Kitabı oku: «Kathleen's Diamonds; or, She Loved a Handsome Actor», sayfa 16
CHAPTER LIX.
OH, RALPH CHAINEY, WAKE!
How murderers walk the earth,
Beneath the curse of Cain,
With crimson clouds before their eyes
And flames about their brain;
For blood has left upon their souls
Its everlasting stain!
The Dream of Eugene Aram.
Ralph Chainey left the presence of his loved and lost Kathleen with a heart full of bitterness and pain, and hurried home.
He had concluded his engagement in Boston the previous evening, and it was a great relief to him, for he was eager to get away from the city that held Kathleen. Stay there, and see her wedded to another, he could not! That way lay madness.
He had dismissed his company for several months. He was going to travel, he said, although the manager pointed out to him that now was the time to reap a golden harvest, if ever. He was even more popular now than before, if such a thing could be. The divorce proceedings had given him notoriety. People who had not gone to see him act before, went now, just for a sight of his handsome face.
He loved his art, but the money was no object to him. Fortune had already showered her golden favors on him in lavish measure. He could not be tempted to remain.
"No, mother, I can not stay," he answered, sadly, when she pleaded with him. "I must get away as soon as this divorce business is settled. That will be soon—in a week or so, my lawyers tell me. Then I will go abroad and try to live down this unpleasant notoriety. You do not blame me, mother?"
She sighed, but answered bravely:
"No; but it will be very lonely, my son."
"You will have my brother, his wife and little ones to cheer you," he said, moved to the heart by her tears. He knew well that he was her favorite son.
He kissed her, and went to his own room, wrote some letters, and then went with his mother for a drive. At night he felt as if the day had been a month long. Oh, how cruel it was, this love that mastered him in spite of his pride!
"You may rouse your pride, you may use your reason,
And seem for a space to slay Love so;
But all in his own good time and season
It will rise and follow where'er you go."
He threw himself down, dressed, on a couch in the luxurious room, and gave himself up to bitter-sweet memories of the girl he loved so hopelessly, living over in his thoughts every time he had met her until now, when her dark eyes had made shipwreck of his life. Time passed unnoted, although the tiny French clock had tinkled musically the midnight hour.
What a picture of manly beauty he made, lying there with half-shut eyes on the rich couch with its Oriental draperies. The gas-light, half-turned down, cast weird shadows all about the room. In the little sleeping-room beyond, seen through the half-drawn portière, all was dark and still. Did a white, desperate face with gleaming eyes peer out of that gloom upon the young man resting there in his velvet dressing-gown, one shapely hand tossed up over his brown curly head, the dark, curly lashes drooping downward to the pale cheek?
Yes, he was well worth looking at, this gifted young actor, this genius who at barely twenty-five had scored such dazzling successes in the dramatic world, and written his name up high upon the scroll of fame. It was no wonder that women raved over his beauty and his genius, and that they filled his daily mail with love letters that he flung into the fire after one contemptuous glance.
But were they eyes of love that gleamed on him now, lying so pale and still and sad, with his thoughts upon his beautiful young love?
Alas! a gleam of tigerish hate shone in those steel-blue orbs as they watched the young man; and when at last the fringed lashes drooped against his cheek, a faint sigh of relief escaped the lips of the impatient watcher. For hours and hours she had been waiting there; but it seemed as if he did not mean to retire to-night. Now he had fallen into a light doze. Perhaps he would sleep there all night.
Oh, Ralph Chainey, wake! From the curtained darkness beyond a fiend is gliding toward you!
The shrouding hood of the long cloak has fallen back from the face of a woman—a bold, handsome face with steel-blue eyes, and glittering golden hair. In her upraised hand glitters a long thin dagger, on her face is stamped in awful, ashen pallor the fell purpose—murder!
But he sleeps on lightly, dreaming, perhaps, of Kathleen, while this beautiful fury glides soundlessly across the thick moquette carpet, gains his side, poises her shining weapon on high, aims for his heart, and—it descends, it pierces his breast!
