NINA’S PERIL.

A Novel.

BY

MRS. ALEX. McVEIGH MILLER.

NEW YORK: Copyright, 1886. G. W. Dillingham, Publisher, Successor to G. W. Carleton & Co. LONDON: S. LOW, SON & CO. MDCCCLXXXVII

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Stereotyped by Samuel Stodder, 42 Dey Street, N. Y.

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DEDICATION.

TO ALEXANDER McVEIGH MILLER, AS A SOUVENIR OF REGARD, AND IN GRATEFUL ACKNOWLEDGMENT OF THE WARM SYMPATHY AND WISE COUNSELS THAT HAVE AIDED AND ENCOURAGED ME IN MY LITERARY EFFORTS.

YOUR WIFE.

October, 1886.

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CONTENTS.

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CHAPTER I. A BEAUTIFUL FACE.

“A phial of laudanum, please!”

The sleepy clerk on night duty at the drug store looked up with a start. He had not heard any one enter, but here stood a young girl by the counter, looking at him with large, sombre dark eyes, that shone wierdly out of a white, white face, framed in tresses of disordered golden hair—a face beautiful beyond all dreams of fancy but for its strange, marble pallor, and the anguished eyes out of which gleamed a desperate purpose, as she extended a snowy ungloved hand with a silver coin shining in the rosy palm, and repeated in a low, eager voice:

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“A phial of laudanum, please.”

It was a wild wintry night in the great city, and there were none abroad except those whom necessity forced to be out. The air was full of keen, fine flakes of snow, that was frozen by the piercing wind even before it fell to the earth. The cold was intense.

The hour was late, and all the shops were closed except the drug stores that stood open by night as well as by day, always at the service of the sick and suffering. Even these, with their great red and green lights glowing abroad like friendly beacons to those who were drifting on the perilous seas of sickness and disease, were mostly deserted to-night, and in this one, where that unlooked-for customer entered, the weary clerk dozed at his post, and her sharp, eager young voice roused him from a disconnected dream.

He sprang to his feet and looked at her, but his sleepy eyes did not take in at first all the misery of that beautiful young face.

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“What can I do for you, miss?” he inquired, with a tone of irrepressible admiration in his voice; and the girl reiterated her formula impatiently:

“A phial of laudanum, please.”

Then he looked at her more closely. He saw the misery in the great, heavy black eyes, with the purple shadows lying darkly beneath them, saw how awfully white and anguished was the lovely face with its perfect features, sharpened and refined by keen suffering. He hesitated before he complied with her request.

“We do not usually sell poisons without a doctor’s prescription. Have you one?” he inquired.

She looked at him imploringly, and clasped her delicate hands together. “No, I have not, but for God’s sake do not refuse me,” she cried, almost wildly. “I must have the laudanum! I am suffering so much, and it will still this terrible pain.” She pressed her clenched hands against her pale cheek with a suppressed groan.

The dawning suspicions of the drug clerk were instantly diverted by her expressive movement.

“Oh, if it is the toothache, all right,” he said. [Pg 10]“Here it is, miss. A few drops on a bit of cotton will soon relieve you; be careful not to use too much.”

She caught it quickly from his hand with a sudden low, hysterical laugh.

“Thank you a thousand times,” she said. “Oh, yes, I will be very careful; but it is not the toothache, it is the heartache I am going to cure.”

She murmured the last words in an undertone and hurried toward the door before she had done speaking. He saw her pause in the doorway an instant, saw her pull the stopple quickly from the little phial, then she put the deadly drug to her lips, drained the last drop, and threw the empty vessel far from her upon the pavement. All seemed to pass in an instant of time, and before the horrified clerk recovered from the trance of horror with which he beheld her terrible deed, she stepped quickly out into the street, and disappeared in the gloom and darkness of the inclement night.

“Great heaven!” gasped the clerk, springing forward in hot pursuit.

He gained the door, sprang into the street at one [Pg 11]bound, and looked about him with straining eyes. The drug store stood on the corner of two streets that intersected each other; he looked hastily up one street and then the other, but vainly. Even in that moment of time the girl had disappeared from his sight like a spirit. Not a person was to be seen, and the hard, white snow freezing sleetily upon the pavements, and shining like diamonds under the light of the flaring gaslamps, held no impression of the light feet that had sped over them so swiftly, and borne her beyond his ken.

