Pretty Geraldine, the New York Salesgirl; or, Wedded to Her Choice

"You have begged me not to betray you, to let you keep the position you hold in Mrs. Fitzgerald's family unmolested. Of course, you expect to pay a price for my charitable silence.

"Very well. Here are my conditions:

"I love Geraldine Harding, and her scorn has made me reckless, desperate.

"I am determined to get her into my power, and humble her towering pride.

"You must help me to carry out my designs.

"In brief, I am determined to kidnap her and conceal her in a safe place, where she cannot escape my attentions. She came very near to loving me once, and I think if I am given a good opportunity, I may win her heart again.

"I am arranging a place for her, and by to-morrow I shall have everything ready for my pretty bird.

"Some plan must be perfected then by which to get possession of the girl.

"As you are in the same house with her, and know all her comings and goings, your woman's wit ought to be able to suggest some plan of procedure without drawing suspicion on yourself.

"Set your wits to work, and write to me to-morrow what you can do to help me.

"And remember that the penalty of refusal will be exposure of your past to the girl's mother, and expulsion in disgrace from your comfortable situation.

C. S."

"The man is a fiend!" groaned Miss Erroll, rising from her seat, and pacing up and down the luxurious apartment, her crimson dressing-gown trailing far behind her on the soundless velvet carpet.

She loved luxury, this woman, and she had sinned to attain it, but everything seemed to go wrong in her life. Punishment for her sins seemed to follow on her footsteps.

So she had put the past behind her, and tried to reform her life.

But ghosts from the dead past would rise up and haunt her, troubling her repose.

"The man is a fiend!" she groaned again. "Why cannot he leave that beautiful, innocent girl in peace? I have done wrong in my life, I know, but nothing so bad as what he asks of me, to lend myself to a vile plot against the peace of a girl who has never harmed me, a girl who has won my liking by her high-bred courtesy, as freely given to me as if I were her equal, instead of a paid dependent. How kind and good they all are to me, and how can I repay their bounty by such treachery?"

All the good in her nature rose to the surface, and did battle against the wrong she was asked to do.

And yet she dared not refuse; dared not risk what her tempter threatened.

Cruel had been her battle with poverty before she obtained this situation.

And if she lost it the dire struggle would begin again.

She might not be able to get honest work; she might be tossed into the terrible maelstrom of women who had to sin for bread.

Yet how could she, who was trying to redeem her own life from a hideous stain, how could she vilely plan to wreck another's life?

It was a terrible struggle that was going on in her breast as she kept her lonely vigil there.

She had not answered the letter yet, although he had commanded her to send a reply to-day. She waited in terror, silent, yet hoping that something would interpose to save her—praying that ere the morrow dawned her persecutor would fall down dead.

"It is no harm, no sin, to wish him dead, that fiend who only lives to plan ruin for the innocent," she cried, in anguish, crumpling the fatal letter in her writhing hands.

Then she gave a violent start, and looked toward the door, her hair seeming to rise on her head with terror.

Did she really hear a low rat-tat upon her door there in the dead waste and middle of the night?

She stood motionless, with her handsome head turned toward the door in an attitude of startled expectancy.

The low knocking came again, and then a low, sweet voice called, softly:

"Are you asleep? It's only me! Please let me in, dear?"

The voice sounded like that of Claire, her sweet little girl pupil.

With a sigh of relief she moved to the door and cautiously opened it.

The next moment she started back with a shuddering cry of fear that was echoed by the figure on the threshold.

The intruder was Cissy Carroll, with her long, dark hair flying loose over her white dressing gown.

With startled outcries, they gazed at each other, and then Miss Carroll demanded, shrilly:

"Do my eyes deceive me? What are you doing here, Azuba Aylesford?"

The woman in the scarlet robe darted forward, and dragged the white-clad girl into the room, whispering, in terrified tones:

"Hush-h! for sweet pity's sake! Do not breathe that name beneath this roof!"

She closed the door softly, and they stood looking at each other in wonder and dismay, while Cissy, recovering her wits, retorted, sharply:

"By what name shall I call you, then, since your divorce from Mr. Clemens?"

