"Woman! You lie!" shouted Egbert Mason, stung to frenzy by her taunts, and sick unto death of her persecution. His was not a quiet nature, and she had touched him in his sorest point. "You lie, and you know it! Out of my sight! Tell all you will. I, too, can threaten. Your vile secret is still safe with me, but I shall find means to be rid of you--Go!"
"Stop!" she commanded, coming nearer and dropping her voice to a sibillant whisper. "Go back seventeen years to a summer night at Crab Orchard Springs! Aha! you start, I see you have not forgotten. Do you recollect the part you played that night? _She is that child!_" and with a malicious laugh she swiftly pa.s.sed from the room.
The man sat stunned where she had left him. Could it be true? And what was the mystery of that far-away night of his youth? The more he pondered the more complete grew the chain. Senator Carleton had married a Kentucky girl, it was true; but her youth had been pa.s.sed on a Mississippi plantation. He had years ago heard more or less idle gossip about the hard, miserly nature of the old planter, Hamilton, and of his bitter opposition to his daughter"s match with penniless young Carleton.
There had been an elopement, or something. It came back to him like some hideous nightmare. His pure, spotless darling--his promised wife! Could there be sin or shame enveloping such a being? He must know. He wrote to Mrs. Carleton. In earnest words of manly truth and honor he besought her to explain to him the past. Eleanor was visiting a friend in a distant city. No answer came. He went to the house and was denied admittance. He followed Eleanor only to learn that she had been hastily summoned home.
That was not the day of rapid transit. He returned at last to find a letter of farewell forever--his beloved had been spirited away to other scenes. Then Egbert Mason left his native land, baffled, broken-hearted, and devoted the next three years to the study of special lines in his profession.
In a stately drawing room of an ideal Kentucky home are Eleanor Carleton and Egbert Mason, once more face to face.
"Oh, my love," he moaned, bending almost reverently before her, "what a mistake, I knew it all when too late. The letters were all found when that unhappy woman was sent to the asylum. Did you think I could change?
"Forget thee dear?"" he quoted unconsciously--he had said the lines so often;
"G.o.d knows I would not if I could: For sweeter far has been to me the pain Of love unsatisfied, than all the vain And ill spent years I lived before we met."
Still she stood, gravely looking at him, her maturing beauty made the fairer by the sable gown she wore.
"Forgive me," then she spoke. "I thought you knew. I have been Leslie Walcott"s wife these four months."
As he sat beside his solitary hearth there was a fumbling outside the door. He opened to admit old Ailsie, now crippled with rheumatic pains.
"I know"d dat was you. Ma.r.s.e Doctor, "n I follered yer, I want to tell yer:--Mistress "splained all "bout dat "fore she died. Dey wan"t nothin"
wrong. Her an" her ma was "feared to let old Master know she hed run "way an" married Ma.r.s.e Henry. He said he wan"t gwine ter will her nary cent. So mistess and her sister, Miss Ellen, arter while, dey fotch her up to de springs. Den ole master he died sudden like, an" Ma.r.s.e Henry, he had done ben "way off to New Auleens--never know"d dey had fooled old Master "bout de chile an" all dat. Po" Mistress! she nebber could tell him no better, and she was always skeerd-like arter she seed you agin.
But she sot right down dat day and writ all about it to you an" I goes and gives de letter to dat purty white lady what was sich a good frien", and den she gimme yourn, ain----"
"Yes, yes, Auntie, I know--I have the letters here----at last," he added in low, husky tones.
The _Louisville Journal_ of the next New Year, under date of January 9, contained the following notice, with lengthy editorial comment:
"Died suddenly last night, of heart disease, at the close of the Military Ball, at the Capitol Hotel, Frankfort, the Hon. Leslie Walcott, age thirty-two years."
Did hope stretch out an alluring hand to one lonely reader?
His Grat.i.tude
VENGEANCE IS MINE
"But surely you do not realize, Robert Garrett, that when you foreclose this mortgage you leave us virtually penniless;" and the large dark eyes of the suppliant were blinded by an agony of tears.
"Really, madam, I regret to seem hard;" and the polished courtesy of the cold, harsh voice fell with heavy weight upon her strained senses. "Your husband has had more time now than any law allows, human or divine."
"Oh, how gladly he would have paid the debt;" she moaned; "it was his kindness and forbearance to others--kindness that seemed imperative. He could not take the law against his crippled brother, his mother"s dying legacy to him. You know all this--you know, too, that if you will only grant a little longer respite he can settle the claim, or the greater part of it. How then can you be so cruel as to drive us out of doors!
You who need nothing of this world"s goods!"
The man of business stirred a little, crossed his well-clad legs in still greater comfort, and audibly repressed a yawn. Then as if unwillingly forced to say something he did it as ungraciously as possible.
"Again I say I grieve to proceed to harsh measures, but"--then as she was about to interpose he broke out irritably, "G.o.d bless my soul, Mrs.
Blaine, how can you expect anything else! I am obliged to be accurate in my matters, otherwise there would be no end to imposition from shiftless men who are always going to pay but----never do."
"This, then, is your ultimatum, sir? You will turn me and my children out wanderers from the old home where I was born--where I had hoped to die? Can you do this? Even you, whom the world calls rich and prosperous and----charitable!" As she spoke she bent upon him in fine scorn her brilliant eyes dark and piercing.
