A TERRIBLE REVELATION.
The next morning after her adventure with Ellen Carson, Allison left New York for Newport, where the Brewster villa was reopened, with John Hubbard to play the part of proprietor and host, and mature his plans for the capture of the beautiful heiress for whom and whose money he had so long been scheming.
To Allison the thought of spending the entire summer in the same house with the man whom she so disliked seemed intolerable, and she became very restless and rebellious in view of the prospect before her ere a week had passed.
“What shall I do with myself during all the years that will intervene before his authority over me or my fortune will expire?” she asked herself, with a feeling of excessive impatience, one day during the second week of their sojourn at Newport.
Yet the man was unwearied in his attentions, unvarying in his kindness to her. He spared no trouble to give her pleasure, he grumbled at no expense if he could but see her smiling and happy, and be allowed to bask in her presence.
“I cannot live an idle, aimless life,” she mused, “while I am waiting for Gerald to make his fortune. Oh, what a proud, obstinate boy! But why doesn’t he write to me? I have not heard from him once since coming to Newport,” she sighed, with a troubled expression. “I would like to teach,” she went on, after a moment of thought; “but it hardly seems right for me, with my fortune, to apply for a position which would otherwise be filled by a girl who must support herself. But something I must do to break away from this bondage. Oh, I know!” with an eager start. “It will be just the most delightful plan! I will have a chaperon, and I will travel. It will be such a blessed relief to get away from—him!”
And, much elated with what she considered a very clever plan, she sought her guardian and made known her wish to go abroad.
The man glanced sharply at her the moment he comprehended her purpose; then sat quietly listening to her until she concluded the rehearsal of her plan, which was, in the main, that she wished to have at least a couple of years of foreign travel before making her début in New York society—which it would not be etiquette for her to do until her season of mourning was over.
When she was through he changed his seat to one beside her, and remarked, with a confidential look and smile:
“Really, Allison, I think it rather singular that you and I both should have the same project in view.”
She glanced up at him in surprise.
“Why, have you been planning such a trip for me?” she questioned, with a momentary twinge of conscience, lest she had been more unjust toward him than he merited.
“Yes,” he replied, in a tone which he could not make quite steady, for the proposal he was about to make was a very momentous one to him. “You are now through school, and it is but right that you should see something of the world. I have had this in mind for some time, and have been trying to arrange for it. I now have my business in such shape that I can leave it indefinitely, and we will have a long holiday, Allison; we will spare neither time nor money, and you shall go wherever your sweet will inclines.”
The girl shot one quick, startled look at her companion; then a burning flush suffused her neck, cheek and brow, for his tone had grown suspiciously tender and tremulous, and she dreaded inexpressibly what she feared was to come.
“Oh, but I did not once think of—of taking you from your business to go with me,” she hastened to say. “I can have a chaperon, you know; there is Miss Wilber, my teacher in history, who has often attended young ladies abroad during summer vacations. She is out of health, and will not teach the coming year, and I am sure she would be glad to go with me; she would be a delightful companion, too, for she is so well posted in history, and has been about so much she is a perfect encyclopedia of facts, legends and traditions. I should feel perfectly safe, and be very happy with her, also.”
“Ah, yes; no doubt it would be a very good arrangement, both for yourself and the lady,” rejoined John Hubbard, when Allison paused, although a frown swept over his face at her evident eagerness to substitute her own plan for his; “but, my dear child, I could never consent to let you go away to Europe like that; I should never know one moment of peace during your absence. Allison,” with sudden and vehement earnestness, “do you remember what I told you only a few months ago—that I have loved you ever since you were a little girl, and that, during all those years, I have had only one aim in life—that of eventually winning you for my wife? Think of it, Allison! I have lived nearly eleven years with this one hope to feed upon and cheer me. I know that I am somewhat older than you, but my affection is none the less strong and true—indeed, having nursed my hopes so long, my love is far more intense than it could have been at the age when a man usually chooses his wife. My darling, I adore you; my life is bound up in you; I must win you, or the world will henceforth be a blank to me, and during the last six months I have yearned for this moment more than I can express. Allison, you will marry me; you will be my wife, and we will go abroad for our honeymoon. I will live only to make you happy, and you shall go where you like if you will but give me the right to go with you.”
He had spoken so rapidly that Allison could not have interrupted him if she had wished; he had poured out his passionate avowal with such resistless vehemence that she was stricken dumb, and sat with averted face, an almost sickening sense of repugnance, even fear, oppressing her.
