Kathleen's Diamonds; or, She Loved a Handsome Actor

CHAPTER XLIV.
GRANDMOTHER FRANKLYN

 
I dreamed that the moon looked sadly down,
And the stars with a troubled ray;
I went to my darling's home—the town
Lies many a league away.
 

H. Heine.

Kathleen's awed voice died away in a hushed sob, and in the grand parlor car there was a dead silence, broken only by the clatter of the car-wheels as they rushed over the glistening steel rails.

Old Benjamin Carew crouched silently in his seat, with clinched hands and half-averted face, but Kathleen could see that he was pale as death, and beads of dew stood on his forehead and around his pain-drawn lips.

"How dearly he must have loved his sister-in-law—my unhappy young mother!" she thought, tenderly; and just then his hand moved and sought hers, clasping it fondly, but with a grasp as cold as ice.

"Oh, Uncle Ben, I ought not to have told you this distressing story!" she exclaimed, remorsefully. "I am so glad to think that I never told papa the story I had from the dying housekeeper. It would have been so cruel for him to know that the woman he had loved and trusted had plotted away the life of my mother."

"Hush, child! you drive me mad! This is too cruel!" groaned the old man.

He leaned his gray head forward on the seat, and sobs, all the fiercer for being suppressed, shook his slight frame. Kathleen wept, too, and altogether it was a sorrowful journey they had to the home from which Vincent Carew had carried Zaidee, his fair young bride, to meet so dark a fate. They talked but little, for a heavy cloud of trouble hung over their spirits and shadowed the future, and the young girl at length became conscious of a strange dread of arriving at the end of the journey so long ardently desired. She ascribed it to sudden timidity at meeting strangers. She did not dream it was a warning presentiment.

She was glad that the cars went straight through Lincoln Station without changing. She could not bear to be reminded of that terrible night when the talon-like fingers of her unknown assailant had closed stranglingly about her white throat, and of all the sorrows that had followed after. The girl, so young and tender, shuddered as with an ague chill, wondering how she had lived through it all.

"And poor Daisy Lynn! poor Daisy Lynn! what ever became of that unhappy girl?" she wondered, pitifully, and her thoughts wandered to the girl's sad love story. "How sorrowful it is to go mad for love!" she sighed. "And yet, how sad it is to lose one's love and remain sane and conscious in the midst of all the cruel pain. Oh, God! am I fated to lose Ralph, my own true lover? How shall I bear to give my hand to another man while I love Ralph so dearly?" And when the train ran into the station at Richmond she was weeping bitter, burning tears for her love, Ralph, from whom she was so cruelly parted. "Oh, the pity of it that I did not believe in him that day that I sent him away from me in scorn, when he was already so sorrowful! Oh, Ralph, my darling! I did not think then that I should ever be suing for your forgiveness for my cruel words; but now—now I could fall at your feet for pity and pardon!" sobbed the unhappy young girl; and there came to her a memory of some verses she had read in the poems of Mittie Point Davis—sweet, sad verses from a loving heart:

 
"I did not think that I should say it first,
That summer evening when we quarreled so
About some trifle you had magnified—
Men are so harsh, you know.
I said some bitter words of hate and scorn;
My pride was up, my temper too, indeed—
But now I know that I perhaps was wrong,
And, dearest, I am brave enough to plead:
Forgive me!
 
 
"I did not think that I should say it first,
Not even when you stayed away so long;
I thought I could be proud and stubborn, too,
I did not know that love could be so strong.
I did not think that life could seem so long
Without the love I reckless cast away;
But now I know that I perhaps was wrong,
And, dearest, I am brave enough to say:
Forgive me!
 
 
"I did not think that I should say it first,
That summer evening when we quarreled so—
I hated you, I know you hated me;
But, darling, that seems long and long ago—
So long, and I, oh! I have missed you so!
While you, perchance, have shared my silent pain.
We both were wrong, but love has conquered pride,
Forget the past; let us be friends again—
Forgive me!"
 

"Richmond!" shouted the conductor, and Kathleen roused with a start from her sad musings, and drew her heavy wraps about her, for the opening of the car door had let in a blast of inclement air. It was late in the afternoon—almost twilight—and a long carriage ride was before them; for the Franklyns had written that they lived on the suburbs of Richmond, but would send a carriage to meet Kathleen.

