A strong hand drew Daisy quickly back.
"Rash child! What is this that you would do?" cried an eager, earnest
voice, and, turning quickly about, speechless with fright, Daisy met
the stern eyes of the apothecary bent searchingly, inquiringly upon
her.
"It means that I am tired of life," she replied, desperately. "My life
is so full of sadness it will be no sorrow to leave it. I wanted to
rest quietly down there, but you have held me back; it is useless to
attempt to save me now. I have already swallowed a portion of the
laudanum. Death must come to relieve me soon. It would be better to
let me die down there where no one could have looked upon my face
again."
"I had no intention to let you die so easily," said the apothecary,
softly. "I read your thoughts too plainly for that. I did not give you
laudanum, but a harmless mixture instead, and followed you to see if
my surmise was correct. You are young and fair--surely life could not
have lost all hope and sunshine for you?"
"You do not know all," said Daisy, wearily, "or you would not have
held me back. I do not know of another life so utterly hopeless as my
own."
The good man looked at the sweet, innocent, beautiful face, upon which
the starlight fell, quite bewildered and thoughtful.
"I should like to know what your trouble is," he said, gently.
"I could tell you only one half of it," she replied, wearily. "I have
suffered much, and yet through no fault of my own. I am cast off,
deserted, condemned to a loveless, joyless life; my heart is broken;
there is nothing left me but to die. I repeat that it is a sad fate."
"It is indeed," replied the apothecary, gravely. "Yet, alas! not an
uncommon one. Are you quite sure that nothing can remedy it?"
"Quite sure," replied Daisy, hopelessly. "My doom is fixed; and no
matter how long I live, or how long he lives, it can never be
altered."
The apothecary was uncomfortable without knowing why, haunted by a
vague, miserable suspicion, which poor Daisy's words secretly
corroborated; yet it seemed almost a sin to harbor one suspicion
against the purity of the artless little creature before him. He
looked into the fresh young face. There was no cloud on it, no guilt
lay brooding in the clear, truthful blue eyes. He never dreamed little
Daisy was a wife. "Why did he not love her?" was the query the
apothecary asked himself over and over again; "she is so young, so
loving, and so fair. He has cast her off, this man to whom she has
given the passionate love of her young heart."
"You see you did wrong to hold me back," she said, gently. "How am I
to live and bear this sorrow that has come upon me? What am I to do?"
She looked around her with the bewildered air of one who had lost her
way, with the dazed appearance of one from beneath whose feet the bank
of safety has been withdrawn. Hope was dead, and the past a blank.
"No matter what your past has been, my poor child, you must remember
there is a future. Take up the burden again, and bear it nobly; go
back to your home, and commence life anew."
"I have no home and no friends," she sighed, hopelessly.
"Poor child," he said, pityingly, "is it as bad as that?"
A sudden idea seemed to occur to him.
"You are a perfect stranger to me," he said, "but I believe you to be
an honorable girl, and I should like to befriend you, as I would pray
Heaven to befriend a daughter of mine if she were similarly situated.
If I should put you in a way of obtaining your own living as companion
to an elderly lady in a distant city, would you be willing to take up
the tangled threads of your life again, and wait patiently until God
saw fit to call you--that is, you would never attempt to take your
life into your own hands again?" he asked, slowly. "Remember, such an
act is murder, and a murderer can not enter the kingdom of heaven."
He never forgot the startled, frightened glance that swept over the
beautiful face, plainly discernible in the white moonlight, nor the
quiver of the sweet, tremulous voice as Daisy answered:
"I think God must have intended me to live, or He would not have sent
you here to save me," she answered, impulsively. "Twice I have been
near death, and each time I have been rescued. I never attempted to
take my own life but this once. I shall try and accept my fate and
live out my weary life."
"Bravely spoken, my noble girl," replied her rescuer, heartily.
"I must go far away from here, though," she continued, shuddering; "I
am sorely persecuted here."
The old man listened gravely to her disconnected, incoherent words,
drawing but one conclusion from them--"the lover who had cast her off
was pursuing the child, as her relentless foe, to the very verge of
death and despair."
"It is my sister who wants a companion," he said. "She lives in the
South--in Florida. Do you think you would like to go as far away as
that?"
"Yes," said Daisy, mechanically. "I should like to go to the furthest
end of the world. It does not matter much where I go!"
How little she knew where fate was drifting her! Rex had not told her
his home was in Florida; he meant to tell her that on the morning he
was to have met her.
"It will be a long, wearisome journey for you to undertake, still I
feel sure you are brave enough to accomplish it in safety."
"I thank you very much for your confidence in me, sir," said Daisy,
simply.
"Tut, tut, child!" exclaimed the old man, brusquely. "That innocent
little face of yours ought to be a passport to any one's confidence. I
don't think there's any doubt but what you will get on famously with
Maria--that's my sister Mrs. Glenn--but she's got three daughters that
would put an angel's temper on edge. They're my nieces--more's the
pity, for they are regular Tartars. Mrs. Glenn sent for my daughter
Alice to come down there; but, Lord bless you, I wouldn't dare send
her! There would be a raging quarrel before twenty-four hours! My
Alice has got a temper of her own. But, pshaw! I ought not to frighten
you, my dear; they could not help but love _you_."
