Читать книгу: «They Looked and Loved; Or, Won by Faith», страница 12
CHAPTER XXXI.
LIZETTE A PRISONER
Donald Kayne had told Nita the simple truth when he said that Lizette's sprained ankle was so severe that she had been obliged to remain for long months at Fortune's Bay. But, to do him justice, he had made every possible arrangement for her comfort and happiness during her long stay at the Rhodus house.
He had provided liberally for every luxury she might desire, sent her a stock of books to read, and of materials for fancy-work, and, having thus provided for her comfort, he made one private stipulation with Fisherman Rhodus and his wife. This condition was that any letters Lizette might write should not be posted, although when she became well enough no embargo was to be placed on her liberty. She was to be permitted to leave the island and return home.
But long and weary were the months before the poor maid could walk, or even stand, upon her foot again. And harrowing was her anxiety over the fate of her young mistress, whom she had last seen borne away in the arms of the sailor. She loaded herself with reproaches for her own credulity that had betrayed Nita into the power of her enemy.
But soon there came to her a letter from Pirate Beach that set her mind at rest. Donald Kayne, after meeting Nita, had thought kindly of poor Lizette's anxiety, and himself wrote her a short letter informing her that the dreaded sailor had indeed kept his promise of returning her mistress to her friends, and that Nita had now gone abroad with the Courtneys, to be absent for an indefinite period.
Lizette's mind thus happily set at rest, she became more cheerful under her great affliction, and within the next three months Jack Dineheart made his appearance at the Rhodus house and humbly begged her pardon for the accident he had caused.
Jack was a good-looking specimen of a sailor, and could be very ingratiating when he chose. He was an intimate friend of the Rhodus family, and it pleased him to make a friend of the pretty, plaintive maid in the lonely old prisonlike house.
He swore to her solemnly that the fall of the ladder had been an accident, but fearing it had made enough noise to awaken the family, he had decided not to risk returning for her lest he should imperil the safety of her mistress. His story was so plausible that Lizette could not refuse to believe it, especially as Donald Kayne corroborated Jack's story that Nita had been returned to her friends.
So pretty Lizette readily forgave the smooth-tongued sailor who, in common with his craft, had the knack of winning his way to a woman's heart.
Jack was often at the island that winter, and when he could overcome the gruffness he often affected, and leave liquor alone, he was always a welcome guest at the Rhodus house.
He even tried to make love in a rough way to the pretty creature who sat so helplessly in the great arm-chair with her wool-knitting in her lap, and had to be waited on by everybody.
Lizette was not averse to his attentions. They lent a little spiciness to the dull days, and so she let a little coquetry creep into her looks and words, just a little kittenish mischief that amused them both, and made old Rhodus and his wife wag their gray heads knowingly, as if to say:
"That will be a match."
In the spring days, when Lizette's sprain began to mend, she promised Jack that on his next trip she would go home with him to Pirate Beach.
"For I took your mistress safely back there, and I sha'n't feel right until I deliver you safe, too," he said.
So it happened that Lizette sailed with him in that golden June time back to Pirate Beach, her heart full of joy at the thought of a reunion with her beloved Miss Nita.
"But somehow, Lizette, I feel like you may be disappointed. I don't believe she has ever come home from Europe yet," Jack said to her, as they sat together on deck that twilight hour of the tenth of June, as they were nearing the familiar shores of New Jersey. "Tell you what, old girl, suppose we don't land at home unless she is up at Gray Gables. We'll drop anchor near the beach and I'll go over to mom and see if the folks are back. If they are not we can go on up to New York and have a lark. You said there was some one there you wanted to see, didn't you?"
"Yes, if they're not dead, for I've written and written and got no answer," returned Lizette, with an anxious look in her soft-blue eyes. So it happened that Jack's bark came to anchor near the shore, and Jack rowed over alone in the twilight to seek his mother.
Lizette waited a while on deck, but as the wind freshened and the waves began to put on white-caps, she grew nervous and went into the tiny cabin to talk to the woman who did the cooking and mending for the very small crew.
Presently the woman went off to attend to some small duty, and then the maid sat down by the light with a book and began to read to pass the time away.
She had just reached a very thrilling point in her novel when a stumbling step made her look up, and—Jack Dineheart was by her side.
