Kitabı oku: «Dainty's Cruel Rivals; Or, The Fatal Birthday», sayfa 10

CHAPTER XXIX.
AS WE KISS THE DEAD

Alas! nor words, nor tears, nor embraces, nor reproaches could move Love Ellsworth from his statue-like repose.

He suffered Dainty's caresses passively, but he did not return them, and his large, beautiful dark eyes dwelt on her face with the gentle calm of an infant whose intellect is not yet awakened.

"You see how it is, Miss Chase, and God knows how sorry I am to see my dear master so," Franklin said, sorrowfully, as she desisted at last, and gazed in silent anguish at the mental wreck in the chair.

A new thought came to her, and she exclaimed:

"Where is my mother?"

"She returned to Richmond almost a month ago, Miss Chase."

"Why did she not remain and nurse poor Love?" she groaned.

Franklin hesitated a moment, then returned in a respectful undertone:

"I can not say for a certainty, miss, but it is whispered among the servants that Mrs. Ellsworth sent her away because the young ladies wished it."

"The young ladies?" inquiringly.

"Miss Peyton and Miss Craye, your cousins. Mrs. Ellsworth has adopted them as her joint heiresses since she came into the fortune that my master lost by his failure to marry on his twenty-sixth birthday."

He gave a great start of surprise when the lovely, sad-eyed girl answered quickly:

"He did not lose it, for in the fear of some such treachery as afterward really happened, your master persuaded me to consent to a secret marriage in the middle of July, so that I have really been his wife going on three months."

"It is false!" cried an angry voice; and there in the door-way towered the tall form of Mrs. Ellsworth, pale to the very lips, but with an ominous flash in her dark eyes.

She had recovered from the faintness that had seized her at first sight of the supposed ghost, on being assured by a servant that she had seen Miss Chase in the flesh entering the room of Mr. Ellsworth. As soon as she could command her shaken nerves, she followed Dainty just in time to hear her avowal of her marriage to Love in July.

"It is false!" she cried, furiously; but Dainty faced her bravely, clasping Love's cold, irresponsive hand in her own, exclaiming tenderly:

"He is my husband!"

"Can you prove it?" sneeringly.

Dainty was very pale, and trembling like a wind-blown leaf, but she summoned courage to reply:

"We were married the middle of July at that little church in the woods where we attended a festival one night. It was in the twilight when we were returning from a long drive into the country."

"Ah! there were witnesses, of course?" anxiously.

"No one was present but the minister who united us," Dainty answered.

"His name?"

"I do not remember it."

"Indeed! that is strange. But perhaps you can remember whether there was a license, without which such a marriage would not be legal?" continued Mrs. Ellsworth, still scornfully incredulous.

Dainty answered, dauntlessly:

"Yes, there was a license. Love went to the county seat to procure it just previous to the marriage."

They gazed into each other's eyes, and Mrs. Ellsworth drew a long, shivering breath as she exclaimed, menacingly:

"This sounds very fine, but you can not prove one word of it—not one! It is a plot to wrest a fortune from me, but it will not succeed. It was your falsity in forsaking Love at his wedding-hour that caused all his trouble, and the sight of you is hateful to me. You must leave here at once, and return to your mother at your old home in Richmond, for the roof of Ellsworth shall not shelter you an hour!"

"Madame, after all my wrongs at your hands—" began Dainty, reproachfully; but she was cruelly interrupted:

"Assertion is not proof! Until you can bring proof of all your charges, I decline to admit them. Again, Lovelace Ellsworth is now a pauper dependent on my bounty. Raise but your voice to assert a wife's claim on him, and out he goes to become the wretched inmate of an idiot asylum. On your silence as to this trumped-up charge of a secret marriage, and also of wrongs pretended to be done by my hands, depends the comfort of Lovelace Ellsworth. Now say whether you love yourself better than you do him!"

It was a crucial test; but the girl did not hesitate.

She pressed her lips to Love's pale brow solemnly, as we kiss the dead, murmuring:

"I would sacrifice my very life to purchase any good for him!"

The man Franklin gazed on in keen sympathy for the girl and bitter disdain of the cruel woman, but he did not dare to utter a word lest he should make matters worse.

Mrs. Ellsworth's eyes flashed triumphantly at her easy victory over the broken-hearted girl.

"Very well. You have made a wise decision. You would only come to bitter grief by opposing me," she asserted, loftily; and added: "Now you must go. Here is ten dollars; take it, and go back on the first train to your mother in Richmond."

The girl clung to her husband, sobbing:

"Oh, let me stay and be his slave! I love him so I can not leave him!"

