The Unseen Bridegroom Part 58

"Because I would not disgrace you and drag you down. I loved you far too well for that. I could have done nothing for you but bespatter you with the mire in which I wallowed, and I wanted you, my beautiful one--my pearl, my lily--to be spotless as mountain snow. It can do you no harm to know when I am dead."

"And Carl Walraven is nothing to me?"

"Nothing, Mollie--less than nothing. Not one drop of his black blood flows in your veins. Are you sorry, Mollie?"

"No," said Mollie, drawing a long breath. "No!" she repeated, more decidedly. "I am glad, Miriam--mother."

"You can call me mother, then, despite all?"

"Surely," Mollie said, gravely; "and now tell me all."

"Ah, it is a long, sad story--a wicked and miserable story of shame, and sin, and suffering! It is a cruel thing to blight your young life with the record of such horrible things."

"I may surely bear what others have to endure. But, Miriam, before you begin, do you really mean to tell me Mr. Walraven thinks me his daughter?"

"He believes it as surely as he believes in Heaven. He thinks you are his child--Mary Dane's daughter."

"Who was Mary Dane?"

"Your father's sister by marriage--done to death by Carl Walraven."

Mollie turned very pale.

"Tell me all," she said. "Begin at the beginning. Here, drink this--it is wine."

She had brought a pocket-flask with her. She filled a broken tea-cup and held it to the dry, parched lips.

Miriam drained it eagerly.

"Ah!" she said, "that is new life! Sit down here by me, Mollie, where I can see you; give me your hands. Now listen:

"Mollie, you are eighteen years old, though neither you nor Carl Walraven thinks so. You are eighteen this very month. His child, whom he thinks you are, would be almost seventeen, if alive. She died when a babe of two years old.

"Eighteen years ago, Mollie, I was a happy wife and mother. Down in Devons.h.i.+re, in the little village of Steeple Hill, my husband and I lived, where we had both been born, where we had courted and married, where we hoped to lay our bones at last. Alas and alas! he fills a b.l.o.o.d.y grave in the land of strangers, and I am drawing my last breath in far America. And all, Mollie--all owing to Carl Walraven."

She paused a moment. The girl held the cup of wine to her lips. A few swallows revived her, and enabled her to go on.

"There were two brothers, James and Stephen Dane. James, the elder by six years, was my husband and your father. We lived in the old Dane homestead--we three--a happy and prosperous household. We needed but your coming, my daughter, to fill our cup of joy to the very brim. No woman in all broad England was a happier wife and mother than Miriam Dane when you were laid upon my breast.

"We named our baby-girl Miriam--your father would have it so--and you grew healthful and beautiful, fair and blue-eyed, as it is in the nature of the Danes to be. I was glad you had not my black eyes and gypsy skin.

I think I loved you all the more because you were your father's image.

"Ah, Mollie, I never can tell you what a blessed, peaceful household we were until you were three months old! Then the first change took place--Stephen Dane got married.

"At Wortley Manor, just without the confines of Steeple Hill, lived Sir John Wortley and his lady. They had come to spend the hot months down in the country, and my lady had brought with her a London lady's-maid, full of London airs and graces, styles and fas.h.i.+ons. She was a pretty girl, this buxom Mary Linton, with flaxen curls, and light blue eyes, and a skin white as milk and soft as satin. She could sing like an angel, and dance like a fairy, and dress and talk like my lady herself.

"Of course, before she had been a month in the place, she had turned the heads of all the young fellows in the village, Stephen Dane's among the rest. But while she coquetted with all, she smiled most sweetly on Stephen, with his three hundred pounds laid by in bank, his broad shoulders, his lofty stature and his hearty looks. Three months after she came to Wortley Manor, she was Stephen Dane's wife.

"That marriage was the beginning of all the trouble, Mollie. They left the farm, this young pair, and set up a public-house. A public suited Mary Dane to the life. She flaunted in gay dresses and bright ribbons, and gossiped over the bar with the customers, and had all the news of the place put at her tongue's end. And Stephen, he took to drink--a little, at first, to be jovial with the customers; more and more gradually, until, at the end of the honey-moon, he was half his time on the fuddle. And Mary Dane didn't care. She laughed in her pretty way when people talked.

"'Let him take his gla.s.s, Mariam,' says she to me. 'He's fonder of me in his cups, and better-natured every way, than when he's sober. As long as my man doesn't beat me and pull the house about our heads, I'll never say him nay.'

"It was near the end of the second month that a sick traveler stopped at the Wortley Arms--so they called the inn--and lay very ill there for weeks and weeks. He had taken cold and got a fever, and he was very poorly and like to die. Mary Dane, with all her airy ways, had a tender heart and a soft head, and she turned to and nursed the sick man like a sister. They took such care of him at the Wortley Arms that he got well, and in three weeks was able to be up and about.

"This strange gentleman gave the name of Mr. Walls; and he was young and handsome, and very rich. He spent money like water; he paid the doctor and the landlord and the nurses as if he had been a prince. He had a pleasant word and jest for every one. He was hand and glove with Stephen Dane, and heaped presents on presents on his wife. He gave her silk dresses and gold rings and costly shawls and gay bonnets until people began to talk. What did he care for their talk? what did Mary Dane, either? He lingered and lingered. The talking grew louder, until, at last, it reached the ears of Stephen Dane. He took it quietly. 'It's mighty dull for the likes of you here, Mr. Walls,' he says to the gentleman, looking him full in the eye. 'It's no place for a young gentleman, in my notion. I think you had better be going.'

"'Do you?' says Mr. Walls, back again, as cool as himself. 'You are right, I dare say. I'll settle my bill to-night and be off to-morrow.'

"He did settle his bill at the bar before they parted, took a last gla.s.s with Stephen Dane, and walked up to his room, whistling. Steeple Hill never saw him more. When morning came he was far away, and Mary Dane with him."

Again Miriam paused; again Mollie held the wine-cup to her lips; again she drank and went on:

"I couldn't tell you, Mollie, if I would, the shock and the scandal that ran through Steeple Hill, and I wouldn't if I could. If it were in my power, such horrors would never reach your innocent ears. But they were gone, and Stephen Dane was like a man mad. He drank, and drank, and drank until he was blind drunk, and then, in spite of everybody, set off to go after them. Before he had got ten yards from his own doorstep he fell down in a fit, blood pouring from his month and nostrils. That night he died.

"The hour of his death, when he knew he had but a few moments to live, he turned every soul out of the room, and made his brother kneel down and take a solemn oath of vengeance.

"'I'll never rest easy in my grave, James,' said the dying man, 'and I'll never let you rest easy in your life, until you have avenged me on my wronger.'

"Your father knelt down and swore. It was a bad, bad death-bed, and a bad, bad oath. But he took it; and Stephen Dane died, with his brother's hand clasped in his, and his dying eyes fixed on his brother's face.

"They buried the dead man; and when the sods were piled above him, your father told me of the vow he had made--the vow he meant to keep. What could I say? what could I do? I wept woman's tears, I said woman's words.

I pleaded, I reasoned, I entreated--all in vain. He would go, and he went.

"He followed the guilty pair, like a blood-hound, for weary months and months. For a long time it seemed as though he must give up the search as fruitless; but at last, in the open street of a French city, he met the man Walls face to face. He flew at him like a madman, grasped his throat, and held him until the man turned black in the face. But he was lithe, and young, and powerful, and he shook him off at last. Then commenced a struggle for life or death. The street was a lonely one; the time past midnight. No one was abroad; not a creature was to be seen.

Walls pulled out a pistol and shot James Dane through the head. With a cry of agony, the murdered man fell forward on his face. Another instant, and Walls had fled. The dead man was alone in the deserted street.

"Next day the papers were full of the mysterious murder, but before next day Walls and Mary Dane were far away. Rewards were offered by the government, the police were set on the track, but all in vain--the murderer was not to be found.

"But there was one who knew it, and to whom the knowledge was a death-blow--guilty Mary Dane. At all times she had been more weak than wicked, and when Walls had fled home, blood-stained and ghastly, and in his first frenzy had told her all, she dropped down at his feet like a dead woman.

"Mary Dane fled with him from the scene of his crime, because his baby daughter lay on her arm, and she would not see its guilty father die a felon's death; but her heart was torn with remorse from that hour. She never held up her head again. Her wicked love turned to hatred and loathing; the very first opportunity she left him, and, like a distracted creature, made her way home.

"Walls made no effort to follow her--he thought she had gone off in a fit of remorse and misery and drowned herself. He was glad to be rid of her, and he left France at once, and wandered away over the world.

"Mary Dane came home with her child--home to die. On her death-bed she told me the story of my husband's death, and from the hour I heard it, Reason tottered on her throne. I have never been sane since my misery drove me mad.

"Mary Dane died, and I buried her. The child went to the work-house--I would not have touched it with a pair of tongs--and there it, too, died of lack and care. And so the miserable story of sin and shame ended, as all such stories must end.

"But the misery did not end here. You were left me, but I seemed to care for you no longer. I sat down, a stunned and senseless thing, and let all belonging to me go to rack and ruin. The farm went, the furniture went, the homestead went--I was left a widowed, penniless, half-crazed wretch. Thus all was gone but the clothes upon our backs--you went, too.

We were starving, but for the pitying charity of others. As you sat singing by the road-side, the manager of a strolling band of players overheard you, took a fancy to your pretty looks, and ways, and voice, and made me an offer for you. I don't think I knew what I was doing half the time--I didn't then--I let you go.

"When you were gone I broke down altogether, and the authorities of the village took and shut me up in a lunatic asylum. The years I spent there--and I spent six long years--are but a dull, dead blank. My life began again when they sent me forth, as they said--cured.

"I left Steeple Hill and began my life as a tramp. I joined a band of gypsies, and took to their ways--fortune-telling, rush-weaving--anything that came up; and I was black enough and weather-beaten enough to pa.s.s for one of them. I had but one desire left in life. To hunt up the manager of the little theater, and see my daughter again. I didn't want you back. What could I, a miserable tramp, homeless, houseless, do with a young girl?--but I hungered and thirsted for the sound of your voice, for the sight of your face. I would know you anywhere--you were of the kind that do not change much. I knew I would recognize you as soon as I saw you.

"For two years I strolled about with the gypsy gang, searching in vain.

Then my time came, and I saw you. It was at Liverpool, embarking on board a vessel for America. I had money--made in those two yeas wandering--hidden in my breast, more than enough for my pa.s.sage. I crossed the Atlantic in the same vessel with you, and never lost sight of you since.