Jessamine Part 37

"I must get a good night's rest, if I am to travel, to-morrow. Will you excuse me if I go upstairs, thus early?"

"Do not let me detain you a moment. Is there nothing I can do to a.s.sist you?"

"Nothing--thank you! There will be time to strap my trunks in the morning. You still think I had better go--whatever may be the weather?" stopping with the door in her hand.

"I do, certainly; that is, if you are not afraid of adding to your cold--if you are well enough."

"My cold is nothing. I have ordered breakfast at half-past six. I am glad the train does not leave so early as it did last year.

Good-night!"

The cold, indifferent accents sank to the bottom of his heart like lead. What a millstone about this woman's neck was her marriage vow!

His endeavors to make it lighter, and her existence endurable--the work to which he had given his best energies and wisest deliberations; the self-abnegation and prayerful struggle he had accepted as the penalty of his grievous indiscretion, had proved futile. He had guarded eye, tongue, and action for five months; drilled them in friendly looks, words, and deeds, lest a glimmer of the affection that glowed--a pent but consuming fire in his soul--should offend or dismay her; had ministered to her with a lover's constancy and tenderness without a hint of love's reward.

And this was the end! Some significant glance, an intonation, an excess of solicitude for her welfare, had betrayed his design to win her anew, and she had taken the alarm; was terrified and reluctant, without the power of escape. Or her const.i.tution--physical and spiritual--had succ.u.mbed to the attrition of duty against womanly instinct. With vain care he had kept her shackles out of sight.

Everything in her surroundings; the very p.r.o.nunciation of her name by acquaintances, had reminded her continually of her anomalous position. Neither wife, nor maid, she stood, according to her morbid perceptions, alone and banned, without so much as a t.i.tle to the shelter of his roof, except as a bondwoman. She could not forget that she was a slave. The untamable heart--in which the "love of liberty" was a "pa.s.sion," was beating itself to death against the bars he had foolishly hoped to cus.h.i.+on and wreathe until she should cease to feel them as a restraint.

She had not loved him when she married him. That this change in her sentiments was not a pa.s.sing girlish caprice, he had evidence in the words she had written to him while the right of free speech remained to her.

"Months of doubt and suffering have brought me to the determination to confess this without reserve."

"Doubt and suffering!" What were these to the horrors of her actual bondage?

"From which I cannot release her!" he repeated, for the thousandth time.

His habit was to go to the library when she left him for the night, but he lingered, this evening, in the apartment he had fitted up for her with such fond pride; which she had made a sacred place by her abiding. There was a cruel pleasure in noting the tokens of her recent presence; in inhaling the odors of the flowers she had tended; in touching the books she had handled. She could never be more to him than she was now. He believed that she must, from this hour, be less; that the solace of her friends.h.i.+p would be withheld.

Else, why her anxiety to be away from him? her chafing at the threatened delay of a day in her flight back to the only real home she had ever known? Was the memory of the evanescent phantasy of her girlhood--the brief s.p.a.ce during which she had deluded herself into the belief that she loved him, so sore and hateful that she would shun the sight of one who kept it in constant remembrance? Could it be true that he had, in the face of these frightful odds, cherished a hope that he might yet persuade her into a preference for his companions.h.i.+p?

A loud ring at the door-bell startled him into consciousness of the hour and place. Phoebe had gone up to bed, and Mr. Fordham went himself to admit the unseasonable visitor.

"Good-evening!" said a familiar voice when the door was unclosed, and Dr. Baxter walked in as naturally and coolly as if it were not ten o'clock at night, and he plentifully besprinkled with rain. "I was out thinking--and walking, after the warm day--and chancing to observe that I was at your door, I stopped to say 'Good-bye' to the la.s.sie--to your wife. Mrs. Baxter mentioned to-night, at tea, that she was-going to Dundee to-morrow."

He had obeyed Roy's impulse in the direction of the sitting-room, but declined to take a chair. His cravat was a damp string; the handkerchief twisted about his left hand bore marks of terrific usage, and when he removed his hat, every one of his stiff gray hairs appeared to have gone into business on its own account, so distinct was its independent existence. His eyes were like those of a partially awakened somnambulist, and his voice had dreamy inflections. Had his own mood been less sad, Roy must have smiled at the grotesque apparition, uncouth even to one so familiar with the peculiarities of the good man, as was his coadjutor in the business of his life. As it was, he appreciated gratefully the love the old scholar bore his former ward, and the new proof of this, evinced by his stepping without the charmed circle of metaphysical or scientific lucubrations to pay this, for him, rare visit of neighborly courtesy and affectionate interest.

"I am sorry Jessie has retired," he said, sincerely. "She would have been happy to see you. But, in view of to-morrow's journey, she went up to her chamber an hour ago. I am afraid she is asleep by this time."

The doctor shook himself out of a menacing relapse.

"Eh! asleep--is she? Ah, well! that is as it should be. Don't disturb her! I merely called to kiss her, and bid her 'G.o.d speed.'

She is a dear and a good girl. Her price is above rubies. She carries our love and best wishes with her into her retirement.

Since she is not up, I will leave my message with you. I believe--it seems to me that I _had_ a message"--with an ominous twitch of the handkerchief, and a dreamier accent.

"She will appreciate your kind remembrance of her, sir. She prizes your friends.h.i.+p very fondly."

"Ah!" another mental shoulder-jog. "We shall hardly see her again until autumn, I presume? I infer as much from what Mrs. Baxter has told me of her plans."

"There has been no definite time set for her return," said Roy, evasively, his heart heavier than before at the thought that Jessie had expressed to her cousin a desire for a long sojourn in the country.