As he concluded he leaned forward, laying his hand upon hers, which were tensely clasped upon her lap, and tried to look into her downcast eyes.
His touch broke the spell upon her.
Almost involuntarily she shrank from him, snatching her hands from his, a visible shiver creeping over her, and driving every particle of color from her face.
“Oh,” she gasped, as if oppressed by some terrible weight upon her chest, “why will you say such things to me? No, no; it cannot be!”
The man’s countenance changed, as if he had been smitten a sharp and sudden blow.
“Do not tell me that,” he breathed, in a hoarse, unnatural voice. “I cannot bear it. I have lived too long with only this one hope to sustain me, to have it ruthlessly wrested from me at this late day.”
Something in the man’s tone—a sort of despairing, appealing note—sent a wave of pity coursing through Allison’s heart.
“I am sorry if I have pained you,” she faltered; “but—I cannot love you, Mr. Hubbard, and so I must not marry you.”
“I will make you love me, Allison,” he returned, with almost pathetic earnestness. “Out of the superabundance of my own affection I will nourish yours until your heart will turn to me as naturally as a flower turns to the sun.”
But Allison only shrank farther from him.
“It is impossible; it can never be,” she said, so decidedly there was no mistaking her determination to settle the matter for all time.
“Why?” he demanded, sharply, but with quivering lips. “Why can you never love me? How is it that you are so positive?”
“I do not know that I can tell you why; it is not easy to analyze one’s feelings,” Allison responded constrainedly. “I only know that I do not love you and that it would be a great sin to become your wife without loving you.”
“Then it must be because some one stands between us,” said John Hubbard, with jealous bitterness. “Tell me! Is is so? Do you love some one else?”
There was now a note of impatient authority in his tone that aroused Allison’s antagonism and a spirit of recklessness. Then, too, his love-making was so repulsive to her she felt that she could not endure it a moment longer. Perhaps, she thought, if she should confess the truth to him it would put an end to his hopes and emancipate her from all persecutions of this nature in the future.
“Yes,” she admitted, after a moment of hesitation, a vivid flush suffusing her face, “that is the reason.”
“Aha!” he breathed, hoarsely, the veins upon his temples standing out hard and full. “So you confess it! Who is he? Who is he?”
His tone was almost savage, his aspect so vindictive that Allison was aroused in proportion.
She turned upon him with a haughty air, and met his lowering eyes with a clear, cold glance.
“That is my own secret,” she frigidly returned.
“Ha, ha! So you fondly believe it is a secret, do you?” he mockingly retorted. “You imagine that no one has eyes or perceptions to discern the signs of the times? My haughty little lady, your ‘secret’ is no secret; I have read your heart, like an open book, for many a long year.”
“Very well, then; if you are so well versed in mind reading there is no need of your asking information regarding what you already know,” said the fair girl, with quiet sarcasm.
“Perhaps not; but I wish to have my suspicions corroborated by the testimony of your own lips. I want to be sure that my fate is irrevocably sealed before I bow to it. So, tell me, is it Gerald Winchester whom you love? Is he the rival upon whom you expect to bestow your peerless self and your enviable fortune?”
Again Allison flushed a deep and conscious crimson. The man’s manner had grown so coarse and repulsive, while his mocking reference to Gerald set all her pulses tingling with indignation and defiance, and a desire to stand up in defense of her lover.
“And suppose you are right in your surmise—what then?” she demanded, proudly, a dangerous gleam in her eyes.
“In that case, I tell you that you are doomed to be terribly disappointed, for I swear that you shall never marry that upstart! He shall never have the privilege of handling one dollar of Adam Brewster’s fortune!” snarled the man, but so beside himself with rage his voice was hardly audible.
Allison was now thoroughly angry and disgusted.
She sprang to her feet and confronted her companion with haughty mien and blazing eyes.
“You are exceedingly presuming,” she began scornfully. “You are overstepping the bounds of your authority as my guardian, for I certainly have and shall exercise the right to choose for myself whom I will marry, and——”
“And what, Allison?” questioned John Hubbard, growing very white as she suddenly paused. “This is a matter that must be settled, here and now, so you may as well express yourself freely.”
“I was simply going to observe that my choice would certainly not fall upon yourself, even were I heart-whole,” she retorted, with startling candor, and driven to utter defiance by his arbitrary tone and manner.
The man flushed scarlet beneath the scathing words; then a lurid light sprang into his eyes.
“I am afraid you do not realize what you are doing, Miss Brewster, by so scornfully rejecting my suit,” he said, with an evident effort for self-control.
“You have driven me to plain speaking, sir,” Allison replied more calmly. “You would not accept my courteous rejection of your proposals, and you have made me very angry by your slighting remarks about Mr. Winchester, whom you have always appeared to hate, and whom you have also shamefully persecuted.”
“Yes, I have hated and do still hate him, the insufferable upstart, with his assumption of high-toned airs, which are entirely at variance with the beggardly position he has always occupied,” Mr. Hubbard almost hissed, a cold glitter in his eyes, and with the old vicious gleam of his white teeth beneath his mustache. “More than that,” he resumed cruelly, “I swore long ago that he should never marry you, as I plainly saw he was aiming to do by worming himself into the confidence of your father and making love to you on the sly——”
“If you please, Mr. Hubbard, I think we have discussed this subject sufficiently, and I would like to change it,” Allison here icily interposed. “I have decided that I will spend the next two years traveling; therefore, I shall write to Miss Wilber this evening to——”
“Not quite so fast, my young lady, if you please,” her guardian rudely interrupted. “You appear to forget or ignore the fact that you are under my authority, and are not free to arrange your movements exactly as you like without my consent.”
“I am more than eighteen years of age, Mr. Hubbard,” said Allison, proudly, “and I am capable of thinking and acting for myself in all ways except the management of my fortune. Business I do not understand, and I bow to the decree of my father’s will that you shall act as my agent financially; but I am no longer a child, to be told that I cannot go here or there, provided I am properly attended, and I shall arrange to go abroad immediately, with Miss Wilber as my chaperon.”
“Excuse me, Miss Brewster, but you will not go abroad this summer, unless you go under my protection, and as my wife,” John Hubbard observed, with a peculiar smile, that was exceedingly exasperating, and which also sent a strange chill to the heart of his listener. “You’d better be sensible and listen to reason, Allison,” he continued more gently, after a moment of silence. “If you will accede to my proposal, your future may be one long idyl of happiness; your every wish shall be gratified; you shall be a queen—I your slave. But,” sternly, as the girl made an impatient gesture, “if you defy me, I——”
“Well, what if I defy you?” she cried, turning upon him with the air of a princess.
“I have it in my power to crush you.”
A light, scornful laugh rippled over Allison’s red lips.
The idea of a man like John Hubbard, whom, all her life, she had instinctively regarded as her inferior, being able to “crush” her, Adam Brewster’s daughter, and heiress to a million or more, seemed ludicrous in the extreme.
“You appear to be skeptical regarding my powers, Miss Brewster,” the man observed, with a crafty smile, but with a face that was ghastly white from his intense anger.
“Well, yes, I am,” she dryly responded, as she drew forth her watch and glanced at the time. “Excuse me,” she added coldly, “but I have an engagement to drive at four.”
She was about to turn away and leave the room when her companion seized her hand in a vise-like grip, and, bending before her, gazed straight into her eyes with a look that sent a cold chill running down her back.
“Once more, and for the last time—and think well before you answer me—will you marry me, Allison?” he questioned, through his tightly locked teeth.
“No! a thousand times, no!” she cried, in a ringing tone; “and if you ever broach the subject again I will appeal to be set free from your guardianship. I will not submit to such persecution.”
“Ha, ha! You will not need to appeal to be freed from my authority!” he retorted, with an almost fiendish leer.
“Ah! you are going to resign your position, perhaps?” said Allison, with an eagerness which but too plainly betrayed her delight at such a prospect.
“You would be glad to have me do so, no doubt,” he sneered.
“Yes, I think I would,” the girl gravely returned, after a moment of thought. “After what has occurred to-day I think it would be unpleasant for both of us to continue our present relations.”
“Very well; you shall be gratified, for it is my purpose to resign all authority over you,” said John Hubbard, with peculiar emphasis. Then he added, with something between a sigh and a groan, “I would have spared you this, Allison, and it is not too late even now to—to save you, if you will but reconsider your rejection of me——”
Allison checked him with an imperative gesture.
“I will have no more of that,” she said, haughtily. “But what do you mean? From what is it not too late to save me? Why are you about to resign your guardianship of me?”
“To answer your last question will be to reply to all—because I was appointed as guardian to Adam Brewster’s daughter, but—you are no child of the late banker!”