"LET US DIE TOGETHER."
"A gentleman to see Miss Farnham."
Nita was in her ball-dress. There were pearls and diamonds at her
throat, and in the wavy masses of her hair.
"Who?" she asked carelessly.
"He did not send his card; he said to tell you a friend. He is waiting
in the private parlor."
Nita thought carelessly that it was one of her many lovers come to lay
heart and hand and fortune at her feet, and get the same answer she had
given others:
"I have no love to give."
She had a tender heart, but it vexed her when men wooed her.
"I am no coquette. I do not encourage them. Why will they not leave me
alone?" she thought impatiently.
And it was on her lips to decline to see the caller. The next moment she
reflected that if she declined to-night he would come again to-morrow.
The unpleasant moment was only deferred.
"I will go, I will have it over!" she exclaimed, and took up her
bouquet.
"I will pretend that I am in a great hurry to start to the ball," she
thought.
As she entered the parlor a man stood at an open window, breathing in
the sweetness of the fair spring night. As Nita softly closed the door
he came forward into the light, and stood revealed, tall, fair,
handsome--Dorian Mountcastle!
A thrilling heart-cry escaped from Nita's lips:
"Dorian!"
"Nita, my love, my bride!" cried the young man, and caught her in his
arms, straining her fondly to his throbbing heart.
She did not resist him. How could she forego the ecstasy of that
embrace, the warm, intoxicating sweetness of that kiss? For one moment
she forgot the gulf between them. Her arms crept up about his neck and
held him close and tenderly--her lips clung to his. Eden came back for a
few moments to earth again. He pressed the beautiful form closely to his
breast.
Ah, the gladness, the madness, after believing her dead and lost to him
forever on earth, to find her once again, so beautiful, so tender, and
so loving, alive in his arms. He drew her at last to a seat, and
whispered lovingly:
"Speak to me, my darling. Let me be sure this is no dream!"
"No dream," she murmured happily, then asked, with a smile. "How came
you to find me, Dorian?"
"My love, my bride, how beautiful you are," he murmured, "and to think
that I believed you dead, drowned in the cruel sea!"
She gave a convulsive start, she drew back a little from him, the joy
went out of her face. But there was a mist of actual tears--tears of
joy--in Dorian's eyes, and he did not note the curious change on her
face.
"Ah, Nita, how I have suffered!" he cried. "When they told me you were
dead, and that it was your wraith I saw on the yacht that night at
Fortune's Bay, I went mad with grief. They have told me that I tried to
kill myself, that I raved like a madman. But I remembered nothing for
weary days until the reawakening to memory of my loss. Ah, love, pardon
me these wild words, but it seemed to me that without you I was in
hell--in torment without hope of release! Then Van Hise brought me
abroad, but, oh, the long, long months of dark despair that followed--I
will not dwell on them, my darling, now that I have found you again. And
is it not strange I was so long finding out the truth? You must have
written me, of course, love. Is it not strange your letters did not
reach me? And all the while, my precious one, you must have been
wearying for me as I for you, is it not so, sweetheart?
"In Norway one night some fellows with us were speaking of beautiful
women they had met, and your name was mentioned, my darling--your old
name, Nita Farnham. I was struck speechless with emotion, but Van Hise,
my true friend, came to the rescue. He asked questions, he learned where
you were--you and the Courtneys. The news seemed too good to be true,
but Van Hise and I left the party and traveled night and day to reach
London, and find out if it were really my bride given back to me from
the dead. Thank God, thank God, it is true, we are reunited never to
part again!"
But, to his amazement, she drew back from his proffered kiss, she
recoiled a little from him, whispering in a frightened voice:
"Do not make too sure of that, Dorian!"
Mountcastle threw back his handsome head with a happy laugh.
"No coquetry, my darling, it is quite too late for that," he replied
gaily. "You are all my own, you know, and now that I have found you I
shall never leave you again."
His arm tightened about her waist, his eyes beamed adoring love into
hers, but she trembled and gasped in deadly fear as he held her close.
She loved him madly, adoringly, but her soul was as pure as a white
rose-leaf, and she knew that to remain with Dorian would be deadly sin.
Oh, why had he found her here? why had they met again, only to part in
despair? Better if he had gone on believing her dead, as she would,
alas! be soon. No thought came to her that it might be best to confess
all to Dorian, and ask him to help her out of her terrible strait. She
did not know that anything but death could absolve her from her wifely
vows to her husband. She understood his malignant nature well enough to
know that he would pursue her to the ends of the earth if she tried to
escape him. And in her stainless purity she would sooner have died than
seek refuge from him in Dorian's arms.
"Oh, Dorian, Dorian, it breaks my heart to tell you," she sobbed;
"but--but our marriage was all a mistake, I--I can never be your wife."
