Beadle's Dime Library, Vol. III, No. 29 — page 29: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

= iger Dick, the Faro King. 29 Heaven for deliverance, She had no hope of earth- ly or heavenly intervention; her action was merely instinctive. “Florence!” said Cecil,in a heartbroken tone, ‘my poor Florence! why struggle against a fate that is inevitable? It cuts me to the soul to see you in such misery—to know that I am the cause—I who love you so? I would restore you to your home—I would give you up, but Icannot! It is our fate; why fight against it?’ Something in his voice chained her attention. Without releasing her hold on the carriage, she turned her head and looked at him. He stood with ciasped hands and tearful eyes, a look of pleading and deprecation and sorrowful love on his face. With a wild thrill it burst upon her that he was in- sane. Then shrinking, cowering, quivering she hid her face in the curtain of the carriage, chilled to the soul by a new terror. Oh! my darling, how I pity you!—how I love you!—how my heart bleeds for you! I loathe my- self, as the instrument of your torture, far more than you can loathe me. But I am helpless in the hands of a cruel destiny. What is to be, must be! We can none of us escape it!” _ ‘ He reached into the carriage and put his arms about her lovingly, tenderly, and drew her toward him, With a gasp, her strength failed her utterly, He gently disengaged her now nerveless hands and lifted her in his arms. She did not resist him. She seemed paralyzed. She only cowered and shivered and gazed into his face as if fascinated. Slowly he carried her to the house, the “ minister" making way to give him admittance. It was an old log-house, long since given over to the spirits of the storm and solitude. A wide fire-place was at one end of the single room, and above it a smoke- blackened mantel-piece of oak now supported the lantern, A rough bench stood against the wall, and upon this Cecil rested himself, holding Flor- ence in his lap. She, like a bird in the toils of a serpent, sat panting, helpless, fascinated by the strange, weird look of compassion on his face, that never changed. The minister took up his position before them; the cabman and a hangdog-looking fellow who had been in company with the divine, stood a little aloof. The clergyman took from his pocket a greasy, Copeared prayer-book. He held it in hands at shook with the palsy induced by dissipation, He read it with eyes bleared and bloodshot, look- ing from swollen and inflamed lids. He pronounced those solemn charges, those holy exhortations, those sacred prayers, with lips all tremulous with unbri- dled excesses, and emitting at every breath sicken- ing Simaee of alcohol. through the ceremony Florence sat as impas- sive as a statue; only when the ring was slipped on her finger a shudder ran through her frame but she never removed her eyes from his. An Cecil wore such a look of yearning compassion as might have rested on the face of a mother who was forced to look upon her child in agony she could not alleviate. But when the last words were spoken, and the minister closed his book with a care- less slam, a look of wild exultation blazed in Cecil’s eye and distorted his face; and with a blood-curd- ling, maniac laugh, he clasped her to his heart, and cried: ““Mine!—mine, for time and for eternity !—mine beyond the reach of man or God!” r ; ut scarcely were the words out of his mouth, when a pistol-shot rung out on the air, and the ball struck the rude plaster with which the lo were chinked, and scattered it in his face. At the same moment a man = across the threshold, and the mocking voice of Tiger Dick said: ‘*Ah, Beaumont! do not-start. It is only a little ee ae of mine—a celebration of your nuptials with fireworks, you know.” With a ery, Florence burst the spell that bound her; and tearing herself from the arms of her maniac lover sprung toward the Tiger with extended arms. Was she about to appeal to him for protec- tion? Ah! better to trust herself to the mad love of Cecil Beaumont than to commit herself to the tender mercies of this human vampire! : But before she reached him, Cecil Beaumont's arm is extended, the report of a pistol blends with his wild laugh, and she totters and falls into the arms of Tiger Dick, the red blood