Read the book: «They Looked and Loved; Or, Won by Faith»

CHAPTER I.
A WEB OF FATE

"I would sell my soul to Satan for a chest of gold!" cried a despairing voice.

It was a young girl who uttered the words. She was standing under a tree in Central Park, watching the equipages that rolled past in a constant stream. A handsome victoria, in which sat a golden-haired beauty, one of the famed Four Hundred of New York, had just whirled past, and the dust from the wheels had blown into the speaker's face, drawing those reckless words from her lips:

"I would sell my soul to Satan for a chest of gold!"

Of a truth, the girl was fair enough to have exchanged places with the regal woman in the carriage, for her face and form had been shaped in beauty's fairest mold, though the cheek was wan and pale from the pangs of grief and hunger, and the peerless form was draped in worn and shabby garments.

But the fires of pride and ambition burned brightly in the large Spanish-looking dark eyes, as the girl clasped her small ungloved hands together.

"Would you marry me?" asked a low, sneering voice in her ear.

She turned with a start of terror, and it appeared to her as if her reckless words had summoned the arch-fiend himself to her side.

The person who had addressed her was a horribly ugly and grotesque-looking old man.

He was at least sixty-five years of age, bent and stoop-shouldered, with features that were homely to the point of grotesqueness. His nose was large, his mouth wide, his small malevolent gray eyes peered beneath bushy red eyebrows supplemented by grizzled hair and whiskers of the same lurid color. His clothing was scrupulously neat, but well-worn and of cheap material.

"Would you marry me?" repeated this old man, and the beautiful girl gave a start of surprise not unmixed with fear.

"You—you—why, you are as poor as I am!" she gasped, her eyes roving over his shabby attire.

"Appearances are often deceitful, young lady. I look like a beggar, I know, and, truth to tell, I live like one, but I am rich enough to give you your heart's desire—a chest of gold. Did you ever hear of Charles Farnham, the miser?"

"Yes."

"I am Farnham, the miser, young lady, and for once I have a generous impulse. You are young, beautiful, and poor. I am old, ugly, and rich. In the world of fashion such marriages are not uncommon. Will you marry me?"

She gazed into his repulsive features, and shuddered.

"No, no, no!"

"You are very independent," he sneered. "What is your name? Where do you live?"

"My name is no concern of yours. My home will soon be—in—the—river!"

"What mean you, girl?"

"What I have just told you, sir. I am a poor and honest girl, out of work, penniless, and friendless, turned into the streets to-day to starve. Before nightfall I shall end my sorrows in the river."

"A girl with that beautiful face and form need never starve," returned the old miser, with a significant leer.

The pale, young face flushed to a burning crimson, and the large, dark eyes flashed angrily.

"I have been told that many times, sir, but I am an honest girl. I can die, but I cannot do wrong."

"It is too beautiful a day to die," returned the old miser, looking around him at the green grass and flowers and golden sunshine.

The park was crowded. There were throngs on foot, throngs in carriages. Beautiful women were plenty, but none of them could compare with the young girl standing there in the dust of their carriage-wheels talking to the old miser.

"Look at those handsome creatures in their magnificent carriages with liveried servants—look at their silks and jewels. Do you not envy them?" demanded Farnham. "You are more beautiful than they are. It is very foolish of you to drown yourself for lack of bread when I offer you wealth and splendor as my wife."

"But I could not love you. You are old—hideous—and I could not marry any one I did not love; I would rather die."

A fierce gleam came into the old man's eyes.

"You are the proudest pauper I ever saw, yet your very scorn makes you seem more desirable in my eyes," he exclaimed. "Come, give your consent to marry me, and you shall have one of the finest homes in New York—carriages, jewels, Paris dresses, opera-boxes, and an adoring husband. Would you not like all this?"

"All but the husband!" answered the girl frankly and sadly. "Oh, forgive me, sir, but your wealth would not make me happy if I had to live by your side."

"Yet you said just now that you would sell your soul to Satan for a chest of gold."

She shrugged her shoulders.

