Kitabı oku: «Kathleen's Diamonds; or, She Loved a Handsome Actor», sayfa 3

CHAPTER VIII.
"PLEASE BUY MY DIAMOND NECKLACE," SAID KATHLEEN

 
I've no mother, now I'm weeping—
She has left me here alone;
She beneath the sod is sleeping,
Now there is no joy at home.
 

Old Song.

Before Kathleen could reply, the door opened softly and Helen Fox came in with two letters in her hand. Kissing Kathleen good morning, she exclaimed:

"What do you think? The postman has just brought me a proposal!"

"From Loyal Graham?" queried her friend.

Helen blushed up to her eyes, but answered, gayly:

"No, indeed—from Teddy Darrell."

Kathleen arched her black eyebrows in surprise.

"Teddy Darrell! Why, he proposed to me last week," she said.

"And did he ask you to keep it a secret?" asked Helen, consulting her letter, her blue eyes dancing with fun.

"Yes, he did, now that I recall it. Oh, my! I'm sorry I mentioned it; but you took me by surprise."

"There's no harm done, my dear, and you need not look so conscience-stricken. Bless you, I don't mean to keep it a secret, although he prays me here to do so. Why, Teddy Darrell is the worst flirt in Boston, and proposes to a new girl every week, always trying to keep the new love a secret from the old one."

"But does no one ever accept him, Helen?"

"Perhaps. I don't know, I'm sure I sha'n't, and I'm just dying to tell the girls. Why, only last week we were comparing notes over him, and out of seven girls in the crowd he had asked five to marry him. Maud Sylvester said I'd be the next one on his list, and you see I am."

"But how can he fall in love so often?" queried Kathleen, laughing.

"He's very susceptible, I suppose, or maybe it's all in fun. You know some young men like to be engaged to several girls at once, so they can boast of their conquests, and maybe he's one of them. Well, I must lacerate his poor heart by a refusal," with a mock sigh.

"Who will be his next victim?" asked Kathleen.

"Either Maud Sylvester or Katie Wells. One is an actress, the other a novelist. He is wild over both fraternities."

"How amusing!" laughed her friend. "But your other letter, Helen? Is it another proposal?"

"No; this is an invitation to attend a flower show."

"From Loyal Graham?"

"Ye-es," Helen answered, a little consciously. "But, Kathleen, how pale you are! Did you not sleep well?"

"No; I was restless," answered the girl.

She debated within herself whether she ought to tell Helen of the news Susette had brought. She concluded that she would not just yet.

"Come, we will go down to breakfast, dear," Helen said, drawing an arm through Kathleen's to lead her away.

"Susette, you need not go back yet. I shall want you after a while," said Kathleen, and the maid remained very willingly.

Down-stairs Kathleen smiled, talked, ate, and drank in a mechanical fashion. She was busy revolving schemes for escaping her threatening fate.

Kathleen had not been home from school more than six months. The idea of returning to it, and leaving the social whirl, that as yet was so new and charming, was not to be tolerated.

"And just as I had met Ralph Chainey, too," she said to herself, in keen dismay.

Her mind was on a rack of torture. She was afraid that open rebellion would not avail. Her foe was keen and subtle. She would employ strategy to compass her ends.

"I ought to meet her with her own weapons," she thought; and all at once she began to wonder if she could not quietly get away and go South to her dead mother's relatives, there to remain until the return of her father should make her safe from persecution.

Two hours later Kathleen bade her friends good-morning, and walked away with Susette, as they supposed, toward her home. Little did Helen Fox, as she gazed with loving eyes after her beautiful form, dream of the tragic doom hanging over Kathleen Carew.

"Susette, I am not going home with you," she said.

The maid looked inquiringly into the beautiful young face, and Kathleen added, determinedly:

"I am going straight to the station, where I shall take the train and go South to my mother's relatives, to remain until papa gets back to free me from that woman's tyranny."

"Oh, Miss Kathleen! do you think that will be for the best?" inquired Susette, timorously.

"Of course it will, Susette; for they will be kind to me for my dead mother's sake."

"And you will have me to pet you and care for you?" said the affectionate maid.

"I can not take you with me, Susette; for it might get you into trouble, you good soul, and I don't want to do that. I can take care of myself, never fear. No, you are to go straight back home and say that I sent you, and will follow presently."

Susette began to sob dismally, and Kathleen had to draw her aside into a pretty little park where they seated themselves, and talked softly for some time. Then Kathleen arose, and pressed her sweet rosy lips to the woman's wet cheeks.

