MR. AND MRS. J. E. FORREST.
It had been Josephine’s intention to try and make peace with her
husband, if possible, in the hope of winning him back to at least an
outward semblance of harmony. And to do this she relied much on her
beauty, which she knew had not diminished in the least since those
summer days in Holburton, when he had likened her to every beautiful
thing in the universe. She knew she was more attractive now than then,
for she had studied to acquire an air of refinement and high-breeding
which greatly enhanced her charms, and when she saw herself in the long
mirror, with her toilet complete, and the made-up expression of
sweetness and graciousness on her face, she felt almost sure he could
not withstand her.
She had heard from Lois that Everard was in the house, and as the
moments went by and he did not come, the sweetness left her face, and
there was a glitter in her blue eyes, as she walked impatiently up and
down her chamber, listening for his footsteps.
At last, as she grew more and more impatient, she went down to the
dining-room, thinking to find him there; but he was still with Axie in
the kitchen, and so she waited until she heard his step as he went
rapidly up the stairs.
Swiftly and noiselessly she glided into the hall and followed, but was
only in time to see the shutting of the door of Rossie’s room and hear
the sliding of the bolt, while her quick ear caught the sound of
Rossie’s voice as she welcomed Everard. For a moment Josephine stood
shaking with rage, and feeling an inclination to kick at the closed
door, and demand an entrance. But she hardly dared do that, and so she
waited, and strained her ear to catch the conversation carried on so
rapidly, but in so low a tone and so far from her that she could not
hear it all, or even half. But she knew Everard was telling the story of
the marriage, and as he grew more earnest his voice naturally rose
higher, until she could hear what he said, but not Rossie’s replies.
Involuntarily clenching her fists, and biting her lips until the blood
came through in one place, she listened still more intently and knew
there was no hope for her, and felt sure that the only feeling she could
now inspire in her husband’s heart was one of hatred and disgust.
At last, when she could endure the suspense no longer, she knocked upon
the door and claimed “her own” and got it, for her husband, whom she had
not seen for more than two years, stood face to face with her, a tall,
well-developed man, with a will and a purpose in his brown eyes, and a
firm-set expression about his mouth which made him a very different
person from the boy-lover whom she had swayed at her pleasure.
Everard was a thorough gentleman, and it was not in his nature to be
otherwise than courteous to any woman, and he bowed to Josephine with as
much politeness and deference as if it had been Bee Belknap standing
there so dignified and self-possessed, and with an air of assurance and
worldly wisdom such as he had never seen in Josephine Fleming. For a
moment he looked at her in surprise, but there was no sign of welcome in
his face, no token of admiration for the visible improvement in her. He
had an artist’s eye, and noticed that her dress was black, and that it
became her admirably, and that the delicate white shawl was so knotted
and arranged as to heighten the effect of the picture; but he knew the
woman so well that nothing she could do or wear could move him now. When
she saw that she must speak first, she laughed a little, spiteful laugh,
and said:
“Have you nothing to say to me after two years’ separation, or have you
exhausted yourself with _her_?” nodding toward Rossie’s door.
That roused him, and he answered her:
“Yes, much to say, and some things to explain and apologize for, but not
here. I will go with you to your room. They tell me you are occupying my
old quarters.”
He tried to speak naturally, and Josephine’s heart beat faster as she
thought that possibly he might be won to an outward seeming of
friendship after all, and it would be better for her every way. So, when
the privacy of her chamber was reached, and there was no danger of
interruption, she affected the loving wife, and laying her hands on
Everard’s arm, said, coaxingly and prettily:
“Don’t be so cold and hard, Everard, as if you were sorry I came. I had
nowhere else to go, and I’m no more to blame for being your wife than
you are for being my husband, and I certainly have just cause to
complain of you for having kept me so long in ignorance of your father’s
death. Why did you do it? But I need not ask why,” she continued, as she
saw the frown on his face, and guessed he was not to be coaxed; “the
reason is in the apartment you have just quitted.”
Josephine got no further, for Everard interrupted her and sternly bade
her stop.
“So long as you censure me for having kept my father’s death a secret
from you I am bound to listen, for I deserve it; but when you assail
Rosamond Hastings you have gone too far. I do not wish to quarrel with
you, Josey, but we may as well understand each other first as last. You
had a right to come here, thinking it was still my home, and I am justly
punished for my deceit, for which no one can hate me as I hate myself.