Franklin dared not open his lips, but his blood boiled at the cruel scene that followed, when Mrs. Ellsworth tore the weeping wife from her husband with resolute hands and harsh, cruel words, thrusting her outside the door as she cried:

"Go, now—leave the house at once, or I will send him instantly to an idiot asylum! What! you will not take my money? High airs for a pauper upon my word!"

She slammed the door, shutting the wretched young wife out into the hall, and turned fiercely upon Franklin.

"As you have been a witness to this scene," she cried, "I must also command your silence. Will money purchase it?"

"No, madame," he replied, with secret indignation.

"Then love for your master must be the motive," she cried, with a fierce stamp of the foot. "Do you want me to send him to an idiot asylum, where he can no longer have your faithful care?"

"No, madame, no!" the middle-aged servant replied, trembling with emotion.

"Then you will hold your tongue upon what has just occurred in this room? Do you promise?" she cried, harshly.

"I promise," replied Franklin, sadly.

"Very well. See that you do not violate it on pain of serious results to your master. I am tired of the charge of him anyhow; for who knows how soon his simple idiocy may turn to dangerous insanity? So the least provocation from you would cause me to send him to a pauper asylum for idiots!" she cried, warningly, as she hurried from the room to make sure that none of the officious servants should dare to harbor her persecuted victim.

Dainty had already dragged herself out of the house, passing an open door where Olive and Ela looked out with derisive laughter at her blighted appearance, with the golden curls all shorn away, and the pale face stained with tears, while her faded summer gown and the old-fashioned scarf drawn about her shivering form did not conduce to the elegance of her appearance.

"Ha! ha! she looks like a beggar!" sneered Olive, adding: "Let us follow, and see where she goes for shelter. Of course, she will have shocking tales to tell on us if she can get any one to listen. I should like to prevent her if I could."

"Nothing will shut her mouth but death!" returned Ela, significantly, as, unnoticed by any one, they stole out to track the despairing girl on her wretched exile.

The deep gloom of twilight had now fallen, and Dainty stood irresolute where to go, clinging forlornly to the gate, her wistful, white face turned back to Love's window, her tender heart wrung by the torture of leaving him forever.

"Oh! who could have dreamed of such a strange and cruel fate for my darling? It is indeed worse than death!" she sighed, miserably, thinking how cruel Mrs. Ellsworth had been to drive her away so heartlessly, when she had prayed to her humbly on her knees to let her remain as an humble servant and nurse him.

It seemed like the cruelest irony of fate that she, Love Ellsworth's wife, the real mistress of Ellsworth, should be driven in scorn from its gates, penniless, hopeless, and without a friend, her lips sealed to the truth of her wifehood, lest by speaking she should consign her beloved husband to a more cruel doom than he was already enduring.

Mrs. Ellsworth had carried things with a high hand; but she had been reasonably sure of her position, having investigated Love's story of a secret marriage, and satisfied herself that it would be well-nigh impossible to prove it.

Owing to Love's desire for secrecy, there was no record of the license on the books of the clerk of county court who had issued it. The clerk himself, a feeble, aged man, had died suddenly two months ago—the day previous to Lovelace Ellsworth's birthday.

The minister of the little church where the ceremony had been performed had also died a month previous of a malignant fever contracted in visiting a squalid settlement of shiftless sand diggers.

A terrible fatality seemed to attend poor Dainty; for in all probability these two dead men were the only persons who held the secret of her marriage, and dead men tell no tales.

As the worse than widowed bride clung to the gate, taking that farewell look at her husband's window, she suddenly remembered that she had one true though humble friend in the neighborhood—poor old black mammy.

"I will go to her cabin and stay to-night, and to-morrow I must try to go home to mamma," she sighed, turning toward the dark patch of woods where the lonely negro cabin stood, and followed by relentless fate in the shape of her pitiless rivals, Olive and Ela.

"She is going to old Virginia's cabin, but she does not know that the negroes have all moved away to the station, and that she will find it deserted," whispered Ela. "However, she can shelter herself there for the night, though it will be very cold without a fire."

"Some one ought to build one to keep her warm," Olive returned, with a significance that was not lost on her keen-witted cousin.

CHAPTER XXX.
A TERRIBLE DEED

John Franklin's manly blood had boiled with resentment at seeing poor Dainty driven away in disgrace from the home of which she was virtually the mistress, for he believed every word of the story she had told Mrs. Ellsworth.

It made his kind heart ache to realize so fully the sad mental plight of his young master, who could sit by in apathy, and suffer such a cruel wrong to be done to his unfortunate young wife.

He gloried in the pride that had made her fling back in the woman's face the offered pittance from her cruel persecutor.

