An Old Man's Darling

She ceased, and dropped her anguished face into the friendly shelter of her hands again. He remained rooted to the spot as if he could never move again.

"Bonnibel," he said, at last, "surely some subtle madness possesses you. You do not know what you would do. I must save you from yourself until you become rational again."

With these words he went out of the room, locking the door behind him.

CHAPTER XXXV

Colonel Carlyle had not quitted the room an hour before Bonnibel's maid, Dolores, came into her presence, bearing a sealed letter upon a salver.

"Une lettre from monsieur le colonel, for Madam Carlyle," she said, in her curious melange of French and English. Bonnibel took the letter, and Dolores retreated to a little distance and stood awaiting her pleasure.

"What can he have to write to me of?" she thought, in some surprise, as she opened the envelope.

She read these words in a rather tremulous hand-writing:

"Bonnibel, my dear wife," and she shuddered slightly at the words—"I sought you a little while ago to inform you of my immediate departure for Paris, but our interview was of so harrowing a nature that I was forced to leave you without communicating my intention. I could not endure your reproaches longer. I am compelled to leave you here—circumstances force my immediate return to Paris. It is possible, nay, probable, that I may have to make a trip to the United States before I return to Naples. Believe me, it is distressing to me beyond measure to leave you now under existing circumstances, but the business that takes me away is most imperative and admits of no delay.

"I have made every possible provision for your comfort and pleasure during my absence. The housekeeper, the domestics and your own especial maid will care for you faithfully. In an hour I leave here. If you have any commands for me; if you are willing to see me again, and speak even one word of kind farewell, send me a single line by Dolores, and I will be at your side in an instant.

"Clifford Carlyle."

She finished reading and dropped the letter, forgetful of the lynx-eyed French woman who regarded her curiously. Her eyes wandered to the window, and she fell into deep thought.

"Madam," the maid said, hesitatingly, "Monsieur le colonel awaits une reply. He hastens to be gone."

Bonnibel looked up at her.

"Go, Dolores," she answered, coldly; "tell him there is no reply."

Dolores courtesied and went away. Bonnibel relapsed into thought again. She was glad that Colonel Carlyle was going away, yet she felt a faint curiosity as to the imperative business which necessitated his return to his native land. She had never heard him allude to business before. He had been known to her only as a gentleman of elegant leisure.

"Some of the banks in which his wealth is invested have failed, perhaps," she thought, vaguely, and dismissed the subject from her mind without a single suspicion of the fatal truth—that the jealous old man was going to America to be present at the trial of Leslie Dane, and to prosecute him to the death. Ah! but too truly is it declared in Holy Writ that "jealousy is strong as death, and as cruel as the grave."

Colonel Carlyle was filled with a raging hatred against the man who had loved Bonnibel Vere before he had ever looked upon her alluring beauty.

He had received an anonymous letter filled with exaggerated descriptions of Bonnibel's love for the artist, and his wild passion for her. The writer insinuated that the lovely girl had sold herself for the old man's gold, believing that he would soon die, and leave her free to wed the poor artist, and endow him with the wealth thus obtained. Now, said the unknown writer, since the lovers had met again their passion would fain overleap every barrier, and they had determined to fly with each other to liberty and love.

Colonel Carlyle was reading the letter for the hundredth time when Dolores returned from delivering his letter to Bonnibel with the cold message that there was "no reply."

That bitter refusal to the yearning cry of his heart for one kind farewell word only inflamed him the more against the man whom he believed held his wife's heart. It seemed to him that that in itself was a crime for which Leslie Dane merited nothing less than death.

"She read my letter?" he said to the maid who stood waiting before him.

"Oui, Monsieur," answered Dolores, with her unfailing courtesy.

"That is well," he said, briefly; "now, go."

Dolores went away and left him wrestling with the bitterest emotions the heart of man can feel. He was old, and the conflicting passions of the last few years had aged him in appearance more than a score of years could have done. He looked haggard, and worn, and weary. But his heart had not kept pace with his years. It was still capable of feeling the bitter pangs that a younger man might have felt in his place. Felise Herbert had done a fearful work in making this man the victim of her malevolent revenge. Left to himself he had the nobility of a good and true manhood within him. But the hand of a demon had played upon the strings of the viler passions that lay dormant within him, and transformed him into a fiend.

"Not one word!" he exclaimed, to himself, in a passion of bitter resentment. "Not one word will she vouchsafe for me in her pride and scorn. Ah, well, Leslie Dane, you shall pay for this! I will hound you to your death if wealth and influence can push the prosecution forward! Not until you are in your grave can I ever breathe freely again!"

"The slow, sad days that bring us all things ill" merged into weary weeks, but brought no release to the restless young creature who pined and chafed in her confinement like a bird that vainly beats its wings against the gilded bars of its cage. Dolores Dupont guarded her respectfully but rigorously. Weary days and nights went by while she watched the sun shining by day on the blue Bay of Naples, and the moonlight by night silvering its limpid waves with brightness. Her sick heart wearied of the changeless beauty, the tropical sweetness and fragrance about her. A cold, northern sky, with darkening clouds and sunless days, would have suited her mood better than the tropical sweetness of Southern Italy. As it was she would sometimes murmur to herself as she wearily paced the length of her gilded prison:

"Night, even in the zenith of her dark domain,Is sunshine to the color of my fate."

But "the darkest hour is just before day," it is said. It was as true for our sweet Bonnibel as it has proved for many another weary soul vainly beating its weary wings against the bars of life in the struggle to be free. Just now, when her heart and hope had failed utterly and her only chance of escape seemed to lie in a frank confession of the truth to Colonel Carlyle, the path of freedom lay just before her feet, and destiny was busy shaping an undreamed-of future for that weary, restless young heart.

"I can bear it no longer," she murmured, as she paced the floor late one night, thinking over her troubles until her brain seemed on fire. "I will write to Colonel Carlyle and tell him the truth—tell him that dreadful secret—that I am not his wife, that I belong to another! Surely he must let me go free then. He will hate me that I have brought such shame upon him; but he will keep the secret for his own sake, and let me go away and hide myself somewhere in the great dark world until I die."

She dropped upon her knees and lifted her clasped hands to heaven, while bitter tears rained over her pallid cheeks.

"Heaven help me!" she moaned; "it is hard, hard! If I only had not married Colonel Carlyle all might have gone well. Oh, Leslie, Leslie, I loved you so! God help me, I love you still! Yet I shall never see you again, although I am your wife! Ah, never, never, for a gulf lies between us—a gulf of sin, though Heaven is my witness I am innocent of all intentional wrong-doing. I would have died first!"

Her words died away in a moan of pain; but presently the anguished young voice rose again:

"The sibyl's fateful prophecy has all been fulfilled. Yet how little I dreamed that it could come true! Oh, God, how is it that I, the proud daughter of the Veres and the Arnolds, can live with the shadow of disgrace upon my head?"

She dropped her face in her hands, and the "silence of life, more pathetic than death," filled the room. All was strangely still; nothing was heard but the murmurous waves of the beautiful Bay of Naples softly lapping the shore. Suddenly a slight, strange sound echoed through the room. Bonnibel sprang to her feet, a little startled, and listened in alarm. Again the sound was repeated. It seemed to Bonnibel as if someone had thrown a few pebbles against the window. Yes, it must be that, she was sure.

CHAPTER XXXVI

Full of vague alarm, blent with a little trembling hope of she knew not what, Bonnibel ran to the window, which was fortunately not fastened down, pushed up the sash and peered down into the night. The moon had not fully risen yet, and there was but a faint light in the clear sky, but down in the dark shrubbery below she fancied she could see a human form and a white face upturned to the window.

Yes, she was right. In a moment a low and cautious, but perfectly audible voice, floated up to her ears.

"Oh! my dear Miss Bonnibel," was what it said, "is that you?"

Bonnibel put her hand to her heart as if the shock of joy were too great to be borne.

It was the voice of the poor girl over whose unknown fate her heart had ached for many weary days—the welcome voice of faithful Lucy Moore.

"Yes, it is Bonnibel," she murmured gently back, fearing that her voice might be heard by Dolores Dupont, who slept on a couch in the dressing-room to be near her mistress.

"Are you alone?" inquired Lucy, softly.

"Yes, quite alone," was answered back.

"Miss Bonnibel, I have a rope-ladder down here. I am going to throw it up to you. Try and catch it, and fasten it to your window strongly enough for me to climb up to you."

