“If love should come again, I ask my heart,
In tender tremors not unmixed with pain,
Couldst thou be calm, nor feel the past mad smart,
If love should come again?
“In vain I ask. My heart makes no reply,
But echoes evermore the sweet refrain,
Till, trembling lest it seem a wish, I sigh,
If love should come again!”
“How can a man be so infernally indifferent to so much youth, beauty
and innocence?” repeated Jerry Gaines, enthusiastically. “Upon my word,
I marvel that you are not jubilant over the prospect fate holds out to
you--you are ungrateful, old boy!”
Neither one of his comrades saw the look of pain that gathered for an
instant in John Dinsmore’s eyes, nor did they see the mobile lips under
the heavy mustache quiver for an instant, then draw themselves firmly
into a terse straight line.
How could he, whose whole heart’s affection had been wasted on the
fairest of womankind, look with anything save distrust, nor to say,
hatred, on the whole sex, he told himself with a bitter sigh, which he
carefully repressed ere it fell from his white lips.
“Love and marriage are not for me, boys--you both know that,” he
retorted, addressing his words to both his companions. “I shall never
love, consequently, never marry,” he said, slowly and earnestly.
“Every fellow says that until he meets the right girl,” declared the
artist, his eyes still fastened upon that lovely pictured face laughing
up at him.
“Every one save reporters,” laughed Gaines, “and their failure to wed
is because no sweet girl in her senses would agree to have one of
them if she stops to consider the question of bread and butter,” he
declared, breaking into a rollicking tune of “How Lonely the Life of a
Bachelor Is.”
“I beg pardon for this digression, old fellow,” he cried, catching up
the letter. “Now for letting you know what Mademoiselle Jess has to say
to you--in haste--as the lower left hand of the envelope is marked, and
underlined with a grand flourish.”
The quaint letter, so characteristic of the girl who had written it,
ran as follows:
“To MR. JOHN DINSMORE, New York City:
“DEAR MR. DINSMORE: No one knows that I am writing to you, or I
should never in the world be allowed to send it. I suppose you are
wondering who I am. Well, I am Jess--just Jess.
“I was up in the big apple tree in the orchard when the lawyer from
the city came out here, and he not knowing I was up there, sat down
on the bench beneath it and told Mrs. Bryson, the housekeeper, of the
wonderful will which he said had just been forwarded to him to attend
to, by somebody, I forget who; and in it--the will I mean--I was to
be a great heiress--the greatest in all Louisiana--if you would marry
me, and if you wouldn’t, the plantation and all the estate were to be
sold, and the money sent to the heathen Chinese, and I was to go out
into the world a beggar, as well as yourself, or be a governess, or
nursery maid, or kitchen maid maybe.
“I don’t know whether it would be nice or not to marry anybody, but
I’d rather a million times do that than leave the old plantation,
where I know every tree and leaf, and even the wild birds that come
and go each season.
“I heard the lawyer say that he had his doubts about whether you
would like me or not, and perhaps you’d flatly refuse to comply with
your uncle’s will when you saw me, for I was so thin and brown, and
then my hair was like a tangled mane and looked for all the world,
always, as though a comb had never been put to it, and then--a pretty
figure I cut in always running about barefoot--though I am within a
few days of being sixteen. I wish so much that you would come here
and take a look at me, to see if it would be quite convenient for you
to marry me, so that I can stay here forever and ever.
“But for fear you haven’t time, or something like that, I will send
you my picture that you can see if I will suit. It was taken by a
traveling photographer who came to take pictures of the old place for
a magazine, and he didn’t charge me anything for it--I couldn’t have
taken it if he had. He said, ‘Look pleasant, please,’ which made me
laugh so that the picture was spoiled, he said; but indeed, though,
I tried over and over again, I couldn’t help laughing to save my
life. I never dared show the picture to Mrs. Bryson, for she would
have been sure to have raised a terrible time with me for getting it
took--taken, I mean. Please answer as soon as you get this, if you
will come. Write it to Mrs. Bryson, but don’t put in even a hint that
I asked you to, or sent the picture, or I would get punished. JESS.”
It was little wonder that this straightforward letter, direct from the
simple, innocent, girlish heart of the writer, should touch the three
masculine hearts most profoundly.
