Jessamine Part 34

Jessie knew every line of the poem already. She had said it over to herself, scores of times, last Summer, tossing wakefully upon her pillow at midnight, until the pine boughs seemed to have caught the rhythm; or pacing the garden walks with hurrying feet; or hanging over the railing of the rustic foot-bridge. But she could not help listening, as the cunning modulations of the reader drew out the simple fervor of each line.

A steely-blue ray shot from beneath his eyelashes in her direction, as he turned a leaf. She did not see it. Perfectly still, yet attentive, she had leaned her head against the high back of her husband's chair, and was looking straight before her.

The cold disgust, Wonderful and most unjust,

found no expression in att.i.tude and feature.

The reader's voice mellowed; the emphasis of suppressed emotion was more artistic and effective.

Seems to me that I should guess By what a world of bitterness, By what a gulf of hopeless care, Our two hearts divided are.

And I praise thee as I go, Wandering, weary, full of woe To my own unwilling heart,-- Cheating it to take thy part, By rehearsing each rare merit Which thy nature doth inherit; How thy heart is good and true, And thy face most fair to view; How the powers of thy mind Flatterers in the wisest find, And the talents to thee given, Seem as held in trust for Heaven, Laboring on for n.o.ble ends, Steady to thy boyhood's friends, Slow to give or take offence, Full of earnest eloquence.

How, in brief, there dwells in thee All that's generous and free, All that may most aptly move My spirit to an answering love.

"Was'nt it _too_ funny that she didn't give in to such a splendid fellow?" queried Hester, sniffing away the emotion she had tried to sop up with her laced handkerchief. "I never can hear dear Orrin read without crying, no matter what the subject is. I couldn't have helped falling in love with him, I know. It _was_ queer, now!"

fretfully, as she saw Jessie's countenance. "I don't see what there is amusing about it!"

Jessie held her head erect--a movement full of spirit and gladness--and laughed. It was no mirthless sound, but a ripple of real joyousness.

"Very queer!" she answered, merrily. "Mr. Wyllys! we must call upon you to explain the phenomenon. You evidently understand it. You read the poem _con amore_."

She sprang up to serve her guests from the waiter Phoebe had placed upon the table. Roy followed her.

"They tell me you make a delicious article of domestic wine, Mrs.

Fordham--of elderberries, or grapes, or currants--or something,"

said Mrs. Wyllys, bent upon patronage at every turn. "I hope you are going to treat us to some of it now."

"'They' are mistaken!" returned Jessie, the merry ring yet in her voice. "I never attempted anything of the kind. The best subst.i.tute I can offer you for the beverage you had promised yourself, is Rhenish or Marsala which Mr. Fordham procured abroad."

"I can answer for her, I believe, Mrs. Wyllys, that her efforts in that line have been confined to the brewing of flax-seed lemonade, and sage tea!" chimed in Roy.

Whereat Jessie laughed again, as she had not done at Orrin's adventure with the gargle.

Wyllys arose to receive a gla.s.s of wine from her hand, and, in taking it, looked steadily, reproachfully, pa.s.sionately, into her eyes. They sustained the scrutiny without quailing, a glint of roguish defiance playing within them, and her lips curling at the corners, as she turned away. He had a misgiving then that his power over her was at an end. This was not acting, but the flashing of a stream where the sunshine reached to its bed; was filtrated through pure, sweet waters. If she were disenchanted, he knew whom he had to thank for it. He could have hated his Hester for the over-fondness that had made him ridiculous to optics which erst surveyed him with timid and worshipful reverence, as Semele may have regarded high Jove.

He was not sorry he had wedded as he did. He had too just an appreciation of the inconveniences of living beyond one's means; the difficulties that environ a man of expensive tastes and a moderate income, and the thousand goods of wealth, to regret the investment, which had a.s.suredly yielded more than cent. per cent., whether he estimated either the affection or the money he had put into the speculation. He was wise in his generation. Hester was the richest spoil that had ever been laid in his way, and he had not hesitated as to the line of duty. But he did wish she had not wheedled him into this visit, that she might have another opportunity to play the fool herself, and force a like part upon him. Jessie's laughter had stung him unreasonably, and in his avarice of the praise of his kind, he grudged the loss of a moiety of Roy's affectionate admiration.

Fordham did not return to the sitting-room when he had escorted his guests to the outer door. He bade his wife "Good-night," in the hall.

