EVERARD FACES IT.
When Everard was interrupted in his interview with Rosamond, his first
feeling was one of regret, for he had made up his mind to tell her
everything. He had held her in his arms for one blissful moment, and
pressed his lips to her forehead, and the memory of that would help him
to bear the wretchedness of all the after life. But before he could
begin his story, Lawyer Russell came in, and the opportunity was lost.
He could, however, write, and he fully meant to do so, and after his
arrival at Dighton he began two or three letters, which he tore in
pieces, for he found it harder than he had expected to confess that he
had a wife to the girl he had kissed so passionately, and who, he felt
certain, loved him in return. He had seen it in her eyes, which knew no
deception, and in the blushes on her cheek, and his greatest pain came
from the knowledge that she, too, must suffer through him. And so he put
off the writing day after day, and employed his leisure moments in
hunting up the laws of Indiana on divorce, and felt surprised to find
how comparatively easy it was for those whom Heaven had joined together
to be put asunder by the courts of man. Desertion, failure to support,
uncongeniality, were all valid reasons for breaking the bonds of
matrimony; and from reading and dwelling so much upon it he came at last
to consider it seriously as something which in his case was excusable.
Whatever Rossie might think of it he should be happier to know the tie
was broken, even if the whole world disapproved; and he at last
deliberately made up his mind to free himself from the hated marriage,
which grew tenfold more hateful to him when there came to his knowledge
a fact which threw light at once upon some things he had never been able
to understand in Dr. Matthewson.
He was sitting one evening in the room devoted mostly to the use of
gentlemen at the hotel where he was stopping, and listening in a
careless kind of way to the conversation of two men, one an inmate of
the house, and the other a traveler just arrived from western New York.
For a time the talk flowed on indifferent topics, and drifted at last to
Clarence, where it seemed that both men had once lived, and about which
the Dighton man was asking some questions.
“By the way,” he said, “whatever became of that Matthewson, he called
himself, though his real name when I first knew him was Hastings. You
know the Methodist Church got pretty well bitten with him. He was always
the tallest kind of a rascal. I knew him well.”
Everard was interested now, and while seeming to read the paper he held
in his hands, did not lose a word of all which followed next.
“Matthewson? Oh, yes, I know,” the Clarence man replied. “You mean the
fellow who was so miraculously converted at a camp-meeting, and then
took to preaching, though a bigger hypocrite never lived. I don’t know
where he is now. He dabbled in medicine after he left Clarence, and got
“Doctor” hitched to his name, and has been gambling through the country
ever since. The last I heard of him somebody wrote to Clarence asking if
he had a right to marry a couple, by which I infer that he has been
doing a little ministerial duty by way of diversion.”
“I should hardly think a marriage performed by him valid, though I dare
say it would hold in court,” the Dighton man, who was a lawyer, replied;
adding, after a moment, “Matthewson is the name of his aunt, which he
took at her death, together with a few thousands she left him. His real
name is John Hastings. I knew him when he was a boy, and he was the most
vindictive, unprincipled person I ever met, and his father was not much
better, though both could be smooth as oil, and ingratiate themselves
into most anybody’s favor. He had a girl in tow some two or three years
ago, I was told; a very handsome filly, but fast as the Old Nick
himself, if, indeed, she was not worse than that.”
Here the conversation was brought to a close, and Everard went to his
room, where for a time he sat, stunned and powerless to move. Like a
flash of lightning it came upon him just who Dr. Matthewson was, and his
mind went back to that night when, with a rash boy’s impetuosity, he had
raised his hand against the mature man who, while smarting under the
blows, had sworn to be revenged. And he had kept his word, and Everard
could understand now why he had seemed so willing and even anxious that
there should be a perfect understanding of the matter so as to make the
marriage valid.
“Curse him!” Everard said to himself. “He meant to ruin me. He could not
have known what Josey was, but he knew it was not a fitting match for
me, and no time or way for me to marry, if it were; but that was his
revenge. I remember he asked me if I did not fear the man whom I had
punished, and said people like him did not take cowhidings meekly; and
he is Rossie’s _half-brother_; but if I can help it, she shall never
know how he has injured me, the rascal. I’ll have a divorce now, at all
hazards, even though it may do me no good, so far as Rossie is
concerned. I’ll see that lawyer to-morrow and tell him the whole story.”
