Jessamine: A Novel

Jessie still chafed her forehead, where wrinkles of pained perplexity gathered and deepened, as she tried to put word to word and sentence to sentence. She lost what came next in vainly attempting to get the sense of these last sentences. Perhaps she should understand better when she was quite awake.

"Such proportion as the seed sustains to the mature plant, the ovum to the living, moving creature, you will tell me—" Dr. Baxter was saying, when she again lent attention to his dissertation. "I grant it. But like produces like in vegetable and animal generation, and why deny the spiritual analogy? What we call Death is but the threshold—and a narrow one—separating the vestibule from the temple. It is all one building—the Life which God has given. When I cast off the cumbrous shell I have borne so long that I foolishly fancy it is myself—a part of my being without which I should be naked, shivering, and helpless; when it slips from my soul by reason of its own weight and rottenness, I shall enter upon no new existence. It will be I still—not a different creation. For a moment, perhaps, I may not know what has happened. Thus, I have seen a butterfly trembling with the strangeness of his position, clinging with damp, untried wings to the bough that supports the little pendant coffin, now broken—from which he has just crept. A delicious sense of liberty and space there may be as one breathes more freely in leaving a close room for the outer air. I shall miss the incubus of the body, and the fleshly desires I have sloughed off with it. Then will dawn upon me gradually—as I have strength to bear the revelation, that I have passed! Not been made over, mark you! We are nowhere taught that regeneration is a posthumous experience. 'He is gone!' some one will say. And perhaps another—'He is dead!'

"Dead! I tell you, my friend, I shall be the livest man in that room! Not until that hour of glorious emancipation shall I know what life is!"

There was an interval of stillness. Jessie had staggered to her feet. Her eyes, no longer blank, were dilated with intensest and eager inquiry. What did it signify—this talk of death and the life to come? Who was the speaker's companion? Her father? Oh, why did he not speak?

Another voice, deeper and sweeter, made reverent response:

"Thanks be to God, for His unspeakable gift!"

She flung the door widely open; faced the astonished man with the demand, shrieked, rather than spoken:

"Where is he? He said that! my father! Where is he now?"

"Jessie, love!"

Roy caught her in his arms, but she pushed him from her.

"I will know! I am going mad! Where is my father?"

Dr. Baxter secured her fluttering hands; looked steadfastly, yet not sternly, into her eyes.

"He may be here, my child! We cannot tell. Be sure he remembers and loves you still, he, who, while in the flesh, held you so dear. Believe this and be still under the mighty but loving hand of God!"

Her head sank upon his shoulder.

"You would not deceive me! You are a good man, and speak the truth always!" she sobbed, excitedly. "Is my father really dead? Oh, I remember it all now!"

With the resuscitation of the torpid intellect, came a flood of tears, mingled with anguished exclamations—an hysterical attack that only abated with her strength. By nine o'clock she was asleep, exhausted, but free from fever and the nervous spasms that had made the seizure alarming at first. The danger was tided over, for the present, and ere the rest separated for the night, Dr. Baxter returned thanks for "the signal deliverance," kneeling between the husband and sister; besought comfort and peace for the smitten household in fervent, affectionate words, which showed that however his thought might stray from the subjects to which his acquaintances would hold him, his heart was always in the right place.

"I cannot thank you as I should for all you have been to us—all you have done for us!" said Eunice, as they talked of the morrow's parting.

"Do not, my dear! The privilege and the gratitude have been and are mine. God sent me to you. I bless Him for it!"

It was after sunrise when Jessie unclosed her eyes. Eunice's chair was still by her pillow, but it was empty. Her mind was clear. She had no difficulty in recalling how the gentle hands had laid her to sleep; the mellow voice read to her from The Book—"A prayer of the afflicted, when he poureth out his heart before God." Dear Eunice! her love—tried as it had been by her perversity and reserve, her late violent and selfish distress—was more precious than ever before. She would arise and share, if she could not lighten, her labors and her burdens. As she sat up in bed, she espied upon a lounge near by, a gentleman's dressing-gown. The blood sprang to her cheeks in a burning torrent, for the truth flashed instantly upon her. Roy had asserted his right to the exclusive guardianship of his wife; had sent the weary sister to take the rest she needed, and himself kept watch over her through the night. There came to her no softening thought of the anxious affection that had held his eyes waking while others slept. She was only angry—desperately indignant that he had dared sit there and watch her without her knowledge or consent. The blind, mad moment passed, she stood, for many more—white as death—thinking! Then she locked the door. Roy might enter at any instant, or Eunice glide in to ask how she was, and she must be alone while she thought it all out! No mortal eye witnessed the fight of the next hour. The woman—torn and dashed by a legion of passions verily believed, while they had the mastery, that she would not survive it. She never told the tale of her hurts to her dearest earthly friend. It was something she would not renew by relating, even when time had almost worn away the scars.

