Bessie's Fortune: A Novel

by Mary Jane Holmes

"The bills! What does it mean?" Grey thought, for he had paid them all up to the time of his leaving.

Then, remembering to have heard what exorbitant sums were demanded by the proprietors of hotels when a person died in their house, he concluded that this must be the bill which Neil was disputing so hotly, and bidding good-day to the boy, he walked on across the river, with a feeling that life could never be to him again just what it had been before. On the morning when he left the hotel he had seen the nurse, and inquired after the patient, who, she reported, had slept well and seemed a little better. And now she was dead! the girl he loved so much. Dead, in all her soft beauty, with only the suns of nineteen summers upon her head. Dead in Rome, and he not there with her to take a last look at the fair face which, as he walked rapidly on through street after street, seemed close beside him, sometimes touching his own and making him shiver, it was so cold and dead.

"Dead and gone! Dead and gone!" he kept repeating to himself, as he tried to fancy what was passing in the room where he had spent so many hours and where he had kissed the girl now dead and gone forever.

"If I were only there," he thought. "If I could but kiss her again and hold her hand in mine," and for a moment he felt that he must go back and take the matter away from Neil, who could swear at the expense, however great it was.

He must go back and himself carry Bessie to the old home in Wales and bury her in the nook between the father and the wall—the spot which, when he saw it last, he little dreamed would be her grave, and she so young and fair. But to go back would necessitate his telling his Aunt Lucy of the fever, and to excite in her alarm and anxiety for his safety. So he gave it up, but walked on mile after mile, until the night shades were beginning to fall, and be realized how late it was, and that his aunt must be getting anxious about him. Hailing a carriage, he was driven back to his hotel, and found, as he expected, his aunt alarmed at his protracted absence, and still more alarmed at the whiteness of his face and the strange look in his eyes. He had never told her a word of Bessie, or the fever, and he would not do so now. So he merely said he had walked too far and was tired. He should be all right in the morning, and he asked permission to retire early to his room where he could be alone with his sorrow.

They left Florence the next day, for Miss Grey, who had made a long stop there early in the winter, when on her way to Rome, was anxious to leave Italy as soon as possible, fancying that the climate did not agree with Grey, who had not seemed himself since he came from Egypt and joined her in Rome. Arrived in Venice, Grey's first act was to inquire for letters, but there was nothing from Rome, nothing from Flossie, who had promised him to write. They were too busy with their preparations for taking Bessie home. They must be on their way by this time, he thought, and with a heavy heart he journeyed on from Venice until Vienna was reached, and there, at the Hotel Métropole, he found Jack Trevellian's name registered. It would be a relief to talk to him, Grey thought. He had known Bessie, too; and Grey must speak to some one of the sorrow weighing so heavily upon him, or the burden would break him down.

That night in Jack Trevellian's room two young men sat opposite each other with only a small table between them, and on it a single wax candle, which threw a faint, glimmering light upon the white faces which looked so sadly at each other, as in dumb silence the two sat motionless for a few moments after Grey had told his news.

"What is it, old fellow?" Jack had said, cheerily, as, after expressing his joy and surprise at meeting his friend so unexpectedly, and motioning him to a seat, he noticed the care-worn look upon his face and the set expression upon his mouth. "What makes you look so like a grave-yard? Crossed in love, hey? I thought it would come to that sometime, and knew you would be hard hit when hit at all. Tell me about it, do! Maybe I, too, know how it feels," and Jack laughed a little meaning laugh as he remembered the time when Bessie's blue eyes had looked at him and Bessie's voice had said, "I cannot be your wife."

"Hush, Jack!" and Grey put up his hand deprecatingly. "You don't know how you hurt me. Bessie is dead!"

"Dead! Bessie dead! Oh, Grey!" and Jack nearly leaped from his chair in his first surprise and horror; then he sat down again, and there was silence between the two for a moment, when he said, in a voice Grey would never have known as his: "When did she die? Tell me all about it, please, but tell it very slowly, word by word, or I shall not understand you. I seem to be terribly unstrung, it is so sudden and awful. Bessie dead!" and he stared at Grey with eyes which did not seem to see anything before them, but rather to be looking at something far away in the past.