Ralph Chainey was sleeping but lightly, and as the cold steel entered his breast a shudder ran over his whole frame, the dew of pain started on his brow, and with a shriek of mortal agony he staggered to his feet, clutching blindly at the midnight assailant.
She had not counted on this; she thought her frenzied blow would be short, sharp, and decisive, that she would have time to fly from the scene of her terrible crime.
She was mistaken. His outstretched arms caught and held her with the momentary fierce strength of a dying man; his blood spurted out in hot streams upon her face and hands.
And meanwhile his shriek of agony had aroused the house. Earl Chainey, his brother, started wildly from his dreams, and his wife, affrighted at that awful sound, buried her pale face in the pillows. Mrs. Chainey, lying awake and restless, brooding over her son's departure, recognized Ralph's voice in an instant, and, with a terrible foreboding of evil, sprung forward to his rescue.
Upon the threshold of the door they met—the mother and her elder son. Earl flung the door wide, and together they sprung into the room.
Not a moment too soon was their entrance, for Ralph's momentary strength had failed from the profuse loss of blood. He had struggled madly to hold his assailant, but her superior strength had overpowered him, and as he sunk back heavily upon the couch, she raised her bloody weapon for a second, surer blow.
But it never reached its mark, for Earl's strong arm caught and flung her fiercely aside as he knelt by his fallen brother.
CHAPTER LX.
"MY LOVE SHALL CALL HIM BACK FROM THE GRAVE!"
"Oh, my dear, how ill you look this morning. Surely you did not sleep well!" Helen Fox exclaimed, gazing in surprise and pain at Kathleen's pale cheeks and heavy, somber eyes.
It was the morning after her painful interview with Ralph. Kathleen had not closed her heavy eyes all night for thinking of her lost lover and his cruel, parting words. They had pierced her heart like a thorn, and some sweet, sad lines, strangely appropriate, rang in dizzy changes through her brain:
"It came with the merry May, love,
It bloomed with the summer prime;
In a dying year's decay, love,
It brightened the fading time.
I thought it would last for years, love,
But it went with the winter snow—
Only a year ago, love—
Only a year ago!
"'Twas a plant with a deeper root, love,
Than the blighting Eastern tree;
For it grew in my heart, and its fruit, love,
Was a bitter morsel to me.
The poison is yet in my brain, love,
The thorn in my heart, for you know,
'Twas only a year ago, love—
Only a year ago!"
"Yes," the girl thought, sadly, bitterly, "the root of that love went so deep in my heart that I can never pluck it out unless my life goes with it! Oh, God! that I could forget—that I could give all my heart to the one who holds the promise of my hand! Oh, Teddy, Teddy! you deserve more of me than this! You are so good, so noble, you believe in me so fully, little dreaming that the heart which should be yours is given to another!"
She looked at Helen with a smile so faint that it was sadder than tears. She could not speak, and Helen put her arm tenderly about the drooping little figure, so pathetic in its unspoken despair, understanding without one word all the sorrow in Kathleen's heart.
And even then the newsboys running through the streets were shouting wildly:
"Extra copies of The Globe—all about the murder of the handsome actor, Ralph Chainey, by his jealous wife!"
Their startled ears caught the sound—the name. Starting apart, the two beautiful young girls gazed with blanched faces into each other's eyes.
The words were repeated clearly just beneath the window—blasting words, that coldly drove the shuddering blood back from Kathleen's lips to her heart. With a moan, she slipped down to the floor, winding her arms about Helen's knees, leaning her head against her while she wailed:
"Dead! Murdered! Oh, my love, Ralph!"
Then consciousness fled, she slipped inertly to the floor, and Helen, with a pallid face and trembling limbs, ran out to purchase a copy of The Globe.
Ere Kathleen had recovered from her swoon, Helen had hastily run over the startling news—the attempted murder of Ralph Chainey by Fedora, the woman whom he was suing in the courts for divorce.
