Chapter 55

love he did not speak. Why had he changed so soon? Was it some love of his boyhood before he saw her, and had it again sprung into being, now that he had returned to its object? And oh, how dreary the world looked to the young girl with the certainty that Grey was lost to her forever. She did not notice the fanciful summer-house into which Jennie wheeled her; did not notice anything, or think of anything except her desolation and a desire to be alone, that she might cry just as she had never cried before.

"Please, Jennie, go away," she said; "I would rather be alone."

So Jennie left her, and, covering her face with her hands, Bessie sobbed, piteously:

"Oh, Father in heaven, is there never to be any joy for me? Must I always be so desolate and lonely, and is it wicked to wish that I were dead?"

For several minutes poor Bessie wept on, and then with a great effort she dried her tears, and, leaning her head back in her chair, began to live over again every incident of her life as connected with Grey Jerrold. And while she sat there thus, the Boston train stopped at the Allington station, and she heard the roar and the ring as it started on its way. Twenty minutes later she heard behind her the sound of a footstep, apparently hurrying toward her, and thought, if she thought at all, that it was Jennie coming for her. But surely Jennie's tread was never so rapid and eager as this, nor were Jennie's hands as soft and warm as the hands which encircled her face, nor Jennie's voice like this which said to her:

"Bessie, darling Bessie!"

Grey had come to Allington from Springfield, where he had been on business for his father, and both Lucy and Miss McPherson knew that he was coming, and had chosen that day for Bessie's visit to the park, and had purposely talked before her of his probable marriage, in order to test the nature of Bessie's feelings for him.

"We cannot be mistaken," Miss McPherson said to Lucy, after Bessie had left them; "but let me manage the young man."

And when, at last, Grey came, and, after greeting the ladies, asked after Bessie, Miss McPherson replied that she was better and had just left them for the garden; and then, as Grey made no move to go in search of her, she suddenly turned upon him with the exclamation:

"Grey Jerrold, you are a fool!"

"Ye-es?" he answered, interrogatively, as he regarded her with astonishment.

"I repeat it--you are either a fool or blind, or both!" she continued. "But I am neither, and I know you love my niece, and she loves you, and I know too that you think she is engaged to Neil McPherson, but she is not."

"What!" Grey exclaimed, starting to his feet. "What are you saying?"

"I am saying that Bessie's engagement was broken before she left England, and that she--"

"She--what?" Grey cried, almost pleadingly; and Miss McPherson rejoined:

"She is in the garden. You will find her in the rose-arbor."

Grey waited for no more, but went rapidly in the direction of the summer-house where Bessie sat with her back to him, and did not see him until his hands were upon her face and his voice said to her:

"Bessie, darling Bessie!"

Then she started suddenly, and when Grey came round in front of her, and taking her hands in his kissed her lips, she kissed him unhesitatingly, and then burst into a paroxysm of tears.

"What is it, Bessie? Why are you crying so?" Grey said, as he still held her hands and kept kissing her forehead and lips.

"They said you were going to be married," Bessie sobbed, as Grey knelt beside her, and laying her head upon his shoulder, tried to brush her tears away.

"Who said I was to be married?" he asked, in some surprise, and Bessie answered him:

"Your Aunt Lucy said she thought so, and I--oh, Grey, what must you think of me?" and lifting her head from his shoulder, Bessie covered her face with her hands, crying for very shame that she had betrayed what she ought to have kept to herself.

"What must I think of you?" Grey replied. "Why, this--that you are the dearest, sweetest little girl in all the world, and that I am the happiest man. I do not know what Aunt Lucy meant by saying I was going to be married; but I am, and very soon, too--just as soon as you are able to be present at the ceremony. Will that be at Christmas-time, do you think?"

He was taking everything for granted, and Bessie knew that he was, and knew what he meant, but she would scarcely have been a woman if she had not wished him to put his meaning in words which could not be mistaken, so she said to him amid her tears--glad, happy tears they were now:

"Whom are you to marry?"

"Whom?" he repeated. "Whom but you, Bessie McPherson, whom I believe I have loved ever since that Christmas I spent at Stoneleigh two years ago. Do you remember the knot of plaid ribbon you wore that night and which I won at play? I have it still, as one of my choicest treasures, and the curl of hair which Flossie cut from your head, in Rome, when we thought you would die, I divided that tress with Jack Trevellian the night we talked together of you, with breaking hearts, because we believed you were dead. He told me then of his love for you, and I confessed mine to him, though we both supposed that, had you lived, Neil would have claimed you as his. Oh, Bessie, those were dreary months to me, when I thought you dead, and may you never know the anguish I endured when I stood by that grave in Stoneleigh and believed you lying there. But God has been very good to me, far better than I deserve. He has given you to me at last and nothing shall separate us again."

While Grey talked, he was caressing Bessie's face and hair, and stooping occasionally to kiss her, while she sat dumb and motionless, so full was she of the great joy which had come so suddenly upon her, and which, as yet, she could not realize.

"We will be married at Christmas," Grey said; "the anniversary of the time when I first saw you, little dreaming then, that you would one day be my wife. Shall it not be so?"

What Bessie might have said or how long the interview might have lasted, we have no means of knowing, for a shrill cry in the distance of "None of that, misther! for I'm comin' meself to take the hide of ye," startled them from their state of bliss, and looking up they saw Jennie bearing swiftly down upon them, with both arms extended ready for fight.

Jennie, who knew nothing of Grey's arrival, had visited with the servants, until she concluded it was time to return to her young mistress. As she came within sight of the summer-house what was her horror to see a tall young man with his arms around Bessie, and, as it seemed to her, trying to take her from the chair.

"Thaves and murther!" she cried, "if there isn't a spalpeen thryin' to run away with Miss Bessie, body and bones;" and at her utmost speed she dashed on to the fray.

But at sight of Grey she stopped short, and with wide-open eyes and mouth, surveyed him a moment in astonishment; then a broad smile illumined her face as she exclaimed:

"An' faith that's right. Kiss her again as many times as ye likes. It's not meself will interfere, though if you'd been a bla'guard, as I thought you was, I'd of had yer heart's blood," and turning on her heel Jennie walked rapidly away, leaving the lovers a very little upset and disconcerted.

It was Grey who wheeled Bessie back to the house, and taking her in his arms carried her to his Aunt Lucy, to whom he said, as he put her down upon the couch:

"This is my little wife, or, rather, she is to _be_ my wife on Christmas Eve, and Christmas Day we are to spend here with you, who will make the old house brighter than ever it was before." Then, going up to Miss McPherson, he continued: "Kiss me, Aunt Betsey because I am to be your nephew, and because I am no longer a fool."

The kiss he asked for was given, and thus the engagement was sealed, and when next day Grey returned to Boston, he said to his Aunt Hannah, who was still with his mother:

"Bessie is to be my wife, and I must tell her our secret, and at your house, too, for, after she has seen you, I feel sure that she will forgive everything."