People's Pilot, Volume 5, Number 50, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 18 June 1896 — Page 2
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THE NEXT HEIR.
c. Founded on Actual Occur--1 rence In American Life.
Back numbers of the Pilot containing this story will be kept on hand at this office. New subscribers can begin thhr time with the.first chapter of story and receive all back copies. Ten cents pays for the Pilot thirteen weeks, from April 30 to July 23 inclusive, to new subscribers only. “For what reason would you marry Cyril, then?” he asked, as if impulsively. That nonplussed her. Could she answer “for love,” not knowing if he loved her? And did she love him? Her proud eyes sank, and her color came &nd went in most unusual embarrasment. “I see,” said Fred’s soft, sympathetic tones. “I have judged you wrongly. Alas, we men should never judge women by our own hearts, yours are so much the nobler. I thought it had been a question of mere interest on both sides; indeed, I forgot that your riches and Cyril’s poverty might naturally lead you to different views. My cousin is a fortunate man, indeed. May he prove worthy,of his fortune —a richer one than the Huntsford thousands. May, richer far.” She tingled all over with shame. Here was Cyril’s friend assuming her to be in love with Cyril; and, in the same breath, plainly implying that Cyril had no love for her. For once in her life her cool self-possession left her and she knew not what to say. They had been slowly promenading as they talked. Hastings had gradually taken a sympathetic tone, and was establishing a confidential understanding. She must defend herself. “You give my words a broader meaning than 1 intended,” she said. “However kindly I may be inclined toward Cyril, it does not follow that I am —in love.” Then, glancing around her as if for some escape, suddenly her eyes fell on a familiar face—a face so long unseen and so well esteemed, that pleasure at sight of it drove all her embarrassment away upon the instant. A tall, handsome man, with a singularly candid, fearless bearing, and a pair of dreamy, beau tiful brown eyes. There was something of sadness in his smile, however; and as sometimes he pushed back the light, curling hair from his brow, May thought his hand looked strangely white, and his expression wearied. “He has been ill, I think,” she said aloud, and almost unconscious that she spoke. Fred looked at her in surprise. “Who has been ill?” said he. “That gentleman. At least I fear so; it seems to me that he looks tired and sad. He is a dear old friend. I have not seen him for three years or more; I shall be so glad to meet him. Dear Mr. Hastings, do bring him to me.” “With pleasure.” said Fred, leading her to a seat. “Sit here and wait a minute. What shall I call him?” “Captain Osborne, please.”
“Captain Osborne" meant nothing to Fred’s ears. “Mr. Osborne,” or “Frank Osborne” he had never heard. .Neither had Cyril. Poor Dolly was not likely to speak to him of her wronged and forsaken lover. So Fred sped on his errand with alacrity. Frank was glad enough for the summons. His greeting from the beauty was cordial- and kind, and her gray eyes searched his face with undisguised interest and anxiety. “Sit beside me and tell me all the news,” she said. “You have been ill, I am sure,” and then she introduced the two men formally to each other, neither of them suspecting that they had met before. Fred said a few civil words and moved away. “Old friends can find plenty to talk about,” said he. And then he went back to his quiet corner again and watched. “This captain may be of use in my game,” he thought. “She gave him a warm welcome.” He watched the door closely as they talked, though forming, of course, no idea of the subject that ehgrossed them. He saw the beauty’s smiling face grow sad and tender; saw her gray eyes, humid with tears, rest with soft pity on Frank Osborne’s grief-marked features—saw her soft little hand steal into his with half-uncon-scious expression of her sympathy. Fred saw all this without one clew to its true meaning; he struck his hand on the table near him, with a smothered exclamation, half of triumph, half of scorn. “What liars women are! This one deceived even me. This captain is some old lover whom she has jilted. Ay,” he went on, mutely apostrophizing May, “you’re sorry for him now, ain’t you? He has suffered, and you see it, and begin to regret your work. Tears and a tremulous lip —she forgets what pity is akin to. You have deceived yourself, fair May—your fancy for i Cyril is but fancy. This—this is the man you love.” • ' v ' ' *’■ • • li ' 1 t
A Thrilling Recital of Adventure and Loyc. •
CHAPTER XIX.
