Mr. Kirke and Eunice were still absent when Orrin paid his second
call at the Parsonage that day. He had conducted Jessie home in the
forenoon--a drenched and shivering figure, at which Patsey screeched
with terror; stayed long enough to learn from the girl that the
preventives he had ordered against cold were administered, and that
her young mistress was put comfortably to bed, after which he betook
himself to the hotel to make the requisite changes in his own
apparel.
"Miss Jessie hopes you'll stay here, sir," remarked Patsey. "She
says you'll find dry things in Mr. Kirke's room. I've just laid 'em
out all ready."
"I am much obliged to Miss Jessie and to you, my good girl; but I
shall run no risk in going down to the village. Say to Miss Jessie
that she will hear from, or see me again before night."
Three hours later, a messenger brought a note, inquiring how Jessie
was, and if she would be quite able to see him in the evening.
"For I must return to Hamilton to-morrow," he added.
Jessie wrote one line in reply:
"I am up and well. Come whenever you please.
Gratefully,
J. K."
His pleasure was to delay the visit until twilight. Perhaps he had a
difficult programme to arrange; perhaps he wanted to give Jessie
time to recover strength and composure, or he may have thought that
delay would enhance the value of his society. On the legal principle
he had enunciated when Roy's prior engagement was under discussion,
we ought to accept his own explanation of his tardiness.
"I could not come earlier," he said very gravely, in reply to
Jessie's faltered gratitude and fears that he had suffered from the
morning's adventure. "You needed rest and quiet, and I have been
unhinged all day--mentally, I mean. Don't thank me again! You don't
know how like mockery phrases of acknowledgment from you to me
sound. Sit down. You are still weak and nervous. You are trembling
all over."
If she was, it was not from cold or debility. He placed her in an
armchair, brought a shawl from the hall, and folded it about her;
turned away abruptly, and walked the room in a silence she had
neither words nor courage to break. The piano stood open as he had
left it in the morning. He stopped before it on his tenth round,
seated himself, and began a prelude. Then he sang the ballad she had
crooned in the amber sunset, so many, many months ago! while he
listened without, and tore the hearts out of Eunice's roses.
He gave the first verse with tenderness that was exquisite; rendered
the musing ecstasy of the dream with beauty and expression that
thrilled the auditor with delicious pain. This deepened into agony
under the passionate melancholy of the last stanza:
"Soon, o'er the bright waves howled forth the gale,
Fiercely the lightning flashed on our sail;
Yet while our frail barque drove o'er the sea,
Thine eyes like loadstars beamed, Love, on me.
Oh, heart, awaken! wrecked on lone shore!
Thou art forsaken! Dream, heart, no more!"
He came back to where she sat--all bowed together, and quivering in
every limb--and knelt before her.
"Jessie, I have dreamed, and I am awake. I am here to-night, to ask
you to forgive, not only the rash, presumptuous words I spoke this
morning, but the feeling that gave them birth. I have loved you from
the moment of our first meeting. You and Heaven are my witnesses how
I have striven with my unwarrantable passion,--how, persuaded that
the indulgence of this would be a rank offence against honor and
friendship, I resisted by feigned coldness your innocent wiles to
win the good-will of Roy's relative. I deluded myself, for a time,
with the belief that I could control the proofs of my affection
within the bounds of brotherly regard. You best know how, when your
faith in the truth of your accepted lover was shaken, I became his
champion; how conscientiously and laboriously I have pleaded his
cause with you; tried to be faithful to the trust he had reposed in
me;--how, when I had nearly betrayed myself in an unguarded moment,
I endeavored to dissipate any suspicions that my imprudence might
have awakened in your mind. Again and again I have avoided you for
days and months together; punished myself for my involuntary
transgression against my friend by denying myself the sight of that
which was dearer and more to be desired in my esteem than all the
world and heaven itself; have shut myself into outer darkness from
the light of your eyes and the sound of your voice. The fruit of the
toils, the anguish, the precautions of more than a year, was
destroyed to-day by one outburst of ungovernable emotion.
