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Pretty Madcap Dorothy; or, How She Won a Lover, a novel by Laura Jean Libbey |
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Chapter 39 |
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_ CHAPTER XXXIX Dorothy opened her eyes wide, looking up in wonder at the pale, sweet face bending over her. "Poor child!" murmured a sweet, pathetic voice. A kindly hand raised her, gently but firmly, from the dew-wet grass, and pushed the damp, golden curls back from her face. The caressing touch thrilled the girl's being through every fiber. "You ask why I am here!" she sobbed. "Let me tell you: I came here to die. Death would have come to me, I feel sure, if you had not crossed my path. I should have crept to the brink of the bank yonder, and thrown myself down into the river, and ended a life that is not worth the living." "You must have seen a great deal of trouble to cause you to talk like that." "I have seen more trouble than any other person on earth," retorted Dorothy, bitterly. "Have you lost friends, or those nearer and dearer to you?" came the gentle question, and Dorothy did not hesitate, strangely enough, to answer it. "I never had a relative that I can remember," she answered, with a little sob. "But I have lost my lover--my lover! He is to wed another, and that other a girl who was once my dearest friend." "Your story is a sad one," replied the stranger, soothingly; "but it might have been worse--much worse. What if you had lost a husband whom you loved, or a little child whom you idolized? That would have been trouble before which such as you are grieving over now would have paled as the stars pale before a strong noon-day sun. "I do not ask you your story, my poor girl, but listen, and I will tell you mine, and you can then judge how much mightier is my grief than yours." "If you look through the trees yonder you will see a great stone mansion on the brow of the hill. "It is my home. I live there with a dear young husband who adores me; my slightest wish is his law. "I have liveried servants who anticipate and execute my slightest wish. I have all that wealth can buy and love can lavish upon me, but, God help me! I am the most unhappy creature that walks this flower-strewn earth. "I have endured a sorrow so great that the wonder is it has not turned my brain. Some few months since I was happy in the love of a little child. Oh! I idolized my babe with a love that seemed greater than human affection. It was the loadstar of my life. "'Take care! Beware!' cried one and all. 'Such idolatry is not wise; it displeases Heaven.' "I laughed, and did not heed. One day we discharged a worthless servant and he cried out to my husband, as he turned away from the door: 'You shall repent this! I will yet wring the heart of you and yours to the very core; and in that moment, remember me!' "A week passed. One night I suddenly awoke from a troubled dream about my babe. "I put out my hand. It was not in its little crib of white and gold. I sprang from my couch with wild cries that alarmed the household, for I could not find my child. She was gone, as if the earth had opened and swallowed her. But on the pillow of the crib the servants found a note which bore these words: "'My revenge is complete. It is useless to search for your child, for by the time this meets your eye your little one will have found a watery grave.' "I was wild with grief for days and weeks. And when I became somewhat rational, and could understand what was passing about me, I learned the terrible truth--the sad, pitiful story: my babe had indeed found a watery grave. They found a little shoe, its cape, and portions of its dress floating on the waves the next morning. But the body was never recovered; it had drifted out to sea. Now you will not wonder why I wander up and down this lonely path at midnight--why I listen on my bended knees for hours to the whispering voice of the waves. It seems to me like the voice of my little child; and some day I shall follow her into the dark, cold waves, and be at rest with my darling whose tiny hands beckon me down to death in the cold, watery depths whose waves are glinted by the golden light of the flickering stars." Dorothy scarcely breathed, so intense was her effort to restrain herself until the other had finished. In fewer words than we can explain it she had flung her arms about the stranger's neck and breathed out to her the startling story of that never-to-be-forgotten night when she had rescued from the waves the child this poor young mother was describing. "Oh, take me to my child!" she cried. "Now--now! Let not an instant's time elapse. Every moment is precious. I can not wait--I can not!" Then Dorothy had her own story to tell: that she dared not return to Jack Garner's home, where she had left little Pearl; and she told her the whole story from beginning to end. Then came another revelation: "Jack Garner is my husband's partner!" the strange lady cried. "Come back with me, and leave it to me to fully establish your innocence of the atrocious crime of which they believe you guilty. "We have never visited at each other's homes, strangely enough, because of some slight disagreement in the firm at the very time Mr. Garner was taken in. "Come and talk it over with my husband. We will do whatever he decides." Oh, the great rejoicing in the old stone mansion! The horses were hitched up without an instant's delay, and driven like mad into the city, arriving at the Garner mansion just as the clock was striking twelve. The old servant who answered the loud peal of the bell was shocked at the sight of the beautiful lady who rushed past him in the corridor, crying out: "Oh, for the love of Heaven, bring quickly to me the baby whom you call Pearl!" Dorothy and the lady's husband followed. The great disturbance awoke Jack Garner. He heard the scurrying of feet past his door. They stopped at the next room, where the little abandoned babe was sleeping. The next instant a great, wild, happy cry rent the air, which the angels must have heard and wept rejoicingly over; and he heard the joyful cry: "Yes; it is my child--my own little, lost child!" Robing himself hurriedly, Jack quickly opened the door; but his partner was standing there, and thrust him back. Jack knew of the loss of the little one, and his partner explained to him how mysteriously it had been found, and by Jack's old sweetheart, Dorothy Glenn. "Then the child she had here was not her own?" cried Jack, white as death. And as the whole story began to dawn upon him, Jack buried his fair, handsome, haggard face in his hands, and wept for joy. But when his partner touched upon the subject of Dorothy's being accused of poisoning Miss Staples, he sprang up hastily and grasped the other's hand. "The accusation was not true," cried Jack. "Dorothy was not guilty. A girl whom Jessie had known for years, and who was at her bedside, did the deed. She wrote a full confession. I found it under my plate at the dinner-table. Nadine Holt has fled to escape just punishment. Oh, how I wish I could find poor, abused Dorothy, to tell her the truth!" And when he found Dorothy was beneath that roof, and at Jessie Staples' bedside, his joy knew no bounds. He sought her there at once to crave her pardon for the unjust suspicion, and no one ever knew just exactly what passed between the sick girl lying there, Dorothy, and her old lover. In his great generous-heartedness, Jack sent hurriedly out to learn the fate of the hapless Kendal. He was not dead, they soon discovered, but in a very critical condition. And Jack's generosity went so far as to bring his rival beneath that roof, and nurse him back to health and strength. From the first, even while lying on her sick-bed, Jessie took the greatest interest in the young doctor who, she remembered, had always been so kind to her; and as soon as she was able, she begged that her chair might be drawn up to his bedside, that she might show him her kindly sympathy. And in the days and weeks that they were thus thrown together, Jessie learned to care for the handsome, dark-eyed Harry Kendal quite as much as she had ever cared for Jack. One day, when the sun was shining, and the birds were twittering to each other of early spring, Harry Kendal asked the pale, sweet girl who knelt beside his couch to be his bride. And she answered him, through her bitter tears, that though she had been mad enough to learn to love him, it could never be, for she was betrothed to Jack. Jack had entered the room unperceived by both, and had heard all, and with the magnanimity so characteristic of him, he stepped nobly forward and placed Jessie's hand in that of the man she loved. "I absolve you from your promise, my dear girl," he said. "You must wed him whom you love best. Never mind me." "But you?" sobbed Jessie. "I--I will accept my freedom only on one condition, Jack; and that is, that you ask Dorothy to fill my place--aye, to take her own old place again in your heart and life!" "Not now," he said; "but perhaps I may speak to her some time in the future." And he must have spoken to her, for three weeks later there was a double wedding at the Garner mansion; and there never were two more beautiful brides than Jessie and Dorothy, nor two happier young husbands than Harry Kendal and Jack Garner; and Jack never ceased blessing the fates that gave to him for his bride, after all his trials, pretty Madcap Dorothy. But, then, the course of true love never did ran smooth. [THE END] _ |
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