Chapter 34

FROM JANUARY TO MARCH.

Never had Neil been more gracious or agreeable than during the interval when he was waiting for the answer to his letter. He felt sure of a favorable reply and that Bessie would be his before the June roses were in bloom, and that of itself kept him in a happy frame of mind. He was very attentive to Blanche and very kind to his mother, and he wrote long letters to Bessie three times a week, and went to church every Sunday and gave a half-penny to every little ragged child he met, and felt that Neil McPherson was a pretty good fellow after all.

At last the letter came, and Neil read it in the privacy of his room, and, being alone with no one to hear, called his aunt a name which sounded a little like swearing, and paced up and down the apartment with the perspiration standing thickly around his white lips, and a feeling at his heart as if he were not only bitterly disappointed but had also been insulted by the offer made to him.

"An overseer in some cotton mills!--factories they call them there. Not if I know myself!" he said. "_I_ stoop to that? Never! The old woman is a fool," (this with an adjective), "and she evidently thinks she is doing a big thing. Two thousand dollars a year! Why, that is not much more than mother allows me now, and I am awfully hard up at times. No, Bessie, you must wait a little longer until something turns up, as I am sure there will. An overseer! _I!_" and Neil's voice was indicative of the scorn and contempt with which he regarded an overseer of cotton mills, and the vast difference he felt there was between such an individual and himself.

Neil was very sore and very much depressed, and his depression told upon his health, and he became so pale and haggard that his mother was alarmed, and insisted upon his leaving England for a time and going down to Cannes, in Southern France, where several of her friends were spending the winter. To this Neil made no objection, and wrote to Bessie of his plans, and made himself out so great an invalid that Bessie felt a fear in her heart lest her lover should die and she be left in the world alone, in case--She did not dare finish the thought, or put into words her conviction that her father was daily growing weaker, with less care for or interest in any thing passing around him. This change for the worse had commenced with a heavy cold, taken soon after the holidays, and which none of Dorothy's prescriptions could reach. It was in vain that Bessie tried to persuade him to let her call a physician.

"No, child," he said, "it's nothing. I shall be better in a few days, when the weather moderates. I do not want a doctor, and if I did we are too poor. How much have we on hand?"

Bessie did not tell him the exact amount, for fear of troubling him in his weak, nervous condition.

Their Christmas hospitalities had cost them dear, and there was very little in the family purse with which to meet their necessities. Just after Neil's departure there had come a letter from Daisy, who was in Nice, with some Americans, whose acquaintance she had made in Paris and whose party she had joined.

"These American friendships cost a great deal," she wrote, "for they stop at the most expensive hotels, and I must have a parlor and bedroom in order to keep up appearances, so I really have nothing to spare just now; but I send you a five-pound note which I borrowed for you from Mr. Jack Trevellian, who came day before yesterday and told me of his visit to Stoneleigh. If I am any judge, he is more than half in love with you, and when I said I was going to write and regretted that I could not send you any money, as I was sure you must need it after so much company, he insisted upon loaning me twenty pounds, and when I refused so large a sum he made me take ten, which I will divide with you. It was very generous in him, and when I said I should pay him as soon as possible, he begged me never to speak of it, as he would gladly give ten times that sum to one as faithful and kind to her father as you are. Jack is a good fellow, and there is only one life between him and a, title, I hear. Try for him, Bessie; I know you can get him. Write him a little note and tell him how kind it was in him to loan me the money. That will be a beginning, but you need not say how much of it I sent you; as he designed it all for you, he might not like it if he knew I kept half. How is your father? The last time I was home I really thought he was threatened with softening of the brain, he seemed so sleepy and stupid and forgetful. Give him my love, and believe me always your affectionate mother,

"DAISY McPHERSON.

"P.S.--I hear Lord Hardy has returned from Egypt and is expected here. I am glad, for a sight of him will do me good. He is the best friend I ever had, and the first, except, of course, your father."

Such, in part, was Daisy's letter, which Bessie read with an aching heart and cheeks which burned with shame. She wanted money sadly, for her boots were giving out at the sides, and the butcher's bill was unpaid, and her father needed wine and jellies to tempt his sickly appetite and keep up his failing strength. But she would have gone barefoot and denied herself food for a week sooner than touch the five-pound note her mother had wrung from Jack Trevellian, her recent guest.

"It was begged; it is a charity; it burns my hand," she said, as she held the note between her thumb and finger. "I will not have it in the house," and the next moment it was blackening on the fire where the indignant girl had thrown it, together with her mother's letter, which her father must never see.

Oh, how for an instant Bessie loathed herself as she thought of her mother and saw in fancy the whole sickening performance at Nice, the daily jesting and badinage with those people around her--second-class Americans, she was sure, or they would not take up her mother; but worst of all was the interview with Jack Trevellian, whose feelings had been wrought upon until he gave her ten pounds, because of her poverty!

"Oh, it is too horrible; but I will pay it back some time," she said, and kneeling by the firelight with her hot, tear-stained face buried in her hands, Bessie prayed earnestly that in some way see might be enabled to pay this debt to Jack Trevellian.

