Chapter XI: Only to Suffer and Endure!

Byrd Barrington remained long in the library where Maisie had left him, his head bowed on his desk, his broad shoulders heaving with a strong man’s stifled emotion.

It would seem as if the triumph of keeping his vow to the dead had borne heavily on his own heart.

Bravely, silently, he was fighting the battle with his strange love--the battle against temptation.

He knew well enough that he could take Maisie at her word--that by some legal quibble he could gain her freedom from his brother--the freedom that she craved.

He knew quite as well, also, that since Josephine had relented, his brother would not greatly care, might even welcome release from the fetters he had unwisely forged in a moment’s madness.

And yet, dare he take her at her word? Clasp to his breast an unloving bride?

Had he not seen enough in his late father’s two marriages of marriage with love on one side only?

Had he not sworn to himself never to enter the nuptial state save at the promptings of mutual love?

A stifled groan escaped him. “It cannot be; I must hold back my hand. In a little while she will change her mind and learn to be patient while waiting for Delmar’s heart to turn from Josephine to its true allegiance. All will--all must--come right in time between the wedded pair. It is not for me to meddle--only to suffer and endure!”

There was a hurried step by his side, an agitated voice:

“Oh, Byrd! Byrd!”

He lifted up his ghastly face from his folded arms impatiently.

“Well, Aunt Constance?”

“Can you believe me? Maisie has run away!”

“Impossible!”

“But here is her note!” and she held out to him the scrap of paper where Maisie had written:

“DEAR AUNT CONSTANCE: This is to thank you for all your kindness to
me since I came to Castellane, a lonely little orphan girl! I am
going away to earn my own living. Some day I will write you where
to send the small trunk I have packed with my plainest things. The
others would be no use to a working-girl. Tell all the others good-by
for me. God bless you!

“MAISIE.”

While he read and reread it with dazed eyes, Mrs. French explained:

“I went to her room, to speak a few words of comfort to the poor child, and the first thing I saw was her pretty wedding-gown torn into fragments and scattered over the floor. Then the note on the pincushion caught my eye. I rang the bell for Nancy, and, on making inquiries, I found that several of the servants had seen Maisie going out more than an hour ago, with a little leather satchel on her arm.”

“She has gone on the afternoon train. I heard it whistle some time ago,” he said blankly.

“Oh, how dreadful! But you will follow and bring her back, Byrd?”

“You forget that I do not know where she has gone.”

“It cannot be far. She never had any money but her monthly allowance of twenty-five dollars, and it must have been partly spent.”

A shudder ran over him at the thought of Maisie, so young, so fair, so gently nurtured, alone in the world trying to earn her daily bread.

“But what can we do?” he cried helplessly. “Even if I followed her, she would not come back with me!” and he poured out all that had passed between them.

Mrs. French was simply horrified.

“The poor child must have lost her senses, indeed!” she cried. “I do not deny but that it was a cruel blow to find out that Delmar had married her from such unworthy motives, but she should have tried to make the best of it, poor child. Of course, you are right; she would never return, even if we went down on our knees to her, so we can do nothing but wait. She may get sick enough of her folly, and soon come home.”

“God grant it!” he cried fervently, for, though just before she came in he had been telling himself he could not remain any longer under the same roof as Maisie, that he would go away upon a long journey somewhere, it cut him to the heart to know that she was gone. The grand mansion all at once seemed bare and empty as a tomb.

“I will write to Delmar. He ought to know about it,” she said.

“Yes, he should know,” Barrington agreed. “But do you not remember he gave us no address? He is off for the seat of war, and would write us first, he said.”

So there was nothing to do but wait and hope, those hardest duties of all; and meantime Aunt Constance confidently believed that the hard realities of life would weaken Maisie’s desperate pride and send her flying back to the home-nest.

“She doesn’t know what poverty is like! When she meets the grim specter all alone, she will pocket her pride and fly back to Castellane,” she declared grimly.

