me manage the young man."

And when, at last, Grey came, and, after greeting the ladies, asked after Bessie, Miss McPherson replied that she was better and had just left them for the garden; and then, as Grey made no move to go in search of her, she suddenly turned upon him with the exclamation:

"Grey Jerrold, you are a fool!"

"Ye-es?" he answered, interrogatively, as he regarded her with astonishment.

"I repeat it--you are either a fool or blind, or both!" she continued.

"But I am neither, and I know you love my niece, and she loves you, and I know too that you think she is engaged to Neil McPherson, but she is not."

"What!" Grey exclaimed, starting to his feet. "What are you saying?"

"I am saying that Bessie's engagement was broken before she left England, and that she--"

"She--what?" Grey cried, almost pleadingly; and Miss McPherson rejoined:

"She is in the garden. You will find her in the rose-arbor."

Grey waited for no more, but went rapidly in the direction of the summer-house where Bessie sat with her back to him, and did not see him until his hands were upon her face and his voice said to her:

"Bessie, darling Bessie!"

Then she started suddenly, and when Grey came round in front of her, and taking her hands in his kissed her lips, she kissed him unhesitatingly, and then burst into a paroxysm of tears.

"What is it, Bessie? Why are you crying so?" Grey said, as he still held her hands and kept kissing her forehead and lips.

"They said you were going to be married," Bessie sobbed, as Grey knelt beside her, and laying her head upon his shoulder, tried to brush her tears away.

"Who said I was to be married?" he asked, in some surprise, and Bessie answered him:

"Your Aunt Lucy said she thought so, and I--oh, Grey, what must you think of me?" and lifting her head from his shoulder, Bessie covered her face with her hands, crying for very shame that she had betrayed what she ought to have kept to herself.

"What must I think of you?" Grey replied. "Why, this--that you are the dearest, sweetest little girl in all the world, and that I am the happiest man. I do not know what Aunt Lucy meant by saying I was going to be married; but I am, and very soon, too--just as soon as you are able to be present at the ceremony. Will that be at Christmas-time, do you think?"

He was taking everything for granted, and Bessie knew that he was, and knew what he meant, but she would scarcely have been a woman if she had not wished him to put his meaning in words which could not be mistaken, so she said to him amid her tears--glad, happy tears they were now:

"Whom are you to marry?"

"Whom?" he repeated. "Whom but you, Bessie McPherson, whom I believe I have loved ever since that Christmas I spent at Stoneleigh two years ago. Do you remember the knot of plaid ribbon you wore that night and which I won at play? I have it still, as one of my choicest treasures, and the curl of hair which Flossie cut from your head, in Rome, when we thought you would die, I divided that tress with Jack Trevellian the night we talked together of you, with breaking hearts, because we believed you were dead. He told me then of his love for you, and I confessed mine to him, though we both supposed that, had you lived, Neil would have claimed you as his. Oh, Bessie, those were dreary months to me, when I thought you dead, and may you never know the anguish I endured when I stood by that grave in Stoneleigh and believed you lying there. But G.o.d has been very good to me, far better than I deserve. He has given you to me at last and nothing shall separate us again."

While Grey talked, he was caressing Bessie's face and hair, and stooping occasionally to kiss her, while she sat dumb and motionless, so full was she of the great joy which had come so suddenly upon her, and which, as yet, she could not realize.

"We will be married at Christmas," Grey said; "the anniversary of the time when I first saw you, little dreaming then, that you would one day be my wife. Shall it not be so?"

What Bessie might have said or how long the interview might have lasted, we have no means of knowing, for a shrill cry in the distance of "None of that, misther! for I'm comin' meself to take the hide of ye,"

startled them from their state of bliss, and looking up they saw Jennie bearing swiftly down upon them, with both arms extended ready for fight.

Jennie, who knew nothing of Grey's arrival, had visited with the servants, until she concluded it was time to return to her young mistress. As she came within sight of the summer-house what was her horror to see a tall young man with his arms around Bessie, and, as it seemed to her, trying to take her from the chair.

"Thaves and murther!" she cried, "if there isn't a spalpeen thryin' to run away with Miss Bessie, body and bones;" and at her utmost speed she dashed on to the fray.

But at sight of Grey she stopped short, and with wide-open eyes and mouth, surveyed him a moment in astonishment; then a broad smile illumined her face as she exclaimed:

"An' faith that's right. Kiss her again as many times as ye likes. It's not meself will interfere, though if you'd been a bla'guard, as I thought you was, I'd of had yer heart's blood," and turning on her heel Jennie walked rapidly away, leaving the lovers a very little upset and disconcerted.

