Jessamine Part 11

"Our excellent neighbors are very kind and attentive," etc., etc.

Jessie re-read this letter when she had finished Roy's; perused it with a half smile that was more mournful than amused, and an odd stricture about her heart. Eunice's round of duties and pleasures seemed to her like something she had pa.s.sed--outgrown ages since; yet there was, far down in her spirit, a piteous longing for those gone days. She might be wiser--she was not better or happier for the glimpses lately granted her of a world of stormy and contending pa.s.sions and mixed motives.

"He spent the Sabbath with us!" she read aloud. "And I was not at home! He said nothing to me of his intention to visit Dundee. Since he has changed his plans in one respect, he may in another, and be absent three or four weeks instead of two. Heigho!"

She folded up her sister's letter, and addressed herself very slowly to the task of getting ready for a party at Judge Provost's--the great house of the town. It was given in honor of a niece of his, who was visiting his daughter, and was to be a grand affair. Jessie had never attended one half so fine, but she was _ennuyee_ in antic.i.p.ation.

"There will be the stock company of beaux," she meditated. "The one unmarried professor; the ten almost marriageable seniors, and the ten utterly ineligible ones, who are without beards or moneyed capital; the whole army (I had nearly said 'herd') of juniors and soph.o.m.ores; the dozen or fifteen gentlemen detailed for the occasion from the doctors' and lawyers' offices, and the higher rank of tradespeople in Hamilton. There will be dancing in one parlor, and small-talk in another; promenading in the halls and billiard-room; flirtations in all stages among the oleanders and lemon-trees of the conservatory, and a "jam"--_not_ sweet--in the supper-room. As a clergyman's daughter and the guest of a clergyman's wife, I must not dance in public. I am sick to nausea of callow collegians and small-talk, and I don't care for late suppers of indigestible dainties. I would rather spend the evening with Mariana in the moated grange, for that mopish damsel would let me sit still and sulk if I wanted to. And I believe I do!"

"A little more fire, my love!" whispered Mrs. Baxter in the dressing-room, affecting to be busy in shaking out Jessie's pink silk drapery. "I have a presentiment that you are to meet your fate to-night. But you must positively exert yourself to seem less quiet and preoccupied. Repose and lofty indifference are considered well-bred, and are a very safe _role_ for the commonplace to adopt.

But they are unbecoming to _us_."

The novice did her best to throw light into her eyes and warmth into her complexion. Being a novice, the attempt was a failure; but Mrs.

Baxter, perceiving that ignorance, not obstinacy, hindered the desired effect, forbore to hint that, in spite of Jessie's elegant attire and becoming _coiffure_, she had never seen her look worse.

Trusting to the animating influences of the festive scene to restore that which friendly expostulation had proved inefficient to recall, she committed her to the officious homage of young Lowndes, and turned her attention to the part she was herself to play in the evening's drama.

"What a magnificent creature your niece is, Mrs. Baxter; or is she a cousin?" said an elderly gentleman--also one of the judge's visitors--to her, at length.

The pleased and amiable chaperone looked over her shoulder, directed by his gaze, just in time to see Jessie pa.s.s, treading as if on air; her eyes luminous...o...b.. of rapture; her cheeks like the inner foldings of a damask rose; her lips apart in a smile, sweet and happy, and her hand on Orrin Wyllys' arm.

CHAPTER IX.

"And you have really been to Dundee!" Jessie was saying, unconscious that she was clinging to Mr. Wyllys' arm--very slightly, but perceptibly to him, with the glad hold of one to whom something dear and rare has been restored. "Was this a part of the original plan of your journeyings?"

"No,--but my business led me within sight of Old Windbeam--('a frosty pow' his is, just now!)--and it acted upon me as did the Iron Mountain of the Arabian Nights upon the hapless ships that approached it. It drew out the nails of doubt as to the best course for me to pursue; the screws of resolution not to be turned aside by memories of the Past and the allurements of the Present. To be brief--I collapsed utterly! took the afternoon train to Dundee, and pa.s.sed, in that retreat from briefs and busybodies, the happiest Sabbath I have known since last August."

"Euna wrote to me about it--the lovely, precise old darling! She never indulges in extravagances upon any subject, but her concise sentences mean much, and these said how she enjoyed the day--and your music. I was envious of her, when I read of it--just for a moment, of course. I have seen so much of you this winter it seemed mean and selfish in me to grudge her one day of like pleasure."

"Envy so groundless could not but be evanescent," said Orrin, with admirable gravity. "But tell me about yourself. What have you been doing while I was away?"

