CHAPTER XIV.
COTTAGE AND CASTLE.
The beautiful California night, sweet and balmy, although it was March—how like a dream of beauty lay the grounds about Bonair, with their thick shrubberies and fragrant flowers!
Yet Berry, unused to nocturnal wanderings alone, would have been frightened only for the wild excitement that dominated every other emotion.
The full moon rode queenly in the cloudless sky, and shone like silver on the lovely scene—on tall groups of statuary, gleaming whitely against clumps of tropical shrubbery, on arbors twined with roses, on tinkling fountains, on tall, white clumps of lilies and beds of hyacinths, scenting the air with sweetness. All that wealth and taste could devise in this land so favored by nature, was here in lavish measure adorning the many acres of ground that surrounded the picturesque pile of magnificent buildings called Bonair.
And simple Berenice Vining, to whom all this was so new and amazing, caught her breath with a gasp, remembering that Charley Bonair was heir to it all—the only son of the proud multimillionaire.
She felt for the first time the vast difference between her and the man who had made careless love to her for twenty-four hours—love that was not great enough to bridge the gulf between the lowly cottage and the lofty castle, so that she might walk across it to his arms.
Her thoughts flew to the old home, to the humble cottage, with the morning glories climbing all over it in blue and white and roseate glory, and a yearning came to her for her little room again, with its cheap white ruffled curtains at the window, and the simple adornings so dear to a young girl’s heart.
Her heart rose in her throat, and she had to pause and lean her head against a tree, while she sobbed in hysterical distress:
“Oh, mamma, mamma!”
Remorse throbbed at her bosom’s core. She had done wrong to forsake the dear old mother whose heart had been broken by her desertion.
“Alas, why was I not there to pray for her forgiveness? She was all I had to love me on earth! Those older brothers and sisters, they never cared for Berry. They always scolded and berated me because I was mamma’s pet; they said I was a spoiled child. None of them will ever care to see me again!”
She sobbed on brokenly, without noticing that the clock in the high tower had solemnly tolled out the midnight hour, when she was to meet the fortune teller and receive the charm that was to ward off her impending cruel doom.
She did not even notice, in her perturbation, the delicate odor of a fine cigar blending with the scent of the flowers close by, and she would have darted away in alarm had she dreamed that a young man was sitting on a rustic seat in a clump of shrubbery just back of her—so close indeed that she might have caught the sound of his quick breathing only that it was drowned by the tinkle of the fountain that, throwing its spray high in the air, fell back again like the low patter of rain upon the broad leaves of the lily-bordered pool.
But as for him, he had caught every word she uttered, and he knew every tone of the sweet voice, too, though he could not see her face as she clung there with her cheek against the rough bark of the tree.
It was Charley Bonair, sick at heart and troubled, who had hidden himself there in the solitude of the beautiful night to puzzle over the problem of his destiny.
He thought he had worked it all out before in the moonlight nights on the yacht, before he had landed from it at San Francisco. But that was when he had believed that Berenice Vining was surely dead, and that nothing remained but his duty to Rosalind.
Now it all rose again like a ghost that would not down—the struggle between his heart and his duty, for they did not agree.
His troth plight held him to Rosalind, his love belonged to Berry.
But the pure little cottage maiden would not accept the heart without the hand.
Now that he knew she still lived, his heart was in a tumult between love and pride and duty.
He did not wish to make a mésalliance. His pride clung to Rosalind, the heiress, and he felt he owed her all respect and duty.
But his code of morals was so lax that if he could have possessed Berry without a wedding ring, he would have been loyal to her, even while wedding her rival, and found a measure of happiness in the double life.
But so certain was he of the little maiden’s stainless purity, that he knew it would be useless to reveal himself to her, although sobbing there in touch of his hand.
At the first sign of his presence he knew that she would fly from him in alarm and consternation.
He had come home determined to be good, and delight all his relatives by asking Rosalind to name the wedding day. He had decided that since Berry must surely be dead he could jog along quite comfortably with the blond beauty. Since neither one professed to be greatly in love, there would be plenty of ways for such rich people to keep out of each other’s way.
