The Unbidden Guest

OR,

BETWEEN TWO PASSIONS

BY

Mrs. ALEX. McVEIGH MILLER

AUTHOR OF

“What Was She to Him?” “The Man She Hated,” “All for Love,” “The Fatal Kiss,” “Pretty Madcap Lucy,” “Let Us Kiss and Part,” and numerous other books published in the New Eagle Series.

STREET & SMITH CORPORATION PUBLISHERS 79-89 Seventh Avenue, New York

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Copyright 1900 and 1901 By Norman L. Munro

The Unbidden Guest

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CONTENTS

CHAPTER I. THE GIPSY’S CURSE. CHAPTER II. I LOVED YOU BEST OF ALL. CHAPTER III. LELIA’S INGRATITUDE. CHAPTER IV. JEALOUSY AS CRUEL AS THE GRAVE. CHAPTER V. POOR, UNLOVED GIPSY, THE WAIF. CHAPTER VI. IN DEADLY PERIL. CHAPTER VII. A WORTHY RESOLVE. CHAPTER VIII. A QUARTER OF TWELVE. CHAPTER IX. SHE STARED DEATH IN THE FACE. CHAPTER X. AN ANGEL UNAWARES. CHAPTER XI. THE UNBIDDEN GUEST. CHAPTER XII. “HERE IS YOUR RING.” CHAPTER XIII. A RASH PROMISE. CHAPTER XIV. A CRY IN THE NIGHT. CHAPTER XV. A STRUGGLE FOR A RING. CHAPTER XVI. A TERRIBLE DISCOVERY. CHAPTER XVII. A LETTER FROM LAURIE. CHAPTER XVIII. OFF WITH THE OLD LOVE. CHAPTER XIX. HE COULD NEVER FORGET HER NOW. CHAPTER XX. NEVER MORE HER LOVER. CHAPTER XXI. IF IT COSTS MY HEART’S BLOOD. CHAPTER XXII. HOUNDED TO HIS FATE. CHAPTER XXIII. TWO RINGS. CHAPTER XXIV. HAUNTED. CHAPTER XXV. THE MASK OF A GUILTY SOUL. CHAPTER XXVI. THE PALL OF DEATH. CHAPTER XXVII. A FORGOTTEN BRIDE. CHAPTER XXVIII. A GIPSY PROPHECY. CHAPTER XXIX. THE HEIRESS. CHAPTER XXX. STARTLING NEWS. CHAPTER XXXI. THE DEAD ALIVE.

CHAPTER XXXII. GIPSY’S PARENTAGE. CHAPTER XXXIII. YOU HAVE TRIUMPHED. CHAPTER XXXIV. THE VENGEANCE OF HEAVEN. CHAPTER XXXV. AS IN A DREAM. CHAPTER XXXVI. THE PARTING OF THE WAYS. CHAPTER XXXVII. SHE BETRAYED HERSELF. CHAPTER XXXVIII. WAS IT A VICTORY? CHAPTER XXXIX. ONLY A DREAM! CHAPTER XL. THE PROOFS OF HER GUILT. CHAPTER XLI. IN EXILE. CHAPTER XLII. WITH THE FLIGHT OF TIME. CHAPTER XLIII. THE AMERICAN BEAUTY. CHAPTER XLIV. THE NIGHTINGALE’S STORY.

CHAPTER I.

THE GIPSY’S CURSE.

“Heigh-ho! I wish I were a boy, then I would run away from The Crags and see the beautiful world that lies hidden beyond these tall mountains!”

It was the voice of a pretty young girl, poised on tiptoe on the very verge of a lofty cliff, gazing down eagerly at the scene far below, the silvery Greenbrier River, the gleaming line of serpentine railway, and the winding road that curved around the jagged cliffs up to the heights where stood The Crags, a picturesque old stone mansion.

Here several generations of the aristocratic Willoughbys had lived and died, and the present owner and incumbent was Miss Cyrilla Willoughby, a spinster of sixty years, with literary tastes, who spent her[Pg 6] time preparing for publication the memoirs of her distinguished race.

And the girl?

Oh, a mere nobody! A sort of protégée of Miss Willoughby.

It was quite seventeen years ago that the lady’s cousin, a stern, domineering soldier, had stalked into her library one day, saying abruptly:

“Cyrilla, there are some impudent, thieving gipsies camped in your south meadow, and I have taken the liberty of driving them off. I gave orders for them to be gone bag and baggage before dark.”

“But was that necessary, Eustis? They have camped on my lands several times before, and never did any harm that I know of, and they amused the young people of the neighborhood telling their fortunes,” remonstrated the spinster mildly.

“They know no more of the future than you or I, Cyrilla!” he returned sharply, without taking the trouble to tell her that the enraged gipsy queen had told his fortune gratis in a string of maledictions, prophesying unnumbered evils on his luckless head.

