BEFORE THE DAWN.
None could envy Edmund Clarke's feelings as he hastened on his way to
find out the fate of the fair girl he believed to be his daughter!
He could not credit the story of her elopement.
Harrowing suspicion pointed to the probability that Roma, having found
out the truth about herself, had hurried to Boston to have the real
heiress put out of the way.
What more likely than that the wicked girl had intercepted Jesse's
letter containing Liane's address and made capital of it to further her
own evil ends?
The man shuddered as he realized what a fiend he had cherished as his
daughter. He realized that it was the old fable of warming a viper in
the bosom that stings and wounds the succoring hand.
Roma could never come under his roof again. Her vile attempt on his
life and Doctor Jay's precluded such a possibility.
But he groaned aloud as he thought of having to break all the truth to
his frail, delicate wife--unless he should be able to first find Liane
and get the proofs of her real parentage.
With a trembling hand he rang Mrs. Brinkley's bell, starting back in
surprise when it was answered by no less a person than Sophie Nutter.
"Mr. Clarke!" she faltered, in blended surprise and pleasure.
"Sophie!" he exclaimed, following her into the little parlor, as she
said:
"Come in, sir. All the folks are out but me, and I must say I am
as much surprised to see you here to-day as I was to see Miss Roma
yesterday."
Artful Sophie, she distrusted Roma, and took this method to find out if
he knew of his proud daughter's goings-on.
"Roma here yesterday!" he exclaimed, in a voice of agony, feeling all
his suspicions confirmed.
"Yes, sir, she was here to see old Mistress Jenks yesterday, and spent
an hour with her!" returned Sophie quickly, scenting some sort of a
sensation in the air.
She saw him grow pale as death, and he almost groaned:
"Liane? Where was she?"
"At her work, sir, at the store."
"Where is she now?"
"It is thought she has run away with some rich young man, sir. She is
missing this morning, and all her clothes gone!"
"The old woman--where is she? I must see her at once!"
"Lordy, sir, the poor old creature ain't here this afternoon. She went
out to look for Liane, vowing to kill the fellow that persuaded her
away!"
Mr. Clarke had always liked Sophie when she was a member of his
household. Her kind, intelligent face invited confidence.
"Do you think that her distress was genuine, or was she playing a
part?" he asked, adding: "To be frank with you, Sophie, I have a deep
and friendly interest in Liane Lester, and I suspect foul play on the
old woman's part."
It needed but this to make Sophie pour out all that she knew of the
old hag's cruelties to Liane up to last night, when the sounds of a
supposed scuffle had penetrated to her ears, causing the family to
intrude on the old woman en masse, to find that granny had only been
driving a nail, and that Liane was asleep in bed.
"You saw her asleep?" he asked.
"Yes; we all tiptoed to the door, and she lay peacefully in bed, with
the covers drawn up to her chin."
"You are sure that she was breathing?" he asked hoarsely.
"Why, no, sir--but--my God, do you think there could have been anything
wrong?" cried Sophie, alarmed by his looks.
He answered in a voice of anguish:
"I suspect that you were looking at the corpse of sweet Liane; I
suspect that the noise you heard was old granny beating her to death,
and that she has hidden the dead away, and put out a hideous lie to
account for her disappearance!"
Sophie was so terrified that she burst into violent weeping.
But Edmund Clarke's face wore the calmness of a terrible despair. He
felt now that Liane had been foully murdered, and that nothing remained
to him but to take the most complete vengeance on her murderers.
He exclaimed hoarsely:
"Do not weep so bitterly, my good girl; tears will not bring back the
dead. All that remains to us now is to take vengeance on her enemies.
To do this we must find proofs of their crime. Come with me, and let us
search Granny Jenks' room."
It was not hard to break open the locked door, and they went into the
gloomy apartments, Sophie opening the window and letting in a flood of
light.
Then she saw what had escaped their eyes last night--stains of blood on
the bare, uncarpeted floor. In the bedroom, the pillow where Liane's
head had rested last night was also marked by red stains that told in
their own mute language the story of a terrible crime.
Their horrified eyes met, and he groaned:
"It is as I told you! She was murdered, sweet Liane! Oh, I will take a
terrible vengeance for the crime!"
Sophie replied with heartbroken sobbing, and they remained thus several
moments, shuddering with horror in the bare, fireless room.
But not a tear dimmed the man's eyes. He was stricken with despair
that lay too deep for tears. His heavy eyes wandered about the room,
lighting on a small black trunk in a corner.
"If I could only find the proofs!" he muttered, and unhesitatingly
broke the lock, scattering the contents out upon the floor.
It was filled with yellowing relics of a bygone day, and he turned them
over rapidly, saying to Sophie:
"I am searching for something to prove a suspicion of mine--a suspicion
of a deadly wrong!"