"Must you work to-night?" she asked, imploringly. "I meant--I hoped--that is, I thought we would have a pleasant chat over my fire."

Her manner was agitated, her eye restless; but he scarcely noted this, or that she stammered strangely in preferring the pet.i.tion.

"Don't tempt me!"

He would have made his answer playful. It was a sickly show, and repulsed Jessie more effectually than sternness would have done.

With a burning blush, she dropped the hand she had laid lightly on his sleeve; murmured an apology, and hurried upstairs, forgetting that she had intended to sit for a while longer in the lower room.

In her own chamber, she walked the floor in an agony of shame and despair.

"He would never have my love now, if it were offered him!" she said, wringing her hands. "He knows me too well! The glamour of that happy love-summer has gone! gone! To-night, I feel further off from him than ever. He despises me as I deserve! But righteous punishment is as hard to bear as unjust condemnation. And I have suffered so much, and so long! I could have been wholly frank with him, if he had but gone and sat with me ten minutes--if he had been _himself_, instead of shrinking from my touch--rejecting my companionship."

"The book opened of itself at that place!" Roy was thinking at that moment. He had been to the sitting-room for the volume, carried it into the library, and re-read the poem again and yet again, detecting what he imagined was a tear blister on the second page.

"What can I do? What course is left to me save that which I am pursuing? Am I still odious to her?"

The girl at the spring smiled down upon him from the wall; seemed to hold out the green leaf-cup for his acceptance. He could see the glisten of the water upon it; fancy that he heard in the stillness the tinkle of the bright beads as they fell into the basin. The eyes that gave back her look were very patient, but just now it was a patience that had in it much of the weariness of hope deferred.

"I have put a cup of bitterness to your lips, my bird of beauty!"

was his unselfish lament.

Mr. Wyllys "had builded better than he knew," that evening.

"I wouldn't be as cold-blooded as that woman, for all the gold of Golconda!" exclaimed Hester, before the steps of the Fordham cottage were cold from the touch of her Parisian gaiters.

"Maybe you mean diamonds," said her husband curtly. "It is a safe plan not to use terms unless you are certain they are correct."

"Gold or diamonds, it makes no difference! I don't pick my words when I am out of patience. It's precious little she has of either commodity, I guess!" laughing spitefully.

"Take care of that rough place in the crossing," cautioned Wyllys, in a less acrimonious tone, thus reminded what store his spouse possessed of the valuables specified, and, by inevitable a.s.sociation of ideas, of his profitable investment.

"She frets me always!" continued the sweet creature, hanging, according to custom, basket-wise upon his arm. "This evening she was positively rude. How provokingly she laughed at that sweet piece you read so divinely that I was in tears all the way through. You meant it for her, I could see well enough, you smart, sly creature!

And it served her just right! I as good as told her she did not care a snap for her husband, before you came in. And she took it as coolly as if I had paid her a compliment. It is _awful_ what scared consciences some people have. I take to myself the credit of having seen through her from the beginning, when that horrid old matchmaker, Mrs. Baxter, who always puts me in mind of a grinning hyena, was trying to put her off on you. As if you would have married a girl who was next door to a beggar! What is it, petty?"

"I trod on a pebble!"

He had almost flung her arms from their hold. For he remembered the story he had told Jessie in the conservatory, of the woman who was married for her money, and gloried in it.

"What a pity!" gabbled his owner. "I am morally certain that she married Mr. Fordham, poor fellow! to get a home. If that isn't disgustingly immoral--a perfect sale of one's self in the shambles, as you may say, I don't know what is. To be sure, your cousin is one of the very quiet, non-exacting kind, and I _hope_ doesn't suffer as you would, darling love, if she were your wife!" pinching his arm with her claw-like fingers. "For you and I are _such_ turtles, dearie!"

CHAPTER XXV.

Spring was forward in Hamilton that year. Mrs. Baxter, walking on the presidential portico at noon of a bright day in the third week of April complimented the extraordinary benignity of that usually coy month, by sporting the first white dress of the season.

A knot of irreverent students collected about the window of one of the college dormitories, catching glimpses of her snowy draperies fluttering from pillar to pillar of the porch, made merry over profane pleasantries, touching, "flourishing almond trees," and "antique angels."

"Wonder if she wears that red flannel night-cap to ward off the rheumatism!" said one, directing his puny arrow of wit at the "individualizing" scarlet scarf, now wound into a turban about her cla.s.sic head, the silken fringes sweeping her shoulder.