Wives and Widows; or, The Broken Life

by Ann S. Stephens

I can hardly express the pain this gave me. All her life she had come to me in her troubles; and her bright, innocent joys I always shared; for, like a flower-garden, she sent back the sunshine that passed over her, enriched and more golden from a contact with her loveliness. I can hardly tell you what a thing of beauty she was; yet, I doubt if you would have thought her so very lovely as I did, for my admiration was almost idolatry. Of late I had remarked a certain reserve about her, the reticence which kept a sanctuary of feeling and thought quite away from the world, and alas, from me also. Yet she was frank and truthful, as the flower which always folds the choicest perfume close in its own heart. What secret feeling was it that kept her from me, her oldest and best friend.

I was thinking of Jessie while I sat in the easy-chair, looking down the carriage-road that led through our private grounds from the highway; for ours was an isolated dwelling, and no carriage that was not destined for the house ever came up that sweep of road. I looked down upon it with a sad, heavy feeling, though my eyes passed over a terrace crowned with a wilderness of flowers, reached by a flight of steps. The gleam of these flowers, and the green slope beyond, were a part of the scenery on which I gazed, yet I saw nothing of them.

We expected Mrs. Dennison. The carriage had gone over to the country town which lay behind the hills piled up at my left, and I was listening for the sound of its wheels on the gravel with a strange thrill of anxiety. Why was this? What did I care about the young widow who had been invited to spend a few days with our Jessie? She was only a watering-place acquaintance—a clever, beautiful woman of the world, who, having a little time on her hands, had condescended to remember Mrs. Lee's half-extorted invitation, and was expected accordingly.

Jessie was rather excited with the idea of a guest, for it so chanced that we had been alone for a week or two; and though I never saw a family more independent of society than Mrs. Lee's, guests always bring expectation and cheerfulness with them in a well-appointed country house.

"I wonder what keeps them?" said my darling, softly lifting one side of the silken curtains, and unconsciously dropping them into the background of as lovely a picture as you ever saw. "Here are some flowers for the stand, Aunt Matty. She'll catch their bloom through the window, and know it is my welcome."

I took the crystal vase from her hand, and set it on the little table before me.

"Hush!" she said, lifting the drapery higher, and bending forward to listen. "Hush! Isn't that the carriage coming through the pine grove?"

I turned in my chair, for Jessie was well worth looking at, even by a person who loved her less fondly than I did. Standing there, draped to artistic perfection in her pretty white dress, gathered in surplice folds over her bosom, and fastened there with an antique head, cut in coral, with its loose sleeves falling back from the uplifted arm, till its beautiful contour could be seen almost to the shoulder, she was a subject for Sir Joshua Reynolds. I am sure that great master would not have changed the grouping in a single point.

"No," I said, listening; "it is the gardener's rake on the gravel walk, I think."

She bent her head sideways, listening, and incredulous of my explanation. Some gleams of sunshine fell through the glass, and lay richly on the heavy braid of hair that crowned her head in a raven coronal.