Chapter 20

STONELEIGH.

The season is June; the time fourteen years prior to the commencement of this story, and the place an old garden in Wales, about half way between Bangor and the suspension bridge across Menai Straits. The garden, which was very large, must have been beautiful, in the days when money was more plenty with the proprietor than at present; but now there were marks of neglect and decay everywhere, and in some parts of it the shrubs, and vines, and roses were mixed together in so hopeless a tangle that to separate them seemed impossible, while the yew trees, of which there were several, grew dark, and thick, and untrimmed, and cast heavy shadows upon the grass plats near them. The central part of the garden, however, showed signs of care. The broad gravel walk was clean and smooth, and the straight borders beside it were full of summer flowers, among which roses were conspicuous. Indeed, there were roses everywhere, for Anthony loved them as if they were his children, and so did the white-faced invalid indoors, whose room old Dorothy, Anthony's wife, kept filled with the freshest and choicest. It did not matter to her that the sick man had wandered very far from the path of duty, and was dying from excessive dissipation; he was her pride, her boy, whom she had tended from his babyhood, and whom she would watch over and care for to the last. She had defended and stood by him, when he brought home a pretty little brown-eyed, brown haired creature, whose only fault was her poverty and the fact that she was a chorus singer in the operas in London, where Hugh McPherson had seen and fallen in love with her. Two years she lived at Stoneleigh, happy as the singing birds which flew about the place and built their nests in the yews, and then one summer morning she died, and left to Dorothy's care a little boy of three weeks, who, without much attention from any one as regarded his moral and mental culture, had scrambled along somehow, and had reached the age of sixteen without a single serious thought as to his future and without ever having made the least exertion for himself. Dorothy and Anthony, the two servants of the place, had taken care of him, and would continue to do so even after his father's death, or, if they did not, his uncle, the Hon. John McPherson, in London, would never see him want, he thought; so, with no bad habits except his extreme indolence, which amounted to absolute laziness, the boy's days passed on, until the hot summer morning in June, when he lay asleep on a broad bench under the shade of a yew tree, with his face upturned to the sunlight which penetrated through the overchanging boughs and fell in patches upon him. Occasionally a fly or honey-bee came and buzzed about him, but never alighted upon him, because of the watchful vigilance of the young girl who stood by his side, shielding him from the sun's rays with her person and her while cape bonnet, which she also used to scare away the insects, for Archie McPherson must not be troubled even in his sleep, if care of hers could prevent it.

The girl who was not more than twelve in reality, though, her training had made her much older in knowledge and experience, was singularly beautiful, with great blue eyes and wavy golden hair, which fell in long curls to her waist. Her dress, though scrupulously neat and clean, and becoming, indicated that she belonged to the middle or working class, far below the social position of the boy. But whatever inequality of rank there was between them, she had never felt it, for ever since she could remember anything, Archie McPherson had played with and petted and teased her, and she was almost as much at home at Stoneleigh as in the work-room of her mother, Mrs. Elizabeth Allen, who made dresses for the ladies of Bangor and vicinity.

"How handsome he is," she said to herself, as she gazed admiringly upon the sleeping boy, "and how white and slim his hands are. A great deal whiter than mine, but that, I suppose, is because he is a gentleman's son, and I have to wash dishes, and sweep and dust the rooms;" and the girl glanced regretfully at her own hands, which, though fat and well-shaped, were brown, and showed signs of the dusting and dish-washing required of her by her mother, whose means were very limited, and whose dressmaking did not warrant luxury of any kind.

"I wish my hands were white, and that I could wear diamond rings like the ladies at the George," she continued; "and sometime I will, if they are only shams. Half the world does not know the difference."

Just then a handsome carriage containing a gentleman and lady, child and nurse, and maid, turned in at the lodge gate, which Anthony opened very respectfully, with a pull at his forelock.

"That's the McPhersons from London! What an ugly, proud-looking thing Lady Jane is!" the girl thought, and in watching the carriage as it drove toward the house she relaxed her vigilance so far that a huge blue bottle-fly which had been skirting around the spot, for some time, alighted squarely upon Archie's nose, and roused him from his slumber.

Yawning lazily, and stretching his long arms, he looked up, and seeing his companion, called out, in a tone half familiar, half patronizing, as he would address an inferior:

"Halloo, Daze, what are you doing here?"

"Keeping the sun and the flies off from you; they bite awfully this morning," she answered, quietly, and Archie continued:

"Upon my word, Daze, you are a little trump, standing bareheaded in the sun to shield me! How long have you been here?"

"Half an hour, perhaps; and I was getting tired," was the girl's reply; but Archie did not ask her to sit down beside him, for he wanted all the bench to lounge upon, and leaning upon his elbow he went on talking to her, and answering her questions jestingly, until she said:

"How is your father?"

Then there came a shadow upon the face of the boy, who replied:

"He is worse, and they have sent for Uncle John and Lady Jane. We expect them to-day."

