“Miss Iris! Oh, please excuse me, I promised to call you always Maggie,
but I am so frightened--I don’t know what I say. Maggie, are you awake?
My mother is very ill, I fear; I do not know what to do for her. Won’t
you please get up and look at her?”
It was the night following that on which Iris had first entered the
humble home of Jenny Mason, and a comfortable couch had been provided
for her--at her own expense--in the little bedroom opening off the
apartment which served as sitting room, dining room, and kitchen in one.
It was after eleven o’clock that night when Jenny aroused Iris from a
deep sleep.
She arose from her bed with a sickening sense of dizziness and an
oppressing weight on her heart, but one glance into the white, pained
face of Jenny’s suffering mother gave her a false power of endurance.
It was plain to even her experienced eye--and she had never yet looked
upon a person in the death struggle--that Mrs. Mason would never see
another sunrise.
“Oh, Jenny, you must bring a doctor at once!” cried Iris, but at the
sound of these words the invalid’s fingers closed tighter around the
hand of her child.
“Do not leave me--no doctor can--give me one moment of life. I want you
with me--till the end comes!” she whispered, and Iris had not the heart
to oppose the dying woman’s wishes.
“Tell me where the doctor lives!” Iris whispered.
Jenny offered a feeble remonstrance, but Iris would not listen, and, a
moment later, the latter was hurrying through the city streets.
The doctor of whom she was in search resided about a dozen blocks from
the residence of Mrs. Mason, and Iris had gone about half that distance
when two gentlemen met her face to face.
She was not veiled, and the moonlight fell upon her beautiful, pale
face.
At sight of her both of the gentlemen started, and Iris in her
turn--having recognized in one of these men the gentleman whose face
had so strangely started her on the previous evening--uttered an
exclamation of dismay at first, but quickly recovering herself, bent
her head in acknowledgment of her recognition of him, and hurried on
without a glance into the face of his companion, with whom she had
often danced and chatted in the days when she believed herself the
young daughter and joint heiress of Oscar Hilton.
Iris had not gone two dozen paces away from them when the companion of
Charles Broughton clasped the latter’s arm excitedly.
“What can be the matter, Charley? Do you know anything about it? Iris
Hilton is not the girl whom I would expect to find walking the streets
at night alone, and at this hour, too. Why, Broughton, it is nearly
half past eleven. I shall follow her--there must be something wrong.”
With these words, Gerald Dare, who had been a secret admirer of Oscar
Hilton’s younger daughter, was about to start in pursuit of the lonely
girl, but the firm grip of Charles Broughton’s hand upon his arm
restrained him.
At the first mention of the name “Iris,” a gray, ashen pallor had crept
over Broughton’s face, and his breath had been quickly indrawn, like
that of one who was drowning.
“Walk with me, Dare, to the nearest café--that deathly feeling of
weakness is creeping over me again. You know how ill I was last night!”
His voice was so faint and tremulous that Dare was really alarmed, and
accompanied his friend to a café, thus giving Iris a chance to escape
his espionage, exactly the object which Broughton desired to attain.
Iris pursued her way to the doctor’s residence unmolested, and was
fortunate enough to find that gentleman still in his office, he having
just returned from visiting one of his serious cases.
Iris would have left the place at once on stating her errand, and
gaining his promise to follow her immediately, but something in the
expression of her wan, white face, with its innate and unmistakable
look of refinement, had led the doctor to detain her.
“My child, you are yourself sadly in need of a physician’s care. You
are not fit to be out at night alone. Wait just one moment, and I
will have my gig made ready, and you and I will drive to Mrs. Mason’s
together.”
They reached the tenement in which Mrs. Mason resided, some minutes
after midnight; but, as the old physician saw at a glance, his coming
had been in vain.
The grim King of Terrors had entered before him, and the white,
still form beside which Jenny Mason knelt was only a senseless and
feelingless statue of clay--all that remained was the earthly tenement
whence the immortal spirit had fled.
We will not linger over the days that followed; suffice it to say that
the last dollar of which Iris had been possessed when she left the home
of her reputed father was spent in defraying the funeral expenses of
Mrs. Mason.
On the second day after Mrs. Mason’s burial Isabel Hilton called on
Jenny, and reproached the latter sharply for failing to have her dress
completed, refusing even to excuse the poor girl when she offered her
mother’s death as an apology for failing to fulfill her contract.
Iris remained hidden in the inner room during Isabel’s visit, but the
latter made no mention whatever of her missing sister’s name.
She quietly informed Jenny that in the future she would have no work
for her, as she was not fond of disappointments, and left the unhappy
little dressmaker in despair, as Mrs. Clara Neville had also withdrawn
her patronage.
After this it was impossible for Iris and Jenny to live as the latter
had formerly been able to do.
There came a day when the two girls left their humble home in search of
work, without having eaten any breakfast, for the simple reason that
there was not even a loaf of bread in the house.
Jenny soon succeeded in obtaining employment of a fashionable
modiste in Forty-first Street, near Fifth Avenue, but Iris--or
Maggie Gordon--must consent to work six months for Madam Ward as an
apprentice, if she would learn the trade by which her friend earned a
livelihood.
Jenny urged her to accept the offer.
“Do consent to stay here, Maggie; madam seems to be a kind lady, and
the girls with whom we will have to work--Emma and Sarah--have every
appearance of being quiet and ladylike girls, who will never pry into
your business or make themselves too familiar.”
Iris consented to Jenny’s plan, even remembering that she had not one
dollar to her name, but thinking that the jewelry of which she was
possessed--if sold--would bring her money enough to defray her expenses
until she could learn to work with Jenny.
Jenny made it a condition with Madam Ward that Maggie should not be
separated from her, and consequently another day found Maggie Gordon,
with Jenny Mason, Emma Henry, and Sarah Bennett, engaged in the making
of an elegant costume of white satin and point lace--the bridal dress
of Mrs. Clara Neville, to be worn on the occasion of that lady’s
marriage with Mr. Charles Broughton.
Despite all her brave efforts to accomplish the work expected of her,
the constant and unusual confinement of the workroom quickly told
upon Iris; and on the third day of her engagement with Madam Ward she
was obliged to quit her work shortly after noontime, unable longer to
combat the deathly feeling of sickness that had been gradually creeping
upon her since the night of Mrs. Mason’s death.
Emma, who was just returning from the bank--where she had been sent to
change a check for her employer--met Maggie at the hall door.
“I have a telegram for you, Maggie; I signed the receipt myself to
save you the trouble of coming downstairs,” said Emma, in her gentle,
sympathetic voice; and Maggie could only bow her head in acknowledgment
of Emma’s kindness, as she took the ominous yellow envelope from the
latter’s hand, and seated herself, weak and trembling, on the lower
step of the stairs leading to the workroom, to make herself mistress of
its contents.
The girl, Emma, with the true instincts of a gentlewoman, passed up the
stairs without waiting to see how the contents of the yellow envelope
would affect her fellow worker, although her young heart ached for the
girl whose sufferings she could read so plainly in the sorrowful eyes
and pallid features for a moment uplifted to her gaze.
Maggie was therefore all alone when she opened the telegram, and read
the following words:
“TO IRIS--OR MAGGIE GORDON: If you ever cared for Chester St. John
come to him now. He is dying, and calls for you with every breath.
He cannot live one hour from the time you receive this telegram; so
if you slight this message you will render his last moments unhappy.
Should you care to see him alive, call immediately at No. 685B
Lexington Avenue.”
Iris read the message over and over again.
All the memory of the bitter words that had passed Chester St. John’s
lips when he bade her farewell faded from her brain.
She scarcely looked at the name signed to the telegram--Gerald Dare.
She thought of nothing but that Chester St. John was dying, and that
she loved him with all her heart and soul.
And with the telegram crushed in her hand, and only the thought of her
approaching meeting with Chester St. John keeping her from giving way
to that sickening sensation of weakness, she turned her steps in the
direction of the house in Lexington Avenue, without a thought that any
treachery had lured her thither, although St. John’s residence was not
in that locality.
It never occurred to her to wonder how this Gerald Dare knew of her
change of name, and the place where she worked.