Jupiter Lights

The wagon was passing between two high gate-posts (there was no gate); it entered an avenue bordered with trees whose boughs met overhead, shutting out the moonlight. But Uncle Abram knew the way; and so did the mule, who conducted his wagon over the remaining space, and up to the porch of a large low house, in a sudden wild gallop. “Hi-yi!” said Uncle Abram, warningly; “All ri’, den, ef yer wanter,” he added, rattling the reins. “Lippity-clip!”

The visitor’s eyes perceived lights, an open door, and two figures waiting within. The wagon stopped, and Meadows dismounted from her perch. But Cicely, before following her, put her face close to Eve’s, and whispered: “I’d better tell you now, so that you won’t call me that again – before the others: I’m not Mrs. Bruce any longer; my name is Morrison. I married Ferdinand Morrison six months ago.” After this stupefying declaration she pressed Eve’s hand, and, jumping lightly to the ground, called out, “Bring the steps, some of you.”

There was a sudden dispersion of the group of negroes near the porch; a horse-block with a flight of steps attached was brought, and placed in position for the visitor’s descent. It appeared that she needed this assistance, for she had remained motionless in the wagon, making no effort to follow Cicely’s example. Now she descended, jealously aided by Meadows, who had retained but one clear idea amid all these bewilderments of night-drives with half-dressed blacks and mad mules through a desert of sand, and that was to do all in her power for the unfortunate lady whom for the moment she was serving; for what must her sufferings be – to come from Hayling Hall to this!

“Here is Eve,” Cicely said, leading the visitor up the steps.

The white-haired man and the tall woman who had been waiting within, came forward.

“Grandpa,” said Cicely, by way of introduction. “And Aunt Sabrina.”

“My father, Judge Abercrombie,” said the tall lady, correctingly. Then she put her arms round Eve and kissed her. “You are very welcome, my dear. But how cold your hands are, even through your gloves! Dilsey, make a fire.”

“I am not cold,” Eve answered.

But she looked so ill that the judge hastily offered her his arm.

She did not accept it. “It is nothing,” she said. Anger now came to her aid, Cicely’s announcement had stunned her. “I am perfectly well,” she went on, in a clear voice. “It has been a long voyage, and that, you know, is tiresome. But now that it is over, I shall soon be myself again, and able to continue my journey.”

“Continue! Are you going any further, then?” inquired Miss Abercrombie, mildly. “I had hoped – we have all hoped – that you would spend a long time with us.” Miss Abercrombie had a soft voice with melancholy cadences; her tones had no rising inflections; all her sentences died gently away.

“You are very kind. It will be impossible,” Miss Bruce responded, briefly.

While speaking these words they had passed down the hall and entered a large room on the right. A negro woman on her knees was hastily lighting a fire on the hearth, and, in another moment, the brilliant blaze, leaping up, made a great cheer. Cicely had disappeared. Judge Abercrombie, discomfited by the visitor’s manner, rolled forward an arm-chair vaguely, and then stood rubbing his hands by the fire, while his daughter began to untie Miss Bruce’s bonnet strings.

“Thanks; I will not take it off now. Later, when I go to my room.” And the visitor moved away from the friendly fingers. Miss Sabrina was very near-sighted. She drew her eye-glasses furtively from her pocket, and, turning her back for an instant, put them on; she wished to have a clearer view of John Bruce’s sister. She saw before her a woman of thirty (as she judged her to be; in reality Eve was twenty-eight), tall, broad-shouldered, slender, with golden hair and a very white face. The eyes were long and rather narrow; they were dark blue in color, and they were not pleasant eyes – so Miss Sabrina thought; their expression was both angry and cold. The cheeks were thin, the outline of the features bold. The mouth was distinctly ugly, the full lips prominent, the expression sullen. At this moment Cicely entered, carrying a little child, a boy of two years, attired only in his little white night-gown; his blue eyes were brilliant with excitement, his curls, rumpled by sleep, was flattened down on one side of his head and much fluffed up on the other. The young mother came running across the slippery floor, and put him into Miss Bruce’s arms. “There he is,” she said – “there’s your little Jack. He knows you; I have talked to him about you scores of times.”

The child, half afraid, put up a dimpled hand and stroked Eve’s cheek. “Auntie?” he lisped, inquiringly. Then, after inspecting her carefully, still keeping up the gentle little stroke, he announced with decision, “Ess; Aunty Eve!”

Eve drew him close, and hid her face on his bright hair. Then she rose hurriedly, holding him in her arms, and, with an involuntary motion, moved away from Cicely, looking about the room as if in search of another place, and finally taking refuge beside Miss Sabrina, drawing a low chair towards her with the same unseeing action and sinking into it, the baby held to her breast.

Tall Miss Sabrina seemed to understand; she put one arm round their guest. Cicely, thus deserted, laughed. Then she went to her grandfather, put her arm in his, and they left the room together. When the door had closed after them, Eve raised her eyes. “He is the image of Jack!” she said.

“Yes, I know it,” answered Miss Sabrina. “And I knew how it would affect you, my dear. But I think it is a comfort that he does look like him; don’t you? And now you must not talk any more about going away, but stay here with us and love him.”

“Stay!” said Eve. She rose, and made a motion as if she were going to give the child to her companion. But little Jack put up his hand again, and stroked her cheek; he was crooning meanwhile to himself composedly a little song of his own invention; it was evident that he would never be afraid of her again. Eve kissed him. “Do you think she would give him to me?” she asked, hungrily. “She cannot care for him – not as I do.”

Miss Sabrina drew herself up (in the excess of her sympathy, as well as near-sightedness, she had been leaning so far forward that her flat breast had rested almost on her knees). “Give up her child – her own child? My niece? I think not; I certainly think not.” She took off her glasses and put them in her pocket decisively.

“Then I shall take him from her. And you must help me. What will she care in a month from now – a year? She has already forgotten his father.”

Miss Sabrina was still angry. But she herself had not liked her niece’s second marriage. “The simplest way would be to stay here for the present,” she said, temporizing.

“Stay here? Now? How can you ask it?”

Tears rose in the elder lady’s eyes; she began to wipe them away clandestinely one by one with her long taper finger. “It’s a desolate place now, I know; but it’s very peaceful. The garden is pretty. And we hoped that you wouldn’t mind. We even hoped that you would like it a little – the child being here. We would do all we could. Of course I know it isn’t much.”

These murmured words in the melancholy voice seemed to rouse in Eve Bruce an even more stormy passion than before. She went to Miss Sabrina and took hold of her shoulder. “Do you think I can stand seeing him,” she demanded – “here – in Jack’s place? If I could, I would go to-night.” Turning away, she broke into tearless sobs. “Oh Jack – Jack – ”

Light dawned at last in Sabrina Abercrombie’s mind. “You mean Mr. Morrison?” she said, hurriedly rising. “You didn’t know, then? Cicely didn’t tell you?”

“She told me that she had married again; nothing more. Six months ago. She let me come here – you let me come here – without knowing it.”

“Oh, I thought you knew it,” said Miss Sabrina, in distress. “I did not like the marriage myself, Miss Bruce; I assure you I did not. I was very fond of John, and it seemed too sudden. If she had only waited the year – and two years would have been so much more appropriate. I go there very often – to John’s grave – indeed I do; it is as dear to me as the graves of my own family, and I keep the grass cut very carefully; I will show you. You remember when I wrote you that second time? I feared it then, though I was not sure, and I tried to prepare you a little by saying that the baby was now your chief interest, naturally. And he wasn’t going to be married,” she added, becoming suddenly incoherent, and taking hold of her throat with little rubs of her thumb and forefinger as Eve’s angry eyes met hers; “at least, not that we knew. I did not say more, because I was not sure, Miss Bruce. But after it had really happened, I supposed of course that Cicely wrote to you.”

“She!”

“But Mr. Morrison is not here; he is not here, and never has been. She met him in Savannah, and married him there; it was at a cousin’s. But she only stayed with him for a few months, and we fear that it is not a very happy marriage. He is in South America at present, and you know how far away that is. I haven’t the least idea when he is coming back.”

