Two years before, she had met an old acquaintance from London, who knew Neil and disliked him, consequently the impression she had received of him was not altogether favorable.
"A good-looking, well-meaning fellow," the man had said, "but very indolent, and selfish, and proud, with an inordinate love of money, and respect for those who have it."
And in this opinion the spinster was confirmed by his letter.
"Let me see!" she said, taking off her gla.s.ses, and regarding the fire intently. "He wishes me to send him a few thousand pounds to enable him to marry his cousin and live in idleness in his father"s house on Warwick Crescent until his mother is reconciled, and he wishes to know if I intend to make Bessie my heir. No, my fine London gentleman! If Bessie ever has a fortune it will not be from me. Now, if Neil wanted this money to set himself up in business; if he was going to work to earn his own bread and b.u.t.ter and support his family like an honest man, I would let him have it cheerfully. But work is the last thing he thinks about. It would degrade him. Ugh! it makes me so mad!" and she shook her head fiercely at the fire, as she went on:
"But the girl, if he tells the truth, is the right kind of stuff, staying at home, caring for her father, wearing shabby clothes, and even washing the dishes, which I have no doubt hurts him the most. I rather like this girl, and for her sake I will give Neil a chance, though I don"t suppose he will accept it. There are those cotton mills which I had to take on that debt of Carson"s. They have been nothing but a torment to me for the want of a capable man to look after them. I will offer the situation to Neil with a salary of two thousand dollars a year, and ten per cent. of the net profits, and I will let him have, rent free, the house which Carson occupied, and will furnish it, too, and have everything in running order when he gets here with his bride.
That I call a right generous offer, but, bless your soul, do you suppose he will take it?"
And she interrogated the fire, which made no response, except that a half dead coal dropped into the pan and went out into blackness.
"Of course he won"t," she continued, "for that would be doing something!
But we shall see. I will write the letter to-night," and ringing for her writing materials the old lady began her letter to Neil, telling him what she would do for him if he chose to come to America and try to help himself.
"The work is not hard," she wrote. "It requires more thought, and judgment, and tact, than anything else, but it will bring you in contact with some very second-cla.s.s people--_sc.u.m_, if you choose to call them so--and with some of the excellent of the earth as well for all grades are represented in the mills, and for what I know, the future Governor of Ma.s.sachusetts is working there to-day; but if he is, you may be sure he has a book somewhere around and studies it every chance he gets, for in this way our best men are made. If you do not choose to take my offer, I shall do nothing for you, and Bessie will be a fool to marry one who does not care enough for her to be willing to work and support her. I have no intention of making her my heir. My will is made, and I do not often change my mind. Still, I have a fancy for the girl--have always had a fancy for her, and if you bring her to me on the terms I offer, you will never be sorry."
This last Miss Betsey wrote because of the desire which kept growing in her heart as once it had before, to look again in Bessie"s face, to hear her voice, to feel the touch of her hands; and in short, to have some one to love and be interested in, as something told her she could be interested in and love Bessie McPherson.
The letter was sent to Neil, and the same mail took another to a well-known banking house in London with which Miss McPherson had business relations. To this house she gave instructions that the sum of one hundred pounds should at once be forwarded to Archibald McPherson, who was not on any account to know from whom the money came.
When her letters were gone she began again to build castles with regard to Bessie, whom she was expecting, in spite of her lack of confidence in Neil"s willingness to accept her offer.
In fancy she furnished the large stone house on the cliff above the mills, which Bessie was to occupy, and furnished it with no sparing hand. In fancy she climbed the sleep steps every day, and went in and out with the freedom of a mother, for such she meant to be to the young couple, both her own blood, and both seeming very near to her now when there was a chance of their coming to her and dispelling the loneliness of her monotonous life. But she kept her expectations to herself, not even telling them to Lucy Grey, or Hannah Jerrold, her most intimate friends, both of whom noticed a change in her, but did not guess why she seemed so much more cheerful and happy, or why she was so often in Worcester, inquiring the prices of china and gla.s.sware, and household furniture generally.
Once she was very near letting it out, and that was when Hannah was spending the afternoon with her, and said: "I have received a letter from Grey, who writes that he spent a day at Stoneleigh and saw your grandniece Bessie."
"What did he think of her?" Miss Betsey asked, and Hannah replied:
"He thought her the loveliest creature he had ever seen. I do believe he is more than half in love with her, for I never knew him so enthusiastic over a girl before."
"Yes," Miss McPherson said, and remembering what she knew Grey to be and what she feared Neil was, she thought, "Oh, if it were Grey and Bessie;"
and that night she dreamed that it was Grey and Bessie, and that she tore down the house on the cliff, overlooking the mill, and built there a palace something after the fashion of Chatsworth, except that it was more modern in its style and general appearance, and many pairs of eyes like those seen on the terrace at Aberystwyth looked into hers, and many little hands rubbed holes in her stuff dress, and many little voices called her grandma the name she bade them give her in place of auntie.
