"Perhaps Daisy will go for you," suggested Bess.
There was no need of being jealous _now_ of Daisy"s beauty in that direction. Gertie gladly availed herself of the suggestion.
"Daisy," she said, turning abruptly to the quivering little figure, whose face drooped over the lilac silk, "never mind finishing that dress to-night. I wish you to take a note over to the large gray stone house yonder, and be sure to deliver it to Mr. Rex Lyon himself."
CHAPTER XXV.
Gertie Glenn never forgot the despairing cry that broke from Daisy"s white lips as she repeated her command:
"I wish you to deliver this note to Mr. Rex Lyon himself."
"Oh, Miss Gertie," she cried, clasping her hands together in an agony of entreaty, "I can not--oh, indeed I can not! Ask anything of me but that and I will gladly do it!"
Both girls looked at her in sheer astonishment.
"What is the reason you can not?" cried Gertie, in utter amazement. "I do not comprehend you."
"I--I can not take the note," she said, in a frightened whisper. "I do not--I--"
She stopped short in utter confusion.
"I choose you shall do just as I bid you," replied Gertie, in her imperious, scornful anger. "It really seems to me you forget your position here, Miss Brooks. How dare you refuse me?"
Opposition always strengthened Gertie"s decision, and she determined Daisy should take her note to Rex Lyon at all hazards.
The eloquent, mute appeal in the blue eyes raised to her own was utterly lost on her.
"The pride of these dependent companions is something ridiculous," she went on, angrily. "You consider yourself too fine, I suppose, to be made a messenger of." Gertie laughed aloud, a scornful, mocking laugh.
"Pride and poverty do not work very well together. You may go to your room now and get your hat and shawl. I shall have the letter written in a very few minutes. There will be no use appealing to mamma. You ought to know by this time we overrule her objections always."
It was too true, Mrs. Glenn never had much voice in a matter where Bess or Gertie had decided the case.
Like one in a dream Daisy turned from them. She never remembered how she gained her own room. With cold, tremulous fingers she fastened her hat, tucking the bright golden hair carefully beneath her veil, and threw her shawl over her shoulders, just as Gertie approached, letter in hand.
"You need not go around by the main road," she said, "there is a much nearer path leading down to the stone wall. You need not wait for an answer: there will be none. The servants over there are awkward, blundering creatures--do not trust it to them--you must deliver it to Rex himself."
"I make one last appeal to you, Miss Gertie. Indeed, it is not pride that prompts me. I could not bear it. Have pity on me. You are gentle and kind to others; please, oh, please be merciful to me!"
"I have nothing more to say upon the subject--I have said you were to go. You act as if I were sending you to some place where you might catch the scarlet fever or the mumps. You amuse me; upon my word you do. Rex is not dangerous, neither is he a Bluebeard; his only fault is being alarmingly handsome. The best advice I can give you is, don"t admire him too much. He should be labeled, "Out of the market.""
Gertie tripped gayly from the room, her crimson satin ribbons fluttering after her, leaving a perceptible odor of violets in the room, while Daisy clutched the note in her cold, nervous grasp, walking like one in a terrible dream through the bright patches of glittering moonlight, through the sweet-scented, rose-bordered path, on through the dark shadows of the trees toward the home of Rex--her husband.
A soft, brooding silence lay over the sleeping earth as Daisy, with a sinking heart, drew near the house. Her soft footfalls on the green mossy earth made no sound.
Silently as a shadow she crept up to the blossom-covered porch; some one was standing there, leaning against the very pillar around which she had twined her arms as she watched Rex"s shadow on the roses.
The shifting moonbeams pierced the white, fleecy clouds that enveloped them, and as he turned his face toward her she saw it was Rex. She could almost have reached out her hand and touched him from where she stood. She was sorely afraid her face or her voice might startle him if she spoke to him suddenly.
"I do not need to speak," she thought. "I will go up to him and lay the letter in his hand."
Then a great intense longing came over her to hear his voice and know that he was speaking to her. She had quite decided to pursue this course, when the rustle of a silken garment fell upon her ear. She knew the light tread of the slippered feet but too well--it was Pluma.
She went up to him in her usual caressing fashion, laying her white hand on his arm.
"Do you know you have been standing here quite two hours, Rex, watching the shadows of the vine-leaves? I have longed to come up and ask you what interest those dancing shadows had for you, but I could not make up my mind to disturb you. I often fancy you do not know how much time you spend in thought."
Pluma was wondering if he was thinking of that foolish, romantic fancy that had come so near separating them--his boyish fancy for Daisy Brooks, their overseer"s niece. No, surely not. He must have forgotten her long ago.
"These reveries seem to have grown into a habit with me," he said, dreamily; "almost a second nature, of late. If you were to come and talk to me at such times, you would break me of it."
The idea pleased her. A bright flush rose to her face, and she made him some laughing reply, and he looked down upon her with a kindly smile.
Oh! the torture of it to the poor young wife standing watching them, with heart on fire in the deep shadow of the crimson-hearted pa.s.sion-flowers that quivered on the intervening vines. The letter she held in her hand slipped from her fingers into the bushes all unheeded. She had but one thought--she must get away. The very air seemed to stifle her; her heart seemed numb--an icy band seemed pressing round it, and her poor forehead was burning hot. It did not matter much where she went, n.o.body loved her, n.o.body cared for her. As softly as she came, she glided down the path that led to the entrance-gate beyond. She pa.s.sed through the moonlighted grounds, where the music and fragrance of the summer night was at its height.
The night wind stirred the pink clover and the blue-bells beneath her feet. Her eyes were hot and dry; tears would have been a world of relief to her, but none came to her parched eyelids.
She paid little heed to the direction she took. One idea alone took possession of her--she must get away.
"If I could only go back to dear old Uncle John," she sighed. "His love has never failed me."
It seemed long years back since she had romped with him, a happy, merry child, over the cotton fields, and he had called her his sunbeam during all those years when no one lived at Whitestone Hall and the wild ivy climbed riotously over the windows and doors. Even Septima"s voice would have sounded so sweet to her. She would have lived over again those happy, childish days, if she only could. She remembered how Septima would send her to the brook for water, and how she sprinkled every flower in the path-way that bore her name; and how Septima would scold her when she returned with her bucket scarce half full; and how she had loved to dream away those sunny summer days, lying under the cool, shady trees, listening to the songs the robins sang as they glanced down at her with their little sparkling eyes.
How she had dreamed of the gallant young hero who was to come to her some day. She had wondered how she would know him, and what were the words he first would say! If he would come riding by, as the judge did when "Maud Muller stood in the hay-fields;" and she remembered, too, the story of "Rebecca at the Well." A weary smile flitted over her face as she remembered when she went to the brook she had always put on her prettiest blue ribbons, in case she might meet her hero.
Oh, those sweet, bright, rosy dreams of girlhood! What a pity it is they do not last forever! Those girlish dreams, where glowing fancy reigns supreme, and the prosaic future is all unknown. She remembered her meeting with Rex, how every nerve in her whole being thrilled, and how she had felt her cheeks grow flaming hot, just as she had read they would do when she met the right one. That was how she had known Rex was the right one when she had shyly glanced up, from under her long eyelashes, into the gay, brown hazel eyes, fixed upon her so quizzically, as he took the heavy basket from her slender arms, that never-to-be-forgotten June day, beneath the blossoming magnolia-tree.
Poor child! her life had been a sad romance since then. How strange it was she was fleeing from the young husband whom she had married and was so quickly parted from!
All this trouble had come about because she had so courageously rescued her letter from Mme. Whitney.
"If he had not bound me to secrecy, I could have have cried out before the whole world I was his wife," she thought.
A burning flush rose to her face as she thought how cruelly he had suspected her, this poor little child-bride who had never known one wrong or sinful thought in her pure, innocent young life.
If he had only given her the chance of explaining how she had happened to be there with Stanwick; if they had taken her back she must have confessed about the letter and who Rex was and what he was to her.
Even Stanwick"s persecution found an excuse in her innocent, unsuspecting little heart.
"He sought to save me from being taken back when he called me his wife," she thought. "He believed I was free to woo and win, because I dared not tell him I was Rex"s wife." Yet the thought of Stanwick always brought a shudder to her pure young mind. She could not understand why he would have resorted to such desperate means to gain an unwilling bride.
"Not yet seventeen. Ah, what a sad love-story hers had been. How cruelly love"s young dream had been blighted," she told herself; and yet she would not have exchanged that one thrilling, ecstatic moment of rapture when Rex had clasped her in his arms and whispered: "My darling wife," for a whole lifetime of calm happiness with any one else.
On and on she walked through the violet-studded gra.s.s, thinking--thinking.
Strange fancies came thronging to her overwrought brain. She pushed her veil back from her face and leaned against the trunk of a tree; her brain was dizzy and her thoughts were confused; the very stars seemed dancing riotously in the blue sky above her, and the branches of the trees were whispering strange fancies. Suddenly a horseman, riding a coal-black charger, came cantering swiftly up the long avenue of trees. He saw the quiet figure standing leaning against the drooping branches.
"I will inquire the way," he said to himself, drawing rein beside her.