FROM MARCH TO JUNE.
When Bessie knew that the money was really theirs, when she had it in
her hand and counted the bank-notes, her happiness knew no bounds, and
she felt richer than Blanche Trevellian ever had with fifty times that
sum. To her that hundred pounds represented so much actual good and
comfort for her father, for whom she would use nearly all of it. But
first she must pay Jack Trevellian, and she said to her father:
"May I have ten pounds of this to do with as I like? I promise to make
good use of it."
"Yes, child," he answered, "it is all yours to do with as you please."
So she sent ten pounds to Jack, and wrote:
"I return the money you were so good as to loan mother. Ten pounds
she said it was. It was very kind in you to let her have it, and I
know you meant it well. You could not mean otherwise; but please,
Mr. Trevellian, for my sake don't do it again.
"Yours truly,
"BESSIE McPHERSON."
This done, Bessie paid the butcher and the baker and the grocer, and a
part of what they were owing Anthony and Dorothy, and bought herself a
pair of shoes, and then religiously put by what was left to buy the
medicines and dainties, the beef tea and wine and jellies and fruit,
which were to nurse her father back to health physically and mentally.
But it would take more than fruit or jelly to repair a constitution
never strong and now greatly weakened by disease. Every day Archie grew
weaker, while Bessie watched over and tended him with anguish in her
heart and a terrible shrinking from the future when he would be gone
forever. From Neil she heard often, but his letters did not do her much
good they were so full of regret for the poverty which was keeping her
from him and would keep her indefinitely for aught he knew. From her
mother she seldom heard. That frivolous butterfly was too busy and gay
to give much time or thought to her dying husband and overburdened
child. She was still at Nice and still devoted to her American friends,
the Rossiter-Brownes, as they called themselves, to the great amusement
of their neighbors, who had known them when they were plain Mr. and Mrs.
Isaac R. Brown, of Massachusetts, or, as they were familiarly called,
Miss Brown and Ike. But they were rich people now; a turn in the wheel
had made Ike a millionaire and transformed him into Mr. Rossiter-Browne,
and with his wife and his two children, Augusta and Allen, he was doing
Europe on a grand scale, and Mrs. Rossiter-Browne, an ambitious but
well-meaning woman, had taken a violent fancy to Daisy, and had even
invited her to go home with her in June, offering to defray all her
expenses out and back if she would do so.
"And I half made up my mind to go," Daisy wrote to Bessie in May. "I
have often wished to see America, and shall never have a better chance
than this. Though not the most refined people in the world, the
Rossiter-Brownes are very nice and very kind to me. Lady June, I dare
say, would call them vulgar and second-class, and I am inclined to think
they are what their own countrymen call _shoddy_. They have not always
been rich as they are now. Indeed, Mrs. Rossiter-Browne makes no secret
of the fact that she was once poor and did her own washing, which is
very commendable in her, I am sure. By some means or other--either oil,
or pork, or the war--they have made a fortune and have come abroad to
spend it in a most princely manner. Mrs. Rossiter-Browne is
good-looking, and wears the finest diamonds at Nice, if I except some of
the Russian ladies, but her grammar is dreadful, her style of dress very
conspicuous, and her voice loud and coarse. Augusta, the daughter, is
twenty, and much better educated than her mother. She is rather pretty
and stylish, but indolent and proud. Allen, the son, is twenty-two,
tall, light-haired, good-natured, and dandified, kisses his mother night
and morning, calls her _ma_ and his father _pa_, and his sister _sis_;
drives fast horses, wears an eye-glass, carries a cane, and affects the
English drawl. _Pere_ Rossiter-Browne is a little dapper man, with a
face like a squirrel. At breakfast, which is served in their parlor, he
eats with his knife, and pours his tea into his saucer in spite of
Augusta's disgust and his wife's open protestations.
"'Now, Angeline, you shet up with your folderol,' he will say, with the
most imperturbable good humor. 'At _table dote_ I can behave with the
best of 'em, but in my own room I'm goin' to be comfortable and take
things easy like, and if I want to cool my tea in my _sasser_ I shall.
Miss McPherson don't think no less of me for that, you bet.'
"They have given me a standing invitation to breakfast with them when I
like.
"'It don't cost no more for five than for four,' Mr. Rossiter-Browne
says, and as juicy beefsteaks and mutton chops and real cream have a
better relish than rolls and tea, I accept their hospitality in this as
in many other things.
