Kathleen's Diamonds; or, She Loved a Handsome Actor

"The young village maid, when with flowers she dresses
Her dark, flowing hair for some festival day,
Will think of thy face till, neglecting her tresses,
She mournfully turns from the mirror away."

"Poor thing! she must have been a beauty," the railway employé said, as he contemplated Kathleen's cold and beautiful face. "Come, let us carry her into the house and get a doctor. Maybe she ain't really dead, only swooned," he continued, hopefully; and between them they bore her in, and laid her on a bench made soft with their overcoats.

Then the man ran to his instrument, which was ticking busily away, and directly said:

"Your train is several hours late, sir; so if you'll stay here, I'll run and fetch a doctor."

He flashed out at the door, and in the illy-lighted, shabby little waiting-room Ralph Chainey was alone with beautiful dead Kathleen, so cruelly murdered.

He knelt down by her side in an agony of dumb despair. He gazed through blinding tears upon the sweet white face; he took her cold, white hand and kissed the wound upon it, and then he whispered, as if she could hear him:

"Beautiful Kathleen! you will never know now how dearly I have loved you since first I saw your face! You are dead—dead! and soon the dark earth will cover you away forever from the sight of men. Ah! if only those dead lips could unclose long enough to tell me the name of your dastardly murderer, I would pursue him to the ends of the earth, but that I would bring him to punishment!"

He bent his head until his pale lips touched the rigid ones of the dead girl. They were icy cold, but the soft curls of bright hair that lightly brushed his forehead, how soft, how silken, how alive, they felt! But she was dead—this girl who had blushed last night beneath his glance, whose voice had been so sweet and low when she spoke to him.

"Ah, Fate is a cruel lord,
A tyrant at best his rule;
And we learn by sin and sword
While here in his rigid school.
Ah, me. I left her with hopes beguiled,
We parted, and Fate looked on and smiled."

The shock and horror of the occasion began to overcome him, strong man as he was; and his head reeled; consciousness forsook him. He fell in a crouching position upon the floor, where he lay until the doctor entered, followed by his gentle, girlish wife.

"Oh, the dear, sweet, pretty creature! what an awful way for her to meet such a fate! The murderer ought to be burned at the stake!" exclaimed the young wife, sorrowfully, and her tears fell fast on Kathleen's face.

Doctor Churchman examined the girl's throat carefully, and said, with a deep sigh:

"Poor thing, she is quite dead! There is nothing I can do for her but to carry her over to our house and take care of the body until her friends come."

A deep groan startled him, and Ralph Chainey staggered dizzily to his feet.

"Ah, sir! so you have recognized this young woman, Dickson tells me. Well, please dictate a telegraph message to her friends at once," Doctor Churchman said to him, gently, for the despairing look on the young man's face touched him with sympathy.

"He must have been in love with the murdered girl," he said to himself.

Ralph went into the little office and sent a message off to Mrs. Carew's address:

"I have found Kathleen Carew here dead under very mysterious circumstances. Please come immediately, as I am compelled to leave."

By one of those strange rulings of fate that so startle us at times, a mistake was made at the Boston office in taking the message, and when received by Mrs. Carew the telegram ran thus:

"I have married Kathleen Carew, and nothing can change it. Please God in Heaven, I am comforted to know it."

Mrs. Carew raved with anger, and the very next day the Boston papers published, as a sensational item, Miss Carew's elopement and marriage to the handsome actor, who charmed all women's hearts out of their keeping—Ralph Washburn Chainey.

Mrs. Carew's active malice could invent but one sting for the heart of her step-daughter at so short a notice. She cabled at once to Vincent Carew in London a garbled account of Kathleen's elopement with an actor, one of the lowest and most unprincipled professionals who had ever disgraced the stage.

Vincent Carew had just been buying his ticket to return to America. His health was restored, and his heart ached for a sight of his bonny Kathleen, his beloved daughter.

Close against his heart lay her picture, and her last sweet, loving letter, in which she implored him to come home to his unhappy child. She did not mention her step-mother's unkindness, but a vague suspicion stirred within him and prompted his speedy return.

His ticket was bought, his luggage, with so many beautiful gifts for Kathleen stored in it, was sent down to the steamer. He smiled as he thought of the surprise in store for his "home folks."

Upon this complacent mood came the malicious cablegram from his irate wife.

