Dainty's Cruel Rivals; Or, The Fatal Birthday
Stonewall's back was a woman, whom he presently lifted down, exclaiming,
cheerfully:
"Git up, mammy. Come out to the gate, Sairy Ann! I've brought you gran'
company from the train, and you must spread a feast and rejoice! Come
in, and welcome, Mrs. Ellsworth!"
"Oh, mammy! I've come back to you to die!" sobbed Dainty, falling
wearily on the old woman's ample breast.
CHAPTER XXXVI.
"ONLY TO SEE YOU, MY DARLING."
Oh, what a welcome Dainty received from the true hearts in that humble
home!
They treated her like a queen, but so warm was their devotion, and so
eager their interest, they soon drew from her lips all that had happened
to her in Richmond.
The women's tears fell copiously, and even Hiram Peters could not help
drawing the backs of his horny hands now and then across his kind, moist
eyes, while he groaned:
"I swow you had troubles fit to kill you!"
"At the last I could bear my shame and misery no longer. I made up my
mind to come back to West Virginia, and try to find some evidence of my
marriage, that my child should not be born under a cloud of shame," said
Dainty, sorrowfully.
"Poor lamb!" groaned mammy; and the others sighed in concert, for when
they had heard all she could tell about her marriage, Mr. Peters was
fain to confess that her prospects looked very dark.
"You see, Mrs. Ellsworth, madame," he said, proudly giving her her true
name, bringing a flash of pleasure to her eyes, "that old man, the
county clerk that must have issued the license, died soon after, and
likewise the preacher of that little church in the woods; so, unless you
can find out what became of the license, it will be a hard job to prove
the marriage."
"I fear so," sobbed Dainty; then she added: "Do you think, mammy, that
Mrs. Ellsworth is still unrelenting?"
"Hard as a stone, honey!"
"But perhaps if she knew the truth, that a child is to come of that
secret marriage, she might relent and pity it enough to acknowledge me
as Love's wife," sighed Dainty, anxiously.
But her listeners all persuaded her that such a thing was impossible.
The woman would never acknowledge anything that would cause her to lose
her grip on the wealth she was holding by a shameless fraud.
"Honey, don't yo' go nigh them deceitful wretches! Don't yo' even let
them know that yo' are alive, or there'll be a new plot set on foot
direckly 'ginst yo' sweet life and the one that's comin' too! Hab yo'
forgot how the old 'oman shet yo' up in dat dark dungeon till yo'
pisened yo'self, and how dem gals tried to burn yo' up in de ole cabin,
and would hab 'ceeded, too, but for John Franklin breakin' in de winder
and fetchin' yo' out--an' his face an' han's an' hair all scorched
drefful!" expostulated mammy.
Among them all they persuaded her that it was better not to try to prove
her rights than to lose her life.
"You stay here quietly long o' us, honey, and don't let no one know who
you air, and arter your chile comes, you may leave it with me ef you
wants, and I'll tek keer of it till the good Lord makes a better way for
it. And all of us we'll pray and pray that good luck may come to you,"
exclaimed Mrs. Peters, piously, while her husband chimed in, fervently:
"You kin 'pend on us to be your firm fren's fer life, ma'am, and you air
jist as welcome ter anythin' we got as any one of our nine boys!"
Oh, how their humble kindness went to her wounded heart, encouraging her
to cry out, passionately:
"There is one thing I crave more than I ought on earth, and perhaps some
one might manage it for me; it is to see my husband's face again!"
A dark cloud seemed suddenly to fall over them all, and she cried in
dismay:
"Why do you all look so strange and frightened? Oh, my God! do not tell
me he is dead!"
"No, deares', yo' husban' ain't dead!" sighed mammy, and burst into
sudden loud sobs, as she added: "Dey done tooken him away dis larst week
to New York, honey. Doctor Platt, dat good ole man, yo' know, and
Franklin, his body-servant, as sabed yo' from de fire, yo' know. And yo'
kain't nebber look on his face no mo', fer Doctor Platt say he was
gettin' dang'ous an' might hurt somebuddy, so he 'suaded Missis
Ellsworth to fasten him up in a 'sylum way off yonder, an' him'll nebber
come home no mo'!"
CHAPTER XXXVII.
A WONDERFUL DISCOVERY.
Fortune had indeed seemed to favor Mrs. Ellsworth.
Nearly nine months had passed since her step-son's attempted murder; and
though his bodily health seemed good, no change for the better had taken
place in his mental condition.
Another very pleasing fact was that Dainty Chase had never turned up
again to annoy her with assertions of a secret marriage, to which she
could produce no proof but her simple word. She wondered in her secret
mind what had become of the girl, for her nieces were too prudent to
confess to her the crime by which they supposed their beautiful cousin
to have perished.
They suspected that while glad to have the girl out of the way, she
might feel squeamish over downright murder.
So they decided that it was just as well not to tell her that they had
tracked the hapless girl to the negro cabin, and having seen her fall
senseless on the floor, had fired the ramshackle old place in front of
both doors and fled.
As the cabin had burned completely to the ground, they supposed that
their victim had perished in the flames; but their guilty consciences
had never permitted them to venture near the _debris_ to see if her
charred bones remained a mute witness of their awful deed.
