CHAPTER XXXIV.
UNDER THE MASK OF FRIENDSHIP.
When Queenie found herself alone, after the departure of Raymond Challoner, she gave full vent to the bitter grief she had kept pent up in her breast, upon learning from him of the death of the only man whom she had ever loved, though the knowledge of that love had come to her too late.
She could hardly bring herself to believe he was really dead, lying a mass of charred remains, he who had been such a strong, active, handsome man but a few short weeks ago. How could fate have severed the golden cord of his noble existence at the very height of his success and glorious fame!
She brushed at length the burning tear drops from her eyes, muttering:
“If he is indeed dead, then my past and my future are dead—there is no hope of happiness for me hereafter.”
But even in the midst of her grief she realized that the worst possible thing that she could do would be to give way to it so utterly.
All at once every hope upon which she had built her expectation of a roseate future lay in ruins at her feet. She was not even the wealthy widow that she had expected to be.
Then she fell to thinking of all that Raymond Challoner had promised if she would aid him in his schemes of urging this girl Jess to a speedy marriage, in order that he might gain the Dinsmore millions.
Queenie’s curiosity over the girl made her forget her sorrow for the time being, in realizing the fact, that even had John Dinsmore lived, this was the girl whom he would have been in duty bound to wed. This was the girl who would have lived in the sunshine of his presence.
“He would never have loved her, for his love was mine—all mine!” she cried, clutching both of her hands convulsively over her heart. “Such a man loves once in a lifetime—no more!”
She lost no time in sending for Jess to come to her, and she was agreeably surprised to see the girl return with the messenger.
Queenie had expected to see a shy little Southern rosebud; instead, she beheld a glorious young creature of such rare beauty that for a moment she held her breath in astonishment as she gazed upon her; and even in that moment the thought ran through Queenie’s mind:
“Despite John Dinsmore’s assurances that he would never love any one else but me, he would have been hardly human not to have fallen in love with this peerless little Jess at first sight had he but seen her.”
Queenie’s reverie was cut short by the girl advancing with outstretched hands toward her, saying:
“I am Jess—and you are Queenie Trevalyn! I—I beg your pardon, Mrs. Brown. Dear me, how funny the thought of your being even married, let alone being a—widow—seems,” she rattled on, breathlessly. “I love you already, you are so sweet. Won’t you let me kiss you, and won’t you say: ‘Welcome, Jess?’”
“I was just about to say that, and offer not one, but as many kisses as you like,” said Queenie, opening out her arms to the graceful little figure that bounded into them.
That was the beginning of the friendship which was to end so disastrously for poor Jess.
Queenie was a thorough woman of the world, versed in its arts, its deceits, while Jess was but a child of nature, with a heart as open as the day, and free from guile or knowledge of falsity; therefore it was little wonder that she quite believed her welcome genuine.
In a week’s time, “the two girls,” as Queenie’s mother persisted in calling them, were as inseparable as though they had known each other from childhood up.
“I am so glad that you came to me just when you did, dear Jess,” murmured Queenie, “for I was feeling my grief so keenly that I thought my poor heart would surely break.”
Jess crossed the room and stood in front of the picture of the late departed Mr. Brown, studying the wrinkled face it represented; the bald head, smooth as a billiard ball; the shrunken mouth and chin, and almost sightless eyes, and her thoughts broke into words, and quite before she considered what she was about to utter, she said, impulsively:
“How could you ever have loved so old and withered a human being, Queenie, let alone marrying him; and you so young and fair? I thought when I first saw the picture hanging here that he was your great-grandfather.”
A flush stained Queenie’s face from neck to brow for a moment, and her heart gave a great strangling throb. It was fully a moment ere she replied, then she said slowly:
“I will not tell you an untruth, Jess; it was not because I loved my husband that I married him. He saved my father from financial ruin, and I married him because he demanded my hand as the price of it. There was no question of love between us.”
“I should never marry a man I could not love, no matter what the consequences of my refusing were,” declared Jess.
“You have never been placed in such a position; you can hardly tell what you would do or would not do, dear,” murmured Queenie, thinking that that remark was a fine opening for Jess to make a confidant of her in regard to the lover who was to have been forced upon her by the Dinsmore will.
In this surmise she was quite correct. Jess wheeled about from the picture, and flinging herself on a hassock at Queenie’s feet, she buried her young face in her false friend’s lap, exclaiming:
“Ah! but I have had a most thrilling experience, I assure you, Queenie. May I tell you all about it?”
“If you like, dear,” was the answer, and she lowered her white lids over her eyes that Jess might not see the hard, steely glitter in them should she chance to look up suddenly.
“I did throw over a lover and a fortune into the bargain, because I could not like, let alone love the man whom I would have had to wed to gain the money, though the loss of it made me—a pauper!”
“What a romance!” cried Queenie. “Do tell me all about it, dear—who would have ever dreamed that you, who look so much like a child, had ever contemplated marriage, let alone decided so important a step.”
“It is romantic,” said Jess, slowly. “I doubt if any other young girl in the whole wide world ever had such a strange experience as mine has been.” And, glad enough to find so attentive and sympathetic a listener, Jess, with the confiding innocence of youth, proceeded to narrate to her new-found friend the story of her life; how, from the first recollection she had had, she had been a part and parcel of Blackheath Hall, yet had lived a life wholly apart from its inmates.
If Queenie had not conceived, down deep in her heart, a deadly hatred of this girl whom fate had decreed for John Dinsmore, the man she loved, she would have been moved to pity by Jess’ recital.
“I have no recollection of a home, or a mother,” continued Jess, resting her dimpled chin on her pink palms, her elbows on Queenie’s knee, and her large, dark, soulful eyes gazing up into the wine-dusk eyes looking down into her own. “The knowledge of that was my earliest grief. I seemed to be like Topsy—‘just growed there, nobody knowed how,’ as that waif and stray expressed it.
“I was there on sufferance, as it were. I belonged to nobody, and nobody belonged to, or took the least interest, in me. I roamed where I would, as neglected a specimen of humanity as one would wish to see. I had no friends save the birds in the deep woods, and the wild animals I had trained and made comrades of.
“My one passion was reading. I scarcely know how I ever managed to learn how to decipher the stories that I was so fond of. One of the old colored mammies about the plantation had learned to read and write, and taught me as much as she knew—my education ended there. Once a year the cast-off clothing of the housekeeper was made over for me—that was all the interest ever exhibited in me. Nobody ever took the trouble to ask if I were sick or well, satisfied with my strange lot, or lonely, if I had a heart within my bosom that longed for companionship and sympathy, or how I even existed.
“No one knew how I would throw myself down in the long grass in the depths of the silent wood, for the birds never told my secret, and cry out to the pitying skies to send me from heaven just one wish, grant me one prayer, and that was for some human being to love, some one who would love me in return; for some one to hold my hands, and ask me in a kind and gentle voice if I were weary, and if I were, to pillow my head on a kindly breast and soothe me while I wept out my woe there. The young girls I read of had happy homes, tender mothers, kind fathers, sisters dear, brothers, and—lovers; why, then, was this height of human happiness beyond my reach? I longed for companionship, and girl friends.”
“Had you no thought of—a lover?” queried Queenie, ever so softly.
“Yes,” whispered Jess, almost shyly. “I had my ideal of the kind of a man who would captivate my heart; a girl who reads much has her ideal, you know. I often said to myself: ‘If there is a Prince Charming in this world for me, he must be tall, and grave, and handsome, with blue eyes, and chestnut hair waving above a broad, white brow, and——’ Why, what in the world is the matter, Queenie? You look as though you were dying.”