He was very talkative that evening, and asked his wife many questions about her friends and the shopping she wished to do, and the places they were to visit; and Julia, who had hitherto regarded him as a quiet, silent man, given to few words, wondered at the change, and watched the bright red spots on his cheeks, and thought how she would manage to have medical advice for that dreadful heart-disease, which had come like a nightmare to haunt her bridal days.
Next morning there came a Boston paper containing a notice of the marriage, and this Guy sent to Daisy, with only the faint tracing of a pencil to indicate the paragraph.
"Better so than to write," he thought; though he longed to add the words, "Forgive me, Daisy; your letter came too late."
And so the paper was sent, and, after a week or two, Guy went back to his home in Cuylerville, and the blue rooms which Julia had fitted up for Daisy five years before became her own by right. And f.a.n.n.y Thornton welcomed her warmly to the house, and by many little acts of thoughtfulness showed how glad she was to have her there. And Julia was very happy save when she remembered the heart-disease which she was sure Guy had, and for which he would not take advice. "There was nothing the matter with his heart, unless it were too full of love," he told her laughingly, and wondered to himself if in saying this he was guilty of a lie, inasmuch as his words misled her so completely.
After a time, however, there came a change, and thoughts of Daisy ceased to disturb him as they once had done. No one ever mentioned her to him, and since the receipt of her letter he had heard no tidings of her until six months after his marriage, when there came to him the ten thousand dollars, with all the interest which had accrued since the settlement first was made. There was no word from Daisy herself, but a letter from a lawyer in Berlin, who said all there was to say with regard to the business, but did not tell where Miss McDonald, as he called her, was.
Then Guy wrote Daisy a letter of thanks, to which there came no reply, and as time went on the old wound began to heal, the grave to close again; and when, at last, one year after his marriage, they brought him a beautiful little baby girl and laid it in his arms, and then a few moments later let him into the room where the pale mother lay, he stooped over her, and kissing her fondly, said;
"I never loved you half as well as I do now!"
It was a pretty child, with dark blue eyes, and hair in which there was a gleam of gold, and Guy, when asked by his wife what he would call her, said;
"Would you object to Margaret?"
Julia knew what he meant, and like the true, n.o.ble woman she was, offered no objection to Guy"s choice, and herself first gave the pet name of Daisy to her child, on whom Guy settled the ten thousand dollars sent to him by the Daisy over the sea.
CHAPTER IX.-DAISY, TOM, AND THAT OTHER ONE.
Watching, waiting, hoping, saying to herself in the morning, "It will come before night," and saying to herself at night, "It will be here to-morrow morning." Such was Daisy"s life, even before she had a right to expect an answer to her letter.
Of the nature of Guy"s reply she had no doubt. He had loved her once, he loved her still, and he would take her back of course. There was no truth in that rumor of another marriage. Possibly her father, whom she understood now better than she once did, had gotten the story up for the sake of inducing her through pique to marry Tom; but if so, his plan would fail. Guy would write to her, "Come!" and she should go, and more than once she counted the contents of her purse and added to it the sum due her from Madame Lafarcade, and wondered if she would dare venture on the journey with so small a sum.
"You so happy and white, too, this morning," her little pupil, Pauline, said to her one day, when they sat together in the garden, and Daisy was indulging in a fanciful picture of her meeting with Guy.
"Yes, I am happy," Daisy said, rousing from her revery; "but I did not know I was pale, or white, as you term it, though, now I think of it, I do feel sick and faint. It"s the heat, I suppose. Oh! there is Max, with the mail! He is coming this way! He has,-he certainly has something for me!"
Daisy"s cheeks were scarlet now, and her eyes were bright as stars as she went forward to meet the man who brought the letters to the house.
"Only a paper!-is there nothing more?" she asked, in an unsteady voice, as she took the paper in her hand, and recognizing Guy"s handwriting, knew almost to a certainty what was before her.
"Oh, you are sick, I must bring some water," Pauline exclaimed, alarmed at Daisy"s white face and the peculiar tone of her voice.
"No, Pauline, stay; open the paper for me," Daisy said, feeling that it would be easier so than to read it herself, for she knew what was there, else he would never have sent her a paper and nothing more.
Delighted to be of some use, and a little gratified to open a foreign paper, Pauline tore off the wrapper, starting a little at Daisy"s quick, sharp cry as she made a rent across the handwriting.
"Look, you are tearing into my name, which he wrote," Daisy said, and then remembering herself she sank back into her seat in the garden chair, while Pauline wondered what harm there was in tearing an old soiled wrapper, and why her governess should take it so carefully in her hand and roll it up as if it had been a living thing.
There were notices of new books, and a runaway match in high life, and a suicide on Sumner street, and a golden wedding in Roxbury, and the latest fashions from Paris, into which Pauline plunged with avidity, while Daisy listened like one in a dream, asking, when the fashions were exhausted, "Is that all? Are there no deaths or marriages?"
Pauline had not thought of that,-she would see; and she hunted through the columns till she found Guy"s pencil mark, and read:
"Married, this morning, in--church, by the Rev. Dr.--, a.s.sisted by the rector, Guy Thornton, Esq., of Cuylerville, to Miss Julia Hamilton, of this city."
"Yes, yes, I see,-I know, it"s very hot here, isn"t it? I think I will go in," Daisy said, her fingers working nervously with the bit of paper she held.
But Pauline was too intent on the name Thornton to hear what Daisy said, and she asked: "Is Mr. Thornton your friend or your relative?"
It was natural enough question, and Daisy roused herself to answer it, and said, quickly: "He is the son of my husband"s father."
"Oh, _oui_," Pauline rejoined, a little mystified as to the exact relationship existing between Guy Thornton and her teacher"s husband, who she supposed was dead, as Daisy had only confided to madame the fact of a divorce.
"What date is the paper?" Daisy asked, and on being told she said softly to herself: "I see; it was too late."
There was in her mind no doubt as to what the result would have been had her letter been in time; no doubt of Guy"s preference for herself, no regret that she had written to him, except that the knowledge that she loved him at last would make him wretched with thinking "what might have been," and with the bitter pain which cut her heart like a knife there was mingled a pity for Guy, who would perhaps suffer more than she did, if that were possible. She never once thought of retribution, or of murmuring against her fate, but accepted it meekly, albeit she staggered under the load and grew faint as she thought of the lonely life before her, and she so young.
Slowly she went back to her room, while Pauline walked up and down the garden, trying to make out the relationship between the newly-married Thornton and her teacher.
"The son of her husband"s father?" she repeated, until at last a meaning dawned upon her, and she said: "Then he must be her brother-in-law; but why didn"t she say so? Maybe, though, that is the English way of putting it;" and having thus settled the matter Pauline joined her mother, who was asking for Mrs. Thornton.
"Gone to her room, and her brother-in-law is married. It was marked in a paper, and I read it to her, and she"s sick," Pauline said, without, however, in the least connecting the sickness with the marriage.
Daisy did not come down to dinner that night, and the maid who called her the next morning reported her as ill and acting very strangely.
Through the summer a malarious fever had prevailed to some extent in and about Rouen, and the physician whom Madame Lafarcade summoned to the sick girl expressed a fear that she was coming down with it, and ordered her kept as quiet as possible.
"She seems to have something weighing on her mind. Has she heard any bad news from home?" he asked, as in reply to his question where her pain was the worst, Daisy always answered:
"It reached him too late-too late, and I am so sorry."
Madame knew of no bad news, she said, and then as she saw the foreign paper lying on the table, she took it up, and, guided by the pencil marks, read the notice of Guy Thornton"s marriage, and that gave her the key at once to Daisy"s mental agitation. Daisy had been frank with her and told as much of her story as was necessary, and she knew that the Guy Thornton married to Julia Hamilton had once called Daisy his wife.
"Excuse me, she is, or she has something on her mind, I suspect," she said to the physician, who was still holding Daisy"s hand and looking anxiously at her flushed cheeks and bright, restless eyes.
"I thought so," he rejoined, "and it aggravates all the symptoms of her fever. I shall call again to-night."
He did call, and found his patient worse, and the next day he asked of Madame Lafarcade:
"Has she friends in this country? If so, they ought to know."
A few hours later and in his lodgings at Berlin, Tom read the following dispatch:
"Mrs. Thornton is dangerously ill. Come at once."
It was directed to Mr. McDonald, who with his wife had been on a trip to Russia, and was expected daily. Feeling intuitively that it concerned Daisy, Tom had opened it, and without a moment"s hesitation packed his valise and leaving a note for the McDonalds when they should return, started for Rouen. Daisy did not know him, and in her delirium she said things to him and of him which hurt him cruelly. Guy was her theme, and the letter which went "too late, too late." Then she would beg of Tom to go for Guy, to bring him to her, and tell him how much she loved him and how good she would be if he would only take her back.
"Father wants me to marry Tom," she said in a whisper, and Tom"s heart almost stood still as he listened; "and Tom wanted me, too, but I couldn"t, you know, even if he were worth his weight in gold. I could not love him. Why, he"s got red hair, and such great freckles on his face, and big feet and hands with frecks on them. Do you know Tom?"
"Yes, I know him," Tom answered, sadly, forcing down a choking sob, while the "big hand with the great frecks on it," smoothed the golden hair tenderly, and pushed it back from the burning brow.
"Don"t talk any more, Daisy; it tires you so," he said, as he saw her about to speak again.
But Daisy was not to be stopped, and she went on: