Queenie Trevalyn

“ Like one dazed he turned slowly around, setting his miserable face toward the lights and the music, but his overwrought nerves could stand no more, strong man though he was, and without a moan or a cry he fell headlong upon the white sands at her feet—like a hero in a great battle falls when he has received his death wound, crying out: “When love has conquered pride and anger, you may call me back again.”
“Great heavens! what a dilemma!” cried Queenie Trevalyn, angrily. ”

“ Ay, as much as though she lay in the grave, and again and again such terrible waves of grief swept over him that they threatened to dethrone his reason. He did not care to live an hour longer. All that he loved on earth was lost to him.
He had loved Queenie Trevalyn as few men love in a lifetime. She had drawn him on, encouraged him by all the wiles with which a finished coquette ensnares her victims, and then had cast him off without the least compunction.
But, ah, how strange a thing is the human heart. ”

“ He does not understand this queer child—for woman she certainly is not—and before he knows it, he is drawing a comparison between her and the girl who jilted him so cruelly because he was not rich—beautiful Queenie Trevalyn, and at the thought of his lost love, his brows contract with a spasm of pain, and a stifled groan breaks from his lips. ”

“ Queenie Trevalyn had read it slowly through twice, controlling her emotions with a supreme effort.
It was from her father, and announced his utter failure in New York.
He had made an unsuccessful venture in Wall Street, and the result was that every dollar he had on earth had been swept from him.
“When you return to the city,” he wrote, “instead of your own home, it will be to a boarding house. For myself I care not; but my heart bleeds for you, my dear wife, and Queenie, knowing full well how much you both love the luxurious trappings of wealth and position! But my grief cannot mend matters. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Queenie’s eyes almost start from their sockets, the shock and the horror of his words affect her so terribly. He is married! She wonders that those words did not strike her dead. She stands for a moment looking at him like one bidding a last farewell to life, hope, and the world.
“You are married?” she gasps again. “Oh, my God! my punishment is more than I can bear!” and she sinks on the floor at his feet with a piteous moan, burying her face in her hands and weeping as women seldom weep in a lifetime. ”

“ Raymond Challoner gazed after her with a strange expression on his usually placid countenance, as he remarked to himself:
“It’s a very disagreeable procedure. I hope she won’t do anything desperate. Those high-spirited girls are apt to kill themselves, or something else equally as terrible. She’s tremendously in love with me, poor little girl; and it’s flattering, but not at all pleasant under the circumstances.”
Queenie Trevalyn walked straight up to her own room with the same proud, measured step. ”

“ Yes, a most beautiful picture of lovely girlhood Queenie Trevalyn appeared in her traveling dress of dove gray, with the crimson rose nestling in her bosom, and her two bright eyes eager with expectancy as he approached.
“Good-morning, my radiant darling!” he cried, availing himself of the opportunity of addressing her as rapturously as he liked, there being no one else on the wide, [34] shady veranda; most every one being busy over the packing of trunks and saying good-by to friends. ”

“ I did not suppose you ever enjoyed the luxury of being alone; such is the penalty of having admirers by the score,” bowing low before the beauty, adding: “I beg to remind you that this is our waltz, and it is my favorite music, ‘My Queen.’”
Queenie Trevalyn arose graciously, her rosebud lips [14] wreathed in the sweetest of smiles. She danced and laughed, the gayest of the gay, never for an instant did her thoughts revert to the heart that was enduring the agonies of death, for love of her, down upon the cold, white sands. ”

“ They condescended, however, to give Queenie a note to a trained nurse, a Mrs. Brent, suggesting that she would in all probability receive her mother and self for a few days, until Mrs. Trevalyn was able to return to New York.
And thither, letter in hand, Queenie turned her steps, murmuring to herself:
“Ah, me! How strange are the tricks fate plays upon us!” little dreaming as she uttered the words of the thrilling event about to transpire. ”

“ If he is rich, it is not unlikely; if he is poor, Queenie Trevalyn will whistle him down the wind, as the old saying goes. Lawrence Trevalyn’s daughter is too worldly to make an unsuitable marriage. Her father is one of the ablest lawyers at the New York bar, and makes no end of money, but his extravagant family succeeds splendidly in living up to every dollar of his entire income, and Miss Queenie knows that her only hope is in marrying a fortune; she is quite as ambitious as her parents. ”

“ Moore’s feelings were it was hard to conjecture.
One moment he hated all womankind, for the sake of the one he had found so fair and so false—beautiful Queenie Trevalyn, whom he had loved too well, and to his bitter cost.
[117]
Then he found himself softening toward one of the hated sex—little Jess, whose heart was as innocent and pure as a little babe’s.
He wondered if she would ever have the heart to draw a man on to declare his love, and then, when she found that he was not possessed of wealth, discard him as unconcernedly as she would a withered flower of which she had grown tired. ”

“ For an instant the young man standing in the doorway was dazed with amazement, but in the next he sprang forward to raise the girl.
“Do not go near my Lucy! Do not touch her!” cried the unhappy mother, distractedly. “This is all your work, sir—all your work!”
John Dinsmore drew back in much distress. Never by word, act or deed, had he given the girl encouragement to bestow her affections upon himself. He was touched deeply. He remembered his own hopeless love for Queenie Trevalyn, and could sympathize from the very bottom of his heart with any human being who loved in vain. ”

“ Does he love her?” was Queenie’s mental cry.
At the sight of the beautiful vision in the doorway, John Dinsmore springs to his feet, putting his young wife hastily from him.
Jess is blushing like a full-blown rose in June.
“Oh, Mrs. Brown—Queenie—don’t be so terribly shocked, please,” she cries, dancing to her side and flinging her arms around her. “I am going to explain something about this gentleman which will surprise you dreadfully. He is my husband!” And as she utters the words triumphantly, she steps back and looks at Queenie, cresting her pretty head sideways, like a young robin. ”

