Czytaj książkę: «Pretty Geraldine, the New York Salesgirl; or, Wedded to Her Choice», strona 11

CHAPTER XXXIV.
ENEMIES AT BAY

 
"Punishment o'ertakes the transgression,
In time;
Fate compels a full confession,
In time.
None can safely sin forever—
Conscience leaves the bosom never—
It will crush guilt's best endeavor,
In time."
 

Francis S. Smith.

Clifford Standish paused to note the effect of his boasting on Mrs. Fitzgerald.

Every statement he had made was a falsehood, but he knew that she could not disprove a single one.

The magnificent salary of which he boasted was only fifty dollars a week, and as for his rich mother who made him such a handsome allowance, and would leave him a fortune when she died, the old woman was as poor as poverty itself, and took in washing. But as she lived away off in Colorado, he was not afraid that she would ever appear to contradict his statement. In fact, he had told the same story to every new acquaintance, until he had almost come to believe it himself.

He judged that Mrs. Fitzgerald was proud and arrogant, and would prefer her daughter to marry rich; so, after telling his boastful story, he waited with some confidence for her reply.

She drew herself erect to her stateliest height, and if scorn could have killed, the lightnings of her dark eyes would have stretched him dead at her aristocratic feet.

"You contemptible villain!" she exclaimed, angrily.

"Madame!"

"You perjured wretch! You cowardly wife-deserter! You escaped criminal! You persecutor of innocence! You—you—fiend!" concluded Mrs. Fitzgerald, losing her temper in her righteous indignation and piling opprobrious epithets one upon another in the white heat of her wrath.

Startled, cowed by this most unexpected onslaught, the wretch could only cower in pallid amazement before the lady as she continued her scathing denunciation.

"How dare you intrude yourself here after your vile persecutions of Geraldine? Your audacity is startling, and I should do quite right to hand you over to the police on the charge of abducting and intimidating an innocent young girl! But I abhor scandal, and for this reason I shall not have you punished, unless—you dare to annoy us again!"

Recovering his hardihood, he muttered, sullenly:

"Madame, I deny the truth of your statements. Your daughter promised to marry me!"

"At the point of a revolver, yes, when, fearing for her life, she determined to temporize with you, hoping to throw you off your guard that she might escape your cowardly persecution. She has told me her story from beginning to end, and I shudder to think what might have been my dear girl's fate but for our meeting on the train!" exclaimed Mrs. Fitzgerald, flashing on him the scornful lightnings of her reproachful eyes.

Realizing for the first time that Geraldine had duped him in her apparent acquiescence to his will, and feeling himself beaten for the time in the dangerous game he had played, he cowered sullenly before her as she pointed to the door, saying, authoritatively:

"Now go, you hound! and never let me see your craven face again!"

Defeated, humiliated, writhing under her womanly scorn, he slunk out of the room and from her presence, into the wintry streets whose chill he could not feel, so hotly was he raging in his inmost heart against the two women who had scorned him for his wickedness.

"So you were playing on my credulity, laughing at me in your sleeve, pretty Geraldine!" he muttered, with a stifled oath. "Very well. You defeated me this time, but—look to yourself in the future!"

So muttering, he turned toward the sleigh that he had left waiting for him, but, to his surprise, it was gone.

For some unknown reason the driver had proved false to his engagement, and deserted his post.

Cursing the man's stupidity, he walked some distance along the snowy streets in the piercing cold of the western air before he boarded a car to take him to his boarding-house on State street.

Leaving the car, however, at an obscure side street with the intention of seeking a near-by saloon and concert hall, he crossed the street, and was proceeding on his way when suddenly he heard hurried footsteps behind, and then a hand clutched his arm whirling him fiercely around.

"Wretch!" hissed a man's voice, vibrant with hate. "Wretch! So I have caught you at last! Where is she? Where is my Geraldine?"

Under the glare of the electric lights that shone with ghastly whiteness on the snowy pavement, he found himself looking into the stern blue eyes of Harry Hawthorne.

For two days the young man had been on his track, without one clew to reward his efforts, for the villain, hiding his identity under an assumed name, had been swallowed up, like a wave breaking on the shore, in the vast city of Chicago.

Now, by chance, they were face to face, on an obscure street, almost deserted by reason of the piercing cold, and they looked at each other with mortal hate in their flashing eyes.

"Where is she? Where is my Geraldine?" demanded Hawthorne, hoarsely, tightening his grip on his enemy's arm so that he vainly tried to throw it off.

