The Unseen Bridgegroom by May Agnes Fleming (best free ebook reader .TXT) 📖

suffer and let that horrible doctor off scot-free."

Mr. Walraven, in his study, meantime, had written a letter to Lawyer Sardonyx, detailing in brief his wishes, and requesting him to call upon Mrs. Walraven in the course of the day. That done, he quitted the house, determined to return no more until she had left.

The afternoon brought Hugh Ingelow. Mollie was alone in her room, having a very anxious time; but when his name was announced, she dropped the book she was trying to read and made a headlong rush down-stairs. If Hugh Ingelow had seen the rosy light that leaped into her cheeks, the glad sparkle that kindled in her eyes at the sound of his name, he could hardly have been insensible to their flattering import.

Mr. Ingelow congratulated her on her bright looks as he shook hands.

"I never saw you looking better," he said, with earnest admiration.

"Looks are deceitful, then," said Mollie, shaking her early head dolefully. "I don't think I ever felt worse, even when cooped up in Doctor Oleander's prison."

"Really! What has gone wrong now?" the artist inquired.

"Everything dreadful! The most shocking tempests in tea-pots. Guardy is going to separate from his wife!"

"Indeed!" said Mr. Ingelow, coolly. "The very best thing he could do."

"Oh, Mr. Ingelow!"

"Quite true, Mollie. She's a Tartar, if ever there was a Tartar. He committed a terrible act of folly when he married her; let him show his return to wisdom by sending her adrift. I don't pity her in the least. If he forgave her this time, she would simply despise him, and begin her machinations all over again."

"No! Do you think so? Then I'm not to blame?"

"You!" Mr. Ingelow laughed. "I should think not, indeed! Set that tender little heart of yours at rest, Mollie. Blanche Walraven is big and fierce, and able to take care of herself. Let us get rid of her quietly; if we can, and be thankful."

"Mr. Sardonyx is with her now," said Mollie, "arranging matters. Oh, dear! I can't help feeling nervous and troubled about it. It's not fair to punish her and let Doctor Oleander go off scot-free."

"His punishment is his detection and your loss, Mollie. I can think of no heavier punishment than that. I met him, by the bye, in Broadway, as large as life, and as impudent as the gentleman with the cloven foot. He bowed, and I stared, and cut him dead, of course."

Before Mollie could speak, the door-bell rang. A moment later and there was the sound of an altercation in the hall.

"You can't see Miss Dane, you ragamuffin!" exclaimed the mellifluous tones of footman Wilson. "You hadn't oughter ring the door-bell! The airy's for such as you!"

"It is Miriam!" cried Mollie, running to the door. "It is surely Miriam at last!"

But it was not Miriam. It was a dirty-faced boy--a tatter-demalion of fourteen years--with sharp, knowing black eyes. Those intelligent orbs fixed on the young lady at once.

"Be you Miss Dane--Miss Mollie Dane--miss?"

"Yes," said Mollie. "Who are you?"

"Sammy Slimmens, miss. Miss Miriam sent me, miss--she did."

"Miriam? Are you sure? Why didn't she come herself?"

"Couldn't, miss," nodding sagaciously. "She's very bad, she is. Got runned over, miss."

"Run over!" Mollie cried, in horror.

"Corner Fulton Street, miss, and Broadway. Yesterday morning 'twas. I told the policeman where she lived, and he fetched her home. Won't live, they say, and she's sent for you. Got something very 'ticular to tell you, miss."

"I will go at once," Mollie said, unutterably distressed. "My poor Miriam! I might have known something had happened, or she would have been here before this."

She flew upstairs and was back again, dressed for the street, in ten minutes.

"Permit me to accompany you, Miss Dane," said Hugh Ingelow, stepping forward. "You have been entrapped before. We will be on our guard this time. Now, my man," to the hero of the rags and tatters, "lead on; we follow."

The boy darted away, and Mr. Ingelow with Mollie's hand drawn through his arm, set off after him at a rapid rate.


CHAPTER XXVI.

MIRIAM'S STORY.

A miserable attic chamber, dimly lighted by one dirty sky-light, a miserable bed in one corner, a broken chair, an old wooden chest, a rickety table, a few articles of delf, a tumble-down little cook-stove.

That was the picture Mollie Dane saw, standing on the threshold of Miriam's room.

There was no deception this time. On that wretched bed lay the broken and bruised figure of the woman Miriam, dying.

Her deep, labored breathing was painfully audible, even outside the room; her strong chest rose and fell--every breath torture.

By her side sat the mother of the ragged boy, holding a drink to her lips, and coaxing her to open her mouth and try to swallow.

In vivid contrast to all this poverty and abject wretchedness, the young girl in the door-way stood, with her fair, blooming face, her fluttering golden ringlets, her rich silken garments, and elegant air.

The woman by the bed turned round and stared for a moment; then--

"Be you the young lady as Mrs. Miriam sent my Sammy for?" she asked.

"Yes," said Mollie, coming forward. "How is she?"

"Bad as bad can be, miss. Won't never see another day, the doctor says."

"My poor Miriam--my poor Miriam!"

The slow tears gathered in her eyes as she bent above her and saw the pinched, sharpened face, with the blue tinge of coming death already dawning there.

"Be you a relation?" the woman asked, curiously. But Mollie did not answer--she was stooping over the sick woman, absorbed.

"Miriam!" she said, softly, taking the skinny hand in both her own--"Miriam, look up! Speak to me. It is I--your own Mollie."

The sound of that beloved voice penetrated the death fog already blurring every faculty. The dulled eyes opened with a sudden, joyful light of recognition.

"Mollie," she said, "my dear little Mollie. I knew you would come."

"I am very, very sorry to see you like this, Miriam. Do you suffer much pain?"

"Not now--only a dull aching from head to foot. But even that will soon be over. I am glad. My life has been nothing for the past sixteen years but one long torment. I am glad it is so nearly done. Mollie," fixing her haggard eyes solemnly on her face, "you know I will never see another sunrise."

"My poor, poor Miriam!"

"Are you sorry for poor Miriam, Mollie?"

"Sorrier than sorry! What other relative have I in the wide world but you?"

"Not one, Mollie. But I am a relative you need hardly grieve for. I have been a bad, cruel woman--the worst woman that ever lived to you, my poor little girl!"

"Miriam!"

"Ah! don't look at me with those innocent, wondering blue eyes! You shall know all. I can't die with my story untold, my secret unrevealed. Mrs. Slimmens, I have something very particular to say to this young lady. Please to leave us alone."

The woman, with a disappointed look, rose up and quitted the room.

Mollie drew up the only chair and seated herself by the bedside.

"Did you come here alone?" was Miriam's first question, when they were together.

"No," said Mollie, coloring slightly. "Mr. Ingelow came with me. He is waiting below."

"That is well. It is growing late, and the neighborhood is not a good one. He saved you, did he not?"

"He did. I owe him my life--my liberty."

"I knew he would--I knew he would! I trusted him from the first Mollie, do you know why I sent for you in my dying hour?"

"To tell me who I am."

"Yes--you would like to know?"

"More than anything else in the wide world."

"And have you no idea--no suspicion?"

Mollie hesitated.

"I have sometimes thought," reddening painfully, "that I might be Mr. Walraven's daughter."

"Ah!" said Miriam, her eyes lighting; "and he thinks so, too!"

"Miriam!"

"Yes," said Miriam, exultingly, "he thinks so--he believes so, and so does his wife. But for all that, not one drop of his blood flows in your veins!"

"Miriam!"

"Not one drop! If there did, you should not now be standing by my death bed. I would expire unrepenting and unconfessed. Mollie, you are mine--my very own--my daughter!"

She raised herself on her elbow and caught Mollie in her arms with a sudden, fierce strength. The girl stood perfectly speechless with the shock.

"My child--my child--my child! For years I have hungered and thirsted for this hour. I have desired it as the blind desire sight. My child--my child! have you no word for your dying mother?"

"Mother!"

The word broke from Mollie's white lips like a sobbing sigh. The intense surprise of the unexpected revelation stunned her.

"You believe me, then--you do believe me!" Miriam cried, holding her fast.

"You are dying," was Mollie's solemn answer. "Oh, my mother! why did you not tell me this before?"

"Because I would not disgrace you and drag you down. I loved you far too well for that. I could have done nothing for you but bespatter you with the mire in which I wallowed, and I wanted you, my beautiful one--my pearl, my lily--to be spotless as mountain snow. It can do you no harm to know when I am dead."

"And Carl Walraven is nothing to me?"

"Nothing, Mollie--less than nothing. Not one drop of his black blood flows in your veins. Are you sorry, Mollie?"

"No," said Mollie, drawing a long breath. "No!" she repeated, more decidedly. "I am glad, Miriam--mother."

"You can call me mother, then, despite all?"

"Surely," Mollie said, gravely; "and now tell me all."

"Ah, it is a long, sad story--a wicked and miserable story of shame, and sin, and suffering! It is a cruel thing to blight your young life with the record of such horrible things."

"I may surely bear what others have to endure. But, Miriam, before you begin, do you really mean to tell me Mr. Walraven thinks me his daughter?"

"He believes it as surely as he believes in Heaven. He thinks you are his child--Mary Dane's daughter."

"Who was Mary Dane?"

"Your father's sister by marriage--done to death by Carl Walraven."

Mollie turned very pale.

"Tell me all," she said. "Begin at the beginning. Here, drink this--it is wine."

She had brought a pocket-flask with her. She filled a broken tea-cup and held it to the dry, parched lips.

Miriam drained it eagerly.

"Ah!" she said, "that is new life! Sit down here by me, Mollie, where I can see you; give me your hands. Now listen:

"Mollie, you are eighteen years old, though neither you nor Carl Walraven thinks so. You are eighteen this very month. His child, whom he thinks you are, would be almost seventeen, if alive. She died when a babe of two years old.

"Eighteen years ago, Mollie, I was a happy wife and mother. Down in Devonshire, in the little village of Steeple Hill, my husband and I lived, where we had both been born, where we had courted and married, where we hoped to lay our bones at last. Alas and alas! he fills a bloody grave in the land of strangers, and I am drawing my last breath