Kitabı oku: «Little Golden's Daughter; or, The Dream of a Life Time», sayfa 12

CHAPTER XXXVII

Richard Leith went down to his office, and threw himself heavily into a chair, bowing his gray head dejectedly on his hands.

His brain was almost crazed with the agony of the last hour's discovery.

The sealed book of the past had been roughly torn open again, and in agony of soul he repented the selfish course he had pursued with the fair, young wife he had stolen from her home and friends.

Where was she now, his beautiful, golden-haired darling?

What fate had kept her from her home and friends, and from the little child that had come to such bitter grief in the absence of the mother-love that might have shielded her from harm?

He sprang from his chair, and paced impatiently up and down the floor, while he hurriedly settled his plans. He would leave for the south that night.

He would seek out John Glenalvan, and charge him with his sin.

He would force him to unfold the mystery of little Golden's disappearance. Perhaps, oh, God, the villain had murdered her.

If he had, he should suffer the dire punishment the law meted out for such wretched criminals.

"But before I go," he said to himself, grimly, "I will go and see Desmond. If he has lied to me heretofore, woe be unto him. The base betrayer of my poor child's innocence shall receive no mercy at my hands."

He threw on his hat and directed his steps to the hotel where Mr. Desmond was staying in preference to the grand, deserted dwelling, which was closed and left in the solitary care of the housekeeper during the absence of the family.

Mr. Desmond was smoking in his luxurious parlor, carelessly habited in dressing-gown and slippers.

His handsome, debonair face looked pale and worn, and melancholy. A hopeful gleam came into the listless eyes as his visitor was admitted.

"Ah, Leith, so glad to see you," he cried, throwing away his cigar, and eagerly advancing. "You bring me news—Edith has relented?"

"There is nothing more unlikely," Mr. Leith returned, with grim truthfulness; then he broke out with fiery impetuosity: "Desmond, for God's sake tell me the truth. Have you deceived me as well as your wife? Are you guilty of this monstrous sin?"

Mr. Desmond was startled by the almost agonizing entreaty of the lawyer's look and voice.

On the impulse of the moment he caught up a small Bible that lay upon a table close at hand, and pressed his lips upon it while he exclaimed in the deep, convincing tones of truth:

"Leith, I solemnly swear to you that I am innocent of the crime laid to my charge, so help me God."

Something in the man's deep earnestness, and in his look of suffering, staggered Richard Leith's doubts and fears, and made him feel that he had been a brute to doubt his daughter's agonized declarations of innocence. He exclaimed with sudden fervor and earnestness:

"Mr. Desmond, it is but fair to tell you that I have found the girl, Mary Smith, and that she exonerates you, too."

"I was sure she would, although she despises me," cried Mr. Desmond. "I admit that I behaved despicably to her. I tried to get up a flirtation with her, but she scorned me with the pride of a queen, and the affair went no further. I believed her as pure and cold as the snow. No one was more amazed than myself when I learned the truth through my wife's causeless jealousy."

"You say 'causeless jealousy,' Desmond," Mr. Leith remonstrated, gravely, "but you forget that ever since your marriage you have persistently wounded your loving and sensitive wife by the most open and flagrant flirtations, thus giving her the greatest cause to doubt your fidelity."

Mr. Desmond looked thoroughly ashamed and penitent at the perfectly truthful charge.

"You speak the truth, I have behaved shamefully," he replied. "But I have had my lesson now. I never knew how much I loved and honored my sweet and beautiful wife until in her righteous wrath she deserted me. But if she will believe me this time and return to me, I will never offend her again by my foolish propensities. I will never even look at another woman. I am quite cured of flirting."

He spoke so soberly and earnestly that Mr. Leith was fain to believe him, but he answered gravely:

"Your wife is so thoroughly incensed against you, that she will never believe even your sworn word without additional proof."

"But how can I prove it to her?" cried the anxious husband. "She would not believe Mary Smith's denial, and she refuses to credit mine."

