CHAPTER XI.
“Halloa, Jim,” said Nathans, “have you come to worry the good gentleman?”
“I’ve come for what’s due me!” growled the boy.
“Due you? Nothing is due you. Don’t think you can demand a sum of money and then get it. What have you done for us?”
“Got you the girl, and pointed out Cooper. You and Benson wouldn’t have known about them if it hadn’t been for me.”
Nathans shrugged his shoulders.
“Heap you did for us. Look, the girl’s saddled upon her cousin for no telling how long, and Cooper is only serving a term which does us no good.”
Jim cackled a funny little laugh.
“Pooh,” said he. “I wouldn’t give five cents for that girl’s chance of life if you two got your hands upon her. Poor little thing, she is too pretty to be with men like you.”
He crossed his legs and puffed out smoke from a vile-smelling cigar.
“Don’t get too personal, young fellow,” said the Jew, “but there, there, Benson, I’ll leave you with this young degenerate. Young fellow, if you had made a finish of the job you began fifteen years ago, you would not be in the position you are in now, and we would be able to hold our heads up with the best of them.”
“Well, now all you have to do is to twist the girl’s neck like this,” and the villain screwed his fingers deftly around, “and then we three could be rich.”
He squinted his eye to one side as he said this, and the Jew gave a great gasp.
“You’ve got a nerve, young fellow, that exceeds anything I have ever seen. Now then, I’ll leave you to settle with Benson.”
All this time George Benson said nothing, butwas looking curiously at the miniature man. Jim Farren was of under size, with a brutal-looking face. After the Jew had gone the escaped convict looked his question and Benson said suddenly:
“Don’t you think you’ve a good nerve to come here and ask to get a certain sum of money you did not earn? If you had not interfered with our arrangements fifteen years ago and helped that sailor to escape you would have been all right now. He would still have been serving a sentence and the girl would be dead. You had better go away.”
“I’ve been seeing my Cousin Biddy,” said the man, thinking to gain time.
“Well, you had better leave this house, and don’t come around whining to me. If you had had any sense you would have kept that Arkwright from my heels. I dare not take a step for fear he will hound me.”
The man looked again sharply at Benson.
“I suppose you mean that you cannot kill the girl without it being found out?”
“Hush, wretch, you talk too loud.”
“I am thinking my voice will be heard outside this wall if something isn’t done soon,” replied Jim.
“Oh, you do, do you? You are trying to threaten me, are you? Well, don’t do that, for it won’t work.”
“Oh, won’t it? Well, we will see. Now then, are youse going to give me that money?”
“No.”
“Not one cent?”
“No, not even a half a cent, and if you try anything we will send you up for the rest of your term.”
“Listen, Mr. Benson. Some folks situated like I am ain’t any too particular how they live when they don’t have no money. I don’t know but as I’d lief be at Blackwell’s as here in the city, but maybe I rather be there if I could get even with men what has done me an injustice.”
Benson’s face had grown white to his ears, and he had no hold upon his temper. He rose suddenly to his feet, and Jim, thinking it best to get out, ran into the hall.
There he met Biddy sailing down the stairs. This woman had improved herself a great deal since coming in a mansion to live, and she eyed her cousin with great scorn.
“Jim, why are youse about here with that dirty face? Seems to me youse might have some thought for me. Now, get out of here and don’t come again until it can be clean.”
“He’s gone back on me,” said Jim, pointing his finger to the library door.
“Glad of it,” said the woman; “you are both as bad as you can be. I hope you will find your way to jail for being so mean to our little girl when she was small. If she were not an angel she would not let any of you people in the house.”
“Oh, wouldn’t she?” cried he. “Well, she’d better not get too flip, for Mr. Benson runs this house.”
“Who said he did?” asked the Irishwoman, her blue eyes fastening upon the man keenly.
“He did,” replied Jim, looking toward Benson’s door.
Biddy muttered something about things goingtopsy turvy and that she would tell Nellie her mind, and Jim walked out.
He slouched along the street with his hands in his pockets. His idea was to think of some way he could get even with Benson without running any risk himself.
One afternoon Nellie was sitting writing her daily letter to Tom. Her mind had left the sheet before her, and with her eyes fixed upon the ivy-covered church opposite she tried to weave a day dream which would bring her happiness. How many weary months had passed since her Tom had gone to prison, and each day her cousin became more insufferable and she hated him more and more. He had constantly persecuted her with his attentions.
It would be well to cite a little episode which had happened only a few days before. Benson had gotten it into his mind that Biddy interfered with Nellie as far as he was concerned; that is,influenced her against him, so he determined to banish the woman from the house, and with this intention he set about finding a woman who would take Biddy’s place.
One morning he sent a peremptory message to Nellie to come to him in the library, which was his favorite place to meet her.
“Helen,” said he, rising at her entrance, “you will listen to what I am going to say to you, and know, please, before I begin, that it is for your own good that I speak.”
“Then do not hesitate,” replied the girl with so much sarcasm in her voice that the man’s face flooded with color.
“Please do not use that tone to me,” said he sternly.
“Very well,” and Helen sank gracefully back into her seat.
“Helen,” and Benson commenced in low, measured tones, “you are much younger than I am, but that is no reason why I should not care for you or you for me. I am only your second cousin.”
The man paused a moment, and Nellie, thinking it incumbent upon her to speak, said:
“I do not see what you mean.”
“This,” replied Benson. “Nellie, I love you. I want you to be my wife, and because I do love you I desire that you should come under good influence, and I require that you should allow Biddy to leave this house. It is a shame to keep her here.”
The girl’s face changed color. She did not speak and allowed him to go on.
“I believe this woman exerts a bad influence over you, for she is not a lady and could not be made into one, no matter how hard she would try, nor whatever was done for her. I have hired you a good woman to take her place, and have notified Biddy to leave to-night. I allowed you to bring her with you because you were coming into a strange house. Will you be good enough to say something, and not sit there looking at me like that?”
Still the girl was silent, while a mixture of emotions were arising in her breast. This manhad taken such a hold upon her, had constituted himself her husband without her consent, and would send away her beloved Biddy, and——
Here her thoughts changed their current, and she thought of the man in the prison cell. Marry George Benson—never. Let Biddy go out of her life, delightful, droll old Biddy, whom she loved? No, she would go, too, then.
Seeing that she was not going to speak, and hoping that she had taken his words as they were meant, the man arose and opened the door which opened into his private office.
“Miss Wallace, will you please come in?”
An angular-looking woman, with an evil eye, and who looked fixedly at Nellie, glided into the room.
“This is your new companion, Nellie,” said Benson genially, “and I know you will like each other. Now you will take her to your suite of rooms, Helen, and show her where she is to sleep.”
It was now time for Nellie to speak. She rose like a young empress and faced her guardian.
“You have gone a little too far,” said she, throwing back her head haughtily; “just a little too far——”
But before she could say anything more the woman had taken her by the arm and whispered:
“We shall be the best of friends. There is nothing Miss Standish can ask me to do that I will be unwilling to try.”
Nellie shook off the white fingers.
“Don’t touch me,” shivered the girl; “I will not have you near me, do you understand? I won’t have you in my Biddy’s place. I will bid you good-night, Mr. Benson, and say that when I am twenty-one, I shall come back and you shall leave this house, but now, to-night, do you hear,” and the girl bent far forward and looked into the man’s eyes, “do you understand, I am going back to the boathouse with my Biddy.”
With this sweeping statement, she flung herself out of the room, and fled upstairs, and she no sooner came near the door but she heard the sound of sobs. Opening it, she saw Biddy downupon her knees beside a trunk throwing her things in promiscuously.
“What are you doing, Biddy?” asked the girl sternly.
“Mr. Benson has told me to leave, and, darlint, it is better for you. I am not a lady, he says, but I loved you, child; I loved you.”
“Biddy, listen to me. Are you going back to the boathouse?”
“Yes.”
“Then I am going with you. I just told Mr. Benson, too, and also said to that vixen in a black dress, who he said was to be my companion, that I would have nothing to do with her.”
“Did you tell him that?” and Biddy sat down upon the floor and ceased her sobbing and looked at her darling.
“I did, and I’m going with you, Biddy. I told him I would come back when I was twenty-one and take charge of the house, and until that time he could reign here with the companion he had chosen for me.”
Saying this, she had commenced to tear thethings out of the closet. But a knock caused her to cease.
Benson was standing looking at her with a pleading expression in his eyes. He hated to admit that he could not tame this very young girl, and that she would take no wish of his into consideration, much less an order.
“What are you doing, Helen?” asked he, looking about the room.
“Getting ready to go with Biddy. I suppose the new companion will need these rooms.”
“Don’t be foolish, Nellie,” commenced the man. “You are to stay in your home, for it is not to be thought of, your leaving it.”
“Then if I stay, Biddy shall stay, too.”
Benson hesitated. The dark eyes under the shock of golden hair were flashing at him their challenge.
“Then,” said the man slowly, “let Biddy stay. I did not think you would take any such drastic measures. I hope you won’t regret it.”
“But she will,” he muttered as he made his way downstairs and dismissed the new woman, who,with a very dark smile upon her face, laughed him to scorn for his indecision.
“I should like the managing of that young girl for a little while,” said she slowly, “and I think I could bring her to time.”
“Leave your address. I may need you,” replied Benson, as he showed her the door.
And now this day Nellie was writing her experience to Tom.
“As if I could live here without Biddy, Tom,” wrote she. “And with the woman he hired for my companion. You have no idea how repugnant she was to me. Oh, Tom, is this misery never to cease? Now I have but a little money to do as I want to with, but, my beloved, it won’t be long before I can spend all the money I wish. Then for freedom for you and happiness for me.”
This letter was received at the prison and the warden congratulated Tom upon having such aconstant little sweetheart, but the tone of the missive was anything but satisfactory to Tom. He believed that Biddy would be sent away and Nellie would be left alone with Benson.
He thought of this so long that the idea seemed to set his brain on fire, and he could see his darling going through all sorts of things and tortures to make her give over the money to Nathans and her cousin. He pictured in his mind this woman, who had been brought to take the place of the faithful Irishwoman, who had been his and Nellie’s friend since their terrible experience in the river fifteen years before. He suddenly made up his mind to escape that night from the prison.
And escape he did. He slipped out of his place in the line of men and hid behind a large pile of lumber where some carpenters were at work. One man had taken off his suit of blue overalls, and thrown it down upon the boards, and instantly Tom had put this on, and had calmly walked out of the gate with the set of carpenters.
When he once was in the open air his thoughts immediately went to Helen. He would changehis clothes, and then satisfy himself how his sweetheart was getting along.
Helen Standish was growing impatient, and her twenty-first birthday was fast crowding upon her—that time when she would be her own mistress.
This thought often haunted both Benson and Nathans. The Jew had tormented Benson with his fears and worryings.
“You’ve got to marry that girl or put her out of the way,” commanded the Jew, and Benson knew this to be a fact, for was he not involved to such an amount that he could not stand under the strain much longer?
So this evening he sent for his ward, and said to her:
“My dear Helen, I am going to ask you a question. Will you marry me? I love you, and I beg you to be my wife.”
The girl rose to her feet. Her eyes narrowedinto just a squint, for she seemed to be measuring his strength against hers. There was something so strong in her feelings to-night. Was she not twenty-one to-morrow and mistress of her own fortune? And did it not mean freedom for her Tom?
“I thank you, my cousin,” said she, bowing low, “but I will have to decline the honor. What is more, to-morrow I will want my home to myself, as I am thinking of making several changes among the servants. And then, my lawyer says that you should hand me a statement of all the moneys spent since my grandfather died, and then please turn my property over to me.”