Part 37 (1/2)
”I must get a good night's rest, if I am to travel, to-morrow. Will you excuse me if I go upstairs, thus early?”
”Do not let me detain you a moment. Is there nothing I can do to a.s.sist you?”
”Nothing--thank you! There will be time to strap my trunks in the morning. You still think I had better go--whatever may be the weather?” stopping with the door in her hand.
”I do, certainly; that is, if you are not afraid of adding to your cold--if you are well enough.”
”My cold is nothing. I have ordered breakfast at half-past six. I am glad the train does not leave so early as it did last year.
Good-night!”
The cold, indifferent accents sank to the bottom of his heart like lead. What a millstone about this woman's neck was her marriage vow!
His endeavors to make it lighter, and her existence endurable--the work to which he had given his best energies and wisest deliberations; the self-abnegation and prayerful struggle he had accepted as the penalty of his grievous indiscretion, had proved futile. He had guarded eye, tongue, and action for five months; drilled them in friendly looks, words, and deeds, lest a glimmer of the affection that glowed--a pent but consuming fire in his soul--should offend or dismay her; had ministered to her with a lover's constancy and tenderness without a hint of love's reward.
And this was the end! Some significant glance, an intonation, an excess of solicitude for her welfare, had betrayed his design to win her anew, and she had taken the alarm; was terrified and reluctant, without the power of escape. Or her const.i.tution--physical and spiritual--had succ.u.mbed to the attrition of duty against womanly instinct. With vain care he had kept her shackles out of sight.
Everything in her surroundings; the very p.r.o.nunciation of her name by acquaintances, had reminded her continually of her anomalous position. Neither wife, nor maid, she stood, according to her morbid perceptions, alone and banned, without so much as a t.i.tle to the shelter of his roof, except as a bondwoman. She could not forget that she was a slave. The untamable heart--in which the ”love of liberty” was a ”pa.s.sion,” was beating itself to death against the bars he had foolishly hoped to cus.h.i.+on and wreathe until she should cease to feel them as a restraint.
She had not loved him when she married him. That this change in her sentiments was not a pa.s.sing girlish caprice, he had evidence in the words she had written to him while the right of free speech remained to her.
”Months of doubt and suffering have brought me to the determination to confess this without reserve.”
”Doubt and suffering!” What were these to the horrors of her actual bondage?
”From which I cannot release her!” he repeated, for the thousandth time.
His habit was to go to the library when she left him for the night, but he lingered, this evening, in the apartment he had fitted up for her with such fond pride; which she had made a sacred place by her abiding. There was a cruel pleasure in noting the tokens of her recent presence; in inhaling the odors of the flowers she had tended; in touching the books she had handled. She could never be more to him than she was now. He believed that she must, from this hour, be less; that the solace of her friends.h.i.+p would be withheld.
Else, why her anxiety to be away from him? her chafing at the threatened delay of a day in her flight back to the only real home she had ever known? Was the memory of the evanescent phantasy of her girlhood--the brief s.p.a.ce during which she had deluded herself into the belief that she loved him, so sore and hateful that she would shun the sight of one who kept it in constant remembrance? Could it be true that he had, in the face of these frightful odds, cherished a hope that he might yet persuade her into a preference for his companions.h.i.+p?
A loud ring at the door-bell startled him into consciousness of the hour and place. Phoebe had gone up to bed, and Mr. Fordham went himself to admit the unseasonable visitor.
”Good-evening!” said a familiar voice when the door was unclosed, and Dr. Baxter walked in as naturally and coolly as if it were not ten o'clock at night, and he plentifully besprinkled with rain. ”I was out thinking--and walking, after the warm day--and chancing to observe that I was at your door, I stopped to say 'Good-bye' to the la.s.sie--to your wife. Mrs. Baxter mentioned to-night, at tea, that she was-going to Dundee to-morrow.”
He had obeyed Roy's impulse in the direction of the sitting-room, but declined to take a chair. His cravat was a damp string; the handkerchief twisted about his left hand bore marks of terrific usage, and when he removed his hat, every one of his stiff gray hairs appeared to have gone into business on its own account, so distinct was its independent existence. His eyes were like those of a partially awakened somnambulist, and his voice had dreamy inflections. Had his own mood been less sad, Roy must have smiled at the grotesque apparition, uncouth even to one so familiar with the peculiarities of the good man, as was his coadjutor in the business of his life. As it was, he appreciated gratefully the love the old scholar bore his former ward, and the new proof of this, evinced by his stepping without the charmed circle of metaphysical or scientific lucubrations to pay this, for him, rare visit of neighborly courtesy and affectionate interest.
”I am sorry Jessie has retired,” he said, sincerely. ”She would have been happy to see you. But, in view of to-morrow's journey, she went up to her chamber an hour ago. I am afraid she is asleep by this time.”
The doctor shook himself out of a menacing relapse.
”Eh! asleep--is she? Ah, well! that is as it should be. Don't disturb her! I merely called to kiss her, and bid her 'G.o.d speed.'
She is a dear and a good girl. Her price is above rubies. She carries our love and best wishes with her into her retirement.
Since she is not up, I will leave my message with you. I believe--it seems to me that I _had_ a message”--with an ominous twitch of the handkerchief, and a dreamier accent.
”She will appreciate your kind remembrance of her, sir. She prizes your friends.h.i.+p very fondly.”
”Ah!” another mental shoulder-jog. ”We shall hardly see her again until autumn, I presume? I infer as much from what Mrs. Baxter has told me of her plans.”
”There has been no definite time set for her return,” said Roy, evasively, his heart heavier than before at the thought that Jessie had expressed to her cousin a desire for a long sojourn in the country.
Yet if he had failed to keep her with him now, what warrant had he for confidence in his ability to lure her back?