Kitabı oku: «They Looked and Loved; Or, Won by Faith», sayfa 7

CHAPTER XIX.
TREACHERY

Lizette could scarcely repress a cry of surprise, she was so startled by the sudden appearance of the sailor whose bronzed face and glittering eyes shone weirdly in the dim light outside the strong iron bars at the window. But at his warning she clapped her hand over her open mouth.

"Be quiet, please, miss," said the sailor. And as Lizette bent nearer, he continued in a low voice: "I am here to save you and your mistress, but if the people in the house should hear us we are lost. I have brought tools to wrench off these bars, and if your mistress will only come quietly with me all will be well."

"But who are you?" whispered the maid. "How did you know about us? Did you come from the yacht? Is it possible Mr. Mountcastle knows we are here?"

"Yes; he has found out everything, but he could not come himself. He is very ill, so he sent me. But excuse me, miss; we mustn't stop to talk. You must prepare your mistress to go while I wrench off these bars. Don't let her make any outcry, or the game will be up, for Rhodus and Kayne will be down upon us at the first sound."

Lizette knew that it was true, and she saw no cause to distrust the sailor, who seemed to be honest. With a heart full of joy she returned to her mistress, who was now stirring restlessly. Lizette bent over her and whispered:

"Wake, dearie, wake. We are going to escape from our prison."

But the influence of the opiate she had taken had dulled Nita's tortured brain. At Lizette's loving efforts to arouse her she only stared in a dull, uncomprehending way.

"It does not matter, for if she was fully awake she might be frightened," thought Lizette, and hurriedly dressed her mistress in the serge boating-suit she had worn on her wedding-night—the only gown she now possessed. She was simply quiescent and passive, like a little child only half-awake.

The sailor had now succeeded in removing the heavy iron bars with but slight noise, and he was leaning on the window-sill waiting with impatience.

"Do not wake her if you can avoid it. I can carry her in my arms," he called softly to Lizette.

Lizette gathered the passive form to her breast and bore it to the window. The man held out eager arms, and the dark head dropped unresistingly upon his shoulder. Lizette did not notice the keen thrill of joy that shook the sailor from head to foot as he clasped the precious burden.

"I will carry her down, and you must follow," he said gently. "Do not attempt to descend until I am safe at the bottom. The ladder is not very strong."

Slowly and carefully he bore his burden down the ladder, clasping her close to a heart that was throbbing quick and fast with triumph, while Lizette looked on with trembling suspense.

He reached the ground safely, then—was it accident or design?—a movement of his arm caused the ladder to slide from the window-sill, and fall with a dull thud to the ground!

Lizette, who had climbed upon the sill ready to step out, gave a stifled cry of dismay as she saw the ladder fall, and the sailor striding away with Nita, while a low laugh came back to her on the night wind. The deserted maid threw up her hands with a moan of despair.

An awful suspicion had rushed over her mind at the sound of the sailor's taunting laugh—a suspicion of treachery dark and dire. She had been duped, deceived! The sailor had not come from Dorian Mountcastle as he had falsely pretended.

Doubtless he was the paid tool of Donald Kayne, who, wishing to separate Nita from her only friend, had laid this cunning trap to carry out his purpose. And, thanks to her simple credulity, he had succeeded even more easily than he could have hoped. Here she was locked securely in this second-story room, for Mrs. Rhodus always turned the key on her prisoners at night, and yonder her young mistress was being borne away by the sailor into another cruel captivity uncheered by the sight of a friendly face.

Lizette was wild with fear and grief for her lovely mistress. It seemed to her she had betrayed Nita to some fearful fate. She hated herself for her dreadful mistake, and, frantic with grief, she exclaimed:

"I will follow or die!"

Springing upon the broad window-sill, she let herself down first by her hands, then dropped as gently as she could to the ground.

Then a shriek of uncontrollable pain rent the air. In her heavy fall she had twisted or broken one of her ankles.

The pain was so excruciating that after one moment of supreme agony, she trembled all over, then relapsed into unconsciousness.

It was, indeed, Dorian Mountcastle's yacht that had come into harbor at Fortune's Bay. The Reverend Mr. Irwin had been put ashore more than a week previous and sent back to New York with a full purse of gold and a new stock of experience. Captain Van Hise and the doctor had remained by Dorian, and helped him pull through his tedious illness.

He was now slowly convalescing, but there were two things that greatly retarded his recovery. One was a deep and silent remorse over the death of Donald Kayne, whom he had last seen stretched apparently dead upon the sands at Pirate Beach. The other cause was anxiety over Nita, about whom the surgeon still kept up the little fiction of sea-sickness.

One of Dorian's first conscious requests on hearing the story of his bride's illness was that they should put into land so that Nita might get well.

"And then we will continue our journey on land, for although I enjoy yachting very much myself, I do not wish for my poor little wife to suffer from the agonies of sea-sickness," he said tenderly.

So by one of the accidents of fate that we call blind chance the Nita was steered into Fortune's Bay.

"And what the deuce shall we do now? He's asking for her all the time, and mad with impatience for a sight of her face," groaned Van Hise to the doctor that night when they were smoking together upon deck. The hour was late, nearing midnight, and the surgeon yawned sleepily.

"I shall keep up the fiction till to-morrow," he said; "then I shall have to invent something else, for this one will not serve my purpose any longer. But only Heaven knows how I am going to get out of this trouble. Tell him that his bride is drowned I cannot, dare not, for he would either die or go mad from the shock in his present weak condition. Well, I will go and have a good-night look at him and turn in and sleep on it."

"Think I'll go to bed, too," said the captain.

But he lingered a moment with his weed, silently drinking in the beauty of the summer night, then suddenly concluded to have a stroll upon the shore before he retired.

"Just to stretch my legs, for, by Jove! I prefer the land to the deck," he muttered, as he strode up the gang-plank and felt his feet on terra firma.

The doctor found Dorian awake and restless, tormented by the yearning desire for Nita's presence.

"Doc, you must let her come to me to-morrow. I cannot bear this separation any longer!" he cried with impatient pain.

"Didn't I tell you that Mrs. Mountcastle was too weak to leave her berth?"

"Then I will go to her!" cried Dorian.

"You are also too weak to walk," replied his friend.

"Then I will be carried to her berth. I must see her for myself. I fear that she is worse than you tell me."

"You are exciting yourself, Dorian, in a manner that I fear may bring on a relapse of your sickness. And your wound is barely healed, remember. Come, curb this impatience, and to-morrow things may be more to your liking. But now I must give you a sedative, or you will not sleep to-night, and that will be very bad for you."

Dorian was glad to take the sedative that promised oblivion from vexing thoughts. He swallowed it meekly, and bade the surgeon good night. He was well enough now so that they did not have to watch him at night.

The dim flame of the lowered lamp cast a pale gleam on the wan face, as he lay, with half-shut eyes, trying vainly to sleep, for the thought of his young bride, the intense, overpowering yearning to see her again, banished repose.

Was it the sound of the lapping waves that drowned a light, quick footstep? He heard nothing, but suddenly there was a flutter as of woman's robes beside him—some one falling on her knees, stretching out tender arms to clasp his neck.

His thoughts had taken embodied shape—Nita's self was here, her head on his breast, her kisses burning on his lips! Dorian clasped his love with passionate tenderness, and kissed her lips over and over in the mad joy of seeing her again. Low murmurs of love escaped their lips, between sweet caresses. He comprehended that her yearning for him had matched his for her. Weak and ill as she was, she had eluded her watchers and sought his side.

"Oh, my love, my darling, how pale and thin you are! You have suffered greatly," he whispered.

"And you, too, love," she murmured. "You have suffered also, have you not? But you will get well, now that I have come back to you, my husband! Oh, how thankful I am I did not perish in the gloomy sea that dark night when I was swept into the water with Lizette. Now I will stay by you and nurse you while you get strong again. Oh, Dorian, how I love you! Hold me tight, darling; do not let any one take me away from you!"

They were wild with joy over their reunion, and to neither one came the slightest presentiment of the cruel truth—that these were parting as well as greeting kisses.

Something put out the dim flame of the lamp, and there was the sound of a heavy, creaking footstep in the room. The next moment Nita was torn rudely from her husband's arms, and her head and face muffled in something dark and heavy, and she was borne swiftly away from the yacht.

CHAPTER XX.
A GHOST ON BOARD SHIP

Quite close to the yacht Nita was moored a trimly built, compact little sailing vessel of which Jack Dineheart, the sailor, was master. It was toward this little bark that he bore Nita after his daring exploit in kidnaping her from the Rhodus house.

He had lain at anchor near the island two days, and was getting ready to sail that night when, upon starting on an errand to the house of Fisherman Rhodus, he had been startled by seeing Nita's face behind the barred window as she watched her husband's yacht in the bay with sorrowful eyes of love and longing.

