Jessamine Part 6

She was just established in her comfortable _causeuse_, when the door-bell heralded a visitor.

"My dear Mr. Wyllys!" she cried, fluttering forward to meet him.

"You are doubly welcome when you come alone. One sees you so seldom except in a crowd, that it is a genuine pleasure to have a few moments' quiet conversation with you."

"It is like yourself to excuse my unfas.h.i.+onably early call with such gracious tact," responded the gentleman, bowing low over her hand.

He shook hands with the doctor with less _empress.e.m.e.nt_, but most respectfully, and sank upon a divan near the hostess.

"I have another engagement this evening, but I could not deny myself the pleasure of paying my _devoirs_ to you in pa.s.sing. I will not ask if you have recovered from the fatigue of Thursday night"--with an expressive look at her blooming face. "I believe, however, it is never a weariness to you to be agreeable, as it is to us duller and less benevolent mortals. I am horribly cross, always, on the morning succeeding a party. It is as if I had overdrawn my account, in the matter of social entertainment; borrowed too heavily from the reserve fund intended by Nature for daily expenses. But this rule applies only to people whose resources of spirits, wit, and general powers of pleasing, are limited. You are above the need of such pitiful economy as we find necessary."

"_Shall_ I undeceive you?" beamed the lady. "If the doctor--dear, patient martyr!--were put into the witness-box, he might tell sad tales, make divulgations that would demolish your pretty and flattering theory. Doctor, my love! Mr. Wyllys is anxious to know what was the status of my spiritual and mental thermometer, on the morning after our little _re-union_, last week?"

"Eh, what did you say, my dear?"

He lowered his folio. His eyebrows were perked discontentedly, and his forefinger was in the doomed bow she had tied not fifteen minutes before.

Mrs. Baxter tried, unsuccessfully, to frown down the offending digit before she made reply.

"Mr. Wyllys has heard that I am like champagne, 'stale, flat, and unprofitable'--with a dash of vinegar--when the effervescence wrought by social excitement is off," vivified, by her mirthful misrepresentation of her visitor's words, into radiance that revealed every molar, and forced her eyelids into utter retirement.

"Ah!" The doctor smiled absently, and re-bent his brows over the page, protruding his lips in a vicious pout as he read.

"He disdains to notice the slander," resumed Mrs. Baxter, unabashed at her failure to elicit a conjugal compliment. "Seriously, Mr.

Wyllys, I am thankful for the guidance of reason and will that counterbalance my mercurial temperament. My spirit resembles nothing else so much as a mettled steed, whose curvettings are restrained by an inexorable rein. But for my sober judgment, Impulse would have led me into an erratic course, I fear."

Relaxing the tension of the fingers and wrist that had pulled hard at an imaginary curb, and unclenching the teeth from their bite upon the word "inexorable," she sighed, reflectively.

"The combination is rare--" commenced the gentleman.

"It is preposterous!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed the doctor, closing the Russian-leather alb.u.m with a concussion like the report of a pocket-pistol.

"I think not, dear," said the wife, gently corrective. "It is, as Mr. Wyllys says, a rare combination, but certainly not an impossible one."

"It is preposterous," reiterated the doctor, with a ruinous tug at his cravat, "that a rational creature, who can read and write, should waste time in disfiguring good, honest paper with such incongruous, not to say blasphemous, nonsense as I find here. It was bad enough for mediaeval monks to deck the Word of Life in the motley wear of a harlequin. Greek, German, black-letter text, are, all of them, stumbling-blocks to the unlearned, diversions to the thoughtless. But when the sacred Scriptures are bedizened into further illegibility by paint and gilding, and _ill.u.s.trated_ by birds, beasts, and even fishes, daubed upon fields, azure, argent, and verde, the offence becomes an abomination. Such profanation is offered that divinest of pastorals, the twenty-third psalm, in this volume," elevating it in strong disgust.

Mrs. Baxter arose and took it from his hand in time to save it from being tossed to the table or floor.

"Tastes differ, my dear husband," was all she said, but her forbearance and real sweetness of temper called forth a look of unfeigned respect from the amused spectator.

"I wouldn't keep it in the parlor, if I were in your place, Jane,"

the doctor expostulated, seeing her deposit the folio upon a stand beyond his reach.

"I will not ask you to look at it again, love,"--still amiably.

She returned to the subject when the critic had helped himself to a volume which was more to his taste.

"I saw few things when I was abroad, before my marriage, that interested me more than the illuminated missals and breviaries preserved in convents, museums, and private collections of _vertu_,"

she said to Mr. Wyllys. "I am the possessor of a remarkably fine specimen of the illuminator's art--the gift of a dear friend and relative, now no more. I had not looked into it for years until after I commenced my humble alb.u.m, which, allow me to observe, my excellent husband does not guess is my handiwork. To return"--the hands describing an inward curve, and subsiding into an embrace upon her knee--"the best touches in my work were after my precious reliquary. I must show it to you. I am chary of displaying it to non-appreciative or irreverent eyes. Consequently it seldom sees the light."

Orrin followed her to an escritoire at the back of the room, peeping covertly at his watch as he went. Mrs. Baxter laid her hand upon her bust, and choked down some rebellious uprising of memory or regret, as she unlocked a drawer.

"This is it!" mournfully, taking out a thin volume bound in gilded leather and carved boards, and redolent of the scent of some Indian wood.

Orrin examined it in pleased surprise. He had expected to see an absurdity. He beheld a gem of its kind; a collection of Latin hymns, including the Stabat Mater, Dies Irae, and Veni Sancte Spiritus, each page encircled by a border of appropriate design, and delicate yet rich coloring.

"I have never seen anything finer. I do not wonder that you prize it highly. I thank you for showing it to me," he said, sincerely. "By whom was it executed?"

"My friend ordered it for me of an adept in his art, then resident at Florence. I forget his name, but you will find it cleverly concealed from the common eye in some one of the convolutions of the t.i.tle-page," was the reply.

The fly-leaf adhered slightly to the page designated, and Orrin read the inscription upon the former before detaching it.

"'_Jane Lanneau, from Ginevra. Florence, January 1st, 18--._' I have surely seen that handwriting before! 'Ginevra!'" he repeated slowly, and the pretty name fell musically from his tongue. "There is poetry in the word!"

"You would have said so, had you known her!" Mrs. Baxter winked away two unbidden tears that glazed her eyes, without forming and dropping--swallowed anew and very hard. "She always reminded me of a plaintive poem set to music. That is, in the later years of an existence which was all song and sunniness when it was fresh and new."

Orrin fluttered a few leaves; commented upon the grace and finish of a decoration here and there, and went back to the inscription. It was strongly like Jessie Kirke's writing, but the resemblance was undoubtedly accidental. The one line had been penned, he learned from the date, before she was born.

"She was the Helena to my Hermia," pursued the hostess. "We lived the same life until her marriage, which preceded mine by five years.

She was my senior by some months, but in heart and soul we were _twins_!"--pressing her hands gradually together, beginning at the wrists, and pa.s.sing upward to the finger-tips, to express the idea of oneness. "And by a most extra-_or_-di-nary coincidence, we both married clergymen!"

"Another evidence of the perfect harmony of soul existing between you. Did I understand you to say that she is not living?"

"Alas! she has been in her grave for fifteen years. I never saw her after her marriage, which was a surprise to all her friends. We antic.i.p.ated a brilliant union for her. But she bestowed herself, her talents, her beauty, upon a clerical widower who was twelve years older than herself. My poor Ginevra! it was a strange ending to her sanguine dreams. Mr. Kirke was a scholarly man, it is true, and a thorough gentleman, and of his devotion to her there could be no doubt. It was such wors.h.i.+p as few women can inspire. I believe that he tried faithfully to make her happy, but my personal acquaintances.h.i.+p with him was very slight."

"Kirke!" repeated Orrin, more deliberately and with less emphasis than was his wont, and he was always the reverse of abrupt. His lazy articulation now was almost a drawl. "I know a gentleman--a clergyman of that name--Rev. Donald L. Kirke, resident, now, and I fancy for many years, at Dundee--"

"It is the very same!" Mrs. Baxter started tragically, and leaned gaspingly toward him, her throat swelling like a pouter pigeon's.

"And you know him, you say? Tell me something about him--about his family! My sweet cousin left a child, I know. Does it still live?

Dundee! yes! that was the quaint Scotch name of my Ginevra's new home. I have always a.s.sociated it with 'The Cotter's Sat.u.r.day Night.' You recollect 'Dundee's wild, warbling measures'? Do sit down and tell me all!"

"You should visit Dundee," said Orrin, sauntering back to the fireplace, but declining the seat she offered. "It is a beautiful valley--sheltered from storms by a barricade of picturesque hills. I was there in May, and the climate and flowers--especially the wealth of roses, reminded me of sunny Provence. I became quite well acquainted with Mr. Kirke. He is, as you describe him, a thorough gentleman--one of the genuine 'old school'--handsome, refined, and scholarly. His daughters, of whom there are two, are cultivated ladies. The younger--who is, I presume, the child to whom you refer--is, I have heard, very like her beautiful mother. You would be interested in her, first, for your cousin's sake, but very soon for her own. This matter of family likeness is a curious one. I see now what was the resemblance that puzzled me last Spring. Miss Jessie Kirke might easily be mistaken for your daughter."

"If she were, what a happy woman I should be!" cried the flattered lady, casting up her brown eyes, and raising her clasped hands to a level with her chin. "The relief afforded by your charming description is beyond expression. I have never dared inquire respecting my lost darling's babe. And she is really a Lanneau!

Heaven bless her! I feared--_how_ I feared! to hear that she had grown up an awkward rustic, whose faint likeness to her parent would pain, not gratify me. Therefore I have maintained no correspondence with Mr. Kirke since our exchange of letters immediately after his wife's decease. 'Jessie Kirke!' what a _riante_, _piquante_, bewitching name!"

"I wish you could prevail upon her father to entrust her to you for a time. She would be a feature in our society this winter. Her face and manners are strikingly attractive, and hers is a style of beauty that will improve with years and knowledge of the world. Her bearing and conversation have much of the fascination which is, I suspect, a family gift. She will grow handsomer until--I cannot say when.

Women, like leaves, have their time to fade, and this trying season lies, with a large majority, a little on the bright side of thirty.

The Lanneaus have not lost the secret they brought from fair France--the magic that purchases the gift of perennial youth."

"Fie! fie! how you digress! I am dying for information of my beloved young cousin, and you launch into irrelevant gallantries--flattery that is thrown away, let me tell you, upon one of my age and gravity!" frowned Mrs. Baxter with her forehead, her lips openly refractory, and her eyes dancing with delight. "_Do_ sit down and tell me more!"

"I cannot, thank you! I have already bored you with a visit three times as long as I meant it should be. Your cousin does the family credit. I can award her no higher praise. _Au revoir!_"

"One second!" she entreated, detaining him. "The discoveries of this evening seem trifles to you. To me they are an EVENT! I shall write to the precious lamb to-morrow. Please give me her address in full."

Orrin dictated, and she wrote it upon her ivory tablets.

"Perhaps it would be as well not to mention me in connection with this renewal of your intercourse with Mr. Kirke's family," he said, carelessly. "Your friends.h.i.+p will be the more welcome if it is supposed that it has its root in your fond recollection of your lamented relative. Excuse the suggestion--but from what I have seen of father and daughters, I am inclined to think them sensitive and proud--as they have a right to be. Your tact hardly needed this hint, however. There is a ring! I have loitered here shamefully! Do you know that your beautiful drawing-room is likened, about town, to Circe's cave?"