Saved from herself or, On the edge of doom
427--A Wizard of the Moors By St. George Rathborne
426--The Bride of the Tomb and Queenie’s Terrible Secret
By Mrs. Alex. McVeigh Miller
425--A College Widow By Frank H. Howe
SAVED FROM HERSELF;
OR,
ON THE EDGE OF DOOM
BY
ADELAIDE STIRLING
AUTHOR OF
“A Forgotten Love,” “Nerine’s Second Choice,” “A Sacrifice to Love,”
“Her Evil Genius,” “Above All Things,” “The Girl He Loved,”
“Love and Spite,” “When Love Dawns.” All published
exclusively in the EAGLE SERIES.
NEW YORK
STREET & SMITH, PUBLISHERS
79-89 SEVENTH AVENUE
Copyright, 1898 and 1899
By STREET & SMITH
Saved from Herself
All rights reserved, including that of translation into foreign
languages, including the Scandinavian.
SAVED FROM HERSELF
CHAPTER I.
THE THEATER.
“I don’t see,” said Mrs. Trelane discontentedly, “why the woman could
not have kept you.”
She spoke to her own reflection in the glass with an angry frown. What
was the good of an exquisite toilet, of a face that did not look within
ten years of its age, when seated on the sofa opposite was a grown-up
daughter whose presence in the house might spoil all her own well-laid
plans?
Just a week ago her only child, aged seventeen, had been returned from
her cheap boarding-school with a scathing note from the principal
regarding her unpaid bills. It was unbearable, even though she had
forbidden the girl to be about the house or meet any of her visitors.
To-night, when the table was laid for a party of two, the presence of a
third was--impossible!
“Ismay,” Mrs. Trelane turned sharply to the tall, slim figure coiled on
the sofa, “couldn’t you take a maid and go out somewhere to-night? Oh,
no--I can’t spare you! Well, mind you don’t let Abbotsford see you--he
doesn’t know you are, you know!”
The girl looked with somber impatience at her mother in her satin gown,
so great a contrast to her own shabby black serge.
“All right,” she said quietly, “but if he keeps coming here every day
he is bound to find out my existence.”
“It won’t matter--by and by.” Mrs. Trelane gave a little conscious
laugh and poured some peach-blossom scent on her handkerchief. Ismay,
as the delicate odor reached her, moved her head as if it sickened her.
Three years away from a mother who had never loved her had deadened
the memory of the regret, the loneliness, that had been her portion
always. But to-night she saw very clearly that she was, as always, a
stone in the road of Mrs. Trelane’s life.
She got up, with a leisurely grace, and looked about her as the
door-bell rang and Mrs. Trelane swished softly out of the room. She
was used to being unpopular; at school no one had liked her, but yet
indifference from her mother cut her.
And it was dull, deadly dull! There was nothing to read, nowhere to sit
but this disordered bedroom that smelled to nausea of almonds.
A neat maid with a cross face came in at that moment and bumped down
an uninviting tray of tea and bread and butter on a table, with
an impertinence that was somehow galling. Ismay Trelane looked at
it, and a sudden light sprang into her strangely lovely face, that
was sometimes so much older than her years, as a smile came to her
delicate, thin lips.
“There isn’t any room for me in mama’s life,” she thought quietly,
“it’s all taken up with Lord Abbotsford! She can’t surely think he
means to marry her, yet she never kept up the mask like this for any of
her other admirers.”
Looking back with ungirlish wisdom into the past before she had been
shoved into Mrs. Barlow’s school, she added:
“Well, it doesn’t matter! I’m not a child any more; I can amuse myself.”
She felt in the pocket of her old black frock, that was too short, for
all the money she owned--ten shillings her mother had given her in a
moment of generosity.
“She said to keep out of the way,” she reflected, “and I will. But I
won’t sit here all the evening, and I won’t”--pride getting the better
of hunger--“drink any of that horrid tea.”
She slipped on her sailor-hat and jacket, a garment that had been
barely decent all summer, but was threadbare now, and with noiseless
haste made her way down-stairs and out into the street.
The fresh, cool air did her good, and she walked quickly out of the
quiet Brompton Square into the bustling thoroughfare of the Brompton
Road.
London at night was strange to her, and she was not even sure what she
wanted to do.
“I’m out, though, and that’s the main thing,” she thought cheerfully.
“I think I’ll go for a drive on an omnibus! Then when I feel like it I
can get off and have something to eat somewhere.”
She felt almost gay as she hailed the first bus that came thundering
by, and climbed to the roof of the unwieldy thing.
How pretty it was! The long street like a shifting ribbon of light,
with its never-ending stream of carriage-lamps; its procession of
hansoms and carriages full of people--men chiefly--in evening dress.
“Where do you go?” she asked the conductor as she paid her fare.
“Piccadilly Circus, miss; Shaftesbury Avenue, past the Palace Theater.”
“Theater!”
Ismay’s heart gave a jump. Why not go to a theater? There was time; it
could not be more than half-past eight. After that she could take a cab
and go home. It was three years since she had been at a theater; but
she knew the Palace was a variety place, where it did not matter what
time you arrived.
The November air was cold on top of the omnibus, but the girl’s blood
was warm, as she watched the surging panorama of the streets. This was
life; the shifting crowd went to her head like wine; her eyes burned
like stars as she looked about her at the never-ending drama of London.
