As long as he lived, Charley Bonair would never forget that tragic
moment.
All at once, the fumes of wine passed from his brain, and left him
sober and horrified, the heart sinking like lead in his breast.
It flashed over his mind that Berry’s wild leap for liberty, made just
as he turned the vehicle around, could hardly fail to result in her
instant death on the rough and rocky road.
A loud groan escaped his blanched lips, and he drew the frightened
horse swiftly back upon its haunches that he might spring out to go to
her assistance.
But the spirited animal, frightened out of all reason by Berry’s leap,
and his master’s wild cry of alarm, now spurned control, and darted
forward at headlong speed, dragging the lines from Bonair’s hands, so
that the light trap rocked so wildly from side to side he could barely
keep his seat by clinging to the edges.
He felt himself rushing to instant death, and in his horror over
Berry’s fate, he did not greatly care, though the instinct of
self-preservation made him shout aloud while he clung desperately to
the swaying vehicle that, after a mile or so of this tremendous rush,
became shattered into pieces, mercifully enough for him, because he
suddenly fell through the wreck to the ground, miraculously unharmed.
The maddened horse still rushed forward with furious leaps, trying to
rid himself of the fettering shafts that clung and hindered his flight.
He lay prostrate in the dust several moments, bruised, battered, and
shaken, but, luckily, with no bones broken, so that presently he stood
upright again, the only living thing in sight upon the lonesome road.
The moon and stars shone down upon him coldly, and the night winds
seemed to reproach him in subtle whispers.
“Where is she, the girl who trusted you, whose tender faith you
shattered with your reckless words?” it seemed to say.
With a groan he looked backward, then retraced his steps with
difficulty, he was so shaken up from the shock and the fall.
But he knew that he must find her, dead or alive, must restore her to
her home, for which she had pleaded pitifully.
There was a great ache, deep down in his heart, a passionate repentance
for his folly, a dawning love greater than any he had ever known in his
wild career.
“If Heaven would listen to such a sinner, I’d pray to find her, living
and unhurt,” he thought wildly. “Surely if my unworthy life could be
spared, hers should be! Dear, little, innocent Berry!”
Toiling wearily and anxiously along the road, he regained the spot
where Berry had sprung to her fate. With a wild heart-throb he saw her
white figure lying prone on the ground.
“Not dead! oh, not dead!” he prayed wildly, as he bent over the
prostrate form.
Still and white, and seemingly lifeless, she lay, poor little girl; but
placing his hand above her heart, he felt a faint, irregular flutter
that assured him of life.
He looked wildly about for assistance, his pale face transfigured with
joy.
“Berry, dear little Berry, speak to me,” he cried fondly; but there was
no reply.
The dark lashes did not lift from the pallid cheeks, the sweet lips did
not open to answer his pleading cry, the little hand he clasped seemed
already cold with approaching death.
“Oh, if some one would happen along! If I only had a vehicle!” he
groaned, sweeping his glance up and down the lonely road for a sign
of life anywhere. But there was neither man nor house in sight, only
unbroken vistas of trees lining the dreary road, and in the distance
the prolonged baying of a hound that sent an evil shudder along his
veins.
They were at least five miles from town, and he remembered with
sickening self-reproach how he had promised Berry that it should be so
short a drive, not over two miles at the longest.
“My accursed selfishness and vanity caused it all! If she dies, her
death lies at my door,” was the thought that beat upon his bewildered
brain.
Every moment of unconsciousness brought her death nearer and nearer;
he realized it with cruel force. “Ah, Heaven, what should I do?” he
cried, kneeling over her there in the dusty road, marveling even in his
remorse and grief at the fairness of her pallid face.
There was only one thing to do--he must carry her back to town in his
arms, since there was no other way.
Like Richard the Third, he could have cried out: “My kingdom for a
horse!”
Realizing all the bitterness of his plight, he bent down and took
Berry’s limp figure in his arms and started out to trudge the distance
back to town.
