“Let no one say that there is need
Of time for love to grow.
Ah, no, the love that kills, indeed,
Dispatches at a blow.”
“Jess is your wife!” repeated Queenie, in a voice so hollow and
deathlike that it might have come from the tomb.
John Dinsmore bowed his head in assent, and as he did so, his companion
detected a shadow of bitterness in his eyes, and a whitening of his
face.
“What to you seems so strange can be explained in a very few words, if
you care to hear that explanation,” he said, slowly.
Queenie bowed her head eagerly. Like him, words seemed to fail her.
She sank into the nearest chair, pointing to one opposite her, but he
declined the proffered seat, remarking that, “with her permission, he
would prefer standing.”
For some moments he stood leaning against the marble mantel ere he
could control himself sufficiently to tell his story.
Then he began almost abruptly:
“When you knew me at Newport, I told you that I was simply John
Dinsmore, Author, Bohemian. I did not add that I was the last of kin
of a wealthy uncle who had always told me that I should be his heir,
for I despise men who live in expectancy of falling into dead men’s
shoes, and getting the good out of fortunes which other men have toiled
for. I depended upon myself and my own achievements for getting along
in the world.
“Well, to make a long narrative brief, scarcely two days had
passed after you and I had parted that night on the sands, ere the
intelligence was brought to me that my uncle had just died abroad, and
that I was his heir. But there was a condition to it, however, in the
shape of a codicil, declaring, that in order to inherit this fortune, I
was to become the husband of a maiden whom he had selected for me, to
wit: a young girl named Jess, who lived on his plantation, Blackheath
Hall, down in Louisiana. The will also added, should I fail to do this,
the girl, Jess, like myself, would be disinherited.”
“And you, whom I thought the soul of honor, beyond the power of being
bought by sordid gold, wedded this girl for the Dinsmore millions!”
cried Queenie, bitterly.
He looked at her reproachfully, and his firm lips quivered ever so
slightly. The accusation was galling to him.
“No,” he said, sharply; “not so. Fate, if there indeed be such a
condition, forged link after link of the chain, and I was”--he was
going to add--“drawn into it,” but he bit his lip savagely, keeping
back the words. But Queenie’s quick wit supplied just what he withheld.
After a brief pause he continued:
“I was on my way down South to tell the girl that the wedding could
never take place, when that railway accident occurred which held me
prisoner, as it were, at the farm of the Caldwells for many weeks. Not
wishing the information to get into the newspapers, I gave those good
people the name of Moore. Imagine my amazement when fate, as I call it
again, brought the girl, Jess, to that very farmhouse.”
“And you fell in love with her and married her out of hand?” broke in
Queenie again, trembling with agitation.
“Again you are in error,” he retorted, with a deep-drawn sigh. “Looking
on the girl, I pitied her, for the reason that my failure to fall in
love with and wed her would cost her one-half of the Dinsmore fortune,
just as it would cost me the other half. My action would make her
homeless, penniless. The more I brooded over that the more I pitied
her, and one day a path out of the dilemma seemed to suddenly open out
before me. Something seemed to say to me: ‘Why not marry the girl, and
thus secure the fortune to her which should be hers?’
“At first my heart rebelled at the notion, but the more I turned it
over in my mind, the more it seemed my solemn duty to do so. I put
the plan into execution at once, lest my resolution should fail me,
and still calling myself Mr. Moore, I asked Jess to marry me, and her
answer was ‘yes.’
“I meant to tell her who I was after the marriage ceremony, and add
‘now that I have secured to you the fortune that is yours through my
uncle’s desire, I leave it with you to fulfill your marriage vows, or
bid me depart,’ and to also tell her that I intended to make over my
share of the Dinsmore millions to her.
“Before we reached the farmhouse again, after the marriage, which I
need scarcely add was a secret one, I exacted a promise from the lips
of Jess that she would not reveal what had taken place until I gave her
permission to do so.
“She left with Lawyer Abbot for New York within the hour, I promising
to write her within a fortnight after she had arrived here. Instead,
I concluded that it was best to come in person, see her, reveal my
identity, and leave my future and my fate in her hands. That is my
story. I did not know I should find you in this house, Queenie, Heaven
knows I did not. I was informed that your parents now resided here. I
thought you were wedded to Raymond Challoner, and away in Europe on
your bridal trip.”
“Instead you find me a widow,” murmured Queenie, looking up into his
face with eager shining eyes and her breath coming and going swiftly
with every palpitation of her heaving bosom.
“Too late, too late!” he muttered in a low voice almost under his
breath, but not so low but what his companion caught the words.
“No, no!” she cried, vehemently, “it is not too late, John Dinsmore.
This girl is nothing to you, less than nothing since you do not love
her. Give her half of the Dinsmore millions, since it must be hers, and
divorce her, as you had planned, and then--then----”
“Good Heavens! What are you saying, Mrs.----”
John Dinsmore stops short, and Queenie knows that he cannot call her by
that name--that it sticks in his throat.
Queenie has the grace to blush, and then she covers her crimson face
with her hands! Surely he must understand what she has left unsaid--and
he does, and gives a great start of surprise. Hitherto Queenie has
occupied a pedestal high as an angel in his heart. Is this the girl
whom he has worshiped so madly, this girl who is coolly counseling him
to divorce the girl who is his wedded wife? All in an instant of time
the mad, passionate love he has had for Queenie dies a tragic death.
It was his intention to divorce little Jess, but now that it is
proposed to him by another--oh, strange perversity of human nature!--he
seems to recoil from it, he knows not why.
Queenie’s quick intuition tells her that she has lost ground with John
Dinsmore in making such a cool, calculating, unwomanly proposition, but
before she can utter another word to mend matters, in his opinion, she
hears the voice of Jess calling to her from the corridor outside:
“Queenie, Queenie, where in the world can you be? I have looked
everywhere for you.”
Another instant and she will reach the drawing-room.
Queenie darts to the door to intercept her. She must not enter that
room in which her husband is standing.
But as Queenie flies from the apartment by one door, Jess enters it by
another.
For one instant she stands fairly transfixed, as her gaze encounters
the tall, commanding figure standing there.
In the next she has reached his side with such a cry of intense delight
that in spite of himself it has gone straight to his heart.
“My husband! oh, my husband!” And almost before he is aware of what is
happening, two soft, white arms have been flung about his neck and a
pair of rosy lips is pressed to his, and a world of ardent kisses is
showered upon him, in a way which fairly takes his breath away.
“How delightful of you to come and take me by surprise like this,” Jess
was crying, breathlessly and delightedly. “I was thinking of you just
this minute, and that I would give anything in this world to see you.”
He feels that he must make some retort, but he is at a loss for words,
and he can only articulate:
“Are you so very glad to see me again, little girl? Why is it--why?”
“Why?” echoes Jess, with a melodious little laugh like liquid sunshine.
“Why, because I love you so. I have loved you more and more every hour
and day that we have been apart, until I felt that I could not stand
being away from you much longer, and now you are here, and I am so
glad--so glad!”
“Little Jess,” exclaims John Dinsmore, holding the girl off at arm’s
length, “child, do you know what you are saying?” And his face grows
deathly white as he looked down into the fair, dimpled, flushed young
face gazing so fondly up at him.
“Of course I know what I’m saying!” laughed the girl, joyously. “I am
telling how dearly I love you--love you better than all the wide world
besides, and how happy I am now that you have come for me to claim me,
and take me away with you. I shall never leave you again, never, never,
never! I have thought of nothing but you night and day since you sent
me from you, and counted the hours until I should behold you again; but
that is all past now. Oh, how good of you to come for me before the two
weeks were up.”
“My God!” bursts from John Dinsmore’s lips, as Jess reiterates her love
for him over again in impulsive, childish fashion. “I never dreamed of
this!”
“You have forgotten to kiss me, and say that you are as glad to see me
as I am to see you,” she goes on, breathlessly, in a headlong fashion,
as she falls to kissing him in her impulsive way over and over again,
fairly smothering him with the intense love she is showering upon
him--a love that he knows wells up from the very depths of her young
heart--a love which she is too innocent to attempt to try to conceal
from him. No wonder he looks at her askance--wondering how in the world
he is ever to utter the words that he has come to tell her--that he is
there to bid her an eternal farewell!