CHAPTER XXVIII.SOMETHING DOES HAPPEN.
It had rained all day in Dresden,—a steady, persistent rain, which kept the guests of the Hotel Victoria in-doors, and made them so tired, and uncomfortable, and restless that by night every shadow of reserve was swept away, and they were ready to talk to any one who would answer them in their own tongue. Conspicuous among the guests assembled in the parlor was Miss Fleming,—“Miss Josephine Fleming, Boston, U. S. A.,” she was registered, and she passed for one of those Bostonians who, whether deservedly or not, get the reputation abroad of being very exclusive, and proud, and unapproachable. Just now this character suited Josephine, for she found that she was more talked about when she was reserved and dignified than when she was forward and flippant; so, though they had been at the Victoria some weeks, she had made but few acquaintances, and these among the English and the most aristocratic of theAmericans. And Josephine had never been so beautiful as she was now. And she had the satisfaction of knowing that she was always the most attractive woman in every company, and the one most sought after. Of her poverty she made no secret, and did not try to conceal the fact that she was Mrs. Arnold’s companion. But she had seen better days, of course, before papa died and left his affairs so involved that they lost everything, and mamma was compelled to take a few boarders to eke out their income.
This was her story, which took well when told by herself, with sweet pathos in her voice and a drooping of her long lashes over her lovely blue eyes. Every one of her acquaintances of any account in America had been stepping-stones in Europe, where she met people who knew the Gerards, and John Hayden, and Miss Belknap, who was her very heaviest card, the one she played most frequently, and with the best success. The New Yorkers all knew Beatrice, and were inclined to be very gracious to her friend. Occasionally she had come across some graduate from Amherst, whom she had met before, but never till the rainy day with which this chapter opens had she seen any one from the vicinity of Rothsay, or who knew her husband personally. She was in the habit of looking over the list of arrivals, and had seen the names of “Mr. and Mrs. Philip Evarts, Cincinnati, U. S. A.,” and had readily singled out the new-comers attable d’hote, divining at once that the lady was a bride; but no words had passed between them until the evening of the rainy day; then Josephine entered the parlor faultlessly gotten up, and looking very sweet and lovely in her dark-blue silk and velvet jacket, with her golden hair caught up with an ivory comb. Nothing could be prettier than she was, and Phil Evarts, who, as Everard had said, was just the man to be attracted by such a woman as Josephine, and whose wife was sick with a headache in her room, managed to get near the beauty, who took a seat apart from the others, and met his advance with a swift glance of her dreamy eyes, which made his heart beat faster than a man’s heart ought to beat when his wife is up stairs with the headache.
It was her business to speak first, and she said, very modestly:
“Excuse me, sir, but do you know if there has been a mail since lunch?”
“I don’t,” he replied, “but I will inquire. I am just going to the office. What name shall I ask for?”
She told him, and during the few minutes he was gone he found out who Miss Fleming from Boston was, and all about her that the English-speaking clerk knew. But there was no letter for her, for which he was very sorry. She was sorry, too; she did so want to hear from home and sister. She did not saymamma, for she knew her mother was dead, and had known it for a week, and kept it to herself until she could decide whether to wear black or not, and so shut herself out from any amusements they might have in Paris, where they were going next.
Naturally the two began to talk of America, and when Mr. Evarts spoke of Cincinnati as his home, she said:
“I have a friend who was once at school there. Everard Forrest, of Rothsay, do you know him?”
She had no idea that he did, and was astonished at the vehemence with which he responded:
“Ned Forrest, of Rothsay! Of course I know him. We were at school together. He’s the best fellow in the world. And he is your friend, too?”
“Yes,” Josey answered, beginning at once to calculate how much knowledge of Everard she would confess to. “I knew him when he was in college at Amherst. We lived in Holburton then, a little town over the line in New York, and he was sometimes there, but I have not seen him for a long time. I hope he is well.”
“He was the last time I saw him, which was three or four months ago, perhaps more,” Mr. Evarts replied. “He was in the city for a day, and I saw him just a moment. He is working like a dog; sticks to his business like a burr, which is so different from what I thought he’d do, and he so rich, too.”
“Is he?” Josephine asked; and Evarts replied:
“Why, yes; his father must have been worth half a million, at least, and Ned got the whole, I suppose. There are no other heirs, unless something was given to that girl who lived in the family. Rosamond Hastings was the name, I think.”
“Is his father dead?” Josephine asked; and in her voice there was a sharp ring which even stupid Phil Evarts detected and wondered at.
“Dead? Yes,” he replied. “He has been dead I should say nearly, if not quite, two years.”
Josephine was for a moment speechless. Never in her life had she received so great a shock. That Judge Forrest should have been dead two years and she in ignorance of it seemed impossible, and her first feeling after she began to rally a little was one of incredulity, and she asked:
“Are you not mistaken?”
“No, I’m not,” Mr. Evarts replied. “I saw Everard in Covington a few weeks after his father’s death, and talked to him of the sickness, which was apoplexy or something of that sort. Anyway, it was sudden, and Ned looked as if he hadn’t a friend in the world. I did not suppose he cared so much for his father, who, I always thought, was a cross old tyrant. I used to visit at Forrest House occasionally years ago, when we were boys, but have not been there since the judge’s death. Ned does not often come to Cincinnati, and as I have been gone most of the time for the last two years, I have heard but little of him.”
“How long, did you say, has his father been dead?” Josephine asked; and Mr. Evarts replied:
“It must be two years in November, or thereabouts.”
“And this Rosamond Hastings who lives there, how old is she, and is he going to marry her?” Josephine asked next; while Evarts thought to himself:
“Jealous, I do believe,” but he answered her:
“Miss Hastings must be seventeen or eighteen, and when I saw her, five or six years ago, was not so very handsome.”