If I had been candid and frank from the first, it would have saved me a
great deal of trouble and self-abasement. You heard of my father’s
death——”
“Yes, but no thanks are due you for the information. Mr. Everts, whom I
met in Dresden, told me of it. At first I did not believe him, for I had
credited you with being a man of honor, but he convinced me of the fact,
and in my anger I started home at once, and came here, to find that girl
the mistress of the house, and, they tell me, your father’s heir. Is
that true?”
“I’ve nothing but what I earn,” he said, “but I think I have proved
conclusively that I can support you, whatever may come to me, and I
expect to do so still, but it must be apart from myself. I wish that
distinctly understood, as it will save further discussion. You could not
be happy with me; I should be miserable with you after knowing what I
do, and seeing what I have seen.”
Here she turned fiercely upon him, and with flashing eyes and dilated
nostrils demanded what he meant.
“I will tell you when I reach it,” he replied; “but first, let me go
over the ground from the beginning——”
“No need of that,” she replied, angrily. “You went over the ground with
_her_,—that girl whom I hate with deadly hatred. I heard you. I was
outside the door.”
“Listening!” Everard said, contemptuously. “A worthy employment, to
which no lady would stoop.”
“Who said I was a lady?” she retorted, stung by his manner and the tone
of his voice, and forgetting herself entirely in her wrath. “Don’t you
suppose I know that it was because I was _not_ a lady according to your
creed that your father objected to me and that _you_ have sickened of
me. A poor, unknown butcher’s daughter is not a fit match for you; and I
was just that. You thought you married the daughter of Roxie Fleming,
who kept a boarding-house, and so you did, and something more. You
married the daughter of the man who used to deliver meat at your
grandfather’s door in Boston, and of the woman who for years cooked in
your mother’s family. I knew this when you first came to us, and laughed
in my sleeve, for I know how proud you are of family blood and birth,
and I can boast of blood, too, but it is the blood of beasts, in which
my father dealt, not the blue-veined kind, which shows itself in
hypocrisy and the deliberate deception of years. I told your father,
when I met him at Commencement, that my mother was present at his
wedding, and she was. She made the jellies and ices, and stood with the
other servants to see the ceremony. Wouldn’t your lady mother turn over
in her coffin if she could know _just_ whom her boy married?”
Was she a woman, or a demon? Everard wondered, as he replied:
“If possible, I would rather not bring my mother into the conversation,
but since you will have it so, I must tell you that she _did_ know who
you were.”
“How! did you tell your mother of the marriage, and have you kept that
from me, too?” Josephine asked, and he replied:
“I did not tell her of the marriage, although I tried to, and made a
beginning by showing her your picture, and telling her your name and
that of your mother, whom she at once identified as the Roxie who had
lived in her father’s family so long.”
“And of course my fine lady objected to such stock,” Josephine said,
with a sneer in her voice.
“Josephine,” and Everard spoke more sternly than he had ever spoken to
her in his life, “say what you like to me, but don’t mention my mother
in that tone or spirit again. She did not despise you for your birth. No
true woman would do that. She said that innate refinement or delicacy of
feeling would always assert itself, and raise one above the lowest and
humblest of positions. Almost her last words to me were of you, in whom
she knew I was interested, for I had confessed as much.
“‘If she is so good, and womanly, and true, her birth is of no
consequence—none whatever,’ she said. So you see she laid less stress
upon it than do you, who know better than she did whether you are good,
and womanly and true.”
Here Josephine began to cry, but Everard did not heed her tears, and
went on:
“There is in this country no degradation in honest labor; it is the
character, the actions, which tell; and were you what I believed you to
be when in my madness I consented to that foolish farce, I would not
care though your origin were the lowest which can be conceived.”
Here Josephine stopped crying, and demanded, sharply:
“What am I, pray? What do you know of me?—you, who have scarcely seen me
half a dozen times since I became your wife.”
“I know more than you suppose,—have seen more than you guess,” he
replied; “but let me begin with the morning I left you in Holburton,
four years ago last June, and come down to the present time.”
When he hinted that he knew more of her life than she supposed, there
instantly flashed into Josephine’s mind the memory of all the love
affairs she had been concerned in, and the improprieties of which she
had been guilty, and she wondered if it were possible that Everard could
know of them, too. But it was not, and, assuming a calmness she was far
from feeling, she said:
“Go on, I am all attention.”
Very rapidly, Everard went over with the events of his life as connected
with her up to the time of his father’s death and his own
disinheritance, and here he paused a moment, while Josephine said:
“And so it was through me you lost your money. I am very sorry, and I
must say I think it mean in that girl to keep it, knowing as she does
how it came to her.”
“You misjudge her,” Everard said, quickly. “You know nothing of her, or
how she rebelled against it and tried to give it back to me. But she
cannot do it while she is under age, and I would not take it if she
could. I made her believe it at last, and then counseled with Miss
Belknap as to my future course——”
“Miss Belknap, indeed!” Josephine exclaimed, indignantly. “Don’t talk to
me of Miss Belknap, the tricky, deceitful thing, to come into our house,
knowing all the time who I was, and yet pretending such entire ignorance
of everything. How I hate her, and you, too, for sending her there as a
spy upon my actions.”
“You are mistaken,” Everard said. “Bee was no tale-bearer, and no spy
upon your actions. Neither was she sent to you, for I did not know she
was there till she wrote me to that effect. She had the best of motives
in going to your mother’s house. She wished to see you for herself,
and,—pardon me, Josey, if I speak very plainly,—she wished to find all
the good there was in you, so as to know better how to befriend you,
should you need it.”
“Which, thank Heaven, I don’t, so she had her trouble for her pains,”
was Josephine’s rejoinder, of which Everard took no notice, but simply
went on:
“Beatrice has been your best friend from the moment she first heard of
you, and after father’s death she advised me to go straight to you and
tell you the whole truth, and offer you a home such as I could make for
you myself,—in short, offer you poverty and protection as my
acknowledged wife.”
“Strange you did not follow her advice, with your high notions of
morality,” Josephine said, with a sneer; and he replied:
“I started to do it in good faith, and went as far as Albany without a
thought that I should not do it, but there I began to waver, for I saw
you, myself unseen and my presence unsuspected, so that you acted and
spoke your feelings without restraint.
“Perhaps you can recall a concert or opera which you attended with
Doctor Matthewson as your escort, and perhaps, though that is not so
likely, you may remember the man who seemed to be asleep in the seat
behind the one you took when you entered the car, talking and laughing
so loudly that you drew to yourself the attention of all the passengers,
and especially the young man, who listened with feelings which can be
better imagined than described, while his _wife_ made light of him, and
allowed attentions and liberties such as no pure-minded woman would for
a moment have suffered from any man, and much less from one of Dr.
Matthewson’s character. I hardly know what restrained me from knocking
him down and publicly denouncing you, but shame and disgust kept me
silent, while words and glances which made my blood boil passed between
you two until _you_ were tired out and laid you head on his arm as
readily as you would have rested it on mine had I sat in his place. And
there I left you asleep, and I have never looked upon your face since
until to-night, when I found you at Miss Hastings’ door. After that
scene in the car I could not think of offering to share my poverty with
you. We were better apart, and I made a vow that never for an hour would
I live with you as my wife. The thing is impossible; but because I
dreaded the notoriety of an open rupture, and the talk and scandal sure
to follow an admission of the marriage, I kept quiet, trusting to chance
to work it out for me as it has done at last. And now that the worst has
come, I am ready to abide by it and am willing to bear the blame myself,
if that will help you any. The people in Rothsay will undoubtedly
believe you the injured party, and I shall let them do so. I shall say
nothing to your detriment except that it is impossible for us to live
together. I shall support you just as I have done, but I greatly prefer
that it should be in Holburton, rather than in Rothsay. It is the only
favor I ask, that you do not remain here.”
“And one I shall not grant,” was Josephine’s quick reply. “I like
Rothsay, so far as I have seen it, and here I shall stay. Do you think
that I will go back to Holburton, and bear all the malicious gossip of
that gossipy hole? Never! I’ll die first! You accuse me of being fond of
Dr. Matthewson, and so I am, and I like him far better than I ever liked
you, for he is a _gentleman_, while you are a knave and a hypocrite, and
that girl across the hall is as bad as you are;—I hate her,—I hate you
both!”
She was standing close to him now, her face livid with rage, while the
blue of her eyes seemed to have faded into a dull white, as she gave
vent to her real feelings. But Everard did not answer her, and as the
dinner-bell just then rang for the third time, she added sneeringly, “If
you are through with your abuse I’ll end the interview by asking you to
take me down to dinner. No? You do not wish for any dinner? Very well, I
can go alone, so I wish you good evening, advising you not to fast too
long. It is not good for you. Possibly you may find some cracker and tea
in Miss Hastings’ room, with which to refresh the inner man.”