But their suspense did not last long--only through the evening hours and a restless night, dream-haunted for both with visions of the dear one adrift on life’s wide sea, struggling with the wild waves of destiny that perhaps would engulf her soul, or perchance cast her back, weary and storm-driven, on the safe shores of home.

While the morning sun was just piercing the gray clouds of dawn, the master of Castellane was awakened to greet an untimely visitor--the affable postmaster of the little town.

“Beg pardon, I’m sure, for disturbing you, sir, but I heard that Miss Van Allyn had gone away, and I’m afraid I have bad news of the poor little girl.”

In his hand was an open telegram, and his tone was reproachful. Everybody in town knew that Barrington had succeeded to all his father’s money, leaving Delmar and Maisie out in the cold.

Barrington struggled quickly into a long dressing-gown, and held out his hand for the message.

He read with staring eyes:

“TO THE POSTMASTER OF ROSEDALE, VA.: A young girl, who registered
here to-night as M. V. Allen, became the victim of an accident by
fire, and is dead. Her only luggage, a leather satchel, is marked in
black letters: M. V. A., Rosedale, Va. Can you communicate with her
friends? JOHN JOYNES,

“Of the William Penn House, Philadelphia, Pa.”

“My God!” Barrington muttered, reeling into a seat, with his hand before his eyes.

“Remorse!” thought the postmaster sagely, and turned as Mrs. French came in with alarm depicted on every feature.

“What is the matter with Byrd?” she cried, and he handed her the telegram that had fallen from Byrd’s nerveless hand to the floor.

“Dead, dead! Our little Maisie! Oh, it cannot be!” she shrieked, and fell into Byrd’s arms, moaning and sobbing in the shock of grief.

He could only hold her tight, with his ghastly face bowed upon her gray hair. He was a man; he must hide the anguish that consumed his heart.

“I--I--will go--on the first train,” he said hoarsely to the postmaster, adding: “Thank you for coming at once. We were troubled over her flight, but we did not know where she had gone.”

The misery of his face moved the man’s heart to sympathy, and he said:

“I shall be very glad if I can help you any way.”

“I thank you; there is nothing. I shall go, as I said just now, on the first train, and--and--bring her home!” he said hollowly.

“I shall go with you!” sobbed Mrs. French.

So in the late afternoon they came to the cheap but genteel lodging-house in Philadelphia where that tragedy of death had been enacted the night previous, and when they were strong enough to bear the horror, they were shown in an upper room something lying very still under a white sheet.

But first they had been shown the satchel, the contents, the jewelry, all of which they fully identified.

There was not the least hope of mistake. Byrd Barrington opened the lid of the watch, and there was her full name, with the date and a motto: “Always true”--he himself had given it to Maisie on her birthday, when she was just sixteen and the fairest little beauty the sun ever shone on, the fairest and the sauciest, for, even while accepting his gift, she had laughed his love to scorn.

“You are too old to be my lover!” she had declared cruelly.

He was fourteen years older, it was true, and he had answered bitterly:

“But not too old to make a fool of myself loving you!”

Here was the watch and the few jewels, all of which he knew too well, and Aunt Constance identified every piece of the clothing. Had she not always ordered the girl’s things and marked them herself? No, there was not the slightest room for doubt.

Then the people at the house told how fair and pretty she was, with bright blue eyes and golden hair, and how her shrieks had brought every one rushing to the scene, to find her wrapped in flames that quickly destroyed her life. Of the origin of the accident, none could tell. They thought it likely she might have been combing her hair before the mirror, and the draft must have blown her sleeve against the gas-jet; that was the most plausible theory; so she had been swallowed in the flames, they thought; but, anyway, her burns were so terrible before they could put out the fire that she died without ever speaking again, save for piteous moans, enough to break one’s heart.

That dreadful thing swathed in linen and burned out of all semblance to Maisie, save for a few wisps of yellow hair still clinging to the fleshless skull, Barrington and his aunt took home, coffined, to Castellane and buried, amid the tears of the whole neighborhood, for bonnie Maisie Van Allyn Barrington.