"There is only one way out of the trouble," the lawyer said, gravely.

"And that?" Mr. Desmond asked, anxiously.

"Is to find out the man who is really in fault, and obtain his sworn statement," Richard Leith replied.

"The girl will give us the necessary information, of course," Mr. Desmond exclaimed, his spirits rising.

"On the contrary, she obstinately refuses to do so. She makes a most perplexing mystery of her unhappy situation."

Mr. Desmond looked uneasy and perplexed a moment, then he exclaimed, confidently:

"It is only a question of blackmail then. She will tell the truth if a golden bribe is offered her. Depend upon it, she is only waiting for that."

"You are mistaken," Richard Leith returned, gravely. "You do not understand her motives. I will tell you a harrowing secret, Desmond. I have discovered that that unfortunate girl is my own daughter!"

In a few eloquent words he told Mr. Desmond the story of his strange marriage, and its tragic denouement—the lost wife, the ruined daughter.

In his own despair and agitation, it did not seem strange to the lawyer that his excitement was reflected on the face of his listener, but when he had finished his story, Desmond sprang wildly to his feet, exclaiming:

"Good God, Leith, I can lay my hand on the destroyer of your child. It is my wife's brother—it is Bertram Chesleigh!"

"Heaven, how blind I have been!" Richard Leith exclaimed, with lurid eyes, and a deathly-pale face.

CHAPTER XXXVIII

There was a moment's silence, then Mr. Leith said, huskily:

"Tell me how this fact came to your knowledge, Desmond."

"Do you remember the sudden trip my wife and I took to Florida last summer?"

"Yes, I heard of it," the lawyer replied.

"I will go back a few months previous to that trip." Mr. Desmond said.

"It was this winter a year previous that Bertram Chesleigh made the acquaintance of young Frederick Glenalvan in New York and was invited by him to visit his far-away Floridian home.

"About the first of last June Bert accepted the invitation, and spent about two weeks at Glenalvan Hall.

"He wrote to my wife from there, hinting vaguely at having lost his heart to a perfect 'pearl of beauty.'

"Edith, who is excessively proud, and mortally afraid of a mesalliance, replied to him coolly, discountenancing the idea and begging him not to marry out of his own state.

"Between you and me, Leith, I believe she had a great heiress booked for the young fellow in New York."

He paused for breath, but at Richard Leith's look of impatience, went on hastily:

"Bertram did not reply to his sister's letter, but in the latter part of the same month Fred Glenalvan wrote us that Bertram was lying ill with brain fever.

"We went to him at once and found him not expected to live, He was delirious, and through all his illness he called incessantly on one name. Morning, noon and night it was always, 'Golden, Golden, Golden.'"

A groan forced itself through Richard Leith's rigid lips, but he did not speak, and Mr. Desmond continued:

"That cry for Golden was always coupled with a wild appeal for forgiveness for some wrong, the nature of which we could not determine.

"My curiosity and that of my wife were powerfully excited, and we wondered who the Golden was that he called upon, and why she never came.

"It was quite evident that the Glenalvans did not care to divulge the secret, so we never presumed to ask, but when Bertram grew convalescent Edith inquired of him, and he told her the truth."

"Let me hear it," said Richard Leith, gaspingly, while the knotted veins stood out like cords on his forehead.

"It was the same story your daughter told you—that of a fair young girl kept aloof from her kind, slighted and scorned for no visible fault."

"Bertram met and loved her. They had some secret meetings by night in one of which they were discovered, and in the scene that followed, the fact was disclosed that the girl was illegitimate."

"Oh, my weakness, my sin!" groaned the wretched listener. "Curses upon John Glenalvan for his horrible villainy."

"Bertram declared that he had only entertained the most honorable feelings toward the girl," said Mr. Desmond, "but he confessed that the knowledge of her parentage so staggered him that he was induced to forsake her. He left Glenalvan Hall before daylight without seeing her again."