She dried her eyes and looked on with womanly curiosity, while he
picked up and shook a little red box in the bottom of the trunk.
A dozen or two trinkets and letters fell out on the floor, and he
searched them eagerly over, lighting at last on a slender golden
necklace belonging to an infant.
He held it with a shaking hand, saying to Sophie:
"See this little clasp forming in small diamonds the word 'Baby'? It
belonged to my wife in infancy, and when our little Roma was born she
clasped it on her neck."
"And Granny Jenks has stolen it!" she cried indignantly.
"Worse than that! She stole also the child that wore it!" he answered,
with a burst of the bitterest despair.
His heart was breaking with its burden of concealed misery, and
Sophie's eager, respectful sympathy drew him on till he could not
resist the temptation to tell her all, sure of her sympathy.
It was like reading a novel to Sophie--the story of the lost babe,
the spurious one substituted, and all that had happened since to the
present moment.
"Oh, my dear sir, I believe you are quite right! Sweet, beautiful Liane
was surely your daughter, while as for the other, she never had the
ways of a lady, for all her grand bringing up, and she had the same
cruel spirit like granny, always wanting to beat any one who displeased
her. She slapped my face several times when I was her maid, and maybe
you know, sir, that I left her service because I saw her push a man
over the cliff one night."
"I have heard it whispered that you fancied something of the kind. My
wife said you were crazy," returned Mr. Clarke.
"Crazy--not a bit of it, sir! It was God's holy truth! I can show you
the man! He escaped the death she doomed him to, and lives in this very
house!" cried Sophie, glad that she could defend herself.
"I should like to see the man!" cried Clarke, who was eager to get all
the evidence possible against Roma.
"He will be coming in directly from his school," cried Sophie; and,
indeed, at that moment a step was heard in the hall, and the dark,
bearded face of the new boarder appeared passing the door.
"Come in!" called Sophie imperatively, and as he obeyed: "Mr. Clarke,
this is Carlos Cisneros, the man Miss Roma pushed over the bluff."
Cisneros bowed to the stranger and scowled at the informer.
"Why did you betray my confidence?" he cried threateningly.
"Because I knew you wanted to get your revenge on her, and this man
will help you to it."
The two men glared at each other, and Mr. Clarke asked:
"Why did she thirst for your life?"
"I held a dangerous secret of hers, and she believed me dead. When I
hunted her down and threatened to betray her, she tried to kill me. She
pushed me over the bluff, but I was picked up by a passing yacht, and
my life was saved."
"What was that secret?"
"She has promised to pay me richly for keeping it," sullenly answered
the man.
"She cannot keep her promise, because she is not my daughter at all,
but an adopted one, and, finding out that she has attempted many
crimes, I shall cast her off penniless."
"That alters the case. If she cannot pay me for holding my tongue, I'll
take my revenge instead," answered Carlos Cisneros, with flashing eyes.
"Sir, Roma is my wife. We were married secretly at boarding school.
Then she tired of me and went home, while I was ill. When I hunted her
down she attempted to murder me!"
Suddenly they were startled by a tigerish snarl of rage.
Granny, creeping catlike along the hall, came suddenly upon the open
door, and the group within her room.
She staggered over the threshold, and glared like a tiger in the act of
springing.
Mr. Clarke, still holding the shining necklace in his hand, cried
bitterly:
"Miserable murderess, you are detected in your crimes! Here is the
proof in my hand that you are the fiend that stole my infant daughter
from her mother's breast, and made her young life one long torture!
Here upon the floor and the bed are the blood stains that prove you
murdered my child last night. My God, I only keep my hands off your
throat so that you may tell me what you have done with my precious
dead!" his voice ending in a hollow groan.
The detected wretch crept closer to Cisneros, whining:
"Don't let him kill me! I know I deserve it, but don't let him kill me!"
"Tell him the truth, then!" cried Cisneros, who, although not a very
good man himself, was astonished at the story he had heard, and felt a
keen disgust for the repulsive, whining old creature.
"What is it you want to know?" she muttered, gazing fearfully at Clarke.
"Was not Liane Lester my own child?"
"Yes, I s'pose it's useless to deny it, now that you've found your
baby's necklace in my trunk."
"And the girl I adopted as my daughter is your grandchild?"
"Yes--but you'll have to keep her now, and give her all your gold. You
won't never find Liane no more!" she muttered, with a cunning leer, as
of one demented.
"Tell me why you stole my child!"
"It won't do you any good to find out now. She won't never come back
any more!" she muttered stubbornly.
He groaned in anguish, but reiterated:
"I insist on having the truth. Answer my question."
"Tell him the truth, you she devil!" growled Cisneros, pinching her arm
as she huddled closer to his side.
She whined with pain, but she was mastered; she did not dare persist in
her obstinacy.
