Dainty's Cruel Rivals; Or, The Fatal Birthday

by Mrs. Alex. McVeigh Miller

  CHAPTER XXIX.

  AS WE KISS THE DEAD.

  Alas! nor words, nor tears, nor embraces, nor reproaches could move LoveEllsworth from his statue-like repose.

  He suffered Dainty's caresses passively, but he did not return them, andhis large, beautiful dark eyes dwelt on her face with the gentle calm ofan infant whose intellect is not yet awakened.

  "You see how it is, Miss Chase, and God knows how sorry I am to see mydear master so," Franklin said, sorrowfully, as she desisted at last,and gazed in silent anguish at the mental wreck in the chair.

  A new thought came to her, and she exclaimed:

  "Where is my mother?"

  "She returned to Richmond almost a month ago, Miss Chase."

  "Why did she not remain and nurse poor Love?" she groaned.

  Franklin hesitated a moment, then returned in a respectful undertone:

  "I can not say for a certainty, miss, but it is whispered among theservants that Mrs. Ellsworth sent her away because the young ladieswished it."

  "The young ladies?" inquiringly.

  "Miss Peyton and Miss Craye, your cousins. Mrs. Ellsworth has adoptedthem as her joint heiresses since she came into the fortune that mymaster lost by his failure to marry on his twenty-sixth birthday."

  He gave a great start of surprise when the lovely, sad-eyed girlanswered quickly:

  "He did not lose it, for in the fear of some such treachery as afterwardreally happened, your master persuaded me to consent to a secretmarriage in the middle of July, so that I have really been his wifegoing on three months."

  "It is false!" cried an angry voice; and there in the door-way toweredthe tall form of Mrs. Ellsworth, pale to the very lips, but with anominous flash in her dark eyes.

  She had recovered from the faintness that had seized her at first sightof the supposed ghost, on being assured by a servant that she had seenMiss Chase in the flesh entering the room of Mr. Ellsworth. As soon asshe could command her shaken nerves, she followed Dainty just in time tohear her avowal of her marriage to Love in July.

  "It is false!" she cried, furiously; but Dainty faced her bravely,clasping Love's cold, irresponsive hand in her own, exclaiming tenderly:

  "He is my husband!"

  "Can you prove it?" sneeringly.

  Dainty was very pale, and trembling like a wind-blown leaf, but shesummoned courage to reply:

  "We were married the middle of July at that little church in the woodswhere we attended a festival one night. It was in the twilight when wewere returning from a long drive into the country."

  "Ah! there were witnesses, of course?" anxiously.

  "No one was present but the minister who united us," Dainty answered.

  "His name?"

  "I do not remember it."

  "Indeed! that is strange. But perhaps you can remember whether there wasa license, without which such a marriage would not be legal?" continuedMrs. Ellsworth, still scornfully incredulous.

  Dainty answered, dauntlessly:

  "Yes, there was a license. Love went to the county seat to procure itjust previous to the marriage."

  They gazed into each other's eyes, and Mrs. Ellsworth drew a long,shivering breath as she exclaimed, menacingly:

  "This sounds very fine, but you can not prove one word of it--not one!It is a plot to wrest a fortune from me, but it will not succeed. It wasyour falsity in forsaking Love at his wedding-hour that caused all histrouble, and the sight of you is hateful to me. You must leave here atonce, and return to your mother at your old home in Richmond, for theroof of Ellsworth shall not shelter you an hour!"

  "Madame, after all my wrongs at your hands--" began Dainty,reproachfully; but she was cruelly interrupted:

  "Assertion is not proof! Until you can bring proof of all your charges,I decline to admit them. Again, Lovelace Ellsworth is now a pauperdependent on my bounty. Raise but your voice to assert a wife's claim onhim, and out he goes to become the wretched inmate of an idiot asylum.On your silence as to this trumped-up charge of a secret marriage, andalso of wrongs pretended to be done by my hands, depends the comfort ofLovelace Ellsworth. Now say whether you love yourself better than you dohim!"

  It was a crucial test; but the girl did not hesitate.

  She pressed her lips to Love's pale brow solemnly, as we kiss the dead,murmuring:

  "I would sacrifice my very life to purchase any good for him!"

  The man Franklin gazed on in keen sympathy for the girl and bitterdisdain of the cruel woman, but he did not dare to utter a word lest heshould make matters worse.

  Mrs. Ellsworth's eyes flashed triumphantly at her easy victory over thebroken-hearted girl.

  "Very well. You have made a wise decision. You would only come to bittergrief by opposing me," she asserted, loftily; and added: "Now you mustgo. Here is ten dollars; take it, and go back on the first train to yourmother in Richmond."

