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Title: Let Us Kiss and Part
or, A Shattered Tie
Author: Mrs. Alex. McVeigh Miller
Release Date: November 19, 2021 [eBook #66774]
Language: English
Produced by: Demian Katz, Craig Kirkwood, and the Online Distributed
Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (Images courtesy of
the Digital Library@Villanova University.)
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LET US KISS AND PART ***
Transcriber’s Notes:
Text enclosed by underscores is in italics (_italics_), and text
enclosed by equal signs is in bold (=bold=).
Additional Transcriber’s Notes are at the end.
* * * * *
NEW EAGLE SERIES No. 943
LET US KISS AND PART
By Mrs. Alex. McVeigh Miller
[Illustration]
STREET & SMITH
PUBLISHERS
NEW YORK
Let Us Kiss and Part;
OR,
A SHATTERED TIE
BY
MRS. ALEX. McVEIGH MILLER
Author of “Pretty Madcap Lucy,” “The Fatal Kiss,” “Loyal Unto
Death,” “The Strength of Love,” “Lady Gay’s Pride,”
and many other romances of American life published
exclusively in the EAGLE and NEW EAGLE SERIES.
[Illustration]
NEW YORK
STREET & SMITH, PUBLISHERS
79-89 SEVENTH AVENUE
* * * * *
Copyright, 1897-1898 By STREET & SMITH
Let Us Kiss and Part
All rights reserved, including that of translation into foreign
languages, including the Scandinavian.
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LET US KISS AND PART.
CHAPTER I. WHEN POVERTY ENTERS THE DOOR.
To love and hate in the same breath, it is as cruel as a tragedy.
Leon and Verna Dalrymple knew all that subtle pain as they faced each
other in the cold, gray light of that autumn day whereon they were
parting forever.
It was not simply a lovers’ quarrel, either.
The pity of it was that they were husband and wife, both very young,
both very fond, but driven apart by unreasoning pride and passion.
The husband was twenty-one years old, the bride but seventeen--a case
of “marry in haste, repent at leisure.”
Six months ago the bride, sole daughter of a wealthy family, had eloped
from boarding school with a poor young man, a teacher of music.
For her fault the daughter had been cast off by her parents, and the
young man dismissed from the school where he taught. Unable to secure
another position, misfortune had steadily tracked his footsteps until
he could scarcely afford bread for himself and the fair, dainty bride.
Having rushed into marriage without thought for the future, misfortune
soured their naturally hasty tempers, and when the fierce wolf of
poverty came in at the door love flew out of the window.
They could scarcely have told how it all began, but at last they
were quarreling most bitterly. There were mutual recriminations and
fault-findings, that increased in virulence until one day, goaded by
Verna’s reproaches, Leon cried out in hot resentment:
“I regret that I ever saw you!”
“I hate you!” she replied, with a scornful flash of her great,
somber, dark eyes, and whether the words were true or not, she never
took them back--neither one ever professed sorrow for angry words or
begged forgiveness. The husband, hurt by her sneers, pained by her
reproaches, and inwardly wounded by his inability to provide for her
better, took refuge in sullen silence that she resented by downright
sulking. She was furious at his unkindness, disgusted with her poverty,
and unconsciously ill of a trouble she did not suspect, so the breach
widened between their hearts until one day she said with rigid white
lips and somber, angry eyes:
“I am tired of starving and freezing here where I am not wanted! I
shall go home and beg papa to forgive my folly and get me a divorce
from you.”
The awful words were spoken and they fell on his heart like hailstones,
but though he grew pale as death and his whole frame trembled, he
feigned the cruelest indifference, saying bitterly:
“You could not please me better!”
So the die was cast.
Perhaps she had wished to test his love, perhaps she hoped that the
fear of losing her might beat down the armor of his stubborn pride and
make him sue for a reconciliation.
Whatever she might have secretly desired, his answer was a deathblow to
her hopes.
At his words a strange look flashed into her large, dark eyes, and for
a moment her red mouth quivered like a child’s at an unexpected blow.
But she swallowed a choking sob, and the next moment her young face
grew rigid as a mask.
Rising slowly from her seat, she put on her hat, caught up a small hand
satchel from the floor, and passed silently from the poor apartment.
If only she had turned her fair, haughty head for one backward
glance--if only----
For his passionate heart had almost leaped from his breast in the
terror of his loss.
Anger, pride, and pique were forgotten alike in the supreme anguish of
that moment’s despair.
As she turned away he stretched his arms out yearningly, whispering
with stiff, white lips that could scarcely frame the words:
“Darling, come back!”
Had she only looked back, her heart would have melted with tenderness
at sight of his grief. She would have fallen, sobbing, on his breast.
But she never turned her proud, dark head; she did not catch the
yearning whisper, and his arms dropped heavily to his sides again,
while the echo of her retreating footsteps fell like a death knell on
his heart.
Angry and estranged, they had parted to go their separate ways forever,
and the stream of destiny rolled in widely between their sundered
lives, thus wrenched violently heart from heart.
To be born to the heritage of such beauty, pride, and passion, is not
altogether goodly--yet, it is the daughter of this strangely parted
pair whom I have chosen for my heroine, for in four months after
Verna Dalrymple left her husband she became the mother of a lovely
daughter--a girl that in its dainty beauty possessed the blond fairness
of the father, the dark, dreamy eyes and proud, beautiful mouth of the
brunet mother.
CHAPTER II. SIXTEEN YEARS LATER.
“Sister Jessie, I am so hungry. Please give me some bread!” sobbed the
pleading voice of a little child, clinging to the skirts of the young
house mother, a dark-eyed girl of sixteen.
“I’se hungry, too. I want my bekfus!” sobbed a still younger child,
petulantly, and for answer Jessie stooped down and gathered both the
little boys into her yearning arms, crying tremulously:
“Wait a little while, my darlings, and sister Jessie will go and try to
get you some bread!”
Oh! what a tale of wretchedness was told by the bare, fireless room
and the pinched faces and hollow eyes of the three children, the girl
of sixteen, the boys of six and four, respectively. It was midday,
but they had not tasted food for twenty-four hours, and the cupboard
was empty of the smallest crust. It was a chilly November day, but
the small stove was fireless, though their thin, ragged garments were
insufficient to keep out the biting cold.
Jessie kissed the wan, tear-wet faces of her hungry little brothers,
then stood up again and looked round the room to see if there was
anything left worthy the attention of the old pawnbroker on the corner.
A choking sob escaped the girl’s lips:
“Alas, there is nothing but trash! The little purse is empty, and the
rent unpaid for two months. What shall we do?”
A loud rap on the door gave her a violent start, and she sprang to open
it, exclaiming piteously:
“They have come again for the rent!”
She was confronted by a medium-sized young man, good-looking in a
coarse style with red cheeks, keen, black eyes, and close-cropped,
black hair, dressed flashily, with a long, gold watch chain dangling
across his breast.
Staring curiously into the room and at the girl, he demanded:
“Is John Lyndon at home?”
“He is not.”
“Where is his wife, then, hey?”
A sob came from all three of the children, but no reply until a little,
motherly looking woman suddenly pushed past the young man into the
room, exclaiming:
“Arrah, now, how dare ye break the hearts av thim by yer impidence,
axin for their mither, and herself dead of a faver six months ago!”
“Ah, and the father?”
“Poor sowl, they took him to the hospital, a month ago, hurt by an
accident, and he died there but yesterday. I just came in to take the
childer to git the last look at his dead face before they bury him at
the city’s expinse.”
“Ah, very sorry, I’m sure, but, of course, now the rent will never be
paid, and I was sent here to bring a dispossess warrant, so I may as
well read it for the benefit of the children.”
And he coolly proceeded to do so, apparently unmoved by the sad story
of death and disaster he had just heard.
Then he beckoned to two rough-looking men who had been standing in the
hallway. They came up at once, and at a motion of the hand from the
dispossess officer, they began at once to move the few shabby household
effects into the street.
Painful sobs burst from the hapless orphans, but the little Irishwoman,
with the calmness of one long familiar with the stern face of poverty,
said to them gently:
“You see, dears, ye are turned into the street. Have yees any friends
to take yees in?”
Jessie answered forlornly:
“We have an aunt, a dressmaker, in a distant part of the city. She was
papa’s sister, but he would never let her know that we were so poor
after he lost his steady job, saying she had troubles enough of her
own.”
“Av coorse she will help yees, when she knows about your troubles, poor
things, so now come to my room and have a little snack before we start
to the hospital,” said Mrs. Ryan tenderly, marshaling the orphans past
the dispossess agent, who remarked insinuatingly:
“The oldest girl’s big enough to go out and earn her own living, and if
her aunt won’t take her to keep, I know of a situation she can get as
parlormaid with a very nice lady.”
“Thank you kindly, but I hope she won’t need it,” returned Mrs. Ryan
curtly, as she led the little flock to her own poor apartment where she
fed them on the best she could afford, weak tea, baker’s stale bread,
and a bit of cheese, but a feast to the famishing orphans whose thanks
brought tears to her kind eyes.
Afterward she took them to look their last on the face of their dead
before he was consigned to his grave among the city’s pauper dead, poor
soul, the victim of penury and misfortune. Then she led them weeping
away to their aunt, Mrs. Godfrey, who heard with grief of her poor
brother’s death and looked with pity on his orphan children.
She said plaintively:
“I’m a lone widow with a sick daughter and no support but my needle,
but, of course, I cannot turn John’s children out into the cold world.
I’ll take Mark and Willie and do the best I can by them, but as for
Jessie, she is old enough to go out and work for herself. Besides, she
has no claim on me, as she was not my brother’s child!”
“Not papa’s child!” almost shrieked Jessie, in her astonishment, and
Mrs. Godfrey, looking ready to faint under the burden of her new
responsibilities, replied:
“No, you were only the niece of my brother’s wife, though she brought
you up as her own child, and loved you just as well.”
Mrs. Ryan questioned eagerly:
“Are Jessie’s own parents living?”
“The Lord only knows,” was the answer, and, seeing the anxiety on their
faces, Mrs. Godfrey continued:
“You see, it was this way: Jessie’s father and mother were divorced
when they hadn’t been married more than seven months or so, and
afterward their child was born, and when it was a few years old the
father in a fit of rage stole Jessie away from her mother and brought
her to his sister to raise as her own. He went away and for years sent
money liberally to keep and educate the child, but at last letters
and money both stopped suddenly, and ’twas supposed he was dead. The
Lyndons kept Jessie all the same, and did the best they could, but
misfortunes began to come and death followed--so everything came to
this pass. I’ll say it for Jess, she’s a good child, but I’m too poor
to keep her, so she will have to look for a situation.”
“I’ve heard of one already, so I will take her back and try to get
it for her. Bid your little brothers good-by, dear,” said Mrs. Ryan
gently, in her pity for the forlorn girl, who now turned to Mrs.
Godfrey, faltering:
“Maybe you can tell me where to find my mother?”
“I can’t, my dear, for now I remember I never heard her name, nor
your pa’s, neither. You always went by the name of Lyndon, and was
considered their child, so you will have to go on calling yourself
Lyndon till you find out better. Maybe your ma wasn’t a good woman,
anyway, or she wouldn’t had to be divorced.”
Cruel was the parting between Jessie and the little ones, but with
kisses and tears, and promises to come again, the desolate girl was
hurried away to her fate--every link broken between her and the past,
her brain on fire, her heart aching, her future a chaos that no hope
could pierce.
“If I could only find my mother!” she sighed to Mrs. Ryan.
“Sure, darlint, don’t fix your heart on her, for she must have been
a bad woman indade, or your father wouldn’t have stole ye away and
put ye in his sister’s care. Arrah, now, I’m thinking of what the
dispossess agent said about knowing of a good place for ye to stay as
parlormaid. And good luck to ye, darlint; there he is in front of the
tiniment now, having the old sticks of your furniture moved, bad cess
to his eyes! But then ag’in, ’tain’t his fault. He was sint by the
landlord to do it, and can’t help himself, so why should we be hard on
him, thin! Och, if you plaze, sir, we would like to have the address of
the good lady as you said would take Jessie for a parlormaid.”
The agent’s face beamed with surprise and delight, and, hastily drawing
a card from his pocket, he presented it, saying:
“There’s the address, and just tell the lady I sent you, and I know she
will give Miss Lyndon the place,” beaming on the girl in a way that
made her shrink and shudder.
“Why, ’tis the old fortune teller in the next street,” said Mrs. Ryan,
surveying the dingy card that read:
“Know your fate and fortune. Consult Madame Barto, scientific palmist,
No. 16A West Twenty-third Street. Hours between ten and four daily. Fee
one dollar.”
CHAPTER III. A YOUNG GIRL’S FIRST THOUGHT.
Madame Barto’s ideas of a parlormaid seemed rather confused, for her
gloomy little brick house had no occupants save herself and Jessie,
and before business hours in the morning she and Jessie did up all
the household work, after which they separated, madame to sit in her
dingy parlor and read detective stories in the intervals of waiting for
customers, and Jessie to wait in a tiny anteroom off the hall to answer
the doorbell.
The first thing that morning madame had gone out and bought her maid
a neat, black gown finished with black and white ribbons, at neck and
waist, and a neat little pair of buttoned boots that made quite an
improvement in her appearance.
“This comes in advance out of your first month’s salary, and I think
you will agree I am very generous to trust you,” she said frankly.
“I am very grateful, madame,” faltered the girl shyly, for she stood
greatly in awe of the tall, dark, homely fortune teller, with her stern
face and grenadierlike walk.
“See that you prove so,” the woman said dryly, adding, as she seized
the girl’s hand and turned the pink palm to the light: “Let us see what
fate has in store for such a pretty girl.”
“Shall I ever be married?” queried Jessie timidly, and Madame Barto
laughed:
“Ha, ha, the first thought of a young girl--‘shall I ever be married?’
Yes, yes, pretty one. I can promise you a husband for certain! Girls
like you--so lovely and naïve--are very sure to marry, for the men will
not give them any peace. But you’ll repent it afterward if you’re like
most women. I know, for marriage is a lottery, and more blanks are
drawn than prizes.”
“I am sorry. I thought love must be so sweet,” said the girl with a
little, unconscious sigh.
“Poor thing!” answered the woman, with a half sneer, her keen, deep-set
eyes following the lines of the delicate palm while she pursued:
“I see dark clouds lowering over your life--and the line of life is
strangely crossed. I foresee tragic elements in your future. The
chances of happiness are against you, but you may possibly overcome
these adverse influences. Let us hope so. Otherwise----” she paused,
looked keenly at the girl, and exclaimed:
“You will not thank me if I tell you any more. What is the use, anyway?
You will find it out soon enough yourself. These people who pay me a
dollar for reading the future, what fools they are! If they wait they
will know it for nothing!”
Jessie hung her golden head in cruel disappointment, having hoped that
a good fortune might have been promised from the reading of her little
hand, while the madame continued briskly:
“Come, now, you will sit here in the anteroom with this bit of sewing
until the doorbell rings, then you will answer it, usher the caller in
here, and come to me for instructions. Will you remember this?”
“Oh, yes, madame,” sitting down obediently with the roll of ruffling
madame had given her to hemstitch, eager to be alone with her sad
thoughts.
Sad they were, indeed, poor Jessie, thus wrenched from all she had
known and loved in the past, and thrown alone on the world, to face the
untried future.
Standing with reluctant feet,
Where the brook and river meet,
Womanhood and childhood fleet.
At the clanging of the doorbell she started quickly to her feet with a
strange, inexplicable throb of the heart.
She flew out into the hall and turned the doorknob to admit the caller.
Had she guessed that it was the little god Cupid knocking, would she
have unbarred the door?
Alas! destiny is strong. We could not shirk it if we would.
The fair little hand shot back the bolt and turned the doorknob.
And as the lid of Pandora’s box was opened, letting out evil on the
world, so with the opening of the door Jessie let in love and pain:
Those kinsfolk twain.
On the threshold confronting her stood a young man of perhaps four and
twenty, and if you had searched New York over you could not have found
a more perfect specimen of manly grace, strength, and beauty.
Tall, athletic, with fine, clear-cut features, eyes like deep,
blue pools under thick-fringed lashes, brown, clustering locks of
silken gloss and softness, he was a man to look at twice with frank
admiration, and when you added to nature’s gifts the best efforts of
the tailor, a man to set any girl’s heart throbbing wildly in her
breast.
“I wish to see Madame Barto, please,” he said, in a voice of such
strong agitation that Jessie looked at him in wonder at the deep pallor
of his handsome young face and the lines of pain between his knitted
brows.
“I will tell madame,” she said, leaving him in the anteroom, walking
impatiently up and down.
Madame was deeply interested in her detective story, and she yawned
impatiently, saying:
“Tell him I’m engaged with a caller, and will be at leisure in about
ten minutes.”
“But he is in a hurry, and in some great trouble, madame. You could
read it in his face and his voice, so strained and tremulous, poor
fellow!” cried Jessie warmly.
Madame laughed heartlessly:
“Oh, I know the type! Jealous young fool, just had a quarrel with his
sweetheart and wants to find out if she will ever make it up with him!
Let him wait. Suspense will cool his temper. Meantime, I must have ten
minutes to finish this thrilling chapter! Go!” turning eagerly to her
book again.
The girl hurried back to the caller, who was pacing impatiently up and
down the room just as she had left him.
“Madame Barto will be at leisure in ten minutes,” she said gently,
sitting down to her work again, while the young fellow went to the
window and drummed a restless tattoo on the pane.
Jessie’s fingers had grown suddenly tremulous, and the color flushed up
in her young face, for through her drooping lids she felt him gazing at
her with suddenly aroused attention.
And one looking once at Jessie Lyndon could not help looking twice.
Of that rarest, most exquisite type, a dark-eyed blonde, she was
possessed of most alluring beauty that not even want and poverty had
sufficed to dim.
A little above medium height, slight and graceful, with perfect
features, an oval face, a skin as delicate as a rose leaf, pouting,
crimson lips, large, dark, haunting eyes, and a mass of curling golden
hair, she would enchant any lover of beauty.
The young man, after watching her in blended admiration and curiosity
several minutes, suddenly exclaimed:
“Excuse me, are you Madame Barto’s daughter?”
Jessie lifted those large, dark, haunting eyes to his face in wonder,
answering:
“No, I am an orphan girl--living with madame and working for her
because I have no home nor friends.”
The pathos of the low-spoken words went to his heart, and his voice
grew soft with sympathy as he said:
“My name is Frank Laurier. May I know yours?”
“It is Jessie Lyndon,” she replied, dropping her eyes with a deepening
blush at his eager glance.
“A pretty name. I should like to know you better, Miss Lyndon. Will
you take a little drive with me in the park some afternoon?”
She started in such surprise that the sewing fell from her little,
trembling hands.
“Sir, I--I----” she faltered confusedly.
He smiled at her dismay, and added eagerly:
“No, no, I don’t mean to be impertinent. I would like the pleasure of a
drive with you, and would return you safe to madame afterward. Please
say you will accept my invitation,” he pleaded, his dark-blue eyes
shining with a light that sent a sweet, warm thrill through her heart
like a burning arrow--the flame-tipped arrow of love.
She grew dizzy with the thought of driving with him in the park--she,
little Jessie Lyndon, poor, obscure, friendless, to be chosen by this
splendid young exquisite, it was too good to be true.
“Will you go--to please me!” pleaded the musical, manly voice, and she
murmured tremulously:
“I--would--go--if madame----”
“Leave that to me. I will coax her,” he said radiantly, as a little
tinkle of the bell summoned him to the fortune teller.
CHAPTER IV. THE WINNING OF A HEART.
Jessie set some very bad stitches in madame’s ruffling the next half
hour, for her slender fingers trembled with the quick beating of her
heart.
She had had her shy dreams of a lover, like other girls, and now they
seemed about to become blissful reality.
Could it be he had fallen in love with her? This rich, handsome young
man--in love with the face that she could not help knowing was very
fair. Madame must be mistaken thinking that his strange agitation
came from a quarrel with his sweetheart. He could not have had any
sweetheart, surely.
Her dark eyes beamed with joy, her cheeks glowed crimson as a sea
shell, and her heart throbbed wildly with suspense. Madame Barto came
in presently with the young man, and said blandly:
“I have consented to your taking an hour’s drive in the park with this
gentleman, my dear, if you wish.”
“Let it be this afternoon. I will call for you promptly at four
o’clock,” he added, smiling at her as he bowed himself out.
Madame Barto laughed knowingly, and exclaimed:
“You pretty child, you are fortunate to have Frank Laurier pay you such
attention. He is well-born, and rolling in wealth. Your dark eyes have
turned his head! Hark, the bell again!” and she retreated quickly to
her parlor.
Jessie hurried to the door, and again her unconscious hand opened the
door to destiny.
A beautiful brunette of about twenty, richly gowned, and with an
imperious air, entered the hall, and said curtly:
“I wish to see Madame Barto quickly.”
Jessie carried the message, and said:
“This young lady looks as pale and agitated as the young man who has
just left.”
“Oh, it’s another love scrape, I suppose. That’s what usually brings
them here! Well, you may send her in at once!”
The moment that the beautiful brunette found herself alone with Madame
Barto she exclaimed breathlessly:
“Just now as I was passing in my carriage I saw a young man I
know--Frank Laurier--leaving this house. Did he come to have his
fortune told, or--or--to see that lovely girl that admitted me?”
Madame answered demurely:
“To have his fortune told, of course. In the lines of his hand I found
a broken engagement, and he wished to know if it would ever be renewed.”
“And you told him----” eagerly.
“I beg pardon. I cannot disclose the secrets of my customers,” madame
returned, rather stiffly, as she bent over the jeweled hand her
customer had just ungloved.
A bursting sigh heaved the young girl’s breast, and she cried
plaintively:
“Quick! What do you see?”
“Ah, how strange! I see in your hand, also, a broken engagement!” she
exclaimed, in surprise.
“Yes, yes--now, tell me, will we ever make it up, our foolish quarrel!”
cried the girl wildly.
Madame answered deliberately:
“The fates are against it. I see here that your path will be crossed by
a charming rival, who will lure his heart away!”
The girl snatched her hand away and arose, furious with passion, crying:
“Woe be unto that girl! She had better never been born than come
between me and my lover!”
“There are other men to love you!” consoled madame.
“What do I care for them? I want only him! And I have been so foolish,
I have driven him from me! But no one else shall have him! I swear it!”
cried the brunette, her dark eyes flashing wildly, as she paid the
fortune teller, adding, “Come, tell me all you told Frank Laurier, and
all this is yours!” and she held out a roll of bank notes.
Madame was not proof against the golden bribe, so she answered:
“I told him the engagement would most likely never be renewed--that
a lovely blonde was fated to come between them and cause much
unhappiness.”
“Let her beware!” hissed the beautiful girl, under her breath, as
madame took up her hand again, saying:
“You have much to console you for a single disappointment in love. You
are beautiful and rich, and you can have great success as an actress if
you wish to----”
“That is an old story. I do not wish to hear any more--not that I
believe what you have told me! It is all jargon--he shall make up with
me!” muttered the proud, beautiful creature, tearing her hand from
madame’s, and flinging out of the room in a rage.
As Jessie opened the door for her exit she gave the girl one keen,
disdainful glance, whispering to herself like one distraught:
“A lovely blonde! But she shall rue the day she comes between us!”
She swept out of the house like a beautiful fury, and Jessie sighed.
“She must be very unhappy in spite of her silks and jewels!”
Then she forgot the haughty beauty in tender thoughts of the man who
had preceded her--“my lover” she already called him softly to herself.
Ah, they give their faith too oft,
To the careless wooer;
Maidens’ hearts are always soft,
Would that men’s were truer!
It seemed long to Jessie till four o’clock sounded, though she was kept
busy with the customers coming and going all day, eager to know their
fate and fortune from the palmist.
But at last business hours were over, and Jessie and her employer
lunched frugally, after which the madame said kindly:
“Now you may get ready for your drive with Mr. Laurier, for it is on
the stroke of four o’clock.”
There was no getting ready for a girl who possessed but one gown,
except to bathe her face and hands and rearrange her wealth of
sunshiny tresses in the loose plait in the back, then affected by girls
of her age. This done, Jessie placed on her charming head the black
sailor hat madame had bought her, while she sighed to herself:
“I fear my dress is not fine enough for a drive in the park with such a
grand, rich gentleman as Mr. Laurier. Perhaps his fashionable friends
will laugh at me. I wonder why he cares to take me with him like this,
when he could have his pick of grand, rich girls like the one that came
to have her fortune told this morning!”
The bell clanged loudly, and she flew with a beating heart to the door,
her cheeks glowing, her eyes shining with the tenderest love light.
She had not the slightest doubt but that it was Frank Laurier waiting
outside.
She opened the door quickly, with a smile of welcome on her coral lips.
Oh, how quickly the glad smile faded when she saw instead the young man
who had recommended her to this place but yesterday--the dispossess
agent.
He was dressed very fine in a loud, flashy style, and smiled
patronizingly at lovely Jessie, exclaiming:
“Ah! Miss Jessie, how sweet you look. That new dress is very becoming.
Now, don’t you feel grateful to me for getting you this nice place with
my aunt? I didn’t tell you Madame Barto is my aunt, did I? My name is
Carey Doyle, and I came to take you for a nice little walk, if you will
go with me.”
“I--I--thank you, but--I have an engagement,” Jessie faltered, drawing
back in secret disgust from her bold admirer.
“Well, you may break that engagement, my pretty little Jessie, for I’m
bound to have you for my little sweetheart, I swear, and you shall
give me a kiss to seal the bargain!” protested Carey Doyle, crowding
her to the wall and throwing his arms around her slender waist despite
her cries and struggles in his effort to press a kiss on the pouting,
scarlet lips.
But in the excitement of his entrance they had forgotten to close the
door, and Frank Laurier, bounding up the steps, took in directly the
situation.
The next moment he had wrenched the burly wretch away from Jessie, and
thrust him by force down the steps, aiding his progress by a kick as he
exclaimed:
“Take that for insulting the young lady!”
CHAPTER V. THE FIRST KISS.
Pale and trembling from her fright, Jessie leaned against the wall when
Frank Laurier returned to her, jaunty and debonair, saying lightly:
“I have pitched the bold fellow down the steps, and he has gone off out
of the way. Why, how pale and ill you look! Were you so much frightened
of a kiss?”
“Yes--from that wretch!” she faltered, and his deep-blue eyes laughed
at her quizzically, and with something like daring in them as he led
her out to the pavement to an elegant little trap, and, taking up the
reins, drove off in great style for the park.
Jessie’s heart throbbed with pride and joy, but she still trembled
violently from the struggle with Doyle.
She half sobbed:
“Oh, I never can thank you enough for driving him away! If he had
kissed me--oh, I should have died of disgust!”
“Died of a kiss, ha, ha!” laughed the young man gayly, so amused at the
idea that it took firm hold of his memory, to be recalled at a fateful
aftertime.
“Have you never been kissed by a young man, then, little Jessie?” he
added, still laughing.
“Oh, no, no, never!” blushing deeply.
“Then he will be a lucky young fellow who gets the first kiss from you!
I wonder who he will be! Can you guess?”
The great, dark eyes stole a shy glance at him under the drooping
lashes, as she whispered demurely:
“Only the man I shall marry!”
“Oh, indeed!”
Did he think she was chaffing him, or coquettishly daring him, or what?
It is certain he was in a reckless, flippant mood, and that swift
glance of hers warmed his blood like wine. They were in the park now,
driving under the shadow of some autumn-colored trees, and all in a
flash his arm slipped round her waist, the brown head bent over the
golden one.
Two faces bent--
Bent in a swift and daring dream,
An ecstasy of trembling bliss,
And sealed together in a kiss.
She did not struggle, sweet Jessie, against this bold caress, simply
yielded to it with a delirious throb of joy, letting his lips drain the
sweetness of hers unhindered, as a bee sips the sweets of the rose, her
thrilling form resting quiescent against the arm that clasped her close
to his heart. When he released her, neither spoke a word, Jessie sat
very still, her form inclined slightly toward him, her eyes downcast
and shining, her cheeks warmly flushed, her moist lips tremulous, her
bosom heaving with emotion, a lovely picture of girlish tenderness on
which the young man’s eyes rested with pleasure.
He touched up the sleek, black ponies with the whip, and directly
they were borne into the thick of the crowd that made the beautiful
drives a gay, changeful panorama of fine horses, smart turnouts, and
magnificently dressed women.
Frank Laurier blent readily with the animated crowd, sitting erect
with a very pale face, compressed lips, and eyes that glittered with
a blue fire as he swept them eagerly and restlessly over the passing
faces, returning salutations every moment or so, and seemingly
almost forgetting the girl by his side in some secret, overmastering
excitement.
As for her, if she could have thought of anything but that kiss and the
bliss of his nearness, she would have begun to feel out of place in her
cheap, simple dress there in the moving throng of richly garbed women,
whose glances rested in wonder on the fair face and cheap attire of the
girl by Laurier’s side. She did not, indeed, guess how different she
looked from the others, or how very strange it was for a man in his
position to run the gantlet of all those curious, surprised eyes--he,
one of the fashionable four hundred, with that little working girl by
his side.
If the innocent child gave a thought to the incongruity, she only felt
it as a tribute of his regard for her.
She felt an exquisite pleasure in thus being exhibited at his side
to the habitués of his particular world, and did not realize the
strangeness of his inattention to herself, or the eagerness of his
excited glance as it roved from carriage to carriage filled with fair
faces and bright, sparkling eyes, as if in restless search for some one.
At last!
Jessie, close to his side, felt the young man give a quick start of
surprise and emotion, at the same moment lifting his hat with a low
bow.
She saw passing them on the drive a splendid, low victoria, containing
two handsome, elegantly dressed ladies, one past the first blush of
girlhood, the other--oh!--the dark beauty of this morning who had come
to Madame Barto’s to know her fate and fortune!
Jessie’s dark, uplifted eyes met and held for a moment the flashing
orbs of the beautiful brunette, and all in a moment she felt as if
she were withering in the heat of some desert simoom, so fierce and
malevolent was that look that seemed to scorch her very soul.
She thought with a thrill of nameless fear:
“The beautiful stranger hates me!--I wonder why!”
But the next moment the fear was blotted out in a new terror.
No one could ever tell what frightened Frank Laurier’s spirited ponies,
but just as they passed the victoria they bolted wildly and ran away
in spite of his close grip on the reins, creating a terrible panic and
confusion, and barely missing a collision with another carriage.
CHAPTER VI. FATE’S DECREE.
If Jessie had turned her fair head to look back as she drove off so
triumphantly with her handsome escort, she would have seen Carey Doyle
scrambling up from the gutter where he had landed after his animated
encounter with Laurier, and shaking his fist after her malevolently,
while curses low and deep shrilled over his lips, and his eyes blazed
with a baleful light that boded no good to those who had aroused his
jealous anger.
Brushing the soil of the gutter from his flashy suit, he shambled
across the pavement and back into the house from which he had been so
vigorously ejected.
Madame Barto herself met him on the threshold, and drew him in,
exclaiming hoarsely:
“Why, Carey, what is the meaning of this? I was just coming into the
hall to see Jessie off on her drive, when I beheld her struggling in
your arms, and the next moment Mr. Laurier grasped you and sent you
spinning down the steps like a top!”
“Laurier! Is that his name, curse him?” grumbled Doyle, rubbing his
knee which seemed to have been crippled by the fall, and continuing
excitedly, “It was this way, Aunt Barto: I fell in love with pretty
little Jessie the minute I clapped my eyes on her yesterday, the
beggarly little minx, and when I did her the good turn to send her
to you, of course I meant to have my innings for the good deed. This
afternoon I spruced up in my very best and came to take her for a
walk, but as soon as I came in and asked her, she tossed up her yellow
head like a princess and said she had another engagement. My temper
flared up and I said she should go with me and give me a kiss into the
bargain, but when I grabbed her she fought like a little cat, and then
that dandy rushed in like a whirlwind, caught me up with the strength
of ten men and pitched me down the steps, rolling me into the gutter
and nearly breaking every bone in my body, ugh!” with another groan.
“But, Carey, I thought you were courting that little Jewess, Yetta
Stein.”
“So I am, and have bought the ring, but it’s all up with that since
I’ve seen Jessie. Besides, Yetta’s family were bent on making me
embrace the Jewish religion before the knot was tied, so I can refuse
to do it and break off that way.”
“You mean to say you’ll throw over the match with the rich pawnbroker’s
daughter for the sake of this beggar, Jessie?”
“Yes, I will. I wasn’t thinking at first of marriage, only having some
good times with her, but now that dandified Samson has showed up I’ll
take her from him if I can, just to break his heart as he tried to
break my neck. Curse him!”
“Oh, pshaw, Carey, it’s nonsense of you to think of competing with
a rich young millionaire like Frank Laurier. Why, he never saw her
before to-day, and he must have become quite fascinated with her at
first sight, for he invited her to drive with him in the park this
afternoon.”
Carey Doyle shook his fist and raved impatiently:
“Thunderation! I say he shall not! I’ll follow them to the park,
frighten his horses, and make them run away and break both the
upstarts’ necks.”
“What good would that do, you foolish fellow? Better dismiss them both
from your mind and stick to Yetta.”
“I won’t, so there! I swear to have Jessie Lyndon, by hook or crook!”
“You cannot succeed. I have read both their hands, and if the science
of palmistry is true, which I firmly believe, those two, Laurier, the
millionaire, and Jessie, the little working girl, are meant for each
other by fate.”
“Bah, curse palmistry! Didn’t you read my hand and tell me a pack of
lies?”
“No, I told you that a prison yawned for you, and that only a lawyer’s
quibble would be able to save your neck from the gallows. I begged you
to restrain your evil propensities and try to avert the disaster if you
could! And I read all this written in your hand as plain as print,”
returned the fortune teller solemnly, with full faith in her art; but,
with an oath of incredulous scorn, her nephew limped heavily out of the
house.
CHAPTER VII. THE BEAUTIFUL RIVALS.
When the beautiful brunette in her drive through the park met Jessie
Lyndon riding by the side of Frank Laurier, all the blood in her veins
seemed momentarily to turn to ice in the shock of surprise, and then to
burn like liquid fire under the impulse of jealous rage.
If a look could have killed, the fierce gleam of her eyes must have
slain her fair rival instantly, as by a lightning flash!
Then all at once something terrible happened.
Frank Laurier’s gayly prancing horses suddenly snorted with fear and
rage, and bounded forward so swiftly that he lost his grip on the
reins, having been momentarily unstrung by a meeting he had anticipated
ever since entering the park.
A dreadful panic ensued on the crowded driveway.
The air was filled with shouts and cries that only maddened the frantic
steeds dashing madly forward without control, for all Laurier’s efforts
to regain his reins were fruitless, and, leaning too far forward, he
was jerked violently to one side and thrown from the vehicle out upon
the ground, leaving Jessie alone, clinging desperately to the seat, her
lovely face convulsed with terror, her dark eyes dilated with fear and
dim with raining tears, a picture of beauty and distress, while her
frightened shrieks rang wildly on the air.
Another harrowing moment, and the anguished voice was hushed, the
sweet eyes closed, the throbbing heart stilled! In their mad rush
trying to evade capture, the horses collided with a tree, shattering
the light vehicle, and hurling the young girl out upon the grass. All
white and unconscious, she lay there, a thin stream of blood trickling
down her temple where a stone had grazed it and staining the gold of
her hair with crimson.
A sympathetic crowd soon gathered around, exclaiming in wonder and pity
at her girlish beauty and her sorrowful plight.
But in a minute a light dogcart that had swiftly followed the runaways
was reined in upon the spot, and a young man sprang quickly from it,
advancing on the scene, while he cried with an air of authority:
“Stand back, everybody, and give her air!”
“Who is she? Who is she?” rang on every side, and the young man, who
was no other than Carey Doyle, answered impudently:
“She is my little sister Jessie, and I would like to take her home, if
you people will give me room to pass!”
Before his impatient show of authority, every one stupidly gave way,
and, lifting her carefully in his arms, Carey Doyle placed Jessie in
the dogcart, while he muttered exultantly to himself:
“Ah, my scornful little beauty, you are in my power now, and I will pay
you well for your fine airs as well as for the kick that rich fool gave
me!”
He was about to leap into the cart when an elegant victoria drove up,
in which sat two very handsome women. One of them, the youngest,
leaned forward and called him to her side.
Flashing her great eyes imperiously at the impatient young man, she
whispered eagerly:
“What is she to you?”
He muttered curtly:
“My sweetheart!”
“Ah!” she murmured joyfully, and added softly: “I saw you come up
behind them and frighten his horses with the lash. Why did you do it?”
His coarse face was scowling as he answered sullenly:
“She went with him against my will, and I was furious enough to kill
them both!”
“Do not be afraid of me--I will not betray you unless you disobey my
orders. Listen: He is my lover, and she is trying to lure him from me.
It is your task to keep them apart, and if they ever meet again, I will
denounce you for this crime. You understand?”
“Yes, and will obey!” he returned, just as the other lady leaned across
the seat, saying anxiously:
“What does he say about the young girl? Is she injured much?”
Carey Doyle answered quickly:
“Only a scratch on the temple and a fainting spell, madame. I’ll take
her home fast as I can, and she will soon be all right,” and he leaped
into the cart.
“I hope so,” she said kindly, and, as he drove away, she said to her
companion:
“What an exquisitely lovely face the poor girl has! And what beautiful
sunny hair, so fine and curly! I wonder who she is, Cora, and where
Frank happened to make her acquaintance?”
“I’ll tell you all I know when we get home,” the young lady answered,
frowning darkly at the memory of that morning’s rencontre at Madame
Barto’s with lovely Jessie.
She thought viciously:
“That old witch lied to me--she knew he was there to see the girl, but
she feared to own the truth to me. But I shall have an ally now in the
man who carried her off this evening, and woe to him if he breaks faith
with me!”
CHAPTER VIII. “SHE SHALL BE MINE?”
With an evil smile on his face, Carey Doyle whipped up the horse and
drove swiftly back to his aunt’s house, his eyes gloating on the pale,
unconscious beauty of Jessie’s face as it lay across his knee where he
had carefully placed it.
The man’s heart was aroused as it had never been before by this lovely
girl, and he vowed to himself that she should become his own.
In the gray dusk of the November day he carried her into the house, to
the dismay of Madame Barto, who exclaimed:
“So you were as good as your word! You tried to kill the poor child!”
Carey Doyle denied the impeachment with the greatest sang-froid,
protesting that on the contrary he had saved the poor girl’s life in a
runaway accident.
“And as soon as you bring her around I want to have a serious talk with
you,” he said, as she turned him out of the little hall bedroom where
Jessie lay on her narrow cot.
He waited impatiently in the parlor about half an hour before she
reappeared, saying:
“She was hard to revive, and hardly knows what has happened to her yet,
so I just gave her a sedative and left her to fall asleep while I come
to hear what you have to say, Carey.”
“Well, as I told you just now, Laurier’s horses bolted in the park and
ran away, pitching him out, and leaving Jessie in. I happened to be
looking on and stopped the team and saved her life.”
“Good!” said the fortune teller approvingly, and he continued:
“While I took Jessie into my dogcart to bring her home, two swell
Fifth Avenue ladies had Laurier put into a carriage and taken home.
Now, aunt, I want you to help me to win Jessie Lyndon, and to give up
all such notions as Fate having cut her out for Mr. Laurier. It isn’t
likely that he means fair by Jessie, anyway; rich young men don’t often
marry poor girls, you know; while I’ll make her my wife at any moment
you persuade her to have me.”
“How am I to manage it?”
“Tell her that Laurier was killed in the accident, and keep her a
prisoner in her room until she consents to marry me.”
“A risky game--and what am I to gain by it, anyway?” asked madame
significantly.
Doyle laughed coarsely:
“Well, I’ve helped you often enough in risky games, so it’s your turn
now. You just help me in this, or I’ll split on you. See? And you know
what I can say and do if I want to. But you do the right thing and
I will, too. Here’s some money, but mind you do the right thing, or
you’ll be sorry. I’ll go now and call to-morrow evening to see how our
plan works,” he said, rising to go.
Alas, poor little Jessie, surrounded by cruel plotters and a jealous
foe, it might have been better if she had died in the heavy sleep that
lulled her senses that dreary night rather than awaken to the sorrow
of the next day.
When she sighed and opened her heavy-lidded eyes again, the fortune
teller stood by the bed, looking down at her with a penetrating gaze.
“Ah, what a long sleep you’ve had, child. Do you feel better?” she
asked.
“Better!” cried Jessie, then a wave of memory swept over her, and she
moaned, “Oh, how terrible it was! How came I here? And he--oh, where is
he?”
Madame took her hand and answered solemnly:
“You may well ask, where is he? Poor child, how can I tell you
the dreadful truth? But you will have to bear it. He--poor Frank
Laurier--was killed stone-dead!”
A shriek rang through the room--long, loud, heart-rending!--then Jessie
lay like one dead before the heartless woman.
Madame Barto would never forget that day.
Jessie Lyndon’s grief for Frank Laurier when she recovered from her
long swoon was indeed heart-rending.
In vain madame expostulated:
“Why should you take on so? You never saw him till yesterday!”
“Oh, I cannot understand it, but I know that he was as dear to me as if
I had known him a year!”
“A young girl must not give her heart unsought.”
“Oh, madame, I did not. Oh, my heart!”
The girl flung herself back on the pillows in an agony of grieving that
strangled words on her lips, and it was hours later when she asked
plaintively:
“Where have they taken him?”
Madame answered soothingly:
“Two lady friends of his were in the park when he was killed--Mrs.
Dalrymple and Miss Ellyson of Fifth Avenue--and they had him conveyed
to their home.”
Jessie instantly remembered the ladies she had seen in the victoria,
especially the dark, brilliant beauty who had frowned at her so blackly.
She gasped faintly:
“Oh, I must see him once more before he is hidden from me forever in
the cold, dark grave!”
“Impossible!” cried madame sternly, and though the half-distraught girl
knelt to her in an agony of entreaty, she still refused her prayer.
Indeed, she could do no less, seeing what a falsehood she had told.
Then Jessie grew angry and desperate.
“You are wicked and heartless to tell me I cannot see him once before
he is buried! I defy you! I will go!” she cried, with a passion of
which madame had not believed her capable.
The dark, dreamy eyes flashed defiance out of the deadly, pale face,
alarming Madame Barto so that she snatched up Jessie’s clothing and
bore them away in triumph, exclaiming:
“There, now, I don’t think you will run off to Fifth Avenue in your
nightgown, miss!”
And, locking the door on the outside, she left the poor girl to her
fate, forgetting that in Jessie’s closet there still remained hanging
the cheap, threadbare garments she had worn when she came.
But Jessie remembered, and she quickly put them on again, the torn
calico gown, the broken shoes, the old sailor hat--then she drew aside
the curtain and looked out, starting to find that the gray November day
was near its close and the sky overcast with threatening snow clouds.
How long it seemed since yesterday! He had been twenty-four hours dead.
Dead! Oh, how impossible it seemed for such youth and strength and
beauty to be so quickly annihilated. His kiss still burned like fire on
her lips and thrilled warmly through her veins.
“Oh, I must see him once again!” she sobbed, and pushed up the sash and
measured the distance to the ground with frantic eyes.
It was only a story and a half, and a neglected awning rope fortunately
hung from her own window. With a low cry of joy, Jessie caught it and
knotted it to the window shutter. When it grew a little darker she
climbed up into the window and swung herself out, tremblingly, on the
frail support.
Halfway down to the ground the rope broke with her weight, and gave
her a fall to the pavement, but the distance was not great, and with a
little, stifled moan of pain, she dragged herself up from the ground
and hurried off through the darkness, sobbing:
“I know where Fifth Avenue is, and I will go there if it kills me. But
I hope that proud, beautiful lady will not be there to wither me with
her angry eyes!”
CHAPTER IX. AN HOUR TO BE REMEMBERED.
The Fifth Avenue mansion where Mrs. Dalrymple lived was little less
than a palace as she was little less than a princess, if royal beauty,
royal wealth, and almost royal state could count. Her parents were
dead, she was mistress of herself and many millions, and at barely
thirty-three, while looking scarcely twenty-five, had scores of hearts
at her feet from which to choose, if that way lay her happiness.
Some said that she had been widowed young, others that she was
divorced, some that her heart was buried in a grave, others that she
was a man hater. No one ever heard her own that either was true. She
simply smiled and went her way, heedless of praise or blame.
That autumn evening when she swept down the grand staircase into the
brilliantly lighted hall, her rich violet velvet robe trailing behind
her, her jewels flashing like stars, she heard an altercation at the
door. Her pompous servant was saying harshly:
“You cannot come in here; no, indeed, there’s no use begging me, I tell
you. Go around to the servants’ entrance!”
Mrs. Dalrymple stopped short, listening to the low, pleading, girlish
voice that half sobbed:
“I tell you I’m not a beggar! Oh, do let me in to see Mr. Laurier just
once more!”
The man was about to laugh rudely just as his mistress came up behind
him, exclaiming in her sweet, frosty voice:
“What is the trouble here?”
The man stepped back in dismay at the question, and a girlish form
rushed past him and knelt at the lady’s feet.