After his brief, angry conversation with the girl, Jack Dineheart had forgotten all about his errand, and rushed away toward the yacht with murder in his heart toward Dorian Mountcastle.

Upon nearing it, and seeing several men upon her deck, his wrath became tempered with prudence, and he retreated toward his own vessel, where, after fortifying himself with several glasses of liquor, he concocted the scheme of kidnaping the imprisoned girl and carrying her to sea with him, and perhaps back to Pirate Beach to the grim guardianship of his mother, old Meg Dineheart, the fortune-teller.

Laughing in fiendish glee at the discomfiture of the deceived Lizette, the sailor bore Nita away in his strong arms, his heart leaping with joy.

In the old cabin by the seaside at Pirate Beach, Jack Dineheart had watched a lovely, somber-eyed little child budding into exquisite girlhood, and when she was barely fourteen had sought her for his bride. Her proud refusal had been followed by a year of such bitter persecution on the part of himself and his witchlike mother, that at fifteen Nita had fled from them to the great metropolis where her valiant struggle to earn her bread had ended three years later in Central Park, and she had given her hand in marriage to the old miser for the means of saving herself from starvation or suicide.

And now she had fallen once more into the hands of her sailor-lover, who, loving her for her beauty, and hating her for her scorn, had vowed to punish her by parting her forever from her husband.

But as he hurried on in the clear moonlight with his burden the slight form of Nita began to weigh heavily in his arms.

So he laid Nita, who still seemed fast asleep, down upon the ground a few moments, and, turning his gaze from her, began to scrutinize the sky and the sea for auguries of a successful voyage.

And lying there alone in the cool night air, Nita suddenly recovered full consciousness of herself and her surroundings, although she could not remember how she had come to be there.

Lifting her head and gazing about her in surprise, she saw before her the ocean, and near at hand the yacht of her husband. Behind her, absorbed for the moment in his scrutiny of the sky, was Jack Dineheart.

Fear and hope combined lent her a new, strange power. Struggling to her feet, Nita darted noiselessly forward toward the yacht.

Jack Dineheart, however, discovered her flight just before she reached the yacht. Furious with rage, he followed, and, finding every one asleep, audaciously penetrated to Dorian's cabin and dragged the hapless girl from the arms of her husband.

Unheeding the loud cry that burst from Dorian's lips, he escaped safely to his own vessel, and a few minutes later it left its moorings in the harbor, and set sail for Pirate Beach.

Dorian Mountcastle was again bereft of his bride, and Nita was in the power of a relentless lover whose love was even more dangerous than his enmity.

Captain Van Hise, returning from his moonlight stroll upon the land, saw the graceful little bark gliding out upon the ocean, with no thought that she bore Nita away. He believed that Nita was dead, and in his manly, honest heart there was a ceaseless sorrow over her untimely death.

He stepped on the deserted deck, where all was so still and calm, and his vigorous walk having driven away all his sleepy feelings, he stole softly to Dorian's berth, fancying he might be awake and restless and glad of company. All was dark and still, but at the sound of his footstep Dorian spoke:

"Is that you Van Hise? Make a light, please."

The captain obeyed; then asked who had put his light out.

Dorian answered in a strangely excited voice:

"Nita was here with me a few moments, and I fancy she must have stolen away from Lizette, for suddenly, as I held her to my heart and kissed her, the light went out and some one dragged her away from my arms, and in spite of my outcry carried her off in dead silence. It must have been Lizette, of course, but her behavior was very rude, and so I shall tell her to-morrow."

"My God!" exclaimed Van Hise, his face white, his eyes staring. A shudder shook him from head to foot; then he exclaimed uneasily:

"My friend, you have been dreaming!"

"A very blissful dream, although, alas! too brief," Dorian answered, with a smile of languid rapture. "My wife was here, kissed me, and talked to me for a few happy moments before the maid dragged her away. To-morrow I must see her again. Oh, Van Hise, I am so happy that I have seen my darling again I do not think I shall sleep a wink to-night!"

Van Hise sat down, trembling, his face dead white.

"You must have been asleep," he said decidedly.

"No, I have not slept to-night. Doc was down and gave me a sedative, but it seemed only a few minutes later that Nita came to me, and since Lizette took her away I've been lying here in a happy waking dream."

