Kitabı oku: «Daisy Brooks: or, A Perilous Love», sayfa 15
“Money could not purchase these charming billets-doux from me,” he said. “This will be charming reading matter for the Honorable Rex Lyon, and the general public to discuss.”
She raised her flashing eyes unflinchingly to his face, but no word issued from her white lips.
“A splendid morsel for the gossips to whisper over. The very refined and exclusive heiress of Whitestone Hall connives to remove an innocent rival from her path, by providing money for her to be sent off secretly to boarding-school, from which she is to be abducted and confined in a mad-house. Your numerous letters give full instructions; it would be useless to deny these accusations. I hold proof positive.”
“That would not screen you,” she said, scornfully.
“I did not carry out your plans. No matter what the intentions were, the points in the case are what actually happened. I can swear I refused to comply with your nefarious wishes, even though you promised me your hand and fortune if I succeeded,” he answered, mockingly.
“Will not money purchase your silence?” she said, with a deep-drawn breath. “I do not plead with you for mercy or compassion,” she said, haughtily.
Lester Stanwick laughed a mocking laugh.
“Do not mistake me, Miss Pluma,” he said, making no attempt at love-making; “I prefer to wrest you from Rex Lyon. I have contemplated with intense satisfaction the blow to his pride. It will be a glorious revenge, also giving me a charming bride, and last, but not least, the possession at some future day of Whitestone Hall and the Hurlhurst Plantations. A pleasing picture, is it not, my dear?”
CHAPTER XXXII
Pluma Hurlhurst never quailed beneath the cold, mocking glance bent upon her.
There was no hope for her; disgrace and ruin stared her in the face; she would defy even Fate itself to the bitter end with a heroism worthy of a better cause. In that hour and that mood she was capable of anything.
She leaned against a tall palm-tree, looking at him with a strange expression on her face, as she made answer, slowly:
“You may depend upon it, I shall never marry you, Lester Stanwick. If I do not marry Rex I shall go unmarried to the grave. Ah, no!” she cried desperately; “Heaven will have more mercy, more pity than to take him from me.”
“What mercy or pity did you feel in thrusting poor little Daisy Brooks from his path?” asked Stanwick, sarcastically. “Your love has led you through dangerous paths. I should call it certainly a most perilous love.”
She recoiled from him with a low cry, those words again still ringing in her ears, “A perilous love.”
She laughed with a laugh that made even Stanwick’s blood run cold–a horrible laugh.
“I do not grieve that she is dead,” she said. “You ought to understand by this time I shall allow nothing to come between Rex and me.”
“You forget the fine notions of honor your handsome lover entertains; it may not have occurred to you that he might object at the eleventh hour.”
“He will not,” she cried, fiercely, her bosom rising and falling convulsively under its covering of filmy lace and the diamond brooch which clasped it. “You do not know the indomitable will of a desperate woman,” she gasped. “I will see him myself and confess all to him, if you attempt to reveal the contents of those letters. He will marry me and take me abroad at once. If I have Rex’s love, what matters it what the whole world knows or says?”
She spoke rapidly, vehemently, with flushed face and glowing eyes; and even in her terrible anger Stanwick could not help but notice how gloriously beautiful she was in her tragic emotion.
“I have asked you to choose between us,” he said, calmly, “and you have chosen Rex regardless of all the promises of the past. The consequences rest upon your own head.”
“So be it,” she answered, haughtily.
With a low bow Stanwick turned and left her.
“Au revoir, my dear Pluma,” he said, turning again toward her on the threshold. “Not farewell–I shall not give up hope of winning the heiress of Whitestone Hall.”
For several moments she stood quite still among the dark-green shrubs, and no sound told of the deadly strife and despair. Would he see Rex and divulge the crime she had planned? Ah! who would believe she, the proud, petted heiress had plotted so cruelly against the life of an innocent young girl because she found favor in the eyes of the lover she had sworn to win? Ah! who could believe she had planned to confine that sweet young life within the walls of a mad-house until death should release her?
What if the plan had failed? The intention still remained the same. She was thankful, after all, the young girl was dead.
