Orrin Wyllys could afford to laugh at criticism that would have
provoked a thin-skinned, or moderately-vain man to anger, if not to
hatred. For he was aware that his cousin had spoken the bare truth
when he represented him as the admired Crichton of the town which
was their home. His features and form were as I have portrayed them.
He had neither beauty nor absolute symmetry to recommend these. He
was not wealthy, nor yet eminent in his profession. A lawyer in fair
practice, gained principally by the exercise of other gifts than
legal acumen, he was yet a person of mark in the community. The
reason assigned for this would have been the same, in effect, by
every acquaintance, whether the witness were the fine lady of _ton_
who made sure of him before issuing her cards for the grand ball of
the season, or the Milesian who "stepped intil his Honor's office to
ask him could I take the law of Teddy O'Rourke for this black eye,
or is it himself that will be afther taking the law of me for the
two I've give _him_?"
"Not regularly handsome, I admit, my dear," Mrs. Beau Monde would
say. "But there is something more potent, as more subtle in
influence in his presence and speech. Do you know I think a
fascinating homely man the most charming creature in the world? And
Mr. Wyllys' deportment, tone, and conversation are unsurpassable.
Other men may be as well-bred, but there is a nameless Something
about his manner that is exquisite and irresistible."
While Murphy would expatiate by the hour upon the "satisfaction a
man experienced in daleing wid a pairfect gintleman, and it was
Misther Wyllys had the beautiful way wid him!"
That he danced elegantly, sang expressively, and was a pleasing
pianist; that he was conversant with the current literature of the
day; that the stereotyped cant known as "art criticism" fell from
his tongue aptly, and as if no one else had ever used the same
phrases in his auditor's hearing,--undoubtedly contributed largely
to his popularity; but these accomplishments were secondary in power
to the nameless Something lauded by Mrs. Beau Monde. His own sex
recognized the charm more willingly than they are wont to
acknowledge the claims to favoritism of one who is the woman's
darling of his set. The graceful _insouciance_ that artfully
concealed his consciousness of the degree long ago awarded him, as
"Pet of the Petticoats;" his gay good-humor, his fund of anecdote
and repartee, made him as welcome at bachelors' wine and
dinner-parties as in mixed companies. If his negligent saunter
through the assembly-room, his deliberate articulation and grave,
deferential bend before his fair vassals, provoked ill-nature to the
charge of puppyism, the censor was silenced by tales of his
proficiency in manly sports; how in the gymnasium and billiard-room,
upon the cricket-green and skating-pond, he had few equals, so
seldom found a superior, that his exploits had passed into a
proverb.
After all, however, his brightest bays were gained in his character
as carpet knight. Trained coquettes and professional flirts, flushed
by a long course of victories, had put confident lances in rest and
run vain-glorious tilts with him. He was always ready to accept the
challenge; ready to become, for a few days, or, in exceptionally
tough cases, a few weeks, the apparent captive of the ambitious
belle. The approach of proud humility than which nothing could have
been more opposed to servility of spirit or demeanor; the gradual,
and finally rapt absorption of his every faculty and sentiment into
his unspoken adoration of her whose chains he wore; the delicate
appreciation of each shade of feeling and thought, and prescience of
each desire;--above and beneath all, his singular faculty of
adaptation to the various phases of character set for his
reading,--could hardly fail, first, to disarm, then to flatter,
finally to captivate.
Up to this period of his career, when he had entered his
nine-and-twentieth year, nobody said openly of him that his business
in life was to win hearts for the pleasure of breaking them. If he
had broken any, his victims made no moan. In the cases of the
veteran coquettes alluded to just now, sympathy would have been
thrown away. There were stealthy whispers to the effect, however,
that others, less wary, had been drawn into his snare; had dreamed
of love, and, awakening to anguished perception of their folly, had
shrouded bleeding hearts in robes of pride or Christian
resignation, and lived on outwardly as little changed by the
experience as was he. It is superfluous to remark that these
cautious rumors lent lustre to his fame instead of tarnishing it;
that dozens of intrepid damsels were wrought by the hearing into a
Curtius-like spirit of self-immolation; panted to leap, bedecked in
their bravest array, into the gulf which yawned to destroy the
safety and peace of mind of the whole sisterhood of marriageable
women in the classic town of Hamilton. The envious, nor the prudish,
stigmatized him as a lady-killer. The coarse term would be an insult
to his refinement, his notable honor, and equally notable kindness
of heart. He was, beyond question, the most charming of men, a
social diamond of the first water, although the obtuse daughters of
the Dundee manse had not at once discovered it.