"I—I spoke thoughtlessly, sir. I did not think that Satan would hear me," she murmured in an undertone.

The miser saw in her eyes a girlish scorn that maddened him; yet, strange to say, it made him more eager to possess this luring though scornful beauty. He stood gazing covetously at her, and suddenly she added archly:

"I have read stories about people who sold themselves to the devil; but you see they had a little respite first, and rather enjoyed life before he claimed them, but if I married you I should be signed, sealed, and delivered over at once to the enemy," and she laughed, a mocking, mirthless laugh, for, in truth, she was desperate with despair and misery.

"You are very complimentary," said her strange suitor, with a contortion of the lip that was a cross between a grin and a sneer. He had an angry longing to strike the beautiful face that looked at him with such defiant scorn, for the girl was as proud as she was poor, and she had her treasured love-dreams like all other young girls—dreams of a rich and handsome lover who might some day woo her for his bride.

Miser Farnham, with a frightful grimace, withdrew from her side, but remained close by, watching the lonely, desolate creature with keen, calculating gray eyes.

Something more than an hour went by, and as the brilliant pageant of wealth and fashion began to fade, the girl drew a long, shuddering sigh, and turned to leave the park. A jibing voice sounded in her ear:

"Are you going to the river now?"

The dark eyes, heavy now with despair, turned upon the face of the old man.

"Yes; I am going to the river," she replied, in a dull, dreary tone.

"Will you wait one moment, please?"

She stopped and looked at him in dull wonder, her face so pallid, her eyes so despairing, that he shuddered to meet them.

"You said just now that Satan always gave a respite to those whose souls he bought; I have pondered deeply over those words, and here is the result: I will give you a respite, if you will marry me. No, don't turn away so recklessly. I mean it, young lady. Marry me to-day, and I will not see you again for a whole year. In the meantime you shall reign a queen in a palace; your life shall be a dream of delight. In my hand is the wand of the magician—gold—yellow gold—and I can accomplish all that I promise, and more! Think! A whole year of luxury, of pleasure, and in that time not one sight of my face. Can you turn from this to the dark, cold river? Surely, then, you must be mad!"

The girl stood like one rooted to the spot, her eyes dark, burning, eager. What was it he was offering? Wealth, ease, happiness—and she was homeless and starving. Her brain reeled; she trembled with excitement.

"A year," repeated old Farnham temptingly, "and in all that time I will not come near you. Only speak the word, and we will go now to a lawyer, I will have a marriage contract drawn, waiving all rights for one year from the date of marriage. Then we will be married. I will secure a chaperon and maid for you, and, leaving you in a home of luxury, take my departure until the months of your respite are over. Perhaps by then your gratitude to me will lead you to look on me with favor—if not, there is still the river"—leering wickedly.

Surely a stranger offer had never been made to a fair and homeless girl. It was romantic in some of its aspects, and it was tempting to the forlorn young creature. A gleam of piteous hope came into the large, sad eyes. A year or more of life, of ease, of comfort.

"No poor girl ever had such a chance before. Surely, you consent," continued the wily tempter.

"Yes, I consent," answered the girl, with stiff lips and unsmiling eyes.

"Good," uttered the miser, with a chuckle of satisfaction. He caught her small ungloved hand and pressed it with awkward gallantry. It was cold as a lump of ice, and fell stiffly from his clasp. Then she looked at him and spoke again, briefly and coldly:

"I am trusting fully in your promises," she said. "Remember, you must not play me false, or weak girl as I am, I shall know how to punish you."

"You can trust me, for I love you," he answered, in wheedling tones. "Come now, let us go at once to a lawyer. We can get a cab at the park gates."

She followed him away from the park, and when seated in the cab on their way to the lawyer's, he said:

"When the contract is drawn up, and we are married, the first thing will be to get you some clothing and jewels suitable for a beautiful young heiress. The next thing will be a chaperon. Well, I know an aristocratic woman, widowed and reduced to poverty, who will gladly take charge of you for the splendid salary and privileges she will get. She has one daughter, who will be a fitting companion for you. These two will make it possible for you to enter at once into the best society. You will be introduced to them as my ward, not as my wife. Then, with your chest of gold, you will enter upon a dazzling career. Your wealth and your beauty, and the prestige your chaperon will confer upon you, will enable you to dazzle the world of society and fashion. Does the picture please you?"