Standish looked at him a moment in fear and indecision then a devilish thought came to him, and he laughed aloud, mockingly.

"Your Geraldine, ha! ha! Your Geraldine!"

Something in his voice and laughter seemed to freeze the blood in Hawthorne's veins, but he said, in deadly wrath:

"You stole her from me by a vile trick. I saw the forged note you sent to her, and I know that you have betrayed her to some terrible fate; but by the God above us, if she has suffered wrong at your hands, Standish, your vile life shall pay the forfeit!"

"Bah! Hawthorne, this ranting is useless. She is alive, she is well, she is happy, and I have just come from keeping an appointment with the charming little beauty."

"Liar!"

"Do not bandy epithets so generously, Hawthorne. We really have no quarrel with each other—for she isn't worth it!"

"Liar! Hound!" and Hawthorne looked as if he could barely restrain himself from throttling his defiant foe.

But Standish kept his temper well in check, knowing that he could gain more thus than by losing it.

He smiled mockingly, and said:

"Those are hard words, but I think you will offer an apology for them presently. See! here is Geraldine's note to me. It is yours if you wish to keep it."

He thrust a crumpled sheet of paper into Hawthorne's hand, and by the glaring electric light he read:

"Mr. Standish:—You may call at eight o'clock this evening.

Geraldine Harding.

"Dec. 29th, 1894."

How the words glared up at him, for he knew the writing well, and a groan burst from his lips as he flung it from him, crying:

"Where is she? I must see her! I must have an explanation!"

"I cannot tell you where she is. She would not wish it. You may as well give up the game, Hawthorne, for I have won!"

The triumph in his voice was hateful.

Hawthorne did not speak for a moment, and his opponent continued:

"Let us understand each other. We have been rivals for Geraldine Harding's love, and she has coquetted with us both, promised her hand to both. Well, all is fair in love or war. My little scheme succeeded, and she is satisfied!"

"You have married her, Standish?"

"How could I when I have a wife living in New York, and Geraldine knows it? But I tell you she loves me and is satisfied. We stage people are not at all prudish, you know."

The next moment Hawthorne's strong fingers were about his throat.

"You have lied, you miserable dastard! Geraldine is as pure as snow, and unless you take back your falsehoods I will strangle them in your throat!"

A hoarse, gurgling laugh issued from the convulsed throat of Standish, and the next moment they closed in deadly combat.

Both were strong and athletic men, both brave, both desperate, and for a few minutes the contest they waged was an equal one.

But suddenly Hawthorne began to get the advantage.

He had his foe down and his knee on his breast.

"Will you take back your foul lie, hound?" he hissed, fiercely.

Standish made no answer in words.

He had been struggling all the while to get at his hip-pocket, and now he succeeded in drawing out a dagger and plunging it in Hawthorne's breast. There was a horrible ripping sound, and he rolled over bleeding in the snow.

CHAPTER XXXV.
GERALDINE'S CHOICE

 
"Howe'er it be, it seems to me,
'Tis only noble to be good;
Kind hearts are more than coronets,
And simple faith than Norman blood."
 

Tennyson.

 
"Fair maiden, let me say to you,
Mark well the man who comes to woo;
Select the one as true as steel,
With brain to think and heart to feel."
 

Francis S. Smith.

When Mrs. Fitzgerald had dismissed Standish, she returned to her daughter and recounted all that had passed.

She was vastly amused at the actor's boastfulness, and said:

"It is only low-bred people, 'beggars on horseback,' as the saying goes, who brag of their possessions or their expectations. Really high-toned people—and they may be high-toned even if poor—can never tolerate purse-proud vulgarity."

Geraldine laughed and said:

"Clifford Standish's story of his rich mother has always been his trump card in social life. I have often been secretly disgusted at hearing him tell it to new acquaintances."

"He probably sets a very low estimate on his own merits when he has to resort to such silly boasting to curry favor," returned her mother, adding: "I have met people of his stamp before, and, as a rule, their statements were untruthful. I dare say, if the facts were known, the fellow's mother takes in washing or goes out scrubbing."

"Thank Heaven, I am rid of him at last! I do not believe he will ever dare to cross my path again since finding out that I have such a strong defender in my noble mother," declared Geraldine, gladly, for she did not yet comprehend with what an evil nature she had to deal.

Believing herself rid of Clifford Standish forever, her longing thoughts returned to the true lover from whom she had been so cruelly torn.

"Oh, my love! my love! I cannot give you up," she thought, tenderly, and after a moment's hesitancy she cried:

"Oh, mamma, you said just now that a person may be high-toned even though poor, and it made me think of my lover Harry. If you should meet him, mamma, not knowing his obscure station, you would think him not less than princely. He has the bearing, the speech, and the heart of a gentleman—of one of nature's noblemen. Then why should you despise him for his poverty?"

Mrs. Fitzgerald's fair brow clouded with annoyance at her daughter's words and she said, quickly:

"I do not despise him for his poverty—I do not despise him at all. I said that you could not marry him because almost from your cradle you have been promised to another."

"What nonsense!" said the girl, petulantly, to herself but she asked, with seeming calmness:

"To whom, mamma?"

"To a splendid young gentleman of wealth and rank in England."

"How romantic! Tell me all about it, dear mamma!" cried Geraldine, anxious to know the worst.

"You are laughing at me, Geraldine," her mother cried, doubtfully.

"No, no, mamma; I was only smiling at my transformation. Such a little while ago I was simply a poor shop-girl in a New York dry-goods store, and engaged to marry a fireman, who was considered an exceedingly good match for me. Now I find myself a rich young heiress, betrothed to an English nobleman. It is quite startling."

"I believe you regret your good fortune!" cried the lady.

Geraldine answered with a burst of tears.

For a few moments she sobbed vehemently; then calming herself, she sighed.

"Dear mamma, I can never regret that I have found you, but I can never cease to deplore your hardness of heart that would part me from my heart's chosen one!"

"Hardness of heart," echoed the mother, reproachfully.

"Oh, mamma, you do not know how fondly I love him!" sobbed the daughter, and for a little while there was a painful silence.

Mrs. Fitzgerald was a woman of strong will and high ambition.

She could not forego her plans for Geraldine.

So presently she said, soothingly:

"My darling girl, I know you would not wish to have me break my plighted word. When I was in Europe, at the time when you were two years old, I spent two months at the home of a New York cousin of mine who had married a rich lord. They had a son seven years old—a bright, manly little lad—who fairly worshiped you; and one day his mother said, gayly: 'Leland, why don't you ask little Geraldine to be your wife when she grows up?'

"The pretty blue-eyed boy laughed and knelt down by your side, repeating the question his mother had prompted, and you kissed him and lisped 'yes.'"

"But I was only a baby, mamma. Of course, such a betrothal was not binding," remonstrated Geraldine, though she was touched at the pretty, childish betrothal.

"Wait till I have finished, darling. Lady Putnam, my cousin, smiled at me with tears in her eyes, and said that she hoped that the childish love would endure till they were grown, and that they might indeed marry. I agreed to this, and we solemnly betrothed the children next day, buying a tiny diamond ring on purpose to fit your finger. Little Leland was delighted with his promised bride, and grieved bitterly when we left him and returned to New York."

Geraldine was about to speak, but her mother interrupted:

"Wait, dear, till I have finished the story I began. Then I will listen to your objections."

CHAPTER XXXVI.
GERALDINE'S DEFIANCE

 
"There are some sweet affections
That wealth cannot buy,
That cling but still closer
When sorrow draws nigh;
As the mistletoe clings
To the oak, not in part,
But with leaves closely round it,
The root in its heart."
 

Charles Swain.

Mrs. Fitzgerald sighed, and continued:

"I must touch briefly now on a subject painful to us both—your father's faithlessness."

"Oh, mamma, how could he be false to one like you—so noble, so beautiful?" cried Geraldine, in wonder.

"He was weak and easily flattered by a designing woman—that is all I will say, Geraldine, for how can I disparage an erring father to his child? Well, while I remained at my cousin's in Devonshire, my husband kept running back and forth to Paris, seeming infatuated by its charms. At length a rumor reached me that he was lavishing money and attention on a notorious woman who had caught his fancy. I wrote to him, begging that he would deny it, but he treated my letter with disdain, plunging more recklessly into dissipation, and even appearing in public by the side of the woman who had lured him from me, seated in a magnificent vehicle he had purchased for her use. To be brief, Geraldine, his vile conduct killed every spark of love I ever had for him. I returned to my home in New York and secured a divorce as soon as possible, encouraged by my father, who was then living. But he died in a few months, and afterward I was very lonely, having no near relatives to cheer me except you, my pet and darling. At a watering-place I met Mr. Fitzgerald, and a mutual fascination for each other was followed by an early marriage. Soon after our return from our bridal tour, your father—enraged, perhaps that I could find happiness with another—came to Chicago and stole you away. A cruel fate foiled all my efforts to trace you, until that day when chance brought us face to face."

