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Kitabı oku: «Kathleen's Diamonds; or, She Loved a Handsome Actor», sayfa 9

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CHAPTER XXXII.
"WE HAVE MET—WE HAVE LOVED—WE HAVE PARTED!"

Farewell, farewell! for aye, farewell,
Yet must I end as I began,
I love you, love you, love but you.

Joaquin Miller.

Kathleen gave up all hope of ever hearing from her Southern relatives.

"They do not care for me, and I must not expect anything of them," she sighed, and the thought came to her that now she had been at Mrs. Stone's six weeks, and grown well and strong again, she must seek a situation as a teacher and support herself.

"I suppose I could teach little children, and I must try to find some place. It is unfair to my kind friend for me to remain here longer," she sighed, and stole softly down to the library for a morning paper to consult the advertisements.

As the girl glided softly across the floor a low murmur of voices reached her through the falling curtains from the adjoining parlor.

The girl gave a violent start, and sunk tremblingly into the nearest chair.

She was pale as death, and her heart beat violently against her side.

What was it? What had startled the young girl so much?

The sound of a voice had pierced her heart like a sword-thrust.

It was Ralph Chainey's voice, so deep, so sweet, so mellow, that, once heard, it could never be forgotten, especially by one who loved him so despairingly as did our poor Kathleen.

He was speaking to Mrs. Stone, and for one wild moment Kathleen believed that he had traced her here, that he had come to inquire for her. Surely then he could not be guilty, or conscience would have kept him away.

She strained her ears to catch every tone of that deep, sweet voice, and then she heard him speaking to Mrs. Stone of her literary work. He had been so struck with the force of one of her books that he wanted her to dramatize it for him, or write him a new play.

All unaware of Kathleen's nearness to him, the young actor had come here to this house, seemingly led by the subtle hand of Fate.

Kathleen glided to the falling curtains, and, drawing one ever so lightly apart, gazed with eager, yearning eyes into the room.

Her hungry eyes feasted on the sight of her false lover as he sat in full view, opposite Mrs. Stone, in a large velvet arm-chair.

Never, it seemed to bonny Kathleen, had she seen him look so grandly handsome, not even in his spirited impersonation of Prince Karl, in which he had so thrilled her girlish heart.

But Ralph Chainey was pale, and in his splendid, thoughtful brown eyes lay the haunting shadow of a cruel pain. He was tortured by his failure to find lost Kathleen.

But the conventional smile that played over his handsome face as he talked to the gifted woman before him deceived Kathleen. It seemed to her that he was well and happy, that he had forgotten that she ever lived—the girl he had pretended to love so dearly.

"I have the plot of a new story upstairs in my study, and I believe it is just the thing you want, Mr. Chainey," said Mrs. Stone, vivaciously. She rose, and added: "I will go and get it, but if I am some little time away, please go into the library, and amuse yourself with a book. I must confess that I am very careless, and often misplace my manuscripts."

Mrs. Stone vanished through the door, and Ralph Chainey, who was so unhappy that he dreaded nothing so much as his own sad thoughts, immediately turned toward the library.

Kathleen gave a gasp of surprise and terror, and turned to fly.

She was too late. Even as her hand fell from the curtain Ralph Chainey swept it aside and entered. The strangely parted lovers were face to face.

For a moment the young man was only conscious that Mrs. Stone's library was occupied by a beautiful young girl.

But the moan that burst uncontrollably from Kathleen's white lips made him glance more closely at the young girl's face, and then he saw that it was his missing love.

A cry of joyful astonishment broke from him, and he sprung forward, crying, eagerly:

"Kathleen, my darling!"

His arms closed about her; he pressed her closely to his throbbing breast.

Kathleen's eyes closed, and her golden head sunk heavily on her lover's breast.

She had almost fainted with the shock of seeing him so suddenly, combined with the exquisite rapture and pain of his fond embrace.

But even while he showered kisses on her fair face and closed eyes, memory and reason began to assert themselves. She struggled faintly in his clasp, and he perceived that she was trying to free herself.

Instantly he opened his arms and allowed her to go free, for Ralph Chainey was one of the proudest of men, and would not force his caresses on any one.

But he said eagerly, although with a slight tone of reproach in his voice:

"Kathleen, my dearest, how came you here, and why was it that I found you gone that night when I returned to the station?"

