DR. MATTHEWSON’S GAME.
The St. James was full that season, and when Mrs. J. E. Forrest arrived
she found every room occupied, and was compelled to take lodgings at a
house across the Park, where guests from the hotel were sometimes
accommodated with rooms, and where, in addition to her own parlor and
bedroom, she found a large square chamber, which she asked the mistress
of the house to reserve for a few days, as she was expecting an old
friend of her husband’s, and would like to have him near her, inasmuch
as Mr. Forrest was not able to come with her on account of his business.
Later in the season he might join her, but now he was too busy. She laid
great stress upon having a husband, and she was so gracious, and
affable, and pretty, that her landlady, Mrs. Morris, was charmed at
once, and indorsed the beautiful woman who attracted so much attention
in the street, and who at the hotel took everything by storm. She had
laid aside her mourning, and blossomed out in a most exquisite suit of
navy-blue silk and velvet, which, although made in Paris more than a
year before, was still a little in advance of the Florida fashions, and
was admired by every lady in the hotel, and patterns of the pocket, and
cuffs, and overskirt were mentally taken and experimented upon in the
ladies’ rooms, where the grace, and beauty, and probable antecedents of
the stranger were freely discussed.
Nobody had ever heard of Mrs. J. E. Forrest, and few had heard of
Rothsay, but there were some people at the St. James, this winter, who
remembered Miss Belknap and Mrs. Morton, and when it was known that Mrs.
Forrest was their friend the matter was settled, and Josephine became
the belle and beauty of the place. Young men stationed themselves near
the door through which she came in to the hall to look at her as she
passed, but if she was conscious of their homage she made no sign, and
never seemed to know how much attention she was attracting. One or two
ladies spoke to her at last as she stopped for a while in the parlor,
and so her acquaintance began, and Miss Belknap was brought to the
surface, and Mr. Forrest was talked about, and a little hacking cough
was produced, by way of showing what had sent this dainty, delicate
creature away from her husband, with no other guardianship than that of
her sister. But Agnes’ presence was sufficient to save appearances. She
was much older, and so quiet and reserved, and even shy, that the ladies
made no advances to her, and after a little scarcely noticed her as she
sat apart from them, waiting patiently till her brilliant sister was
ready to go home. Josephine was expecting a gentleman friend, whom she
had known ever since she was a young girl, she said, the fourth day
after her arrival, and the ladies were glad, as it would be so much
pleasanter for her in her husband’s absence; and so matters were made
easy for the coming of Dr. Matthewson, who, since parting from Josephine
in Dresden, more than a year before, had visited nearly every city of
note in Europe, sometimes meeting with success in his profession as
gambler and sometimes not, sometimes living like a millionaire and
sometimes like a beggar. The millionaire life suited him the best, but
how to secure it as a permanency, or even to secure a comfortable living
which required neither exertion nor self-denial, was something which
puzzled him sorely, until he received a letter from Josephine, which
inspired him at once with fresh courage and hope. The letter, which was
written from the Forrest House, was a long time in reaching him, and
found him at last in Moscow, where his genius of bad luck was in the
ascendant, and he had fallen into the toils of a set of sharpers, who
were using him for their own base purposes. Handsome in face and form,
winning in his manner, and perfectly familiar with nearly every language
spoken on the Continent, he was very useful to them by way of bringing
under their influence strangers who visited the city, and they kept a
hold upon him which he could not well shake off.
When he received Josephine’s letter telling him where she was, and the
disposition Judge Forrest had made of his property, and Rosamond’s
determination not to use more of it than was absolutely necessary, but
to restore it to Everard when she came of age, he made up his mind to
leave Moscow at all hazards, and, crossing the sea, seek out the sister
in whom he suddenly found himself greatly interested. And to this end
fortune favored him at last by sending in his way a German Jew,—Van
Schoisner,—between whom and himself there sprang up a friendship which
finally resulted in the Jew’s loaning him money enough to escape from
the city which had been in one sense a prison to him. Van Schoisner was
his _compagnon-du-voyage_, and as both were gamblers, they made straight
for Vienna, where Matthewson’s luck came back to him, and he won so
rapidly and largely that Van Schoisner, who was tinged with German
superstition, regarded him as one whom the god of the gaming-table
especially favored, and clung to him and made much of him, and when a
malarial fever attacked him took him to his brother’s, a Dr. Van
Schoisner, who kept what he called a private _maison de sante_, in an
obscure Austrian town, half-way between Vienna and Lintz.
And here Dr. Matthewson paid the penalty of his dissipated life in a fit
of sickness which lasted for months, and left him weak and feeble as a
child. During all this time he did not hear from Josephine, whose
letters never reached him, and he knew nothing of her until he reached
New York, when he wrote at once to her at Rothsay, asking very
particularly for Rosamond, and announcing his intention of visiting the
Forrest House, if agreeable to the inmates.
To this letter Josephine replied immediately, telling him not on any
account to come to Rothsay, but to join her in Florida about the middle
of December, when she would tell him everything which had happened to
her since their last meeting in Dresden. In a postscript she added:
“Miss Hastings is not here, and has not been since last January. She is
somebody’s governess, I believe.”
And it was this postscript which interested the doctor more than the
whole of Josephine’s letter. If Rosamond were not in Rothsay, then where
was she, and how should he find her? for find her he must, and play the
role of the loving brother, which role would be all the more effective,
he thought, because of the air of invalidism there was about him now,
and which sat well upon him. He really was weak from his recent illness,
but he affected more languor than he felt, and seemed quite tired and
exhausted when he reached the house where Josephine was stopping, and
where his room was in readiness for him; and Josephine cooed and
fluttered about him, and was glad to see him, and so anxious that he
should have every possible attention.
And Dr. Matthewson enjoyed it all to the full, and was never tired of
hearing of the Forrest House, or of asking questions about Rosamond, of
whom Josey at last affected to be jealous.
And so the days went on until the first week in January, when one
morning, as the doctor and Josephine sat together on the long piazza of
the hotel, a carriage from the boat arrived, laden with trunks, and
children, and two ladies, one middle-aged, and apparently the mother of
the children, the other, young, graceful, and pretty, even in her soiled
traveling dress of dark gray serge. As she threw back her vail and
descended from the carriage Josephine started suddenly, and exclaimed:
“Rosamond Hastings, for all the world! What brought her here?”
“Who? Where? Do you mean that girl with the blue vail and gray dress,
and,—by Jove, those magnificent eyes?” Dr. Matthewson said, as Rosamond
turned her face in the direction where he was sitting, and glanced
rapidly at the groups of people upon the piazza, without, however,
seeing any one distinctly.
“Yes, that’s Rosamond,” Josey replied, with a feeling of annoyance at
the arrival of one who might work her so much harm. “I’ll see her at
once, and make that matter right,” she thought, and trusting to Rossie’s
good nature and her ingenuity, she resumed her conversation with the
doctor, who seemed unusually silent and absent-minded, and after a
little excused himself, saying he was not feeling quite well, and
believed he’d take a sail on the river, and see if the fresh air would
not revive him.
Usually Josephine had been his companion in his sails on the river, but
he did not ask her to go with him now. He preferred to be alone, and
with a gracious bow he walked away, not so much to try the river air as
to think over and perfect his plans for the future.
“By George!” he said to himself, “this is what I call luck. Here I’ve
been wondering how I should find the girl, and behold, she has dropped
suddenly upon me, and if I play my cards well the game is mine, and her
money too, or my name is not Matthewson, _ne_ Hastings, _ne_ villain of
the first water.”