Ordinarily this would have been no great feat, for Charley Bonair was
an athlete of renown among his fellows. But he had got such a severe
shaking up himself, besides partially spraining his ankle, that he was
not very fit for the burden he now started out to carry.
He trembled under the weight of Berry, and the perspiration ran down
his face in streams, while he had to hide his lips to suppress groans
of agony, as the weak ankle now and then twisted under him so that he
could barely proceed.
But he set his teeth, grimly, vowing:
“I shall take her home if I die for it. It is the only atonement I can
make for my sin. How dared I think I could flirt with this pure, sweet
little darling!”
He thought with wonder of her exquisite innocence and ignorance, of how
surely she had believed at first that he really wished to marry her
when she was so far beneath him in the social scale.
“I shall never forget her pride and anger when I showed her my real
nature,” he thought ruefully. “Ah, what a strong sense of honor! How it
put me to the blush! She is too good for me, sweet little Berry! It is
better to marry Rosalind, who knows all my faults, doubtless, and is
not very saintly herself.”
Suddenly he paused in distress, and looked about him.
The moon had gone under a dark cloud, the air had turned chill, a
flurry of rain beat down upon him, groping in thick darkness with that
dead weight in his arms. It was one of the sudden changes in September
weather, capricious as April.
“We must get under shelter, somehow, somewhere!” he thought, looking
toward the trees, then a cry of joy shrilled over his lips.
Among the trees he saw a light flare up like a precious jewel in the
gloom. It came from the windows of a house.
He staggered toward it, drenched with rain, agonized at every step with
his sprained ankle, and his mind in a tumult. How he gained the porch
he scarcely knew, but he saw that it was a sort of tavern.
He stumbled on the steps and fell prone with his lovely burden.
CHAPTER VI. THE BOOK OF FATE.
“Hello! What is this? Looks romantic!” cried a gay, female voice, as
the owner ran forward, followed by several curious people, who united
in concern for the drenched and hapless strangers thus cast upon their
care.
With lively ejaculations of wonder, they got the pair into a large,
shabby sitting room, where a troupe of stage people were making merry.
The most warm-hearted people on earth, they began, without any
questions, to relieve their guests. Presently Bonair was able to
explain reservedly:
“I was driving out with that young lady, a friend of mine, when my
horse became frightened and ran away, throwing us both out. The
accident happened about a mile back, and I carried the young girl in my
arms, hoping to find a doctor somewhere.”
“There is one in the house and he has already gone to her assistance,”
they told him.
“Tell him to save her life at whatever cost. I would give my own life
to save that girl,” he cried anxiously, causing a sympathetic smile all
around.
No one blamed him, for one look at Berry’s lovely face seemed to them
sufficient excuse for the greatest devotion.
Meanwhile they found Bonair needing attention, also, for his injured
foot was rapidly swelling and causing pain. The doctor came in
presently and gave it the necessary attention, saying that his patient
was reviving, and would presently be herself again, he hoped. There
were some superficial bruises, but he hoped there was no internal
injury.
“Thank Heaven!” cried Bonair fervently, pressing a roll of bills into
the physician’s hand, while he added:
“If a covered vehicle can be had, I would like to take the young girl
home to her mother, who may be uneasy at her delay.”
“But, my dear sir, that will be most imprudent; I should not like my
patient to be moved until to-morrow. As for you, you might send word to
her mother to come here.”
The young fellow shrank a little. He wondered how Mrs. Vining would
take the news. He would doubtless get a sound berating from the old
woman.
“But I have fully deserved it, and I will take my punishment like
a man,” he thought grimly, and ordered the vehicle to be got ready
quickly.
“There is a terrible storm raging--it is equinoctial weather, you
know. Better wait till it clears up,” they said.
“No, I will not wait, if a man can be found to drive me. That poor
mother will be very anxious,” he answered firmly.
