CHAPTER XXXII.
IT WAS THE OVERFLOWING DROP OF SORROW IN THE CUP
THAT ALREADY BRIMMED OVER.
"Alone with my hopeless sorrow,
No other mate I know!
I strive to awake tomorrow,
But the dull words will not flow.
I pray--but my prayers are driven
Aside by the angry Heaven,
And weigh me down with woe!"
Young, beautiful, penniless, and alone in the world! Oh, what a cruel
fate!
Dainty realized it in all its bitterness when she arrived in Richmond
that dull October day, and found the first snow of the season several
inches deep on the ground, making her shiver with cold in her thin
summer gown and straw hat.
But her heart was warm with the thought of the dear mother she was going
to rejoin.
What a glad reunion it would be for both in spite of her bitter
troubles, when, clasped in that dear mother's arms, she should lay her
weary head on that dear breast, and sob out all her grief to
sympathizing ears.
She had a little money in a small purse that Franklin had forced her to
take as a loan, and she hired a cab to take her to her old home, where
she had not a doubt of still finding her mother.
Alas! what was her horror to find the small house burned to the ground!
Dismissing the cab, she started on a round of the neighborhood, seeking
news of the dear one.
But there were new neighbors in the sparsely settled place, and no one
knew anything about the little lady who had kept boarders at the house
on the corner.
Half frozen with the bitter cold, she dragged herself to the corner
grocery, thinking that Mr. Sparks could surely give her some
information.
His stolid, well-fed face was the first familiar one she had met, and
she wondered why he wore that broad band of crape about his coat-sleeve.
"Is it really you, Miss Chase? Well, well! you're quite a stranger! Been
ill? You don't look as blooming as when you went away in the summer.
Well, it was hard on you losing your little mother in that cruel
fashion! But death is no respecter of persons. He robbed me of my ailing
wife about the same time your mother was called. What! you don't
understand? Bless me! the girl's dropped like I'd shot her! Ailsa!
Ailsa!" he called in alarm, as he picked up the unconscious girl, and
hurried with her to the back of the store, which was also his dwelling.
Then a pretty, brown-eyed girl, sitting with several noisy children,
sprang up, and cried in wonder:
"What is the matter?"
"Here's your old neighbor and school-mate, Ailsa, little Dainty Chase.
She came into the store, and I was talking to her about the death of my
wife and her mother, when she dropped in a sort of fit. See to her, will
you, while I run back to my customers?"
Pretty Ailsa Scott hastened to resuscitate her old school-mate, and
when she revived, was startled to hear her sob, hysterically:
"I came to find my mother, Ailsa. I have been lost from her for wretched
months; but your step-father told me she was dead! Oh, it can not be
true! God would not be so cruel!"
Ailsa Scott had passed through the recent loss of her own mother, and
she knew what a blow it would be to Dainty when she heard the cruel
truth; but there was no escaping it, so she clasped her gentle arms
about the stricken girl, saying sadly:
"It makes my heart ache for you, dear Dainty, but it would be useless to
deceive you. About the time that mother lay in her last sickness it was
rumored that your mother came back here the very day after the house was
burned. I did not see her myself, but it was in all the papers that she
went suddenly insane, and after wandering wildly about the city all day,
calling for you, took poison and died in an alley. I do not know where
she is buried, for mother was so very ill, and died the same week. Since
then I've had my heart and hands both full with the care of the
children, and teaching school, too, for I would not depend on my
step-father for a penny. You know"--whispering--"I always hated him, and
there wasn't much love lost between us. Indeed, I wouldn't have stayed
here a day after mother's death only for my little half-brothers and
sisters. He had no relations to help him, and hired help is not very
reliable. He keeps a servant, but they tell me she is unkind to the
children when I'm at school. If you have no friends to go to, dear, I
wish you would stay with me awhile, and look after the little ones while
I'm away."
It was a delicate offer of a shelter, for Ailsa's eyes had taken in the
poverty of her guest, and Dainty was but too glad of a refuge in which
to nurse her deep despair.
When Ailsa informed her step-father questioningly of her offer, he
smiled approval, and made Dainty welcome in his simple home, while
tender-hearted Ailsa soothed her all she could in the bitterness of her
bereavement.
"We are both orphans, dear, and we can sympathize with each other," she
said, tenderly, and helped her friend to get some neat mourning gowns,
in which she looked so frail and lily-like that she seemed to be fading
away like a broken flower.
She tended patiently on the little children and won their love, and the
exuberant gratitude of their father, this latter so effusive that it
grew irksome to the sorrowful, reserved girl.
"Oh, Ailsa, I do not wish to seem ungrateful, but I dislike the man as
much as you do, and his attentions are getting too pointed to be
agreeable. I am afraid I shall have to leave you and the dear children,
much as I love you," she sighed, in December, after two quiet months in
the little house; and her friend rejoined, indignantly:
"I see he is trying to court you, although his wife, my dear mother, has
been dead but a few months. Oh, why did she ever marry such a brute? I
believe he broke her heart, for it was a strange decline of which she
died. He was always flirting with his women customers, and scolded his
wife harshly when she objected. He made her bitterly unhappy, the
coarse, unfaithful wretch, and that is why I hate him so for my own papa
never spoke an unkind word to her up to the day of his death. You will
have to repulse him, but not too unkindly to arouse his enmity."
But the crisis came suddenly the next day while Ailsa was at school.
Mr. Sparks boldly proposed marriage to the indignant girl.
Her blue eyes flashed disdain upon him, as she cried:
"How can you be so coarse and unfeeling, sir, showing so little respect
to the memory of the wife dead but a few months?"
"She is as dead now as she will be in ten years hence!" he replied, with
a grin that filled her with disgust; while he added, wheedlingly: "But I
know how particular women folks are over these trifles, and I would have
waited till spring before I spoke to you on the subject, but the fact
is, the neighbors are gossiping about my keeping house with two pretty
girls, and neither one any kin to me. So I thought I'd better marry one
of them, and shut scandal's mouth. And as for Ailsa, I never liked her.
She is always throwing up to me that her pa was a nicer man than I am.
But as for you, Dainty, I worship the very ground you walk on, and I'll
marry you to-morrow if you'll say the word."
"I can't marry you, sir. I--I--oh I am going right away, Mr. Sparks! I
couldn't breathe the same air with a man that was so disrespectful to
his first wife's memory as to court another in three months after her
death!" the young girl cried, in passionate disgust, arousing such
bitter spite that the rejected suitor cast courtesy to the winds,
rejoining, hotly:
"Go, then, Miss Pert, and the sooner the better! Shall I call a wagon to
take your trunk?" sarcastically.
"You know I have no trunk, Mr. Sparks, but I will pack my valise at
once, and perhaps you will let it stay till I can take it away. I must
rent a room somewhere first," she murmured.
"No; take it with you, I say. Your clothes might get contaminated
breathing the same air with me!" he answered, angrily.
So presently Dainty went away in the teeth of a howling winter storm,
without a penny in her purse, or a shelter for her head, while the
little ones sobbed out to Ailsa when she returned that bad papa had
driven sweet Dainty away.