trickling from her Bide over his sleeve. Take her so! You are welcome!” he cried; and with a laugh of triumph and derision, he leaped enough the sashless window. before the Tiger, em- t a as he was with Florence, could return Shadow Jim ran to the corner of the house to in- tercept his flight; but the maniac beat him to the earth with a single blow, and leaping upon one of the ‘saddle-horses which Tiger Dick brought, spurred out of sight in the darkness. CHAPTER Xt. THE DEAD ALIVE. Txt balmy days went by with healing on their wings for May Powell; and though her heart was left crushed and sore, her body gradually yielded to the influences of nature and recovered from the shock that had prostrated her. One evening she passed, in wan and sad-eyed convalescence, down the garden path to Honeysuckle Bower. Looking out on the placid river, she thought of the evening when Cecil had come to her, and then, as she thought, Lad gone out to that cruel death at the hands of her rother She could scarcely realize it even now, that Cecil was dead—that he lay cold and still in his far-away hs and that Fred, who had pote her kitten rom the cruelty of his playfellows, and had wept With her when she broke her doll—she could scarce- ly realize that Fred had thrust him from the bluff an the terrible waters, and now fied a branded out- As she thought and wept, a dark object appeared on the water, moving toward her. She soon made it out to be the head of a man swimming—a man with sagt black whiskers and a face of corpse-like or, lighted by sunken eyes of unnatural bril- ncy. Her first instinct was to fly; but his voice detained her, though her heart palpitated with ap- prehension. u~,D0 not fear, lady,” he said, in a reassuring tone. “You are Miss Powell, are you not?” ‘* Yes, sir, ’ she replied, still trembling. “T come to you with word of your brother. CanI see you where we will not be overheard?” He spoke in a guarded tone, glancing about as he walked up out of the water. There was something familiar in the voice that May could not explain. But he was from her bro- ther; that explained his strange manner of com- ing. you can speak to me here, sir. We are alone. Where is Frederick? Is he well? And has he es- caped so that they cannot follow him?" The man stopped at alittle distance from her, as if to reassure her, and said: ti ‘‘ Miss Powell, your brother is the victim of a ter- rible mistake.” ‘*A mistake? What mistake?” “You have heard of innocent men being convicted on circumstantial evidence?” “Innocent ?={Frederick innocent? What do you mean?” ‘* Men supposed to be dead have reappeared, alive and well.” ‘Oh, sir! pray @xplain yourself. At what are you hinting?” © ‘Prepare your mind for a great joy. I repeat, your brother is the victim of a fatal mistake.” aa do you say? Frederick innocent, and— an Pee ** Cecil Beaumont is not dead!" May sat as still as death for a moment, and then she said, in a dying voice: “You are mistaken. They buried him more than a week ago.”’ “That was the mistake. It was not Beaumont.” n she sat still, this time panting with a wild excitement, She sat and looked at the speaker try- ng to receive his words into her mind and digest their meaning. ‘* How do you know?” she asked, presently, **T have seen him within the hour.”’ “Take me to him! Where is he? Why did he not come with you?’ She arose and put her hand on the arm of the to his face with fevered impa- stranger, gazing tience. “He has suffered. He is much changed. You would scarcely know him,” “Is he ill? What has happened? Oh, sir, take me to him immediately,” “He is as pale and thin and ghastly as I am,” pur- sued the stranger, looking at her s ; Now she rose on tiptoe and peered into his face, A cadence in his voice had set her heart to throb- bing wildly. The next instant he tore the false whis- kers from his face, threw an arm about her, and put his hand over her mouth. It was just in time to check the cry that arose to her lips, as she fainted in his arms. ‘*Poor thing! poor thing!’ muttered Cecil Beau- mont, as he laid her down on the grass. ‘ How I have wronged her! She loved me—she loves me still, as few women are capable of loving; and I, a that I am, trample her heart ruthl under 00 ” Then, with the glitter of insanity glowing in his eyes, he went on: ‘* Ah! how sad it is to be in the hands of so cruel a fate! Everything that I ever loved—everything that ever loved me—has fallen under the curse!” With a quivering sob, May Powell came back to life again; and then, with a sound like the cooing of a dove, she nestled in his arms, about his neck, unconscious that her clothes were being saturated by the water that still dripped from his garments, on weeping and laughing and kissing him, with little caressing hugs, and repeating over and over again, as if she would never tire of the sound: “Cecil! Cecil! Cecil! Cecil!” And Cecil Beaumont held her in his arms and wept over her like a child. His only thought was: ‘““How I have wronged her!—how I have wronged her! Ah! what a cruel, cruel destiny!” . It seemed as if she would have sat_there forever, without a word of explanation, filled, satisfied with the knowledge that he lived—with his arms enfold- ing her—with his broad breast for her heart to beat against. But he broke the spell. ” he said, “I have come back to you, but not to the world.” She started back, and gazed at him, with open- eyed wonder. ‘Not to the world?” she repeated. “‘ What do you mean?”’ “T cannot explain to you now; but the world must not know for a few days that Iam not dead. I have a task to perform. If it were known thatI lived— that I am dae Bae be frustrated—my life might yet be in jeo <a ®Ceail, who r your “ou emy? Is it that terrible man?—that—that—Tiger Dick? Has he been trying to kill you? Oh! what a wretch! I knew that he was a murderer, that day when I saw him smile.”’ “Yes, he is at the bottom of it all,” assented Cecil, gladly jumping at any solution that would satisfy her curiosity. ; . Then why not apply to the police immediately, and have him arrested?” “T cannot meet him in that way, May. See; here is the mark of his last bullet.” He opened his shirt and showed where a bullet, shot at him from one side, had ranged across his breast, leaving a blue line. She uttered a tremulous *on, Cecil! what can we do for it?” “ Nothing,” he replied. aes is not gals DE it was a narrow escape. y, cannot you for two or three anya do not know where else to © for security.” . Pe she asked. “Cecil, where?” re! not know. There must be a room in that big house.” fie looked wistfully at the house as he spoke. May thought a moment, and then the color came you “lite a ds upon it; every consideration “Your life depends u : must give way before that,’’ she said, more in apolo- gy to herself than to him. “ ‘*Yes, my life TAB, dapend upon it,’’ he replied, detecting the st e in her breast between conven- tional propriety and conscious purity pet Ares ‘“‘T know of but one place where you will be secure from prying eyes,” she said, Lyogee straight into his face; “ but though my conduct will provoke curiosi- ty the while, it will receive no explanation until you are out of danger. Sta here, until I see if the way is clear to get you into the house.” Then she was gone; and Cecil Beaumont, his na- ture purged of some of its baseness in the fi cru- cible through which he had passed, standing in the shadows that seemed sanctified by her recent pres- ence, bared his head with a reverence for woman- hood that his rational moments had never known. “May,” he said, in whispered apostrophe, ‘in your devotion I see the treasure I have carelessly thrown aside; in your love I recognize a 1 cast before swine! Your love for me blinded you to a fact as patent as day; and now, for love of me, you lay at my feet a woman’s dearest treasure—for my sake, freely, unhesitatingly, you incur the risk of compromising yourself in the eyes of the herd who, seeing only through the discolored medium of their own vile natures, discern in fine gold only dross. AndI?—I accept it! As if that was not enough, I betray you while accepting it, and make your very nobility of soul subserve the gratification of the bas- est of ions—revenge | *““Ah! what a requital! Whatadevillam! Butl must go on—it is decreed! Oh! the cruel destiny! These hands, how they reek with the blood of my childhood’s playfellow!