Daisy Brooks: or, A Perilous Love

“It–it is nothing. The day is warm, and I am tired, that is all.”

“You are not like the same Pluma who kissed me when I was going away,” he persisted. “Since I left this house something has come between you and me. What is it, Pluma?”

She looked up to him with a proud gesture that was infinitely charming.

“Is anything likely to come between us?” she asked.

“No; not that I know of,” he answered, growing more and more puzzled.

“Then why imagine it?” she asked.

“Because you are so changed, Pluma,” he said. “I shall never perhaps know the cause of your strange manner toward me, but I shall always feel sure it is something which concerns myself. You look at me as though you were questioning me,” he said. “I wish you would tell me what is on your mind?”

“I do not suppose it could make the least difference,” she answered, passionately. “Yes, I will tell you, what you must have been blind not to notice long ago. Have you not noticed how every one watches us with a peculiar smile on their lips as we come among them; and how their voices sink to a whisper lest we should overhear what they say? What is commented upon by my very guests, and the people all about us? Listen, then, it is this: Rex Lyon does not love the woman he has asked to be his wife. The frosts of Iceland could not be colder than his manner toward her. They say, too, that I have given you the truest and deepest love of my heart, and have received nothing in return. Tell me that it is all false, my darling. You do care for me, do you not, Rex? Tell me,” she implored.

“Good heavens!” cried Rex, almost speechless in consternation; “do they dare say such things? I never thought my conduct could give rise to one reproach, one unkind thought.”

“Tell me you do care for me, Rex,” she cried. “I have been almost mad with doubt.”

There was something in the lovely face, in the tender, pleading eyes, and quivering, scarlet mouth, that looked as if it were made for kisses–that Rex would have had to have been something more than mortal man to have resisted her pleading with sighs and tears for his love, and refuse it, especially as she had every reason to expect it, as he had asked her to be his wife. There was such a look of unutterable love on her face it fairly bewildered him. The passion in her voice startled him. What was he to do with this impetuous girl? Rex looked as if he felt exceedingly uncomfortable.

He took her in his arms and kissed her mechanically; he knew that was what she wanted and what she expected him to do.

“This must be my answer, dear,” he said, holding her in a close embrace.

In that brief instant she had torn the daisies from the lapel of his coat with her white, jeweled fingers, tossed them to the earth, and stamped her dainty feet upon them, wishing in the depths of her soul she could crush out all remembrance from his heart of the young girl for whose memory this handsome lover of hers wore these wild blossoms on his breast.

As Rex looked down into her face he missed them, and quickly unclasped his arms from around her with a little cry.

Stooping down he instantly recovered his crushed treasures and lifted them reverently in his hand with a sigh.

“I can not say that I admire your taste, Rex,” she said, with a short, hard laugh, that somehow grated harshly on her lover’s ears. “The conservatories are blooming with rare and odorous flowers, yet you choose these obnoxious plants; they are no more or less than a species of weeds. Never wear them again, Rex–I despise them–throw them away, and I will gather you a rare bouquet of white hyacinths and starry jasmine and golden-rod bells.”

The intense quiver in her voice pained him, and he saw her face wore the pallor of death, and her eyes were gleaming like restless fire.

“I will not wear them certainly if you dislike them, Pluma,” he said, gravely, “but I do not care to replace them by any other; daisies are the sweetest flowers on earth for me.”

He did not fasten them on his coat again, but transferred them to his breast-pocket. She bit her scarlet lips in impotent rage.

In the very moment of her supreme triumph and happiness he had unclasped his arms from about her to pick up the daisies she had crushed with her tiny heel–those daisies which reminded him of that other love that still reigned in his heart a barrier between them.

CHAPTER XXIX

“I do think it is a perfect shame those horrid Glenn girls are to be invited up here to Rex’s wedding,” cried little Birdie Lyon, hobbling into the room where Mrs. Corliss sat, busily engaged in hemming some new table-linen, and throwing herself down on a low hassock at her feet, and laying down her crutch beside her–“it is perfectly awful.”

“Why,” said Mrs. Corliss, smoothing the nut-brown curls back from the child’s flushed face, “I should think you would be very pleased. They were your neighbors when you were down in Florida, were they not?”