"I shall dream no more, dear! I solemnly vow this on my knees, while
I beg you to say that you do not despise me!"
The bowed head was upon his shoulder now, and she was weeping. He
put his arm about her, and held her close, while he prayed her to be
comforted.
"I have cost you many painful thoughts, and not a few tears since
the day when you told me the story of old David Dundee, over there
in the window," he said, sadly. "It would have been better--much
better for you had you never seen or heard of me. These tears are
all for me, I know. But, indeed, darling, I am not worthy of one of
them. They make me feel yet more keenly what a villain I must seem
to you."
"Don't say that!" she burst forth. "If you are unworthy in your own
sight, what must I think of my conduct? You were under no vow; had
professed to love no other, had entered into no compact in the name
of God, to be constant to one--one only--while life endured; a
compact you called as sacred and binding as marriage. I loathe
myself when I think of my fickleness and falsehood. I do not
deserve to receive the love of any true man. There is, at times, a
bitter tonic in the idea that I may be better worth Roy Fordham's
acceptance than I would be of another's who had never deceived the
trust of the woman who loved him."
She sat upright, and laughed, in saying it. "We--he and I--could not
upbraid one another on the score of inconstancy."
"I will not have you depreciate yourself. You have been true to the
letter of your vow. There are some feelings that defy control.
Listen to me, dearest," sitting down by her. "This is a world of
mismatched plans,--of blighted hopes and fruitless regrets. But the
wise do not defy Fate. They look, instead, for the sparkle of some
gem amid the ashes of desolation. Let us be brave since we cannot be
hopeful. I can never forget you,--never cease to think of you as the
dearest and noblest of women. The memory will be more to me than any
possession in the gift of Fortune. No change of external
circumstances can make us less to one another than we are now, while
to the world we can never be more. Nothing is further from my wishes
or designs than to weaken your regard for the strength of a compact
so solemn as that which binds you to your betrothed. He is a good
man, and he will cherish you kindly and faithfully. It may be a hard
saying, but we are dealing in no mock reserves now, love; and
however weakly my heart may shrink from pronouncing the doom of my
happiness, I ought not to disguise from myself or you the truth,
that, as he has done nothing since your betrothal to forfeit your
esteem, you should fulfil your promise whenever he shall claim it."
"Which he may never do!" Jessie interrupted the forced calmness of
the argument. "I heard a terrible story a month ago--one that has
driven sleep from my eyes for whole nights since. Did you ever hear
that my mother was insane for many years before she died?"
It was too dark to see her features, but Orrin felt the strong
shudder that ran over her; saw the gesture that seemed to tear the
dreadful secret from her breast.
She went on wildly. "That the loving words and caresses, the
recollection of which has fed my heart from my babyhood, the tales
and songs and sketches that were my choicest pleasures then, were
the vagaries of an unsettled mind; that she knew nothing aright
after I, miserable little wretch! was born! Not even her own and
only child! That, through all these years I have been worshipping a
beautiful myth! I never had a mother! Oh! that I had died while I
still believed in her!"
The cry of the last sentence was of hopeless bereavement, and the
specious actor beside her sat appalled at the might of a woe beyond
his conception.
She resumed before he could reply.
"I ought never to marry! Accursed from the beginning, I should
finish my shadowed life alone. You talk of the gifts of Fortune. The
best she can offer me now are quiet and obscurity. I have written
all this to Mr. Fordham. He knows, by this time, that I am a less
desirable partner for his fastidious and untainted self than was the
poor girl whose only crime was that her sister had died of
consumption,--that a deadlier malady is my birthright!"
"You have written this to Roy?" exclaimed Orrin, in stern earnest.
"Without consultation with your sister or father?"