"Do not call it chance, mamma; it was Providence, surely, that saved me from that wretch!" cried pretty Geraldine, fervently.

"We will call it Providence, then," agreed her mother, and continued: "Until the last few years, when my heart and thoughts were all occupied by your step-father's failing health, I kept up a regular correspondence with my cousin, Lady Putnam, and her letters were filled with praises of her noble son, Leland. She had a sweet little daughter also, called Amy, but her pride seemed to centre in the boy who would inherit his father's rank and wealth."

She paused, sighed, then added:

"Now, Geraldine, you see how I had planned your future before you were so cruelly stolen from me. And now that you have been restored to my heart, all my old ambitions for you have revived. Can you wonder that I prefer for you to marry noble Leland Putnam, whom I have known and loved ever since his childhood, rather than a stranger, who, however worthy, is poor and obscure, and could not elevate you to the position your beauty merits?"

Geraldine had listened silently and earnestly. The romantic story of her childish betrothal pleased her, but it could not turn her true heart from its firm allegiance.

She said, gently:

"You have told me a deeply touching story, dear mamma. I grieve that my own father proved so false and unworthy, and I rejoice that I did not inherit his fickleness, for my heart is true as steel to the first object of its choice. I can never cease to love Harry Hawthorne, and as for the betrothal you speak of, it was simply a childish affair, forgotten, no doubt by all but yourself."

"You are mistaken, my dear; for my cousin often mentioned it in her letters after you were lost to us, as we feared, forever. I shall write to her this very day, and tell her you are found again."

"But not one word of that childish engagement, please, mamma! I will not be offered to any man!" remonstrated Geraldine, in alarm.

"Certainly not, Geraldine. Of course, I know what is due to you. But if Leland revives it of himself, if he still claims you, you cannot refuse to marry him!"

Geraldine felt as if she were choking.

A cruel fate seemed to destine her to a loveless marriage.

Oh, how could her mother be so cruel, so heartless, wrapped up in sordid ambition, reckless of a young heart's misery!

Filled with fear and anger at her threatening fate, she sprang to her feet, crying, passionately:

"Mamma, I do not wish to offend you, but—but—I will not be forced into a loveless marriage. I will be true to Harry, though the whole world oppose me! Why, I would rather have remained a poor salesgirl forever than have lost him, my own true love, by finding myself an heiress!"

The passionate defiance was out, and the mother knew that all her ambitions were likely to be defeated by a girl's perversity.

She called it perversity in her mind. She would not own that it was love—constant, faithful love, that has been the theme of poets since first they struck the sounding lyre.

She did not want to excite the girl any further now, though she determined that in the end she should yield to her mother's will.

Rising from her seat, she quitted the room like a skillful general, though casting one single glance backward that rankled reproachfully in Geraldine's heart.

CHAPTER XXXVII.
"A WOMAN'S HONOR IS INVOLVED, AND MY SILENCE IS ITS ONLY SAFEGUARD."

 
"Woman's honor is nice as ermine—
Will not bear a soil."
 
 
"Her maiden pride, her haughty name,
My dumb devotion shall not shame;
The love that no return doth crave,
To knightly levels lifts the slave."
 

When Clifford Standish plunged the dagger into Hawthorne's breast, and heard the groan of the victim, felt the hot blood spurting over his hands as he rolled over in the snow, he thought he had killed him.

But no pang of remorse touched his cruel heart.

He exulted in the deed that he had done.

Springing to his feet, he glanced hurriedly around, and seeing no one near, coolly wiped his bloody hands on Hawthorne's overcoat, and hastened away, exclaiming:

"I am rid of my dangerous rival at last!"

But there had been an unsuspected witness of the deadly crime he had committed.

From a window above a young man had been looking down just as the rivals closed in mortal combat.

He had come to the place to call on a friend who roomed there, and learned that he was out, but was told that he would be in directly.

Without removing his hat and overcoat, he walked restlessly up and down the room, and at last became so impatient that he pushed up the window and looked out to see if his friend was yet in sight.

But the narrow street, its snowy expanse lighted by the flaring electric lights, was deserted, save by two men, who hurled themselves with tremendous force against each other in deadly conflict.

