Several months went by, and the fate that hung so heavily over Flower Fielding's beautiful head lowered more and more darkly, until life became a burden almost too heavy to be borne.
Laurie Meredith had gone away on the night before the one appointed for their elopement, and nothing had ever been heard of him since.
At first Flower had feared that something had happened to her lover, and in her desperation she had personally made inquiry at the hotel where he had boarded, and the clerk had told her that Mr. Meredith had settled his bill that evening and had his trunk sent down to the boat, saying that he was going home, as his father had written for him to come.
"I am very sorry," Flower said, falteringly. She saw the clerk's look of astonishment, and added: "Mr. Meredith lent me some books to read, and I would have liked to return them, but I did not know he was going away so soon. Have you any idea where I could send them?"
"No, I have not, miss; but I dare say Mr. Meredith desired you to keep them," returned the resplendent young clerk, with an admiring glance at the lovely young girl, which made her color hotly and immediately turn away.
"He will come back, or he will write soon and explain why he went away so suddenly. He may have been called away by a telegram. Perhaps some of his relatives are dead," she thought; and for several weeks she waited, expecting his return, or a letter at least.
Still she could not help feeling indignant at the way in which he had gone.
"He might have sent a note to let me know," shethought; but as time passed on without any explanation, she resolved to write to him and ask him why he had treated her so unkindly.
He had given her a card one day with his Northern address upon it, and she had put it away carefully in her little rosewood writing-desk.
But when she went to look for it the card was gone. Something else was gone, too—a paper that Laurie had given her to keep—an important document.
She nearly fainted at first; but, rousing herself, she went to her trunk and looked carefully through that, then her bureau drawers, thinking that perhaps she had removed it to another place.
But neither the card nor the paper was to be found.
A wild suspicion came to her, and she rushed to Jewel's room.
"Have you taken anything out of my desk?" she asked, abruptly.
Jewel looked around in surprise.
"What a question! Of course I have not taken anything from your desk. Have you lost anything, or only your senses, Flower Fielding?"
Flower shrunk sensitively from her sister's sharp voice and angry glance, and answered in a low voice:
"I had a card with Laurie Meredith's name on it, and—a very important paper. I thought perhaps you had taken them away to tease me."
"No, I have not seen them. What was the paper about?" Jewel asked, gazing sharply into her sister's downcast face.
"I can not tell you, dear Jewel," was the sad reply. Then taking courage in her misery, the poor girl continued. "Do you remember where Laurie Meredith lived? And will you tell me, for I have forgotten?"
"You wish to write to him?" sneered Jewel, and Flower sighed:
"Yes."
"Has he written to you?"
"No; or at least I have never received a letter—but, Jewel, he must have written—he must surely have written—only I have never received the letter."
The piteous voice, the tearful blue eyes were very touching, but Jewel Fielding laughed harshly.
"Do you want to know what I think?" she cried. "You are a fool, Flower Fielding. The man never gave you another thought after he left here, and I am surprised at you for thinking of writing to him. And what would mamma say? You know she forbid you to have anything to say to Laurie Meredith."
"Yes, I know. Please do not tell her, Jewel, that I wished to write to him," Flower faltered, anxiously.
"If you will promise me not to write to him, Flower, I will not tell mamma."
"How can I write when I do not know where to address a letter? But I will not promise, for if I find out I shall write!" Flower cried, defiantly, and rushed away.
Jewel's beautiful dark face dilated with anger as she muttered to herself:
"The obstinate little vixen, how I hate her! I do not know why I do not tell mamma everything. It is only because I am afraid she would not be severe enough upon her. I will wait, wait, until I get more to go upon. That wretched Sam, where can he have gone, and why does he not return?"
For Sam had locked up the cabin on the morning after Laurie Meredith disappeared, and had gone away, no one knew where.
Perhaps he had gone to get rid of the importunities ofMrs. Fielding, fearing lest in some weak moment she might cajole him out of the papers she desired so much.
However that may be, he had disappeared as entirely as if mother earth had opened and swallowed him, and both Mrs. Fielding and Jewel chafed bitterly over this misfortune.
Mrs. Fielding had gone to Sam's house several times in the dead of night and made eager search for the papers, but without success. But the known fact that Sam was gone away, connected with the fact that lights had been seen flaring through the cabin windows at night, speedily gave room to gossips about the neighborhood to declare that old Maria's ghost haunted the place.
When the report came to the ears of Mrs. Fielding she smiled bitterly, and Jewel, who had been watching her mother's face, immediately leaped to a conclusion. She thought:
"She has been there searching for those papers at night."
And she immediately determined that she would do the same thing, for she felt convinced that her mother had failed. Else why did she grow older and stranger with such awful rapidity that her daughters shuddered sometimes, fearing from her fits of rage alternating with fearful moodiness that she was going mad.
Poor Flower, in spite of her own sorrows, felt an added pang when she heard that the ghost of her old black nurse was walking about her old home. She shed some bitter tears, and ventured to express a timid fear lest Maria had had something on her mind before she died which made her spirit restless now.
Mrs. Fielding scowled furiously and snarled angrily.
"Maria was a wicked old woman! She had done enough evil to send her soul to torment, and I hope she is suffering there!"
Her flashing eyes and vindictive words almost frightenedher daughters, and Flower hurriedly retired to her own room to weep bitterly over those unkind words spoken of her dear old nurse.
Poor Flower, she was almost always weeping now! A terrible trouble had come to her which she feared the keen, cruel eyes of Jewel already suspected, although Mrs. Fielding, absorbed in her bitter, secret musings, and spending much of her time alone, noticed nothing.
The summer days were long since gone, and nearly six months had passed since Laurie Meredith had to all appearance deserted the trusting young girl whom he had secretly made his wife.