The door at the end of the room opened. Cicely’s little figure appeared on the threshold. Miss Sabrina, who seemed to know who it was by intuition, as she could see nothing at that distance, immediately began to whisper. “Of course we don’t know that it is an unhappy marriage; but as she came back to us so soon, it struck us so – it made that impression; wouldn’t it have made the same upon you? She must have suffered extremely, and so we ought to be doubly kind to her.” And she laid her hand with a warning pressure on Eve’s arm.

“I am not likely to be unkind as long as there is the slightest hope of getting this child away from her,” answered Eve. “For she is the mother, isn’t she? She couldn’t very well have palmed off some other baby on you, for Jack himself was here then, I know. Oh, you needn’t be afraid, I shall defer to her, yield to her, grovel to her!” She bent her head and kissed the baby’s curls. But her tone was so bitter that poor Miss Sabrina shrank away.

Cicely had called to them, “Supper is ready.” She remained where she was at the end of the long room, holding the door open with her hand.

II

THE father of John and Eva Bruce was an officer in the United States army. His wife had died when Eve was born. Captain Bruce brought up his children as well as he could; he would not separate himself from them, and so he carried them about with him to the various military stations to which he was ordered. When his boy was sixteen, an opportunity presented itself to him: an old friend, Thomas Ashley, who was established, and well established, in London, offered to take the lad, finish his education, and then put him into the house, as he called it, the house being the place of business of the wealthy English-American shipping firm to which he had the good-fortune to belong.

Captain Bruce did not hesitate. Jack was sent across the seas. Eve, who was then ten years old, wept desperately over the parting. Six years later she too went to England. Her father had died, and, young as she was, her determination to go to her brother was so strong that nothing could stand against it. During the six years of separation Jack had returned to America twice to see his father and sister; the tie between the three had not been broken by absence, but only made stronger. The girl had lived a concentrated life, therefore an isolated one. She had had her own way on almost all occasions. It was said of her, “Any one can see that she has been brought up by a man!” In reality there were two men; for Jack had seemed to her a man when he was only twelve years old. Her father gone, her resolve to go to Jack was, as has been said, so strong that nothing could stand against it. But in truth there was little to oppose to it, and few to oppose her; no one, indeed, who could set up anything like the force of will which she was exhibiting on the other side. She had no near relatives; as for her father’s old friends, she rode over them.

“You’ll have to let her go; she puts out her mouth so!” said Mrs. Mason, the colonel’s wife, at last. The remark, as to its form, was incoherent; but everybody at the post understood her. At sixteen, then, Eve Bruce was sent to England. As soon as she was able she took a portion of the property which came to her from her mother, to make a comfortable home for Jack. For Jack had only his salary, and it was not a large one. He had made himself acceptable in the house, and in due time he was to have a small share of the profits; but the due time was not yet, and would not be for some years. His father’s old friend, who had been his friend also, as well as his sponsor in the firm, had died. But his widow, who liked the young American – she was an American herself, though long expatriated – continued to extend to him much kindness; and, when his sister came over, she included her in the invitations. Eve did not care much for these opportunities, nor for the other opportunities that followed in their train; occasionally she went to a dinner; but she found her best pleasure in being with her brother alone. They remained in London all the year round, save for six weeks in August and September. Eve could have paid many a visit in the country during the autumn and winter; but their small, ugly house near Hans Place was more beautiful in her eyes, Jack being there, than the most picturesque cottage with a lawn and rose garden, or even than an ivy-grown mansion in a deer-haunted park.

Thus brother and sister lived on for eight years. Then one morning, early in 1864, Jack, who had chafed against his counting-house chains ever since the April of Sumter, broke them short off; he too had a determined mouth. “I can’t stand it any longer, Eve; I am going home. Fortunately you are provided for, or I couldn’t. I shall lose my place here, of course; but I don’t care. Go I must.” A week later he sailed for New York. And he was soon in the army. “Blood will tell,” said his father’s regimental companions – the few who were left.

Eve, in London, now began to lead that life of watching the telegraphic despatches and counting the days for letters which was the lot of American women during those dark times of war. She remained in London, because it was understood between them that Jack was to return. But she rented their house, and lived in lodgings near by, so as to have all the more money ready for him when he should come back.

But Jack did not come back. When the war reached its end, he wrote that he was going to be married; she was a Southern girl – he was even particular as to her name and position: Cicely Abercrombie, the granddaughter of Judge Abercrombie of Abercrombie’s Island. Eve scarcely read these names; she had stopped at “marry.”