“Yes,” replied the little girl, frowning, “but I don’t like them one bit. Bess and Gertie–that’s the two eldest ones, make me think of those stiff pictures in the gay trailing dresses in the magazines. Eve is nice, but she’s a Tom-boy.”

“A wh–at!” cried Mrs. Corliss.

“She’s a Tom-boy, mamma always said; she romps, and has no manners.”

“They will be your neighbors when you go South again–so I suppose your brother thought of that when he invited them.”

“He never dreamed of it,” cried Birdie; “it was Miss Pluma’s doings.”

“Hush, child, don’t talk so loud,” entreated the old housekeeper; “she might hear you.”

“I don’t care,” cried Birdie. “I don’t like her anyhow, and she knows it. When Rex is around she is as sweet as honey to me, and calls me ‘pretty little dear,’ but when Rex isn’t around she scarcely notices me, and I hate her–yes, I do.”

Birdie clinched her little hands together venomously, crying out the words in a shrill scream.

“Birdie,” cried Mrs. Corliss, “you must not say such hard, cruel things. I have heard you say, over and over again, you liked Mr. Hurlhurst, and you must remember Pluma is his daughter, and she is to be your brother’s wife. You must learn to speak and think kindly of her.”

“I never shall like her,” cried Birdie, defiantly, “and I am sure Mr. Hurlhurst don’t.”

“Birdie!” ejaculated the good lady in a fright, dropping her scissors and spools in consternation; “let me warn you not to talk so again; if Miss Pluma was to once hear you, you would have a sorry enough time of it all your after life. What put it into your head Mr. Hurlhurst did not like his own daughter?”

“Oh, lots of things,” answered Birdie. “When I tell him how pretty every one says she is, he groans, and says strange things about fatal beauty, which marred all his young life, and ever so many things I can’t understand, and his face grows so hard and so stern I am almost afraid of him.”

“He is thinking of Pluma’s mother,” thought Mrs. Corliss–but she made no answer.

“He likes to talk to me,” pursued the child, rolling the empty spools to and fro with her crutch, “for he pities me because I am lame.”

“Bless your dear little heart,” said Mrs. Corliss, softly stroking the little girl’s curls; “it is seldom poor old master takes to any one as he has to you.”

“Do I look anything like the little child that died?” questioned Birdie.

A low, gasping cry broke from Mrs. Corliss’s lips, and her face grew ashen white. She tried to speak, but the words died away in her throat.

“He talks to me a great deal about her,” continued Birdie, “and he weeps such bitter tears, and has such strange dreams about her. Why, only last night he dreamed a beautiful, golden-haired young girl came to him, holding out her arms, and crying softly: ‘Look at me, father; I am your child. I was never laid to rest beneath the violets, in my young mother’s tomb. Father, I am in sore distress–come to me, father, or I shall die!’ Of course it was only a dream, but it makes poor Mr. Hurlhurst cry so; and what do you think he said?”

The child did not notice the terrible agony on the old housekeeper’s face, or that no answer was vouchsafed her.

“‘My dreams haunt me night and day,’ he cried. ‘To still this wild, fierce throbbing of my heart I must have that grave opened, and gaze once more upon all that remains of my loved and long-lost bride, sweet Evalia and her little child.’ He was–”

Birdie never finished her sentence.

A terrible cry broke from the housekeeper’s livid lips.

“My God!” she cried, hoarsely, “after nearly seventeen years the sin of my silence is about to find me out at last.”

“What is the matter, Mrs. Corliss? Are you ill?” cried the startled child.

A low, despairing sob answered her, as Mrs. Corliss arose from her seat, took a step or two forward, then fell headlong to the floor in a deep and death-like swoon.

Almost any other child would have been terrified, and alarmed the household.

Birdie was not like other children. She saw a pitcher of ice-water on an adjacent table, which she immediately proceeded to sprinkle on the still, white, wrinkled face; but all her efforts failed to bring the fleeting breath back to the cold, pallid lips.

At last the child became fairly frightened.

“I must go and find Rex or Mr. Hurlhurst,” she cried, grasping her crutch, and limping hurriedly out of the room.

The door leading to Basil Hurlhurst’s apartments stood open–the master of Whitestone Hall sat in his easy-chair, in morning-gown and slippers, deeply immersed in the columns of his account-books.