To her grief and terror she had found out months ago that a little child was coming to her, and she knew not where to fly to hide the shame and disgrace hanging over her golden head.
Oh, how she repented her folly and disobedience now, for she believed that Laurie was false to her, and that he had deliberately abandoned her after amusing himself with her all the golden summer days!
She would rather have died than confess the truth to her proud mother, now that the marriage-certificate was lost, for she feared that her story would not be believed, having an intuitive knowledge that Jewel would, through the weight of her influence, be against her—Jewel, who had taken no pains to conceal the fact that she had hated her blue-eyed sister ever since that rivalry for Laurie Meredith's love, in which Flower had been the winner.
So, as the cold days of winter deepened and darkened, and the winds blew chill and cold across the stormy sea, Flower began to stay in her room more and more, with her pale face glued against the window-pane, thinking, thinking, until she grew almost as wild-eyed as her mother, and wondering how much longer it would be before she would be compelled to fly to hide her disgrace.
The time came when poor, unhappy Flower felt that she could hide her condition no longer—not even from the absorbed woman who took so little pride in her beautiful daughters now.
For months she had been going about with a heavy shawl wrapped about her; but the pretense of chilliness could no longer avail her, for spring was in its second month now and early flowers were in bloom.
She laid her plans tearfully to flee from home and leave some of her things on the sea-shore, that her mother might think she had drowned herself for love. Better that than the bitter truth.
She had a little money—the savings of the little pin-money allowed her monthly by her mother. She put this in a little purse in her bosom, wrapped herself in a plain dark cloak and thick veil, and started out, one dark twilight hour, with a small hand-satchel on her arm, feeling quite sure of escaping unmolested, as her mother was in her own room, and Jewel had gone to the town close by to do a little shopping, as she said.
Alas! Jewel was coming up the front steps, and a low, malicious cry came from her lips as she sprung forward and caught Flower rudely by the arm.
"Where are you going?" she demanded, sharply.
"To—to—walk," Flower faltered, trying to draw herself away; but Jewel held her fast.
"It is a falsehood—you are running away!" she exclaimed, harshly.
"What does it matter if Iamrunning away?" Flower cried, growing desperate in her despair. "No one cares for me now. Laurie has deserted me, mamma is changed and cold, and you have grown to hate me so bitterly thatI feared to come and tell you of my trouble and beg you to pity and help me. Let me go, Jewel, and throw myself into the sea and end it all."
Jewel's eyes took on a baleful look in the twilight; she muttered, hoarsely:
"If I were quite sure you would do that I'd let you go; but you wouldn't. You were running away to seek Laurie Meredith, you know you were!"
"I have a right to seek him if I choose!" Flower cried, roused to defiance by her sister's inhumanity. "He is my husband, and no one knows it better than you, Jewel, for I am quite sure that it was you who took the certificate from my desk. Oh, sister—dear sister!" she cried, growing suddenly wild and pathetic as she fell on her knees before the hard-hearted girl, "you have tortured me long enough, have you not? Even such jealous hate as yours must be satisfied by the torments I have endured in the past eight months. Oh, give me back my marriage-certificate! Let me give it to my mother; perhaps then she will forgive me, and I need not go away."
It was a thrilling picture, the lovely, wretched, forsaken girl kneeling in the gloom of the shadowy porch, her fair face upturned so pleadingly, the tresses of shining gold falling in disorder over the dark cloak as she looked up at that dark, proud face so transformed by jealousy and anger that it appeared almost satanic, for no pity lightened in the cruel, triumphant smile that parted the curved, red lips.
"Ha! ha! so you were married—a likely story!" she hissed, scornfully. "And the poor little bride has lost her marriage-certificate. That is unfortunate! But, come, let us tell mamma. Perhaps she will forgive you, anyhow."
With a wild, mocking laugh she dragged Flower to the parlor, which Mrs. Fielding had just entered, and holding her hapless sister tightly by the arm, exclaimed:
"Mamma, I caught Flower running away from home, and I brought her back."
Mrs. Fielding, startled out of her apathy at once, started to her feet, crying wonderingly:
"Running away! Flower running away! But why? What reason—"
Spite of Flower's frantic struggles Jewel tore the shrouding cloak from her sister's form.
"Reason! ha, ha! Look at her one moment and you will see her reason!" she laughed, in bitter triumph; and Mrs. Fielding, after one wild, searching glance, threw up her thin white hands and uttered a shriek of horror and anger combined.
Jewel sprung quickly to her mother's side.
"Do not take it so hard, mamma," she cried, eagerly, with blazing eyes. "Her disgrace can not touch you nor me! Oh, mamma, I have fathomed the secret that has tortured you so long! This is the girl that was foisted on you by your faithless husband in place of my dead twin sister! This Flower is Daisy Forrest's daughter!"
It was a tragic moment in the lives of the three who stood in that closed room looking into one another's faces with dilated eyes.
Flower had fallen on her knees and dropped her shamed face in her hands when Jewel tore away her cloak. But at those startling words, uttered so triumphantly by her twin sister, the little white hands fell helplessly at her sides, and the blue eyes stared in bewilderment at her mother.
Did she hear aright? Was she dreaming, or was that Jewel, her twin sister, plucking eagerly at her mother's sleeve and saying such strange things in that hard, triumphant voice.
"Don't take it so hard, mamma. Her disgrace can not touch you nor me. Ah, mamma, I have fathomed the secret that has tortured you so long. This is the girl that was foisted on you by your faithless husband in place of my dead twin sister. This is Daisy Forrest's daughter."
The room seemed to reel, the solid walls to go up and down in some strange fashion before Flower's dim eyes, but she tried to keep her senses and hear what her mother would say to this monstrous charge.
She saw the dark-eyed, white-haired woman reel backward and throw up her arms into the air, while a strange, unearthly cry burst from her lips—a cry that was half-fierce joy and half a strangling horror.
