Wizard Will, the Wonder Worker
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"Yes, mamma, for he has a place as night messenger in a telegraph office; he goes on at ten o'clock and gets off at six," explained Pearl.
"My poor boy! and this accounts for his being so hard to wake up every morning.
"Yes, mamma; but he sleeps in the daytime when he can, and you know he goes to bed early, but I always wake him up at half-past nine o'clock; and, oh, mamma! Will gets six dollars a week, only think of that."
"And he's killing himself, he don't get half the sleep he should have.
"He must give it up, Pearl, for I will not allow him to ruin his health and slave his young life away as he is doing."
"But, mamma, you are sick, and Will makes so much, and you ought not to work."
But Mrs. Raymond was firm in her resolve, and when Will came creeping into his little room in the early morning, he was astonished at finding his mother lying in his bed, awaiting him.
In vain he argued; she would not hear of his continuing his night-work, and so Will Raymond left his place and looked for something else to do.
But nothing came in his way; times were hard, and but a few pennies a day were all the mother and her children had to live on.
Will seldom ate at home, saying that he got plenty at the lunch-counters during the day, and he left the scanty food for his mother and sister; but this his mother soon began to disbelieve, as the boy looked really ill and was growing thin.
"To-day is Thanksgiving Day, Will, so we must have a good dinner," said Mrs. Raymond, with a forced smile, one morning, after a most meagre breakfast.
"Oh, mamma!" said Will, and his heart was too full to say more.
"My son, I have a gold-piece – a three-dollar piece given me years ago, and which I have held on to until now, never counting it in thinking of my finances; but I wish you to take it and go to some good market and invest a dollar at least in a good dinner;" and the poor mother turned away to hide her tears, for the faces of her children told her plainly that they were hungry – yes, very hungry, as she was herself.
Will took the piece of gold, when his mother had taken it from its hiding-place, and placed it carefully in his pocket.
Then he started out upon his errand.
He was anxious to make his money go as far as possible, and yet secure the best, so he wended his way to a market, which had often attracted his attention.
Arriving at the market he feasted his eyes upon bunches of crisp, white celery, selected some fine sweet-potatoes, picked out a fine chicken, and then felt in his pocket for his money.
The marketman saw him turn pale as death, and then say, in a whisper, which he knew was not feigned:
"My gold-piece is gone!"
"Have you lost your money, my little man?" he asked, in a kindly way.
"Yes, sir; and it is all we have in the world.
"Ah! here is a hole in my pocket, and it has rolled out, for it was a three-dollar gold-piece.
"But maybe I can find it, sir," and the tears were in the boy's eyes.
"If you do not come back, I will trust you for your Thanksgiving dinner, for I know you will pay me when you can."
"Oh, thank you, sir! You are so kind!" and Will bounded away to look for his gold-piece.
But then he remembered that if he went at a rapid pace it might escape his eye; he walked slowly, searching the ground at every step of the way.
Presently he walked bolt up against a gentleman who had been watching his approach for half a block.
"Oh, pardon me, sir!" he said.
"Certainly, my boy; but you appear to be searching for something that you have lost?"
The face of the man was full of kindness, though stern, and his voice had a sympathetic tone in it that touched the boy, who told his misfortune to the stranger, adding:
"It was all we had, sir, and poor mother's heart will break, I know."
The man looked like one who had seen the world, and he dressed as one who had a plethoric pocket-book.
He was a reader of human nature, and saw that it was no begging for sympathy that the boy told his story for.
A man of fifty, perhaps, he was well preserved, and yet there was that in his face that seemed to indicate that his life had not been all made up of sunshine.
"My boy, I found your gold-piece, and – "
"Oh, sir!" cried Will, in delight.
"Yes, and I took it as an omen of good luck, this Thanksgiving day, and I meant to devote many times its amount to charity, of which I might not have thought but for my finding this gold-piece.
"No, I cannot give you my 'luck-piece,' as I must keep it; but I will give you more than its value, so let us go to the market and get the things you ordered, and then, if you will ask me home with you, I will go, for somehow I look upon you as a lucky find, my boy.