But before the morrow came, Everard received Mrs. Markham’s telegram,
which startled him so much that he forgot everything in his haste to
return home and see if aught had befallen Rosamond. It had something to
do with her he was sure, but no thought that it had to do with Josephine
entered his mind until he stepped from the car and heard that she was at
the Forrest House. For an instant his brain reeled, and he felt and
acted like a drunken man, as he went to claim his traveling-bag. Then,
without a word to any one, he walked rapidly away in the darkness, with
a face as white as the few snow-flakes which were just beginning to
fall, and a feeling like death in his heart as he thought of Rossie left
alone to confront Joe Fleming as his wife. And yet it did not seem very
strange to him that Josephine was there. It was rather as if he had
expected it, just as the murderer expects the day when his sin will find
him out. Everard’s sin had found him out, and as he sped along the
highway, half running in his haste to know the worst, he was almost glad
that the thing he had dreaded so long had come at last, and to himself
he said:
“I’ll face it like a man, whatever the result may be.”
From the windows of Rossie’s room a faint light was shining, but it told
him nothing of the sick girl lying there, so nervous and excited that
bright fever spots burned on her cheeks, and her hands and feet were
like lumps of ice as she waited and listened for him, hearing him the
moment he struck the gravel-walk beneath her window, for he purposely
turned aside from the front piazza, choosing to enter the house in the
rear, lest he should first encounter the woman, who, like Rossie, was
waiting and watching for him, and feeling herself grow hot and cold
alternately as she wondered what he would say. Like Rossie, she was sure
he would come on that train, and had made herself as attractive as
possible in her black cashmere and jet, with the white shawl around her
shoulders, and her golden hair falling on her neck in heavy masses of
curls. And then, with a French novel in her hand, she sat down to wait
for the first sound of the carriage which was to bring him, for she did
not dream of his walking that cold, wet night, and was not on the alert
to see the tall figure which came so swiftly through the darkness,
skulking like a thief behind the shrubbery till it reached the rear
door, where it entered, and stood face to face with old Aunt Axie, who
in her surprise almost dropped the bowl of gruel she had been preparing
for Rosamond. She did spill it, she set it down so quickly, and putting
both her hands on Everard’s shoulders she exclaimed:
“Oh, Mars’r Everard, praise de Lord you am come at last! I couldn’t b’ar
it much longer, with Miss Rossie sick up sta’rs, and that woman below
swashin’ round wid her long-tailed gowns, an’ her yaller ha’r hangin’
down her back, and sayin’ she is your wife. She isn’t your wife, Mas’r
Everard,—she isn’t?” and Axie looked earnestly at the young man, who
would have given more than half his life to have been able to say, “No,
she is not.”
But he could not do that, and his voice shook as he replied:
“Yes, Aunt Axie, she is my wife.”
Axie did not cry out or say a word at first, but her black face quivered
and her eyes filled with tears, as she took a rapid mental survey of the
case as it stood now. Everard’s wife must of course be upheld for the
credit of the family, and, though the old negress knew there was
something wrong, it was not for her to inquire or to let others do so
either; and when at last she spoke, she said:
“If she’s your wife, then I shall stan’ by her.”
He did not thank her or seem to care whether she stood by his wife or
not, for his next question was:
“You said Rosamond was sick. What is the matter?”
“Sore throat and bad cold fust, and then your wife comed an’ took us by
surprise, an’ Miss Rossie fainted cl’ar away, and has been as white, an’
still, an’ slimpsy as a rag ever since.”
Something like a groan escaped from Everard’s lips, as he said:
“Tell Miss Rossie I am here, and ask if I can see her,—at once, before I
meet anybody else.”
“Yes, I’ll tell her,” Axie said, as she hurried to the room, where, to
her great surprise, she found her young mistress in her flannel
dressing-gown and shawl, sitting in her easy-chair, with her head
resting upon pillows scarcely whiter than her face, save where the red
spots of fever burned so brightly.
In spite of Mrs. Markham’s remonstrance Rossie had insisted upon getting
up and being partly dressed.
“I must see Everard,” she said. “You can’t understand, and I can’t
explain, but he will come to me, and I must see him alone.
“Yes. Tell him to come up; I am ready for him,” she said to Aunt Axie.
And Everard advanced, with a sinking heart, and knocked at Rossie’s door
just as a black-robed figure, with a white wool shawl wrapped around it,
started to come up the stairs.