Chapter 16

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_ CHAPTER XVI A strong hand drew Daisy quickly back. "Rash child! What is this that you would do?" cried an eager, earnest voice, and, turning quickly about, speechless with fright, Daisy met the stern eyes of the apothecary bent searchingly, inquiringly upon her. "It means that I am tired of life," she replied, desperately. "My life is so full of sadness it will be no sorrow to leave it. I wanted to rest quietly down there, but you have held me back; it is useless to attempt to save me now. I have already swallowed a portion of the laudanum. Death must come to relieve me soon. It would be better to let me die down there where no one could have looked upon my face again." "I had no intention to let you die so easily," said the apothecary, softly. "I read your thoughts too plainly for that. I did not give you laudanum, but a harmless mixture instead, and followed you to see if my surmise was correct. You are young and fair--surely life could not have lost all hope and sunshine for you?" "You do not know all," said Daisy, wearily, "or you would not have held me back. I do not know of another life so utterly hopeless as my own." The good man looked at the sweet, innocent, beautiful face, upon which the starlight fell, quite bewildered and thoughtful. "I should like to know what your trouble is," he said, gently. "I could tell you only one half of it," she replied, wearily. "I have suffered much, and yet through no fault of my own. I am cast off, deserted, condemned to a loveless, joyless life; my heart is broken; there is nothing left me but to die. I repeat that it is a sad fate." "It is indeed," replied the apothecary, gravely. "Yet, alas! not an uncommon one. Are you quite sure that nothing can remedy it?" "Quite sure," replied Daisy, hopelessly. "My doom is fixed; and no matter how long I live, or how long he lives, it can never be altered." The apothecary was uncomfortable without knowing why, haunted by a vague, miserable suspicion, which poor Daisy's words secretly corroborated; yet it seemed almost a sin to harbor one suspicion against the purity of the artless little creature before him. He looked into the fresh young face. There was no cloud on it, no guilt lay brooding in the clear, truthful blue eyes. He never dreamed little Daisy was a wife. "Why did he not love her?" was the query the apothecary asked himself over and over again; "she is so young, so loving, and so fair. He has cast her off, this man to whom she has given the passionate love of her young heart." "You see you did wrong to hold me back," she said, gently. "How am I to live and bear this sorrow that has come upon me? What am I to do?" She looked around her with the bewildered air of one who had lost her way, with the dazed appearance of one from beneath whose feet the bank of safety has been withdrawn. Hope was dead, and the past a blank. "No matter what your past has been, my poor child, you must remember there is a future. Take up the burden again, and bear it nobly; go back to your home, and commence life anew." "I have no home and no friends," she sighed, hopelessly. "Poor child," he said, pityingly, "is it as bad as that?" A sudden idea seemed to occur to him. "You are a perfect stranger to me," he said, "but I believe you to be an honorable girl, and I should like to befriend you, as I would pray Heaven to befriend a daughter of mine if she were similarly situated. If I should put you in a way of obtaining your own living as companion to an elderly lady in a distant city, would you be willing to take up the tangled threads of your life again, and wait patiently until God saw fit to call you--that is, you would never attempt to take your life into your own hands again?" he asked, slowly. "Remember, such an act is murder, and a murderer can not enter the kingdom of heaven." He never forgot the startled, frightened glance that swept over the beautiful face, plainly discernible in the white moonlight, nor the quiver of the sweet, tremulous voice as Daisy answered: "I think God must have intended me to live, or He would not have sent you here to save me," she answered, impulsively. "Twice I have been near death, and each time I have been rescued. I never attempted to take my own life but this once. I shall try and accept my fate and live out my weary life." "Bravely spoken, my noble girl," replied her rescuer, heartily. "I must go far away from here, though," she continued, shuddering; "I am sorely persecuted here." The old man listened gravely to her disconnected, incoherent words, drawing but one conclusion from them--"the lover who had cast her off was pursuing the child, as her relentless foe, to the very verge of death and despair." "It is my sister who wants a companion," he said. "She lives in the South--in Florida. Do you think you would like to go as far away as that?" "Yes," said Daisy, mechanically. "I should like to go to the furthest end of the world. It does not matter much where I go!" How little she knew where fate was drifting her! Rex had not told her his home was in Florida; he meant to tell her that on the morning he was to have met her. "It will be a long, wearisome journey for you to undertake, still I feel sure you are brave enough to accomplish it in safety." "I thank you very much for your confidence in me, sir," said Daisy, simply. "Tut, tut, child!" exclaimed the old man, brusquely. "That innocent little face of yours ought to be a passport to any one's confidence. I don't think there's any doubt but what you will get on famously with Maria--that's my sister Mrs. Glenn--but she's got three daughters that would put an angel's temper on edge. They're my nieces--more's the pity, for they are regular Tartars. Mrs. Glenn