Kitabı oku: «Kathleen's Diamonds; or, She Loved a Handsome Actor», sayfa 6

CHAPTER XIX.
"RALPH CHAINEY IS A MARRIED MAN!"

 
"Sigh no more, ladies, sigh no more,
Men were deceivers ever;
One foot on sea and one on shore,
To one thing constant never."
 

When Ralph Chainey had led Kathleen into the waiting-room of the depot he had been so absorbed in her that he failed to notice any one around him.

So he did not observe a pretty and showily-dressed blonde beauty who was walking restlessly up and down the room, evidently bent on attracting attention to herself and her dress by these maneuvers.

When Ralph entered with Kathleen, the young woman gave him a curious glance that speedily changed to one of dismay.

Then she shrunk back hurriedly into the shadow and watched the pair with bright, steel-blue eyes that glittered with the light of hate.

"A love affair," she muttered, angrily, and noted keenly every movement of the two. She saw how they looked at each other with the light of love in their beautiful eyes. She stole nearer and overheard their words; she saw their kiss, their tender parting.

Her white hands clinched themselves tightly, her face paled beneath its rouge, and she muttered indistinctly to herself—muttered words of hate and menace.

When Ralph Chainey had left Kathleen alone the stranger boldly approached the weeping girl.

Standing before Kathleen, she touched her on the shoulder, and when Kathleen shrunk back and lifted her white face in piteous fear and entreaty, the stranger almost started at its wonderful beauty.

"Ralph Chainey is deceiving you," was the startling sentence that fell on Kathleen's ear.

"Oh!" the girl exclaimed in bewilderment; but the blonde beauty went on:

"He has promised to marry you, but he does not mean it, you poor, pretty child. It is only a plot to betray you."

"You speak falsely," Kathleen managed to stammer in a choking voice, her dark eyes flashing indignantly.

"You do not want to believe it, I know, but I can prove to you that I speak the truth. Ralph Chainey is a married man. I am his wife!"

Kathleen grew as pale as she had been in her coffin that terrible night; her dark eyes stared as if fascinated into the pretty painted face of the woman. She could not speak; her head seemed to be going round and round; her poor heart throbbed as if it would break.

"Perhaps you have heard that actors are wicked people," continued the pretty stranger. "It is true of the whole class, and most especially of this Ralph Chainey. He is always seeking for a new love, and leaving some other woman to break her heart for love of him. Although I am his wife, he tired of me months ago, and left me to starve or die of a broken heart, he cared not which, so that he was well rid of me. My kind parents took me home, and since then I have watched his career in amazement and despair. Many and many a fair and innocent young girl I have saved from his clutches."

"Oh, Heaven! must I believe this?" came in a low, sobbing under-tone from Kathleen's pale lips.

"You are the youngest and fairest of them all and it would break my heart to see you fall into Ralph Chainey's power," continued the blonde, anxiously. "Be warned in time, my poor girl. Fly from this spot and go home to your friends."

"I have no friends in this city, and my home is in far-off Boston," sobbed Kathleen, clasping her little hands in despair.

"Then come home with me, and stay all night, and you can go on to Boston to-morrow morning early," was the quick reply.

She waited for an answer, but none came. Kathleen's head had drooped on her breast. A fatal unconsciousness had stolen over her, and the hour of her enemy's triumph was at hand.

The blonde beauty laughed low and maliciously, as she realized how deeply her words had struck their poisoned arrows into the young girl's heart.

Coolly signaling a stranger who had hurriedly entered the almost deserted waiting-room, she said:

"My friend has fainted from grief at receiving a telegram containing news of the death of her lover. Will you assist me to carry her out to my carriage before she revives? I know she will go into hysterics as soon as she recovers, and that would be so embarrassing in this public place."

The gentleman, a slight-built, genial-faced man of about thirty years, courteously acceded to her request, and gazed with deep compassion at the beautiful face of the unconscious girl he was carrying in his arms.

"What a lovely creature! and so young—scarcely more than a child; yet she had a lover, and he is dead," he thought, pityingly, as he placed her in the carriage.

"I thank you for your kindness," said the blonde beauty, with a dazzling smile. The carriage door closed upon her after she had said "Home" to the driver, and then Samuel Hall, the kind-hearted, smiling-faced young man, stood under the gas-light, gazing after them with dazed blue eyes.

"Quite an adventure, Sammy, was it not, eh?" he muttered, talking naïvely to himself. Perhaps his arms thrilled yet with the pressure of the beautiful form that had lain heavily in them a minute ago. His mild blue eyes looked soft and dreamy.

"How lovely she was!" he mused. "So lovely and so sorrow-stricken! The other one was handsome, too, in her way, but not like the younger. Grand, rich people, I suppose," he ended with a sigh; for, having once known "better days," our friend "Sammy" did not very much enjoy his position as a hard-working clerk in one of Philadelphia's immense dry-goods emporiums.

He went home to his lonely room in a great, rambling boarding-house, and though he was not usually impressionable, his mind kept running on his little adventure. He said to himself that it was because he was so sorry for the beautiful young girl who had fainted when she received the telegram that her lover was dead.

"I wonder what their names were?" he mused, curiously. "The blonde I did not quite like. There was something theatrical and made-up about her. She did not in the least resemble the fainting one, so they could not be sisters."

Still musing on his little adventure, he retired. Sleep came to him, made restless by uncanny dreams.

It seemed to the young man that he was standing on the verge of a precipice, looking down into a dark gulf where a turbulent river rushed along in foam and fury. Struggling in the gloomy waves was the young girl he had carried fainting to her carriage, and her white face was upturned to him; her great, piteous dark eyes were fixed on his with unutterable reproach. Tossing her white arms up toward him, she cried, bitterly:

"You helped that wicked woman to destroy me!"

Then she sunk beneath the waves, and they closed forever over her white face and shining hair.

Sammy Hall awoke in anguish, his forehead beaded with perspiration.

"Oh, what a strange, weird dream! How vivid it is still in my mind! What does it mean? Is it a warning? That can not be, however, for I was doing her a kindness, not an injury, and my heart ached with sympathy for her sorrow."

He could think of nothing else next day, and at noon, when a heavy storm came up and kept customers from crowding into Haines & Co.'s great store, he told the bright, pretty young salesladies about it, dream and all.

They listened to him with the liveliest interest; their eyes grew dim with pity for the beautiful young girl whose heart had broken for the death of her lover.

"But it was so strange for her to reproach me in that dream!" he said, in a troubled voice—"so strange! Because, you see, I was only kind to her, and did nothing wrong."

"Mr. Hall, I have a theory to explain your dream," cried Tessie Mays, a romantic young girl; and every one turned to her with interest as she went on: "The blonde was a bad, wicked creature who frightened that pretty, innocent young thing into a faint, and then carried her off to some wretched fate—'the spider and the fly,' you know."

"It is very likely, indeed!" chorused all those romantic young girls, and Sammy Hall's heart sunk like a stone in his breast.

He brooded over that night's adventure, and in his sleep that strange dream kept recurring. He feared that Tessie Mays was right. The blonde woman was a wicked creature who had made him a tool to help her in her nefarious plans.

Two days later, as he was going along Ninth Street to dinner, he came suddenly face to face with the blonde, made up carefully and gaudily attired. He stopped in front of her and stammered:

"Oh! ah! miss—madame—excuse me; but how is that unhappy young girl?"

"Why, you must be crazy! I don't know you. I don't know what you mean. Get out of my way!"

She pushed him roughly aside, and had disappeared before he recovered from his surprise.

CHAPTER XX.
KATHLEEN MAKES A STARTLING DISCOVERY

 
"Who that feels what Love is here—
All its falsehood, all its pain—
Would, for even Elysium's sphere,
Risk the fatal dream again?"
 

When Kathleen Carew recovered consciousness she found herself on a bed in a shabby garret bed-room, with the eyes of the blonde beauty looking into hers.

"So you are come to at last? I began to think you were dead, child. Here! smell this, and you'll soon be better," she exclaimed, vivaciously, as she held a bottle of camphor under Kathleen's nose.

Kathleen pushed it away like a petulant child.

"What am I doing here?" she sobbed, in a frightened voice.

"This is my home, you know. I offered to bring you here to save you from Ralph Chainey, that wicked actor. Oh, my! what a scene there was after you fainted. He came back, and I can tell you, he was frightened at finding me there. I told him he must go away, that I had told you all, and you hated him. He tried to brazen it all out at first, but presently he was humble enough, and I made him carry you out and put you in my carriage. Then he went away, vowing he would get you into his power some day."

Kathleen shuddered from head to foot, and cried, appealingly:

"Oh, madame, is he really your husband? For the sake of Heaven, do not tell me an untruth, for it is more bitter than death to lose faith in one's lover!"

"Alas! if it is so hard to lose faith in a lover, how much worse to be deceived by a husband?" cried the blonde, pathetically.

She dashed her white hand across her dry eyes, and Kathleen caught the glitter of a diamond ring flashing like a little sun. In her small, pink ears there were magnificent diamonds, too, and Kathleen began to watch them with fascinated eyes.

"What a beautiful diamond ring! Won't you let me try it on, please?" she asked, humbly.

The blonde, flattered by the admiration for her ring, slipped it off with some difficulty, and allowed Kathleen to take it in her fingers.

She held it up and gazed inside the gold circle, reading aloud:

"'Kathleen Carew!'"

"Why, I never knew before that a name was cut–" began the woman, then bit her lip and checked herself, abruptly.

"Where did you get this ring?" asked Kathleen, excitedly.

"My husband gave it to me."

"And your beautiful ear-rings?"

"They, too, were gifts from my husband."

"From Ralph Chainey?"

"Of course. Didn't I tell you he was my husband? Do you want to see my marriage certificate?" holding out her finger for the ring.

"Presently," said Kathleen, sitting erect, with a strange fire in her eyes. "Is this," she continued, in a strange voice, "your name inside the ring?"

"Of course," airily answered the blonde.

Kathleen's slumbrous eyes began to glow with an angry light, and she exclaimed, passionately:

"It is false! It is my own name, and the ring is mine! The ear-rings also are mine! My father gave them to me!"

"You must be crazy, girl!" exclaimed the blonde, in honest surprise. She snatched the ring and slipped it back on her finger.

"I tell you I am in earnest," stormed Kathleen, roused to a sudden fury by the thought of her wrongs. "I tell you I am Kathleen Carew, and those jewels were stolen from me by a man who choked me and left me for dead on the ground, while he tore those gems from my bleeding hands and ears. And you say it was your husband–" she stopped, shuddering violently. Was she criminating Ralph Chainey?

CHAPTER XXI.
WAS RALPH CHAINEY A VILLAIN?

 
Roses have thorns, and love is thorny, too;
And this is love's sharp thorn that guards its flower,
That our beloved has the cruel power
To hurt us deeper than all others do.
 

Sarah C. Woolsey.

Kathleen, pale, shuddering, startled, gazed in horror at the face of the bold, handsome creature who declared to her that these gems for which she had been almost murdered were given to her by Ralph Chainey.

Was it true that the woman was Ralph's wife, and that he had given her the jewels?

If so, what an awful vista of suspicion and crime opened back of these two facts!

Could it be that Ralph Chainey was the fiend who had robbed and murdered her that night, and then by his clever acting thrown off suspicion from himself?

The terrible suspicion made her tremble like a leaf in the wind; and meantime the woman, whom we will call Fedora, was gazing at her with suspicious eyes.

