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Chapter XXXI

As the hours wore on, poor Jessie Staples grew so alarmingly worse, and the fever increased so rapidly, that, despite her entreaties, Dorothy felt that she must summon medical aid.

Soon after the entire household had gathered about Jessie, in the greatest alarm.

A physician was sent for at once – Doctor Crandall, whom Mrs. Garner had known for long years.

It so happened that the doctor lay very ill himself from an attack of la grippe, and, penning a line or so to Mrs. Garner, he explained that he had sent as a substitute a young doctor whom he had taken into his office to act for him during his illness. He felt sure they could rest Miss Staples' case with all safety in his hands.

That was the beginning of the terrible end.

Surely a cruel fate must have brought the situation about. It happened in this way:

When Harry Kendal had exerted every means to find Dorothy, and had failed, he commenced to look about for something to do.

It occurred to him that perhaps the best person to whom he could apply was Doctor Crandall, who had been the life-long friend of his old benefactor, Doctor Bryan.

Kendal's appeal was not in vain. He was taken in at once. Indeed, his coming was most opportune, he was told.

It so happened that his very first call was to the home of Mrs. Garner.

"Garner!" The name sounded very familiar to him. His brow darkened as he heard it. Was not that the name of the young man who had been Dorothy Glenn's lover when he first met little Dorothy in the book-bindery? Of course, it was absurd to imagine that there could be anything in common between these wealthy Garners and that poor fellow who worked hard at his trade. Still he hated the name.

When he reached the mansion and was ushered into the corridor, to his intense surprise, the first person whom he met face to face was Jack Garner! He recognized Jack at once; but the light in the corridor was low, and, besides, he had turned up his coat-collar, and with the heavy beard he had grown, Garner, as it was not to be wondered at, did not know him. Besides, Jack had seen him but twice – once as he was putting Dorothy into a coach, and again on the Staten Island boat, in the dim, uncertain moonlight.

"Your patient is this way, doctor," he said, motioning him up the broad stairway.

A sudden, strange thought came to Kendal: What if he should find Dorothy there?

He no sooner entered the room and uttered the first word than the slim figure in black, wearing the blue glasses, started violently. Dorothy recognized him at once, despite the heavy beard.

"How in the world came he here?" she gasped to herself, in the greatest amazement.

But she had no opportunity to think long over the matter, for Jessie required the most immediate attention.

"I think it will be best to send you a practical nurse," he said, as he took his departure.

He spoke to Doctor Crandall about it immediately upon his return to the office.

"There is only one young woman whom I can think of just at present," said the doctor. "She is not what you might call a trained nurse, but she claims to have had a little experience. We shall have to secure her in a case of emergency. I shall send for her to-night; she will probably be there in the morning when you arrive."

As Kendal ascended the steps of the palatial home of the Garners, he came face to face with a woman who was standing in the vestibule, just in the act of touching the bell. One glance, and he fairly reeled back.

"Nadine Holt!" he cried, aghast, "is it you —you?"

"We meet again at last!" hissed the girl, confronting him with death-white face. "I knew I should find you sooner or later, and I have been on your track."

"Hush! hush! Nadine," he cried; "what do you mean? In Heaven's name, don't speak so loud! Every one is listening. You will ruin me."

"That is what I intend to do!" she shrieked, clutching frantically at his arm with her long, thin fingers. "You deserted me and wedded another."

"What put such a notion in your head, anyhow, Nadine?" he said, evasively, thinking it best to temporize with the raging fury confronting him.

"I heard all about it," she panted, hoarsely.

"Then some one has been cruelly maligning me," he cried; "and you, of all people in the world, Nadine, should not have believed it. Hush! some one is coming. I hear footsteps. Meet me later. I want to have a long talk with you. But, by the way, what are you doing here at this house, Nadine?"

"Did I not tell you that I answered Doctor Crandall's advertisement for a nurse, and that this is my errand here? But what are you doing here?"

"I may as well tell you the truth, Nadine," he said, despairingly, seeing that it would all come out sooner or later. "I – I have been studying medicine since I met you, and they have engaged me as physician. But now that surprises are in order, I suppose you know who lives here?"

"No," she answered.

"It is your old friend Garner, who used to be in the book-bindery. He has acquired sudden wealth – Heaven knows how. His mother is living with him, and also that pretty girl whom I used to think was so quiet – Miss Staples."

Before Nadine could reply, her amazement was so great, the door was opened by the quiet footman, and they were ushered into the drawing-room.

Kendal had barely time to whisper to Nadine: "These people do not know that I am the same one whom they used to know as the car conductor. Don't give me away," ere the door opened, and Mrs. Garner made her appearance.

"Ah! you have brought a nurse with you, doctor," she said, in a tone of great relief.

So saying, she led the way to the sick-room.

Nadine's entrance caused the greatest surprise to both Mr. Garner and Jessie.

No one thought of noticing the plain, dark little figure half hidden by the curtains in the bay window, or they would have seen Dorothy start and fairly gasp for breath as her eyes fell upon the nurse Kendal had brought with him, and heard them discuss the point that Nadine must be installed there as nurse.

Her brain fairly reeled, and it flashed over her mind what a villain Kendal really was.

She had quite believed all this long time that he had parted from Nadine Holt, and here he had been keeping up Nadine's friendship clandestinely through it all.

Of course Iris Vincent was expecting to marry him.

It was clear that Kendal had a good many irons in the fire.

She only wished that Iris Vincent knew of his friendship for Nadine.

Dorothy wondered if Nadine would penetrate her disguise.

Nadine assumed her duties at once, and the first thing which she did was to order the slim creature about, scarcely giving her a moment's rest.

Nadine had always heard that this was the way paid nurses invariably did.

She took every opportunity to consult Doctor Kendal and waylay him for long chats. Even Jessie noticed this, as ill as she was; and she noticed, too, that the young doctor resented it; and Nadine herself was not slow in perceiving his lack of interest in herself.

"How very interested you are in your pretty white-faced patient," Nadine said, on the second day of her stay there. "I almost believe you have fallen in love with Jessie Staples, and mean to bring her quickly back to health, and – and marry her."

Kendal turned from her with a fierce imprecation, and muttering something that sounded very like "the cursed jealousy of some women," abruptly quitted the room, slamming the door after him.

Then Nadine felt sure that she had stumbled upon the terrible truth.

Chapter XXXII

Whenever a jealous woman is looking for something with which to feed the green-eyed monster, she usually finds it, or imagines she does, which amounts to the same thing. It was so with Nadine.

No one mentioned to Nadine the fact that Jessie was betrothed to Jack Garner. Even had she heard it, she would not have believed it. She would have imagined that it was a falsehood made up for her benefit.

She could not endure the kindly looks he gave Jessie, nor endure to see him bend over her, raise her from her pillow, and, while one strong arm supported her, coax her to take her medicine.

Such sights as these were more terrible for Nadine to endure than the pangs of death; and for hours afterward she would feel an almost uncontrollable desire to strangle the sick girl.

In Nadine's heart there rose a mad wish that Jessie would die before Harry Kendal became too fond of her.

While Jessie slept and she was not buried in the depths of a newspaper to kill time, she would be brooding over this subject: If Jessie Staples would only die!

One day, while in this morbid mood, her eyes fell upon a fatal paragraph that riveted her attention with breathless interest.

It spoke of the death of a once noted court beauty who had been in her time the toast of all Europe. Men had fought duels for her sake, and courtiers thought it a great honor to risk life and limb to do her bidding, being repaid by only a smile or one glance from her wine-dark eyes.

It happened that while riding about in her pony-cart she had, by chance, one day encountered a poor tradesman's son who had stopped by a brook at which her own horse was slaking his thirst, to give his steed a drink.

One glance at the fair, handsome Saxon face, and the girl who had laughed to scorn full many a lover, felt her heart going from her keeping to this bonny stranger.

Although he was poor – only a tradesman's son – and she had wealth untold, yet the beauty was not fair in his eyes.

He passed her by with only a gracious bow, as any courtier might, for he was in a hurry to reach the side of his beloved Gretchen. She was only a peasant maid, but in his eyes she was more beautiful than a queen.

He loved the pretty Gretchen with all his heart.

When my lady came to inquire about him, and learned he had a pretty little sweetheart, she grew very wroth, but she said never a word.

On that day she sent for Gretchen, and employed her as her maid. But from that hour there was a change in Gretchen's life.

Slowly but surely she faded, although her distracted lover did everything in his power to prolong the life of the maid he loved.

In the early spring-time, while robins sang and the trees put forth their blossoms, he gazed his last on all that was mortal of poor Gretchen.

The great lady tried her best to comfort Gretchen's lover, but he would not be comforted.

His hopes were buried in Gretchen's grave, and she could not turn his thoughts to herself, and ere the first moon waned, they laid him, too, beside his Gretchen, in his last home.

The great lady never smiled again, and soon after the doors of the convent closed upon one of the most beautiful women of her time.

On her death-bed she called one and all of those about her to listen to her tragic story.

She cried out that they must not touch her hand, for it was stained with human blood; and it was then that her horrible story was brought to light.

And in an awful whisper, while the long shadows deepened, she made this terrible revelation: that years, before she had murdered her maid, Gretchen, because the girl was loved by him whom she would have won.

By night and by day she pondered upon how it should be done, then suddenly the way and means occurred to her.

