CHAPTER XX.THE HEIRESS.
She looked like anything but an heiress the next morning when she came down to breakfast, with her swollen face and red eyes, which had scarcely been for a moment closed in sleep. Everard was far brighter and fresher. He had accepted the situation, and was resolved to make the best of it, and though the memory of his father’s bitter anger rested heavily on his heart, it was softened materially by what Rosamond had told him, and, contrary to his expectations, he had slept soundly and quietly, and though very pale and worn, seemed much like himself when he met Rossie in the breakfast-room. Not a word was said on the subject uppermost in both their minds; he carved, sitting in his father’s old place, and she poured the coffee with a shaking hand, and Bee did most of the talking, and was so bright and merry that when at last she said good-by and went to her own home, Rossie’s face was not half so sorry-looking, or her heart so heavy and sad, though she was just as decided with regard to the money.
She had not yet talked with Lawyer Russell, in whom she had the utmost confidence. He surely would know some way out of the trouble,—some way by which she could give Everard his own; and she sent for him to come to the house, as she would not for the world appear in the streets with this disgrace upon her,—for Rossie felt it a disgrace,—of having supplanted Everard; and she told the lawyer so when he came, and assuring him of her unalterable determination never to touch a dollar of the Forrest money, asked if there was not some way by which she could rid herself of the burden and give it back to Everard. She told him what had occurred between herself and the judge, and asked if he did not think it had reference to the will. The lawyer was certain it had, and asked if Everard knew this fact. Yes, Rossie had told him, and though he seemed glad in one way to know his father had any regrets for the rash act, he still adhered to his resolve to abide by the will.
“But he cannot; he shall not; he must take the money. I give it to him; it is not mine, and I will not have it,” she said, impetuously, demanding that he should fix it some way.
Mr. Russell had seen Everard for a few moments that morning, and heard from him of his firm resolve not to enter into any arrangement whereby he could be benefited by his father’s fortune.
“Father cast me off,” he said, “and no arguments can shake my purpose. Rossie is the heiress, and she must take what is thrust upon her; but make it as easy as you can for the child; let her choose her own guardian, and I trust she will choose you. I know you will be trustworthy.”
All this the lawyer repeated to Rossie, and then, as she still persisted in giving back, as she expressed it, he explained to her how impossible it was for her to do it until she reached her majority, even if Everard would take it.
“You are a minor yet,” he said; “are what we call an infant. You must have a guardian, and I propose that you take Everard, and he may also be appointed administrator of the estate; he will then be entitled to a certain amount of money as his legitimate fees, and so get some of it.”
Exactly what the office of guardian and administrator was, Rosamond did not know, but she grasped one idea, and said:
“You mean that whoever is administrator will be paid, and if Mr. Everard is that he will get some money which belongs to him already; that is it, is it not? Now, I want him to have it all; if I cannot give it to him till I am twenty-one, I shall do it then, so sure as I live to see that day, and, meanwhile, you must contrive some way for him to use it just the same. You can, I know. I am quite resolved.”
She had risen as she talked and stood before him, her cheeks flushed, her eyes unnaturally bright, and her head thrown back, so that she seemed taller than she really was. Lawyer Russell had always liked Rossie very much, and since that little business matter touching the receipt, he had felt increased respect and admiration for her, for he was certain she had helped Everard out of some one of the many scrapes he used in those days to be in. Looking at her now he thought what a fine-looking girl she was growing to be, and started suddenly as he saw a way out of the difficulty, but such a way that he hesitated a moment before suggesting it. Taking off his glasses, and wiping them with his handkerchief, he coughed two or three times and then said:
“How old are you, Rossie?”
“Fifteen last June,” was her reply, and he continued:
“Then you are almost fifteen and a half, and pretty well grown. Yes, it might do; there have been queerer things than that.”
“Queerer things than what?” Rossie asked, and he replied:
“Than what I am going to suggest. There is a way by which Everard can use that money if he will.”
“What is it? Tell me,” she exclaimed, her face all aglow with excitement.
“He could marry you, and then what was yours might be his.”
