"Thank Heaven! the crisis,The danger is past,And the lingering illnessIs over at last—The fever called 'Living'Is conquered at last!"
"Thank Heaven! the crisis,The danger is past,And the lingering illnessIs over at last—The fever called 'Living'Is conquered at last!"
The day came, late in September, when the autumn leaves were turning red and gold, that Dainty Chase opened wide her startled blue eyes upon the world again.
She had closed them consciously over six weeks ago in the gloomy dungeon beneath Ellsworth Castle, when, pressing to her desperate lips the bitter draught of death, she had bidden the cruel world farewell.
In the long weeks of illness and delirium that followed, many things had come and gone without her knowledge; and now, when consciousness returned again; there was a dazed look in the beautiful pansy-blue eyes that stared wide and dark out of her wan and wasted face, with the blue veins wandering plainly beneath the transparent skin.
"Where am I?" she gasped, faintly, putting her weak little hands up to her head, and wondering in a bewildered way what made her hair feel so thin and short and curly, like that of a year-old infant.
The fact was, that Sairy Ann Peters had been compelled to cut off all of Dainty's golden tresses to stay the progress of the devastating fever, and she had anticipated with womanly grief the sadness of the hour when the girl should realize her cruel loss.
She came quickly to the bedside and took the little trembling hands in her toil-hardened but motherly ones, and said, tenderly:
"So you've come to yourself at last, dearie, and beginning to worrit the fust thing because all your beautiful long curly hair is cut off! But never mind, chile; it will grow again as pretty as ever all over in shiny leetle rings like a babby's; and I was jest obleeged to crop it off to save your sweet life, you had the fever so miserable bad."
"Where am I?" Dainty repeated, in amazement, her gaze lingering confidently on the homely but gentle face before her and receiving in return the smiling reply:
"Where you are is soon told, honey; you're in a logging-camp, where my husband and nine grown sons are running a saw-mill till the first of October, way up in the mountings, where we hain't seen but two faces besides our own sence we come here the first day of April. It's 'bout six weeks sence my husband found you at day-break, lying sick and raving on the bank of the trout stream where he was fishing for our breakfast, and brought you home with him. I gin you my best bed, and been nussin' you all this while like you was my own darter, which I never had one, but al'ays hankered arter one; but the good Lord He sent me sons every time till I've nine on 'em; and I'm past fifty, and no more hopes of a darter now, though there'll be darters-in-law a-plenty, no doubt, when my boys begin to mate. Well, now you know all you ast me about, chile, and I'm jest as cur'usover you. What mought your name be, and wherever did you drap from, anyway?"
"I—I don't know," Dainty faltered, weakly, with a bewildered air.
"Sho! you don't know? Ah, well! I see how 'tis. Your memory ain't come back clear yet; and no wonder, after sech a hard sickness as you've come through! Never mind, dearie, it'll all come back arter awhile. Are you hungry now?"
"Thirsty!" faltered the girl; and like a flash the past came back to her, conjured up by that single word, presenting to her mind the dark, noisome cell where she had suffered so terribly with the cruel, burning fever and the terrible thirst, until longing for death, she had pressed the bitter poison to her parched lips.
Then all was blank till now, and she wondered feebly how she had escaped death, and still more, how she had been released from her terrible captivity, and been brought here to this remote mountain camp.
The woman gave her a draught of clear, cold, sparkling water that cleared her faculties immensely, and closing her heavy-lidded eyes again, she began to recall the past from the dim shades of memory.
It was a bitter task, and the hot tears flashed beneath her lashes as she remembered that Sheila Kelly had told her that Love, her husband, was wounded and dying.
The next morning she said wistfully to the kind woman:
"I am beginning to remember things now. Do you know a place called Ellsworth?"
"I've heerd tell of it; it's quite seven miles from here."
"Seven miles! Then how on earth did I ever get tothis place?" wondered Dainty, but she only said, reticently:
"A lady named Chase is there, and I am her daughter. I was very ill, and I can not remember how I came to be out in the woods; but I would like for you to send word to my mother."
"I will see about it," replied Mrs. Peters; and after consulting her family, she reported that all were too busy to go to Ellsworth now, but they intended to break up camp the first of October, to return to their winter home at the station, and if she could be patient till then, she should have a bed in the wagon, and they could easily leave her at Ellsworth on their way past.
With this she was forced to be content, having no claim on her simple entertainers, save that of humanity; but the week, after all, slipped away quite fast in the delicious languor of returning health; and one day the Peters family loaded up three long wagons with their household goods, and set forth for home, having made Dainty and the mother quite comfortable on a mattress for the long journey over the worst stretch of rocky mountain road known in that section of a very rough country.
It seemed like some beautiful dream at last, when, after kindly farewells from her homely benefactors, she stood at the gates of Ellsworth in the chilly sunset of a windy October day, walking slowly and weakly along the graveled paths, past fading summer flowers and flaunting autumn blooms, on her way to the great house, her heart leaping with joy at the thought of her mother's kiss of welcome, and sinking with pain in the fear that she should find her darling dead and buried, according to Sheila's story.
"No—there's nothing left us nowBut to mourn the past;Vain was every ardent vow—Never yet did Heaven allowLove so warm, so wild to last.Not even hope could now deceive me,Life itself looks dark and cold;Oh, thou never more canst give meOne dear smile like those of old!"
"No—there's nothing left us nowBut to mourn the past;Vain was every ardent vow—Never yet did Heaven allowLove so warm, so wild to last.Not even hope could now deceive me,Life itself looks dark and cold;Oh, thou never more canst give meOne dear smile like those of old!"
Dainty dragged her trembling limbs as fast as her strength would permit toward the great house, lifting her large blue eyes eagerly up to the windows in search of some familiar face, though hope was very weak in her trembling heart.
It was two long, weary months since the first day of August, and what might not have happened in that time?
If Sheila Kelly had told her the truth, her young husband must be dead and buried long ago, and the only friend left to her in the wide, cruel world would be her mother, if indeed that dear mother lived, for what more likely than that she had died of heart-break at her daughter's mysterious disappearance?
Dainty, who knew so well her mother's devotion, feared that such a calamity was but too possible.
But she realized that even if her mother lived she was very unlikely to be found at Ellsworth now. Her bitter enemies would have driven her away long ago.
Still a subtle yearning drew her to the home of her beloved, though, as she drew near to the scene of her hopes or fears, her keen emotion almost overwhelmed her, driving the faint color back from her wan cheeks to her weak heart, and making her tremble so that she could scarcely advance one foot beyond the other.
How changed and lonely everything seemed since she had gone away? She did not even meet one of the servants as she hurried on, wrapping closely about her shivering form a thin cashmere scarf that kind Sairy Ann Peters had pressed on her to protect her, in her light summer dress, from the cold autumn winds. Thus panting, trembling, starting, and alternately hoping and despairing, she came close enough at last to gaze at the upper windows of the handsome suite of apartments that belonged to Lovelace Ellsworth.
She paused with a suppressed sob of excitement, and swept her glance rapidly from window to window.
Suddenly, with a cry of ecstatic joy, the girl sank to her knees with clasped, upraised hands.
"God in Heaven, I thank Thee!"
On her pallid, hopeless face had come such a light of joy and gratitude and boundless surprise as can only shine after long grief and pain when the grave seems to give up its dead and our beloved live again.
Her wistful, yearning eyes had been granted the most joyful sight that Heaven could have given—the sight of Lovelace Ellsworth sitting at the open window of his room, gazing with a strange, intent look at the setting sun as it sank below the mountain-tops and left the world in shadow.
"God in Heaven, I thank Thee! He lives; my beloved one, we shall be restored to each other!" repeatedthe girl in an ecstacy of gladness; and her dark-blue eyes clung rapturously to the handsome face, wondering at its pallor and strange, intent look.
"Dear Love, how pale and thin and sad he looks! He has been ill, perhaps, or it is grief for me that has changed him so! It is strange that he never found me when I was such a short distance away; but there are many mysteries to be unraveled yet," she murmured, rising to her feet, and going in haste to a side entrance, where she could easily gain the upper portion of the house without being detected.
As she mounted the stairs, she was thinking so gladly of the joyful reunion with Love, that she did not observe, until they were face to face, a lady coming out of his room. It was Mrs. Ellsworth; and as she met the pale, trembling girl gliding like a shadow in the semi-darkness of the corridor, a long, loud, wailing cry burst from her startled lips, and making an effort to fly from what she took for a veritable ghost, she tripped, and fell prostrate to the floor.
Dainty saw her cruel aunt distinctly, heard the startled cry and the fall; but she never looked back, but ran eagerly to her darling's room.
She tore open the door, and rushed over the threshold, across the room, with outstretched arms.
"Oh, my love, my darling!"
Her young husband was sitting at the window in an easy-chair, with a velvet dressing-gown wrapped about him, and at the sound of her entrance, he turned his face around, and looked at the intruder blankly.
Blankly!—that was the only word that described it.
If Dainty had been the greatest stranger in the world,her young husband could not have turned upon her lovely, agitated face a more calm, unrecognizing stare.
For a moment she stopped, and regarded him pitifully, sobbing:
"Oh, Love! am I so changed you do not know your own little Dainty, your wife? Oh, look at me closely! I have been ill, and lost my beauty for a little while. They had to cut my hair, but, dearest, it will soon grow again as pretty as ever!"
She moved closer, and timidly clasped her arms about his neck.
"Oh, my darling! do not look at me as if I were a stranger! Oh, do not! That cold, stony stare almost breaks my heart! Oh, Love! it is your own little Dainty! I was stolen away from you, and oh! I have passed through such a terrible experience! You have been ill, too, have you not, my dearest one? Oh, how thin and pale you are, but just as handsome as ever!" and she clasped him close in a warm embrace, and showered fond, wifely kisses on his cold, unresponsive lips.
The door opened suddenly, and an intelligent-looking mulatto man came in very softly, as if into a sick room.
Dainty knew him at once as Love's valued personal attendant Franklin.
Her arms dropped from Love's neck, and she blushed as he exclaimed:
"So it's really you, Miss Chase?"
"Why, Franklin, you knew me at once, but your master looks on me as a stranger!" she answered, in surprise that grew boundless as the man returned, sadly:
"Alas! Miss Chase, you and all the world must ever remain strangers to my poor master now!"
The mulatto was a clever, well-educated person, and his words, strange as they sounded, carried the ring of truth.
"What can you mean?" she faltered.
"Miss Chase, where have you been? Have you heard nothing of Mr. Ellsworth's sad condition?" he asked, respectfully.
Still keeping her arm around Love's neck, the young girl answered, gently:
"I was kidnapped the night before my wedding, Franklin, and the next day I was told Mr. Ellsworth had been shot and was dying. Then I was taken very ill, and knew nothing more till I returned here to-day, when I was overjoyed to learn that he was still alive!"
The man looked at her with genuine sadness.
"Ah, Miss Chase! I do not know whether you should be glad or not. Is not this more cruel than death?"
"I do not understand," she faltered, uncomprehendingly; and he answered, with intense sympathy:
"You have spoken to him, and he does not know you—you, the dearest creature on earth to him, Miss Chase! Neither does he recognize any one else, nor remember anything. There is a bullet in his head that the doctors can not extricate, and it has destroyed his mental faculties completely. His health is good, but he has forgotten the past, and lost even the power of speech. He will never be anything, they say, but a harmless idiot."
She cried out with a terrible anger that it was not true, that she could not believe it; he was trying to deceive her and break her heart.
He was usually a quiet, stolid man, but the tears came to his eyes as she knelt on the floor and wound her armsabout Love in passionate embraces, and, with tears that might have moved a heart made of stone, called on him to pity her and speak to her, his love, his Dainty, his true wife, whose heart was breaking for one tender word from his dear lips!
