Roy Fordham remained ten days longer in Dundee in consequence of an
arrangement made by his brother professors by which they divided his
duties among them. Dr. Baxter, whose partiality for him was
proverbial, taking a double share upon himself. The furlough was not
accepted by him without misgivings. He felt that he ought to be in
his place at the beginning of the college session, and that to avail
himself further of the generous kindness of trustees and faculty,
after a year's absence, was an abuse of the same. Dr. Baxter wrote
him two strong, short letters to refute this idea, and he found
additional solace for his conscience in the discovery that he was
needed by the sisters. Eunice and he were joint executors of Mr.
Kirke's small property. To Jessie were left her mother's dowry with
the accumulated interest; her mother's picture, and certain articles
of jewelry, dress, and furniture, which had been hers. Everything
else was Eunice's--a portion that did not nearly equal her
sister's, but with which she was more than content. The settlement
of the estate was easily accomplished. The just man had no debts,
and the few legal papers needful to secure the title of his
possessions to his children were in perfect order.
At the end of a week the only open question was that of Eunice's
residence. Roy had engaged a house in Hamilton, and was urgent in
his desire that she should live with Jessie and himself. The
conscientious elder sister hesitated in the knowledge that her
income would not support her in like comfort anywhere else.
"My inclination leads-me to follow Jessie," she confessed to her
brother-in-law. "My sense of duty to myself and to you makes me
doubt the propriety and justice of living in comparative idleness,
when, if I had not the shelter of your roof, I must work to eke out
a maintenance."
Which quibble Roy pronounced absurd and far-fetched.
"Quite unworthy of sensible Eunice! To say nothing of the manifest
unkindness to our poor girl here," he said, as his wife entered the
room where he was sitting. "Come here, Love, and convince this
unreasonable and sceptical woman that she is indispensable to our
happiness."
Jessie yielded passively to the arm that drew her to his knee.
"What is it?" she asked, listlessly.
Roy gave an abstract of the situation.
She looked confused--uncertain whether she had heard him aright. It
was an effort to understand anything, sometimes. Roy and Eunice
glanced from her to one another. They saw that dazed look, heard
her stammer oftener than either liked; dreaded nothing else so much
as they did the repetition of the scenes attending their father's
demise and burial.
"Of course she will live with me--with us, wherever we go!" she
rejoined. "Unless you object"--to Roy. "But I was under the
impression that you wished it,--that the matter was definitely
arranged."
"It is, now!" said Roy confidently, and Eunice did not dispute it.
There was a clear, more constant light in her eye, now that the
responsibility of the decision was removed from her, and the step
determined upon without her vote. The prospect of separation from
her sister was very painful, and there were other reasons why
Hamilton should be a pleasant home to them all. This was her
representation of the case to herself and to the friends who
lamented losing her.
"Mourning is very becoming to Miss Kirke!" was the usual remark of
these visitors upon leaving the Parsonage.
And--"She is really a most lovely woman. What will the congregation
do without her?"
Roy was to leave them for a fortnight, to attend to his classes, and
forward the preparations for the reception of his bride. When all
was ready for their removal, he would return to superintend the sale
of furniture, stock, etc., then take the sisters back to town with
him.
"My family!" he said, in forced gayety, on the morning of his
departure. "I assure you, my consequence in my own eyes is mightily
augmented by the acquisition of my new honors."
Eunice called up one of her slow, bright smiles in acknowledgement.
Jessie appeared to heed the compliment as little as she did the
parting, that drew tears from her sister's eyes and choked Roy's
farewell directions as to the care she must take of herself while he
was away.
"I shall write to you every day, my sweet wife," he promised. "And
it will not harm you--it may help you to while away the time, if you
can scribble a few lines to me in return, now and then."
"If I can I will. If you wish it I will write certainly. But don't
expect to hear every day from me. There's very little here to write
about, you know," answered Jessie.
Eunice wondered, to reverent admiration, at the love and forbearance
with which he thanked her for the concession.
They attended him to the porch. The morning was foggy, and Roy put
Jessie back in the shelter of the hall-door.
