下载掌阅APP，畅读海量书库
立即打开
Every object in the dimly lighted chamber seemed, to Jessie's strained eyes, to stand out with painful distinctness, as her long-absent lover entered. Most clearly of all, she saw his familiar figure; noticed even the full beard and gray travelling-suit, while he crossed the floor toward her. She arose, mechanically, and went forward a step to meet his fleet, noiseless advance.
"My own one! my precious darling!"
He had her in his arms before she could resist, if she had meant to do so. There were tears in his eyes and voice as he kissed her, and he held her closely, warmly, as a mother would a suffering child.
She undid his embrace with fingers strong and chill as steel.
"My father is very ill!" she faltered, and retreated to his pillow.
Disturbed by the movement and sound of his name, Mr. Kirke awoke. The recess in which his bed stood was in partial shadow, but his gaze rested at once upon Roy, and he tried to lift his head.
"Is that the doctor?"
Jessie replied:
"No, Papa! It is Mr. Fordham."
Instead of welcoming him, the sick man looked heavenward, and his lips moved in prayer. Only the daughter who had crept nearest to him, interpreted the burden of his thanksgiving.
" Lord! now lettest Thou Thy servant depart in peace!"
When he moved, it was in an effort to hold out his arms to the returned voyager.
"Roy! dear, dear son!"
Roy took the emaciated hands in his, with one answering word.
"Father!"
"Leave us for a little while, my children!" said the dying voice. "We have much to say to one another, and the time is short!"
He was obeyed; Eunice going to her room, to weep and pray in mingled gratitude and sorrow; Jessie flying down the stairs into the hall, thence out into the garden.
The sky was one expanse of cloud by this time. The wind moaned fitfully in the tree-tops; brought down showers of dry leaves into her face and upon her uncovered head. They whispered drearily to her as they hurtled by and crackled under her feet, and each thicket had its sigh of desolation. She heard and felt all—her soul in unison with the night and its voices of woe. She had fled from her father's presence, feeling like one accursed, forsaken by God and man. The return for which the dying saint's praise had gone up to heaven, was the event she had anticipated with shame and terror that made her long to bury herself in the wilderness or the grave, to escape the sight of him whom she had deceived. To him, her father was now bequeathing her—his dearest earthly treasure. Would Roy let him, indeed, depart in peace, or would his stern sense of truthfulness and honor impel him to a revelation of her perfidy? True, he had taken her in his arms and kissed her, but she had received this as his farewell, not his salutation;—seen in it the resistless overflow of the old-time fondness at sight of her and her affliction. Better—a thousand times better—that he had not come until the eyes that had lighted into gladness at sight of him were sealed in death, than to plant thorns in the painless pillow of the death-bed by relating how she had betrayed the trust of her betrothed, and disappointed her father's hopes.
If she could have warned him! If she had had the presence of mind to make some sign of caution before she left them together!
Would Roy—"the man of granite"—have mercy? or must her father's last words to her be reproof and not blessing? regret and not thankfulness?
Up and down! up and down! she trod the long alley, looking at the faintly illuminated windows of that upper chamber; wringing her hands in her dry-eyed agony, longing yet fearing to hear the summons that should end her suspense.
It came at length! Roy's step upon the piazza, and his call, guarded that it should not reach the sick-room, but audible to her as would be the trump of doom.
"Jessie! where are you?"
She went toward him without hesitation. Women have gone to the hall of sentence and to the block in the same way. He met her, guided by her rustling tread among the leaves.
"This should not be!" he said. " You will be ill next!"
He led her into the house, and to the parlor where there were lights.
She was not surprised that he did not let her pause until they reached the deep window—where she had not sat, for months, until that morning after the doctor left her. She had not expected a violent outbreak of anger or recrimination; had felt that, even in becoming her accuser, he could not cease to be a gentleman.
Orrin had told her, more than once or thrice, that his kinsman was just to calm severity. He would grant her a chance of self-exculpation; would judge her out of her own mouth; make her rehearse to him the story of her falsehood upon the spot where she had plighted her vow of eternal constancy. And she would meet it all—say it all, save the name of her tempter—that she was pledged not to reveal—if he would but let her go back the sooner to her father—the father who was dying upstairs!
"Don't think me cruel, dear, or ungenerous," began Roy, when he had seated her, and himself at her side.
Had her wretchedness moved him to leniency?
He continued: "But this is no season for useless delays and mistaken reserve. Our dear father is passing away from us. I met the doctor on my way to you this evening. He thinks that he may leave us very, very soon. One moment, dearest, and you shall go to him"—for she had started up. "He has made a dying request of us—of you and me—the fulfilment of which depends upon you. I say nothing of the eager happiness with which I have given my consent to the proposal—only of the comfort you can shed upon his last moments by marrying me in his sight within the next hour."
"No! no! no! " She slid from her seat to her knees, and hid her face, crouching to the floor in horror and humiliation. "I cannot! It would be a sin! a fearful sin!"
Roy would have raised her, but she shrank away from him.
"Anything but that! Ask me anything but that !" she repeated.
