It had been a long, dreary year to Everard, and when the anniversary came round of the day when Rossie sailed, it seemed to him that he had lived in that year more than a hundred lives. And yet, in a business point of view he had been very prosperous, and money was beginning to be more plenty with him than formerly, though he could not lay by much, for Josephine made heavy demands upon him. When she left Florida she did not return to Rothsay, where she knew she was looked upon with distrust by the better class. It was a dull, poky hole, she said, and she should enjoy herself better traveling, so she traveled from place to place during the summer and autumn, and in the winter went again to Florida,—but early in the spring she came back to the Forrest House, where she lived very quietly, and seemed to shun rather than court society. She, too, knew of Rossie’s failing health, for she heard often from the doctor, and she expressed so much anxiety for her to Beatrice and Everard, hinting that they did not know the worst, that their fears were increased, and suspense was growing intolerable, when, at last, one morning in May, the mail brought to Everard the American Register from Paris, directed in a hand he had never seen before.
Evidently it was sent from the office, and probably had in it the whereabouts of some of his friends who were traveling in Europe, and who occasionally forwarded him a paper when they left one place for another. Mr. Evarts was still abroad, and Everard ran his eye over the list of names registered in different places to see if his was there, for that the paper had anything to do with Rossie he never dreamed. Indeed, she was not in his mind, except as she was always there, in a general way, and so the shock was all the greater and more terrible when he came suddenly upon a little obituary notice, and read, with wildly-throbbing heart, and eyes which felt as if they were starting from their sockets, so great was the pressure of blood upon his brain:
“Died, on the evening of April 20th, in Haelder-Strauchsen, Austria, of consumption and heart disease, Miss Rosamond Hastings, of Rothsay, Ohio, U. S. A., aged nineteen years and ten months. Seldom has death snatched any one more lovely in person and character than this fair young girl, who, in a strange land, far from home, passed peacefully and willingly to the home above, and whose last words to her weeping brother were: ‘Don’t cry for me, and tell them at home not to be sorry either. Heaven is as near me here in Austria as it would be in America, and I am so glad to go.’”
Everard could read no more, and throwing the paper from him he buried his face in his hands, and for a few moments gave way to such grief as men seldom feel, and never experience but once in a life-time. He did not weep; his pain was too great for tears; neither did any word escape his livid lips, but his frame shook as with an ague chill, and occasionally a long drawn, moaning sob told how much he suffered, while great drops of sweat gathered thickly upon his face, and in the palms of his hands. No other blow could have smitten him so heavily as he was smitten now. It is true he had felt a great dread lest Rossie should die, but underlying that was always the hope that she would come back again. But all that was ended now, the little ray of sunlight on his horizon had set in gloom, and the night lay dark and heavy around him, with no rift in the black clouds, no light in the future. Rossie was dead, in all her freshness and youthful beauty; Rossie, who had been to him a constant source of pleasure and joy, since he first took her in his arms, a tiny little girl, and kissed her pretty mouth in spite of her remonstrance, “Big boys like oo mustn’t tiss nittle dirls like me.”
He had kissed her many times since as his sister, and twice with all the intensity of a lover’s burning passion, and once she had kissed him back, and he knew just where her lips had touched him, and fancied he felt their pressure again, and the perfume of her breath upon his cheek. But, alas, she was dead, and the Austrian skies were bending above her grave in that far-off town with the strange-sounding German name, which he had not stopped to pronounce.
“What was the name?” he asked himself, speaking for the first time since he read the fatal news, and reaching mechanically for the paper lying open at his feet.
But his eyes were blood-shot and dim, and it took him some time to spell out, letter by letter, the name Haelder-Strauchsen, and to wonder where and what manner of place it was where Rossie died, and if she were lying under the flowers and soft green turf she loved so much in life, and if he should ever see her grave.
“Yes, please Heaven!” he said, “I’ll find it some day, and whisper to my darling sleeping there of the love it will be no sin to speak of then. I’ll tell her how with her life my sun of hope went down, never to rise again.”
Then, glancing once more at the paper, he read a second time “Died, April 20th,” and tried to recall what he was doing on that day, the darkest and saddest which had ever dawned for him. Making allowance for the difference in time between Austria and Ohio, it was little past midday with him when it was evening over there where Rosamond was dying, and with a shudder he remembered how he was occupied then. Josephine had written him a note, asking him to come to the Forrest House as soon after lunch as possible, as she wished particularly to see him. As he walked up the avenue to the house, he had looked around sadly and regretfully at the different objects which had once been so familiar to him, and all of which had been so intimately associated with Rossie. It was a lovely April day, and beds of hyacinths and crocuses were in full bloom, and the daffodils and double narcissuses were showing their heads on the borders near the door. These had been Rossie’s special care, and he had seen her so often working among them, trowel in hand, with her high-necked, long-sleeved apron on, that he found himself half-looking for her now.