Part 8 (1/2)
”My coming was timely,” he said, drawing a chair to her side. ”Dear child! your life is too precious to be wasted in unavailing regrets.
Your peace of mind is dear to too many to be wrecked by morbid nursings. Don't think me hars.h.!.+ You should have something to engage your time and thoughts beyond the routine of occupation and recreation appointed to you here; should see more of the world than that portion of it which is bounded by these mountains. You would starve upon what satisfies your sister. Duty to be performed--duty done--a straight course and strength to walk therein--these fill the measure of her earthly desires. Your temperament and your intellect demand a larger sphere--wider range for your mind and more food for your heart. You are dying of inanition, and you do not know it. You are a caged wild bird who is trying to learn to sing by note.”
She shook her head wilfully.
”You are altogether wrong. I have been pampered, housed, petted, until nerve and muscle, mental and spiritual, are gone. I need a stimulant, but a moral one.”
Orrin changed his ground.
”What if I supply it in the guise of a German course, seasoned with unsparing admonition whenever you are indolent or unreasonable?” he said, lightly.
CHAPTER VII.
A less vain man than Mr. Wyllys would have been flattered by the effect produced upon the spiritless, faded creature, the mocking shadow of the old blithesome Jessie, by half an hour's talk with himself. A less patient man would have been chagrined by the discovery that his enumeration of the varied and substantial benefits that would accrue to her from the proposed visit to Mrs.
Baxter, and the delicate skill with which he contrived to keep before her all the while the prospect of his society and guardians.h.i.+p, weighed but as thistle-down with the obtuse ”love-sick girl,” in comparison with the circ.u.mstance that Hamilton was Roy Fordham's home.
Orrin was surprised, and not agreeably, when her own words forced this astounding fact upon him.
”It will be the next best thing!” she said, dreamily, a happy smile touching her lips and kindling up her eyes. ”I have heard him talk so much of the place and the people, that it will be like revisiting half-remembered scenes--renewing former acquaintances.h.i.+ps. You will show me all his favorite haunts, let me see the friends he values most highly--won't you? The ocean is narrower and quieter when I think of taking the walks and drives he likes best--which he has described to me over and over; of mingling with those who were his daily a.s.sociates--who knew him before I did.
Though I don't like very well to think of _that_”--interrupting herself with a laugh. ”I feel as if n.o.body had the right. It seems to me that I cannot recollect when I did _not_ know him.”
She mused silently for some minutes--the tender light still trembling over her face. It was as if she had forgotten his presence, until a sudden thought turned her to him with an abrupt query.
”Mrs. Baxter knows nothing of--has heard no rumors?” in shy anxiety that appeared overstrained to one who had heard the loving soliloquy Orrin was prompt to decide was in very bad taste, even when the unconsidered listener was in the confidence of both parties.
”Of your engagement?” he said, with grave directness. ”Hamilton is in profound ignorance on that subject. Roy knows how to keep his own counsel, and knowing it was his wish that your betrothal should remain secret, for the present, I have mentioned it to no one. You need be under no embarra.s.sment on that score.”
”Thank you.”
Jessie was silent again, but the pause was filled with soberer thoughts. She began to fear lest she had been talking nonsense--been indiscreet and unmaidenly. Orrin kindly overlooked the lapse into selfish sentimentality, but she was ashamed that she had given him occasion for exercising forbearance on this subject. He noted, and with satisfaction, that she treated him to no more love rhapsodies that night; did not voluntarily name Roy in the ensuing dialogue.
”I am happy to learn that Mrs. Baxter is warm-hearted and sincere,”
she said, at the close of a searching catechism upon that lady's characteristics. ”I was prepossessed in her favor, less by her letter, than because she loved my mother. My sister has been a dear and careful parent to me. You have seen what my father's fond indulgence is. But the core of my heart has ached for my mother--my own beautiful mother--ever since she died. I was not quite five years old, yet I recollect her as if I had kissed her for the last time, yesterday. My father had this oriel built to please her. I remember seeing her nowhere else until she was carried up to her death-bed. Her easy chair stood there”--pointing--”and her writing-desk beside it. When I could, by standing on tip-toe, just get my chin upon the window-sill, she would make me measure with a bit of ribbon how much the jessamine had grown in a week. She planted these vines and tended them as if they had been her children. She said to me, more than once or twice, that she hoped I would be like my name-flower when I grew up--brave, sweet, faithful--telling how one had for fifty years curtained the porch of the house in which she was born, and how dearly she loved it. She made me her companion, and, in some sort, her confidante by the time I could talk plainly, and very proud I was of the distinction. She used to take me upon her lap, or hold me closely in her arms as she lay on her lounge in the twilight, and repeat stories of her Southern home; sing ballads so sweetly sad that I could not help crying quietly while I listened--very quietly, for fear she should hear me, and stop.”
It was twilight by this time. The mountain-crown was dusky as the plain; the elm-trees in the church-yard were swaying in the bleak wind that bowed the garden-shrubbery, and swept the long gra.s.s above neglected graves into brown waves. The naked, snake-like sprays of the creepers tapped monotonously against the window-panes. Orrin had healthy nerves, but as he looked through the glooming air at the shaft, standing like a sheeted ghost at the head of Mr. Kirke's second wife, and heard in the stillness of the place and hour, the sobbing sighs of the pine boughs, he wished Jessie had chosen some other hour and spot for her weird reminiscence than the November gloaming and this haunted recess.
She was leaning back in her chair, her hands crossed, her face upraised to the sky:
”I have a perfect picture of her before me, at this moment,” she went on, presently. ”She had large, soft eyes, and very dark hair.
She was always pale, and she never laughed. But her smile was my reward when I was good, as her kiss was the cure for every hurt.
n.o.body else can ever tell me such wonderful tales. Some were in prose, many in verse, more beautiful to my apprehension than any poetry I have read since. This was on her well days--my white days!
when the writing-desk would, if I requested, be supplanted by the color-box and pencils, and we pa.s.sed whole hours together--she and I--she sketching or painting to ill.u.s.trate anecdote and fairy story, I perched in my high chair at her side, looking on in rapt delight.
I believe that I was a troublesome child--noisy, wayward, pa.s.sionate--to everybody else in the house. I kept away from her of my own accord in my stormy or sulky fits. The earliest lesson taught me by my father was, that 'poor, sick mamma must not be disturbed.'
I suppose it was on account of her feeble health that he always heard my prayers, put me to bed at night, and nursed me in my infant sicknesses. It was he who came to my crib in the dim light of one terrible January morning, and told me that she was in Heaven. I did not understand exactly what that meant, but I gathered that it was something very dreadful from the sight of his emotion. I have never seen him weep except that once. I had sprung from my pillow to sob out my childish grief in his arms. He pressed me to his bosom until I could scarcely breathe, and said, over and over, in a strange undertone that terrified me more than did the drip of the hot tears over my face--'Ginevra's baby! Ginevra's baby!' Baby though I was, the scene is graven upon my memory for life.”
The wind shook the cas.e.m.e.nt, and the bare sprays tapped more impatiently upon the gla.s.s, as the spirit of the dead mother might have signalled her child to let her in.