Slighted love or, At her heart's expense
“None, unless a heavy fog comes up. But it is very clear now. We are
not more than two miles from shore. See, there is Great Head in the
distance and the lights of Winthrop. You need not be alarmed. It is
only a vexatious delay, and I will try to amuse you so that the time
will go fast.”
“Thank you,” she said very low, and both were quite silent for a few
moments. Italy was looking down at the rippling waves with a solemn
face.
“Are you frightened, or are you angry?” her companion asked gently.
“I am neither,” she answered. “But I am suddenly sad. There came into
my mind this moment a picture of my mother.”
“Your mother was a most unhappy woman,” he said half-inquiringly.
“Oh, Heaven, how unhappy!” sighed the girl; some impulse of confidence
seized her, and while they waited there becalmed on the wide ocean,
seemingly alone in the world, she told him something of the lonely life
she had led, hounded through the world by a foe in ambush.
“Oh, Mr. Murray, tell me if you have any suspicion who that enemy could
be?” she cried imploringly.
But he was honestly surprised and startled.
“I have not the least idea. I did not know your mother had an enemy in
the world. I heard that she had placed you in a convent to be educated,
and was living there herself in quiet comfort.”
“We were only two years at the convent. My mother’s health could not
bear the sedentary life, and----” But suddenly she looked up and cried
in a startled voice:
“Why, how strange! I cannot see Great Head and the lights of Winthrop
now. It seems misty.”
“There is a fog, and it is growing quite thick, but I hope the wind
will rise presently and blow it away,” he answered in a troubled tone.
He had been watching the creeping mist with startled eyes while she
talked to him. It had stolen on them like a thief in the night. They
could not see the sky nor the stars now, and scarcely each other’s
faces for the insidious white fog.
Suddenly there came a sound that struck terror to their hearts.
“A steamer is approaching us!” cried Francis Murray wildly. He leaned
forward and caught her cold little hand.
“Italy, my love, my darling, say that you forgive me for bringing you
into this deadly peril, and let us pray God that we be not in the track
of the coming horror!”
She could not answer. Her lips seemed frozen, but Francis Murray lifted
up his voice and shrieked a warning to the steamer. Too late! She bore
down swiftly upon them, cutting the little dory in twain.
CHAPTER X.
BORNE ON THE TIDE.
The gay party on shore discussed their warm coffee and elegant lunch
with such keen appetites that the absentees were almost forgotten,
until the increasing fog suddenly awoke a feeling of alarm in Ralph
Allen’s breast.
“I wish now that they had not gone out sailing,” he said. “It is no
joke to be becalmed in a fog. What if they should be run down by a
steamer?”
Several members of the party began to express alarm, but Percy
Seabright cried out boisterously:
“Do not let us borrow trouble. It is not likely that anything will
happen to them. Indeed, I envy Francis his good luck in getting
becalmed in a fog with such a pretty girl. What a chance for a
flirtation! Ten to one they come back engaged, and this winter we will
get cards to the wedding.”
He had quite recovered from his melancholy of a while ago, and was the
life and soul of the party, singing songs and telling anecdotes to
while away the long hours. The young people fell in with his infectious
gaiety and took his bright view of the situation, all but Ralph and
Alexie.
These two felt seriously uneasy over their friends, and from time
to time went arm in arm down to the beach, watching to see the fog
lift, or the air freshen and the tide come in, but the winds remained
quiescent in their mysterious caves, and the fog hung like a white
gauze veil over a still and glassy sea.
But no one else shared their anxiety. Percy Seabright and Mrs. Dunn
were boisterously gay, and Alys Audenreid had a strange look in her
eyes and a strange tone in her voice. She believed that the powers of
evil had granted her wicked wish, and that Francis Murray and Italy
were both drowned in the cruel sea. So hard and cruel had jealousy
made her heart that she exulted secretly in the belief. She would
much sooner have seen him dead than happy with her rival--beautiful,
dark-eyed Italy Vale.
In her blind fury of jealous rage, Alys wanted the world to end for
those two who had made her so unhappy. She had grown hopeless of
supplanting Italy in Francis Murray’s heart.
Francis Murray had never shown Alys one sign of love, but she chose to
consider herself wronged and deserted, and exulted in the speedy ending
of those two lives. What a cruel thing is the jealousy of an ignoble
mind--strong as death and cruel as the grave!
It was almost two hours past midnight when Ralph Allen uttered a cry of
the keenest joy:
“The wind is rising, the fog lifting!”
He and Alexie ran down to the beach again. The sea was ruffled with
little white-capped wavelets, and the tide began to roll in upon the
shore with a wailing voice. The wind was high and the fog was rolling
away. They stretched their eyes over the wide expanse of water, hoping
to see the little dory riding in with the tide. Ah, joy! There it came,
far away as yet; but no--what was it tossing on the waves like a sail?
Ralph Allen gave a loud shout, and the whole party ran down to him.
They did not have to wait and watch long. Directly the strong tide
brought in and cast at their feet the broken sail of the dory, with a
half-unconscious girl clinging despairingly to the rope!
Washed ashore on a broken sail that clung to some fragments of a
shattered boat--oh, what an eloquent story was told in that occurrence!
All of Ralph’s forebodings were dismally realized. He knew that the
worst had happened, that the dory had been run into and destroyed by
some monster steamer--but--where was Francis Murray?