"The cowardly cur!" Richard Leith exclaimed, clenching his hands until the purple nails sunk into the quivering flesh.

"Hear me out," said Mr. Desmond, quickly, "before you judge him too hardly."

"I am listening," answered Richard Leith, trying to master his surging passions beneath an appearance of calmness. "I am listening, but what more can there be to say, Mr. Desmond?"

"This, Mr. Leith: Bertram went away, determined to forsake the hapless girl, but his love and remorse, and the overpowering cause of shame, urged his return so powerfully that in three days he returned to Glenalvan Hall with the full intention of marrying the girl at once, and taking her abroad with him where no one knew her unfortunate story.

"When he reached there she was gone—none knew whither. John Glenalvan told him that she had gone away with the boldly-avowed intention of leading a life of sin with her mother. Poor Bertram had suffered so much that he could not bear that crowning blow. He staggered and fell like a log at the villain's feet. A brain fever followed that nearly cost him his life."

"One more score is added to my terrible list against John Glenalvan," Richard Leith muttered darkly.

"I have no more to say," continued Mr. Desmond, "except that all the circumstances point unerringly at Bertram Chesleigh as the man who wronged your daughter."

"You are right," groaned the unhappy father. "Oh, God, if only she had remained at Glenalvan Hall that he might have made reparation for his sin!"

"Did not Bertram write to you in relation to the unfortunate affair? He mentioned an intention to do so," said Mr. Desmond.

"Only a letter so cautiously worded that I could gain no clew to the real truth," replied Richard Leith. "No names were mentioned. He only described the girl who was supposed to have entered some one of the many nameless houses in this city. He wished me to reclaim her, if possible, provide her a home, and he agreed to make her a generous allowance."

"Poor Bert," said Mr. Desmond, "and all the while she was in his sister's employ, and in reach of his hand, if he had only known it."

There was a moment's heavy silence; then Richard Leith rose hastily.

"I must go home now," he said. "I—may God forgive me—I was so maddened by my child's wrongs and my own suspicions that I refused to own her; I drove her away from her rightful home. Pray God that she be not gone. If she has, I must bring her back and tell her that I know her whole sad story, and I must make the best I can of her poor, blighted life."

"Shall you write to Bertram Chesleigh?" inquired Desmond.

"Yes, for they must know that they have wronged you, and that you are innocent," replied the lawyer. "And, Desmond, you must write to your wife. I will inclose your letter with mine, otherwise, in her pride and anger, she might return it unopened. I thank God that your fidelity is vindicated, and that your reunion is now insured."

"I have a better plan than writing to her," said Desmond, blushing like a school-girl. "I will follow your letter to her brother, and plead my cause in person. I cannot wait, Leith; I am too impatient. I long to meet my wife and child again. You will give me their address? The Europa sails to-night. I must go with her."

Mr. Leith saw no objection to the plan. He was sorry for the impatient husband who had received a lesson that would last a life-time.

He gave him his wife's address in Italy, with his cordial good wishes and went away to seek his wronged, unhappy daughter.

"She cannot have gone yet. She was to weak and ill to have gone to-day. She would have waited until she was better," he kept whispering to his reproachful heart as he hurried along.

Then he thought of the beautiful, fashionable woman who had taken the place of little Golden's mother, and worn her name for twelve long years.

"Poor Gertrude," he murmured sadly. "I wonder how she bears it. Perhaps she will not grieve much. She does not love me as she did when I first made her my wife. Perhaps I am to blame. I have chilled her tender nature by my carelessness or coldness, for I have never loved her as I did my lost little Golden."

He hurried up the marble steps and ran impatiently along the hall, stumbling against the housekeeper, who was pacing sedately along with a little basket of keys.

As he was rushing past her she stopped and called to him.

"Mistress and her maid are gone away, sir."