“Palace Theater, miss.” The conductor’s voice startled her. He helped
her down with a curious feeling that she was too young to be out alone.
But he was reassured as he saw her move composedly under the lighted
awning to the flaring entrance, where the lights shone red in the
box-office. She was older than she looked, he decided, as he signaled
the driver to go on.
Ismay, as the swinging doors closed behind her, stood undecided for a
minute. There was a notice facing her:
“Stalls, ten shillings. Dress-circle, seven and sixpence. Upper circle,
five shillings.”
Stalls were out of the question.
“One dress-circle,” she said composedly, making her way to the
ticket-seller’s window through the groups of men idling in the entrance.
Most of them looked at her curiously; her strange beauty and her shabby
black clothes contrasted oddly.
She read their thoughts as she turned with her ticket in her hand, and
her eyes glittered with pride under her long, dark lashes.
Yet, as she followed the usher up the stairs to the dress-circle, she
walked as one in a dream, and stood for a moment in a sort of daze as
she was turned over to the white-capped attendant.
The whole house was in darkness except for the lights upon the stage
and the constant glimmer of matches, for every one seemed to be
smoking, even many of the women in the boxes.
Ismay stumbled to her seat still dazed.
Was this a theater? Had she spend nearly all of her ten shillings for
this?
Two badly painted women danced between the verses of a song, and their
antics seemed to amuse the crowd.
Ismay drew her skirts away from the vicinity of a French hair-dresser
as she thought:
“If that is all they have to do to earn their livings I could make
mine.”
Then she started angrily.
A common, flashily dressed man beside her had spoken to her. His tone
offended her, and she rose and swept past him like an insulted duchess.
She walked up the steps to the third gallery, where men and women
were seated at small tables, eating olives and drinking liquor. As
she emerged into the bright light she stopped and leaned over the
balustrade with her beautiful eyes still glowing.
“Beast!” she said under her breath, “to dare to speak to me!”
A man standing quite near her glanced at her wonderingly, and as she
turned she found his eyes upon her.
“I beg your pardon,” he said civilly, “but I could not help hearing
what you said.”
Ismay Trelane lifted her strange eyes and saw a face that, dreaming or
waking, would haunt her to the end of her life.
Bronzed, gray-eyed, clear-cut--it came near to being the handsomest
face in London. Many a woman had turned to look upon it, and some, like
Ismay, carried the remembrance forever.
Something, she knew not what, made the girl tremble as she answered him.
“A man spoke to me,” she said slowly. “You do not think he will come up
here, do you?”
“I spoke to you, too,” her hearer’s voice was kind but a little puzzled.
“You are different,” she said simply. “Oh,” with a little gasp, “he is
coming up!”
“Stand by me and don’t look at him!” said the stranger authoritatively.
Miss Trelane moved closer to him, as she was told, and the obnoxious
Frenchman, with a curious glance, passed by her.
If she had looked up just then at her new friend she would have seen
that he was divided between wonder and--something else. Music-halls
were an old story to him, but this girl had apparently never been in
one. She looked so out of place, and yet--well, at all events, she was
beautiful! Though the beauty was not that of a young girl. This face
might have smiled on dead men out of Circe’s window, in strange lands
long ago. For the girl’s hair was an ashy flaxen without a hint of
gold; her skin was fine and milky white, and her lips so red as to be
startling in her colorless face. But it was her eyes more than anything
that were full of strange witchery, for they were as clear and dark a
green as the new shoots of a pine-tree in the spring.
“Nonsense!” the man thought, “she is only some little milliner. But she
ought not to be here.”
The girl looked up, as though she read his mind.
“I don’t like it--here. I think I’ll go home,” she said slowly.
“I think I would,” he returned, with a smile. “This is not a good place
to begin with when one has never been out alone before.”
“How did you know I never was?” she asked sharply.
“Oh, I thought so!” was the answer. “But if you do wish to go home you
had better let me take you down-stairs. It’s rather crowded, and--there
may be more Frenchmen!”
“Home!” she looked at him queerly. “Oh, I can’t go home! It’s too--too
lonely.” Her lips quivered desolately at the thought of the long hours
before bedtime in that house where she was not wanted.
As she looked at him the absolute beauty of his face struck her once
more. She had never spoken to a man like this; it had been a very
different sort of men she had been used to seeing in her childhood. How
immaculately dressed he was, and what lovely black pearls he wore as
shirt-studs. “I don’t think I’ll go home at all,” she ended abruptly.
“Not go home?” He stared at her. “My dear child, you’re talking
nonsense. Do you mean that you live alone when you say it is too
lonely?” He felt suddenly sorry for her, and wondered afresh who she
was. Her dress was old and worn, fit for a servant out of place, but
her ungloved hand lying on the red velvet rail was exquisitely white
and smooth.
As he looked at her she laughed, a little delicate laugh that was
somehow far older than her years.
“Yes, of course,” she said, “utter nonsense; for I can live with my
mother.”
She moved away as she spoke; even if the man was as good-looking as all
the gods, she would not stay talking with him after he had suggested
she should go.
“Wait a moment, if you are lonely at home. I am lonely here,” he said,