"Oh, Jack, what is it?" cried the young woman, in dismay, for as he sank into a seat by her side she saw that his face was ashy white, his eyes wild, his frame trembling.
"It is nothing, you foolish girl, nothing. Go get me a drink of whisky," he answered hoarsely, and put up his hand to shield his face from her inquisitive gaze.
Then, indeed, a shudder ran through all her frame, and she cried in sickening terror:
"Oh, Jack, what have you been doing? There is blood on your hand—wet blood—and blood on your sleeve!"
With a frightened oath the man looked, and found her words were true. His hand was red with blood, and so was his light coat-sleeve.
For a minute they gazed at each other in startled silence. His eyes were wolfish—hers frightened, questioning. A moment, and he broke through the spell that held him, with an uneasy laugh.
"Good Lud! don't look so scared," he cried roughly. "I'll tell you the truth, Lizette. My arm's hurt—a shark bit at me in the little boat, and I had a tussle to get away. I didn't mean to tell, only you saw the blood. Now don't tell any one, will you? See here, Lizette, I won't allow any tattling"—roughly. "I'll go wash the blood off and get a drink; and you'll hold your tongue, you hear?"
"Very well, Jack," Lizette answered, with dignity, offended by his rough, menacing manner; then she caught at his coat as he was turning to go, and asked eagerly:
"But, Miss Nita, Jack? Is she up there at Gray Gables, or not?"
"No, she has never come back from Europe, so we will go on to New York, as we planned, and have a jolly good time; but, mind, Lizette, not a word about the shark and the blood, or I'll cut off the end of your tongue!" and Jack wrenched himself free, and disappeared.
Lizette wept with disappointment because she should not see her mistress yet.
"But I'll spend a few hours in New York, then go back to Pirate Beach and see Mrs. Hill, and find out all about Miss Nita," she thought, as she threw herself on her bunk, and sobbed herself to sleep.
When she awoke again she found herself a prisoner in a low den by the river-side in New York, guarded by a fiendish-looking old woman, who thrust some coarse food inside the door, and disappeared without answering a word to her imploring questions. Jack Dineheart was nowhere to be seen, but in a few days Lizette was horrified to find that his mother had taken the place of the mute attendant.
"Meg Dineheart, what does this mean?" she demanded angrily, but with a jeering laugh Meg vanished, and she heard the key grate harshly in the lock of the door.
"Oh, what is the mystery of this strange persecution?" wondered the half-maddened prisoner, forebodingly, but all her fears for the future did not approach the reality of the awful fate that hung suspended over her head ready to fall and destroy her very life.
CHAPTER XXXII.
ON TRIAL FOR HER LIFE
When the day of Nita's trial approached the popular verdict had adjudged her guilty. It was believed that if the jury cleared her it would only be to send her for life to an insane asylum.
Azalea Courtney and her mother read the papers with deepest interest, they exulted in every harsh criticism aimed at Nita, and they hoped that she would get the severest sentence.
"If she is spared to be Dorian's wife, I shall hate her even more bitterly than I do now," asserted Azalea vindictively.
"I thought you had gotten over your passion for Dorian, now that you are going to make such a grand match," her mother returned uneasily.
Azalea was lounging on a sofa, the picture of indolence. She raised herself on her elbow and looked into her mother's face with a spark of fire leaping into her large blue eyes.
"Dorian Mountcastle is the only man I ever loved, or ever shall love," she answered, "I shall marry Sir George of course, but I shall love Dorian as long as I live. I thought that time when I threw him over that I should soon forget, but I was young, and did not realize the power of love. Fancy then how horribly I hate Nita, whom he loves so dearly."
"Somehow I think it would have been more to our interest if we had taken her part and hidden our hatred in our own hearts," said Mrs. Courtney. "Soon we shall be turned out of doors penniless, with no claim on her pity or protection."
"But, mama, you will get the ransom for that—thing," returned Azalea, growing pale at the memory of her fright.
"I am not so sure of that. There are no answers to my letters."
"Then, mama, it may not be as important as we thought. We had better destroy it before we are suspected," cried Azalea, unconscious that a woman listening at the keyhole gave a start of dismay.
"Yes, I will burn it, and keep the white silk for your wedding-gown," said Mrs. Courtney thriftily, unheeding her daughter's shudder.
