Little Golden's Daughter; or, The Dream of a Life Time. Alex. McVeigh Miller
spoken one word, and his silence impressed Golden with a sense of her wrong-doing and disobedience far more than the loudest reproaches could have done.
She clung to his hand, weeping and sighing, and shivering silently at old Dinah's muttered invectives against Mr. Chesleigh.
Hugh Glenalvan spoke no words to his granddaughter until he had led her into the house.
Then he sank into his chair, and his gray head drooped upon his breast.
Surprise and sorrow seemed to have deprived him of the power of speech.
Golden knelt at his feet and laid her golden head upon his knee.
"Grandpa, speak to me," she wailed. "Do not be angry with your little Golden! Oh, grandpa, you have been so hard and strict with me; you have kept me too secluded. If you had let me have freedom and happiness like other girls, this never would have happened!"
"Hush, little missie; you must not speak to ole massa like dat," cried Dinah, trying to pull her away. "You don't know what you talkin' 'bout. Come away till ole massa is well enough to talk to you 'bout dis fing."
She lifted the girl and would have led her away, but the old man waved his hand feebly to detain her, and so she placed her in a chair instead.
Then she brought a glass of wine and poured a little between the white, writhing lips of her old master.
"Grandpa, speak to me!" wailed Golden again.
Old Dinah looked at her almost sternly, and said abruptly:
"You must let him alone, Miss Golden, you have enamost kilt him now, with your badness and deceit."
"Black mammy, you shall not speak to me so," cried the girl, resentfully, and then the bright head drooped on the arm of the chair, and she wept bitterly, more from fright at the condition of her grandfather, than from any tangible sense of her own wrong-doing.
She loved her grandfather dearly, and the sight of his suffering stabbed her tender heart deeply.
While she wept silently, old Dinah busied herself in anxious cares for the old man.
He seemed frozen into a statue of despair, sitting with his head bowed forlornly, and his vacant eyes on the floor.
But quite suddenly he roused himself and looked around him with a heavy, hopeless gaze.
"Dinah, leave me alone," he said, with unwonted impatience. "I am not ill, or if I am it is with a sickness beyond mortal healing. Golden's disobedience and her cruel, undeserved reproaches have broken my heart."
Golden threw herself impulsively at his feet again.
"Grandpa, forgive me," she wailed. "I shall die if you do not say that you will pardon me!"
He did not answer her. He only looked at his old black servant.
"Dinah, you may leave us," he said, sorrowfully, "I had hoped to keep the secret all my life; but the time has come when I must reveal to my grandchild her mother's story."
"Um-me-e e," groaned the old negress. "Sh, I t'ought it was a brack day when John Glenalvan kem here dat mornin' a-askin' ole massa to shut my pore chile up like a crim'nal."
"Hush, Dinah," the old man repeated, pointing to the door. She went out, and Golden turned her beautiful eyes, like blue violets drowned in tears, upon his pale, drawn face.
"Oh, grandpa," she cried, "you will tell me something of my mother at last. I have so longed to hear something of my mother and my father."
A groan forced itself through Hugh Glenalvan's livid lips.
"Your desire shall be gratified," he replied. "But the telling will cost you great sorrow, child."
Her beautiful face grew white and scared.
"Oh, grandpa," she cried, "then Elinor and Clare told the truth. My poor mother–"
A bursting sob checked the rest of her speech.
"Golden, before I tell you your mother's story, I must receive your own confession. Dinah has told me all the beginning of your acquaintance with my son's visitor. You must now give me the history of what further intercourse has passed between you. How comes it that my little Golden, whom I deemed so true and pure, broke her promise to old Dinah?"
The beautiful face drooped from his gaze, overspread with warm, crimson blushes. No words came from the sweet, tremulous red lips.
"A promise, child, no matter how humble the person to whom it is made, should be held perfectly sacred and inviolate," he continued. "I could not have believed that you, the child I had reared so carefully, could have been so ignoble as to falsify your promise."
CHAPTER XI
Beautiful Golden sobbed wildly at the reproachful words of her grandfather.
"Grandpa, I didn't mean it," she wept. "Indeed, indeed, I intended to keep my promise to black mammy. It was quite by accident that I broke it."
"How could it have been by accident?" inquired the old man, incredulously.
"Do you remember my habit of sleep-walking?" she inquired.
"Yes—ah, yes, for it has frightened me often to see a little, white figure glide into my room at night, with vacant, unseeing eyes. I always feared you would run into some terrible danger. Your mother had the same unfortunate habit," replied the old man.
"Grandpa, it was through that habit of mine that I broke my word to black mammy," said Golden, with an earnestness that showed how truthful was her explanation.
"Tell me how it occurred, Golden," he said, fixing his dim eyes anxiously on her face.
"Grandpa, I am almost ashamed to tell you," she replied, blushing crimson, "but it was in this way. The night after Mr. Chesleigh entered my room by accident, I was very restless in my sleep. I will tell you the truth. I had begun to love the handsome stranger. I thought of him before I fell asleep, and in my restless slumbers I dreamed of him. So I fell into my old habit of wandering in a state of somnambulism. It was a beautiful moonlight night. I dressed myself and wandered out into the grounds, and down by the lake, my favorite resting-place. Suddenly I started, broad awake in the arms of Mr. Chesleigh. I had gone too near the edge of the lake, and he had saved me from falling in."
She shuddered slightly, and resumed:
"In common gratitude I was compelled to speak, and thank the gentleman for saving me from a watery grave. Do you think I was wrong to do so?"
"It would have been cold and ungrateful to have omitted thanking him," he admitted.
"So I thought," said Golden.
"If your intercourse had stopped there, Golden, I should have had no words of blame for you. But you have carried on a secret intrigue ever since. You have stolen out to meet that man every night, have you not?"
"Yes, grandpa, but we loved each other," said the simple child, who seemed to think that was ample excuse for what she had done.
Hugh Glenalvan groaned, and remained lost in thought for a moment.
Then he bent down and whispered a question in her ear.
She started violently; the warm, ever-ready color flashed into her cheek; she threw up her head and looked at him with proud, grieved eyes.
"Grandpa, you hurt me cruelly," she replied. "Do not think of me so unkindly. I am as pure as the snow."
He seemed to be relieved by the words so quickly and proudly spoken. The next minute he said, gravely:
"My child, has this gentleman ever said anything to you of marriage?"
Little Golden remained silent and thoughtful a moment, then she answered, steadily.
"Yes."
"He wishes to marry you, then?"
"Yes," answered the girl, with a little quiver of triumphant happiness in her voice.
"When?" he asked.
A shadow fell over the fair, sweet face a moment.
"I do not know exactly