Part 1 (1/2)
DAISY THORNTON.
by Mrs. Mary J. Holmes.
CHAPTER I.-EXTRACTS FROM MISS FRANCES THORNTON'S JOURNAL.
Elmwood, June 15th, 18-.
I have been working among my flowers all the morning, digging, weeding and transplanting, and then stopping a little to rest. My roses are perfect beauties this year, while my white lilies are the wonder of the town, and yet my heart was not with them to-day, and it was nothing to me that those fine people from the Towers came into the grounds while I was at work, ”just to see and admire,” they said, adding that there was no place in Cuylerville like Elmwood. I know that, and Guy and I have been so happy here, and I loved him so much, and never dreamed what was in store for me until it came suddenly like a heavy blow.
Why should he wish to marry, when he has lived to be thirty years old without a care of any kind, and has money enough to allow him to indulge his taste for books, and pictures, and travel, and is respected by everybody, and looked up to as the first man in town, and petted and cared for by me as few brothers have ever been petted and cared for? and if he must marry, why need he take a child of sixteen, whom he has only known since Christmas, and whose sole recommendation, so far as I can learn, is her pretty face?
Daisy McDonald is her name, and she lives in Indianapolis, where her father is a poor lawyer, and as I have heard, a scheming, unprincipled man. Guy met her last winter in Chicago, and fell in love at once, and made two or three journeys West on ”important business,” he said, and then, some time in May, told me he was going to bring me a sister, the sweetest little creature, with beautiful blue eyes and wonderful hair. I was sure to love her, he said, and when I suggested that she was very young, he replied that her youth was in her favor, as we could more easily mould her to the Thornton pattern.
Little he knows about girls; but then he was perfectly infatuated and blind to everything but Daisy's eyes, and hair, and voice, which is so sweet and winning that it will speak for her at once. Then she is so dainty and refined, he said, and he asked me to see to the furnis.h.i.+ng of the rooms on the west side of the house, the two which communicate with his own private library, where he spends a great deal of time with his books and writing. The room adjoining this was to be Daisy's boudoir or parlor, where she could sit when he was occupied and she wished to be near him. This was to be fitted up in blue, as she had expressed a wish to that effect, and he said no expense must be spared to make it as pretty and attractive as possible. So the walls were frescoed and tinted, and I spent two entire days in New York hunting for a carpet of the desirable shade, which should be right both in texture and design.
Guy was exceedingly particular, and developed a wonderful proclivity to find fault with everything I admired. Nothing was quite the thing for Daisy, until at last a manufacturer offered to get a carpet up which was sure to suit, and so that question was happily settled for the time being. Then came the furniture, and unlimited orders were given to the upholsterer to do his best, and matters were progressing finely when order number two came from the little lady, who was sorry to seem so fickle, but her mamma, whose taste was perfect, had decided against _all_ blue, and would Guy please furnish the room with drab trimmed with blue?
”It must be a very delicate shade of drab,” she wrote, and lest he should get too intense an idea, she would call it a _tint_ of a _shade_ of drab, or, better yet, a _hint_ of a tint of a shade of drab would describe exactly what she meant, and be so entirely unique, and lovely, and _recherche_.
Guy never swears, and seldom uses slang of any kind, but this was a little too much, and with a most rueful expression of countenance he asked me ”what in thunder I supposed a hint of a tint of a shade of drab could be?”
I could not enlighten him, and we finally concluded to leave it to the upholsterer, to whom Guy telegraphed in hot haste, bidding him hunt New York over for the desired shade. Where he found it I never knew; but find it he did, or something approximating to it,-a faded, washed-out color, which seemed a cross between wood-ashes and pale skim milk. A sample was sent up for Guy's approval, and then the work commenced again, when order number three came in one of those dainty little billets which used to make Guy's face radiant with happiness. Daisy had changed her mind again and gone back to the blue, which she always preferred as most becoming to her complexion.
Guy did not say a single word, but he took the next train for New York, and staid there till the furniture was done and packed for Cuylerville.
As I did not know where he was stopping, I could not forward him two letters which came during his absence, and which bore the Indianapolis post-mark. I suspect he had a design in keeping his address from me, and, whether Daisy changed her mind again or not, I never knew.
