There was a little sigh of disappointment, and then Rossie laid her head on Yulah’s arm, and did not speak again until she was on the soft bed in the blue room at Elm Park, where, when Bee asked her how she felt, she whispered: “So happy and glad, because I shall see him in the morning; send for him very early.”
And when the morning came a message was dispatched to Everard to the effect that Mr. and Mrs. Morton had returned and wished to see him immediately. But another message had found its way to the office before this one, for knots of crape were streaming in the November wind from every door-knob at the Forrest House, and the village bell was tolling in token that some soul had gone to the God who gave it.
In his office Everard sat listening to the bell, every stroke of which thrilled him with a sensation of something like dread, as if that knell of death were in some way connected with himself. Who was it dead that day that the bell should clamor so long, and would it never strike the age, he asked himself, just as the door opened and Lawyer Russell came in, flurried and excited, and red and white by turns as he shook the rain-drops from his overcoat, for the storm, though greatly abated, was not over yet.
“Who is dead? Do you know?” Everard asked, and Mr. Russell replied:
“Yes, Ned; it will be a great shock to you,—an infernal shock,—though of course you were all over any hankering after her; but it’s that Matthewson woman. She died last night, and there’s about forty yards of crape flying from the doors up there, and the doctor, they say, is actually taking on to kill, and blubbering like a calf; but we’ll fix him. You’ll see; he’s watched; there’s a po——oh, Lord! what have I said, or come near saying?”
And in his disgust at himself for having nearly let out the secret before the time, the lawyer retreated into the adjoining room, leaving Everard alone to meet what had been a terrible shock to him, for though he had heard at different times from Agnes of Josephine’s illness, he had never believed her dangerous; and now she was dead; the woman he once fancied that he loved. There were great drops of sweat about his mouth and under his hair, and his lips quivered nervously while, human as he was, there came over him with a rush the thought that now indeed he was free in a way which even Rossie would have recognized had she been alive. But Rossie, too, was dead; his freedom had come too late.
“Everybody is dead,” he whispered, sadly, while hot tears sprang to his eyes and rolled down his cheeks,—tears, not for the woman at the Forrest House, for whom the bell kept steadily tolling, but for the dear little girl dead, as he believed, so far away, but who, in reality, was so very near, and even then asking when he would come.
“Soon, darling, soon,” Beatrice said, for she had sent a note to Everard, and the messenger was at his office door and in the room before Everard was aware of his presence.
“Mrs. Morton at home!” he exclaimed, as he took the note from the servant’s hand.
“Dear Everard,” Beatrice wrote, “we came home last night on the late train, and I am so anxious to see you, and have so much to tell. Don’t delay a minute, but come at once.