Jessie Graham Part 5

Had she confessed it then it would have saved her many a weary heartache, and her companion from many a thoughtless act, but she did not, and when Jessie, caressed her white cheek, and said laughingly, "Has my prudish Nell a secret love affair?" she made some incoherent answer, and, seeking her pillow, lived over again the scene in the garden, blushing to herself as she recalled the dark face which had bent so near to hers, and the tender voice which had whispered in her ear the name so recently given to her. "Little Snow-Drop," he called her when he bade her adieu, and the moon went down behind the mountain ere she fell asleep thinking of that name and the time when the forest tree would cast its leaf and he be with her again.

CHAPTER V.-WALTER AND JESSIE.

"So you won't go with me," William said to Jessie, next morning, when she met him at the depot and gave him the note intended for her grandmother.

"No," she replied. "The city is dull as yet, and I'd rather remain here with Ellen."

"Oh, yes, Ellen," and William spoke quite indifferently. "Why didn't she come to bid me good-by?" and he looked curiously at Jessie to see how much she knew.

But Jessie suspected nothing, and replied at once:

"She has a headache this morning and was still in bed when I left her."

The heartless man was conscious of a pleasurable sensation,-a feeling of gratified vanity,-for he knew that headache was for him. But he merely said:

"Tell her that I'm sorry she's sick; she is a pleasant, quiet little girl, quite superior to country girls in general."

"There's the train," cried Jessie, and in a moment the cars rolled up before them.

"It will seem a young eternity until you come home," said William, clasping Jessie's hand. "Good-bye," he added, as "all aboard" was shouted in his ear, and as he turned away his place was taken by another, who had witnessed the parting between the two, and at whom Jessie looked wonderingly, exclaiming:

"Why, Walter, I didn't expect you to-day."

"And shall I infer that I am the less welcome from that?" the young man asked, for with his inborn jealousy, which no amount of discipline could quite subdue, he thought he detected in Jessie's tone and manner something cold and constrained.

Nor was he wholly mistaken, for Jessie did not feel toward him just as she had done before. Still she greeted him cordially,-thought how handsome he was, and came pretty near telling him so,-but told him instead, that she thought he resembled his cousin William. This brought the conversation to a point Walter longed to reach, and as they walked slowly towards home he questioned her of William,-asking when he came, and if she had seen much of him previous to his visit there.

"I saw him almost every day before he went to Europe," she replied. "You know he lives in New York now, and grandma thinks there's n.o.body like him."

"Yes," returned Walter, "I remember your father told me once that she had set her heart upon your marrying him."

"People would think it a splendid match," returned Jessie, a little mischievously, for as she had known that William disliked Walter, so she now felt that Walter disliked William, and she continued: "Charlotte Reeves would give the world to have him spend a week in the country with her," and the saucy black eyes looked roguishly up at Walter, who frowned gloomily for an instant, and then rejoined:

"Shall I tell you what your father said about it?"

"Yes, do. I think everything of his opinion."

"He said, then, that he would rather see you buried than the wife of any of that race," and Walter laid a great stress upon the last two words.

For a time Jessie walked on in silence, then stopping short and looking up from under her straw hat, she said:

"Ain't _you_ one of that race?"

"I suppose I am," answered Walter, smiling at a question which admitted of two or three significations.

Jessie thought of but one. Her father liked Walter very much, even though his mother was a Bellenger; consequently it must be something about William himself which prompted that remark, and as Jessie usually echoed her father's sentiments, she felt, the old disagreeable sensation giving way, and before they reached the farm-house she was chatting as gayly with Walter, as if nothing had ever come between them.

That night Walter and Jessie sat together in the little portico, which was securely shaded from the sun by Aunt Debby's thrifty hop vines.

Walter was telling Jessie of his recent visit, and how his grandfather cried when he stood in the room where he was married nearly fifty years before.

"I supposed old people outlived all their romance," said Jessie, adding laughingly, as she plucked the broad green leaves growing near her head, "I don't think I could love any body but father fifty years,-could you?"