So she whimpered:
"My daughter Cora stole the baby from your wife's breast, and she loved
it so that I daren't take it away, lest she should die. So I let her
keep it, and when her own child came she wouldn't never have naught
to do with it, but clung to the other one, poor, crazy thing! So I
thought I would raise them as twins, but when Doctor Jay sent me to get
one from the foundling asylum in its place, the devil tempted me to
keep your baby because Cora loved it so, and I put my own grandchild
in your wife's arms, hoping you wouldn't find out the truth, and that
Cora's child would be a great rich lady. My poor girl went stark mad,
and they put her in the crazy asylum for life, but I was ashamed of the
disgrace. I told every one she had run away again to be an actress.
And I kept the baby to work for me till it grew a great girl, with
a face like an angel, and a heart like an angel, too, but somehow I
always hated her, because I had a bad heart!"
"And then your grandchild found out the truth, and came and told you to
kill Liane?" cried her accuser.
"How did you know that?" she demanded, shrinking in deadly fear.
"No matter how. You know it is true."
The light of mingled madness and defiance glared out of the woman's
eyes. She growled:
"Well, I had to do it when she told me. Roma always would have her way,
just like Cora, her mother! I said I hated to do it, the girl was such
a lamb; so sweet, so gentle; but you cannot take Roma's place from her
now, since Liane's dead: though I hated to do it, she was such a little
angel."
Sophie Nutter burst into violent sobbing, Mr. Clarke's lips twitched
nervously so that he could not speak, but Cisneros, with flashing eyes,
exclaimed:
"So you killed the sweet angel, you fiend from Hades! Well, I hope you
will swing for your diabolical crimes! A dozen lives like yours would
not pay for one like hers! Come, now, we want to know where you hid her
body."
She glanced at him resentfully, answering, to his surprise:
"They may hang me if they want to! I don't love my life since I killed
Liane! I miss her so, sweet lamb, I miss her so! I thought I hated her,
and I used her cruelly, but when she was dead, when I saw the blood on
her white face, I loved her! I kissed her little cold hand. I told her
I was sorry I had done it, and wished I could bring her back to life!
She was good to me, little angel, and I hate Roma because she made me
kill her! I told her it was not right to kill her, but she hounded me
to it! Now she can keep Liane's place at Cliffdene, but I don't want to
see her any more. Cruel, wicked Roma, that made me a murderess!"
She rocked her body miserably to and fro, maundering hoarsely on, while
Sophie's vehement sobbing filled the room as she recalled last night,
when she had looked her last on Liane's still, white face, cruelly
fooled by the old woman's lies.
Mr. Clarke cried, with fierce, despairing anger:
"No more of this paltering, woman! Tell us where to find Liane's body!"
To his joy and amazement, the half-crazed woman answered:
"Roma told me to throw her in the river or the sewer, but she was so
sweet I could not do it! I hid her in an old cellar, very dark and
cold, and when I begged her to speak to me, she opened her sweet eyes
again! Come with me, and I will show you!"
Almost afraid to hope that she spoke the truth, they followed the
half-crazed woman to an old unoccupied house several blocks away, and
there, indeed, they found Liane, faintly breathing and half frozen,
lying on the floor of a cold, dark cellar, half covered with some
scraps of carpet that granny had laid over her in her late repentance.
Again Sophie's passionate sobs broke out, echoed dismally by granny,
who muttered pleadingly:
"Don't take her from me if she lives; don't give me Roma to live with!
I hate her now, the wicked wretch, and I'd rather have my little angel,
Liane! I'll never beat her again; no, never! Do you hear me promise,
Liane?"
But there was no recognition in the half-open eyes of the poor girl,
as they searched their faces, and, pushing granny sharply aside, Edmund
Clarke took up his daughter in his arms and bore her back to Mrs.
Brinkley's, while Carlos Cisneros was sent in haste for a physician.
Granny, seeming to have no fear of arrest for her dreadful crimes,
hovered anxiously about, eager as any to aid in undoing her evil work.
Liane was laid in Sophie's soft white bed, and the girl said tenderly:
"I will nurse her myself, and no one knows better than I how to care
for her, for I used to be a nurse in a hospital."
"Keep the old woman out," said Mr. Clarke sternly, and she went back to
her own rooms, sobbing like a beaten child.
The doctor was soon on the scene, and he looked very grave, indeed,
when he had made his examination.
"It is a serious case," he said. "There has been a severe blow on the
head that stunned her, and all her faculties are benumbed. How long
this state will last I cannot tell, but I hope I shall bring her around
all right."
Mr. Clarke rejoiced exceedingly at even this small ray of hope, and,
engaging the doctor to remain until his return, set out impatiently to
Devereaux's house to tax Roma with her crimes.
He was burning with impatience. He could not wait, he was so eager to
tell wicked Roma the truth that all her schemes had failed, and that,
by Heaven's good mercy, Liane would be restored to her parents' hearts,
while she, the wicked usurper, would be driven out to live with the old
hag who had helped her in her nefarious plot against his daughter's
life.
He took with him Carlos Cisneros, and, unknown to them both, Granny
Jenks followed in their wake, cunningly curious to see how Roma took
her downfall.
At nightfall they reached the Devereaux mansion, just a few moments
after the ceremony that had made Roma the wife of the young
millionaire. Indeed, Lyde and the other two witnesses had just
withdrawn from the apartment, on Roma's request to be left alone with
her husband.
She looked up at him with shining, love-filled eyes, murmuring:
"Please kneel down by me, Jesse, so that I may put my arms around your
neck and die with my head upon your breast."
He pitied the rash girl so much that he could not refuse her anything
in her dying hour. He obeyed her wish, and held his arm around her with
her bright head on his bosom, expecting every moment to be her last.
But the minutes flew, and Roma showed not a sign of dying. Instead, her
breathing was very strong and regular, and she tightened her arms about
him, exclaiming:
"Oh, my husband, would you be glad if life could be granted to me now,
that I might live, your happy bride?"
"Do not let us dwell on the impossible, Roma," he answered kindly.
"But why impossible, Jesse, dearest? I am not really certain of dying.
I do not feel like it now, at all, and perhaps the dose I took was not
really sufficient to kill me! Now that I am your wife, it seems as if a
new elixir of life is coursing through my veins, and I long to live for
your precious sake! Oh, surely you do not wish me to die!"
Here was a dilemma, certainly. Jesse Devereaux, holding the warm,
palpitating figure in his arms, did not know how to answer her piteous
appeal, and he was saved the necessity, for at the moment the door
opened, admitting Lyde, followed by Edmund Clarke, with granny, who
had forced herself in, bringing up the rear.
Lyde had told him hurriedly what had happened, and he had asked to see
Roma; hence the intrusion.
The bride still clung fondly to her husband, and when they entered, she
exclaimed, in strong, natural accents:
"Papa, dear, congratulate us. We are married."
"So I have heard," he replied, with keen sarcasm, adding: "I was told
that you were dying, but you do not look much like it. Your cheeks are
red, your eyes bright and clear, and your voice does not falter."
Roma actually laughed out softly and triumphantly, saying:
"I have just told my dear husband that I do not feel like dying at all,
and that love and happiness have given me a new elixir of life."
Edmund Clarke would have spared exposing her if it had been really her
dying hour, but he saw that she had grossly deceived Devereaux, so he
returned, with bitter sarcasm:
"As you feel so strong and happy, I have some exciting news to break to
you."
"News, papa?" sweetly.
"Do not call me papa," he answered bitterly. "You know well that I am
not related to you, and that your discovery of the truth has caused
you to attempt the most heinous crimes to keep my real daughter from
coming into her birthright. I am here to tell you that your plot to
kill Doctor Jay and myself has been discovered. Your attempted murder
of Liane Lester came near success, but, happily, she has revived, and
Granny Jenks, your wicked grandmother, has confessed that you were
substituted in her place, and that Liane is my own child!"
"Heavens!" cried Devereaux, his arms falling from around Roma; but she
clung to him, exclaiming passionately:
"I am your wife! No matter what he charges, I am your wife; do not
forget that, Jesse!"
"And no doubt you pretended that you had swallowed poison, just to
entrap him in your toils!" cried Edmund Clarke scornfully, while
Devereaux, looking at her as she clung to him, exclaimed:
"Is this true, Roma?"
Her eyes flashed with defiance as she answered, rising, quickly:
"Yes, it is true. I only swallowed some colored water to frighten you
all, and to make you marry me, because I loved you so dearly! You must
forgive me, my darling husband, for you cannot alter anything now!"
He recoiled from her touch with loathing, and Mr. Clarke broke in:
"Do not trouble yourself over her words, Jesse, for she has no claim
upon you. She has already a living husband--one whom she tried to
murder, to put him out of her way, but he is here to testify to the
truth of my words."
Through the open door stepped the wronged husband with a manly air,
saying to startled Roma:
"Every man's hand is against you but mine, Roma, and even my heart
recoils at your wickedness; but I love you still, and if you will
repent of your sins and promise to lead a better life, I will take you
back, and our old dream of a dramatic life shall be fulfilled."
It was a noble touch in the life of a man who had not been very good,
but who was at least Roma's superior in everything, and she could not
help but recognize it.
Beaten, foiled, in everything, she turned to the man she had wronged,
saying:
"It is worth all the rest to find such a constant heart."
She laughed mirthlessly, mockingly, and left the room, scowling as she
passed at Granny Jenks, huddled against the door, holding back her
skirts from contact with her granddaughter, while she muttered: "I
don't love you any more, and I wish never to see you again. I am going
back to Liane."