“ Queenie Trevalyn did not go into hysterics over her father’s letter, as her mother had done. Instead, she was very angry.
“How dare a man, who has a family on his hands dependent upon him for support, to risk his fortune in speculation?” she stormed. “The man who is mad enough to do it should be sent to an insane asylum, and confined there for the rest of his natural life!”
“But what are we to do, my dear?” queried the weeping mother, in a sobbing, querulous voice. “I have always lived in elegance; how am I to enter a New York [29] boarding house? I—I should fall down dead on the threshold! ”

“ Enemies to the death. You have insulted my pride, and the day will come when you will bitterly rue it!”
To lose him this heiress would be just the kind of revenge most pleasing to Queenie Trevalyn, who realized all too well his love of wealth and luxury.
No; Jess must never reach New York and hear the story of how John Dinsmore had been Queenie’s admirer, and all the rest she had to tell, for no doubt, out of pique, Jess would not take him then, believing him one and the same John Dinsmore, of course. ”

“ If he had been rich he would have stood a fair chance of winning her. The love of a great, strong, honorable heart did not count with her. Her affection was not for exchange, but for sale. The beautiful girl whom he had thought little less than the angels above was but common clay, a mercenary creature, who weighed [13] gold in the scale against marriage, and whose idea of a gentleman, one of nature’s noblemen, was measured by his wealth. To her a poor man was less than the dust beneath her dainty feet.
“You have heard what I have said, Mr. Dinsmore,” said Queenie Trevalyn, haughtily. ”

“ My love died for you long ago, and to-night my respect goes with it; for the woman who would counsel me to turn from my wedded wife, no matter what she has done, and find consolation with her, is one whom I do not desire even to know.”
As he uttered these words he strode from the room, leaving Queenie staring after him, the very picture of a fiend incarnate, with her eyes blazing like two coals of yellow fire, and her face and lips bloodless.
“Foiled!” she shrieked. “Foiled! and I had set my heart and soul upon winning him, and the way seemed so easy!” ”

“ Trevalyn, angrily. “I won’t tolerate it. I knew what I was doing. Money is best.”
“Love is best!” murmured Queenie, “and without it, all the wealth of the world is but dross,” and, as she uttered the words, her thoughts flew back to the lover whom she had left on the white sands, ere she had been taught that pitiful lesson, and she walked slowly from the room. Her mother watched her with darkening brows.
“I thought I had brought that girl up to be sensible,” she ruminated; “but I find she is as foolish as the general run of girls. ”

“ Surely he must understand what she has left unsaid—and he does, and gives a great start of surprise. Hitherto Queenie has occupied a pedestal high as an angel in his heart. Is this the girl whom he has worshiped so madly, this girl who is coolly counseling him to divorce the girl who is his wedded wife? All in an instant of time the mad, passionate love he has had for Queenie dies a tragic death.
It was his intention to divorce little Jess, but now that it is proposed to him by another—oh, strange perversity of human nature!—he seems to recoil from it, he knows not why. ”

“ To-night.”
“I do not understand you in the least, my dear,” exclaimed Mrs. Trevalyn, as Queenie still continued to wring her hands, weeping bitterly the while. “Your eyes will be in the back of your head if you keep on wailing and weeping in this way,” she added in annoyance, “and a pretty sight you will present then. Always remember to keep your face looking beautiful, no matter what else goes amiss.”
Thus admonished, Queenie dried her eyes, but she could not keep back the heavy sighs that arose to her lips at the very thought of Raymond Challoner and his hint that she must marry him. ”

“ Jess crossed the room and stood in front of the picture of the late departed Mr. Brown, studying the wrinkled face it represented; the bald head, smooth as a billiard ball; the shrunken mouth and chin, and almost sightless eyes, and her thoughts broke into words, and quite before she considered what she was about to utter, she said, impulsively:
“How could you ever have loved so old and withered a human being, Queenie, let alone marrying him; and you so young and fair? ”

“ Even if you should fail with him,” she went on, plaintively, “there is the old Widower Brown——”
“Stop, mother!” cried Queenie Trevalyn, a shudder of horror passing over her slender frame. “I love wealth and position dearly, but I would rather die on the street from starvation than marry a man whom I detest as thoroughly [41] as Hiram Brown, octogenarian, miser, hunchback, and pawnbroker.” ”

“ Trevalyn.
“I had very little time to grieve over having to refuse him,” continued Queenie, “for another lover arose instantly upon the horizon of my future, as though to console me. In less than half an hour after I had refused John Dinsmore, I was the affianced bride to be of Mr. Raymond Challoner, heir prospective to all the Challoner millions. I like him in his way amazingly; I think he will make a far more fitting mate for a frivolous girl like me than grave John Dinsmore, had he been worth the same amount of shining gold.” ”

“ Before he had met Queenie Trevalyn, he had believed in women much as he believed in angels—that they were [182] incapable of deceit, or treachery, and could do nothing wrong.
And now his experience with Jess strengthened the conviction that his theory concerning the fair sex had been radically wrong. Now he believed from the very depths of his heart that they were incapable of feeling a true affection, and were ready to jilt one lover, at the very altar if need be, if they found some one else more eligible—that they were mercenary to the heart’s core. ”

“ She gloated, rather, over the misery of the girl who had won the love of the only man on earth whom she would ever care for.
“Let her cry!” muttered Queenie, hoarsely, as she paced up and down; “all the grief she could know in a lifetime could not equal the poignant misery I endured in the one moment John Dinsmore spurned me from him, declaring that he would not divorce that girl and wed me for all the wealth of the Indies—ay, to save his life, even, if it came to that. ”