Kitabı oku: «Kathleen's Diamonds; or, She Loved a Handsome Actor», sayfa 10
CHAPTER XXXVI.
A CRUEL STAB
My ship sails forth with sable sails
Over Life's stormy sea;
Thou knowest how heavy is my woe,
And still thou woundest me.
H. Heine.
Alpine had come and gone. Under a mask of sweetness and love, she had tortured Kathleen's heart.
"My dear girl, how fortunate you are to have caught Teddy Darrell!" she exclaimed, after Kathleen had told her the story of her adventures, save and excepting about Fedora's claim that she was Ralph Chainey's wife. That one dread secret the girl kept locked close in her heart.
"Fortunate!" Kathleen echoed, dully.
"Yes," Alpine answered. "He is rich, and unless you are going to marry him, it does not look well for you to remain with Mrs. Stone."
"But, Alpine, I have no other place to go. Mrs. Stone is my only friend."
"She is your friend because her cousin wants to marry you, and if you refuse Teddy, she will be very angry."
"Do you think so, Alpine?" the young girl exclaimed, startled at the idea.
"I am sure of it. My advice to you is to marry Teddy."
"But I do not love him, Alpine. I—I loved Ralph Chainey—once—so dearly that I feel that I can never love another."
"Why have you turned against Ralph?" asked her step-sister, curiously.
"I can not tell you," faltered Kathleen.
"Do you love him still?"
"No," Kathleen answered, spiritedly; but Alpine did not believe one word.
"Kathleen, how would you like to come back home?" she asked.
"Your mother would not permit it," sighed the young girl.
"It is because she does not believe you are really Kathleen. She thinks you an impostor. I have been talking to her, trying to get her consent to bring you home."
Kathleen looked curiously at her step-sister, puzzled by her odd air of hesitancy.
"Well, go on. What is it?" she asked, with that little imperious manner inseparable from herself.
"She would not agree except on one condition."
Kathleen looked at her in silent wonder, and, with pretended sorrow, Alpine said:
"The condition was that you come as a housemaid—as a paid servant."
She saw, with silent, secret malice, the angry crimson mount to Kathleen's pearly cheek, and remained silent a few moments to enjoy the sensation of proud Kathleen humiliated.
Kathleen was indeed furious with resentment, and for a moment she could not speak for the great lump in her throat.
Then she fought down her emotion with an iron will and looked straight at her tormentor, saying, coolly:
"I suppose it is so hard for your mother to forget the position she once occupied in my father's house that she would be glad to sink his daughter to the same level."
Alpine crimsoned. She always hated to remember that her mother had been Zaidee Carew's governess, and that it was hinted that her arts had driven the artless child-wife to despair and death.
But it was not her policy to seem offended with Kathleen. To propitiate Ralph Chainey, she must still seem to be the friend of the girl he loved so dearly.
So she looked at her lovely rival with a sad, sweet smile, and said:
"Of course, I knew that you would not come—that way—and I told mamma so. But she made me promise to tell you what she said. You must not be angry with me, dear, for I have a better plan for you."
The young girl looked at her in angry silence, asking herself: "What new insult?"
"You know, of course, that your father, in a fit of anger against you, left me all his money in a will?" asked Alpine.
Kathleen nodded coldly.
"I am going to make you an allowance to live on, Kathleen. I told mamma I meant to do so, and she said your father did not intend for you to have a penny of that money. Of course, I knew that. But it makes no difference to me, for I can not bear to have you living on Mrs. Stone's charity. It is better for you to depend on me for your support than on a stranger. Don't you think so yourself?"
Kathleen rose up, white-faced, indignant, goaded to fury.
"No, I do not think so," she said, angrily. "I would rather starve in the streets than support life on an allowance from you, made out of the money that should be mine, but which you cheated me out of by some cunning trick known only to yourself and your mother. I believe you are deceitful, that you are only pretending a kind feeling for me to serve some purpose of your own. Go, go, and leave me to myself and my misery!"
There was something in the looks and words of that frail, beautiful young girl that compelled obedience from Alpine. She rose instantly.