"It is too damp for you out here! Don't stand there to see me off!"
Eunice--maybe he--would have been better satisfied had she
disregarded the loving command. As it was, when he waved his hand
from the carriage-door, Eunice stood alone in the doorway. Yet she
was sure Jessie did not mean to be ungracious; that she was not
really insensible to the devotion of the husband of her choice; that
but for the stay of his presence she must have gone mad or died in
her overwhelming grief. What she mistook for unwifelike reserve was
an incessant effort to control herself to play the woman and not the
child. It was best not to interfere even so far as to hint that
Roy's kindest schemes for her comfort and pleasure as often as not
were unnoticed by verbal thanks or grateful look from her whom he
aimed to benefit. As Jessie's interest in the outer world and
passing events revived, this blemish would vanish. Older people, who
had known more of the discipline of life, had fallen into the
mistake of idolizing their sorrows while they were new.
The sisters were at tea on the third day of Mr. Fordham's absence,
when a letter was brought to Jessie.
"From Roy!" she said, quietly, and laid it down by her plate until
the meal was finished,--Eunice hurrying through hers in the belief
that the wife wished to be alone when she read it.
Instead of this, Jessie broke the seal, and read the four closely
written pages by the lamp upon the supper-table, while her sister
washed the silver and china in the same little cedar-wood pail, with
shining brass hoops, her mother had used for this purpose a quarter
of a century before. Eunice was inclined to be scrupulous in the
matters of extreme cleanliness and system in housekeeping, and
neatness and fitness of apparel; and had other and quaint, but never
unpleasant, peculiarities that leaned toward what the vulgar and
unappreciative style "old-maidism." But she was a bonny picture to
behold to-night, her black dress setting off her fairness to
exquisite advantage; her features chastened into purer outline and a
softer serenity by sorrow; her eyes more beautiful for the shadows
that had darkened them.
She was younger in appearance and feeling than her companion, who
scanned, without change of expression and complexion, the love-words
that had streamed, a strong, living tide, from the writer's heart.
She read it all, from address to signature; then handed it to her
sister, who had just summoned Patsey to remove the hot water and
towels.
"There are several messages to you in it," she said, languidly. "You
can read them for yourself."
Eunice drew back.
"I don't think he meant it for any eyes but yours, dear. Tell me
what he says to me."
"I should have to go all over it again in order to do that,"
returned Jessie. "They are scattered sentences--business items and
the like. You may look for them at your leisure. I shall leave the
letter upon the table here."
She put it down under her lamp, and turned her chair to the fire.
This was their sitting-room, now that the two, with Patsey, composed
the household. By tacit consent, they avoided the parlor, as
recalling too vividly the gatherings and the happiness of other
days. Jessie had leaned back in her cushioned seat, staring, in a
blank, purposeless way, at the fire for five minutes or more, when
Eunice took her place with her work-box on the other side of the
hearth.
"You insist, then, that I shall read your love-letter?" she asked,
pleasantly.
Faithful to her promise to Roy to do all in her power for the
restoration of Jessie's native cheerfulness, she compelled herself
to wear a tranquil countenance in her sight, to speak hopefully,
and, when she could, brightly, in addressing her.
Jessie neither smiled nor frowned. She looked simply and wearily
indifferent.
"If you please," she said, without withdrawing her eyes from the
blazing logs.
Eunice skimmed the first three pages cursorily, on the watch for any
mention of her own name, beset, all the while, by the idea that her
act in opening the letter at all bordered upon profanation, and
affected almost to tears by stray sentences she could not avoid
seeing, eloquent of the young husband's tender compassion for his
loved one, his longings to be with her, and fond prognostications of
the peace and joy of their future life.
