CHAPTER XXI.A MIDNIGHT RIDE.
It was after midnight when Everard reached Albany, the second day after he left Rothsay. There the train divided, the New York passengers going one way, and the Boston passengers another. Everard was among the latter, and as several people left the car where he was, he felicitated himself upon having an entire seat for the remainder of his journey, and had settled himself for a sleep, with his soft traveling hat drawn over his eyes,and his valise under his head, when the door opened and a party of young people entered, talking and laughing, and discussing a concert which they had that evening attended. As there was plenty of room Everard did not move, but lay listening to their talk and jokes until another party of two came hurrying in just as the train was moving. The gentleman was tall, fine-looking, and exceedingly attentive to the lady, a fair blonde, whom he lifted in his arms upon the platform, and set down inside the door, saying as he did so:
“There, madam, I did get you here in time, though I almost broke my neck to do it; that last ice you took came near being our ruin.”
“Ice, indeed! Better say that last glass you took,” the lady retorted, with a loud, boisterous laugh, which made Everard shiver from head to foot, for he recognized Josephine’s voice, and knew it was his wife who took the unoccupied seat in front of him, gasping and panting as if wholly out of breath.
“Almost dead,” she declared herself to be, whereupon her companion, who was Dr. Matthewson, fanned her furiously with his hat, laughing and jesting, and attracting the attention of everybody in the car.
For an instant Everard half rose to his feet, with an impulse to make himself known, but something held him back, and resuming his reclining attitude, with his hat over his eyes in such a manner that he could see without being himself seen, he prepared to watch the unsuspecting couple in front of him, and their flirtation, for it seemed to be that in sober earnest.
Josey was all life and fun, and could scarcely keep still a moment, but turned, and twisted, and tossed her head, and coquetted with the doctor, who, with his arm on the seat behind her, and half encircling her, bent over her, and looked into her beaming face in the most lover-like manner.
Just then the door at the other end of the car opened, and the conductor appeared with his lantern and demand for tickets.
“I shall have to pay extra,” Matthewson said. “You ate so long that I did not have time to get my tickets.”
“Nonsense,” Josey answered, in a voice she evidentlydid not mean to have heard, but which nevertheless reached Everard’s ear, opened wide to receive it, “Nonsense! This one,” nodding towards the conductor, “never chargesmeanything; we have lots of fun together. I’ll pass you; put up your money and see how I’ll manage it.”
And when the conductor reached their seat and stopped before it and threw the light of his lantern in Josey’s face, he bowed very blandly, but glanced suspiciously at her companion, who was making a feint of getting out his purse.
“My brother,” Josey said, with a mischievous twinkle in her blue eyes; and with an expressive “all right,” the conductor passed on and took the ticket held up to him by the man whose face he could not see, and at whom Josephine now for the first time glanced.
But she saw nothing familiar in the outstretched form, and never dreamed who it was lying there so near to her and watching all she did. So many had left at Albany and so few taken their places that not more than half the seats were occupied, and those in the immediate vicinity of Josey and the doctor were quite vacant, so the young lady felt perfectly free to act out her real nature without restraint; and she did act it to the full, laughing, and flirting, and jesting, and jumping just as Everard had seen her do many a time, and thought it charming and delightful. Now it was simply revolting and immodest, and he glared at her from under his hat, with no feeling of jealousy in his heart, but disgusted and sorry beyond all power of description that she was his wife. Rossie had stood boldly up before him and asked him to marry her, but in her innocent face there was no look like this on Josey’s,—this look of recklessness and passion which showed so plainly even in the dimness of the car. At last something which the doctor said, and which Everard could not understand, elicited from her the exclamation:
“Aren’t you ashamed of yourself, andIa married woman?”
“The more’s the pity,” the doctor replied, with an expression on his face which, had Everard cared for or even respected the woman before him, would have prompted him to knock the rascal down. “The more’sthe pity,—for me, at least. I’ve called myself a fool a thousand times for having cut off my nose to spite my face.”
“What do you mean?” Josey asked, and he replied:
“Oh, nothing; only, can’t you get a divorce? I don’t believe he cares two cents for you.”
“I know he don’t,” and Josey shrugged her shoulders significantly; “but so long as he keeps me in money I can stand it.”
“And does he do that pretty well nowadays?”
“Yes, so-so; he is awfully afraid of his father, though, and I do not blame him. Such an old curmudgeon. I saw him last summer.”
“You did? Where?”