Alas! nor words, nor tears, nor embraces, nor reproaches could move Love Ellsworth from his statue-like repose.
He suffered Dainty's caresses passively, but he did not return them, and his large, beautiful dark eyes dwelt on her face with the gentle calm of an infant whose intellect is not yet awakened.
"You see how it is, Miss Chase, and God knows how sorry I am to see my dear master so," Franklin said, sorrowfully, as she desisted at last, and gazed in silent anguish at the mental wreck in the chair.
A new thought came to her, and she exclaimed:
"Where is my mother?"
"She returned to Richmond almost a month ago, Miss Chase."
"Why did she not remain and nurse poor Love?" she groaned.
Franklin hesitated a moment, then returned in a respectful undertone:
"I can not say for a certainty, miss, but it is whispered among the servants that Mrs. Ellsworth sent her away because the young ladies wished it."
"The young ladies?" inquiringly.
"Miss Peyton and Miss Craye, your cousins. Mrs. Ellsworth has adopted them as her joint heiresses sinceshe came into the fortune that my master lost by his failure to marry on his twenty-sixth birthday."
He gave a great start of surprise when the lovely, sad-eyed girl answered quickly:
"He did not lose it, for in the fear of some such treachery as afterward really happened, your master persuaded me to consent to a secret marriage in the middle of July, so that I have really been his wife going on three months."
"It is false!" cried an angry voice; and there in the door-way towered the tall form of Mrs. Ellsworth, pale to the very lips, but with an ominous flash in her dark eyes.
She had recovered from the faintness that had seized her at first sight of the supposed ghost, on being assured by a servant that she had seen Miss Chase in the flesh entering the room of Mr. Ellsworth. As soon as she could command her shaken nerves, she followed Dainty just in time to hear her avowal of her marriage to Love in July.
"It is false!" she cried, furiously; but Dainty faced her bravely, clasping Love's cold, irresponsive hand in her own, exclaiming tenderly:
"He is my husband!"
"Can you prove it?" sneeringly.
Dainty was very pale, and trembling like a wind-blown leaf, but she summoned courage to reply:
"We were married the middle of July at that little church in the woods where we attended a festival one night. It was in the twilight when we were returning from a long drive into the country."
"Ah! there were witnesses, of course?" anxiously.
"No one was present but the minister who united us," Dainty answered.
"His name?"
"I do not remember it."
"Indeed! that is strange. But perhaps you can remember whether there was a license, without which such a marriage would not be legal?" continued Mrs. Ellsworth, still scornfully incredulous.
Dainty answered, dauntlessly:
"Yes, there was a license. Love went to the county seat to procure it just previous to the marriage."
They gazed into each other's eyes, and Mrs. Ellsworth drew a long, shivering breath as she exclaimed, menacingly:
"This sounds very fine, but you can not prove one word of it—not one! It is a plot to wrest a fortune from me, but it will not succeed. It was your falsity in forsaking Love at his wedding-hour that caused all his trouble, and the sight of you is hateful to me. You must leave here at once, and return to your mother at your old home in Richmond, for the roof of Ellsworth shall not shelter you an hour!"
"Madame, after all my wrongs at your hands—" began Dainty, reproachfully; but she was cruelly interrupted:
"Assertion is not proof! Until you can bring proof of all your charges, I decline to admit them. Again, Lovelace Ellsworth is now a pauper dependent on my bounty. Raise but your voice to assert a wife's claim on him, and out he goes to become the wretched inmate of an idiot asylum. On your silence as to this trumped-up charge of a secret marriage, and also of wrongs pretended to be done by my hands, depends the comfort of Lovelace Ellsworth. Now say whether you love yourself better than you do him!"
It was a crucial test; but the girl did not hesitate.
She pressed her lips to Love's pale brow solemnly, as we kiss the dead, murmuring:
"I would sacrifice my very life to purchase any good for him!"
The man Franklin gazed on in keen sympathy for the girl and bitter disdain of the cruel woman, but he did not dare to utter a word lest he should make matters worse.
Mrs. Ellsworth's eyes flashed triumphantly at her easy victory over the broken-hearted girl.
"Very well. You have made a wise decision. You would only come to bitter grief by opposing me," she asserted, loftily; and added: "Now you must go. Here is ten dollars; take it, and go back on the first train to your mother in Richmond."
The girl clung to her husband, sobbing:
"Oh, let me stay and be his slave! I love him so I can not leave him!"
Franklin dared not open his lips, but his blood boiled at the cruel scene that followed, when Mrs. Ellsworth tore the weeping wife from her husband with resolute hands and harsh, cruel words, thrusting her outside the door as she cried:
"Go, now—leave the house at once, or I will send him instantly to an idiot asylum! What! you will not take my money? High airs for a pauper upon my word!"
She slammed the door, shutting the wretched young wife out into the hall, and turned fiercely upon Franklin.
"As you have been a witness to this scene," she cried, "I must also command your silence. Will money purchase it?"
"No, madame," he replied, with secret indignation.
"Then love for your master must be the motive," she cried, with a fierce stamp of the foot. "Do you want me to send him to an idiot asylum, where he can no longer have your faithful care?"
"No, madame, no!" the middle-aged servant replied, trembling with emotion.
"Then you will hold your tongue upon what has just occurred in this room? Do you promise?" she cried, harshly.
"I promise," replied Franklin, sadly.
"Very well. See that you do not violate it on pain of serious results to your master. I am tired of the charge of him anyhow; for who knows how soon his simple idiocy may turn to dangerous insanity? So the least provocation from you would cause me to send him to a pauper asylum for idiots!" she cried, warningly, as she hurried from the room to make sure that none of the officious servants should dare to harbor her persecuted victim.
Dainty had already dragged herself out of the house, passing an open door where Olive and Ela looked out with derisive laughter at her blighted appearance, with the golden curls all shorn away, and the pale face stained with tears, while her faded summer gown and the old-fashioned scarf drawn about her shivering form did not conduce to the elegance of her appearance.
