CHAPTER XL.ROBERT MACPHERSON INTERVIEWS GERTIE.
Gertie was quite well the next day, and took her usual place at the table, and when breakfast was over and Godfrey and the young ladies had gone to ride, she strolled out to the little cemetery, which looked so cool and inviting with the white marble gleaming through the evergreens and climbing vines. Scarcely was she seated there when she heard footsteps near, and saw Robert Macpherson coming rapidly toward her.
“Excuse me,” he said, “I have followed you here because I wanted to be alone while I gave you something, and told you something which should have been told and given before, only,—” he paused a moment, looking both embarrassed and distressed, and then continued hastily: “I am a coward and a fool! Gertie, were you ever ashamed to tell who you were?”
“What do you mean?” Gertie asked, looking curiously at him.
“I mean that my blood is a little mixed,” he answered, “but I will explain that by and by, and now to my business. I think you have several times pressed flowers which grew on this grave” (pointing to Abelard’s), “and sent them to his mother.”
“Yes. I have pressed them for Mrs. Schuyler to send two or three times when she had not the leisure, and have written for her to the sweet-faced old lady of whom she once told me,” Gertie said, and Robert rejoined: “I saw that old lady when I was abroad the last time, and when she heard I was coming here she told me of Mrs. Schuyler, whom she had seen, and of the ‘bonnie young lassie’ who took such care of her boy’s grave, and sent her flowers from it, and she wrote you a letter, Gertie, because she said you seemed very near to her, and shesent you some ‘Cairngorms’ for a necklace and earrings. They have been in the family for years, and she intended them for her oldest grand-daughter, but she died, and there is no other, so she sent them to you, knowing that Mrs. Schuyler can have far more precious stones, though I think these very handsome; they are almost as fine as a topaz,—look,” and he handed her a box in which were several very fine Cairngorms of that variety found in Aberdeenshire.
“Oh, how pretty, how beautiful!” Gertie exclaimed, holding them to the light. “And she sent them to me? I do not understand it.”
“Read her letter and you will see how much she is interested in you,” Robert said, handing Gertie a large, unsealed letter, directed in a very peculiar hand, and which I will give in part, avoiding as much as possible the broad Scotch which made it so unintelligible that Robert was obliged himself to read it to Gertie before she clearly understood it.
“My bonnie lassie,” it began, “an old crone from over the sea sends you her blessing and prayers for the care you’ve tooken of my puir laddie’s grave, and the posys you’ve sent, and the letters you’ve writ with the same, and which fetches you very near to my heart and love, and so I send you these stones from Can-Gorrum, to wear round your bonny neck, and in yer pretty ears. My grandson, Robert, will tell you how his puir mother had them, and gie them to me when I was cauld, and hungry, and sair; but I dinna sell them for the siller, as she thinket I moight. I weatherit the storm, Jinnie and me, and kep ’em for her ain sweet bairn, Dolly, who died; and it’s not the loikes of Jinnie to wear sic as these, and her lassies bein’ all lads, I sends them to you with my blessin’, and duty to the beautiful Ladye Skiller, and so I greet you; God bless you, good-by.
“Mistress Dorathy Lyle,“by her grandson Robert.”
“Mistress Dorathy Lyle,“by her grandson Robert.”
“Mistress Dorathy Lyle,“by her grandson Robert.”
“Mistress Dorathy Lyle,
“by her grandson Robert.”
Gertie had listened intently until the point was reached where reference was made to my “grandson Robert,” when she started up, exclaiming:
“What?”
“Wait,” Robert said; “wait till I am through,” and, with a shaking voice, he finished the letter, laying a good deal of emphasis upon the last words, “by my grandson Robert.”
“Her grandson! What does she mean, Mr. Macpherson? Does she meanyou?” Gertie asked, and Robert replied:
“Yes, Gertie, she meansme. I am that woman’s grandchild, the son of her daughter, and I am going to tell you about it.”
He spoke rapidly, and Gertie had no chance to interrupt him as he went on.
“My mother was Dorothea Lyle, born in Alnwick, in the same thatched cottage Mrs. Schuyler has undoubtedly described to you. She was the eldest child and beautiful,—the Lyles are all good-looking, and mother was pre-eminently so, with a tolerable education, too, acquired from a lady in the neighborhood who was interested in her, and in whose house she was a nursery governess. It was there she met my father, the youngest son of an old Scotch family, which had a title in reversion and a good deal of money. It was a runaway match, which the proud Macphersons tried to overthrow. But they could not, and if they had, my father would have married his beautiful Dolly again. He was very fond of her, and taught her a great deal himself, so that my first recollections of her are of as fine a lady in speech and manner as any I have ever seen. I was born in Naples, where father tried to earn his living by painting, for he was a natural artist and we were very poor, as his family turned him off and would not receive him with his wife.
