The snow-storm waxed furious as the day wore on.
Jessie unclosed the blinds of the windows opposite the bed, that Roy
might see it in all its might and beauty.
"It is a foot deep in the street," she said. "The evergreens in the
Campus are loaded; the firs and junipers are like enormous
sugar-loaves, and some of the slighter trees--cedar and
arbor-vitae--are bowed nearly double. There is one"--laughing with
almost her olden glee--"the ambitious arbor-vitae near the east gate,
which you said last Sunday, 'carried too much sail aloft for a
gale,' whose crown not only touches the ground, but is frozen there,
while the roots hold firm. I wish you could see it! It reminds me of
the poor lady who, in her rage to be ultra-fashionable, had her hair
dressed very _a la Chinoise_,--dragged up so high and twisted so
tightly on the back of her head, that she could not get her heels to
the floor. I do enjoy a grand old-fashioned snow-storm! None of the
petulant flurries with swirling flakes, that spend their strength in
an hour, but such a tempest as this, that does not abate under a day
and a night. One has such a delicious feeling of home comfort and
seclusion--the almost certainty that strangers will not intermeddle
with fireside joys and interests while the household is shut in--I
was about to say--tucked in snugly by the great white veil."
Roy liked to hear her talk. Her girlish prattle was more charming to
him than the profoundest disquisitions of scholars, or the brilliant
repartee of literary coteries. Aware of this, and that part of her
nursely duty was to amuse the patient; ignorant that his heart was
leaping with a new-born hope, so sweet and sudden that his head
whirled dizzily under its influence, and the world took on rarest
robes of beauty, she rambled on, her eyes bent upon the driving
fleeces without. She had never been handsomer than now. Every trace
of the shock that had prostrated nervous forces and reason, three
months before, was gone from figure and countenance, while she
thought only of gratifying her companion and her own fancy for a
wild, winter day. Not dreaming of the impassioned gaze that dwelt
upon her, she stood in an attitude of careless grace, a half smile
playing about her mouth.
"As she used to stand in the oriel, at sunset!" thought Roy, with an
unheard sigh. "Is all that, then,
"'The tender grace of a day that is dead'?
Can it 'never come back to me?'"
"I can think how Old Windbeam would wrap this mantle about his head
and shoulders," resumed Jessie more softly. "How blackly the pines
show against his sides! The meadows are an immense _meringue_;
Willow Creek is frozen and invisible under the snow--so tightly
locked within its banks that its groans can be heard, in the pauses
of the storm, all the way to the Parsonage. I used to lie awake on
sharp, frosty nights, and hear the rumble of the imprisoned air
running all the way from the upper bridge down to the falls. The
holly-berries on the tree by the front porch peep out saucily from
the little woolly piles that collect upon the spikes and leaves; the
church-yard is level from fence to fence--oh, Roy!"
With the cry, she sank down upon a low seat, weeping as from the
depths of a riven heart.
"Under the snow! under the snow!" she reiterated, in a transport of
distress. "I cannot bear to think of it!"
"Come to me, dear Jessie!" said Fordham, in gentle command. He
hardly expected that she would obey, but she did, groping her way by
reason of the blinding tears, and sobbing unrestrainedly. He had not
seen her weep before since the night of her arrival at the cottage.
"Sit here!" he said, designating a chair at his side. "I have
something to say when you can hear it. These tears will ease your
burdened heart, and they are due to the memory of the dear ones who
are for a little while out of our sight."
She had stifled her sobs, but her head was still bowed; her frame
heaved in the ground-swell of the passing storm.
"For a little while! Out of our sight!" he repeated,
thoughtfully--longingly. "We shall be together--all of us--very
soon. Did you ever ask yourself if you would be able to await the
call of the Master--all your appointed time;--ever imagine what a
crushing load mortality and its ills would be to you, if, 'while in
the body pent,' you could be a witness of the blessedness of those
who are 'forever with the LORD'? Dear child! The Father leads us as
wisely as lovingly!"
