Daisy Brooks: or, A Perilous Love

Rex Lyon stood upon the porch of Whitestone Hall gazing up at the white, fleecy clouds that scudded over the blue sky, lost in deep thought.

He was the same handsome, debonair Rex, but ah, how changed! The merry, laughing brown eyes looked silent and grave enough now, and the lips the drooping brown mustache covered rarely smiled. Even his voice seemed to have a deeper tone.

He had done the one thing that morning which his mother had asked him to do with her dying breath–he had asked Pluma Hurlhurst to be his wife.

The torture of the task seemed to grow upon him as the weeks rolled by, and in desperation he told himself he must settle the matter at once, or he would not have the strength to do it.

He never once thought what he should do with his life after he married her. He tried to summon up courage to tell her the story of his marriage, that his hopes, his heart, and his love all lay in the grave of his young wife. Poor Rex, he could not lay bare that sweet, sad secret; he could not have borne her questions, her wonder, her remarks, and have lived; his dead love was far too sacred for that; he could not take the treasured love-story from his heart and hold it up to public gaze. It would have been easier for him to tear the living, beating heart from his breast than to do this.

He had walked into the parlor that morning, where he knew he should find Pluma. She was standing before the fire. Although it was early spring the mornings were chilly, and a cheerful fire burned in the grate, throwing a bright, glowing radiance over the room and over the exquisite morning toilet of white cashmere, with its white lace frills, relieved here and there with coquettish dashes of scarlet blossoms, which Pluma wore, setting off her graceful figure to such queenly advantage.

Rex looked at her, at the imperious beauty any man might have been proud to win, secretly hoping she would refuse him.

“Good-morning, Rex,” she said, holding out her white hands to him. “I am glad you have come to talk to me. I was watching you walking up and down under the trees, and you looked so lonely I half made up my mind to join you.”

A lovely color was deepening in her cheeks, and her eyes drooped shyly. He broke right into the subject at once while he had the courage to do it.

“I have something to say to you, Pluma,” he began, leading her to an adjacent sofa and seating himself beside her. “I want to ask you if you will be my wife.” He looked perhaps the more confused of the two. “I will do my best to make you happy,” he continued. “I can not say that I will make a model husband, but I will say I will do my best.”

There was a minute’s silence, awkward enough for both.

“You have asked me to be your wife, Rex, but you have not said one word of loving me.”

The remark was so unexpected Rex seemed for a few moments to be unable to reply to it. Looking at the eager, expectant face turned toward him, it appeared ungenerous and unkind not to give her one affectionate word. Yet he did not know how to say it; he had never spoken a loving word to any one except Daisy, his fair little child-bride.

He tried hard to put the memory of Daisy away from him as he answered:

“The question is so important that most probably I have thought more of it than of any words which should go with it.”

“Oh, that is it,” returned Pluma, with a wistful little laugh. “Most men, when they ask women to marry them, say something of love, do they not?”

“Yes,” he replied, absently.

“You have had no experience,” laughed Pluma, archly.

She was sorely disappointed. She had gone over in her own imagination this very scene a thousand times, of the supreme moment he would clasp his arms around her, telling her in glowing, passionate words how dearly he loved her and how wretched his life would be without her. He did nothing of the kind.

Rex was thinking he would have given anything to have been able to make love to her–anything for the power of saying tender words–she looked so loving.

Her dark, beautiful face was so near him, and her graceful figure so close, that he could have wound his arm around her, but he did not. In spite of every resolve, he thought of Daisy the whole time. How different that other love-making had been! How his heart throbbed, and every endearing name he could think of trembled on his lips, as he strained Daisy to his heart when she had bashfully consented to be his wife!

That love-making was real substance; this one only the shadow of love.

“You have not answered my question, Pluma. Will you be my wife?”

Pluma raised her dark, beautiful face, radiant with the light of love, to his.

“If I consent will you promise to love me better than anything else or any one in the wide world?”

“I will devote my whole life to you, study your every wish,” he answered, evasively.

How was she to know he had given all his heart to Daisy?

She held out her hands to him with a charming gesture of affection. He took them and kissed them; he could do neither more nor less.

