THE HEIRESS.
She looked like anything but an heiress the next morning when she came
down to breakfast, with her swollen face and red eyes, which had
scarcely been for a moment closed in sleep. Everard was far brighter and
fresher. He had accepted the situation, and was resolved to make the
best of it, and though the memory of his father’s bitter anger rested
heavily on his heart, it was softened materially by what Rosamond had
told him, and, contrary to his expectations, he had slept soundly and
quietly, and though very pale and worn, seemed much like himself when he
met Rossie in the breakfast-room. Not a word was said on the subject
uppermost in both their minds; he carved, sitting in his father’s old
place, and she poured the coffee with a shaking hand, and Bee did most
of the talking, and was so bright and merry that when at last she said
good-by and went to her own home, Rossie’s face was not half so
sorry-looking, or her heart so heavy and sad, though she was just as
decided with regard to the money.
She had not yet talked with Lawyer Russell, in whom she had the utmost
confidence. He surely would know some way out of the trouble,—some way
by which she could give Everard his own; and she sent for him to come to
the house, as she would not for the world appear in the streets with
this disgrace upon her,—for Rossie felt it a disgrace,—of having
supplanted Everard; and she told the lawyer so when he came, and
assuring him of her unalterable determination never to touch a dollar of
the Forrest money, asked if there was not some way by which she could
rid herself of the burden and give it back to Everard. She told him what
had occurred between herself and the judge, and asked if he did not
think it had reference to the will. The lawyer was certain it had, and
asked if Everard knew this fact. Yes, Rossie had told him, and though he
seemed glad in one way to know his father had any regrets for the rash
act, he still adhered to his resolve to abide by the will.
“But he cannot; he shall not; he must take the money. I give it to him;
it is not mine, and I will not have it,” she said, impetuously,
demanding that he should fix it some way.
Mr. Russell had seen Everard for a few moments that morning, and heard
from him of his firm resolve not to enter into any arrangement whereby
he could be benefited by his father’s fortune.
“Father cast me off,” he said, “and no arguments can shake my purpose.
Rossie is the heiress, and she must take what is thrust upon her; but
make it as easy as you can for the child; let her choose her own
guardian, and I trust she will choose you. I know you will be
trustworthy.”
All this the lawyer repeated to Rossie, and then, as she still persisted
in giving back, as she expressed it, he explained to her how impossible
it was for her to do it until she reached her majority, even if Everard
would take it.
“You are a minor yet,” he said; “are what we call an infant. You must
have a guardian, and I propose that you take Everard, and he may also be
appointed administrator of the estate; he will then be entitled to a
certain amount of money as his legitimate fees, and so get some of it.”
Exactly what the office of guardian and administrator was, Rosamond did
not know, but she grasped one idea, and said:
“You mean that whoever is administrator will be paid, and if Mr. Everard
is that he will get some money which belongs to him already; that is it,
is it not? Now, I want him to have it all; if I cannot give it to him
till I am twenty-one, I shall do it then, so sure as I live to see that
day, and, meanwhile, you must contrive some way for him to use it just
the same. You can, I know. I am quite resolved.”
She had risen as she talked and stood before him, her cheeks flushed,
her eyes unnaturally bright, and her head thrown back, so that she
seemed taller than she really was. Lawyer Russell had always liked
Rossie very much, and since that little business matter touching the
receipt, he had felt increased respect and admiration for her, for he
was certain she had helped Everard out of some one of the many scrapes
he used in those days to be in. Looking at her now he thought what a
fine-looking girl she was growing to be, and started suddenly as he saw
a way out of the difficulty, but such a way that he hesitated a moment
before suggesting it. Taking off his glasses, and wiping them with his
handkerchief, he coughed two or three times and then said:
“How old are you, Rossie?”
“Fifteen last June,” was her reply, and he continued:
“Then you are almost fifteen and a half, and pretty well grown. Yes, it
might do; there have been queerer things than that.”
“Queerer things than what?” Rossie asked, and he replied:
“Than what I am going to suggest. There is a way by which Everard can
use that money if he will.”
“What is it? Tell me,” she exclaimed, her face all aglow with
excitement.
“He could marry you, and then what was yours might be his.”
The lawyer had thrown the bombshell and waited for the explosion, but
there was none. Rossie’s face was just as bright and eager, and showed
not the slightest consciousness or shrinking back from a proposition
which would have covered some girls with blushes and confusion. But
Rossie was a simple-hearted girl, who, never having associated much with
companions of her own age, had never had her mind filled with lovers and
matrimony, and when the lawyer proposed her marrying Everard she looked
upon it purely as a business transaction,—a means of giving him his own;
love had nothing to do with it, nor did it for a moment occur to her
that there would be anything out of the way in such an act. She should
not live with him, of course; that would be impossible. She should
simply marry him, and then leave him to the enjoyment of her fortune,
and her first question to the lawyer was:
“Do you think he would have me?”