It was Jessie Lyndon in her tattered garments, on which clung flecks
of melting snow, her face drawn and pallid with misery, the tears half
frozen on her cheeks, her form trembling with weariness, her beauty
half obscured by her miserable plight, as strange a contrast to that
palatial scene and the queenly woman before her as the mind could well
imagine.
She knelt before the startled lady with upraised, pleading eyes and
pathetic clasped hands, imploring:
“Oh, madam, forgive me this intrusion, but my heart is breaking! Oh,
will you let me see Mr. Laurier once before he is lost to me forever!”
“Child, this is very strange!”
“Oh, madam, let me explain! I have a right to see him. We were out
driving. There was such a dreadful accident! Oh, you can see for
yourself how my heart is breaking!” wailed the poor girl, losing all
control over her emotion, and sobbing outright.
Mrs. Dalrymple cried out in the greatest wonder:
“Why you are the little girl that was with Frank in the runaway
accident yesterday, are you not? How very, very strange you look and
act, poor child! You should not come here to see Mr. Laurier, you know.
It is not proper to do so, and, besides----”
Jessie interrupted wildly:
“Oh, madam, do not scold me, I pray you. I am wretched enough already.
Is there not a woman’s heart beating under your silks and jewels the
same as under my rags? Then pity me, I implore you, and grant the boon
I crave! Let me see him but once.”
“All this is very strange to me, child, and for my life I cannot
understand why you should be so anxious to see Frank Laurier, but I
cannot resist your frenzied appeals, they touch me too deeply. He is
in there. Go in and speak to him!” waving her jeweled hand toward the
closed portières of a room on the left of the magnificent corridor.
With a strangled sob, Jessie sprang toward the curtains. Impelled
by sympathy she could not understand, Mrs. Dalrymple followed her
footsteps.
Frank Laurier was lying at ease on a sofa with one foot on a
cushion--having sustained a severe sprain to one ankle that would keep
him Mrs. Dalrymple’s welcome guest for several days. Some strips of
court plaster on the side of his face slightly marred his beauty to an
ordinary observer, but not to Jessie Lyndon, who, advancing at first
with slow, awed footsteps, suddenly stopped, stared, then flew across
the room to the sofa, murmuring in joyful incredulity:
“Alive! Alive!”
She sank on one knee, and pressed her lips tenderly on one hand that
was thrown carelessly above his head.
“Why, that wicked woman told me you were dead! And I--I----” the sweet
voice faltered.
A low, derisive laugh rang on the air, and, lifting her eyes, Jessie
saw that they were not alone.
It was Cora Ellyson who had laughed, as with flashing eyes she pushed
Jessie away from Frank’s side.
“Go away, you bold girl, how dare you force your way in here to annoy
Mr. Laurier?” she cried angrily.
“Annoy him; I--it is not true! Do I annoy you?” pleaded Jessie
tremulously, turning to the young man whose handsome face twitched with
pain as he answered impatiently:
“My dear Miss Lyndon, this is very strange on your part! To come
bursting into the room like this. What is the matter?”
To the day of his death he would never forget what happened in that
room after his cold and haughty reception of little Jessie.
CHAPTER X. THE ENDING OF HER LOVE DREAM.
Laurier, startled, dismayed, and angered by Jessie’s sensational
entrance, had spoken to her more harshly and hastily than if he had
taken second thought.
The hateful, mocking laugh from Cora Ellyson accentuated his words, and
Mrs. Dalrymple, who had paused just inside the door, gazed in wonder at
the strange scene.
Instantly Jessie sprang to her feet. She stood still a moment, looking
at him with wounded love, doubt, fear, incredulity, all struggling
together in her great, soft, dark eyes like a dying fawn’s.
Again Cora Ellyson laughed, low and mockingly--a hateful, significant
laugh that made Frank Laurier exclaim rebukingly:
“Hush, Cora, you are unjust!”
Then he looked at Jessie pityingly. He wished that he were not lame
that he might fly from the room to avoid the plaintive reproaches of
the one girl and the jealous fury of the other. Mrs. Dalrymple, who had
drawn gradually nearer and nearer, was listening with a face drawn with
deep emotion, but again Cora Ellyson’s scornful laugh rang through the
room, and before Jessie could speak again, she cried mockingly:
“Pshaw, Frank, why not tell her the plain truth as you were telling me
before she came in when we made up our silly lovers’ quarrel? Listen,
Miss Lyndon; it was this way.”
“Hush, Cora, do not wound her so!” he entreated, but she advanced and
stood close by him, silencing him by an imperious gesture, her rich
silken robes rustling, her jewels flashing, her proud, dark head lifted
haughtily as she surveyed her shrinking rival, poor Jessie, in her
worn, shabby garments and broken shoes.
“It was this way, Miss Lyndon: Frank Laurier and I were plighted lovers
until three days ago, when we had a foolish little lovers’ quarrel and
parted, vowing never to meet again. But our wedding day was but a few
days off, and as soon as we separated both began to repent, but were
too proud to say so. Is not this true, Frank?”
“Yes--but do not wound the child’s heart by telling her the rest,” he
implored, almost inaudibly.
“Nonsense!” she answered lightly, and added: “This is the rest, Miss
Jessie Lyndon. Frank saw you, and, struck with your pretty face,
decided to pique me into a reconciliation by flirting with you. Hence
the drive in the park that resulted as he wished, in the making-up
of our little difference to-day, and I assure you that but for your
intrusion here this evening, he would never have given you another
thought!”
She ended with a little, tinkling laugh of triumphant scorn that fell
like hailstones on the heart she had crushed.
The cruel truth was out, and when the echo of that exultant laugh died
away there was a silence like death in the brilliant, sumptuous room.
Frank Laurier, with a low, inarticulate cry, tried to rise from his
recumbent position, scarcely knowing what to do, but his sweetheart’s
jeweled hand on his shoulder firmly pressed him back, while they gazed
in rising awe at Jessie Lyndon.
She stood among them a breathing statue of shame-stricken girlhood, the
hot color glowing in her cheeks, and mounting up to the roots of her
bright hair, her red lips parted and tremulous, the big tears hanging
like pearls on her lashes, her bosom rising and falling with emotion
beneath the shabby gown that could not hide the budding grace of her
perfect form.
This poor girl, so fair, so friendless, to whom no one spoke one word
of sympathy, so terribly alone among them all, what would she do?
For several moments she did not speak a word--she could not, for the
terrible, choking sensation in her throat, and the mad leaping of her
burdened heart in her breast--then, as the scarlet glow faded into
deadly pallor, she lifted her heavy eyes up to Cora Ellyson’s face.
“I cannot bear it, God forgive me!” she cried, and the little hand
pressed to her lips a tiny vial, then flung it down empty as she rushed
from the room, eluding the detaining hand Mrs. Dalrymple stretched
forth.
“She has taken poison! Follow, and bring her back!” shouted Frank
Laurier rising in alarm, then falling back with a groan on the sprained
foot that would not support his weight.
“Pshaw, she was only shamming!” his proud sweetheart answered coolly,
helping him back to his sofa, and bending to press a kiss on his brow.
But he did not notice the fond caress. He groaned in a sort of agony:
“My God, it is all my fault; I did not realize what I was doing! If
she dies, poor girl, it will lie at my door, her cruel fate.”
“Nonsense, Frank, it was not your fault, her making such a little fool
of herself, trying to catch a rich husband! Lie still, and compose
yourself! Aunt Verna will see about the silly creature!” drawing a
chair to his side and overwhelming him with attentions to banish Jessie
from his mind.
Meanwhile the shame-stricken, frantic girl had rushed past Mrs.
Dalrymple’s outstretched arms to the corridor, and darting past the
astonished servant, tore open the door, and disappeared in the gloom of
the stormy night.
“Follow her, and bring her back by force!” exclaimed his mistress, in
the wildest agitation.
“It is storming wildly, madam. The air is filled with snow, and it is
deep already,” the man objected.
“Go! Bring her back at once! I tell you go!” she stormed at him, and he
obeyed without further parley.
Then her writhing lips parted in incoherent words:
“Oh, God, this pain at my heart! That poor girl, she was so fatally
like my lost daughter, my stolen child, that I could scarcely refrain
from clasping her in my arms! Oh, if it should be my lost one! But,
no, she said that her mother was dead! Oh, why am I idling here? I
must telephone for a physician to be on hand when she is brought back.
Perhaps her sweet young life may be saved, and I will make it my care
henceforth for the sake of her haunting likeness to my lost darling!”
* * * * *
Poor Jessie had only carried out her intention on coming to see
Laurier, for life held so little charm for the unfortunate girl now
that all who loved her were dead that in desperation she had resolved
to end it all by suicide, that last resort of the wretched.
In the room she occupied at Madame Barto’s was a case of medicine, and
from it she had selected the tiny vial labeled “Poison,” and filled
with a dark liquid.
In her agony of shame it was worse to her than if Laurier had, indeed,
been dead. The dark unknown was welcome to her as the terrible present.
Penniless, friendless, with no one to turn to, she yet dared not go
back to Madame Barto, fearing alike her wrath at her escape, and
the persecutions of her hated nephew. Crushed beneath the burden of
unendurable despair, she drained the vial, and fled out into the night
and the storm to die.
The black night, inhospitable as the hearts she had left, greeted her
with storm and fury, driving her on before a furious gale that took
away her breath and tossed her to and fro, at last throwing her down
heavily, and striking her head against the curbing, so that in a minute
she became unconscious, and lay still at the mercy of the elements.
The icy wind shrieked above her, the snow fell in thick, white sheets
and wrapped her in a shroud of royal ermine, and thus she lay silent
and moveless for about a quarter of an hour before she was found by the
man Mrs. Dalrymple had sent to seek and bring her back.
She had barely gone half a square from the mansion, but in the stormy
gloom it was hard to find any one, and he was about to give up the
quest in despair of success when his foot stumbled against a soft body
under the snow.
With a startled cry he stooped down and dragged her up in his arms,
bearing her to a little distance, where a light gleamed through a
window. By its aid he saw that it was she whom he sought.
“But, poor little girl, she seems as dead as a door-nail! Howsomever,
I’ll carry her back to my mistress, dead or alive!” he muttered,
struggling on with his inert burden against the raging storm till he
gained the shelter of the mansion.
Mrs. Dalrymple was waiting in the wildest anxiety, the physician having
already arrived, and been told the meager story that a poor young girl
had attempted suicide and rushed out into the storm to die.
“I should like to see the vial and determine the nature of the poison,”
said Doctor Julian gravely, and he was keenly disappointed when Cora
Ellyson confessed that she had inadvertently trod on it and crushed it,
so that she had to call a servant to remove the fragments.
“That is very unfortunate, as a knowledge of the poison taken would
have materially assisted in finding the antidote,” he said, and
the servant was quickly summoned by his mistress to bring back the
fragments.
The answer was that they had been consumed in the kitchen range.
Directly afterward the girl’s stiffening body was brought in and
laid down upon the floor before their eyes--a hapless sight that
wrung anguished groans from Frank Laurier’s lips, though his proud
sweetheart looked on coldly and unmoved, perhaps secretly glad in her
heart of this calamity.
One glance at the pale, cold face in its frame of wet, disheveled gold,
and the physician said sadly:
“Poor child, I can do nothing. She is already dead!”
“Oh, no, no, no, do not say such dreadful words! She must not die!”
sobbed Mrs. Dalrymple, giving way to wild emotion as she knelt by
Jessie, tore open her gown, and felt eagerly for the heart.
“Oh, Doctor Julian, feel here! Is not there some slight pulsation?”
hopefully.
“Not the faintest, my dear madam. The deadly potion did its work
quickly. The lovely girl is dead! Ah, how remarkable!” bending with a
start to examine a mark on the young girl’s breast where it was exposed
by the open gown.
Doctor Julian was an old man, the family physician, and he added
surprisedly:
“See that red cross on her breast! It is precisely similar to your
family birthmark, and if I mistake not, you have one like it yourself!”
“Precisely similar, doctor, and on the same spot--oh, Heaven, how
strange this seems! My lost child--so cruelly stolen from me ere I had
given her any name but darling--had the same mark! What if--what if----
Oh, my brain reels with wild suspicion. Could it be----”
“Calm yourself, my dear madam. This may be but a coincidence! However,
it ought to be investigated to-morrow.”
“It shall be,” she sobbed, then started as Cora Ellyson cried
impatiently:
“Are you going to leave that dead girl lying there all night? I declare
I shall faint if she is not removed!”
“Cora!” expostulated her lover; but she shrugged her shoulders
haughtily.
Doctor Julian glanced at her in surprise, then said gently, to Mrs.
Dalrymple:
“What disposition will be made of the poor girl’s body?”
“It shall remain in my care, doctor, and the funeral shall be in my
charge from this house, and at my own expense,” she sobbed.
Cora Ellyson started forward indignantly, crying:
“Dear aunt, you surely forget that my wedding is the third day from
now. The girl shall not be buried from here. It would be unseemly amid
wedding gayeties!”
“The wedding must be postponed!” the proud woman sighed, lifting
Jessie’s cold little hand and pressing her lips upon it.
“It shall not. Postponements are unlucky!” Cora uttered angrily.
“Just a few days, dear--until next week, say,” whispered her lover, who
could scarcely turn his horrified gaze from that fair, dead face before
him to his pouting sweetheart.
He was recalling the words Jessie had used in speaking of Carey Doyle’s
frustrated attempt to kiss her lips:
“I should have died of disgust!”
How he had laughed at the idea of any one dying of a kiss, but looking
at that still form on the floor, he felt as if he had the brand of Cain
on his high, white brow.
“Her death lies at my door!” he thought, in a passion of remorse.
They bore Jessie tenderly from his presence to a beautiful white and
gold room near Mrs. Dalrymple’s own, and there the lady’s favorite
maid robed the lovely form for the grave in beautiful white robes fit
for a bride, selected from the wardrobe of her mistress. Then, laid
on a soft, white couch with her golden locks drifting about her like
sunshine on snow, and fragrant flowers between her waxen hands, she lay
like one asleep in her calm, unearthly beauty.
And by her side Mrs. Dalrymple kept lonely vigil, distracted by doubts
and fears lest this prove to be her own lost darling restored to her
only in death.
Toward midnight a stealthy figure glided in--Cora Ellyson, in a crimson
silk dressing gown with her raven hair streaming loose over her
shoulders.
“Aunt Verna, you will make yourself sick, staying up like this! And
what is the use?” remonstratingly.
There was no answer from the heavy-eyed woman brooding over the dead
girl’s couch, and Cora continued eagerly:
“I beg you to reconsider your decision. Send this body away to the
undertaker’s and let the funeral be from there, so that my wedding need
not be overshadowed by so evil an omen.”
“I cannot grant your request, Cora. The funeral will take place from
this house, and your wedding must be postponed,” came the sad but firm
reply.
“I tell you it shall not. I will not be disappointed for a hysterical
sentiment. This poor girl is nothing to you, nothing! I give you notice
that unless you do as I wish I will remove to-morrow to my Cousin van
Dorn’s and have my wedding from his house Thursday!”
“Please yourself, Cora, but do not presume to dictate to me! And now,
go; leave me, I prefer to be alone!” with a flash of spirit.
CHAPTER XI. A BREAKING HEART.
Madame Barto did not expect any customers the next morning; it was so
still, so dark and lowering after the night’s storm, but at ten o’clock
the bell clanged loudly and she admitted a beautiful, richly dressed
woman who said excitedly:
“No, I do not wish my fortune told, but I will pay you well for any
information about a young girl who has been living with you--Jessie
Lyndon.”
“She ran away from me last night, the little vixen, and I did not
discover it till this morning,” the fortune teller answered sullenly.
“Do not speak unkindly of the dead. Jessie Lyndon was found dead in the
snow by one of my servants last night, and she is at my house awaiting
burial,” was the startling reply.
“Good heavens! Poor little thing!” ejaculated Madame Barto, with a
touch of sympathy.
“I have come,” continued the lady, with a quivering lip, “to get all
the information possible about this young girl’s antecedents.”
“’Tis little I can give you, ma’am, in truth. She only stayed with me a
day or so, but I can give you the address of Mrs. Ryan, the woman who
brought her to me, and ’tis likely she can tell you all you want to
know, though I don’t think she has any folks rich enough to bury her,
poor thing, and, of course, she has no claim on me,” added Madame Barto
apprehensively.
The caller gave her a haughty glance.
“I am not looking for any one to pay Jessie Lyndon’s burial expenses,
my good woman,” she said freezingly; “Mrs. Ryan’s address, please, and
take this for your trouble,” pressing a gold piece into the ready palm,
and sweeping out to her waiting car.
“Whew! What a highflyer, to be sure! And liberal, too! I wish I knew
her name! There, she’s dropped a dainty handkerchief! Here ’tis in the
corner--Dalrymple! The same woman Carey told me about. I see how it
all happened now. She got out of the window, poor little Jessie, for,
after all, she was a sweet, pretty girl, and went to Fifth Avenue to
find the man she believed dead! Then the blizzard caught and killed her
in sight of the house! I’m free to own I am sorry, for I wished her no
harm, only when my nephew told me about Mr. Laurier’s angry sweetheart,
I thought just as well to keep Jessie out of his way for her own good.
Well, well, Carey will be coming presently, and what a fit he will be
in when he learns she is dead, poor Jessie Lyndon!”
Mrs. Dalrymple drove straight to Mrs. Ryan’s house, and found the good
little woman at home busy with her needle. From her she learned enough
to convince her that the hapless girl was no other than her lost child.
She stayed and listened to the woman’s harrowing story, and the tears
fell in torrents when she learned all that Jessie, brave little Jessie,
so lovely and so ill-fated, had suffered from the ills of poverty,
while her mother would have given all her millions to find her lost
child, her sole heiress.
All her pride gave way before the humble little woman, who had been
kind to the orphan girl, and she confessed the truth that she was
Jessie’s mother, the woman from whom an angry, unforgiving husband had
stolen away her heart’s idol, her little child.
Mrs. Ryan could not look into that proud, noble face, and believe she
was the bad woman Mrs. Godfrey suspected. Her kind heart went out to
her in sympathy, and she said:
“It’s been hard lines on yees both, lady, but yees can make it up to
bonny Jessie now!”
“Did I not tell you? Alas, she is dead, my darling!” And at that moving
story Mrs. Ryan’s heart was almost broken.
“You will come and see her, will you not? She looks like an angel, so
fair, so pure, so peaceful!” the bereaved mother cried, on leaving, and
in her gratitude for the woman’s kindness to Jessie she pressed on her
a sum of money that seemed like riches itself to the toil-worn creature
whose heart had kept warm and human through all the trials of pinching
poverty.
Mrs. Dalrymple hastened home and found Frank and Cora together, the
latter having just returned from arranging to celebrate her marriage at
her cousin’s home, instead of here. She was complaining most bitterly
to her lover of her aunt’s injustice, but he said impatiently:
“Cora, pray do not harp on this subject any more unless you would have
me believe you heartless!”
Her eyes flashed with resentment, but before she could utter the angry
reply that trembled on her lips, Mrs. Dalrymple swept into the room,
and between broken sobs, told them of her cruel discovery of her
child’s identity when all too late to save her life.
“Last night when she stood talking to you so sadly I was dazed,
confused, by a subtle something in her voice, glance, and gestures that
recalled the past,” she said. “At last it struck me with staggering
force that she reminded me of my divorced husband, while at the same
time she bore a startling resemblance to my lost child. I was struck
dumb with emotion, and could not move! Then that terrible thing
happened. You know the rest--how Doctor Julian found on her breast the
family birthmark. To-day it was easy to find the links in the chain
that proved her my own, so long lost to me, and found, alas, only
in--death!”
The pale, beautiful face drooped upon her breast in pitiful despair
as she cried: “May God send his curse upon the man who made my life
desolate, and robbed me of my child, my only comfort!”
Frank Laurier’s handsome face was pale with emotion as he faltered:
“Mrs. Dalrymple, I dare not ask you to forgive me for my share in your
grief, it is beyond pardon. She did not forgive me, nor can you, I
know. I feel that the sight of me must be hateful to you, so I shall
trespass no longer on your hospitality. I leave to-day, but I pray you
to believe that my undying remorse will be my bitterest punishment.”
She could well believe it from his pallid face and dejected mien, but
she could not bring the word forgive to her trembling lips. When she
remembered the previous night and the shame and pain of her hapless
child that had hurried her cruelly out of life she felt like crying
out upon him in mad resentment for what he had done.
As for Cora, she was stunned into silence by the strange story she had
heard.
She dared no longer inveigh against her aunt’s injustice. She could
only bow to the inevitable. But fully determined not to risk the evil
omen of a postponed marriage, she withdrew to her cousin’s house that
day after forcing herself to utter some meaningless expressions of
sympathy to the relative she was deserting in her hour of sorrow.
“You must forgive me, but dear Frank is so averse to a postponement,”
she twittered, and Mrs. Dalrymple did not contradict her, though she
knew it was not the truth.
She had seen within the last few hours a subtle change pass over the
young man.
From being so passionately in love with beautiful Cora that he was
willfully blind to her glaring faults, a chill seemed to have passed
over him, making him temporarily cold to the fascinating blandishments
of his triumphant betrothed.
Mrs. Dalrymple read in his sudden reserve and indifference that he
would not be averse to a postponement out of sympathy with the house of
mourning, but nothing was further from Cora Ellyson’s selfish thoughts.
Mrs. Dalrymple also knew something that Cora did not guess.
When the beautiful, white casket had been borne into the house some
time ago and Jessie’s still form was laid in it, her golden head
pillowed on fragrant flowers after pressing so many thorns in life,
Frank Laurier had gone on his crutch to the room, and spent half an
hour alone with the beautiful dead.
The mother, who watched him, herself unseen, had seen in his deep-blue
eyes, as they rested on her darling’s face, that look that cannot be
mistaken, the dawning of a great and silent love.
Cora Ellyson’s rival dead was more dangerous to her peace than in life.
In her grave she would hold the best part of the heart that Cora
claimed as all her own.
The bereaved mother had seen him press reverent lips on the shining
mass of golden hair, had heard him murmur solemnly: “Jessie, darling,
can you hear me pray for your forgiveness?”
CHAPTER XII. AN EVIL OMEN.
Thursday morning dawned fair and sunny with all traces of Tuesday
night’s storm swept away--the streets clean, the skies blue, the
air crisply cold--the day set for Jessie Lyndon’s funeral and Frank
Laurier’s wedding.
In the grand parlor of Mrs. Dalrymple’s home the dead girl lay like one
asleep, in a white casket banked with rarest flowers whose delicate
perfume pervaded the whole house. In yesterday’s newspapers a brief
announcement had been made:
“DIED.--Suddenly, at her mother’s residence, No. 1512A Fifth Avenue,
Tuesday evening, Darling, only daughter of Mrs. Verna Dalrymple.
“Friends and relatives of the family are respectfully invited to
attend the funeral services from the family residence, Thursday noon.
Interment at Greenwood.”
In other columns of the newspaper longer paragraphs were given to the
grand noon wedding of the young millionaire, Frank Laurier, to the
brilliant society belle and heiress, Miss Cora Ellyson. It would be a
grand church wedding and the floral decorations were superb, while the
trousseau, lately arrived from Paris, was simply magnificent. Pictures
of the prospective bride and groom, intertwined with true-lovers’
knots, were duly printed for the benefit of an admiring public.
As the hour of noon drew near, Mrs. Dalrymple’s house was filled with
sympathetic guests, to whose ears had floated rumors of the sad ending
of her long grief for her stolen child--recovered only in death. When
they saw Darling Dalrymple in her coffin--her mother had never given
her any name but Darling--they wept in sympathy with the bereaved heart
from whom this lovely treasure had been so cruelly wrested by the grim
King of Terrors.
The beautiful Episcopal service was read, the mother’s farewell kiss
pressed on the cold, white brow, the casket closed, and borne out to
the white-plumed hearse, the carriages were filled with the mother and
friends, and the solemn cortège moved away to Greenwood, where the grim
family vault had been opened to receive another scion of the old house
of Van Dorn, the fairest of all its fair daughters.
At the same time only a block away, on the same avenue, a bridal train
was leaving the Van Dorn mansion for the church.
Life and death jostling each other almost side by side!
In one carriage sat the bride, with her cousins, the Van Dorns, and her
dark, brilliant beauty was at its best, enhanced by the snowy bridal
robes and the joy that flashed from her eyes at the thought that she
would soon be the bride of the man she adored.
Laurier and his best man were to meet them at the church, the
bridegroom having recovered sufficiently from his sprain that he could
walk without a crutch.
In the sunshine of the brilliant day the two processions met and passed
each other, the bridal train and the funeral cortège--Cora going to
her bridal, her rival to her grave!
The bride’s eyes were riveted on the white, flower-banked casket, and
her florid color faded to ashen pallor while she shrank back shuddering:
“It is an evil omen to meet a corpse on the way to one’s wedding!”
“Do not give way to such fancies, dear,” Mrs. van Dorn answered
soothingly, but she also grew pale with superstition, though having
heard all about Jessie from Cora, she thought inwardly:
“Though it is evil-omened to meet a funeral on the way to one’s
wedding, yet I fancy Cora is more fortunate to meet her rival dead
than living. Though Frank Laurier treated that poor girl very badly, I
believe that a secret remorse is gnawing at his heart, and if she had
lived, who knows how it all might have turned out? Frank Laurier has
appeared very strange to me these past two days--pale, distrait, and
sad--the result of keen remorse, no doubt, but does he love Cora as
well as before, I wonder! This encounter with the dead girl has shaken
my nerves, and I feel uneasy. I wish the wedding was well over, and the
knot safely tied for Cora’s sake. I hope he will be sure to meet us
promptly at the church!”
CHAPTER XIII. FORSAKEN AT THE ALTAR.
Mrs. Dalrymple, throwing back her heavy veil for air, gasped with
surprise and wonder.
She could not have dreamed of seeing Frank Laurier at the funeral
services at the Van Dorn vault when it was the hour for his wedding at
old Trinity.
Yet there he stood in their midst, his handsome head bowed reverently,
his face pale, his eyes heavy with grief--he who should be so happy in
this his bridal hour!
Catching her startled glance, he moved to her side, whispering sadly:
“I could not stay away, but I shall be in time to meet Cora at Trinity.
Ah, how my heart aches with this cruel blow! Let me love you as a
son for her dear sake!”--he paused, with a long-drawn sigh, for the
venerable bishop was beginning the last sad rites: “Ashes to ashes,
dust to dust.”
Soon they had to come away and leave her there alone, sweet Jessie,
among her dead kindred, she whose brief life had been so sad and
lonely, ending with so cruel a tragedy.
So fare thee well, sweet friend of mine,
Veiled now from sight
By death’s dark night,
Thou givest back no word or sign.
I leave thee with the violets white,
By truth caressed,
In perfect rest,
And bid thee, dear, a fond good-night.
Frank Laurier, accompanied by his best man, Ernest Noel, returned to
their coupé, and outside the cemetery limits ordered the coachman to
proceed as fast as possible to old Trinity to meet the bridal party.
Noel thought that this attendance on a funeral in the very hour of his
marriage was a very strange freak on the part of his friend, and he was
puzzled yet more by the gravity and sadness of Laurier’s face as they
drove swiftly along toward the church.
But having no clew to the enigma, he tried to dismiss it from his mind,
glancing at his watch and saying:
“By George, we are due at Trinity now, and it would be shocking to get
there late--a slight the bride would not easily forgive!”
He was astonished that Laurier made no reply, sitting pale and grave
and seemingly indifferent in his seat as if he had not heard.
Noel shrugged his shoulders, and called to the coachman:
“Drive as fast as you dare. We are already late!”
Thereupon the horse was urged to a higher rate of speed, and presently
there was a commotion outside, and the coupé stopped.
“What is the matter?” inquired Noel, putting his head outside, and thus
encountering a burly policeman.
“You are under arrest for fast driving,” grunted the guardian of the
law.
“But, good heavens, man, you must not detain us. It is necessary for us
to drive fast in order to reach old Trinity for a wedding ceremony,”
expostulated Noel.
“Wedding or no wedding, all three of you must come to the station house
with me,” answered the policeman, who was both surly and dull-witted.
Laurier suddenly aroused himself to the situation, and united his
expostulations to Noel’s, but all to no avail.
The policeman would not hear to letting them go. He said to himself he
would “teach them young bloods a lesson.” He did not credit at all the
story of the wedding party waiting at the church.
Laurier, suddenly realizing the situation, and thinking of Cora’s anger
and mortification at having to wait for him so long, grew frantic.
He whispered to Noel:
“Would it be any use to offer him a bribe to let us go?”
“No, he is so malicious he would get us indicted for trying to bribe
him in the discharge of duty.”
Laurier turned to the stubborn policeman, asking politely:
“Could you not take our names and let us report to the police court
to-morrow?”
“They may do that at the station house, but I am obliged to arrest you
and take you there. Come, the longer you parley the more time you are
losing! I’ll just jump up with your driver so we can lose no time.”
Noel whispered excitedly:
“Suppose we cut and run while he is getting on the box? We could easily
get a cab.”
“Done!” And they slipped out unperceived on either side, to the vast
amusement of a good-natured crowd that had collected on the corner.
Unfortunately the policeman caught the snickering at his expense, just
as the coupé drove off, and turned his red head curiously back, at once
catching sight of the fugitives.
“Stop!” he shouted angrily, springing down to follow.
A hot chase ensued, but as the sympathies of the spectators were all
with the handsome young men, the poor policeman got no assistance, and
presently he was outdistanced by the agile sprinters, and gave up the
pursuit just a minute too soon, for, in turning a corner at breakneck
speed, Frank Laurier collided with a bicycle and went down like a rock.
“Good heavens!” cried Ernest Noel, stopping short in horror above the
wreck, the shattered wheel, and the two prostrate men.
They had both sustained injuries, but the rider directly got up on his
feet, and declared himself all right save for a few bruises.
Not so with Frank Laurier, who lay like one dead before them, with his
fair, handsome face upturned to the light, his eyes closed, and a dark
bruise on the side of his temple, showing where he had struck it in
falling against the curbstone. All efforts to revive him failed, and a
physician who was called declared it was a case of concussion of the
brain and that the patient must be removed at once to Bellevue Hospital.
“No, no--he is”--began Ernest Noel quickly, but at that moment the
red-headed policeman trotted on the scene with a bewildered air,
awakening such instant fierce resentment in his breast that he sprang
at him, exclaiming hotly:
“You red-headed villain, you are the cause of all this trouble! I
should like to throttle you!”
Whereupon the indignant officer raised his club and brought it down on
the cranium of the hot-headed young man with such telling effect that
he was quite stunned, and fell an easy victim to arrest, being removed
in an ambulance to the station house, while his poor friend, whose
identity was equally unknown, was taken to Bellevue Hospital.
What an ending to a day that had been anticipated for months with the
ardor of a true lover. Instead of wedding bells the slow procession to
the grave, and now--far from the festal scene, alone among strangers
who did not suspect his identity with the young millionaire Frank
Laurier, terribly injured, perhaps unto death, how strange and sad a
fate!
And the bride--poor girl!--so beautiful, so proud, so imperious, who
can picture the depths of her pain and humiliation, waiting more than
an hour at the thronged, fashionable church for a laggard bridegroom
who never came, who sent no excuse, who left her to suffer under one of
the cruelest blows woman’s heart can bear--forsaken at the altar!
She was taken home again by her relatives, a pallid, wild-eyed,
half-frantic girl, vowing bitterest vengeance on her recreant lover as
she stripped the bridal veil from her dark, queenly head, and tramped
it angrily beneath her feet.
“Thus I trample on the past, on all the love I bore him, and vow
myself to vengeance!” she cried madly, to her cousin, Mrs. van Dorn,
whose eyes filled with sympathetic tears as she cried:
“It is a cruel blow, dear Cora, but do not be too rash in your anger.
Perhaps something happened to prevent Frank’s coming and everything may
yet be explained to your satisfaction.”
But her consoling words rang hollow in her own ears, for she thought:
“I had a presentiment of this on the way to the church. I felt certain
that he would fail to meet Cora there. Oh, it was very cruel in him
to wound the poor girl so. It is a disgrace that will cling to a girl
through life, being jilted at the altar. How much kinder it would
have been to break with her sooner and avoid a public exposé like the
painful one we have had to-day. I feel almost as indignant as Cora at
the slight put on our family!”
Later on her husband looked in at the dressing-room door, saying kindly:
“How is Cora, poor child? I have something to tell her about Laurier if
I may come in!”
“Speak quickly!” cried the half-distraught girl, turning almost
fiercely upon him. “Has anything happened to the wretch?”
“I was just about to say that I just now met Hazelton, and he told me
he saw Laurier and Noel at Greenwood when the funeral services over
your aunt’s daughter were concluded at the vault.”
“At her funeral--in our bridal hour! False, wicked wretch! I will never
forgive him, never! May the curse of a forsaken bride blight his life
from now to the grave! May the cruelest misfortunes of life overtake
him!” raved the insulted girl in the madness of her wounded love and
pride.
“Be calm, Cora, I shall avenge this slight to you,” her cousin said
angrily, and just then he received a summons from downstairs.
It was sunset, and Ernest Noel, very pale and shaken, had just been
released on bail and come to bring them the news of all that had
happened to prevent Laurier from meeting his bride at the altar--lying
instead at a hospital at the point of death.
CHAPTER XIV. WAVES OF MEMORY.
When Laurier and Noel had both been taken away, the man whose bicycle
had been the cause of their calamity stood alone among the curious
onlookers gazing somewhat ruefully at the ruin of his wheel.
He was a fair-haired, fine-looking gentleman approaching middle age,
and his blue eyes had in them a grave, sad expression, as of one who
had looked on the sadder side of life.
To one and another he put the question: “Who were those two young men?”
No one could give him any satisfaction, and he was turning away,
leaving the broken wheel to its fate when a reporter approached the
scene, observing:
“I should like to get your name, sir, for my report of this accident
for my evening paper.”
“Ah!--say John Smith,” the stranger returned impatiently, walking
quickly away from his interlocutor and disappearing down a side street.
He stopped presently in a café for a glass of wine to settle his shaken
nerves.
He could not get out of his mind the handsome, unconscious face of
Laurier as it lay upturned to the winter sunlight after the shocking
accident.
“I would give all I own if it had not happened,” he thought
sorrowfully; “although I know I am not to blame, for he dashed into me
full tilt as we turned the corner; still, I feel in a way responsible,
and I shall go to-morrow to Bellevue to inquire about his case, and to
lend any financial aid required. But that will scarcely be necessary, I
suppose, as both the young fellows were most expensively dressed as if
for some elegant social function--perhaps a noon reception or wedding.
The mysterious part of the affair is, what were they doing sprinting
along the streets in that garb, and pursued by a policeman?”
He finished his wine, tipped the obsequious waiter, took a cigar, and
strolled into the reading room to smoke.
As the blue wreaths of smoke curled over his fair head thrown
carelessly back, exposing the clear-cut, spirited features, his
thoughts ran thus:
“What an unlucky devil I am, anyway! If the Fates had had any mercy,
they would have stretched me dead on the sidewalk instead of that
handsome youth who doubtless had much in life to live for--everything,
perhaps, that I have not--youth, love, happiness, home, while I am a
lonely wanderer on the face of the earth. To her, false heart, I owe it
all! Can I ever forgive her heartless desertion?”
A heavy frown came between his brows as he continued:
“What a return after my years of exile and toil--my sister and her
husband dead, their children and my precious daughter lost to me in the
mazes of this great, wicked city. For a week now I have vainly sought
to trace them, but since my sister’s death and her husband’s removal
I can find no trace save the item accidentally read in the _World_ of
John Lyndon’s accident and death. I have been to the hospital where he
died, but they can give me no clew to his family. He was buried at the
city’s expense, they said, so they must be in the direst poverty. Oh,
what a cruel fate must be theirs, dear little ones! Oh, my Jessie, my
bright-eyed darling, I wronged you after all in taking my revenge on
her! You would have fared better in her care. Oh, if God will only let
me find you, my sweet one, I will make it up to you by such devotion as
the world never knew! Jessie! Jessie!” and his head sank on his hands
while the fire of his cigar went out in ashes.
Again he lifted his head with a start at the sound of a footstep. Other
men were entering. They must not find him moping like a woman.
He took up a newspaper and looked over it at random. It bore
yesterday’s date, but that did not matter. He was only pretending to
read.
The column of deaths came before his eyes, and almost mechanically he
read the first funeral notice:
“DIED.--Suddenly, at her mother’s residence, No. 1512A Fifth Avenue,
Tuesday evening, Darling, only daughter of Mrs. Verna Dalrymple.
“Friends and relatives of the family are respectfully invited to
attend the funeral services from the family residence, Thursday noon.
Interment at Greenwood.”
“Merciful Heaven!”
The words breathed low and faintly over the man’s suddenly blanched
lips, and the paper shook in his nervous grasp while his eyes stared in
a sort of incredulous horror at the printed words that moved him so.
Thoughts flew like lightning through his brain:
“Darling Dalrymple! What does it mean? It cannot be possible that
she ever recovered the child! No, for the poor, kindly folk who were
at my poor sister’s deathbed told me of her lovely, gentle daughter,
golden-haired Jessie, with the big, soft, dark eyes and the tender,
rosy lips, to whom the mother clung in dying, bidding her be a little
mother to Mark and Willie. No, it could not be Jessie. She has most
likely adopted a child in place of her lost daughter--a child that
death has taken away!”
He remained silently musing with his eyes on the death notice till
every printed word seemed photographed on his brain.
“Verna Dalrymple--Darling Dalrymple! How strange that she did not throw
away the name with all the rest that it stood for--fickle heart! I
suppose she had to keep it for the child’s sake, sweet little Jessie!
Ah, how strange we never guessed she was coming! If we had known how
different all might have been! I must have been more patient of her
fretting, she more tender of my restlessness under misfortune! The
dear little one coming must have held our hearts together--hearts now
so terribly sundered!” And Leon Dalrymple bowed his fair head heavily
while waves of memory swept across his heart.
CHAPTER XV. FORGETFULNESS, THE GREAT PANACEA.
A lonely life and much brooding inclines the mind to strange aspects.
Leon Dalrymple’s thoughts dwelt persistently on the dead girl--his
divorced wife’s adopted daughter as he believed.
He felt a painful, almost jealous curiosity over her, wondering if she
had usurped the love that belonged to Jessie as well as her place in
her mother’s home.
“I should like to look upon her face!” he repeated over and over to
himself, and the desire grew at last into a bold determination.
The early autumn twilight found him at the cemetery, whispering into
the ear of the feeble old sexton who recoiled with surprise at his
proposition:
“No, sir, no, it would be as much as my place is worth! I can’t do it!”
he protested, but the clink of gold made him change his opinion.
“It is nothing, after all--only to give me one look at the dead girl’s
face! What could they do to you even if they discovered the truth?”
Dalrymple repeated impatiently, and he redoubled his bribe.
The cupidity of the old man made him falter in his opposition, and as
a result they entered the vault just as the darkness of night settled
over the earth, the sexton carrying a dark lantern, whose glare he
turned on the bank of flowers that surrounded the casket, blending
their rich, rare odors with the noisome odors of mortality.
The dead are in their silent graves,
And the earth is cold above;
And the living weep and sigh
Over dust that once was love!
They advanced toward the casket, but suddenly each recoiled and glared
at the other.
“What was that? It sounded like a stifled moan!” exclaimed Dalrymple,
in alarm.
“Nothing but the wind in the trees,” exclaimed the old sexton,
recovering himself, and wrenching loose the lid of the casket, sending
out gusts of rich fragrance from the covering of tuberoses.
A moment more, and the casket was open, Dalrymple advancing with a
quickened heartthrob to gaze on the silent sleeper.
It was a startling scene.
The old vault dark and grim, with rows of dead-and-gone aristocrats
ranged around, in the center the bier banked with flowers, supporting
the casket that held--not a dead girl, but a living one, for as the two
men gazed with bated breath on the exquisite face, a second low moan
sounded on the air, and then a pair of large, soft, wondering, dark
eyes opened suddenly, and gazed up into their startled faces!
It was enough to shake the nerves of the strongest man, to see the dead
thus suddenly come to life, and the old sexton was not strong--in fact,
he had suffered for years from an organic disease of the heart.
So the shock was more than his weak heart could bear.
His face changed to an ashen hue, his old eyes dilated wildly, his
frame shook like a leaf in the wind, his knees knocked together, and
finally, with an awful groan, he sank in a senseless heap on the floor
of the vault.
Dalrymple took no heed of the old man’s fate. All his attention was
riveted on the girl struggling back to life from her place among the
dead.
It was no strange face that he gazed on, for years ago he had kissed a
fair, childish face with lineaments like these, as he placed the little
one in his tender sister’s arms, saying:
“Call her Jessie Lyndon, after yourself, dear, and train her up to be
noble and loving and true, as you have always been. I would not have
her brought up by her proud, rich, heartless mother, who deserted me
for my poverty, but rather as you have been, dear, to make a loving
wife to your husband through all reverses. I leave her in your care,
and I will send you ample money for her support, but Heaven alone knows
whether I shall ever return to the land where I have suffered such a
cruel shipwreck of my happiness.”
That was twelve long years ago that he had wreaked what he believed
justifiable revenge on a heartless wife, goaded by ceaseless brooding
on his wrongs that had well-nigh turned his brain. Then he had exiled
himself from his native land and became a lonely wanderer.
I go, but whereso’er I flee
There’s not an eye will weep for me.
There’s not a kind, congenial heart
Where I may claim the smallest part.
He had but one solace, and that was in his art. Music had always been a
passion with him until love had become its rival. Now Cupid had fled,
he turned back to his old love. Drifting to Germany, he found congenial
friends, and for some years made a meager living for himself and child,
sending all he could spare to America for his golden-haired darling.
Then came that long, long illness that swallowed up almost a year of
his life in a hospital--that strange illness that baffled the learned
physicians, some declaring it was melancholy madness, others an
unaccountable loss of memory, but all agreeing that it must have been
brought about by long brooding over something that had become almost a
monomania.
The whirlwind followed upon my brain and beat my thoughts to rack,
Who knows how many a month I lay ere memory floated back?
When strength slowly returned and with it some glimmerings of painful
memory, a clever man, the wisest physician at the hospital, said to him:
“You have been strangely ill, and the wisest among us could not rightly
name your disease, but it was next door to madness. I have studied your
case with keen interest, and I learn that you are a lonely man much
given to brooding and moping. Am I right in suspecting that you have a
hopeless sorrow hidden in your past?”
Leon Dalrymple could only bend his blond, curly head in silent assent.
“I knew it,” said the wise physician, and he added kindly:
“Cease brooding over this ill that you cannot remedy, for that way
madness lies. Forgetfulness is the only panacea for a hopeless grief.
You are a musician, they tell me. Give it up for a more practical
life. The greatest bard in the world has written that music is the
food of love. Thus it only ministers to your sorrow. Cast it aside for
a totally different life. If you were strong enough, I should say try
manual labor, that in exhausting the body, dulls and wearies the mind,
curing its ills of brooding and melancholy. Try the Australian gold
fields. Get rich and practical.”
The patient took his advice.
After years of toil and travel, when body and mind were both restored,
he had permitted himself to dwell again with yearning memory on the
past.
He was aghast when he counted up twelve years since he had come away.
“I must go home to my little Jessie!” he cried.
He had kissed her as a child and gone away--he found her again almost
a woman, lying among funeral flowers in her soft, white shroud, but,
thank Heaven, with the breath of life faintly heaving her bosom, and
dawning in the dark of her tender eyes.
“Jessie, Jessie!” he cried, in a transport of joy, but she knew him
not; her glance was dazed and frightened at her grim, unfamiliar
surroundings.
It came to him suddenly that if she recovered consciousness fully and
found she had been buried alive the shock might be too great for her
reason.
She had closed her eyes again with a tired sigh, so he lifted her
tenderly from her white satin bed, and bearing her outside, wrapped her
carefully in his long, dark overcoat.
CHAPTER XVI. WHEN A MAN HATES.
Rapid thoughts were revolving in his mind:
“I will take her far away from New York, my precious daughter, and her
mother shall never know that she is not lying in the old vault among
her dead-and-gone kindred, the proud Van Dorns. The rest of her sweet
life shall belong to the plebian father her mother despised.”
Suddenly he remembered the old sexton lying, as he supposed, in a heavy
swoon on the floor of the vault.
“Can I purchase his silence?” he wondered, laying Jessie’s quiet form
down on the dry grass while he returned to the vault.
It gave him a shock to find that the old man was quite dead, but
directly he began to perceive that the sudden death would help his
plans materially.
“Poor old man, I am very sorry about it, but it makes my secret safe.
Now, I will lay him with the lantern and the vault keys some distance
away in one of the paths, so that when he is found in the morning no
one will suspect what has happened here,” he thought, as he lifted the
frame of the old man and bore it some distance away, placing beside it
the lantern and keys as if he had fallen dead on the spot.
“God rest his soul!” he murmured, bending over the still form and
placing in his inner coat pocket a sum of money more than sufficient to
defray his burial expenses.
