LITTLE SWEETHEART.

CHAPTER I. CHAPTER II. CHAPTER III. CHAPTER IV. CHAPTER V. CHAPTER VI. CHAPTER VII. CHAPTER VIII. CHAPTER IX. CHAPTER X. CHAPTER XI. CHAPTER XII. CHAPTER XIII. CHAPTER XIV. CHAPTER XV. CHAPTER XVI. CHAPTER XVII. CHAPTER XVIII. CHAPTER XIX. CHAPTER XX. CHAPTER XXI. CHAPTER XXII. CHAPTER XXIII. CHAPTER XXIV. CHAPTER XXV. CHAPTER XXVI. CHAPTER XXVII. CHAPTER XXVIII. CHAPTER XXIX. CHAPTER XXX. CHAPTER XXXI. CHAPTER XXXII. CHAPTER XXXIII. CHAPTER XXXIV. CHAPTER XXXV. CHAPTER XXXVI. CHAPTER XXXVII. CHAPTER XXXVIII. CHAPTER XXXIX. CHAPTER XL. CHAPTER XLI. CHAPTER XLII. CHAPTER XLIII. CHAPTER XLIV. CHAPTER XLV. CHAPTER XLVI. CHAPTER XLVII. CHAPTER XLVIII. CHAPTER XLIX. CHAPTER L. CHAPTER LI. CHAPTER LII. CHAPTER LIII. CHAPTER LIV. CHAPTER LV. CHAPTER LVI. CHAPTER LVII. CHAPTER LVIII. CHAPTER LIX. CHAPTER LX. CHAPTER LXI. CHAPTER LXII. CHAPTER LXIII. CHAPTER LXIV. CHAPTER LXV. CHAPTER LXVI. CHAPTER LXVII. CHAPTER LXVIII. CHAPTER LXIX. CHAPTER LXX. CHAPTER LXXI. CHAPTER LXXII. CHAPTER LXXIII. CHAPTER LXXIV.

CHAPTER I.

The smoking-car was draughty and ill-smelling; the three commercial travelers, with their cards and whisky, noisy to the point of rudeness, and the view from the windows of the slowly moving train was not interesting to one who had gone over the route to Jacksonville a dozen times before. The rocking motion of the train hindered reading with any comfort, and Norman de Vere flung down his newspaper impatiently and went into the ladies’ car.

“There may be some pretty women in there to look at,” he thought, idly, having an artistic taste that could interest itself for hours in traveling in watching the delicate profile of some beautiful face with a ravishing turn to chin and throat, or round cheek shaded by the curled fringe of a long, dark eyelash.

For the matter of that, any woman might have looked twice at him, too, if she had any feminine penchant for manly beauty.

Tall, broad-shouldered, symmetrically formed, with olive skin, large, flashing, dark eyes, wavy dark hair, clear-cut, handsome features, and a mouth so beautifully shaped that the absence of the conventional mustache from the short, curled upper lip seemed almost an affectation to display its beauty. Norman de Vere at two-and-twenty was a magnificent specimen of young manhood, combining in his fine person all the best elements of strength and beauty. You saw, too, from the cut and quality of his well-chosen traveling garments, and from his very air of easy indifference, that he was Fortune’s favorite—beloved of Plutus as well as Apollo.

He dropped languidly down into a seat some little distance back of the woman and child who were the sole occupants of the ladies’ car.

“Wonder where they got on? They were not in here two[Pg 6] hours ago when I went forward to the smoking-car,” he thought, with idle curiosity, having nothing better to attract his attention.

The slight, black-robed figure sitting in front of him had its head and face hidden in a little black poke bonnet and black lace veil. The face, turned steadfastly from him, as if gazing through the window, was propped against a small hand in a trim, black kid glove. Before her, on a seat which the accommodating conductor had turned over to face her, slumbered a lovely child of about four years. By contrast with the somber black garments of the lady and the rich crimson velvet of the cushions on which it was lying, the little creature, in its white dress, its tangle of rich golden curls, its round cheeks warmly flushed with happy slumber, its half-parted, dewy red lips giving glimpses of pearly baby-teeth, looked like a beautiful human flower.

But Norman de Vere’s handsome face had assumed a rather rueful expression when he looked over and saw the pretty sleeper.

“Presently it will wake up and squall. Then I shall beat a retreat into the smoking-car. The drummers could be no worse,” thought he, testily.

But pending the meditated retreat he fell to speculating over these chance companions of his railway ride.

