Jessamine Part 35

"It is a piratical flag!" rejoined another. "And there! she is signalling some poor wretch on to his doom!"

The Lady President had waved her handkerchief to some one in or near the college, and halted at the top of the front steps to receive him.

"Who is the latest victim?" asked those in the rear of the party, as the foremost craned his neck to peer upon the campus.

"One who is able to take care of himself," was the response. "No less a personage than his Royal Highness."

This _sobriquet_, let me explain, was applied to Professor Fordham in no unkind or depreciatory spirit by his cla.s.ses. Originally intended as a play upon his Christian name, it grew into popular esteem as descriptive of their pride in his manly carriage and knightly demeanor. The quintette at the window watched him with interest and admiration now, as he strode along the gravelled avenue leading to the Presidents' house.

"He would march up to the cannon's mouth in the same style,"

commented the chief speaker. "Did you ever see better shoulders?"

"Did you ever see a better _man_?" interrogated the fifth of the group--a grave senior, who had not spoken before.

And to the honor of the watchers, as of the watched, be it recorded that a hearty acquiescence in his verdict followed the question.

The goodly man found abundant favor, likewise in Mrs. Baxter's eyes, as she invited him to enter her abode.

"'Will you walk into my parlor?'

Said the spider to the fly."

Sang one of the graceless rascals in the dormitory, as a commentary upon the, to them, dumb show.

It was to Fordham anything but dumb. Mrs. Baxter was excruciatingly voluble in excusing herself for "what you must, I am certain, regard as an unparalleled liberty, my dear Professor!" she continued, when he was seated.

"I am gratefully at your service whenever you can make use of me, madam," was the reply, which was more sincere than professions of the kind usually are.

Mrs. Baxter's genuine love for her young cousin, and her numberless acts of neighborly kindness, had greatly endeared her to Jessie's husband. Her peculiarities of manner and phraseology weighed nothing with him when compared with her sound principles and generous heart.

"_Thank_ you! I knew I might make the venture with _you_! My own mind being ill at ease, I could not resist the impulse to waylay you and unburden"--making as though she would clutch her heart, then sprawling both hands, her arms widely divergent lines from her heaving bust--"un_burden_ myself to you, as the person most likely to sympathize with and ameliorate my anxieties. I had nearly said, my maternal anxieties. And indeed, Mr. Fordham, I could scarcely love your dear wife more, if she were, in truth, my child. Dear to me as the representative of the beloved friend of my youth, she has enhanced that partiality a thousandfold by her own worth and loveliness. This is my apology--this and the solicitude to which I have referred, for what may appear to you indelicate interference with your domestic affairs."

The polite interest with which her auditor had received her prefatory remarks was supplanted by uneasiness, instant and intense, as he perceived the drift of her speech. He had made a motion to rise when the words, "your dear wife," pa.s.sed her writhing lips.

She hindered him with outstretched hands.

"Not that there is any cause for new and immediate alarm," she hastened to a.s.sure him. "But I was in to see her this morning. She keeps bravely up when you are at home, I dare say."

"She never complains. I have had my apprehensions that the untimely heat of the weather has been prejudicial to her strength. Her appet.i.te is variable, and she is paler than she was in the winter, but I attributed--"

"Yes! of course!" interrupted Mrs. Baxter. Once bent upon an harangue, she was about as easily checked as a Yellowstone geyser in full play. "I am not surprised that your fears have not been awakened. I taxed her, to-day, with having deceived you as to the extent of her la.s.situde and depression. I surprised her lying on the sofa in her room, with the traces of fresh and copious tears upon her cheeks. She tried to laugh me out of my fears by talk of nervousness and hysteria, and would doubtless have succeeded, such are her spirit and address--but, Mr. Fordham! her precise likeness in look and manner at that moment to her sainted mother sent a poignant fear through my soul! Far be it from me to censure the dead, but I have always maintained--I shall ever believe that my precious Ginevra's life might have been spared--prolonged for _years_--had her husband conferred with those who were conversant with her idiosyncrasies--spiritual and physical. Although--I will reveal to you, my dear sir, under the seal of a secrecy you will see the expediency of respecting, what I have never lisped to her daughter, or even to the best of husbands and men--Dr. Baxter. My cousin Ginevra carried a blighted heart to Dundee when she went thither as Mr. Kirke's bride. An unfortunate misunderstanding had alienated her from one to whom her girlish affections were given. It is needless to enter into particulars. It is enough to say that they had loved and they were parted. She had not seen or heard from him for two years, most of which time she had pa.s.sed abroad; indeed, she believed him to be the husband of another when she accepted Mr.

Kirke. I own to you that my instinct and my reason opposed this fatal step. I expostulated with her.

"'Jane!' said she (you can imagine how Jessie would utter it!) 'say no more. My resolution is taken. This is a _good_ man, and he loves me! In this union I shall--I _may_ find rest, quiet, and in some measure, peace. I have been storm-tossed until I have no strength left for struggling!'

"Upon the eve of her marriage, the man whom she loved returned and sought an interview. I was with her in her chamber when his card, requesting this favor, was handed her. At sight of the familiar characters the buried love sprang up alive, strong, importunate! It was a fearful scene--that resurrection! What should she have done?"

"Confessed all to her promised husband!" came low and sternly from the man's heart. "He would have resigned her to her lover without a word of blame. I knew Mr. Kirke well. I do not speak unadvisedly."

"Such was my counsel. But she would not heed it. She refused to look again upon the face of him whose heart was breaking with love and vain regrets, and went right on to her bridal. And her daughter, if subjected to a like test, would act as she did."

"You say that Jessie is not well?" said Roy, shortly.

There were limits to his fort.i.tude. He could not hear other lips tell what would be Jessie's action were an abhorrent marriage forced upon her by conscience or honor.

"In my estimation, she is very _far_"--arms again divergent--"_very_ far from well, even taking into consideration the provocatives to languor you alluded to, just now. Furthermore--and again let me _beg_ you to receive this intimation in the spirit in which I offer it!--furthermore, she is homesick for Dundee and her sister. I adverted to them casually to a.s.sure myself that my views on this point were correct, and her eyes filled again directly.

"'I had hoped to see Euna this month,' she said, 'but the change in the college vacation, abolis.h.i.+ng the intermediate, and making one long term instead of two short ones, has prevented it.'

"But when I remarked--'I wish Eunice could pay you a visit, were it only from Sat.u.r.day to Monday!' the loyal wife (such a stanch advocate as you have in her, Mr. Fordham!), took alarm.

"'Indeed, Cousin Jane, no one could take kinder care of me than Roy does!' she said, warmly. 'He spoils and pets me beyond reason, and when he is in the house, I desire no other society.'

"'But my precious girl!' I remonstrated; 'he cannot be with you all the time?'

"I wish you had seen the smile with which she replied--'Ah! but I have the memory of his goodness to live on in his absence!'

"She is true and fond, Mr. Fordham! Nevertheless, she does need change of air and scene. Her mother pined herself into an untimely grave in her longing for a sight of her old home and the faces of beloved ones."

Roy was silent; his eyes downcast, his lips whitening with the pressure this story had brought to bear upon him. It was not so much the consciousness that, in sending his wife away, he would rob his life of repression and self-denial of the little suns.h.i.+ne left to it, as the thought that she was sickening of his companions.h.i.+p; could not live and grow in his shadow. This was the naked truth, disguise it as she might from her cousin; deny it to herself as she probably did. In every point of Mrs. Baxter's description, he recognized this terrible sense of bondage, crus.h.i.+ng spirit and life; heard, even in her tribute to his loving watchfulness over her health and bodily comfort, the plaint embodied in the poem he had learned by heart:

"Like a chained thing, caressed By the hand it knows the best, By the hand which, day by day, Visits its imprisoned stay, Bringing gifts of fruit and blossom From the green earth's plenteous bosom; All but that for which it pines, In these narrow, close confines, With a sad and ceaseless sigh,-- Wild and winged Liberty!"

With a deep inspiration which was the farewell to more hopeful dreams than he knew, until then, he had nursed, he collected his senses to reply.

"It was my intention to take Jessie to Dundee in June, at the beginning of my vacation. She set the time herself--I can see now, in compliance with what she believed were my wishes. But she shall go at once. I thank you for your more than friendly concern for her, your frank dealing with me."

He arose to go. The lady scanned his face somewhat uneasily. There was something there that foiled her penetration.

"You understand, my dear sir, that _nothing_ would have tempted me to intermeddle in this affair, were the case precisely what you have supposed. But there is an undercurrent, Mr. Fordham, the effect of which I can trace, that seriously complicates anything like hysterical depression. And loving the child as we do--as every one does, it behooves us to watch her warily, minister to her intelligently as tenderly. The affection between the sisters is unusually strong, and we should remember that the dear lamb has known no other mother."

"I have offered, several times during the winter, to take her to visit Eunice. We were to have gone at Christmas, but Jessie had a severe cold that confined her to the house a fortnight."

"I remember! To be _quite_ sincere with you--not that I consider it a dangerous symptom--but I _wish_ she were rid of that little hacking cough. She makes light of it. Says it is nervous, or from the stomach. But I do not like it!"

She attended him to the portico, disclaiming, cautioning, and thanking him,--gesticulating through it all--as the wickedest of the wicked quintette of observers had it--"like a lunatic windmill."

They espied no change in the Professor's gait or air. He walked firmly, head erect and countenance composed. And their distance from him was too great to allow them to note the want of color in his complexion.

He entered his own house, more slowly than he had trodden the pavement. Jessie had fallen into the habit common to wives who hail their husbands' return as cheering events, of meeting him in the hall, sometimes at the front door. She appeared from the sitting-room, while he was hanging up his hat and dusting his boots.

He was particular in all that pertained to personal neatness.

"Your step sounds weary," she said. "It is very warm, really debilitating, to-day--is it not?"

During his brief answer he surveyed her narrowly, the dread that had been gnawing his heart all the way home sharpening his vision in the search for signs of debility and disease.

She, too, wore a white dress, but a black grenadine shawl was folded over her chest, and Roy's eye rested aghast upon the thin hand that held it together. What had he been thinking of, not to discern the inroads of the destroyer in this, and in the finer oval of her face; in the slight cough that succeeded her question, and the hurried breathing he could hear in approaching her? If his awakening should have come too late!

"I believe I have the Spring fever," he said, affecting to suppress a yawn. "This weather puts one in mind of country delights; makes him crave the smell of the freshly upturned earth, and the sight of green land growing things."