“I will be your wife, Rex,” she said, with a tremulous, wistful sigh.

“Thank you, Pluma,” he returned, gently, bending down and kissing the beautiful crimson lips; “you shall never regret it. You are so kind, I am going to impose on your good nature. You have promised me you will be my wife–when may I claim you, Pluma?”

“Do you wish it to be soon?” she asked, hesitatingly, wondering how he would answer her.

“Yes,” he said, absently; “the sooner it is over the better I shall be pleased.”

She looked up into his face, at a loss how to interpret the words.

“You shall set the day, Rex,” she replied.

“I have your father’s consent that it may take place just as soon as possible, in case you promised to marry me,” he said. “Suppose it takes place in a fortnight, say–will that be too soon for you?”

She gave a little scream of surprise. “As soon as that?” she murmured; but ended by readily consenting.

He thanked her and kissed her once more. After a few quiet words they parted–she, happy in the glamour of her love-dream; he, praying to Heaven from the depths of his miserable heart, to give him strength to carry out the rash vow which had been wrung from his unwilling lips.

In his heart Rex knew no one but Daisy could ever reign. Dead, he was devoted to her memory.

His life was narrowing down. He was all kindness, consideration and devotion; but the one supreme magnet of all–love–was wanting.

In vain Pluma exerted all her wondrous powers of fascination to win him more completely. How little he dreamed of the depths of love which controlled that passionate heart, every throb of which was for him–that to have won from him one token of warm affection she would have given all she held dear in this world.

“How does it happen, Rex,” she asked, one evening, “you have not asked me to sing to you since you have asked me to be your wife? Music used to be such a bond of sympathy between us.”

There was both love and reproach in her voice. He heard neither. He had simply forgotten it.

“I have been thinking of other things, I presume. Allow me to make up for it at once, however, by asking you if you will sing for me now.”

The tears came to her dark, flashing eyes, but she forced them bravely back. She had hoped he would clasp her in his arms, whispering some sweet compliment, then say to her “Darling, won’t you sing to me now?”

She swept toward the piano with the air of a queen.

“I want you to sit where I can see you, Rex,” she demanded, prettily; “I like to watch your face when I sing you my favorite songs.”

Rex drew his chair up close to the piano, laying his head back dreamily against the crimson cushions. He would not be obliged to talk; for once–just once–he would let his fancies roam where they would. He had often heard Pluma sing before, but never in the way she sung to-night. A low, thrilling, seductive voice full of pleading, passionate tenderness–a voice that whispered of the sweet irresistible power of love, that carried away the hearts of her listeners as a strong current carries a leaflet.

Was it a dream, or was it the night wind breathing the name of Daisy? The tears rose in his eyes, and he started to his feet, pale and trembling with agitation. Suddenly the music ceased.

“I did not think such a simple little melody had power to move you,” she said.

“Is it a new song?” he asked. “I do not remember having heard it before. What is the title of it?”

He did not notice her face had grown slightly pale under the soft, pearly light of the gleaming lamps, as she held the music out toward him.

“It is a pretty title,” she said, in her low, musical voice, “‘Daisies Growing o’er my Darling’s Grave.’”

In the terrible look of agony that swept over his handsome face, Pluma read the secret of his life; the one secret she had dreaded stood as clearly revealed to her as though it had been stamped in glowing letters upon his brow. She would have stood little chance of being Rex’s wife if Daisy Brooks had lived.

Who would have dreamed the beautiful, proud young heiress could have cursed the very memory of the young girl whom she believed to be dead–lying all uncared for in a neglected, lonely grave?

Rex felt sorely disturbed. He never remembered how the remainder of the evening passed. Ah, heavens! how his mind wandered back to that sweet love-dream so cruelly broken. A mist as of tears spread before his eyes, and shut the whole world from him as he glanced out of the window and up at the star-gemmed sky–that was his Daisy’s home.

“I hope my little song has not cast a gloom over you, Rex?” she said, holding out her hands to him as she arose to bid him good-night–those small white hands upon one of which his engagement-ring glowed with a thousand prismatic hues.

“Why should it?” he asked, attempting to laugh lightly. “I admired it perhaps more than any other I have ever heard you sing.”

Pluma well knew why.

“It was suggested to me by a strange occurrence. Shall I relate it to you, Rex?”

He made some indistinct answer, little dreaming of how wofully the little anecdote would affect him.

“I do not like to bring up old, unpleasant subjects, Rex. But do you remember what the only quarrel we ever had was about, or rather who it was about?”

He looked at her in surprise; he had not the least idea of what she alluded to.

“Do you remember what a romantic interest you once took in our overseer’s niece–the one who eloped with Lester Stanwick from boarding-school–the one whose death we afterward read of? Her name was Daisy–Daisy Brooks.”

If she had suddenly plunged a dagger into his heart with her white jeweled hands he could not have been more cruelly startled. He could have cried aloud with the sharp pain of unutterable anguish that memory brought him. His answer was a bow; he dared not look up lest the haggard pain of his face should betray him.

“Her uncle (he was no relation, I believe, but she called him that) was more fond of her than words can express. I was driving along by an unfrequented road to-day when I came across a strange, pathetic sight. The poor old man was putting the last touches to a plain wooden cross he had just erected under a magnolia-tree, which bore the simple words: ‘To the memory of Daisy Brooks, aged sixteen years.’ Around the cross the grass was thickly sown with daisies.

“‘She does not rest here,’ the old man said, drawing his rough sleeve across his tear-dimmed eyes; ‘but the poor little girl loved this spot best of any.’”

Pluma wondered why Rex took her just then in his arms for the first time and kissed her. He was thanking her in his heart; he could have knelt to her for the kind way she had spoken of Daisy.

A little later he was standing by the open window of his own room in the moonlight.

“My God!” he cried, burying his face in his hands, “this poor John Brooks did what I, her husband, should have done; but it is not too late now. I shall honor your memory, my darling; I shall have a costly marble monument erected to your memory, bearing the inscription: ‘Sacred to the memory of Daisy, beloved wife of Rex Lyon, aged sixteen years.’ Not Daisy Brooks, but Daisy Lyon. Mother is dead, what can secrecy avail now?”

He would not tell Pluma until the last moment. Straightway he ordered a magnificent monument from Baltimore–one of pure unblemished white, with an angel with drooping wings overlooking the tall white pillar.

When it arrived he meant to take Pluma there, and, reverently kneeling down before her, tell her all the story of his sweet, sad love-dream with his face pressed close against the cold, pulseless marble–tell her of the love-dream which had left him but the ashes of dead hope. He sealed the letter and placed it with the out-going morning mail.

“Darling, how I wish I had not parted from you that night!” he sighed.

How bitterly he regretted he could not live that one brief hour of his past life over again–how differently he would act!

CHAPTER XXVIII

While Rex was penning his all-important letter in his room, Pluma was walking restlessly to and fro in her boudoir, conning over in her mind the events of the evening.

Rex had asked her to be his wife, but she stood face to face with the truth at last–he did not love her. It was not only a blow of the keenest and cruelest kind to her affection, but it was the cruelest blow her vanity could possibly have received.

To think that she, the wealthy, petted heiress, who counted her admirers by the score, should have tried so hard to win the love of this one man and have failed; that her beauty, her grace, her wit, and her talent had been lavished upon him, and lavished in vain. “Was that simple girl, with her shy, timid, shrinking manner, more lovable than I?” she asked herself, incredulously.

She could not realize it–she, whose name was on the lips of men, who praised her as the queen of beauty, and whom fair women envied as one who had but to will to win.

It seemed to her a cruel mockery of fate that she, who had everything the world could give–beauty and fortune–should ask but this one gift, and that it should be refused her–the love of the man who had asked her to be his wife.

Was it impossible that he should learn to love her?

She told herself that she should take courage, that she would persevere, that her great love must in time prevail.

“I must never let him find me dull or unhappy,” she thought. “I must carefully hide all traces of pique or annoyance.”

She would do her best to entertain him, and make it the study of her life to win his love.

She watched the stars until they faded from the skies, then buried her face in her pillow, falling into an uneasy slumber, through which a beautiful, flower-like, girlish face floated, and a slight, delicate form knelt at her feet holding her arms out imploringly, sobbing out:

“Do not take him from me–he is my world–I love him!”

