Slighted love or, At her heart's expense
In an incredibly short space of time the street began to fill up with
a shouting, gesticulating throng of human beings. The fire-bells rang,
and soon the fire-engines came clattering upon the scene.
But the fire had gained such rapid headway that it was feared the
inmates could not escape.
In the meantime Professor Doepkin had rushed to the rear of the house,
trying to make an entrance. In vain, for the back of the building was a
more solid mass of flame than the front.
People said afterward that there had never been the equal of Professor
Doepkin’s splendid daring. He helped the firemen to batter in the front
doors, and then, with a blanket over his head, rushed into the house
and disappeared in the black smoke that filled the broad hallway.
“The fellow must be crazy! He will never come out alive!” declared the
firemen unanimously.
But they were mistaken. After about ten minutes of keen suspense, while
the engines played rapidly on the doomed building, he reappeared,
staggering down the marble steps with a white, senseless figure in his
arms.
Eager hearts went to his assistance, and the woman he had rescued was
tenderly cared for; but when he had looked once on the fair face and
streaming, golden hair he cried out wildly:
“My God!”
And before any one could prevent him, he rushed back into that
holocaust of smoke and flame.
“Poor fellow! there is some one that he loves inside that house. He
must have rescued the wrong one,” cried one compassionate person.
“He is a hero!” cried another.
“But he has lost his senses, or he would never have gone back. The roof
will fall in before he gets out. When the experienced firemen will
not enter a burning building, you may always know that there is great
danger,” cried out another croaker.
And indeed no one could blame them. The house was wrapped in vivid
flame, and the efforts of the firemen began to be directed to saving
the adjacent buildings.
Suddenly a prolonged cheer from a thousand throats rent the midnight
air.
The hero had emerged from the building again with another drooping
white form clasped to his breast. And the eager crowd saw that this one
was a very young girl, with dark, flowing curls and of wonderful beauty.
In a few more minutes the roof fell in on the doomed house.
The papers next day chronicled the distressing facts that three
servants had perished in the fire. It was added that Mrs. Vale and her
daughter had only been saved by unexampled heroism.
CHAPTER XXV.
ITALY’S CLUE.
The next day found Mrs. Vale and Italy tenderly cared for at the home
of good Mrs. Mays.
Professor Doepkin had called a carriage and taken them there the night
before, commending them to the care of the good landlady and beautiful
Mrs. Severn, the sad-faced young widow.
Mrs. Vale was confined to her bed from the effects of severe nervous
shock. Italy was up and about, although very pale and grave-looking,
with the memory of last night. It seemed like a dream to her, the way
she had awakened last night in the blinding smoke and glare, with the
crackling of the flames in her ears, and the loud shouts of the excited
throng outside blending with the pandemonium of noise.
She would never forget those few moments of awful anguish when she had
realized the horror of her position, and, knowing herself caught like a
rat in a trap, felt that escape was impossible, that she must die this
awful death by fire. Then suddenly the door had been wrenched apart,
and through the stifling smoke rang a familiar voice:
“Italy! Italy! Are you here? Speak!”
With a cry of joy, she moved toward the welcome voice, and through
the awful heat and blinding smoke reached his arms that clutched her
eagerly.
“Be brave. Fear nothing, for I will save you,” he cried, as he clasped
her close, and a mighty flood of joy rolled over her even in the horror
of the position. Then a sudden terror drove the blood coldly back upon
her heart.
“Mama!” she shrieked.
“Is safe. I carried her out to the street ten minutes ago,” replied her
rescuer, as he toiled through the corridor, and, reaching the stairway,
began the descent, holding the blanket carefully over her head that
not one hair of those dark, shining tresses should be scorched by the
leaping flames that put out tongues of fire at them as they passed.
At last--after an eternity it seemed--he bore her into the street, and
the fresh, cold air blew into her face like a breath from heaven.
She was safe, and not one hair of her head was harmed--safe, and there
was her mother, too. Both owed their lives to this noble hero.
He with his face and hands almost blistered by the heat he had defied,
his fair, curly beard and hair singed by the fire, had disappeared from
sight as soon as he had put them in the care of Mrs. Mays, and the
afternoon of another day had come, still he was missing.
Italy left her mother asleep and stole down to the parlor. It was just
after luncheon.
Ralph Allen and Emmett Harlow were there reading. Mrs. Severn was
at the window with a bit of sewing--a melancholy black figure with
smileless lips and pallid cheeks, yet beautiful in a strange, haunting
fashion that had tempted the young artist to ask her to set to him as
“Niobe.”
She had refused gently but firmly, and their plan for winning her into
the outside world had failed. She never crossed the threshold of her
home. She was breaking her heart in silent grief for the dead.
“Where is Professor Doepkin? I wish to thank him for his bravery last
night,” Italy said abruptly, and Emmett answered lightly:
“Pray do not attempt anything so rash. The professor is a very modest
man--really bashful, I think--and he would be overwhelmed with
confusion if you applauded his conduct last night.”
