Chapter 33

MISS MCPHERSON AND THE LETTER.

Nine years had made but little change in Miss Betsey McPherson, either mentally or physically. As she had been at the Thanksgiving dinner where we first met her, so she was now, with possibly a little sharper tone in her voice and a shade more of eccentricity in her nature. As she lived alone then with her two servants, so she lived alone now, with the same cook in the kitchen, but not the same housemaid to attend her. Flora had been married for five or six years to a respectable mechanic, and lived in a small white house across the common, with three children to care for--two boys and a girl. This last she had thought to call for her former mistress to whom she had timidly expressed her intention, asking if she would be godmother.

"Flo is a fool to saddle her child with a name she hates," Miss McPherson thought, but she consented to act as sponsor, and wore her best black silk in honor of the occasion, when Sunday came and she took her accustomed seat in church.

But her thoughts were evidently not upon the service, for she knelt in the wrong place, and once said aloud in her abstraction, "Let us pray," and there was a twinkle in her round bright eyes, and a grim smile on her face when she at last arose, and straight and stiff as a darning-needle walked up the aisle, and took in her arms the little pink and white baby who was to bear her name. It was a pretty child, and as she held it for a moment and looked into its clear blue eyes fixed so questioningly upon her face, there came to her the thought of another little blue-eyed girl who had come to her on the sands of Aberystwyth, and the touch of whose hands as they rubbed and patted the folds of her dress she could feel even now after the lapse of many years. That child had said to her that Betsey was a horrid name; this child in her arms would think so, too, and hate it all her life, and when the clergyman, said, "Name this child," she answered, in a loud, clear voice, which rang distinctly through the church:

"Bessie McPherson!"

"No, no; oh, no!" Flora gasped in a whisper, "it is Betsey, ma'am; it is for you."

"Hush! I know what I am about," was whispered back, and so Bessie McPherson, and not Betsey, was received into Christ's flock and signed with the sign of the cross, and given to the happy mother happier than she dared to own because of the change of name.

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."

And then her thoughts went over the sea after that other Bessie, her own flesh and blood, of whom she had not heard in years. It was very seldom that her brother John wrote to her, and when he did he never mentioned Archie or his family, and so she knew nothing of them except that Daisy was still carrying on her business at Monte Carlo and was known as an adventuress to every frequenter of the place. But where was Bessie? Miss McPherson asked herself, us she gazed dreamily into the fire. Was she like her mother, a vain coquette and a mark for coarse jests and vulgar admiration?

"For the girl must be pretty," she said, "There was the promise of great beauty in that face, and true, pure womanhood, too, if only she were well brought up."

And then through the woman's heart there shot a pang as she wondered if she had done right to leave Archie and his child to their poverty all these years. Might she not have done something for them, and so perhaps have saved the daughter from sin? The little room at the head of the stairs was still kept just as it was when she was expecting Bessie. There was the big doll in the corner, the dishes on the shelf, and the single bed with its lace hangings was freshly made every month, and by its side each night the lonely woman knelt and prayed for the little girl who had come to her on the sands and looked into her eyes with a look which had haunted her ever since. But of what avail was all this? Ought she not to have acted as well as prayed? What was faith without works, and if Bessie had gone to destruction, as most likely she had, was it not in part her fault? Such were the questions tormenting Miss McPherson when at last Winny came in to remove the tea things and brought with her a letter, which she gave into her mistress' hand. It was Neil's letter, and Miss Betsey examined it very carefully before opening it, wondering who had written her from London, and experiencing a feeling that its contents would not prove altogether agreeable. Adjusting her spectacles a little more firmly on her nose, she opened it at last, and read it through very slowly, taking in its full meaning as she read, and commenting to herself in her characteristic way.

Two years before, she had met an old acquaintance from London, who knew Neil and disliked him, consequently the impression she had received of him was not altogether favorable.

"A good-looking, well-meaning fellow," the man had said, "but very indolent, and selfish, and proud, with an inordinate love of money, and respect for those who have it."

And in this opinion the spinster was confirmed by his letter.

