“Good-by, Everard, good-by, and if it should be forever, you’ll never forget me, will you?” These were her parting words, which, in the after time, he said over and over again, with a bitterer, heavier pain than that he felt when with Bee he stood upon the Jersey shore, and watched the Oceanic sailing down the bay.
And so Rossie passed from their sight, and the next they heard from her she had reached Liverpool, but was greatly fatigued with the voyage, during which she had been sick most of the time. It was only a few lines she wrote to Everard, to tell him she was safe.
“When I am stronger,” she said, “I will send you and Beatrice a long letter, and tell you everything. Now I can only sit by my window and look out upon the busy streets of Liverpool and St. George’s Hall right opposite, and occasionally there comes over me a feeling of something like homesickness when I remember how far I am from America and the friends who never seemed half so dear to me as now, when I am so widely separated from them.”
The next he heard from Rossie she was in London, delightfully located in lodgings near Regent’s Park, and playing keep house, while her brother was the best and kindest man in the world, and she was very happy. Then they went to Switzerland, and Rossie’s letters were full of the enthusiastic delight she felt with everything around her. Of her health she seldom spoke, and when she did, it was not altogether satisfactory. Sometimes she was so tired that she had kept her room for two or three days, and again a headache, or sore throat, or cold, had confined her to the house for nearly a week; but she was very happy among the Alps, and wished that Beatrice and Everard were there with her to enjoy what she was enjoying. As the summer advanced, however, her letters were not so frequent, and the doctor sometimes wrote for her, saying she was not feeling well, and had made him her amanuensis. They were not to be alarmed, he said; it was only a slight heart difficulty, induced by the mountain air, which often affected tourists in that way. He should take her to Southern France early in the autumn, and then to Italy as the season advanced, and should not return to America till spring.
When Everard read this letter there came over him again a great horror of some impending evil threatening Rossie, and do what he might he could not shake it off. He thought of it by day and dreamed of it by night, and could he have found any good excuse for doing so, he would have started for Europe, and kept near the girl, who, it seemed to him, was in some imminent peril, though of what nature he could not guess.
Some time in November a letter came from Dr. Matthewson, dated at Nice, where he said they had been for two or three weeks, and where, as he expressed it, “I hope our dear invalid is improving. Switzerland was not the place for her, and she seemed to grow weaker every day she staid there, so I hastened back to Paris, and then came here, where she seems very happy, but is weak as an infant. She complains of nothing but weariness, and cannot get rested. Of course I have the best medical advice for her, and everything is done which can be to arrest the disease and give her some strength. The physicians have forbidden her reading or writing, even short letters, and I must do it for her for the present. I hope that neither you nor Miss Belknap will be needlessly distressed, for I assure you there is no immediate danger, and with proper care, such as she has now, she will, I think, be quite able to return to America in the spring. She is calling to me now from her chair by the window, and says. ‘Tell them not to be troubled about me; that I walked too much in Switzerland and am not rested yet, but am so happy here in beautiful Nice, looking out upon the blue Mediterranean.’”
After this letter Rossie never wrote again, and though Everard and Beatrice wrote frequently to her, asking her to send them a line, if nothing more, Dr. Matthewson always replied, “She is forbidden to write even so much as her name;” and so the fall and winter crept on, and Rossie was first in Venice, then in Florence, and then in Rome. And then Dr. Matthewson wrote one day to Everard, saying that Rossie did not know of this letter, neither did he wish her to know, as it would only trouble her and retard her recovery, but to be brief, he found himself straitened for money just now, physicians charged so abominably in Europe, and on account of Rossie’s illness their expenses were, of course, much heavier than they would otherwise have been, and if Everard would make an advance for Rossie of a few thousand dollars, he should be very glad. He was intending to leave Rome early in the spring, and go to Germany to a famous cure, where the prices were very high.
Double the amount of money asked for was placed at the doctor’s disposal, and when that night Everard went to Elm Park to call upon Beatrice, he said, in reply to her inquiries for news from Rossie:
“We shall never see her again.”