"Ha! ha! she looks like a beggar!" sneered Olive, adding: "Let us follow, and see where she goes for shelter. Of course, she will have shocking tales to tell on us if she can get any one to listen. I should like to prevent her if I could."
"Nothing will shut her mouth but death!" returnedEla, significantly, as, unnoticed by any one, they stole out to track the despairing girl on her wretched exile.
The deep gloom of twilight had now fallen, and Dainty stood irresolute where to go, clinging forlornly to the gate, her wistful, white face turned back to Love's window, her tender heart wrung by the torture of leaving him forever.
"Oh! who could have dreamed of such a strange and cruel fate for my darling? It is indeed worse than death!" she sighed, miserably, thinking how cruel Mrs. Ellsworth had been to drive her away so heartlessly, when she had prayed to her humbly on her knees to let her remain as an humble servant and nurse him.
It seemed like the cruelest irony of fate that she, Love Ellsworth's wife, the real mistress of Ellsworth, should be driven in scorn from its gates, penniless, hopeless, and without a friend, her lips sealed to the truth of her wifehood, lest by speaking she should consign her beloved husband to a more cruel doom than he was already enduring.
Mrs. Ellsworth had carried things with a high hand; but she had been reasonably sure of her position, having investigated Love's story of a secret marriage, and satisfied herself that it would be well-nigh impossible to prove it.
Owing to Love's desire for secrecy, there was no record of the license on the books of the clerk of county court who had issued it. The clerk himself, a feeble, aged man, had died suddenly two months ago—the day previous to Lovelace Ellsworth's birthday.
The minister of the little church where the ceremony had been performed had also died a month previous of amalignant fever contracted in visiting a squalid settlement of shiftless sand diggers.
A terrible fatality seemed to attend poor Dainty; for in all probability these two dead men were the only persons who held the secret of her marriage, and dead men tell no tales.
As the worse than widowed bride clung to the gate, taking that farewell look at her husband's window, she suddenly remembered that she had one true though humble friend in the neighborhood—poor old black mammy.
"I will go to her cabin and stay to-night, and to-morrow I must try to go home to mamma," she sighed, turning toward the dark patch of woods where the lonely negro cabin stood, and followed by relentless fate in the shape of her pitiless rivals, Olive and Ela.
"She is going to old Virginia's cabin, but she does not know that the negroes have all moved away to the station, and that she will find it deserted," whispered Ela. "However, she can shelter herself there for the night, though it will be very cold without a fire."
"Some one ought to build one to keep her warm," Olive returned, with a significance that was not lost on her keen-witted cousin.
John Franklin's manly blood had boiled with resentment at seeing poor Dainty driven away in disgrace from the home of which she was virtually the mistress, for he believed every word of the story she had told Mrs. Ellsworth.
It made his kind heart ache to realize so fully the sad mental plight of his young master, who could sit by in apathy, and suffer such a cruel wrong to be done to his unfortunate young wife.
He gloried in the pride that had made her fling back in the woman's face the offered pittance from her cruel persecutor.
"Yet, poor soul, she looked shabby and penniless. Perhaps she had not the money to pay her fare to Richmond. I wonder if the unfortunate young lady would accept a loan from her husband's servant?" he thought, anxiously.
It pained him to think of her going out into the darkness of the night, friendless and shelterless, knowing how well his master had loved her, and how worthy she was of that love.
He decided that it was his duty to follow her and proffer his services if she needed them, though in so clandestine a manner that wicked Mrs. Ellsworth need not find it out and revenge herself by cruelty to his master.
Leaving Love presently to the care of another attendant, he slipped away through the grounds to the road,wondering which way the unhappy wanderer had gone.
A little incident ended his perplexity.
While pausing under the shade of a tree, gazing anxiously up and down the road, he suddenly saw the cousins Olive and Ela, skulking like criminals out in the dusky woodland path that led to old mammy's cabin; and the light of the rising moon on their faces showed them pallid and scared-looking, as if pursued by threatening fiends. Clasping each other's hands, and panting with excitement, they fled across the road to the gates of Ellsworth, without perceiving that they were detected in something underhand by the lynx eyes of a suspicious watcher.
"They have been up to some mischief, and I will find it out if I can," he thought, darting into the woodland path, and following it with alert eyes until suddenly the darkness was illuminated by the glare of fire, and rushing forward, he discovered old mammy's cabin wrapped in flames.
A startled cry burst from the man's lips as a terrible suspicion drove the bounding blood coldly back upon his heart.
Had the deserted cabin been fired by Olive and Ela?
If so, what had been their motive? Something very important surely, for conscious guilt had looked from their pale faces, had marked their skulking flight from the scene.
If Dainty Chase had gone to the cabin to seek refuge with the old black woman, their motive was not hard to fathom, and as Franklin bounded toward the scene of the fire, it all flashed over his mind like lightning.
The life of Dainty was a menace to Mrs. Ellsworth and her nieces, for if she could prove her marriage toLovelace Ellsworth on the middle of July, she would wrest from his step-mother the wealth she claimed by reason of his failure to marry before his birthday, and in which she was making her nieces joint sharers.
Yes, all three of them had a terrible interest in the girl's death; the man realized it fully.
And Mrs. Ellsworth but a little while ago had given him a deep insight into her evil nature.
Perhaps she had sent her nieces—as wicked as herself—to follow poor Dainty and devise means for getting her out of the way.
It was horrible to think of such a crime, but he made haste to verify his suspicions by darting around to an end window not yet wreathed in the leaping flames and peering into the house, though the heat scorched him and the smoke was stifling.
He drew back with a cry of horror and indignation.
Yes, Dainty was there!
On gaining the shelter of the cabin, seeking the protection of the old mammy, whom she counted as her only friend, the girl, in her grief and sorrow and cruel disappointment at finding the place untenanted, had sunk into a heavy swoon on the hard floor.
