MRS. CARL WALRAVEN'S LITTLE GAME.
Mysterious Miriam, in her dismal garret lodging, was not the only person who read, and intelligently comprehended, these two very singular advertisements.
Of all the hundreds who may have perused and wondered over them, probably there were but four who understood in the least what was meant—the two most interested, and Miriam and Mrs. Walraven.
Stay! There was the Reverend Raymond Rashleigh, who might have seen his way through, had he chanced to read the "Personal" column of the paper.
On the Thursday morning that this last advertisement appeared, Mrs. Carl Walraven sat alone in the pretty boudoir sacred to her privacy. It was her choice to breakfast alone sometimes, en dishabille. It had been her choice on this particular day.
At her elbow stood the tiny round table, with its exquisite appointments of glass, and porcelain, and silver; its chocolate, its toast, its eggs, its little broiled bird.
Mrs. Walraven was of the luxurious sort, as your full-blown, high-blooded Cleopatras are likely to be, and did ample justice to the exquisite cuisine of the Walraven mansion.
Lying back gracefully, her handsome morning robe falling loosely around her, her superb black hair twisted away in a careless, serpentine coil, her face fresh and blooming, "at peace with the world and all therein," my lady Blanche digested her breakfast and leisurely skimmed the morning paper.
She always liked the "Personals." To-day they had a double interest for her. She read again and again—a dozen times, at least—that particular "Personal" appointing the meeting at Fourteenth Street, and a lazy smile came over her tropical face at last as she laid it down.
"Nothing could be better," mused Mrs. Walraven, with that indolent smile shining in her lazy, wicked black eyes. "The little fool sets her trap, and walks into it herself, like the inconceivable idiot she is. It reminds one of the ostrich, this advertisement—pretty Mollie buries her head in the sand, and fancies no one sees her. Now, if Guy only plays his part—and I think he will, for he's absurdly and ridiculously in love with the fair-haired tom-boy—she will be caught in the nicest trap ever silly seventeen walked into. She was caged once, and got free. She will find herself caged again, and not get free. I shall have my revenge, and Guy will have his inamorata. I'll send for him at once."
Mrs. Walraven rose, sought out her blotting-book, took a sheet of paper and an envelope, and scrawled two or three words to her cousin:
DEAR GUY,—Come to me at once. I wish to see you most particularly. Don't lose a moment.
Very truly,
BLANCHE.
Ringing the bell, Mrs. Walraven dispatched this little missive, and then, reclining easily in the downy depths of her violet velvet fauteuil, she fell into a reverie that lasted for upward of an hour. With sleepy, slow, half-closed eyes, the wicked, smile just curving the ripe-red mouth, Mme. Blanche wandered in the land of meditation, and had her little plot all cut and dry as the toy Swiss clock on the low mantel struck up a lively waltz preparatory to striking eleven. Ere the last silvery chime had ceased vibrating, the door of the boudoir opened and Dr. Guy Oleander walked in.
"Good-morning, Mrs. Walraven," said the toxicologist, briskly. "You sent for me. What's the matter?"
He took off his tall hat, set it on a sofa, threw his gloves into it, and indulged in a prolonged professional stare at his fair relative.
"Nothing very serious, I imagine. You're the picture of handsome health. Really, Blanche, the Walraven air seems to agree with you. You grow fresher, and brighter, and plumper, and better-looking every day."
"I didn't send for you to pay compliments, Doctor Oleander," said Mrs. Walraven, smiling graciously, all the same. "See if that door is shut fast, please, and come and sit here beside me. I've something very serious to say to you."
Dr. Oleander did as directed, and took a seat beside the lady.
"Your husband won't happen in, will he, Blanche? Because he might be jealous, you know, at this close proximity; and your black-a-vised men of unknown antecedents are generally the very dickens when they fall a prey to the green-eyed monster."
"Pshaw! are you not my cousin and my medical adviser? Don't be absurd, Guy. Mr. Walraven troubles himself very little about me, one way or other. I might hold a levee of my gentlemen friends here, week in and week out, for all he would know or care."
"Ah! post-nuptial bliss. I thought marriage, in his case, would be a safe antidote for love. All right, Blanche. Push ahead. What's your business? Time is precious this morning. Hosts of patients on hand, and an interesting case of leprosy up at Bellevue."
"I don't want to know your medical horrors," said Mrs. Walraven, with a shudder of disgust; "and I think you will throw over your patients when you hear the subject I want to talk about. That subject is—Mollie Dane!"
"Mollie!" The doctor was absorbed and vividly interested all at once. "What of Mollie Dane?"
"This," lowering her voice: "I have found out the grand secret. I know where that mysterious fortnight was spent."
"Blanche!" He leaned forward, almost breathless. "Have you? Where?"