"Come, now, to the market."
"But, sir, our home is a flat on the top floor of a tenement-house, and it is so humble, and we are so poor, you would not like to go there."
"I will go, unless you refuse to take me, my boy."
"No, sir, I could not refuse one who is so kind to me," was the answer, and Will led the way back to the market.
"Did you find your money, my lad?" asked the man.
"Yes, sir, or rather this gentleman found it for me."
"Yes, sir, and I wish you to put up your best turkey, and other things that I will order, and send at once to the address that my young friend here will give you."
Will stood aghast, as he heard the orders, for flour, tea, coffee, sugar, hams and other things were on the list until he seemed to feel that his kind friend was going to provision the flat for a year to come.
"Now, Will, we must take a carriage, for I am a trifle lame, from the effects of an old wound when I was a soldier in the Mexican war," and a passing hack was called, and the two entered it.
Arriving at the tenement-house the gentleman bade the driver wait, and then he followed Will up the dingy flights of stairs to the top floor.
Opening the door of the sitting-room, Will ushered his guest in, and Mrs. Raymond arose from her easy-chair at sight of a stranger.
She looked pale and thin, but very beautiful, and her face slightly flushed as she saw her son with the visitor.
"This is my mother, Mr. Ivey, and this, my little sister Pearl.
"Mother, this gentleman has been most kind to me," and Will introduced his visitor with the ease of one double his years.
The visitor seemed amazed at the lovely woman he beheld before him, and instinctively he knew that he was in the presence of a lady.
He bowed low, and advancing held out his hand, while he said:
"You must pardon my intrusion, Mrs. Raymond; but I was so fortunate this morning as to find a three-dollar gold-piece.
"It caught my eye, as it glittered upon the pavement, and picking it up I saw that it had a hole in it, so attached it to my watch-chain.
"A moment after I beheld one I recognized as the owner coming in search of it, and thus I made the acquaintance of your noble boy, and hence took the occasion to also meet you and his sister."
Mrs. Raymond was touched by the words of the visitor, and there was that in his face that seemed to impress her, and she said:
"You are very welcome, sir, though ours is but a poor home for visitors, and I have been an invalid for some little time; but may I ask, as my son introduced you as Mr. Ivey, if you are not Colonel Richard Ivey, who was known as Dashing Dick Ivey of the Dragoons in the Mexican war?"
"Why yes, madam, that was my name, when years ago I was a cavalry officer; but have we met before that you recognize me?"
"No, sir, but when a girl I kept a scrap-book, and yours was among the pictures that I took from a paper and put in it, and often have I looked over the book and your face has but little changed, so I recalled it upon hearing your name."
"You are very kind, my dear madam, and this is another link of friendship between us that you should remember me as a soldier, and I hope you will look upon me from this day as an old friend, one who knows your sufferings and your needs, for I have heard all from Will, and I intend to do for you just what I would have done for a sister of mine were she in distress," and into the hearts of the mother and her children came a joy that they had not known for many a long day, and all through Will Raymond's losing his three-dollar gold-piece on Thanksgiving Day.
CHAPTER VIII. – The Dashing Dragoon
COLONEL DICK IVEY was a bachelor and a man of vast wealth.
He had been an only son, and the idol of his boyhood life had been his sister, two years his junior.
Their parents had been wealthy, and they dated their ancestry back for many generations, and the father of the young Richard had been anxious to have his son become a soldier, and so got for him a cadetship at West Point.
A handsome, dashing youth, generous to a fault, Dick Ivey had won the hearts of professors and comrades alike, and none of the latter had envied him the first honours of his class when he had graduated, while the instructors had said they were well won and deserved.
There were four persons present at the graduating exercises that Dick was most desirous of pleasing, and these were his parents, his sister, and her best friend, the young cadet's lady-love.
But, in spite of his honours won, the fickle young lady-love had flirted with the honoured cadet, refused his proffered love, and became infatuated, as it were, with a brother cadet of her old lover.
It cut Dick Ivey to the heart, but he nursed his sorrow in silence, uttered no complaint, and went to the border with his regiment, to soon win distinction as a daring officer.
