Dainty's Cruel Rivals; Or, The Fatal Birthday
in future," smirked the delighted spinster, thinking what a little fool
that girl was to refuse such a man.
Ailsa came next day, and was indignant when she heard how her
step-father had treated Dainty, while she rejoiced that the girl had
found such a refuge, for she believed that Miss White was in the main a
very good woman.
"But, oh! Dainty, she has set her cap at Sparks, and I believe her
flatteries have made an impression on him that will heal the wounds your
scolding gave. Depend on it, that will be a match, and, as I believe she
would make a real good step-mother to my little half-brothers and
sisters, you and I will rent rooms and live together like sisters after
the wedding!" she cried, cheerfully, trying to bring a smile to the
pale, lily-like face over which the tears streamed as the girl sighed:
"Oh, Ailsa, you are like an angel to me!"
"I am very sorry," continued Ailsa, "that you have promised to work for
your board, for you need a little money as you go along--all girls
do--and when I found you were gone without a cent I was nearly crazy. I
gave old Sparks such a lecture as he will never forget, and I fairly
hugged that primpy old maid when she came to tell me where you were.
Now, dear, take this ten dollars from your sister Ailsa, and use it in
time of need. No, you shall not refuse it, or you may be sorry for it if
Miss White should turn you out in the streets some day as heartlessly as
old Sparks did."
She had not the least idea of such a thing happening again, but she
wanted to frighten Dainty into taking the gift, and she succeeded, after
which she left, promising to see her friend often.
The weeks came and went, and Dainty toiled at her sewing with aching
limbs and a heavy heart filled with dire forebodings that she dare not
utter aloud to any human being, even gentle Ailsa, and at night her
lonely pillow was wet with tears, and her piteous cry was ever:
"Oh, mother, mother, if only you were with me now to pity and help me in
my trouble!"
For awhile Miss White was quite kind, for at the bottom of her heart she
felt secretly grateful to the girl for having in a way brought about her
acquaintance with Sparks--an acquaintance that she prosecuted with much
vigor, running in and out daily for trifles from the store, till her
broad flatteries and fondness for the children awakened a warm sentiment
in his heart, and he began to pay her such pleasing attentions as
calling on Sunday evenings for social chats, Dainty always keeping out
of the way, reluctant to meet him again, and quite unaware that in his
spite he was doing all he could to turn Miss White's heart against her
hapless _protege_.
March came with its bleak winds and occasional hints of spring, but
Dainty's heart sank heavier day by day, her cheeks grew more pale, her
eyes more heavy, as she drooped over her work shivering, with the thick
cape always wrapped about her form, and looking as if death would soon
claim her as its own.
They were dark, sad days for Dainty, for the gay young girls, Miss
White's assistants, began to shun her, and to look askance at the form
always bundled up so closely from the winter cold. Two hands quit work
abruptly and never returned, and the three others held private
conversations with their employer, after which she came straight to
Dainty, saying harshly:
"You wicked girl, you have imposed on me!"
Dainty was putting away the tea-things, and she started so violently
that a china cup fell through her thin fingers and crashed upon the
floor.
Miss White continued, angrily:
"I took you in as an honest girl and treated you kindly. In return you
imposed on me, disgraced my house, and broke up my business!"
"Oh, madame!"
"Two of my best hands have quit me in disgust, and the other three
threaten to go unless I turn you away at once. Do you know the reason,
pray?"
Crimson with shame, Dainty dropped forlornly before her with
down-dropped eyes, speechless with fear, and the woman continued,
sharply:
"Take off that cape you've been shrouded in all the winter, pretending
to suffer from the cold, and let me see if it is really hiding your
disgrace."
"Oh, spare me!"
"Do as I bid you! There! I've dragged it off in spite of you! Oh, for
shame--shame! How could you be so wicked with that innocent face?"
"Oh, I am not as bad as you think! I--I--"
"Hush! You can't excuse your disgrace. Mr. Sparks told me all along you
were a bad girl, and told me when we became engaged I must send you to
the right-about before we were married. But, somehow, I couldn't believe
ill of you, till I see it now with my own eyes."
"Oh! may I stay till to-morrow? You will not drive me out into the
streets to-night?" imploringly.
"I ought to do it to pay you for cheating me so; but I'm a Christian
woman, and, somehow, I pity you, and I can't be hard on you. You may
stay to-night; but you must leave in the morning directly after
breakfast. There's a hospital in this city for poor girls that's gone
astray like you. You can go there, and the good doctor will take you in
and let you stay till your child is born. Then you can put it in the
foundlings' home and some good people may adopt it."
"Merciful God, have pity!" shrilled over the girl's tortured lips, as
she sank on her knees, overcome by the horror of her thoughts.
Her child--Love Ellsworth's lawful heir--to be born in a home for "girls
gone astray," and placed in a foundlings' home, to be "adopted by some
good people." Had she come to this? She, whose future had promised so
radiantly nine brief months ago! A wild prayer to Heaven broke from her
pallid lips:
"Oh, God! take us both--the forsaken mother and child--to heaven!"
"It's too late to take on now. Better behaved yourself right at first,"
the old maid admonished her; adding, soothingly: "Go to bed now, and
I'll send to-morrow for the good doctor to come and take you to the
lying-in hospital."