“I think you are jesting with me,” said the girl. “It would seem most
ungrateful in me not to express my gratitude to this hero,” and her
dark eyes kindled so fervently that Emmett sighed to himself:
“I wish I stood in the hero’s shoes. But never mind, my boy, you have
done something to deserve her gratitude, after all, and some day she
will know it and appreciate it, although it can never win for you that
treasure--her love.”
“I wish very much to see him!” cried Italy almost yearningly.
“He is asleep, Italy, exhausted by his efforts last night,” said Ralph;
and Emmett chimed in:
“If you are in a hurry to thank him, you may write a little note, for,
really, I do not believe he will be willing to present himself before
you for a week or so, as his personal appearance was seriously injured
by getting his hair and whiskers singed last night. The handsome
professor is very proud of his whiskers, and very likely he will not be
visible until they grow again.”
“I fancy that he would be quite as handsome without his whiskers as
with them,” Italy replied, with so significant a tone and glance that
Emmett started, colored, and exclaimed:
“What do you mean?”
“Oh--nothing,” she answered, sitting down and taking up a newspaper;
while Mrs. Severn said to her softly:
“The professor did sustain some painful burns on his hands, and his
face is somewhat blistered, too. So he is keeping his room very quietly
to-day--I think he quite understands all your gratitude without your
expressing it.”
Italy thanked her with a smile, and just then Ralph Allen spoke:
“I am reading one of the most terrible tragedies ever printed or
enacted.”
“The world is full of tragedies,” said Emmett Harlow. “What is this
one, Ralph?”
“It is a story of love and insanity,” replied Ralph, and every one
shuddered, while Mrs. Severn cried out eagerly:
“Read it, Mr. Allen.”
“It is too long--several columns of the New York _World_--so I will
tell it to you in my own words. But it will sound very shocking to you
ladies, for it is the story of one girl who murdered another one that
she loved.”
“One that she loved--how could that be?” cried Emmett.
And Ralph answered:
“She was insane. But let me tell you the story:
“They were two beautiful young girls down South--let me see--yes,
Memphis, Tennessee--and they loved each other devotedly and with
such excess that Alice, the elder girl, declared she meant to marry
the beautiful Freda that she loved so well. They wrote each other
impassioned love-letters, and Alice was jealous of every one that
admired her schoolmate, pretty Freda. The affair went on until Freda’s
friends began to disapprove of it, and tried to break off the romantic,
girlish intimacy. They parted them, and Alice almost went mad with
despair. When she heard that Freda’s friends were going to remove her
from the city she could not bear it. One day Alice was riding out in a
buggy with Lillie, another friend of hers, and they saw Freda on the
street with her sister and some friends.
“‘Let me get out one moment. I wish to bid Freda farewell,’ said Alice
coolly.
“It all happened in a minute. Alice ran after Freda, threw her arms
around her neck, drew back the lovely head, and in an instant had cut
her friend’s throat. Freda fell dead on the pavement, and Alice flew
back to the buggy and sprang in as coolly as if nothing had happened.”
“Horrible!” shuddered Emmett.
But the girls sat still, pallid, and with dilated eyes.
“Only think of it, she murdered her dearest friend, the girl she loved
to madness!” cried Ralph. “But she was insane. At the trial she was
proved insane, and the _World_ tells here that she has been placed in
a lunatic asylum for life. But how pale you ladies look! I ought not
to have told you this awful story, especially after Italy’s shock last
night. It is too much for her nerves----Italy!”
He ran to her assistance, for her face had whitened to the hue of
death, and she was slipping inertly from her chair down to the floor.
Italy had indeed fainted, but it was not so much from the shock of
hearing of that strange tragedy as from the awful and startling
suspicion it had put into her mind.
Mrs. Severn quickly brought restoratives, and presently the young girl
sat up, looking about with dazed, wondering eyes, while Ralph murmured
contritely:
“Forgive me for telling that tragic story. I had forgotten that you
were nervous from last night.”
A light of remembrance leaped into her eyes, and she faltered:
“You were very kind--that is, it was very interesting. I should like to
read it in the papers, please.”
In some surprise, he placed it in her hand.
“I must return to mama now, I think,” she murmured, and hurried from
the room.
Mrs. Vale was still sleeping calmly and sweetly, and Italy turned from
the bed with wild excitement.
“We have all been blind--blind!” she ejaculated. “Only to think how
that man has fooled us all! What was that gleam I saw sometimes in
those strange, glittering eyes of his? It was madness, I feel sure of
it now. It is he--my father’s dearest friend, as they called him--who
murdered my father. I must send for Mr. Gardner. I must tell him all my
suspicions.”
She went out and sent the message for the lawyer, then returned to the
room and read and reread the revolting story, of that crime far away in
the sunny southland where one beautiful young girl had murdered another
one through insane love and jealousy.
“It is the clue I needed, the key to the mystery of my father’s murder,
but, oh, can I prove it? How cunningly the fiend has drawn the network
of safety around himself, while he blackened my mother’s fame and
then threw his crime on the innocent shoulders of Francis Murray. Oh,
could my father have loved this wretch? Did he ever suspect aught of
his treachery? What was written in that missing diary that my father
guarded so jealously from every eye? Where is it now? Oh, I would give
the world to know!”