AT PIRATE BEACH.
It was midnight, and the moon rode high in the star-spangled sky, and
mirrored itself in the ocean as it rolled its long and heavy swells in
upon the silvery sands of the shell-strewn shore.
Far up the beach stood an old, graystone mansion, many-gabled and
picturesque, surrounded by handsome and spacious grounds dotted with
trees and shrubberies. Up in the second story a dim light gleamed from
an open casement, and from it leaned a girl watching the beauty of the
summer night with dark, solemn eyes--Nita Farnham, the miser's bride.
Charles Farnham, Mrs. Courtney, the chaperon; a maid, and several
servants had accompanied Nita here. The old man had stayed only one
hour, at the end of which he had accompanied his bride to her chamber
and showed her upon the hearth-rug a small iron-bound box containing the
promised gold.
"The little chest is yours, all yours," he said, with a strange
emphasis. "There are many thousands of dollars in it, but they are
nothing to my great wealth. I am many times a millionaire. Ah, Farnham,
the miser, eking out his wretched life by selling cigars on the elevated
railroad, but they little dream of his stores of hidden wealth. Wait one
year more, and they will stare in envy at my Fifth Avenue palace and my
peerless bride!"
She shuddered uncontrollably, and, dropping the cold hand he had taken
in farewell, he turned away with a grin.
"Good-by, for a year, my beauty!"
She bowed in horror; then locked the door, and stood alone in the
luxurious chamber, with the shadow of a fateful tragedy looming over her
unconscious head and the price for which she had sold herself--the chest
of gold--lying open at her feet.
The maid tapped presently upon the door, but Nita sent her away.
"I shall not need you to-night. You may retire."
But sleep was far from Nita's eyes. Midnight found her leaning from her
window, watching the moonlight on the sea and the gray mist creeping up
the shore, and murmuring over and over:
"Pirate's Beach! Pirate's Beach! How strange that he should have brought
me here! Here of all places in the wide, wide world!"
A strange, beguiling melancholy crept over her as she listened to the
voice of the sea as the surf broke continuously upon the beach. The very
beauty of the summer night oppressed her.
"I am married, married," she murmured sadly. "I should not mind it if my
husband were young and handsome, and we loved each other; but, alas, I
am forever cut off from love's sweetness--I am bound by golden chains to
that hideous old miser."
Nita was passionate, wilful, and undisciplined. A strange life had been
hers, and it had left her like some beautiful, untamed, wild
bird--untrammeled by conventionalities. The great, inrolling waves down
on the beach seemed crying out to her yearningly:
"Come, come, come. We love you, we understand you!"
She flung a thick woolen shawl over her dark head, and stole down to the
beach, and stood there dreamily, her gray-clad form blending softly with
the creeping gray mist.
"How familiar it all looks, yet that old man did not dream I had ever
been here before. I wonder if old Meg, the fortune-teller, lives here
still? What if we meet? What if she recognizes me?"
She ran with a light, quick step along the beach for about half a mile,
then paused pantingly close to a tumble-down old shanty that had
evidently been constructed out of the black hull of an ancient wreck.
From a tiny, smoke-begrimed window a dim light pierced through the murky
sea fog, and Nita murmured:
"So she is here still, the old harpy!"
She bent her head, and peered through the dim little panes into the
shanty. A smothered cry escaped her lips.
"Good heavens! what is that old man doing here?"
Seated by a table, ornamented with bottles and pipes, Nita had seen an
ugly, witchlike old crone in close converse with--Farnham, the miser. It
flashed into her mind that he was seeking from old Meg some knowledge of
the future which she pretended to foretell, and she smiled in ironical
amusement.
"An old man like that ought to know that Meg's pretentions are all
humbug," she thought impatiently, and bent her ear to listen to their
words. Old Meg was muttering with fierce gesticulations:
"I don't understand your plans nor approve them. Beware how you trifle
with me, Farnham, or I will tear her from that stately home. I will make
her my slave as in the old days before she ran away from my boy's love,
the proud jade!"
Miser Farnham put out a lean hand and gripped the virago's wrist so
tightly that she screamed with pain.
"Behave yourself then, you she-devil, and do not presume to question my
actions. You will leave the girl alone, remember. She belongs to me now,
for I found her after you had let her escape your clutches. No wonder
she fled from you. The bare idea of that ruffianly son of yours aspiring
to the hand of the proud Juan de Castro's daughter--faugh!"
"You know what he wanted," Meg growled significantly.
"Yes, what he will never get," was the harsh reply, and Farnham only
laughed at her incoherent ravings. To Nita it seemed plain that the
fiendish pair shared some dark secret between them, and that the man
held the balance of power.
"They are plotting against me. They both know the secret of my
parentage, although old Meg has told me a hundred times that I was cast
up by the sea. What if I go in there and tax them with their villainy,
and demand the truth?"
With flashing dark eyes she moved toward the door, and her hand touched
the knob to throw it open. A moment's indecision, then her brave heart
failed her. She recoiled, shuddering with a sudden fear.
"No, no, I dare not. They might murder me," and she hurried from the
spot, with terror-winged feet.
When the old black hulk and its glimmering light were swallowed up in
the gloom, Nita stopped a moment to take breath, and turned her
exquisite white face toward the sea.
"Oh, ocean, how I love you, you great murmuring mystery!" she cried,
stretching out her white hands lovingly, as the surf rolled in.
Hark, what was that blending with the hollow voice of the waves? A human
voice, a deep groan as of one dying! Nita uttered a cry of superstitious
terror, and ran wildly a few paces farther along the shore. A broken
shell pierced the sole of her thin shoe, but she limped painfully on,
half-blinded by the salt spray and her own startling tears, when
suddenly she stumbled over a body lying directly in her path, and fell
prostrate.