"But for the opportune entrance of his brother, Mr. Earl Chainey," ran the paragraph, "the fiend would have succeeded in her fell design. The deadly blade was descending a second time to sheath itself in the victim's breast, when she was caught and violently hurled aside by Earl Chainey. She proved to be Fedora, the wife whom he was suing for divorce. She now lies in a prison cell, awaiting her punishment, which will probably be a capital one, as Ralph Chainey has never regained consciousness, owing to the loss of blood, and his death is momentarily expected."
It was to bear this terrible shock to her heart that Kathleen recovered consciousness. Was it not a wonder she did not go mad with the horror of it all?
Parting from her only yesterday in despair and anger—lying dead, perhaps, this moment—dying at least, and dying before he had forgiven her for her coldness and hardness. Oh, God, the pity of it all!
Weeping, she lay upon Helen's breast. Pride all gone, she laid her heart bare to her sympathetic friend.
"Oh, Helen, it will kill me unless I go to him—unless he speaks my forgiveness before he dies!"
"You shall go my darling," was the answer; and in less than an hour the carriage was at the door. The two girls stepped into it, and they were rapidly driven to Mrs. Chainey's suburban home.
All the way Kathleen lay upon her friend's breast, weeping, always weeping. In all her long after-life she could never forget that long hour of misery and suspense, in which she could not tell whether she should find him dead or alive. Would he pronounce her forgiveness, or would his lips be stiff in death, and the memory of his anger remain forever a thorn in her heart?
How the cold March rain swirled through the leafless shrubbery about the great stone house, with its closed doors and windows, suggesting so vividly the presence of death. Thank God! there was one thing lacking—the funereal crape upon the door. At the worst, he was still alive.
"Alive, alive! oh, thank God!" murmured Kathleen through her raining tears.
Helen tenderly supported her as they left the carriage. Soon they were within the house; Kathleen was waiting with a wildly beating heart for some one to come to them.
But when Ralph's mother came to them, Kathleen was beyond speech. It was Helen who had to prefer the request that they should see Ralph—"Friends, old and dear friends," she said, in excuse.
The gentle, gray-haired lady looked in wonder at the beautiful, weeping girl, the fairest she had ever beheld. Her heart went out to her at those tears.
"They are for my boy," she thought, tenderly.
But she hesitated, for the doctors had forbidden any one to enter the room.
"He knows no one. He has spoken but twice, and then just to utter a name," she said, looking doubtfully at the two fair supplicants.
"A name?" whispered Kathleen, eagerly.
"Yes; it is that of a young girl whom I fancy he loves. If it were only her now," she said, musingly.
"The name?" questioned Helen Fox, with eager impatience.
"Kathleen!" replied Mrs. Chainey.
Oh, what a cry came from Kathleen's lips!
"Oh, my love, my love, you have not forgotten me! I am Kathleen! Oh, madame, let me go to him!"
"Come!" was the thrilling answer, and as she led the girl away, Kathleen's heart throbbed wildly with the thought that she should hear his lips pronounce her forgiveness.
"And he shall not die! My love shall call him back from the grave!" she sobbed.
CHAPTER LXI.
SHE LOVED MUCH
I would have rather been a slave
In tears, in bondage, by his side,
Than shared in all, if wanting him,
This world had power to give beside.
L. E. Landon.
She was kneeling by his couch—she was gazing through her blinding tears upon that pallid, emotionless face, as still now as though it already bore the stamp of death; her hand touched his, but it did not respond to her passionate pressure, and when she called his name, there was no answer—not even a quiver of the dark, curling lashes lying so heavily against the marble-white cheek.
Mrs. Chainey and the two physicians looked on in the tenderest compassion. The story of the young girl's love was written on her anguished face, and they knew, alas! that Ralph Chainey lay close to the borders of spirit-land. The dark eyes would never open on that most beautiful face bending over him, the pale lips would never unclose to speak her name.