Doubtless her cruel rivals, following and beholding her piteous plight, had seen their opportunity and taken instant advantage of it.
Roused from her unconsciousness by the crackling flames and stifling smoke, the girl was just rising from the floor, and the despair on her face as she comprehended her terrible environment would haunt John Franklin to his dying day.
The great, sublime pity that rose to flood-tide in theman's tender heart submerged every thought of self in an instant.
No escape seemed possible for Dainty. The inflammable log cabin was surrounded by fire, and she stood in the center of the awful glare like some pale, beautiful martyr at the stake.
Franklin caught up a great bowlder from the ground and dashed it again and again against the sash till it was broken in, then, stripping off his coat, muffled his head in it, and sprang like a hero through smoke and flame to the rescue of his master's bride, catching her up in his strong arms, and bearing her, after a fierce conflict with the fire, back through the broken sash to life and safety.
And not a moment too soon, for the roof of the cabin crashed in on the burning walls ere he had staggered three yards from the scene of his heroic deed, and the fierce flames, leaping higher, conveyed to two anxious watchers at Ellsworth the news that they had succeeded in their damnable crime.
Franklin realized that it was best to let them hug that belief to their hearts, so all that he did afterward that night was under the veil of secrecy.
He succeeded in getting an old buggy and conveying Dainty to the station, where he placed her on the midnight train and bought her a ticket for Richmond.
No one but black mammy was let into the secret, and unseen by any one in the gloom of the midnight hour and in the scarcity of travel that night, she was sent on her way to her mother, Franklin saying to her earnestly:
"Let me advise you, Mrs. Ellsworth, to keep close to your mother, and away from the fiendish enemies who are seeking to compass your death. I will take the bestcare of your husband, and may God send him recovery from his hurt, that he may restore you to your rightful position, and punish the wretches who have wronged you both!"
"Stop! stranger; may I speak with you?—Ah, yes, you needn't fear—While I whisper through the grating,I wouldn't have them hear.These jailers, if a bodyBut chance to speak her name,They roll their eyes so savage,As if they meant to tameSome wild beast, and they scare me.Come nearer, nearer yet;Come near me till I whisper,'Have you seen her?—seen Annette?'"What did they bring me here for?I say, I want to go!How shall I ever find herWhen I am locked in so?They lied to me—'Twas once there in the street,Where I sat on a doorstepTo rest my aching feet.They say, 'We'll lead you to her,'And many times said, 'Come,'At last I followed, eagerTo find my little one.But when I bid them bring her.They answer, 'By and by.'Just turn the key, please, won't you,And let me slip out sly?"
"Stop! stranger; may I speak with you?—Ah, yes, you needn't fear—While I whisper through the grating,I wouldn't have them hear.These jailers, if a bodyBut chance to speak her name,They roll their eyes so savage,As if they meant to tameSome wild beast, and they scare me.Come nearer, nearer yet;Come near me till I whisper,'Have you seen her?—seen Annette?'
"What did they bring me here for?I say, I want to go!How shall I ever find herWhen I am locked in so?They lied to me—'Twas once there in the street,Where I sat on a doorstepTo rest my aching feet.They say, 'We'll lead you to her,'And many times said, 'Come,'At last I followed, eagerTo find my little one.But when I bid them bring her.They answer, 'By and by.'Just turn the key, please, won't you,And let me slip out sly?"
One of the most troublesome patients at the Virginia Asylum for the Insane in Staunton was a pretty, pale little woman named Mrs. Chase.
To look at her sitting very quiet—sometimes with her fair little hands meekly folded, and a brooding sorrow in her tearful, deep blue eyes—you would have said she was a most interesting patient, and could not surely give any one trouble.
But the women attendants in her ward could have told you quite a different story.
Mrs. Chase had a suicidal mania, and had to be watched closely all the time to keep her from taking her own life.
These attendants would have explained to you that all insane people have some hobby that they ride industriously all the time.
There was the man who believed himself to be Napoleon reincarnated, and amused everybody with his military toggery and braggadocio.
There was the lady who called herself Queen Victoria, and was never seen without a huge pasteboard crown.
There were the two men who each claimed to be the Christ, and frowned disapproval on the claims of each other.
There was the youth who imagined himself a violin virtuoso, and fiddled all day long, varying his performance by pausing to pass around the hat for pennies, of which he had accumulated, it was said, more than a gallon already.
There was the forsaken bride who was waiting every day for the false lover to return and bear her away on a blissful wedding-tour.
There was the man who believed himself already dead,and solemnly recounted to you the particulars of the horrible death he had died, adding that he was detained from his grave by the delay of the cruel undertakers in taking his measure for the coffin. He had actually been known to slip into the dead-house one day, and lie down in a casket intended for a real corpse, having to have force employed to eject him from his narrow abode.
Again, there was the man who imagined himself to be a grain of corn, and fled with screams of alarm from the approach of a chicken. These, and scores of others with hobbies, tragic or ridiculous, as the case might be; but not one of them all, said the attendants, needed such care and watching as pale, pretty, meek little Mrs. Chase.
Her hobby was a lost or stolen child.
No one knew whether or not there was any truth in her claim. She had been brought there from Richmond, a friendless stranger, who had been found wandering homeless in the street, raving of a lost child.
Her story was just as likely to be false as true, they said, for lunatics imagined many things. It might be her child had died; for she was always praying for death, that she might find her lost darling again.
It was melancholy madness. The hardest to cure of all, said the doctors, and she had been frustrated in several frantic attempts to end her life. She was so clever and so cunning that they had to watch her constantly; but even the most impatient of the attendants could not give her a cross word, her grief was so pathetic, and she seemed so sorrowfully helpless in her frail, gentle prettiness.
"Have you seen my daughter, my darling little Dainty? She is lost; stolen away from me while I slept," she would say to every strange person she saw, and herpale face would glow as she added, proudly: "She was the prettiest girl in the world. I have often heard people say so. She was as beautiful as a budding rose, with hair like the sunshine, and eyes as blue as the sky. Her little hands were white as lilies, and her feet so tiny and graceful, every one turned to watch her as she passed; and was it any wonder she caught such a grand, rich lover? She would have married him if she had not been lost that night. Oh, let me out! let me go and find my darling! You have no right to lock me in here!"
Then she would fly into paroxysms of anger, trying to batter down the walls and escape from what she called her stony prison; and at other times she would pray for death, crying:
"Oh, God! send me death; for surely my darling must be dead, or she would have come back to me long before they locked me up here! They stole her away and killed her, my sweet Dainty, the cruel enemies who hated and envied her so much for her angelic beauty and her noble lover! Oh, who would keep me back from death, when only through its dark gates can I find my child again?"
But they watched her carefully; they allowed her no means of ending the life of which she was so weary; and so the months flew by from September to spring, and it was almost a year since Dainty had left her home so gladly for the country visit that had ended so disastrously, and with such a veil of mystery over her strange fate.
"Where is Annette? Where is she?Does anybody know?"
"Where is Annette? Where is she?Does anybody know?"
"Alone with my hopeless sorrow,No other mate I know!I strive to awake tomorrow,But the dull words will not flow.I pray—but my prayers are drivenAside by the angry Heaven,And weigh me down with woe!"
"Alone with my hopeless sorrow,No other mate I know!I strive to awake tomorrow,But the dull words will not flow.I pray—but my prayers are drivenAside by the angry Heaven,And weigh me down with woe!"
Young, beautiful, penniless, and alone in the world! Oh, what a cruel fate!
Dainty realized it in all its bitterness when she arrived in Richmond that dull October day, and found the first snow of the season several inches deep on the ground, making her shiver with cold in her thin summer gown and straw hat.
But her heart was warm with the thought of the dear mother she was going to rejoin.
What a glad reunion it would be for both in spite of her bitter troubles, when, clasped in that dear mother's arms, she should lay her weary head on that dear breast, and sob out all her grief to sympathizing ears.
She had a little money in a small purse that Franklin had forced her to take as a loan, and she hired a cab to take her to her old home, where she had not a doubt of still finding her mother.
Alas! what was her horror to find the small house burned to the ground!
Dismissing the cab, she started on a round of the neighborhood, seeking news of the dear one.
But there were new neighbors in the sparsely settled place, and no one knew anything about the little lady who had kept boarders at the house on the corner.
Half frozen with the bitter cold, she dragged herself to the corner grocery, thinking that Mr. Sparks could surely give her some information.
His stolid, well-fed face was the first familiar one she had met, and she wondered why he wore that broad band of crape about his coat-sleeve.
"Is it really you, Miss Chase? Well, well! you're quite a stranger! Been ill? You don't look as blooming as when you went away in the summer. Well, it was hard on you losing your little mother in that cruel fashion! But death is no respecter of persons. He robbed me of my ailing wife about the same time your mother was called. What! you don't understand? Bless me! the girl's dropped like I'd shot her! Ailsa! Ailsa!" he called in alarm, as he picked up the unconscious girl, and hurried with her to the back of the store, which was also his dwelling.
Then a pretty, brown-eyed girl, sitting with several noisy children, sprang up, and cried in wonder:
"What is the matter?"
"Here's your old neighbor and school-mate, Ailsa, little Dainty Chase. She came into the store, and I was talking to her about the death of my wife and her mother, when she dropped in a sort of fit. See to her, will you, while I run back to my customers?"
Pretty Ailsa Scott hastened to resuscitate her oldschool-mate, and when she revived, was startled to hear her sob, hysterically:
"I came to find my mother, Ailsa. I have been lost from her for wretched months; but your step-father told me she was dead! Oh, it can not be true! God would not be so cruel!"
Ailsa Scott had passed through the recent loss of her own mother, and she knew what a blow it would be to Dainty when she heard the cruel truth; but there was no escaping it, so she clasped her gentle arms about the stricken girl, saying sadly:
"It makes my heart ache for you, dear Dainty, but it would be useless to deceive you. About the time that mother lay in her last sickness it was rumored that your mother came back here the very day after the house was burned. I did not see her myself, but it was in all the papers that she went suddenly insane, and after wandering wildly about the city all day, calling for you, took poison and died in an alley. I do not know where she is buried, for mother was so very ill, and died the same week. Since then I've had my heart and hands both full with the care of the children, and teaching school, too, for I would not depend on my step-father for a penny. You know"—whispering—"I always hated him, and there wasn't much love lost between us. Indeed, I wouldn't have stayed here a day after mother's death only for my little half-brothers and sisters. He had no relations to help him, and hired help is not very reliable. He keeps a servant, but they tell me she is unkind to the children when I'm at school. If you have no friends to go to, dear, I wish you would stay with me awhile, and look after the little ones while I'm away."
It was a delicate offer of a shelter, for Ailsa's eyes hadtaken in the poverty of her guest, and Dainty was but too glad of a refuge in which to nurse her deep despair.
When Ailsa informed her step-father questioningly of her offer, he smiled approval, and made Dainty welcome in his simple home, while tender-hearted Ailsa soothed her all she could in the bitterness of her bereavement.
"We are both orphans, dear, and we can sympathize with each other," she said, tenderly, and helped her friend to get some neat mourning gowns, in which she looked so frail and lily-like that she seemed to be fading away like a broken flower.
She tended patiently on the little children and won their love, and the exuberant gratitude of their father, this latter so effusive that it grew irksome to the sorrowful, reserved girl.
"Oh, Ailsa, I do not wish to seem ungrateful, but I dislike the man as much as you do, and his attentions are getting too pointed to be agreeable. I am afraid I shall have to leave you and the dear children, much as I love you," she sighed, in December, after two quiet months in the little house; and her friend rejoined, indignantly:
"I see he is trying to court you, although his wife, my dear mother, has been dead but a few months. Oh, why did she ever marry such a brute? I believe he broke her heart, for it was a strange decline of which she died. He was always flirting with his women customers, and scolded his wife harshly when she objected. He made her bitterly unhappy, the coarse, unfaithful wretch, and that is why I hate him so for my own papa never spoke an unkind word to her up to the day of his death. You will have to repulse him, but not too unkindly to arouse his enmity."
But the crisis came suddenly the next day while Ailsawas at school. Mr. Sparks boldly proposed marriage to the indignant girl.
Her blue eyes flashed disdain upon him, as she cried:
"How can you be so coarse and unfeeling, sir, showing so little respect to the memory of the wife dead but a few months?"
"She is as dead now as she will be in ten years hence!" he replied, with a grin that filled her with disgust; while he added, wheedlingly: "But I know how particular women folks are over these trifles, and I would have waited till spring before I spoke to you on the subject, but the fact is, the neighbors are gossiping about my keeping house with two pretty girls, and neither one any kin to me. So I thought I'd better marry one of them, and shut scandal's mouth. And as for Ailsa, I never liked her. She is always throwing up to me that her pa was a nicer man than I am. But as for you, Dainty, I worship the very ground you walk on, and I'll marry you to-morrow if you'll say the word."
"I can't marry you, sir. I—I—oh I am going right away, Mr. Sparks! I couldn't breathe the same air with a man that was so disrespectful to his first wife's memory as to court another in three months after her death!" the young girl cried, in passionate disgust, arousing such bitter spite that the rejected suitor cast courtesy to the winds, rejoining, hotly:
"Go, then, Miss Pert, and the sooner the better! Shall I call a wagon to take your trunk?" sarcastically.
"You know I have no trunk, Mr. Sparks, but I will pack my valise at once, and perhaps you will let it stay till I can take it away. I must rent a room somewhere first," she murmured.
"No; take it with you, I say. Your clothes might getcontaminated breathing the same air with me!" he answered, angrily.
So presently Dainty went away in the teeth of a howling winter storm, without a penny in her purse, or a shelter for her head, while the little ones sobbed out to Ailsa when she returned that bad papa had driven sweet Dainty away.
Dainty dragged herself slowly along the snowy street, almost exhausted by the weight of the hand-bag; and she wondered pathetically if it might not be best to follow her mother's example, and seek refuge from life's woes by the straight gate of death?
"Dear mother, if I only knew where to find the lonely grave where strangers laid you, I would stretch myself upon it and die!" she sobbed, the tears in her cheeks mixing with the melting snow, as it flew into her pale face, driven by the bleak December gale.
She crept presently into a quiet area-way, and somewhat sheltered from the driving storm, pondered on what she was to do now, without friends and without money, in a cold, suspicious world.
Presently she heard girlish chatter and tittering, and glancing through a window, saw several young girls busy at sewing-machines, directed by an angular spinster whom she took to be a dress-maker.
A sudden temptation seized her, and she rapped timidly on the basement door, bringing the spinster hurriedly to it.
"Do you want a dress made?" she inquired, glancing at Dainty's hand-bag.
"No, madame. I am in search of work. Do you wish another hand to sew?" faltered Dainty.
"Um! yes—I don't know. Bring in your valise, andlet us talk it over;" ushering her into a tiny, cozy kitchen, where they could talk in private.
"Now, then, what's your name, and how came you out hunting work in the face of such weather? Tell the truth," she said, suspiciously; and Dainty obeyed.
"I have been employed to help nurse some children, and was discharged to-day. My name is Miss Chase."
"Did you bring a recommendation?" sharply.
"No, ma'am; but I think I can refer you to Miss Ailsa Scott, on this same street. It was her mother's children I was nursing; but the father sent me away."
"I know Mr. Sparks. Why did he send you away?"
"I would rather not tell."
"Then I can not give you work!" curtly.
"Oh, madame, I am ashamed to tell you! The man wanted to marry me, and his poor wife dead but a few months! I refused with scorn, and he drove me away," the girl answered, wearily.
"Humph! I can't see what he wanted with a chit like you for a wife," the spinster returned, tossing her false frizzes disparagingly, and adding: "I do need another hand, but the pay is too much. I can not afford it."
"Oh, madame, I would work for my board awhile, if you will let me stay here!" pleaded Dainty, eagerly; and the woman answered:
"I don't know but that would suit me very well. I live here by myself, all the girls going home in the evenings. You may take off your things, and I'll get some work ready for you. But, mind, I'll call on Ailsa Scott to-night, and unless you have spoken the truth, out you go in the morning."
"I have only spoken the truth, madame," Dainty sighed, as she obeyed the commands, and soon found herself seatedamong the busy sewing girls, basting away on a ruffle, and thanking God in her heart for even this poor shelter that must be paid for with constant toil.
The girls all seemed to be gay enough, in spite of their poverty; but Dainty, poor, nervous girl, was glad when they went away at sunset, and left her alone with Miss White, as she found the name of her employer to be.
The spinster was not more than forty, and rather good-looking, in spite of her angularity. She asked Dainty many questions about Sparks, betraying quite a lively interest in the widower; and by and by she dressed herself smartly in a black silk gown and red bonnet, and went off to get Dainty's character from Ailsa Scott, leaving the girl alone in the house, save for some tenants in the upper part.
Dainty was very tired and sad; but she washed the tea-things and put them away, and lay down on the lounge in the sewing-room, with a sigh of relief at the chance to rest.
Poor Dainty was always tired and sad now. She had never been very strong since her illness in the mountains.
Her face was always thin and pale, her blue eyes hollow, with dark circles beneath them, while her breath was short and palpitating. She knew that she was strangely ill, and had a fancy that she was going into a rapid decline.
Ailsa Scott wanted her to see a doctor, but she always refused to do so.
"I want to die! I would rather not take any medicine from the best doctor in the world!" she exclaimed, rebelliously.
