Jessamine: A Novel

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—"unburden 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," passed her writhing lips.

She hindered him with outstretched hands.

"Not that there is any cause for new and immediate alarm," she hastened to assure 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 appetite 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 lassitude 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 passed 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 fortitude. 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 assure 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, abolishing 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 Saturday 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 sunshine left to it, as the thought that she was sickening of his companionship; 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, crushing 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:

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."

"Then take a look at my conservatory," she returned, playfully, leading the way to the open bay-window.

The sill, without and within, was crowded with plants. She had been at work among them for an hour, and they were in their freshest trim. The pruning-scissors lay upon the shelf, and, taking them up, she clipped a sprig of heliotrope, another of mignonette, a rose-bud, and a bit of citron-aloes, bound them together with silk from her work-basket, and offered them smilingly.

"Thank you. They are very sweet, very beautiful! How does the jessamine thrive?"

"Not so well as it should—ungrateful little thing!" touching the leaves of a stunted vine which was honored with a china flower-pot and the sunniest stand in the window. "I am afraid it cannot flourish in this high latitude. It needs warmer earth, less fitful sunshine. Or it may be that I am killing it with kindness," she added, shaking her head pensively.

Roy detected another meaning in her thoughtfulness. Ungenial influences, unwelcome assiduity of attention, were sapping her vitality, and the analogy between her lot and that of her fading favorite was wearing upon her imagination.

"We will try again."

He had to clear his throat before he could speak. Jessie smiled slightly, with no misgiving of the communication that awaited her. She even stooped to pick off a few withered leaves that had previously escaped her notice. The two were side by side within the recess; so near together that the warm breeze blew the light folds of the wife's dress over the husband's arm; but she recked no more of the wretchedness kept down by his strong will than if a thousand leagues of ocean divided them.

"I have been thinking seriously all the way home of taking you to Dundee, and leaving you in Eunice's charge for a time," continued Roy, presently. "You are not so rosy and light-footed here as you were among the mountains. And the sudden variations of our climate affect the human Jessamine also! You should have a change, and without delay."

"I am very well—entirely contented!" she interposed, reddening vividly.

"You are kind to say so!" gratefully. "But there are other reasons why you should anticipate the date originally set for your visit to your old home. Eunice has been very self-denying and patient, and she should have her reward. While you are regaining health and strength, winning back your lost roses, you can accumulate a plentiful supply of seeds and roots of all descriptions, besides studying floriculture with your sister—if it be true, as you would make me believe, that she excels you in skill. For in your absence I shall have a real conservatory built back of this room, and our long talked of oriel run out here."

Jessie made a desperate effort to jest away the discussion.

"Oh! as to the oriel, I have quite abandoned the project since Mrs. Wyllys told me—having learned from the Provosts that we meditated something of the sort—that oriels had 'gone out entirely; that no stylish house nowadays is disfigured by them.' The only thing resembling the obsolete excrescences that would be admitted into a modern 'establishment' is a mullioned window, my good sir! I should never hold up my head in Hamilton again if I were to offend so boldly against the rules of art governing the best society!"

The toss of her head and her tones were Mrs. Orrin's to the life. But Roy had hard work to smile. In his state of mind, badinage was like jesting over a death-bed.

"Mrs. Wyllys must look the other way, then—at the majestic proportions of her cupola, if she likes, for the oriel is to be a fact next month. The work will be better done if I am on the ground to oversee operations, and it would not be pleasant for you to remain in the house while it is in confusion, not to mention the risk of taking cold from the damp walls and the open room, while the wall is down. It will be a convenience all around, you see."

"If you really think that I will be in the way—"

"I did not say that!" The correction was so prompt as to sound sharp. "But my judgment tells me that the plan I suggest is the best for both of us. My mind will be easier with regard to you if you are safe and happy in Eunice's care."

Jessie had turned her face quite away, and seemed to be gazing at some object in the street.

"I see!" she said, finally. "When do you wish me to go?"

"Whenever it suits your convenience. If you desire my escort, we had best leave Hamilton on Saturday of this or the next week."

"I can travel alone easily if it is not convenient for you to leave your classes. If you go on Saturday you lose Monday also. This is Tuesday. I can be ready by Thursday morning. If the change be as needful as you suppose, the sooner it is made the better. As to an escort, a lady needs none when there is no change of cars."

Roy pinched the succulent stems of his flowers until the perfume was hot and sickly. How impatient she was to be gone! She had gasped when he opened the door of escape from her cage, as if she already saw "wild and wingèd liberty" beyond.

"You do not think it necessary to notify Eunice of your coming, then?" he inquired.

