For an instant Daisy shuddered, and fancied she felt an icy chill, as if her husband"s words were words of prophecy and a blast were blowing upon her from some dark, cold grave. But she was too young to die; death was not for her these many years; it was only waiting for this enfeebled man, whom she wheeled back to the house where Bessie was, and where the birds he heard so often came and sang to him of green fields and flowery meadows beyond the sea, where he saw always Bessie with a look of rest and sweet content upon her face, instead of the tired, watchful, waiting look habitual to it now.
And so, listening to the birds, he fell asleep, as was his wont, and Daisy shook off the chill which had oppressed her, and busied herself with the preparations for her journey.
CHAPTER XVII.
MRS. ROSSITER-BROWNE.
In due time Mrs. Rossiter-Browne and her daughter, Augusta, came to the "George," with their maid, and took possession of the best rooms, and scattered shillings and half-crowns with a lavishness which made every servant their slave. Of course Daisy called, bearing Bessie"s compliments and regrets, and then Mrs. Browne and Augusta came to Stoneleigh in the finest turn-out which the hotel could boast, for though the distance was short, Mrs. Browne never walked when she could ride, and on this occasion she was out for a drive, "to see the elephant of Bangor, trunk and all, for she was bound nothing should escape her which she ought to see, if she died for it, and she guessed she should before she got round home, as she was completely tuckered out with sight-seeing," she said, as she sank pantingly into an easy-chair in the large cool room, which Daisy had made very bright and attractive with fresh muslin curtains, a rug, a table-spread, and some tidies brought from Nice. This room, which was only used in summer, had on the floor a heavy Axminster, which had done service for forty years at least, but still showed what it had been, and spoke of the former grandeur of the place, as did the ma.s.sive and uncomfortable chairs of solid mahogany, the old pier-gla.s.s against the wall, and the queerly shaped sofa, on which Daisy had thrown a bright striped shawl, which changed its aspect wonderfully. She wished to make a good impression upon her American friend, and she succeeded beyond her most sanguine hopes. With her ideas of the greatness and importance of the McPhersons, who, if poor, were aristocrats, Mrs. Browne was prepared to see every thing _couleur de rose_, and the old wainscoted room and quaint furniture delighted her more even than the pretty little devices with which Daisy had thought to make the room more modern and heighten the effect.
"If there"s anything I dote on particularly, it"s on ancestry halls,"
Mrs. Rossiter-Browne said, as she looked admiringly around her. "Now them chairs, which a Yankee would hide in the garret, speak of a past and tell you"ve been somebody a good while. I"d give the world for such an old place as this at home; but, my land! we are that new in America that the starch fairly rattles as we walk. We are only a hundred years old, you know; had our centennial two or three years ago. That was a big show, I tell you; most as good as Europe, and better in some respects, for I could be wheeled in a chair and see things comfortable, while over here, my land! my legs is most broke off, and I tell Gusty I"ll have to get a new pair if I stay much longer. Think of me climbing up Pisa, and St. Peter"s, and all the Campyniles in the country, and that bra.s.s thing in Munich to boot, where I thought I should of sweltered, and all to say you"ve been there. It"s a park of nonsense, I tell "em, though I s"pose it does cultivate you, and that reconciles me to it."
Here the lady paused for breath, and Augusta, whose face was very red, began to talk to Bessie of Wales and the wild, beautiful scenery. She was as well educated as most young ladies of her cla.s.s, and was really a very pretty, lady-like girl, who expressed herself well and intelligently, and was evidently annoyed by her mother"s manner of speaking, for she tried to keep the conversation in her own hands, and Bessie, who guessed her design, helped her to do so; and after a few moments Mrs. Browne arose to go, and, shaking out her silk flounces and pulling her hands to her ears to make sure her immense diamonds were not unclasped, because, as she said, she would not for a farm lose her _solitarys_, she said good-morning, and was driven away to see the _elephant_ of Bangor and vicinity.
Bessie drew a long breath of relief as she saw the carriage leave the park, and said: "Oh, mother, how can you find pleasure in her society, and are the Americans generally like her?"
"Not half as good as she, some of them, though vastly more refined and better educated," Daisy replied, warming up in defense of the woman who was so kind to her, and whom she knew to be honest and true as steel.
"There are plenty of ignorant, vulgar women in England, traveling on their money recently acquired, who at heart are not half as good as Mrs.
Browne," she said; "and for that matter there are t.i.tled ladies too who know precious little more than she. Why, old Lady Oakley once sent me a note, in which more than half the words were misspelled, and her capitals were everywhere except in the right place; but she is _my lady_, and so it is all right. I tell you Bessie, there is, after all, but little difference between the English and the Americans, who, as a cla.s.s, are better informed than we are and know ten times more about our country than we do about theirs."
