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Mrs. Orrin Wyllys had "run in very sociably" to chat for an hour with her dear cousin, Mrs. Fordham.
"Orrin brought me to the door," she said, divesting herself of her fur cloak, and untying the coquettish hood that half covered her head. "I knew Mr. Fordham would be at the meeting in the Town Hall. Orrin promised to meet him there. He can't bear for me to be alone, so he offered to leave me to a comfortable dish of gossip with you while he attended to the interests of the 'dear people.' Of course, it is very gratifying to have one's husband so popular, but I often tell Orrin that I don't see one-tenth nor one-hundredth part as much of him as I ought to. I don't believe there is another man in the United States who is so run after. Not that this surprises me," tittering and trying to blush. "I, of all people alive, ought to have most charity with such devotion. It is a consolation to be assured that he regrets these numerous draughts upon his time as much as I do, and I am not disposed to be jealous. I do think mutual confidence is just the sweetest thing in the world. Between married lovers, I mean. What are you so busy about?"
Jessie's work-basket was heaped with calico and flannel.
"Making clothes for some poor children," she answered. "If you will excuse me, I will go on with my work, as the garments are sadly needed."
"Certainly! I shall be more at my ease if you do not seem to mind my being here. You are the most industrious woman I know. It positively fatigues one to watch you. I suppose, though, there is everything in being trained to such habits from childhood. Now, I haven't a thing to do from morning to night, which is lucky, for I have always been so carefully waited upon from my cradle up to the present hour, when my darling husband will hardly let me put my foot to the ground without his assistance. You can't imagine how aux petits soins he is in the retirement of our sweet, sweet home! True, the house is large, preposterously large—as I told my dear, indulgent father when he bought it. And as Orrin is fond of style, and I have always been used to it, we keep up a ridiculous establishment when one considers the size of the family. Now, I dare say, you keep but two or three women-servants, and maybe no man at all, as you have no carriage of your own?"
"Phoebe is our only servant," said Jessie, unperturbed at having to state the mortifying fact with which Mrs. Wyllys was already acquainted.
"Is it possible!" looking curiously about her through her gold eye-glass. "Yet everything about your little place is as neat as a pin. What a valuable creature she must be! I declare I must tell Orrin that! 'Five servants to wait upon two people, my love!' I said to him this very evening. 'It is frightful extravagance!' But he insists that I shall be relieved from all drudgery, knowing how delicately I have been reared. If I were fond of work, I should be puzzled how to employ myself at the hours when there are no visitors. When I am ennuyée in Orrin's absence, I have only to run across the street to my uncle's, Judge Provost's, to find plenty of society. What a houseful of children they have! I told Orrin yesterday, that it was lucky he never fancied Jeannie Provost (who, to whisper a secret, was just perfectly crazy after him !) My uncle has a large fortune, but it will be cut up by the rule of long division at his death. How fast you sew! Your protégés are some of your Dundee parishioners, I suppose?" condescendingly to the woman of low estate.
"No. The few poor there are so well cared for by their neighbors as not to require my help. This is work allotted me by the Managers of the Hamilton Charitable Society. There is much suffering here this winter."
"Ah!" indifferently. "Orrin doesn't approve of my attending these Women's Societies. He says it would unsex me—that he so admires my thorough womanliness! And, after all, when people can give money to the collectors and visitors and agents, and all that kind of nuisance, there is no use in doing anything else. The demands upon us in the name of charity, are just perfectly awful ! I said to Orrin—dear, generous soul! this very morning—'My sweet love, you must positively bear in mind that we are not quite made of money!'"
A photograph upon a handsome easel attracted her attention, and the eye-glass was on duty.
"Is that a fancy picture, or a portrait?"
"It is a likeness of my sister."
"Indeed! Is she single or married? What is her name?"
"Her name is Eunice Kirke."
"Ah! a spinster! She is a very nice-looking person! As you were saying, the winter is severe! But the skating and sleighing are superb! I was on the ice several times last week with Orrin. He's such a splendid skater: I am so proud to be seen with him! I suppose you must have heard how much attention we attract whenever we appear?"
"I see very little of general society, this winter," Jessie politely evaded the inquiry. "I am not in the way of hearing about gay assemblies of any kind."
