Pretty sixteen-year-old Alice Laurens looked wonderfully like her elder
sister as she lay, with pale face and close-shut lids, upon her little
bed, with her mother and only remaining sister, Nora, weeping over
her, while Mr. Finley hovered, like a bird of prey, in the background,
heartlessly calculating in his own mind how far this accident might be
turned to his advantage in forcing Pansy Falconer to own her identity,
and to pay his price for keeping her secret from her proud husband.
Alice Laurens had a broken arm, and had remained unconscious ever
since her fall, so that the physicians feared she had sustained
internal injuries that would speedily result in death. One of them had
accompanied her home, and sat in grave silence, watching the scene,
while Willie Laurens, utterly crushed and disheartened, had flung
himself into a chair, and, with his convulsed face hidden in his hands,
seemed utterly oblivious to everything but his sorrow.
Altogether, it was a sad scene on which the parting sun’s rays fell,
as they slanted in at the open door and penciled with golden beams the
prematurely silvered head of the unhappy mother as she knelt by her
unconscious child, uttering piteous moans of grief and despair, for her
afflictions pressed heavily on her heart.
Minutes passed, and there was apparently no change in Alice. That
she still lived was only evident from a faint pulsation which the
clever physician could barely detect in her wrist, and every moment he
expected that even that faint, fluttering spark would go out in death.
The lingering sunset began to fade. Some of the neighbors came in with
hushed footsteps and sympathetic faces. On the dark, frowning face of
Mr. Finley a light of satisfaction began to dawn.
When twilight began to darken the summer sky, he slipped from that
solemn chamber, where they were watching for death to come in and
dispossess the mother’s heart of its treasure, and disappeared from the
scene.
He made his way quickly to Franklin Street, and rang the bell at
Colonel Falconer’s door. When a servant appeared he pushed past him
and unceremoniously entered the wide hall.
“Tell Mrs. Falconer that a man is waiting with an important message
from her husband,” he said boldly.
The servant showed him into a small reception room, and disappeared,
while Finley waited--rather nervously, it must be confessed, for he was
by no means certain that Colonel Falconer was out. What if he should
appear, and kick the lying intruder out of doors?
But fortune favored him, for in a very few moments the rustle of a
woman’s garments was audible, and then Pansy appeared before him,
simply clad in a pale-gray traveling dress, and with a tear-stained
face and swollen eyes. She closed the door carefully behind her, then
started back as she beheld her visitor.
“You!” she exclaimed, in horrified tones.
He rose and bowed profoundly.
“I came to bring you the sad news of poor Alice, but I see from your
face that you have already heard,” he said pointedly.
Pansy made a scornful gesture, and sank into a seat.
“What do you mean?” she demanded, trying to keep up an assumption of
indifference that was only too plainly belied by her trembling voice
and swollen eyelids.
“Your sister Alice, Mrs. Falconer, fell, by accident, through an open
hatchway at Arnell & Grey’s this afternoon, and is now on her deathbed.
She raves for you--calls for you every moment. Can you have the heart
to refuse to go to your dying sister?”
She looked steadily at him, and answered defiantly:
“I have heard of that accident at Arnell & Grey’s, but what is that to
me? I do not know the poor girl.”
“What is the use your trying to fence with me like this, Pansy? I know
you!” cried Finley harshly, adding: “But I did not know your cursed
pride was so strong, else I had not come for you, even to please that
poor, dying girl, who begged me so piteously to come.”
“She did not send you. She believes that her erring sister died,” Pansy
answered irresolutely.
“She believed that once, but not lately. There have been rumors that
she is still alive, that she had been seen of late on the streets of
this city, and that she is living a life of gilded shame. The story has
preyed on the poor girl’s mind, and she sent me to seek you, that she
might pray you with her dying breath to forsake your sinful life.”
“You have told those base falsehoods to that poor, credulous child!”
Pansy flashed forth indignantly, but he denied the accusation, and
continued:
“I cannot bear to return to her without you. The disappointment in her
dying eyes would haunt me. I will make you a proposition, Pansy: Come
with me to her dying bed, and I will manage things so that you shall
see her alone. Not even her mother shall enter the room, and you shall
go away again, and not a living soul be any the wiser for your presence
there.”
She saw that he was very much in earnest, that he would do as he said,
and, twisting her little hands together in an agony of indecision, she
exclaimed:
“Do you know that in little more than an hour I am to leave here for
the White Sulphur Springs? Miss Ives has already gone around to her
friends who will accompany us. My husband will come home presently to
drive with me to the depot.”
“And in the meantime your poor, dying sister is calling for you in
vain. Pansy Laurens, you are utterly heartless!” exclaimed Mr. Finley,
with a fine show of indignation.
She trembled perceptibly, and grew pale as a snowdrop under the glare
of the gaslight.
“May her uneasy spirit haunt you, and drive repose from your breast!”
he cried tragically.
Whirling toward him with a disdainful gesture of her white hand, she
exclaimed:
“What if I went with you, simply to humor the fancy of this poor, dying
girl--mind, I own to no relationship with her--what would be the price
of your silence?”
Without moving a muscle, he answered coolly:
“A thousand dollars!”
“You are certainly rapacious! I could not give you such a sum to-night.”
“I should not expect it. I would give you a week to raise it, if you
would leave with me some of your diamonds as a guarantee of good
faith,” he replied, with an air of business that amused while it
disgusted her.
