“And now, my darling husband, I put both my arms around your neck and kiss you many, many times, and ask you not to be angry with me, but write to me soon, and send the money, if possible.
“Truly, lovingly, faithfully, your wife, Joe.”
“I haven’t told more than three falsehoods,” Josey said to herself, as she read the letter over. “I said I hoped his mother would recover, and that I knew I should love her, and that I wanted the money to pay for music and French, when, in fact, I want more a silk dress in two shades of brown. And he will send it, too. He’ll manage to get it from his father or mother, and I may as well drop in at Burt’s and look at the silk this afternoon, on my way to post this letter.”
She did drop in at Burt’s and looked at the silk, and saw another piece, more desirable every way, and fifty cents more a yard. And from looking she grew to coveting, and was sorry that she had not asked for seventy-five instead of fifty dollars, as the one would be as likely to be forthcoming as the other. Once she thought to open her letter and add a P. S. to it, but finally decided to wait and write again for the extra twenty-five. The merchant would reserve the silk for her a week or more, he said, and picturing to herself how she should look in the two shades of brown, Josey tripped off to the post-office, where she deposited the letter, which Everard found upon his table on his return from his mother’s grave. It was the silk which in Josey’s mind was the most desirable, but the music and the French must be had as well, and so she called upon a Mrs. Herring, who gave music lessons in the town, and proposed that she should have two lessons a week, with the use of piano, and that as compensation the lady’s washing, and that of her little girl, should be done by sister Agnes, who was represented as the instigator of the plan. As the arrangement was better for the lady than for Josey, the bargain was closed at once, and Mrs. J. E. Forrest took her first lesson that very afternoon, showing such an aptitude and eagerness to learn that her teacher assured her of quick and brilliant success as a performer. The French was managed in much the same way, and paid for in plain sewing, which Josey, who was handy and neat with her needle, undertook herself, instead of putting it upon her mother or poor Agnes, who, on the Monday following, saw, with dismay, the basket piled high with extra linen, which she was to wash and iron. There was a weary sigh from the heavily-burdened woman, and then she took up this added task without a single protest, and scrubbed, and toiled, and sweat, that Josey might have the accomplishments which were to fit her to be mistress of the Forrest House.
Every day Josey passed the shop window at Burt’s, and stopped to admire the silk, and at last fell into the trap laid for her by the scheming merchant, who told her that three other ladies had been looking at it with a view to purchase, and she’d better decide to take it at once if she really wanted it; so she took it, and wrote to Everard that night, asking why he did not send the fifty dollars, and asking him to increase it with twenty-five more.
CHAPTER VIII.
EVERARD.
He was so giddy, and sick, and faint, when he returned to the house from his mother’s grave, that he had scarcely strength to reach his room, where the first object which caught his eye was Josephine’s letter upon the table. Very eagerly he caught it up, and breaking the seal, began to read it, his pulse quickening and his heart beating rapidly as he thought, “She would be so sorry for me if she knew.”
He was so heart-sore and wretched in his bereavement, and he wanted the sympathy of some one,—wanted to be petted, as his mother had always petted him in all his griefs, and as she would never pet him again. She was dead, and his heart went out with a great yearning after his young wife, as the proper person to comfort and soothe him now. Had she been there he would have declared her his in the face of all the world, and laying his aching head in her lap would have sobbed out his sorrow. But she was far away, and he was reading her letter, which did not give him much satisfaction from the very first. There was an eagerness to assure him that the marriage was valid, and he was glad, of course, that it was so, and could not blame her for chafing against the secrecy which they must for a time maintain; but what was this request for fifty dollars,—this hint that she had a right to ask support from him? In all his dread of the evils involved in a secret marriage he had never dreamed that she would ask him so soon for fifty dollars, when he had not five in the world, and but for Rosamond’s generous forethought in sending him the ten he would have been obliged to borrow to get home. Fifty dollars! It seemed to the young man like a fabulous sum, which he could never procure. For how was he to do it? He had told his father distinctly that he was free from debt, that he did not owe a dollar, and if he should go to him now with a request for fifty dollars what would he say? It made Everard shiver just to think of confronting his stern father with that demand. The thing was impossible. “I can’t do it,” he said; and then, in his despair, it occurred to him that Josey had no right to make this demand upon him so soon; she might have known he could only meet it by asking his father, which was sure to bring a fearful storm about his head. It was not modest, it was not nice in her, it was not womanly; Bee would never have done it, Rossie would never have done it; but they were different—and there came back to him the remembrance of what his mother had said, and with it a great horror lest Josephine might really lack that innate refinement which marks a true lady. But he would not be disloyal to her even in thought; she was his wife, and she had a right to look to him for support when she could have nothing else. She could not take his name, she could not have his society, and he was a brute to feel annoyed because she asked him for money with which to fit herself for his wife. “She is to be commended for it,” he thought. “I wish her to be accomplished when I present her to Bee, who is such a splendid performer, and jabbers French like a native. Oh, if I had the money,” he continued, feeling as by a revelation that Josephine would never cease her importunings until she had what she wanted.
But how should he get it? Could he work at something and earn it, or could he sell his watch, his mother’s gift when he was eighteen?