Dainty's Cruel Rivals; Or, The Fatal Birthday

Oh, the shrieks of despair that filled the gloomy cell! They were enough to move a heart of stone; but Dainty's tormentor was cruel as a fiend.

She listened unmoved to the expressions of despair and the prayers for liberty, and laughed incredulously, when the girl cried, desperately:

"Oh, Sheila! for God's sake, let me go to the side of my dying husband! Yes, he is my own dear husband, and my place is by him now, to soothe his last hours. We were married secretly two weeks ago, because he feared our cruel enemies would devise some scheme to tear us from each other, as indeed they have done. But now that you know the truth, you would not keep a young wife from the side of her dying husband, would you? You will set me free, to go to him?"

But the wretch shook her head, with a mocking laugh.

"You will never see the light of day again!" she said, calmly.

"Oh, Sheila, do you forget that I have a mother to mourn me as well as a husband? A poor widowed mother, who has no one but me in the wide, wide world! I am the light of her eyes and her heart. She will die of a broken heart at my mysterious fate! For her sake, Sheila, if not for my own and my husband's, I beg you for my liberty!" prayed the wretched prisoner, kneeling on the cold floor at her tormentor's feet.

But she might as well have prayed to the cold stone wall as to such a fiend in human form.

"Ye're wastin' worruds, Dainty Chase!" she said, mockingly, as she rose to go. "Ye'll niver come out of this cell alive, I tell you; so the sooner yer make up yer mind ter die, the better; and I'll kem ag'in this day week, hoping ter find yer cold corp on the bed!"

"One word!" implored the wretched girl, detaining her. "Where am I, Sheila Kelly? Is this, as I suspect, a dungeon beneath the ruined wing of Ellsworth?"

"Yes, ye're right; 'tis the underground chambers, where t' ould Ellsworths hid from the Indians and kept their prisoners, and this will be yer tomb, Dainty Chase. Better try the laudanum, and put yersilf out of misery at once!" flashing out, and locking the door on the outside as before.

CHAPTER XXIII.

AH! THE PITY OF IT!

The oaken door clanged heavily to, and the massive bolt, as it shot into place, sounded in Dainty's ears like the trump of doom, shutting her into a living grave; for now that she had heard of her husband's condition, she had no longer the least hope of rescue.

In all the wide, cruel world, who was there that had any interest in poor Dainty Chase save her husband and her mother?

Her husband was dying, and her poor, helpless little mother was powerless to save her.

They would tell her that her fair daughter had eloped with a favorite lover; and how was she to know that the story was untrue?

In her desire to spare her gentle little mother pain, Dainty had withheld the whole story of the persecutions she had suffered at Ellsworth.

In every letter home she had written the substance of these words:

"It is very pleasant here, and I am very happy. I long for you to be with me."

And the mother's heart had rejoiced in her daughter's happiness.

When she should awaken from her drugged sleep, and hear that Lovelace was dying, and her daughter fled with another, there would be no one to comfort her, none to say that the story was untrue. She would have to simply accept it in all its horror, and her tender heart would break with the despair of it all.

"Oh, my husband; my mother!" sobbed the heartbroken girl; and she wondered how Heaven could permit such cruelties as had been practised on her by her relentless enemies.

Before the coming of her heartless jailer she had been suffering with hunger and thirst; but she forgot both now as she lay weeping and moaning and praying, until after awhile the deep sleep of exhaustion stole over her, and she slumbered for long hours, starting fitfully now and then and murmuring feverishly the name of her beloved.

When she started broad awake at last, the lamp had burned low, and she knew by this that another day must have passed.

Her lips were parched with thirst, and she seized the bottle of water, and drank feverishly, though she thought bitterly:

"Most likely it is poisoned, and the draught will bring me a horrible death! But what matter? A speedy death is better than dying by inches in a living tomb!"

But she was mistaken—the water was not drugged. Her enemies would have been shocked at the idea of a downright murder.

When she died of the foul air and deprivation and grief, they would complacently call it the visitation of God. If she was driven to swallow the poison they had sent her, it would be by her own choice that she had died a suicide's death. It would not rest like a weight on their consciences; and they hoped she would do it, for then they would place the body where it might conveniently be found, and the coroner's verdict would say she died from laudanum administered by her own hand.