He was so well content with his fancied discovery that it was well for his own conceit that he could not hear their words, and so detect its fallacy. That would have opened his eyes, indeed. But he knew nothing, while thinking he knew all. For once the deceiver was by himself deceived. “And where is your pretty little wife?” inquired May. “I heard you were to be married, just as I heard you were a captain —and I know she must be pretty. Have vou brought her here with you?” Poor Frank! He winced at the cruelquestiou, and turned pale. She watched him with alarm and surprise as he hesitated to reply. Had it been a man that had spoken, his answer would have been but short; but this warm, sympathetic soul, gentle woman's voice, soft as his lost darling's; these tender, pitiful eyes, searching his heart, and pitying they knew not what. He could not turn aside from woman's sympathy. In an instant the tloodgates of his sorrow were Hung open wide. “I will tell you all. You will be merciful to her and pitiful to me," he cried. And then, in a few brief, eloquent, heartfelt words, he told her the whole story. Her sorrow for him, her pity for the unhappy girl knew no bounds. I canno„ tell if her judgment of Dolly would have been so merciful if unbiased by his. His generosity quite carried her away. No ore must speak harshly of his lost love before him. “Six months since she left vou. aud you hope to tind her yet! Alas! how will you find her, and where? You could not wed her now ” “Oh, never, never! The thought of marriage for me is over and done. I think only for saving her. To find her first, then hunt down the wretch who has wronged her, and force him to do her justice; these are the two objects of my life.” “If I could only aid you. But you have not told her name yet, nor his? I '' “I will then. Poor child. She was only a simple country girl, and bore a country name. It was the very music of my heart for years, and now it tortures me to speak it, But you shall know it. As for the man, his name was
At that instant Cyril approached. May put up her little hand warningly. “To morrow,” she said, hurriedly. “Come to me to morrow, and let us try to form some plan —say no more now.” “You will keep all I have told you secret?” “As the grave.” Cyril was before her. “Well, Sir Truant, where have you been so lon°-? I have consoled myself for your desertion by finding a dear old friend; one who saved my life long ago; I’ll tell you all about it some day. Captain Osborne, Mr. Huntsford, let me make you acquainted, and hope that you may be friends.” Thus they met. Dolly’s husband and Dolly’s lover, face to face. A strange antipathy, a thrill of dislike repulsed them both, but they bowed coldly, wondering at their own feelings, too. For neither had ever seen the other's face; neither suspected that they had encountered once before, six months ago, at midnight, in a dark and quiet lane. That night or morning rather, as May’s maid disrpbed her. she musing meanwhile on the story she had heard, the story of a love betrayed, a handkerchief long forgotten fell from her bosom to the floor, and a scrap of paper fluttered from its folds. She snatched it eagerly Some words were writted upon it in a delicate, tremulous hand these: "Don’t leave me to-night, dear Cyril. I am not well, not happy. If you love me at all, oh, stay. I cannot plead to you before Fred, so I write you this. Stay home to-night dearest, if you have not quite ceasedto love me. Your own, Dolly.” May Elli-i said notone word. She crushed the letter in her hand and set her red lips firm and close and waited for her maid to leave her. Being alone at last she read the pitiful appeal once more. “And I carried this in my bosom all night,” she said, bitterly. “This viper to sting me. Oh, to punish them both, ‘Stay at home to-night.’ Where is ‘home’ now? And ‘Dolly!’I’ll find her,” she added with kindling eyes, “and serve her as vipers should be served. I’ll crush her, as I crush this.” She flung the poor, appealing letter down and set her foot upon it with passionate rage upon the floor. “This was why I found him cold. He loves another and will marry me for sake of the Huntsford fortune. I would scorn to take him on such terms.” She took the letter up again and stood thoughtfully, crushing it in her hand. “If I reject him he gains the fortune just the same, and is free to marry her. That must not be, it shall not! I will punish him as he has wounded me, through her. But how? Who and where is she? I must find ‘Dolly’ first before I can strike at her lover.” She sat there long in bitter, brooding thought, the letter still crushed in her hand. Truly, the little unsuspected seed had begun to grow, and
THE PEOPLE’S PILOT. RENSSELAER, IND., THURSDAY, JUNE 18. 1896.
