PEPITA!
Donald Kayne did not hear the old woman's shriek of joy, nor see Jack
Dineheart's craft. He flung along the sands with a long, striding step,
his heart seething with rage and pain, and, entering the grounds at Gray
Gables, sought a seat among the thick shrubberies to muse undisturbed
over his troubles.
The startling disappearance of Nita from the Rhodus house had filled him
with vague alarm and unowned remorse. He knew that she was not with
Dorian, and also knew that the bereaved young husband had been told that
his young bride was dead.
He had heard, too, while in hiding on the island, that grave fears were
entertained for Dorian's reason. He had been terribly shocked the
morning after Nita's disappearance when poor Lizette had been found
moaning upon the ground, where she had fallen from the window. The
maid's ankle had sustained a dreadful sprain, and she had several
bruises of a very painful character. She was carried into the house and
carefully attended, but it was several hours before she could tell how
her accident had happened.
Donald Kayne believed at first that it must have been an emissary from
Dorian who had carried Nita away, but the careful inquiries made
afterward revealed the fact that she was not upon the yacht.
The guilty man who, in imprisoning Nita, had not intended that any harm
should come to her, was confronted by the terrible mystery of Nita's
betrayal into some unknown and awful fate. Cruelly disappointed and
angry as he had been over Nita's refusal to gratify his curiosity, he
could not rid himself of the impression that it was not mere girlish
perversity on her part.
He was haunted by the look in Nita's eyes the night when he had knelt at
her feet, begging her to confess the truth. He had told the girl he was
her enemy, and that he would persecute her, but he had not dreamed of
anything like this.
He had promised Azalea to return and report his luck with old Meg, but
he felt averse to seeking the pretty girl yet, so he remained in the old
garden-chair, with his head bowed despondingly on his hand, while
darkness fell round him, and up at the old stone house the windows began
to glow with lights, while from the open windows of the parlor Azalea
Courtney's voice broke upon the air in a song.
Azalea's voice was clear, sweet, and well-trained, and she had chosen a
sweet and melancholy strain that blended fittingly with the pensive
twilight hour:
"'There never was a love like mine,
For since my darling went away
There has not been a night or day,
Through winter's snow or summer's shine,
But he is with me
Constantly!'"
The pathetic words sank deep into the tortured heart of the man,
listening out in the dusk and dew, with the murmur of the sea in his
ears and the heavy perfume of flowers all around. He pressed his heavy
brow against the back of his seat, murmuring over the words:
"'There never was a love like mine!'"
Azalea stopped singing, but played on in dreamy mood a low, sad
nocturne.
Suddenly, through the stillness of the garden, a faint sound reached his
ear--a sound like a human sigh, then:
"Donald!"
With a start and a cry he lifted his head.
"Donald," was breathed tremulously upon the air again.
But there was no one near. Thrilling with awe, he glared into the
darkness. The night was dark, and there in the shade of the tall firs
and shrubberies, the shadows were dense. He could barely distinguish the
outlines of his own hand. And yet as he gazed the voice called him
again, softly, tenderly, beseechingly:
"Donald!"
"Who is there? Who calls?" he asked eagerly, and no voice replied, but
out of the darkness there began to form before him at a little distance
a faint, silvery something like a cloud taking shape and form. It grew
more and more dense until it assumed the form of a woman--a mist-woman,
shadowy, faint, yet luminous with a soft, unearthly glow, and beautiful
as an angel with spiritual face, and slender, beckoning hands.
A strange spell came over the gazer, a spell of tender awe and
ineffable peace. He spoke, and his voice was low and soft, like a sigh
of love:
"Pepita."
For a moment the silvery mist wavered there in its wondrous beauty
before him; then, all at once, it began to move backward from him with a
floating movement of ineffable grace, the dark, solemn eyes still fixed
on his, while the beckoning hand and etherial voice both breathed:
"Come!"
Donald Kayne arose like one in a dream, and followed the floating mist
on and on through winding paths overgrown here and there with grass and
weeds, toward the house, blundering on in a dazed way like a drunken
man, tearing his hands upon thorny, outstretched branches of roses,
shaking down splatters of dew that wet his face and hair.
The radiant shape was leading him on and on toward the house, and the
nearer they came the more faint and indistinct it grew.
At last--when close to the old gray stone wall, and when his
outstretched hands almost touched it--the phantom shape moved straight
against the wall and melted into thin air like a bubble.
Donald Kayne, with a cry of agony, clutched at the fading form, and fell
forward heavily against the wall, striking his temple with resounding
force. The blow stunned him and flung him backward, half-unconscious
upon the grass. He did not know that he lay there for an hour ere he
struggled back to thought and memory.
He struggled up to his feet and gazed at the blank wall, so chill and
dark, where the spirit-form had disappeared.
"I have seen a ghost," he shuddered. "It was Pepita in all her beauty.
Yet I saw through and beyond her the trees and flowers. She is dead, my
Pepita, I know it at last!"