"Perhaps I'll never need a wedding-gown, mama. I have not had a letter from the baronet for two weeks. He only proposed to me to pique Nita, you know, and he may intend to back out of the engagement now."
"If he does he will have a suit for breach of promise on his hands," exclaimed Mrs. Courtney viciously, and the woman listening outside the door sneered as she grasped closer in her hands a thin, foreign-looking letter, bordered and sealed with black.
Then she retreated a few paces, gave a loud cough, and, again advancing, rapped on the door and delivered her letter.
"Good Heavens, mama! a London letter in mourning. And, see, it is in a strange hand—a woman's! What can it mean?"
"Open it, Azalea, and see!"
Her daughter obeyed, exclaiming in another moment:
"Sir George's sister, mama—Lady Landon—oh, mama, this is terrible. Sir George was thrown from his horse two weeks ago, down at his country place, and fatally injured, dying in a few hours. He never spoke, never was conscious again—so farewell to all my ambitious dreams! Fate has baffled me again."
Mrs. Hill, who had taken the liberty of lingering, now had to help bring Azalea out of a fit of hysteria induced by the failure of her brilliant prospects. Mrs. Courtney dismissed the housekeeper, and began to comfort her daughter.
"Don't grieve any more over it, my dear. Fortunately your affections are not hurt in the least."
"No—but it's the money and the position I've lost—that's what I'm thinking of, mama."
"It can't be helped now, and I have another plan—if all goes well."
"What is it, mama?"
"Azalea, you know that old Farnham was very rich. Now, if Nita should be—ahem—executed for his murder—who is to inherit all that money?"
"I don't know, mama. Perhaps that old fortune-teller will try for it."
"She will be disappointed. I shall claim it myself—or, rather, you."
"Mama, you must be crazy!"
"Not at all, my dear, but I have a secret. Miser Farnham was your father's half-brother, older than your father, the black sheep of the family, and disowned by all his kin. Why, barely sixteen years ago that old man was the master of a smuggling vessel—a dishonest craft, so strongly suspected of piratical tendencies that she was seized and sunk by the authorities. Then old Farnham gave up his seafaring life, and became a scamp on land as he had been on sea. But I needn't bore you with a recital of his rascality. Suffice it to say he was closely related to the Courtneys, although we never had any reason to be proud of the relationship. But now that he is dead you are your uncle's heiress; if Nita—ahem—dies, it will come to you—the wealth he has hoarded so long—and even if she is cleared, you can sue for a share unless he has made a formal will and left her the whole property."
It seemed to Nita that she could not live through her trial; as if she should fall dead of her shame and despair when she was led into court that morning to meet the curious faces of the dense crowd.
But there was Dorian, with his encouraging smile, and there was Mrs. Van Hise, with her tender, motherly ways, and Lena, with her steadfast heart; Donald Kayne, too, and Captain Van Hise, with Colonel Harlow, her lawyer—all these true friends were there, and by their love and faith helped her to bear her terrors bravely, and not to mind the dark, glowering faces of Meg Dineheart and her son as they sat ready to swear away her life.
There was one thing that surprised her—the absence of Mrs. Courtney and Azalea. At the inquest over the dead miser these two had done all in their power, told all they knew against her, and she had been told that they would be witnesses for the prosecution.
When she whispered her wonder to Mrs. Van Hise, the cheek of the good lady turned slightly pale, and she whispered hurriedly:
"They may have been detained, but I see that Mrs. Hill, the kind housekeeper from Gray Gables, is here. Perhaps she will explain."
Mrs. Hill had nodded and smiled in the most endearing fashion at her favorite, but her kind heart sank at the pale, sad looks of Nita. The long weeks of close confinement those sweltering summer days had told sadly on the young girl's health and strength.
Her cheeks were wasted with sorrow and washed pale with tears, her dark eyes were heavy and downcast, her lips pathetic in their weary, wistful droop. Her black silk costume, plain and close-fitting, was nunlike in its simplicity, and had no relief of color except some roses, the gift of Dorian, that she carried listlessly in her small white hand where the serpent-ring still glittered in its baleful splendor.
She had offered the ring to Donald Kayne, but he had refused to accept it.
