Gertie Glenn never forgot the despairing cry that broke from Daisy's
white lips as she repeated her command:
"I wish you to deliver this note to Mr. Rex Lyon himself."
"Oh, Miss Gertie," she cried, clasping her hands together in an agony
of entreaty, "I can not--oh, indeed I can not! Ask anything of me but
that and I will gladly do it!"
Both girls looked at her in sheer astonishment.
"What is the reason you can not?" cried Gertie, in utter amazement. "I
do not comprehend you."
"I--I can not take the note," she said, in a frightened whisper. "I do
not--I--"
She stopped short in utter confusion.
"I choose you shall do just as I bid you," replied Gertie, in her
imperious, scornful anger. "It really seems to me you forget your
position here, Miss Brooks. How dare you refuse me?"
Opposition always strengthened Gertie's decision, and she determined
Daisy should take her note to Rex Lyon at all hazards.
The eloquent, mute appeal in the blue eyes raised to her own was
utterly lost on her.
"The pride of these dependent companions is something ridiculous," she
went on, angrily. "You consider yourself too fine, I suppose, to be
made a messenger of." Gertie laughed aloud, a scornful, mocking laugh.
"Pride and poverty do not work very well together. You may go to your
room now and get your hat and shawl. I shall have the letter written
in a very few minutes. There will be no use appealing to mamma. You
ought to know by this time we overrule her objections always."
It was too true, Mrs. Glenn never had much voice in a matter where
Bess or Gertie had decided the case.
Like one in a dream Daisy turned from them. She never remembered how
she gained her own room. With cold, tremulous fingers she fastened her
hat, tucking the bright golden hair carefully beneath her veil, and
threw her shawl over her shoulders, just as Gertie approached, letter
in hand.
"You need not go around by the main road," she said, "there is a much
nearer path leading down to the stone wall. You need not wait for an
answer: there will be none. The servants over there are awkward,
blundering creatures--do not trust it to them--you must deliver it to
Rex himself."
"I make one last appeal to you, Miss Gertie. Indeed, it is not pride
that prompts me. I could not bear it. Have pity on me. You are gentle
and kind to others; please, oh, please be merciful to me!"
"I have nothing more to say upon the subject--I have said you were to
go. You act as if I were sending you to some place where you might
catch the scarlet fever or the mumps. You amuse me; upon my word you
do. Rex is not dangerous, neither is he a Bluebeard; his only fault is
being alarmingly handsome. The best advice I can give you is, don't
admire him too much. He should be labeled, 'Out of the market.'"
Gertie tripped gayly from the room, her crimson satin ribbons
fluttering after her, leaving a perceptible odor of violets in the
room, while Daisy clutched the note in her cold, nervous grasp,
walking like one in a terrible dream through the bright patches of
glittering moonlight, through the sweet-scented, rose-bordered path,
on through the dark shadows of the trees toward the home of Rex--her
husband.
A soft, brooding silence lay over the sleeping earth as Daisy, with a
sinking heart, drew near the house. Her soft footfalls on the green
mossy earth made no sound.
Silently as a shadow she crept up to the blossom-covered porch; some
one was standing there, leaning against the very pillar around which
she had twined her arms as she watched Rex's shadow on the roses.
The shifting moonbeams pierced the white, fleecy clouds that enveloped
them, and as he turned his face toward her she saw it was Rex. She
could almost have reached out her hand and touched him from where she
stood. She was sorely afraid her face or her voice might startle him
if she spoke to him suddenly.
"I do not need to speak," she thought. "I will go up to him and lay
the letter in his hand."
Then a great intense longing came over her to hear his voice and know
that he was speaking to her. She had quite decided to pursue this
course, when the rustle of a silken garment fell upon her ear. She
knew the light tread of the slippered feet but too well--it was Pluma.
She went up to him in her usual caressing fashion, laying her white
hand on his arm.
"Do you know you have been standing here quite two hours, Rex,
watching the shadows of the vine-leaves? I have longed to come up and
ask you what interest those dancing shadows had for you, but I could
not make up my mind to disturb you. I often fancy you do not know how
much time you spend in thought."
Pluma was wondering if he was thinking of that foolish, romantic fancy
that had come so near separating them--his boyish fancy for Daisy
Brooks, their overseer's niece. No, surely not. He must have forgotten
her long ago.
"These reveries seem to have grown into a habit with me," he said,
dreamily; "almost a second nature, of late. If you were to come and
talk to me at such times, you would break me of it."
The idea pleased her. A bright flush rose to her face, and she made
him some laughing reply, and he looked down upon her with a kindly
smile.
Oh! the torture of it to the poor young wife standing watching them,
with heart on fire in the deep shadow of the crimson-hearted
passion-flowers that quivered on the intervening vines. The letter she
held in her hand slipped from her fingers into the bushes all
unheeded. She had but one thought--she must get away. The very air
seemed to stifle her; her heart seemed numb--an icy band seemed
pressing round it, and her poor forehead was burning hot. It did not
matter much where she went, nobody loved her, nobody cared for her. As
softly as she came, she glided down the path that led to the
entrance-gate beyond. She passed through the moonlighted grounds,
where the music and fragrance of the summer night was at its height.
