American fiction -- 19th century; Dime novels; Popular literature
“No, not that; I can’t part with that,” he groaned; and then he
remembered his best suit of clothes, which had cost nearly a hundred
dollars, and a great many hard words from his father. He could sell
these in Cincinnati; he had just money enough to go there and back, and
he would do it the next day, and make some excuse for taking a valise,
and no one need be the wiser. That was the very best thing he could do,
and comforted with this decision he crept shivering to bed just as the
clock was striking the hour of eleven.
Breakfast waited a long time for him the next morning, and when she saw
how impatient the judge was growing, Rosamond went to his door and
knocked loudly upon it, but received no answer, except a faint sound
like a moan of pain, which frightened her, and sent her at once to the
judge, who went himself to his son’s room. Everard was not asleep, nor
did he look as if he had ever slept, with his blood-shot, wide-open eyes
rolling restlessly in his head, which moved from side to side as if in
great distress. He did not know his father; he did not know anybody; and
said that he was not sick, when the doctor came, and he would not be
blistered and he wouldn’t be bled; he must get up and have his
clothes,—his best ones,—and he made Rossie bring them to him and fold
them up and put them in his satchel, which he kept upon his bed all
during the two weeks when he lay raving with delirium and burning with
fever induced by the cut on his head, and aggravated by the bleeding and
blistering which he had without stint. Rossie was the nurse who staid
constantly with him, and who alone could quiet him when he was
determined to get up and sell his clothes. This was the burden of his
talk.
“I must sell them and get the money,” he would say,—but, with a singular
kind of cunning common to crazy people, he never said money before his
father. It was only to Rosamond that he talked of that, and once, when
she sat alone with him, he said:
“Don’t let the governor know, for your life.”
“No, I won’t; you can trust me,” she replied; then, while she bathed his
throbbing head, she asked: “Why do you want the money, Mr. Everard? What
will you do with it?”
“Send it to _Joe_,” he said. “Do you know Joe?”
Rossie didn’t know Joe, and she innocently asked:
“Who is he?”
“Who is he?” Everard repeated: “ha, ha! that’s a good joke. _He_,—Joe
would enjoy that; _he_ is a splendid fellow, I tell you.”
“And you owe him?” Rossie asked, her heart sinking like lead at his
prompt reply.
“Yes, that’s it; you’ve hit the nail. I owe him and I must pay, and
that’s why I sell my clothes. I owe him money,—_him_,—that’s capital.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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