Mr. Hill was not alarmed at first. He smiled, and murmured, whimsically:

"Whew! A prize-fight! I bet on the one that whips!"

Oblivious of the cold air that rushed through the open window into his friend's warm steam-heated apartment, he leaned out and watched the contest, adding:

"I don't suppose they would thank me for spoiling their sport, so I won't interfere. It's the blue-coat's business to break it up, but they're never in place when needed."

The battle went on, and the unseen witness gazed admiringly at the well-pitted antagonists.

He was a jovial young fellow, and he really felt inclined to cheer the gallant athletes, so cleverly did they handle each other.

But he restrained his inclination, and continued his watching, and wondering who the combatants were and which would gain the mastery.

But all at once he uttered a startled cry:

"Heavens! that was murder!"

He had heard the ripping sound of the dagger pressed upward into the victim's breast, and his dying groan as he rolled over in the snow.

Starting away from the window, he ran away from the room into the hall, eager to make his way into the street.

In the lower hall he blundered against another man, who caught him by the arm, saying, roughly:

"Hello! what are you running away like this for, eh?"

"Don't you know me, Doctor Rowe? Come with me, for God's sake, into the street. I was looking out of the window, and saw a murder being done."

They rushed into the street, but the little delay had enabled the murderer to make his escape.

Nothing was to be seen of any human creature but that still form lying there in a drift of snow that had turned crimson with the blood that was spurting from his breast.

With exclamations of pity and horror, they bent over him, the physician quickly feeling for his heart.

"Is he dead?" asked Leroy Hill, his laughing dark eyes growing soft with pity.

"Not yet; his heart beats faintly, but this flow of blood must be stopped at once. It is very fortunate we came to him so quickly," returned the old physician, tearing open Hawthorne's shirt-bosom and preparing to stanch the flow of blood.

Several people came out of the house and joined them, and a crowd collected quickly, a policeman coming at last around the corner.

Those who could assist the doctor did so, others plied each other with questions.

"Who is he?"

"Who killed him?"

No one could answer either question.

No cards nor letters were found on the stranger's person to prove his identity, and no one present recognized him.

Leroy Hill could only tell that he had seen the encounter from an upper window, and that the assassin had escaped before he reached the street.

Doctor Rowe looked up, asking: "Has any one 'phoned for an ambulance to take him to the hospital? His last chance of life will soon be gone if he has to lie here in the street."

A bystander interposed, sarcastically:

"And he won't have much chance of life among some of those brutal nurses at the hospital, neither."

Mr. Hill's absent friend had come up a moment before, and the young man turned to him, saying, kindly:

"Let's give the poor devil a chance for his life, Ralph. Can't we get a room in the house and hire a nurse for him?"

"Why, certainly, Lee. Glad you thought of it! We will put him in my bedroom and I can sleep on the lounge in my study," returned Ralph Washburn who was an author, and had the kindest heart in the world.

And so Harry Hawthorne found true friends among those jolly, big-hearted Westerners, and, under their faithful ministrations, he came back to the life that had used him so hardly.

And then they found that he was inclined to throw a bit of a mystery around himself, for he was unwilling to answer questions about anything.

"Don't think me ungrateful, boys," he said to Ralph and Lee, as they sat by his bed. "God only knows how grateful I am for your goodness, and I hope to prove it to you some day. I'm from the North; I don't belong in Chicago—I'll own that. I won't tell my name yet—call me Jack Daly; that will do as well as anything until the time comes when I can safely confess all."

They liked him in spite of his mysterious ways, for there was too much nobility in his face to lead any one astray. They felt sure that he was worthy of honor and respect.

"But, Jack Daly," began Leroy Hill, smiling as he ran his white hand through his clustering auburn curls, "I'm going to ask you one question. Do you mean to shield the man who tried to murder you?"

"To shield him? Was he not a stranger?"

"I do not believe he was a stranger to you. You did not meet as strangers. You had a terrible quarrel. Perhaps it was about a woman. Listen: I found a bloody glove in the snow that night, and it belonged either to you or to him. I deciphered in it a name—Clifford Standish!"

"Heavens!" exclaimed the patient.

"Then that is your name?"

"No."

"Then it was your assailant's, and I am bound to put the police in possession of this important clew."

The patient raised himself on his elbow, crying, feverishly:

"For God's sake! spare that villain, Mr. Hill; not for his sake, no, no—but for a woman's sake! Listen: there is a tragedy behind what you know. A woman's honor is involved, and my silence is its only safeguard!"