Jessamine Part 27

"Next Spring we will set a root of jessamine outside," remarked Roy, when Orrin praised the infant creepers--ivy and pa.s.sion-flower--on the inside of the cas.e.m.e.nt.

The carpet was mosses, green, gray, and russet, specked with red-topped lichens; the walls were flushed with pink. Jessie's escritoire was in one corner, her work-stand in another. A reading-lamp, with its alabaster shade, was upon the centre-table, and a low lounging chair beside it. The picture of Jessie's mother hung over the mantel; Jessie's books strewed the stands, and were ranged in rows within a handsome bookcase at the back of the room.

Choice engravings were hung in good lights, and within the fireplace lay long, well-seasoned logs ready for lighting.

"Beauty's bower!" said Orrin, gazing about him with unqualified approbation. "Who would have given you credit for such a genius for furnis.h.i.+ng? For the individuality of your appointments shows that you are not indebted to the upholsterer for the charming effect. But perhaps you have worked under orders. Did Mrs. Fordham and her sister give you general directions?"

"None. I am happy to have the approval of a connoisseur," rejoined Roy, lightly. "I knew, of course, what Jessie would like, and have tried to please her. Upholsterers and _cartes blanches_ from papa, and the toils of magnificence are the luxuries (and nuisances) of men who marry heiresses. As perhaps you have discovered."

"Sagely guessed! I heard little besides millinery, dressmaking, and upholstery talk while in B----. Ponderous preparations, so it struck me, for such everyday events as marrying, giving in marriage, and going to housekeeping. I had come to the conclusion that I was anti-domestic in my proclivities, but a sight of this idyl of a home has staggered the belief. I am glad you are married, old fellow!"

clapping him on the shoulder. "I could not tell you in a month _how_ glad!"

"Don't begin, then!" Roy led the way to the library. "Else, not to be outdone, I must take at least a year in which to express my gratification at the event."

Orrin eyed him furtively while he affected to be engrossed in the delicate operation of lighting the cigar tendered by the host. Roy's clear, open brow, sunny smile, and the hearty ring of his voice were indubitable signs of the sincerity of his happiness. It was with a lighter spirit--I leave conscience out of the question--that his kinsman threw himself back in his comfortable chair, and prepared to enjoy the evening.

"The last of my _quasi_ widowerhood!" said Roy. "I wish it were the last of your bachelor days, Orrin!"

"_Ca viendra!_" returned the other, his cigar between his teeth.

"Next month is December."

"I hope your wife will take as kindly to me as mine does to you!"

pursued Roy. "And that I may, one day, have the opportunity to prove by services rendered her, my appreciation of the care you have taken of my interests in my absence."

"Don't speak of it, my dear boy!" said Orrin, hastily.

Even he colored slightly at the unintentional sarcasm. He coughed to emit the smoke that had gone down the wrong way, and this gave him time to rally his ideas. No harm had come of his innocent pastime.

Roy was none the wiser, and his bride had had the advantage of a new sensation in the development of her latent capacities for loving and suffering. She would be better and stronger all her life; her character would gain breadth and fibre for the emotion that had stirred the depths of her being. It was wholesome, if sharp, discipline--a sort of spiritual subsoil ploughing, without which she might never have developed aright. Women were a marvellous and an entertaining study. Their powers of craft and concealment were beyond man's ken or imitation. The most imprudently pa.s.sionate of them acted sometimes with circ.u.mspection that would put a Talleyrand to the blush. Jessie, mad and desperate as she was at her last interview with himself, had nevertheless reconsidered her resolution to reveal her inconstancy to her lawful lover, and judiciously judging that the Past was gone beyond recall, had taken up with the old love so soon as the new one was off. She could not have done better for all parties. "Scenes," except when sentimental and _en tete-a-tete_, were a vulgarism to be eschewed by refined people.

"Jack shall have Gill, Nought shall go ill."

he repeated, mentally, thus salving the smart caused by Roy's thanks. "Jessie and I will be capital friends and neighbors. She will like me none the less because she knows that, had she been possessed of the fair and fond Hester's wealth, her destiny would have been changed. She is too acute of perception not to comprehend that, in that case, my sense of what was due to her and myself would not have let me resign her, even to my honored cousin, here.

But what is, is best, I suppose.

"You have never met my Dulcinea, I believe?" he said aloud, both cigar and windpipe being in good working order by the time he reached this consolatory sequel.

"I have not had that pleasure. Jessie gave me a slight sketch of her--a mere outline, which I hope to fill up for myself, shortly, from life."

"Then," meditated the cool and candid bridegroom-elect, "my tow-headed divinity lied egregiously about that old affair! I must cross-examine her in earnest, and if my suspicion is correct, make her retract certain counts in her indictment against Jessie's husband. I owe him that much reparation. Since they are a wedded unit, things should go upon velvet so far as is consistent with the fact of human imperfection. I'll send the lovely Hester to make amends to Mrs. Fordham, some time. If I do not forget it."

He was in one of his gracefully indolent moods to-night, and did not hurry himself in speech.

"She is not handsome. You would not, I fear, consider her even pretty," he resumed, after a few lulling puffs, such as might be necessary to temper loverly exaggeration. "But she is a dear, affectionate, pliant little thing, and will make just the wife a _blase_ world citizen like myself needs. I hope--I think you will like her. But I don't expect you to see in her the peer of your glorious Jessie, however well she may suit me."

Roy, when left alone again, pondered this speech dissatisfiedly.

"I am not quite content with this match, nor with Orrin's tone. I had not looked for a lover's rhapsodies, knowing his critical taste in these matters, but he ought not to acknowledge or feel the need of apologies for his choice. I am afraid his love does not leave him as little to wish for and to fear, as mine does me."

He looked up at the portrait with a smile.