"Call me Miss Erroll. Azuba Aylesford and Mrs. Clemens are both dead. From her ashes rises Kate Erroll, governess."

"Ah-h!" and Cissy remembered what Geraldine had told her about the governess with a history in her face. She understood it now.

Light was also dawning on the other, and she asked:

"Is it possible that you, Miss Carroll, are the guest who arrived to-day from New York?"

"Yes, but I did not dream of finding you here, Miss—Erroll. When I knocked at the door, I supposed this was Miss Harding's room. My head ached, and I wished to ask for some camphor."

"You were mistaken. Her room is on one side of yours, mine on the other, hence the mistake."

"I am sorry I disturbed you. I will withdraw now," said Cissy, in her coldest tone, moving toward the door.

But suddenly she was prevented from going by Miss Erroll falling madly at her feet.

"You shall not go yet—not till—not till—you promise not to betray me to your friends, not to tell them of my wicked past!" she exclaimed.

Cissy Carroll drew back her robe from contact with the kneeling suppliant. Her face was very pale, and her eyes flashed with scorn.

"Why should I spare you, woman? You did not spare me—nor him!" she answered, bitterly.

"That is true—oh, how true! But I have been bitterly punished for my sins—so bitterly that even those I have wronged might pity me. I sinned, but I have suffered!" moaned the kneeling woman, lifting despairing eyes to her accuser.

"The way of the transgressor is hard," answered Cissy, with the harshness of woman to woman.

"Do I not know it! Alas! alas!" moaned Kate Erroll, and she continued: "Now that I have repented my sins, and am trying to be good, my past rises up to menace me on every hand with danger!"

Cissy Carroll did not answer, and she could not pity, for had not this woman robbed her life of happiness?

Suddenly Kate Erroll asked, eagerly:

"Have you never forgiven Cameron Clemens yet?"

"He has never asked me," Cissy returned, evasively.

"He would not dare after the scorn with which you dismissed him when I put in my claim to him. Ah, Miss Carroll, you did wrong, and you made my victory an easy one. If you had clung to him he would never have turned to me."

Cissy did not answer, save by the curl of a disdainful lip.

"Oh, I wronged you both most bitterly," Kate Erroll added, with keen, though late remorse. "Listen: I never loved Cameron Clemens—never; I only angled for him because he was a good catch, and I, a poor actress, loved luxury, and wanted to make a good marriage. He was not in love with me, but I pushed the flirtation so far that he could not avoid the proposal. I am sure he scarcely regarded our flirtation seriously. Before it was a week old he went away for his summer outing. He met you, and fell in love in earnest. He wrote to me, and asked release. I was furious, and would not reply. I waited—waited until just before the marriage. Then I swooped down on you, enraged you with hints that he was after your grandfather's money. You dismissed him with furious scorn—just what I wanted; and I—oh, shame to my womanhood, for I did not love him!—I pursued him till he made me his wife!"

"You did not love him? Oh, Heaven! yet you wrecked both our lives for selfish gain!" groaned Cissy, appalled at the woman's confession.

"It was cruel, oh, I know it now, but I did not then, for I had never loved, and could not realize the anguish of your loss. But I have been punished for my sins, I tell you. Of course, we led a wretched life, hating each other after a short time most bitterly. Then the tempter came in the person of a handsome young actor who taught me the meaning of love. He begged me to elope with him, promising to marry me as soon as my husband secured a divorce. Well, I fled with him, and Mr. Clemens lost no time in applying to the courts for a dissolution of his marriage bonds. Soon I was free; but did my betrayer keep his promise to me? Ah, no; he laughed me to scorn, and told me he already had a wife. All my love turned to hate, and I fled from him as from the presence of a leper. All my life since has been a struggle for honest bread. I could not return to the stage, for I could not live down the awful notoriety of my sin. Fortunately, I had a good education, and after months of wretchedness, during which I buried a nameless child, I secured this situation with these noble people. Will you let me keep it, or will you take your just revenge?"

Her tremulous voice wavered and broke; then silence fell.

She remained kneeling in a suppliant position at the feet of the woman she had wronged so bitterly, her large blue eyes upraised in passionate appeal.

Cissy Carroll stood like a statue in front of the kneeling woman, her face death-white, her eyes sombre, with painful thought.

