Jessamine Part 23

Fordham of his request, and determined to grant it, but it was not clear that he quite understood her.

"Good child!" he said, with closed eyes. "G.o.d bless you both!"

Did "both" mean his daughters or the two who were to be wedded presently? She could not bring herself to ask.

Mr. Kirke lapsed into slumber or stupor, and the room was silent again save for his irregular breathing, showing that his semi-insensibility varied in character from that of the day. Once, Jessie got up with the remark that it was time to renew the mustard-poultices that stimulated the curdling veins into action, and the pair did the office deftly and mutely. Eunice saw her sister, as she reseated herself, lay her cheek to the almost pulseless hand that rested on the coverlet, and close her eyes, while her lips were stirred by an inaudible sentence. The observer was thankful for this token of a more subdued and natural frame of mind than the suffering girl had yet exhibited. It was meet that she should seek the blessing of Heaven upon the union she was about to form, and that thoughts of prayer should be linked with loving ones of her earthly parent. And Eunice, too, prayed in her gentle, pious heart for the happiness of the child she had reared as her own, and for that of the true, fond brother, whose arrival in this their darkest hour, was like a direct answer from on high to the pet.i.tions she had offered, during their long days of watching and anxiety.

With Roy to console and care for Jessie, the smitten household would be rich even in temporal comfort.

Was Jessie praying? She had proudly flung the charge of perjury at another, saying--"Of this sin, at least, I am innocent." What was the act to which she had given her consent--which the next hour would render irrevocable? It was when this question was forced upon her by some taunting demon, that she kissed the lifeless hand, and whispered the formula she had said aloud that morning at the open window, and repeated inly hundreds of times since.

"My father is dying!"

Since she could not lie down and die in his stead, she would sacrifice the poor hopes of peace that were spared to her from the wreck of her early dreams, to purchase for him what gratification she could still give him. Eunice might well eye her apprehensively, all that day and evening. Many with steadier brains and cooler blood than were hers have been consigned to insane asylums.

The wind was so loud, the roar of the pine outside the window so continuous, as to drown the sound of returning hoofs and wheels.

They were ignorant of Roy's second arrival until he knocked at the chamber-door. Eunice said, "Come in!" and he whispered a few words to her before he approached Jessie.

"Are you quite ready?" he asked, softly.

She bowed her head in a.s.sent.

He disappeared for a moment, then came back with Dr. Baxter, Drs.

Winters and Trimble. The physicians, with difficulty, aroused their patient so far as to swallow the stimulant they administered. Patsey brought in more lights, and retired, with the doctors, to the background--an interested spectator of the singular scene.

"Father!" it was Roy's voice, sonorous yet pleasant, that reached the senses and reason which were fast slipping away with life. "This is Dr. Baxter, of whom you have often heard--Jessie's very dear friend--and whose wife is the cousin of Jessie's mother."

The double reference was talismanic. Mr. Kirke opened his eyes to their full width--all recognizing, in them the gla.s.sy stare of dissolution--and tried to move his hand toward the person thus introduced.

"He is very welcome!"

Dr. Baxter pressed the cold hand between his.

"Brother in Christ! we should have met before. We shall meet again.

In that safe world there are no crossed purposes or partings. There we shall know even as we are known--of one another and of the Master. You are very near the entrance upon that perfect life. I have been sent hither by our LORD to bid you, 'G.o.d speed!' on the short and easy journey, and to ask your blessing upon these, our children, who would walk after you, hand in hand. Is it still your wish that they should be married here beside you, before you go from their sight?"

"Yes; by all means!"

The emphasis was faint, yet perceptible, and he shut his clammy fingers feebly upon those Jessie slipped within them, as she obeyed Dr. Baxter's injunction to join her right hand with that of her betrothed. She felt their loose hold more plainly than she did the warm, strong grasp that signified loving protection, tenderest sympathy.

It was a strange, sad rite,--stranger and more melancholy than burials usually are. The bride's gaze never left the sunken face and closed eyes that rested among the pillows, and her a.s.sent to the interrogations put to her was so slight as to create a pa.s.sing doubt in the mind of the catechist as to whether she had given any. The mountain storm burst overhead in thunder, wind, and rain, as the bridegroom spoke his reverent and stead-fast response, and when the benediction was p.r.o.nounced, Jessie stooped to kiss her father, apparently forgetful that Roy's was the paramount right to the token of affection.

"Dear Papa! It is your little Jessie! I have done as you wished.

Will you not bless me?"

The cry sounded in the ear deadened by the death-stupor as a faint and far-off call. Mr. Kirke's eyelids quivered without rising, and the muscles of the mouth were moved. Then, the gray calm settled down again upon his countenance.

"He must speak to me! I must be sure that he hears me--that he understands how I have obeyed him!" said Jessie, frantically. "He _must_!" to the physicians who advanced to the bedside with restoratives.

They were useless. The dying man was beyond the reach of human skill. The lips were parted, the throat did not contract. Dr.

Winters shook his head despairingly and turned from his old friend and pastor, the untasted gla.s.s of brandy in his hand.

"He does not see or hear me!" cried the daughter, throwing up her arms in a pa.s.sion of despair. "I did it for him, and he will never know it."