"Well, good-bye, since you will not let me be your friend," she said, and glided from the room.
Kathleen walked up and down the floor in a passion of insulted pride, her cheeks burning, her little fists clinched in impotent wrath, her heart on fire with the longing to avenge herself on those two insolent women.
It was a dangerous time to her for Teddy Darrell to enter—handsome, loving Teddy who adored her, and who was wild with anger over the insult she had received; for Kathleen could not keep back her grievance; she told Teddy frankly of Mrs. Carew's message and of Alpine's offer.
"Great Heaven! how mean some women can be! It was done purposely to humiliate you!" he exclaimed, angrily.
He looked at beautiful Kathleen, with the fire of her dark eyes dim with tears, and her cheeks burning with resentment, feeling himself hardly able to refrain from taking her in his arms and kissing away the tempestuous tears.
Suddenly his repressed passion burst forth:
"Kathleen, my darling, do marry me! Can't you learn to love me just a little? I would be so fond of you, so devoted, that you could not help but learn to love me. And I am rich, you know. I would help you queen it over those insolent women."
Her heart leaped at his words; pride carried the day.
"I would do it—if—if—I—thought I could learn to love you; and that ought to be easy, because you have been so good to me, and I am so grateful," she murmured.
It did seem easy at the moment. Teddy was true, Teddy loved her, while Ralph Chainey was false and cruel. Why should she wear the willow for him? Why lie down in the dust, while her heartless step-mother and step-sister trampled on her rights and her feelings? So in a fury of resentment, Kathleen gave Teddy her promise to marry him and to learn to love him.
CHAPTER XXXVII.
RALPH CHAINEY IS DRIVEN TO DESPERATION, AND TURNS ON HIS FOE
Even now, I tell you, I wonder
Whether this woman called Estelle
Is flesh and blood, or a beautiful lie
Sent up from the depths of hell.
Edmund Clarence Stedman.
Ralph Chainey went from Alpine's presence to his home in Sumner, one of the beautiful suburbs of Boston, and to the presence of his gentle widowed mother, who presided over a lovely home that was shared with her by an older son and his small family.
"Ralph, dear, you look pale. You are ill!" she exclaimed, anxiously.
"My head aches severely. I will go to my room and lie down for an hour to get my nerves steady for to-night," he said; and kissing her affectionately he left her to seek seclusion for his aching heart and brain.
He leaned his aching head on his hand, and a rush of bitter memories swept over him.
He saw himself five years ago a boy of twenty-two, brilliant, ardent, and impetuous, just beginning his dramatic career. At the very outset he had fallen into the toils of a beautiful actress years older than himself. By a clever playing of her cards, she had entrapped him into a marriage; but scarcely had the honey-moon waned ere he learned to his horror the true character of his wife. She was false, light, and wicked, and no entreaties could win her from her wicked ways.
A separation ensued, and Ralph, ashamed to court publicity by applying for a divorce, agreed to support the false woman if she would promise not to annoy him by venturing into his presence. She accepted these terms, but instead of retiring to seclusion, as he desired her, Fedora, as she called herself, joined a ballet troupe, and scandalized her unfortunate young husband by her wild career. Still the marriage was wholly unknown to the world, and in hopes of maintaining this silence, the young actor suffered on patiently, his pride wounded, his fancy dead, his soul thrilled with disgust, but one solace left to him, and that the knowledge that his false wife had kept faith with him in preserving his secret—kept faith because he had threatened her with exposure and divorce upon its betrayal.
At last she had broken faith, and, bitterest of all, had betrayed his miserable folly to the one woman that he wished never to know it—to beautiful, proud Kathleen, the idol of his very soul, for whom he had felt all the passion of the poet's plaint:
"I love you. That is all. Life holds no more.
Here in your arms I have no other world.
Where is the mad ambition known of yore?
All fled away to some far-distant shore,
And lost forever. Yes, I love you, sweet—
You only—you alone. My heart, my life
I lay—a meager offering—at your feet."
It had fallen on him like a crushing blow, the knowledge that Fedora lived, when he had been duped, deceived into believing that she was dead and he was free.
