The tear-stained face was slowly lifted, and the sight of the girl"s distress was heart-breaking.
"He is dead," Joan said in a choking voice. Then, with something like resentment--"Are--are you satisfied?"
Mercy went back to her chair and her beloved crystal. And after a moment she began to speak in a low, even tone, as though reciting a well-learnt lesson.
"It was at the crossing of 36th Street and Lisson Avenue, here the street cars cross, here some also turn off. It was the fault of his horse. The creature shied at a heavy truck. Two cars were approaching from east and west. The shying horse slipped on the granite paving, fell, and was caught between the two meeting cars before they could pull up. The horse was killed on the spot, and--the rider was----"
"Don"t, auntie! Don"t say it! Yes, yes, he was taken to the hospital, and died of his injuries. But don"t speak of his terrible mutilations.
I--I can"t bear it."
Again Joan buried her face in her hands as though to shut out the horror of it all. But the elder woman had no such scruples.
"Why harrow yourself with the picture?" she demanded brusquely.
"Imagination can add nothing to the fact. Tears will not change one detail. They will only add to your distress. d.i.c.k Sorley left your side to go to certain death. Nothing could have averted that. Such was his fate--through you."
CHAPTER III
THE PARIAH
Joan suddenly threw up her head. There was resentment in the violet depths of her eyes, and her whole expression had hardened. It was as though something of her youth, her softness, had pa.s.sed from her.
"You must tell me, auntie," she demanded in a tone as cold as the other"s. "I--I don"t understand. But I mean to. You accuse me with the responsibility of--this. Of responsibility for all that has happened to those others. You tell me I am cursed. It is all too much--or too little. Now I demand to know that which you know--all that there is to know. It is my right. I never knew my father or mother, and you have told me little enough of them. Well, I insist that you shall tell me the right by which you dare to say such things to me. I know you are cruel, that you have no sympathy for any one but--yourself. I know that you grudge the world every moment of happiness that life contains. Well, all this I try to account for by crediting you with having pa.s.sed through troubles of which I have no knowledge. But it does not give you the right to charge me with the things you do. You shall tell me now the reason of your accusations, or I will leave this home forever, and will never, of my own free will, set eyes on you again."
Mercy"s thin lips parted into a half-smile.
"And I intend that you shall know these things," she replied promptly.
"You shall know them from my lips. Nor has any one more right to the telling than I." The smile died abruptly, leaving her burning eyes shining in an icy setting. "I am cruel, eh?" she went on intensely.
"Cruel because I have refused to bend beneath the injustice of my fellows and the persecutions of Fate. Cruel because I meet the world in the spirit in which it has received me. Why should I have sympathy?
The world has robbed me of the only happiness I ever desired. What obligation, then, is mine? You are right. I have no sympathy for any living creature--none!"
Joan offered no comment. She was waiting--waiting for the explanation she had demanded. She was no longer the young girl just returned flushed with the healthy glow of her morning ride. Life had taken on a fresh tone for her since then. It seemed as if years had suddenly pa.s.sed over her head and carried her into the middle of life.
"You shall have your explanation," Mercy went on after a moment"s pause. "I will give it you from the beginning. I will show you how it comes that you are a pariah, shedding disaster upon all men who come under your influence."
"A pariah!"
Joan"s eyes suddenly lit with horror at the loathsome epithet.
"Yes. Pariah!" There was no mistaking the satisfaction which the use of the word seemed to give the other woman. In her eyes was a challenge which defied all protest.
As Joan had no further comment she went on--
"But they were all blind--blind to the curse under which you were born--under which you live. You shall have your wish. You shall know the right which I have for charging these things at your door. And the knowledge of it will forever shatter the last castle of your day-dreams."
Something of awe took hold of the listening girl. Something of terror, too. What was the mystery into which she was blindly delving? Knowing her aunt as she did, she felt, by her manner, that her words were the prelude to disclosures that meant disaster to herself. And as the other proceeded her half-frightened eyes watched her, fascinated by the deliberateness of manner and the pa.s.sionate sincerity underlying every word of the story she told.