Bonnibel leaned forward silently. A twisted bundle was skillfully thrown up, and she caught it in her hands. Stepping back into the room she uncoiled a light yet strong ladder of silken rope.

"Fasten it into the hooks that are used to secure the window-shutters," said Lucy's voice from below.

Trembling with joy, Bonnibel fastened the ends strongly as directed, and threw the rope down to Lucy. In a few moments the girl had climbed up to the window, sprang over the sill, and had her young mistress in her arms.

"One kiss, you darling!" she said, in a voice of ecstasy, "then I must pull up the rope, for I fear discovery, and I have much to tell you before I take you away with me!"

Bonnibel's heart gave a quick bound of joy.

"Oh! Lucy, will you really take me away?" she exclaimed, pressing the girl's hand fondly.

"That's what I am here for," answered Lucy, withdrawing her mistress into the darkest corner of the room, after having drawn her rope up and dropped the curtains over the coil as it lay upon the floor.

"Lucy, how did you ever find me?" exclaimed Bonnibel, gladly, as they sat down together on a low divan, mutually forgetting the difference in their position as mistress and maid in the joy of their re-union.

"I've never lost track of you, Miss Bonnibel, since the night your husband turned me into the cold, dark street."

"Cruel!" muttered Bonnibel, with a shudder.

"Yes, it was cruel," said Lucy, "but I didn't spend the night in the streets! Pierre, the hall-servant, let me in again unbeknownst to Colonel Carlyle, and I slept in my old room that night, though I couldn't get to speak to you because he had locked you into your room and kept the key. At daylight I went away and secured a lodging near you—you know I had plenty of money, Miss Bonnibel, because you were always very generous! That evening when Colonel Carlyle took you away, along with that hateful furrin maid, I followed after, you may be sure, and I've been in Naples ever since trying to get speech of you; but though I've tried bribery, and corruption, and cunning, too, I've always failed until to-night."

She paused to take breath, and Bonnibel silently pressed her hand.

"So there's the whole story in a nutshell," continued Lucy, after a minute; "I ain't got time to spin it out, for you and me, Miss Bonnibel, has to get away from here as quick as ever we can! Do you think you can climb down my ladder of rope?"

Bonnibel smiled at the anxious tone of the girl's question.

"Of course I can, Lucy," she said, confidently, "I wish there were nothing harder in life than that."

"Miss Bonnibel," said the girl, in a low voice, "we must be going in a minute or two, now. Can you get a dark suit to put on? And have you any money you can take with you? For it will take more money than I have in my purse, perhaps, to carry us home to New York."

"To New York—are we going back there?" faltered the listener.

"As fast as wind and water can carry us!" answered the girl. "You and me are needed there in a hurry, my darling mistress. At least you are, for I feel almost sure that a man's life is hanging on your evidence."

"Lucy, what can you mean?" exclaimed Bonnibel, in amazement.

"Ah! I see they have told you nothing!" answered Lucy.

Bonnibel caught her arm and looked anxiously into her face.

"No one has told me anything," she said. "What should they have told me?"

"Much that you never knew, perhaps," said the girl, shaking her head gravely.

"Then tell it me yourself," said Bonnibel. "Do not keep me in suspense, my good girl."

"May I ask you a question first, Miss Bonnibel?"

"As many as you please, Lucy!"

"You remember the night poor old master was murdered?" said the girl, as if reluctant to recall that painful subject.

"As if I could ever forget it," shuddered the listener.

"You were down at the shore until late that night," pursued the girl, "and when you got back you found your uncle dead—murdered! Miss Bonnibel, was Mr. Dane with you that night on the sands? I have sometimes been athinkin' he might a been."

"Lucy, what are you trying to get at?" gasped the listener.

"I only asked you the question," said Lucy, humbly.

"And I cannot understand why you ask it, Lucy, but I will answer it truly. Leslie Dane was with me every moment of the time."

"I thought so," said Lucy, fervently. "Thank God!"

"Lucy, please explain yourself," said Bonnibel anxiously. "You frighten me with your mysterious looks and words. What has gone wrong?"

"I am going to tell you as fast as I can, my dear young mistress. Try and bear it as bravely as you can, for you must go back to America to right a great wrong."

"A great wrong!" repeated the listener, helplessly.