A telegraphic message from Richmond, where she had been playing, had summoned him to her death-bed; but when he reached the city her friends told him she was dead and buried.
They showed him a new grave in the beautiful shades of romantic Hollywood, and presented him with a long bill for her funeral expenses. He paid it without a murmur, and could not help feeling glad that he was rid of his terrible incubus. He did not dream that it was only a clever plot of the wicked woman to extort money, and that she enjoyed very much the liberal sum he had handed over to liquidate the expenses of her interment.
He realized it all now—saw how cruelly Fate, in the shape of the heartless Fedora, had used him, and, with a bitter groan, stared his cruel destiny in the face.
Fedora—his false wife—lived! She had parted him forever from his beautiful, dark-eyed love.
"We have parted—I have loved thee;
But for me all hope is o'er!
We have parted, and forever;
I must dream of thee no more!"
He believed that Kathleen was going to marry Teddy Darrell, as Alpine hinted, but he was not so sure that it was for love. He remembered, with a thrill of blended rapture and despair, how he had caught Kathleen to his heart this morning, and how she had lain passive in his arms at first.
"She did not repulse me at first," he thought. "Her heart throbbed wildly against mine, and she lay yielding and passive in the utter abandon of a pure woman who truly loves. Then she remembered all at once, and withdrew herself from me in stinging scorn."
He groaned bitterly at the memory of her cruel words.
"My poor, proud darling! if she would but have listened to me, she might have pitied and forgiven me," he thought, with the fluctuating hopes of a lover's heart. He loved Kathleen so dearly that he could not remain angry with her, although he tried to do so. In his heart he made excuses for her. She was so young, so inexperienced, and there was no telling what lies Fedora had told the young girl.
"I will punish that fiend, at least," he cried, starting to his feet. "No more squeamishness shall deter me from seeking a divorce, and I shall do so at once. Who knows but that Kathleen may pity me, may relent, when she learns all that I have suffered?"
CHAPTER XXXVIII.
"I HAVE COME FOR MY DIAMONDS," KATHLEEN SAID TO THE JEWELER
We love but once. A score of times, perchance,
We may be moved in fancy's fleeting fashion—
May treasure up a word, a tone, or glance—
But only once we feel the soul's great passion.
E. W. Wilcox.
Mrs. Stone was charmed when she heard that Kathleen was to marry Teddy.
"You will be as happy as the day is long!" she exclaimed, fondly kissing the beautiful girl.
"Do you think so?" asked Kathleen, anxiously.
Proud as she was, she began to feel frightened at what she had done.
She found her wayward heart going out in a passion of regret after her lost lover, instead of leaning fondly on her accepted one.
She was alarmed lest it should always be so, and so she timidly asked the question of Mrs. Stone:
"Do you think so?"
Mrs. Stone did not know anything of that lost lover—did not guess at the pain in the young girl's heart.
She honestly believed that, given a fair opportunity, her cousin might win this girl's pure young heart.
So she encouraged Kathleen to look forward with pleasure to her marriage.
"And I should let it be soon," she said. "Teddy wishes it very, very much, and has begged me to plead his cause."
"Oh, not soon!" cried the young girl, in alarm.
"Why not, my dear? As well one time as another, if you mean to marry him at all."
"I—I want to wait until Helen Fox comes home. She always promised to be my bride-maid."
"You can write to Helen. It will take a few weeks to get your trousseau ready, and by then she can come home."
The big, dark eyes were dilated with terror.
"I should not like to hurry Helen home. I want—want—her—to enjoy her trip as long as she likes," faltered Kathleen, piteously.
"You dear, timid child! you are determined to make Teddy wait for his happiness," laughed her friend. "Well, never mind: let it be as long as you choose. Only you will not mind if I begin to get your trousseau ready? You know there are always so many delays."
A burning blush stole over Kathleen's pure cheek.
"Dear Mrs. Stone, Teddy will have to take me as I am. I have no money for a trousseau," she sighed.
"Let that be my care. Surely I may make a wedding gift to my cousin's bride!"
"Let it be as simple as possible, then, dear Mrs. Stone," answered proud Kathleen.
