A Little Girl in Old Pittsburg

"It is God's own truth," she continued. "I have your father's letter, and you will hardly disown his signature. Your son is at Hurst Abbey – "

"Woman!" he thundered, "it is a base trumped-up lie! There are four lives between me and the succession, and there may be more."

"There were, but last autumn they were all swept suddenly out of existence. The Earl was crazed with grief. I went to him and took his grandson, a beautiful child, that would appeal to any heart. And at his desire I have come to America for you."

Jeffrey Andsdell placed his wife in her father's arms. "Take her home," he said hoarsely, "I will follow and disprove this wild, baseless tale."

Then he pressed her to his heart. "Whatever happens, you are the only woman I have ever loved, remember that;" and taking the woman's arm, entered her coach with her.

The small group dispersed without a word. What could be said! There was consternation on all faces. Bernard Carrick took his daughter home. Once her mother kissed the pallid cheek, and essayed some word of comfort.

"Oh, don't!" she cried piteously. "Let me be still. I must wait and bear it until – "

She did not cry or faint, but seemed turning to stone. And when they reached the house she went straight through the room where the feast was spread, to her own, and threw herself on the bed.

"Oh, acushla darlin'," cried Norah, "sure we had the warning when the pear tree bloomed. I said it was trouble without reason, and though I broke them all off it couldn't save you."

"Oh, my darlin', God help us all."

CHAPTER XIV

SORROW'S CROWN OF SORROW

"Whatever happens!" The words rang through Daffodil's brain like a knell. There was something to happen. She had been so happy, so serenely, so trustingly happy. For her youthful inexperience had not taught her doubt. The cup of love had been held to her lips and she had drank the divine draught fearlessly, with no thought of bitter dregs at the bottom.

Grandmere came and unpinned the veil; it was too fine and precious an article to be tumbled about.

"Let the rest be," she said. "He is coming and I want to be as I was then."

Then they left her lying there on the bed, the gold of her young life turning slowly to dross. Some curious prescience told her how it would be.

She heard the low voices in the other room. There was crying too. That was her mother. Felix asked questions and was hushed. Was it hours or half a lifetime! All in her brain was chaos, the chaos of belief striving with disbelief that was somehow illumined but not with hope.

He came at last. She heard his step striding through the room and no one seemed to speak to him. He came straight to her, knelt at the bed's side, and took her cold hands in his that were at fever heat.

"My poor darling!" he said brokenly. "I should not have learned to love you so well, I should not have asked for your love. But in this new country and beginning a new life it seemed as if I might bury the old past. And you were the centre, the star of the new. Perhaps if I had told you the story – "

"Tell it now," she made answer, but it did not sound like her voice. She made no effort to release her hands though his seemed to scorch them.

"You can hardly understand that old life in London. There is nothing like it here. I was with a lot of gay companions, and all we thought of was amusement. I had a gift for acting and was persuaded to take part in a play. It was a success. I was flattered and fêted. Women made much of me. I was only a boy after all. And the leading lady, some seven years my senior, fascinated me by her attention and her flatteries. It did turn my head. I was her devoted admirer, yet it was not the sort of love that a man knows later on. How it came about, why she should have done such a thing I cannot divine even now, for at that time I was only a poor, younger son, loaded with debts, though most of my compeers were in the same case. But she married me with really nothing to gain. She kept to the stage. I was tired of it and gave it up, which led to our first dissension. She fancied she saw in me some of the qualities that might make a name. And then – she was angry about the child. We bickered continually. She was very fond of admiration and men went down to her. After a little I ceased to be jealous. I suppose it was because I ceased to care and could only think of the wretched blunder I had made and how I could undo it. We had kept the marriage a secret except from her aunt and a few friends. She would have it so. The child was put out to nurse and the company was going to try their fortunes elsewhere. I would not go with her. In a certain way I had been useful to her and we had a little scene. I went to my father and asked him for money enough to take me to America, where I could cut loose from old associates and begin a new life. He did more. He paid my debts, but told me that henceforward I must look out for myself as this was the last he should do for me."