"You were so sick after Mr. Arnold died," said Lucy, continuing her story, "that the doctors kept the papers and all the news that was afloatin' around, away from you; so it happened that we never let you know that your friend, Mr. Leslie Dane, was charged with the murder of your uncle."

There was a minute's shocked silence; then, with a smothered moan of horror, Bonnibel slid from her place and fell on the floor in a helpless heap at Lucy's feet.

"Oh! Miss Bonnibel, rouse yourself—oh, for God's sake don't you faint! Oh, me! oh, me! what a born fool I was to tell you that before I got you away from this place!" cried Lucy in terror, kneeling and lifting the drooping head upon her arm.

"Oh! Miss Bonnibel, please don't you faint now!" she reiterated, taking a bottle of smelling salts from her pocket and applying it to the young lady's nostrils.

Thus vehemently adjured, Bonnibel opened her blue eyes and looked up into the troubled face of her attendant.

"We have got to be going now," urged the girl, "you must keep all your strength to get away from here."

"I will," said Bonnibel, struggling to a sitting posture in Lucy's supporting arms. "I am quite strong, Lucy, I shall not faint, I give you my word, I will not! Go on with your story!"

"I mustn't—you can't stand it," answered the girl, hesitating.

"Go on," Bonnibel said, with a certain little authoritative ring in her voice that Lucy had always been wont to obey.

"If I must then," said Lucy, reluctantly, "but there's but little more to tell. Mr. Dane got away and they never caught him till the night of your grand masquerade ball when Colonel Carlyle recognized him. The next day he had him arrested and put in a French prison on the charge of murder."

"And now?" asked Bonnibel, in horror-struck accents.

"And they all sailed for the United States more than two weeks ago," answered Lucy, sadly. "Mr. Dane to his trial, and Colonel Carlyle, Mrs. Arnold and Miss Felise Herbert to testify against him."

"More than two weeks ago," repeated Bonnibel like one dazed.

"I heard some men talking about it," Lucy went on, "and they said that if Mr. Dane couldn't prove his absence at the time of the murder he would certainly get hung."

A moan was Bonnibel's only response.

"So you see, my dear young mistress, that his only chance rests on your evidence, and we must start right away if we are to get there to save him!"

Bonnibel sprang to her feet, trembling all over.

"Let us go this moment," she said, feverishly; "oh, what if we should be too late!"

Wild with horror she set about her preparations. Her one thought now was to save Leslie Dane though the whole world should know the shameful secret she tried so hard to keep from its knowledge.

CHAPTER XXXVII

February winds blew coldly over the sea at Cape May, the day was bleak and sunless, a misty, drizzling rain fell slowly but continuously, chilling the very marrow of one's bones. No one who could have helped it would have cared to venture out in such dreary, uncomfortable, depressing weather. But up and down the beach, before the closed mansion of Sea View, walked a weird, strange figure, bareheaded in the pitiless war of the elements, bowed and bent by age, clothed in rent and tattered finery, with scant, gray locks flying elfishly in the breeze that blew strongly and cruelly enough to have lifted the little, witch-like form and cast it into the sea.

"I am a fool to come out in such stormy weather!" this odd creature muttered to herself. "What is it that drives me out of my sick bed to wander here in the rain and wind before Francis Arnold's house? There is a thing they call Remorse, ha, ha—is that the haunting devil that pursues me?"

She looked at the lonely mansion, and turned back to the sea with a shudder.

"Whose is the sin?" she said, looking weirdly out at the wild waves as if they had a human voice to answer her query. "She tempted me with her gold—she had murder in her heart as red as if she had dyed her hands in his life-blood! Ugh!" she wrung her hands and shook them from her as if throwing off invisible drops, "how thick and hot it was when it spurted out over my hands! Yet was not the sin hers? Hers was the brain that planned, mine but the hand that struck the blow!"

"Gold, gold!" she went on, after a shuddering pause, "what a devil it is to tempt one! I never harmed human being before, but the yellow glitter was so beautiful to my sight that it betrayed me. Strange, that when it had made me do her will, it should have grown hateful to my sight, and burned my hands, till I came here and cast every golden piece of my blood-bought treasure into the sea."

She drew nearer to the waves, peeping into them as if perchance the treasure she had cast into their bosom might yet be visible.

