Miller's daughter

“ MILLER. Alas, gentleman, why should you trouble your self so much, considering the imperfections of my daughter, which is able to with-draw the love of any man from her, as already it hath done in her first choice. Maister Manville hath forsaken her, and at Chester shall be married to a mans daughter of no little wealth. But if my daughter knew so much, it would go very near her heart, I fear me. VALINGFORD. Father miller, such is the entire affection to your daughter, as no misfortune whatsoever can alter. My fellow Mountney, thou seest, gave quickly over ”

“ The story and the songs of a miller's man who loves his master's daughter, and of a miller's daughter who loves a huntsman better, may seem very trivial, commonplace, and unpoetical to many a man of forty or fifty. ”

“ The poor child stood trembling in the doorway, her dress in disorder, her beautiful hair broken loose from its fastenings, and streaming over her shoulders, her great, blue eyes blazing like stars in her lovely, pallid face, her sweet lips curled in scorn as she pointed her finger at Mrs. Leith, and exclaimed:
"Oh, cruel, unnatural mother! Is your life so pure that you can afford to sit in judgment on me?"
"Is the girl mad?" Mrs. Leith exclaimed, recoiling from her.
"No, I am not mad, although my wrongs have been bitter enough to madden any human being," Golden retorted, passionately. ”

“ Lorraine, who had come out of her shell almost unbelievably in her week of companionship with Miss Penny, so that now in the crisis she was a very tower of strength not only to Miss Penny but to the Miller household as well, began to be greatly troubled by her daughter’s demeanour. She had rejoiced at the manner in which the girl had bloomed under Anna’s influence, and had been amazed not only at her capacity for learning and power of adaptability but at the generous warmth and sweetness of her nature. She had believed that a real transformation had taken place. ”

“ He has suffered bitterly and repented sorely. Let me tell him that you are living, and that your beautiful little son is his own child. Let me tell him that you both will come home to us. Ah, Laurel, my dear daughter, I cannot tell you how tenderly my heart goes out to you, both for your own sake and for that of the child. How I love the beautiful, manly little lad! He is the heir to Eden, the last descendant of the Le Roys, my son's son, my only grandchild. All these years you have kept him from us; you have had all his sweetness to yourself. I have no word of blame for you, my dear daughter. ”

“ Leith raised her companion's veil.
All started and uttered a cry of incredulous surprise.
Little Golden's daughter, pallid, beautiful, tearful, was standing there, looking at them across her mother's coffin.
"Thank God!" she said, in her sweet, clear voice, with a sound of tears in its sweetness. "Thank God, my mother was pure and innocent! The dream of my life-time is fulfilled at last."
"Does the grave give up its dead?" they cried, and Bertram Chesleigh went to her side and touched her white hand, half-fearfully. ”

“ I have always longed to have a child of my own to love. It seemed as if my heart was always yearning for the daughter I believed to be dead. But Golden," he looked at her anxiously and pleadingly as he clasped her little hand, "you have a story of your own to tell me before we go on the quest for your mother. ”

“ Your son will be kinder to you when I am gone, and your life will be less hard; perhaps black mammy will be kind and faithful to you, so you will not miss your thoughtless little Golden very much. God bless you, grandpa, you must pray for me nightly, for I am going to seek my mother, the erring mother who cursed me with life! If indeed, she is living in sin and shame, I will strive to reclaim her and restore her to the safe path of virtue. I have nothing else to live for. Love and happiness, the delights of this world, are not for me. ”

“ Yet Golden shivered and trembled as she regarded the fair, smiling beauty. How could she look so bright and careless with the brand of deadly sin upon her? There was neither sorrow nor repentance on the smiling, debonair face.
"And this is my mother," Golden thought to herself, with a strange heaviness at her heart. "She seems utterly indifferent at her wickedness. Ah, she little dreams that the poor babe that she deserted so heartlessly is sitting before her now."
Mrs. Leith's light, careless voice jarred suddenly on her mournful mood.
"Well, I will try you, Mary, for I need a maid. ”

“ The poor miller’s daughter sat there, and for the life of her could not think what to do. She had not the least idea how to turn straw into gold, and she became more and more unhappy, till at last she began to cry. Then all at once the door opened, and in came a tiny little man and said to her, “Good evening, Mistress Miller; why are you crying so bitterly?” ”

“ Miller was, perforce, obliged to let the matter rest. She went her way angry and vexed beyond measure, and somewhat baffled too. How is a mother to deal with a daughter who is so determined and so defiant as was Beatrice Miller? There is no known method in civilized life of reducing a young lady of twenty to submission in matters of the heart. ”

“ You are too young to talk about husbands," answered Golden.
"Dear me, is my daughter contemplating marriage?" cried a gay, sweet voice, and, looking up, they saw Mrs. Desmond in her traveling wraps, dusty and weary, but looking very glad and eager at seeing her child again.
Ruby sprang to her arms, and Golden looked on with sympathetic tears in her eyes at the happy reunion of the mother and child. Mrs. Desmond did not seem to see her until she had fairly smothered Ruby in kisses, when she looked up and said, approvingly:
"How do you do, Mary? ”

“ Then, as she saw the scattered toys: “What, you have been weeping over the old playthings? Would you like to be a child again, my daughter?”
“No, no; it is not that, dear mother!” Thea cried, hastily. She stood a moment irresolute, with her little hand under the folds of her dress; then, going closer to Mrs. de Vere, she said, faintly: “I will tell you the truth. While looking through my old picture-books I came across a letter that I found on the floor and put away in my childish days—to destroy, I suppose, as my little scissors were with it. ”

“ But her tears fell heavily as she looked at the deathly white face laying on the pillow, and she wondered to herself if it would not be less hard for her to see him die then and there, than live to find his lost wife again.
"God forgive me for my weakness and selfishness," she cried, starting at her own thoughts. "May he live to find the happiness of which he has been cheated so long."
The long, weary night, filled with mortal agony to poor little Golden, slowly wore away.
At the earliest peep of dawn a messenger arrived from the town with a telegram for Mr. Leith. ”

“ A bitter cry broke from her lips.
"What does it matter if my hair has turned to snow? My heart changed to fire long since. Go, girl, leave me to myself!"
Jewel made no sign of obeying. She said, curiously:
"So our old nurse is dead, mamma?"
"Dead—yes! I wish she had died twenty years ago! I wish she had never been born!" Mrs. Fielding burst out, furiously.
"But I thought you were fond of her, mamma!" Jewel exclaimed, in momentary wonder. Then a sudden light broke over her mind. "Ah, I remember now! Sam said she had a secret to tell you. Was it that secret which turned you against Maria?" ”

“ Then she turned from him, and went to her grandfather, who was gazing at her with dazed eyes full of grief and dread. She put her arms around his neck, and kissed his poor, withered cheek with her sweet, quivering lips.
"Grandpa, you must not take me for a ghost," she said. "It is your own little Golden come back to live and love you again. I was not dead, after all. Did I not tell you I could not die yet? But I cannot tell you all the story of my rescue from the grave now. Let us give all our thoughts to our martyred dead."
She looked up and saw her father and old Dinah waiting to greet her. ”

“ Miller will do a novel in which most of the men and most of the women are “people”—regular people or irregular people, great or{325} small, does not matter; but they must be people—we in America will be the first to acclaim her.
Of Mrs. Miller herself there are only a few brief facts to be stated. This tall and charming woman was born in New York in 1874, the daughter of James G. K. Duer and Elizabeth (Meads) Duer. She was graduated from Barnard College, Columbia University, in 1899. She was married to Henry Wise Miller of New York on October 5, 1899. ”

“ John was unfeignedly glad that Golden had gone away herself without giving him the trouble and annoyance of sending her.
"It is much better as it is, father," he said to the poor, broken-hearted old creature. "I fully intended to send the girl away. She has only saved herself the ignominy of a summary dismissal. Do not fret yourself over her. She has only forsaken you to lead a life of shame with her erring mother. I hope that a lightning flash may strike her dead before she ever returns here again to disgrace and shame us yet further!" ”

“ The low voice broke again, and she leaned back pale and silent, and a sadder picture rose in fancy before the fixed blue eyes.
This time it was of a golden-haired, blue-eyed girl, with a wailing infant on her breast—a girl who had sought refuge from danger in an humble negro cabin. Over her was bending a plump, good-looking mulatto woman, and the girl was praying, feebly:
"Take me away from here! Hide me and my baby from our enemy!" ”

“ Now that I know her innocent and pure, the terrible mystery of her fate chills the blood in my veins. Where shall I look for her? How shall I find her?"
Mrs. Leith looked at her compassionately.
"Poor child!" she said. "You are too ill and weary to seek for anyone now. Leave that sorrowful quest to your father, and place yourself in my care."
The tears brimmed over in Golden's beautiful eyes at the kindly spoken words of her step-mother. ”

“ My Darling Daughter: If I had not thought I was destined to perish in the cruel sea that day, I should never have given you the clew to find your proud mother who wrecked my life with her relentless scorn.
“If I had not been sure of death, I never should [198] have intrusted you with those messages of remorse and forgiveness and love at which she laughed, perhaps, in her undying resentment against me. ”

“ Else why did she grow older and stranger with such awful rapidity that her daughters shuddered sometimes, fearing from her fits of rage alternating with fearful moodiness that she was going mad.
Poor Flower, in spite of her own sorrows, felt an added pang when she heard that the ghost of her old black nurse was walking about her old home. She shed some bitter tears, and ventured to express a timid fear lest Maria had had something on her mind before she died which made her spirit restless now.
Mrs. Fielding scowled furiously and snarled angrily. ”

“ This dead girl was my wife, made so by a secret marriage last summer. It is my wife and my child you have hidden from me in this low grave. May God forgive me for the wrong I did them."
Then, unable to bear the strain upon his nerves and his heart any longer, the wretched man fell forward heavily, and lay in a deep swoon across the mound that covered little Golden and her child.
A terrible punishment had been meted out to him for the pride and selfishness that had made of his innocent child-wife an outcast, and a creature at whom to point the finger of a seemingly just scorn. ”

“ Her pride has been wounded by some vulgar rich person, no doubt.”
And he looked tenderly at the little beauty, while he said:
“There are plenty of young men who would marry the girl they love in spite of the whole world. I am glad I was one of them, and I had two years of almost perfect happiness with my darling—two years in which a lovely little daughter came to us—a girl who would be about [202] as old as you, my child, if she had lived. Alas! she is dead—she and her mother!”
His voice trembled, his face grew pale, she read keen despair in his dark-blue eyes. ”

“ 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. ”

“ He expected that the little girl would grow indignant at this comment on her favorite, but instead of this she puckered her little brows thoughtfully.
"I don't quite know what you mean by an old maid," she replied.
"You are caught in the trap, Bert. You will have to define yourself," said Mrs. Desmond, laughingly.
"I don't know whether I can," he replied as gayly. "But I think, Ruby, that an old maid is a person who—who doesn't like men, and grows old and never marries."
"Then my nurse is an old maid. You guessed right, Uncle Bert," said the child, with perfect soberness. ”

“ The little maiden's heart beat faster at the delicious sound, so inspiring to youthful ears. She threw down her book impatiently.
"How sweet it sounds," she said. "They are in the great [Pg 9] dancing-hall. I should like to see them. How cruel my cousins are to me!"
The sweet lips quivered, and the blue eyes darkened with anger. Golden was a spoiled, impetuous child. Her grandpa and old Dinah had always yielded to her in everything and placed no restraint on her impetuous temper.
Her little heart was swelling bitterly now, with resentment against her cruel cousins. ”