"WITH THIS RING I THEE WED."
"You have killed my mistress!" cried the maid angrily.
Nita had fallen unconscious at his feet.
"It is only a faint," he replied.
And between them she was soon restored to consciousness, although still
dazed and white and trembling from the shock she had received.
Miser Farnham dead! She could scarcely realize it, and she tried hard to
keep from feeling glad and happy over the startling news. It seemed
cruel and wicked to rejoice over any one's death.
Captain Van Hise returned to the charge as soon as he thought she could
bear it.
"Of course, if Dorian could have foreseen this he would not have planned
to carry you off," he said. "But as things have fallen out, don't you
think you had better forgive him and marry him to-night?"
"You are perfectly certain that Mr. Farnham is dead?" she asked him,
with such shuddering anxiety that he knew how all depended on his
answer, and hastened to reply:
"Perfectly certain. We had it from the best authority."
This was a white lie, but he considered it admissible in his friend's
behalf. He had only heard the current rumor, but he did not suppose that
the old man's death had any special bearing on Nita's marriage to
Dorian, except that it seemed to him a very desirable thing that the
objectionable guardian had been removed so opportunely from this mundane
sphere.
"Not a very desirable connection for a lady in the position that Mrs.
Dorian Mountcastle will occupy, for everybody in New York had heard of
Miser Farnham, and his record was not a straight one," he mused, and
thought he saw relenting in Nita's eyes.
"Oh, come with me to Dorian," he urged. "The surgeon has agreed to a
brief interview, only you must be very calm and not excite him."
Lizette who, for a maid, was a very superior sort of person, beamed
cordial approval.
"Miss Nita, I think the easiest way is to consent!" she cried. "If you
refuse it may make him worse, and since you intend to marry him some
time, anyway, what's the odds?"
"Yes, what's the odds?" echoed Van Hise cheerfully, and led her to
Dorian.
She wondered in a dazed way if she ought to tell her lover the
truth--tell him she had been married to the repulsive old miser, but her
whole soul rose in rebellion against the humiliating confession.
She remembered how he had scorned Azalea because she would have married
him for his money. No--no, he would despise her if he knew--he who had
never known poverty and hunger and bitter need--that she had sold
herself to the horrible old miser for a chest of gold.
When she saw Dorian lying in the berth so wan and pale, wounded in a
chivalrous defense of her, she forgot everything else but that she
loved him wildly--madly! Loved him with a love that was her doom.
Quite overcome, she sank upon her knees by Dorian's berth.
"Oh, my love, my love," she whispered, with her lips against his brow.
And then Dorian knew that the victory was won. If she had wavered for
one moment his pale, handsome, suffering face had turned the scale in
his favor.
And her dark eyes answered without words.
"You are an angel," he murmured. "Oh, Nita, I will pay you for this with
a life's devotion. But I should have died of my wound, I think, very
soon if you had said you would not marry me!"
"My dear Miss Farnham, permit me," said Captain Van Hise at this
juncture.
He raised her gently, and placed her in a seat by Dorian.
"You were not to have much excitement, you know, Dorian, so let us have
the agony over as soon as possible," he remarked genially.
And though Nita's heart leaped in sweet alarm, he gave her no respite,
but went and brought the preacher, the surgeon, the captain, and
Lizette.
Propped up by the surgeon's arm, Dorian held Nita's cold little hand in
his, and a few solemn words made her his bride.
"'To have and to hold from this day forward,'" went on Irwin's solemn
voice.
And directly the ring was slipped over Nita's third finger, and she was
bending her stately head for her husband's kiss. Then they all
congratulated the pair very quietly and retired, the surgeon lingering
to give Dorian a sedative, after which he said gravely:
"Now, Mrs. Mountcastle, you may sit by your husband until he falls
asleep, but no talking, remember, for he must have a long night's rest."
They were alone together. He looked up at her in grateful, adoring love.
"We are on our wedding-trip, darling," he murmured.
"Yes, Dorian. Now sleep," she whispered, as she placed her hand
caressingly on his white brow. He closed his eyes, and the beautiful
bride sat and watched him, her heart thrilling with passionate love and
joy.
"He is mine--all mine--my darling husband!" she thought, with a thrill
of thanksgiving that she had been turned aside that day in the park from
the fell purpose of self-destruction. "It is always darkest just before
dawn, and thus it was with me," she whispered in blissful
unconsciousness of the lowering future.
By and by Lizette came to lead her away, and much as she would have
preferred to remain by Dorian, she felt that the surgeon would be better
pleased if she left him.
The sky was cloudy and the sea rough. Mr. Irwin and Captain Van Hise had
succumbed to sea-sickness and were invisible. The captain of the yacht
was busy, and the surgeon, after a few pleasant words, went down to
watch over his patient.
