Daisy's Necklace, and What Came of It

"In thirteen pages there are no less than two blots and five erasures. You have grown careless in your penmanship lately;" and Mr. Flint closes the book with a report like that of a pocket-pistol, and opens it again. One would suppose the office-boy to be shot directly through the heart; but he survives, and is attacked with a wonderful fit of industry.

"Do you write in your sleep?" inquires Mr. Flint, with a quiet insolence.

Mortimer thinks how often he has toiled over those same pages at hours when he should have been sleeping – hours taken from his life. But he makes no reply. He only bites his lips, and lets his eyes flash. Suddenly a thought strikes him, and, bending over Mr. Flint's shoulder, as if to examine more closely his careless chirography, he takes a small key from an open drawer in the escritoire behind him, and drops it into his vest-pocket. After receiving a petulant reprimand, Mortimer returns to his desk; and again that weary, weary pen scratches over the paper.

After the bank deposit is made up, and Mr. Flint looks over the bill-book, and startles the orphan from a state of semi-somnolency, he goes on 'Change. He is no sooner out, than Mortimer throws Tim a bit of silver coin.

"Get some apples for yourself, Tim."

Tim (he's small of his age) slides down from the high stool with agility, while his two eyes look like interrogation points. He is wondering at this sudden outbreak of munificence, for though "Mr. Mortimer" always had a kind word for Tim, and tried to extricate him from the web of mistakes which Tim was forever spinning around himself, yet Tim never knew him to come down with the "block tin" before, as he eloquently expressed it; and he looks at Mortimer all the time he is getting his cap, and pauses a moment at the door to see if he doesn't repent.

When Tim's feet cease sounding on the stairs, Mortimer goes into the back office, and with the key which he had taken from the drawer, unlocks a small iron hand-safe. His trembling fingers turn over package after package; at last he finds one which seems to be the object of his search. This he hastily conceals in the bosom of his coat. After carefully re-locking the safe, he approaches the escritoire to return the purloined key, but to his dismay he finds the drawer locked. The one above it, however, is unfastened. Drawing this out, he places the key in its right compartment.

Mortimer, in searching for the paper which he has hidden in his bosom, had removed several others from the safe; but in his nervousness he had neglected to replace a small morocco case. He discovers his negligence, and hears foot-falls on the stairs at the same moment. There is no time to re-open the chest: he wraps the case in his handkerchief, and resumes his place at the desk.

Tim returns munching the remains of a gigantic apple, and bearing about him a convicting smell of peanuts. Suddenly Mr. Flint enters, and Tim is necessitated to swallow the core of his russet without that usual preparatory mastication which nature's kindly law suggests. Mr. Flint has made a capital bargain on 'Change, and his face is lighted up with a smile, if fancy can coax such an expression into one. It looks like a gas-light in an undertaker's window.

It is five o'clock. Mr. Flint goes home to doze over a diminutive glass of sherry. He holds it up between his eyes and the light, smiling to see the liquid jewels, and wishes that they were real rubies. Flint! they are red tears, and not jewels which glisten in your glass, for you crushed the poor, and took advantage of the unfortunate to buy this pleasant blood which pulses in your brittle chalice!

That night he thought of a pair of blue, innocent eyes which once looked pleadingly in his – of two tiny arms that were once wound fondly around his neck. Those eyes haunted him into the misty realm of dreams, where myriads of little arms were stretched out to him; and he turned restlessly on his pillow. Ah, Flint, there is an invisible and powerful spirit in the heart of every man that will speak. It whispers to the criminal in his cell; and the downy pillows and sumptuous drapery around the couch of Wealth cannot keep it away at midnight.

There is not a house but has its skeleton. There is a ghastly one in Flint's.

The silvery lips in Trinity steeple chime the hour of eleven; St. Paul's catch it up, and hosts of belfrys toss the hour to and fro like a shuttle-cork. Then the goblin bells hush themselves to sleep again in their dizzy nests, murmuring, murmuring! – and the pen of the pale book-keeper keeps time with the ticking of the office time-piece.

It is nearly twelve o'clock when he reaches the door of a common two-story house in Marion-street. The door is opened before he can turn the bolt with his night-key, and the whitest possible little hand presses his. He draws it within his own, and places his arm around the daintiest little waist that ever submitted to the operation. Then the two enter the front parlor, where the dim light falls on Mortimer and a beautiful girl on the verge of womanhood. She looks into his face, and his lips touch a tress of chestnut hair which has fallen over his shoulder.

"You are very pale. Have you been unwell to-day?"