The soldier repressed a groan, and thought:

"He has dreamed the whole thing, or he has seen poor Nita's wraith. I should not like the seamen to know it, for only last night they were talking together, and I heard them say that to see a ghost on board ship was a sign of shipwreck. Decidedly they must not know of this, not even the good captain, or they might desert the yacht in a body!"

He waited until Dorian seemed to fall into a light doze; then went and woke up the surgeon to tell him the strange happening.

"Oh, pooh! it was no ghost—only a vision evoked by his morphine pill. He can be told to-morrow, if he persists in his fancy, that Nita's imprudence to-night has given her a relapse, and that will afford us a new excuse," replied the clever surgeon.

CHAPTER XXI.
DONALD KAYNE'S RETURN

Through Azalea Courtney's revelations the elopement of Dorian Mountcastle and Nita Farnham had become the sensation of the hour, and innumerable newspaper paragraphs had chronicled the facts of the duel, the death of Donald Kayne, the elopement of the young lovers on the yacht. And then Irwin returned with the story of the tragedy of Nita's loss at sea with her maid Lizette.

It was a tragedy so full of woe that it thrilled every heart that read it with sympathy and sorrow. Even the Courtneys, who hated the girl, grew pale as they realized how soon Nita's happiness had come to an end, and that Dorian was so terribly bereft of his love.

But into the ward of Bellevue, where Miser Farnham lay barely alive, so terribly had he been hurt in the railway accident, and so slight were his chances for life, penetrated no tidings from the outer world. None there knew anything of the beautiful ward who had eloped with her lover the very night of the accident. Charles Farnham was supposed to be friendless and poor, save for some miserly savings of whose hiding-place none had any knowledge. No one took any interest in his fate except the doctors and nurses at Bellevue, and they all believed that it was impossible that he should recover from his internal injuries. He was alive and little more. He had never uttered a conscious word since the accident.

As for the Courtneys, they were still at Gray Gables, carrying out their policy of masterly inaction. The flight of Nita and the condition of the miser made no difference to them. A lawyer, acting under instructions received from Farnham previous to the accident, was entrusted with the conduct of expenses incident to the housekeeping at Gray Gables. Everything went on like clock-work, except that the good housekeeper, Mrs. Hill, who had grown to love her young mistress so dearly, carried always a sad face and aching heart for poor Nita's tragic fate.

Weeks flew past, and it would have been very lonely at Gray Gables but that the Courtneys invited some city friends for a few weeks, and got through the July days with some bathing, dressing, boating, and dancing, not keeping up any pretense of mourning over Nita's supposed death.

Meg Dineheart, the old fortune-teller, still prowled about the beach like a bird of evil omen, and had twice been driven ignominiously out of Gray Gables with threats of arrest if she ever showed her face there again.

To tell the truth, Meg was slyly seeking for Nita's chest of gold that Lizette had carefully hidden in the closet of her mistress, but she found such lynx eyes watching her whenever she ventured into the old stone mansion that she almost despaired of success.

During the summer, Meg had made two trips to New York to see Miser Farnham at the hospital, but she got no good out of these visits. He still lingered in that strange, comatose condition, taking no notice of anything, and yet improving slowly but appreciably, so the nurses said, until they began to believe that he would really get well again.

"The old wretch! I wish he would die, then maybe Jack and me would get the handling of all that money if only we knew where it was hid," muttered Meg angrily, and she was in no wise pleased to learn that he was likely to recover.

She was very anxious for her son Jack to return from his last trip to sea, for he had been away several months, and she was eager to know what he would say to the happenings at Pirate Beach since he went away, the return and death of Nita, whom he had wished to marry, and the accident to the miser, whose gold both mother and son greedily coveted.

New York had another sensation the middle of August when Donald Kayne, the millionaire, who was believed to have been killed in the duel with Dorian Mountcastle returned, alive and well, to the city in his own yacht.

"It was all a mistake, the report of my death. My antagonist was much more seriously wounded than myself, and I have heard had a hard tussle for life," he told his friends carelessly.

Yet a strange change had come over Donald Kayne. Always nervous and restless, his friends observed that he was now more so than ever before. He veered from place to place. He could hardly be seen at his club any more. And no one had any news of Dorian Mountcastle's whereabouts until received through him.

"My yacht stayed a few days at Fortune's Bay," he said. "While there I heard that Dorian Mountcastle's yacht had been there before me. Dorian had been recovering slowly from the wound I gave him, and he had not been told of the tragic death of his wife. When it could be kept from him no longer the truth was broken to him gently, but it almost bereft him of reason. The last I heard of him was that his friends had taken him abroad for a year to recuperate his health."