"Yet, poor soul, she looked shabby and penniless. Perhaps she had not the money to pay her fare to Richmond. I wonder if the unfortunate young lady would accept a loan from her husband's servant?" he thought, anxiously.

It pained him to think of her going out into the darkness of the night, friendless and shelterless, knowing how well his master had loved her, and how worthy she was of that love.

He decided that it was his duty to follow her and proffer his services if she needed them, though in so clandestine a manner that wicked Mrs. Ellsworth need not find it out and revenge herself by cruelty to his master.

Leaving Love presently to the care of another attendant, he slipped away through the grounds to the road, wondering which way the unhappy wanderer had gone.

A little incident ended his perplexity.

While pausing under the shade of a tree, gazing anxiously up and down the road, he suddenly saw the cousins Olive and Ela, skulking like criminals out in the dusky woodland path that led to old mammy's cabin; and the light of the rising moon on their faces showed them pallid and scared-looking, as if pursued by threatening fiends. Clasping each other's hands, and panting with excitement, they fled across the road to the gates of Ellsworth, without perceiving that they were detected in something underhand by the lynx eyes of a suspicious watcher.

"They have been up to some mischief, and I will find it out if I can," he thought, darting into the woodland path, and following it with alert eyes until suddenly the darkness was illuminated by the glare of fire, and rushing forward, he discovered old mammy's cabin wrapped in flames.

A startled cry burst from the man's lips as a terrible suspicion drove the bounding blood coldly back upon his heart.

Had the deserted cabin been fired by Olive and Ela?

If so, what had been their motive? Something very important surely, for conscious guilt had looked from their pale faces, had marked their skulking flight from the scene.

If Dainty Chase had gone to the cabin to seek refuge with the old black woman, their motive was not hard to fathom, and as Franklin bounded toward the scene of the fire, it all flashed over his mind like lightning.

The life of Dainty was a menace to Mrs. Ellsworth and her nieces, for if she could prove her marriage to Lovelace Ellsworth on the middle of July, she would wrest from his step-mother the wealth she claimed by reason of his failure to marry before his birthday, and in which she was making her nieces joint sharers.

Yes, all three of them had a terrible interest in the girl's death; the man realized it fully.

And Mrs. Ellsworth but a little while ago had given him a deep insight into her evil nature.

Perhaps she had sent her nieces—as wicked as herself—to follow poor Dainty and devise means for getting her out of the way.

It was horrible to think of such a crime, but he made haste to verify his suspicions by darting around to an end window not yet wreathed in the leaping flames and peering into the house, though the heat scorched him and the smoke was stifling.

He drew back with a cry of horror and indignation.

Yes, Dainty was there!

On gaining the shelter of the cabin, seeking the protection of the old mammy, whom she counted as her only friend, the girl, in her grief and sorrow and cruel disappointment at finding the place untenanted, had sunk into a heavy swoon on the hard floor.

Doubtless her cruel rivals, following and beholding her piteous plight, had seen their opportunity and taken instant advantage of it.

Roused from her unconsciousness by the crackling flames and stifling smoke, the girl was just rising from the floor, and the despair on her face as she comprehended her terrible environment would haunt John Franklin to his dying day.

The great, sublime pity that rose to flood-tide in the man's tender heart submerged every thought of self in an instant.

No escape seemed possible for Dainty. The inflammable log cabin was surrounded by fire, and she stood in the center of the awful glare like some pale, beautiful martyr at the stake.

Franklin caught up a great bowlder from the ground and dashed it again and again against the sash till it was broken in, then, stripping off his coat, muffled his head in it, and sprang like a hero through smoke and flame to the rescue of his master's bride, catching her up in his strong arms, and bearing her, after a fierce conflict with the fire, back through the broken sash to life and safety.

And not a moment too soon, for the roof of the cabin crashed in on the burning walls ere he had staggered three yards from the scene of his heroic deed, and the fierce flames, leaping higher, conveyed to two anxious watchers at Ellsworth the news that they had succeeded in their damnable crime.

Franklin realized that it was best to let them hug that belief to their hearts, so all that he did afterward that night was under the veil of secrecy.

He succeeded in getting an old buggy and conveying Dainty to the station, where he placed her on the midnight train and bought her a ticket for Richmond.

No one but black mammy was let into the secret, and unseen by any one in the gloom of the midnight hour and in the scarcity of travel that night, she was sent on her way to her mother, Franklin saying to her earnestly:

"Let me advise you, Mrs. Ellsworth, to keep close to your mother, and away from the fiendish enemies who are seeking to compass your death. I will take the best care of your husband, and may God send him recovery from his hurt, that he may restore you to your rightful position, and punish the wretches who have wronged you both!"

