RALPH CHAINEY IS DRIVEN TO DESPERATION, AND TURNS ON HIS FOE.
Even now, I tell you, I wonder
Whether this woman called Estelle
Is flesh and blood, or a beautiful lie
Sent up from the depths of hell.
EDMUND CLARENCE STEDMAN.
Ralph Chainey went from Alpine's presence to his home in Sumner, one
of the beautiful suburbs of Boston, and to the presence of his gentle
widowed mother, who presided over a lovely home that was shared with
her by an older son and his small family.
"Ralph, dear, you look pale. You are ill!" she exclaimed, anxiously.
"My head aches severely. I will go to my room and lie down for an
hour to get my nerves steady for to-night," he said; and kissing her
affectionately he left her to seek seclusion for his aching heart and
brain.
He leaned his aching head on his hand, and a rush of bitter memories
swept over him.
He saw himself five years ago a boy of twenty-two, brilliant, ardent,
and impetuous, just beginning his dramatic career. At the very outset
he had fallen into the toils of a beautiful actress years older than
himself. By a clever playing of her cards, she had entrapped him into
a marriage; but scarcely had the honey-moon waned ere he learned to
his horror the true character of his wife. She was false, light, and
wicked, and no entreaties could win her from her wicked ways.
A separation ensued, and Ralph, ashamed to court publicity by applying
for a divorce, agreed to support the false woman if she would promise
not to annoy him by venturing into his presence. She accepted these
terms, but instead of retiring to seclusion, as he desired her,
Fedora, as she called herself, joined a ballet troupe, and scandalized
her unfortunate young husband by her wild career. Still the marriage
was wholly unknown to the world, and in hopes of maintaining this
silence, the young actor suffered on patiently, his pride wounded, his
fancy dead, his soul thrilled with disgust, but one solace left to him,
and that the knowledge that his false wife had kept faith with him in
preserving his secret--kept faith because he had threatened her with
exposure and divorce upon its betrayal.
At last she had broken faith, and, bitterest of all, had betrayed his
miserable folly to the one woman that he wished never to know it--to
beautiful, proud Kathleen, the idol of his very soul, for whom he had
felt all the passion of the poet's plaint:
"I love you. That is all. Life holds no more.
Here in your arms I have no other world.
Where is the mad ambition known of yore?
All fled away to some far-distant shore,
And lost forever. Yes, I love you, sweet--
You only--you alone. My heart, my life
I lay--a meager offering--at your feet."
It had fallen on him like a crushing blow, the knowledge that Fedora
lived, when he had been duped, deceived into believing that she was
dead and he was free.
A telegraphic message from Richmond, where she had been playing, had
summoned him to her death-bed; but when he reached the city her friends
told him she was dead and buried.
They showed him a new grave in the beautiful shades of romantic
Hollywood, and presented him with a long bill for her funeral expenses.
He paid it without a murmur, and could not help feeling glad that he
was rid of his terrible incubus. He did not dream that it was only a
clever plot of the wicked woman to extort money, and that she enjoyed
very much the liberal sum he had handed over to liquidate the expenses
of her interment.
He realized it all now--saw how cruelly Fate, in the shape of the
heartless Fedora, had used him, and, with a bitter groan, stared his
cruel destiny in the face.
Fedora--his false wife--lived! She had parted him forever from his
beautiful, dark-eyed love.
"We have parted--I have loved thee;
But for me all hope is o'er!
We have parted, and forever;
I must dream of thee no more!"
He believed that Kathleen was going to marry Teddy Darrell, as Alpine
hinted, but he was not so sure that it was for love. He remembered,
with a thrill of blended rapture and despair, how he had caught
Kathleen to his heart this morning, and how she had lain passive in his
arms at first.
"She did not repulse me at first," he thought. "Her heart throbbed
wildly against mine, and she lay yielding and passive in the utter
_abandon_ of a pure woman who truly loves. Then she _remembered_ all at
once, and withdrew herself from me in stinging scorn."
He groaned bitterly at the memory of her cruel words.
"My poor, proud darling! if she would but have listened to me, she
might have pitied and forgiven me," he thought, with the fluctuating
hopes of a lover's heart. He loved Kathleen so dearly that he could not
remain angry with her, although he tried to do so. In his heart he made
excuses for her. She was so young, so inexperienced, and there was no
telling what lies Fedora had told the young girl.
"I will punish that fiend, at least," he cried, starting to his feet.
"No more squeamishness shall deter me from seeking a divorce, and I
shall do so at once. Who knows but that Kathleen may pity me, may
relent, when she learns all that I have suffered?"