"Cultivating envy, as I said--and, I am not positive, but wrath and all uncharitableness, as well. Who is it that confesses to an instant uprising of all that is wicked in his nature at the approach of trouble, while visible blessing always moves him to thankful piety? I am afraid I am similarly const.i.tuted. I have been dull and 'dumpish' for a week and more; choosing to quarrel with the three peas under the fourteen feather-beds, rather than enjoy the good that is certainly mine. You see I also am versed in fairy-lore."

"I remember that the disguised princess, at being asked why she was haggard in the morning after the night spent in the forester's cabin, betrayed her gentle breeding by complaining of the lumps in her mountainous couch. Fourteen feather-beds! Think of it! To sleep amid the waves of one of the Dutch abominations is enough to engender dyspepsia, apoplexy, and spleen. But what were the three peas in your bed of roses?"

"It has rained four days out of eight, my Germany letter was behind time--and I missed my brother-cousin at every turn," responded Jessie bravely, vexed that anything in the enumeration should make her cheek put on the sudden flame of poppies.

"Two valid and sufficient reasons for _ennui_! As for the third, and notably the least of all, I thank you for the welcome implied by it.

I have missed you, Jessie!"

"But not as I have you!" was the ingenuous response. "I have been homesick, dismal, disagreeable,--_horrid_ generally. But I spare you the recapitulation. I am very, very happy that you are back again in health, and,"--faltering a little,--"in better spirits, than when you left us."

"Mr. Wyllys!" interrupted a consequential personage--a young-old bachelor. "Excuse me, Miss Kirke, but this is business of importance!"

He spoke a sentence aside to Orrin, who replied briefly in the same tone.

"Mr. Hurst is acting as master of ceremonies to-night, _comme a l'ordinaire_," observed Wyllys, moving on with his companion. "How will Hamilton parties get on after he dies--or marries--I wonder?

There has been an addition to the ranks of fashion during my absence, I find. I had hardly finished my bow to Mrs. and Miss Provost, when Warren Provost presented me forcibly to Miss Sanford.

I learned, before I went three steps farther, that this party is given to Miss Sanford, and now Mr. Hurst tells me that I am expected, presently, to dance with Miss Sanford. Who _is_ Miss Sanford?"

Jessie comprehending, at once, that he shunned further reference to the state of his spirits at their parting, followed his lead away from the subject, with alacrity.

"Miss Sanford is the daughter of Judge Provost's sister, and _such_ an heiress! An American Miss Burdett Coutts, if half the stories in circulation about her be true. She is the only child of a five-millionaire, and has, besides, a million in her own right, inherited from her mother. Poor thing! what a nuisance it must be to be so _horribly_ rich!" commented the country girl who thought herself wealthy with her mother's wedding-portion of ten thousand dollars, carefully husbanded by her father against her majority or marriage.

"If another woman than Jessie Kirke had said that, I should have supposed she was in jest," said Orrin. "I believe you mean what you say. But why? Many and sweet are the uses of money."

"Why do I regard it as a misfortune for a woman to be immensely rich? Because she can never be sure of true friend or lover. Because she seldom escapes one of two evils, dupedom or misanthropy. It must be almost an impracticable task for a great heiress to satisfy herself that she is not wooed _pour les beaux yeux de ses ecus_."

"But if there are no other _beaux yeux_ in the case--her own being, we will say, leaden--should she not congratulate herself that she has one talisman that will win attention and regard?"

"Regard!" echoed Jessie, incredulously.

"And why not? She typifies bank stock, real estate, ready money, to the adorer of these. He worships _them_, it is true, but through her, as discriminating Romanists try to make us believe that they adore the Virgin Mary by the help of her images."

"And as Dr. Baxter told me, the other day, Aaron and his crew of apostate ingrates bowed down to the molten calf--as the representative of the Egyptian Apis," put in Jessie, sarcastically.

"If a woman can content herself with that sort of worship, put herself on a par with the goose that laid the golden egg, she wants neither affection nor pity."

"Yet I'll warrant that the famous goose preened herself alongside of the most gorgeous peac.o.c.k in the barnyard; accounted herself the equal of the stateliest swans. There are as many purse-proud women as men. Millionnaires of both s.e.xes do not scorn the court paid to their money through themselves. On the contrary, they would be piqued and offended if their dollars were not duly appreciated.