“For who knows but he may have left a widow and orphans who will mourn
bitterly to-morrow when he is found here dead,” he thought, with a
sigh, as he turned from the spot, returning to Jessie, who lay faintly
breathing, but not yet fully conscious, on the grass.
“Now to get safely away from here before she awakes and realizes the
horror of her position,” he muttered, fastening the long overcoat
tightly around her to conceal her white robes as he bore her in his
arms out of the beautiful cemetery, past glimmering statues marking the
last repose of world-worn hearts.
The mossy marbles rest
On the lips that we have pressed
In their bloom.
And the names we loved to hear
Have been carved for many a year
On the tomb.
Once safely in the street, he ventured to call a taxicab, explaining to
the chauffeur, who looked suspiciously at his strange burden, that his
daughter had fainted in the street while they were on their way to a
little party.
“Just drive about the streets a while until I give you further orders,”
he said, wishing to gain time to think.
To carry Jessie in this garb and condition to any hotel, he knew, would
bring upon him a suspicion he was unwilling to face, so he racked his
brain in the endeavor to decide where to go with his charge.
In his extremity he thought of the woman by whom the Lyndons had once
lived, and who had told him of his sister’s death and the removal
of the bereaved family to so distant a part of the city that she had
quite lost track of them. The woman was widowed and lived alone in a
poor cottage of her own, so it was the safest refuge he could find for
Jessie.
To this kindly soul he went in his trouble, and was received with
motherly cordiality.
Preferring not to tell her the actual truth, he satisfied her curiosity
with a plausible story, and soon had Jessie disrobed and placed in a
warm, comfortable bed.
But though the woman who had dearly loved Jessie always called her by
every fond, endearing name, no light of recognition shone in the dazed,
dark eyes. By morning they found that she was really ill, and needed a
physician.
“She has had a fall and perhaps injured her brain--however, I can tell
better by to-morrow,” said the man of healing.
Acting on this clever diagnosis, his treatment of the case was so
correct that within three days the light of reason returned to Jessie’s
eyes.
It was a fact that the fall on the pavement and striking her head had
more seriously injured Jessie than the drug she had taken, the latter
having only induced a long, deep sleep, very like its “twin brother
death.”
Leon Dalrymple watched by her bedside with passionate devotion, feeling
that he had at last something to live for in this beautiful daughter
restored to him as from the dead.
While she still lay ill without having recognized any one around her,
he provided the Widow Doyle with a full purse and sent her out to buy a
fine outfit.
“We are going away on a journey, my daughter and I,” he said. “She must
have a large trunkful of good clothing suitable to a young lady of
moderate fortune--nothing gaudy or cheap, but of fine material, and of
the best make.”
Mrs. Doyle was a woman of excellent taste, and she fitted Jessie out
well with clothing of the best style, so that when she was well enough
to sit up she could while away the hours of convalescence by admiring
her pretty, new things.
The day came when she opened wide her beautiful eyes with the light
of reason shining in them, and saw sitting by the bed a handsome,
fair-haired man, who had about him a subtle fascination that instantly
drew her heart.
“Who are you?” she whispered faintly.
He turned and took her hand.
“Have you never heard of your absent father, dear little Jessie?”
“Yes. Are you----”
“Yes, I am your father, dearest. Will you kiss me?”
She held up her sweet face passively and gave him a child’s dutiful
kiss, murmuring plaintively:
“And my mother?”
A dark frown gloomed his brow as he retorted angrily:
“We will never speak of her, Jessie. She is as one dead to us both.”
CHAPTER XVII. DALRYMPLE’S SECRET.
Jessie’s large, soft, dark eyes turned on her father’s face with a look
that shook his soul, they were so like other eyes he had once loved.
She cried pleadingly:
“No, no, for I have had such a sweet dream of my mother it thrills my
heart yet. Let me tell it to you, papa!”
The dark eyes and the pleading voice pierced his heart like a knife.
Why had God given her this subtle likeness to her mother that would
always be like a thorn in his heart?
He could not answer for his tumultuous thoughts, and she continued
thrillingly:
“Such a strange dream, papa!--sweet and strange, for I seemed to be
dead, but I felt no sorrow for it, because life had been cruel to me,
and I was glad to be at rest. Then she seemed to come and stand by my
side, the mother I had never known till an hour before my death, when
I saw her only as a proud, rich stranger. But in death she seemed to
belong to me. She knelt by me and kissed my face, my hands, my hair;
she called me Darling, and her tears rained on me while she deplored
the cruel fate that parted us in life, and restored me to her only in
death. Tell me, papa, could this be true? This proud, beautiful lady,
was she my mother?”
He had listened in surprise and wonder, and now he said evasively:
“It was only a dream, you know, dear.”
“Only a dream--but I hoped it might prove a reality. I--I--loved her so
dearly in my dream because she was so sweet and tender,” faltered the
girl with tears of disappointment starting to her eyes while her father
gazed at her in secret wonder, longing to know what strange events had
preceded her supposed death.
He could not bear to see her yearning for the mother who had been so
cruel to the father, but he did not know how to change that instinct of
love; he could only say coldly:
“Do not think any more of your dream, child. It was very misleading.”
“Perhaps so,” she murmured humbly, believing it must be true what he
said, for she could recall another dream that was, indeed, too subtly
sweet to be aught but illusion.
In that strange dream a voice all too fatally dear to her heart had
murmured words of love and tenderness, vowing fealty to her in heaven:
I love you, dearest one, all the while,
My heart is as full as it can hold,
There is place and to spare for the frank young smile,
And the red young mouth and the hair’s young gold,
So, hush, I will give you this leaf to keep,
See, I shut it inside the sweet, cold hand--
There, that is our secret! go to sleep;
You will wake, and remember and understand.
In that lovely dream he--Frank Laurier--had pressed his lips on her
golden hair, had kissed a rose and crushed it between her folded
hands. Was it only a dream?
Yes, how could it be aught but a dream? He who had trifled with her,
scorned her while living, how could he have changed when she lay dead?
The tears brimmed over in her eyes as she thought:
“How foolish I am, dwelling on such fancies. Of course, I have been
ill--not dead!--and dreamed all about these people who care naught for
me.”
Leon Dalrymple took her hand and looked at her with tender pity.
“My dear little one, do you feel well enough to go back with me over
the cruel past?” he asked abruptly.
She assented eagerly, and with some evasions that he deemed necessary,
he gave her a brief résumé of his life.
“I shall not tell you what your mother’s name was--nor mine--I call
myself Leon Lyndon now,” he said curtly, continuing: “Suffice it to say
you were born after your mother deserted me in disgust at my poverty. I
did not suspect you were coming, and, if she guessed it, she selfishly
kept the tender secret. You were born, and became the joy and pride
of her life while I hated her for having deprived me of your love. I
believe I was half mad in my troubles those days, and I contrived to
see you often unsuspected by your mother, while you were out with your
nurse. Your baby beauty and sweetness grew upon me so that at last I
stole you away, gloating over the thought that I could punish her at
last for her cruelty to me. I took you to my dear, sweet sister Jessie,
left you in her care, and became an exile from my native land. The
story of those twelve years is too long for you now, but at length the
longing for you drew me back again to New York, where I searched for
you vainly for a week before I chanced on you at last.”
“You found me lying like one dead in the snow!” she cried, and he
started, answering evasively:
“How came you there, my darling? I am very anxious to hear your story
up to that point.”
To his surprise she burst into tears, sobbing unrestrainedly for
several moments.
He waited patiently, stroking the fair head tenderly till the healing
tears ceased to flow, then, little by little, he drew her on, until the
story of her young life and her piteous little love secret lay bare
before his eyes.
He was startled, touched, and pained; the tears were very near his eyes.
He kissed her tenderly, pityingly.
“It was very sad, my child, but you are so young you will soon get over
this sorrow. It was rash in you to try to throw away your life like
that, and I am very glad that I found you in your extremity and placed
you in a physician’s care, else your life must have paid the forfeit of
your desperate deed,” he said rapidly, determining in his mind that she
should never know what had happened to her that night after she fell
down in the snow and thought herself dying.
“But life is very sad,” she murmured plaintively. “He--he--will marry
that scornful beauty, Miss Ellyson, and--and--they will laugh together
many times over me--and my broken heart.”
The tears came again in a burning shower, but he was glad to see them
fall; he knew they would relieve her pain of wounded love and pride.
When she grew quiet he said tenderly:
“You must forget him, dear, as they will forget you in their happiness.
I will take you away from New York, where you shall never meet those
cruel hearts again.”
“I should like to go--I should like to forget!” she sighed, and his
heart throbbed with divine sympathy, for he knew well all the anguish
of her plaint.
Do I remember? Ask me not again!
My soul has but one passion--to forget!
Oh, is there nothing in the world then
To take away the soul’s divine regret?
Alas, for love is evermore divine,
Immortal is the sorrow love must bring,
The buried jewel seeketh yet to shine,
And music’s spirit haunts the idle string,
So doth the heart in sadness ever twine,
Some fading wreath that keeps hope lingering.
CHAPTER XVIII. LAURIER’S ATONEMENT.
When two people are of the same mind that certain subjects are painful,
they are not apt to recall them to each other’s memory.
Leon Lyndon, as he chose to call himself, left New York within the
week with his strangely recovered daughter, and in new pursuits and
pleasures both sought oblivion of the painful past.
Lyndon had become rich while at the gold fields, and he spared no
expense on Jessie.
Finding that in her restless mood she enjoyed travel more than anything
else, they spent six months wandering over their native land, enjoying
its beauties and grandeur, unsurpassed by any other country in the
world.
Then they crossed the ocean and resumed their migratory habits.
Another six months were spent in this way, then a weariness fell on
both and they longed for rest.
The father decided to settle in Germany for a year and cultivate his
daughter’s mind.
He had already discovered to his delight that she had inherited his
great talent for music, together with a voice of rare power and melody.
Securing the best teachers that money could procure, they spent
eighteen quiet months in the polishing of Jessie’s mind, and father and
daughter became passionately attached to each other, finding in this
warm affection some balm for past sorrow.
Meanwhile, Lyndon had kept from his daughter one fact that she would
doubtless have found very interesting--the story of the accident that
had prevented the marriage of Frank Laurier at the appointed time.
He had read in the next day’s papers the story of the interrupted
marriage--the bride’s long wait at the church, the mysterious failure
of the bridegroom to arrive, the bride’s mortification and her return
home--then the solution of the mystery in the accident that had
befallen Laurier, nearly costing him his life, as it was stated that he
was lingering between life and death with concussion of the brain.
Leon Lyndon immediately comprehended that he had been the cause of the
trouble by running into Laurier with his wheel, and though it had been
unavoidable, he felt a keen remorse and regret for his part in the
tragedy, although he owed the victim no sympathy, seeing what grief he
had brought upon his daughter.
These facts Lyndon thought it prudent to conceal from Jessie, supposing
that the marriage would take place anyhow, as soon as the condition of
the bridegroom improved, so the name was tacitly dropped between them,
and after they left New York remained unspoken, if unforgotten.
Meanwhile, matters were quite different in New York from what either he
or Jessie could have supposed.
Laurier, after his accident, had remained for several days in a serious
condition, recovering consciousness so slightly as not to be able
to recognize the friends who were permitted to visit him. Having no
relatives in the city, his dearest friend, Ernest Noel, was often by
his bedside, and it was quite a week before the latter dared answer the
half-dazed questions put to him by the sick man.
Then full consciousness dawned, and all the cruel truth came upon him.
The funeral, the accident, the interrupted wedding, all dawned on his
mind, and a hollow groan burst from him as he turned his eyes on Noel.
“Cora----”
Noel read the pained questioning in the one word. The stricken
bridegroom was thinking of Cora and the cruel ordeal she had been
called on to bear, the interrupted wedding, the gossip, the nine days’
wonder.
“She is well,” Noel said encouragingly.
“Tell me all about that day,” Laurier pleaded faintly, and his friend
obeyed with some evasions.
Not for worlds would he have betrayed the whispers he had heard of the
proud bride’s fury at her lover on that cruel wedding day when she had
turned away from the altar, a bride without a bridegroom, a stricken
creature who in her wrath hated the whole world, and felt revengeful
enough to have plunged a knife into the heart of the man who had
disappointed her and made her the sensation of an hour.
He glossed that fact over very lightly by saying:
“Miss Ellyson was naturally cruelly wounded, believing herself a jilted
bride.”
“My proud, beautiful Cora, it was indeed a most cruel ordeal, and
I would have died to spare her such pain. Are you quite sure she
understands everything now, Noel?”
“Yes; I went and told her myself how everything fell out, and it was
fully explained in the newspapers of the next day--so every one knows
now that it was an untoward accident that prevented the wedding, and
that it will take place as soon as you are recovered.”
“And Cora exonerates me from blame?”
“Ye-es,” hesitatingly.
“You are keeping back something, Noel? Speak out.”
“Well, then, she was rather vexed over your attending Miss Dalrymple’s
funeral. You see, Laurier, it was that which really caused our deuced
hurry, that upset everything.”
“I never intended Cora should know I went to that funeral.”
“You may be sure I did not tell her, for I thought strange of your
doing it myself, but some dunce saw you there, blurted it out to Van
Dorn, and he told Miss Ellyson. See?”
“Oh, yes,” and for a few moments Laurier remained silent, his thoughts
divided between the dead girl and the living one--the one he had
wounded unto death, the one who was to be his bride.
He gave a long, long sigh to Jessie’s memory, then a chivalrous thought
to Cora.
“Poor girl, how cruelly she must have suffered in the terrible suspense
of that hour. I must make it up to her, Noel, as soon as I can. Perhaps
it would please her to be married now before I get well.”
“Now? Here?”--in surprise.
“Yes; why not? Loving each other so well, what does the time and place
matter if it is a true union of hearts? It would stop silly gossip
over the interrupted wedding, and such a proof of my tenderness would
perhaps condone my offense in showing respect to Mrs. Dalrymple by
attending her daughter’s obsequies.”
There was a slight touch of bitterness in the last words that Noel did
not understand, and he said, in his brusque way:
“Not many girls would care to be married by a sick bed and sacrifice
all the fol-lalas of a brilliant wedding.”
“But Cora would because she loves me very fondly. Will you go and see
her for me, Noel, and ask her if she would be willing to marry me
to-morrow, so that we can start on our wedding tour as soon as I am
well enough?”
Noel went, and the patient, tired by his long talk, dozed again, and
filled up the interval of time this way till his friend’s return.
He wakened at last with a start at a light touch on his arm.
“Ah, Noel, is that you? Where have you been so long? Ah, I remember
now! You saw Cora? She will grant my wish?”
“You are mistaken, old boy. She--refuses!”
CHAPTER XIX. THE NEW WINE OF LOVE.
Cora Ellyson had, indeed, refused her lover’s request.
Ernest Noel had gauged her quite correctly in asserting that she would
be unwilling to be married simply, without the pomp and ceremony so
dear to the feminine mind.
And, besides, though pained over her lover’s accident, she could not
forgive in her heart the first cause of it.
She argued to herself that if he had not gone to the funeral he would
not have been forced to the haste that had resulted so disastrously to
himself and caused her so cruel a mortification.
“Whoever heard of anything so outré as a man’s going to a funeral in
his wedding suit, and on the eve of his marriage?”
She cried to herself in a passion of jealous anger, hating poor Jessie
for the sympathy he had shown and the few thoughts she had taken from
the proud bride who had claimed all.
Despite her love for him, Cora longed to punish her lover for his
fealty to Jessie’s memory.
She did not consider that he had already suffered enough. She desired
his punishment to come through her, the chosen of his heart.
If any one had told her that the fire of his love that had burned
so fiercely until that day in the park had cooled down into an
indifference that he would not own even to his own heart, she could not
have believed it.
They had had their lovers’ quarrels before, flirted with others before,
kissed and made up always. She expected things to go as usual.
She had not punished him enough yet, and the refusal to marry him on
his sick bed was a stroke that secretly pleased her very much. It would
cause him such cruel pain he would realize her value more.
She even declined to visit him while he lay ill at the hospital on the
plea that her nerves could not bear the shock.
“Tell him to get well as soon as possible, so that my wedding gown will
not get out of fashion,” was the gay message sent by Mrs. van Dorn, who
with Mrs. Dalrymple went to call on the invalid.
Perhaps it was the sight of the bereaved mother in her deep mourning
that put the thought of Jessie in his mind--perhaps she had never been
out of it since that tragic night. Anyhow, he received Cora’s messages
with apparent resignation, and in the long days of convalescence, while
she thought he was yearning for her with ceaseless impatience, his
thoughts kept wandering to the dead girl, living over in memory their
brief acquaintance--the first time he had seen her and been startled by
her naïve, girlish beauty, the struggle with Doyle when he had rescued
her from the villain’s rude advances, the drive to the park, and--the
fatal kiss!
Whenever Laurier recalled that sweet, clinging kiss he had taken from
Jessie’s red, flowerlike lips, his heart would beat wildly in his
breast, and the warm color flush up to his brow.
The garbled story of a glass of wine too much that he had told to
Jessie in excusing himself, was quite untrue. He had not taken any
wine; it was a bewildering flash-up of emotion that had throbbed at his
heart and made him yield to the temptation to press her sweet lips with
his own.
It was true that the influence of Cora still remained so strong that he
had soon turned from the girl to watch the passing throngs for his old
love that he might note the jealous flash of her great eyes at sight
of an apparent rival--afterward when suffering from the effects of his
accident in the park, and exposed to the tender witcheries of Cora, it
had been easy to win him back.
But the events of that night, when Jessie had come to Mrs.
Dalrymple’s--her love, her humiliation, her despair, coupled with
Cora’s heartless behavior, were impressed ineffaceably on his heart.
The one had inspired pity and sympathy, the other deep disgust.
“Pity is akin to love,” and now that Jessie was dead Laurier knew that,
had she lived, he could have loved her as well--aye, better--than he
had ever loved proud, jealous Cora, who looked on him as a sort of
slave to her caprices, to be scolded and sent away, then whistled back
at will.
Had Jessie lived, he would have bidden this tenderness back, knowing
that his fealty belonged to his betrothed, but it did not matter now if
he gave Jessie some tender regrets in the few days that must elapse
before he married Cora and pledged to her irrevocably the devotion of
his heart.
In the meantime, new influences were at work to sunder more widely the
two hearts already chilled by jealousy and anger.
Ernest Noel, having always admired beautiful Cora at a distance,
was now brought into more intimate relations with her by the errand
on which he had gone for Laurier, and the young girl, not averse to
a little flirtation to relieve the tedium of waiting her lover’s
recovery, smilingly encouraged his frank advances.
It became the customary thing to call every evening and report
Laurier’s progress on the road to recovery to his fair betrothed.
No secret was made of these calls to Laurier, who each morning received
an enthusiastic description of how Cora had looked and acted and the
flippant messages she had sent her lover.
Believing that she was arousing Laurier’s jealousy, as she had often
done before, and thus increasing the fervor of his love, she rested
secure, though secretly burning with anxiety to see him again, and only
deterred from a visit to him by the rooted determination to pay him out
for his fault, as she called it, to herself.
Beautiful, vindictive, jealous, she was capable of savage fury when
aroused, but in indulging her fierce resentment she was running a risk
she little dreamed.
Laurier, getting an insight into the flirtation, did not feel the least
disturbed, but was startled at himself when he detected a latent wish
that she would transfer her affections to Noel.
CHAPTER XX. WOULD THE OLD LOVE RETURN?
December snows lay deep upon the ground when Laurier left the hospital
two weeks after the fateful accident that had postponed his wedding.
His first visit was to Cora.
Having punished him as she deemed sufficiently, she was passionately
glad to see him again.
The fond arms twined about his neck, the dark head nestled against
his breast, the dewy red lips were upturned to meet his own, but as
he pressed them he remembered other lips, oh, so warm and sweet and
clinging, now pale and cold in death.
Ah, pale, pale, now those rosy lips
That once I kissed so fondly,
And closed for aye the sparkling glance
That dwelt on me so kindly.
And moldering now in silent dust
The heart that loved me dearly,
But still within my bosom’s care
Shall live my Highland Mary!
Was it Laurier’s punishment for his sin that Jessie should haunt him
so, that her pale wraith should glide between him and his living love,
and make his lips cold to her kiss and his heart chill to her tender
embrace!
Time was when his blood had run like fire with those arms about his
neck, and that dark head on his breast, but how strangely all was
altered now, and what a deep depression hung over him, though he tried
to hide it from those searching, dark eyes, and to outdo her in the
warmth of his greeting.
“Dear Frank, how pale and ill you look! And--and--you do not kiss me as
of old. Are you vexed with me because I would not consent to a sick-bed
wedding?” archly.
“No, no, dear; why should I be? It was better to wait and have a public
wedding so as to display your lovely bridal gown, of course,” he
answered, forcing a smile.
“And you were not impatient?”
“I was too ill for that, you know.”
“Poor Frank! How you must have suffered! I hope you were not vexed
that I did not come to see you. But they told me you were looking so
frightfully ill I had not the heart lest I should scold you, for, after
all, everything was your own fault, you know, going to that girl’s
funeral.”
“Do not let us bring that subject up again, Cora. I only did what I
thought was my duty.”
“Duty! That kept you from your own wedding!” she cried reproachfully.
“Only for that we should be married now.”
“We can be married to-morrow if you are willing, Cora.”
“Nonsense! How could we? All the arrangements will have to be made over
again. And my maid of honor is out of town--gone South for a month.”
“You can choose another!”
“But she made me promise to wait her return!”
“I do not think that is at all necessary. Choose some other girl and
let us have the agony over!” abstractedly.
“The agony! Sir?” and Cora Ellyson almost transfixed him with the
indignant flash of her great, dark eyes.
He started, realizing he had made a blunder.
“Dear Cora, I beg your pardon, I did not mean to wound you. Do you not
understand my impatient mood? That it is agony to me, this waiting to
call you mine,” anxiously.
“Dear Frank, was that what you meant? I thought for a moment
that--that--but, no, it would be impossible you should look on our
marriage as a bore!”
“Impossible!” he echoed fervently, but in the bottom of his heart he
was terribly distressed at his own indifference, he who had once loved
Cora to madness.
He would not have had her find out the cruel truth for the world. He
played his part as a true lover still with amiable deceit, thinking
anxiously:
“This is but a caprice of illness. Love will come back.”
Alas!
Would Love his ruined quarters recognize
Where shrouded pictures of the past remain,
And gently turn them with forgiving eyes
If Love should come again?
Cora was charmed with the belief in his anxiety for the wedding. She
thought that absence had, indeed, taught him her value. With pretty
coquetry she pretended coyness in naming another wedding day just to
make him plead for haste.
Understanding what was expected of him, he continued to insist, until
she named a day just two weeks distant.
“And it shall be a home wedding this time. I could not bear to go to
church again after--that day! Oh, I knew it was ill-fated when we met
that horrible funeral! I wish I had turned back then and so escaped
the next cruel hour--the waiting, the anxiety, the curious faces, some
sympathetic, some sarcastic--the sinking at the heart, the bitter
resentment, believing myself jilted at the altar! Ah, Frank, there are
times when I feel as if I can never forgive you for the humiliation of
that hour!” cried Cora, in passionate excitement.
He took her burning hands and kissed them fondly, crying:
“I will make it all up to you, my darling, when I am your husband, by
the most patient devotion!”
And as he gazed at the dark, brilliant face that had once charmed him
so, he told himself that surely the old love would come back as soon as
that painful, lingering remorse over Jessie should fade from his mind.
Who could help loving beautiful Cora, even in spite of the glimpses
he had had of cruel depths in her mind? He would try to forget how
heartlessly she had acted to her hapless little rival and love her
again in spite of all.
He knew that scores of men envied him the prize he had won in the
promise of her hand; even Ernest Noel, his best man, scarcely disguised
the fact that he had fallen a victim to her witcheries, and frankly
envied his friend, so he was not surprised on going out to meet Noel
coming up the steps to call on Cora, as had now become his daily habit.
CHAPTER XXI. PLAYING WITH FIRE.
The young men nodded gayly at each other, then Ernest Noel passed into
the house.
“How radiant you look, ma belle!” he exclaimed enviously.
Cora’s red lips parted over her pearly teeth in an enchanting smile of
joy, as she answered:
“Frank has just gone, and we were naming the wedding day again.”
She knew well that the announcement would pierce his heart like a
sword, for only yesterday Ernest had proved unfaithful to his friend
and pleaded for her love.
Beautiful Cora had laughed at her passionate suitor, enraging him with
her scorn.
“You led me on, encouraged me to love you, and hope for a return!” he
cried sullenly.
“Nonsense! You knew I was engaged to Frank all the time!” she cried.
“Yet you pretend indifference to him, refused to marry him on what
might have been his deathbed, and, besides, I had heard it whispered
that you were so angry on your wedding day you had vowed vengeance on
your recreant bridegroom. Is not all this true, Cora?”
“I deny your right to question me. I shall marry Frank when he gets
well,” she cried, with her most imperious air.
“My God, then you were only coquetting with me to pass the time--is it
true?”
“I was kind to you because you were Frank’s friend--that is all--and
you are very wicked to try to steal me from him,” she cried defiantly.
“You were playing with fire,” he muttered, and turned and went away
with a strange smile glooming his dark, strong face.
To-day he wore a careless smile, and did not flinch when she told him
so triumphantly that she had just named the wedding day again.
“Is it so, indeed? Then you will soon be lost to me forever!” he cried
lightly, adding: “I must steal every hour I can from my fortunate rival
until the fatal day. The crust of the snow is hard, and my sleigh is at
the door. Will you come with me for a ride?”
“Yes, I will go,” she answered kindly.
Warmly wrapped in sealskin, she followed him out to the natty little
sleigh, careless in her happiness of the gloomy day and lowering storm
clouds, little dreaming of what was coming.
He tucked the warm robes cozily about her, took up the reins, and they
set off at a spanking pace, gliding gayly over the smooth crust of snow
until they found themselves leaving the crowded city behind.
They had talked but little, but now Noel slackened rein, and said
suddenly:
“So you really love Laurier after all?”
“Of course--when I am to marry him in two weeks!”
“Yet a week ago I could have sworn that you did not care for him.”
“Appearances are deceitful.”
“Yes, very,” he replied, with a low, bitter laugh, adding: “For I could
almost have sworn that your heart had turned from him to me!”
“What egregious vanity!” cried Cora, laughing outright.
The laugh almost drove him mad. Striking the black, fiery horse lightly
with the whip so that it dashed quickly forward again, he almost hissed:
“What would you do to any one who should come between you and Laurier?”
The girl’s eyes flashed, she ground her white teeth together viciously,
crying:
“I should hate them, I should want to murder them!”
Noel’s face grew livid, but he looked around at her fixedly, crying:
“Then you will want to murder me, for I am a barrier between you and
Laurier that cannot be removed. I am your lawful husband, beautiful
Cora!”
“You are mad!” she cried, in alarm. “Let us turn back instantly. See,
the snow is beginning to fall!”
Without heeding her command, Ernest Noel drove on through the gathering
storm, replying hoarsely:
“I am not mad, Cora, I am telling you the truth. Do you remember the
private theatricals we took part in last week for the benefit of that
little church? You were the bride, I was the bridegroom, and it was
a lawful marriage, for I made private arrangements to have it so,
securing a license and a minister. You are my wife as fast as the law
can make you. Now, what have you to say?”
CHAPTER XXII. A DESPERATE DEED.
Cora Ellyson sat speechless by the side of Ernest Noel for several
minutes as the sleigh rushed on through the whirling snowflakes.
Her face was as white as the snowflakes, her very lips pale, and her
eyes flashed with a dangerous anger that startled her desperate lover.
In their dark gleam he read, indeed, a murderous hate too deep for
words--a hate that could kill, so great was its fury. Choking with
grief and rage, she remained speechless, though her writhing lips
struggled for words. A despair too deep for utterance possessed her
soul.
What, wedded to this villain! Tricked into a ceremony that bound her
to him and cut her off from Frank, her beloved, forever! It was too
horrible! She could not believe it!
“Is it really true? You have not lied to me?” gaspingly.
“It is true as Heaven, Cora. Say what you will, you are my wife, and as
such I claim you! Come, give me a kiss, and let us make up our quarrel!”
Throwing his arm around her waist he drew her forcibly to his side,
pressing hot kisses on the shrinking face, while her shrieks rang
wildly on the air--wildly, but unheeded, for they were in the country
now on a lonely, unfrequented road, and the darkness of the wintry
afternoon, together with the whirling snowflakes, made everything dim
and indistinct.
A very frenzy of rage possessed the wretched girl. She had said rightly
that she could murder any one who came between her and Laurier.
As she struggled wildly with Noel, she flung one hand up to her hair,
whose dark, silken braids were pierced through with a strong but
slender silver dagger with a jeweled hilt. Withdrawing it dexterously,
she made a lunge at his breast.
With a stifled oath he warded off the first blow, catching the point
of the dagger in his own hand so that it pierced through, the blood
spouting out in a fountain of crimson, but, withdrawing it quickly, she
aimed again for his heart.
“My God!” shrilled in agony from his lips as his arm fell, and the
reins dropped from his hands while he sank an inert mass at the bottom
of the sleigh. The next moment the black horse, frightened by her
shrieks, had the bit between his teeth and was running away, while
Cora, crouched in the seat wild-eyed, pale-faced, an image of horror,
resigned herself to inevitable death.
On over the frozen snow, through the whirling storm, he ran for over a
mile, then--stumbling over some obstruction in the road, he came to a
sudden stop, and the little sleigh overturned, throwing its occupants
out into the drifted snow.
One breathless moment and Cora scrambled to her feet unhurt, but not so
the companion of her wild drive.
Silent and pallid, a senseless heap with the blood staining his white
shirt bosom and his wounded hand, Ernest Noel lay like one dead in the
snow.
“I have killed him!” the girl muttered wildly, but so terrible was her
resentment that she felt no remorse for her deed, only a fierce joy
that he was out of her way.
“He deserved it all!” she muttered, casting her glance hurriedly around
to see if there was any witness to her crime.
But she was all alone with nature--nature in her stormiest mood, the
wind shrieking in a rising gale, blowing the snow across the fields,
bending and twisting the bare boughs of the trees, while the drifts
were piled high against the rough stones of an old lime quarry close to
the side of the road.
In that lonely scene the desperate girl stood wild-eyed, breathless,
still burning with rage that precluded all remorse.
“If I could only hide him, if only the snowdrifts would cover him from
my sight forever!” she exclaimed, and then her glance fell on the old
quarry and lighted with intelligence.
“I can throw him down there!” she muttered, and with a strength born of
terror, dragged the inert body by the arms, and pushed it down into the
pit.
It fell with a hollow thud that made the panting girl, listening above,
shudder violently, and fly back to the sleigh.
The black horse, seemingly subdued by its wild race and with the sweat
streaming from every pore, despite the biting wind, stood patiently
waiting her pleasure as she nervously returned and caught up the reins
preparing for the inclement drive home.
A voice struck on her ears, sending terror to her heart lest the dead
had arisen from his grave in the deserted pit.
“I’ll drive you home, Miss Ellyson!”
Who was this, calling her boldly by name? With a start of terror, she
lifted her eyes, and saw a man striding to her through the snow.
She had seen the bold eyes, the coarse, good-looking face before. It
was Carey Doyle.
“How came you here?” she faltered fearfully, and he answered coolly:
“I was cutting across fields visiting some country friends of mine when
I saw you upset, and hastened to your assistance. Who was the man you
pushed over into the pit, Miss Ellyson? Surely not Frank Laurier?”
Her heart sank with wild alarm as she answered faintly:
“You--you--are mistaken. I--I--came--here alone, I swear. I was
only--only--looking down into the pit thinking how terrible if the
sleigh had overset down there!”
“Miss Ellyson, I saw you dragging the man over there by his arms--don’t
deny it,” Doyle returned masterfully.
She was detected, she realized it, and began to sob hysterically:
“Oh, for sweet pity’s sake do not betray me! He--he--was killed when
the sleigh upset--and I--I--did not know what to do! I thought I would
leave him there. How could I drive home with a dead man!” shudderingly.
“What was his name?”
“I will not tell you!” wildly.
“Miss Ellyson, there is blood on your hands and your dress. Is it
possible you have done murder?” Carey Doyle demanded, with sudden
sternness.
“No, no, it was an accident! He--he--would have mistreated me, and
I--I--defended myself with the hairpin! It wounded him, and then
the fall killed him! I--I--oh, sir, I cannot bear the sensation of
discovery. I will make you rich if you will keep this terrible secret!”
pleaded Cora, kneeling down abjectly in the snow before the exultant
wretch glorying in the discovery he had made.
Rather than put herself in the power of this bad man Cora had better
have put the dead man back into the sleigh and driven back to the city
with a full confession of her sin. Surely no jury would have convicted
her of murder when they heard how she had been goaded by cruel wrong
into a terrible deed. They would all agree that she had been driven
temporarily insane by her fear and suffering.
But her poor brain was too distraught to think clearly. A horrible fear
possessed her lest the deed become known, and she should fall into the
hands of the law.
She knelt down in the cold snow with the biting wind cutting her white
face and blowing her dark, loosened hair about her, her small hands
clasped, pleading, praying:
“Oh, sir, do not betray me! I could not bear detection! What will you
take to keep my wretched secret?”
His eyes gleamed with cupidity as he answered:
“You are rich, so I don’t think you would mind a thousand dollars,
would you?”
“You shall have it!”
“Then my lips are sealed. Get in and let me drive you home, Miss
Ellyson. Then I must manage to have the horse and sleigh returned to
the stables without exciting suspicion, so you will have to confide in
me, don’t you see, so that I can help you better,” shrewdly.
Oh, how it galled her pride to take him into her confidence, but there
was no other way, so she said evasively:
“He was Ernest Noel, who fell in love with me and tried to supplant Mr.
Laurier in my heart. On this drive he took the liberty of kissing me,
and in defending myself I gave him a fatal blow.”
He helped her in and took her home, afterward returning the sleigh to
the stables in a way that diverted all suspicion.
CHAPTER XXIII. A MYSTERIOUS DISAPPEARANCE.
Two weeks rolled around very quickly and brought Cora’s wedding day
again.
It would be somewhat different from the one that had been so tragically
interrupted the month before.
This would be a home wedding at Mrs. van Dorn’s, where Cora was still
staying.
And she had chosen another maid of honor, because the first one was
still absent in the South.
Laurier also would have to select another friend for his best man, as
Ernest Noel had mysteriously disappeared.
No one had seen him since the afternoon when he had taken Miss Ellyson
sleigh riding, and it was currently believed that the young man had
committed suicide.
Cora had lent color to this report by frankly owning that Noel had
perfidiously sought to win her from Laurier, and in the madness of
disappointment threatened to take his own life.
She told glibly of their long sleigh ride, in which they had been
caught in the snowstorm and lost their way, not returning until after
nightfall.
She grew pale and grave when she told how Noel had pleaded for her
love in passionate phrases, and how angry he had grown when she had
upbraided him for his treachery to his friend.
“All is fair in love or war,” he had replied doggedly, and turned a
deaf ear to her pleadings that he would turn back from the storm that
was gathering.
“I shall drive on and on if it be to perdition until you take pity on
me!” he had vowed grimly, but her fright and tears had moved him at
last to bring her back home.
With her hand close clasped in Laurier’s, Cora had repeated her story,
ending sadly:
“I was very angry with the poor fellow, yet I pitied him, too; he was
so tragically in earnest, and I shall never forget him as I saw him
last when he left me at the door. His face was pale as death, and his
eyes glared wildly under the electric lights as he took my hand in his
and kissed it, murmuring tragically:
“You will never see me again, for I cannot bear my life without your
love! I shall end it to-night, and when you hear of my death you will
know I did it for your sake, and may the thought of it prove a thorn in
the roses of your happiness!”
Cora’s voice sank to a low, sobbing cadence as she added:
“He looked wild enough to do any rash deed, but I did not believe him,
I thought he was only trying to frighten me. I said good night quickly,
and ran into the house, for I was almost frozen, and scared half to
death from our interview.”
“Poor Cora--poor Noel! It was very distressing to you both, I know, and
I fear he really carried out his threat, for nothing has been heard of
him yet, and his relatives are getting very anxious,” said Laurier
gravely, almost wishing in his heart that Cora had taken pity on Noel’s
love and accepted him.
He knew well that she had coquetted with the young man and led him on
to his madness--he had seen it all along while he lay ill--but it was
useless to tax her with the wrong, he could only think bitterly:
“Why will women break hearts for pastime?”
But following the thought, a pale, reproachful face seemed to rise
before him, and lips that he had kissed for the whim of a moment--red,
rosy lips--seemed to murmur:
“What of men?”
So he could not reproach Cora; he was not without fault himself.
The days passed quickly with no tidings of Noel, and the twenty-second
of December came--his wedding day!
Oh, with what joy he had looked forward to it once! The day that should
give him proud, beautiful Cora for his own!
He had loved her madly for a little while, but all his efforts could
not bring back the passion now. It was cold and dead, and his heart lay
like a stone in his breast.
They had decided to go South on a bridal tour, both having crossed
the ocean several times, so that there would have been no novelty in
the trip. Everything was in readiness for the journey as soon as the
wedding reception was over.
Why was it that he could look forward so indifferently to the
tête-à-tête journey with the stately bride for whose sake he was
bitterly envied by other men? Did a dead hand, small and white and
warning--rise between him and his bride, barring out happiness?
It almost seemed so.
Would to God I could awaken!
For I dream I know not how,
And my soul is sorely shaken
Lest an evil step be taken,
Lest the dead who is forsaken
May not be happy now.
He would not listen to the haunting voices throbbing at his heart, but,
putting them aside, prepared to keep his troth plight, praying yet for
love to come back to its forsaken nest in his heart.
Not so with beautiful Cora, who, beaming with joyous anticipations, was
making ready for her bridal, smiling as the maid pinned on the bridal
veil, thinking there could be no bar to her happiness now, for was not
Frank waiting for her downstairs, and everything in readiness!
“Oh, Miss Cora, how magnificent you look! May I let them all see you
now?” cried the exultant maid.
“Yes, I am ready to go downstairs now, and it is time, is it not?”
tilting back the long pier glass for another admiring view at herself
in the glory of her white brocade train and point-lace veil.
Fifine stepped to the door and called Mrs. van Dorn and the others who
were waiting, but as they crossed the threshold, loud, piercing shrieks
rang through the room, and a horrible sight met their eyes.
In stepping back for a better view of herself, Cora had thoughtlessly
brushed against a cluster of wax lights burning in a silver candelabra
on her dressing table. In an instant the flames caught the filmy folds
of her veil and ignited it, wrapping her quickly in leaping flames like
so many writhing serpents.
Never had there been a more tragic interruption to a wedding.
The splendid mansion so gayly decorated for the occasion, instantly
became a scene of dismay and confusion.
The shrieks of the frightened women upstairs brought the bridegroom and
guests rushing to their aid, and it was Frank Laurier himself who first
had the presence of mind to tear the burning garments from Cora, though
at the cost of painful injuries to himself.
But he scarcely gave a thought to that, so keen was his pity for the
poor wreck of what had been but five minutes ago a beautiful, radiant
young girl, with her heart full of love and pride going to the altar
with her handsome lover.
Cora’s injuries were so severe that her blackened, swollen features
were quite unrecognizable. The bridal gown was reduced to a charred,
black mass, and there was not a vestige left of the costly point-lace
veil.
For long weeks she hovered between life and death, and no one supposed
she could ever recover. Indeed, her best friends thought it might be
better to die than to live with all her radiant beauty gone. All her
beautiful hair, her eyebrows and lashes were burned away, and her once
lovely skin was scarred and red. The great, flashing, dark eyes were
dim and sunken.
When after long weeks she began to convalesce to the surprise of all
her doctors, people said that she ought to release Frank Laurier from
his engagement. No man would be willing to marry such a fright.
But Cora was not so magnanimous. She sent word to her lover to be true
to her, and she would marry him as soon as she was quite well again.
Then she consulted the most eminent physicians and dermatologists in
the city about the restoration of her beauty.
She was wild with anguish over her disfigurements, and declared that
she would sacrifice her whole fortune to regain what she had lost by
the terrible accident.
She put herself in their hands and they promised to do their best,
but the process would be slow--she must give up the world for a year,
perhaps, ere success could crown their efforts. She agreed to this and
refused to see her lover until her lost beauty should be restored.
CHAPTER XXIV. “LOVE, I WILL LOVE YOU EVER!”
Among the passengers on a steamer homeward bound from England to
America were a man and his daughter who attracted much admiring
attention from all the other passengers.
The man was Leon Lyndon, and he was returning with his daughter
Jessie after nearly two years’ absence from New York. Lyndon, tall,
fair, middle-aged, with a most serious expression, did not cultivate
acquaintances, but rather repelled advances, preferring to devote
himself to his beautiful daughter, who in turn gave him all her
attention.
It was most provoking to all the young men, who were simply wild to
know the dainty beauty, and to tempt her to flirtations on the deck
these balmy September evenings when the sea shone like silver and the
full moon rode in gleaming majesty through the pathless blue sky.
It was too bad, they said, for her father to monopolize her always,
hanging around her chair with books that they read together all day,
and in the evenings strumming on his mandolin while she warbled tender
love songs in a voice so sweet that the very winds and waves seemed to
hush themselves to listen.
Curiosity was rife concerning the attractive pair, but no one could
satisfy it, and when they had been three days out no one had secured
anything but a bowing acquaintance with either.
It was about this time that a young man who had been confined to his
stateroom all these days by sea-sickness now made his appearance on
deck.
It was no less a person than Frank Laurier, who had been abroad almost
a year, and was returning at the summons of his betrothed.
It was almost two years since Cora’s terrible accident had so abruptly
interrupted their wedding, and never, since the first hour, had he been
permitted to gaze on her face.
The restoration of her health and beauty had consumed many months,
and though he had entreated to see her, the request had always been
sorrowfully denied.
Cora’s heart ached for the sight of his face and the touch of his hand,
but she dared not risk the shock he must have experienced at sight of
her poor, marred face. Still believing in his love that had ceased to
exist, she feared his disenchantment.
Afraid of the weakness of her own will, anxious to place herself out of
temptation, she entreated him to go abroad while she was in the hands
of the doctors, to remain until she summoned him with the glad news
that they might meet again to part no more forever.
He had been absent almost a year now, and they had corresponded in a
desultory fashion, when suddenly he received the letter of recall,
telling him she was well and beautiful again, and he must return,
because her heart was breaking to see him once more.
Laurier’s heart was touched by her faithful love, and he reproached
himself for the way he had neglected her letters, often not answering
them for weeks, almost forgetting her existence in the indifference
that had stolen over him and made him wish in secret that something
would happen to break the irksome bond that fettered his changed heart.
Many a man would not have hesitated to own that he had ceased to love,
and claimed his freedom from her hands, but not so Laurier, who prided
himself on his honor, and pitied Cora too sincerely to wound her loving
heart.
Doubt’s cruel whisper shall not break the spell,
Oh, thou whom to deceive is to befriend;
All shall be well with thee until the end,
Until the end believing all is well!
He was going home to marry her and make her as happy as he could. For
himself it did not matter greatly. Even if his heart was cold to her,
she had at least no living rival, and that must suffice.
That evening when he came on deck--the young men had persuaded
him--begging him to come and listen to the sweet voice singing in the
moonlight, the voice of a girl as lovely as an angel, but with such a
selfish, cruel papa that he would not permit any of them to approach
within arm’s length.
“I wish you would storm the citadel of her heart, Laurier, and avenge
us!” laughed one.
“You forget that I am going home to be married!” he replied gravely.
“Oh, a little flirtation beforehand need not matter.”
“I beg your pardon. A young girl’s love is too sacred to be trifled
with. I will go on deck and listen because I adore singing, but I shall
not try to make the young lady’s acquaintance.”
So in the silvery moonlight of that balmy September evening he went on
deck with his friends, and saw, sitting apart, the man lightly touching
the strings of a mandolin, while by his side stood his daughter, a
slender, classically gowned girl in a simple robe of warm, white
cashmere falling in straight folds, her pure, lovely face crowned with
golden hair, lifted to the sky while she sang in notes of liquid melody:
“Last night the nightingale woke me,
Last night when all was still,
It sang in the golden moonlight
From out the wooded hill.
I opened my window so gently,
I looked on the dreaming dew,
And, oh, the bird, my darling,
Was singing of you, of you!
“I think of you in the daytime,
I dream of you by night,
I wake, and would you were here, love,
And tears are blinding my sight.
I hear a low breath in the lime tree,
The wind is floating through,
And, oh, the night, my darling,
Is sighing, sighing, for you!
“Oh, think not I can forget you,
I could not though I would,
I see you in all around me
The stream, the night, the wood.
The flowers that slumber so gently,
The stars above the blue,
Oh, heaven itself, my darling,
Is praying, praying, for you!”
Frank Laurier stood apart, looking and listening spellbound, while
something sweet and tender to the verge of pain stabbed his heart.
What was there in the pure, uplifted face and in the sweet, sad voice
that seemed to strike a mournful chord in memory like some familiar
strain? He had never heard the song before, and surely never seen the
exquisite face, else it had never been forgotten.
