Dainty's Cruel Rivals; Or, The Fatal Birthday

"Yes, I see—in imagination—and my mouth waters! Let us go back to the mill at once, Peters, and realize our anticipations. Hal-loo! what is that—over on that bank, man?"

"Gee-whillikins! what, indeed?" roared the saw-mill man, rowing rapidly to the bank and springing out so quickly as to almost upset his companion into the pellucid stream.

Stooping over the sleeping form, the rough backwoodsman scrutinized Dainty with amazement, ending by shaking her vigorously, as he exclaimed, in wonder:

"Wake up, honey; wake up, and tell us whar in thunder you come from, a-sleepin' here like the dead, your clothes all wet and drabbled, and your little feet bare and torn and bloody with the rocks and briars! Why, 'tis a sight to make that soft Sairy Ann cry her eyes out! What's your name, chile, and whar'd you cum from anyway?" as the blue eyes flared wide open and Dainty stared at his kindly, gray-bearded face with a pitiful, unrealizing moan.

The commercial traveler fastened the boat to a tree and came on the bank, too, full of curiosity; but all their efforts failed to elicit anything intelligible from the sick girl, and at length they came to the very intelligent conclusion that she must be some invalid strayed away from home, and that the only thing to do under the circumstances was to take her back to the saw-mill with them and await developments.

They did so, and thus our forlorn heroine found shelter in a rude shanty deep in the forest, among a few sturdy toilers who were camping here for the summer, a half score of rough but kindly men, the husband and sons of a good soul, Sarah Ann Peters, who did all the household work for the crowd, and accepted with open arms and heart this new claimant on her sympathy.

CHAPTER XXVI.

THE MOTHER'S WOE

The experienced eyes of this motherly woman soon saw that the lovely young stranger was ill of fever, and in a very serious condition; but having successfully raised a family of nine stalwart sons by her own skill and without aid from the doctors, she "was not feazed," as her husband quaintly said, "by the case." She simply put Dainty to bed, and while she was getting breakfast, brewed a decoction of herbs, which she said would do her a world of good.

Meanwhile, she gladdened the drummer's heart by a delicious breakfast of broiled mountain trout, country ham, fresh butter, sweet corn pone, and strong coffee with thick cream, and he presently went on his way rejoicing after his night in the camp, and expressing the hope that the lovely stranger would soon be well again and restored to her friends.

But those cordial hopes did not seem likely of fulfilment soon, for Dainty continued quite ill for weeks in the lonely logging camp; and, to the surprise of the loggers, none of her friends came in search of her, and no inquiry was made for a missing sick girl.

In the stupor of her fever, she continued for weeks to be unconscious of her surroundings, and the busy, stolid family, who cared for her, did not think it their business to seek out her friends. They simply accepted the duty of caring for her as Heaven-sent, and left the rest to a gracious Providence.

As for Mrs. Ellsworth, she was struck with consternation when no dead body was found the next morning where Sheila had placed it beneath the tree; but on viewing the swollen, brawling stream, she concluded that it must have swept Dainty's corpse away during the storm, and she lived in daily expectation of its discovery, and the great sensation it would create in the neighborhood.

Thus the summer days passed away, bringing the bright cool September weather, and still the waters did not give up their beautiful dead; but no search was made for Dainty, though Lovelace Ellsworth had astonished his doctors and disappointed his step-mother by clinging to life in spite of his grievous hurt, and was now on the road to recovery, so that the trial of Vernon Ashley for his attempted murder soon took place, and the prisoner received sentence of a term of years in the penitentiary.

Olive and Ela were now domesticated at Ellsworth as the acknowledged heiresses of their aunt, who, by the failure of her step-son to marry on his twenty-sixth birthday, now claimed to be the mistress of his wealth, and took credit to herself for her charitable spirit in caring for the unhappy invalid, who was now fast regaining health and strength.

As for Mrs. Chase, she had been virtually driven from Ellsworth by the caprices of the two proud, heartless girls who had received so much kindness at her hands in the days when they were poor school-teachers in Richmond.

Olive and Ela, who had so vigorously persecuted Dainty, with the able assistance of their aunt, rejoiced without stint when they learned that their machinations had driven their envied cousin to a premature death; and they regretted that the young girl's body had been swept away by the high waters, longing for her death to be made public, that they might exult in secret over the poor mother's woe.

