OH, RALPH CHAINEY, WAKE!
How murderers walk the earth,
Beneath the curse of Cain,
With crimson clouds before their eyes
And flames about their brain;
For blood has left upon their souls
Its everlasting stain!
_The Dream of Eugene Aram_.
Ralph Chainey left the presence of his loved and lost Kathleen with a
heart full of bitterness and pain, and hurried home.
He had concluded his engagement in Boston the previous evening, and it
was a great relief to him, for he was eager to get away from the city
that held Kathleen. Stay there, and see her wedded to another, he could
not! That way lay madness.
He had dismissed his company for several months. He was going to
travel, he said, although the manager pointed out to him that now was
the time to reap a golden harvest, if ever. He was even more popular
now than before, if such a thing could be. The divorce proceedings had
given him notoriety. People who had not gone to see him act before,
went now, just for a sight of his handsome face.
He loved his art, but the money was no object to him. Fortune had
already showered her golden favors on him in lavish measure. He could
not be tempted to remain.
"No, mother, I can not stay," he answered, sadly, when she pleaded with
him. "I must get away as soon as this divorce business is settled.
That will be soon--in a week or so, my lawyers tell me. Then I will go
abroad and try to live down this unpleasant notoriety. You do not blame
me, mother?"
She sighed, but answered bravely:
"No; but it will be very lonely, my son."
"You will have my brother, his wife and little ones to cheer you," he
said, moved to the heart by her tears. He knew well that he was her
favorite son.
He kissed her, and went to his own room, wrote some letters, and then
went with his mother for a drive. At night he felt as if the day had
been a month long. Oh, how cruel it was, this love that mastered him in
spite of his pride!
"You may rouse your pride, you may use your reason,
And seem for a space to slay Love so;
But all in his own good time and season
It will rise and follow where'er you go."
He threw himself down, dressed, on a couch in the luxurious room,
and gave himself up to bitter-sweet memories of the girl he loved so
hopelessly, living over in his thoughts every time he had met her until
now, when her dark eyes had made shipwreck of his life. Time passed
unnoted, although the tiny French clock had tinkled musically the
midnight hour.
What a picture of manly beauty he made, lying there with half-shut
eyes on the rich couch with its Oriental draperies. The gas-light,
half-turned down, cast weird shadows all about the room. In the little
sleeping-room beyond, seen through the half-drawn _portière_, all
was dark and still. Did a white, desperate face with gleaming eyes
peer out of that gloom upon the young man resting there in his velvet
dressing-gown, one shapely hand tossed up over his brown curly head,
the dark, curly lashes drooping downward to the pale cheek?
Yes, he was well worth looking at, this gifted young actor, this genius
who at barely twenty-five had scored such dazzling successes in the
dramatic world, and written his name up high upon the scroll of fame.
It was no wonder that women raved over his beauty and his genius, and
that they filled his daily mail with love letters that he flung into
the fire after one contemptuous glance.
But were they eyes of love that gleamed on him now, lying so pale and
still and sad, with his thoughts upon his beautiful young love?
Alas! a gleam of tigerish hate shone in those steel-blue orbs as they
watched the young man; and when at last the fringed lashes drooped
against his cheek, a faint sigh of relief escaped the lips of the
impatient watcher. For hours and hours she had been waiting there; but
it seemed as if he did not mean to retire to-night. Now he had fallen
into a light doze. Perhaps he would sleep there all night.
Oh, Ralph Chainey, wake! From the curtained darkness beyond a fiend is
gliding toward you!
The shrouding hood of the long cloak has fallen back from the face of
a woman--a bold, handsome face with steel-blue eyes, and glittering
golden hair. In her upraised hand glitters a long thin dagger, on her
face is stamped in awful, ashen pallor the fell purpose--murder!
But he sleeps on lightly, dreaming, perhaps, of Kathleen, while this
beautiful fury glides soundlessly across the thick moquette carpet,
gains his side, poises her shining weapon on high, aims for his heart,
and--it descends, it pierces his breast!
Ralph Chainey was sleeping but lightly, and as the cold steel entered
his breast a shudder ran over his whole frame, the dew of pain started
on his brow, and with a shriek of mortal agony he staggered to his
feet, clutching blindly at the midnight assailant.
She had not counted on this; she thought her frenzied blow would be
short, sharp, and decisive, that she would have time to fly from the
scene of her terrible crime.
She was mistaken. His outstretched arms caught and held her with the
momentary fierce strength of a dying man; his blood spurted out in hot
streams upon her face and hands.
And meanwhile his shriek of agony had aroused the house. Earl Chainey,
his brother, started wildly from his dreams, and his wife, affrighted
at that awful sound, buried her pale face in the pillows. Mrs. Chainey,
lying awake and restless, brooding over her son's departure, recognized
Ralph's voice in an instant, and, with a terrible foreboding of evil,
sprung forward to his rescue.
Upon the threshold of the door they met--the mother and her elder son.
Earl flung the door wide, and together they sprung into the room.
Not a moment too soon was their entrance, for Ralph's momentary
strength had failed from the profuse loss of blood. He had struggled
madly to hold his assailant, but her superior strength had overpowered
him, and as he sunk back heavily upon the couch, she raised her bloody
weapon for a second, surer blow.
But it never reached its mark, for Earl's strong arm caught and flung
her fiercely aside as he knelt by his fallen brother.