“I could never endure the thought of Rex’s intense anger if he once imagined the truth; he would never forgive duplicity,” she cried, wildly.
The proud, beautiful girl, radiant with love and happiness a short time since, with a great cry flung herself down among the ferns, the sunlight gleaming on the jewels, the sumptuous morning dress, the crushed roses, and the white, despairing face.
Any one who saw Pluma Hurlhurst when she entered the drawing-room among her merry-hearted guests, would have said that she had never shed a tear or known a sigh. Could that be the same creature upon whose prostrate figure and raining tears the sunshine had so lately fallen? No one could have told that the brightness, the smiles, and the gay words were all forced. No one could have guessed that beneath the brilliant manner there was a torrent of dark, angry passions and an agony of fear.
It was pitiful to see how her eyes wandered toward the door. Hour after hour passed, and still Rex had not returned.
The hum of girlish voices around her almost made her brain reel. Grace Alden and Miss Raynor were singing a duet at the piano. The song they were singing fell like a death-knell upon her ears; it was “‘He Cometh Not,’ She Said.”
Eve Glenn, with Birdie upon her lap, sat on an adjoining sofa flirting desperately with the two or three devoted beaus; every one was discussing the prospect of the coming morrow.
Her father had returned from Baltimore some time since. She was too much engrossed with her thoughts of Rex to notice the great change in him–the strange light in his eyes, or the wistful, expectant expression of his face, as he kissed her more fondly than he had ever done in his life before.
She gave appropriate answers to her guests grouped around her, but their voices seemed afar off. Her heart and her thoughts were with Rex. Why had he not returned? What was detaining him? Suppose anything should happen–it would kill her now–yet nothing could go wrong on the eve of her wedding-day. She would not believe it. Stanwick would not dare go to Rex with such a story–he would write it–and all those things took time. With care and caution and constant watching she would prevent Rex from receiving any communications whatever until after the ceremony; then she could breathe freely, for the battle so bravely fought would be won.
“If to-morrow is as bright as to-day, Pluma will have a glorious wedding-day,” said Bessie Glenn, smiling up into the face of a handsome young fellow who was fastening a rosebud she had just given him in the lapel of his coat with one hand, and with the other tightly clasping the white fingers that had held the rose.
He did not notice that Pluma stood in the curtained recesses of an adjoining window as he answered, carelessly enough:
“Of course, I hope it will be a fine, sunshiny day, but the indications of the weather don’t look exactly that way, if I am any judge.”
“Why, you don’t think it is going to rain, do you? Why, it will spoil the rose-bower she is to be married in and all the beautiful decoration. Oh, please don’t predict anything so awfully horrible; you make me feel nervous; besides, you know what everybody says about weddings on which the rain falls.”
“Would you be afraid to experiment on the idea?” asked the impulsive young fellow, who always acted on the spur of the moment. “If to-morrow were a rainy day, and I should say to you, ‘Bess, will you marry me to-day or never?’ what would your answer be?”
“I should say, just now, I do not like ‘ifs and ands.’ Supposing a case, and standing face to face with it, are two different things. I like people who say what they mean, and mean what they say.”
Pluma saw the dazzling light flame into the bashful young lover’s eyes as he bent his head lower over the blushing girl who had shown him the right way to capture a hesitating heart.
“That is love,” sighed Pluma. “Ah, if Rex would only look at me like that I would think this earth a heaven.” She looked up at the bright, dazzling clouds overhead; then she remembered the words she had heard–“It looked like rain on the morrow.”
Could those white, fleecy clouds darken on the morrow that was to give her the only treasure she had ever coveted in her life?
She was not superstitious. Even if it did rain, surely a few rain-drops could not make or mar the happiness of a lifetime. She would not believe it.
“Courage until to-morrow,” she said, “and my triumph will be complete. I will have won Rex.” The little ormolu clock on the mantel chimed the hour of five. “Heavens!” she cried to herself, “Rex has been gone over two hours. I feel my heart must be bursting.”
No one noticed Pluma’s anxiety. One moment hushed and laughing, the queen of mirth and revelry, then pale and silent, with shadowed eyes, furtively glancing down the broad, pebbled path that led to the entrance gate.