So bitterly had they hated and envied Dainty that it extended to her gentle mother, and even the sight of her pale, sorrowful face, as she moved unobtrusively about the place, giving the most motherly care to Love in his affliction, goaded them to futile rage, until in the malice of their natures they decided that she should no longer remain at Ellsworth.

To further their purpose, they made secret complaints to their aunt that Mrs. Chase was maligning them behind their backs to the servants, and ridiculing them as "beggars on horseback," who had forgotten their former poverty and toil in the sudden accession of riches.

No doubt Mrs. Ellsworth was glad of a pretext for ridding herself of one whose sweet, sad face must have been a constant silent reproach to her for driving her loved daughter to death; for she hastened to assail the astonished creature with reproaches, dismissing her denials with incredulous scorn, and declaring that under the circumstances the roof of Ellsworth could no longer be her shelter.

"I will go this evening, madame," her sister-in-law answered with gentle pride, her pale face flushing as she added: "I should not have trespassed so long on your hospitality but I thought I was making myself useful by nursing Mr. Ellsworth."

"There is a trained nurse," Mrs. Ellsworth said, loftily.

"Yes; but she has been both careless and incompetent."

"I shall dismiss her to-morrow. He will only need his man Franklin now," Mrs. Ellsworth returned; and they parted with cold bows on either side, the heartless woman to return to her nieces with the news of Mrs. Chase's banishment, and the latter to take a sorrowful leave of Lovelace Ellsworth, and pack her trunk and Dainty's for immediate departure.

The hot tears that fell on each dainty piece of clothing as she packed it away only the angels knew, for the mother's heart was breaking over the loss of her child.

She could not bring herself to believe that Dainty had fled with another man, for having accidentally made the acquaintance of the old black mammy, she had been favored with a thrilling narration of all that her daughter had suffered from the persecution of ghosts and the attempt at kidnapping.

It was a terrible shock to the mother's heart, and after that she could not believe that Dainty had eloped. She was sure that the girl had been stolen away, and perhaps murdered.

Oh, the curse of poverty! How it goaded the poor mother's heart!

Too poor to spend a penny in search of the beloved only child who had met such a mysterious fate, alone in the world, and almost friendless, she journeyed sorrowfully back to Richmond, only to find that a fire on the previous night had destroyed the cottage where her furniture was stored, and that she had no shelter for her head and no work for her hands. Was it any wonder her poor brain went wild?

CHAPTER XXVII.

IT SEEMED LIKE SOME BEAUTIFUL DREAM WHEN SHE ENTERED THE GATES IN THE CHILLY SUNSET OF A WINDY OCTOBER DAY

"Thank Heaven! the crisis,The danger is past,And the lingering illnessIs over at last—The fever called 'Living'Is conquered at last!"

The day came, late in September, when the autumn leaves were turning red and gold, that Dainty Chase opened wide her startled blue eyes upon the world again.

She had closed them consciously over six weeks ago in the gloomy dungeon beneath Ellsworth Castle, when, pressing to her desperate lips the bitter draught of death, she had bidden the cruel world farewell.

In the long weeks of illness and delirium that followed, many things had come and gone without her knowledge; and now, when consciousness returned again; there was a dazed look in the beautiful pansy-blue eyes that stared wide and dark out of her wan and wasted face, with the blue veins wandering plainly beneath the transparent skin.

"Where am I?" she gasped, faintly, putting her weak little hands up to her head, and wondering in a bewildered way what made her hair feel so thin and short and curly, like that of a year-old infant.

The fact was, that Sairy Ann Peters had been compelled to cut off all of Dainty's golden tresses to stay the progress of the devastating fever, and she had anticipated with womanly grief the sadness of the hour when the girl should realize her cruel loss.

She came quickly to the bedside and took the little trembling hands in her toil-hardened but motherly ones, and said, tenderly:

"So you've come to yourself at last, dearie, and beginning to worrit the fust thing because all your beautiful long curly hair is cut off! But never mind, chile; it will grow again as pretty as ever all over in shiny leetle rings like a babby's; and I was jest obleeged to crop it off to save your sweet life, you had the fever so miserable bad."