"They take me everywhere, and I am really quite useful to them in
various ways. None of them speak French at all except Augusta, and she
very badly. But she is improving rapidly, for I hear her read both
French and Italian every day, and help her with her pronunciation. Then
I have introduced them to a great many people, among whom are some
English lords and ladies and German barons and baronesses; and, as all
Americans dote on titles, notwithstanding their boasted democracy, so
Mrs. Rossiter-Browne is not an exception, but almost bursts with dignity
when she speaks to her Yankee friends of what Lady So-and-so said to her
and what she said to Baron Blank. She nearly fell on her face when I
introduced her to Lord Hardy, who has returned from Egypt and was here
for a few days. He took to her wonderfully, or pretended that he did,
and she was weak enough to think he had an eye to Augusta's charms, and
asked if I supposed him serious in his attentions to her daughter, and
what kind of a husband he would make. What an absurd idea! Lord Hardy
and Augusta Browne! I laughed till I cried when I told Ted about it and
asked him what he thought of it.
"'I might do worse,' he said, and then walked away, and that afternoon
took Mrs. Browne and Augusta over to Villefranche.
"Ted is very much changed from the boy whom I smuggled into the
play-room at Monte Carlo as my Cousin Susan, and I can't get him near
there now. It seems that he lost a great deal of money one night, and
actually left the Casino with the intention to kill himself. But he had
not the courage to do it, though he told me he put the muzzle of the
pistol to his forehead, when a thought of his mother stayed his hand and
the suicide was prevented. She was in heaven, he said, and he wanted to
see her again. If he killed himself he knew he should not, and so he
concluded to live, but made a vow never to play again, and he has kept
it and become almost as big a spoony as Jack Trevellian. By the way, I
saw Trevellian the other day, and when I said something about hoping to
pay him his ten pounds soon, he told me _you_ had paid it. Very kind in
you, I am sure, but I don't see where you got the money. You might have
kept it, as he would never have pressed me for it, and I could not pay
it if he did. My rooms cost me so much that I never have a shilling to
spare, and I do not go to Monte Carlo often, for these Rossiter-Brownes
profess to be very religious people--Baptists, I believe--and hold
gambling in great abhorrence, so, as I wish to stand well with them I
have to play on the sly, or not at all. They have a house in New York
and another in the country somewhere, and a cottage at the sea-side; and
they have a maid and a courier, and Mrs. Rossiter-Browne talks as
familiarly with both of them as she does with me, and I think feels more
at ease in their society than in mine. But she is a good woman, and
since commencing this letter I have decided to accept her invitation and
accompany her to America. They sail the last week in June, and I shall
manage to spend a few days at Stoneleigh before I go. How is your
father? Write me soon, and if you can do so please send me a pound or
two. I have so very little; and I had to borrow of Ted, who, I must
say, loaned me rather unwillingly, I thought, while Trevellian, whom I
tried cautiously, never took the hint at all. It must be I am going off
and have not the same power over the men which I once had; and yet Mrs.
Rossiter-Browne told me the other day that I was called the prettiest
woman in Nice, and said she was very proud to have me of her party. What
a fool she is, to be sure!"
This letter filled Bessie with disgust and anxiety, too, while for a
moment there arose within her a feeling of rebellion and bitter
resentment against the woman who got so much from life and left her to
bear its burdens alone.
"But I would far rather be what I am than what she is," she thought, as
she wiped her tears away and stole softly to her father's room to see if
he were still sleeping.
He was usually in a half-unconscious condition now, seldom rousing
except to take his meals, or when Bessie made a great effort to interest
him, and she did not guess how fast he was failing. The second week in
June Daisy came, fresh and bright and eager, and looking almost as young
as Bessie, who knew no rest day or night, and was pale and thin and
worn, with a look on her face and in her eyes very sad to see in a young
girl.
"Oh, mother, I am so glad you have come," she cried, and laying her head
in her mother's lap, she sobbed passionately for a moment, while she
said: "And you will not go away; will not leave me here alone, with no
one to speak to all day long but Dorothy. Oh, mother, the loneliness is
so terrible and life is so dreary to me."
For a moment Daisy's heart was stirred with pity for the tired, worn
girl, and she half resolved to give up America and stay at home where
she was needed. But as the days went on and she saw just what life at
Stoneleigh meant, she felt that she could not endure it, and, fondly
stroking Bessie's hair and smoothing her pale cheek, she told her she
would not be gone long. She should return in September and would
positively remain at home all winter and take the care from Bessie.
"Your father will not die," she said. "People live years with his
disease; he is better than when I first came home; at least he is more
quiet, which is a gain."