"It would depend a good deal upon the person I loved," returned Walter, and the look he gave Jessie seemed to say that it would not be a hard matter to love her through all time.

Jessie saw the look, and while it thrilled her with a sudden emotion of pleasure, it involuntarily reminded her of what William had said of the valedictory, and abruptly changing the conversation she said:

"Mr. Bellenger told me your speech was very good. May I see it for myself?"

Walter was a fine orator, and knew that the favor with which his speech had been received was in a great measure owing to the manner in which it was delivered. He was willing for Jessie to have heard it, but he felt a natural reluctance in permitting her to read it. Jessie saw his hesitancy, and it strengthened the suspicion which before had hardly existed.

"Yes, let me see it," she said. "You are surely not afraid of me!" and she persisted in her entreaties until he gave it into her hands, and then joined his grandfather, while she returned to her room, and striking a light, abandoned herself to the reading of the valedictory; and as she read it seemed even to her that she had heard some portion of it before.

"Yes, I have!" she exclaimed, as she came upon a strikingly expressed and peculiar idea. "I have read that in print," and in Jessie's heart there was a sore spot, for the losing confidence in Walter was terrible to her. "He is not strictly honorable," she said, and laying her face upon the roll of paper, she cried to think how she had been deceived.

The next morning Walter was not long in observing her cold distant manner, and he accordingly became as cold and formal toward her, addressing her as Miss Graham, when he spoke to her at all, and after breakfast was over, going to the village, where he remained until long past the dinner hour, hearing that which made him in no hurry to return home and make his peace with the little dark-eyed beauty. Everybody was talking of Miss Graham's city beau, who had taken her to ride so often, and who, when joked by his familiar landlord, had partially admitted that an engagement actually existed between them.

"So you've lost her, sleek and clean," said the talkative Joslyn to Walter, who replied that "it was difficult losing what one never had,"

and said distinctly that "he did not aspire to the honor of Miss Graham's hand."

But whether he did or not, the story he had heard was not calculated to improve his state of mind, and his dejection was plainly visible upon his face when he at last reached home.

"Jessie was up among the pines," Aunt Debby said, advising him "to join her and cheer her up a bit, for she seemed desput low spirited since Mr.

Bellenger went away."

Had Aunt Debby wished to keep Walter from Jessie, she could not have devised a better plan than this, for the high spirited young man had no intention of intruding upon a grief caused by William Bellenger's absence, and hour after hour Jessie sat alone among the pines, starting at every sound, and once, when sure a footstep was near, hiding behind a rock, "so as to make him think she wasn't there." Then, when the footstep proved to be a rabbit's tread, she crept back to her seat upon the gra.s.s, and pouted because it was not Walter.

"He might know I'd be lonesome," she said, "after receiving so much attention, and he ought to entertain me a little, if only to pay for all father has done for him. If there is anything I dislike, it is ingrat.i.tude," and having reached this point, Jessie burst into tears, though why she should cry, she could not tell.

She only knew that she was very warm and very uncomfortable, and that it did her good to cry, so she lay with her face in the gra.s.s, while the rabbit came several times very near, and at last fled away as a heavier, firmer step approached.

It was not likely Jessie would stay in the pines all the afternoon, Walter thought, and as the sun drew near the western horizon, he said to his grandfather:

"I will go for the cows to-night just as I used to do," and though the pasture where they fed lay in the opposite direction from the pines, he bent his footsteps toward the latter place, and came suddenly upon Jessie, who was sobbing like a child.

"Jessie," he exclaimed, laying his hand gently upon her arm, "what _is_ the matter."

"Nothing," she replied, "only I'm lonesome and homesick, and I wish I'd gone to New York with Mr. Bellenger."

"Why didn't you then?" was Walter's cool reply, and Jessie answered, angrily:

"I would, if I had known what I do now."

"And pray what do you know now?" Walter asked, in the same cold, calm, tone, which so exasperated Jessie that she replied:

"I know you hate me, and I know you didn't write all that valedictory, and everything."