Kitabı oku: «The Senator's Favorite»
CHAPTER I.
"A ROSEBUD SET WITH LITTLE WILLFUL THORNS."
"We were two daughters of one race;
She was the fairest in the face;
The wind is sighing in turret and tree.
I hated her with the hate of hell,
Therefore revenge became me well.
Oh, but she was fair to see!"—Tennyson.
"Mamma, darling, you'll take me to the Inauguration Ball, that's a love."
"Oh, my baby, what an absurd idea! And you only sixteen!"
"I'm as tall as you, mamma, and I only look small because my dresses are too short. I wish you would let out the tucks to hide my ankles—there now!"
"But, Precious, you have the prettiest feet and ankles in the world."
"I don't care; I want my dresses long, and my hair put up. I'm tired of being only a schoolgirl! Everybody in Washington will be at the Inauguration Ball. I want to go, too, and shake hands with the new president."
"Nonsense, dear; the next Inauguration Ball will be time enough for you."
"Four years! Why, then I shall be twen-ty. Quite an old maid, mamma, dear, with crows' feet and wrinkles."
Mrs. Winans, the handsome wife of a noted Southern Senator, threw back her graceful golden head, and laughed softly:
"Oh, what a ridiculous child!"
But her dark-blue eyes lingered tenderly on the lovely upturned face, for Precious was on an ottoman at her mother's feet.
Mrs. Winans was the mother of three children—a son and two daughters. Precious was the youngest—"the baby," they called her—and, like all babies, she was spoiled, and liked to have her own way, always wheedling her parents until she got whatever she wanted.
"Dear mamma, you will let me go," she cried teasingly.
"Go where?" exclaimed a musical voice, as a tall, dark, regal beauty entered the library. "Go where?" she repeated. "And what is the baby teasing for now, mamma?"
Precious Winans lifted her golden head from her mother's knee, and turning her pansy-blue eyes on her queenly sister replied, with the air of a little princess:
"Ethel, I've made up my mind to go to the Inauguration Ball."
"The ball, indeed?" and Ethel shook with laughter in which her mother joined.
Ere the echo of their mirth died away a tall, dark, handsome man entered the room—their father, from whom the elder girl inherited her dusky beauty, while the younger was the image of her lovely blond mother.
"What is the joke about?" he asked genially, and his wife replied:
"Precious has a new notion in her silly little noddle. She wants to attend the Inauguration Ball."
"The idea!" laughed Ethel, gently sarcastic.
But Precious had fled to her father, and was hanging on his neck. As he clasped the lissome form to his heart he asked earnestly:
"Why not?"
"Yes, why not?" echoed his pretty pet.
"But, papa, she is too young," cried Ethel, almost angrily.
"Don't listen to her, papa. She doesn't want me to have one bit of fun. But I will go to the ball, for you will say yes, won't you, my darling old love?" and she stroked his rippling black whiskers with her dainty mite of a hand, and gazed into his eyes with innocent confidence.
He hugged the little pleader tight, and looked over the top of her golden head at his wife.
"What say you, Grace, my dear? Isn't she big enough to go to the ball?"
"I'm as tall as mamma. You needn't laugh, Ethel," cried Precious, and waited eagerly for her mother's reply.
The gentle lady said sweetly:
"I'm sorry to disappoint my dear little girl, but she is too young to go into society yet, and she would have to make her début as a young lady before she went to a grand ball."
"I don't care if I'm not a young lady, mamma; I'm determined to go to the ball," cried Precious, with hysterical symptoms, and Mrs. Winans sighed gently.
"Indeed, my darling girl, I'm sorry to refuse you, but—" she began, and paused in dismay, for a sound of petulant weeping filled the room. Precious lay in her father's arms transformed into a Niobe.
"Oh, Precious, pray don't be such a baby," implored Ethel impatiently, but the sobbing only grew louder, and between whiles came the pathetic plaint:
"Nobody cares for me."
Those tears and sobs melted the father's doting heart. He cried out pleadingly.
"Poor little love, her heart is almost broken. Do let her go, mamma."
"Papa is the only friend I have in the world!" wailed the diplomatic little darling, and he pressed her closer to his throbbing heart.