"Are you going mad, my darling? You are my wife already, you know," he
replied wonderingly.
"No, Dorian, no; it was all a mistake, I tell you. I told you always
that I could never marry you while my guardian lived. Captain Van Hise
told me that night that he was dead, and so I consented to be married.
But there was a mistake. Mr. Farnham was not dead. He lives--he claims
me--so I cannot be yours."
Dorian Mountcastle laughed at her childish fears.
"His death or his life makes no difference now," he replied soothingly.
"You belong to me alone, and no power on earth can take you from me.
Perhaps he has some hold on your fortune. Is that what you mean? Let him
have every penny, Nita. I have enough."
"Dorian, words are useless. I never can be yours. We must part."
He looked at her in amazement. He grew impatient at what he considered a
silly whim.
"I do not understand all these silly fancies, Nita," he burst out
angrily. "Perhaps you have ceased to love me, perhaps you have repented
our marriage--is it so?"
"Yes, I repent it," she replied despairingly.
A flood of jealous rage poured like molten lava through his veins.
"You have met some one you love better?" he cried, in a voice so strange
from excess of keen emotion that it did not sound like his own.
"No; ah, no, my love, my Dorian," she moaned, and suddenly flung herself
at his feet. "Oh, I love you. I love you. I love you," she cried
passionately, as she knelt there with upraised eyes.
Startled by her emotion, he stooped to raise her, but she resisted the
effort.
"No; let me kneel here humbly at your feet and thank you for your love
while I implore your pardon for my weakness," she sobbed. "Oh, Dorian,
there can never be any happiness for us, dearest, while Charles Farnham
lives. If he were dead--if he were only dead--we might be happy. I wish
that he had died that night when he was hurt. Oh, Dorian, he holds a
power over me that you do not dream of. We must part, my own dear love,
we must go our ways in life alone unless----"
She paused a moment, and searched his face with eager eyes.
"Ah, Dorian, do you love me very, very much?" she sighed.
"Better than the whole world, better than my own soul!" he answered
fervently.
And a low sigh of gladness heaved her breast.
"A terrible temptation has come to me, Dorian. We love each other so
well that life apart would be worse than death. And yet--yet--we must
part. Oh, Dorian, let us foil our malignant fate. Let us die together."
Surely she must be going mad to talk in this strange fashion when there
was nothing that could come between their wedded hearts, nothing that
could keep them apart. He spoke to her soothingly, tenderly, but she
only became more wildly agitated.
"Do you think that I talk strangely?" she cried. "Oh, Dorian, I have
heard and read of lovers who died in each other's arms rather than live
apart. Let us follow their example. A drop of poison--poison that will
kill easily, you know--and, locked in each other's arms, we may drift
together--always together, darling--into heaven or hell, or whatever
home God gives to reckless, broken-hearted lovers. What say you, Dorian?
Shall it be so?"
And she gazed wildly into his horrified face.
Dorian gazed in mingled grief and horror at the beautiful girl. Surely
she must be mad, he thought. Then his heart sank. Had her love turned
from him in their long months of separation?
Dorian had a passionately jealous nature, and the fear of Nita's
fickleness once admitted to his mind, caught fire and burned like a
devouring flame. The girl's eager, beseeching eyes beheld all at once a
strange change pass over his fair, handsome face, and, rising, he pushed
her from him, crying out angrily:
"I understand you, Nita. In the months of our separation you have
wearied of me. Do not deny it, for I will not listen to your
protestations. A moment ago I thought you must be mad, now I perceive
that there is method in your madness. You chafe at the tie that binds us
together. You would fain be free, so you pretend this baseless fear of
your guardian. Fickle heart, you have wrecked my life! I adored you, but
you found my love only a weariness. Well, take your freedom! I go, never
to molest you again."
The white, crouching figure lifted a pallid, woful face, and moaned:
"Oh, Dorian, will you leave me? Must I die alone?"
"Die!" the husband sneered angrily. "No, you will live to make some
other fool happy a while, as you did me, then throw him over in this
heartless fashion!"
All Dorian's old cynical distrust of woman's love was returning,
supplemented by jealous agony too deep for words. It seemed to him that
Nita was simply playing a part, pretending this unreasoning dread of her
guardian's anger.
"Dorian, my love, forgive my weakness!" pleaded Nita wildly; but his
eyes flashed back only a limitless wrath and scorn.
"Forgive you! no--not while life lasts! But--farewell forever!"
Then the door opened and closed--Dorian was gone in anger, and Nita was
alone with her despair, her heart breaking with its heavy burden.
Slowly and wearily she dragged herself back to her room. She was glad
the maid was not there to see her pale, changed face and crumpled
ball-gown. She closed the door, and mechanically removed the bitter
traces of tears from her face and rearranged her dress.