But that night she thought of the necklace she had left with Golden & Glitter. It was worth five thousand dollars, and they had advanced her one thousand on it. Perhaps they would let her have more—enough to buy her simple wedding garments, and save her the humiliation of accepting them from Mrs. Stone.
She was not afraid of startling them. The story of her return had leaked out; the Boston papers had given it publicity. So she went in Mrs. Stone's carriage the next morning to the great jewelers, and was received by them with the greatest affability. They overwhelmed her with congratulations on her resurrection. But when she asked about her diamond necklace they told her an amazing story. Ivan Belmont had come to them soon after her supposed death, and redeemed the necklace by the payment of a thousand dollars, acting, he claimed, under the instructions of his mother.
Kathleen gazed at him in astonishment.
"But I never told any human being about selling the diamonds! How could they know?" she exclaimed.
The jewelers were as much puzzled as she was. They had told no one, either, but were intending to acquaint Mrs. Carew with the truth, when Ivan Belmont had forestalled them by presenting himself and redeeming the necklace.
They advised the young girl to go to Mrs. Carew and demand the return of the jewels. They did not doubt that she would be glad to return them to the hapless girl they had stripped of everything.
Kathleen's eyes were flashing with anger. She passionately gave the order to drive to Commonwealth Avenue, determined to demand her rights.
When Jones opened the door to the imperious young beauty his face lighted with instant recognition and he rejoiced to see that she had survived the horrors of that dreadful night when Mrs. Carew had cast her forth to die.
But he remembered the orders of his mistress, and firmly barred her entrance.
"Mrs. Carew's orders was not to admit you, miss, if you came again," he said, resolutely.
"How dare she!" exclaimed Kathleen, her eyes flashing.
"But, really, miss, you know 'tain't right for you to follow Mr. Belmont right into his mother's house," remonstrated Jones, uneasily; and as she stared at him, he added, coaxingly: "You better go wait down there at the corner while I go tell Mr. Belmont that you want him."
"Why, what do you mean?" inquired Kathleen, sharply.
"Why, ain't you Ivan Belmont's—sweetheart, miss?"
"How dare you?" cried the girl.
The lightnings of her eyes seemed almost to scorch him, and he faltered:
"You—you asked for him that night when you came before; and Mrs. Carew—begging your pardon, miss—said you were bad, and told me to take you and throw you in the street."
"So it was you that did it?" the girl cried, sharply.
"No, miss. I could not have treated a dog like that," whispered Jones, glancing over his shoulder, lest he be overheard. Then he told her how much he had pitied her, and how he had placed her in the carriage, hoping some one would care for her.
"God bless you for your pity!" cried the girl, melted almost to tears; and, in her turn, she told Jones who she really was, and that when she had asked him for his master that night, she had meant her father, not knowing that he was dead.
"Mrs. Carew told you a willful falsehood," she said, angrily; then paused, remembering that it was not dignified to discuss her step-mother with a servant, no matter how great the provocation.
"And you must really let me come in, because I have important business with your mistress. If she discharges you for permitting me to enter, I will get my friends to procure you another situation," she added, kindly.
The man stood aside in respectful assent.
"Thank you kindly, Miss Carew. You will find my mistress with her son and daughter in the library," he said.
"So he is here. So much the better," thought Kathleen.
She swept, with an aching heart, down the superb hall of her old home, Jones gazing after her in respectful admiration.
"My! what a high-stepping beauty! A regular goddess!" he ejaculated; and breathed a silent prayer that the disinherited daughter might yet oust these heartless people out of her old home and come into her own.
Kathleen, pale with passion, flung back the library curtains with a shaking hand, and stood revealed to the inmates.
Ivan Belmont had read with horror in a distant city the marvelous story of his step-sister's resurrection and return. Trembling with fear, he recalled the night when he had encountered her upon the steps and fled away from her, believing she was a ghost.
He had come home to find out the truth, and was even now listening to the story, as told by his mother and sister, when the curtains parted, flung back by an angry hand, and Kathleen, beautiful and imperious in her righteous wrath, stood revealed to their astonished eyes.