"You can telegraph on Thursday morning, when you are fairly rid of me. Euna is always at home, and always ready and glad to see me. My visit will make her very happy."

The rising tears broke through her assumed lightness. She struggled to drive them back, and failing, walked abruptly from the room.

And thus the question was settled.

Jessie began to pack that afternoon; working so diligently as to be wan and appetiteless by supper time. Fanny Provost and her betrothed, Lieutenant Averill, who was in Hamilton on furlough, called in the evening. Warren Provost and Selina Bradley came in afterward, and the hostess revived visibly in their society. Her eyes and color were brilliant; her laugh ready; her repartee pointed and felicitous. The young people, regretting the near prospect of her departure, fell to rallying her upon her partiality for country life, and she defended the preference with spirit. Then, at Fanny's earnest request, she told the authentic legend of Dundee and "auld Davie," appearing to forget herself and her slavery (thought Roy), in her enthusiasm.

"The women fought too!" ejaculated Selina, when it was finished. "They were made of different stuff from me, or any other young lady of this generation that I know. I go into convulsions at the sight of an empty gun."

"They were warring for home and freedom!" rejoined Jessie. "To avoid captivity I would fight in the open field in the ranks. And so would you. But the love of liberty is oftener a passion with us mountaineers, than with lowlanders."

She caught her breath strangely—something between a sob and a laugh—which she tried to cover with a cough.

"A sad and ceaseless sigh!"

repeated the haunting demon in Roy's heart.

The hilarious talk went on, unchecked by his occasional fits of abstraction. Jessie was like another being in the anticipation of liberation.

"Heartlessly cheerful!" said Selina, with her usual aptitude for making unlucky observations.

"One would think you two were tired of each other already!" she subjoined. "And you haven't been married more than half a year! I shall tell this to papa. He raved over your mutual attachment and your devoted attentions to Mr. Fordham when he was sick, Jessie!"

"Say, at the same time, that she does not go, of her own accord!" said Roy—"but because I try to be as careful of her health as she was of mine. Although, if you had ever visited Dundee, you would not be scandalized by her desire to revisit it."

Fanny, observing Jessie's quick, hot blush and averted eyes, and divining that something was ajar, came to the relief of the hardly pressed couple.

"Did Jessie ever tell you, Mr. Fordham," she said, in her liveliest tone—"of the astounding poetical effort put forth by her admirer, Mr. Lowndes, the rich student, they used to call him—entitled, 'Jessie the flower o' Dundee'! The graceless youths of his class set it to the good old Scotch tune of that name. It was in a different metre—very uncommon, I believe, and the fun of the joke was in fitting the words in, after the manner of 'Ancient Uncle Edward.' I will get you a copy, and Warren here shall teach you how to sing it."

CHAPTER XXVI.

The weather changed on the morrow.

Coming home at nightfall, Roy found Jessie standing at the western window, surveying sorrowfully the unfavorable aspect of the heavens.

"It will be very unpleasant travelling in the rain!" she remarked as he entered. "The sun went down behind a portentous bank of clouds. And the wind is veering to the storm-quarter."

It was evident that the possibility of a single day's delay made her restless and anxious.

"The signs portend nothing worse than April showers, I hope," he encouraged her to believe. "Or, should there be a steady rain, you will soon run out of it into the region of blue skies and milder airs. I see no reason for altering your arrangements. You will be sheltered and dry in the cars."

"True!" she answered, musingly, returning to her contemplation of the unpromising horizon.

She was perturbed, however, and unusually taciturn while they were at supper; dull and spiritless during the hour they spent together in the sitting-room; arousing herself with apparent effort to reply to his remarks, and rarely offering one of her own accord. Roy's attempts at cheerful conversation were less evenly sustained than was customary with him in her presence. It was not his intention that this last evening should be one of gloomy constraint, but it approximated this more nearly every moment. Both were abstracted, and each was unwilling that the other should discover the direction in which his and her thoughts were straying. So the pauses in the sluggish flow of talk became more and more frequent, until, at nine o'clock, Jessie arose, with a sigh of relief.

"I must get a good night's rest, if I am to travel, to-morrow. Will you excuse me if I go upstairs, thus early?"

"Do not let me detain you a moment. Is there nothing I can do to assist you?"

"Nothing—thank you! There will be time to strap my trunks in the morning. You still think I had better go—whatever may be the weather?" stopping with the door in her hand.

"I do, certainly; that is, if you are not afraid of adding to your cold—if you are well enough."

"My cold is nothing. I have ordered breakfast at half-past six. I am glad the train does not leave so early as it did last year. Good-night!"