There was a powerful drug of which she had heard that gave women the most marvelous of complexions, but which sooner or later caused death.

Gretchen should take it; it could be placed in the basin of water in which she was wont to bathe her face each morning, and it would enter the body through the pores of the skin. In this way the doctors would be completely baffled, for they would not be able to trace the poison.

She put this dastardly plot into execution, and her cruel heart did not upbraid her, though she saw the girl droop and fade daily before her eyes.

When she looked out of her window and saw Gretchen and her lover pacing up and down the primrose path in the moonlight, a horrible laugh would break from the great lady's ripe, red lips.

"There will be but a few more of these meetings, tender partings and kisses under the larch-tree boughs."

She had never dreamed, this false, cruel beauty, that a man's heart could be constant to a dead love and spurn a living one.

All these years she had lived to rue it; but neither prayers, nor suffering, nor pangs of conscience could atone for the terrible crime committed.

During all the years that had passed since Gretchen had been lying in that lonely grave, she had never known one moment's peace of mind, until this hour when she lay dying and had confessed all.

Slowly, twice, thrice, Nadine Holt read the story through, and as she read, a terrible thought came into her own mind.

Why could not she procure this same drug and administer it in the same way to Jessie Staples?

She took the paper up to her room and hid it very carefully in her satchel.

True, Jessie had taken her in this time without saying one word of the past unpleasantness, treating her as though that quarrel had never been.

But Nadine was different. She was one of the kind that "never forgets, never forgives" while life lasts.

When the household was wrapped in deep sleep that night, Nadine stole out upon her terrible mission.

Several careful druggists refused to fill her order; but this did not daunt her. She knew that among the lot she would soon come across a catch-penny, and in this supposition she was quite right.

She soon found a place, and secured the deadly drug which she called for, and she stole into the house again without any one being the wiser for her midnight trip.

The light was burning low in the sick-room as she entered it, and Mrs. Brown sat half dozing in her chair by the bedside.

She started up as Nadine crossed the threshold.

"You needn't mind staying any longer," she remarked, brusquely; "I will take charge of the patient now."

"No," said the other, quietly but firmly. "It is between twelve and one that the most important medicine must be administered."

"Don't you suppose I am capable of giving it?" retorted Nadine angrily enough. "You don't seem to realize what is the business of a paid nurse!"

The other made no remark, but still she lingered. Had she a suspicion that there was anything amiss?

She was a strange creature, anyhow, with that old-looking face, the great mass of thick black hair studded with gray, and the thick blue glasses.

Where had she seen some one of whom this creature reminded her so strangely and so strongly?

Even the tone of her voice, although it sounded hoarse and unnatural, was somehow familiar to her.

The very way in which Mrs. Brown crested her head she had seen somewhere before, and it had made quite an impression upon her at the time.

"I can not help thinking that she is always spying upon every movement of mine, and she listens – I am sure she does – to every word the doctor and I say; and these people who watch others so much always need watching themselves."

Seeing that Nadine Holt was determined to banish her from the sick-room, Dorothy quitted the apartment with a very heavy heart, though she could not have told why.

Chapter XXXIII

The days that followed were dark ones to the Garner household, for Jessie began to fail rapidly.

She grew so weak that the entire household began to grow terribly alarmed over her condition. Even the doctor had grave apprehension for his patient.

"The case of Miss Staples puzzles me completely," he said to Doctor Crandall, when he returned to his office one afternoon. "I have never known of symptoms like hers;" and he minutely described the strange turn the case had taken which had baffled him completely.

"As soon as I am able to be about I will go with you and see for myself just where the trouble is."

Meanwhile, a serious matter was agitating the brain of poor Jessie Staples.

She realized before any of the rest did that her condition was becoming alarming, and her wedding-day was drawing nearer and nearer.

But when that day dawned, a secret voice in her heart whispered that she would be "the bride of death," and not Jack Garner's.

She wondered if Heaven meant it for the best, that she must give up the life that might have held so much for her. She had longed for death many a time; but now that it seemed imminent, her very soul grew frightened because of one thought: she would have to leave Jack behind her. It seemed to her that though she should be buried fathoms deep, her soul would cling to earth – and Jack. What if, in time to come, he should forget her! Ah! that was the bitterest stroke of all; and she realized that, no matter how deeply a person may love, when the object of that affection dies, time brings balm to his woe, and mellows it into forgetfulness or to a shadowy memory.

If she were to die, would he ever love another, and stand with that other before the altar?

In her day-dreams, in times gone by, Jessie had pictured to herself – as girls will in those rosy moments – how she would stand at the altar, and listen with whirling brain and beating heart to those sweet, solemn words that would bind her forever to the man she loved with more than a passing love. She pictured how she would walk down the aisle, leaning on his arm – that great, strong arm that would be her support for evermore – a great mist of happy tears in her eyes as she clung to him.