“Some poor little widow who has buried her husband among strangers and is going home to her people with her little child,” he decided from her garb of somber black.

And as men always take a peculiar interest in young and pretty widows, our hero began to wish that she would turn her head and let him see her face. That she was young he felt quite sure from her erect shoulders and slight and delicate shape.

But the young widow remained motionless, with her cheek in her hand and her head turned toward the window, seemingly intent on the flitting landscape, with its dreary dead-level clothed with forests of pine, cedar, and cypress, while here and there the glittering leaves and magnificent white flowers of the magnolia-tree divided admiration with the long, swaying wreaths of funereal-looking moss somberly draping the great live-oaks. Perhaps the tropical growth lying under the soft, velvety drizzle of a steady October rain pleased her fancy or held her interest, or perhaps hot, silent tears were falling under the little black veil, for she never stirred from her statue-like quiet even when the door opened noisily presently, admitting the jolly commercial travelers whose loud talk and[Pg 7] laughter immediately startled the smiling baby sleeper from her dreams.

There was a low, startled whimper of fear, and the little darling sat erect, first digging dimpled, chubby fists into her eyes, then staring at the heartless disturbers of her dreams with the brightest, bluest, most reproachful orbs they had ever seen.

“She is going to squall! The widow will have to move at last!” Norman de Vere muttered, with triumphant curiosity.

He was right, and wrong. The baby did not squall, but the lady moved. She leaned forward, patted the child with her little gloved hand, murmured some low, soothing words, and immediately returned to her musing position at the window without any one ever having seen her face.

The travelers were staring with all their might. Every heart went out to the little angel in the white dress.

One of them—rough fellow and hard drinker as his red face showed him to be—had pretty little children of his own at home. He uttered a caressing sound and held out eager arms.

The baby shook her golden head archly and made him a little grimace of disdain that set the other two laughing. She climbed down from her seat and up again upon the lady’s, where she stood erect, the sweetest thing alive, already full of innate, unconscious coquetry. The big, cloudless blue eyes wandered guilelessly over their faces as she clung with her tiny dimpled fists to the back of the seat, scanning each face in turn with pretty, fearless curiosity.

By this time every man in the car was in love with the beautiful, bright little thing, and the drummers began to rummage their pockets for something pretty wherewith to tempt her to come to their arms. Their boisterous mirth had already softened to something more respectful, and when one actually found a paper of peppermint lozenges about him, his eyes gleamed with triumph.

“Come, sit on my knee and you shall have candy,” he called out, persuasively.

The little beauty did not notice him. She was watching the face of Norman de Vere and making eyes at him with the sweetest baby coquetry, so “innocent arch, so cunning simple,” that the gazers were transported with delight. The young man, on his part, was regarding her with a gentle gravity of expression that puzzled her guileless mind. The three drummers she recognized instinctively as being already her slaves. What of this silent man who made no effort to[Pg 8] attract her, who returned her inviting, wistful gaze without a smile, unless that sparkle in his large dark eyes could be called one?

Was it his seeming indifference that attracted her, or his wonderful, god-like beauty? There awoke in the young mind something of that pain which we of older growth term the yearning for the unattainable.

She sprung down into the aisle unheeded by her silent female companion, and the drummers each reached out for her. She stopped a minute to look at the unique watch-charm that one dangled before her eyes, laughed gleefully as she eluded the outstretched arm of the second, and promptly accepted the lozenges from the third, turning from him with a polite “Ta-ta,” and going straight to Norman de Vere.

“Wretched little flirt!” ejaculated the giver of the candy, with mock indignation, as he saw her climbing upon Norman de Vere’s lap with the most engaging confidence.

Then:

“Don’t oo want some of my tandy?” she inquired, cooingly, as she offered him the paper.

Norman de Vere’s thoughtful gravity relaxed into a laugh, and he promptly put an arm about the plump form that had enthroned itself on his knee.

“I don’t want any candy, please,” he said, shutting his lips tight against the small thumb and finger that were conveying a pink lozenge to his lips; “but I’ll take a kiss.”

No sooner said than the rosebud mouth was pressed eagerly, softly upon his, sending an odd thrill through his whole frame, then she half whispered:

“I ’ove oo.”

“A case of love at first sight,” haw-hawed one of the irrepressibles across the aisle, and the baby shook her tiny pink-and-white fist at him and cried out, disdainfully:

“Go way! I don’t ’ove oo! Oo ain’t pritty!”

