With this letter in his pocket and barely enough money to defray his own expenses for a few weeks longer, it is not to be wondered at, if Neil was not in a very jubilant state of mind when he reached the Quirinal, and found matters as they were--Bessie very low with the fever, of which he had a mortal terror and her mother dest.i.tute of funds except as Grey Jerrold had supplied them, or as she had borrowed from Mrs. Meredith, to whom she owed twenty pounds, with no possible means of paying. All this and more, she tearfully explained to Neil, who listened to her with a great sinking at his heart and a feeling that he had plunged into something dreadful, from which he could not escape. There was manliness enough in his nature to make him wince a little, when he heard what Grey had done, while at the same time he was conscious of a pang of jealousy as he reflected that only a stronger sentiment than mere friendship for Bessie could have actuated Grey, generous and n.o.ble as he knew him to be.
"Oh, if I were rich," he sighed, as with a conviction that he was about the most abused person in the world, he went into the room where Bessie lay, white, and worn, and motionless almost as the dead, for though the fever had left her she was very weak, and could only whisper her welcome, while the great tears rolled down her cheeks.
Neil was awfully afraid of her. There might still be infection in her breath and infection in the room. He fancied he smelled it, and involuntarily put his hands to his mouth and nose, as he drew near the bed. Bessie saw the motion, and interpreted it aright.
"Oh, Neil," she said, with a sob, "you are not afraid of me?"
"No, certainly not; only this fever is a confounded thing when it takes hold of a great hulking fellow like myself, and just now I am very tired," he said; then, heartily ashamed of himself as he saw the look of distress on Bessie"s face, he bent and kissed her forehead, and told her how sorry he was to find her so sick, and that he would not leave her till she was strong again.
But all the time he talked he fidgeted in his chair, and kept looking at the door as if anxious to escape into the fresher air.
"Do you think there is any danger?" he said to Flossie, whom he encountered in the adjoining room.
Flossie knew he was afraid, and there was mischief in the merry Irish la.s.sie"s heart, as she replied:
"Danger, oh, no, if she is kept quiet and carefully nursed, the doctor says she will soon get well enough to be moved."
"Yes, I know that, of course," Neil stammered. "I mean, is there any danger of my taking it from her--from the room--from the air, you know?
"Are you afraid of it?" Flossie asked him, very demurely, and he replied:
"N--no; yes--I believe I am. Does that make any difference?"
"I should say it did, very decidedly," Flossie answered, with great earnestness and evident concern. "Mr. Jerrold was not one bit afraid, and he was in there all the time;" this, with a saucy twinkle in her black eyes, as she saw the flush in Neil"s face and guessed its cause.
"You did not kiss her, of course?" she continued, with the utmost gravity.
"Yes, I did," he answered promptly. "Do you think--do you think--"
"Yes I do," she said, decidedly, adding to herself: "I think you are a fool!" To him she continued: "I"ll tell you what to do. Grandma is afraid, like you, so I know all the preventives. Let me burn a match or two under your nose so that the fumes will saturate your face; that will counteract any bad effects from the kiss, and to prevent contagion hereafter, get a good sized leek. You can find one at any grocer"s: put it in a bit of cloth, with a piece of camphor-gum, and wear it over the pit of your stomach. You may even brave the small-pox with that about your person."
"But won"t it smell awfully?" Neil asked, with a shudder, as he thought of wearing about his person an obnoxious leek, whose odor he abominated.
"It will smell some, but what of that? You can endure a great deal in order to feel safe," Flossie replied.
Neil could endure a great deal where his personal safety was concerned, and wholly deceived by Flossie"s manner, he submitted to the burnt matches, which nearly strangled him, and brought on so violent a fit of coughing as made him fear lest he should burst a blood-vessel.
"I guess you are all right as far as the kiss is concerned," Flossie said, nearly bursting with merriment. "And now for the leek and camphor.
I"ll fix it for you."
He found the leek and the camphor and Flossie tied them up for him in a bit of linen and bade him be quite easy in his mind, as with these disinfectants he was impervious to the plague itself.
"What a coward he is, to be sure!" she said, as she watched him hurrying down the hall to his room with his disinfectants. "Sir Jack told me he was a milksop and not half worthy of Bessie, and he was right. I think him an idiot. Leeks, indeed! Won"t he smell, though, when the leek gets warmed through and begins to fume! Phew!" and the little nose went up higher than its wont as Flossie returned to the sick-room.
