CHAPTER XVIII.
A PREMONITION OF COMING EVIL.
“I am really glad if I was the cause of preventing you from committing so terrible an act as suicide,” said the girl, solemnly, “for that would have been very wicked.”
“If you have lost all that makes life worth the living, you care little enough how soon existence ends for you,” he replied, artfully; and with a well-simulated heartbroken sigh, which caused little Jess to begin for the first time to pity him.
He saw her softened mood in her eyes, and followed up his advantage with adroit skill, and, ere Jess was quite aware of it, he was proposing to her for the second time.
“I do not want your answer to-day, little girl,” he went on. “Take a week to consider it, if you require that length of time, and in the meantime, talk it over with Mrs. Bryson, or any one else who has your true interest at heart. Will you do this?”
Jess could not find it in her heart to refuse this request to the man who had risked his own life to save hers.
“I am going to run down to New Orleans for a few days,” he continued, “and when I return you can have your answer ready for me.”
Early that forenoon he took his leave, promising Mrs. Bryson that he would be back by the end of the week.
After he had gone, Jess made a clean breast of what had occurred, and the fact that she was to give Mr. Dinsmore his answer when he returned as to whether she would marry him or not, to Mrs. Bryson, who expressed herself as delighted that he had thought so well of her as to propose, a remark which Jess did not relish, as it savored of the idea in her mind that the old housekeeper considered the handsome Mr. Dinsmore very much above her—a thought which she greatly resented.
From the moment in which she divulged the secret which she had concluded at first not to tell to any one, Mrs. Bryson gave her no peace. Every hour in the day she dinned into the girl’s ears the practicability of her union with Mr. Dinsmore, which her benefactor, the young man’s uncle, had foreseen, and so earnestly desired.
It was all Jess heard from morning until night; she had it for breakfast, luncheon and dinner, until she fairly grew irritable at the sound of the name of Dinsmore, and hated the bearer of it, despite the fact that he had rendered her so valuable a service. She could find no peace until she had in a fit of desperation promised Mrs. Bryson that it should be as she wished—she would say yes to Mr. Dinsmore when he returned, and that the wedding should take place whenever he desired.
“I knew you could not be so insane as to throw over such a fortune, together with such a nice young husband,” declared the housekeeper, with a sigh of great relief, “for few young girls would have been mad enough to refuse him. I shudder to think what the result would have been had he taken you at your word and committed suicide, or gone off and married somebody else. Why, you would simply have been a beggar, Jess; thrust out at once upon the cold mercies of the world; for, according to the will, Blackheath Hall, and all of his other possessions, would have been sold within a few months, and the great fortune would have gone to charities.”
“I see how it is,” said Jess, dryly; “you would lose a good home and fine income—that is where your great interest lies, Mrs. Bryson.”
The old housekeeper flushed a fiery red: she knew what Jess said was quite true. She was considering her own interests when she urged this marriage, but it was not pleasant to hear the truth dragged unmercifully forward, and when it was just as well that it should be hidden.
“Very well, I’m going to marry this man just because you insist upon it,” said Jess, bitterly. “I do not love him, and never will; and I shall do quite well if I do not hate him outright.”
“You will learn to care for him in time, my dear child,” declared Mrs. Bryson, who was in no way disconcerted by the girl’s outburst. She was used to Jess’ fiery temper, as she phrased it. She lost no time in communicating the act to Lawyer Abbot, who came to the village to congratulate the girl in person, and to assure her that she had taken an eminently proper course in looking with favor upon the young man whom her benefactor had selected for her husband.
He was considerably flustered by the girl answering in her terribly straightforward manner:
“Perhaps I have, and perhaps I haven’t. All the books that I have ever read have been unanimous in the opinion that a girl should not marry a man unless she loves him.”
“Tut, tut, my dear child; those were only love stories—romances, and people are not romantic in real life, you know,” declared the astute lawyer.
“Then I pity the people in real life, and I wish I were the heroine in a romance,” replied Jess, tossing her dark, curly head defiantly, “for they are the only ones who live ideal lives.”
The lawyer looked as he felt, bewildered, and he could see dimly outlined in the future, breakers ahead for the young man—if she married him.
“She would be as likely as not to fall headlong in love with the first strolling gypsy that crossed her path,” he ruminated as he looked at her critically, “and then it would end in a divorce suit, or worse, if anything could be worse. I almost believe the girl is right. A creature of her fiery disposition should not have her hands tied in matrimony without her heart has been won by the man she marries. I hope all will be well; I can only hope it.” And as he looked thoughtfully out of the window, a premonition of coming evil seemed to sweep over his heart.
Suddenly he joined Mrs. Bryson, saying:
“I have a plan to suggest which I think you will approve of. Jess ought to be sent away for a few weeks where she will see something of the world, and when she sees how well Mr. Dinsmore compares with the generality of men, and learns by meeting them that they are not such heroes as her vivid, romantic imagination has caused her to believe them to be, she will be more—well, more satisfied with the future a kind fate has laid out for her.”
“Your plan is a capital one, sir,” replied Mrs. Bryson, “but I know of no place that I could send her to.”
“While we have been on this subject, the very place, an ideal home, has occurred to me. Some few years ago, when I lived in New York, I had a partner, a Mr. Trevalyn, who would be glad to receive her beneath his roof on a visit, if I requested the favor. He has a charming wife, and a daughter, Queenie, who cannot be so very much older than Jess. Would you like to go and visit this New York family, my dear?” he asked, turning to Jess.
“Oh, yes, indeed!” exclaimed the girl, eagerly, her face dimpling over with an eager smile. “All my life I have wanted to see what New York was like. I’d love to go under one condition.”
“You must let me know what it is before I can decide as to that,” said Mr. Abbot, quietly.
“Well, I wouldn’t like them to know that I was an engaged girl if I went there. I wouldn’t like them to know there was such a man as Mr. Dinsmore; nor one word of that crazy will.”
“Why should you wish to conceal the fact of your betrothal?” asked the old lawyer, wonderingly; adding: “Most young girls are more than eager to proclaim such a fact, my dear.”
Jess laughed, saying:
“If you really want to know, I don’t mind telling you. They make all sorts of fun down in the village of engaged girls. I shouldn’t want any one to make that sort of fun of me; I wouldn’t bear it.”
“Life in the city, and city manners, you would find quite different,” replied Lawyer Abbot, quietly; adding: “But if you do not wish the engagement known, I see of no reason to tell it. Mr. Dinsmore need not be mentioned in any way, or even known there.”
“Then I’ll go, Mr. Abbot. And, oh, I’ll be so glad to get away from Blackheath Hall for ever so short a time,” cried Jess, dancing around the room and clapping her hands in joy like a veritable child over the promise of a holiday.
Mrs. Bryson flushed a dull red. She had the very guilty and uncomfortable feeling and knowledge that the grand, old place had never been a home to the child any more than it had been to the wild birds that were sheltered there at night under the broad eaves. Her existence had been like theirs; she roamed where she would by day, until darkness drove her back to the shelter of its roof; and so matters would have continued to have gone on had it not been for that death abroad, and the strange will which was the result of it, and which had named the little Bohemian will-o’-the-wisp as one of the heirs of the vast estate, providing the conditions contained therein were carried out.
It had not been until then that Mrs. Bryson had taken the trouble to cultivate Jess’ acquaintance, as it were, and now she felt keen shame as she reviewed the past, and the little care she had expended upon the girl who had been left in her charge.
If the girl had grown up wild as a deer, and untamable as a young lioness, she was to blame for it, she well knew.
The wonder to her was that matters adjusted themselves by the young nephew proposing to Jess at all. She realized that it would never have been if the girl had not grown up as beautiful as a wild rose; and Jess had no one to thank for her wondrous beauty but nature, which had made her as perfect as it is given mortals to be.
“All’s well that ends well,” said Lawyer Abbot to Mrs. Bryson, as he was taking his leave.
“But has it ended?” asked his companion, anxiously. “I shall always be looking for something to happen to prevent it, until the girl actually stands at the altar. Even then she is as likely as not to back out. Jess does not realize the value of money, nor the fortune which hangs in the balance, or what its loss would mean to her. All that she is thinking about is that she does not love the man she is so soon to marry. I repeat—how will it end?”