"Painful things occur every day, my dear madam, in this transitory life. And once in a while the tables turn. I think I remember a time when I pleaded with perhaps not so much eloquence, but quite as much earnestness, for a boon at the hands of pretty Mildred Deering.
I didn"t get it, and I have survived, you see. We are apt to magnify our misfortunes;" and a mocking smile told wherein lay the animus that was her undoing.
Then she drew her graceful figure to its full height, and with the contempt of an outraged wife and mother, her words came in tones of concentrated vehemence:
"So! Robert Garrett, this is your vaunted Christianity! You, the immaculate pillar of the church--the friend of the outcast--the chief among philanthropists! Grant _your_ boon? Was there was ever a moment in her sheltered life when Mildred Deering would have consorted with the hypocrite you are? Never! Better a thousand times poverty with n.o.bility and truth in the man she loves. Better an age of privation with Herbert Blaine than a single instant in the presence of such as you. Do your worst! And may G.o.d mete out to you and yours the mercy you have shown us!"
Clasping the hand of her little girl who had clung to her mother"s skirts, gazing with wide-open, awestruck eyes at the great man, she was gone in a moment.
"Ah!" uttered Robert Garrett in a long-drawn-out syllable, reaching for the evening paper.
There had been another silent witness of this scene in the person of a lad who stood within the door he had entered just as Mrs. Blaine had appeared in the opposite way. He was a rather ill-favored schoolboy, but his thoughts as he came forward with the lanky awkwardness of youth and took a chair in chimney corner, were not of himself or his looks.
"Father," he said after some minutes had pa.s.sed, the rattle of the newspaper and the measured ticking of the clock being the only disturbing sounds, "Father," he repeated, this time with a falling inflection.
Startled uncomfortably at the unexpected address the father peered frowningly at the boy with a gruff, "What!"
"Do you think it is just the fair and square thing to turn "em out?"
"What do _you_ know about it, you young meddler. Keep quiet about what does not concern you. You have enough to eat and wear--attend to your own business."
There was no encouragement to go on, so young Robert sat and pondered till his father, chafing under the silent rebuke personified in every line of the son"s uncomely face, sent him to his room.
In the other house there was little sleep; and for many succeeding days the devoted Blaines, with heavy hearts, put by their idols one by one, till at last the time-honored oaken doors closed upon them in relentless banishment. It mattered not that amid new scenes prosperity once more opened her sheltering arms and kept the wolf from the door. The new owner of Deering Castle, as the villagers had admiringly christened the grand old place, refused to sell it. Robert Garrett, with the littleness born of a mean, cramped nature, clung to this coveted possession as the one thing to be held, though all else were taken. He had money but knew not how to enjoy it. His household, for the most part, reflected the coa.r.s.eness of his nature, and as time pa.s.sed his retribution was meted out in rebellious sons and daughters, who wasted his substance and dragged down his name still further in the mire.
Twenty years had gone by. Herbert Blaine and his bright-eyed wife slept in the city of the dead. With their latest breath they had, one by one, adjured their beloved daughter, the only surviving child since the civil war had laid low their three manly boys, to regain possession of the old homestead. Time, they a.s.sured her, would make all things even, and long before they laid down the burden of life, they had seen how the wife"s curse beat upon the head of the man who had so oppressed them. They had learned to feel pity for him whom they had once despised. Not so Jessie Blaine. She was a woman now, and had been, for a few brief years, till death robbed her, a happy wife. But never could she forget that dismal twilight hour when her innocent eyes had photographed the hateful, sneering face of her mother"s enemy; when her ears had phonographed his mocking words. The scene had haunted her waking and sleeping, for many days; and still after all these years she could and did remember.
She rejoiced when she heard that wild Ben Garrett had broken nearly every law of the decalogue, and was wrecking the peace of all who cared for him. "They richly deserve it all;" she said, when some fresh escapade or misdemeanor would come to light. He had squandered his father"s thousands aimlessly, recklessly, and was fast bringing his white hairs in sorrow to the grave. Jessie Forrester only smiled as she read these items from the local press. Riches and honors were hers.
There was nothing lacking but the dear old home of her people, and this could not be bought. She climbed to heights undreamed-of in her earlier days, and became a shining light in the world of letters. Her books were read in two continents. Statesmen and distinguished circles sought her till her name became a power in the land. Her influence was widespread.
In an eastern city she at last came to revel in her books and ma.n.u.scripts, or in her sweet, healthful, domestic loves, renouncing all thoughts of revenge, for the time being, and abandoning the hope of recovering the sacred pile where she first saw the light.
One day there came a letter bearing the postmark of her native town.
With difficulty deciphering the straggling, tremulous address, she broke the seal and read as follows:--
"Madam:
"A heart-broken father appeals to you in his hour of extremity, to save his son from the gallows. My boy--my wayward, reckless boy, who was once as innocent and pure as yourself, has fallen into the hands of treacherous natives and half-breeds in Arkansas, and they accuse him of murdering a traveller for his money. He is guiltless of this crime--G.o.d knows he is; but the weight of evidence is fearful, and I am powerless to refute it. The proceedings have been hurried over and the verdict is against him.