That night Neil wrote to his mother the exact condition of affairs, telling her how he had found his aunt and cousin, whom he could not leave without being stigmatized as a brute; telling her what Grey had done for them; telling her that they owed old Mrs. Meredith twenty pounds, and that unless she wished a subscription paper to be started for them in the hotel, among the English, many of whom were her acquaintances, she must send money to relieve their necessities, and pay their bills. Neil felt almost sure that this last would touch his mother, when nothing else could reach her, and he was right. Neither she nor her husband cared to have their friends contribute to the needs of any one who bore their name, and the letter which Lady Jane sent to her son contained sixty pounds, which she bade him use to the best possible advantage, adding that he was to leave Rome as soon as he could, with any show of decency. This, Neil would gladly have done if he could, but when his mother"s letter arrived it found him plunged into a complication of difficulties from which he could not extricate himself.
Daisy had suddenly been stricken down with the fever, which developed so rapidly and a.s.sumed so violent a form that Neil"s strength, and courage, and patience were taxed to the utmost, and he might have succ.u.mbed entirely, if it had not been for Flossie, who was equal to any emergency, and who resisted all her grandmother"s efforts to get her out of the fever-hole, as she designated the hotel.
Flossie would not go so long as Bessie needed her. She was not afraid, she said, and every morning her eyes were just as saucy and mirthful, and the roses on her cheek just as bright, as if she had not been up half the night, soothing the wildly delirious Daisy, and encouraging Neil, who, as the days went by, rose a little in her estimation. He threw the obnoxious leek from his window, when, as Flossie had predicted, its fumes became intolerable, and he gave up the large, sunny room which he had occupied at first, and took a smaller, less expensive one, and he learned to deny himself many things before that terrible fever had burned itself out. He gave up _table d"hote_ and lunch, and took to the restaurants outside. He gave up driving on the Pincian Hill, or having carriages at all, and patronized the street-cars and omnibuses when he went out for an airing, as Flossie insisted that he should do each day.
"I do believe I could make something of him in time," the energetic little lady thought. "But, dear me! Bessie would humor all his fancies, and be a perfect slave to his caprices; even now she will not let him wait upon her much, for fear of tiring him."
And so the days went on until two weeks were gone, and then one April morning it was whispered among the few guests remaining in the hotel, that death was again in the house, and more trunks were packed in haste, and more people left, until the fourth floor was almost as silent as the room in which Daisy lay dead, with a strange beauty in her face, to which had returned, as it sometimes does, all the freshness and loveliness of youth, so that she looked like some fair young girl as she lay upon her pillow, with her hands upon her bosom, just as she had folded them, when at the last she said to those around her:
"It is growing late. I think I will retire; good-night;" then, clasping her hands together, she began the prayer of her childhood: "Now I lay me down to sleep," repeating the whole distinctly, while, with the words, "I pray thee, Lord, my soul to take," she went to meet the G.o.d who is so pitiful and kind, and who knew all the good that was in her, and knew, too, what thoughts of remorse for the past and prayers for forgiveness had been in her heart during the few lucid intervals which had been given to her. She had been delirious most of the time, and in her delirium had talked of things which made poor Bessie shudder, they revealed to her so much more of her mother"s past than she had ever known.
Monte Carlo was the field to which her fancy oftenest took flight, and there, at the gaming-table she sat again, going through the excitement of the olden time, losing and winning--winning and losing--sometimes with Teddy at her side, and sometimes with men of a baser, lower type, with whom she bandied jests, until the scene was too horrible even for the iron-nerved Flossie to endure. Then, there were moments of perfect consciousness, when she knew and spoke rationally to those about her, and tried to comfort Bessie, who insisted upon having a lounge taken into the room so that she might see her mother, if she could not minister to her.
Once, startled by the expression of the faces around her, Daisy said:
"Why do you all look so sorry? Am I very sick? Am I going to die? Oh, _am_ I going to die? I cannot die. I cannot! Don"t let me die! Don"t; don"t."
It was like the cry of a frightened child begging a reprieve from punishment, and that piteous "Don"t! don"t!" rang in Bessie"s ears long after the lips which uttered the words were silent in death.
During their journeyings together, Daisy had shown the best there was in her and had really seemed trying to reform. When, on her return from America, she had suggested that they go abroad, saying she would sell her diamonds to defray the expenses, Bessie had refused at first, and had only consented on condition that her mother abandoned all her old habits of life, and neither played nor bet, nor practiced any of her wiles upon the opposite s.e.x for the purpose of extorting money from them. And all this Daisy promised.
"I"ll be as circ.u.mspect as a Methodist parson"s wife," she said; and she kept her word as well as it was possible for her to do.
She neither played, nor bet, nor coaxed money from her acquaintances by pretty tales of poverty, and if she sometimes bandied familiar jests with her gentlemen friends, Bessie did not know it, and there was springing up in her heart a strong feeling of respect for her mother who, just as the new life was beginning, was to be taken from her.
"Oh, mamma," she sobbed, putting her poor, pale, face close to that of the dying woman, for Neil had taken her in his arms and laid her beside her mother "oh, mamma, how can I give you up." Then, as the greater fear for her mother"s future overmastered every other feeling, she said: "Speak to me, mother; tell me you are not afraid; tell me you are sorry; tell me, oh, my Heavenly Father, if mother must die, forgive her all the past and take her to Thyself."
"Yes," Daisy murmured, moving a little uneasily, "Forgive me all the past--and there is so much to forgive. I am sorry, and most of all for Archie and Bessie, whom I neglected so long. Oh, how pleasant the old home at Stoneleigh looks to me now. Bury me by Archie in the gra.s.s, it is so quiet there; and now it is getting late. I think I will retire.
Good-night!"
And then, folding her hands together, she said the "Now I lay me," and Flossie, who was bending over her, knew that she was dead, and motioning to Neil, bade him take Bessie away.
Neil was very tender and very kind and loving to the poor little girl quivering with pain, but uttering no sound and shedding no tear as she lay pa.s.sive in his arms, but he felt that he was badly abused, and that the burden laid upon him was heavier than he could bear. Could he have had his way, Daisy would have been buried in the Protestant cemetery, in Rome. This would have been far less expensive and have saved him no end of trouble. But when he suggested it to Bessie, she said "No" so decidedly that he gave it up and nerved himself to meet what he never could have met but for Flossie, who, as far as she could, managed everything, even to battling fiercely with the proprietor, whose bill she compelled him to lessen by several hundred francs, and when he demanded payment for four dozen towels which he said had been ruined, she insisted upon taking the towels, which she said were hers, if she paid for them. Never had portier or clerk encountered such a tempest as she proved to be, and they finally surrendered the field and let her have her own way, shrugging their shoulders significantly, as they called her "_la pet.i.te diable Irelandaise_."
It was old Mrs. Meredith who furnished the necessary funds, for there was no time to send to England. Neil telegraphed to his father, asking him to go down to Stoneleigh and meet them on their arrival with the body. But the Hon. John was suffering with the gout, and only Anthony and Dorothy were there, when Neil and Flossie and Bessie came, the latter utterly exhausted and unable to sit up a moment after entering the house. So they took her to her old room, which Dorothy had made as comfortable and pleasant as she could; and there Bessie lay, weak as a little child, while the kind neighbors came again and stood in the yew-shaded cemetery where Daisy was buried and where there was room for no more of the McPhersons.
"Now what?" Flossie said to Neil, when the burial was over and they sat alone in the parlor; "now what are you going to do?" and when he answered, gloomily, "I am sure I don"t know," she flashed her black eyes upon him and replied: "You don"t know? Then let me tell you; marry Bessie at once. What else can you do? Surely you will not leave her here alone?"
"I know I ought not to leave her here," Neil said, despondingly. "But I cannot marry her now."
"Why not?" Flossie asked him sharply, and he replied:
"I cannot marry her and starve, as we surely should do. I have no means of my own, and mother would turn me from her door if I brought her Bessie as my wife. As it is, I dread going to her with all these heavy bills. It was a foolish thing to bring Mrs. McPherson home, and I said so at the time. That woman has been a curse to every one with whom she ever came in contact."
"Oh, mamma, poor mamma, I wish I, too, were dead, as you are," moaned, or rather gasped a little white-faced girl who was standing just outside the door, and had heard all Neil was saying.
Bessie had remained upstairs as long as she could endure it, and when she heard voices in the parlor and knew that Neil and Flossie were there, she arose, and, putting on a dressing-gown and shawl, crept down stairs to go to them. But Flossie"s question arrested her steps, and leaning against the side of the door, she heard all their conversation, and knew the bitterness there was in Neil"s heart toward her mother, less by what he said, than by the tone of his voice as he said it, for there was in it a cold, hard ring which made her shiver and sent her back to the bed she had quitted, where she lay for hours, until she had thought it out and knew what she meant to do. But she said nothing of her decision either to Neil or Flossie, the latter of whom left her the next day to join her grandmother, in London.
Neil waited a few days longer, loath to leave Bessie and dreading to go home and meet what he knew he must meet when he told his mother the amount of her indebtedness to Mrs. Meredith, who had signified her wish to be paid as soon as possible.
Naturally dull of perception as he was, Neil was vaguely conscious of a change in Bessie"s manner, but he attributed it to grief for the loss of her mother, wondering a little that she could mourn so deeply, a death, which, to him, seemed a relief, for Daisy was not a person whom he would care to acknowledge as his mother-in-law.
Bessie could not forget the words she had overheard, and though they might be true, she knew Neil ought not to have spoken them to a comparative stranger, and she began to realize, as she never had before, that in Neil"s nature there was much which did not accord with hers.
Many and many a time thoughts of Grey Jerrold filled her mind, and in her half-waking hours at night, she heard again his voice, so full of sympathy, and felt an inexpressible longing to see him again, and hear him speak to her. Still, she meant to be loyal to Neil, and on the morning of his departure, when he was deploring his inability to marry her at once, she lifted her sad eyes to him and said: