Spring was forward in Hamilton that year. Mrs. Baxter, walking on
the presidential portico at noon of a bright day in the third week
of April complimented the extraordinary benignity of that usually
coy month, by sporting the first white dress of the season.
A knot of irreverent students collected about the window of one of
the college dormitories, catching glimpses of her snowy draperies
fluttering from pillar to pillar of the porch, made merry over
profane pleasantries, touching, "flourishing almond trees," and
"antique angels."
"Wonder if she wears that red flannel night-cap to ward off the
rheumatism!" said one, directing his puny arrow of wit at the
"individualizing" scarlet scarf, now wound into a turban about her
classic head, the silken fringes sweeping her shoulder.
"It is a piratical flag!" rejoined another. "And there! she is
signalling some poor wretch on to his doom!"
The Lady President had waved her handkerchief to some one in or
near the college, and halted at the top of the front steps to
receive him.
"Who is the latest victim?" asked those in the rear of the party, as
the foremost craned his neck to peer upon the campus.
"One who is able to take care of himself," was the response. "No
less a personage than his Royal Highness."
This _sobriquet_, let me explain, was applied to Professor Fordham
in no unkind or depreciatory spirit by his classes. Originally
intended as a play upon his Christian name, it grew into popular
esteem as descriptive of their pride in his manly carriage and
knightly demeanor. The quintette at the window watched him with
interest and admiration now, as he strode along the gravelled avenue
leading to the Presidents' house.
"He would march up to the cannon's mouth in the same style,"
commented the chief speaker. "Did you ever see better shoulders?"
"Did you ever see a better _man_?" interrogated the fifth of the
group--a grave senior, who had not spoken before.
And to the honor of the watchers, as of the watched, be it recorded
that a hearty acquiescence in his verdict followed the question.
The goodly man found abundant favor, likewise in Mrs. Baxter's eyes,
as she invited him to enter her abode.
"'Will you walk into my parlor?'
Said the spider to the fly."
Sang one of the graceless rascals in the dormitory, as a commentary
upon the, to them, dumb show.
It was to Fordham anything but dumb. Mrs. Baxter was excruciatingly
voluble in excusing herself for "what you must, I am certain, regard
as an unparalleled liberty, my dear Professor!" she continued, when
he was seated.
"I am gratefully at your service whenever you can make use of me,
madam," was the reply, which was more sincere than professions of
the kind usually are.
Mrs. Baxter's genuine love for her young cousin, and her numberless
acts of neighborly kindness, had greatly endeared her to Jessie's
husband. Her peculiarities of manner and phraseology weighed nothing
with him when compared with her sound principles and generous heart.
"_Thank_ you! I knew I might make the venture with _you_! My own
mind being ill at ease, I could not resist the impulse to waylay you
and unburden"--making as though she would clutch her heart, then
sprawling both hands, her arms widely divergent lines from her
heaving bust--"un_burden_ myself to you, as the person most likely
to sympathize with and ameliorate my anxieties. I had nearly said,
my maternal anxieties. And indeed, Mr. Fordham, I could scarcely
love your dear wife more, if she were, in truth, my child. Dear to
me as the representative of the beloved friend of my youth, she has
enhanced that partiality a thousandfold by her own worth and
loveliness. This is my apology--this and the solicitude to which I
have referred, for what may appear to you indelicate interference
with your domestic affairs."
The polite interest with which her auditor had received her
prefatory remarks was supplanted by uneasiness, instant and
intense, as he perceived the drift of her speech. He had made a
motion to rise when the words, "your dear wife," passed her writhing
lips.
She hindered him with outstretched hands.
"Not that there is any cause for new and immediate alarm," she
hastened to assure him. "But I was in to see her this morning. She
keeps bravely up when you are at home, I dare say."
"She never complains. I have had my apprehensions that the untimely
heat of the weather has been prejudicial to her strength. Her
appetite is variable, and she is paler than she was in the winter,
but I attributed--"
"Yes! of course!" interrupted Mrs. Baxter. Once bent upon an
harangue, she was about as easily checked as a Yellowstone geyser in
full play. "I am not surprised that your fears have not been
awakened. I taxed her, to-day, with having deceived you as to the
extent of her lassitude and depression. I surprised her lying on the
sofa in her room, with the traces of fresh and copious tears upon
her cheeks. She tried to laugh me out of my fears by talk of
nervousness and hysteria, and would doubtless have succeeded, such
are her spirit and address--but, Mr. Fordham! her precise likeness
in look and manner at that moment to her sainted mother sent a
poignant fear through my soul! Far be it from me to censure the
dead, but I have always maintained--I shall ever believe that my
precious Ginevra's life might have been spared--prolonged for
_years_--had her husband conferred with those who were conversant
with her idiosyncrasies--spiritual and physical. Although--I will
reveal to you, my dear sir, under the seal of a secrecy you will see
the expediency of respecting, what I have never lisped to her
daughter, or even to the best of husbands and men--Dr. Baxter. My
cousin Ginevra carried a blighted heart to Dundee when she went
thither as Mr. Kirke's bride. An unfortunate misunderstanding had
alienated her from one to whom her girlish affections were given. It
is needless to enter into particulars. It is enough to say that they
had loved and they were parted. She had not seen or heard from him
for two years, most of which time she had passed abroad; indeed, she
believed him to be the husband of another when she accepted Mr.
Kirke. I own to you that my instinct and my reason opposed this
fatal step. I expostulated with her.
"'Jane!' said she (you can imagine how Jessie would utter it!) 'say
no more. My resolution is taken. This is a _good_ man, and he loves
me! In this union I shall--I _may_ find rest, quiet, and in some
measure, peace. I have been storm-tossed until I have no strength
left for struggling!'
"Upon the eve of her marriage, the man whom she loved returned and
sought an interview. I was with her in her chamber when his card,
requesting this favor, was handed her. At sight of the familiar
characters the buried love sprang up alive, strong, importunate! It
was a fearful scene--that resurrection! What should she have done?"
"Confessed all to her promised husband!" came low and sternly from
the man's heart. "He would have resigned her to her lover without a
word of blame. I knew Mr. Kirke well. I do not speak unadvisedly."
"Such was my counsel. But she would not heed it. She refused to look
again upon the face of him whose heart was breaking with love and
vain regrets, and went right on to her bridal. And her daughter, if
subjected to a like test, would act as she did."
"You say that Jessie is not well?" said Roy, shortly.
There were limits to his fortitude. He could not hear other lips
tell what would be Jessie's action were an abhorrent marriage forced
upon her by conscience or honor.
"In my estimation, she is very _far_"--arms again divergent--"_very_
far from well, even taking into consideration the provocatives to
languor you alluded to, just now. Furthermore--and again let me
_beg_ you to receive this intimation in the spirit in which I offer
it!--furthermore, she is homesick for Dundee and her sister. I
adverted to them casually to assure myself that my views on this
point were correct, and her eyes filled again directly.
"'I had hoped to see Euna this month,' she said, 'but the change in
the college vacation, abolishing the intermediate, and making one
long term instead of two short ones, has prevented it.'
"But when I remarked--'I wish Eunice could pay you a visit, were it
only from Saturday to Monday!' the loyal wife (such a stanch
advocate as you have in her, Mr. Fordham!), took alarm.
"'Indeed, Cousin Jane, no one could take kinder care of me than Roy
does!' she said, warmly. 'He spoils and pets me beyond reason, and
when he is in the house, I desire no other society.'
"'But my precious girl!' I remonstrated; 'he cannot be with you all
the time?'
"I wish you had seen the smile with which she replied--'Ah! but I
have the memory of his goodness to live on in his absence!'
"She is true and fond, Mr. Fordham! Nevertheless, she does need
change of air and scene. Her mother pined herself into an untimely
grave in her longing for a sight of her old home and the faces of
beloved ones."
Roy was silent; his eyes downcast, his lips whitening with the
pressure this story had brought to bear upon him. It was not so much
the consciousness that, in sending his wife away, he would rob his
life of repression and self-denial of the little sunshine left to
it, as the thought that she was sickening of his companionship;
could not live and grow in his shadow. This was the naked truth,
disguise it as she might from her cousin; deny it to herself as she
probably did. In every point of Mrs. Baxter's description, he
recognized this terrible sense of bondage, crushing spirit and life;
heard, even in her tribute to his loving watchfulness over her
health and bodily comfort, the plaint embodied in the poem he had
learned by heart:
"Like a chained thing, caressed
By the hand it knows the best,
By the hand which, day by day,
Visits its imprisoned stay,
Bringing gifts of fruit and blossom
From the green earth's plenteous bosom;
All but that for which it pines,
In these narrow, close confines,
With a sad and ceaseless sigh,--
Wild and winged Liberty!"
With a deep inspiration which was the farewell to more hopeful
dreams than he knew, until then, he had nursed, he collected his
senses to reply.
"It was my intention to take Jessie to Dundee in June, at the
beginning of my vacation. She set the time herself--I can see now,
in compliance with what she believed were my wishes. But she shall
go at once. I thank you for your more than friendly concern for her,
your frank dealing with me."
He arose to go. The lady scanned his face somewhat uneasily. There
was something there that foiled her penetration.
"You understand, my dear sir, that _nothing_ would have tempted me
to intermeddle in this affair, were the case precisely what you have
supposed. But there is an undercurrent, Mr. Fordham, the effect of
which I can trace, that seriously complicates anything like
hysterical depression. And loving the child as we do--as every one
does, it behooves us to watch her warily, minister to her
intelligently as tenderly. The affection between the sisters is
unusually strong, and we should remember that the dear lamb has
known no other mother."
"I have offered, several times during the winter, to take her to
visit Eunice. We were to have gone at Christmas, but Jessie had a
severe cold that confined her to the house a fortnight."
"I remember! To be _quite_ sincere with you--not that I consider it
a dangerous symptom--but I _wish_ she were rid of that little
hacking cough. She makes light of it. Says it is nervous, or from
the stomach. But I do not like it!"
She attended him to the portico, disclaiming, cautioning, and
thanking him,--gesticulating through it all--as the wickedest of the
wicked quintette of observers had it--"like a lunatic windmill."
They espied no change in the Professor's gait or air. He walked
firmly, head erect and countenance composed. And their distance
from him was too great to allow them to note the want of color in
his complexion.
He entered his own house, more slowly than he had trodden the
pavement. Jessie had fallen into the habit common to wives who hail
their husbands' return as cheering events, of meeting him in the
hall, sometimes at the front door. She appeared from the
sitting-room, while he was hanging up his hat and dusting his boots.
He was particular in all that pertained to personal neatness.
"Your step sounds weary," she said. "It is very warm, really
debilitating, to-day--is it not?"
During his brief answer he surveyed her narrowly, the dread that had
been gnawing his heart all the way home sharpening his vision in the
search for signs of debility and disease.
She, too, wore a white dress, but a black grenadine shawl was folded
over her chest, and Roy's eye rested aghast upon the thin hand that
held it together. What had he been thinking of, not to discern the
inroads of the destroyer in this, and in the finer oval of her face;
in the slight cough that succeeded her question, and the hurried
breathing he could hear in approaching her? If his awakening should
have come too late!
"I believe I have the Spring fever," he said, affecting to suppress
a yawn. "This weather puts one in mind of country delights; makes
him crave the smell of the freshly upturned earth, and the sight of
green land growing things."
"Then take a look at my conservatory," she returned, playfully,
leading the way to the open bay-window.
The sill, without and within, was crowded with plants. She had been
at work among them for an hour, and they were in their freshest
trim. The pruning-scissors lay upon the shelf, and, taking them up,
she clipped a sprig of heliotrope, another of mignonette, a
rose-bud, and a bit of citron-aloes, bound them together with silk
from her work-basket, and offered them smilingly.
"Thank you. They are very sweet, very beautiful! How does the
jessamine thrive?"
"Not so well as it should--ungrateful little thing!" touching the
leaves of a stunted vine which was honored with a china flower-pot
and the sunniest stand in the window. "I am afraid it cannot
flourish in this high latitude. It needs warmer earth, less fitful
sunshine. Or it may be that I am killing it with kindness," she
added, shaking her head pensively.
Roy detected another meaning in her thoughtfulness. Ungenial
influences, unwelcome assiduity of attention, were sapping her
vitality, and the analogy between her lot and that of her fading
favorite was wearing upon her imagination.
"We will try again."
He had to clear his throat before he could speak. Jessie smiled
slightly, with no misgiving of the communication that awaited her.
She even stooped to pick off a few withered leaves that had
previously escaped her notice. The two were side by side within the
recess; so near together that the warm breeze blew the light folds
of the wife's dress over the husband's arm; but she recked no more
of the wretchedness kept down by his strong will than if a thousand
leagues of ocean divided them.
"I have been thinking seriously all the way home of taking you to
Dundee, and leaving you in Eunice's charge for a time," continued
Roy, presently. "You are not so rosy and light-footed here as you
were among the mountains. And the sudden variations of our climate
affect the human Jessamine also! You should have a change, and
without delay."
"I am very well--entirely contented!" she interposed, reddening
vividly.
"You are kind to say so!" gratefully. "But there are other reasons
why you should anticipate the date originally set for your visit to
your old home. Eunice has been very self-denying and patient, and
she should have her reward. While you are regaining health and
strength, winning back your lost roses, you can accumulate a
plentiful supply of seeds and roots of all descriptions, besides
studying floriculture with your sister--if it be true, as you would
make me believe, that she excels you in skill. For in your absence I
shall have a real conservatory built back of this room, and our long
talked of oriel run out here."
Jessie made a desperate effort to jest away the discussion.
"Oh! as to the oriel, I have quite abandoned the project since Mrs.
