Part 38 (1/2)
Still dumbly, he drew her to him; put back the hair from her face, every line of his own astir with a pa.s.sion of pity and adoration she hardly dared to look upon. It was a minute before he could articulate. Then the tense lips were moved into womanly softness.
”You can forgive _me_, then, my Wife! Thank G.o.d!”
He laid his cheek to hers, and she felt the great sobs of the breast against which she leaned.
But for a long time, there was nothing more said.
Except by the rain-drops whispering over their heads, broken, now and then, by the wind into little gushes that sounded like laughter, happy to tearfulness.
CHAPTER XXVII.
In the plenitude of her cousinly compa.s.sion for the lonely husband, Mrs. Baxter coaxed her spouse into escorting her to Mr. Fordham's, on Thursday evening. The wind had settled into an easterly gale, after yesterday's genial warmth; the day had been unpleasant, and the clouds were still dripping at irregular intervals, as if wrung by impatient hands.
”But it is an act of common humanity to visit the poor fellow in his solitude, my dear, while his desolation is fresh upon him!” she sighed, sympathetically.
”Mr. Fordham was in the library,” said Phoebe, with an air of bewilderment at the lady's query, and to the library the consoler accordingly tripped, with footfall of down, and countenance robed in decorous and becoming pensiveness.
Her light tap was unanswered, but uncertain of this, she took the benefit of the doubt, and entering bouncingly, as was her habit, she surprised Jessie, sitting upon her husband's knee, one hand buried in his hair, the other clutching his beard, in a fas.h.i.+on at once undignified and saucy. Both were laughing so heartily that their neglect of the warning knock was explained.
When the confusion of mutual explanations was over, Mrs. Baxter learned, to her amazement, that the journey to Dundee was postponed until after the College Commencement.
”I _wouldn't_ go when I found that Roy wanted to get rid of me!”
said the transformed wife. ”When I put him into the confessional, he owned who was his fellow-conspirator in the scheme for my banishment. For shame, Cousin Jane! I have long suspected you of a weakness for the handsome Professor, but you sit convicted of a deliberate attempt to remove him from the guardians.h.i.+p of his legal protector, that your designs upon his affections might be more vigorously prosecuted. And no sooner do you suppose that the coast is clear, than you present yourself, arrayed in your best dress and choicest smiles, and with actually a rose-bud in your brooch! to make sure of your game. I shall never trust in human friends.h.i.+p again!”
”You are ungenerous to triumph over me so openly--and in the poor, dear doctor's hearing!” returned her cousin, holding her fan before her face, with a theatrical show of detected guilt.
”I ought to have some compensation for the excruciating anguish the discovery cost me,” retorted Jessie. ”Tongue cannot describe the tremendous struggle I went through before I could bring myself to undertake the investigation of your perfidy and his susceptibility.
I know just how Esther felt when she screwed her courage to the sticking-point, and made up her mind and her toilette to face Ahasuerus and a possible gallows.”
Roy was pretending to listen to the doctor's elaborate disquisition upon an important political question, but he stole a sidelong glance at the sparkling face, across the hearth, and smiled, in gladness of content.
She was his blithe, lovesome witch again. The baleful enchantment that had ensnared her fancy and distracted her thoughts from dwelling upon him and his love--(he refused to believe that he had ever lost her heart)--was destroyed, and, by him, remembered no more as a thing of dread. More to spare him pain than to s.h.i.+eld Orrin, Jessie had not entered into the particulars of her estrangement, or revealed who was the prime agent in bringing it about. Wyllys' name was not mentioned by either.
”I had a bad, wild dream--” she thus explained her defection. ”A dream that made me doubt you--Heaven--myself--everything! that robbed me of love and hope, with faith. I was susceptible, giddy, undisciplined; and I was grievously tempted by an evil spirit.
Maybe”--humbly--”I am no better or wiser now; but I am ready and thankful to give myself up to your guidance. I ought to be a good woman in future; for I have been dealt with very tenderly by my Heavenly Father--and by you, my best earthly friend!”
Roy had no fear. His second wooing was, he felt, crowned with richer, more enduring success than the first had been. He cared not to ask, or to conjecture by what art his image had been clouded over, since he saw it now clearly mirrored in a heart tried by refining fires.
The christening feast was not held until December, at which date Master Kirke Lanneau Fordham was four months old.
Eunice had taken her school and cottage for a year, and the interesting _fete_ could not be appointed until she could make her arrangements to be with her sister. Work for the good of others, and wholesome meditation, had brought to her, as they must to all healthy, G.o.d-fearing souls, healing and peace during the months she had spent in her new domicile. With the June vacation had come Jessie and her husband; and when the little claimant upon their love and care arrived, the lonely woman, who had put thoughts of her own wifehood and maternity from her forever, when she turned the key upon the souvenirs of her one love-dream, opened her heart and took in, with the babe, comfort and hope that were, to her, fresh and beautiful life. What Roy's arguments and Jessie's entreaties could not accomplish, the innocent young eyes and clinging baby-fingers effected within a month after her nephew's birth. If Kirke went to Hamilton, she would follow, she promised, and early December saw her domesticated in the Fordham household.
”I wish Orrin Wyllys and his wife were not coming, this evening!”
said Jessie, confidentially, to her sister, as they were arraying the boy for the grand occasion.
Eunice looked in no wise surprised at the impetuous exclamation, albeit it was the first avowal of dislike of Roy's relative she had ever heard from Jessie's lips.