In the teeth of the driving storm they set forth, but Charley Bonair
never reached his destination.
The driver, a sulky-looking fellow, who had observed Bonair’s display
of money at the inn, as well as his diamond ring, assaulted and robbed
his passenger on the way to town, and left him for dead upon the
highway.
When found the next morning, there was indeed but little life left in
him--not enough to recognize any one, or to remember aught that had
happened. Life became a blank to him for many days.
The return of his horse to the stable with the fragments of the trap
clinging to the harness told what had happened to him, and no one
suspected that a beautiful young girl had been his companion on that
mad ride.
He could not speak and tell the story, for he lay ill and unconscious
many days, and none guessed that the strange and continued
disappearance of Berry Vining lay at his door.
The mother herself had found a plausible reason for her daughter’s
absence.
She believed that Berry had fled in anger over their quarrel that
night, dreading lest she should be coerced into a marriage with the
merchant tailor.
“We had a quarrel, and I believe she ran away in a fret. No, I don’t
think she has committed suicide. Berry wasn’t that kind of a girl,”
she said, adding hopefully, “she has maybe gone and got a situation in
a store in New York, and will write to me when she gets over her mad
spell.”
The neighbors accepted this view of the matter, and no one could
gainsay it. Mrs. Vining’s misfortunes with her children were an old
story! She was always bewailing the disappearance of her handsome son
by a former marriage: a son who had deserted her and gone none knew
where.
Berry did not return, and no tidings came of her, but the deserted
mother kept on at her work in patient sadness, hoping and praying for
the welfare of her headstrong child, though too poor to make a search
for the truant.
Thus the hand of Fate abruptly closed the first chapter in the
acquaintance of Charley Bonair and the pretty village maid.
For when he recovered memory and consciousness far into October, they
told him weeks had elapsed since he had been thrown from his trap and
nearly killed, and that only the most skillful nursing had saved his
life.
No one could answer the mute question in his eyes, for the secret of
that night had never transpired, though he wondered how it had been so,
saying to himself that Berry was a girl in a thousand to have held her
tongue over such an accident.
“It is better so,” he said to himself, in keen relief, yet he resolved
he would write her a note of thanks, which he hastily did, only to get
it returned with the information that Miss Vining was gone away.
When cautious inquiries brought out the reputed facts of her
disappearance, he was dazed with wonder. He made a secret trip to the
old inn, but he found it closed and uninhabited.
It was a very bad moment that came just then to handsome, reckless
Charley Bonair.
He was terrified at the mysterious disappearance of the winsome little
beauty. He asked himself in an agony what had been her fate, cursing
himself for having left her at the inn that night.
“What did I know of those people there? How dared I leave her
unprotected among them? Judging from the fellow that robbed and nearly
murdered me that night, the whole gang must have been rough and
dangerous. Ah, little one, what has been your cruel fate?” he groaned
to himself, tormented by the mystery that was so hard to fathom,
because he dared not make any public hue and cry through fear of
betraying Berry’s wild ride with him that, if known, must inevitably
compromise her in every one’s eyes, despite her innocence.
The upshot of it all was that he went, privately, to a detective, and
saying nothing of his real purpose, employed him to find out where the
people had gone who kept the inn.
The owner of the house was found, and reported that the tenant, an old
man, had died of apoplexy a month before. His servants were scattered
and could not be found.
The identity of the theatrical troupe was next inquired into, and soon
learned to be the Janice James Company. They could not be traced now,
only in so far as that they had disbanded and scattered, some joining
other companies, others going back to their homes, so that Bonair’s
next move through the detective was to offer a reward through the
personal columns of the New York papers for information regarding any
member of the troupe. But weeks elapsed without bringing any reply.
Not even to the detective did Bonair confide his real motive for his
quest. A new respect and tenderness for the girl he had tried to trifle
with filled his mind, and made him as tenacious of her good name as if
she had been his sister or his wife.