“It is so wide, this great world vaulted o’er
By the blue sky clasping dark shore to shore,
It is too wide--it is too wide for me!
Would God that it were narrowed to a grave,
And I slept quiet, naught hid with me save
The love that was too great--too great for me.”
That brief letter from John Dinsmore created no end of excitement at
Blackheath Hall. After an absence of five-and-twenty years the heir,
whom she well remembered as a handsome, high-spirited, blue-eyed lad,
was coming home at last.
All the old family servants were startled out of the lethargy into
which they had fallen during the long years since a master had been at
the old hall to rule them--most of them but barely recalled the owner,
Mr. George Dinsmore, a bachelor, and the most extensive plantation
owner in all Louisiana.
Mrs. Bryson, the housekeeper, well remembered a day when he called her
to his study and said: “I am going away on a journey. I may return in
a month, or it may be a year; perhaps even longer. During my absence,
though it be long or short, I want everything at the old plantation to
go on the same--you understand?”
The good woman courtesied, and answered: “Everything shall go on the
same, sir, though you may be away weeks, months, or years.”
Thus he took his departure, and no one knew his destination.
It was five long years ere Mrs. Bryson heard from the master of
Blackheath Hall. At that time she received a letter from him bearing
the foreign postmark of London.
After giving minute directions concerning the plantation, the letter
wound up with this singular postscript:
“My nephew--who will one day be my heir, presumably--together with his
tutor, will be at Blackheath Hall for a short stay. I leave it to you
to make their stay as pleasant as possible.”
Mrs. Bryson carried out her master’s wishes to the letter. When the
English tutor and the little lad arrived the hospitable doors of
Blackheath Hall were thrown open wide to welcome them.
During their short stay they saw but little of the tutor, for he kept
to himself much of the time, rarely joining them save at meal times,
and even then he had little to say, as though understanding intuitively
that they would like to question him as to the identity of the lad--for
they knew nothing whatever of the family history of their master, what
relatives he had, or where they resided.
Some of the servants began to ply the lad with questions on the first
day of his arrival when they had him alone, but they were effectually
silenced by the boy replying:
“I will go and ask my tutor and find out for you, telling him that you
wish to know.”
They stopped him short, covered with confusion. And after that
experience, in which they were ignominiously prevented from satisfying
their curiosity, they made no attempt to question the boy, and he rode
the fat, sleek horses at a mad, breakneck gallop, bareback, down the
lane, chased the young lambs over the meadow, and pulled ruthlessly the
long, slender leaves of the tobacco plants to his heart’s content.
During the short time of his stay beneath that roof every one, from
the housekeeper down, loved the gay, rollicking lad who was so full of
life and spirit and boyish pranks; and they were sorry enough when the
tutor announced that their stay at Blackheath Hall had come to an end,
and sorrier still when they saw the lad, who had been the life of the
house, ride away--and they always carried the memory in their hearts of
how he turned and kissed his little hand to them when he reached the
brow of the hill, ere he was lost completely to their sight.
Then, once again, after this short break in their lives, everything
settled down to the same dull, monotonous routine at Blackheath Hall--a
monotony which was not broken for full many a year. During this time
the master of the plantation still continued to reside abroad, giving
not the slightest hint or explanation to his wondering household as to
the why or wherefore of his strange action.
Thirteen years more rolled slowly by, then came the second break in the
dull life of the inmates of the old hall. A second letter was received
from the master, this time bearing the postmark of far off Egypt, and
announcing that by the time they received his letter a child would be
sent to them, who was to make her home at the hall--her name was--Jess.
That was all the information the letter contained. There was not
even a word as to what position the child was to occupy in the
household--whether she was to be reared to take the place of one of the
servants when they should be incapacitated by old age from work, or was
to be looked upon as a _protégée_ of the master.
In due time the child arrived--an elfish little creature she was--in
charge of a woman, a foreigner, who understood no English.
She made no stop whatever, delivering the little one to the inmates of
Blackheath Hall and departing immediately, without even partaking of
the refreshments which they would have pressed upon her.
They could understand but one thing; she called the little one
Jess--just that and nothing more. When they asked her for the little
one’s other name, she maintained by motions that she could not
comprehend their question.
Perhaps this was true, or it might have been feigned; at any rate, she
made all haste from the place, seemingly heartily glad to be rid of her
charge.
In Mrs. Bryson’s opinion, the woman was a French maid--and the child
bore such a striking resemblance to her that almost every member of the
household remarked it.
Little Jess seemed to take kindly enough to her surroundings. She grew
and thrived like a weed, springing up much after the fashion of that
uncultivated plant.
She was allowed to roam about as she would--bare of foot and
hatless--the great mane of curling hair with which nature had provided
her being her only head-covering--lithe and graceful as a young fawn in
her brown linsey gown, which barely reached the slender, brown ankles.
Jess was a child of nature--she would have known little enough of
books, and cared still less, had not the servants taken pity on her
and taught her to read and write, which was quite as much as they knew
themselves.
The master of Blackheath Hall never wrote again to ask about the little
waif. Except for the brief mention he had made that she was to find
shelter beneath his roof, he seemed to forget her entirely.
Therefore the shock of the lawyer’s coming, with the sad notice of Mr.
George Dinsmore’s death, and the will--which was very much stranger
still--giving his nephew his entire fortune if he took with it Little
Jess--cutting him off entirely if he failed to do so, and cutting the
girl off, as well, if she failed to secure his nephew, John Dinsmore,
for her husband--was the most mystifying surprise they had ever had.
“It is useless to hope that a fastidious gentleman who has traveled
half over the world--as has Mr. John Dinsmore--would take to a wild,
half-tamed creature like Jess,” Mrs. Bryson said, despairingly, and her
heart misgave her that she had not troubled herself to look after the
girl better during the years which had come and gone so swiftly. If her
late master’s plans miscarried, she felt in a vague way that the fault
would lie at her door for not looking after the girl better, and making
her more of a lady, instead of a lovely little hoydenish savage who
would have her own way and knew no will save her own.
For days at a time Jess had been in the habit of wandering about where
fancy willed, and no one took the pains to inquire into her coming or
going--whether she was in the house or out of it; if she fell asleep
from fatigue amid the long grass under the trees when night overtook
her, or if she were in her own little room in the servants’ quarters
under the eaves.
The mistake of years could not be rectified in a day. Mrs. Bryson
realized that, and felt, in consequence, deep concern.
For the first time in her life, after the lawyer’s visit, she searched
for Jess. Through the house and over all the grounds she went, but
there were no signs of her.
Jess was like a wild bird ever on the wing; no one knew where she was
likely to alight.
Mrs. Bryson was most anxious to have a long and earnest talk with the
girl. It never occurred to her for a moment that the girl was evading
her for that very reason--that she had heard her tell the lawyer that
she meant to have a long and serious talk at once with Jess--but from
that hour Jess was nowhere to be found.
It never occurred to the good woman to look up into the magnolia trees
which she passed a score of times in her vain search for the girl.
The letter which was received at Blackheath Hall, announcing that the
heir would soon arrive there, put Mrs. Bryson in a great state of
trepidation. Jess must be found, told the truth and be made to realize
that she was to appear before the strange gentleman who was coming, as
a young girl of refinement--not a wild, barefooted savage who would not
only shock, but horrify him, and shatter at once his uncle’s plans of
marriage between them.
Clothes would have to be made in a hurry, and lessons given her in
deportment; and she would have to be made to understand that her
sweetness of demeanor, her behavior and conversational powers would
mean wealth or beggary to her.
Every member of the household was sent out in search of the girl, but
it was all to no purpose.
Not one of them once dreamed that Jess, up in the tree, was fairly
convulsed with laughter at the annoyance she was causing them. She knew
their plans, for she heard them discuss them freely as they hurried
along, and then and there she determined that she would not take a
single step out of her way to please the fastidious heir of Blackheath
Hall. It was a matter of little concern to the girl whether he liked
her or not.