“Ah, they know not heart
Of man or woman who declare
That love needs time to do or dare.
His altars wait--not day nor name--
Only the touch of sacred flame.”
The week which follows the advent of Jess to the old farmhouse Mr.
Moore will never forget. It is a changed place.
Lucy Caldwell, the farmer’s daughter, is a quiet girl, quite as
ladylike as many a city-bred, boarding-school miss. But Jess is
decidedly the reverse.
She bounds up and down the carpetless stairs, three steps at a time,
whistles ear-splitting snatches of coon songs, as she describes them to
Lucy, bangs doors and romps about to her heart’s content, all of which
indicates that she is perfectly happy. She is so content in the old
farmhouse that she does not care if the Trevalyns never return to their
home. She could stay at the farm forever; yes, forever.
She does not realize, child that she is, what causes her exuberance of
spirits, what is it that makes her so wondrously joyous and contented.
She only realizes that every hour of her life is filled with a new,
sweet pleasure--the pleasure of being so much in the company of Mr.
Moore.
Jess’ first thought in the morning, upon waking, is of him, and her
last thought at night, until she trails off into deep, healthful
slumber, is of the handsome, kingly man who makes the days pass so
delightfully for her.
Mrs. Caldwell and her daughter note with alarm Jess’ fondness for Mr.
Moore’s society, and comment on it in no kindly manner.
“She behaves most outrageously for an engaged girl,” declared Lucy.
“Her betrothed ought to know how she is flirting with another man
when out of his sight, and Mr. Moore ought to be advised that she is
not fancy free. Oh, dear! Oh, dear! why did I allow myself to become
pledged to silence in regard to the matter? But for that I could tell
him. She cares so little for her _fiancé_ that she has not even written
him a line since she has been here--which is quite a week now. Why,
every other young girl who is engaged, and who is away from the man she
is to marry, writes to him every day of her life, I am sure. I know
that is the way that I should do.” Lucy even ventured to drop a hint to
Jess regarding this matter, and she never forgot the effect which it
produced upon her, to the last day of her life.
They were standing together out on the porch. Jess was watching eagerly
down the road, in the direction Mr. Moore was sauntering, her cheeks
slightly flushed, and her eyes full of a bright light which Lucy had
not seen there before.
“I can guess of whom you are thinking, Jess,” she says, lightly.
A great flood of crimson stains Jess’ cheeks, quickly extending from
chin to brow, as she wheels about and catches Lucy’s gray eyes, which
have a malicious gleam in them. But this she does not note.
Before she has time to utter the words that rise to her lips, Lucy
adds, smoothly:
“Of course, you were thinking of the young man whom you are soon to
marry. How strange it is that you have not heard from him since you
have been here. Now, were I in your place, I should feel worried, to
say the least.”
Jess throws herself face downward on the red-painted bench of the
porch, sobbing as though her heart would break.
All in an instant she had been hurled from the heights of bliss down
to the very depths of dark despair. She had forgotten Mr. Dinsmore
completely for one short, happy week, as completely as though he had
never existed.
“Oh, how cruel of you to remind me, Lucy,” she sobbed, bitterly. “You
have brought me from heaven back to earth.”
“You are talking wildly, and in riddles,” remarked Lucy, sharply.
“Why should you not be pleased to hear of the man whom you are soon to
marry? Yours is a strange sort of love, I should say.”
Then the truth came out. Jess could keep it back no longer.
“I do not love him. I--I fairly hate him,” she sobbed, vehemently. “I
wrote to him in accordance with--with--the expressed desire of one who
is dead--that I would marry him, and I have been regretting it every
hour of my life since.”
“You ought to be ashamed to acknowledge such a state of heart,”
returned Lucy, indignantly. “It is sinful!”
“I cannot help it. That is just how I feel,” cried Jess, great sighs
welling up from her heart to her lips.
“You have promised to marry a young man whom you do not love!” repeats
Lucy, for the first time realizing that part of Jess’ excited remarks.
She was about to add: “How could you do it?” Then she thinks better of
what she was about to say, and goes on: “Mother says the greatest love
has often commenced with a very decided aversion.”
“I must marry John Dinsmore, but I shall hate him till the day I die!”
sobbed Jess, vehemently.
They have been so absorbed in their conversation that neither of the
girls noted that Mr. Moore had made a tour of the grounds and entered
the best room by the side door, and stood by the open window, looking
out at them, screened by the heavy, white curtains.
He had heard the last words of that conversation, and stepped back from
the open window, with a very strange pallor upon his face, but it soon
gave place to the cynical smile that played about his lips.
“Woman-like, she is not disposed to lose the Dinsmore fortune,” he
muttered. “She is worldly enough for that, childlike though she
appears,” and he turns on his heel and walks as noiselessly out of the
room and out of the house as he has entered.
There is a sneering expression on his handsome, cold face.
“Yes, she is like that other one,” he thinks, “willing to barter
herself for glittering gold and the pleasures it may bring,” and he
thinks of the lines which he applies to all womankind:
“Away, away; you’re all the same,
A flattering, smiling, jilting throng!
Oh, by my soul! I burn with shame
To think I’ve been your slave so long!
Away, away! Your smile’s a curse;
Oh! blot me from the race of men,
Kind, pitying Heaven, by death or worse,
Before I love such things again.”
And as he walks quickly along, smoking the cigar which he has lighted,
he thinks, amusedly, that the girl’s resolve to marry him is like the
old quotation of counting chickens before they are hatched; for he
has not as yet asked her hand in marriage--that marriage which is so
distasteful to both of them--and then he falls to abusing the will
which would tie them together for life--two who had not the slightest
affection for each other.
He wondered, as he smoked, what Jess would think if she knew that he
was the obnoxious person whom that will had dealt with. He regarded her
with a glance of keen scrutiny as she hurried down the walk and up to
the rustic bench where he was seated an hour later.
“I--I want to ask you a question, Mr. Moore!” she cried, breathlessly.
“Will you answer it?”
“If I can,” he responded, gravely, as he tossed aside his cigar, and
made way for her on the rustic bench. But, instead of accepting the
seat, she threw herself, with childish abandon, in the long grass at
his feet, looking up at him with those great, dark, limpid eyes, which
reminded him of a young gazelle.
He leans back and watches her.
She seems in no hurry to unbosom herself as to the question she has
intimated that she is so eager to ask.
He looks at her curiously. He does not understand this queer child--for
woman she certainly is not--and before he knows it, he is drawing a
comparison between her and the girl who jilted him so cruelly because
he was not rich--beautiful Queenie Trevalyn, and at the thought of his
lost love, his brows contract with a spasm of pain, and a stifled groan
breaks from his lips. Yes, he was comparing Queenie and Jess. That
cruel wound is still gaping open, and every thought of Queenie gives
his heart a stab of the keenest pain, and for the instant he forgets
the girl at his feet, remembering only that summer and the beautiful,
false face that drew him on like a lodestar, only to wreck his heart on
the bitter rock of disappointment.
And at the memory of it all, he covered his face with his hands and
groaned aloud.
Jess was a child of impulse. With no thought of the imprudence of her
action, in an instant she was on her feet, and in the next a pair of
warm arms were thrown about his neck, two terror-stricken, childish
eyes were looking into his, a soft face was close to his, and Jess was
crying, excitedly:
“Oh, Mr. Moore, are you sick? I’m so sorry. I wish it were I instead
of you. No, that is not just what I want to say. What I mean is that I
wish that I could take it from you, or suffer it in your stead, that
you might be free from it.”
And the young voice which utters the words quivers with emotion, and a
little gust of tears, wrung from an anguished, little heart, fall upon
his face.
He is so startled for a moment he is fairly speechless--struck dumb
with astonishment. If a thunderbolt had fallen from a clear sky, or the
ground had suddenly opened beneath his feet, he could not have been
more astounded.
The touch of those soft arms about his neck fairly electrifies him. He
starts back, turns a dull red, then flushes hotly, as he looks at her
and tries to answer.
“Ill! No,” he replies. “I am not ill, thank you, Miss Jess,” he says,
at length, and he laughs a little, forced laugh, as she stands and
looks at him in wonder, her arms having fallen at her side.
She is dimly conscious that she has made herself ridiculous in his eyes
by her solicitude, and that her impulsive action throwing her arms
about him had greatly offended him, and she wondered vaguely, as she
stands before him covered with confusion, how she ever dared do it.