"Now good-bye for a few weeks only, Susette, dear; for as soon as papa returns I'll be back. If Mrs. Carew turns you out, go to Helen Fox and ask her to give you employment while I am away. She will do it for my sake, I know. And I'll write to you at Helen's as soon as I get to Richmond. How fortunate that I have my diamonds with me, for I can go to the jeweler's and sell enough to carry me on my journey. Oh, Susette, don't sob so, please, dear! Good-bye; God bless you!" She signaled a passing cab, gave the order: "Golden & Glitter's, Tremont Street," and was driven swiftly away.

It was a bright, cool morning in April, and Tremont Street was thronged with shoppers and business people as she stepped out of the cab in front of the jeweler's elegant shop.

Bidding the cab wait, the young girl drew down her lace veil and entered without noticing, in her preoccupation, the tall, blonde young man, with a small satchel in his hand, who was intently gazing into the jeweler's window with a covetous gleam in his pale, dull-blue eyes.

But the young man's eyes turned aside from the contemplation of the treasures displayed within the heavy plate-glass window and fastened on the beautiful young girl with her patrician air and elegant costume.

"Kathleen, as I live!" he exclaimed, with a violent start, and followed her stealthily into the shop.

The elegant place was thronged with shoppers, and he mingled with them, keeping close to Kathleen, although unobserved by the object of his espionage.

"I wish I had the money that lucky girl is going to spend!" he muttered, enviously, to himself.

Kathleen went immediately to the desk of Mr. Golden, the senior partner of the firm. Drawing a small black case from her pocket, she opened it, displaying a very pretty diamond necklace.

"Mr. Golden, of course you remember when papa bought this necklace here for me," she said, timidly. "He paid five thousand dollars for it, you know. Well, papa is away"—with a catch in her breath—"and—I—I need some money very much. Will you do me the favor of buying this back for whatever you will give me?"

The kindly white-haired gentleman, drew a check toward him and began to write rapidly.

"Will a thousand dollars do you, my dear young lady? Because you can take that, and leave the necklace as security for the loan. You can redeem it when your father gets back," he said, beaming genially upon her, for the Carews were among his best customers.

CHAPTER IX.
MURDERED!

 
As I came through the Valley of Despair—
As I came through the valley, on my sight,
More awful than the darkness of the night,
Shone glimpses of a past that had been fair.
 

E. W. W.

When Kathleen had thanked Mr. Golden for his ready kindness, and gratefully accepted the check, she hastened to the bank, on the next block, and had it cashed in some large and a few bills of smaller denomination. She had left Cabby waiting for her in front of the jewelers, telling him that as soon as she returned from the bank she wanted him to drive her to the station, to take the first train for the South.

Accordingly, she returned in a few minutes and sprung into the cab, little dreaming that she was watched and followed by the tall, blonde young man who had recognized her when she had alighted at Golden & Glitter's, and followed her into the store.

He had secured a cab for himself, and was following fast upon her track.

"Now, what is up with the heiress? Must be an elopement. Egad! Alpine told me she was in love with a handsome actor, and that the mater was going to take her back to school to save her for me. Deuce take her! I don't want her, only for the money she'll get from old Carew. I was always afraid of those snapping black eyes of hers. I'd rather have that little blue-eyed New York ballet dancer of mine, in spite of her extravagance. A thousand dollars—a cool thousand! That's what the little minx wants me to give her now, or–But I won't think of that; it makes me savage. A thousand dollars! That's what Kathleen Carew has in her purse this moment, besides the diamond on her finger, and her ear-rings—real diamonds inside the little gold balls she wears snapped over them in daytime. I wish I had 'em for my little duck! Wouldn't she be sweet with great sparklers in her pink ears! And to think that the mater refused me the check I begged her for this morning, and she rolling in old Carew's money, while her only son could not keep up any style at all only for gambling!" ran the tenor of his thoughts, as he pursued hapless Kathleen to the station, making up his mind that she was about to elope, and grimly determining that she should purchase his silence with her money and jewels. "And cheap getting off like that, when I might take her back to mother and keep her for myself. Egad! maybe the actor will pay me something on his own account; d—n the lucky rascal!" he muttered.

To his amazement, no person met Kathleen at the station. She bought her ticket alone, and entered the parlor car of the vestibule train going South.

"To Richmond, hey? Running away alone, and to those poor relations of hers, I'll be bound. No chance, then, of getting any of her boodle for my dearie. She will need it all, for they say the Franklyns, her mother's relations, are poor as Job's turkey hen. Well, I'll follow, and we'll see if anything turns up to my advantage;" and, buying a ticket as far as Philadelphia, he entered the train, after first disguising himself by taking from his hand satchel and putting on a dark wig and dark, heavy whiskers.