He said to himself that she had only made him think of love again--love
that had grown a stranger to his heart, though once as sweet and
welcome as the song she sang.
She rested a few moments, without observing her rapt listeners, then
the sweet voice rose again, following the chords of the mandolin:
“Beneath the trees together
They wandered hand in hand,
Oh, it was summer weather,
And Love was in the land;
Their hearts were light,
The sun shone bright,
And as they went along,
With voices sweetly mingled,
They sang the old, old song:
“Love, I will love you ever,
Love, I will leave you never,
Ever to me precious to be.
Never to part, heart bound to heart!
Ever am I, never to say good-by!
“Beneath the trees together
They went along apart,
Oh, it was autumn weather,
And heart had turned from heart,
Across the wold the air came cold,
The mists rose dull and gray,
And in their ears, like a mocking voice,
They heard the well-known lay:
“Yet still while o’er the heather
They go their way alone,
Oh, it is wintry weather,
And all the summer’s gone!
They hear the air they love the most
Upon their fancy fall;
’Tis better to have loved and lost
Than not have loved at all.”
The sweet voice was inexpressibly pathetic. Laurier felt a lump rise in
his throat and a moisture in his eyes. He longed to clasp the singer in
his arms and soothe her tender grief.
CHAPTER XXV. AN ANSWERED PRAYER.
The sweet voice died away in lingering echoes over the waters, the
mandolin ceased its plaintive chords, and Jessie sat down with a low
sigh by her father’s side, and leaned her head against his shoulder in
pathetic silence, while the listeners stole away, leaving Laurier alone
in the seat he had taken, gazing absently over the moonlit waters while
ocean’s tone seemed to echo over and over:
“Love, I will love you ever,
Love, I will leave you never!”
He had sat down very suddenly because he had staggered from emotion
over a shock.
It had come to him all at once why the girl’s face and voice had
seemed so familiar that it had awakened subtle pain blent with keenest
pleasure.
The fair, exquisite face was like one that had been lying long beneath
the coffinlid, the voice was one whose sweet, reproachful tones had
once pierced his heart like an avenging sword. She brought back to him
the irrevocable past.
“So like, so like, she might be Jessie Lyndon’s sister,” he mused. “But
no, that could not be. Mrs. Dalrymple had but one daughter. It is only
a chance likeness.”
He began to wonder what their names could be, the father and daughter,
and when one of his friends came back to his side he whispered the
question:
“What did you say their names were?”
He was astounded when the young man answered calmly:
“His name is Lyndon, and he calls his daughter Jessie.”
“Heavens!” and Laurier started violently.
“What is it?” cried his friend.
“Nothing! Yes, that wretched sickness is coming on again. Will you
assist me to my stateroom?”
He lay wakeful and wretched all night, tortured by a name and a
semblance, thinking that surely she must have been related to the dead
girl by some close tie, and wishing to know her just for the sake of
the past.
The next morning, in spite of his bad night, he was on deck early,
determined, if possible, to make the acquaintance of the new Jessie
Lyndon.
But our heroine had not been on shipboard three days without finding
out the name of this important fellow passenger.
Her father had discovered it early and communicated it briefly, saying:
“Do not recognize him when he comes on deck. If he addresses you,
pretend perfect forgetfulness of him and the past.”
“You may be sure I will do so,” with a lightning gleam of pride in the
soft, dark eyes, and a swift rush of color to the round cheek.
But a moment later she asked, almost inaudibly:
“His wife--does she accompany him?”
“No, he is alone.”
When Laurier saw her in the broad glare of daylight he perceived that
her likeness to the dead Jessie Lyndon was more startling even than
it had seemed last night--it might have been Jessie herself with
the additional charm of eighteen over sixteen added to two years of
cultivation, and all the advantages of a rich and becoming dress.
But when he passed close by her as she lounged in her chair her calm
glance swept over him like the veriest stranger’s, while the color rose
in her cheek at his admiring glance.
It was quite useless for him to seek an introduction. No one dared
penetrate their chill reserve but the captain, and he refused Laurier’s
request regretfully, saying that the Lyndons were very offish and did
not care to know people.
But all day Laurier haunted her vicinity. He could scarcely take his
eyes from the beautiful, luring face with its down-dropped eyes bent
so steadily over her book; he simply forgot his betrothed’s existence,
and kept wishing feverishly that something would happen to make him
acquainted with the fascinating stranger.
How terribly our wild wishes are answered sometimes!
Laurier did not dream that his good or evil fate would soon grant his
prayer.
Jessie sang again on deck that night, and Laurier retired to toss on a
restless pillow, and dream of her all night.
In the dark hour that comes before the dawn a leaping flame shot up
from the steamer into the darkness, irradiating the gloom with awful
light, while panic-stricken voices rang out upon the night, shouting:
“Fire! Fire! Fire!”
CHAPTER XXVI. AN OCEAN TRAGEDY.
Of the horrors that attended the burning of the _Atlanta_ in mid-ocean
that September night none could clearly tell, not even the survivors,
so sudden had been the alarm, so terrible the onset of the leaping
flames, so wild the ferocity of almost every one as they fought over
the lifeboats, forgetting honor and chivalry in the mad rush for
continued existence.
From the first moment it was evident that the ship was doomed. The fire
had gained such headway before it was discovered that its progress
could not be checked. So the dread alarm, “Fire! Fire! Fire!” rang out
in horror from anguished voices blending with the roaring, leaping
flames, and the sullen roar of old ocean, both deadly enemies to
mankind, and eager for their destruction.
Over the hurly-burly of wind and wave and fire rose the captain’s
voice, ordering out the lifeboats, and then the struggle for life
began, intensified by the anguished shrieks of women and children,
wailing and screaming in their despair.
The boats were lowered, but, alas, there would not be room for all the
_Atlanta’s_ freight of human souls!
So the struggle for supremacy began, the young and the strong jostling
the old and weak, fighting for place and supremacy. Ah, Heaven, that
such cruelty and selfishness should exist beneath the sky!
The few brave, chivalrous souls, the captain and first mate among
them, who insisted that the women and children should be given first
place and the men take their chances, had their voices drowned by
angry, clamorous cries, as the traitors scrambled down the ladder
pell-mell into the boats, crowding them till they almost sank with
their heavy freight.
In the awful glare of light that illuminated the sea and sky and the
scene of terror, Leon Lyndon leaned against the deck rail with his arm
about his daughter, pleading, praying the selfish wretches to take her
in and save her, though he must himself perish.
In the lurid scene of smoke and flame Jessie’s face shone clear and
pale as a lily, as she clasped his neck, entreating him not to let her
be separated from him.
“Oh, papa, darling, there is no one to love poor Jessie but you! Think
how lonely I should be in the wide world without you, my only friend!
If both cannot be saved, let us die together!”
The man’s face, white already with the anguish of despair, grew more
pallid still in the lurid light that glared on it as though her
pathetic plaint went through his heart.
Clasping her close as though in a last embrace, he cried passionately:
“Oh, my darling, it is a cruel pass to which we are brought, but, as
for me, I am growing old, and it does not much matter. My life has been
a failure, and there are times when I have been tempted to end it with
my own hands. But since I found you, Jessie, you have made it sweeter,
so that I would fain live for you! But it cannot be. Even if I can
persuade those selfish men to give you a place in the lifeboat, I must
be left behind. In a moment we part forever! Listen, Jessie, my sweet
daughter, to the last words of a dying man!”
She clasped her fair arms about his neck, and raised her lovely face,
tear-wet and pain-drawn, to his own.
“Papa, darling, we cannot part. Do not send me from you!”
All this time a man had been lingering near them unheeded. He could see
their agony, but he could not catch their words, drowned in the ocean’s
roar and the crackling of the flames, blent with the wild cries of the
panic-stricken passengers.
Leon Lyndon bent his convulsed face to his daughter’s and pressed his
lips to hers, then murmured solemnly:
“Darling, you will not be alone in the world as you said just now, and
as I have made you believe in my selfish anger. You have your mother!”
“Papa!” she gasped.
The fire roared and crackled over their heads; the beasts still fought
going down the ladder to safety, and the man close to them watched with
impatience for the father to make some effort to save his child.
CHAPTER XXVII. “I LOVED HER ALWAYS.”
Leon Lyndon knew that his time was short. The last words must be
hurried, and he continued:
“If you escape this horror, Jessie, go to New York to Mrs. Dalrymple.
Tell her you are her daughter, sent to her at last by her erring
husband. Tell her that in his last hour Leon Dalrymple’s heart was true
to her as from the first hour he saw her beautiful face. Tell her he
prayed her pardon for the impatient temper and cruel pride that turned
her heart against him; that while both were wrong, he was most to
blame; though if she had only looked back the day she went she would
have seen his arms extended to take her back, and he would have gone
on his knees to beg her to stay! All is past and gone--the hopes, the
fears, the longings, the despair, the vengeful anger that deprived her
of her child--but I have loved her always--I could not thrust her from
my heart!”
His strained voice broke in agony and he hid his face against her
shoulder, all the anguish of more than eighteen years crowding on him,
blent with the horror of the moment.
Ah, those cruel years of separation, what agony, what hopeless love,
what mad yearnings, what unutterable despair had been crowded in them!
If they had known the wastes lost love must cross
The wastes of unlit lands--
If they had known what seas of salt tears toss
Between the barren sands.
If she had known that when in the wide west
The sun sank gold and red,
He whispered bitterly: “’Tis like the rest,”
The warmth and light have fled.
If he had known that she had borne so much
For sake of the sweet past,
That mere despair said: “This cold look and touch
Must be the cruel last!”
If she had known the longing and the pain.
If she had only guessed--
One look--one word--and she perhaps had lain
Reconciled on his breast!
Too late! Too late! All was ending now, the pain, the despair, of weary
years and Death stared him in the face--Death that he had longed for
often as the best friend of the wretched!
Why should we fear the beautiful angel Death,
Who waits us at the portals of the skies,
Ready to kiss away the struggling breath,
Ready with gentle hands to close our eyes?
Leon Lyndon had only one tie to bind him to life--this fair, loving
daughter--but he knew they must be parted now, and he drew her close to
the ladder, followed by Laurier, who had been most impatiently waiting,
and again renewed his prayers to the men who were still crowding into
the last boats.
It was a sight to touch the coldest heart to anger to see such
selfishness, so many men crowded into the few boats with just a few
fortunate women and children who had had husbands and fathers strong
enough to force a way for them.
But on deck there were a score of people, two-thirds women and
children, who were preparing to cast themselves into the sea on frail
planks and life preservers, their only refuge.
The last boat was filled, and there was but one woman in it. The rowers
were putting off when a loud voice cried authoritatively:
“Hold! You can crowd in another and you shall take this lady, or I will
sink the boat, by thunder, and send your selfish souls to Hades!”
It was a threat not to be lightly treated, and the rowers waited,
turning their white, angry faces to the ladder where a man clambered
down, assisting a beautiful young girl.
It was Frank Laurier who had broken in on Lyndon’s unheeded and
uncared-for pleadings, crying abruptly:
“They will not hear you, sir, but give her to me and I will force them
to take her in, or I will spring into the sea and overset the boat!”
And catching the astonished girl from her father’s clasp, for the
exigencies of the moment admitted of no ceremony, he made the bold
stroke that insured Jessie’s safety, placing her swooning form in the
boat with the grumbling crew who yet dared not refuse his command.
Then they rowed quickly away out of reach of the storm of vituperations
from the captain and other men who remained on the deck working away at
a raft, on which they hoped to escape with the remaining women.
Laurier looked back at Leon Dalrymple as we may call him now, and the
look on his face, the pain, the sorrow, was one never to be forgotten.
He cried out, though Laurier could not catch the words:
“My God, what have I done? I have sent her from me, penniless, with the
belt of jewels, all our worldly wealth, secured around my waist! I must
follow and cling to the boat until I can remove it and leave it with
her, my darling; then no matter what becomes of me!”
The next instant he sprang over the deck rail into the sea, and, guided
by the light of lurid flames, swam after the vanishing lifeboat.
“Poor fellow, I was about to propose to share with him the spar I see
floating yonder, but he is doubtless crazed with excitement! I will
follow and try to help him, for he cannot swim long in such a sea
without support!” thought Laurier, springing into the sea and clutching
the spar.
At that moment the first gray light of dawn shone over the sea, hailed
with joy by scores of voices, and the raft was quickly launched, the
rest of the passengers escaping gladly from the burning ship that was
scattering them with firebrands and cinders.
But the raft so hastily constructed and overcrowded, began to give way,
threatening instant destruction to those who had trusted to its frail
support.
At that moment an empty lifeboat was observed floating near them, and
they comprehended at once that the first lifeboat, overcrowded with
selfish men, had somehow overturned and cast them all into the sea.
They had no time to bemoan this new horror, they were too glad of this
chance to save the imperiled women and children.
CHAPTER XXVIII. WAS A MIRACLE WROUGHT?
The sea was unusually calm and smooth that morning. A skillful swimmer
could make good headway against the tide.
Laurier was an athlete, and swimming lightly and strongly after the
vanishing lifeboat, he looked about anxiously for Lyndon, hoping to
assist him.
To his surprise and dismay not a sign was to be seen of the fair head
of the man in whom he took an almost painful interest for the sake of
his daughter.
His straining gaze wandered here and there over the illuminated waters,
but the glare of the burning ship pained his eyes, and nothing could
be seen but floating débris, swirling black cinders, and the lifeboats
vanishing in the gloom of the cold, gray dawn.
His heart sank with pain and sympathy thinking of the life gone down to
the depths so suddenly, and the fair daughter left fatherless.
“Alone among those selfish wretches who received her so reluctantly
that I feared to trust her to their care! What will become of her, poor
girl?” he thought, and obeying a blind impulse he could not resist,
swam after the boat that he now observed had slackened its speed as
though too heavy freighted, being sunk to the water’s edge.
What he hoped or expected from following he did not know himself. The
boat was so full they could not have made any room for him. He was all
alone in the wide waste of waters with nothing but a spar between him
and eternity, and the chances were all against his rescue. With his
superb strength and skill he might keep afloat for hours--or, something
might happen to end his life any moment, he could not tell.
He was near enough now to see that there was some commotion in the boat
as though of men struggling together in fierce dispute, and the rowers
had much ado to keep it from being overset.
In the next moment the struggle was ended by a horrible deed.
Several men lifted and cast out of the boat into the sea the
white-robed form of a woman that immediately sank! Shrieks and cries
as of horror echoed from the boat upon the morning air! Then the
rowers bent to their oars, the boat shot away, and Laurier knew that
his efforts to save Jessie Lyndon had all been in vain--the heartless
fiends, fearful for their own safety, had overpowered the more merciful
minority and cast the unwelcome passenger into the ocean.
Thrown into the boat in a fainting condition, Jessie was a most
undesirable burden, and for the few that pitied her, there was a
majority who scowled in anger, declaring that the additional weight
would cause them all to lose their lives.
“Oh, no, no, no!--let us be glad we can save her beautiful life!”
cried the only one other woman in the boat, and dipping her hand in
the water, she tenderly laved the girl’s pale brow, trying to restore
animation to the still form.
But it was a long, deep swoon, and no wonder--torn from her beloved
father, leaving him to a most certain death, Jessie’s nerves had quite
given way. She lay still and lifeless among them, heedless alike of
bitter imprecations or exclamations of tender pity.
The most of these men were the offscourings of the passengers and
crew--coarse, brutal men, selfish to the last extreme, ignorant of
sympathy or pity. One of these men cried loudly:
“She is dead, and cannot be resuscitated. Let us cast her out!”
“Yes, let us do it! It is ill luck carrying a dead body!” cried a
superstitious sailor.
Then the wrangle began, the woman and a few men declaring that the
girl was yet alive and should be kept in the boat, others clamoring
to get rid of the helpless burden. It ended in a struggle where the
strong overpowered the weak, and amid the shrieks of the woman and the
expostulations of the more merciful men, the unconscious form was torn
from those who would have protected it, and thrown into the sea.
Then the rowers bent to the oars, and under their efforts the boat shot
away, leaving Frank Laurier in the distance, a horrified spectator of
one of the most dastardly deeds ever committed by fiends in the form of
men.
Fate had indeed brought Jessie Lyndon and Frank Laurier together again
under circumstances the most awful that could be imagined--both face to
face with death, having scarcely one chance in a hundred of escape from
their perilous strait.
As for Jessie, the only hope lay in Frank Laurier’s ability to reach
and save her if she should rise to the surface again.
Ah, what deeds of valor Love can do! How it fires the heart, and nerves
the arm to superhuman strength!
With a wild prayer to Heaven on his pallid lips, he swam quickly toward
the spot where the white form had disappeared beneath the engulfing
waves, but ere he reached it he saw to his joy that she had risen again
and was floating on the surface, her skirts upheld by a piece of plank
on which they had caught and become entangled.
His heart gave a wild, suffocating leap; his throat swelled; hot tears
of joy sprang to his dark-blue eyes as he redoubled his efforts to
reach her side.
Breathless, spent, exhausted with his wild struggle to overcome
death, he reached the silent, floating form with its still, white face
upturned to the sky, the golden locks streaming loose upon the water,
and he clasped the beauteous form with the frenzy we feel when that
which is dearest to us on earth seems slipping away from us forever.
“Jessie! Jessie!” he groaned, with a wild recollection of a face so
like to this that he had seen once lying among funeral flowers in the
ghastly shadow of the old family vault. “Jessie! Jessie!” But there
came no movement of the white lips in answer to his wild appeal.
Yet even dead he would not cast her from him, but arranging her form
carefully on the plank, and placing the spar beneath himself, they
floated for an hour--the seeming dead and the anguished living side by
side, away from the burning ship slowly settling beneath the waters,
out on the trackless waste, while the gray light in the sky slowly
brightened.
Laurier’s eyes gazed on the beautiful face in mute love and despair,
while in his heart there echoed the sweet plaint she had sung but
yesternight:
“Love, I will love you ever,
Love, I will leave you never,
Ever to me, precious to be,
Never to part, heart bound to heart,
Ever am I, never to say good-by!”
He had never spoken one word to her, never touched her hand, never
looked into her soft, dark eyes, as he believed, yet while she had
stood there singing in the moonlight, she had lured the heart from his
breast because she brought back to him in fancy the dead girl he had
loved too late.
He vowed to himself that he would never be parted from this dead love
of his, so fair and still. They would float on together side by side
until he knew there was no longer any hope of her recovery, then he
would fold her in his arms and they would plunge down together to the
depths of ocean.
A sudden cry--of commingled hope, surprise, and doubt--shrilled over
his blanched lips:
“Ah, am I dreaming, or is this a blissful reality? Did her lips move,
her eyelids flutter?”
But it was no dream as he feared, no fancy of an overwrought brain.
A faint tinge of color had crept into the waxen cheek, the eyelids
fluttered nervously, the lips parted in a strangling gasp.
A cry of rapture escaped his lips, and at the sound so close to her
ears Jessie opened wide her eyes with a dazed look straight upon his
face.
There was no recognition at first. It was the startled wonder of a very
young infant that looked out upon him--an infant just waking from sleep.
But little by little comprehension dawned on her mind. She recognized
a familiar face presently, read passionate love in the blue eyes
fixed upon her own, recalled his identity, and wondered why they were
drifting thus with her head upon his arm, through sunlit seas together.
CHAPTER XXIX. ALONE TOGETHER.
Laurier watched Jessie’s great, dark eyes widen and darken with
feeling, and guessed the thought in her mind before she murmured in
anguish:
“Papa!”
He answered tenderly:
“Afloat somewhere on the wide, wide sea, as we are, little Jessie, and
held in the hollow of the same Divine Hand that is able to save us even
from this terrible plight. Be brave, and let us hope for the best.”
His voice trembled, for he knew too well how desperate were their
chances, how slender the thread of hope to which they could cling.
Yet he was not at all unhappy.
All that the world held for him as dearest and sweetest was beside
him here in the person of this girl almost a stranger to him, yet so
fatally dear that she blotted out everything on earth beside.
The world is naught till one is come
Who is the world; then beauty wakes,
And voices sing that have been dumb.
As for Jessie, as full memory returned and she found herself alone with
Laurier on the sunlit sea, under his tender care, her feelings were
unenviable.
When she heard that he was on the steamer it brought back all the cruel
past with a rush of pain.
When she saw him that night and the next day and that night again on
the steamer, she could hardly bear it. When she felt him looking at
her, hot blushes burned her face lest he should recognize her as the
girl who had given him an unrequited love from which he had turned in
disgust.
But in spite of all her pride, she could not help looking at him at
the rare times when he was not looking at her, and she saw that he was
handsomer than ever, but with a different expression, a gravity he had
not worn when she knew him first; something that was almost sadness
lurking in his dark-blue eyes, and chastening the debonair smile that
had thrilled her heart with such subtle tenderness.
She knew from the captain that he had sought an introduction to her,
but she was frightened at the bare idea of it. She would not have
spoken to him for anything the world held.
Then came the horrible alarm of fire, and she had rushed from her
stateroom in the white dressing gown, warm and dainty, in which she had
thrown herself down to rest on her couch. Her father had met her and
caught her in his arms.
She saw Frank Laurier lingering near, but she quickly turned her head
away, saying to herself that she would not speak to him if she were
dying.
Such a little time afterward she had been caught up in his arms and
borne down the ladder to the boat, swooning as soon as she was placed
in it, and now--now--the incredible horror of the thought made her
dizzy--she was lost to all the world but this man, alone with him on
the wide, wide sea, under his protection, at his mercy.
How had it all come about?
Feminine curiosity made her put aside her vow of silence, and she
looked at him with wide, solemn eyes, murmuring:
“Where is the boat?”
“You fell out of it and sank, and those wretches left you to your fate.
I saw them and swam near, catching you as you came to the surface.”
“Then--I--owe--you--my--life!”
“Yes,” he answered, and she wondered at the sweet, significant smile
that played around his lips.
He dared not tell his companion, either, of how the fiends in the boat
had cast her out into the sea to perish. The shock would be too great
to her nerves, already shattered by grief at her father’s loss.
He said to himself that if they escaped the perils of the sea the time
might come when he could safely tell her these things and ask her to
give him her life that he had saved to gladden his home forever.
Higher and higher climbed the sun in the heavens, and the sea glittered
with a brilliancy that pained their eyes while the whitecapped waves
rocked them on the breast of old ocean, the only living objects in the
scene, while far in the distance the smoldering hulk of the _Atlanta_
was slowly sinking from sight as it burned to the water’s edge.
They kept close together, their eyes turned on the far distance,
watching for the gleam of a sail that might presage rescue, but at
last hope began to die in their hearts, they were so weary with the
buffeting of the cruel waves and the hot glare of the sun that they
were almost ready to close their eyes on the waste of sunlit water and
sink down, down, down, through the cool, green darkness to eternal
rest.
CHAPTER XXX. A HEART OF SYMPATHY.
It was a stroke of the rarest good fortune that Laurier and Jessie
should be saved by a homeward-bound steamer--the _Scythia_, going
straight to New York.
What a sensation they created when the passengers discovered them
floating in the water on the poor raft formed of the plank and the spar.
A boat was quickly lowered, and they were drawn into it with all speed,
and, oh, what pity and kindness was showered on them after their long
exposure and peril!
The men took charge of Laurier, and the women of Jessie, every one
eager to contribute dry clothing and administer all needed comforts.
All were strangers alike to Jessie, but among the passengers Laurier
found several acquaintances, people he had met in London barely a week
ago, and whom he knew intimately in New York.
Laurier satisfied their curiosity by a straightforward recital of the
burning of the _Atlanta_, then he was glad enough to have a warm meal
and to be left to rest in his stateroom, where, spent and weary, he
remained until late next morning.
When he came on deck in a fairly well-fitting suit of clothing
contributed by a friend, he looked about anxiously for Jessie, hoping
she was well enough to come out this bright, sunny morning.
But she was not visible.
“Miss Lyndon is not well enough to come out to-day. The doctor thinks
she should rest in her stateroom till to-morrow,” he was told.
He could hardly wait till to-morrow to see her again, he was so
impatient.
How can I wait until you come to me?
The once fleet mornings linger by the way,
Their sunny smiles touched with malicious glee.
At my unrest they seem to pause and play,
Like truant children while I sigh and say,
How can I wait?
Meanwhile Jessie, really ill from fatigue and grief over her father’s
unknown fate, rested until next day, her retirement enlivened by the
visits of the ladies who vied with each other in their attentions
and condolences, every one having fallen in love with the beautiful
stranger.
They thought it most romantic that such a handsome pair as Laurier and
Jessie should have been cast away together at sea.
“Such an incident should end most naturally in love and marriage,”
declared Miss Chanler, who was a very romantic girl.
“What a pity that Miss Ellyson should be in the way!” added Mrs. de
Vries, a young society matron in Laurier’s set.
Jessie’s large eyes had an inquiring expression that moved her to add
further:
“Of course, you know all about his engagement?”
“No, I do not. I never met him until on shipboard,” Jessie answered
with seeming indifference.
“And you did not really know that he is going home to marry a girl he
has been engaged to over two years?”
“No,” Jessie answered carelessly.
“Then we must tell you about it. The story is quite romantic, if it
will not tire you to hear it.”
“Not at all,” she answered calmly, glad that they could not notice her
agitation.
So he was not married to proud, scornful Cora yet? She wondered why,
and listened eagerly to Mrs. de Vries as she rattled on and told all
that had happened as we already know.
As Mrs. de Vries finished her dramatic recital, a quick sob followed
from Jessie, who was weeping the tears that rise from a tender heart
over her rival’s calamity.
“Oh, I did wrong to unnerve you so. Forgive me,” the lady cried
repentantly.
“It is so dreadful!” Jessie sobbed, in answer, and for some moments she
found it impossible to command her feelings.
Then she stifled the bursting sobs, murmuring faintly:
“It was so distressing I could not help it!”
“It does credit to your tender heart, dear girl, but do not forget that
the story is going to end happily after all.”
A flood of sympathy for Frank Laurier’s troubles had been aroused in
Jessie’s heart, blotting out all her passionate resentments.
“How he has suffered through the sufferings of the proud beauty he
loved so well! And she, too, has atoned for all her heartlessness in
the ordeal she has passed through. I pity them too much to hate them
any longer, and when we meet to-morrow I will be very kind to him,” she
thought.
It was just what Laurier had been wishing--that she would be kind to
him when they met again.
The next morning she came on deck in a pretty gown of Miss Chanler’s
that had been altered to fit by a clever maid.
She looked lovely, though very, very pale still, as she went up to
Laurier with frankly extended hand.
“I am much better, and I thank you for saving my life,” she faltered,
with naïve directness.
“The opportunity made me very happy,” he answered, pressing the little
hand warmly as he led her to a steamer chair, and lingered by her side,
secretly jealous of every admiring glance that came her way.
But how could he blame them for feasting their eyes on such flawless
beauty as Jessie Lyndon’s, as perfect as an opening flower!
No one could look into those deep, soft, dark eyes without a thrill
at the heart; no one could gaze at the perfect, crimson lips without
wishing to press a kiss on them, or to embrace the graceful young
figure with the rounded slenderness of eighteen marking its lissom
curves, while the wealth of wavy golden hair drew the eyes again and
again in irresistible admiration.
But it seemed that even if Frank Laurier should fall in love with
Jessie he would have several very formidable rivals.
Most of the eligible young men on board vied with each other in
attentions to the newcomer.
They declared that she was the most beautiful creature ever seen,
and it was plainly to be seen that she could have her pick and choice
of lovers. It mattered not that she was very shy and quiet, grieving
always over her father’s loss, they hovered about her like bees about
a flower, while the ladies were also so charmed that they forgot to be
jealous of the lovely girl.
If Laurier was jealous he dared not say so, but the other young fellows
grumbled that just because Laurier had saved her life he tried to
monopolize all her time--and what was the use?--for they all knew he
was going home to marry an heiress, and there was no need to flirt with
beautiful Miss Lyndon.
Jessie herself wondered why, under the circumstances, he paid her so
much attention, but being devoid of vanity, she ascribed it to the
natural kindliness of his heart, and was very sweet and gentle in
return, telling herself he had been so kind she must not repulse him
these last few days when they would soon be parted forever. There
were times when she could not help feeling that every look and action
breathed love, then she would chide herself for her vanity.
“I am as vain and silly as when I thought him in love with me before,
because he showed me some meaningless attentions just to pique the girl
he loved into jealousy. I must not fall into such a mistake again,” she
mused, trying to curb her tempestuous heart that beat so fast at his
impassioned glances.
CHAPTER XXXI. HOW COULD HE LOSE HER THUS?
The days flew fast and to-morrow their eventful journey would be
over--they would land at New York.
More than one heart was secretly sorry, grieving to lose sight of one
sweet passenger--lovely Jessie Lyndon.
And what made the parting worse was that Jessie gave them no hope
of meeting her again, in spite of their broad hints at renewing her
acquaintance in New York.
She had said to one and all that she was going to relatives in the
city, but not to any one, even Laurier, did she disclose their names.
In fact, Jessie was ill at ease over the thought of returning to her
mother, because there she must meet again the proud beauty, Cora.
“I must be there through all the excitement of their wedding. How can I
bear it?” she asked herself in frank dismay.
It seemed to her that she could not bear the pain of seeing him wedded
to another. She would be sure to turn pale and tremble, and thus betray
the secret of her sad heart--her unrequited love.
She wished that the wedding were over and done with, so that they might
be gone away on their bridal tour before she entered the house.
The more she thought of it the more she felt that she could not bear
the excitement of the wedding, and at length she resolved to seek out
some of her former humble friends and remain with them until Laurier
and his bride were gone on their wedding tour.
That last night before they landed was the most beautiful they had
experienced. The azure dome was gemmed with countless stars that were
mirrored in the calm sea, the moon shed a bewitching, silvery light on
everything, and the air was as soft as in midsummer.
Every one remained on deck till a late hour. They had music and
flirting to beguile the time, and Laurier betrayed the fact of Jessie’s
talent.
“Oh, why did you not tell us before?” they cried. “Oh, do not refuse to
sing for us!”
They had been so kind that she could not well refuse; besides, she
loved to sing as the birds love to warble.
She whispered to Laurier:
“I will do my best because they have all been so kind to me, but I fear
I shall break down thinking of poor papa and the uncertainty of his
fate.”
He tried to cheer her with hopeful words:
“Look on the bright side; your father may have been saved just as we
were, and you may soon be reunited.”
“I fear not. He had a presentiment of death, I believe, for he sent
messages as from the dying to his friends in New York,” she sighed.
“Still, I would not give up hope. Many people have been known to
survive terrible accidents,” he replied, and she wondered if he was
thinking of all that had happened to him and Cora.
She sighed, and began to strum softly on the guitar some one had
offered for her accompaniments.
Then she sang, and the tremor in her voice made it all the sweeter.
They hung spellbound on the liquid notes sweet as the nightingale.
“It is another Melba!” they cried in delight, but some were hushed into
silence, their very heartstrings stirred by the divine strains.
When she stopped at last, all were clamorous for more, but she pleaded
weariness.
A low voice murmured in her ear:
“Just one more, please--the song you sang for your father the night I
first saw you.”
“I must have sung several,” she replied, and he answered:
“‘Love, I will love you ever!’”
The significant earnestness of the tone and words made her heart throb
so quickly that the blood mantled her cheek with crimson. She made no
answer, just swept the strings and sang the sweet old song, while his
heart kept echoing the tender refrain:
“Love, I will love you ever,
Love, I will leave you never,
Faithful and true,
Ever to me precious to be,
Heart bound to heart,
Never to part,
Love, I will love you ever!”
She paused, and no one ventured to ask her to sing again. They wished
to keep the last sweet strain in their hearts.
She turned her face up to the starry sky, and little by little they
fell away from her side, comprehending that she preferred to be alone.
Soon no one was left but Laurier, and for some little time he kept
silence. It was enough to be near her, to gaze on the lovely face
upturned to the moonlit sky, to breathe the same air with her, and to
wonder of what she was thinking with that pensive curve on her crimson
lips, whether of her dead father, or a possible lover.
He started while a twinge of jealousy tore through his heart like
red-hot iron. A lover! Oh, how he hated the thought!
Then another thought came to vex him.
To-morrow they would be parted. She was going out of his life to
unknown friends.
And she had shown no disposition to continue her acquaintance with him
beyond to-morrow.
Could he bear to lose her thus?
Life would be unutterably dreary without this beautiful girl who had
come into his life so strangely, and was about to fade from it so soon.
His heart leaped with great, suffocating throbs. He must speak, must
know his fate!
He leaned closer to her till their heads almost touched, the brown,
curly one, and the wavy, golden-tressed one.
“Jessie,” he faltered.
She started violently, and turned her face inquiringly toward him, as
he continued:
“Ever since that first night I saw you with your pure face upturned
to the sky, the words of your song have echoed in my heart. Will you
forgive me for daring to say them over to you? ‘Love, I will love you
ever!’”
She could not pretend to misunderstand him. With dilated, wondering
eyes, she gazed at him, as he continued thrillingly:
“I know this seems strange to you--strange and abrupt. But once before
I knew and loved a Jessie Lyndon, so like to you that you might have
been twin sisters. Perhaps you have had a near relative of that name?”
anxiously.
CHAPTER XXXII. THE HEART OF A LOVER.
The stars shone on, the wind sighed, the sea moaned, but Jessie’s heart
almost stopped still.
The moment she had dreaded had come at last.
He was asking her about that other Jessie Lyndon.
And she would have to answer so that he would not suspect her identity.
Her heart beat suffocatingly and almost choked her voice as she tried
to speak. “I have startled you, venturing so abruptly on this subject,”
he said. “I would have waited longer, only that we shall be parting
to-morrow, and I feared lest I should never see you again. Ah, Jessie,
that is such a horrible thought to me. I could not bear it! I cannot
bear to think that I shall never see you again! I love you--love you
with a passion undreamed of till now! Are you willing for me to love
you, to let me try to win your heart in return?”
A sudden flash of pride shone in her eyes, and she tried to answer him
with scornful words, but they died on her lips.
She loved him so dearly, oh, Heaven, in spite of all her resolves
against it, that she could not bring herself to say one cruel word
to him, no matter how much she knew he was to blame. If she could
have known that he was speaking truly, that he actually loved her, as
he said, and had he but been free she would have fallen against his
breast, and sobbed out all her love in his arms, the happiest girl in
the whole world.
But once he had deceived her, and in fancy his kiss burned on her lips
again--sweetest and falsest kiss the world ever knew.
She nerved herself to lift her head and drew back from him in sad
surprise while he exclaimed ardently:
“You do not answer me, Jessie--may I hope, then, or----” The words died
on his lips, for she interrupted reproachfully:
“Mr. Laurier, you have no right to speak such words to me--you who are
going to New York to marry another girl!”
He gave a cry as if stunned, and his face drooped against his breast.
He had been forgetting Cora for many a day. This lovely girl had driven
her from his memory.
Thus suddenly recalled to memory by her gently reproachful words, he
groaned in agony, not daring to meet her dark, soft eyes.
“Is it not true?” she asked gently, but, looking up, he groaned angrily:
“It is Mrs. de Vries who has told you this! She was always a noted
gossip!”
“Yes, she told me, but why should she not, if it is true, and you do
not deny it,” she faltered, almost hoping that he could.
But Frank Laurier could not be untruthful. A bursting sigh heaved his
breast as she watched him with pathetic, dark eyes.
He turned on her almost fiercely, crying:
“You think me a vile wretch, do you not?”
“No--but--a flirt--perhaps!” pensively, and he gathered himself
together to do battle for his happiness.
“I am not a flirt, Jessie, but I may be a vile wretch, for since the
first night I saw you I have entirely forgotten the poor girl I am
engaged to marry. Instead of loving her I almost hate her because she
stands between your heart and mine!”
He paused, looking at her, and found her expression doubtful and
wondering.
“That sounds very fickle and cruel to you, does it not?” he cried, “but
let me explain, and you will see that I am not quite so bad as I seem.
I was engaged to Cora two years ago, but just before our wedding day
I met a girl--the Jessie Lyndon I spoke of to you just now--and there
was a bitter rivalry between the two young girls, for I admired Jessie
Lyndon very much. But I was bound to Cora and must keep my promise. The
girl Jessie died very suddenly, and then I found out strangely that
she was dearer to my heart than the living Cora. But I kept my secret
locked in my heart, and would have married her the same only that our
marriage has been twice postponed by a strange fatality. Now it is
announced for the third time, and I am going home to marry her, but in
the interval of my absence my heart has turned from her as utterly as
if it had never known one throb of love for her in the past.”
She did not answer. She was dazed and full of wonder.
He had said such astonishing words that she could not forget them. Why
did he think she was dead? How had he made so strange a mistake?
He added feverishly:
“All this while I have been loving Jessie Lyndon dead better than
Cora Ellyson living, and when I saw you that night on the steamer my
heart went out to you passionately as if you had risen from the dead
in answer to my yearning prayer. It would be wrong to wed Cora with my
heart full of you! I will go to her and confess the truth, and ask her
to release me so that I may lay my life at your feet!”
Oh, what a moment of triumph for Jessie Lyndon!
When she remembered that awful night at Mrs. Dalrymple’s it seemed too
strange to be true that she had won from proud, scornful Cora the lover
whom she worshiped, thus paying back scorn for scorn.
And she could not doubt he loved her now. It quivered in his voice, and
flushed his cheek, thrilling her with a secret happiness too deep for
words.
Her heart cried wildly:
“Oh, if he were but free, my handsome lover, I would confess my love
and make him happy!”
But the thought of Cora came over her with an icy chill.
He had belonged to her first, and, after all her suffering, Jessie was
too noble a rival to break that proud girl’s heart.
She turned her face from him to the shining stars so that he could not
read the despairing love written on it, and answered, firmly though
gently:
“I forbid you to tell her the truth, for I can never accept happiness
based on the wreck of another devoted heart. You must marry Cora as you
promised to do, and, perhaps, you will learn to love her again!”
CHAPTER XXXIII. THE BLACKMAILER.
Madame Barto’s doorbell clanged impatiently twice, and then a deeply
veiled young lady was admitted, and shown to the small parlor where
madame received her callers. She glanced around her, muttering:
“Almost two years since I was here, yet how familiar everything
appears! Madame herself would have the same old lying story to tell,
perchance, if I were to cross her palm again with silver! Pah! the
dingy hole disgusts me. I wish that wretch would hasten! I have no time
to waste here, and Aunt Verna so ill that it was unseemly for me to
quit the house.”
She paced up and down the floor with the impatience of a caged lioness.
“Why don’t he come? It is money again, I suppose! Money--always money!
And since my unfaithful guardian speculated with my money and lost so
much of it, I have scarcely enough for my own needs. I shall be glad
when I am safely married to Frank, for then I shall defy Carey Doyle
to do his worst. I can deny his story if he dares bring any charges,
and Frank Laurier, I know, will defend his wife’s honor to the last.
Ah, how I long to see him again, my love, my own! His steamer is due
to-day, and I am wild with impatience. Ah! what cruel suspense I have
endured since he went away. And even now I dread the meeting. My beauty
is not as brilliant as before my terrible accident, and I shall always
be compelled to depend on cosmetics to aid the charms that before were
unsurpassed!”
She flung back her thick veil and paused before a mirror, studying her
face intently, as she had contracted a habit of doing now.
She was indeed changed from the brilliant Cora of two years ago.
The beauty specialists had done their best, but they could not restore
all that the cruel flames had licked up so relentlessly that fatal
wedding eve.
She had tried to cheat Frank Laurier, but she could not cheat herself,
and she dreaded inexpressibly the moment of their meeting.
“Will his love survive the change? Has it, indeed, survived our long
parting?” she asked herself anxiously, for she had not failed to notice
how indifferent his letters had been, and how few and far between.
She thought:
“Perhaps he thinks I should release him, and that his indifference will
goad me into it, but I will never do it, not even if he asked me! After
all, I am afraid Frank is rather fickle in his love! He turned from me
to another--that Jessie Lyndon that my aunt claimed as her daughter. If
she had lived, I fear she would have made me trouble with Frank, for he
must have secretly admired her, and it is fortunate for me in all ways
that she died--for one thing, on account of her rivalry; the other,
that now Aunt Verna will leave me her millions when she dies! And that
may not be long, for she is certainly very ill now, and--ah!” her low
soliloquy ended with a start as a young man abruptly entered the room.
“Good morning, Miss Ellyson. I am glad you obeyed my summons so
promptly,” he sneered, with coarse triumph.
She frowned angrily as she cried:
“You are impertinent, Carey Doyle. How dared you summon me here?”
“You have ignored all my letters asking for money, and I had too much
respect for your position to annoy you at your aunt’s, so I thought it
was the best plan for you to meet me here and discuss matters.”
“What is it that you wish?”
“Money, of course!”
“Wretch! I have paid you over and over for keeping that miserable
secret!”
“You have not paid me half that it was worth to you, my proud lady!”
Carey Doyle answered boldly.
She was furious with rage, her eyes gleaming, her face death-white, her
small hands clenched. She thought bitterly that she wished he were dead
and lying by the side of her victim down in the old stone quarry, the
thought of whose ghastly secret had kept her sleepless many a night.
But she had reasoned to herself many a time that the crime could never
be traced to her, for she had covered up the clues too cleverly by her
story of his suicidal threats.
Even if they were to find the whitening bones of Ernest Noel down in
the dim old quarry, they could not fasten his death on anybody. They
would simply believe he had carried out his threat of suicide.
Her anger blazed at the thought that in this insolent man, the witness
of her evil deed, lay her only peril.
“I will not give you any more money, I have exhausted my resources.
Besides, I am not afraid of your story. You will not dare repeat it,
for I would give you into custody for attempted blackmail!” she hissed
threateningly.
But Carey Doyle’s laugh was not reassuring. It stung her to fury, yet
inspired her with alarm, though she persisted:
“I am not afraid of you. No one will take your word against mine!”
“You may risk it if you choose,” he answered, with persistent
nonchalance.
She measured him with a scornful glance, but she could not cow him, and
her heart sank with fear.
By to-morrow Frank Laurier would be in New York. Within a week, if
woman’s wit could compass it, she would be his wife. Dare she risk any
disclosure that might rouse her lover’s suspicions, and so postpone the
wedding again?
She groaned in spirit, but she decided that she dare not defy Carey
Doyle until she had a husband to defend her against his charges.
“How much do you require?”
“Just one thousand dollars!”
“You ask too much.”
“I cannot do with less.”
“You must!”
“I will not!”
They glared at each other, but she saw that she could not shake his
resolution.
Swallowing her rage and chagrin, she expostulated:
“It is but a month ago I gave you five hundred
dollars--and--and--since that night you helped me you have had four
thousand dollars.”
“For which I am most profoundly grateful,” airily, “and a poor price
for such a secret, too, so you shouldn’t mind a last payment such as I
ask for now.”
“A last payment! You will be calling for more in a week.”
“I swear to you I will not. I am about to leave the city for Alaska.”
“Do you mean it?”
“As surely as the sun shines in the heavens this bright September day!
Perhaps you have read, Miss Ellyson, of the wonderful gold finds in
Alaska that have stirred the whole country into a fever. Well, I have
joined a party to go out to the gold diggings, and I mean to make
my fortune or lose my life, whichever fate wills. It will cost me a
thousand dollars to get to the Klondike, so you see I shall have no
means of returning from those frozen wilds till I make my pile. Surely
you would not begrudge a thousand dollars to be rid of me forever?”
No, she would not. It would be a small price to pay to rid herself of
this terrible incubus.
She had read in all the newspapers of the perils of the awful journey
to Alaska, and she thought in her heart with joy that surely he could
never return from beyond the far Yukon.
Cora had shuddered at the tales of Alaska, but now she brightened at
the thought that Carey Doyle was not, indeed, likely to return from so
grim a journey.
“Since you need it so much and promise never to ask for more, I will
try to get the sum for you within the week,” she said, adding:
“I will send a letter to this address telling you when and how I will
pay it to you. Is that satisfactory?”
“Perfectly, for I know you will keep your word,” he replied, smiling to
himself at the victory he had won over the haughty girl who scorned him
even while she cringed beneath his power.
She inclined her head haughtily, drew down the thick veil again, and
swept out of the house down to her waiting limousine, and so back to
Mrs. Dalrymple’s, where, since her return from the hospital, she again
made her home, the Van Dorns being indefinitely absent in Paris.
CHAPTER XXXIV. “A BREAKING HEART,” SHE SAID.
Mrs. Dalrymple had never felt like a well woman since the day she
kissed her daughter’s dead face and turned away from the old family
vault, feeling that her last hope in life was gone.
Alone and lonely, though she had the whole world at command by
the power of wealth, Verna Dalrymple, still a young woman, and a
magnificently beautiful one, was as wretched as the veriest beggar
starving in the streets.
Never since the moment she had turned from her angry young husband,
doubting his love and hating his poverty, had Verna Dalrymple known a
really happy hour.
Despite her pride and resentment that had driven them apart, she had
loved Leon, her husband, with the passion of her life, and realized it
too late.
The decree of divorce she had permitted her parents to secure for her
fell like the trump of doom upon her heart, and the coming of her child
had been her only consolation.