"You'd never guess. It sounds too romantic—too incredible—for belief. Even the hackneyed truism, 'Truth is stranger than fiction,' will hardly suffice to conquer one's astonishment—yet true it is. Do you recollect the Reverend Mr. Rashleigh's story at the dinner-party, the other day—that incredible tale of his abduction and the mysterious marriage of the two masks?"
"I recollect—yes."
"He spoke of the bride, you remember—described her as small and slender, with a profusion of fair, curling hair."
"Yes—yes—yes!"
"Guy," fixing her powerful black eyes on his face, "do you need to be told who that masked bride was?"
"Mollie Dane!" cried the doctor, impetuously.
"Mollie Dane," said Mrs. Walraven, calmly.
"By Jove!"
Dr. Oleander sat for a instant perfectly aghast.
"I only wonder it did not strike you at the time. It struck me, and I whispered my suspicion in her ear as we passed into the drawing-room. But she is a perfect actress. Neither start nor look betrayed her. She stared at me with those insolent blue eyes of hers, as though she could not possibly comprehend."
"Perhaps she could not."
Mrs. Walraven looked at him with a quiet smile—the smile of conscious triumph.
"She is the cleverest actress I ever saw off the stage—so clever that I am sometimes inclined to suspect she may have been once on it. No, my dear Guy, she understood perfectly well. Mollie Dane was the extraordinary bride Mr. Rashleigh married that extraordinary night."
"And who the devil," cried Dr. Guy, using powerful language in his excitement, "was the birdegroom?"
"Ah!" said Blanche, "there's the rub! Mr. Rashleigh doesn't know, and I don't know, and Mollie doesn't know herself."
"What!"
"My dear Doctor Oleander, your eyes will start from your head if you stare after that fashion. No; Mollie doesn't know. She is married; but to whom she has no more idea than you have. Does it not sound incredible?"
"Sound? It is incredible—impossible—absurd!"
"Precisely. It is an accomplished fact, all the same."
"Blanche, for Heaven's sake, explain!" exclaimed the young man, impatiently. "What the foul fiend do you mean? I never heard such a cock-and-bull story in all my life!"
"Nor I. But it is true, nevertheless. Listen: On the night following the dinner-party I did the meanest action of my life. I played eavesdropper. I listened at Mollie's door. All for your sake, my dear Guy."
"Yes?" said Guy, with an incredulous smile.
"I listened," pursued Mrs. Blanche, "and I overheard the strangest confession ever made, I believe—Mollie Dane relating the adventures of that hidden fortnight, at midnight, to that singular creature, Miriam."
"Miriam! Who is she?"
"Oh! you remember—the woman who tried to stop my marriage. Mollie quieted her on that occasion, and they had a private talk."
"Yes, yes! I remember. Go on. How did Miriam come to be with Mollie, and who the mischief is Miriam?"
"Her aunt."
"Her aunt?"
"Her mother's sister—yes. Her mother's name was Dane. Who that mother was," said Mrs. Walraven, with spiteful emphasis, "I fancy Mr. Walraven could tell you."
"Ah!" said her cousin, with a side-long glance, "I shouldn't wonder. I'll not ask him, however. Proceed."
"I took to reading a novel after I came home," proceeded Mrs. Walraven, "and my husband went to bed. I remained with my book in the drawing-room, very much interested, until nearly midnight. I fancied all in the house had retired; therefore, when I heard a soft rustling of silk swishing past the drawing-room door, I was considerably surprised. An instant later, and the house door was softly unfastened. I turned the handle noiselessly and peeped out. There, in her pink dinner toilet, jewels and all, was Miss Dane, stealing upstairs, and following her, this wretched, ragged creature, Miriam."
"Well?" said the doctor.
"Well, I followed. They entered Miss Dane's chamber and closed the door. The temptation was strong, the spirit willing, and the flesh weak. I crouched at the key-hole and listened. It was a very long conversation—it was fully three o'clock before Miriam departed—but it held me spell-bound with its interest from beginning to end. Once I was nearly caught—I sneezed. I vanished behind a big cabinet, and just saved myself, for they opened the door. Mollie set it down to the wind, or the rats, closed the door again, and my curiosity overcoming my fear of detection, I crept back and heard every word."
"Well?" again said the doctor.
"Well, Mollie made a clean breast of it. On her wedding-night she was enticed from the house by a letter purporting to come from this Miriam. The letter told her that Miriam was dying, and that she wished to make a revelation of her parentage to Mollie, before she departed for a worse land. It seems she knows Miss Dane's antecedents, and Miss Dane doesn't. Mollie went at once, as the Reverend Raymond Rashleigh did, and, like him, was blindfolded and bound, borne away to some unknown house, nobody knows where, waited on by the girl who carried the letter, and held a fast prisoner by a man in a black mask. That man's face Mollie never saw, nor has she the least idea of whom it may be. She is inclined to suspect you."
"Me!"
The doctor's stare of astonishment was a sight to behold.
"It is you, or Sardonyx, or Ingelow—one of you three, Mollie is certain. The particular one she can't decide. She dreads it may be either the lawyer or the doctor, and hopes, with all her heart, it may be the artist."
Dr. Oleander's swarthy brows knit with a midnight scowl.
"She is in love with this puppy, Ingelow. I have thought as much for some time."
"Hopelessly in love with him, and perfectly willing to be his wife, if he proves to be her husband. Should it chance to be you, she will administer a dose of strychnine the first available opportunity."
"She said that, did she?"
"That, and much more. She hates, detests, and abhors you, and loves the handsome artist with all her heart."
"The little jade! And how about her elderly admirer?"
"Sir Roger? Oh! he is to get the go-by. 'Men have died, and worms have eaten them, but not for love.' He will stand the blow. 'All for love, and the world well lost,' is to be her motto for the future. She is in love with Hugh, and Hugh she must have. The spoiled baby is tired of all its old toys, and wants a new one."
"And she married this masked man, and never saw him? That is odd."
"The whole affair is excessively odd. You know how impatient she naturally is. She grew desperate in her confinement in a few days, and was ready to sell her birthright for a mess of pottage—ready to sacrifice her freedom in one way for her freedom in another. She had the man's promise that he would return her to her friends a week after she became his wife. She married him, and he kept his promise."
"And he never let her see his face?"
"Never! and she can not even suspect who it is. He wore a long, disguising cloak that concealed his figure, false beard and hair, and spoke only French. But she hopes it may be Hugh Ingelow. What do you think?"
"That is not Hugh Ingelow. The fellow hasn't energy enough to entrap a fly."
"Sardonyx, then?"
"Sardonyx is too cautious. He knows too much of the law to run his head into the lion's jaws. Besides, it is too absurdly romantic for so practical a man. No, it is not Sardonyx."
"Yourself, then?"
The doctor laughed.
"Nonsense, Blanche! Mollie is out of her reckoning about us three. By the bye, I see now through those queer advertisements that have appeared in the 'Herald' of late. Black Mask—White Mask."
"Yes; Mollie wants to find out whom she has espoused. By Miriam's advice, she inserted that first advertisement to Black Mask. He, as you perceive, replies in to-day's edition."
"And she is to meet him to-morrow night."
"Exactly; and will, unless you forestall him."
"How?"
"Don't be stupid, pray. What is to hinder you from being at the place of rendezvous first and playing Black Mask?"
"I beg your pardon; I am stupid still. Black Mask will be there himself."
"Look here: ten is the hour. Toward evening I will advance every time-piece in the house, Mollie's watch included, half an hour. She will be at the place of tryst at half past nine. Be you there, likewise—cloaked, bearded, bewigged. Have a carriage in waiting. Make her think you are Hugh Ingelow, and she will enter it without hesitation. Speak French. She will not recognize your voice. Once in the carriage, carry her off."
"Where?" asked the doctor, astonished at the rapidity of all this.
"To Long Island—to the farm. She will be as safe there as in Sing Sing. Make her think you are her unknown husband. It will be easily done, for she half thinks it now. Only—look out for the strychnine!"
The doctor rose to his feet, his sallow face flushed, his small black eyes sparkling.
"By Jove! Blanche, what a plotter you are! I'll do it, as sure as my name's Guy. I love the little witch to madness, and I owe her one for the way she jilted me. I'll do it, by thunder!"
"Very well," said Mrs. Walraven, quietly. "Don't get excited, and don't make a noise. I knew you would."
"But what will the old lady say?"
"Who cares for the old lady?" retorted Mme. Blanche, contemptuously. "Not you, I hope. Tell her it's an insane patient you have brought to her for quiet and sea air. Judy is a regular dragon, and the old woman is as keen as a ferret and as sly as a female fox. Mollie won't escape from them. She may yield, if she really is convinced you are her husband. Tell her you love her to distraction—can't live without her, and so on. She may yield. Who knows? These girls are bundles of inconsistencies, and Mollie Dane the most inconsistent of the tribe. Have the ceremony performed over again before witnesses, and bring her back here in a month—Mrs. Guy Oleander! Even if she won't consent from pity for your state, she may to escape from that dreary Long Island farm. She did once before, you know, and may again. That is all I have to suggest, Guy. The rest is with yourself. In the vocabulary of great men, there is no such word as fail."
She rose up. Dr. Oleander grasped her hand in an outburst of enthusiastic gratitude.
"Blanche, you're a brick—a trump—a jewel beyond price! I don't know how to thank you. You're a woman of genius—a wife for a Talleyrand!"
"Thanks. Let me be able to return the compliment. I ask no more. Let me see how cleverly you will carry off pretty Mollie. I never want to see her under this roof again."