The revulsion from his pleasant mood to keen wrath was terrible.

Vincent Carew had a dislike to actors in general, of which no one understood the origin.

The thought of his bonny Kathleen married to one of this abhorred class drove the proud man beside himself with shame and rage. For an hour he raged and stormed about his room until he was on the verge of apoplexy.

Having exhausted the first fury of his anger, he flung himself into a cab and was driven in haste to a lawyer's office.

His last act on leaving England was to execute his last will and testament, in which he angrily disinherited Kathleen, his only child. Leaving the document with the lawyer for safe keeping, with instructions to forward it to America in case of his loss at sea, the angry man was driven down to the steamer, and embarked for home—the home that would be so lonely now without the light of Kathleen's starry, dark eyes.

Did he repent his harsh and hasty deed, that haughty man, as he paced the steamer's deck those long moonlight nights thinking of his dead wife—lovely, childish Zaidee—and the daughter she had left him—willful, spirited Kathleen? Did he shudder with fear as he remembered that should anything happen to him at sea, the cruel will that disinherited the young girl would be irrevocable? Or did he gloat over the prospect of her sufferings with her impecunious husband? No one knew, for in his bitter trouble and humiliation he stood proudly aloof from all, cultivating no one's friendship, seemingly absorbed in his own thoughts, until that night—that night of awful storm and darkness—when fatal disaster overtook the good ship Urania, and she was burned at sea, her fate sending a thrill of horror through the heart of the world when the tidings became known with Vincent Carew's name among the lost.

CHAPTER XII.

"KATHLEEN, I SWEAR THAT I WILL AVENGE YOUR MURDER!"

My idol is dead—my queen!
I stand by her frozen clay,
And bitterly wail, "Kathleen,
Come back to my heart, I pray!"
But only the moaning storm winds sigh,
"Come back, come back!" as they hurry by.

    W. J. Benners, Jr.

Gentle, womanly hands prepared lovely, hapless Kathleen for the grave, and she was laid upon a white bier in Doctor Churchman's pretty parlor. Very pale and beautiful she looked, and as Ralph Chainey bent over her for one farewell look, she did not seem like one dead, but just asleep. It even seemed as though the white flowers on her breast moved softly, as with a gentle breath; but when he hastened to hold a mirror over her lips, it remained clear, without any moisture. He laid it down with a bitter groan.

His delayed train would arrive in a few moments and he was compelled to leave the dead girl's side for a death-bed. He must leave Kathleen here with these kind, sympathetic people; but he would return as soon as he could; for there must be an inquest, at which he must be the chief witness.

He wondered how her relatives would take it—her stately step-mother, her pretty step-sister, who had told him such unblushing falsehoods about Kathleen.

"Helen Fox will be sorry, I know, for she loved Kathleen dearly," he murmured aloud. Tears fell from his beautiful brown eyes upon the angelic face, and he went on talking to the girl in a low monotone, almost forgetting that she could not hear him, or perhaps fancying that her gentle spirit hovered near: "My darling, you will never know how dearly I loved you, nor how I shall mourn you all my life long! Once I saved your life and oh! why did not Heaven give me that joy again? Why did I come too late to-night?" With a groan, he laid his hand softly on the one that clasped the white flowers on her breast, and added: "Kathleen, I swear that I will avenge your murder, if it takes me all my life to do it and costs me all my fortune!"

He bent and pressed his lips on her white brow and her soft curls, took a white rosebud from under her pulseless hand and placed it in his breast, then he was gone. Presently, when the excited villagers began filing in to look at the murdered girl, they saw a tear-drop that had fallen from his eyes glittering like a pearl on the bosom of her black silk dress.

The little community was wild with horror and excitement at the finding of the murdered girl in their midst, and when it became known that she had been recognized as a great Boston heiress, the furore became even greater. The telegraph wires flashed the news from town to city, and the newspapers that one day had chronicled the news of Kathleen's elopement, printed twenty-four hours afterward in flaring head-lines the awful story of her robbery and murder.

Even Mrs. Carew, wicked as she was, paled to the lips as she read it, and Alpine fainted outright. Weak, selfish, cruel as the girl was, she had cared for Kathleen more than she knew. The girl's charms had won upon her, in spite of herself.

"Good heavens! that actor, he has robbed and murdered her, the fiend!" Mrs. Carew cried, violently. "He is even worse than I thought!"