"Why should I consult them? Having deceived me for twenty years or
more, they would not be likely to tell me the truth now. The story
came indirectly to me, from the daughter of my mother's nurse, who
lived here herself as a servant when I was born. Afterward I saw and
talked with the woman myself. Nothing but the whole truth would
satisfy me. Her account was clear and circumstantial. There is no
mistake."
"The woman is a lying gossip--a malicious or weak-minded slanderer.
You have acted hastily and most unwisely!" Orrin said, in
seriousness that commanded her attention. "This tale is not a new
one to me. Your sister informed me that there was such a figment in
circulation before you went to Mrs. Baxter."
He rehearsed Eunice's description of her step-mother's invalidism,
softening such portions of it as might, he feared, tend to feed the
daughter's unhealthy fancies.
"Your father and your family physician will tell you that her
disease was physical. Her low, nervous state and hysterical symptoms
were concomitants to this, as were her indisposition to see
strangers, and inability to go abroad. It is your duty to write this
explanation to Roy. He had your father's version of the case, when
he asked his sanction to his addresses to yourself. You must tell
him that this was the correct one."
"To what purpose would all this be?" He had never heard her speak
sullenly until now. "Better that he should part from me on this
pretext than upon the ground which my farther confession would
furnish."
She said the concluding words so indistinctly that Orrin did not
catch their purport, or his rejoinder would have been different and
less prompt.
"For the sake of your mother's memory!" he urged, gently. "The
mother who, you are again persuaded, both knew and loved you."
She was still for a moment.
"You are right," she said then. "It would be base to screen my
faithlessness at the expense of her reputation. I am cowardly--but
indeed, indeed, it is not an easy task to undeceive him. He trusts
me implicitly! If you had read his letters! And I do still value his
esteem. I believed in him so long, you know. But I will tell him
all! It is just that I should be spared no humiliation!"
To Wyllys this was sheer raving, yet it sounded dangerous.
"What do you mean?" he queried, in an altered tone.
Instead of replying, she hid her face in her hands--(how well he
remembered the old action!)--and moaned.
He touched her shoulder, less in caress than admonition, as he
asked, "Tell him what? Why do you speak of humiliation?"
"Because he still believes in _me_, I tell you! He will scorn me
when I confess that my heart has changed--that I can never love him
again, as I fancied I did once!" she whispered, as if ashamed to say
it aloud. "He will cast me off--free me at once and forever."
The temptation was powerful, and the Thug yielded to it, without a
struggle.
"And if he should, darling? What then?" he said, tightening his arm
about her waist.
"_You_ should not ask me!" in a yet lower whisper.
Had the dusk allowed, she might have seen a smile of triumph upon
his face; an involuntary uprearing of the head as from the binding
of the bay of victory about his brows. In affections and in spirit,
she lay at his feet--her love confessed, her destiny in his power.
Did he wish, for one insane instant, that his acting were reality,
that, with clean heart and hands, he could fold her in his embrace,
and call her by the name which is the seal and glory of loving
womanhood? make her his honored and beloved Wife?
We are all human, and there may have gaped in that one wild second,
an hitherto unsuspected joint in his harness of unscrupulous
egotism. If this were so, he conquered the weakness before he again
spoke.
"Jessie, this is sheer madness! My beautiful angel! why have you
made me love you only that both our hearts should be broken at last?
Do you know what you are doing? Do not injure yourself fatally in
the estimation of all your friends by cancelling this engagement.
Your father has talked much to me of the comfort it is to him. He
loves and honors Fordham; is happy in his old age in the
anticipation of giving you into his keeping. This will be a crushing
blow to his pride and affection. And Fordham! you do not comprehend
what a terrible thing his anger is. I, who have seen him aroused,
warn you not to make him your lifelong enemy. These calm, slow
natures are vindictive beyond the possibility of your conception."
"Yet you would have me trust myself and my happiness in his keeping?
When I have said that I do not love him! Have you read _my_ nature
to so little purpose as to think that fear will drive, where
affection does not lead me?"
