Jolly Sally Pendleton; Or, the Wife Who Was Not a Wife
by Laura Jean Libbey · English · Gutenberg #29544 · 398,702 chars · public domain (US)
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Title: Jolly Sally Pendleton; Or, the Wife Who Was Not a Wife
Author: Laura Jean Libbey
Release date: July 29, 2009 [eBook #29544]
Language: English
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E-text prepared by Steven desJardins and the Project Gutenberg Online
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JOLLY SALLY PENDLETON
Or
The Wife who was Not a Wife
by
LAURA JEAN LIBBEY
[Illustration: Jolly Sally Pendleton by Laura Jean Libbey]
Hart Series No. 43
Copyright 1897 by George Munro's Sons.
Published by
The Arthur Westbrook Company
Cleveland, O., U. S. A.
INDEX
CHAPTER PAGE
I. BOTH GIRLS WERE SO STUNNINGLY PRETTY, AND WORE 5
SUCH ODD, BEWITCHING COSTUMES ON THEIR TANDEM,
THAT THE PEOPLE WHO STOPPED TO WATCH THE BEAUTIES
AS THEY WHIRLED BY NICKNAMED THEM "THE HEAVENLY
TWINS."
II. IT IS ONE THING TO ADMIRE A PRETTY GIRL, QUITE 10
ANOTHER THING TO FALL IN LOVE WITH HER.
III. THE TERRIBLE WAGER AT THE GREAT RACE. 13
IV. WHICH WON? 19
V. "SHALL WE BREAK THIS BETROTHAL, THAT WAS MADE ONLY 23
IN FUN?"
VI. THE WAY OF WOMEN THE WHOLE WORLD OVER. 26
VII. BERNARDINE. 31
VIII. "OH, I AM SO GLAD THAT YOU HAVE COME, DOCTOR!" 36
IX. "WHAT A LONELY LIFE FOR THIS BEAUTIFUL YOUNG 38
GIRL!"
X. WHAT IS LIFE WITHOUT LOVE? 40
XI. A SHADOW DARKENS THE PEACEFUL HOME OF THE 45
BASKET-MAKER.
XII. "YOU ARE FALSE AS YOU ARE FAIR, BERNARDINE!" 48
XIII. HE WISHED HE COULD TELL SOME ONE HIS UNFORTUNATE 52
LOVE STORY.
XIV. "HAVE I BROKEN YOUR HEART, MY DARLING?" 58
XV. "I LOVE YOU! I CAN NOT KEEP THE SECRET ANY 61
LONGER!"
XVI. "WHERE THERE IS NO JEALOUSY THERE IS LITTLE LOVE!" 64
XVII. 70
XVIII. FATE WEAVES A STRANGE WEB. 74
XIX. "TRUE LOVE NEVER DOES RUN SMOOTH." 80
XX. "IT WOULD BE WISER TO MAKE A FRIEND THAN AN ENEMY 84
OF ME."
XXI. JASPER WILDE MEETS WITH AN ADVENTURE. 87
XXII. 92
XXIII. 95
XXIV. 98
XXV. 102
XXVI. 105
XXVII. 109
XXVIII. 114
XXIX. 117
XXX. 125
XXXI. 130
XXXII. 135
XXXIII. 141
XXXIV. 145
XXXV. 148
XXXVI. 151
XXXVII. 156
XXXVIII. 161
XXXIX. 165
XL. 170
XLI. 176
XLII. 177
XLIII. 182
XLIV. 187
XLV. 191
XLVI. 196
XLVII. 200
XLVIII. 205
XLIX. 210
L. 215
LI. 219
LII. 224
LIII. 229
LIV. 232
LV. 235
LVI. 240
LVII. 244
LVIII. 249
JOLLY SALLY PENDLETON
OR
THE WIFE WHO WAS NOT A WIFE
CHAPTER I.
BOTH GIRLS WERE SO STUNNINGLY PRETTY, AND WORE SUCH
ODD, BEWITCHING COSTUMES ON THEIR TANDEM, THAT THE
PEOPLE WHO STOPPED TO WATCH THE BEAUTIES AS THEY
WHIRLED BY NICKNAMED THEM "THE HEAVENLY TWINS."
As Jay Gardiner drove down the village street behind his handsome pair
of prancing bays, holding the ribbons skillfully over them, all the
village maidens promenading up the village street or sitting in groups
on the porches turned to look at him.
He was certainly a handsome fellow; there was no denying that. He was
tall, broad-shouldered, with a fair, handsome face, laughing blue eyes,
a crisp, brown, curling mustache, and, what was better still, he was
heir to two millions of money.
He was passing the summer at the fashionable little village of Lee,
among the Berkshire Hills of Massachusetts.
That did more to advertise the place than all the glowing newspaper
items the proprietor of the Summerset House could have paid for.
Every mother of a marriageable daughter who had heard of the millionaire
managed to rake and scrape together enough money to pass the season at
Lee.
It was laughable to see how adroitly these mothers managed to secure an
introduction, upon one pretext or another, to the handsome millionaire.
Then the daughters were duly brought forward and presented.
Every one knew the story of Jay Gardiner. His lady-mother and elder
sister lived in what was called the Castle, the grandest and most famous
homestead by far in Great Barrington.
With all the millions at her command, haughty Mrs. Gardiner had but one
great sorrow, and that was that her handsome son could not be induced to
remain at home and lead the life of a fashionable young gentleman of
leisure.
At college he had declared his intention of studying medicine. He had
graduated with high honors, and, much to his mother's annoyance, had
established himself as a full-fledged M. D.
If he had been poor, perhaps patients might not have come to him so
readily; but as it was, he found himself launched at once into a
lucrative practice.
This particular summer upon which our story opens, his grand lady-mother
was unusually incensed against handsome Jay. He had refused to spend his
vacation at the Castle, because, as he explained, there was a bevy of
fashionable girls invited there for him to fall in love with, and whom
he was expected to entertain.
"The long and the short of it is, mother, I shall not do it," he
decisively declared. "I shall simply run over to Lee and take up my
quarters in some unpretentious boarding-house, where I can come down to
my meals and lounge about in a _négligé_ shirt, and read my papers and
smoke my cigars swinging in a hammock, without being disturbed by
girls."
In high dudgeon his lady-mother and sister had sailed off to Europe, and
they lived all their after-lives to rue it, and to bemoan the fact that
they had not stayed at home to watch over the young man, and to guard
the golden prize from the band of women who were on the lookout for just
such an opportunity.
Jay Gardiner found just such an ideal boarding-house as he was looking
for. Every woman who came to the village with a marriageable daughter
tried to secure board at that boarding-house, but signally failed.
They never dreamed that the handsome, debonair young millionaire paid
the good landlady an exorbitant price to keep women out.
Good Widow Smith did her duty faithfully.
When Mrs. Pendleton, of New York, heard of the great attraction at Lee,
Massachusetts, she decided that that was the place where she and her two
daughters, Lou and Sally, should spend the summer.
"If either of you girls come home engaged to this millionaire," Mrs.
Pendleton had declared, "I shall consider it the greatest achievement of
my life. True, we live in a fine mansion on Fifth Avenue, and we are
supposed to be very wealthy; but not one of our dear five hundred
friends has discovered that the house we live in is merely rented, nor
that your father's business is mortgaged to the full extent. We will
have a hard time to pull through, and keep up appearances, until you two
are married off."
Mrs. Pendleton established herself at the Summerset House, with her two
daughters. Every Saturday afternoon the pompous old broker went out to
Lee, to make a show for the girls.
"The next question is," said Mrs. Pendleton, after the trunks were
unpacked, and the pretty clothes hung up in the various closets, "which
one of you two will Mr. Gardiner prefer?"
"Me!" said jolly Sally, with a mischievous laugh, complacently gazing at
the lovely face reflected in the mirror.
"It might be as well to wait until after he is introduced to us before
you answer that question," said Lou. "But how are we to meet him?"
"Your father will attend to that part of the business," said Mrs.
Pendleton. "He understands what he has to do, and will find a way to
accomplish it. Having marriageable daughters always sharpens a man's
wits. Your father will find some way to get in with young Mr. Gardiner,
depend upon that."
It required three weeks for Mr. Pendleton to secure an introduction to
the young man. On the following day the two sisters, dressed in their
best, and hanging on their father's arms, paraded up and down the
village streets until they espied the object of their search.
Introductions naturally followed; but, much to the chagrin of the girls,
their father, after chatting for a moment with handsome Mr. Gardiner,
dragged them along.
"I did not have a chance to say one word to him," said Lou,
disappointedly.
"Nor I," said Sally, poutingly.
"Don't make a dead set for a man the first time you see him,"
recommended Mr. Pendleton, grimly. "Take matters easy."
The proudest moment of their lives was when Jay Gardiner called upon
them at their hotel one afternoon. The girls were squabbling up in their
room when his card was handed them.
"Did he say which one of us he wishes to see?" cried Lou, breathlessly.
"The Misses Pendleton," replied the bell-boy.
There was a rush for their best clothes, and an exciting time for the
mother in getting the girls into them.
A moment later, two girls, both pretty as pictures, with their arms
lovingly twined about each other, glided into the parlor. Handsome Jay
turned from the window, thinking to himself that he had never beheld a
fairer picture.
There was half an hour's chat, and then he took his departure. He never
knew why he did it, but he invited them both to drive with him the next
day. Sally was about to answer "yes," delightedly, on the spot; but her
sister, remembering her father's warning, was more diplomatic.
"We will have to ask mamma if we can go," she said.
Mrs. Pendleton, who was passing through the corridor at that moment, was
called in. She and her elder daughter exchanged glances.
"I am sorry," she said, apologetically, "but Sally and I have an
engagement for that afternoon."
The young millionaire fell into the trap at once.
"Then could not Miss Louise accompany me?" he inquired.
"If she cares to go, I really have no objection," said Mrs. Pendleton,
hiding her delight with an arch smile.
When he left, and the two girls had returned to their room, the
stormiest kind of a scene followed.
"Take care! take care!" cautioned Mrs. Pendleton, to Sally. "Your sister
Lou is twenty; you are but eighteen. You should not stand in her way."
CHAPTER II.
IT IS ONE THING TO ADMIRE A PRETTY GIRL, QUITE ANOTHER THING TO FALL IN
LOVE WITH HER.
The next afternoon Sally Pendleton watched behind closed blinds as her
sister drove off, proud and happy as a queen, in Jay Gardiner's handsome
carriage. Louise Pendleton kissed her finger-tips gracefully to the
blinds, behind which she knew her rebellious sister was watching.
The drive through the country roads was delightful, it was such a fine
day, so bright, so sunshiny. Jay Gardiner seemed to feel the influence
of it, and almost unconsciously cast aside the mantle of haughtiness and
pride, in which he usually wrapped himself, in order to make it pleasant
for the beautiful, graceful girl whom fortune and fate had flung in his
way.
Louise realized what a golden chance she was having, and made the best
of it.
That was the beginning of the strangest romance that ever was written.
When Jay Gardiner helped his fair companion from the buggy, Louise
Pendleton looked shyly into her companion's face, murmuring that she
had had the most delightful drive of her life.
"I am glad you are so well pleased," answered Jay, raising his straw hat
with a low bow; adding, gallantly: "I must take your sister out and show
her what beautiful roads we have here."
Louise was thoroughly diplomatic. A hot flush rose to her face, but she
crushed back the words that sprung to her lips, saying sweetly:
"You are indeed thoughtful, Mr. Gardiner. I am sure Sally will
appreciate it."
"We will arrange it for to-morrow," he said. "I would be delighted to
have you accompany us. I will drop in at the hop this evening, and you
can let me know."
Louise and her mother had a long talk that afternoon.
"I think she may as well go with you," said the mother. "I am positive
that he will prefer you to your sister. Fair men usually like their
opposites in complexion."
The following afternoon the two sisters went driving with handsome Jay
in his splendid T-cart, and were the envy of every girl in the village.
He did his best to entertain them. He drove them over to Great
Barrington, and through the spacious grounds that surrounded the Castle.
The eyes of both sisters glowed as they caught sight of the magnificent,
palatial house, and each resolved, in the depths of her heart, that this
should be her home, and that she should reign mistress there.
Jay Gardiner divided his attentions so equally between the two sisters
that neither could feel the least bit slighted.
The fortnight that followed flew by on golden wings.
There was not a day that Jay Gardiner did not take the two sisters on
some sight-seeing expedition.
Every one began to wonder which of the sisters was the favorite.
Mrs. Pendleton watched affairs with the keenest interest.
"If he has a preference for either, it is certainly Louise," she told
herself. "Sally seems content that it should be so."
All night long, after these afternoon excursions, both girls would seek
their pillows, and dream the whole night through of handsome Jay
Gardiner.
Louise would talk of him all the following morning, but Sally uttered no
word; her secret was buried down in the depths of her heart.
Other young men of the village sought a pleasant word or a smile from
gay, capricious Sally Pendleton. But she would have none of them.
"I will have a millionaire or nothing," she said, with a little laugh.
On two or three occasions, much to Sally's chagrin, Mr. Gardiner invited
Louise to drive without her.
"That shows which way the wind is beginning to blow," she thought; and
she looked at her sister critically.
Louise and her mother often had long conferences when she came in from
her rambles with him.
"Has he spoken?" Mrs. Pendleton would ask; and she always received the
same answer in a disappointed tone--"No!"
"Any other girl would have had a declaration from the young man before
this time."
"If I could make the man propose, I would be his betrothed without a
day's delay," Louise would reply, quite discontentedly.
Sally would turn away quickly before they had time to notice the
expression on her face.
One day, in discussing the matter, Mr. Pendleton observed his younger
daughter gazing fixedly at her mother and Louise.
"Love affairs do not interest you, Sally," he said, with a laugh. "My
dear," he said, suddenly, "you are not at all like your mother in
disposition. Could you ever love any one very much?"
"I do not know, papa," she answered. "I do not love many people. I only
care for a few. In the way you mean, love would be a fire with me, not a
sentiment."
How vividly the words came back to him afterward when her love proved a
devastating fire!
She had turned suddenly to the window, and seemed to forget his
question.
No one knew what a depth of passion there was in the heart of this girl.
If any one should have asked her what she craved most on earth, she
would have replied, on the spur of the moment--"Love!"
CHAPTER III.
THE TERRIBLE WAGER AT THE GREAT RACE.
A month had gone by since the two sisters had met the one man who was to
change the whole course of their lives.
Louise Pendleton made no secret of her interest in handsome Jay
Gardiner. She built no end of air-castles, all dating from the time when
the young man should propose to her.
She set out deliberately to win him. Sally watched with bated breath.
There could be no love where there was such laughing, genial friendship
as existed between Louise and handsome Jay. No, no! If she set about it
in the right way, _she_ could win him.
As for Jay himself, he preferred dark-eyed Louise to her dashing,
golden-haired sister Sally.
The climax came when he asked the girls, and also their father and
mother, to join a party on his tally-ho and go to the races.
Both dressed in their prettiest, and both looked like pictures.
The races at Lee were always delightful affairs. Some of the finest
horses in the country were brought there to participate in these
affairs.
As a usual thing, Jay Gardiner entered a number of his best horses; but
on this occasion he had not done so. Louise declared that it would have
made the races all the more worth seeing had some of his horses been
entered.
"Don't you think so, Sally?" she said, turning to her sister, with a gay
little laugh; but Sally had not even heard, she was thinking so deeply.
"She is anticipating the excitement," said Mrs. Pendleton, nodding
toward Sally; and they all looked in wonder at the unnatural flush on
the girl's cheeks and the strange, dazzling brightness in her blue
eyes.
They would have been startled if they could have read the thoughts that
had brought them there.
There was the usual crush of vehicles, for the races at Lee always drew
out a large crowd.
Jay Gardiner's box was directly opposite the judge's stand, and the
group of ladies and gentlemen assembled in it was a very merry one,
indeed.
Every seat in the grand stand was occupied. Both Louise and Sally were
in exuberant spirits.
It was the first race which they had ever attended, and, girl-like, they
were dying with curiosity to see what it would be like.
"Which horse have _you_ picked for the winner?" asked Mr. Pendleton,
leaning over and addressing Jay.
"Either General or Robin Adair. Both seem to stand an equal chance.
Well, I declare!" exclaimed Gardiner, in the same breath, "if there
isn't Queen Bess! It's laughable to see _her_ entered for the race.
She's very speedy, but she isn't game. I have seen her swerve when
almost crowned with victory."
Sally Pendleton listened to the conversation with unusual interest.
In a few moments all the riders, booted and spurred, came hurrying out
from their quarters in response to the sharp clang of a bell, and in a
trice had mounted their horses, and were waiting the signal to start.
The interest of the great crowd was at its height. They were discussing
their favorites freely.
The buzz of voices was deafening for a moment.
No one noticed Sally, not even Louise or her mother, as she leaned over
breathlessly, and said:
"Which horse do _you_ think is going to win, Mr. Gardiner?"
"I have no hesitancy in saying Robin Adair," he declared. "He has
everything in his favor."
"I have an idea that the little brown horse with the white stockings
will win."
He laughed, and a look indicative of superior judgment broke over his
face.
"I feel very sure that your favorite, Queen Bess, will lose, Miss
Sally," he said.
"I feel very confident that she will win," she said.
He shook his head.
"I should like to make a wager with you on that," she cried.
"A box of candy--anything you like," he replied, airily; "but I must
warn you that it is not quite the correct thing to wager with a lady,
especially when you are sure that she will lose."
"I'll take my chances," she replied, a strange look flashing into her
excited blue eyes.
"You have not told me what the wager is to be."
For a moment the girl caught her breath and gave a lightning-like glance
about her. No one was listening, no one would hear.
"You have not told me," said Jay Gardiner, gallantly, as he bent
forward.
She turned and faced him, and her answer came in an almost inaudible
whisper. But he heard it, though he believed he had not heard aright.
"Do I understand you to say that your hand is the wager?" he asked,
surprisedly.
"Yes!" she answered.
For a moment he looked at her in the utmost astonishment. Then a laugh
suffused his fair face. Surely this was the strangest wager that he had
ever heard of. He was used to the jolly larks of girls; but surely this
was the strangest of them all. He knew that there was little hope of
Queen Bess winning the race. But he answered, with the utmost gravity:
"Very well; I accept your wager. Your hand shall be the prize, if the
little mare wins."
"She is so very young--only eighteen," he said to himself, "that she
never realized what she was saying. It was only a jolly, girlish prank."
If there had been in his mind the very slightest notion that Queen Bess
would win, he should have refused to accept the wager. But she surely
would not win; he was certain of that.
So, with an amused smile, he acquiesced in the strange compact. In the
midst of the talking and laughing, the horses came cantering on to the
course.
It was a beautiful sight, the thorough-bred horses with their coats
shining like satin, except where the white foam had specked them, as
they tossed their proud heads with eager impatience, the gay colors of
their riders all flashing in the sunlight.
A cheer goes up from the grand stand, then the starter takes his place,
and the half-dozen horses, after some little trouble, fall into
something like a line. There is an instant of expectancy, then the flag
drops, and away the horses fly around the circular race-track.
For a moment it is one great pell-mell rush. On, on, they fly, like
giant grey-hounds from the leash, down the stretch of track, until they
are but specks in the distance; then on they come, thundering past the
grand stand at a maddening pace, with Robin Adair in the lead, General,
Yellow Pete, and Black Daffy going like the wind at his heels, and
Queen Bess--poor Queen Bess!--fully a score of yards behind.
A mad shout goes up for Robin Adair. He looks every inch the winner,
with his eyes flashing, his nostrils dilated. Every man leans forward in
breathless excitement. Even the ladies seem scarcely to breathe.
Suddenly a horse stumbles, and the rider is thrown headlong. There is a
moment's hush; but the horse is only an outsider, and the crowd cheer
the rest encouragingly.
For a time they seem to run almost level, then most of the horses seem
to show signs of the terrible strain. Robin Adair keeps steadily to the
fore, with General closely at his heels. The rest begin to fall off.
Again a mad shout goes up for Robin Adair.
"No, no--General!" comes the hoarse cry from a hundred throats.
But through it all, the wiser ones notice the gallant little mare, Queen
Bess, coming slowly to the front.
Some daring voice shouts:
"Queen Bess! Queen Bess!"
"She is fresh as a daisy!" mutters some one in the box adjoining Jay
Gardiner's.
White to the lips, Sally Pendleton sits and watches, her hands clasped
tightly in her lap.
The babble of voices is so deafening that she can not hear.
Again the gallant steeds are specks in the distance. Now they pass the
curve, and are on the home-stretch, dashing swiftly to the finish.
Nearer and nearer sounds the thunder of their oncoming hoofs. Ten
thousand people grow mad with excitement as they dash on.
To the great surprise of the spectators, Queen Bess is gaining steadily
inch by inch, until she passes those before her, even the General, and
there is but a ribbon of daylight between herself and the great Robin
Adair.
The crowd goes wild with intense excitement. Nerves are thrilling as
down the stretch dashes the racers almost with the rapidity of
lightning.
The grand stand seems to rock with the excited shouts. One great cry
rises from ten thousand throats. Queen Bess has reached the great Robin
Adair's flanks, and inch by inch she is gaining on him. And the excited
spectators fairly hold their breath to see which horse wins.
