JOSEPHINE’S LITTLE GAME.
Was it any wonder that Byrd Barrington fell ill of nervous shock the
day after the funeral?
Heaven alone knew all that the man had borne silently in his heart for
years--his life overshadowed by his terrible vow.
Now all was ended; his father and Maisie dead, his brother impoverished
and exiled. He had kept his vow, but the fulfilment was bitter on his
lips.
How changed and still everything was at Castellane with those three
gone--the stern, cold father, the gay, rollicking younger son, the
lovely, happy-hearted girl.
In vain the sun shone, the flowers bloomed, the birds sang now. The
pall of death and despair hung heavily, like a black cloud, over
Castellane and its proud owner.
Outraged nature reeled before the successive shocks of fate, and
finally gave way beneath the awful strain.
On the morning after the funeral he was found in bed by his man,
burning up with fever, raving in delirium.
Poor Mrs. French! It seemed as if the good lady’s trials were never to
have an ending.
In her way she, too, had been feeling very unhappy, and Byrd’s illness
seemed like the last stroke of misfortune.
“With my brother and Maisie dead and my nephew gone off to be killed in
the war, while Byrd is likely to die of brain-fever, what is to become
of me?” she cried, wringing her hands and never reflecting, good soul
that she was, that in the event of those two last deaths the Barrington
wealth must all fall to her and the several heirs on her brother’s side.
She was a kind, simple soul, who had never shared her brother’s greed
for gold, and, without thinking of any advantage accruing to herself
by the deaths of her nephews, she bewailed their condition with honest
grief.
The best physician was called in, and a trained nurse brought from
Baltimore, so that Byrd Barrington began his struggle for life with the
best care and attention, aided by a strong physique.
In spite of everything in his favor, it was a battle royal he waged
with death.
Weeks slipped away while he lay in the grasp of the fever, so low that
his end seemed but a question of time.
Meanwhile, the war with Spain was on, and Delmar Barrington had gone
with his regiment to Cuba.
Mrs. French had not failed to write him the particulars of his young
bride’s death, and afterward of his brother’s illness, but to neither
letter did the young soldier make any reply. It was not natural he
should grieve much over either piece of news. He had not loved his
forsaken bride, nor yet his elder brother. Perhaps it was but natural
he should feel a guilty sensation of relief at the news of his freedom
from the fetters so hastily forged and so quickly regretted--and as to
Byrd’s illness, well, he certainly owed him no solicitude, and if he
died it would mean to his brother only good fortune--wealth, love, and
happiness.
He did not write to his aunt, but he did to Josephine, reminding her of
the words she had said that day of his fatal wedding, asking if she had
truly meant them, and if she would stand by them, now that Maisie was
dead.
The deceitful girl was caught in her own trap. She had no idea of
marrying Delmar now that he was penniless, unless his brother died.
So she waited several weeks before she replied to the letter, and then
wrote guardedly.
She begged him to excuse her delay in replying, as she and dear mama
had been so busy helping poor Mrs. French nurse Mr. Barrington, who
still lay at the point of death. How could her unkind Delmar doubt his
poor Josephine? If anything ever came between their hearts again it
would be mama’s fault, because she was always nagging her about loving
a poor man, etc. But perhaps they ought not to be writing to each other
like this just yet, and poor Maisie only dead a few weeks. Wasn’t it
better just to correspond casually, as friends, until his period of
mourning had expired?
All this was to gain time, while Barrington’s recovery remained
doubtful, for Josephine, under her mother’s efficient tutelage, was
daily at Castellane, on the excuse of helping Mrs. French, who really
required no help, being surrounded by efficient servants and the most
skilful of trained nurses; but she could not repel the sympathy that
Josephine served up to her in sugar-coated doses, thereby gaining a
firmer footing at Castellane.
If Byrd recovered, she hoped to work on him in his convalescence and
win his heart. If he died, she was sure of Delmar. Thus she almost
felt sure of success in her daring plans.
