When Roy returned his cousin was with him.
Mrs. Wyllys launched herself into the hall at sound of their voices,
her bright azure train 'wide dispread;' her arms extended like the
yards of a ship.
"My darling!" casting her entire weight against his chest, a hand
upon each shoulder, and putting up a tight knot of a mouth for the
kiss marital. "What an eternity you have been absent! I have been
ever so uneasy about you!"
She re-entered the sitting-room, hanging by her clasped hands upon
his arm, and warbling in her thin falsetto,--
"Now you have come, all my fears are removed,
Let me forget that so long you have roved!"
It was not in human nature, even such a gentlemanly nature as Roy's,
to remain unmoved by the spectacle. His risible muscles were still
rebellious when he invited Orrin to seat himself near the fire, and
observed in tones that would waver, despite politeness and pity,
that "the night was very cold."
An awkward little pause ensued. Orrin's chair was at Jessie's right
hand, and he turned slightly in that direction while stooping to
warm his hands at the blazing hearth, as if expecting some
hospitable demonstration from her. She folded her work as neatly as
if handling satin instead of flannel, laid it within her basket and
set it back, and, with a word of apology, left the room to order
refreshments for the guests. On her return, she entered from the
parlors that she might more easily reach a divan on the opposite
side of the hearth from Orrin. Hester was whispering to her husband,
and Roy, whose seat was next that Jessie had taken, glanced down at
her with a smile of cheerful greeting, as she made the exchange. She
met it with eyes that well-nigh destroyed his composure. Mournful to
wretchedness; appealing to supplication, they seemed to lay her soul
open to his regards; to ask of him--was it succor or forgiveness? it
could not be affection!
She, at least, ought to have known Wyllys too well to imagine--if
she thought of him at all--that the silent by-play would pass
unnoticed and uncomprehended by him. In his bachelorhood, the
expression of aversion to his proximity, and the mute resort to her
husband's protection, would have amused and incited him to the
exercise of more potent fascinations. But Jessie's demeanor, of
late, had irked him unreasonably. He could have supported an overt
show of vindictiveness better than the dignified indifference that
baffled his attempts to re-establish their confidential relations.
Manoeuvre as he might, and as he did, he could never see her for
one instant alone, and this, he was sure, was not accidental. Upon
one pretext or another, he called at the cottage at all hours--most
frequently when he knew Roy was engaged in his professional duties.
"Mrs. Fordham begged to be excused," occasionally; oftener kept him
waiting below until the, to him, inopportune burst of Mrs. Baxter
into the parlor, or Fanny Provost's entrance through the side-porch
next her home, prevented a _tete-a-tete_.
He could not believe that she had taken her, whom he swore at
inwardly as a "chattering cockatoo," into her confidence in a matter
so delicate as her unextinguished passion for himself, but it
was plain that the coincidences which damaged his plans were
somebody's work. For a while he derived some compensation for his
disappointment from the additional evidence thus furnished him by
the short-sighted novice in scheming, that her shyness was the fruit
of cowardice; that lively coals of love for him still lurked beneath
the ashes with which she would fain keep them smothered. But his
best powers of _finesse_ had not elicited a flash from these. Adroit
references to scenes and words which she could not recall without
emotion, if the wonted fires were still there, had produced
as little visible effect as did his ardent protestations of
cousinly attachment. She treated him as she did a dozen other
gentlemen--neither worse nor better. Mortification and amazement at
his non-success were but human. Displeasure and the inclination
to retaliate upon the instrument of his discomfiture were
unprofessional, and the display of them impolitic to the last
degree. That he admitted these feelings, was to be accounted for
plausibly only upon the hypothesis that contact with the sour whey
of his wife's temper had not improved his own. In times past, he had
been too rational, as well as too firmly entrenched in his
self-appreciation, to descend to serious meditation upon the
practice of a quality so vulgar, and usually so unremunerative as
revenge. Two whole months had gone by since he laid his plans of
advance upon the fortification of matronly propriety and womanly
pride, and he had not gained an inch that he could discover.
It was fortunate for Jessie's self-respect that in her harshest
judgment of his motives and character, she never surmised what was
his present purpose. With her natural propensity to blame herself
for the sins others committed against her, she would have leaped to
the inference that he had seen warrant in her former indiscretion
and inconstancy, for the belief that neither moral nor religious
principle would serve her successfully in resisting his declaration
of undiminished attachment; that she who had played false to the
lover, would be unfaithful to the husband, if a similar magnet were
presented to her vacillating heart. She saw, indeed, that he courted
her notice and friendship; believed that she read in his conduct
lingering fears that she might yet betray his perfidy to Roy, if she
were not propitiated by such sugarplums of attention as other women
liked. The conviction of his cowardice had dealt the heaviest blow
at the idol that crumbled into common dust on that September day.
All vestige of godhood had departed beneath the shock. A brave man
might sin; a good man might, under extreme provocation, be cruel.
The caitiff who slunk away, whining, at sight of the lifted scourge
which should punish him for the crime he could not deny, must
forfeit love with esteem.
Wyllys' mood, at sight of the rapid signal or query that passed from
husband to wife, was the exact reverse of amiable, and he was not
pacified by Hester's conduct. Hitching her chair close to her
lord's, she stroked his hair and beard, smiling affectedly, in
amorous languishment, at her lately purchased vassal, and purring
like a cat. So soon as he could decently seek deliverance from the
absurd situation, Orrin slipped from under the crawling fingers, and
began to examine the books upon the centre-table.
"Isn't he looking well?" said his tormentor to Roy, showing all her
prominent teeth in the affectionate leer she sent after him.
"Very well. His health has always been excellent, I believe,"
rejoined Roy. "Although his active habits have hindered the gain of
so much as a pound of superfluous flesh."
It hurt him to see his gay and gallant clansman in the humiliating
position of a led bear, at the mercy of a marmoset, but he could not
be anything but civil in his own house.
"Oh! Oh! don't hint at the possibility of his ever getting _fat_! I
think lean people are just _too_ sweet! I wouldn't have him altered
by the change of a single hair in his mustache. Women ought to think
their husbands perfect, oughtn't they, Cousin Jessie?"
"If they _are_ perfect!" was the reply.
Mrs. Wyllys accomplished a compound toss of her head; her ear-rings
fairly jingling, and the flowers in her sandy braids and frizettes
quivering like aspens in an east wind.
"That is rank heresy! Love that isn't blind is no love at all. I
wouldn't give a fig for the constancy of a wife who could detect the
slightest flaw in the man she has promised to love, honor, and obey.
Would you now, Mr. Fordham?"
"If you would have my candid opinion, I should prefer intelligent
and discriminating esteem to blind adoration," was the courteous
rejoinder, at which the lady bridled.
"I might have expected some such answer in this staid,
matter-of-fact household! Now, Orrin and I--"
"You are true to your _penchant_ for Mrs. Norton, I perceive!" Orrin
interrupted her unceremoniously, looking across at Jessie. "This is
a handsome English edition of her poems."
"Yes! I have had it for several years."
"Is that an implication that you would not procure it now, if you
did not possess it?"
"I imply nothing, except that she is popular with most young girls."
"Woman, then, in her maturity of mind and affection, grows out of
the taste for the 'female Byron'--for that is Mrs. Norton's
_sobriquet_ in the literary world?" he said, interrogatively, and in
suave deference to her judgment. "What some contend poetry should
be,--the lyrical, expression of passion,--sounds extravagant to one
who has studied life for herself. Must this be so? Are there no
recesses far down in the heart where the dew will lie all day?
Because we have learned to think in sober and weighty prose, must we
blush to remember that our souls once melted through our eyes as we
sang, 'Thy Name was Once the Magic Spell,' or read, 'The Tryst,' and
'I Cannot Love Thee?'"
"I have a song, called--'I do not Love Thee,'" interposed Mrs.
Wyllys. "It is just the sweetest thing you ever heard. Let me see!
How does the air go?" humming. "I do not love thee! No! I do not
love thee!"
"I am tempted to doubt the decline of your admiration for our
poetess," pursued Wyllys to Jessie, with royal disregard of his
beloved's vocalization. "The book opens of itself at the last-named
poem."
"Do read it aloud, lovey!" begged Hester, eagerly. "I should _so_
like to hear it! And he _does_ read poetry so exquisitely!" to the
Fordhams. "It is just perfectly delightful to listen to him! I tell
him that was the way he captivated me, with his reading and his
singing. They are _too_ sweet!"
"Let us have it, Orrin!" said Roy, good-humoredly, desirous to
relieve him from the saccharine shower. "I never read it, I think.