What wonder that he, sitting among the roses in the arbor, found
infinite diversion in the recollection that he was pronounced by
Jessie "positively homely"--utterly unattractive beside her handsome
lover, and that her more discreet sister had mildly echoed her
disappointment?
He enjoyed the novelty of the incident and the laugh it gave
him--was sincere in the half-spoken regret--"What a pity I cannot
publish this verdict and the manner of its delivery, in Hamilton."
With that, he pulled down a branch of musk roses nodding above his
head; broke it, tore off the petals, until he had a double handful,
and buried his face in the odorous mass. Roy came up with him as the
sound of low, sweet singing moved the stillness of the garden and
the sunset into music. The songstress was Jessie, lying within her
oriel-window alone, and gazing at the amber ocean billowing above
the purple hills at the outlet of the valley. Her rich contralto
voice was like the colored light and the musk roses, Orrin thought,
in no wise tempted to dislike or underrate her because she did not
value him aright. That mistake would rectify itself, by and by. He
could stay a fortnight in Dundee as well as not. Roy had pressed him
to do so, and he began to think he would.
This was what Jessie sang, never dreaming of the audience, fit, but
few, hidden in the blossoming thicket:
"Sleeping, I dreamed, Love--dreamed, Love, of thee;
O'er the bright wave, Love, floating were we.
Light in thy fair hair played the soft wind,
Gently thy white arms round me were twined;
And as thy song, Love, swelled o'er the sea,
Fondly thy blue eyes beamed, Love, on me."
Neither of the cousins stirred until the song was finished, when a
robin in the nearest elm began his vespers.
"This is Arcadia!" said Orrin, ravishing another spray--great white
roses this time, with creamy hearts.
"It is _home_!" replied the other, softly.
Orrin appeared not to hear him.
"Or the Vale of Cashmere!" he went on, drawing in long breaths of
perfume. "Here are
"'Timid jasmine buds that keep
Their odors to themselves all day,
But when the sunlight dies away
Let the delicious secret out--'
roses of Kathay and bulbuls--and Nourmahal!"
Roy looked at him over his shoulder.
"If you have pulled enough of Eunice's rare, early roses to pieces
to satisfy your destructive proclivities, we will go in," he said,
pleasantly.
Something in his friend's eye and tone disinclined him to pursue the
theme. He could not suspect him of an intention to ridicule Jessie
or her home, but he felt the absence of sympathy with his own mood.
"Are they _hers_?" asked the other, brushing the wasted leaves in an
unheeded shower to the floor.
Roy paid no regard to the emphasis. He was strangely averse to
talking about Jessie at that moment.
"They are," he said, leading the way to the house, Orrin treading on
the scattered flakes of fragrance, to gain the door of the bower.
"She is an able florist. There is not another garden like hers for
many miles around."
No one excepting Jessie observed that Mr. Wyllys did not accost her
of his own accord while they were at tea, which was set out upon a
small table near the large window in the parlor. She, used to
petting, and what might have been considered by an impartial judge
more than her share of general attention, and a trifle nervous
withal, in her desire to produce an agreeable impression upon Roy's
kinsman, did remark it, and was conscience-smitten by the fear lest
her chagrin at beholding a man so unlike her preconceived ideal had
been reflected in her manner. She seized an opportunity, therefore,
when Roy rolled the table to its accustomed place in the middle of
the apartment, to court Orrin's notice.
"So you ascended our Mont Blanc this afternoon?" she said, smiling
engagingly. "I must retract my saucy innuendoes touching your
fondness for ease."
He was quite near her, but he must have been inattentive, for he
turned his face to her, with--"Pardon me! I did not catch your
observation!"
"It was nothing so dignified as an observation," she retorted,
coloring and laughing. "If I were to repeat it, you would be
reminded of the poor girl whose complaint--'The soup is hot,'
uttered confidentially to a deaf old lady who chanced to sit next
her at a dinner-party, was the signal for the solemn production of
an ear-trumpet, and the remark--audible to all present--'A very
profound and interesting observation, I doubt not, my dear! Will you
oblige me by repeating it?'"
Mr. Wyllys laughed in well-bred moderation that, somehow, made
Jessie feel that her little story was not very amusing, and had been
tamely told.
"I submit to the consequences of my deafness, rather than annoy you
by the ear-trumpet," was his answer.
Bowing, in quitting her, he followed Mr. Kirke to another window.
"We were speaking of Ruskin's 'Stones of Venice,' to-day," Jessie
heard him begin.
She had read the book, and would have enjoyed listening to their
discussion of it, as did Eunice, to whom Mr. Wyllys appealed at her
re-entrance, setting a chair for her by her father's, and
establishing himself in front of them.
Roy apparently did not object to this arrangement, for he drew a
stool to the sofa, and talked to Jessie, aside, of things that would
have interested her beyond all other subjects, but for the sight of
that group in the moonlight that now flooded the room. It kept astir
the uneasy sensation produced by Mr. Wyllys' marked avoidance of
her at tea-time. While her hand lay within her lover's, and her ear
drank in all he said, and her heart beat, fast and warm, as he only
could make it pulsate, she was ashamed to catch herself watching the
slender figure, bending easily forward, his elbow upon the table at
his side, his chin upon his hand, now in an attitude of respectful
attention, while her father or Eunice spoke, again talking
earnestly--she was sure, eloquently also,--in the low, cleverly
modulated accents of which he was the consummate master. Did he then
regard her as a feather-brained rattle? a forward school girl, of
whose prattle he was already weary, and whom he adjudged incapable
of entering into, or appreciating, intellectual conversation?
"Oh dear!" escaped her, when she reached this point.
Roy looked amazed--almost aghast--as well he might. He was in the
middle of a description of their future home, prefatory of a hint he
deemed it best to drop relative to a petition he had laid before the
trustees of the college in which he was professor. This had asked a
year's leave of absence, that he might pursue the study of the
German language and literature abroad with one or two other branches
of his profession. Orrin Wyllys had brought him letters of
approbation from the body named, and the time had come when he must
feel his way gently to the announcement of the approaching
separation.
"My darling!" he said. "What is it? Are you in pain?"
"Yes! Not my foot!" seeing him look at it. "I have a desperate
heartache! I shall never be good and wise enough for you, Roy! And
you will discover this for yourself, one day."
"That is the only really foolish thing I have ever heard you say!"
returned he, in fond raillery. "I am tormented, without
intermission, by the conviction that I am unworthy of your regard,
so we will let the one fear neutralize the other. Love is a powerful
solvent, dear. It will melt these stubborn doubts--these flintstones
of fancied incompatibility, that fret your heart when you meditate
upon the chances that we shall make one another happy."
"But if I were sedate and discreet; cautious as to what I say, and
to whom I say it,--more learned and beautiful--more like the blessed
old Euna over there. You see"--in real mortification--"I cannot
express the wish to reform without falling into my nonsensical
tricks of speech!"
Roy could not preserve his gravity.
"I am not laughing at you!" he whispered, as she flung her arm over
her eyes. "What has moved you to this sensitiveness--and with _me_?
I could but liken my sentiments in the imaginary survey of the
pattern bride you would give me to those of Jacob, who was put off
with the demure Leah, when he had bargained for witching wicked
Rachel."
"The comparison is an insult to Euna!" interrupted Jessie, warmly.
"I said you ought to marry a woman like her--pure as a pearl, true
as steel--in principle like adamant. Leah! Bah! I always detested
her! She was a sly, heartless traitor--a smooth-tongued hypocrite,
who cozened the pretty young sister whom she envied--becoming, as
she did, a willing party to her father's fraud. She deserved all
the unhappiness she got!"
"We shall not differ there. The 'tender-eyed' Jewess is no favorite
of mine. But, even supposing that I were to sacrifice inclination to
a sense of what you consider the fitness of things, Eunice or one
like her would never elect to marry me. It is dissimilarity in
certain characteristics that provides the best sauce for courtship.
Your sister, for instance, would be well-mated with a man like Mr.
Wyllys, the salient points of whose character are those which she
has not."
"In other words, you think the interests of the drama demand that I
should do the light comedy as a counter-poise to your heavy
tragedy?" said Jessie, appeased. "I am sure I could never like your
cousin--or one like him--well enough to think of marrying him."
"I don't ask you to do it!" rejoined Roy, playfully. "But do not, on
that account, shut your eyes to his real excellence. He is to be
your brother, remember--for I have no other. His father was my
guardian, and while he lived, I scarcely felt the early loss of my
parents. To Orrin personally, I owe much. He is four years my
senior, and when we were at school, he fought many a battle in my
behalf with boys bigger than either of us. Then, we were separated
for seven years, seeing one another only in vacations and casual
furloughs from business. He is one of the trustees of our college,
and, although he will not admit it, I am persuaded that I am
indebted to his influence, seconded as it was by my dear old friend,
Dr. Baxter's advocacy of my cause,--for my Professorship. You will
like and esteem him when you come to know him. I hope you two will
be great friends in time. As a preliminary to your better
understanding, and consequently your admiration for him--I am going
to ask him for some music."
