Laurier, startled, dismayed, and angered by Jessie’s sensational
entrance, had spoken to her more harshly and hastily than if he had
taken second thought.
The hateful, mocking laugh from Cora Ellyson accentuated his words, and
Mrs. Dalrymple, who had paused just inside the door, gazed in wonder at
the strange scene.
Instantly Jessie sprang to her feet. She stood still a moment, looking
at him with wounded love, doubt, fear, incredulity, all struggling
together in her great, soft, dark eyes like a dying fawn’s.
Again Cora Ellyson laughed, low and mockingly--a hateful, significant
laugh that made Frank Laurier exclaim rebukingly:
“Hush, Cora, you are unjust!”
Then he looked at Jessie pityingly. He wished that he were not lame
that he might fly from the room to avoid the plaintive reproaches of
the one girl and the jealous fury of the other. Mrs. Dalrymple, who had
drawn gradually nearer and nearer, was listening with a face drawn with
deep emotion, but again Cora Ellyson’s scornful laugh rang through the
room, and before Jessie could speak again, she cried mockingly:
“Pshaw, Frank, why not tell her the plain truth as you were telling me
before she came in when we made up our silly lovers’ quarrel? Listen,
Miss Lyndon; it was this way.”
“Hush, Cora, do not wound her so!” he entreated, but she advanced and
stood close by him, silencing him by an imperious gesture, her rich
silken robes rustling, her jewels flashing, her proud, dark head lifted
haughtily as she surveyed her shrinking rival, poor Jessie, in her
worn, shabby garments and broken shoes.
“It was this way, Miss Lyndon: Frank Laurier and I were plighted lovers
until three days ago, when we had a foolish little lovers’ quarrel and
parted, vowing never to meet again. But our wedding day was but a few
days off, and as soon as we separated both began to repent, but were
too proud to say so. Is not this true, Frank?”
“Yes--but do not wound the child’s heart by telling her the rest,” he
implored, almost inaudibly.
“Nonsense!” she answered lightly, and added: “This is the rest, Miss
Jessie Lyndon. Frank saw you, and, struck with your pretty face,
decided to pique me into a reconciliation by flirting with you. Hence
the drive in the park that resulted as he wished, in the making-up
of our little difference to-day, and I assure you that but for your
intrusion here this evening, he would never have given you another
thought!”
She ended with a little, tinkling laugh of triumphant scorn that fell
like hailstones on the heart she had crushed.
The cruel truth was out, and when the echo of that exultant laugh died
away there was a silence like death in the brilliant, sumptuous room.
Frank Laurier, with a low, inarticulate cry, tried to rise from his
recumbent position, scarcely knowing what to do, but his sweetheart’s
jeweled hand on his shoulder firmly pressed him back, while they gazed
in rising awe at Jessie Lyndon.
She stood among them a breathing statue of shame-stricken girlhood, the
hot color glowing in her cheeks, and mounting up to the roots of her
bright hair, her red lips parted and tremulous, the big tears hanging
like pearls on her lashes, her bosom rising and falling with emotion
beneath the shabby gown that could not hide the budding grace of her
perfect form.
This poor girl, so fair, so friendless, to whom no one spoke one word
of sympathy, so terribly alone among them all, what would she do?
For several moments she did not speak a word--she could not, for the
terrible, choking sensation in her throat, and the mad leaping of her
burdened heart in her breast--then, as the scarlet glow faded into
deadly pallor, she lifted her heavy eyes up to Cora Ellyson’s face.
“I cannot bear it, God forgive me!” she cried, and the little hand
pressed to her lips a tiny vial, then flung it down empty as she rushed
from the room, eluding the detaining hand Mrs. Dalrymple stretched
forth.
“She has taken poison! Follow, and bring her back!” shouted Frank
Laurier rising in alarm, then falling back with a groan on the sprained
foot that would not support his weight.
“Pshaw, she was only shamming!” his proud sweetheart answered coolly,
helping him back to his sofa, and bending to press a kiss on his brow.
But he did not notice the fond caress. He groaned in a sort of agony:
“My God, it is all my fault; I did not realize what I was doing! If
she dies, poor girl, it will lie at my door, her cruel fate.”
