CHAPTER XVII.
DALRYMPLE’S SECRET.
Jessie’s large, soft, dark eyes turned on her father’s face with a look that shook his soul, they were so like other eyes he had once loved.
She cried pleadingly:
“No, no, for I have had such a sweet dream of my mother it thrills my heart yet. Let me tell it to you, papa!”
The dark eyes and the pleading voice pierced his heart like a knife.
Why had God given her this subtle likeness to her mother that would always be like a thorn in his heart?
He could not answer for his tumultuous thoughts, and she continued thrillingly:
“Such a strange dream, papa!—sweet and strange, for I seemed to be dead, but I felt no sorrow for it, because life had been cruel to me, and I was glad to be at rest. Then she seemed to come and stand by my side, the mother I had never known till an hour before my death, when I saw her only as a proud, rich stranger. But in death she seemed to belong to me. She knelt by me and kissed my face, my hands, my hair; she called me Darling, and her tears rained on me while she deplored the cruel fate that parted us in life, and restored me to her only in death. Tell me, papa, could this be true? This proud, beautiful lady, was she my mother?”
He had listened in surprise and wonder, and now he said evasively:
“It was only a dream, you know, dear.”
“Only a dream—but I hoped it might prove a reality. I—I—loved her so dearly in my dream because she was so sweet and tender,” faltered the girl with tears of disappointment starting to her eyes while her father gazed at her in secret wonder, longing to know what strange events had preceded her supposed death.
He could not bear to see her yearning for the mother who had been so cruel to the father, but he did not know how to change that instinct of love; he could only say coldly:
“Do not think any more of your dream, child. It was very misleading.”
“Perhaps so,” she murmured humbly, believing it must be true what he said, for she could recall another dream that was, indeed, too subtly sweet to be aught but illusion.
In that strange dream a voice all too fatally dear to her heart had murmured words of love and tenderness, vowing fealty to her in heaven:
In that lovely dream he—Frank Laurier—had pressed his lips on her golden hair, had kissed a rose and crushed it between her folded hands. Was it only a dream?
Yes, how could it be aught but a dream? He who had trifled with her, scorned her while living, how could he have changed when she lay dead?
The tears brimmed over in her eyes as she thought:
“How foolish I am, dwelling on such fancies. Of course, I have been ill—not dead!—and dreamed all about these people who care naught for me.”
Leon Dalrymple took her hand and looked at her with tender pity.
“My dear little one, do you feel well enough to go back with me over the cruel past?” he asked abruptly.
She assented eagerly, and with some evasions that he deemed necessary, he gave her a brief résumé of his life.
“I shall not tell you what your mother’s name was—nor mine—I call myself Leon Lyndon now,” he said curtly, continuing: “Suffice it to say you were born after your mother deserted me in disgust at my poverty. I did not suspect you were coming, and, if she guessed it, she selfishly kept the tender secret. You were born, and became the joy and pride of her life while I hated her for having deprived me of your love. I believe I was half mad in my troubles those days, and I contrived to see you often unsuspected by your mother, while you were out with your nurse. Your baby beauty and sweetness grew upon me so that at last I stole you away, gloating over the thought that I could punish her at last for her cruelty to me. I took you to my dear, sweet sister Jessie, left you in her care, and became an exile from my native land. The story of those twelve years is too long for you now, but at length the longing for you drew me back again to New York, where I searched for you vainly for a week before I chanced on you at last.”
“You found me lying like one dead in the snow!” she cried, and he started, answering evasively:
“How came you there, my darling? I am very anxious to hear your story up to that point.”
To his surprise she burst into tears, sobbing unrestrainedly for several moments.
He waited patiently, stroking the fair head tenderly till the healing tears ceased to flow, then, little by little, he drew her on, until the story of her young life and her piteous little love secret lay bare before his eyes.
He was startled, touched, and pained; the tears were very near his eyes.
He kissed her tenderly, pityingly.
“It was very sad, my child, but you are so young you will soon get over this sorrow. It was rash in you to try to throw away your life like that, and I am very glad that I found you in your extremity and placed you in a physician’s care, else your life must have paid the forfeit of your desperate deed,” he said rapidly, determining in his mind that she should never know what had happened to her that night after she fell down in the snow and thought herself dying.
“But life is very sad,” she murmured plaintively. “He—he—will marry that scornful beauty, Miss Ellyson, and—and—they will laugh together many times over me—and my broken heart.”
The tears came again in a burning shower, but he was glad to see them fall; he knew they would relieve her pain of wounded love and pride.
When she grew quiet he said tenderly:
“You must forget him, dear, as they will forget you in their happiness. I will take you away from New York, where you shall never meet those cruel hearts again.”
“I should like to go—I should like to forget!” she sighed, and his heart throbbed with divine sympathy, for he knew well all the anguish of her plaint.