Oh, the fiendish deed had been plotted well! And when Mrs. Ellsworth revived next day, and heard from Sheila Kelly the story of Dainty's despair, she was well pleased, saying to herself, excusingly:

"I would not have done it, only that she wilfully defied me, and thwarted all my plans for marrying Love to one of my favorite nieces. But it can not be helped now, and her death is quite necessary to my plans; for if Love dies, as they say he is bound to, I should inherit all his money, unless Dainty should return and prove the marriage that he claims took place between them weeks ago. How fortunate he was shot down before he could make the story public; for now it is known to none but me, and it shall never pass my lips—not even to my nieces. Dainty will soon die of her imprisonment, even if she is not tempted to end her sufferings speedily with the laudanum, and then I shall adopt the two girls as my heiresses, and take them here to live with me. As for Mrs. Chase, I hardly know what to do with the woman. They say she woke up soon after the shooting, and is taking on pitiably about Dainty's flight and Love's condition. I shall have to show her some kindness, I suppose, just to keep up appearances."

If she could have looked into the prison to which she had heartlessly consigned her fair young niece, she would have felt encouraged in her schemes; for the lovely girl was fading like some fair flower rudely broken from its stem.

Weeping and praying ceaselessly, she had eaten but a few morsels of the stale bread, for her anguish made her incapable of hunger; but the water was all gone in four days, though Dainty tried to husband it longer; for a fever had seized on her, and she was almost crazed by thirst, raving now and then deliriously in the darkness, for the tiny can of oil was exhausted, too, and the blackness of the tomb brooded over the cell.

She had sobbed till her throat was dry and parched and aching; she had wept till her tears were all exhausted in their fountains; she was so weak that she could not stand upright on the floor, and she could only lie like a stony image of despair on her bed and wait for death.

And she had looked forward so happily to this wretched week—she and Love. They were to have been upon the ocean now, en route for foreign lands, so happy in their love that listening angels might have envied their bliss. Ah, the pity of it, this terrible reality of pain!

At times, when she was not asleep or delirious, her thoughts flew to Love. She wondered if he were dead yet, and prayed for his spirit to come and visit her in her loneliness.

So the awful hours dragged by, though Dainty did not know whether they were days or months, in the bewilderment of her mind. They seemed to her like endless years; and the time came when she could bear her agony no longer, when, in burning fever and delirium, she prayed for death, and recalled her enemy's subtle temptation.

In the black darkness, the weak, white hand groped for the laudanum and unstoppered it.

"God forgive me!" cried the maddened girl, pressing the bitter draught to her fever-parched lips.

Then the vial crashed in fragments on the stone floor, and all was still.

CHAPTER XXIV.

THE DARKEST HOUR

A week had passed since the fatal birthday of Lovelace Ellsworth, and at the quiet twilight hour he lay among his pillows, a pale, breathing image of the splendid man whose life had been so cruelly blighted on his wedding morn.

It was the strangest thing the medical fraternity had ever heard of—how the young man lingered on with a bullet in his brain; but it was certain, they said, to have a fatal ending soon. The strange, speechless stupor in which he had lain for a week would soon close with death.

And meanwhile, his most faithful nurse was Dainty's mother.

The gentle woman had awakened from her drugged sleep directly after the exciting interview held in her room by Mrs. Ellsworth and her step-son, and her awakening had indeed been a most cruel one.

The news they had to tell her about Dainty was almost a death-blow.

She did not know how to credit the startling story, for she knew that her fair daughter never had a lover before coming to Ellsworth; but she did not know how to contradict the letter they showed her that seemed to be written in Dainty's own hand. She could only weep incessantly, and wonder why Heaven had dealt her so cruel a blow.

Then followed the attempted murder of Ellsworth; and rousing herself from the hopeless despair into which she was sinking, the noble woman gave all her time and attention to caring for the sufferer, trying to lose her own keen sense of trouble in care for another.

And Love owed much to her tender care; for the hired nurse proved very incompetent, and the ladies of the household gave no help, Mrs. Ellsworth continuing so ill for days as to engross the attention of Olive and Ela.

In fact, they took no further interest in Lovelace Ellsworth, now that he lay unconscious and dying, for what could be gained by kindness to him now? It was better to cling to Mrs. Ellsworth, for she would inherit all her step-son's money by his failure to marry, and perhaps they might come in for a share through her favor.

So Mrs. Chase devoted herself to the sick man, weeping, hoping, and praying for him to recover and help her to find Dainty; for in struggling back to consciousness that morning, she had heard vaguely, as in a dream, Love's assertion to his step-mother that he was already the husband of her daughter.

This very day, a week after Dainty's disappearance, she had sought an interview with the now recovered Mrs. Ellsworth, and begged her to use some of her abundant means, as Love's agent, in searching for Dainty.

"It can not be true—that story that Dainty eloped with another for she never had any lover but Mr. Ellsworth. Besides, when I was awakening from my strange sleep that morning, I heard him telling you he had married my daughter two weeks before," she said, wondering why Mrs. Ellsworth gasped and grew so deathly pale before she burst into that strange laugh, declaring that Mrs. Chase had dreamed the whole thing.

"Nothing of the kind was said by my step-son," she declared, firmly; adding, with a sneer: "Your trouble must have turned your brain, causing you to imagine such a ridiculous thing; and I hope you will not mention it to any one else, for Lovelace Ellsworth was the soul of honor, I assure you, and the last person in the world to lead an innocent young girl into anything so disgraceful as a secret marriage."

"I know that he was very noble," faltered the poor little woman, "and I must indeed have dreamed it if you deny that I heard such a statement. Yet the dream was as vivid as a reality."

"Dreams often are, and this was only another instance," replied the haughty woman, coldly, adding: "I see no use trying to find Dainty. She went away of her own free will, and she will not communicate her whereabouts till she chooses. With that you must rest content. As for my part, I am free to confess that I am so indignant at her treachery to Love that I don't care if I never see her face again!"

Mrs. Chase shrank sensitively from the angry flash of her sister-in-law's black eyes, and returned meekly to Love's bedside to watch the slowly sinking life and wipe the moisture from the pale brow that Dainty had so loved to kiss, and her tortured heart prayed hourly:

"Oh, God, give back his life! Raise him up from this bed of illness, that he may unravel the web of mystery that entangles the fate of my lost darling!"

Mrs. Ellsworth was terribly frightened, for Sheila Kelly had promptly told her of Dainty's declaration that she was already married to Love, and her offer that Love would make her rich if she would set her free.

If the proud woman had felt the least pity for Dainty, it all died now in the dread lest she should escape and rob her of the rich inheritance that would be hers if Love died unmarried. She said to herself resolutely that there was no help for it now. Dainty's life must be sacrificed to the terrible exigencies of her position.

Not that Mrs. Ellsworth would have taken the girl's life with her own white hands, or even deputed another to do so. Oh, no, no! Of course she would not be so wicked, she told herself complacently.

But to imprison the poor girl on bread and water in a sunless dungeon, and goad her to despair till she died of persecution, or even took her own life—oh, that was quite another thing! thought the heartless woman, stifling the voice of conscience in her determination to succeed in her wicked aims.

With Sheila Kelly, as with Mrs. Chase, the mistress of Ellsworth laughed to scorn the assertion of Dainty that she was Love Ellsworth's wife.

"She was only trying to work on your feelings—do not pay any attention to her falsehoods," she said; and Sheila, who had half-way determined to make capital some way out of her important secret, stupidly yielded the point, and again became the tool of her wily mistress.

When Dainty had been imprisoned a week, Sheila visited her again, and, as a result, hurried to her mistress with a pale, scared face, whispering:

"I have earned the promised reward, madame. The girl is out of the way!"

"Dead!" whispered the woman, with an uncontrollable shudder.

"Yes, cowld and dead for hours, pore craythur!" answered the woman, displaying at last a touch of natural feeling in something like remorse over her hellish work.

"How?" demanded her mistress, hoarsely.

"By the poison, madame. It was all black on her lips, and spilt on the bed-clothes, and the vial broken on the floor; but she got enough to kill her stone dead."

"That is well. If she chose to die by suicide, we are not accountable," she said, heartlessly, though her frame shook as with an ague chill.

No amount of sophistry could make her believe herself guiltless of this terrible deed.

"Will you come and look at the corp', madame? I want you to be satisfied I'm telling the truth," continued the Irish woman, eagerly; and after a moment of hesitation, Mrs. Ellsworth decided to go.

It was best to make sure of her cruel work.

In the twilight gloom they stole away, and threaded the dark, noisome corridors of the ruined wing down to the underground passages, till they reached the dark cell where poor Dainty's life had ebbed away in untended illness and fever, till, crazed and delirious, she had ended all with the tempting draught that promised oblivion of her sorrows in welcome death.

It was a sight to make the angels weep with pity when Sheila flashed her light in the gloomy place, and revealed to Mrs. Ellsworth's shrinking eyes the pale, still form of the girl she had hated and wronged, lying on the squalid couch, with her golden tresses veiling her wasted form and framing the fair, dead face like sunshine; the blue eyes closed on the world that had been so cruel to her; the pale lips stained with the dark liquid she had drained in the madness of her desperation.

On the chair lay the broken remains of the bread she had been too ill to swallow; but the bottles of water were quite empty, and perhaps they could guess how she had drained them and wept for more in the terrible feverish thirst of her last hours; but they spoke no word to each other of this, only gazed and gazed with a sort of conscience-stricken awe on the dead girl, until at last Mrs. Ellsworth stooped and placed her hand on the white breast.

"Yes, she is gone, poor girl! Her heart is cold and still, her form seems quite rigid; she must have been dead quite a long while," she muttered, in a tone of relief.

In reality, it was but a few hours ago that Dainty had swallowed the laudanum while just sinking into the stupor of a malignant fever; but to all intents and purposes, in the garish light, she looked like a corpse of ten hours' duration.

And now came an important question—how to dispose of the fair, dead girl; for it would never do to leave her here, lest the body be discovered in future, and the crime traced to the door of those who were responsible for her death.

Sheila Kelly had a plan, and she quickly proposed it.

"Yer want iverybody to know she's dead, because if Mr. Ellsworth gets well, he'll be searching for her till kingdom come, unless he knows the truth."

"Yes, you are right; although there is not one chance in a hundred of his recovery. He just lies with closed lips and eyes like a breathing corpse," said Mrs. Ellsworth, impatiently.

"I was a-thinkin' this," said Sheila. "It's a dark night, and there'll be no moon till midnight. I can carry her body in me arrums down to the road, and lay her under the tree by the creek, with the bottle of laudanum in her hand, and a little note, if ye choose to write it, a-sayin' she is deserted by her lover, who refused to make her an honest wife, so she chooses ter die. Then the coroner's 'quest will find the poison in her stomach, and all is over, and no suspicion of our part in her taking off."

"Capital, Sheila!" cried her mistress, approvingly, though she added: "I hate the sensation that will follow the finding of the body; but it is best, as you say, to let the world know she is dead; then, should Lovelace survive, he can not doubt he is a widower, if he was ever married. So you may carry out your plan, Sheila, and come to me at once for your pay."

CHAPTER XXV.

AMONG STRANGERS

The dark, calm, dewy night closed down presently, and Sheila Kelly promptly finished her wicked work.

The reward was immediately paid into her hands, and she departed in haste from Ellsworth to spend it in riotous living.

The night was warm and sultry, and few people strayed abroad; so out in the road, on the grassy bank by a little purling creek, there lay for hours the motionless form of a seemingly dead girl, by her side a bottle of laudanum, and a pathetic little note detailing the reasons for her suicide.

For awhile all was very still. The bending branches of the trees stirred, and fanned the still, white face, the dew kissed it; the light, airy wings of the summer insects brushed it in flying; the winds caressed it with the sweet odors of clover and daisies, and the waters murmured by with a soothing song, all alike unheeded by the beautiful, silent sleeper.

"Softly!She is lying with her lips apart;Softly!She is dying of a broken heart!"Whisper!She is going to her final rest;Whisper!Life is growing dim within her breast!"

Suddenly the sultry darkness was broken by a flash of lightning, followed by a low rumble of thunder. Swift rain-drops flashed down through the leaves upon that still, white face, and a summer storm broke in startling fury on the heated earth, drenching the motionless form with a steady downpour of water.

The wind howled through the trees, breaking and twisting branches, tossing leaves about like feathers, and swelling the little creek to a brawling stream.

All the while the blue sheets of lightning lighted up the sky with splendor, and gleamed through the tossing tree-branches down on the fair, quiet face seemingly locked in death's awful repose. For half an hour the war of the elements raged, then ceased as suddenly as it had begun, and the last faint gleam of lightning showed a startling change.

The lips of Dainty Chase were parted in long, gasping breaths; the blue eyes were dilated in a blank and straining gaze. She rose slowly, staggeringly, to her feet, and as the black clouds parted overhead, and the full moon glimmered through, flooding the wet earth with splendor, as though diamonds strewed every blade of grass, she stepped, slowly, falteringly, down to the road, dragging her drenched body along aimlessly toward the open country that lay beyond.

It would seem as if a miracle had been wrought, giving back life to the dead.

But Dainty's draught of laudanum had been too small to induce death, and the wholesome bath of rain and the electric elements abroad in the air had combined to rouse her from a stupor that might otherwise have terminated fatally. Life—feeble, and faltering, yet still life—stole back along her veins to her numb heart, and set it beating again.

With a strength almost incredible after the terrible week she had endured, she wandered slowly down the road, obeying blind impulse, not reason; for her mind was yet clouded by delirium, and she had as yet no realization of who she was or where she was.

Her mind was a pitiful blank, and her lips babbled vacant nothings as she dragged herself on and on, further and further away from Ellsworth, and into the lonely woods, unconsciously leaving the beaten track, and pursuing a lonely bridle path that led her into the very heart of the forest.

Now and then, when her strength failed, she would drop down and rest; then start up and wander on again, aimlessly and drearily, until she seemed to be lost in a maze of thick woodland that looked like the haunts of savage creatures and crawling serpents, whose dens were fitly chosen among these jagged gray rocks.

"And when on the earth she sank to sleep,If slumber her eyelids knew,She lay where the deadly vine doth weepIts venomous tear, and nightly steepThe flesh in blistering dew,And near her the she-wolf stirred the brake,And the copper snake breathed in her ear."

She came staggering out at last from a great thicket of ferns and found herself near a brawling mountain stream—one of those pellucid trout streams dear to the disciples of gentle Isaak Walton. On its green, sloping banks she sank down to rest, lulled by the low murmur of the waters, and presently the gray shadows of dawn were pierced by the sun's bright rays lighting the solitary wilderness with glory.

Higher and higher mounted the sun, and all the woodland dwellers started abroad, while the mists of the night fled at the warmth of the advancing day; but wearily, wearily, slumbered the exhausted girl, crouching on the grass, with her pallid cheek in the hollow of her little hand, her hair a tangle of glory glinting in the sun, as it shone through the branches of the trees.

Heavily, wearily, she slept on as one too exhausted ever to wake again, and presently the deep forest stillness was broken by the dip of oars in the murmuring stream, while a man's voice cried, eagerly:

"Another speckled beauty for our string, Peters! Ye gods, what a royal breakfast we shall have this morning! Is your wife a good cook, say? For it would be a thousand pities to have these spoiled!"

The voice had the shrill twang of the commercial traveler, the daring explorer who penetrates the depths of the forests as well as the heart of the cities, and the answer came in the distinct patois of the West Virginian backwoodsman:

"Stranger, thar mought be better cooks than my Sairy Ann whar you hail from up yon in New Yorrok; but, I swow, thar hain't another saw-mill in West Virginny as can ekal the cookin' in my camp! Wait till Sairy Ann br'ils these mountain trout and slaps 'em on to a pone of sweet corn bread. See?"

"Yes, I see—in imagination—and my mouth waters! Let us go back to the mill at once, Peters, and realize our anticipations. Hal-loo! what is that—over on that bank, man?"

"Gee-whillikins! what, indeed?" roared the saw-mill man, rowing rapidly to the bank and springing out so quickly as to almost upset his companion into the pellucid stream.

Stooping over the sleeping form, the rough backwoodsman scrutinized Dainty with amazement, ending by shaking her vigorously, as he exclaimed, in wonder: