In the distance the red and colored gleaming lights of an apothecary"s shop caught her gaze.
"Yes, that way will be best," she said, reflectively.
She drew the shawl closer about her, pressing on as rapidly as her feeble little feet would carry her. How weak she was when she turned the k.n.o.b and entered--the very lights seemed dancing around her.
A small, keen-eyed, shrewd little man stepped briskly forward to wait upon her. He started back in horror at the utter despair and woe in the beautiful young face that was turned for a moment toward him, beautiful in all its pallor as a statue, with a crown of golden hair such as pictures of angels wear encircling the perfect head.
"What can I do for you, miss?" queried the apothecary, gazing searchingly into the beautiful dreamy blue eyes raised up to his and wondering who she could possibly be.
"I wish to purchase some laudanum," Daisy faltered. "I wish it to relieve a pain which is greater than I can bear."
"Toothache, most probably?" intimated the brisk little doctor. "I know what it is. Lord bless you! I"ve had it until I thought I should jump through the roof. Laudanum"s a first-cla.s.s thing, but I can tell you of something better--jerk "em out, that"s my recipe," he said, with an odd little smile. "Of course every one to their notion, and if you say laudanum--and nothing else--why it"s laudanum you shall have; but remember it"s powerful. Why, ten drops of it would cause--death."
"How many drops did you say?" asked Daisy, bending forward eagerly.
"I--I want to be careful in taking it."
"Ten drops, I said, would poison a whole family, and twenty a regiment. You must use it very carefully, miss. Remember I have warned you," he said, handing her the little bottle filled with a dark liquid and labeled conspicuously, "Laudanum--a poison."
"Please give me my change quickly," she said, a strange, deadly sickness creeping over her.
"Certainly, ma"am," a.s.sented the obliging little man, handing her back the change.
Daisy quite failed to notice that he returned her the full amount she had paid him in his eagerness to oblige her, and he went happily back to compounding his drugs in the rear part of the shop, quite unconscious he was out the price of the laudanum.
He was dreaming of the strange beauty of the young girl, and the smile deepened on his good-humored face as he remembered how sweetly she had gazed up at him.
Meanwhile Daisy struggled on, clasping her treasure close to her throbbing heart. She remembered Ruth had pointed out an old shaft to her from her window; it had been unused many years, she had said.
"The old shaft shall be my tomb," she said; "no one will think of looking for me there."
Poor little Daisy--unhappy girl-bride, let Heaven not judge her harshly--she was sorely tried.
"Mother, mother!" she sobbed, in a dry, choking voice, "I can not live any longer. I am not taking the life G.o.d gave me, I am only returning it to Him. This is the only crime I have ever committed, mother, and man will forget it, and G.o.d will forgive me. You must plead for me, angel-mother. Good-bye, dear, kind Uncle John, your love never failed me, and Rex--oh, Rex--whom I love best of all, you will not know how I loved you. Oh, my love--my lost love--I shall watch over you up there!" she moaned, "and come to you in your dreams! Good-bye, Rex, my love, my husband!" she sobbed, holding the fatal liquid to her parched lips.
The deep yawning chasm lay at her feet. Ten--ay, eleven drops she hastily swallowed. Then with one last piteous appeal to Heaven for forgiveness, poor, helpless little Daisy closed her eyes and sprung into the air.
CHAPTER XVI.
A strong hand drew Daisy quickly back.
"Rash child! What is this that you would do?" cried an eager, earnest voice, and, turning quickly about, speechless with fright, Daisy met the stern eyes of the apothecary bent searchingly, inquiringly upon her.
"It means that I am tired of life," she replied, desperately. "My life is so full of sadness it will be no sorrow to leave it. I wanted to rest quietly down there, but you have held me back; it is useless to attempt to save me now. I have already swallowed a portion of the laudanum. Death must come to relieve me soon. It would be better to let me die down there where no one could have looked upon my face again."
"I had no intention to let you die so easily," said the apothecary, softly. "I read your thoughts too plainly for that. I did not give you laudanum, but a harmless mixture instead, and followed you to see if my surmise was correct. You are young and fair--surely life could not have lost all hope and sunshine for you?"
"You do not know all," said Daisy, wearily, "or you would not have held me back. I do not know of another life so utterly hopeless as my own."
The good man looked at the sweet, innocent, beautiful face, upon which the starlight fell, quite bewildered and thoughtful.
"I should like to know what your trouble is," he said, gently.
"I could tell you only one half of it," she replied, wearily. "I have suffered much, and yet through no fault of my own. I am cast off, deserted, condemned to a loveless, joyless life; my heart is broken; there is nothing left me but to die. I repeat that it is a sad fate."
"It is indeed," replied the apothecary, gravely. "Yet, alas! not an uncommon one. Are you quite sure that nothing can remedy it?"
"Quite sure," replied Daisy, hopelessly. "My doom is fixed; and no matter how long I live, or how long he lives, it can never be altered."
The apothecary was uncomfortable without knowing why, haunted by a vague, miserable suspicion, which poor Daisy"s words secretly corroborated; yet it seemed almost a sin to harbor one suspicion against the purity of the artless little creature before him. He looked into the fresh young face. There was no cloud on it, no guilt lay brooding in the clear, truthful blue eyes. He never dreamed little Daisy was a wife. "Why did he not love her?" was the query the apothecary asked himself over and over again; "she is so young, so loving, and so fair. He has cast her off, this man to whom she has given the pa.s.sionate love of her young heart."
"You see you did wrong to hold me back," she said, gently. "How am I to live and bear this sorrow that has come upon me? What am I to do?"
She looked around her with the bewildered air of one who had lost her way, with the dazed appearance of one from beneath whose feet the bank of safety has been withdrawn. Hope was dead, and the past a blank.
"No matter what your past has been, my poor child, you must remember there is a future. Take up the burden again, and bear it n.o.bly; go back to your home, and commence life anew."
"I have no home and no friends," she sighed, hopelessly.
"Poor child," he said, pityingly, "is it as bad as that?"
A sudden idea seemed to occur to him.
"You are a perfect stranger to me," he said, "but I believe you to be an honorable girl, and I should like to befriend you, as I would pray Heaven to befriend a daughter of mine if she were similarly situated.
If I should put you in a way of obtaining your own living as companion to an elderly lady in a distant city, would you be willing to take up the tangled threads of your life again, and wait patiently until G.o.d saw fit to call you--that is, you would never attempt to take your life into your own hands again?" he asked, slowly. "Remember, such an act is murder, and a murderer can not enter the kingdom of heaven."
He never forgot the startled, frightened glance that swept over the beautiful face, plainly discernible in the white moonlight, nor the quiver of the sweet, tremulous voice as Daisy answered:
"I think G.o.d must have intended me to live, or He would not have sent you here to save me," she answered, impulsively. "Twice I have been near death, and each time I have been rescued. I never attempted to take my own life but this once. I shall try and accept my fate and live out my weary life."
"Bravely spoken, my n.o.ble girl," replied her rescuer, heartily.
"I must go far away from here, though," she continued, shuddering; "I am sorely persecuted here."
The old man listened gravely to her disconnected, incoherent words, drawing but one conclusion from them--"the lover who had cast her off was pursuing the child, as her relentless foe, to the very verge of death and despair."
"It is my sister who wants a companion," he said. "She lives in the South--in Florida. Do you think you would like to go as far away as that?"
"Yes," said Daisy, mechanically. "I should like to go to the furthest end of the world. It does not matter much where I go!"
How little she knew where fate was drifting her! Rex had not told her his home was in Florida; he meant to tell her that on the morning he was to have met her.
"It will be a long, wearisome journey for you to undertake, still I feel sure you are brave enough to accomplish it in safety."
"I thank you very much for your confidence in me, sir," said Daisy, simply.