Page:New Peterson magazine 1859 Vol. XXXV.pdf/44



DAISY.

45 the family group paused at the gate to exchange gettings with their friends; and the little Margret strayed among the graves, gathering wild flowers. Climbing a high tomb, she stepped too sear the edge, lost her balance, and would have fallen backward upon a sharply broken foot- stone, had not I caught ber. The parents and three or four others rushed simultaneously forward, but they would have been too late to save their darling from injury, perhaps death. Their thanks were so earnest, I hastened to make my escape; but not before the father had demanded my address, and given me his own in exchange. His card bore the name of Gilbert Devon. As we parted, little Margaret held out to me the flowers she had so assiduously culled, begging me to take them. I drew a daisy from the bouquet, and laying it in my prayer-book, told her I would keep that for its name-sake.

At twenty-one I married. Ellen —— was very beautiful, sang well, danced well, and seemed amiable in temper. She was the only child of a rich, old man, and the centre of a circle of ad- ®miring bachelors. Neighborhood and mutual acquaintances threw us often together; my relatives looked approvingly upon her prospects; and officious familiars resolved upon a match. To me they hinted that the fair Ellen sighed for no other; and like the plotting friends of Benedict and Beatrice, they whispered her the same mischievous lie. With the vanity of youth, and the wonted credulity of my sex in such matters, I believed: and flattered at being preferred to older and more devoted aspirants, I soon fancied myself in love. Her father favored me, for he was eager to connect with his daughter the heir of an educated family; having that reverence for superior knowledge so often evinced by those whose early lives have passed in ignorance and coarseness.

In short, I married, full of a boy’s romantic notions of domestic bliss. But our tastes, our training, our pursuits were adverse; and to both, marriage became a galling yoke. Yet we learned to bear it quietly, and the wise world commended our harmony.

At length my wife was taken away, and I was left alone. I was not a popular man, and I knew it So when thoughtful fathers began to urge me to family dinners, and smiling mothers pressed me to fetes champetres, I grew disgusted; aad resigning my wife’s fortune in behalf of her needy relatives, I left the city.

Impelled by a vague longing, I turned toward Newport. As the stage approached the town, the old windmills by the road-side swung their monster arms as they had done twelve years before, and one or two returning market-wagons plodded on at the samo slow pace. Alighting at the Bellevue House, the groups of little children at play beneath the horse-chesnuts gave more of life to the scene; and their negro nurses, with their handkerchief-enveloped heads, showed them to be visitants from Southern homes.

Seeking the host, I inquired of the family of Gilbert Devon; and received in answer the two chilling words, “All gone.” This way modified, however, by more particular information; the substance of which was that Mr. Devon and his wife were dead, and that their daughter had gone to reside elsewhere. When he added that Mr. Devon had died insolvent, I thought of my own ample fortune with a satisfaction that I had never felt before. Where the daughter was, my host could not tell; but referred me to a waiter who had been a servant at the Devons’, until the family had broken up. The black knew only that “Miss Margaret had gone to her uncle’—“aunt Phyllis could tell me all about ber”—“aunt Phyllis was her nurse’—“aunt Phyllis was at the ’sylum.”

Engaging the fellow as a guide, I drove over a green road, which led through a farm on the western shore, to the bank opposite Coaster’e Harbor Island. While waiting the tardy coming of the boatman, for whom we had signaled, a strangely attired and stalwart figure appeared beside us. A scarlet stripe ornamented the seams of his white trousers; a uniform coat covered his back; and a buff vest, with gilt buttons, his broad chest. Epaulets glittered on his aquare shoulders; a black plume waved in his hat, and a long sword rattled at his side. To the jocose and mocking salutation of my guide, he deigned no reply; but when I lifted my hat to him, with the deference that his mien seemed to challenge, he raised his hand to the brim of his own in true military fashion, while his eye lightened with approval of the appreciative stranger. The transit seemed to me as though it would be interminable. The half crazy ferryman rowed now this way, now that, until the soldierly John rebukingly seized the oar, and with vigorous jerks sped us to the landing. His ‘‘much obleege’” for my grateful fee were his only words, and I saw him no more.

Poor Phyllis was glad to have a listener to the story of the Devons. With the privileged garrulity of the old domestic, she detailed the minutest particulars of the illness of her mistress—of the nights of watching, and the days of care—of her peaceful parting at the Inst. In her own way, she told of the gentle nursing of the loving Margaret, of her assiduous devotion