Her spirit was rising. He knew the signs of her mood, and that the
sharpest of the struggle between her will and his was to come. He
made ready his last shaft.
"Leave things as they are! If I plead earnestly, it is because there
is so much at stake. For me, as for you! Do not tempt me to perjury
and dishonor. Help me to keep my integrity by holding fast to your
own! Believe me, who have seen more of life and human inconsistency
than your virgin fancy ever pictured, when I say that crossed loves
are the rule, love-marriages the exception in this crooked, shadowed
world. By and by, you--both of us--will learn quietness of soul, if
not content, and nobody surmise the secret of the locked
heart-chambers which are consecrated to one another."
"Perjury! dishonor!" repeated Jessie, bewildered. "By what oath are
_you_ bound? I do not understand!"
"You have heard no report, then, of the business which brought me to
Dundee? Has not Mrs. Baxter or Miss Provost written to you of my
engagement?"
"Engagement!" still wonderingly.
"I am engaged to be married, Jessie!" mournfully firm.
"To whom?"
He just caught the gasp, for her throat and tongue were too dry for
perfect articulation.
"To Hester Sanford."
Without another word, she got up and groped her way to the mantel.
Orrin followed.
"What is it?" he asked, tenderly.
"I want the matches! Ah, here they are!"
She struck one, the blue flame showing a ghastly face above it,
lighted the lamp, and motioned Orrin to a seat opposite her own, at
the centre-table.
"Now!" she said, interlacing her fingers upon the table, and leaning
over them in an attitude of attention. "Go on with what you were
saying."
If she had expected him to show embarrassment, she was foiled. He
put his hand upon hers before he began, and although she drew it
back, he felt that it was clay-cold, and judged rightly that his
real composure would outlast her counterfeit.
"What could I do?" he said, beseechingly. "You were lost to me as
surely as though you were already married or dead. If I am to blame
for obeying the reckless impulse to double-bar the door separating
us--to divide myself from you by a gulf so wide that expectancy,
desire, and hope would perish in attempting to cross it, you are
scarcely the one to upbraid me for the deed. More marriages are
contracted in desperation than from mutual love. I said: 'If I am
ever cured, it will be by this means.' Miss Sanford was not
unpropitious to my advances. I will not insult your common-sense by
pretending that her evident partiality flattered or attracted
me--much less that I ever felt one throb of tenderness for her.
Since I could never love another woman, what difference did it make
who bore my name and kept my house? It were better--so I
reasoned--to marry one whose supreme self-love would prevent
her from divining my indifference and its cause, who was
shallow-hearted, insensitive, and obtuse of wit, than one who,
gauging my feelings by her own, would expect a devotion I could not
feign--
"But I cannot talk of Miss Sanford and my new bonds, here, and now!
I thought myself armed at every point for self-justification when I
came to you. One ray from your eyes showed me my error."
"Perjury! dishonor!" reiterated Jessie, without moving the eyes that
were fast filling with disdain. "It is from these that I am to save
you? You perjured yourself when you told that girl that you loved
her--and tell it to her you did, or she would not have accepted your
hand. Other men have sought her in marriage, and she would be
exacting as to the form of your proposal. You dishonored yourself
and the name of wedded love in every vow you made her. From this
sin, at least, I am free. When I promised to marry Roy Fordham, I
thought I understood my own feelings. And my heart _was_ his! If I
could forget the mad, wicked dream that divides me from that season
of purity and gladness, I would peril my soul to do it! You speak of
the sanctity of my engagement; of the integrity that bids you hold
fast to yours. We will pass over the first. It _was_ a sacred thing,
and a precious, once, before the serpent left his loathsome trail
upon it. But where was your integrity when you talked to me of love,
just now? when you deliberately prefaced the announcement of your
betrothal by the declaration that the memory of me must always be
more to you than any earthly possession? Was this loyal? Was it
honorable, or even honest? I believe that I have loved you, Orrin
Wyllys! I believe, moreover, that you have tried to win my love--for
what end the Maker of us both alone knows. If I have been weak, you
have been wicked. I see it all now--step by step! fall after fall!