She was made of sterner stuff than she knew. Ere she quitted her chamber, her resolution was taken—every trace of the strife put out of sight. She had "light enough to see the next step." If she were bound for life against her will and conscience, Roy was basely wronged—and through no fault he had committed against her. If her course were to be joyless—a strait and rough path, his was no smoother or more delightsome. Recompense him for what she had lost for him, she could not, but she could and she would appear dutiful and resigned.

Fordham coming in from the brisk walk in the early morning air by which he had tried to make up for his vigil, found her in the parlor, arranging the books upon bracket-shelves and dusting the rare old china bowl and vases which the sisters let no one but themselves handle. Her breakfast-toilette had been carefully made, contrasting strikingly with yesterday's négligé. Her rich hair was braided as she used to wear it, and banded with black ribbon; her white cambric dress was belted with the same, and loops of narrower hung from her mourning brooch. She comprehended all that had happened within the week; accepted the expediencies and proprieties of her position with its sorrows and duties, and he honored her for it. Her attire showed that she consulted his taste, wished to be fair in his eyes, and for this he loved her better than ever, if that could be. He did not know it, but the woman he had wedded never, in her previous or subsequent life, gave another equal proof of strength of mind and purpose, as when, physically faint and mentally distraught by the frightful ordeals she had already sustained, she lifted this, the heaviest cross of all, and adjusted it to her shoulders for a lifelong journey.

The greeting between them was affectionate on his side—grave upon hers—very quiet on both, as befitted the circumstances of the household.

"Ah, Jessie, darling! I am glad you are well enough to be down stairs! But are you not exerting yourself too much?" he exclaimed at his entrance.

And—"I am much better, thank you! entirely able to be about as usual," was the reply, uttered without the flicker of a blush.

Then he kissed the cheek that was neither averted nor offered.

Dr. Baxter and Eunice appearing, a minute afterward, saw nothing amiss. There may have been nothing, yet the young husband had looked for a different reception—now that his Jessie was declared to be "quite herself again."

He was a patient man and a considerate, and the secret disappointment was condemned as soon as recognized. This was not the time for love-making—or—this was clearly Jessie's feeling. To oppose her scruple while her grief was so fresh and her nerves unsettled, would be persecution. She deserved all grace and indulgence at his hands, and she should have it. Their life—as theirs was all before them. He would be a help not an embarrassment, to the orphans. Jessie loved him! Jessie was his wife! That was enough!

CHAPTER XVIII.

Roy Fordham remained ten days longer in Dundee in consequence of an arrangement made by his brother professors by which they divided his duties among them. Dr. Baxter, whose partiality for him was proverbial, taking a double share upon himself. The furlough was not accepted by him without misgivings. He felt that he ought to be in his place at the beginning of the college session, and that to avail himself further of the generous kindness of trustees and faculty, after a year's absence, was an abuse of the same. Dr. Baxter wrote him two strong, short letters to refute this idea, and he found additional solace for his conscience in the discovery that he was needed by the sisters. Eunice and he were joint executors of Mr. Kirke's small property. To Jessie were left her mother's dowry with the accumulated interest; her mother's picture, and certain articles of jewelry, dress, and furniture, which had been hers. Everything else was Eunice's—a portion that did not nearly equal her sister's, but with which she was more than content. The settlement of the estate was easily accomplished. The just man had no debts, and the few legal papers needful to secure the title of his possessions to his children were in perfect order.

At the end of a week the only open question was that of Eunice's residence. Roy had engaged a house in Hamilton, and was urgent in his desire that she should live with Jessie and himself. The conscientious elder sister hesitated in the knowledge that her income would not support her in like comfort anywhere else.

"My inclination leads-me to follow Jessie," she confessed to her brother-in-law. "My sense of duty to myself and to you makes me doubt the propriety and justice of living in comparative idleness, when, if I had not the shelter of your roof, I must work to eke out a maintenance."

Which quibble Roy pronounced absurd and far-fetched.

"Quite unworthy of sensible Eunice! To say nothing of the manifest unkindness to our poor girl here," he said, as his wife entered the room where he was sitting. "Come here, Love, and convince this unreasonable and sceptical woman that she is indispensable to our happiness."

Jessie yielded passively to the arm that drew her to his knee.

"What is it?" she asked, listlessly.

Roy gave an abstract of the situation.

