Jessamine Part 26

It was cold and dark, but for the light of the taper she set down upon the mantel. There were none of the fanciful ornaments,--none of the luxurious devices, the patches of bright coloring that reflected the owner's tastes and whims in Jessie's apartment. All the draperies--those of the windows, the dressing-table, and the antique chairs, were pure white, as were also the walls. The carpet was a sober drab, checkered with narrow lines of blue. The aspect of the whole was so chill and grave on this bleak night, that Eunice s.h.i.+vered as at the breath of winter, as she drew up a seat to a stand in the middle of the floor, and leaned her head upon the hard wood. Not a tear or word escaped her, but a deft and an invisible engraver was at work upon her features, sharpening outlines, deepening here a stroke and there a furrow, until the father would not have known his child.

I said, many pages back, that Orrin Wyllys' victims made no moan.

Least of them all, was this one likely to publish her case to the world,--to shriek out her great and sudden woe in the ear of heaven and of her kind. She had never loved before she met him, and the discovery of this curious fact had stimulated his professional zeal--animated his pride in the honor and success of his vocation.

He had found the key to her heart, and had used it. Love is no holiday romance when it comes thus late in life to a woman of large capacity for affection, and a will, the strength of which has. .h.i.therto made the repression of such seeking instincts and needs as win for weaker girls the reputation of lovingness and dependence, appear even to those who know her best like tranquil contentment with her allotted share of love and companions.h.i.+p. She had heard herself called, "a predestined old maid," ever since her mother left her, a demure infant, apt and serious beyond her years--to become her father's co-worker and comforter. Her calm smile at the nickname looked like conscious superiority to dread of the obloquy--a fear that infects all cla.s.ses of her s.e.x. Her love was as reticent as her longing for affection had been. Orrin's most insidious arts had not sufficed to surprise her into confession. Of marriage he had never spoken, nor she permitted herself to think. Her attachment was artless and uncalculating as a child's. He had convinced her that the subtle sympathy of their souls had made them one from their earliest meeting; that he had then recognized in her his spirit-mate. The seductive cant came trippingly from his tongue with the fluent convincingness of much practice, and she was listening to it for the first time. His dual game was adroitly conducted, and the result was a triumphant cap-sheaf to his harvest of hearts. His bride-expectant would have torn her flaxen hair--natural and artificial--with rage had she guessed how tame he found his pursuit of herself; how deficient in the flavor of excitement that had marked his courts.h.i.+p of the beautiful but fortuneless country girls.

The hall-clock rang out nine strokes when Eunice shook off her reverie, and unlocked a drawer of her bureau. It was lined with silver paper, and the odor of dried violets stole into the still, cold air when she opened it. A bunch of withered flowers; a small herbarium filled by Wyllys and herself in their woodland and mountain rambles,--the vignette on the t.i.tle-page, from his pencil; all the inscriptions, names of specimens, and poetical legends, penned by his hand; a thin bundle of letters and notes; five or six books--favorite works with both of them--composed the contents. She took them out carefully, one by one, and laid them in a heap upon the table. Then, she sought in the closet for a walnut box, one of her childhood's treasures, an oblong casket with a sliding top and a strong lock. Without audible evidence of suffering, she arranged the relics within it, with the nice regard to neatness and order which was, with her, intuitive as it had become habitual. The last article was a volume of Spenser's "Faerie Queene"--an English edition elegantly ill.u.s.trated. Wyllys had sent it to her, the Christmas Jessie pa.s.sed with Mrs. Baxter. His pencillings were upon several pages, and one of the fly-leaves bore an extract from Tennyson. He had apologized for transcribing it, there, in the letter accompanying the gift, by saying that it was ever in his mind, when he watched or talked with her. No eyes save his and hers had ever seen the lines as written upon that page, and they were the more precious to her that this was so.

Eyes not down-dropt, nor over-bright, but fed With the clear-pointed flame of chast.i.ty; Clear without heat, undying, tended by Pure vestal thoughts in the translucent fane Of her still spirit; locks (not wide-dispread) Madonna-wise on either side her head; Sweet lips, whereon perpetually did reign The summer calm of golden charity,-- Were fixed shadows of thy fixed mood.

She unclosed the book and re-read them before consigning it to its place. How vividly arose before her the scene of that Christmas Eve, when the parcel was brought to her! Her father always spent the evening of the twenty-fourth of December in his study--and fasting.