“Why, at Amherst; at Commencement. I went to the president’s reception, and made Everard introduce me, and tried my best to captivate the old muff, but it was of no use; he took a dreadful dislike to me, and expressed himself freely to his son, who reported to me——”
“The mean coward to do that,” the doctor exclaimed, and Josephine replied, “No, not mean at all. I made him tell me just what his father said. I gave him no peace till he did, for I wanted the truth, so as to know how far to press my claim to recognition; and I made up my mind that my best plan was to keep quiet a while, and let matters adjust themselves. Maybe the old man will die; he looked apoplectic, as if he might go off in some of his fits of temper, and then won’t I make the money fly, for no power on earth shall keep me from the Forrest House then.”
“And you’ll ride over everybody, I dare say,” the doctor suggested, and she answered him, “You bet your head on that,” the slang dropping from her pretty lips as easily and naturally as if they were accustomed to it, as indeed they were.
“Is Everard greatly improved?” was the next question, and Josephine replied, “Some would think so, perhaps, but I look upon him as a perfect milksop. I don’t believe I could fall in love with him now. Why, he is just as quiet and solemn as a graveyard; never laughs, nor jokes, nor smokes, nor anything; he is fine-looking,though, and I expect to be very proud of him when I am really his wife.”
“Which you never shall be, so help me Heaven!” was Everard’s mental ejaculation, as he ground his teeth together.
He had made up his mind, and neither Bee nor any one else could change it. That woman, coquetting so heartlessly with another man, and talking thus of him, should never even be asked to share his poverty, as he had intended doing. He would never voluntarily go into her presence again. He would return to Rothsay, tell his story to Bee and see what he could do to help Rossie, and then go to work like a dog for money with which to keep the woman quiet. And when the day came, as come it must, that his secret was known, there should be a separation, for live with her a single hour he would not. This was his decision, and he only waited for the train to stop in order to escape from her hateful presence. But it was an express and went speeding on, while the two in front of him kept up their conversation, which turned at last on Rosamond, the doctor asking “if she still lived at the Forrest House.”
Josephine supposed so, though she had heard nothing of her lately, and Dr. Matthewson asked next what disposition she intended to make of her when she was mistress of Forrest House.
“That depends,” Josephine replied, with her favorite shrug; “if there is nothing objectionable in her she can stay; if she proves troublesome, she will go.”
Oh, how Everard longed to shriek out that the girl who, if she proved troublesome, was to go from Forrest House, was the mistress there, with a right to dictate as to who would go or stay; but that would be to betray himself; so he kept quiet, while Josey, growing tired and sleepy, began to nod her golden head, which drooped lower and lower, until it rested on the shoulder of Dr. Matthewson, whose arm encircled the sleeping girl and adjusted the shawl about her, for it was growing cold and damp in the car.
Just then they stopped at a way station, and, taking his valise, Everard left the train, which after a moment went whirling on, leaving him standing on the platform alone in the November darkness.
There was a little hotel near by, where he passed a few hours, until the train, bound for Albany, came along, and carried him swiftly back in the direction of home and Rossie, of whom he thought many times, seeing her as she looked standing before him with that sweet pleading expression on her face, and that musical ring in her voice, as she asked to be his wife. How her eyes haunted him,—those brilliant black eyes, so full of truth, and womanly softness and delicacy. He could see them now as they had confronted him, fearlessly, innocently, at first, but changing in their expression as the sense of what she had done began to dawn upon her, bringing the blushes of shame to her tear-stained face.
“Dear little Rossie!” he thought; “if I were free, I believe I’d say yes,—not for the money, but for all she will be when she gets older.” And then there crept over him again that undefinable sense of something lost which he had felt when Rossie said to him, “I would not marry you now for a thousand times the money.”
He was growing greatly interested in Rossie, and found himself very impatient during the last few hours of his journey. What had been done in his absence, he wondered, and was she more reconciled to the fortune which had been thrust upon her, and how would she receive him, and how would she look? She was not handsome, he knew, and yet her face was very, very sweet; her eyes were beautiful, and so was the wavy, nut-brown hair, which she wore so becomingly in her neck,—and at the thought of her hair there came a great lump in Everard’s throat as he remembered the sacrifice the unselfish girl had made for him two years before.
“In all the world there is no one like little Rossie,” he said to himself, and felt his heart beat faster with a thrill of anticipation as the train neared Rothsay and stopped at last at the station.
Taking his valise, which was not heavy, he started at once for the Forrest House, which he reached just as it was growing dark, and the gas was lighted in the dining-room.