The train rushed on and on through the land; but Kathleen, sobbing under her veil, took no heed of time. Day passed, and it was far into the night. The train rushed into a lonely woodland station, snorted and stopped, while the conductor shouted:

"Passengers for the South change cars here!"

Kathleen and a single gentleman seemed the only Southern passengers. They groped their way out into the darkness of the starless night. The other train was waiting on the other side of a small wooden depot. Kathleen, confused by the strangeness and darkness, staggered shiveringly forward on the muddy path, alone, and frightened at the solitude.

A stealthy step behind her, two throttling hands at her throat smothering her startled cry. She was thrown violently down, the jewels wrenched from her hands and ears, the purse from her dress; then the black-hearted murderer fled toward the waiting train, leaving his victim for dead upon the ground.

CHAPTER X.
AT DEAD OF NIGHT

 
I gaze on her frozen face,
Her mystical, sightless eyes.
And now—even now—her grace
The power of death defies.
 

W. J. Benners, Jr.

Kathleen lay still and white under the starless sky, like one dead, and there was no one to come to her rescue, for the telegraph operator, busy at his instrument, dreamed not of her proximity, and at this hour of the night there were no loiterers about in the village. Swiftly and silently had the fiend escaped, and it was most probable that day would dawn ere any one would discover the beautiful girl lying out there in the rear of the depot upon the damp, muddy ground, dead and cold.

But to return to Boston, which our heroine had so unceremoniously quitted.

Her last thought as the train steamed away with her was of Ralph Chainey, the handsome actor, who had looked so tenderly into her eyes, and who had whispered as he held her hand at parting: "I hope we shall meet again."

Her tears had started at the memory.

"It is all over," she sighed. "He will be gone away from Boston before I go back, and I shall never see him again."

But at that very moment events were shaping themselves in Ralph Chainey's life so as to bring him to her side again.

In his room at the Thorndike Hotel he was reading a telegram that said:

"Come at once. Fedora is ill—perhaps dying."

His handsome face grew grave and troubled. Throwing down the telegram, he sought his manager.

"Every engagement for this week must be canceled. I must go South on the first train."

"But, my dear Mr. Chainey, the loss will amount to thousands of dollars," expostulated the reluctant manager.

"No matter; let the loss be mine. A—some one—is—ill—dying. I must go."

"I am very sorry. We were having a splendid success here," sighed the manager; but his regrets did not deter the young man from going.

Two hours after Kathleen had left Boston, he drove up to the same station where she had taken the train for the South, and entered another one going in the same direction.

Meanwhile, Susette sauntered back to Beacon Street with the message Kathleen had dictated—she would be at home later on.

Mrs. Carew was indignant. She had been planning to take Kathleen away by the noon train. Her trunk, already strapped and corded, stood in the hall.

Susette received a severe scolding for leaving her young mistress, but she did not seem much affected by it.

"She is my mistress, and I should not dare to disobey her orders," she replied, and walked out of the room.

"What shall you do now?" asked Alpine, curiously.

"I must wait and take her on a later train."

Ringing a bell, she sent her own maid to Commonwealth Avenue, to bring home her tardy step-daughter.

Ellen returned with the news that Kathleen had left Mrs. Fox's several hours ago.

"And with Susette, too," said the elderly maid, sourly; for she cherished a secret grudge against Kathleen's maid, who was younger than herself, better looking, and had insnared the affections of James, the butler.

Susette was recalled. On being questioned, she readily admitted that Kathleen had started home with her, but sent her on ahead, promising to follow.

While the angry step-mother stormed and raved over Kathleen's willfulness, awaiting her return in impotent anger, the young girl was flying fast from her tyranny, and nearer to the fate that loomed darkly in the near future.

The flying train sped on through the night with Ralph Chainey. He had thrown himself down dressed upon his berth, for the porter had told him that he would have to change cars at midnight.

He was restless and troubled. No sleep visited his eyes. In spite of himself, his thought turned back to Boston—to Kathleen Carew. She haunted him with her musical voice and luring eyes. At last a deep groan forced itself through his lips.

"I would to Heaven we had never met!" he exclaimed, in a tone of deep despair.

Pushing back the light curtain, he looked out into the night. It had grown cold and bleak. A light patter of mingled rain and snow was beating against the window.

"How dreary!" the young man murmured, with a shudder; and added, in a sort of awe: "Dying! can that be true?"

The porter, who was very attentive—the result of a liberal tip—came and put his head between the curtains.

