THE TENTH OF JUNE.
It was true, as the old miser had told Meg Dineheart, Nita had been
saved from death by the skilful efforts of a London physician, and in
the stupid, weakened state induced by the drug she had taken, and the
measures used to counteract its effects, she was like wax in Mrs.
Courtney's hands, so that she was brought home with scarcely a protest.
In fact, she was so ill that during the whole voyage to New York she
scarcely remembered the old miser's existence, and the dreadful fact
that the year of her marriage-contract was drawing to its close.
When she was taken to Gray Gables some glimmerings of memory returned to
her, but she did not remember that it was the fatal tenth of June.
It was May when she made the frantic effort to end her life. Since then,
in the pangs of keen physical distress, time had slipped by unheeded.
It was touching to see the joy of good Mrs. Hill at the return of her
beloved young mistress. She wept with joy, and hugged Nita close to her
motherly bosom, kissing the top of the drooping little head, with its
crown of dark, wavy tresses, threaded with gold.
She did not say one word to her of the story she had read in the New
York paper, but when she looked into the pale and lovely face she knew
that the shadow of some pathetic sorrow had fallen darkly on the young
girl's heart.
Nita lay wearily on a sofa until it was time to dress for dinner. Then
Mrs. Hill came up to help her, for her English maid had not accompanied
her home.
"It does not matter what I wear," she said listlessly.
"But Mrs. Courtney expects company this evening, I think," said Mrs.
Hill.
"It does not matter," the girl again replied wearily, her eyes full of
tears.
But Mrs. Hill had excellent taste, and she laid out a dainty white gown
for her young lady.
"I may be old-fashioned in my notions, but to my mind a young girl
always looks best in white, and to you, Miss Nita, it's wonderfully
becoming," she said, as she shook out the soft, shining robe of
feather-light Lansdowne, with its profuse, airy trimmings of white,
embroidered chiffon. "This is pretty enough for a bride," she said
admiringly. "Won't you wear your moonstone jewelry with it, Miss Nita?
It will suit you so well, and I will bring you some pale-pink roses and
white jasmine flowers for your corsage. The garden is beautiful now,
since the gardener had it in charge. You know last year when we first
came it was all of a tangle."
So she rambled on, and listless Nita let her have her way, and barely
looked in her mirror when the good woman said enthusiastically:
"Now you are finished, dearie. Look in the glass what a beauty you are!"
She was a beauty. The soft, shining robe draped her form exquisitely,
and the filmy chiffon rufflings made a soft mist about her lovely
half-bare neck and arms that were clasped with moonstones, set in
frosted silver, looking soft and fairylike as linked moonbeams.
On her breast heaved a cluster of starry-white jasmine flowers mixed
with pale-pink, half-opened rose-buds, making a delicate contrast of
color with the whiteness of her costume.
Beautiful, yes--but with a tragedy of sorrow in the midnight eyes and on
the pathetic curves of the exquisitely chiseled lips. She smiled
faintly, and murmured some words of thanks, then went down-stairs.
The drawing-room, wearing a holiday air, with profuse decorations of
flowers, was deserted as yet. Azalea and her mother were still dressing.
With a sigh of relief Nita turned her footsteps to the garden, that,
under the care of a gardener had been rescued from the tangle of last
year, and made into a fairyland of beauty and fragrance.
Nita walked slowly along the graveled paths, now in the full beams of
the rising moon, now in the long dark shadows of the tall fir-trees.
She paused to rest by the fountain where last year she had come with her
lover's letter in her bosom, and her wild heart thrilling with pain and
rapture. A sob swelled her throat as she lifted her sad gaze to the
star-gemmed sky, and murmured:
"Dorian, my love, Dorian, it breaks my heart to know that you are lost
to me forever!"
"Your Dorian is here, darling Nita," answered a voice by her side, and
his arm drew her fondly to his breast.
A low, shuddering cry, and Nita struggled out of those fond, clasping
arms, and faced her lover with startled eyes.
"Dorian," she breathed, in mingled joy and pain--"Dorian, oh, why are
you here?"
"I followed you, my sweet. Ah, Nita, I know the story of your mad
attempt to end your life. Love, love, why did you do it?"