A gasp of astonishment, and Mrs. Carew rose, tall, stately, insolent.
"What is the meaning of this intrusion?" she demanded. "I told Jones that he was not to admit the likes of you to this house!"
Kathleen's lightning glance almost transfixed her, and she flushed with sudden uneasiness.
"I came here for my diamonds. Give them to me, and I will go," the young girl answered, defiantly, and she saw Ivan Belmont whiten to a deadly pallor.
"Diamonds?" echoed Alpine, in surprise.
"I have just come from Golden & Glitter's," said Kathleen. "I went there for my diamond necklace that I left there as security for a thousand dollars when I went away. They told me that Ivan Belmont had redeemed the necklace for his mother."
CHAPTER XXXIX.
KATHLEEN BEFORE HER FATHER'S PORTRAIT
Oh, that those lips had language! Life has passed
With me but roughly since I heard thee last.
Those lips are thine—thy own sweet smile I see,
The same that oft in childhood solaced me.
Cowper.
Kathleen's declaration was almost equal to the bursting of a bomb-shell in the handsome library of the Carew mansion.
Alpine sprung excitedly to her feet with a scream of surprise, and fixed her dilated blue eyes almost wildly upon Kathleen's pale, angry face.
Her mother, who was so crafty and wicked that one could scarcely charge her with any meanness of which she was not guilty, had the novel sensation of being falsely accused for once, and recoiled with a nasty and indignant disclaimer from her insolent and threatening position toward the intruder.
"Your accusation is entirely false!" she cried, hoarsely.
But it was upon her dissipated son that Kathleen's words fell with the most crushing power.
This slender, handsome Ivan Belmont, with his straw-gold curls and seraphic blue eyes, was a cold and brutal villain who utterly belied his gentle looks. He had all his mother's evil traits intensified, and would not stop at murder if there was anything to be gained by it, provided he was not to be found out. He was a coward, and afraid of punishment.
So when Kathleen made her bold charge against him, and he realized that possible detection and punishment hung over his head, his coward heart gave a thump as if it would burst the confines of his narrow chest, his brain reeled, his fair face whitened to an ashy hue, his limbs trembled beneath him as he clutched the back of a chair, and with an inarticulate groan of feeble denial, he sunk in a senseless heap upon the floor.
"Ivan is dead! You have killed him with your false words!" shrieked Alpine, running to her brother.
Mrs. Carew followed, and they knelt down over Ivan, exclaiming and lamenting, although much of it was for effect, for they did not waste much affection on their black sheep.
Kathleen, readily comprehending that Ivan had fainted from terror, curled a scornful lip, and turning her back on them, walked across the room to where a life-size portrait of her dead father filled a panel near his writing-desk.
Vincent Carew had been a singularly handsome and imposing gentleman, and the fine artist had done full justice to his noble subject. The dark eyes seemed to hold the very fire of life and the smiling lips almost about to breathe a blessing on his wronged, unhappy orphan child.
As Kathleen paused in front of the magnificent portrait of her lost father, the hard, defiant look on her face faded as if by magic, and the burning light of her large Oriental dark eyes was softened by a rush of tears. Almost unconsciously she sunk upon her knees and lifted her clasped white hands appealingly.
"Oh, father, dear father, if only you could speak to me, if only you could tell me why you turned against your unhappy child?" she sighed, pathetically.
It was a sorrowful picture—pathetic enough to move anything but the heart of a fiend—that unhappy girl kneeling there in tears and love before the portrait of the father who had disinherited her and left her to want and misery.
But no one noticed her. Mrs. Carew and her daughter were busy over Ivan, whose swoon was a deep one. Kathleen's raining tears fell unnoticed and unpitied, save by the great All-seeing Eye.
Kathleen's heart was thrilling with all the pathos expressed in Cowper's beautiful lines:
"Oh, that those lips had language! Life has passed
With me but roughly since I heard thee last!"
Alas! how cruel it was to think that this dear, loving father had turned against her at the last! What was the mystery of it? Who was to blame?
