"RALPH CHAINEY IS A MARRIED MAN!"
"Sigh no more, ladies, sigh no more,
Men were deceivers ever;
One foot on sea and one on shore,
To one thing constant never."
When Ralph Chainey had led Kathleen into the waiting-room of the depot
he had been so absorbed in her that he failed to notice any one around
him.
So he did not observe a pretty and showily-dressed blonde beauty
who was walking restlessly up and down the room, evidently bent on
attracting attention to herself and her dress by these maneuvers.
When Ralph entered with Kathleen, the young woman gave him a curious
glance that speedily changed to one of dismay.
Then she shrunk back hurriedly into the shadow and watched the pair
with bright, steel-blue eyes that glittered with the light of hate.
"A love affair," she muttered, angrily, and noted keenly every movement
of the two. She saw how they looked at each other with the light of
love in their beautiful eyes. She stole nearer and overheard their
words; she saw their kiss, their tender parting.
Her white hands clinched themselves tightly, her face paled beneath its
rouge, and she muttered indistinctly to herself--muttered words of hate
and menace.
When Ralph Chainey had left Kathleen alone the stranger boldly
approached the weeping girl.
Standing before Kathleen, she touched her on the shoulder, and when
Kathleen shrunk back and lifted her white face in piteous fear and
entreaty, the stranger almost started at its wonderful beauty.
"Ralph Chainey is deceiving you," was the startling sentence that fell
on Kathleen's ear.
"Oh!" the girl exclaimed in bewilderment; but the blonde beauty went on:
"He has promised to marry you, but he does not mean it, you poor,
pretty child. It is only a plot to betray you."
"You speak falsely," Kathleen managed to stammer in a choking voice,
her dark eyes flashing indignantly.
"You do not want to believe it, I know, but I can prove to you that I
speak the truth. Ralph Chainey is a married man. _I am his wife!_"
Kathleen grew as pale as she had been in her coffin that terrible
night; her dark eyes stared as if fascinated into the pretty painted
face of the woman. She could not speak; her head seemed to be going
round and round; her poor heart throbbed as if it would break.
"Perhaps you have heard that actors are wicked people," continued the
pretty stranger. "It is true of the whole class, and most especially of
this Ralph Chainey. He is always seeking for a new love, and leaving
some other woman to break her heart for love of him. Although I am
his wife, he tired of me months ago, and left me to starve or die of
a broken heart, he cared not which, so that he was well rid of me. My
kind parents took me home, and since then I have watched his career in
amazement and despair. Many and many a fair and innocent young girl I
have saved from his clutches."
"Oh, Heaven! must I believe this?" came in a low, sobbing under-tone
from Kathleen's pale lips.
"You are the youngest and fairest of them all and it would break my
heart to see you fall into Ralph Chainey's power," continued the
blonde, anxiously. "Be warned in time, my poor girl. Fly from this spot
and go home to your friends."
"I have no friends in this city, and my home is in far-off Boston,"
sobbed Kathleen, clasping her little hands in despair.
"Then come home with me, and stay all night, and you can go on to
Boston to-morrow morning early," was the quick reply.
She waited for an answer, but none came. Kathleen's head had drooped on
her breast. A fatal unconsciousness had stolen over her, and the hour
of her enemy's triumph was at hand.
The blonde beauty laughed low and maliciously, as she realized how
deeply her words had struck their poisoned arrows into the young girl's
heart.
Coolly signaling a stranger who had hurriedly entered the almost
deserted waiting-room, she said:
"My friend has fainted from grief at receiving a telegram containing
news of the death of her lover. Will you assist me to carry her out to
my carriage before she revives? I know she will go into hysterics as
soon as she recovers, and that would be so embarrassing in this public
place."
The gentleman, a slight-built, genial-faced man of about thirty years,
courteously acceded to her request, and gazed with deep compassion at
the beautiful face of the unconscious girl he was carrying in his arms.
"What a lovely creature! and so young--scarcely more than a child; yet
she had a lover, and he is dead," he thought, pityingly, as he placed
her in the carriage.
"I thank you for your kindness," said the blonde beauty, with a
dazzling smile. The carriage door closed upon her after she had
said "Home" to the driver, and then Samuel Hall, the kind-hearted,
smiling-faced young man, stood under the gas-light, gazing after them
with dazed blue eyes.
"Quite an adventure, Sammy, was it not, eh?" he muttered, talking
naïvely to himself. Perhaps his arms thrilled yet with the pressure of
the beautiful form that had lain heavily in them a minute ago. His mild
blue eyes looked soft and dreamy.
"How lovely she was!" he mused. "So lovely and so sorrow-stricken! The
other one was handsome, too, in her way, but not like the younger.
Grand, rich people, I suppose," he ended with a sigh; for, having
once known "better days," our friend "Sammy" did not very much enjoy
his position as a hard-working clerk in one of Philadelphia's immense
dry-goods emporiums.
He went home to his lonely room in a great, rambling boarding-house,
and though he was not usually impressionable, his mind kept running on
his little adventure. He said to himself that it was because he was so
sorry for the beautiful young girl who had fainted when she received
the telegram that her lover was dead.
"I wonder what their names were?" he mused, curiously. "The blonde I
did not quite like. There was something theatrical and made-up about
her. She did not in the least resemble the fainting one, so they could
not be sisters."
Still musing on his little adventure, he retired. Sleep came to him,
made restless by uncanny dreams.
It seemed to the young man that he was standing on the verge of a
precipice, looking down into a dark gulf where a turbulent river rushed
along in foam and fury. Struggling in the gloomy waves was the young
girl he had carried fainting to her carriage, and her white face was
upturned to him; her great, piteous dark eyes were fixed on his with
unutterable reproach. Tossing her white arms up toward him, she cried,
bitterly:
"_You_ helped that wicked woman to destroy me!"
Then she sunk beneath the waves, and they closed forever over her white
face and shining hair.
Sammy Hall awoke in anguish, his forehead beaded with perspiration.
"Oh, what a strange, weird dream! How vivid it is still in my mind!
What does it mean? Is it a warning? That can not be, however, for I was
doing her a kindness, not an injury, and my heart ached with sympathy
for her sorrow."
He could think of nothing else next day, and at noon, when a heavy
storm came up and kept customers from crowding into Haines & Co.'s
great store, he told the bright, pretty young salesladies about it,
dream and all.
They listened to him with the liveliest interest; their eyes grew dim
with pity for the beautiful young girl whose heart had broken for the
death of her lover.
"But it was so strange for her to reproach me in that dream!" he said,
in a troubled voice--"so strange! Because, you see, I was only kind to
her, and did nothing wrong."
"Mr. Hall, I have a theory to explain your dream," cried Tessie Mays, a
romantic young girl; and every one turned to her with interest as she
went on: "The blonde was a bad, wicked creature who frightened that
pretty, innocent young thing into a faint, and then carried her off to
some wretched fate--'the spider and the fly,' you know."
"It is very likely, indeed!" chorused all those romantic young girls,
and Sammy Hall's heart sunk like a stone in his breast.
He brooded over that night's adventure, and in his sleep that strange
dream kept recurring. He feared that Tessie Mays was right. The blonde
woman was a wicked creature who had made him a tool to help her in her
nefarious plans.
Two days later, as he was going along Ninth Street to dinner, he came
suddenly face to face with the blonde, made up carefully and gaudily
attired. He stopped in front of her and stammered:
"Oh! ah! miss--madame--excuse me; but how is that unhappy young girl?"
"Why, you must be crazy! I don't know you. I don't know what you mean.
Get out of my way!"
She pushed him roughly aside, and had disappeared before he recovered
from his surprise.