Bessie King

“ He therefore divided his kingdom into two parts. The elders lived in one half of the realm, under the government of his mother, while he was King of the young. Riding, hawking, or sailing along the grey river, he never saw a wrinkled visage. Hence his kingdom was called the Village of Youth.
The King was betrothed to a fair Princess named Rowena. She loved her future husband dearly, though his strange malady and the exodus of the old people from his dominions had clouded her happiness, and made her long for some way of alleviating his suffering. ”

“ It is only the thought of losing thee that shadows my face."
So they passed out of the chamber into the garden.
Thus the time wore away. Summer began to wane. The nights grew longer and the days more brief.
The King's impatience to see his daughter married increased hourly. Yet the Prince daily put him off with excuses when asked to fix the date of the wedding. At length His Majesty grew angry at the delay.
"It is time," he said to Myra, "that thou wast settled in life. We are old, and in all probability have little longer to live. Thy good lord seemeth all he should be. ”

“ The lark soaring upwards sang the same song of liberty and hope all through the unending day. No change in the Village of Youth, young for ever.
The Princess, however, felt differently. A maiden wants so little to make her happy. The eternal day was not long to her; her King was with her through its everlasting hours, and summer would never leave them and their love would [Pg 22] never die. Had she only known whether Beryl was safe, her mind would have been quite at rest.
Meeting her Lord one day in the palace gardens, she read the agony in his face ”

“ He's not a bit like Mr. Duncan. And I like your Aunt Annie too. She plays so nice, just as if she were a little girl herself; and she helps everybody if they don't know how, or fall down, or anything."
"Are we not having a real nice time, Bessie?" asked Gracie Howard.
[Pg 237]
"Yes," said Bessie; "but I do wish my soldier and Mrs. Yush could come to our party."
"What makes you care so much about Colonel Rush?" asked Gracie. "He's such a big man."
"He isn't any bigger than my father," said Bessie; "and I love my father dearly, dearly. We can love people just as much if they are big." ”

“ Who is pelting me with flowers? No: it’s not a flower either. What is it, Mary?” and he stooped and picked it up, turning it round and round very gingerly, as if afraid it would fall to pieces in his fingers. “Looks like a small edition of that thing on your head.”
“Just what it is,” replied his sister. “It is a doll’s hat. Ah! there is the little owner, I suppose,” and she looked up at Bessie who was peeping over the banisters with watchful, [218] earnest eyes, and holding Margaret Colonel Horace in her arms. ”

“ Beryl's cheeks were flushed, and her eyes sparkled with excitement, as she hastened along the corridor to the apartments of the Princess. Her royal mistress was seated in the portico which looked on to the palace gardens. Never had Beryl seen the future Queen so [Pg 8] sad. Forgetting her news in her anxiety, she threw herself at Rowena's feet, and besought her to say what ailed her.
"It is the old trouble that afflicts me, dear child. The King grows worse, and I fear that if he cannot conquer his melancholy he will go mad." ”

“ Bessie's lip was full and ripe when she pouted and her voice was freighted heavily with protest and appeal. How pretty her eyelids were when there was a tear quivering on the lashes like a ball of quicksilver. And how really enchanting she looked, as with hair a bit disheveled and color heightening, she went on to argue impetuously:
"What's the good of having a private car? What's the good of being a vice-president's wife and daughter, if you can't change your mind and go galloping out to California when you feel like it? Back to your own home! Back to your own people! ”

“ Not the woman whom you saw in Rome, full of anxiety for her child, but a vain, selfish, intriguing woman, whom no good man could respect, much as he might admire her dazzling beauty. Well, she had me on her string, when I met her daughter, but something Bessie said to me made me strong to resist coils and arts which Satan himself would find it hard to withstand. I used to ride with her, and flirt with her, and bet with her, and play at her side in Monte Carlo, and let her fleece me out of money, just as she did every one with whom she came in contact ”

“ It would have done Grandpapa Duncan good to have seen his pets' pleasure. Maggie fairly screamed with delight. "Oh, such paper, such lovely stamped paper."
"And such embelopes," said Bessie, "with our own name letters on them."
"I am going to write to every one I know in the world," cried Maggie.
"Mamma," said Bessie, when they had looked again and again at their beautiful presents, "I do think God has made all my people the very best people that ever lived. I don't think any little girls have such people as mine."
"I suppose every other little girl thinks the same thing, Bessie." ”

“ His wife must never be a governess, never earn her own bread! The idea was preposterous; and then he talked of the bright future before them if they waited patiently, and how happy he would make her; and in the morning he left her and went back to London, and she was alone again, and looking anxiously forward to news from her mother, and the day after Neil left a letter came from Daisy with the blackest and deepest of borders, and Bessie opened it eagerly to learn where she was, and when she was coming home. ”

“ The next day five hundred dollars were placed in the Allington Savings Bank to the credit of Bessie McPherson Bowen, and the spinster washed her hands of the whole affair, as she expressed it to herself. But she could not quite forget the child, and when on the Monday evening after the christening she sat by her open fire with her round tea table at her side, there was a thought of it in her mind, and she said to herself:
"I am glad I did not give it my name. Betsey is not very poetical, and they are sure to call you Bets when they are angry at you. Bessie is better and sweeter every way." ”

“ The photographer's art had succeeded admirably with Bessie, and made a most wonderful picture of childish innocence and beauty, besides bringing out about the mouth and into the eyes that patient, half sorry expression which spoke to Miss Betsey of loneliness and hunger far up in the fourth and fifth stories of fashionable hotels, where the little girl often ate her smuggled dinner of rolls and nuts and raisins, and whatever else her mother could convey into her pocket unobserved by those around her.
"Yes, she looks as if a big slice of plum pudding or mince pie would do her good! ”