CHAPTER XXXI.
LOST! LOST! LOST!

 
"Stop! stranger; may I speak with you?—
Ah, yes, you needn't fear—
While I whisper through the grating,
I wouldn't have them hear.
These jailers, if a body
But chance to speak her name,
They roll their eyes so savage,
As if they meant to tame
Some wild beast, and they scare me.
Come nearer, nearer yet;
Come near me till I whisper,
'Have you seen her?—seen Annette?'
 
 
"What did they bring me here for?
I say, I want to go!
How shall I ever find her
When I am locked in so?
They lied to me—
'Twas once there in the street,
Where I sat on a doorstep
To rest my aching feet.
They say, 'We'll lead you to her,'
And many times said, 'Come,'
At last I followed, eager
To find my little one.
But when I bid them bring her.
They answer, 'By and by.'
Just turn the key, please, won't you,
And let me slip out sly?"
 

One of the most troublesome patients at the Virginia Asylum for the Insane in Staunton was a pretty, pale little woman named Mrs. Chase.

To look at her sitting very quiet—sometimes with her fair little hands meekly folded, and a brooding sorrow in her tearful, deep blue eyes—you would have said she was a most interesting patient, and could not surely give any one trouble.

But the women attendants in her ward could have told you quite a different story.

Mrs. Chase had a suicidal mania, and had to be watched closely all the time to keep her from taking her own life.

These attendants would have explained to you that all insane people have some hobby that they ride industriously all the time.

There was the man who believed himself to be Napoleon reincarnated, and amused everybody with his military toggery and braggadocio.

There was the lady who called herself Queen Victoria, and was never seen without a huge pasteboard crown.

There were the two men who each claimed to be the Christ, and frowned disapproval on the claims of each other.

There was the youth who imagined himself a violin virtuoso, and fiddled all day long, varying his performance by pausing to pass around the hat for pennies, of which he had accumulated, it was said, more than a gallon already.

There was the forsaken bride who was waiting every day for the false lover to return and bear her away on a blissful wedding-tour.

There was the man who believed himself already dead, and solemnly recounted to you the particulars of the horrible death he had died, adding that he was detained from his grave by the delay of the cruel undertakers in taking his measure for the coffin. He had actually been known to slip into the dead-house one day, and lie down in a casket intended for a real corpse, having to have force employed to eject him from his narrow abode.

Again, there was the man who imagined himself to be a grain of corn, and fled with screams of alarm from the approach of a chicken. These, and scores of others with hobbies, tragic or ridiculous, as the case might be; but not one of them all, said the attendants, needed such care and watching as pale, pretty, meek little Mrs. Chase.

Her hobby was a lost or stolen child.

No one knew whether or not there was any truth in her claim. She had been brought there from Richmond, a friendless stranger, who had been found wandering homeless in the street, raving of a lost child.

Her story was just as likely to be false as true, they said, for lunatics imagined many things. It might be her child had died; for she was always praying for death, that she might find her lost darling again.

It was melancholy madness. The hardest to cure of all, said the doctors, and she had been frustrated in several frantic attempts to end her life. She was so clever and so cunning that they had to watch her constantly; but even the most impatient of the attendants could not give her a cross word, her grief was so pathetic, and she seemed so sorrowfully helpless in her frail, gentle prettiness.

"Have you seen my daughter, my darling little Dainty? She is lost; stolen away from me while I slept," she would say to every strange person she saw, and her pale face would glow as she added, proudly: "She was the prettiest girl in the world. I have often heard people say so. She was as beautiful as a budding rose, with hair like the sunshine, and eyes as blue as the sky. Her little hands were white as lilies, and her feet so tiny and graceful, every one turned to watch her as she passed; and was it any wonder she caught such a grand, rich lover? She would have married him if she had not been lost that night. Oh, let me out! let me go and find my darling! You have no right to lock me in here!"

Then she would fly into paroxysms of anger, trying to batter down the walls and escape from what she called her stony prison; and at other times she would pray for death, crying:

"Oh, God! send me death; for surely my darling must be dead, or she would have come back to me long before they locked me up here! They stole her away and killed her, my sweet Dainty, the cruel enemies who hated and envied her so much for her angelic beauty and her noble lover! Oh, who would keep me back from death, when only through its dark gates can I find my child again?"

But they watched her carefully; they allowed her no means of ending the life of which she was so weary; and so the months flew by from September to spring, and it was almost a year since Dainty had left her home so gladly for the country visit that had ended so disastrously, and with such a veil of mystery over her strange fate.

 
"Where is Annette? Where is she?
Does anybody know?"