She looked confused—uncertain whether she had heard him aright. It was an effort to understand anything, sometimes. Roy and Eunice glanced from her to one another. They saw that dazed look, heard her stammer oftener than either liked; dreaded nothing else so much as they did the repetition of the scenes attending their father's demise and burial.

"Of course she will live with me—with us, wherever we go!" she rejoined. "Unless you object"—to Roy. "But I was under the impression that you wished it,—that the matter was definitely arranged."

"It is, now!" said Roy confidently, and Eunice did not dispute it.

There was a clear, more constant light in her eye, now that the responsibility of the decision was removed from her, and the step determined, upon without her vote. The prospect of separation from her sister was very painful, and there were other reasons why Hamilton should be a pleasant home to them all. This was her representation of the case to herself and to the friends who lamented losing her.

"Mourning is very becoming to Miss Kirke!" was the usual remark of these visitors upon leaving the Parsonage.

And—"She is really a most lovely woman. What will the congregation do without her?"

Roy was to leave them for a fortnight, to attend to his classes, and forward the preparations for the reception of his bride. When all was ready for their removal, he would return to superintend the sale of furniture, stock, etc., then take the sisters back to town with him.

"My family!" he said, in forced gayety, on the morning of his departure. "I assure you, my consequence in my own eyes is mightily augmented by the acquisition of my new honors."

Eunice called up one of her slow, bright smiles in acknowledgement. Jessie appeared to heed the compliment as little as she did the parting, that drew tears from her sister's eyes and choked Roy's farewell directions as to the care she must take of herself while he was away.

"I shall write to you every day, my sweet wife," he promised. "And it will not harm you—it may help you to while away the time, if you can scribble a few lines to me in return, now and then."

"If I can I will. If you wish it I will write certainly. But don't expect to hear every day from me. There's very little here to write about, you know," answered Jessie.

Eunice wondered, to reverent admiration, at the love and forbearance with which he thanked her for the concession.

They attended him to the porch. The morning was foggy, and Roy put Jessie back in the shelter of the hall-door.

"It is too damp for you out here! Don't stand there to see me off!"

Eunice—maybe he—would have been better satisfied had she disregarded the loving command. As it was, when he waved his hand from the carriage-door, Eunice stood alone in the doorway. Yet she was sure Jessie did not mean to be ungracious; that she was not really insensible to the devotion of the husband of her choice; that but for the stay of his presence she must have gone mad or died in her overwhelming grief. What she mistook for unwifelike reserve was an incessant effort to control herself to play the woman and not the child. It was best not to interfere even so far as to hint that Roy's kindest schemes for her comfort and pleasure as often as not were unnoticed by verbal thanks or grateful look from her whom he aimed to benefit. As Jessie's interest in the outer world and passing events revived, this blemish would vanish. Older people, who had known more of the discipline of life, had fallen into the mistake of idolizing their sorrows while they were new.

The sisters were at tea on the third day of Mr. Fordham's absence, when a letter was brought to Jessie.

"From Roy!" she said, quietly, and laid it down by her plate until the meal was finished,—Eunice hurrying through hers in the belief that the wife wished to be alone when she read it.

Instead of this, Jessie broke the seal, and read the four closely written pages by the lamp upon the supper-table, while her sister washed the silver and china in the same little cedar-wood pail, with shining brass hoops, her mother had used for this purpose a quarter of a century before. Eunice was inclined to be scrupulous in the matters of extreme cleanliness and system in housekeeping, and neatness and fitness of apparel; and had other and quaint, but never unpleasant, peculiarities that leaned toward what the vulgar and unappreciative style "old-maidism." But she was a bonny picture to behold to-night, her black dress setting off her fairness to exquisite advantage; her features chastened into purer outline and a softer serenity by sorrow; her eyes more beautiful for the shadows that had darkened them.

She was younger in appearance and feeling than her companion, who scanned, without change of expression and complexion, the love-words that had streamed, a strong, living tide, from the writer's heart. She read it all, from address to signature; then handed it to her sister, who had just summoned Patsey to remove the hot water and towels.

"There are several messages to you in it," she said, languidly. "You can read them for yourself."

Eunice drew back.

"I don't think he meant it for any eyes but yours, dear. Tell me what he says to me."

"I should have to go all over it again in order to do that," returned Jessie. "They are scattered sentences—business items and the like. You may look for them at your leisure. I shall leave the letter upon the table here."

She put it down under her lamp, and turned her chair to the fire.

This was their sitting-room, now that the two, with Patsey, composed the household. By tacit consent, they avoided the parlor, as recalling too vividly the gatherings and the happiness of other days. Jessie had leaned back in her cushioned seat, staring, in a blank, purposeless way, at the fire for five minutes or more, when Eunice took her place with her work-box on the other side of the hearth.