The cold, indifferent accents sank to the bottom of his heart like lead. What a millstone about this woman's neck was her marriage vow! His endeavors to make it lighter, and her existence endurable—the work to which he had given his best energies and wisest deliberations; the self-abnegation and prayerful struggle he had accepted as the penalty of his grievous indiscretion, had proved futile. He had guarded eye, tongue, and action for five months; drilled them in friendly looks, words, and deeds, lest a glimmer of the affection that glowed—a pent but consuming fire in his soul—should offend or dismay her; had ministered to her with a lover's constancy and tenderness without a hint of love's reward. And this was the end! Some significant glance, an intonation, an excess of solicitude for her welfare, had betrayed his design to win her anew, and she had taken the alarm; was terrified and reluctant, without the power of escape. Or her constitution—physical and spiritual—had succumbed to the attrition of duty against womanly instinct. With vain care he had kept her shackles out of sight. Everything in her surroundings; the very pronunciation of her name by acquaintances, had reminded her continually of her anomalous position. Neither wife, nor maid, she stood, according to her morbid perceptions, alone and banned, without so much as a title to the shelter of his roof, except as a bondwoman. She could not forget that she was a slave. The untamable heart—in which the "love of liberty" was a "passion," was beating itself to death against the bars he had foolishly hoped to cushion and wreathe until she should cease to feel them as a restraint.

She had not loved him when she married him. That this change in her sentiments was not a passing girlish caprice, he had evidence in the words she had written to him while the right of free speech remained to her.

"Months of doubt and suffering have brought me to the determination to confess this without reserve."

"Doubt and suffering!" What were these to the horrors of her actual bondage?

"From which I cannot release her!" he repeated, for the thousandth time.

His habit was to go to the library when she left him for the night, but he lingered, this evening, in the apartment he had fitted up for her with such fond pride; which she had made a sacred place by her abiding. There was a cruel pleasure in noting the tokens of her recent presence; in inhaling the odors of the flowers she had tended; in touching the books she had handled. She could never be more to him than she was now. He believed that she must, from this hour, be less; that the solace of her friendship would be withheld. Else, why her anxiety to be away from him? her chafing at the threatened delay of a day in her flight back to the only real home she had ever known? Was the memory of the evanescent phantasy of her girlhood—the brief space during which she had deluded herself into the belief that she loved him, so sore and hateful that she would shun the sight of one who kept it in constant remembrance? Could it be true that he had, in the face of these frightful odds, cherished a hope that he might yet persuade her into a preference for his companionship?

A loud ring at the door-bell startled him into consciousness of the hour and place. Phoebe had gone up to bed, and Mr. Fordham went himself to admit the unseasonable visitor.

"Good-evening!" said a familiar voice when the door was unclosed, and Dr. Baxter walked in as naturally and coolly as if it were not ten o'clock at night, and he plentifully besprinkled with rain. "I was out thinking—and walking, after the warm day—and chancing to observe that I was at your door, I stopped to say 'Good-bye' to the lassie—to your wife. Mrs. Baxter mentioned to-night, at tea, that she was-going to Dundee to-morrow."

He had obeyed Roy's impulse in the direction of the sitting-room, but declined to take a chair. His cravat was a damp string; the handkerchief twisted about his left hand bore marks of terrific usage, and when he removed his hat, every one of his stiff gray hairs appeared to have gone into business on its own account, so distinct was its independent existence. His eyes were like those of a partially awakened somnambulist, and his voice had dreamy inflections. Had his own mood been less sad, Roy must have smiled at the grotesque apparition, uncouth even to one so familiar with the peculiarities of the good man, as was his coadjutor in the business of his life. As it was, he appreciated gratefully the love the old scholar bore his former ward, and the new proof of this, evinced by his stepping without the charmed circle of metaphysical or scientific lucubrations to pay this, for him, rare visit of neighborly courtesy and affectionate interest.

"I am sorry Jessie has retired," he said, sincerely. "She would have been happy to see you. But, in view of to-morrow's journey, she went up to her chamber an hour ago. I am afraid she is asleep by this time."

The doctor shook himself out of a menacing relapse.

"Eh! asleep—is she? Ah, well! that is as it should be. Don't disturb her! I merely called to kiss her, and bid her 'God speed.' She is a dear and a good girl. Her price is above rubies. She carries our love and best wishes with her into her retirement. Since she is not up, I will leave my message with you. I believe—it seems to me that I had a message"—with an ominous twitch of the handkerchief, and a dreamier accent.