"Oh, yes! I forgot you were wearing black. But you shouldn't bury yourself too much, even to keep your house in this lovely order. I have seen you out driving several times with Mrs. Baxter, and said to Orrin what a convenience you must find her carriage. And while I think of it, do let me call by for you some day in the sleigh! Orrin and I have spoken of doing it, scores of times, but to confess the truth, we are just a little selfish! We so enjoy riding together, that we neglect our friends. Before I married Orrin, some officious friends advised me not to expect much attention from him after the wedding, 'because he was a ladies' man.' Such were notoriously indifferent to their wives' comfort, I was informed. Even my cousin—the Attorney-general's lady—said to me, 'My dear Hester! Mr. Wyllys is charming—but I am afraid he is too charming to take kindly to domesticity!' I nearly cried myself sick! But I turned a deaf ear to the croakers, and obeyed the dictates of my own heart. Now, I am reaping the reward of my wise action. It may sound boastful in me, but I don't believe my Orrin has his equal as a husband in the universe. His devotion to me is miraculous. I understand that we have the reputation of being the most love-sick couple in town, but I don't care! Let those that laugh win—and I have won! The women try to ridicule us because they are envious. It is not for me to say why the men do it!" A giggle and a violent sidewise toss of the head. "The worst they can say is, that we are more in love with one another now, than we were before our marriage. It is true, and we glory in it. My only fear is, that my darling husband may become too domestic in his perfect content with his wife and his home. It is very sweet and beautiful in him, but I often force him to go abroad, both with, and without me, to counteract this tendency."
Jessie stitched on diligently, with a half smile the visitor mistook for pleased interest in her theme, when it was in reality, made up of amusement and contempt. She could have had no surer evidence of how completely she had outgrown girlish foibles and unworthy rivalries; how firmly established she was upon her new plane of principle, reasoning, and views, than the equanimity with which she suffered Hester's patronage and open exultation over herself. Her contemptuous amusement in retrospection, embraced the would-be belle, who, although "nothing but a poor minister's daughter," had vied with the heiress in style and popularity. She even had a passing thought of ridicule for the memory of the dark-green walking dress, trimmed with fur, and the sweeping green plume. Such paltry contests as they looked to her now! such an insignificant opponent was this brainless, conceited creature before her!
Her boasting Mrs. Fordham valued at its true worth. Through Mrs. Baxter she had learned that the exactions, caressings, and braggadocio of Wyllys's bride made him the laughing stock of his associates. Her fortune was settled upon herself in terms that put it beyond his management, and his graceful insouciance had occasionally proved insufficient to cover his chagrin at her unsparing use of the power this arrangement gave her. Elated to rapture at her success in securing him, she paraded their mutual affection ad nauseam in whatever company they entered; people said, dragged him abroad against his will in order to do this. In the large circle of her husband's acquaintances, she was received with a degree of distinction, she chose to believe was homage to her charms and worth, and superadded to the egregious vanity and pretension of the heiress, her complacency in the dignity of the married woman was ludicrous beyond description.
She was arrayed to-night in a blue Irish poplin, bordered on overskirt, sleeves and basque with ermine; there were diamonds in her ears, upon her fingers, and clustered in her brooch, and artificial flowers in her hair.
"How I envy you for the easy time you have with your dress;" she remarked, incidentally to Jessie. "That is the only advantage one has in wearing mourning. You cannot imagine what a deal of time and labor I must expend upon my toilette. Orrin is even harder to please in these matters than I am. If he had his way I should always be in full dress."
Her voice had always upon Jessie a peculiar and unpleasant effect, akin to that produced by the touch of some viscid substance. But she was Mrs. Orrin Wyllys. This was the end of his "dream of fair women!" to become the petted henchman of a homely, selfish, arbitrary, silly, and wealthy wife.
"How can you endure to touch that coarse work?" was her next essay, with a gesture of her be-ringed fingers like filliping off an obnoxious insect. "Why, that is a flannel petticoat—isn't it?"
"Yes."
"Does Mr. Fordham ever catch you at that sort of sewing?"
"Sometimes."
Jessie had her quiet little smile of satisfaction at the thought of the delightful evenings she had had since this task was commenced, for Roy read aloud to her while she sewed.
"I am astonished he tolerates it! Orrin is so fastidious; has such an exalted appreciation of my refinement, that I wouldn't dare let him see me handle such a garment. I think the more careful we are to maintain a certain degree of modest reserve in the presence of our husbands, the more we shrink from all things common and unclean, the better they will love us. I dread lowering myself to the level of a commonplace woman in my beloved Orrin's eyes; would keep myself his divinity while I can. But I know I am an exception in this respect, that with most married couples, disenchantment comes with the wane of the honeymoon."
Jessie understood the thrust conveyed in the borrowed phrases, enunciated with monkey-like gravity. She had had others like it from the same source. The narrow soul and heart of the speaker had never let her forgive Mrs. Fordham for having once played in her sight the part of chief favorite upon Orrin's list of belles. He had glossed over the circumstance of his pointed attentions to the country girl, by representing her relations to his cousin; had sworn sounding oaths, more loud than deep, that he had never whispered to her of love—and his wife listened and disbelieved. At any rate, the Hamilton wiseacres gave the poorer woman the credit of the conquest, and the knowledge of this was the Banquo at Hester's coronation-feast.
"But you and our good cousin Roy are such awfully practical people!" ran on the chatterer. "I have told Orrin twenty times that I didn't believe your husband kissed you once a week. I should be disconsolate if mine did not kiss me whenever he went out and came in—not to mention dozens of times besides. However, as my blessed, charitable old love says, people differ wonderfully in temperament. Now, we are so ardent!"
"As you say, diversity of temperament accounts for much that seems singular in action," remarked Jessie, composedly.
There was a strange aching at her heart as she said it. Looking at the flat, flaccid visage of her interlocutor, she would have declared it to be impossible for her to wound her by this inane twaddle, peppered with weak spite. Yet she had set a nerve ajar.
"If I had a husband—"the "practical" woman was saying to herself—"his kisses would be too dear and sacred to be counted over and boasted of to others. If I had a husband! Heaven help me! I have none!"
The china-blue eyes of the shallow pate over there would have glittered with malicious delight in her own shrewdness, had she guessed how near to the truth was her description of the external intercourse of those whom the church and the world named as one.
"It is awfully nice to be married!" she rattled on, growing more and more confidential. "There is such solid comfort in the reflection that your destiny is accomplished. No more need for anxiety and setting one's cap, and all that. I shall never forget the delicious peace that filled my whole soul when I first heard myself called 'Mrs. Wyllys!' when I appreciated that the irrevocable step was taken. Still, it seems very sudden. It is just a year since I heard Orrin spoken of as your beau—a funny mistake, as you know, but I didn't then. Oh! how angry I was! for I had determined, even then, that he should fall in love with me. Maybe you recollect the time? It was one day when we were playing billiards at Judge Provost's, and somebody—Fanny, I believe—said he was your teacher. Afterward, the girls began talking about Mr. Fordham's attentions to another young lady—never supposing that he was engaged to you all the time. By the way—did I ever tell you that my dear, upright, kind-hearted husband charged me to mention to you that that was all a foolish mistake?"
"What was a mistake?"
Jessie looked up, arresting the swift, even motion of her fingers.
"Why, the story of Mr. Fordham's engagement to Maria Dunn, a young lady of our city."
"I recollect that you stated it as a fact," returned Jessie, pointedly. "She was an intimate friend of yours, you said, and that you had the tale directly from her. You said, moreover, that Mr. Fordham had called upon you, in company with her."
Hester's thin skin was mottled with mulberry.
"Well, yes! we were a good deal together, at one time, and she certainly did lead me to believe that Mr. Fordham was in love with her—now I come to think of it. I have forgotten the exact circumstances, but there was some talk about it and she did all she could to excite sympathy, until she took a fancy to marry another man. A miserably poor match she made—a clerk upon a salary of two thousand dollars! and her father with seven children! Then , she vowed there had never been any attachment between herself and Mr. Fordham. She was related to the friends he was visiting, and he happened to act as her escort once or twice. For my part, I am sure he never gave her reason to think that he cared a rush for her. She was one of those girls who are always running after the men, and fancy that every gentleman who looks at them is going to propose on the spot. If there is one creature whom I despise above all others, it is a woman who thinks marriage the chief end of her existence. I really thought I had spoken to you about this, long ago. Dear Orrin told me to do it, just after we were married. He said you might allude to the affair in talking with Mr. Fordham, and I might be drawn into a libel-suit or fuss of some kind. I can't see how I came to forget it—I am usually so particular in following his advice!"
Jessie gathered nothing intelligible from the monologue after this. The gleam of her needle was a dull spark before her eyes, and the viscid drawl had some vague association in her mind with the slimy trail of a snake. Once, the slender steel broke between her fingers. Twice she understood, from the other's interrogative intonation that she waited a reply, and she supplied one at random.
A sharp thought aroused her at last, to put a question in her turn.
"You say Mr. Wyllys told you to correct the unfavorable impression he fancied this story might have produced upon my mind. When did he first refer to the subject?"
"O, for that matter, he asked me about it before we were engaged. And, wasn't I properly frightened when I found you had told tales out of school? Of course, I made as light of it as possible, and when he paid his first visit to B——, I set it all straight by telling him I was certain it was a fabrication. I had had reasons for doubting Maria's veracity and honor in other respects. Would you believe it? The girl actually tried to attract Orrin's notice, after she knew he was engaged to ME !"
Jessie had no means of determining how much, or how little truth there was in this statement. It mattered nothing to her who had been the more culpable in the deception practised upon her—the intriguing husband, or the foolish wife. It was probable both had prevaricated grossly and maliciously. It was certain that they had together wrought her great and irreparable harm. The long-delayed explanation was worse than useless. The one maligned by the mischievous gossip had been cast off, and alienated. She should never have the courage to confess the whole wrong to him now.
Unless—