said; "but as it is, I am willing, though I had hoped that in your
travels abroad you might have found some high-born English girl with a
title, but it is something to marry a niece of Lady Jane, and I dare say
Miss McPherson will make the girl her heir; so I will welcome her as my
daughter, and perhaps she will brighten up the house, which is at times
insufferably dull, with your father growing more and more silent and
gloomy every day. I should not wonder if he were to become crazy, like
your grandfather."
Grey did not reply to this, or tell her that he could guess in part what
it was which had made his father grow old so fast, and blanched his hair
to a snowy white, unusual to one of his years. It was the secret hidden
under the bed-room floor which had affected his whole life, and affected
it all the more because he had brooded over it in silence, and never
spoken to any one upon the subject. Once Hannah attempted to say
something to him, but he had repulsed her so fiercely that she never
tried again, and he did not guess what efforts Grey had made to find
the rightful heirs of Joel Rogers. Like his wife, he did not object to
Grey's engagement. Bessie was a desirable _parti_, as she would, in all
probability, inherit her aunt's large fortune, and he signified his
approval; and in all Boston there was not a happier man than Grey, on
the morning when, with his Aunt Hannah, he at last started for
Allington, telling her when he bade her good-by at the station that he
should bring Bessie to her early the following day.
It was a most lovely October morning when Grey drove Bessie through the
rocky lane in the pasture land up to the old house, of which he had told
her on Christmas Eve, at Stoneleigh, almost two years ago, and which
seemed neither new nor strange to Bessie, so strong an impression had
his description made upon her.
"There she is; that is Aunt Hannah," Grey said, as a tall, slender
woman, in a plain black dress, came to the open door and stood waiting
for them.
"And I should have known her, too. What a sad face it is, just as if
there was a history hidden under it." Bessie said, and Grey replied, as
be lifted her from the phaeton:
"There is a history hidden there, and sometime I will tell it to you."
Then leading her to his aunt he said:
"Auntie, I have brought you Bessie."
"Yes," Hannah answered, with a gasp, as her cold hands were clasped by
the soft, warm ones of the young girl, who looked up at her curiously,
wondering at her manner.
At sight of Bessie, Hannah had been startled by the likeness to the
picture hidden away so many years, every feature of which was indelibly
stamped upon her memory. Had that picture taken life and form, and was
it confronting her now? It seemed so, and for an instant she grew cold
and faint, and stood staring at the girl.
"Auntie, won't you kiss Bessie?" Grey said, and then the spell was
broken, and taking the girl in her arms, Hannah kissed and cried over
her as a fond mother cries over the child which has been lost and is
restored to her again.
Hannah could not define to herself the feeling which took possession of
her from the moment she saw Bessie standing there in the low,
old-fashioned room, with the October sunshine falling on her golden hair
and lighting up her beautiful face, still pale and worn from recent
sickness. It was as if an angel had come suddenly to her, bringing the
peace and rest she had never known since that awful night more than
forty years ago, and she felt all her olden horror rolling away, as she
watched Bessie going over the house, with Grey--; now up the crooked
stairs to the room under the roof where Grey used to sleep when a boy,
and where there were still the remains of a horse, and a boat which he
had sailed in the big iron kettle by the well--; now down the cellar
stairs to see the foundation of the big chimney which occupied the
center of the house, and in which the swallows built their nests; now
out to the well where the bucket hung, and then to the little bench
where Grey used to sit and kick the side of the house, while the
terror-stricken old man looked on trembling, lest the boards should give
way and show what was hidden there! It was there yet, dust and ashes
now, but still there, and Bessie sat down alone beside it, while Grey
shivered as his grandfather had done, and drew her away as quickly as
possible.
"Where does this lead to?" she asked, laying her hand upon the door
which was always closed.
"That was grandfather's room. No one goes in there," Grey said,
hurriedly, as he put his arm around her, and told her she had seen
enough, and must rest until after dinner.
He took her to the pleasant south room, where the early dinner was
served, with the tiny silver teaspoons, marked with the initials of
Hannah's mother, and the bits of old china, which modern fashion has
made so choice and rare now. And Bessie enjoyed it with the keen relish
of a returning appetite. She had improved rapidly within the last week,
and declared herself is well and strong as ever, when, after dinner was
over and the dishes cleared away she nestled down among the cushions of
the chintz-covered lounge.
"This is such a dear old place," she said, "that I should like to stay
here always. People say there is a skeleton in every house, but I am
sure there can be none here, everything seems so peaceful and quiet."
"Why did she make that remark, of all others?" Grey thought, as, with a
face whiter even than that of his Aunt Hannah, he sat down beside her,
and drawing her closely to him, laid her golden head upon his shoulder.
"Bessie," he said, and his voice shook a little, "I am going to tell you
something which perhaps I ought to have told you before I asked you to
be my wife, and which I should have told you had I thought the telling
would make any difference in your love for me."
"Nothing could make any difference in that," Bessie said, lifting up her
sweet face to be kissed, and then dropping her head again upon Grey's
arm, just as Hannah came in and took a seat on the other side of her.
Hannah had been up stairs to her room, where she now kept the box in
which lay the picture which was so like Bessie McPherson.
"More like her than I supposed," she whispered, as she gazed upon the
face which seemed each moment to grow more and more like the young girl
to whom Grey was to tell the story.
He was only waiting for her to come in before he commenced, she knew,
and putting the picture back in its place, she went down to the south
room, and taking her seat beside Bessie, as Grey motioned her to do,
waited for him to begin.
"Bessie," he said, and his aim tightened its clasp around her waist,
"there _is_ a skeleton here, and it has darkened all my Aunt Hannah's
life, and thrown its shadow over me as well. Can you bear to have a
little of it fall upon you, too?"
"Yes," she answered, fearlessly, "I have always lived with skeletons
until I knew you loved me; they cannot frighten me."
"But, darling, would you love me as well, think you you knew that, in a
way, there was a disgrace clinging my name?" he asked, and Bessie
replied:
"A disgrace! What do you mean? I cannot imagine you to be in disgrace;
but if you are, I am quite ready to share it with you."
"Even if it be murder?"
Grey spoke the last word in a whisper, as if afraid the walls had ears,
but Bessie heard him distinctly, and with a great start, she drew
herself away from him, and sat rigid as a stone, while she repeated:
"Murder! Oh, Grey, you surely do not mean that!"
"No, not exactly; it was manslaughter, done in self-defense," Grey
answered her, and, with a sigh of relief, Bessie asked:
"Who was the killed, and who the killer?"
"My grandfather did the deed, in the heat of passion, and the victim has
lain under the floor of that room into which I would not let you enter,
for more than forty years. Now you know the skeleton there is in this
old house."
"Ye-es," Bessie said, while a look of terror and pain crept into her
eyes; but she did not move nearer either to Grey or his aunt.
Indeed, it seemed to both that she drew herself into as small a compass
as possible, so that she might not touch them, and her face was very
white and still as Grey commenced the story, which he made as short as
possible, though he dwelt at length upon the life-long remorse of his
grandfather, and the heavy burden which his Aunt Hannah had carried for
years.
At this part of the story, Bessie's face relaxed, and one of the hands,
which had been clasped so tightly together at first, went over to
Hannah's hand, which it took and held until Grey told of the lonely days
and dreary nights passed by the young girl in the old horror-haunted
house, with no one but Rover for her companion. Then the hand went up
with a soft, caressing motion to the face which Grey had once said
looked as if Christ had laid his hands hard upon it, and left their
impress there. It was pallid now, as the face of a corpse, and there
were hard lines about the mouth, which quivered with pain. But, at the
touch of Bessie's soft fingers, the hardness relaxed, and, covering her
eyes, Hannah burst into a paroxysm of weeping.
"Dear auntie," Bessie said, "my auntie, because you are Grey's, how you
must have suffered, and how I wish I could have come to you. There would
have been no terror here for me, because, you see, it was not
premeditated; it was an accident, not a crime, and God, I am sure,
forgave it long ago. No, Grey;" and now she turned to him, and, winding
her arms around his neck, went on: "It is not a disgrace you ask me to
share it is a misfortune, a trouble; and do you think I would shrink
from it a moment--I, who have borne so much that _was_ disgrace?"
He knew she was thinking of her mother, but he said nothing except to
fold her in his arms and kiss her flushed, eager face, while she went
on:
"But who was this man? Where did he live, and had he no friends to make
inquiries for him?"
Grey remembered now that he had simply said, the _peddler_, without
giving the name, and he hastened to say:
"He was Joel Rogers, a Welshman, from Carnarvon, and it was for his
sister Elizabeth, or her heirs, that I was searching, when I first came
to Stoneleigh."
"Oh, Grey!" and Bessie sprang up almost as quickly as she had done when
he spoke to her of murder; "oh, Grey! what if it should be my
great-uncle, whose grave is under the floor? You once told me you were
hunting for Elizabeth Rogers, and I said I would ask Anthony, who knew
everybody for fifty miles around and for a hundred years back. But I
forgot it until after father died, when it came to me one day, and I
went to Anthony and asked if he knew any one in Carnarvon or vicinity by
the name of Elizabeth Rogers.
"'No,' he said, 'I never knew Elizabeth Rogers; but I knew your
grandmother, Elizabeth Baldwin, before she was married, and she had a
half-brother, Joel Rogers, twenty years older than herself. A queer,
roaming kind of chap, who went off to America, or Australia, or some
such place, and never came back again. He was a good bit older than I
am,' Anthony said, 'and would be over eighty if living now.'
"Then I remembered that when I was a child I once heard my grandmother
Allen speak of a brother, who, she said, went to the States when she was
a girl, and from whom she had not heard in many years. He must have been
very fond of her, for she had several choice things he had given her,
and among them a picture of herself, which, she said, was painted in
London the only time she was ever there, and which was very beautiful."
"A picture, did you say? Would you know one like it if you were to see
it?" Hannah asked, in a constrained voice and Bessie replied:
"Oh, yes; that portrait is still at Stoneleigh, for when grandma died,
six or seven years ago, mother gave it to me, and I hung it in my room.
It was like mother, only prettier, I think."
While Bessie was speaking Hannah had risen, and going from the room soon
returned, bearing in her hand the box, which for so many years she had
secreted, and which Grey had not seen since he was a boy, and Hannah
told him the sad story which had blighted her life. He saw it now in his
aunt's hands, and shuddered as if it were a long closed grave she was
opening.
"Here is the watch," she said, with a strange calmness, as she laid in
Bessie's lap the silver time-piece, whose white face seemed to Grey to
assume a human shape, and look knowingly up at him. "You see it stopped
at half-past eight. It has never been wound up since," Hannah continued,
pointing to the hour and minute hands.
Without the slightest hesitancy Bessie took the watch, and examining it
carefully, said, as she fitted the key attached to the old-fashioned fob
to the key-hole:
"Do you think it would go if I were to wind it up?" Then, giving the key
a turn or two, she continued: "It does. It ticks. Look, Grey," and she
held it to his ear.
But he started away from it, as if it had been the heart beat of the
dead man himself, and rising quickly began to pace up and down the room,
while Bessie next took the picture to which she bore so striking a
likeness.
"It is grandmother! _It is!_" she exclaimed. "He must have had two
taken, one for himself and one for her. Is she not lovely?"
"She is like you," Hannah replied, "and it was this resemblance which
started me so when I first saw you this morning. Oh, Bessie, my child,
your coming to me has cleared away all the clouds, and I can make
restitution at last, for _you_ are the rightful heir of the money I have
saved so carefully--heir of that and everything."
"I do not think I understand you," Bessie said, and then Hannah handed
her the will, executed in Wales, about a year before Joel Rogers' death,
and in which he gave all he had to his sister Elizabeth and her heirs
forever.
"Still I do not quite see it. Explain it to me, Grey," Bessie said,
with a perplexed look on her face.
Thus importuned, Grey sat down beside her, and, as well as he could,
explained everything, and told her of the gold, to which his aunt had
added interest every year, so that the heirs, when found, should have
their own, and of the shares in the slate quarries in Wales, dividends
on which must have amounted to quite a fortune by this time, and all of
which was hers, when she was proven to be the lawful heir of Elizabeth
Baldwin, sister of Joel Rogers.