"Listen," she said, checking her voice to a low, even monotone. "You are the child of disaster if ever woman was. Your father was a poor, weak fool, a big, handsome, good-hearted fool whom Nature had endowed with nothing more than a perfect exterior. He was a Wall Street man, of a sort. One of those gamblers who live on the fringe of the big financial circles, and most of whom gather their livelihood from the crumbs falling from the rich man"s table, but are ready to steal them when the fall is not sufficient to fill their hungry mouths. For three years he and I were engaged to be married."
She paused, and her hot eyes dropped to the crystal in her lap. Then she went on, with harsh sarcasm breaking the level of her tone--
"For three years we waited for the coming of that trifling luck which would enable us to marry. For three years I worked silently, joyfully, to fill the wonderful bottom drawer which never failed to inspire me with courage and hope. You see I--loved your father."
Again she paused, and Joan forgot something of her own trouble as she noted the evident pain these memories gave to her aunt.
"The luck came. It was small enough. But with the little money I had it was just sufficient. The license was procured. The wedding was fixed. And I--well, G.o.d was good, the world was good, and life was a joy beyond all dreams. You see I, too, was young then. My only relative was a younger sister. She was a beautiful girl with red-gold hair. And she was in business in California. I sent for her to come to the wedding."
Joan gave a tense sigh. She knew what was to follow. The red-gold hair told its own story. Mercy Lascelles raised a pair of stony eyes, and her thin lips were smiling.
"I can see you understand," she said, without emotion. "Yes, she came, and she stole your father from me. Oh, yes! she was handsome enough to steal any man. She was even more beautiful than you are. It was just before we were to be married. Less than a week. A good time to steal him from me--after three years of waiting." She laughed bitterly. "She stole him, and I--I cursed her. Oh, I didn"t cry out! I simply cursed her, I cursed her offspring, and burned every garment I had made or bought for the wedding in my parlor stove. I sat by and watched the fire as it hungrily devoured each record of my foolish day-dreams. And as each one vanished in cinder and smoke I cursed her from the very bottom of my heart."
The woman laughed again, and Joan could not repress a shudder at the sound.
"Twelve months she had of him. And during those twelve months both he and she nearly drove me mad in their efforts to make me marry your father"s great friend and fellow gambler. His name doesn"t matter. He was a brown-haired creature, who was, if possible, a greater gambler than your father. But unlike your father his luck was phenomenal. He grew rich whilst Charles Stanmore, with every pa.s.sing week, grew poorer. And for twelve long months he persecuted me with his attentions. He never left me alone. I sometimes think he was crazy in his desire to marry me. He knew the whole of my wretched story, yet it made no difference. He swore to me in his mildly deliberate way that I should marry him. Perhaps I ought to have read the real character of the man underlying his gentle manner, but, poor fool that I was, I didn"t. It was left to later events to open my eyes, events which were to teach me that under the guise of friendship he hated Charles Stanmore, because--because, in spite of everything, I still loved him.
"At the end of those twelve months my cup of bitterness was filled to overflowing. You were born. You, with your deep-blue eyes and red-gold hair. You, Charles Stanmore"s child--but not mine."
Her voice died out, and Joan understood something of the pa.s.sion in this strange woman"s soul. But the next moment a hard laugh jarred her nerves. It was a laugh that had no mirth. Only was it an audible expression designed to disguise real feelings.
"Oh, I had no grudge against you. You--you with your crumpled face and big blue eyes. You could make no difference to my life as I saw it.
And yet you did." The woman"s fingers suddenly clutched the crystal in her lap with a force that left the thin tips of them white and bloodless. "You did. A difference that in my maddest dreams I could never have hoped for. You brought with you the curse of disaster from which there was no escape for those to whom you belonged.
