DR. MATTHEWSON.
The train from Ellicottville was late that afternoon. In fact, its habit
was to be late, but on this particular day it was more than usually
behind time, and the one stage which Holburton boasted had waited more
than half an hour at the little station of the out-of-the-way town which
lies nestled among the Berkshire hills, just on the boundary line
between the Empire State and Massachusetts. The day was hot even for
midsummer, and the two fat, motherly matrons who sat in the depot
alternately inveighed against the heat and wiped their glowing faces,
while they watched and discussed the young lady who, on the platform
outside, was walking up and down, seeming wholly unconscious of their
espionage. But it was only seeming, for she knew perfectly well that she
was an object of curiosity and criticism, and more than once she paused
in her walk and turning squarely round faced the two old ladies in order
to give them a better view, and let them see just how many tucks, and
ruffles and puffs there were in her new dress, worn that day for the
first time. And a very pretty picture Josephine Fleming made standing
there in the sunshine, looking so artless and innocent, as if no thought
of herself had ever entered her mind. She was a pink-and-white blonde,
with masses of golden hair rippling back from her forehead, and those
dreamy blue eyes of which poets sing, and which have in them a marvelous
power to sway the sterner sex by that pleading, confiding expression,
which makes a man very tender towards the helpless creature appealing so
innocently to him for protection.
The two old ladies did not like Josephine, though they admitted that she
was very beautiful and stylish, in her blue muslin and white chip hat
with the long feather drooping low behind, too pretty by far and too
much of the fine lady, they said, for a daughter of the widow Roxie
Fleming, who lived in the brown house on the Common, and sewed for a
living when she had no boarders from the city. And then, as the best of
women will sometimes do, they picked the girl to pieces, and talked of
the scandalous way she had of flirting with every man in town, of her
airs and indolence, which they called laziness, and wondered if it were
true that poor old Agnes, her half-sister, made the young lady’s bed,
and mended her clothes, and waited upon her generally as if she were a
princess, and toiled, and worked, and went without herself, that Josey
might be clothed in dainty apparel, unbecoming to one in her rank of
life. And then they wondered next if it were true, as had been rumored,
that she was engaged to that young Forrest from Amherst College, who had
boarded at the brown house for a few weeks the previous summer, and been
there so often since.
“A well-mannered chap as you would wish to see,” one of them said, “with
a civil word for high and low, and a face of which any mother might be
proud; only——” and here the speaker lowered her voice, as she continued:
“Only he does look a little fast, for no decent-behaved boy of twenty
ought to have such a tired, fagged look as he has, and they do say there
were some great carousin’s at Widder Fleming’s last summer, which lasted
up to midnight, and wine was carried in by Agnes, and hot coffee made as
late as eleven, and if you’ll b’leve it”—here the voice was a
whisper—“they had a _pack of cards_, for Miss Murdock saw them with her
own eyes, and young Forrest handled them as if used to the business.”
“Cards! That settles it!” was repeated by the second woman, with a shake
of the head, which indicated that she knew all she cared to know of
Everard Forrest, but her friend, who was evidently better posted in the
gossip of the town, went on to add that “people said young Forrest was
an only son, and that his father was very rich, and lived in a fine old
place somewhere west or south, and had owned negroes in Kentucky before
the war, and was a copperhead, and very close and proud, and kept
colored help, and would not like it at all if he knew how his son was
flirting with Josephine Fleming.”
Then they talked of the expected entertainment at the Village Hall the
following night, the proceeds of which were to go toward buying a
fire-engine, which the people greatly needed. And Josephine was to
figure in most everything, and they presumed she was now waiting for
some chap to come on the train.
For once they were right in their conjecture. She was waiting for
Everard Forrest, and when the train came in he stepped upon the platform
looking so fresh, and cool, and handsome in his white linen suit that
the ladies almost forgave Josephine for the gushing manner with which
she greeted him, and carried him off toward home. She was so glad to see
him, and her eyes looked at him so softly and tenderly, and she had so
much to tell him, and was so excited with it all, and the brown house
overgrown with hop-vines was so cool and pleasant, and Agnes had such a
tempting little supper prepared for him on the back piazza, that Everard
felt supremely happy and content, and once, when nobody was looking on,
kissed the blue-eyed fairy flitting so joyously around him.
“I say, Josey,” he said, when the tea-things had been removed, and he
was lounging in his usual lazy attitude upon the door-step and smoking
his cigar, “it’s a heap nicer here than down in that hot, close hall.
Let’s not go to the rehearsal. I’d rather stay home.”
“But you can’t do it. You must go,” Josephine replied. “You must
rehearse and learn your part, though for to-night it doesn’t matter. You
can go through the marriage ceremony well enough, can’t you?”
“Of course I can, and can say, ‘I, Everard, take thee, Josie, to be my
lawful wife,’ and, by Jove, I wouldn’t care if it was genuine. Suppose
we get a priest, and make a real thing of it. I’m willing, if you are.”
There was a pretty blush on Josey’s cheek as she replied, “What nonsense
you are talking, and you not yet through college!” and then hurried him
off to the hall, where the rehearsal was to take place.
Here an unforeseen difficulty presented itself. Dr. Matthewson was not
forthcoming in his character as priest. He had gone out of town, and had
not yet returned; so another took his place in the marriage scene, where
Everard was the bridegroom and Josephine the bride. The play was called
“The Mock Marriage,” and would be very effective with the full glamour
of lights, and dress, and people on the ensuing night; and Josephine
declared herself satisfied with the rehearsal, and sanguine of success,
especially as Dr. Matthewson appeared at the last moment apologizing for
his tardiness, and assuring her of his intention to be present the next
evening.
He was a tall, powerfully-built man of thirty or more, whom many would
call handsome, though there was a cruel, crafty look in his eyes, and in
the smile which habitually played about his mouth. Still, he was very
gentlemanly in his manner, and fascinating in his conversation, for he
had traveled much, and seen everything, and spoke both German and French
as readily as his mother tongue. With Miss Fleming he seemed to be on
the most intimate terms, though this intimacy only dated from the time
when she pleaded with him so prettily and successfully to take the place
of the priest in “The Mock Marriage,” where John Murdock was to have
officiated. At first the doctor had objected, saying gallantly that he
preferred to be the bridegroom, and asking who that favored individual
was to be.
“Mr. Everard Forrest, from Rothsay, Southern Ohio,” Josephine replied,
with a conscious blush which told much to the experienced man of the
world.
“Forrest! Everard Forrest!” the doctor repeated thoughtfully, and the
smile about his mouth was more perceptible. “Seems to me I have heard
that name before. Where did you say he lived, and where is he now?”
Josephine replied again that Mr. Forrest’s home was in Rothsay, Ohio, at
a grand old place called Forrest House; that he was a student at
Amherst, and was spending his summer vacation with a friend in
Ellicottville.
“Yes, I understand,” the doctor rejoined, adding, after a moment’s
pause: “I’ll be the priest; but suppose I had the power to marry you in
earnest; what then?”
“Oh, you wouldn’t. You must not. Everard is not through college, and it
would be so very dreadful—and romantic, too,” the girl said, as she
looked searchingly into the dark eyes meeting hers so steadily.