“Yes, thank you,” Josey said, and as she just then saw Mrs. Arnold coming into the salon, she bowed to her new acquaintance, and walked away, with such a tumult in her bosom as she had never before experienced.
It would take her a little time to recover herself and decide what to do. She must have leisure for reflection; and she took it that night in her room, and sat up the entire night thinking over the events of the last two years,as connected with Everard, and coming at last to the conclusion that he was ascoundrel, whom it was her duty as well as pleasure to punish by going to America at once and claiming him as her husband.
In the first days of her sudden bereavement, Agnes’ kind heart had gone out with a great yearning for her young sister, to whom she had at once written of their mutual loss, saying how lonely she was, and how she hoped they would henceforth be more to each other than they ever had been. And Josephine had been touched and softened, and had written very kindly to Agnes, and had cried several times in secret for the dead mother she would never see again, but whose death she did not then see fit to announce to Mrs. Arnold; but she would do so now, and make it a pretext for going home at once. Nothing should keep her from wreaking swift vengeance on the man who had deliberately deceived her for two years, and who, she had no doubt, was faithless to her in feeling, if not in act. Of course there was a woman concerned in the matter, and that woman was probably Rossie Hastings, who, Mr. Evarts said, was still living at the Forrest House, whither she meant to go in her own person as Mrs. J. E. Forrest, and so rout the enemy, and establish her own claims as a much-injured wife. She did not mean to be violent or harsh, only grieved, and hurt, and forgiving, and she had no doubt that in time she should be the most popular woman in Rothsay, not even excepting Beatrice, whose silence with regard to the judge’s death she could not understand, inasmuch as she could have had no reason for keeping it a secret.
It may seem strange that as a friend of Everard’s Phil Evarts had not heard of the judge’s will, but for the last two or three years he had led a wandering kind of life, and spent most of his time in Rio Janeiro, and as Everard had never spoken of his affairs on the few occasions they had met since the judge’s death, he was in total ignorance of the manner in which the judge had disposed of his property. Had he known it, and told Josephine, she might have acted differently, and hesitated a little before she gave up a situation of perfect ease and comparative luxury for the sake of a husband whom she did not love, and who had nothing for her support except his own earnings. But she didnotknow this, andshe was eager to confront him andthe jade, as she stigmatized Rosamond, and she packed some of her clothes that night that she might start at once.
Fortunately for her plans the next morning’s mail from Paris brought her another letter from Agnes, who thought she might be anxious to know what she had decided to do, for the present, at least, until they could consult together. But Josephine cared very little what Agnes did.Shewas going to the Forrest House, and she was glad that Dr. Matthewson, who had been with her for a time at the hotel, had started for Italy only a few days before. He might have opposed her plan, and she knew from experience that it was hard to resist the influence he had over her. Utterly reckless and unprincipled, he seemed really to like this woman, whom he thoroughly understood, and in whose nature he recognized something which responded to his own. Two or three times he had talked openly to her of a divorce, and had hinted at a glorious life in Italy or wherever she chose to go. But Josephine was too shrewd to consider that for a moment. Dr. Matthewson lived only by his wits, or to put it in plainer terms, by gambling and speculation and intrigue. To-day he was rich, indulging in every possible luxury and extravagance, and to-morrow he was poor and unable to pay even his board; and much as she liked him she had no fancy to share his style of living. She preferred rather to be the hated wife of Everard Forrest and the mistress of his house; so she took Agnes’s letter to Mrs. Arnold, and with a great show of feeling told her her mother was dead, and her sister Aggie left all alone, and wanting her so badly that she felt it her imperative duty to start at once for America.
“I am sorry, of course, to leave you,” she said, “but you have so many acquaintances now, and your health is so much better, that you will do very nicely without me, I am sure, and I have long felt that my position was merely a sinecure. I am only an unnecessary expense.”
Mrs. Arnold knew that to some extent this was true. Josephine was rather an expensive luxury, and she had more than once seen in her signs of selfishness and duplicity which shocked and displeased her. But the girl had been uniformly kind and attentive to her, andshe was loth to part with her, and tried to persuade her to wait till spring. But Josephine was determined, and seeing this Mrs. Arnold ceased to oppose her, and generously gave her two hundred dollars for her expenses home; and Josephine took it, and smiled sweetly through her tears, and kissed her friend gushingly, and then hurried away to complete her preparations.
The next day she left Dresden for Paris, where she staid a week, while she selected a most becoming wardrobe in black, and was delighted to see what a pretty, appealing woman she was in her mourning, and how fair and pure her skin showed through her long crape vail, and how blue and pathetic her eyes looked, especially when she managed to bring a tear into them.
Of course she was noticed, and commented upon, and admired on shipboard, and when it was known why she was going home alone, and why she was in such deep mourning, she had everybody’s sympathies, and was much sought after and petted.
She was certainly a very fair picture to contemplate, and the male portion of her fellow travelers indulged in that pastime often, and anticipated her every movement, and vied with each other in taking her chair to the most sheltered and comfortable place, and adjusting her wraps, and drawing her shawl a little closer around her neck, and helping her below whenever she was at all dizzy, as she frequently was; and when at last theVille de Pariscame into port, and she stood on shore, frightened, bewildered, and so much afraid of thosedreadful custom-house officers, though she had nothing dutiable except a Madonna bought formammabefore she knew she was dead, at least ten gentlemen stood by her, reassuring her and promising to see her through, and succeeding so well that not one of her four big trunks was molested, and the captain himself helped her into the carriage which was to take her to the Harlem depot. With all the gallantry of a Frenchman he saw her comfortably adjusted, and squeezing her hand a little, lifted his hat politely, and wishing herbon voyage, left her to drive away toward the new life which was to be so different from the old.