promised to produce in time a fruitful tree of evil. CHAPTER XX. POOR DOLLY. Who and where is Dolly?” questioned May Ellis, moodily of her own thoughts as she sat alone after the ball. Any one who had known the happy, blooming country girl in the days of her careless maidenhood might have stood face to fabe with Dorothy \ ernon.now, and asked, without suspicion, of the pale, sad, shrinking woman: “Where has beautiful, bright, happv Dolly gone?” She asked it herself, sometimes. Asked it of the strange, wistful, weary face that looked at her so sadly from the glass. “Dolly Lisle had roses in her cheeks,” she would sigh, “and a light of love and joy within her eyes; but your sad eyes shine only through their tears, and your cheeks are alwa3 r s pale. Oh, my image in the glass! you are but the ghost of a dead beauty, Dolly Lisle, whom he had loved, has passed away aud gone; it is only Dolly \ ernon that is left.; his wife, of whom he has grown weary.” For just as constant dropping is said to wear away a stone, Fred’s sly, insidious counsels had produced their due effect. Cyril had begun to neglect and slight the wife whom he regarded as a barrier to his fortune. The human heart, especially the masculine heart, is strangely constituted, and ppssesssion too often begets satiety in love. She was his own now; there was no more risk of losing her; no further danger that a rival might snatch her away. At any time when he wanted her he knew just where to find her; knew that his coming, his caresses, the expression of his love, would be welcomed as her heart’s one happiness, her heart’s best boon. The risk and the romance of his courtship were past, and the reality of marriage remained. Ali was concluded and assured, a settled and foregone conclusion; there was nothing to be feared from her, he was too sure of her fidelity and devotion; and nothing to be learned of her —her heart and soul lay like a clear mirror or an open book before his own, and when he gazed he saw only his own image there, and nothing to be hoped for from her, for she had already given all.
In short she was no longer the love whom he might lose, but his wife, all too assuredly won. And yet he had loved her. She was his own wife, and the romance of love’s young dream had grown tame; he had hidden her away in a corner, as it were, where the world could not see her charms, and consequently his own pride in her young beauty received no fresh impulse and incentive from the admiration of others. He neglected her too ofteD, shrinking somewhat from the unuttered reproach of her gradually paling color and saddened eyes. He was under the fatal influence of a villain who held her constantly up with hypocritical pretense of pity before his mental vision as a cause of blight and ruin to his life, and he half believed himself, by fits and starts, infatuated with another woman, who brought the weight of no common fascination and beauty to bear upon his vacillating nature. There were times when he regretted the folly of his marriage, half wished himself once more free—and yet he loved Dolly still. It wanted but some sudden shock to rouse him to that truth. Some threatening danger to his fond security, some risk that he might loose her even yet, these would have brought him speedily back once more a penitent to his young wife’s feet. Meantime she knew nothing of these inner workings, the child was little versed in reading hearts. She knew that in the days when first they met, when first they wedded, his love had been both passionate and warm. She had' been ail he thought of, all he cared for then—hours, days, weeks went by and fonud him by her side, unchanged, uncooled, unwearied, and she had thought that passionate love would last. She had not dreamt of change, even in the ardor of its expression; now, when he left her, first for hours, then days together, when he rather returned than sought her- fond caress, when she heard him discussing with “Cousin Fred” a world into which she had not entered, people whom she had never seen, interests in which she had no part nor share, what wonder that her ignorant, loving heart grew sick with fear—the fear that he had no longer loved her. She had no one in whom to confide. “A wife should have no confidant but her husband,” was her pure and simple creed, and it was so difficult to confide qer fears of him to himself. She had tried it once or twice, first, when they had been three months married. “Cyril,” she had said, kneeling down suddenly beside him, as he sat smoking and reading the papers, and looking up half-wistfully, half-ador-into his face, “Cyril, are you sure you love me as much as ever?” In an instant the paper and cigar were flung aside, and she was gathered fondly to his em-! brace. “My life, my best beloved!” with a soft shower.
