Dr. Septimus Baxter was President of Marion College, situate in the
beautiful town of Hamilton, lying two hundred miles to the
northward, and in another state than the mountain-girded valley of
which the Dundee Church and the surrounding village were the chief
ornaments. Dr. Baxter was the nominal head of the faculty of
professors, and Mrs. Septimus Baxter was virtual autocrat of his
home.
He was a little man, physically, at his best, which was when he was
in his own realm--the area enclosed by the walls of his
lecture-room. There was, in popular phrase, "no fit" to his clothes.
His trousers bagged at the knees, and his coats hung in loose folds
down from his shoulder-blades, on the very day they left the
tailor's shop; were shabby within twenty-four hours. He had a trick
of brushing the nap of his hat the wrong way in his abstracted
moods, and of twisting his forefinger in one bow of his white
cravat until he dragged it into a slovenly loop, two crumpled wisps
depending from it. Another and his most inveterate habit was, to tie
his handkerchief into a succession of tight knots while he lectured,
preached, prayed, and talked. Each marked a step in ratiocination or
a rise in interest in the matter that engaged his mind until the
climax of proof or animation was reached, when he would begin to
untie them, one after the other, timing the process so judiciously
that "Amen!" or "_Quod erat demonstrandum!_" passed his lips as the
released cambric swept through his hand in a flourish prior to its
restoration to his pocket. Nevertheless, he commanded respect from
students and professors. His courage in grappling with crabbed or
ponderous themes; the eagle eye that penetrated the vapors of
mysticism, detected the insidious thread of sophistry, which,
intertwined with legitimate argument, was gradually but fatally
guiding the inquirer away from the truth; the bursts of real
eloquence, passages of beauty and pathos, that starred the
didacticism of his discourses, electrifying his hearers as the
musical ring from the desiccated tortoise-shell may have startled
the god who tripped over it--these made him a hero to his classes, a
man to be consulted and reverenced by his co-laborers. Moreover, he
had a great heart within his narrow chest, soft as a child's,
generous to self-abnegation, and full of such holy and Christian
graces as love the shade, while their unconscious aroma betrays
their existence to all who pass.
Mrs. Baxter had been a belle, and she would hardly have cast a
second glance upon the small and shabby divine, but for two weighty
reasons. By some unaccountable freak of Cupid, or of Fortune, the
popular Miss Lanneau had counted her thirtieth year without
exchanging her celibate state for that which she languishingly
avowed would be preferable to one of her dependent nature and
seeking sensibilities. She laughed yet with her lips and executed
arch manoeuvres with her speaking eyes, when unfeeling allusion
was made in her presence to the "crooked stick" that awaits the
over-nice fagot gatherer, and to the forlorn and aged virgin, also a
wanderer in woodlands, who answered the owl's "To-who?" all the
freezing night with the despairing--"Anybody!" But at heart she was
growing restless, if not unhappy, when Dr. Baxter fell in her way.
She was a _litterateur_, as well as a beauty, and her reverend
suitor was a man of note--a distinguished clergyman, a _savant_ and
senior professor in a highly respectable institution of learning.
She had longed for a "career" all her life--for a sphere of decided
influence--social and literary. Would a more promising avenue to
this ever be offered her? She overlooked the ill-fitting coat, the
dragged cravat, the inevitable handkerchief. As she put it, she "set
the subjective where it should always be placed--above the grosser
objective." In direct English she married the doctor, and had for
fifteen years made him an excellent wife. If his testimony were of
importance in this case--and he was a sturdy truth-teller--he wanted
no better.
I have said that he was a little man at his best. He was a pygmy on
a certain evening in the November succeeding the Dundee Centennial
summer. To begin with the most severe of the dwarfing processes to
which he had been subjected. It was a reception night in the
presidential mansion. Mrs. Baxter had given a party the previous
week, and now sat in state, as was the Hamiltonian usage, to receive
the calls demanded from those who had been the invitees on that
occasion. The ceremony in its mildest form would have been
purgatorial to her spouse, but she had aggravated the torture by
personally superintending his toilette. This accomplished, she
entreated him if he had one atom of regard for her, to leave necktie
and handkerchief alone for that night; walked him into the parlor,
and inducted him into an immense easy chair directly beneath a
bracket-light; thrust an illuminated folio--one of her centre-table
ornaments--between his fingers, and withdrew to her own chair a
little way off, to examine the effect.
"You are really picturesque, my love!" she decided, in honeyed
patronage. "If you can _only_ remember to sit upright instead of
slipping down in the lap of your chair until your coat-collar shows
above the back of your neck, you will make a fine study for a sketch
of 'Learned Leisure,' or something of that kind."
The poor man smiled resignedly, and began to turn the leaves of his
book. It was a sacred album, the work of his wife's fair fingers,
although he did not know this.
"I flatter myself you will find some choice bits there?" she said,
modestly.
She was fond of talking about "bits," and "effects," and "tone," and
"depth;" of "_chiaro-oscuro_," and "bas-reliefs," and "intaglios,"
and "antiques,"--useful cant that forms the stock-in-trade of many
an art-critic, whose decrees pass current with a larger circle than
the clique which eulogized Mrs. Baxter's talents. She was, in
feature and coloring, a pretty woman still, in defiance of her
forty-five or forty-six years. Her brown eyes were lively; the red
of her complexion, if a trifle fixed and hard, seldom outspreading
the distinctly defined round spots upon the cheek-bones, was hers
honestly, as were the glossy curls that showed no frost-lines, and
the pearly teeth she had trained her lips to reveal at every
possible opportunity. Her hands were plump, white, and small, and
would have been smaller had she exercised them less. Like the teeth,
they were too obtrusive. She could not say "Good-day" to a passing
acquaintance without parting her lips in a wide smile over the
milk-white treasures, tucking away their natural covering in an
incredibly narrow fold above the ivory, and stretching it below into
a straight line which lost itself in creases that had once been
dimples. She had been renowned in her youth for her vivacity, and
had cultivated it into what nobody was kind enough to tell her was
frisky affectation. The extent to which the pliant fingers curved,
and twined, and twinkled, and sprawled, in the course of a
conversation of moderate length, was a thing of wonder forever to
the uninitiated spectator of her gambols. She added to this
gesticulation a way of plunging forward from her girdle upward, when
she waxed very animated, that threatened to precipitate her into the
lap of her fellow-colloquist, after which she would lay her hand
upon her heaving bust, and swallow audibly, while awaiting a reply
to her latest deliverance. To sum up description in one word--Mrs.
Baxter's speciality was Manner.
Her friends were correct in one laudation. She was amiable and
kind-hearted in her way, as her husband was in his. If she
trafficked upon this excellence, made the most of it, very much
after the style in which she showed off her teeth and hands, it was
rather because display was her controlling foible, than through any
design upon the answering gratitude of her beneficiaries. She was
dressed in black silk, with a jaunty velvet basquine, a scarlet
scarf of Canton crepe fastened upon the right shoulder with an
antique cameo, and knotted under the left, the fringed ends falling
low down upon her skirt.
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 unfashionably early call with such
gracious tact," responded the gentleman, bowing low over her hand.
He shook hands with the doctor with less _empressement_, 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 passing. 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!" ejaculated the doctor, closing the
Russian-leather album 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 _illustrated_ 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 album, 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
title-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 passing 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
anticipated 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 worship as few women can inspire. I believe
that he tried faithfully to make her happy, but my personal
acquaintanceship 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 associated it with 'The Cotter's Saturday
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 friendship 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?"