Sure enough, a close carriage was in waiting, the driver an old darky who seemed surprised and even displeased that he had two passengers instead of one.

"Mistis was only 'specting a lady," he observed.

"This is my uncle, who came along to take care of me," Kathleen answered, with assumed cheerfulness, for her heart was beating with a strange suspense and dread. The old negro put her trunk up, and they entered the carriage, and set out on a long ride that did not end until night had wrapped its sable pall of gloom around the earth.

"Oh, uncle, how glad I am that you came with me! I should have felt so frightened all alone!" whispered the girl, nestling close to her relative's side.

He answered only by a silent pressure of her little hand. He had been strangely moody and silent ever since she had told him the story of her mother's tragic death.

The dark, gloomy exterior of the old brick house standing alone in thick, shrubberied grounds was not inviting, but presently the front door opened and a gleam of light stole forth. In its ray there appeared a witch-like old woman huddled in a gray blanket shawl, who stood shivering in the hall while they alighted.

"Howdy, granddaughter? Glad to see you!" She gave Kathleen a cold peck on the cheek and peered curiously at her companion. "Who's this? I warn't expecting anybody but you, my dear. Oh, your uncle! Howdy-do, sir? Walk right in, both of you, to the parlor. Folks all out at a party but me. You'll see them in the morning."

She ushered them into a prim, old-fashioned sitting-room that did not show much pretension to the wealth the Franklyns had written they were possessed of; but Kathleen was so glad of the great glowing fire that she ran to it and held her numb fingers to the blaze, with scarcely a glance at her surroundings. Uncle Ben followed her with a strange sinking at the heart.

His impressions of Mrs. Franklyn—Kathleen's grandmother—were not favorable, it seemed.

She was unprepossessing in her looks and manners, and she certainly regarded him in the light of an interloper. She had not extended to him the warm welcome that Northern people are led to believe is characteristic of Southern hospitality.

Mrs. Franklyn pulled out a little table on which was arranged a tempting little supper.

"I kept oysters and coffee warm for you," she said beamingly. "Now lay off your things, both of you, and eat before they get cold, won't you?"

"I am so tired—my head aches—I don't think I can swallow a mouthful!" pleaded Kathleen, on the point of hysterical tears.

Oh; why had she come? She was alarmed, somehow, and she wondered why her heart had failed to go out warmly to this new-found relative, as she had expected. Instead, she experienced fear and repulsion.

But the old woman was not to be denied. She almost forced her reluctant guests to swallow some of the food, and then she bundled them off to their rooms with an alacrity that savored of anxiety to be rid of their company.

"You must be dead tired and wanting to rest, and I'm free to confess that it's long past my usual bed-time," she declared.

"Good-night, Uncle Ben. I hope you will rest well," Kathleen said, kissing the old man with quivering lips. Then they parted, each to their separate rooms.

But there was no rest for Uncle Ben; his pillow was one of thorns, and he rose and paced the floor at midnight, restless and unhappy.

"My heart is on fire! Oh, God, I can not bear this pain! Let me go out into the cold, dark streets and walk it off!" he muttered, restlessly, and hurried into his clothes. "I suppose I can easily slip out of this old, ramshackle house without arousing any one," he thought as he proceeded to open the door.

But he recoiled with a start, for the door was locked on the outside! He was a prisoner in this strange house!

CHAPTER XLV.
IVAN RECEIVES A CHECK IN HIS CAREER

 
Full many a thankless son has been,
But never one like mine.
His meat was served on plates of gold,
His drink was rosy wine.
 

Thomas Hood.

When Kathleen and her uncle had left the house on Commonwealth Avenue, Mrs. Carew turned to Ivan with angry eyes.

"Is it true? Have you got that girl's diamonds?" she inquired.

"Of course he has. You can read it in his guilty face!" chimed in Alpine, contemptuously.

Ivan glared back at them with defiant eyes.

"What are you going to do about it?" he asked, insolently.

"You must return them. There will be a terrible scandal if you do not," replied his mother.

"I have sold them and spent the money," he returned with inimitable coolness.

"Good heavens! what will you do?" she cried; and to her indignation he laughed out aloud as he said:

"You and Alpine will have to make up the four thousand between you, and pay Kathleen!"

"I will not!" came in a burst of rage from Alpine's lips, and her mother echoed it.

"I will not!"