The color flushed hotly into her pale face, but she stood apart, looking at him with burning eyes, and not uttering one word.

"Kathleen, why do you look at me so strangely?" exclaimed her lover, in reproachful wonder. "Has your heart changed toward me? Did you repent your promise to marry me that night, and run away, or did your enemies find you, as you feared they would? Tell me the truth, my darling."

But still she did not speak. In truth, she could not. There was a hysteric constriction in her throat that held it tight as with iron bands. She gazed with unwilling fascination into the large, pleading, brown eyes of her lover, her young heart throbbing wildly in her breast.

"Kathleen, what have I done that you will not even speak to me?" he asked, piteously, and all her heart thrilled at the words; her will was hardly strong enough to restrain her from springing into his arms. His glance, deep, reproachful, loving, and magnetic, all in one, held her like a charm:

"It shot down her soul's deep heaven
Like a meteor trailing fire."

A long, long, troubled sigh breathed over the girl's sweet lips, and with a great effort of her will she drooped her eyelids so that they could not encounter his gaze.

"For I dare not, or—I should risk everything for his dear love," she thought, wildly.

She mystified him so by her strange behavior that he forgot his pride, and again advanced toward her side.

"Kathleen, my love, my darling, speak to me, if only one word!" he cried, yearningly, passionately.

And finding her voice at last, she faltered to him, in a despairing tone:

"Did you ever—ever—know—a woman named—Fedora?"

"My God!" cried Ralph Chainey.

He flung up one hand to his brow and reeled backward from her side like one wounded to the death.

"So it is true?" Kathleen cried, in a hollow voice full of bitter anguish.

Ralph Chainey looked at her with sad eyes from which all the brightness had strangely faded.

"Who has told you?" he asked, in a dull voice.

"She told me herself," Kathleen answered, and shot him an indignant glance, pride coming to her rescue. There could no longer be any doubt of his guilt. His looks confessed it.

But he faltered in a dazed voice:

"That is impossible! She is dead!"

"You can not deceive me like that, Ralph Chainey!" cried Kathleen, in tempestuous anger. Her eyes flashed lightning on her recreant lover, and she continued, bitterly: "Your wife came to me that night in the station and told me all. She—she took me away."

"What was she like?" demanded the young man, hoarsely. He seemed dazed by sudden misery.

"She was a beautiful blonde with a haughty manner," answered Kathleen; and he groaned as if there could be no longer any hope.

"I have been duped, deceived! I believed that Fedora was dead long ago," he said, angrily. Then his voice grew softer. "Kathleen, will you let me explain it all?" he pleaded, humbly.

But in the heart of the beautiful, passionate young girl there had suddenly leaped into life the devouring flame of jealousy—jealousy and hate for the woman who had thrust her rival into the pit of a black despair. And he had deceived her. It seemed to her she must go mad with her wrongs. In this moment she hated her lover.

She turned on him with a tigerish glare in her splendid eyes.

"I will hear nothing!" she said, bitterly. "You will never have the chance to deceive me again!" and she rushed angrily from the room.

CHAPTER XXXIII.
RALPH CHAINEY'S ANGER

I can not break the cruel net,
And yet—
My eyes with scornful tears are wet—
Release me, teach me to forget.

Celia Thaxter.

Kathleen gained her own room, locked the door, and fell prostrate on the floor in a passion of blinding grief and jealous anger. Tears came to her relief, and rained down her cheeks in a tempest of emotion.

"Will he go away, or will he remain, tell Mrs. Stone my whole story, and beg her to plead his cause with me?" she asked herself, and hoped unconsciously that he would.

She did not know the young man's sturdy pride. He had waited for Mrs. Stone, transacted his business with her, and gone away without a word.

"She did not love me, or she would have let me explain it all, as I wished. She did not care to have the barrier between us swept away. So be it. Let her go. She is not worthy such love as I gave her," he thought, with scorn of the heart that could trample on such devotion:

"The spirit of eager youth
That named her queen of queens at once, and loved her in very truth;
That threw its pearl of pearls at her feet, and offered her, in a breath,
The costliest gift a man can give from his cradle to his death."

His brow clouded with a heavy frown as he thought of the woman who had turned the heart of his fair young love so cruelly against him.

