Dainty's Cruel Rivals; Or, The Fatal Birthday
Sheila Kelly shrugged her shoulders, and proceeded to fill the dying
lamp with fresh oil from a tin can she had brought in her capacious
basket. Then sitting down on the foot of the narrow cot, she began and
recounted the events of the morning to her anxious listener, ending
with:
"Shure, the mane, murtherin' Ashley is safe in jail, t' ould Leddy
Ellsworth, going from one fainting fit ter another, and Masther Lovelace
a-laying with ter bullet in his head, niver spakin' a worrud since he
was shot, niver opening his eyes, jist a-dying by inches, sez all the
docthers."
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;