"Yes, I understand now," she said, with a quivering lip, and the great
tears rolling down her cheeks. "There is money for me somewhere, but,
oh, I wish it had come in father's life-time. We were so poor then;
but," she added, as a bright smile broke over her face, "I am glad for
you, Grey, that I shall not be a penniless bride."
Did she not then appreciate the position, or see the gulf which her
relationship to the dead man had built between them? If not, he must
tell her, and rising again to his feet, and standing over her, Grey
began with a choking voice:
"Bessie, you do not seem even to suspect that, in the eyes of the world,
the fact that you are Joel Rogers' grand-niece ought to separate you
from me. Don't you know that the blood of your kinsman is on my
grandfather's hands, and does that make no difference with you?"
"Difference!" she repeated. "No, why should it? Oh, Grey, you are not
going to give me up because of that? I was not to blame;" and in
Bessie's voice there was such a pleading pathos, that when she stretched
her hands toward him, Grey took her in his arms, feeling that all his
doubts and fears were removed, and that Bessie might be his in spite of
everything.
For a long time they talked together of the course to be pursued,
deciding finally that the matter should be kept to themselves until Grey
and Bessie were married, and with Hannah had been to Wales and proved
the validity of Bessie's claim to the effects of Joel Rogers.
There was no longer any talk of waiting until Christmas Eve, for the
marriage was to take place as soon as possible, and when Grey took
Bessie home to Miss McPherson he startled that good woman with the
announcement that he was to be married the last week in November and
sail at once for Europe, taking his Aunt Hannah with him.
CHAPTER XV.
WEDDING BELLS.
They rang first for Lord Hardy and Augusta Browne, who had intended to
be married in October, but whose wedding was deferred until the second
week in November, because, as Mrs. Rossiter-Browne expressed it,
"Gusty's bridal trouses could not arrive in time from Paris." Everything
pertaining to the young lady's wardrobe was ordered either from London
or Paris, and could Mrs. Browne have done it she would have bought the
Arch of Triumph, and, transporting it to Allington, would have set it up
in front of her house and illuminated it for the occasion. She should
never have another daughter marry an Irish lord, she said, and she meant
"to make a splurge and astonish the natives," and she did.
She had a temporary ball-room built at one side of the house, and
lighted it with a thousand wax candles. She had a brass band from
Springfield and a string band from Worcester. She had a caterer from
Boston, whom with her usual happy form of expression she called a
"canterer." She had colored waiters in white gloves in such profusion
that they stumbled over and against each other. She had an awning
stretched from the front door to the gate, with yards and yards of
carpeting under it.
"She had not been abroad for nothing, and she guessed she knew what was
what," she said to Lord Hardy when he hinted that a plainer wedding
would suit him quite as well, and that the money she was expending could
be put to better purpose.
"I guess we can stand it, and still have a nice little sum for Gusty,"
she added, and patting her future son-in-law upon the back she bade him
"keep cool and let her run the machine."
After that, Lord Hardy kept quiet, though he was never so near a fever
as during the week which preceded his nuptials. For Augusta herself he
did not care at all, as men are supposed to care for the girl they are
about to marry. He did not dislike her, and he thought her rather pretty
and lady-like, with a far better education than his own; but, strangely
enough in these last days of his bachelorhood, he often found himself
living over again those far-off times in Monte Carlo, when, as Cousin
Sue from Bangor, he had laughed and talked and flirted with poor little
Daisy, as he called her to himself, now that she was dead, and the grave
had closed over all her faults and misdemeanors. She had been the cause
of his ruin, and he had, at times, hated her for it, but she had been
jolly company for all that, and he wondered what she would say if she
could know that Mrs. Rossiter-Browne was to be his mother-in-law and
Augusta Lady Hardy.
"She would turn over in her coffin, I do believe," he thought, and then
he wondered how much Augusta's wedding portion would be, and how far it
would go toward restoring his Irish home to something like its former
condition. But on this point, _pere_ Browne maintained a rigid silence,
and he was obliged to be content with the hints which _mere_ Browne
dropped from time to time. She had made minute inquiries with regard to
Hardy Manor, her daughter's future home, and at her request he had made
a drawing of it, so that she knew just how many rooms there were, and
how they were furnished.
"I shall h'ist them feather beds out double quick," she said, "and them
high four-posters, with tops like a buggy. I'd as soon sleep in a
hearse, and I shall put in some brass bedsteads and hair mattresses, and
mabby I shall furnish Gusty's room with willer work. I'll show 'em what
Uncle Sam can do."
Was she then going with him to Hardy Manor, and must he present her to
his aristocratic friends as the mother of his bride? The very
possibility of such a calamity made the perspiration ooze from the tips
of Lord Hardy's fingers to the roots of his hair, and once he
contemplated running away and taking the first ship which sailed for
Liverpool. But when he remembered his debts he concluded to swallow
everything, even the mother-in-law, if necessary. He was to sail the
last week in November, and as, when he engaged his state-room, nothing
had been said about a second one for Mrs. Browne, he comforted himself
with the hope that she did not meditate going with him. She would,
perhaps, come in the spring, by which time he might be glad for the
brass bedsteads and hair mattresses which abounded at the Ridge House,
and which were really more in accordance with his luxurious tastes than
the feather beds and high four-posters which had done duty at Hardy
Manor for more years than he could remember.
Over four hundred invitations were given to the wedding, as Mrs. Browne
said she "didn't mean to make nobody mad." But she did offend more
people than if her party had been more select, for when Mrs. Peter
Stokes, the truckman's wife, heard that her next door neighbor, Mrs. Asa
Noaks, the hackman's wife, had received an invitation and she had not,
her indignation knew no bounds, and she wondered who _Miss Ike Browne_
thought she was, and if she had forgotten that she once went out to work
like any other hired girl; and when Susan Slocum, whose mother took in
washing, heard that her friend Lucy Smith, who worked in the mill, was
invited and she was not, she persuaded her mother to roll up the four
dozen pieces which had been sent from the Ridge to be washed, and return
them with the message that if she wa'n't good enough to go to the
wedding she wa'n't good enough to wash the weddin' finery. This so
disturbed poor Mrs. Browne, who really wished to please every body, that
but for the interference of Allen and Augusta she would have gone
immediately to the offended washerwoman with an apology, and an earliest
request to be present at the wedding.
"Don't for pity's sake, ask any more of the scum," Allen said, adding,
that if she had not invited any of them no one would have been slighted.
"Well, I don't know," Mrs. Browne rejoined, with a sigh; "I can't quite
forget when I was _scum_ myself, and knew how it felt."
On the whole, however, everything went smoothly, and the grand affair
came off one November night when the air was as soft and balmy as in
early summer, and the full moon was sailing through a cloudless sky as
carriage after carriage made its way to the brilliantly lighted house
through the dense crowd of curious people which filled the road in
front, and even stretched to the left along the garden fence. All the
factory hands were there, and all the boys in town, with most of the
young girls, and many of the women whose rank in life was in what Allen
called the scum, forgetting that but for his father's money he might
have been there too.
There were four bridemaids in all, and their dresses and trains were
something wonderful to behold, as they swept down the stairs and through
the long drawing-room to the bay-window where, amid a wilderness of
roses, and azalias, and lilies, they were to stand. This was the part
the most distasteful to Lord Hardy, who would greatly have preferred
being married in church according to the English form--and, in fact,
Augusta would have liked that, too; but Mrs. Browne was a stanch
Baptist, and opposed any deviation from the good old rule, and so Lord
Hardy was compelled to submit, though his face wore the look of anything
but a happy man as he went through the ordeal which made him Augusta's
husband, and then received the congratulations of the guests, most of
whom addressed the bride as Lady Hardy.
When Augusta heard of Bessie's engagement with Grey she went at once to
congratulate her, and insisted upon her being one of her bridemaids. But
Bessie declined; she was too much a stranger to take so conspicuous a
place, she said, and would rather be a quiet looker-on.
But she was there with Grey, to whose arm she clung as she looked
wonderingly on at the gorgeous display, unlike anything which was ever
seen in Allington before, or ever would be again.
Altogether it was a most brilliant and successful affair, and the
reporters, who had been hired to be present, did it ample justice in the
next day's papers. "Festivities in High Life" headed the column, in
which the beauty and accomplishments of the bride were dwelt upon at
large, while free scope was given to the imagination and the pen when it
came to the elegant manners of the hostess, the air of refinement and
cultivation perceptible among the guests, and the signs of wealth and
perfect taste everywhere visible. The great popularity of the family was
also dwelt upon as proven by the immense crowd thronging the streets,
and Lord Hardy was congratulated upon his rare good luck, and hints were
thrown out that England and Ireland ought to feel complimented that so
many of America's fair daughters were willing to wear a foreign title
and grace a foreign home.
"What fools those reporters are, to be sure, and the Brownes are bigger
fools to allow such stuff to be printed," was Miss McPherson's comment
upon the articles which appeared in the _Spy_ and the _Gazette_, and the
Springfield _Republican_, and her opinion was pretty generally shared by
the citizens of Allington, who immediately raked up the ashes of the
Brownes' past history, and recalled with great zest the times when Mrs.
Browne had worked in the kitchen at Grey's Park, while poor Mr. Browne
was charged with every possible second-class occupation, from mending
brass kettles down to peddling clothes-pins.
Fortunately, however, Mrs. Browne was in happy ignorance of all this.
She only knew that she had "killed a bear," as she expressed it, and
that she had been described as an elegant and accomplished lady, who led
the _ton_ in Allington.
"I guess I've whipped 'em all, though I'll wait and see what Miss
McPherson does," she said; but Miss McPherson did nothing.
It was the wish of both Bessie and Grey that the wedding should be as
quiet as possible. Any one was free to go to the church where the
ceremony took place one morning the last week in November, and which was
filled with plain, respectable people. But only Hannah and Lucy Grey,
Mr. and Mrs. Burton Jerrold, and the clergyman, Mr. Sanford, went to the
house, where the wedding-breakfast was served, and where Miss Betsey
broke down more than once, as she thought how soon she had lost the girl
whom she had learned to love so much. Grey and Bessie were going to New
York that afternoon, for they were to sail the next day, and Hannah was
going with them. No good reason had been assigned for this sudden trip
across the ocean at this season of the year, and only Mr. Sanford knew
why it was taken. Hannah had told him everything, and while he
expressed his pleasure that the long search and waiting had at last been
rewarded in so satisfactory a manner, he added, sadly:
"I hope you will not stay there long. I shall be very lonely without
you, Hanny."
It was the first time he had given her the pet name of old, since Martha
had been laid to rest in the church-yard, and as a penance for doing so,
he went the same day to Martha's grave and stood there at least fifteen
minutes, with the November rain falling upon him until his clothes were
nearly wet through.
"Poor Martha," he sighed, as he turned away, "she would be fidgeted to
death if she knew how wet I am. I guess I had better drink some boneset
when I get home. I believe that is what she used to give me."
He went with the party to New York, and so did Miss Grey and Miss
McPherson, and the loungers at the Allington station made some joking
remarks about one widower going off with three old maids, but each of
the old maids knew her business, and cared little what the rabble said.
The Brownes, too, were in New York with Lord and Lady Hardy, who sailed
in the same ship with Grey and Bessie. Just how much Augusta's wedding
portion was, was never known, but that it was satisfactory was proven by
the felicitous expression of Lord Hardy's face, which beamed with
delight as he said good-by to his mother-in-law, whom he kissed in the
exuberance of his joy. But his countenance fell a little when he heard
her tell Augusta not to be so down in the mouth, for she should be over
there herself early in the spring, in time to see to house-cleaning!
The day was bright and warm, as the days in Indian summer often are, and
the McPherson party stood upon the wharf waving their good-bys as long
as Grey and Bessie were discernible among the passengers; then they
returned to their Hotel, and Miss Betsey sent the following cablegram to
Neil in London:
"Bessie was married yesterday to Grey Jerrold, and sails to-day for
Liverpool."
CHAPTER XVI.
BESSIE'S FORTUNE.