“It was about this time that Mrs. Lyle wrote to mother of sickness and destitution, and asked for money in her need, but alas, we had none, and mother sent these Cairngorms, which father bought for her when she was married, and which they had never been able to have set for herself. She thought her mother could sell them for bread, but she would not. Her fortunes brightened a little just then, and she kept the stones carefully, meaning them for my sister on her bridal day; but that day never came. I told you of my sister once, and that you lookedlike her. She was so beautiful, and I loved her so much, but she died when she was twelve years old, and the only picture we had of her was burned. Our fortunes were mending then. The Macpherson mother was dead, and the father sent us money, and when mother died, two years after Dora, father and I were invited to Glenthorpe, in the north of Scotland, and there father died, and by my grandfather’s will I came into possession, at his death, of a large sum of money, and now, by another death, I have a right, if I choose, to take my wife to Glenthorpe, should I ever have one, which I probably never shall, for the girl I love is too proud to marryme, knowing who I am.”
Gertie thought of Julia Schuyler, but she did not speak, and after a moment Robert continued:
“You wonder, perhaps, why I never told this before, and I blush to own that I was ashamed to do it and acknowledge that I was anything to this man by whose grave I stand, or anything to that family whom Mr. and Mrs. Schuyler and Godfrey have seen. I think people who have been very poor, and have come up from the great unwashed, have that feeling more than those to the manor born, and though I have tried to be kind to my mother’s friends so far as gifts are concerned, I have shrunk from coming in contact with them, especially the Aunt Nesbit, of whom it is no slander to say she is verycoarse.
“I went first to see them years ago, just before coming to America, and when I heard of their acquaintance with the Schuylers I hesitated about crossing the sea with Godfrey, but was finally persuaded and came to Hampstead where I have felt like a criminal every time allusion has been made to Abelard Lyle. Last March I went again to see them, and, coward that I am, did not tell them I had been here, only that I was coming, and then Mrs. Lyle, my grandmother, spoke of you, and asked me to bring the letter and the Cairngorms. I could not refuse, and knew then I must tell you everything, and I have, except, indeed, of my father’s family, which ranks among the first in Scotland. Glenthorpe is a beautiful place and will be my home in future, for I am the only male heir left to that estate.
“I have told you my story, Gertie, and will not ask you to keep my secret. The sooner it is divulged the better, perhaps, as I shall then know the worst there is to know, with regard to the girl I love. She will never marry a carpenter’s nephew; her father would not permit it either.”
He seemed to be waiting for a reply, and Gertie said at last:
“Col. Schuyler is very proud, and she is prouder than he, I think; but Glenthorpe may reconcile her to a great deal. You must tell her yourself, however. I shall not help you there.”
“But, Gertie, do you think she cares for me? You girls can judge of each other better than men can judge of you. Does she like me ever so little, think you?”
Remembering how, from the first, Julia had appropriated Robert to herself, seeming jealous and angry of his slightest attention to another, Gertie replied:
“If you should ask her to be your wife, and tell her nothing of the Lyles, I am sure she would say yes,” and with that answer Robert was obliged to be content, but there was a shadow on his face, which lasted for a week or more, and which Julia’s blandishments and coquetries had no power to remove. Indeed, he hardly seemed to notice them or her, and when Godfrey rallied him, and asked what was the matter, he answered that he was pining for Glenthorpe, and began to talk seriously of going back to Scotland; but to this Godfrey would not listen, and when Julia’s eyes looked at him pleadingly as she said: “Don’t go till fall, Mr. Macpherson;” while Emma, who seldom said much, expressed a strong desire for him to remain, he give up Glenthorpe for the summer, and stayed at Schuyler Hill.
Meantime Gertie’s present had been shown, and discussed, and admired by Edith, and Emma, and Godfrey, while Alice wondered if they wererealCairngorms, and Julia had said, in Robert’s hearing, that she’d like to seeherselfwearing stones which came from such a source, and the colonel had offered to send them to New York and have them set handsomely. But this Gertie would not permit. She had a plan in her mind which she hoped some day to carry out, and test Miss Julia’s unwillingness to “wear stones from such a source” as that white-hairedwoman over the sea, whom the proud beauty teasingly called “Gertie’s godmother.”