THE CURSE FULFILLED.
Sir Philip Cranstoun walked out of the hotel that afternoon a beaten
man.
He and Lord Carthew were equally powerless before this woman, whose
audacity, vulgarity, and cunning were equally astonishing as revolting
to both of them.
The gray wolf had been scoffed at and insulted to his face, not only
by this hoarse-voiced virago, whose features resembled so strangely
those of his late wife and of her daughter Stella, but by his own
former servant, Stephen Lee, who had laughed to scorn his threats of
punishment and dismissal.
“I’ve always hated you,” the young gamekeeper had said. “I only
entered your service that I might bide my time, and see you made a
fool of, and disgraced in the eyes of the world; and if your daughter
here can’t do it, nobody can. You’ll rue the day you meddled with the
Romanys and shot down Hiram Carewe in cold blood before you’ve done.”
Lord Carthew’s resentment against his father-in-law knew no bounds.
Not for an instant did he believe the Baronet’s labored explanation.
He remained convinced that he had been the victim of a trick, and that
Sir Philip, having two daughters, had palmed off upon him the other
instead of Stella, and now refused to own to his villany.
“Your conduct has been infamous, sir. It places you outside the pale
of decency. I shall at once call in the law to get your daughter, whom
you have married to me under a false name and by a knavish trick,
returned upon your hands.”
Such was the nature of his parting words to Sir Philip as he left him
at the hotel door.
That hateful old woman’s prophecy returned upon Sir Philip’s brain
with maddening iteration.
“You shall be wretched at home, and hated abroad! No one shall ever
love you! Your children shall bring disgrace and shame upon you! You
shall die in a miserable garret, and I, Sarah Carewe, shall live to
laugh at you as you lie dying!”
The first part of the prophecy was being verified indeed; as to the
last, that was, of course, sheer mouthing. No doubt the old hag who
uttered it, and who would by this time have been over eighty, had long
been mouldering in her grave, while he, Sir Philip Cranstoun----
“I beg your pardon, sir, but is your name Sir Philip Cranstoun?”
The speaker was a respectably dressed man of swarthy complexion and
handsome features, apparently about five and thirty years of age.
“Why do you want to know?” the Baronet inquired curtly, eying the
stranger, who had the appearance of a well-to-do mechanic, with
suspicion.
“I beg pardon, sir, but it’s about your daughter, a young lady called
Miss Stella Cranstoun, I want to speak to you.”
“What about her?”
“Well, sir, I’m a Surrey man, and I know you and her by sight. I’m
working in London now, and in the house in Whitechapel where I’m
lodging a young lady was brought three days ago, in the care of two
elderly women, who won’t let her put her head outside the door. And
I’d take my oath, sir, she’s your daughter, Miss Stella Cranstoun. I
can take you to the house, sir, in a cab, if you like. I was half a
mind to write about it down to the Chase, but I thought how you’d
think it a liberty; but as soon as I spotted you just now as I was
going back to my work, thinks I, I must up and speak to him.”
The man’s manner was so genuine, and the affair of such pressing
importance that Sir Philip, after a moment’s hesitation, decided to
accompany him. A four-wheeled cab was crawling past, driven by a
dark-faced, clean-shaven man, no longer young. The cabman pulled up as
he saw Sir Philip looking for a conveyance, and the latter sprang in
and ordered the man who had addressed him to take his place on the box
and direct the driver.
This order was at once obeyed. Once on their way toward Whitechapel,
the two men looked at each other. The Fates were against Sir Philip
Cranstoun that day, for the driver was his brother-in-law, James
Carewe, whom he had caused to serve five years in prison, and his
companion was James’ younger brother Brian, who had helped Clare Lady
Cranstoun to escape from her husband’s home.
It had been Brian’s business to “shadow” his family enemy, and this
cab-driving plan was only one out of many plots woven by the moving
and directing spirit of the Carewes, old Sarah, to get her prey into
her hands. No suspicion of his danger crossed Sir Philip’s mind as he
let himself be rapidly driven eastward. He was longing to revenge
himself by extra harshness of treatment upon his daughter Stella for
daring to escape from his control and send a substitute in her stead
to be wedded to Lord Carthew.
Suddenly, while these malevolent thoughts filled his mind, a violent
lurch of the cab hurled him upon his hands and knees; the next moment
a blow in the chest from the shaft of a heavy van into which the cab
had been deliberately driven, felled him, stunned and bleeding, as he
attempted to rise. He heard the crash of glass, the noise of loud
talking; then insensibility came to dull the exquisite pain he was
suffering, and he knew no more until he opened his eyes in a mean and
squalid room, and became conscious that several people were standing
round his bed, and that the cracked and quavering voice of a very old
woman was sounding close to his ear.
“Make him conscious--make him conscious for a bit, dear, good doctor,
before he dies. You see, he’s a relation of mine; he married the
daughter of my boy Hiram--oh, you needn’t look surprised! Sixty years
ago _I_ was pretty enough for a swell to have married _me_.”
“Doctor,” muttered the injured man, “where am I? And what has happened
to me?”
“You have had a very serious accident--a heavy van ran into your cab
in a street not far from here. This is Elizabeth Street, Whitechapel.”
“Let me be moved at once to my house in Berkeley Square.”
