Jessie Graham

by Mary Jane Holmes

"I was so tired," she said, "that I sat down and must have gone to sleep, for I dreamed that I was dead, and that the man who came to us in the pines dug my grave. Where is he, Jessie!"

"I am here," said William, coming forward, "and believe me, my dear Miss Howland, I would dig the grave of almost any one sooner than your own. Allow me to assist you," and he offered her his hand.

Ellen was really very weak, and when he saw how pale she was he made her lean upon him as they walked down the hillside to the house. And once, when Jessie was tripping on before, he slightly pressed the little blue-veined hand trembling on his arm, while in a very tender voice he asked if she felt better. Ellen Howland was wholly unaccustomed to the world, and had grown up to womanhood as ignorant of flattery or deceit as the veriest child. Pure and innocent herself, she did not dream of treachery in others. Walter to her was a fair type of all mankind, and she could not begin to fathom the heart of the man who walked beside her, touching her hand more than once before they reached the farm-house door.

They found the supper table neatly spread for five, and though William's intention was to spend the night at the village hotel, he accepted Mrs. Howland's invitation to stay to tea, making himself so much at home, and chatting with all so familiarly, that Aunt Debby pronounced him a clever chap, while Mrs. Howland wondered why people should say the Bellengers of Boston were proud and overbearing. It was late that night when William left them, for there was something very attractive in the blue of Ellen's eyes, and the shining black of Jessie's, and when at last he left them, and was alone with himself and the moonlight, he was conscious that there had come to him that day the first unselfish, manly impulse he had known for years. He had mingled much with fashionable ladies. None knew how artificial they were better than himself, and he had come at last to believe that there was not among them a single true, noble-hearted woman. Jessie Graham might be an exception, but even she was tainted with the city atmosphere. Her father's purse, however, would make amends for any faults she might possess, and he must win that purse at all hazards; but while doing that he did not think it wrong to pay the tribute of admiration to the golden-haired Ellen, whose modest, refined beauty had impressed him so much, and whose artless, childlike manner had affected him more than he supposed. "Little Snow-Drop" he called her to himself, and sitting alone in his chamber at the hotel, he blessed the happy chance which had thrown her in his way.

"It is like the refreshing shower to the parched earth," he said, and he thought what happiness it would be to study that pure girl, to see if, far down in the depths of her heart, there were not the germs of vanity and deceit, or better yet, if there were not something in her nature which would sometime respond to him. He did not think of the harm he might do her. He did not care, in fact, even though he won her love only to cast it from him as a useless thing. Country girls like her were only made for men like him to play with. No wonder then if in her dreams that night Ellen moaned with fear of the beautiful serpent which seemed winding itself, fold on fold, about her.

Jessie, too, had troubled dreams of felon's cells, of clanking chains, and even of a gallows, with Walter standing underneath beseeching her to come and share the shame with him. Truly the serpent had entered this Eden and left its poisonous trail.

For nearly a week William staid in town, and the village maidens often looked wistfully after him as he drove his fast horses, sometimes with Jessie at his side, and sometimes with Ellen, but never with them both, for the words he breathed into the ear of one were not intended for the other. Drop by drop was he infusing into Jessie's mind a distrust of one whom she had heretofore considered the soul of integrity and honor. Not openly, lest she should suspect his motive, but covertly, cautiously, always apparently seeking an excuse for anything the young man might hereafter do, and succeeding at last in making Jessie thoroughly uncomfortable, though why she could not tell. She did not blame Walter for his father's sins, but she would much rather his name should have been without a blemish.

Gradually the brightness of Jessie's face gave way to a thoughtful, serious look, her merry laugh was seldom heard, and she would sit for hours so absorbed in her own thoughts as not to heed the change which the last few days had wrought in Ellen, too. Never before had the latter seemed so happy, so joyous, so full of life as now, and Aunt Debby said the rides with Mr. Bellenger upon the mountains had done her good. William had pursued his study faithfully, and, in doing so, had become so much interested himself that he would have asked Ellen to be his wife had she been rich as she was lovely. But his bride must be an heiress; and so, though knowing that he could never be to Ellen Howland other than a friend, he led her on step by step until at last she saw but what he saw, and heard but what he heard. He was not deceiving her, he said, sometimes when conscience reproached him for his cruelty. She knew how widely different their stations were; she could not expect that one whom half the belles of Boston and New York would willingly accept could think of making her his wife. He was only polite to her, only giving a little variety to her monotonous life. She would forget him when he was gone. And at this point he was conscious of an unwillingness to be forgotten.

"If we were only Mormons," he thought, the last night of his stay at Deerwood, when out under the cherry trees in the garden he talked with her alone, and saw the varying color on her cheek, as he said, "We may never meet again." "If we were only Mormons, I would have them both, Nellie and Jessie, the one for her gilded setting, the other because——"

He did not finish the sentence, for he was not willing then to acknowledge to himself the love which really and truly was growing in his heart for the fair girl beside him.