"Miss Nita, dear, don't let's stay on deck. Seems like it's getting
colder, and the wind is so high and the waves so rough they break over
the deck. You'll get splashed all over if you don't come into the
cabin."
"Not yet, Lizette, for I love old ocean in all his moods, and this is
sublime. How the wind roars, and how fast the dark, ragged clouds drift
over the moon, showing silver edges now and then, again all inky black.
Isn't it grand?"
"It just frightens me so that I can't see anything pretty about it. Oh,
dear, Miss Nita, ain't you afraid of the mountain waves rolling so fast?
Seems like one of them will go right over the yacht presently, and bury
us in the bottom of the sea."
Lizette shivered with fear, but Nita answered smilingly:
"No, I am not afraid, but, still I think we are going to have a little
bit of a storm. Ah! did you see that lightning flash? Hark the thunder!"
Then the rain began to patter upon the deck, and both ran into the
cabin, breathless with the wind and cool air, the maid lamenting:
"Oh, why did we come, why did we come? The yacht will be wrecked. We
shall all be drowned!"
Nita tried to encourage the frightened creature, but all in vain, for
the torrents of falling rain and the boom of the waves produced so much
noise that they could not distinguish each other's voices.
"Oh, what shall we do? what shall we do?" shrieked the frightened maid,
half-crazed with alarm. "I'll go to the captain this minute and beg him
to take us back home."
Half-crazed by fear, she ran shrieking out upon the deck, and, at a
sudden lurch of the yacht, fell prostrate. Nita followed, and stooped to
help her to rise. What followed was told afterward with a white face of
horror by the yacht captain who, just coming to seek them, became an
eye-witness of a terrible tragedy, and himself narrowly escaped becoming
a victim.
The night was inky-black, only for the fitful lightning flashes; the
wind violent; the rain pouring in torrents, and he began to feel alarmed
himself for the safety of the yacht and its passengers.
As Irwin and Van Hise were both suffering the agonies of sea-sickness,
he thought of the two solitary women who might be frightened, and
started to speak a word of comfort to them.
Staggering over the rocking deck toward the light that flickered from
the cabin door, he beheld Lizette rush out shrieking with fear.
The yacht dipped down into the trough of a sea, and the maid lost her
footing and fell prostrate. The next instant a blinding electric flash
showed him Nita clinging to and trying to lift Lizette; then the bow of
the yacht dipped lower still and the curving billow rose up high in air;
then it broke over the deck in a fury and flung the man prostrate upon
his face. He clutched at something--he never knew what--and the mighty
mass of water swept over him.
The yacht bounded upward again, and--but for the man clinging and
gasping for dear life--the deck was swept bare.
On the wings of the sobbing gale came to him shrieks of despair from the
two doomed women swept off into the sea.
A few minutes longer the storm raged wildly, then as if the elements had
wreaked their fury, the sea grew calmer, the winds lulled, the rain
ceased, the black clouds parted above, and silvery moon-rays fringed the
rents with heavenly glory.
But to the little knot of men huddled upon the deck of the _Nita_
watching the sea with agonized eyes came no sight of the lost ones--the
fair bride and the faithful maid--who had been engulfed in the mighty
mass of foaming waters.
They looked at each other with ashen faces, these sorrowful men; they
spoke in despairing voices; they were wounded to the heart by this awful
tragedy.
And the burden of their cry was that it would kill Dorian to learn the
tragic fate of his bride.
"He must not know," said Doctor Ray, the surgeon. "Through all the
tumult of the storm he has slept peacefully under the influence of a
sedative, and it is likely he will rest quietly until morning. When he
asks for his bride he must be told that she is ill of sea-sickness, with
her maid in close attendance. This excuse must serve until he is
convalescent. Let no man forget, for whoever should tell him the truth
would be guilty of murder."
No one doubted it, and they acquiesced in his decision. So the long
night passed, and the summer morning dawned with the balmy air and
cloudless skies, but Dorian, when he waked, was feverish and out of his
head.
They did not have to make any excuses to him about the lost one. In his
delirium he seemed to forget her existence.
* * * * *
In the week that followed upon her compact with Donald Kayne, Azalea
Courtney had not been able to gain a single clue to the mystery of
Nita's possession of the serpent ring. She had duly communicated to him
the conversation she had overheard that night between the lovers, but
neither one could make anything out of Nita's words, except the natural
agitation of a young girl who knows certainly that her guardian will
disapprove of her heart's choice.
The week that followed, before Dorian went up to New York, was one of
secret, silent, but exquisite torture to the baffled Azalea. Her plans
and schemes for bringing about a misunderstanding between the lovers,
and winning Dorian for herself, had failed utterly.