Up to that time Dr. Matthewson had taken but little notice of Josephine,
except to remark her exceeding beauty as a golden-haired blonde. With
his knowledge of the world and ready discernment he had discovered that
whatever position she held in Holburton was due to her beauty and
piquancy, and firm resolve to be noticed, rather than to any blood, or
money, or culture. She was not a lady, he knew, the first time he saw
her in the little church, and, attracted by her face, watched her
through the service, while she whispered, and laughed, and passed notes
to the young men in front of her. Without any respect himself for
religion or the church, he despised irreverence in others, and formed a
tolerably accurate estimate of Josephine and her companions. After her
interview with him, however, he became greatly interested in everything
pertaining to her, and by a little adroit questioning learned all there
was to be known of her, and, as is usual in such cases, more too. Her
mother was poor, and crafty and designing, and very ambitious for her
daughter’s future. That she took in sewing and kept boarders was nothing
to her detriment in a village, where the people believed in honest
labor, but that she traded on her daughter’s charms, and brought her up
in utter idleness, while Agnes, the child of her husband’s first
marriage, was made a very drudge and slave to the young beauty, was
urged against her as a serious wrong, and, except as the keeper of a
boarding-house, in which capacity she excelled, the Widow Fleming was
not very highly esteemed in Holburton. All this Dr. Matthewson learned,
and then he was told of young Forrest, a mere boy, two years younger
than Josey, who had stopped with Mrs. Fleming a few weeks the previous
summer, and for whom both Josey and the mother had, to use the
landlady’s words, “made a dead set,” and succeeded, too, it would seem,
for if they were not engaged they ought to be, though it was too bad for
the boy, and somebody ought to tell his father.
Such was in substance the story told by the hostess of the Eagle to Dr.
Matthewson, who smiled serenely as he heard it, and stroked his silken
mustache thoughtfully, and then went down to call upon Miss Fleming, and
judge for himself how well she was fitted to be the mistress of Forrest
House.
When Everard came and was introduced to him after the rehearsal, there
was a singular expression in the eyes which scanned the young man so
curiously; but the doctor’s manners were perfect, and never had Everard
been treated with more deference and respect than by this handsome
stranger, who called upon him at Mrs. Fleming’s early in the morning,
and in the course of an hour established himself on such terms of
intimacy with the young man that he learned more of his family history
than Josephine herself knew after an acquaintance of more than a year.
Everard never could explain to himself how he was led on naturally and
easily to speak of his home in Rothsay, the grand old place of which he
would be heir, as he was the only child. He did not know how much his
father was worth, he said, as his fortune was estimated at various sums,
but it didn’t do him much good, for the governor was close, and insisted
upon knowing how every penny was spent. Consequently Everard, who was
fast and expensive in his habits, was, as he expressed it, always hard
up, and if his mother did not occasionally send him something unknown to
his father he would be in desperate straits, for a fellow in college
with the reputation of being rich must have money.
Here Everard thought of Rosamond and what she had sent him, but he could
not speak of that to this stranger, who sat smiling so sweetly upon him,
and leading him on step by step until at last Rossie’s name _did_ drop
from his lips, and was quickly caught up by Dr. Matthewson.
“Rossie!” he repeated, in his low, purring tone, “Rossie! Who is she?
Have you a sister?”
“Oh, no. I told you I was an only child. Rossie is Rosamond Hastings, a
little girl whose mother was my mother’s most intimate friend. They were
school-girls together, and pledged themselves to stand by each other
should either ever come to grief, as Mrs. Hastings did.”
“Married unhappily, perhaps?” the doctor suggested, and Everard replied:
“Yes; married a man much older than herself, who abused her so
shamefully that she left him at last, and sought refuge with my mother.
Fortunately this Hastings died soon after, so she was freed from him;
but she had another terror in the shape of his son, the child of a
former marriage, who annoyed her dreadfully.”
“How could he?” the doctor asked, and Everard replied:
“I hardly know. I believe, though, it was about some house or piece of
land, of which Mrs. Hastings held the deed for Rossie, and this John
thought he ought to share it, at least, and seemed to think it a
fortune, when in fact it proved to be worth only two thousand dollars,
which is all Rosamond has of her own.”
“Perhaps he did not know how little there was, and thought it unjust for
his half-sister to have all his father left, and he nothing,” the doctor
said, and it never once occurred to Everard to wonder how he knew that
Mr. Hastings left _all_ to his daughter, and nothing to his son.
He was wholly unsuspicious, and went on:
“Possibly; at all events he worried his stepmother into hysterics by
coming there one day in winter, and demanding first the deed or will,
and second his sister, whom he said his father gave to his charge. But I
settled him!”