“Unfortunately, my jewels are packed and my trunks are gone. You will
have to depend upon my simple word of honor, or go back as you came,”
she replied coldly.
He studied her face a moment, then said sullenly:
“I will take your word of honor, then. You have too much at stake to
risk disappointing me. So that is settled. Of course, if you did not
pay me in a week I should follow you to the White Sulphur Springs. Will
you come with me now?”
“Go out and hail some passing cab, and keep it waiting at the corner
around the next square. I will join you there in a few minutes, for I
have no time to lose. I must return here in time to join my husband,”
Pansy answered, dismissing him with a wave of her hand, and then
hastening upstairs to don a concealing bonnet and veil, and to leave
some plausible excuse with Phebe for Colonel Falconer, who might return
at any moment.
She left the house regretfully, with unsteady steps and a foreboding
heart, fearing that she was doing wrong, but drawn by a passionate
yearning to the deathbed of her beloved sister.
“How could I refuse her dying prayer, even though its granting be
attended with so much risk and cost to myself?” she thought, with
generous pity and self-sacrificing love.
“Remember,” she said to Finley, as they were whirled swiftly up the
steep grade of Broad Street toward his home on Church Hill, “I must see
Alice Laurens alone. You will go in first, and see that every one else
leaves the room.”
“I will do so,” he promised, and no more was said between them. At
the corner below his residence the hack was stopped. He got out, and
directed her to wait until he returned for her.
When he reëntered the house he found that a great change had taken
place in the invalid.
She had recovered full consciousness, and appeared so much better than
had been expected by her physician that he declared it quite likely she
would recover, if no untoward circumstances intervened. Fortunately for
Finley’s purpose, the physician was watching by her bed alone, having
persuaded the family to go into the dining room and partake of tea. A
clever thought came to Finley, and he exclaimed:
“Doctor Hewitt, a man has fallen in a fit on the corner two squares
below, and they are hunting a physician everywhere. I will watch beside
Alice if you will go.”
The physician seized his hat, and, promising to return after a while,
darted out, leaving the grocer in possession.
He stooped over Alice, who was regarding him with wide-open, loathing
eyes, for he was universally hated by his stepchildren, and, bending
down, whispered hurriedly:
“Your sister Pansy is coming to see you. Mind, there must be no outcry,
and you must never tell any one she came, for she can stay but a few
minutes, and no one must ever know she has been here.”
In a few minutes more the two long-parted sisters were weeping in each
other’s arms.
“Do not try to talk, my darling sister,” whispered Pansy fondly,
while Finley adroitly lowered the gas and turned the key in the door.
Tenderly caressing Alice, Pansy continued: “I was not drowned, Alice,
but I made you all think so that you might not worry over my fate. I am
the wife of a good man, but he does not know my sad story, and I can
never own my relatives, for then he would find out everything, and he
is so proud he would cast me off. But I could not stay away, dear, when
they told me you were dying, so I came in secret.”
“I am glad that you came, my precious sister; but there is some mistake
about my dying, for the doctor says I have a fair chance of getting
well,” Alice answered feebly.
“Thank Heaven!” murmured her beautiful sister, and the silence of deep
emotion fell over them as they clung to each other.
Finley looked on with exultation. These moments of reunion between the
long-parted sisters were worth a thousand dollars to him now, and much
more in the future; for, having once established a claim on Pansy, he
would never rest satisfied until he had wrung from her every dollar she
could command for years to come.
“Oh, Alice, I long to see our mother, but I dare not do so. She must
never know that I am living. You must keep the secret of this meeting,
and, oh, you must love her well, and be very good to her for my sake,
as well as your own,” murmured Pansy, with tears in her beautiful eyes,
as she drew herself reluctantly from Alice’s clasping arms.
“Must you go so soon?” sighed the suffering girl.
“I dare not stay longer,” sobbed Pansy. She bent down and whispered
hurriedly: “Alice, I will send you some money anonymously, and you must
let no one know it came from me. Spend it for yourself, mamma, and
Nora. Good-by, darling!” And, pressing her lips to her sister’s cheek
in despairing love, she rose upright, and said anxiously:
“Mr. Finley, I must go now, or they will come in and find me here.”
She had pushed her thick veil back to the top of her bonnet, and her
beautiful, pale face was clearly defined, even in the dim light of
the room. Mr. Finley had forgotten that in this room, which was upon
the first floor, there was a window that opened upon a narrow alley.
The shutters were drawn, but the sash was raised, and Willie Laurens,
anxious to see how Alice was, but fearful of intruding on the strict
quiet prescribed for her, had tiptoed through the alley and slanted the
shutters that he might gaze into the room.
He saw with amazement the beautiful form kneeling by Alice and clasping
her in its tender arms, saw the fond parting kiss, heard the words
addressed to Mr. Finley, and beheld with mad, murderous rage the
beautiful, despairing face of the sister whose sin had disgraced him
and put the girl he loved so far above his reach.
The seed Mr. Finley had industriously planted in his pliant mind had
grown by now into a tree that was ready to bear deadly fruit. With a
smothered imprecation, he rushed back into the store, and presently,
when Pansy came stealing through the darkened hallway on her way to the
street, her brother was waiting for her with the fires of hell in his
young heart.
He lifted the pistol in his hand, fired, and Pansy fell, bathed in
blood, just inside the doorway.