CHAPTER X.
It seemed to take all the life out of poor Tom when he found himself being taken back to prison. While he had perfect faith in Nellie, still he hated the evil influence of her cousin. But he did not yet know the girl who loved him, and did not realize that no influence in the world could make her untrue to him.
He went moodily into the same cell that he was placed in before, this time hoping that his darling would be true to him.
The morning at last arrived when Nellie should leave the boathouse that had sheltered her so long.
She was arranging her hair slowly when Biddy said: “Are you very sure, me darlint, that you want your old Biddy with you in youse elegant home?”
Nellie dropped the hair which had twined about her fingers, and looked at her foster mother.
“Well, if you don’t go with me, then I won’t go either,” and Nellie sat down and commenced to cry.
“There, there, honey,” soothed the woman. “Don’t you take on so; your Biddy would follow you to the ends of the earth. But I don’t want you to be ashamed of me.”
“That I could never be,” said Nellie, “and when Tom gets out of prison, then we’ll all go abroad, for I shall have enough money for all of us.”
“Oh, I’m delighted to be with me darlint,” replied Biddy. “I only hope you can find a lawyer who will help you get poor Tom out.”
“I meant what I said,” averred Nellie later, while thinking deeply, “that I would spend my last cent to get him free.”
“And may your efforts be blessed by heaven,” sighed Biddy.
“I am constantly praying,” said Nellie, “that I will be shown some way to aid him. Don’t you see the poor fellow is so helpless shut there inthat cell, and although I am going to see him, I know that I shall be broken-hearted to come away without him.”
As they were speaking, a beautiful span of horses and a liveried driver drove to the boathouse.
“Is this Miss Standish?” asked the servant. “I was sent for you and Miss Biddy.”
The haughty nose of the coachman turned up slightly as he said this, and Nellie noticed it, and she vowed inwardly that the man’s place should be filled by another more worthy before long. Already the determined Nellie had taken the reins in her own hands.
“I must take my cat,” said she at the last minute, and when Biddy demurred, saying that the man driving the carriage might not be pleased with a cat in the beautiful carriage, she broke out and said:
“Then let him lump it if he don’t like it. I’ll take my cat if I want to and not ask my servant.”
“Oh, Nellie,” gasped Biddy, “don’t call thatlovely man a servant. He really looks so handsome and dignified.”
“He won’t long if I sic Tabby on him. Would you like to see her scratch at that wool?”
“Hush, Nellie,” begged Biddy; “there, come now, and we’ll climb in.”
The old boathouse was closed until Biddy should have a chance to rent it, and she turned the key in the lock with a sigh, as for years she had made this place her home.
The carriage bowled gently down through the streets, and Helen Standish tripped up the steps from which, when a child, she and her mother were turned away, but the beautiful girl now going to take up her own, remembered nothing of the starvation her poor little mother had gone through with. All of her days had been spent in bliss and happiness, with this same old Irishwoman sitting sedately beside her, with the Tabby in her arms.
“I am here to greet you,” said George Benson as he led the girl into her future home. “I am so pleased that you are where you belong.”
But this girl would not have believed this story had she seen this man when he was alone in his room. His face was pale and shadowed with care.
“If I can only make her understand that she must not consult any lawyer, but allow me to manipulate her affairs it will be all right, but the moment she demands a settlement I’ll do away with her, for it will be my only salvation. I wonder if she would marry me.”
“Well, how do you like this room?” asked Nellie of Biddy in an upper bed-chamber, ushering her foster mother through half a dozen rooms and halting at the last one. “I suppose they think I’m going to sleep alone, but I’ll give them to understand that I won’t. What’s the use of being rich if one cannot do as they wish to?”
“And you don’t love your old Biddy less for all the money you have, me darlint?” cried the woman.
“Indeed I do not,” said Nellie; “the only thing concerns me now is my dear Tom.”
“Oh, you’ll get him out all safe,” said the woman; “don’t you worry about that.”
“Well, how can I help it,” asked Nellie, “when I know that dear fellow is languishing over on that Island for something he did not do? Now then, Biddy, did you ever see any man look as handsome as he did when he took off those whiskers? The horrid things; I never knew how they disfigured him until I had seen him without them.”
“Aye, he is a beauty,” added Biddy. “I knew that you would admire him. Now, darlint, tell me where I shall hang my bonnet. I don’t know what to do in these big rooms.”
“Oh, put it anywhere, Biddy,” cried the girl, looking about. “So this used to be my mother’s room. I am going to see if there is anything that ever belonged to her about.”
For hours the young girl searched among the several rooms which her cousin had told her belongedto her mother, when suddenly she came upon a little closet tightly locked.
With a set of keys which she had found she opened it, and before her glistening eyes were a number of things which evidently belonged to a little girl.
A broken French doll, with one eye gone, grinned at Nellie from the corner. In a chair in the middle of the small room was another doll made of rags, and it still showed signs of childish teeth.
The long stringy hair which hung over the dirty face brought the tears to Helen’s eyes. She sat down upon the floor and began to cry.
“Why, darlint,” cried Biddy, “and you are a-crying. I wouldn’t look at them little things if they make your heart ache. Come to your Biddy’s heart.”
“Oh, Biddy, Biddy, I can’t help but cry over my mother. I wish she had lived and been with us. Oh, how hard fate was to her when she had such a home as this to die in a dreadful prison.”
“Well, well, it must have been the Good Father’s wish,” cried the woman, “or it would nothave happened. Now, cheer up, dear, and be happy.”
“But, look at this little doll,” said the girl sorrowfully; “she must have loved this one, for she has used it so much.”
“So she has, sweet, but she did not want her own little girl to cry over it.”
“But she didn’t have any nice mother like you, dear,” said Nellie.
“Just in this great house all alone with her father. A girl needs a mother, Biddy.”
“Aye, so they do, and I thank heaven it was given to me to be one to you, my sweety.”
“And you have been more than that to me,” whispered the girl.
“Oh, Biddy, if I only had my Tom now, I would be the happiest girl in the world.”
“Then why don’t you go and see a good lawyer, and maybe he will help you to get him out?”
“I don’t know who to go to.”
“And I wouldn’t ask Mr. Benson either,” said Biddy with a curious wink of her eye. “You remember what Mr. Tom said, don’t you?”
“Blaming my cousin for his arrest?”
“That’s it; he was to blame for the lad’s trouble.”
“You need not fear, Biddy, that I shall go to him, for he has done enough harm.”
At this moment the servant came to the door, and said: “Mr. Benson would like to see Miss Standish in the library.”
Nellie found her cousin sitting, looking very glum, at the side of the writing table.
“You sent for me?” asked she with dignity.
“I did. Be seated.”
She waited, before speaking again, for him to proceed.
“You are a very young girl to have the responsibility of so much money.”
“I know,” replied Nellie quickly, “and that is the reason why I miss Tom so much. He never has allowed me to have any responsibility.”
Her companion bit his lip ferociously, and the sight gave Nellie intense delight.
“He will be of no service to you, my dear, for many years to come.”
It was Nellie’s turn to bite her lip, for she knew the truth of his statement.
“I cannot reconcile myself to the thought that Tom Cooper ever did such a thing.”
“Nevertheless he did, and you may take my word for it, for I saw the bundle he had the diamonds hidden away in.”
“I would have to have his word for it,” said the girl with flaming cheeks and rising from her chair.
“Be seated,” ordered Benson, “and we will avoid unpleasant subjects.”
She sank again into her chair and listened.
“I wanted to know if you wish me to manage your business for you for a while yet, for it will be some time before you are of age, and I am your trustee.”
“Of course, you are to do as you have done. I desire it. Is that all you wish me to say?”
“Yes,” he replied with a gratified smile.
He walked to the door with her and impulsively took her hand in his.
“Child,” said he, “I want you to grow fond of your cousin. I have your welfare at heart.”
The tears sprang into her eyes as she heard this.
But, saying nothing, she ran quickly upstairs and threw herself into Biddy’s arms.
“Oh, my, Biddy, that man drives me crazy. He is always bringing to my mind that I cannot have Tom for so many years; grow fond of him, never, even if he is my own cousin.”
The decision that she would see a lawyer on her own account made her restless until one afternoon she ordered the carriage and drove down Broadway.
“I want to stop at Wanamaker’s,” said she to the coachman, “and you wait for me. I have much shopping to do.”
Without waiting to purchase one article, she went through the store into the rear street and took a car.
There was something always in the attitude of the servants that made her think that she was being spied upon, and certainly if the manthought she was buying girlish trash she would be free to do as she had planned.
She stopped in front of a tall building and disappeared inside.
“I want to see Mr. Campbell,” said she at a law office.
A young man bowed before her, and she thought by the expression of his face that she could trust him. Starting from the beginning of her mother’s life as far back as she knew, she told the story. Then, coming down to the present, she related her fears about her lover.
“He is innocent,” declared the girl, “and you may name your own price if you will help me to get him out of prison.”
The young lawyer could not but admire the girl. She could give him but meagre knowledge of Tom’s trouble, but names were added, so that he could get his own evidence.
“And I do not want you to ever write me. I am suspicious of my cousin and those pretending to be my friends, and as long as they think that Iam doing nothing for Tom I am safe, but I fear the consequences otherwise.”
The lawyer promised and soon the eagle-eyed coachman, who was being paid by Benson to keep his eye upon his young mistress, saw the girl emerge from Wanamaker’s, and wave her finger at him from the distance. She had been gone just two hours.
“Home,” was all she said.
“Biddy,” whispered Nellie, after she and the woman were in bed, “you told me to look up a lawyer, and I did it to-day. I did not buy any of those things I said I did.”
“No?” inquired the woman.
“Indeed not, I simply went into a store and out the back door, and let the carriage wait for me in front. Why, do you know I fear even the eyes of Brown. When he drives me anywhere, he always looks as if he were memorizing the number of the place. But how contentedly he waited until I came out of the store, and he was nearly asleep upon the box.”
Biddy shook the bed with hearty laughter.
“You’ve got the brain,” said she softly, and then they fell asleep.
Old Nathans was so angry about the coming of Nellie upon the scene that he stormed every time he came to the Benson home.
“You are a fool,” raved he, “a perfect fool. Long ago you ought to have settled this affair, instead of calling upon me for such large amounts. Now then, unless you get some of that girl’s money or get her out of the way, we will both be ruined. She is a crafty witch.”
“Yes, but does not take a step that she is not watched.”
“Maybe she fools you.”
“Not much; I am paying the servants well.”
“Women are not to be trusted,” commented Nathans, “for when you think you know just what they are doing that is the time you get fooled.”
Benson made no reply to this.
“The only thing I want,” went on the Jewangrily, “is some of the money I’ve let you have the past fifteen years and before that time. Now, get a hustle on yourself, and don’t keep me waiting any longer. I should think with that Tom out of the way it would be easy enough to put her out of our path.”
“You tried it once,” said Benson, “and utterly failed.”
“Yes, but you remember that Tom Cooper was not then in jail.”
“Oh, yes, he was,” tantalized Benson.
“Well, I mean that he was with her. Now he is not.”
“There is some truth in that,” replied the other, “but I have my own opinion that we have gone to the length of our tether, and she may outwit us after all.”
“Oh, that little Bowery tough was at the shop the other day, and asked for his reward for finding the girl and the man. I just laughed at him, and told him to scoot.”
“That’s right,” answered Benson. “We won’t give him any thousand; it is too hard to get.”
“So ’tis, but aren’t you afraid he’ll squeal on us?”
“His word wouldn’t be much,” scoffed Benson. “If he comes to me I shall soon give him a piece of my mind.”
Just at that moment there came a rap at the door, and the servant announced:
“Mr. Jim Farren.”