Kitabı oku: «Kathleen's Diamonds; or, She Loved a Handsome Actor», sayfa 2

CHAPTER V.
MRS. CAREW IS MYSTERIOUSLY ABSENT

 
Alas, that clouds should ever steal
O'er Love's delicious sky—
That ever Love's sweet lip should feel
Aught but the gentlest sigh.
 

L. E. L.

Mrs. Carew did not appear at breakfast the next morning and Alpine, with a reproachful glance at Kathleen, said that mamma was sick. She had been so worried last night that she could not sleep, and this morning she had such a terrible headache that she must lie abed all day.

Kathleen did not look either repentant or sorry. She simply said that in that case she would not practice her music this morning, and went off to her own little studio, where she painted a while with great ardor, then threw down her brush, and rang for Susette to bring up the morning papers.

Susette lingered a minute after she had put down the newspapers.

"Miss Kathleen, I don't think it will disturb Mrs. Carew the least bit if you practice your music," she said, significantly.

"But her head aches, Susette."

"No, it don't miss; she's not in the house, so there! She went away early—very early, in her traveling-dress, the Lord knows where; for James told me so on the sly." (James was the butler, and Susette's sweetheart.)

Kathleen looked a little startled as she said:

"You must be mistaken. Ellen has been with her mistress all day. I tapped at the door a while ago to ask how she was, and she reported Mrs. Carew as very low."

"They are all deceiving you, Miss Kathleen, but what for I don't know, only I'm sure and certain she ain't in this house," protested Susette, stoutly.

"Very well, Susette. Her absence has no more interest for me than her presence," Kathleen answered, indifferently, as she opened The Globe and read the encomiums on Ralph Chainey's acting that filled a critical half column.

Her eyes sparkled and her cheeks glowed with pleasure.

"He plays 'Prince Karl' again to-night. Oh if I only could go again!" she thought, regretfully; then, throwing down the paper, she decided she would go and practice her music, since Mrs. Carew was not ill, as Alpine pretended.

She had played but a few bars when Alpine entered with reproachful eyes.

"Have you no feeling, Kathleen? You will kill mamma!"

"Since mamma went away this morning early and has not yet returned, there's no danger," Kathleen answered, coolly.

"It is false! Who told you so?"

"No matter how I found it out. I'm in possession of the mysterious fact."

"It's that prying Susette, I know! I shall advise mamma to dismiss her immediately."

"You'd better not, Alpine. Susette knows some of your secrets!" Kathleen answered, with a provoking laugh.

"I have no secrets!" snapped Alpine; but she left the room discomfited.

Kathleen practiced and read until the late luncheon, where she was surprised to find herself alone.

"Where is Miss Belmont, James?" she asked.

"Miss Belmont went out for a walk," he answered, respectfully.

While Kathleen was making up her mind to go for a walk, too, some callers were announced. She received the matron and her two gay young daughters, entertained them herself, with an apology for the absence of the other members of the family, and saw them depart with a sigh of relief.

"I will go for my walk now," she decided, but turning from the piano, she saw an open note lying on the floor. Her own name attracted her, and picking it up, she read, under date of that morning:

"Dear Alpine and Kathleen—Mamma wishes you to join us at an informal three-o'clock lunch to-day, to meet a distinguished guest. Brother George was at college with Prince Karl—Ralph Chainey, you know—and he is coming here to lunch with us to-day. Do come, girls! He's so handsome and talented I want you both to know him. There will be several others, too, but we want you especially. I want him to see our beautiful Kathleen."

The note bore the name of Helen Fox, one of their intimate girl friends, and Kathleen realized in a minute that she had been tricked by crafty Alpine, who had gone to the luncheon alone to meet Ralph Chainey.

A futile sob of bitter disappointment rose in the girl's throat, and crushing the note in her hand, she walked to the window, gazing blankly out into the handsome street through burning tears.

A light laugh startled her. There was Alpine Belmont, in elegant attire, walking toward the gate with a tall, handsome, distingué young man. Lifting his hat with a smile, he left the young lady there, and walked away with a hasty backward glance at the window that showed him a lovely, woful face staring in undisguised wonder at the spectacle of Ralph Chainey walking home with deceitful Alpine Belmont.

"Alpine, you wicked girl, how could you treat me so unfairly?" she demanded, shaking with passion.

Alpine flung herself into a chair, flushed, laughing, insolent.

"You told mamma last night that I was a sneaking tell-tale, didn't you? Well, then, I paid you off, that's all! Besides, mamma does not allow you to know Ralph Chainey—a pity for you, my poor Kathleen, for he's the most fascinating young man I ever met. I made myself very agreeable to him, and I think he fell in love with me. You see yourself he walked home with me from Helen's luncheon. Would you like to know what I told him about you, my charming Kathleen?"