And so Bessie gave it up and entered at last into her mother's
anticipations of her journey, and listened with some interest to what
she had to say of the Rossiter-Brownes, the best and most generous
people in the world, for they were not only to bear all her expenses to
and from America, but Mrs. Browne had given her a twenty-pound note for
any little expenditures necessary for her journey.
"I am sure I don't know why they fancy me as they seem to," Daisy said,
"unless they have an idea that I am a much more important personage than
I am, and that to take me home as their guest will raise them in the
estimation of their friends. They know the McPherson blood is good, and
they know about Lady Jane, who Mrs. Browne persists in thinking is my
sister-in-law. Did I tell you that the Rossiter-Brownes' old home is
near Allington, where your father's aunt is living?"
"No," Bessie replied, looking up with more interest in her manner.
"Well, it is," Daisy continued, "and I mean to beard the old woman in
her den and conquer a peace. She has heaps of money, the Brownes say,
and is greatly respected in spite of her oddities, and is quite an
aristocrat in the little place; and, as I suspect, is far above Mrs.
Rossiter-Browne, who wishes to show me to her. She does not guess how
the old woman hates us all."
And so Daisy rattled on with her small, tiresome talk, to which Bessie
sometimes listened and sometimes did not. The Rossiter-Brownes were in
Leamington now, but were coming through Wales on their way to Liverpool,
and Mrs. Browne and Augusta were to stop for a day or two at the
"George" and take Daisy with them when they left.
"I wish we could show them some attention," Daisy said to her daughter.
"Don't you think we might manage a French tea in the garden at four
o'clock? We have some rare old china and some solid silver and Dresden
linen, and we could get Lucy Jones to wait upon us. Do you think we can
do it?"
"Perhaps we can," Bessie replied, reflecting that a French tea in the
garden at four o'clock meant only thin slices of bread and butter, with
biscuits and possibly some little sponge cakes which would not cost
much. She could go without a pair of gloves and make the old ones do.
All extras came out of poor little Bessie, but she was accustomed to it,
and did not mind, and just now she was so glad to have her mother with
her, for Daisy, as if a little remorseful for what she was about to do,
was unusually sweet and affectionate and kind, and devoted herself to
her husband as she had never done since Bessie could remember. She
washed his face and hands and brushed his hair, and wheeled him out into
the garden under the old yew tree, where he once slept on the summer
morning while she kept the sun and the flies from him. And stooping over
him, she asked if he remembered the little girl who used to come to him
there when he was a boy.
"Yes; that was Daisy," he said, "but I have not seen her in many a year.
Where is she now?" and he looked at her in a strange, bewildered way.
Then, as the brain fog lifted a little and cleared away, his chin
quivered and he went on: "Oh, Daisy, Daisy; it comes back to me now, the
years that are gone, and you as you were then. I loved you so much."
"And don't you love me now, Archie?" she asked, kneeling beside him with
her white arms across his knees, while she looked into his face with the
old look she could assume so easily, and which moved even this weak man.
Laying his thin, pale hands upon her head, he burst into tears and said;
"Yes, Daisy, I have always loved you, though you have made no part of my
life these many years."
"And have you missed me? Have you been unhappy without me?" she asked,
and he replied:
"Missed you? Yes; but I have not been unhappy, for I have had Bessie. No
man could be unhappy with Bessie, I think I will go in now and find her.
I am better with her; and the birds are not singing here."
"What birds?" Daisy asked, looking curiously at him, as, with closed
eyes, he leaned wearily back in his chair and replied:
"The birds which sing to me so often; birds of the future, and the past,
too, I think they are, for they sing sometimes of you, but oftener of
Bessie and a journey far away where she is going to be happy when we are
both gone and the winds are blowing across our graves--over there," and
he pointed toward the little yard where his father and mother were lying
side by side, and where he soon would lie.
For an instant Daisy shuddered, and fancied she felt an icy chill, as if
her husband's words were words of prophecy and a blast were blowing upon
her from some dark, cold grave. But she was too young to die; death was
not for her these many years; it was only waiting for this enfeebled
man, whom she wheeled back to the house where Bessie was, and where the
birds he heard so often came and sang to him of green fields and flowery
meadows beyond the sea, where he saw always Bessie with a look of rest
and sweet content upon her face, instead of the tired, watchful, waiting
look habitual to it now.
And so, listening to the birds, he fell asleep, as was his wont, and
Daisy shook off the chill which had oppressed her, and busied herself
with the preparations for her journey.