"And now he asks you to return?" There was a certainty in her voice and she was as unemotional as if they were talking of some one else.

"It is true that now I am his only living son. Late last autumn Lord Veron, his wife and two sons, with my next brother, Archibald, were out for an afternoon's pleasure in a sailboat when there came up an awful blow and a sudden dash of rain. They were about in the middle of the lake. The wind twisted them around, the mast snapped, they found afterward that it was not seaworthy. There was no help at hand. They battled for awhile, then the boat turned over. Lady Veron never rose, the others swam for some time, but Archibald was the only one who came in to shore and he was so spent that he died two days later. I wonder the awful blow did not kill poor father. He was ill for a long while. My wife went to him then and took the child and had sufficient proof to establish the fact of the marriage, and her aunt had always been a foster mother to the boy. There must be some curious fascination about her, though I do not wonder father felt drawn to his only remaining son. Archibald's two children are girls and so are not in the entail. Hurst Abbey would go to some distant cousins. And she offered to come to America and find me. She has succeeded," he ended bitterly.

There was a long pause. He raised his head, but her face was turned away. Did she really care for him? She was taking it all so calmly.

"You will go," she said presently.

"Oh, how can I leave you? For now I know what real love is like. And this is a new country. I have begun a new life, Daffodil – "

"But I cannot be your wife, you see that. Would you give up your father's love, the position awaiting you for a tie that could never be sanctified? You must return."

"There is my son, you know. I shall not matter so much to them. It shall be as you say, my darling. And we need not stay here. It is a big and prospering country and I know now that I can make my way – "

It was not the tone of ardent desire. How she could tell she did not know, but the words dropped on her heart like a knell. Apart from the sacrifice he seemed ready to make for her there was the cruel fact that would mar her whole life, and an intangible knowledge that he would regret it.

"You must go." Her voice was firm.

Did she love so deeply? He expected passionate upbraiding and then despairing love, clinging tenderness. One moment he was wild to have the frank, innocent sweetness of their courtship; he was minded to take her in his arms and press bewildering kisses on the sweet mouth, the fair brow, the delicately tinted cheek, as if he could not give her up. Then Hurst Abbey rose before him, his father bowed with the weight of sorrow ready to welcome him, the fine position he could fill, and after all would the wife be such a drawback? There were many marriages without overwhelming love. If his father accepted her – and from his letter he seemed to unreservedly.

He rose from his kneeling posture and leaned over her. She looked in her quaint wedding dress and marble paleness as if it was death rather than life.

"You can never forgive me." His voice was broken with emotion, though he did not realize all the havoc he had made. "But I shall dream of you and go on loving – "

"No! no!" raising her hand. "We must both forget. You have other duties and I must rouse myself and overlive the vision of a life that would have been complete, perhaps too exquisite for daily wear. It may all be a dream, a youthful fancy. Others have had it vanish after marriage. Now, go."

He bent over to kiss her. She put up her hand.

Was it really more anger than love?

"I wish you all success for your poor father's sake." She was going to add – "And try to love your wife," but her whole soul protested.

He went slowly out of the room. She did not turn or make the slightest motion. She heard the low sound of voices in the other room, his among them, and then all was silence. He had gone away out of her life.

Her mother entered quietly, came near, and took her in her arms.

"Oh, my darling, how could the good All Father, who cares for his children, let such a cruel thing happen? If that woman had come a month ago! And he fancied being here, marrying, never to go back, made him in a sense free. But he should not have hidden the fact. I can never forgive him. Yet one feels sorry as well that he should have misspent so much of his life."

"Help me take off my gown, mother. No one must ever wear it again. And we will try not to talk it over, but put it out of our minds. I am very tired. You won't mind if I lie here and see no one except you who are so dear to me."

It was too soon for any comfort, that the mother felt as she moved about with lightest tread. Then she kissed her and left her to her sorrow.