of tender kisses, “have I ever givemyou cause to doubt? Why, dearest?” She had not known why very well a minute since, but now his kisses reassured her. She laughed softly as she answered: “You go out so much with Fred of late. It made me jealous, but I am ashamed of that now; still, why cannot Igo with you? Oh, love, lam only happy by your side!” It was new to him still, this soft, half-hidden, wifely passion breaking out into warm expression now and then. He had not come to that day yet in which it should seem a tyranny and a restraint. Fred and I have business, pet; you shall know all about it some day. You promised, you know, never to worrv me about that Surely my little wife can trust her husband!” Ah, yes; as every woman trusts the man she loves. She would not “worry him,” either; she would be patient and trust. But when, one day, she discovered from their conversation that their “business” of the night befote had been a visit to the opera, a sense of being slighted seized her cruelly. ‘You might have taken me there, I think,” she said, impulsively, and with tears springing in hei eyes. I could not go oiit for an evening’s pleasure and leave you lonely at home. That is howl love.” Cyril was penitent enough. She should go that very night—to-morrow —when she pleased—if she would forgive him.” She aid that readily. The pleasure of forgiving hin\ and being entreated to forgive was worth a thousand operas—although our little country girl had never yet seen one. It was arranged that she should go to-morrow. Fred said nothing at the time. By and bye, however, he held a whispered conversation with Cyril, and when ten o’clock came, carried him off for the night, “on pressing business,” to Dolly’s grief and disgust. “I declare it is too bad,” she cried, pouting and frowning a little. “You are more at Fred’s disposal than you are at mine, though I am your wife!” Half unconsciously she emphasized those last words. Cyril looked somewhat startled. Fred frowned and sighed and shook his head, as who should say: “The chains are beginning to gall.” “You see, my dear boy, if you appear with her in public, there is danger of the whole thing being known. A speech like that, for instance —•I am your wife’—carried to May’s ears by some evasdropper, and where would your chance of inheriting the fortune be? You can’t take her my dear fellow, upon my soul!” This^w as as they left the house. It was in the v suburbs,'and boasted a little garden in front; and. as Cyril closed the gate behind him, the sound of sobs could be heard distinctly from within.
“Poor little thing!” said he, half hesitating; “she’ll fret after me all night long.” Then, yielding- as usual, as Hastings drew him away: “This is a devilish awkward scrape I’ve got into all around! Heigho! Poor Dolly!” Not only did she fret after him all that night, but for many a weary night afterward. And she did not go to the opera, poor child, either. On the contrary, Fred came, just when she had made all ready, to say that Cyril had unexpectedly been summoned out of town. There was a note from him, loving enough, but,, in truth, it was less disappointment than positive sorrow that overcame her at this, so sudden, parting. “You need not lose the opera, however,” insinuated Fred, softly; “I am at your service, cousin. Cyiil could have no objection to your going with me.” He knew better. None knew Cyril’s jealous temperament, or how bitterly he would have resented such a proceeding on the part of his unacknowledged wife, better than Fred. He had lain a trap for the poor little unwary feet, deliberately. It was i-n vain, however; the unsuspecting bird flew.past the snare, without so much as even glancing at it. “You are very kind, Cousin Fred,” with a painfully quivering lip and tremuluos tone, “but I will not trouble you. What would the opera be to me—what is life itself to me—if Cyril, my husband, be away?” Fred looked at her with a momentary twinge of pity—so young, so innocent, so true. Poor Dolly!
To Be Continued. □ nvEOnsrooNT tdiimiie] table. south bound. Chicago Rensselaer La Fayette lodiadapolis v o. f—Mail, Daily 8:30 a m J0:55 a m 12:25 p m No. 33 10:48 pm l:o9pm 4:35 pm No. 39—Milk Dally 3:2opm 0:15 pm 7:55pm No.3.—Express, Daily.. 8:30 p m 11:13 p m 12:40 a m 3:2> a m N 0.31 last mail 2:45 a m Does not stop in Rens’r 8:00 a m No, 45—Local freight. 3:24 p m NORTH BOUND No,4—Mail 7:2oam 4:25 am team 12:25am No. 32 12:30 am 10.18 am 2.05 No. 40-Milk, Daily.... 10:15 a m 7:3lam team No - 3 ° 9:2opm 7:llpm 3:45 pm No. 6 Mail, Exp., Daily6:oo p m 3:24 p m 2:05 p m No. 45—Local Freight 9:30 a m No. 74—Freight 9:05 pm No. 74 carries passengers between Lafayette and Rensselaer. No. 32 stops at Rensselaer only when there are Rensselaer passengers to let off. No 3 -fast mail does nto stop.