ALAS, POOR ROSSIE!
It had been a long, dreary year to Everard, and when the anniversary
came round of the day when Rossie sailed, it seemed to him that he had
lived in that year more than a hundred lives. And yet, in a business
point of view he had been very prosperous, and money was beginning to be
more plenty with him than formerly, though he could not lay by much, for
Josephine made heavy demands upon him. When she left Florida she did not
return to Rothsay, where she knew she was looked upon with distrust by
the better class. It was a _dull, poky hole_, she said, and she should
enjoy herself better traveling, so she traveled from place to place
during the summer and autumn, and in the winter went again to
Florida,—but early in the spring she came back to the Forrest House,
where she lived very quietly, and seemed to shun rather than court
society. She, too, knew of Rossie’s failing health, for she heard often
from the doctor, and she expressed so much anxiety for her to Beatrice
and Everard, hinting that they did not know the worst, that their fears
were increased, and suspense was growing intolerable, when, at last, one
morning in May, the mail brought to Everard the _American Register_ from
Paris, directed in a hand he had never seen before.
Evidently it was sent from the office, and probably had in it the
whereabouts of some of his friends who were traveling in Europe, and who
occasionally forwarded him a paper when they left one place for another.
Mr. Evarts was still abroad, and Everard ran his eye over the list of
names registered in different places to see if his was there, for that
the paper had anything to do with Rossie he never dreamed. Indeed, she
was not in his mind, except as she was always there, in a general way,
and so the shock was all the greater and more terrible when he came
suddenly upon a little obituary notice, and read, with wildly-throbbing
heart, and eyes which felt as if they were starting from their sockets,
so great was the pressure of blood upon his brain:
“Died, on the evening of April 20th, in Haelder-Strauchsen, Austria, of
consumption and heart disease, Miss Rosamond Hastings, of Rothsay, Ohio,
U. S. A., aged nineteen years and ten months. Seldom has death snatched
any one more lovely in person and character than this fair young girl,
who, in a strange land, far from home, passed peacefully and willingly
to the home above, and whose last words to her weeping brother were:
‘Don’t cry for me, and tell them at home not to be sorry either. Heaven
is as near me here in Austria as it would be in America, and I am so
glad to go.’”
Everard could read no more, and throwing the paper from him he buried
his face in his hands, and for a few moments gave way to such grief as
men seldom feel, and never experience but once in a life-time. He did
not weep; his pain was too great for tears; neither did any word escape
his livid lips, but his frame shook as with an ague chill, and
occasionally a long drawn, moaning sob told how much he suffered, while
great drops of sweat gathered thickly upon his face, and in the palms of
his hands. No other blow could have smitten him so heavily as he was
smitten now. It is true he had felt a great dread lest Rossie should
die, but underlying that was always the hope that she would come back
again. But all that was ended now, the little ray of sunlight on his
horizon had set in gloom, and the night lay dark and heavy around him,
with no rift in the black clouds, no light in the future. Rossie was
dead, in all her freshness and youthful beauty; Rossie, who had been to
him a constant source of pleasure and joy, since he first took her in
his arms, a tiny little girl, and kissed her pretty mouth in spite of
her remonstrance, “Big boys like oo mustn’t tiss nittle dirls like me.”
He had kissed her many times since as his sister, and twice with all the
intensity of a lover’s burning passion, and once she had kissed him
back, and he knew just where her lips had touched him, and fancied he
felt their pressure again, and the perfume of her breath upon his cheek.
But, alas, she was dead, and the Austrian skies were bending above her
grave in that far-off town with the strange-sounding German name, which
he had not stopped to pronounce.
“What was the name?” he asked himself, speaking for the first time since
he read the fatal news, and reaching mechanically for the paper lying
open at his feet.
But his eyes were blood-shot and dim, and it took him some time to spell
out, letter by letter, the name Haelder-Strauchsen, and to wonder where
and what manner of place it was where Rossie died, and if she were lying
under the flowers and soft green turf she loved so much in life, and if
he should ever see her grave.
“Yes, please Heaven!” he said, “I’ll find it some day, and whisper to my
darling sleeping there of the love it will be no sin to speak of then.
I’ll tell her how with her life my sun of hope went down, never to rise
again.”
Then, glancing once more at the paper, he read a second time “Died,
April 20th,” and tried to recall what he was doing on that day, the
darkest and saddest which had ever dawned for him. Making allowance for
the difference in time between Austria and Ohio, it was little past
midday with him when it was evening over there where Rosamond was dying,
and with a shudder he remembered how he was occupied then. Josephine had
written him a note, asking him to come to the Forrest House as soon
after lunch as possible, as she wished particularly to see him. As he
walked up the avenue to the house, he had looked around sadly and
regretfully at the different objects which had once been so familiar to
him, and all of which had been so intimately associated with Rossie. It
was a lovely April day, and beds of hyacinths and crocuses were in full
bloom, and the daffodils and double narcissuses were showing their heads
on the borders near the door. These had been Rossie’s special care, and
he had seen her so often working among them, trowel in hand, with her
high-necked, long-sleeved apron on, that he found himself half-looking
for her now.
