A WORKING GIRL’S WEDDING.
In less than a year after Fair’s mysterious disappearance from New
York, Waverley Osborne, whose admiration had been the indirect cause of
all her trouble, was married to Sadie Allen.
The telegram that had summoned Sadie Allen to the deathbed of her
sister in Philadelphia was a fraudulent one, forged by Carl Bernicci,
who had resorted to this means to remove from Fair the friend and
protector to whom she clung with the desperation of despair.
When she reached Philadelphia and found her sister perfectly well and
greatly surprised at her coming, Sadie at once suspected the fraud that
had been perpetrated upon her.
“It is the work of Carl Bernicci, or of Belva Platt. They have taken
this means to get me away, but I will foil them; I will go back at
once to that poor child, whom they hope in this way to get into their
power,” she said to her sister, to whom she had hastily related the
whole story, and who, as glad as she was to see Sadie, would not press
her to stay, lest harm should befall the fair young girl she had left.
So Sadie, after spending but a few hours in Philadelphia, started back
to New York, with her mind full of misgivings and fears.
“I have been away from her one whole night, and it will be night again
before I reach New York. Oh, may Heaven protect that poor girl until I
get back to her side!” she thought anxiously.
It was night, indeed, when she reached the great city, and a heavy
thunderstorm was in progress. One moment the lightning flashed and
made everything clear as noonday, the next the thunder’s peal and the
downpour of torrents of rain made the scene one of Cimmerian darkness.
Poor Sadie, without either waterproof cloak, gossamer, or umbrella,
took her little satchel and stepped out into the rainy night amid the
bawling troop of cabmen, intent on making her way to the nearest street
car.
She had not enough money to pay for a cab, or she would certainly have
taken one, and saved herself a drenching, for in a minute her light
summer dress was soaking wet.
But she did not have time to think of her dress, for in another moment,
as she struggled through the crowd, she felt a hand at her elbow, and
she tripped and fell over a booted foot thrust out before her. Before
she could recover her balance, the hand at her elbow thrust a heavy
shawl over her head, smothering her shrieks of terror, and she was
quickly lifted by a pair of strong arms and borne to a cab that was
waiting close by.
She was flung upon the cushions, the door banged to, and then the
vehicle set off rapidly, while Sadie was immediately placed under the
influence of a drug that stupefied her senses for the time being, and
when she awoke, the next morning, she was a prisoner in a little, low,
shabby hut near the river, she judged, from what she could see through
the dirty panes of a small window in her second-story room.
An old woman came up presently and unlocked the door long enough to
present her with some bread and water for her breakfast. To Sadie’s
angry questions, she replied coolly that she was to be her prisoner
until Carl Bernicci had brought his wife to her senses.
“When she quits her foolin’ and goes home to her husband, like a dacent
wife, then you’ll git out, and not afore!” said the crone sharply,
as she locked the door on the outside, heedless of Sadie’s alternate
threats and entreaties.
A long and weary week went by, during which poor Sadie remained a close
prisoner in the miserable little hut, closely guarded by the cross old
woman whom Sadie concluded must follow the trade of laundress, judging
by the continual smell of soapsuds that came up through the cracks in
the bare floor.
During that time she had made daily efforts to escape, but the old
woman was too sharp for her, and when Sadie threatened, in desperation,
to throw herself from the window, she placed iron bars across it.
Immured in the narrow room, Sadie proceeded to make it as airy as
possible by breaking all the panes in the window. Through the apertures
thus made, she could look down upon an unpaved street, along which
there were few passers-by, and these of so rough a looking aspect that
her momentary temptations to call down to them for assistance did not
last long.
“No doubt all the inhabitants of the place are in collusion with the
old woman,” she thought despairingly.
One day, when she had been imprisoned on bread and water for a week and
a half, she heard voices in the room beneath. One belonged to the old
woman, and the other was a masculine voice with a strangely familiar
sound.
Sadie started and listened intently, for that voice seemed to carry her
mind back to the shroud factory with vivid power.
But still she could not remember to whom the voice belonged, although a
wild hope came over her that perhaps some of her friends were searching
for her--a wild hope speedily dissipated, for when she laid down upon
the floor and placed her ear at a gaping crack she discovered that the
conversation, which began to grow loud and threatening, related to the
larceny of sundry shirts and collars.
“You failed to bring the right number last week, and this week it is
the same, so I determined to come myself and to force you to give
up the missing things, for I will not be robbed in this wholesale
fashion,” said the voice; and then Sadie’s hopes fell into ashes.
“It is only one of her customers whom she has robbed of his shirts,”
she decided.
But so keen was her curiosity over the owner of the familiar voice that
she stationed herself at the window, hoping to see him emerge from the
house.
She was not disappointed, for presently the furious war of words below
came to an end, and a man stepped out into the street with a bundle
under his arm--the missing shirts, which the dishonest washerwoman had
yielded up on being threatened with arrest.
Sadie Allen screamed with joy and pounded furiously on the window to
attract the man’s attention.
It was Waverley Osborne, the young clerk who had been in love with
Fairfax Fielding, and for whose sake Belva Platt had plotted such a
wicked revenge on the innocent girl.
The young man looked up at the noise above his head, and quickly
recognized the face of the good-natured girl whom he had seen so often
at the factory.
“Good gracious, Miss Allen, what are you doing here?” he exclaimed, and
she answered:
“I am a prisoner, Mr. Osborne. Oh, please, please make that wicked old
woman downstairs release me, and I will bless you forever.”
“All right,” replied the young man heartily, and he instantly darted
into the house again.
A furious altercation ensued, but the end of it was that Waverley
Osborne burst open the door of Sadie’s prison and took her away with
him in triumph, although the old woman fought, scratched, bit, and tore
like a hyena in the effort to keep her prisoner. The young man was more
than a match for her, however, and got away in triumph with Sadie.
“Oh, how brave and good you are, Mr. Osborne! I can never cease to
thank you for this timely rescue,” cried Sadie gratefully, and somehow
the romance of the occasion led each to take an interest in each
other. Sadie wondered in secret how Fair Fielding could have been so
indifferent to so brave and good-looking a young man, and Waverley
thought it was strange that he had never noticed before how pleasant
a girl Sadie Allen was--not pretty, but he was rather disgusted with
beauty, anyway. He had found out that Belva Platt blondined her hair
and painted her cheeks and lips. When he had turned in disgust from
these false charms to Fair Fielding, the latter’s scornful airs and
ambitious views had thrown cold water on his budding hopes. Truly he
had reason to conceive an antipathy to beauty.
So Sadie caught his heart in the rebound, and as she won it by force of
honest merit, not meretricious charms, she was able to hold and keep
it. In a very few months the courtship that had begun on the day when
he opened her prison door ended in a happy and suitable marriage. Belva
Platt was furious with jealous rage, but she had become so unpopular at
the factory since her wicked revenge upon Fair Fielding that she dared
not vent her anger in anything but spiteful speeches, and in ignoring
the bride and groom. She had lost him forever, and not one of the
working girls but exulted in her defeat.
The married pair went to housekeeping on a simple scale, and each kept
on with their factory work. Sadie learned that the old woman who had
kept her imprisoned was the grandmother of Belva Platt. They made no
effort to have any of the parties punished for Sadie’s imprisonment,
for it was rumored that Carl Bernicci had drowned himself in despair at
his wife’s strange disappearance.