Jessamine Part 31

"His relations should be yours, if the partners.h.i.+p be in good faith, and on equal terms."

"That is for him to decide!" answered she, precisely as before.

"Thank you! I do not s.h.i.+rk the responsibility," said Roy putting himself in the breach as usual, when he saw her non-plussed or disturbed. "Another sip of nectar, Orrin, before you breast the storm?"

A wry face was the response, and the most fascinating man in Hamilton bowed himself out. As he drew the door to after him, he glanced across the hall. The room Roy had showed him as his was opposite, and the door open. There was fire in that grate also; a lady's sewing-chair in front of it, and a work-box he recognized as Jessie's on the small table beside it. On the back of the chair hung a linen ap.r.o.n, with pockets, such as he had seen her wear when engaged in household tasks in Dundee, or gardening. He guessed directly that she had stopped in there to lay it off when she brought up the gargle. That this was her apartment, he was sure, when another step revealed a bureau with a ladies' dressing-case open upon it.

"Separate apartments!" he mused, picking his steps lightly down the cottage stairs. "Very unsentimental! Very un-American! decidedly independent and jolly. But, in this case, what is the meaning of it?"

He believed he had the clue to the mystery before he inserted his latch-key in the door of his--or his wife's--house. Jessie Fordham could not forget that Jessie Kirke had loved him. The decent show of conjugal felicity he had witnessed that day was a hollow crust below which the lava still surged and seethed. Jessie was more faithful to the one great pa.s.sion of her life, and less philosophical than he had been ready to believe. Her scrupulous avoidance of him whenever this could be done without awakening suspicion; the half bitter retorts that fell now and then from the lips she would train to the utterance of conventional lies; the indignant sparkle of the eyes that answered the searching appeal of his--what were all these but the ill-concealed tokens of an attachment that had so inwrought itself with the fibres of heart and being as to defy her strenuous attempts to pluck it forth, or keep it out of sight. It was a revelation to him, and a flattering one--one that merited serious consideration.

The devil gat hold of him in that hour; sifted him as wheat, bringing all that was base in his nature uppermost. Heretofore, he had shunned everything that could secure for him the reputation of a _cicisbeo_. When a woman was once married, she became an object of indifference to him. He accounted the pursuit of such, a hazardous and flavorless exhibition of Lothario-ism which the refined age should frown down. He was not a _gourmand_ or libertine, he had often proudly a.s.serted to himself. Pleasures of that stamp he left to men of grosser tastes and coa.r.s.er grain. He had meant to allow his cousin all the domestic peace which should honestly fall to his share, and to cultivate amicable relations with his cousin-in-law--Roy's wife, who had given conclusive evidence of intelligent appreciation of himself.

But if Jessie were unhappy; not on terms with her respectable husband, cleverly as both dissembled--if Jessie still loved him--

"_C'est une autre chose!_" he muttered between his teeth, and complacently knocking the snow off his boots upon the marble steps of his "mansion."

His most heartless propositions always sought cover in the facile foreign tongue.

A writer in the last generation defined an egotist to be "One who would burn down his neighbor's house to boil an egg for himself."

Orrin Wyllys was an Egotist.

CHAPTER XXII.

The snow-storm waxed furious as the day wore on.

Jessie unclosed the blinds of the windows opposite the bed, that Roy might see it in all its might and beauty.

"It is a foot deep in the street," she said. "The evergreens in the Campus are loaded; the firs and junipers are like enormous sugar-loaves, and some of the slighter trees--cedar and arbor-vitae--are bowed nearly double. There is one"--laughing with almost her olden glee--"the ambitious arbor-vitae near the east gate, which you said last Sunday, 'carried too much sail aloft for a gale,' whose crown not only touches the ground, but is frozen there, while the roots hold firm. I wish you could see it! It reminds me of the poor lady who, in her rage to be ultra-fas.h.i.+onable, had her hair dressed very _a la Chinoise_,--dragged up so high and twisted so tightly on the back of her head, that she could not get her heels to the floor. I do enjoy a grand old-fas.h.i.+oned snow-storm! None of the petulant flurries with swirling flakes, that spend their strength in an hour, but such a tempest as this, that does not abate under a day and a night. One has such a delicious feeling of home comfort and seclusion--the almost certainty that strangers will not intermeddle with fireside joys and interests while the household is shut in--I was about to say--tucked in snugly by the great white veil."

