Little Golden's Daughter; or, The Dream of a Life Time

A youth was coming toward her, and his low, entreating "stay, madam," arrested her contemplated flight.

He came close to her side, and as his rough garments brushed the stone ballustrade, the cool, moist smell of newly thrown up earth came distinctly to her senses.

She shivered and thought of that new-made grave lying in the silence and calm of the dewy night.

"Will you tell me if Mr. Chesleigh is here, ma'am?" he inquired, respectfully.

"Yes, he is here. What can you want of Mr. Chesleigh at this unseemly hour of the night?" she inquired, in wonder.

"I have important business with him," said the youth, and Gertrude thought she detected a trembling, as of fear, in his voice. "Can I see him a moment, if you please?"

"No, you cannot, for he is ill and unconscious, and we fear that he is dying," she replied.

A smothered exclamation escaped from the youth's lips.

"Oh, this is dreadful!" he said, as if unconscious of having a listener. "What shall we do now?"

"Can I help you?" asked Gertrude, gently.

He bent toward her eagerly.

"Oh, madam, you are a friend of the poor lady that was buried this afternoon?" he said, almost fearfully.

"Yes," she answered, with a quickened heart-beat.

"Then come with me, for God's sake. There is not a minute to lose. Don't be afraid. No harm shall come to you."

So impressed was Gertrude by the youth's strange eagerness that she followed him without a word across the green lawn, through the wide gate, and along the winding road.

"Not here!" she said, aghast, as he paused at the white gate of the Glenalvan burying ground.

"Yes, even here," he answered, solemnly; and the gate-latch clicked softly beneath his hand. "Follow me, lady. No harm shall happen you."

CHAPTER XLIV

When Bertram Chesleigh came to full consciousness again he found himself lying on a couch in Mr. Leith's bedroom.

The curtains were drawn at the windows, but the light of the full day glimmered through, and he saw the grave-faced physician sitting beside him, while Richard Leith, from the bed opposite, regarded him with an intent expression. He struggled up feebly and pressed his hand to his brow.

"I have had a shock," he said, with an air of strange perplexity, as he looked into their anxious faces. "What was it? What has happened to me?"

"You have been near to death's door," replied the physician, gravely, "but you will recover now."

"I wish that I had died!" the young man burst out, with such passionate realization of his misery, that the doctor exclaimed, incautiously:

"So, then, you did try to commit suicide?"

The brilliant, dark eyes looked at him in amazement.

"Suicide! suicide!" he repeated, blankly. "Who dares to say that of me?"

The doctor regarded him thoughtfully.

"My dear sir," he said, quietly, "I happened in here very opportunely last evening and found you suffering all the terrible symptoms of arsenic poisoning. Your friends feared that your grief had unhinged your mind, and that under temporary aberration you had attempted the destruction of your own life."

"They were wrong. I could never have been such a coward," Bertram answered, in such a tone of convincing truthfulness that no one could doubt him. "Indeed, doctor, you must have been mistaken. I have taken no drug recently."

"I am not mistaken," the physician asserted, confidently. "You had most certainly had arsenic administered to you in a draught of wine."

A startled gleam came into Mr. Chesleigh's eyes, his face whitened, a cry of horror came from his lips.

"Doctor, are you quite, quite sure?" he exclaimed.

"I would swear to the drug," was the instant reply. "Do you admit the wine?"

"Yes," came the grave reply; "I drank a glass of wine before coming in here yesterday evening, but I did not dream it was drugged," and an expression of almost incredulous horror swept over the handsome face.

"Who gave you the wine?" inquired the doctor and Richard Leith almost simultaneously.

But Bertram Chesleigh shook his head.

"Do not ask me," he said. "It is terrible, yet I will not betray my would-be destroyer."

"It was one of the Glenalvans," asserted Richard Leith, seeing the truth as by a flash of light.

"Do not ask me," the young man replied again. "I must not tell you. It is too terrible. I can scarce believe the dread reality myself."

But though he refused to reveal the secret, Richard Leith felt morally certain that it was to some of the family of John Glenalvan the young man owed the attempted destruction of his life. He had heard that Elinor had "set her cap" at him.

This, then, was the dreadful revenge she had taken for her disappointment.

The physician went away and left them together. Then the lawyer told his son-in-law his whole sad story. Bertram's indignation knew no bounds.

"May the curse of an offended God rest upon John Glenalvan's head!" he exclaimed. "It is to him and his family that my poor Golden owes the bitter sorrows of her brief life. My sister's maid, Celine, confessed that it was Elinor Glenalvan who discovered Golden's identity, and bribed her to send her away under a ban of disgrace. Oh, God, Leith, could I only have known that the girl little Ruby loved so dearly, and who shunned me so persistently, was my deserted wife, how joyously would I have taken her to my heart and claimed her for my own."

"Yes, if you had only known," Richard Leith replied, with mournful emphasis. "My poor young daughter, hers indeed was a hard lot. Scorned by her kindred, deserted by her husband, despised and disowned by her miserable father! How glad she must have been to creep into the kindly shelter of the grave! Ah, Heaven, Chesleigh, I never can forget my own wretched share in breaking that tender heart."

His head sank back on his pillow, and almost womanly tears coursed over his pale cheeks.

"But she forgave me before she died," he continued, pathetically, after a little. "She was an angel, Chesleigh. I can never forget how sweet and patient she was. The day before she died they carried me into her room. I lay on a couch by the side of her bed. They showed me the beautiful little waxen image—the babe that had never drawn a single breath of life in this world, and I could not keep from crying when they said her terrible fall had killed the child. The minister came, and told her that she must die in a few hours, too. But was it not strange, Chesleigh? She smiled sadly and shook her head."

"'No, you are all mistaken,' she said. 'I should not be sorry to die, but my time has not come yet. I cannot die until I know whether I shall meet my mother in Heaven, or whether she is still on earth.'

"But that night she passed away peacefully in her sleep. It was so calm and gradual we did not know when the end had come. It was like those sweet lines of Hood:

"'We watched her breathing through the night,
Her breathing soft and low,
As in her breast the wave of life
Went heaving to and fro.