The son leaned back indolently in his chair, not a whit moved by their anger. They always had come round to his demands. They would have to do it now.

"Would you bring disgrace on yourselves by having me sent to prison to save a paltry four thousand dollars?" he demanded, with the air of one who is master of the situation.

They glared at him aghast. The two women loved money passionately. It made them almost frantic the way that Ivan squandered it.

"You two are rolling in wealth," he continued, "and yet you begrudge a poor devil of a son and brother a few thousand to get him out of a penitentiary scrape."

The listeners shuddered. Next to money, they loved good repute, and it was the dread of their lives that the dissolute Ivan would bring disgrace upon them. And here it was staring them in the face. The penitentiary, ugh!

"We have spent at least fifteen thousand dollars on you since we came into this fortune!" groaned Alpine.

"And what you ever did with so much money, in so short a time, I can not imagine," added Mrs. Carew.

"Fast living and cards," laconically replied the villain.

They looked at each other, the two badgered women, and one thought was in the mind of each. Ivan was shameless, defiant. He would never alter his evil courses and if he went on like this, and they had to supply him with money, he would bankrupt them in the end. Disgrace would come to them sooner or later through this black sheep.

Alpine turned to him and asked curiously:

"How did you find out that Kathleen had left her diamonds at the jewelers?"

He started and whitened at the suddenness of the question, but answered, doggedly:

"That is my own secret, and I do not choose to disclose it."

"Neither do I choose to help you out of the scrape you have brought on yourself. Not a dollar will I give you!" retorted Alpine, stung to defiance and rebellion by his matchless assurance.

He did not believe her, and smiled as he answered:

"Oh, yes, you will, for your own sake, my dear sister. Perhaps you think I don't see through your little game; but I do. You're trying to marry Ralph Chainey, the great actor, although he does not care a pin for you. However, you are crafty enough to hook him, I'll be bound—only, he certainly would not look at you again if Kathleen sent your only brother to prison for stealing her diamonds."

Her blue eyes blazed on him with the steely glare of a bitter hate; but she said, almost as if begging him to do better:

"But, Ivan, if we helped you out of this, you would be into some new scrape directly."

"Very likely," he replied, taking insolent pleasure in torturing her, not dreaming she would really turn at bay.

But Alpine was reckless, desperate—ready to give up the fierce contest with an untoward fate. A revengeful longing to punish Ivan for his misdeeds, even at the bitterest cost to herself, assailed her and drove everything else out of her mind. Her eyes flashed, her face grew ashen, and, turning to her mother, she said, in a low, tense voice:

"You see how it is, mamma. If we help him out of this, it will be something else directly. How can we bear the strain for years? Do what we will, he will beggar and disgrace us sooner or later. Why not let the end come now? Let—Kathleen send him to prison for his crime, and we—we—can live it down as best we may."

Every word fell like a drop of ice on the ingrate's heart. Did she mean it? Would they desert him at last, these two?

He was frightened, and yet incredulous. He had heard and read and believed that there was no limit to the love and forgiveness of a mother's and sister's heart.

But he had gone too far in his insolent assurance, and, to his terror and amazement, his hour of reckoning had come at last.

He did not take into account the fact that he did not have a good woman for a mother. His excesses had turned her heart against him, and to his horror she sided with Alpine, angrily discarding him.

"I wash my hands of you," she said, bitterly. "Kathleen may send you to prison if she will. Alpine and I can go abroad. The affair will soon blow over, and people will forget it by the time we come home from Europe."

He dropped his insouciance, and descended to pleading, but it was of no avail. He saw a black fate lowering over him from which there seemed no escape.

In the darkest moment a clever idea came to him.

"If I could only escape to Europe, the whole affair would be over, for I would never come back; but, alas! I have not the means to pay my passage across the ocean," he said, despondently.

Mrs. Carew caught eagerly at the offered bait.

"If you will go and never return, I will furnish you the means," she said.

"I swear it," he replied, and left the house presently, the money in his pocket, an evil, sneering smile on his thin lips.

Meanwhile, Jones had said to Miss Belmont:

"Mr. Chainey has been waiting in the drawing-room some time to see you."

"You should have told me sooner," she exclaimed, flashing at the prospect of seeing Ralph.

"I did not like to interrupt you, miss," he replied, respectfully, but Alpine did not wait to hear his apology; she hurriedly sought the man she loved.