Breathlessly she called upon his name, beseeching him to look at her, to speak to her; but the spell that wrapped him was too deep. Those strong men listening to her wept in sympathy. They had no hope. It had been so difficult to stanch the flow of blood from the terrible wound so close to his heart, that he was sinking from inanition—he could not survive the weakness.
Suddenly the girl turned and looked at them. They were whispering together. She caught some disjointed words:
"It has been tried with success. You remember cases of?—but he is so far gone, I doubt—transfusion of blood—do you think?"
It startled them, the way the weeping girl sprung to her feet. New life seemed to come to her. She threw off the long fur cloak from her slender form, pushed back the sleeve from the most beautiful white arm they had ever beheld, and cried, beseechingly:
"You can save him! Oh, take my blood—my very life, so that you restore him!"
They were shocked at first, but she would not listen. She implored them to yield to her wish.
"I am so strong, I have such splendid health, it will not hurt me—I can bear it!" she cried, pleadingly, and they were full of admiration for her courage and bravery.
Her lovely face shone with its lofty purpose.
"Impossible!" they answered; but they gazed with admiring eyes at the beautiful girl whose fresh young loveliness indeed hinted at glowing health and strength; but it seemed hopeless, such an experiment. He was so far gone. Any minute might launch his life's bark out upon death's unknown sea.
She could not bear it, this obstinate refusal. Oh, to save him, to save him she would lay down her life!
A desperate thought came to her. Her dark eyes fastened on a rich blue vein in the rosy white arm she had bared to their view. A furtive movement and she had slipped from the burnished mass of her golden tresses a toy dagger with a jewel-studded hilt. Maddened with misery, she thrust the keen point against the blue vein, and the scarlet tide of her life-blood spurted out in a tiny vivid jet. Oh, horror!
They sprung toward her, one bound a handkerchief over the wound, but—her bravery had thrilled their hearts. They could not hesitate longer. It was a forlorn hope, but yes, they would try the experiment!
CHAPTER LXII.
"GOD BLESS BRAVE, BONNY KATHLEEN CAREW!"
So silent! Yet it seems to me
That had you lived, and had I died,
My dead heart must have heard you call,
And, throbbing with new life, replied.
Doctor Beard was an enthusiast in his art, and his fine eyes shone with eager interest as he realized the delicate and dangerous operation that lay before him and his colleague, Doctor Miller. Both were comparatively young, but they had attained eminence already, and if any physician in Boston was capable of conducting this experiment, it was one or both of these two.
They gazed anxiously into each other's eyes as they made their hasty preparations. Would it fail, or would it succeed? Death was so near—so perilously near! Would the rushing tide of life ever flow through those numb veins again? Yes, if there were any efficacy in love and prayer; for the stricken mother knelt, weeping and praying, by her boy's side, and down-stairs, in the darkened parlor, Helen Fox, waiting in keen suspense, lifted her heart in earnest petitions that God would spare the young life trembling in the balance. Within the great house all was trembling anxiety and suspense, while outside the wild March wind shook the dead branches of the trees and drove the gusty rain against the windows with a mournful patter, as though kindly Nature wept for the bright young life going out into darkness.
When years had fled and gray hairs began to creep into their bonny brown curls, Doctor Beard and Doctor Miller still loved to tell the story of that day, and how it ended—of the patient who lay so close, so awfully close to the portals of death that it did not seem possible for human art to save him, and of the beautiful, brave young girl who had prayed them on her knees to take the blood from her round, white arm and infuse it into the patient's, giving him new life; how they had hesitated to wound that tender, exquisite flesh, and how she had taken the initiative, thrusting a jeweled pin from her hair into the blue vein.
"I tell you it was grand!" cried Doctor Beard, with enthusiasm. "I could hesitate no longer. I was longing to make the experiment from the first moment the thought entered my head. So we asked the consent of Miss Fox, the young girl's dearest friend, who had brought her there. She was willing, and we tried it. Tried it, and—with the grandest success."