It was an anniversary with him; scrupulously observed for many years, of what event or crisis in his life his daughters never knew.

Eunice had made her preparations for a lonely evening by her chamber-fire; collected her books and work about her that she might not feel too sadly the want of human converse. But she had touched none of these; was sitting, her head on her hand, gazing into the fire, hearkening to the wind as it flung fierce dashes of sleet against the windows, and longing, how hungrily! for some visible evidence that she was remembered and missed by another, as she thought of and missed him. Into her solitude had come his gift and letter, and the night was all light about her; the world was no more dark and cold and tempestuous. She walked in Paradise, hand in hand with the good genius who had wrought the spell.

The idealistic character of woman's love is at once her blessing and her curse. Orrin Wyllys, at that hour dancing at a Christmas rout, the gayest of the season, looking meaning but unuttered flatteries into other eyes; feigning--as he best could feign--to wait as for the sentence of life and death, upon other "sweet lips," would have laughed in unmixed amus.e.m.e.nt had he seen, in a magic mirror, the representment of himself before which a pure, fervent soul was laying votive offerings of her best affections and richest fancies;--to which she was looking up as to the highest of human intelligences, the embodiment of manhood's virtues and graces. While to her the delusion was happiness without stain or shade, while it lasted.

It was over now! Returning from the pursuit of these shadows--dearer and fairer than any real joy and positive delight that would ever visit her solitary life,--she let the leaves of the book she still held unfurl slowly under her fingers, reading a line here, a paragraph there, always those marked by the hand that must never meet hers again with the lingering touch which said more than the most impa.s.sioned words from other tongues. A blue ribbon was inserted at one place, where a pa.s.sage was encircled by pencilled brackets, while in the margin was written, "E. K."

Her angel's face As the great eye of heaven s.h.i.+ned bright, And made a suns.h.i.+ne in a shady place.

Eunice shut her eyes in a throe of memory that ploughed deep pain-lines in her visage. h.e.l.l may keep, but earth has not a keener torment than the contemplation of what was once sweetest joy,--now changed into shameful agony.

The book had fallen to the floor and lay still open at the page marked by the ribbon. In picking it up, her eye rested upon another line--unmarked.

At last, in close heart shutting up her pain.

The rest of Eunice Kirke's life was a commentary upon that pa.s.sage.

The travail of concealment began when she turned the lock upon the mementos--few and innocent--of her only love-dream. Hitherto, it had been a pearl, too priceless and pure to be exposed to other eyes.

Defaced and crushed by one rude blow, it was something to be thrust out of sight, kept beyond the chance of suspicion or detection--buried in a nameless grave.

The key of the casket was a tiny thing, at which she looked for an instant in irresolution that ended in her raising the window, and flinging it far into the garden. The rain would soon beat it into the loose mould. It would be rusted into uselessness before the spring plough-share brought it again to the surface. Upon the lid of the box she fastened a card.

"_To be buried with me_," she wrote upon it with fingers that did not tremble.

The grave seems near and welcome in the ague-fit that shakes the soul from the divine illusion of reciprocal affection. There was not a symptom of sickly sentimentalism in Eunice's nature; but she did feel that she could have said farewell to existence and the few she loved, with less effort than was required to dress her countenance in its wonted serenity, and go back to her sister; to speak and act as if a thunderbolt had not riven the ground at her feet; to consult her rustic and un.o.bservant handmaid about homely details of the morrow's housekeeping. Confirmations all of them--of the stubborn fact that the business of life--its tug and sweat and strain, halts not for broken heart-strings.

If the iron be blunt, a man must lay to it more strength. If the spirit refuse to bear its part in the appointed work of the hour, or day, or life, the muscles and brain must be educated to perform double duty. This toiling and reeking at the galley-oar may bring power to the sinews, and hardness to the flesh, but woe to him by whose offence the burden is bound upon the guiltless!

CHAPTER XIX.

The third Sabbath in October was bland and bright as June. Roy, who had arrived in Dundee on Sat.u.r.day evening, invited his wife to a stroll in the garden with him after the dispersion of the afternoon congregation. There were more sere than green leaves in the rose labyrinth, but one side of the arbor was covered by a thrifty _micra phylia_ that had been known to keep its foliage from Autumn to Spring when the winter was not severe, and which had put forth, within a week, a few large milk-white roses, warmed into delicious fragrance by the sunny day.