Jewel laughed triumphantly, and continued:
"I was determined to find out Maria's secret—the terrible secret that had changed you so, but you would not satisfy my curiosity. So I watched and waited, and at last I heard you talking to Sam about some papers that he had hidden from you. I have been seeking them ever since, and to-day I found them, read them, and so became acquainted with all my father's villainy, and the share taken in it by our old nurse."
Mrs. Fielding's eyes began to blaze with a wild, maniacal light. She held out her hands with a commanding gesture.
"The papers! Give them to me!" she cried, hoarsely.
Jewel shook her head.
"Wait," she said; "they are half burned anyhow. It seems as if my father intended to burn them and never let you know the deceit he had practiced on you. He had written the whole story out, from time to time, in his diary, and on the day he committed suicide he must have flung it into the fire, and old Maria pulled it out—"
"Yes, that is what she said. Give me the book,Jewel!" Mrs. Fielding cried, in wild impatience; but again the clever, wicked girl refused.
"Not yet," she said; and suddenly turned on Flower, pointing a scornful finger at her wan, white face. "Get up; you look like a fool kneeling down there!" she exclaimed, roughly. "Sit down there in that chair; mamma is going to tell you who and what you are."
Flower dragged her trembling form up from the floor, and obeyed, looking toward Mrs. Fielding with wistful, frightened eyes.
"Now, mamma!" Jewel cried, eagerly; but the wretched woman uttered a low moan of distress and sunk like a log to the floor.
Instinctively Flower rose to go to her assistance, but Jewel pushed her back roughly into her chair.
"Do not you dare touch her!" she exclaimed, with such a lightning-like glance that Flower fell abashed into the chair.
Jewel knelt by her mother a minute; then rose, and said:
"It is nothing but a faint; she will come to herself presently. In the meantime, I will tell you the story of my mother's ruined life, for whichyourmother is to blame."
"My mother?" Flower echoed, bewilderedly.
"Yes," Jewel answered; and pointing at Mrs. Fielding, she said: "That woman is no relation of yours; but you are my half-sister—made so by the sin of our father."
A low, startled cry shrilled from Flower's white lips; but Jewel did not heed it—only went on, like a young fury:
"He was a villain, that Charley Fielding! Your mother, who was beautiful, but poor and of obscure birth, he betrayed; and my mother, who was rich, and his social equal, he married for money, still keeping up his intriguewith the girl Daisy Forrest. So that you and I were born within twenty-four hours of each other."
Flower sat bolt upright, listening with burning eyes and a deathly pale face.
"She—your mother—died soon after your birth," Jewel went on, in a thick, excited voice. "My little twin sister died, too, in a few hours after she came into the world. Then old Maria, who lived until then with Daisy Forrest, allowed her master to persuade her into a cruel wrong. In short, my dead twin sister was buried upon Daisy Forrest's breast, and you, her loving child, were imposed upon my mother as her own—my mother, who hated your mother with the bitterest hate, and who, if she had dreamed of your identity, would have gone mad with rage."
There was a slight movement of the still figure on the floor. Mrs. Fielding was recovering.
Jewel went on:
"It was this secret that our old nurse revealed on her death-bed to my mother. That one of the children she claimed as her own was not hers, but she could not remember which child—you or I—was Daisy Forrest's. She told mamma that there were papers in her old chest that she thought would prove the truth. Those papers Sam hid, and to-day I searched the cabin and found them."
With a moan Mrs. Fielding lifted her head, but neither of the two girls heeded her, so absorbed were they—Flower in this terrible story, Jewel in gloating over her rival's dismay.
"I read the papers—the torn leaves from his diary that he flung into the fire and that Maria rescued," Jewel added, with blazing eyes. "It set at rest the doubt that has tormented my mother so long. It said that the child with his own blue eyes and golden hair was the child of Daisy Forrest, whose death drove him to suicide."
Mrs. Fielding staggered to her feet. She stood looking at Flower with a tortured face.
"Ah! even a mother's instinct has played me false in this. I thought, I hoped—" she cried out, passionately, then checked herself, and the agony of her face changed to wrath and fury.
Advancing toward the shrinking, terrified girl, she exclaimed, hoarsely, angrily:
"So I have wasted my love on you—you, my rival's child! She had his heart and you his face—my false husband's beautiful face! Are you not afraid that I will strike you dead for having deceived me so bitterly!"
"I, mamma, I deceive you? Ah, no, no, for I did not know!" Flower moaned, faintly, and shrinking in terror from the wild-eyed woman towering over her so fiercely, and who cried out, scornfully, now:
"No, that is true, you did not know what a heritage of shame was yours, what a cloud hung over your birth—and yet you proved yourself true to your inherited nature, to your mother's false, light instincts. You rushed into your sin, into shame—"
"Hush!" Flower cried, indignantly, her face dyed red with shame. She stood upright, and holding to the arms of the chair to steady her trembling form, said, eagerly: "I am Laurie Meredith's wife!"
"Ha! ha!" laughed Jewel, with scornful incredulity.
"Ha! ha!" echoed Mrs. Fielding, and there was a sound in her voice that was terrible to hear—the tones of incipient madness.
There was madness in her eyes, too, so horribly they glittered as she sprung toward Flower, and all in an instant buried her working white fingers in the girl's long tresses.
"Daisy Forrest, I shall kill you!" she screamed, with an awful, blood-curdling laugh; and dragging her victim down upon her knees, she tried to clasp her fingers around the fair white throat of her hated rival's child, and strangle her life out.
In another moment murder would have been done, but fortunately the monomaniac was thwarted in her deadly purpose, for her maddened shriek had brought the servants rushing to the scene, and Jewel, who had been silently gloating over the terrible deed, realized that her plans would be thwarted if this went further, and her crazed mother murdered poor Flower for her unconscious transgression.