CHAPTER IV.
WHICH WON?
Never in the history of the Lee races had there been such an exciting
scene as this. Jay Gardiner's face is as white as death, as, with bated
breath, he watches the two thorough-breds. Every one rises to his feet
in the hope of catching a full view of the flyers.
Which will win the race--the great Robin Adair or the gallant little
Queen Bess?
The mad shouts are deafening.
Suddenly they notice that Robin Adair, who has been victor in a dozen
such races, begins to show signs of distress. The foam covers his dark
chest, and his eyes flash uneasily. It is all that his rider can do to
urge him on with whip and spur.
There is only one more furlong to cover. Robin Adair and little Queen
Bess are side by side, neck to neck, both increasing their speed with
every stride.
Suddenly Robin, the great Robin Adair, falters ever so slightly. The
seething mass of men and women hold their breath. Then, quick as a
flash, as if shot from a bow, gallant little Queen Bess passes him. A
great cry breaks from the vast multitude of spectators. One instant
later, and the cry has deepened into a mighty yell. Little Queen Bess,
with every muscle strained, passes under the wire--a winner!
The next instant she is hidden from sight by the eager thousands who are
crowding and pushing one another to catch a glimpse of the winner. Jay
Gardiner stands for a moment as if dumbfounded. He is hardly able to
credit the evidence of his own senses.
"Queen Bess had won!" cried the golden-haired girl by his side, and he
answers a hoarse--"Yes."
The girl laughs, and the sound of that laugh lingers in his memory all
the long years of his after-life.
"And I have won!" she adds, shrilly.
Again he answers, in that same hoarse monotone--"Yes!"
Before he has time even to think, Sally Pendleton turns around to her
father and mother, crying triumphantly:
"Mamma--papa, Mr. Gardiner wants me to marry him. My hand is pledged to
him; that is, if you are willing!"
The young man's face turned as white as it would ever be in death.
The effect of her words can better be imagined than described. Mr.
Pendleton stared at his daughter as though he had not heard aright.
Mrs. Pendleton was dumbfounded. And Louise--poor Louise!--to her it
seemed as if life had ended for her.
Mr. Pendleton recovered himself in an instant. He had been quite sure
that Mr. Gardiner preferred his elder daughter Louise to his younger
daughter, merry, rollicking Sally.
"I am sure, I am very well pleased," he said, heartily extending his
hand to Mr. Gardiner. "Certainly I give my consent, in which my wife
joins me."
Jay Gardiner's face flushed. He could not make a scene by refusing to
accept the situation. He took the proffered hand. Mrs. Pendleton rose to
the occasion.
"If he prefers Sally, that is the end of it as far as Louise is
concerned. Sally had better have him than for the family to lose him and
all his millions," she thought, philosophically.
Jay Gardiner's friends congratulated the supposedly happy lovers. Louise
spoke no word; it seemed to her as though the whole world had suddenly
changed; her golden day-dreams had suddenly and without warning been
dispelled.
During that homeward ride, Jay Gardiner was unusually quiet. His brain
seemed in a whirl--the strange event of the afternoon seemed like a
troubled dream whose spell he could not shake off, do what he would.
He looked keenly at the girl by his side. Surely she did not realize the
extent of the mischief she had done by announcing their betrothal.
It was not until he had seen his party home and found himself alone at
last in his boarding-house that he gave full rein to his agitated
thoughts.
It was the first time in the life of this debonair young millionaire
that he had come face to face with a disagreeable problem.
Gay, jolly Sally Pendleton, with her flashing get-up--a combination of
strangely unnatural canary-yellow hair, pink cheeks and lips, and
floating, rainbow-hued ribbons--jarred upon his artistic tastes.
He did not admire a girl who went into convulsions of laughter, as Sally
did, at everything that was said and done. In fact, he liked her less
each time he saw her. But she was young--only eighteen--and she might,
in time, have a little more sense, he reflected.
What should he do? He looked at the matter in every light; but,
whichever way he turned, he found no comfort, no way out of the dilemma.
If he were to explain to the world that the engagement was only the
outcome of a thoughtless wager, his friends would surely censure him for
trying to back out; they would accuse him of acting the part of a
coward. He could not endure the thought of their taking that view of it.
All his friends knew his ideas concerning honor, particularly where a
lady was concerned.
And now he was in honor bound to fulfill his part of the wager--marry
Sally Pendleton, whom he was beginning to hate with a hatred that
startled even himself.
Such a marriage would spoil his future, shipwreck his whole life, blast
his every hope. But he himself was to blame. When that hoidenish,
hair-brained girl had made such a daring wager, he should have declined
to accept it; then this harvest of woe would not have to be reaped.
Suddenly a thought, an inspiration, came to him. He would go to Sally,
point out to her the terrible mistake of this hasty betrothal, and she
might release him from it.
CHAPTER V.
"SHALL WE BREAK THIS BETROTHAL, THAT WAS MADE ONLY IN FUN?"
The thought was like an inspiration to Jay Gardiner. He would go to
Sally and ask her to break this hateful engagement; and surely she would
be too proud to hold him to a betrothal from which he so ardently
desired to be set free.
The following day he put his plan into execution. It was early in the
afternoon when he entered the hotel, and going at once to the
reception-room, he sent up his card. He had not long to wait for Miss
Sally. He had scarcely taken two or three turns across the floor ere she
floated into the room with both hands outstretched, an eager smile on
her red lips.
He took one of the outstretched hands, bowed ever it coldly, and hastily
dropped it.
"I was expecting you this afternoon," said Sally, archly, pretending not
to notice his constraint, "and here you are at last."
"Miss Pendleton," he began, stiffly, "would you mind getting your hat
and taking a little stroll with me? I have something to talk over with
you, and I do not wish all those people on the porch, who are listening
to us even now, to hear."
"I would be delighted," answered Sally. "Come on. My hat is right out
there on a chair on the veranda."
He followed her in silence. It was not until they were some little
distance from the hotel that he found voice to speak.
"You say you want to talk to your betrothed," laughed the girl, with a
toss of her yellow curls; "but you have maintained an unbroken silence
for quite a time."
"I have been wondering how to begin speaking of the subject which weighs
so heavily on my mind, and I think the best way is to break right into
it."
"Yes," assented Sally; "so do I."
"It is about our betrothal," he began, brusquely. "I want to ask you a
plain, frank question, Miss Pendleton, and I hope you will be equally as
frank with me; and that is, do you consider what you are pleased to call
your betrothal to me, and which I considered at the time only a girlish
prank, actually binding?"
He stopped short in the wooded path they were treading, and looked her
gravely in the face--a look that forced an answer. She was equal to the
occasion.
"Of course I do, Mr. Gardiner," she cried, with a jolly little laugh
that sounded horrible in his ears. "And wasn't it romantic? Just like
one of those stories one reads in those splendid French novels, I
laughed----"
"Pray be serious, Miss Pendleton," cut in Gardiner, biting his lip
fiercely to keep back an angry retort. "This is not a subject for
merriment, I assure you, and I had hoped to have a sensible conversation
with you concerning it--to show each of us a way out of it, if that is
possible."
"I do not wish to be set free, as you phrase it, Mr. Gardiner," she
answered, defiantly. "I am perfectly well pleased to have matters just
as they are, I assure you."
His face paled; the one hope which had buoyed him up died suddenly in
his heart.
Sally Pendleton's face flushed hotly; her eyes fell.
"I will try to win your liking," she replied.
"It is a man's place to win," he said, proudly; "women should be won,"
he added, with much emphasis. "When two people marry without love, they
must run all the risk such a union usually incurs."
"Pardon me, but I may as well speak the truth; you are the last girl on
earth whom I could love. It grieves me to wound you, but it is only just
that you should know the truth. _Now_ will you insist upon carrying out
the contract?"
"As I have told you from the start, my answer will always be the same."
"We will walk back to the hotel," he said, stiffly.
She rose from the mossy log and accompanied him without another word. At
last he broke the silence.
"I am a gentleman," he said, "and am in honor bound to carry out this
contract, if you can not be induced to release me."
"That is the only sensible view for you to take," she said.
He crushed back the angry words that rose to his lips. He had never
disliked a woman before, but he could not help but own to himself that
he hated the girl by his side--the girl whom fate had destined that he
should marry.
CHAPTER VI.
THE WAY OF WOMEN THE WHOLE WORLD OVER.
As Jay Gardiner and Sally walked to the hotel the young man had made up
his mind that the wedding should be put off as much as possible.
Suddenly Sally touched him on the arm just as they reached the flight of
steps leading to the veranda.
"I have one request to make of you," she said. "Please do not tell any
of my folks that you do not care for me, and that it is not a
_bonâ-fide_ love-match."
He bowed coldly.
She went on: "Mamma has a relative--an old maiden cousin, ever so
old--who liked my picture so well that she declared she would make me
her heiress. She's worth almost as much as you are. They named me after
her--Sally Rogers Pendleton. That's how I happen to have such a
heathenish name. But I'll change it quick enough after the old lady dies
and leaves me her money.
"And you will call to see me often?" asked Sally.
"Before I promise that, I must ask what you call 'often.'"
"You should take me out riding every afternoon, and call at least every
other evening."
Again that angry look crossed Jay's handsome face.
"In this case the usual customs must be waived," he answered, haughtily.
"I will call for you when I drive. That must suffice."
Jay Gardiner's thoughts were not any too pleasant as he wended his way
to his boarding-house. He had always prided himself on his skill in
evading women, lest a drag-net in the hands of some designing woman
might insnare him. Now he had been cleverly outwitted by an
eighteen-year-old girl.
He suddenly lost all pleasure in driving. He was thankful for the rainy
week that followed, as he was not obliged to take Sally out driving.
One day a telegram came from New York, requesting his immediate presence
in that city to attend a critical case. With no little satisfaction he
bid the Pendletons good-bye.
"We intend to cut short our summer outing. We will return to New York in
a fortnight, and then I hope to have the pleasure of seeing you as often
as possible," Sally remarked.
"I lead a very busy life in the city," he said. "A doctor's time is not
his own."
"I shall not enjoy staying here after you have gone," she said, a trifle
wistfully.
But he paid little heed to the remark.
The happiest moment of his life was when the train steamed out of Lee.
"Why don't you stay over and see the next race?" said one of his
friends, wringing his hand on the platform of the car.
"I shall never go to another race," he remarked, savagely.
"What! were you a plunger at the last race?" asked his friend.
But Jay Gardiner made no answer.
"I am sorry if I have called up bitter recollections," laughed his
friend.
Then the bell sounded, and the train moved on.
Jay Gardiner turned resolutely away from the window, that he might not
catch a look of the hotel.
"I wonder if my patient, Miss Rogers, and the relative this girl speaks
of are one and the same person?" he asked himself.
He had once saved the life of this Miss Rogers, and since that time she
had been a devoted friend of his.
She was a most kind, estimable woman, and he admired her for her noble
character. Surely she could not be the lady of whom Sally Pendleton
spoke so derisively?
He reached the city at last, and, without taking time to refresh
himself, hurried to see who it was that needed his help.
It was eleven o'clock, and the crowds on the streets of the great
metropolis had begun to thin out.
His office clerk, who was expecting him, said, in answer to his inquiry:
"It is Miss Rogers, sir. She is dangerously ill, and will have no other
doctor."
"I will go to her at once," said Jay Gardiner.
But at that moment a man who had been hurt in a railway accident was
brought in, and he was obliged to devote half an hour of his valuable
time in dressing his wounds. Then with all possible haste he set out on
his journey.
He gave orders to his driver to go to Miss Rogers' residence by the
shortest route possible.
At that very moment, in another part of the city, a woman who had once
been young and beautiful lay dying. The room in which she lay was
magnificent in its costly hangings; the lace draperies that hung from
the windows represented a fortune, the carpets and rugs which covered
the floor were of the costliest description. Rare paintings and the
richest of bric-a-brac occupied the walls and other available places.
Even the lace counterpane on the bed represented the expenditure of a
vast sum of money. But the woman who lay moaning there in mortal pain
would have given all to have purchased one hour of ease.
"Has the doctor come yet, Mary?" she asked.
"No," replied her faithful attendant, who bent over her. "But he can not
be long now, my lady. It is several hours since we telegraphed for him,
and I have telephoned for him every hour since. At the office they say
that he has already started for here."
"Are those carriage wheels? Go to the window, Mary, and see."
The attendant glided noiselessly to the heavily draped window and drew
aside the hangings.
"No," she answered, gently; "he has not yet come."
"Something must have happened, Mary," half-sobbed the sufferer; "I am
sure of it."
Ay, something out of the usual had happened to Doctor Gardiner.
As his handsome brougham turned into Canal Street, the doctor, in
looking from the window, noticed a young girl hurrying along the street.
There was something about the symmetrical figure that caused the doctor
to look a second time.
He said to himself that she must be young; and a feeling of pity
thrilled his heart to see one so young threading the streets at that
hour of the night.
So many people were making their way through the streets that the driver
was only able to proceed slowly. And thus the young girl, who had quite
unconsciously attracted the doctor's attention, kept pace with the
vehicle.
Once, as Jay Gardiner caught sight of her face, he felt as though an
electric shock had suddenly passed through him. For a moment he was
almost spell-bound. Where had he seen that face? Then suddenly it
occurred to him that it was the _fac-simile_ of the picture he had
bought abroad.
And as he gazed with spell-bound attention, much to his disgust he saw
the young woman stop in front of a wine-room and peer in at one of the
windows. This action disgusted the young doctor immeasurably.
"How sad that one so fair as she should have gone wrong in the morning
of life," he thought.
Suddenly she turned and attempted to dart across the street. But in that
moment her foot slipped, and she was precipitated directly under the
horses' hoofs.
A cry broke from the lips of the doctor, and was echoed by the man on
the box.
"Are you hurt?" cried Doctor Gardiner, springing from his seat and
bending over the prostrate figure of the girl.
"No, no!" cried the girl, in the saddest, sweetest voice he had ever
heard. "They must not find me here when they come to the door; they will
be so angry!" she said, springing to her feet.
At that moment there was a commotion in the wine-room, the door of which
had just been opened.
As the girl turned to look in that direction, she saw a man pushed
violently into the street.
"Oh, it is father--it is father!" cried the young girl, wildly, shaking
herself free from the doctor's detaining hand. "Oh, they have killed my
father! See! he is lying on the pavement dead, motionless! Oh, God, pity
me! I am left alone in the wide, wide world!"
CHAPTER VII.
BERNARDINE.
Doctor Gardiner sprung forward quickly.
"You are unnecessarily alarmed, my dear young lady," he said. "The
gentleman is only stunned."
So it proved to be; for he had scarcely ceased speaking when the man
struggled to his feet and looked about him in dazed bewilderment.
"Oh, papa, darling, have they killed you!" sobbed the young girl,
springing wildly forward and throwing her arms about the dust-begrimed
man.
"I don't know, Bernardine," he answered in a shrill voice. "I am sure
every bone in my body is broken--quite sure."
"No," interrupted Doctor Gardiner, pitying the young girl in her
distress; "you are only bruised. I am a doctor; if you will give me your
address, I will look in and give you something when I return this way. I
may return in an hour's time, I may be as late as to-morrow morning."
"We--we--could not pay for the services of a doctor, sir," sobbed the
young girl. "If there is anything the matter, I will have to take poor
papa to the hospital."
"I would never go to the hospital, Bernardine," whined the man in a low
tone. "That will be the last of me if I ever have to go there."
"I would make no charge whatever," said Doctor Gardiner. "My services
would be rendered gratis," he added, earnestly.
The young girl looked at him with tears shining in her great dark eyes.
"We live in the tenement just around the corner, sir," she said, "on the
sixth floor. My father is David Moore, the basket-maker."
Doctor Gardiner dared not remain another moment talking with them, and
with a hasty bow he re-entered his carriage. But during the remainder of
his journey he could think of nothing but the sad, beautiful face of
Bernardine Moore, the basket-maker's daughter.
"What in the name of Heaven has come over me!" he muttered. "I have seen
a face, and it seems as though I have stepped through the gates of the
old world and entered a new one."
He collected his thoughts with a start, as the carriage reached its
destination.
He had not realized how quickly the time had passed. He resolutely put
all thoughts from him as he walked up the steps of the mansion before
which he found himself.
The door opened before he could touch the bell.
"We have been waiting for you, doctor," said the low-voiced attendant
who had come to the door.
He followed her through the magnificent hall-way, and up the polished
stairs to the apartment above, where he knew his patient was awaiting
him.
The wan face lying against the pillow lighted up as the doctor entered.
His bright, breezy presence was as good as medicine.
"You!" he cried, advancing to the couch. "Why, this will never do, Miss
Rogers! Tut, tut! you are not sick, you do not look it! This is only an
excuse to send for me, and you know it. I can see at a glance that you
are a long way from being ill, and you know it!" he repeated.
He said it in so hearty a manner and in such apparent good faith, that
his words could not help but carry conviction with them.
Already the poor lady began to feel that she was not nearly so ill as
she had believed herself to be.
But the doctor, bending over her, despite his reassuring smile and light
badinage, realized with alarm that his patient was in great danger, that
there was but a fighting chance for her life.
An hour or more he worked over her unceasingly, doing everything that
skill and science could suggest.
With the dawning of the morning he would know whether she would live or
die.
"Doctor," she said, looking up into his face, "do you think my illness
is fatal? Is this my last call?"
He scarcely knew how to answer her. He felt that the truth should not be
kept from her. But how was he to tell her?
"Because," she went on, before he could answer, "if it is, I had better
know it in time, in order to settle up my affairs. I--I have always
dreaded making a will; but--but there will come a time, sooner or later,
when it will be necessary for me to do so."
Again Doctor Gardiner laughed out that hearty, reassuring laugh.
"That is the natural feeling of a woman," he said. "Men never have that
feeling. With them it is but an ordinary matter, as it should be."
"Would you advise me to make a will, doctor?" and the white face was
turned wistfully to him.
"Certainly," he replied, with an attempt at light-heartedness. "It will
occupy your mind, give you something to think about, and take your
thoughts from your fancied aches and pains."
"Fancied?" replied the poor lady. "Ah, doctor, they are real enough,
although you do not seem to think so. I--I want to leave all my money to
_you_, doctor," she whispered. "You are the only person in the whole
wide world who, without an object, has been kind to me," she added, with
sudden energy. The fair, handsome face of the young doctor grew grave.
"Nay, nay," he said, gently. "While I thank you with all my heart for
the favor you would bestow on me, still I must tell you that I could not
take the money. No, no, my dear Miss Rogers; it must go to the next of
kin, if you have any."
Her face darkened as an almost forgotten memory rose up before her.
"No!" she said, sharply; "anything but that! They never cared for me!
They shall not fight over what I have when I am dead!"
"But you have relatives?" he questioned, anxiously.
"Yes," she said; "one or two distant cousins, who married and who have
families of their own. One of them wrote me often while I lived at San
Francisco; but in her letters she always wanted something, and such
hints were very distasteful to me. She said that she had named one of
her children after me, saying in the next sentence that I ought to make
the girl my heiress. I wrote to her to come on to San Francisco, when I
fell so ill, a few weeks ago. She answered me that she could not come,
that she was very sick herself, and that the doctors had ordered her out
to Lee, Massachusetts, to live on a farm, until she should become
stronger. When I grew stronger, I left San Francisco with my faithful
attendant, Mary. I did not let them know that I was in New York, and had
taken possession of this fine house, which I own. Suddenly I fell ill
again. I intended to wait until I grew stronger to hunt her up, and see
how I should like her before making overtures of friendship to her. I
should not like to make a will and leave all to these people whom I do
not know. There are hundreds of homes for old and aged women that need
the money more."
"Still, a will should always be made," said the doctor, earnestly. "I
will send for some one at once, if you will entertain the idea of
attending to it."
"No!" she replied, firmly. "If anything happens to me, I will let them
take their chances. Don't say anything more about it, doctor; my mind is
fully made up."
He dared not argue with a woman who was so near her end as he believed
her to be.
This case proved to be one of the greatest achievements of his life.
From the very Valley of the Shadow of Death he drew back the struggling,
fluttering spirit of the helpless lady. And when the first gray streaks
of dawn flushed the eastern sky, the doctor drew a great sigh of relief.
"Thank God, she will live!" he said.
When the sun rose later the danger was past--the battle of life had been
won, and death vanquished.
Although Doctor Gardiner was very weary after his night's vigil, still
he left the house with a happy heart beating in his bosom.
He scarcely felt the fatigue of his arduous labors as he stepped into
his carriage again. His heart gave a strange throb as he ordered the
driver to go to the tenement house, the home of the old basket-maker and
his beautiful daughter.
How strange it was that the very thought of this fair girl seemed to
give his tired brain rest for a moment!
He soon found himself at the street and number he wanted.
"Does Mr. Moore, the basket-maker, live here?" he asked, pausing for a
moment to inquire of a woman who sat on the doorstep with a little child
in her arms.