The old man took his glasses off again and looked at her, wondering much
what stuff she was made of. Whatever it was he was sure she was as
modest, and pure, and innocent as a new-born child, and he answered her:
“I’ve no doubt of it. I would if I were in his place.”
“And if he does, he can live right along here as if there had been no
will?” was her next question; and the lawyer replied:
“Yes, just as if there had been no will;” then, remembering he had an
engagement with a client and that it was already past the hour, he arose
to go, and Rosamond was left alone.
It was not her nature to put off anything she had to do, and feeling
that she should never rest until something definite was settled, she
inquired at once where Everard was, and finding that he was in his
father’s room, started thither immediately. He was sitting in his
father’s chair by the table, arranging and sorting some papers and
letters, but he arose when she came in and asked what he could do for
her.
“I have been talking with Lawyer Russell,” she said, “trying to fix it
some way, and he says I cannot give it to you till I am twenty-one; then
I can do as I please, but it is so long to wait,—five years and a-half.
I am most fifteen and a-half now. (This in parenthesis, as if to
convince him of her mature age, preparatory to what was to follow.) I
want you to have the money so much, for it is yours, no matter what the
law may say. I do not like the law, and there is but one way out of
it,—the trouble, I mean. Lawyer Russell says if you marry me, you can
use the money just the same. Will you, Mr. Everard? I am fifteen and
a-half.”
This she reiterated to strengthen her cause, looking him straight in the
face all the time, without the slightest change of color or sign of
self-consciousness.
Had she proposed in serious earnestness to murder him Everard could not
have been more startled, or stared at her more fixedly than he did, as
if to see what manner of girl this was, asking him to marry her as
coolly and in as matter-of-fact a way as she would have asked the most
ordinary favor. Was she crazy? Had the trouble about the will actually
affected her brain! He thought so, and said to her very gently, as he
would have spoken to a child or a lunatic:
“You are talking wildly, Rossie. You do not understand what you are
saying. You are tired and excited. You must rest, and never on any
account let any one know what you have said to me.”
“I do know what I am saying, and I am neither tired nor excited,” Rossie
answered. “Lawyer Russell said that was the only way you could use the
money before I was twenty-one.”
“And did he send you here to say that to me?” Everard asked, and she
replied:
“No, he only suggested it as a means, because I would have him think of
something. I came myself.”
He saw she was in earnest; saw, too, that she did not at all comprehend
what she was doing, or the position in which she was placing herself if
it should be known. In her utter simplicity and lack of worldly wisdom,
she might talk of this thing to others and put herself in a wrong light
before the world, and however painful the task, he must enlighten her.
“Rossie,” he began, “you do not at all know what you have done, or how
the act might be construed, by women, especially, if they knew it. Girls
do not usually ask men to marry them; they wait to be asked.”
Slowly, as the shadow of some gigantic mountain creeps across the
valley, there was dawning on Rossie’s mind a perception of the
construction which might be put upon her words, and the blood-red flame
suffused her face and neck, and spread to her finger-tips, as she said,
vehemently: “You mistake me, Mr. Everard, I did not mean it as you might
marry Miss Beatrice, or somebody you loved. I did not mean anything
except a way out. I was not going to live here at all; only marry you so
you could have the money, and then I go away and do for myself. That’s
what I meant. You know I do not love you in a marrying way, and that I’m
not the brazen-faced thing to tell you so if I did. If I thought you
could believe that of me, I should drop dead at your feet, and I almost
wish that I could now, for very shame of what I have done.”
As she talked there had come to Rossie more and more the great
impropriety and seeming immodesty of what, in all innocence of purpose
she had done, and the knowledge almost crushed her to the earth, making
her cover her burning face with her hands, and transforming her at once
from a child into a woman, with all a sensitive woman’s power to feel
and suffer. She did not wait for him to speak, but went on rapidly:
“You cannot despise me more than I despise myself, for I see it now just
as you do, and I must have been an idiot, or crazy. You will loathe me
always, of course, and I cannot blame you; but remember. I did not mean
it for love, or think to stay with you. I do not love you _that way_;
such a thing would be impossible, and I would not marry you now for a
thousand times the money.”