But Rossie was not there; Rossie was dying far away over the sea; and
only Josephine met him in the hall, civilly and haughtily, as had been
her manner of late, and taking him into the reception-room where Rossie
used to come to him and vex him so with her long dress and new airs of
womanhood, told him she had an invitation to visit a friend who lived in
Indianapolis, and who had invited her to spend the entire summer with
her, and she wished to know if he could furnish her with money for the
necessary outfit, and should she shut up the house again and let Agnes
go to Holburton, or should she keep it open and leave Agnes in charge.
He told her she could have the money, and said that if Agnes wished to
go to Holburton they might as well shut up the house for the summer; and
then he left her and walked rapidly down the avenue, thinking of the
girl whose presence seemed to fill the place so completely that once,
when a bush near the carriage road rustled suddenly as a rabbit darted
away, he stopped, half expecting to see a figure in white sun-bonnet and
high-necked apron spring out at him just as Rossie used sometimes to do
when she was a little child and he a well-grown boy. And she was dying
then, when he was thinking so much of her, and she seemed to be so near
him. “Dying then and dead now,” he said, to himself, just as a step was
heard outside, and Lawyer Russell came in, stopping short in alarm at
the white, haggard face which Everard lifted to him.
“What is it, my boy? Are you sick? What has happened? Tell me,” he
asked; and motioning to the paper on the floor, Everard answered sadly,
“Rossie is dead.”
“Rossie dead! No, no, Ned, it can’t be true,” Mr. Russell said, and
picking up the paper he read the paragraph indicated by Everard, while a
tear moistened his eyelids and rolled down his cheeks.
The old man had been very fond of Rossie, and for a few moments he
walked up and down the little back office with his hands behind him and
his head bent down, then stopping suddenly he gave vent to the
exclamation “By George!” uttered in such a tone that Everard looked up
quickly and inquiringly, and said:
“What is it? What’s the matter?”
“Ned, my boy, look here. This may not be the time nor place to speak of
such a thing, but hanged if I can help it,” the lawyer replied, coming
close to Everard and continuing, “I take it that you considered Rosamond
Hastings to have been the lawful devisee to your father’s estate.”
“I know she was,” Everard said; and the lawyer went on in a choking
voice:
“Poor little girl! She rebelled against it hotly, and would have deeded
it to you if she had lived to come of age,—there’s nothing surer than
that. But you say she’s dead, and she not twenty yet till June, and
don’t you see, in spite of fate, the estate goes to her brother, who is
her heir-at-law, and that’s what I call hard on you. I know nothing of
the man except what you have told me, but if the half of that is true,
he is a scamp, and will run through the property in a quarter of the
time it took to make it. Maybe, though, he has some kind of honor about
him, and if Rossie knew she was going to die, you may be sure she put in
a plea for you, and perhaps he will divide; that’s the best you can hope
for. So we won’t despair till we hear from the brother. There’s another
mail from the north to-night. A letter may come by that. It ought to
have been here with the paper. It’s a bad business all round,—very bad.
Rossie dead; poor Rossie, the nicest girl and most sensible that ever
was born, and the property gone to thunder!”
The old man was a good deal moved, and began again to walk the floor,
while Everard laid his head upon the table in a half stupefied
condition. Not that he then cared especially what became of his father’s
money, though the thought that it would go to the man he hated most
cordially was a fresh shock to his nerves, but it was nothing to losing
Rossie. That was a grief which it seemed to him he could not bear.
Certainly he could not bear it alone. He must tell it to some one who
would not, like Lawyer Russell, talk to him of money; and when it began
to grow dark, so that no one could see how white and worn he was, he
arose and walked slowly up to Elm Park, sure of finding a ready and
hearty sympathy there.
“Oh, Everard, what is it?” Beatrice asked, when she first met him and
saw his white, haggard face.
He answered her as he had answered Mr. Russell, “Rossie is dead,” and
then seated himself again in the chair from which he had arisen when she
came in. Beatrice’s tears were falling like rain, but Everard’s eyes
were as dry as if he had never thought to weep, and there was such a
fearful expression of anguish on his face that Beatrice went up to him,
and laying her hand on his head, said, pityingly:
“Oh, Everard, don’t look like that. You frighten me. Cry, can’t you,
just as I do? Tears would do you good.”
“Cry?” he repeated. “How can I cry with this band like red-hot iron
around my heart, forcing it up to my throat. I shall never cry again, or
laugh, never. Bee, I know you think me foolish and wicked, too, perhaps;
half the world would think it, and say I had no right to love Rossie as
I do, and perhaps I have not; but the dearest, sweetest memory of my
life is the memory of what she was to me. I know she could never be
mine. I gave that up long ago, and still the world was pleasanter to me
because she was in it. Oh, Rossie, my darling, how can I live on and
know that you are dead?”
Then Beatrice did not attempt to comfort him, for she knew she could
not, but she sat by him in silence until he arose and went away, saying
to her at parting, and as if he had not told her before, “Rossie is
dead.”