"No, Daisy," and he bends down and kisses her.

"Why do you persist in sitting up for me? I shall scold if you spoil your cheeks. Kiss me, Daisy."

The girl pouts, and declares she won't, as she coquettishly twines her arms around his neck, and Mortimer has such a kiss as all Flint's bank stock could not buy him – a pure, earnest kiss. He was rich, poor in the world's eye, richer than Flint, with his corpulent money bags, God pity him!

They sit a long while without speaking. Mortimer breaks the silence.

"We are very poor, Daisy."

"Yes, but happy."

"Sometimes. To-night I am not; I am weary of this daily toiling. The world is not a workshop to wear out souls in. Man has perverted its use. Life, and thought, and brain, are but crucibles to smelt gold in. Nobleness is made the slave of avarice, just as a pure stream is taught to turn a mill-wheel and become foul and muddied. The rich are scornful, and the poor sorrowful. O, Daisy, such things should not be! My heart beats when I think how poorly you and your mother are living."

"O, how much we owe you, Mortimer! you are selling your life for us. From morning till night, day after day, you have been our slave. Poor, dear Mortimer, how can we thank you? We can only give you love and prayers. You will not let me help you. Last night, when you found me embroidering a collar, a bit of work which Mrs. Potiphar had kindly given me, you pleasantly cut it in pieces with your pen-knife, and then pawned your gold pencil to pay for ruining Mrs. Potiphar's muslin – too proud to have me work!"

"Why will you pain me, darling? I was complaining for others, not myself. I do not toil as thousands do. I am impulsive and irascible, and do not mean all I say. I am ungrateful; my heart should be full of gratitude to-night, for the cloud which has hung over me the last six months has shown its silver lining."

"What do you mean?" cries Daisy.

"Do you know that you are an heiress?" asks Mortimer, gaily.

Daisy laughs at the idea, and mockingly says, "Yes."

"An heiress to a good name, Daisy! which is better than purple, and linen, and fine gold."

Daisy looks mystified, but forbears to question him, for he complains of sleep. The lovers part at the head of the stairs. Mortimer, on reaching his room, draws a paper from his bosom; he weeps over it, reads it again and again; then he holds it in the flame of a candle. When the ashes have fallen at his feet, he exclaims:

"I have kept my promise, Harvey Snarle! Peace to your memory!"

From a writing-desk in a corner of the room he takes a pile of manuscript, and weary as he is, adds several pages to it. The dream of his boyhood has grown with him – that delightful dream of authorship! How this will-o'-the-wisp of the brain entices one into mental fogs! How it coaxes and pets one, cheats and ruins one! And so that appalling pile of closely-written manuscript is Mortimer's romance? Wasted hours and wasted thought – who would buy or read it?

A down-town clock strikes the hour of two so gently, that it sounds like the tinkling of sheep-bells coming through the misty twilight air from the green meadows. With which felicitous simile we will give our hero a little sleep, after having kept him up two hours after midnight.

Slumber touches his eyelids gently; but Daisy lies awake for hours; at last, falling into a trouble sleep, she dreams that she is an heiress.

Oh, Daisy Snarle!

V

The bitter cups of Death are mixed,
And we must drink and drink again.

    R. H. Stoddard.

V.

DAISY SNARLE

Sunday Morning – Harvey Snarle and Mortimer – A Tale of Sorrow – The Snow-child – Mortimer takes Daisy's hand – Snarle's death.

Six months previous to the commencement of the last chapter, Mr. Harvey Snarle lay dying, slowly, in a front room of the little house in Marion-street.

It was Sunday morning.

The church bells were ringing – speaking with musical lips to "ye goode folk," and chiming a sermon to the pomp and pride of the city. As Mortimer sat by the window, the houses opposite melted before his vision; and again he saw the old homestead buried in a world of leaves – heard the lapping of the sea, and a pleasant chime of bells from the humble church at Ivytown. And more beautiful than all, was a child with clouds of golden hair, wandering up and down the sea-shore.

"Mortimer?" said the sick man.

Then the dream melted, and the common-looking brick buildings came back again.

"The doctor thought I could not live?" said the man, inquiringly.

"He thought there was little hope," replied Mortimer. "But doctors are not fortune-tellers," he added, cheerfully.

"I feel that he is right – little hope. Where is Daisy?"

"She has lain down for a moment. Shall I call her?"

"Wearied! Poor angel; she watched me last night. I did not sleep much. I closed my eyes, and she smiled to think that I was slumbering quietly. No; do not call her."