The fickle maiden meanwhile married the successful rival, and two years after died, it was said, of a broken heart.
The news came to Dick Ivey that his sister was to marry, and when he heard whom it was that was to be her husband, he obtained a furlough and started for his home to warn her against the man who had broken the heart of his old lady-love.
But, wounded on the way, in a fight with Indians, he was laid up for weeks, and arrived too late, for his sister had married the man whom he now hated with all his soul.
Soon after the Mexican war broke out, and as the American army crossed the Rio Grande, Dick Ivey met his old rival, and learned of his sister's death.
Soon after a letter came to him, written by his sister, and given to some faithful servant to mail.
It told of her sorrows, her sufferings, the cruelties of the man she had loved, and that she too was dying of a broken heart.
At once did Dick Ivey seek the man who had wrecked the lives of two whom he had so dearly loved, and what he said was terse, to the point, and in deadly earnest. It was:
"You know my cause of quarrel with you, sir, and that now is no time to settle it, for we belong to our country.
"But, the day this war ends, if you and I are alive, you shall meet me on the field of honour, and but one of us shall ever leave it alive."
And all through the war did Dick Ivey win fame, and he became a hero in the eyes of his gallant comrades.
At last the war ended, the City of Mexico was in the hands of General Scott, and the Daring Dragoons, commanded by Colonel Ivey, were ordered home.
Instantly, he sought his rival, and reminded him of his words at the breaking out of hostilities, and the two met in personal combat upon the duelling field.
It was a duel with swords, and each man meant that it should be to the death, that no mercy should be shown, and it could end in but one way – the death of one, or both.
It was fought through to the bitter end, and Dick Ivey left his hated enemy dead upon the field.
Resigning his commission, he returned to his home in the State of Mississippi, and yet he remained there but a short while, for the spirit of unrest was upon him, and the papers teeming with stories of his career, he sailed for foreign lands and remained abroad for years.
Again, he returned to America and settled in an elegant bachelor-home upon a fashionable avenue in New York city, a man of noble impulses, yet one upon whose life a shadow had fallen, and who carried in his heart a skeleton of bitter memories.
Such was the man who had found Will Raymond's lost gold-piece, and his career, from a cadet at West Point, to his living a luxurious bachelor life in New York, Mrs. Raymond read to her children that Thanksgiving night after he had left; for the distinguished soldier had begged an invitation to eat his Thanksgiving turkey that day in the humble home of the woman he had so strangely met, and who, by some strange accident, had pasted in her scrap-book his picture, as a young soldier, and the scraps of his life history as she had then read them, never dreaming that she would meet the hero with the dark, handsome face, dressed in his gorgeous Dragoon uniform.
To her children then, that Thanksgiving night, after he had departed, Mrs. Raymond read the history of the Dashing Dragoon, and he became to Will and Pearl a hero also in their eyes, and warm was the welcome that he received when he came the next day to tell Mrs. Raymond that he had adopted all of them as protegées, and meant to take them to a pleasant home and send the children to school.
This promise he kept, for he would not be said nay, and Mrs. Raymond, grown almost happy-faced with the change, moved to a pleasant little home in the upper part of the city, and Will and Pearl daily attended the most fashionable schools in the metropolis.
Months thus passed away, Colonel Ivey taking his Sunday dinner with the mother and her children at first, and then calling oftener and oftener, until one night he called Will and Pearl to him and told them that he had asked their mother to become his wife, and that she had said that she would.
It made them happy, for they were glad to see joy in the face of their dearly loved mother, and soon after Mrs. Ruby Raymond became Mrs. Richard Ivey.
It was a quiet wedding in the cosey home, and then into the grand mansion of Colonel Ivey the mother and her children moved, and sunshine seemed to brighten all their pathway through life; but alas! who can see into the future, who can tell how far beyond the sunshine lie the shadows that must fall upon our lives, shutting out all brightness, encircling them with gloom as black as the grave, and far more cruel.
CHAPTER IX. – Phantoms of the Past
IT was a pleasant night and Mrs. Richard Ivey sat alone in the handsome library of her elegant country house on the sea-shore, for it was the summer time.
