Chapter XIII: Josephine’s Little Game

Was it any wonder that Byrd Barrington fell ill of nervous shock the day after the funeral?

Heaven alone knew all that the man had borne silently in his heart for years--his life overshadowed by his terrible vow.

Now all was ended; his father and Maisie dead, his brother impoverished and exiled. He had kept his vow, but the fulfilment was bitter on his lips.

How changed and still everything was at Castellane with those three gone--the stern, cold father, the gay, rollicking younger son, the lovely, happy-hearted girl.

In vain the sun shone, the flowers bloomed, the birds sang now. The pall of death and despair hung heavily, like a black cloud, over Castellane and its proud owner.

Outraged nature reeled before the successive shocks of fate, and finally gave way beneath the awful strain.

On the morning after the funeral he was found in bed by his man, burning up with fever, raving in delirium.

Poor Mrs. French! It seemed as if the good lady’s trials were never to have an ending.

In her way she, too, had been feeling very unhappy, and Byrd’s illness seemed like the last stroke of misfortune.

“With my brother and Maisie dead and my nephew gone off to be killed in the war, while Byrd is likely to die of brain-fever, what is to become of me?” she cried, wringing her hands and never reflecting, good soul that she was, that in the event of those two last deaths the Barrington wealth must all fall to her and the several heirs on her brother’s side.

She was a kind, simple soul, who had never shared her brother’s greed for gold, and, without thinking of any advantage accruing to herself by the deaths of her nephews, she bewailed their condition with honest grief.

The best physician was called in, and a trained nurse brought from Baltimore, so that Byrd Barrington began his struggle for life with the best care and attention, aided by a strong physique.

In spite of everything in his favor, it was a battle royal he waged with death.

Weeks slipped away while he lay in the grasp of the fever, so low that his end seemed but a question of time.

Meanwhile, the war with Spain was on, and Delmar Barrington had gone with his regiment to Cuba.

Mrs. French had not failed to write him the particulars of his young bride’s death, and afterward of his brother’s illness, but to neither letter did the young soldier make any reply. It was not natural he should grieve much over either piece of news. He had not loved his forsaken bride, nor yet his elder brother. Perhaps it was but natural he should feel a guilty sensation of relief at the news of his freedom from the fetters so hastily forged and so quickly regretted--and as to Byrd’s illness, well, he certainly owed him no solicitude, and if he died it would mean to his brother only good fortune--wealth, love, and happiness.

He did not write to his aunt, but he did to Josephine, reminding her of the words she had said that day of his fatal wedding, asking if she had truly meant them, and if she would stand by them, now that Maisie was dead.

The deceitful girl was caught in her own trap. She had no idea of marrying Delmar now that he was penniless, unless his brother died.

So she waited several weeks before she replied to the letter, and then wrote guardedly.

She begged him to excuse her delay in replying, as she and dear mama had been so busy helping poor Mrs. French nurse Mr. Barrington, who still lay at the point of death. How could her unkind Delmar doubt his poor Josephine? If anything ever came between their hearts again it would be mama’s fault, because she was always nagging her about loving a poor man, etc. But perhaps they ought not to be writing to each other like this just yet, and poor Maisie only dead a few weeks. Wasn’t it better just to correspond casually, as friends, until his period of mourning had expired?

All this was to gain time, while Barrington’s recovery remained doubtful, for Josephine, under her mother’s efficient tutelage, was daily at Castellane, on the excuse of helping Mrs. French, who really required no help, being surrounded by efficient servants and the most skilful of trained nurses; but she could not repel the sympathy that Josephine served up to her in sugar-coated doses, thereby gaining a firmer footing at Castellane.

If Byrd recovered, she hoped to work on him in his convalescence and win his heart. If he died, she was sure of Delmar. Thus she almost felt sure of success in her daring plans.

But as for helping to nurse the invalid back to health, Josephine privately hoped that he might surely die. Of the two, she preferred Delmar for a husband. His dark, dashing beauty was ineffaccably printed on her heart. If he only had Byrd’s money, she would be willing and glad to marry him to-morrow.

So the days came and went, April slipping into May and May into June before the crisis of Byrd’s illness was reached, and then death withdrew his shattered forces and left life conquerer on the field they had valiantly contested through long, long weeks of uncertainty and doubt.

Josephine wrote the news to Delmar. She knew he would be glad, she said, to know that his brother was convalescing, even though, of course, it made a difference in his own prospects.

When Delmar read her letter he ground between his white teeth a bitter oath. He scarcely realized till now how he had counted on Byrd’s death.

Fate having removed Maisie and struck his brother down on a bed of illness, he had dared to dream wild dreams of happiness again--dreams in which Josephine played the central figure always--coquette Josephine, on whom he could not count, he knew, without money to back him in his wooing.

He studied her letter closely. How evasive it was; how incomprehensible; every line guarded lest she should write one word too much, and ending artfully:

“Poor Maisie has been dead just two months now. I would not think I
was doing right corresponding with so recent a widower if it were not
we are such old friends!”

“She is playing the prude--trying to keep friends with me and angling at the same time for Byrd’s heart!” he muttered furiously, and in an access of rage tore the letter to fragments, vowing he would write to her no more.

“What is there left to me in life? Nothing! It is no matter if I fall in the ranks of war! Life holds nothing for me but disappointment, poverty, and blighted love. And I owe it all to his treachery--that cursed brother of mine!” he ground savagely between his teeth, his whole soul on fire with his sense of injury.

Josephine did not grieve over her unanswered letter. She felt the correspondence embarrassing, now that the master of Castellane was slowly convalescing and sure to hold his own.

“Poor Delmar! I am very sorry for him, and just as sorry for myself, for, even if I marry Byrd, I can never love him,” she said to herself, although none the less for that did she withhold her hand from trying to win the desperate game she was playing.

“I am bound to win,” she cried to herself desperately. “Mama says that papa is on the verge of failure, and that a rich husband is my only salvation. Some girls, if they had been in my place, loving Del so dearly, would never have let his brother get well. They would have dropped something into his medicine--ugh! what a wicked thought! But I couldn’t help thinking it, time and again, and--well, I’m glad they did not let me have the chance! That trained nurse was always on guard, and so my foolish temptation wrought no harm.”

She grew pale at her own thought, and hurried into Byrd’s room with the bunch of sweet June roses she had brought from Shirley.

“Good morning. How bright you look to-day!” she cried, as she tendered the flowers to the invalid, who sat at one of the windows, breathing in the sweetness of the rare June day.

He thanked her for the roses, and held them listlessly in his hand while he said:

“Yes, I feel stronger daily, and my physician has ordered me to White Sulphur Springs, to complete my cure.”

Josephine laughed out loud in happy excitement.

“Why, what a coincidence!” she cried. “Mama and I were just planning this morning to go to the White Sulphur Springs soon. So we can make a party, can we not?”

“I suppose so,” he replied carelessly, as if it were a matter of no importance.

“I would like to pinch him black and blue!” she thought viciously, but her lips smiled as she said:

“We should have missed you so if you had gone without us. It would not seem like home at Shirley with Castellane shut up and you away.”

“You are very kind,” he replied absently, laying the flowers down on the table, and seeming to forget that they would wither in the warm air. He was thinking that Castellane did not seem like home to him, either, with Maisie gone--lying out yonder under the grass and flowers in the Barrington plot.

Josephine was bitterly piqued. She almost fancied she could read his thoughts, and she cried out, with childish pique:

“I will go home; you are tired of me! You will never care for me as you did for Maisie!”