  The girl clung to her husband, sobbing:

  "Oh, let me stay and be his slave! I love him so I can not leave him!"

  Franklin dared not open his lips, but his blood boiled at the cruelscene that followed, when Mrs. Ellsworth tore the weeping wife from herhusband with resolute hands and harsh, cruel words, thrusting heroutside the door as she cried:

  "Go, now--leave the house at once, or I will send him instantly to anidiot asylum! What! you will not take my money? High airs for a pauperupon my word!"

  She slammed the door, shutting the wretched young wife out into thehall, and turned fiercely upon Franklin.

  "As you have been a witness to this scene," she cried, "I must alsocommand your silence. Will money purchase it?"

  "No, madame," he replied, with secret indignation.

  "Then love for your master must be the motive," she cried, with a fiercestamp of the foot. "Do you want me to send him to an idiot asylum, wherehe can no longer have your faithful care?"

  "No, madame, no!" the middle-aged servant replied, trembling withemotion.

  "Then you will hold your tongue upon what has just occurred in thisroom? Do you promise?" she cried, harshly.

  "I promise," replied Franklin, sadly.

  "Very well. See that you do not violate it on pain of serious results toyour master. I am tired of the charge of him anyhow; for who knows howsoon his simple idiocy may turn to dangerous insanity? So the leastprovocation from you would cause me to send him to a pauper asylum foridiots!" she cried, warningly, as she hurried from the room to make surethat none of the officious servants should dare to harbor her persecutedvictim.

  Dainty had already dragged herself out of the house, passing an opendoor where Olive and Ela looked out with derisive laughter at herblighted appearance, with the golden curls all shorn away, and the paleface stained with tears, while her faded summer gown and theold-fashioned scarf drawn about her shivering form did not conduce tothe elegance of her appearance.

  "Ha! ha! she looks like a beggar!" sneered Olive, adding: "Let usfollow, and see where she goes for shelter. Of course, she will haveshocking tales to tell on us if she can get any one to listen. I shouldlike to prevent her if I could."

  "Nothing will shut her mouth but death!" returned Ela, significantly,as, unnoticed by any one, they stole out to track the despairing girl onher wretched exile.

  The deep gloom of twilight had now fallen, and Dainty stood irresolutewhere to go, clinging forlornly to the gate, her wistful, white faceturned back to Love's window, her tender heart wrung by the torture ofleaving him forever.

  "Oh! who could have dreamed of such a strange and cruel fate for mydarling? It is indeed worse than death!" she sighed, miserably, thinkinghow cruel Mrs. Ellsworth had been to drive her away so heartlessly, whenshe had prayed to her humbly on her knees to let her remain as an humbleservant and nurse him.

  It seemed like the cruelest irony of fate that she, Love Ellsworth'swife, the real mistress of Ellsworth, should be driven in scorn from itsgates, penniless, hopeless, and without a friend, her lips sealed to thetruth of her wifehood, lest by speaking she sh
ould consign her belovedhusband to a more cruel doom than he was already enduring.

  Mrs. Ellsworth had carried things with a high hand; but she had beenreasonably sure of her position, having investigated Love's story of asecret marriage, and satisfied herself that it would be well-nighimpossible to prove it.

  Owing to Love's desire for secrecy, there was no record of the licenseon the books of the clerk of county court who had issued it. The clerkhimself, a feeble, aged man, had died suddenly two months ago--the dayprevious to Lovelace Ellsworth's birthday.

  The minister of the little church where the ceremony had been performedhad also died a month previous of a malignant fever contracted invisiting a squalid settlement of shiftless sand diggers.

  A terrible fatality seemed to attend poor Dainty; for in all probabilitythese two dead men were the only persons who held the secret of hermarriage, and dead men tell no tales.

  As the worse than widowed bride clung to the gate, taking that farewelllook at her husband's window, she suddenly remembered that she had onetrue though humble friend in the neighborhood--poor old black mammy.

  "I will go to her cabin and stay to-night, and to-morrow I must try togo home to mamma," she sighed, turning toward the dark patch of woodswhere the lonely negro cabin stood, and followed by relentless fate inthe shape of her pitiless rivals, Olive and Ela.

  "She is going to old Virginia's cabin, but she does not know that thenegroes have all moved away to the station, and that she will find itdeserted," whispered Ela. "However, she can shelter herself there forthe night, though it will be very cold without a fire."

  "Some one ought to build one to keep her warm," Olive returned, with asignificance that was not lost on her keen-witted cousin.