WHEN HAPPINESS SEEMED NEAR!
Granny Jenks, after great bustling about and clattering of dishes, sat
down at last to copious draughts of strong tea, flavored with whisky.
"Oh, granny, aren't you taking a drop too much?" ventured Liane
apprehensively.
"Mind your own business, girl. I'll take as much as I choose! Ay, and
pour some down your throat, too, if you don't look out!"
Liane drank her tea in silence, while the old woman went on angrily:
"I want that forty dollars you kept back from me, girl, and I mean to
have it, too, or give you a beating!"
This was a frequent threat, so Liane did not pay much heed, she only
gazed fixedly at the old hag, and said:
"Granny, suppose I were to go away and leave you forever, do you think
you could be happy without me?"
"Humph! And why not, pray?"
Liane sighed, and answered:
"I was just thinking how I have been your slave, beaten and cuffed
like a dog for eighteen years, and I was wondering if in all that time,
when I have been so patient and you so cruel, if you had in your heart
one spark of love for your miserable grandchild!"
"Eh?" cried granny, staring at her fixedly, while Liane continued:
"Ever since I could toddle I have labored at your bidding, fetching
and carrying, with nothing, but scoldings and beatings in return, and
not a gleam of sunshine in my poor life. You have not shown me either
mercy or pity; you have made my whole life as wretched as possible, and
I have sometimes wondered why Heaven has permitted my sufferings to
continue so long. Now, I have a strange feeling, as if somehow it was
all coming to an end, and I wonder if you will miss me, and regret your
unnatural conduct, when I am gone out of your life forever?"
She spoke with such sweet, grave seriousness that the old woman
regarded her earnestly, noting, as she had never closely done before,
the beauty and sweetness of the young eyes turned upon her with such
pathetic solemnity.
"Maybe you mean to run away with some rascal, like your mother!" she
sneered at length.
"I was not thinking of any man, or of running away, granny; only, it
seems to me, there's a change coming into my life, and I am going out
of yours forever!"
"Do you mean you're going to die?"
"No, granny, I mean that I shall be happy, after all these wretched
years; that my starved heart will be fed on love and kindness, and I
want to tell you now that if Heaven grants me the blessings I look for,
I shall leave you that forty dollars as a gift, for then I shall not
need it," returned Liane solemnly.
"Better give it here, now; you might forget when your luck comes
to you. And--and, you ain't never going to need it after to-night,
anyway!" returned granny, with a ghastly grin.
"No, I prefer to wait till to-morrow!" the young girl answered, with
a sudden start of fear, for the glare the old woman fixed on her was
positively murderous.
She got up, thinking she would go down and see if Lizzie had returned
from her work yet; but granny sprang from her chair and adroitly turned
the key in the lock, standing with her back against the door.
Liane's eyes flashed with impatience.
"Let me out, granny!" she cried. "This is not fair!"
"Give me that money!" grumbled the hag, with the tone and look of a
wild beast.
"I--I--Mrs. Brinkley put it in a savings bank for me!" faltered Liane,
bracing herself for defense, for her startled eyes suddenly saw murder
in the old woman's face.
She felt all at once as if she would have given worlds to be outside
that locked door, away from the deadly peril that menaced her in the
beastly eyes of half-drunken granny.
She was not a coward. Yesterday she had faced death bravely for Mrs.
Clarke's sake, and would have given her life freely for another's; but
this was different.
To be murdered by the old hag who had blasted all her young life, just
as her hopes of happiness seemed about to be realized, oh, it was
horrible! Unrelenting fate seemed to pursue her to the last.
She drew back with a gasping cry, for the old woman was upon her with
the growl of a wild beast and the well-remembered spring of many a
former combat, when the weak went down before the strong.
Liane, who had always been too gentle to strike back before, now
realized that she must fight for her life. Granny intended to kill her
this time, she felt instinctively, and silently prayed Heaven's aid.
She opened her lips to shriek and alarm the household, but granny's
skinny claw closed over her mouth before she could utter a sound, and
then a most unequal struggle ensued.
Liane was no match for the old tigress, who scratched, and bit, and
tore with fury, finally snatching up a club that she had provided for
the occasion, and striking the girl on her head, so that she went down
like a log to the floor.
Granny Jenks snarled like a hyena, and stooped down over her mutilated
victim.
She lay white and breathless on the floor, her pallid face marked with
blood stains, not a breath stirring her young bosom, and the fiend
growled viciously:
"Dead as a doornail, and out of my pretty Roma's way forever!"
Suddenly there came the loud shuffling of feet in the hall, and the
pounding of eager fists on the locked door.
Granny Jenks started in wild alarm. She realized that the sounds of her
struggle had been heard, and regretted her precipitate onslaught on
Liane.
"I should have waited till they were all asleep; but that whisky fired
my blood too soon!" she muttered, as, paying no heed to the outside
clamor, she dragged the limp body of her lovely victim to the inner
room, throwing it on the bed and drawing the covers over it, leaving a
part of her face exposed in a natural way, as if she were asleep.
She was running a terrible risk of detection but nothing but bravado
could save her now.
She dimmed the light, and returned to the other room, demanding:
"Who is there? What do you want?"
Several angry voices vociferated:
"Let us in! You are beating Liane!"
At that she snarled in rage and threw wide the door, confronting Mrs.
Brinkley and her sister, with the two new boarders.
"You must be crazy!" she exclaimed. "I was pounding a nail into the
wall to hang my petticoat on, and Liane is asleep in the bedroom. If
you don't believe me, go and look!"
They did not believe her, so they tiptoed to the door and peeped
inside, and there, indeed, lay the girl, seeming in the dim half light
to be sleeping sweetly and naturally.
"You can wake her if you choose, but she said she was very tired, and
hoped I would not disturb her to-night," said artful granny coolly,
though in a terrible fright lest she be taken at her word.
They retreated in something like shamefaced confusion, leaving granny
mistress of the situation.
"What made you so sure she was beating the girl?" asked Carlos Cisneros
of Sophie Nutter, who had raised the alarm.
"I used to know them at Stonecliff, where they lived, and she beat her
there, poor thing, so when I heard the noise I thought she was at her
old tricks again!" replied Sophie, going back downstairs to the parlor,
where she had been looking at Mrs. Brinkley's photographs.
The language teacher followed her, and as he was rather handsome, and
knew how to be fascinating with women, he soon gained her confidence,
and found out everything she knew about Stonecliff, even to the cause
of her leaving Roma Clarke's service. His eyes gleamed with interest as
she added earnestly:
"Although I have seen Mr. Devereaux alive since, and they tell me I
was raving crazy that night, still I can never be persuaded that I did
not see Miss Clarke push a man over the bluff to his death."
She was astounded when he answered coolly:
"You were not mistaken, but the man was not Devereaux. It was another,
who held a dangerous secret of hers, so that she wanted him dead."
Sophie looked at him suspiciously.
"Did you see her push him over the bluff as I did? Ugh! That horrible
scene! It comes before me now, as plain as if it was that night!" she
shuddered.
She was amazed when he answered:
"I was the man she tried to drown!"
He was secretly delighted that there had been a witness to Roma's
crime. It made his hold upon her that much firmer.
He added, in reply to Sophie's gasp of wonder:
"I was saved by a passing yacht, and put in a hospital, where I nearly
died from a wound on my head."
Sophie gasped out:
"And--and aren't you going to punish the hussy?"
His eyes flashed, but he answered carelessly:
"Well, not just yet!"
"Shall you ever?"
"Wait and see," he replied. "Can you imagine what brought her into this
house to-day?"
"I cannot. I suppose she knew Granny Jenks at Stonecliff; but I am sure
she hated sweet Liane, because she carried off the beauty prize over
her head."
Carlos Cisneros gleaned all he could from Sophie, but he gave her no
further information about himself, content with making a very good
impression, indeed, on Sophie's rather susceptible heart.
Meanwhile, upstairs, granny, having locked the door with a stifled
oath, dropped down on the rug, and lay for long hours in a drunken
stupor, while the dreary night wore on.
Suddenly, as the bells hoarsely clanged four in the morning, granny
started broad awake, shivering with cold in the fireless room, and sat
up and looked about her, whimpering like a startled child:
"Liane! Liane!"
A sudden comprehension seemed to dawn upon her, and, getting up
heavily, she stalked into the inner room.
The dim lamp was burning low, casting eerie shadows about the room, and
she walked over to the bed, where she had thrown something the evening
before.
The ghastly thing lay there still, just as she had placed it with the
coverlid drawn up to the chin, the silent lips fallen apart, the eyes
a little open and staring dully, as granny placed her skinny claw over
the heart, feeling for a pulsation.
There was none. She had done her work well. Her victim--the victim
of eighteen years of most barbarous cruelty--lay pale and motionless
before her, the mute lips uttering no reproach for her crime.
The old woman gazed and gazed, as if she could never get done looking,
and then her face changed, her lips twitched, she blinked her eyelids
nervously, and sank down by the bed, overcome by a sudden and terrible
remorse.
"My God! What have I done?" she groaned self-reproachfully.
Far back in granny's life was a time when she had been a better woman.
It seemed to return upon her now.
She groped beneath the coverlid for Liane's cold, stiff hand.
"Liane, little angel, I am sorry," she muttered. "I would bring you
back if I could! Oh, why did the foul fiend send her here to tempt me
to the damnation of this deed? But she is safe now! Roma is safe now!
And she has promised that I shall not miss Liane's labor."
A new thought struck her. It would soon be day, and she must hasten to
hide the evidence of her crime.
She started up nervously, and busied herself searching Liane for
the coveted money, but not finding it, she began other necessary
preparations.
It was that dismal hour that comes before the dawn, when she stole
through Mrs. Brinkley's dark halls and passed like a shadow through the
side door, escaping safely into the street with a shawled and hooded
burden that must be safely hidden from the sight of men.
Lightly and softly fell the cold December snow, covering up the
footprints of the skulking woman; but they could not blot the dark
stain of crime from her black soul.
Dawn came slowly, and broadened into perfect day, and in the Brinkley
house the household stirred and went about accustomed tasks. Soon
granny's voice went snarling through the open door, calling shrilly
downstairs:
"Liane! Liane!"
Lizzie White answered back from the kitchen:
"She is not here!"
Then granny tapped on Miss Nutter's door.
"Is that lazy baggage in here?"
"I have not seen her since last night," answered Sophie, and presently
the house rang with granny's cries of anger and distress.
All went in haste to her rooms, and she reported that Liane had
certainly run away, as she had many times threatened to do. All her
clothes and little trinkets, together with her little hand bag, were
missing.
Granny's blended anger and grief were so superbly acted that her simple
listeners did not doubt her truth.
Mrs. Brinkley, thinking of the fine presents Liane had received from
some unknown admirer, secretly doubted the story the girl had told her,
and confided to Lizzie her belief that she had indeed eloped, and would
most likely come to a bad end.