Loe raamatut: «Pretty Geraldine, the New York Salesgirl; or, Wedded to Her Choice», lehekülg 16

CHAPTER LII.
FOR CISSY'S SAKE

 
"The burden of my heart, dear,
There's little need to tell;
There's little need to say, dear,
I've loved you long and well.
 
 
"And you will be my wife, dear,
So may you ever bless
Through all your sunny life, dear,
The day you answered yes."
 

Cissy paused for breath, and her lover looked at her adoringly.

Never had she looked so beautiful, never had she seemed so truly noble as at this moment when so generously pleading the cause of the woman who had brought such bitter sorrow into her life.

He forgot for a moment the tall, fair, beautiful woman who hung breathlessly on his fiat of fate, and exclaimed, rapturously:

"Cissy, you are an angel!"

"Yes, she is an angel!" cried the governess, eagerly. "She is an angel, and she will forgive you all your faults and make you happy yet—so happy that you might afford to spare the poor wretch whose sins have all recoiled upon her own head with crushing weight!"

"Spare her!" pleaded Cissy, with humid eyes.

He looked back at her tenderly, and answered:

"For your sake!"

With a sob of joy, the governess fled from the room.

And with her going the last shadow that her wicked influence had cast upon their lives faded into the past.

He moved closer to Cissy, catching both her trembling hands in his, and looking deep into her tearful eyes, saying, tremulously:

"My darling, the events of to-day have thrown down the last barriers of restraint between us, and we are back again where we left off that bitter day when you cast me off for the sake of the woman who declared she had a better claim to me. Cannot we go back to that past?"

Her face was downcast, her eyes drooped from his, she trembled, and did not speak.

But he was not repulsed, for she let him keep the little trembling hands in his, and he was thus encouraged to go on in a low voice, hoarse from passionate love:

"Cissy, I love you more devotedly than ever, and I should have sought you long ago but that I feared a repulse. I knew so well your willful pride, you see. But now fate has thrown us together again, and it will break my heart to lose this new sweet hope. Darling, will you forgive the past, and let the future make amends?"

Cissy had not thought last night that she would be won so quickly as this. She had resolved in her heart to be quite cold at first, and make her lover's second wooing very difficult.

But as Cameron said, the events of the day had made reserve impossible. They had come face to face with the past in all its love and pain.

So she could not steel her responsive heart to her lover's impetuous wooing. With a great burst of tears that revealed all her heart, she threw herself into his eager arms that clasped and held her with boundless delight.

And the woman whom Cissy had saved from exposure by her generous prayer for mercy, crept away to her room, muttering, in a fearful way:

"How strangely fate pursues me in this house! I thought I was done with my bitter past, but three of its ghosts have risen here to confront me with my sins! What a terrible blunder I made going into that room! But I did not dream of meeting my divorced husband there! Still, I might have guessed he would follow that girl, the one love of his life. She is indeed an angel, but alas! she would not intercede for me if she knew the thing I had done last night!"

CHAPTER LIII.
"I WILL NEVER FORGIVE HER!"

 
"Oh, loved one! where art thou?
 
 
Doubt whispers in my ear
Many and many a fear,
And tells me thou art gay while I despair,
Yet be the bright hours thine,
If only thou art mine,
I all the dark ones am content to bear."
 

The strange disappearance of her daughter had come to Mrs. Fitzgerald with the suddenness of a thunderbolt.

To lose her like this—the child she had loved so dearly and mourned so unceasingly—over whom she had rejoiced with such yearning love when found; oh! it was inexpressibly bitter!

In the six weeks that Geraldine had been with her the glad mother had lavished on her daughter everything that could make a young girl happy, withholding nothing except her approval of her love for Harry Hawthorne. Wealth had been poured out with an unstinting hand, to surround her and clothe her with beautiful things; she had been praised, petted, and loved by the whole household, and the two children, her half-brother and sister, had vied with each other in lovely attentions to their new-found sister.

Nothing had been lacking to make Geraldine happy—nothing except the love she had been forbidden to cherish.

Alas! this love had ranked above everything else in her tender heart.

 
"The world is naught when one is gone
Who was the world? then the heart breaks
That this is lost which was once won."
 