So with her own white, jeweled hands she assisted the servants in their efforts to drag Mrs. Fielding away from her victim, succeeding only just in time, for Flower was discovered unconscious upon the floor, and some time elapsed before she even breathed again, so terrible had been the onslaught of her enemy.
But Mrs. Fielding was for the time a raving mad woman. She had to be bound and locked into a chamber alone while the man-servant ran all the way to town to bring a physician.
The remaining servants crowded around Jewel and begged to hear what had been the cause of the strange scene they had witnessed.
She explained satisfactorily to all, when she replied, angrily:
"My sister had gone astray and disgraced us, and when mamma found it out quite suddenly just now she went mad with horror, and would have slain her if your timely entrance had not prevented her rash deed."
Then she sent them all out, and sat down in the parlor to watch Flower, who still lay on the floor breathing faintly, but in such a weak and dazed condition that she realized nothing of what had happened or of what was goingon around her, still less of the baleful black eyes that watched her so malevolently, as Jewel said to herself:
"My mother is crazed, and the task of punishing this hated girl has fallen from her hands to mine. Let me think over all the most horrible things I have ever heard of, and decide what I can do to make her suffer the longest and worst in return for the torments I have borne since she took my lover from me. Oh, I hate her as bitterly as my mother hated her mother, and I swear I will have vengeance for my wrongs!"
And those beautiful, evilly splendid black eyes, as they floated over poor Flower's silent, unconscious form, looked baleful enough for their very glances to kill.
Presently the house-maid put her head in at the door, giving Jewel a violent start.
"Has the doctor come?" she asked.
"No, miss; but me and the cook thinks we had better carry Miss Flower upstairs and put her to bed," Tibbie replied, with a compassionate look at the silent form upon the floor.
Jewel frowned and considered a moment, then gave her assent to the plan.
Then she added:
"When you come down, you had better lock the door, as she might try to run away. In fact, she was about to do so this evening, but mamma prevented her. Although she has proved so bad, and disgraced the family, we intend to keep her at home and take care of her."
The kind-hearted Tibbie murmured an approval of this kindness, and with the cook's assistance, soon had Flower undressed and placed in bed. Then seeing that she was still in a dazed and half-unconscious condition, and either unable or disinclined to speak, they shaded the lamp andwithdrew, locking the door as ordered, and giving the key to the triumphant Jewel.
In the meantime the physician arrived and pronounced Mrs. Fielding temporarily insane.
"I will leave soothing medicine for her, and I will send two nurses from town, for she will have violent paroxysms, and it will take at least two people to restrain her from doing harm to herself or others," he said, and took leave, wondering at the coolness and self-command of this beautiful young girl, whose bright eyes were not dimmed by a tear, as he explained to her the terrible condition of her mother.
He would have been more surprised if he could have read the thoughts of that vindictive heart.
"So she is really insane!" she said to herself. "I am glad of that. There will be no one now to interfere with my plans for Flower. It is true she would have killed her if she had been let alone, but I do not want her to die yet. I want her to live and wither under the shame of her birth, and under the agony of her desertion by Laurie Meredith. I will torment her as much as I can until the child is born, then I hope she will die, and the brat, too, so that when Laurie Meredith comes back I can have the pleasure of telling him that they are dead, and showing him their graves."
Her passionate, jealous love for handsome Laurie Meredith was mixed with hate now, and she delighted in stabbing his heart as he had stabbed hers when he turned from her dark, dazzling charms to her sister's fair, angelic beauty.
Going to her room, she unlocked her trunk and took out some papers, over which she gloated with fierce delight.
"Although I long for power and gold, millions could not buy these from me, for my sweet revenge is better than gold! Ah, how cleverly I parted them! They outwitted me when they managed to steal away and get married,but I've kept them apart ever since, I've made them pay dearly for their temerity!" she cried, exultantly.
The papers she held were the half-burned diary of Charley Fielding, the marriage-certificate and card she had stolen from Flower's desk, and the note she had intercepted on its way to Flower, together with several letters that Laurie Meredith had written to his wife since his departure, and which, through Jewel's clever plotting, she had failed to receive.
She pressed them in her hands, gloating over them with more delight than a ball-room belle would have done over the most priceless diamonds, for they represented the power she thirsted for so ardently—the power to torment those whom she hated.
She cared nothing for the fact, that in spite of all that had come and gone, poor, unhappy Flower was her half-sister still. She only knew that ever since the fatal hour when Laurie Meredith had made choice between them she had hated the blue-eyed, golden-haired beauty with a jealous fury that was as pitiless as death.
She thought she was a very clever girl, she had managed everything so adroitly. In the first place, she had bribed Sam to give her Flower's letter that night, and to take back a reply from herself. She had found out from that letter that Flower was Laurie Meredith's wife, that she was going away with him, and that a telegram had called him away one day sooner, causing him to write to Flower to come at once to him, as he must be far on his way north before the next night, which was set as the time for them to leave.
In that sudden emergency Jewel's keen wits served her well. She remembered that her handwriting was so similar to her sister's that few could tell them apart, so she decided upon a bold step. She wrote to Laurie Meredith in his wife's name, declaring that she had changed her mind about going with him, that she could not bring herself toleave her mother and sister, but that she would be his true and faithful wife, and wait for him until he came back from Germany.
The young husband was most bitterly disappointed, but the telegram that summoned him to a parent's sick-bed admitted of no delay. He went without Flower, but he wrote to her very soon from his Northern home, entreating her to reconsider her determination and join him there.
Jewel had a fervent admirer in the person of the post-office clerk.
