An Old Man's Darling

CHAPTER VI

Francis Arnold was dead. The soul of the proud millionaire, the disappointed husband, the loving uncle, had been hurried prematurely before the bar of Eternal Justice. In the stillness of the summer night while he rested in fancied security beneath his own roof-tree, the angel of sleep pressing down his weary eye-lids, the deadly destroyer had crept to his side, and red-handed murder had struck the cowardly blow that spilled his life blood.

They came hurrying out—the servants first, the wife next, the step-daughter last—all roused by that piercing shriek of agony—and found him sitting there dead, with Bonnibel lying lifeless at his feet, her white robes dabbled and stained in the blood upon the floor.

They brought lights and looked at him. Yes, he was cold and dead. There was a great scarlet stain on his white vest where the deadly weapon had entered his heart. The blood had dripped down in a great pool upon the floor and was fast stiffening on his garments.

Mrs. Arnold shrieked aloud and went into horrible hysterics, laughing wildly and maniacally, and tearing her hair from its fastenings; but Felise Herbert stood still as a statue of horror, looking at the dismal scene. Her pale face was paler than ever, and her large, black eyes looked wildly about her. She made no effort to arrest her mother's frenzied cries, but stood still as if frozen into ice, while the maids lifted up the still form of poor Bonnibel and carried her through the drawing-room window, laying her down gently, and applying restoratives.

Life came swiftly back to her under their influence. She lifted her head, and opened her eyes upon the faces around her just as a shrill and piercing whistle announced the departure of the train which was bearing her young husband away from her for years—perhaps forever.

Bonnibel sprang up and went out on the piazza again. As she stepped to the side of that lifeless form, Felise Herbert, just waking from her apparent trance of horror, waved her hands in the air, and cried out solemnly and sepulchrally:

"Oh, Heaven! It is Leslie Dane who has done this dreadful deed. That was what he meant by his dark threats this evening!"

"Leslie Dane has killed him!" echoed her mother, wildly.

"It is false, woman! How dare you accuse him of such a deed?" Bonnibel cried out fiercely, wild with grief and horror; then suddenly she looked at the half-dazed men-servants standing around their master helplessly.

"Idiots!" she cried, "why do you stand here idle? Why does not some one bring a doctor? Perhaps he is not dead yet—he may be revived."

They brought a physician at her bidding, but when he came his services were needed for her, not for the pale corpse down stairs that would nevermore want the physician's potent art. They had taken her by force to her room, where she was wildly walking the floor, wringing her hands and raving over her loss.

"You are dead, Uncle Francis," she cried, passionately; "you will never speak to me again. And I had left you in anger. We never quarreled before—never! And without a good-bye kiss, without a forgiving word, you are gone from me into the darkness of death! They have killed you, my dear one!—who could have been so cruel?—and you will never know how I loved you, and that I forgave you for your cruelty so soon, or that I wished to be reconciled. Oh, God! Oh, God!"

She told her story frankly to the good old doctor when he came and questioned her. She and her uncle had quarreled because he had denied her a darling wish. She had rushed out of the house in a fit of anger, and moped about the seashore until late into the night. Then she had returned, and seeing him sitting there on the piazza she had felt her anger melting into tenderness, and stolen up to give him the kiss of reconciliation, but found him cold and dead.

She told the same story when the inquest was held next day, blushing crimson when they asked her what she and her uncle had quarreled over.

"It was a purely personal matter," she answered, hesitatingly. "Is it necessary to reveal it?"

They told her it was necessary.

"He refused to sanction my engagement to my lover, and drove him away from the house with cruel, insulting words," she answered briefly through her tears and blushes.

"And you were very angry with your uncle?"

"Yes; for a little while," she answered frankly; "but when I came back to the house I was ready to forgive him and be friends with him again. He had never been unkind to me before, but indulged me in every wish, and petted me as my own father might have done had he lived. I was almost wild at first with surprise and anger at the first denial I had ever received from him; but I soon overcame my indignant feelings, and when I came back to the house I loved him as fondly as ever."

She left the room immediately after giving in her evidence, overcome with grief and emotion, and going to her room, threw herself down upon the bed, from which she did not rise again for many weeks. Grief and excitement precipitated her into a brain fever, and for many days life and death fought persistently over their unhappy victim.

Had she known what would take place after she left the room she would have remained until the inquest was over. Felise Herbert and her mother boldly declared their belief that Leslie Dane was the murderer of Mr. Arnold. From the drawing-room windows which opened out on the piazza they had overheard the conversation between the two men relative to Bonnibel, and they detailed every word, maliciously misrepresenting Leslie Dane's indignant words so as to place the worst construction upon them. One or two of the servants had heard also, and from all the testimony elicited the jury readily found a verdict of willful homicide against Leslie Dane, and a warrant was issued for the young man's arrest.

But poor little Bonnibel, tossing up-stairs in her fevered delirium, knew nothing of all this. If she had known she might easily have cleared her lover from that foul charge by proving that he had been with her during those fatal hours in which Mr. Arnold had met his death.

It remained for her to prove his innocence at a darker hour than this, and at the sacrifice of much that she held dear.

Mr. Arnold's body was carried to his winter residence in New York, and buried from thence with all the pomp and splendor due to his wealth and station. Felise and her mother, of course, accompanied the remains.

The housekeeper at the seaside home was left in charge of the hapless Bonnibel, who lay sick unto death in her luxurious chamber, tended carefully by hirelings and strangers, but with never one kiss of love to fall on her fevered brow in sympathy and tenderness.

Love had gone out of her life. With the young husband adrift now on the wide sea, and the kindly uncle lying in his gory grave, love had gone away from her.

She had no kindred now from whom to claim tenderness or care, so only hirelings were left to watch the spark of life flickering so feebly day by day, that it seemed as if it must surely go out in darkness. They were all who heard the wild, passionate appeals for Leslie and Uncle Francis that were always on the sufferer's lips as she babbled incoherently in her wild delirium.

Mrs. Arnold and Felise remained in New York for several weeks, attending to business affairs and superintending the making up of very fashionable and cumbrous mourning.

Mrs. Arnold did not provide any of this raiment for Bonnibel. She sincerely hoped that the girl would die of her fever and preclude the necessity of so doing.

But youth is very tenacious of life. Bonnibel, in her illness and desolation, would willingly have died to please her aunt, but destiny had decreed otherwise.

There came a cool, still night in September when the nurses hung carefully around the bed waiting for the crisis that the doctor had said would come at midnight. It came, and the reaper, Death, with his sickle keen, passed by on the other side.

In the meanwhile outraged justice was on the qui vive for the escaped homicide, Leslie Dane. It was rumored that he had sought refuge in a foreign land, but nothing definite could be learned regarding his mysterious whereabouts.

CHAPTER VII

October winds were blowing coolly over the sea before Bonnibel Vere arose from her sick-bed, the pale and wasted shadow of her former rosy and bewildering self.

She had convalesced but slowly—too slowly, the physician said, for one of her former perfect health and fine constitution. But the weight of grief hung heavily upon her, paralyzing her energies so completely that the work of recuperation went on but slowly.

Two months had elapsed since that dreadful night in which so much had taken place—her secret marriage and her uncle's murder.

She should have had a letter from her young husband ere this, but it was in vain that she asked for the mail daily. No letter and no message came from the wanderer, and to the pangs of grief were added the horrors of suspense and anxiety.

A look of weary, wistful waiting crept into the bonnie blue eyes that had of old been as cloudless and serene as the blue skies of summer. The rose forgot to come back to her cheek, the smile to her lips. The shadow of a sad heart was reflected on her beauty.

The first day she sat up Mrs. Arnold came in to see her. She had only returned from the city a few days before and was making preparations to go back for the winter season. She sent the nurse away, saying that she would sit with Miss Vere a little while herself.

It was a lovely day, warm and sunny for the season, and Bonnibel sat in her easy-chair near the window where she could look out upon the wide expanse of the ocean with its restless blue waves rolling in upon the shore with a solemn murmur. She loved the sea, and was always sorry when the family left their beautiful home, Sea View, for their winter residence in the city.

"You have grown very thin, Bonnibel," said her aunt, giving her a very scrutinizing glance, as she reclined in her chair, wrapped in a warm, white cashmere dressing gown, to which her maid had added a few bows of black velvet in token of her bereavement. "It is a pity the doctor had to shave your hair. You look a fright."

Bonnibel put her hand up to her brow and touched the soft, babyish rings of gold that began to cluster thickly about her blue-veined temples.

"It is growing out again very fast," she said; "and it does not matter any way. There is no one to care for my looks now," she added, thinking of the uncle and the lover who had doted so fondly on her perfect loveliness.

"It matters more than you think, Bonnibel," said Mrs. Arnold, sharply, the lines of vexation deepening in her face. "It behooves you to be as beautiful as you can now, for your face is your fortune."

"I do not understand you, aunt," said the young girl, gravely.

"It is time you should, then," was the vexed rejoinder, "I suppose you think now, Bonnibel, that your poor uncle has left you a fortune?"

Bonnibel looked at her in surprise, and the widow's eyes shifted uneasily beneath her gaze.

"Of course I believe that Uncle Francis has provided for my future," said the girl, quietly.

"You are mistaken, then," snapped the widow; "Mr. Arnold died without a will and failed to provide for either you or Felise. Of course, in that case, I inherit everything; and, as I remarked just now, your face is your fortune."

"My uncle died without a will!" repeated Bonnibel in surprise.

"Yes," Mrs. Arnold answered, coolly.

"Oh, but, aunt, you must be mistaken," said Bonnibel, quickly, while a slight flush of excitement tinted her pale cheeks. "Uncle Francis did leave a will. I am sure of it."

"Then where is it?" inquired Mrs. Arnold.

"In his desk in the library," said the girl confidently. "He told me but a few hours before his death that he had made his will, and provided liberally for me, and he said it was at that minute lying in his desk."

"Are you sure you have quite recovered from the delirium of your fever?" inquired the widow, scornfully. "This must be one of the vagaries of illness."

"I am as sane as you are, madam," said Bonnibel, indignantly.

"Perhaps," sneered Mrs. Arnold, rustling uneasily in the folds of her heavy black crape. "However that may be, no will has been found, either in the desk or in the hands of his lawyer, where it should most probably be. The lawyer admits drawing one up for him years ago, but thinks he must have destroyed it later, as no trace of it can be found."

"I have nothing to live upon, then," said Bonnibel, vaguely.

She did not comprehend the extent of the calamity that had fallen upon her. Her sorrow was too fresh for her mind to dwell upon the possibilities of the future that lay darkly before her.

"You have absolutely nothing," repeated Mrs. Arnold, grimly. "Your father left you nothing but fame; your uncle left you nothing but love. You will find it difficult to live upon either."

Bonnibel stared at her blankly.

"You are utterly penniless," Mrs. Arnold repeated, coarsely.

"Then what am I to do?" asked the girl, gravely, twisting her little white hands uneasily together.

"What do you suppose?" the lady inquired, with a significant glance.

A scarlet banner fluttered into the white cheeks of the lovely invalid. The tone and glance of the coarse woman wounded her pride deeply.

"You will want me to go away from here, I suppose," she answered, quietly.

Mrs. Arnold straightened herself in her chair, and to Bonnibel's surprise assumed an air of wounded feeling.

"There, now, Bonnibel," said she, in a tone of reproach, "that is just like you. I never expected that you, spoiled child as you are, would ever do me justice; but do you think I could be so unfeeling as to cast you, a poor orphan child, out upon the cold charity of the world?"

Bonnibel's guileless little heart was deceived by this dramatic exhibition of fine feeling. She began to think she had done her uncle's wife injustice.

"Forgive me, aunt," she answered, gently. "I did not know what your feelings would be upon the subject. I know my uncle intended to provide for me."

"But since he signally failed to do so I will see that you do not suffer," said the widow, loftily; "of course, I am not legally compelled to do so, but I will keep you with me and care for you the same as I do for my own daughter, until you marry, which, I trust, will not be long after you lay aside your mourning. A girl as pretty as you, even without fortune, ought to make an early and advantageous settlement in life."

The whiteness of the girl's fair, childish face was again suffused with deep crimson.

"I shall never marry," she answered, sadly, thinking of the lover-husband who had left her months ago, and from whose silence she felt that he must be dead; "never, never!"

"Pshaw!" said Mrs. Arnold, impatiently; "all the girls talk that way, but they marry all the same. I should be sorry to have to take care of you all your life. I expect you and Felise to marry when a suitable parti presents himself. My daughter already has an admirer in New York whom she would do well to accept. He is very old, but then he is a millionaire."

She arose, stately, handsome and dignified.

"Felise and I return to New York Saturday," she said. "Will you be strong enough to accompany us?"

"I am afraid not," said Bonnibel, faintly.

"Very well. Your maid and the housekeeper will take care of you in our absence. I will send you a traveling suit of mourning, and when you feel strong enough you can come to us."