“Oh, Mr. Hurlhurst,” cried Birdie, her little, white, scared face peering in at the door, “won’t you please come quick? Mrs. Corliss, the housekeeper, has fainted ever so long ago, and I can’t bring her to!”

Basil Hurlhurst hurriedly arose and followed the now thoroughly frightened child quickly to the room where the old housekeeper lay, her hands pressed close to her heart, the look of frozen horror deepening on her face.

Quickly summoning the servants, they raised her from the floor. It was something more than a mere fainting fit. The poor old lady had fallen face downward on the floor, and upon the sharp point of the scissors she had been using, which had entered her body in close proximity to her heart. The wound was certainly a dangerous one. The surgeon, who was quickly summoned, shook his head dubiously.

“The wound is of the most serious nature,” he said. “She can not possibly recover.”

“I regret this sad affair more than I can find words to express,” said Basil Hurlhurst, gravely. “Mrs. Corliss’s whole life almost has been spent at Whitestone Hall. You tell me, doctor, there is no hope. I can scarcely realize it.”

Every care and attention was shown her; but it was long hours before Mrs. Corliss showed signs of returning consciousness, and with her first breath she begged that Basil Hurlhurst might be sent for at once.

He could not understand why she shrunk from him, refusing his proffered hand.

“Tell them all to leave the room,” she whispered. “No one must know what I have to say to you.”

Wondering a little what she had to say to him, he humored her wishes, sending them all from the room.

“Now, Mrs. Corliss,” he said, kindly drawing his chair up close by the bedside, “what is it? You can speak out without reserve; we are all alone.”

“Is it true that I can not live?” she asked, eagerly scanning his face. “Tell me truthfully, master, is the wound a fatal one?”

“Yes,” he said, sympathetically, “I–I–am afraid it is.”

He saw she was making a violent effort to control her emotions. “Do not speak,” he said, gently; “it distresses you. You need perfect rest and quiet.”

“I shall never rest again until I make atonement for my sin,” she cried, feebly. “Oh, master, you have ever been good and kind to me, but I have sinned against you beyond all hope of pardon. When you hear what I have to say you will curse me. Oh, how can I tell it! Yet I can not sleep in my grave with this burden on my soul.”

He certainly thought she was delirious, this poor, patient, toil-worn soul, speaking so incoherently of sin; she, so tender-hearted–she could not even have hurt a sparrow.

“I can promise you my full pardon, Mrs. Corliss,” he said, soothingly; “no matter on what grounds the grievance may be.”

For a moment she looked at him incredulously.

“You do not know what you say. You do not understand,” she muttered, fixing her fast-dimming eyes strangely upon him.

“Do not give yourself any uneasiness upon that score, Mrs. Corliss,” he said, gently; “try to think of something else. Is there anything you would like to have done for you?”

“Yes,” she replied, in a voice so hoarse and changed he could scarcely recognize it was her who had spoken; “when I tell you all, promise me you will not curse me; for I have sinned against you so bitterly that you will cry out to Heaven asking why I did not die long years ago, that the terrible secret I have kept so long might have been wrung from my lips.”

“Surely her ravings were taking a strange freak,” he thought to himself; “yet he would be patient with her and humor her strange fancy.”

The quiet, gentle expression did not leave his face, and she took courage.

“Master,” she said, clasping her hands nervously together, “would it pain you to speak of the sweet, golden-haired young girl-bride who died on that terrible stormy night nearly seventeen years ago?”

She saw his care-worn face grow white, and the lines of pain deepen around his mouth.

“That is the most painful of all subjects to me,” he said, slowly. “You know how I have suffered since that terrible night,” he said shudderingly. “The double loss of my sweet young wife and her little babe has nearly driven me mad. I am a changed man, the weight of the cross I have had to bear has crushed me. I live on, but my heart is buried in the grave of my sweet, golden-haired Evalia and her little child. I repeat, it is a painful subject, still I will listen to what you have to say. I believe I owe my life to your careful nursing, when I was stricken with the brain fever that awful time.”

“It would have been better if I had let you die then, rather than live to inflict the blow which my words will give you. Oh, master!” she implored, “I did not know then what I did was a sin. I feared to tell you lest the shock might cost you your life. As time wore on, I grew so deadly frightened I dared not undo the mischief my silence had wrought. Remember, master, when you looked upon me in your bitterest, fiercest moments of agony, what I did was for your sake; to save your bleeding heart one more pang. I have been a good and faithful woman all my life, faithful to your interests.”