Dorian was so nearly well that he would not permit himself to be treated
as an invalid. He took his meals with them in the dining-room; he spent
his evenings in the drawing-room, and, although he listened to Azalea's
songs and politely turned the pages of her music, she knew that she
bored him inexpressibly, and that he was always glad to escape to his
betrothed at the window, where she always sat, after turning her
beautiful, grave face from them all, to gaze at the sea, and listen to
its solemn tone, that was so much sweeter to her ears than Azalea's
voice.
When Dorian turned from the piano, and went back to his love at the
window, Azalea's heart would swell with jealous wrath until her voice
would falter almost into silence, and the greatest aim of her life grew
to be revenge upon Nita, who had won the prize she had worked for in
vain.
Those golden summer days, while Dorian and Nita loitered in the old
garden, laughing and pelting each other with roses like two gleeful
children, or read poetry to each other in the honeysuckle bowers, Azalea
could hardly bear her life, but she smiled on, like the Spartan boy,
sure that, somehow or other, with Donald Kayne's assistance, she would
find a way to torture the proud and happy lovers.
At last the end of the week and the love-making came, for Dorian went up
to New York on that mission that was to prove so disastrous to all
concerned.
And Nita, left alone with the two hostile women who barely masked their
antagonism to her under a thin veneer of courtesy, relapsed into a
profound melancholy. With Dorian by her side she could almost forget the
dark shadow that clouded all her future with the blackness of despair.
Their mutual love, so strong, so pure, had the talismanic power to ward
off evil and disquieting thoughts, but with Dorian away, Nita was
haunted by vexing fears that would not down. Soon came the letter
inviting Nita and her maid for the moonlight trip upon the yacht.
When Azalea saw her rival's flushed and happy face she grew almost
frantic with secret rage. A longing seized upon her to know what Dorian
had written in the letter that had brought back the fading roses to
Nita's cheeks, and that light of gladness to her dark eyes.
When Nita and her maid went down to the shore at sunset Azalea stole up
to the girl's room, determined to search for Dorian's letter. Nita had
placed the precious missive in a silver jewel-case on her
dressing-table, and, after a short search, Azalea found it, and flew to
her mother with flaming cheeks.
"Read this," she panted breathlessly. "Oh, mama, all is lost! They are
going to elope, I am sure!"
When Mrs. Courtney had read the letter she agreed with her daughter.
Dorian and Nita had certainly planned an elopement.
"Oh, mama, you must not permit it! You can certainly assume that much
authority! Come, come, let us go down to the beach and force her to
return with us," cried the excited Azalea, and, carried away by her
impetuosity, Mrs. Courtney obeyed.
But they were just a little late for the execution of their designs.
Azalea was doomed to disappointment. Nita was already on board the yacht
with her maid, and while yet at some little distance from the scene they
became the startled witnesses of the duel fought upon the beach by the
two enemies in the purple light of the gloaming with the sound of the
solemn sea in their heedless ears.
With shrieks of fear Azalea flew toward the scene, but too late to
interrupt the duelists. Captain Van Hise was already pushing off from
shore the little boat with Dorian and the surgeon, and the officers of
the law were surrounding the other group upon the shore, where Donald
Kayne lay stretched out upon the silvery sands.
Upon the confused group Azalea broke with hysterical shrieks and cries,
and soon all that she knew was told; Mrs. Courtney, coming up as soon as
she could follow her lighter-footed daughter, confirmed the story of the
elopement. To-morrow that and the duel would startle the world at large.
The officers of the law agreed that Donald Kayne should be taken back to
New York on his own yacht, and then the group dispersed, Mrs. Courtney
leading the hysterical Azalea back to Gray Gables, where she spent a
wakeful night with her daughter, who actually threatened to commit
suicide because Dorian had carried off Nita to make her his bride. But
by morning Azalea was able to discuss the situation, and she agreed that
it looked very discouraging for her mother.
"Mr. Farnham will be furiously angry with me for letting it happen, and
I have no doubt that as soon as he reads it in the papers he will come
down here to turn me out of the house," Mrs. Courtney complained
bitterly, for this luxurious home was a palace compared to the humble
lodgings in the city where she would be forced to return when she lost
her well-paid position as chaperon to Miser Farnham's heiress.
"But, mama, you must, of course, insist upon receiving the whole year's
salary," cried Azalea.
"Of course," replied her mother, and took up the morning paper, adjusted
her glasses, and began to read.
"Is there anything about the duel?" eagerly inquired Azalea, from the
couch, where she was enacting the part of a semi-invalid.
"No, nothing yet. Too soon, you know, Azalea; but, of course, all the
evening papers will have it. Oh, good gracious, what is this! Accident
yesterday afternoon on the elevated railroad, and several people killed
and wounded. Azalea, listen to this:
"'Charles Farnham, very well known as a peculiar character of New York,
called the miser, was seriously wounded, and at first reported killed,
but revived a little, and was taken to Bellevue Hospital, where he now
lies in a semi-unconscious condition.'"