CHAPTER XVIII.

Roy Fordham remained ten days longer in Dundee in consequence of an arrangement made by his brother professors by which they divided his duties among them. Dr. Baxter, whose partiality for him was proverbial, taking a double share upon himself. The furlough was not accepted by him without misgivings. He felt that he ought to be in his place at the beginning of the college session, and that to avail himself further of the generous kindness of trustees and faculty, after a year's absence, was an abuse of the same. Dr. Baxter wrote him two strong, short letters to refute this idea, and he found additional solace for his conscience in the discovery that he was needed by the sisters. Eunice and he were joint executors of Mr.

Kirke's small property. To Jessie were left her mother's dowry with the acc.u.mulated interest; her mother's picture, and certain articles of jewelry, dress, and furniture, which had been hers. Everything else was Eunice's--a portion that did not nearly equal her sister's, but with which she was more than content. The settlement of the estate was easily accomplished. The just man had no debts, and the few legal papers needful to secure the t.i.tle of his possessions to his children were in perfect order.

At the end of a week the only open question was that of Eunice's residence. Roy had engaged a house in Hamilton, and was urgent in his desire that she should live with Jessie and himself. The conscientious elder sister hesitated in the knowledge that her income would not support her in like comfort anywhere else.

"My inclination leads-me to follow Jessie," she confessed to her brother-in-law. "My sense of duty to myself and to you makes me doubt the propriety and justice of living in comparative idleness, when, if I had not the shelter of your roof, I must work to eke out a maintenance."

Which quibble Roy p.r.o.nounced absurd and far-fetched.

"Quite unworthy of sensible Eunice! To say nothing of the manifest unkindness to our poor girl here," he said, as his wife entered the room where he was sitting. "Come here, Love, and convince this unreasonable and sceptical woman that she is indispensable to our happiness."

Jessie yielded pa.s.sively to the arm that drew her to his knee.

"What is it?" she asked, listlessly.

Roy gave an abstract of the situation.

She looked confused--uncertain whether she had heard him aright. It was an effort to understand anything, sometimes. Roy and Eunice glanced from her to one another. They saw that dazed look, heard her stammer oftener than either liked; dreaded nothing else so much as they did the repet.i.tion of the scenes attending their father's demise and burial.

"Of course she will live with me--with us, wherever we go!" she rejoined. "Unless you object"--to Roy. "But I was under the impression that you wished it,--that the matter was definitely arranged."

"It is, now!" said Roy confidently, and Eunice did not dispute it.

There was a clear, more constant light in her eye, now that the responsibility of the decision was removed from her, and the step determined upon without her vote. The prospect of separation from her sister was very painful, and there were other reasons why Hamilton should be a pleasant home to them all. This was her representation of the case to herself and to the friends who lamented losing her.

"Mourning is very becoming to Miss Kirke!" was the usual remark of these visitors upon leaving the Parsonage.

And--"She is really a most lovely woman. What will the congregation do without her?"

Roy was to leave them for a fortnight, to attend to his cla.s.ses, and forward the preparations for the reception of his bride. When all was ready for their removal, he would return to superintend the sale of furniture, stock, etc., then take the sisters back to town with him.

"My family!" he said, in forced gayety, on the morning of his departure. "I a.s.sure you, my consequence in my own eyes is mightily augmented by the acquisition of my new honors."

Eunice called up one of her slow, bright smiles in acknowledgement.

Jessie appeared to heed the compliment as little as she did the parting, that drew tears from her sister's eyes and choked Roy's farewell directions as to the care she must take of herself while he was away.

"I shall write to you every day, my sweet wife," he promised. "And it will not harm you--it may help you to while away the time, if you can scribble a few lines to me in return, now and then."

"If I can I will. If you wish it I will write certainly. But don't expect to hear every day from me. There's very little here to write about, you know," answered Jessie.

Eunice wondered, to reverent admiration, at the love and forbearance with which he thanked her for the concession.

They attended him to the porch. The morning was foggy, and Roy put Jessie back in the shelter of the hall-door.

"It is too damp for you out here! Don't stand there to see me off!"

Eunice--maybe he--would have been better satisfied had she disregarded the loving command. As it was, when he waved his hand from the carriage-door, Eunice stood alone in the doorway. Yet she was sure Jessie did not mean to be ungracious; that she was not really insensible to the devotion of the husband of her choice; that but for the stay of his presence she must have gone mad or died in her overwhelming grief. What she mistook for unwifelike reserve was an incessant effort to control herself to play the woman and not the child. It was best not to interfere even so far as to hint that Roy's kindest schemes for her comfort and pleasure as often as not were unnoticed by verbal thanks or grateful look from her whom he aimed to benefit. As Jessie's interest in the outer world and pa.s.sing events revived, this blemish would vanish. Older people, who had known more of the discipline of life, had fallen into the mistake of idolizing their sorrows while they were new.

The sisters were at tea on the third day of Mr. Fordham's absence, when a letter was brought to Jessie.

"From Roy!" she said, quietly, and laid it down by her plate until the meal was finished,--Eunice hurrying through hers in the belief that the wife wished to be alone when she read it.

Instead of this, Jessie broke the seal, and read the four closely written pages by the lamp upon the supper-table, while her sister washed the silver and china in the same little cedar-wood pail, with shining bra.s.s hoops, her mother had used for this purpose a quarter of a century before. Eunice was inclined to be scrupulous in the matters of extreme cleanliness and system in housekeeping, and neatness and fitness of apparel; and had other and quaint, but never unpleasant, peculiarities that leaned toward what the vulgar and unappreciative style "old-maidism." But she was a bonny picture to behold to-night, her black dress setting off her fairness to exquisite advantage; her features chastened into purer outline and a softer serenity by sorrow; her eyes more beautiful for the shadows that had darkened them.

She was younger in appearance and feeling than her companion, who scanned, without change of expression and complexion, the love-words that had streamed, a strong, living tide, from the writer's heart.

She read it all, from address to signature; then handed it to her sister, who had just summoned Patsey to remove the hot water and towels.

"There are several messages to you in it," she said, languidly. "You can read them for yourself."

Eunice drew back.

"I don't think he meant it for any eyes but yours, dear. Tell me what he says to me."

"I should have to go all over it again in order to do that,"

returned Jessie. "They are scattered sentences--business items and the like. You may look for them at your leisure. I shall leave the letter upon the table here."

She put it down under her lamp, and turned her chair to the fire.

This was their sitting-room, now that the two, with Patsey, composed the household. By tacit consent, they avoided the parlor, as recalling too vividly the gatherings and the happiness of other days. Jessie had leaned back in her cushioned seat, staring, in a blank, purposeless way, at the fire for five minutes or more, when Eunice took her place with her work-box on the other side of the hearth.

"You insist, then, that I shall read your love-letter?" she asked, pleasantly.

Faithful to her promise to Roy to do all in her power for the restoration of Jessie's native cheerfulness, she compelled herself to wear a tranquil countenance in her sight, to speak hopefully, and, when she could, brightly, in addressing her.

Jessie neither smiled nor frowned. She looked simply and wearily indifferent.

"If you please," she said, without withdrawing her eyes from the blazing logs.

Eunice skimmed the first three pages cursorily, on the watch for any mention of her own name, beset, all the while, by the idea that her act in opening the letter at all bordered upon profanation, and affected almost to tears by stray sentences she could not avoid seeing, eloquent of the young husband's tender compa.s.sion for his loved one, his longings to be with her, and fond prognostications of the peace and joy of their future life.

At the top of the fourth page, a pa.s.sage seemed to dart up at her from the sheet, and, leaping into view, to be changed into characters of red-hot flame:

"What a discreet little woman you are, never to hint to me your knowledge of Orrin's engagement! The communication took me completely by surprise. He would scarcely believe that you had not told me; said that he went down to Dundee on purpose to impart to you the agreeable and important secret. The marriage is fixed for December. I always prophesied that he would marry in haste when he had once selected the lady, whom I am extremely curious to meet. He has floated from flower to flower so long that his selection ought to be worth seeing. You know her, he tells me. I shall expect a full-length description of her--done in your finest style, when I return. I own I should be better satisfied that he is to be made as happy as I would have him, if Miss Sanford were not an heiress.

While we--you and I--and others who know him well, will never suspect him of selling himself for money, the above fact may give occasion for scandal-mongers to rave and exult. The father of the bride-elect is in town. I met him on the street to-day with Orrin.

Rumor has it that his business here is to purchase the new house opposite Judge Provost's, as a residence for the happy pair. It will be a handsome home, but I hope and believe that we shall be as content with our love-nest of a cottage."

Jessie did not look around as her sister refolded the letter, tucked it into the envelope, and laid it upon the table. But while each believed herself to be separated from the other by a fathomless gulf of memories, every one of which was an anguish, both were pondering the same section of the epistle that lay between them. The announcement of Wyllys' approaching marriage was, in itself, nothing to the wife. The thought of it had lost the power to wound when she parted with her faith in him. The wrong he had done her could never be forgiven; he had misled her purposely; deceived her cruelly; had robbed her life of love and hope, and given her self-contempt and remorse in their stead. But she did not regret him--as she now knew him to be--or linger fondly upon recollections of their by-gone intimacy. Hester Sanford was welcome to the suitor her gold had bought.

The phrases that had found a sentient spot in her breast were these: "Whom I am extremely curious to meet." "I shall expect a full-length description of her." The apathetic misery which had locked brain and heart with fetters of ice since her father's death had not rendered her totally unmindful of her husband's long-suffering and gentleness, his unselfish love and care of herself. She was persuaded that the girlish pa.s.sion that had made of him a demi-G.o.d was gone forever. Her flesh fainted, and her spirit died within her, at the caresses to which she had turned herself in the days of her idolatry, as roses open to the sun--as innocently and as naturally.

She could never love again. The fires had scathed too deeply for that; but she had begun to believe that she might find comfort in esteeming and liking her only protector; might seek, and not in vain, in a calm, true friendship for this good man, forgetfulness of the storms that had wrecked her early dreams. In his frank and n.o.ble presence suspicion stood rebuked. It was easier to discredit the evidence of one's own senses and judgment, than to doubt his integrity.

But here was a deliberate deception. He--Roy Fordham--had known Hester Sanford before she--Jessie--ever saw her. She was the intimate a.s.sociate and _confidante_ of his former love;--of the woman he had renounced heartlessly and without compunction,--and whose name had never pa.s.sed his lips in his wife's hearing. She recalled faithfully Hester's account of the call "Maria" had paid with her then betrothed at Mr. Sanford's house--a statement she would not have dared to make, had it been groundless. Whence this affectation of ignorance, on Fordham's part, of the person and character of his cousin's intended bride, if not as a further means of keeping the knowledge of the affair from _her_?

"To whom it should have been told, more than a year ago!" she reflected, a dreary loneliness creeping over her, with the conclusion--"He is like the rest of them! I would have believed in him if I could!"

The door shut quietly. She did not hear it, or miss her sister from her place. It was not an uncommon occurrence for them to sit together without speaking, for an hour at a time, Eunice's fingers busied with some article of useful needlework, Jessie's holding a book which she pretended to read as a cover for her griefful musings. Much less was it in the imagination of the younger sister to follow the elder in her progress up the staircase, her face more stony and eyes more desolate with each step, to the fair, large chamber she had occupied from her childhood.