Every instinct of delicacy and respect for the young girl prompted him to retire at once; yet he could not bear to go and leave a wrong impression on the mind of the beautiful girl whom he admired so much.
He retreated to the door, and, standing there, said, anxiously and respectfully:
"I entreat you to believe, Miss Glenalvan, that I entered here with no wrongful motive. Led by a fit of curiosity, I was exploring the ruined wing of the hall, and I entered without a dream of finding it occupied by any living being. I had been led to believe that these rooms were totally unoccupied, and were even unsafe to enter. Will you accept my apology?"
Little Golden's head was still hidden against Dinah's shoulder, and the old woman broke out sharply and quickly:
"Honey, chile, don't you go for to 'cept dat wilyun's 'pology! Ef he done really cum in dis room by accident, he would agone out ag'in when he found dat a young lady occupied de room. But no; de first sight my ole brack eyes saw when I jumped off my pallet and come to de door was dat strange man a-kissin' you, my precious lamb."
Golden began to sob, and Mr. Chesleigh mentally anathematizedthe old woman's long tongue that had thus betrayed the secret he had intended to keep so carefully.
His face grew scarlet as he hastened to say:
"I kissed your hand, Miss Glenalvan, and I entreat your pardon for yielding to that overmastering temptation. Can you forgive me?"
But Golden was still weeping bitterly, and old Dinah, in her fear and indignation for her darling, pointed quickly to the door.
"Go," she said. "Don't you see how you frighten the chile by staying?"
There seemed nothing to be gained by staying. The old woman was utterly unreasonable, and Golden was so agitated she could not speak.
The embarrassed intruder silently withdrew to his own apartment, where he spent the night brooding over the strange discovery he had made and the unpleasant position in which he had placed himself.
"Honey, chile, where did you git 'quainted wid dat ondecent man?" inquired old Dinah of her nursling, as soon as Mr. Chesleigh had quitted the room.
"What makes you think I am acquainted with him, mammy?" inquired the child in surprise.
Dinah shook her woolly head sagely.
"Don't try to deceabe your ole brack mammy, my lamb," she said. "He called you Missie Glenalvan—do you think I didn't notice that?"
Golden's pretty cheeks grew scarlet with blushes.
"I shall have to 'form your grandpa of what he done, the impident wilyun!" continued Dinah, emphatically.
"Oh, black mammy, please don't tell," cried the girl impulsively. "You heard what he said—it was a mere accident, I am quite, quite sure he meant no harm."
"Ole massa shall be de jedge o' dat," replied Dinah decidedly. "I'll miss my guess if de ole man don't put a pistol-hole frew my fine, han'some gentleman!"
"Oh, black mammy! then you shall not tell," cried Golden in terror. "Indeed, indeed, he is not the wicked man you believe him. He has kept my secret for me, and I must keep his now. That would only be fair."
"Ah, den youdoknow him," cried Dinah, horrified. "Tell me all about it dis minute, if you know what's best for you, chile."
Golden did not resent the old nurse's tone of authority. She knew the old woman's love for her too well. She dried her eyes and reluctantly related her escapade two nights before.
"He kept my secret," she concluded, "and it would not be fair for us to make trouble for him, would it, black mammy?"
Old Dinah had slipped down to the floor, and sat with her long, black arms clasped around her knees, looking up into her nursling'seager, fearful face, with a good deal of trouble in her keen, black eyes.
The old woman was shrewd and intelligent in her way. She foresaw trouble, and perhaps the bitterest sorrow from these two meetings between the handsome guest of John Glenalvan and the young mistress.
"Black mammy, promise me you will not tell grandpa," Golden pleaded. "I will do anything you ask me if only you will not tell him."
Thereupon Dinah announced her ultimatum.
"If you will promise me never to speak to the strange gentleman again, little missie, I will not tell ole massa."
Golden opened wide her blue eyes. She looked very lovely as she leaned back among the snowy, ruffled pillows, her golden hair straying loosely about her shoulders, her cheeks tinted with a deep, warm blush, her little hands nervously clasping and unclasping each other.
"Black mammy, I think you are very cross to-night," she pouted. "Why should I never speak to the handsome gentleman again?"
"Because it's best for you. Ole brack mammy knows better dan you, chile."
"But I liked him so much," said Golden, blushing rosy red.
"You had no business to like him," responded Dinah. "He's to marry Miss Elinor."
"I do not believe it," said Golden, quickly.
"He's not for you, anyway," retorted Dinah. "You'll nebber marry no one, my dear."
"Why not?" asked the child. "Will nobody ever love me?"
"Nobody'll ever love ye like your grandpa, honey, and 'taint likely dat ever he will give ye away to anyone."
Golden was silent a moment. She seemed to be thinking intently. After a moment she said gravely and sadly:
"Grandpa is old, and I am young. Who will take care of me when he is gone?"
"Your old brack mammy, I guess, honey."
"You are old, too," said Golden. "You may not live as long as I do."
"Bless the chile's heart, how shedotalk," said the old negress. "Ah, my precious lamb, I has outlived dem as was younger and fairer dan ole black Dinah."
The old black face looked very sad for a moment, then Dinah continued:
"Little missie, it's my clair duty to tell old massa de sarcumstances of the case to-morrow morning. Leastwise, unless you promise me nebber to speak to dat man ag'in."
"That is very hard," sighed Golden.
"Hard," said Dinah. "I should think you would be so mad at the wilyun, a-comin' in and kissin' you so unceremonious, dat you would nebber want to speak to him any more."
Golden hid her face in the pillows, and a deep sigh fluttered over her lips.
"Come, dearie, won't you promise?" said Dinah. "I knows what's for your good better dan you does yourself, chile."
"Must I promise it, indeed?" sighed the innocent child, lifting her flushed face from the pillow a moment to fix her big, blue, imploring eyes on the old woman's obdurate face.
"Yes, you must sartainly promise it," was the uncompromising reply.
There was silence for a moment, and Dinah saw the tears come into the sweet, blue eyes.
"Honey, chile, does you promise me?" she inquired, only confirmed in the opinion by this demonstration.
"Yes, I promise not to speak to him unless you give me leave, black mammy," replied Golden, with quivering lips.
"That's right, darling. Mammy can depend on your word. Lie down, and go to sleep, honey, and I'll fetch my pallet in yere, and sleep on de flo' by your bedside, so that no one kin 'trude on you ag'in."