“Yes?” the doctor said, interrogatively, and Everard continued:
“Father was gone, and this wretch, who must have been in liquor, was
bullying my mother, and declaring he would go to the room where Mrs.
Hastings was fainting for fear of him, when I came in from riding, and
just bade him begone; and when he said to me sneeringly, ‘Oh, little
David, what do you think you can do with the giant, you have no sling?’
I hit him a cut with my riding-whip which made him wince with pain, and
I followed up the blows till he left the house vowing vengeance on me
for the insult offered him.”
“And since then?” the doctor asked.
“Since then I have never seen him. After Mrs. Hastings died he wrote an
impertinent letter to father asking the guardianship of his sister, but
we had promised her mother solemnly never to let her fall into his hands
or under his influence, and father wrote him such a letter as settled
him; at least, we have never heard from him since, and that is eight
years ago. Nor should I know him either, for it was dark, and he all
muffled up.”
“And have you no fear of him, that he may yet be revenged? People like
him do not usually take cowhidings quietly,” the doctor asked.
“No, I’ve no fear of him, for what can he do to me? Besides, I should
not wonder if he were dead. We have never heard of him since that letter
to father,” was Everard’s reply, and after a moment his companion
continued:
“And this girl,—is she pretty and bright, and how old is she now?”
“Rossie must be thirteen,” Everard said, “and the very nicest girl in
the world, but as to being pretty, she is too thin for that, though she
has splendid eyes, large and brilliant, and black as midnight, and what
is peculiar for such eyes, her hair, which ripples all over her head, is
a rich chestnut brown, with a tinge of gold upon it when seen in the
sunlight. Her hair is her great beauty, and I should not be surprised if
she grew to be quite a handsome woman.”
“Very likely;—excuse me, Mr. Forrest,” and the doctor spoke
respectfully, nay, deferentially, “excuse me if I appear too familiar.
We have talked together so freely that you do not seem a stranger, and
friendships, you know, are not always measured by time.”
Everard bowed, and, foolish boy that he was, felt flattered by this
giant of a man, who went on:
“Possibly this little Rossie may some day be the daughter of the house
in earnest.”
“What do you mean? that my father will adopt her regularly?” Everard
asked, as he lifted his clear, honest eyes inquiringly to the face of
his companion, who, finding that in dealing with a frank, open nature
like Everard’s he must speak out plain, replied:
“I mean, perhaps you will marry her.”
“I marry Rossie! Absurd! Why, I would as soon think of marrying my
sister,” and Everard laughed merrily at the idea.
“Such a thing is possible,” returned the doctor, “though your father
might object on the score of family, if that brother is such a scamp. I
imagine he is rather proud; your father, I mean,—not that brother.”
“Rossie’s family is well enough for anything I know to the contrary,”
said Everard. “Father would not object to that, though he is infernally
proud. He is a South Carolinian, born in Charleston, and boasts of
Southern blood and Southern aristocracy, while mother is a Bostonian, of
the bluest dye, and both would think the Queen of England honored to
have a daughter marry their son. Nothing would put father in such a
passion as for me to make what he thought a _mesalliance_.”
“Yes, I see, and yet——”
The doctor did not finish the sentence, but looked instead down into the
garden where Josephine was flitting among the flowers.
“Miss Fleming is a very beautiful girl,” the doctor said, at last, and
Everard responded heartily:
“Yes, the handsomest I ever saw.”
“And rumor says you two are very fond of each other,” was the doctor’s
next remark, which brought a blush like that of a young girl to
Everard’s cheek, but elicited no reply, for there was beginning to dawn
upon his mind a suspicion that his inmost secrets were being wrung from
him by this smooth-tongued stranger, who, quick to detect every
fluctuation of thought and feeling in another, saw he had gone far
enough, and having learned all he cared to know, he arose to go, and
after a good morning to Everard and a few soft speeches to Josephine,
walked away and left the pair alone.