"Yes," she answered, in a surly voice; "and more's the pity for the rest
of us tenants, for he is a regular fiend incarnate, sir, and has a fit
of the delirium tremens as regularly as the month comes round. He's got
'em now. A fine dance he leads that poor daughter of his. Any other girl
would get out and leave him. Are you the doctor Miss Bernardine was
expecting? If so, walk right up. She is waiting for you."
CHAPTER VIII.
"OH, I AM SO GLAD THAT YOU HAVE COME, DOCTOR!"
Doctor Jay Gardiner, with as much speed as possible, made his way up the
long, steep flights of dark, narrow stairs, and through the still darker
passages, which were only lighted by the open doors here and there,
revealing rooms inhabited by half a dozen persons. They were all
talking, fighting or scrambling at the same time; and the odor of that
never-to-be-forgotten smell of frying onions and sausages greeted his
nostrils at every turn until it seemed to him that he must faint.
"Great heavens! how can so fair a young girl live in an atmosphere like
this?" he asked himself.
At length, almost exhausted, for he was unused to climbing, this
haughty, aristocratic young doctor found himself on the sixth floor of
the tenement house, and he knocked at the first door he came to.
It was opened by the young girl Bernardine. He could see at a glance
that her face bore the traces of trouble, and the dark eyes, still heavy
with unshed tears, showed signs of recent weeping.
"Oh, I am so glad that you have come, doctor!" she said, clasping her
little hands. "My poor father is so much worse. Please step in this
way!"
He was ushered into a little sitting-room, and as he entered it he saw
that everything was scrupulously neat and clean.
"Poor papa is out of his mind, doctor. Please come quickly, and see
him!"
It did not require a second glance for the doctor to understand all; and
straightway he proceeded to give the man a draught, which had the effect
of quieting him. The young girl stood by the man with clasped hands and
dilated eyes, scarcely breathing as she watched him.
The young doctor turned impulsively to the girl by his side.
"Pardon me for the question, but do you live alone with your father?" he
asked.
"Yes," she replied in a voice that thrilled him as the grandest,
sweetest music he had heard had never had power to do. "We have only
each other," she added, watching the distorted face on the pillow with
a fond wistfulness that made the young doctor, who was watching her,
almost envy the father.
"I will come again to-morrow," he said, "and prescribe for him. I have
done all the good that is possible for the present."
"Good-morning, Miss Moore," he said, standing with his hat in his hand,
and bowing before her as if she were a princess. "If you should have
occasion to need me in a hurry, send for me at once. This is my
address." And he handed her his card.
Again she thanked him in a voice so sweet and low that it sounded to him
like softest music.
He closed the door gently after him; and it seemed to him, as he walked
slowly down the narrow dark stairs, that he had left Paradise and one of
God's angels in it.
CHAPTER IX.
"WHAT A LONELY LIFE FOR THIS BEAUTIFUL YOUNG GIRL!"
All that day the sweet face of Bernardine Moore was before Doctor
Gardiner. He found himself actually looking forward to the morrow, when
he should see her again. He deceived himself completely as to the cause,
telling himself that it was because of his pity for her, and the
desolate life she was leading.
The next day when he called, Bernardine again met him at the door.
"Papa has been calling for you," she said. Then she stopped short, in
dire confusion, as she remembered the reason why he was so anxious to
see him. "He has just fallen into a light sleep. I will go and awaken
him at once and tell him you are here."
"By no means," he said. "Pray do not awaken him; the sleep he is having
is better than medicine. Will you permit me to sit down and talk with
you for a few moments, until he awakens?"
She looked anxiously at him for a moment, then said, with charming
frankness:
"Would you mind very much if I went on with my work. I have several
baskets to be finished by night, when they will be called for."
"By no means. Pray proceed with your work. Do not let me disturb you,"
he answered, hastily. "I shall consider it a great favor if you will
allow me to watch you as you work."
"Certainly," said Bernardine, "if you will not mind coming into our
little work-shop," and she led the way with a grace that completely
charmed him.
The place was devoid of any furniture save two or three wooden chairs,
which the girl and her father occupied at their work, the long wooden
bench, the great coils of willow--the usual paraphernalia of the
basket-makers' trade.
She sat down on her little wooden seat, indicating a seat opposite for
him. He watched her eagerly as her slim white fingers flew in and out
among the strands of trailing willow quickly taking shape beneath her
magic touch.
"It must be a very lonely life for you," said Jay Gardiner, after a
moment's pause.
"I do not mind; I am never lonely when father is well," she answered,
with a sweet, bright smile. "We are great companions, father and I. He
regales me by the hour with wonderful stories of things he used to see
when he was a steamboat captain. But he met with an accident one time,
and then he had to turn to basket-making."
As he conversed with the young girl, Jay Gardiner was indeed surprised
to see what a fund of knowledge that youthful mind contained. She was
the first young girl whom he had met who could sit down and talk
sensibly to a man. Her ideas were so sweet, so natural, that it charmed
him in spite of himself. She was like a heroine out of a
story-book--just such a one, he thought, as Martha Washington must have
been in her girlhood days. His admiration and respect for her grew with
each moment.
CHAPTER X.
WHAT IS LIFE WITHOUT LOVE?
Every evening, on some pretext or other, Jay Gardiner managed to pay
David Moore, the basket-maker, a visit, and the cynical old man began to
look forward to these visits.
He never dreamed that his daughter was the magnet which drew the young
man to his poor home. They were evenings that Jay Gardiner never forgot.
Bernardine was slightly confused at first by his presence; then she
began to view the matter in another light--that the young doctor had
taken quite an interest in her father. He had certainly cured him of a
terrible habit, and she was only too pleased that her father should have
visits from so pleasant a man.
She always had some work in her slender white hands when the doctor
called. Sometimes, glancing up unexpectedly, she would find the doctor's
keen blue eyes regarding her intently, and she would bend lower over her
sewing. Jay Gardiner, however, saw the flush that rose to her cheek and
brow.
As he sat in that little tenement sitting-room--he who had been
flattered and courted by the most beautiful heiresses--he experienced a
feeling of rest come over him.
He would rather pass one hour in that plain, unpretentious sitting-room
than visit the grandest Fifth Avenue mansion.
And thus a fortnight passed. At the end of that time, Jay Gardiner stood
face to face with the knowledge of his own secret--that he had at last
met in Bernardine Moore the idol of his life. He stood face to face with
this one fact--that wealth, grandeur, anything that earth could give
him, was of little value unless he had the love of sweet Bernardine.
It came upon him suddenly that the sweet witchery, the glamor falling
over him was--love.
He realized that he lived only in Bernardine's presence, and that
without her life would be but a blank to him. His love for Bernardine
became the one great passion of his life. Compared with her, all other
women paled into insignificance.
He fell, without knowing it, from a state of intense admiration into one
of blind adoration for her. He had never before trembled at a woman's
touch. Now, if his hand touched hers, he trembled as a strong tree
trembles in a storm.
Looking forward to the years to come, he saw no gleam of brightness in
them unless they were spent with the girl he loved.
Then came the awakening. He received a letter from Sally Pendleton, in
which she upbraided him for not writing. That letter reminded him that
he was not free; that before he had met Bernardine, he had bound himself
in honor to another.
He was perplexed, agitated. He loved Bernardine with his whole heart,
and yet, upon another girl's hand shone his betrothal-ring.
When the knowledge of his love for sweet Bernardine came to him, he told
himself that he ought to fly from her; go where the witchery of her
face, the charm of her presence, would never set his heart on fire; go
where he could never hear her sweet voice again.
"Only a few days more," he said, sadly. "I will come here for another
week, and then the darkness of death will begin for me, for the girl who
holds me in such galling chains will return to the city."
Why should he not see Bernardine for another week? It would not harm
her, and it would be his last gleam of happiness.
At this time another suitor for Bernardine's hand appeared upon the
scene. On one of his visits to the Moores' home he met a young man
there. The old basket-maker introduced him, with quite a flourish, as
Mr. Jasper Wilde, a wine merchant, and his landlord. The two men bowed
stiffly and looked at each other as they acknowledged the presentation.
Doctor Gardiner saw before him a heavy-set, dark-eyed young man with a
low, sinister brow. An unpleasant leer curled his thin lips, which a
black mustache partially shaded, and he wore a profusion of jewels which
was disgusting to one of his refined temperament.
He could well understand that he was a wine merchant's son. He certainly
gave evidence of his business, and that he had more money than good
breeding. The word _roué_ was stamped on his every feature.
Jay Gardiner was troubled at the very thought of such a man being
brought in contact with sweet Bernardine. Then the thought flashed
through his mind that this was certainly the man whom the woman on the
doorstep had told him about.
Jasper Wilde, looking at the young doctor, summed him up as a proud,
white-handed, would-be doctor who hadn't a cent in his pocket.
"I can see what the attraction is here--it's Bernardine; but I'll block
his little game," he muttered. "The few weeks that I've been out of the
city he has been making great headway; but I'll stop that."
The young doctor noticed that what the woman had told him was quite
true. He could readily see that Bernardine showed a feeling of
repugnance toward her visitor.
But another thing he noticed with much anxiety was, that the old
basket-maker was quite hilarious, as though he had been dosed with wine
or something stronger.
Jay Gardiner knew at once that this man must have known the
basket-maker's failing and slipped him a bottle, and that that was his
passport to favor.
Doctor Gardiner talked with David Moore and his daughter, addressing no
remarks whatever to the obnoxious visitor.
"The impudent popinjay is trying to phase me," thought Wilde; "but he
will see that it won't work."
Accordingly he broke into every topic that was introduced; and thus the
evening wore on, until it became quite evident to Doctor Gardiner that
Mr. Jasper Wilde intended to sit him out.
Bernardine looked just a trifle weary when the clock on the mantel
struck ten, and Doctor Gardiner rose to depart.
"Shall I hold the light for you?" she asked. "The stair-way is always
very dark."
"If you will be so kind," murmured the doctor.
Jasper Wilde's face darkened as he listened to this conversation. His
eyes flashed fire as they both disappeared through the door-way.
On the landing outside Doctor Gardiner paused a few moments.
How he longed to give her a few words of advice, to tell her to beware
of the man whom he had just left talking to her father! But he
remembered that he had not that right. She might think him presumptuous.
If he had only been free, he would have pleaded his own suit then and
there. That she was poor and unknown, and the daughter of such a father,
he cared nothing.
Ah! cruel fate, which forbid him taking her in his arms and never
letting her go until she had promised to be his wife!
As it was, knowing that he loved her with such a mighty love, he told
himself that he must look upon her face but once again, and then it
must be only to say farewell.
"The night is damp and the air is chill, and these narrow halls are
draughty. Do not stand out here," he said, with eager solicitude; "you
might catch cold."
She laughed a sweet, amused laugh.
"I am used to all kinds of weather, Doctor Gardiner," she said. "I am
always out in it. I make the first track in winter through the deep
snows. I go for the work in the morning, and return with it at night.
You know, when one is poor, one can not be particular about such little
things as the weather; it would never do."
CHAPTER XI.
A SHADOW DARKENS THE PEACEFUL HOME OF THE BASKET-MAKER.
Sweet Bernardine Moore laughed to see the look of amazement upon the
young doctor's face.
He who had been reared in luxury, pampered and indulged--ay, spoiled by
an over-indulgent mother, what had he ever known of the bitter realities
of life, the struggles many have to undergo for their very existence?
He looked at this delicate, graceful girl, and his lips trembled, his
eyes grew moist with tears.
Oh, if he but dared remove her from all this sorrow! The thought of her
toiling and suffering there was more than he could calmly endure.
He turned away quickly. In another moment he would have committed
himself. He had almost forgotten that he was bound to another, and would
have been kneeling at her feet in another minute but for the sound of
her father's voice, which brought him to himself.
"Bernardine!" cried her father, fretfully, "what are you doing out there
so long in the hall? Don't you know that Mr. Wilde is waiting here to
talk with you?"
A pitiful shadow crossed the girl's face. Evidently she knew what the
man had to say to her.
Tears which she could not resist came to her eyes, and her lovely lips
trembled.
Doctor Gardiner could not help but observe this.
"Bernardine," he cried, hoarsely, forgetting himself for the moment, "I
should like to ask something of you. Will you promise to grant my
request?"
"Yes," she murmured, faintly and unhesitatingly.
"Do not trust the man to whom your father is talking."
"There is little need to caution me in regard to him, Doctor Gardiner,"
she murmured. "My own heart has told me that already----"
She stopped short in great embarrassment, and Doctor Gardiner thought it
best not to pursue the subject further, for his own peace of mind as
well as hers.
He turned abruptly away, and was quickly lost to sight in the labyrinth
of stair-ways.
With slow steps Bernardine had re-entered her apartments again. As she
approached the door, she heard Jasper Wilde say to her father in an
angry, excited voice:
"There is no use in talking to you any longer; it must be settled
to-night. I do not intend to wait any longer."
"But it is so late!" whined the basket-maker in his high, sharp treble.
"You knew I was coming, and just what I was coming here for. Why didn't
you get rid of the poor, penny doctor, instead of encouraging him?"
"I could not say much to the doctor, for he had my life in his hands,
and saved it."
"There might be worse things for you to face," replied the man,
menacingly. And the poor old basket-maker understood but too well what
he meant.
"Yes, yes," he said, huskily, "you must certainly speak to Bernardine
this very night, if I can get her to give you a hearing. I will do my
best to influence her to have you."
"Influence!" exclaimed the man, savagely. "You must command her!"
"Bernardine is not a girl one can command," sighed the old man. "She
likes her own way, you know."
"It isn't for her to say what she wants or doesn't want!" exclaimed the
man savagely. "I shall look to you to bring the girl round to your way
of thinking, without any nonsense. Do you hear and comprehend?"
"Yes," said the old man, wearily. "But that isn't making Bernardine
understand. Some young girls are very willful!"
Trembling with apprehension, the old basket-maker dropped into the
nearest chair.
His haggard face had grown terribly pale, and his emaciated hands shook,
while his eyes fairly bulged from their sockets. The agony of mind he
was undergoing was intense.
"Will Bernardine refuse this man?" he muttered to himself, "Oh, if I
but dared tell her all, would she pity, or would she blame me?"
He loved the girl after his own fashion; but to save himself he was
willing to sacrifice her. Poor Bernadine! Had she but known all!
CHAPTER XII.
"YOU ARE FALSE AS YOU ARE FAIR, BERNARDINE!"
"I should think your own common sense would tell you. Surely you must
have guessed what I am so eager to say, Miss Bernardine?" Jasper Wilde
began, taking little heed of her father.
The girl's white lips opened, but no sound came from them. He was right;
she quite expected it; but she did not tell him so.
"I might as well break right into the subject at once," he said. "My
errand can be told in a few words. I have fallen deeply in love with
your pretty face, and I am here to ask you to marry me. Mind, I say to
marry me! What do you think of it?"
The girl drew back hurriedly.
"I think you might have guessed what my answer would have been, and thus
saved yourself."
Again his face darkened, and an angry fire leaped into his eyes; but he
controlled himself by a great effort.
"Why do you refuse me?" he asked. "I am a big catch, especially for a
girl like you. Come, I have taken a notion to you, Bernardine, and
that's saying a good deal."
"Spare yourself the trouble of uttering another word, Mr. Wilde," she
said, with dignity. "I would not, I could not marry you under any
circumstances. It is as well for you to know that."
"So you think now; but I fancy we can change all that; can't we, Moore?"
The old basket-maker's lips moved, but no sound came from them; the
terror in his eyes became more apparent with each moment.
"I will never change my decision," said Bernardine.
Jasper Wilde drew his chair up nearer to the girl.
"Listen to me, Bernardine," he said. "You shall marry me, by all the
gods above and all the demons below! I have never been thwarted in any
wish or desire of my life. I shall not be thwarted in this!"
"You would not wish me to marry you against my will?" said the girl.
"That would make little difference to me," he rejoined. "You will like
me well enough after you marry me; so never fear about that."
"I do not propose to marry you," replied Bernardine, rising haughtily
from her seat. "While I thank you for the honor you have paid me, I
repeat that I could never marry you."
"And I say that you shall, girl, and that, too, within a month from
to-day," cried the other, in a rage.
"Oh, Bernardine, say 'Yes!'" cried the old man, trembling like an aspen
leaf.
"I have never gone contrary to your wishes, father, in all my life," she
said; "but in this instance, where my interests are so deeply
concerned, I do feel that I must decide for myself."
With a horrible laugh, Jasper Wilde quitted the room, banging the door
after him.
With a lingering look at the beautiful young face, her father bid her
good-night, and with faltering steps quitted the little sitting-room and
sought his own apartment. A little later, Bernardine was startled to
hear him moaning and sobbing as though he were in great pain.
"Are you ill, father?--can I do anything for you?" she called, going
quickly to his door and knocking gently.
"No," he answered in a smothered voice. "Go to your bed, Bernardine, and
sleep. It is a great thing to be able to sleep--and forget."
"Poor papa!" sighed the girl, "how I pity him! Life has been very hard
to him. Why are some men born to be gentlemen, with untold wealth at
their command, while others are born to toil all their weary lives
through for the meager pittance that suffices to keep body and soul
together?"
She went slowly to her little room, but not to sleep. She crossed over
to the window, sat down on a chair beside it, and looked up at the bit
of starry sky that was visible between the tall house-tops and still
taller chimneys, then down at the narrow deserted street so far below,
and gave herself up to meditation.
"No, no; I could never marry Jasper Wilde!" she mused. "The very thought
of it makes me grow faint and sick at heart; his very presence fills me
with an indescribable loathing which I can not shake off. How
differently the presence of Doctor Gardiner affects me! I--I find myself
watching for his coming, and dreading the time when he will cease to
visit papa."
Doctor Gardiner's coming had been to Bernardine as the sun to the
violet. The old life had fallen from her, and she was beginning to live
a new one in his presence.
As she sat by the window, she thought of the look the young doctor had
given her at parting. The remembrance of it quickened the beating of her
heart, and brought the color to her usually pale cheeks.
How different the young doctor was from Jasper Wilde! If the young
doctor had asked her the same question Jasper Wilde had, would her
answer have been the same?
The clock in an adjacent belfry slowly tolled the midnight hour.
Bernardine started.
"How quickly the time has flown since I have been sitting here," she
thought.
She did not know that it had been because her thoughts had been so
pleasant. She heard a long-drawn sigh come from the direction of her
father's room.
"Poor papa!" she mused; "I think I can guess what is troubling him so.
He has spent the money we have saved for the rent, and fears to tell me
of it. If it be so, Jasper Wilde, at the worst can but dispossess us,
and we can find rooms elsewhere, and pay him as soon as we earn it. How
I feel like making a confidant of Doctor Gardiner!"
Poor girl! If she had only done so, how much sorrow might have been
spared her!
CHAPTER XIII.
HE WISHED HE COULD TELL SOME ONE HIS UNFORTUNATE LOVE STORY.
During the weeks Doctor Gardiner had been visiting the old basket-maker
and thinking so much of his daughter, he had by no means neglected his
patient, Miss Rogers, in whom he took an especial, almost brotherly,
interest, and who rapidly recovered under his constant care, until at
length he laughingly pronounced her "quite as good as new."
One day, in mounting the handsome brown-stone steps to make more of a
social than a business call, he was surprised to see the mansion closed.
He felt quite grieved that his friend should have packed up and departed
so hastily--that she had not even remembered to say good-bye to him. He
felt all the more sorry for her absence just at this time, for, after
much deliberation, he had decided to make a confidante of Miss Rogers,
and pour into her kindly, sympathetic ear the whole of his unfortunate
love story from beginning to end, and ask her advice as to what course
he should pursue. He had also resolved to show her the last letter he
had received from Miss Pendleton, in which she hinted rather strongly
that the marriage ought to take place as soon as she returned to the
city.
And now Miss Rogers was gone, he felt a strange chill, a disappointment
he could hardly control, as he turned away and walked slowly down the
steps and re-entered his carriage.
The next mail, however, brought him a short note from Miss Rogers. He
smiled as he read it, and laid it aside, little dreaming of what vital
importance those few carelessly-written lines would be in the dark days
ahead of him. It read as follows:
"MY DEAR DOCTOR GARDINER--You will probably be
surprised to learn that by the time this reaches you I
shall be far away from New York, on a little secret
mission which has been a pet notion of mine ever since
I began to recover from my last illness. Do not be much
surprised at any very eccentric scheme you may hear of
me undertaking.
"Yours hastily and faithfully,
"MISS ROGERS."
The terse letter was characteristic of the writer. Doctor Gardiner
replaced it in its envelope, put it away in his desk, with the wish that
she had mentioned her destination, then dismissed it from his mind.
At the identical moment Doctor Gardiner was reading Miss Rogers' letter,
quite a pitiful scene was being enacted in the home of the old
basket-maker.
It was with a shudder that he awoke and found the sunshine which
heralded another day stealing into his narrow little room.
Bernardine had been stirring about for some time, and at length the
savory odor of the frugal breakfast she was preparing reached him, and
at that moment she called him.
When he made his appearance she saw at a glance that he must have passed
a sleepless night. He had no appetite, and pushed away the plate with
his food untouched, despite Bernardine's earnest efforts to induce him
to eat something.
