Chapter XVI: Expecting Bessie

After Miss McPherson had sent her letter to her nephew, Archie, asking him to give his little daughter to her keeping, her whole nature seemed to change, and there was on her face a look of happy expectancy rarely seen there before. Even her cook, Sarah, and her maid, Flora, noticed and discussed it as they sat together by the kitchen fire; but as Miss McPherson never encouraged familiarities with her domestics, they asked her no questions, and only wondered and speculated when she bade them remove everything from the small bedroom at the end of the upper hall, which communicated with her own sleeping apartment. But when this room was papered and painted, and furnished with a pretty carpet of drab and blue, and a single iron bedstead with lace hangings, and a child's bureau and rocking-chair, and more than all when a large doll was bought, with a complete wardrobe for it, Flora could no longer restrain her curiosity, but asked if her mistress were expecting a child.

"Yes," was the reply, "my grandniece, Betsey, who was named for me. She lives at Stoneleigh, my old home in Wales, and I may get a letter any day saying she has sailed. I shall go to New York to meet her so have my things ready for me to start at a moment's notice."

So confident was Miss McPherson that her nephew would be glad to have his daughter removed from the influences around her to a home where she was sure of enough to eat, and that his frivolous wife would be glad to be rid of a child who must be in the way of her flirtations, that she was constantly expecting to hear that she was coming. She did not believe Archie would bring her himself, but she thought he would probably consign her to the care of some reliable person, or put her in charge of the captain or stewardess, and in her anxiety to have the little girl she had written a second letter three days after she sent the first. In this she had suggested the stewardess of the Celtic, whom she knew, and with whom she assured Archie he could trust his child. But days and weeks went by, until it was past the middle of June, and still there were no tidings of Bessie; at last, however, there came a foreign letter, addressed in a woman's hand to:

"Miss Elizabeth McPherson, Allington, Worcester Co., Mass., U.S.A."

The Elizabeth was an affront to the good woman, who bristled all over with resentment, as she held the dainty envelope in her hand and studied the strange monogram, "D.A.M." (Daisy Allen McPherson).

"Swears even in her monogram! I knew she would," was Miss Betsey's comment, as she broke the seal and began to read, first muttering to herself, "She writes well enough."

The letter was as follows:

"STONELEIGH, BANGOR, June 3d.

"OUR DEAR AUNT."

"Umph! I'm not _her_ aunt," was the mental comment, and then she
read on:

"We have just come home from Paris, where we spent several
delightful weeks with a party of friends, who would gladly have kept
us longer, but Archie was homesick for the old place, though what he
can see in it to admire I am sure I do not know. So here we are for
an indefinite length of time, and here we found both your letters,
which old Anthony, who grows more and more stupid every year, failed
to forward to us in Paris. As Archie leaves everything to me, he
said I must answer the letters, and thank you for your offer to
remove our little girl from the poisonous atmosphere you think
surrounds her, and bring her up morally and spiritually. I do not
know what the atmosphere of Stoneleigh used to be when you lived
here, but I assure you it is very healthy now; not at all poisonous,
or malarious. We have had some of the oldest yews cut down and that
lets in the sunshine and fresh air, too.

"But I am wandering from the object of my letter, which is to say
that we cannot let you have our little Bessie, even with the
prospect of her learning to scour knives and pare potatoes, and
possibly having a few thousands, if she does well. Archie would as
soon part with his eyes as with Bessie; while nothing short of an
assured fortune, and that a large one, would induce me to give her
up. She is in one sense my stock in trade--"

"Heartless wretch!" dropped from the indignant lady's lips. "Her stock in trade! What does she mean? Does she play out this child for her own base purposes?"

Then she read on:

"Strangers are always attracted by her, and through her we make so
many pleasant acquaintances. Indeed, she quite throws me into the
shade, but I am not at all jealous. I am satisfied to be known only
as Bessie's mother. I am very proud of her, and hope some day to see
her at least a countess."