"I don't know what to make of you, girl," she said, impatiently. "Come, now; I want to hear your story from beginning to end."

Kathleen did as she was asked. She related the whole story of her life, from the first meeting with Ralph Chainey until now.

Fedora listened with eager attention.

She was especially interested in Mrs. Belmont and her son Ivan.

"And she wanted you to marry him?" she said.

"Yes; but I will never do it. I hate him, and so does papa. He is a spendthrift, and dissolute," said Kathleen, quoting words that her father had used of his step-son.

Fedora frowned and said, hastily:

"But he is very handsome, isn't he?"

"I believe some people think so, but I don't. I guess Daisy Lynn thought so, or she would not have gone mad for love of him;" and the whole story of Daisy Lynn came out.

It proved very interesting indeed to the blonde, who asked many questions, and seemed disappointed that Kathleen could not answer them all.

When she had elicited all that Kathleen could tell, she returned to the subject of Ralph Chainey.

"I knew he was false to me, but I did not believe he was wicked enough to do murder," she said.

Kathleen shuddered as with a mortal chill, and said faintly:

"There must be some mistake."

The blonde gazed in silence for several minutes at the lovely face of the hapless young girl, then asked, abruptly:

"What shall you do about it?"

"Nothing," Kathleen answered, sorrowfully; and she thought to herself that she would give the world to blot out of her life all memory of the man she had loved so dearly and so well; yet she knew that his memory would haunt her all her life long, and that her heart would break because he had proved unworthy.

She looked pleadingly at the woman before her, and exclaimed:

"Will you please take me home to my father?"

"To-morrow," answered Fedora, soothingly. She rose as she spoke. "Lie down and sleep; it is late," she added. "To-morrow I will go home with you and restore you to your friends."

She went out, carefully locking the door behind her.

Alone in her own room, she looked at the beautiful jewels that had cost Kathleen so dear, and muttered:

"He did it for me—to get these for me. How he loves me! But this girl! her life is a menace to his liberty. If I let her go home and tell what she knows, suspicion will fall upon him. Why did he bungle so, if he must do that ghastly job?" Then she laughed. "Oh, I have paid you out, Ralph Chainey!"

CHAPTER XXII.
RESCUED

 
"Hame, hame, hame! 'tis hame I fain wad be—
Hame, hame, hame, in my ain countree!"
 

Sammy Hall was bitterly sorry that he had missed getting any information from the blonde about the beautiful girl he had seen with her that night at the station.

The beautiful white face and closed eyes of the young girl haunted him with strange persistency.

And after his accidental rencontre on the street with the insolent blonde he felt more apprehensive than ever.

"I wish I knew where she lived: I would find out more about her," he thought; and fell to watching for the bright, steel-blue eyes and golden hair every day.

He was rewarded for his efforts when one day he saw her at the trimming counter buying some gold passementerie from Tessie Mays.

Sammy Hall waited till she had sailed out of the store, then went across to the young salesgirl.

"It's that woman—the one that carried off the girl that night. I saw her give you her address. What is it?" he queried, excitedly.

As much excited as himself, Tessie gave it to him, and he began to set his wits to work to find out the mystery of that night.

To Kathleen's indignation and dismay, Fedora had kept her a close prisoner in the shabby little garret chamber ever since that night—now five days ago—when she had been brought there.

To quiet the complaints of the girl, Fedora told her that she dare not let her go outside the house, because her aunt's emissaries were searching for her everywhere, and that, if found, she would be arrested and taken back to the asylum.

"You must remain quietly hidden here until the search blows over," she said; and no entreaties could move her jailer's heart; there was always a plausible excuse; but Kathleen, looking into the flippant, insolent face, began to distrust the woman.

"She hates me—hates me because Ralph Chainey said he loved me," she thought, uneasily; and she grew frightened in the miserable little garret room in which she was kept a prisoner, seeing no one but Fedora, who brought her food with her own hands—food which tasted palatable enough, but which seemed only to sap the young girl's strength.

