One easily guesses that “A Wayside Flower” was the story of a young girl—beautiful, but poor.
The rich hero’s fancy turned from his betrothed, the proud beauty, his equal in wealth and station, to the simple village maiden.
With all the arts of love he wooed her for his own.
When the maiden, pure as snow, turned in grief and anger from the proffer of the heart without the hand, he deceived her by a mock marriage, swearing her to keep the secret.
In the distant village, where they spent their blissful honeymoon, she somehow discovered through a letter he had dropped that he was betrothed to another, and the wedding day set.
Undreaming of treachery, yet grieved for her hapless rival’s sorrow, Daisy reproached her young husband for his flirtations, and insisted on his writing at once to the young girl to break off as gently as possible the engagement he could never now fulfill.
Carelessly assenting, Chester wrote the letter under Daisy’s eyes, sealed and addressed it, and pretended to have her post it to make sure.
But he had cunningly slipped quite another sort of letter into the envelope, and destroyed the one she had seen him write.
By and by came the time when he must leave her alone and return to his home, lest his rich father disinherit him on finding out the truth of his marriage to the village beauty.
He never returned.
For a while came letters filled with love and devotion, and always inclosing money for the little wife.
Weary months slipped away, and brought the winter snows. The deserted bride fell ill, and besought her husband to return to her side.
Blank silence fell. No more letters, no more money.
In the simple cottage where she boarded, the people began to hint at desertion. The villainous son showed her loverlike attentions.
When Daisy repulsed him in anger he showed her a letter from her husband that broke her heart.
Chester had written to the villain that the girl was not his wife. He had deceived her by a mock marriage. Now he was weary of her, and would see her no more. In fact, he was about to go abroad for years, and if he, the villain, would marry the girl, he would pay him handsomely to keep the whole thing quiet.
For the sake of her beauty and the bribe he was offered, this poor apology for manhood was ready to make Daisy an honest wife, but when she refused him with biting scorn he made his weak mother thrust her into the street, homeless and penniless in the winter’s snow.
Daisy pawned her simple jewels and journeyed back to her deserted home and widowed mother, praying only to die under the roof that had sheltered her childhood and girlhood.
Then she heard that there was to be a grand wedding up at the hall that night. Her false lover was about to wed the beautiful heiress, his social equal, his chosen mate.
Poor little Daisy had been plucked as carelessly as a wayside flower, and thrown aside to die.
The poor old mother, half crazed by her daughter’s shame and despair, cried bitterly:
“You have only yourself to blame, girl! I brought you up to shun rich young men; I told you they had no use for poor girls but to wreck their lives. You would not believe what I told you, you laughed at my warnings, and fled with the villain that ruined you. Now you have returned to drag out a wretched existence under the ban of scorn, while he goes scot-free and weds another!”
The wretched Daisy knew that it was all true. She shut herself into her room, and brooded over her trouble till her brain went wild.
In the evening she came down to her mother, calm with the calmness of a great despair.
“I have thought it all over, dear mother,” she said gently. “I did wrong to come back to you in my trouble; because you warned me and I would not listen. So I have no right to stay here and cloud your life with my shame and sorrow. I am going away forever. Good-by, dear mother. Say that you forgive me before I die!”
“What do you mean, child? Where are you going? What is this wild talk of dying? Come back, Daisy; mother will forgive you,” cried the poor mother, but Daisy had fled through the door out into the cold moonlight, shining on a world that was white with snow.
“I must follow and bring her back. I scolded her too harshly,” the mother cried, snatching her bonnet and hastening after her child.
But her poor, rheumatic limbs could not keep pace with Daisy’s flying feet. She could not overtake her in time to prevent the tragedy.
The bridal cortège was moving out from the gates of the hall, and some little children belonging to the tenant were throwing flowers in front of the bridal carriage as it started toward the church where the fashionable throng was waiting.
The clear moonlight and lamplight showed Chester’s face plain as day, as he sat by the side of the bride.
With a cry of reproach and despair that shrilled to heaven, Daisy darted into the road, and flung herself under the horses’ feet.
But Chester, sitting there, pale and handsome, on his way to his wedding, had seen that lovely face upraised to heaven as she darted forward, had heard that terrible cry, and it pierced his false heart like an arrow.
He gave an answering cry, and tearing open the carriage door, as the vehicle swayed under the driver’s frantic efforts to throw the horses back on their haunches, he sprang out and strove to tear Daisy from under their desperate hoofs.
The maddened animals dragged the reins from the driver’s hands, and their steel-clad hoofs came down with a dull thud upon Chester’s and Daisy’s bodies as they writhed on the ground.
It all passed more quickly than one could describe it, and almost before the people in the next carriage knew that anything was happening the ill-fated pair were drawn from their terrible position, crushed and dying.
The frightened bride, reckless of her white gown and slippers, sprang out into the snow.
“Oh, what has happened?” she cried, in wild alarm.
Then she saw Chester prone upon the ground, with blood streaming from a cut in his head down over his pallid face, while he held to his heart the slight figure of an unconscious girl. The bride knew the pale face instantly. It was the little cottage maiden, who had eloped with a mysterious lover whose identity no one knew.
“Oh, Chester, what does this mean? What has happened to you?” demanded the bride wildly, and turning his heavy eyes on her face, he groaned:
“Geraldine, I have sacrificed my life to save this poor girl!”
“Why did you do it? What is she to you?” fiercely.
Like an arrow from a bow straight to her heart came his answer:
“The truth is cruel to you, Geraldine, but I feel that I am dying, so I must make a full confession. I deceived this poor girl with a mock marriage, then deserted her, returning to make you my lawful bride. Realizing her despair, she has returned and chosen to die beneath my horses’ feet. I have given my life vainly in the effort to save poor little Daisy.”
Geraldine realized that people were crowding round about her, that the white face of the “best man” was close to hers, his arms shielding her from falling to the ground, but she kept her eyes glued on that pale, dying face, and her ears strained not to lose a sound of that weak, dying voice.
“Geraldine,” he faltered on, “I meant to marry you for wealth and position, but in my heart I loved Daisy best. I was not worthy of your love, but I pray you to forgive me, and to see that I am buried by the side of the girl who was my wife in the sight of Heaven.”
He had thought little Daisy dead, but suddenly her dim eyes flared open and rested adoringly on his face. Her dulled hearing had caught words that made her ineffably happy.
“Darling!” he muttered brokenly.
The best man stifled Geraldine’s cry of rage with a daring hand upon her lips.
“Forgive him, dear, you shall not miss him,” he whispered tenderly. “Do you remember how we loved each other before that lovers’ quarrel, when he came between? Now you know he was unworthy, let us begin again, dear. Tell him you forgive and will do his will.”
Geraldine trembled at the warm touch of his hand, and bending over Chester, gave the promise he asked.
“I forgive you; you shall rest side by side,” she faltered, not a minute too soon, for in another moment the lovers were both dead, clasped in each other’s arms.
The first scene in “A Wayside Flower” showed the heroine singing a love song at a window wreathed in morning glories, and as Bonair gazed in wondering agitation, he saw that the singer’s face was that of little Berry Vining!