The girl laid her fair head silently on the pillow, and Dinah threw down a quilt on the floor and rolled herself in it. She was soon snoring profoundly.
Not so with beautiful Golden. It was quite impossible for her to sleep again. She shut her eyelids resolutely, but the busy, beautiful brain was too active to admit of her losing consciousness again. She lay thinking of the splendid, dark-eyed stranger.
"He has kissed me twice," she whispered to her heart, "and yet I do not even know his name. I wonder if I shall ever see him again. I hope I shall."
As she remembered how earnestly he had apologized for his presence in her room, she could not believe him the wicked villain old Dinah had so loudly represented him.
"He is handsome, and I believe that he is good," the girl said to herself, "and they tell me Elinor wants to marry him; I would like to marry him myself, just to spite my cousins."
Poor little Golden! Her spite against her cousins was almost as old as her years. They had always hated her, and Golden had been quick to find it out and resent it.
She had a quick and fiery temper, but it did not take her long to repent of her little fits of passion.
She was a bright, winsome, lovable child. It was a wonder that anyone could hate her for her beautiful, innocent life.
Yet there were those who did, and it was beginning to dawn vaguely on the mind of the girl that it was so. She knew that her life was passed differently from that of the other girls of her age and class.
There were no teachers, no companions, no pleasures for her, and no promise of any change in the future.
She wondered a little why it was so, but she never complained to her grandfather. It was, perhaps, only his way, she said to herself, little dreaming of the dark mystery that lay like a deep, impassible gulf between her and the dwellers in the outside world of which she knew so very, very little.
A week elapsed, and there seemed but little prospect of the little prisoner's release from the haunted chambers of the ruined wing.
The Glenalvans' guest lingered on, fascinated, it appeared, by the attractions of the beautiful Elinor. At least Elinor stoutly maintained this fact in the privacy of the family circle, while Clare as obstinately persisted that Mr. Chesleigh was perfectly impartial in his attentions to both.
But however doubtful was Elinor's impression, the fact remained that he was pleased with his visit.
He consented by their urgent invitation to prolong his stay another week. The girls were jubilant over his decision.
Meanwhile, old Dinah watched her secluded nursling with unremitting vigilance. She could not remain with her all day, because her housekeeping duties took her constantly into the lower part of the house, but she visited her intermittently, and at night rolled herself in a thick counterpane and slept on the floor by the side of Golden's couch.
She took the added precaution to turn the rusty key in the lock at night.
Old Dinah had never heard the familiar adage that "love laughs at locksmiths."
She was ordinarily a very sound and healthy sleeper. The mere accident of a rheumatic attack, and consequent sleeplessness, had caused her appearance the night Mr. Chesleigh had entered the room.
Usually she might have been lifted, counterpane and all, and carried away bodily without being aware of it.
Nearly two weeks after the night of her rencontre with Mr. Chesleigh, old Dinah awoke suddenly "in the dead waste and middle of the night," seized in the relentless grip of her old enemy, the rheumatism.
She rolled herself out of her quilt and sat upright, groaning dolorously, and rubbing her knees in which the pain had settled.
"Oh, Lordy! oh, Lordy!" she groaned, "how my ole bones does ache! Miss Golden! Miss Golden! my precious lam', wake up, and bid your ole brack mammy a las' far'well. I'm a-dyin', sartin, shuah!"
But Golden, usually a very light sleeper, made no reply. Dinah reared her woolly head upward and looked into the bed.
The bed wasempty.
Then Dinah looked around her in amazement to see if Golden was not in the room, laughing at her lugubrious groans as she had often done before. But she saw no trace of her young mistress.
"Miss Golden! Miss Golden!" she called, "is you in de udder room? Ef you is, come in here! I'se berry sick, honey, almos' a-dyin'."
But her repeated calls elicited no reply. It appeared that pretty Golden was out of sight and hearing.
Suddenly old Dinah saw the dainty, white, ruffled night-dress,in which Golden had retired that night, lying in a snowy heap upon the floor.
Dinah seized upon the garment and shook it vigorously, as if she expected to see the slight form of her young mistress drop from its folds to the floor.
"Um—me-e-e," she groaned, "has de sperets carried de chile off?"
She glanced up at the row of pegs where she had hung Golden's few articles of apparel. Her best dress—a dark-blue cashmere—was gone, also her hat and a summer jacket.
"She hab runned away from us," old Dinah exclaimed, with almost a howl of despair.
The thought inspired her with such grief and terror that she forgot her ailment entirely. She hobbled out from the room and made her way down stairs to her master's apartment and burst into his presence—a ludicrous object indeed in her striped cotton bed-gown.
Old Hugh Glenalvan, late as it was, had not retired to bed. Wrapped in an old wadded dressing-gown he sat in an easy-chair before an old, carved oaken cabinet.
One quaint little drawer was open, and the white-haired old man was poring over some simple treasures he had taken from it—simple treasures, yet dearer to his heart than gold or precious stones—a few old photographs, an old-fashioned ambrotype in an ebony case, a thin, gold ring and some locks of hair.
Upon this sad and touching picture of memory and tenderness old Dinah's grotesque figure broke startlingly.
"Ole massa! ole massa!" she cried, wildly, "has you seen little missie? Is she here with you?"
The old man swept his treasures off his knees into the quaint cabinet and looked at his old servant in amazement.
"Dinah, what does this startling intrusion mean?" he inquired, pushing his spectacles off his brow and regarding her with a mild frown.
"Little Golden is missing. She hab runned away from us, ole massa!" shouted Dinah, desperately.
"Dinah, you must be crazy," repeated Mr. Glenalvan, blankly.
"It's de Lard's truth, ole massa. She hab done followed in her mudder's footsteps! Dat han'some man ober at John Glenalvan's has been and gone and 'ticed our Golden from us," wailed the old negress, in despair.
It was not long before Mr. Glenalvan had heard the whole of Golden's simple love-story from his servant. They were filled with horror and grief at its too probable termination.
"Dinah, it may be that she has stolen out into the grounds for a walk in the fresh air. She was growing very restless with the close, indoor confinement. Have you thought of that?" he said, hoping feebly against hope.
"Shall I go out and look for her, den, ole massa?" said Dinah, in a tone that plainly betrayed her hopelessness.