By cleverly playing on his vanity she induced him to let her have Flower's letters, and each one she answered briefly, by denying Laurie Meredith's wish and indulging in weak regrets over the haste with which she had wedded him, lamenting lest her mother should find out her folly and withhold forgiveness.
So it was that not one of those loving letters, for which Flower would have given her very life, ever reached her, and Jewel sat here gloating over their possession, while in the very next room poor little Flower lay upon her sleepless bed, an image of despair, wondering if it could be true all that Jewel had told her—that she was a child of shame, her mother a bad, wicked woman, and her father a sinful wretch who had broken the hearts of both her mother and Jewel's.
If any one had told Jewel Fielding that she had the heart of a murderess, she would have indignantly denied the accusation—she would have been frightened and angry at the very idea—yet it was nothing less than a slow murder that she began the next day.
In the first place, she gave out to the servants that Flower was so ashamed and remorseful over her sin that she wished to keep her own room all the time, and desiredto see no human face save that of her sister; so, lest any one should enter, she meant to keep her door locked all the while. Jewel declared that she desired to humor her sister's whim, and would carry her meals upstairs daily with her own hands.
Having thus paved the way to carrying the key of Flower's room in her pocket, and to starving her without being found out, the vindictive girl went into Flower's room, and surprised her at the task of plaiting a rope out of her bed-clothes by which to escape through her window, which was in the second story.
Jewel produced from under her dainty apron a hammer and some nails, with which she proceeded to nail down the window-sashes securely.
At first Flower tried to prevent her by holding back her arm; but Jewel shook her loose with a fierce strength, and, turning, menaced the white temple with the lifted hammer.
"Dare to hold back my arm again, and I will kill you!" she hissed, with vindictive rage, while the murderous fire that flashed from her black eyes appalled Flower's very soul.
With a moan she fell upon the bed, and lay watching Jewel until she had finished securing the windows.
Then she rose up in bed, and brushing back the wealth of sunny curls from her aching brow, began to plead pathetically for her freedom.
"I wish to go away, and you have no right to forbid me," she said at last, bitterly, resenting the scorn of the other.
Jewel laughed mockingly.
"No right!" she exclaimed. "Ha! ha! Then I will take the right! You stole Laurie Meredith from me, and now you are going to be punished for your treachery."
"Punished! As if I had not already suffered enough!" the wretched girl cried, in pathetic despair.
"You are going to suffer more yet," hissed Jewel, with blazing eyes. "I am going to keep you locked up here, and allow you nothing but bread and water, and not enough of that. You shall wish yourself dead every day, but there will be just enough bread to keep you alive in misery—no more!"
Flower's beautiful face turned ghastly, her blue eyes stared at the cruel girl with a dazed, horrified look.
"Oh, Jewel, I wish I were dead already! I have nothing left to live for now!" she exclaimed. "But, still, would it not be too horrible to starve me now? It—it would be a double murder, for—for—oh, Jewel, did you not forget the child?"
The piteous pleading for her unborn child only angered Jewel the more, and with scornful, cutting phrases she taunted her with her disgrace and misery, and reiterated her intention of torturing her in return for what she called her treachery.
When she left the room Flower believed that her fate was sealed. Jewel had revealed her real self so plainly that she could hope for no mercy and no pity.
She wept bitterly for the little unborn child, that through Jewel's cruelty would have to die. She had hoped somehow that she would find Laurie before it was born, and that all would yet be well. For surely, surely, he had not deserted her. It was only that some unfathomable treachery on Jewel's part had kept them asunder. She did not want to believe him false.
"But I must die, all the same, and he will never know how I suffered through my love for him," she sighed, day after day, as her strength waned under the scanty diet of dry bread and stale water served to her daily by Jewel, with cruel taunts and scornful looks for sauce.
She grew weaker and weaker, great hollows came into her pale cheeks, her blue eyes looked larger than ever with the purple shadows beneath them, while the one longingcry of her heart was always for freedom, freedom, from this dreadful house, through whose whole extent the maniacal shrieks of the mad Mrs. Fielding echoed night and day.
After weeks of this terrible life there came a day when the horror-haunted house became unnaturally still and quiet. Mrs. Fielding had been removed to an insane asylum, and her wild cries no longer echoed on the shuddering air.
Jewel knew that at the next meeting of the county court a guardian must be appointed for herself and her sister until her mother's recovery, and she resolved to finish her awful work before any prying, perhaps suspicious stranger should come into the house.
More than eight months had elapsed since Laurie Meredith had gone away, and Jewel knew that the time of Flower's trouble was near at hand.
She had been holding back one terrible thing for acoup d'étatat the last, and she decided now that the fitting moment had arrived in which to startle Flower into a slightly premature illness and thus make sure of her death at once.
It was a fiend's plan, a fiend's wish, but Jewel never faltered in her deadly purpose. Her evil passions drove her on to the commission of a deed that, call it by what specious name she chose in her own mind, would be no less than murder.
So she went into Flower's room one night carrying a lighted lamp in one hand and a newspaper in the other.
In this long, weary month she had never permitted Flower the use of a lamp at night, thinking that the long, interminable hours of darkness would add to her torture, as indeed they had done most effectually.
So the poor girl started up from her bed in alarm, dazed by the brilliant light of the lamp, and filledwith a wild hope that Jewel was about to relent toward her, she exclaimed, wildly:
"Ah, sister, you bring me a light. You begin to relent. Blessings on you, dear Jewel! Now, give me food, too, I am so hungry, so thirsty, and the air of this closed room stifles me! Open the window and let the sweet air of spring come in! Then bring me food, food, for I am starving."
Jewel set down the lamp and took from her pocket a beautiful, red-cheeked apple.
"I will give you just one bite of this if you will return it to me when you have taken it," she said, with a mocking laugh. And Flower promised; but when she had taken as large a bite as her pearly teeth could compass, her horrible hunger and thirst overcame her, and she clung wildly to the luscious fruit, begging, pleading for it, until Jewel forced it from her after a short, sharp struggle, and restored it to her pocket.
