University of Virginia Library

4. CHAPTER IV.

“I'd sell this mouldy cupboard, if it belonged to
me,” said George to his wife, upon his first survey of
Temple House; “Argus sticks to it. What possessed
him to believe that he could foist the rattle-trap upon
us? Do you like it?”

“Very much, George; I think it agreeable here.
I have room enough.”

“Make it as agreeable as you can for me. Rox,—
I have no money to speak of now. The sum I
married you on is exhausted. Let's see how old is
Tempe? I recollect that on the day she was born
I looked into my situation, and I must say I thought
of the Spanish Main—and of Argus. But you have
spent nothing.”

“I never spent money, George—I cannot be wasteful;
to save is my ambition.”

“Rox, you are a miser. You dress yourself and
Tempe upon what? The poor little beggar is always
a thing of shreds and patches.”

Roxalana made no effort to combat his opinion.

“I tell you I must have money, Rox.”

There was nothing for her to say on this point.

“I must and will have it. Where shall I obtain
it?”

Intently regarding him, without a particle of emotion
in her face, she answered:

“You must and will have it; and you will obtain
it from Argus.”

“So! well—for just now, day, day, Rox.”

He left her in a composure that would have driven
a lover frantic; but George was not her lover,—
he scarcely knew why he had become her husband.
Nothing in her nature knit itself into the temperament,
which compassed and ruined him. He knew,
though, that she would throw her soul into the flames
of hell as coolly as if it were an old glove, for his
sake; and that, good woman as she was, she would
lie for him with calm lips and unblenched eyes, to
hide his slightest fault.

With her, it was as Argus predicted; she grew to
the place as moss grows to the stone. Its space and
substantiality suited her silence-loving soul. Tempe,
having discovered the weak spot of the domain—
the door into the alley—made herself happy with
constant visits and rompings among the children there,
and was too much absorbed with its hearty, vulgar
life to miss any loving care at home.

Gradually and unobtrusively, Roxalana assumed
the control of the housekeeping; her method was as
rigid and exact as the laws of a monastery. Its basis
was an economy which George called parsimony,
and Argus prudence. Though she would have gone
to the world's end with George, had he desired it, no
prayer nor threat could induce her to allow him two
eggs for his breakfast: and when Tempe cried with

rage and disgust at her schoolmate's discovery that
she wore petticoats of duck, made from the fragments
of worn sails, Roxalana even shared her tears,
but said the petticoats answered the same purpose as
finer ones, and that she esteemed it a fortunate circumstance
to be so near the junk store on the quay,
for there were a number of articles in it at half price
that no one but herself would think of turning to account.
Argus was amused with her management.
He understood it after a little, when he understood
the rapacity of George; it accorded with his wishes,
that she would employ no servant, nor any outside
help. At home he must drop everything that entangled
his personality. The more limited and defined
the exterior of his life, the greater his enjoyment
of that strange internal liberty, which men of intellect
who have experienced much possess, and do not
desire to show. Roxalana herself, always sedate,
always at ease, keeping good faith with the veritable,
silent regarding the unsubstantial and visionary, came
singularly up to his requirements. Not so with
George, who existed in mental slavery to some hope,
or desire, which bore no relation to his present possessions.
To obtain his wishes he needed a lawless
liberty. Sharp and selfish as Argus was, cold and
cynical, it is certain that he allowed George to impoverish
him. In regard to this fact, Roxalana, who
knew it, made herself magnanimous for Argus. On
his side he concealed his losses from her. They never
knew what George did with the money. Every day
he declared his intention of leaving Kent, and every
evening deferred his departure. He soon exhausted
the town; its high life was merely respectable, and its
low life devoid of vim. His most worthy performance
was in clearing the old garden paths, resetting
the roses, and patching with vines and lattice-work
the summer-house. Roxalana knew nothing of flowers,
but in the time of roses, she like to pull one to
nibble at, and stare over. And she had a strange
fancy for tulips which George took pains to raise for
her; and when she first saw them blooming at Temple
House, her dark face borrowed their tint for a
moment, and her grave, solid eyes smiled as she
thanked him.

“You are a kind of dusky, solemn tulip yourself,
Rox,” he said.

Argus, looking at George while he was leisurely
making these repairs, acquired the habit of smoking
in the garden, and in this way they dropped into each
other's society, exchanged cigars, and scattered their
ashes in company. If they ventured on speech it was
to note the weather, to argue on trivial points, banter
each other, and to laugh; but they never touched
on any vital topic. Had they done so, there might
have been a root of bitterness revealed. Inside the
house they rarely met, except at supper in the green
room—that ceremony being religiously observed still.
Roxalana, George, and Tempe alike yielded to the
influence of Argus there.

“Where is my father?” Tempe sometimes asked,
missing him suddenly.

“He is in the place he chooses to be,” her mother

generally replied. “Where is your patchwork? Do
I see a rent in your frock? What is the matter with
your shoes?” And Tempe was diverted from a subject
which Roxalana preferred not to dwell on herself.
But when George was the most irregular, her regularity
was the most noticeable; never was the housekeeping
so nicely adjusted as when he was absent.

The day came when he left Kent. There was no
mystery concerning his going—no opposition, and no
conclusion. As he crossed the threshold Roxalana
went to her chamber window, and watched him going
down the lawn with a calm, heavy countenance.
Argus stood under the elms, his hat pitched over his
eyes, and Tempe was beside her father, holding his
hand. They reached the gate, where neither Argus
nor Roxalana's eyes could follow them. George
stopped and turned his head towards the house.