"Fate was against us, Dorian, and I could not live without you, I begged
you to die with me, but you were cruel. Life was more to you than love.
That is a man's way. But, being only a weak woman, I chose death--only
they were so hard they would not let me die."
Her voice sank into his heart.
"Oh, my poor, little love. I did not believe your wild words. How could
I think you would try to end so sweet a life?" he cried, but Nita did
not reply; she only gazed at him with the fixity of despair.
"Nita, I distrusted you that night. I spoke cruelly to you. Will you
forgive me my harshness, my dear wife?"
"Oh, not that word--not that!" and Nita shrank and shivered, drawing
back as he approached her. "Oh, Dorian, do not think of me, nor speak to
me as your wife ever again," she continued wildly. "Remember that grim
old man--remember Miser Farnham, Dorian. Have I not told you I never can
be your wife while he lives! Oh, why does Heaven permit such wretches
to walk the earth, a barrier to the happiness of true lovers?" and she
wrung her hands despairingly.
"Do not give up like this to your sorrow, my darling," he said
soothingly, "for I believe that the mysterious barrier to our happiness
will soon be removed. I do not like to fight with shadows, Nita, so
after my interview with you in London, I came to New York to see your
guardian, and ask him frankly what was the secret of his objection to
your marriage."
"You asked him--that?" Nita faltered in an indescribable tone.
"Yes, dearest, for it seemed best to know his reasons and combat them in
a practical fashion."
"But he did not tell you--he dare not yet!" she muttered, rather to
herself than him.
"He did not tell me then, but he made an appointment to meet me here
to-night, the tenth of June--when he said I should hear the secret,
Nita, from your own lips."
He never forgot the awful look on Nita's lovely face. It was convulsed
with agony and deadly fear.
"To-night," she muttered hoarsely--"to-night, the tenth of June--oh, how
could I forget that day--of all days in the world? And he--is coming
here to-night?" The voice did not sound like her own.
"Yes, Nita; and bade me meet him here with my friend, Van Hise, who went
with me to see him. Mrs. Courtney told me you were in the garden, so I
left my friend with her and came to seek you here. Farnham will be here
presently, and soon the worst will be over. Courage, sweetheart; you are
my wife, after all, and he cannot really keep us apart!"
But it seemed as if she had forgotten him. Her form trembled like a reed
in the wind, her eyes were fixed upon the ground, she muttered hoarsely:
"It is diabolical! That old fiend has planned his triumph with
cold-blooded malice! How he will exult in my shame and despair! I cannot
bear it--no, no, no!" And with the spring of a startled fawn, Nita flew
past her lover, a vanishing white shape, toward the garden-gate.
Dorian stood like one stunned a moment, then followed in swift pursuit.
But he was suddenly arrested by an outstretched arm.
"Where are you flying to, Dorian?" demanded Captain Van Hise, who had
just come out to look for his friend.
"Do not detain me, Van Hise. I am following Nita, who has just fled from
me in some strange alarm. She went out at the garden-gate. Come! let us
pursue her, for I fear her terrors will lead her into something
dreadful," faltered Dorian, dragging his friend with him in pursuit of
the flying girl.
But the slight delay had given her the advantage of them. She flew like
the wind along the sands, flying from the degradation that she could not
face, flying to seek refuge in the deep, dark sea from her wretched life
and its crowding ills.
They could never have overtaken her, she had gained too much the start
of them, and terror lent wings to her feet, but--suddenly she stumbled
and fell prostrate over an inert body lying directly in her path.
In her frenzied flight she had not perceived it, but now--now, as she
struggled to rise again, a startled cry shrilled over her lips.
She comprehended the ghastly truth--here, almost at the gates of Gray
Gables, murder had been done! Recoiling with a strangled cry, she looked
down at the body at her feet--the ugly, twisted body, the hideous face,
the evil eyes set in a ghastly stare of death. On the instant she
recognized him--Miser Farnham!
He was dead--murdered almost at the gates of Gray Gables, while on his
way to claim his bride, to score his horrid triumph and break two loving
hearts. It was a dastardly deed, and fate or retribution had met him on
his way.