She had not told her friend the strange story of her secret marriage, fearing lest the threatened revenge of Mrs. Ellsworth should find her out even this far away; but Ailsa guessed well at some sad secret, and pitied the poor girl with all her gentle heart.
By and by Miss White returned in a very good humor indeed, saying that Miss Scott said everything was all right, and she would call to see her friend on her way from school the next day.
"I saw Mr. Sparks, too, and really, he is the most charming man I ever met," she simpered, adding: "I don't see how you could repulse his addresses, Miss Chase; he is so handsome and agreeable. Then, too, poor man,his sweet little children stand so much in need of a mother that he was excusable for haste, though he ought to have picked an older woman than you."
"I should say that you, Miss White, would be the most suitable woman in the world for him," Dainty ventured, with a faint smile.
"Thank you for the compliment. I wonder if he thinks so, too? He was certainly quite attentive, and I didn't let him guess I knew he was looking for a wife; but I made up my mind to buy my groceries from him in future," smirked the delighted spinster, thinking what a little fool that girl was to refuse such a man.
Ailsa came next day, and was indignant when she heard how her step-father had treated Dainty, while she rejoiced that the girl had found such a refuge, for she believed that Miss White was in the main a very good woman.
"But, oh! Dainty, she has set her cap at Sparks, and I believe her flatteries have made an impression on him that will heal the wounds your scolding gave. Depend on it, that will be a match, and, as I believe she would make a real good step-mother to my little half-brothers and sisters, you and I will rent rooms and live together like sisters after the wedding!" she cried, cheerfully, trying to bring a smile to the pale, lily-like face over which the tears streamed as the girl sighed:
"Oh, Ailsa, you are like an angel to me!"
"I am very sorry," continued Ailsa, "that you have promised to work for your board, for you need a little money as you go along—all girls do—and when I found you were gone without a cent I was nearly crazy. I gave old Sparks such a lecture as he will never forget, and I fairly hugged that primpy old maid when she came to tellme where you were. Now, dear, take this ten dollars from your sister Ailsa, and use it in time of need. No, you shall not refuse it, or you may be sorry for it if Miss White should turn you out in the streets some day as heartlessly as old Sparks did."
She had not the least idea of such a thing happening again, but she wanted to frighten Dainty into taking the gift, and she succeeded, after which she left, promising to see her friend often.
The weeks came and went, and Dainty toiled at her sewing with aching limbs and a heavy heart filled with dire forebodings that she dare not utter aloud to any human being, even gentle Ailsa, and at night her lonely pillow was wet with tears, and her piteous cry was ever:
"Oh, mother, mother, if only you were with me now to pity and help me in my trouble!"
For awhile Miss White was quite kind, for at the bottom of her heart she felt secretly grateful to the girl for having in a way brought about her acquaintance with Sparks—an acquaintance that she prosecuted with much vigor, running in and out daily for trifles from the store, till her broad flatteries and fondness for the children awakened a warm sentiment in his heart, and he began to pay her such pleasing attentions as calling on Sunday evenings for social chats, Dainty always keeping out of the way, reluctant to meet him again, and quite unaware that in his spite he was doing all he could to turn Miss White's heart against her haplessprotege.
March came with its bleak winds and occasional hints of spring, but Dainty's heart sank heavier day by day, her cheeks grew more pale, her eyes more heavy, as she drooped over her work shivering, with the thick capealways wrapped about her form, and looking as if death would soon claim her as its own.
They were dark, sad days for Dainty, for the gay young girls, Miss White's assistants, began to shun her, and to look askance at the form always bundled up so closely from the winter cold. Two hands quit work abruptly and never returned, and the three others held private conversations with their employer, after which she came straight to Dainty, saying harshly:
"You wicked girl, you have imposed on me!"
Dainty was putting away the tea-things, and she started so violently that a china cup fell through her thin fingers and crashed upon the floor.
Miss White continued, angrily:
"I took you in as an honest girl and treated you kindly. In return you imposed on me, disgraced my house, and broke up my business!"
"Oh, madame!"
"Two of my best hands have quit me in disgust, and the other three threaten to go unless I turn you away at once. Do you know the reason, pray?"
Crimson with shame, Dainty dropped forlornly before her with down-dropped eyes, speechless with fear, and the woman continued, sharply:
"Take off that cape you've been shrouded in all the winter, pretending to suffer from the cold, and let me see if it is really hiding your disgrace."
"Oh, spare me!"
"Do as I bid you! There! I've dragged it off in spite of you! Oh, for shame—shame! How could you be so wicked with that innocent face?"
"Oh, I am not as bad as you think! I—I—"
"Hush! You can't excuse your disgrace. Mr. Sparkstold me all along you were a bad girl, and told me when we became engaged I must send you to the right-about before we were married. But, somehow, I couldn't believe ill of you, till I see it now with my own eyes."
"Oh! may I stay till to-morrow? You will not drive me out into the streets to-night?" imploringly.
"I ought to do it to pay you for cheating me so; but I'm a Christian woman, and, somehow, I pity you, and I can't be hard on you. You may stay to-night; but you must leave in the morning directly after breakfast. There's a hospital in this city for poor girls that's gone astray like you. You can go there, and the good doctor will take you in and let you stay till your child is born. Then you can put it in the foundlings' home and some good people may adopt it."
"Merciful God, have pity!" shrilled over the girl's tortured lips, as she sank on her knees, overcome by the horror of her thoughts.
Her child—Love Ellsworth's lawful heir—to be born in a home for "girls gone astray," and placed in a foundlings' home, to be "adopted by some good people." Had she come to this? She, whose future had promised so radiantly nine brief months ago! A wild prayer to Heaven broke from her pallid lips:
"Oh, God! take us both—the forsaken mother and child—to heaven!"
"It's too late to take on now. Better behaved yourself right at first," the old maid admonished her; adding, soothingly: "Go to bed now, and I'll send to-morrow for the good doctor to come and take you to the lying-in hospital."
But in the gray dawn of the cold morning she found the bed empty, and poor Dainty gone.