The wailing wind and the moaning sea gave no reply, and Italy’s lips
were silent, too. Only a faint pulse at her heart gave signs of life.
It was well that there was a physician with the party, and that warm
coffee and wine were at hand. Everything necessary was quickly done,
and then she was taken back to The Lodge breathing faintly but looking
like a dead girl and quite unable to speak. They did not stay to see
the sun rise, but disbanded mournfully--mourning Francis Murray as
dead, and dreading lest Italy’s life should also be offered up as a
sacrifice to the pitiless sea.
Only Percy Seabright said hilariously:
“It is evident that Miss Vale was not born to be drowned. She has had
two hairbreadth escapes from the sea, and the Fates that pursue her had
better change their tactics if they wish for success.”
Mrs. Dunn and Alys said nothing, but they wished in their hearts that
Italy had perished and Francis Murray escaped. Then they might have
woven anew their spider’s web to ensnare a good man’s heart.
Too late! Too late! There could scarcely be one hope that he had
survived, for the next day, when Italy was able to speak, she told
feebly the story of their accident, how the dory had been cleft in
twain by the steamer, and that she had been swept instantly away and
never heard his voice again.
The day succeeding was the first of September, when the house-party was
to break up. Mrs. Dunn and her favorite niece, Alys, took leave with
silky purrings of sympathy for the bereaved hostess, but Alexie begged
frankly to stay and nurse the sick girl, who was too weak yet to leave
her bed.
Mrs. Murray was glad to have her stay, glad for some one else to watch
over Italy, whom she hated now with more virulence than ever.
“Through this girl I have lost my son, and I will never willingly look
upon her face again. When she gets well, either she or I must leave The
Lodge,” she avowed before them all.
Mrs. Dunn and Alys vowed that she was right, Percy Seabright said
nothing, but Ralph and Alexie looked shocked and indignant.
“But, dear Mrs. Murray, the accident was not Italy’s fault,” cried the
warm-hearted girl.
But Mrs. Murray’s terrible bereavement had but hardened her cold heart.
“The girl disobeyed me in going with Francis that night. Had she
remained at home, as I bade her, he would now be alive and well. No, I
will never forgive Italy Vale for my son’s tragic death, and as soon as
she recovers I shall ask her to make her home elsewhere.”
Alexie looked pleadingly at her aunt.
“May I ask her to become our guest this winter?” she murmured.
“Decidedly not. Mrs. Murray’s cause is mine, and I fully endorse her
course,” was the brusk reply.
The quick tears came into Alexie’s sweet blue eyes as she turned them
on Ralph. He whispered tenderly:
“When we are married you shall have our friend for your guest as long
as you like. In the meantime I will see if we cannot find a pleasant
home for her as soon as she is able to leave The Lodge.”
He went away with the rest that day, but Alexie knew that he would
return on the morrow, for all the sunshine of Ralph Allen’s life lay in
those sweet, blue eyes of his fair, betrothed bride, and for them the
course of true love had always run smooth.
CHAPTER XI.
WITHOUT A HOME.
Overwhelmed with grief and horror at her son’s fate, Mrs. Murray held
firmly to her resolve not to see Italy again. She regarded the hapless
girl as a murderess. In vain did Alexie try to assuage her keen despair
by pointing out to her that there was no certainty of her son’s death,
but that he might possibly have been saved by the very steamer that had
destroyed the little dory and set Italy adrift upon the wide sea.
“Dear Mrs. Murray, he was such a splendid swimmer, it is not probable
he could have perished in so calm a sea,” she cried.
“Why, then, does he not return to me?” cried the anguished mother; and
she added:
“It is three days ago now, and if he had been saved he would surely
have come back ere now. No, no, he must have been killed by the stroke
that cut the little boat in twain.”
It seemed so plausible that this was true that Alexie could not think
of any more words of comfort. She had to leave the bereaved woman to
her terrible despair.
But strangely enough, Italy Vale would not believe that Francis Murray
was dead.
“Something tells me that he escaped--that he is alive somewhere in the
world to-day, and that he will return,” she cried, her eyes beaming, a
faint color staining the ivory pallor of her delicate cheek.
It was the fifth day after the moonlight party, and Italy was sitting
up for the first time in an easy chair, wrapped in a loose, furred
dressing-gown and warm slippers, for the day was chilly.
A storm had raged the night before, and the sea was high and rough, and
a chilly wind was whistling along the New England coast, while heaps of
drift lay along the sands that were dotted with screaming sea-gulls and
sand-pipers.
Sweet Alexie Audenreid had been talking to the lonely girl with all the
tenderness of a sister, telling her the truth that could be withheld
no longer, but softening its harshness all that she could by her own
expressions of affection.
But when she had ended she looked away from the keen pain in the dark
eyes as Italy realized that she was an object of dislike to Mrs.
Murray, an unwelcome guest whose departure was eagerly wished for--that
she was homeless. She could not speak for some moments for the keen
hurting in her throat, and the wonder in her mind.
Mrs. Murray had been kind to her when she first came to Winthrop.
What had changed her so as the weeks went past? What had made her so
bitterly unkind and cruel? As she thought it over, a dimpled white
hand clasped hers tenderly, and sweet Alexie whispered: