Daisy Brooks Part 14

"I would like to see Daisy Brooks, if you please. She is here, I believe?" he said, questioningly. "May I come in?"

Rex's handsome, boyish face and winning smile won their way straight to the old lady's heart at once.

"Perhaps you are the young lady's brother, sir? There is evidently some mistake, however, as the young lady's name is Stanwick--Daisy Stanwick. Her husband, Lester Stanwick--I believe that is the name--is also in Elmwood."

All the color died out of Rex's handsome face and the light from his brown eyes. He leaned heavily against the gate-post. The words seemed shrieked on the air and muttered on the breeze.

"Daisy is _not_ his wife! My G.o.d, madame!" he cried, hoa.r.s.ely, "she _could not_ be!"

"It is very true," replied the old lady, softly. "I have her own words for it. There may be some mistake, as you say," she said, soothingly, noting the death-like despair that settled over the n.o.ble face. "She is a pretty, fair, winsome little creature, blue-eyed, and curling golden hair, and lives at Allendale. She is certainly married. I will call her. She shall tell you so herself. Daisy--Mrs. Stanwick--come here, dear," she called.

"I am coming, Miss Ruth," answered a sweet, bird-like voice, which pierced poor Rex's heart to the very core as a girlish little figure bounded through the open door-way, out into the brilliant sunshine.

"G.o.d pity me!" cried Rex, staggering forward. "It _is_ Daisy--my wife!"

CHAPTER XIII.

Rex had hoped against hope.

"Daisy!" he cried, holding out his arms to her with a yearning, pa.s.sionate cry. "My G.o.d! tell me it is false--you are _not_ here with Stanwick--or I shall go mad! Daisy, my dear little sweetheart, my little love, why don't you speak?" he cried, clasping her close to his heart and covering her face and hair and hands with pa.s.sionate, rapturous kisses.

Daisy struggled out of his embrace, with a low, broken sob, flinging herself on her knees at his feet with a sharp cry.

"Daisy," said the old lady, bending over her and smoothing back the golden hair from the lovely anguished face, "tell him the truth, dear.

You are here with Mr. Stanwick; is it not so?"

The sudden weight of sorrow that had fallen upon poor, hapless Daisy seemed to paralyze her very senses. The sunshine seemed blotted out, and the light of heaven to grow dark around her.

"Yes," she cried, despairingly; and it almost seemed to Daisy another voice had spoken with her lips.

"This Mr. Stanwick claims to be your husband?" asked the old lady, solemnly.

"Yes," she cried out again, in agony, "but, Rex, I--I--"

The words died away on her white lips, and the sound died away in her throat. She saw him recoil from her with a look of white, frozen horror on his face which gave place to stern, bitter wrath. Slowly and sadly he put her clinging arms away from him, folding his arms across his breast with that terrible look upon his face such as a hero's face wears when he has heard, unflinchingly, his death sentence--the calm of terrible despair.

"Daisy," he said, proudly, "I have trusted you blindly, for I loved you madly, pa.s.sionately. I would as soon believe the fair smiling heavens that bend above us false as you whom I loved so madly and so well. I was mad to bind you with such cruel, irksome bonds when your heart was not mine but another's. My dream of love is shattered now.

You have broken my heart and ruined and blighted my life. G.o.d forgive you, Daisy, for I never can! I give you back your freedom; I release you from your vows; I can not curse you--I have loved you too well for that; I cast you from my heart as I cast you from my life; farewell, Daisy--farewell forever!"

She tried to speak, but her tongue cleaved to the roof of her mouth.

Oh, pitying Heaven, if she could only have cried out to you and the angels to bear witness and proclaim her innocence! The strength to move hand or foot seemed suddenly to have left her. She tried hard, oh! so hard, to speak, but no sound issued from her white lips. She felt as one in a horrible trance, fearfully, terribly conscious of all that transpired around her, yet denied the power to move even a muscle to defend herself.

"Have you anything to say to me, Daisy?" he asked, mournfully, turning from her to depart.

The woful, terrified gaze of the blue eyes deepened pitifully, but she spoke no word, and Rex turned from her--turned from the girl-bride whom he loved so madly, with a bursting, broken heart, more bitter to bear than death itself--left her alone with the pitying sunlight falling upon her golden hair, and her white face turned up to heaven, silently praying to G.o.d that she might die then and there.

