Dainty's Cruel Rivals; Or, The Fatal Birthday
but al'ays hankered arter one; but the good Lord He sent me sons every
time till I've nine on 'em; and I'm past fifty, and no more hopes of a
darter now, though there'll be darters-in-law a-plenty, no doubt, when
my boys begin to mate. Well, now you know all you ast me about, chile,
and I'm jest as cur'us over you. What mought your name be, and wherever
did you drap from, anyway?"
"I--I don't know," Dainty faltered, weakly, with a bewildered air.
"Sho! you don't know? Ah, well! I see how 'tis. Your memory ain't come
back clear yet; and no wonder, after sech a hard sickness as you've come
through! Never mind, dearie, it'll all come back arter awhile. Are you
hungry now?"
"Thirsty!" faltered the girl; and like a flash the past came back to
her, conjured up by that single word, presenting to her mind the dark,
noisome cell where she had suffered so terribly with the cruel, burning
fever and the terrible thirst, until longing for death, she had pressed
the bitter poison to her parched lips.
Then all was blank till now, and she wondered feebly how she had escaped
death, and still more, how she had been released from her terrible
captivity, and been brought here to this remote mountain camp.
The woman gave her a draught of clear, cold, sparkling water that
cleared her faculties immensely, and closing her heavy-lidded eyes
again, she began to recall the past from the dim shades of memory.
It was a bitter task, and the hot tears flashed beneath her lashes as
she remembered that Sheila Kelly had told her that Love, her husband,
was wounded and dying.
The next morning she said wistfully to the kind woman:
"I am beginning to remember things now. Do you know a place called
Ellsworth?"
"I've heerd tell of it; it's quite seven miles from here."
"Seven miles! Then how on earth did I ever get to this place?" wondered
Dainty, but she only said, reticently:
"A lady named Chase is there, and I am her daughter. I was very ill, and
I can not remember how I came to be out in the woods; but I would like
for you to send word to my mother."
"I will see about it," replied Mrs. Peters; and after consulting her
family, she reported that all were too busy to go to Ellsworth now, but
they intended to break up camp the first of October, to return to their
winter home at the station, and if she could be patient till then, she
should have a bed in the wagon, and they could easily leave her at
Ellsworth on their way past.
With this she was forced to be content, having no claim on her simple
entertainers, save that of humanity; but the week, after all, slipped
away quite fast in the delicious languor of returning health; and one
day the Peters family loaded up three long wagons with their household
goods, and set forth for home, having made Dainty and the mother quite
comfortable on a mattress for the long journey over the worst stretch of
rocky mountain road known in that section of a very rough country.
It seemed like some beautiful dream at last, when, after kindly
farewells from her homely benefactors, she stood at the gates of
Ellsworth in the chilly sunset of a windy October day, walking slowly
and weakly along the graveled paths, past fading summer flowers and
flaunting autumn blooms, on her way to the great house, her heart
leaping with joy at the thought of her mother's kiss of welcome, and
sinking with pain in the fear that she should find her darling dead and
buried, according to Sheila's story.
CHAPTER XXVIII.
MORE BITTER THAN DEATH.
"No--there's nothing left us now
But to mourn the past;
Vain was every ardent vow--
Never yet did Heaven allow
Love so warm, so wild to last.
Not even hope could now deceive me,
Life itself looks dark and cold;
Oh, thou never more canst give me
One dear smile like those of old!"
Dainty dragged her trembling limbs as fast as her strength would permit
toward the great house, lifting her large blue eyes eagerly up to the
windows in search of some familiar face, though hope was very weak in
her trembling heart.
It was two long, weary months since the first day of August, and what
might not have happened in that time?
If Sheila Kelly had told her the truth, her young husband must be dead
and buried long ago, and the only friend left to her in the wide, cruel
world would be her mother, if indeed that dear mother lived, for what
more likely than that she had died of heart-break at her daughter's
mysterious disappearance?
Dainty, who knew so well her mother's devotion, feared that such a
calamity was but too possible.
But she realized that even if her mother lived she was very unlikely to
be found at Ellsworth now. Her bitter enemies would have driven her away
long ago.
Still a subtle yearning drew her to the home of her beloved, though, as
she drew near to the scene of her hopes or fears, her keen emotion
almost overwhelmed her, driving the faint color back from her wan cheeks
to her weak heart, and making her tremble so that she could scarcely
advance one foot beyond the other.
How changed and lonely everything seemed since she had gone away? She
did not even meet one of the servants as she hurried on, wrapping
closely about her shivering form a thin cashmere scarf that kind Sairy
Ann Peters had pressed on her to protect her, in her light summer dress,
from the cold autumn winds. Thus panting, trembling, starting, and
alternately hoping and despairing, she came close enough at last to gaze
at the upper windows of the handsome suite of apartments that belonged
to Lovelace Ellsworth.
She paused with a suppressed sob of excitement, and swept her glance
rapidly from window to window.
Suddenly, with a cry of ecstatic joy, the girl sank to her knees with
clasped, upraised hands.
"God in Heaven, I thank Thee!"
On her pallid, hopeless face had come such a light of joy and gratitude
and boundless surprise as can only shine after long grief and pain when
the grave seems to give up its dead and our beloved live again.
Her wistful, yearning eyes had been granted the most joyful sight that
Heaven could have given--the sight of Lovelace Ellsworth sitting at the
open window of his room, gazing with a strange, intent look at the
setting sun as it sank below the mountain-tops and left the world in
shadow.
"God in Heaven, I thank Thee! He lives; my beloved one, we shall be
restored to each other!" repeated the girl in an ecstacy of gladness;
and her dark-blue eyes clung rapturously to the handsome face, wondering
at its pallor and strange, intent look.
"Dear Love, how pale and thin and sad he looks! He has been ill,
perhaps, or it is grief for me that has changed him so! It is strange
that he never found me when I was such a short distance away; but there
are many mysteries to be unraveled yet," she murmured, rising to her
feet, and going in haste to a side entrance, where she could easily gain
the upper portion of the house without being detected.
As she mounted the stairs, she was thinking so gladly of the joyful
reunion with Love, that she did not observe, until they were face to
face, a lady coming out of his room. It was Mrs. Ellsworth; and as she
met the pale, trembling girl gliding like a shadow in the semi-darkness
of the corridor, a long, loud, wailing cry burst from her startled lips,
and making an effort to fly from what she took for a veritable ghost,
she tripped, and fell prostrate to the floor.
Dainty saw her cruel aunt distinctly, heard the startled cry and the
fall; but she never looked back, but ran eagerly to her darling's room.
She tore open the door, and rushed over the threshold, across the room,
with outstretched arms.
"Oh, my love, my darling!"
Her young husband was sitting at the window in an easy-chair, with a
velvet dressing-gown wrapped about him, and at the sound of her
entrance, he turned his face around, and looked at the intruder blankly.
Blankly!--that was the only word that described it.
If Dainty had been the greatest stranger in the world, her young
husband could not have turned upon her lovely, agitated face a more
calm, unrecognizing stare.
For a moment she stopped, and regarded him pitifully, sobbing:
"Oh, Love! am I so changed you do not know your own little Dainty, your
wife? Oh, look at me closely! I have been ill, and lost my beauty for a
little while. They had to cut my hair, but, dearest, it will soon grow
again as pretty as ever!"
She moved closer, and timidly clasped her arms about his neck.
"Oh, my darling! do not look at me as if I were a stranger! Oh, do not!
That cold, stony stare almost breaks my heart! Oh, Love! it is your own
little Dainty! I was stolen away from you, and oh! I have passed through
such a terrible experience! You have been ill, too, have you not, my
dearest one? Oh, how thin and pale you are, but just as handsome as
ever!" and she clasped him close in a warm embrace, and showered fond,
wifely kisses on his cold, unresponsive lips.
The door opened suddenly, and an intelligent-looking mulatto man came in
very softly, as if into a sick room.
Dainty knew him at once as Love's valued personal attendant Franklin.
Her arms dropped from Love's neck, and she blushed as he exclaimed:
"So it's really you, Miss Chase?"
"Why, Franklin, you knew me at once, but your master looks on me as a
stranger!" she answered, in surprise that grew boundless as the man
returned, sadly:
"Alas! Miss Chase, you and all the world must ever remain strangers to
my poor master now!"
The mulatto was a clever, well-educated person, and his words, strange
as they sounded, carried the ring of truth.
"What can you mean?" she faltered.
"Miss Chase, where have you been? Have you heard nothing of Mr.
Ellsworth's sad condition?" he asked, respectfully.
Still keeping her arm around Love's neck, the young girl answered,
gently:
"I was kidnapped the night before my wedding, Franklin, and the next day
I was told Mr. Ellsworth had been shot and was dying. Then I was taken
very ill, and knew nothing more till I returned here to-day, when I was
overjoyed to learn that he was still alive!"
The man looked at her with genuine sadness.
"Ah, Miss Chase! I do not know whether you should be glad or not. Is not
this more cruel than death?"
"I do not understand," she faltered, uncomprehendingly; and he answered,
with intense sympathy:
"You have spoken to him, and he does not know you--you, the dearest
creature on earth to him, Miss Chase! Neither does he recognize any one
else, nor remember anything. There is a bullet in his head that the
doctors can not extricate, and it has destroyed his mental faculties
completely. His health is good, but he has forgotten the past, and lost
even the power of speech. He will never be anything, they say, but a
harmless idiot."
She cried out with a terrible anger that it was not true, that she could
not believe it; he was trying to deceive her and break her heart.
He was usually a quiet, stolid man, but the tears came to his eyes as
she knelt on the floor and wound her arms about Love in passionate
embraces, and, with tears that might have moved a heart made of stone,
called on him to pity her and speak to her, his love, his Dainty, his
true wife, whose heart was breaking for one tender word from his dear
lips!
CHAPTER XXIX.
AS WE KISS THE DEAD.
Alas! nor words, nor tears, nor embraces, nor reproaches could move Love
Ellsworth from his statue-like repose.
He suffered Dainty's caresses passively, but he did not return them, and
his large, beautiful dark eyes dwelt on her face with the gentle calm of
an infant whose intellect is not yet awakened.
"You see how it is, Miss Chase, and God knows how sorry I am to see my