"No!" the girl answered, hotly.

"I don't believe you—you're dying to hear. Well, it was this: I said you did not recognize him in the least last night till I told you it was the man that saved you at Newport. Then I said you would not come to meet him at the luncheon to-day, because you said it would be such a bore having to thank him. Ha, ha! You'd like to murder me, I know!"

CHAPTER VI.
KATHLEEN'S DEFIANCE

 
She went her way with a strong step and slow—
Her pressed lip arched, and her clear eye undimmed,
As if it were a diamond—and her form held proudly up.
 

N. P. Willis.

Helen Fox was one of those sweet, pretty, amiable girls that everybody loves. Her rosy lips were always wreathed in smiles, and the very glance of her roguish blue eyes invited confidence. She was the most popular girl in her set, and the intimate friend of Kathleen Carew and Alpine Belmont.

Warm-hearted Helen had been sadly disappointed because Kathleen had not come to the luncheon, and the excuse that Alpine offered—namely, that her step-sister could not tear herself away from a new novel—seemed too shallow to entertain.

"I'm really mad with Kathleen, the lazy thing!" she said, frankly, to Ralph Chainey, who smiled, but made no comment. He was thinking about what Miss Belmont had told him just now. It rankled in his mind.

"I am anxious for you to meet her, she is such a beauty!" continued Helen, enthusiastically.

He gave some flattering answer that made her dimple and blush, but she answered, with a careless glance around:

"Oh, yes, we girls are well enough; but wait till you see my bonny Kathleen. Such lips, such hair, such eyes!"

Ralph Chainey laughed.

"You needn't be so sarcastic, Mr. Chainey. You haven't seen our beauty yet."

"I saw her last night at the theater."

"Oh, so you did. I forgot that. Well, isn't she charming?"

The handsome actor replied with a quotation:

"'Perfectly beautiful, faultily faultless.'"

"She is all that," Helen Fox replied; but she looked at him with puzzled eyes, and thought within herself that he was somehow piqued at Kathleen Carew. But why, since the two had never met?

Suddenly the reason presented itself to her mind.

"The great vain thing! He is piqued because the beauty didn't come to the luncheon. He is offended because she did not seem anxious to meet him."

And she was secretly amused at the young actor's palpable vanity, regarding it as a good joke, little dreaming of the seed that Alpine Belmont had been sowing in his mind.

Many envious glances followed Alpine, a little later, when she bore Ralph Chainey off in triumph as her escort home; but Helen was pleased, for she thought:

"If Alpine asks him into the house he will get acquainted with Kathleen, and then he will find out how lovable she is."

But when George Fox, who had also walked home with a young lady on Commonwealth Avenue, returned home he reported that Ralph Chainey had left Miss Belmont at the door.

Suddenly Helen remembered sundry small matters that were not at all to Alpine's credit.

"That girl is tricky, I know," she said to herself. "Perhaps she did not ask Mr. Chainey to go in. Perhaps she kept Kathleen from coming here to-day. She has been known to do shabby things to cut other girls out of their lovers. Not that Ralph Chainey is Kathleen's lover yet, but he ought to be. They are just suited to each other, both are so splendid. It may be that Alpine intends to catch him herself before her sister gets a chance." Helen laughed a sage little laugh to herself, and added: "I'll ask mamma to let us call at Mrs. Carew's and take Kathleen with us to the theater to-night."

"Oh, Alpine! where is Kathleen? George and mamma are waiting out here in the carriage. We have just one seat left, and we stopped to ask Kathleen to go with us to the theater."

"Mamma is out, Helen, and she would not like it if Kathleen went without leave."

"But mamma is with us, Alpine. She would chaperon Kathleen."

"She can not possibly go," began Alpine, in a high tone of authority; but at that moment a light swish of silken draperies came through the hall, and a sweet voice said, clearly:

"Kathleen can go, Helen, and she will go, too, if you will wait till she gets on her things."

And Alpine beheld her step-sister, cool, calm, defiant, rustle up to Helen Fox and kiss that piquant, silk-robed damsel.

"Come upstairs with me, Helen, dear, while I dress," she said, radiantly, trying to draw her toward the stairway, for this colloquy had taken place in the hall.

Alpine followed them upstairs out of reach of the servants' ears, and then she said, sharply:

"You need not get ready, Kathleen, for I shall assume mamma's authority in her absence, and forbid your going."

"Oh, Alpine, where is the harm?" pleaded Helen.

"Mamma has forbidden her to go to the theater any more this week, because she caught her making eyes at an actor on the stage last night," Alpine answered, maliciously.

