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There was no prettier spot in the Dundee valley than Willow Creek, a somewhat wide, and in some places deep, stream, just where it was spanned by a rustic bridge at the bottom of the Parsonage meadows. The fringe of willows on the thither bank, and the alder and birch thicket studding that nearest the house, were reflected in the clear, brown mirror to the tiniest leaf and bud. Beneath and between these, there were stretches of turf which were evergreen; beds of wild balsam that flowered all summer; ferns in variety and profusion, from the tree-ferns upborne by their wiry black stems to a height of four or five feet, to the delicate maiden-hair, hiding in the lee of straws and stones; and on the day we are describing—the fifth of September—these alternated with borders of hoary mountain sage, blue-eyed asters, tossing plumes of golden-rod, yet taller purple brush, stiff and gorgeous, and patches of bright yellow dodder, running riotously into the water, and entangling the commoner arrow-leaf and sedge in its meshes.
Through the gorge worn by the creek in the mountains, one had a view of the upper valley, and the chain of hills that grew bluer and lower as the eye pursued their southerly course. Below the bridge was the church, benignant warder of the plain fertile as was that of Sodom, loaded with corn, ripe for cutting, and already stacked for the garner, and white, here and there, as from untimely snows, with blossoming buckwheat. The whistle of the quail in the stubble, the rattling roll of empty farm wagons over the stone bridge below the mill, on their way to the field; the duller thunder of heavily laden trains creaking and swaying from side to side behind the straining oxen, and the drowsy undertone of the mill-wheel, mingled with the nearer warble of birds in the trees and the gentle wash of the waves under the willows. It was bright, benignant weather—a day that reminded one of healthy, active, happy middle-age, for there was a whisper of Autumn in the air, the mellowness of Autumnal light over plain and water and hill.
There was nothing in landscape, air, or sunlight that should have reminded Jessie Kirke of the miserable February afternoon when she stood on the Hamilton bridge, staring down at the black ice below, and fought her first battle of life. But that other scene and the strife of that hour were very present to her, as she halted on the foot-bridge and leaned over the rail to gaze at the slow, smooth current of the creek. The narrow crossing had been designed and partly built by Mr. Kirke himself. The floor was of oak plank; the railing was composed of cedar branches with the bark left on, arranged in fantastic figures, and surmounted by a slender pole of the same wood. Many stopped to examine and admire it in passing over, and it made a picturesque feature in the view. It was familiar in every joint to Jessie, having formed a part of her favorite walk for ten years; but she chose to linger there on this morning, to hang over the parapet, pick bits of bark from the side and fling them into the creek, as an idle child might launch and watch a miniature fleet.
It was a face many removes from childhood's thoughtlessness and childish glee that looked back at her from the glassy surface. A face, wild-eyed and haggard, with bent brows betokening suffering and conflict; a mouth telling, in piteous and patient lines, of defeat.
She had returned from Hamilton in April, looking jaded and ill, said the Dundeeians, who shook sagacious heads over her winter's dissipation. Her father and Eunice attributed her loss of bloom and liveliness to too close application to her studies, and cited her improvement in music, French, and German, in proof of their theory. She did not relax her diligence when she was settled at home. Eunice, whose name was a synonym for industry, did not surpass her in strict attention to all departments of feminine work. In the kitchen and the garden, at the needle, the piano, writing-desk, and her books, she toiled from sunrise until bedtime, with energy Eunice silently likened to greediness for occupation of mind and body, while Mr. Kirke hardly recognized his darling in the decorous thrifty housewife and busy student. Intonations, phraseology, and deportment—all were altered. She was an elegant woman in appearance and conversation, but the fond parent missed the tricksy sprite who had wrought mischief and mirth in his home; missed her teasing and her follies, her exactions and her caresses. Not that she was cold or sullen. She told long and entertaining stories of her Hamilton life; gave faithful descriptions of the people and things she had seen while away from them; listened with apparent interest to neighborhood news and family plans; talked of art, literature, and philosophy to him by the hour; was attentive to his every possible want, and offered regularly the morning and evening kiss she had been accustomed to bestow from her infancy. But, having already one daughter who was an exemplar to her sex, he recollected the bewitching naughtiness of the old-time Jessie, and wished fervently that he had met Mrs. Baxter's invitation by a peremptory negative, and kept his gem as it was. To his taste, it had lost—not gained—in the cutting and polishing.
Eunice was discreet when he intimated something of the kind to her.
