Beadle's Dime Library No. 509 — page 8: what you’re looking at

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

8 an assiduous chafing of the young woman’s hands, wrists and temples, not forgetting to assist and stimulate the labored action of breath- ing by artificial means, the critical point was presently surmouuted, Then, after a brief, bewildered quiescence, re- sembling a swoon (during which the young man perceived that the sufferer was not only young, put exceedingly beautiful, with delicate bands, feet small to a fault, and a generally refined, cultivated air, though emaciated as with pro- longed hardships, and very poorly though neat- ly dressed) she sighed, the color came back slow- ly into her cheeks, and as she opened her eyes on his he saw thatshe was thoroughly composed and collected. Then, suddenly realizing for the first time that he was a stranger, and she in his arms, sbe swiftly disengaged herself, rose tremblingly, and stood partly averted from him, with ber bands clasped and her head sunk on her troubled breast. ‘*] begin to realize it—everything!” she at last said, in a low sweet voice, but one of in- conceivable sadness and dreariness, ‘‘ Of course I can’t imagine who you are, sir,or how you chanced in this secluded spot I had selected to end my miseries in. And [ am not yet pre- pared to say whether I am glad or sorry that you snatched me back from my doom--from death—from my lonyed-for oblivion.” The young man had momentarily forgotten iis new wealth, his better nature and nobler sensibilities being uppermost for the nonce, * Life should be sweet,” be gravely responded, “* and death—must of all self-sought death—far from the thoughts of beauty aud youth.” She made an impatient gesture that struck him oddly as being very similar to the quick, ubrupt ones that were characteristic of his own personality, but only answered with continued meekness and sorrowfulness: ‘ Perhaps so. I pray you, sir, to indulge my weakness for a few moments, after which shall be able to confront my changed situation with more composure,” He nodded, and then made a besitating movement, uncertain whether she desired to be left alone in the attic or not. But she only crossed the floor with feeble steps to an old-fashioned settee, provided with dusty cushions, near to where the miserable candle was guttering and sputtering, and quietly laid her length upon it with her back toward aim. Buried in thought, the young man merely noted that the young girl’s form was peerless in its grace and symmetry, even surpassing what he remembered of La Travadeuse’s admired and statuesque figure in those regards, Then he quictly repossessed himself of his grip-sack and lantern, restored the revolver to his pocket, and, seating himself in one of the two chairs in the place, awaited the strange young woman’s pleasure with certain ill-defined feelings of curiosity such as he had never quite experienced before. What was the new sensation, premonition, or what not, that was upon him? Even the coveted wealth in his grasp seemed to have become of secondary importance for the time being, and ke found himself contemplatin the graceful young figure in the dim candle an lantern light—which was now, however, giving way before the steadily increasing, pinkly tender luster of the summer dawn—with inde- scribable interest and emotion. What was it? A little later, when the young woman com- conga rose, and once more approached him, er face and figure tenderly distinct in the new light, he knew what it was. ever before had he seen a creature so refin- edly, so sadly, so pathetically lovely. For the first time in his life—and he was now twenty-six—love at sight, the master passion, asserting itself without premonition or prepare tion, was his sovereign and his better angel. He loved her! Another brunette, too! Was it his fatality? And yet ‘the blonde young fellow found himself flushing at sage ot ing this delicate young stranger with Mrs. - love, whose mature blandishments had not un- a, dwelt warmly in his imagination; while the mere suggestion of Therese Bertrande’s bola beauty and ravishing black eyes in a like comparison was sufficient to summon the indig- nant shame-faced blush into his cheeks, as at a piece of sacrilege. Perhaps the young woman, on her part, re- marked the superlative manly beauty of the young fellow with some degree of surprise. But ber gentle, inexpressible sadness was scarcely ameliorated, as she slowly crossed the t floor to him, and sunk into the re- maining chair, with something discontented and chiding in her profoundly dejected air. ‘“*Of course, | must thank you, sir,” she said, moodily. ‘* But, why did ycu do it?” “Do what?” he wonderingly asked. ‘*Cut me down.” And she glanced without a shudder at the remnant of the cord dangling from the iron book, ‘‘ Ah, butit was my own vacillating fault. I should have swallowcd the poison first, and so made sure,” The young man snatched up from jts proxim- ity to the water-jug the vial, to which her eyes drew his attention, and turned the label to the growing light. Lavdanum! Mayfield shuddered. ‘* Don’t talk in that way—please don’t,” he exclaimed. ‘‘It is horrible! It—it makes me unhappy.” The surprise returned into the sweet, sad brown eyes, and deepened there. ‘It makes you unhappy?’ she slowly re- peated, CHAPTER XI, LOVE AT SIGHT. THE young man found himself blushing un- comfortably at the girl’s repetition of bis own Hance in the wondering and interrogatory orm. ‘* Yes,” he reiterated, half-doggedly. ‘‘ Such horribly despairing language from your lips—it makes me positively unhappy. ** But why should it?” He strove to laugh, but with poor success. ‘‘ Wasn’t the language unnatural and horrible enough in itself, miss?” ‘“ Yes; but why from my lips especially— from one who is a perfect stranger to you?” ‘‘T don’t know—how should I know?’ He was blushing again, and so furiously, so unac- countably—for extreme diffidence with the op- posite sex was by no means one of this youn man’s charazteristics—as to excite his anger an self-contempt. ‘'I—I suppose it’s because I—I find myself suddenly—quite abruptly and unex- pectedly, in fact—interested in you. Really, it is quite inexplicable.” And his eyes shifted about helplessly. The young girl’s eyes rested upon him curi- ously and with deep gravity. ‘+ Will you please tell me your name, sir?” she asked, in her low, ‘but collected voice. ‘* Harvey Mayfield,” was the prompt reply. This seemed to be getting back into matter- of-factness at last, and her rescuer was speedily becoming his old self again. ‘*What’s yours?” he demanded. A faint, but not displeased, color came into the pure olive pallor of her sweet face at his abruptness, ‘‘Retta Merrivale,” she hesitatingly replied. ‘‘ What a very pretty name,” She almost smiled, the exclamation was so boyishly impulsive—so different from what she judged must be his accustomed ways, ‘Your own name is not an ugly one, by any means,” she said, in a sort of weary, l-return- you-the-compliment way that was not altcgether flattering. ‘Let us explain things to each other, Miss Merrivale,” Harvey went on to say. ‘* We will not allude again to—to—” He glanced at the suspended cord nervously, and then, snatching up the vial again, tossed it out of the window near which they were sitting, and which, as it faced the east, was now giving entrance to the dawn-light in roseate floods and streaks. ‘ No, no; no more of that. But how is it that you happen to be here in this miserably secluded and deserted house?” ‘* How is it that you happen to be in it?” was her counter question. | The young man bit his lip, and unconsciously drew his precious grip-sack closer to his feet. ‘“Oh, indeed!” be laughed. ‘ But is it so a that I, having heard of the haunted re- utation of the place, should have been attracted ecw by the faint glimmer of your candle- ig “There was no such glimmer, sir; I had taken the precaution to curtain in the room.” “There was, nevertheless, a stray glimmer!” _ the other, with truthfulness, ‘‘I swear it! ‘‘Granted. But do people naturally take to haunted houses at midnight, when attracted by stray candle-gleams?” “], for one, am not averse to them,” said Har- vey, candidly. ‘If there is one thing that I have an unaffected contempt for and disvcelief in, it is ghosts.” ** Why seek them, then?” And there was some- thing almost quizzical in a corner of her grave eyes. ‘« Seek them!” he echoed. “ec Yes ” ** But I don’t.” “*‘ Nevertheless,” demurely, “‘ the haunted re- putation, together with the ghostly candle-gleam, was your sole attraction.” “Ob, ah! Well, yousee—what does it matter, anyway?’ And he was evidently resolving to be more cautious with so shrewd a companion, But she was disposed to be somewhat merciless in her drearily humorous way. ‘¢ Besides,” she went on, ‘‘that could be hard- ly indispensable in a bunt for ghosts, who might be expected to light one’s way with the glimmer of their own impalpable and diaphanous forms,” And she touched the still burning dark-lantern with ber foot, while even glancing at the grip- sack. He half angrily extinguished the one, and snatched up the other across his knees, without attempting a reply. Old Falcon, the Thunderbolt Detective. EL 7”_—_—_—___—_—-??Reeneoeeee eee ‘* Moreover,” she went on, ‘‘ I heard you when you first entered the cottage by the back door— at least, I heard somebody enter; and that was a good long hour before—before the fall of the chair that I kick away from under me must have brought you up into the attic bere.” “Tsay, Miss Merrivale,” Mayfield blurted out half appealingly, ‘‘never mind exactly why I chanced in this cottage, will you? Then I won’t ask you anything more as to your own presence here. That’s square, isn’t it now?” Her smile was unmistakable now, though but for an instant, and he could forgive her its aniusement at his expense, so charmingly did it part the perfect lips, to the revelation of the per- fect teeth behind them. ‘You are at least frank, Mr, Mayfield—frank after your fashion, you know,” she said, quickly grave again. ‘ But I sha’n’t accept the privilege of making quite so much of a mystery of myself in return. Is it so strange, then, that I should also be found in this place?” “Tt is strange, miss—awfully so!” “ But why? [ama poor, underpaid work-girl of the not remote neighborbood—a wretched operative of the Yonkers carpet manufactories, in fact, without relatives, friends or money, and with the unusually hard, grinding work and worse associations—all foreign to my past life and breeding—filling me at last with unbearable hopelessness and despair. Such, in truth, is m simple history, sir. Is it then so strange that I, also, might have known of this deserted and lonely place by reputation, and—and so have been attracted hither, though of course with a far less honest, far more reprehensible object in view than yours could have been?” Somehow her concluding words made him wince, he felt that he so little deserved the gen- erous side of ber comparison, ‘““Oh, I see—I understand!” he exclaimed, impulsively. ‘* But, don’t say you are still friendless, miss. I am going to be your friend,” —with another blush and a kindling of the eyes: that intensified his comeliness—‘‘ that is if you will let me, you know,” She lowered her eyes. ‘‘T should already be greatly beholden to you,” she murmured, beginning to pick at her oor gown with both hands in an aimless, con- used way. ‘* You have saved me—saved me from my wicked designs upon myself.” ‘‘God be praised for that! But, no more on that score. would continue your friend—do yet more for you—be yet more to you!” dis- jointedly. ‘S What—wl at do you mean?” But even then, as she raised her eyes, and caught the new, magnetic light in his, with the lorious auroral beams illuminating his frank, air face, at this moment redeemed and noble in its pristine purity, she saw and understood, ad his new-born and guileless passion awak- ened a responsive thrill in her youtbful, but theretofore clouded and misery-numbed, sensi- bilities? Who shall yet say? For even stranger, more mysterious in the heart of maidenbood than in the heart of man is the kindling of the divine spark, the inception and springing into flower of that magic growth, love at first sight. But at all events a pronounced color overspread the pure pallor of her face, and her eyes were troubled as she once more lowered them be- neath his steadfast gaze. * Who and what are you, sir?” she asked, tremblingly. ‘* A young man of leisure, at present boardin in Tarrytown,” he replied, aftera pause, “ young fellow, fortunately of ample means—re- cently acquired,” he slowly added, ‘‘ who until quite lately had a strong idea of becoming a student of divinity—but who now hasn’t any- thing of the sort.” She seemed somewhat surprised, but be hur- riedly went on to give her the main points in his uneventful past—of course only prior to bis con- nection with the felon’s legacy. Tke story carried with it the impress of its unassuming truthfulness, ‘* Why should you so suddenly have given up your inclinations for a sacred and unselfish calling?’ Retta asked. ‘I can’t understand it.” The young man seemed to be forcing slowly to the surface a sudden and strongly-conceived ve, ‘And I cannot make you understand it any better—not yet, at least,” be pean unsteadily, and half-averting his face. ‘* But I can tell you why, since the inning of our acquaintance here, 1 have at last put my irrevocable seal upon my renunciation of those recent leanings to what you are pl to style a sacred and unselfish calling.” - ‘‘ Why is 1t, then?’ she asked, wholly unsus- pectingly. : He raised his gray eyes flutteringly, un- easily, almost agonizedly to her sweet face. ‘* It is because I love you !” CHAPTER XII. TWO STRANGE YOUNG MEN, ’ Har an bour later, when Retta Merrivale and Harvey Mayfield were abt the out- skirts of Yonkers, after, a friendly side-by-side walk from the haunted cottage, in the sweet iAKe (E(©)