KATHLEEN'S DESPERATION AND HER ESCAPE.
"And then she sang a song
That made the tear-drops start;
She sang of home, sweet home,
The song that reached my heart."
_Popular Song_.
Kathleen sighed restlessly as she turned the pages with her little
white hands.
"Love is sweet, but, oh, how sad it is, too!" she sighed. "Oh, how
cruel it is to love and be beloved again, yet be severed from one's
love by so strange and cruel a fate as mine."
She read aloud, in a soft, murmuring voice, like sweetest music, some
verses from Daisy Lynn's book:
"It is the spirit's bitterest pain
To love and be beloved again,
And yet between a gulf that ever
The hearts that burn to meet must sever!"
* * * * *
"With me the hope of life is gone,
The sun of joy is set;
One wish my heart still dwells upon,
The wish it could forget!
I would forget that look, that tone,
My heart has all too dearly known.
But who could ever yet efface
From memory love's enduring trace?
All may revolt, all my complain,
But who is there may break the chain?"
"Poor Daisy Lynn! how could she love Ivan Belmont like that?" exclaimed
Kathleen, in disgust, forgetting that he _was_ a rather handsome man,
and that tastes differ. A longing to see what Daisy Lynn looked like
came over her, and she searched the room in vain for her picture.
Then she went down and asked Miss Watts if she might see her niece's
photograph.
The old blind lady looked up with gentle displeasure.
"Daisy, child, have you no memory of the past?" she exclaimed. "You
know very well that in all your life I have never allowed you to have
your picture taken!"
"But why not?" asked Kathleen, in wonder.
"Because it is a sin," replied the old lady, who was rigidly religious.
"Have you forgotten," she continued, "the second commandment that you
used to read every Lord's day at Sabbath-school?" and she repeated,
solemnly:
"'Thou shalt not make unto thyself any graven image, nor the likeness
of anything that is in heaven above, or in the earth beneath, or in the
waters under the earth; thou shalt not bow down to them nor worship
them.'"
Kathleen stared in amazement at this liberal interpretation of the
Scriptures, and retired regretting that she could not have the sad
pleasure of gazing on the features of the unfortunate girl in whose
fate her own was so strangely bound up.
"Poor, poor Daisy Lynn! I wonder what became of her when she escaped
her keeper and wandered abroad that cold, dark night?" she mused; and
she thought that the girl must be dead and at rest from her sorrows.
A long week of waiting elapsed, but no answer came to Kathleen's
letters.
Kathleen grew desperate with suspense and trouble. She could no longer
while away the dreary winter days by reading poor Daisy Lynn's novels,
or playing sad melodies on her pretty little piano. She began to pace
up and down the little room for long hours, revolving plans for escape
from Miss Watts.
The three servants whom the old lady employed guarded the young girl,
by the order of their mistress, as jealously as if she had been a
convict in a penitentiary. All the doors were locked and guarded by
burglar chains. She had appealed to their mercy in vain; and she was
empty-handed and had nothing with which to bribe them. They had been
told she was melancholy mad, and saw no reason to doubt the story. Her
sad, white face, her beautiful dark eyes, in which the tears so often
gathered, and her mournful little songs, all lent color to the charge.
Desperate emergencies require desperate remedies. Kathleen decided, in
spite of Mrs. Hoover's warnings, to run away.
She had no money; but that did not deter her from her purpose. She
would beg in the street for money to go to Boston before she would
remain here any longer, she told herself, with a burst of tears.
Her old fear of her step-mother had died out in the conviction that
her father had, of course, returned home ere now, and that, under his
protection, no harm could befall his beloved child.
From the curtained alcove where Daisy Lynn's soft, white sheets and
blankets and counterpanes were stored on shelves, Kathleen brought the
sheets and tore them into strips, working on them every night until she
had succeeded in making a strong plaited rope with which to let herself
down from the window.
"Heaven help me--dear Heaven help me!" she prayed all the while; and
one dark night toward midnight she fastened the rope to the shutter
hinge and let herself safely down to the street.
Stunned by the velocity of her descent, and with bleeding hands
rasped by the rough rope, Kathleen fell upon the ground and lay there
pantingly a few moments.
"Free at last, thank Heaven--free!" she murmured, gladly, and wrapping
her long circular cloak around her, and drawing the warm hood close
about her beautiful face, she ran breathlessly along, flashed around a
corner, and had left her prison behind her, fleeing, as she hoped, to
home and happiness.
It was growing late, and in the quiet city of Philadelphia there were
few pedestrians abroad, and those mostly men. In any other city of that
size Kathleen, with her beautiful face, would have been insulted over
and over, but the Quaker City of Brotherly Love had in it a smaller
ruffianly element than the others. When she stopped and appealed to
those she met she invariably received a coin instead of a leer; but
they were so small--so small, and, oh, it would take so much money to
get to Boston!
She had stopped a policeman on his beat and asked him timidly how much
money it would take to get to Boston.
"Oh, as much as twenty dollars, I guess!" he replied; and at his
curious stare she thanked him and ran away, pausing under a street lamp
to count her money.
"Only two dollars and twenty cents! I shall never, never get enough!"
she sighed, and then she gave a shriek. A thief had snatched the money
from her little white hand and run down a side street.
Kathleen started to run after him, but there was no policeman in sight,
and the thief had quite disappeared. She ran till her limbs trembled
with weariness, and suddenly emerged into Walnut Street. People were
coming out of the Walnut Street Theater, and crowding the pavement.
She saw a handsome man handing a fair young girl to her carriage, and
the sight awoke memories of the past when she, Kathleen Carew, heiress
then to a million, now a beggar in the streets, had been handed to her
carriage by Ralph Chainey, the handsome young actor, who had whispered
in her ear:
"I hope we shall meet again."
A dry sob rose in her throat, but she choked it back, and advancing
till she was in the midst of the throng, paused suddenly, and began to
sing in a low but thrilling voice that favorite old song, "Home, Sweet
Home," at the same time holding out her tiny white hand for largess.
It was a desperate deed, but poor Kathleen was a desperate girl, and
knew little more of the evil of the world than a little baby. She was
so eager to get money to go home, and she thought that out of this
great crowd there might be many who would pay her for singing the
simple little song that everybody loved so well--"Home, Sweet Home--The
Song That Reached My Heart."