At last there came a day when Hannah Jerrold sat in the yew-shaded
garden at Stoneleigh, on the same bench where Archie once lay sleeping,
with Daisy at his side keeping the flies from him. Archie and Daisy were
dead, and Hannah Jerrold, whose life had reached out and laid hold upon
theirs, was there in the old home to make restitution, and coming to her
down the walk were Grey and Bessie, whose face was wonderfully beautiful
as she lifted it to her husband, and said something which made him stoop
down and kiss the sweet mouth from which the old, tired look had nearly
vanished.
She was so happy now, this little Welsh girl, who had borne so much, and
suffered so much, and it seemed to Hannah as she drew near as if a halo
of joy shone in her deep blue eyes and irradiated every feature of her
lovely countenance.
"Oh, it is so nice to be home again, and the old place is so dear to
me," she said, as she sat down by Hannah upon the bench, "I half wish we
were going to stay here, though I like America very much, and shall in
time, become as genuine a Yankee as Grey himself. You know he is in a
way a cosmopolitan."
They had taken Anthony and Dorothy completely by surprise, for although
Bessie had written to them of her engagement, she had said nothing of
coming home, as she did not then expect to do so. But circumstances had
changed, and the old couple were just sitting down to their frugal
breakfast of bread and tea when a carriage from the station drove into
the park, and in a moment Bessie was in Dorothy's arms, laughing and
crying and talking in the same breath, presenting Hannah as her husband
and her husband as her Aunt Hannah, in her joy and excitement at being
home once more.
It did not take long to explain why they had come, to the old people,
who entered heart and soul into the matter Anthony offering to go at
once to Carnavon and hunt up some one who could swear to the
hand-writing of Joel Rogers and help to prove the will, while Dorothy
said she had no doubt that among some papers, bills and receipts which
had belonged to Bessie's grandmother and which were still lying in an
old writing-desk where Daisy had put them when her mother died, there
were letters from Joel to his sister, which proved to be a fact.
"I remember him well, though he was a good bit older than I am," Anthony
said. "A little sandy-haired man, very kind-hearted and honest, though
rather touchy and quarrelsome if he had too much beer in him, I
shouldn't wonder but he died in some spree brought on by drink."
"Yes, he died in a spree brought on by drink," Hannah answered, sadly,
and that was the only time she was ever called upon to speak of the
manner of Joel Rogers' death.
Indeed, the whole matter was managed far more easily than she had
feared. No troublesome questions whatever were asked, for there was no
one enough interested in Joel Rogers to ask them, and when the will was
proven and Bessie's claim as his rightful heir established, Grey found
no difficulty whatever in obtaining from the company where the deceased
had owned shares so many years ago, a full and correct account of all
moneys invested and the dividends which had been accruing since, the
whole of which was at once made over to Bessie, who found herself an
heiress to so large an amount that it fairly took her breath away at
first.
"Why, I am rich!" she exclaimed, and then, as the tears gathered in her
eyes, she continued: "Oh, if this had come to me while poor father was
alive, it would have made him so comfortable, and we were so poor."
Then she began to wonder what she should do with it all, and how dispose
of it to the best advantage.
"If you were only poor and wanted it, I should be so glad," she said to
Grey; "but you do not, and so I must do the best I can."
It never occurred to her to use any part of it for herself. She meant to
give it away, and make a great many people happy. And within a day or
two she had decided what to do with a part of it at least. She was
sitting alone with Grey around the bright fire in the drawing-room one
evening after their late dinner, and Grey was saying to her, as she sat
on a low stool at his side, leaning her head on his knee and holding his
hand in hers:
"It will soon be two years since I first saw you, with your face against
the window, looking out into the darkness at the big American. I dare
say you wished me in Guinea."
"That I did," Bessie answered laughingly, as she deepened her clasp of
his hand, "for I did not at all know what to do with you."
"But I remember well that you gave up your own cozy bedroom, like the
dear, unselfish little girl you are," Grey said, and Bessie rejoined.
"Yes, but I hope you remember, too, that you would not take it, and,
pretending to have the asthma, said you preferred the north chamber,
with the storm and the cold and the rats. Oh, Grey, honestly I did not
want you here one bit. I thought you would be in the way but I am so
glad now, for if you had not come I might never have been your wife,"
and Bessie nestled closer to the arm which was her rightful
resting-place, and which encircled her fondly, as Grey replied a little
teasingly:
"No, not my wife perhaps, but you might have been Neil's, eh?"
"No, Grey, if I had not met you, I could not have married Neil. I once
thought I loved him, it is true, but I know now I did not. We were so
unlike we could never have been happy. But I like him very much and am
sorry for him, if he really cared for me. I wonder what he will say when
he hears I am married and am here in Wales. He did not even know I was
engaged. I think you ought to write and tell him, and perhaps invite him
here for the holidays. Do you think he would care to come?"
"No, Bessie. Neither would I care to have him," Grey replied. "I would
rather spend the first Christmas alone with you in the place where I
first saw you; but I am willing to write to Neil, and when we go to
London I will find him of course, and you shall see him."
"Thank you, Grey," Bessie said, just as Dorothy came in with a letter
for her mistress, who took it in her hand and bending to the firelight
recognized Neil's hand-writing, while her cheeks flushed as she saw her
new name, Mrs. Grey Jerrold, and thought that Neil was the first to
address her thus.
Breaking the seal, she read as follows:
"LONDON, December ----, 18--.
"My Dear Cousin: You may think it strange that I have not written
before this and congratulated you upon your marriage. But I did not
know of it until a week ago, when I came home from the Continent,
summoned by the news that my mother was very ill. Then I found a
telegram from my Aunt Betsey, which said, 'Bessie was married
yesterday to Grey Jerrold and sails to-day for Liverpool.' I was not
greatly surprised, and I am glad that it is Grey, I know he is
worthy of you and I hope you will both be happy, even if I am
wretched and forlorn, for I am more so than I ever was in my life
before. Mother is dead and we have just returned from burying her at
the old home in Middlesex. She died of typhoid-pneumonia the day
after my return. I did not send for you to attend her funeral, for
fear it would seem like an insult, she had taken such a stand
against you during her life. But she changed very much in that
respect, and a few hours before she died she talked of you, and said
she withdrew all her opposition, and that, if I loved you still and
you loved me she hoped we would marry and be happy. I did not tell
her of the telegram, and so she did not know that you were already
married. But, strangest of all, she advised me to go to America, and
if I could find anything to do, which would not compromise me as a
gentleman, to do it. Think of that, Bessie. My mother advising me to
work, after all her training to the contrary. But she knew there was
no other way. It is work or starve with me now. A few weeks before
mother's death she lost nearly everything which she had in her own
right, and which would have naturally come to me, so that most of
her income died with her. Neither Trevellian House, nor the one in
the country, is ours any longer, and father must go into lodgings
when the new heir takes possession. This, at his age, is very hard,
and I am sorry for him. If we only had the house in Middlesex it
would not be so bad, for he likes the country and would be happy
there. What he will do here alone in London I am sure I don't know,
for I am going out to India on a salary of three hundred pounds a
year; small enough for a chap of my habits, but better than nothing.
"I'd like awfully to see you once more before I go, and if you come
to London I hope you will let me call upon you. Don't think I am
breaking my heart because you belong to Grey. I am not that kind,
and it would do no good. But I loved you as I can never love any one
again, and there is always a thought of you in my mind, and I see
your face as it looked at me that day in Liverpool, when I acted the
part of a cowardly knave.
"I would kick myself for that if I could. You were too good for me,
Bessie, and I should have been a drag upon your life always. But
Heaven knows how much I miss you, and how at times, when the thought
comes over me that you are lost to me forever, and that another man
is enjoying the sweetness I once thought would be mine, I half wish
I were dead and out of the way of everything. Then I put that
feeling aside as unworthy of me, and say to myself that I am glad
you are happy, and that Grey is the noblest and best fellow in the
world, and the one of all others who ought to have you for his wife.
I shall never marry; that is settled. First, there is no woman in
the world I can ever look at after loving you; and, second, I am too
poor, and always shall be.
"And now I suppose you are thinking of Blanche, and wondering where
she is. She and mother had a jolly row, of which I fancy I was the
cause. Blanche told mother that all either she or I cared for was to
get her ten thousand a year, and by Jove, I believe she was right,
but I did not suppose she had sense enough to know it; trust a fool
sometimes to see through a stone wall.
"Well, mother told Blanche that _I_ did not even care for the ten
thousand pounds, that I loved you, and had been engaged to you, and
that you had discarded me. That was the straw too many, and
forthwith, Miss Blanche departed from Trevellian House, bag and
baggage, and I hear she is about to marry the eldest son of Lord
Haxton, a brainless idiot, not half as good-looking as I am. There
is conceit for you! But you know I was always rather vain of my
looks, and I do believe that the greatest terror poverty holds for
me is the knowing that I must wear seedy hats and threadbare coats,
and trousers a year behind. Maybe Grey will sometime send me a box
of his cast-off clothes.
"But what nonsense I am writing, and it is time I closed. I hear
father in his room, and guess it must be time for his tea, so I will
go in and join him. I hope either you, or Grey, or both, will write
to me and tell me your plans.
"Forever and ever yours,
"Neil."
"P.S.--I saw Jack Trevellian the other day, and told him you were
married. For a minute he was as white as a piece of paper; then he
rallied, and asked a great many questions about you. It seems be
thought that you died in Rome when you were so sick there, and he
says Grey thought so, too. Jack did not know to the contrary until
one day last summer, when Flossie Meredith met him in the streets in
Paris and told him you were in America. Jack is growing stout, and
looks quite the landed proprietor. He keeps a lot of hounds, and has
invited me to visit him. But I am done with things of that sort.
Again good-by.
"P.S. No. 2.--I have had my tea with father, and when I told him I
had been writing to you, he bade me give you his love, and say, that
he should very much like to see you and your husband, and that if
you are not coming to London, he will go to Stoneleigh, where he has
never been since your grandfather died. This, I take it, is right
shabby in him. But father is greatly changed. Between you and me, he
was awfully afraid of mother. Poor mother, she meant well, and she
was fond of me.
"By the way, Flossie is in London, with her grandmother, stopping at
Langham's, and Jack is there, too, and has asked the old lady to
spend some weeks at Trevellian Castle. It is frightfully lonesome
there, he says, and he wants Flossie to brighten it up. Can you read
between the lines? I think I can. Flossie is bright as a button.
"Again yours, forever,
"Neil."
Bessie read the letter, and then, passing it to her husband, said:
"It is from Neil. Would you like to see it?"
Taking it from her, Grey read it through, and then, leaning back in his
chair, watched Bessie, as, with her elbows on her knees, and her face
resting on her hands, she sat gazing intently into the fire with a
wistful, earnest look which puzzled him a little. Was she thinking of
the two men who had loved her so much and one of whom loved her still?
And was she sending a regret after the title she had lost? He did not
believe so; and, after a moment, he reached out his hand, and laying it
caressingly upon her soft, wavy hair, said to her:
"What is it, _petite_? Are you thinking how you might have been Lady
Bessie Trevellian?"
Then she turned her clear, truthful blue eyes upon him and answered:
"No, Grey. I would rather be your wife than the grandest duchess in the
world, but I am thinking of Neil and his father, and how hard it is for
them to be so poor. Grey"--and rising from her stool, Bessie seated
herself on her husband's lap, and, winding her arms around his neck, and
laying her soft, warm check against his bearded one, said again; "Grey,
I want to ask you something--want to do something. Can I?"
"Yes, do what you like. Ask me what you like. What is it, darling?" Grey
answered her, and Bessie replied:
"I want to give a thousand pounds of my money to Neil and a thousand to
his father. That is not much, I know, but the interest upon it will put
Uncle John in better lodgings than he can now afford, and it will help
Neil, too. Only think of three hundred pounds a year after all he has
been accustomed to spend. What do you think, Grey?"
Grey's arm tightened its clasp around the girlish figure, and his lips
touched Bessie's white forehead as he said:
"I think you the most generous, unselfish little woman in all the world.
