Dainty's Cruel Rivals 32It Was the Overflowing Drop of Sorrow in the Cup That Already Brimmed Over
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Literature · Romance
Dainty's Cruel Rivals 32
It Was the Overflowing Drop of Sorrow in the Cup That Already Brimmed Over
MillerEnglish
"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.
