12. CHAPTER XII.
On the third day after Tempe's return to Kent,
Mr. Drake's coachman drove her home.
“We shall see you soon,” said the Drake family
at parting.
“I shall see you often, of course,” Tempe replied;
but, her face set homeward, the conviction that a
final separation had taken place between them, settled
in her mind without a regret. As she walked
up the path, she queried whether it was her heavy
mourning dress, or the atmosphere which was
freighted with a storm, that made her feel as if she
were taking a wearisome burden along. She pushed
open the door of the green room, and, burden or no
burden, saw Argus and her mother in the old place
and attitude. Like a wounded child, her lips
quivered, but resolutely beating back the rush of
tears that burnt her eyelids, she ended the struggle
with a smile, and cried:
“This is an agreeable world, mother. I have been
journeying in it, and here I am again.”
Roxalana rose stiffly from her seat; shook Tempe's
hand vehemently; stared at her with strange, sad
eyes, and resumed her seat without speaking.
Argus eyed Tempe's crape with disgust.
“Take off those badges now,” he said; “the disconsolate
is not becoming.”
“Do,” begged her mother, “leave off those weeds
with us; I detest them, and you will find them as
irksome as convalescence. It is a poor custom to
have the dead brood in black garments; and when
one takes them off, escaping into bright colors, the
dead escape too. I think our friends should be
perceived in all the ordinary affairs of life; nothing
should be set apart for them.”
“Nonsense,” said Argus, throwing his half-smoked
cigar into the fire. “What would become of the
ancient and respectable institution of monuments
and epitaphs,—those final and selfish compliments,—
if we followed your fancies?”
“Mother,” said Tempe, “I shall wear black all
my days; I am sure it is the least I can do.”
She caught the inquiring, sarcastic smile with
which Argus regarded her, and sat down, pulling off
her gloves, and bonnet. The reception she received,
so cool, and undemonstrative, as if nothing had happened,
set her thoughts upon the wonderful talent
of self-ownership which belonged to Argus and Roxalana.
She comprehended now why they seemed
superior to the persons she had lately been intimate
with; their outside possessions weighed nothing
in comparison to that instinct of self-possession,
when well developed!
“Argus,” said Roxalana, “attend to the fire;
Tempe may be taking cold.”
“The fire is a rousing one, and does not need a
splinter even.”
While the evening was passing as usual Tempe
stole off to bed. There were women, who, having
borne what she had, upon re-entering that chamber
would have felt their sharpest misery; who would
have been tormented with baffled desire,—a remorse
at not having improved the moments of sympathy
and endearment which only yesterday was possible,
to-day, impossible. Women yet alive in every fibre,
crushed with the belief of an eternal separation from
love, who would have grovelled in an ecstasy of
despair, washed out the vivid colors of the past with
floods of tears, and battled away the memory of their
joys behind the shield of resignation; who would
have propped the ruined present with prayers and
vows, beseeching God to hold the loosened tendrils
of their useless affections. Not so with Tempe.
She stepped across the threshold without dread or
agitation, but a sudden howl of the wind at the loose,
old casements made her turn her eyes towards the
blank, curtainless windows, and shiver. Placing the
lamp near the glass, she shrank from catching a
sight of herself, and moved away with wandering
eyes, which at last fell on the stuffed red and green
macaw, fastened to a mahogany perch against the
wall. Her thoughts travelled back to the time
when she tried to pull out some of its feathers,
years ago, and the interval did not seem much
longer than her marriage day.
“Married!” she whispered, with a feeling of consternation,
and holding her left hand up to see the
ring. With nervous haste she dropped it in a
drawer, hoping she had prevented the danger of bad
dreams. Roxalana found her sound asleep, with her
head on the edge of the drawer.
“Come, Tempe, creep into bed beside m, I have
missed you, lately. There is your night-gown; let
me unfasten your dress.”
Tempe submitted with a yawn, and then woke up
enough to ask a hundred questions concerning the
past six weeks. It was midnight before the two
widows slept.