He did marry Cicely Abercrombie in October of that year, 1865.

He wrote long letters to his sister; he wished her to come out and join them. He had leased two of the abandoned cotton plantations – great things could be done in cotton now – and he was sure that he should make his fortune. Eve, overwhelmed with her disappointment and her grief, wrote and rewrote her brief replies before she could succeed in filling one small sheet without too much bitterness; for Jack was still Jack, and she loved him. He had never comprehended the exclusiveness, the jealousy of her affection; he had accepted her devotion and enjoyed it, but he had believed, without thinking much about it at any time, that all sisters were like that. In urging her, therefore, to join them, he did not in the least suspect that the chief obstacle lay in that very word “them,” of which he was so proud. To join “them,” to see some one else preferred; where she had been first, to take humbly a second place! And who could tell whether this girl was worthy of him? Perhaps the bitterest part of the suffering would be to see Jack himself befooled, belittled. The sister, wretchedly unhappy, allowed it to be supposed, without saying so – it was Jack who suggested it – that she would come later; after she had disposed of the lease of their house, and sold their furniture to advantage. In time the furniture was sold, but not to advantage. The money which she had taken from her capital to make a comfortable home for her brother was virtually lost.

Presently it was only a third place that could be offered to her, for, during the next winter, Jack wrote joyfully to announce the birth of a son. He had not made his fortune yet; but he was sure to do so the next year. The next year he died.

Then Eve wrote, for the first time, to Cicely.

In reply she received a long letter from Cicely’s aunt, Sabrina Abercrombie, giving, with real grief, the particulars of Jack’s last hours. He had died of the horrible yellow-fever. Eve was ill when the letter reached her; her illness lasted many months, and kind-hearted Mrs. Ashley took her, almost by force, to her place in the country, beautiful Hayling Hall, in Warwickshire. When at last she was able to hold a pen, Eve wrote again to Cicely; only a few lines (her first epistle had not been much longer); still, a letter. The reply was again from Miss Abercrombie, and, compared with her first communication, it was short and vague. The only definite sentences were about the child; “for he is the one in whom you are most interested, naturally,” she wrote, under-scoring the “he” and the “naturally” with a pale line; the whole letter, as regards ink, was very pale.

And now Eve Bruce had this child. And she determined, with all the intensity of her strong will, of her burning, jealous sorrow, that he should be hers alone. With such a mother as Cicely there was everything to hope.

III

WHILE the meal, which Cicely had announced as supper, was going on in the dining-room, Meadows was occupying herself in her accustomed evening effort to bring her mistress’s abiding-place for the night, wherever it might happen to be, into as close a resemblance to an English bedroom as was, under the circumstances, possible. The resemblance had not been striking, so far, with all her toil, there having been something fundamentally un-English both in the cabins of the Ville de Havre and in the glittering salons which served as bedrooms in the Hotel of the Universe in New York. The Savannah boat had been no better, nor the shelf with a roof over it of the little Altamaha; on the steamer of the Inland Route her struggle had been with an apartment seven feet long; here at Romney it was with one which had six times that amount of perspective.

A fire, freshly lighted, flared on the hearth, the spicy odor of its light wood still filling the air. And there was air enough to fill, for not one of the doors nor of the row of white windows which opened to the floor fitted tightly in its casing; there were wide cracks everywhere, and Meadows furthermore discovered, to her horror, that the windows had sashes which came only part of the way down, the lower half being closed by wooden shutters only. She barred these apertures as well as she could (some of the bars were gone), and then tried to draw the curtains; but these muslin protections, when they reached the strong current of air which came through the central crack of the shutters, were blown out towards the middle of the room like so many long white ghosts. Meadows surveyed them with a sigh; with a sigh she arranged the contents of Miss Bruce’s dressing-bag on the outlandish bare toilet-table; she placed the slippers by the fire and drew forward the easiest chair. But when all was done the room still remained uncomfortably large, and uncomfortably empty. Outside, the wind whistled, the near sea gave out a booming sound; within, the flame of the candle flared now here, now there, in the counter-draughts that swept the room.

“It certainly is the farawayest place!” murmured the English girl.