She had used her last and heaviest weapon, and without a glance at him
turned to go from the room, but he would not suffer her to leave him
thus. Over him, too, as she talked, a curious change had come, for he
saw the transformation taking place and knew he was losing the sweet,
old-fashioned, guileless-child, who had been so dear to him. She was
leaving him, forever, and in her place there stood a full-fledged woman,
rife with a woman’s instincts, quivering with passion, and burning with
resentment and anger, that he had not at once understood her meaning
just as she understood it. How her words,—“I do not love you that way;
such a thing is impossible; and I would not marry you now for a thousand
times the money,” rang through his ears, and burned themselves into his
memory to be recalled afterward, with such bitter pain as he had never
known. He did not quite like this impetuous assertion of the
impossibility of loving him. It grated upon him with a sense of
something lost. He must stand well with Rossie, though her love _that
way_, as she expressed it, was something he had never dreamed of as
possible.
“Rossie,” be said, putting out his arm to detain her, “you must not go
from me feeling as you do now. You have done nothing for which you need
to blush, because you had no bad intent, and the motive is what exalts
or condemns the act. Sit here by me. I wish to talk with you.”
He made her sit down beside him upon the sofa, and tried to take her
hand, but she drew it swiftly away, with a quick, imperative gesture. He
would never hold her hand again, just as he had held the little brown,
sunburned hands so many times. She was a woman now, with all her woman’s
armor bristling about her, and as such he must treat with her. It was a
novel situation in which he found himself, trying to choose words with
which to address little Rossie Hastings, and for a moment he hesitated
how to begin. Of her strange offer to himself he did not mean to speak,
for there had been enough said on that subject. It is true he had
neither accepted nor refused, but that was not necessary, for she had
withdrawn her proposition with such fiery energy as would have made an
allusion to it impossible, if he had been free and not averse to the
plan. He was not free, and as for the plan, it struck him as both
laughable and ridiculous, but he would not for the world wound the
sensitive girl beside him more than she had wounded herself, and so when
at last he began to talk with her it was simply to go again over the
whole ground, and show her how impossible it was for him to take the
money or for her to give it to him. He appreciated her kind intentions;
they were just like her, and he held her as the dearest sister a brother
ever had; but she must keep what was her own, and he should make his
fortune as many a man had done before him, and probably rise higher
eventually than if he had money to help him rise. He had not yet quite
decided what he should do, but that he should leave Rothsay was
probable. He should, however, stay long enough to see that her affairs
were in a way to be smoothly managed, and to see her fairly installed in
the Forrest House with some respectable elderly lady as her companion
and protector. Lawyer Russell would, of course, be her guardian, and the
administrator of the estate. She could not be in better hands; and
however far away he might be, he should never lose his interest in her
or cease to be her friend.
“Meanwhile,” he said, with an effort to smile, “I shall be glad if you
will allow me to make your house my home until my arrangements are
completed. I am not so proud that I will not accept that hospitality at
your hands.”
I do not think that Rosamond quite comprehended his last words. She only
knew that he would not hurry away from the Forrest House, and she looked
up eagerly, and said:
“I am so glad, and I hope you will not hate me, or ever believe I meant
the foolish thing I said,—in that way.”
“No, Rossie,” he answered her, “I am far from hating you, and how can I
think you meant _that way_ when you have repeatedly declared that you
would not marry me now for a thousand times the money?”
“No, now nor ever!” Rosamond exclaimed, energetically; and he replied:
“Yes, I know; men generally understand when a girl tells them she has no
love or liking for them.”
There was something peculiar in his voice, as if what she said hurt him
a little, and Rossie detected it, and in her eagerness to set him right
involuntarily laid her hand on his arm, and flashing upon him her
brilliant, beautiful eyes, in which the tears were shining, said to him:
“Oh, Mr. Everard, you must not mistake what I mean. I do like you, and
shall for ever and ever; but not in a marrying way, and I am so sorry I
have come between you and your inheritance. You have made me see that I
cannot now help myself, but when I am twenty-one, if I live so long, so
help me Heaven, I’ll give you back every dollar. You will remember that,
and knowing it may help you to bear the years of poverty which must
intervene.”
Again the long, silken lashes were lifted, and the dark, bright eyes
looked into his with a look which sent a strange, sweet thrill through
every nerve of the young man’s body. Rosamond had come up before him in
an entirely new character, and he was vaguely conscious of a different
interest in her now from what he had felt before. It was not love; it
was not a desire of possession. He did not know what it was; he only
knew that his future life suddenly looked drearier than ever to him if
it must be lived away from her and her influence. She had risen to her
feet as she was speaking, and he rose also, and went with her to the
door, and let her out, and watched her as she disappeared down the
stairs, and then went back to his task of sorting papers, with the germ
of a new feeling stirring ever so lightly in his heart,—a sense of
something which might have made life very sweet, and a sense as well of
bitter loss.