And so I am sure would Neil, if he knew what you proposed; but, Bessie,
I do not believe he would like it, or like you to offer it to him. He
has more manhood than that. Poverty is hard to bear, but it will not
hurt him. On the contrary, having to work for his living will bring out
the very best there is in him, and make him a man. He will not starve or
even suffer want on three hundred pounds a year; it is more than many a
working man has with a large family to support. So do not waste your
sympathy on Neil, who can take care of himself; but his father is old,
and the change will be hard upon him. Was he not born at Stoneleigh?"
"I think so. Yes," Bessie answered, and Grey continued:
"Neil says he likes the country and laments the loss of Elm Park. Now,
this is my suggestion; Anthony and Dorothy ought to have some one with
them in their old age. How would you like taking a part of that two
thousand pounds you are so anxious to dispose of, and with it repair and
fit up this place into a comfortable and pleasant home for Mr.
McPherson, whenever he chooses to stay here? The rest of the two
thousand you can invest for his use as long as he lives, and the
interest of it will add to his present moderate income. What do you
think of my plan?"
"I think it the very best that could be adopted, and I shall write to
Neil to-night, so it will go in the first mail to-morrow," Bessie said,
and before she slept she wrote a long letter to Neil, telling him first
of the fortune which had come to her so unexpectedly, but not explaining
how it had come.
She was simply the sole heiress of a certain Joel Rogers, who left
shares in the quarries and mines, and these she was now possessed of,
and felt herself a rich woman.
"Quite an heiress, it seems to me," she wrote, "although the sum is
really not so very large, but it is more than I ever dreamed of having,
and as money burns in my fingers, I am dying to be rid of some of it,
and this is a plan which Grey and I have talked over together, and which
I hope will meet your approval and that of your father."
Then, as briefly as possible she made her offer, which she begged him to
persuade his father to accept.
"It will make me very happy," she wrote, "to know that his old age is
made more comfortable by me. I should be glad to give you a part of my
little fortune, but Grey says you would not like it, and perhaps he is
right. I am glad that you are going to do something; I think you will be
happier if occupied with business, and I wish you to be happy, as I am
sure you will be some day, and always remember that you have two
sincere friends, Grey and your Cousin Bessie."
She was going to add "Jerrold" to the Bessie, but refrained from doing
so, thinking to herself that she would not be the first to flaunt her
new name in Neil's face. Grey, however, had no such scruples. Looking
over Bessie's shoulder, as she finished her letter, he saw her start to
make the "J," and when she changed her mind, and put down her pen, he
took it up and himself wrote the "Jerrold" with a flourish, saying, as
he did so:
"Don't be afraid to show your colors, _petite_. I think 'Bessie Jerrold'
the sweetest name in all the world."
"So do I; but I doubt if Neil holds the same opinion," Bessie answered,
with a laugh, as she leaned her head upon her husband's bosom, while he
kissed her lips and forehead, and said the fond, foolish things which no
loving wife, however old she may be, is ever tired of hearing--fond,
foolish words, which, if oftener spoken, would keep alive the love in
hearts which should never grow cold to each other.
It was three days before an answer came to Bessie's letter, and in that
time she developed a most astonishing talent for architecture, or rather
for devising and planning how to repair and improve a house. At least
twenty sheets of paper were wasted with the plans she drew of what she
meant to do. There were to be bow-windows here, and balconies there, and
porticoes in another place; chimneys were to be moved as readily and
easily as if they had been pieces of furniture; partitions thrown down,
doors taken away, and portieres substituted. All the solid,
old-fashioned furniture was to be discarded, and light, airy articles to
take its place, like the willow work and brass bedsteads then on their
way to Hardy Manor as a gift from Mrs. Browne. Indeed, it was not until
Grey told Bessie that she was outdoing the Yankees in her desire for
change, and asked if she were copying Mrs. Rossiter-Browne, that she
stopped to rest, and concluded to wait for a letter from Neil before she
commenced the work of knocking down and hauling out, as Dorothy
expressed it.
At last the letter came, not from Neil, but from his father, who, after
thanking Bessie most cordially for her generous offer, which he was
glad to accept, wrote as follows:
"I hope you will not be disappointed because I answer your letter in
place of Neil, who said he could not possibly do it. He is greatly
changed, and does not seem like himself at all. After reading your
letter and passing it to me, he sat for a long time staring blankly
at nothing, with a look on his face which I could not understand,
and when I asked him what was the matter, he put his head upon the
table and cried as young men never cry except they are greatly
moved, and I cried, too; though why I cannot tell, unless it was for
all the trouble which has come upon us at once, the loss of my wife,
the loss of our home, and the fact that Neil must now, from
necessity, do something to earn his bread. But I do not think he
minds that as much as one might suppose, and when I began to cry he
stopped at once and tried to comfort me, and said our lot was not a
hard one by any means, when compared with what many had to endure;
that it was a good thing to have to bestir himself; that he had been
a lazy, conceited, selfish puppy long enough, and that if it were
possible he meant to be a man. And then he spoke of you as his good
angel, and said you were the truest, purest, and sweetest woman in
all the world, and that neither of us could ever repay you and your
husband for your generosity to us. I am sure I cannot, nor can I
tell you how happy I shall be at Stoneleigh. I am afraid you will
have a steady incumbent, for once there, I do not believe I shall
care to leave it. I have seen all of the world I wish to, and the
quiet and peace of Stoneleigh will be very grateful to me. I think,
however, that for the winter I shall remain in London, where I hope
to see you and Mr. Jerrold, whose father and mother I met years ago
at Penrhyn Park. I do not yet know when Neil will start for India;
probably within a few weeks, and then I shall be very lonely. That
God may bless you, my dear Bessie, and give you all the happiness
you deserve, is the prayer of your affectionate uncle,
"JOHN MCPHERSON."
CHAPTER XVII.
OLD FRIENDS.
Over this letter Bessie had a good cry, with her face on Grey's shoulder
and Grey's arms around her, and when he asked why she cried she said she
did not know, only the world seemed a very dreary world with no one
perfectly happy in it except themselves. But Bessie's tears in those
days were like April showers, and she was soon as joyous and gay as
ever, and entered heart and soul into the improvements and repairs which
were to make Stoneleigh habitable for the Hon. John, who, greatly to
their astonishment, came suddenly upon them one day when they were ankle
deep in brick and mortar and lath and plaster, and all the other
paraphernalia attendant upon repairing an old house.
Neil was away so much, he said, and he was so lonely in his lodgings,
with no one to speak to but his landlady, that he had decided to come to
Stoneleigh, though he did not mean to make the least trouble, or be at
all in the way.
But a fine gentleman, unaccustomed to wait upon himself, is always in
the way, and even Bessie's patience was taxed to its utmost during the
weeks which followed. Fortunately for her, Grey knew what was needed
better than she did herself, for while she would have torn down one day
what had been done the day before, he moved more cautiously and
judiciously, so that the work really progressed rapidly, and some time
in March John McPherson took possession of the two rooms which had been
expressly designed for him, and which, as they were fitted up and
furnished with a reference to comfort rather than elegance, were
exceedingly homelike and pleasant, and suited the London gentleman
perfectly.
"Here I shall live and die, blessing you with my last breath," he said
to Bessie, as he moved into his new quarters and seated himself in an
arm-chair by a window which overlooked the park and the Menai Bridge not
very far away.
He was very fond of Bessie, whom he always called "dear child," and
once, when she stood by him, he put his arm about her and kissing her
fondly said, "I wish you could have been my daughter; it would have been
the making of Neil."
"No, no, oh, no, I couldn't, for there is Grey, whom I love a great deal
the best," Bessie answered hurriedly, as she drew herself from him, half
feeling as if a wrong had been done her husband by even a hint that she
could ever have been the wife of another.
Some time in April the Jerrolds went to London and met Neil at the Grand
Hotel, where he was staying a few days before leaving for India.
Owing to Grey's tact, the interview was tolerably free from
embarrassment, though in Neil's heart there was a wild tumult of
conflicting emotions, as he stood with Bessie again face to face, and
heard her well remembered voice.
How lovely she was in her young, happy wifehood, with the tired,
care-worn look gone from her sweet face, where only the light of perfect
joy and peace was shining.
Grey, who, without being in the least a prig, was something of a
connoisseur in the details of dress, had delighted to adorn his bride
with everything which could enhance her beauty, and Bessie wore her
plumage well, and there was a most striking contrast between the girl of
fifteen, who, in her washed linen gown and faded ribbons, had once stood
up in the park waving her handkerchief to Neil, and the young matron of
twenty, who, clad in a faultless dinner dress, with diamonds in her ears
and on her fingers, went forward to meet her cousin. And Neil recognized
the difference, and felt himself growing both hot and cold by turns as
he took the hand extended to him, and looked down upon the little lady,
whom, but for her bright face and clear, innocent blue eyes, he would
scarcely have known, so complete was the transformation. For a moment
Neil felt as if he preferred the old linen, with its puffed sleeves and
antiquated appearance, to the shimmer of the fawn-colored satin, with
its facings of delicate blue, and the flush of the solitaires; but, as
he watched her moving about the elegant rooms and discharging her duties
as hostess just as kindly and thoughtfully as she had done at
Stoneleigh, where the china was cracked and the silver was old, he said
to himself, that the transformation was such as it should be, and that
satins and diamonds, though out of place on little Bessie McPherson, of
Stoneleigh, were fitting adornments for Mrs. Grey Jerrold, of Boston. He
had called her Bessie, as of old, and the repeating the dear name to
her, and seeing the quick, responsive smile and questioning glance he
knew so well, nearly unmanned him, and raised within him such a tempest
of love, and remorse, and regret for what he had lost, that it required
all his fortitude and will not to break down entirely, and to seem
natural and at ease during the dinner, to which Grey had invited him,
and which was served in the private parlor.
Half an hour or more after dinner a servant brought in a card with Jack
Trevellian's name upon it, and in a moment Jack was with them, shaking
hands cordially with both Grey and Bessie, and appearing as much at his
ease as he did in the park when he first saw the latter and told her who
the people were, while she, a shy country girl, looked on wonderingly
and made her quaint remarks. She did not look like a country girl now,
and Jack's eyes followed her admiringly as she moved around the room,
with a faint flush on her cheeks and a very little shyness perceptible
in her manner. Once, when standing near her, he put a hand on either
shoulder, and looking down into her face said to her:
"Do you know, Mrs. Jerrold how nearly my heart was broken when I thought
you were dead, and that for months the brightness of my life seemed
blotted out. But it is all right now, and I am glad for you that you are
Grey Jerrold's wife. You will be very happy with him."
"Yes, yes, very happy," Bessie answered, and then, scarcely knowing why
she did so, she asked him abruptly for Flossie, and where she was.
"At Trevellian Castle," Jack replied, taking his hands from her
shoulders and stepping back from her. "She is there with her
grandmother, a cantankerous old woman, who leads Flossie a sorry life,
or would if she were not so light-hearted that trouble slips from her
easily."
"No one could be happy with Mrs. Meredith," Bessie said, "She is so
cross and unreasonable, and I pity poor Flossie, who is made for
sunshine. I wish she would go to America with us. I should be so glad to
have her, and I mean to write and ask her. Do you think she would like
to go?"
"Ye-es--no--I don't know," Jack answered, thoughtfully, while it seemed
to Bessie that a shadow passed over his face, and he sat for a few
moments in a brown study as if revolving something in his mind. Then
rousing up he said he must leave them, as he was due at a party at the
West End, and it was time he was making his toilet. "I shall be very
glad to see you at Trevellian Castle," he said to Grey, "and if you will
come I will treat Mistress Bessie to the biggest fox-hunt she ever saw.
I have no end of hounds and horses, and Flossie is an admirable
horsewoman. Why, she can take the highest fence and clear the widest
ditch in the county. Come and see her do it. Good-by."
The next day Bessie wrote to Flossie, urging her to go with her to her
new home, and saying that she knew she would like America, and be very
happy there.
A week later and Neil started for India. He said good-by, at the hotel,
to his father, who had come from Wales to see him; but Grey and Bessie
went with him to Southampton, where he was to embark. It was hard for
Neil to seem cheerful and natural, but he succeeded very well until the
last, when he said good-by to Bessie. Then he broke down entirely, and,
taking her in his arms, cried over her as a mother cries over the child
she is losing.