"It was magical the way that the girl's fresh young blood put new life into him," agreed Doctor Miller. "Why, I give you my word, I had no faith in the operation. The fellow looked like a dead man. I could have sworn he would never revive again, yet—it was magical, as I said just now—when we had carefully bound up their arms, that brave, beautiful girl leaned over him, looked into his face, and cried in accents of piercing anguish:
"'Oh, Ralph, my darling, come back to Kathleen! You must not die!'"
"And you may believe me or not," said Doctor Beard, taking the thread of the story again, "but the dead man opened his eyes and met her look. The color began to come back to his ashen face. He smiled faintly, whispered her name, 'Kathleen,' turned on his side, and slept calmly as a weary child."
"That was the proudest moment of my life!" cried Doctor Miller. "God bless brave, bonny Kathleen Carew!"
CHAPTER LXIII.
WITHIN PRISON BARS
Oh, my heart, my heart is sick, a-wishing and awaiting:
I looked out for his coming as a prisoner through the grating
Looks and longs and longs and wishes for its opening day.
Jean Ingelow.
"A week, and yet he has never been near me! Not a word, not a sign! What does he mean? Why has he left me to my cruel fate?"
The beautiful prisoner raged up and down the narrow limits of her prison cell like a caged lioness, so desperate was her mood, so fierce her unrest.
"Such cruel and heartless neglect from him who incited me to that dark deed is unbearable! He does not yet know Fedora if he believes she will tamely bear it!" And she clinched her white hands ominously, her eyes glittering with anger, as she thought of the man for whom she had risked so much, yet who seemed to have left her to her fate without an effort to save her.
"Where is he? What has become of him? Will he leave me to die like a rat in a hole? And I thought he loved me—fool that I was! Did I not already know men too well to trust him? Oh, fool that I was! And yet, dare he desert me, the partner in his terrible secret? Perhaps the coward has fled, fearing that I may betray him!"
So she raved on, every moment increasing her impotent fury.
"No answer to my letters, no notice taken of my passionate appeals! Why, he might have effected my escape ere this if he had tried, and I must escape! It is true I can not be hung, since that foolish girl saved Ralph's life when he was on the brink of death; but if I am sentenced I shall be sent to prison for long, long years! I can not bear the thought! Oh, God, I'm stifling—dying!" She threw herself on her hard couch, sobbing in hysterical abandon.
A grating sound at the door; the key turned in the lock; the portal opened, closed again. Inside stood a beautiful young girl gazing with sad, accusing eyes at the wretched, sobbing woman.
Fedora looked up with a cry of wonder mingled with rage:
"Kathleen Carew!"
"Yes, Kathleen!" answered the other. She advanced, and they gazed in momentary silence into each other's eyes—the girl Ralph Chainey loved, and the woman that was his wife.
"Why are you here?" muttered Fedora, hoarsely, as she started to her feet.
"For justice," answered Kathleen, sternly.
"Justice?"
"Yes, justice to the man you tried to murder—the man I saved from death!"
"Saved, yes—curse you forever for that deed!" snarled the prisoner, viciously.
Kathleen recoiled a little at her terrible aspect, and said, in wonder:
"Why did you do it? Why did you want him dead?"
"I hated him! I hate you!"
"I know, but you would soon have been free of him by the law. Why did you want to kill him? It was horrible. Life is so sweet when one is young; and Ralph is young—only twenty-five," said the young girl, almost piteously.
"Why do you come here to probe into my secrets?" Fedora cried, fiercely. "Listen, then: I wanted him dead before he secured the divorce, so that I might inherit his wealth. I, his loving widow! Ha! ha! Was it not a clever scheme?" She laughed wildly; and, coming closer to Kathleen, glared threateningly into her eyes as she hissed: "You foiled me—you—curse you, I repeat! Let me but escape, and I will murder you!"
A weaker heart than Kathleen's might have quailed before such threats; but she stood there trembling but courageous, an earnest purpose in her splendid eyes.