But who had done that awful deed? Some enemy, of course--perhaps the
wicked old fortune-teller. But, though she trembled and shuddered, it
came to her with a thrill of joy that now she was free--now Dorian need
never know the secret of which she was so bitterly ashamed--that she had
been for one cruel year a wife in name to the wicked miser.
She would fly back to the house--she would steal up to her own room and
remove the white dress with its blood-stains where she had slipped and
fallen on the body. No one should know that she had found the murdered
man there.
With a stifled moan she turned to retrace her steps, and--ran almost
into the arms of the two men coming in pursuit. In the near distance
they had seen her kneeling there, they came up just as she turned to
fly.
"Who is this? What is this?" cried the soldier, bending down over the
body at his feet.
Nita answered with a hysterical sob:
"Look, I found him lying here when I was flying to cast myself in the
sea. It is--it is--my guardian--and some one has--murdered--him!" with
the last words she shuddered violently, and fell unconscious at Dorian's
feet.
He lifted her up in his arms, and his hands were wet with the
blood-spatters on her white gown--the bridelike robe that looked so
stainless when she stood there by the fountain a few minutes ago.
"I will carry her up to the house, Van Hise, and you had better remain
here by the body until I send some one back to help remove it," he said,
in a shaken voice, turning away.
At that moment there appeared on the scene the hobbling form of Meg, the
fortune-teller. After a few moments of unconsciousness she had come to
herself in the lonely cabin, and curiosity had induced her to follow the
old miser up to Gray Gables.
She stopped short with a shrill cry, and, stooping down, examined the
dead, drawing back with a shudder as her hand became wet with blood.
"Ugh! it is the old miser--and murdered! Who has done this?" she croaked
dismally.
Van Hise explained to her that he did not know anything about it, that
Miss Farnham found the body there but a moment ago.
"And it is not more than half an hour since he left my cabin alive and
well, going up to Gray Gables to keep an important appointment with
Nita," croaked the old woman. She looked after the retreating form of
Dorian, and sneered:
"Perhaps she grew impatient and came out to meet the old man, did she
not?"
"She came out alone, certainly, but for what purpose I cannot tell,"
answered the puzzled soldier, who had never seen old Meg before, and he
added:
"I know nothing about the matter except that she was very unhappy and
excited, and my friend and I followed her as fast as we could, fearing
she might commit some desperate deed."
"Some desperate deed, ha, ha! yes, and so she did!" shrieked the old
crone, in horrid glee. "She met the old man she feared and hated, and
she murdered him--murdered him so that he should not betray her secret!"
"Woman, woman! how dare you utter such a fiendish lie!" exclaimed the
soldier angrily.
He sprang forward as though to strike her down, but she eluded him, and
drew a glittering knife to defend herself.
"Lay but a finger on old Meg, and you will be stretched out there by the
miser's side," she menaced, and again laughing a horrible laugh, she
continued:
"She murdered him, I say it again, and before twenty-four hours go over
her head she shall lie in prison for her crime! Ah! she thinks her
secret safe now, but barely an hour ago he told me she had been his wife
in secret for a year, and that he was going there to claim her
to-night!"
* * * * *
Stiff and stark in his last long sleep, Miser Farnham lay in his coffin
awaiting burial--this was the end of his plotting and planning--his
scheming and sinning.
The inquest was over, and Meg Dineheart, as chief witness, had hounded
the hapless girl she hated to a terrible fate. Circumstantial evidence
had pointed so strongly to Nita as the slayer of the miser, that she had
been consigned to prison to await trial for murder.
There were few who could believe in the young girl's innocence, for the
evidence against her was so overwhelmingly strong, and the motive for
the murder so plain. And there were not lacking witnesses to prove that
the girl had been desperate with despair and misery.
The Courtneys were the first to turn against her, and as witnesses they
did their worst. They could tell the story from the beginning of Nita's
falling in love with another man, and her fear and hatred of the miser;
they could tell of the elopement, of the return, and of Nita's desperate
despair and frantic grief when she learned that the miser had survived
the dreadful railway accident. They could dwell with telling effect on
her wickedness in encouraging Dorian's love when she was another man's
wife, they could dilate on the attempted suicide in London.
All their stifled hatred of the girl who had benefited them could be
aired now, and without one word of pity for her sorrows, they became old
Meg's able allies in hounding her to her doom.