The lawyer had thrown the bombshell and waited for the explosion, but there was none. Rossie’s face was just as bright and eager, and showed not the slightest consciousness or shrinking back from a proposition whichwould have covered some girls with blushes and confusion. But Rossie was a simple-hearted girl, who, never having associated much with companions of her own age, had never had her mind filled with lovers and matrimony, and when the lawyer proposed her marrying Everard she looked upon it purely as a business transaction,—a means of giving him his own; love had nothing to do with it, nor did it for a moment occur to her that there would be anything out of the way in such an act. She should not live with him, of course; that would be impossible. She should simply marry him, and then leave him to the enjoyment of her fortune, and her first question to the lawyer was:
“Do you think he would have me?”
The old man took his glasses off again and looked at her, wondering much what stuff she was made of. Whatever it was he was sure she was as modest, and pure, and innocent as a new-born child, and he answered her:
“I’ve no doubt of it. I would if I were in his place.”
“And if he does, he can live right along here as if there had been no will?” was her next question; and the lawyer replied:
“Yes, just as if there had been no will;” then, remembering he had an engagement with a client and that it was already past the hour, he arose to go, and Rosamond was left alone.
It was not her nature to put off anything she had to do, and feeling that she should never rest until something definite was settled, she inquired at once where Everard was, and finding that he was in his father’s room, started thither immediately. He was sitting in his father’s chair by the table, arranging and sorting some papers and letters, but he arose when she came in and asked what he could do for her.
“I have been talking with Lawyer Russell,” she said, “trying to fix it some way, and he says I cannot give it to you till I am twenty-one; then I can do as I please, but it is so long to wait,—five years and a-half. I am most fifteen and a-half now. (This in parenthesis, as if to convince him of her mature age, preparatory to what was to follow.) I want you to have the money so much, for it is yours, no matter what the law may say. I do not like the law, and there is but one way out of it,—the trouble, Imean. Lawyer Russell says if you marry me, you can use the money just the same. Will you, Mr. Everard? I am fifteen and a-half.”
This she reiterated to strengthen her cause, looking him straight in the face all the time, without the slightest change of color or sign of self-consciousness.
Had she proposed in serious earnestness to murder him Everard could not have been more startled, or stared at her more fixedly than he did, as if to see what manner of girl this was, asking him to marry her as coolly and in as matter-of-fact a way as she would have asked the most ordinary favor. Was she crazy? Had the trouble about the will actually affected her brain! He thought so, and said to her very gently, as he would have spoken to a child or a lunatic:
“You are talking wildly, Rossie. You do not understand what you are saying. You are tired and excited. You must rest, and never on any account let any one know what you have said to me.”
“I do know what I am saying, and I am neither tired nor excited,” Rossie answered. “Lawyer Russell said that was the only way you could use the money before I was twenty-one.”
“And did he send you here to say that to me?” Everard asked, and she replied:
“No, he only suggested it as a means, because I would have him think of something. I came myself.”
He saw she was in earnest; saw, too, that she did not at all comprehend what she was doing, or the position in which she was placing herself if it should be known. In her utter simplicity and lack of worldly wisdom, she might talk of this thing to others and put herself in a wrong light before the world, and however painful the task, he must enlighten her.
“Rossie,” he began, “you do not at all know what you have done, or how the act might be construed, by women, especially, if they knew it. Girls do not usually ask men to marry them; they wait to be asked.”
Slowly, as the shadow of some gigantic mountain creeps across the valley, there was dawning on Rossie’s mind a perception of the construction which might be put upon her words, and the blood-red flame suffused her face and neck, and spread to her finger-tips, as she said,vehemently: “You mistake me, Mr. Everard, I did not mean it as you might marry Miss Beatrice, or somebody you loved. I did not mean anything except a way out. I was not going to live here at all; only marry you so you could have the money, and then I go away and do for myself. That’s what I meant. You know I do not love you in a marrying way, and that I’m not the brazen-faced thing to tell you so if I did. If I thought you could believe that of me, I should drop dead at your feet, and I almost wish that I could now, for very shame of what I have done.”
As she talked there had come to Rossie more and more the great impropriety and seeming immodesty of what, in all innocence of purpose she had done, and the knowledge almost crushed her to the earth, making her cover her burning face with her hands, and transforming her at once from a child into a woman, with all a sensitive woman’s power to feel and suffer. She did not wait for him to speak, but went on rapidly:
“You cannot despise me more than I despise myself, for I see it now just as you do, and I must have been an idiot, or crazy. You will loathe me always, of course, and I cannot blame you; but remember. I did not mean it for love, or think to stay with you. I do not love youthat way; such a thing would be impossible, and I would not marry you now for a thousand times the money.”
