“Roxie? Roxie Fleming? Is she a second wife, and is there a step daughter much older than Josephine?”
“Yes; but how did you know it, and where have you seen them?” Everard asked, eagerly, his anger giving way to his nervous dread of some development worse even than the dollar jewelry, which had hurt him cruelly.
“Years ago, when I was a young girl, we had in our family a cook, Roxie Burrows by name, competent, tidy, and faithful in the discharge of her duties, but crafty, designing and ambitious. Our butcher was a Mr. Fleming, a native of Ireland, and a very respectable man, whose little daughter used sometimes to bring us the steak for breakfast in the morning, and through whom Roxie captured the father, after the mother died. She was so sorry for the child, and mended her frocks, and made much of her till the father was won, when, it was said, the tables were turned, and little Agnes mended the frocks and darned the socks, while Roxie played the lady. I remember hearing of the birth of a daughter, but I was married about that time, and knew no more of the Flemings until a few years later, when I was visiting in Boston, and mother told me that he was dead, and Roxie had gone with the children to some place West. I am sure it must be the same woman with whom you boarded. Has she sandy hair and light gray eyes, with long yellow lashes?”
“Yes, she has; it is the same,” Everard replied, with a feeling like death in his heart as he thought how impossible it was now to tell his mother that Josephine was his wife.
How impossible it was that she would ever be reconciled to the daughter of her cook and butcher, who added to her other faults the enormity of wearing dollar jewelry! And I think that last really hurt Everard the most. On such points he was very fastidious and particular, and more than once had himself thought Josey’s dress too flashy, but the glamour of love was over all, and a glance of her blue eyes, or touch of her white hands always set him right again and brought him back to his allegiance. But the hands and the eyes were not there now to stand between him and what his mother had said, and he felt like crying out bitterly as he took back his photograph and listened a few moments longer, while his mother talked lovingly and kindly, telling him he must forgive her if she had seemed harsh, that it was for his good, as he would one day see. He would forget this boyish fancy in time and come to wonder at his infatuation. Forget it! with those words ever in his ears, “I pronounce you man and wife.” He could not forget, and it was not quite sure that he would do so if he could. Josey’s face and Josey’s wiles had a power over him yet to keep him comparatively loyal. He had loved her with all the intensity of a boy’s first fervent passion, which never stopped to criticise her manner, or language, or style of dress, though, now that his eyes were opened a little, it occurred to him that there might be something flashy in her appearance, and something told him that the massive chain and cross, so conspicuous on Josephine’s bosom, came from that store in Pittsfield, where everything was a dollar, from an immense picture down to a set of spoons. And his mother had detected it, by what subtle intuition he could not guess; and had traced her origin back to a butcher and a cook! Well, what then? Was Josey the worse for that? Was it not America’s boast that the children of butchers, and bakers, and candlestick-makers should stand in the high places and give rule? Certainly it was, and his mother herself had said it was neither birth nor blood which made the lady. It was a nobleness from within asserting itself without, and stamping its impress upon its possessor. And had Josephine this inborn refinement and nobility, or had she not? That was the point which troubled the young man as he went out from his mother’s presence, and sought a little arbor in a retired part of the grounds where he would be free to think it out. With his head, which was aching terribly, bowed upon his hands, he went over all the past as connected with Josephine, detecting here and there many a word and act which, alas, went far toward proving that his mother’s estimate of her was not very wrong. But how did his mother divine it? Had women some secret method of reading each other unknown to the other sex. Could Beatrice read her, too, from that photograph, and what would Bee’s verdict be? He wished he knew; wished he could show it to her incidentally as the photograph of a mere acquaintance. And while he was thus thinking he heard in the distance Bee’s voice, and lifting up his head he saw her coming down the long walk gayly and airily, in her pretty white muslin dress, with a bit of pink coral in her ears and in the lace bow at her throat. One could see that she was a saucy, fun-loving, frolicsome girl, with opinions of her own, which sometimes startled the staid ones who walked year by year in the same rut, but she was every whit a lady, and looked it, too, as she came rapidly toward Everard, who found himself studying and criticising her as he had never criticised a woman before. She was not like Josephine, though wherein the difference consisted he could not tell. He only knew that the load at his heart was heavier than ever, and that he almost felt that in some way he was aggrieved by this young girl, who, when she saw him, hastened her steps and was soon at his side.
“Oh, here you are,” she said, “Rossie told me I should find you in the garden. I came to inquire after that broken head, for which I feel responsible. Why, Ned,” she continued, calling him by the old familiar name of his boyhood, “how white you are! I am afraid it was more serious than I supposed;” and she looked anxiously into his pale, worn face.
His head was aching terribly, but he would not acknowledge it. He only said he was a little tired, that the cut on his forehead was nothing, and would soon be well; then, making Beatrice sit down beside him, he began to ask her numberless questions about the people of Rothsay, especially the young ladies. Where was Sylvia Blackmer, and where was Annie Doane, and, by the way, where was Allie Beadle, that pretty little blonde, with the great blue eyes, who used to sing in the choir.
“By Jove, she was pretty,” he said, “except that her hair was a little too yellow. She looks so much like a girl east that some of the college boys rave about, only this girl, Miss Fleming, is the prettier of the two. I shouldn’t wonder if I had her photograph somewhere. She had a lot taken and gave me one. Yes, here it is,” he continued, after a feint of rummaging his pocket-book. “What do you think of her?” he asked, passing the picture to Beatrice, and feeling himself a monster of duplicity and deception.
Bee took the card, and looking at it a moment, said:
“Yes, she is very pretty; but you don’t want anything to do with that girl. She is not like you.”