He watched her deft fingers in silence as she cleared the table at
length, washed and dried the dishes and put them away, and tidied the
little room.
"Now, father," she said, at length, "the sun is shining now, and I will
give you half an hour of my time to listen to the story you have to tell
me. Don't look so distressed about it, dear; no matter what it is, I
will utter no word of complaint, you shall hear no bitter words from my
lips, only words of love, trust and comfort."
"Tell me that again, Bernardine," he cried; "say it over again. Those
words are like the dew of Heaven to my feverish soul."
She uttered the words again, with her soft white arms twined lovingly
around his neck, and she held them there until he came to the end of his
wretched story.
"Bernardine," he began, softly, with a pitiful huskiness in his voice,
"I rely on your promise. You have given me your word, and I know you
will never break it. Don't look at me. Let me turn my face away from the
sight of the horror in your eyes as you listen. There, that is right;
let my poor whirling head rest on your strong young shoulder.
"It happened only a few weeks ago, Bernardine," he continued, brokenly,
"this tragedy which has wrecked my life. One night--ah! how well I
remember it--even while I lie dying, it will stand out dark and horrible
from the rest of my life--I--I could not withstand the craving for drink
which took possession of me, and after you slept, I stole softly from my
couch and out of the house.
"The few dimes I had in my pocket soon went where so many dollars of
my--yes, even your humble earnings have gone before--in the coffers of
the rum-shop.
"The liquor I drank seemed to fire my brain as it had never been fired
before. I remember that I went to that place around the corner--the
place that you and Doctor Gardiner saw them throw me out of that night
you thought they had crippled me for life.
"The man who keeps the place saw me coming in, and made a dash at me.
Then a terrible fight took place between us, and a crowd gathered,
foremost among whom I dimly saw the face of Jasper Wilde outlined amidst
the jeering throng.
"To hasten the telling of an unpleasant tale, I will say he ejected me,
the while hurling the most insulting epithets at me. Then he spoke of
_you_, Bernardine, and--and turning upon him with the ferocity of an
enraged lion, I swore that I would kill him on sight.
"'Beware! take care,' laughed Jasper Wilde, turning to my enemy; 'the
old basket-maker always keeps his word. You are in danger, my boy.'
"At this the crowd jeered. I hurried away. I never remembered how far I
walked to still the throbbing of my heart and cool the fever in my
veins.
"At length I turned my steps toward home. How far I had traversed in the
darkness I did not take note of; but as I was hurrying along, I heard a
loud cry for help. I ran around the corner from which it seemed to
proceed, and then I fell headlong across the body of a man lying prone
upon the pavement.
"I drew a box of matches from my pocket, and hastily struck one. Yes, it
was a man dying with a wound in his breast, made from a clasp-knife,
which still stuck in it.
"In horror I snatched the knife away; and as I did so, the blood from
the wound spurted up into my face and covered my clothes. In that
instant I made the awful discovery that the knife was my own. I must
have lost it from my pocket during my encounter with my enemy, who kept
the wine-room.
"By the flickering light of the half-burned match, which I held down to
the man's face, I saw--oh, God! how shall I tell it?--I saw that the man
who had been murdered with my knife was the man whom I had sworn before
the crowd I would kill on sight.
"As I made this startling discovery, a man laid a heavy hand on my
shoulder, and Jasper Wilde's voice, with a demoniac ring, cried in my
horrified ears:
"'I see you have kept your word, David Moore! You have murdered your
enemy!'
"All in vain I protested my innocence. He only laughed at me, jeered at
my agony with diabolical glee.
"'You will be hanged,' he said. 'Of course, you realize that, David
Moore.'
"'I would not care for my life--what became of me--if it were not for
Bernardine!' I moaned, wildly.
"'Yes, it _is_ a pity for Bernardine,' he made answer. 'I am sorry for
you on her account. How sad it will be to see you torn away from her,
and she all alone in the world! Moore,' he hissed, close to my ear, 'for
her sake, and upon one condition, I will save you from the gallows. No
one but me has seen you bending over the murdered man with that knife in
your hand. If I keep silent, no one can _prove_ the crime was done by
you. Do you comprehend--do you realize of what vital interest that which
I am saying is to you?'
"'Yes,' I answered in a choked, awful voice. 'But the condition! What
have I, a poor, penniless basket-maker, even at this moment owing you
money--what have I which you, the son of a rich father, would stoop to
accept?' I cried in the utmost despair. He stooped nearer, and whispered
in my ear:
"'You have a treasure which I long to possess. Give me Bernardine. I--I
will marry the girl, and will forever hold my peace. It will save you
from prison. Think and act quickly, man. You can _make_ the girl accept
me if she should desire to refuse.'
"I heard the whistle of an advancing policeman coming leisurely along
his beat. Another moment and he would turn the corner where I stood
almost paralyzed.
"'Speak, man!' cried Jasper Wilde. 'Am I to save you, or call the
officer to arrest you? Am I to get Bernardine, or not?'
"Oh, child! forgive me--pity me! Life to an old man even like me is
sweet. I could almost feel the rope of the gallows tightening about my
poor old throat, and I--oh, God, pity me--I promised him, Bernardine.
"'Save me, and Bernardine shall marry you!' I cried; 'only save me!
Don't call the police, for the love of Heaven!'
"'Then fly!' he cried, shrilly. 'Take the knife with you; go as quickly
as you can to my rooms, back of my place, and there I will give you
something to wear until you can get home!'
"I made my way to his place, as he directed. He was there before me. He
took the blood-stained clothes and knife from me, remarking, grimly:
"'I shall keep these, the evidences of your guilt, until you succeed in
making Bernardine my wife. If she refuses, I shall need them.'
"Oh, Bernardine, from that hour to this I have lived a perfect hell on
earth. I am as innocent of that crime as a babe; but everything is
against me. Jasper Wilde has proof enough to send your poor, wretched
old father to the gallows, if you refuse to marry him. Oh, Bernardine! I
dare not lift my head and look up into your dear young face. Speak to
me, child, and let me know the worst. This gnawing at my soul is
intolerable--I can not bear it and live!"
But the lips of the hapless girl whose arms were twined about his neck
were mute and cold as marble.
"Won't you speak to me, Bernardine?" he wailed out, sharply. "Your
silence is more than I can bear. For God's sake, speak!"
CHAPTER XIV.
"HAVE I BROKEN YOUR HEART, MY DARLING?"
Bernardine Moore slowly untwined her white arms from about her father's
neck, and turned her white, anguished face toward him, and the awful
despair that lay in the dark eyes that met his was more piteous than any
words could have been.
"Have I broken your heart, Bernardine?" he cried out. "Oh, my child, my
beautiful Bernardine, have I ruined your life by that fatal promise?"
She tried to speak, but no words fell from her white lips; it seemed to
her that she would never speak again; that the power of speech had
suddenly left her.
"My poor old life is not worth such a sacrifice, Bernardine!" he cried
out, sharply; "and you shall not make it. I will put a drop of something
I know of in a cup of coffee, and then it will be all over with me. He
can not pursue me through the dark gates of death."
"No, no," said the girl, great, heavy tears--a blessed relief--falling
from her eyes like rain. "Your life is more precious to me than all the
world beside. I would take your place on the gallows and die for you,
father. Oh, believe me!--believe me!"
"And you feel in your heart the truth of what I say--that I am innocent,
Bernardine?" he cried. "Say you believe me."
"I would stake my life on your innocence, father," she replied, through
her tears. "I believe in you as I do in Heaven. You shall not die! I
will save you, father. I--I--will--marry Jasper Wilde, if that will save
you!"
She spoke the words clearly, bravely. Her father did not realize that
they nearly cost her her life--that they dug a grave long and deep, in
which her hopes and rosy day-dreams were to be buried.
"You have saved me, Bernardine!" he cried, joyously. "Oh, how you must
love me--poor, old, and helpless as I am!"
She answered him with kisses and tears; she could not trust herself to
speak.
She rose abruptly from her knees, and quitted the room with unsteady
steps.
"Thank Heaven it is over!" muttered David Moore, with a sigh.
"Bernardine has consented, and I am saved!"
The day that followed was surely the darkest sweet Bernardine Moore had
ever known. But it came to an end at last, and with the evening came Jay
Gardiner.
He knew as soon as he greeted Bernardine and her father that something
out of the usual order had transpired, the old basket-maker greeted him
so stiffly, Bernardine so constrainedly.
Bernardine's manner was quite as sweet and kind, but she did not hold
out to him the little hand which it was heaven on earth to him to clasp
even for one brief instant.
Looking at her closely, he saw that her beautiful dark eyes were heavy
and swollen with weeping.
"Poor child! She is continually grieving over the drinking habit of her
father," he thought; and the bitterest anger rose up in his heart
against the old basket-maker for bringing a tear to those beautiful dark
eyes.
Again the longing came to him to beat down all barriers that parted her
from him, take Bernardine in his arms, and crying out how madly he loved
her, bear his beautiful love away as his idolized bride to his own
palatial home. But the thought of that other one, to whom he was in
honor and in duty bound, kept him silent.
He realized that for his own peace of mind and hers he must never see
Bernardine again; that this must be the last time.
"I am sorry your father has fallen asleep, yet I do not wish to waken
him, for I have come to say farewell to him and to you, Miss Moore," he
said, huskily.
He saw the lovely face grow as white as a snow-drop; he saw all the glad
light leave the great dark eyes; he saw the beautiful lips pale and the
little hands tremble, and the sight was almost more than he could
endure, for he read by these signs that which he had guessed
before--that the sweet, fond, tender heart of Bernardine had gone out
to him as his had gone out to her.
"Are you sorry, my poor girl?" he asked, brokenly.
"Yes," she answered, not attempting to stay her bitter tears, "I shall
miss you. Life will never be the same to me again."
He stopped before her, and caught her passionately to him.
"Dear Heaven, help me to say good-bye to you!" he cried; "for you must
realize the truth, Bernardine. I love you--oh, I love you with all the
strength of my heart and soul! Yet we must part!"
CHAPTER XV.
"I LOVE YOU! I CAN NOT KEEP THE SECRET ANY LONGER!"
For a moment Bernardine rested in his arms while Jay Gardiner cried over
and over again, reckless as to how it would end:
"Yes, I love you, Bernardine, with all my heart, with all my soul!"
But it was for a moment only; then the girl struggled out of the strong
arms that infolded her, with the expression of a startled fawn in her
dark, humid eyes.
"Oh, Doctor Gardiner, don't; please don't!" she gasped, shrinking from
him with quivering lips, and holding up her white hands as though to
ward him off. "You must not speak to me; indeed, you must not!"
"Why should I not tell you the secret that is eating my heart away!" he
cried, hoarsely.
Before he could add another word, she answered, quickly:
"Let me tell you why it is not right to listen to you, Doctor Gardiner.
I--I am the promised wife of Jasper Wilde!"
If she had struck him a blow with her little white hand he could not
have been more astounded.
His arms fell to his sides, and his face grew ashen pale.
"You are to marry Jasper Wilde?" he cried, hoarsely. "I can not believe
the evidence of my own senses, Bernardine!"
She did not answer, but stood before him with her beautiful head drooped
on her breast.
"You do not love him, Bernardine!" cried Jay Gardiner, bitterly. "Tell
me--answer me this--why are you to marry him?"
Her lips moved, but no sound came from them.
"If I should sue to you upon my bended knees to be mine, Bernardine,
would you not turn from him for me?"
He knew by the piteous sob that welled from the very depths of her heart
how deeply this question must have struck her.
"Bernardine," he cried, hoarsely, "if ever I read love in a girl's heart
when her eyes have met mine, I have read it in yours! You love me,
Bernardine. You can not, you dare not deny it. I repeat, if I were to
sue you on my bended knees, could you, would you refuse to be my wife?"
"I--must--marry--Jasper Wilde," she whispered, wretchedly.
Without another word, stung by pride and pain, Jay Gardiner turned from
the girl he had learned to love so madly, and hurried down the dark,
winding stairs, and out into the street.
For one moment poor Bernardine gazed at the open door-way through which
his retreating form had passed; then she flung herself down on her
knees, and wept as women weep but once in a life-time.
Wounded love, outraged pride, the sense of keen and bitter humiliation,
and yet of dread necessity, was strong upon her. And there was no help
for her, no comfort in those tears.
"Was ever a girl so wronged?" she moaned.
She wept until there seemed to be no tears left in those dark, mournful
eyes. As she lay there, like a pale, broken lily, with her head and
heart aching, she wondered, in her gentle way, why this sorrow should
have fallen upon her.
While she lay there, weeping her very heart out, Jay Gardiner was
walking down the street, his brain in a whirl, his emotions wrenching
his very soul.
Miss Pendleton had written him that she would expect him to call that
evening. He had been about to write her that it would be an
impossibility; but now he changed his mind. Going there would be of some
benefit to him, after all, for it would bring him surcease of sorrow for
one brief hour, forgetfulness of Bernardine during that time.
It touched him a little to see how delightedly the girl welcomed him.
She, too, was a money-seeker like the rest of her sex; but he could
also see that she was in love with him.
"I have been home for three days, and you have not even remembered that
fact," she said, brightly, yet with a very reproachful look.
"If you will pardon the offense, I will promise not to be so remiss in
the future."
"I shall hold you to your word," she declared. "But dear me, how pale
and haggard you look! That will never do for a soon-to-be bridegroom!"
His brow darkened. The very allusion to his coming marriage was most
hateful to him. Sally could see that, though she pretended not to notice
it.
Mr. and Mrs. Pendleton came in to welcome him, being so profuse in their
greeting that they annoyed him.
Louisa was more sensible. Her welcome was quiet, not to say constrained.
"If it had been Louisa instead of Sally," he mused, bitterly, "the fate
that I have brought upon myself would be more bearable."
He was so miserable as he listened to Sally's ceaseless chatter that he
felt that if he had a revolver, he would shoot himself then and there,
and thus end it all.
CHAPTER XVI.
"WHERE THERE IS NO JEALOUSY THERE IS LITTLE LOVE!"
It was a relief to Jay Gardiner when he found himself out of the house
and on the street. The short two hours he had passed in Sally's society
were more trying on his nerves than the hardest day's work could have
been.
He groaned aloud at the thought of the long years he was destined to
live though, with this girl as his companion.
He had come at seven, and made his adieu at nine. Sally then went
upstairs to her mother's room with a very discontented face, and entered
the _boudoir_ in anything but the best of humors.
Mrs. Pendleton looked up from the book she was reading, with an
expression of astonishment and wonder.
"Surely Doctor Gardiner has not gone so soon!" she exclaimed.
"Yes, he has," replied Sally, laconically.
"I suppose some important duty called him away so early?"
"He did not say so," returned her daughter, crossly.
"Is he coming soon again?" questioned Mrs. Pendleton, anxiously.
"I don't know," replied Sally; adding, slowly: "When I tried to find out
when he would call again, he seemed annoyed, and replied, curtly: 'That
will be hard for me to determine, Miss Pendleton. You must remember that
those in my profession have few leisure hours.' He would not set a time.
I had to let the matter rest at that."
"He is not very much in love, then, I fear, my dear Sally," said her
mother, reflectively. "Still, bad beginnings often make good endings.
But I had almost forgotten to tell you the startling news, my dear,"
added Mrs. Pendleton, hastily. "Your aunt, Sally Rogers, is here. Louisa
is entertaining her up in her _boudoir_. You must not be surprised, or
show too much amusement when you see her. She is a sight. We would be
eternally disgraced if the neighbors were to see her. She is fairly
covered with rags--yes, rags! There are holes in her shoes; there never
was such a bonnet worn since the time of the ark; and as for gloves, she
disdains such an article of feminine attire altogether. I do not think
one will have to wait long to come into possession of her fortune. But
run up to your sister's room and greet old Miss Sally as affectionately
as possible."
Sally was rather glad of this intelligence, for it prevented her from
having a very bad case of the blues in thinking over her lover's
coldness, and how irksome this betrothal was to him.
She found her sister doing her utmost to entertain the most grotesque
little old woman she had ever beheld. Her mother's description had
certainly not been overdrawn.
Sally felt like bursting into uproarious laughter the moment her eyes
fell upon Miss Rogers, and it was only by a most superhuman effort she
controlled herself from letting her rising mirth get the better of her.
"Dear me, _is_ this, _can_ this be jolly little Sally Pendleton, as you
used to sign the merry letters you wrote to me?" asked Miss Rogers,
stopping short in some remark she was making to Louisa, and gazing hard
at the slender, girlish figure that had just appeared on the threshold.
"Yes, it is I, Sally Pendleton," responded the girl, coming quickly
forward. "I just heard you were here, aunt, and I want to tell you how
delighted, enraptured, overjoyed I am to see you," she added, throwing
her arms around the bundle of rags which inclosed the thin little old
maid, with a bear-like hug and any amount of extravagant kisses, not
daring to look at Louisa the while.
"This is indeed a hearty welcome, my dear!" exclaimed Miss Rogers.
"Stand off, child," she added, holding Sally at arm's-length, "until I
get a good look at you."
And she gazed long and steadily.
Sally could not tell whether Miss Rogers was pleased or disappointed
with her, as her face never expressed her emotions.
"I will call you and your sister my nieces; but you are not so nearly
related to me as that---the line of relationship is a long way off.
There are many others as near to me as your family."
"But none who love you anywhere near as well," put in Sally, quickly.
"I hope you mean what you say," replied Miss Rogers, quietly; adding,
after a moment's pause, during which she wiped a suspicious moisture
from her eyes: "I am a very lonely woman, and life offers few charms for
me, because I am quite alone in the world, with no one to care for me. I
have often thought that I would give the whole world, if it were mine to
give, for just one human being to whom I was dear. I am desolate; my
heart hungers for sympathy and kindness, and--and a little affection. I
have neither father nor mother, sister nor brother, husband nor
children. I hope neither of you girls will ever experience the
hopelessness, the heartache conveyed in those words. It is hard,
bitterly cruel, to be left alone in the world. But I suppose Heaven
intended it to be so, and--and knows best."
"You shall never know loneliness again, dear aunt," murmured Louisa. "To
make every moment of your life happy will be our only aim."
"Thank you, my dear," replied Miss Rogers, tremulously.
"You shall live with us always, if you will, aunt," said Sally, "and be
one of the family. You may have my _boudoir_ all to yourself, and I will
take the small spare room next to it."
"You are very good to me," said Miss Rogers, huskily.
Mrs. Pendleton had been busy getting the handsome guest-chamber ready
for their wealthy kinswoman. She entered just in time to overhear
Sally's last remark.
"Miss Rogers shall have a larger, handsomer _boudoir_ than yours,
Sally," remarked her mother. "The entire suite of rooms on this floor is
at her disposal, if she will only allow us to persuade her to remain
with us. My dear daughters, you must add your entreaties on this point
to your father's and mine."
"How can I ever repay you for your deep interest in a lone body like
me?" murmured Miss Rogers.
The eyes of the girls and those of their mother met; but they did not
dare express in words the thought that had leaped simultaneously into
their minds at her words.
"You have had no one to look after your wardrobe, dear Aunt Rogers,"
said Mrs. Pendleton; "so do, I beseech you, accept some of my gowns
until you desire to lay them aside for fresher ones."
"I am bewildered by so much kindness," faltered Miss Rogers. And she was
more bewildered still at the array of silks and satins and costly laces
with which the three ladies deluged her.
The very finest rooms in the house were given her. Miss Sally made her a
strong punch with her own hands, "just the way she said she liked it,"
and Louisa bathed her face in fragrant cologne, and tried on a lace
night-cap with a great deal of fuss.
Some one came in to turn down the night-lamp a little later on--a
quiet, slender figure in a dark-brown gown. It was not Mrs. Pendleton,
nor was it either of her daughters.
"Who are you?" asked Miss Rogers, perceiving at a glance that she was
evidently no servant of the household. A sweet, pale, wan face was
turned toward her.
"I an Patience Pendleton," replied a still sweeter voice.
"Dear me!" exclaimed Miss Rogers, "I never heard that there were three
daughters in this family." She could see, even in that dim light, the
pink flush steal quickly over the wan, white face.
"I am a daughter by my father's first marriage," she answered, quietly.
"My step-mother and her daughters seldom mention me to any one."
There was no suspicion of malice in her tone, only sadness; and without
another word, save a gentle good-night, she glided from the room.
It was Sally, bright, jolly Sally, who awakened Miss Rogers the next
morning. Louisa insisted upon helping her to dress, while Mr. and Mrs.
Pendleton tapped at the door, and eagerly inquired if she had rested
well.
She was given the seat of honor at the breakfast-table, and a huge
bouquet of hot-house roses lay at her plate.
Sally had inquired the night before as to her favorite viands, and they
were soon placed before her deliciously prepared.
Louisa brought a dainty hassock for her feet, and Mrs. Pendleton a
silken scarf, to protect her from the slightest draught from the open
windows.
"You treat me as though I were a queen," said Miss Rogers, smiling
through her tears.
She could scarcely eat her breakfast, Sally and Louisa hung about her
chair so attentively, ready to anticipate her slightest wish. But
looking around, she missed the sweet, wistful face that she had seen in
her room the night before.