—how they drip and drip with the blood of her whom I had enshrined in yr 4 heart of hearts! They will never be clean again, ti bathed in the blood of the fiend whose baleful wings, through all. these years, have hovered between me and the sunlight of heaven!” A frenzy was upon him; and he paced the bower like & caged ett with Ce 4 eyes, white, quivering nost and fever-parche 8. A step sounded on the walk, and instantly he was Come!" said May, and gave him her hand. Cautiously they approached the house. She led him in at a side door, up adark staircase, through a corridor, to a room whie , from its appointments, he recognized as her boudoir. From this she opened a door that ushered him into her bedchamber. “Here, Cecil, you will be safe,"’ she said. ‘‘Do not go near enough to the window wt be seen from the lawn, and I keep watch in the outer room so that no one can get to you. I will have , meals served in the boudoir, and share them with you. There are some of Fred’s—poor Fred's garments, a ey you can change your wet clothes imiedi- ately.” He stood, as if overpowered, with bowed head and swimming eyes. Then he bent over her hand, and while tears fell upon it with his kisses, he said: “God bless you, May, and help me! How little deserving of this I am!’ ‘* Hush, Cecil!’’ she whispered ; ““T would yield my life for you, if need were!’ A moment shé laid her cheek to his, touching her lips, with her heart in them, to his neck; and then ushed him gently into the room and closed the she p door, Long she walked the floor of her boudoir in fe- vered excitement. “He is alive! he is alive!’ she whispered to her- self, her face almost luminous with its radiance of love and joy and gratitude, Then the thought that he was the wreck of hig former self wrung ber heart with a twinge of an ; but she banished it as un- grate, after the great mercy of Heaven in sparing life; and with ds reverently folded on her bosom, she raised her streaming eyes and whispered: “Oh, God! I thank thee! He is alive!” But her enfeebled frame succumbed at last; and she lay white and still on the sofa, and with her hands before her eyes to shut out everything else oon (ay conscicusness, thought of him with her whole so The clock was on the stroke of twelve, when Mr. Powell raised his head from the table, where it had been resting on his arms in painful meditation. Wearily he arose; and as he stood, a man prema- turely old through grief, one could see how fearfully the events of the past few weeks had told upon him. A drunkard, a gambler, a forger, a robber, a mur- derer!—and now, to crown the catalogue of infamy, he had pegulled from her home the woman he pro- fessed to love, and sunk her, too, in the quagmire of his shame! t was the thought that wrung the father’s heart and turned his black hairs gray. But hark! as if in mockery of his grief comes a rn wild laugh of derision. It rises weird and spec- tral, and dies away «0d-curdling rattle. He starts and listens. ‘Ww ..18 it? Again it rises. And now he rushes to the door and up the stairs, and without knocking, bursts into May’s boudoir. She is standing in the middle of the room, as white as any ghost. She raises her hand in a ges- ture that holds him on the threshold. Again that hideous ue tgs through the house, coming un- mistakably from her bed ber, and covering her face with her hands, she stands shuddering doom bee What in’ Heaven’ is it, M | ‘What in Heaven’s name is it, May?” asks her frightened father, taking her by the arm and shak- ing her, to rouse her out of the stupor that has fal- leghg looks up at hi ith é looks up at him, with such a look of w has never before beheid, error ‘Father,’ she says, ‘it is Cecil]"’ ** Cecil?” He gazes at her as if he thought she had taken es ois all re, fath e ve, father, and has come back." Leaving her, he strides to the bedroom door and thro pen. Ce eaumon ting u in bed, just prepar to give tbe tes to ae aher of those insane laughs. At sight of Mr. Powell a look of terror comes into his face, and he reaches one hand under his pillow. But May darts in past mt Geet Cecll ‘Cecil! ! itis papa!” calm, Instantly he is ““Ah! Mr. Powell! Pardon me, sir; pardon me, I did not recognize re ih at first, But this is a sad af- fliction that has fallen upon you, sir. Let me offer you my heartfelt condolence.” Excuse us a moment, Cecil,” says May, with a woman's ready wit; and pushing her father back, she closes the door “ee died strength Cpe gre she sinks to the: Sonn, thing in ang of 8 and moans and as if her heart aE | —- ee m JOO EO Cc ‘Ss.coO LL