Bessie's Fortune Part 23

John McPherson had heard from his host that his nephew was there, and was in a most perturbed state of mind, on his wife's account, rather than on his own. She would be very indignant, and perhaps do something rash, he feared, while, for himself he wanted to see the boy, whom he had always liked. It was while he was thinking thus that Archie came suddenly upon him. In his surprise, Mr. McPherson forgot everything except the young man standing so humbly before him, with a look on his face, and in his eyes, like the brother dead years ago, and who, when dying, had said, "Be kind to Archie."

Extending both hands to his nephew, he said:

"Archie, by Jove, I am glad to see you. I hope you are well, though upon my word, you don't look so," and he glanced curiously, and with a sensation of pity, at the young man, who, though scarcely thirty-one, might have pa.s.sed for forty, he was so pale and care worn, while his clothes were threadbare and shining in places, and hung upon him loosely. But at this cordial greeting, there was a wonderful transformation, and Archie's face grew almost boyish in its expression, and there was a moisture in his eyes as he took his uncle's hands and held them, while he answered the questions put to him so rapidly.

Remembering at last that it was his duty to reprove his nephew a little, the Hon. John said to him:

"I have been very angry with you, for your hasty marriage was not what I could have wished. It has severed you from--us--from Lady Jane completely."

"Yes, I know," Archie replied. "I supposed you would not like it; but my marriage was for myself, and not for any one else."

"And it has proved all you could wish?" his uncle asked, regarding him steadily.

Archie's face was very red, and his lips were white, as he replied:

"Daisy was very young. We ought to have waited; but she is beautiful, and greatly admired."

"Umph! More's the pity!" John said. Then, after a moment's silence, he continued: "I say, Archie, how have you managed to live all these years?

I hear of you everywhere I hope you have not resorted to the gaming-table?"

"Never!" came decidedly from Archie, "Do you think I would break my promise to my father? I have never touched a card, even for amus.e.m.e.nt, though I have wanted to so much, when I needed money sadly and saw how easily it was won at Monte Carlo."

"Your wife plays, though!" John said sharply; and Archie replied:

"I have nothing to say on that score, except that Daisy takes care of me. I should starve without her; for you know I was not brought up to work, and it is too late now to begin, though I believe I'd be willing to break stone on the highway, if I had the strength."

"Yes, yes, I see," the uncle interposed, a horrible dread seizing him lest his nephew might do something beneath a McPherson unless he was prevented.

"How much have you now?--how much money, I mean?"

"Just one shilling; and Daisy has, ten. If Mrs. Smithers had not invited us here, Heaven only knows what we should have done, for Daisy will not stay at Stoneleigh; so we travel from place to place, and she manages somehow," Archie said: and his uncle rejoined:

"And makes her name a by-word and a reproach, as I suppose you know."

"Daisy is my wife!" Archie replied, with a dignity for which his uncle menially respected him.

Just then the last dinner-bell rang, and rising from his seat, John put his hand first in his vest pocket and then into Archie's hand, where he left a twenty-pound note, saying rapidly:

"You needn't tell _her_--your wife I mean, or mine, either. A man may do as he likes occasionally."

They were walking toward the house, arm-in-arm, and Archie's step was lighter, and his face brighter and handsomer than it had been in many a day. Indeed, he was quite his old self as he entered the drawing room and greeted his august aunt, who received him more graciously than, she had his wife.

Just then Neil came in with Bessie, whom he took to his mother, saying:

"Look, mother, here is Bessie. Didn't I tell you she was a beauty?"

Then, as his mother merely inclined her head, he lifted the child in his arms and held her close to the proud lips which touched the white forehead coldly, while a frown darkened the lady's face, for notwithstanding that Bessie was so young and Neil a mere boy, she disapproved of the liking between them lest it should interfere with Blanche. But Neil did not fancy Blanche, and he did like Bessie, and took her in to dinner, holding her little hand while she skipped and jumped at his side and looked up in his face with those great blue eyes which moved him strangely now, and which in the after time were to bewilder and intoxicate and awaken in him all the better impulses of his nature and then become the sweetest and the saddest memory of his life.

"It is so nice to go to dinner with big people and have all you want to eat, isn't it?" she said to him, as she settled herself in her chair and adjusted her napkin with all the precision of a grown person.

"Of course it's nice," Neil replied, never dreaming what a real dinner was to this child who had so often dined on a bit of bread, a few shriveled grapes, a fig or two and some raisins, trying hard to keep her tears back when the bread was dry and scanty and she was very hungry.

She was very happy with Neil at her side, and she laughed and chatted with him and told him of Stoneleigh and the white rabbit old Anthony was rearing for him when he came at Christmas as he had promised to do.

Dinner being over, Archie, who did not smoke, excused himself from the gentlemen who did, and taking Bessie with him, sauntered off into the grounds till he reached the seat where he had found his uncle. Sitting down upon it and taking Bessie in his lap he told her of his good fortune and showed her the bank-note.

"Oh, I am so glad!" the child exclaimed; "for now we are real, and not impostors, are we?"

"Not in the sense of not having any money," he replied, but there was a sad, anxious expression on his face, as he looked down upon the little girl beside him, and thought of the future and what it might bring to her.

