Page:The Galaxy, Volume 5.djvu/756

728 member 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 used to take me upon her lap, and hold me closely in her arms as she lay upon her lounge in the twilight, and tell me stories of her childhood in her Southern home, sing ballads so sweetly sad that I often cried silently, while I listened—silently, lest 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 churchyard were swaying solemnly in the bleak wind that bowed the slight garden-shrubs and swept the long grass 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 gray evening at the now shadowy shaft, standing like a sheeted ghost at the head of Mr. Kirke's favorite wife, and heard the mournful sough of the autumn breeze, 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 darkening sky.

"I have a perfect picture of her before me at this moment," she resumed, dreamily. "She had large, soft eyes and very black hair. She was always pale, and she never laughed. But her smile was my reward when I had been good, as her kiss was the cure for every hurt. Nobody else ever repeated to 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 golden days! when the writing-desk would, if I requested it, be supplanted by the color-box and pencils, and we passed whole hours together—she and I—she sketching or painting to illustrate anecdote and fairy story—I perched in my high chair at her side, looking on in rapt delight. I was a troublesome child to every one else in the house. I kept away from her of my own accord in my passionate or sulky fits. The earliest lesson taught me by my father was that 'poor, sick mamma must not be disturbed.' I suppose it was because of her delicate health that he always heard my prayers, put me to bed and nursed me in my infant sicknesses. It was he who came to my crib early one morning and told me she was in Heaven. I have never seen him weep except then. 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!' From that moment I transferred to him the idolatry I had felt for my mother while she lived."

The wind shook the casement and the bare sprays tapped more impatiently upon the glass, as the spirit of the dead mother might have signalled her child to let her in.

"Mrs. Baxter will never weary of talking with you upon a theme so dear to you both," said Orrin, shaking off the superstitious fancy.

"You have heard her speak of my mother, then?"

Jessie was aroused to livelier speech by the thought.

"Yes—often—long before I suspected the identity of her lamented relative with your father's wife. By a singular mischance she never mentioned his name in my hearing until a night or two ago, when she asked me if I knew him—and you."