"Does she really live? Have I been duped by a cunning lie—a trick to extort the price of a costly funeral? I almost believe it. Let me find out if it is true, and bitter shall be that fiend's punishment," he mused with almost savage intensity.

He had reached Boston only that morning, and he had promised Alpine Belmont, who had written to him almost every day since he left, that he would call upon her very soon. Wondering if she knew of Kathleen's presence in the city, he bent his steps toward Commonwealth Avenue.

Meanwhile, Mrs. Stone, full of elation at the compliments paid her by the gifted actor, and eager to share her pleasure with Kathleen, went upstairs and tapped softly on the door.

Kathleen opened it, and her friend started with surprise at seeing her face flushed and her eyes swollen with weeping.

"Do not mind me; it—it—is nothing," was all she would say in reply to Mrs. Stone's sympathetic inquiries; and at last the authoress plunged into her own affairs, telling Kathleen all about Ralph Chainey's visit, and his wish that she should write a play for him.

"He has taken away the plot of my new novel to read, and he will return in a few days to tell me how he likes it. If I succeed in pleasing him, I shall be famous!" she exclaimed.

"I hope that you will succeed," Kathleen said, earnestly.

"Have you ever seen Ralph Chainey act, my dear, and did you like him?"

"I have seen him, and I think he is a grand actor," the girl replied, quietly.

"How would you like to go and see him to-night? He plays 'A Parisian Romance.' I am sure he will be splendid in that, as he is in everything. We will take Teddy with us. What do you say, my dear?"

Kathleen hesitated, her heart throbbing wildly with the blended love and hate she now felt for the handsome lover who had so wickedly deceived and betrayed her girlish trust.

Then a sudden temptation came to her to stab his heart as cruelly as he had done hers. Why not go with Teddy, who loved her so dearly, and pretend to return his devotion?

"I should be delighted to go!" she said, unfalteringly to Mrs. Stone.

CHAPTER XXXIV.
ALPINE SOWS THE SEED OF JEALOUSY

They have told you some false story;
You believe them—all they say.
You are false, but I'll forgive you;
But forget I never may.

Song.

"You startle me! Kathleen really alive? Kathleen here, in the same city with us?" exclaimed Alpine Belmont, in genuine surprise.

Ralph Chainey had been telling her all about his visit to Mrs. Stone and his unexpected rencontre with his lost love.

"Some one has been slandering me to her, and she hates me now. She refused to have anything more to do with me," he ended, with a long sigh.

The beauty's lashes fell to hide her blue eyes' exultant gleam.

"Oh, how cruel of Kathleen!" she exclaimed. She sighed, and added, in a low, tender voice: "How could any one be cruel to you?"

He hardly noticed the purport of her speech, he was so absorbed in thought.

"You will go to her, Miss Belmont? You will bring her home?" he pleaded.

"But perhaps she will not come with me. Is it not a little strange that she did not come here at first, Mr. Chainey?"

"Yes, it is strange. There is something very mysterious about this affair. But go to her, Miss Belmont, and no doubt she will give you her confidence. Be her friend, if she needs one," pleaded the lover, forgetting his wrath against Kathleen in anxiety over her welfare.

"I will go to-morrow," promised Alpine, soothingly.

"And you will bring her home with you?"

"If she will come," answered Alpine. Then she gave a violent start, exclaiming: "Oh, I've just remembered something!"

"Well?" asked the young man, eagerly.

"Mrs. Stone is own cousin to Teddy Darrell, and he was Kathleen's lover last winter. Can there be any connection between her being there with Mrs. Stone—whom I'm certain she used not to know—and Teddy Darrell?"

The shaft went home. She saw him pale and tremble with jealous dread.

"I know Teddy Darrell," he said, trying to speak carelessly. "Did—did she ever care for him?"

"Yes, I believe so. There was a flirtation anyway, and we thought once it would be a match; but suddenly it all came to nothing. I don't know who was to blame, but I'm afraid it was Teddy. He's known to be fickle-minded and a wretched flirt."

How sweetly and artlessly she spoke; but every word was a sword-thrust in the hearer's heart. Wan and haggard with misery, he rose and began to pace the floor restlessly.