Everybody laughed except that slight, silent form like a statue of black marble in the front seat, and Norman de Vere asked with a smile:

“Won’t you tell me your name, little one?”

She beamed upon him with her sunny blue eyes, and answered:

“Sweet’art.”

There was more laughter from across the aisle. The young man reddened in spite of himself, but persisted:

“Yes, I know you are my sweetheart, but what is your other name? What does your mamma call you?”

[Pg 9]

“Nuffin, only des Sweet’art,” she replied, amiably, reaching up and patting his cheek with a warm, sticky little palm, with a lozenge glued to it by its own sweetness.

“That is her name for you when you are very good, I suppose, but when you are bad—when you cry and scold your doll, what name does she call you then?” he queried, and she replied, intelligently:

“‘Naughty yittle Sweet’art.’”

“I give it up,” he said, carelessly; and then she asked, in her innocent, confiding manner:

“Don’t oo want me to sing mamma’s yittle song all ’bout me myse’f?”

“Yes, please.”

She threw back her curly golden head, swelled her soft, white throat, opened her rosebud mouth, and sung, with bird-like sweetness, these words:

No words could describe fitly the wonderful, wooing sweetness, the bird-like melody of the little one’s voice as it rose soft and clear above the clatter of the moving train—every word, though uttered in broken baby dialect, distinctly audible to the listeners.

The innocent little child, absorbed in the delight of her own performance, appeared as unconscious of them all as some wild-wood bird caroling alone upon its leafy nest, and produced as pure an effect upon her hearers.

[Pg 10]

When she stopped no one moved or spoke for a minute, then the red-faced drummer chuckled:

“Sweetheart, you’re an out-and-out prima-donna!”

The others were touched and silent.

CHAPTER II.

Sweetheart herself remained quite silent and pensive for a moment after her little song, as if it had touched some chord of sadness in her heart. Then she nestled her curly head softly against Norman de Vere’s broad breast.

“Sweet’art tired, Sweet’art s’eepy,” she lisped in a plaintive tone, and shut her eyes.

He held her closely in a tender clasp, looking down admiringly at the lovely baby face, fair as carven pearl, and tinted warmly yet delicately as a Mme. de Watteville rose. How richly fringed with thick gold were the full white lids; how lovely the curve of the scarlet lips; how deep the dimple—a perfect Cupid’s nest—in the exquisite chin! His eyes dwelt long and lingeringly on every perfect outline, and he said to himself, with a half smile:

“If she grows up like this, she will give many a man the heartache.”

A sigh chased away the smile, and a cold, cynical look came into the dark eyes, as if some unpleasant memory stirred within him.

The train rushed on through the rainy afternoon, past the swamps and forests, past the unfrequent little towns where they seemed to make the most unconscionably long stops, considering the small additions received to the stock of passengers, and presently it seemed to Norman de Vere that every one was asleep but himself.

The drummers had each taken a double seat to himself, and with silk handkerchiefs over their faces, snored sedately. Even the “little widow,” as Norman called her in his thoughts, had let her arm and head slip down to the back of her seat, and seemed to be quietly sleeping. Sweetheart still lay close in the fold of his strong arm, and though presently the plump little thing began to feel warm and heavy, he would not rouse her, lest he should call her back from her wandering in the beautiful Land of Nod.

“But what a careless little mother!” he thought. “She takes small concern over her baby, leaving her to be nursed and cuddled by utter strangers. Still,” with an excusing[Pg 11] thought, “she must be fond of the little one, she has trained her to sing with such wondrous sweetness and accuracy. It is only that she is tired or ill—broken down with grief most likely—and she knows that even rough men are only too proud to play the nurse to her little pet.”

He wondered vaguely if the face hidden under the little poke bonnet and veil were one half as lovely as the one slumbering so peacefully on his breast, and gazing down at little Sweetheart, tried to fancy the cherub face grown older, and the innocent soul grown wise with woman’s lore; but again a heavy sigh heaved his breast and a frown of deep cynicism drew ungracious lines on his high, white brow.

“Heaven forbid! Heaven forbid!” he muttered, with something like impatient wrath. “It seems a pity for this dear little one to grow up so. Yet,” bitterly, “how else could it be, and a woman?”

The early autumn twilight, hastened by the steady rain, began to darken in the car, and the brakeman came in and lighted the lamps.

“A bad spell o’ weather, sir,” he said, loquaciously, to the occupant of the car who had his eyes open. “Uncommon rainy for Florida; been fallin’ stiddy for two days and nights. ’Counts for the few passengers, I ’spose. Well, ’tis er ill wind blows nobody good. Better sleepin’ ’commodations for the passengers,” glancing around humorously; for this was twenty years ago, reader, and before the luxurious era of Pullman sleepers and parlor cars and fast-flying vestibule trains.

Norman de Vere was about to make some brief, courteous answer to the man’s remarks, but he was prevented by a sudden terrible rumble and rocking of the car—the swift precursor of one of those dreadful railway accidents due to heavy rains and weakened bridge foundations that desolate so many hearts and homes. With a swift instinct he clasped his sleeping burden tightly to his breast just as the doomed car reared upward a moment, like a maddened, living creature, only to collapse the next instant with its freight of human souls and go crashing down through a broken bridge into a mad hell of seething, foaming water.

A little river ordinarily insignificant enough, but swollen now to a torrent by incessant rains for several days, had washed all the mortar from the stone foundations of the railroad bridge and weakened it so that the weight of the locomotive[Pg 12] had carried it down crashing to the bed of the river and telescoped the train.

When Norman de Vere realized that, but for a sharp blow on the head from a heavy timber, he was unhurt, and that he held the struggling child safe in his arms, it seemed to him that he must have been saved by a miracle, nothing less.

The whole train was a wreck, and but for the fact that the ladies’ car was on top of the débris, he could never have escaped alive. He was wedged between two seats of the car, which lay on its side, the windows uppermost, and over and around surged the raging water, churned into foam by the rapid descent of the train, and by the explosion of the locomotive’s boiler as soon as it touched the river. To add to the horror of the position, the lamps just lighted by the brakeman had exploded and caught fire, affording a lurid light within the interior of the wrecked car.

The child in his arms waked and screamed with sudden terror. He hushed her with a tender word, and listened appalled for another human sound in that terrible tumult of crashing timbers and raging waters.

But no sound came.

He saw the brakeman’s legs sticking out from under a pile of timbers that had instantaneously crushed the life from his body. Turning about in his cramped position, he looked for Sweetheart’s mother and the drummers.

There was no sign of the slender little black-draped figure, but a pair of masculine arms protruded from under an overturned seat. He put Sweetheart down and went to work manfully to extricate the owner.

To his joy, he dragged the man out, stunned, but alive—one of the jolly drummers. Rapidly as he could, he resuscitated him and made him understand their position.

“We will either be burned or drowned if we do not speedily escape,” he said. “But before we think of ourselves we must see if there are any more alive in the car.”

“I’m with you to the death!” the other cried, heartily; then he shuddered. “But this is horrible! How the water seethes over the settling wreck! And it will be on fire inside presently.”

“Be good, little darling!” Norman cried to the whimpering, frightened baby, who sat very still where he had placed her, with a dazed look in her big blue eyes.

Obeying a pitying impulse, he kissed her lightly, then turned to his grewsome task.

[Pg 13]

The two other drummers were soon discovered, both stone dead, and one horribly mutilated.

“God rest their souls!” cried the drummer, who was a devout Catholic.

He crossed himself, his face pale with grief and horror, then went on with his task. The mysterious woman had not been found yet.

A few steps further on and they began to pull away great fragments of the roof where it had crashed in over the seat where she had been reclining. They were obliged to work very carefully lest she should be pinioned under them yet alive, and they must not crush out the faintest spark of life.

And above them and around them the fierce and swollen river roared like a tiger eager for its prey, while within the narrow compass of the wrecked car the air began to grow hot and dense with smoke from the burning lamp that had sent its blazing oil running about like tongues of flame, devouring all it touched.

A minute more and they found her, dead. Norman de Vere was never to know whether the face over which he had wondered was beautiful or homely. The heavy timbers had mutilated it beyond all semblance of humanity, and he reeled and sickened at sight of the bloody corpse.

“Oh, my God, how terrible!” he cried, and the Catholic crossed himself again. “God rest her soul!” he muttered, then eagerly: “We can do no more. They are all dead. Let us try to save ourselves. We shall suffocate if we remain in here five minutes longer. See the child!”

Little Sweetheart had suddenly succumbed to the heat and smoke, and fallen senseless.

Norman de Vere caught her up in his arms with a cry very like despair.

“Now don’t give way!” cried George Hinton, the drummer, eagerly. “What do you propose to do?”

“Can you swim?”

“Like a fish.”

“So can I. We must knock out that window there. The water will pour into the car, but we must climb through the opening and commit ourselves to the mercy of the river.”