The mother's heart was cruelly wounded by the desertion of her daughter.

"I will never forgive her!" she cried in the first agony of the shock. "She has proved herself the child of her wicked father by this heartless desertion of home and friends, and I can realize how little of my blood runs in the veins of the daughter I bore him."

In vain did Cissy intercede for her friend.

"Remember how young and loving she was, dear Mrs. Fitzgerald. Then, too, her lover was very charming—just the sort of a man to fascinate a young girl."

"He may have been as handsome as Apollo, and as fascinating, but he was not a good man, or he would never have persuaded a young girl to elope with him. Why did he not come frankly to me like a gentleman, and ask for my daughter's hand?"

"Dear Mrs. Fitzgerald, because he knew it would be hopeless. Of course our dear Geraldine must have acquainted him with your opposition to the marriage," said Cissy, gently, though in her heart she thought very strangely of Geraldine, asking herself over and over why the girl had chosen to deceive her so in asserting that she knew nothing of Hawthorne's whereabouts.

"She must have been in secret correspondence with him all the while, but I could not have believed it of Geraldine but for that note in her own writing," she said, sadly enough to the angry mother.

At first, Mrs. Fitzgerald had feared that Cissy was in the plot of Geraldine's elopement, but the young girl's surprise and grief were so genuine that she dismissed the doubt. "She has treated you shamefully, too, my dear," said the lady. "After inviting you here as a guest, and promising you such a charming time, it was abominable to go off that way and leave you in the lurch."

"Do not worry about me. My only concern is for you in your trouble. Geraldine acted willfully, I know, but there is one comfort. The man she has married is good and true, and cannot fail to make her happy."

"Ah, but, my dear girl, only think of what she has thrown away. Why, Geraldine was betrothed to a nobleman from her childhood, the owner of a vast estate in England."

"Perhaps that was why she ran away for fear of being forced into an unloving marriage, madame."

"Oh, no, that would never have happened, of course. I would not have wished her to marry unwillingly, nor would noble Lord Putnam have accepted an unloving bride. Perhaps, after all, he will wait for my Claire. She will be grown up in a few years, and bids fair to be as lovely as Geraldine," returned the lady, comforting herself with hopes of the future.

At that moment a servant entered the boudoir to announce the arrival of Cameron Clemens.

Cissy looked up with heightened color, saying:

"It is a gentleman we knew in New York. If you will excuse me, I will go down, and I will be glad to have you accompany me."

Mrs. Fitzgerald protested that she was not able to see any one, and excused herself to Cissy, who hurried down to the caller.

We have read in a former chapter of the result of that interview, so we will follow Cissy, after his departure, back to the presence of Mrs. Fitzgerald.

"I fear I shall have to return to New York in a few days," she remarked, feeling that delicacy would suggest her leaving after Geraldine's strange desertion.

But Mrs. Fitzgerald raised an indignant protest.

"No, Cissy, you must not go. I have grown very fond of you, and why should you not remain with me?"

Cissy thanked her for her cordiality, but said, blushingly, that she must go back to work. She was to be married in the spring, and she must earn her wedding clothes.

"Married? Oh, dear! And to the gentleman who was calling just now, I suppose?"

"Yes, madame," owned Cissy, with the loveliest rose glowing on her soft cheeks.

"Tell me all about it!" cried the lady, kindly.

Cissy thought that this would involve too long a story, so she said, simply, that she and Mr. Clemens had been engaged years before, and had quarreled and parted. Now they had made it up again, and she had promised to marry him in the spring.

"I have a charming thought," cried the lady. "You shall not return to New York. Stay with me as my companion and friend, and be married here."

"My dear lady, you are too kind—but it would be impossible. There is my trousseau to be thought of, you know."

"Certainly, child. I was thinking of that. Leave it to me to provide the trousseau as my wedding gift to you. What? Too proud? Why, aren't you to be my companion? And, of course, I shall owe you as much as you could earn at O'Neill's—and more," softly. "My dear girl, don't refuse. Think how unhappy I am, and what a comfort you can be to me."

Cissy saw that the offer was affectionate and earnest, and came from the depths of a noble heart, so she accepted it most gladly.