"We change cars at the next station, Mr. Chainey, and that's but a few miles away. You'd better be getting ready."

Ralph came into the little reception-room, and the man assisted him into his overcoat. A few minutes more, and the train was slowing up at the lonely station.

"You're the only person getting off, sir. Good-night, sir; a pleasant journey!"

The porter handed out Ralph's valise, and he stepped down into the darkness, while the train went its way.

"But where the dickens is the other one?" soliloquized the young man, standing still a moment, the light snow pelting his face, while he peered into the darkness for the locomotive's head-light. "It must be behind that little depot. Here goes for a tour of investigation!" and with his valise in hand, he strode forward in the darkness, hardly knowing where he went, and wondering at the scarcity of railway officials and light.

"The train can't be here. It is probably late," he thought, and then his foot tripped, and he fell headlong over a body lying in his path.

A shudder of nameless horror shook the young man as he scrambled to an erect position, muttering:

"Good heavens! a woman, I know, from the silken garments. Now, what is she doing out here on the ground in this Cimmerian darkness, with the snow coming down in a fury?" He raised his voice and shouted loudly: "Halloo, halloo!"

The closed door of the depot, with its one blinking lighted window, opened, and then the form of a man appeared in the opening.

"Who is it, and what's the matter?" he exclaimed, shortly.

"Bring a lantern out here. I've found a woman dead in the snow!" was the startling answer.

Ralph had knelt down and felt the face and hands of the motionless woman. They were cold as ice, and he realized that she was dead.

"Horrible!" he murmured, and while he waited for the man to come with the lantern little thrills of awe ran through him. The flesh he had touched was firm and young, the hair was soft and curly, the garments silken. Who was she, and why was she out here under the night sky, cold and dead?

The depot agent came hurrying out through the driving snow, and flashed the light of his lantern full into their faces, for Ralph was still kneeling down by the motionless form.

"Who are you, and what is the row?" he inquired, curiously, but Ralph did not reply.

He was gazing in terror at the silent face with its closed eyes that lay so pale and still before him, wet with the falling snow, the bronze curls tangled on the forehead, drops of blood congealed on the exquisitely-formed ears; and, oh, horror! the white throat and chin had dark crimson finger-marks upon them. The small velvet hat had fallen off, the dress pocket was turned inside out, one hand had the glove torn off, and was wounded where a ring had been wrenched from it.

"Oh, Heaven!" groaned Ralph Chainey, in a low voice of shuddering horror, and the man exclaimed:

"Why, this looks like robbery and murder! See, her pocket has been turned inside out, a ring has been torn from her finger—a diamond, very likely—and her ears are bleeding where her ear-rings have been torn out! Look at the red marks on her throat! Good Lord; she has certainly been choked and robbed by some devil in human shape! Mister, who are you, and where did you come from, and how did you find her?"

Ralph Chainey, whose face had grown as white as the dead one before him, did not reply save by a second groan of unutterable horror. He was wringing his hands in dismay, and the expression of his eyes was one of bitterest anguish. Not until the man shook him by the shoulder, and plied him over and over with questions, did he reply, telling him in disjointed sentences the simple truth of how he came there, and adding:

"If I am not mistaken, she is Miss Carew, a young Boston lady, whom I met there only last night. How she came here, what is the mystery of this, I can not understand."

CHAPTER XI.
THE FATAL TELEGRAM

 
"The young village maid, when with flowers she dresses
Her dark, flowing hair for some festival day,
Will think of thy face till, neglecting her tresses,
She mournfully turns from the mirror away."
 

"Poor thing! she must have been a beauty," the railway employé said, as he contemplated Kathleen's cold and beautiful face. "Come, let us carry her into the house and get a doctor. Maybe she ain't really dead, only swooned," he continued, hopefully; and between them they bore her in, and laid her on a bench made soft with their overcoats.

Then the man ran to his instrument, which was ticking busily away, and directly said:

"Your train is several hours late, sir; so if you'll stay here, I'll run and fetch a doctor."

He flashed out at the door, and in the illy-lighted, shabby little waiting-room Ralph Chainey was alone with beautiful dead Kathleen, so cruelly murdered.

He knelt down by her side in an agony of dumb despair. He gazed through blinding tears upon the sweet white face; he took her cold, white hand and kissed the wound upon it, and then he whispered, as if she could hear him:

"Beautiful Kathleen! you will never know now how dearly I have loved you since first I saw your face! You are dead—dead! and soon the dark earth will cover you away forever from the sight of men. Ah! if only those dead lips could unclose long enough to tell me the name of your dastardly murderer, I would pursue him to the ends of the earth, but that I would bring him to punishment!"