"She is certainly more quiet and studious," she replied, "but she says she is very well, and she has much to make her thoughtful in Roy's absence. The long separation must, of itself, oppress her spirits continually. And, Father, our Jessie has gained new views of Life and Duty within the last year. She can never be a child again. Her nature—mind and affections—must broaden and deepen with time. We would not have it otherwise, strange as the change is to us now. I fear, though, that she works too hard, while I honor her determination to prepare herself thoroughly for her future position. She will be a wife of whom Roy may justly be proud."
Again, when Mr. Kirke feared that Jessie was often depressed to despondency, although she strove bravely to conceal it, the elder sister "hoped all would be well again when Roy came back."
"He can reason or soothe her out of morbid fancies better and sooner than either you or I. His influence over her is wonderful and always beneficial."
"I wish he were home again then!" sighed the parent.
He did not guess how heartily Eunice echoed the desire. She might be partially successful in quelling his anxieties, but the beryl eyes saw that, so far from all being right with her young sister, something was lamentably wrong. Jessie's very manner of speaking of Roy and her marriage was totally dissimilar to her former frank or bashful confession. If she had lived with him as his wife a dozen years, she could not have mentioned his name more composedly, or talked of housekeeping and other practicalities in a more matter-of-fact strain. This was exceedingly sensible, but it was not, on that account, the more like Jessie. The transformation from an enthusiastic madcap, who did and felt nothing by halves—let it be loving, laughing, sorrowing, or working—into the dignified partner of Eunice's everyday cares and duties, equable in temper, reliable in judgment, and judicious in action—ought, perhaps, to have elicited commendation from one who was herself a model in all these respects; but, instead of gratification, she felt only bewilderment and alarm at the completeness of the change. It had been her habit to think and say, when her sister's crudities or extravagances were more marked than her quieter taste approved, that the discipline of life, as life went on, would rectify these; that they were but the redundant growth of a noble stock. A little pruning—a few sharp experiences, and hypercritical indeed would be the judgment that should find room for blame. She was displeased with herself in recollecting this, now that the discipline had wrought upon the free, wild spirit; the redundancies had fallen under the pruning-knife.
Something of this external change must have manifested itself in Jessie's letters, for Roy had twice written privately to Eunice, questioning her closely about her sister's health and spirits.
"Her letters are as regular as ever, and no less beautiful than punctual," he said. "But they contain so few particulars of her daily life and feelings, while they treat freely of other subjects, that I have fancied there is something pertaining to her individual experience she desires to hide from me, lest the knowledge of it should pain me. My noble, generous girl! She would bear any distress or inconvenience rather than afflict me by revealing the extent of her suffering or perplexity. I intrust my sometimes wayward—always sweet, graceful, and clinging Jessamine to you, our sister! Tend and guard it tenderly for me."
Eunice answered hopefully and with such reassurance as she could truthfully impart, and wished more ardently than ever that he would return and assume the charge of his treasure—the charge and the cure.
They had had a quiet summer, the most stirring event being a visit from Mrs. Baxter and Orrin Wyllys, who acted as her escort. They were domesticated for a week at the parsonage, and Jessie's monopoly of her cousin's society had left Orrin almost entirely to her father's and sister's care. Nobody made verbal objection to this division of hospitable duties. Mr. Wyllys held long talks with his host—scientific, theological, literary, and political—during post-prandial smokes, besides driving and walking with him in his professional rounds at such seasons as Eunice was too busy to attend to her guests. When she was at liberty to devote herself to social duties, there were hours of music and reading; long rambles among the hills—Mrs. Baxter and Jessie far in advance—for the latter always outstripped her sister in pedestrian expeditions; moonlight promenades and conferences on the piazza that left Jessie all the time she desired for conversation with her late chaperone . It was generally agreed at parting that the week had passed swiftly and delightfully; farewells were linked with hopes of a repetition of the pleasure, and the household relapsed into its ordinary aspect and ways. If there were any perceptible difference in those composing it, it was that Jessie worked harder and was paler than before the interruption, while Eunice grew younger and prettier every day.
"I have tried very hard!" Jessie said aloud, still hanging over the water, but clasping her hands in a sort of despair. "And I am very tired!"
Then two heavy tears rolled from her eyes and broke up the reflection of the sad face below into little dancing circles.
An hour ago, as she stood in the garden grafting a rosebush, a neighbor rode up to the fence to say, "Good-day," and inquire after the health of the clergyman's family.
"You'll have company pretty soon, I'm thinking," he said, knowingly. "I suppose that's no news to you, though?"