And sweeping him a mocking courtesy she started to leave the room, but
at the door she met her sister, and stopped a moment while she said:
“Ah, Agnes, here is your brother, who, I hope, will be better pleased to
see you than he was to see me. If I remember rightly you were always his
favorite. _Au revoir_,” and kissing the tips of her fingers to Everard,
she left the room, and he heard her warbling snatches of some old love
song as she ran lightly down the stairs to the dining-room, where dinner
had waited nearly an hour, and where Aunt Axie stood with her face
blacker than its wont, giving off little angry snorts as she removed one
after another the covers of the dishes, and pronounced the contents
spoiled.
“Whar’s Mars’r Everard? Isn’t he comin’?” Aunt Axie asked, as Josephine
showed signs of commencing her dinner alone, Mrs. Markham, who ate by
rule and on time, having had tea and cold chicken, and gone.
“Mr. Forrest has lost his appetite and is not coming,” Josephine
replied, with the utmost indifference, and as Agnes just then appeared,
the sisters began their dinner alone.
But few words had passed between Agnes and Everard. She had taken his
hand in hers and held it there while she looked searchingly in his face,
and said:
“I didn’t want to come, but she would have it so, and I thought you knew
and had sent for her. Maybe I can persuade her to go back.”
“No, Aggie, let her do as she likes,—I deserve it all. But don’t feel
badly, Aggie. I am glad to see _you_, at any rate, and I feel better
because you are here; and now go to the dinner, which has waited so
long.”
Agnes was not deceived in the least, and her heart was very heavy as she
went down to the dining-room and took her seat by her sister, who
affected to be so gay and happy, and who tried to soften old Axie by
praising everything immoderately.
But Axie was not deceived, either. She knew it was not all well between
the young couple, and as soon as she had sent in the dessert, she
started up stairs in quest of her boy, finding him in the chamber where
his mother had died, and kneeling by the bed in such an abandonment of
grief that, without waiting to consider whether she was wanted or not,
she went softly to his side, and laying her hard old hands pityingly on
his bowed head, spoke to him lovingly and soothingly, just as she used
to speak to him when he was a little boy, and sat in her broad lap to be
comforted.
“Thar, thar, honey; what is it that has happened you? Suffin dreffle, or
you wouldn’t be kneelin’ here in de cold an’ dark, wid only yer mother’s
sperrit for company. What is it, chile? Can’t you tell old Axie? Is it
_her_ that’s a vexin’ you so? Oh, Mars’r Everard, how could you do it?
Tell old Axie, won’t you?”
And he did tell her how the marriage occurred, and when, and that it was
this which had caused the trouble between him and his father. He said
nothing against Josephine, except that he had lived to see and regret
his mistake, and that it was impossible for him to live with her as his
wife. And Axie took his side at once, and replied:
“In course you can’t, honey, I seen that the fust thing. She hain’t like
you, nor Miss Beatrice, nor Miss Rossie. She’s pretty, with them eyes
and long winkers, an’ she’s kind of teterin’ an’ soft; but can’t cheat
dis chile. ’Tain’t the real stuff like your mother was. Sposin’ I go and
paint my face all over with whitenin’. I ain’t white for all dat. Thar’s
nobody but ole black nigger under de whitewash, for bless your soul, de
thick lips and de wool will show, an’ it’s just de same with no ’count
white folks. But don’t you worry, I’ll stan’ by you. Course you can’t
live with her. I’ll make a fire an’ fetch you some supper, an’ you’ll
feel better in de mornin’,—see if you don’t.”
But Everard asked to be left alone, that he might think it out and
decide what to do. He could not go to bed, and so he sat the entire
night before the fire in the room where his mother had died, and where
his father had denounced him so angrily, and where Rosamond had come to
him and asked to be his wife. How vividly that last scene came up before
him, and he could almost see the little girl standing there again, just
as she stood that day, which seemed to him years and years ago. And but
for that fatal misstep that little girl, grown to sweet womanhood, now
might have been his. Turn which way he would, there was no help, no
hope; and the future loomed up before him dark and cheerless, with
always this burden upon him, this bar to the happiness which might have
been his had he only waited for it. Surely, if his sin was great, his
punishment was greater, and when at the last the gray morning looked in
at the windows of his room, it found him white, and haggard, and worn,
with no definite plan as to his future course, except the firm resolve
that whatever his life might be, it would be passed apart from
Josephine.