CHAPTER XV.
FROM JANUARY TO MARCH.
Never had Neil been more gracious or agreeable than during the interval when he was waiting for the answer to his letter. He felt sure of a favorable reply and that Bessie would be his before the June roses were in bloom, and that of itself kept him in a happy frame of mind. He was very attentive to Blanche and very kind to his mother, and he wrote long letters to Bessie three times a week, and went to church every Sunday and gave a half-penny to every little ragged child he met, and felt that Neil McPherson was a pretty good fellow after all.
At last the letter came, and Neil read it in the privacy of his room, and, being alone with no one to hear, called his aunt a name which sounded a little like swearing, and paced up and down the apartment with the perspiration standing thickly around his white lips, and a feeling at his heart as if he were not only bitterly disappointed but had also been insulted by the offer made to him.
"An overseer in some cotton mills!--factories they call them there. Not if I know myself!" he said. "_I_ stoop to that? Never! The old woman is a fool," (this with an adjective), "and she evidently thinks she is doing a big thing. Two thousand dollars a year! Why, that is not much more than mother allows me now, and I am awfully hard up at times. No, Bessie, you must wait a little longer until something turns up, as I am sure there will. An overseer! _I!_" and Neil"s voice was indicative of the scorn and contempt with which he regarded an overseer of cotton mills, and the vast difference he felt there was between such an individual and himself.
Neil was very sore and very much depressed, and his depression told upon his health, and he became so pale and haggard that his mother was alarmed, and insisted upon his leaving England for a time and going down to Cannes, in Southern France, where several of her friends were spending the winter. To this Neil made no objection, and wrote to Bessie of his plans, and made himself out so great an invalid that Bessie felt a fear in her heart lest her lover should die and she be left in the world alone, in case--She did not dare finish the thought, or put into words her conviction that her father was daily growing weaker, with less care for or interest in any thing pa.s.sing around him. This change for the worse had commenced with a heavy cold, taken soon after the holidays, and which none of Dorothy"s prescriptions could reach. It was in vain that Bessie tried to persuade him to let her call a physician.
"No, child," he said, "it"s nothing. I shall be better in a few days, when the weather moderates. I do not want a doctor, and if I did we are too poor. How much have we on hand?"
Bessie did not tell him the exact amount, for fear of troubling him in his weak, nervous condition.
Their Christmas hospitalities had cost them dear, and there was very little in the family purse with which to meet their necessities. Just after Neil"s departure there had come a letter from Daisy, who was in Nice, with some Americans, whose acquaintance she had made in Paris and whose party she had joined.
"These American friendships cost a great deal," she wrote, "for they stop at the most expensive hotels, and I must have a parlor and bedroom in order to keep up appearances, so I really have nothing to spare just now; but I send you a five-pound note which I borrowed for you from Mr. Jack Trevellian, who came day before yesterday and told me of his visit to Stoneleigh. If I am any judge, he is more than half in love with you, and when I said I was going to write and regretted that I could not send you any money, as I was sure you must need it after so much company, he insisted upon loaning me twenty pounds, and when I refused so large a sum he made me take ten, which I will divide with you. It was very generous in him, and when I said I should pay him as soon as possible, he begged me never to speak of it, as he would gladly give ten times that sum to one as faithful and kind to her father as you are. Jack is a good fellow, and there is only one life between him and a, t.i.tle, I hear. Try for him, Bessie; I know you can get him. Write him a little note and tell him how kind it was in him to loan me the money. That will be a beginning, but you need not say how much of it I sent you; as he designed it all for you, he might not like it if he knew I kept half. How is your father? The last time I was home I really thought he was threatened with softening of the brain, he seemed so sleepy and stupid and forgetful. Give him my love, and believe me always your affectionate mother,
"DAISY McPHERSON.
"P.S.--I hear Lord Hardy has returned from Egypt and is expected here. I am glad, for a sight of him will do me good. He is the best friend I ever had, and the first, except, of course, your father."
Such, in part, was Daisy"s letter, which Bessie read with an aching heart and cheeks which burned with shame. She wanted money sadly, for her boots were giving out at the sides, and the butcher"s bill was unpaid, and her father needed wine and jellies to tempt his sickly appet.i.te and keep up his failing strength. But she would have gone barefoot and denied herself food for a week sooner than touch the five-pound note her mother had wrung from Jack Trevellian, her recent guest.
"It was begged; it is a charity; it burns my hand," she said, as she held the note between her thumb and finger. "I will not have it in the house," and the next moment it was blackening on the fire where the indignant girl had thrown it, together with her mother"s letter, which her father must never see.
