THE OLD HOUSEKEEPER'S STORY.
I can not rise, my darling,
My breast is bleeding--see!
I stabbed myself, thou knowest,
When thou wast reft from me!
H. HEINE.
"But my diamonds, Uncle Ben. I must wait here for them, you know," said
Kathleen.
"Pooh! We can leave that affair in the hands of a lawyer," he replied,
carelessly.
He was determined that nothing should hinder this opportune trip.
He was anxious to get Kathleen away from Boston, where Ralph Chainey
was playing every night to crowded houses. It would seem as if Uncle
Ben had as vigorous a dislike for actors as his dead brother had
cherished.
So he carefully smoothed away all her objections, declaring that he had
money enough to take them both to Richmond, and that she could repay
him, if she insisted on it, when she got back her diamonds.
"I wonder if papa thought, when he gave them to me, that some day they
would be my sole little fortune!" sighed the young girl.
Uncle Ben did not answer. He was looking out of the window at the
country scenery, for they were on their journey now. Kathleen was
sitting opposite to him in the parlor car, with a big bouquet of roses
in her lap, the gift of the adoring Teddy, from whom she had just
parted at the station.
"A noble young fellow," Uncle Ben had said, and his niece answered,
with a little sigh:
"He has been very good to me; but, Uncle Ben, he is called the
greatest flirt in Boston, and I shouldn't wonder if he threw me over at
any time for a newer fancy."
"You are just wishing he would!" the old man exclaimed, curtly, and she
replied only by a roguish laugh.
The train rushed on and on through the wintry landscape, and both of
them grew very thoughtful. At last Kathleen touched her uncle's arm
with a timid hand.
"Uncle Ben, this going home to my mother's people makes me think so
much about _her_ to-day. Tell me, did you ever see mamma?"
The man's strong arm trembled under the pressure of her little white
hand, and he answered in a voice that was hoarse with emotion:
"Yes, I knew little Zaidee--poor little darling!"
"Was she as beautiful as the portrait a great artist made of her? There
is one that hangs in my room at my old home. It is beautiful as an
angel, and papa used to come there often to look at it. I don't think
he cared for my step-mother to know how often he came."
"Zaidee was more beautiful than the portrait," answered the old man, in
a low voice.
He pressed her little hand tenderly as it rested on his arm, and said:
"Tell me all that you know about your mother, my child."
"They have told me that she died by her own hand. Was it not terrible?"
whispered the young girl, with paling lips.
"Terrible!" he echoed, with emotion; and then she asked:
"Uncle Ben, who was to blame for that awful tragedy?"
"No one," he answered, sadly. "Zaidee was passionate, willful, jealous.
She became madly jealous of a governess--a young widow who was employed
in the house to teach her painting and music. Before poor Vincent at
all comprehended the situation, his young wife, in a fit of anger,
destroyed herself by thrusting a little jeweled dagger into her
breast."
"And you are sure no one was to blame?" she persisted and after a
moment's hesitation he replied:
"Perhaps Vince was to blame; but he did not realize it then, poor
fellow! You see, Kathleen, he worshipped his lovely little bride, and
it grieved him that she was lacking in certain accomplishments familiar
to most young girls in his cultured set. To remedy this, he employed
teachers and Zaidee learned rapidly until----" he passed the back of
his hand across his eyes and groaned.
"Until----" repeated Kathleen.
"Quite unexpected by him--for she was probably too proud to betray
herself to him--Zaidee became quite jealous of that pretty young widow,
Mrs. Belmont, and in a fit of madness took her own life, and nearly
broke her husband's heart."
"He married the young widow in a little more than a year," the girl
replied, unable to resist this bitter fling at her dead father's memory.
He winced, the poor old man, as she spoke thus of her father, and
answered, almost excusingly:
"He was so wretched, and Mrs. Belmont comforted him. She, too, had
loved Zaidee, and shared his grief with him. That was how she made
herself so necessary to the unhappy man."
"The fiend!" broke hissingly from Kathleen's white lips.
He turned to her in amazement.
"What do you mean?" he asked, hoarsely.
It was well that they were alone in the car, for Kathleen's excitement
was terrible. Her eyes blazed, her cheeks paled, her heart beat
violently against her side.
"Uncle Ben, I am speaking of that woman who so unworthily took my dead
mother's place!" she exclaimed. "Yes, she is a fiend! _She_ to pretend
that she loved the memory of the woman she goaded to madness--perhaps
murdered; for no one saw my poor young mother drive the fatal steel
into her heart. Oh, God! what deceit--what treachery!"
He grasped her wrist with steely fingers, his eyes flashed with a fire
akin to hers, and he whispered;
"Hush! You must not dare accuse _her_ so! You drive me mad! Oh, it can
not be!"
"You take that false woman's part, then, Uncle Ben, against me and my
poor young mother? Listen, then; let me tell you all I know--a secret
I kept from my dead father, because I believed in him, trusted him, in
spite of the servants' gossip that accused him of complicity in his
young wife's death."
"They dared, the hounds! accuse m-my brother thus?" he breathed,
fiercely, the perspiration starting out on his brow, his strong frame
trembling.
"Yes, they accused him," answered the girl. "Do not take it so hard,
Uncle Ben. He was innocent, I know; but that fiendish woman played
her part to perfection. She made my mother believe that Vincent Carew
wished her out of the way, so that he might wed _her_, the traitress!
She made the servants believe the same. She even plotted----" But
suddenly the girl paused with clasped hands. "Oh! uncle, dear, it will
wound you if I mention this; it will blacken my father's memory in your
eyes--and I always loved him--I love him still, in spite of what he has
done to me, and I ought to spare him."
"Go on, Kathleen. I command you to tell me everything. I have a sacred
right to know," commanded the agitated man by her side.
"Listen, then, dear uncle: Just a few months before my father went away
on that foreign tour, from which he never returned alive, I received a
message from an old woman calling me to her death-bed in the suburbs of
the city. I went, taking my maid with me. In a secret interview that
followed the dying woman told me she had been housekeeper at the Carew
mansion in my mother's time. She could not die easy without revealing
to me a secret she had carried untold for sixteen years."
"That secret?" questioned Benjamin Carew, wildly.
"Was this," replied the girl, solemnly: "On the day of the tragedy,
Mrs. Belmont sought the housekeeper, pretending to be overcome with
grief, surprise, and indignation. She confided to the woman that
Vincent Carew had been making secret love to her ever since she first
entered the house, and that day had openly declared his passion,
begging her to fly with him to Europe, saying that his ignorant
child-wife would then secure a divorce, and he could then marry his
heart's best love. With tears and shame, Mrs. Belmont owned that she
could not help loving her handsome employer, but that she had repulsed
him with scorn, and resigned her situation to take leave immediately.
Mrs. Belmont was too much overcome to explain to her pupil, and wished
the housekeeper to tell Mrs. Carew the whole cause of her leaving."
"My God!" groaned the old man at Kathleen's side; but the girl hurried
on, with blazing eyes.
"The housekeeper, after the fashion of most servants, was too ready to
believe a tale of scandal, and to excite a sensation. She did not think
of doubting Mrs. Belmont then, although grave doubts assailed her after
the tragedy. Well, with her heart on fire with sympathy for her wronged
mistress, she did not think for a moment of sparing her the whole
cruel truth. She blurted it all out in burning words, and advised the
outraged wife to forsake her monster of a husband and return to her own
relatives. Within the hour mamma was found dead."