She had used her last and heaviest weapon, and without a glance at him turned to go from the room, but he would not suffer her to leave him thus. Over him, too, as she talked, a curious change had come, for he saw the transformation taking place and knew he was losing the sweet, old-fashioned, guileless-child, who had been so dear to him. She was leaving him, forever, and in her place there stood a full-fledged woman, rife with a woman’s instincts, quivering with passion, and burning with resentment and anger, that he had not at once understood her meaning just as she understood it. How her words,—“I do not love you that way; such a thing is impossible; and I would not marry you now for a thousand times the money,” rang through his ears, and burned themselves into his memory to be recalled afterward, with such bitter pain as he had never known. He did not quite like this impetuous assertion of the impossibilityof loving him. It grated upon him with a sense of something lost. He must stand well with Rossie, though her lovethat way, as she expressed it, was something he had never dreamed of as possible.
“Rossie,” be said, putting out his arm to detain her, “you must not go from me feeling as you do now. You have done nothing for which you need to blush, because you had no bad intent, and the motive is what exalts or condemns the act. Sit here by me. I wish to talk with you.”
He made her sit down beside him upon the sofa, and tried to take her hand, but she drew it swiftly away, with a quick, imperative gesture. He would never hold her hand again, just as he had held the little brown, sunburned hands so many times. She was a woman now, with all her woman’s armor bristling about her, and as such he must treat with her. It was a novel situation in which he found himself, trying to choose words with which to address little Rossie Hastings, and for a moment he hesitated how to begin. Of her strange offer to himself he did not mean to speak, for there had been enough said on that subject. It is true he had neither accepted nor refused, but that was not necessary, for she had withdrawn her proposition with such fiery energy as would have made an allusion to it impossible, if he had been free and not averse to the plan. He was not free, and as for the plan, it struck him as both laughable and ridiculous, but he would not for the world wound the sensitive girl beside him more than she had wounded herself, and so when at last he began to talk with her it was simply to go again over the whole ground, and show her how impossible it was for him to take the money or for her to give it to him. He appreciated her kind intentions; they were just like her, and he held her as the dearest sister a brother ever had; but she must keep what was her own, and he should make his fortune as many a man had done before him, and probably rise higher eventually than if he had money to help him rise. He had not yet quite decided what he should do, but that he should leave Rothsay was probable. He should, however, stay long enough to see that her affairs were in a way to be smoothly managed, and to see her fairly installed in theForrest House with some respectable elderly lady as her companion and protector. Lawyer Russell would, of course, be her guardian, and the administrator of the estate. She could not be in better hands; and however far away he might be, he should never lose his interest in her or cease to be her friend.
“Meanwhile,” he said, with an effort to smile, “I shall be glad if you will allow me to make your house my home until my arrangements are completed. I am not so proud that I will not accept that hospitality at your hands.”
I do not think that Rosamond quite comprehended his last words. She only knew that he would not hurry away from the Forrest House, and she looked up eagerly, and said:
“I am so glad, and I hope you will not hate me, or ever believe I meant the foolish thing I said,—in that way.”
“No, Rossie,” he answered her, “I am far from hating you, and how can I think you meantthat waywhen you have repeatedly declared that you would not marry me now for a thousand times the money?”
“No, now nor ever!” Rosamond exclaimed, energetically; and he replied:
“Yes, I know; men generally understand when a girl tells them she has no love or liking for them.”
There was something peculiar in his voice, as if what she said hurt him a little, and Rossie detected it, and in her eagerness to set him right involuntarily laid her hand on his arm, and flashing upon him her brilliant, beautiful eyes, in which the tears were shining, said to him:
“Oh, Mr. Everard, you must not mistake what I mean. I do like you, and shall for ever and ever; but not in a marrying way, and I am so sorry I have come between you and your inheritance. You have made me see that I cannot now help myself, but when I am twenty-one, if I live so long, so help me Heaven, I’ll give you back every dollar. You will remember that, and knowing it may help you to bear the years of poverty which must intervene.”
Again the long, silken lashes were lifted, and the dark, bright eyes looked into his with a look which sent a strange, sweet thrill through every nerve of the young man’s body. Rosamond had come up before him in anentirely new character, and he was vaguely conscious of a different interest in her now from what he had felt before. It was not love; it was not a desire of possession. He did not know what it was; he only knew that his future life suddenly looked drearier than ever to him if it must be lived away from her and her influence. She had risen to her feet as she was speaking, and he rose also, and went with her to the door, and let her out, and watched her as she disappeared down the stairs, and then went back to his task of sorting papers, with the germ of a new feeling stirring ever so lightly in his heart,—a sense of something which might have made life very sweet, and a sense as well of bitter loss.