"Where?" he inquired, pausing and looking back in bewildered surprise.

"I cannot tell you, for I do not know," the woman replied, respectfully. "But she bade me say that she left a letter for you on her dressing-table."

He ran up to Mrs. Leith's dressing-room, and found it in some slight disorder, as if traveling bags had been hurriedly packed.

Amid the dainty litter of the dressing-table he saw a square envelope addressed to himself, and hurriedly tore it open.

His gaze ran over the few pathetic words daintily penciled on the perfumed, satiny sheet.

"Richard," she wrote. "I have gone away from you. I have long felt that I had but a small share in your heart, and now I know that I have, perhaps, no right to your name, and no place in your home. So it is best that I should leave you. I have taken little Golden with me. There is one thing, at least, that I can do. I can be a mother to the child whose father has disowned her, and whose mother is so tragically lost.

"You were wrong, Richard. The child has been wronged, but I believe that she is innocent. I have loved you more than you knew; perhaps more than you cared, and for your sake I will care for your forlorn child. You will not seek for us. We are companions in misery, and you will respect our grief. I cannot tell you where we shall go. But if you find little Golden's mother I shall know it, and the mother shall have her child."

With the simple name, "Gertrude," the letter ended; Richard Leith reread it slowly, filled with a great surprise and wonder.

"She will care for the child I treated so heartlessly," he murmured. "God bless her. I did not know that Gertrude could be so true and noble. I have wronged her indeed, and she has worn the mask of carelessness and frivolity over a wounded heart. Oh, God, if I only knew where to find them."

He almost cursed himself for his cruelty to his wronged and miserable daughter.

He remembered how young she was, and how ignorant of the world when Bertram Chesleigh had won her heart. Perhaps she was not to blame. His wrath waxed hot against the man who had betrayed her guileless innocence.

He went down and asked the housekeeper if Mrs. Leith had gone away in the carriage, and she answered that the lady had walked, and the maid had accompanied her.

"I cannot go south until I have found them," he said to himself, sadly. "Poor little Golden, poor Gertrude."

Before the next day he had visited every depot and every wharf by which they might have left the city, but he had learned nothing. The next day after he inserted a personal in the Herald:

"To Gertrude:—Return with Golden. Her true story is known and she is freely forgiven. Anxiously,

R. L."

But the two for whom that yearning cry was written were fated never to behold it. And the dreary winter days came and went while he waited for tidings, filled with the heart-sickness of a great despair.

CHAPTER XXXIX

While the winter snow still whirled in blinding drifts through the streets of New York, the sun shone, the flowers bloomed, the birds sang around old Glenalvan Hall in far-away Florida.

Old Dinah crooned her quaint revival hymns in the sunny doorway of the kitchen, and her old master dozed in the bright, bay-window among the pots of fragrant flowers.

It was February, and hints of the nearing spring were in the air that sighed softly among the flowers, and lifted the thin, white locks from the brow of old Hugh, as his weary head lay resting on the back of his easy-chair.

Very thin, and sad, and mournful looked the old man as he sat in his easy-chair, with his lonely thoughts fixed ever on the past. He was old and weary. Life held no charm for him now.

One thought of the last lonely sheaf waiting for the reaper as he sat with his withered hands folded, and that look of patient grief on his thin, white, aged face.

"Oh, my lost little Golden," he murmured aloud: "She tarries long. The quest for her mother is a weary one. Oh, that God would give me back the mother and child, both innocent and pure as when I lost them."

A sudden shadow fell between him and the light. He looked up and saw a man standing before him, a man with a pale, worn, troubled face, and dark eyes that held the story of a tragedy in their somber depths.

"Pardon," he said, "I have ventured unannounced into your presence. My name is Richard Leith."

The old man stared at him with dim, unrecognizing eyes. That name conveyed no meaning to his mind. He had never heard it before.

"You are a stranger," he said.

"Yes," Richard Leith answered, and stood silent a moment.

How should he tell Hugh Glenalvan that he was the man who had stolen his daughter from him and desolated his life?

It was a hard task. His voice quivered and broke as he said:

"I am a stranger, but I am also your son-in-law."

"I have no son-in-law," the old man replied, gazing blankly at him.

"Your daughter was my wife," said Richard Leith.

"Little Golden?" said the old man, like one dazed.

"Yes," answered the lawyer. "I stole her from you sixteen years ago, and made her my darling wife. Oh, sir, can you ever forgive me the sorrow I have caused you?"

"A wife! She was a wife! Thank God for that," the old man murmured, with trembling delight. "And you have brought her back at last. Where is she, my darling little Golden?"

"Oh, God!" murmured the conscience-smitten man before him.

"Let me see her, my sweet child," cried Hugh Glenalvan, feebly rising. "It was cruel to keep the little one from me so long. Oh, Golden, Golden, come to me, my darling."

Richard Leith put him back with gentle hands into his chair. He knelt down at his feet and told him all his sorrowful story, throwing all the blame on himself, and pleading humbly for pardon from the father whom he had robbed of his darling.

"I loved her," he said. "She was dearer than my own life. I would have brought her back to you in time. I was only waiting for the fame and fortune that came to me soon. But treachery came between us. I lost her, and henceforth I have lived hand in hand with sorrow and despair."

The soft wind sighing past the window seemed to echo that heavy word "despair."

"At the door of John Glenalvan lies your sorrow and mine," continued Richard Leith, "I am come to call him to account."

"Who are you that dares arraign John Glenalvan?" exclaimed a harsh, blatant voice, as the speaker strode rudely into their presence.

Richard Leith sprang to his feet and confronted the intruder. His dark eyes blazed with wrath as he answered:

"I am Richard Leith, the husband of Golden Glenalvan, whom you falsely reported dead to gain some wicked end of your own. Liar, I have found you out in your sin! I demand my wronged wife at your hands."

John Glenalvan glared lividly at the daring man who thus boldly confronted him with his sin.

The blood retreated from his face and lips, and his eyes were wild and startled.

"Answer me," cried Richard Leith, advancing upon him. "Where is Golden, my wife?"

"You lie! She was never your wife," John Glenalvan retorted, furiously.

"Shame upon you, John, to malign the fair name of your sister," cried his father, indignantly. "Rather rejoice that she is proved innocent at last."

"Let him prove her so, if he can," cried the wretch, maliciously.

"I can do so. Here is the certificate of my marriage to Golden Glenalvan in New York sixteen years ago, replied Richard Leith, unfolding a yellowed paper and holding it open before the eyes of the father and son.

"Then she was really your wife," John said, with unwilling belief.

"Of course she was my wife. How dared you think evil of your own sister?" demanded the lawyer, scornfully.

"I do not answer to you for my thoughts, sir," replied John Glenalvan, angrily.

"But you must answer to me for the deed which has deprived me of my wife and child for fifteen years," cried Richard Leith. "John Glenalvan, where is my wife?"

"How should I know?" he retorted.

"It is too late to fence with me," answered Richard Leith. "You, and you alone, are at the bottom of my wife's mysterious disappearance. You have either shut her up in solitary confinement, or you have murdered her!"

"Murdered her! How dare you hint at such a thing?" John Glenalvan thundered, growing white with fear.

"I dare do more," cried the lawyer, driven to desperation. "If you do not tell me what has become of my wife I will have you arrested for her murder."

At these warning words John Glenalvan threw himself upon his accuser with the cry of an infuriated wild beast.

Richard Leith was weak and ill. He had risen from a sick-bed, on which wasting anxiety and grief had thrown him, when he came to Glenalvan Hall.

He went down like an infant before the strong fury of his opponent, and the old man's wailing cry pierced the air.

"John, hold your hand! For God's sake, do not murder the man!"