"I must be dreaming," answered the girl, passing her hand across her eyes in a bewildered fashion.

But the rest of the day seemed but a continuation of her dream. They went at once to a lawyer, who drew up the strange marriage-contract; then to a minister, who united them in matrimonial bonds. Next the old miser took his bride to a large store, where he gave orders that she should be supplied with an outfit of clothing suitable to her needs as a young heiress. Obsequious clerks flew to do his bidding; then, drawing her aside, he said:

"I shall leave you here several hours while I go to see the lady who will be your chaperon during the one year that you will pass as my rich ward instead of my wife."

He paused a moment, then added, with an air of hesitancy:

"I have decided that your home shall be for the first few weeks at a seaside residence I own in New Jersey. I will arrange for you to go this evening, as it is but a short distance from New York. Be all ready in your traveling-dress when I call for you with the lady and your maid at six o'clock."

CHAPTER II.
AT PIRATE BEACH

It was midnight, and the moon rode high in the star-spangled sky, and mirrored itself in the ocean as it rolled its long and heavy swells in upon the silvery sands of the shell-strewn shore.

Far up the beach stood an old, graystone mansion, many-gabled and picturesque, surrounded by handsome and spacious grounds dotted with trees and shrubberies. Up in the second story a dim light gleamed from an open casement, and from it leaned a girl watching the beauty of the summer night with dark, solemn eyes—Nita Farnham, the miser's bride.

Charles Farnham, Mrs. Courtney, the chaperon; a maid, and several servants had accompanied Nita here. The old man had stayed only one hour, at the end of which he had accompanied his bride to her chamber and showed her upon the hearth-rug a small iron-bound box containing the promised gold.

"The little chest is yours, all yours," he said, with a strange emphasis. "There are many thousands of dollars in it, but they are nothing to my great wealth. I am many times a millionaire. Ah, Farnham, the miser, eking out his wretched life by selling cigars on the elevated railroad, but they little dream of his stores of hidden wealth. Wait one year more, and they will stare in envy at my Fifth Avenue palace and my peerless bride!"

She shuddered uncontrollably, and, dropping the cold hand he had taken in farewell, he turned away with a grin.

"Good-by, for a year, my beauty!"

She bowed in horror; then locked the door, and stood alone in the luxurious chamber, with the shadow of a fateful tragedy looming over her unconscious head and the price for which she had sold herself—the chest of gold—lying open at her feet.

The maid tapped presently upon the door, but Nita sent her away.

"I shall not need you to-night. You may retire."

But sleep was far from Nita's eyes. Midnight found her leaning from her window, watching the moonlight on the sea and the gray mist creeping up the shore, and murmuring over and over:

"Pirate's Beach! Pirate's Beach! How strange that he should have brought me here! Here of all places in the wide, wide world!"

A strange, beguiling melancholy crept over her as she listened to the voice of the sea as the surf broke continuously upon the beach. The very beauty of the summer night oppressed her.

"I am married, married," she murmured sadly. "I should not mind it if my husband were young and handsome, and we loved each other; but, alas, I am forever cut off from love's sweetness—I am bound by golden chains to that hideous old miser."

Nita was passionate, wilful, and undisciplined. A strange life had been hers, and it had left her like some beautiful, untamed, wild bird—untrammeled by conventionalities. The great, inrolling waves down on the beach seemed crying out to her yearningly:

"Come, come, come. We love you, we understand you!"

She flung a thick woolen shawl over her dark head, and stole down to the beach, and stood there dreamily, her gray-clad form blending softly with the creeping gray mist.

"How familiar it all looks, yet that old man did not dream I had ever been here before. I wonder if old Meg, the fortune-teller, lives here still? What if we meet? What if she recognizes me?"

