(Printed in the United States of America)
LITTLE SWEETHEART
OR,
NORMAN DE VERE’S PROTEGEE.
BY
MRS. ALEX. McVEIGH MILLER.
HART SERIES No. 49
COPYRIGHT 1889 BY GEORGE MUNRO.
PUBLISHED BY
THE ARTHUR WESTBROOK COMPANY
CLEVELAND, O., U. S. A.
LITTLE SWEETHEART.
CHAPTER I.
The smoking-car was draughty and ill-smelling; the three commercial
travelers, with their cards and whisky, noisy to the point of rudeness,
and the view from the windows of the slowly moving train was not
interesting to one who had gone over the route to Jacksonville a dozen
times before. The rocking motion of the train hindered reading with any
comfort, and Norman de Vere flung down his newspaper impatiently and
went into the ladies’ car.
“There may be some pretty women in there to look at,” he thought,
idly, having an artistic taste that could interest itself for hours
in traveling in watching the delicate profile of some beautiful face
with a ravishing turn to chin and throat, or round cheek shaded by the
curled fringe of a long, dark eyelash.
For the matter of that, any woman might have looked twice at him, too,
if she had any feminine penchant for manly beauty.
Tall, broad-shouldered, symmetrically formed, with olive skin, large,
flashing, dark eyes, wavy dark hair, clear-cut, handsome features, and
a mouth so beautifully shaped that the absence of the conventional
mustache from the short, curled upper lip seemed almost an affectation
to display its beauty. Norman de Vere at two-and-twenty was a
magnificent specimen of young manhood, combining in his fine person all
the best elements of strength and beauty. You saw, too, from the cut
and quality of his well-chosen traveling garments, and from his very
air of easy indifference, that he was Fortune’s favorite--beloved of
Plutus as well as Apollo.
He dropped languidly down into a seat some little distance back of the
woman and child who were the sole occupants of the ladies’ car.
“Wonder where they got on? They were not in here two hours ago when
I went forward to the smoking-car,” he thought, with idle curiosity,
having nothing better to attract his attention.
The slight, black-robed figure sitting in front of him had its head
and face hidden in a little black poke bonnet and black lace veil. The
face, turned steadfastly from him, as if gazing through the window, was
propped against a small hand in a trim, black kid glove. Before her,
on a seat which the accommodating conductor had turned over to face
her, slumbered a lovely child of about four years. By contrast with
the somber black garments of the lady and the rich crimson velvet of
the cushions on which it was lying, the little creature, in its white
dress, its tangle of rich golden curls, its round cheeks warmly flushed
with happy slumber, its half-parted, dewy red lips giving glimpses of
pearly baby-teeth, looked like a beautiful human flower.
But Norman de Vere’s handsome face had assumed a rather rueful
expression when he looked over and saw the pretty sleeper.
“Presently it will wake up and squall. Then I shall beat a retreat into
the smoking-car. The drummers could be no worse,” thought he, testily.
But pending the meditated retreat he fell to speculating over these
chance companions of his railway ride.
“Some poor little widow who has buried her husband among strangers and
is going home to her people with her little child,” he decided from her
garb of somber black.
And as men always take a peculiar interest in young and pretty widows,
our hero began to wish that she would turn her head and let him see her
face. That she was young he felt quite sure from her erect shoulders
and slight and delicate shape.
But the young widow remained motionless, with her cheek in her hand and
her head turned toward the window, seemingly intent on the flitting
landscape, with its dreary dead-level clothed with forests of pine,
cedar, and cypress, while here and there the glittering leaves and
magnificent white flowers of the magnolia-tree divided admiration with
the long, swaying wreaths of funereal-looking moss somberly draping
the great live-oaks. Perhaps the tropical growth lying under the soft,
velvety drizzle of a steady October rain pleased her fancy or held her
interest, or perhaps hot, silent tears were falling under the little
black veil, for she never stirred from her statue-like quiet even when
the door opened noisily presently, admitting the jolly commercial
travelers whose loud talk and laughter immediately startled the
smiling baby sleeper from her dreams.
There was a low, startled whimper of fear, and the little darling sat
erect, first digging dimpled, chubby fists into her eyes, then staring
at the heartless disturbers of her dreams with the brightest, bluest,
most reproachful orbs they had ever seen.
“She is going to squall! The widow will have to move at last!” Norman
de Vere muttered, with triumphant curiosity.
He was right, and wrong. The baby did not squall, but the lady moved.
She leaned forward, patted the child with her little gloved hand,
murmured some low, soothing words, and immediately returned to her
musing position at the window without any one ever having seen her face.
The travelers were staring with all their might. Every heart went out
to the little angel in the white dress.
One of them--rough fellow and hard drinker as his red face showed him
to be--had pretty little children of his own at home. He uttered a
caressing sound and held out eager arms.
The baby shook her golden head archly and made him a little grimace of
disdain that set the other two laughing. She climbed down from her seat
and up again upon the lady’s, where she stood erect, the sweetest thing
alive, already full of innate, unconscious coquetry. The big, cloudless
blue eyes wandered guilelessly over their faces as she clung with her
tiny dimpled fists to the back of the seat, scanning each face in turn
with pretty, fearless curiosity.