"Where am I?" Dainty repeated, in amazement, her gaze lingering confidently on the homely but gentle face before her and receiving in return the smiling reply:

"Where you are is soon told, honey; you're in a logging-camp, where my husband and nine grown sons are running a saw-mill till the first of October, way up in the mountings, where we hain't seen but two faces besides our own sence we come here the first day of April. It's 'bout six weeks sence my husband found you at day-break, lying sick and raving on the bank of the trout stream where he was fishing for our breakfast, and brought you home with him. I gin you my best bed, and been nussin' you all this while like you was my own darter, which I never had one, but al'ays hankered arter one; but the good Lord He sent me sons every time till I've nine on 'em; and I'm past fifty, and no more hopes of a darter now, though there'll be darters-in-law a-plenty, no doubt, when my boys begin to mate. Well, now you know all you ast me about, chile, and I'm jest as cur'us over you. What mought your name be, and wherever did you drap from, anyway?"

"I—I don't know," Dainty faltered, weakly, with a bewildered air.

"Sho! you don't know? Ah, well! I see how 'tis. Your memory ain't come back clear yet; and no wonder, after sech a hard sickness as you've come through! Never mind, dearie, it'll all come back arter awhile. Are you hungry now?"

"Thirsty!" faltered the girl; and like a flash the past came back to her, conjured up by that single word, presenting to her mind the dark, noisome cell where she had suffered so terribly with the cruel, burning fever and the terrible thirst, until longing for death, she had pressed the bitter poison to her parched lips.

Then all was blank till now, and she wondered feebly how she had escaped death, and still more, how she had been released from her terrible captivity, and been brought here to this remote mountain camp.

The woman gave her a draught of clear, cold, sparkling water that cleared her faculties immensely, and closing her heavy-lidded eyes again, she began to recall the past from the dim shades of memory.

It was a bitter task, and the hot tears flashed beneath her lashes as she remembered that Sheila Kelly had told her that Love, her husband, was wounded and dying.

The next morning she said wistfully to the kind woman:

"I am beginning to remember things now. Do you know a place called Ellsworth?"

"I've heerd tell of it; it's quite seven miles from here."

"Seven miles! Then how on earth did I ever get to this place?" wondered Dainty, but she only said, reticently:

"A lady named Chase is there, and I am her daughter. I was very ill, and I can not remember how I came to be out in the woods; but I would like for you to send word to my mother."

"I will see about it," replied Mrs. Peters; and after consulting her family, she reported that all were too busy to go to Ellsworth now, but they intended to break up camp the first of October, to return to their winter home at the station, and if she could be patient till then, she should have a bed in the wagon, and they could easily leave her at Ellsworth on their way past.

With this she was forced to be content, having no claim on her simple entertainers, save that of humanity; but the week, after all, slipped away quite fast in the delicious languor of returning health; and one day the Peters family loaded up three long wagons with their household goods, and set forth for home, having made Dainty and the mother quite comfortable on a mattress for the long journey over the worst stretch of rocky mountain road known in that section of a very rough country.

It seemed like some beautiful dream at last, when, after kindly farewells from her homely benefactors, she stood at the gates of Ellsworth in the chilly sunset of a windy October day, walking slowly and weakly along the graveled paths, past fading summer flowers and flaunting autumn blooms, on her way to the great house, her heart leaping with joy at the thought of her mother's kiss of welcome, and sinking with pain in the fear that she should find her darling dead and buried, according to Sheila's story.

CHAPTER XXVIII.

MORE BITTER THAN DEATH

"No—there's nothing left us nowBut to mourn the past;Vain was every ardent vow—Never yet did Heaven allowLove so warm, so wild to last.Not even hope could now deceive me,Life itself looks dark and cold;Oh, thou never more canst give meOne dear smile like those of old!"

Dainty dragged her trembling limbs as fast as her strength would permit toward the great house, lifting her large blue eyes eagerly up to the windows in search of some familiar face, though hope was very weak in her trembling heart.

It was two long, weary months since the first day of August, and what might not have happened in that time?