"Sweets to the sweet!" said Roy, cutting a half-open blossom and a bud, and fastening them in Jessie's brooch. "I wish they did not match your cheeks so nearly, Love!"

She smiled faintly.

"I am gaining strength rapidly. There is nothing the matter with me, except that I have not enough to do to keep me from moping. There is one thing you must let me speak of while Eunice is not by,"--she continued, hurriedly. "I may not have appeared grateful for your permission to remain here until her arrangements about the school are completed, but I am thankful! I feel your goodness--your generosity, deeply! I wish I were more worthy of it!"

Unconsciously, she had laid hold of the lappel of his coat, and was fingering it nervously. Then--a girlish trick she used to practise when coaxing or bantering her father, and, occasionally, when talking saucily with himself--she began with deliberate fingers to b.u.t.ton the coat from the throat down. "Making a mummy of me, Madcap!" was the alliterative comment Mr. Kirke usually made when the process was finished. Roy recollected it now, and smiled to himself. The action--her first voluntary caress since his return from abroad, thrilled him with ecstasy. Her downcast eyes and trembling lips recalled, in one rapturous rush, thoughts of the shy dalliance of the girl he had wooed amid these bowers. He was winning her back to her true self,--or, rather, nature and affection were recovering from the lethargy induced by the shock she had sustained.

"My wife must never speak to me of grat.i.tude!" he said, restraining the paean the heart would have sung through the lips. "Your happiness should be--if I know myself--_is_ my chief consideration. Much as I regret Eunice's refusal to share our dwelling, I should be savage in my unkindness if I were to add to your disappointment by denying your request that you might be left together a week or two longer.

Nor do I wish to punish her, or, in any manner, express my chagrin at her determination. She is actuated by motives which are weighty in her estimation. The sight of her glistening eyes when I told her, this morning, that you were not to be separated while she remained in the Parsonage, went far toward compensating me for my self-denial. By and by, my bird will nestle in my bosom, settle herself in our home. The knowledge that you are, indeed and in truth, mine, dear one, renders me patient, almost satisfied, in your absence. If I say hourly, in the thought of your coming to and dwelling with me--'G.o.d speed the day!' the aspiration does not incline me to force your inclination, to withhold from you a reasonable indulgence, that I may see you the sooner in your right place. I would be your husband--not your jailor, my pet!"

It was impossible to look into his moved face; to hear the cadence of pa.s.sion and yearning that trembled along the last sentences, and not believe that, whatever might be the record of his past loves and defections, his whole heart was now given to her who bore his name.

The listener's paroxysm of humility bowed her in spirit to his feet.

He was heaping burning coals upon her shamed head.

"And G.o.d make me fit for that home!" she said, solemnly, lifted in the exaltation of high resolve above the mental apathy and physical repulsion which had, up to this hour, made this enforced union an ever-present nightmare. "Indeed, Roy, I will strive to be a good wife! I have nothing to live for except the hope of making you happy. You know what I am, weak and faulty--a spoiled child from the beginning, to whom, everything like discipline was unknown until lately. And then--one stroke followed another so rapidly that I have hardly been sane, I think. But I do want to satisfy you in every respect, or so far as one like me can!"

"'So far as you can!'" his whole soul in the eyes that beamed into hers, and in the sweet, proud smile irradiating his grave features.

"The work is done, dearest! My cup runneth over. It will scarcely bear a rose-leaf this evening,--only this seal of our renewed covenant, my angel of blessing, my good, true _wife_!" bending to kiss her.

He remembered afterward, how she clung to his shoulder and hid her face there, when he placed her beside him on the bench in the arbor, where they sat out the half-hour of sunset as they had so many others in days gone by.

Eunice, seated behind the tea-urn when they obeyed Patsey's summons to supper, noted the lessened gloom of her sister's mien and Roy's expression of radiant content; saw, when they gathered about the hearth for the evening's talk, that Roy took in his clasp the hand which generally lay listlessly across its fellow in Jessie's lap, and that she allowed him to retain it. Saw and was thankful for these slight harbingers of the return of the love and brightness which were once her child's life. Tried to comfort herself in her isolation with the belief that the night was pa.s.sing from her darling's spirit.

"Wounds soon heal in hearts young and healthy as is hers!" she thought. "For this, at least, I may return hearty thanks."