"Ah, Gracie, how can you refuse?" he exclaimed, but Ethel cried out pettishly:
"Papa, you have spoiled Precious until she is a perfect baby, and if she cried for the moon I believe you'd try to have a ladder built up to it. You always find it easy enough to refuse me when I ask imprudent things, and I don't think you ought to take sides against mamma in this. Let Precious wait a few years before she comes out."
But dismal sobs were the only answer to this plea, and Precious wept, persuasively:
"Oh, papa, darling papa, do say that I may go, for mamma will do anything you wish."
The senator's pleading dark eyes met the anxious blue ones of his wife, and he said eagerly:
"Dearest, she wants to go so very, very much, and it will break her sweet little heart if you refuse. Besides, this is different from a regular ball, for thousands and thousands of people attend the Inauguration Ball just to see the new president. There will be a great crush as usual, and you will bring the girls home very soon, I know. So for this one time I think we may humor our baby's curiosity. Now dry your eyes, my pet."
"Oh, you darling! you darling!" cried Precious ecstatically, and lifted her face, all lovely and damp like a rain-washed rose. She embraced him rapturously, then flew to her mother.
"Mamma, you shall never repent this, for I'll be as good as gold hereafter."
Ethel had turned away and left the room with a frowning brow and darkly flashing eyes.
"He loves her best," she murmured bitterly. "He would never have yielded like that to my entreaties for anything against dear mamma's wish. Ah, why is it so? Am I not beautiful and good, and his elder daughter? Why should Precious be always first in my noble father's heart?"
That jealous heart-cry strikes the keynote of our story, dear reader, for had the senator not loved Precious best, this story of Ethel's temptation and her sister's suffering would never have been written.
Ethel Winans was bitterly unhappy.
Unhappy? and why?
Externally she had everything to make her blessed.
Young, beautiful, healthy, the fortunate daughter of a rich and distinguished statesman, this girl had
"But lain in the lilies
And fed on the roses of life."
But Milton has aptly written:
"The mind is its own place, and in itself
Can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven."
Ethel Winans' life stream had been poisoned at its very source by a baleful jealousy.
Those who knew her gifted father best were aware that his early married life had been embittered by the faults of a passionately jealous nature intent on supremacy in everything. This elder daughter had inherited his beauty and his temperament. Every parental influence was working against her happiness.
She went with a weary, listless step to her own apartments, and fell heavily upon a silken divan. Her red lips were trembling, and tears began to rain from her beautiful eyes.
"Why was I ever born?" she cried angrily. "No one cares for poor Ethel! Mamma, in spite of her denials, loves my brother Earle the best, and papa worships Precious. If I were dead they would scarcely miss me."
She began to pace up and down the luxurious room, her rich crimson silk gown trailing soundlessly over the thick velvet carpet, her loosened tresses pouring in a dusky torrent below her waist, her lovely jeweled hands writhing together in agony.
"How I love him, my noble, handsome father!" she cried. "But ever since Precious was born, before I was three years old, she has supplanted me in everything. I can remember it all although I was so young. She pushed me from my mother's breast, she crowded me from my father's heart. I was no longer the petted baby. I must give way to Little Blue Eyes, as they call her, and from the first I hated my rival. When I was little I used to strike her, until my mother's gentle teachings made me ashamed, and then I tried to love my little sister for mamma's sake. I do love her. God knows I love her, for who could help it, she is so sweet and lovely? Yet there are times—horrible times—when Satan seems to possess my soul, and I give way to something that is awful—to jealous hate and fury—and then, oh, then, I wish that Precious were dead, or that I had never been born. Once I confessed all to mamma, and she shuddered and wept at my wickedness. But she clasped me in her tender arms, and told me that she loved me—oh, very, very much and that she would pray for me daily! Dear mamma! she is an angel, and I am a wicked, rebellious girl, and frighten every one with my fits of temper and imperious ways. And I forget to pray for myself as mamma bade me do, and when I forget, the Evil One gets possession of my weak soul."
She fell on her knees, she lifted her streaming dark eyes heavenward.
"Oh, Heaven help me, make me a better girl, keep me from hating my dear little sister, and save me from my own evil nature!" she prayed, with desperate fervor.
CHAPTER II.
"LOVE TOOK UP THE GLASS OF TIME."
"Sister, since I met thee last,
O'er thy brow a change has passed.
In the softness of thine eyes
Deep and still a shadow lies.