"For I must not stay away from the ball. That shallow Azalea would think
I envied her triumph," she thought in bitter pride, and as one goes to
the stake she accompanied the Courtneys to Lady Landon's ball, never
telling them that Dorian had sought her out, and that she had sent him
away from her, reckless and broken-hearted.
But when Dorian read of it all in the next day's papers that praised the
beauty of Miss Farnham, the lovely American, and told how the Earl of
Winthrop had paid her such devoted attention, he smiled in bitter
mockery.
"It is just as I thought--there is a title in the case, and she means to
repudiate me. American girls all run wild over coronets nowadays," he
said bitterly, to Captain Van Hise, to whom he had confided the story of
Nita's strange behavior.
Van Hise was frankly puzzled. He had believed in beautiful Nita, and he
would not give up his faith yet. He remembered the night of the
marriage, how she had refused her consent until he had told her that the
old miser was dead.
"There is something very strange here. I honestly believe in her
professed dread of her guardian," he said thoughtfully. "And as for the
title, Dorian, you know how we were told of her coldness and
indifference to all her suitors. No, she cares for no one but you, but
she will let her guardian's influence wreck both your lives unless you
take the matter frankly in hand. What say you? Shall we go home to New
York, and have it out with the old miser? Beard the lion in his den, and
find out the worst of his power. You consent? Good. We will sail this
week."
Lady Landon's ball had indeed been a great success, and the Courtneys
were highly elated over the admiration excited by Azalea's delicate
blond beauty. Her future sister-in-law had been quite cordial, too, but
in her secret heart she would have preferred the magnificent Nita with
her calm manner and queenly beauty. She hinted as much to her brother,
but he told her bitterly that Miss Farnham aspired to higher rank than a
mere baronet, and the attentions of Lord Winthrop certainly lent color
to the assertion.
The Courtneys were eager to return to the United States, whither they
expected Sir George Merlin to follow them. They wanted to astonish their
old set in New York with Azalea's grand match. Then, too, Mrs. Courtney
did not desire to offend the old man who had ordered her with no
uncertain sound to bring Nita home.
But her charge had set her face like a flint against returning.
Rebellious and desperate thoughts were working in the young girl's mind.
Why should she return to America? That was the question that tortured
her night and day. She had resolved to die rather than live with her
husband, and in a few more weeks the end of the year would come. A
dreadful existence stretched before her--the price she must pay for this
year of luxury--this year that might have been almost happy but for the
madness of love that had come so suddenly and so irresistibly into her
life.
"Oh, Dorian, Dorian, I loved you but to lose you--yet I cannot live
without you--so I will end my life and its sorrows," she sobbed in the
sleepless silence of the night. In her short, eventful life she had had
few chances to make real friends, and she had no kins-people except old
Meg Dineheart, who had declared herself on that first night at Pirate
Beach to be her grandmother. For this reason Nita had protected her from
arrest for her crimes, but she shuddered and grew heart-sick at the
thought of sustaining any relationship to the wicked old hag, and often
longed for a mother's love.
"I am alone in the world, with no right to love and happiness like other
girls, and surely God will forgive me for ending my wretched life," she
sobbed, and began to plan the way in which to end "life's fitful fever."
Mrs. Courtney thought it a strange whim when, instead of attending the
opera one evening, Nita went to church. She knew afterward the meaning
of the fancy she had combated all in vain. Nita went to church to pray
and ask God's pardon for the wicked deed she was about to commit.
She smiled in mournful mockery when her worldly-minded chaperon tried to
argue her out of going.
"Dear Mrs. Courtney, I can take my maid; I need not deprive you of the
pleasure," she said sadly. "But as for me, I do not care for music
to-night. I would rather hear some godly words and prayers."
"It is time enough for piety when you are old and gray," the woman said
cynically, and Nita gave her a strange, sad glance.
"What if I do not live to grow old--if I die in my early youth?" she
queried.
Mrs. Courtney shrugged her shoulders without replying; but after Nita
had gone out, she said significantly to Azalea.
"I think she is suffering from a temporary aberration of the mind. You
have noticed how quiet, almost morose, she has been lately. I shall take
her home to her guardian without delay. There must be something wrong
with her mind, the way she has carried on since she married Dorian."
But Nita had her way and went to church, and if ever a tortured soul,
about to launch itself into eternity, prayed earnestly for the pity and
pardon of Heaven, she did that night.
And the next morning Mrs. Courtney had a shock that she never forgot
till her dying day. Nita's maid came rushing into her room with a pallid
face and staring eyes.
"Oh, madam, I've found Miss Farnham dead in her bed with a bottle of
poison by her side!" she almost shrieked.