And with a heart racked by terrible jealousy, Pluma turned uneasily on her pillow and opened her eyes. The stars were still glimmering in the moonlighted sky.

“Is the face of Daisy Brooks ever to haunt me thus?” she cried out, impatiently. “How was I to know she was to die?” she muttered, excitedly. “I simply meant to have Stanwick abduct her from the seminary that Rex might believe him her lover and turn to me for sympathy. I will not think of it,” she cried; “I am not one to flinch from a course of action I have marked out for myself, no matter what the consequences may be, if I only gain Rex’s love.”

And Pluma, the bride soon to be, turned her flushed face again to the wall to dream again of Daisy Brooks.

She little dreamed Rex, too, was watching the stars, as wakeful as she, thinking of the past.

Then he prayed Heaven to help him, so that no unworthy thought should enter his mind. After that he slept, and one of the most painful days of his life was ended.

The days at Whitestone Hall flew by on rapid wings in a round of gayety. The Hall was crowded with young folks, who were to remain until after the marriage. Dinner parties were followed by May-pole dances out on the green lawns, and by charades and balls in the evening. The old Hall had never echoed with such frolicsome mirth before. Rex plunged into the excitement with strange zest. No one guessed that beneath his winning, careless smile his heart was almost breaking.

One morning Pluma was standing alone on the vine-covered terrace, waiting for Rex, who had gone out to try a beautiful spirited horse that had just been added to the stables of Whitestone Hall. She noticed he had taken the unfrequented road the magnolia-trees shaded. That fact bore no significance, certainly; still there was a strong feeling of jealousy in her heart as she remembered that little wooden cross he would be obliged to pass. Would he stop there? She could not tell.

“How I love him–and how foolish I am!” she laughed, nervously. “I have no rival, yet I am jealous of his very thoughts, lest they dwell on any one else but myself. I do not see how it is,” she said, thoughtfully, to herself, “why people laugh at love, and think it weakness or a girl’s sentimental folly. Why, it is the strongest of human passions!”

She heard people speak of her approaching marriage as “a grand match”–she heard him spoken of as a wealthy Southerner, and she laughed a proud, happy, rippling laugh. She was marrying Rex for love; she had given him the deepest, truest love of her heart.

Around a bend in the terrace she heard approaching footsteps and the rippling of girlish laughter.

“I can not have five minutes to myself to think,” she said to herself, drawing hastily back behind the thick screen of leaves until they should pass. She did not feel in the humor just then to listen to Miss Raynor’s chatter or pretty Grace Alden’s gossip.

“Of course every one has a right to their own opinion,” Grace was saying, with a toss of her pretty nut-brown curls, “and I, for one, do not believe he cares for her one whit.”

“It is certainly very strange,” responded Miss Raynor, thoughtfully. “Every one can see she is certainly in love with Rex; but I am afraid it is quite a one-sided affair.”

“Yes,” said Grace, laughing shyly, “a very one-sided affair. Why, have you ever noticed them together–how Pluma watches his face and seems to live on his smiles? And as for Rex, he always seems to be looking over her head into the distance, as though he saw something there far more interesting than the face of his bride-to-be. That doesn’t look much like love or a contented lover.”

“If you had seen him this morning you might well say he did not look contented,” replied Miss Raynor, mysteriously. “I was out for a morning ramble, and, feeling a little tired, I sat down on a moss-covered stone to rest. Hearing the approaching clatter of a horse’s hoofs, I looked up and saw Rex Lyon coming leisurely down the road. I could not tell you what prompted me to do it, but I drew quietly back behind the overhanging alder branches that skirted the brook, admiring him all unseen.”

“Oh, dear!” cried Grace, merrily, “this is almost too good to keep. Who would imagine dignified Miss Raynor peeping admiringly at handsome Rex, screened by the shadows of the alders!”

“Now don’t be ridiculous, Grace, or I shall be tempted not to tell you the most interesting part,” returned Miss Raynor, flushing hotly.

“Oh, that would be too cruel,” cried Grace, who delighted on anything bordering on mystery. “Do tell it.”

“Well,” continued Miss Raynor, dropping her voice to a lower key, “when he was quite opposite me, he suddenly stopped short and quickly dismounted from his horse, and picked up from the roadside a handful of wild flowers.”

“What in the world could he want with them?” cried Grace, incredulously.

“Want with them!” echoed Miss Raynor. “Why, he pressed them to his lips, murmuring passionate, loving words over them. For one brief instant his face was turned toward me, and I saw there were tears standing in his eyes, and there was a look on his face I shall never forget to my dying day. There was such hopeless woe upon it–indeed one might have almost supposed, by the expression of his face, he was waiting for his death-sentence to be pronounced instead of a marriage ceremony, which was to give him the queenly heiress of Whitestone Hall for a bride.”

“Perhaps there is some hidden romance in the life of handsome Rex the world does not know of,” suggested Grace, sagely.

“I hope not,” replied Miss Raynor. “I would hate to be a rival of Pluma Hurlhurst’s. I have often thought, as I watched her with Rex, it must be terrible to worship one person so madly. I have often thought Pluma’s a perilous love.”

“Do not speak so,” cried Grace. “You horrify me. Whenever I see her face I am afraid those words will be ringing in my ears–a perilous love.”

Miss Raynor made some laughing rejoinder which Pluma, white and trembling behind the ivy vines, did not catch, and still discussing the affair, they moved on, leaving Pluma Hurlhurst standing alone, face to face with the truth, which she had hoped against hope was false. Rex, who was so soon to be her husband, was certainly not her lover.

Her keen judgment had told her long ago all this had come about through his mother’s influence.

Every word those careless lips had uttered came back to her heart with a cruel stab.

“Even my guests are noticing his coldness,” she cried, with a hysterical little sob. “They are saying to each other, ‘He does not love me’–I, who have counted my triumphs by the scores. I have revealed my love in every word, tone and glance, but I can not awaken one sentiment in his proud, cold heart.”

When she remembered the words, “He pressed them to his lips, murmuring passionate, loving words over them,” she almost cried aloud in her fierce, angry passion. She knew, just as well as though she had witnessed him herself, that those wild flowers were daisies, and she knew, too, why he had kissed them so passionately. She saw the sun shining on the trees, the flower-beds were great squares and circles of color, the fountains sparkled in the sunlight, and restless butterflies flitted hither and thither.

For Pluma Hurlhurst, after that hour, the sunshine never had the same light, the flowers the same color, her face the same smile, or her heart the same joyousness.

Never did “good and evil” fight for a human heart as they struggled in that hour in the heart of the beautiful, willful heiress. All the fire, the passion, and recklessness of her nature were aroused.

“I will make him love me or I will die!” she cried, vehemently. “The love I long for shall be mine. I swear it, cost what it may!”

She was almost terribly beautiful to behold, as that war of passion raged within her.

She saw a cloud of dust arising in the distance. She knew it was Rex returning, but no bright flush rose to her cheek as she remembered what Miss Raynor had said of the wild flowers he had so rapturously caressed–he had given a few rank wild flowers the depths of a passionate love which he had never shown to her, whom he had asked to be his wife.

She watched him as he approached nearer and nearer, so handsome, so graceful, so winning, one of his white hands carelessly resting on the spirited animal’s proudly arched, glossy neck, and with the other raising his hat from his brown curls in true courtly cavalier fashion to her, as he saw her standing there, apparently awaiting him on the rose-covered terrace.

He looked so handsome and lovable Pluma might have forgotten her grievance had she not at that moment espied, fastened to the lapel of his coat, a cluster of golden-hearted daisies.

That sight froze the light in her dark, passionate eyes and the welcome that trembled on her scarlet lips.

He leaped lightly from the saddle, and came quickly forward to meet her, and then drew back with a start.

“What is the matter, Pluma?” he asked, in wonder.

“Nothing,” she replied, keeping her eyes fastened as if fascinated on the offending daisies he wore on his breast.

“I left you an hour ago smiling and happy. I find you white and worn. There are strange lights in your eyes like the slumbrous fire of a volcano; even your voice seems to have lost its tenderness. What is it, Pluma?”

She raised her dark, proud face to his. There was a strange story written on it, but he could not tell what it was.