Mr. Carrick had been very much incensed and blamed the suitor severely. Andsdell had taken it with such real concern and regret and apparent heart-break that the father felt some lenity might be allowed in thought, at least.

Grandad was very bitter and thought condign punishment should overtake him.

"And instead," said warm-hearted Norah indignantly, "he turns into a great lord and has everything to his hand. I could wish his wife was ten times worse and I hope she'll lead him such a life that he'll never see a happy day nor hour, the mean, despicable wretch."

In the night tears came to Daffodil's relief, yet she felt the exposure had come none too soon. With her sorrow there was a sense of deception to counteract it. He had not been honest in spite of apparent frankness, and it hurt her to think he had accepted her verdict so readily. Hard as it would have been to combat his protestations in her moment of longing and despair, any woman would rather have remembered them afterward.

Daffodil kept her bed for several days. She felt weak and distraught. Yet she had her own consciousness of rectitude. She had not been so easily won, and she had been firm and upright at the last. There was no weak kiss of longing to remember. The one he had given her in the church could be recalled without shame. For a few moments she had been in a trance of happiness as his wife. And putting him away she must also bury out of sight all that had gone before.

She took her olden place in the household, she went to church after a week or two and began to see friends again, who all seemed to stand in a little awe of her. The weather was lovely. She was out in the garden with her mother. She rode about with her father. But she felt as if years had passed over her and she was no longer the lightsome girl.

It made her smile too, to think how everything else was changing. The old log houses were disappearing. Alleyways were transformed into streets and quite noteworthy residences were going up. General O'Hara and Mayor Craig enlarged their glass house and improved the quality of glass. She remembered when her father had tacked some fine cloth over the window-casing and oiled it to give it a sort of transparency so that they could have a little light until it was cold enough to shut the wooden shutters all the time, for glass was so dear it could not be put in all the windows. Not that it was cheap now, the processes were cumbersome and slow, but most of the material was at hand.

Mrs. Forbes was a warm and trusty friend through this time of sorrow. She would not let Daffodil blame herself.

"We all liked Mr. Andsdell very much, I am sure. I can count up half a dozen girls who were eager enough to meet him and who were sending him invitations. He really was superior to most of our young men in the way of education and manners. And, my dear, I rather picked him out for you, and when I saw he was attracted I made the captain write to a friend of his at Williamsburg and learn if there was anything serious against him, and everything came back in his favor. Of course none of us suspected a marriage. He talked frankly about his family when there was need, but not in any boastful way. And this is not as disgraceful as some young men who have really had to leave their country for their country's good. But, my dear, if it had not been for this horrid marriage you would have gone off in style and been my lady."

"But maybe none of it would have happened then;" with a rather wan smile.

"True enough! But you're not going to settle down in sober ways and wear hodden gray. And it's not as if you had been jilted by some gay gallant who had married another girl before your eyes as Christy Speers' lover did. And she found a much better man without any long waiting, for Everlom has never succeeded in anything and now he has taken to drink. Don't you suppose Christy is glad she missed her chance with him!"

"It won't be that way, though. I think now he will make a fine man and we shall hear nothing disgraceful about him, if we ever hear at all, which I pray may never come to pass. For I want to put it out of my mind like a story I have read with a bad ending."

"You are a brave girl, Daffodil."

"I don't know why I should be really unhappy. I have so many to love me. And it doesn't matter if I should never marry."

Mrs. Forbes laughed at that, but made no reply. Here was the young lieutenant, who was taking heart of grace again, though he did not push himself forward.

On the whole it was not an unhappy summer for Daffodil. She found a great interest in helping Felix though he was not a booky boy. Always his mind seemed running on some kind of machinery, something that would save time and labor.

"Now, if you were to do so," he would say to his father, "you see it would bring about this result and save a good deal of time. Why doesn't some one see – "

"You get through with your books and try it yourself. There's plenty of space in the world for real improvements."