“Impossible. It would be madness to move you in your present state.”
“Shall I die?”
“I hope not. I cannot say. But you must be prepared.”
“He won’t die, doctor, dear, until I have spoken to him,” put in the
old crone, pressing close to the wounded man’s pillows. “That’s what
he’s waiting for. He’s waiting to hear the voice of old Sarah Carewe,
whose son he murdered, and whose grandchild’s heart he broke; the
voice he heard cursing him outside the court-house, where he swore
James Carewe’s liberty away. But James Carewe has been even with you,
Philip Cranstoun, for it was he who drove your cab to-day. And Clare,
my dear grandchild, will rest in her grave when she knows how I’ve
carried out her prayer to bring up your children to hate and to
disgrace you when those twin girls, Stella and Lura Cranstoun, were
born to her. I let you keep the one, and you well-nigh broke her heart
as you broke her mother’s. But old Sarah saved her, and she’ll marry
her own young spark, the farmer, while I’ll wager my little Lura will
set all tongues wagging with her doings. She’s an imp of evil even _I_
can’t manage, and she’s been trained to hate you as I do. Romanys have
good memories, Sir Philip Cranstoun. Old Sarah told you she would live
to laugh at you as you lay dying in a garret, and her words have come
true!”
Her voice rose to a shriek of triumph on her last words, and there was
a fiendish glee in the shrill laugh that accompanied them. The dying
man turned his head aside with a shudder of repugnance, and motioned
to the doctor to approach him.
“Stella, my daughter Stella; I want her,” he whispered. “Where is
she?”
The doctor turned to the old woman, who, as though exhausted by the
excitement of the moment for which she had waited so long, had sunk
upon a chair, looking extraordinarily old and feeble.
“Oh, he can see her if she likes,” she mumbled. “_His_ bullying days
are over.”
Not until late that same evening could Stella be found, Brian Carewe
having applied in vain at the lodgings in Duchess Street, where she
had been placed by old Sarah after the latter had brought her, drugged
and insensible, in the caravan to London. But Brian had the gypsy
instinct of tracking, and enlisting the aid of his nephew, Stephen
Lee, who had long ago discovered the fraud perpetrated upon Lord
Carthew, he sought out the address of Hilary Pritchard, and through
him that of the latter’s aunt, in whose care Stella had been placed
that day.
And by the light of a candle flickering in the wind, which blew
through the broken window-panes of a wretched garret, Stella saw her
father for the last time, and on her knees beside his bed freely
forgave him for any grief he might have caused her, and soothed his
last moments with a daughter’s tenderness as freely given as it was
wholly undeserved.
* * * * * * * *
Mr. and Mrs. Hilary Pritchard are settled in the Canadian homestead
now, where they live in perfect happiness and ever-increasing worldly
prosperity. The law has long since freed Lord Carthew from his
unfortunate marriage, concerning which the world has forgotten to
talk; but the money which he settled upon Lura only accelerated her
end by enabling her to indulge in her passion for drinking. At once
the means and the victim of a long-deferred vengeance, she died
miserably at the age of four and twenty. Old Sarah only survived her
enemy, Sir Philip, by a few months; and as to James Carewe, and Brian,
and Stephen Lee, they are living out unprofitable lives in the way
best suited to their roving, restless temperaments.
But Stella was only one-third gypsy after all. Such freedom-loving
instincts as she has are tempered by a gracious womanliness and
unobtrusive refinement, which make her a queen among the settlers and
farmers in her new home, where, blessed with her husband’s and her
children’s love, she can forget the sorrows and the trials of her
girlhood’s years.
THE END.
TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES
Gertrude Warden was the pseudonym of Gertrude Isobel Price.
She was the younger sister of author/actress Florence Warden.
Minor spelling inconsistencies (_e.g. evening-gown/evening gown,
stepmother/step-mother, etc.) have been preserved.
Alterations to the text:
Punctuation: fix a few quotation mark pairings.
[Prologue.--Part II]
“William’s wife she said she felt she’d rather have died at once”
delete first _she_.
Change “a neighboring farmer had been _commisioned_ to bring” to
_commissioned_.
[Chapter VII]
“as well as other points which had _puzzed_ her” to _puzzled_.
[Chapter XII]
“saw the _unimstakable_ relief in her face, and hastened” to
_unmistakable_.
[Chapter XV]
“into the presence of his lovely _fianceé_” to _fiancée_.
“the shrill, eldritch laughter of the hag Sarah _Carew_” to _Carewe_.
[Chapter XVI]
“Stephen’s hawk-eyes to distinguish anything Stopping still”
add period after _anything_.
[Chapter XVII]
“He did not even see Dakin in _attendancce_ as his pale face”
to _attendance_.
“could hardly refrain from a little cry of _admiraton_” to
_admiration_.
“to whisper and mumble the necessary _reponses_ in the service”
to _responses_.
[Chapter XVIII]
(“Handsome is as handsome does,” persisted the old old gentleman)
delete one _old_.
(“_Tis_ some trick of old Sarah’s,” he kept on repeating) to _’Tis_.
[Chapter XIX]
“you don’t bear me any _gruge_, do you?” to _grudge_.
[Chapter XX]
“he gathered little but that an _eldely_ woman named Tait” to _elderly_.
[End of text]