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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.