The days came and went, until it was almost two weeks since Geraldine's elopement.

They had looked every day for a letter from her, telling them where she was, and perhaps pleading for pardon, and to be permitted to see her mother again.

But not a line was received from the truant.

"She is cruel, heartless! her father's child, not mine," cried poor Mrs. Fitzgerald, trying to steel her heart against the truant.

But one cold, snowy day toward the last of February—could they ever forget that day—a card was brought to the lady in her boudoir.

She glanced at it, and turned deadly pale.

The card bore a name she had reason to hate.

Harry Hawthorne

It fell from her trembling hands, and Cissy, glancing at it, exclaimed, joyously:

"We shall hear of Geraldine at last!"

"I cannot see him!" moaned Mrs. Fitzgerald, tremblingly.

"Oh, yes, you will. Come! I will go down with you. Courage! You will fall in love with your son-in-law at sight, and forgive him for stealing your daughter!" cried Cissy, encouragingly, taking her hand to lead her down.

And in a few more moments they stood in the presence of a man so strikingly handsome and debonair that Mrs. Fitzgerald could not help from thawing toward him a little as Cissy presented him. He was well-dressed, princely in manners and appearance. As far as looks and culture went, her favorite, Lord Putnam, could not surpass the New York fireman.

He looked disappointed somehow, and after the first few words were passed, ventured straight to the point.

"Mrs. Fitzgerald, I think your daughter has told you of me. We are betrothed, you know, and I hope her heart has not turned against me with her accession to fortune. May I hope that you will also smile on my suit, and permit me to see Geraldine?"

They stared at him in amazement, the two startled women. Why, what could he mean, with those strange words and that confident air?

Cissy recovered from her trance of surprise first, and exclaimed:

"Mr. Hawthorne, what can you mean? Geraldine is not here. We supposed she was with you!"

"With me?—how strange! Why, Miss Carroll, I haven't seen her since Christmas Eve. Do not tell me that harm has come to my darling!"

CHAPTER LIV.
"WILL YOU BID ME GODSPEED."

 
"I reach into the dark, O Love!
I reach into the dark.
I cannot find thee; and my groping hands
Touch only memories and phantom shapes.
 
 
"I call into the dark, O Love!
I call into the dark.
There comes from out the hush above, below,
No answer but my own quick-fluttered breath."
 

Harry Hawthorne had sprung to his feet, pale with emotion, as he stood before Cissy, repeating the words:

"With me? How strange! Why, I have not seen her since Christmas. Do not tell me that harm has come to my darling!"

With the utterance of his words a terrible comprehension dawned on Mrs. Fitzgerald.

She understood that she had been horribly deceived, that Geraldine had not gone away to marry her lover, but had been entrapped into some terrible fate.

The fear of Clifford Standish's vengeance for the scorn she had heaped on him pierced her heart like a knife-thrust.

For two weeks Geraldine had been missing.

And no search had been made, because it was believed that she was safe and happy with her heart's choice, Harry Hawthorne.

But, instead, she had become the victim of a terrible doom.

The horror of her apprehensions overcame the mother's heart, and she fell forward in a heavy swoon.

When consciousness returned, she found herself lying flat on a couch, with Cissy bathing her forehead, and Hawthorne her hands, with eau de cologne.

She felt very weak and helpless, but as consciousness returned to her she groaned despairingly.

Hawthorne gave her a look of tender sympathy, and said:

"Mrs. Fitzgerald, can you listen to me a few moments?"

His gentle voice and manly looks inclined her heart toward him in spite of her prejudices against him, so she bowed her head affirmatively.

He went on:

"While we were trying to restore you to consciousness, Miss Carroll has told me the circumstances of Geraldine's disappearance. That note purporting to be from Geraldine was no doubt a forgery, and I fear she has fallen into the power of Clifford Standish."

Mrs. Fitzgerald groaned. Cissy sobbed aloud, and although Hawthorne would not permit himself to break down like a woman, his voice was very husky as he proceeded:

"A few more words and I must leave you, to institute a search for our missing darling. Will you bid me Godspeed?"

"Yes, oh, yes," and she held out her hand to him voluntarily.

When he took it he felt a warm, kindly pressure, and realized that in their common loss and sorrow humanity had triumphed over pride, and he could count on her as a true friend. Lord Putnam was momentarily forgotten.

Releasing her hand, he added:

"You may wonder at my delay in seeking Geraldine, so I will briefly explain: In the first place, when I found that the actor had abducted her on Christmas evening, I followed on the next train to Chicago. Four weary days I sought her, but all in vain. At length I met Standish one cold snowy evening on an obscure street, and demanded Geraldine at his hands. He assured me with such malice, that she was his willing companion, that I sprang at the dastard's throat in fury, and he stabbed me and ran off, leaving me for dead. Some kind Samaritans rescued and took care of me, but I kept the name of my would-be murderer a secret, for fear of drawing Geraldine's name into a scandal. Well, just as I became convalescent, I received news of the death of a very near relative that obliged my immediate return to New York. I sent for a detective, confided my secrets to him, and employed him to search for Geraldine in my absence. While I was away I received information that Geraldine had discovered her long-lost mother, and was safe with you. As this set my mind at rest about my betrothed, I paid and dismissed my detective, and determined that as soon as I had settled up some business matters I had on hand, I would return to Chicago and ascertain whether Geraldine's heart had remained true to me in her change of fortune, or if she would discard me for some richer lover. I arrived to-day, and came here full of hope and love to meet—this terrible tragedy of woe!"

He paused to steady his shaking voice, then added:

"But I believe I have a clew, and I shall follow it up. I go now to my detective. He is very clever, and I am very sorry I dismissed him. I feel sure he can help me to unravel this mystery."

The hope and courage in his voice inspired her to exclaim, eagerly:

"May Heaven help you—and bless you!"

"Thank you! Those words will inspire me to do my best."

He touched her hand with his lips, like a gallant knight, and bowing to Cissy, left the room.

But while Mrs. Fitzgerald lay unconscious, he had said to the young girl:

"Is there a governess in this house?"

"Yes, Miss Erroll."

"Has she ever carried on a flirtation with Standish?"

To his surprise, Cissy blushed, and stammered, replying:

"I should not like to answer that question unless you have very good cause for asking it."

She was generously eager to shield the woman's past if she could consistently do so.

But he answered, gravely:

"This must be considered a secret yet, but my detective wrote me that Mr. Standish was carrying on a flirtation with this Miss Erroll. Can she have been in collusion with him to kidnap Geraldine?"

"Good Heaven!" cried Cissy, paling at the awful suspicion that presented itself. She saw that she must tell all she knew.

But at that moment Mrs. Fitzgerald showed signs of reviving, and Cissy whispered, hurriedly:

"I can tell you all about Miss Erroll and Standish. They were lovers long ago, but I do not know if they have met recently."

Then the lady opened her eyes, and the subject dropped.

But when Hawthorne was gone, the horror of his suggestion staid in Cissy's mind, and she admitted to herself that it might be plausible.

For what if Standish, by threatening the woman with betrayal to her employer, had forced her to help him in his nefarious plot?

Cissy was so excited and indignant that she was on the point of rushing to Miss Erroll and taxing her with the crime.

But sober second thought restrained her.

She might frighten the woman, and cause her to run away out of reach.

She decided to leave it all to Hawthorne and the detective.

Meanwhile, she had enough on her hands to soothe the agonized mother, who was almost frantic with grief over the mystery of her daughter's fate.

She kept wringing her hands and sobbing:

"It is two long weeks since she disappeared. Oh, it is too late! too late! for any one to save my poor child now!"

Cissy shuddered at all that the words implied, but she cried, bravely:

"Do not let us despair. Although Geraldine's whereabouts are unknown to us, she is in the keeping of God, as she has always been, and surely He will protect her. Let us hope and pray."

Gradually she infused some hope into the mother's heart, and presently they knelt and prayed to God to restore Geraldine to their arms again.

Meanwhile, Hawthorne, as we will continue to call him for a little while, hurried to the office of Norris, the wonderful Western detective.

He found the little man in, and after a hurried greeting, said:

"I have called again about that case of mine."

"Ah, you wish to begin another search for the girl; is that it? I thought it strange you dropped it so suddenly when you got my report. But perhaps you had received news some way of the girl?"

"I had; but, Norris, that was a terrible mistake of mine letting you drop the case when you did. You were on the right track, though you did not know it. I am almost hoping you kept on watching, out of curiosity, after I paid and dismissed you. It will be worth much to you if you did," anxiously.

"But I did not, I'm sorry to say; for directly after I got your check I went off on a chase down South after some gold-brick swindlers. Fact is, I just got back from Richmond yesterday, after a stay of three weeks. But I ran the rascals down, though, after a very exciting chase. Tell you all about it," bustled the little detective, importantly.

"No, I don't care about it now," Hawthorne cried, impatiently. "You must hear my story first, for you must never pause now till that missing girl is found—the girl who was right under your nose all the time while you were watching the governess—Miss Fitzgerald, formerly Geraldine Harding."

"You don't say! Tell me all about it, sir."

Hawthorne went rapidly over all he had to tell, and then Norris said:

"The governess helped him, as sure as you're born, Mr. Daly."

CHAPTER LV.
DETECTED

 
"If you could go back to the forks of the road,
Back the long miles you have carried the load;
Back to the place where you had to decide
By this way or that all your life to abide;
Back of the sorrow and back of the care,
Back to the place where the future was fair—
If you were there now, a decision to make,
Oh! pilgrim of sorrow, which road would you take?"
 

It would scarcely be believed that a young girl could be drugged and carried from her own room at midnight by a scoundrel, even in the great, wicked city of Chicago.

But such had been the fate of our pretty Geraldine, although only by the connivance of the governess had Standish been able to accomplish the daring abduction.

Having quieted her uneasy scruples by swearing that he meant to marry the girl—which, indeed, he was most anxious to do—Standish unfolded his nefarious plot, and by his threatenings forced her to consent to aid him.

He told her that the girl had flirted most outrageously with him once, then thrown him over for another, and he was determined to get even with the little jilt by making her his wife. He swore that nothing should turn him from his purpose of revenge, and unless Miss Erroll aided him in this he would send Mrs. Fitzgerald a letter on the following day, acquainting her with the past history of her handsome governess.

It was absolutely fiendish, his threat, but she doubted not that he would keep his word; so, promising all he asked, she hurried away from him, eager to escape the nipping winter blasts and the flecks of snow that kissed her cheeks with icy lips, the forerunner of a snow-storm that wrapped the earth in a snowy mantle long before the dawn.

When the young ladies returned from the theatre, Miss Erroll was bending over her desk, where she had been busy for hours, counterfeiting Geraldine's handwriting from a bit of manuscript she had stolen from her room.

She was an adept at this work, and succeeded in her task so well that the note she pinned on Geraldine's pillow somewhat later, was so cleverly done it might have deceived an expert.

When Geraldine went into her own room that night she found Miss Erroll waiting for her, instead of the neat mulatto girl her mother had employed for her exclusive service.

"Martha was called home by the illness of her mother, and begged me to help you if she did not return in time," she explained, smilingly.

The truth was that Miss Erroll had given the girl some drugged wine that sent her into such a heavy sleep that she was enabled to steal into her place.

Geraldine protested that she could do without assistance, but Miss Erroll insisted on remaining; so at last she was hurried into bed, and then the woman said, solicitously:

"Now a sip of this spiced wine the maid told me to keep warm for you, to prevent a cold after being out such an inclement evening."

Geraldine did not care for the wine, and she was not at all chilly, but she drank a little from the cup, just to escape the woman's importunities.

Then she laid her fair head down to rest, and in a very few moments was soundly asleep; and no wonder, for the wine she had drank had contained enough opium to keep her in a stupor for many hours.

Not till she was sound asleep did the woman go out, and then she stole like a shadow of evil omen through the darkened house, where she undid all the door fastenings, that Clifford Standish might have no difficulty in entering.

Returning to Geraldine's room, she cautiously dressed the sleeping girl in warm, thick shoes and stockings, and a thick blanket-wrapper, placing close at hand a heavy cloak and hood, evidently making her ready for a mysterious journey.

In the dressing-room beyond, she had already packed a hand-bag with clothing, which she now brought in and placed near the door.

While she was dressing her, Geraldine had stirred and moaned several times, but the influence of the drug held her senses bound too fast for her to awake; so Miss Erroll had everything ready, and was crouched in a chair waiting, when there came a low, soft scratching at the door, the signal agreed on between them.

She started, growing pale as ashes, her heart sinking in her breast. She had been hoping and praying that he would not come.

Stealing to the door, she admitted Standish, who was not a very pleasant object to see in his black crape mask.

Not a word passed between them, but she silently wrapped Geraldine in the cloak and hood ready for her journey.

The daring actor lifted the girl as though she had been a little child, and taking the hand-bag also, stole from the house undetected, and made his way to a sleigh that was in waiting around the nearest corner.

Then Miss Erroll, shivering like one in an ague fit, proceeded to finish her work.

She locked the door, and re-made the dainty bed, so that it had the appearance of not having been slept in that night.

Upon the pillow she pinned the note that she had written in Geraldine's hand, and to which she had signed Geraldine's name.

And, lastly, and just before leaving the room, she sank on her knees, and prayed with dramatic fervor:

"Oh, God, if Thou wilt hear the prayer of a wretch like me, I implore that Thou wilt watch over and protect from harm the poor girl whom I have betrayed into that wretch's hands!"

When the hue and cry arose the next morning over Geraldine's disappearance, she was as much excited as any, and her grief was as noisy as that of the others.

She was indeed grieved and remorseful over her evil deed, and she had only one comfort to offer herself:

"Self-preservation is the first law of nature."

She had saved herself, and, as the days dragged by, her first terror of discovery gave place to a conviction of safety. Not the least suspicion had pointed her out as the wretch she was. The children still remained devoted to her, Mrs. Fitzgerald was kind, Miss Carroll courteous, the servants respectful. She began to breathe freely again, saying, to herself:

"Why should I fret? Of course Standish has married the girl, and she ought to be glad to get such a handsome husband!"

She could not banish a little bitter jealousy of Geraldine, for once she had hoped to marry Standish herself, and the old passion still ached in her heart, though she had fled from him in horror when she learned that he had a living wife.

Now that two weeks had passed, she supposed they were married and happy, and some day there might be a reconciliation between the mother and daughter and the son-in-law who had so cleverly stolen his bride. Standish had promised that no matter what happened, his confederate's agency in the affair should never be known.

But she would not have begun to feel so confident of her position if she could have heard what the detective, Norris, was saying that day to Hawthorne.

"That governess helped him, as sure as you're born, Mr. Daly."

Hawthorne said, hurriedly:

"You may call me by another name henceforward—that of Hawthorne. I confess that Daly was an assumed one. And now, about this governess?"

"Yes, there's no time to lose, Mr. Hawthorne, in beating about the bush. That poor girl has been missing for two weeks, and God only knows what has come to her ere now. We must see this Erroll woman at once, and surprise her into confession by taxing her with the crime."

"A clever idea. Let us confront her at once," cried Hawthorne, with burning impatience.

"I'm with you to the death!" laughed the jovial little detective, springing to his feet, and within the hour they arrived at the mansion, and sent their cards to Miss Errol.

They had chosen Cissy Carroll to bear them, and the governess looked at her, pale with affright.

"I do not know these men, Hawthorne and Norris. I cannot see them," she declared at first.

But Cissy was firm.

"You must go down. They said their business was important, and they would not leave without seeing you," she said.

"I dare not see them! I am afraid!" faltered the guilty woman.

"Why should you be afraid? Have you done anything wrong?" demanded Cissy, sternly, for a terrible suspicion was troubling her mind.

The woman shot her a keen glance, and asked:

"Have you betrayed me?"

"No."

"Then I will see them, but they must have made a mistake. I am not the person they want."

Putting on an expression of bravado, she followed Cissy to the presence of the two men, who both rose and bowed profoundly, though they read the signs of guilt in her ghastly face. Then the detective said:

"Miss Erroll, will you kindly favor us with the address of your lover, Mr. Clifford Standish?"