Overland Tales Part 25

Wheaton not taken off his gla.s.ses when Charlie came in he might have noticed an unusual flush on the young man's face; as it was he shook hands with him so cordially that Charlie's color subsided somewhat, and his heart beat less loud for a minute.

I doubt that either the old gentleman or the young one remember just how the conversation was opened; but in less than fifteen minutes Mr.

Wheaton, with motions something like those of an enraged turkey-gobbler, and a color darkening face and neck fully equal to the intensest shade that bird can boast of on its gills, flew to the door, and called on Lola to make her appearance, in no pleasant tones. Together with Lola, as though divining the trouble drawing near, came Mrs. Wheaton, though so noiselessly, through a side-door, that no one observed her at first.

"Lola," sputtered Mr. Wheaton, "I have spent more money on your education than both your other sisters together ever cost me; and now here comes this young fellow and tells me, as coolly as you please, that you are engaged to him, and the like nonsense. Engaged, indeed; you are not eighteen yet, and he hasn't got a cent to his name. I thought I had brought up my children to love me at least, if I cannot compel them to obedience; and if you, Lola, go off and leave me in my old age--go away from my house with a beggar--you who have been petted and spoiled; you on whom I had built the hopes of my declining years, you will never darken my doors again, but live a beggar and an outcast forever away from your parents' home."

Mrs. Wheaton had approached the group, and Charlie turned to her.

"It is not as a poor man that I claim your daughter for my bride; see, I am rich--worth a hundred thousand this moment," he drew a package of papers from his pocket; "and I have the ambition and the power to ama.s.s a fortune, and place your daughter where she will never miss the comforts and luxuries of her childhood's home."

He stepped over to where Mr. Wheaton stood listening in incredulous silence to what the young man said.

"And may I ask from where this fabulous wealth springs so suddenly?" he asked, breaking the silence.

"I own to having tried my luck, against the strict advice and wish of my employers, in mining speculations. The venture has proved successful. I say nothing in extenuation of the fault--if fault I have committed--save that I wanted to offer to Lola a home which should not be too great a contrast to her father's house. Old Bingham--"

"Old Bingham," interrupted Mr. Wheaton, purple in the face; "and the name of the mine?"

"The Golden Lamp," answered Charlie, proudly, holding up for Mr.

Wheaton's inspection the papers he had drawn from his pocket.

"Lola!" shouted Mr. Wheaton in his shrillest tones, seizing the girl by the arm and dragging her away from Charlie's side, as if the young man had been afflicted with a sudden leprosy, "come to me, my child. He's a beggar, I tell you--a beggar and worse; for all his friends will turn from him for his indiscretion. The whole thing is a gull; there isn't gold enough in the mine to show the color. Here's the paper. Where did you have your eyes this morning?"

Charlie stood like one paralyzed; his fingers clutched tighter the roll of papers in his hand, and he gazed with a strange, bewildered stare into Lola's eyes, as though trying hard to understand what the dreadful things he heard meant. Lola seemed to comprehend quicker, and the look she bent on Charlie was full of tender pity, as she watched the lines that black, hopeless despair was writing on his face. Mrs. Wheaton had s.n.a.t.c.hed the paper from her husband's hand and was reading:

"The chosen few who thought that for once they could fleece the golden lamb driven quietly into a little corner for their own benefit, have come out leaving their own wool behind. We are speaking of the Golden Lamb Mine, which was to have been paraded in the market about the first of January, to lead astray with its deceptive glitter all who were foolish enough to believe without seeing. The few shares that had already been disposed of 'to strictly confidential friends,' by the shrewd managers of the concern, have gone down from five hundred dollars to five dollars, at which figure they went begging late in the afternoon yesterday, no one having confidence in a swindle so promptly and completely exposed."

"Lola," it was Charles's voice, but so changed and broken that Mrs.

Wheaton dropped the paper to look into his face.

Lola sprang to his side, and he groped for her hand as though its slender strength could uphold the man who but an hour before looked able to move mountains from their place. Blindness seemed to have fallen on his eyes, for he repeated the call when the girl stood close beside him.

"My darling," she murmured, seizing the hand that was still seeking hers, and, heedless of her mother's presence or her father's wild gestures, she pressed the icy fingers to her lips, breathing broken words of love and comfort into Charlie's ear.

"Lola!" the name again rang through the room; it was her mother's cry, and the sharp terror in it struck like a knife to the girl's heart, "your father--quick! Would you kill him? Do you not see--he is dying!

Oh, my child, my child, cast off everything, but do not load your soul with his death! G.o.d help me to guide you." There was something in the woman's eye that spoke of more than alarm at the symptoms of an approaching attack, such as she had always feared for the father of her children.

She had never loved this man with the absorbing pa.s.sion of which her heart was capable; but as she knelt by his side, giving him every aid in her power in a frenzied, hurried manner, so different from her usual placid ways, her wide-opened eyes seemed to look back through the shadows and mists of long, dreary years, and she spoke wildly and rapidly to her child.

"Oh, Lola! don't blacken your soul with this crime--I too loaded the curse on me; I have borne it for years--and all the useless remorse, the vain, bitter regrets. Give up all you hold dear in life, but do not, do not try to find your way to happiness over the stricken form of your father!"

Lola shook like a reed in the storm, and breaking away from Charlie she knelt by her mother's side.

"Father!" she pleaded, "father, speak to me--call me your pet again--your dearest child; see me--I will never, never leave you, father, only speak to me once again."

No one heeded Charlie, and he staggered from the house, muttering between his clinched teeth:

"So they will all turn from me--and she was the first."

Hours pa.s.sed ere the old man found speech and consciousness again; and the physician who had been summoned shook his head warningly. "It was a narrow escape," he said; "careful, old man, careful. What is it the Bible, or some other good book says--'let not your angry pa.s.sions rise?'

Who's been vexing you?"

Lola, his special favorite, whose eyes he had seen opening on the light of this world, was not present, or her ghastly face might have prevented him from asking the question.

Mrs. Wheaton was again the quiet, sad-faced woman, solicitous only for the comfort and well-doing of the man who had been to her the most indulgent of husbands. It was hard to say what was pa.s.sing in her heart; perhaps the crater had long since burned out, and the silver threads running through her raven hair was the snow that had gathered on the cold ashes. For Lola there was neither rest nor sleep, and she insisted on watching through the night by her father's bedside, though a.s.sured that there was no necessity for keeping watch.

Early the next morning she went out, not clandestinely, but with a determined step and an expression in her eye than which nothing could be more sad and hopeless. She returned after many hours, and though her eyes had lost none of their dreary expression, there seemed to be some purpose written in them that could also be traced in the lines drawn since yesterday about the firmly closed mouth. Her mother, concealed by the heavy curtains drawn back from the window, watched her gloomily as she pa.s.sed through the room gathering up some music that lay scattered on the piano, as though she meant never to touch its ivory keys again.

"Ah, me!" she sighed, "she is young to learn the bitter lesson: that those who have a heart must crush out its love before they can go through life in peace! Dolores--it seemed like an atonement to call her so; but would I had not given her the fatal name. G.o.d will help her to forget--as He has given me peace."

The darkening eyes, straying far out over the waters, seemed for a moment ready to belie the boast of her lips, so restless and uneasy was their light; but the discipline of half a lifetime a.s.serted its power, and she went from the room, calm and self-possessed as ever.

Little did she dream of the cause of what she deemed Lola's uncomplaining resignation. The girl had seen her lover, and, unspeakably wretched as he was, she could say no word to comfort him, but held his hand in hers, with all the love her heart contained beaming from her glorious eyes. Only once did he clasp her to his heart in a pa.s.sionate embrace: she had sealed the promise to be his, with a kiss. They would enter on their new life together at the beginning of the year. They would be wedded to each other on New-Year day--but the priest who received their vows should be Death, and their marriage-bed the bottom of the bay.

Charlie's name was never mentioned in the Wheaton mansion; the events of Christmas morning seemed banished from the memory of the three people who had partic.i.p.ated in them. There was nothing to indicate that a change of any kind had taken place or was likely to take place. Once only in the course of the week Miss f.a.n.n.y remarked laughingly, that she thought Lola was preparing to elope, because all her books, dresses, and trinkets were so neatly packed together. But as no one seemed to join in Miss f.a.n.n.y's pleasantry, the young lady betook herself to her usual pastime--the novel and the lounge.

During the week the weather changed, and heavy storms swept over land and sea, stirring to the depths the waters on which Lola gazed for many a half hour with a kind of stony satisfaction. She had not seen Charlie since the first day of the week, and she often muttered to herself, "Far better death than a life without my love."

At last New-Year's morning dawned clear and bright, like a morning in early spring. At an early hour the Wheaton mansion became the scene of great rejoicing. There was a vigorous pull at the bell, and when the door was opened a robust young fellow made his way very unceremoniously into the breakfast-room, and a fresh Irish voice with its rich brogue burst out:

"Plaize, mam, and it's a splendid b'y; and nurse says I'm not to stay a minit, but you're to come right aff."

Mr. Wheaton threatened to go off with joy this time, his face turned so red.

"A boy, mother--think of that!" he shouted, forgetting for once in his life what he deemed his dignity, and for the first time calling his wife anything but Mrs. Wheaton in the presence of strangers or servants.

"Pat, my boy, here's something to drink his health [Thank'ee, sur;--and it's a half aigle, shure], but not now; mind you, go right back and stay there till I come, or I'll skin you alive."

After this unprecedentedly familiar and jocular speech, he turned Pat out of doors, kissed his wife frantically and rushed up-stairs to dress, as though the boy's life and safety depended on his taking immediate charge of him. In the meantime the door-bell had been rung again, and Mr. Wheaton stopped when halfway up the stairs, there was something so frightened and excited in the manner of the lady who entered the hall-door.

"Miss Lola is at home, I think," said the servant in answer to her question; and Mrs. Wheaton, crossing the hall at this moment, turned to look at the strange woman.

A little scream, and Miss Myrick--for it was she--asked of Lola, who stood white and ghostly in the doorway, "Is that your mother, Lola? Oh, then I understand it all. Poor Charlie? The woman who could--"

Mrs. Wheaton stepped quickly forward. "Stop, Augusta Myrick; not one word more before my child."

Mr. Wheaton had descended the stairs, and sprung to his wife, who seemed ready to sink, but Lola, unheeding both, clutched Miss Myrick's arm.

"Charlie?" she gasped.

"Oh, Lola! he's gone; his room is empty and all his papers have been stolen or destroyed. My poor, poor boy."

"Gone--to his death without me! How cruel--but I am coming, Charlie; I will follow you."

Her eyes were wandering, and she broke from Miss Myrick's grasp.

"Hold her," cried Miss Myrick, "hold her. Charlie is dead and she is crazed. Help!"

Mr. Wheaton was beside himself, and Mrs. Wheaton flung her arms about Lola, who was struggling to free herself. At last her father's strong hands bore her to a sofa in the nearest room, and as he laid her down the weary eyes closed and the fainting head drooped back.