She ran with a light, quick step along the beach for about half a mile, then paused pantingly close to a tumble-down old shanty that had evidently been constructed out of the black hull of an ancient wreck. From a tiny, smoke-begrimed window a dim light pierced through the murky sea fog, and Nita murmured:

"So she is here still, the old harpy!"

She bent her head, and peered through the dim little panes into the shanty. A smothered cry escaped her lips.

"Good heavens! what is that old man doing here?"

Seated by a table, ornamented with bottles and pipes, Nita had seen an ugly, witchlike old crone in close converse with—Farnham, the miser. It flashed into her mind that he was seeking from old Meg some knowledge of the future which she pretended to foretell, and she smiled in ironical amusement.

"An old man like that ought to know that Meg's pretentions are all humbug," she thought impatiently, and bent her ear to listen to their words. Old Meg was muttering with fierce gesticulations:

"I don't understand your plans nor approve them. Beware how you trifle with me, Farnham, or I will tear her from that stately home. I will make her my slave as in the old days before she ran away from my boy's love, the proud jade!"

Miser Farnham put out a lean hand and gripped the virago's wrist so tightly that she screamed with pain.

"Behave yourself then, you she-devil, and do not presume to question my actions. You will leave the girl alone, remember. She belongs to me now, for I found her after you had let her escape your clutches. No wonder she fled from you. The bare idea of that ruffianly son of yours aspiring to the hand of the proud Juan de Castro's daughter—faugh!"

"You know what he wanted," Meg growled significantly.

"Yes, what he will never get," was the harsh reply, and Farnham only laughed at her incoherent ravings. To Nita it seemed plain that the fiendish pair shared some dark secret between them, and that the man held the balance of power.

"They are plotting against me. They both know the secret of my parentage, although old Meg has told me a hundred times that I was cast up by the sea. What if I go in there and tax them with their villainy, and demand the truth?"

With flashing dark eyes she moved toward the door, and her hand touched the knob to throw it open. A moment's indecision, then her brave heart failed her. She recoiled, shuddering with a sudden fear.

"No, no, I dare not. They might murder me," and she hurried from the spot, with terror-winged feet.

When the old black hulk and its glimmering light were swallowed up in the gloom, Nita stopped a moment to take breath, and turned her exquisite white face toward the sea.

"Oh, ocean, how I love you, you great murmuring mystery!" she cried, stretching out her white hands lovingly, as the surf rolled in.

Hark, what was that blending with the hollow voice of the waves? A human voice, a deep groan as of one dying! Nita uttered a cry of superstitious terror, and ran wildly a few paces farther along the shore. A broken shell pierced the sole of her thin shoe, but she limped painfully on, half-blinded by the salt spray and her own startling tears, when suddenly she stumbled over a body lying directly in her path, and fell prostrate.

CHAPTER III.
"IT IS BETTER THAT YOU DIE."

Nita believed for a moment that she had stumbled over a body cast up by the cruel sea. That strange awe of death overcame her at first, and, struggling painfully to her feet, she was about to hurry from the spot when she was suddenly arrested by a low moan similar to the one that had so startled her when she was several paces away.

She realized that it was not a corpse, it was a living being, lying unconscious at her feet—a living being, wet already with the surf, that went over him each time it rolled in on the shore. The tide was coming in strongly, and presently the fatal undertow would sweep him out to sea.

"It must not be!" she cried.

Sinking down on her knees, she gazed into the white, upturned face for some sign of life.

"Oh, pitiful Heaven, he is dead!" cried Nita wildly, and she laid her white hand with an involuntary, tender caress on the broad, white brow, from which the wet masses of brown curls fell carelessly back.

Did her touch recall him to life? The broad breast heaved suddenly, the eyelids fluttered open, and the young girl met the wondering gaze of a pair of eyes that seemed to pierce her heart.

The next moment a giant wave rolled in and flung her prostrate against his breast. Drenched and shivering, Nita struggled to her knees again.

"You are alive, thank Heaven," she exclaimed gladly. "Oh, speak to me, sir; let me help you to rise, for if we remain here, the sea will sweep us both away."