Yet, despite her bravery, Pluma’s face and lips turned white when she heard the confusion of her lover’s arrival.
Perhaps Pluma had never suffered more suspense in all her life than was crowded into those few moments.
Had he seen Lester Stanwick? Had he come to denounce her for her treachery, in his proud, clear voice, and declare the marriage broken off?
She dared not step forward to greet him, lest the piercing glance of his eyes would cause her to fall fainting at his feet.
“A guilty conscience needs no accuser.” Most truly the words were exemplified in her case. Yet not one pang of remorse swept across her proud heart when she thought of the young girl whose life she had so skillfully blighted.
What was the love of Daisy Brooks, an unsophisticated child of nature, only the overseer’s niece, compared to her own mighty, absorbing passion?
The proud, haughty heiress could not understand how Rex, polished, courteous and refined, could have stooped to such a reckless folly. He would thank her in years to come for sparing him from such a fate. These were the thoughts she sought to console herself with.
She stood near the door when he entered, but he did not see her; a death-like pallor swept over her face, her dark eyes had a wild, perplexing look.
She was waiting in terrible suspense for Rex to call upon her name; ask where she was, or speak some word in which she could read her sentence of happiness or despair in the tone of his voice.
She could not even catch the expression of his face; it was turned from her. She watched him so eagerly she hardly dared draw her breath.
Rex walked quickly through the room, stopping to chat with this one or that one a moment; still, his face was not turned for a single instant toward the spot where she stood.
Was he looking for her? She could not tell. Presently he walked toward the conservatory, and a moment later Eve Glenn came tripping toward her.
“Oh, here you are!” she cried, flinging her arms about her in regular school-girl abandon, and kissing the cold, proud mouth, that deigned no answering caress. “Rex has been looking for you everywhere, and at last commissioned me to find you and say he wants to speak to you. He is out on the terrace.”
How she longed to ask if Rex’s face was smiling or stern, but she dared not.
“Where did you say Rex was, Miss Glenn?”
“I said he was out on the terrace; but don’t call me Miss Glenn, for pity’s sake–it sounds so freezingly cold. Won’t you please call me Eve,” cried the impetuous girl–“simply plain Eve? That has a more friendly sound, you know.”
Another girl less proud than the haughty heiress would have kissed Eve’s pretty, piquant, upturned, roguish face.
“What did Rex have to say to her?” she asked herself, in growing dread.
The last hope seemed withering in her proud, passionate heart. She rose haughtily, and walked with the dignity of a queen through the long drawing-room toward the terrace. Her heart almost stopped beating as she caught sight of Rex leaning so gracefully against the trunk of an old gnarled oak tree, smoking a cigar. That certainly did not look as if he meant to greet her with a kiss.
She went forward hesitatingly–a world of anxiety and suspense on her face–to know her fate. The color surged over her face, then receded from it again, as she looked at him with a smile–a smile that was more pitiful than a sigh.
“Rex,” she cried, holding out her hands to him with a fluttering, uncertain movement that stirred the perfumed laces of the exquisite robe she wore, and the jewels on her white, nervous hands–“Rex, I am here!”
CHAPTER XXXIII
We must now return to Daisy, whom we left standing in the heart of the forest, the moonlight streaming on her upturned face, upon which the startled horseman gazed.
He had not waited for her to reply, but, touching his horse hastily with his riding-whip, he sped onward with the speed of the wind.
In that one instant Daisy had recognized the dark, sinister, handsome face of Lester Stanwick.
“They have searched the pit and found I was not there. He is searching for me; he has tracked me down!” she cried, vehemently, pressing her little white hands to her burning head.
Faster, faster flew the little feet through the long dew-damp grasses.
“My troubles seem closing more darkly around me,” she sobbed. “I wish I had never been born, then I could never have spoiled Rex’s life. But I am leaving you, my love, my darling, so you can marry Pluma, the heiress. You will forget me and be happy.”