Novels and sentimentalists tell us that the unhappy possessors of princely fortunes desire to be loved and sought for their intrinsic virtues, whereas the great ma.s.s--especially of women--who are wedded for their riches, are quite alive to the truth that this is so, and are far from being wounded thereby. They are neither dupes nor misanthropes, but sensible practical bodies who regard their property as a part of themselves--soul of their soul--and unhesitatingly appropriate all the advantages it buys, pluming themselves, as a rule, upon their ability to command service and fidelity. You shake your head? Let me ill.u.s.trate from real life. I was talking, some time ago, with a married lady whom n.o.body had ever, in my hearing, called weak-minded, even behind her back. I had known her for many years, and she opened up her mind to me freely, with regard to her courtship by, and marriage to, the man of her choice. 'I feared, at one time, that I had lost him forever,' she said. 'He was, quite a.s.siduous in his attention to another young lady who was pretty, elegant, and accomplished. I was very unhappy, for he had never declared his intentions to me. But she had not money enough to suit his notions of the fitness of things,'--I quote literally. 'So he came back to me. Wasn't I thankful then that my dear father had provided for me handsomely and thus secured my happiness for life?'"

"A clever anecdote--considering it is impromptu!" said wilful Jessie, with an air of superb disbelief. "If I could credit it, and you--"

"You would cease to commiserate heiresses!" finished Wyllys. "For myself, I have an antipathy to the whole cla.s.s. All whom I have had the misery of knowing were sordid, self-conceited, and rapacious of admiration to a degree that pa.s.sed understanding and disgust."

He dropped his voice, for the crowd immediately about them had grown still and attentive.

Miss Sanford was going to sing. Jessie and her escort chanced to be near the piano, and had a fine view of her as she was led to the instrument by an ambitious senior, whom she loaded down with her bouquet, gloves, fan, handkerchief, and gold vinaigrette. She was probably about twenty-five years of age, but this was a difficult point to determine from her appearance; her hair, eyebrows, and complexion being so light, that, as Jessie afterwards said to Mrs.

Baxter, she looked as if she might have lain for forty-eight hours in a bath of caustic soda and water--the preliminary process in the preparation of the phantom bouquets the President's lady was skilled in arranging. Miss Sanford was thin and bony. "Scraggy," one would have termed her, had she belonged to the so-called inferior animals.

Her eyes were a pale, fixed blue, like those of a china doll; her lips met scantily over teeth that were unpleasantly prominent; she had a receding chin, a sharp nose, and a low forehead. A homely, shrewish-looking girl to the uninstructed eye. Yet her air showed that she was accustomed to receive court from the sophisticated mult.i.tude, the many who were awake to the fact that she was the undoubted mistress of charms not to be adequately expressed by less than seven figures. Her dress was a walking advertis.e.m.e.nt of her pretensions to this intelligent homage, being mauve satin, flounced with point lace. It was cut too low upon the flat chest and prominent shoulder-blades, but the region thus left bare was made interesting to feminine eyes by a magnificent diamond necklace.

Bracelets to match loaded her meagre wrists, and were pushed up ostentatiously before she put her fingers upon the key-board, with a coquettish grimace at her cavalier.

"I don't sing ballads," Jessie and Orrin heard her say, tossing her head one-sidedly--a frequent trick with her, since it set her ear-rings to dancing until the precious stones seemed to emit sparks of real fire. "Ballad music is considered so low in refined circles.

I have never cultivated any but the cla.s.sical style--operas, you know, bravuras and arias, and all that, you know. Let me treat you to my favorite--just the _sweetest_ thing you ever heard, from La Traviata. I perfectly dote upon it!"

She played a thumping prelude and accompaniment in villainous time; her voice was shallow and shrill; she made audacious dashes at trills and cadenzas, her feeble pipe breaking down upon the ascending, and breaking up upon the descending scale. A more lamentable and witless travestie of operatic execution could hardly have been conceived of. The Italian words were made a thing of no account whatever.

"Her resources are wonderful," said Orrin, under cover of the buzz of compliments and thanks that succeeded the song. "When she forgot what came next she subst.i.tuted something of her own composition--in the Kaffir dialect, I think--with a readiness and coolness truly astounding. Honor bright, now," laughing down mischievously into his companion's eyes--"what has this little scene reminded you of--something you have hitherto viewed as a caricature?"

"I won't tell you!"

But Jessie's face was alive with fun. It might not be--it certainly was not altogether kind or well-bred in her to join in ridiculing the host's niece, but it was "only Orrin," and so long as his comments were for her ear alone, no harm was done.

"You need not! Miss Swartz has arisen above such 'low style' as 'Blue-eyed Mary' and 'That Air from the Cabinet,' but she can still 'sing Fluvy du Tajy if she had the words.' Indeed, being bent upon fascination, she sings it, words or no."

He had found Jessie and Mrs. Baxter deep in "Vanity Fair" one evening, had taken the book and read aloud several chapters, including "The quarrel about an heiress."