“God! what ails me?” he cried.

Struck by a profound and painful emotion, for a
moment he stood like the stabbed Iago, bleeding, but
not killed. He took Tempe in his arms, and gazed
at her wistfully.

“Tempe, you are a beauty,” he murmured; “don't
forget that you look like your father.”

His fine eyes filled with tears; beaded sweat burst
out on his forehead.

“I am a wretch, Tempe,” he said bitterly; “don't
forget that, either. Be sure that you can live without
the cursed fillip my nerves require. I cannot
define and settle my wants as the souls behind us
do. Well, the world—mine oyster—is no harder to

open, than ever. But what is the use of my trying
it again.”

He had kissed her a dozen times while speaking,
kissed her with sighs and trembling lips. She was
dumb, but observing a sound of wheels coming
down the street checked him; it was the coach which
had come for him. As it drew up at the gate, his
expression changed, those empty, foolish hopes with
which the unknown deludes, charged in upon him,
dissipating his doubt and misery like smoke in the
air.

“Kiss papa,” he begged. “Good girl; see what a
beautiful day it is for me. Ask mamma to count
the tulips this year. Tell her that I remember Roxalana's
goodness to me; she has been good, Tempe.
Mind this also; be always polite to your uncle
Argus.”

He sprang from the gate, and went down the steps
without a sound.

Tempe heard the loud morning song of the birds
flying round the elms. She watched them. These
winged creatures, afterwards embodied the remembrance
of her father, unapproachable, beautiful,
direct in their instincts—free as the ether that
sustained them, and faithless as the winds that
steered them hither and thither.

Returning, she missed Argus, and searched the
house in vain for her mother. She flew to the alley,
and played from house to house, dining with her
favorite, Mat Sutcliff, till nightfall. Then with a
new feeling of lawlessness, she boldly burst into the

green room, expecting to find confusion and dismay;
to her surprise, she found her mother snuffing the
same candles, and making tea in the old fashion.
The supper was laid with the usual care, accompanied
with no pungent, mournful sauce. Argus read
the Kent Chronicle as he did every evening. From
a diffidence which she could not have explained, she
avoided looking directly in her mother's face, but
kept on the alert for any sudden groan or cry. But
Roxalana wore the evening through in the old
fashion, except that she continually brushed her lips
with her handkerchief, as if they were feverish.
When they were alone, and Tempe perceived that her
mother intended to go to bed in silence, she burst
out with her father's message:

“He said, I was to tell you that he had spoken of
your goodness to him; and that you must count the
tulips. And, oh—won't he come back?”

“I never was half good enough to him, Tempe.”

“What shall I do?” asked Tempe, the tears streaming
from her eyes.

“We will count the tulips together. Now get into
bed, and dream of him, as I shall.”

No change appeared in Roxalana's manner, but
from the day of George's departure, she never went
beyond the limits of the house. The fashion of her
dress remained the same, and she never looked into
a newspaper.

For many a January and July the percentage of
Argus's diminished capital dropped into his purse
with the thought, that there might come a demand

for it from George. None came. The happy earth
moved eastward with its expectant lovers, but it never
rolled Roxalana's love in sight again. Tempe shot
up within the shadow of those dark walls, as the
lovely star-flower comes up from the dark ground in
spring among the dead boughs and needles of the
pines. Finally, Argus and Roxalana knew that
George was dead. They read it, perhaps, in each
others eyes; perhaps the air was weighted with his
passing soul, which burdened them.

They announced his death to Tempe, for once in
speech working together, offering the courtesy to the
last mortal Cause which should be the warrant for
the same towards themselves on a like occasion.
There were no tears, nor lamentations, but Roxalana
stared as fixedly at Tempe as if the lids of her eyes
had lost the power of closing over them; and Argus
was pale and downcast; his hands moved about in
search of something to adjust. Tempe looked from
one to the other, and with some embarrassment
asked if she should wear black. Roxalana shook
her head, and a faint, sarcastic smile played over
Argus's lips, and his hands ceased to be nervous.
When Tempe looked in the glass that night, and let
down her hair, she remembered the injunction of her
father, that she must not forget the likeness between
them, and sat motionless, watching her image, her
mind dwelling on their parting interview at the gate.
Picturing, as she did, the defacement of the dead,
and shrinking from the dull power of the unknown
grave, which had quelled her counterpart, she could

not resist the contrast which the sight of her own
beautiful vitality gave her, and so her father's self
faded away. From this period the routine of life
with Argus and Roxalana lost its dash of bitter
flavor; a dramatic possibility had disappeared. The
elasticity of Argus's breath-loving temperament
stretched without strain or snap; time stood equably
with him. His face looked firm and smooth; his
eyes were latent in their energy, and his bearing was
full of idle strength. Roxalana, heavy, incurious,
with slight self-love, perfectly well balanced in mind
and body, excepting a dark, crooked desert, which
was only revealed, as the mirage is revealed, when
the desert is travelled upon settled into a placid
content which did not look beyond itself. Tempe
lived as a child lives—in an unthinking flow of high
spirits, which turned each day into a series of absorbing
events.

The lapse of years sometimes kindly purls along
even with the sophisticated; when God, and the
Universe, and their own passions do not trouble
them; when their enjoyments and afflictions do not
range higher than those of the savage. It was so at
Temple House. It was a natural worship which
Argus gave to himself at the shrine of Aurora on
this September day. The day's labor of Roxalana
was a sufficient and reasonable one, and it was not
necessary that Tempe, by any thunderbolt, should
be startled from her happiness and vacuity.