Within two days after the receipt of Roy's first letter, Eunice had announced to Jessie the reverse of her plans for the winter. Instead of removing with them to Hamilton, she had decided to hire a cottage in the village, and open a school for girls. She had partially engaged both house and pupils before she broached the subject to her sister. Thoroughly aroused from her selfish languor by the startling intelligence, Jessie had opposed the scheme with might and main. Accustomed as she was to Eunice's calm but resolute measures, and her taciturnity respecting her own views, wants, and plans, this retreat from a position which had not been taken without much and serious thought, filled her with consternation. Having plied her unsuccessfully with arguments and entreaties of her own devising, Jessie wrote to Roy, begging him to use his powerful influence to avert the threatened evil.

"I cannot do without her!" she said, without staying to reflect upon what might be the husband's feeling on reading the avowal, "unlike as we are and reserved as we have been to one another on some subjects, our hearts are knit together by bands which are all the stronger for our late loss. In the antic.i.p.ation of this parting, my only sister seems to me like my second soul--the other part of myself. I shall be less than half a woman without her. You can do more with her than any one else. If you desire my happiness, and I know you do, entreat her not to leave me!"

If aught in this letter wounded Fordham, n.o.body knew it. He wrote to Eunice forthwith and urgently; did his best to dissuade her from the novel project, partly because he loved and respected her, chiefly because the matter was one that concerned Jessie's comfort and happiness. He accomplished nothing, except to elicit from Eunice the admission that she had no counter-reasoning to offer, and a mild but firm repet.i.tion of her unalterable resolve. He made a second attempt on Sat.u.r.day evening, during Jessie's absence from the room.

Eunice sewed on steadily without a word, while he set forth the disadvantages of her present plan--the advantages of the former.

Finally, brought to bay by his argument and searching questions, she confronted him abruptly.

"I must have work, and plenty of it, just now, Roy! I _dare_ not be idle! When it shall be safe and best for me to rest and think, I will accept your offer. I beg you to believe that I act from principle--not caprice. I am sure that I am doing right. And now, please say no more."

He desisted at that, and with characteristic magnanimity, undertook to reconcile his wife to the separation, by holding out the hope that it was but temporary, besides inquiring into the minutiae of her design, and lending her what a.s.sistance she required in the furtherance of it. All was in train when he returned to his post of duty on Thursday morning. Repairs were in progress upon the leased cottage, which was pretty and convenient; twenty pupils engaged to begin lessons early in November; the sale of the surplus furniture was over, and the sisters, with Patsey, were busy getting the rest of their effects in order for transportation. Jessie was to follow in two weeks, when she had seen Eunice and the faithful servant domiciled in their new abode.

It was the longest fortnight Roy had ever known, although he kept his loneliness and longing to himself, concealing their existence most carefully from his wife. She would come to "him and home," on Wednesday of the second week, and he pa.s.sed every hour he could spare from college duties and sleep, in getting the house ready for her reception. On Monday, arrived boxes from Dundee which he unpacked with his own hands. They contained Jessie's personal property--books, books and _bijouterie_, and the most delightful occupation of his solitude was the arrangement of these in parlor and sitting-room. He slept at "home," as he proudly called it, after these were brought in. They were too valuable to be left unguarded.

On Tuesday night, Orrin Wyllys, who had just returned from a visit of three or four days to his _fiancee_, chanced to pa.s.s the house, and seeing lights on the first floor, rang the bell.

Roy answered it. He was in dressing-gown and slippers--a cigar in one hand, a book in the other.

"A domesticated Benedict to the life!" laughed his cousin, as he followed him into the library. "Aha! there is an old and valued acquaintance."

The portrait of the girl at the wis.h.i.+ng-well hung opposite the door, and, he observed, in exact range of Roy's vision as he sat in his chair.

"You will find many more if you will use your eyes. Come with me."

The dining-room adjoined the library, and the parlors were just across the hall. A bronze statuette of Pallas--four feet high, mounted upon a column of Egyptian marble--presented to the popular professor by the students, was the most conspicuous ornament; but scattered here and there were many interesting works of art selected by him in foreign lands--always with reference to Jessie's tastes and wishes. The piano was Orrin's bridal gift--a surprise held in reserve by the fond husband to brighten the coming home of his household deity. But the sitting-room back of the state apartments, was the one on which he had expended most care and time. A bay-window did duty for the more roomy oriel, and the shelf, which was an extension of the sill, was filled with plants.