Kitabı oku: «Little Golden's Daughter; or, The Dream of a Life Time», sayfa 11

CHAPTER XXXIV

Mrs. Leith drew back her trailing silken skirts from contact with poor Golden's recumbent form as if there were contamination in her very touch.

"I have been terribly deceived," she said, "I had begun to like the girl very much. She suited me more than any maid I have had for a long while, and I thought her quite pure and respectable. Do the best you can for her, Mrs. Brown, for I shall send her away as soon as she is able to walk."

Heedless of Golden's large, blue eyes that unclosed and fixed themselves reproachfully upon her, she swept from the room and sought Mr. Leith, to whom she confided the housekeeper's discovery.

The grave-faced lawyer looked shocked and distressed, unaccountably so, the lady thought.

"I can scarcely credit it," he said. "She has such an innocent and child-like face."

"Such faces are sometimes deceiving," remarked the lady. "This instance proves the fact."

"What do you intend to do with the poor child!" Mr. Leith asked, with an unconscious sigh.

"I shall send her away, of course," Mrs. Leith replied, decidedly.

"Oh, cruel, unnatural mother!" said a faint, reproachful voice, behind her.

She turned with a start and saw that Golden had followed her.

The poor child stood trembling in the doorway, her dress in disorder, her beautiful hair broken loose from its fastenings, and streaming over her shoulders, her great, blue eyes blazing like stars in her lovely, pallid face, her sweet lips curled in scorn as she pointed her finger at Mrs. Leith, and exclaimed:

"Oh, cruel, unnatural mother! Is your life so pure that you can afford to sit in judgment on me?"

"Is the girl mad?" Mrs. Leith exclaimed, recoiling from her.

"No, I am not mad, although my wrongs have been bitter enough to madden any human being," Golden retorted, passionately. "I am not mad, although your terrible sin has ruined my life and broken my heart."

"My sin, mine!" retorted Mrs. Leith, in apparent bewilderment. "What do you mean, girl? I am nothing to you!"

"Nothing to me, oh, my God," moaned Golden, wringing her white hands. "Then you deny that you are my mother?"

"Your mother, girl, when I have never had a child in my life. Mr. Leith, do you not see that the wretched creature is raving mad?" cried the lady, retreating to his side apprehensively.

Golden turned her flashing blue eyes on the white, startled face of the man.

"She denies that she is my mother," she said. "Perhaps you will deny that you are my father."

She saw a quiver pass over the man's pale face.

"I do not understand your words," he replied, in a voice shaken with emotion. "Explain yourself."

"I am the child Golden Glenalvan deserted at Glenalvan Hall in its helpless infancy, that she might return to New York and lead a life of shame with you," she cried out bitterly.

Richard Leith's dark eyes turned on her face with a lurid gleam in their shadowed depths.

"Hold!" he cried. "Whoever you are, you shall not malign the memory of poor, little Golden. She was pure as the snow."

"Pure!" the girl repeated, blankly. "She was never your wife. They told me she lived with you in open shame."

A startling change came over the face of Richard Leith. There was a glare, like that of madness, in his eyes.

He fell backward into a chair, and the labored breath came from between his parted lips in strong, shuddering sighs.

Mrs. Leith flew to his side, and bent anxiously over him.

"Mr. Leith, what is it? What does all this mean? I am mystified," she cried.

His heavy, dark eyes full of sorrow and despair, lifted gloomily to her wondering face.

"It means," he replied, "that I have had a secret in my life, and that the time is come for you to know it. If this girl speaks truly she is indeed my daughter, though not yours."

"Not hers!" echoed Golden, in bewilderment, as she looked at the beautiful woman whom she had for long weeks believed to be her mother.

"Not hers," he replied, "for long before I met and married this lady, little Golden Glenalvan was dead."

A startled cry came from Golden's lips.

"Dead," she shuddered; "no, no; you are deceiving me."

"Not so, as God is my judge," he replied. "But sit down, child, and tell me all your story. Then we may be able to understand each other."

Golden glanced half-fearfully at Mrs. Leith, who stood leaning against her husband's chair, pale and silent, and anxious-looking. The lady quietly and gravely motioned her to a seat.

She thankfully obeyed the gesture, for she felt ill and weary, and the sudden shock of learning that her mother was dead, had been a terrible one to her, and had almost stricken her senseless again.

In low, pathetic tones, and with many tears, Golden told Richard Leith all that she knew of her mother, and as much as she could of her own lonely life, without revealing the tragic story of her unfortunate love.

He listened in silence, although she could see that he was terribly agitated.

His white brow was beaded with great drops of sweat, his eyes stared wildly, he bit his lips till the blood started to keep back the groans of pain.

When she had finished he went over to her, knelt at her feet, and gently kissed her cold, little hand.

"You are my daughter," he said, "and you are the living image of your mother. But until this moment, little Golden, I believed you dead. I wrote to John Glenalvan when my wife ran away from me, and asked him if she had returned to her father. He wrote back that she had done so, that she had given birth to a little daughter, and that the mother and child had both died. Then he added his curse, and threatened, if I ever came near Glenalvan Hall, to shoot me down like a dog."

His voice broke huskily a moment. Golden looked at him eagerly.

"You said your wife," she faltered. "Was my mother, then, legally married to you? Am I not a–" her voice broke huskily over the word, "a nameless child?"

"Your mother was my legal wife, little one. You are my own daughter, born in lawful wedlock. God only knows what crafty and wicked enemy of mine wrote that lying letter to my poor, young wife, telling her that I had deceived her by a mock marriage. She was too credulous, and believed the lie too easily. It was not true. I can give you every proof that your mother was my lawful wife, little Golden."

She fell on her knees, and with upraised hands and streaming eyes, thanked God for those precious words.

Her mother had been pure and noble. There was no shadow of stain on her daughter's birth.

Then, with a sudden, startling thought she confronted him, her white hands clasped in agony, her voice ringing wild and shrill:

"John Glenalvan told you that my mother died. He lied! She disappeared very suddenly the night after I was born, and that villain declared that she had deserted me and returned to her sinful life with you. She did not die, and she did not return to you. Oh, my God, where is she now?"

She saw that terrible question reflected on her father's face.

It whitened to the awful hue of death, and he reeled backward like a smitten man.

A faint cry came from Mrs. Leith, who had dropped heavily into a chair.

"Oh, Heaven, if she is yet living, what, then, am I?"

Richard Leith went to her side, and looked down at her white, scared face, pitifully.

"Gertrude," he said to her gently, "we have both been the victims of a terrible wrong. When I married you several years after the loss of my first wife, won by your beauty, which reminded me of my poor, little Golden's, I honestly believed that she was dead. There is some terrible mystery here, and John Glenalvan is at the bottom of it. But I will wring the truth from his false lips, and if my lost little Golden has come to harm at his hands, his life shall pay the penalty of his sin!"

CHAPTER XXXV

"Oh, father," cried little Golden. "Why did you lure my poor mother from her home. She was so young, so trusting. Why did you persuade her to desert her parents?"

The man's pale, handsome features quivered all over with vain remorse and penitence.

"You do well to reproach me, little Golden," he sighed. "There is no excuse for my sin. But I will tell you how I came to act so imprudently.

"I was a struggling young lawyer, poor and proud, when I first met your beautiful mother during a business trip to the south. Her family, though reduced to comparative poverty by the late war, were proud and aristocratic people, and I felt quite sure that they would have refused me the hand of their petted darling.

"I had heard so much of the pride of the southerners that I was afraid to ask the Glenalvans for their beautiful child. So I acted the part of a coward and stole her from them. The dear girl loved me well, and went with me willingly when I promised to take her back to them after we were married.

"I took her to New York, and made her my true and lawful wife, but so afraid was I of those haughty Glenalvans that I refused to allow her to write my name and address to her friends. I was waiting till I should have acquired a fame and fortune that would make me acceptable in their eyes. Oh, God, how terribly my sin has found me out after all these years."

He paused and wiped away the cold dew that beaded his high, white brow. After a moment he went on, sadly:

"I was fast gaining prominence and a competence in my profession, when some base enemy of mine—as a lawyer I had some of the blackest-hearted enemies that a man ever had—wrote my darling a letter, defaming me in scandalous terms, and averring that I had deceived her by a mock marriage.

"Poor child, she was very simple and credulous. She fell an easy victim to the liar's tale. She fled from me, leaving that cruel letter behind her, the only thing there was to hint at the reason of her hurried flight."

"Oh, if only you had followed her then," moaned beautiful Golden.

"If I only had!" he echoed. "My first impulse was to do so; but I had on hand a very important case, which I had staked everything on winning. If I managed it well my success was assured as one of the leading lawyers of the day. My speech for the defense was anticipated anxiously by many. So I suffered my ambition to overrule my first instinctive resolve to follow my wife, and instead I wrote to her brother. He sent me that lying letter that almost broke my heart."

He broke down and sobbed like a woman, or rather, unlike a woman, for those great, convulsive moans of agony that issued from his breast seemed as if they would rend his heart in twain.

Golden stole to his side and laid her small hand kindly on his gray head, that was bowed in sorrow and remorse.

"I am sorry for you, my father," she said. "You have been weak and imprudent, but not sinful, as I thought. But, oh, my poor mother! My heart is torn over her wretched fate. She must have perished miserably, or we should have heard from her ere now. Oh, father, what shall we do?"