She sank to her knees beside the bed and buried her face in the coverings. Roy leaned over her, and whispered something the rest did not hear. He might as well have addressed her father with words of consolation. When he touched her to recall her attention, she s.h.i.+vered violently, but gave no other sign of consciousness of his presence.

"I am glad you are here, Mr. Fordham--heartily rejoiced and greatly relieved," said Dr. Winters, as Roy attended him down the stairs.

"Your wife needs very delicate and judicious treatment just now. Her whole nervous system is unstrung. I saw it in her manner and eye this forenoon. When the unnatural strain is relaxed, she will break down completely, I am afraid."

Mr. Kirke died at midnight. He had noticed no one, and said nothing since his feeble rejoinder to Dr. Baxter's query whether the marriage should proceed, until half an hour before he breathed his last, those about him saw a change in the face that, in stillness and beauty, resembled a fine Greek mask. Jessie perceived it first; was quick to take advantage of the tinge of color, the tremor of features.

"Papa!" she prayed, raising his head to a resting-place on her arm.

"Can you hear me? If you can, kiss me."

The stiff lips moved under the pressure of hers, and a smile, ineffable in radiance and tenderness, remained when the kiss had been given.

"You do know me--do you not?" said his daughter, breathlessly. "Who is it that is speaking to you?"

All present heard the reply:

"_Ginevra!_"

CHAPTER XVII.

The "breaking down" predicted by Dr. Winters, took the form, not of hysterical emotion, as he had antic.i.p.ated, but of physical languor and spiritual apathy, which were more alarming. Jessie moved, spoke, and thought like one in a trance; acquiescing in every proposal made by her sister and Roy; obeying every request without demur or inquiry. If left to herself she asked nothing except to be allowed to sit or lie pa.s.sive for hours together; her great eyes closed or blank; her countenance set in the gloomy weariness that had marked it from the moment her hand left her dead father's forehead--a look that said she had henceforward nothing to hope for or to fear.

Few husbands would have had tolerance with this excessive grief for the loss of a parent, however beloved, and worthy of filial attachment. One might search far and long without finding a man whose sympathy with the demonstration of this would incite him to warmer love and fonder care for her, who, for the time, overlooked his claim to supreme regard in her devotion to a memory.

"You could not mourn more bitterly for _me_!" I once heard a man say in impatient reproach, upon surprising his wife in tears within a week after she had committed an indulgent parent to the grave.

He was a good man, and an affectionate husband, but he could not endure the semblance of a divided allegiance.

Had Roy Fordham's love been of this sensitive and exclusive type, it would have been chafed threadbare before the honeymoon was one-tenth wasted. The new bond between them she ignored entirely--not, it was evident, in wilfulness or shyness, but because it had no place in her thoughts; was a matter of no moment in comparison with the event that steeped her whole being in despondency. It was well that neither he nor Eunice had any knowledge of the continuous warfare of the summer, the fiercer struggle of that early September day, the morrow of which had brought a fresh sorrow in her father's illness.

Had they comprehended all this, superadded to their fears that her three weeks' watching and its _finale_ had seriously affected her nervous system, they would have had small hope of the curative power of Nature and of Love. She was, in reality, insane for the three days immediately succeeding her marriage, if lack of feeling, thought, and connected memory signify mental aberration. In after years, this period was almost a blank in the retrospect, a confusing dissolving view that defied her scrutiny. While it lasted it was a nightmare from which she had not strength to awaken.

When she was led by Roy to take a last look at her father's face as he lay in his coffin ready to be transported to the church, her eyes were vacant and dry, her features emotionless.

"He looks very natural!" she said slowly, like one trying to recall the conventional phrase in such circ.u.mstances.

When Eunice bent weepingly to kiss the frozen lips where still lingered the smile of ineffable peace with which he had named his wife, Jessie eyed her with a mixture of wonder and perplexity; and remarking again, "Very natural! almost life-like!" turned away, with the air of one who had said and done all that could be required of her.

In an agony of alarm, Roy sought Dr. Winters, who had called to inquire after the health of the family, and to see if he could be of service in their affliction. Eunice had taken charge of her sister at night, and reported that what little sleep had visited the latter had been won by the use of anodynes. Had the physician--asked the bridegroom--a sedative, potent enough to induce slumber for several hours, the after effect of which would not be increased cerebral excitement? Come what might, Jessie must not witness the obsequies appointed for that forenoon. Her mind seemed, to him, to need but a touch to complete its overthrow. While the two gentlemen held counsel, Eunice entered with the welcome news that Jessie had, on leaving the parlor where the remains lay, gone voluntarily to her own room--she having shared her sister's since their common bereavement--thrown herself upon the bed and fallen into a deep sleep.

The church-bell was not tolled for the pastor's funeral, and a band of trusty yeomen, stationed fifty yards up and down the road, prevented vehicles from approaching the gate of Parsonage or church-yard. The reason was quickly disseminated, and the value of the precaution universally admitted. Mingled with the tears that fell upon the bier of the faithful servant of G.o.d, were earnest prayers for the restoration of health and reason to the daughter--"the people's" pride and pet as she had been his--the merry, popular "little Jessie," who was known to every household in the parish. Many wistful eyes sought the closed blinds, behind which she lay wrapped in death-like slumber.

"The only hope for life and brain!" Dr. Winters had p.r.o.nounced, and the dictum was repeated far and near with awed looks and subdued breath.