The expression of his religious faith and experience never sounded
like cant, even in the ears of the scoffer. It was a part of his
life. His utterances were fearless, simple, fervent, enforcing
respect for their author, although the listener might not be in
sympathy with their spirit. Jessie ceased to weep or sigh while he
talked; presently showed her tear-stained face, tremulous with sad
smiles, and laid her hand timidly upon his.
"Thank you! Every word is a drop of comfort. But so much talking is
bad for your throat, and the fever will return if you are agitated.
It was childish and selfish in me to give way as I did. But," her
lip quivering anew--"it came in upon me like a flood! the happy
by-gone hours and the dear old manse! Just how it all looked, as I
had seen it, a hundred times in the winter weather I always loved.
And the changes--and where _they_ are now!"
"I ought to thank you for allowing me to sorrow with and try to
console you. Don't be afraid of me, dear! afraid to bring your
trials, with your pleasures, to your friend. If left to yourself,
just now,--if I had not called you to me, you would have rushed away
to hide your tears in your own room. You never wound me except when
you act and look as if you stood in dread of my displeasure or
criticism. Won't you be candid and tell me why this is so? Am I a
very cruel taskmaster? Do you not believe me when I say that I
desire no other earthly good as I do to make you contented--happy,
if that can be."
"I do believe it! I should be slow to see and to be convinced if I
did not!" began Jessie, the truth trembling upon her tongue. The
temptation to unbosom herself without fear and reserve was very
strong. "But I feel myself to be unworthy of your regard, and the
goodness you show me. And you are so wise and discreet--so
self-contained--"
A pang changed his features. He stirred restlessly, biting his lip
to keep back a repetition of the word "self-contained!" that would
have been a groan.
"You are suffering!" said Jessie, anxiously. "I have made you
worse!"
"No; a passing pain--that is all! You always make me better. What
should I have done without you, to-day, my kind nurse?"
A perverse fit, one of her spoiled-child freaks, seized Jessie.
"Phoebe would have taken excellent care of you!" she said,
demurely, casting down her eyes to hide the gleam of mischief
darting up to the surface. "She wanted to make brown gravy soup, and
roast a fat duck for your dinner, with mince-pie--'to leave a nice
taste in his mouth, ma'am.' And she persists in the belief that a
gargle of red-pepper tea, with mustard-draughts upon your feet, and
a cayenne poultice about your throat 'would pull you through,' when
doctor's stuffs fail. As to society, your cousin, or, maybe, Dr.
Baxter would have come in to cheer you up. What a godsend a big
linen sheet would be to the good President, on a day like this,
with a listener who is _hors du combat_ with a hoarse cold!"
"I have not needed to be cheered up, since I saw the first glimpse
of your face, this morning!" answered Roy, unguardedly. Conscious
that he was trenching upon forbidden ground, he diverted the
conversation. "What a flow of spirits Orrin has! I _did_ hurt my
throat laughing at his tragico-comico envy of my surroundings. I
wish he had a _home_, one like this, if it were shared by a
congenial companion, a woman who was more nearly his equal, mentally
and morally, than the one he has chosen. He would be much happier
than he can hope to be in the splendid pile he calls by that name."
"He seems perfectly satisfied with wife and house," returned Jessie,
dryly. "And the marriage was certainly one of preference on Miss
Sanford's part. Not that I admire or like her, and I know her better
than you do. But I am persuaded that we waste our pity when we
expend it on either of them."
They chatted, then, of various matters in the familiar style in
which their conversations were generally carried on, until the day
closing in about them, the fire spread a mellow radiance over the
area immediately around it; the white bed and the noble head laid
high on the pillows; upon Jessie's earnest face and crown of raven
hair. It was the hour and the scene for the confidential talk of
husband and wife; the outpouring of true soul to true; the only
unrestrained heart-communion this side the Land where subterfuge and
disguise are unknown; speech as far more excellent and satisfying
than the language of unwedded lovers as the perfume from the
unfolded lily surpasses that which steals from the bud.
Between these two, love was neither named nor hinted at. The wife's
hands lay crossed upon her knees, and the husband did not offer to
hold or touch them, or stroke the beautiful hair with which the
betrothed had toyed unrebuked. It was an anomalous intimacy, the
restraints and courtesies of which would have been laughed at as
affectations, if the story of them were not totally discredited by
the world outside "the great white veil" that shut them into their
home,--theirs in name and in fact.
Jessie got up, at length, stepping over the carpet without rustle or
jar, "the poetry of motion," thought the looker-on, and laid more
coals upon the fiery mass in the grate. Many-colored flames shot up
through and darted, like living serpents, along the pile; the low
crackling and hissing of the igniting lumps awoke a cricket in the
chimney-corner. Jessie, kneeling on the rug, glanced over her
shoulder, on hearing the cheery chirp, and smiled at Roy.
"You don't treat the crickets on your hearth as Gruffand Tackleton
boasted that he did--'crunch 'em, sir!' I like to hear the little
busybodies--don't you?"
Without rising, when she had seemed to hearken for a while, she
began to sing. Roy had not heard a note from her, even in church,
since their marriage, and he held his breath, lay motionless, lest
she should awaken from her reverie. It was an old ballad she was
crooning--half Scotch, and with a thought of pathos in the melody,
although the words were not plaintive.
"Tis rare to see the morning bleeze,
Like a bonfire, frae the sea;
'Tis fair to see the burnie kiss
The lip o' the flowery lea.
And fine it is on green hillside
Where hums the bonnie bee,
But rarer, fairer, finer far,
Is the Ingleside to me."
A light roseate film hid her from Roy's eyes. The Ingleside, where
she now knelt! his and hers! did she really love it so well as not
to pine for the haunts of her girlhood? And what had pressed that
cry from her that was still echoing through his heart-chambers? the
appeal that would have meant in a loving wife uncontrollable
yearning for the sympathy of him who best knew her needs and her
sorrows?
"O, Roy!" she had said, hands outstretched as if to fasten upon his
for support in the deep waters. It imported more--a million times
more, that childlike wail--to him than all she had afterward
expressed of gratitude and esteem. In that hour, consecrate forever
by what his musings brought forth, he resolved to woo and win a
second time the only woman he had ever loved; who he had believed
was lost to him for all time, chained as she was to his side, forced
into a relation she abhorred by vows her dying father and
he--impatient, ruthless lover!--had put into her mouth. He would be
very wary, very patient, but love like his must conquer in the end.
Doubts might oppose him in the broad light of day and common-sense,
but he would not be turned aside. He did not underrate the
difficulties that lay in the way of this novel wooing. Jessie was no
longer the fresh-hearted, impetuous girl who had laid her hand
confidingly in his (his palm thrilled now in the recollection!) as
he sat by her in the oriel-window, the shadows of the tossing
jessamine-bells--"joy-bells," he called them--cast upon her white
dress and the carpet by the April sunshine; the dewiness and scents
of the Spring morning in the air; the "light that was never on land
and sea" glorifying the eyes uplifted to his.
Faulty, but frank, with a mind stored with crude riches, a heart
whose capacity for love and Love's sacrifices even he had divined
rather than discovered--she had been easily won, though not lightly
sought. Now, the luxuriant womanliness, the growth of which he
marked from day to day in her _physique_, had not kept pace with the
chastened development of her inner nature. If he had said in that
early stage of "Love's Young Dream"--"She is like no other girl I
ever met!" she was now a veritable unique--a gem a monarch might be
proud to set in his diadem.
For all that, he would win her! Should she arise from her lowly
place by the ingle, and without a word of explanation or excuse for
what was past, again give him her hand, saying merely, "I love you!"
he would let all that had been enigmatical in their intercourse go
from his remembrance at once and entirely; would trust her with his
honor and affections, above all and through all that might stagger
his faith in another. Was his a pitiful, cringing spirit? Was it a
high or a mean type of human love that made him, possessing his
tried soul in more abundant patience, say in the prospect of the
tedious and cautious, it might be the arduous, approach to the goal
of his desires, that must be his, if he would make success a
certainty;--
"_And they seemed unto him but a few days for the love he had to
her!_"