She had to bend her ear close to his lips to catch the faint reply:

"I am—wounded—and have no—strength—to rise. Go—save yourself—leave me—to—my—fate!"

It must have cost him a severe effort to utter the disjointed words, for with the last one his eyes closed and he became unconscious.

And out upon the ocean Nita saw the white-caps rolling in to the shore, as if eager to seize and carry off their helpless victim. From her pallid lips came a cry of despair, and, seizing his shoulders, she tried to drag him further up the beach.

"God help me to save him," she prayed aloud, for the heavy body resisted her efforts, and she was distinctly conscious of as strong a yearning to save this man's life as though he had been a beloved friend of long, long years.

A happy thought came to her, and, dragging the strong woolen shawl from her head, she passed it with difficulty under his body, knotting the long ends on his breast. Just then another strong wave engulfed them. Clinging to the end of the shawl, she bent down and let it rush and roar above them, with its thunder of sound, and almost resistless fury of force.

With her whole heart uplifted in prayer, Nita grasped the ends of the shawl, and slowly, wearily, but determinedly, dragged the heavy form of her companion far up the beach; and within the gates of her home, where she sank down, exhausted, and gazed anxiously into his unconscious face, her heart convulsed by an agonizing yearning that he might live.

But the features remained still and lifeless, the broad breast did not heave with the faintest sign of life. She noted even then with the eyes of an artist his wonderful beauty.

"Oh, the pity of it that one so beautiful should die like this," she sobbed, and laid her hand caressingly upon his brow. Then she started as from a trance, and withdrew her hand from his brow, sobbing under her breath: "It is better that you died, for if you had lived you would have lured my heart away!"

She shivered as the keen breeze swept over her drenched form, bearing with it the intoxicating scent of June flowers blooming riotously in the neglected gardens, and rising wearily, she toiled up to the house and aroused the servants.

They gazed at her in amazement when she briefly explained the situation, and commanded them to bring the unconscious man into the house, and send for a doctor.

When the man-servant and the housekeeper had brought the dripping form and laid it on a bed, the woman cried out in wonder:

"What a strange thing! Why, I know this young man, Miss Farnham! He is Mr. Dorian Mountcastle."

And the pale young creature, leaning over the pillow, looked at her with dark, eager eyes, and murmured:

"Is he dead? Do you think that he is dead?"

"The Lord knows, honey; he looks like it, that's certain. But we can tell better when the doctor comes. Now do you go right up to your room, please, and get some dry clothes on before you catch your death of cold, while we tend to the young man," pushing her gently toward the door.

Nita threw one long look of mute despair upon Dorian Mountcastle's still and beautiful face, with the long, dark lashes lying so heavily upon the death-white cheeks, and moved silently out of the room, dragging herself wearily up the stairs, encumbered by her dripping wet garments, that left little rills of salt-water wherever she moved.

As she went along the dim corridor to her room her lips moved ever so slightly. She was whispering:

"Dorian! Dorian! What a soft, sweet name!"

When Nita had left her room, obeying the strange impulse that had tempted her out to the shore in the dead hour of the night, she had forgotten the open chest of gold upon the floor; she had even left the door standing slightly ajar with a dim light burning on the dainty dressing-table.

It was just the same now as she stepped across the threshold, little pools of salt-water sinking into the rich carpet. She stopped then, staring before her in wild-eyed horror.

Upon the rug crouched the haglike woman she had seen but a little while ago, cursing Miser Farnham in the old shanty. Her back was turned to Nita, her clawlike, skinny hands were diving into the chest of gold. She was filling her apron with the glittering coins. She had not heard the light footstep behind her, but suddenly a sharp voice rang in her ear:

"Put back that gold, you vile thief! What are you doing here?"

The old woman started so violently that the corners of her apron fell, and the gold pieces rolled in every direction. Springing wildly to her feet, she confronted Nita with the horrible, burning eyes of a murderess.

"I came here to kill you, Juanita de Castro, and to avenge my son!" she hissed, springing on her victim like a tigress.

Ere Nita could cry for help, she was borne down by her enemy's fierce onslaught, her white throat gripped in a clutch of death.