At the top of the fourth page, a passage seemed to dart up at her
from the sheet, and, leaping into view, to be changed into
characters of red-hot flame:
"What a discreet little woman you are, never to hint to me your
knowledge of Orrin's engagement! The communication took me
completely by surprise. He would scarcely believe that you had not
told me; said that he went down to Dundee on purpose to impart to
you the agreeable and important secret. The marriage is fixed for
December. I always prophesied that he would marry in haste when he
had once selected the lady, whom I am extremely curious to meet. He
has floated from flower to flower so long that his selection ought
to be worth seeing. You know her, he tells me. I shall expect a
full-length description of her--done in your finest style, when I
return. I own I should be better satisfied that he is to be made as
happy as I would have him, if Miss Sanford were not an heiress.
While we--you and I--and others who know him well, will never
suspect him of selling himself for money, the above fact may give
occasion for scandal-mongers to rave and exult. The father of the
bride-elect is in town. I met him on the street to-day with Orrin.
Rumor has it that his business here is to purchase the new house
opposite Judge Provost's, as a residence for the happy pair. It will
be a handsome home, but I hope and believe that we shall be as
content with our love-nest of a cottage."
Jessie did not look around as her sister refolded the letter, tucked
it into the envelope, and laid it upon the table. But while each
believed herself to be separated from the other by a fathomless gulf
of memories, every one of which was an anguish, both were pondering
the same section of the epistle that lay between them. The
announcement of Wyllys' approaching marriage was, in itself, nothing
to the wife. The thought of it had lost the power to wound when she
parted with her faith in him. The wrong he had done her could never
be forgiven; he had misled her purposely; deceived her cruelly; had
robbed her life of love and hope, and given her self-contempt and
remorse in their stead. But she did not regret him--as she now knew
him to be--or linger fondly upon recollections of their by-gone
intimacy. Hester Sanford was welcome to the suitor her gold had
bought.
The phrases that had found a sentient spot in her breast were these:
"Whom I am extremely curious to meet." "I shall expect a full-length
description of her." The apathetic misery which had locked brain and
heart with fetters of ice since her father's death had not rendered
her totally unmindful of her husband's long-suffering and
gentleness, his unselfish love and care of herself. She was
persuaded that the girlish passion that had made of him a demi-god
was gone forever. Her flesh fainted, and her spirit died within her,
at the caresses to which she had turned herself in the days of her
idolatry, as roses open to the sun--as innocently and as naturally.
She could never love again. The fires had scathed too deeply for
that; but she had begun to believe that she might find comfort in
esteeming and liking her only protector; might seek, and not in
vain, in a calm, true friendship for this good man, forgetfulness of
the storms that had wrecked her early dreams. In his frank and noble
presence suspicion stood rebuked. It was easier to discredit the
evidence of one's own senses and judgment, than to doubt his
integrity.
But here was a deliberate deception. He--Roy Fordham--had known
Hester Sanford before she--Jessie--ever saw her. She was the
intimate associate and _confidante_ of his former love;--of the
woman he had renounced heartlessly and without compunction,--and
whose name had never passed his lips in his wife's hearing. She
recalled faithfully Hester's account of the call "Maria" had paid
with her then betrothed at Mr. Sanford's house--a statement she
would not have dared to make, had it been groundless. Whence this
affectation of ignorance, on Fordham's part, of the person and
character of his cousin's intended bride, if not as a further means
of keeping the knowledge of the affair from _her_?
"To whom it should have been told, more than a year ago!" she
reflected, a dreary loneliness creeping over her, with the
conclusion--"He is like the rest of them! I would have believed in
him if I could!"
The door shut quietly. She did not hear it, or miss her sister from
her place. It was not an uncommon occurrence for them to sit
together without speaking, for an hour at a time, Eunice's fingers
busied with some article of useful needlework, Jessie's holding a
book which she pretended to read as a cover for her griefful
musings. Much less was it in the imagination of the younger sister
to follow the elder in her progress up the staircase, her face more
stony and eyes more desolate with each step, to the fair, large
chamber she had occupied from her childhood.