It was Grey who wheeled Bessie back to the house, and taking her in his arms carried her to his Aunt Lucy, to whom he said, as he put her down upon the couch:

"This is my little wife, or, rather, she is to _be_ my wife on Christmas Eve, and Christmas Day we are to spend here with you, who will make the old house brighter than ever it was before." Then, going up to Miss McPherson, he continued: "Kiss me, Aunt Betsey because I am to be your nephew, and because I am no longer a fool."

The kiss he asked for was given, and thus the engagement was sealed, and when next day Grey returned to Boston, he said to his Aunt Hannah, who was still with his mother:

"Bessie is to be my wife, and I must tell her our secret, and at your house, too, for, after she has seen you, I feel sure that she will forgive everything."

CHAPTER XIV.

TELLING BESSIE.

At last Mrs. Geraldine was better, and signified her willingness to let her sister-in-law return to her own home, from which she had been absent so long. She had received, with a good deal of equanimity, the news of her son's engagement with Bessie, whom she remembered as a lovely child, wholly unlike her mother.

"If that woman were living, I would never consent to the marriage," she said; "but as it is, I am willing, though I had hoped that in your travels abroad you might have found some high-born English girl with a t.i.tle, but it is something to marry a niece of Lady Jane, and I dare say Miss McPherson will make the girl her heir; so I will welcome her as my daughter, and perhaps she will brighten up the house, which is at times insufferably dull, with your father growing more and more silent and gloomy every day. I should not wonder if he were to become crazy, like your grandfather."

Grey did not reply to this, or tell her that he could guess in part what it was which had made his father grow old so fast, and blanched his hair to a snowy white, unusual to one of his years. It was the secret hidden under the bed-room floor which had affected his whole life, and affected it all the more because he had brooded over it in silence, and never spoken to any one upon the subject. Once Hannah attempted to say something to him, but he had repulsed her so fiercely that she never tried again, and he did not guess what efforts Grey had made to find the rightful heirs of Joel Rogers. Like his wife, he did not object to Grey's engagement. Bessie was a desirable _parti_, as she would, in all probability, inherit her aunt's large fortune, and he signified his approval; and in all Boston there was not a happier man than Grey, on the morning when, with his Aunt Hannah, he at last started for Allington, telling her when he bade her good-by at the station that he should bring Bessie to her early the following day.

It was a most lovely October morning when Grey drove Bessie through the rocky lane in the pasture land up to the old house, of which he had told her on Christmas Eve, at Stoneleigh, almost two years ago, and which seemed neither new nor strange to Bessie, so strong an impression had his description made upon her.

"There she is; that is Aunt Hannah," Grey said, as a tall, slender woman, in a plain black dress, came to the open door and stood waiting for them.

"And I should have known her, too. What a sad face it is, just as if there was a history hidden under it." Bessie said, and Grey replied, as be lifted her from the phaeton:

"There is a history hidden there, and sometime I will tell it to you."

Then leading her to his aunt he said:

"Auntie, I have brought you Bessie."

"Yes," Hannah answered, with a gasp, as her cold hands were clasped by the soft, warm ones of the young girl, who looked up at her curiously, wondering at her manner.

At sight of Bessie, Hannah had been startled by the likeness to the picture hidden away so many years, every feature of which was indelibly stamped upon her memory. Had that picture taken life and form, and was it confronting her now? It seemed so, and for an instant she grew cold and faint, and stood staring at the girl.

"Auntie, won't you kiss Bessie?" Grey said, and then the spell was broken, and taking the girl in her arms, Hannah kissed and cried over her as a fond mother cries over the child which has been lost and is restored to her again.

Hannah could not define to herself the feeling which took possession of her from the moment she saw Bessie standing there in the low, old-fas.h.i.+oned room, with the October suns.h.i.+ne falling on her golden hair and lighting up her beautiful face, still pale and worn from recent sickness. It was as if an angel had come suddenly to her, bringing the peace and rest she had never known since that awful night more than forty years ago, and she felt all her olden horror rolling away, as she watched Bessie going over the house, with Grey--; now up the crooked stairs to the room under the roof where Grey used to sleep when a boy, and where there were still the remains of a horse, and a boat which he had sailed in the big iron kettle by the well--; now down the cellar stairs to see the foundation of the big chimney which occupied the center of the house, and in which the swallows built their nests; now out to the well where the bucket hung, and then to the little bench where Grey used to sit and kick the side of the house, while the terror-stricken old man looked on trembling, lest the boards should give way and show what was hidden there! It was there yet, dust and ashes now, but still there, and Bessie sat down alone beside it, while Grey s.h.i.+vered as his grandfather had done, and drew her away as quickly as possible.