But in the gray dawn of the cold morning she found the bed empty, and
poor Dainty gone.
CHAPTER XXXV.
GRAND COMPANY.
A strange chance, or, perhaps, a kindly Providence, brought Sarah Ann
Peters and old black mammy together that spring at the railway station
near Ellsworth, where both were then living.
The indefatigable white woman was laid low with la grippe, and her
husband, in seeking a maid-of-all-work to fill her place, could find no
one to take the situation but the aged Virginia.
As six of the large brood of sons were away at school, mammy undertook
"to do for the rest," as she expressed it; and the last of March found
her domesticated at the six-roomed frame house on the edge of the woods,
a mile from the station.
Here the thrifty Peters family had lived for ten years throughout the
winters, removing each spring to the lonely saw-mill in the mountains,
where by hard, unremitting toil they succeeded in earning enough money
to send their children to good schools in the cold weather.
Already Peters was making his arrangements to remove to the woods in
April, when his good wife was stricken with a heavy cold that laid her
low during the last three weeks of March; though her sturdy constitution
triumphed then, and she sat up the first day of April, a little pale and
wasted, but, as she expressed it, "feeling just as stout as ever, but
glad to have mammy there awhile yet to take the heft of the work off her
tired shoulders."
In her secret heart black mammy felt cruelly hurt at having come down,
in her old age, to work for ordinary "po' w'ite trash;" but she had
fallen on evil days in this latter end of her pilgrimage.
After the terrible misfortune that had befallen Love Ellsworth, his
heartless step-mother had made full use of her power to oppress all who
had taken the part of poor Dainty Chase.
For many years mammy, with her son and her daughter-in-law, had
inhabited rent free, their cabin on the Ellsworth estate, Love also
allowing them the use of a patch of ground for their garden. The negroes
having belonged to his ancestors in slavery times, he felt that this
kindness was but their honest due.
But no sooner had Mrs. Ellsworth usurped the reins of government than
she proceeded to drive away the poor negroes from the cabin. Thereupon
mammy's son and his wife removed to the coal mines of Fayette County,
and left the old woman to shift for herself.
Though she did her work faithfully for Mrs. Peters, she did not fail to
impress on the good woman the superiority of the position from which she
had fallen, and the grandeur of the family that had formerly owned her,
always adding that "Massa Love wouldn't a let her kem to sech a pass ef
he had kep' his mind."
Mrs. Peters, with the kindest heart and warmest sympathies in the world,
listened patiently to black mammy's tales, till the loquacious old
negress at last confided to her the whole story of her young master's
blighted love dream, down to the moment when Franklin had brought Dainty
Chase to the station, bought her ticket, and sent her on to her mother
in Richmond.
Then the interested Mrs. Peters also had a story to tell, for she had
recognized in the heroine of the story the lovely patient she had tended
so faithfully, last fall, at the logging camp in the woods.
"And I believe she told the truth to that wicked woman, that she was
secretly married to Mr. Ellsworth," she affirmed. "For, Virginny, I'll
tell you a secret that hain't never passed my lips before, not even to
Peters, and I don't often keep secrets from my good old man. But this is
it: I more nor suspected that that pore young chile was in a way to
become a mother."
"Lord, have mercy!" ejaculated black mammy, and the tears rolled down
her fat, black cheeks.
After that the two women could talk of little else but sweet Dainty and
her sorrowful plight--an unacknowledged wife soon to be a mother.
They counted up the months on their fingers, and found that the
important event was almost at hand--must happen within the next two
weeks--and mammy exclaimed:
"I see it all plain as daylight now! Massa Love was 'fraid sumpin' would
happen to 'vent de marriage, so he took his sweetheart off on de sly,
an' dey got married; den he sent me home an' fix up dat room nex' to his
own fer his bride, so 'at he kin tek keer ob her ebery night--dat's it.
An' den dey bofe feel so easy in dey min's, little finkin' what turrible
fings gwine happen on de birfday. Oh! ain't it de awfules' 'fliction you
ebber hear on, Mis' Peters? Dat pore man wif de bullet in his haid, an'
his senses gone, an' dat pore wife druv away in poverty, an' dem
wretches rollin' in gold dat belongs to Massa Love an' his sweet bride!
An' to fink dat I is cheated, too, out o' a hunnerd dollars! fer I done
match dat torn piece ob torchon lace to Sheila Kelly's night gownd long
ago, an' ef Massa Love was in his senses, I could claim dat big
reward."
That night, the last of March, Mrs. Peters confided the whole story to
her surprised and sympathizing husband.
"I never heard anything to ekal it!" he declared, indignantly; adding:
"I wish sumpin' could be done to git that poor young wife her rights,
and I'm willin' to spend time and money helpin' ef I only knew which end
to begin at! Them wimmen at Ellsworth ought to be tarred and feathered
and rid on a fence rail, I swow! But likely they'll make it hot for any
one as tries to bring home their sins to 'em."
The next day he rode over to the station at sunset on his old gray mare
Stonewall, for some groceries from the store, and the supper things
being cleared away, mammy took her black pipe and sat down by the
roadside to smoke, just outside the front gate.
By and by, through the cloud of smoke and the purple haze of twilight,
she saw him returning with his bundles, and, sitting behind him on old