"Are all the family assembled here?" she inquired, wondering if it had
not been a dream she had had of a sweet white face and a pair of sad
gray eyes.
"All except Patience," replied Mrs. Pendleton, with a frown. "She's
rather queer, and prefers not to join us at table or in the
drawing-room. She spends all her time up in the attic bedroom reading
the Bible and writing Christmas stories for children for the religious
papers. We don't see her for weeks at a time, and actually forget she
lives in this house. She's quite a religious crank, and you won't see
much of her."
Miss Rogers saw the girls laugh and titter at their mother's remarks;
and from that moment they lowered in her estimation, while sweet
Patience was exalted.
CHAPTER XVII.
The next few days that passed were like a dream to Miss Rogers. Every
one was so kind and considerate it seemed that she was living in another
world.
Mrs. Pendleton had cautioned the girls against mentioning the fact of
Sally's coming marriage, explaining that she might change her mind about
leaving her fortune to the family if she knew there was a prospect of
wealth for them from any other source.
"But it would not be fair to let her make sister Sally her heiress,"
said Louisa, bitterly. "She ought not to get both fortunes. She will
come into a magnificent fortune through marrying Jay Gardiner. Why
should you want her to have Miss Rogers' money, too? You ought to
influence that eccentric old lady to leave her fortune to _me_."
"Hush, my dear. Miss Rogers might hear you," warned her mother.
But the warning had come too late. In coming down the corridor to join
the family in the general sitting-room, as they had always insisted on
her doing, she had overheard Miss Louisa's last remark.
She stopped short, the happy light dying from her eyes, and the color
leaving her cheeks.
"Great Heaven! have I been deceived, after all? Was the kindness of the
Pendleton girls and their parents only assumed? Was there a monetary
reason back of it all?" she mused.
A great pain shot through her heart; a wave of intense bitterness filled
her soul.
"I will test these girls," muttered Miss Rogers, setting her lips
together; "and that, too, before another hour passes over my head."
After a few moments more of deliberation, she arose, and with firm step
passed slowly down the broad hall to the sitting-room.
Mrs. Pendleton and her eldest daughter Louisa had left the apartment.
Sally alone was there, lounging on a divan, her hair in curl-papers,
reading the latest French novel.
On her entering, down went the book, and Sally sprung up, her face
wreathed in smiles.
"I was just wondering if you were lonely or taking a nap," she
murmured, sweetly. "Do come right in, Miss Rogers, and let me draw the
nicest easy-chair in the room up to the cool window for you and make you
comfortable."
"How considerate you are, my dear child," replied Miss Rogers, fairly
hating herself for believing this sweet young girl could dissemble. "I
am glad to find you alone, Sally," she continued, dropping into the
chair with a weary sigh. "I have been wanting to have a confidential
little chat with you, my dear, ever since I have been here. Have you the
time to spare?"
Sally Pendleton's blue eyes glittered. Of course Miss Rogers wanted to
talk to her about leaving her money to her.
Sally brought a hassock, and placing it at her feet, sat down upon it,
and rested her elbows on Miss Rogers' chair.
"Now," she said, with a tinkling little laugh that most every one liked
to hear--the laugh that had given her the _sobriquet_, jolly Sally
Pendleton, among her companions--an appellation which had ever since
clung to her--"now I am ready to listen to whatever you have to tell
me."
After a long pause, which seemed terribly irksome to Sally, Miss Rogers
slowly said:
"I think I may as well break right into the subject that is on my mind,
and troubling me greatly, without beating around the bush."
"That will certainly be the best way," murmured Sally.
"Well, then, my dear," said Miss Rogers, with harsh abruptness, "I am
afraid I am living in this house under false colors."
Sally's blue eyes opened wide. She did not know what to say.
"The truth is, child, I am not the rich woman people credit me with
being. I did not tell you that I had lost my entire fortune, and that I
was reduced to penury and want--ay, I would have been reduced to
starvation if you had not so kindly taken me in and done for me."
"What! You have lost your great fortune? _You are penniless?_" fairly
shrieked Sally, springing to her feet and looking with amazement into
the wrinkled face above her.
Miss Rogers nodded assent, inwardly asking Heaven to pardon her for
this, her first deliberate falsehood.
"And you came here to us, got the best room in our house, and all of
mamma's best clothes, and you a beggar!"
Miss Rogers fairly trembled under the storm of wrath she had evoked.
"I--I did not mention it when I first came, because I had somehow hoped
you would care for me for myself, even though my money was gone, dear
child."
A sneering, scornful laugh broke from Sally's lips, a glare hateful to
behold flashed from her eyes.
"You have deceived us shamefully!" she cried. "How angry papa and mamma
and Louisa will be to learn that we have been entertaining a pauper!"
"Perhaps you have been entertaining an angel unawares," murmured Miss
Rogers.
"God forgive you, girl, for showing so little heart!" exclaimed Miss
Rogers, rising slowly to her feet.
"I shall take no saucy remarks from you!" cried Sally, harshly. "Come,
make haste! Take off those fine clothes, and be gone as fast as you
can!"
"But I have nothing to put on," said Miss Rogers.
Sally instantly touched the bell, and when the maid came in response to
her summons, she said, quickly:
"Bring me that bundle of clothes mamma laid out for you to give to the
charity collector to-day."
Wonderingly the maid brought the bundle, and she wondered still more
when Miss Sally ordered her to go down to the servants' hall, and not to
come up until she was called for.
"Now, then," she cried, harshly, after the door had closed upon the
maid, "get into these duds at once!"
Miss Rogers obeyed; and when at length the change was made, Sally
pointed to the door and cried, shrilly:
"Now go!"
"But the storm!" persisted Miss Rogers, piteously. "Oh, Sally, at least
let me stay until the storm has spent its fury!"
"Not an instant!" cried Sally Pendleton, fairly dragging her from the
room and down the corridor to the main door, which she flung open,
thrust her victim through it, and out into the storm.
CHAPTER XVIII.
FATE WEAVES A STRANGE WEB.
If Sally Pendleton had taken the trouble to look out after the trembling
old woman she had thrust so unceremoniously into the raging storm, she
would not have gone up to her own room with such a self-satisfied smile
on her face.
Just as that little scene was taking place, a brougham, drawn by a pair
of spirited horses, was being driven rapidly down the street, and was
almost abreast of the house as this extraordinary little drama was being
enacted.
Its occupant had ordered the driver to halt at the Pendleton mansion,
and looking out of the window, he had seen with amazement the whole
occurrence--had seen Sally Pendleton, who had always posed before him as
a sweet-tempered angel--actually thrust a feeble-looking, poorly-dressed
woman out of the house and into the street to face a storm so wild and
pitiless that most people would have hesitated before even turning a
homeless, wandering cur out into it.
Doctor Gardiner's carriage drew up quickly before the curbstone, and as
he sprung from the vehicle, his astonishment can better be imagined than
described at finding himself face to face with his friend, Miss Rogers,
and that it was she who had been ejected so summarily. The poor soul
almost fainted for joy when she beheld the young physician.
"My dear Miss Rogers!" he cried in amazement, "what in the name of
Heaven does the scene I have just witnessed mean?"
"Take me into your carriage, and drive down the street; that is, if you
are not in a hurry to make a professional call."
Jay Gardiner lifted the drenched, trembling woman in his strong arms,
placed her in the vehicle, took his seat beside her, and the brougham
rolled down the avenue.
Clinging to his strong young arm, Miss Rogers told, between her smiles
and tears, all that had taken place--of the test which she had put the
Pendletons to before leaving her money to the girl Sally, who had been
named after her; of its disastrous ending when she told Sally she was
poor instead of rich; of the abuse the girl had heaped upon her, which
ended by throwing her into the street.
She told all, keeping back nothing, little dreaming that Jay Gardiner
knew the Pendletons, and, least of all, that Sally was his betrothed.
He listened with darkening brow, his stern lips set, his handsome,
jovial, laughing face strangely white.
What could he say to her? He dared not give vent to his bitter thoughts,
and denounce the girl he was in honor bound to give his name and shield
from all the world's remarks.
"You have learned your lesson, Miss Rogers," he said, slowly. "Now be
content to return to your own luxurious home and its comforts, a sadder
and wiser woman."
"I have not tested _all_ yet," she returned. "There is yet another
family, whose address I have recently discovered after the most patient
search. I had a cousin by marriage who ran off with a sea-captain. She
died, leaving one child, a little daughter. The father no longer follows
the sea, but lives at home with the girl, following the trade of
basket-making, at which he is quite an expert, I am told, if he would
only let drink alone."
Jay Gardiner started violently. The color came and went in his face, his
strong hands trembled. He was thankful she did not notice his emotion.
"The man's name is David Moore," she went on, reflectively, "and the
girl's is Bernardine. A strange name for a girl, don't you think so?"
"A beautiful name," he replied, with much feeling; "and I should think
the girl who bears it might have all the sweet, womanly graces you long
to find in a human being."
Miss Rogers gave him the street and number, which he knew but too well,
and asked him to drive her within a few doors of the place, where she
would alight.
When she was so near her destination that she did not have time to ask
questions, he said, abruptly:
"I know this family--the old basket-maker and his daughter. I attended
him in a recent illness. They seem very worthy, to me, of all
confidence. There is a world of difference between this young girl
Bernardine and the one you describe as Miss Sally Pendleton. Please
don't mention that you know me, Miss Rogers, if you would do me a
favor," he added, as she alighted.
The landing was so dark she could hardly discern where the door was on
which to knock.
She heard the sound of voices a moment later. This sound guided her, and
she was soon tapping at a door which was slightly ajar. She heard some
one say from within:
"Some one is rapping at the door, Bernardine. Send whoever it is away.
The sight of a neighbor's face, or her senseless gossip, would drive me
crazy, Bernardine."
"I shall not invite any one in if it annoys you, father," answered a
sweet, musical voice.
Miss Rogers leaned against the door-frame, wondering what the girl was
like who had so kindly a voice.
There was the soft _frou-frou_ of a woman's skirts, the door was opened,
and a tall, slender young girl stood on the threshold, looking
inquiringly into the stranger's face.
"I am looking for the home of David Moore and of his daughter
Bernardine," said Miss Rogers.
"This is David Moore's home, and I am his daughter Bernardine," said the
young girl, courteously, even though the stranger before her was illy
clad.
"Won't you invite me in for a few moments?" asked Miss Rogers,
wistfully. "I heard what some one, your father probably, said about not
wanting to see any one just now. But I can not well come again, and it
is raining torrents outside."
"Yes, you may enter, and remain until the storm abates," said
Bernardine, cheerfully. "My father would not let any one leave his door
in such a storm as this. Pray come in, madame."
"It is kind of you to say 'madame' to a creature like me," sighed the
stranger, following the girl into the poorly furnished but scrupulously
neat apartment.
Bernardine smiled.
"When I was very young, one of the first lessons my dear mother taught
me was to be polite to every one," she returned, quietly.
"You look like your mother, my dear," said Miss Rogers, huskily. "I--I
was afraid you would not."
"Did you know my mother?" exclaimed Bernardine, clasping her hands
together, and looking eagerly at the stranger in the coarse, ill-fitting
gown.
"Yes, my dear; I knew her years ago, when we were both young girls. She
looked then as you do now. I was distantly related to her, in fact. I--I
was wealthy in those days, but I have since lost all my money, and am
now reduced to penury--ay, to want," murmured the shabbily dressed
woman.
Bernardine sprung forward excitedly.
"Surely you can not be the great Miss Rogers of California, of whom I
have heard her speak thousands of times?"
"Yes, I am Miss Rogers, my dear; great once, in the eyes of the world,
when I had money, but despised now, that I am reduced and in want."
In a moment Bernardine's arms were around her, and tears were falling
from the girl's beautiful dark eyes.
"Oh, do not say that, dear Miss Rogers!" she cried. "_I_ love you
because my mother loved you in the days that are past. Money does not
always bring love, and the loss of it can not lessen the love of those
who owe us allegiance, and who have a true affection for us. Welcome, a
thousand times welcome to our home, dear aunt, if you will let me call
you that; and--and I shall use my influence to have father invite you to
share our humble home forever, if you only will."
"No, no, Bernardine," replied Miss Rogers. "You have mouths enough to
earn bread for."
"One more would not signify," declared Bernardine; "and your presence
beneath this roof would amply compensate me. I would take a world of
pleasure in working a little harder than I do now to keep you here."
"Before you give me too much hope on that point you had better talk it
over with your father. He may think differently from what you do. He may
not want to keep a tramp's boarding-house," she added, quietly.
"Father will be sure to think as I do," reiterated Bernardine. "He has a
rough exterior, but the kindest of hearts beats in his rugged bosom."
"You are right there, Bernardine," said David Moore, pushing open an
inner door and coming forward. "I could not help overhearing all that
passed between you two. I am sorry you have lost all your money, Miss
Rogers; but that will not make any difference in the heartiness of the
welcome we give you; and if Bernardine wants you to stay here with us,
stay you shall. So take off your bonnet, and make yourself at home."
CHAPTER XIX.
"TRUE LOVE NEVER DOES RUN SMOOTH."
Miss Rogers was quite overcome by the hearty welcome she received from
David Moore, the old basket-maker, and Bernardine, his lovely daughter.
It went straight to her lonely heart, because she knew it was genuine
friendship untainted by mercenary motives.
She shared Bernardine's humble yet dainty apartment, and fell quite
naturally into being a member of the household.
There was one thing which puzzled her greatly, and that was, the sighs
that would rend sweet Bernardine's breast while she was sleeping.
"The girl has some secret sorrow which she is hiding from the world,"
she thought, anxiously. "I must find out what it is."
She had been an inmate of Bernardine's home for a week before she
learned that the girl was soon to be wedded. Bernardine's father told
her, hinting triumphantly that that event would mean the dawn of a more
prosperous future for the family, as her intended husband was very
rich--had money to burn.
"Don't say much about him to Bernardine," he added, quickly; "for she's
not in love with him by any means."
"Then why is she going to marry him?" asked Miss Rogers, amazedly.
"He has money," replied David Moore, nodding his head wisely; "and
that's what sharp girls are looking for nowadays."
"I thought love was the ruling power which moved young girls' hearts,"
responded Miss Rogers, slowly. "At least, it used to be when I was a
young girl like Bernardine."
He laughed uneasily, but made no reply, as Bernardine entered the room
at that instant with an open letter in her hand.
"Jasper Wilde has returned to the city, father," she said, tremulously,
"and--and he is coming here this evening to see us."
As the girl uttered the words, Miss Rogers was quite sure she could
detect the sound of tears in her quivering voice.
"I am very glad," replied David Moore, endeavoring to speak lightly. "I
shall be mighty pleased to see my prospective son-in-law."
Bernardine drew back quickly, her lovely face pitifully pale, then
turned abruptly and hurried from the room.
Miss Rogers followed her. The girl went to her own apartment, threw
herself on her knees, and burying her face in the counterpane, wept such
bitter, passionate tears that Miss Rogers was alarmed for her.
"You poor child!" exclaimed Miss Rogers. "Sit down here beside me, and
tell me the whole story--let me understand it."
"I can not tell you any more. I met one whom I _could_ love,
and--we--parted. I sent him away because my father had declared that I
should marry this other one."
"Because of his wealth?" said Miss Rogers, in a strangely hard voice.
"No, no! Do not do my father that injustice. It was not because of his
wealth. I--I should have had to marry him had he been the poorest man in
the city."
"It is cruel, it is outrageous, to ask a young girl to marry a man whom
she detests. It is barbarous. In my opinion, that is carrying parental
authority too far. This marriage must not take place, Bernardine. It
would be wicked--a sin against God."
Although Miss Rogers did her best to probe into the mystery--for
Bernardine's sake--the girl was strangely obdurate. So she said no more
to her on the subject just then; but when she approached David Moore on
this topic, his incoherent replies puzzled her still more.
"I am much obliged to you for taking such an interest in Bernardine's
affairs; but let me warn you of one thing, Miss Rogers, while you are
under my roof, don't attempt to meddle with what does not concern you in
any way. By heeding my remark, we shall keep good friends. This marriage
must take place. The young fellow is good enough, and she'll get to like
him after awhile. See if she doesn't."
The harsh, abrupt manner in which he uttered these words told Miss
Rogers that little hope could be entertained from that source.
Bernardine had almost cried herself ill by the time Jasper Wilde's knock
was heard on the door.
Mr. Moore answered the summons.
"Is there any use in my coming in?" asked Wilde, grimly, coming to a
halt on the threshold. "Does your daughter consent to marry me? I could
not make head or tail out of your letter."
"Bernardine's answer is--yes," murmured the old man, almost
incoherently. "She consents for _my_ sake; though Heaven knows I'm not
worth the sacrifice."
"_Sacrifice!_" repeated Jasper Wilde in a high, harsh voice. "Come, now,
that's too good. It's me that's making the sacrifice, by cheating the
hangman and justice of their just due, Moore; and don't you forget it."
Sooner than he expected, Bernardine made her appearance.
Jasper Wilde sprung up to welcome her, both hands outstretched, his eyes
fairly gloating over the vision of pure girlish loveliness which she
presented.
She drew back, waving him from her with such apparent loathing that he
was furious.
"I do not pretend to welcome you, Jasper Wilde," she said, "for that
would be acting a lie from which my soul revolts. I will say at once
what you have come here to-night to hear from my lips. I will marry
you--to--save--my--poor--father," she stammered. "I used to think the
days of buying and selling human beings were over; but it seems not. The
white slave you buy will make no murmur in the after years; only I shall
pray that my life will not be a long one."
Jasper Wilde frowned darkly.
"You are determined to play the high and mighty tragedy queen with me,
Bernardine," he cried. "Take care that your ways do not turn my love for
you into hate! Beware, I tell you! A smile would bring me to your feet,
a scornful curl of those red lips would raise a demon in me that you
would regret if you aroused it."
"Your hate or your love is a matter of equal indifference to me,"
returned the young girl, proudly.
This remark made him furious with wrath.
"You love that white-handed fellow whom I met the last time I was here.
That's what makes you so indifferent to me!" he cried, hoarsely. "Speak!
Is it not so?"
"Yes," replied Bernardine, cresting her beautiful head, proudly. "Yes, I
love him, and I do not fear to tell you so!"
"Then, by Heaven! I will kill him on sight!" cried Jasper Wilde. "I will
not brook a rival for your affections! The man you love is doomed!"
CHAPTER XX.
"IT WOULD BE WISER TO MAKE A FRIEND THAN AN ENEMY OF ME."
Bernardine Moore drew herself up to her full height, and looked the
scorn she felt for the man standing before her, as he gave utterance to
his hatred of Doctor Gardiner.
"It is a coward only who threatens one who is not present to defend
himself!" she answered; adding, icily: "I imagine when you meet Doctor
Gardiner you will find a foeman worthy of your steel."
"You are not in the most amiable mood this evening. I hope you will
receive me more pleasantly the next time. Good-night, my beautiful
sweetheart. _Au revoir_ for the present, obstinate though fairest of all
sweethearts."
Ere Bernardine had time to divine his intention, he had caught her in
his arms, pressed her close to his throbbing heart, and although she
struggled all she knew how, he succeeded in covering her face, her neck,
her brow with his hot, wine-tainted kisses, the while laughing
hilariously as he noted how loathsome they were to the lovely young
girl.
Bernardine, with a wild shriek, broke at last from his grasp, and dashed
madly from the sitting-room to her own apartment, which she reached in
time to fall fainting in Miss Rogers' arms, the sting of those bitter
kisses burning her lips like flame.
As Jasper Wilde leisurely put on his hat and walked out of the
sitting-room, Miss Rogers suddenly confronted him.
"I would like a word with you, Jasper Wilde," she said, brusquely,
barring his way.
"Who are you, and what do you want with me?" he demanded, with a harsh
imprecation on his lips, thinking her one of his father's tenants.
"I want to intercede with you for poor Bernardine Moore," she said,
simply. "Let me plead with you to forego this marriage, which I
earnestly assure you is most hateful to her, for she loves another."
The flashing fire in his hard black eyes might have warned her that he
was an edged tool, and that it was dangerous to encounter him.
"Out of my way, you cursed old fool!" he cried, savagely; "or I'll take
you by the neck and fling you to the bottom of the stairs!"
Miss Rogers was sorely frightened, but she nobly held her ground.
"Your bullying does not terrify me in the least, Jasper Wilde," she
said, calmly. "I have seen such men as you before. I would have talked
with you quietly; but since you render that an impossibility, I will end
my interview with one remark, one word of warning. Attempt to force
Bernardine Moore into this hateful marriage, and it will be at your
peril. Hear me, and understand what I say: She shall never wed you!"
"I should be as big a fool as you are, woman, if I lost time bandying
words with you!" he cried, sneeringly. "If Bernardine has deputized you
to waylay me and utter that nonsensical threat, you may go back and tell
her that her clever little plan has failed ignominiously. I am proof
against threats of women."
Miss Rogers looked after him with wrathful eyes.
"If there was ever a fiend incarnate, that man is one," she muttered.