“Nonsense, Frank, it was not your fault, her making such a little fool
of herself, trying to catch a rich husband! Lie still, and compose
yourself! Aunt Verna will see about the silly creature!” drawing a
chair to his side and overwhelming him with attentions to banish Jessie
from his mind.
Meanwhile the shame-stricken, frantic girl had rushed past Mrs.
Dalrymple’s outstretched arms to the corridor, and darting past the
astonished servant, tore open the door, and disappeared in the gloom of
the stormy night.
“Follow her, and bring her back by force!” exclaimed his mistress, in
the wildest agitation.
“It is storming wildly, madam. The air is filled with snow, and it is
deep already,” the man objected.
“Go! Bring her back at once! I tell you go!” she stormed at him, and he
obeyed without further parley.
Then her writhing lips parted in incoherent words:
“Oh, God, this pain at my heart! That poor girl, she was so fatally
like my lost daughter, my stolen child, that I could scarcely refrain
from clasping her in my arms! Oh, if it should be my lost one! But,
no, she said that her mother was dead! Oh, why am I idling here? I
must telephone for a physician to be on hand when she is brought back.
Perhaps her sweet young life may be saved, and I will make it my care
henceforth for the sake of her haunting likeness to my lost darling!”
* * * * *
Poor Jessie had only carried out her intention on coming to see
Laurier, for life held so little charm for the unfortunate girl now
that all who loved her were dead that in desperation she had resolved
to end it all by suicide, that last resort of the wretched.
In the room she occupied at Madame Barto’s was a case of medicine, and
from it she had selected the tiny vial labeled “Poison,” and filled
with a dark liquid.
In her agony of shame it was worse to her than if Laurier had, indeed,
been dead. The dark unknown was welcome to her as the terrible present.
Penniless, friendless, with no one to turn to, she yet dared not go
back to Madame Barto, fearing alike her wrath at her escape, and
the persecutions of her hated nephew. Crushed beneath the burden of
unendurable despair, she drained the vial, and fled out into the night
and the storm to die.
The black night, inhospitable as the hearts she had left, greeted her
with storm and fury, driving her on before a furious gale that took
away her breath and tossed her to and fro, at last throwing her down
heavily, and striking her head against the curbing, so that in a minute
she became unconscious, and lay still at the mercy of the elements.
The icy wind shrieked above her, the snow fell in thick, white sheets
and wrapped her in a shroud of royal ermine, and thus she lay silent
and moveless for about a quarter of an hour before she was found by the
man Mrs. Dalrymple had sent to seek and bring her back.
She had barely gone half a square from the mansion, but in the stormy
gloom it was hard to find any one, and he was about to give up the
quest in despair of success when his foot stumbled against a soft body
under the snow.
With a startled cry he stooped down and dragged her up in his arms,
bearing her to a little distance, where a light gleamed through a
window. By its aid he saw that it was she whom he sought.
“But, poor little girl, she seems as dead as a door-nail! Howsomever,
I’ll carry her back to my mistress, dead or alive!” he muttered,
struggling on with his inert burden against the raging storm till he
gained the shelter of the mansion.
Mrs. Dalrymple was waiting in the wildest anxiety, the physician having
already arrived, and been told the meager story that a poor young girl
had attempted suicide and rushed out into the storm to die.
“I should like to see the vial and determine the nature of the poison,”
said Doctor Julian gravely, and he was keenly disappointed when Cora
Ellyson confessed that she had inadvertently trod on it and crushed it,
so that she had to call a servant to remove the fragments.
“That is very unfortunate, as a knowledge of the poison taken would
have materially assisted in finding the antidote,” he said, and
the servant was quickly summoned by his mistress to bring back the
fragments.
The answer was that they had been consumed in the kitchen range.
Directly afterward the girl’s stiffening body was brought in and
laid down upon the floor before their eyes--a hapless sight that
wrung anguished groans from Frank Laurier’s lips, though his proud
sweetheart looked on coldly and unmoved, perhaps secretly glad in her
heart of this calamity.
One glance at the pale, cold face in its frame of wet, disheveled gold,
and the physician said sadly:
“Poor child, I can do nothing. She is already dead!”
“Oh, no, no, no, do not say such dreadful words! She must not die!”
sobbed Mrs. Dalrymple, giving way to wild emotion as she knelt by
Jessie, tore open her gown, and felt eagerly for the heart.
“Oh, Doctor Julian, feel here! Is not there some slight pulsation?”
hopefully.
“Not the faintest, my dear madam. The deadly potion did its work
quickly. The lovely girl is dead! Ah, how remarkable!” bending with a
start to examine a mark on the young girl’s breast where it was exposed
by the open gown.
Doctor Julian was an old man, the family physician, and he added
surprisedly:
“See that red cross on her breast! It is precisely similar to your
family birthmark, and if I mistake not, you have one like it yourself!”
“Precisely similar, doctor, and on the same spot--oh, Heaven, how
strange this seems! My lost child--so cruelly stolen from me ere I had
given her any name but darling--had the same mark! What if--what if----
Oh, my brain reels with wild suspicion. Could it be----”
“Calm yourself, my dear madam. This may be but a coincidence! However,
it ought to be investigated to-morrow.”
“It shall be,” she sobbed, then started as Cora Ellyson cried
impatiently:
“Are you going to leave that dead girl lying there all night? I declare
I shall faint if she is not removed!”
“Cora!” expostulated her lover; but she shrugged her shoulders
haughtily.
Doctor Julian glanced at her in surprise, then said gently, to Mrs.
Dalrymple:
“What disposition will be made of the poor girl’s body?”
“It shall remain in my care, doctor, and the funeral shall be in my
charge from this house, and at my own expense,” she sobbed.
Cora Ellyson started forward indignantly, crying:
“Dear aunt, you surely forget that my wedding is the third day from
now. The girl shall not be buried from here. It would be unseemly amid
wedding gayeties!”
“The wedding must be postponed!” the proud woman sighed, lifting
Jessie’s cold little hand and pressing her lips upon it.
“It shall not. Postponements are unlucky!” Cora uttered angrily.
“Just a few days, dear--until next week, say,” whispered her lover, who
could scarcely turn his horrified gaze from that fair, dead face before
him to his pouting sweetheart.
He was recalling the words Jessie had used in speaking of Carey Doyle’s
frustrated attempt to kiss her lips:
“I should have died of disgust!”
How he had laughed at the idea of any one dying of a kiss, but looking
at that still form on the floor, he felt as if he had the brand of Cain
on his high, white brow.
“Her death lies at my door!” he thought, in a passion of remorse.
They bore Jessie tenderly from his presence to a beautiful white and
gold room near Mrs. Dalrymple’s own, and there the lady’s favorite
maid robed the lovely form for the grave in beautiful white robes fit
for a bride, selected from the wardrobe of her mistress. Then, laid
on a soft, white couch with her golden locks drifting about her like
sunshine on snow, and fragrant flowers between her waxen hands, she lay
like one asleep in her calm, unearthly beauty.
And by her side Mrs. Dalrymple kept lonely vigil, distracted by doubts
and fears lest this prove to be her own lost darling restored to her
only in death.
Toward midnight a stealthy figure glided in--Cora Ellyson, in a crimson
silk dressing gown with her raven hair streaming loose over her
shoulders.
“Aunt Verna, you will make yourself sick, staying up like this! And
what is the use?” remonstratingly.
There was no answer from the heavy-eyed woman brooding over the dead
girl’s couch, and Cora continued eagerly:
“I beg you to reconsider your decision. Send this body away to the
undertaker’s and let the funeral be from there, so that my wedding need
not be overshadowed by so evil an omen.”
“I cannot grant your request, Cora. The funeral will take place from
this house, and your wedding must be postponed,” came the sad but firm
reply.
“I tell you it shall not. I will not be disappointed for a hysterical
sentiment. This poor girl is nothing to you, nothing! I give you notice
that unless you do as I wish I will remove to-morrow to my Cousin van
Dorn’s and have my wedding from his house Thursday!”
“Please yourself, Cora, but do not presume to dictate to me! And now,
go; leave me, I prefer to be alone!” with a flash of spirit.