Poor little, neglected, unloved bride, so fair, so young, so fragile, out alone facing the dark terrors of the night, fleeing from the young husband who was wearing his life out in grief for her. Ah, if the gentle winds sighing above her, or the solemn, nodding trees had only told her, how different her life might have been!
“No one has ever loved me but poor old Uncle John!” She bent her fair young head and cried out to Heaven: “Why has no mercy been shown to me? I have never done one wrong, yet I am so sorely tried. Oh, mother, mother!” she cried, raising her blue eyes up to the starry sky, “if you could have foreseen the dark, cruel shadows that would have folded their pitiless wings over the head of your child, would you not have taken me with you down into the depths of the seething waters?” She raised up her white hands pleadingly as though she would fain pierce with her wrongs the blue skies, and reach the great White Throne. “I must be going mad,” she said. “Why did Rex seek me out?” she cried, in anguish. “Why did Heaven let me love him so madly, and my whole life be darkened by living apart from him if I am to live? I had no thought of suffering and sorrow when I met him that summer morning. Are the summer days to pass and never bring him? Are the flowers to bloom, the sun to shine, the years to come and go, yet never bring him once to me? I can not bear it–I do not know how to live!”
If she could only see poor old, faithful John Brooks again she would kneel at his feet just as she had done when she was a little child, lay her weary head down on his toil-hardened hand, tell him how she had suffered, and ask him how she could die and end it all.
She longed so hungrily for some one to caress her, murmuring tender words over her. She could almost hear his voice saying as she told him her pitiful story: “Come to my arms, pet, my poor little trampled Daisy! You shall never want for some one to love you while poor old Uncle John lives. Bless your dear little heart!”
The longing was strongly upon her. No one would recognize her–she must go and see poor old John. She never thought what would become of her life after that.
At the station she asked for a ticket for Allendale. No one seemed to know of such a place. After a prolonged search on the map the agent discovered it to be a little inland station not far from Baltimore.
“We can sell you a ticket for Baltimore,” he said, “and there you can purchase a ticket for the other road.”
And once again poor little Daisy was whirling rapidly toward the scene of her first great sorrow.
Time seemed to slip by her unheeded during all that long, tedious journey of two nights and a day.
“Are you going to Baltimore?” asked a gentle-faced lady, who was strangely attracted to the beautiful, sorrowful young girl, in which all hope, life, and sunshine seemed dead.
“Yes, madame,” she made answer, “I change cars there; I am going further.”
The lady was struck by the peculiar mournful cadence of the young voice.
“I beg your pardon for my seeming rudeness,” she said, looking long and earnestly at the fair young face; “but you remind me so strangely of a young school-mate of my youth; you are strangely like what she was then. We both attended Madame Whitney’s seminary. Perhaps you have heard of the institution; it is a very old and justly famous school.” She wondered at the beautiful flush that stole into the girl’s flower-like face–like the soft, faint tinting of a sea-shell. “She married a wealthy planter,” pursued the lady, reflectively; “but she did not live long to enjoy her happy home. One short year after she married Evalia Hurlhurst died.” The lady never forgot the strange glance that passed over the girl’s face, or the wonderful light that seemed to break over it. “Why,” exclaimed the lady, as if a sudden thought occurred to her, “when you bought your ticket I heard you mention Allendale. That was the home of the Hurlhursts. Is it possible you know them? Mr. Hurlhurst is a widower–something of a recluse, and an invalid, I have heard; he has a daughter called Pluma.”
“Yes, madame,” Daisy made answer, “I have met Miss Hurlhurst, but not her father.”
How bitterly this stranger’s words seemed to mock her! Did she know Pluma Hurlhurst, the proud, haughty heiress who had stolen her young husband’s love from her?–the dark, sparkling, willful beauty who had crossed her innocent young life so strangely–whom she had seen bending over her husband in the pitying moonlight almost caressing him? She thought she would cry out with the bitterness of the thought. How strange it was! The name, Evalia Hurlhurst, seemed to fall upon her ears like the softest, sweetest music. Perhaps she wished she was like that young wife, who had died so long ago, resting quietly beneath the white daisies that bore her name.
“That is Madame Whitney’s,” exclaimed the lady, leaning forward toward the window excitedly. “Dear me! I can almost imagine I am a young girl again. Why, what is the matter, my dear? You look as though you were about to faint.”
The train whirled swiftly past–the broad, glittering Chesapeake on one side, and the closely shaven lawn of the seminary on the other. It was evidently recess. Young girls were flitting here and there under the trees, as pretty a picture of happy school life as one would wish to see. It seemed to poor hapless Daisy long ages must have passed since that morning poor old John Brooks had brought her, a shy, blushing, shrinking country lassie, among those daintily attired, aristocratic maidens, who had laughed at her coy, timid mannerism, and at the clothes poor John wore, and at his flaming red cotton neckerchief.
She had not much time for further contemplation. The train steamed into the Baltimore depot, and she felt herself carried along by the surging crowd that alighted from the train.
She did not go into the waiting-room; she had quite forgotten she was not at the end of her journey.
She followed the crowds along the bustling street, a solitary, desolate, heart-broken girl, with a weary white face whose beautiful, tender eyes looked in vain among the throngs that passed her by for one kindly face or a sympathetic look.
Some pushed rudely by her, others looked into the beautiful face with an ugly smile. Handsomely got-up dandies, with fine clothes and no brains, nodded familiarly as Daisy passed them. Some laughed, and others scoffed and jeered; but not one–dear Heaven! not one among the vast throng gave her a kindly glance or a word. Occasionally one, warmer hearted than the others, would look sadly on that desolate, beautiful, childish face.
A low moan she could scarcely repress broke from her lips. A handsomely dressed child, who was rolling a hoop in front of her, turned around suddenly and asked her if she was ill.
“Ill?” She repeated the word with a vague feeling of wonder. What was physical pain to the torture that was eating away her young life? Ill? Why, all the illness in the world put together could not cause the anguish she was suffering then–the sting of a broken heart.
She was not ill–only desolate and forsaken.
Poor Daisy answered in such a vague manner that she quite frightened the child, who hurried away as fast as she could with her hoop, pausing now and then to look back at the white, forlorn face on which the sunshine seemed to cast such strange shadows.
On and on Daisy walked, little heeding which way she went. She saw what appeared to be a park on ahead, and there she bent her steps. The shady seats among the cool green grasses under the leafy trees looked inviting. She opened the gate and entered. A sudden sense of dizziness stole over her, and her breath seemed to come in quick, convulsive gasps.
“Perhaps God has heard my prayer, Rex, my love,” she sighed. “I am sick and weary unto death. Oh, Rex–Rex–”
The beautiful eyelids fluttered over the soft, blue eyes, and with that dearly loved name on her lips, the poor little child-bride sunk down on the cold, hard earth in a death-like swoon.
“Oh, dear me, Harvey, who in the world is this?” cried a little, pleasant-voiced old lady, who had witnessed the young girl enter the gate, and saw her stagger and fall. In a moment she had fluttered down the path, and was kneeling by Daisy’s side.
“Come here, Harvey,” she called; “it is a young girl; she has fainted.”
Mr. Harvey Tudor, the celebrated detective, threw away the cigar he had been smoking, and hastened to his wife’s side.
“Isn’t she beautiful?” cried the little lady, in ecstasy. “I wonder who she is, and what she wanted.”
“She is evidently a stranger, and called to consult me professionally,” responded Mr. Tudor; “she must be brought into the house.”
He lifted the slight, delicate figure in his arms, and bore her into the house.
“I am going down to the office now, my dear,” he said; “we have some important cases to look after this morning. I will take a run up in the course of an hour or so. If the young girl should recover and wish to see me very particularly, I suppose you will have to send for me. Don’t get me away up here unless you find out the case is imperative.”
And with a good-humored nod, the shrewd detective, so quiet and domesticated at his own fireside, walked quickly down the path to the gate, whistling softly to himself–thinking with a strange, puzzled expression in his keen blue eyes, of Daisy. Through all of his business transactions that morning the beautiful, childish face was strangely before his mind’s eye.
“Confound it!” he muttered, seizing his hat, “I must hurry home and find out at once who that pretty little creature is–and what she wants.”
