UNDER THE ROOF OF GRAY GABLES.
Dorian Mountcastle belonged to that gay, careless, half-Bohemian class
of rich young men, who, without seriously offending the proprieties,
manage to set at naught many of the petty conventionalities that obtain
in their set, and enjoy themselves after their own fashion in a sort of
come-and-go-as-you-please style.
He was five-and-twenty. His parents had both died before he was sixteen,
and he had traveled extensively, five years with a tutor, and latterly
alone. Many men envied him, and many women sighed for him--or for his
fortune, he was not certain which.
Chance had brought the young man to Pirate Beach the night of Nita's
arrival there. Two days before he had joined a yachting-party, but
caprice, or disgust, at the machinations of a husband-hunting young lady
on board, had inspired him with so keen a longing for escape, that he
had prevailed on his friend to set him ashore, at an hour when plain
people are just seeking their beds.
"I'll seek shelter presently at that imposing old mansion up there," he
thought indifferently, and walked musingly along the shore, thinking in
weary disdain of the woman who had persecuted him on his friend's yacht.
"And all for the Mountcastle gold, not at all for the owner," he
muttered cynically. "How beautiful and heartless women are! Shall I
never be loved for myself alone? No, I have proved that," and he turned
his face to the sea with a short, angry laugh.
There glided toward him across the noiseless sands, like a spirit of
evil, the bent and crouching form of an old woman, with a hideous,
scarred face, and bright, furtive eyes. A catlike bound brought her
within hearing of his last words, and she echoed his laugh with one more
cynical and hard than his own.
Turning with a start of surprise, Dorian Mountcastle beheld the witch,
and exclaimed, in a tone of comic despair:
"Ye gods, another female! Can I not escape them either on land or sea?"
"No, for a woman is destined to work you bitter woe, young sir," replied
a cracked and gibing voice.
"A safe prophecy, madam. Woman has worked woe to man ever since Adam's
day, and will no doubt continue it to the end of the chapter," laughed
the young man, in a tone of careless raillery.
The scarred, hideous old hag was watching so greedily the flashing
diamond on his hand that she forgot to answer him, until he touched her
lightly, and asked mockingly:
"Are you so overcome with admiration that you cannot speak? Who lives up
there in the great house?"
"They are new tenants--just arrived to-night. I know nothing about them,
but the house is called Gray Gables, and belongs to an old man in New
York. You must be a stranger, sir, not to know Gray Gables?"--with a
glance of furtive inquiry.
"Yes, I am a stranger. I landed here from a yacht to-night," Dorian
answered, with careless confidence. "I'll tell you the truth, old lady.
Some women badgered me so that I was fain to jump overboard into the sea
to avoid them, so my friend, the owner of the yacht, kindly consented to
set me off here, where I'm as lonesome as Robinson Crusoe on his
desert-island."
"You don't know anybody at Pirate Beach?" she suggested.
"Not a living soul but you, my friend--no, not even the name of the
place until now. Pirate Beach! Jove, an unpleasantly suggestive name."
"There's nothing in the name, though there might have been many years
ago. There's no danger now, young sir"--wheedingly.
"Glad to hear it, I'm sure. Well, is there any hotel hereabout?"
"A matter of five miles or so on a lonely road."
"Too long a tramp for a lazy man. Maybe they will give me a bed up
yonder."
A hoarse cry issued from the woman's lips, and, recoiling from him, she
suddenly lifted her skinny right arm on high, and almost shrieked, so
loud and uneven was her voice:
"Young man, venture not now or ever beneath the roof of Gray Gables. It
is written in the stars that Fate threatens thee there!"
Dorian Mountcastle stared, then laughed at her tragic turn.
"So you are a sibyl? Come, read me a page from the mystic stars."
A piece of silver crossed her skinny palm, and she laughed in joy. There
was more where that came from. She had caught the clink in his vest
pocket. She laughed, then scowled.
"Oh, you may sneer," she cried angrily. "You do not believe that old Meg
can read the stars, you jest at her art. But the time comes when you
shall weep. Look up yonder at that old gray house, so dark and
forbidding, among the trees. It has been accursed and uninhabited for
years; but to-night I see in the shining stars a new shadow hovering,
vulturelike, above it. You are mixed up in it--you, whom fate has sent
here to-night. For you I read woe and despair. You will go mad for a
woman's love!"
He laughed at her in keenest mockery, this Dorian Mountcastle, who was
so tired of lovely woman and her deceitful wiles.
"You are cheating me, Madam Sibyl! I know the shallow sex too well to
lose my head over any of them!" he exclaimed, in a voice of cynical
melancholy, and, throwing her another coin, walked impatiently away to
some little distance, standing with his back to her, and his moody face
turned to the sea.
Meg, the fortune-teller, remained where he had left her several moments
watching him with a strange, catlike intentness. Now and then she would
throw a cautious glance around her, but there was no one in sight--no
one but the young man yonder with the diamond gleaming on his hand, and
his pockets full of gold--yes, gold, for the last piece he had thrown
her was yellow and shining. A terrible cupidity was aroused in the old
crone's breast.
As for Dorian Mountcastle; in his careless or cynical self-absorption he
had already forgotten the woman and her wild predictions--a fatal
forgetfulness. For, as Meg crouched there, on the shining sands, her
lean claw slipped inside the long black cloak she wore, and clutched the
hilt of a sharp knife she carried in her breast. A low grating chuckle
escaped her lips--the laugh of a fiend--and she began to advance upon
her unconscious prey.
With his back to her, and his hands in his pockets, he was watching the
sea, and softly whistling a melancholy strain from a favorite opera.
Meg crept close, unheard, unseen, threw out a cautious foot, tripped
him, and he fell backward on the wet sands, ere he could extricate his
hands from his pockets.
That instant she sprang upon her helpless victim. The murderous knife
glittered in the moonlight, then descending, sheathed itself deep in his
breast. Dorian Mountcastle quivered all over, like one in the agonies of
a violent death, then lay quiet, at the mercy of the murderess.