CHAPTER XLIX.MRS. DOCTOR BARRETT.
The guest was Mrs. Dr. Barrett, and she came one dreary day in November, unannounced and unexpected, her white puffs of hair just as smooth as ever, her mourning just as deep and her black eyes just as restless and eager as she walked up the avenue and looked curiously about her. She had accidentally stumbled upon Godfrey in New York while walking down Broadway, and recognizing him at once had seized him by the arm, and to his utter amazement, claimed him as her grandson by marriage. It was not in Godfrey’s nature to be other than polite to any woman, and so adroitly did Mrs. Barrett manage, that when at last he left her seated in the car which was to take her to Hampstead, he found himself out of pocket just ten dollars, which had gone for carriage hire, and lunch and stage fare, and ticket to Hampstead.
“But then a fellow must do something for hisstep-grandmother-in-law,” he said to Tom Barton, who chanced to be in the city, and to whom he related his experience, adding that he hardly thought the worthy woman was expected at Schuyler Hill.
Nor was she. But Mrs. Barrett was not one who cared particularly for the feelings of others. Regularly twice a yearsince her daughter’s marriage she had received money from Colonel Schuyler, and never in her life had she been more comfortable and free; but this did not satisfy her so long as she knew that across the sea was a luxurious home, which she felt she had a right to enjoy. It was more than six years now since her daughter’s marriage, and in all that time there had been no wish expressed to see her, no invitation for her to come, and she was tired of waiting and weary of her present idle life, while to do her justice there was in her heart a genuine desire to see her child’s face once more, and hear the sound of her voice. So, when her money came as usual in October, with a letter from Edith, who told of Emma’s marriage, and said that Julia was also gone, and she was alone with her husband, Arthur and Gertie, Mrs. Barrett’s decision was made, and giving up her pleasant rooms which she had occupied so long, she started for America, and arrived at Hampstead on a November day when the wind sighed drearily through the trees and rustled the dead leaves at her feet as she passed slowly up the avenue leading to Schuyler Hill. She had walked from the station, and taking the road which led past her old home, had paused a moment by the gate, looking at the pretty cottage and thinking of all that had happened since the day Abelard was carried through the gate up to the little cemetery she could see in the distance.
Edith was out that afternoon, and only Gertie was at home when Mrs. Barrett rang and asked first for Mrs. Schuyler and then for Miss Westbrooke.
“An old lady in black, with puffs of white hair,” the servant said to Gertie, who, without a thought as to who it could be, went down to meet the stranger.
“Oh, Mrs. Barrett,” she cried, when she caught sight of the well-remembered features. “I did not dream of seeing you. When did you come? Oh, Iamso glad, and so will Mrs. Schuyler be. I wish she were here.”
There was no question as to Gertie’s joy, and Mrs. Barrett wished she was as sure of as hearty a welcome from her own daughter as she received from this stranger, who was removing her bonnet and shawl and talking to her so fast.
“You must be very tired, and I’d take you to your room at once, only I hardly know which Mrs. Schuyler would wish you to have. The best, though, of course, as you are her mother. Yes, I think I’ll venture that. Come with me, please;” and Gertie led the way up the broad, long stairs to the guest chamber of the house, the one reserved for people like Mrs. Gen. Morton and Mrs. Gov. Strong, who sometimes visited at Schuyler Hill.
But Mrs. Barrett knew better than to take it.Shewas not so sure of Edith’s delight, while the colonel, she felt, would never forgive her if he found her in his best room. So she said to Gertie:
“I do not believe I had better take this, as I shall probably remain a long time, and a smaller, plainer chamber will do for me,—one near you, if I can have it,” she added, with an instinctive feeling that in Gertie she should find her strongest ally and friend.
“Come to my room, then, and wait. Mrs. Schuyler will soon be here,” Gertie said, and while she spoke, there was the sound of wheels, and looking through the blinds, Mrs. Barrett saw her daughter in her carriage coming up the avenue, and scanned her curiously.
“What a great lady she is, though,” she said, aloud, “and what a handsome house. I wonder if she blames me now?”
From having lived alone so much, Mrs. Barrett had acquired the habit of talking to herself, and she was startled when she met Gertie’s eyes fixed wonderingly upon her, and became aware that she was speaking her thoughts aloud.
“That’s she; that’s Edith; I hear her voice,” she said, beginning to tremble with excitement, and anticipation, and dread. “Would you mind telling her I’m here?” she added, feeling intuitively that if she was to have a shock Gertie would stand between her and the battery, and thus make it easier to bear.
“Certainly, I’ll tell her,” Gertie replied, while there began to dawn upon her a faint suspicion that possibly Mrs. Barrett might not be altogether welcome.
Edith had never voluntarily mentioned her mother in Gertie’s hearing, and when the latter spoke of her, as she sometimes did, she turned the conversation at once into another channel. This Gertie now remembered, and when she added to it the few words Mrs. Barrett had inadvertently let fall about her daughter’s blaming her, she felt sure there was some misunderstanding between mother and daughter; and while she stood firmly by Edith, as the one probably least in fault, she felt a great pity for the tired, worn woman, whose face was so much paler and thinner than when she last saw it, and she resolved to do the best for her she could.
“Oh, Mrs. Schuyler,” she said, meeting the lady at the foot of the stairs, and detaining her there while she spoke. “Wait a moment, please, before you go up. I have some good news for you, real good, too. And you will be so glad. I was, and she is nothing to me either. Guess who has come?”
Edith could not guess, though a thrill ran through her nerves, and without the slightest reason for it she felt the touch of the iron fingers at her throat, and her voice was a whisper as she asked:
“Who is it, Gertie?”
“Your mother, and she is so tired and pale, and is trembling all over to see you,” Gertie replied, surer than ever, from the expression of Edith’s face, that there was something unpleasant between them.
“My mother! My mother here, in this house,” Edith said, and her voice, which she had recovered, reached to the upper hall where her mother stood, hearing the words and feeling them like so many stabs, for she knew now she was not welcome.
Edith was not glad, though her feelings were less for herself than for her husband. Try as she might she had never been able quite to forgive her mother for the false position in which her falsehood had placed her, and she felt she could never trust her again. Still she was her mother, and nothing could undo that, and she was there in her house, unasked, it is true, but as a mother, she had, perhaps, a right to come; or would have had, if the husband had not expressed himself so decidedlyagainst it; and that was where Edith felt most keenly. What would Col. Schuyler say? Would he blame her? And would the result be estrangement and coldness between them? That something would come of it she was sure, and as if she already felt the shadow of thesomethingwhich would result from that visit of her mother’s, and threaten both her life and reason, she stood a moment unable to move while Gertie stared at her amazed, and the mother still stood waiting in the hall above. Recovering herself at last she went slowly up the stairs, and on toward her own room, where she naturally expected to find her visitor. But Mrs. Barrett was at the other end of the hall, and called to her: “Here, Edith; here I am; here’s your poor old mother.”
Then Edith turned and went swiftly to the spot, and, touched by the trembling voice and the tired, white face, which had grown so old, forgot everything for a moment, and winding her arms around her mother’s neck, kissed her lovingly, and then leading her to her own room, shut the door and sat down to look at her.
“You didn’t expect me, I know,” Mrs. Barrett began, in a half defiant, half apologetic tone; “and perhaps I did wrong to come; but I was so tired of living alone, with nothing to do but think from one day to another; and then I wanted so much to see you, in the handsome home I got for you. A mother has a right to visit her child, you know.”
This she said because of the expression on Edith’s face, which she could not understand any more than she could realize that the refined, elegant woman clad in velvet and ermine was her daughter,—her own flesh and blood. Edith had grown far away from her mother, and there was scarcely a sentiment in common between them. Still she wished to do right, and when her mother said what she did, she replied:
“Yes, certainly, you have a right; and I am——”
She did not get any further, for the voice which made her start as it said:
“Edith, my dear, whose is all that remarkable-looking baggage down in the hall which I stumbled over just now?”
Colonel Schuyler had ridden round to the stable, and giving his horse to the care of the groom, had entered the house through the side hall, where Mrs. Barrett’s numerous boxes and bundles had been deposited by the express man, who, as the lady was not in sight, made a little charge against the colonel for bringing it from the station. Mrs. Barrett believed in having things secure, and in addition to locks and hasps had tied her boxes with cords and ropes, which, with the marks of age and travel, gave them a “remarkable appearance” indeed, and the colonel stumbled over them and struck his ankle against the sharp corner of one of them, and he was suffering from the pain when he put the question to his wife, without a thought that the obnoxious baggage was part and parcel of his mother-in-law, who sat a little in the shadow, and whom he did not see till Edith said to him:
“Why, it must bemother’sbaggage. I did not know it was here. Howard, see! here’s mother!—come all the way from England!”
Edith was as near hysterical as she well could be and not break down entirely, while the colonel was Confounded, and amazed, and indignant, altogether. When he knocked his ankle against the box and saw the bits of rope, he had thought of the Lyles, and wondered if it could be they were claiming relationship so soon; and now it was even worse than the Lyles,—it was a mother-in-law whom he did not like, and to whom he had sent larger sums of money every year for the sake of keeping her where he wished her to remain. But she was here in his house, and had evidently come to stay, and he must not be rude to her for Edith’s sake; so he made a great effort to be civil, and said:
“Ah, yes,—your mother! Mrs. Barrett, how do you do? I am,—yes, I am sure I am very much,—yes,—taken by surprise. When did you come? You must be very tired. Edith, my dear, hadn’t you better show her to her room?”
He had made his speech, and, anxious to be rid of her, asked Edith to take her away; and Edith, who breathed more freely now that the worst was over, arose, and bidding her mother followher, conducted her to the small but pleasant room adjoining Gertie’s and communicating with it by means of a door. To Edith it seemed that her mother was safer near to Gertie, while Mrs. Barrett was delighted with the arrangement, especially as Gertie signified her willingness to have the door kept open when Mrs. Barrett liked.
It was known in the kitchen by this time that the soiled, jaded little woman with the queer-looking baggage was Mrs. Schuyler’s mother, and among the servants there was much talk and speculation concerning her. Had she come to stay? was she expected? was the colonel glad to see her? and what was she, anyway? Mrs. Tiffe knew all about the lodgers and the plain sewing, while the lower grade of servants knew a great deal more, and had among them a tradition that Mrs. Schuyler’s mother once sat under an umbrella in the streets of London, and sold gingerbread, and apples, and peanuts, and boot-lacings. And now she was here to be treated like Mrs. Schuyler herself, and John sniffed a little contemptuously when he went in to wait upon the family at dinner.
But there was nothing to sniff at in the highly respectable-looking woman, whom Gertie had helped to dress in her best black silk, with the widow’s cap set jauntily above the snow-white puffs of hair, and the air of quiet dignity which Mrs. Barrett knew so well how to assume, even when unusually embarrassed as she was now, with so much grandeur and display around her, and Edith mistress of it all. Truly, she did a good thing when she withheld the letter which would so surely have changed her daughter’s life, she thought, when she was alone in her room that night, and free to recall the chain of events which had resulted in her being there.
Edith, too, was thinking, and her thoughts kept her awake until long after midnight, when, as she was about falling away to sleep, she was startled by the sound of a groan, which seemed to come from her mother’s room, and a moment after Gertie knocked at her door, saying:
“Please, Mrs. Schuyler, I think Mrs. Barrett is very sick.”
In a moment Edith was out of bed and knotting the cord ofher dressing-gown with trembling hands, while the colonel, also roused from his first deep sleep, and remembering Mrs. Rogers, who had gotten Edith up at midnight, wondered to himself “why these people would always persist in being sick at such inopportune times, and send for Edith to help them.”
The colonel was very sleepy and a little inclined to be unreasonable, and, after Edith had gone to her mother, he lay awake for a long time listening to the sound of voices in Mrs. Barrett’s room, the shutting of doors, the footsteps in the hall, and the general commotion, until he began to wonder if for Edith’s sake he ought not to get up and see what was the matter.
Ere long, however, he heard Mrs. Tiffe say to one of the maids, as she passed his door, that it was nothing butcrampsand a good deal ofhypo; and thus reassured he composed himself to sleep, and did not waken, when, in the gray of the early morning, Edith crept shivering to his side.