CHAPTER XIV.
WAVES OF MEMORY.
When Laurier and Noel had both been taken away, the man whose bicycle had been the cause of their calamity stood alone among the curious onlookers gazing somewhat ruefully at the ruin of his wheel.
He was a fair-haired, fine-looking gentleman approaching middle age, and his blue eyes had in them a grave, sad expression, as of one who had looked on the sadder side of life.
To one and another he put the question: “Who were those two young men?”
No one could give him any satisfaction, and he was turning away, leaving the broken wheel to its fate when a reporter approached the scene, observing:
“I should like to get your name, sir, for my report of this accident for my evening paper.”
“Ah!—say John Smith,” the stranger returned impatiently, walking quickly away from his interlocutor and disappearing down a side street.
He stopped presently in a café for a glass of wine to settle his shaken nerves.
He could not get out of his mind the handsome, unconscious face of Laurier as it lay upturned to the winter sunlight after the shocking accident.
“I would give all I own if it had not happened,” he thought sorrowfully; “although I know I am not to blame, for he dashed into me full tilt as we turned the corner; still, I feel in a way responsible, and I shall go to-morrow to Bellevue to inquire about his case, and to lend any financial aid required. But that will scarcely be necessary, I suppose, as both the young fellows were most expensively dressed as if for some elegant social function—perhaps a noon reception or wedding. The mysterious part of the affair is, what were they doing sprinting along the streets in that garb, and pursued by a policeman?”
He finished his wine, tipped the obsequious waiter, took a cigar, and strolled into the reading room to smoke.
As the blue wreaths of smoke curled over his fair head thrown carelessly back, exposing the clear-cut, spirited features, his thoughts ran thus:
“What an unlucky devil I am, anyway! If the Fates had had any mercy, they would have stretched me dead on the sidewalk instead of that handsome youth who doubtless had much in life to live for—everything, perhaps, that I have not—youth, love, happiness, home, while I am a lonely wanderer on the face of the earth. To her, false heart, I owe it all! Can I ever forgive her heartless desertion?”
A heavy frown came between his brows as he continued:
“What a return after my years of exile and toil—my sister and her husband dead, their children and my precious daughter lost to me in the mazes of this great, wicked city. For a week now I have vainly sought to trace them, but since my sister’s death and her husband’s removal I can find no trace save the item accidentally read in the World of John Lyndon’s accident and death. I have been to the hospital where he died, but they can give me no clew to his family. He was buried at the city’s expense, they said, so they must be in the direst poverty. Oh, what a cruel fate must be theirs, dear little ones! Oh, my Jessie, my bright-eyed darling, I wronged you after all in taking my revenge on her! You would have fared better in her care. Oh, if God will only let me find you, my sweet one, I will make it up to you by such devotion as the world never knew! Jessie! Jessie!” and his head sank on his hands while the fire of his cigar went out in ashes.
Again he lifted his head with a start at the sound of a footstep. Other men were entering. They must not find him moping like a woman.
He took up a newspaper and looked over it at random. It bore yesterday’s date, but that did not matter. He was only pretending to read.
The column of deaths came before his eyes, and almost mechanically he read the first funeral notice:
“Died.—Suddenly, at her mother’s residence, No. 1512A Fifth Avenue, Tuesday evening, Darling, only daughter of Mrs. Verna Dalrymple.
“Friends and relatives of the family are respectfully invited to attend the funeral services from the family residence, Thursday noon. Interment at Greenwood.”
“Merciful Heaven!”
The words breathed low and faintly over the man’s suddenly blanched lips, and the paper shook in his nervous grasp while his eyes stared in a sort of incredulous horror at the printed words that moved him so.
Thoughts flew like lightning through his brain:
“Darling Dalrymple! What does it mean? It cannot be possible that she ever recovered the child! No, for the poor, kindly folk who were at my poor sister’s deathbed told me of her lovely, gentle daughter, golden-haired Jessie, with the big, soft, dark eyes and the tender, rosy lips, to whom the mother clung in dying, bidding her be a little mother to Mark and Willie. No, it could not be Jessie. She has most likely adopted a child in place of her lost daughter—a child that death has taken away!”
He remained silently musing with his eyes on the death notice till every printed word seemed photographed on his brain.
“Verna Dalrymple—Darling Dalrymple! How strange that she did not throw away the name with all the rest that it stood for—fickle heart! I suppose she had to keep it for the child’s sake, sweet little Jessie! Ah, how strange we never guessed she was coming! If we had known how different all might have been! I must have been more patient of her fretting, she more tender of my restlessness under misfortune! The dear little one coming must have held our hearts together—hearts now so terribly sundered!” And Leon Dalrymple bowed his fair head heavily while waves of memory swept across his heart.