“ 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? ”

“ I am so tired!" and as Allen happened to be the nearest to her, she leaned her head against him and cried aloud.
Before Mrs. Browne could reply, Augusta asked:
"What of Bessie? Will she not be very lonely without you?"
"Nasty cat! She is as jealous as she can be, and I will stay to spite her," Daisy thought, but she said: "Oh, yes, I ought to go home to Bessie, though she would bid me stay now that I am here; she is so unselfish, and I shall never come again. Her cousin's family in London will take her directly home, so she will not be alone. Poor Bessie!" ”

“ I tell you this, my child, because you are getting to be a woman. You were fifteen last March. 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."
Bessie did not reply for the great lump which had risen in her throat as her father put into words what in part she had suspected, but tried to fight down. ”

“ You are so anxious to have that hospital bed for your lame Jemmy. Promise to say what we all say, and we will all vote that you shall have that prize; and I will coax the four girls who are not here to do the same. They will do it for me."
Bessie knew that this was true, for Kate generally carried things her own way in her room. "Maggie, of course, will vote for you; so will Belle and Lily; and so no one else will have a chance, for that will be more than half the school, and you are sure of the prize. Quick! speak, Bessie! There is no time lose. ”

“ Bessie felt rather than saw the questioning eyes which her aunt flashed upon her, and her face was scarlet as she answered:
"Yes, I saw Miss Grey. She was very kind to me when I was sick. She did go directly to Boston."
"What is the matter with Mrs. Jerrold?" Miss Betsey asked, and Mrs. Browne replied:
"The land only knows. Heart complaint, the last report, I believe. I saw Hannah at the depot this morning; she'd been sent for, too. Geraldine always wants her when she's sick; but the minit she is better, the old maid sister is in the way, and not good enough for my lady's fine friends. ”

“ He was no prince in disguise as it would have been so pleasant to discover him to be—this short, thickly-made, middle-aged man, with the prominent, bright, dark eyes, the large dark head, the knobbly red forehead, whose parents had kept a small draper's shop in a small market-town in the county.
What could a man so born and nurtured have to give Bessie in return for the stories of the high life to which she had been accustomed? ”

“ Miss Betsey answered, abruptly, and, turning on her heel, she walked away to her own room, where she held communion with herself, wondering how much longer she could or ought to hold out, "I have tried her pretty well, and she has not flinched a hair; but I guess I will wait a day or two, till I have heard from Sarah," she thought, but this resolution she did not carry out for two reasons, one of which was found in the letter which she received that afternoon, and the other in the fact that at tea-time Bessie fainted dead away as she stood by her auntie's chair. ”

“ The wave of color passed from Bessie's face. "Dear grandpapa, don't talk of such remote events; it is time enough to think of changes and decide when the time comes," said she.
"That is no answer, Elizabeth. Prudent people make their arrangements in anticipation of changes, and their will in anticipation of death. Speak plainly: do you like the lodge as a residence, or the vicinity of Norminster?"
"Dear grandpapa, if you were no longer here I should go home to the Forest," Bessie said, and grew very pale.
The old squire neither moved nor spoke for several minutes. ”

“ Archibald McPherson, of Bangor! Then you are the daughter of that—" he checked himself, and added, "I have met your mother at Monte Carlo," and he drew back a step or two, as if he feared that something of the mother's character might have communicated itself to the daughter. And Bessie saw the movement, and the change of expression on his face, and her cheeks were scarlet with shame, but she lifted her clear blue eyes fearlessly to his, and said:
"Yes, mother is a monomaniac on the subject of play. It is a species of insanity, I think." ”

“ That young man works and plays very hard: he must take heed not to overdo it."
"Then I shall see all my friends while I am in the Forest," said Bessie, very glad.
"Yes, and as pleased they will be to see you. Mother, Bessie might walk to Brook with me before tea. They will [Pg 294] be uncommonly gratified, and she will get over to us many another day," Mr. Carnegie proposed.
"Yes, Thomas, if it will not overtire her."
"Oh, nothing overtires me," said Bessie. "Let us go by Great-Ash Ford."
Before they started the doctor had a word or two with his wife alone. ”

“ Those ten minutes seemed interminable before the lights of the station flashed before their eyes.
“Here she is—here is our Bessie!” exclaimed a voice, and a fine-looking young fellow in an ulster ran lightly down the platform as Bessie waved her handkerchief. He was followed more leisurely by a handsome, gray-haired man with a quiet, refined-looking face.
“Tom—oh, Tom!” exclaimed Bessie, almost jumping into his arms, as he opened the carriage door. “Were mother and Hattie very frightened? Why, there is father!” as Dr. Lambert hurried up. ”

“ If you'll never tell as long as you live and breathe, those solitaires in mamma's ears are nothing but paste, and were bought in the Palais Royal," and Bessie pursed up her lips so disdainfully that Miss McPherson burst into a laugh, and stooping down, kissed the little face as she said:
"That's right, child; never tolerate a sham; better the naked truth always."
In the distance Daisy, who had passed them ten minutes or so ago, was seen returning with young Hardy and rising to her feet, Miss Betsey said:
"I must go now, child; good-by. ”

“ And he went to Stoneleigh and tried all the way there to think of Bessie as she looked in the park, in the old faded gown with the disfiguring puffs; tried to make himself believe that she had no manner, no style, and would not pass for a great lady among people city bred; that she was better suited to some quiet home such as Grey Jerrold might give her, were he happy enough to win her. ”