"Let me see!" she said, taking off her glasses, and regarding the fire intently. "He wishes me to send him a few thousand pounds to enable him to marry his cousin and live in idleness in his father's house on Warwick Crescent until his mother is reconciled, and he wishes to know if I intend to make Bessie my heir. No, my fine London gentleman! If Bessie ever has a fortune it will not be from me. Now, if Neil wanted this money to set himself up in business; if he was going to work to earn his own bread and butter and support his family like an honest man, I would let him have it cheerfully. But work is the last thing he thinks about. It would degrade him. Ugh! it makes me so mad!" and she shook her head fiercely at the fire, as she went on:

"But the girl, if he tells the truth, is the right kind of stuff, staying at home, caring for her father, wearing shabby clothes, and even washing the dishes, which I have no doubt hurts him the most. I rather like this girl, and for her sake I will give Neil a chance, though I don't suppose he will accept it. There are those cotton mills which I had to take on that debt of Carson's. They have been nothing but a torment to me for the want of a capable man to look after them. I will offer the situation to Neil with a salary of two thousand dollars a year, and ten per cent. of the net profits, and I will let him have, rent free, the house which Carson occupied, and will furnish it, too, and have everything in running order when he gets here with his bride. That I call a right generous offer, but, bless your soul, do you suppose he will take it?"

And she interrogated the fire, which made no response, except that a half dead coal dropped into the pan and went out into blackness.

"Of course he won't," she continued, "for that would be doing something! But we shall see. I will write the letter to-night," and ringing for her writing materials the old lady began her letter to Neil, telling him what she would do for him if he chose to come to America and try to help himself.

"The work is not hard," she wrote. "It requires more thought, and judgment, and tact, than anything else, but it will bring you in contact with some very second-class people--_scum_, if you choose to call them so--and with some of the excellent of the earth as well for all grades are represented in the mills, and for what I know, the future Governor of Massachusetts is working there to-day; but if he is, you may be sure he has a book somewhere around and studies it every chance he gets, for in this way our best men are made. If you do not choose to take my offer, I shall do nothing for you, and Bessie will be a fool to marry one who does not care enough for her to be willing to work and support her. I have no intention of making her my heir. My will is made, and I do not often change my mind. Still, I have a fancy for the girl--have always had a fancy for her, and if you bring her to me on the terms I offer, you will never be sorry."

This last Miss Betsey wrote because of the desire which kept growing in her heart as once it had before, to look again in Bessie's face, to hear her voice, to feel the touch of her hands; and in short, to have some one to love and be interested in, as something told her she could be interested in and love Bessie McPherson.

The letter was sent to Neil, and the same mail took another to a well-known banking house in London with which Miss McPherson had business relations. To this house she gave instructions that the sum of one hundred pounds should at once be forwarded to Archibald McPherson, who was not on any account to know from whom the money came.

When her letters were gone she began again to build castles with regard to Bessie, whom she was expecting, in spite of her lack of confidence in Neil's willingness to accept her offer.

In fancy she furnished the large stone house on the cliff above the mills, which Bessie was to occupy, and furnished it with no sparing hand. In fancy she climbed the sleep steps every day, and went in and out with the freedom of a mother, for such she meant to be to the young couple, both her own blood, and both seeming very near to her now when there was a chance of their coming to her and dispelling the loneliness of her monotonous life. But she kept her expectations to herself, not even telling them to Lucy Grey, or Hannah Jerrold, her most intimate friends, both of whom noticed a change in her, but did not guess why she seemed so much more cheerful and happy, or why she was so often in Worcester, inquiring the prices of china and glassware, and household furniture generally.

Once she was very near letting it out, and that was when Hannah was spending the afternoon with her, and said: "I have received a letter from Grey, who writes that he spent a day at Stoneleigh and saw your grandniece Bessie."

"What did he think of her?" Miss Betsey asked, and Hannah replied:

"He thought her the loveliest creature he had ever seen. I do believe he is more than half in love with her, for I never knew him so enthusiastic over a girl before."

"Yes," Miss McPherson said, and remembering what she knew Grey to be and what she feared Neil was, she thought, "Oh, if it were Grey and Bessie;" and that night she dreamed that it was Grey and Bessie, and that she tore down the house on the cliff, overlooking the mill, and built there a palace something after the fashion of Chatsworth, except that it was more modern in its style and general appearance, and many pairs of eyes like those seen on the terrace at Aberystwyth looked into hers, and many little hands rubbed holes in her stuff dress, and many little voices called her grandma the name she bade them give her in place of auntie.