It was cold and dark, but for the light of the taper she set down
upon the mantel. There were none of the fanciful ornaments,--none of
the luxurious devices, the patches of bright coloring that reflected
the owner's tastes and whims in Jessie's apartment. All the
draperies--those of the windows, the dressing-table, and the antique
chairs, were pure white, as were also the walls. The carpet was a
sober drab, checkered with narrow lines of blue. The aspect of the
whole was so chill and grave on this bleak night, that Eunice
shivered as at the breath of winter, as she drew up a seat to a
stand in the middle of the floor, and leaned her head upon the hard
wood. Not a tear or word escaped her, but a deft and an invisible
engraver was at work upon her features, sharpening outlines,
deepening here a stroke and there a furrow, until the father would
not have known his child.
I said, many pages back, that Orrin Wyllys' victims made no moan.
Least of them all, was this one likely to publish her case to the
world,--to shriek out her great and sudden woe in the ear of heaven
and of her kind. She had never loved before she met him, and the
discovery of this curious fact had stimulated his professional
zeal--animated his pride in the honor and success of his vocation.
He had found the key to her heart, and had used it. Love is no
holiday romance when it comes thus late in life to a woman of large
capacity for affection, and a will, the strength of which has
hitherto made the repression of such seeking instincts and needs as
win for weaker girls the reputation of lovingness and dependence,
appear even to those who know her best like tranquil contentment
with her allotted share of love and companionship. She had heard
herself called, "a predestined old maid," ever since her mother left
her, a demure infant, apt and serious beyond her years--to become
her father's co-worker and comforter. Her calm smile at the nickname
looked like conscious superiority to dread of the obloquy--a fear
that infects all classes of her sex. Her love was as reticent as her
longing for affection had been. Orrin's most insidious arts had not
sufficed to surprise her into confession. Of marriage he had never
spoken, nor she permitted herself to think. Her attachment was
artless and uncalculating as a child's. He had convinced her that
the subtle sympathy of their souls had made them one from their
earliest meeting; that he had then recognized in her his
spirit-mate. The seductive cant came trippingly from his tongue with
the fluent convincingness of much practice, and she was listening to
it for the first time. His dual game was adroitly conducted, and the
result was a triumphant cap-sheaf to his harvest of hearts. His
bride-expectant would have torn her flaxen hair--natural and
artificial--with rage had she guessed how tame he found his pursuit
of herself; how deficient in the flavor of excitement that had
marked his courtship of the beautiful but fortuneless country girls.
The hall-clock rang out nine strokes when Eunice shook off her
reverie, and unlocked a drawer of her bureau. It was lined with
silver paper, and the odor of dried violets stole into the still,
cold air when she opened it. A bunch of withered flowers; a small
herbarium filled by Wyllys and herself in their woodland and
mountain rambles,--the vignette on the title-page, from his pencil;
all the inscriptions, names of specimens, and poetical legends,
penned by his hand; a thin bundle of letters and notes; five or six
books--favorite works with both of them--composed the contents. She
took them out carefully, one by one, and laid them in a heap upon
the table. Then, she sought in the closet for a walnut box, one of
her childhood's treasures, an oblong casket with a sliding top and a
strong lock. Without audible evidence of suffering, she arranged the
relics within it, with the nice regard to neatness and order which
was, with her, intuitive as it had become habitual. The last article
was a volume of Spenser's "Faerie Queene"--an English edition
elegantly illustrated. Wyllys had sent it to her, the Christmas
Jessie passed with Mrs. Baxter. His pencillings were upon several
pages, and one of the fly-leaves bore an extract from Tennyson. He
had apologized for transcribing it, there, in the letter
accompanying the gift, by saying that it was ever in his mind, when
he watched or talked with her. No eyes save his and hers had ever
seen the lines as written upon that page, and they were the more
precious to her that this was so.
Eyes not down-dropt, nor over-bright, but fed
With the clear-pointed flame of chastity;
Clear without heat, undying, tended by
Pure vestal thoughts in the translucent fane
Of her still spirit; locks (not wide-dispread)
Madonna-wise on either side her head;
Sweet lips, whereon perpetually did reign
The summer calm of golden charity,--
Were fixed shadows of thy fixed mood.