"I can see it all now," she went on exultingly. "I can see it as I saw it then, every detail of it. Your father"s gambling had brought him down to something like want. A week before you were born his home was sold up, and he and your mother took shelter in a tiny three-roomed apartment for which they had no money to pay the rent. In desperation he came to _me_--to _me_ for help. And I gave it him. The day before you were born I gave him the money for the expenses of your birth and to tide him over for three months. It was almost all I had in the world." Again came that mirthless laugh. Then she hurried on. "But the temptation was too much for Charles Stanmore, gambler that he was. He suddenly found himself with money in his pocket and hope in his foolish soul. There was a big wheat operation going on at the moment, and every penny of the money, along with all the credit he could procure, he plunged into it."
"And lost it all?" Joan whispered.
The other shook her head.
"No. The influence of your strange fate was at work. On the day that you saw light Charles Stanmore was a comparatively rich man. And your mother--was dead."
Joan breathed a deep sigh.
"Yes, wheat went up by leaps and bounds, and your father was delirious with joy. He stood over you--I can see him now--and talked at you in his foolish, extravagant way. "You"re the brightest, happiest, luckiest little hoodlam that ever came into the world," he cried. "And your name is "Golden," my little Golden Woman, for if ever there was a golden kiddie in the world you are she. Gold? Why, you"ve showered it on me. Luck? Why, I verily believe if you"d been around you"d have brought luck to Jonah when he got mixed up with the whale"s internals." And then, just as he finished, the bolt fell. The doctor came in from the next room and took him aside. Your mother was dead."
A sob broke from the listening girl, a great sob of sympathy for the kindly, weak, irresponsible father she had never known.
"Your father"s disaster looked like my blessing. I had no regrets for the woman," Mercy went on. "He was mine now by every right. The thief had come by her reckoning. So I seized the opportunity that was thrust in my way. Mine was the right to care for him and help him in his trouble, nor have I shame in saying that I took it.
"But the curse of your life was working full and sure. But for your existence I should never have taken that step. But for that step other matters would never have occurred. When your father"s--friend discovered what I had done his fury knew no bounds. His insults were unforgettable--at least by me. But I persisted. For a great hope was at work within me that now your mother was gone eventually Charles Stanmore might come back to his allegiance, and I might step into her place. It was a foolish hope, but--I loved your father.
"Bah!" she went on impatiently. "It is no use raking amongst those ashes. The details don"t matter to you. Those things are dead. And only is their effect alive to-day. My hopes were never to be fulfilled. How should they be with the curse of your father"s golden girl involving us all in disaster. Let me cut the wretched history as short as I can. At first money was plentiful enough, and luck in that direction seemed to border on the marvelous. To give you an instance your father--imbecile that he was--swore he would test it in your own interests. He hunted round till he found the most hair-brained, wildcat company ever floated for the purpose of robbing moneyed fools, and invested ten thousand dollars in it as a life-dowry for you. It was the joke of all his gambling friends. It was like pitching dollar bills into the Hudson. And then in a month the miraculous happened.
After a struggle the company boomed, and you were left with a competence for life. Yes, at first money was plentiful enough, but your father never got over his shock of your mother"s death. Sometimes I used to think his brain was weakening. Anyway, he plunged into a wild vortex of gambling. He drank heavily, and indulged himself in excesses from which he had always kept clear up to that time. He took to cards in a manner that frightened even me, used as I was to his weaknesses. And in all these things his friend encouraged and indulged him.
"The end was not far off. How could it be? Your father"s luck waned and his debauches increased. He grew nervous and worried. But he persisted in his mode of life. Then, in a little while, I knew that he was borrowing. He never touched your money. But he was borrowing heavily. This man whom I had come to regard as his evil genius undoubtedly lent him money--much money. Then came a particularly bad time. For two days Charles Stanmore went about like a madman. What the trouble was I never knew--except that it was a question of money. And this terminated in the night of disaster toward which everything had been driving."
Mercy Lascelles" voice dropped to a low, ominous pitch, and she paused as though to draw all the threads of memory into one firm grasp. Her look, too, changed. But it was a change quite unnoticed by Joan.