"Let us both go," said old Hugh.
They sallied forth anxiously into the brilliant moonlight that lay in silvery brightness all over the sweet, southern landscape—old Hugh, bareheaded, in his tattered dressing-gown, old Dinah in her short night-dress, too ridiculous a figure for anyone to contemplate without inward mirth.
It so happened that Elinor, whom the hard exigencies of poverty compelled to be her own dressmaker, had sat up late that night to complete some alterations in a dress in which she had intended to array her fair self for the morrow.
Having stitched on the last bit of lace, she went to the window and leaned out to cool her heated brow.
"My head aches, and I am almost melted with sewing by that hot lamp," she said to herself, fretfully. "How I hate this poverty that grinds one down so! When once I am married to Bertram Chesleigh I will never touch a needle again! I will order all my dresses of Worth, of Paris. And Iwillmarry Bertram Chesleigh! I swear it; and woe be to anyone that tries to prevent me!"
Her dark eyes flashed luridly a moment, and her white hand was angrily clenched.
She was thinking of Clare, who had persisted in rivaling her with Mr. Chesleigh.
At that moment the subdued murmur of voices floated up to her window from the lawn.
She glanced down quickly, and saw old Dinah and her master crossing the lawn, their grotesque shadows flying long and dark before them in the brilliant moonlight.
Quick as thought Elinor was out of her seat, and gliding softly through the door in quest of her father.
Before old Glenalvan and his servant had crossed the lawn, two dark figures stole forth from the hall and silently followed them.
On the green border of the silver lake two figures were standing in the beautiful moonlight. One was a man, tall, dark, splendid, with a princely beauty.
His arm was thrown protectingly about a slender form that clung lovingly to his side.
It was Golden Glenalvan, dressed in a dark suit and light cloth jacket, a neat, little walking-hat, set jauntily on her streaming, golden curls.
Her blue eyes were lifted tenderly, and yet anxiously to her lover's face.
"Oh, Bert," she said, giving him the tender name by which he had taught her to call him, "you must indeed let me go now. We have been saying good-bye at least a half an hour."
"Parting is such a sweet pain," said the lover, bending to kiss the tempting, up-turned lips. "Give me just one more minute, my darling."
"But I have been out so long," she objected, faintly. "What if black mammy should awake and find me gone?"
"There is not the slightest danger," said Bertram Chesleigh carelessly. "The old woman sleeps so soundly that a thunder-clap would scarcely wake her."
But just at that moment of his fancied security, old Dinah, in Golden's deserted chamber, was vigorously shaking her empty night-dress in a dazed attempt to evolve from its snowy folds the strangely missing girl.
Golden smiled, then sighed faintly. He kissed her lips before the sigh had fairly breathed over them.
"If you must indeed go, my darling," he said to her in a low voice, freighted with passionate tenderness, "tell me once again, my little Golden, how dearly you love me."
"Love you," echoed the beautiful girl, and there was a Heaven of tenderness in the starry blue eyes she raised to his face. "Oh, my dearest, if I talked to you until the beautiful sun rose to-morrow, I could not put my love into words. It is deep in my heart, and nothing but death can ever tear it thence."
She threw her arms around his neck, and their lips met in a long, passionate kiss. There was a silence broken only by the soft sigh of the rippling waves, while they stood
"tranced in long embraces,Mixed with kisses, sweeter, sweeterThan anything on earth."
"tranced in long embraces,Mixed with kisses, sweeter, sweeterThan anything on earth."
On that hush of exquisite silence that brooded round them, broke hastening footsteps and angry voices.
The lovers started back from each other in dismay to find themselves surrounded by an astonished group.
Old Dinah formed a central and conspicuous figure, beyond which old Hugh Glenalvan's silvery locks fluttered forlornly in the breeze.
John Glenalvan and Elinor, his daughter, brought up the rear. Perhaps the old gentleman and his servant were as much astonished at seeing these followers as they were at the sight that met their eyes.
Old Dinah recovered her self-possession first of all, perhaps because she had vaguely suspected some such eclaircissement from the facts already in her possession.
She rushed forward and caught her disobedient nursling by the hand.
"Oh, my darlin', my honey, chile," she cried. "Come away from dat black-hearted wilyun to your grandpa and your ole brack mammy."
But to the consternation of everybody, the girl shook Dinah's hand off, and clung persistently to her lover.
He drew his arm protectingly around the slight figure, and Golden cried out with pretty, childish defiance:
"He loves me! he loves me! and I will not leave him."
That sight and those words fairly maddened Elinor Glenalvan. The blood seemed to boil in her veins.
"Loves you—ha! ha! loves you, the child of sin and shame!" she cried out, in a hoarse voice of bitter scorn and passion. "Oh,yes, he loves you. That is why he has lured you to your ruin, as a stranger did your mother before you."
"Hush, Elinor," said John Glenalvan, in his sternest tone; then he looked at his father, who had crept to Golden's side, and stood there trembling and speechless. "Father," he said, harshly, "take the girl away. I must speak with Mr. Chesleigh alone."
"I will not go," said Golden, and she looked up into her lover's face with a strange, wistful pleading in her soft, blue eyes, and in her sweet, coaxing lips.
He bent down and whispered something that made her leave his side and put her small hand gently into her grandfather's.
"Grandpa, I will go home with you now," she said to him, tremulously, and he led her away, followed by Dinah, who glared angrily behind her, and muttered opprobrious invectives as she went.
If looks could have killed, Bertram Chesleigh would never have lived to figure any further in the pages of my romance.
Bertram Chesleigh was left alone by the lake, with the angry eyes of John Glenalvan glaring upon him, while Elinor, speechless with rage, stood a little apart and watched him.
"Mr. Chesleigh, may I ask the meaning of this singular scene?" inquired his host, stiffly.
Bertram Chesleigh, standing with folded arms in dignified silence, opened his lips and said, briefly:
"It means, Mr. Glenalvan, that I have made the acquaintance of your niece and fallen in love with her."
A threatening flash came into Elinor's eyes in the moonlight. She bit her lips fiercely to keep back the words that rose to them.
"I am sorry to hear that," said John Glenalvan, in a subdued voice. Inwardly he was raging with anger, but he allowed no trace of it to escape him. "Will you tell me where and how you became acquainted with that child?"
"I must decline to do so," said the young man, firmly.