Orrin obeyed the call, but not with alacrity. He seemed altogether
content with his location and his companions.
"Please do not order lights!" he said to Eunice who arose with him.
"No illumination can be preferable to the mountain moonlight. It is
radiance clarified to purity."
It revealed to him, from his seat upon the music-stool, a picture he
was artist enough to enjoy. Jessie's white dress and pillows were
flecked by the irregular tracery of vine-shadows, but, through an
opening in the leafy lattice, the moon poured a stream of light upon
her face and bust, revealing even the gleam of the betrothal ring
upon the hand supporting her cheek. Roy had opened the piano, and
now stood at her feet in the shade, leaning against the wall--a
dark, motionless sentinel, with folded arms and bowed head,
listening to the music, or watchful of her.
The player essayed no scientific surprises; no juggling complication
of fingers and keys. He began with a moonlight sonata, the original
theme of which might have been rung by fairy hands upon the
jessamine bells, "giving their delicious secrets out" under the
weight of summer dew. From this he strayed into the "Midsummer
Night's Dream,"--thence to the most beautiful of the musical
paradoxes, "Songs Without Words," and there rested.
"More, please!" entreated Jessie, in dreamy delight.
Both hands were folded under her cheek now, and she had not moved
since he finished the fairy sonata.
"This is Elysium!" she added, softly.
"But sing, Orrin--won't you?" asked Roy.
So long as his cousin's music brought his darling more pleasure than
did conversation with himself, the generous fellow would contribute
in this way to her gratification.
"You wouldn't have wondered at or blamed me, if you had ever heard
him sing," said a broken-hearted wife to me once, in reviewing the
circumstances of her early acquaintance with the man who had
married, neglected, brutally ill-used, and finally deserted her. He
was bully, ruffian, liar, cheat, and drunkard, but he sang like an
angel, giving to words and music a depth and delicacy of expression
that sounded to the listeners like heavenly inspiration. With the
visage of a Caliban and the appetites of a satyr, he yet moved
others to smiles, tears, high and holy aspirations, to solemn or
wild enthusiasm, religious or patriotic. His musical genius was the
talisman by which he made himself popular, courted, envied,
passionately beloved. Orrin Wyllys' voice, his exquisite taste in
and knowledge of music would have won him social distinction had he
been awkward in carriage, boorish in manner, and an ignoramus. There
was not another amateur performer in his circle who could ever hope
to equal him in effective and scientific execution. In the keeping
of some--of many--the gift would have been a joy and a beneficence.
He had none more dangerous--and he knew it, lightly as he affected
to esteem it.
If his first selection on this occasion harmonized less perfectly
with the hush and chastened lustre of the evening than his
unsyllabled melodies had done, he was excusable since it developed
the best tones of his voice. It was Mrs. Norton's sea lyric--"The
Outward Bound." His auditors felt the rush of the favoring wind that
had sprung up at dawn; heard the flap of the sails as they filled,
and the creak of the line that strained at the anchor; saw the knot
of parting friends; the close, tight hand-clasp, that helped force
back the tears from eyes that would fain smile farewell.
"It is a fine old song," said Mr. Kirke. "I heard it many years ago.
I thank you, Mr. Wyllys, for reviving the memory."
"This generation has nothing that can compare worthily with the
music of other days," replied Orrin's voice from his shaded corner.
"The true lover of the art must turn from the _potpourri_ of the
modern opera, the unflavored whey of fashionable ballads, with the
craving of him who, having tasted the mellow wine, refuses the
new--for he saith, 'the old is better.'"
Jessie moved like one awaking from a trance--spoke with feigned
lightness.
"'To weep is a woman's part!' I don't like that line of your song,
Mr. Wyllys. If your 'Outward Bound' had admitted mothers, sisters,
and wives to the parting banquet, they would have borne themselves
as bravely as did their masculine comrades, and without the aid of
the 'sparkling brimmer,' which is, I suppose, the poetical name for
a potion known, hereabouts, as 'mountain dew' or 'Dutch courage.'
But if poets of the stronger sex are to be believed, Niobe was the
prototype woman."