"Heaven help poor Bernardine if she carries out her intention of
marrying him! He will surely kill her before the honeymoon is over! Poor
girl! what direful power has he over her? Alas! I tremble for her
future. It would be the marriage of an angel and a devil. Poor
Bernardine! why does she not elope with the young lover whom she loves,
if there is no other way out of the difficulty, and live for love,
instead of filial duty and obedience?"
Bernardine worked harder than ever over her basket-making during the
next few days--worked to fill every moment of her time, so as to forget,
if she could, the tragedy--for it was nothing less--of her approaching
marriage to Jasper Wilde.
She grew thinner and paler with each hour that dragged by, and the tears
were in her eyes all the while, ready to roll down her cheeks when she
fancied she was not observed.
Once or twice she spoke to Miss Rogers about the man she loved, telling
her how grand, noble, and good he was, and how they had fallen in love
with each other at first sight; but she never mentioned his name.
"God help poor Bernardine!" she sobbed. "I do not know how to save the
darling girl. I think I will lay the matter before my dear young friend,
Doctor Gardiner. He is bright and clever. Surely he can find some way
out of the difficulty. Yes, I will go and see Jay Gardiner without
delay; or, better still, I will write a note to have him come here to
see me."
She said nothing to Bernardine, but quietly wrote a long and very
earnest letter to her young friend, asking him to come without delay to
the street and number where he had left her a week previous, as she had
something of great importance to consult him about.
CHAPTER XXI.
JASPER WILDE MEETS WITH AN ADVENTURE.
Miss Rogers had taken the greatest pains to direct her all-important
letter to Doctor Jay Gardiner, and had gone to the nearest box to mail
it herself. But, alas! for the well-laid plans of mice and men which
gang aft aglee.
Fate, strange, inexorable Fate, which meddles in all of our earthly
affairs, whether we will or not, ordained that this letter should not
reach its destination for many a day, and it happened in this way:
Quite by accident, when it left Miss Rogers' hand, the letter dropped in
the depths of the huge mail-box and became wedged securely in a crevice
or crack in the bottom.
The mail-gatherer was always in a hurry, and when he took up the mail on
his rounds, he never noticed the letter pressed securely against the
side down in the furthermost corner.
Sitting anxiously awaiting a response to her missive, or her young
friend to come in person, Miss Rogers watched and waited for Jay
Gardiner, or any tidings of him, in vain.
Meanwhile, the preparations for the obnoxious marriage which she seemed
unable to prevent went steadily on.
All the long nights through Bernardine would weep and moan and wring her
little white hands. When Miss Rogers attempted to expostulate with her,
declaring no one could compel her to marry Jasper Wilde against her
will, she would only shake her head and cry the more bitterly, moaning
out that she did not understand.
"I confess, Bernardine, I do not understand you," she declared,
anxiously. "You will not try to help yourself, but are going willingly,
like a lamb to the slaughter, as it were."
David Moore seemed to be as unnerved as Bernardine over the coming
marriage. If he heard a sound in Bernardine's room at night, he would
come quickly to her door and ask if anything was the matter. He seemed
to be always awake, watching, listening for something. The next day he
would say to Miss Rogers:
"I was sorely afraid something was happening to Bernardine last
night--that she was attempting to commit suicide, or something of that
kind. A girl in her highly nervous state of mind will bear watching."
"Your fears on that score are needless," replied Miss Rogers. "No matter
whatever else Bernardine might do, she would never think of taking her
life into her own hands, I assure you."
But the old basket-maker was not so sure of that. He had a strange
presentiment of coming evil which he could not shake off.
Each evening, according to his declared intention, Jasper Wilde
presented himself at David Moore's door.
"There's nothing like getting my bride-to-be a little used to me," he
declared to her father, with a grim laugh.
Once after Jasper Wilde had bid Bernardine and her father good-night, he
walked along the street, little caring in which direction he went, his
mind was so preoccupied with trying to solve the problem of how to make
this haughty girl care for him.
His mental query was answered in the strangest manner possible.
Almost from out the very bowels of the earth, it seemed--for certainly
an instant before no human being was about--a woman suddenly appeared
and confronted him--a woman so strange, uncanny, and weird-looking, that
she seemed like some supernatural creature.
"Would you like to have your fortune told, my bonny sir?" she queried in
a shrill voice. "I bring absent ones together, tell you how to gain the
love of the one you want----"
"You do, eh?" cut in Jasper Wilde, sharply. "Well, now, if you can do
anything like that, you ought to have been able to have retired, worth
your millions, long ago, with people coming from all over the world to
get a word of advice from you."
"I care nothing for paltry money," replied the old woman, scornfully. "I
like to do all the good I can."
"Oh, you work for nothing, then? Good enough. You shall tell me my
fortune, and how to win the love of the girl I care for. It will be
cheap advice enough, since it comes free."
"I have to ask a little money," responded the old dame in a wheedling
tone. "I can't live on air, you know. But let me tell you, sir, there's
something I could tell you that you ought to know--you have a rival for
the love of the girl you want. Look sharp, or you'll lose her."
"By the Lord Harry! how did you find out all that?" gasped Jasper Wilde,
in great amazement, his eyes staring hard, and his hands held out, as
though to ward her off.
She laughed a harsh little laugh.
"That is not all I could tell if I wanted to, my bonny gentleman. You
ought to know what is going on around you. I only charge a dollar to
ladies and two dollars to gents. My place is close by. Will you come and
let me read your future, sir?"
"Yes," returned Jasper Wilde. "But, hark you, if it is some thieves' den
you want to entice me to, in order to rob me, I'll tell you here and now
you will have a mighty hard customer to tackle, as I always travel armed
to the teeth."
"The bonny gentleman need not fear the old gypsy," returned the woman,
with convincing dignity.
Turning, he walked beside her to the end of the block.
She paused before a tall, dark tenement house, up whose narrow stair-way
she proceeded to climb after stopping a moment to gather sufficient
breath.
Jasper Wilde soon found himself ushered into a rather large room, which
was draped entirely in black cloth hangings and decorated with mystic
symbols of the sorceress's art.
An oil lamp, suspended by a wire from the ceiling, furnished all the
light the apartment could boast of.
"Sit down," said the woman, pointing to an arm-chair on the opposite
side of a black-draped table.
Jasper Wilde took the seat indicated, and awaited developments.
"I tell by cards," the woman said, producing a box of black pasteboards,
upon which were printed strange hieroglyphics.
It was almost an hour before Jasper Wilde took his departure from the
wizard's abode, and when he did so, it was with a strangely darkened
brow.
He looked fixedly at a small vial he held in his hand as he reached the
nearest street lamp, and eyed with much curiosity the dark liquid it
contained.
"I would do anything on earth to gain Bernardine's love," he muttered;
"and for that reason I am willing to try anything that promises success
in my wooing. I have never believed in fortune-tellers, and if this one
proves false, I'll be down on the lot of 'em for all time to come. Five
drops in a glass of water or a cup of tea."
CHAPTER XXII.
While the preparations for the marriage which poor, hapless Bernardine
looked forward to with so much fear went steadily on, preparations for
another wedding, in which Jay Gardiner was to be the unwilling
bridegroom, progressed quite as rapidly.
On the day following the scene in which Sally Pendleton had turned Miss
Rogers from the house--which had been witnessed by the indignant young
doctor--he called upon his betrothed, hoping against hope that she might
be induced to relent, even at the eleventh hour, and let him off from
this, to him, abhorrent engagement.
He found Sally arrayed in her prettiest dress--all fluffy lace and
fluttering baby-blue ribbons--but he had no eyes for her made-up,
doll-like sort of beauty.
She never knew just when to expect him, for he would never give her the
satisfaction of making an appointment to call, giving professional
duties as an excuse for not doing so.
Sally arrayed herself in her best every evening, and looked out from
behind the lace-draped windows until the great clock in the hall chimed
the hour of nine; then, in an almost ungovernable rage, she would go up
to her room, and her mother and Louisa would be made to suffer for her
disappointment.
On the day in question she had seen Jay Gardiner coming up the stone
steps, and was ready to meet him with her gayest smile, her jolliest
laugh.
"It is always the unexpected which happens, Jay," she said, holding out
both her lily-white hands. "Welcome, a hundred times welcome!"
He greeted her gravely. He could not have stooped and kissed the red
lips that were held up to him if the action would have saved his life.
He was so silent and _distrait_ during the time, that Sally said:
"Aren't you well this morning, Jay, or has something gone wrong with
you?" she asked, at length.
"I do feel a trifle out of sorts," he replied. "But pardon me for
displaying my feelings before--a lady."
"Don't speak in that cold, strange fashion, Jay," replied the girl,
laying a trembling hand on his arm. "You forget that I have a right to
know what is troubling you, and to sympathize with and comfort you."
He looked wistfully at her.
Would it do to tell her the story of his love for Bernardine? Would she
be moved to pity by the drifting apart of two lives because of a
betrothal made in a spirit of fun at a race? He hardly dared hope so.
"I was thinking of a strange case that came under my observation
lately," he said, "and somehow the subject has haunted me--even in my
dreams--probably from the fact that it concerns a friend of mine in whom
I take a great interest."
"Do tell me the story!" cried Sally, eagerly--"please do."
"It would sound rather commonplace in the telling," he responded, "as I
am not good at story-telling. Well, to begin with, this friend of mine
loves a fair and beautiful young girl who is very poor. A wealthy
suitor, a dissipated _roué_, had gained the consent of her father to
marry her, before my friend met and knew her and learned to love her.
Now, he can not, dare not speak, for, although he believes in his heart
that she loves him best, he knows she is bound in honor to another; and
to make the matter still more pitiful, he is betrothed to a girl he is
soon to marry, though his _fiancée_ has no portion of his great heart.
Thus, by the strange decrees of fate, which man can not always
comprehend the wisdom of, four people will be wedded unhappily."
As Sally listened with the utmost intentness, she jumped to the
conclusion that the "friend" whose picture Jay Gardiner had drawn so
pathetically was himself, and she heard with the greatest alarm of the
love he bore another. But she kept down her emotions with a will of
iron. It would never do to let him know she thought him unfaithful, and
it was a startling revelation to her to learn that she had a rival. She
soon came to a conclusion.
"It is indeed a strangely mixed up affair," she answered. "It seems to
me everything rests in the hands of this young girl, as she could have
either lover. Couldn't I go to her in the interest of your friend, and
do my best to urge her to marry him instead of the other one."
"But supposing the young girl that he--my friend--is betrothed to
refuses to give him up, what then?"
"I might see her," replied Sally, "and talk with her."
"It is hard for him to marry her, when every throb of his heart is for
another," answered Jay Gardiner, despondently.
"Who is this young girl who is so beautiful that she has won the love of
both these lovers?" she asked in a low, hard voice.
"Bernardine---- Ah! I should not tell you that," he responded,
recollecting himself. But he had uttered, alas! the one fatal
word--Bernardine.
CHAPTER XXIII.
"I can never rest night or day until I have seen this Bernardine and
swept her from my path!" she cried.
She made up her mind that she would not tell her mother or Louisa just
yet. It would worry her mother to discover that she had a rival, while
Louisa--well, she was so envious of her, as it was, she might exult in
the knowledge.
But how should she discover who this beautiful Bernardine was of whom he
spoke with so much feeling?
Suddenly she stopped short and brought her two hands together, crying,
excitedly:
"Eureka! I have found a way. I will follow up this scheme, and see what
I can find out. Jay Gardiner will be out of the city for a few days. I
will see his office attendant--he does not know me--and will never be
able to recognize me again the way I shall disguise myself, and I will
learn from him what young lady the doctor knows whose name begins with
Bernardine. It is not an ordinary name, and he will be sure to remember
it, I am confident, if he ever heard it mentioned."
It was an easy matter for Sally to slip out of the house early the next
day without attracting attention, although she was dressed in her
gayest, most stunning gown.
Calling a passing cab, she entered it, and soon found herself standing
before Jay Gardiner's office, which she lost no time in entering.
A young and handsome man, who sat at a desk, deeply engrossed in a
medical work, looked up with an expression of annoyance on his face at
being interrupted; but when he beheld a most beautiful young lady
standing on the threshold, his annoyance quickly vanished, and a bland
smile lighted up his countenance. He bowed profoundly, and hastened to
say:
"Is there anything I can do for you, miss?"
"I want to see Doctor Gardiner," said Sally, in her sweetest, most
silvery voice. "Are you the doctor?"
"No," he answered, with a shadow of regret in his tone. "I am studying
with Doctor Gardiner. He has been suddenly called out of the city. He
may be gone a day, possibly a week. Is there anything I can do for you?"
"I fear not, sir. Still, I will tell you my errand, if I may be seated
for a few moments."
"Certainly," he responded, placing a chair for his lovely young visitor;
adding: "Pray pardon my seeming negligence in not asking you to be
seated."
Sally sunk gracefully into the chair the young physician watching her
the while with admiring eyes.
"My call on Doctor Gardiner is not to secure his services in a
professional capacity," she began, hesitatingly; "but to learn from him
the address of a young lady I am trying to find."
"If it is any one who is his patient, or has been at any time, I think I
can help you. He has the addresses down in a book."
"But supposing he knew her socially, not professionally, her name would
not be apt to be down on his list, would it?" she queried, anxiously.
"No," he admitted. "But I think I know every one whom the doctor knows
socially--every one, in fact, save the young lady--a Miss Pendleton,
whom he is soon to marry. You see, we were college chums, and I have
been his partner in office work over five years. So I will be most
likely to know if you will state the name."
"That is just the difficulty," said Sally, with her most bewildering
smile, which quite captivated the young doctor. "I met the young lady
only once, and I have forgotten her address as well as her last name,
remembering only her Christian name--Bernardine. I met her in Doctor
Gardiner's company only a few weeks ago. He would certainly recollect
her name."
"Undoubtedly," declared the young physician. "I regret deeply that he is
not here to give you the desired information."
"Would you do me a favor if you could, sir?" asked Sally, with a glance
from her eyes that brought every man she looked at in that way--save Jay
Gardiner--to her dainty feet.
The young physician blushed to the very roots of his fair hair.
"You have only to name it, and if it is anything in my power, believe
that I will do my utmost to accomplish it. I--I would do anything to--to
please you."
"I would like you to find out from Doctor Gardiner the address of
Bernardine," said Sally, in a low, tremulous voice; "only do not let him
know that any one is interested in finding it out save yourself. Do you
think you can help me?"
He pondered deeply for a moment, then his face brightened, as he said:
"I think I have hit upon a plan. I will write him, and say I have found
the name Bernardine on a slip of paper which he has marked, 'Patients
for prompt attention,' the balance of the name being torn from the slip,
and ask the address and full information as to who she is."
"A capital idea!" exclaimed Sally, excitedly. "I--I congratulate you
upon your shrewdness. If you find out this girl's address, you will
place me under everlasting obligations to you."
"If you will call at this hour two days from now, I shall have the
address," he said, slowly.
CHAPTER XXIV.
Much to the delight of Doctor Covert, the little beauty did call again,
at the very hour he had set. But his pleasure had one drawback to it,
she was heavily veiled. But, for all that, he knew how lovely was the
face that veil concealed, how bright the eyes, how charming the dimples,
how white the pearly teeth, how sweet the ripe red cheeks, so like
Cupid's bow.
He could not conceal his great joy at beholding her again. She noticed
his emotion at once. He would not have been so well pleased if he could
have seen how her red lip curled in scorn as she said to herself:
"Fools fall in love with a pretty face on sight; but it is another thing
to get a desirable man to fall in love. They are hard to win. I have
heard of this Doctor Covert before. True, he did go to college with Jay
Gardiner, and is his chum; but one is rich and the other poor."
"I hope you have been successful," murmured Sally, giving him her little
white hand to hold for an instant--an instant during which he was
intensely happy.
"Yes, my dear miss," he answered, quickly. "I am overjoyed to think I
can be of service to you--in a way, at least. I did not communicate with
Doctor Gardiner, for it occurred to me just after you left that I _had_
heard him mention the name; but I am sure there is a mistake somewhere.
This girl--Bernardine--whom I refer to, and whom Doctor Gardiner knows,
can not possibly be a friend of yours, miss, for she is only the
daughter of an humble basket-maker, and lives on the top floor of a
tenement house in one of the poorest parts of the city."
Sally Pendleton's amazement was so great she could hardly repress the
cry of amazement that arose to her lips.
She had never for an instant doubted that this beautiful Bernardine, who
had won the proud, unbending heart of haughty Jay Gardiner, was some
great heiress, royal in her pomp and pride, and worth millions of money.
No wonder Doctor Covert's words almost took her breath away.
"Are you quite sure?" she responded, after a moment's pause. "Surely, as
you remarked, then there must be _some_ mistake."
"I am positive Doctor Gardiner knows but this one Bernardine. In fact, I
heard him say that he never remembered hearing that beautiful name until
he heard it for the first time in the humble home of the old
basket-maker. And he went on to tell me how lovely the girl was, despite
her surroundings."
The veiled lady arose hastily, her hands clinched.
"I thank you for your information," she said, huskily, as she moved
rapidly toward the door.
"She is going without my even knowing who she is," thought Doctor
Covert, and he sprung from his chair, saying, eagerly:
"I beg a thousand pardons if the remark I am about to make seems
presumptuous; but believe that it comes from a heart not prompted by
idle curiosity--far, far from that."
"What is it that you wish to know?" asked Sally, curtly.
"Who you are," he replied, with blunt eagerness. "I may as well tell you
the truth. I am deeply interested in you, even though you are a
stranger, and the bare possibility that we may never meet again fills me
with the keenest sorrow I have ever experienced."
Sally Pendleton was equal to the occasion.
"I must throw him off the track at once by giving him a false name and
address," she thought.
She hesitated only a moment.
"My name is Rose Thorne," she replied, uttering the falsehood without
the slightest quiver in her voice. "I attend a private school for young
ladies in Gramercy Park. We are soon to have a public reception, to
which we are entitled to invite our friends, and I should be pleased to
send you a card if you think you would care to attend."
"I should be delighted," declared Doctor Covert, eagerly. "If you honor
me with an invitation, I shall be sure to be present. I would not miss
seeing you again."
Was it only his fancy, or did he hear a smothered laugh from beneath the
thick dark veil which hid the girl's face from his view?
The next moment Sally was gone, and the young doctor gazed after her, as
he did on the former occasion with a sigh, and already began looking
forward to the time when he should see her again. Meanwhile, Sally lost
no time in finding the street and house indicated.
A look of intense amazement overspread her face as she stood in front of
the tall, forbidding tenement and looked up at the narrow, grimy
windows. It seemed almost incredible that handsome, fastidious Jay
Gardiner would even come to such a place, let alone fall in love with an
inmate of it.
"The girl must be a coarse, ill-bred working-girl," she told herself,
"no matter how pretty her face may be."
A number of fleshy, ill-clad women, holding still more poorly clad,
fretful children, sat on the door-step, hung out of the open windows and
over the balusters, gossiping and slandering their neighbors quite as
energetically as the petted wives of the Four Hundred on the fashionable
avenues do.
Sally took all this in with a disgusted glance; but lifting her dainty,
lace-trimmed linen skirts, she advanced boldly.
"I am in search of a basket-maker who lives somewhere in this vicinity,"
said Sally. "Could you tell me if he lives here?"
"He lives right here," spoke up one of the women. "David Moore is out,
so is the elderly woman who is staying with him; but Miss Bernardine is
in, I am certain, working busily over her baskets. If you want to see
about baskets, she's the one to go to--top floor, right."
Sally made her way up the narrow, dingy stairs until she reached the top
floor. The door to the right stood open, and as Sally advanced she saw a
young girl turn quickly from a long pine table covered with branches of
willow, and look quickly up.
Sally Pendleton stood still, fairly rooted to the spot with astonishment
not unmingled with rage, for the girl upon whom she gazed was the most
gloriously beautiful creature she had ever beheld. She did not wonder
now that Jay Gardiner had given his heart to her.
In that one moment a wave of such furious hate possessed the soul of
Sally Pendleton that it was with the greatest difficulty she could
restrain herself from springing upon the unconscious young girl and
wrecking forever the fatal beauty which had captivated the heart of the
man who was her lover and was so soon to wed.
Sally had thrown back her veil, and was gazing at her rival with her
angry soul in her eyes.
Seeing the handsomely dressed young lady, Bernardine came quickly
forward with the sweet smile and graceful step habitual to her.
"You wish to see some one--my father, perhaps?" murmured Bernardine,
gently.
"_You_ are the person I wish to see," returned Sally, harshly--"you, and
no one else."
Bernardine looked at her wonderingly. The cold, hard voice struck her
ear unpleasantly, and the strange look in the stranger's hard,
steel-blue eyes made her feel strangely uncomfortable.
Was it a premonition of coming evil?
CHAPTER XXV.
She was not to remain long in suspense.
"In the first place," began Sally, slowly, "I wish to know what your
relations are, Bernardine Moore, with Doctor Jay Gardiner. I must and
will know the truth."
She saw that the question struck the girl as lightning strikes a fair
white rose and withers and blights it with its awful fiery breath.
Bernardine was fairly stricken dumb. She opened her lips to speak, but
no sound issued from them. She could not have uttered one syllable if
her life had depended on it.
"Let me tell you how the case stands. I will utter the shameful truth
for you if you dare not admit it. He is _your lover_ in secret, though
he would deny you in public!"
