Pretty Madcap Dorothy Part 43

"You were terribly foolish to grow so jealous of Iris Vincent as to run away from me. Why, I--I was merely flirting with her because she was pretty.

"Why, she is married now, and at the other end of the world, for aught I know or care. I can only add that, from the moment I learned of your disappearance, I have been searching for you night and day. Oh, Dorothy, now that I have found you, do not treat me like this, I beseech you! Let us kiss and make up. We are driving direct toward the parsonage, where we are to be married.

"Few men would care for you so much upon making the terrible discovery that you had fled from home and directly to the arms of an old lover, remaining under his roof until you were cast out from it by that lover himself. I do not know even what your quarrel with him was about. I do not ask to know. The object which took me there, I do not mind telling you. I had a quarrel with your lover, Jack Garner. We were to meet early this morning to settle the affair of honor; but as he did not show up to make the arrangements, I forced my way into his house, in order that I might not miss him. I heard him turning you from his door. Then amazement held me spell-bound. I shall take this into account when--when I have my settlement with him, later on. Any indignity offered to you shall be my affair, as your husband, to settle."

Dorothy had drawn back from him listening with horror to the words that fell from his lips.

"The duel must be averted at any cost," she told herself; yet she could not--oh, she could not!--marry him. "I must think of some way out of this," thought Dorothy, in the wildest agony. "I must save myself, and save him, too."

But in a moment, while she was pondering over the affair, the vehicle came to a sudden stop, and, looking out, she saw it was standing before the wide entrance-gate of a parsonage.

"Here we are!" cried Kendal, holding out his hand to her.

"I have not said that I would marry you," she cried. "How dared you bring me here?"

"That fact was settled between you and me so long ago that you surprise me by your words," he said, angrily.

"There is such a thing as a person changing her mind," said Dorothy, as she leaped from the carriage, and stood facing him under the trees.

"Surely you do not mean that you have changed yours?" retorted Kendal, knowing that his best policy was to temporize with her.

"I have, indeed," declared the girl; "and you will therefore oblige me, Mr. Kendal, by re-entering your carriage and driving along."

"Do you think I would leave you here, Dorothy," he said, in his most winning voice--"here, at this strange parsonage? I should say not! If you object to marrying me now, I know it is only through pique; but still I say that I shall await your own good time; and, as the song goes, 'When love has conquered pride and anger, you will call me back again.' Do get in, Dorothy, darling; do not make a scene here. See! they are watching us from the window. Get in, and we will drive on to Yonkers. It is only four miles farther up the road. I promise you you shall have your own way. Mrs. Kemp is at the old home. You will be welcomed with open arms."

"Take your hand off my arm, or I shall scream!" cried the girl, struggling to free herself.

Quick as a flash he seized her, and, with the rapidity of lightning, thrust her back into the coach.

"Drive on--drive on!" Kendal yelled to the driver--"you know where!" and despite Dorothy's wild, piercing cries, the coach fairly flew down the white, winding road, and was soon lost to view amid the dense trees.

It soon became evident to Dorothy that she was only losing her strength in shouting for help.

Kendal was leaning back in his seat, with the most mocking smile on his lips that ever was seen.

"It is a pity to waste so much breath on the desert air," he sneered. "I would advise you to stop before you become exhausted, as there is no one to hear you and to come to your aid."

But Dorothy did not heed, and renewed her cries the more vociferously.

He had said thoughtlessly, that her cries would startle the horses, never dreaming that this would indeed be the case. But, much to his alarm, he noticed that their speed was increasing with every instant of time. It broke upon him all too soon that they were indeed running away, and that the driver was powerless to check them.

In great alarm, Kendal sprang to his feet and threw open the door. That action was fatal; for at that instant the horses suddenly swerved to the right, and he was flung head foremost from the vehicle; the wheels pa.s.sed over him, and the next instant the coach collided with a large tree by the road-side, and Dorothy knew no more.

Up this lonely path walked a woman, young and very fair, but with a face white as it would ever be in death. And as her despairing eyes traveled up and down the scene they suddenly encountered the white upturned face of a woman lying in the long gra.s.s.

With a great cry she reached her side.

"Dead!" she whispered in a voice of horror, as she knelt beside the figure lying there, and placed her hand over her heart. But no; the heart beneath her light touch beat ever so faintly. "Thank G.o.d! this poor creature is not dead," murmured the stranger, fervently.

CHAPTER x.x.xIX.

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 gra.s.s, 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 antic.i.p.ate and execute my slightest wish.

I have all that wealth can buy and love can lavish upon me, but, G.o.d 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 pa.s.sed. 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 pa.s.sing 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.