"Countess! Fool!" muttered Miss Betsey, and read on:

"The inclosed photograph is like her in features, but fails, I think, in expression, but I send it, as it will give you some idea of her as she is now."

Here Miss Betsey stopped, and taking a card from the bit of tissue paper in which it was wrapped, gazed earnestly and with a feeling of intense yearning and bitter disappointment upon the beautiful face, whose great wide-open, blue eyes looked at her, just as they had looked at her on the sands at Aberystwyth. The photographer's art had succeeded admirably with Bessie, and made a most wonderful picture of childish innocence and beauty, besides bringing out about the mouth and into the eyes that patient, half sorry expression which spoke to Miss Betsey of loneliness and hunger far up in the fourth and fifth stories of fashionable hotels, where the little girl often ate her smuggled dinner of rolls and nuts and raisins, and whatever else her mother could convey into her pocket unobserved by those around her.

"Yes, she looks as if a big slice of plum pudding or mince pie would do her good! Poor little thing, and I am not to have her," Miss Betsey said, with a lump in her throat, as she continued reading:

"You saw her once, I know, three years ago, at Aberystwyth, though
she had no idea then who the funny woman was who asked her so many
questions. Why didn't you make yourself known to us? Archie would
have been delighted to meet you. He never saw you, I believe. And
why didn't you speak to me when I went by as Bessie says I did? Was
Archie with me, I wonder? or, was it young Lord Hardy from Dublin,
Archie's best friend? He was with us there, and sometimes walked
with me when Archie was not inclined to go out. He is very nice, and
Archie is very fond of him, while to Bessie and me he is like a
brother."

Here Miss Betsey stopped again, and taking off her spectacles harangued the tortoise-shell cat, who was sitting on the rug and looking at her.

"Archie's friend! her brother! Humbug! It does make me so mad to see a married woman with a young snipper-snapper of a fellow chasing after her, and using her husband as a cover. Mark my words, the woman who does that is not a pure, good woman at heart, or in thought, though outwardly she may be sweet as sugar; and her husband--

"Well, he is both weak and unmanly to allow it, and is looked upon with contempt."

To all this Mrs. Tortoise-shell purred an assent, and the lady went on with the letter.

"Bessie is wailing for me to go for a walk, and so I must bring this
letter to a close. Archie sends his love, and will, with me, be very
glad to welcome you to your old home, should you care to visit it.
When I was a child I thought it the grandest place in the world, but
it is very much run down, for we have no money with which to keep it
up, and have only the two servants, Anthony and Dorothy, both of
whom are getting old. And yet I do not complain of Archie for not
trying to do something. Once, however, before we were married I
tried to rouse him to something like energy, and caring for himself,
but since seeing the world, his world I mean, for you know of course
I am not what would be considered his equal socially, I have changed
my mind, and do not blame him at all. Brought up as he was with an
idea that he must not work, it is very hard for him to overcome
early prejudices of training and education, and I think his uncle,
the Hon. John, would be intensely mortified to have his nephew in
trade, though he is very careful not to give him any thing toward
his support, and we are so poor that even a hundred pounds would be
a fortune to us. Maybe some good angel will send it to us by and by.

"Hoping it most devoutly, I have the honor to be,

"Very sincerely, your niece,

"DAISY ALLEN McPHERSON.

"P.S.--Bessie thanks you again for the turquois ring you sent her."

"A hundred pounds! Five hundred dollars! and maybe she devoutly hopes I shall be the good angel who will send it to her, but she is mistaken. Do I look like an angel?" Miss Betsey said, fiercely, addressing herself again to the cat. "No, they may go to destruction their own way. I wash my hands of them. I should have been glad for the little girl, but I can't have her. She will grow up like her mother, marry some fool, have her friend and brother dangling after her, and smuggle dinners and lunches for her children up in the attic. Well, so be it. That ends it forever!"

The letter was an insult from beginning to end, and Miss McPherson felt it as such, and with a sigh of keen regret as for something lost, she put away the picture, and when Flora asked when little Miss Bessie was coming, she answered curtly:

"Never!"