"Yes, madam," Bonnibel answered, and the wealthy widow left the room.

So in a few weeks after, while nature was putting off her gay livery and donning winter hues, Bonnibel laid aside the bright garments she had been wont to wear, as she had already laid aside the joy and gladness of her brief spring of youth, and donning the black robes of bereavement and bitterness,

The day before she left Sea View she went down to the shore to have a parting row in her pretty little namesake, the Bonnibel.

She had delayed her return to the city as long as possible, but now she was growing stronger she felt that she had no further excuse to dally in the home she loved so well, and which was so inseparably connected with the two beloved ones so sadly lost—the uncle who had gone away from her through the gates of death, and the young husband who seemed separated from her just as fatally by time and distance.

As she walked slowly down to the shore in the beautiful autumnal sunshine it seemed to her they both were dead. No message came to her from that far Italy, which was the beloved Mecca of Leslie's hopes and aspirations. He had never reached there, she told herself. Perhaps shipwreck and disaster had befallen him on the way.

No thought of his forgetfulness or falsity crossed the mind of the loyal little bride. It seemed to her that death was the only thing that could have thrown that strange gulf of silence between their hearts.

She sprang into the little skiff—one of her uncle's loving gifts to his niece—and suffered it to drift out into the blue waves. A fresh breeze was blowing and the water was rather rough. The breeze blew the soft, short rings of gold merrily about her white temples where the blue veins were seen wandering beneath the transparent skin.

The last time she had been out rowing her hair had flouted like a banner of gold on the breeze, and her cheek had glowed crimson as the sunny side of a peach.

Now the shorn locks and the marble pallor of her cheeks told a different story. Love and beauty had both left her, she thought, mournfully. Yet nature was as lovely as ever, the blue sky was mirrored as radiantly in the blue sea, the sunshine still shone brightly, the breeze still whispered as tenderly to its sweethearts, the flowers. She alone was sad.

She stayed out a long while. It was so sunny and warm it seemed like a summer instead of an autumn day. The sea-gulls sported joyously above the surface of the water, now and then a silvery fish leaped up in the sunshine, its scales shining in beautiful rainbow hues, and shedding the crystal drops of spray from its body like a shower of diamonds, and the curlew's call echoed over the sea. How she had loved these things in the gay and careless girlhood that began to seem so far away in the past.

"That was Bonnibel Vere," she said to herself, "the girl that never knew a sorrow. I am Bonnibel Dane, whose life must lie forever in the shadow!"

She turned her course homeward, and as she stepped upon the shore she picked out a little blue sea-flower that grew in a crevice of the rock, and stood still a moment looking out over the blue expanse of ocean, and repeating some pretty lines she had always loved:

A sudden voice and step broke on her fancied solitude. She turned quickly and found herself face to face with the wandering sibyl, Wild Madge.

The half-crazed creature was, as usual, bare-headed, her white locks streaming in the air, her frayed and tattered finery waving fantastically about her lean, lithe figure. She looked at Bonnibel with a hideous leer of triumph.

"Ah maiden!" she cried—"said I not truly that the bitter waters of sorrow were about to flow over you? You will not mock the old woman's predictions now."

Bonnibel stood silent, gazing in terrified silence at the croaking old raven.

"Where is the gay young lover now?" cried Wild Madge laughing wildly. "The summer lover who went away before the summer waned? Is he false, or is he dead, maiden, that he is not here to shelter that bonny head from the storms of sorrow?"

"Peace, woman," said Bonnibel, sadly. "Why do you intrude on my grief with your unwelcome presence?"

"Unwelcome, is it, my bonnie bird? Ah, well! 'tis but a thankless task to foretell the future to the young and thoughtless. But, Bonnibel Vere, you will remember me, even though it be but to hate me. I tell you your sorrows are but begun. New perils environ your future. Think not that mine is but a boasted art. Those things which are hidden from you lie open to the gaze of Wild Madge like a painted page. She can read your hands; she can read the stars; she can read the open face of nature!"

"You rave, poor creature," said Bonnibel, turning away with a shiver of unreasoning terror, and pursuing her homeward way.

Wild Madge stood still on the shore a few minutes, looking after the girl as her slim, black-robed figure walked away with the slow step of weakness and weariness.

"It is a bonny maid," she said, aloud; "a bonny maid. Beautiful as an angel, gentle as a dove. But beauty is a gift of the gods, and seldom given for aught but sorrow."