Alpine watched him under her down-drooped lashes, her breast heaving with its love and pain. Yet she knew that she was no more to him than a hundred other girls whose names he barely knew, save and except that she was Kathleen's step-sister. She "was not the rose, but she had lived near it."

It was cruelly hard, when she loved him so dearly. The temptation seized her to fall at his feet, to cry out to him that she could not live without him, that she was going mad for his dear love.

She recoiled with horror from the thought. No, no; he would despise her. Let her show him tenderness and sympathy, but not love. By and by he might turn to her when he became convinced that Kathleen was lost to him forever.

"And she is, she shall be!" vowed the girl; and after watching Ralph in silence for some moments, while he strode up and down, seemingly oblivious of her presence, she moved to his side, and slipping her hand timidly within his arm, murmured, softly:

"Do not worry over it, please, dear friend. Even if Kathleen is lost to you, there are hundreds of other girls as well worth the winning."

He did not answer; he was dumb with despair; but he suffered Alpine to cling to his arm and walk up and down by his side, murmuring low words of sympathy all the while.

"I shall scold Kathleen for her cruelty to you; you did not deserve it, for you were true to her," she said, and sighed. "Ah, how sad it is for one's love to prove false—false and fickle!"

He turned on her almost fiercely.

"You believe that she loves this Darrell?" he exclaimed.

"I believe she does," answered Alpine, with pretended reluctance, exulting in the pain she saw on his face.

It gave her a savage joy to wound him in his love for Kathleen. She longed to make him hate the hapless girl as bitterly as she herself hated her.

"I must go," he said, abruptly; then as she clung to his hand: "Do not forget your promise to go to her to-morrow. And—you will send me a note? I play here all this week."

"Yes, you shall hear from me. I shall see you again, too, for I'm coming every night to see you act," she answered, sweetly.

"Thank you," he replied, dropped her hand, and went away, never remembering how lovingly the blue eyes had looked into his, nor how tenderly she had spoken. It was Kathleen of whom he was thinking—his sweet, estranged love.

CHAPTER XXXV.
ALPINE'S FALSEHOOD

So dearly loved, so deeply false,
Ah, why should I regret thee?
'Twas fatal to my peace of mind
The hour when first I met thee!

MRS. A. McV. Miller.

When the curtain rose that night on Ralph Chainey in the beautiful play, "A Parisian Romance," there were seated in opposite boxes the beautiful rivals for the handsome actor's love—Alpine Belmont in one box with her haughty mother, and in the other Kathleen Carew, chaperoned by Mrs. Stone and with Teddy Darrell hanging adoringly over her chair.

Kathleen was all in white—a simple form of mourning—and white flowers, set off by their own green leaves, were her only adorning.

And Teddy Darrell? Well, the young swell "was gotten up regardless," as one of his friends remarked—"a golden youth" like himself. His evening dress was faultless, and his button-hole bouquet matched Kathleen's white flowers. His diamonds were magnificent, and his whole air was so hopeful and exuberant that when Ralph Chainey from the stage first caught sight of him his heart sunk with despair. He felt that "flirting Teddy" was a rival to be dreaded.

"Why need she have come to torture me with the sight of all I have lost?" he thought, despairingly; but he went on splendidly with his part in the play. A stubborn pride came to his aid. She should not see how he was suffering, this lovely, scornful girl leaning back in her chair to look up into the handsome face so close to her own as attentive Teddy wielded the white ostrich feather fan. She scarcely seemed to see what went on upon the stage; she did not look across into the box where her step-mother and Alpine were staring in angry surprise. She looked only at Teddy Darrell; she smiled only at him. It was such a pronounced flirtation that the crowded house observed it and smiled indulgently at the handsome pair, declaring that it would certainly be a match.

Whispers, too, were circulating among the people who had known Kathleen Carew in her life-time. Who was this girl with the face and smile of the dead heiress?—that luring face so subtly beautiful that no one had dreamed the world could hold a copy.

Curiosity moved a gentleman, when the curtain fell, to go and ask Mrs. Carew about it.

"I am as much amazed as you are," she replied.

"Then you can not tell me who she is," he said, regretfully.

"She is masquerading under the name of my dead step-daughter, and pretends to be resurrected from a trance, or something like that. We first heard about it yesterday," was Mrs. Carew's curt reply.

"Then you have not seen her until to-night?"

"No," nervously.

"Shall you acknowledge her, Mrs. Carew?"

"No. She is an impostor, and we will have nothing to do with the minx."

"Speak for yourself, mamma," said Alpine, pertly. "I'm not sure she's an impostor, for it is Kathleen's face and her very gestures. I am going over to Mrs. Stone's box and find out the truth for myself, if Mr. Layne will take me."

She rose, drawing the blue wrap about her white shoulders. Mrs. Carew stared aghast.

"You will not, you must not!" she exclaimed, angrily.

Alpine bent down and whispered rapidly in her ear:

"What does it matter? I have her money safe; she could not get it if she lived a thousand years, and I have my own plans. You must not interfere with them."

When Alpine took that tone, her mother knew that protest was useless.

"Do as you please," she muttered, angrily, and tossed her head as Alpine went out leaning on Mr. Layne's arm.

"What is the girl up to, I wonder?" she mused, uneasily. "She always had a sneaking fondness for Kathleen, and would be just silly enough to bring her home to live with us. She shall not do it, no matter what the world says. I always hated the girl for the look she has of her dead mother."

Mrs. Carew was jealous of the very memory of poor Zaidee, and could not bear the sight of her beautiful daughter. She writhed with anger when she saw Alpine embrace Kathleen.

"Kathleen, is it really you? Oh, you darling, let me kiss you!" she cried, effusively, and put her arms impulsively about the young girl.

Kathleen recoiled from her at first. She thought that Alpine knew all about her mother's cruelty; but as Alpine held her in that warm embrace, she exclaimed:

"Kathleen, why did you not come home to us?"

Kathleen released herself from Alpine, answering, bitterly:

"I came, but your mother denied me, and put me out into the street, unconscious, to perish in the snow."

"Impossible!" cried Alpine. But there came to her all in a rush the memory of that night when her mother had told her that a woman had come to see Ivan, and she had driven her away.

"She deceived me; it was Kathleen," she thought, and exclaimed, eagerly:

"My dearest girl, she did not tell me anything about it, but of course she believed you were an impostor. You believe me? you will let me be your friend, Kathleen?" anxiously.

"Come and see me at Mrs. Stone's to-morrow, Alpine," her step-sister answered; and then turned to the gentleman.

"How do you do, Mr. Layne? Will you, too, take me for an impostor?" she inquired, holding out her little hand to him.

"No, indeed, Miss Carew, for I am sure there can not be a copy of your beautiful face in all the world," he replied, gallantly. Being an elderly widower, he felt privileged to pay broad compliments.

Kathleen blushed and smiled, and the curtain rising at that moment showed Ralph Chainey that Alpine had seized the first opportunity to go and see Kathleen.

He was intensely pleased with Alpine's loyalty.

"She is a better girl than I used to think," he decided, and made up his mind to go to her box the first opportunity to thank her for her goodness.

He did not dream that Alpine was whispering at that moment little poisoned arrows into Kathleen's ear about himself, nor of the cruel pain that tore Kathleen's heart as she heard of her lover's liking for Alpine.

"When he came yesterday, he told me of your being at Mrs. Stone's. What a shock it was to know you were really living! But I must go back to mamma now, and to-morrow I'll come and see you, and hear all about your little romance," tearing herself away.

Just as she expected, Ralph hurried to her box as soon as the curtain fell.

"What did she say?" he whispered, eagerly; and Kathleen, who was watching them, felt her heart thrill with renewed bitterness as she saw the curly brown head bent low over Alpine's straw-gold one.

"He is doing it to pique me," she thought; but she could not turn her burning dark eyes away from the sight.

Alpine looked up smilingly into the pale, anxious face.

"She told me to come to-morrow and see her and hear her story; there was not time to-night," she replied.

He was disappointed; she read it in his speaking countenance, and added:

"She gave me one bit of news, but I am not sure that I ought to tell you."

"Please do so," he urged.

"It will pain you, I fear," sighed Alpine.

"I am strong enough to bear anything except—suspense," setting his teeth firmly.

Mrs. Carew was looking at them curiously:

"Mamma, will you please excuse us for whispering? I have something to tell Mr. Chainey—a secret."

"You are excusable," the lady replied, sourly, turning away her head.

Alpine whispered to Ralph: