If any one had told Jewel Fielding that she had the heart of a
murderess, she would have indignantly denied the accusation--she would
have been frightened and angry at the very idea--yet it was nothing
less than a slow murder that she began the next day.
In the first place, she gave out to the servants that Flower was so
ashamed and remorseful over her sin that she wished to keep her own
room all the time, and desired to see no human face save that of her
sister; so, lest any one should enter, she meant to keep her door
locked all the while. Jewel declared that she desired to humor her
sister's whim, and would carry her meals upstairs daily with her own
hands.
Having thus paved the way to carrying the key of Flower's room in her
pocket, and to starving her without being found out, the vindictive
girl went into Flower's room, and surprised her at the task of plaiting
a rope out of her bed-clothes by which to escape through her window,
which was in the second story.
Jewel produced from under her dainty apron a hammer and some nails,
with which she proceeded to nail down the window-sashes securely.
At first Flower tried to prevent her by holding back her arm; but Jewel
shook her loose with a fierce strength, and, turning, menaced the white
temple with the lifted hammer.
"Dare to hold back my arm again, and I will kill you!" she hissed, with
vindictive rage, while the murderous fire that flashed from her black
eyes appalled Flower's very soul.
With a moan she fell upon the bed, and lay watching Jewel until she had
finished securing the windows.
Then she rose up in bed, and brushing back the wealth of sunny curls
from her aching brow, began to plead pathetically for her freedom.
"I wish to go away, and you have no right to forbid me," she said at
last, bitterly, resenting the scorn of the other.
Jewel laughed mockingly.
"No right!" she exclaimed. "Ha! ha! Then I will take the right! You
stole Laurie Meredith from me, and now you are going to be punished for
your treachery."
"Punished! As if I had not already suffered enough!" the wretched girl
cried, in pathetic despair.
"You are going to suffer more yet," hissed Jewel, with blazing eyes.
"I am going to keep you locked up here, and allow you nothing but
bread and water, and not enough of that. You shall wish yourself dead
every day, but there will be just enough bread to keep you alive in
misery--no more!"
Flower's beautiful face turned ghastly, her blue eyes stared at the
cruel girl with a dazed, horrified look.
"Oh, Jewel, I wish I were dead already! I have nothing left to live
for now!" she exclaimed. "But, still, would it not be too horrible to
starve me now? It--it would be a double murder, for--for--oh, Jewel,
did you not forget the child?"
The piteous pleading for her unborn child only angered Jewel the more,
and with scornful, cutting phrases she taunted her with her disgrace
and misery, and reiterated her intention of torturing her in return for
what she called her treachery.
When she left the room Flower believed that her fate was sealed. Jewel
had revealed her real self so plainly that she could hope for no mercy
and no pity.
She wept bitterly for the little unborn child, that through Jewel's
cruelty would have to die. She had hoped somehow that she would find
Laurie before it was born, and that all would yet be well. For surely,
surely, he had not deserted her. It was only that some unfathomable
treachery on Jewel's part had kept them asunder. She did not want to
believe him false.
"But I must die, all the same, and he will never know how I suffered
through my love for him," she sighed, day after day, as her strength
waned under the scanty diet of dry bread and stale water served to her
daily by Jewel, with cruel taunts and scornful looks for sauce.
She grew weaker and weaker, great hollows came into her pale cheeks,
her blue eyes looked larger than ever with the purple shadows beneath
them, while the one longing cry of her heart was always for freedom,
freedom, from this dreadful house, through whose whole extent the
maniacal shrieks of the mad Mrs. Fielding echoed night and day.
After weeks of this terrible life there came a day when the
horror-haunted house became unnaturally still and quiet. Mrs. Fielding
had been removed to an insane asylum, and her wild cries no longer
echoed on the shuddering air.
Jewel knew that at the next meeting of the county court a guardian must
be appointed for herself and her sister until her mother's recovery,
and she resolved to finish her awful work before any prying, perhaps
suspicious stranger should come into the house.
More than eight months had elapsed since Laurie Meredith had gone away,
and Jewel knew that the time of Flower's trouble was near at hand.
She had been holding back one terrible thing for a _coup d'état_ at the
last, and she decided now that the fitting moment had arrived in which
to startle Flower into a slightly premature illness and thus make sure
of her death at once.
It was a fiend's plan, a fiend's wish, but Jewel never faltered in her
deadly purpose. Her evil passions drove her on to the commission of a
deed that, call it by what specious name she chose in her own mind,
would be no less than murder.
So she went into Flower's room one night carrying a lighted lamp in one
hand and a newspaper in the other.
In this long, weary month she had never permitted Flower the use of a
lamp at night, thinking that the long, interminable hours of darkness
would add to her torture, as indeed they had done most effectually.
So the poor girl started up from her bed in alarm, dazed by the
brilliant light of the lamp, and filled with a wild hope that Jewel
was about to relent toward her, she exclaimed, wildly:
"Ah, sister, you bring me a light. You begin to relent. Blessings on
you, dear Jewel! Now, give me food, too, I am so hungry, so thirsty,
and the air of this closed room stifles me! Open the window and let
the sweet air of spring come in! Then bring me food, food, for I am
starving."
Jewel set down the lamp and took from her pocket a beautiful,
red-cheeked apple.
"I will give you just one bite of this if you will return it to me
when you have taken it," she said, with a mocking laugh. And Flower
promised; but when she had taken as large a bite as her pearly teeth
could compass, her horrible hunger and thirst overcame her, and she
clung wildly to the luscious fruit, begging, pleading for it, until
Jewel forced it from her after a short, sharp struggle, and restored it
to her pocket.
"You are not half as hungry and thirsty for that delicious fruit as I
was hungry and thirsty for Laurie Meredith's love!" she said, bitterly.
"I loved him with my whole heart, yet you took him from me, and now
you shall suffer for it! Ah, no, Madame Flower, I have not relented! I
am not going to give you any food, nor water, nor fresh air; and if I
brought a light it was only that I might gloat over your agony when you
read something that I came upon accidentally this evening, and which
will add the last drop of bitterness to the overflowing cup of your
misery."
She laughed exultantly, and Flower shrunk back, with her hand before
her eyes to shut out the blaze of those angry eyes that burned upon her
face.
"I--I had better not read it, then. I have borne all that I can bear
already," she moaned, faintly.
Jewel struck the wasted little white hand rudely away from before
Flower's eyes, and said, sharply:
"I thought you would be glad to read this paragraph about Laurie
Meredith. It explains his seeming desertion and falsity to you."
At these words a wild, strangling gasp came from Flower's lips, and she
caught eagerly at the paper, while Jewel, with a plump, jeweled finger,
pointed out a paragraph marked heavily with black ink.
Laurie Meredith's own hand had marked it, and he had sent the paper to
Flower many months ago, little dreaming what a terrible purpose it was
destined to serve.
It was a Boston newspaper, and the paragraph was simply this:
"As we go to press we have just heard that our esteemed townsman,
Laurie Meredith, died very suddenly last night."