"Bessie," he said, at last, "how would you like to live at Stoneleigh altogether, and not be traveling about?"

"Oh, I'd like it so much," Bessie said, "but I am afraid mamma would not. She hates Stoneleigh, it's so dull."

"But you and I might live there. You would be my little housekeeper and I could teach you your lessons," Archie said, conjuring up in his mind a vision of a quiet home with Bessie as his companion.

If Daisy did not choose to stay with him she could go and come as she liked, he thought, and then and there he decided that _his_ wandering life was at an end.

The next day the party at Penrhyn Park was increased by Mr. and Mrs.

Burton Jerrold from Boston: "very nice Americans, especially the lady, who might pa.s.s for an Englishwoman," Mrs. Smithers informed her guests.

"Yes, I know them, or rather I know their son Grey, the young cub who thrashed me so last Fourth of July when we were at Melrose," Neil exclaimed; "but he's not a bad fellow after all, and we grew to be good friends, I hope he is coming, too."

But Grey did not come, as the reader will remember, for his mother made it a kind of punishment for his quarrel with Neil, that he should remain in London while she visited at Penrhyn Park, where she met with Lady Jane McPherson, whom she admired greatly, and with Daisy, whom she detested for the bold coquetry, which manifested itself so plainly after the arrival of Lord Hardy, that even Mrs. Smithers' sense of propriety was shocked, and she began to look forward with pleasure to the day when her house would be freed from the presence of this lady.

The month of August was the limit of the visit, and Daisy would have gone then had there been any place to go to except Stoneleigh. But there was not; no friendly door was open to her. She could not return to London, and she would not go to Stoneleigh: so, she resolved to remain where she was until Lord Hardy returned to his country seat in Ireland, and then she would go there and take Archie and Bessie with her.

To carry out this purpose she began suddenly to droop and affect a languor and weakness she was far from feeling, for she had really never been better in her life, and Archie knew it, and watched her with dismay as she enacted the role of the interesting invalid to perfection. A little hacking cough came on, with a pain in her side, and finally, to Mrs. Smithers' horror, she took to her bed the last week in August, unable to sit up, but overwhelmed with grief at her inability to travel, and fear lest she should be a burden upon her hostess, and outstay her welcome.

Never dreaming that it was a farce to gain time, Mrs. Smithers made the best of it, and saw guest after guest depart, until only the Welsh McPhersons remained, and she was longing to get away herself to the north of Scotland, where she was due the middle of September.

Fortunately Lord Hardy went home sooner than he had intended, and wrote to Daisy and her husband that his house was ready for them, and then the invalid recovered her strength rapidly, and was able in three days to leave Penrhyn Park, and travel to Ireland with Archie, who had fought hard to return to Stoneleigh and begin the new life he had resolved upon. But Daisy knew better than to go to Hardy Manor without him, and she persuaded him to go with her and then to Paris, from which place she made a flying visit to Monte Carlo, where she met with such success that she did not greatly object to spending the holidays at Stoneleigh, whither they went just before Christmas.

It was at this time that Archie received his aunt's letter offering to take little Bessie and bring her up as a sensible, useful woman. For a moment Archie's heart leaped into his throat as he thought of emanc.i.p.ating his child from the baneful influence around her, but when he remembered how desolate he should be without her, he said:

"I cannot let her go."

Upon one point, however, he was still resolved; he would remain at Stoneleigh and keep Bessie with him. Nothing could change that decision.

Daisy would of course go where she pleased. He could not restrain her, and as many Englishwomen did travel alone on the Continent, she might escape remark in that respect, and be no more talked about than if he were with her. At first Daisy objected to this plan. It was necessary for her to earn their living, she said, and the least Archie could do was to give the support of his presence. But Archie was firm, and when in February Daisy started again on her trip, which had for its destination Monte Carlo and Genoa, Archie was left behind with his twenty-pound note, which he had not yet touched, and with Bessie as his only companion.

CHAPTER VI.

SEVEN YEARS LATER.

Seven years, and from a lovely child of eight years old Bessie McPherson had grown to a wonderfully beautiful girl of fifteen, whose face once seen could never be forgotten, it was so sweet, and pure, and refined, and yet so sad in its expression at times, as if she carried some burden heavier than the care of her father, who was fast sinking into a state of confirmed invalidism, and to whom she devoted all the freshness of her young life, with no thought for herself or her own comfort. And there was a shadow on the girl's life; a burden of shame and regret for the silly, frivolous mother, who spent so little time at home, but who flitted from place to place on the Continent, not always in the best of company but managing generally to hang on to some old dowager either English, French, or German, and so cover herself with an appearance of respectability. Sometimes Lord Hardy was with her, and sometimes he was not, for as he grew older and knew her better, he began to weary of her a very little. Just now he was in Egypt, and before he started he sent her a receipt in full for all her indebtedness to him for borrowed money which he knew she could never pay. And Daisy had written to her husband that the debt was paid, and had given him to understand that a stroke of unparalleled success had enabled her to do it. When her mother died two years before, and left a few hundreds to her daughter, Archie had urged the necessity of sending the whole to young Hardy, but Daisy had refused and spent it for herself. Now, however, it was paid, and he was glad, and quite content with his uneventful life, even though, it was a life of the closest economy and self-denial for himself and Bessie.