"You have always been my good angel, Bessie," he said, "and if I ever
make anything of myself, it will all be owing to you. Good-by, and may
God bless you and make you the happiest woman in the world, as you
deserve to be. I may never see you again, and I may. If I succeed, and
really think I am a man, and not a sneak as you have always known me, I
shall come to you sometime, and show you that there was something in
Neil McPherson besides selfishness and conceit. Good-by."
Releasing her, he turned to Grey, who, during this little scene, had
considerately turned his back upon them, and stood looking from the
window as unconcernedly as if no tall, handsome cousin were kissing his
wife and crying over her. He had perfect faith in Bessie, and he pitied
Neil, and when the latter offered him his hand he took it, and pressing
it warmly, said:
"Good by, and God bless you. As long as I live you will have a friend in
me. I think you will succeed in India, but if you fail, try America. You
are sure to succeed there, if you only have the will, and I can help you
some, perhaps. Good-by."
Neil made no answer, except to wring Grey's hand, and then he passed out
from the old life to the new, with a pretty equal chance for failure or
success.
This was in April, and the latter part of May the Jerrolds sailed for
America, but before they did so Bessie received a letter from Flossie,
who was at her grandmother's home near Portrush, in Ireland, and who
wrote as follows:
"DEAR BESSIE: I ought to have written you long ago, and thanked you
for your kind invitation to go with you to your American home. I
should have liked it of all things in the world, for to see America
and know what it is like, has been the dream of my life. You knew it
is the paradise of my countrymen, the land into which Pat and
Bridget entered when Johnny Bull came out. For various reasons,
however, I must decline your invitation, and I am going to tell you
all about it, but the beginning and the end lie so far apart that I
must go way back to the time when, owing to some mistake, Jack
Trevellian thought you died in Rome, and, because he thought so, he
made a hermit of himself and wandered off into the Tyrol and the
Bavarian Alps, where nobody spoke English, and where all he knew of
the civilized world was what he gleaned from German papers. Nobody
could communicate with him, for when he wrote to his steward, as he
did sometimes, he never said where a letter could reach him, or
where he was going next.
"At last, however, he concluded to go home, and got as far as Paris,
where grandma and I happened to be staying. This was last August,
and I was in the Rue de Rivoli one day, near Place Vendome, when,
who should turn from a side street a few rods in advance of me but
Jack himself, looking very rough and queer, with a long beard and a
shocking hat. He did not see me, and was walking so fast that I had
to run to overtake him, and even then I might not have captured him
if I had not taken the handle of my umbrella and hooked it into his
coat collar behind. This brought him to a stand-still and nearly
threw him down. You ought to have seen the expression of his face,
when he turned to see who was garroting him in broad daylight, for
he thought it was that.
"'Flossie!' he exclaimed; 'what are you about, and what is this you
have hitched to me?'
"You see the umbrella was still hooked to his coat collar and
flopping itself open.
"'If you will stand still I will show you what it is,' I said,
laughing till I cried at the comical appearance he presented, with
the passers-by looking on wonderingly.
"I do not think he liked it very well. No one likes to be made
ridiculous; but we were soon walking together very amicably, and he
was telling me where he had been, and that he was now on his way to
Trevellian Castle.
"'I have not seen you, Flossie,' he said--and I wish you could have
heard how sadly and low he spoke--'I have not seen you since Bessie
died in Rome. You were with her, I believe?'
"'Bessie died in Rome!' I exclaimed. 'What do you mean? Bessie did
not die in Rome. She is not dead at all. She has gone to America in
the same ship with Grey Jerrold.'
"He stopped more suddenly than he did when I hooked him with the
umbrella, and turning toward me, asked me if I was telling him the
truth. Then we walked on as far as the Champs d'Elysees, where we
sat down, and I told him everything which had happened at Rome, and
after we left there, as far as I knew. But I doubt if he heard half
I was saying. The only point he did seem to understand was that you
were not dead, and that you had gone to America in the same ship
with Mr. Jerrold. It was Neil who had told me that, and to him I
referred Jack for any further information concerning you. But I do
not think he stopped to get it, for he went straight through London
to Trevellian Castle, where his presence was needed. And then, after
a time he invited grandma and me to visit him there, because he was
lonely without any ladies in the house. And we went, and I was
perfectly happy; for, you know, it was once my home, and it is going
to be--But wait till I tell you how Jack is changed, and how he used
to go away by himself, and stay for hours alone, and come back with
such a tired look on his face, and ask me to tell him again of Mr.
Jerrold's kindness to you in Rome. Grandma said he was in love with
you, and I think so, too. But wait till I tell you how he came home
from London after seeing you there as Mrs. Jerrold, and how he raved
about your beauty, and grace, and elegance, and the lovely dress you
wore the night he called, blue he said he believed it was, and he
wanted me to have one like it, as if what became your lilies and
roses would suit my black face and turned-up Irish nose. But men
know nothing of color, or anything else, at least Jack does not, as
you will see when I tell you, if I ever come to that.
"Well, it was like this: You were married to Mr. Jerrold, and now I
am going to tell you how your letter came, and Jack brought it to
me, and stood staring at me while I read it, and then he said:
"'She has asked you to go to America?'
"'Yes,' I answered, without looking up; and he continued:
"'And you are going?
"'I'd like to,' I said, 'I would rather go to America than to any
other place in all the world.'
"'Rather than stay here with me?' he asked.
"Something in his voice made me look up, and then--and then--I do
not believe I can tell you, except that I suddenly found out that I
had been caring a great deal for Sir Jack Trevellian. Yes, a great
deal; while he--well, I may as well tell you, for Sir Jack is not
the man to say he loves a girl if he does not, and he told me he
loved me, and wanted me for his wife; and I, well, I just covered up
my face so he could not see it, and cried with all my might, I was
so happy and glad.
"I know what transpired at Stoneleigh, and that I am not his first
choice, but I am satisfied. How could he help loving you. I am sure
I could not if I were a man, and so we are to be married in June,
here, in grandma's house, where she brought me the minute she heard
of the engagement.
"'It is highly improper for you to stay at Trevellian Castle a day,
under the circumstances,' she said, as if Sir Jack, as my promised
husband, had been suddenly transformed into a monster, who would
work me harm.
"I wish you could come to the wedding, and so does Jack. He is here,
and has been for a week, and when I finish this letter we are going
out to sit upon the rocks and see the tide come in and the moon
rise, and shall naturally sentimentalize a little, and he will tell
me how much he loves me, and call me his Irish lassie; he has done
that a hundred times, but when he gets too spooney and
demonstrative, I ask him if he loves me better than he did you, and
that quiets him, for like your president, or king, George Somebody
or other, he cannot tell a lie, and says:
"'Not better, perhaps, but differently, just as you are different
from her. She is fair, you know, and you are dark--' and so I infer
that his love for you was white, and his love for me black. '_Ah,
bien; je suis contente_.'
"And now I _must_ close, for Jack has come in, hat in hand, and bids
me hurry, as there is the funniest specimen of an American down on
the Rocks that he ever saw. Her name is Mrs. Rossiter-Browne, and
her daughter married an Irish lord who lives near Dublin. I have met
so few Americans that I must really see this one. Jack says it is
better than a play to hear her talk. So, good-by. From your loving
FLOSSIE."
"P.S.--I have seen Mrs. Rossiter-Browne, who knows you, and Grey,
and all his relations back to the flood. Is she a fair specimen of
Americans? But of course not; even I know better than that. Mr.
Jerrold is not at all like her--neither, I fancy, are his people.
Mrs. Browne has recently arrived, and is to spend the summer with
her daughter. Lady Hardy, who is not with her. She talks so funny,
and her slang is so original, and her grammar so droll, that I find
her charming, and if many of the Americans are like her, you are to
be congratulated, as you can never lack variety. Once more, good-by,
FLORENCE MEREDITH."
CHAPTER XVIII.
HOME AGAIN.
Great were the rejoicings both in Boston and Allington over the return
of the travelers, and great the surprise of all, when it was known that
Bessie had come back an heiress to no mean fortune. But just who the
great uncle was from whom her money had come to her, none, except Grey's
father and Mr. Sanford ever knew, and if they had, few would have
remembered the peddler of more than forty years ago whose disappearance
had caused no remark, and awakened no suspicion. Could Bessie have had
her way she would have told the story fearlessly and moved the bones of
her kinsman to another resting-place, but Grey and Mr. Sanford overruled
her, both for Hannah's sake and for the sake of Grey's father, who could
not have borne the talk it would have created.
Mr. Jerrold had never been the same since that night when he heard his
father's confession, and he was fast growing into a morbid, misanthropic
man, whom his wife, not without reason, feared would one day be crazy.
Every year he shrank more and more from meeting his fellowmen, and at
last he abandoned business altogether, and remained mostly at home in a
room which he called his office, and where he saw only those he was
obliged to see. The money lying in his bank in Hannah's name, but which
he knew was intended for some one else, and the shares in the mines and
quarries of Wales, troubled him greatly, for somewhere in the world
there were people to whom they belonged, and he sometimes felt that if
he and his sister were guiltless of their father's crime, they were, at
least, thieves and robbers, because of the silence upon which he himself
had insisted. More than once recently he had resolved to tell Grey, and
let him decide the matter, and it was upon this very thing he was
brooding, on the morning when his son was announced. Grey had reached
Allington the previous day, and found his mother there waiting to
receive him.
"I wanted your father to come with me, but he would not. He dislikes
Allington worse than I do, and mopes all day in his room just as his
father did. I wonder if there is any insanity in the family," she said
to Grey, who answered, cheerily:
"Not a bit of it, mother; and if there is Bessie's advent among us will
exorcise the demon. I am going to Boston to-morrow to see father, and
shall bring him back with me a different man entirely."
He found his father in his room, moping, as his mother had said, and was
struck with the change in him, even during the few months he had been
away. He stooped more than ever, and there was in his whole appearance
an air of weakness and brokenness of spirit pitiable to see in a man who
had once been so proud and strong.
"Grey, my boy, how are you? I am glad to see you, very glad," he said,
as his son entered the room; and when Grey sat down by him, and taking
his thin, white hand, pressed it gently and said, "Poor father, you are
not well, are you?" he did a most astonishing thing. He laid his head on
his son's arm and sobbed aloud:
"No, Grey, I am sick--in mind, not in body--and I have been sick
these--how old are you, Grey?"
"Twenty-six, my next birthday," Grey replied, and he continued:
"Yes, you were fourteen when your grandfather died. Twelve years ago,
and for twelve years I have been sick--very sick. Oh, Grey, if I dared
to tell you, and ask you what to do!"
"You need not tell me," Grey said to him. "I know what you mean, and
have known it ever since grandpa died, for I was there that night,
unknown to you or any one; was in the kitchen by the stove, and heard
what grandpa told you. Don't you remember how sick I was after it? Well,
that was what ailed me. Aunt Hannah knows. I told her, and together we
have tried to find his heirs, and, father, we _have_ found them, or
_her_, for there is but one direct heir of his sister Elizabeth, and
that--and that--is Bessie, my wife. Oh, father, look up, bear up; you
must not faint," Grey continued in alarm, as he felt his father press
heavily against him, and saw the ghastly pallor on his face.
"Bessie--your wife--the heir! And does she know what we do?" Mr.
Jerrold gasped, and Grey replied:
"Yes, everything--and knew it before I married her. Listen, and I will
tell you all."
Ringing the bell, Grey bade the servant who appeared bring a glass of
wine, which he made his father swallow, and then, supporting him with
his arm, he told him everything, from the night when he had knelt upon
the snow in the woods and asked to be forgiven for his grandfather's
sin, down to the present time.
"And you knew it all these years when I was trying to hide it from you,"
Mr. Jerrold said; "and you have worked while I have only sat still and
brooded; and you have found the heir in Bessie. Are you sure it is
Bessie? Oh, Grey! God bless you, my boy! You do not know what a load of
care you have taken from me, for, though my father's sin is none the
less, it does not hurt me as much, and I feel as if I could forgive him
all. I do not believe he was so much in fault. The peddler struck him
first, you know. I must see Hannah, and hear the story again. What time
do you return to Allington?"
Grey told him, and he continued:
"I shall go with you--first to see Hannah, and then to Grey's Park in
the evening. Poor Hannah! she has had such a lonely life!"
Three hours later and Mr. Jerrold was driven to the house in the
pasture-land, in the phaeton which Lucy had sent to the station to meet
Grey, who walked to Grey's Park, where Bessie greeted him as rapturously
as if weeks instead of hours had passed since she saw him.
Mr. Jerrold had expected to find his sister alone, and was a little
disappointed to see the Rev. Mr. Sanford there, cozily taking tea in the
pleasant south room, where the morning-glories were trained across the
windows, and the early June roses were looking in.
"Oh, Burton, how glad I am to see you! and how well you are looking!"
Hannah cried, as she went forward to meet her brother, in whom she saw a
change, as if he had suddenly grown young.
And he did feel younger and happier than he had in years; and as soon as
Mr. Sanford took his leave, which he did immediately after tea, Burton
plunged at once into the principal object of his visit.
"I have come," he said, "to open the doors and windows of that ghostly
room, and let in the light and air of Heaven. Grey has told me
everything, and I feel like a new man. Even the--the--the thing father
did, does not seem to me quite as it did. Would you mind telling me
again the particulars of the quarrel?--how it commenced, I mean--nothing
more."
He had risen as he was talking, and going into the bedroom, threw back
the heavy curtains, and opening the windows and blinds, sat down in his
father's chair, while Hannah stood beside him and told him how both men
had drank until their reason was clouded, and how the peddler had called
her father a cheat and a liar, and struck him first, and how--But here
her brother stopped her, and said:
"That will do. I am satisfied that what father did was done in
self-defense, and so the world would have said, and acquitted him, too,
I am sure. I almost wish you had told at the time. We should have lived
it down, though I might never have married Geraldine and never have had
Grey. No, sister, you did right, and having kept it so long, we must
keep it still. No use to unearth it now, though I would give half my
life and every dollar I own--yes, I'd give everything except my boy
Grey, to know it had never been there," and he pointed to the corner of
the room, where the bed was still standing, and under which was the
hidden grave.
"Bessie is willing we should tell, and if I thought we ought, I should
be willing, too," Hannah said, but her brother shook his head.
"It can do no good to any one, so let the poor man rest in peace. You
have found his heirs and restitution can be made; the money is safe in
the bank."
"And now I must go, for Geraldine is waiting for me," Burton said,
adding, as be stood a moment by the door: "I feel twenty years younger
than I did, and you, Hannah--why, you look thirty years younger, and are
really a handsome woman for your age. By the way, shall you live here,
or with Grey?"
"I don't know yet where I shall live," Hannah replied, and her cheeks
were scarlet as she said good-by and watched him as he drove away.
CHAPTER XIX.
JOEL ROGERS' MONUMENT.
It was a very merry party which met next day at the farm-house, and Mr.
Jerrold was the merriest of them all, though he could not understand
exactly why he was so light-hearted and glad. The fact that Joel Rogers
died by his father's hand remained the same, but it did not now affect
him as it once had done. Bessie seemed to have taken all the shame and
pain away. He was very fond of her, always calling her daughter when he
addressed her, and when, after dinner was over, she came and sat at his
side, and laying her hand on his, said to him, "Father, there is
something I very much wish to do, and I want your consent," he answered,
unhesitatingly: "You shall have it, no matter what you ask."
"Thanks," Bessie said, with a triumphant look at Grey, who was standing
near. "I thought you would not oppose me, even if Grey did. You see, I
have so much money that it burns my fingers, and I think I must have
lived in America long enough to have caught your fever for change, or
else the smell of plaster and paint at Stoneleigh awakened in me a
desire for more, for, what I wish to do is to tear down this old house
and build another one, where we can spend our summers. This house,
though very nice and comfortable, is falling to pieces, and will tumble
down in some high wind. The plastering is off in two of the rooms up
stairs, and a part of the roof has fallen in over the bedroom and
wood-shed. Aunt Hannah says the snow was suffered to lie there last
winter while she was with us in Wales. So you see we must do something,
and I have the plan of such a pretty place, which I want to call
Stoneleigh Cottage after my old home. Your room and Aunt Hannah's are to
be the pleasantest of all, with a bow-window and fire-place in both, and
there is to be a fire-place in the hall, which is to be finished in oak,
with a wide staircase and a tall clock on the landing, and the windows
are to have little colored panes of glass at the top, and the floors are
to be inlaid and waxed, with rugs of matting instead of carpets, as we
want everything cool for summer, and we will have a big piazza where we
can have tea or breakfast, or even a dance, if we like. Won't that be
nice?"
Bessie had talked very rapidly, with a feeling that she did not have the
sympathy of her hearers. She had conceived the idea of pulling down the
old house and building a new one while she was in Wales, alleging to
herself as one reason that both Hannah and Grey would enjoy themselves
better under a roof which did not cover a grave, while the other reason
was not then quite clear enough in her own mind to be put into words,
but she had said nothing to any one until the morning of the day when
she broached the subject to his father. Together with Grey, she had gone
over the old house, which, from having been shut up so long, seemed more
dilapidated than ever. But Grey opposed her plan, and Hannah opposed it,
while Mr. Jerrold grew hot and cold by turns, as he thought what might
possibly be brought to light if the house were removed and any
excavations made, as there might be. As if divining what was in his
mind, Bessie continued:
"I do not mean to have the new house just where this one stands, but
farther to the right. We can fill up the cellar with the debris, and
have loads of earth brought in and make a kind of plateau, with it
terrace all around it. We can make that plateau so lovely with shrubs,
and flowers, and grass. I once saw one like what I have in mind, at a
country place in England, and in one corner, under a willow tree, was a
little grave; the only son of the house had been buried there, and I
thought it so lovely to have a monument of flowers, and trees and
singing birds."
Locking into the blue eyes fixed so earnestly upon him, Mr. Jerrold read
what she meant, and said to her:
"You shall do as you like; if Hannah does not object."
Hannah, too, began to get a glimpse of the truth, and so did Grey, and
when she said, "You are all willing--it is settled?" they answered yes,
and Grey went with her to choose the site for the new house, which in
her impetuosity, she declared should be commenced at once saying she
would remain in Allington during the summer and superintend it herself.
It was Bessie who choose the site, to the right of the old building and
near a great flat rock which she said she meant to have in a corner of
the yard, as it would be such a nice play-house for children.
"Yes, a very nice play-house for children," Grey said, winding his arms
around her and kissing her blushing cheek, and then they sat down upon
the rock and talked of and planned the house, and Bessie told him all
that was in her mind in regard to the plateau, which she meant to make
as beautiful as a garden, so that no one would ever dream it held a
grave.
"I ought to do something for him," she said; "and as my grandmother was
fond of flowers, and grass, and singing birds, so I am sure was he, and
he shall have them in abundance, and maybe he will know that his
sister's granddaughter is doing it for him, and be glad."
In the light of this new idea, Mr. Jerrold, Hannah and Grey entered
heart and soul into Bessie's project, and within a week a plan for the
cottage had been drawn, and a contract made with the builders who were
to commence work at once. Neither Hannah nor Bessie were present when
the walls of the main building went crashing down into the cellar they
were to fill, but when it came to the bed-room and wood-shed, Hannah,
Bessie, Grey and his father sat under a tree at a little distance,
watching nervously while the men took down timber after timber, until
the spot was clear, and the ground as smooth as it usually is under a
floor where there is no cellar.
"Oh," Bessie said, with a sigh of relief, as she turned to Grey, who was
sitting next to her, but her eye went past him to Hannah, who, with her
hands clasped tightly together, sat as rigid as a block of marble,
gazing so intently at the spot which held so much horror for her that
she did not at first know when Bessie stole softly to her side; but when
the young girl wound her arm around her neck, and kissing her softly,
said: "They have let him into the light, and I am so glad; it does not
seem now like a hidden grave," the tension on her nerves gave way, and
she burst into a paroxysm of tears, the very last she ever shed over
that hidden grave. For, like Bessie, she felt better, now that the
sunlight was falling upon it, and by and by, when everything was
accomplished, and Bessie had carried out her idea, she felt that the
dead man's monument would be worthy of a far nobler personage than he
who slept beneath it.
Yielding to Bessie's earnest solicitations Grey decided to remain with
her in Allington during the summer and superintend in person the work,
which, owing to good management and the great number of men employed,
went on so rapidly that by the last of October everything was done
except the furnishing, which was to be put off until Spring, for before
the autumn came it was known that Hannah would never occupy the house
save as she went there a visitor. The words spoken to her many years
before by the Rev. Charles Sanford had been repeated, and this time her
answer had been:
"Yes, Charlie, if you do not think it too ridiculous for people as old
as we are to marry. Why, I am almost sixty."
"But just as dear and young to me as if you were sixteen," was the reply
of the Rev. Charles, who was quite as much in love as he had been nearly
forty years before, when he asked Hannah Jerrold to be his wife.
Of course after it was settled he went straight to Martha's grave and
staid there all the afternoon, and did a little gardening around it, and
trained the rose-bush around the head-stone, and picking a half open
blossom, put it in his button-hole and silently apostrophized the dead
woman at his feet, telling her that though he was about to bring a new
mistress to the home where she had reigned supreme, he should not forget
her, and should so far as was consistent, see that all her ideas were
carried out, especially as far as his health was concerned. Then be
walked thoughtfully away, whispering to himself;
"Martha was a very good and excellent woman, but I loved Hanny first,
and God forgive me if it is wrong to say it, I think I love her the
best."
Then he went and told Miss McPherson, who called him and Hannah fools,
to think of marrying at their time of life, but said she was satisfied
if they were. Then he told Lucy Grey, who congratulated him warmly and
was sure he would be happy. Then he told Bessie, who cried at first
because her Aunt Hannah was not to live with her, and then entered heart
and soul into the affair and became as much interested in the wedding
and the wedding outfit as if the bride-elect had been a young girl in
her teens instead or an elderly woman in her fifties. Then he told his
senior warden, who, having himself been married three times, had nothing
to say, but hurried home with the news, which was all over Allington by
the next day, and was received differently, according to the different
natures of the receivers. Some were very glad, and predicted that the
rector would be far happier with Hannah than he had been with Martha,
while others wondered what that worthy woman would say if she knew that
another was to fill her place, and _all_ calculated the ages of the
respective parties, making _him_ out younger than he was and _her_ a
great deal older. But neither he nor she ever knew what was said, and
they would not have cared if they had, for both were supremely happy and
thankful for the peace and blessedness which had crowned their later
life. Fifty and even sixty is not so very old, at least to those who
have reached it, and Hannah neither looked nor felt old when in her
becoming traveling dress of seal brown she stood up in the parlors of
her brother's house on Beacon street and was made Mrs. Charles Sanford.
This was early in February, and six weeks before, on Christmas Eve,
there had come to that same house on Beacon street a little black-eyed,
black-haired boy, as unlike either Bessie or Grey as a baby well could
be.
"He is not like any one I have ever seen of your family," the old nurse
said, when she brought the sturdy fellow to Bessie, who, the moment she
looked at him exclaimed:
"Why, Grey, he is exactly like Neil; his eyes, his hair, his expression,
and Neil will be so glad. We must have his picture taken at once and
sent to Neil, with a lock of his hair."
Grey thought it doubtful if Neil would be quite as enthusiastic over
Bessie's baby as she seemed to think, but when a few hours later she
drew his face down to hers and whispered to him:
"We will call baby Neil McPherson, won't we?" he fondly kissed the
little mother, and answered hesitatingly:
"Yes, darling, we will call our baby Neil McPherson, if you like."
And so with a birth, a christening, and a wedding the winter passed
rapidly at No. ---- Beacon street, and by the first of May Bessie was
again in Allington, armed and equipped for settling Stoneleigh Cottage,
and giving the finishing touches to the plateau, which with the advance
of summer, began to show marks of great beauty, and to attract general
attention. Bessie's idea of raising it two feet above the level of the
ground had been carried out, and the sods which had been placed upon it,
and the terrace around it in the autumn, were fresh and green as velvet
in the early spring, while of the roses, and lilies, and flowering
shrubs which had been planted with so much care, not one had died, and
many of them blossomed as freely as plants of older growth. The plateau
was Bessie's especial pride and care, particularly that corner of it
over which the bedroom once stood. Here she had an immense bed of
pansies, heart-shaped and perfect in outline, and in the center a cross,
where only white daisies were growing.
"Grandmother liked pansies and daisies the best, and I thought, perhaps,
he did, too; and then mother's name was Daisy, you know," she said to
Hannah, who rightly guessed that this bank of flowers was Bessie's _In
Memoriam_, not only to her uncle, but to her mother as well.
And very beautiful the heart-shaped bed of human-faced pansies, with the
daisy cross in the center, looked all the summer long, and many admired
and commented upon it, but only five persons ever knew that the white
cross marked a grave.
CHAPTER XX.
After Five Years.
"Noiselessly as I be spring-time
Her crown of verdure weaves,
And all the trees on all the hills
Open their thousand leaves,"
So noiselessly and quickly have the years come and gone since we first
saw our heroine, Bessie, a little girl on the sands of Aberystwyth, and
now we present her to our readers for the last time, a sweet-faced,
lovely matron of twenty-six, who, with her husband, was waiting at the
Allington station, one bright June afternoon, for the incoming train
from New York. Just behind the station, where the horses would not be
startled by the engine, stood the family carriage, a large, roomy
vehicle, bought for comfort rather than show, and which seemed to be
full of children, though in reality there were only three. First, Neil,
the boy of five years and a half, who, with his dark eyes and hair, and
bright olive complexion, was the very image of the Neil for whom he was
named, and who was a most lovable and affectionate child.
Next to Neil was the three-year old Robin, with blue eyes and golden
hair, like the blind Robin for whom he was named, and next was the girl
baby, who came nearly a year and a half ago, and to whom Grey said, when
he first took her in his arms:
"I thank God for giving you to me my little daughter, and I am sure you
look just as your mother did when she first opened her eyes at
Stoneleigh. Yes, I am very glad for you, little Bessie McPherson."
And so that was the name they gave the baby with lustrous blue eyes and
wavy hair, and the same sweet, patient expression about the mouth as
there was about the mouth of the young girl-mother, whom Neil and Robin
called "Bessie mamma," while to their sister they gave the name of "Baby
Bessie."
And Baby Bessie was in the roomy carriage, sitting on Jenny's lap, and
playing peek-a-boo with Robin, while Neil stood on the opposite seat
engaged in a hot altercation with another boy about his own age, who,
dressed in deep black, which gave him a peculiar look, was seated at a
little distance in a most elegant carriage, with servants in livery, and
who, when asked by some one standing near what his name was, had
answered:
"I am Lord Rossiter Hardy, and I am waiting for my mother, who is coming
from New York, and who is going to bring me a bicycle."
Something in the boy's tone of superiority irritated Neil, who was
thoroughly democratic, and he called out:
"Phoo!--a _lord_--why you are nobody but Ross Hardy! and your
grandmother--"
"Hush, Neil, or I'll tell your father; and look where you are standin',
with your dirthy fate on the cushions. Come down directly, or I'll be
afther helpin' ye!" said Jennie; whereupon Neil turned his attention to
her, and a spirited battle ensued, in which Robin also took part, and
which was only brought to an end by the sound of the train in the
distance.
"There's the whistle! Out with ye, or ye'll not be in time to grate yer
uncle!" Jennie cried; and with a bound Neil was upon the ground, and
rushing through the station, joined his mother, who with Grey was
looking anxiously at the few passengers alighting from the train.
First came Lady Augusta Hardy, habited in the deepest of crape. Poor
Teddie had died a few months before, and with her little son Rossiter,
who was now the heir of Hardy Manor, she was spending the summer at
home, and with her foreign airs and liveried servants brought from
Dublin was creating quite a sensation to Allington. With a bow to the
Jerrolds, who were among the few she condescended to notice, she passed
on to where her coachman and footman waited for her, while Bessie ran
hastily down the platform towards a tall, sickly looking man, who almost
tottered as he walked, while a sudden pallor about his lips told how
weak he was.
"Oh, Neil, I am so glad--and so sorry, too. I did not think you were
like this," Bessie cried, as she took both his hands in hers, and,
standing on tiptoe, kissed the quivering lips, which could not for a
moment speak to her "You are very tired," she continued, as Grey came
up and, after greeting the stranger cordially, offered him his arm.
"You are very tired from the voyage and the journey here, it is so hot
and dusty; but you will rest now, our house is so cool and the air here
so pure. There, let me help you, too."
And in her eagerness, Bessie passed her arm through Neil's, or rather
put it around him, and thus supported, the sick man went slowly to the
open carriage, where Jennie had the children with the exception of
little Neil, who, finding himself overlooked, was cultivating the
station master and telling him that the dark-looking man was his Uncle
Neil from India, and that they were to have ice cream for dinner in
honor of his arrival, and he was to go to the table and have two saucers
full.
In her anxiety for her cousin, Bessie had forgotten her children, but at
the sight of them she exclaimed:
"Oh, Neil, look! Here are two of my babies, Robin and Bessie, and the
boy over there throwing stones, is your namesake. I hope they will not
trouble you--Robin and Bessie, I mean--for you and I are to go in the
carriage with them, and Grey will take little Neil in the phaeton."
"Yes, thank you," Neil replied, too sick and tired to care for anything
just then; and leaning back in the carriage, he closed his eyes wearily,
and did not open them again until they were more than half way to
Stoneleigh Cottage.
Then Robin, who had been regarding the stranger curiously, laid his
little dimpled hand on the thin, wasted one, and said:
"Is you s'eep?"
With a start Neil's eyes unclosed, and he looked for the first time on
Bessie's children, with such a pain in his heart as he had hoped he
might never feel again. Over and over he had said to himself that she
should never know how the very thought of them hurt and almost maddened
him, and how, in his foolish anger, he had burned the lock of hair which
she had sent to him from the head of her first-born. And he said it to
himself again, now that he was face to face with the little ones, and
though every nerve in his body thrilled at the touch of the soft hand on
his, he tried to smile, and said:
"No, I am not asleep; I am only tired. What is your name, my little
man?"
"Wobin; tree years old. And this is Baby Bessie, and this is Bessie
mamma," was the prompt reply; and Neil rejoined:
"Yes, I knew your mamma when she was a little girl no bigger than you,
and her hands felt just as yours feel."
"I p'ays for you every night when mamma puts me to bed. I say, 'God
bless Uncle Neil,'" the child continued.
Then two great tears gathered in the sick man's eyes, but he brushed
them away quickly, while Bessie took the boy in her lap and kept him
from talking any more.
By this time they were in the road which led from the highway to the
house. This had formerly been little more than a lane, but under
Bessie's supervision it had been transformed into a broad avenue,
bordered with trees and footpaths on either side, and seats beneath the
trees, which, though young, had grown rapidly, and already cast cool
shadows upon the grass.
"This is the place; that is Stoneleigh Cottage," Bessie said, pointing
to the house where Grey was waiting for them, with the boy Neil at his
side.
"And this is Neil, my eldest; we think he is like you," Bessie
continued, as she alighted from the carriage and presented the child to
her cousin.
"Phoo! I ain't a bit like him," was the boy's mental comment, while
Neil, the elder said, quickly:
"Heaven forbid that he should be like me."
They took him to his room at once--the pleasant south room, whose
windows overlooked the plateau, now all ablaze with flowers.
"You must lie down and rest till dinner. I ordered it at seven to-night,
I will send you up some tea at once. I hope you will be comfortable and
ask for what you want," Bessie said, as she flitted about the room,
anxious to make her guest feel at home.
He was very tired, and sank down upon the inviting looking lounge,
saying as he did so:
"Oh, Bessie, you do not know how glad I am to be here with you and Grey;
nor yet how it affects me. I am not always as bad as this. I shall be
better by and by. God bless you."
He drew her face down to his and kissed it fervently; then she went
softly out and left him there alone.
Poor Neil! he was greatly to be pitied. His life in India had been a
failure from first to last. He had no talent for business, and as he
thoroughly disliked the business he was in, it was not strange that he
was dismissed by his employers within six months after his arrival in
Calcutta. Then he tried something else, and still something else, and
was just beginning to feel some interest in his work and to hope for
success, when a malarial fever seized upon him and reduced him to a mere
wreck of his former self.
Then it was that his father died suddenly at Stoneleigh, and as it
seemed desirable that some one should attend to what little there was
left to him, Neil returned to England, going first to Wales and then to
London, where he took the very lodgings which Bessie had occupied years
before, and at which he had rebelled as dingy and second-class. How
sorry he was now that he had wounded Bessie so unnecessarily, and how
well he understood from actual experience the poverty which could only
afford such apartments as Mrs. Buncher's! Except the little his father
had left him he had scarcely a shilling in the world, and the future
looked very dreary and desolate on that first evening in April, when the
once fashionable and fastidious Neil McPherson took possession of his
cheerless rooms on Abingdon Road, and threw himself down upon the
hair-cloth sofa with an ache in his head and an ache in his heart as he
thought of all the past, and remembered the sweet-faced girl who had
once been there, and who had left there an atmosphere of peace and
quiet, which reconciled him at last to his surroundings.
Of all his large circle of acquaintance in London, there was not one
whom he cared to meet, and so he staid mostly in his room, only going
out at unfashionable hours for a stroll in Kensington Gardens, and
occasionally to the park, where he always sat down in the place where
Bessie had sat in her faded linen when he drove by with Blanche. Once
only he joined the crowd on Saturday afternoon, and saw the _elite_ go
by, the princess with her children, the dukes and duchesses, the lords
and ladies, and lastly Lady Blanche Paxton, who rode alone in her glory.
The man, who was almost an imbecile when she married him, was an idiot
now, and had a keeper to look after him, and on Blanche's face there was
an expression of _ennui_ and discontent which told Neil that she was
scarcely happier than himself, even with her hundreds of thousands and
her home on Grosvenor Square.
It was about this time that Neil received a most cordial letter from
Grey and Bessie, urging him to spend the summer with them in Allington,
and to stay as much longer as he pleased.
"Always, if you will, for our home is yours," Bessie wrote; and after a
severe conflict with his love and his pride, Neil accepted the
invitation, and left England with a feeling that he might never see it
again.
The voyage was a rough one, and as he was sick all the way, he had
scarcely strength to stand when he reached Allington, and only
excitement and sheer will kept him up until he found himself in the
cool, pretty room which had been prepared for him, and which it seemed
to him he could never leave again.
Just as the twilight was beginning to fall, Miss Betsey drove up the
avenue, stiff, straight, and severe, in her best black silk and white
India shawl, which she only wore on rare occasions. Why she wore them
now, she hardly knew, and she had hesitated a little before deciding to
do so.
"I do not want the dude to think me a scarecrow," she said to herself;
"though who cares what he thinks? I did not favor his coming, and they
know it. I told them they would have him on their hands for life, and
Bessie actually said they might have a worse thing. I don't know about
that, but I do know he will not sit down upon _me_."
From this it will be seen that Miss Betsey's attitude toward the young
man was anything but friendly, as she started to make her first call
upon him.
"Didn't come down to dinner? I don't like that. He will be having all
his meals in his room, first you will know. Better begin as you can hold
out," she said, sharply, and Bessie replied, with tears in her eyes:
"Oh, auntie, don't be so hard upon poor Neil. You do not know how weak,
and sick, and changed he is. Just think of his lodging with Mrs. Buncher
in London, and coming out as a second-class passenger."
"Did he do that?" Miss Betsey asked, quickly, while the lines about her
mouth softened as she went up stairs to meet the _dude_, who looked like
anything but a dude as he rose to greet her, in his shabby clothes,
which, nevertheless, were worn with a certain grace which made you
forget their shabbiness, while his manner, though a little constrained,
had in it that air of good breeding and courtesy inseparable from Neil.
Miss Betsey had expected to see him thin and worn, but she was not
prepared for the white, wasted face, which turned so wistfully to her,
or for the expression of the dark eyes so like her brother Hugh,
Archie's father. Hugh had been her favorite brother, the one nearest her
age, with whom she had played and romped in the old garden at
Stoneleigh. He had been with her at Monte Carlo when her lover was
brought to her dead, and in the frightened face which had looked at her
then there was the same look which she saw now in Neil, as he came
slowly forward. She had expected a dandy, with enough of invalidism
about him to make him interesting to himself at least; but she saw a
broken, sorry young man, as far removed from dandyism as it was possible
for Neil to be, and she felt herself melting at once.
He was her own flesh and blood, nearer to her even than Bessie; he was
sick; he was subdued; he had crossed as a second-class passenger, and
this went further toward reconciling her to him than anything he could
have done.
"Why Neil, my boy," she said, as she took both his hands, "I am sorry to
see you so weak. Sit down; don't try to stand; or rather, lie down, and
I will sit beside you."
She arranged his pillows and made him lie down again, he protesting the
while, and saying, with a faint smile:
"It hardly seems right for a great hulking fellow like me to be lying
here, but I am very tired and weak," and in proof thereof the
perspiration came out in great drops upon his forehead and hands, and
about his pallid lips.
Miss Betsey did not talk long with him that night, but when she left
him she promised to come again next day and bring him some wine, which
she had made herself, and which was sure to do him good.
"Sleep well to-night, and you will be better to-morrow," she said.
But Neil did not sleep well, and he was not better on the morrow, and
for many days he kept his room, seeming to take little interest in
anything around him, except Bessie. At sight of her he always brightened
and made an effort to be cheerful and to talk, but nothing she could do
availed to arouse him from his state of apathy.
"All life and hope have gone out of me," he said to her one day, "and I
sometimes wonder what has become of that finefied swell I used to know
as Neil McPherson. I never felt this more, I think, than the day I
hesitated before paying my penny for a chair in the park because I did
not know as I could afford it. That was the time I saw Blanche go by in
her grand carriage, where I might have sat, I suppose; but I preferred
my hired chair, and sent no regret after her and her ten thousand a
year. I saw Jack, too, that day; did I tell you? He stumbled upon me,
and I think would have offered me money if he had dared. I am glad he
did not. He was staying in London, at Langham's, and Flossie was with
him. I did not see her, but he told me of her, and of his twin boys,
Jack and Giles, whom Flossie calls 'Jack and Gill.' Roguish little bears
he said they were, with all their mother's Irish in them, even to her
brogue. He has grown stout with years, and seemed very happy, as he
deserves to be. Everybody is happy, but myself; everybody of some use,
while I am a mere leech, a sponge, a nonenitity in everybody's way, and
I often wish I were dead. Nobody would miss me. Don't interrupt me,
please," he continued, as he saw Bessie about to speak. "Don't interrupt
me, and do not misunderstand me. I know you and Grey would be sorry just
at first, but you have each other, and you have your children. You could
not miss me long, or be sorry except for my wasted life. No, Bessie. I
would far rather die, and I think I shall."
This was Neil's state of mind, and nothing could rouse him from it until
one day in August when Miss Betsey drove over to Stoneleigh Cottage,
and went up to his room, where he sat as usual by the window looking out
upon the plateau, where Bessie's children were frolicking with their
nurse. Of late he had evinced some interest in the children, and once or
twice had had them in his room, and had held Baby Bessie on his knee and
kissed her fat hands, and the boy Neil, who saw everything, had said to
his mother, in speaking of it:
"He looked as if he wanted to cry, when sister patted his face and said
'I love oo,' and when I asked him if he didn't wish she was his baby, he
looked so white, and said, 'Yes, Neil; will you give her to me?'
"I told him 'No, sir-ee, I'd give him my ball, and velocipede, and
jackknife, but not baby.'"
This was the day before Miss Betsey came, straight and prim as usual,
but with a different look on her face and tone in her voice from
anything Neil had known, as she asked him how he was feeling, and them,
sitting down beside him, began abruptly:
"I say, Neil, why, don't you rouse yourself? I've been talking to the
doctor, and he says you have no particular disease, except that you seem
discouraged and hopeless, and have made up your mind that you must die."
"Yes, auntie, that is just it; hopeless and discouraged, and want to
die--oh, so badly!" Neil replied, as he leaned back in his chair. "What
use for me to live? Who wants me?"
"_I do!_"
The words rang sharply through the room, and Neil started as if a pistol
had been fired at him.
"You want me? You!" he said, staring blankly at her as she went on
rapidly:
"Yes, I want you, and have come to tell you so. I am an odd old woman,
hard to be moved, but I am not quite calloused yet. I did not like you,
years ago, when those letters passed between us and you would not accept
my offer because you thought it degrading. I am glad now you did not,
for if you had, Bessie would not have been Grey's wife, but yours; and
you are not fit to be her husband, or in fact anybody's. You are only
fit to live with _me_, and see to my business. I am cheated at every
turn, and I need somebody who is honest to look after my rents and
investments. You can do this. It is not hard, and will pay in the end. I
am old and lonesome, and want somebody to speak to besides the
cat--somebody to sit at table and say good-morning to me. In short, I
want you for my son, or grandson, if you like that better. I shall be
queer, and cranky, and hard to get along with at times, but I shall mean
well always. I shall give you a thousand dollars a year to manage my
affairs, and when I die I shall divide with you and Bessie. I have made
a new will to that effect this very morning, so you see I am in earnest.
What do you say?"
He said nothing at first, but cried like a child, while Miss Betsey
cried, too, a little, and blew her nose loudly, and told him not to be a
fool, but to go outdoors on the plateau, where the children were, and
sit there in the shade, and try to get some strength, for she wanted him
very soon.
Then she went away, and he dragged himself out to the plateau, and let
Neil and Robin play that he was a balky horse who would not go,
notwithstanding their shouts and blows with dandelions and blades of
grass, while Baby Bessie pelted him with daisies from the white cross
and pansies from the border.
From that day on, Neil's improvement was rapid, and when, on the last
day of September, the Jerrolds returned to their house in Boston, they
left him domesticated with Miss Betsey, and to all appearance happy and
contented. He would never be very strong again, for the malaria
contracted in India had undermined his constitution; but he was able to
do all his aunt required of him, even to overseeing at times the hands
in the cotton-mill, an office he had once spurned with contempt, and
from which he undoubtedly shrank a little, although he never made a sign
to that effect.
A year or more after his arrival in America he wrote to Jack Trevellian
as follows:
"I hardly think you would know the once fastidious Neil McPherson,
if you could see him now in a noisy cotton-mill, screaming at the
top of his voice to the stupid operatives, and button-holed
confidentially by the Brother Jonathans, who address him as 'Square,
and speak of his aunt as the 'old woman.' But it is astonishing how
soon one gets accustomed to things, and I really am very happy,
especially when scouting the country on my beautiful bay, a present
from my aunt, who gave it to me on condition that I would take care
of it myself. Think of me in overalls and knit jacket, currying a
horse and bedding him down, for I do all that; in fact, I do
everything, even to splitting the kindlings when the chore-boy
(that's what they call him here) does not come.
"Ah, well; I have learned many things in this land of democracy, and
am content; though in my heart I believe I still have a hankering
after old aristocratic England, provided I could be one of the
aristocrats. I suppose you know that poor Blanche died last winter
of fever in Naples, but perhaps you do not know that she left me ten
thousand pounds! Fifty thousand dollars they count that in America,
and I actually do not know what to do with it. My aunt gives me a
thousand a year for spending money, and when she dies, I shall have,
as nearly as I can estimate it, half a million, which in this
country makes a rich man. If Bessie had not provided for old Anthony
and Dorothy, I should care for them; but as she has, I believe I
shall use the interest of Blanche's money in paying for scholarships
in India, and China, and Japan, and Greece, and I'll call them the
Blanche Trevellian and the Bessie McPherson scholarships. That will
please Bessie, for she is great on missions, both at home and
abroad, and her kitchen is a regular soup-house in the winter, for
every beggar in Boston knows Mrs. Grey Jerrold. Jack, you don't know
what a lovely woman Bessie is. Sweeter and prettier even than when
she was a girl and you and I were both in love with her. And
Grey--well, you ought to see how he worships her! Why, she is never
within his reach that he does not put his hands upon her, and if he
thinks no one is looking on he always kisses her, and by Jove, she
kisses him back as if she liked it! And I--well, I bear it now with
a good deal of equanimity. Eels, they say, can get used to being
skinned, and so I am getting accustomed to think of Bessie as Grey's
wife instead of mine, and I really have quite an uncleish feeling
for her children. Indeed. I intend to make them my heirs
"And so good-by to you, old chap; with love to Flossie and the
twins, from your Yankeefied friend,
"NEIL McPHERSON."
And now our story winds to a close, and we are dropping the curtain upon
the characters, who go out one by one and pass from our sight forever.
In the cozy rectory Hannah Jerrold's last days are passing happily and
peacefully with the Rev. Charles Sanford, who loves her just as dearly
and thinks her just as fair as on that night years and years ago, when
she walked with him under the chestnut trees, and while her heart was
breaking with its load of care and pain, sent him from her with no other
explanation than that it could not be.
At Grey's Park Lucy Grey lives her life of sweet unselfishness, looked
up to by the villagers as the lady _par excellence_ of the town, and
idolized by the little ones from Boston, who know no spot quite as
attractive as her house in the park.
Miss Betsey and Neil still scramble along together, he indolent at times
and prone to lapse into his old habits of luxurious ease, for which she
rates him sharply, though on the whole she pets him as she has never
petted a human being before.
"Boys will be boys," she says, forgetting that Neil is over thirty years
of age, and she keeps his breakfast warm for him, and gets up to let him
in when he has staid later than usual at the Ridge House, where he is a
frequent visitor, for he and Allen Browne are fast friends and boon
companions. Together they ride and drive, and row on the lakes around
Allington; together they smoke and lounge on the broad piazza of the
Ridge House, but Neil never drinks or plays with Allen, or any one else,
for his aunt made it a condition of her friendship, that he should never
touch a drop of anything which could intoxicate, or soil his hands with
cards, even for amusement. The shadow of that awful tragedy at Monte
Carlo is over her still, and she looks upon anything like card-playing
as savoring of the pit.
Allen Browne is a young man of elegant leisure, who takes perfumed
baths, and wears an overcoat which comes nearly to his feet, and a
collar which cuts his ears. He is a graduate from Harvard, and his
mother says his 'schoolin' has cost over fifteen thousand dollars,
though where under the sun and moon the money went she can't contrive.
Mrs. Rossiter-Browne is very proud of her son and of her daughter, the
Lady Augusta, who comes home nearly every summer with a retinue of
servants and her little boy, who calls himself Lord Rossiter-Browne
Hardy, and Neil Jerrold, when he is angry with him, "a little Yankee,"
while Neil promptly returns the compliment by calling him a
"freckled-faced paddy."
In the old home on Beacon street, Mrs. Geraldine still affects her air
of exclusiveness and invalidism, although a good deal softened and
improved by the grandchildren, of whom she is very fond, and whose baby
hands and baby prattle have found their way to her heart, making her a
better because a less selfish woman.
In the street and among men Burton Jerrold holds his head as high as
ever, for all his shame and dread are buried in the grave under the
white cross at Stoneleigh Cottage, where Bessie spends every summer,
with her children, and where Grey spends as much time as possible. He is
a man of business now, and many go to him for counsel and advice, and
this, except in the hottest weather, keeps him in the city during the
week. But every Saturday afternoon the Jerrold carriage, with Bessie and
the children in it, stands behind the station waiting for the train, the
first sound of which in the distance is caught up and repeated by Neil
and Robin, while Baby Bessie claps her hands and calls out, "Papa is
coming." And very soon papa comes, with an expression of perfect content
on his fine face as he kisses his wife and babies, and then in the
delicious coolness of the late afternoon is driven up the shaded avenue
to the cottage where the plateau is bright with flowers, and where the
daisy cross in its purple heart of pansies, gleams white and pure in the
summer sunshine.
THE END.