In her excitement she did not then regret that she had burned the note, though she knew that it was a rash act, and that it necessitated extra self-denials which would tell heavily upon her. With strong black linen thread and a bit of leather she patched her boots; she dressed and undressed in the cold, for she would allow no fire in her room; she never tasted meat, or tarts, or sweets, or delicacies of any kind, but contented herself with the simplest fare, and piled her father's plate, begging him to eat, and watching him with feverish anxiety as her mother's dreadful words rang in her ears--softening of the brain! Was that terrible disease stealing upon him? Would the time come when the kind eyes which now always brightened when they rested on her would have in them no sign of recognition, and the lips which spoke her name so lovingly utter only unmeaning words? It was terrible to contemplate, and Bessie felt she would rather see him dead than an imbecile.

"But what should I do with father gone?" she said, and her thoughts turned to Neil, who would surely take her then, even if he took her into poverty.

And so in a measure Bessie was comforted, and watched her father with untiring vigilance, and felt that he was slipping from her and that in all the world there was for her no ray of joy except in Neil's love, which she never doubted, and without which her heart would have broken, it was so full of care and pain. And it was just when her heart was saddest because her father had that morning called her _Daisy_, and when she corrected him had said, "Yes, but I can't think of your name; words go from me strangely at times; everything is confused," that Neil's letter came, bringing her fresh cause for anxiety, and seeming with its brevity and strangeness, to put him farther from her than he would be in Cannes, whither he was going.

That night Bessie cried herself to sleep, and was so weak and sick the next morning that Dorothy persuaded her to stay in bed and brought her up her breakfast of toast, crisp and hot, with a fresh boiled egg and a cup of tea which she declared would almost give life to a dead man.

"But, Dolly," Bessie said, "you should not have brought me the egg; they are two pence apiece, and father must have them all. Can't you keep it and warm it up for him?"

"Warm up an egg! Bless the child," and Dorothy laughed till the tears ran. "You can't warm over a boiled egg, so eat it down; it will do you good, and you are growing so thin and pale. Here is a letter for your father; but as he is asleep I brought it to you."

Taking the letter, Bessie examined the address, which was a strange one to her. Evidently it was on business, and as nothing of that kind could mean anything but fresh anxiety and annoyance for her father, she resolved to know the contents and, if possible, keep them from the weak invalid. So she broke the seal and read with astonishment that Messrs. Blank & Blank, bankers, in Lombard street, London, had been instructed by one who did not wish his name to appear, to send to Mr. Archibald McPherson of Stoneleigh, Bangor, the sum of one hundred pounds, and inclosed was a check for the same.

"Oh!" Bessie exclaimed, as she sprang up and began to dress herself rapidly. "One hundred pounds! Why, we are rich, and father can have everything he wants. I wonder how much a bottle of Johannisberger wine would cost."

Then there crept into her mind the question, who sent it? Was it the Hon. John? Was it Neil? or--and Bessie's heart stood still a moment and then beat with a heavy pain--or was it Jack Trevellian, who had done this because of what her mother had told him of their needs? It was like him, she knew, but if it were he, she could never touch the money, and without a word to her father of the letter, she wrote at once to Messrs. Blank & Blank, Lombard street, asking if it were Mr. Trevellian, and saying if it were, she must return the check as they could not keep it.

"Direct your answer to me," she wrote, "as I transact all my father's business for him."

In two days the answer come, very stiffly worded, but assuring her that the donor was not Mr. Trevellian and that her father need have no scruples about taking the money, and would have none did he know from whom it came. This satisfied Bessie, who took the letter to her father, confessing all she had done, and with him trying to guess who had been so kind to them.

"I can think of no one except my aunt in America," Archie said, "and she is not likely to remember us in this way after so many years' silence."

"If I thought it were she I would write to her," Bessie said, "and at all events I will write to _somebody_ and thank them, and send the letter to Messrs. Blank & Blank, in London. They know who it is and will forward it for me."

Accordingly the next Bangor mail for London bore in it a letter from Bessie to their unknown friend.

"DEAR MADAM, OR SIR, whichever you may be," she began, "I wish I could tell you how much joy and gladness, and relief, too, your generous gift of one hundred pounds brought to both father and me. God bless you for it, and may you never know the want and actual need which made your gift so very welcome that instead of shrinking from it we could only cry over it, and be glad that somewhere in the world there was somebody thinking and caring for us. Every night of my life I shall pray for you, and if I ever know who you are, and meet you face to face, I will try and thank you better than I feel that I am doing on paper. Yours gratefully and sincerely,"

BESSIE McPHERSON,

"P.S.--If, as papa half suspects, you are his Aunt Betsey, I am doubly glad, because it shows that you sometimes think of us in the old home at Stoneleigh, and I wish you would write a few words to father. It will do him so much good, and he is so sick and helpless, and lonely, and--I dare not tell you what I fear, only he sometimes forgets my name and his own, too, and calls things different from what they are. Oh, if he should die, I should die, too!"

This was sent to Messrs. Blank & Blank with instructions to forward it to the donor. But Messrs. Blank & Blank were very busy with other matters than forwarding letters of thanks. They had just written to Miss McPherson that her orders had been obeyed and the money paid, and so Bessie's letter was put aside and forgotten, for weeks and even months, when an incident occurred which brought it to their minds and it was forwarded to Miss McPherson.