Daffodil went up to the old trysting place one day. How still and lonesome it seemed. Had the squirrels forgotten her? They no longer ran up her arm and peered into her eyes. He was at Hurst Abbey and that arrogant, imperious woman was queening it as my lady. Was all this satisfying him?

It was the right thing to do even if his motives were not of the highest. To comfort his father in the deep sorrow, and there was his little son.

"No," she said to herself, "I should not want to come here often. The old remembrances had better die out."

She had written to her guardian explaining the broken marriage, and he wondered a little at the high courage with which she had accepted all the events. He had sent her a most kindly answer. And now came another letter from him.

There had been inquiries about leasing some property at Allegheny. Also there were several improvements to be made in view of establishing a future city. His health would not admit of the journey and the necessary going about, so he had decided to send his partner, Mr. Bartram, whom she must remember, and whom he could trust to study the interests of his ward. And what he wanted to ask now was another visit from her, though he was well aware she was no longer the little girl he had known and whose brightness he had enjoyed so much. He was not exactly an invalid, but now he had to be careful in the winter and stay in the house a good deal. Sometimes the days were long and lonesome and he wondered if out of the goodness of her heart she could spare him a few months and if her parents would spare her. Philadelphia had improved greatly and was now the Capitol of the country, though it was still staid and had not lost all of its old nice formality. Couldn't she take pity on him and come and read to him, talk over books and happenings, drive out now and then and be like a granddaughter as she was to his friend Duvernay?

"Oh, mother, read it," and she laid the letter in her mother's lap. Did she want to go? She had been so undecided before.

Bernard Carrick had received a letter also. Mr. Bartram was to start in a short time, as it seemed necessary that some one should look after Daffodil's estate and he wished to make her father co-trustee if at any time he should be disabled, or pass out of life. He could depend upon the uprightness and good judgment of Mr. Bartram in every respect. And he put in a very earnest plea for the loan of his daughter awhile in the winter.

"Oh, I should let her go by all means," declared Mrs. Forbes. "You see that unlucky marriage service has put her rather out of gear with gayeties and when she comes back she will be something fresh and they will all be eager to have her and hear about the President and Lady Washington. And it will cheer her up immensely. She must not grow old too fast."

Daffodil went to tea at Mrs. Ramsen's and there was to be a card party with some of the young men from the Fort. Mrs. Forbes and the captain were at tea and the Major's wife. They talked over the great rush of everything, the treasures that were turning up from the earth, the boats going to and fro. Booms had not come in as a word applicable to this ferment, but certainly Pittsburg had a boom and her people would have been struck dumb if the vision of fifty or a hundred years had been unrolled. Lieutenant Langdale came in to the card playing. They really were very merry, and he thought Daffodil was not so much changed after all, nor heartbroken. He was very glad. And then he asked and was granted permission to see her home. He wanted to say something sympathetic and friendly without seeming officious, yet he did not know how to begin. They talked of his mother, of Archie and how well he was doing.

"And at times I wish I had not enlisted," he remarked in a rather dissatisfied tone. "Not that the feeling of heroism has died out – it is a grand thing to know you stand ready at any call for your country's defence, but now we are dropping into humdrum ways except for the Indian skirmishes. And it gets monotonous. Then there's no chance of making money. I didn't think much of that, it seemed to me rather ignoble, but now when I see some of those stupid fellows turning their money over and over, – and there's that Joe Sanders; do you remember the wedding feast and his going off to Cincinnati with his new wife, who was a very ordinary girl?" and Ned gave an almost bitter laugh. "Now he owns his boat and is captain of it and trades all the way to New Orleans."

"Oh, yes." She gave a soft little laugh as the vision rose before her.

"I remember how sweet you looked that night. And I had to be dancing attendance on her sister. How many changes there have been."

"Yes; I suppose that is life. The older people say so. Otherwise existence would be monotonous as you said. But you did admire military life."

"Well, I like it still, only there seem so few chances of advancement."

"But you wouldn't want real war?"

"I'd like an opportunity to do something worth while, or else go back to business."

If she had expressed a little enthusiasm about that he would have taken it as an interest in his future, but she said —

"You have a very warm friend in Captain Forbes."

"Oh, yes;" rather languidly.

Then they talked of the improvements her father had made in the house. There had been two rooms added before the wedding. And the trees had grown so, the garden was bright with flowering shrubs.

"I wonder if I might drop in and see you occasionally," he said rather awkwardly, as they paused at the gate. "We used to be such friends."

"Why, yes;" with girlish frankness. "Father takes a warm interest in you two boys."

Her mother sat knitting. Barbe Carrick hated to be idle. Her father was dozing in his chair.

"Did you have a nice time, little one?"

"Oh, yes. But I am not an enthusiastic card player. I like the bright bits of talk and that leads to carelessness;" laughing. "Mrs. Remsen is charming."

Then she kissed them both and went her way.

"She is getting over her sorrow," admitted her father. "Still I think a change will be good for her, only we shall miss her very much."

"She has been a brave girl. But it was the thought of his insincerity, his holding back the fact that would have rendered him only the merest acquaintance. She has the old French love of honor and truth."

"And the Scotch are not far behind."

Lieutenant Langdale tried his luck one evening. Mr. Carrick welcomed him cordially, and Felix was very insistent that he should share the conversation. He wanted to know about the Fort and old Fort Duquesne, and why the French were driven out. Didn't they have as good right as any other nation to settle in America? And hadn't France been a splendid friend to us? And why should the French and English be continually at war?

"It would take a whole history to answer you and that hasn't been written yet," subjoined his father.

Ned had stolen glances at the fair girl, who was sitting under grandmother Bradin's wing, knitting a purse that was beaded, and she had to look down frequently to count the beads. Yes, she had grown prettier. There was a fine sweetness in her face that gave poise to her character. Had she really loved that detestable Englishman?

They made ready for Mr. Bartram. Not but what there were tolerable inns now, but taking him in as a friend seemed so much more hospitable. Daffodil wondered a little. He had not made much of an impression on her as a girl. Sometimes he had fallen into good-natured teasing ways, at others barely noticed her. Of course she was such a child. And when the talk that had alarmed her so much and inflamed her childish temper recurred to her she laughed with a sense of wholesome amusement. She knew now a man must have some preference. The old French people betrothed their children without a demur on their part, but here each one had a right to his or her own most sacred feelings.

Mr. Bartram was nearing thirty at this period. Daffodil felt that she really had forgotten how he looked. He had grown stouter and now had a firm, compact figure, a fine dignified face that was gentle and kindly as well, and the sort of manliness that would lead one to depend upon him whether in an emergency or not.

Her father brought him home and they all gave him a cordial welcome for M. de Ronville's sake first, and then for his own. He had the refined and easy adaptiveness that marked the true gentleman.

They talked of the journey. So many improvements had been made and towns had sprung up along the route that afforded comfortable accommodations. Harrisburg had grown to be a thriving town and was the seat of government. He had spent two very entertaining days within its borders.

"Yes, M. de Ronville was in failing health, but his mind was clear and bright and had gone back to the delights and entertainments of his early youth. He had a fine library which was to go largely to that started in the city for the general public. He kept a great deal of interest in and ambition for the city that had been a real home. Through the summer he took many outside pleasures, but now the winters confined him largely to the house.

"I do what I can in the way of entertainment, but now that I have all the business matters to attend to, I can only devote evenings to him and not always those, but friends drop in frequently. He has been like a father to me and I ought to pay him a son's devotion and regard, which it is not only my duty, but my pleasure as well. But he has a warm remembrance of the little girl he found so entertaining."

"Was I entertaining?" Daffodil glanced at him with a charming laugh. "Everybody, it seems, was devoted to me, and my pleasure was being consulted all the time. Mrs. Jarvis was so good and kindly. And Jane! Why, it appears now as if I must have been a spoiled child, and spoiled children I have heard are disagreeable."