From thy voice there thrills a tone
Never to thy childhood known;
Through thy soul a storm has moved;
Gentle sister, thou hast loved!"—Hemans.
It was the fourth day of March, and Washington was full of strangers drawn thither to witness the Inauguration ceremonies attendant upon the new president taking the oath of office as ruler of the nation.
But nature had frowned on everything that day, and from early dawn till midnight her tears poured in torrents upon the vast throngs that surged ceaselessly through the magnificent broad avenues of the beautiful city. The wind raged wildly, and the rain fell in sheets, as though
"The heart of heaven were breaking
In tears o'er the fallen earth."
Along the route of the procession, from the White House to the Capitol, Pennsylvania avenue was packed with a dense mass of people, upon whose forest of umbrellas the magnificent decorations of flags and bunting overhead dripped red and blue ink as they hung forlornly over the scene. The windows of the houses were filled with curious faces and the grand stands erected here and there for the sightseers were occupied, too, in spite of the weather, for no one seemed to have stayed indoors for fear of the elements. Hundreds of thousands of people seemed to be packed upon the pavements, jostling each other with their umbrellas, and patronizing the busy fakirs who peddled presidential badges and photographs, while ever and anon rose the plaintive call of the diligent vender of Philadelphia cough drops. Altogether the day was dismal in the extreme. The drenched people looked ridiculous, and the glory of the procession was considerably dampened from the same cause.
But the day with its stormy skies, its surging throngs, and fitful enthusiasm was over now. The new president was installed in the White House, the old president was deposed. "Le roi est mort! Vive le roi!"
Still Nature wept tumultuously, for with nightfall the storm increased in violence. Black, portentous clouds scurried over the face of the sky, and sheets of icy cold rain poured upon the earth.
But all this downpour did not check the ardor of the tens of thousands of people who flocked to the Inauguration Ball in the immense new Pension building. The avenues were thronged with carriages, and they literally blocked the square around the building, while within all was like fairy-land with splendid decorations, brilliant lights, black coats of civilians, gay uniforms of soldiers, brilliant costumes of foreign legations, and lovely women whose magnificent jewels radiated fire, while over all rose the swell of music. The new president was there with his family, and willful Precious Winans had duly made his acquaintance, the honor she had so much coveted.
And beautiful, passionate Ethel, with her flashing eyes and her proud smile?
Since we first met her several weeks ago a change has come over this reckless spirit.
The passion of love has thrown its golden glamour over her heart.
At a brilliant entertainment ten days ago she had met a stranger, an Englishman of rank and wealth, who was just now being lionized by American society.
Lord Chester was young, handsome, fascinating, and caused many a flutter in feminine hearts, but he soon singled out the brilliant belle, Miss Winans, as the bright particular star of his worship, and it was soon suspected that the girl, whose conquests had been legion in her two successful seasons, had been touched at last by Cupid's arrows. Society began to prophesy a match.
Ethel was radiant in the bliss of this dawning passion.
She foresaw, in a worshiping love and a brilliant marriage, an escape from the life that her jealous nature made at times unendurable.
"As Lady Chester I should leave my father's house, where Precious has supplanted me in all my rights. In my grand English home I should reign queen of my husband's heart, and in time the wounds of slighted love in my father's home might heal and be forgotten," she thought gladly, and there was triumph in the anticipation of this brilliant match, for she did not believe Precious could ever win a title, in spite of her charms.
"She is lovely, but she is not queenly, as I am. She would not grace a title," she thought proudly.
At the ball that night she wore Lord Chester's flowers, and he hung over her devotedly, but he had not yet seen Precious. Her mother kept her resolutely in the background. The senator's entreaties had forced her to bring her younger daughter, but she was determined that the girl's presence should not be known any more than could be helped. She wanted to keep this lovely pearl secluded from society as long as she could.
So, withdrawn into a flowery alcove with Precious, she scarcely mingled at all with the surging mass of people whose vast numbers made dancing quite an impossibility. The senator remained with them part of the time, but was often called off by friends, and sometimes left them to mingle with the crowd.
Precious, a perfect picture of beauty in a white Empire silk gown, with her golden curls all loose over her shoulders, remained demurely by her mother's side, the radiant light in her blue eyes and the flush on her cheeks showing how much she enjoyed the brilliant scene.