Wyllys told me--having learned from the Provosts that we meditated
something of the sort--that oriels had 'gone out entirely; that no
stylish house nowadays is disfigured by them.' The only thing
resembling the obsolete excrescences that would be admitted into a
modern 'establishment' is a mullioned window, my good sir! I should
never hold up my head in Hamilton again if I were to offend so
boldly against the rules of art governing the best society!"
The toss of her head and her tones were Mrs. Orrin's to the life.
But Roy had hard work to smile. In his state of mind, badinage was
like jesting over a death-bed.
"Mrs. Wyllys must look the other way, then--at the majestic
proportions of her cupola, if she likes, for the oriel is to be a
fact next month. The work will be better done if I am on the ground
to oversee operations, and it would not be pleasant for you to
remain in the house while it is in confusion, not to mention the
risk of taking cold from the damp walls and the open room, while the
wall is down. It will be a convenience all around, you see."
"If you really think that I will be in the way--"
"I did not say that!" The correction was so prompt as to sound
sharp. "But my judgment tells me that the plan I suggest is the best
for both of us. My mind will be easier with regard to you if you are
safe and happy in Eunice's care."
Jessie had turned her face quite away, and seemed to be gazing at
some object in the street.
"I see!" she said, finally. "When do you wish me to go?"
"Whenever it suits your convenience. If you desire my escort, we had
best leave Hamilton on Saturday of this or the next week."
"I can travel alone easily if it is not convenient for you to leave
your classes. If you go on Saturday you lose Monday also. This is
Tuesday. I can be ready by Thursday morning. If the change be as
needful as you suppose, the sooner it is made the better. As to an
escort, a lady needs none when there is no change of cars."
Roy pinched the succulent stems of his flowers until the perfume
was hot and sickly. How impatient she was to be gone! She had gasped
when he opened the door of escape from her cage, as if she already
saw "wild and winged liberty" beyond.
"You do not think it necessary to notify Eunice of your coming,
then?" he inquired.
"You can telegraph on Thursday morning, when you are fairly rid of
me. Euna is always at home, and always ready and glad to see me. My
visit will make her very happy."
The rising tears broke through her assumed lightness. She struggled
to drive them back, and failing, walked abruptly from the room.
And thus the question was settled.
Jessie began to pack that afternoon; working so diligently as to be
wan and appetiteless by supper time. Fanny Provost and her
betrothed, Lieutenant Averill, who was in Hamilton on furlough,
called in the evening. Warren Provost and Selina Bradley came in
afterward, and the hostess revived visibly in their society. Her
eyes and color were brilliant; her laugh ready; her repartee pointed
and felicitous. The young people, regretting the near prospect of
her departure, fell to rallying her upon her partiality for country
life, and she defended the preference with spirit. Then, at Fanny's
earnest request, she told the authentic legend of Dundee and "auld
Davie," appearing to forget herself and her slavery (thought Roy),
in her enthusiasm.
"The women fought too!" ejaculated Selina, when it was finished.
"They were made of different stuff from me, or any other young lady
of this generation that I know. I go into convulsions at the sight
of an empty gun."
"They were warring for home and freedom!" rejoined Jessie. "To avoid
captivity I would fight in the open field in the ranks. And so would
you. But the love of liberty is oftener a passion with us
mountaineers, than with lowlanders."
She caught her breath strangely--something between a sob and a
laugh--which she tried to cover with a cough.
"A sad and ceaseless sigh!"
repeated the haunting demon in Roy's heart.
The hilarious talk went on, unchecked by his occasional fits of
abstraction. Jessie was like another being in the anticipation of
liberation.
"Heartlessly cheerful!" said Selina, with her usual aptitude for
making unlucky observations.
"One would think you two were tired of each other already!" she
subjoined. "And you haven't been married more than half a year! I
shall tell this to papa. He raved over your mutual attachment and
your devoted attentions to Mr. Fordham when he was sick, Jessie!"
"Say, at the same time, that she does not go, of her own accord!"
said Roy--"but because I try to be as careful of her health as she
was of mine. Although, if you had ever visited Dundee, you would not
be scandalized by her desire to revisit it."
Fanny, observing Jessie's quick, hot blush and averted eyes, and
divining that something was ajar, came to the relief of the hardly
pressed couple.
"Did Jessie ever tell you, Mr. Fordham," she said, in her liveliest
tone--"of the astounding poetical effort put forth by her admirer,
Mr. Lowndes, the rich student, they used to call him--entitled,
'Jessie the flower o' Dundee'! The graceless youths of his class
set it to the good old Scotch tune of that name. It was in a
different metre--very uncommon, I believe, and the fun of the joke
was in fitting the words in, after the manner of 'Ancient Uncle
Edward.' I will get you a copy, and Warren here shall teach you how
to sing it."