"But there is only one Jessie in the world, and she will be here to-morrow night."

Still standing before the picture, he made an involuntary gesture, as of folding something in his arms.

"My darling! soon to be my angel in the house! I think it would kill me to lose you now."

His sudden motion had struck a book from the corner of the table, exposing a letter that lay beneath. It was a foreign envelope, and had probably been given to the servant by the postman that afternoon, and placed there by her with the book on the top, for safe-keeping. An enclosure fell out as he opened the cover--a letter that had arrived in Heidelberg after he set out for home, said a line from a fellow-student in the University. The smile lingered lovingly about mouth and eyes, while he tore off the inner wrapper.

The superscription was Jessie's; the note the short and cold farewell she had indited after her parting with Orrin Wyllys, on the 6th of September.

"No harm done!" reiterated the affectionate kinsman, walking slowly along to his lodgings, under the pure moon. "I should have been sorry had she carried her threat into execution; spoiled her own prospects, and made Roy wretched. But I could find it in my heart to regret the witch even now that I am on the eve of beatification. The affair was interesting--most engaging while it lasted--had more cayenne and wine in it than this very lawful and eminently remunerative love-making. My 'la.s.sie wi' the lint-white locks,' says it is 'just the sweetest thing in the world.' _Peut etre!_

'An excellent piece of work, Madame Lady!

Would it were done!'"

CHAPTER XX.

Roy was at the depot Wednesday afternoon to meet his wife.

"You are not well, I am afraid!" she said, when they were in the carriage that was to convey them home.

"I am not sick, but I have had much to think of and to do, lately, and I may look somewhat jaded," he answered. "You left Eunice well, you say?"

"Quite well, thank you! You have overworked yourself in getting the house ready for me. You should have left that for me to do."

"It was not necessary. As it is, you will find much room for alteration and improvement, I doubt not. You were fortunate in meeting with a pleasant escort on your journey. Are you much fatigued?"

"No, but my head aches a little," turning her face to the window.

She was disappointed in her reception. The parting from Eunice had been a grievous trial; the journey filled with mournful thoughts of the past that now lay so very far behind her. In turning her back upon her parents' graves and her birthplace, she seemed to have parted company forever with the blithe girl who had been born and had grown up to woman's estate, careless and joyous as the swallows that had for a century built their nests in the belfry of the church-tower. She had almost forgotten how Jessie Kirke felt and acted. Yet she was thankful that in the midst of melancholy and dazement, her appointed way lay clear and open before her; that she had still a sure staff on which to lean,--the hope and resolve that she would do her duty bravely and well in the sphere for which her marriage-vow had set her apart. It was indicative of the generous temper and sound sense that never failed to a.s.sert themselves when the momentary tumult of pa.s.sion had pa.s.sed, which neither her faults nor the influence of the tempter had warped, that she had never, for one moment, blamed Roy for hurrying forward their marriage. They were "troth-plight," as her Scottish ancestors would have put it.

She had said, "If you insist upon the fulfilment of my promise, I will submit to your decision." And she had not said it idly. He had taken her at her word, as he had the right to do, and by that pledge she would abide.

Lonely and tired, the sight of Roy's face in the crowd of strangers upon the platform of the Hamilton station had cheered her heart like a cordial. She forgot that he was her husband; remembered him only as a n.o.ble and faithful friend in whose presence she would be no longer solitary and sad. She was even conscious of a proud sense of proprietors.h.i.+p in the fine-looking, dignified man who was the first to enter the car when it stopped,--a consciousness that flushed her cheeks faintly, and quickened her pulses, as she introduced him to the gentleman who had acted as her escort and heard his well-chosen words of acknowledgment for the favor done him. He had not kissed her then--she supposed because there were so many looking on; but after taking his place beside her in the carriage, he might surely tell her that her coming gave him joy; repeat something of the rapturous antic.i.p.ations that had overflowed his heart in writing his last letter, received by her the night before. His face was very pale, his eyes abstracted, his voice constrained. Anything more unlike the Roy she had known in Dundee could hardly be imagined, without changing the ident.i.ty of the man. It was not surprising that a qualm of home-sickness weakened her heroic resolutions; put to flight her dreams of forgetting her unhappiness in the sustained effort to be and do all he wished.

Roy saw the struggle and surmised, in part, the cause of it; but what could he say to a.s.suage or encourage? The caresses and fond words with which he had sought to console her in the earlier days of her desolation must, he now saw in the lurid light shed upon his honeymoon by that terrible letter, have aggravated her sufferings.

Professing to be her protector, he had played the part of a brutal ravisher; had torn her,--shrinking and crying out against the loathed union she felt would "be a sin--a fearful sin," from her free, happy girl-life, and bound her, soul and body, in fetters more hateful and enduring than manacles of steel. After the first shock of horror and of grief, he forgot the wrong he had sustained in his overmastering compa.s.sion for her. And he could not free her! Loving her better than he did his own happiness and life, he was powerless to ensure her peace of mind by restoring her to liberty. Had he been other than the true Christian and true man he was, the distracting anguish of that conviction would have driven him to madness and to suicide, as a sequel to the fearful vigil that followed the discovery of his real position.

Light came with the morning, and strength for the day. His course was plain--to mitigate the rigors of her fate by such kindly deeds as a brother might perform for the promotion of a sister's welfare; by abstaining from even such manifestations of affection as are a brother's right. There should be no formal explanation until she had recovered from the fatigue of her journey, and begun to feel at home in her new abode. Thus much he could and would do, and await the result.

"What a pretty, pretty house!" exclaimed Jessie, as the carriage drew up at the gate of a cottage on the southern slope of one of the hills on which the handsome town was built.

She had meant to praise his selection of a residence however ordinary its appearance, but her enthusiastic admiration was genuine.