Even Dorian and Captain Van Hise had been compelled to give damning
evidence against Nita. They had found her kneeling and then trying to
escape from the murdered man's side, her dress and her hands all wet
with the blood.
And there was no one else near, no one until old Meg had appeared. All
the evidence given at the inquest had pointed straight to Nita's guilt,
and there seemed but one extenuating circumstance--it seemed as if she
must have suffered for months from emotional insanity.
In a moment of madness, enraged by the knowledge that her husband had
contrived a cunning plot to expose her secret and humiliate her in the
eyes of the man she madly loved, she had met the old man coming to Gray
Gables, and in her blind rage sprang at him and murdered him.
The weapon had not been found, but it was decided to have been a very
keen-bladed knife, and there were two wounds in the region of the heart
that must either one have proved instantly fatal.
Doubtless she had thrown the knife away, although careful search had
failed to find it. But that was not strange. The encroaching tide, of
course, had carried it out to sea.
Only three friends rallied round her, only three hearts believed in her
innocence--they were Dorian, Van Hise, and kindly Mrs. Hill. It was
this only that saved her from utter heart-break.
With Dorian to believe in her still, Dorian to love her and champion her
cause, there was still a little gleam of light in the awful darkness of
her fate.
And Dorian, when he engaged the best lawyer in New York to defend her,
had told him that he was willing to sacrifice his fortune and his life
in her defense.
"Oh, sir, I am not guilty--I am not guilty!" she cried piteously,
lifting her great, appealing eyes to the face of the great lawyer, as he
entered her gloomy prison-cell.
"I shall prove your innocence--be sure of that," he answered kindly, and
then he bade her speak to him without reserve, confiding all her story
to his sympathy, that he might best judge how to defend her cause.
And Nita opened all her sad young heart freely and without reserve. From
early childhood, as far back as she could remember, her home had been
with old Meg, at her rude cabin by the seashore, an unwilling,
ill-treated drudge, beaten and cuffed at every small rebellion of her
proud spirit.
At length she grew to girlhood, and then Jack Dineheart, old Meg's son,
began to persecute her with offers of marriage. She hated Jack, and at
fifteen years old ran away to New York to escape his persecutions.
Providence watched over the friendless girl, and she soon found friends,
poor, but kind, who took her into their shabby home, and helped her to
find work.
For three years she struggled on bravely, first as a nurse-girl, then in
a store, as a cash-girl. Then the good old man who, with his kind wife,
had befriended her, fell sick and died. His wife, old and feeble, soon
followed him to the grave.
Nita left the store to attend these sick friends, and the usual lot of
the poor in a great, struggling city, fell to her share. Every penny
gone, the few sticks of furniture taken for rent, she was turned into
the streets, starving and friendless. She could find no work; she was
too proud to beg, so she resolved to end her sorrows in the river.
"I lingered in Central Park watching the gay throngs so rich and happy,
while I was starving and miserable. I had resolved not to die until
sunset," she told the lawyer. "I clung to life, but I was afraid of a
night in the streets of the great city, and I was too timid and ashamed
to ask strangers for assistance. Then I met the old miser just as I had
murmured a desperate prayer for gold. He offered to marry me, and at
first I refused. But he finally told me that if I would consent he would
give me a chest of gold, and draw up a marriage-contract giving me
perfect liberty for one year. I consented; but, oh, sir, I was deceiving
him--I never meant to live with him. I only caught at the chance of a
little longer life, and luxury that I craved, but had never known."
The lawyer listened to her in the deepest pity, drawing her out with
skilful questions. He thought he had never heard anything more pathetic
than the story of her love for Dorian, told so frankly and sadly as
though he had been her father.
"And have you no relatives, my child?" he asked, and she told him that
old Meg had once said that she was cast up by the sea from a wreck, and
had afterward claimed to be her grandmother.
"But I do not believe her. My heart shrinks in loathing from that wicked
woman. I believe that she and Mr. Farnham knew all my past story, and
all about my relatives," added Nita passionately.
"I think you are right, and I shall leave no stone unturned to ferret
out the truth and punish the real murderer," said the lawyer; and when
he took his leave he left a little ray of hope shining like a star in
the heart of the beautiful prisoner in her lonely cell.