She even pictured to herself how he would help her into the coach, and how they would drive away out into the great wide world together, to be separated never again.

Instead of all this, now she would be lying in her grave, with blue forget-me-nots and pale primroses on her breast.

Jack would be going through that scene with another as his bride; and as the years rolled by he would forget her, or think of her only now and then at times – not with keen regret, but with faint, vague indifference.

Oh, God! if it had been he who was destined to die, she would have shut herself up from the world, and would have lived only for his memory.

Her last prayer would have been, when death's dew gathered on her brow, to be buried beside him.

But men are more fickle than women. How few of them remain true to a dead love!

As she tossed to and fro on her pillow, these thoughts tortured her more than tongue could tell.

Then a strange fancy took possession of her.

The more she thought of it, the more her heart longed to accomplish it, until she could not restrain the longing that seemed to take entire possession of her.

And one day, when she seemed even more ill than usual, she could no longer restrain the impulse to send for Jack.

He came quickly at her bidding, sat down by her couch, caught the little white hand – ah! terribly thin and white now – in his, and raised it to his lips.

"Did you wish me to sit with you, Jessie?" he said. "Or would you like me to read to you?"

"No; I want to talk to you, Jack," she said, with a little quiver in her voice.

"Have you ever thought how near it is to – to our wedding-day, Jack," she whispered, faintly.

"Yes," said Jack, with never a thought of what was coming.

"What – what would you do if I were still ill when it dawned?"

"The ceremony could be performed just the same," he answered, promptly. "There would be no wedding at the church, no invited guests; that would be all the difference."

"Would you wish to marry me if – if you knew that I would never be well again, and that perhaps death would be hovering very, very near to claim me, and to part me from you?"

"I will keep to my part of the compact, Jessie," he said, huskily.

"But what if I should die before it, Jack?" she questioned, faintly.

"I do not know what you mean, Jessie," he said, gravely – "what you are trying to get at."

"Oh, Jack! I mean this: I – I want to belong to you in life and in death. I do not want you to have any other love but me, even if I should be taken from you. I want you to be true to me forever. I could not rest in my grave, though they burled me fathoms deep, if you ever called another – wife! If I am to die, Jack, you must promise me one thing – that you will never wed – another!"

"How can you talk of such a thing, my dear Jessie?" he said, reproachfully. "You pain me beyond measure."

"You will give me that promise, will you not, Jack?" she pleaded. "The pangs of death will be easier to bear if my mind is but at rest on that subject."

"You are going to get well soon, and the ceremony will take place as we have arranged," he said, soothingly; but she shook her head.

"If I should not, Jack," she whispered, fixing her burning eyes wistfully on his face, "let me have the assurance from your lips that you will never, never put another in my place."

"If it will settle any doubts in your mind, I give you the promise that you ask," he answered, in a low, grave voice; and it was worth that promise to see the girl's pale face light up with a swift flush of joy.

"Oh, thank you – thank you, Jack!" she sobbed.

At that moment a strange incident was taking place in Dorothy's room.

Almost thoroughly exhausted with night-watching, Dorothy had fallen asleep in a chair, in which she had sat down for a few moments' rest.

Was it only a vision? she wondered, or did she hear some one call her name softly: "Dorothy! Dorothy!"

She turned her head quickly, but she could see no one, although some one was whispering:

"Why do you nurse Jessie so carefully? If it is destined that she should die, I wonder that you grieve when you know that her death will bring freedom to Jack Garner and love to you!"

The idea was so startling that for a time it nearly took her breath away.

"Let her drift quietly on to the end which is near. If you do not work too zealously to save her, your reward will be the heart of him whom you love at last. Take warning, and heed my words!"

Dorothy sprang from her chair, quivering with excitement.

She had been fast asleep, and the words that still rang in her ears shocked her yet, even though she knew it was but a dream – though such a vivid one – and the voice that whispered those words to her seemed so like Jack's.

Still the idea was in her head. If Jessie Staples died, her lover would be free again, and she knew what that would mean for herself.

She tried to put the thought from her, but she could not; it haunted her continually.

She tried to tell herself that even if Jessie were to die, she would never make herself known to Jack.

But, even after she had said all that, she knew in her own mind that she would be sure to let Jack know at last, for she would never realize a moment's happiness until she was once more what she had been to Jack in the past.

It had been such a slight affair that had parted them, and that had drifted two hearts asunder.

 
Alas! how light a cause may move
Dissensions between hearts that love —
Hearts that the world in vain had tried,
And sorrow but more closely tied;
That stood the storm when waves were rough,
Yet in a sunny hour fell off,
Like ships that have gone down at sea
When heaven was all tranquillity."