Full of shame and mortification at what she had done, Rossie resolved to go at once to Elm Park and confess the whole to Beatrice, whom she found at home. She was thinking of the Forrest House and the confusion caused by the foolish will of an angry old man, when Rossie was announced, and, sitting down at her feet, plunged into the very midst of her trouble by saying:
“Oh, Miss Beatrice, I have come to tell you something which makes me wish I was dead. What do you suppose I have done?”
“I am sure I cannot guess,” Beatrice replied, and Rossie continued, “I asked Mr. Everard to marry me,—actually to marry me!”
“Wha-at!” and Beatrice was more astonished than she had ever been in her life. “Asked Everard Forrest to marry you! Are you crazy, or a——”
She did not finish the sentence, for Rossie did it for her, and said,
“Yes, both crazy and a fool, I verily believe!”
“But how did it happen? What put such an idea into your head?”
Briefly and rapidly Rosamond repeated what had passed between herself and Lawyer Russell, who had asked how old she was, and on learning her age had suggested her marrying the young man and thus giving him back the inheritance.
“And you went and did it, you little goose,” Beatrice said, laughing until the tears ran down her cheeks; but when she saw how distressed Rosamond was she controlled her merriment, and listened while Rossie went on:
“Yes, I was a simpleton not to know any better, but I never meant him to marry me as he would marry you or some one he loved; that had nothing to do with it at all. And I was going right away from Forrest House to take care of myself. I knew I could find something to do, as nurse, or waitress, or ladies’ maid, if nothing more; and I meant to go just as soon as the ceremony was over and leave him all the money, and never, never come back to be in the way.”
“And you told him this, and what did he say?” Beatrice asked, her mirth all swept away before the great unselfishness of this simple-hearted girl, who went on:
“I did not tell him all that at first. I asked him to marry me, just as I would have asked him to give me a glass of water, and with as little thought of shame, but the shame came afterward when I saw what I had done. I can’t explain how it came,—the new sense of things,—I think he looked it into me, and I felt in an instant as if I had been blind and was suddenly restored to sight. It was as if I had been walking unclothed in my sleep, fearlessly, shamelessly, because asleep, and had suddenly been roused to consciousness and saw a crowd of people staring and jeering at me. Oh, it was so awful! and I felt like tearing my hair and shrieking aloud, and I said so many things to make him believe I did not mean it for love or to live with him.”
“And what did he say to the offer? Did he accept or refuse?” Beatrice asked, and Rosamond replied:
“I do not think he did either. I was so ashamed when it came to me, and talked so fast to make him know that I would not marry him for a thousand times the money, and did not love him, and never could.”
“I’ll venture to say he was not especially delighted with such assertions; men are not generally,” Beatrice said, laughingly, but Rosamond did not comprehend her meaning, or if she did, she did not pay any heed to it, but went rapidly on with her story, growing more and more excited as she talked, and finishing with a passionate burst of tears, which awakened all Bee’s sympathy, and made her try to comfort the sobbing girl, who seemed so bowed down with shame and remorse.
Her head was aching dreadfully, and there began to steal over her such a faint, sick feeling, that she offeredno remonstrance when Bee proposed that she spend the night at Elm Park, and sent word to that effect to the Forrest House.
The message brought Everard at once, anxious about Rosamond, whom he wished to see. But she declined; her head was aching too hard to see any one, she said, especially Everard, who must despise her always. Everard had certainly lost the child Rossie; and the world had never seemed so dreary to him as that night in Bee’s boudoir, when he fairly and squarely faced the future and decided what to do, or rather, Bee decided for him; and with a feeling of death in his heart he concurred in her opinion, and said he would go at once to Josephine, and telling her of his father’s death and will, ask her to help him build up a home where they might be happy. He was not to show her how he shrank back and shivered even while taking her for his wife. He was to put the most hopeful construction on everything, and see how much good there was in Josie.
“And I am sure she will not disappoint you,” Beatrice said, infusing some of her own bright hopefulness into Everard’s mind, so that he did not feel quite so discouraged when he said good-night to her, telling her that he should start on the next morning’s train for Holburton, but asking her not to tell Rossie of Josephine until she heard from him.