"There was a man named Judas," she muttered; "I have heard them tell of him somewhere—he sold a man's life for some pieces of silver—but when it was done he went and cast the treasure back to those who had bought his soul. He must have felt as I do. What is it that I feel—remorse, repentance, or a horror of that dreadful leap I shall soon be taking into the dark?"

Walking wildly up and down she did not see two figures coming towards her through the mist of the rain—two female figures shrouded in long water-proof cloaks and thick veils.

"Miss Bonnibel," said one to the other, "'tis the wicked old witch—the fortune-teller—Wild Madge. Sure the old thing must be crazy, tramping out in such wild weather!"

Bonnibel shuddered as she looked at the weird old creature.

"Cannot we avoid her notice?" she inquired, shrinking from contact with the sibyl.

At that moment Wild Madge turned and saw them. Directly she came up to them with her fortune-teller's whine:

"Cross my palm with silver and I will tell your fortune, bonny ladies."

"No, no, Wild Madge, we haven't got time to hear our fortunes told," said Lucy Moore. "Don't try to detain us. We are on a mission of life and death."

"So am I," mocked the sibyl with her strange, discordant laugh. "Death is on my trail to-day; but I know you, Lucy Moore, and you, too, lovely lady," she added, peering curiously under Bonnibel's veil. "I told your fortune once, pretty one—did the prophecy come true?" she inquired, seizing hold of Bonnibel's reluctant hand, and drawing off her glove.

"Yes, it came true," she answered, tremblingly.

"Yes, I see, I see," said the sibyl, peering into the little hand; "you have suffered—you suffer still! But, lady, listen to me! The clouds are breaking, there is a silver lining to every one that droops over you now. You may believe what I tell you; ha! ha!

"'Tis the sunset of life gives me mystical lore,And coming events cast their shadows before.'"

Uttering the quotation with the air of a prophetess, she released Bonnibel's hand and suddenly sank upon the wet ground with a stifled moan of pain.

"Oh! Lucy, she is ill—her hands are as hot as fire, her eyes are quite glassy," exclaimed Bonnibel in alarm as she bent over the fallen form.

"We can't help that, Miss Bonnibel—we are compelled to hurry on to Brandon," said the girl, for though ordinarily the softest-hearted of human beings her impatience to be gone made her rather indifferent to the visible weakness and illness of the sibyl.

"Oh! but, Lucy, we must spare her a moment," cried Bonnibel, full of womanly pity, and forgetting her dread of the sibyl at sight of her sufferings; "she must not die out here in the cold and rain. Let us take her between us and lead her to the house, and leave her in care of the old housekeeper if she is there."

"We must hurry, then," said Lucy; "Mr. Leslie Dane's life is worth more than this old witch's if she lived two hundred years to follow her trade of lying!"

She stooped very gently, however, and helped the poor creature to her feet; supporting the frail form between them, the mistress and maid walked on toward the house.

"What threatens Leslie Dane's life?" inquired the old sibyl suddenly, as she walked between them with drooping head.

"They are trying him for the murder of Mr. Arnold, more than three years ago, if you must know," said Lucy.

"Is he innocent?" inquired the old creature in a faltering voice.

"Innocent? Of course he is—as innocent as the angels," answered Lucy, "but he can never prove it unless me and Miss Bonnibel can get the witnesses at Brandon to prove an alibi for him. So you see we are wasting time on you, old woman."

"Yes, yes," faltered Wild Madge, humbly. "But where are they trying him, Lucy Moore?"

"At Cape May Court House, old woman—and the evidence will be summed up to-day, the jurors will give their verdict. You see we must hurry, if we would save him."

"Yes, yes; better to leave the old woman to die in the rain, and hurry on," whined the sick woman.

"We are here now. We will leave you under shelter at least," Bonnibel answered gently.

They led her in, and consigned her to the care of the wondering old housekeeper at Sea View, and went back to the shore.

The Bonnibel, battered and worn, but still seaworthy, rocked at her moorings yet. They loosened the little craft, sprang in, Bonnibel took up the oars, and the little namesake shot swiftly forward through the rough waves to Brandon.

CHAPTER XXXVIII

"Prisoner at the bar, have you anything to say why the sentence of death shall not be pronounced against you?"