"You are very pale. Have you been unwell to-day?"
"No, Daisy," and he bends down and kisses her.
"Why do you persist in sitting up for me? I shall scold if you spoil your cheeks. Kiss me, Daisy."
The girl pouts, and declares she won"t, as she coquettishly twines her arms around his neck, and Mortimer has such a kiss as all Flint"s bank stock could not buy him--a pure, earnest kiss. He was rich, poor in the world"s eye, richer than Flint, with his corpulent money bags, G.o.d pity him!
They sit a long while without speaking. Mortimer breaks the silence.
"We are very poor, Daisy."
"Yes, but happy."
"Sometimes. To-night I am not; I am weary of this daily toiling. The world is not a workshop to wear out souls in. Man has perverted its use. Life, and thought, and brain, are but crucibles to smelt gold in. n.o.bleness is made the slave of avarice, just as a pure stream is taught to turn a mill-wheel and become foul and muddied. The rich are scornful, and the poor sorrowful. O, Daisy, such things should not be! My heart beats when I think how poorly you and your mother are living."
"O, how much we owe you, Mortimer! you are selling your life for us. From morning till night, day after day, you have been our slave. Poor, dear Mortimer, how can we thank you? We can only give you love and prayers. You will not let me help you. Last night, when you found me embroidering a collar, a bit of work which Mrs. Potiphar had kindly given me, you pleasantly cut it in pieces with your pen-knife, and then p.a.w.ned your gold pencil to pay for ruining Mrs. Potiphar"s muslin--too proud to have me work!"
"Why will you pain me, darling? I was complaining for others, not myself. I do not toil as thousands do. I am impulsive and irascible, and do not mean all I say. I am ungrateful; my heart should be full of grat.i.tude to-night, for the cloud which has hung over me the last six months has shown its silver lining."
"What do you mean?" cries Daisy.
"Do you know that you are an heiress?" asks Mortimer, gaily.
Daisy laughs at the idea, and mockingly says, "Yes."
"An heiress to a good name, Daisy! which is better than purple, and linen, and fine gold."
Daisy looks mystified, but forbears to question him, for he complains of sleep. The lovers part at the head of the stairs. Mortimer, on reaching his room, draws a paper from his bosom; he weeps over it, reads it again and again; then he holds it in the flame of a candle. When the ashes have fallen at his feet, he exclaims:
"I have kept my promise, Harvey Snarle! Peace to your memory!"
From a writing-desk in a corner of the room he takes a pile of ma.n.u.script, and weary as he is, adds several pages to it. The dream of his boyhood has grown with him--that delightful dream of authorship! How this will-o"-the-wisp of the brain entices one into mental fogs! How it coaxes and pets one, cheats and ruins one! And so that appalling pile of closely-written ma.n.u.script is Mortimer"s romance? Wasted hours and wasted thought--who would buy or read it?
A down-town clock strikes the hour of two so gently, that it sounds like the tinkling of sheep-bells coming through the misty twilight air from the green meadows. With which felicitous simile we will give our hero a little sleep, after having kept him up two hours after midnight.
Slumber touches his eyelids gently; but Daisy lies awake for hours; at last, falling into a trouble sleep, she dreams that she is an heiress.
Oh, Daisy Snarle!
V.
_The bitter cups of Death are mixed, And we must drink and drink again._
R. H. STODDARD.
V.
DAISY SNARLE.
_Sunday Morning--Harvey Snarle and Mortimer--A Tale of Sorrow--The Snow-child--Mortimer takes Daisy"s hand--Snarle"s death._
Six months previous to the commencement of the last chapter, Mr. Harvey Snarle lay dying, slowly, in a front room of the little house in Marion-street.
It was Sunday morning.
The church bells were ringing--speaking with musical lips to "ye goode folk," and chiming a sermon to the pomp and pride of the city. As Mortimer sat by the window, the houses opposite melted before his vision; and again he saw the old homestead buried in a world of leaves--heard the lapping of the sea, and a pleasant chime of bells from the humble church at Ivytown.
And more beautiful than all, was a child with clouds of golden hair, wandering up and down the sea-sh.o.r.e.
"Mortimer?" said the sick man.
Then the dream melted, and the common-looking brick buildings came back again.
"The doctor thought I could not live?" said the man, inquiringly.
"He thought there was little hope," replied Mortimer. "But doctors are not fortune-tellers," he added, cheerfully.
"I feel that he is right--little hope. Where is Daisy?"
"She has lain down for a moment. Shall I call her?"
"Wearied! Poor angel; she watched me last night. I did not sleep much. I closed my eyes, and she smiled to think that I was slumbering quietly. No; do not call her."
After a pause, the sick man said:
"Wet my lips, I have something to tell you."
Mortimer moistened his feverish lips, and sat on the bed-side.
"It comes over me," said the consumptive.
"What? That pain?"
"No; my life. There is something drearier than death in the world."
"Sometimes life," thought Mortimer, half aloud.
The sick man looked at him.
"Why did you say that?"
"I thought it. Life is a bitter gift sometimes. An ambition or a pa.s.sion possess us, flatters and mocks us. Death is not so dreary a thing as life then."
"He felt that."