John Glenalvan looked around at his daughter.
"Elinor, return to the house," he said. "I will join you there presently."
Elinor walked away, but she did not return to the hall as her father had commanded. Instead, she hid herself behind a clump of willows, where she could hear every word that passed between the two men.
Some excited words ensued. Bertram Chesleigh was cool and calm. He denied that John Glenalvan had any right to call him to account for what he carelessly termed his innocent flirtation with little Golden.
"From what I can hear," he said, "you have treated the girl both cruelly and wrongfully. I stand ready to answer to Golden's grandfather for any wrong he may consider I have done, but I shall make no apology to you, Mr. Glenalvan."
"Why, not?" said the man, with repressed passion. "The girl is my niece!"
"Yet you have wickedly secluded her from all society, and even debarred her of her freedom," said Bertram Chesleigh, indignantly. "It is your fault alone that she has been driven to seek the natural delights of youth in a clandestine manner."
"It is not my fault, but her mother's," said John Glenalvan, significantly.
His face grew pale as he spoke; his eyes strayed furtively to the quiet lake, lying silvery and serene in the clear moonlight.
"How? I do not understand you," said the other, haughtily.
John Glenalvan hesitated a moment. When he spoke it was with an affectation of deep feeling and manly sorrow.
"Mr. Chesleigh," he said, "your unhesitating charge against me of cruelty to my niece forces me to the disclosure of a most painful family secret—one that I would fain have guarded from your knowledge. There is a strong reason for my course toward Golden Glenalvan."
He paused, and the listener said, hoarsely:
"A reason——" then paused, because his voice had broken utterly.
"Yes, a reason," was the bitter reply. "Mr. Chesleigh, little Golden is the child of my own and only sister, but—how shall I tell you—she has no right and no place in the world. She isa nameless child!"
The solid earth seemed to reel beneath Mr. Chesleigh's feet. He staggered back dizzily, and threw up his hands as if the man had struck him.
"He is proud. The blow tells fearfully," thought Elinor, watching him through the trees with vindictive eyes. "Ah, my defiant Golden, your last chance is gone now. He will never look at you again!"
"Mr. Glenalvan, you do not mean it. You are but trying my credulity," cried Bertram Chesleigh.
"Is it likely that I would publish a falsehood to my own discredit?" inquired the other.
"No, no—but, oh, God, this is too dreadful to believe!"
"Dreadful, but true," groaned John Glenalvan. "Golden is the child of sin and shame. If I had had my way she would have been consigned to a foundling asylum. But my father weakly insisted on rearing her himself, and I was injudicious enough to permit it. The only stipulation I made was that she should be kept away from the sight of the world as much as possible. I see now that all precautions were useless. Young as she is, the bad blood in her veins begins to show itself already in depraved conduct."
"Hush! do not censure her harmless meetings with me," said Bertram Chesleigh, in a voice of agony. "The child is so pure and innocent she has no idea of evil. I would die before I would wrong her!"
"I am glad to hear you say so," said the other. "If you really mean it, perhaps you will agree to relinquish your useless pursuitof her. You would not be willing to marry her after what you have heard, I am quite sure."
Meantime little Golden walked away with her grandfather, who stumbled along like one in a painful dream, his gray head bowed as if beneath the weight of sorrow, his footsteps faltering and slow.
He had not spoken one word, and his silence impressed Golden with a sense of her wrong-doing and disobedience far more than the loudest reproaches could have done.
She clung to his hand, weeping and sighing, and shivering silently at old Dinah's muttered invectives against Mr. Chesleigh.
Hugh Glenalvan spoke no words to his granddaughter until he had led her into the house.
Then he sank into his chair, and his gray head drooped upon his breast.
Surprise and sorrow seemed to have deprived him of the power of speech.
Golden knelt at his feet and laid her golden head upon his knee.
"Grandpa, speak to me," she wailed. "Do not be angry with your little Golden! Oh, grandpa, you have been so hard and strict with me; you have kept me too secluded. If you had let me have freedom and happiness like other girls, this never would have happened!"
"Hush, little missie; you must not speak to ole massa like dat," cried Dinah, trying to pull her away. "You don't know what you talkin' 'bout. Come away till ole massa is well enough to talk to you 'bout dis fing."
She lifted the girl and would have led her away, but the old man waved his hand feebly to detain her, and so she placed her in a chair instead.
Then she brought a glass of wine and poured a little between the white, writhing lips of her old master.
"Grandpa, speak to me!" wailed Golden again.
Old Dinah looked at her almost sternly, and said abruptly:
"You must let him alone, Miss Golden, you have enamost kilt him now, with your badness and deceit."
"Black mammy, you shall not speak to me so," cried the girl, resentfully, and then the bright head drooped on the arm of the chair, and she wept bitterly, more from fright at the condition of her grandfather, than from any tangible sense of her own wrong-doing.
She loved her grandfather dearly, and the sight of his suffering stabbed her tender heart deeply.
While she wept silently, old Dinah busied herself in anxious cares for the old man.
He seemed frozen into a statue of despair, sitting with his head bowed forlornly, and his vacant eyes on the floor.
But quite suddenly he roused himself and looked around him with a heavy, hopeless gaze.
"Dinah, leave me alone," he said, with unwonted impatience. "I am not ill, or if I am it is with a sickness beyond mortal healing. Golden's disobedience and her cruel, undeserved reproaches have broken my heart."
Golden threw herself impulsively at his feet again.
"Grandpa, forgive me," she wailed. "I shall die if you do not say that you will pardon me!"
He did not answer her. He only looked at his old black servant.
"Dinah, you may leave us," he said, sorrowfully, "I had hoped to keep the secret all my life; but the time has come when I must reveal to my grandchild her mother's story."
"Um-me-e e," groaned the old negress. "Sh, I t'ought it was a brack day when John Glenalvan kem here dat mornin' a-askin' ole massa to shut my pore chile up like a crim'nal."
"Hush, Dinah," the old man repeated, pointing to the door. She went out, and Golden turned her beautiful eyes, like blue violets drowned in tears, upon his pale, drawn face.
"Oh, grandpa," she cried, "you will tell me something of my mother at last. I have so longed to hear something of my mother and my father."
A groan forced itself through Hugh Glenalvan's livid lips.
"Your desire shall be gratified," he replied. "But the telling will cost you great sorrow, child."
