Part 11 (1/2)
”Our excellent neighbors are very kind and attentive,” etc., etc.
Jessie re-read this letter when she had finished Roy's; perused it with a half smile that was more mournful than amused, and an odd stricture about her heart. Eunice's round of duties and pleasures seemed to her like something she had pa.s.sed--outgrown ages since; yet there was, far down in her spirit, a piteous longing for those gone days. She might be wiser--she was not better or happier for the glimpses lately granted her of a world of stormy and contending pa.s.sions and mixed motives.
”He spent the Sabbath with us!” she read aloud. ”And I was not at home! He said nothing to me of his intention to visit Dundee. Since he has changed his plans in one respect, he may in another, and be absent three or four weeks instead of two. Heigho!”
She folded up her sister's letter, and addressed herself very slowly to the task of getting ready for a party at Judge Provost's--the great house of the town. It was given in honor of a niece of his, who was visiting his daughter, and was to be a grand affair. Jessie had never attended one half so fine, but she was _ennuyee_ in antic.i.p.ation.
”There will be the stock company of beaux,” she meditated. ”The one unmarried professor; the ten almost marriageable seniors, and the ten utterly ineligible ones, who are without beards or moneyed capital; the whole army (I had nearly said 'herd') of juniors and soph.o.m.ores; the dozen or fifteen gentlemen detailed for the occasion from the doctors' and lawyers' offices, and the higher rank of tradespeople in Hamilton. There will be dancing in one parlor, and small-talk in another; promenading in the halls and billiard-room; flirtations in all stages among the oleanders and lemon-trees of the conservatory, and a ”jam”--_not_ sweet--in the supper-room. As a clergyman's daughter and the guest of a clergyman's wife, I must not dance in public. I am sick to nausea of callow collegians and small-talk, and I don't care for late suppers of indigestible dainties. I would rather spend the evening with Mariana in the moated grange, for that mopish damsel would let me sit still and sulk if I wanted to. And I believe I do!”
”A little more fire, my love!” whispered Mrs. Baxter in the dressing-room, affecting to be busy in shaking out Jessie's pink silk drapery. ”I have a presentiment that you are to meet your fate to-night. But you must positively exert yourself to seem less quiet and preoccupied. Repose and lofty indifference are considered well-bred, and are a very safe _role_ for the commonplace to adopt.
But they are unbecoming to _us_.”
The novice did her best to throw light into her eyes and warmth into her complexion. Being a novice, the attempt was a failure; but Mrs.
Baxter, perceiving that ignorance, not obstinacy, hindered the desired effect, forbore to hint that, in spite of Jessie's elegant attire and becoming _coiffure_, she had never seen her look worse.
Trusting to the animating influences of the festive scene to restore that which friendly expostulation had proved inefficient to recall, she committed her to the officious homage of young Lowndes, and turned her attention to the part she was herself to play in the evening's drama.
”What a magnificent creature your niece is, Mrs. Baxter; or is she a cousin?” said an elderly gentleman--also one of the judge's visitors--to her, at length.
The pleased and amiable chaperone looked over her shoulder, directed by his gaze, just in time to see Jessie pa.s.s, treading as if on air; her eyes luminous...o...b.. of rapture; her cheeks like the inner foldings of a damask rose; her lips apart in a smile, sweet and happy, and her hand on Orrin Wyllys' arm.
CHAPTER IX.
”And you have really been to Dundee!” Jessie was saying, unconscious that she was clinging to Mr. Wyllys' arm--very slightly, but perceptibly to him, with the glad hold of one to whom something dear and rare has been restored. ”Was this a part of the original plan of your journeyings?”
”No,--but my business led me within sight of Old Windbeam--('a frosty pow' his is, just now!)--and it acted upon me as did the Iron Mountain of the Arabian Nights upon the hapless s.h.i.+ps that approached it. It drew out the nails of doubt as to the best course for me to pursue; the screws of resolution not to be turned aside by memories of the Past and the allurements of the Present. To be brief--I collapsed utterly! took the afternoon train to Dundee, and pa.s.sed, in that retreat from briefs and busybodies, the happiest Sabbath I have known since last August.”
”Euna wrote to me about it--the lovely, precise old darling! She never indulges in extravagances upon any subject, but her concise sentences mean much, and these said how she enjoyed the day--and your music. I was envious of her, when I read of it--just for a moment, of course. I have seen so much of you this winter it seemed mean and selfish in me to grudge her one day of like pleasure.”
”Envy so groundless could not but be evanescent,” said Orrin, with admirable gravity. ”But tell me about yourself. What have you been doing while I was away?”
”Cultivating envy, as I said--and, I am not positive, but wrath and all uncharitableness, as well. Who is it that confesses to an instant uprising of all that is wicked in his nature at the approach of trouble, while visible blessing always moves him to thankful piety? I am afraid I am similarly const.i.tuted. I have been dull and 'dumpish' for a week and more; choosing to quarrel with the three peas under the fourteen feather-beds, rather than enjoy the good that is certainly mine. You see I also am versed in fairy-lore.”
”I remember that the disguised princess, at being asked why she was haggard in the morning after the night spent in the forester's cabin, betrayed her gentle breeding by complaining of the lumps in her mountainous couch. Fourteen feather-beds! Think of it! To sleep amid the waves of one of the Dutch abominations is enough to engender dyspepsia, apoplexy, and spleen. But what were the three peas in your bed of roses?”
”It has rained four days out of eight, my Germany letter was behind time--and I missed my brother-cousin at every turn,” responded Jessie bravely, vexed that anything in the enumeration should make her cheek put on the sudden flame of poppies.
”Two valid and sufficient reasons for _ennui_! As for the third, and notably the least of all, I thank you for the welcome implied by it.
I have missed you, Jessie!”
”But not as I have you!” was the ingenuous response. ”I have been homesick, dismal, disagreeable,--_horrid_ generally. But I spare you the recapitulation. I am very, very happy that you are back again in health, and,”--faltering a little,--”in better spirits, than when you left us.”
”Mr. Wyllys!” interrupted a consequential personage--a young-old bachelor. ”Excuse me, Miss Kirke, but this is business of importance!”
He spoke a sentence aside to Orrin, who replied briefly in the same tone.
”Mr. Hurst is acting as master of ceremonies to-night, _comme a l'ordinaire_,” observed Wyllys, moving on with his companion. ”How will Hamilton parties get on after he dies--or marries--I wonder?
There has been an addition to the ranks of fas.h.i.+on during my absence, I find. I had hardly finished my bow to Mrs. and Miss Provost, when Warren Provost presented me forcibly to Miss Sanford.
I learned, before I went three steps farther, that this party is given to Miss Sanford, and now Mr. Hurst tells me that I am expected, presently, to dance with Miss Sanford. Who _is_ Miss Sanford?”