sent for my daughter Alice to come down there; but, Lord bless you, I wouldn't dare send her! There would be a raging quarrel before twenty-four hours! My Alice has got a temper of her own. But, pshaw! I ought not to frighten you, my dear; they could not help but love you." And thus it was Daisy's fate was unchangeably settled for her. "There is one thing I would like you to promise me," she said, timidly, "and that is never to divulge my whereabouts to any one who might come in search of me. I must remain dead to the world forever; I shall never take up the old life again. They must believe me dead." Argument and persuasion alike were useless; and, sorely troubled at heart, the apothecary reluctantly consented. Poor little Daisy impulsively caught him by both hands, and gratefully sobbed out her thanks. The arrangements were soon completed, and before the gray dawn pierced the darkness of the eastern sky poor little Daisy was whirling rapidly away from Elmwood. The consternation and excitement which prevailed at the Burton Cottage when Daisy's absence was discovered can better be imagined than described; or the intense anger of Stanwick upon finding Daisy had eluded him. "Checkmated!" he cried, white to the very lips. "But she shall not escape me; she shall suffer for this freak. I am not a man to be trifled with. She can not have gone far," he assured himself. "In all probability she has left Elmwood; but if by rail or by water I can easily recapture my pretty bird. Ah, Daisy Brooks!" he muttered, "you can not fly away from your fate; it will overtake you sooner or later." Some hours after Stanwick had left the cottage, an old man toiled wearily up the grass-grown path. "Oh, poor little Daisy," he said, wiping the tears from his eyes with his old red and white cotton kerchief; "no matter what you have done I will take you back to my heart--that I will!" He clutched the letter Mme. Whitney had written him close in his toil-hardened hand. The letter simply told him Daisy had fled from the seminary, and she had every reason to believe she was now in Elmwood. He had received the letter while in New York, and hastily proceeded to Elmwood, the station indicated, at once, without stopping over at Allendale to acquaint Septima with the news. "She shall never be sent off to school again," he commented; "but she shall stop at home. Poor little pet, she was always as happy as the day was long; she sha'n't have book-learning if she don't want it. I am too hard, I s'pose, with the child in sending her off among these primpy city gals, with their flounces and furbelows, with only three plain muslin frocks. The dickens fly away with the book-learnin'; I like her all the better just as she is, bless her dear little heart! I'm after little Daisy Brooks," he said, bowing to the ladies who met him at the door. "I heard she was here--run away from school, you see, ma'am--but I'll forgive the little gypsy. Tell her old Uncle John is here. She'll be powerful glad to see me." Slowly and gently they broke to him the cruel story. How the dark, handsome stranger had brought her there in the storm and the night; and they could not refuse her shelter; the gentleman claimed her to be his wife; of her illness which culminated in her disappearance. They never forgot the white, set face turned toward them. The veins stood out like cords on his forehead, and the perspiration rolled down his pallid cheeks in great quivering beads. This heart-rending, silent emotion was more terrible to witness than the most violent paroxysms of grief. Strangely enough they had quite forgotten to mention Rex's visit. "You don't know how I loved that child," he cried, brokenly. "She was all I had to love in the whole world, and I set such store by her, but Stanwick shall pay dearly for this," he cried, hoarsely. "I shall never rest day or night until my little Daisy's honor is avenged, so help me God! You think she is dead?" he questioned, looking brokenly from the one to the other. They only nodded their heads; they could not speak through their sobs. At that moment several of the neighbors who were assisting in the search were seen coming toward the cottage. They gathered in a little knot by the garden wall. With a heart heavier than lead in his bosom John Brooks went forward to meet them. "You haven't got any track of my little Daisy?" he asked, despondingly. The men averted their faces. "For God's sake speak out, my men!" he cried, in agony; "I can't stand this suspense." "There are footprints in the wet grass down yonder," one of them replied; "and they lead straight down to the old shaft. Do you think your girl has made away with herself?" A gray, ghastly pallor settled over John Brooks' anguished face. "The Lord knows! All of you stay here while I go down there and look. If I should find anything there I'd rather be alone." There was a depth of agony in the man's voice that touched his hearers, and more than one coat-sleeve was drawn hastily across sympathetic eyes as they whispered one to the other he would surely find her there. John Brooks had reached the very mouth of the pit now, and through the branches of the trees the men saw him suddenly spring forward, and stoop as if to pick up something, and bitter cries rent the stillness of the summer morning. "Daisy! oh, Daisy! my child, my child!" Then they saw him fall heavily to the ground on the very brink of the shaft. "I guess he's found her!" cried the sympathizing men. "Let us go and see." They found John Brooks insensible, lying prone on his face, grasping a tiny little glove in one hand, and in the other a snowy little handkerchief, which bore, in one corner, worked in fanciful design, the name of "Daisy." _

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