And thus it was Daisy's fate was unchangeably settled for her.
"There is one thing I would like you to promise me," she said,
timidly, "and that is never to divulge my whereabouts to any one who
might come in search of me. I must remain dead to the world forever; I
shall never take up the old life again. They must believe me dead."
Argument and persuasion alike were useless; and, sorely troubled at
heart, the apothecary reluctantly consented. Poor little Daisy
impulsively caught him by both hands, and gratefully sobbed out her
thanks.
The arrangements were soon completed, and before the gray dawn pierced
the darkness of the eastern sky poor little Daisy was whirling rapidly
away from Elmwood.
The consternation and excitement which prevailed at the Burton Cottage
when Daisy's absence was discovered can better be imagined than
described; or the intense anger of Stanwick upon finding Daisy had
eluded him.
"Checkmated!" he cried, white to the very lips. "But she shall not
escape me; she shall suffer for this freak. I am not a man to be
trifled with. She can not have gone far," he assured himself. "In all
probability she has left Elmwood; but if by rail or by water I can
easily recapture my pretty bird. Ah, Daisy Brooks!" he muttered, "you
can not fly away from your fate; it will overtake you sooner or
later."
Some hours after Stanwick had left the cottage, an old man toiled
wearily up the grass-grown path.
"Oh, poor little Daisy," he said, wiping the tears from his eyes with
his old red and white cotton kerchief; "no matter what you have done
I will take you back to my heart--that I will!"
He clutched the letter Mme. Whitney had written him close in his
toil-hardened hand. The letter simply told him Daisy had fled from the
seminary, and she had every reason to believe she was now in Elmwood.
He had received the letter while in New York, and hastily proceeded to
Elmwood, the station indicated, at once, without stopping over at
Allendale to acquaint Septima with the news.
"She shall never be sent off to school again," he commented; "but she
shall stop at home. Poor little pet, she was always as happy as the
day was long; she sha'n't have book-learning if she don't want it. I
am too hard, I s'pose, with the child in sending her off among these
primpy city gals, with their flounces and furbelows, with only three
plain muslin frocks. The dickens fly away with the book-learnin'; I
like her all the better just as she is, bless her dear little heart!
I'm after little Daisy Brooks," he said, bowing to the ladies who met
him at the door. "I heard she was here--run away from school, you see,
ma'am--but I'll forgive the little gypsy. Tell her old Uncle John is
here. She'll be powerful glad to see me."
Slowly and gently they broke to him the cruel story. How the dark,
handsome stranger had brought her there in the storm and the night;
and they could not refuse her shelter; the gentleman claimed her to be
his wife; of her illness which culminated in her disappearance.
They never forgot the white, set face turned toward them. The veins
stood out like cords on his forehead, and the perspiration rolled down
his pallid cheeks in great quivering beads. This heart-rending, silent
emotion was more terrible to witness than the most violent paroxysms
of grief. Strangely enough they had quite forgotten to mention Rex's
visit.
"You don't know how I loved that child," he cried, brokenly. "She was
all I had to love in the whole world, and I set such store by her, but
Stanwick shall pay dearly for this," he cried, hoarsely. "I shall
never rest day or night until my little Daisy's honor is avenged, so
help me God! You think she is dead?" he questioned, looking brokenly
from the one to the other.
They only nodded their heads; they could not speak through their
sobs.
At that moment several of the neighbors who were assisting in the
search were seen coming toward the cottage.
They gathered in a little knot by the garden wall. With a heart
heavier than lead in his bosom John Brooks went forward to meet them.
"You haven't got any track of my little Daisy?" he asked, despondingly.
The men averted their faces. "For God's sake speak out, my men!" he
cried, in agony; "I can't stand this suspense."
"There are footprints in the wet grass down yonder," one of them
replied; "and they lead straight down to the old shaft. Do you think
your girl has made away with herself?"
A gray, ghastly pallor settled over John Brooks' anguished face.
"The Lord knows! All of you stay here while I go down there and look.
If I should find anything there I'd rather be alone."
There was a depth of agony in the man's voice that touched his
hearers, and more than one coat-sleeve was drawn hastily across
sympathetic eyes as they whispered one to the other he would surely
find her there.
John Brooks had reached the very mouth of the pit now, and through the
branches of the trees the men saw him suddenly spring forward, and
stoop as if to pick up something, and bitter cries rent the stillness
of the summer morning.
"Daisy! oh, Daisy! my child, my child!"
Then they saw him fall heavily to the ground on the very brink of the
shaft.
"I guess he's found her!" cried the sympathizing men. "Let us go and
see."
They found John Brooks insensible, lying prone on his face, grasping a
tiny little glove in one hand, and in the other a snowy little
handkerchief, which bore, in one corner, worked in fanciful design,
the name of "Daisy."