My readers, let us turn back a few pages in the tragic life-history of that unhappy creature, and read the story of those heavy sorrows that had driven the young and beautiful girl recklessly and wickedly forward upon the terrible shoals of self-destruction.

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CHAPTER II. WAITING AND HOPING.

A cloudy gray sky, a chill gray sea, a stretch of sandy beach against a back-ground of rugged hills covered with trees, through whose leafless branches the March wind was eerily moaning. In all the grey monotony there was no touch of color or brightness, save the figure of a girl in a scarlet merino dress and turban, standing on the shell-strewn shore gazing seaward at a noble steamer bounding over the waves toward the landing that was hidden [Pg 13]from sight by a turn in the shore, perhaps a quarter of a mile distant.

The girl had come down from the great red brick mansion that crowned a tall bluff, perhaps half a mile away, and she had no companion save the great shaggy, black Newfoundland that crouched at her feet, gazing up at her with mute, adoring eyes of almost human intelligence, as she chanted low and softly to herself:

Then she looked down with a laugh that was half sad, into the big brown eyes of her canine friend.

“Ah, Lion, old fellow, what a silly pair we are, coming out in this wild weather watching for a ship that never comes in,” she said. “Every day for years we have come down to the wharf to wait for one who never comes. Will it always be thus, I wonder? Shall I go on waiting and hoping and loving till my hair turns gray, and will he never come?

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Half unconsciously she hummed over another verse of her song:

Lion leaned his shaggy mane caressingly against her, and while she patted his black head with her white, jeweled hand, the steamer touched the wharf, landed a solitary passenger, and moved on majestically upon its way.

Nina Strangemore looked up after a minute, gave a smothered sigh, and turned back to her dog.

“Ah, Lion, my good dog, it is the same old story, ‘He cometh not,’” she said; and the magnificent animal gave a piteous whine, as if he comprehended the full measure of her wistful disappointment. He fell to licking her hands and gazing up at her with his dumb, affectionate eyes full of a mute sympathy that was almost painful to its recipient. She pushed him almost pettishly from her, and looked out again at the wide sea and the fast receding ship.

“How they come and go over the water like [Pg 15]white-winged birds,” she sighed, with a patient sorrow in her voice. “Ah, me, will they never bring Talbot home?”

A sound, a step! She turned with a start.

A gentleman was coming along the level sands toward her—a tall, bronzed, handsome man, whose eyes lingered upon her with startled, irrepressible admiration. She met his gaze, and the rich color flew into her cheeks, and the light of a sudden, supreme happiness flashed into her great dark eyes. She made a few steps toward him, then quickly checked herself, and stood waiting with a bounding pulse and wildly beating heart.

The stranger came nearer, lifted his hat with courteous grace to the solitary girl, and passed on, followed by a low, inquiring growl from Lion, who did not quite know whether to regard him as friend or enemy.

But Nina Strangemore gazed like one petrified after the retreating form, and when it had passed from her sight, she knelt down upon the wet sands, put her arms around Lion’s black mane, and hid her white face there.

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“Oh, Lion, Lion,” she sobbed, in an abandon of girlish sorrow. “He is home at last! Talbot, my husband, and he did not speak to me; he did not even remember me, his little Nina, his loving girl-wife! Oh, what shall we do, Lion, old fellow?”

CHAPTER III. SKETCHING THE PAST.

While she kneels there desolately on the cold wet sands, we will briefly sketch her past for you, reader.

She was an heiress, this dark-eyed girl sobbing there as forlornly as if she had not a friend on earth. She had houses and land and gold, but all her vast possessions had not kept her life from being sad and lonely, for she was an orphan, and she had neither kith nor kin save a sour maiden aunt who lived with her in lonely state at the great house up yonder on the high bluff.

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Five years ago she had been Nina Selwyn, a spoiled little girl of thirteen years, the idol of her father and her gentle step-mother, for Nina’s own mamma had died when her first-born was a toddling baby. Mr. Selwyn had mourned her devoutly for five years, and then he married a beautiful young widow with one son, Talbot Strangemore.

The second marriage resulted happily, perhaps the more happily because no children came to usurp the place of the loving, petted, and yet willful little Nina. Mrs. Selwyn was a good woman, and having no daughter of her own lavished all the love she could spare from her son upon her second husband’s only child. She was neither calculating nor mercenary yet as the years rolled on, vague, pleasant dreams came to her of a future in which the lives of Talbot Strangemore, her son, and of Nina Selwyn, her little step-daughter, were bound together with a flowery chain.

Mr. Selwyn shared these pleasant dreams. He had a profound admiration for his step-son, then a youth ten years the senior of little Nina.

Talbot Strangemore merited all the loving admiration [Pg 18]and pride that was bestowed upon him. He was noble, gifted, and remarkably handsome in a bold, manly style. He was in college, but all his vacations were spent at Selwyn Heights, his step-father’s stately residence, where he enjoyed himself intensely in the manly sports of hunting, fishing and rowing, delighting in such recreations after the confinement of his Alma Mater.

Little Nina, whose spirits were as gay and light as a wild bird’s, was his frequent companion at these times, and the young heiress regarded her step brother with a species of hero-worship that was carefully fostered by her parents, who, while they encouraged the affection of the pair, tried to preserve it from a fraternal cast. Nina was never permitted to call Talbot her big brother any more than he was allowed to term her his little sister. They were never suffered to forget that there was no tie of real kinship between them.

“For if they grow up loving each other as brother and sister they will never think of each other in any nearer, dearer light,” argued Mrs. Selwyn, and she took the greatest pains to manage affairs agreeably to the aim she had in view, although she gave no inkling [Pg 19]of her designs to the boy and girl for whom in innocent unconsciousness she was laying up a heritage of woe.

Both she and Mr. Selwyn thought it would be for the happiness of both, if they could one day be united in marriage. Talbot was so manly and gifted, but had very little money, while Nina had so much, and although she was a delicate, thin little creature now, she gave promise of future beauty of a rare and unusual type, for she had hair of the real golden shade and eyes as dark as pansies. She was thin and sunburned now, for they could never keep her in the house, but the tan would wear off when she was a young lady and she would be a real beauty, Mrs. Selwyn averred knowingly, and, managed rightly, Talbot could not help falling in love with the young heiress.

But when Talbot graduated at twenty-three with all the honors of his Alma Mater, Nina at thirteen was not making any very rapid strides toward being a charming young lady. She was such a willful, capricious, yet withal loving little thing, and her wishes were so absolute that her education had been dreadfully neglected. Mr. Selwyn loved her too [Pg 20]well to send her away from him to school, so he had employed governesses at home, who one after another resigned their situations in despair, declaring that Miss Selwyn would not attend to her books, and that she was a wretched little romp, who cared for nothing but boats, and dogs, and horses, and rough out-door sports.

Unfortunately, these charges were all quite true. Nina did hate books, and she did love to be out of doors all the time, gathering flowers in the splendid gardens and conservatories of Selwyn Heights, or boating fearlessly on the billowy sea, or riding at break-neck pace on her spirited white pony, with a grumbling groom galloping behind her. Thus life went on, until she was thirteen, and from time to time her doting parents would say, excusingly:

“The child is so thin and delicate that it is best to let her gain health and strength in her outdoor pursuits, that she first learned to love when she was Talbot’s little companion. There is time enough yet to restrain her and educate her before she is a young lady.”

Poor little Nina Selwyn, those were her happiest [Pg 21]days—those free, untroubled days that were soon to be only a memory—the sweetest memory in a life that in the coming time was to have many a thorn among its roses. For suddenly, from a sky that had hitherto been cloudless and serene, fell a swift, terrible bolt of fate.

Just before Talbot came home to prepare for the European tour that was to follow his college course, Mr. Selwyn died suddenly one evening while sitting peacefully in his chair watching a beautiful sunset scene. All his affairs were found in perfect order at the reading of the will. His large fortune was divided equally between his idolized daughter and his beloved wife, the latter being appointed Nina’s guardian.

But the loving wife did not live to discharge the sacred trust bequeathed her. She was a nervous, delicately-organized woman, and she never recovered the shock of her husband’s sudden death. In two weeks she followed him to the grave, leaving behind her the two whom she loved so well, and for whose future she had so hopefully plotted and planned—a future which she influenced as much as her limited [Pg 22]time on earth would permit her, for before she died, she had joined the hands of the beloved son and the simple, unformed girl of thirteen—had seen consummated the marriage that is the subject of our story.

CHAPTER IV. COMING HOME.

That was all five years ago now, but as Talbot Strangemore walked slowly over the sand toward Selwyn Heights, memory recalled the past time freshly to his thoughts—memory mixed with pain and mad regret. He recalled his mother’s dying prayer that he would marry Nina Selwyn now in her innocent childhood, that she, his mother, might die in peace, knowing that her dearest wish was fulfilled, and that the happiness of the two she loved was secured.

“She is only a child,” he had said, in horror and amazement.

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“Yes, I know,” his mother answered, “and that is why I cannot bear to leave her alone in the world to be the future prey of designing people. It was her father’s wish and mine that she should be yours some day, but how can I tell what may happen if I die and leave her unprotected and uncared for, save by careless hirelings? Oh, Talbot, you have been a good son to me always. Do not fail me now!”

And so, because the young fellow was momentarily reckless and desperate, and because he was half distracted with grief over his dying mother, and could not say no to her earnest prayer, he yielded to her will.

“But Nina—what will she say?” he asked, thinking of the pale, large-eyed child who was so changed and subdued by her father’s death that she crept about the house a pallid, wistful little ghost, “Will she be willing?”

“Nina will do any thing I ask,” she replied, and the event proved that she was right, for after the child had been summoned to a private interview with her step-mother she came out with wet eyes and grieving [Pg 24]red lips and sought Talbot Strangemore in the library.

“Mamma has been telling me that you want to marry me,” she said, laying her small brown hand upon his arm, and looking at him with those sad, wet eyes like dusky pansies drowned in dew.

He laid his strong white hand softly over the little fingers that trembled on his arm.

“Yes,” he answered, “but are you willing, little girl?”

“Oh, yes, for when mamma dies I shall have no one left to love me but you, and she says that if I do not marry you I may lose you too some day, so I will be your wife, and then you can take care of me always,” Nina replied, with childish directness, going over the specious arguments that Mrs. Selwyn had used to gain her compliance with her wish.

And so in this straightforward manner their strange troth was plighted and a few hours later they stood hand in hand by Mrs. Selwyn’s death-bed, and a wondering half disapproving man of God made the innocent child a bride. In another day she was motherless. Heiress of all the Selwyn wealth, and with all her life [Pg 25]before her, she was yet one to be pitied, for she had no one on earth but her husband, and he did not love her, and believed that he had made a great sacrifice when he had bound himself with all his future ambitions to that wan, uninteresting child.

“And what about my tour abroad, mother?” he said, when they were alone after the ceremony. “I do not believe I could bear to stay here when you—are gone away from me! But what shall I do with Nina? She is too young to be really my wife yet, shall I send her to school?”

“No,” she answered, “I will tell you what to do, Talbot, send for your maiden aunt in Baltimore to come and live with Nina, secure governesses for her and let her be educated thoroughly. By the time she is sixteen she will be old enough and cultivated enough for you to come home and claim your bride.”

He drew a sigh of relief at the respite her plans afforded him.

“I will do exactly as you advise,” he said, and he did.

The next day he and his child-bride stood to watch the last breath flutter over her gasping lips.

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She drew Nina close to her side. “Talbot is your husband now, my darling,” she said, anxiously, “you will belong to him always, and he to you. Promise me now that you will give him all your love and all your life, that you will always try to secure his happiness.”

“I promise, mamma,” answered the weeping child, and the vow was registered in heaven.

She did not ask Talbot for the same promise she had exacted from the simple child, so innocent and ignorant of the world. She did not think it was necessary; she believed implicitly in her son’s faith and honor. And so having ordered their futures so far as lay in her finite power, she passed “to where beyond these voices there is rest.”

Talbot carried out her wishes and advice to the letter. He installed his maiden aunt and an accomplished teacher at Selwyn Heights, and when he had done that he went abroad, although Nina clung to him weeping, and besought him not to go.

“It is only for a little while,” he said, evasively, “And I shall write to you often, dear. You must be a good girl, Nina, and as soon as I get to New York I [Pg 27]will send you back a nice present to remember me by. Will you tell me what you would like to have, dear?”

He felt momentarily tender and sorry for the little girl who was grieving so much over his going, but in the next moment he was chagrined and half disgusted for she lifted her wet eyes from his breast and said, with transient brightness: