The Unseen Bridegroom | Page 4

I have a great deal more to say, and I will say
it, and you will hear me before we part to-night. I know my power, Mr.
Carl Walraven, and I mean to use it. Do you think I need wear these
rags? Do you think I need tramp the black, bad streets, night after night,
a homeless, houseless wretch? No; not if I chose, not if I ordered--do
you hear?--ordered my aristocratic friend, Mr. Walraven, of Fifth
Avenue, to empty his plethoric purse in my dirty pocket. Ah, yes," with
a shrill laugh, "Miriam knows her power!"
"Are you almost done?" Mr. Walraven replied, calmly. "Have you
come here for anything but talk? If so, for what?"
"Not your money--be sure of that. I would starve--I would die the death
of a dog in a kennel--before I would eat a mouthful of bread bought
with your gold. I come for justice!"
"Justice"--he lifted a pair of sullen, inquiring eyes--"justice! To
whom?"
"To one whom you have injured beyond reparation--Mary Dane!"
She hissed the name in a sharp, sibilant whisper, and the man recoiled
as if an adder had stung him.
"What do you mean?" he asked, with dry, parched lips. "Why do you
come here to torment me? Mary Dane is dead."
"Mary Dane's daughter lives not twenty miles from where we stand.
Justice to the dead is beyond the power of even the wealthy Carl
Walraven. Justice to the living can yet be rendered, and shall be to the
uttermost farthing."
"What do you want?"
"I want you to find Mary Dane, and bring her here, educate her, dress
her, treat as your own child."
"Where shall I find her?"

"At K----, twenty miles from here."
"Who is she? What is she?"
"An actress, traveling about with a strolling troupe; an actress since her
sixth year--on the stage eleven years to-night. This is her seventeenth
birthday, as you know."
"Is this all?"
"All at present. Are you prepared to obey, or shall I--"
"There!" interrupted Mr. Walraven, "that will do. There is no need of
threats, Miriam--I am very willing to obey you in this. If I had known
Mary Dane--why the deuce did you give her that name?--was on this
continent, I would have hunted her up of my own accord. I would, upon
my honor!"
"Swear by something you possess," the woman said, with a sneer;
"honor you never had since I first knew you."
"Come, come, Miriam," said Mr. Walraven, uneasily, "don't be
cantankerous. Let by-gones be by-gones. I'm sorry for the past--I am
indeed, and am willing to do well for the future. Sit down and be
sociable, and tell me all about it. How came you to let the little one go
on the stage first?"
Miriam spurned away the proffered chair.
"I spurn it as I would your dead body if it lay before me, Carl Walraven!
Sit down with you? Never, if my life depended on it! The child became
an actress because I could keep her no longer--I couldn't keep
myself--and because she had the voice and face of an angel--poor little
wretch! The manager of a band of strolling players, passing through our
village, heard her baby voice singing some baby song, and pounced
upon her on the instant. We struck a bargain, and I sold her, Mr.
Walraven--yes, sold her."

"You wretch! Well?"
"Well, I went to see her occasionally afterward, but not often, for the
strolling troupe were here, there, and everywhere--from pillar to post.
But I never lost sight of her, and I saw her grow up a pretty, slender,
bright-eyed lass, well dressed, well fed, and happy--perfectly happy in
her wandering life. Her great-grandmother--old Peter Dane's wife--was
a gypsy, Mr. Walraven, and I dare say the wild blood broke out. She
liked the life, and became the star of the little band--the queen of the
troupe. I kept her in view even when she crossed the Atlantic last year,
and paid her a visit a week ago to-night."
"Humph!" was Carl Walraven's comment. "Well, Mistress Miriam, it
might have been worse; no thanks to you, though. And now--what does
she know of her own story?"
"Nothing."
"What?"
"Nothing, I tell you. Her name is Mary Dane, and she is seventeen
years old on the twenty-fifth of November. Her father and mother are
dead--poor but honest people, of course--and I am Aunt Miriam,
earning a respectable living by washing clothes and scrubbing floors.
That is what she knows. How much of that is true, Mr. Walraven?"
"Then she never heard of me?"
"She has never had that misfortune yet; it has been reserved for
yourself. You are a rich man, and you will go to K----, and you will see
her play, and will take a fancy to