"It is not I who ask it, dear. Our father has decided what shall be the time and place of our marriage. It is not selfish—much less is it sinful in us to yield to his wish—his last earthly desire. It has been his prayer from the commencement of his illness that he might live to join our hands; give you into my keeping before you should close his eyes. Surely, knowing this, we may not fear to repeat in his hearing the vows we made long ago in this, our betrothal nook."
The simple, sad sincerity of his appeal sounded like pitiless will in the ears of the distracted girl, but she could not gainsay his reasoning. The decision was then thrown upon her! Hers was the power to cast a ray of light upon the even-time of the life which had been to her a constant benefaction, or to cloud it with disappointment.
"It is not selfish in us to yield to his wish!"
The words stung like venomed sarcasm. Not selfish to accept the fate against which her nature—physical and spiritual—had lashed itself into revolt for weary months past! Not selfish to bind upon her neck the yoke of the scorned and unloving wife!
The last thought moved her to action. She dragged herself to her feet, still rejecting his aid, and, for the first time since their meeting, looked into his face.
"Did you get my last letter? that in which I asked you to release me from this engagement?"
"Yes."
He would have drawn nearer as he said it, but she kept him off—less by her gesture than with her eyes—so unlike the sweet wells at which he used to drink his fill of love!
"And knowing all, it is still your wish to marry me! Think well before you answer. This bond is for life, remember! and life is long! Oh, how long to the miserable!"
"This is my answer." Before she could avoid him, he had gathered her in his arms, had pressed the reluctant head to his bosom. "We have been wedded almost a year and a half already, my Jessie. I am claiming my wife, not my betrothed. Did you imagine that I could be frightened from my hope and my purpose by that morbid little note, written by a half-sick, over-sensitive woman? Recollect! you left the decision to me! If, instead of this, you had ordered me to stay away forever, I should have come to you all the same; have taken you to the old resting-place and kissed away the gloomy fancies that had tempted you to banish me. I know your heart better than you do yourself—and it is mine ! The Lord do so to me, and more also, if aught but death part you and me!
"Now, beloved, what shall I say to our father? The minutes are precious."
"It shall be as you and he desire. I will tell him this myself," replied Jessie, calming all at once into mournful composure Roy deemed altogether natural in the circumstances.
"One word more!" detaining her. "I met Dr. Baxter this evening at the station, on his way to pay you a visit, promised, he said, ever since last winter. Stopping at the hotel while the stage set down other passengers, we heard of your father's illness, and our dear old friend, with characteristic delicacy, would not present himself—a stranger—to your sister, in the circumstances. He remained at the hotel until I should bring further intelligence. Am I right in supposing that it is your wish, as well as mine, that he should perform the ceremony which is to make us one in name, as we have long been one in heart? If so, I will go for him without delay."
"Do what you like—whatever is best," she answered, hurriedly. "By all means, bring Dr. Baxter here! My father will like to see him."
"His arrival just now is providential," said Roy, walking upstairs at her side, his arm still supporting her. "There is light, even from the earthward side, upon this dark river, love!"
He beckoned Eunice from the sick-room as Jessie went in, exchanged half-a-dozen sentences with her relative to his plans, and ran down the steps lightly and swiftly. He had ordered Mr. Kirke's horse to be harnessed to his buggy before he sought Jessie, and Eunice heard him drive off in the direction of the village by the time she returned to her post.
The sisters awaited him and the clergyman where they had sat all day, the one at the right hand, the other at the left hand, of their father. Eunice ventured to suggest to her companion the expediency of making some change in her dress before the ceremony.
"I thought perhaps you would like to be married in white," she said, timidly. "I am almost sure Roy would prefer this."
"I have not time to dress. I have left him too long already," returned Jessie, pointing to her father.
She tried to keep her promise of apprising him of her acquiescence in his will, but was partly baffled by his increasing drowsiness! He spoke, it is true, when she told him that she had heard from Mr. Fordham of his request, and determined to grant it, but it was not clear that he quite understood her.
"Good child!" he said, with closed eyes. " God bless you both!"
Did "both" mean his daughters or the two who were to be wedded presently? She could not bring herself to ask.
Mr. Kirke lapsed into slumber or stupor, and the room was silent again save for his irregular breathing, showing that his semi-insensibility varied in character from that of the day. Once, Jessie got up with the remark that it was time to renew the mustard-poultices that stimulated the curdling veins into action, and the pair did the office deftly and mutely. Eunice saw her sister, as she reseated herself, lay her cheek to the almost pulseless hand that rested on the coverlet, and close her eyes, while her lips were stirred by an inaudible sentence. The observer was thankful for this token of a more subdued and natural frame of mind than the suffering girl had yet exhibited. It was meet that she should seek the blessing of Heaven upon the union she was about to form, and that thoughts of prayer should be linked with loving ones of her earthly parent. And Eunice, too, prayed in her gentle, pious heart for the happiness of the child she had reared as her own, and for that of the true, fond brother, whose arrival in this their darkest hour, was like a direct answer from on high to the petitions she had offered, during their long days of watching and anxiety. With Roy to console and care for Jessie, the smitten household would be rich even in temporal comfort.
Was Jessie praying? She had proudly flung the charge of perjury at another, saying—"Of this sin, at least, I am innocent." What was the act to which she had given her consent—which the next hour would render irrevocable? It was when this question was forced upon her by some taunting demon, that she kissed the lifeless hand, and whispered the formula she had said aloud that morning at the open window, and repeated inly hundreds of times since.
"My father is dying!"
Since she could not lie down and die in his stead, she would sacrifice the poor hopes of peace that were spared to her from the wreck of her early dreams, to purchase for him what gratification she could still give him. Eunice might well eye her apprehensively, all that day and evening. Many with steadier brains and cooler blood than were hers have been consigned to insane asylums.
The wind was so loud, the roar of the pine outside the window so continuous, as to drown the sound of returning hoofs and wheels. They were ignorant of Roy's second arrival until he knocked at the chamber-door. Eunice said, "Come in!" and he whispered a few words to her before he approached Jessie.
"Are you quite ready?" he asked, softly.
She bowed her head in assent.
He disappeared for a moment, then came back with Dr. Baxter, Drs. Winters and Trimble. The physicians, with difficulty, aroused their patient so far as to swallow the stimulant they administered. Patsey brought in more lights, and retired, with the doctors, to the background—an interested spectator of the singular scene.
"Father!" it was Roy's voice, sonorous yet pleasant, that reached the senses and reason which were fast slipping away with life. "This is Dr. Baxter, of whom you have often heard—Jessie's very dear friend—and whose wife is the cousin of Jessie's mother."
The double reference was talismanic. Mr. Kirke opened his eyes to their full width—all recognizing, in them the glassy stare of dissolution—and tried to move his hand toward the person thus introduced.
"He is very welcome!"
Dr. Baxter pressed the cold hand between his.
"Brother in Christ! we should have met before. We shall meet again. In that safe world there are no crossed purposes or partings. There we shall know even as we are known—of one another and of the Master. You are very near the entrance upon that perfect life. I have been sent hither by our Lord to bid you, ' God speed!' on the short and easy journey, and to ask your blessing upon these, our children, who would walk after you, hand in hand. Is it still your wish that they should be married here beside you, before you go from their sight?"
"Yes; by all means!"
The emphasis was faint, yet perceptible, and he shut his clammy fingers feebly upon those Jessie slipped within them, as she obeyed Dr. Baxter's injunction to join her right hand with that of her betrothed. She felt their loose hold more plainly than she did the warm, strong grasp that signified loving protection, tenderest sympathy.
It was a strange, sad rite,—stranger and more melancholy than burials usually are. The bride's gaze never left the sunken face and closed eyes that rested among the pillows, and her assent to the interrogations put to her was so slight as to create a passing doubt in the mind of the catechist as to whether she had given any. The mountain storm burst overhead in thunder, wind, and rain, as the bridegroom spoke his reverent and stead-fast response, and when the benediction was pronounced, Jessie stooped to kiss her father, apparently forgetful that Roy's was the paramount right to the token of affection.
"Dear Papa! It is your little Jessie! I have done as you wished. Will you not bless me?"
The cry sounded in the ear deadened by the death-stupor as a faint and far-off call. Mr. Kirke's eyelids quivered without rising, and the muscles of the mouth were moved. Then, the gray calm settled down again upon his countenance.
"He must speak to me! I must be sure that he hears me—that he understands how I have obeyed him!" said Jessie, frantically. "He must !" to the physicians who advanced to the bedside with restoratives.
They were useless. The dying man was beyond the reach of human skill. The lips were parted, the throat did not contract. Dr. Winters shook his head despairingly and turned from his old friend and pastor, the untasted glass of brandy in his hand.
"He does not see or hear me!" cried the daughter, throwing up her arms in a passion of despair. "I did it for him, and he will never know it."
She sank to her knees beside the bed and buried her face in the coverings. Roy leaned over her, and whispered something the rest did not hear. He might as well have addressed her father with words of consolation. When he touched her to recall her attention, she shivered violently, but gave no other sign of consciousness of his presence.
"I am glad you are here, Mr. Fordham—-heartily rejoiced and greatly relieved," said Dr. Winters, as Roy attended him down the stairs. "Your wife needs very delicate and judicious treatment just now. Her whole nervous system is unstrung. I saw it in her manner and eye this forenoon. When the unnatural strain is relaxed, she will break down completely, I am afraid."
Mr. Kirke died at midnight. He had noticed no one, and said nothing since his feeble rejoinder to Dr. Baxter's query whether the marriage should proceed, until half an hour before he breathed his last, those about him saw a change in the face that, in stillness and beauty, resembled a fine Greek mask. Jessie perceived it first; was quick to take advantage of the tinge of color, the tremor of features.
"Papa!" she prayed, raising his head to a resting-place on her arm. "Can you hear me? If you can, kiss me."
The stiff lips moved under the pressure of hers, and a smile, ineffable in radiance and tenderness, remained when the kiss had been given.
"You do know me—do you not?" said his daughter, breathlessly. "Who is it that is speaking to you?"
All present heard the reply:
" Ginevra! "