The night wind stirred the pink clover and the blue-bells beneath her
feet. Her eyes were hot and dry; tears would have been a world of
relief to her, but none came to her parched eyelids.
She paid little heed to the direction she took. One idea alone took
possession of her--she must get away.
"If I could only go back to dear old Uncle John," she sighed. "His
love has never failed me."
It seemed long years back since she had romped with him, a happy,
merry child, over the cotton fields, and he had called her his sunbeam
during all those years when no one lived at Whitestone Hall and the
wild ivy climbed riotously over the windows and doors. Even Septima's
voice would have sounded so sweet to her. She would have lived over
again those happy, childish days, if she only could. She remembered
how Septima would send her to the brook for water, and how she
sprinkled every flower in the path-way that bore her name; and how
Septima would scold her when she returned with her bucket scarce half
full; and how she had loved to dream away those sunny summer days,
lying under the cool, shady trees, listening to the songs the robins
sang as they glanced down at her with their little sparkling eyes.
How she had dreamed of the gallant young hero who was to come to her
some day. She had wondered how she would know him, and what were the
words he first would say! If he would come riding by, as the judge did
when "Maud Muller stood in the hay-fields;" and she remembered, too,
the story of "Rebecca at the Well." A weary smile flitted over her
face as she remembered when she went to the brook she had always put
on her prettiest blue ribbons, in case she might meet her hero.
Oh, those sweet, bright, rosy dreams of girlhood! What a pity it is
they do not last forever! Those girlish dreams, where glowing fancy
reigns supreme, and the prosaic future is all unknown. She remembered
her meeting with Rex, how every nerve in her whole being thrilled, and
how she had felt her cheeks grow flaming hot, just as she had read
they would do when she met the right one. That was how she had known
Rex was the right one when she had shyly glanced up, from under her
long eyelashes, into the gay, brown hazel eyes, fixed upon her so
quizzically, as he took the heavy basket from her slender arms, that
never-to-be-forgotten June day, beneath the blossoming magnolia-tree.
Poor child! her life had been a sad romance since then. How strange it
was she was fleeing from the young husband whom she had married and
was so quickly parted from!
All this trouble had come about because she had so courageously
rescued her letter from Mme. Whitney.
"If he had not bound me to secrecy, I could have have cried out before
the whole world I was his wife," she thought.
A burning flush rose to her face as she thought how cruelly he had
suspected her, this poor little child-bride who had never known one
wrong or sinful thought in her pure, innocent young life.
If he had only given her the chance of explaining how she had happened
to be there with Stanwick; if they had taken her back she must have
confessed about the letter and who Rex was and what he was to her.
Even Stanwick's persecution found an excuse in her innocent,
unsuspecting little heart.
"He sought to save me from being taken back when he called me his
wife," she thought. "He believed I was free to woo and win, because I
dared not tell him I was Rex's wife." Yet the thought of Stanwick
always brought a shudder to her pure young mind. She could not
understand why he would have resorted to such desperate means to gain
an unwilling bride.
"Not yet seventeen. Ah, what a sad love-story hers had been. How
cruelly love's young dream had been blighted," she told herself; and
yet she would not have exchanged that one thrilling, ecstatic moment
of rapture when Rex had clasped her in his arms and whispered: "My
darling wife," for a whole lifetime of calm happiness with any one
else.
On and on she walked through the violet-studded grass, thinking--thinking.
Strange fancies came thronging to her overwrought brain. She pushed her
veil back from her face and leaned against the trunk of a tree; her brain
was dizzy and her thoughts were confused; the very stars seemed dancing
riotously in the blue sky above her, and the branches of the trees were
whispering strange fancies. Suddenly a horseman, riding a coal-black
charger, came cantering swiftly up the long avenue of trees. He saw the
quiet figure standing leaning against the drooping branches.
"I will inquire the way," he said to himself, drawing rein beside her.
"Can you tell me, madame, if this is the most direct road leading to
Glengrove and that vicinity? I am looking for a hostelry near it. I
seem to have lost my way. Will you kindly direct me?" he asked, "or to
the home of Mr. Rex Lyon?"
The voice sounded strangely familiar to Daisy. She was dimly conscious
some one was speaking to her. She raised her face up and gazed at the
speaker. The cold, pale moonlight fell full upon it, clearly revealing
its strange, unearthly whiteness, and the bright flashing eyes, gazing
dreamily past the terror-stricken man looking down on her, with white,
livid lips and blanched, horror-stricken face. His eyes almost leaped
from their sockets in abject terror, as Lester Stanwick gazed on the
upturned face by the roadside.
"My God, do I dream?" he cried, clutching at the pommel of his saddle.
"Is this the face of Daisy Brooks, or is it a specter, unable to sleep
in the depths of her tomb, come back to haunt me for driving her to
her doom?"