“Like some lone bird, without a mate,
My weary heart is desolate;
I look around, and cannot trace
One friendly smile, one welcoming face;
And e’en in crowds, I’m still alone,
Because--I cannot love--but one.”
John Dinsmore experienced quite a change of climate when he reached New
York from that which he had just left behind him in the sunny South. A
violent snowstorm was raging, and it was bitter cold.
Busy as the streets of the great metropolis always were there seemed
to be more than the usual throng surging to and fro, and then John
Dinsmore remembered what he came very near forgetting, that it was
Thanksgiving Eve.
How happy were the faces of all who passed him, as though there were
no such things in the world as sorrow, desolation, and heartaches. He
smiled a bitter smile, telling himself that he had little enough to
give thanks for, in the way of happiness. He hesitated a moment on the
corner of Broadway, wondering if it were best to go to a hotel, or to
the room of his old friends, Jerry Gaines and Ballou.
“I do not feel equal to seeing and talking with even the Trinity
to-night,” he muttered. “They would want an account of all that
transpired since I saw them last, and I am not equal to it just yet.
How surprised they will be, and pleased to know that I escaped the
wreck under which the papers had me buried, and still more pleased to
learn that I married the girl that Uncle Dinsmore selected for me; but
they will do their best to argue me out of my firm resolve to divorce
the girl. But nothing that they can say or do will shake me in my
purpose. I will set the girl free in the shortest possible time, that
she may wed the man to whom she was engaged when I came upon the scene
and married her, never dreaming she was in love with another, and that
the reports of my wealth had tempted her to prove false to him. I know
but too well what the poor fellow must have suffered.”
Finding himself in the vicinity of the home of the Trevalyns, that
is, the address Queenie had given him when they were at Newport, he
concluded that there was no time like the present to discharge the
unpleasant task. He therefore turned his steps in that direction at
once.
A brisk walk of scarcely three minutes brought him to the number he was
in search of, No. -- Fifth Avenue.
The obsequious servant who answered the summons at the door bowed low
to the tall, distinguished-looking gentleman whom he found there.
It was then that John Dinsmore made the fatal mistake of his life. He
called for Miss Trevalyn, instead of Mrs. Trevalyn.
“Evidently the gentleman doesn’t know that our young lady is married,”
thought the servant, and he answered with a smile:
“The lady has changed her address, sir. You will find her at No. --
Fifty-second Street.”
The man would have given him additional information in the next breath,
but at that instant John Dinsmore turned swiftly, and with a courteous
bow descended the steps.
“Probably an old beau of our young lady’s,” thought the servant, gazing
thoughtfully after the tall, commanding form. “I should say also that
he is not a New Yorker, or he would have known all about Miss Queenie’s
marriage to the old millionaire, who turned out on his death to be
almost a pauper. That ought to be a warning to all young girls who
would marry old men for their supposed wealth.”
Meanwhile John Dinsmore was making his way with long, swinging strides
to the address given, which he knew could be scarcely more than a
couple of blocks or so away.
He could not see much of the exterior of the house, for, although
scarcely five in the afternoon, it was already dark.
Once again he asked for Miss Trevalyn, instead of inquiring for Mrs.
Trevalyn, his thoughts were, alas! so full of the girl he had loved so
madly, so deeply--and lost so cruelly.
The servant stared for an instant blankly, but in the next he
remembered that that was the name of his young mistress before her
marriage, and with a low bow invited the gentleman to enter, throwing
open the drawing-room door for him.
John Dinsmore knew that she would recognize the name his card bore at
the first glance.
After much consideration he had thought it best to acquaint Mrs.
Trevalyn with the true state of affairs before seeing Jess--she being
the girl’s hostess, and the one whom she would seek advice from--after
he had had his interview with her.
He seated himself in the nearest chair and awaited her coming.
He had scarcely seated himself ere his eyes fell upon a picture of
Queenie, a life-size painting, hanging upon the opposite wall. His
heart was in his eyes as he gazed.
The old sorrow that he thought he had strangled to death by main force
of indomitable will seemed to have sprung instantly into new life. The
old sorrow was crying aloud. What vain, wild passion; what deep regret,
there was still in his heart! He tried to withdraw his eyes from the
fatal beauty of that pictured face, which was, ah! so lifelike, but it
seemed impossible for him to do so.
A mad desire which he could not repress seemed to draw him toward it,
and mechanically he allowed himself to cross the room and stand before
it. And he could hardly keep from falling on his knees before it,
touching the little hands that seemed so lifelike; and, God help him,
to restrain himself from kissing passionately the beautiful lips that
he had hungered so to caress from the first moment that he and Queenie
Trevalyn had met.
The temptation mastered him. “Just once; no one in the wide world will
ever know,” he muttered, hoarsely, “and what can it matter; it can do
no harm to the soulless canvas,” and, raising his feverish face, he
kissed passionately the lips of the picture, not once, but many times.
Then he turned away with his heart on fire, and flung himself down
into the depths of the great armchair again, burying his face in his
trembling hands.
“A love such as mine can never die,” he groaned, and he wondered how he
should ever be able to meet Queenie face to face, and live through it,
if it was such an effort to gain anything like composure when he came
suddenly upon her picture in her mother’s drawing-room.
He thought of the few happy weeks in which he had sunned himself in the
presence of his idol without a care or a thought of how it was to end,
although he should have realized the great gulf more clearly that lay
between them at that time--she being rich, and he poor as it is the
fate of most authors to be.
And lines of his own composing, lines which appeared in his book, came
to his mind:
“’Tis no easy matter, as most authors know,
To coin pleasant thoughts from the mind’s full mint;
And then, after all, he must ask no pay,
But be satisfied merely to see it in print.”
He wished with all his heart that the girl he loved so well had married
some man more worthy of her than Raymond Challoner, the libertine and
gambler.
He turned the chair around. He had always imagined himself a brave
man; now he knew that he had not the control over himself that he had
imagined.
“Fool that I am, I would give ten years of my life to live those three
blissful weeks at Newport over again,” he muttered sadly and hoarsely.
“I feel so unnerved that I almost wish that I could find some excuse
for leaving this house without seeing Jess; but that cannot be, I
suppose, for that must be Mrs. Trevalyn’s step which I hear in the
corridor.”
With a heavy sigh he crushed back the unhappiness that had swept over
his heart, and summoned by a mighty effort the calm expression which
had become habitual to his face, and the coldness to his eyes.
It was not an instant too soon, however, for at that moment the
portières before the door were swept back by a white, jeweled hand.