Roy liked to hear her talk. Her girlish prattle was more charming to him than the profoundest disquisitions of scholars, or the brilliant repartee of literary coteries. Aware of this, and that part of her nursely duty was to amuse the patient; ignorant that his heart was leaping with a new-born hope, so sweet and sudden that his head whirled dizzily under its influence, and the world took on rarest robes of beauty, she rambled on, her eyes bent upon the driving fleeces without. She had never been handsomer than now. Every trace of the shock that had prostrated nervous forces and reason, three months before, was gone from figure and countenance, while she thought only of gratifying her companion and her own fancy for a wild, winter day. Not dreaming of the impa.s.sioned gaze that dwelt upon her, she stood in an att.i.tude of careless grace, a half smile playing about her mouth.

"As she used to stand in the oriel, at sunset!" thought Roy, with an unheard sigh. "Is all that, then,

"'The tender grace of a day that is dead'?

Can it 'never come back to me?'"

"I can think how Old Windbeam would wrap this mantle about his head and shoulders," resumed Jessie more softly. "How blackly the pines show against his sides! The meadows are an immense _meringue_; Willow Creek is frozen and invisible under the snow--so tightly locked within its banks that its groans can be heard, in the pauses of the storm, all the way to the Parsonage. I used to lie awake on sharp, frosty nights, and hear the rumble of the imprisoned air running all the way from the upper bridge down to the falls. The holly-berries on the tree by the front porch peep out saucily from the little woolly piles that collect upon the spikes and leaves; the church-yard is level from fence to fence--oh, Roy!"

With the cry, she sank down upon a low seat, weeping as from the depths of a riven heart.

"Under the snow! under the snow!" she reiterated, in a transport of distress. "I cannot bear to think of it!"

"Come to me, dear Jessie!" said Fordham, in gentle command. He hardly expected that she would obey, but she did, groping her way by reason of the blinding tears, and sobbing unrestrainedly. He had not seen her weep before since the night of her arrival at the cottage.

"Sit here!" he said, designating a chair at his side. "I have something to say when you can hear it. These tears will ease your burdened heart, and they are due to the memory of the dear ones who are for a little while out of our sight."

She had stifled her sobs, but her head was still bowed; her frame heaved in the ground-swell of the pa.s.sing storm.

"For a little while! Out of our sight!" he repeated, thoughtfully--longingly. "We shall be together--all of us--very soon. Did you ever ask yourself if you would be able to await the call of the Master--all your appointed time;--ever imagine what a crus.h.i.+ng load mortality and its ills would be to you, if, 'while in the body pent,' you could be a witness of the blessedness of those who are 'forever with the LORD'? Dear child! The Father leads us as wisely as lovingly!"

The expression of his religious faith and experience never sounded like cant, even in the ears of the scoffer. It was a part of his life. His utterances were fearless, simple, fervent, enforcing respect for their author, although the listener might not be in sympathy with their spirit. Jessie ceased to weep or sigh while he talked; presently showed her tear-stained face, tremulous with sad smiles, and laid her hand timidly upon his.

"Thank you! Every word is a drop of comfort. But so much talking is bad for your throat, and the fever will return if you are agitated.

It was childish and selfish in me to give way as I did. But," her lip quivering anew--"it came in upon me like a flood! the happy by-gone hours and the dear old manse! Just how it all looked, as I had seen it, a hundred times in the winter weather I always loved.

And the changes--and where _they_ are now!"

"I ought to thank you for allowing me to sorrow with and try to console you. Don't be afraid of me, dear! afraid to bring your trials, with your pleasures, to your friend. If left to yourself, just now,--if I had not called you to me, you would have rushed away to hide your tears in your own room. You never wound me except when you act and look as if you stood in dread of my displeasure or criticism. Won't you be candid and tell me why this is so? Am I a very cruel taskmaster? Do you not believe me when I say that I desire no other earthly good as I do to make you contented--happy, if that can be."

"I do believe it! I should be slow to see and to be convinced if I did not!" began Jessie, the truth trembling upon her tongue. The temptation to unbosom herself without fear and reserve was very strong. "But I feel myself to be unworthy of your regard, and the goodness you show me. And you are so wise and discreet--so self-contained--"

A pang changed his features. He stirred restlessly, biting his lip to keep back a repet.i.tion of the word "self-contained!" that would have been a groan.

"You are suffering!" said Jessie, anxiously. "I have made you worse!"

"No; a pa.s.sing pain--that is all! You always make me better. What should I have done without you, to-day, my kind nurse?"

A perverse fit, one of her spoiled-child freaks, seized Jessie.

"Phoebe would have taken excellent care of you!" she said, demurely, casting down her eyes to hide the gleam of mischief darting up to the surface. "She wanted to make brown gravy soup, and roast a fat duck for your dinner, with mince-pie--'to leave a nice taste in his mouth, ma'am.' And she persists in the belief that a gargle of red-pepper tea, with mustard-draughts upon your feet, and a cayenne poultice about your throat 'would pull you through,' when doctor's stuffs fail. As to society, your cousin, or, maybe, Dr.

Baxter would have come in to cheer you up. What a G.o.dsend a big linen sheet would be to the good President, on a day like this, with a listener who is _hors du combat_ with a hoa.r.s.e cold!"

"I have not needed to be cheered up, since I saw the first glimpse of your face, this morning!" answered Roy, unguardedly. Conscious that he was trenching upon forbidden ground, he diverted the conversation. "What a flow of spirits Orrin has! I _did_ hurt my throat laughing at his tragico-comico envy of my surroundings. I wish he had a _home_, one like this, if it were shared by a congenial companion, a woman who was more nearly his equal, mentally and morally, than the one he has chosen. He would be much happier than he can hope to be in the splendid pile he calls by that name."

"He seems perfectly satisfied with wife and house," returned Jessie, dryly. "And the marriage was certainly one of preference on Miss Sanford's part. Not that I admire or like her, and I know her better than you do. But I am persuaded that we waste our pity when we expend it on either of them."

They chatted, then, of various matters in the familiar style in which their conversations were generally carried on, until the day closing in about them, the fire spread a mellow radiance over the area immediately around it; the white bed and the n.o.ble head laid high on the pillows; upon Jessie's earnest face and crown of raven hair. It was the hour and the scene for the confidential talk of husband and wife; the outpouring of true soul to true; the only unrestrained heart-communion this side the Land where subterfuge and disguise are unknown; speech as far more excellent and satisfying than the language of unwedded lovers as the perfume from the unfolded lily surpa.s.ses that which steals from the bud.

Between these two, love was neither named nor hinted at. The wife's hands lay crossed upon her knees, and the husband did not offer to hold or touch them, or stroke the beautiful hair with which the betrothed had toyed unrebuked. It was an anomalous intimacy, the restraints and courtesies of which would have been laughed at as affectations, if the story of them were not totally discredited by the world outside "the great white veil" that shut them into their home,--theirs in name and in fact.

Jessie got up, at length, stepping over the carpet without rustle or jar, "the poetry of motion," thought the looker-on, and laid more coals upon the fiery ma.s.s in the grate. Many-colored flames shot up through and darted, like living serpents, along the pile; the low crackling and hissing of the igniting lumps awoke a cricket in the chimney-corner. Jessie, kneeling on the rug, glanced over her shoulder, on hearing the cheery chirp, and smiled at Roy.

"You don't treat the crickets on your hearth as Gruffand Tackleton boasted that he did--'crunch 'em, sir!' I like to hear the little busybodies--don't you?"

Without rising, when she had seemed to hearken for a while, she began to sing. Roy had not heard a note from her, even in church, since their marriage, and he held his breath, lay motionless, lest she should awaken from her reverie. It was an old ballad she was crooning--half Scotch, and with a thought of pathos in the melody, although the words were not plaintive.

"Tis rare to see the morning bleeze, Like a bonfire, frae the sea; 'Tis fair to see the burnie kiss The lip o' the flowery lea.

And fine it is on green hillside Where hums the bonnie bee, But rarer, fairer, finer far, Is the Ingleside to me."

A light roseate film hid her from Roy's eyes. The Ingleside, where she now knelt! his and hers! did she really love it so well as not to pine for the haunts of her girlhood? And what had pressed that cry from her that was still echoing through his heart-chambers? the appeal that would have meant in a loving wife uncontrollable yearning for the sympathy of him who best knew her needs and her sorrows?