"We expect no one," said Jessie, carelessly.
"It will be a pleasant surprise to you, then. I saw Mr. Wyllys at the hotel as I came by."
Jessie's knife swerved slightly as she made the incision in the bark, but her voice was firm.
"Are you sure?"
"Oh, yes! I talked with him. He got up late last night, he said. Come now, Miss Jessie; I am an old friend, which of you is he after?"
"Neither that I know of. Certainly not me!" replied she, imperturbably.
She finished her task carefully, when the inquisitor had passed; carried twine and scissors into the house; gave Patsey an order as she glanced into the kitchen, and, unobserved by the servant, left the dwelling and went down through the garden into the meadow.
Her father and Eunice were away from home for the day—probably for the night also, and she had her reasons for preferring the solitude of the woods, or a retreat among the crags of Old Windbeam, to a prolonged interview with Orrin Wyllys.
Did I say, "preferred"? Does not the opium-eater, in his lucid intervals, prefer thirst and languor and pain to the drug for which his diseased appetite cries out as the dying for breath, and the fever-scorched for water? Prefer it with mind and conscience, if not with flesh and will? Jessie Kirke's will lived yet, and it had borne her beyond the reach of temptation and kept her there. But it did not hinder her from picturing Orrin pacing the portico, or, sitting in the parlor, awaiting her while she hid herself and her wretchedness among the willows. She had but to go back by the way she had come, and hours of blissful companionship would be hers; full draughts of enjoyment such as those which had intoxicated the unwary girl who, last winter, had believed that she might drink and be blameless. His eyes would kindle into the magic gleam that enervated resolution and let loose a flood of vague, delicious fancies upon her brain; his voice melt into the modulations that enchained the ear like pathetic music. Under the spell of his consummate address she would believe, for the moment, or the hour, or the day he spent with her, all that he said or looked, although dimly conscious, the while, that she would despise herself as a weak, guilty fool for the temporary faith, through weeks and months afterward.
As she did now! She was wrung by self-contempt for nursing these imaginations, yet dallied with them—sipped shudderingly, yet with avidity, of their dangerous sweetness.
"I have tried very hard!" she moaned again.
Tried to hold fast to her trust in her betrothed after the cruel shock it had sustained from Hester Sanford's story, for she still believed that it was firm and absolute up to that hour; ignored persistently the fact that other influences had previously been at work sapping her confidence in the attachment of one who, his nearest of kin reluctantly admitted, was a man of granite, virtuously severe to the frailties of others, because he was himself prudent, sage, and incorruptible by such bribes as most men found potent—love, and the hope and opportunity of making the beloved one happy. Not one word of this had Wyllys ever uttered. He always spoke of Roy with seriousness and respect, confessing voluntarily, time and again, his own moral and intellectual inferiority to his cousin, and scrupulously keeping her betrothment before Jessie's mind. Whatever might have been her lapses from loyalty, she could not deny that in this oft-repeated acknowledgment of her paramount obligation to her affianced husband, Orrin had been honorable to punctiliousness. She had not yet come to see that he had also been ingenious in pressing invisible shackles into her soul; in reminding her perpetually that she was no longer a free agent. The girl had chafed under the process, without knowing that she did so, and why. Her brotherly friend, who had seen a blooded horse, although docile by nature and well broken in, fret and grow restive under an over-tight check-rein, may have known, better than she, what he was about.
She was still uncertain how much or how little truth there was in the heiress' tale. She had contrived to see her but seldom after the scene in the billiard-room, and in this she was ably seconded by Miss Sanford when the news of "that Miss Kirke's" engagement to Professor Fordham was circulated in Hamilton circles. Jessie did not try to analyze the impulse that bade her announce the relation she bore to Roy at the very time when her doubts of him were at their height. Perhaps she felt the need of a safeguard for herself; or her conscience may have rebuked her that she had not defended him—right or wrong—when attacked; or the suspicion of his unworthiness stimulated her to a strained generosity, a resolve to leave undone no part of the duty she owed, while she was under contract to him. It had been long since her latest mention of the matter to Wyllys. He had replied to her queries by an injunction to continued confidence in Roy's integrity, which was construed by her into a charitable evasion. He promised again and solemnly to push his investigations as occasion might offer, but she believed that he was afraid to keep his word. He would preserve intact his own love and esteem for the cousin he professed to revere, and blindly declined to undertake the examination of a record he more than feared contained entries that would lower his opinion of his hero, and damage the latter's character irretrievably with herself.
Given this lever of unappeased distrust in, and latent resentment toward him, to whom her allegiance was due, and a less adroit diplomat than Orrin Wyllys might have so weakened the defences of her love and constancy as to make her question whether surrender were not unavoidable—even desirable. She was "tired," poor child! dismayed that her labor in "deep mid-ocean" was so tedious and severe, longing for rest in whatever port her worn heart might make.
"I shall be tamed by the time you come home," she had said, 'twixt tears and smiles, to Roy at their parting. "Quite tame and old!"
"And I am!" she thought, the jest recurring to her now. "Only life has also grown tame, and the world old and gray!"
She had swung her hat upon her arm, and pushing back her hair with the palms that supported her forehead, that the wind from the water might cool her beating temples, she rested her listless weight upon the frail railing. The woven twigs, once supple, were dry and rotten under the bark, and swayed outward with a sharp crack—a warning that came too late to save her. She caught, in falling, at the shattered panels left standing, and dragged only a handful of broken sticks with her into the creek. Coming to the surface after the plunge, she threw her grasping, struggling hands widely abroad, succeeded in seizing one of the upright supports of the bridge, and clung to it. Her head and shoulders were out of water. She was not actually drowning. In the strength imparted by this consciousness, she drew a long breath, and called for help.
A faint echo came back from the hills. The rest of the shout was lost in the spreading meadows, or overpowered by the commingled sounds that were the voice of the early autumn day.
She heard them more distinctly than when she had stood upon the bridge; the beat of the mill-wheel, the rattle and rumble of the farm-wagons, even the tread of the teams upon the oaken flooring; the now distant whistle of the quail, and, close beside her, the lapping of the creek among the sedges.
She weighed her chances of speedy release from her unpleasant and dangerous situation before she raised another outcry. The stream was the feeder of the mill-pond, and was made deeper and more sluggish by the dam, less than half a mile farther down. She remembered to have heard that the depth just under the bridge was about ten feet. It might as well be a hundred if she were to relinquish her hold. She could do nothing but cling and wait until her calls should bring rescue, or some chance passenger espy her. This was an unfrequented by-way, and it might be many hours before assistance came to her in the latter form. As to the other, the Parsonage was the nearest dwelling. The mill was no farther off, but the united shriek of twenty drowning women could not be heard above the clatter of the machinery. Patsey was alone in the kitchen, her whole soul in her semi-weekly baking, and deaf to all out-door noises excepting those from the poultry-yard. There was no one else in the house, unless Orrin had arrived. Jessie believed that she tasted the bitterness of death, as she imagined him, expectant of her coming, yet thoughtless of evil as the reason of her delay, taking a few restless turns upon the portico; then, wandering into the parlor, and standing, as he often did, for several minutes together, gazing at the picture of the girl at the wishing-well; opening the piano and running over some remembered air, or improvising dreamy, wistful strains, with absent thoughts, and eyes fixed upon vacancy.
And she was here! nearing the gates that were to shut down between them forever.
She called again—a shrill scream that scared the birds from their perches on the willow and birch boughs, and awoke a wailing echo among the mountains. Then all was quiet, save for the mill, the fainter roll of heavy wheels, and, louder than either, the lap! lap! lap! of the waves upon the grassy bank. How deadly cold the water was! And she became sensible now of an increasing weight drawing her downward—the strain of her saturated garments upon the arms wound about the rough pole which stood between her and death. There was a current, also, to be resisted, placid as the mirror had seemed from above, and her sinews were aching already. Her whole body would be numb presently—her clutch be relaxed by cold and the prostration of the nervous and muscular system.
She had decried life as tame, and the world as unlovely. She found them, in this fearfully honest hour, too dear and beautiful to leave thus suddenly. She recollected, even in this season of peril and dread, the oft-repeated story that one in the act of drowning recalls, in a flash of memory, every event of his past existence, however remote and minute; reasoned within herself that this must be an old wives' fable, since she, on the brink of eternity, had but one overmastering idea—how to avert impending dissolution. Her father, Eunice, Roy, and Orrin, were all in her mind by turns, but there was no quickening of affection now that she might be leaving them to return no more. They were, in comparison with the terrible fact of her present danger, but misty and far-off abstractions—faded portraits in her mental gallery, hardly deserving a glance. She dwelt, in agony, upon the circumstances that the stream was becoming like ice to her limbs, and the pain in her arms intense, while her soaked clothing and the current were sucking her downward. When the last remnant of her strength should fail, would she be drowned by the cruel waters where she had fallen in, or borne, conscious, and writhing in the throes of suffocation, over the dam, to be mangled by the rocks below the fall?
The horror of the last fancy drew from her another shriek. The echo taunted her by its feeble mimickry; the dull boom of the mill-wheel, the teamster's shout to his oxen, had the same meaning, and the lapping of the water was that of a fierce destroyer, hungering for his prey.
Meanwhile, the visitor at the Parsonage had been through the round Jessie had sketched for him in her tortured imagination; had paced the porch until he was weary of the solitary turns; surveyed the portrait to his heart's content, regretting, in his æsthetic mind, that the original had toned down to the level of commonplace refinement, and had played a pensive "thought" on the piano.
This performance brought in Patsey.
"Dick Van Brunt was by the gate just now, Mr. Wyllys, and he said as how he seen Miss Jessie going down toward the crick, nigh upon an hour ago. You mought see something of her if you was to walk that way."
"Thank you, Patsey. Perhaps I will if she do not come in soon. And perhaps I 'mought' make a fool of myself, clambering over those confounded mountain-paths for half a day, and not get a glimpse of her!" he muttered, when the handmaiden had withdrawn.
He stepped through the oriel-window into the garden, humming, sotto voce , "My heart's in the Hielands, my heart is not here;" made the tour of the enclosure, noting how Eunice's rose labyrinth had grown, and that the rarer plants he had sent her in the Spring were recompensing her for the care she had bestowed upon them; brushed both hands over a bed of bergamot until the air reeked with perfume, and plucked a sprig of rosemary from the spot where he had stood to overhear the sisters' criticisms of himself sixteen months before—smiling queerly as he did so.
"I will send the fair Una a root of 'Cæsar's Bay,' with the stipulation that she shall set it just here," he said inwardly, the smile brightening at the apt conceit. "It shall be to me a floral monument—a Cupid's Ebenezer."
He gathered, furthermore, several bunches of choice roses, rifling them of their freshest odor by ruthless handling, and strewing them to the right and left as he went from the garden into the meadow. The day was fine, and not warm enough to make walking a grievous task, and he might find Jessie at or near the bridge. He whistled "Casta Diva" as he strolled over the short, thick grass, elastic to the foot as carpets of the deepest pile,—whistled melodiously, and, one would have said, for want of thought, in remarking his roving eyes and tranquil physiognomy. He looked, as he felt, on excellent terms with himself and the rest of the world; like a man who had eaten to satisfaction, but not to repletion, of the sunny side of the peach tendered by Fortune, and who was suitably grateful to the person to whom he considered that he owed his success in life—to wit, Orrin Wyllys.
What a companion portrait to set over against this serene visage and lounging figure in the pleasant meadow-paths was that, which, with distorted limbs, and countenance eager to frenzy, hung midway over the stream he was approaching! Jessie had heard the whistle, and known it for his; caught from afar his measured tread upon the sward, and, feeling herself grow weak and voiceless in the rush of reviving hope, had painfully gathered her remaining forces to abide his coming. She could see him through rifts in the low-branching birches; counted every step with trembling impatience until he was within a stone's throw.
Then she signalled him in a husky, dissonant voice that shocked herself, fainting though she was with suspense, intent only upon watching his movements, which meant to her deliverance, sure and swift.
"Orrin! make haste! I am perishing!"
A glimpse of the broken railing told him all.
Tearing off his coat as he ran, he leaped into the creek, swam out to her, and bade her loosen her hold, and remain perfectly quiet.
"Don't seize me! I will save you! Trust me!" he said, in authority she did not dream of resisting.
In a minute more he had dragged her through the water and laid her upon the warm turf, where the sun fell in brightness that meant comfort to her now as emphatically as the wavering glitter upon the stream had signified derision of her sufferings when she was very nigh to death.
In all their intercourse, Orrin had never spoken words that came so directly from what had once been a heart, as those that stirred the languid pulses and brought back the fleeting senses of the forlorn creature who lay gasping within his arms—livid, sodden, almost lifeless.
"Darling Jessie! Precious child! Thank Heaven, I was in time!"
The blue lips were touched by a smile; her eyes unclosed upon his with a look of worshipful love and gratitude that appealed to meaner elements of his character than those that had prompted his first outburst. He was himself again as his gaze kindled into responsive softness and fire.
" My love!" he murmured, bending to kiss her. "May I not call you so for one blessed instant? My only love, and mine alone!"