But I was always 'matter-of-fact,' as Mrs. Wyllys has already
discovered. Perhaps the 'lyrical expression of passion' had less
hold upon my adolescent imagination than it generally has upon
impressible youth."
He resigned himself patiently to the hearing of an ultra-pathetic
love-song.
Jessie knew every line of the poem already. She had said it over to
herself, scores of times, last Summer, tossing wakefully upon her
pillow at midnight, until the pine boughs seemed to have caught the
rhythm; or pacing the garden walks with hurrying feet; or hanging
over the railing of the rustic foot-bridge. But she could not help
listening, as the cunning modulations of the reader drew out the
simple fervor of each line.
A steely-blue ray shot from beneath his eyelashes in her direction,
as he turned a leaf. She did not see it. Perfectly still, yet
attentive, she had leaned her head against the high back of her
husband's chair, and was looking straight before her.
The cold disgust,
Wonderful and most unjust,
found no expression in attitude and feature.
The reader's voice mellowed; the emphasis of suppressed emotion was
more artistic and effective.
Seems to me that I should guess
By what a world of bitterness,
By what a gulf of hopeless care,
Our two hearts divided are.
* * * * *
And I praise thee as I go,
Wandering, weary, full of woe
To my own unwilling heart,--
Cheating it to take thy part,
By rehearsing each rare merit
Which thy nature doth inherit;
How thy heart is good and true,
And thy face most fair to view;
How the powers of thy mind
Flatterers in the wisest find,
And the talents to thee given,
Seem as held in trust for Heaven,
Laboring on for noble ends,
Steady to thy boyhood's friends,
Slow to give or take offence,
Full of earnest eloquence.
* * * * *
How, in brief, there dwells in thee
All that's generous and free,
All that may most aptly move
My spirit to an answering love.
"Was'nt it _too_ funny that she didn't give in to such a splendid
fellow?" queried Hester, sniffing away the emotion she had tried to
sop up with her laced handkerchief. "I never can hear dear Orrin
read without crying, no matter what the subject is. I couldn't have
helped falling in love with him, I know. It _was_ queer, now!"
fretfully, as she saw Jessie's countenance. "I don't see what there
is amusing about it!"
Jessie held her head erect--a movement full of spirit and
gladness--and laughed. It was no mirthless sound, but a ripple of
real joyousness.
"Very queer!" she answered, merrily. "Mr. Wyllys! we must call upon
you to explain the phenomenon. You evidently understand it. You read
the poem _con amore_."
She sprang up to serve her guests from the waiter Phoebe had
placed upon the table. Roy followed her.
"They tell me you make a delicious article of domestic wine, Mrs.
Fordham--of elderberries, or grapes, or currants--or something,"
said Mrs. Wyllys, bent upon patronage at every turn. "I hope you are
going to treat us to some of it now."
"'They' are mistaken!" returned Jessie, the merry ring yet in her
voice. "I never attempted anything of the kind. The best substitute
I can offer you for the beverage you had promised yourself, is
Rhenish or Marsala which Mr. Fordham procured abroad."
"I can answer for her, I believe, Mrs. Wyllys, that her efforts in
that line have been confined to the brewing of flax-seed lemonade,
and sage tea!" chimed in Roy.
Whereat Jessie laughed again, as she had not done at Orrin's
adventure with the gargle.
Wyllys arose to receive a glass of wine from her hand, and, in
taking it, looked steadily, reproachfully, passionately, into her
eyes. They sustained the scrutiny without quailing, a glint of
roguish defiance playing within them, and her lips curling at the
corners, as she turned away. He had a misgiving then that his power
over her was at an end. This was not acting, but the flashing of a
stream where the sunshine reached to its bed; was filtrated through
pure, sweet waters. If she were disenchanted, he knew whom he had to
thank for it. He could have hated his Hester for the over-fondness
that had made him ridiculous to optics which erst surveyed him with
timid and worshipful reverence, as Semele may have regarded high
Jove.
He was not sorry he had wedded as he did. He had too just an
appreciation of the inconveniences of living beyond one's means; the
difficulties that environ a man of expensive tastes and a moderate
income, and the thousand goods of wealth, to regret the investment,
which had assuredly yielded more than cent. per cent., whether he
estimated either the affection or the money he had put into the
speculation. He was wise in his generation. Hester was the richest
spoil that had ever been laid in his way, and he had not hesitated
as to the line of duty. But he did wish she had not wheedled him
into this visit, that she might have another opportunity to play the
fool herself, and force a like part upon him. Jessie's laughter had
stung him unreasonably, and in his avarice of the praise of his
kind, he grudged the loss of a moiety of Roy's affectionate
admiration.