"Keep it for Pepita's sake, and think of her kindly sometimes, for I believe it was for you she lost her life," he said huskily, and Nita tearfully put the splendid jewel back upon her finger. But the old terror of it was gone now, and she thought often and tenderly of the woman who had owned it, and whose tragic fate had saddened the life of Donald Kayne.
Pale and trembling with the horror of her awful position, Nita sat, the cynosure of hundreds of curious eyes, some of them soft with pity, others harsh with blame. She shuddered as her thoughts went back over her short life, so full of sorrows, and with so little sunshine in it. Dorian loved her—that was the only gleam of brightness. With that thought she looked timidly at him, and the world of love in the eyes that returned her gaze thrilled her heart with joy.
And, meanwhile, Colonel Harlow had begun to argue his client's case. The grave jury and the eager crowd hung upon the words that fell from his lips.
But the lawyer for the prosecution, who was young, and had his spurs yet to win, had a slightly sarcastic smile on his lips. Colonel Harlow was great, he knew, but he could not clear the prisoner by a brilliant speech unless he had evidence to show that some one else had committed the crime, and Lawyer Field was certain that such evidence was not to be given. So he listened with a smile, and grew impatient for his own turn, when he expected to eclipse Colonel Harlow's oratory and convict the prisoner. In his own mind he felt certain of her guilt.
Colonel Harlow spoke effectively for several hours and then the examination of the witnesses began. They were few, but they were so rigidly cross-examined that it took a long time.
Eagerly every one watched Dorian's pale, harassed face, as he gave the testimony he was not permitted to withhold. Nita choked back the rising sob lest it should grieve him, but after he and Captain Van Hise sat down, and were followed by old Meg and her son, it seemed to the girl as if she were already condemned.
Lena Van Hise was sobbing bitterly by her friend's side, unable to restrain her emotion. She believed with Nita that the evidence of those four witnesses would be fatal. Lawyer Field was certain of it, too. He smiled to himself as he watched Colonel Harlow's pale and troubled face.
"He feels certain of his defeat," decided Fields exultantly.
He did not know what a sensation was to follow upon the call for the next witness.
"Mrs. Courtney!"
Mrs. Hill, the housekeeper from Gray Gables, rose in her place to announce that the witness was dead.
"Dead!"
And a murmur of uncontrollable excitement arose. When it had been quelled she was asked when the witness had died, and the answer was given that she had met her death the night before in leaping from the window of Gray Gables, which had been partially burned to the ground.
"Miss Azalea Courtney!"
Miss Courtney had been saved from the burning house by the brave exertions of the firemen, but was so badly burned she would not be able to come into court for months, if ever.
Nita's white face dropped into her hands, while she stifled a cry of horror. Gray Gables almost burned to the ground, Mrs. Courtney dead, Azalea injured—how dreadful it was. Her heart thrilled with pity for her relentless foes.
Mrs. Hill was a witness, too, and her loving testimony to Nita's goodness made the girl's heart beat warmly again—love and praise were so dear to her sad heart, even from this humble source.
She looked away from the angry, glowering eyes of Jack Dineheart and his mother, and fixed her gaze on the kind face of the good woman, who, although the cause of the burning of Gray Gables did not come exactly under the head of evidence, managed to give the listeners the benefit of her theory.
Mr. Kayne had left a skeleton secreted in the house, and the Courtneys had stolen and hidden it, hoping, by their blackmailing efforts, to receive a large ransom for it. Failing in their designs, and fearful of detection, they had attempted to destroy their prize by fire, resulting in the disaster by which the mansion had been destroyed, and both women injured, the elder one fatally.
As for the skeleton, she, Mrs. Hill, had discovered its hiding-place several hours before, and assisted Mr. Kayne to remove it to a place of safety.
Nor did Mrs. Hill forget to give the gaping public the benefit of the sensation it received in hearing of the death of Miss Courtney's titled lover across the sea.
Fate had baffled the pretty plotter at every point, and, penniless and friendless, even her beauty, the weapon on which she prided herself so much, now totally destroyed, she was nothing now but an object of pity and charity to those whom she had sought to wrong.
When Mrs. Hill's highly sensational evidence was all in she was permitted to resume her seat, and the court announced that all the witnesses had been examined and the speech for the prosecution would begin.
At that moment Colonel Harlow arose to say that he had another and very important witness yet, and from the expression of his face the lawyer for the prosecution began to feel rather nervous.
"The new witness," announced Colonel Harlow, "is Miss Lizette Brittain, a former maid of Miss Farnham, who has been missing for some time, but has turned up just when most needed."
When Nita saw the face of Lizette again she half-rose in her seat, with a cry of joy.
Lizette gave her a loving smile in return, and a reassuring nod.
CHAPTER XXXIII.
THE PARRICIDE'S FATE
Meg Dineheart and her sullen son did not care to stay in to hear the new evidence. They were trying to slip quietly away, but an officer, all unconsciously to the guilty pair, had been quietly guarding them both, and they were informed in a curt whisper that they must remain.
With sullen looks of baffled rage the conspirators sat down again, and Lizette, who was looking very pale and ill, although resolute, began her story.
She told of her return to Pirate Beach on Jack Dineheart's bark the tenth of June, and of how he had gone over in the row-boat to see his mother, returning soon, pale, agitated, and bloody, with the story of the shark that had bitten him in the water, and the falsehood that Nita had never returned from abroad. She dwelt on his taking her to New York, and her inexplicable imprisonment there for no reason that she could discover.
"Little did I dream," continued the maid, with tears in her eyes, "that my dear mistress was on trial for murdering her husband, and that Jack Dineheart was keeping me shut up, knowing that as soon as I heard about it I would denounce him as the murderer, for I never did believe that shark-story he told me. But I was in no danger of ever finding out the awful truth, imprisoned as I was, if a kind friend had not interested himself in my fate. Mr. Donald Kayne had promised my mistress to send for me, and then he learned that I had sailed for home on Dineheart's ship. He learned that Dineheart had landed at New York, but when he sought the sailor and asked him for me, he was told I had died, and was buried at sea.
"Not believing the story, Mr. Kayne placed a detective on the sailor's track, and then he decided to murder me so as to escape espionage. He and his mother bound me, while drugged, to a railroad track, believing I would be killed, but they had been followed by the detective and Mr. Kayne, and as soon as the sailor and his mother left me I was rescued and taken to a place of safety.
"That was last night, and when Mr. Kayne told me of the awful plight of my dear mistress, I knew that God had spared me to save her life, for I know—and God knows—that it was Jack Dineheart who murdered the miser that evening of the tenth of June, when he went ashore at twilight and came back with that white, scared face, and the blood on his hand and sleeve."
Mr. Fielding, the lawyer for the prosecution, knew now that he had no case, that the prisoner at the bar was innocent of crime, for Jack Dineheart and his mother, terrified at finding themselves in the power of the law, confessed everything, and begged for mercy.
And a cruel and disastrous plot was laid bare when they revealed the secret kept so long, under threats of death from Miser Farnham, should they dare reveal it.
In his character of a well-to-do ship's captain, Farnham had been an unsuccessful suitor for the hand of the beautiful American girl that the rich Spaniard, Juan de Castro, had married.
Hiding his chagrin Farnham had vowed a bitter vengeance on his rival, and the opportunity came to him within a year after the marriage. Juan de Castro was very rich in his own right, having inherited the estates of a millionaire uncle, and when his parents looked coldly on his choice of an American bride, he swore in bitter anger that he would never look on their faces again, but return and become an American citizen.
Converting all his wealth into money, he stored it in a dozen chests and secured transportation for it on the vessel of his wife's pretended friend, Captain Farnham. The young pair embarked for New York, but on the voyage the young mother, after the birth of a daughter, died, and Farnham murdered the unhappy young widower, and pretended that he had committed suicide while in a frenzy of grief at the loss of his wife.
The babe was cared for by a sailor's wife until they reached Pirate Beach, when he placed it in the care of old Meg, whom he had promised to marry.
He stored the stolen gold in the cellar of his old house, Gray Gables, and kept its hiding-place a secret, but he promised that Jack should marry the little Juanita when she grew up, and become master of the great treasure.
Later, when the murdered man's sister, Pepita, came to America to seek her brother, the miser, fearing she would detect his villainy, had sent her an anonymous letter, acknowledging her little niece's existence, and promising if she would come at once, and secretly, to deliver Juanita into her hands.
She went, fell into the spider's web, and met death in the gold-vault, from whence her bleached skeleton had now been removed, to rest in a consecrated grave.
When Jack Dineheart, listening at his mother's door that night, first learned that his fiend of a father had married the girl promised in her infancy to his son, he had gone mad with jealous rage for himself, and honest pity for the lovely girl doomed to fall into the power of her father's murderer. To avenge his own wrongs and to save Nita from a fiend, Jack Dineheart had slain his father.
The miserable parricide and his whining old mother were led away to prison to be tried for Miser Farnham's murder, and for conspiracy against the life of Lizette Brittain.
A few months later the old fortune-teller was sentenced to imprisonment for life, and her son was condemned to be electrocuted.
Long before the sentence of death was executed the prisoner became violently insane, and, attempting to murder one of the wardens in the prison, was shot dead.
Old Meg, whose affections had been centered on Jack, after his death never held up her head, dying very suddenly one day, when she had been in prison barely two years.
Mrs. Van Hise had made a charming discovery. When Meg Dineheart had mentioned the name of Gertrude Vaughan as that of Nita's mother, the lady had given a start of surprise, and made a few abrupt inquiries of the fortune-teller. Later she said fondly to Nita:
"I have a claim upon you, after all; my maiden name was Vaughan, and from what Meg told me I have discovered that your mother was a cousin of mine whose acquaintance I had never made. So, Nita, dear, you belong to me until Dorian claims you."
"Which will be to-morrow, if Nita will consent," exclaimed the happy lover.
"She will not consent, for she has to order her trousseau first, and I shall take her home with me to-morrow, and she will not be ready to be married until late in the winter," laughed Mrs. Van Hise, determined to hold on to her lovely cousin as long as possible.
They all went up to New York the next day, but before they went all arrangements were made for Azalea Courtney's comfort. Nita went herself to the hospital where the burned and disfigured girl would have to remain many months.
But the heavy hand of affliction had not softened nor sweetened Azalea's temper. She had heard how the trial had turned out, and her heart was full of disappointment, hate, and jealous envy.
"I suppose you have come here to exult over my misery!" she said bitterly.
"Oh, Azalea, how can you think me so cruel? I am sorry for you; I came here to help you."
"I suppose you think me poor and came to give me money, but I have startling news for you," Azalea returned angrily.
"News, Azalea!"
"Yes. You think yourself heiress to all Miser Farnham's money, but my mother told me the day before she died that old Farnham was my own uncle, and that I ought to have a share in his wealth, so I shall employ a lawyer and sue you for a division of the spoils," said the disfigured beauty, with angry triumph.
"You will not need to sue, Azalea, for all of the miser's possessions that can be discovered shall be given to you freely. The chests of gold that have been taken from Gray Gables since the fire are all mine, you know, my father's property, but the house belonged to that wicked old man, and the property will bring you a good sum. I am glad you will have this money, since you are too proud to accept anything from me," Nita said gently.
The next day, Nita accompanied her friends to their home in New York, taking with her Mrs. Hill and Lizette, each of whom she presented with a sum of money that, measured by their simple tastes, made them rich for life.
"Miss Nita, you have made me so happy!" cried grateful Lizette.
The girl was the sole support of her mother and a crippled brother. The sick boy needed country air and food, and would have died in the hot city but for the present of money that Nita had given her the night she had saved her from old Meg's murderous designs.
"With that money I sent them both into the country, my mother and my brother, and it helped them, oh, so much!" cried the maid. "To-morrow I shall seek them out, and now that I am rich, I can live with them and take care of them so nicely, although I hate to leave your service."
Nita sympathized with all the good girl's plans and wishes, and lent her aid heartily to their accomplishment, rejoicing in the great good she could accomplish out of her store of wealth.
Mrs. Hill remained with her in spite of the fact that she was now well-to-do.
"I love you too well to leave you, dear Miss Nita!" cried the affectionate creature.
At Christmas, Nita and Dorian were married, and the beauty of the bride and the splendor of the wedding at the Van Hise mansion, on Fifth Avenue, created quite a sensation.
Their wedding-tour was to Spain. Nita had a longing to see her father's birth-place, and Donald Kayne, now her devoted uncle and friend, shared her yearning.
He had a fancy to see Pepita's old home, so he accompanied them, a welcome guest, on their journey.