"You insist, then, that I shall read your love-letter?" she asked, pleasantly.

Faithful to her promise to Roy to do all in her power for the restoration of Jessie's native cheerfulness, she compelled herself to wear a tranquil countenance in her sight, to speak hopefully, and, when she could, brightly, in addressing her.

Jessie neither smiled nor frowned. She looked simply and wearily indifferent.

"If you please," she said, without withdrawing her eyes from the blazing logs.

Eunice skimmed the first three pages cursorily, on the watch for any mention of her own name, beset, all the while, by the idea that her act in opening the letter at all bordered upon profanation, and affected almost to tears by stray sentences she could not avoid seeing, eloquent of the young husband's tender compassion for his loved one, his longings to be with her, and fond prognostications of the peace and joy of their future life.

At the top of the fourth page, a passage seemed to dart up at her from the sheet, and, leaping into view, to be changed into characters of red-hot flame:

"What a discreet little woman you are, never to hint to me your knowledge of Orrin's engagement! The communication took me completely by surprise. He would scarcely believe that you had not told me; said that he went down to Dundee on purpose to impart to you the agreeable and important secret. The marriage is fixed for December. I always prophesied that he would marry in haste when he had once selected the lady, whom I am extremely curious to meet. He has floated from flower to flower so long that his selection ought to be worth seeing. You know her, he tells me. I shall expect a full-length description of her—done in your finest style, when I return. I own I should be better satisfied that he is to be made as happy as I would have him, if Miss Sanford were not an heiress. While we—you and I—and others who know him well, will never suspect him of selling himself for money, the above fact may give occasion for scandal-mongers to rave and exult. The father of the bride-elect is in town. I met him on the street to-day with Orrin. Rumor has it that his business here is to purchase the new house opposite Judge Provost's, as a residence for the happy pair. It will be a handsome home, but I hope and believe that we shall be as content with our love-nest of a cottage."

Jessie did not look around as her sister refolded the letter, tucked it into the envelope, and laid it upon the table. But while each believed herself to be separated from the other by a fathomless gulf of memories, every one of which was an anguish, both were pondering the same section of the epistle that lay between them. The announcement of Wyllys' approaching marriage was, in itself, nothing to the wife. The thought of it had lost the power to wound when she parted with her faith in him. The wrong he had done her could never be forgiven; he had misled her purposely; deceived her cruelly; had robbed her life of love and hope, and given her self-contempt and remorse in their stead. But she did not regret him—as she now knew him to be—or linger fondly upon recollections of their by-gone intimacy. Hester Sanford was welcome to the suitor her gold had bought.

The phrases that had found a sentient spot in her breast were these: "Whom I am extremely curious to meet." "I shall expect a full-length description of her." The apathetic misery which had locked brain and heart with fetters of ice since her father's death had not rendered her totally unmindful of her husband's long-suffering and gentleness, his unselfish love and care of herself. She was persuaded that the girlish passion that had made of him a demi-god was gone forever. Her flesh fainted, and her spirit died within her, at the caresses to which she had turned herself in the days of her idolatry, as roses open to the sun—as innocently and as naturally. She could never love again. The fires had scathed too deeply for that; but she had begun to believe that she might find comfort in esteeming and liking her only protector; might seek, and not in vain, in a calm, true friendship for this good man, forgetfulness of the storms that had wrecked her early dreams. In his frank and noble presence suspicion stood rebuked. It was easier to discredit the evidence of one's own senses and judgment, than to doubt his integrity.

But here was a deliberate deception. He—Roy Fordham—had known Hester Sanford before she—Jessie—ever saw her. She was the intimate associate and confidante of his former love;—of the woman he had renounced heartlessly and without compunction,—and whose name had never passed his lips in his wife's hearing. She recalled faithfully Hester's account of the call "Maria" had paid with her then betrothed at Mr. Sanford's house—a statement she would not have dared to make, had it been groundless. Whence this affectation of ignorance, on Fordham's part, of the person and character of his cousin's intended bride, if not as a further means of keeping the knowledge of the affair from her?

"To whom it should have been told, more than a year ago!" she reflected, a dreary loneliness creeping over her, with the conclusion—"He is like the rest of them! I would have believed in him if I could!"

The door shut quietly. She did not hear it, or miss her sister from her place. It was not an uncommon occurrence for them to sit together without speaking, for an hour at a time, Eunice's fingers busied with some article of useful needlework, Jessie's holding a book which she pretended to read as a cover for her griefful musings. Much less was it in the imagination of the younger sister to follow the elder in her progress up the staircase, her face more stony and eyes more desolate with each step, to the fair, large chamber she had occupied from her childhood.

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 shivered 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 hitherto 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 companionship. 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 classes of her sex. 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 courtship 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 title-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 illustrated. Wyllys had sent it to her, the Christmas Jessie passed 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.

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 amusement 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 impassioned words from other tongues. A blue ribbon was inserted at one place, where a passage was encircled by pencilled brackets, while in the margin was written, "E. K."

Eunice shut her eyes in a throe of memory that ploughed deep pain-lines in her visage. Hell 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 passage.

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 unobservant 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 Saturday 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 button 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 gratitude!" he said, restraining the pæan 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—'God 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 passion 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 God 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 passing 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 anticipation 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, nobody 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 repetition of her unalterable resolve. He made a second attempt on Saturday 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 minutiæ of her design, and lending her what assistance 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 passed 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 fiancée, chanced to pass 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 wishing-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.

"Next Spring we will set a root of jessamine outside," remarked Roy, when Orrin praised the infant creepers—ivy and passion-flower—on the inside of the casement.

The carpet was mosses, green, gray, and russet, specked with red-topped lichens; the walls were flushed with pink. Jessie's escritoire was in one corner, her work-stand in another. A reading-lamp, with its alabaster shade, was upon the centre-table, and a low lounging chair beside it. The picture of Jessie's mother hung over the mantel; Jessie's books strewed the stands, and were ranged in rows within a handsome bookcase at the back of the room. Choice engravings were hung in good lights, and within the fireplace lay long, well-seasoned logs ready for lighting.

"Beauty's bower!" said Orrin, gazing about him with unqualified approbation. "Who would have given you credit for such a genius for furnishing? For the individuality of your appointments shows that you are not indebted to the upholsterer for the charming effect. But perhaps you have worked under orders. Did Mrs. Fordham and her sister give you general directions?"

"None. I am happy to have the approval of a connoisseur," rejoined Roy, lightly. "I knew, of course, what Jessie would like, and have tried to please her. Upholsterers and cartes blanches from papa, and the toils of magnificence are the luxuries (and nuisances) of men who marry heiresses. As perhaps you have discovered."

"Sagely guessed! I heard little besides millinery, dressmaking, and upholstery talk while in B——. Ponderous preparations, so it struck me, for such everyday events as marrying, giving in marriage, and going to housekeeping. I had come to the conclusion that I was anti-domestic in my proclivities, but a sight of this idyl of a home has staggered the belief. I am glad you are married, old fellow!" clapping him on the shoulder. "I could not tell you in a month how glad!"

"Don't begin, then!" Roy led the way to the library. "Else, not to be outdone, I must take at least a year in which to express my gratification at the event."

Orrin eyed him furtively while he affected to be engrossed in the delicate operation of lighting the cigar tendered by the host. Roy's clear, open brow, sunny smile, and the hearty ring of his voice were indubitable signs of the sincerity of his happiness. It was with a lighter spirit—I leave conscience out of the question—that his kinsman threw himself back in his comfortable chair, and prepared to enjoy the evening.

"The last of my quasi widowerhood!" said Roy. "I wish it were the last of your bachelor days, Orrin!"

"Ca viendra!" returned the other, his cigar between his teeth. "Next month is December."

"I hope your wife will take as kindly to me as mine does to you!" pursued Roy. "And that I may, one day, have the opportunity to prove by services rendered her, my appreciation of the care you have taken of my interests in my absence."

"Don't speak of it, my dear boy!" said Orrin, hastily.

Even he colored slightly at the unintentional sarcasm. He coughed to emit the smoke that had gone down the wrong way, and this gave him time to rally his ideas. No harm had come of his innocent pastime. Roy was none the wiser, and his bride had had the advantage of a new sensation in the development of her latent capacities for loving and suffering. She would be better and stronger all her life; her character would gain breadth and fibre for the emotion that had stirred the depths of her being. It was wholesome, if sharp, discipline—a sort of spiritual subsoil ploughing, without which she might never have developed aright. Women were a marvellous and an entertaining study. Their powers of craft and concealment were beyond man's ken or imitation. The most imprudently passionate of them acted sometimes with circumspection that would put a Talleyrand to the blush. Jessie, mad and desperate as she was at her last interview with himself, had nevertheless reconsidered her resolution to reveal her inconstancy to her lawful lover, and judiciously judging that the Past was gone beyond recall, had taken up with the old love so soon as the new one was off. She could not have done better for all parties. "Scenes," except when sentimental and en tête-à-tête, were a vulgarism to be eschewed by refined people.