CHAPTER XXXIII.EVERARD FACES IT.
When Everard was interrupted in his interview with Rosamond, his first feeling was one of regret, for he had made up his mind to tell her everything. He had held her in his arms for one blissful moment, and pressed his lips to her forehead, and the memory of that would help himto bear the wretchedness of all the after life. But before he could begin his story, Lawyer Russell came in, and the opportunity was lost. He could, however, write, and he fully meant to do so, and after his arrival at Dighton he began two or three letters, which he tore in pieces, for he found it harder than he had expected to confess that he had a wife to the girl he had kissed so passionately, and who, he felt certain, loved him in return. He had seen it in her eyes, which knew no deception, and in the blushes on her cheek, and his greatest pain came from the knowledge that she, too, must suffer through him. And so he put off the writing day after day, and employed his leisure moments in hunting up the laws of Indiana on divorce, and felt surprised to find how comparatively easy it was for those whom Heaven had joined together to be put asunder by the courts of man. Desertion, failure to support, uncongeniality, were all valid reasons for breaking the bonds of matrimony; and from reading and dwelling so much upon it he came at last to consider it seriously as something which in his case was excusable. Whatever Rossie might think of it he should be happier to know the tie was broken, even if the whole world disapproved; and he at last deliberately made up his mind to free himself from the hated marriage, which grew tenfold more hateful to him when there came to his knowledge a fact which threw light at once upon some things he had never been able to understand in Dr. Matthewson.
He was sitting one evening in the room devoted mostly to the use of gentlemen at the hotel where he was stopping, and listening in a careless kind of way to the conversation of two men, one an inmate of the house, and the other a traveler just arrived from western New York. For a time the talk flowed on indifferent topics, and drifted at last to Clarence, where it seemed that both men had once lived, and about which the Dighton man was asking some questions.
“By the way,” he said, “whatever became of that Matthewson, he called himself, though his real name when I first knew him was Hastings. You know the Methodist Church got pretty well bitten with him. He was always the tallest kind of a rascal. I knew him well.”
Everard was interested now, and while seeming to read the paper he held in his hands, did not lose a word of all which followed next.
“Matthewson? Oh, yes, I know,” the Clarence man replied. “You mean the fellow who was so miraculously converted at a camp-meeting, and then took to preaching, though a bigger hypocrite never lived. I don’t know where he is now. He dabbled in medicine after he left Clarence, and got “Doctor” hitched to his name, and has been gambling through the country ever since. The last I heard of him somebody wrote to Clarence asking if he had a right to marry a couple, by which I infer that he has been doing a little ministerial duty by way of diversion.”
“I should hardly think a marriage performed by him valid, though I dare say it would hold in court,” the Dighton man, who was a lawyer, replied; adding, after a moment, “Matthewson is the name of his aunt, which he took at her death, together with a few thousands she left him. His real name is John Hastings. I knew him when he was a boy, and he was the most vindictive, unprincipled person I ever met, and his father was not much better, though both could be smooth as oil, and ingratiate themselves into most anybody’s favor. He had a girl in tow some two or three years ago, I was told; a very handsome filly, but fast as the Old Nick himself, if, indeed, she was not worse than that.”
Here the conversation was brought to a close, and Everard went to his room, where for a time he sat, stunned and powerless to move. Like a flash of lightning it came upon him just who Dr. Matthewson was, and his mind went back to that night when, with a rash boy’s impetuosity, he had raised his hand against the mature man who, while smarting under the blows, had sworn to be revenged. And he had kept his word, and Everard could understand now why he had seemed so willing and even anxious that there should be a perfect understanding of the matter so as to make the marriage valid.
“Curse him!” Everard said to himself. “He meant to ruin me. He could not have known what Josey was, but he knew it was not a fitting match for me, and no time or way for me to marry, if it were; but that was hisrevenge. I remember he asked me if I did not fear the man whom I had punished, and said people like him did not take cowhidings meekly; and he is Rossie’shalf-brother; but if I can help it, she shall never know how he has injured me, the rascal. I’ll have a divorce now, at all hazards, even though it may do me no good, so far as Rossie is concerned. I’ll see that lawyer to-morrow and tell him the whole story.”
But before the morrow came, Everard received Mrs. Markham’s telegram, which startled him so much that he forgot everything in his haste to return home and see if aught had befallen Rosamond. It had something to do with her he was sure, but no thought that it had to do with Josephine entered his mind until he stepped from the car and heard that she was at the Forrest House. For an instant his brain reeled, and he felt and acted like a drunken man, as he went to claim his traveling-bag. Then, without a word to any one, he walked rapidly away in the darkness, with a face as white as the few snow-flakes which were just beginning to fall, and a feeling like death in his heart as he thought of Rossie left alone to confront Joe Fleming as his wife. And yet it did not seem very strange to him that Josephine was there. It was rather as if he had expected it, just as the murderer expects the day when his sin will find him out. Everard’s sin had found him out, and as he sped along the highway, half running in his haste to know the worst, he was almost glad that the thing he had dreaded so long had come at last, and to himself he said:
“I’ll face it like a man, whatever the result may be.”
From the windows of Rossie’s room a faint light was shining, but it told him nothing of the sick girl lying there, so nervous and excited that bright fever spots burned on her cheeks, and her hands and feet were like lumps of ice as she waited and listened for him, hearing him the moment he struck the gravel-walk beneath her window, for he purposely turned aside from the front piazza, choosing to enter the house in the rear, lest he should first encounter the woman, who, like Rossie, was waiting and watching for him, and feeling herself grow hot and cold alternately as she wondered what he would say. Like Rossie, she was sure he would come on that train, and had made herself as attractiveas possible in her black cashmere and jet, with the white shawl around her shoulders, and her golden hair falling on her neck in heavy masses of curls. And then, with a French novel in her hand, she sat down to wait for the first sound of the carriage which was to bring him, for she did not dream of his walking that cold, wet night, and was not on the alert to see the tall figure which came so swiftly through the darkness, skulking like a thief behind the shrubbery till it reached the rear door, where it entered, and stood face to face with old Aunt Axie, who in her surprise almost dropped the bowl of gruel she had been preparing for Rosamond. She did spill it, she set it down so quickly, and putting both her hands on Everard’s shoulders she exclaimed:
“Oh, Mars’r Everard, praise de Lord you am come at last! I couldn’t b’ar it much longer, with Miss Rossie sick up sta’rs, and that woman below swashin’ round wid her long-tailed gowns, an’ her yaller ha’r hangin’ down her back, and sayin’ she is your wife. She isn’t your wife, Mas’r Everard,—she isn’t?” and Axie looked earnestly at the young man, who would have given more than half his life to have been able to say, “No, she is not.”
But he could not do that, and his voice shook as he replied:
“Yes, Aunt Axie, she is my wife.”
Axie did not cry out or say a word at first, but her black face quivered and her eyes filled with tears, as she took a rapid mental survey of the case as it stood now. Everard’s wife must of course be upheld for the credit of the family, and, though the old negress knew there was something wrong, it was not for her to inquire or to let others do so either; and when at last she spoke, she said:
“If she’s your wife, then I shall stan’ by her.”
He did not thank her or seem to care whether she stood by his wife or not, for his next question was:
“You said Rosamond was sick. What is the matter?”
“Sore throat and bad cold fust, and then your wife comed an’ took us by surprise, an’ Miss Rossie fainted cl’ar away, and has been as white, an’ still, an’ slimpsy as a rag ever since.”
Something like a groan escaped from Everard’s lips, as he said:
“Tell Miss Rossie I am here, and ask if I can see her,—at once, before I meet anybody else.”
“Yes, I’ll tell her,” Axie said, as she hurried to the room, where, to her great surprise, she found her young mistress in her flannel dressing-gown and shawl, sitting in her easy-chair, with her head resting upon pillows scarcely whiter than her face, save where the red spots of fever burned so brightly.
In spite of Mrs. Markham’s remonstrance Rossie had insisted upon getting up and being partly dressed.
“I must see Everard,” she said. “You can’t understand, and I can’t explain, but he will come to me, and I must see him alone.
“Yes. Tell him to come up; I am ready for him,” she said to Aunt Axie.
And Everard advanced, with a sinking heart, and knocked at Rossie’s door just as a black-robed figure, with a white wool shawl wrapped around it, started to come up the stairs.