CHAPTER XLVI.
"I HAVE BETRAYED MYSELF. YOU KNOW MY HEART NOW."

 
It matters not its history; love has wings
Like lightning, swift and fatal, and it springs
Like a wild flower, where it is least expected,
Existing whether cherished or rejected.
 

L. E. L.

Ralph had been waiting many minutes for Miss Belmont, but he had forgotten the lapse of time in his agitation over the meeting with Kathleen, and he rose with almost a start to meet the beautiful blonde, who hurried to him with both hands extended in rapturous greeting.

"So glad," she murmured, with the loveliest upward glance, that was quite lost on Ralph, for he did not notice it, but exclaimed:

"I had quite a surprise coming in just now. I met Miss Carew. So she has repented and come home?"

"Yes, and no—it was only a formal call. Kathleen is so proud she will not come back to us, even for the short time before her marriage," answered Alpine.

She sighed, and he echoed it; but it was of Kathleen he was thinking—bonny Kathleen. Alpine guessed it, and bit her lips, then plunged into an animated account of Uncle Ben Carew, making him appear in the most ridiculous light.

"He was an impostor, of course. Mamma is quite sure that my step-father never had a brother," she said.

"But Kathleen believed in him?" he asked.

"Yes. Was it not strange she should let herself be deceived by such a designing schemer? She carried him off as her guest at Mrs. Stone's."

He was silent, wondering if Kathleen had made a mistake, and suddenly Alpine said, sweetly:

"Now please put Kathleen out of your mind and think of no one but me while you are here. Am I not your friend, and haven't I some claim on you?"

Something in her tone startled him. He glanced hurriedly into her face and read as in a book all her love and longing. Her eyes met his and held them as if fascinated. While he gazed she started forward and caught his hand in hers, murmuring, hysterically:

"I have betrayed myself. You know my heart now. Oh, Ralph! forgive me that I could not hide my love for you! Forgive me, and try to love me a little in return."

"Good heavens!" cried the young man, aghast, withdrawing his hand hurriedly from her grasp and looking at her in consternation.

But Alpine, already excited and unnerved by the scene with her brother, could not draw back now, having betrayed her secret. She cried out, pleadingly:

"Do not turn from me so angrily. Is it a crime to love you—to wish for your love?"

She recalled him to the fact that he was acting rudely, that he ought not to let this unhappy girl see the disgust with which she had inspired him by her avowal of love.

It was most embarrassing. He longed to get away, for he did not know what to say. He was utterly abashed, and obeying a sudden impulse, sprung to his feet and turned to the door.

"Miss Belmont, I—I hope you will—excuse me, but I have—have just remembered something—er—er—important—a rehearsal. Will you pardon my haste? Good-bye," he stammered, like a bashful school-boy, and instantly fled the scene, leaving Alpine to fling herself upon a sofa in a burst of hysterical tears.

"Oh, why did I betray my bitter secret! I was mad—mad! and now I have driven him from my side forever by my imprudence!" she sobbed in the wildest abandon.

As she lay there sobbing, her hatred and jealousy of her beautiful step-sister grew stronger than ever. It was for love of Kathleen that Ralph Chainey had turned from her when she had humbled herself to him and sued for his love.

Some touching verses rang in sad melody through her brain.

 
"Ah, dearest, had some happier chance,
The force of fateful circumstance,
Some burning thrill of love divine,
But touched your heart and made you mine,
How had my pulses gladly beat
With love's deep rapture wildly sweet;
How had my life so crowned put forth
Life's proudest strength to prove its worth
For love of you!
 
 
"But cruel fate that shapes our ends,
Dark doom that poet love attends—
The fate unhappy Petrarch sung
In fair Italia's burning tongue.
Such fate as, reckless, tears apart
The tendrils of the breaking heart
From every prop where it would twine,
Such cruel fate, alas! is mine
For love of you!
 
 
"So when my grave is green to see,
You will not let them say of me:
Her talent was a wasted power,
Her life has failed of fruit and flower;
For you will know the hopeless pain,
That palsied heart and hand and brain—
Will know that life has failed alone
Because a blight was on it thrown
For love of you!"
 

She dashed the tears from her eyes and sat up, the picture of shame and despair.

"I could have been a better woman if he had been kind to me—if he would but have promised to try to love me!" she muttered, angrily. "But how fast he hurried away, as if he despised me. How I wish I could hate him in return—hate him as I hate his dark-eyed love! It is for her he scorns me. Oh, God! for vengeance on them both!"

CHAPTER XLVII.
A TERRIBLE CRIME

 
"Deep and dark the flowing river,
Close to the feet like a serpent glides;
Many a secret lost forever
The deep and beautiful water hides!"
 

Our Kathleen did not share the wakefulness of her relative.

On the contrary, a strange drowsiness stole over her as soon as she entered the shabby little bedroom to which Mrs. Franklyn conducted her with such alacrity.

"Get a good rest, that's a dear! and in the morning you shall see them all," she said, wheedlingly; and giving Kathleen a cold little kiss on the cheek, she retreated, leaving her guest alone.

Kathleen flung off her clothes, shivering in the fireless room, slipped into her gown, and crept between the sheets, murmuring over her prayers in the bed because it was too cold outside. Then, with the tears still wet on her lashes, she fell into a heavy slumber.

Presently the door opened again noiselessly, and the old woman's head was thrust inside the room. She gave a low grunt of satisfaction as she heard the deep breathing of Kathleen, and closed the door.

Silence again in the old house; but if any one had been listening they would have heard outside, in the chilly night, the stamp of the horses that had brought the uncle and niece to this place. The cab was waiting yet. Why, and for whom?

The night was intensely dark, it was freezing cold, and the driver did not have to wait long.

The door opened softly in a little while, and a man and a woman stole out bearing between them a figure wrapped up in a long cloak. They pushed their dead or living burden, whichever it was, into the cab, entered themselves, and were driven a long distance, until the low murmur of a river rushing between its banks was distinctly heard. At a quiet, unfrequented spot they came to a stop; the two people got out again, and carried their burden to the river-bank; then there was a thud, a splash, and then they turned away, their arms empty of the load they had brought. In the silence and darkness of the wintry night a terrible crime had been committed.

Alas! poor Kathleen, poor orphan-girl, the sport of a most malignant fate! Heaven help thee now, drifting upon the dark, mysterious waves of the gloomy river, beneath the pall of the ink-black heavens, unlighted by either moon or star!

Meanwhile, the old man, locked into his room like a rat in a trap, was bending all his feeble efforts toward releasing himself.

He feared to make an outcry, for he comprehended instinctively that treachery lurked in the air of the old house, with its forbidding mistress—treachery and danger to himself and helpless Kathleen.

He sunk back helplessly upon the bed, at first shaken and unnerved by his terrible suspicions. Sweeping his hand across his brow, he muttered:

"My door was locked on the outside by design to bar me out from my child—my bonny Kathleen. What have they done to her? or what are they going to do?"

He crept cautiously to the window and pushed up the sash. Horrors! it was barred across with iron as closely as a prison; and again he fell to raving of treachery and danger.

"That woman was not Mrs. Franklyn. I did not believe at first that it could be poor Zaidee's mother. She could not have changed so much in seventeen years, I knew; yet I could not speak out then, lest I betray myself. I thought I would wait for the developments of to-morrow. Alas! it was a fatal resolve. We were decoyed here by the trick of some deadly enemy, and every moment that I remain locked up here Kathleen is in the most deadly peril. God in Heaven help me to escape, that I may succor my poor child!"

Desperate with fears for Kathleen, he threw himself against the door and shook it with all his might. The sounds rang through the house, but no one came to release him. He shrieked aloud, but no voice replied to his frantic calls.

In his misery an awful suspicion had come to him.

He remembered Kathleen's threat to Ivan Belmont, that she would send him to prison unless she received the value of her stolen diamonds.

What if that villain had laid a deadly trap to decoy Kathleen to this place and murder her to save himself the payment of that pitiful sum! This affair looked like it. Perhaps she was already murdered—his beautiful Kathleen, that he loved so dearly, and whom he had brought here in his mistaken eagerness to get her away from Boston.

Searching frantically about, he perceived with joy an old rusty poker beneath the iron fender of the fire-place. He seized it, and with the strength of a madman wrenched the lock from the door. It flew open. He was free.

Then ensued the most piteous search the world ever knew—the old man's frantic search for missing Kathleen.

It was all in vain. The old house was empty, the girl was gone, the old woman was gone, and the night-wind, as it sighed around the gables of the lonely old house, did not whisper to him of the awful secret the river hid.