Even John Dinsmore could not help the smile of amusement that came to
his lips with the hearing of the first sentence, broadening into a
hearty laugh at the conclusion.
“A little rough diamond!” commented Ballou, in a low voice.
“A treasure which almost any man would be proud to win,” added Jerry
Gaines.
Then, suddenly, he laid his hand on his friend’s arm, saying:
“Why don’t you take a run down to Louisiana, and look over the ground,
and the little maid as well, and then you will be better able to judge
whether or not you can afford to throw away the splendid offering which
the gods have flung in your way.”
John shook his head.
“I shall never marry,” he reiterated, “why, then, should I bother about
the inheritance which is based upon that contingency? And furthermore,
I would be inhuman to take advantage of such a child as this letter
shows the girl to be, by tying her to so bitter a fate as being wedded
to a man whose only object in marrying her was to secure a fortune. My
friends, I am made of different material from that. Of all classes
of men, I most despise a fortune hunter--a trader on a woman’s heart!
There is something sacrilegious, horrible to me, in the thought.”
“There will not be the least bit of harm in taking a trip down there,
at least,” urged Jerry Gaines. “That will not necessarily oblige you to
marry against your desire, I’m sure.”
Hazard Ballou heartily coincided in this opinion, and between them they
were so persistent that he should pursue this course that at last, for
the sake of peace, John Dinsmore promised to take the trip, especially
as his doctor had suggested that when he was able to leave Newport he
should take a trip South, to some mild climate, where his recuperation
would be complete.
Neither Ballou nor Gaines would be satisfied until he had answered the
child’s letter, as they termed Jess.
When he had gotten as far as addressing it, he was met by the fact that
Jess had asked him to communicate his response to Mrs. Bryson, instead
of herself; therefore he sent the following brief epistle to that
worthy woman, whom he remembered, though very indistinctly, as having
seen when he was taken on a visit to Blackheath Hall, as the place was
called, many years ago, when he was a small lad of five years.
“It makes me feel rather ancient to remember that that was a quarter of
a century ago,” he remarked, with a smile, as he looked over the brief
epistle, which ran as follows:
“To MRS. BRYSON, Blackheath Hall, Greenville, Louisiana:
“MY DEAR MADAM: After many years, I shall be again in your vicinity
within the course of a fortnight. May I hope that your hospitality
may be extended to me for a few days; I promise not to trespass upon
you longer than that.
“With best wishes for the welfare of yourself and all the inmates of
Blackheath Hall, I remain,
“Yours very truly,
“JOHN DINSMORE.”
“Short, but to the point,” remarked Jerry Gaines, as John handed it to
him wearily to fold up and place in the envelope.
An hour later the letter was duly on its way toward the sunny South,
where it was destined to create such havoc in the old Louisiana home.
“It is best that I should travel about for a little while, at least,”
ruminated John Dinsmore, long after his tried and true friends had left
him; “for the reason that my soul is filled with such bitter unrest
that I will find bearing the burden of life more and more intolerable
as the weeks roll on.
“Nearly a month has passed, and in a few short weeks more Ray Challoner
will lead the only girl I shall ever love to the altar, for I heard her
promise to be his bride two months from that day. Those were the cruel
words which broke my heart as I listened to them, unable to speak or
move, or make my presence known on the other side of those broad palms
which screened me from my faithless idol’s sight.
“When the marriage occurs, I want to be so far away that no
intelligence of it can reach me; for God knows, strong man though I am,
I think I should go mad to hear or read of it.
“Heaven pity a man who loves a girl as I have loved, and always will
love, Queenie Trevalyn.
“God! why were women made so beautiful, to ensnare the hearts of men,
only to cast them aside as playthings of the hour?
“I know her to be a frivolous coquette, a girl without a soul, a girl
who loves wealth above everything else earthly; but for all that I
worship her still, and her image will be enshrined in my heart until
the breath leaves my body, and death ends it all.”
And as he uttered the words he meant every one of them, little knowing
what fate had in store for him, and it was well that he did not.
A week later John Dinsmore set out on his Southern journey, his two
friends accompanying him to the train to see him off.
They would not have said “good-by” so cheerfully, had they known all
that was to happen ere they beheld his face again--ay, they would have
held him back at any cost.