As the winter wore away and no more was heard of Dainty or her mother,
they confidently looked on the girl as dead; but if their consciences
reproached them for their sin, they allowed no sign of it to appear on
their careless faces as they plunged into every gayety offered by their
new position. The winter had been an epoch in their hitherto
poverty-stricken lives, and they made the most of it, Mrs. Ellsworth
giving them a lavish allowance, and permitting them to travel with
friends wherever they chose.
Thus they had had a trip to California in December, and on returning in
February had been given glimpses of the gay season in New York and
Washington before returning in March to silent, gloomy Ellsworth, where
the mistress had remained inflexibly on guard over her step-son, lest
the doctors, peradventure, should do something to restore his mind.
"That meddlesome old Doctor Platt keeps on hoping for something to
happen. The other physicians have given it up, and say that Love will be
an idiot for life. He is sure that if the bullet could be removed, he
would be restored; but I will not permit them to cut into the poor boy's
head, and perhaps destroy his life as well as his reason," she often
complained, until the old doctor gave up all hopes of gaining her
consent to the operation that he wished performed.
But he still came to visit Love in a friendly way, although the young
man continued in the same state of seeming hopeless idiocy, never
improving with the lapse of time, until, in desperation, the old man,
with Franklin's assistance, concocted a daring scheme.
He had read with contempt and abhorrence the mind of the woman, and knew
that she wished to keep her step-son in his present state, and that no
proposition looking to his cure would be entertained by the selfish
creature who wished to keep her grip on the young man's property. She
would rather see him dead than restored to his rich dower of brains and
wealth.
So when, late in March, she was first informed by Franklin, and
afterward by Doctor Platt himself, of a change for the worse in the
patient, she was more pleased than sorry.
Love's condition was changing, they said, from simple idiocy to active
insanity that would necessitate his removal from Ellsworth to a place of
close confinement.
"He may develop at any moment a homicidal mania, and prove terribly
dangerous to his attendants. Indeed, Franklin has grown nervous already
over some of his more violent moods, and threatens to resign his place,"
said Doctor Platt.
This was indeed most welcome news for Mrs. Ellsworth. Nothing except
Love's death could have pleased her better.
Though she had been fond of him once, his opposition to her will, and
his contempt of her two favorite nieces, had turned her lukewarm
fondness to active hate.
So it was hard for her to assume a look of concern when it was all she
could do to keep from openly rejoicing. She dropped her face in her
hands to keep the keen old doctor from openly reading its expression.
"It is a very delicate and peculiar case," continued Doctor Platt. "You
can not place him in an idiot asylum, because he is not now an
idiot--yet his lunacy is not developed enough to commit him for lunacy.
At the same time, he may become violent at any time and--do murder! It
is not right to keep him at Ellsworth with such terrible risks attached
to his staying. I have a plan, if you choose to consider it. If not,
you may consult other physicians."
"Let me hear your plan first," she answered, affably, in her secret joy.
"Let me take him to a private sanitarium in New York, well known to me
as the best place in the United States for a person in his condition. It
is a high-priced place, but you can afford it for the sake of the relief
of mind you would experience in removing this threatening danger from
Ellsworth, and in knowing that his hopelessly incurable insanity had the
kindest treatment."
Those two words caught her instant attention.
"You honestly believe him hopelessly insane?" she cried.
"Yes," he replied; saying, inwardly: "God forgive me for lying, but it
is in a righteous cause!"
In fact, he was quaking with fear lest she should suspect the motive
lying at the bottom of his anxiety to take his patient to New York.
If she had been a well-read woman, he would have been afraid to risk
such a plot; but he knew that she scarcely ever scanned the columns of a
newspaper.
Otherwise she would have been cognizant of the new scientific discovery,
one of the greatest of the nineteenth century triumphs, and most
important to the medical cult--the discovery of the wonderful X-ray of
light by the famous German savant, Professor Roentgen.
She would have known that by the operation of this X-ray the formerly
dense human body could be made transparent enough to be seen through,
revealing not only the skeleton with all its delicate mechanism, but the
presence of every foreign element, so that already bullets had been
located and removed from the bodies of patients who had suffered
tortures from them for years. These wonderful facts filled the columns
of newspapers and the pages of magazines. The whole world was wild with
enthusiasm. It was the greatest and most beneficial discovery of the
nineteenth century, they said, and Professor Roentgen's thoughtful brow
was laureled with a fame that made him greater than a king.
Mrs. Ellsworth had never read a line about the X-ray. If you had asked
her she would not have understood what you meant.
But every fiber of the intelligent old doctor's body vibrated with joy
of the new discovery, and the hope that through its means his patient
might be restored to health.
The dream that he dreamed night and day was to carry Lovelace Ellsworth
to New York and have the bullet in his head located by means of the
wonderful X-ray.
"Once located it might in all probability be removed, and your master
restored to himself," he said confidentially to the clever Franklin, who
rejoiced exceedingly at this little ray of hope in the darkness of his
master's fate.
But realizing the deep interest Mrs. Ellsworth had in preventing Love's
restoration to reason, they knew it was useless to tell her of the new