"You are not half as hungry and thirsty for that delicious fruit as I was hungry and thirsty for Laurie Meredith's love!" she said, bitterly. "I loved him with my whole heart, yet you took him from me, and now you shall suffer for it! Ah, no, Madame Flower, I have not relented! I am not going to give you any food, nor water, nor fresh air; and if I brought a light it was only that I might gloat over your agony when you read something that I came upon accidentally this evening, and which will add the last drop of bitterness to the overflowing cup of your misery."
She laughed exultantly, and Flower shrunk back, with her hand before her eyes to shut out the blaze of those angry eyes that burned upon her face.
"I—I had better not read it, then. I have borne all that I can bear already," she moaned, faintly.
Jewel struck the wasted little white hand rudely away from before Flower's eyes, and said, sharply:
"I thought you would be glad to read this paragraph about Laurie Meredith. It explains his seeming desertion and falsity to you."
At these words a wild, strangling gasp came from Flower's lips, and she caught eagerly at the paper, while Jewel, with a plump, jeweled finger, pointed out a paragraph marked heavily with black ink.
Laurie Meredith's own hand had marked it, and he had sent the paper to Flower many months ago, little dreaming what a terrible purpose it was destined to serve.
It was a Boston newspaper, and the paragraph was simply this:
"As we go to press we have just heard that our esteemed townsman, Laurie Meredith, died very suddenly last night."
"As we go to press we have just heard that our esteemed townsman, Laurie Meredith, died very suddenly last night."
Jewel watched her victim eagerly, breathlessly.
She saw the hue of death overspread the lovely, wasted face, the blue eyes, already dim through the tears that had washed their brightness away, dilate in wonder and horror. Oh, how sweet it was to see that look of mortal agony on the face that Laurie Meredith had loved to kiss! Jewel said to herself that in the months since he went away, she had made her successful rival shed a thousand tears for each and every kiss he had pressed on those lovely, rosebud lips.
But her thirst for revenge was not sated yet. There was yet another sweet draught waiting for her lips in the near future.
All this time she had been keeping up the correspondence with Laurie Meredith, in order to prevent him from coming back South to see Flower. But she said to herself that when the girl was dead she would cease writing. He would become uneasy then, and the chances were that hewould soon come back. Then she, the girl he had slighted, she would show him his wife's grave.
What sweetness there was in this thought for Jewel! She gloated over it often, and thought that surely no girl had ever had a more perfect revenge for slighted love than she had taken.
Her thoughts went further yet sometimes.
She had taken the greatest pains to hide her enmity to her sister. There was no one who could say she had been unkind to Flower; Laurie Meredith should never know otherwise, and from her reputed tenderness to his dead wife, and her sweet sympathy with himself, should spring up another flower of love that should bloom for her alone. Some day she would be his wife, and the secret of all she had done to part him from Flower should be buried forever in the poor girl's grave.
She could see nothing to mar the success of her far-reaching plans. With Flower dead, and her mother the inmate of an insane asylum, she would be her own mistress, with quite a handsome fortune at her command, and she intended to make capital of her liberty and her position.
True, the physician had said that her mother's reason would most probably return within a few months, but Jewel had made up her mind that the foolish, half-mad creature should never leave the asylum again. For so young a girl she was wonderfully clever and headstrong, and she was fully determined to have her own way.
With all these thoughts in her mind she stood watching Flower reading those few brief lines, and she was not surprised when with one low cry of anguish the unhappy girl let the paper slip from her nerveless hands, and fell back in a heavy swoon upon the pillow.
Jewel laughed as she looked at the still, white face, and moved toward the door.
"I will walk up and down the hall and get some freshair while she recovers at her leisure," she said, aloud; and she stepped outside and went to the hall window, which was open, letting in a flood of balmy air, sweet with the heavy scent of the early blooming lilacs.
She leaned her elbows on the window-ledge and looked out at the beautiful tides of the sea rolling into the shore with a hollow murmur, while the moon's bright rays made silver paths across the restless waves. But Jewel shivered, and exclaimed:
"But for him I should be dead, drowned in that cruel sea! He saved my life, and I dedicated it to him. I made him the king of my heart! Oh, why did she come between us? If I am wicked it is all her fault. She drove me mad."
Absorbed in her angry self-excuses, it was almost half an hour before she returned to the room she had left, and then she found Flower lying just as she had left her, cold and apparently rigid, with no movement at her heart.
Jewel could not repress a low cry of horror. She was only a girl, and wicked as she was, she was frightened when she saw that life had fled from the body of her she had so cruelly tortured.
She felt Flower's hands and they were deadly cold; she shouted in her ear and she did not respond. Then running into her own room, she brought out a pitcher of fresh water, which she poured over Flower's head and face in a perfect deluge.
But not a sigh, not the movement of an eyelash rewarded her efforts at resuscitation. With something like awe she began to realize that her work was completed sooner than she had expected. Flower was already dead.
She flung wide the door and began to scream loudly for the servants.
Her voice rang wildly down the long halls and dim stairways, returning to her in ghostly echoes; but no one answeredto her wild calls. The servants had stolen away to a merry-making in the town.
Something of the truth began to dawn upon her mind when she had shouted herself hoarse.
"They are either stolen away or fast asleep," she muttered, and rushed down-stairs to their quarters in the yard.
The cottage door was locked, and Jewel pounded lustily without receiving any reply. Looking at the windows, she saw that they were closed and dark.
"The wretches! how dared they go away and leave me with that dead girl?" she muttered, ignoring the fact that Flower had been alive a little while ago. The deep, hoarse baying of the watch-dog, aroused in his distant kennel by the noise she had made, caused her to start and crouch down shivering on the back door-step.
"I shall stay here till they come. I—I—can not watch by that dead girl alone!" she muttered, with a superstitious horror of death.
But in the meantime the copious shower of water she had poured over Flower had taken effect.
While Jewel was battering at the door of the servants' quarters Flower had revived and found the door wide open, and such a draught of sweet, pure air rushing into the room that it seemed to endow her with new life.
She dragged herself wearily into the hall and heard Jewel's angry voice berating the servants down in the yard. She instantly suspected the true state of the case.
"She thinks I am dead, and wishes to arouse the servants. I must try to escape before she returns," she moaned, faintly, and made her way down-stairs like a spirit, slipped the bolt of the front door, and let herself out, friendless and homeless, into the dark.
Nothing but her terrible fear of being recaptured and imprisoned by her relentless foe could have given poor Flower the strength to get away from the house that, after being her home so long, had become a place "by horror haunted."
But with a brave heart, although her footsteps faltered often, she set off from the spot, traveling as fast as her reduced strength would permit, and taking the high-road that led away from the town and toward the deserted cabin of the dead nurse.
It was instinct rather than intention that led her to the place; for she had no thought of stopping there, but only of putting miles of space between herself and Jewel, of whom she had now become horribly afraid.
But, poor girl, starved as she had been, and in her delicate condition of health, she had not strength enough to carry her far. Besides, she had been tormented for several days by peculiar pains, which now became so acute as to materially interfere with her progress.
"I can not go any further. I must lie down here in the road and die," she moaned, lifting her tear-wet eyes to the moonlit sky, as if beseeching the pitying Lord to have mercy on His suffering child.
In a minute more the white-paled fence and dark grove of trees surrounding the cabin came into view.
The sight recalled old Maria to Flower's mind, and she sighed plaintively:
"Ah, mammy, dear, I wish you were alive yet; then I should have at least one friend in my misery."
She stopped and leaned on the old gate. All was dark and silent, and the long branches of the trees threw fantastic shadows on the ground that at any other time wouldhave awed the sensitive girl; but she was oblivious now to everything but her pain, her weariness, and her cruel hunger and thirst.
"There is no one here. I will go into the house and lie down on the pretty white company-bed that mammy always kept so nice, and I will die there. Jewel will never think of looking for me here. She knew that I was afraid of ghosts," she murmured, as she unlatched the gate and dragged herself up the graveled walk to the door.
She pulled the latch and found that it was not locked. There was nothing to prevent her entering, so she groped her way in, and, shivering and moaning, crossed the floor to the tiny room which Maria had always kept sacred to hospitality. She fell heavily across the little white bed, and lay there thinking desolately that death could not be far away.
Ah, how grateful the clean, soft feather bed felt to Flower's weary, aching limbs! She thought that if only those keen, sickening pains would cease she could fall asleep and die thus, perhaps, in a pleasant stupor; but the agony only grew greater, and a sudden realization of truth forced a groan of fear from her lips.
Her travail was coming upon her, and the girl fainted outright, and lay for some moments wrapped in a blissful unconsciousness.
The night grew older, the moon rode high in the heavens, and the stillness of the midnight hour was broken by the shrill whistle of a steamer that touched at the wharf a mile below, remained only long enough to throw out a plank and permit the landing of two passengers and their baggage, then went on its way majestically.
A newly married widower was bringing home a bride, no less a personage than Sam, the good-looking mulatto ne'er-do-well. As he had married from mercenary motivesthe first time, his second match was for love alone, and Maria's successor was a colored lady of as bright a type as himself, young and sprightly, and good-looking.
She rejoiced in the patronymic of Pocahontas, which was shortened by general consent of herself and friends to "Poky."
Sam made arrangements for getting his bride's baggage brought up in the morning, and tucking Poky's hand under his arm, set forth to tramp the distance that lay between the steamboat wharf and the humble cabin.
The girl who had lain in the darkness all night, racked by cruel pains, and praying for death, gave a quick start and held her breath in fear.
She heard loud voices and footsteps in the outer room, and foreboded that Jewel had tracked her here.
"Oh, Heaven! and I had thought to die alone and in peace, undisturbed by her jealous, mocking eyes!" she sighed to herself, despairingly.
She flung herself desperately out of the bed down upon the floor, crawled under the white valance that hung all around the old-fashioned bed, and lay there holding her breath in terror, hoping that she would not be discovered. One hope alone was left her—to die before those angry eyes of her jealous half-sister shone upon her again.
In the meantime Sam had lighted a candle, and his wife had helped herself to a chair, while she gazed around with a critical eye at the appointments of the room.
It was well furnished indeed, for old Maria had been as thrifty as Sam was shiftless, and Poky said presently that "arter she had tidied up ter-morror it would be a very decent sort of a place."
"So I told yer, my lub," replied Sam, affectionately, and he gave the brown beauty an energetic kiss. Then he said, persuasively, "Poky, 'sposen yer light a fire and let us have a cup of coffee before we go to bed."
Poky assented good-naturedly, and very soon a fire was crackling in the little kitchen stove, and the odor of coffee and broiling ham pervaded the air. Then Poky took from the capacious basket she had brought on her arm a loaf of bread and a roll of butter, and proceeded to set the little table for her lord's repast.
It was just as she had finished her thrifty preparations, and invited Sam to "draw up his cheer," that he gave a startled little cry, and looked over his shoulder apprehensively:
"Sam!"
"Poky!"
"What's de matter, nigger, lookin' over yo' shoulder like you see sumfin'? Don't yer go 'magining now dat ole 'oman is ha'ntin' de house!"
He came closer to his wife and whispered, tremulously:
"Hush, honey; Maria did say as how if de dead could come back she would, and—and—I heard somefin' sartain—oh, Lord!"