Oh, Father above, pity her! She had no mother's gentle voice to guide her, no father's strong breast to weep upon, no sister's soothing presence. She was so young and so pitifully lonely, and Rex had drifted out of her life forever, believing her--oh, bitterest of thoughts!--believing her false and sinful.

Poor little Daisy was ignorant of the ways of the world; but a dim realization of the full import of the terrible accusation brought against her forced its way to her troubled brain.

She only realized--Rex--her darling Rex, had gone out of her life forever.

Daisy flung herself face downward in the long, cool, waving green gra.s.s where Rex had left her.

"Daisy," called Miss Burton, softly, "it is all over; come into the house, my dear."

But she turned from her with a shuddering gasp.

"In the name of pity, leave me to myself," she sobbed; "it is the greatest kindness you can do me."

And the poor old lady who had wrought so much sorrow unwittingly in those two severed lives, walked slowly back to the cottage, with tears in her eyes, strongly impressed there must be some dark mystery in the young girl's life who was sobbing her heart out in the green gra.s.s yonder; and she did just what almost any other person would have done under the same circ.u.mstances--sent immediately for Lester Stanwick.

He answered the summons at once, listening with intense interest while the aged spinster briefly related all that had transpired; but through oversight or excitement she quite forgot to mention Rex had called Daisy his wife.

"Curse him!" he muttered, under his breath, "I--I believe the girl actually cares for him."

Then he went out to Daisy, lying so still and lifeless among the pink clover and waving gra.s.s.

Poor Daisy! Poor, desperate, lonely, struggling child! All this cruel load of sorrow, crushing her girlish heart, and blighting her young life, and she so innocent, so entirely blameless, yet such a plaything of fate.

"Daisy," he said, bending over her and lifting the slight form in his arms, "they tell me some one has been troubling you. Who has dared annoy you? Trust in me, Daisy. What is the matter?"

Lester Stanwick never forgot the white, pitiful face that was raised to his.

"I want to die," she sobbed. "Oh, why did you not leave me to die in the dark water? it was so cruel of you to save me."

"Do you want to know why I risked my life to save you, Daisy? Does not my every word and glance tell you why?" The bold glance in his eyes spoke volumes. "Have you not guessed that I love you, Daisy?"

"Oh, please do not talk to me in that way, Mr. Stanwick," she cried, starting to her feet in wild alarm. "Indeed you must not," she stammered.

"Why not?" he demanded, a merciless smile stirring beneath his heavy mustache. "I consider that you belong to me. I mean to make you my wife in very truth."

Daisy threw up her hands in a gesture of terror heart-breaking to see, shrinking away from him in quivering horror, her sweet face ashen pale.

"Oh, go away, go away!" she cried out. "I am growing afraid of you. I could never marry you, and I would not if I could. I shall always be grateful to you for what you have done for me, but, oh, go away, and leave me now, for my trouble is greater than I can bear!"

"You would not if you could," he repeated, coolly, smiling so strangely her blood seemed to change to ice in her veins. "I thank you sincerely for your appreciation of me. I did not dream, however, your aversion to me was so deeply rooted. That makes little difference, however. I shall make you my wife this very day all the same; business, urgent business, calls me away from Elmwood to-day. I shall take you with me as my wife."

She heard the cruel words like one in a dream.

"Rex! Rex!" she sobbed, under her breath. Suddenly she remembered Rex had left her--she was never to look upon his face again. He had left her to the cold mercies of a cruel world. Poor little Daisy--the unhappy, heart-broken girl-bride--sat there wondering what else could happen to her. "G.o.d has shut me out from His mercy," she cried; "there is nothing for me to do but to die."

"I am a desperate man, Daisy," pursued Stanwick, slowly. "My will is my law. The treatment you receive at my hands depends entirely upon yourself--you will not dare defy me!" His eyes fairly glowed with a strange fire that appalled her as she met his pa.s.sionate glance.

Then Daisy lifted up her golden head with the first defiance she had ever shown, the deathly pallor deepening on her fair, sweet, flower-like face, and the look of a hunted deer at bay in the beautiful velvety agonized eyes, as she answered: