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A less vain man than Mr. Wyllys would have been flattered by the effect produced upon the spiritless, faded creature, the mocking shadow of the old blithesome Jessie, by half an hour's talk with himself. A less patient man would have been chagrined by the discovery that his enumeration of the varied and substantial benefits that would accrue to her from the proposed visit to Mrs. Baxter, and the delicate skill with which he contrived to keep before her all the while the prospect of his society and guardianship, weighed but as thistle-down with the obtuse "love-sick girl," in comparison with the circumstance that Hamilton was Roy Fordham's home.
Orrin was surprised, and not agreeably, when her own words forced this astounding fact upon him.
"It will be the next best thing!" she said, dreamily, a happy smile touching her lips and kindling up her eyes. "I have heard him talk so much of the place and the people, that it will be like revisiting half-remembered scenes—renewing former acquaintanceships. You will show me all his favorite haunts, let me see the friends he values most highly—won't you? The ocean is narrower and quieter when I think of taking the walks and drives he likes best—which he has described to me over and over; of mingling with those who were his daily associates—who knew him before I did. Though I don't like very well to think of that "—interrupting herself with a laugh. "I feel as if nobody had the right. It seems to me that I cannot recollect when I did not know him."
She mused silently for some minutes—the tender light still trembling over her face. It was as if she had forgotten his presence, until a sudden thought turned her to him with an abrupt query.
"Mrs. Baxter knows nothing of—has heard no rumors?" in shy anxiety that appeared overstrained to one who had heard the loving soliloquy Orrin was prompt to decide was in very bad taste, even when the unconsidered listener was in the confidence of both parties.
"Of your engagement?" he said, with grave directness. "Hamilton is in profound ignorance on that subject. Roy knows how to keep his own counsel, and knowing it was his wish that your betrothal should remain secret, for the present, I have mentioned it to no one. You need be under no embarrassment on that score."
"Thank you."
Jessie was silent again, but the pause was filled with soberer thoughts. She began to fear lest she had been talking nonsense—been indiscreet and unmaidenly. Orrin kindly overlooked the lapse into selfish sentimentality, but she was ashamed that she had given him occasion for exercising forbearance on this subject. He noted, and with satisfaction, that she treated him to no more love rhapsodies that night; did not voluntarily name Roy in the ensuing dialogue.
"I am happy to learn that Mrs. Baxter is warm-hearted and sincere," she said, at the close of a searching catechism upon that lady's characteristics. "I was prepossessed in her favor, less by her letter, than because she loved my mother. My sister has been a dear and careful parent to me. You have seen what my father's fond indulgence is. But the core of my heart has ached for my mother—my own beautiful mother—ever since she died. I was not quite five years old, yet I recollect her as if I had kissed her for the last time, yesterday. My father had this oriel built to please her. I remember seeing her nowhere else until she was carried up to her death-bed. Her easy chair stood there"—pointing—"and her writing-desk beside it. When I could, by standing on tip-toe, just get my chin upon the window-sill, she would make me measure with a bit of ribbon how much the jessamine had grown in a week. She planted these vines and tended them as if they had been her children. She said to me, more than once or twice, that she hoped I would be like my name-flower when I grew up—brave, sweet, faithful—telling how one had for fifty years curtained the porch of the house in which she was born, and how dearly she loved it. She made me her companion, and, in some sort, her confidante by the time I could talk plainly, and very proud I was of the distinction. She used to take me upon her lap, or hold me closely in her arms as she lay on her lounge in the twilight, and repeat stories of her Southern home; sing ballads so sweetly sad that I could not help crying quietly while I listened—very quietly, for fear she should hear me, and stop."
It was twilight by this time. The mountain-crown was dusky as the plain; the elm-trees in the church-yard were swaying in the bleak wind that bowed the garden-shrubbery, and swept the long grass above neglected graves into brown waves. The naked, snake-like sprays of the creepers tapped monotonously against the window-panes. Orrin had healthy nerves, but as he looked through the glooming air at the shaft, standing like a sheeted ghost at the head of Mr. Kirke's second wife, and heard in the stillness of the place and hour, the sobbing sighs of the pine boughs, he wished Jessie had chosen some other hour and spot for her weird reminiscence than the November gloaming and this haunted recess.
She was leaning back in her chair, her hands crossed, her face upraised to the sky:
"I have a perfect picture of her before me, at this moment," she went on, presently. "She had large, soft eyes, and very dark hair. She was always pale, and she never laughed. But her smile was my reward when I was good, as her kiss was the cure for every hurt. Nobody else can ever tell me such wonderful tales. Some were in prose, many in verse, more beautiful to my apprehension than any poetry I have read since. This was on her well days—my white days! when the writing-desk would, if I requested, be supplanted by the color-box and pencils, and we passed whole hours together—she and I—she sketching or painting to illustrate anecdote and fairy story, I perched in my high chair at her side, looking on in rapt delight. I believe that I was a troublesome child—noisy, wayward, passionate—to everybody else in the house. I kept away from her of my own accord in my stormy or sulky fits. The earliest lesson taught me by my father was, that 'poor, sick mamma must not be disturbed.' I suppose it was on account of her feeble health that he always heard my prayers, put me to bed at night, and nursed me in my infant sicknesses. It was he who came to my crib in the dim light of one terrible January morning, and told me that she was in Heaven. I did not understand exactly what that meant, but I gathered that it was something very dreadful from the sight of his emotion. I have never seen him weep except that once. I had sprung from my pillow to sob out my childish grief in his arms. He pressed me to his bosom until I could scarcely breathe, and said, over and over, in a strange undertone that terrified me more than did the drip of the hot tears over my face—'Ginevra's baby! Ginevra's baby!' Baby though I was, the scene is graven upon my memory for life."
The wind shook the casement, and the bare sprays tapped more impatiently upon the glass, as the spirit of the dead mother might have signalled her child to let her in.
"Mrs. Baxter will never weary of talking with you upon a theme so dear to you both," said Orrin, shaking off the superstitious fancy.
Jessie was aroused to livelier speech by the suggestion.
"You have heard her speak of my mother, then?"
"Yes, but before I suspected the identity of the 'Ginevra' who was her adopted sister, with your father's wife. By a singular mischance, she never named him to me until one day last week, when she asked if I knew him—and you."
He had equivocated so adroitly as to bar cross-examination, he hoped, but Jessie's curiosity was not easily parried.
"Was that before or after she wrote to me?"
"Probably afterward, for she told me that the sight of a keepsake given her by your mother had set her to thinking of their early and close intimacy, and that she had 'obeyed the impulse which bade her make inquiries about you, and ask you to visit her.' Those were her words, as nearly as I can recall them. She expresses herself warmly—but not, I honestly believe, more warmly than she feels."
"I would not go to Hamilton had you recalled to her mind the fact of my existence. If love for her lost friend did not prompt her to seek me out, I would not owe my recognition to the recommendation of another. No! not to yours!"
Had he not read aright her sturdy pride, her jealousy for her mother's memory and her father's dignity? With what wise pre-vision he had detected the danger, and, by his caution to Mrs. Baxter, averted it!
Eunice, the beryl-eyed, also had her confidential talk with Mr. Wyllys that night.
"Father," she said, after supper, as he tarried, for an instant, in the dining-room. "I should like to speak with Mr. Wyllys for ten minutes when Jessie is not by. Can you contrive to call her out of the parlor, by and by?"
"Certainly, my daughter," he replied, without curiosity or hesitation.
Jessie was his pride and darling—very beautiful and gifted in his eyes. He lavished upon her the wealth of a heart that had never known its own depth until he met her mother. The first Mrs. Kirke was the daughter of one of his college-professors, a little older than himself, very amiable, very discreet, and the best housekeeper in the parish. He owed much to her exemplary management since, relieved from cares domestic and pecuniary, he could devote much time, bring unjaded energies, and a free mind to the prosecution of the studies he loved so well. Without in the least entering into his enthusiasm in scholastic research, she laid down as one of the rules of her orderly household, that his study was forbidden ground to heedless or intrusive feet; guarded him when he had entered the sanctum, and shut the door between him and the living, active world—as vigilantly as she would have watched and defended hid treasure. He was "about his business," in her phrase, and to her just, practical ideas of duty and life it was but right that people should be allowed to follow their lawful and allotted callings without molestation. She did not particularly enjoy her husband's sermons, but he found her bread, butter, and cake always to his taste. He was an accomplished linguist, and would have been glad to have one under his own roof, with whom he could converse in Italian, German, or French. She had, as his correct ear continually reminded him, but an imperfect acquaintance with her vernacular, according to classical standards. But her coffee was fragrant, clear, and strong; while a whiff of her Young Hyson was as the scent of a zephyr that had wandered over acres of flowering tea-plants, and made the wishy-washy, or over-boiled decoctions of other housewives seem but weedy and rank abominations. If the refined and sensitive young pastor kept within his own breast many thoughts, dreams, and regrets he would fain have shared with a congenial mate, it should have been a compensation that the shirt-front covering the sealed repository of these was snowy and glossy as a bran-new tomb-stone; that the heels of his socks were always run before they went on his feet, and that in the years of their wedded life he never found "a button off." Mr. Kirke believed fully all his parishioners said when they assured him that he had a pattern wife, and that he ought to take good care of her, since he would never find another like her. She worked steadily and diligently—she was never "fussy"—up to the day on which Eunice's little brother was born. "Overdid herself," said doctor and gossips, while her husband blamed himself bitterly for not having taken thought to spare her who had served him to the death. The death that came so swiftly and easily, she had time for neither parting word nor kiss.
"I am tired, I believe," she murmured to the nurse. Unused to complain, she said it deprecatingly even in mortal weakness. "Do you think that I might just take a little nap? If Mr. Kirke should want for anything, don't hesitate to wake me at once." With that she turned her face to the wall and died—"fell asleep," said her head-stone. Her baby was buried with her.
This was Eunice's mother. Four years after the decease, the widower met Ginevra Lanneau at a watering-place whither he had gone for health, and she for distraction from certain troublesome memories. Whatever may have been her faults and weaknesses; whatever the motives for her marriage and the causes of her subsequent invalidism and melancholy, this good man had worshipped her with entireness of devotion; had mourned her with an intensity of anguish that bleached his locks; bent his stately form toward the earth that had swallowed up his idol; deafened him to the calls of ambition that urged him to leave a seclusion endeared to him as her home and burial-place.
But for all this, Eunice was his right hand, in Parsonage and in parish. He "really would have no excuse for a third marriage," was a common saying in the neighborhood—"with such a daughter to keep his house and 'do for him.'" If the spirit of the mother were permitted to watch her child's daily walk and conversation, it must have heightened her beatitude to be thus assured that "Mr. Kirke" was not likely, while Eunice lived, "to want for anything." Her father's trust in her discretion was implicit, and when she unblushingly asked him to "contrive" to secure for her a tête-à-tête with a young and attractive man, he made no demur, formed no conjectures. Nor did he doubt that the matter of her communication to Mr. Wyllys was, in some way, essential to Jessie's weal. The first and abiding thought with both was "the child," he had yet made up his mind to part with for a little while.
Eunice was sewing by the shaded parlor lamp. Wyllys, while he talked to both sisters, looked quite as often at her as at Jessie. He was in the mood for enjoying himself, and his surroundings were propitious. He had had an excellent supper. Eunice had inherited her mother's taste and skill in the domestic department. Her dainty cookery would have done credit to a salaried chef , said Mr. Wyllys, than whom there were few better judges of all that pertained to the gratifications of the flesh. A wood fire burned busily and gayly upon the castellated fire-dogs of shining brass that flashed back the illumination from a hundred curves and points. There was a breath of tea-roses and mignonette in the air, for the shelf running around the inside of the oriel was filled with plants; crimson curtains had taken the place of muslin, at the other windows. A November gale—"a dry storm"—was rising without. It was pleasant, while hearkening to its blustering, to bethink himself that he had not to breast it in a tramp back to the hotel, he having accepted Mr. Kirke's invitation to sleep at the parsonage. The recollection of his disagreeable journey, now that he was rested, warmed, and filled, was another element in his present content. The old-fashioned parlor with its quaint and massive furniture, were more to his liking than the polish and glow of the modern "suite of rooms," every prosperous mechanic's wife now regards as one of the necessaries of life. From his leisurely and approving survey of the apartment, his eyes came back to dwell longest upon Eunice.
She wore a brown merino, that made no noise when she moved, and fell in classic folds about her as she sat in her straight-backed chair. A knot of blue ribbon joined a crimped ruffle above the high-necked dress, and frills of the same material were at her wrists. The light, strained through the ground-glass shade, made her skin seem fair and fresh as that of a little child, while it did not blur the clear chiselling of her features. Her hands were shapely, her motions replete with quiet grace. The high-bred lady, stainless in deed as single in motive, spoke in the fearless, tranquil eyes and composed demeanor.
"She rests me!" said the connoisseur in womanly loveliness, to his appreciative self. "If I were obliged to marry either, I am not sure she would not suit me better than this restless gypsy, who keeps one perpetually upon the qui vive by her sharp interrogations, her repartee, and variable moods. To secure the perfection of comfort, a man should be able to flirt with one all day, and come home at evening to recover from his dazed feverishness in the cool semi-twilight of the other's presence. I must find out, some day, if she has ever been in love. I think not. There is a dewy firmness in the texture of her heart that seldom outlasts the fires of even a mild passion—such a timid flame as the pastor's daughter might conscientiously feel for some pious under-shepherd or amorous evangelist."
At this precise instant, Jessie, who had been flitting restlessly about the room, picking dead leaves from the geraniums, and seed-vessels from verbenas and mignonette, tossing them, one at a time, into the fire, and pensively watching the blaze feed upon them; parting the curtains to press her face against the glass "to see whether it rained," stopping once in a while to lean on her sister's chair and address a question to her or Orrin—obeyed her father's summons to his study. The two left at the fireside, followed her to the door with their eyes, then these met. Eunice answered the questioning of Orrin's.
"She is over-excited to-night. But there is a nervous restlessness about her of late that makes me anxious. I hope much for her from the proposed change of air and scene."
She laid aside her work, neatly folded; put scissors and thimble in their cases, and the cases into her work-box, and calmly confronted her companion.
"Mr. Wyllys, I wish to say a word to you respecting my sister's antecedents before she goes to Mrs. Baxter."
Without a symptom of surprise, he bowed, and exchanged his seat for one near the stand by which she sat. In this one action, he accepted her confidence, and put his services at her disposal should she desire them.
"From the descriptions of this lady, given by yourself and my father, I infer that she is affectionate and voluble. She will be likely to impart to Jessie all she knows of her mother's history, and question her concerning her own childish recollections. I have thought it best that you should hear the truth upon a subject that is rarely alluded to in our family. My father talked freely of it with Mr. Fordham before giving his sanction to his engagement with Jessie; but he has not spoken of it to me in many years—never to my sister. Should a garbled version of a story which is sad enough in itself, reach her ears, it would distress and bewilder her if there were no one near who could correct the mis-statement. My stepmother never recovered the natural tone of her health and spirits after my sister's birth. Her malady took the form of a gentle melancholy, indifference to domestic and neighborhood interests, varied at times by fits of wild weeping, so violent that she was confined to her couch with headache and debility for several days after each. She talked rationally when drawn into conversation, expressing herself upon every topic discussed with clearness and intelligence; but the spring of action was gone. She never complained of bodily pain; made no unreasonable demands upon the time and patience of those about her. Nor did she require to be humored and amused as is the way of most sufferers from confirmed hysteria. She read much and wrote more, burning her manuscripts, however, as fast as they were finished. She drew, too, rapidly and well, and upon these occupations expended what little energy of mind and body remained to her after the illness that had nearly cost her her life. We guarded her from intrusion and uncharitable remark as far as we could. My nurse, an elderly widow, was then alive, and was our housekeeper, her daughter being our only other servant. How the report originated, I cannot say—probably from some indiscreet remark let fall by this daughter, who has now a home of her own some miles away—but within the year, a rumor has been brought to me that Jessie's mother died a lunatic. It is possible Mrs. Baxter has likewise heard such. If she has, and should be so imprudent as to repeat it to you, so unfeeling as to hint it to the daughter of that unhappy lady, may I rely upon you to tell my sister the exact truth? My stepmother lived and died a sane woman—as sane as I am this moment. Jessie is impressible and ardent. Her love for her mother is a passion. It would nearly kill her if this slander were retailed to her."
She had made her little speech; summed up the case, and offered her appeal with such simplicity, such deft moderation, as challenged the lawyer's admiration. His reply was directly to the purpose.
"You may depend upon me, Miss Kirke. I hope, with you, that I shall never be called upon to fulfil the trust with which you have honored me. I am confident that Mrs. Baxter is ignorant of the particulars of her cousin's ill-health. She has spoken to me with apparent frankness of her early life—of her marriage, and the seclusion that followed it."
"For which she blames my father!" interrupted Eunice, red indignation staining her fair face. "Because he would not subject his wife to the indifferent or pitying observation of those who had been the associates of her brilliant girlhood; because he indulged her longing for solitude and quiet; guarded her sedulously and tenderly from all that could tax and jar upon her tortured nerves—he fell under their ban! He gave me some letters to examine and file—or burn, if I thought fit—ten years ago. Among them I found one from Mrs. Baxter—one from another cousin of Ginevra Lanneau. They were written to him, just after her death. Both reproached him—Mrs. Baxter (then Miss Jane Lanneau) gently, the other harshly, for separating his young wife from her friends and 'immersing her in a savage solitude, where, cut off from all congenial associations, a nature so refined as hers could not but pine itself to death.' I do not quote from Mrs. Baxter. If she had upbraided the best of men and most loving of husbands in these terms, Jessie should never enter her house, unless under my protest."
"You are right. But, believe me, she will be safe and happy in Mrs. Baxter's care. Her goodness of heart is undeniable; her impulses are amiable, and she is, moreover, a woman of sound principles and genuine piety. She is vain, but never unkind or censorious. She always reminds me of the pretty bas bleu immortalized by the 'Spectator'—or is it the 'Tattler'? 'When'—says the essayist—'she would look languishing, there is a fine thing to be said at the same time that spoils all. Thus, the unhappy Merab, although a wit and a beauty, hath not the credit of being either, and all because she would be both.' Our Hamilton Merab has sterling traits, nevertheless, and is incapable of using the language you have quoted. No one but a vulgar idiot could apply it to Mr. Kirke. The writer had, I take it, never seen him. You have every reason to be proud of your father, Miss Eunice. He is that best work of the Creator—a Christian gentleman,—I say it without reverence,—a prince of the blood royal."
The golden lights glanced up from the dark wells of her eyes; her smile was grateful and exultant.
"Thank you! I know you mean what you say, and it is but the truth."
Neither spoke for a brief space. The soughing of the pine-tree was annoyingly continuous to Orrin's ear; the fire-flashes were silent. He tried to forget the vexing sound in remarking that Eunice's bent profile showed against the dark wood of the high, carved mantel, clear and fine as a cameo cutting, but it would be heard.
"You were very young at the time of your step-mother's death to be your father's assistant and co-adviser," he said, to prevent an awkward break in their talk. "I am surprised at the accuracy of your recollections."
"I was fifteen. The elder daughter of a family early learns to assume and to bear domestic cares; is more mature at the same age than are those who come after her. I remember my own mother, who died eleven years earlier than did Jessie's. I was thirty last month."
She picked up her sewing without a flutter or a blush, and Orrin, not daring to offer her the flimsy compliment of incredulity he would have paid another woman who had volunteered a confession disparaging to her personal charms, was still casting about in his mind for words that should praise, yet not offend, when his opportunity was lost through Jessie's return to the room.