"It is false!" answered the young girl, stung to madness by Alpine's wickedness. Turning to Helen, she said, proudly: "I accept your invitation, Helen, and will accompany you to the theater, in spite of a hundred Alpine Belmonts! I am no slave to be domineered over in this manner, and Alpine had better go and leave me alone before she arouses me any further."

"Very well, miss; take your own way and defy me; but mamma will make you repent it, be sure of that," snapped Alpine, withdrawing.

"Oh, Kathleen, I didn't know I was going to raise such a breeze! Perhaps you had better not go if Mrs. Carew objects," Helen said, uneasily.

Kathleen turned on her a face crimson with angry passion.

"I'd go if she killed me for it!" she cried, with an imperious stamp of her dainty foot. "Who is that woman to forbid my going to places of amusement, like other girls?" She rang the bell violently for Susette, and added: "Say nothing before my maid, Helen; but on our way to the theater I'll tell you how wickedly Alpine treated me this afternoon."

Presently Alpine, peeping through her door, saw the two girls going away, Helen a little uneasy looking, the other proud, defiant, beautiful as a dream.

"She will meet Ralph Chainey, after all," Alpine muttered, in a fury.

It was midnight when Mrs. Fox's carriage stopped again at the Carew mansion, and George handed Kathleen out and rang the bell for her at her own door.

The windows were closed, and not the faintest gleam of light shone through them. George waited a few moments, then rang the bell again.

"Every one must be asleep, they are so long coming," said Kathleen, shivering in the cold night air.

They rang again furiously; but there was no response. The locked door, the dark, forbidding windows seemed to frown on their frantic efforts to arouse the house.

Mrs. Fox put her head out of the carriage window and said:

"Kathleen, you had better come home with us to-night, my dear. I don't think you will be able to rouse any one there; and you will catch cold waiting in the cool night air."

CHAPTER VII.
"MRS. CAREW IS GOING TO MAKE YOU MARRY HER SON," SAID THE MAID

 
I've thought of thee—I've thought of thee,
Through change that teaches to forget;
Thy face looks up from every sea,
In every star thine eyes are set.
 

N. P. Willis.

Kathleen was annoyed by her failure to get into the house, but she did not attach any particular significance to it. She supposed that Alpine, out of spite, had caused the servants to lock up and go to bed; that was all. She went home willingly enough with her kind friends, intending to return the next morning.

And when she laid her beautiful head on the pillow that night, it was to dream of soft brown eyes that had looked thrillingly into hers, and of a warm white hand that had clasped hers, oh! so closely, when he said good-night; for Ralph Chainey, the actor—or Prince Karl, as Kathleen called him in her thoughts—had come into Mrs. Fox's box twice between the acts, and had been presented to the beautiful heiress whose life he had saved last summer, and from whose presence he had gone away incognito.

Prince Karl had been on his dignity at first. He had remembered what Alpine Belmont had told him that afternoon.

He believed that beautiful Kathleen was cold, proud and ungrateful.

So, after bowing over her little hand when George Fox presented them, he turned his attention to the vivacious Helen, and scarcely looked at the radiant creature close to her side.

Kathleen bit her red lips and remained silent. She understood Ralph Chainey's mood, and knew that she had to thank Alpine for his indifference.

Her sweet lips quivered with a repressed sob, and her dark eyes swam in moisture that threatened to fall in blinding tears. It was hard—cruelly hard to have him believe her proud and ungrateful, and to see him resent it in this cavalier fashion.

He bowed himself out presently, and then Helen Fox turned to her, eagerly.

"How did you like him, Kathleen? Isn't he just splendid?" she exclaimed. Then she saw how grave and quiet the young girl looked, and remembered what Kathleen had told her in the carriage. "Oh! I forgot; he did not really pass one word with you. He was piqued and stiff over what Alpine told him," she cried, and added, consolingly: "Never mind; he'll come round. He admires you very much—I saw that in his eyes—and, of course, he is secretly very much interested in you, having saved your life! It is very romantic, Kathleen, and I shouldn't wonder if it's a match."

"Don't, Helen!" answered the girl, somewhat incoherently.

But Helen laughed gayly, and when the next act was over and the actor came again for a few minutes, he found her whispering very mysteriously to her mother. She nodded at him, and went on confiding something to her mother's ear.

George Fox had gone out, so there was no one to speak to but Kathleen—trembling Kathleen—who blushed warmly when he came to her side, and murmured, tremulously:

"I want to thank you for—for last summer. It was so good of you, so noble, to risk your life for a—a stranger."

"Pray do not speak of it; it was nothing. I ran no risk; I am a good swimmer," he replied, a little stiffly.

But Kathleen went on, in that tremulous voice:

"I—I have always remembered you with gratitude—always longed to see you again, that I might thank you from my heart for your goodness. Papa, too, wanted to see you. Why did you go away so suddenly?"

Where was the arrogance, the indifference on which Alpine had expatiated? The sweet lips trembled; there was dew on the curling black lashes that shaded the splendid, luring black eyes. When Ralph Chainey had gazed into them a moment, he turned away his head like one dazzled by too much sunlight.

"Why did you go away so suddenly?" she repeated; and then he said:

"It was because I am an actor, Miss Carew. If I had stayed to receive your thanks, and disclosed my identity, the story would have got into the newspapers, and people would have said I did it to get some free advertising. Your name would have gone all over the country as the heroine of the rescue. You would not have liked the publicity, perhaps; and so I hurried away."

"It was very good of you to think of that," she answered, simply; then added hastily, for the minutes were passing, and she knew he must soon return to the stage again: "Mr. Chainey, Alpine told me what she had told you this afternoon. It was—was—a joke on her part. I did recognize you last night as soon as I saw you. I told her who you were. She was jesting, believe me for I—I could not—be so ungrateful as to forget your face so soon."

It was time for him to go. He rose and held out his hand.

"Thank you," he said, in his deep, sweet voice, pressing her hand warmly. His magnetic brown eyes gazed deep into hers, and he murmured, inaudibly to the others: "It was the happiest moment I ever knew when I saved your life!"

Then he was gone. From the stage she met his eyes twice fixed on her, as if he could not resist the temptation of looking. When George Fox put them all into their carriage, he came out, still in his stage costume, to say good-night. He held her hand just a moment longer than Helen's, and he whispered:

"I hope we shall meet again."

His eyes, his words, his thrilling hand-clasp, haunted the motherless girl that night in the mystical land of dreams.

She arose early, after a rather restless night, and her first thought was that she had no morning-dress.

"I am taller than Helen, so I can not wear one of hers; neither can I wear the low-necked costume I wore to the theater last night," she murmured, in perplexity.

Her musings were cut short by a tap at the door. Susette, her maid, entered with a large bundle.

"Good-morning, Miss Kathleen. I've brought your walking-dress for you to come home," she said, undoing the paper and displaying a black silk costume.

"Oh! how good of you, Susette! I was just thinking I would have to ask Mrs. Fox to send around for it."

"Mrs. Carew sent me," said Susette, pursing her lips.

"So she has returned?" asked Kathleen, resting her charming head on her elbow and looking down at the maid, who had seated herself on an ottoman close to the bed.

"She came home near midnight last night, Miss Kathleen."

"Near midnight? Why, then, some one must have been awake when I came home, Susette! Why did no one answer the bell?"

"The madame's orders," Susette replied, significantly.

The great dark eyes of Kathleen dilated in wonder.

"But why–" she began, and the maid interrupted:

"Miss Kathleen, I did some eavesdropping on your account last night, and if you'll not think the worse of me for it, I'll tell you Mrs. Carew's plans."

The woman was rather intelligent and quite well educated for one in her position. She had been in Kathleen's service five years, and loved her young mistress dearly. Her devotion to her interests had won her a warm place in Kathleen's heart.

"Go on," she said, and Susette continued:

"When madame went away yesterday it was somewhere into the country where there's a boarding-school, where you are to be sent to-day."

"Susette!"

"It's the gospel truth, miss! They packed your trunk last night, all ready for you to start. That's why they wouldn't let you in. You were not to know anything."

"To—send—me—back—to—school!" exclaimed the young girl in such amazement that the words came with difficulty from her lips. Her eyes flashed with anger. "I will not go! She can not force me!" she declared.

"She intends to make you go. I heard her tell Miss Belmont so," said the maid, looking very sad, for she knew that Mrs. Carew's will was law.

Kathleen's face grew scarlet with passion, and there was a dangerous light in her eyes, but she did not answer. Springing from the couch, she allowed Susette to attire her in her black silk.

"I thought maybe if I told you beforehand that maybe you could think of some way to outwit her," said the maid.

"And I will—I will! I will never be sent to school again!" cried the girl, in something almost like terror. She clasped her little hands and sighed: "Oh, why did papa ever go away and leave me here in that woman's power? She was always cruel to me, but she did not dare so much while he was here. Oh, I wish he would come home to his poor Kathleen!"

Bitter burning tears rolled down her cheeks and dropped on her heaving bosom. It was so hard to be ruled by this coarse woman, who envied and hated her in the same breath.

"She is going to make you marry her son, too. She told her daughter that she was determined to bring that about, so he might share your fortune," Susette remarked at this juncture.