“You have indeed,” he responded, greatly puzzled as to what she could possibly mean.

She tried to raise herself on her elbows, but her strength failed her, and she sunk back exhausted on the pillow.

“Listen, Basil Hurlhurst,” she said, fixing her strangely bright eyes upon his noble, care-worn face; “this is the secret I have carried in this bosom for nearly seventeen years: ‘Your golden-haired young wife died on that terrible stormy night you brought her to Whitestone Hall;’ but listen, Basil, ‘the child did not!’ It was stolen from our midst on the night the fair young mother died.”

CHAPTER XXX

“My God!” cried Basil Hurlhurst, starting to his feet, pale as death, his eyes fairly burning, and the veins standing out on his forehead like cords, “you do not know what you say, woman! My little child–Evalia’s child and mine–not dead, but stolen on the night its mother died! My God! it can not be; surely you are mad!” he shrieked.

“It is true, master,” she moaned, “true as Heaven.”

“You knew my child, for whom I grieved for seventeen long years, was stolen–not dead–and dared to keep the knowledge from me?” he cried, passionately, beside himself with rage, agony and fear. “Tell me quickly, then, where I shall find my child!” he cried, breathlessly.

“I do not know, master,” she moaned.

For a few moments Basil Hurlhurst strode up and down the room like a man bereft of reason.

“You will not curse me,” wailed the tremulous voice from the bed; “I have your promise.”

“I can not understand how Heaven could let your lips remain silenced all these long, agonizing years, if your story be true. Why, yourself told me my wife and child had both died on that never-to-be-forgotten night, and were buried in one grave. How could you dare steep your lips with a lie so foul and black? Heaven could have struck you dead while the false words were yet warm on your lips!”

“I dared not tell you, master,” moaned the feeble voice, “lest the shock would kill you; then, after you recovered, I grew afraid of the secret I had dared to keep, and dared not tell you.”

“And yet you knew that somewhere in this cruel world my little child was living–my tender, little fair-haired child–while I, her father, was wearing my life out with the grief of that terrible double loss. Oh, woman, woman, may God forgive you, for I never can, if your words be true.”

“I feared such anger as this; that is why I dared not tell you,” she whispered, faintly. “I appeal to your respect for me in the past to hear me, to your promise of forgiveness to shield me, to your love for the little child to listen calmly while I have strength to speak.”

He saw she was right. His head seemed on fire, and his heart seemed bursting with the acute intensity of his great excitement.

He must listen while she had strength to tell him of his child.

“Go on–go on!” he cried, hoarsely, burying his face in the bed-clothes; “tell me of my child!”

“You remember the terrible storm, master, how the tree moaned, and without against the western wing–where your beautiful young wife lay dead, with the pretty, smiling, blue-eyed babe upon her breast?”

“Yes, yes–go on–you are driving me mad!” he groaned.

“You remember how you fell down senseless by her bedside when we told you the terrible news–the young child-bride was dead?”

She knew, by the quivering of his form, he heard her.

“As they carried you from the room, master, I thought I saw a woman’s form gliding stealthily on before, through the dark corridors. A blaze of lightning illumined the hall for one brief instant, and I can swear I saw a woman’s face–a white, mocking, gloriously beautiful face–strangely like the face of your first wife, master, Pluma’s mother. I knew it could not be her, for she was lying beneath the sea-waves. It was not a good omen, and I felt sorely afraid and greatly troubled. When I returned to the room from which they had carried you–there lay your fair young wife with a smile on her lips–but the tiny babe that had slumbered on her breast was gone.”

“Oh, God! if you had only told me this years ago,” cried the unhappy father. “Have you any idea who could have taken the child? It could not have been for gain, or I should have heard of it long ago. I did not know I had an enemy in the wide world. You say you saw a woman’s face?” he asked, thoughtfully.

“It was the ghost of your first wife,” asserted the old housekeeper, astutely. “I never saw her face but once; but there was something about it one could not easily forget.”

Basil Hurlhurst was not a superstitious man, yet he felt a strange, unaccountable dread stealing over him at the bare mention of such a thing. It was more than he could endure to hear the name of the wife he had loved, and the wife who slept beneath the wild sea-waves, coupled in one breath–the fair young wife he had idolized, and the dark, sparkling face of the wife who had brought upon him such wretched folly in his youth!