Yet if he had failed to keep her with him now, what warrant had he for confidence in his ability to lure her back?

"You will be lonely without her!" the worthy President observed, something in the atmosphere of this, her especial apartment, conveying to his straying wits an indistinct perception of the void her absence would make in the daily life of the man before him. In his own way, he missed his restless and faithful Jane when she was not at home.

"I shall!"

Not another word before the lips were closely sealed.

The doctor looked at him quickly and keenly, then put out his hand to pat his shoulder.

"Keep up a brave heart, my lad! although the desire of your eyes be removed from your side, for a few weeks. Nothing cheats time of heaviness, like work and hope. One you will find here in your accustomed avocations. The second will culminate in fruition when you are reunited to her you love, and, please G.o.d--in the blessedness of a father's love and delight, when your firstborn is given into your arms. It is a joy HE has seen fit to deny me. I shall take my name down into the grave with me. HIS will be done!

But I have not, on that account, the less sympathy with you at this juncture. Say to our Jessie that our prayers will follow her. You will go to her at the beginning of vacation, of course. And should you wish to run down to Dundee, for a day or two, each week during the remainder of term-time, I will gladly take your cla.s.ses. You can recompense me by letting me christen the heir"--a fatherly smile overspreading the dry face. "The advent is expected towards the last of July, Mrs. Baxter says."

Conscious that, in the drunkenness of his astonishment, he returned a lame and seemingly ungracious reply to offer and congratulations, Roy made no movement to detain the eccentric guest, when he, after another dazed look around the apartment, as if wondering how he had got there, espied the door, and approached it with the briefest of "Good-nights." While the master of the house stood rooted to the floor, the visitant accomplished his exit, unchallenged and unattended. Another man would have taken mortal offence at the lack of respectful ceremony. The doctor, in his semi-trance, had not an idea of the commotion he had excited.

"I am not surprised that I am an offence in her eyes--that she must accuse me in her heart, of being less than man," muttered the husband, at length, pa.s.sing a shaking hand over his pale forehead.

"She ought to hate me for my seeming indifference--my unfeeling silence. She would if she were not an angel. My poor girl! And she has borne it all, without a murmur; like the brave, true woman she is. G.o.d forgive me! I can never pardon myself!"

He was sitting, his arms crossed upon the table, and his head laid upon them, when Jessie glided in stealthily. Over her white wrapper she had thrown a crimson shawl, and her long hair was loose upon her shoulders. Whatever resolve had drained her cheeks and lips of bloom, and lighted the steady flame in her eyes, had been acted upon with precipitancy, lest her nerve should fail.

She halted upon the threshold, on seeing the bowed figure; then advanced more rapidly, but without noise.

"Roy! are you awake?"

"Yes."

But he did not lift his face.

"Are you sick?"

"No!"

"Can you listen to me for a few minutes!"

"As long as you wish."

His voice was hollow and tremulous to plaintiveness; but she took heart from its exceeding, if mournful, gentleness.

"I cannot sleep to-night," she commenced, hurriedly, "still less can I leave you to-morrow, without expressing to you, however feebly, my sense of the goodness and mercy you have showed me from the hour I entered this house, until now. I may have appeared un.o.bservant and unthankful; may have seemed to accept your benefits as if they were my due, when, in reality, I was unworthy of the least of them all; but it was because I did not know in what form to express my grat.i.tude. If, in my acquiescence in your proposal that I should go to my sister for a season, I have used few words; have not thanked you for this fresh proof of your delicate watchfulness over my comfort and happiness, I beg you to attribute my shortcomings to other reasons than insensibility or misconstruction of your motives.

I was entirely unprepared for the suggestion. It was a shock to me, because I had dared to believe that you would see fit to let me remain here with you until vacation, when we could go to Dundee together."

Standing on the other side of the table, she saw a slight but eager change in the expression of the mute form. It was as if his hearing were strained for her next utterance, but the features were still concealed.

On the roof of the bay-window, the soft, large drops of the April shower were beginning to fall in musical whispers.

Jessie put out a hand upon the marble top of the table to steady herself, as she resumed. There was that in this continued silence that awed and made her incoherent. It was unlike Roy's usual reception of her advances--his ready and indulgent courtesy. Her heart beat painfully and fast, but she did not swerve from her resolution.

"I know you so well--your purity of purpose; the standard of excellence you set for your motive and deed; your earnest desire to make me happy--that I fear you will, when I am gone, accuse yourself of want of skill or judgment in your treatment of me. I want you to remember then, that I broke through the reserve we have aided one another to maintain, to a.s.sure you that, in no one particular would I have had your action different from what it has been--that, in language and demeanor you have been alike n.o.ble. Deserving your reprobation, I have received tender respect; having forfeited by my fickleness and falsehood all claim to kindness, I have been cherished as the truest wife in the land might hope to be. Something tells me that, when we part to-morrow, it will be to meet no more in time. It may be that the presentiment is born of my distempered imagination; but it has drawn my whole soul out in a longing I cannot frame into speech, to be at peace with you; to feel your hand again upon my head; to hear you call me once--just once more, by the holy name of Wife!

"For I am your wife, Roy! Unworthy as I am of the t.i.tle, it is the only glory I have. Until yesterday, I had dreamed of saying this to you in very different language and circ.u.mstances. It is just that this expectation should be disappointed. I do not appeal from my sentence of exile. But, by the memory of the love you once had for me--and I was full of faults then as now--do not send me away, unforgiven, and _starving_ for your affection--my husband!"

When he looked up, she was kneeling at his side, her eyes streaming with the tears that had impeded her utterance.