Little Golden's Daughter; or, The Dream of a Life Time

If looks could have killed, Bertram Chesleigh would never have lived to figure any further in the pages of my romance.

CHAPTER X

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 is a 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 pursuit of 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."

CHAPTER XI

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.

CHAPTER XII

"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 mean that—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 or fear 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.