All these years she had fought down with resolution the passion of her
heart, loving and hating alternately the man whose brief appearance on
the stage of her life had been as fateful as a tragedy.
Yet she knew not if he were dead or living, for never since the moment
of their parting had she gazed on his fair, handsome face.
The divorce case, based on nonsupport and incompatibility of temper,
had been cleverly managed by her lawyers without bringing them together
again, and when she fainted on receiving the decree of divorce, all
supposed it was from hysterical excitement; none guessed that the iron
of despair had entered her soul on knowing herself parted forever from
Leon Dalrymple.
She clung to his name still, with the excuse that it was for the sake
of the unborn child, that it might bear the paternal name.
But with the coming of the beloved daughter one bitter drop always
mingled with her cup of joy.
It was that he could not share her happiness.
His child looked at her with its father’s face, and had the sunny curls
that had crowned his handsome head.
There was wordless reproach in the resemblance.
There are words of deeper sorrow
Than the wail above the dead;
Both shall live, but every morrow
Wake us from a widowed bed.
And when thou wouldst solace gather,
When our child’s first accents flow,
Wilt thou teach her to say “Father!”
Though his care she must forego?
When her little hand shall press thee,
When her lip to thine is pressed,
Think of him whose love had blessed thee,
Think of him thy love had blessed!
Four years the child remained the idol of her life, and kept alive in
her heart the father’s memory--then the blow fell that almost crushed
her--the loss of the child!
It was stolen while taking an airing in the park with its nurse.
The maid had been flirting with a policeman--she said she had only just
turned her head--when the little darling had been snatched up by a
stranger--a man with a black wig and bushy whiskers who got away with
the child in spite of her pursuit.
On being cross-questioned, the maid admitted that the little girl had
previously made the acquaintance of a blond gentleman with a melancholy
aspect, and the two--Darling and the gentlemanly stranger--had become
fast friends.
The little one would run to meet him, shouting with joy when he
appeared, usually with a sweet bunch of flowers or a new toy. They
would sit together on a bench a while, and Darling would prattle to
him joyously, then with a long-drawn sigh he would leave the spot and
reappear several days afterward, always meeting a glad welcome from the
child. She did not think it was any harm as he seemed such a perfect
gentleman. And she was sure it was not he who had kidnapped the child.
It was a dark man, all bushy, black whiskers and wig.
The girl was lying; because she had been so busy with her flirtation
that she did not know just when the child ran away to meet the blond
gentleman beckoning from a distance, and threw herself into his arms.
Then it was easy enough to whip into a carriage with her and away.
So the frightened nurse stuck to her story of the dark stranger, but
the mother’s heart was not deceived. She knew that Darling’s abductor
was no one but her father, who, cheated of her sweetness all these
years, had thus taken his revenge.
For a while the most bitter resentment possessed the mother’s heart.
She employed detectives, and spared neither time, money, nor patience
in the effort to recover the child.
For several years the search went on, ending at last without success.
Leon Dalrymple, who had placed his child with his sister, the wife of a
poor artisan in an obscure part of the city, and then sailed for Europe
himself, had so cleverly covered up his tracks that Mrs. Dalrymple’s
daughter was reared in poverty in the same city where her mother was
rolling in wealth, yet as effectively separated as if continents had
rolled between them.
So the years went on, and Mrs. Dalrymple, plunging into the social
whirl, tried to drown her grief in vain.
Her parents died, and their large fortune fell to her, the only
surviving child. Then she took her orphan niece, Cora Ellyson, into her
home and heart.
But in no sense could Cora fill the lost child’s place. She was
passionate, self-willed, imperious, and ungrateful. Her aunt wearied of
her often, despairing of any congeniality between them, and secretly
anxious that Cora should marry and thus remove to another home.
Then came the episode of Jessie Lyndon, the wonderful likeness that
startled Mrs. Dalrymple, and the discovery of the family birthmark on
the young girl’s breast.
Swiftly the links were fastened in the chain that proved the dead girl
to be the stolen child, recovered only in death.
It was cruel, cruel! The woman’s heart so long on the rack of suspense
almost broke beneath the awful strain of hope’s decay.
After Jessie’s death and Cora’s accident no one thought it strange that
she gave up society, draping herself in the deepest mourning garb.
In her restless mood before finding Jessie she had promised to marry a
titled Englishman, who, meeting her abroad, had followed her home to
plead his suit.
Now she abruptly canceled this engagement, to the despair of her
suitor, who adored her beauty as much as he did her millions.
Her heart had never been in it. No man had touched that since she had
been parted from her husband, but she had thought to fill up her empty
life with gratified vanity, to wear the tiara of a duchess.
Her heart revolted, and she realized that she would do her lover wrong
to give him the hand without the heart.
So, in spite of his entreaties, she took back her promise, and set
society caviling as much as it had done at her divorce. She did not
care. She was growing indifferent to everything now that she had found
Darling and lost her again in death.
So it happened that as time went by she lost heart and hope, sickening
of a vague disease without a name, the slow loss of interest in life
that had nothing left to make it dear.
She lay ill on her bed at last, and the old family physician came and
shook his head and said it must be nervous prostration.
“It is a breaking heart,” she replied wearily.
“No, no.”
“I tell you yes,” she cried. “It was too cruel a blow, finding Darling
and losing her again as I did. I have never recovered from it. The
thorn has been in my heart always, and I can never recover.”
“You should have married the duke. It would have diverted your mind to
wear a coronet.”
“It would only have wearied me,” she replied, and the look in her
great, languid, dark eyes made his old heart ache. “You may spare your
pills and potions, doctor. They cannot cure me, for I do not wish to
get well. I am reaping the crop of pain I sowed in my passionate youth,
and I am weary of life!”
“You should have married another man and forgotten that episode,” he
said; but she turned her face to the wall with a stifled moan:
“I could not forget!”
And he went away perplexed and unhappy, realizing that the medical art
could not avail to cure that subtle malady--hopelessness and weariness
of life.
So it happened that she grew worse and worse, weaker and weaker. She
swallowed the doctor’s tonics patiently; but they did not do her any
good, and she smiled sorrowfully when he chided her because she would
not make an effort to live.
“The world is empty,” she murmured again, turning her lovely, pallid
face to the wall.
CHAPTER XXXV. “BILLING AND COOING WILL WAIT.”
So it happened that on the day when the _Scythia_ came into port--the
same day that Cora Ellyson went to Madame Barto’s at Carey Doyle’s
command--Mrs. Dalrymple lay so ill that Cora felt it wrong to leave the
house even for a moment.
Yet she dared not disobey the commands of her merciless tyrant.
On returning home she received a note from Frank Laurier announcing
that he had arrived in New York that morning and would call on her that
evening. The poor fellow having been parted from Jessie by her own
decree of separation, had no resource now but to return to Cora, and
most bitter indeed was the penalty.
He would never forget that night when his beautiful love had so gently
forbidden him to hope to win her and bade him return to Cora.
Prayers and entreaties were of no avail; she put them gently aside,
saying:
“Even if I loved you, how could I be happy with you when you had broken
another’s heart for my sake?”
True as truth herself, she could not contemplate such treachery calmly,
even though Cora had treated her so cruelly that many would have held
it a fair revenge.
He took her little hand in spite of her protest, and held it, and it
fluttered like a little, white bird in his clasp.
He looked full into her eyes, and, oh, how soft and dark they were, as
if full of unshed tears.
“Answer me one question,” he said: “If I had been free to woo you, if
there had been no Cora who held my promise, could you have given me
your love?”
In the beautiful moonlight he saw her bosom heave with emotion, and she
faltered sadly:
“You must pardon me for not answering that question.”
Then she tore her hand away, and fled from him in the wildest haste. He
saw her no more till next morning in the rush of leaving.
He went up to her, saying:
“We shall be landing presently. Shall I take you to your friends,
Jessie?”
She looked up at him very pale and constrained.
“My--my--friends are very plain, humble people--not at all in your set,
Mr. Laurier.”
“No matter how humble, I would like to see you safely to them,” he said.
“It will not be necessary, I thank you. Mrs. de Vries has lent me the
money for a cab, and I shall know where to go, as I have only been away
from New York two years,” she replied quietly.
“You will at least allow me to see you safely on shore, and to find you
a cab?”
“I shall be very grateful,” with a gentle smile.
After that, in the rush and confusion, he could say no more, but he
stayed by her side and waited through all the excitement of the merry
adieus, noting how popular she had become in the few days on the
_Scythia_, so that every one wished to touch her hand and wish her a
happy future. At last he was leading her down the gangplank, saying
to her with a mournful attempt at cheerfulness that the fire on the
_Atlanta_ had saved them the bother of having their luggage examined
and paying customhouse duties.
A cab was found much sooner than he desired, and he stood by it,
holding her hand very tight, longing to never let it go.
“Are we never to meet again?” he asked mournfully, and she answered,
very low:
“We must, I fear, for our social circles may one day be the same--but
not yet--not until--after you--are--married!”
She almost gasped as she uttered the last words, and tottered into the
taxi, sinking heavily into the seat.
“Where to, lady?” asked the chauffeur, and she whispered a reply that
Frank did not hear.
The door banged, the machine started, and he stood gazing after the
taxi with his heart in his eyes as lonely in that gay, bustling throng
as though stranded on a desert shore.
The world is naught when one is gone
Who was the world. Then the heart breaks
That this is last that once was won.
He hurried to his bachelor lodgings. He had written to his servants to
make ready for his coming. From there he wrote, by and by, the note to
Cora announcing his return, and his intention of calling on her that
evening. He hurried to Mrs. Dalrymple’s mansion that evening, but while
he waited for Cora’s entrance, a sad-faced servant informed him that
she would be with him as soon as she could leave her aunt, who was so
ill that she was not expected to survive the night.
A rush of surprise and grief over this startling news drove his own
troubles, temporarily, from the young man’s mind.
Five minutes later Cora hurried into the room, superbly attired,
dabbing her eyes with a damp handkerchief, inwardly thankful that this
show of grief would account for the vanished luster of her once bright
orbs.
“Frank, dearest!” she cried, throwing herself upon his breast.
They sat down a little apart from each other by his own maneuver, while
he said anxiously:
“This distressing news of Mrs. Dalrymple has driven everything else out
of my head. Is it really so bad, Cora?”
“It is the strangest case I ever heard of, Frank. Aunt Verna has been
steadily declining for long months of a malady so obscure that no
doctor can diagnose it, and she declares herself that it is a breaking
heart.”
“Oh, how sad, how pitiful!” he cried, and his thoughts returned to the
day when he had seen her bending, a sad, black-draped figure, over her
daughter’s bier. So this was the cruel end.
His betrothed continued sorrowfully:
“It will break my heart to lose my dear Aunt Verna, even though I shall
be the heiress of all her millions!”
She thought it was a good idea to remind him slyly of this fact, but he
looked at her coldly.
“You should not be counting on such things, Cora. It sounds mercenary,”
he said, rebukingly, while all the while his eyes were taking in the
change that had come over her once brilliant beauty--faded like a rose
that has languished in the withering heat of an August day.
She looked at him reproachfully:
“Oh, Frank, I did not mean it that way, I love Aunt Verna dearly, and I
am praying that she will not die.”
“Is there the slightest hope?”
“The doctors say if she had some shock to arouse her and draw her
thoughts from herself, it might do good, but she cares about nothing.
She has not shown any animation to-day, except a faint spark of
interest when I told her you were coming.”
“I should so love to see her again. Shall I have that sad pleasure?” he
asked, eager to escape from the tête-à-tête interview with Cora, now
that he could not tax her at once with her treachery.
“She asked that you should come to her a while,” Cora answered, and
then added sobbingly:
“But have you nothing more to say to me, dear Frank, after your long
absence? How cold and careless you seem.”
“Billing and cooing will wait. Let us go to your aunt now, Cora,” he
answered, rising impatiently.
CHAPTER XXXVI. “HOW WAS IT THAT LOVE DIED?”
“Let us go to your aunt now, Cora,” repeated Frank impatiently, and
though her anger blazed at his coldness, she dared not give rein to it
lest she lose him forever.
With a deep, quivering sigh she slipped her arm through his, and led
him upstairs to the elegant suite of apartments where her aunt lay
dying.
In an exquisite apartment furnished with Oriental magnificence, and
sweet with the breath of roses in golden jardinières, while a soft,
pearly light was diffused over everything by burning wax lights, Mrs.
Dalrymple lay faintly breathing on a low, white couch, wrapped in a
rich, white cashmere gown, girdled at the waist by a golden cord, her
long, luxuriant tresses floating loose in ebon blackness over the
pillow.
When Cora entered the room she led Frank Laurier straight to the couch,
saying gently:
“Are you asleep, Aunt Verna? Here is Frank come to see you.”
At these words her eyes opened with a transient gleam of interest, and
her white hand fluttered toward him while she murmured:
“I am glad to see you, Frank. You were always one of my favorites.”
He pressed her hand warmly, uttering words of deep sympathy as he sank
into the chair the maid placed for him, then a slight pause ensued.
Mrs. Dalrymple’s eyes rested on the pair sitting side by side, and she
said, with gentle interest:
“You have been gone a long time, Frank. Have you had many adventures?”
“None but the burning of my ship in mid-ocean while returning,” he
replied, causing Cora to exclaim:
“Good heavens!”
Then he remembered that his betrothed had told him the doctors said
that something to take Mrs. Dalrymple’s thought from brooding on
herself might prove most beneficial, so he continued:
“You would find it quite a thrilling story if you were not too ill to
listen to the telling.”
She sighed softly. “I am a dying woman, Frank. The blight of weariness,
of ennui, of heart loneliness, has fallen on my life, and I am fading
from earth, yet I have still a little human interest left, and it will
not tire me to listen to your story.”
She had brightened perceptibly, this strange woman who lay there
sinking into death, not of any vital trouble, but merely of morbid
grief and despair that she could not quell.
So Frank plunged into the story of the _Atlanta’s_ burning, and, seeing
that her eyes rested on him with gentle interest, he told it in most
eloquent fashion, dwelling at length on the beautiful girl he had
rescued.
The invalid’s eyes brightened with interest, while a faint pink crept
into her waxen cheek, but presently Cora’s jealousy broke bounds, and
she exclaimed sharply.
“Pray tell us the name of this paragon of beauty--this bewitching
combination of dark eyes, dimples, rosy cheeks, and golden hair!”
A moment’s hesitation, and he answered frankly:
“Miss Jessie Lyndon!”
“Ah-h!”
The stifled cry came from Mrs. Dalrymple’s suddenly blanched lips, and
her dark eyes closed as if in death.
“You have killed her!” Cora cried to him angrily, but the maid came
and knelt by her mistress, chafing her cold hands till her eyes opened
again.
“I beg your pardon,” Frank began contritely, but she smiled faintly,
saying:
“That name gave me a shock, but I am better now, and I find your story
strangely interesting. Go on--tell me more of Jessie Lyndon.”
“There is no more to tell, except that I fear her father must, indeed,
have perished in the cruel sea, leaving the poor girl an orphan,” he
replied, wondering at the change that began to come over her, the quick
flush of color to cheeks and lips, the renewed luster of the fading,
eyes. She did not look like a dying woman, now, as she cried feverishly:
“Tell me all you know of Jessie Lyndon’s father!”
“Dear Aunt Verna, I fear this excitement must be very bad for you. Let
me take Frank away!” interposed Cora jealously.
“No, no, I am better--I--I--am interested. Let him stay and tell me
more of this interesting father and daughter,” her aunt faltered, and
with a smoldering flash in her dark eyes, Cora sank back into her
chair, while Frank answered:
“I know but little more to tell! Leon Lyndon, as he was called, was
a very reticent man, making no friends among the passengers, keeping
coldly aloof with a moody air like a man with a tragic past.”
“A tragic past! Well, and his looks? Was he dark or fair?”
“He was fair, with wavy, golden hair, slightly streaked with
gray--dark-blue eyes, and a fair mustache. In his youth he must have
been rarely handsome, but he could not be less than forty now.”
She cried out tremblingly:
“The very description of my divorced husband--the man that stole
Darling from me, and broke my heart. And the girl, was she like him,
tell me!”
Frank Laurier answered excitedly:
“She was the living picture of the dead Jessie Lyndon--the girl you
buried as your daughter.”
“Nonsense, Frank----” began Cora rebukingly, but at that moment a maid
appeared at the door, beckoning her away, and saying:
“There’s a young lady downstairs insisting on seeing Mrs. Dalrymple,
and I told her I would call you.”
“I will come,” Cora answered quickly, then, looking back at Frank,
“Please do not tell Aunt Verna any more startling stories while I am
gone.”
She vanished, and Frank looked back at the invalid in whom a startling
improvement had certainly taken place.
Motioning to the maid for some cordial that stood on the table, she
swallowed it eagerly, then said:
“Suzanne, you may go into the dressing room within call if I need you.”
The maid retired, and she turned a piteous gaze on Frank Laurier’s
sympathetic face.
“Oh, Frank, you have roused me to life again!” she moaned. “This story,
it actually thrills me with hope! Yet--yet--how foolish I am! How could
she be my daughter whose dead face I kissed in the coffin, whom I left
in the old family vault among the dead-and-gone Van Dorns? But, oh, if
I could only see her face! Do you think you can find her and bring her
to me to-morrow?”
“I will try,” he replied, but he knew it would be no easy task. It
seemed to him that Jessie Lyndon meant to hide herself from him.
She closed her eyes and lay still for a few moments, her bosom heaving
with excited gasps, the color coming and going on her wasted cheeks.
Then she clutched his hand with her cold, damp fingers, crying:
“I cannot die till I have seen this girl who has a face like my dead
child’s, Frank. Frank, I have a feverish fancy--perhaps a dying fancy!
But will you try to gratify it?”
“Indeed I will,” he replied heartily.
“Bend closer, let me whisper it--for I shouldn’t like Cora or Suzanne
to hear, and you will not betray me, will you?”
“Never, I promise you!”
“It is this: Go early to-morrow to the old family vault at Greenwood,
make the sexton open it, and look in that white casket and see if
Darling is still there, or--if her father has stolen her away and
brought her to life again.”
It was the strangest fancy he had ever heard, and it made him shudder
to think of that gruesome visit to the old Van Dorn vault, but we can
refuse nothing to the dying.
“I will do what you wish,” he answered, just in time, for Cora entered
at that moment, visibly nervous, but trying hard to conceal the signs
of a terrible agitation.
She glanced suspiciously from one to the other, crying:
“Aunt Verna, how excited you look. I fear you are much worse!”
“No, Cora, I feel strangely better, as if Frank’s visit had done me
much good.”
“It has done me much good, too--made me glad and happy! Oh, aunt, I
hope you will get well in time for our wedding next week,” cried Cora,
leaning a trembling hand on her betrothed’s shoulder.
“Next week!” he cried, with a start of dismay that Cora affected to
misunderstand.
“Yes, I have arranged to have it next week, for what is the use of
any further delay? We have waited long enough, you and I, for our
happiness, have we not, dear? So everything is ready for our wedding
and flitting next week. And because Aunt Verna is sick it shall be the
quietest sort of a ceremony--no wedding breakfast, nor excitement--just
a few friends for witnesses, and the marriage in my traveling
gown--then the bridal tour. I have even planned that. We will go to
California. Shall you not like that, dear?”
It made her furious that he grew so deadly pale, that he stammered,
when he tried to answer. She guessed with a sick heart that he would
get out of it all if he could.
“All for the sake of that hateful girl--that Jessie Lyndon, number two,
who has again come between me and happiness!” she thought bitterly.
She linked her hands in his arm and drew him away.
“Aunt Verna is tired now. Come away, and I will let you see her again
to-morrow,” she said coaxingly.
They went back to the drawing-room, and she sat down by his side on a
velvet fauteuil, still keeping her hands clasped in his arm.
But he sat by her pale and distrait, no pulse in his being answering to
her blandishments.
He was thinking, miserably:
“Next week! Next week! How under heaven can I get out of this
entanglement with honor to myself, and without scandal to Cora?”
He cried hoarsely, displeasedly, in his uncontrollable misery:
“Cora, why are you in such a hurry for the wedding?”
He felt the quick start she gave as she leaned against him, heard the
catch in her breath as she sobbed:
“Oh, you are cruel! Think how often it has been postponed, and--and--I
thought that you would be as impatient as I am! It--it--was Aunt Verna
who advised it. She said: ‘Do not keep the poor fellow waiting long,
Cora. No matter if I am sick, the marriage must not be postponed again!
You can be married very quietly and go away, and no one will think hard
of you, for you have suffered much and waited long!’ Oh, Frank, you
seem so cold, so indifferent? Do not tell me you love me no more. If
you tore that hope from me I should die here at your feet of my shame
and my despair!”
No man ever had a tenderer heart than Laurier.
When he heard those passionate words from Cora’s lips, when he saw the
burning tears in her dark eyes, he felt ashamed and remorseful that he
had let his heart wander from her and fixed it on another.
“Poor girl, she loves me well, and dare I risk the breaking of my troth
to her? She might be driven to suicide, and her death would lie at my
door,” he thought, in painful indecision that she clearly read with her
keen, feminine intuition.
She drooped sorrowfully before him, her hands clasped in a mute abandon
of despair, as she continued pathetically:
“If, indeed, you think I am hurrying up the wedding too much, I can
postpone it again, though it would indeed be evil-omened, a third
postponement. But I wish above all things to please you, my dearest. So
tell me what you wish. Shall it be two weeks hence, or a month?”
Frank felt like a contemptible wretch and villain, but he also knew she
was weaving a web for him from which he could not escape, in honor.
“Don’t fret any more, Cora! You need not postpone it a day longer than
you choose. I’m ready any time you are!”
“Then it shall be next week, as I had planned it, dearest. Must you go
so soon?” as he rose. “Good night”--lifting her face for his careless
kiss.
CHAPTER XXXVII. STARTLING NEWS.
Jessie Lyndon had been strong enough to send her lover from her because
he was bound to another, but she was not brave enough to meet him daily
in the intimate association of her mother’s home as she knew must be
the case if she went to Mrs. Dalrymple’s before the wedding.
She must see him there daily with Cora, and she knew that her presence
would only make him more unhappy, and hinder the return of his heart to
the girl to whom it was plighted.
Besides, she knew that she was not brave enough, or strong enough, to
bear the pain of seeing him daily with his betrothed--perhaps to be
compelled by the narrow conventionalities of society to be a guest at
his wedding.
Fondly as she longed to meet her mother and convey to her the dying
messages of her father, she determined to postpone that meeting till
after Frank and Cora were married and gone.
Her mind ran over her few humble friends in New York, suggesting the
Widow Doyle as the most available one with whom to stay during the
short interval that must elapse between now and the marriage. In this
secluded suburban cottage she had no fear that Frank Laurier could
trace her even should he make an attempt.
So to Widow Doyle she went, and was fortunate to find the good woman
at home, receiving a hearty welcome, and most sincere sympathy, when
the sorrowful tale of her father’s loss was told.
“Poor dear, you will have to stay with me and be my daughter,” she
said, with a tenderness that brought tears to Jessie’s eyes.
“I will never forget your kindness--but I have a relative to whose care
I shall go shortly. In the meantime, I will accept your hospitality
most gratefully,” she cried, not caring to disclose her relationship to
Mrs. Dalrymple until she should have been accepted as a daughter by the
lady.
How could she tell but that the proud, rich lady might deny her claim,
might denounce her as an impostor!
What proof could she offer save her dead father’s word?
And would that suffice for the proud, rich woman of whom she had
dreamed such beautiful things, but who might not in any way come up to
her ideal mother.
The future looked very gloomy to Jessie as she sat resting in the
little easy-chair in Mrs. Doyle’s sitting room.
She realized that unless Mrs. Dalrymple accepted her as a daughter she
would be thrown on the world penniless, and obliged to make her own way.
She had remembered that her father, by a strange whim, carried the
whole of his fortune, consisting of magnificent uncut gems, in a belt
of leather around his waist.
But she knew that she had a talent that, if exercised, would provide
her a living. It was her voice, whose power and sweetness equaled
those of the most world famous prima donnas. The professors who had
cultivated that charming voice had told her she could secure a position
on the operatic stage any time she chose.
But Jessie cared nothing for fame. At the present moment, so young, so
fair, so tender, all that her heart craved was love.
And the pain of her disappointment took all the zest out of life.
She spent a quiet, lonely day with her humble hostess, whom she
entertained by a recital of the way she had spent her time since
leaving New York.
In the evening she grew listless and taciturn, her mind wandering from
this humble abode of the poor widow to the grand mansion on Fifth
Avenue, where her beautiful, stately mother reigned supreme, and where
Cora was now perhaps receiving Frank and renewing their vows of love.
“Perhaps when he sees her again his heart will turn back to her with
the old love. How could he help it when once he loved her so well? He
will soon forget poor Jessie, and that will be the best,” she thought,
but so inconsistent is love that hot tears welled to her eyes at the
fancy.
Then Widow Doyle ran in with the evening paper, which she had borrowed
from a neighbor.
Jessie took it and glanced indifferently at the columns, thinking that
the news of New York had but little interest for a sad heart like her
own.
But presently she found herself quite mistaken, for her eyes lighted on
a paragraph of vital importance to herself.
It ran briefly:
“Mrs. Verna Dalrymple, of No. 1512A Fifth Avenue, continues very ill
with no prospects of recovery. Indeed, her death is hourly expected.
The Four Hundred will thus lose one of its brightest ornaments, and
the poor of the city one of their most charitable benefactors. It is
a source of regret that so brilliant and beneficent a life should be
thus untimely cut down in the prime of beauty and intellect.”
A cruel pain like a sharp thorn pierced Jessie’s heart as she clutched
the newspaper in her rigid hands, staring at the fatal paragraph with
dilated eyes.
She could not stay away from her mother as she had planned. She must go
to her at once and receive her dying blessing.
Stifling back a choking sob, she rose to her feet, exclaiming eagerly:
“Mrs. Doyle, I have just read in this paper of the serious illness of a
very dear friend of mine on Fifth Avenue. If I could get a cab I would
go to her at once.”
“There is a cab stand on the next block. I’ll get you one at once.”
“Thank you--God bless you!” Jessie sobbed, and while the good woman was
gone she slipped on her hat and jacket and stood impatiently waiting,
her heart sinking with fear lest her mother should be dead ere she
reached her side.
The cab arrived speedily, and Mrs. Doyle asked hospitably:
“Shall you return, my dear, to-night?”
“It is not likely, but you shall certainly hear from me to-morrow.
Good night, dear, kind friend,” and with a word of direction to the
chauffeur she was gone.
While Mrs. Doyle was wondering over Jessie’s sudden departure, there
came a hasty knock on the door, and when she opened it there stood
that black sheep of a stepson of hers that she had not seen for two
years--the redoubtable Carey Doyle.
Slouching carelessly in, and falling into a seat, he said amiably:
“How-do, old lady?”
“Well, Carey, this is certainly a day of surprises, and you’re the
second one that has turned up to-day that I hadn’t seen for two years!”
ejaculated the old lady, in the pleased surprise of one that leads a
quiet, lonely life when confronted with old friends.
“But where have you been all this time? Never coming near your poor old
stepma for two years?” she added reproachfully.
“Has it been so long? By Jove, I didn’t think it! But I’ve been hard
down to business, and though I thought of coming often, still I
couldn’t spare the time. But you’ve been getting on all right, have
you?”
“Yes, I’ve scratched along and kept body and soul together,” she
replied, prudently making the worst of her situation, lest he had come
to borrow money, a shrewd suspicion, for his face fell as he exclaimed:
“Then you haven’t a hundred dollars or so you could lend a fellow to
help him off to the Klondyke?”
“Mercy, no! Where would a poor body like me get a hundred dollars,
or even a hundred cents ahead, making a living by her needle?” she
exclaimed, prudently ignoring a little hoard, Leon Lyndon’s gift to
her, that she had laid by for the future “rainy day” that must come to
all the poor in sickness or trouble.
Doyle looked disappointed and muttered to himself that he was sorry he
had taken the trouble of coming since he couldn’t wheedle any funds out
of the old woman.
His disappointed gaze roved over the floor and he saw almost at his
feet an exquisitely embroidered handkerchief. Picking it up, he read
aloud the name in the corner:
“Lisa Chanler!”
“Why, that must be Miss Lyndon’s handkerchief. She went off in such a
hurry she forgot it--a young girl that was staying with me, you know,”
explanatorily.
Carey Doyle looked up with quick interest, for the name touched a chord
in memory, and brought back a face that had charmed him with its beauty
and enraged him with its pride.
He remembered that Jessie Lyndon was dead--that he had heard a strange
story of how she had been found dead in the snow and acknowledged as
the stolen daughter of a grand, rich woman on Fifth Avenue; then he
had put her out of his thoughts and married the pawnbroker’s daughter,
Yetta Stein, leading a cat-and-dog existence, quarreling, till a week
ago, when he had left her, swearing that New York was not large enough
to hold them both, and that he would start to Alaska next day. He meant
what he said, and was raising all the cash he could for the long,
perilous journey.
But the name of Lyndon still held a charm for him that roused his
curiosity, making him question his stepmother about her guest until she
told all she knew about Jessie, from almost two years ago till now.
“And only think of being burned up in the middle of the ocean! All
one’s clothes, I mean--and escaping without a rag to one’s back, or a
dollar in one’s purse!” she added vaguely, continuing:
“That fine handkerchief you see was given her by a Miss Chanler, one of
the passengers--and her other clothes, too, for, as I said, she hadn’t
a rag to her back, poor girl!”
Carey Doyle was secretly astonished and mystified--Jessie Lyndon dead,
and Jessie Lyndon living, what could it mean? He resolved to come back
to-morrow and see the girl for himself.
* * * * *
When the old family physician came next morning to see his patient, he
was surprised to see her so well.
“Why, how bright you look! You are certainly better,” he cried gladly.
“I am better, indeed, and it is all owing to such a pleasant visit I
had last evening from an old friend. It was Frank, and you know how
fond I am of him. Cora brought him in to see me, and he entertained
me so pleasantly that I quite forgot I was almost dying. Indeed, I am
almost resolved now to get well,” smiling brightly at him.
“Capital! Capital! You only need the will to get well, and you will
soon be in your best health again. I have always told you that, you
know, and I am glad Frank has roused you to take an interest in life
again!” he cried, with hearty joy.
“And he is coming again to-day. I am expecting him any moment!” Mrs.
Dalrymple added, two spots of feverish color brightening her cheeks in
the unrest of her mind. “There, I hear his voice now! No, doctor, do
not go. He will have strange news for me, perhaps, and I may need you
in my excitement. Besides, if it is good news I wish you to hear it.”
Frank Laurier entered with Cora, and after salutations all around, he
looked anxiously at the patient, whispering:
“Can you bear the shock of good news?”
“Oh, Frank, yes, yes--speak quickly--my suspense has been terrible!”
she cried hoarsely.
And to the amazement of the doctor and Cora, he replied: “I obeyed your
command, and--the casket was empty!”
A shriek of joy broke on their ears, then Mrs. Dalrymple lay like a
corpse before them, so ashen pale, so deadly still.
The old doctor with a cry of dismay knelt by her side, and felt for her
heart.
“Do not tell me that my good news has killed her!” Frank cried with
horror in his dark-blue eyes, while Cora awaited the dénouement in wild
suspense.
A secret hope came to her that this might be death, that her aunt might
not live to prosecute the search for her hated rival, Jessie Lyndon.
But presently the old doctor’s efforts at her recovery were rewarded
with success. Her eyes opened, the color came back to her lips, she
faltered:
“Ah, you thought that I was dead!--but how could I die with such happy
news!”
“But I do not understand!” the physician replied blankly, while Cora
remained silent from consuming rage.
“Tell them all, Frank,” commanded Mrs. Dalrymple, with a happy smile,
and he obeyed in a few words.
“We had reason to suspect that the young girl, Jessie Lyndon, whom
Mrs. Dalrymple buried as her daughter almost two years ago, had been
resurrected and was alive in New York, and--we find that our suspicions
are true.”
“This is startling!” cried the doctor, but Cora listened silently with
a ghastly face and burning eyes.
Frank Laurier continued:
“We know that it is true because I went, by Mrs. Dalrymple’s request,
to her vault in Greenwood this morning, and opened the casket that we
saw closed on the dead face of her daughter. It was empty.”
“Is it possible?”
“And,” continued Frank, “as if to prove correct the suspicions of our
friend that her divorced husband had taken away the corpse, I found on
the floor a glove that was marked inside with the name Leon Dalrymple.”
“Ah, it is true, it is true!” cried the invalid faintly, triumphantly.
“My daughter lives! I shall not die now that I have that happy
knowledge. And you will find her for me, Frank? Every moment is an
hour till my Darling is restored to me!” cried the anxious mother.
“I will do all that is possible,” he answered, but in her anxiety she
made him promise to insert personals in all the newspapers begging
Jessie Lyndon to come at once to her sick mother, V. D.
Frank’s first effort was to find the chauffeur who had taken Jessie
away from the steamer, but he was unsuccessful.
Days came and went with no tidings, and then more personals appeared
offering rewards for news of Jessie Lyndon.
In the meantime, she had never returned to the Widow Doyle’s humble cot
nor sent any message.
But Carey Doyle, watching proceedings with a hawk eye, chanced upon the
personals and ejaculated:
“Come, now, this is very strange. The old lady said she had gone to see
Mrs. Dalrymple, yet apparently she never got there. Is there foul play
anywhere? Maybe I have stumbled on a private Klondyke of my own! I’ll
claim that reward for news of her anyway, but I won’t face Laurier,
I’ll go to Mrs. Dalrymple herself.”
And so eager was the lady for news that he gained admittance to her
boudoir, where she sat in an easy-chair getting stronger every day, and
claiming the reward, obtained it, and blurted out his news.
Mrs. Dalrymple was terribly startled. She called out in wild excitement:
“Send Miss Ellyson to me instantly!”
CHAPTER XXXVIII. LOVE REKINDLED.
Cora had been listening outside the door, and she darted in now,
exclaiming:
“I was just coming in when I heard you call for me, dear aunt.”
She gazed at Carey Doyle as if he had been a perfect stranger, but her
face was ghastly with fear lest he meant also to betray her secret.
But he flashed her a swift, reassuring look while Mrs. Dalrymple
exclaimed:
“Only think, Cora, this man has news of Darling. Kindly repeat it to
her, sir.”
And Carey Doyle, who remembered well the rivalry between Cora and
Jessie, took a malicious pleasure in doing so, gloating over each word
as he saw how ghastly pale and frightened she grew.
Mrs. Dalrymple was watching her niece, too, and very suddenly she said:
“While he was telling me this story, Cora, I remembered that on
that same night a servant called you out of my room, saying a young
lady wanted me, and that you must come down. You went, and when
you returned, after a while, you said nothing of the visitor, and
in my agitation I forgot it till just now. Cora, Cora, can it be
possible”--she broke off short, for Cora fell at her feet in wildest
agitation.
“Oh, Aunt Verna, can you ever forgive me for what I have done? Indeed,
I meant it for the best, but it has turned out to be a terrible
mistake!”
“Cora, Cora, what have you done?”
“Forgive me, forgive me; I did wrong.”
“Do not keep me in suspense, Cora. Answer me, was it my daughter that
came that night?”
“It was a girl that looked like the one you interred in the old family
vault. She said: ‘I am Jessie Lyndon, the stolen daughter of Mrs.
Dalrymple. I wish to see her if you please!’”
“My God! And you sent her away?” groaned the agonized mother.
“Yes, I sent her away, for how could I dream that she was speaking the
truth?”
“Cora, you should have brought her to me!” wildly.
“I feared it would kill you in your weak state, for every one thought
you were sinking into death. It seemed to me I was acting very
prudently, and when she was gone I kept the secret, believing it was
for the best.”
Cora’s acting was superb. Her dark eyes were full of burning tears, and
her whole behavior showed grief and regret.
Mrs. Dalrymple was completely deceived. She almost pitied Cora.
“Get up, dear girl, do not weep so bitterly. I will forgive you, for I
know you did what you thought was for the best, though you made a sad
and grievous mistake.”
She turned her eyes on Carey Doyle as if she had momentarily forgotten
his presence, and exclaimed:
“Why, have you not seen the chauffeur who brought her here?”
“I did not neglect that, madam, but he said she paid her fare and
dismissed him, saying she should remain with her friends all night.”
“Oh, heavens, what a mystery! Where did my Darling go, alone,
penniless, friendless, that gloomy night?” sobbed the mother.
Carey Doyle watched Cora with a lynx eye, but her perfectly acted
remorse and grief baffled suspicion.
He rose, and Mrs. Dalrymple said eagerly:
“Keep up the search for my daughter and you shall be paid well for your
work.”
“I will do what I can, madam, and I hope you will hear from me again,”
he replied respectfully; then with a malignant look at Cora, he
withdrew from the room and was shown out by a servant.
* * * * *
Cora had a difficult rôle to play now, pretending the keenest regret
for her cousin’s disappearance, while at heart she was wildly elated
over it.
But she was not finding much happiness in her position as bride elect,
though she knew that half the girls in New York would envy her the
honor of becoming the handsome young millionaire’s bride.
They did not know how she had schemed and sinned for that honor, nor
that the sweets of victory had turned to dead sea fruit upon her lips.
His short-lived passion was dead, and in spite of his honorable efforts
to disguise his indifference, Cora realized his patient misery, and
knew that the day of their wedding was secretly unwelcome to his heart.
A nobler woman would have given him his freedom unasked, too proud to
accept the hand without the heart.
Not so Cora, who recklessly ran every risk for the sake of gratifying
her love and ambition, hurrying on the wedding day in spite of her
aunt’s lingering illness and painful anxiety, and despite the fact that
she knew that secretly Frank resented the unseemly haste.
Indeed, she had overheard him lamenting it to Mrs. Dalrymple, saying:
“I fear it looks selfish to you, our marrying and going off in such
haste, leaving you in this trouble.”
“Do not think of me. Cora is the only one to be considered now. She
feels that she has waited too long for her happiness to have it
postponed longer,” she answered.
He noticed that she made no reference to his own case, and flushed
slightly, dreading lest she had penetrated the secret of his love for
her missing daughter, and meant to rebuke him for fickleness to Cora.
He said no more, for Cora entered just then with a downcast face,
having managed to overhear their brief conversation. They were going
for a drive, and presently Mrs. Dalrymple was left alone with her
thoughts.
They were not pleasant ones, for they veered with painful persistence
between the missing daughter and the dead father.
In the dear, dead past she had loved him well, and the old love seemed
to wake again, now that he was dead and beyond her tenderness.
So often since you went away,
I wonder in a vain despair,
If you are sad, if you are glad,
And if you miss me there!
Do you recall impatient words
Full of life’s jar and pain?
Oh, I would take them back, dear heart,
If you could come again!
She leaned her beautiful, dark head on her wasted, white hand where the
blue veins showed so clearly, and burning tears flowed down her cheeks.
Suzanne entered with the afternoon mail on a salver, placed it on a
stand before her mistress, and gently retired.
Dashing away the unwelcome tears, she began going over the letters,
mostly affectionate missives from her “dear Four Hundred friends,”
expressing affectionate pleasure at her rumored great improvement in
health.
Dropping them wearily one after the other, she came upon one addressed
in so large a masculine hand that she stared at it in some curiosity.
Then she saw that it was not addressed to herself, but to Miss Darling
Dalrymple, and was postmarked New York.
“How very, very strange this is, and how familiar the handwriting
looks!” she cried with a quickened heartthrob, and she decided that in
this case it was her duty to open her daughter’s letter.
She did so with nervous, fluttering fingers, and then she saw staring
her in the face these words:
“MY DARLING DAUGHTER: If I had not thought I was destined to perish in
the cruel sea that day, I should never have given you the clew to find
your proud mother who wrecked my life with her relentless scorn.
“If I had not been sure of death, I never should have intrusted you
with those messages of remorse and forgiveness and love at which she
laughed, perhaps, in her undying resentment against me. I could hope
now that you forgot to tell her, for it might be better so.
“You are with your mother, no doubt, so I address this letter to her
house. Oh, Jessie, darling, how I blundered when I gave you back to
her! My heart cries out for you, my darling child, the only treasure
I have in the world! I cannot give you up. Will you come back to me,
darling? She has troops of friends, and does not need you, but I have
only my dark-eyed Jessie.
“If she laughed and mocked at the tender messages I sent her when I
believed I must die, never tell me of it, darling. I cannot bear the
pain.
“Choose between us, quickly, Jessie, and come to me at once, if you
can, at the Hotel Supremacy.
“LEON DALRYMPLE.”
The great, hollow, dark eyes devoured every word with surprise and joy,
for nothing he could say against her mattered much now that she knew he
lived, the man she had loved hopelessly through years of alienation and
separation with the terrible barrier of divorce between their wedded
hearts.
And no matter how far they had drifted apart, their hearts must share
one common sorrow--the loss of their darling.
She bowed her head upon the letter, and the wild, hysterical sobs of an
overburdened heart shook her frame.
CHAPTER XXXIX. HEARTS UNITED.
Then she seized a pen and wrote falteringly:
“Leon, she has never come home to me, so I read your letter, hoping to
find some clew to my lost Darling.
“I have been seeking her vainly for days, but she is lost to me in
this great, wicked city!
“There is much to tell, but I am weak and ill, I cannot write more.
Will you come and hear the story from my lips?
“VERNA.”
Calling a messenger, she dispatched the note to the Hotel Supremacy,
and waited his reply in the wildest impatience.
Then she bade Suzanne dress her in a becoming negligee.
“Make me look as young and as well as possible, for I expect a visit
from an old friend who has not seen me for years--he will be shocked at
the change in me, I know.”
“Madame is more beautiful still than any young girl--only just a little
too frail looking now from recent illness, but judicious dressing will
disguise much of that,” cried the affectionate maid, applying herself
with ardor to her task.
And a little later the result fairly justified her prediction.
The exquisite boudoir in white and gold harmonized well with the
delicately beautiful woman whose pallor was softened by the faint rose
hues of her gown overlaid with rich, creamy laces. Reclining on a
pale-hued divan, with that fitful color coming and going in her cheek,
with a streaming light of expectant joy in her wide, dark eyes, she
was, indeed, a charming picture--one to thrill a man’s heart to the
core.
“Will he come?” she asked herself in painful uncertainty, as her mind
reverted rapidly over eighteen years to the bleak November day whereon
they had quarreled and parted.
Oh, how they had loved and hated in a breath, both so young, so hasty,
so inexperienced, that they scarcely knew what a harvest of woe they
were sowing when they turned their backs on each other.
They had sown, and, alas, they had reaped--and the harvest was a
plenteous crop of tears that tasted bitter on their lips.
I am tired to-night, and I miss you,
And long for you, love, through tears;
And it seems but to-day that I saw you go--
You, who have been gone for years.
And I feel as I sit here thinking
That the hand of a dead old June
Has reached out hold of my loose heartstrings,
And is drawing them up in tune.
I am tired, and that old sorrow
Sweeps down on the bed of my soul,
As a turbulent river might suddenly break
Away from a dam’s control.
It beareth a wreck on its bosom,
A wreck with a snow-white sail,
And the hand on my heartstrings thrums away,
But they only respond with a wail.
She had taken a daring step--she had called him back whom in anger she
had forsaken years ago.
Now, she began to be frightened at her own boldness.
“He will not come, he will laugh me to scorn!” she sighed, and dropped
her pallid face down on her arms.
She had given her orders that if a gentleman named Dalrymple called he
should be shown to her boudoir at once.
With her face bowed on her arms, she did not hear footsteps falling on
the thick velvet carpet, obeying the low directions of the servant who
said respectfully, as he drew back the portières:
“You will find Mrs. Dalrymple there.”
Leon Dalrymple, tall, pale, handsome still, in spite of years and
sorrow, advanced softly across the room, his heart beating with loud,
suffocating throbs.
He had been thinking of their parting in the shabby room amid pinching
poverty that she despised, more than eighteen years ago.
Now they were meeting again, surrounded by all the luxury wealth can
bestow, but how valueless it had been in exchange for what it had cost.
He saw before him a beautiful form with the dark head bowed on the
folded arms as if in grief, and he stood waiting, hesitating, but she
did not look up at him.
He coughed, timidly, to arouse her, and exclaimed hoarsely:
“Ver--Mrs. Dalrymple!”
A start of surprise, and she lifted her pale, excited face, and saw
him standing before her--her old love, her discarded husband--older,
graver, sadder by eighteen long years.
Yet her heart leaped to meet him in a great, strangling sob of joy.
Without rising from her recumbent position she held out her hand,
saying faintly:
“You will pardon my not rising. I have been ill--am yet weak.”
He advanced, and touched the cold hand with his own that was quite as
cold--dropped it quickly, and took the seat she indicated close by her
divan.
Controlling his emotions as well as he could, he began:
“Your letter filled me with alarm. What can have happened to my
daughter?”
“Our daughter,” she said, gently correcting him, with a sad smile,
adding: “It was very bold in me to send for you, Leon, but I thought
that in this matter we might act together.”
“Leon”--she called him Leon as of old--and it made the blood rush to
his face, and his whole frame tremble with agitation, the old love
rising in him like a flood.
