Mary Jane Holmes

“ No one heard him, no one knew he was there; but as he stood in the silence and darkness he heard distinctly his grandfather's voice, and this was what he heard:
"I must tell you, my son, and you, my minister; but no one else, not Grey—no, no, not, the boy Grey, who loves me so much. His life must not be shadowed with disgrace. He must not hate me in my coffin. Oh, Grey! Grey! May God bless him and give him every needful happiness, and make him so good and noble that his life will blot out the stain upon our name." ”

“ Neil had no doubt that Grey would try to win her when once he had seen her, and he began at last to feel sorry that he had invited his friend to Stoneleigh, and to have doubts as to his ability to give Bessie up even to him. He was sure of it when he reached Stoneleigh and saw her with the brightness on her face and the sparkle in her eye as she welcomed him. She might not be as elegant or as stylish as Blanche, who had lived in the city all her life, but she was inexpressibly sweet and womanly, and there was in every movement a grace and quiet dignity which stamped her as a lady. ”

“ At last the day was ended, and the shades of night crept in and around the old gray house, while a darker shadow than any which night ever brings was in the sick-room where Archie lay, half unconscious, and talking, now of Daisy, now of Bessie, and now of Neil and asking if he had come. He had not nor any answer to the telegram, and Bessie's heart was very heavy and sad with a sense of desertion and terrible loneliness. How could she bear to be alone with her dead father, and only Anthony and Dorothy to counsel her? ”

“ You must love Sir Jack. You cannot help loving him when you know how good he is! Why, if I tried real hard I could love him myself! But he looks upon me as a child, though he does not play with and tease me as Cousin Harry did. Poor Hal! There is such a pain in my heart when I think of him so strong and full of fun in the morning, and then dead before noon. Oh, Hal. Hal! My tears are falling fast for him, and I am so lonely without him. Come to me, Bessie, and you shall never have a more devoted friend than little
"FLORENCE MEREDITH." ”

“ Jerrold, you are so noble and good. You have made so many happy. God bless you, and give you everything which you desire most."
She was too much exhausted to talk any more, and closing her eyes, she lay as if asleep, while Grey watched her with the bitterest pain in his heart he had ever known. Would she die? Must he give her up? Was there yet no brightness, no happiness in the world for her, whose life had been one of sacrifice and toil? He could not think so, and all his soul went out in one continuous prayer: "Don't let Bessie die." ”

“ But Neil did not fancy Blanche, and he did like Bessie, and took her in to dinner, holding her little hand while she skipped and jumped at his side and looked up in his face with those great blue eyes which moved him strangely now, and which in the after time were to bewilder and intoxicate and awaken in him all the better impulses of his nature and then become the sweetest and the saddest memory of his life.
"It is so nice to go to dinner with big people and have all you want to eat, isn't it?" ”

“ Seven years, and from a lovely child of eight years old Bessie McPherson had grown to a wonderfully beautiful girl of fifteen, whose face once seen could never be forgotten, it was so sweet, and pure, and refined, and yet so sad in its expression at times, as if she carried some burden heavier than the care of her father, who was fast sinking into a state of confirmed invalidism, and to whom she devoted all the freshness of her young life, with no thought for herself or her own comfort. ”

“ I cannot let you die just as I know how much I love you, and something tells me you will yet be mine. We should all love you so much, my mother, Aunt Lucy, Aunt Hannah, and all."
And then suddenly, as his mind leaped to the future, Grey seemed to see the old farm-house in the rocky pasture-land far away, and Bessie was there with him, sitting just where he had so often sat when a child, on the little bench in the wood-shed close against the wall, beyond which was that hidden grave whose shadow had, in a way, darkened his whole life. ”

“ Meanwhile the party at Grey's Park had gathered around the fire in the drawing-room, and Geraldine was repeating to her sister the particulars of her presentation to the queen, shivering occasionally as she heard the sleet and snow beating against the window, for with the going down of the sun the storm had commenced again with redoubled fury, and the wind howled dismally as it swept past the corners of the house, bearing with it blinding sheets of snow and rain, and sounding some times like human sobbing as it died away in the distance.
"Is there some one crying outside, or is it the wind?" ”

“ Grey, who, without being in the least a prig, was something of a connoisseur in the details of dress, had delighted to adorn his bride with everything which could enhance her beauty, and Bessie wore her plumage well, and there was a most striking contrast between the girl of fifteen, who, in her washed linen gown and faded ribbons, had once stood up in the park waving her handkerchief to Neil, and the young matron of twenty, who, clad in a faultless dinner dress, with diamonds in her ears and on her fingers, went forward to meet her cousin. ”

“ You were too good for me, Bessie, and I should have been a drag upon your life always. But Heaven knows how much I miss you, and how at times, when the thought comes over me that you are lost to me forever, and that another man is enjoying the sweetness I once thought would be mine, I half wish I were dead and out of the way of everything. Then I put that feeling aside as unworthy of me, and say to myself that I am glad you are happy, and that Grey is the noblest and best fellow in the world, and the one of all others who ought to have you for his wife. I shall never marry ”

“ For an instant Daisy shuddered, and fancied she felt an icy chill, as if her husband's words were words of prophecy and a blast were blowing upon her from some dark, cold grave. But she was too young to die; death was not for her these many years; it was only waiting for this enfeebled man, whom she wheeled back to the house where Bessie was, and where the birds he heard so often came and sang to him of green fields and flowery meadows beyond the sea, where he saw always Bessie with a look of rest and sweet content upon her face, instead of the tired, watchful, waiting look habitual to it now. ”

“ It was very apparent this afternoon, as she stood by the window looking out upon the snow which covered the garden and park, and made her shiver a little, and think of the mother who should have been at home, lightening her daughter's burden and cheering her lonely life.
"How happy the girls must be who have real mothers," Bessie thought, and then as if the regret for the mother reflected upon the father, who was so much to her, she went up to him by the fire, and stooping over him kissed him tenderly. ”

“ Grey answered her, laughingly, as he bade her good-by and walked away.
For a week or more Bessie scarcely spoke or moved, it was such happiness to rest, with every wish anticipated either by her aunt or Jennie, whose voice was a whasper most of the time, and who was learning to be more quiet and subdued. At last, however, Bessie began to talk, and said to Jennie one day:
"I believe I am getting better, and I am afraid I am not as glad as I ought to be—the world holds so little for me, and so few who care for me beside auntie and you." ”

“ John McPherson, and my mother is Lady Jane McPherson,' he replied, in a tone intended to annihilate me wholly.
"But I stood my ground, and said:
"'Oh, you are Neil McPherson, are you? and your father is an honorable, and your mother a lady? Well, I am Grey Jerrold, of Boston, and my father is an honorable, and my mother is a lady, too!"
"'Now, reely, you make me larf,' he cried. 'Your father may be an honorable—I believe you have such things—but your mother is not a lady; there are no ladies in America—born ladies, such as we have in the United Kingdom. ”

“ You are very beautiful, and Neil McPherson knows it, and if you had a fortune he might seek to be more than your cousin, but as it is don't attach much importance to what he says and does or be disappointed at what he does not do."
"The old cove has hit it," Jack thought; "he understands Neil to a dot. If Bessie had a fortune he would go down before her in dead earnest; and, perhaps, I would too, for, 'pon my soul, she has the sweetest face I ever saw. What a lovely woman she will make." ”

“ Alas for poor weak human nature when perverted from its better side! The sound of Teddy's voice, so different from what it had been before during the voyage, awoke a throb in Daisy's heart, which she would not like to have confessed to those around her. She was free now, and who knew that she might not one day be mistress of that handsome place in Ireland, Lord Hardy's home, if she only played her cards well. Surely that low-born Yankee girl, Augusta Browne, could never be her rival, even if she had money. ”

“ So Jennie left her, and, covering her face with her hands, Bessie sobbed, piteously:
"Oh, Father in heaven, is there never to be any joy for me? Must I always be so desolate and lonely, and is it wicked to wish that I were dead?"
For several minutes poor Bessie wept on, and then with a great effort she dried her tears, and, leaning her head back in her chair, began to live over again every incident of her life as connected with Grey Jerrold. And while she sat there thus, the Boston train stopped at the Allington station, and she heard the roar and the ring as it started on its way. ”

“ I was too young, and I should not have played anyway, for I promised Aunt Lucy I would not," Grey said, and Miss McPherson replied, with startling vehemence:
"That's right, my boy! that's right! Never, never play for money so long as you live. You have no idea what perils lurk around the gaming-table, or what an accursed spot Monte-Carlo is, beautiful as it is to look at. Those lovely grounds are haunted with the ghosts of the suicides who, ruined body and soul, have rushed unprepared into the presence of their Maker." ”

“ Such was the state of affairs at the farm-house on the morning of Thanksgiving Day, when Hannah was making her preparations to go to Grey's Park for two hours or more, just to sit through the dinner and see Grey, whom she had not seen since his return from Europe.
Her father was not as well that morning. Thanksgiving was always a terrible anniversary for him, for as on that day the several members of a family meet again around the old hearth-stone, so the ghosts of the past all came back to torture him and fill him with remorse. ”

“ And so the game began, Neil bending every energy to win, and feeling almost as much excited and eager as if it were a fortune at stake, instead of the bit of Scotch ribbon he had affected to dislike. And it did almost seem to him as if he were playing for Bessie herself; playing to keep her from Grey, the very man to whom he had said he would rather give her than to any one else in the world, if she were not for him. The first game was Grey's, the second Neil's; then came the rubber, and Bessie dealt. ”

“ A face which strangers would trust without a moment's hesitancy; large dark-blue eyes, thick brown hair just inclined to curl at the ends; and a smile which would have made the plainest face handsome and which was Grey's chief point of attraction, if we except his voice, which, though rich and full, was very sweet, and expressive of the genuine interest and sympathy he felt for every human being in distress or otherwise. No tired, discouraged mother in a railway car, trying to hush her crying infant, would ever fear that he would be annoyed or wish her and her child in Jericho. ”

“ I think 'Bessie Jerrold' the sweetest name in all the world."
"So do I; but I doubt if Neil holds the same opinion," Bessie answered, with a laugh, as she leaned her head upon her husband's bosom, while he kissed her lips and forehead, and said the fond, foolish things which no loving wife, however old she may be, is ever tired of hearing—fond, foolish words, which, if oftener spoken, would keep alive the love in hearts which should never grow cold to each other. ”

“ And so he went his way to busy London, and heard from Blanche that the white-haired old earl in the north of England was dead, and the puny Dick master in his place.
"Only two between you and a fortune," seemed whispered in his ear, and with it came a thought of Bessie sitting under the old yew tree in the summer sunshine and looking after him.
"Murderer!" he said to himself again, "do you wish Dick dead and Hal, too, the finest fellow that ever lived, for the sake of a young girl whose mind is full of a prig like Neil McPherson?" ”