Daisy grew very eloquent and earnest as she talked, but Bessie was not convinced, and felt a shrinking from Mrs. Rossiter-Browne as from something positively bad; and here she did the woman great injustice, for never was there a kinder, truer heart than Mrs. Browne"s, and if, in her girlhood, she had possessed a t.i.the of her present fortune, she would have made a far different woman from what she was.
For a few days longer she staid at the "George," and astonished the guests with the richness of her toilets and the singularity of her speech, which was something wonderful to her hearers, who looked upon her as a specimen of Americans generally. But this she would not permit; and once, when she overheard the remark, "that"s a fair sample of them, I suppose," turned fiercely on the knot of ladies who, she knew, were discussing her, and said:
"If it"s me you are talking up and think a fair sample let me tell you that you are much mistaken. I ain"t a sample of nothin". I am just myself, and Uncle Sam is not at all responsible for me, unless it is that he didn"t give me a chance, when young, to go to school. I was poor, and had to work for my livin", and my old blind mother"s, too. She is dead this many a year; but if she could of lived till now, when I have so much more than I know what to do with, I"d have dressed her up in silks and satins, and brought her over the seas and flouted her in your faces as another sample of your American cousins, who, take "em by and large, are quite as refined as your English women, and enough sight better informed about everything. Why, only t"other day one of "em asked me what language was generally spoken in New York city, and didn"t a school-girl from Edinburgh ask Gusty if the people out West were not all heathens, and if Chicago was near Boston! I tell you, ladies, folks who live in gla.s.s houses should not throw stones. You are well enough, and nice enough, and on _voices_ you beat us all holler, for "tis a fact that most of us pitch ours too high and talk through our noses awful, and maybe you"d do that too, if you lived in our beastly climate, but as a rule you have not an atom more learning or refinement at heart than we."
Thus speaking, she sailed from the room with an air which would have befitted a grand d.u.c.h.ess, leaving her astonished auditors to look at each other a moment in silence, and then to express themselves fully and freely and unreservedly with regard to American effrontery, American manners, and American slang, as represented by Mrs. Rossiter-Browne.
It was a day or two after this that the French tea was served in the Stoneleigh garden, with strawberries and cream and sponge cakes, and Daisy did the honors as hostess admirably, and Mrs. Rossiter-Browne, resplendent in garnet satin and diamonds, sat in a covered garden-chair and noted everything with a view to repeat it sometime in the garden of her country house at home. "She"d show "em what was what," she thought.
"She"d Let "em know that she had traveled and had been invited out among the gentry," for such she believed Daisy to be, and she antic.i.p.ated with a great deal of complacency the sensation which that airy, graceful, woman would create in Ridgeville, the little place a mile or more from Allington, where her husband"s farm was situated, and where stood the once old-fashioned house, but now very pretentious residence, which she called the Ridge House. She was going there direct after reaching New York, and thither numerous boxes had preceded her, containing pictures and statuary and other trophies of her travels abroad, and Daisy, whose exquisite taste she knew and appreciated, was to help her arrange the new things, and then "she"d give a smasher of a party," she said, as she sat in her garden-chair and talked of the surprise and happiness in store for the _Ridgevillians_ when she issued cards for her garden party.
"I sha"n"t slight n.o.body at all edible to society," she said, "for I don"t believe in that. I shall have Miss Lucy Grey, of course, from Grey"s Park, for she is the cream-dilly-cream of Allington, she and your Aunt, Miss McPherson," turning to Daisy, "and mebby I shall ask Hanner Jerrold, though she never goes anywheres--that"s Grey"s aunt," and now she nodded to Bessie, who at the mention of the name Jerrold, evinced a little interest in what the lady was saying.
Turning to Augusta, who was eating her strawberries and cream in silence, with a look of vexation on her face as her mother floundered on, she said:
"I think you told me you knew Mr. Grey Jerrold?"
"Yes," Augusta replied, "that is, he once spent a summer in Allington and I went to the same school with him; since then we have met several times in Allington and two or three times here. Still, I really know very little of him."
"Who"s that you know very little of--Grey Jerrold?" Mrs. Browne chimed in. "Well, I call that droll. Have you forgot how often he used to come home from school with you, and how he fished you out of the pond that time you fell in? Why, he was that free at our house, that he used always to ask for something to eat, and would often add on, "something baked to day." You see, he didn"t like dry victuals, such as his Aunt Hannah gave him. She is _tight_ as the bark of a tree, and queer too, with it all."
