Mr. Moore looks at the girl standing before him long and earnestly;
then, reaching forward, he catches her hands in one of his own, asking,
slowly:
“Why should it matter to you, little one, whether I was ill or well?
Why should you care?”
“Because I like you so much,” answered the girl, unconscious of what
her words implied. “I should not be quite happy unless you were happy,
too.” And she looked up, with those frank, childish eyes of hers,
directly into his face.
“Why do you like me, little Jess?” he queried, somewhat huskily.
“Because you have been so kind and gentle with me, and I am little used
to either; and, then, you have never censured me, as I had every reason
to believe you would do, for being the cause of you nearly losing your
life. If you had let me drown, when it was in your power to do so, it
would have been serving me exactly right, you know.”
He looked down into the childish face, with strange emotions throbbing
in his breast. Of all people the world held, not one of them had ever
told him, up to the present hour, that they liked him, or cared to see
him happy. On the contrary, the great, cruel world had hustled him
about sharply, and every one had been only too eager to trample him
down, utterly regardless of his feelings, whether he was doomed to
misery or not.
Long and earnestly he debated with himself as to whether he should tell
her that he was John Dinsmore, instead of Mr. Moore, as she thought
him, the hated being whom the elder Dinsmore had stipulated in that
ridiculous will that she should wed, or lose a princely fortune.
But at last he decided that it would not be amiss to sound her in
regard to her feelings first, before disclosing his identity to her.
But ere he could proceed to do this, fate, in the shape of Lucy
Caldwell, the farmer’s daughter, intervened.
She was hastening toward him, with a paper in her hand.
From the house she had seen him grasp and hold Jess’ little hand, and,
fearful that he was growing overfond of her pretty visitor, joined
them hurriedly, to prevent the attempt at sentimentalism, telling
herself that Jess should never have the opportunity of being alone with
Mr. Moore again if she could prevent it, and she would certainly be
ingenious enough to head off any _tête-à-têtes_, with her mother’s aid.
Down the path came Lucy, with a haste unusual to her, and at her
approach the gentleman dropped Jess’ hand, not altogether displeased at
the interruption which had caused the words he was about to utter to
remain unsaid for the present.
“Your New York papers, which you are always so anxious about, have
come, and here they are, Mr. Moore,” she said, handing them to him, the
heightened color flaming up into her face as he thanked her, expressing
the regret that she should put herself to so much trouble as to bring
them out to him.
“There is a letter for you inside the house, Jess,” she said, turning
to his companion. “Uncle Abbot wrote to papa from New Orleans, and a
Mrs. Bryson--I think he said she was the housekeeper at Blackheath
Hall--incloses one for you, which, he wrote, was of the greatest
importance, and must be delivered to you at once.”
Reluctantly, Jess followed Lucy to the farmhouse. She had little
curiosity to read Mrs. Bryson’s letter. She would rather have remained
outside in the golden sunshine talking to and worshiping her hero under
the great oak trees.
Meanwhile, the hero in question was following the forms of the two
girls with a troubled glance.
“If she knew who I was, she would hate me,” he mused, “but, not
knowing, I have the deepest, truest and warmest friendship that young,
girlish heart is capable of giving.”
He thought of the words he had somewhere read, “that the love which
is tenderest and sweetest in a woman’s breast has its birth in
friendship, gradually growing into a deeper passion.” Then again his
eyes took on the look of cynical coldness so habitual to them.
“Bah!” he cried; “what man is mad enough to trust the happiness of
his future in the hands of a girl of sixteen, when he has passed the
boundary line of thirty? She might like me in her childish way now, but
at five-and-twenty she would have her eyes opened to her folly, and
hate me most cordially.”
Then he turned his eyes to his paper most moodily, and was soon fathoms
deep in its pages, as it were, all forgetful of Jess, and the incident
which had stirred his heart like wine--the clasp of those soft arms
around his neck.
He had turned the second page of the _Herald_, and was running his eye
leisurely down one of the columns, when an article met his eye that
drove every vestige of color from his face. Like one stunned he read
the caption:
“A Brilliant Marriage in High Life. Miss Queenie, the Only Daughter
of Lawyer Trevalyn, of No. -- Fifth Avenue, New York, Married at Noon
To-day to----”
He could see no more, for a blood-red mist floated before his eyes; his
hands trembled so that the sheet before him was rent in twain at the
very column he had been reading, so tense was the strain of his clutch;
then, like a dead one, he fell face downward under the trees, suffering
from the keenest pain a human heart can know.
He was so far from the house, so far from all human sound, that the
bitter cries that welled up from the depths of his anguished soul could
not be heard.
And, lying there, he wept as few men weep in a lifetime. He had known
that it must come; he had been watching for it; he had not missed one
of the New York papers since he had been ill. He had sent for the
back numbers from the day he had been stricken, and had scanned their
columns with an intensity which nearly brought on a relapse when he was
enabled to sit up to read them. But the article for which he searched,
and dreaded so to behold, did not appear.
“Had anything occurred to break off the match between Ray Challoner
and his lost Queenie?” he would ask himself over and over again. And
with that thought came the glimmering hope, if that were the case, he
might even yet win her, for the fortune which she craved was now his
through the sale of his books.
Then he would thrust the thought from him with loathing. No! a thousand
times no! He would never buy a wife. He would go unwedded to the grave
first, and he hated his own weakness for still craving her love and her
presence.
He had expected this intelligence, yet when the blow fell, it was as
though it had killed the living, beating heart in his bosom, withered
it, as lightning blights and withers a giant oak and fells it to the
earth.
Queenie was married at last, and to his rival. That was the one thought
that whirled through his brain, and almost drove him mad.
She was lost to him forever! Ay, as much as though she lay in the
grave, and again and again such terrible waves of grief swept over him
that they threatened to dethrone his reason. He did not care to live an
hour longer. All that he loved on earth was lost to him.
He had loved Queenie Trevalyn as few men love in a lifetime. She had
drawn him on, encouraged him by all the wiles with which a finished
coquette ensnares her victims, and then had cast him off without the
least compunction.
But, ah, how strange a thing is the human heart. Through it all, no
matter what had befallen him at her fair, false hands, he loved her
still, with a love which refused to be killed.
Although he hated himself for his weakness, he would have given all he
had in the world, ay, his very prospects of Heaven! if he could have
averted that marriage. Ay, given every dollar of the wealth which had
come to him too late, to have been standing on the spot where he was
lying now (with his face buried in the long grass, uttering bitter
moans) with Queenie Trevalyn’s hands clasped in his, looking down into
the depths of her wondrous eyes listening to her dulcet voice, though
in his innermost soul he realized that every word those sweet, rosy
lips were uttering was false--false!
“I must banish such a wish or I shall, indeed, go mad!” he sobbed,
dashing his hand over his eyes, as though he could shut out the picture
which his memory conjured up at will.
But it was useless; he had loved too well, and the wound was too deep.
If he had a revolver with him in that hour, the rest of his life story
would never have been written, for he would have ended it then and
there.
How long he remained there like one stunned he never knew. He took no
heed of the flight of time. He was suddenly brought to a realization of
his surroundings by the touch of a little hand, cool as a lily leaf,
upon his burning brow, and Jess’ voice saying, in alarm:
“Now I know that you are very ill, indeed, Mr. Moore, when I find you
lying here where I left you hours ago, and groaning so,” and the dark,
curly head was bent down close to his, and Jess began to cry bitterly
over him, stroking his face, and then his clenched hands, as a child
might caress a loved animal lying at her feet cruelly hurt.
“Don’t, Jess, little girl!” he whispered, in a choking voice. “I am not
ill, as you think, believe me; and I thank you for your sweet sympathy.
Surely, you are the only being on the wide earth who has the least
interest in me, whether I am sick or well, or whether I live or die.”
And with those words, a strange resolve came to him to marry Jess, that
she might have the fortune, and then make away with himself at once and
end it all!