He gave a jump, and so did Poky. Both had heard something this time—the low wails of a new-born infant proceeding from the next room.
They held their breath for a minute, then Poky, who was rather strong-minded, said, contemptuously:
"Cats!"
"Do—do—you think so, Poky?" her better half inquired, dropping his trembling frame into a chair, and more than half convinced that Maria was haunting him already.
"Sartain!" said Poky, with a sniff. "Lors, Sam, what a coward you be! It's only some cats as is got in thrue a open window."
She seized a poker and the candle and disappeared into the "company room," leaving Sam cowering in the dark, and trembling lest the shade of his departed Maria shouldpounce upon him at any minute and shake him for having presumed to give her a successor.
Then a succession of low wails echoed on the air again, and Sam shook himself together with returning courage.
"'Twas cats after all! I thought so!" he ejaculated, with a feeble chuckle. "And, Lordy, but Poky's a-makin' 'em git!"
Apparently it took her some time to disperse the feline intruders, for fifteen minutes elapsed, and she did not return. Then he attempted to follow her and got the door slammed in his face with the curt yet good-naturedly delivered sentence:
"You stay whar you is, nigger!"
He slunk back to his chair, and presently she came out with an important face, and lighting another candle, placed it on the table, and told him to eat his supper.
"But, Poky—"
"Yes, it's all right, Sam. 'Twasn't no cats, nor no ghosts, only a beautiful young gal, Sam, runned away from her friends to-night and hid herself here for her chile to be borned, which it was dat baby we heerd a-caterwauling."
"Who is she, Poky?" amazedly.
"She said you'd know—some sort o' name like Flower o' de fiel', or somethin'. But I mus' go back and tend to her and dat baby. Lucky for her we cum here dis night. Eat your supper without me, Sam, 'cause I'se needed bad in dere."
She disappeared again, and Sam sat there conscience-stricken, wondering if his sin that night months ago had brought this thing to pass.
He had known that Laurie Meredith and Flower Fielding were lovers, and he had guessed that Jewel was jealous,when she bribed him so heavily to give her that important letter and to take back the answer she sent. In his eagerness to possess himself of her costly bribe he had not counted the cost of his treachery to the lovers. Now he began to experience a sneaking consciousness that his guilt had somehow helped to pave the way to that trouble in yonder.
He wondered what had become of Laurie Meredith, that his pretty sweetheart had been forced to seek refuge in a deserted negro cabin in her sore distress and trouble, and so wondering, he fell asleep in his chair, and remained there until morning, snoring profoundly, and oblivious to everything.
When he opened his eyes again the broad sunlight of new day was shining in through the open door, and the song of birds was in the air.
Poky's trunk had come up, and she was down on her knees unpacking it, and softly humming a revival song.
Sam's neck, which had been hanging over on his breast, felt as if it was half broken. He straightened up and gaped so loudly that his wife turned around and began to rate him soundly for sleeping in his chair all night, declaring that she had nearly shaken him to pieces without being able to rouse him, so had retired, leaving him to the enjoyment of his arm-chair.
Sam did not doubt the assertion, knowing himself to be a very heavy sleeper. He sat still a little while collecting his wits, and then said:
"Yes, I remember it all now, Poky. I fell to sleep while you was in de comp'ny with Miss Flower an' de baby."
"Wha-at?" Poky exclaimed, and he repeated his words, only to be laughed at by his wife, who declared that he must have been dreaming, as she did not know what he meant in the least.
In vain did Sam go over the startling events of last night to his laughing wife. She admitted the cats in the company room, but the rest of the story she laughed to scorn.
"You fell asleep, you foolish nigger, while I was scatterin' dem tom-cats off dat shed, and you dreamed all de rest," she said; and to satisfy his doubts she made him go into the spare room, which he found neat and tidy, as in Maria's time, the white bed smooth and unrumpled, the two cane-seated chairs standing rigidly against the wall, the small looking-glass on the white-draped toilet-table reflecting his crest-fallen face only, as Poky, standing at the open door, said, jibingly:
"I hope you'se satisfied now! You don't see any babies nor flowers in dere, does you?"
The puzzled dreamer shuffled out with rather a sheepish air, and while he did justice to his morning repast, had to endure a running fire of commentaries on his dream that drove him at last quite out of the house, to escape being the butt of Poky's merry malice.
Presently, while he was sulkily smoking his pipe in the front yard, she came out to him in her check apron, with her sleeves rolled up, and carrying the broom in her brown, shapely hand. With rather a sober air, she said:
"I declare, Sam, I was so tickled at yer foolish dream that I forgot to tell yer what the man said as brought my trunk this mornin'."
"Well?" inquired her sulky spouse.
"Why, it 'pears like a young lady 'bout dis neighborhood drowndid herself las' night."
"Sho!" exclaimed Sam, wonderingly.
"Yes, siree—drowndid herself on account of trubble an' sickness. What made it all de worse was dat she was de beautifulest gal in de country, and had a twin sister ekally beautiful, and dat pore thing is 'most crazy 'boutit all," explained Poky, while Sam eagerly demanded names.
"Sho! I has such a pore mem'ry fer names," Poky began, reflectively; then she stuttered: "Ju—Ju—Jule—"
"Jewel and Flower!" shouted Sam, and her eyes beamed with delight.
"Dat's dem! and 'twas de las' one—dat Flower—dat got up outen her sick-bed and runned away las' night, and Jule she said shorely she done drowndid herself, 'cause how she done said she would do it de first chance, and she was so weak she couldn't a' walked no furder than down to de sea-shore."
"Golly! I mus' go up to de big house and hear 'bout it," Sam exclaimed, darting toward the gate, while Poky called after him, jibingly:
"Sam, don't go and tell anybody 'bout yer foolish dreams las' night."