For with each day Kathleen grew weaker and weaker.

At first she had been wont to pace the chamber restlessly for hours. Now her limbs grew weary; her brain seemed to reel. She rested in the chair, then upon the bed, and her burning brain was full of the thought of Ralph Chainey's treachery.

"I loved him so, I loved him so—yet he was wicked, false and cruel beyond all men!" she sobbed; and the knowledge was killing to her. She thought that now, at last, she was going mad, like poor Daisy Lynn, over a lover's falsity.

She did not know that it was death, not madness, that was approaching; but the food brought her by Fedora was drugged, so that in a short time it must cause her death if she kept on taking it.

She did not dream what a terrible interest the woman had in her death, and that she had decided that Kathleen Carew must never go out of that house alive.

"He did it for me, and I must not let her go free," she decided, grimly, and went unfalteringly about her plans for ending that sweet, innocent young life.

Kathleen found her imprisonment here more galling than it had been in the home of Miss Watts. There was here no pretty, dainty room filled with a young girl's dainty books and pictures, but only squalor such as might have surrounded an uneducated servant.

She wondered much over the house she was in, and if her jailer, the gaudily attired blonde beauty, inhabited such a shabby apartment as she allotted to her guests. But she was not likely to have her curiosity gratified on this point, as Fedora always locked the door on leaving, and there was only one window—a small one, very high up—that gave an uninteresting outlook on the walls of other houses—poor ones, it seemed, from their moldy bricks.

A day came when Fedora did not bring her any dinner, and the whole day wore away dully and gloomily. It was the day when Samuel Hall saw her shopping in the store of Granville B. Haines & Co. Kathleen did not dream of what had happened, but Fedora had moved out of the house that day, leaving her victim to her fate.

Kathleen ate so little of the drugged food prepared for her that she had lived longer than the woman anticipated, so she decided to leave her to starve to death in the unoccupied house, where she was locked into the wretched garret.

When she gave her address to the pretty saleslady at Granville B. Haines & Co.'s, it was in a fit of absent-mindedness that saved Kathleen's life.

Instead of giving her new address, she gave her old one, and, as we have seen, Samuel Hall at once secured it from Tessie Mays.

So excited was the young man, and so fearful that harm had befallen the beautiful young girl of that night's adventure, that he actually secured the services of a policeman, and finding the house closed and seemingly unoccupied, the doors were broken open and a strict search instituted.

When they had almost begun to despair of success, the beautiful victim was found by the delighted young clerk, who at once recognized her as the fainting girl he had placed in the carriage that night.

She fainted again when she learned that she was saved, and the policeman and Sammy had some difficulty in restoring her to consciousness. When they had done so, they were filled with grief and horror at the story she had to tell.

"Oh, let me go to papa!" she begged them, pathetically, and Samuel Hall, melted by her beauty and distress, assured her that she should be sent at once to Boston. A closed carriage was secured, and Sammy and the sympathetic policeman escorted her to the station, where a first-class ticket was bought and Kathleen placed in a Pullman car.

"God forever bless you!" sobbed the young girl, weeping over Sammy's hand, and overwhelming him with promises of what her rich father would do to reward him for his nobility.

Then the train steamed away out of the station, and there were tears in the eyes of both men, through which they saw dimly the pale and lovely face, on which a little hopeful smile was budding into bloom.

The policeman made Sammy promise to keep a sharp lookout for the perfidious blonde, and to let him know if he found her, so that she might be arrested and punished for kidnapping the girl. Then the two separated, the policeman returning to his regular beat, and Sammy to the store, where he told the sympathetic young girls the story of his knightly deliverance of Kathleen, and became quite a hero in their admiring eyes.

But gladdest of all was our beautiful Kathleen, speeding as fast as steam could carry her back to Boston and to papa, who must surely have come home ere now, and who would be so glad to see his little girl.