Fordham did not return to the sitting-room when he had escorted his
guests to the outer door. He bade his wife "Good-night," in the
hall.
"Must you work to-night?" she asked, imploringly. "I meant--I
hoped--that is, I thought we would have a pleasant chat over my
fire."
Her manner was agitated, her eye restless; but he scarcely noted
this, or that she stammered strangely in preferring the petition.
"Don't tempt me!"
He would have made his answer playful. It was a sickly show, and
repulsed Jessie more effectually than sternness would have done.
With a burning blush, she dropped the hand she had laid lightly on
his sleeve; murmured an apology, and hurried upstairs, forgetting
that she had intended to sit for a while longer in the lower room.
In her own chamber, she walked the floor in an agony of shame and
despair.
"He would never have my love now, if it were offered him!" she said,
wringing her hands. "He knows me too well! The glamour of that happy
love-summer has gone! gone! To-night, I feel further off from him
than ever. He despises me as I deserve! But righteous punishment is
as hard to bear as unjust condemnation. And I have suffered so much,
and so long! I could have been wholly frank with him, if he had but
gone and sat with me ten minutes--if he had been _himself_, instead
of shrinking from my touch--rejecting my companionship."
"The book opened of itself at that place!" Roy was thinking at that
moment. He had been to the sitting-room for the volume, carried it
into the library, and re-read the poem again and yet again,
detecting what he imagined was a tear blister on the second page.
"What can I do? What course is left to me save that which I am
pursuing? Am I still odious to her?"
The girl at the spring smiled down upon him from the wall; seemed to
hold out the green leaf-cup for his acceptance. He could see the
glisten of the water upon it; fancy that he heard in the stillness
the tinkle of the bright beads as they fell into the basin. The eyes
that gave back her look were very patient, but just now it was a
patience that had in it much of the weariness of hope deferred.
"I have put a cup of bitterness to your lips, my bird of beauty!"
was his unselfish lament.
Mr. Wyllys "had builded better than he knew," that evening.
* * * * *
"I wouldn't be as cold-blooded as that woman, for all the gold of
Golconda!" exclaimed Hester, before the steps of the Fordham cottage
were cold from the touch of her Parisian gaiters.
"Maybe you mean diamonds," said her husband curtly. "It is a safe
plan not to use terms unless you are certain they are correct."
"Gold or diamonds, it makes no difference! I don't pick my words
when I am out of patience. It's precious little she has of either
commodity, I guess!" laughing spitefully.
"Take care of that rough place in the crossing," cautioned Wyllys,
in a less acrimonious tone, thus reminded what store his spouse
possessed of the valuables specified, and, by inevitable association
of ideas, of his profitable investment.
"She frets me always!" continued the sweet creature, hanging,
according to custom, basket-wise upon his arm. "This evening she was
positively rude. How provokingly she laughed at that sweet piece
you read so divinely that I was in tears all the way through. You
meant it for her, I could see well enough, you smart, sly creature!
And it served her just right! I as good as told her she did not care
a snap for her husband, before you came in. And she took it as
coolly as if I had paid her a compliment. It is _awful_ what scared
consciences some people have. I take to myself the credit of having
seen through her from the beginning, when that horrid old
matchmaker, Mrs. Baxter, who always puts me in mind of a grinning
hyena, was trying to put her off on you. As if you would have
married a girl who was next door to a beggar! What is it, petty?"
"I trod on a pebble!"
He had almost flung her arms from their hold. For he remembered the
story he had told Jessie in the conservatory, of the woman who was
married for her money, and gloried in it.
"What a pity!" gabbled his owner. "I am morally certain that she
married Mr. Fordham, poor fellow! to get a home. If that isn't
disgustingly immoral--a perfect sale of one's self in the shambles,
as you may say, I don't know what is. To be sure, your cousin is one
of the very quiet, non-exacting kind, and I _hope_ doesn't suffer as
you would, darling love, if she were your wife!" pinching his arm
with her claw-like fingers. "For you and I are _such_ turtles,
dearie!"