THE FATAL TELEGRAM.
"The young village maid, when with flowers she dresses
Her dark, flowing hair for some festival day,
Will think of thy face till, neglecting her tresses,
She mournfully turns from the mirror away."
"Poor thing! she must have been a beauty," the railway employé said, as
he contemplated Kathleen's cold and beautiful face. "Come, let us carry
her into the house and get a doctor. Maybe she ain't really dead, only
swooned," he continued, hopefully; and between them they bore her in,
and laid her on a bench made soft with their overcoats.
Then the man ran to his instrument, which was ticking busily away, and
directly said:
"Your train is several hours late, sir; so if you'll stay here, I'll
run and fetch a doctor."
He flashed out at the door, and in the illy-lighted, shabby little
waiting-room Ralph Chainey was alone with beautiful dead Kathleen, so
cruelly murdered.
He knelt down by her side in an agony of dumb despair. He gazed through
blinding tears upon the sweet white face; he took her cold, white hand
and kissed the wound upon it, and then he whispered, as if she could
hear him:
"Beautiful Kathleen! you will never know now how dearly I have loved
you since first I saw your face! You are dead--dead! and soon the dark
earth will cover you away forever from the sight of men. Ah! if only
those dead lips could unclose long enough to tell me the name of your
dastardly murderer, I would pursue him to the ends of the earth, but
that I would bring him to punishment!"
He bent his head until his pale lips touched the rigid ones of the
dead girl. They were icy cold, but the soft curls of bright hair that
lightly brushed his forehead, how soft, how silken, how alive, they
felt! But she was dead--this girl who had blushed last night beneath
his glance, whose voice had been so sweet and low when she spoke to him.
"Ah, Fate is a cruel lord,
A tyrant at best his rule;
And we learn by sin and sword
While here in his rigid school.
Ah, me. I left her with hopes beguiled,
We parted, and Fate looked on and smiled."
The shock and horror of the occasion began to overcome him, strong man
as he was; and his head reeled; consciousness forsook him. He fell in
a crouching position upon the floor, where he lay until the doctor
entered, followed by his gentle, girlish wife.
"Oh, the dear, sweet, pretty creature! what an awful way for her to
meet such a fate! The murderer ought to be burned at the stake!"
exclaimed the young wife, sorrowfully, and her tears fell fast on
Kathleen's face.
Doctor Churchman examined the girl's throat carefully, and said, with a
deep sigh:
"Poor thing, she is quite dead! There is nothing I can do for her but
to carry her over to our house and take care of the body until her
friends come."
A deep groan startled him, and Ralph Chainey staggered dizzily to his
feet.
"Ah, sir! so you have recognized this young woman, Dickson tells me.
Well, please dictate a telegraph message to her friends at once,"
Doctor Churchman said to him, gently, for the despairing look on the
young man's face touched him with sympathy.
"He must have been in love with the murdered girl," he said to himself.
Ralph went into the little office and sent a message off to Mrs.
Carew's address:
"I have found Kathleen Carew here dead under very mysterious
circumstances. Please come immediately, as I am compelled to leave."
By one of those strange rulings of fate that so startle us at times, a
mistake was made at the Boston office in taking the message, and when
received by Mrs. Carew the telegram ran thus:
"I have married Kathleen Carew, and nothing can change it. Please God
in Heaven, I am comforted to know it."
Mrs. Carew raved with anger, and the very next day the Boston papers
published, as a sensational item, Miss Carew's elopement and marriage
to the handsome actor, who charmed all women's hearts out of their
keeping--Ralph Washburn Chainey.
Mrs. Carew's active malice could invent but one sting for the heart of
her step-daughter at so short a notice. She cabled at once to Vincent
Carew in London a garbled account of Kathleen's elopement with an
actor, one of the lowest and most unprincipled professionals who had
ever disgraced the stage.
Vincent Carew had just been buying his ticket to return to America.
His health was restored, and his heart ached for a sight of his bonny
Kathleen, his beloved daughter.
Close against his heart lay her picture, and her last sweet, loving
letter, in which she implored him to come home to his unhappy child.
She did not mention her step-mother's unkindness, but a vague suspicion
stirred within him and prompted his speedy return.
His ticket was bought, his luggage, with so many beautiful gifts for
Kathleen stored in it, was sent down to the steamer. He smiled as he
thought of the surprise in store for his "home folks."
Upon this complacent mood came the malicious cablegram from his irate
wife.
The revulsion from his pleasant mood to keen wrath was terrible.
Vincent Carew had a dislike to actors in general, of which no one
understood the origin.
The thought of his bonny Kathleen married to one of this abhorred class
drove the proud man beside himself with shame and rage. For an hour he
raged and stormed about his room until he was on the verge of apoplexy.
Having exhausted the first fury of his anger, he flung himself into a
cab and was driven in haste to a lawyer's office.
His last act on leaving England was to execute his last will and
testament, in which he angrily disinherited Kathleen, his only
child. Leaving the document with the lawyer for safe keeping, with
instructions to forward it to America in case of his loss at sea, the
angry man was driven down to the steamer, and embarked for home--the
home that would be so lonely now without the light of Kathleen's
starry, dark eyes.
Did he repent his harsh and hasty deed, that haughty man, as he
paced the steamer's deck those long moonlight nights thinking of
his dead wife--lovely, childish Zaidee--and the daughter she had
left him--willful, spirited Kathleen? Did he shudder with fear as he
remembered that should anything happen to him at sea, the cruel will
that disinherited the young girl would be irrevocable? Or did he gloat
over the prospect of her sufferings with her impecunious husband? No
one knew, for in his bitter trouble and humiliation he stood proudly
aloof from all, cultivating no one's friendship, seemingly absorbed in
his own thoughts, until _that_ night--that night of awful storm and
darkness--when fatal disaster overtook the good ship _Urania_, and she
was burned at sea, her fate sending a thrill of horror through the
heart of the world when the tidings became known with Vincent Carew's
name among the lost.