"These are idle words, and I did not come here to bandy words with you. I came to make a solemn appeal to you," she said meekly, almost beseechingly.
"Appeal to me?" asked the prisoner, with a scornful laugh; and then she waited out of curiosity for the other's answer.
"Do you remember that night in Philadelphia?" Kathleen asked.
"Yes, I remember."
"You were wearing my diamonds—the ones that were stolen from me that night when I was left for dead on the ground at Lincoln Station. You told me—told me," her voice faltering, "that Ralph Chainey gave you the jewels. Oh, God! I think if I had quite believed that horrible story, I should have died! But there was always the merciful doubt—the hope that it might not be true—that saved me from madness!"
She paused, but the prisoner did not speak—only smiled derisively.
"So I have come to you for the truth," went on the girl. "Oh, for God's sake, speak and tell me you lied! It was not Ralph; it could not be. Perhaps you are shielding the guilty man behind his identity. Are you? Tell me the truth! I will not ask you to betray the criminal. I do not wish to punish him. Only tell me it was not Ralph!" and she waited in wild suspense for the answer.
Fedora's evilly handsome face had on it a smile of triumph. She was gloating over the young girl's misery.
"So you love my husband?" she exclaimed, tauntingly, and the deep color rose up over Kathleen's face at the cruel sneer. She trembled with emotion, although she tried to appear indifferent as she answered:
"I did not come here to discuss that with you, madame."
Fedora was regarding her with a fixed gaze. A cunning thought had entered her mind.
"How much is my secret worth to you?" she asked.
"All the wealth in the world, if I had it, but I am penniless. I can not buy your secret," Kathleen answered, sadly.
Fedora came nearer and whispered in her ear:
"If I tell you the truth, will you help me to escape?"
"I could not do it if I wished to do so ever so much. It would take money, and I have already told you I have none."
The voice was cold and dull. Kathleen began to realize how hopeless was her mission. The cruel, calculating woman before her had no pity for her misery.
But Fedora was scheming in her mind how to turn her secret to account. She hated Kathleen too bitterly to show her any kindness; but if she could pay for the secret she wanted so badly, why, let her have it.
She looked at Kathleen with a cunning expression.
"There is one condition on which I will tell you what you want to know."
"I have already told you that I have no money."
"I do not mean money. Listen, Miss Carew: You know Ivan Belmont?"
"Yes," with a contemptuous gesture.
"He is a friend of mine; and if he knew about my trouble he would try to help me, I think. Do you know where he is? Can you send word to him?"
"I do not know anything about his whereabouts."
"You must find out. You must tell him that I, Fedora, have sent you to him. Tell him I command him to come to me here. Return to me with a letter from Ivan Belmont, and you shall hear the truth about the diamonds. I swear it!"
They gazed at each other—Fedora flushed and eager, Kathleen excited, sorely tempted.
"What say you? Is my price too great?" demanded the prisoner.
"No," Kathleen replied. Turning to go, she said:
"I will surely find Ivan Belmont, and bring the letter."
The door closed. The prisoner was again alone within the grated cell.
The hours dragged on and brought the gloomy night. With it there hovered over the great city the black and vulture wings of a terrible storm. It hissed, it roared, it swept with devastating, cyclonic force through that area where the prison was situated. Trees, roofs, houses even, yielded to its terrific fury, and flew like feathers before its angry breath. The poor prisoners, cowering in superstitious terror before the awful voices of the warring elements, prayed to God for mercy; but the answer seemed far, far away, for suddenly there came a terrible, deafening roar; the earth seemed to rock like a cradle, and the great stone tower of the prison fell with a sound as though heaven and hell had clashed, while lurid flames shot up from the awful ruin into the midnight air. Sentence of death had already been pronounced on many who were awaiting trial, and many a soul went up in that holocaust of smoke and flame and tempest to render an account of the deeds done in the flesh. Some few survived, some few escaped. Where was Fedora?
