Daisy Brooks: or, A Perilous Love

No one noticed Pluma’s anxiety. One moment hushed and laughing, the queen of mirth and revelry, then pale and silent, with shadowed eyes, furtively glancing down the broad, pebbled path that led to the entrance gate.

Yet, despite her bravery, Pluma’s face and lips turned white when she heard the confusion of her lover’s arrival.

Perhaps Pluma had never suffered more suspense in all her life than was crowded into those few moments.

Had he seen Lester Stanwick? Had he come to denounce her for her treachery, in his proud, clear voice, and declare the marriage broken off?

She dared not step forward to greet him, lest the piercing glance of his eyes would cause her to fall fainting at his feet.

“A guilty conscience needs no accuser.” Most truly the words were exemplified in her case. Yet not one pang of remorse swept across her proud heart when she thought of the young girl whose life she had so skillfully blighted.

What was the love of Daisy Brooks, an unsophisticated child of nature, only the overseer’s niece, compared to her own mighty, absorbing passion?

The proud, haughty heiress could not understand how Rex, polished, courteous and refined, could have stooped to such a reckless folly. He would thank her in years to come for sparing him from such a fate. These were the thoughts she sought to console herself with.

She stood near the door when he entered, but he did not see her; a death-like pallor swept over her face, her dark eyes had a wild, perplexing look.

She was waiting in terrible suspense for Rex to call upon her name; ask where she was, or speak some word in which she could read her sentence of happiness or despair in the tone of his voice.

She could not even catch the expression of his face; it was turned from her. She watched him so eagerly she hardly dared draw her breath.

Rex walked quickly through the room, stopping to chat with this one or that one a moment; still, his face was not turned for a single instant toward the spot where she stood.

Was he looking for her? She could not tell. Presently he walked toward the conservatory, and a moment later Eve Glenn came tripping toward her.

“Oh, here you are!” she cried, flinging her arms about her in regular school-girl abandon, and kissing the cold, proud mouth, that deigned no answering caress. “Rex has been looking for you everywhere, and at last commissioned me to find you and say he wants to speak to you. He is out on the terrace.”

How she longed to ask if Rex’s face was smiling or stern, but she dared not.

“Where did you say Rex was, Miss Glenn?”

“I said he was out on the terrace; but don’t call me Miss Glenn, for pity’s sake–it sounds so freezingly cold. Won’t you please call me Eve,” cried the impetuous girl–“simply plain Eve? That has a more friendly sound, you know.”

Another girl less proud than the haughty heiress would have kissed Eve’s pretty, piquant, upturned, roguish face.

“What did Rex have to say to her?” she asked herself, in growing dread.

The last hope seemed withering in her proud, passionate heart. She rose haughtily, and walked with the dignity of a queen through the long drawing-room toward the terrace. Her heart almost stopped beating as she caught sight of Rex leaning so gracefully against the trunk of an old gnarled oak tree, smoking a cigar. That certainly did not look as if he meant to greet her with a kiss.

She went forward hesitatingly–a world of anxiety and suspense on her face–to know her fate. The color surged over her face, then receded from it again, as she looked at him with a smile–a smile that was more pitiful than a sigh.

“Rex,” she cried, holding out her hands to him with a fluttering, uncertain movement that stirred the perfumed laces of the exquisite robe she wore, and the jewels on her white, nervous hands–“Rex, I am here!”

CHAPTER XXXIII

We must now return to Daisy, whom we left standing in the heart of the forest, the moonlight streaming on her upturned face, upon which the startled horseman gazed.

He had not waited for her to reply, but, touching his horse hastily with his riding-whip, he sped onward with the speed of the wind.

In that one instant Daisy had recognized the dark, sinister, handsome face of Lester Stanwick.

“They have searched the pit and found I was not there. He is searching for me; he has tracked me down!” she cried, vehemently, pressing her little white hands to her burning head.

Faster, faster flew the little feet through the long dew-damp grasses.

“My troubles seem closing more darkly around me,” she sobbed. “I wish I had never been born, then I could never have spoiled Rex’s life. But I am leaving you, my love, my darling, so you can marry Pluma, the heiress. You will forget me and be happy.”

Poor little, neglected, unloved bride, so fair, so young, so fragile, out alone facing the dark terrors of the night, fleeing from the young husband who was wearing his life out in grief for her. Ah, if the gentle winds sighing above her, or the solemn, nodding trees had only told her, how different her life might have been!

“No one has ever loved me but poor old Uncle John!” She bent her fair young head and cried out to Heaven: “Why has no mercy been shown to me? I have never done one wrong, yet I am so sorely tried. Oh, mother, mother!” she cried, raising her blue eyes up to the starry sky, “if you could have foreseen the dark, cruel shadows that would have folded their pitiless wings over the head of your child, would you not have taken me with you down into the depths of the seething waters?” She raised up her white hands pleadingly as though she would fain pierce with her wrongs the blue skies, and reach the great White Throne. “I must be going mad,” she said. “Why did Rex seek me out?” she cried, in anguish. “Why did Heaven let me love him so madly, and my whole life be darkened by living apart from him if I am to live? I had no thought of suffering and sorrow when I met him that summer morning. Are the summer days to pass and never bring him? Are the flowers to bloom, the sun to shine, the years to come and go, yet never bring him once to me? I can not bear it–I do not know how to live!”

