_LOVE’S BITTEREST CUP_
A Sequel to “Her Mother’s Secret”
_By_
MRS. E. D. E. N. SOUTHWORTH
AUTHOR OF
“The Lost Lady of Lone,” “The Trail of the Serpent,” “Nearest and
Dearest,” “A Leap in the Dark,” “A Beautiful Fiend,” Etc.
[Illustration]
A. L. BURT COMPANY
PUBLISHERS NEW YORK
POPULAR BOOKS
By MRS. E. D. E. N. SOUTHWORTH
In Handsome Cloth Binding
Price per volume, 60 Cents
* * * * *
Beautiful Fiend, A
Brandon Coyle’s Wife
Sequel to A Skeleton in the Closet
Bride’s Fate, The
Sequel to The Changed Brides
Bride’s Ordeal, The
Capitola’s Peril
Sequel to the Hidden Hand
Changed Brides, The
Cruel as the Grave
David Lindsay
Sequel to Gloria
Deed Without a Name, A
Dorothy Harcourt’s Secret
Sequel to A Deed Without a Name
“Em”
Em’s Husband
Sequel to “Em”
Fair Play
For Whose Sake
Sequel to Why Did He Wed Her?
For Woman’s Love
Fulfilling Her Destiny
Sequel to When Love Commands
Gloria
Her Love or Her life
Sequel to The Bride’s Ordeal
Her Mother’s Secret
Hidden Hand, The
How He Won Her
Sequel to Fair Play
Ishmael
Leap in the Dark, A
Lilith
Sequel to the Unloved Wife
Little Nea’s Engagement
Sequel to Nearest and Dearest
Lost Heir, The
Lost Lady of Lone, The
Love’s Bitterest Cup
Sequel to Her Mother’s Secret
Mysterious Marriage, The
Sequel to A Leap in the Dark
Nearest and Dearest
Noble Lord, A
Sequel to The Lost Heir
Self-Raised
Sequel to Ishmael
Skeleton in the Closet, A
Struggle of a Soul, The
Sequel to The Lost Lady of Lone
Sweet Love’s Atonement
Test of Love, The
Sequel to A Tortured Heart
To His Fate
Sequel to Dorothy Harcourt’s Secret
Tortured Heart, A
Sequel to The Trail of the Serpent
Trail of the Serpent, The
Tried for Her life
Sequel to Cruel as the Grave
Unloved Wife, The
Unrequited Love, An
Sequel to For Woman’s Love
Victor’s Triumph
Sequel to A Beautiful Fiend
When Love Commands
When Shadows Die
Sequel to Love’s Bitterest Cup
Why Did He Wed Her?
Zenobia’s Suitors
Sequel to Sweet Love’s Atonement
* * * * *
For Sale by all Booksellers or will be sent postpaid on receipt of
price.
A. L. BURT COMPANY, PUBLISHERS
New York
Copyright, 1882, 1889
By ROBERT BONNER
Renewal granted to Mrs. Charlotte Southworth Lawrence, 1910
“LOVE’S BITTEREST CUP”
Printed by special arrangement with STREET & SMITH
LOVE’S BITTEREST CUP
CHAPTER I
A WEDDING FROLIC AT FOREST REST
The good folk of our county always seized with gladness any fair excuse
for merry-making, especially in the dead of winter, when farm work was
slack.
Now the marriage of the popular young doctor with the well-liked young
teacher was one of the best of excuses for general outbreak into gayety.
True, the newly married pair wished to settle down at once in their
pretty cottage home, and be quiet.
But they were not to be permitted to do so.
Every family to whom the young doctor stood in the relation of attendant
physician gave either a dinner or a dancing party.
Judge Paul McCann, an old bachelor, who was one of his most valuable
patients—a chronic patient dying of good living, and taking a long, long
time to do it in—gave a heavy dinner party, to which he invited only
married or middle-aged people—such as the elder Forces, Grandieres,
Elks, and—Miss Bayard, who did not attend.
This dinner came off on the Monday after the marriage, and was a great
success.
Every one was pleased, except the young people who had nothing to do
with it.
“Selfish old rhinoceros! Wouldn’t give a dancing party because he’s got
the gout! And Natty so fond of dancing, too!” growled Wynnette, over her
disappointment on that occasion.
But the Grandieres consoled her and all the young people by giving a
dancing party at Oldfields on the following Wednesday, and inviting all
the members, young and old, of every family in the neighborhood.
This party was but a repetition, with improvements, on the New Year’s
Eve party, just four weeks previous; for again there was a full moon, a
deep, level snow, frozen over, and fine sleighing, and all circumstances
combined to make the entertainment a most enjoyable one.
This frolic was followed on Friday with a dancing party given by the
Elks at Grove Hill, to which the same people were invited, and where
they talked, laughed and danced as merrily as before.
And do you think that the descendant of the “Dook of England” was one to
neglect her social duties, or to be left behind in the competition of
hospitable attentions to the bride and groom because her house was small
and her means were even smaller?
Not at all! So she determined to give a dancing party on the next
Tuesday evening, and invite all the neighborhood with his wife and
children, and “his sisters, aunts and cousins.”
“But, great Jehosophat, Aunt Sibby, if you ask all these people, what
are you going to do with them? They can’t all get into the house, you
know!” exclaimed Roland Bayard, while his aunt and himself were forming
a committee of ways and means.
“That’s _their_ business! _My_ business is to invite them to a party,
and to open the door. _Their_ business is to get in the house—if they
can. Do your duty, sez I! Without fear or favor, sez I! Do the proper
thing, sez I! unregardless of consequences, sez I! _My_ duty is to give
a party to the bride and groom, and I’m a-going to do it! Take your own
share of the world’s play, sez I, as well as the world’s work, sez I! We
can’t live our lives over again, sez I!
“‘Live while you live, the sacred preachers say,
And seize the pleasures of the passing day.’”
“I think you have got that quotation wrong, auntie,” said Roland.
“’Tain’t quotation, you ignomanners! It’s verses out of the ‘English
Reader’ as I used to study when I went to school to young Luke Barriere,
when he was young Luke, and before he left off teaching and divested all
his yearnings into a grocery.”
“Well, you have got the lines wrong, anyway, Aunt Sibby.”
“I tell you I ain’t! What do you know about it? I’ve read more verse
books than ever you knew the names of! But that ain’t nothing to the
point! What I want you to do is to take the mule cart and drive round
the neighborhood, and invite all the company—everybody that we saw at
all the other parties! Every one of ’em—childun and all! When you do a
thing, sez I, do it well, sez I! What’s worth a-doing of at all, sez I,
is worth doing well, sez I!”
“I might as well start at once, as it will take me all day to go the
rounds. I’ll go harness up the mule now.”
“Yes, go; and wherever you happen to be at dinner time there you stop
and get your dinner. I shan’t expect you home till night, because after
you have given out all the invitations, you know, I want you to call at
old Luke Barriere’s grocery store and fetch me——Stop! have you got a
pencil in your pocket?”
“Yes, Aunt Sibby.”
“Well, then, put down—Lord! where shall I get a piece of writing paper?
Hindrances, the first thing! It’s always the way, sez I!”
“It need not be writing paper. This will do,” said Roland, tearing off a
scrap of brown wrapper from a parcel that lay on the table.
“Now, then, write,” said Miss Sibby.
And she gave him a list for sugar, spices, candies, “reesins” and
“ammuns,” “orringes” and “lemmuns.”
“Is this all?” inquired Roland.
“Yes, and tell Luke Barriere he must charge it to me, and tell him I’ll
pay him as soon as I get paid for that last hogshead of tobacco I
shipped to Barker’s.”
“All right, auntie.”
“And, mind, as I told you before, I shan’t expect you home to dinner.
You won’t have time to come. And I shan’t get no dinner, neither, ’cause
all the fireplace will be took up baking cakes. Soon’s ever you’re gone,
me and Mocka is a-going right at making of ’em. Thanks be to goodness as
we have got a-plenty of our own flour, and eggs, and milk, and butter!
And when you have got plenty of flour, and eggs, and milk, and butter,
sez I, you’ll get along, sez I!”
“Very well, Aunt Sibby.”
“And don’t you forget to invite Luke Barriere to the party, mind you!
You mustn’t forget old friends, sez I!”
“Oh! And must I invite Judge Paul McCann?” inquired the sailor, with a
twinkle in his eye, for you see
“They had been friends in youth.”
“No!” emphatically replied the old lady. “No! Them as has the least to
do with old Polly McCann, sez I, comes the best off, sez I! There! Now
go! You ain’t got a minute more to lose!”
The young man went out to the little stable behind the house, and put
the mule to the cart, and drove around to the front door, to come in and
get his overcoat and cap.
“Oh! I forgot to tell you, Roland! Hire the nigger fiddlers while you
are out,” said Miss Sibby.
“I’ll remember, aunt,” replied the young man, drawing on his “surtout,”
and, with cap and gloves in hand, hurrying out to the cart.
In another moment Miss Sibby heard the mule cart rattle away on its
rounds.
She then tied on a large apron, rolled up her sleeves, washed her hands,
and went into the kitchen to make cakes.
And all that day her two servants, Mocka and Gad, had a time of it!
Late in the evening Roland came back with a cargo of groceries, and the
report that all the neighborhood had been invited to her party, and had
accepted the invitation.
“And now, Aunt Sibby, it is getting awfully serious! If they all
come—and they will all come—where are you going to put them? Here are
only three rooms on this floor—the kitchen, the parlor and the parlor
bedroom,” said Roland, in real concern.
“Le’s see,” mused the old lady, looking around. “‘Where there’s a will
there’s a way,’ sez I! And, Lord knows, as I have got the will, I must
find the way! The party is given to the young bride and groom, and for
the sake of the dancers, and they must have the preference. Le’s see,
now: The bed must be took out’n the parlor bedroom and put upstairs. The
folks as don’t dance must sit in the parlor bedroom, with the door open,
so as they may see the dancing and hear the music. Then the dancers must
dance in this parlor, and the nigger fiddlers can play in the kitchen,
with the door open, so the music can be heard all over the house. The
two rooms upstairs can be used for the ladies’ and gentlemen’s dressing
rooms. Oh, there’s ample space! ample! And we shall have a grand time,
Roland!” said the old lady of sixty-one with the heart of sixteen.
And her words came true. Everything was propitious. To be sure, the
moonlight was gone; but the sky was clear and cold, and the stars
sparkling with the brilliancy that is only to be seen in just such
winter weather, and the snow was deep and frozen hard, and the sleighing
was “hevvingly,” as the lady from Wild Cats’ described it.
And when all the company were assembled in Miss Sibby’s little,
hospitable house, and divided into rooms according to her plan, there
was really no uncomfortable crowd at all.
Roland Bayard received all the guests at the door.
Gad showed the gentlemen upstairs into the little north bedroom, and
Mocka conducted the ladies up into the little south bedroom.
Both these small attic chambers had been neatly prepared as dressing
rooms.
As the guests came down, Miss Sibby, in her only black silk dress and
Irish gauze cap, received them at the foot of the stairs, and took them
in turn to their appointed places.
The negro fiddlers were seated in the kitchen near the door, which was
opened into the parlor.
The young people formed a double set on the parlor floor.
The elders sat on comfortable seats in the parlor bedroom, with the door
open, so that they could see the dancers and hear the music, while
gossiping with each other.
“The fun grew fast and furious”
as the witches’ dance at Kirk Alloway.
“Miss Sibby!” cried Wynnette, in one of the breathless pauses of the
whirling reel—“Miss Sibby, for downright roaring fun and jollification
your party does whip the shirt off the back of every party given this
winter.”
“I’m proud you like it; but, oh, my dear Miss Wynnette Force, do not put
it that there way! Wherever did you pick up sich expressions? It must a
been from them niggers,” said Miss Sibby, deprecatingly.
“I reckon it was from the niggers I ‘picked up sich expressions,’ Miss
Sibby, for the words and phrases they let fall are often very
expressive—and I take to them so naturally that I sometimes think I must
have been a nigger myself in some stage of pre-existence,” laughed
Wynnette.
“I don’t know what you are talking about, child; but I do know as you
sartainly ought to break yourself of that there habit of speaking.”
“I do try to, Miss Sibby! I correct myself almost every time,” said
Wynnette, and then craning her neck with dignity, she added—“What I
meant to say about your entertainment, Miss Bayard, was that it is far
the most enjoyable I have attended this season.”
“Thank y’, honey, that’s better! A young lady can’t be too particular,
sez I!” concluded Miss Sibby. But before she finished speaking the whirl
of the reel had carried Wynnette off to the other end of the room.
The dancing continued until ten o’clock.
The fiddlers rested from their labors and took their grog.
The dancers sat down to recover their breath and to partake of
refreshments in the form of every sort of cake, candy, nut and raisin,
to say nothing of apple toddy, lemon punch and eggnogg.
When all had been refreshed the music and dancing recommenced and
continued until midnight, when they wound up the ball with the giddy
Virginia reel.
The hot mulled port wine was handed round and drunk amid much laughing,
talking and jesting.
Then the company put on their wraps, took leave of their happy hostess,
re-entered their sleighs and started merrily for their homes.
The lady from the gold diggings had partaken so heartily of all the good
things provided by Miss Sibby, and had tested so conscientiously the
rival merits of apple toddy, lemon punch, eggnogg and mulled port, that
she went sound asleep in the sleigh and slept all the way to Mondreer
and on being roused up to enter the house she addressed the dignified
squire as Joe Mullins, and remarked that she thought the lead was
running out at Wild Cats’, and they had better vamose the gulch and go
prospecting some’eres else.
However, she slept off the effects of the party and was her own happy
and hearty self at breakfast the next morning.