He bent his head until his pale lips touched the rigid ones of the dead girl. They were icy cold, but the soft curls of bright hair that lightly brushed his forehead, how soft, how silken, how alive, they felt! But she was dead—this girl who had blushed last night beneath his glance, whose voice had been so sweet and low when she spoke to him.

 
"Ah, Fate is a cruel lord,
A tyrant at best his rule;
And we learn by sin and sword
While here in his rigid school.
Ah, me. I left her with hopes beguiled,
We parted, and Fate looked on and smiled."
 

The shock and horror of the occasion began to overcome him, strong man as he was; and his head reeled; consciousness forsook him. He fell in a crouching position upon the floor, where he lay until the doctor entered, followed by his gentle, girlish wife.

"Oh, the dear, sweet, pretty creature! what an awful way for her to meet such a fate! The murderer ought to be burned at the stake!" exclaimed the young wife, sorrowfully, and her tears fell fast on Kathleen's face.

Doctor Churchman examined the girl's throat carefully, and said, with a deep sigh:

"Poor thing, she is quite dead! There is nothing I can do for her but to carry her over to our house and take care of the body until her friends come."

A deep groan startled him, and Ralph Chainey staggered dizzily to his feet.

"Ah, sir! so you have recognized this young woman, Dickson tells me. Well, please dictate a telegraph message to her friends at once," Doctor Churchman said to him, gently, for the despairing look on the young man's face touched him with sympathy.

"He must have been in love with the murdered girl," he said to himself.

Ralph went into the little office and sent a message off to Mrs. Carew's address:

"I have found Kathleen Carew here dead under very mysterious circumstances. Please come immediately, as I am compelled to leave."

By one of those strange rulings of fate that so startle us at times, a mistake was made at the Boston office in taking the message, and when received by Mrs. Carew the telegram ran thus:

"I have married Kathleen Carew, and nothing can change it. Please God in Heaven, I am comforted to know it."

Mrs. Carew raved with anger, and the very next day the Boston papers published, as a sensational item, Miss Carew's elopement and marriage to the handsome actor, who charmed all women's hearts out of their keeping—Ralph Washburn Chainey.

Mrs. Carew's active malice could invent but one sting for the heart of her step-daughter at so short a notice. She cabled at once to Vincent Carew in London a garbled account of Kathleen's elopement with an actor, one of the lowest and most unprincipled professionals who had ever disgraced the stage.

Vincent Carew had just been buying his ticket to return to America. His health was restored, and his heart ached for a sight of his bonny Kathleen, his beloved daughter.

Close against his heart lay her picture, and her last sweet, loving letter, in which she implored him to come home to his unhappy child. She did not mention her step-mother's unkindness, but a vague suspicion stirred within him and prompted his speedy return.

His ticket was bought, his luggage, with so many beautiful gifts for Kathleen stored in it, was sent down to the steamer. He smiled as he thought of the surprise in store for his "home folks."

Upon this complacent mood came the malicious cablegram from his irate wife.

The revulsion from his pleasant mood to keen wrath was terrible.

Vincent Carew had a dislike to actors in general, of which no one understood the origin.

The thought of his bonny Kathleen married to one of this abhorred class drove the proud man beside himself with shame and rage. For an hour he raged and stormed about his room until he was on the verge of apoplexy.

Having exhausted the first fury of his anger, he flung himself into a cab and was driven in haste to a lawyer's office.

His last act on leaving England was to execute his last will and testament, in which he angrily disinherited Kathleen, his only child. Leaving the document with the lawyer for safe keeping, with instructions to forward it to America in case of his loss at sea, the angry man was driven down to the steamer, and embarked for home—the home that would be so lonely now without the light of Kathleen's starry, dark eyes.

Did he repent his harsh and hasty deed, that haughty man, as he paced the steamer's deck those long moonlight nights thinking of his dead wife—lovely, childish Zaidee—and the daughter she had left him—willful, spirited Kathleen? Did he shudder with fear as he remembered that should anything happen to him at sea, the cruel will that disinherited the young girl would be irrevocable? Or did he gloat over the prospect of her sufferings with her impecunious husband? No one knew, for in his bitter trouble and humiliation he stood proudly aloof from all, cultivating no one's friendship, seemingly absorbed in his own thoughts, until that night—that night of awful storm and darkness—when fatal disaster overtook the good ship Urania, and she was burned at sea, her fate sending a thrill of horror through the heart of the world when the tidings became known with Vincent Carew's name among the lost.