All at once now he went back to his old resolve.
“I must marry Rosalind and be done with it. There would be no end of a bother with my folks, and probably disinheritance, if I cut the whole thing and married little Berry. Besides, Rose is a good girl, after all, and it would be a shame to break her heart.”
Just as he came to this eminently virtuous resolution, and was softly rising to sneak away from the temptation of folding the sobbing Berry to his heart, there came an unlooked-for incident.
The sound of muffled footsteps suddenly paused by the tree, and a hoarse voice muttered impatiently:
“Why did you fail to keep the tryst, girl? It is long since the midnight bell tolled, and I grew weary of waiting.”
Berry gave such a convulsive start backward that the blossoming shrubs behind her were shaken, and dropped a shower of sweet flower petals to the ground.
“I—I—oh, I was so wretched thinking of my dear mother dead and my lost home, and the sorrows of my life, that I forgot everything else,” faltered the poor girl, with a dazed air. “What was it, please, you wanted of me?”
Charley Bonair was not going to leave just now, oh, no! He would stay and see what lark the girl was up to, anyway. Perhaps time had changed her, and she was not the good little angel of the past! Somehow he felt himself grow jealous at the thought, even while the quick thought came she might now be more to him.
Why did he feel all at once that he hated little Berry? Was it that she had destroyed his faith?
I deemed her the one thing undefiled
By the air we breathe, in a world of sin;
The truest, the tenderest, purest child,
A man ever trusted in.
What was this reproach for a tryst she had failed to keep? He would listen, he would learn her sin.
He leaned forward on his tiptoes, and got a good peep through the rose branches at Berry and her interlocutor. The latter looked like an old Indian squaw, picturesque draped in an old red blanket, with a feathered headdress over her seamy, swarthy face.
“Ah, a woman!” the young fellow thought to himself in keen relief, that made his heart throb tumultuously.
He heard the coarse, guttural voice replying cajolingly:
“Have you forgot so soon, girl, the charm I promised when I told your fortune, that was to avert a threatening doom, and bring to you wealth and happiness?”
Berry gave a little cry of remembrance and pleading:
“Oh, I remember it all now. Forgive me that I forgot. Oh, I was so sad, so sorrowful, I could think of nothing but the tale you told me of the death of my old mother. Oh, is it really, really true?”
The agony of those upraised eyes was enough to pierce a heart of stone, but the old crone answered malevolently:
“It is true as that the moon and stars shine in the heavens to-night. She thought that you had fled with a rich young man, who meant to ruin you, and she cursed you for your sin and her disgrace.”
“Oh, but I am innocent and pure as the day I was born! I pray Heaven that in death she knows the truth!” moaned the poor girl wildly.
“We have no time for all this rant! It is time for honest folks to be in their beds!” rejoined the Indian impatiently. Charley Bonair started, asking himself:
“Now, where have I heard that voice before, and that old saw in the same tone? It is strangely familiar, somehow, with a difference that baffles one!”
He heard Berry murmur again sobbingly:
“Forgive me, I did not mean any harm. Have you brought the charm with you?”
Then indeed Charley Bonair could scarcely keep from betraying himself by laughing outright.
“I left it around the path there in my bundle. Come with me and you shall have it.”
“I thank you,” Berry answered, simply and sweetly, and moved away by her side, a slim, white, girlish figure by the tall, grotesque figure of the other.
Bonair started to follow, then drew quickly back.
“It is none of my business to go spying on the dear, silly little girl,” he decided. “She must be in love with some other fellow now, by her anxiety over the old fortune teller, who knows no more of her future than the man in the moon. I’d better go back to the house and announce myself, and done with it! Hello, I’ll finish my cigar and drop around to my zoo, and see Zilla first. They wrote me she had two cubs and was savage as a lioness!”
He sauntered along in the moonlight when the cigar was lighted; but suddenly his repose was shaken by a terrible sound—loud, piercing shrieks coming from the direction of the zoo.