"She will appreciate your kind remembrance of her, sir. She prizes your friendship very fondly."

"Ah!" another mental shoulder-jog. "We shall hardly see her again until autumn, I presume? I infer as much from what Mrs. Baxter has told me of her plans."

"There has been no definite time set for her return," said Roy, evasively, his heart heavier than before at the thought that Jessie had expressed to her cousin a desire for a long sojourn in the country.

Yet if he had failed to keep her with him now, what warrant had he for confidence in his ability to lure her back?

"You will be lonely without her!" the worthy President observed, something in the atmosphere of this, her especial apartment, conveying to his straying wits an indistinct perception of the void her absence would make in the daily life of the man before him. In his own way, he missed his restless and faithful Jane when she was not at home.

"I shall!"

Not another word before the lips were closely sealed.

The doctor looked at him quickly and keenly, then put out his hand to pat his shoulder.

"Keep up a brave heart, my lad! although the desire of your eyes be removed from your side, for a few weeks. Nothing cheats time of heaviness, like work and hope. One you will find here in your accustomed avocations. The second will culminate in fruition when you are reunited to her you love, and, please God—in the blessedness of a father's love and delight, when your firstborn is given into your arms. It is a joy He has seen fit to deny me. I shall take my name down into the grave with me. His will be done! But I have not, on that account, the less sympathy with you at this juncture. Say to our Jessie that our prayers will follow her. You will go to her at the beginning of vacation, of course. And should you wish to run down to Dundee, for a day or two, each week during the remainder of term-time, I will gladly take your classes. You can recompense me by letting me christen the heir"—a fatherly smile overspreading the dry face. "The advent is expected towards the last of July, Mrs. Baxter says."

Conscious that, in the drunkenness of his astonishment, he returned a lame and seemingly ungracious reply to offer and congratulations, Roy made no movement to detain the eccentric guest, when he, after another dazed look around the apartment, as if wondering how he had got there, espied the door, and approached it with the briefest of "Good-nights." While the master of the house stood rooted to the floor, the visitant accomplished his exit, unchallenged and unattended. Another man would have taken mortal offence at the lack of respectful ceremony. The doctor, in his semi-trance, had not an idea of the commotion he had excited.

"I am not surprised that I am an offence in her eyes—that she must accuse me in her heart, of being less than man," muttered the husband, at length, passing a shaking hand over his pale forehead. "She ought to hate me for my seeming indifference—my unfeeling silence. She would if she were not an angel. My poor girl! And she has borne it all, without a murmur; like the brave, true woman she is. God forgive me! I can never pardon myself!"

He was sitting, his arms crossed upon the table, and his head laid upon them, when Jessie glided in stealthily. Over her white wrapper she had thrown a crimson shawl, and her long hair was loose upon her shoulders. Whatever resolve had drained her cheeks and lips of bloom, and lighted the steady flame in her eyes, had been acted upon with precipitancy, lest her nerve should fail.

She halted upon the threshold, on seeing the bowed figure; then advanced more rapidly, but without noise.

"Roy! are you awake?"

"Yes."

But he did not lift his face.

"Are you sick?"

"No!"

"Can you listen to me for a few minutes!"

"As long as you wish."

His voice was hollow and tremulous to plaintiveness; but she took heart from its exceeding, if mournful, gentleness.

"I cannot sleep to-night," she commenced, hurriedly, "still less can I leave you to-morrow, without expressing to you, however feebly, my sense of the goodness and mercy you have showed me from the hour I entered this house, until now. I may have appeared unobservant and unthankful; may have seemed to accept your benefits as if they were my due, when, in reality, I was unworthy of the least of them all; but it was because I did not know in what form to express my gratitude. If, in my acquiescence in your proposal that I should go to my sister for a season, I have used few words; have not thanked you for this fresh proof of your delicate watchfulness over my comfort and happiness, I beg you to attribute my shortcomings to other reasons than insensibility or misconstruction of your motives. I was entirely unprepared for the suggestion. It was a shock to me, because I had dared to believe that you would see fit to let me remain here with you until vacation, when we could go to Dundee together."

Standing on the other side of the table, she saw a slight but eager change in the expression of the mute form. It was as if his hearing were strained for her next utterance, but the features were still concealed.

On the roof of the bay-window, the soft, large drops of the April shower were beginning to fall in musical whispers.

Jessie put out a hand upon the marble top of the table to steady herself, as she resumed. There was that in this continued silence that awed and made her incoherent. It was unlike Roy's usual reception of her advances—his ready and indulgent courtesy. Her heart beat painfully and fast, but she did not swerve from her resolution.

"I know you so well—your purity of purpose; the standard of excellence you set for your motive and deed; your earnest desire to make me happy—that I fear you will, when I am gone, accuse yourself of want of skill or judgment in your treatment of me. I want you to remember then, that I broke through the reserve we have aided one another to maintain, to assure you that, in no one particular would I have had your action different from what it has been—that, in language and demeanor you have been alike noble. Deserving your reprobation, I have received tender respect; having forfeited by my fickleness and falsehood all claim to kindness, I have been cherished as the truest wife in the land might hope to be. Something tells me that, when we part to-morrow, it will be to meet no more in time. It may be that the presentiment is born of my distempered imagination; but it has drawn my whole soul out in a longing I cannot frame into speech, to be at peace with you; to feel your hand again upon my head; to hear you call me once—just once more, by the holy name of Wife!

"For I am your wife, Roy! Unworthy as I am of the title, it is the only glory I have. Until yesterday, I had dreamed of saying this to you in very different language and circumstances. It is just that this expectation should be disappointed. I do not appeal from my sentence of exile. But, by the memory of the love you once had for me—and I was full of faults then as now—do not send me away, unforgiven, and starving for your affection—my husband!"

When he looked up, she was kneeling at his side, her eyes streaming with the tears that had impeded her utterance.

Still dumbly, he drew her to him; put back the hair from her face, every line of his own astir with a passion of pity and adoration she hardly dared to look upon. It was a minute before he could articulate. Then the tense lips were moved into womanly softness.

"You can forgive me, then, my Wife! Thank God!"

He laid his cheek to hers, and she felt the great sobs of the breast against which she leaned.

But for a long time, there was nothing more said.

Except by the rain-drops whispering over their heads, broken, now and then, by the wind into little gushes that sounded like laughter, happy to tearfulness.

CHAPTER XXVII.

In the plenitude of her cousinly compassion for the lonely husband, Mrs. Baxter coaxed her spouse into escorting her to Mr. Fordham's, on Thursday evening. The wind had settled into an easterly gale, after yesterday's genial warmth; the day had been unpleasant, and the clouds were still dripping at irregular intervals, as if wrung by impatient hands.

"But it is an act of common humanity to visit the poor fellow in his solitude, my dear, while his desolation is fresh upon him!" she sighed, sympathetically.

"Mr. Fordham was in the library," said Phoebe, with an air of bewilderment at the lady's query, and to the library the consoler accordingly tripped, with footfall of down, and countenance robed in decorous and becoming pensiveness.

Her light tap was unanswered, but uncertain of this, she took the benefit of the doubt, and entering bouncingly, as was her habit, she surprised Jessie, sitting upon her husband's knee, one hand buried in his hair, the other clutching his beard, in a fashion at once undignified and saucy. Both were laughing so heartily that their neglect of the warning knock was explained.

When the confusion of mutual explanations was over, Mrs. Baxter learned, to her amazement, that the journey to Dundee was postponed until after the College Commencement.

"I wouldn't go when I found that Roy wanted to get rid of me!" said the transformed wife. "When I put him into the confessional, he owned who was his fellow-conspirator in the scheme for my banishment. For shame, Cousin Jane! I have long suspected you of a weakness for the handsome Professor, but you sit convicted of a deliberate attempt to remove him from the guardianship of his legal protector, that your designs upon his affections might be more vigorously prosecuted. And no sooner do you suppose that the coast is clear, than you present yourself, arrayed in your best dress and choicest smiles, and with actually a rose-bud in your brooch! to make sure of your game. I shall never trust in human friendship again!"

"You are ungenerous to triumph over me so openly—and in the poor, dear doctor's hearing!" returned her cousin, holding her fan before her face, with a theatrical show of detected guilt.

"I ought to have some compensation for the excruciating anguish the discovery cost me," retorted Jessie. "Tongue cannot describe the tremendous struggle I went through before I could bring myself to undertake the investigation of your perfidy and his susceptibility. I know just how Esther felt when she screwed her courage to the sticking-point, and made up her mind and her toilette to face Ahasuerus and a possible gallows."

Roy was pretending to listen to the doctor's elaborate disquisition upon an important political question, but he stole a sidelong glance at the sparkling face, across the hearth, and smiled, in gladness of content.

She was his blithe, lovesome witch again. The baleful enchantment that had ensnared her fancy and distracted her thoughts from dwelling upon him and his love—(he refused to believe that he had ever lost her heart)—was destroyed, and, by him, remembered no more as a thing of dread. More to spare him pain than to shield Orrin, Jessie had not entered into the particulars of her estrangement, or revealed who was the prime agent in bringing it about. Wyllys' name was not mentioned by either.

"I had a bad, wild dream—" she thus explained her defection. "A dream that made me doubt you—Heaven—myself—everything! that robbed me of love and hope, with faith. I was susceptible, giddy, undisciplined; and I was grievously tempted by an evil spirit. Maybe"—humbly—"I am no better or wiser now; but I am ready and thankful to give myself up to your guidance. I ought to be a good woman in future; for I have been dealt with very tenderly by my Heavenly Father—and by you, my best earthly friend!"

Roy had no fear. His second wooing was, he felt, crowned with richer, more enduring success than the first had been. He cared not to ask, or to conjecture by what art his image had been clouded over, since he saw it now clearly mirrored in a heart tried by refining fires.

The christening feast was not held until December, at which date Master Kirke Lanneau Fordham was four months old.

Eunice had taken her school and cottage for a year, and the interesting fête could not be appointed until she could make her arrangements to be with her sister. Work for the good of others, and wholesome meditation, had brought to her, as they must to all healthy, God-fearing souls, healing and peace during the months she had spent in her new domicile. With the June vacation had come Jessie and her husband; and when the little claimant upon their love and care arrived, the lonely woman, who had put thoughts of her own wifehood and maternity from her forever, when she turned the key upon the souvenirs of her one love-dream, opened her heart and took in, with the babe, comfort and hope that were, to her, fresh and beautiful life. What Roy's arguments and Jessie's entreaties could not accomplish, the innocent young eyes and clinging baby-fingers effected within a month after her nephew's birth. If Kirke went to Hamilton, she would follow, she promised, and early December saw her domesticated in the Fordham household.

"I wish Orrin Wyllys and his wife were not coming, this evening!" said Jessie, confidentially, to her sister, as they were arraying the boy for the grand occasion.

Eunice looked in no wise surprised at the impetuous exclamation, albeit it was the first avowal of dislike of Roy's relative she had ever heard from Jessie's lips.

"It would not have been expedient to omit them from your list of invitations, my dear!" she returned, with her slow, bright smile. "For Roy's sake, you must disguise your antipathy."

"Antipathy isn't too strong a word, Euna! You cannot understand what reason I have to distrust that man! to despise both himself and his wife! And the dêbut of Papa's boy ought to be all brightness to Mamma!" suspending the process of the toilette to strangle him with caresses.

"He cannot hurt you now, love. Even poisonous breath soon passes from finely-tempered steel."

The look and tone silenced the other. Eunice's insight of the tempter's true character was deeper than she had imagined. Even she never dreamed how, and at what cost, the knowledge was gained.

Miss Kirke was an attractive feature of the assembly that night. Many thought her handsomer than her more lively sister. There was not one present who would not have ridiculed the idea of a comparison between her classic beauty and Mrs. Wyllys' shrewish physiognomy. Once, the two ladies talked together for five minutes, near the centre of the front parlor, the light from the chandelier streaming on both. Eunice was dressed with her usual just taste, in a lustreless mourning silk, a tiny illusion ruff enhancing the fairness of neck and face, her abundant hair arranged simply without ornament. She possessed the rare accomplishment of standing still without stiffness, and no nervous play of fingers or features marred the exquisite repose of her bearing, as she listened to or replied to her companion.

Hester was in the full glory of brocade, diamonds, and point lace, with French flowers twisted in her pale tresses, and trailing bramble-wise down her back. She fidgeted incessantly; her skin was muddy with biliousness and discontent; she perked her faint eyebrows into a frown, every other minute; her laugh was forced, and the viscid tones had a twang of pain or ill-humor. She was getting very tired of keeping up the appearance of conjugal felicity with so little assistance from her lord; growing bitterly conscious of the motives that had impelled him to the uncongenial marriage, and disposed to eye jealously every woman to whom he paid the most trifling attention.

"I suppose you are baby-mad, like the rest?" she said, pulling viciously at the golden chain of her bouquet-holder. "I am in a deplorable minority here, to-night. Christening-parties are always a bore to me. I am so sincere, you know, so apt to say what I think, that I can never go into raptures over the little monkeys, as everybody else does. I presume, now, that it is considered rather a nice child—if there is such a thing—isn't it?"

"We think him a noble little fellow; but we do not require the rest of the world to agree with us," replied Eunice, with unruffled politeness.

"I detest children! just perfectly abominate babies! I wouldn't have one for a kingdom. And Orrin loves his own ease too much to want them. He is an awful hypocrite, Miss Kirke. You were very wise not to get married. He can't abide children"—raising her voice—"although he is making a fool of himself over that bundle of lace, lawn, and flannel yonder."

Eunice, inwardly provoked at the irreverent and inelegant description of the royal cherub, could yet respond, with apparent composure.

"He does it from a sense of duty, or a desire to please, probably."

She followed the direction of the wife's scornful eyes.

The folding doors were open, and through the archway, they had a view of the mother, tempting her boy with a flower she had taken from a bouquet, near by, laughing at his open mouth, starting eyes, and fluttering arms, as he tried to seize it. Orrin had approached her while his wife was speaking to Eunice; accosted her before she was aware of his vicinity. His remark, delivered with his most insinuating smile, and in his inimitable manner, was evidently a compliment to the beauty of the child; but she met it with lightness bordering upon contempt. Dropping the flower, she lifted the babe from his temporary throne on the stuffed back of an easy chair, and walked away.

Mrs. Wyllys tittered shrilly, and clapped her hands.

"A decided rebuff!" she sneered, more loudly than good breeding would have counselled. "It is strange, Miss Kirke, that your lady-killer is so slow to learn the mortifying fact that he ceases to be irresistible when he has been guilty of the mistake of matrimony."

Orrin, nervously sensitive to her tones, heard and saw her, while he affected to do neither; saw, likewise, by whom she was standing, and that she showed beside her neighbor as a tawdry, artificial rose, faded and tumbled, does when near a stately, living lily.

Seeing and admitting all this, he heaved an inaudible sigh that did not touch his eyes or chasten his careless smile. His inward moan was not—"Me miserable!" or "Fool that I was!" or anything else poetical or tragic; but—"If I could have afforded it!"

"The fair Euna will wear better than mia cara sposa!" he owned, candidly. "But money outlasts beauty, and is more necessary to a man's happiness. Love is only a luxury; an indulgence too costly for the enjoyment of most wedded pairs. Beryl eyes and a Greek profile would not have paid my debts, nor the future claims of carriage makers, and horse-jockeys, and yacht-builders, No! I have done all that man could, in the like circumstances. Better bread buttered on both sides by Hester, than a dry slice with Eunice."

He owed Miss Kirke no grudge; found placid satisfaction in reviewing their intercourse, akin to that he experienced in the contemplation of a fine, mezzo-tinto engraving or a moonlit landscape. But Jessie irritated and piqued him. If her gay insensibility were bravado, he would yet make her drop the mask. His wife was right in affirming that the passion for conquest was not extinct after a year of married bliss.

"She did worship me in those days!" he ruminated. "Worshipped me madly and entirely, as men are seldom loved, as few women are capable of loving. Does she take me for an idiot in supposing that I credit the thoroughness of her cure!"

Lounging in a desultory way through the rooms, bowing to this, and exchanging a pleasant word with that one of the friends collected to do honor to the infant scion of the house, he contrived to waylay Jessie in the hall. She had transferred the baby to the nurse's care, and was returning to her guests. A fierce impulse possessed him as he marked her happy face, flushed by excitement into loveliness that had never been hers in her girlhood. She was passing him with a slight and nonchalant bow, when he arrested her.

"Can I speak with you for a moment?"

"Now?" she said, dubiously, looking toward the parlors crowded with company.

"Now! I can wait no longer! Is any one in the library?"

Before she could reply, he had pushed the door back, and led her in. The room was not needed for the use of the guests, and was unlighted except by the low fire in the grate.

"I will light the gas!" said Jessie, trying to withdraw her hand from his clutch.

He tightened the grasp. It is said that every man is a savage at some time of his life. The brutish devil was rampant now in the polished citizen of the world, the indolent epicure. If he were ever to regain his lost influence, it must be by a coup d'état—by threats, rather than flattery. He would show her what she risked in attempting to dupe and foil him. A desperate expedient, but the case was not a hopeful one.

"What affectation of prudery is this?" he asked, roughly. "Time was when you were less scrupulous about granting me interviews in the firelight. Do you imagine, silly child, that your overacted farce of wifely devotion blinds me as it does the fools you have called together to-night to witness this pretty display of domestic felicity? Or"—his tone changing suddenly—"that any amount of coldness and cruelty can extinguish my love for you? the love you once confessed—in my arms—was reciprocated by yourself, then the betrothed of him, who now believes you to be his loyal consort? You have found it an easy task to deceive him, because it is not in him to worship you as I do. You may struggle to escape from me, but you know I am speaking the truth, and leaving half of it untold. Don't drive me to distraction, Jessie! or I shall divulge that which your husband, with all his phlegmatic philosophy, may resent. Resent, possibly, upon me—certainly upon you—in treatment you will find it hard to bear. I have warned you before, that generous forgiveness of an offence to his dignity and self-love is a height of virtue unknown to Roy Fordham. I warn you that you are dealing with a desperate, because a miserable man!"

"This is a specimen of the superior manliness, the lofty magnanimity you vaunt as your characteristics—is it?"

She had wrested her hand from him. The faint, red glare revealed the outlines of a figure drawn up to its full height, and instinct with anger and defiance. The clear accents were stinging hailstones.

"I am not afraid of you, if I do shrink from your touch. I am glad you have given me this opportunity to say what you ought to know. You played upon my inexperience and loneliness, when I was committed—a too trustful child—to your care by my betrothed and my father. You tampered with my active imagination and my credulity, until you wrought in my mind false and florid views of life; and when your train was ready to be fired, insinuated suspicions—which you knew were groundless!—of Roy Fordham's honor, and his fidelity to me."

"I suggested no suspicions!" he interrupted.

"You nourished the germs planted by Hester Sanford's slander. And when I did not know where, or upon what I stood; when my brain was teeming with unhealthy fancies, and my heart sick with fever and thirst, you offered me what you called love—dragged from me the admission that it was returned."

"Since perfect frankness is the order of the day, allow me to observe that the 'dragging' was not a difficult process!" interjected Wyllys, offensively.

"I am willing to allow your amendment—if you will consent to have me repeat this story in detail to all who are assembled in the other room," she returned, undaunted. "I should enjoy the task, because it would pave the way for an avowal I should exult in proclaiming to the universe. It is that I value the least hair of my husband's head more than I ever did you—body, soul, and what you denominate as your heart; that I had rather serve him as a bond-slave, and never receive a word or glance of affection, if I might live near and for him—than to reign an Empress at your side; that I never comprehend the height, depth and fulness of his condescension and love at any other time as when I reflect that these are bestowed upon a woman who was once misled into the conviction that you were a true man, and that she cared for you. I stand ready to say all this—and more. I am no weak girl, now, to be terrified by bugbears. There is a perfectness, even of human love, that casteth out fear. You forget this when you threaten me with my husband's displeasure."

She laughed, and all the corners of the quiet room caught up the mirthful echoes.

"Why, if Roy stood where you do, I could tell him all you have said, without a blush or tremor. That I have never done this, you owe to my reluctance to betray to the baseness of one in whose veins runs the same blood as in his. I would spare him the pain and shame of seeing you for what you are. But I wish he knew everything!"

"I think he does!"

While she was speaking, a shape had loomed into motion from a recess formed by two bookcases at the further end of the library, and was now at her side. As her husband's voice greeted her astonished ears, she felt his supporting arm about her.

"Hush, my darling!" he said, at her stifled scream. "I came in for a book just before you entered. After hearing Mr. Wyllys' preliminary remark I thought it best to let you vindicate yourself without my help. Not that I needed to hear your justification, but I meant that he should. We will go back to our friends, now. Shall I tell Mrs. Wyllys that you are waiting to take her home?" to Orrin.

"If you please," was the equally formal reply.

A week later, Selina Bradley brought Mrs. Baxter a piece of startling news.

"It is certainly true!" she insisted, as the other looked her incredulity. "The house and furniture are offered for sale. It is very doubtful when they will return. They may reside abroad for years—take up their permanent abode in Paris. Mr. Wyllys affects to treat the plan as one they have been considering this great while, but there are queer stories afloat. Hester is indiscreet, you know. They had a violent scene in the hearing of the servants on their return from the Fordhams' christening party. The most unlikely, but a popular, rumor is that Hester was furiously jealous of her husband's attentions to Jessie, or her sister, that night. She threatened to leave him, and go home to her father, unless he would take his oath never to speak to either of them again."

"You may well say 'unlikely!'" Mrs. Baxter said, eyeing the doctor apprehensively, as he sat up to his eyebrows in a book at a distant window. "They are going to Paris, you say?"

The doctor had lowered his volume, let go his cravat, and pushed up his spectacles.

"So Hester says, and is in ecstasies (apparently) at the prospect. As for Mr. Wyllys, he professes to think American society a very wishy-washy affair compared with Parisian circles."

"Humph!" snorted the doctor. "They could not choose more wisely and consistently. Paris is the world's repertory of gilded shams!"

He tied a double knot in his handkerchief.

THE END.

1873.

G.W. Carleton & Co.

NEW BOOKS

AND NEW EDITIONS,

RECENTLY ISSUED BY