They looked at each other with dim, miserable eyes, this strangely reunited father and daughter, the awful mystery of the wife and mother's fate chilled their hearts.

He took her hand and drew her gently nearer to him.

"My child, I shall go to Glenalvan Hall and confront John Glenalvan with his sin. I believe the whole key to the mystery lies in that villain's hands."

"I am almost sure of it," she replied. "He hated my mother, and he hated me. I will go with you. What joy it will be to stand up proudly before him and tell him that my birth was honest and honorable, and that my father is a good and true man, who is glad to see me, for you are glad, aren't you?" she asked him, pleadingly.

"Yes, dear, I am very glad. I have always longed to have a child of my own to love. It seemed as if my heart was always yearning for the daughter I believed to be dead. But Golden," he looked at her anxiously and pleadingly as he clasped her little hand, "you have a story of your own to tell me before we go on the quest for your mother. The great mystery of love has come to you already in your tender youth. Tell me, my daughter, are you a wife?"

The crimson color flushed into her cheeks, then receded, leaving her deathly pale again.

Tears rose into the great, blue eyes, and trembled on the long-fringed lashes.

Her lips parted and closed again without a sound.

"Tell me, Golden," he urged, anxiously; "are you a wife, or has some artful villain deceived you? If so–" he clenched his hand, and the lightnings of passion flashed from his somber, dark eyes.

A moan of pain came from the girl's white lips.

"Oh, father, I cannot tell you now," she sighed. "Only trust me. Do not believe me vile and wicked. Perhaps I may be able to tell you the truth some day."

As she spoke, some strange, new light flashed into his mind.

She saw the startled gleam flash into his eyes.

"Tell me," he cried out, hoarsely, "are you the girl that was dismissed from Mrs. Desmond's employ under the stigma of a disgraceful suspicion?"

She covered her face with her hands and faltered "yes," in a voice of agony.

"Was that terrible accusation true?" he demanded, in a voice so changed she could scarcely recognize it.

"No, never! It was false, I swear it before Heaven. My trouble came to me before I entered Mrs. Desmond's employ," she replied.

"Golden, you must tell me the name of the man who has wronged you," he said, sternly.

"I cannot," she answered, sorrowfully.

"You mean you will not," he said.

"I cannot. I am bound by a promise," she answered.

"It was a foolish promise. The time has come when you must break it," he answered, steadily. "You must clear yourself in Mrs. Desmond's eyes, and reconcile her to her husband. Do you know that they are separated on your account?"

"I heard you say so," she replied.

"It is true, and I am their lawyer. Will you let me write to Mrs. Desmond, and tell her the name of the man who is really in fault, and for whose sin she has deserted her innocent husband?"

"I cannot," she moaned again, in a voice of agony. "I am bound by a sacred promise. Bitter as the consequences are, I must keep it!"

It seemed incredible to him that this frail, slight girl should hold her secret so resolutely in the face of the trouble it had caused.

"But, Golden, think a moment," he began.

"I have thought until my brain is almost wild," she interrupted, pitifully. "But I can see no possible loophole out of my solemn vow of silence."

"You were wrong to take such a vow, Golden, and it is almost wicked for you to keep it. Do you see how much is at stake? Through your silence a man and his wife are divided in anger and shame, and a cloud of the blackest disgrace is lowering over your own head. Do you know that it is a fearful thing to come between husband and wife?"

"I feel its enormity in the very depths of my heart," she replied, shuddering and weeping.

"Then surely you will speak; you must speak," he urged.

But she only shook her head.

"Not if I command you to do so?" he asked.

"Not if you command me," she replied, with mournful firmness.

There was a moment's silence, and Richard Leith gazed upon the girl with a sick and shuddering heart.

A vague suspicion was beginning to steal into his mind.

What if Golden was deceiving him, and Mrs. Desmond's belief were true?

He reeled before the sickening horror of the thought. The dread suspicion seemed to float in fiery letters before his eyes.

He looked at the bowed figure of the sobbing girl, and steeled his heart against her. She was no child of his if she could let the shadow of suspicion tamely rest upon her head.

"Golden," he said, "think of what I must endure if you refuse to declare yourself. Would you have me acknowledge a child who has covered my honorable name with shame? Shall I take you by the hand and say to the world that honors me as a stainless man: 'This is my daughter. She has disgraced herself, and brought ruin and despair into another's home.'"

She shrank and trembled before the keen denunciation of his words. She threw herself at his feet and looked up with frightened, imploring eyes.

"Father, do not disown me," she cried. "I have not disgraced you—you will know the truth some day. Tell the whole world my piteous story. It may be—it may be that the telling will bring you joy, not sorrow. For," she said to her own heart, hopefully, "if Bertram Chesleigh should hear the truth, and know that I am not a nameless child, surely he will claim me then. He can no longer be ashamed of me."

She felt that the happiness of her whole future hung trembling in the balance on the chance of her father's recognition of her. If in his anger at her obstinacy he should repudiate her claim on him, nothing was left her but despair.

Richard Leith could be as hard as marble when he chose. His pride and his anger rose in arms now against the thought of receiving this branded girl as his own daughter.

"Golden," he said, "what if I say that I will not receive you as my daughter unless you consent to clear up this disgraceful mystery that surrounds you?"

"You will not tell me so—you could not be so cruel," she cried, fearfully.

"Only one word, Golden. The name of the man who has wronged you. Tell me, that I may punish him."

"You must not, for I love him," she moaned, despairingly.

"You force me to believe that Mrs. Desmond was right, and that you are a lost and guilty creature," he said scathingly.

A long, low wail came from her lips, then she bowed her head and remained silent.

"Do you still persist in this obstinate silence?" he asked.

"I must," she answered faintly.

"Go, then," he thundered at her, "you are no child of mine. I refuse you the shelter of my home, my name, and my heart. I cannot believe that you are the child of my innocent little Golden. Go, and never let me see your face again."

And with the cruel words he turned and left the room.

CHAPTER XXXVI

Little Golden stared at the closing door through which her father had vanished, with blank, terror-filled eyes. To have found him and lost him like this was too terrible.

She sat gazing before her like one dazed, with the angry words of her father still ringing in her ears, when a low and fluttering sigh recalled her to the fact of Mrs. Leith's presence which she had forgotten for the moment in her anguish of soul.

She looked around shrinkingly at the fair woman who had taken her mother's place, and her mother's name, dreading to meet a glance of scorn, even transcending that which her father had cast upon her.

Instead she met the beautiful, troubled eyes of her step-mother fixed upon her with tenderest pity.

Mrs. Leith had been vain, careless, and frivolous all her life. She had never known a care or sorrow in the whole course of her pleasant, prosperous existence.

The hard crust of selfishness and indifference had grown over the better impulses of a nature that at the core was true, and sweet, and womanly.

The last hour with its strange revelations had been the turning point in her life.

She realized with a shudder the dreadful position in which she was placed. She was married to a man who, in all probability, had a wife living.

It was possible that she herself was almost as much an outcast as the wretched girl who crouched weeping on the floor, homeless, friendless, and forsaken, in the hour of her direst need.

Never before had Mrs. Leith been brought face to face with a real sorrow. She gazed wonderingly upon poor little Golden, the course of whose checkered life had run as strangely as that of one of her favorite novel heroines.

So it happened that when Golden looked timidly up expecting to be immediately annihilated by her scornful glance, she met only the gentlest pity beaming from the large, blue eyes of the unhappy woman.

"Come to me, Golden," she said, and as the young girl advanced she asked her in a strangely saddened voice:

"Are you angry with me, child, that I have filled your mother's place and worn her name for twelve, long years?"

"No, I am not angry," Golden answered, gently. "It was through no fault of yours—you did not know."

"No, I did not know," Mrs. Leith murmured, putting her hands to her eyes while the tears fell through her fingers. "I did not know, and now it is too late."

"What shall you do now?" Golden asked her wonderingly.

"I shall go away," Mrs. Leith replied, sadly.

"Are you angry with my father?" asked the girl.

"No, Golden, he sinned ignorantly," replied Mrs. Leith. "Therefore I cannot blame him. But I must go away from him, and never see him again until he learns the truth whether or not his first wife was living when he married me."

Then there was a brief silence. The two women, so lately mistress and maid—now placed upon the same level by the equalizing hand of sorrow, sat still a little while looking out upon the unknown future with dreary, hopeless eyes. Then Mrs. Leith roused herself with an effort.

"And you, Golden—where will you go? What will you do?" she asked.

"God knows," the girl exclaimed, hopelessly. "I am so stunned by the revelations of to-day that I know not where to turn. For weary months the dream of finding and reclaiming my guilty mother has filled and occupied my thoughts. Now that I know her innocent and pure, the terrible mystery of her fate chills the blood in my veins. Where shall I look for her? How shall I find her?"

Mrs. Leith looked at her compassionately.

"Poor child!" she said. "You are too ill and weary to seek for anyone now. Leave that sorrowful quest to your father, and place yourself in my care."

The tears brimmed over in Golden's beautiful eyes at the kindly spoken words of her step-mother.

"Oh, madam," she cried, "you offer to befriend me. Then you do not believe that I am the lost and guilty creature they would fain make me out."

Mrs. Leith's beautiful face beamed with sympathy as she answered:

"No, Golden, I do not believe you are a sinner. I have a strong conviction that you are a deserted or discarded wife, and I will care for you in your forlorn situation with the tenderness of your own mother."