Her beautiful face grew white and scared.
"Oh, grandpa," she cried, "then Elinor and Clare told the truth. My poor mother——"
A bursting sob checked the rest of her speech.
"Golden, before I tell you your mother's story, I must receive your own confession. Dinah has told me all the beginning of your acquaintance with my son's visitor. You must now give me the history of what further intercourse has passed between you. How comes it that my little Golden, whom I deemed so true and pure, broke her promise to old Dinah?"
The beautiful face drooped from his gaze, overspread with warm, crimson blushes. No words came from the sweet, tremulous red lips.
"A promise, child, no matter how humble the person to whom it is made, should be held perfectly sacred and inviolate," he continued. "I could not have believed that you, the child I had reared so carefully, could have been so ignoble as to falsify your promise."
Beautiful Golden sobbed wildly at the reproachful words of her grandfather.
"Grandpa, I didn't mean it," she wept. "Indeed, indeed, I intended to keep my promise to black mammy. It was quite by accident that I broke it."
"How could it have been by accident?" inquired the old man, incredulously.
"Do you remember my habit of sleep-walking?" she inquired.
"Yes—ah, yes, for it has frightened me often to see a little, white figure glide into my room at night, with vacant, unseeing eyes. I always feared you would run into some terrible danger. Your mother had the same unfortunate habit," replied the old man.
"Grandpa, it was through that habit of mine that I broke my word to black mammy," said Golden, with an earnestness that showed how truthful was her explanation.
"Tell me how it occurred, Golden," he said, fixing his dim eyes anxiously on her face.
"Grandpa, I am almost ashamed to tell you," she replied, blushing crimson, "but it was in this way. The night after Mr. Chesleigh entered my room by accident, I was very restless in my sleep. I will tell you the truth. I had begun to love the handsome stranger. I thought of him before I fell asleep, and in my restless slumbers I dreamed of him. So I fell into my old habit of wandering in a state of somnambulism. It was a beautiful moonlight night. I dressed myself and wandered out into the grounds, and down by the lake, my favorite resting-place. Suddenly I started, broad awake in the arms of Mr. Chesleigh. I had gone too near the edge of the lake, and he had saved me from falling in."
She shuddered slightly, and resumed:
"In common gratitude I was compelled to speak, and thank the gentleman for saving me from a watery grave. Do you think I was wrong to do so?"
"It would have been cold and ungrateful to have omitted thanking him," he admitted.
"So I thought," said Golden.
"If your intercourse had stopped there, Golden, I should have had no words of blame for you. But you have carried on a secret intrigue ever since. You have stolen out to meet that man every night, have you not?"
"Yes, grandpa, but we loved each other," said the simple child, who seemed to think that was ample excuse for what she had done.
Hugh Glenalvan groaned, and remained lost in thought for a moment.
Then he bent down and whispered a question in her ear.
She started violently; the warm, ever-ready color flashed into her cheek; she threw up her head and looked at him with proud, grieved eyes.
"Grandpa, you hurt me cruelly," she replied. "Do not think of me so unkindly. I am as pure as the snow."
He seemed to be relieved by the words so quickly and proudly spoken. The next minute he said, gravely:
"My child, has this gentleman ever said anything to you of marriage?"
Little Golden remained silent and thoughtful a moment, then she answered, steadily.
"Yes."
"He wishes to marry you, then?"
"Yes," answered the girl, with a little quiver of triumphant happiness in her voice.
"When?" he asked.
A shadow fell over the fair, sweet face a moment.
"I do not know exactly when," she replied. "But Mr. Chesleigh will see you to-morrow—he told me just now that he would—and then he will settle everything."
There was a silence for a moment. The breeze sighed softly through the trees outside; they could hear it in the utter stillness. The dim, flaring light fell on the gray head of the old man, drooping forlornly on his breast, and on the lovely, upturned face of the girl, with its tender blue eyes and falling golden hair.
"Grandpa," she whispered, "do not be angry with your little girl. Put your hand on my head and say you forgive me for my fault."
He could not resist the coaxing voice and the asking blue eyes. He laid his hand on the golden head and said, solemnly and kindly:
"I forgive you, my little Golden, and I pray Heaven that no evil may come of this affair!"
She kissed his wrinkled, tremulous, old hand, where it hung over the arm of the chair.
"Thank you," she said, gratefully. "I am so glad you are not angry with me. And now, dear grandpa, I am going to kneel right here and listen while you tell me my mother's story."
In the momentary silence the wind outside seemed to sigh more sadly through the trees; the dim light flared and flickered, casting weird, fantastic shadows in the corners of the room. Deep, heavy sighs quivered over the old man's lips as the beautiful, child-like girl knelt there, with her blue eyes lifted so eagerly to his face.
"You are the image of your mother, my child," said Golden's grandfather. "She had a white skin, pink cheeks, blue eyes, and shining hair. You inherit her happy, light-hearted disposition. You bear the same name also—Golden Glenalvan."
"Why was I never called by my father's name?" asked innocent Golden.
"My child, you anticipate my story," he answered, "but I will tell you. You have no right to your father's name."
A cry of terror came from the parted lips of the girl.
"Oh, grandpa, you do not meanthat—you could not be so cruel!"
"You must remember that it is not my fault," he answered.
She sprang up and stood before him, with a look of white despair on her lovely young face.
"Now I understand it all," she said. "I know why my life is so unlike that of other girls. Oh, grandpa, grandpa, tell me where to find my mother that I may curse her for my ruined life!"
His only answer was a low and heart-wrung groan.
"Grandpa, tell me where to find her," repeated little Golden, wildly. "She must be living, for I remember now that no one has ever told me plainly that she was dead. I will go to her—I will reproach her for her sin! I will tell her what a life mine has been—how I have been hated and despised for my mother's fault, even by my kindred."
Sighs, long and bitter, heaved the old man's breast, but he answered her not. She flung herself weeping at his feet.
"You do not speak!" she cried. "Oh, grandpa, tell me where to find my cruel mother!"
"She is with your father," said Hugh Glenalvan, in a deep and bitter voice that showed what agony he endured in the revelation of his daughter's disgrace and infamy.
Golden threw up her little hands in convulsive agony.
"Oh, not that!" she cried. "Tell me it is not true!"
Again he had no answer for her, and Golden cried out reproachfully:
"Grandpa, grandpa, why did you suffer her to be so wicked?"
"It was through no fault of mine," he answered heavily.
She looked at him in silent anguish a moment, then she asked him:
"Where is she? Tell me where to find her, if you know."
"John told me she was in New York the last time he heard of her; but that was years ago. I pray God that she may be dead ere this."
And then he wrung his hands, and the tears rolled down his withered cheeks.
"Oh, my lost little daughter, my precious little Golden," he moaned in agony. "How little I dreamed in your innocent babyhood that you were reserved for such a fate!"
Golden was regarding him attentively.
"Uncle John told you she was in New York," she said. "What did Uncle John know? Did he hate my mother as he hates me?"
He looked at her, startled.
"Hate your mother," he cried. "His own sister! No—of course not—that is, not until she fell!"
"He hated her then?" asked Golden, musingly.
"Yes, he hated her then. I believe he could have killed her."
"He should have killed her betrayer," said Golden, who seemed suddenly to have acquired the gravity and thoughtfulness of a woman.
"I would have killed him myself if I could have laid hands on the villain," said her grandfather, with sudden, irrepressible passion.
The bitter grief and impatient wrath of the girl had sobered down into quietness more grievous than tears.
Her face showed deathly white in the dim light; her lips were set in a line of intense pain; her pansy-blue eyes had grown black with feeling.
She brought a low stool and sat down at her grandfather's feet, folding her white hands meekly in her lap, and drooping her fair head heavily.
"Grandpa, I will not interrupt you again," she said. "I will sit here quite still, and listen. Now tell me all my mother's story."
She kept her word.
After he had told her all he had to tell, and she knew the whole tragic story of her mother's disgrace, she still sat there silently, with her dark eyes bent on her clasped hands.
The cloud of shame and disgrace seemed to lower upon her head with the weight of the whole world.
"You understand all I have told, my child?" he said to her, after waiting vainly for her to speak.
She put her small hand to her head in a dazed, uncertain way.
"Oh, yes, I think so," she replied. "But my head seems in a whirl. I will ask you just a few questions, grandpa, to make sure that I have understood."
And then she seemed to fall into a "brown study." When she had collected her thoughts a little she began to question him.
"I think you said that my mother eloped at sixteen with a handsome stranger whose acquaintance she had casually made in her long, lonely rambles in the woods. In a few weeks she wrote to you from New York that she was happily married. Am I right, grandpa?"
"Yes," he replied.
"And then, although you and Uncle John wrote repeatedly, you could hear no more from her until a year had passed, and she came back unexpectedly one dreadful stormy night."
She paused, and he murmured a dreary, "Yes, dear."
"She was in sore trouble," the girl went on, slowly. "She had found out that her husband had deceived her. She was not legally his wife. Their marriage had only been a mock marriage. So she left him."
"That is right," he said, as she paused again.
"And Uncle John, her only and elder brother, cursed her for the disgrace she had brought on the Glenalvans. I think you told me that, did you not, dear grandpa?" she said, lifting her heavy eyes a moment to his sad, old face.
"Yes, dear, he cursed her. John was always stern and hard, and he was always jealous of our love for his little sister. He thought we had spoiled her, and he was bitterly angry when she returned to us in sorrow and shame. He was married to a woman as hard as himself, and they were both for driving her forth like a dog. But Dinah and I—for my daughter's mother had died while she was away—were too tender-hearted for that. We cared for the poor, desolate child in spite of John's threats and curses."
"And that very night I was born," said little Golden, with the heaviest sigh in which any mortal ever cursed the ill-fated hour of birth.
"Yes, you were born in the storm and terror of that dreadful night," he answered with a heavy sigh. "And your mother almost broke her heart over you because you would never bear the name of the man she had loved so well."
"And that name, dear grandpa, tell me what it was," she cried, with repressed eagerness.
"My dear, she would never reveal that name. She loved him although he had betrayed her. She was afraid of our vengeance."
A look of keen disappointment came over the beautiful, mobile face.
"But, grandpa," she said, "when she wrote you from New York, after she left you, in the first flush of her happiness, when she had not your vengeance to fear, did she not reveal her name then?"
"Not even then," said the old man, bitterly. "She hinted that there was some innocent but just cause for secrecy just then, but that she would send her true name and address in the next letter. That next letter never came."
"There is not the slightest clew for me, then. I shall never find my mother," said the girl, sorrowfully.
"Golden, why should you wish to find her? She is a sinner, leading a life of shame. She deserted you in your helpless infancy to return to the arms of the villain who had betrayed her."
"So Uncle John says," returned the girl, meaningly.
He started, more at the tone than the words.
"Golden, do you doubt him?" he cried.
"Yes," said the girl steadily, turning on him the full splendor of her purple-blue eyes, in which glowed a spark of indignant fire. "Yes, grandpa, I doubt it. I utterly refuse to believe such a scandalous story of my mother."
He looked at her sadly, touched by her loyal faith in the mother she had never known.
"But think, my dear," he said. "You were but a few days old when she stole away in the night and left you without a line to tell us of her whereabouts. But John's blood was up. He traced her to New York, and learned enough to be sure that she had returned to her lover. Then he lost all trace of them, and came home reluctantly enough, for he would have shot the villain if he could have laid hands on him."
"It is a plausible story," the girl said, thoughtfully. "I might believe it if any one but John Glenalvan had told it. But oh, grandpa, that man always reminds me of a snake in the grass."
"My child, that is one of old Dinah's homely phrases," he remonstrated.
"It is a very true one, though," she maintained, stoutly.
He saw that he could not convince her, so he sighed and remained silent.
He had never thought of doubting his son's assertion himself. Golden's incredulity awakened a vague sense of uneasiness in his mind.
The girl sat silently also for a brief space of time, while the old clock in the corner slowly ticked away the moments of that momentous night.
She roused herself from her drooping, dejected attitude at last and looked up at the quiet old man.
"Grandpa," she said anxiously, as if some sudden doubt orfear had come into her mind, "what will Bert say when he hears this dreadful story?"
"Bert?" said her grandfather, questioningly.
"Mr. Chesleigh, I mean," she replied. "What will he say when my story is known to him? Will he, too, hate me for my mother's sin?"
A look of pain and dread came over the sad, old face.
"My darling, how can I tell?" he said. "I have heard that the Chesleighs are very proud. It is only too likely that he will scorn you when he knows the truth. I am afraid you must give up all thought of loving him, dear."
A strange, intense look came over the beautiful young face.
"I cannot do that," she said. "I love him with my whole heart! I shall love him all my life. He loves me, too, grandpa. He cannot give me up! He will be true to me. I am not to blame for my mother's fault."
"No, dear, I know that," he answered; "but the sins of the parents are visited on the children. It is not likely that Mr. Chesleigh will care to wed a nameless girl. He is wealthy and high-born, and can have his choice from among the best in the land. Your Cousin Elinor aspires to marry him."
"He will never marry Elinor," said little Golden, decidedly. "He loves me alone. He will be true to me."
"God grant it, dear," her grandfather said, with a patient sigh, in which there was but little hope.
Then he looked up and saw the first pale gleams of the summer dawn stealing into the room through the open window.
The birds began to warble their mating songs in the broad-leaved magnolia trees outside, as if there were no care nor sorrow, nor blighting disgrace anywhere in the wide, beautiful world.
"My little one," he said to the grave, hollow-eyed child, who seemed suddenly to have grown a full-statured woman, "go to your room and rest. You look terribly ill and wretched. Do not go back to the haunted chamber again, but to your old room down stairs. Try to sleep, if you can."
He looked after her in wonder as she turned to obey him. Yesterday she had been a beautiful, charming, careless child, full of pretty, evanescent angers and quick repentances.
The bloom, the smiles, the brightness were all gone now. The gold-brown lashes drooped heavily against the death-white cheeks, the sweet lips quivered heart-brokenly, the slow and lagging step was that of a weary woman.
As soon as she had reached the seclusion of her own chamber, little Golden threw herself across her bed and wept as though her tender heart would break.
Strangely nurtured as she had been, the pride of race had been as strong in her young heart as that of any Glenalvan of them all, and the shock of her grandfather's revelation had been a terrible one.
"I wish that I had died in my innocent babyhood," she wept; and her black mammy, who had been lingering near her unobserved, came forward to her and said quickly, while she smoothed the golden hair lovingly with her old black hands:
"You must not say dat, honey, chile. I has great hopes in your life. I has almos' wore out my ole brack knees a-prayin' an' a-prayin' to de good Lawd dat you might be de instrument to sabe your mudder from her sinful life."
Little Golden looked at her black mammy with a kind of pathetic wonder in her beautiful, tearful eyes.
"How could I do that, black mammy?" she said.
"By seekin' dat poor soul out, Miss Golden, and 'suadin' her to forsake dat wicked man, an' spend de balance ob her life in prayin' an' repentin' ob her deadly sins," said Dinah, devoutly and earnestly.
Golden sat up in the bed and looked at Dinah with eager, shining eyes and impulsively clasped hands.
"Ah, black mammy, if I only could," she cried; "but you forget I do not know where to find her. I do not even know the name of that dreadful man."
And she shivered at the thought of his wickedness. She remembered that he was her father, that his bad blood flowed in her veins.
Old Dinah was looking at her strangely.
"Little missie, what would you think if I could tell you his name?" she said, with a little note of triumph in her tone.
"Could you—oh, could you?" cried little Golden, impulsively.
"Jest wait one minute, darlin'," said Dinah, hobbling out of the room.
Golden waited, wonderingly and impatiently.
After a little while Dinah returned, and laid a small package, wrapped in tissue paper, in her hand.
Golden removed the wrappers tremblingly. A small bit of crumpled pasteboard fell out into her hand.
She straightened it out and devoured with eager eyes the aristocratic name printed upon it in small, clear, black type.
Then she raised her gleaming eyes to the excited face of the old black woman.
"So," she said with a long, deep, sobbing breath, "this is my father's name?"
"Yes, chile, leastways I has de berry best reason for finking so," replied Dinah, promptly.
"Then you are not sure?" cried the girl, and there was a note of keen disappointment in her voice.
"All I know is dis, honey. It fell outer your mudder's pocket de night when you was born. She was drawin' out her handkercher, an' it fell onto de floor 'thout her seein' it. I didn't say nofin' to de poor, distracted chile. I only picked the keerd up and put it away. I sabed it for you, honey, chile."
"And I am very grateful to you, black mammy," said the girl. "You had very good reason for thinking it was my father's name. But it is a wonder you never gave it to grandpa, or to Uncle John."
"Who?Megib John Glenalvan anything, or tell him anything? Not to sabe his brack soul from de debbil, who's got a bill ob sale for him!" cried Dinah, flying into a rage, as she always did at the mention of Golden's uncle.
"Black mammy, why do you hate my uncle so bitterly?" asked Golden.
"'Cause he's a snake in de grass," replied Dinah, shortly.
"I know that—at least I have always felt it," said Golden, meditatively; "but there must be some particular reason, mammy. Tell me what it is."
"Well, den, if you mus' know, dere's two reasons," said Dinah. "De first is dat he hated your pore, sweet mudder. De second one is dat he's like a human wampire fastened on your gran'pa."
"I don't understand what you mean by your second reason," said Golden, gravely.
Dinah looked at her a moment in meditative silence; then she said abruptly:
"I don't keer what dey say, I'll tell you, my chile. Your Uncle John done badgered and badgered your grandpa while you was a leetle, teeny babby until, for de sake ob peace, dat pore ole man done made John a deed to Glenalvan Hall and de whole estate. Your gran'pa ain't no more dan a beggar in the ole hall his own fader left him in his will."
"But why did my grandfather give away his property like that?" asked the girl.
"'Cause John swore if he didn't do it dat he would carry you off and put you into a foundling asylum. You was a pore, leetle, deliky babby then, and we skeecely 'spected you would live from one day to de nex' one. So to hab de pleasure ob keepin' an' tendin' you de ole man 'sented to beggar hisself."
"Grandpa did all that for my unworthy sake, and yet I reproached him for being strict and hard with me! Oh, how wicked and ungrateful he must think me," cried the girl, tearfully.
"No he don't, honey, chile," said the black woman, soothingly, "you see he knowed dat you wasn't 'ware of all what you had to t'ank him for."
"No, indeed, I never dreamed of all I had cost him," exclaimed beautiful Golden, self-reproachfully. "And so, black mammy, we are only staying at Glenalvan Hall on the sufferance of my uncle?"
"Dat's jest de way ob it, missie. And, look ye, too dat ongrateful, graspin' wilyun has done threaten your pore gran'pa, time and ag'in, to pack bofe of you'uns off to de pore-house."
"The unnatural monster!" exclaimed little Golden, in a perfect tempest of passionate wrath.
"Well you may say so," cried Dinah, in a fever of sympathy. "De debbil will nebber git his due till he gets John Glenalvan! De blood biles in my ole vains when I fink ob all de insults dat man has heaped on his own fader, 'long ob you and your pore misguided mudder."
Beautiful little Golden sat upright regarding the excited old woman in grave silence. Her blue eyes were on fire with indignationand grief. At times she would murmur: "Poor, dear grandpa, dear true-hearted grandpa," and relapse into silence again.
She roused herself at last from her musing mood, and looked up at Dinah. There was a hopeful light in the soft, blue eyes, so lately drowned in tears of sorrow and despair.
"Black mammy, I have been thinking," she said, "and I will tell you what I mean to do."
"What, honey?"
"I will tell you a secret, mammy. Mr. Chesleigh loves me. We are—that is, I will be his wife one of these days."
"Miss Golden, is dat so?" cried black mammy, delighted. "I am so glad! I was 'fraid—well, nebber min' what I was 'fraid of, chile; but 'deed I is so glad dat Mr. Chesly's gwine to marry you. He is a rich man, honey. You kin snap your lily fingers at ugly Marse John, when once you is Mr. Chesly's wife."
"Yes, he is very rich, black mammy," said the girl, with a pretty, almost childish complacency. "He has told me so, and he tells me I shall have jewels and fine dresses, and all that heart could desire when I go to live with him—I mean," blushing rosy red, "when I become his wife."
"And powerful pretty you will look in dem fine tings, honey," said her black mammy, admiringly.
"But the best thing of all, black mammy, is that I shall be able to take grandpa away from this place, and love him and care for him," cried Golden, exultantly. "I shall take you, too, mammy, for you have been the only mother I ever knew. Grandpa shall have the happiest home in the world, and Bert and I will both love him dearly, dearly!"
"And your pore, lost mudder, darlin', you had forgotten her," said Dinah, a little wistfully, her thoughts straying back through the mist of years, to the lost little nursling who had fluttered from the safe parental nest, and steeped the white wings of her soul in the blackness of sin.
But Golden shook her dainty head decidedly.
"No, black mammy, I had not forgotten," she said. "When I am Bert's wife, he shall help me to seek and save my poor, lost mother. We will try to win her back to the path of right, and save her soul for Heaven," she concluded, with girlish ardor and fervency.
"May the good Lawd help you to succeed, my innercent lamb," said the good old black woman, prayerfully. "Her little soul was too white and tender for de brack debbil to git it at de last for his brack dominions."
There was a sudden tap at the door. Golden looked at it eagerly and expectantly, while Dinah threw it open.
A small black boy, a servant of John Glenalvan, stood outside with a sealed letter in his hand.
"For Missie Golden, from Mass Chesleigh," he said, putting it in Dinah's hand, and quickly retiring.
Dinah carried it silently to her mistress, who kissed the superscription, and eagerly tore it open.
The thick, satin-smooth sheet rustled in the trembling little hand as the blue eyes ran over it, lovingly and eagerly.
As she read, the tender, loving eyes grew wild and startled, an ashen shade crept around the rosebud lips, the young face whitened to the corpse-like hue of death. She crumpled the sheet in her hand at last, and threw it wildly from her, while a cry of intolerable anguish thrilled over her white lips.
"Oh, mammy, mammy, my heart is broken—broken! I shall never see him again. He has forsaken me for my mother's sin!"
Then she fell back cold and rigid, like one dead upon the bed. Dinah flew to her assistance, cursing in her heart the wickedness and heartlessness of men.
But though she worked busily and anxiously, the morning sun rode high in the heavens before the deeply-stricken girl recovered her consciousness. Her grandfather was watching beside her pillow when her eyes first opened, and she threw her arms around his neck and wept long and bitterly on his faithful breast.
"You were right," she whispered to him. "You know the cruel world better than I did. He has left me, grandpa—I shall never see him again. He discards me for my mother's sin."
She wept and moaned all day, refusing all consolation. She was terrified by the coldness and cruelty of the world that condemned her for the sins of others.
Many and many a time she had chafed at the narrowness and loneliness of her lot, but she had never known sorrow until to-day.
Its horrible reality crushed her down before its pitiless strength like the fury of the storm-rain. A crushed and bleeding victim, she lay weak and stunned in its victorious path.
At nightfall she slept, wearied out by the force and violence of her deep, overmastering emotion.
Old Dinah persuaded her weary, haggard old master to retire to his room and bed, promising to watch faithfully herself by the sick girl.
She dozed until midnight, when, as Golden still slept on heavily, she permitted herself to take a wary nap in an old arm-chair. It was daylight when the weary, suffering old creature awoke. The beautiful Golden was gone.
A little three-cornered note lay on the pillow that still held the impress of the dear little head. The child had written sorrowfully to her grandfather:
"Grandpa, darling, I have only brought you trouble and sorrow all my life-time, so I am going away. Your son will be kinder to you when I am gone, and your life will be less hard; perhaps black mammy will be kind and faithful to you, so you will not miss your thoughtless little Golden very much. God bless you, grandpa, you must pray for me nightly, for I am going to seek my mother, the erring mother who cursed me with life! If indeed, she is living in sin and shame, I will strive to reclaim her and restore her to the safe path of virtue. I have nothing else to live for. Love and happiness, the delights of this world, are not for me. It shall bethe dream of my life-timeto find and save my wronged and erring mother."
"Grandpa, darling, I have only brought you trouble and sorrow all my life-time, so I am going away. Your son will be kinder to you when I am gone, and your life will be less hard; perhaps black mammy will be kind and faithful to you, so you will not miss your thoughtless little Golden very much. God bless you, grandpa, you must pray for me nightly, for I am going to seek my mother, the erring mother who cursed me with life! If indeed, she is living in sin and shame, I will strive to reclaim her and restore her to the safe path of virtue. I have nothing else to live for. Love and happiness, the delights of this world, are not for me. It shall bethe dream of my life-timeto find and save my wronged and erring mother."