Suddenly a very distinguished looking man, white-haired, and in the uniform of some foreign service, with glittering orders on his breast, caught sight of Mrs. Winans in her secluded alcove, and hastened to speak to the beautiful lady.
Precious did not care about the old gentleman. She moved back, and looked another way to escape an introduction.
"Ah, Baron Nugent," cried the lady and for ten minutes he lingered beside her, then moved on.
"Precious," she cried, looking around, but there was no answer. Precious had disappeared.
"She is hiding, to tease me," smiled Mrs. Winans, and began to search for her daughter with a smile on her lips.
But Precious was nowhere to be seen, and she presently grew quite alarmed.
"She will be lost in this dense crowd. It was very thoughtless in her to leave my side. I must find her father and send him to search for her," cried the frightened mother.
But for some time she could not see her husband, or any one else that she knew.
Suddenly she came upon Ethel and Lord Chester sitting close to a vine-wreathed pillar, seemingly absorbed in each other. The handsome young nobleman was leaning over Ethel with an air of devotion that seemed only the due of her dark and sparkling beauty.
Mrs. Winans gave a little suppressed sob of joy at finding some one that she knew. She went up to the lovers, and cried tremulously:
"Oh, Ethel, have you seen Precious? She is lost!"
Ethel looked up with a frown at the interruption of her charming conversation, and answered coldly:
"No, mamma; I thought she was with you."
"She was, but a little while ago Baron Nugent stopped to speak to me, and when I looked around again Precious had disappeared as completely as if she had sunk through the floor. She must have strayed into the crowd, the thoughtless child, and got lost. Oh, if I could find her father and send him to look for her!"
"I will be very glad to bring him to you, madam," exclaimed Lord Chester, courteously and he hurried away to seek the senator.
Ethel pouted angrily.
"If you had only stayed where you were, mamma, Precious would have come back to you directly. You are making a great fuss over nothing," she declared, and Mrs. Winans trembled at the jealous flash in the large dark eyes.
"My dear, I am very sorry I interrupted you," she said, in her low, gentle voice. "But I was so alarmed over Precious I did not think. Forgive me."
"There is nothing to forgive, but it is just like Precious, raising an excitement, and spoiling every one's pleasure. She should never have come," Ethel replied ungraciously.
At that moment Lord Chester came hurrying back with Senator Winans in tow.
"Oh, Paul, I have lost Precious," his wife cried with a choking sob.
"No, dear, we will find her presently, I'm sure," he said cheerfully, but with an anxious light in his eyes. Then he explained that while she was talking to the baron he had beckoned Precious away in order to present her to a friend of his, a cabinet minister. While they were all talking they had spied the president leaving, and bidding Precious remain where she was until he came back her father hurried forward for a few good-night words with him.
"I am sure I was not absent more than fifteen minutes from her side, but when I returned she was gone. I supposed she had made her way back to you, and was searching for you both when I met Lord Chester."
"She never came back. Oh, my darling, where are you? What has become of you?" moaned the anxious mother, and her lovely, delicate face paled with fear.
"Do not be alarmed, Grace. I will soon find her for you," her husband cried, and Lord Chester, eager to be of use, added:
"I will assist you if you will describe your daughter to me."
Senator Winans cried impulsively:
"She is the most beautiful girl you ever saw. Only sixteen, with blue eyes like velvet pansies, golden curls sweeping to her waist, a white silk gown, and pearls on her lovely white neck."
A low, muttered word came from Ethel's lips, but they did not catch its import, and turned away. Only her tearful mother saw the livid pallor that overspread the beautiful face and the flash of anger in the dark eyes.
CHAPTER III.
"THEY HAVE CHEATED ME OF THE LOVE THAT SHOULD BE MINE."
"How does a woman love? Once, no more,
Though life forever its loss deplore;
Deep in sorrow, or want, or sin,
One king reigneth her heart within;
One alone by night and day
Moves her spirit to curse or pray."
—Rose Terry Cooke.
An hour's frantic search convinced Senator Winans that his daughter was not in the immense ballroom, and inquiry among the door-keepers brought to light something very startling.
A young man had left the ballroom an hour before, carrying an unconscious girl in his arms.
He had told the doorkeeper that she was his sister, that she had fainted in the crowd, and that he was going to put her in his carriage, and take her home.