Oh, how for an instant Bessie loathed herself as she thought of her mother and saw in fancy the whole sickening performance at Nice, the daily jesting and badinage with those people around her--second-cla.s.s Americans, she was sure, or they would not take up her mother; but worst of all was the interview with Jack Trevellian, whose feelings had been wrought upon until he gave her ten pounds, because of her poverty!
"Oh, it is too horrible; but I will pay it back some time," she said, and kneeling by the firelight with her hot, tear-stained face buried in her hands, Bessie prayed earnestly that in some way see might be enabled to pay this debt to Jack Trevellian.
In her excitement she did not then regret that she had burned the note, though she knew that it was a rash act, and that it necessitated extra self-denials which would tell heavily upon her. With strong black linen thread and a bit of leather she patched her boots; she dressed and undressed in the cold, for she would allow no fire in her room; she never tasted meat, or tarts, or sweets, or delicacies of any kind, but contented herself with the simplest fare, and piled her father"s plate, begging him to eat, and watching him with feverish anxiety as her mother"s dreadful words rang in her ears--softening of the brain! Was that terrible disease stealing upon him? Would the time come when the kind eyes which now always brightened when they rested on her would have in them no sign of recognition, and the lips which spoke her name so lovingly utter only unmeaning words? It was terrible to contemplate, and Bessie felt she would rather see him dead than an imbecile.
"But what should I do with father gone?" she said, and her thoughts turned to Neil, who would surely take her then, even if he took her into poverty.
And so in a measure Bessie was comforted, and watched her father with untiring vigilance, and felt that he was slipping from her and that in all the world there was for her no ray of joy except in Neil"s love, which she never doubted, and without which her heart would have broken, it was so full of care and pain. And it was just when her heart was saddest because her father had that morning called her _Daisy_, and when she corrected him had said, "Yes, but I can"t think of your name; words go from me strangely at times; everything is confused," that Neil"s letter came, bringing her fresh cause for anxiety, and seeming with its brevity and strangeness, to put him farther from her than he would be in Cannes, whither he was going.
That night Bessie cried herself to sleep, and was so weak and sick the next morning that Dorothy persuaded her to stay in bed and brought her up her breakfast of toast, crisp and hot, with a fresh boiled egg and a cup of tea which she declared would almost give life to a dead man.
"But, Dolly," Bessie said, "you should not have brought me the egg; they are two pence apiece, and father must have them all. Can"t you keep it and warm it up for him?"
"Warm up an egg! Bless the child," and Dorothy laughed till the tears ran. "You can"t warm over a boiled egg, so eat it down; it will do you good, and you are growing so thin and pale. Here is a letter for your father; but as he is asleep I brought it to you."
Taking the letter, Bessie examined the address, which was a strange one to her. Evidently it was on business, and as nothing of that kind could mean anything but fresh anxiety and annoyance for her father, she resolved to know the contents and, if possible, keep them from the weak invalid. So she broke the seal and read with astonishment that Messrs.
Blank & Blank, bankers, in Lombard street, London, had been instructed by one who did not wish his name to appear, to send to Mr. Archibald McPherson of Stoneleigh, Bangor, the sum of one hundred pounds, and inclosed was a check for the same.
"Oh!" Bessie exclaimed, as she sprang up and began to dress herself rapidly. "One hundred pounds! Why, we are rich, and father can have everything he wants. I wonder how much a bottle of Johannisberger wine would cost."
Then there crept into her mind the question, who sent it? Was it the Hon. John? Was it Neil? or--and Bessie"s heart stood still a moment and then beat with a heavy pain--or was it Jack Trevellian, who had done this because of what her mother had told him of their needs? It was like him, she knew, but if it were he, she could never touch the money, and without a word to her father of the letter, she wrote at once to Messrs.
Blank & Blank, Lombard street, asking if it were Mr. Trevellian, and saying if it were, she must return the check as they could not keep it.
"Direct your answer to me," she wrote, "as I transact all my father"s business for him."
In two days the answer come, very stiffly worded, but a.s.suring her that the donor was not Mr. Trevellian and that her father need have no scruples about taking the money, and would have none did he know from whom it came. This satisfied Bessie, who took the letter to her father, confessing all she had done, and with him trying to guess who had been so kind to them.
"I can think of no one except my aunt in America," Archie said, "and she is not likely to remember us in this way after so many years" silence."
"If I thought it were she I would write to her," Bessie said, "and at all events I will write to _somebody_ and thank them, and send the letter to Messrs. Blank & Blank, in London. They know who it is and will forward it for me."
Accordingly the next Bangor mail for London bore in it a letter from Bessie to their unknown friend.