Hapless Bernardine had borne all she could; and without a word, a cry,
or even a moan she threw up her little hands, and fell in a lifeless
heap at her cruel enemy's feet.
For a moment Sally Pendleton gazed at her victim, and thoughts worthy of
the brain of a fiend incarnate swept through her.
"If she were only dead!" she muttered, excitedly. "Dare I----"
The sentence was never finished. There was a step on the creaking stairs
outside, and with a guilty cry of alarm, Miss Pendleton rushed from the
room and out into the darkened hall-way.
She brushed past a woman on the narrow stairs, but the darkness was so
dense neither recognized the other; and Sally Pendleton had gained the
street and turned the nearest corner, ere Miss Rogers--for it was
she--reached the top landing.
As she pushed open the door, the first object that met her startled eyes
was Bernardine lying like one dead on the floor.
Despite the fact that she was an invalid, Miss Rogers' nerves were
exceedingly cool. She did not shriek out, or call excitedly to the other
inmates of the house, but went about reviving the girl by wetting her
handkerchief with water as cold as it would run from the faucet, and
laving her marble-cold face with it, and afterward rubbing her hands
briskly.
She was rewarded at length by seeing the great dark eyes slowly open,
and the crimson tide of life drift back to the pale, cold cheeks and
quivering lips.
A look of wonder filled Bernardine's eyes as she beheld Miss Rogers
bending over her.
"Was it a dream, some awful dream?" she said, excitedly, catching at her
friend's hands and clinging piteously to them.
"What caused your sudden illness, Bernardine?" questioned Miss Rogers,
earnestly. "You were apparently well when I left you an hour since."
Still Bernardine clung to her with that awful look of agony in her
beautiful eyes, but uttering no word.
"Has she gone?" she murmured, at length.
"Has _who_ gone?" questioned Miss Rogers, wondering what she meant.
"The beautiful, pitiless stranger," sobbed Bernardine, catching her
breath.
Miss Rogers believed that the girl's mind was wandering, and refrained
from further questioning her.
"The poor child is grieving so over this coming marriage of hers to
Jasper Wilde that I almost fear her mind is giving way," she thought, in
intense alarm, glancing at Bernardine.
As she did so, Bernardine began to sob again, breaking into such a
passionate fit of weeping, and suffering such apparently intense grief,
that Miss Rogers was at a loss what to do or say.
She would not tell why she was weeping so bitterly; no amount of
questioning could elicit from her what had happened.
Not for worlds would Bernardine have told to any human being her sad
story--of the stranger's visit and the startling disclosures she had
made to her.
It was not until Bernardine found herself locked securely in the
seclusion of her own room that she dared look the matter fully in the
face, and then the grief to which she abandoned herself was more
poignant than before.
In her great grief, a terrible thought came to her. Why not end it all?
Surely God would forgive her for laying down life's cross when it was
too heavy to be borne.
Yes, that is what she would do. She would end it all.
Her father did not care for her; it caused him no grief to barter her,
as the price of his secret, to Jasper Wilde, whom she loathed.
It lacked but one day to that marriage she so detested.
Yes, she would end it all before the morrow's sun rose.
CHAPTER XXVI.
Miss Rogers noticed that Bernardine was strangely silent and preoccupied
during the remainder of that day; but she attached no particular
importance to it.
She knew that the girl was wearing her heart out in brooding over the
coming marriage. Jasper Wilde refused to be bought off, and Bernardine
herself declared that it must take place. _She, alas! knew why!_
Miss Rogers had done her best to persuade David Moore to take Bernardine
away--to Europe--ay, to the furthest end of the world, where Jasper
Wilde could not find them, declaring that she would raise the money to
defray their traveling expenses.
David Moore shook his head.
"There is no part of the world to which we could go that he would not
find us," he muttered, burying his face in his shaking hands. "But we
will speak no more about it. It unmans me to think what would happen
were----" and he stopped short.
He had often heard Miss Rogers make allusion to money she could lay her
hand on at any moment; but the old basket-maker never believed her. He
fancied that the poor woman had a sort of mania that she was possessed
of means which she could lay her hand on at any moment, and all she said
on the subject he considered as but visionary, and paid no attention to
it whatever.
Poor Miss Rogers was in despair. What could she do to save Bernardine?
She worried so over the matter that by evening she had so severe a
headache that she was obliged to retire to her room and lie down.
David Moore had drunk himself into insensibility early in the evening,
and Bernardine, sick at heart, alone, wretched, and desolate, was left
by herself to look the dread future in the face.
The girl had reached a point where longer endurance was impossible. The
man whom she loved had been only deceiving her with his protestations of
affection; he had laughed with his companions at the kisses he had
bestowed on her sweet lips; and she abhorred the man who was to claim
her on the morrow as the price of her father's liberty.
No wonder the world looked dark to the poor girl, and there seemed
nothing in the future worth living for.
As the hours dragged by, Bernardine had made up her mind what to do.
The little clock on the mantel chimed the midnight hour as she arose
from her low seat by the window, and putting on her hat, she glided from
the wretched rooms that had been home to her all her dreary life.
Owing to the lateness of the hour, she encountered few people on the
streets. There was no one to notice who she was or whither she went,
save the old night-watchman who patroled the block.
"Poor child!" he muttered, thoughtfully, looking after the retreating
figure; "she's going out to hunt for that drunken old scapegrace of a
father, I'll warrant. It's dangerous for a fine young girl with a face
like hers to be on the streets alone at this hour of the night. I've
told the old basket-maker so scores of times, but somehow he does not
seem to realize her great danger."
Bernardine drew down her dark veil, and waited until the people should
go away. She was dressed in dark clothes, and sat so silently she
attracted no particular attention; not even when she leaned over and
looked longingly into the eddying waves.
Two or three ships bound for foreign ports were anchored scarcely fifty
rods away. She could hear the songs and the laughter of the sailors. She
waited until these sounds had subsided.
The girl sitting close in the shadow of one of the huge posts was not
observed by the few stragglers strolling past.
One o'clock sounded from some far-off tower-clock; then the half hour
struck.
Bernardine rose slowly to her feet, and looked back at the lights of the
great city that she was leaving.
There would be no one to miss her; no one to weep over her untimely
fate; no one to grieve that she had taken the fatal step to eternity.
Her father would be glad that there was no one to follow his step by
night and by day, and plead with the wine-sellers to give him no more
drink. He would rejoice that he could follow his own will, and drink as
much as he pleased.
There was no dear old mother whose heart would break; no gentle sister
or brother who would never forget her; no husband to mourn for her; no
little child to hold out its hands to the blue sky, and cry to her to
come back. No one would miss her on the face of God's earth.
Alas! for poor Bernardine, how little she knew that at that very hour
the man whose love she craved most was wearing his very heart out for
love of her.
Bernardine took but one hurried glance backward; then, with a sobbing
cry, sprung over the pier, and into the dark, seething waters.
CHAPTER XXVII.
When Jay Gardiner left the city, he had expected to be gone a week,
possibly a fortnight; but, owing to an unexpected turn in the business
he was transacting, he was enabled to settle it in a day or so, and
return to the city.
It was by the merest chance that he took passage by boat instead of
going by rail; or, more truly speaking, there was a fate in it. The boat
was due at the wharf by midnight; but, owing to an unaccountable delay,
caused by the breaking of some machinery in the engine-room, it was
after one o'clock when the steamer touched the wharf.
Doctor Gardiner was not in such a hurry as the rest of the passengers
were, and he walked leisurely across the gang-plank, pausing, as he
reached the pier, to look back at the lights on the water.
He felt just in the mood to pause there and enjoy what comfort he could
find in a good cigar. He was just about to light a cigar, when his gaze
was suddenly attracted toward a slender object--the figure of a woman
sitting on the very edge of the pier.
She was in the shadow cast by a large post; but he knew from the
position in which she sat, that she must be looking intently into the
water.
He did not like the steady gaze with which she seemed to be looking
downward, and the young doctor determined to watch her. He drew back
into the shadow of one of the huge stanchions, and refrained from
lighting his cigar.
If she would but change her dangerous position, he would call out to
her; and he wondered where was the watchman who was supposed to guard
those piers and prevent accidents of this kind.
While he was pondering over this matter, the figure rose suddenly to its
feet, and he readily surmised from its slender, graceful build, which
was but dimly outlined against the dark pier, that she must be a young
girl.
What was she doing there at that unseemly hour? Watching for some sailor
lover whose ship was bearing him to her from over the great dark sea, or
was she watching for a brother or father?
He had little time to speculate on this theme, however, for the next
instant a piteous cry broke from the girl's lips--a cry in a voice
strangely familiar; a cry that sent the blood bounding through his heart
like an electric shock--and before he could take a step forward to
prevent it, the slender figure had sprung over the pier.
By the time Jay Gardiner reached the edge of the dock, the dark waters
had closed over her head, a few eddying ripples only marking the spot
where she had gone down.
In an instant Doctor Gardiner tore off his coat and sprung into the
water to the rescue. When he rose to the surface, looking eagerly about
for the young girl whom he was risking his life to save, he saw a white
face appear on the surface. He struck out toward it, but ere he reached
the spot, it sunk. Again he dived, and yet again, a great fear
oppressing him that his efforts would be in vain, when he saw the white
face go down for the third and last time.
With a mighty effort Doctor Gardiner dove again. This time his hands
struck something. He grasped it firmly. It was a tightly-clinched little
hand.
Up through the water he bore the slender form, and struck out for the
pier with his burden.
Doctor Gardiner was an expert swimmer, but it was with the utmost
difficulty that he succeeded in reaching the pier, owing to the swell
caused by the many steamboats passing. But it was accomplished at last,
and almost on the verge of exhaustion himself, he succeeded in effecting
a landing and laying his burden upon the pier.
"She is half drowned as it is," he muttered, bending closer to look at
the pallid face under the flickering light of the gas-lamp.
As his eyes rested upon the girl's face, a mighty cry broke from his
lips, and he staggered back as though a terrible blow had been dealt
him.
"Great God! it is Bernardine!" he gasped.
The discovery fairly stunned him--took his breath away. Then he
remembered that the girl was dying; that every instant of time was
precious if he would save her.
He worked over her as though his life were at stake, and his efforts
were rewarded at last when the dark eyes opened languidly.
"Bernardine," he cried, kneeling beside her on the pier, his voice husky
with emotion, "why did you do this terrible deed? Speak, my love, my
darling!"
And almost before he was aware of it, he had clasped her to his heart,
and was raining passionate kisses on the cheek, neck, and pale cold lips
of the girl he loved better than life.
She did not seem to realize what had transpired; she did not recognize
him.
"Do not take me home!" she sobbed, incoherently, over and over again.
"Anywhere but there. He--he--will kill me!"
These words alarmed Doctor Gardiner greatly. What could they mean? He
knew full well that this must have been the last thought that crossed
her brain ere she took the fatal leap, or it would not have been the
first one to flash across her mind with returning consciousness.
He saw, too, that she was getting into a delirium, and that she must be
removed with all possible haste.
He did not know of Miss Rogers being in her home, and he reasoned with
himself that there was no one to take care of her there, save the old
basket-maker, and she could not have a worse companion in her present
condition; therefore he must take her elsewhere.
Then it occurred to him that a very excellent nurse--a widow whom he had
often recommended to his patients--must live very near that vicinity,
and he determined to take her there, and then go after her father and
bring him to her.
There was an old hack jostling by. Jay Gardiner hailed it, and placing
Bernardine within, took a place by her side. In a few moments they were
at their destination.
The old nurse was always expecting a summons to go to some patient; but
she was quite dumbfounded to see who her caller was at that strange
hour, and to see that he held an unconscious young girl in his arms.
Jay Gardiner explained the situation to the old nurse.
"I will not come again for a fortnight, nurse," he said, unsteadily, on
leaving. "That will be best under the circumstances. She may be ill, but
not in danger. I will send her father to her in the meantime."
"What an honorable man Jay Gardiner is!" thought the nurse, admiringly.
"Not every man could have the strength of mind to keep away from the
girl he loved, even if he was bound to another."
Doctor Gardiner dared not take even another glance at Bernardine, his
heart was throbbing so madly, but turned and hurried from the house, and
re-entering the cab, drove rapidly away.
He had planned to go directly to David Moore; but on second thought he
concluded to wait until morning.
It would be a salutary lesson to the old basket-maker to miss
Bernardine, and realize how much he depended upon the young girl for his
happiness.
This was a fatal resolve for him to reach, as will be plainly seen.
As soon as he had finished his breakfast, he hurried to the Canal Street
tenement house.
There was no commotion outside; evidently the neighbors had not heard of
Bernardine's disappearance, and he doubted whether or not her father
knew of it yet.
Jay Gardiner had barely stepped from the pavement into the dark and
narrow hall-way ere he found himself face to face with Jasper Wilde.
The doctor would have passed him by with a haughty nod, but with one
leap Wilde was at his side, his strong hands closing around his throat,
while he cried out, in a voice fairly convulsed with passion:
"Aha! You have walked right into my net, and at the right moment. Where
is Bernardine? She fled from me last night, and went directly to your
arms, of course. Tell me where she is, that I may go to her and wreak my
vengeance upon her! Answer me quickly, or I will kill you!"
Jay Gardiner was surprised for an instant; but it was only for an
instant. In the next, he had recovered himself.
"You cur, to take a man at a disadvantage like that!" he cried; adding,
as he swung out his muscular right arm: "But as you have brought this
upon yourself, I will give you enough of it!"
Two or three ringing blows showed Jasper Wilde, that, bully though he
was, he had met his match in this white-handed aristocrat.
He drew back, uttering a peculiar sharp whistle, and two men, who were
evidently in his employ, advanced quickly to Wilde's aid.
"Bind and gag this fellow!" he commanded, "and throw him down into the
wine-cellar to await my coming! He's a thief. He has just stolen my
pocket-book. Quick, my lads; don't listen to what he says!"
CHAPTER XXVIII.
Quick as a flash, Jasper Wilde's two men seized Jay Gardiner from behind
and pinioned his arms, Wilde the while excitedly explaining something in
German to them.
Doctor Gardiner, as we have explained, was an athletic young man. He
could easily have disposed of Wilde, and probably a companion; but it is
little wonder that the three men soon succeeded in overpowering him,
while Wilde, with one awful blow, knocked him into insensibility ere he
had time to refute the charge his antagonist had made against him.
"Take him to my private wine-cellar!" commanded Wilde, excitedly. "He's
a fellow we've been trying to catch around here for some time. He's a
thief, I tell you!"
The men obeyed their employer's command, little dreaming it was an
innocent man they were consigning to a living tomb.
It was an hour afterward ere consciousness returned to Jay Gardiner. For
a moment he was dazed, bewildered; then the recollection of the
encounter, and the terrible blow he had received over the temple,
recurred to him.
Where was he? The darkness and silence of death reigned. The air was
musty. He lay upon a stone flagging through which the slime oozed.
Like a flash he remembered the words of Jasper Wilde.
"Take him to my private wine-cellar until I have time to attend to him."
Yes, that was where he must be--in Wilde's wine-cellar.
While he was cogitating over this scene, an iron door at the further end
of the apartment opened, and a man, carrying a lantern, hastily entered
the place, and stood on the threshold for a moment.
Doctor Gardiner saw at once that it was Jasper Wilde.
"Come to, have you?" cried Wilde, swinging the light in his face. "Well,
how do you like your quarters, my handsome, aristocratic doctor, eh?"
"How dare you hold me a prisoner here?" demanded Jay Gardiner, striking
the floor with his manacled hands. "Release me at once, I say!"
A sneering laugh broke from Wilde's thin lips.
"_Dare!_" he repeated, laying particular stress upon the word. "We
Wildes dare anything when there is a pretty girl like beautiful
Bernardine concerned in it."
"You scoundrel!" cried Jay Gardiner, "if I were but free from these
shackles, I would teach you the lesson of your life!"
"A pinioned man is a fool to make threats," sneered Wilde. "But come,
now. Out with it, curse you! Where is Bernardine?--where have you hidden
her?"
"I refuse to answer your question," replied Jay Gardiner, coolly. "I
know where she is, but that knowledge shall never be imparted to you
without her consent."
"I will wring it from your lips, curse you!" cried Wilde, furiously. "I
will torture you here, starve you here, until you go mad and are glad to
speak."
"Even though you _kill_ me, you shall not learn from my lips the
whereabouts of Bernardine Moore!" exclaimed Jay Gardiner, hoarsely.
As the hours dragged their slow lengths by, exhausted nature asserted
itself, and despite the hunger and burning thirst he endured, and the
pain in his head, sleep--
"Tired Nature's sweet restorer--balmy sleep"--
came to him.
Suddenly the door opened, and Jasper Wilde, still carrying a lantern,
looked in.
"It is morning again," he said. "How have you passed the night, my
handsome doctor? I see the rodents have not eaten you. I shouldn't have
been the least surprised if they had. I assure you, I wonder they could
have abstained from such a feast."
"You fiend incarnate!" cried Jay Gardiner, hoarsely. "Remove these
shackles, and meet me as man to man. Only a dastardly coward bullies a
man who can not help himself."
"Still defiant, my charming doctor!" laughed Wilde. "I marvel at that. I
supposed by this time you would be quite willing to give me the
information I desired."
Jay Gardiner could not trust himself to speak, his indignation was so
great.
"_Au revoir_ again," sneered Wilde. "The day will pass and the night
will follow, in the natural course of events. To-morrow, at this hour, I
shall look in on you again, my handsome doctor. Look out for the
rodents. Bless me! they are dashing over the floor. I must fly!"
Again the door closed, and with a groan Jay Gardiner could not repress,
he sunk to the floor, smiting it with his manacled hands, and wondering
how soon this awful torture would end.
CHAPTER XXIX.
During the long hours of the night which followed, Jay Gardiner dared
not trust himself to sleep for a single instant, so great was his horror
of the rodents that scampered in droves across the damp floor of the
cellar in which he was a prisoner.
He felt that his brain must soon give way, and that Jasper Wilde would
have his desire--he would soon be driven to insanity.
He thought of Bernardine, who was waiting for him to return to her, and
he groaned aloud in the bitterness of his anguish, in the agony of his
awful despair.
The manacles cut into his flesh, for his wrists had swollen as he lay
there, and the burning thirst was becoming maddening.
"Great God in Heaven! how long--ah, how long, will this torture last?"
he cried.
In the midst of his anguish, he heard footsteps; but not those for which
he longed so ardently. A moment later, and Jasper Wilde stood before
him.
"Now let me tell you what my revenge upon the beautiful Bernardine will
be for preferring _you_ to myself. I shall marry her--she dare not
refuse when I have her here--that I warrant you. As I said before, I
shall marry the dainty Bernardine, the cold, beautiful, haughty
Bernardine, and then I shall force her to go behind the bar, and the
beauty of her face will draw custom from far and near.
"Nothing could be so revolting to her as this. It will crush her, it
will kill her, and I, whose love for her has turned into hate--yes,
deepest, deadly hate--will stand by and watch her, and laugh at her. Ha!
ha! ha!"
With a fury born of madness, Doctor Gardiner wrenched himself free from
the chains that bound him, and with one flying leap was upon his enemy
and had hurled him to the floor, his hand clutching Wilde's throat.
"It shall be death to one or other of us!" he panted, hoarsely.
But he had not reckoned that in his weak condition he was no match for
Jasper Wilde, who for the moment was taken aback by the suddenness of
the attack.
* * * * *
That the encounter would have ended in certain death to Jay Gardiner, in
his exhausted state, was quite apparent to Jasper Wilde; but in that
moment fate intervened to save him. Hardly had the two men come together
in that desperate death-struggle, ere the startling cry of "Fire!" rang
through the building.
Jasper Wilde realized what that meant. There was but one exit from the
cellar, and if he did not get out of it in a moment's time, he would be
caught like a rat in a trap. Gathering himself together, he wrenched
himself free from the doctor's grasp, and hurling him to the floor with
a fearful blow planted directly between the eyes, sprung over the
threshold.
Wilde paused a single instant to shout back:
"I leave you to your fate, my handsome doctor! Ha! ha! ha!"
But fate did not intend Jay Gardiner to die just then, even though he
sunk back upon the flags with an awful groan and fully realized the
horror of the situation.
That groan saved him. A fireman heard it, and in less time than it takes
to tell it, a brawny, heroic fellow sprung through the iron door-way,
which Wilde in his mad haste had not taken time to close.
A moment more, and the fireman had carried his burden up through the
flames, and out into the pure air.
The fresh air revived the young doctor, as nothing else could have done.
"Give me your name and address," he said, faintly, to the fireman. "You
shall hear from me again;" and the man good-naturedly complied, and then
turned back the next instant to his duty.
In the excitement, he forgot to ask whose life it was he had saved.
The fire proved to be a fearful holocaust. Canal Street had never known
a conflagration that equaled it.
Doctor Gardiner made superhuman efforts to enter the tenement-house, to
save the life of the old basket-maker--Bernardine's hapless father--who
stood paralyzed, incapable of action, at an upper window. But no human
being could breast that sea of flame; and with a cry of horror, the
young doctor saw the tenement collapse, and David Moore was buried in
the ruins.