"Not you, papa darling!" moaned the girl, loyal to her love for him despite everything. "Some one deceived you, lied to you, made you believe me unworthy of your love. I will not lay it up against you. I forgive you, dear, because you were always so good and loving!" her voice broke in a hard sob, ending with, "But, oh, papa, papa, I wish you could come back from the grave as I did, to comfort your poor girl! Dear Lord, I pray Thee send papa back to me!"
Had Heaven answered her earnest prayer?
She turned wildly toward the door, for a strange voice had sounded from it—strange, yet not strange, for it had a tone of her father's voice in it, although louder and less refined than Vincent Carew's polished tones.
A stranger had entered the library—a tall old man in shabby genteel clothes that had seen much service, and wearing a long gray beard that matched his bushy gray curls. A pair of smoky glasses hid a pair of dark eyes that twinkled with curiosity as he advanced, exclaiming:
"Hey-day, good friends! what's the matter with the pretty young man? Sick?"
Ivan Belmont had at that moment opened his light-blue eyes on the faces of his mother and sister, and they turned languidly on the new-comer, while Mrs. Carew exclaimed, almost ferociously, her eyes gleaming like blue steel:
"Who are you, and what is the meaning of this intrusion?"
"My name is Ben Carew, at your service, Sister Carew. Howdy—howdy do, all of you? These your children? Is your son sick much?" replied the stranger, in a loud, familiar tone.
"Impertinent!" muttered the lady, angrily. She rose to her feet. "See here, old man, you have made a mistake coming here, certainly. I don't know you, and have no business with you, so clear out at once!"
The old man stood his ground, undismayed by the virago.
"Not so fast, ma'am, not so fast," he said, soothingly, with a wave of his hand. "Now, ain't you Vincent Carew's widow?"
"Yes," she snapped.
"And I'm Vincent Carew's brother Ben."
Every eye in the room turned on him in amazement, and Mrs. Carew exclaimed:
"My husband did not have a brother at all!"
"No brother that he owned, maybe, but an older brother, for all that, living down on the farm, poor and humble, so maybe his proud, ambitious brother didn't own up to his folks about Ben; but all the same he was good to him, and many's the year Vince sent money down to the old farm to help out when the crops failed and prices fell on live stock—many's the day, God rest his soul!"
Brother Ben drew his hand across his eyes and the sound of suppressed sobs filled the room.
"My husband is dead, if he was any relation to you; so we don't want you here," Mrs. Carew said to him, brutally.
He started back as if she had struck him, and said, sadly:
"Yes, I heard that he was dead, and I wished it had been me instead. I ain't much 'count in the world, no-how; but the neighbors said: 'Ben, you ought to go up to Boston and get your share of your brother's property.' Vince left me something, I know. He always said he would without my ever asking."
"He left you nothing. I don't believe in you, anyway. You're an impostor, I'm sure. So get out of this at once!" insisted Mrs. Carew. But he did not stir.
"I want to stay and visit you, sister-in-law, and see the city sights," he pleaded.
"Go; I won't have you here! You are a disgrace to the house!" she said, angrily, but still inwardly appalled, for, in spite of his rough looks and country manners, he was wonderfully like the dead brother he claimed. In voice, features, and gesture he recalled the dead.
He stood staring in pained amazement at the inhospitable woman, when suddenly a little hand stole into his, and a tearful voice murmured:
"Uncle Ben, I believe in you and I love you, for you are so like my dear, dead papa that it makes my heart glad just to see and hear you."
He looked down into the face of a lovely, dark-eyed girl, whose lips were trembling with a hushed sob, and exclaimed:
"Why, this is Vince's girl. I know by the favor! God bless you, honey! give your old uncle a hug;" and he put his honest arms around her, and pressed the curly golden head against his breast.
"Did you ever see such impudence, mamma? Kathleen is utterly shameless!" cried Alpine, in a high key of disdain.
"You'll let me stay, won't you, sissy, dear? I'm too old to travel straight back to the country," said Uncle Ben, coaxingly, while he turned a glance of meek pleasure and triumph on the others.
"Alas! dear uncle, this is not my home. I can not invite you to remain, much as I wish to do so," sighed the young girl.