But as for helping to nurse the invalid back to health, Josephine
privately hoped that he might surely die. Of the two, she preferred
Delmar for a husband. His dark, dashing beauty was ineffaccably printed
on her heart. If he only had Byrd’s money, she would be willing and
glad to marry him to-morrow.
So the days came and went, April slipping into May and May into June
before the crisis of Byrd’s illness was reached, and then death
withdrew his shattered forces and left life conquerer on the field they
had valiantly contested through long, long weeks of uncertainty and
doubt.
Josephine wrote the news to Delmar. She knew he would be glad, she
said, to know that his brother was convalescing, even though, of
course, it made a difference in his own prospects.
When Delmar read her letter he ground between his white teeth a bitter
oath. He scarcely realized till now how he had counted on Byrd’s death.
Fate having removed Maisie and struck his brother down on a bed of
illness, he had dared to dream wild dreams of happiness again--dreams
in which Josephine played the central figure always--coquette
Josephine, on whom he could not count, he knew, without money to back
him in his wooing.
He studied her letter closely. How evasive it was; how
incomprehensible; every line guarded lest she should write one word too
much, and ending artfully:
“Poor Maisie has been dead just two months now. I would not think I
was doing right corresponding with so recent a widower if it were not
we are such old friends!”
“She is playing the prude--trying to keep friends with me and angling
at the same time for Byrd’s heart!” he muttered furiously, and in an
access of rage tore the letter to fragments, vowing he would write to
her no more.
“What is there left to me in life? Nothing! It is no matter if I fall
in the ranks of war! Life holds nothing for me but disappointment,
poverty, and blighted love. And I owe it all to his treachery--that
cursed brother of mine!” he ground savagely between his teeth, his
whole soul on fire with his sense of injury.
Josephine did not grieve over her unanswered letter. She felt the
correspondence embarrassing, now that the master of Castellane was
slowly convalescing and sure to hold his own.
“Poor Delmar! I am very sorry for him, and just as sorry for myself,
for, even if I marry Byrd, I can never love him,” she said to herself,
although none the less for that did she withhold her hand from trying
to win the desperate game she was playing.
“I am bound to win,” she cried to herself desperately. “Mama says
that papa is on the verge of failure, and that a rich husband is my
only salvation. Some girls, if they had been in my place, loving Del
so dearly, would never have let his brother get well. They would have
dropped something into his medicine--ugh! what a wicked thought! But I
couldn’t help thinking it, time and again, and--well, I’m glad they did
not let me have the chance! That trained nurse was always on guard, and
so my foolish temptation wrought no harm.”
She grew pale at her own thought, and hurried into Byrd’s room with the
bunch of sweet June roses she had brought from Shirley.
“Good morning. How bright you look to-day!” she cried, as she tendered
the flowers to the invalid, who sat at one of the windows, breathing
in the sweetness of the rare June day.
He thanked her for the roses, and held them listlessly in his hand
while he said:
“Yes, I feel stronger daily, and my physician has ordered me to White
Sulphur Springs, to complete my cure.”
Josephine laughed out loud in happy excitement.
“Why, what a coincidence!” she cried. “Mama and I were just planning
this morning to go to the White Sulphur Springs soon. So we can make a
party, can we not?”
“I suppose so,” he replied carelessly, as if it were a matter of no
importance.
“I would like to pinch him black and blue!” she thought viciously, but
her lips smiled as she said:
“We should have missed you so if you had gone without us. It would not
seem like home at Shirley with Castellane shut up and you away.”
“You are very kind,” he replied absently, laying the flowers down on
the table, and seeming to forget that they would wither in the warm
air. He was thinking that Castellane did not seem like home to him,
either, with Maisie gone--lying out yonder under the grass and flowers
in the Barrington plot.
Josephine was bitterly piqued. She almost fancied she could read his
thoughts, and she cried out, with childish pique:
“I will go home; you are tired of me! You will never care for me as you
did for Maisie!”