Full of shame and mortification at what she had done, Rossie resolved to
go at once to Elm Park and confess the whole to Beatrice, whom she found
at home. She was thinking of the Forrest House and the confusion caused
by the foolish will of an angry old man, when Rossie was announced, and,
sitting down at her feet, plunged into the very midst of her trouble by
saying:
“Oh, Miss Beatrice, I have come to tell you something which makes me
wish I was dead. What do you suppose I have done?”
“I am sure I cannot guess,” Beatrice replied, and Rossie continued, “I
asked Mr. Everard to marry me,—actually to marry me!”
“Wha-at!” and Beatrice was more astonished than she had ever been in her
life. “Asked Everard Forrest to marry you! Are you crazy, or a——”
She did not finish the sentence, for Rossie did it for her, and said,
“Yes, both crazy and a fool, I verily believe!”
“But how did it happen? What put such an idea into your head?”
Briefly and rapidly Rosamond repeated what had passed between herself
and Lawyer Russell, who had asked how old she was, and on learning her
age had suggested her marrying the young man and thus giving him back
the inheritance.
“And you went and did it, you little goose,” Beatrice said, laughing
until the tears ran down her cheeks; but when she saw how distressed
Rosamond was she controlled her merriment, and listened while Rossie
went on:
“Yes, I was a simpleton not to know any better, but I never meant him to
marry me as he would marry you or some one he loved; that had nothing to
do with it at all. And I was going right away from Forrest House to take
care of myself. I knew I could find something to do, as nurse, or
waitress, or ladies’ maid, if nothing more; and I meant to go just as
soon as the ceremony was over and leave him all the money, and never,
never come back to be in the way.”
“And you told him this, and what did he say?” Beatrice asked, her mirth
all swept away before the great unselfishness of this simple-hearted
girl, who went on:
“I did not tell him all that at first. I asked him to marry me, just as
I would have asked him to give me a glass of water, and with as little
thought of shame, but the shame came afterward when I saw what I had
done. I can’t explain how it came,—the new sense of things,—I think he
looked it into me, and I felt in an instant as if I had been blind and
was suddenly restored to sight. It was as if I had been walking
unclothed in my sleep, fearlessly, shamelessly, because asleep, and had
suddenly been roused to consciousness and saw a crowd of people staring
and jeering at me. Oh, it was so awful! and I felt like tearing my hair
and shrieking aloud, and I said so many things to make him believe I did
not mean it for love or to live with him.”
“And what did he say to the offer? Did he accept or refuse?” Beatrice
asked, and Rosamond replied:
“I do not think he did either. I was so ashamed when it came to me, and
talked so fast to make him know that I would not marry him for a
thousand times the money, and did not love him, and never could.”
“I’ll venture to say he was not especially delighted with such
assertions; men are not generally,” Beatrice said, laughingly, but
Rosamond did not comprehend her meaning, or if she did, she did not pay
any heed to it, but went rapidly on with her story, growing more and
more excited as she talked, and finishing with a passionate burst of
tears, which awakened all Bee’s sympathy, and made her try to comfort
the sobbing girl, who seemed so bowed down with shame and remorse.
Her head was aching dreadfully, and there began to steal over her such a
faint, sick feeling, that she offered no remonstrance when Bee proposed
that she spend the night at Elm Park, and sent word to that effect to
the Forrest House.
The message brought Everard at once, anxious about Rosamond, whom he
wished to see. But she declined; her head was aching too hard to see any
one, she said, especially Everard, who must despise her always. Everard
had certainly lost the child Rossie; and the world had never seemed so
dreary to him as that night in Bee’s boudoir, when he fairly and
squarely faced the future and decided what to do, or rather, Bee decided
for him; and with a feeling of death in his heart he concurred in her
opinion, and said he would go at once to Josephine, and telling her of
his father’s death and will, ask her to help him build up a home where
they might be happy. He was not to show her how he shrank back and
shivered even while taking her for his wife. He was to put the most
hopeful construction on everything, and see how much good there was in
Josie.
“And I am sure she will not disappoint you,” Beatrice said, infusing
some of her own bright hopefulness into Everard’s mind, so that he did
not feel quite so discouraged when he said good-night to her, telling
her that he should start on the next morning’s train for Holburton, but
asking her not to tell Rossie of Josephine until she heard from him.