He had forfeited his life for the brandy he had taken just a little
while before, which utterly unfitted him to make an effort to get out of
the building.
Jay Gardiner, sick at heart, turned away with a groan. He must go to
Bernardine at once; but, Heaven help her! how could he break the news of
her great loss to her?
As he was deliberating on what course to pursue, a hand was suddenly
laid on his shoulder, and a voice said, lustily:
"By all that is wonderful, I can scarcely believe my eyes, Jay Gardiner,
that this is you! I expected you were at this moment hundred of miles
away from New York. But, heavens! how ill you look! Your clothes are
covered with dust. What can be the matter with you, Jay?"
Turning suddenly at the sound of the familiar voice, Doctor Gardiner
found himself face to face with the young physician who took charge of
his office while he was away.
"Come with me; you shall not tell me now, nor talk. Come to the office,
and let me fix up something for you, or you will have a spell of
sickness."
And without waiting to heed Jay Gardiner's expostulations--that he must
go somewhere else first--he called a passing cab, and hustled him into
it.
Owing to his splendid physique, he felt quite as good as new the next
morning, save for the pain in his head, where he had fallen upon the
stone flagging of the wine cellar.
Without any more loss of time than was absolutely necessary, he set out
for the old nurse's house, at which he had left Bernardine two days
before. He had half expected to find her ill, and he was not a little
surprised when she came to the door in answer to his summons.
"Mrs. Gray is out," she said, "and I saw you coming, Doctor Gardiner,
and oh, I could not get here quick enough to see you and thank you for
what you have done for me--risked your own life to save a worthless one
like mine."
"Hush, hush, Bernardine! You must not say that!" he cried, seizing her
little hands.
He drew her into the plain little sitting-room, seated her, then turned
from her abruptly and commenced pacing up and down the room, his
features working convulsively.
It was by the greatest effort he had restrained himself from clasping
her in his arms. Only Heaven knew how great was the effort.
"Why did you attempt to drown yourself, Bernardine?" he asked, at
length. "Tell me the truth."
"Yes, I will tell you," sobbed Bernardine, piteously. "I did it because
I did not wish to become Jasper Wilde's bride."
"But why were you driven to such a step?" he persisted. "Surely you
could have said 'No,' and that would have been sufficient."
For a moment she hesitated, then she flung herself, sobbing piteously,
on her knees at his feet.
"If I tell you _all_, will you pledge yourself to keep my secret, and
my father's secret, come what may?" she cried, wringing her hands.
"Yes," he replied, solemnly. "I shall never divulge what you tell me.
You can speak freely, Bernardine."
And Bernardine _did_ speak freely. She told him all without reserve--of
the sword Jasper Wilde held over her head because of her poor father,
whom he could send to the gallows, although he was an innocent man, if
she refused to marry him.
Jay Gardiner listened to every word with intense interest.
"While I have been here I have been thinking--thinking," she sobbed.
"Oh, it was cruel of me to try to avoid my duty to poor father. I must
go back and--and marry Jasper Wilde, to save poor papa, who must now be
half-crazed by my disappearance."
Doctor Gardiner clasped her little hands still closer. The time had come
when he must break the awful news to her that her father was no longer
in Jasper Wilde's power; that he had passed beyond all fear of him, all
fear of punishment at the hand of man.
"Are you strong enough to bear a great shock, Bernardine?" he whispered,
involuntarily gathering the slender figure to him.
The girl grew pale as death.
"Is it something about father? Has anything happened to him?" she
faltered, catching her breath.
He nodded his head; then slowly, very gently, he told her of the fire,
and that he had seen her father perish--that he was now forever beyond
Jasper Wilde's power.
Poor Bernardine listened like one turned to stone: then, without a word
or a cry, fell at his feet in a faint.
At that opportune moment the old nurse returned.
Doctor Gardiner soon restored her to consciousness; but it made his
heart bleed to witness her intense grief. She begged him to take her to
the ruins, and with great reluctance he consented.
Ordering a cab at the nearest stand, he placed her in it, and took a
seat by her side, feeling a vague uneasiness, a consciousness that this
ride should never have been taken.
She was trembling like a leaf. What could he do but place his strong arm
about her? In that moment, in the happiness of being near her, he forgot
that he was in honor bound to another, and that other Sally Pendleton,
whom he was so soon to lead to the altar to make his wife.
The girl he loved with all the strength of his heart was so near to
him--ah, Heaven! so dangerously near--the breath from her lips was
wafted to him with each passing breeze, and seemed to steal his very
senses from him.
Oh, if he could but indulge in one moment of happiness--could clasp her
in his arms but a single moment, and kiss those trembling lips just
once, he would be willing to pay for it by a whole life-time of sorrow,
he told himself.
Ah! why must he refuse himself so resolutely this one draught of
pleasure that fate had cast in his way?
He hesitated, and we all know what happens to the man who hesitates--he
is lost.
At this moment Bernardine turned to him, sobbing piteously:
"Oh, what shall I do, Doctor Gardiner? Father's death leaves me all
alone in the world--all alone, with no one to love me!"
In an instant he forgot prudence, restraint; he only knew that his
heart, ay, his very soul, flowed out to her in a torrent so intense no
human will could have restrained it.
Almost before he was aware of it, his arms were about her, straining her
to his madly beating heart, his passionate kisses falling thrillingly
upon her beautiful hair and the sweet, tender lips, while he cried,
hoarsely:
"You shall never say that again, beautiful Bernardine! _I_ love
you--yes, I love you with all my heart and soul! Oh, darling! answer
me--do you care for me?"
The girl recoiled from him with a low, wailing sob. The words of the
fashionably attired young girl who had called upon her so mysteriously
on that never-to-be-forgotten day, and taunted her with--"He is
deceiving you, girl! Doctor Gardiner may talk to you of love, but he
will never--never speak to you of marriage. Mark my words!"--were
ringing like a death-knell in her ears.
"Oh, Bernardine!" he cried, throwing prudence to the winds, forgetting
in that moment everything save his mad love for her--"oh, my darling!
you are _not_ alone in the world! _I_ love you! Marry me, Bernardine,
and save me from the future spreading out darkly before me--marry me
within the hour--_now_! Don't refuse me. We are near a church now. The
rector lives next door. We will alight here, and in five minutes you
will be all my own to comfort, to care for, to protect and idolize, to
worship as I would an angel from Heaven!"
He scarcely waited for her to consent. He stopped the coach, and fairly
lifted her from the vehicle in his strong arms.
"Oh, Doctor Gardiner, is it for the best?" she cried, clinging to him
with death-cold hands. "Are you _sure_ you want me?"
The answer that he gave her, as he bent his fair, handsome head, must
have satisfied her. Loving him as she did, how could she say him nay?
They entered the parsonage, and when they emerged from it, ten minutes
later, Bernardine was Jay Gardiner's wedded wife.
And that was the beginning of the tragedy.
"I shall not take you to the scene of the fire just now, my darling," he
decided. "The sight would be too much for you. In a day or two, when you
have become more reconciled to your great loss, I will take you there."
"You know best, Doctor Gardiner," she sobbed, as they re-entered the
vehicle. "I will do whatever you think is best."
"Where to, sir?" asked the driver, touching his cap.
"We will go to Central Park," he answered; then turning to Bernardine,
he added: "When we reach there, we will alight and dismiss this man. We
will sit down on one of the benches, talk matters over, and decide what
is best to be done--where you would like to go for your wedding-trip;
but, my love, my sweetheart, my life, you must not call me 'Doctor
Gardiner.' To you, from this time on, I am Jay, your own fond husband!"
CHAPTER XXX.
Jay Gardiner had taken fate in his own hands. He had married the girl he
loved, casting aside every barrier that lay between them, even to facing
the wrath, and, perhaps, the world's censure in deserting the girl to
whom he was betrothed, but whom he did not love.
He was deeply absorbed in thinking about this as the cab stopped at the
park entrance.
"Come, my darling!" exclaimed Jay, kissing fondly the beautiful face
upturned to him, "we will alight and talk over our plans for the
future."
She clung to him, as he with tender care, lifted her from the vehicle.
He was her husband, this grand, kingly, fair-haired man, at whom the
women passing looked so admiringly. She could hardly realize it, hardly
dare believe it, but for the fact that he was calling her his darling
bride with every other breath.
He found her a seat beneath a wide-spreading tree, where the greensward
was like velvet beneath their feet, and the air was redolent with the
scent of flowers that rioted in the sunshine hard by.
"Now, first of all, my precious Bernardine, we must turn our thoughts in
a practical direction long enough to select which hotel we are to go to;
and another quite as important matter, your wardrobe, you know."
Bernardine looked up at him gravely.
"This dress will do for the present," she declared. "The good, kind old
nurse dried and pressed it out so nicely for me that it looks almost as
good as new. And as for going to a hotel, I am sure it is too expensive.
We could go to a boarding-house where the charges would be moderate."
Jay Gardiner threw back his handsome head, and laughed so loud and so
heartily that Bernardine looked at him anxiously.
"Now that I come to think the matter over, I don't think I ever told
you much concerning my financial affairs," he said, smiling.
"No; but papa guessed about them," replied Bernardine.
"Tell me what he guessed?" queried Jay. "He thought I was poor?"
"Yes," replied Bernardine, frankly. "He said that all doctors had a very
hard time of it when they started in to build up a practice, and that
you must be having a very trying experience to make both ends meet."
"Was that why he did not want me for a son-in-law?"
"Yes, I think so," admitted Bernardine, blushing.
"Tell me this, my darling," he said, eagerly catching at the pretty
little hands lying folded in her lap; "why is it that _you_ have waived
all that, that you have married me, not knowing whether I had enough to
pay for a day's lodging?"
The most beautiful light that ever was seen flashed into the tender dark
eyes, a smile curved the red lips that set all the pretty dimples
dancing in the round, flushed cheeks.
"I married you because----" and then she hesitated shyly.
"Go on, Bernardine," he persisted; "you married me because----"
"Because I--I loved you," she whispered, her lovely face fairly covered
with blushes.
"Now, the first thing to do, sweetheart, is to call a cab, that you may
go to the nearest large dry-goods store and make such purchases as you
may need for immediate use. I can occupy the time better than standing
about looking at you. I will leave you at the store, and have the cabby
drive me around to the old nurse and explain what has occurred, and
tell her that you won't come back. Then I can attend to another little
matter or two, and return for you in an hour's time. And last, but not
least, take this pocket-book--I always carry two about me--and use
freely its contents. The purse, and what is in it, are yours, sweet!"
"Oh, I couldn't think of taking so much money!" declared Bernardine,
amazed at the bulky appearance of the pocket-book at the first glance.
Jay Gardiner laughed good-naturedly.
"You shall have everything your heart desires, my precious one," he
declared. "Don't worry about the price of anything you want; buy it, and
I shall be only too pleased, believe me."
There was no time to say anything further, for the store was reached,
and Jay had barely time to snatch a kiss from the beautiful lips ere he
handed her out.
"I will return in just an hour from now, Bernardine, with this cab," he
said. "If you are not then at the door, looking for me, I shall wait
here patiently until you do come out."
"How good you are to me!" murmured the girl, her dark eyes brimming over
with tears. "If papa could only know!"
"There, there now, my darling, it hurts me to see those eyes shed tears!
The past is past. Your father would be glad to know you have a protector
to love and care for you. Try to forget, as much as you can, the sad
calamity, for _my_ sake."
And with another pressure of the hands, he turned away and sprung into
the cab, watching the slender form from the window until it disappeared
in the door-way and was lost to sight.
"Love thrust honor and duty aside," he murmured. "I married sweet
Bernardine on the impulse of the moment, and I shall never regret it. I
will have a time with Sally Pendleton and her relatives; but the
interview will be a short one. She has other admirers, and she will soon
console herself. It was my money, instead of myself, that she wanted,
anyhow, so there is no damage done to her heart, thank goodness. I
will----"
The rest of the sentence was never finished. There was a frightful
crash, mingled with the terrific ringing of car-bells, a violent plunge
forward, and Jay Gardiner knew no more.
With a thoughtful face, Bernardine walked quickly into the great
dry-goods store.
She tried to do her husband's bidding---put all thoughts of it from her
for the time being--until she could weep over it calmly, instead of
giving way to the violent, pent-up anguish throbbing in her heart at
that moment.
She had not been accustomed to spending much money during her young
life. The very few dresses she had had done duty for several years, by
being newly made over, sponged, and pressed, and freshened by a ribbon
here, or a bit of lace there. So it did not take long to make the few
purchases she deemed necessary, and even then she felt alarmed in
finding that they footed up to nearly seven dollars, which appeared a
great sum to her.
Six o'clock now struck, and the clerks hustled away the goods en the
counters, and covered those on the shelves with surprising agility, much
to the annoyance of many belated customers who had come in too late "to
just look around and get samples."
To the surprise of the clerks, as they reached the sidewalk from a side
entrance of the building, they saw the beautiful young girl still
standing in front of the store with the parcel in her hand and a look of
bewilderment on her face.
"It is a little after six," murmured Bernardine, glancing up at a clock
in an adjacent store. "He has not yet returned, but he will be here
soon. I do not wonder that the driver of the cab he is in can make but
little headway, the crowds on the street and crossings are so great."
One cab after another whirled by, their occupants in many instances
looking back to catch another glimpse of that perfect face with its
wistful expression which had turned toward them so eagerly and then
turned away so disappointedly.
"A shop girl waiting for some fellow who is to come in a cab and take
her out to supper," remarked two dudes who were sauntering up Broadway.
Bernardine heard the remark, and flushed indignantly.
How she wished she dared tell them that she was waiting for her husband!
Yes, she was waiting--waiting, but he came not.
CHAPTER XXXI.
The sun dipped low in the West; the great crowds hurrying hither and
thither were beginning to thin out. New York's busy throngs were seeking
their homes to enjoy the meal which they had worked for in factory and
shop, for they were mostly working people who composed this seething
mass of humanity.
Slowly time dragged on. Seven o'clock tolled from a far-off belfry.
Bernardine was getting frightfully nervous.
What could have happened to her handsome young husband, who had left her
with the promise that he would return within the hour?
The policeman pacing to and fro on that beat watched her curiously each
time he passed.
Eight o'clock struck slowly and sharply. The wind had risen, and was now
howling like a demon around the corners of the great buildings.
"What shall I do? Oh, Heaven, help me! what shall I do?" sobbed
Bernardine, in nervous affright. "He--he must have forgotten me."
At that moment a hand fell heavily on her shoulder.
Looking up hastily through her tears, Bernardine saw a policeman
standing before her and eyeing her sharply.
"What are you doing here, my good girl?" he asked. "Waiting for
somebody? I would advise you to move on. We're going to have a storm,
and pretty quick, too, and I judge that it will be a right heavy one."
"I--I am waiting for my husband," faltered Bernardine. "He drove me here
in a cab. I was to do a little shopping while he went to find a
boarding-house. He was to return in an hour---by six o'clock. I--I have
been waiting here since that time, and--and he has not come."
"Hum! Where did you and your husband live last?" inquired the man of the
brass buttons.
"We--we didn't live anywhere before. We--we were just married to-day,"
admitted the girl, her lovely face suffused with blushes.
"The old story," muttered the officer under his breath. "Some rascal has
deluded this simple, unsophisticated girl into the belief that he has
married her, then cast her adrift."
"I am going to tell you what I think, little girl," he said, speaking
kindly in his bluff way. "But don't cry out, make a scene, or get
hysterical. It's my opinion that the man you are waiting for don't
intend to come back."
He saw the words strike her as lightning strikes and blasts a fair
flower. A terrible shiver ran through the young girl, then she stood
still, as though turned to stone, her face overspread with the pallor of
death.
The policeman was used to all phases of human nature. He saw that this
girl's grief was genuine, and felt sorry for her.
"Surely you have a home, friends, here somewhere?" he asked.
Bernardine shook her head, sobbing piteously.
"I lived in the tenement house on Canal Street that has just been burned
down. My father perished in it, leaving me alone in the world--homeless,
shelterless--and--and this man asked me to marry him, and--and I--did."
The policeman was convinced more than ever by her story that some _roué_
had taken advantage of the girl's pitiful situation to lead her astray.
"That's bad. But surely you have friends _somewhere_?"
Again Bernardine shook her head, replying, forlornly:
"Not one on earth. Papa and I lived only for each other."
The policeman looked down thoughtfully for a moment. He said to himself
that he ought to try to save her from the fate which he was certain lay
before her.
"I suppose he left you without a cent, the scoundrel?" he queried,
brusquely.
"Oh, don't speak of him harshly!" cried Bernardine, distressedly. "I am
sure something has happened to prevent his coming. He left his
pocket-book with me, and there is considerable money in it."
"Ah! the scoundrel had a little more heart than I gave him credit for,"
thought the policeman.
He did not take the trouble to ask the name of the man whom she believed
had wedded her, being certain that he had given a fictitious one to her.
"There is a boarding-house just two blocks from here, that I would
advise you to go to for the night, at least, young lady," he said, "and
if he comes I will send him around there. I can not miss him if he
comes, for I will be on this beat, pacing up and down, until seven
o'clock to-morrow morning. See, the rain has commenced to come down
pretty hard. Come!"
There was nothing else to do but accept the kind policeman's suggestion.
As it was, by the time she reached the house to which he good-naturedly
piloted her, the fierce storm was raging in earnest.
He spoke a few words, which Bernardine could not catch, to the
white-haired, benevolent-looking lady who opened the door.
She turned to the girl with outstretched hands.
"Come right in, my dear," she said, gently; "come right in."
"I was waiting for my husband, but somehow I missed him," explained
Bernardine. "The policeman will be sure to run across him and send him
around here."
The lady looked pityingly at the beautiful young face--a look that made
Bernardine a little nervous, though there was nothing but gentleness and
kindness in it.
"We will talk about that in the morning," she said. "I will show you to
a room. The house is quite full just now, and I shall have to put you in
a room with another young girl. Pardon the question, but have you had
your supper?"
"No," replied Bernardine, frankly, "and I am hungry and fatigued."
"I will send you up a bowl of bread and milk, and a cup of nice hot
tea," said the lady.
"How good you are to me, a perfect stranger!" murmured Bernardine. "I
will be glad to pay you for the tea and----"
The lady held up her white hand with a slow gesture.
"We do not take pay for any services we render here, my dear," she said.
"This is a young girls' temporary shelter, kept up by a few of the very
wealthy women in this great city."
Bernardine was very much surprised to hear this; but before she could
reply, the lady threw open a door to the right, and Bernardine was
ushered into a plain but scrupulously neat apartment in which sat a
young girl of apparently her own age.
"Sleep here in peace, comfort and security," said the lady. "I will have
a talk with you on the morrow," and she closed the door softly, leaving
Bernardine alone with the young girl at the window, who had faced about
and was regarding her eagerly.
"I am awfully glad you are come," she broke in quickly; "it was terribly
slow occupying this room all alone, as I told the matron awhile ago. It
seems she took pity on me and sent you here. But why don't you sit down,
girl? You look at me as though you were not particularly struck with my
face, and took a dislike to me at first sight, as most people do."
She was correct in her surmise. Bernardine _had_ taken a dislike to her,
she scarcely knew why.
Bernardine forgot her own trials and anxiety in listening to the
sorrowful story of this hapless creature.
"Why don't you try to find work in some other factory or some shop?"
asked Bernardine, earnestly.
"My clothes are so shabby, my appearance is against me. No one wants to
employ a girl whose dress is all tatters."
A sudden thought came to Bernardine, and she acted on the impulse.
"Here," she said, pulling out her pocket-book--"here is ten dollars. Get
a dress, and try to find work. The money is not a loan; it is a gift."
The girl had hardly heard the words, ere a cry of amazement fell from
her lips. She was eyeing the well-filled pocket-book with a burning
gaze.
CHAPTER XXXII.
The girl took the money which Bernardine handed to her, her eyes
following every movement of the white hand that placed the wallet back
in her pocket.
"You must be rich to have so much money about you," she said, slowly,
with a laugh that grated harshly on Bernardine's sensitive ears.
"It is not mine," said Bernardine, simply; "it is my husband's, and
represents all the years of toil he has worked, and all the rigid
economy he has practiced."
The girl looked at her keenly. Could it be that she was simple enough to
believe that the man who had deserted her so cruelly had _married_ her?
Well, let her believe what she chose, it was no business of hers.
The bowl of bread and milk and the cup of tea were sent up to
Bernardine, and she disposed of them with a heartiness that amused her
companion.
"I am afraid you will not sleep well after eating so late," she said,
with a great deal of anxiety in her voice.
"I shall rest all the better for taking the hot milk. I fall asleep
generally as soon as my head touches the pillow, and I do not wake until
the next morning. Why, if the house tumbled down around me, I believe
that I would not know it. I will remove my jacket, to keep it from
wrinkling."
This information seemed to please her companion. She breathed a sigh of
relief, and an ominous glitter crept into her small black eyes.
"But I do not want to go to sleep to-night," added Bernardine in the
next breath. "I shall sit by the window, with my face pressed against
the pane, watching for my--my husband."
Her companio
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