It was her hour of triumph.

Her enemy was delivered into her hand.

Her vengeance was assured, if she chose to take it.

Why should she not? she thought, in the first bitterness of the meeting with the woman who had wronged her so deeply.

Then something else came to her mind.

"'Vengeance is mine; I will repay,' saith the Lord."

Looking at the humble suppliant there, she felt that punishment had already been meted out to her in fullest measure.

She could almost pity now instead of spurning the wretched creature who, having dashed love's brimming cup from the thirsty lips of another, had been forced to drink its bitter lees herself.

She moved back a pace, and said, quietly:

"Rise. You are safe from vengeance of mine."

"You will forgive me?" faltered the governess, gratefully.

Cissy answered, coldly:

"I did not say I would forgive you, for I do not think I ever can. But I will not betray your secret. To-morrow we may meet as strangers, who have no interest in each other."

She moved toward the door, followed by protestations of undying gratitude to which she made no reply.

It seemed to her that she could not breathe freely in the presence of this woman, to whom she owed all her misery. She fled to her own room to weep in solitude.

CHAPTER XLV.

"IF I WERE A KING I WOULD RAISE HER TO MY THRONE!"

"As shines the moon in cloudless skies,She in her poor attire was seen,One praised her ankles, one her eyes,One her dark hair, and lovesome mien,So sweet a face, such angel grace,In all that land had never been;Cophetua swore a royal oath,'This beggar maid shall be my queen!'"Tennyson.

But, leaving our interests in the Garden City temporarily, we must journey across the dark-blue sea, to follow the fortunes of our noble hero, Harry Hawthorne.

As the intelligent reader has doubtless surmised already, he was the hero of the newspaper paragraph Mrs. Fitzgerald had read to her daughter, and he had crossed the seas to claim his own.

Young blood is often too hot, and an angry quarrel with his old father had made the heir of a noble name and fine estate a voluntary exile from home under distant skies, where he was not too proud to earn his bread by honest toil.

But all that was changed now.

In the English county of Devonshire, at the grand old castle home of Raneleigh, the old lord lay dead, and my lord, his son, must lay aside his masquerading and come home to wear the honors and the title that were his by ancestral right.

His two Chicago friends were charmed with his romance when he told it to them, one day on the steamer, just before they landed on the bonny shore of England.

"I only borrowed the name of Jack Daly," he laughed. "The one that belongs to me is Harry Leland, and my title will be Lord Putnam."

They congratulated him warmly. It was a romance in real life, they said, and Ralph Washburn declared he should weave it into a novel.

"But you do not know the most romantic part of it yet," said the young man, with a sigh. He debated the question with himself a moment, then decided it could do no harm to confide in his two noble friends.

So, sadly enough, he told them the story of the love affair that had brought him to Chicago, keeping back nothing.

"So now you know how I came by the wound that made you two my stanch friends for life, and you can understand why I let my enemy alone, rather than bring into publicity the name of a woman I loved," he ended.

"But you left the case in the hands of a detective?" said Leroy Hill.

"Yes, he is to find Clifford Standish and shadow him until it is found out whether he lied to me about Miss Harding. He has full instructions to act in my place during my absence."

"And this beautiful girl that you loved when you were simply Harry Hawthorne, the New York fireman, do you mean that if she is found and proved innocent that you will stoop to her now that you have come into your ancestral honors?" inquired the romantic young author, with interest.

"If I were a king I would raise her to my throne!" replied the ardent lover, proudly.

They applauded his faithful love, but they thought that the prospect of his happiness looked very dismal.

The actor's story seemed so plausible that they feared it might be true that he had won the vacillating heart of pretty Geraldine.

They looked at each other significantly, but they did not have the heart to breathe their doubts aloud. They saw that he was already unhappy enough.

But they felt sure in their hearts that if the detective ever traced the movements of the persons in whom Hawthorne was interested, he would report Standish's story as true.

When they had been in England a week, having witnessed the joy of the mother over the truant's return, and had been the recipients of the most charming hospitalities from the family, a letter came from the Chicago detective to Lord Putnam.

But the information it contained was very meagre.

He had traced Clifford Standish through a very clever disguise, but the whereabouts of Miss Harding remained a mystery.

In fact, the detective was inclined to believe that the actor had lost interest in the girl he had brought to Chicago. Perhaps he had wearied of her, and left her to despair. At any rate, he was conducting a correspondence, perhaps a flirtation with a handsome governess, Miss Erroll, employed by Mrs. Fitzgerald, a wealthy widow, on Prairie avenue.

The pride of Geraldine's mother and her repugnance to the name of her first husband had induced her, on bringing the girl to Chicago, to give out to the newspapers the paragraphs for publication stating that her daughter, Miss Fitzgerald, had been called home from school by the death of her father. Even in the household Geraldine bore the same name, and thus the clever detective was baffled by the simple substitution of another name; and while he had traced Clifford Standish up to his very entrance to the Prairie avenue mansion, he had no suspicion that the actor was interested in any one of the family besides the handsome governess.

But the same mail had brought Lady Putnam also a letter from Chicago, and when she had read it she called her son into her boudoir, where she sat alone, saying, in a flutter of excitement:

"I have a letter from America, dear Leland, and as you are so fond of everything American, perhaps you can remember the beautiful little American girl to whom you were betrothed when she was only about two years old?"

CHAPTER XLVI.

"I WILL TEST MY DARLING'S LOVE."

"I have heard or dreamt, it may be—What love is when true;How to test it—how to try it—It the gift of few.Only a true heart can find itTrue as it is true;Only eyes as clear and tenderLook it through and through."

The handsome young lord looked at his mother in surprise when she uttered those words: "Perhaps you remember the beautiful little American girl to whom you were betrothed when she was barely two years old?"

That episode of his childish days had almost escaped the young man's memory, so he said, carelessly:

"Indeed, I have almost forgotten it, dear mother."

"Then I must refresh your memory, Leland, for you are old enough now to redeem your pledge."

Lord Putnam looked startled, and said, hastily:

"Of course, you would not consider a trifle like that binding on a grown man."

The stately mother looked somewhat disappointed, and answered, slowly:

"I had hoped it might be, especially as you have no other entanglement."

"Why are you so sure of that, my dear mother?"

She started, and gave him a frightened look.

"Oh, I—I—hope there is none," she said, vaguely.

For a moment it came to him to tell her this love story.

"A mother's sympathy would be very sweet," he thought.

But a sudden impulse of pride restrained him.

"For what if it be proved that Geraldine is unworthy? How could I bear to be pitied?" he thought, with the sensitive pride of true manhood.

So he answered, evasively:

"I was only teasing you, dear mother. Go on with the story you have to tell me."

With a quick sigh of relief, she plunged into the subject:

"As I was saying, when you were a manly little lad of seven, a cousin of mine, from New York, paid me a long visit here, and she had with her a lovely little daughter of two years. You and the little girl were almost inseparable, so much so that my cousin Florence and myself began to look forward to a possible future that might unite your destinies in one. In brief, we solemnly betrothed you to each other."

"I begin to remember it all now, only the little one's name, which escapes my memory," smiled the young man, as a vision of a tiny golden-haired beauty returned to his mind from the past.

"But you were parted soon after that," continued Lady Putnam. "My cousin returned to her American home, and suffered a series of misfortunes. Her husband proved unfaithful, and a divorce followed. She married within two years a splendid gentleman—a Western millionaire—but the happiness of her second union was destroyed by a terrible trial. Her first husband stole away her lovely daughter, little Geraldine, and all these years the most rigid search has failed to find her, so that–"

"Mother, mother, I beg your pardon for interrupting—but—but—you said the girl's name was Geraldine," exclaimed the young man, starting to his feet and betraying for the first time an interest in the subject.

The utterance of that dear and beloved name—Geraldine—had touched a vibrating chord in his sore heart, and he waited in breathless eagerness for her reply.

Lady Putnam, not understanding his fiery impatience, replied, placidly:

"Had you, indeed, forgotten the very name of your dainty little American sweetheart, Leland? Yes, it was Geraldine—Geraldine Harding."

"Oh, Heaven!" and Lord Putnam sank back to his seat the picture of surprise.

Here was a romance indeed!

It was, it must be, his own loved Geraldine of whom his mother was telling him.

They had been betrothed from their very childhood, he and pretty Geraldine. How sweet was the thought!

No wonder their hearts had leaped to greet each other the first moment of their meeting in New York.

But the thought of the mystery that surrounded her fate now forced a hollow groan from his lips.

"What is it, my son? You are not ill?" exclaimed Lady Putnam, in alarm.

"No, no; it was only a passing twinge of pain. Do not mind me, but go on, if you have any more to tell. But perhaps your story is finished."

"No, indeed, for the best part is to come," smiled the lady.

"The best part," he repeated, incredulously.

"Yes, for I have a letter from Florence Fitzgerald, my cousin—the first letter in several years. I told you, did I not, that since her second marriage she has lived in Chicago—that great Western city where they held that wonderful World's Fair, you know, Leland."

"Yes, I know. I was there."

"Well, this letter from Chicago contains both good and bad news. Florence has lost her good and kind husband, and found her missing daughter."

"Found her daughter! Found Geraldine Harding!" cried the young man, springing to his feet, in wild excitement.

"Yes, or Geraldine Fitzgerald, as she calls her now. And, Leland, she will be a great heiress, for her mother's large private fortune will be given to her eldest daughter, as her second husband left her millions of money and a perfect palace of a home on Prairie avenue, the grandest location in the city."

She paused again in alarm, for this time her son had fallen back in his chair, his face death-white, his eyes half-closed.

Her words had been such a revelation to him that the joy of it all overcame him.

He remembered instantly the day he had seen the beautiful girl getting into the carriage before the artist's studio.

He had cried out that he knew her, but Ralph Washburn had said it was Miss Fitzgerald, a great heiress.

So he supposed himself mistaken, and the cruel disappointment had made him actually ill.

But now he knew that it was no mistake.

It was Geraldine herself that he had seen—dear, beautiful Geraldine, his own betrothed, his heart's darling.

He cared nothing for what his mother had said about her being a great heiress.

He loved her for herself alone, and he was rich enough for both.

He would rather have had her remain poor, so that he could have bestowed everything upon her himself.

But, oh, the joy of knowing that she was safe under her mother's roof, safe where he could find her again—it made him dizzy with such a rapture of joy and relief that his face paled with emotion, and his eyes nearly closed, startling Lady Putnam so that she sprang to his side, exclaiming, in alarm:

"You are indeed ill, my dear boy, and I must send for a physician. Please tell me in what way you are affected."

"It is my heart, dear mother!" he groaned, then caught her around the waist, laughing: "Forgive me for alarming you, dearest mother. I am not in the least ill; only overcome with joy at hearing that my darling betrothed is found again."

"Do you really mean it, Leland?" she inquired, dubiously.

"Indeed I do mean it, and I can hardly wait for the time when I shall return to America to claim my bonny bride."

She saw that a curious transformation had come over him.

His cheeks were flushed, and his dark-blue eyes flashed with joy.

She had never seen him look so radiantly happy.

But a sigh heaved her breast as she replied to his words:

"But I fear that I may never see her your bride, Leland, for her mother owns in the letter that the girl has formed an attachment for a poor young man she knew in New York when she was only a poor salesgirl at O'Neill's store. She clings stubbornly to this poor fireman, although she has been told all about her betrothal to you."

"She repudiates my claim, eh?" he laughed, gayly.

"It seems so," she answered.

"Let me see the letter, please, mother."

She gave it to him, and although it covered many pages, he read it with the deepest interest.

And no wonder, for he found there the story of all that had happened to Geraldine since she had boarded the train for Chicago with Clifford Standish. Mrs. Fitzgerald had not failed to relate the discomfiture of the villain who had kidnaped her daughter. Oh, the gladness of his heart when he found how Geraldine had been saved from the villain's power and restored to her mother's arms.

He knew that he could tell all his story to his mother now, for Geraldine was proved pure and faithful; but a moment's reflection decided him not to do so yet a while.

He had a romantic fancy to prove Geraldine's love to the utmost, now that she had come into fortune and position. Not as the Lord of Raneleigh would he woo her, but as Harry Hawthorne, the fireman. Then he would know the true value of her heart.