Blessing and cursing -- Fiction; England -- Fiction; Families -- Fiction; Romanies -- Fiction
“He won’t die, doctor, dear, until I have spoken to him,” put in the
old crone, pressing close to the wounded man’s pillows. “That’s what
he’s waiting for. He’s waiting to hear the voice of old Sarah Carewe,
whose son he murdered, and whose grandchild’s heart he broke; the
voice he heard cursing him outside the court-house, where he swore
James Carewe’s liberty away. But James Carewe has been even with you,
Philip Cranstoun, for it was he who drove your cab to-day. And Clare,
my dear grandchild, will rest in her grave when she knows how I’ve
carried out her prayer to bring up your children to hate and to
disgrace you when those twin girls, Stella and Lura Cranstoun, were
born to her. I let you keep the one, and you well-nigh broke her heart
as you broke her mother’s. But old Sarah saved her, and she’ll marry
her own young spark, the farmer, while I’ll wager my little Lura will
set all tongues wagging with her doings. She’s an imp of evil even _I_
can’t manage, and she’s been trained to hate you as I do. Romanys have
good memories, Sir Philip Cranstoun. Old Sarah told you she would live
to laugh at you as you lay dying in a garret, and her words have come
true!”
Her voice rose to a shriek of triumph on her last words, and there was
a fiendish glee in the shrill laugh that accompanied them. The dying
man turned his head aside with a shudder of repugnance, and motioned
to the doctor to approach him.
“Stella, my daughter Stella; I want her,” he whispered. “Where is
she?”
The doctor turned to the old woman, who, as though exhausted by the
excitement of the moment for which she had waited so long, had sunk
upon a chair, looking extraordinarily old and feeble.
“Oh, he can see her if she likes,” she mumbled. “_His_ bullying days
are over.”
Not until late that same evening could Stella be found, Brian Carewe
having applied in vain at the lodgings in Duchess Street, where she
had been placed by old Sarah after the latter had brought her, drugged
and insensible, in the caravan to London. But Brian had the gypsy
instinct of tracking, and enlisting the aid of his nephew, Stephen
Lee, who had long ago discovered the fraud perpetrated upon Lord
Carthew, he sought out the address of Hilary Pritchard, and through
him that of the latter’s aunt, in whose care Stella had been placed
that day.
And by the light of a candle flickering in the wind, which blew
through the broken window-panes of a wretched garret, Stella saw her
father for the last time, and on her knees beside his bed freely
forgave him for any grief he might have caused her, and soothed his
last moments with a daughter’s tenderness as freely given as it was
wholly undeserved.
* * * * * * * *
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account