And to crown the injury you have done me with insult, you adjure me
to save you from temptation to perjury by heaping lie upon lie, in
continuing to assert by actions, if not by direct protestation, that
I love a man to whom I am indifferent. You have sold yourself for
Hester Sanford's millions. You would have me sell myself, soul and
body, for expediency and convenience--and to avert Roy Fordham's
lasting enmity. That is the case, stripped of sentimental verbiage."
"Jessie!"
"I have no affection for him, or for any one else! No faith! no
hope!" she pursued, towering above him like a lost but menacing
spirit. "You saved my life this morning. You make of that benefit a
wrong to-night, by robbing life of all that it held of sweetness and
comfort; by showing me what a coarse bit of gilded clay I--poor
fool! have worshipped. I wish you had let me drown!"
"Jessie! are you mad?"
He had arisen with her, and would have drawn nearer to her side, but
she waved him off. There was a terrible beauty in her wrath that
fascinated him, in spite of her cutting words.
"I was a happy, trustful child when you crossed my path. I am a
hard, bitter, suspicious woman--and the change is your work. You
have humbled me forever in my own eyes, by letting me into the dark
secrets of my instability and idiotic credulity. I care not what
others think of me. I shall write to Mr. Fordham before I sleep, and
release him; if he still considers himself bound to me, shall tell
him plainly that my love is dead--and my heart!"
"You will judge me more mercifully, and yourself more justly one
day, Jessie. Your self-reproaches pain me more than do your
vituperations against myself. Nothing you can say in your present
mood can alter my feelings for you. You have had much to try
you, to-day, my poor child! When you are cooler, you will
retract--mentally at least--the charges you have brought against one
whose heart is now--and always will be--your own. You know me better
than you think. I can wait for time and your sober reason to right
me. Implacable as I know Fordham to be, under his impassive
demeanor, he will be more lenient to what he will esteem my breach
of trust--the wrong I have done him--when once he has heard my
defence, than you are at this moment."
"You suppose, then, that I am going to lodge a complaint against
you?" she said, contemptuously. "I shall not mention your name. I
should be ashamed to own who was the cause of my folly. You have
nothing to dread from your cousin's anger."
And, although his last remark was a "feeler," designed to elicit
such an assurance, this speech stung him more sharply than had the
volley of invectives that preceded it.
Mr. Kirke and Eunice did not return until midnight. Jessie had the
evening to herself, and the letter to Roy was sent to the
post-office before she went to bed.
It was short and decisive to unkindness:
"When I wrote to you, last week," was the unceremonious
commencement,--"I said that I would await your reply before
sending another letter. I believed that the information
contained in the former would be the means of terminating our
engagement. I have learned since that the story was a
malicious or idle exaggeration. My mother died, as she had
lived, a sane woman. But this matters little so far as our
relation to one another is concerned. Another, and an
insuperable obstacle to our union, exists in the change of my
feelings toward yourself. If I ever loved you--I think,
sometimes, I never did--I love you no longer. Months of doubt
and suffering have brought me to the determination to confess
this without reserve. I offer no extenuation of my fickleness.
I ought to have remained constant, but I have not. May you
choose more happily and wisely in the future!
"I write this without conference with my father or sister,--in
the knowledge, also, that my change of purpose and prospects
will be a sorrow and a surprise to both. But I cannot hesitate
or draw back. I need hardly say that I have entered into
pledges with no one else. No one desires that I should, or
seeks to win my affections. It rests with you to give me the
release I ask of your generosity and humanity, or to hold me to
the letter of my bond. If, having learned the extent of the
change that has come over me since I gave it, you insist upon
the fulfilment of my promise, I shall submit to your decision.
"Foreseeing what your action will be, it only remains for me to
add that your gifts and letters await your order.
"JESSAMINE KIRKE."