Jessie’s large, soft, dark eyes turned on her father’s face with a look
that shook his soul, they were so like other eyes he had once loved.
She cried pleadingly:
“No, no, for I have had such a sweet dream of my mother it thrills my
heart yet. Let me tell it to you, papa!”
The dark eyes and the pleading voice pierced his heart like a knife.
Why had God given her this subtle likeness to her mother that would
always be like a thorn in his heart?
He could not answer for his tumultuous thoughts, and she continued
thrillingly:
“Such a strange dream, papa!--sweet and strange, for I seemed to be
dead, but I felt no sorrow for it, because life had been cruel to me,
and I was glad to be at rest. Then she seemed to come and stand by my
side, the mother I had never known till an hour before my death, when
I saw her only as a proud, rich stranger. But in death she seemed to
belong to me. She knelt by me and kissed my face, my hands, my hair;
she called me Darling, and her tears rained on me while she deplored
the cruel fate that parted us in life, and restored me to her only in
death. Tell me, papa, could this be true? This proud, beautiful lady,
was she my mother?”
He had listened in surprise and wonder, and now he said evasively:
“It was only a dream, you know, dear.”
“Only a dream--but I hoped it might prove a reality. I--I--loved her so
dearly in my dream because she was so sweet and tender,” faltered the
girl with tears of disappointment starting to her eyes while her father
gazed at her in secret wonder, longing to know what strange events had
preceded her supposed death.
He could not bear to see her yearning for the mother who had been so
cruel to the father, but he did not know how to change that instinct of
love; he could only say coldly:
“Do not think any more of your dream, child. It was very misleading.”
“Perhaps so,” she murmured humbly, believing it must be true what he
said, for she could recall another dream that was, indeed, too subtly
sweet to be aught but illusion.
In that strange dream a voice all too fatally dear to her heart had
murmured words of love and tenderness, vowing fealty to her in heaven:
I love you, dearest one, all the while,
My heart is as full as it can hold,
There is place and to spare for the frank young smile,
And the red young mouth and the hair’s young gold,
So, hush, I will give you this leaf to keep,
See, I shut it inside the sweet, cold hand--
There, that is our secret! go to sleep;
You will wake, and remember and understand.
In that lovely dream he--Frank Laurier--had pressed his lips on her
golden hair, had kissed a rose and crushed it between her folded
hands. Was it only a dream?
Yes, how could it be aught but a dream? He who had trifled with her,
scorned her while living, how could he have changed when she lay dead?
The tears brimmed over in her eyes as she thought:
“How foolish I am, dwelling on such fancies. Of course, I have been
ill--not dead!--and dreamed all about these people who care naught for
me.”
Leon Dalrymple took her hand and looked at her with tender pity.
“My dear little one, do you feel well enough to go back with me over
the cruel past?” he asked abruptly.
She assented eagerly, and with some evasions that he deemed necessary,
he gave her a brief résumé of his life.
“I shall not tell you what your mother’s name was--nor mine--I call
myself Leon Lyndon now,” he said curtly, continuing: “Suffice it to say
you were born after your mother deserted me in disgust at my poverty. I
did not suspect you were coming, and, if she guessed it, she selfishly
kept the tender secret. You were born, and became the joy and pride
of her life while I hated her for having deprived me of your love. I
believe I was half mad in my troubles those days, and I contrived to
see you often unsuspected by your mother, while you were out with your
nurse. Your baby beauty and sweetness grew upon me so that at last I
stole you away, gloating over the thought that I could punish her at
last for her cruelty to me. I took you to my dear, sweet sister Jessie,
left you in her care, and became an exile from my native land. The
story of those twelve years is too long for you now, but at length the
longing for you drew me back again to New York, where I searched for
you vainly for a week before I chanced on you at last.”
“You found me lying like one dead in the snow!” she cried, and he
started, answering evasively:
“How came you there, my darling? I am very anxious to hear your story
up to that point.”
To his surprise she burst into tears, sobbing unrestrainedly for
several moments.
He waited patiently, stroking the fair head tenderly till the healing
tears ceased to flow, then, little by little, he drew her on, until the
story of her young life and her piteous little love secret lay bare
before his eyes.
He was startled, touched, and pained; the tears were very near his eyes.
He kissed her tenderly, pityingly.
“It was very sad, my child, but you are so young you will soon get over
this sorrow. It was rash in you to try to throw away your life like
that, and I am very glad that I found you in your extremity and placed
you in a physician’s care, else your life must have paid the forfeit of
your desperate deed,” he said rapidly, determining in his mind that she
should never know what had happened to her that night after she fell
down in the snow and thought herself dying.
“But life is very sad,” she murmured plaintively. “He--he--will marry
that scornful beauty, Miss Ellyson, and--and--they will laugh together
many times over me--and my broken heart.”
The tears came again in a burning shower, but he was glad to see them
fall; he knew they would relieve her pain of wounded love and pride.
When she grew quiet he said tenderly:
“You must forget him, dear, as they will forget you in their happiness.
I will take you away from New York, where you shall never meet those
cruel hearts again.”
“I should like to go--I should like to forget!” she sighed, and his
heart throbbed with divine sympathy, for he knew well all the anguish
of her plaint.
Do I remember? Ask me not again!
My soul has but one passion--to forget!
Oh, is there nothing in the world then
To take away the soul’s divine regret?
Alas, for love is evermore divine,
Immortal is the sorrow love must bring,
The buried jewel seeketh yet to shine,
And music’s spirit haunts the idle string,
So doth the heart in sadness ever twine,
Some fading wreath that keeps hope lingering.