Dainty's Cruel Rivals; Or, The Fatal Birthday
A startled cry burst from the man's lips as a terrible suspicion drove
the bounding blood coldly back upon his heart.
Had the deserted cabin been fired by Olive and Ela?
If so, what had been their motive? Something very important surely, for
conscious guilt had looked from their pale faces, had marked their
skulking flight from the scene.
If Dainty Chase had gone to the cabin to seek refuge with the old black
woman, their motive was not hard to fathom, and as Franklin bounded
toward the scene of the fire, it all flashed over his mind like
lightning.
The life of Dainty was a menace to Mrs. Ellsworth and her nieces, for if
she could prove her marriage to Lovelace Ellsworth on the middle of
July, she would wrest from his step-mother the wealth she claimed by
reason of his failure to marry before his birthday, and in which she was
making her nieces joint sharers.
Yes, all three of them had a terrible interest in the girl's death; the
man realized it fully.
And Mrs. Ellsworth but a little while ago had given him a deep insight
into her evil nature.
Perhaps she had sent her nieces--as wicked as herself--to follow poor
Dainty and devise means for getting her out of the way.
It was horrible to think of such a crime, but he made haste to verify
his suspicions by darting around to an end window not yet wreathed in
the leaping flames and peering into the house, though the heat scorched
him and the smoke was stifling.
He drew back with a cry of horror and indignation.
Yes, Dainty was there!
On gaining the shelter of the cabin, seeking the protection of the old
mammy, whom she counted as her only friend, the girl, in her grief and
sorrow and cruel disappointment at finding the place untenanted, had
sunk into a heavy swoon on the hard floor.
Doubtless her cruel rivals, following and beholding her piteous plight,
had seen their opportunity and taken instant advantage of it.
Roused from her unconsciousness by the crackling flames and stifling
smoke, the girl was just rising from the floor, and the despair on her
face as she comprehended her terrible environment would haunt John
Franklin to his dying day.
The great, sublime pity that rose to flood-tide in the man's tender
heart submerged every thought of self in an instant.
No escape seemed possible for Dainty. The inflammable log cabin was
surrounded by fire, and she stood in the center of the awful glare like
some pale, beautiful martyr at the stake.
Franklin caught up a great bowlder from the ground and dashed it again
and again against the sash till it was broken in, then, stripping off
his coat, muffled his head in it, and sprang like a hero through smoke
and flame to the rescue of his master's bride, catching her up in his
strong arms, and bearing her, after a fierce conflict with the fire,
back through the broken sash to life and safety.
And not a moment too soon, for the roof of the cabin crashed in on the
burning walls ere he had staggered three yards from the scene of his
heroic deed, and the fierce flames, leaping higher, conveyed to two
anxious watchers at Ellsworth the news that they had succeeded in their
damnable crime.
Franklin realized that it was best to let them hug that belief to their
hearts, so all that he did afterward that night was under the veil of
secrecy.
He succeeded in getting an old buggy and conveying Dainty to the
station, where he placed her on the midnight train and bought her a
ticket for Richmond.
No one but black mammy was let into the secret, and unseen by any one in
the gloom of the midnight hour and in the scarcity of travel that night,
she was sent on her way to her mother, Franklin saying to her earnestly:
"Let me advise you, Mrs. Ellsworth, to keep close to your mother, and
away from the fiendish enemies who are seeking to compass your death. I
will take the best care of your husband, and may God send him recovery
from his hurt, that he may restore you to your rightful position, and
punish the wretches who have wronged you both!"
CHAPTER XXXI.
LOST! LOST! LOST!
"Stop! stranger; may I speak with you?--
Ah, yes, you needn't fear--
While I whisper through the grating,
I wouldn't have them hear.
These jailers, if a body
But chance to speak her name,
They roll their eyes so savage,
As if they meant to tame
Some wild beast, and they scare me.
Come nearer, nearer yet;
Come near me till I whisper,
'Have you seen her?--seen Annette?'
"What did they bring me here for?
I say, I want to go!
How shall I ever find her
When I am locked in so?
They lied to me--
'Twas once there in the street,
Where I sat on a doorstep
To rest my aching feet.
They say, 'We'll lead you to her,'
And many times said, 'Come,'
At last I followed, eager
To find my little one.
But when I bid them bring her.
They answer, 'By and by.'
Just turn the key, please, won't you,
And let me slip out sly?"
One of the most troublesome patients at the Virginia Asylum for the
Insane in Staunton was a pretty, pale little woman named Mrs. Chase.
To look at her sitting very quiet--sometimes with her fair little hands
meekly folded, and a brooding sorrow in her tearful, deep blue eyes--you
would have said she was a most interesting patient, and could not surely
give any one trouble.
But the women attendants in her ward could have told you quite a
different story.
Mrs. Chase had a suicidal mania, and had to be watched closely all the
time to keep her from taking her own life.
These attendants would have explained to you that all insane people have
some hobby that they ride industriously all the time.
There was the man who believed himself to be Napoleon reincarnated, and
amused everybody with his military toggery and braggadocio.
There was the lady who called herself Queen Victoria, and was never seen
without a huge pasteboard crown.
There were the two men who each claimed to be the Christ, and frowned
disapproval on the claims of each other.
There was the youth who imagined himself a violin virtuoso, and fiddled
all day long, varying his performance by pausing to pass around the hat
for pennies, of which he had accumulated, it was said, more than a
gallon already.
There was the forsaken bride who was waiting every day for the false
lover to return and bear her away on a blissful wedding-tour.
There was the man who believed himself already dead, and solemnly
recounted to you the particulars of the horrible death he had died,
adding that he was detained from his grave by the delay of the cruel
undertakers in taking his measure for the coffin. He had actually been
known to slip into the dead-house one day, and lie down in a casket
intended for a real corpse, having to have force employed to eject him
from his narrow abode.
Again, there was the man who imagined himself to be a grain of corn, and
fled with screams of alarm from the approach of a chicken. These, and
scores of others with hobbies, tragic or ridiculous, as the case might
be; but not one of them all, said the attendants, needed such care and
watching as pale, pretty, meek little Mrs. Chase.
Her hobby was a lost or stolen child.
No one knew whether or not there was any truth in her claim. She had
been brought there from Richmond, a friendless stranger, who had been
found wandering homeless in the street, raving of a lost child.
Her story was just as likely to be false as true, they said, for
lunatics imagined many things. It might be her child had died; for she
was always praying for death, that she might find her lost darling
again.
It was melancholy madness. The hardest to cure of all, said the doctors,
and she had been frustrated in several frantic attempts to end her life.
She was so clever and so cunning that they had to watch her constantly;
but even the most impatient of the attendants could not give her a cross
word, her grief was so pathetic, and she seemed so sorrowfully helpless
in her frail, gentle prettiness.
"Have you seen my daughter, my darling little Dainty? She is lost;
stolen away from me while I slept," she would say to every strange
person she saw, and her pale face would glow as she added, proudly:
"She was the prettiest girl in the world. I have often heard people say
so. She was as beautiful as a budding rose, with hair like the sunshine,
and eyes as blue as the sky. Her little hands were white as lilies, and
her feet so tiny and graceful, every one turned to watch her as she
passed; and was it any wonder she caught such a grand, rich lover? She
would have married him if she had not been lost that night. Oh, let me
out! let me go and find my darling! You have no right to lock me in
here!"
Then she would fly into paroxysms of anger, trying to batter down the
walls and escape from what she called her stony prison; and at other
times she would pray for death, crying:
"Oh, God! send me death; for surely my darling must be dead, or she
would have come back to me long before they locked me up here! They
stole her away and killed her, my sweet Dainty, the cruel enemies who
hated and envied her so much for her angelic beauty and her noble lover!
Oh, who would keep me back from death, when only through its dark gates
can I find my child again?"
But they watched her carefully; they allowed her no means of ending the
life of which she was so weary; and so the months flew by from September
to spring, and it was almost a year since Dainty had left her home so
gladly for the country visit that had ended so disastrously, and with
such a veil of mystery over her strange fate.
"Where is Annette? Where is she?
Does anybody know?"
CHAPTER XXXII.
IT WAS THE OVERFLOWING DROP OF SORROW IN THE CUP
THAT ALREADY BRIMMED OVER.
"Alone with my hopeless sorrow,
No other mate I know!
I strive to awake tomorrow,
But the dull words will not flow.
I pray--but my prayers are driven
Aside by the angry Heaven,
And weigh me down with woe!"
Young, beautiful, penniless, and alone in the world! Oh, what a cruel
fate!
Dainty realized it in all its bitterness when she arrived in Richmond
that dull October day, and found the first snow of the season several
inches deep on the ground, making her shiver with cold in her thin
summer gown and straw hat.
But her heart was warm with the thought of the dear mother she was going
to rejoin.
What a glad reunion it would be for both in spite of her bitter
troubles, when, clasped in that dear mother's arms, she should lay her
weary head on that dear breast, and sob out all her grief to
sympathizing ears.
She had a little money in a small purse that Franklin had forced her to
take as a loan, and she hired a cab to take her to her old home, where
she had not a doubt of still finding her mother.
Alas! what was her horror to find the small house burned to the ground!
Dismissing the cab, she started on a round of the neighborhood, seeking
news of the dear one.
But there were new neighbors in the sparsely settled place, and no one
knew anything about the little lady who had kept boarders at the house
on the corner.
Half frozen with the bitter cold, she dragged herself to the corner
grocery, thinking that Mr. Sparks could surely give her some
information.
His stolid, well-fed face was the first familiar one she had met, and
she wondered why he wore that broad band of crape about his coat-sleeve.
"Is it really you, Miss Chase? Well, well! you're quite a stranger! Been
ill? You don't look as blooming as when you went away in the summer.
Well, it was hard on you losing your little mother in that cruel