She unclosed the book and re-read them before consigning it to its
place. How vividly arose before her the scene of that Christmas Eve,
when the parcel was brought to her! Her father always spent the
evening of the twenty-fourth of December in his study--and fasting.
It was an anniversary with him; scrupulously observed for many
years, of what event or crisis in his life his daughters never knew.
Eunice had made her preparations for a lonely evening by her
chamber-fire; collected her books and work about her that she might
not feel too sadly the want of human converse. But she had touched
none of these; was sitting, her head on her hand, gazing into the
fire, hearkening to the wind as it flung fierce dashes of sleet
against the windows, and longing, how hungrily! for some visible
evidence that she was remembered and missed by another, as she
thought of and missed him. Into her solitude had come his gift and
letter, and the night was all light about her; the world was no more
dark and cold and tempestuous. She walked in Paradise, hand in hand
with the good genius who had wrought the spell.
The idealistic character of woman's love is at once her blessing and
her curse. Orrin Wyllys, at that hour dancing at a Christmas rout,
the gayest of the season, looking meaning but unuttered flatteries
into other eyes; feigning--as he best could feign--to wait as for
the sentence of life and death, upon other "sweet lips," would have
laughed in unmixed amusement had he seen, in a magic mirror, the
representment of himself before which a pure, fervent soul was
laying votive offerings of her best affections and richest
fancies;--to which she was looking up as to the highest of human
intelligences, the embodiment of manhood's virtues and graces. While
to her the delusion was happiness without stain or shade, while it
lasted.
It was over now! Returning from the pursuit of these shadows--dearer
and fairer than any real joy and positive delight that would ever
visit her solitary life,--she let the leaves of the book she still
held unfurl slowly under her fingers, reading a line here, a
paragraph there, always those marked by the hand that must never
meet hers again with the lingering touch which said more than the
most impassioned words from other tongues. A blue ribbon was
inserted at one place, where a passage was encircled by pencilled
brackets, while in the margin was written, "E. K."
Her angel's face
As the great eye of heaven shined bright,
And made a sunshine in a shady place.
Eunice shut her eyes in a throe of memory that ploughed deep
pain-lines in her visage. Hell may keep, but earth has not a keener
torment than the contemplation of what was once sweetest joy,--now
changed into shameful agony.
The book had fallen to the floor and lay still open at the page
marked by the ribbon. In picking it up, her eye rested upon another
line--unmarked.
At last, in close heart shutting up her pain.
The rest of Eunice Kirke's life was a commentary upon that passage.
The travail of concealment began when she turned the lock upon the
mementos--few and innocent--of her only love-dream. Hitherto, it had
been a pearl, too priceless and pure to be exposed to other eyes.
Defaced and crushed by one rude blow, it was something to be
thrust out of sight, kept beyond the chance of suspicion or
detection--buried in a nameless grave.
The key of the casket was a tiny thing, at which she looked for an
instant in irresolution that ended in her raising the window, and
flinging it far into the garden. The rain would soon beat it into
the loose mould. It would be rusted into uselessness before the
spring plough-share brought it again to the surface. Upon the lid of
the box she fastened a card.
"_To be buried with me_," she wrote upon it with fingers that did
not tremble.
The grave seems near and welcome in the ague-fit that shakes the
soul from the divine illusion of reciprocal affection. There was not
a symptom of sickly sentimentalism in Eunice's nature; but she did
feel that she could have said farewell to existence and the few she
loved, with less effort than was required to dress her countenance
in its wonted serenity, and go back to her sister; to speak and act
as if a thunderbolt had not riven the ground at her feet; to consult
her rustic and unobservant handmaid about homely details of the
morrow's housekeeping. Confirmations all of them--of the stubborn
fact that the business of life--its tug and sweat and strain, halts
not for broken heart-strings.
If the iron be blunt, a man must lay to it more strength. If the
spirit refuse to bear its part in the appointed work of the hour, or
day, or life, the muscles and brain must be educated to perform
double duty. This toiling and reeking at the galley-oar may bring
power to the sinews, and hardness to the flesh, but woe to him by
whose offence the burden is bound upon the guiltless!