He had cursed her in return for an impudent jade,[Pg 7] and strode from the camp with a brow as black as night, shuddering, in spite of himself at her invocations of the Evil One’s power, though he was not superstitious enough to place any confidence in the efficacy of her prayers.

Be that as it may, the Fates were weaving a grim web about Colonel Ritchie’s future, and before midnight he was summoned to his city home by a telegram announcing the death of a near and dear relative.

Though he had only arrived that day with his wife and little daughter, Lelia, for a month’s visit at The Crags, they left by the first train for their city home, and he never returned, for his death occurred two years later in the Indian Territory, while gallantly leading a charge against a hostile tribe. Thus he never knew that the banished gipsies had forgotten or deserted a lovely, dark-eyed babe in their flight. It was found in the woods next morning by the servants of Miss Willoughby, and carried to The Crags.

And for beauty and brightness, every one vowed that the half-naked little waif had never had an equal. Just a few months old, it smiled into their faces, cooing[Pg 8] and gurgling so engagingly that it won every heart by its infantile pleading of its own cause.

“It must be sent to the poorhouse!” announced Miss Willoughby unconcernedly. What was a pretty gipsy brat to her, a Willoughby!

But Jane Dobbs, the new housekeeper, clasped it to her heart, begging to keep it for her own.

“It’s just the age of the one I lost, and it’ll be sech a comfort to me, please ’m!” she sobbed humbly.

“Keep it, then, so that it does not interfere with your work, or bother me,” returned the spinster carelessly, and thus the little gipsy came to belong to The Crags.

Gipsy—that was what they always called her, every one at The Crags, and it was no matter that Jane Dobbs bestowed on her protégée a string of high-sounding names, they were all ignored, and she soon came to know and answer to the first one.

For her surname little Lelia Ritchie, when she visited The Crags soon after the colonel’s death, became responsible.

“Go away, you little dark gipsy! Laurie and I don’t want to play with you!” she cried, driving her away[Pg 9] with a sharp little slap that sent Gipsy, sobbing, to hide her tingling cheek in the housekeeper’s skirts.

The servants adopted the epithet, turning it into Gipsy Darke, and thus it remained ever after.

Lelia was five years old then, and the despised waif just about three. Laurie was eight, the only and motherless child of Miss Willoughby’s eldest brother, the general. He was a handsome, brown-eyed boy, the constant playmate of the radiant, blond Lelia, for their homes were under one roof, Mrs. Ritchie having gone to live with her widowed brother, when the colonel met his death on the field of battle.

Miss Willoughby’s haughty little niece and nephew never deigned to make a playmate of the pretty little waif whose dark eyes, full of wistful love and longing, followed them about their childish sports. If she came too near them Lelia always drove her angrily away, exclaiming spitefully:

“Papa always hated Indians and gipsies, and so do I. You need not offer us your ugly toys and wild flowers. We don’t want them, and we hate you!”

Laurie Willoughby never disputed Lelia’s authority, never took Gipsy’s part, but neither did he join in his[Pg 10] cousin’s active hostility. He was a quiet, undemonstrative boy, and he knew that if he went contrary to Lelia’s will she would slap his face as readily as she did the little waif’s, with her big, wistful, dark eyes, like a frightened fawn’s under her cloud of silky, black ringlets.

He was a little gentleman, he knew it was not manly to fight with girls, least of all his vixenish cousin, whom he had been told by his aunt was going to be his little wife when they got old enough to marry.

It was a pet project of the family to unite the pair’s fortunes indeed, so they did all in their power to foster their childish love.

So all three were grown up now. Laurie, Lelia, and Gipsy, and as the latter stood on the verge of the cliff in the golden glow of the June morning, gazing far down the dizzy height at the express-train flashing along over the steel rails, and heard the shrill whistle announcing its arrival at the station, she knew that Miss Willoughby’s expected visitors, the devoted cousins, had arrived, and would soon be at The Crags.

Nothing else had been talked of for weeks but this visit, the first in five long years, for Laurie and Lelia[Pg 11] had both been abroad several years finishing their educations—he at a German university, she at a Parisian boarding-school.

How fine and grand they would be, and what great doings would go on at The Crags, quite upsetting Miss Willoughby’s literary labors; for a large house-party had been invited to meet the cousins, and by to-morrow all would be arrived, and the staid old mansion turned topsyturvy with fun and frolic, and dancing and coquetry.

The girl on the cliff, young, beautiful, spirited, tender, yet feeling herself outside all this glow of happiness and excitement, “a mere looker-on in Venice,” as it were, stood there alone in the beautiful June morning, with her heart in her great dark eyes, “half-sunshine and half-shade,” watching the dusty, winding road to see the carriage coming up the hill with the happy lovers smiling into each other’s eyes.

Without a pang of envy or resentment she watched and waited as for beautiful beings from another world—that world she longed to behold, to which she said she would run away if she were only a boy.

And truth to tell, Gipsy actually did look boyish in[Pg 12] her bloomer suit of dark-blue cloth, with tan-colored leggings on her shapely nether limbs, and her little blue cap set rakishly one side on the cloud of flying black ringlets that framed an enchantingly lovely face, arch and spirited and winning, with rose-red pouting lips and dimpled cheeks.

A dangerous rival to the blond Lelia, if only she had not been poor and despised.

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CHAPTER II.

I LOVED YOU BEST OF ALL.

“Oh, they are coming! I see the victoria climbing the hill!” cried Gipsy, eagerly craning her slender neck forward, her large, dark eyes sparkling with excitement, and her canine companion, a big, handsome St. Bernard, uttered a sharp yelp of joy in sympathy.

It was true. The fine, new vehicle, bought by Miss Willoughby expressly to add to the pleasure of her honored guests, was climbing the hill, drawn by two handsome, well-matched bay horses, their silver mounted harness glittering in the golden sunshine.

Laurie Willoughby, handsome and debonair, held the reins, and his beautiful sweetheart, the blond Lelia, sat beside him, frowning in real discontent as she exclaimed impatiently:

“To think of having to waste a whole summer month at the lonesome old Crags, when we might be at Newport or the Pier! I declare I never would have sacrificed myself so if it had not been for Aunt Cy’s[Pg 14] money! But mama is always preaching at me that I must honey the old maid up, or she might not leave me her fortune.”

“Has Aunt Cy promised to make you her heiress?” inquired her lover carelessly.

“No, but mama says if I cut my cards straight, she will be sure to leave it to me, or both of us, Laurie, for, of course, you are as near of kin to her as I am.”

“But if she does not choose to leave us a penny, Lelia, we need not worry, we will have enough of our own, anyway,” Laurie answered placidly.

But Lelia frowned at his indifference, crying out impetuously:

“Oh, no—no, Laurie, one can never have enough money! Papa always said so—he was fond of saying that money is power, and both my parents always set their hearts on having me inherit Aunt Cy’s great fortune, that is as much, you know, as yours and mine put together, Laurie.”

His large, clear, brown eyes turned on her in keen rebuke.

“Oh, Lelia, I hate to have you appear so mercenary!” he sighed, in a reproachful tone.

[Pg 15]

“Laurie, you shall not scold me for nothing!” she retorted petulantly, rolling her great blue eyes at him in displeasure.

He did not notice her defiant words, save by a slight tightening of his lips as he turned his attention to the horses, and she pouted her rose-bud lips, and continued reproachfully:

“Now, you are angry with me, and trying to spoil all the pleasure of my trip by unjust fault-finding. But if I were as mercenary as you say I am, there are other men richer than you, that I refused before you asked me—just because I loved you best!”

At this artful plea Laurie looked down into his sweetheart’s face, and saw the great, blue-bell eyes moist with threatening tears.

He slipped one arm about her waist, and coaxed her into good humor with a lover’s kiss.

“Now smile again, my darling, for we will soon be at The Crags, and dear old Aunt Cy must not think we have been quarreling again, as when we were spoiled children. Look up and you will see the towers of the old mansion as we turn the bend in the road. And see, there’s some one on the verge of the highest[Pg 16] cliff watching as if for the first glimpse of us. Aunt Cy has sent a boy, no doubt, to announce our arrival, so that she may have the whole household lined up on the front steps as usual, to do us honor,” he ended laughingly.

“I don’t think it’s a boy, Laurie dear, it looks more like a girl in short skirts. Get out the field-glasses, and let us look and test.”

Reining the bays in, he gave her the glasses out of the case, and presently she said:

“I told you so, it’s a girl. An odd sort of girl in a bloomer suit, with long hair flying under her cap, a summer tourist, I suppose.”

Laurie took his turn with the glasses, and answered:

“You are right, Lelia, it is a girl, and a deuced pretty one, too, I fancy! Beautiful pose that, but dangerous. Might topple over into space any moment. Say, Lelia, I fancy we know her, too. It looks like Gipsy Darke.”

“That girl! I thought you had forgotten her very existence, Laurie.”

“I don’t see how I could forget her so easily, after seeing her so often at The Crags—from youth to age,[Pg 17] one might say. Besides, somehow I couldn’t get her out of my mind, because I’ve an uneasy conscience over the dusky little midget!” he confessed.

“I don’t understand,” the blue-eyed beauty returned, with lowering displeasure.

“Don’t you, dearest? Oh, well, you know we treated the poor little thing worse than the dirt under our feet, Lelia, that’s the truth!” he said, adding: “Do you remember how the poor girlie followed us all about wanting to play with us, and we drove her away with angry words and even blows?” generously taking half the blame to himself, though Lelia had done it all.

“She deserved all she got! We could not be expected to associate with a gipsy brat!” the beauty cried hotly.

“Oh, of course not, only after all, it couldn’t have hurt us, and might have saved the poor midget some heartaches. She was desperately in love with us both, don’t you know—it must have been for our good looks, not our amiability! I think that a kind word or smile from us would have made her perfectly happy. I am haunted especially by one incident:[Pg 18] The midget approached us with her chubby little fists extended full of wild flowers and sweet grass. Her lovely big black eyes swam in tenderness, and seemed to plead mutely for friendship, her rosy mouth smiled sweetly, she was really a very fascinating baby girl in her white gown and cloud of dark curls, and I was feeling softened beyond description, and must inevitably have responded amiably to her advances, but, alas! something direful happened! Do you remember it, Lelia?”

The beauty, flushing with resentful anger, exclaimed:

“Your memory is good, and so is mine, although I never dreamed you had such a vital interest in Gipsy Darke, or I am sure I should have slapped her face harder than I did when I knocked the flowers out of her hands!”

“You pulled her hair, too,” Laurie said quietly.

“Yes, I pulled her hair, and I would do it again if she tried to come between our hearts as she did then—the little vixen!” she cried passionately, bitterly angered at his frank pity for Gipsy, the waif.

He was half-tempted to remind her that it was she,[Pg 19] not Gipsy, who had played the rôle of vixen in their past encounters, but he hated to see her lovely face distorted by malice, so he forbore, and taking the reins again, drove on silently out of sight of the slender figure on the cliff, outlined so clearly in the golden light—the girl watching for the coming of her fate, though she did not know it.

Laurie Willoughby had spoken out too impulsively the secret thoughts that had lain dormant in his mind for years; but it was a pity that he had even betrayed them to the jealous-minded and selfish young beauty by his side. For now she would be on the alert for causes to persecute the hapless waif, whom she hated with added intensity now that Laurie had confessed to a pity and admiration for her helpless childhood.

A portentous frown swept over her brow, and as though nature sympathized with the girl’s somber mood, a sudden cloud passed over the sun, and from the darkened heavens leaped a bolt of fierce blue lightning, followed by a crash of thunder long, loud, reverberating, that seemed to shake the solid earth and rive the rocks apart. Then several boulders rattled down the cliff and fell into the road before the horses’ feet,[Pg 20] while one, rebounding from the top of the victoria, struck Lelia’s snowy temple, eliciting a shriek of terror from her blanched lips.

It was one of those sudden storms that break unexpectedly on sultry days over West Virginia, and the thunder’s roll was followed by a swift downpour of rain, mixed with large hailstones, quickly cooling the overheated atmosphere.

The young, mettlesome bays, frenzied by the suddenness and fury of the whole incident, and stung by some small flying boulders, immediately precipitated a dangerous situation.

Snorting with fear and rage, they reared upward, pawing the air with their forefeet, and straining on their bits with a force that nearly dragged the reins from Laurie’s grasp.

He stood up in the swaying vehicle, holding on with might and main, though with a heart as heavy as lead, for he realized that at any moment the maddened animals might shy to the left, and plunge over the precipitous side that sloped down to certain death in the river far below.

But for muscles like steel, developed by years of[Pg 21] athletic exercise, he never could have sustained his grip on the lines against the frantic force of the plunging, rearing bays; but with tremendous pluck, he clung and shouted until he brought them down to their feet again, but only to break and run with terrific speed over the up-hill ground, goaded by the shrill screams of Lelia, and the pelting, pouring storm of rain and hail.

What a change from barely ten minutes ago, from a summer scene overarched by blue and sunny skies, to the mountain tempest, the air dark with clouds and rain, the eyes dazzled by the zigzag streaks of lightning, the ears stunned by the crash of thunder and the hoarse snorting of the maddened bays, dashing forward to impending destruction.

For the mountain road, a mere wagon way around the cliffs, offered no escape. On one side it rose like a sheer wall for hundreds of feet, on the other it descended steeply to the bed of the river. A slight swerving from their headlong course in the middle of the road, and death was sure and speedy; but with terrific strength he was holding them straight now.

If only he could hold out to the end!

[Pg 22]

Then Lelia, driven mad with fear and pain, sprang up and clung to his arm, senselessly adding her weight to the strain upon him.

“Sit down!” he thundered angrily, in his alarm and anxiety; but in that moment she dropped across his breast, a dead weight—swooning, and the bays tore the reins from his grasp with hoarse whinnies of exultation, and again reared upward, this time so near the verge that the vehicle must surely topple over backward.