"Your quarrel is with one of your own sex, Miss Jessie; not with me
or mine," was the cool rejoinder. "Mrs. Norton wrote the offensive
line."
"There is something very like it in Kingsley's 'Three Fishers,'"
said Roy, to cover Jessie's trifling discomfiture. "Let us have that
next."
Mr. Wyllys sang it, giving to the refrain a weary sadness, exceeding
pathos. He knew how effective this was when he saw Jessie's hand
steal up to her eyes. She did not plead for "more," or cavil at "Men
must work and women must weep," when he left the instrument, and
went back to the window where Eunice was sitting.
"If you and your father are not afraid of the dew, I should like to
see the mountains in this light," he said, persuasively. "Dare you
walk for a little while upon the porch?"
The three went out together.
"Don't stay here, Roy!" begged Jessie. "The view must be fine
to-night. It is not fair that you should be tied to my side all the
time. I feel as if I were defrauding your cousin of his share of
your society."
"You must continue to upbraid yourself with the theft, then,"
answered Roy, reseating himself upon the ottoman, and drawing her
head to his shoulder. "Or, rather, my pet, you must cease to imagine
that I could prefer any society to yours, any scene to the
delightful seclusion of this, our betrothal nook. Orrin knows all.
He has fine tact, and comprehends how precious to me is every hour
passed with you."
This was a plausible solution of the reserve which puzzled and
pained her. Jessie tried to receive it in full faith, and forgot to
watch the forms strolling back and forth before the two windows
which opened upon the piazza. When the party broke up for the night,
she extended her hand to Orrin in cousinly freedom.
"I mean to make my trial effort at sitting up, to-morrow," she
said, blithely. "And we will have some music. Euna doesn't sing, but
she will play our accompaniments, since Mr. Fordham disdains the
piano."
"I threw a number of instrumental duets into my trunk yesterday,"
said Orrin to Miss Kirke. "I did not then know why I did it. I
understand now that I had some intuition of coming enjoyment. May I
bring them up to-morrow?"
Jessie had never been jealous of Eunice in her life. Her disposition
was as generous as it was impetuous. She did not care, she said to
herself, in reviewing the evening that sent her to her pillow tired
but sleepless, that Mr. Wyllys had openly preferred her sister's
companionship to hers; that he had scarcely noticed her proposal
about the music in his desire to play with Eunice. But she was
conscious of a discordant jar in memories that would else have been
all brightness, whenever she reverted to her repeated efforts to
scale the barriers of the strangerhood that ought not to have
existed between them for a moment after he heard Roy's story--and
the adroit rebuffs that had met each of these.
Eunice had helped her undress and seen her comfortably laid in bed,
kissed her affectionately, and promised to be with her early in the
morning. By the time the door was shut, Jessie had propped her head
upon her crossed arms, and lay with wide-open eyes gazing through
the unshuttered windows at the broad, straight brow of Windbeam,
black and majestic in the mountain moonlight; listening to the
stealthy whispers of the vine-leaves about the casement, and living
over the events of the day--an exciting one in her quiet life. Her
thoughts of Roy were all of prideful joy. Her heart was very
tender, very quiet in the glad humility that possessed her as she
pondered upon the fact that he had chosen her--an undisciplined,
unsophisticated country girl, to share the career she was sure would
be noble and distinguished. Something more than usually fond in
Eunice's silent caress at parting from her for the night, brought up
a host of reminiscences of the motherly love with which this sister
had guarded and nurtured her--the youngling of the household. Such a
bright, sweet day her existence had been! In all her sky there was
not a cloud, save this light vapor of discontent with herself that
the introduction to Roy's relative--the first of his old friends
whom she had ever met--should have been so unsatisfactory.
"His reserve actually increased as the hours went on," she
reflected. "His manner was more free and cordial while I was telling
him the story of old Davie Dundee than after Roy had explained to
him what we are to one another. Perhaps he thinks an engaged young
lady should be demure and dutiful, having no eyes or ears for any
one except her betrothed. Perhaps it is as Roy says, and he fears to
intrude upon our _tete-a-tetes_. I must convince him that we are not
so selfish. Roy declares that his cousin approves heartily of our
engagement--that he said many pleasant things of me, else I should
fear that he had taken a dislike to me, from the beginning, that he
thought Professor Fordham might and ought to have done better. I
must make him like him for myself--not merely because I am his
kinsman's choice."
From which soliloquy the reader will perceive that Mr. Wyllys had
led off with a winning card.