Her face had lost its look of haunting care, and her cheeks glowed with health, and she appeared to be happy once more.
Still there were phantoms of the past that would rise before her and they would not go down at her bidding.
She recalled her first love, noble-hearted, honest Kent Lomax, from whom she had fled to become the wife of a man who had proved himself a wretch, a villain.
She recalled her happy home, her loving parents, and wondered if they had ever forgiven her, for she had not heard one word from them since her flight, and she knew not the scene that had followed, when Kent Lomax had met Schuyler Cluett upon the field of honour, and had fallen before the bullet of the man she had married.
She had told Colonel Ivey all before she had married him, and he had but loved her the more for her confession and the sorrows she had known.
He had told her, too, that in the pleasant fall of the year, they would all go down to Maryland on a visit, and see the old home and her parents, and ask that she might be forgiven.
As she sat alone in her home she was pondering over the past.
Her husband had gone off on a business trip to the far West, Will was away upon a yachting cruise, for he had become a skilful and devoted yachtsman, his step-father having presented him with a beautiful craft, and Pearl was spending the night with a little playmate who lived near.
Presently a footfall was heard in the hallway, and Mrs. Ivey supposed it was the butler, about to close up the house for the night, so that it did not disturb her, but she started when the words fell upon her ears:
"Mrs. Ivey, I believe?"
"Oh, Mercy!"
The cry came like a groan of anguish from the lips of the woman, as she turned and beheld the form of a man standing before her.
He had entered the mansion unseen, had walked into the library unannounced, and was within a few paces of her.
His appearance was that of a gentleman, and yet one whose life was a fast one.
He was well dressed, in fact almost flashily attired, wore a diamond in his front shirt, another upon the little finger of his left hand, and a heavy watch chain crossed his vest front.
He appeared to be a man of forty, and his face was handsome, his eyes piercing, yet a certain cold look, added to recklessness and a cynical smile were not prepossessing.
"You did not expect to see me again, Ruby?" he said in a voice that was tinged with a sneer.
"I believed you dead," she whispered, for she seemed scarcely able to articulate.
"Yes, for so I sent you word."
"You sent me word," she said repeating his words.
"Yes, I got a pal of mine to come and see you, and tell you how I had been smashed up in a railway accident.
"The smash-up was true, and I had my leg broken, and lay for weeks in agony; but I got well, and here I am."
"Oh why did you do me this cruel wrong?" she groaned.
"To accomplish just what you have done."
"And that is – "
"That, believing me dead you might marry, for I knew your beauty would turn the head of some old millionaire fool as it has done."
"And this was your plot?"
"Certainly," and he took a seat near her.
"What is your purpose?" she asked in a voice scarcely audible.
"Not to claim my wife, I assure you."
"I would die before I would again live with you; but it breaks my heart to feel that I have committed this crime against the noble man that made me, as he supposed, his wife, for we both felt that you were dead."
"And wished me so?" he said with a sneer.
"Indeed I did, though Heaven forgive me for telling the truth."
"Well, you see I am by no means a dead man, and as I have no desire to die of starvation I have come to you."
"To me?"
"Yes."
"And why?"
"You are rich."
"I am worth nothing, only such as my husband gives me."
"Well, you'll have to strike him for a loan on my account."
"What do you mean?"
"I need money."
"I can't help you."
"You must."
"I will not."
"Listen to me, Ruby, and don't be silly.
"You have broken the laws of the land, in marrying Colonel Ivey when you had a husband living."
"I believed you dead."
"That does not excuse you, and besides, I can bring up witnesses to swear that you knew me to be alive!"
"Oh, monster!"
"I can do it, and that will prove your guilt, so you see, you are wholly in my power."
"What do you wish of me?"
"I wish, as I said, some money, and I will give you a reasonable time to get it for me.
"If I get it I will go far away and never appear again to disturb you; but, if I do not receive it, I will simply make my presence known to your husband and destroy you."
"It will but drive me again into poverty and wretchedness, for I will not live a lie to that good man, and shall tell him all."
