CHAPTER XXXVII.A GREAT SURPRISE.
“Like some lone bird, without a mate,My weary heart is desolate;I look around, and cannot traceOne friendly smile, one welcoming face;And e’en in crowds, I’m still alone,Because—I cannot love—but one.”
“Like some lone bird, without a mate,My weary heart is desolate;I look around, and cannot traceOne friendly smile, one welcoming face;And e’en in crowds, I’m still alone,Because—I cannot love—but one.”
“Like some lone bird, without a mate,My weary heart is desolate;I look around, and cannot traceOne friendly smile, one welcoming face;And e’en in crowds, I’m still alone,Because—I cannot love—but one.”
“Like some lone bird, without a mate,
My weary heart is desolate;
I look around, and cannot trace
One friendly smile, one welcoming face;
And e’en in crowds, I’m still alone,
Because—I cannot love—but one.”
John Dinsmore experienced quite a change of climate when he reached New York from that which he had just left behind him in the sunny South. A violent snowstorm was raging, and it was bitter cold.
Busy as the streets of the great metropolis always were there seemed to be more than the usual throng surging to and fro, and then John Dinsmore remembered what he came very near forgetting, that it was Thanksgiving Eve.
How happy were the faces of all who passed him, as though there were no such things in the world as sorrow, desolation, and heartaches. He smiled a bitter smile, telling himself that he had little enough to give thanks for, in the way of happiness. He hesitated a moment on the corner of Broadway, wondering if it were best to go to a hotel, or to the room of his old friends, Jerry Gaines and Ballou.
“I do not feel equal to seeing and talking with even the Trinity to-night,” he muttered. “They would want an account of all that transpired since I saw them last, and I am not equal to it just yet. How surprised they will be, and pleased to know that I escaped the wreck under which the papers had me buried, and still more pleased to learn that I married the girl that Uncle Dinsmore selected for me; but they will do their best to argue me out of my firm resolve to divorce the girl. But nothing that they can say or do will shake me in my purpose. I will set the girl free in the shortest possible time, that she may wed the man to whom she was engaged when I came upon the scene and married her, never dreaming she was in love with another, and that the reports of my wealth had tempted her to prove false to him. I know but too well what the poor fellow must have suffered.”
Finding himself in the vicinity of the home of the Trevalyns, that is, the address Queenie had given him when they were at Newport, he concluded that there was no time like the present to discharge the unpleasant task. He therefore turned his steps in that direction at once.
A brisk walk of scarcely three minutes brought him to the number he was in search of, No. — Fifth Avenue.
The obsequious servant who answered the summons at the door bowed low to the tall, distinguished-looking gentleman whom he found there.
It was then that John Dinsmore made the fatal mistake of his life. He called for Miss Trevalyn, instead of Mrs. Trevalyn.
“Evidently the gentleman doesn’t know that our young lady is married,” thought the servant, and he answered with a smile:
“The lady has changed her address, sir. You will find her at No. — Fifty-second Street.”
The man would have given him additional information in the next breath, but at that instant John Dinsmore turned swiftly, and with a courteous bow descended the steps.
“Probably an old beau of our young lady’s,” thought the servant, gazing thoughtfully after the tall, commanding form. “I should say also that he is not a New Yorker, or he would have known all about Miss Queenie’s marriage to the old millionaire, who turned out on his death to be almost a pauper. That ought to be a warning to all young girls who would marry old men for their supposed wealth.”
Meanwhile John Dinsmore was making his way with long, swinging strides to the address given, which he knew could be scarcely more than a couple of blocks or so away.
He could not see much of the exterior of the house, for, although scarcely five in the afternoon, it was already dark.
Once again he asked for Miss Trevalyn, instead of inquiring for Mrs. Trevalyn, his thoughts were, alas! so full of the girl he had loved so madly, so deeply—and lost so cruelly.
The servant stared for an instant blankly, but in the next he remembered that that was the name of his young mistress before her marriage, and with a low bow invited the gentleman to enter, throwing open the drawing-room door for him.
John Dinsmore knew that she would recognize the name his card bore at the first glance.
After much consideration he had thought it best to acquaint Mrs. Trevalyn with the true state of affairs before seeing Jess—she being the girl’s hostess, and the one whom she would seek advice from—after he had had his interview with her.
He seated himself in the nearest chair and awaited her coming.
He had scarcely seated himself ere his eyes fell upon a picture of Queenie, a life-size painting, hanging upon the opposite wall. His heart was in his eyes as he gazed.
The old sorrow that he thought he had strangled to death by main force of indomitable will seemed to have sprung instantly into new life. The old sorrow was crying aloud. What vain, wild passion; what deep regret, there was still in his heart! He tried to withdraw his eyes from the fatal beauty of that pictured face, which was, ah! so lifelike, but it seemed impossible for him to do so.
A mad desire which he could not repress seemed to draw him toward it, and mechanically he allowed himself to cross the room and stand before it. And he could hardly keep from falling on his knees before it, touching the little hands that seemed so lifelike; and, God help him, to restrain himself from kissing passionately the beautiful lips that he had hungered so to caress from the first moment that he and Queenie Trevalyn had met.
The temptation mastered him. “Just once; no one in the wide world will ever know,” he muttered, hoarsely, “and what can it matter; it can do no harm to the soulless canvas,” and, raising his feverish face, he kissed passionately the lips of the picture, not once, but many times. Then he turned away with his heart on fire, and flung himself down into the depths of the great armchair again, burying his face in his trembling hands.
“A love such as mine can never die,” he groaned, and he wondered how he should ever be able to meet Queenie face to face, and live through it, if it was such an effort to gain anything like composure when he came suddenly upon her picture in her mother’s drawing-room.
He thought of the few happy weeks in which he had sunned himself in the presence of his idol without a care or a thought of how it was to end, although he should have realized the great gulf more clearly that lay between them at that time—she being rich, and he poor as it is the fate of most authors to be.
And lines of his own composing, lines which appeared in his book, came to his mind:
“’Tis no easy matter, as most authors know,To coin pleasant thoughts from the mind’s full mint;And then, after all, he must ask no pay,But be satisfied merely to see it in print.”
“’Tis no easy matter, as most authors know,To coin pleasant thoughts from the mind’s full mint;And then, after all, he must ask no pay,But be satisfied merely to see it in print.”
“’Tis no easy matter, as most authors know,To coin pleasant thoughts from the mind’s full mint;And then, after all, he must ask no pay,But be satisfied merely to see it in print.”
“’Tis no easy matter, as most authors know,
To coin pleasant thoughts from the mind’s full mint;
And then, after all, he must ask no pay,
But be satisfied merely to see it in print.”
He wished with all his heart that the girl he loved so well had married some man more worthy of her than Raymond Challoner, the libertine and gambler.
He turned the chair around. He had always imagined himself a brave man; now he knew that he had not the control over himself that he had imagined.
“Fool that I am, I would give ten years of my life to live those three blissful weeks at Newport over again,” he muttered sadly and hoarsely. “I feel so unnerved that I almost wish that I could find some excuse for leaving this house without seeing Jess; but that cannot be, I suppose, for that must be Mrs. Trevalyn’s step which I hear in the corridor.”
With a heavy sigh he crushed back the unhappiness that had swept over his heart, and summoned by a mighty effort the calm expression which had become habitual to his face, and the coldness to his eyes.
It was not an instant too soon, however, for at that moment the portières before the door were swept back by a white, jeweled hand.