If she could only see poor old, faithful John Brooks again she would kneel at his feet just as she had done when she was a little child, lay her weary head down on his toil-hardened hand, tell him how she had suffered, and ask him how she could die and end it all.

She longed so hungrily for some one to caress her, murmuring tender words over her. She could almost hear his voice saying as she told him her pitiful story: “Come to my arms, pet, my poor little trampled Daisy! You shall never want for some one to love you while poor old Uncle John lives. Bless your dear little heart!”

The longing was strongly upon her. No one would recognize her–she must go and see poor old John. She never thought what would become of her life after that.

At the station she asked for a ticket for Allendale. No one seemed to know of such a place. After a prolonged search on the map the agent discovered it to be a little inland station not far from Baltimore.

“We can sell you a ticket for Baltimore,” he said, “and there you can purchase a ticket for the other road.”

And once again poor little Daisy was whirling rapidly toward the scene of her first great sorrow.

Time seemed to slip by her unheeded during all that long, tedious journey of two nights and a day.

“Are you going to Baltimore?” asked a gentle-faced lady, who was strangely attracted to the beautiful, sorrowful young girl, in which all hope, life, and sunshine seemed dead.

“Yes, madame,” she made answer, “I change cars there; I am going further.”

The lady was struck by the peculiar mournful cadence of the young voice.

“I beg your pardon for my seeming rudeness,” she said, looking long and earnestly at the fair young face; “but you remind me so strangely of a young school-mate of my youth; you are strangely like what she was then. We both attended Madame Whitney’s seminary. Perhaps you have heard of the institution; it is a very old and justly famous school.” She wondered at the beautiful flush that stole into the girl’s flower-like face–like the soft, faint tinting of a sea-shell. “She married a wealthy planter,” pursued the lady, reflectively; “but she did not live long to enjoy her happy home. One short year after she married Evalia Hurlhurst died.” The lady never forgot the strange glance that passed over the girl’s face, or the wonderful light that seemed to break over it. “Why,” exclaimed the lady, as if a sudden thought occurred to her, “when you bought your ticket I heard you mention Allendale. That was the home of the Hurlhursts. Is it possible you know them? Mr. Hurlhurst is a widower–something of a recluse, and an invalid, I have heard; he has a daughter called Pluma.”

“Yes, madame,” Daisy made answer, “I have met Miss Hurlhurst, but not her father.”

How bitterly this stranger’s words seemed to mock her! Did she know Pluma Hurlhurst, the proud, haughty heiress who had stolen her young husband’s love from her?–the dark, sparkling, willful beauty who had crossed her innocent young life so strangely–whom she had seen bending over her husband in the pitying moonlight almost caressing him? She thought she would cry out with the bitterness of the thought. How strange it was! The name, Evalia Hurlhurst, seemed to fall upon her ears like the softest, sweetest music. Perhaps she wished she was like that young wife, who had died so long ago, resting quietly beneath the white daisies that bore her name.

“That is Madame Whitney’s,” exclaimed the lady, leaning forward toward the window excitedly. “Dear me! I can almost imagine I am a young girl again. Why, what is the matter, my dear? You look as though you were about to faint.”

The train whirled swiftly past–the broad, glittering Chesapeake on one side, and the closely shaven lawn of the seminary on the other. It was evidently recess. Young girls were flitting here and there under the trees, as pretty a picture of happy school life as one would wish to see. It seemed to poor hapless Daisy long ages must have passed since that morning poor old John Brooks had brought her, a shy, blushing, shrinking country lassie, among those daintily attired, aristocratic maidens, who had laughed at her coy, timid mannerism, and at the clothes poor John wore, and at his flaming red cotton neckerchief.

She had not much time for further contemplation. The train steamed into the Baltimore depot, and she felt herself carried along by the surging crowd that alighted from the train.

She did not go into the waiting-room; she had quite forgotten she was not at the end of her journey.

She followed the crowds along the bustling street, a solitary, desolate, heart-broken girl, with a weary white face whose beautiful, tender eyes looked in vain among the throngs that passed her by for one kindly face or a sympathetic look.

Some pushed rudely by her, others looked into the beautiful face with an ugly smile. Handsomely got-up dandies, with fine clothes and no brains, nodded familiarly as Daisy passed them. Some laughed, and others scoffed and jeered; but not one–dear Heaven! not one among the vast throng gave her a kindly glance or a word. Occasionally one, warmer hearted than the others, would look sadly on that desolate, beautiful, childish face.