If Sheila Kelly had told her the truth, her young husband must be dead and buried long ago, and the only friend left to her in the wide, cruel world would be her mother, if indeed that dear mother lived, for what more likely than that she had died of heart-break at her daughter's mysterious disappearance?

Dainty, who knew so well her mother's devotion, feared that such a calamity was but too possible.

But she realized that even if her mother lived she was very unlikely to be found at Ellsworth now. Her bitter enemies would have driven her away long ago.

Still a subtle yearning drew her to the home of her beloved, though, as she drew near to the scene of her hopes or fears, her keen emotion almost overwhelmed her, driving the faint color back from her wan cheeks to her weak heart, and making her tremble so that she could scarcely advance one foot beyond the other.

How changed and lonely everything seemed since she had gone away? She did not even meet one of the servants as she hurried on, wrapping closely about her shivering form a thin cashmere scarf that kind Sairy Ann Peters had pressed on her to protect her, in her light summer dress, from the cold autumn winds. Thus panting, trembling, starting, and alternately hoping and despairing, she came close enough at last to gaze at the upper windows of the handsome suite of apartments that belonged to Lovelace Ellsworth.

She paused with a suppressed sob of excitement, and swept her glance rapidly from window to window.

Suddenly, with a cry of ecstatic joy, the girl sank to her knees with clasped, upraised hands.

"God in Heaven, I thank Thee!"

On her pallid, hopeless face had come such a light of joy and gratitude and boundless surprise as can only shine after long grief and pain when the grave seems to give up its dead and our beloved live again.

Her wistful, yearning eyes had been granted the most joyful sight that Heaven could have given—the sight of Lovelace Ellsworth sitting at the open window of his room, gazing with a strange, intent look at the setting sun as it sank below the mountain-tops and left the world in shadow.

"God in Heaven, I thank Thee! He lives; my beloved one, we shall be restored to each other!" repeated the girl in an ecstacy of gladness; and her dark-blue eyes clung rapturously to the handsome face, wondering at its pallor and strange, intent look.

"Dear Love, how pale and thin and sad he looks! He has been ill, perhaps, or it is grief for me that has changed him so! It is strange that he never found me when I was such a short distance away; but there are many mysteries to be unraveled yet," she murmured, rising to her feet, and going in haste to a side entrance, where she could easily gain the upper portion of the house without being detected.

As she mounted the stairs, she was thinking so gladly of the joyful reunion with Love, that she did not observe, until they were face to face, a lady coming out of his room. It was Mrs. Ellsworth; and as she met the pale, trembling girl gliding like a shadow in the semi-darkness of the corridor, a long, loud, wailing cry burst from her startled lips, and making an effort to fly from what she took for a veritable ghost, she tripped, and fell prostrate to the floor.

Dainty saw her cruel aunt distinctly, heard the startled cry and the fall; but she never looked back, but ran eagerly to her darling's room.

She tore open the door, and rushed over the threshold, across the room, with outstretched arms.

"Oh, my love, my darling!"

Her young husband was sitting at the window in an easy-chair, with a velvet dressing-gown wrapped about him, and at the sound of her entrance, he turned his face around, and looked at the intruder blankly.

Blankly!—that was the only word that described it.

If Dainty had been the greatest stranger in the world, her young husband could not have turned upon her lovely, agitated face a more calm, unrecognizing stare.

For a moment she stopped, and regarded him pitifully, sobbing:

"Oh, Love! am I so changed you do not know your own little Dainty, your wife? Oh, look at me closely! I have been ill, and lost my beauty for a little while. They had to cut my hair, but, dearest, it will soon grow again as pretty as ever!"

She moved closer, and timidly clasped her arms about his neck.

"Oh, my darling! do not look at me as if I were a stranger! Oh, do not! That cold, stony stare almost breaks my heart! Oh, Love! it is your own little Dainty! I was stolen away from you, and oh! I have passed through such a terrible experience! You have been ill, too, have you not, my dearest one? Oh, how thin and pale you are, but just as handsome as ever!" and she clasped him close in a warm embrace, and showered fond, wifely kisses on his cold, unresponsive lips.

The door opened suddenly, and an intelligent-looking mulatto man came in very softly, as if into a sick room.

Dainty knew him at once as Love's valued personal attendant Franklin.