He went down to Pirate Beach to see the Courtneys, who were very gracious. Azalea had almost given up all hope of ever winning Dorian, and she tried all her fascinations on Donald Kayne.

But he was cold, taciturn and moody, and had no interest in anything except the mystery that had brought him to Pirate Beach—the mystery of Nita Farnham's possession of the serpent ring. But in spite of Azalea's efforts she had nothing to tell him, beyond what she had written him before the duel.

"And yet, I believe," she said, "that the old fortune-teller, who lives in an old boat-cabin down the beach, knows more about Nita than the most of us. I have talked with her, and she is very mysterious. She would neither admit nor deny any knowledge of Nita, but if I had not been too poor to bribe her I believe she would have given me some information."

Donald Kayne sought Meg Dineheart at sunset, and found her standing alone in the strange purple glow by the sea, a weird, witchlike figure, with elf-locks streaming on the breeze, while she shaded her eyes with her hand and strained her gaze across the darkening waters, watching, as she was always watching now, for her son's bark to come sailing home.

She turned upon the intruder with a curse, but Azalea had been right in believing that gold would loosen the old harpy's tongue.

Kayne soon learned that Nita had been reared at Pirate Beach by the old fortune-teller, until at the age of fifteen she had run away to make her own living at the metropolis.

"What is the girl to you?" asked Donald Kayne, but she leered and refused to reply.

"And the serpent ring she wore? I will make your fortune, old woman, if you will tell me how Nita Farnham came by that ring," he exclaimed eagerly.

Bitterly did Meg regret that she could not gratify his curiosity.

"I know nothing of the ring, except that I saw it on Nita's hand before she went away on Mountcastle's yacht. Stay—you say there is but one ring like it in the world? Then I saw the same ring more than fourteen years ago on another woman's hand."

"You saw her? Where? Where, woman?" he cried in fierce excitement.

The old witch peered curiously into the face of her interlocutor. Donald Kayne's face was wild and haggard. Unconsciously to himself, in his wild excitement, he stretched out his hand and clutched the woman's shoulder in a grasp that was painful.

"Speak!" he uttered hoarsely; "speak this instant, and tell me when and where you saw the woman with the serpent ring. Why are you so dumb when you see how impatient I am! Answer before I throttle you!"

But with a ghastly grin Meg writhed herself out of his grasp and sneered:

"That secret is worth gold to me!"

"Harpy," he cried, and thrust his hands into his pockets, but withdrew them disappointed. He had already given her all the money about him. He tore the watch from his pocket, the ring from his hand, and flung them at her feet.

"Take these, and speak!" he cried, but Meg spurned them with her foot.

"It is not enough! Besides, I do not want jewels, but money!"

"You shall have money to-morrow. But do not keep me waiting, I implore you! I am mad, mad for the clue you can give me. Speak now, for sweet pity's sake! Tell me all you know, and if it is worth anything to me, I will reward you richly."

But the woman began to realize that her knowledge was valuable, and decided to sell it dearly.

"The gold first!" she cried. "You are a stranger to me, and if I told you the secret first you might go away and never pay me!"

Vainly he entreated and implored, promising money upon the morrow, but Meg was immovable. She was insensible to the pitiful anxiety of his haggard face. She obstinately refused his prayer, mocking at his impatience.

Donald Kayne, mad with impatient wrath, lifted his hand and struck her lightly across the mouth.

"Take that, you devil!" he cried hoarsely, and with a shriek of rage Meg sprung at him with a knife drawn.

"I will kill you!" she hissed, with savage fury.

But Donald Kayne was more than a match for the tigress, and soon disarmed her, although in the struggle he received a wound in the hand.

He flung the knife into the sea, and wrapped his handkerchief about the wound, while she stood at a little distance watching him with glowering eyes.

But his heart sank as he realized that his imprudence had defeated his own object, and that he might never be able to wrest from her the longed-for secret. But there was no present help for it, and he hurried from her along the beach toward Gray Gables.

Meg shook her fist after him, and muttered anathemas upon him until he was almost out of sight; then turned her eyes again upon the sea, where the last fading rays of sunset lingered in radiant light.

A sudden cry of joy shrilled over her lips. Across the water, in clear sight, was riding a trimly built little sailing craft, that had a very familiar look to her old eyes.

"My son's bark!" she shrieked joyfully.