“Have you not some clew to give me?” he cried out in agony–“some way by which I can trace her and learn her fate?”

She shook her head.

“This is unbearable!” he cried, pacing up and down the room like one who had received an unexpected death-blow. “I am bewildered! Merciful Heaven! which way shall I turn? This accounts for my restlessness all these years, when I thought of my child–my restless longing and fanciful dreams! I thought her quietly sleeping on Evalia’s breast. God only knows what my tender little darling has suffered, or in what part of the world she lives, or if she lives at all!”

It had been just one hour since Basil Hurlhurst had entered that room, a placid-faced, gray-haired man. When he left it his hair was white as snow from the terrible ordeal through which he had just passed.

He scarcely dared hope that he should yet find her–where or how he should find her, if ever.

In the corridor he passed groups of maidens, but he neither saw nor heard them. He was thinking of the child that had been stolen from him in her infancy–the sweet little babe with the large blue eyes and shining rings of golden hair.

He saw Pluma and Rex greeting some new arrivals out on the flower-bordered terrace, but he did not stop until he had reached his own apartments.

He did not send for Pluma, to divulge the wonderful discovery he had made. There was little sympathy or confidence between the father and daughter.

“I can never sleep again until I have some clew to my child!” he cried, frantically wringing his hands.

Hastily he touched the bell-rope.

“Mason,” he said to the servant who answered the summons, “pack my valise at once. I am going to take the first train to Baltimore. You have no time to lose.”

He did not hear the man’s ejaculation of surprise as his eyes fell on the face of the master who stood before him with hair white as snow–so utterly changed in one short hour.

“You couldn’t possibly make the next train, sir; it leaves in a few moments.”

“I tell you you must make it!” cried Basil Hurlhurst. “Go and do as I bid you at once! Don’t stand there staring at me; you are losing golden moments. Fly at once, I tell you!”

Poor old Mason was literally astounded. What had come over his kind, courteous master?

“I have nothing that could aid them in the search,” he said to himself, pacing restlessly up and down the room. “Ah! stay!–there is Evalia’s portrait! The little one must look like her mother if she is living yet!”

He went to his writing-desk and drew from a private drawer a little package tied with a faded ribbon, which he carefully untied with trembling fingers.

It was a portrait on ivory of a beautiful, girlish, dimpled face, with shy, upraised blue eyes, a smiling rosebud mouth, soft pink cheeks, and a wealth of rippling, sunny-golden hair.

“She must look like this,” he whispered. “God grant that I may find her!”

“Mr. Rex Lyon says, please may he see you a few moments, sir,” said Mason, popping his black head in at the door.

“No; I do not wish to see any one, and I will not see any one. Have you that satchel packed, I say?”

“Yes, sir; it will be ready directly, sir,” said the man, obediently.

“Don’t come to me with any more messages–lock everybody out. Do you hear me, Mason? I will be obeyed!”

“Yes, sir, I hear. No one shall disturb you.”

Again Basil Hurlhurst turned to the portrait, paying little attention to what was transpiring around him. “I shall put it at once in the hands of the cleverest detectives,” he mused; “surely they will be able to find some trace of my lost darling.”

Seventeen years! Ah, what might have happened her in that time? The master of Whitestone Hall always kept a file of the Baltimore papers; he rapidly ran his eye down the different columns.

“Ah, here is what I want,” he exclaimed, stopping short. “Messrs. Tudor, Peck & Co., Experienced Detectives, – Street, Baltimore. They are noted for their skill. I will give the case into their hands. If they restore my darling child alive and well into my hands I will make them wealthy men–if she is dead, the blow will surely kill me.”

He heard voices debating in the corridor without.

“Did you tell him I wished particularly to see him?” asked Rex, rather discomfited at the refusal.

“Yes, sir,” said Mason, dubiously.

“Miss Pluma, his daughter, wishes me to speak with him on a very important matter. I am surprised that he so persistently refuses to see me,” said Rex, proudly, wondering if Pluma’s father had heard that gossip–among the guests–that he did not love his daughter. “I do not know that I have offended the old gentleman in any way,” he told himself. “If it comes to that,” he thought, “I can do no more than confess the truth to him–the whole truth about poor little Daisy–no matter what the consequences may be.”