Her arms dropped from Love's neck, and she blushed as he exclaimed:

"So it's really you, Miss Chase?"

"Why, Franklin, you knew me at once, but your master looks on me as a stranger!" she answered, in surprise that grew boundless as the man returned, sadly:

"Alas! Miss Chase, you and all the world must ever remain strangers to my poor master now!"

The mulatto was a clever, well-educated person, and his words, strange as they sounded, carried the ring of truth.

"What can you mean?" she faltered.

"Miss Chase, where have you been? Have you heard nothing of Mr. Ellsworth's sad condition?" he asked, respectfully.

Still keeping her arm around Love's neck, the young girl answered, gently:

"I was kidnapped the night before my wedding, Franklin, and the next day I was told Mr. Ellsworth had been shot and was dying. Then I was taken very ill, and knew nothing more till I returned here to-day, when I was overjoyed to learn that he was still alive!"

The man looked at her with genuine sadness.

"Ah, Miss Chase! I do not know whether you should be glad or not. Is not this more cruel than death?"

"I do not understand," she faltered, uncomprehendingly; and he answered, with intense sympathy:

"You have spoken to him, and he does not know you—you, the dearest creature on earth to him, Miss Chase! Neither does he recognize any one else, nor remember anything. There is a bullet in his head that the doctors can not extricate, and it has destroyed his mental faculties completely. His health is good, but he has forgotten the past, and lost even the power of speech. He will never be anything, they say, but a harmless idiot."

She cried out with a terrible anger that it was not true, that she could not believe it; he was trying to deceive her and break her heart.

He was usually a quiet, stolid man, but the tears came to his eyes as she knelt on the floor and wound her arms about Love in passionate embraces, and, with tears that might have moved a heart made of stone, called on him to pity her and speak to her, his love, his Dainty, his true wife, whose heart was breaking for one tender word from his dear lips!

CHAPTER XXIX.

AS WE KISS THE DEAD

Alas! nor words, nor tears, nor embraces, nor reproaches could move Love Ellsworth from his statue-like repose.

He suffered Dainty's caresses passively, but he did not return them, and his large, beautiful dark eyes dwelt on her face with the gentle calm of an infant whose intellect is not yet awakened.

"You see how it is, Miss Chase, and God knows how sorry I am to see my dear master so," Franklin said, sorrowfully, as she desisted at last, and gazed in silent anguish at the mental wreck in the chair.

A new thought came to her, and she exclaimed:

"Where is my mother?"

"She returned to Richmond almost a month ago, Miss Chase."

"Why did she not remain and nurse poor Love?" she groaned.

Franklin hesitated a moment, then returned in a respectful undertone:

"I can not say for a certainty, miss, but it is whispered among the servants that Mrs. Ellsworth sent her away because the young ladies wished it."

"The young ladies?" inquiringly.

"Miss Peyton and Miss Craye, your cousins. Mrs. Ellsworth has adopted them as her joint heiresses since she came into the fortune that my master lost by his failure to marry on his twenty-sixth birthday."

He gave a great start of surprise when the lovely, sad-eyed girl answered quickly:

"He did not lose it, for in the fear of some such treachery as afterward really happened, your master persuaded me to consent to a secret marriage in the middle of July, so that I have really been his wife going on three months."

"It is false!" cried an angry voice; and there in the door-way towered the tall form of Mrs. Ellsworth, pale to the very lips, but with an ominous flash in her dark eyes.

She had recovered from the faintness that had seized her at first sight of the supposed ghost, on being assured by a servant that she had seen Miss Chase in the flesh entering the room of Mr. Ellsworth. As soon as she could command her shaken nerves, she followed Dainty just in time to hear her avowal of her marriage to Love in July.

"It is false!" she cried, furiously; but Dainty faced her bravely, clasping Love's cold, irresponsive hand in her own, exclaiming tenderly:

"He is my husband!"

"Can you prove it?" sneeringly.

Dainty was very pale, and trembling like a wind-blown leaf, but she summoned courage to reply:

"We were married the middle of July at that little church in the woods where we attended a festival one night. It was in the twilight when we were returning from a long drive into the country."

"Ah! there were witnesses, of course?" anxiously.

"No one was present but the minister who united us," Dainty answered.