By this time every man in the car was in love with the beautiful,
bright little thing, and the drummers began to rummage their pockets
for something pretty wherewith to tempt her to come to their arms.
Their boisterous mirth had already softened to something more
respectful, and when one actually found a paper of peppermint lozenges
about him, his eyes gleamed with triumph.
“Come, sit on my knee and you shall have candy,” he called out,
persuasively.
The little beauty did not notice him. She was watching the face of
Norman de Vere and making eyes at him with the sweetest baby coquetry,
so “innocent arch, so cunning simple,” that the gazers were transported
with delight. The young man, on his part, was regarding her with a
gentle gravity of expression that puzzled her guileless mind. The three
drummers she recognized instinctively as being already her slaves. What
of this silent man who made no effort to attract her, who returned
her inviting, wistful gaze without a smile, unless that sparkle in his
large dark eyes could be called one?
Was it his seeming indifference that attracted her, or his wonderful,
god-like beauty? There awoke in the young mind something of that pain
which we of older growth term the yearning for the unattainable.
She sprung down into the aisle unheeded by her silent female companion,
and the drummers each reached out for her. She stopped a minute to
look at the unique watch-charm that one dangled before her eyes,
laughed gleefully as she eluded the outstretched arm of the second, and
promptly accepted the lozenges from the third, turning from him with a
polite “Ta-ta,” and going straight to Norman de Vere.
“Wretched little flirt!” ejaculated the giver of the candy, with mock
indignation, as he saw her climbing upon Norman de Vere’s lap with the
most engaging confidence.
Then:
“Don’t oo want some of my tandy?” she inquired, cooingly, as she
offered him the paper.
Norman de Vere’s thoughtful gravity relaxed into a laugh, and he
promptly put an arm about the plump form that had enthroned itself on
his knee.
“I don’t want any candy, please,” he said, shutting his lips tight
against the small thumb and finger that were conveying a pink lozenge
to his lips; “but I’ll take a kiss.”
No sooner said than the rosebud mouth was pressed eagerly, softly upon
his, sending an odd thrill through his whole frame, then she half
whispered:
“I ’ove oo.”
“A case of love at first sight,” haw-hawed one of the irrepressibles
across the aisle, and the baby shook her tiny pink-and-white fist at
him and cried out, disdainfully:
“Go way! I don’t ’ove oo! Oo ain’t pritty!”
Everybody laughed except that slight, silent form like a statue of
black marble in the front seat, and Norman de Vere asked with a smile:
“Won’t you tell me your name, little one?”
She beamed upon him with her sunny blue eyes, and answered:
“Sweet’art.”
There was more laughter from across the aisle. The young man reddened
in spite of himself, but persisted:
“Yes, I know you are _my_ sweetheart, but what is your other name? What
does your mamma call you?”
“Nuffin, only des Sweet’art,” she replied, amiably, reaching up and
patting his cheek with a warm, sticky little palm, with a lozenge glued
to it by its own sweetness.
“That is her name for you when you are very good, I suppose, but when
you are bad--when you cry and scold your doll, what name does she call
you then?” he queried, and she replied, intelligently:
“‘Naughty yittle Sweet’art.’”
“I give it up,” he said, carelessly; and then she asked, in her
innocent, confiding manner:
“Don’t oo want me to sing mamma’s yittle song all ’bout me myse’f?”
“Yes, please.”
She threw back her curly golden head, swelled her soft, white throat,
opened her rosebud mouth, and sung, with bird-like sweetness, these
words:
“Yittle sweet’art, tum an’ tiss me,
Des once mo’ before I go;
Tell me truly, will you miss me
As I wander to and fro?
Yet me feel ’e tender p’essing
Of oor wosy lips to mine,
Wif oor dimple’ hands cawessing,
An’ oor snowy arms intwine.
“Yittle sweet’art, tum an’ tiss me,
We may ne’er meet adain;
We may ne’er woam togedder
Down ’e dear ole shady lane.
Uvver years may bwing us sowow
Yat our ’arts but yittle know;
But if tare we s’ould not bo’wow,
Tum an’ tiss me ’fore I go.
“Ah! yittle sweet’art, tum an’ tiss me,
Tum an’ whisper sweet an’ low;
Tell me yat oor ’art will miss me
As I wander to an’ fro.”
No words could describe fitly the wonderful, wooing sweetness, the
bird-like melody of the little one’s voice as it rose soft and clear
above the clatter of the moving train--every word, though uttered in
broken baby dialect, distinctly audible to the listeners.
The innocent little child, absorbed in the delight of her own
performance, appeared as unconscious of them all as some wild-wood bird
caroling alone upon its leafy nest, and produced as pure an effect upon
her hearers.
When she stopped no one moved or spoke for a minute, then the red-faced
drummer chuckled:
“Sweetheart, you’re an out-and-out prima-donna!”
The others were touched and silent.