The furniture reached Elmwood the day but one before Guy started for his bride, and Julia Hamilton, who was then at the Towers, helped me arrange the room, which is a perfect little gem, and cannot fail to please, I am sure. I wonder Guy never fancied Julia Hamilton. Oh, if he only had done so, I should not have as many misgivings as I now have, nor dread the future so much. Julia is sensible and twenty years old, and lives in Boston, and comes of a good family, and is every way suitable,-but when did a man ever choose the woman whom his sister thought suitable for him? And Guy is like other men, and this is his wedding day; and after a trip to Montreal, and Quebec, and Boston, and New York, and Saratoga, they are coming home, and I am to give a grand reception, and then subside, I suppose, into the position of the ”old maid sister who will be dreadfully in the way.”
September 15th, 18-.
Just three months since I opened my journal, and, on glancing over what I wrote on Guy's wedding day, I find that in one respect at least I was unjust to the little creature who is now my sister, and calls me Miss Frances. Not by a word or look has she shown the least inclination to a.s.sume the position of mistress of the house, nor does she seem to think me at all in the way; but that she considers me quite an antediluvian I am certain, for, in speaking of something which happened in 1820, she asked if I remembered it! And I only three years older than Guy! But then she once called him a dear old grandfatherly man, and thought it a good joke that on their wedding tour she was mistaken for his daughter.
She looks so young,-not sixteen even; but with those childish blue eyes, and that innocent, pleading kind of expression, she never can be old.
She is very beautiful, and I can understand in part Guy's infatuation, though at times he hardly knows what to do with his pretty plaything.
It was the middle of August when they came from Saratoga, sorely against her wishes, as I heard from the Porters, who were at the same hotel, and who have told me what a sensation she created, and how much attention she received. Everybody flattered her, and one evening, when there was to be a hop at Congress Hall, she received twenty bouquets from as many different admirers, each of whom asked her hand for the first dance. And even Guy tried some of the square dances,-with poor success, I imagine, for Lucy Porter laughed when she told me of it, and the mistakes he made; and I do not wonder, for my grave, scholarly Guy must be as much out of place in a ball-room as his little, airy, doll of a wife is in her place when there. I can understand just how she enjoyed it all, and how she hated to come to Elmwood, for she did not then know the kind of home she was coming to.
It was glorious weather for August, and a rain of the previous day had washed all the flowers and shrubs, and freshened up the gra.s.s on the lawn, which was just like a piece of velvet, while everything around the house seemed to laugh in the warm afternoon suns.h.i.+ne as the carriage came up to the door. Eight trunks, two hat-boxes, and a guitar-case had come in the morning, and were waiting the arrival of their owner, whose face looked eagerly out at the house and its surroundings, and it seemed to me did not light up as much as it should have done under the circ.u.mstances.
”Why, Guy, I always thought the house was brick,” I heard her say, as the carriage door was opened by the coachman.
”No, darling,-wood. Ah, there's Fan,” was Guy's reply, and the next moment I had her in my arms.
Yes, literally in my arms. She is such a wee little thing, and her face is so sweet, and her eyes so childish and wistful and her voice so musical and flute-like that before I knew what I was doing I lifted her from her feet and hugged her hard, and said I meant to love her, first for Guy's sake, and then for her own. Was it my fancy, I wonder, or did she really shrink back a little and put up her hands to arrange the bows, and streamers, and curls floating away from her like the flags on a vessel on some gala day.
She was very tired, Guy said, and ought to lie down before dinner. Would I show her to her room with Zillah, her maid? Then for the first time I noticed a dark-haired girl who had alighted from the carriage and stood holding Daisy's traveling-bag and wraps.
”Her waiting-maid, whom we found in Boston,” Guy explained, when we were alone. ”She is so young and helpless, and wanted one so badly, that I concluded to humor her for a time, especially as I had not the most remote idea how to pin on those wonderful fixings which she wears. It is astonis.h.i.+ng how many things it takes to make up the _tout ensemble_ of a fas.h.i.+onable woman,” Guy said, and I thought he glanced with an unusual amount of curiosity and interest at my plain cambric wrapper and smooth hair.