"You are a fool, Ruby."
"I was a fool when I became your wife.
"I did not love you, though I believed that I did, and I soon found out that it was but a fascination, such as a serpent has over a bird.
"I fled from my happy home, I deserted a true, honourable man, and became your wife, not to be acknowledged as such, for you hid me away in a little village, while you led a life of dissipation in Philadelphia, still believed to be a bachelor by your friends.
"In that lonely life I lived, and my children were born, and, with no friend near, mine was a wretched existence.
"Deserted by you, with my children, I went to New York to earn my living, and thither you followed me, and I had to give you all that I had saved up, and you gambled it away.
"Again deserted by you, I sought to hide away where you could not find me, and I became prosperous, in a small way, by selling the work of my hands; but again you found me, took my little earnings and went West, and soon after I heard of your death.
"Believe me, Schuyler Cluett, wicked as it was, I rejoiced that I was free, for I believed that I was.
"And now you come again, when I felt that my life was not all shadow, and you demand that I rob my husband to help you."
"I am your husband, Ruby, and I need help, and will have it."
"Not from me, sir."
"Yes, from you."
"I say no! – for I will tell all, and defy you."
"I will first see him, tell him who I am, and he will pay me to keep quiet, for the man loves you.
"For the sake of yourself, and of your children, you had best decide to give me the money, I ask."
She was silent, and lost in deep thought for full a minute, while he watched her face narrowly.
At last she said:
"Schuyler Cluett, you know that I would give much to have you never cross my path again; but your coming has unnerved me, and I am not myself.
"If I give you money, without telling my husband all, it would but be robbing him to pay you.
"If I tell him, I believe he would pay you as you demand; but yet, with you alive, and he knowing it, I could not remain here as his wife.
"So go from me, and I will decide when I can collect my thoughts."
"I will give you just one week."
"It is long enough, for I will not need so much time; but do not come here."
"No, I will give you an address in the city that will reach me, and you can appoint a place of meeting when you can give me the money."
"If I decide to do so."
"Oh, no fear about that, for you will decide in my favour, and for your children for it would be a big scandal, you know, to come out; that – but I'll not remind you, so here is my address, and I'll bid you goodnight, Mrs. Ivey," and he left the room as silently as he had entered it, and the poor woman was again alone with the phantoms of the past.
CHAPTER X. – Deserted
COLONEL RICHARD IVEY came back to his elegant home, from his trip to the West.
He had telegraphed to have the carriage meet him at the railway station, but to his surprise it was not there, and so he sprang into a village hack and drove homeward.
It was dark ere he reached the mansion and his surprise was greater when he saw no lights to greet him.
"Why Ruby must have gone up to the city; but she wrote nothing of intending to do so, in her last letter," he said, as he sprang out of the vehicle and paid the driver.
Ascending to the piazza he rang the bell, and soon a light flashed within the hallway, and the butler opened the door.
"Well, Richard, what is the matter, that I receive such a bleak welcome?" he said.
"The madam is away, sir, and has been for some days; but she left a letter for you, sir, and it's on your table with the mail.
"I'll have lights, sir, at once."
The mansion was soon lighted up, and supper ordered for the master, who went into his library and took up the numerous letters that had arrived for him during his absence of several weeks.
All were thrown aside excepting one.
That one bore no stamp or post-mark, and was from his wife.
Hastily he broke the seal, and seeing that it was several pages in length, he threw himself into his easy-chair beneath the lamp.
As he read, he uttered a sound very like a moan, and, strong man though he was, his hands trembled as he held the letter.
When he had finished he slowly re-read it, and then bending his head upon his hands he sat thus, the picture of silent, manly grief.
What he read was as follows:
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"Soldier's Rest,"September 1st, 18 – ."Dare I, in this letter that I now write you, address you as my heart would dictate and call you my own dear Richard? – for such you are to me and ever will be, though a cruel blow causes me to fly from you.
"The other night I sat alone in your library in your pet chair.
"Will was away in his yacht, on a cruise for a few days, and Pearl was spending the night with a little girl friend.