"Yes, I know; they came while you were asleep. Lady Jane looks very proud," Daisy said, and Archie rejoined:

"She looks as she is then. I hate her!"

If Archie hated her, Daisy did too, and she answered promptly, "So do I!" though she had never seen the lady in question until that morning when she rode by, arching her long neck and looking curiously around her.

"She thinks the world made only for her and the baby Neil," Archie said, "and Dorothy thinks so too. She is in a great way about her coming because we have no servants, I don't care! Let Uncle John give us some money if they want style when they come to Stoneleigh."

"That's so!" and Daisy nodded approvingly; then she went on: "Mother has made some lemon jelly for the dinner, because Dorothy says she makes it so nice, and I am going over this evening to wash the dishes and help Dorothy a little."

"You? I wouldn't!" Archie said, looking reflectingly at her.

"But she will give me a shilling toward a new sash," was the girl's answer, and Archie replied:

"I'll give you the shilling; don't go," and he put his hand in his pocket for the shilling, which Daisy knew was not there, for the poverty of the McPhersons of Stoneleigh was no secret in the neighborhood any more than was the pride which kept them so poor.

She had often heard both discussed by her mother's customers, and when Archie said, as he withdrew his hand empty, "Plague on it, what a bother it is never to have any money; I wish we were not so poor. I wonder how I can make a fortune; I've thought of forty ways," she asked saucily:

"Did you ever think of going to work?"

"To work! To work!" he repeated, slowly, as if not fully comprehending her, "I don't think I quite know what you mean."

"I mean," she replied, "that if you have no money, and want some, why don't you go to work and earn it like Giles, the tailor, or Jones, the baker? It would not hurt you one bit."

"That is rich!" Archie exclaimed, sitting upright for the first time and laughing immoderately. "The best thing I have heard. Ask Lady Jane, or Uncle John, or even Anthony, how they would like to have a McPherson turn baker, or tailor, or tinker."

"You know I did not mean you to be any of these," the girl answered, a little indignantly; "but you might do something. You can go to London and be a clerk in that big store, Marshall & Snellgrove's. That would not be hard, nor spoil your hands."

"I am afraid it would, little Daze," the boy replied. "You will have to try again. It would never do for a McPherson to be in trade. We were not born to it. How would _gambling_ suit you? Piles of money are made that way."

"Gambling!" Daisy repeated, and could Miss Betsey McPherson have seen the scorn which flashed in the eyes of Daisy Allen, she would have forgiven the Daisy McPherson whom she saw years after upon the terrace at Aberystwyth flirting with Lord Hardy.

But the Daisy of the Marine Terrace was a very different person from the young girl who, with a hand upon each hip and her head on one side, gave Archie a piece of her mind in terms neither mild nor selected.

"Gambling! I'd never speak to you again if you stooped to such a thing as to play for money. You'd better a thousand times sell butcher's meat at the corner, or cry gooseberries in the street! Suppose you are a gentleman, a McPherson, without money, must you either gamble, or sit still and let some one else take care of you? It won't hurt _you_ to work any more than any body else, and you'll have to do something. Every body says so. Suppose you do have Stoneleigh when your father dies; there are only a few acres besides the park, and they are all run down. What are you going to do?"

"Upon my word, I did not know you had so much vim. You are a regular little spit-fire," Archie said, regarding her intently; then after a pause, he added: "What am I going to do? I am sure I don't know, unless I marry you and let you take care of me! I believe you could do it."

The hands which had been pressed on Daisy's hips met suddenly together in a quick, nervous clasp, while there came over the girl's face a look of wonder and surprise, and evident perplexity. Although Daisy was much older than her years in some things, the idea of marrying Archibald McPherson, or any one else, had never entered her mind.

Now, however, she was conscious of a new feeling, which she could not define, and after regarding him fixedly for a moment, without any apparent consciousness, she answered in a very matter of fact way:

"I believe I could take care of you--somehow!"

"I know you could; so, suppose we call it a bargain," Archie said, but before Daisy could reply Lady Jane's maid appeared coming down the broad walk.

Stopping in front of the girl and boy, and merely noticing the former by a supercilious stare, she said to the latter interrogatively:

"Mr. Archibald McPherson?"

"Present!" he answered, with a comical look at Daisy, on whom it was lost, for she was admiring the smart cap and pink ribbons of the maid, who said:

"If you are Mr. Archibald, your father wishes to see you. He said I was to fetch you directly."

Rising slowly Archie shook himself together, and started for the house, while Daisy looked after him with a new and thoughtful expression on her face.

"Archie!" she called at last. "Tell Dorothy I shall not come to help her with the dishes. I have changed my mind. I do not want the shilling."

"All right," was Archie's response, as he walked on never dreaming that he had that morning sown the first germ of the ambition which was to overshadow all Daisy Allen's future life, and bear fruit a hundred-fold.