When the man described the beauty of the unconscious girl, the soft white silk gown, and the long golden curls, the agonized senator could no longer doubt that his darling had been kidnaped by some villain, and carried off to some terrible unknown fate.
It was terrible to think that such a thing could be in that gala scene among those thousands of joyous people, and in that blaze of light and splendor. It was like a sword in her father's heart.
His face grew ashen, his eyes blazed, and he swore the most terrible revenge on the fiend who had stolen Precious.
"Oh, my darling, my darling, this news will break her mother's heart!" he groaned.
"But she has another daughter left to comfort her," ventured the elegant young Englishman.
"Yes, we have Ethel. She is a good daughter, but Precious was our favorite, our darling."
"But why? Miss Winans is very charming," cried Lord Chester, a little jealous for the beautiful girl he admired so much.
"Yes, Ethel is charming, but so was my little Precious. She was charming and winsome, too, my youngest born, my darling, the idol of my heart!" groaned the senator, completely overcome by his trouble.
Lord Chester began to feel an eager curiosity over the missing girl. Was she, indeed, as lovely and winsome as her father declared? She must be if her charms exceeded Ethel's.
He held out a sympathetic hand to the stricken father.
"General, pray command my services in this sad affair to assist you in all possible ways," he exclaimed cordially.
"Thank you, Lord Chester, for we must begin to follow up the clews at once. But my heart bleeds for my wife. I fear this shock will almost kill her. My lord, if you will order my carriage, I will send her home with Ethel, telling her that perhaps Precious has somehow found her way home. Not a word of the truth yet. It must be broken to her later, and very gently. She must think that I am still searching here, while in fact I shall be on the track of the kidnaper. Oh, Heavens every moment is an agony, until I find my child again!"
And later on, when his wife and daughter were gone, and he was rolling in a cab to the office of a great detective, he confided to the young Englishman a brief page from his romantic earlier life.
"My only son, Earle, who is at present in Europe, was kidnaped by a lunatic when he was an infant, and it was over four years before we recovered him. He was in my care at the time, and I was blamed for his loss. My wife had brain fever, and almost died, and the pensive shade on her face now was left there by that early grief. Think what it would be to her now to lose Precious in the same terrible fashion. She is a noble Christian woman, but I fear that she would curse me and never forgive me if our darling daughter should be lost like that while in my care. Oh, why was I so careless? Why did I not remember that there are always human wolves watching—for prey?"
Mrs. Winans sobbed bitterly all the way home from the ball, but Ethel was too angry to offer one word of comfort.
Her father's praise of Precious rankled like a poisoned arrow in her heart.
"The most beautiful girl he ever saw! How dared he say it? I wonder if Lord Chester would say so, too, if he saw her? Would he like her blue eyes better than my dark ones? Would he think her golden curls prettier than my raven tresses? Woe be to her if he did, for now he is almost my declared lover, and if she won him from me I should be tempted to take a terrible revenge on both," she thought bitterly, forgetting that the deadliest revenge often recoils on the hand that deals the blow.
They passed into the broad hall, where they were met by Mrs. Winans' privileged attendant, Norah, who had nursed all her children.
"Norah! Norah! has Precious come home?" cried her mistress anxiously.
The woman stared in surprise at the question.
"No, madam, she is not here. I thought she was to come back with you! Why, what ails you that you look so pale and wild? Oh, she is fainting! Help! help! we must carry her to her room!"
They bore the limp figure upstairs, and laid it on the bed. Ethel knelt by her, weeping.
"Mamma, dear mamma, speak to me! Oh, Norah, why does she lie still so long? Is she dead?"
"No, it's only a swoon. I've brought her safely through many like it, poor dear. But tell me what has happened, Miss Ethel? Where is your father and your sister, my little nursling?"
Ethel told her briefly what had happened, adding:
"Papa sent us home and remained, to search for Precious."
"Heaven have mercy!" sobbed nurse Norah, then she busied herself about her mistress.
Ethel stood idly watching her, with dazed eyes, her head in a whirl. She was not thinking of her lost sister, nor her stricken mother. Her restless thoughts had gone back to her handsome English lover.
She was thinking:
"When mamma came upon us so suddenly he was about to make a declaration of his love. I saw it in his eyes, it was trembling on his lips; but mamma came between with the name of Precious—that name that always comes between me and everything! Was it an evil omen, I wonder, or will he tell me to-morrow that he loves me?"