He answered gravely:
“This is very kind in you.”
And for a moment they were very silent, the novelty of the position
bearing painfully on both their hearts--“so near and yet so far.”
Little by little they gained self-possession and talked seriously on
the subject so near to their hearts--the mysterious disappearance of
their daughter from the hour when she had been turned away from her
mother’s house by Cora.
She told him all she knew, and he could not conceal his alarm.
“It is the strangest thing in the world that she did not return to Mrs.
Doyle, the only friend she had in New York!” he exclaimed.
The tortured mother bowed her head and wept.
Then Leon Dalrymple’s heart was melted with sympathy, and he cried:
“Do not weep so bitterly, Verna, I will find her for you if it is in
the power of man to do it. And--and--I will never try to take her from
you again. Let my heart bear all the pangs of loss and loneliness!”
“You have not told me yet how you brought Darling to life!” she
suggested, with a grateful glance.
Then he had to go over the whole story, and she listened with the
closest attention.
Their interview had now lasted more than an hour, and the ice between
them was gradually thawing. The dark and the blue eyes looked very
kindly at each other, and they were Leon and Verna again in their
speech.
She opened the letter, and said daringly, encouraged by his kindness:
“I am very curious over some things you said in this letter to Darling.
It seems you sent me some messages of remorse, forgiveness, and love
when you thought you were about to perish. Will you tell me what they
were?”
His face flushed with emotion, but he faltered nervously:
“They would not be welcome to you, Verna.”
To his delight she replied, with swimming eyes.
“My heart has been hungry for such words these eighteen years,
Leon--hungry for the love that I threw away in my blindness--hungry for
forgiveness that I dared not ask because I feared denial!”
“My darling!” and he was on his knees by her side, his arms opening to
draw her back to her old shelter against his heart.
Gladly the dark head nestled there and in an hour all was explained and
forgiven between them while hope came back to nestle in their hearts.
“We can be married again on the same day as Frank and Cora,” Mrs.
Dalrymple exclaimed happily.
CHAPTER XL. DEEDS OF KINDNESS.
When Dalrymple tore himself away at last to prosecute the search for
his daughter, it occurred to him to seek her at the home of Mrs.
Godfrey, the aunt of his little nephews, Willie and Mark.
It was a great disappointment to him that she had heard nothing of
Jessie, but after all he had hardly expected it. A forlorn hope had led
him there, coupled with the desire to see his little nephews.
When the little lads were led in to him their chief interest in their
new-found uncle was that he was the father of their loved Cousin
Jessie. They plied him with anxious questions about her, to which he
could only answer sadly that she had gone away for a while, but he
hoped she would come back soon.
His first thought was for Mrs. Godfrey, whose care of his nephews he
felt was deserving of a fair reward, so he presented her with a check
for a thousand dollars.
The poor, toil-worn soul was overwhelmed with surprise and joy.
The sum represented a fortune in her eyes, to which the grateful tears
rushed in torrents.
“Oh, I can never thank you enough! This will be like riches to my poor
sister and me! She can have the comforts that an incurably sick woman
needs now, thanks to your generosity! But I feel I don’t deserve it,
when I remember how I had to send sweet Jessie away to earn her own
living!”
“Do not worry over that, because it could not be helped. You did more
than you were able, taking the little boys on your hands. I shall take
care of them now and put them to school.”
“They were welcome to all I could do, poor little ones, and I love them
dearly as the children of my dead brother and his sweet wife, but I
am glad you can take care of them, and bring them up to be something
in the great world,” she replied, with honest pride in her brother’s
children.
“I will do my best,” he replied, bowing himself out, after promising to
return in a day or two and make arrangements for taking Mark and Willie
away.
Then so eager was he for another sight of Verna, that he must needs
call again and tell her about his nephews and ask her advice about
their future.
“I believe I neglected to tell you that I am fairly rich myself and can
afford to do well by the boys without wronging you or Jessie,” he added.
To his surprise and delight she replied:
“I am almost sorry you are rich, Leon, for I would like to show you
how generous I could be with these little ones, but they shall be my
nephews as well as yours, and I insist on your bringing them here
to-morrow to make their home with us.”
“My dearest, you do not understand how troublesome two growing boys
could be. Your patience would very soon be exhausted.”
“No, indeed, Leon, for the patter of children’s feet and the sound of
their happy voices would be like music in this great, lonely mansion.
Here we could care for them like our own children, and how happy it
would make our daughter when she comes home to find her loved little
cousins with us. Let me have my way in this, Leon, if you can feel
satisfied with the arrangements.”
“Satisfied, my own love? Why, it will, indeed, be a boon to me for
which I shall feel grateful to you till my dying day,” he declared with
fervor.
And thus it happened that on the very next day Mark and Willie Lyndon
were removed from the dreary abode of poverty to their new palatial
home.
But the secret rage of Cora Ellyson at the turn affairs were taking can
better be imagined than described.
She had never felt a spark of real love for Mrs. Dalrymple, and had
contemplated her impending death with inward satisfaction, expecting to
inherit all her money, and rule royally in the social world by reason
of it.
It was a bitter blow when her aunt came back from the gates of death
and began to convalesce, but she reasoned to herself:
“It is only a temporary improvement in health, for when her daughter’s
fate continues to be unknown she will relapse into a worse stage than
at first, and die of disappointment.”
But when Mrs. Dalrymple confided to her the new turn affairs had taken,
she could scarcely conceal her rage.
“You are going to remarry your divorced husband--the man you deserted
of your own will, Aunt Verna, and pretended to hate and despise all
these years--Impossible!” she exclaimed remonstratingly.
Mrs. Dalrymple’s dark head instantly crested itself with the pride Cora
knew so well, and she dared not find further fault.
So Cora, repulsed, could only vent her rage in secret, and bitter
enough it was, though mixed with one sweet drop of triumph in the
thought that never again would their eyes rest on Jessie’s sweet face.
“Let them search and search, but never again will their eyes be
gladdened by her return. Let them go on believing that Cora Ellyson is
sorry she sent her into exile that night. Ha, ha!” and a laugh that was
fiendish in its cruel triumph rang out upon the stillness of the room.
She was in a retrospective mood, and as she shook loose the braids of
dark hair over her shoulder, she gazed fixedly at her pallid face in
the long mirror, muttering:
“Yet Frank Laurier doesn’t love me. How mortifying to marry a man who
shrinks from one with secret aversion! Yet I will not turn back. I will
marry him if only to punish him for his perfidy! And if he withholds
love then he shall feel to the core of his heart what it is to trample
on a woman’s love!”
Stung to fury by the indifference he could not hide, Cora was filled
with the venom of “a woman scorned.”
I will teach him to play with a rattlesnake’s tongue,
I will teach him the tiger to rob of its young,
I will teach him ’twere better a man were unborn
If the love of a proud-hearted woman he scorn.
The next day, after fitting out his manly little nephews in handsome
new clothing, Leon Dalrymple took them to their future home, where they
met a cordial welcome from the woman who was soon to be their uncle’s
wife again.
But not so with Cora, who watched their movements with angry eyes.
To the little boys, fresh from the tiny cot of poverty, the great house
on Fifth Avenue was a wonderful Aladdin’s palace.
They gazed about them in round-eyed wonder, and as soon as the first
sense of being company was over and they were left somewhat to their
own devices, they began to explore the house, peeping into room after
room with childish curiosity, mounting stairway after stairway, and
wandering along broad, dark corridors, until they could not find their
way back to the lower rooms where they had been left by Mrs. Dalrymple.
“I’m losted,” sobbed Willie, the six-year-old, digging his little fists
into his tearful blue eyes.
“So am I,” cried Mark, who was older and more manly; “but don’t cry!
Here’s another door! Let’s peep in here!” seizing the knob, and shaking
it vigorously. But the lock refused to yield, and very suddenly he was
caught by Cora Ellyson, who slapped his face till his ears tingled with
pain.
CHAPTER XLI. HAPPINESS SUPREME.
Cora’s eyes flashed, her lips and face went ashen white, her form
trembled with passion, as, catching the boys by their shoulders, she
shook both violently, screaming:
“You little meddlesome wretches, how dare you sneak around this way,
poking your noses into things that are none of your business! Go away,
and if I ever find either one of you up in this hall again, I will kill
you both!”
The elder boy shook himself loose from her angry grasp and tried to
rescue Willie, saying tearfully:
“We didn’t mean no harm, ma’am.”
“Well, keep away from the servants’ hall, hereafter. Go downstairs
now, and never come up here any more, and mind you never tell any one
I slapped you and shook you just now. If you do I will shut you up in
jail to stay forever!” menaced Cora, with flashing eyes.
The boys started to go down obediently, Willie hushing his low sobs in
sheer terror, then Cora flew back to the locked door, opened it with a
key that she took from a little concealed recess, beneath a small rug
that lay before the door.
She did not dream that the curious Mark had darted back to the head of
the stairway, and was closely watching her movements.
He put his arm around Willie, whispering excitedly:
“She has unlocked that room and gone and shut herself up in it, the
mean, spiteful thing! Do you know I believe she has got something shut
up in there.”
“I hate her, and I’m going to tell aunt on her!” came the sobbed reply.
“No, don’t say nothin’, but let’s watch our chance to get even with the
mean thing by seeing into that locked door. I seen where she got the
key!” consoled Mark, whose curiosity was a predominating trait.
“Yes,” muttered Willie, hopes of vengeance rising in his mind. “We’ll
get in that room and see what ’tis she’s hiding.”
Then they pattered downstairs again and no one was the wiser for the
little scene that had passed upstairs in the corridor.
Cora remained in the locked room only a few minutes, and on leaving it
she again turned the key and slipped it in its place, then sped along
the corridor and down the stairs again to her own rooms with an evil
light in her dark, down-cast eyes that boded no good to any one who
crossed the path of her desires.
The two boys waited and watched for an opportunity to get up into the
servants’ hall again, but such a close vigil did Cora keep that they
were unable to do so.
At last the wedding day arrived when Cora and Frank, and Mrs. Dalrymple
and her divorced husband, were to be made one.
On the morning of this day the two brides were very busy, each in her
own apartments were being robed by their respective maids for the
noon ceremony--Cora in a handsome traveling gown and hat to go away
immediately, and her aunt in a dainty confection of blue brocade and
rich lace for an informal luncheon with the few wedding guests.
Love and hope beat high in the breasts of both--the girl who had played
such high stakes to gain a man’s heart, the woman who had never known
the value of love till it was lost and found again.
The drawing-room and corridors were gracefully but not too lavishly
decorated for the ceremony with stately palms and rich roses, whose
fragrance filled the air with sweetness.
Little Mark and Willie were not watched so closely, and roved hither
and thither about the great house, whispering to each other, and, truth
to tell, feeling almost too grand in the fine suits of velvet with rich
lace collars that had been put upon them to grace the occasion. Being
left somewhat to their own devices in the prevailing excitement, they
naturally turned at once to the locked room on the upper floor.
“We must do it now or never, because she is going off with that Mr.
Laurier as soon as she is married, to stay a long while,” said Mark.
“Yes, we must. Let’s go now.” And they stole unseen upstairs and Mark
soon found the key beneath the rug. But it was so large, and the lock
so strong that when they got it in they could not turn it.
“Put your ear to the keyhole and listen. Don’t you hear something?”
said Mark.
“Yes--sounds like a little kitty cryin’; pore li’l sing!” whimpered
Willie.
It lacked only fifteen minutes to the ceremony now. The two bridegrooms
with the guests and the bishop had arrived and were waiting
downstairs. Everything was in readiness for the hour.
The few wedding guests whispered to each other when Cora entered that
she was the palest, most frightened-looking bride they had ever seen.
What was it that could be preying upon her mind upon such an occasion
as this?
But, they added kindly enough, that it was no wonder, for after her two
former fateful wedding days who could blame her for being nervous and
apprehensive of disaster.
She came in quietly enough, with downcast eyes, with her aunt, for the
wedding was to be quite informal, the ceremony being performed first
for the elder couple.
Frank Laurier was there looking quite as pale and troubled as his
bride, but again the guests excused his perturbation, whispering:
“He is afraid something is going to happen.”
A sort of undefined dread of evil pervaded the air.
The bishop arose and opened his book as the elder couple moved in
front of him, and the happiness on those two fine faces, the chastened
happiness of reunion after long grief and pain--almost dissipated the
lowering cloud of presentiment over every spirit.
Brief questions were asked, clear responses made, and the ring slipped
over the bride’s slender finger, token of a union never to be broken
“until death do us part.”
Kisses, congratulations, tears, and smiles, for the happy pair, then
they moved aside for the others with a prayer in their hearts that
these two might not sail forth upon such stormy seas of matrimonial
disaster as they had done in ignorant youth.
None had noticed in the excitement of the congratulations that three
more guests had arrived--three men who had bribed the servants to let
them look on at the scene from behind the tall palms at the open door
of the drawing-room.
Pale, grave, silent, these three men watched the scene with eager eyes,
as Frank and Cora stood side by side breathing the words that bound
their lives in one forever.
Suddenly one gasped and started wildly forward as the minister repeated
mechanically the customary warning, for any one who knew any impediment
to the marriage to speak now or forever after hold his peace.
This man, tall, pale, with a sinister scar on his brow, and a painful
limp, crossed the room as swiftly as his infirmity would permit, and
thundered:
“I forbid the marriage. She is my wife!”
The bishop dropped his prayer book in amazement, and with startled
cries, all faced around upon the newcomer.
Cries of doubtful recognition shrilled over every lip:
“Ernest Noel!”
Cora clung with frantic hands to Frank’s arm, gazing with horrified
eyes at the daring intruder.
There stood Ernest Noel in the flesh, though his good looks were marred
by a scar on his cheek and a decided limp received in some accident.
Over one of his shoulders peered the grave, noble face of the minister
who had married them in the mock marriage that had turned out a real
one, and over the other she saw, like a grinning fiend’s, Carey Doyle’s
with an ugly sneer on the mustached lips.
She was dizzy and her brain reeled. She felt like a weak swimmer in a
strong sea swept away by the relentless and treacherous undertow.
In the momentary silence that followed their cries of recognition,
Ernest Noel continued earnestly:
“This lady is my wife, but I do not charge her with attempted bigamy.
She believed me dead.”
“Explain!” thundered Frank Laurier, thrilled with chivalrous pity for
the drooping figure that clutched his arm with frantic hands.
Ernest Noel bowed gravely, and said:
“Two years ago I was frantic with love for Miss Ellyson and tried to
win her from you, Frank Laurier. We two were the principals in a mock
marriage at some charitable affair, and in my desperation I made the
ceremony a real one, taking out the necessary license and securing
a young minister, Mr. Kincaid, to officiate. Some time afterward I
ventured to confess to my bride the imposition I had practiced on her
and was met by such indignant reproaches that I was driven to--suicide!
“Disappointed in my love, I sprang into a deep pit to end my life, but
the fall did not kill me. I lingered on in agony till the next day,
when this man with me, Carey Doyle, discovered and rescued me from my
perilous situation, taking me to the home of some country friends of
his, where I was cared for many months ere fully restored to myself.
“It was rumored that I had mysteriously disappeared, and the report
of my suicide was accepted as correct. Carey Doyle, for the sake of a
whim, kept the secret of my identity, and so for many months I remained
as one dead to the world that formerly knew me; while regaining my
consciousness at last I learned that Cora had been almost fatally
burned and would be the inmate of a hospital perhaps for years.
In despair I forswore all former associations, and no one but the
executors of my property were informed of my continued existence, while
I brooded miserably over my faults and the wreck I had made of my own
life, my selfish passion and reckless folly. I determined never to
return to the world, but this morning Carey Doyle came to tell me that
I must save Cora from bigamy by forbidding her contemplated marriage
with another.”
Cora and Doyle at that moment exchanged malevolent glances, and she
understood all.
In the beginning the wretch had concealed the fact of Noel’s continued
existence that he might more effectually pursue his scheme of blackmail.
But again she looked from his taunting face back to the grave, sad face
of Noel, who now added:
“I am here to say to Cora and you all, that my marriage to her was
perfectly legal as far as church and State could make it. I love her
still in spite of everything, and if she will forgive me the wrong I
did in making her my wife against her will, and wishes to go with me,
I on my part will forgive any harm she ever did me and gladly take her
to my heart. On the other hand, if she prefers to secure a divorce and
marry Laurier, I will make no fight against it. Her will shall be my
law!”
It was a most noble rôle the man was playing in concealing Cora’s sins
and taking them all on his own broad shoulders.
He had bought Carey Doyle’s silence, and was prepared to keep Cora’s
secret forever from the world in atonement for the one great wrong he
had done her--the wrong to which she had tempted him by her heartless
coquetry.
Forgiving all her sins by the strength of his love he hoped to win her
yet from Laurier, and awaited her answer with burning impatience.
But she clung all the closer to Frank, though she could read by his
face that he thought she ought to turn to Noel.
She was opening her lips to cry out passionately that she loved only
Laurier and would sue for a divorce, when Mark and Willie Lyndon rushed
upon the scene, panting and excited, crying breathlessly:
“Oh, Uncle Leon, Aunt Verna, come with us! We have found our dear
Cousin Jessie at last, but she is dead!”
Like a flash in the confusion of that startling announcement, Cora
dropped Frank’s arm and flew to Noel’s side:
Her face was ghastly as she breathed in his ear:
“Come, Ernest, the machine is waiting! Let us fly! Fly to the other end
of the world!”
Half dazed with the suddenness of the turn things were taking, he
followed her lead, and while the others rushed upstairs, he and Cora
sprang into the limousine and were driven to the railway station.
The secret of the locked room was no longer a secret.
A score of people followed the eager footsteps of the little lads
upstairs to the sad sight they had encountered on opening the door.
There lay sweet Jessie, wan, pale, terribly emaciated, and still as
death on the low couch--a sight that brought cries of grief and horror
from women’s lips, and tears to the eyes of men.
Fortunately the old family physician was in the company.
It looked like death, but he would not pronounce it so. He remembered
what a terrible mistake he had made over Jessie before.
He knelt by her side, doing all he could to restore life, and all the
while he was inwardly praying:
“God help me! Give back her beautiful life to us!”
And all the time the anguished mother and father, the distracted lover,
the interested friends, were echoing the prayer in their hearts.
Oh, what joy thrilled their hearts when the doctor found a faint little
sign of life, but what long and skillful nursing it took before Jessie
was well again, or even strong enough to tell the story of Cora’s
satanic cruelty!
But they were happy days when she was convalescing with so many dear
ones by her side--her reunited parents, her precious little cousins,
and last but not least, her devoted lover, Frank Laurier.
They did not hide their love from each other now, they could talk of
the past without embarrassment, and once when Darling Jessie, as they
called her now, scolded him for that first stolen kiss, he retorted by
telling her of that second kiss upon the sea that had seemingly brought
her back to life.
They had many things to tell her, but the story that interested her
most of all was of her own apparent death and her interment in the old
family vault.
She knew now that it was no dream, the memories she had cherished of
her mother’s sorrow over her coffin, and Frank Laurier’s words of
passionate love and grief. She would cherish them deep in her heart
forever.
As for Mark and Willie, they received the most idolatrous love from all.
“It was so noble in you, Verna, to take them to our own home so
generously that I was always thinking what I could do to reward you for
your goodness, but, lo! God paid the debt of gratitude by making the
little lads the saviors of our own daughter,” the fond husband cried,
with deep emotion.
In the following spring Ernest Noel wrote to Mrs. Dalrymple telling her
of Cora’s death at his villa in Italy.
Shortly after the announcement of this sad news Frank Laurier and the
girl he loved were united in the holy bands of matrimony.
CHAPTER XLII. IRIS AND ISABEL.
“What do you mean by disobeying my orders? Didn’t I tell you I would
see no one to-night? How dare you take it upon yourself to act contrary
to my wishes?”
Peter, the servant, to whom these angry, impatient words were
addressed, stood meekly in the doorway of his master’s library, half in
and half out of the room, waiting for Mr. Oscar Hilton’s loud voice to
cease before venturing to explain his reason for thus intruding on the
latter’s privacy.
“Please, sir, I didn’t forget your orders, but if you’ll remember, sir,
you told me only yesterday never to deny you to Mr. St. John----”
As Peter uttered this name Oscar Hilton’s face, which had been
haggard and pale as if some deep sorrow weighed upon him, brightened
wonderfully, and his voice lost its angry tone.
“You are right, Peter; say to Mr. St. John that I will see him here,
and----”
At this moment Peter drew himself back from the doorway, and a young
girl entered the room--a petite and fairylike creature, looking even
younger than her eighteen years, with eyes of that peculiar blue that
darkens into purple, a complexion clear and fair as the lotus leaf,
and hair of a deep reddish brown that shone like dull gold in the soft
shaded light.
She was dressed richly, as became the daughter of Oscar Hilton--who
was supposed to be one of the richest men in New York. But that
gentleman’s face betrayed neither admiration nor love as she advanced
into the room and stood before him.
“We are ready for Mrs. Laurier’s reception, papa, and I wanted you to
see my costume for the occasion before Isabel came to you, because
I knew how my poor little self will fade into insignificance and be
totally eclipsed by the superior beauty of my queenly sister--but what
is the matter? Papa, you look pale and tired. Shall I stay at home and
read for you? Indeed, I do not care about the party--do let me stay
with you, papa.”
The girl’s sweet voice--at first full of playfulness and merriment--had
grown tender and earnest with the utterance of the last words, and she
came toward her father with hands extended as if to embrace him; but
Oscar Hilton repulsed her almost rudely.
“Go to the reception by all means, Iris, and don’t be so silly and
childish. I am expecting a visitor just now, and cannot be bothered.
Say to Isabel that I will see her when she comes back from Mrs.
Laurier’s. I have writing to do to-night, and shall not have retired.”
Iris Hilton bowed, and turned from her father without a word, but the
sweet, girlish face had lost all its look of brightness, and the pretty
lips quivered piteously while she went to do his bidding.
Mr. Hilton seemed to breathe more freely when she was gone, and it
would have been hard to fathom the expression of his eyes as he
followed the graceful little figure in its retreat from the room,
muttering below his breath:
“Her ‘queenly sister,’ she called my dark-eyed Isabel. Ah, God! how
easily I could bear the ruin that threatens me, and the disgrace that
must inevitably follow, if my Isabel were provided for, my proud,
imperious darling.”
Mr. Hilton’s meditations were here interrupted by the entrance of his
visitor, Mr. Chester St. John, a handsome, distinguished-looking man
of thirty years, whose easy, graceful bearing and cultured manner
proclaimed him at once a gentleman in the truest sense of the word.
Mr. Hilton received him with every token of welcome, and St. John
entered at once into the object of his visit.
“I think you must have guessed long ago, Mr. Hilton,” he said, when
cozily seated with that gentleman before a bright grate fire in the
luxuriously furnished library, “that I love your beautiful daughter
with all my heart. I have not spoken to her of this love, as yet, but
I think--I have dared to hope, that she reciprocates my feeling, and I
only await your permission to ask her to make me the happiest of men.”
St. John paused here, waiting for Mr. Hilton’s answer.
It was so long before the latter made any reply to Chester’s proposal
that the young man began to fear he had received it unfavorably.
“Is it possible that you have other views for your daughter, Mr.
Hilton?” he asked, somewhat proudly, but with a tremor of real anxiety
in his deep-toned voice.
“No, no, my dear boy, you are the one man of all others to whom I could
think for a moment of giving my precious child. I feel--nay! I know
that you are worthy of her, and I will not stand between her and her
love.”
“Thanks, my dear sir, and I assure you you shall never have cause to
regret the confidence you have placed in me. It shall be the labor of
my life to make Iris happy----”
“Iris!”
At Chester St. John’s mention of this name Oscar Hilton sprang to his
feet, with every trace of color dying out of his face, and his hands
pressed tightly to his heart.
“Iris!” he again ejaculated hoarsely; but when Chester sprang to his
side in alarm he waved him back authoritatively. “It is nothing,” he
cried, with quick, gasping breaths, “I am subject to these sudden
spasms of pain--around my heart--and it is so natural for me to call
on--Iris--there! it is over now, but I would like to be alone. Come
to-morrow, St. John, and Iris will give you her answer.”
Chester was not in the least offended by this abrupt dismissal, having
no suspicion that the pain of which Mr. Hilton had complained was
purely imaginary, and that there was a deeper cause for that ashen,
pale face and those trembling hands.
He bade Iris’ father good night with many expressions of regret,
promising to call for Iris’ answer on the morrow, and taking his
departure at last with such a look of hope upon his face that one might
have guessed what he expected the girl’s answer to be.
CHAPTER XLIII. THE OUTCAST.
“Iris! Iris! My God, have I killed her?”
The words came from the lips of Oscar Hilton with a cry of unutterable
fear, as he bent over the rigid and senseless form of his young
daughter, on the morning following his interview with Chester St. John.
“I have killed her!” the man reiterated; but even as he lifted the
girl’s head from the floor, her lips trembled slightly, and the lids
were lifted slowly from the beautiful blue eyes that looked purple now,
as Iris awakened to the consciousness of a sorrow tenfold more bitter
than death.
“It cannot--oh, it cannot be true!” she moaned, drawing herself away
from the touch of his hands with an irrepressible shudder.
“You say that Chester St. John loves me, and will ask me to be his
wife, and I--loving him with every pulse of my heart--must give him
up. Nay! more--that I must tell him I have no love for him--must send
him from me with the bitter thought that I am a false and heartless
coquette. No! no! Oh, dear Heaven! I can do anything but that.”
Oscar Hilton had been terrified when it seemed to him that Iris lay
dead at his feet, but at the moment when her voice fell again upon his
ear, his voice grew stern and cold, and he spoke to her now with a
sneer.
“Do you think Chester St. John would ask you to be his wife if he knew
the true story of your life? He is very proud of his fine old name; do
you think he would care to give it to the child of a----”
The word he would have spoken died on his lips unuttered, for Iris had
lifted her eyes quickly to his own, with an intangible something in
their expression that daunted him.
“You have told me the story of my parentage, Mr. Hilton, and if you
have any claim to the title of a gentleman, you will not insult my
helplessness by repeating the epithet you were about to apply to me.
When you married my father’s divorced wife, and took her to be a mother
to your daughter Isabel, why did you allow her to rear me--that man’s
offspring--as one entitled to your name, to crush me at this late day
with a knowledge of the truth. It has pained me always to notice your
coldness toward me, in contrast to your passionate love for Isabel; but
I--I never suspected this. Oh, how could my own mother deceive me so?”
“I should never have told you the truth, Iris, but for this affair with
St. John. I have treated you always as my own child, and denied you no
luxury that Isabel herself has enjoyed. If I now demand a sacrifice at
your hands, I think I have a right to expect that you will grant what
I ask. At a word from me your mother would have given you, an infant
of two years, into an asylum, sixteen years ago. I saved you from such
a fate, and all I ask in return is that you will cure Chester St. John
of his infatuation for your pretty, childish face. It is nothing more
than infatuation, for before your return from school he was devoted to
Isabel; and, Iris, I will tell you this in strict confidence: unless
my daughter makes an advantageous marriage very soon, I shall be a
ruined man. Think what this word ruin means, not only to Isabel, but to
your invalid mother, whose love of ease and luxury is part of her very
life. Make St. John believe that you have no love for him, and all will
be well, I know. The secret I have revealed to you to-day shall never
again pass my lips, and----”
“Let me speak!” interrupted Iris, with quick, panting breaths. “I have
no other way of paying you for what you have done for me, and I--I will
do what you ask. But when I have sent Chester St. John from me I shall
leave your home forever. I will never pass another night beneath your
roof.”
A low knock on the door at this moment interrupted the girl’s brave
words, and Peter entered, to announce that Mr. St. John was waiting in
the parlor to see Miss Iris.
“So soon! Oh, how shall I meet him?” exclaimed Iris, with such a
passionate cry of pain that Mr. Hilton feared her resolution would fail
at the last, and, starting toward her, attempted to take one of her
hands in his own.
“Iris, do not forget,” he began, but she drew herself shudderingly away
from him, saying, as she moved slowly toward the door:
“I shall not forget the debt I owe you; I am going to pay it now--to
pay it in full.”
There was no tremor in the low, sweet voice as she spoke these words,
but her face, turned for a moment toward him as she crossed the
threshold, was so pitifully white and hopeless that a momentary thrill
of compassion stirred Oscar Hilton’s heart, and he muttered to himself
as he listened to the sound of her footsteps descending the stairs:
“Pshaw! she does not mean all that nonsense. I would never let her do
that, but she shall not stand in my Isabel’s light. Ah, my daughter! I
was thinking of you; was I speaking my thoughts aloud?”
He had spoken the last words audibly, just as the object of his
thoughts entered the room.
“What is the matter, papa? I just passed Iris in the hall, looking like
a ghost, and came in here to find you raving about somebody standing
in my light. Tell me what it is all about, please; I hate anything
approaching a mystery.”
Isabel spoke in the cold, imperious tones that were peculiar to her,
but her father answered her almost humbly:
“There is no mystery, my darling; do not distress yourself. Don’t go
yet, Isabel, I want to talk with you. You have not told me how you
enjoyed yourself at Mrs. Laurier’s last night. Were there many there?
Was Mr. St. John among the guests at any time during the evening?”
The last question was asked so earnestly that Isabel showed her white
teeth in a laugh.
“You are always so anxious about Chester St. John, papa; I think you
have set your heart upon having him for a son-in-law; is it not so,
_mon père_?”
Mr. Hilton answered his daughter gravely:
“I would like it of all things, Isabel; I should like to see you
Chester St. John’s wife.”
Isabel’s dark, handsome face flushed, and she spoke somewhat bitterly:
“I would consent to be his wife if he asked me, papa, because he is
the richest man I know, and the handsomest; but I do not like him. I
think him proud, scornful, and sarcastic; and if the day ever comes
when I--but I must not make idle threats; take comfort in the thought,
my father, your dutiful daughter will employ every art in her power to
bring Chester St. John to her feet.”
CHAPTER XLIV. A CRUEL ORDEAL.
Chester St. John, waiting rather impatiently for the appearance of Iris
in the parlor, came forward with warm words of greeting to meet the
little white-robed figure, when the girl at last made her appearance,
failing, in the semidarkness of the room, to notice the unusual pallor
of her face, or the strange constraint of her manner.
“Iris!”
He could only speak the two soft, sweet syllables of her name, thinking
how well it suited her--Iris--like a rainbow, always bright.
He tried to take her hands in his own, for--although he had as yet
made no actual declaration of his love, he knew he had shown her in
many ways how dear she was to him, and if he was not mistaken in the
language of her sweet, beautiful eyes, he felt equally confident that
his love was returned.
It was not until her hand lay in his own, and he felt it cold as ice in
his clasp, that he took the alarm.
“Iris, my beloved! You know why I have come to you this morning; your
father has told you----” he began, and then--drawing her closely in
his arms he looked intently in her face, uttering a low cry of alarm
at sight of the white, changed countenance. “Iris! Oh, my love, what
is it? What pain or sorrow has come to you?” he exclaimed, bending his
lips to hers, while for one moment she lay white and passive in his
embrace. “Speak to me, my little one! My wife!” he ejaculated. But
at the sound of those words, “My wife!” Iris drew herself out of his
embrace, shivering from head to foot, and covering her ears to shut out
the sound of the voice whose every accent was sweeter than any earthly
music to her.
“You must not talk to me so. You have no right to address me in such
terms,” she said in a voice that sounded cold and feelingless from
the very effort she was making to control her emotion. “I cannot be
your wife, Mr. St. John. I--I do not love you. You have been mistaken;
please do not distress me by repeating your offer.”
It was such a cold and careless rejection that Chester St. John could
not at first believe the evidence of his own ears.
What transpired during the next few minutes Iris could never clearly
recall. She had a vague memory of hearing a voice that bore no
resemblance to the clear tones of Chester St. John, upbraiding her
in bitter, heartbreaking terms for making his life desolate, and
destroying his faith in his mother’s sex.
She seemed to feel for days and weeks afterward the close, almost
cruel, pressure of his hand as he held her fingers for one moment in
parting; after which it had seemed to her that the earth grew suddenly
dark and cold as the grave, and for the second time, since listening to
Oscar Hilton’s story in the library, she had fallen like one dead.
CHAPTER XLV. ENTERING ON THE NEW LIFE.
“Jenny, how much longer must you work to-night? It is so tiresome,
lying here alone, with no one to speak to me; won’t you put aside your
sewing, dear, and read for me?”
It was a woman’s voice, weak and fretful, that uttered these words, and
the person to whom they were addressed, a pale, weary-looking girl of
twenty years, put aside the handsome silk robe upon which she had been
sewing, and came to the bedside of the invalid.
“I must work a little longer, mother, dear,” she said softly. “Miss
Hilton will be so angry about her dress; you know I promised it for
last night, and failed to have it done, because of that unfortunate
headache; but what is the matter, mother--are you feeling worse? Oh, my
mother! I seem to see you failing, hour by hour.”
Jenny had broken into a passionate fit of weeping, kneeling by the low
cot bed with her face on her mother’s breast.
“Hush! hush! my dear, poor child; you have been so brave always, and so
patient with my fretful ways; don’t give way now, dear; try to prepare
yourself----”
Jenny’s hand was pressed upon her lips now, and she could not finish
the sentence.
“You shall not talk of leaving me,” the girl cried passionately; adding
in tones of wild rebellion against the fate she had no power to avert,
“God would not be so cruel to me.”
At this moment there was a crash of thunder that seemed to shake the
tall tenement to its foundation, and the mother and daughter clung to
each other almost in terror, the storm had arisen so suddenly.
It was the evening of the day on which Oscar Hilton had told Iris the
story of her true parentage.
“How nervous I am to-night, mother. Let me close the window blinds, the
rain is coming in through the broken pane, and if a drop should fall on
Miss Hilton’s dress she would never forgive me. If it was her sister,
Miss Iris, I should not be afraid.”
Jenny’s voice ceased suddenly, for at this moment there was a low knock
on the door.
“Oh, dear! Oh, dear! I fear this is Miss Hilton’s servant for the
dress,” murmured the little seamstress, as she hastened to admit the
visitor; but the look of distress on her face changed to one of intense
astonishment as she saw who it was that waited to be admitted.
“Miss Iris!” she could only ejaculate; and Iris came slowly into the
room, seating herself on the nearest chair, like one who was very
weary, while Jenny hastened to light a lamp, as the room was growing
quite dark.
“Oh, Miss Iris!” she cried in alarm, when her eyes first fell upon the
changed countenance of the young lady, “you are in trouble; what can I
do for you? I know I am only a poor sewing girl, and you a rich man’s
daughter, but----”
Until now Iris had been unable to speak, but here she interrupted:
“Listen to me, Jenny: I have come to you to-night as poor and humble
as yourself. You must not ask me to tell you all my story, but this
you must know. I am no longer Iris Hilton, the rich man’s daughter; I
must earn my bread even as you earn yours, by the labor of my hands.
You have seemed so grateful for what little help I rendered you that I
came to you to-night as to a friend--there, don’t cry, Jenny--I cannot
cry; I do not feel as if I could ever shed a tear again. I would have
gone to my friend Mrs. Laurier, but I could not. I am no longer in
her social set, not that that would make any difference to her, but I
simply could not take advantage of her friendship.”
There was something so unutterably sorrowful in the tone in which these
words were spoken that both Jenny and the sick mother shed tears of
sympathy, and the sound of the latter’s low sobbing had the effect of
rousing Iris from the bitter train of thought into which she had fallen.
“Forgive me,” she said, in her sweet, gentle voice, as she approached
the bedside and clasped the hand of the invalid. “I have been selfish
to intrude my sorrows on you, but you shall see how cheerful I will be
after to-night, for I am going to stay with you, if you will have me,
and Jenny shall show me how to sew.”
The sound of footsteps approaching the door, followed by an imperative
knock, interrupted Iris at this moment, and she had just time to seat
herself when Jenny opened the door, to admit a gentleman, the first
sight of whose face caused Iris to start and clasp her hands together
in sudden excitement.
“The face in my mother’s locket!” she said to herself, and shivered
when the man’s voice fell on her ear, although he was speaking merely
on some trivial business matter that did not in the least concern her.
“Mrs. Neville requested me to remind you that she expects her dress to
be completed before one o’clock to-morrow,” he was saying to Jenny, and
in a moment more he would have left the room without glancing toward
the spot where Iris was sitting but for some slight sound that caused
him to turn in the doorway. He started at the sight of Iris’ face, even
as Iris had done on first encountering his own, and Iris could hear the
swift-spoken words he whispered to Jenny:
“Introduce me to that young lady; she is very like a--a friend I lost
years ago.”
Jenny turned toward Iris with the words of introduction trembling on
her lips, but Iris checked her by a glance, as she herself stepped
forward.
“My name is Maggie Gordon, sir; I am a seamstress, like my friend.”
The abruptness of this singular introduction seemed to take the man
completely by surprise, and he could only bow low in acknowledgment and
hasten from the room, leaving Iris--or Maggie Gordon, as our heroine
had called herself--white and trembling like one who had stood in the
presence of some spirit of darkness.
“I am afraid! Oh, so horribly afraid,” she whispered, and crouched
by the sick woman’s bedside, hiding her face in the bedclothes, and
trembling in every limb.
CHAPTER XLVI. THE UNFORGOTTEN FACE.
“I called to see your dressmaker this evening, Clara, and she promises
to have your work completed to-morrow, without fail, and--but by the
way, my dear, I am not quite certain that the young girl will be able
to keep her promise. I caught a glimpse of her invalid mother, and it
is my belief that the poor woman will not live till morning. I suppose,
in that case, the other young lady will be obliged to finish the work
for you.”
The speaker was Mr. Charles Broughton, and the woman he addressed Mrs.
Clara Neville, a haughty, handsome widow of thirty, and Mr. Broughton’s
affianced wife.
The fair widow would never have owned to herself that she could
harbor the slightest feeling of jealousy toward such an insignificant
personage as a dressmaker’s associate; but there was something in Mr.
Broughton’s expression and manner of speaking of that other lady that
brought an angry glitter to the black eyes of his betrothed.
“Who is the person you are speaking of? I never had the pleasure
of meeting any other sewing woman in Jenny’s home. I have always
understood that Jenny Mason was without friends or connections in this
country.”
“I saw a face in Jenny Mason’s home to-night that brought back----”
He did not finish the sentence, but threw his hands suddenly over his
face, shivering in the warmth and luxury of the cozy apartment in which
he sat, as if he had been facing a wintry blast.
“Let me finish the sentence for you, Mr. Broughton; the face you saw
to-night brought back the memory of some woman you have loved in the
past. What a pity that the possessor of this face should be only a
working girl.”
“By heavens! you wrong me, Clara,” he cried hoarsely, “the girl I saw
to-night reminded me of my bitterest enemy--of a woman I have cause to
hate--and whose name I curse every hour of my life. If I thought one
drop of that woman’s blood flowed in the veins of this working girl I
would hunt her out of every place she found employment. I would never
rest until I had visited the sin of her--but what wild talk is this?
The woman whose name I curse is living in luxury wherever she may be,
and the poor little seamstress is not to blame for her remarkable
resemblance to one who must be a stranger to her. Never send me there
again, Clara; the sight of that girl’s face aroused all the demon
within me, and awakened passions that have lain dormant for years.”
He was a handsome man, despite his five-and-forty years. His thick,
wavy black hair showed no thread of silver, and his eyes were keen and
bright.
He was a general favorite among the fair sex, although but little was
known of his antecedents or former history.
If there was an air of mystery surrounding him, this fact only tended
to make him more interesting in the eyes of the ladies, and there were
many who envied Clara Neville her conquest when it became known that
this fascinating little widow had won handsome Charley Broughton’s love.
Clara herself was very proud of her stately, distinguished-looking
lover, and insanely jealous of him, as her recent exhibition of temper
may have led the reader to suppose.
She was half frightened now at the storm of passion her own words had
evoked, but she had no longer any fear that he admired the girl he had
met at Jenny Mason’s.
“Pray calm yourself, my dear Charles,” she said; “you shall never go to
my dressmaker’s again; you will surely be ill if you excite yourself
so; I shall be quite anxious about you when you leave me; please look a
little more cheerful for my sake.”
“For your sake, my pretty pleader, I would accomplish a much harder
task,” replied Broughton, with assumed gayety, as he encircled the
widow’s form with his arm, and pressed a kiss on her white forehead.
During the remainder of that evening he was as loving and attentive
as even the most exacting lady love could have desired, and left Mrs.
Neville in the happy belief that her idolatrous fondness for him was
fully reciprocated.
But once outside her home the man’s whole demeanor changed, and as he
wended his way to the hotel at which he had taken up his residence, he
was saying to himself:
“Bah! how hard it is for me to humor her jealous whims, and to keep up
a pretense of fondness for her. If I had allowed her to continue in
her belief that I admired this Maggie Gordon, she would have succeeded
in getting the girl out of the way.”
Charles Broughton had reached his hotel by this time, and encountered a
friend who had been awaiting his arrival in the reading room, and who
greeted him with an exclamation of astonishment.
“Heavens, Charley, how ill you look!”
“Never mind my looks, my friend; I am a little under the weather, but
I don’t care to be reminded of it continually. Come up to my den, and
let me see if a chat with you and a glass of wine will not restore me,”
said Broughton carelessly; and a few moments later found the friends
chatting and laughing over their wine and cigars.
But always between Charles Broughton and the ruby liquid he raised so
often to his lips came the beautiful face and violet eyes of the girl
who had declared herself to be Maggie Gordon.
CHAPTER XLVII. TREACHERY.
“Miss Iris! Oh, please excuse me, I promised to call you always Maggie,
but I am so frightened--I don’t know what I say. Maggie, are you awake?
My mother is very ill, I fear; I do not know what to do for her. Won’t
you please get up and look at her?”
It was the night following that on which Iris had first entered the
humble home of Jenny Mason, and a comfortable couch had been provided
for her--at her own expense--in the little bedroom opening off the
apartment which served as sitting room, dining room, and kitchen in one.
It was after eleven o’clock that night when Jenny aroused Iris from a
deep sleep.
She arose from her bed with a sickening sense of dizziness and an
oppressing weight on her heart, but one glance into the white, pained
face of Jenny’s suffering mother gave her a false power of endurance.
It was plain to even her experienced eye--and she had never yet looked
upon a person in the death struggle--that Mrs. Mason would never see
another sunrise.
“Oh, Jenny, you must bring a doctor at once!” cried Iris, but at the
sound of these words the invalid’s fingers closed tighter around the
hand of her child.
“Do not leave me--no doctor can--give me one moment of life. I want you
with me--till the end comes!” she whispered, and Iris had not the heart
to oppose the dying woman’s wishes.
“Tell me where the doctor lives!” Iris whispered.
Jenny offered a feeble remonstrance, but Iris would not listen, and, a
moment later, the latter was hurrying through the city streets.
The doctor of whom she was in search resided about a dozen blocks from
the residence of Mrs. Mason, and Iris had gone about half that distance
when two gentlemen met her face to face.
She was not veiled, and the moonlight fell upon her beautiful, pale
face.
At sight of her both of the gentlemen started, and Iris in her
turn--having recognized in one of these men the gentleman whose face
had so strangely started her on the previous evening--uttered an
exclamation of dismay at first, but quickly recovering herself, bent
her head in acknowledgment of her recognition of him, and hurried on
without a glance into the face of his companion, with whom she had
often danced and chatted in the days when she believed herself the
young daughter and joint heiress of Oscar Hilton.
Iris had not gone two dozen paces away from them when the companion of
Charles Broughton clasped the latter’s arm excitedly.
“What can be the matter, Charley? Do you know anything about it? Iris
Hilton is not the girl whom I would expect to find walking the streets
at night alone, and at this hour, too. Why, Broughton, it is nearly
half past eleven. I shall follow her--there must be something wrong.”
With these words, Gerald Dare, who had been a secret admirer of Oscar
Hilton’s younger daughter, was about to start in pursuit of the lonely
girl, but the firm grip of Charles Broughton’s hand upon his arm
restrained him.
At the first mention of the name “Iris,” a gray, ashen pallor had crept
over Broughton’s face, and his breath had been quickly indrawn, like
that of one who was drowning.
“Walk with me, Dare, to the nearest café--that deathly feeling of
weakness is creeping over me again. You know how ill I was last night!”
His voice was so faint and tremulous that Dare was really alarmed, and
accompanied his friend to a café, thus giving Iris a chance to escape
his espionage, exactly the object which Broughton desired to attain.
Iris pursued her way to the doctor’s residence unmolested, and was
fortunate enough to find that gentleman still in his office, he having
just returned from visiting one of his serious cases.
Iris would have left the place at once on stating her errand, and
gaining his promise to follow her immediately, but something in the
expression of her wan, white face, with its innate and unmistakable
look of refinement, had led the doctor to detain her.
“My child, you are yourself sadly in need of a physician’s care. You
are not fit to be out at night alone. Wait just one moment, and I
will have my gig made ready, and you and I will drive to Mrs. Mason’s
together.”
They reached the tenement in which Mrs. Mason resided, some minutes
after midnight; but, as the old physician saw at a glance, his coming
had been in vain.
The grim King of Terrors had entered before him, and the white,
still form beside which Jenny Mason knelt was only a senseless and
feelingless statue of clay--all that remained was the earthly tenement
whence the immortal spirit had fled.
We will not linger over the days that followed; suffice it to say that
the last dollar of which Iris had been possessed when she left the home
of her reputed father was spent in defraying the funeral expenses of
Mrs. Mason.
On the second day after Mrs. Mason’s burial Isabel Hilton called on
Jenny, and reproached the latter sharply for failing to have her dress
completed, refusing even to excuse the poor girl when she offered her
mother’s death as an apology for failing to fulfill her contract.
Iris remained hidden in the inner room during Isabel’s visit, but the
latter made no mention whatever of her missing sister’s name.
She quietly informed Jenny that in the future she would have no work
for her, as she was not fond of disappointments, and left the unhappy
little dressmaker in despair, as Mrs. Clara Neville had also withdrawn
her patronage.
After this it was impossible for Iris and Jenny to live as the latter
had formerly been able to do.
There came a day when the two girls left their humble home in search of
work, without having eaten any breakfast, for the simple reason that
there was not even a loaf of bread in the house.
Jenny soon succeeded in obtaining employment of a fashionable
modiste in Forty-first Street, near Fifth Avenue, but Iris--or
Maggie Gordon--must consent to work six months for Madam Ward as an
apprentice, if she would learn the trade by which her friend earned a
livelihood.
Jenny urged her to accept the offer.
“Do consent to stay here, Maggie; madam seems to be a kind lady, and
the girls with whom we will have to work--Emma and Sarah--have every
appearance of being quiet and ladylike girls, who will never pry into
your business or make themselves too familiar.”
Iris consented to Jenny’s plan, even remembering that she had not one
dollar to her name, but thinking that the jewelry of which she was
possessed--if sold--would bring her money enough to defray her expenses
until she could learn to work with Jenny.
Jenny made it a condition with Madam Ward that Maggie should not be
separated from her, and consequently another day found Maggie Gordon,
with Jenny Mason, Emma Henry, and Sarah Bennett, engaged in the making
of an elegant costume of white satin and point lace--the bridal dress
of Mrs. Clara Neville, to be worn on the occasion of that lady’s
marriage with Mr. Charles Broughton.
Despite all her brave efforts to accomplish the work expected of her,
the constant and unusual confinement of the workroom quickly told
upon Iris; and on the third day of her engagement with Madam Ward she
was obliged to quit her work shortly after noontime, unable longer to
combat the deathly feeling of sickness that had been gradually creeping
upon her since the night of Mrs. Mason’s death.
Emma, who was just returning from the bank--where she had been sent to
change a check for her employer--met Maggie at the hall door.
“I have a telegram for you, Maggie; I signed the receipt myself to
save you the trouble of coming downstairs,” said Emma, in her gentle,
sympathetic voice; and Maggie could only bow her head in acknowledgment
of Emma’s kindness, as she took the ominous yellow envelope from the
latter’s hand, and seated herself, weak and trembling, on the lower
step of the stairs leading to the workroom, to make herself mistress of
its contents.
The girl, Emma, with the true instincts of a gentlewoman, passed up the
stairs without waiting to see how the contents of the yellow envelope
would affect her fellow worker, although her young heart ached for the
girl whose sufferings she could read so plainly in the sorrowful eyes
and pallid features for a moment uplifted to her gaze.
Maggie was therefore all alone when she opened the telegram, and read
the following words:
“TO IRIS--OR MAGGIE GORDON: If you ever cared for Chester St. John
come to him now. He is dying, and calls for you with every breath.
He cannot live one hour from the time you receive this telegram; so
if you slight this message you will render his last moments unhappy.
Should you care to see him alive, call immediately at No. 685B
Lexington Avenue.”
Iris read the message over and over again.
All the memory of the bitter words that had passed Chester St. John’s
lips when he bade her farewell faded from her brain.
She scarcely looked at the name signed to the telegram--Gerald Dare.
She thought of nothing but that Chester St. John was dying, and that
she loved him with all her heart and soul.
And with the telegram crushed in her hand, and only the thought of her
approaching meeting with Chester St. John keeping her from giving way
to that sickening sensation of weakness, she turned her steps in the
direction of the house in Lexington Avenue, without a thought that any
treachery had lured her thither, although St. John’s residence was not
in that locality.
It never occurred to her to wonder how this Gerald Dare knew of her
change of name, and the place where she worked.
CHAPTER XLVIII. A CRUEL STRATAGEM.
Several of the friends whom Iris Hilton had visited in the days of her
prosperity resided on Lexington Avenue, and she knew that the number
mentioned in the dispatch was in the neighborhood of Twenty-third
Street, so that she had not more than a dozen blocks to walk from Madam
Ward’s establishment to her destination.
At last the goal was reached, and she stood still for one moment before
she could ascend the high stone stoop, pressing her hands to her heart,
and praying for strength to go through the ordeal before her.
“He must not see me looking so ill--as I feel I am looking now. Oh, my
darling! My brave, strong, noble love, what can have stricken you down
so soon?” she murmured; and summoning all her strength to overcome the
faintness that was creeping slowly upon her, she ascended the steps and
rang a soft peal at the doorbell.
A stolid-looking colored man opened the door at her summons, and the
girl tried to read in his face some knowledge of the true state of
affairs in his master’s household, but she might as well have sought to
penetrate the countenance of a statue.
“I wish to see him--Mr. St. John--they--they telegraphed for me,” she
said, with a quick, panting breath, and at her words the ebony statue
smiled and opened the door wider, that she might enter.
“Oh, yes, missy, I have had my orders to admit you,” he said, and
something in his careless, and even jovial manner gave Iris a hope that
things were not so bad with Chester St. John as she had feared.
“Will you take me to him now--at once,” she cried. “Oh, please make no
delay--I am very calm, I shall say or do nothing to excite him.”
“All right, missy, just you follow me,” replied the negro; and, still
smiling blandly, he led the way to a room in the second story.
On the threshold of this room the girl paused, her heart beating
tumultuously, and her fair, young face growing white as the dead.
“Oh, God, grant that he may recognize me, and that I may teach him to
know that I was never false to him,” she prayed, and then, forcing
back the sobs that were rising in her throat, she followed the servant
into the room, stepping softly in her fear of disturbing the invalid,
but recoiling with a little cry of repugnance and dismay as her eyes
fell upon the face of the man who had come forward to meet her--the
handsome, saturnine face of Charles Broughton.
As yet she had not conceived any idea of treachery, and after this
first involuntary shrinking from the man whom, for some reason, she
disliked and feared--she would not allow herself to think of anything
but Chester St. John.
“Where is he?” she whispered, with a wild glance around the room; and
at her words Broughton broke into a low, mocking laugh.
“My dear, you must grant me your pardon for luring you here by
stratagem. Your lover is--for aught I know to the contrary--as well
as you or I at this moment; but I knew of no other way of gaining
an interview with you, and so took the liberty of using his name to
accomplish my purpose--don’t look so horrified--I mean no harm to
you--sit down, and Sam shall bring you some wine.”
There was no need for him to tell her to be seated.
She had fallen into the chair nearest her, trembling in every limb, and
for the moment utterly incapable of speech or motion.
* * * * *
On the day subsequent to that on which Iris had left the home of Oscar
Hilton, Isabel, the beloved daughter of the latter, was taken suddenly
and dangerously ill, and the fond father was almost beside himself with
fear for his darling’s safety.
But for this greater and all-absorbing sorrow he would have caused an
immediate search to be made for Iris, as it had been no part of his
policy to drive the girl from his roof.
Mrs. Hilton, as has been mentioned, was a confirmed invalid, and Iris
had been her constant attendant.
She fretted and lamented her daughter’s absence now to such an extent
that Mr. Hilton could not bear to enter her presence.
Evelyn Hilton had been a woman of rare and unusual beauty, and of the
poor remains of this loveliness she was even now foolishly proud.
She was a vain, selfish woman, inordinately fond of dress and luxurious
living, and with little affection to bestow on any object but self.
She had never seemed to bear the real mother love for her only child,
being unable to understand the noble nature of Iris, a nature high
above her own as the stars above the earth.
It gave her no pain now to think of her child’s probable fate, but she
lamented in bitter terms the girl’s heartlessness in leaving her to the
care of hirelings.
“Why did you say anything to drive her away, Oscar? You know how sadly
I shall miss her. I shall never be able to sleep without her voice to
read to me, and no one can soothe me as Iris could, when I suffer with
that dreadful pain in my head. You must find her and bring her back
to me. I cannot get along without Iris; indeed, I cannot, Oscar,” the
invalid had cried to her husband; and he had promised to find the girl
if possible, and would certainly have made an attempt to do so had it
not been for the fact of Isabel’s alarming seizure.
This put all thoughts of Iris from his mind, and during the three days
that followed the house was in a state of confusion impossible to
describe.
It appeared that every doctor of note in the city was called in to
prescribe for Isabel, and it soon became known throughout the circle
to which proud, dark-eyed Isabel had been wont to mingle that Oscar
Hilton’s daughter’s life was despaired of.
On the fourth day of Isabel’s illness Chester St. John, who had left
the city on the day when Iris rejected his love, returned to his home,
and, chancing to hear of the illness of Hilton’s daughter through the
conversation of two gentlemen in his clubroom, at once concluded that
the sufferer was the girl whom he had loved--nay, whom he still loved
as he could never love another, although her own words had condemned
her as a heartless coquette, and he had parted from her with bitter
words of reproach and recrimination.
“Iris dying! Oh, it cannot be! My bright, beautiful love,” he groaned,
and the impulse to go to her home and beg them to let him look upon her
face once more was too strong to be resisted.
He remembered now, when he had believed that Heaven was taking her from
him--remembered with an anguish keen as death--the last look he had
seen in the deep blue eyes of Iris--the look of passionate love and
bitter pain that had followed him, even while her cruel lips sent him
from her.
“There was some mistake--oh, my love! My precious little Iris, if I
could see you now you would make it plain to me,” he thought, and
walked directly from the club to Oscar Hilton’s, his heart turning sick
within him as he approached the house, and a terrible fear came to him
that he might see long streamers of crape and white ribbon streaming
from the bell handle.
“I think the sight would have killed me,” he murmured, as he stood on
the threshold awaiting admittance a few minutes later.
On this day Isabel had been pronounced “out of danger,” and Oscar
Hilton consented to leave her bedside long enough to see Mr. St. John.
The desire to win this rich man for his daughter’s husband instantly
revived in the father’s heart at sight of Chester’s card, and he left
the presence of the girl who had been so near to the portals of death
with no prayer of thanksgiving in his heart to the God who had spared
her to him, but with wild schemes running through his brain for her
worldly advancement. He knew that when she gained her strength again
she would stop at nothing to bring this proud, handsome Chester St.
John to her feet, and he himself had a plan by which he hoped to aid
her in the accomplishment of this purpose.
On entering the little reception room into which a servant had shown
St. John, Mr. Hilton was startled by the almost ghastly pallor of the
young man’s face. He was not long in making the discovery that it was
fears for the life of Iris, and no anxiety for Isabel, that had wrought
this change in the strong, proud man before him, and a fierce and
unreasoning hatred sprang to life in his heart for the hapless child
whose sweet, young face had had power to awaken such a wondrous depth
of love in this man’s soul, a love that his own queenly Isabel had
failed as yet to inspire.
The plans which had been hitherto vague and shadowy took sudden form
and shape in his scheming brain, and when Chester St. John left the
house, nearly an hour later, Oscar Hilton watched his retreating form
with a look almost amounting to triumph.
“I have shaken his faith in her, even as she herself could not shake
it, although she assured him she had no love for him, and led him to
think her a coquette. He will not seek her now, although he does not as
yet believe--as I hinted to him--that she has left my roof for the arms
of some unworthy lover. He shall believe it, though--if Evelyn has not
forgotten her cunning in imitating her daughter’s pretty penmanship.”
CHAPTER XLIX. THE CHILD OF AN ESCAPED CONVICT.
In all her life Iris had never experienced such a feeling of horror as
that which filled her heart on finding that she had been trapped to the
house on Lexington Avenue by the man whom we know as Charley Broughton.
“Let me go away. What wrong have I ever done you that you should
terrify me thus? What can you want of me?” she faltered, staggering
like one under the influence of liquor, as she attempted to walk to the
door.
But for all answer Broughton forced her back into the chair from which
she had arisen, laughing sardonically at her childish betrayal of
terror.
“My pretty one! I tell you I mean you no harm; why do you fear me so;
do you know me?”
Iris shuddered, and covered her eyes with her hands to shut out the
sight of his face.
“Do you know me, little Iris?” he repeated, fearing that she had not
heard his question, and laying a particular stress on the name Iris.
“I will tell you all I know of you,” cried the girl at last, with a
suddenness that startled Broughton more than he would have cared to
confess. “One day, some three years ago, my mother, who is an invalid
confined to her own chamber, sent me to her writing desk in search of
some prescription--or the receipt of a remedy that would ease her pain.
In my haste I overturned the desk, and shattered it, as the wood was
old and dried. While I was gathering up the contents, which had been
scattered upon the floor, I found among them a small gold locket which
I had never seen my mother wear. It was set with pearls, and I admired
it greatly. I remember that my mother cried out in alarm when she saw
the locket in my hands, but I had already opened it, and saw within
it the picture of a man’s face--your face. I questioned my mother
concerning the original, and for the first time in my life saw her
violently agitated. She told me then that the man whose face I gazed
upon in a species of fascination was my enemy--my enemy and hers, and
if ever I met him in life to beware of him, for he would leave no means
untried to work my ruin. That time has come, and your conduct toward me
proves that my mother’s fears were not without foundation. I am in your
power, a weak and unprotected girl, while you are strong and powerful
and pitiless; but although I was terrified at first by the means which
you employed to lure me into your power, I am not afraid of you now,
for I remember that there is a God who knoweth even the fall of the
sparrow, and that the same God watches over me in this--my hour of
peril.”
Iris had arisen from her chair while speaking, and stood before Charles
Broughton in an attitude of defiance, her small hands folded on her
breast, her pretty, bright-tressed head thrown back, and her eyes
uplifted in childish faith and confidence to the God who seems so dear
to such as her.
For one brief moment, Charles Broughton, sin-hardened, worldly, and
unprincipled though he was, turned his eyes away from the sight of that
pure, uplifted face, ashamed of his own vileness; but, alas! he did not
listen long to the promptings of his better nature. The one aim and
object of his life was to be revenged on one who had bitterly wronged
him, and through this innocent child before him he saw the means of
striking the first blow for the accomplishment of this revenge.
“You shall know the reason I have for being an enemy to the woman you
call mother,” he said. “You shall know why Evelyn Hilton speaks of me
as her enemy and yours. Twenty years ago I was not the man you see
before you to-day. I was young and hopeful and tender-hearted.
“It is true I had been led into bad company, and had allowed myself to
be drawn into temptation; but when I met the girl whom it was my fate
to love, I swore to overcome all this temptation and to live a life I
need not be ashamed to ask her to share.
“She was a poor girl, and married me; not because she loved me, but for
the reason that my father was a wealthy man, and she hoped to live a
luxurious life as the wife of his only son and heir.
“In this she was disappointed, for in the very hour in which he learned
that I had made Evelyn Hardress my wife, he disinherited me, and, dying
two months later, left all his wealth to the endowment of a charitable
institution, cutting me off with the mocking bequest of one dollar.
“Had I been alone the sufferer, I would not have felt this injustice
so bitterly; but my young wife was passionately fond of the luxuries
wealth alone could buy, and as I still loved her passionately, it
almost killed me to be obliged to deny her anything for which she
craved.
“At last I was obliged to tell her the truth; and from that hour my
nature changed, until from the weak, extravagant, but foolishly fond
boy of twenty years ago, you see me the bitter, vengeful man of to-day.
“You shrink from me still, and your heart clings to the woman who gave
you birth; but you can never know what agony I endured for that woman’s
sake.
“A distant relative of my father offered me at this time a position as
cashier in his bank, and my acceptance of this offer sealed my doom.
My wife was dearer to me than any consideration of honor, and when
she threw herself weeping on my breast, lamenting that she could not
attend a party to which she had been invited because of her inability
to dress as richly as she had been used to do, I committed my first
crime. I appropriated one thousand dollars of the money intrusted to my
care, and gave it to her for her personal adornment. I saw her decked
in the robes purchased at the sacrifice of my honor. I knew that I had
become a thief for her sake, and yet I gloried in her peerless beauty,
and never loved her as passionately as on that night when I heard her
spoken of as the most beautiful woman in all that crowded assemblage.
“It was not love I felt for her, but a blind infatuation that led me
on to repeat my first crime time and again, until from very terror of
detection I determined to quit the country. Evelyn encouraged me in
this determination, until, just one day previous to that on which I
was to have taken my departure for Europe, where I hoped to earn the
wherewithal to repay the large sums I had purloined, I was arrested
on the charge of forgery, a check having been presented at the bank
bearing the signature of one of our wealthiest depositors, but written
in a hand that was instantly recognized as my own.
“I could almost have sworn it myself to be my own handwriting, so
perfect and faultless was the imitation; but after the first shock of
this awful accusation was over I recognized it as the work of my wife,
who had often boasted of her talent in copying the handwriting of any
person whose penmanship she had ever studied.
“I made no charge against her at the time; indeed, I think the shock
of the discovery deprived me for a time of my reason, and I remember
nothing definitely until I recovered to find myself in a prison cell,
branded as a felon, and doomed to years of confinement.
“When at last, after five years’ imprisonment, the full realization of
my position was brought home to me, I swore a bitter and terrible oath
of vengeance on the woman who had dragged me down to the lowest depths
of degradation, on her and her offspring forever.
“I was allowed a limited communication with friends in the outside
world, who had known and respected me in the days of my prosperity,
and from them I learned that Evelyn, who had succeeded in obtaining a
divorce from me, had married a retired merchant named Oscar Hilton, and
was living the luxurious life of which she had been always so fond.
“From these friends, also, I learned that she had given birth, some
two months previous to her marriage with Hilton, to a female child,
to whom, after her usual romantic notions, she had given the name of
Cleopatra’s handmaiden, Iris.
“I believed at the time, as I believe now, that you, Iris, are my child
as surely as you are Evelyn Hilton’s, and I claim an equal right to
your obedience.
“I have no love for you, I must tell you frankly; you are too much like
the woman who has cursed my life, and made me the reckless wretch I am
to-day. You are beautiful as a siren, with the fatal beauty that lured
me to destruction, and I have resolved that you shall never betray a
good man’s trust as your mother betrayed mine.
“You are my child, Iris Trisilian, and you shall stay with me and do my
bidding; nay, it is useless for you to glance so significantly toward
the door--as well might a bird hope to escape the toils of a charmer,
as you expect to leave my care.”
The man who had called himself Charles Broughton took forcible
possession of the girl’s hands now, and attempted to seat her in
the chair near which she stood; but at this moment the sound of low
knocking on the door interrupted him.
Something in the expression of her face half frightened Charles
Broughton, and grasping her arm almost rudely, he whispered:
“Do not contradict anything I say, no matter how far I may depart from
the truth. Do not dare to carry out the defiance your looks express,
if you would not have me brand you as the daughter of a felon--and not
only the child of a forger, but of an escaped convict. Say one word
to betray me, and the proud aristocrat who has declared his love for
you--the haughty Chester St. John, who is so proud of his spotless
reputation and ancient lineage--shall know you as the offspring of
Carleton Tresilian. Ah, I think that was some one knocking on the
door--come in!” And Charles Broughton threw himself negligently into
a chair at some distance from Iris, who was sitting now with her head
thrown back among the cushions of an easy-chair, her hands locked
tightly together in her lap, and those terrible words to which she had
listened a moment before repeating themselves over and over again in
her tortured brain--“the child of an escaped convict.”
CHAPTER L. SUNDERED HEARTS.
On the afternoon of the day following Chester St. John’s visit to Mr.
Hilton, the former was seated alone in the library of his father’s
mansion on Fifth Avenue, pondering sadly over the change that seemed
to have come over all his life since the hour when the hope he had
cherished of winning Iris for his wife had been shattered by her own
cruel rejection of him.
He felt assured that there was some mystery connected with Iris’ flight
from the home of the man he still believed to be her father, but that
this mystery was connected with any unworthy love never for one moment
occurred to the loyal heart of Chester St. John, Oscar Hilton’s hints
to that effect notwithstanding.
While he was thinking thus, a servant brought him a card bearing the
name of Oscar Hilton, and informed him that that gentleman was waiting
to see him downstairs.
“Thank Heaven, he brings me some news of Iris!” was Chester’s first
thought. But his first glimpse into Hilton’s face showed him that
whatever the tidings the latter brought there was in them no cause for
rejoicing.
Mr. Hilton was very pale, and his face wore an expression of deep
sorrow.
“I am in great trouble,” he said, in answer to Chester’s anxious
inquiry, and stood for a moment with his hands clasped on the low,
marble mantel, and his face hidden in them.
St. John was terribly alarmed, but could not give voice to his fears,
and Hilton himself was obliged to resume the conversation.
“I came to you, St. John, because I know you loved my unfortunate
child, and----”
“My God, what is it? What has happened? Do not keep me in suspense;
tell me the worst,” cried the young man hoarsely.
And with his hatred for unhappy Iris growing stronger than ever with
every fresh evidence of this man’s love for her, Hilton exclaimed:
“The worst is only this--that Iris is unworthy your love or mine.
Chester St. John, I will tell you a secret you should never have known
but for that girl’s ingratitude to me. Iris is no child of mine; her
mother was, when I first met her, the divorced wife of a man who was
serving out a term of imprisonment for forgery.
“You can understand my infatuation, St. John, when I tell you that the
mother at that time was far more beautiful than the daughter is to-day.
Iris was then a child of two years, and I promised to rear her as my
own, and have faithfully kept my vow, as you may have seen, making no
difference between her and my own child, Isabel. When I listened to
your confession of love for her, you may have seen that I was agitated,
but even then I would have allowed you to take the girl to your heart
without revealing a word of the truth to you, in my affection for her,
had it not been for her conduct since that time. But what is the
matter with you? Why do you look at me so strangely?”
“I think I understand now the reason she rejected me. You were not so
kind to her as you tried to be to me. You told her this story of her
unhappy parentage, and the poor child was too proud to come to me with
this stain upon her name, my poor, little love!”
The tone of exquisite tenderness in which these last words were spoken
enraged Hilton almost beyond power of control, and he could not quite
conceal his exultation as he handed Chester a dainty, pink-tinted
envelope, with his own name written in a feminine hand on its face.
He recognized the penmanship instantly as that of Iris, who had once
copied a song for him, and whose notes to his sister Grace he had read
on several occasions.
“Read the letter; you have a right to be made acquainted with its
contents,” said Mr. Hilton; and thus urged, St. John took the letter,
upon which Iris’ blue eyes had never fallen, and read words that
separated him from her so effectually that unless the truth of this
missive should be discovered, she would be to him henceforth as the
greatest stranger--a woman whom he could no longer respect.
He handed the letter back to Oscar Hilton in silence, but his face was
as white as it would ever be in its coffin, and his hand trembled so
that the letter fluttered from his hold to the floor.
“I thank you for having awakened me from my dream,” he said hoarsely;
and a few minutes later Mr. Hilton took his departure, exulting in the
thought that if Chester St. John and Iris Tresilian met face to face on
the morrow, the former would pass the girl as if she were a stranger;
and it now only remained for Isabel to win the heart which no longer
belonged to another.
CHAPTER LI. OSCAR HILTON’S TRIUMPH.
The letter shown to Chester St. John was, as the reader has doubtless
surmised, the work of Evelyn Hilton, and written at the dictation of
her husband.
Cold and unkind though she had been to her daughter while the latter
had been in attendance on her, it cost her a struggle to write the
words that would make her child appear in such an evil light to the man
for whose eye it was intended.
There had been a stormy scene in the chamber of the invalid on the
occasion of the writing of this letter, for at first Mrs. Hilton had
boldly declined to do the work required of her.
“You shall write the letter, and write just exactly as I dictate you.
How dare you refuse to obey me?” he almost shouted, grasping Evelyn’s
delicate wrist so tightly that she cried out with pain.
Even after this outburst she ventured to offer another feeble protest.
“How can you ask me to do that which will ruin the reputation of my own
child? Oh, Oscar, think of your own Isabel. Could any threat of harm
to yourself or any inducement that could be offered you compel you to
write one line that would injure her?”
“You amuse me, Evelyn, you are developing rare dramatic talent in your
old age--your pretense of love for your child is really a fine piece of
acting--bah! Do you think I believe it is anything more than acting?
Did you love your child when you would have placed her in an asylum
sixteen years ago? A little, helpless toddler of two years? You talk of
the ties of natural affection! What had you done with that sentiment
when you forged your husband’s name, and branded the man who had loved
you truly as felon, suffering him to be cast into a prison for your
sins? Good heavens, I have killed her!”
The last exclamation broke from Hilton’s lips with a cry of unfeigned
alarm, for Evelyn had fallen back like one dead among the cushions of
her easy-chair.
Oscar Hilton had loved this woman--next to his idolized
daughter--better than anything in life, and she had not even yet lost
all sway over his selfish heart.
He was thoroughly alarmed now, and used every effort in his power to
restore her, fearing to call any assistance lest in her first moments
of awakening to life she might say something to betray her perilous
secret.
It seemed to him that hours had passed before his efforts were rewarded
with success, and the dark-blue eyes he had once thought so beautiful
lost that strained and awful look that had so terrified him.
“How did you learn my secret?” she cried, when fully restored.
“Your secret is known only to myself, Evelyn, and I assure you it is
safe with me as long as you strive to please me and obey me. I learned
the truth from your own lips, while you were sleeping at my side. You
have a habit of talking aloud, and quite connectedly in your sleep, and
you rave of that forged note continually. You are white and trembling
still; drink this glass of wine, and when you are little stronger I
will dictate the words I wish you to write in your daughter’s name. The
imitation of her handwriting will be no trouble to you, I know, for you
have often boasted to me of your skill in this sort of work. Have you
decided to obey me, Evelyn?”
“I have no choice left me but to obey you,” the woman answered, in a
tone of intense weariness; and half an hour later found her engaged in
writing the letter that was destined to cause her child many an hour of
keen suffering. It was addressed to Oscar Hilton, and read as follows:
“I am leaving your home to follow the fortunes of a man whom I love,
but of whom I know you would not approve. I can tell you nothing
concerning him, only the simple fact of my love for him. I know you
had set your heart upon my marriage with Chester St. John, but this
could never have been.
“I like Mr. St. John very much, and I may have deceived him into the
belief that I returned his affection for me, but I could not help it;
it was so pleasant for me to feel in company that I had the power to
retain the handsomest and wealthiest man among them by my side, while
the other ladies were dying of envy.
“I am sorry now that I did so, because I know that I have often given
pain to your Isabel, who loves Chester St. John with her whole heart.
She never betrayed her secret to me until I told her of his proposal,
and then she could not hide it.
“Her face turned white as death, and I heard her whisper his name over
and over in such a tone of love and sorrow that I was ashamed of my
own heartless conduct.
“I hope he will learn to love Isabel, she is much more worthy than I
am, and better fitted to grace his home.
“When you receive this I shall be with the man of my choice.
“Break the news as gently as possible to my mother, and ask her to
forgive and forget her willful daughter,
“IRIS.”
This was the letter, and hardened and worldly as was the woman who
wrote it, a tear fell on the open page before her as she signed the
name of the sweet-faced girl who had never given her an angry or
impatient word.
On the day following that on which he had shown St. John the letter,
Mr. Hilton met Chester face to face on Broadway, and on the latter’s
making a polite inquiry for Miss Hilton, answered in a grave and
sorrowful tone:
“She does not appear to be making much progress toward recovery. Her
doctors say she makes no effort, and they are astonished that one so
young and lovely should seem to have so little desire for life. St.
John, it would kill me to give her up,” and Hilton grasped the arm
of his companion with a passionate vehemence that contrasted oddly
with his usual calm and collected demeanor. “It would kill me,” he
reiterated, “and to save her I would suffer any humiliation. St. John,
you know the secret sorrow that is breaking my darling’s proud heart;
I was obliged to expose it to you when I showed you Iris’ heartless
letter. Will not you do something to restore her to me? Call on her as
a friend. Do not let her think that you have deserted our home because
of Iris’ cruel treatment----”
“Hush, Mr. Hilton; please do not mention that name in my hearing,”
exclaimed St. John, drawing his arm out of that of his companion with a
shudder of uncontrollable repulsion.
The interview ended with a half reluctant promise from St. John to call
on Isabel, and Isabel’s father went on his way triumphant, thinking
as he proceeded toward his home: “Before another month is over, my
darling shall be Chester St. John’s promised wife, and whether I fail
or prosper, her future will be well provided for.”
CHAPTER LII. ANOTHER ENEMY.
The person who entered the presence of Iris and Charles Broughton at
the latter’s invitation, was Mr. Gerald Dare, the young man who had
recognized Iris while walking with Broughton on the night of Mrs.
Mason’s death.
At sight of Iris now, seated in close proximity to his friend
Broughton, Dare was literally spellbound, and found it impossible to
conceal his astonishment.
“Iris Hilton!” he exclaimed, involuntarily uttering the name by which
he had known her; and then catching the angry, indignant look in
Broughton’s eyes, he sought to offer some apology for his rudeness. As
for Iris herself, she uttered no word or sound.
“You told me to call at this hour, Broughton,” began Dare in a confused
and hesitating manner; to which Broughton replied with a laugh:
“Of course I did, my dear boy, and we’ll settle our little business at
once. Come downstairs with me, if you please; Iris will excuse me and
remain here until I return to her, will you not, my dear?”
At this pointed question Iris lifted her face quickly with an angry,
rebellious flash in her deep blue eyes, but the words she would have
spoken died on her lips as she encountered his glance, and she could
only bow her head in silence.
Finding herself alone a moment later, she tried to collect her
thoughts, and to arrange some plan for her future, but the weight of
her mother’s sin was too heavy upon her, and she seemed alike incapable
of thought or action.
“My duty is to obey him, and to so repair the wrong my mother has
done him as to win him from his scheme of vengeance,” was the noble
thought that came to Iris, even in this hour of her bitter humiliation
and pain; and when Broughton--as we will still call the man who had
declared his real name to be Carleton Tresilian--returned to the room
after dismissing his visitor, Iris, white as the dead, but calm and
tearless, met him with words that filled his heart with a thousand
varying emotions.
“What can I do to repair the cruel wrong you have suffered at my
mother’s hands? I am only a girl, weak and painfully ignorant of the
world and its ways; but you say you are my father, and I am ready to
obey you--what would you have me do?”
She was standing before him now, with her beautiful white face upturned
to him, and her hands clasped tightly before her, showing the strong
effort she was making to control her agitation.
If Iris had borne less resemblance to the woman who had wronged him,
his heart might have softened to the innocent offspring, but now the
girl’s beauty only recalled to mind the tortures her mother had forced
him to endure, and he laughed mockingly at her efforts to conciliate
him.
“My dear, I know you will obey me, simply for the reason that I shall
compel you to do so. I do not intend to ask any great sacrifice at your
hands; but before I state what I shall require of you, I want you to
tell me why you left the home of your mother’s husband so suddenly, and
why you fled from the man who was willing to marry you--the wealthy
Chester St. John. I have followed up your history pretty closely since
I first looked upon your face in the room occupied by the sewing girl,
Jenny Mason, but the cause of your leaving Mr. Hilton’s protection I
have not as yet been able to discover. Please tell me the truth of the
matter at once.”
“I left Mr. Hilton’s roof immediately upon learning that I had no legal
right to the benefits he conferred on me; and as for Mr. St. John--you
know that I would not marry him, believing myself the child of a felon!”
“Your home shall be with me for the future--at least until I can find
a good husband for you. This is my residence, and as you may observe,
it is pretty comfortable. I have no women in the house save one old
negress, who attends to the chamber work. All the rest of my servants
are males, and colored. I shall teach them to look upon you as their
mistress, and I do not think you will find it any trouble to manage
them. I receive a great many friends here almost every evening, and I
shall expect you to help me entertain them. My friends are gentlemen
always, and we employ our time in the enjoyment of a social game of
cards. All I shall require of you, Iris, will be to dress handsomely,
look your prettiest, and make yourself agreeable to my comrades and
friends. Do you understand?”
Iris had listened to his words with a look of intense horror gradually
creeping into the blue depths of her wide, dilated eyes.
She did understand his plan, probably more thoroughly than he had
intended her to do. She had read repeatedly of the fashionable gambling
dens to which men were lured by the beauty of some fair woman who was
employed for no other purpose than to tempt them hither.
She faced Charles Broughton suddenly, with a flash of defiance in her
great, lustrous eyes.
“I shall not remain in this house; I shall not do what you ask of me.
If you were poor--though you were guilty of any sin--I would work for
you; yes, beg for you, I think, willingly, but to live in luxury, as a
decoy for gamblers, this I cannot and shall not do, nor can you compel
me to do so. Let me go away; I ask nothing from you; I never wish to
see your face again.”
She made a step toward the door as she ceased speaking, but Broughton
placed himself before it, laughing mockingly.
“Not so fast, my dear,” he said, with a sneer. “I have a few words
more to say to you, before you take your departure. I shall not try to
detain you here by force, but there is one thing I would like you to
remember. The day is not far distant when you shall come to me and beg
for a shelter under the roof you now despise. Go, now, if you will, but
I advise you to think twice before you do so. I am not one to threaten
idly, nor to forget a threat once uttered. The offer I first made you
is still open to you, and----”
“And I still refuse to accept it as resolutely as before. Let me go
from this house, and I can trust my after fate with God. I am not
afraid that He will desert me; please stand aside and let me pass.”
“Very well, Miss Iris, have your own way in this matter; but remember
my warning,” he said quietly, and then opened the door for her, and
even preceded her to the lower hallway, and stood on the steps until
she had left the house.
Once in the open air, Iris felt that she could breathe more freely, and
a weight seemed lifted off her heart as she turned her steps in the
direction of the humble abode in which she occupied a room with Jenny
Mason.
At the very moment when Iris was descending the broad stone steps of
the house in Lexington Avenue, a limousine was passing the door, and
from the window of the vehicle a lady’s face looked out--the face of
the rich widow who was Charles Broughton’s affianced wife.
Clara Neville had glanced toward the house occupied by the man she
loved with some vague hope of seeing his face near one of the windows,
or perhaps fancying that he might recognize her car and come down to
speak with her.
There had been a smile on her lips, and a happy expression on her face
when she turned toward the window that commanded the best view of
Broughton’s residence, but this look had changed with the swiftness of
a lightning’s flash to one of the wildest jealousy and intense hatred
when her eyes fell upon the figure of Iris descending the steps from
his door, and of Broughton himself standing in the doorway, and so
intent on watching the girl’s retreating form that he did not once
glance toward her car as it passed.
Almost choking with rage the widow pulled the check string and
instructed her chauffeur to turn at the corner and keep Iris in sight
until she reached her destination, no matter to what part of the city
she might lead him.
“All right, ma’am,” the man answered respectfully, and while Iris
walked slowly toward the place she called home, there was no voice in
her heart to tell her of the woman who followed on her track and was
destined to be the most cruel and bitter enemy against whom she would
be forced to contend in the new and strange life now opening before
her.
CHAPTER LIII. HIDDEN PERILS.
Iris found Jenny at home, and terribly alarmed at her friend’s absence.
“Oh, Miss Ir--Maggie, I was so anxious about you,” she cried, embracing
her companion affectionately.
These simple words and display of affection destroyed the last remnant
of strength Iris had striven so hard to retain, and, throwing herself
on Jenny’s breast, she sobbed as if her heart was breaking.
These tears relieved her overtasked brain, and she soon recovered
herself and turned her sweet face toward Jenny, with its own bright,
winning smile.
“There, dear Jenny, I am all right again, and now we will commence our
life all anew. I shall never leave you, dear, as long as you care to
have me with you, but you must not ask me anything about the telegram,
or about anything I do that may seem strange to you. You must only
trust me, dear little friend, and help me to--forget.”
“There is nothing in the world that would make me disturb you, Maggie,
and I shall never question anything you may choose to do, no matter how
strange it may appear to me--but, good gracious! while we have been
talking and crying like two babies, our nice hot tea has been left to
cool on the table. Sit down, dear; I am actually as hungry as a bear.”
The last remark brought a smile to Maggie’s pale face, and the two
girls were soon chatting pleasantly over their simple meal.
After this time, as day followed day, and Iris heard nothing further
from Charles Broughton, she began to experience a sense of peace and
security in her new and humble life. She became a great favorite with
Madam Ward, and by her diligent attention to everything that was shown
to her, bade fair to learn the trade by which she hoped to earn her
livelihood in a very short time.
There was not a girl in Madam Ward’s employ who did not love the
beautiful young apprentice, who never assumed any airs of superiority,
although her every act and word proclaimed her a true lady.
She had a bright smile and a pleasant word for every one; and of the
sorrows gnawing at her heart she never complained, even to Jenny.
But the burden of her secret grief was telling upon her, and one
night after the girls had taken their departure, Madam Ward said in
confidence to her sister:
“I am afraid our little Maggie will not be able to stand the
confinement of a workroom. I can see her failing day by day. She has
not been accustomed to such a life, it is plain to be seen. I shall
give her something to do that will take her out into the air to-morrow
if the day is fine. Let me see--what errand can I send her upon? Oh, I
have it, she shall take this check to the bank and bring me the money
for it. By the way, I did not tell you that Mr. Stuart had sent me the
amount of his wife’s bill--here it is--a check for two hundred dollars,
and----”
Madam Ward’s voice ceased suddenly, for, on chancing to raise her eyes
from the check she was holding in her hand, she saw that the room had
another occupant besides her sister and herself.
“Why, Mrs. Neville, I did not hear you enter; pray pardon me, and be
seated.”
Madam drew forward an armchair for her wealthy customer, and Clara
Neville accepted the invitation, laughing heartily at madam’s look of
dismay.
“Pardon me, my dear madam, I must plead guilty to the crime of
eavesdropping. I was so charmed to hear you speak so kindly of one of
your poor little working girls--won’t you please tell me about this
little Maggie?”
Madam Ward was pleased at the interest Mrs. Neville appeared to take
in the subject, and at once proceeded to tell all she knew of Maggie
Gordon--which was nothing beyond the fact that Maggie had come there
with Jenny Mason to learn the dressmaking and that she had evidently
been reared in a higher sphere of life, as madam expressed herself, and
lastly that she was growing paler and thinner every day for want of
outdoor exercise.
Mrs. Neville listened with an expression of deep interest and sympathy
on her face, exclaiming, when madam had concluded:
“Poor little one! I should like to see her. You are to send her down
to the bank to-morrow, you say, or I should drive down here expressly
to have a glimpse at her, you have interested me so in her story. Of
course, I should come ostensibly on some errand concerning the work you
are doing for me--as I came in reality to-night.”
“You can do so still, Mrs. Neville. Maggie shall go to the bank about
one o’clock. The business will not occupy more than two hours of her
time, and during the rest of the day you can see her,” replied madam,
failing to notice the quick flash of triumph that glittered in the
lady’s eyes at this piece of information.
A few minutes later Mrs. Neville took her departure, promising to call
on the morrow; but when the car door was closed upon her she laughed
aloud, muttering, as she glanced back to the house she had just left:
“If you see either your pretty Maggie or your two hundred dollars after
you send her on that errand to-morrow, it will be because my plan
proves a failure, which I think is scarcely likely to be the case.”
CHAPTER LIV. IN THE TOILS.
All day long, while the eyes of her humble friend Jenny and the rest
of her shopmates were on her, Iris preserved a calm and almost happy
exterior; but when night came, and she lay awake by the sleeping
Jenny’s side, then, indeed, the girl’s young heart was like to break,
and the God in whom she trusted alone knew what she suffered.
It was a close, sultry day in early springtime, and Iris found great
difficulty in breathing, but she never once raised the thick brown veil
that concealed her face, having a constant horror of meeting Charles
Broughton, or some of the sunny-day friends who might recognize in this
pale little working girl the happy Iris of other days.
By walking slowly she reached the bank at last, but was unable to get
her check cashed immediately, as there chanced to be quite a number of
people to be served before her.
One gentleman, noting the weary attitude in which she stood, awaiting
her turn, placed a chair for her behind a large, fluted column near
the paying teller’s window, where she might sit comfortably and partly
concealed from the throng of people around her.
While Iris was seated in this place, two gentlemen, leaning against
the column behind which she was ensconced, and totally ignorant of her
proximity, were conversing in low, guarded tones, every word uttered
being distinctly audible to Iris.
She was about to cough, or make some sound that would warn the
gentlemen of her presence, when some words spoken by one of them caused
her to pause.
She had recognized the voice of Gerald Dare; and Dare had mentioned a
name the very sound of which sent the blood tingling through her veins
like wildfire.
“I am greatly surprised at the information you have just imparted to
me,” Gerald’s companion said, in answer to something the former had
been telling him; and Gerald hastily resumed: “But the information is
perfectly correct, I assure you. I was somewhat surprised myself, on
first hearing the news, although I don’t know why St. John should not
marry old Hilton’s heiress--the black-browed Isabel is eminently more
suited to him than that pretty little Iris could possibly have been.
Sad affair--that of little Iris, was it not?”
“I never heard the truth of the girl’s story, Dare, beyond some vague
rumors that she had left Mr. Hilton’s home, and that she was not his
own daughter. I never had the pleasure of meeting Miss Iris but once,
and then I thought her a charming little lady. What was the trouble,
anyhow?”
Leaning slightly forward in her chair, with a face that was like a mask
of marble behind the thick folds of her veil, Iris listened for Gerald
Dare’s answer, her heart throbbing so wildly that she half feared its
loud pulsations would betray her.
She could hear the long sigh with which Gerald Dare prefaced his answer
to his friend’s question, and then every word he uttered pierced her
heart, and imprinted itself in characters of fire on her brain.
“I am sorry to say that the girl is unworthy of sympathy. I confess I
was once sadly smitten with her charms, and when it leaked out that
she had left her old home, I would not have believed any one who had
dared tell me there was any guilty motive for her flight. I had my eyes
opened to the truth in a very short time, however.
“You know Broughton, do you not? Yes, I mean Charley Broughton; well,
what will you say of Miss Iris when I tell you that I found her at
the house in Lexington Avenue. Ah, you wince, my friend; probably the
mention of this house recalls the memory of many bright dollars lost
inside its walls.
“Well, it was there I came upon Miss Iris, talking confidentially with
Broughton, in that gentleman’s own private rooms.
“I was shocked beyond power of expression, and very nearly succeeded
in incurring my host’s enmity by a too evident betrayal of my feelings
on the subject. A couple of days after the encounter I fell across St.
John at the club, and told him where I had seen the girl every one
fancied him in love with. I know you think it was unmanly of me, but
you see I owed St. John an old grudge, and I think I paid it then, in
full.
“He looked like a dead man for a moment, and I could see him shiver as
if some one had struck him a heavy blow; but he could not have taken
the matter so much to heart as I believed at the time, or society
would not to-day be canvassing the probability of his early marriage
with Isabel Hilton.”
At this moment another gentleman joined the speakers, and the subject
of St. John and his loves was dropped for the time.
It would be a task beyond our feeble powers to describe the feelings of
Iris at the time.
She made no sound, nor gave any outward sign of the torture she was
enduring, nor did she give herself entirely up to the deadly weakness
that was creeping over her.
She remembered Madam Ward’s check, and watched her opportunity to
present it.
This accomplished, she left the bank building with slow and faltering
steps, having first concealed the money in her bosom with a vague fear
that she would not long have her senses, or the power to take care of
it.
Just outside the door of the bank the girl was obliged to raise her
veil, as she seemed literally stifling, and the instant she had done so
a lady, who had been seated in a motor car at the entrance to the bank,
some fifteen minutes before Iris emerged from the building, stepped out
of the vehicle and approached her, exclaiming in a soft, well-modulated
voice: “I beg your pardon, but are you Maggie Gordon, in the employ
of Madam Ward, of Forty-first Street? Yes? How fortunate. I have just
driven down from madam’s on the chance of meeting you. Madam told me
she gave you a sample of silk to match on your way home. The silk is
for my dress, you know, and I chanced to remember that I have two or
three yards of the same material at home, so that it would be only a
useless piece of extravagance to purchase more. If you will step into
the car and drive home with me I will give you the silk, and send my
chauffeur with you to madam’s.”
Iris merely bowed in token that she was at Clara Neville’s service,
and followed the latter to the machine, volunteering no remark as the
vehicle drove away, and scarcely once glancing toward her companion,
but lying back with closed eyes in a corner of the limousine, with the
brown veil again concealing her white, pained face.
CHAPTER LV. ISABEL’S BETROTHAL.
The handsome residence of Oscar Hilton was ablaze with lights from
basement to attic, and from the long parlors issued the sound of merry
dance music. It was Isabel’s birthday, and Isabel’s dear five hundred
friends had been invited to do honor to the occasion.
It must have been almost, if not quite, eleven o’clock, and the
festivities were at their height, when a servant made his way through
the dancers to the place where his master stood, with such a look of
alarm on his face, that every one who chanced to see it knew there was
something wrong, or some sad news to be imparted to their host. Hilton
himself turned white as death as he saw the man coming toward him.
A hush fell upon the assembled guests, and at this most inopportune
moment the music ceased, and one could plainly hear the beating of the
rain against the windows, one of those sudden storms peculiar to early
springtime having arisen unknown to the dancers.
The servant was speaking in low, cautious tones to his master, but some
of his words came plainly to the ears of the bystanders, among whom
were St. John and Isabel.
“Miss Iris is outside, sir, an’ she’s sick, I think, fainted dead away.
She’s drenched through with the rain--and--and, oh, sir, I think she’s
a-dyin’. She just came up the stoop a-holdin’ by the rails, an’ when
I opened the door she cried so faintly, sir, ‘mother! mother!’ an’
fell as if dead at my feet before I could catch her. I laid her in the
reception room, sir--was that right?--an’ I thought it best to tell you
before I frightened Mrs. Hilton.”
“Quite right, Peter; I will attend to the girl myself,” whispered Mr.
Hilton, unconscious that any other ear than his own had caught Peter’s
words.
Peter hurried from the room with his eyes suspiciously moistened and
red; he had loved the gentle Iris very dearly.
Mr. Hilton shortly followed him, pausing first to make a polite apology
to his guests for the necessity which obliged him to tear himself away
from them for a few moments only.
From what Isabel had overheard, she knew that Iris had returned ill,
and in trouble, at this late hour, and her eyes instinctively sought
those of the man upon whose arm she leaned.
His face was white and set, and his lips pressed themselves tightly
together, but he did not avoid her gaze.
He drew her hand closer within his arm, and led her to a spot a little
distance removed from the rest of the company.
“Isabel,” he said gently, as if he had read aright the fear in her
eyes, “you are my promised wife, and Iris has sinned beyond the
possibility of forgiveness--you need not fear that I will give her one
thought that would be a wrong to you. I know your father will deal
gently with her, but you, Isabel, you who have loved her as a sister
almost all her life, you will be kind to her if she comes to you,
penitent and suffering; will you not promise me this, Isabel, my wife?”
He spoke the last two words with a peculiar emphasis, as if trying
to impress on his heart and brain that she was really to bear this
relationship to him.
She smiled up into his face, while tears dimmed her lustrous eyes as
she answered:
“Were she the vilest sinner on earth, I would receive her
gladly--joyfully, and do everything in my power to reclaim her.”
As Isabel uttered these words, Chester St. John bent suddenly over her
and touched his lips gently to her forehead.
It was the first time he had ever caressed her, and the warm blood
crept into her dusky cheeks until they rivaled the crimson of the rose
at her breast, but she knew that the kiss was given only for Iris’
sake, and her heart grew hard and bitter toward that hapless girl.
“She shall not return to this house though she die of starvation on
the street,” was Isabel’s thought, and at the very first opportunity
that offered she stole quietly from the room and made her way to the
apartment where she expected to find her father and the unhappy Iris.
CHAPTER LVI. A CRUEL SUSPICION.
“Oh, madam, I cannot work any longer; something terrible has happened
to Maggie; I have felt so uneasy all day about her, and now, see, it is
almost night, and she has not yet returned. I must go and look for her;
my hands tremble so that I can no longer hold my needle.”
The speaker was Jenny Mason, and the time almost evening of the day on
which Iris had been sent to the bank by Madam Ward.
“I am beginning to grow the least bit uneasy myself,” exclaimed madam,
while Jenny waited for her permission to quit work. “I think it
probable that Mrs. Neville is detaining her; you know, Jenny, that Mrs.
Neville said she should probably meet Maggie at the bank and drive her
home. If this is the case I shall scold Maggie severely, for she should
certainly know better than to keep me in this suspense all this time.
You may go, Jenny, but I do not think there is any cause for alarm.
Maggie is certainly no baby; she is fully capable of taking care of
herself.”
Jenny did not wait to hear any further words from her employer. Her
heart was sick with forebodings and fears for the safety of the friend
she loved, and she left the shop in Forty-first Street looking like a
little ghost.
After Jenny’s departure, Madam Ward grew more uneasy with every passing
moment, and at last, when darkness began to settle over the city, and
the girls were making ready for departure, she called Emma Henry to
her, and asked the latter to go to Mrs. Neville’s residence and see if
the missing girl was still there.
Emma started upon the errand gladly, for she could hardly have slept
that night without being satisfied of Maggie’s safety.
She had not been gone ten minutes when madam, whose face was pressed
against the windowpane, uttered an exclamation of intense relief.
Mrs. Neville’s car was drawing up before the door.
“At last Maggie has come,” she said, half angrily, and hurried down to
open the door herself in her impatience; but Maggie had not come.
Mrs. Neville herself stood on the threshold, looking flushed and angry.
“I declare, madam,” this lady began, “I shall never interest myself
again in a shop girl. I took your pretty Maggie home with me to-day,
and treated her like a lady, and here I find the silk I gave her to
bring to you hidden behind my vestibule door. You know that I am in a
great hurry for my dress, so I thought I would ride down and give you
the silk, as I have other business in this direction. I do not quite
like your favorite, Maggie. She was laboring under intense excitement
to-day, and I confess her conduct displeased me. She refused to be
driven back here in my car, and I think she went to meet some lover. I
hope----”
But Mrs. Neville never finished her sentence, for madam was wringing
her hands, and weeping violently.
“It cuts me to the heart to believe that Maggie is a thief,” she was
sobbing, and Mrs. Neville smiled behind her embroidered handkerchief
at the success of her cruel plans, while she affected to sympathize
with the too trusting mistress of the unworthy girl.
* * * * *
During the short drive from the bank to the residence of Clara Neville,
Iris preserved an unbroken silence. The shock of the revelation to
which she had been an unwilling listener seemed to have deprived her of
thought or action.
Arriving at her home, Mrs. Neville requested Iris to follow her to a
room on the second floor--her own boudoir--a pretty little apartment
furnished in the gay, bright colors the widow loved.
“You had better be seated, girl, for I have a few words to say to you,
and it makes me nervous to see you standing.”
“If you have any message for madam,” replied Iris, “I beg you will tell
me at once, Mrs. Neville, as I am anxious to return with the money I
have in charge for her. I am afraid she will be anxious if I am delayed
a moment longer than is necessary.”
Mrs. Neville laughed mockingly at the girl’s impatience to be gone,
and, sinking languidly into the nearest chair, exclaimed:
“I am very much afraid madam will be forced to endure the pangs
of anxiety for some little time to come. Stay,” as Iris made an
involuntary movement toward the door, “I do not choose that you shall
leave this room until you have answered a few questions I desire to
put to you. In the first place--what are you to Charles Broughton, my
intended husband?”
Mrs. Neville had sprung to her feet as she uttered the last words, and
placed herself between Iris and the door, looking straight into the
girl’s wide, dilated eyes, and noting the look of horror that crept
into the blue depths at her sudden question.
She waited a moment for Iris’ answer, but the girl could not speak,
and Mrs. Neville was more than even convinced of the truth of her
suspicions.
We will spare the reader a repetition of the harsh, unwomanly language
now uttered by the jealous woman, and the cruel epithets she applied to
our unfortunate heroine.
For one moment only Iris stood listening, and shivering like a frail
flower in a winter gale, and then the faintness that had been growing
upon her all day overcame her, and she lost all knowledge of her
sufferings in a blessed unconsciousness, falling to the floor without a
moan or sigh, and lying at Clara Neville’s feet like one dead.
The widow knelt beside Iris and unfastened the bosom of her dress, and
Madam Ward’s two hundred dollars fell out upon the carpet. She picked
it up and placed it in her own pocket, smiling triumphantly as she did
so.
At this moment the sound as of some one breathing startled her, and
looking up quickly she encountered the astonished gaze of Charles
Broughton, who had entered the room unobserved, his footsteps making no
sound on the velvet pile of the carpet.
He was the first to break the embarrassing silence.
“What is the meaning of this scene, Clara, and what brought this girl
here?”
There was nothing of tenderness in his eyes or his voice, as he
motioned carelessly toward the senseless girl, but Clara attributed his
pallor to anxiety for her--Iris--and this belief increased her rage and
jealousy tenfold.
She reproached him in bitter and cutting language for his supposed
infidelity, and told him the circumstance of her having seen Iris leave
his house on Lexington Avenue.
Her explanation of the scene Broughton had surprised her in was simple
and plausible.
“This girl came here to get a piece of silk from me for her employer.
I recognized her as your friend, and my temper got the better of my
reason.
“She fainted when I told her of the wrong she was doing me--your
promised wife--and as this fact in itself would have convinced me
of her friendship for you, I confess I was bitterly angry; and in
my desire to be revenged upon this little pauper who has succeeded
in destroying my happiness, I would have sent her out of this house
without one penny of the two hundred dollars she had just taken from
the bank for Madam Ward.
“Now you know all the truth, Charles, and here and now I want you to
choose between us--this pauper--this dressmaker’s apprentice--and
myself.”
The widow’s face was actually ablaze with anger, and Broughton, knowing
the need he had for her fortune, resolved to conciliate her at all
hazards, regardless of the injury he must do his own child.
“My dear Clara,” he began, encircling her form with one arm despite
her feeble effort to resist him, “you have caused yourself a world of
unnecessary trouble and heartache. So far from loving this girl am I,
that I may safely assure you the feeling I cherish for her is one more
closely approaching to hatred. I told you on the occasion of my first
meeting with her in the home of your seamstress, Jenny Mason, that her
face reminded me of a woman whom I considered my deadliest enemy.
“I have since discovered that she is the daughter of this enemy, and I
have to revenge myself on the mother through the child. Some day, my
own Clara, when you are my wife, and our interests are identical, I
shall tell you all the story of my past; but you have assured me over
and over again that you trusted me implicitly, and now is the time to
prove your sincerity. I shall test it to the utmost, Clara, and--but
see, the girl is reviving--keep the money in your own possession until
we can venture to send it to the owner anonymously, and deny all
knowledge of it should she,”--with a careless motion of his head toward
the figure on the floor--“discover its loss before leaving the house,
and----”
At this moment there was a hasty knock at the door, and the voice of a
servant outside begging the privilege of a few words with her mistress.
Mrs. Neville left the room to ascertain the cause of this interruption.
As she passed out of the room, Iris opened wide her blue eyes and
raised herself on her elbow, looking around her in bewilderment.
The instant her eyes fell on Broughton, who stood coolly looking down
upon her, she remembered the scene through which she had lately passed,
and arose to her feet as rapidly as her feeble strength would allow,
disdaining the aid of his proffered hand.
The man did not wait for her to speak, but placing a chair for her,
almost forced her to be seated.
“You must listen to me, my dear,” he began, in the cold, stern voice
she remembered so well. “I know all about the ordeal you have just gone
through, and I have taught Mrs. Neville her error. Are you not tired of
the life you have been living since we parted, Iris? Are you not ready
to accept the offer I made you on the occasion of our last meeting? I
have not interfered with you since then, trusting that time would show
you the folly of your conduct, and now I am ready to renew the offer I
then made you. Will you come with me to my home?”
Iris had by this time recovered the power of speech, and she would not
allow Broughton to proceed further.
“What does your offer mean for me--a life of even greater misery than I
have yet endured--a life I blush to name? Dear Heaven, do you know the
shame I have suffered this day, to hear myself branded as a creature
unfit for honest women to notice! You say you have been a convict,
and I know you are now a gambler and the associate of gamblers; yet
acknowledge me as your daughter and I will be your slave. I can bear
anything but----”
Broughton at this moment checked the speaker by a gesture so fierce and
determined that she shrank from him in actual fear.
“Cease, girl, and never dare to mention the word convict again in my
presence. What you ask of me is impossible for me to grant. Come with
me to my home. Let the world say of you what it will, you will at
least be secure from want. More than this I cannot do for you. Refuse
the offer, and before the dawn of another day the woman who now employs
you to work for her shall charge you with theft, and accuse you as a
thief before the world.”
Iris had thrown herself before him in a kneeling attitude, and was
clasping his knees in an agony of supplication.
At his last words the girl sprang quickly to her feet, repeating in
accents of supreme horror:
“A thief, a thief! Great Heaven, what can you mean?”
The footsteps of Mrs. Neville were heard returning along the hallway
now, and Broughton whispered hurriedly:
“I mean just what I have said. You shall be accused of theft unless
you do my bidding. The two hundred dollars you had in your possession
when you entered this house have been taken from you. If you go back
to Madam Ward without the money, do you think she will believe the
improbable story you would be obliged to tell to account for its loss?
Think over my offer. I shall return to you in a couple of hours, during
which time you shall remain in this room alone. Ah, Clara, my dear,” as
the widow appeared in the doorway, “I was just telling this young lady
you would permit her to remain here until she recovers from the effects
of her swoon,” and before Iris could open her lips to speak, Broughton
had drawn Mrs. Neville with him out of the room, and locked the door on
the outside, leaving Iris for the time a prisoner.
CHAPTER LVII. HOMELESS AND ALONE.
It never occurred to Iris to attempt an escape from Mrs. Neville’s
boudoir, until such time as Broughton saw fit to release her.
At ten o’clock that night Broughton reëntered the room.
“Well, have you concluded to accept my offer?” he asked sternly, and
the sound of his voice had the effect of rousing the girl as nothing
else could have done.
“I shall never accept your offer. Let me go, sir; I had rather be
thrown into prison for a theft of which I am innocent than buy my
freedom at such a price.”
“It will be a noble revenge, my dear, to doom the child of my betrayer
to the same fate I suffered at her hands. Go, now, it is after ten
o’clock, and Madam Ward will be terribly alarmed, you know.”
He moved aside for Iris to pass out as he concluded, and the girl went
out into the street alone, knowing it would be useless to appeal to him
again or to demand the return of madam’s money.
“Oh, what shall I do! I dare not face Madam Ward, nor can I go to
Jenny; it would kill me to see a look of distrust in the eyes of
the girl who has loved and trusted me always, and who is now my
only friend. Father in heaven, look down on Thy most wretched child
to-night, and direct her what to do; guide her to some haven of refuge,
or she will die in the streets.”
She finally determined to go home to her mother.
Her hand was on the bell knob of the door of her home when the most
cruel memory that had yet dawned upon her made her pause in the act
of ringing. Chester St. John was surely in those lighted parlors--an
honored guest, and the betrothed husband of Isabel, while she, whom he
once loved, was an outcast and homeless, alone in the darkness of the
night and the storm.
This bitter memory was as the last straw that broke the camel’s back,
and when Peter opened the door, her lips could frame no other word than
that piteous cry for “mother” ere the tortured brain once more gave way.
She did not faint, or entirely lose consciousness, but a deadly
sickness robbed her limbs of their strength, and Peter was obliged to
lift her into a little room across the hallway, ere he went to acquaint
Mr. Hilton with the fact of her presence.
Iris would have made her own way to her mother’s apartments when he had
departed on this mission, but it seemed that her limbs were palsied,
and refused to obey her will, or even to bear her slight weight when
she made an attempt to stand on her feet.
“Was it death that was coming to her?”
A happy light sprang into her weary eyes as this sweet hope dawned upon
her, and she murmured in a tone loud enough to reach the ears of Mr.
Hilton, who had just entered the room:
“Mother, you will let me stay with you till it is over; you will not
turn your child out into the streets to die?”
“Good heavens, girl! Why do you talk of dying? You are raving; what has
happened to you, and why are you here?”
The last words, harshly and coldly spoken, showed the girl that she had
little mercy to expect at the hands of her mother’s husband.
“Let me see my mother--I am ill--dying, I think--and I--I have no one
else in all the world,” she said faintly, holding to the back of a
chair for support as she arose from the couch on which Peter had laid
her.
“I cannot grant your request, Iris,” he said coldly. “By your own
conduct you have forfeited your right to hold any manner of intercourse
with my wife. If you are ill I will give you some money, and send
Peter to take you to your lodgings, but this is all I can promise--ah,
Isabel, my daughter, why did you follow me here? Go back to your
guests.”
The bright head of Iris had drooped lower and lower while Hilton spoke
until it rested on the back of the chair, but as he addressed Isabel,
she--Iris--raised her eyes, with the vague hope that the girl whom she
had loved as a sister would say some word in her favor.
“Isabel, I have only asked to see my mother,” she faltered, but Isabel
retorted coldly:
“I fully agree with papa that it is impossible. How could you come
here to-night, Iris, when you know how the world is talking of your
disgraceful conduct. You must go away quietly----”
“Isabel!”
The voice that had spoken the name proceeded from the doorway, where
Chester St. John was standing, gazing into the room with eyes that
were dark with scorn and anger, and a face white as that of Iris
herself.
“Chester,” Isabel exclaimed, with an air of injured innocence and a
reproachful glance toward the motionless figure in the doorway, “you
think we are cruel and harsh to Iris; but you cannot understand that in
denying her request to-night we were seeking to spare her the bitter
knowledge that her own mother absolutely refuses to admit her, or to
speak to her if she were dying. Is not this the truth, papa?”
“It is certainly true, St. John,” he answered. “I would have spared
this unfortunate girl, had such a thing been at all possible; but my
wife positively declines to have anything to do with her daughter now,
or at any time in the future. Mrs. Hilton is even weaker to-night
than usual, and--but,” with a sudden assumption of pride and offended
dignity, “I do not really know why I am making these explanations to
you, St. John; as my daughter’s accepted suitor, the affairs of this
girl cannot concern you; and I think you will do me the justice to
confess that I, who have fed and clothed and sheltered Iris Tresilian
until she left my home of her own accord, and for what purpose you
know--am fully capable of dealing justly with her now.”
“I understand your reproof, sir, and while I acknowledge that I have no
right to dictate to you in this matter, I will still beg leave to say a
word in the interests of common humanity. Had I never looked upon Iris
Tresilian’s face I should still protest against a young creature like
her being sent out on such a night, unprotected and alone. If she has
sinned----”
At the last words of St. John, “If she has sinned,” spoken in a
sorrowful tone that told how firmly he believed in her guilt, all
her soul seemed to rise in passionate rebellion, and with the false
strength despair sometimes lends, Iris advanced toward the group
near the doorway, and stood before them, a little, solitary figure,
with white, set features, whose immobility would have been actually
startling but for the convulsive twitching of the muscles of the
colorless lips, and the large, blue eyes dilated like those of a hunted
stag.
“Of what sin am I accused, Mr. Hilton?” she asked. “For what crime does
my mother condemn me so harshly?” Then turning suddenly to St. John,
before Hilton could answer: “I left this gentleman’s home because he
taught me that I had no claim upon him--that I, who had believed myself
his daughter, was the child of an unworthy father whose name I should
blush to bear. I went forth from this house to earn my own bread, and
since that time I have done nothing of which I need be ashamed, nor----”
She came to a sudden stop here, while for a moment the color grew
deeper and deeper in her face, and then faded utterly, leaving her
again deadly pale.
She had thought of Gerald Dare’s words, and the suspicions her presence
in the house of Charles Broughton had awakened.
Her sudden hesitation and confusion, and the ineradicable flush
of shame that had dyed her cheeks at this cruel memory, seemed to
contradict her previous assertion of innocence, and to shake the faith
new-born in Chester St. John’s heart.
At Iris’ first words Oscar Hilton had trembled lest there should
be something said concerning the forged letter, and he now seized
this moment of the girl’s embarrassment to turn the drift of the
conversation into a new channel.
“My poor child,” he ejaculated, in a tone of well-feigned sympathy,
“do not seek to defend your conduct. Unhappily we have all been made
acquainted with the manner in which you have passed your time since
leaving my protection. If--as you say--you are innocent, will you be
good enough to tell us what you are to the noted gambler and roué,
Charles Broughton?”
At this coarse and rude question Iris started violently, and looked
into the face of the speaker with an expression of actual terror,
fearing for the moment that he had in some manner learned the secret of
Broughton’s identity.
That one swift glance into his eyes reassured her. She knew that he
shared, or pretended to share, the common belief that Broughton was her
lover, and she dared say nothing to undeceive him.
“I can tell you nothing at present, but some time you will know all,
and learn how deeply you have wronged me. My mother will forgive me
then, and bitterly regret her cruelty.”
She took a step toward the door as she concluded, keeping her eyes
turned resolutely away from the face of Chester St. John, lest the
sight of it should rob her of the last remnant of strength she was
struggling so hard to maintain.
Isabel had thrown herself into an easy-chair near the door, and was
holding her handkerchief to her face as if deeply affected by the
scene, while Oscar Hilton was perhaps the most excited of all the
little group.
He feared to detain Iris lest something should be said to betray his
plot, and he dared not let her go forth alone lest St. John should
follow to protect her, and thus learn all the truth.
Mr. Hilton himself was puzzled to account for the mystery of Iris’
connection with Broughton, for, from his own experience of his wife’s
beautiful daughter, he knew her to be pure as the untrodden snow, and
utterly incapable of the sin of which she stood accused.
Whatever the cause of the singular emotion she had betrayed at his
chance mention of Broughton’s name, he--Hilton--was satisfied with the
effect upon St. John, seeing as he did that the latter’s newly awakened
faith in the girl he had loved so devotedly was again shattered.
Mr. Hilton made haste to respond to Iris’ last words before St. John
had time to speak, if such had been that gentleman’s intention.
“My dear child, if you can prove to us that we have wronged you, I, for
one, shall be happy, both for your own sake and that of the woman who
bears my name, your mother; and now, Iris, I shall appropriate the car
of one of my guests to take you to your home, as you are looking weak
and ill, and it is nearly midnight. St. John, I may have your machine
for this purpose, may I not?”
At this direct appeal, Chester--who had crossed the room, and
stood leaning against the low marble mantel, with his eyes bent on
the floor, and his face pale with an agony he did not endeavor to
conceal--advanced quickly to the spot on which Iris stood, with a look
in his eyes that filled Oscar Hilton with fear.
St. John was about to ask Iris a question which would have betrayed him.
He was about to ask her where was the man whose fortune she had left
her home to follow, that he might have constituted himself her champion
and avenger, had he discovered that this lover had basely deserted or
deceived her.
At this moment light footsteps were heard approaching the door, and a
sweet, girlish voice calling gayly:
“Chester! Isabel! Where are you, truants?” as the door was thrown open
unceremoniously to admit a fairylike vision in the person of pretty,
golden-haired Grace St. John, who had been Iris Tresilian’s most
intimate and best-loved friend.
“Ah, brother Chester, how wicked of you to keep Belle all this time
from her friends; we shall be obliged----”
Grace’s merry voice ceased all of a sudden, for her eyes had fallen
on the pale, drooped face of Iris, and although Chester made an
involuntary movement as if to step between them--a movement Iris
understood but too well, the impulsive Grace sprang quickly to the side
of the outcast, and clasped her white arms around the latter’s neck,
crying joyously:
“Oh, Iris, darling, I am so glad to see you; I have missed you so--I
shall be so happy now that you have come home, but, Iris, dear, why do
you sob so bitterly?”
At the first word of kindness, and the first touch of Grace’s caressing
hands, Iris had broken down utterly, and her slender frame was racked
with hoarse, convulsive sobs that were pitiful to hear.
Mr. Hilton addressed St. John in a harsh, imperative tone:
“Take your sister and Isabel back to the parlors while I attend to
Iris. This is no scene for either of them.”
Iris heard these words, and put aside Grace’s clinging arms.
“Let me go, Gracie, dear; I am no fit associate for you now,” she said
sadly and bitterly, walking with tottering steps toward the door as
she spoke; but Grace St. John reached it before her and prevented her
egress.
“Wait, Iris; I must understand this scene,” she said firmly, her pretty
white-rose face growing paler than its wont, and her blue eyes glancing
reproachfully from face to face. “I do not understand why you left
your home, Iris. I only know that some great sorrow or misfortune has
fallen on you, and changed you almost beyond recognition. I have loved
you like a sister since you and I were little children, and yet you say
you are no fit associate for me now, Iris! What do you mean? Why do you
speak of leaving this house at such an hour, darling? If these doors
are closed against you, you shall come home with me. Don’t shudder and
shake your head; I tell you, Iris, there is no barrier strong enough to
separate us, unless--unless”--the girl hesitated, while a faint tinge
of color crept into her white face--“unless you had sinned beyond even
a mother’s forgiveness, and----”
The cold, metallic tones of Oscar Hilton’s voice here interposed:
“Miss St. John, it grieves me beyond the power of words to express, but
I am forced to tell you the truth, that this scene may be no longer
prolonged. Iris Tresilian has sinned beyond a mother’s forgiveness. My
wife has cast her out of her heart, and forbidden me to receive her
again in my home. She----” A suppressed cry from Isabel checked the
words he was about to have added, and, following the glance of his
daughter’s eyes, he saw the cause of her alarm.
The door near which Grace and Iris were standing had been pushed softly
open, and Evelyn Hilton was crossing the threshold, moving slowly, with
her hands clasped in front of her and her eyes bent downward.
She was attired in a long, loose white wrapper, and her fair hair,
escaped from its fastenings, hung far below her waist, giving her a
singularly weird and ghostlike appearance.
Oscar Hilton’s face grew white as marble, and great beads of
perspiration stood out thickly on his forehead.
“She is asleep!” he whispered.
“Not a sound for your lives. A sudden awakening would cause her
death--I have been warned.”
This was indeed true. Mrs. Hilton was a confirmed somnambulist, and her
doctor feared that a sudden awakening from one of these spells would
sooner or later prove fatal.
“Steal quietly out of the room, and leave her alone with me,” said
Hilton, in the same low whisper; but even while he spoke he saw that
this would be impossible, for the sleepwalker had paused directly in
the doorway, and stood in such a position that it would have been
impossible for any one to pass out without touching her, and the very
lightest touch would have awakened her.
There was a moment of intense silence, broken only by the heavy
breathing of the sleeping woman.
Iris trembled like a leaf in a storm, and was scarcely conscious
that it was Chester St. John’s firm hand that had forced her into an
easy-chair, against the back of which he was now leaning, with his face
hidden in his hands.
Presently the lips of the somnambulist opened, and she spoke, slowly
and distinctly:
“Don’t ask me to do it, Oscar; I’ve been a bad, unfeeling mother
always, but I cannot do this thing; it is such a cruel letter--it will
make Chester St. John despise her--I can copy her handwriting--yes--I
know--but to say she left her home for an unworthy lover--while I know
that all her heart is given to him--to Chester--no! no! Oscar! Don’t
threaten to betray my secret--I will write--anything--anything you
dictate----”
Tears were streaming down the poor, wan cheeks of the unfortunate woman
now, while Iris with difficulty checked her own wild sobbing, and
Chester St. John whispered hoarsely:
“What can this mean!” And dropping on his knees, weak as a fainting
woman, hid his face on the arm of the chair in which Iris reclined.
Oscar Hilton had crept noiselessly to his daughter’s side, and was
pressing his hand firmly on her shoulder to prevent her from making any
outcry; for, base and worldly as this man was, he loved his wife with
all the strength of which his selfish nature was capable, and bore even
this betrayal of his baseness rather than silence her at the risk of
her life.
Again there was a moment of silence, while the fingers of the sleeper
made the motions of writing, slowly and carefully, pausing often, and
bending her head as if to study some written page before her.
She seemed to have finished at last, all to the signing of the name,
and this she repeated aloud:
“Iris Tresilian,” adding, after a brief pause, during which she had
sobbed like a child: “It is done, Oscar. I have bought your silence at
the price of my daughter’s reputation, even as I purchased wealth at
the cost of my husband’s honor.”
The last words were spoken very faintly, and Mrs. Hilton now came
farther into the room, with her hands outstretched as if searching for
something.
“My chair, Oscar; wheel it close to the fire,” she whispered, and
Hilton sprang forward quickly to place a chair for her; but in his
agitation his foot struck against a small ormolu stand upon which
Isabel had placed a glass tank containing several gold fishes.
The stand was overturned, and the glass fell with a loud crash,
shattered to pieces on the floor.
The eyes of the somnambulist sprang wide open; she gazed wildly
from one to another of the surrounding faces, and with a cry that
echoed from basement to attic, fell to the ground, writhing in strong
convulsions.
“Good God, I have killed her!” And Oscar Hilton threw himself
frantically on his knees beside her, while the guests, attracted by
that wild and pitiful cry, came thronging to the spot, and Iris,
sobbing out the words: “Mamma! Oh, my poor mother!” attempted to reach
the spot where the latter lay, but fell back, feeble and helpless as an
infant, in Chester St. John’s outstretched arms.
CHAPTER LVIII. THE ARREST.
In less than half an hour after Mrs. Hilton’s cry had alarmed the
ladies and gentlemen assembled to do honor to Isabel Hilton in this
celebration of her birthday, the house was cleared of every guest with
the exception of Grace and Chester St. John.
“Go home, dear, and trust me to take care of Iris as if she were indeed
your sister,” Chester had said to Grace; but pretty Grace had answered
with a decision and dignity quite new to her:
“No, Chester; you believed that Iris was guilty--you were false to her
when she most needed a true friend; but I could never doubt her, and I
shall stay beside her now to give help and what comfort I may in the
trial I see before her.”
“God bless you for your faith in her, my sweet sister!” answered
Chester huskily, as he laid the trembling form of Iris out of his arms,
back into the chair from which she had arisen, ere he hurried from the
house to bring the doctor to Mrs. Hilton.
While he was absent on this errand, Isabel, who realized, with a
sickening sense of desolation and misery, that St. John was lost to her
forever, escaped to her own apartments, where she locked herself in,
refusing to admit even her maid until the afternoon of the following
day.
St. John returned with a doctor in less than fifteen minutes. Mrs.
Hilton was still in convulsions, and the physician saw at a glance
that her case was hopeless.
He gave his decision promptly and without any unnecessary beating
around the bush.
“I will do all that is possible to relieve your wife’s sufferings, Mr.
Hilton, but it is beyond the power of mortal skill to save her. She may
linger with intervals of consciousness for several days, and she may
pass away before daylight; but in any case I have not the faintest hope
of her recovery.”
Mr. Hilton groaned aloud at these words, while Iris wept bitterly.
The latter had not entirely lost consciousness, but that sickening
feeling of weakness robbed her limbs of their strength, and she could
not for her life have arisen from the chair in which Chester had placed
her, until nearly an hour had passed, and Chester and Grace were
preparing to take their departure.
Mrs. Hilton had been carried upstairs to her own apartments, but Mr.
Hilton still lingered, waiting in an agony of impatience for the St.
Johns to leave the house.
Iris scarcely heard Grace’s words of farewell, but every tone of
Chester’s voice thrilled her heart to its inmost core, as he bent over
her chair and clasped both her hands in his own.
“Iris, there has been treachery and deceit at work--and through my
belief in your guilt I have lost you. Oh, this is killing me!”
He had crushed her passive hands so tightly in his agony and regret
that she with difficulty repressed a cry of pain, and then he
hurriedly left the room, murmuring as he threw himself back among the
car cushions by his sister’s side:
“Oh, if I had only trusted her, but my hand was the first to fling a
stone at her memory, my heart the first to fail in its allegiance, and
now I am pledged to another, and she----”
He could no longer carry out this bitter train of thought, it almost
maddened him to think of Iris as he had left her, remaining on
sufferance in the home from which she was an outcast, and where her
mother lay dying.
After his departure Iris grew stronger, and, clasping Oscar Hilton’s
hand in passionate pleading, begged to be allowed to nurse her mother
until the end.
“Oh, sir, please do not refuse me--I will intrude not one hour
after--after all is over,” she sobbed, and, broken and weakened by the
shock of this sudden calamity, Mr. Hilton reluctantly consented for
her to stay, and a few moments later Iris took her position beside her
unconscious mother’s bed, prepared to do her duty faithfully to the
end, although she knew now that this mother’s hand had doomed her to
all the sorrow she had been forced to endure.
Toward noon on the following day Evelyn Hilton recovered consciousness,
and, on recognizing her daughter, appeared much pleased, and sank into
a heavy slumber, after whispering a few words which were heard by Iris
alone.
“I will tell you everything, my daughter, when I wake, and you must try
to forgive me.”
But, alas! before she again awakened, the greatest trial of Iris’ life
had come to her, and the mother’s eyes were doomed to look no more on
her child’s face on this side of the grave.
As early as was at all consistent with the rules of etiquette St. John
and Grace called to inquire for the sufferer.
Isabel received them, looking unusually handsome in her bright, crimson
morning robe, with all the rich color faded out of her dark face, and
her lips quivering piteously as she reported that dear mamma was not
any better, and that she--Isabel--was forced to stay out of the sick
room because she could not listen to poor mamma’s wild and improbable
fancies.
Grace understood the yearning look in her brother’s eyes, and proffered
a timid request for a word with Iris; but Isabel declared that Iris
could not be induced to leave her mother’s bedside for a moment, and
the visitors could not persist any further.
During their brief stay she found an opportunity of speaking alone with
Chester.
“This is a cruel trial, dear Chester; I long to hear some words of
sympathy from your lips; I have sore need of your love now; it is all
so lonesome and terrible with papa always in the sick room, and the
house silent as the grave.”
She had clasped her small hands on his shoulder, and bent her head upon
them, so that her face was very near his own; but although Chester
smoothed her dark, glossy hair with a gentle touch, he did not give
her the caress she expected, for between them there arose a vision
he could not banish--the vision of a sweet mignonne face, a pair of
limpid, violet eyes, and a pretty, bright-tressed head that he had
lately seen bowed in bitter sorrow.
The struggle going on within his heart was almost maddening. Could
he, with his chivalrous sense of honor, ask this girl, who had openly
confessed her love for him, to release him from his promise, that he
might devote his life to the clearing of Iris Tresilian’s name, and
afterward to the task of winning Iris’ forgiveness for having doubted
her?
His conscience told him his first duty was to the woman who was his
promised wife, and for the first time in his life he found it hard to
obey this silent, inward voice.
While he was taking his leave of Isabel a loud ring at the doorbell
startled them, and his heart throbbed with an unaccountable feeling of
foreboding.
Grace was already in the vestibule, and opened the door before a
servant had time to answer the summons. Two men stood on the doorstep,
one of whom exclaimed, without preface:
“We are looking for a girl whose name, we believe, is Aris, or Iris
Tresilian, but who calls herself Maggie Gordon.”
While speaking the man had coolly unbuttoned his coat and exhibited a
shining shield, at sight of which Grace uttered a cry of terror, and
clung to her brother’s arm, trembling in every limb.
“Great heavens! There is some terrible mistake,” ejaculated Chester,
asking, as the men came across the threshold: “With what do you
charge Iris Tresilian?” to which the man replied in his usual cool,
matter-of-fact tone:
“With the theft of two hundred dollars. Madam Marie Ward, of
Forty-first Street, is her accuser.”
CHAPTER LIX. “GOOD-BY.”
“Miss Tresilian accused of theft! There is--there must be some terrible
mistake!” ejaculated Chester St. John, while Grace clung to his arm,
pale and shivering, and Isabel, after the first shock of surprise was
over, actually rejoiced in the new disgrace that had fallen on her
rival, since it must serve to place Iris beyond the pale of Chester’s
forgiveness.
“I shall send upstairs for Iris, that these men may see their mistake,”
she said confidently, and Grace, taking courage from her firm and
determined manner, now ventured to speak, begging Isabel to break the
news to Iris gently, lest the shock should be too much for her. But the
caution came just too late; for even while Grace was speaking, Iris was
descending the stairs, her light footfall making no sound on the soft
velvet pile of the carpet, and the sound of Grace’s low-toned voice
coming distinctly to her ears.
“What is it?” she cried breathlessly, and one of the men whose business
it was to arrest her stepped forward and answered:
“We have a painful duty to perform, young lady, and the quicker it is
over the better for all parties. The name by which you have been known
of late is Maggie Gordon, is it not? You are certainly the original of
this portrait.”
The speaker here exhibited a penciled sketch of the beautiful working
girl, executed by the sister of Madam Ward, an amateur artist of no
mean ability. At sight of this drawing St. John could not repress a
groan, while Grace bowed her head and wept, and Isabel turned a shade
paler. Iris herself was outwardly calm, but her eyes had the wild,
scared look of a hunted animal, and fixed themselves for one brief
second on the face of Chester St. John, as if mutely appealing to him
for aid.
The look went straight to his heart, and, leaving his place by the side
of Isabel, he spoke to Iris in a tone that was tremulous with deep
feeling:
“Depend on me, Iris; I shall do everything in my power to clear you of
this cruel charge. There must be some bitter enemy plotting against
your peace and happiness, some bold and daring enemy, since they dare
accuse you of theft! Oh, child, if you would only tell me everything I
might save you this indignity----”
“Hush! Do not speak to me so; I--I cannot bear it,” she cried
passionately, for the struggle to keep silent in the face of this
appeal was almost killing her. She dared not speak. She dared not utter
one word that might betray the author of her sufferings and her shame,
lest all the shameful story of the past should be revealed and disgrace
and dishonor fall on her dying mother.
It was the opinion of the doctors that life might linger in the poor,
worn frame of Evelyn Hilton for many days, although they had believed
at the time of her attack that her very minutes were numbered. While
her mother still lived, Iris’ lips were effectually sealed, and,
recovering at last from the emotion into which St. John’s words had
thrown her, she turned to him with the light of desperation in her
wide, dilated eyes, and a reckless defiance on her face that filled him
with horror and alarm.
“I have nothing to tell you, Mr. St. John. I cannot explain the loss
of madam’s two hundred dollars, and I must expect to suffer the
consequences. If these men will allow me to get my hat and cloak, and
will wait just one moment while I bid my mother a last farewell, I
shall be ready to accompany them.”
She avoided meeting St. John’s eyes as she spoke thus, and turned
abruptly from him to the officers in the doorway. “You will not refuse
me one moment with my mother, gentlemen, for, oh, sirs, she is dying;
we shall meet no more on earth.”
There was not a break or a quiver in the girl’s voice now, but the
look of dumb agony on her ashen face would have melted a heart of
oak, and the men readily agreed to wait until she joined them, first
ascertaining, however, that there was no back exit by which she might
effect an escape. When she had disappeared up the broad staircase, St.
John turned to Isabel, inquiring the whereabouts of her father, with
the vague idea that Mr. Hilton would in some manner be able to save
Iris--a hope that died again instantly as he remembered Iris’ avowal,
which had amounted almost to a confession of guilt.
Isabel explained that her father had gone to Riverdale, the residence
of an eminent physician, said to be skilled in the treatment of the
disease of which Mrs. Hilton was dying, and might not be at home before
evening.
“What is to be done? I would give half my fortune to spare her
this awful ordeal,” cried Chester, in despair. “Oh, men,” turning
desperately to the officers, “can any amount of money tempt you to go
away and leave Iris Tresilian in peace? I will go at once to this woman
to whom the lost money belonged, and repay it, aye, with interest, if
she will withdraw her charge, and----”
“It is no use, sir,” interrupted one of the officers; “the charge has
been made, and it is our duty to take the young lady into custody. I am
truly sorry, sir, but I assure you there is no help for it.”
St. John realized the truth of this assertion, and knew he could do
nothing at present for the unfortunate Iris.
“Come, Grace,” he said, gently addressing his weeping sister in a voice
that one would scarcely have recognized as his own, “let me take you to
the machine. Go home at once, dear, and leave me to see what steps may
be taken in this dreadful affair. Your loyalty to Iris has taught me a
lesson, Gracie, and from this hour she shall find in me as faithful a
brother as you have been a sister to her.”
Grace allowed him to lead her to the car, saying, as he was closing the
door upon her:
“She is innocent, brother; there is some enemy trying to work her
ruin. Be a friend to her in her hour of need, for she seems to stand
alone--even Isabel----”
“Hush, darling; not a word of Isabel. I have asked her to be my wife,”
interrupted St. John, adding, in a tone of ineffable tenderness: “God
bless you for your faith in Iris, little sister, and God forgive me
for the wrong I have done her by my cruel doubts.”
As St. John’s car drove away a taxicab was passing along, and the
gentleman hailed it and placed it at the disposal of the officers to
convey Iris to prison.
In the meantime Iris had stolen softly into her mother’s chamber, and
fallen on her knees by her bedside. Mrs. Hilton was still sleeping, and
could not hear the girl’s low sobbing, nor the broken, inarticulate
words that fell from her lips.
“Oh, mother, my mother, if you could speak one kind, pitying word to
me it would not be so hard to suffer for your sake. If you could hear
me when I pray for you, if you could join me in asking God to forgive
your sin. Oh, dear Saviour! Thou hearest me. Wilt Thou let my suffering
atone for this dying mother’s sin?”
As if the Divine Comforter had lifted some portion of the burden from
her well-nigh broken heart, Iris arose from her knees and bent closely
over the sleeper.
“This is our last earthly parting,” she whispered, as she touched her
lips softly to those of the unconscious sufferer. “Your child will see
your face on earth no more. Good-by--good-by--my poor, poor mother; I
leave you in God’s keeping--good-by, good-by.”
Iris now hurried from the room, lest the sound of her choking sobs
might arouse the sleeper, and a few moments later she left the house,
going forth with the calmness of utter despair to meet her fate.
CHAPTER LX. CONCLUSION.
As the motor car containing Iris and the officers rolled away from
Oscar Hilton’s home, Peter, the servant who had admitted Iris on the
preceding evening, stood in the area looking after the vehicle with a
perplexed and sorrowful expression on his good-natured face.
A stranger came up excitedly, threw a hasty glance at the departing
machine, and with a nervous gesture turned toward the servant.
“I say, my man,” said the stranger, addressing Peter, “is this the
residence of Mr. Hilton? I have been sent to see the sick lady--his
wife.”
Peter’s thoughts were traveling after Iris, and he readily believed
that the man was a new physician engaged by Mr. Hilton.
“If you will step this way, sir, I will escort you to Mrs. Hilton’s
chamber.”
In less than five minutes the stranger was at the bedside of the
stricken woman.
Mrs. Hilton opened her eyes, and shivered slightly as she met the man’s
gaze. At first she did not recognize him. Then with a low moan she
gasped:
“You? What do you want?”
“I see you recognize me, my dear wife,” replied the stranger, who was
none other than Carleton Tresilian, alias Charles Broughton. “You are
sick unto death, and I have come to torture you, to cause you some
little bit of suffering in your dying moments to repay you for the
intense suffering that you have caused me all these years. I am going
to have my revenge. Listen while I tell you of my plans for vengeance.”
Before the wretched woman could reply, Tresilian unfolded the story of
his meeting with Iris, his pursuit of her until she had been arrested
charged with the theft of two hundred dollars from Madam Ward. From
time to time during the recital of his cold-blooded plan of revenge a
spasm of pain crossed the features of the unhappy woman.
“You have one chance to save your daughter, and that is by signing a
confession to the crime for which I assumed the blame. If you refuse to
do this, then I will publish to the world not only your shame, but your
daughter’s shame as well. Will you sign?”
For a brief moment there was a terrific mental struggle on the part
of Mrs. Hilton. She was still proud, and she was almost willing
to sacrifice her daughter in order to save, if possible, her own
connection with Carleton Tresilian. She realized that she was on the
brink of death, and the fear of punishment hereafter was evidently
strong upon her.
“Yes,” she finally faltered, “I will sign the confession, but only to
save my daughter’s honor.”
Tresilian quickly wrote out the confession and summoned a couple
of servants to witness the signing of the document. His business
completed, he quickly left the house, but he had hardly passed from the
portals of the palatial home when Mrs. Hilton breathed her last.
He hurried to the home of Mrs. Neville, where, after a stormy scene,
the woman promised to return the money to Madam Ward and thus clear
Iris of the terrible charge hanging over her. When a messenger had been
called and dispatched with the money, Tresilian, before Mrs. Neville
could interfere, jerked a revolver from his pocket and committed
suicide.
When the effects of the dead man were examined, Mrs. Hilton’s
confession was found in his pocket.
With the astounding discovery that the girl whom he loved most in all
the world was guiltless of any wrongdoing, Chester St. John pleaded
with Isabel for the release from his irksome engagement. She, with
a woman’s quick intuition, realized that she could never hold his
affections, and reluctantly gave him up.
Eventually Iris married the man whom she loved, and shortly after the
wedding Mr. and Mrs. Frank Laurier gave a large reception in honor of
the newlyweds. All during the succeeding years the affection between
Iris and Jessie grew, and they became the dearest and most affectionate
friends, both realizing the terrible experiences through which each had
passed.
THE END.
“She Could Not Tell” will be the title of the next volume, No 944, of
the NEW EAGLE SERIES. The forthcoming story is from the pen of Ida
Reade Allen, and it is a most delightful tale of love, romance, hate,
and intrigue. It is the kind of novel that you will not put down until
you have finished it.
* * * * *
[Illustration: Delicious THE COCA-COLA CO., ATLANTA, GA.]
* * * * *
Transcriber’s Notes:
Punctuation has been made consistent.
Variations in spelling and hyphenation were retained as they appear in
the original publication, except that obvious typographical errors have
been corrected.
The following changes were made:
p. 192: for changed to of (news of her)
p. 273: He changed to She (She made a)
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