It grated on Bessie"s nerves to hear Mrs. Browne speak of Grey as if she were his equal, and recognized as such at home, and she was glad when Augusta said, quietly:
"But, mother, I was a little girl then, six or seven years old, and Grey felt at home at our house because--"
She did not finish the sentence, as she had evidently struck against a reef which her mother overleaped by saying:
"Yes, I know, Grey was always a nice boy, and not one bit stuck up like his proud mother. I hate Geraldine Grey; yes, I do!" and Mrs. Browne manifested the first sign of unamiability which Daisy had ever seen in her. But Daisy, who remembered perfectly the haughty woman she had met at Penrhyn Park years before, hated her, too, and so there was accord between her and her guest.
"Mr. Jerrold told me of his aunt who lives in the pasture, and whom he loves very much. Do you know her?" Bessie asked, and Mrs. Browne replied:
"Yes; that"s his Aunt Hanner, the one I told you was so tight. She is an old maid, and queer, too; lives all alone, and saves and lays up every cent. I believe she wears the same black gown now for best which she wore thirteen years ago to her father"s funeral. He was a queer one too; crazy, some said, and I guess "twas true. He took a fancy to stay in one room all the time and would not let anybody in but Hanner, and now he is dead she keeps that room shet up and locked, some say. I was at the funeral, and Grey, who was a boy, took on awful, and hung over the coffin ever so long. He was sick with fever after it, and everybody thought he"d die. He was crazy as a loon. I watched with him one night and he talked every thing you could think of, about a grave hid away somewhere--under his bed, he seemed to think--and made me go down on all fours to look for it. I suppose he was thinking of his grandfather so lately buried. And then, he kept talking about _Bessie_ and asking why she did not come."
"Bessie! Me!" the young girl exclaimed, with crimson cheeks, and Mrs.
Browne replied:
"No; "taint likely it was you; and yet, let me see! Yes, well, I declare; I remember now that his Aunt Lucy, who sat up with me, told me it was a little girl they had talked about before him, a grandniece of Miss Betsey McPherson. Yes, that was you, sure! Isn"t it droll, though?"
Bessie did not reply, but in her heart there was a strange feeling as she thought that before she had ever heard of Grey Jerrold, he had been interested in and talked of her in his delirium and in his fevered dreams.
Soon after this, Mrs. Browne arose to go, and said good-by to Bessie, whom she did not expect to see again, as they were to leave on the morrow for Chester, where her husband and son were to meet them. It was Daisy"s last day at home, and though she had been away many times for a longer period than it was now her intention to stay, this going was different, for the broad sea she was to cross would put an immense distance between her and her husband and child, and she was unusually quiet and gentle and affectionate, telling Bessie, who seemed greatly depressed, that the summer would pa.s.s quickly and she should be back to stay for good until the invalid was better or worse.
The next morning when she went to say good-by to her husband he welcomed her with a smile, and with something of his old, courteous manner put out his hand to greet her. She took it between her own, and raising it to her lips, knelt beside him, and laying her head against his arm, said to him, softly:
"Archie, I have come to say good-by, but only a little while. I shall soon be back to stay with you always, or until you are better."
"I shall never be any better," he replied, never suspecting how far she was going from him, "but go, if you like," he continued, "and be happy.
I do not mind it as I used to, for I have Bessie and the birds, who sing to me now all the time. Can"t you hear them? They are saying "Archie, Archie, come," as if it were my mother calling to me."
His mind was wandering now, and Daisy felt a thrill of pain as she looked at him and felt that he was not getting better, that he was failing fast, though just how fast she did not guess.
"Archie," she said, at last, "you love me, don"t you? You told me you did in the garden the other day, but I want to hear it again."
"Love you? You?" he said, inquiringly, as he looked at her with an unsteady, imbecile gaze as if to ask who she was that he should love her.
"Yes," she said. "I am Daisy. Don"t you remember the little girl who used to come to you under the yews?"
"Yes," and his lip trembled a little. "The girl who gave herself and her bonnet to shield me from the flies and sun. You did that then; but Bessie has given herself to me, body and soul, through cold and hunger, sunshine and storm. G.o.d bless her, G.o.d bless my darling Bessie."
"And won"t you bless me, too, Archie? I should like to remember that in time to come," Daisy said, seized by some impulse she could not understand.
Archie hesitated a moment as if not quite comprehending her, then drawing her down to him he kissed her with the old, fervent kiss he used to give her when they were boy and girl together, and, laying his hand upon her head, said tremblingly:
"Will G.o.d bless Daisy, too, and bring her at last to where I shall be waiting for her?"
Then Daisy withdrew herself from him, and without another word went out from his presence and never saw him again. To Bessie, sobbing by the door, she said very little; there was a pa.s.sionate embrace and a few farewell kisses and then she was gone, and twenty minutes later Bessie heard the train as it pa.s.sed bearing her mother away.
CHAPTER XVIII.
THE BIRDS WHICH SANG, AND THE SHADOW WHICH FELL.