CHAPTER XXVII.AFTER DINNER.
They had some music, Alice and Julia playing a duet, and then the latter sang and Godfrey turned the leaves for her and thought how dreadfully she screeched, and longed for her to finish and let Edith take her place. But Edith could not sing that night. There were too many memories of the past crowding into her mind, and at the very thought of singing she felt the iron hand touch her throat as if in warning.
“Thank you, Godfrey; some other time I shall be glad to sing, but not to-night. I am too tired, and if I may be excused, I will go to my room very soon,” she said, in reply to Godfrey’s urgent solicitation for a song.
She was very pale, and her husband came to her aid and said:
“Yes, Godfrey, Mrs. Schuyler must be excused; she is very weary, I see, and needs to rest. Shall I take you upstairs?”
He turned to Edith as he said the last words, and offeringher his arm led her from the room, saying as he bade the ladies good-night that he should not return again that evening, as he had some letters and papers to look over in his reading room. Thus left to themselves the young people were free to talk, and Godfrey threw down the gauntlet by asking his aunt what she thought of his new mother.
“Isn’t she splendid?” he said. “And did you ever see a finer form than hers?”
“She is much better than I expected, and I am glad for the sake of my sister’s memory; had she been at all like your wicked insinuations I certainly should have died with grief.”
And then there followed another criticism upon Edith’s face, and form, and manners, and style, and antecedents,—the critics lingering longest over the latter, and insisting that Godfrey should be truthful and tell them what he knew. But Godfrey didn’t know anything except that she had once been a governess and was afterward the companion of their Aunt Sinclair, who esteemed her highly and was anxious for the match.
“Has she no relatives? Who are the Lyles?” Julia asked, and Godfrey answered:
“I don’t know who the Lyles are, I am sure. Her mother has been married twice, and is now a Mrs. Barrett, who takes lodgers in London,—a highly respectable looking woman, with puffs of gray hair. She is not at all like her daughter, and I don’t believe father fancied her much. That’s all I know; but I’ll tell you where you can get any information you wish concerning your step-grandmother. That Mrs. Rogers at the cottage,—my tenant, you know,—lodged with her for some months. Cultivate her a spell if you are anxious about Mrs. Schuyler’s pedigree.”
“Oh, yes,” Alice said; “we have cultivated her, and she is to do some plain sewing for me. Emma and I went down there yesterday and waited till she came home with a jug of molasses in one hand and a basket of eggs in the other, and that red-haired girl, her daughter, asked me to render some English into French for her. The idea of such people studying French! Girls, Godfrey thinks she’s a beauty; and don’tyou believe, she presumed to lecture him for slang on the ship, and he kissed her!”
“Kissed whom,—Mrs. Rogers?” Julia asked in dismay, while Alice replied:
“No, the daughter, Gertie Rogers—the girl I told you about when I came home last night. She wears her hair down her back, and braids it up in tags at night and lets it out in the morning, to give it that wavy, rippling appearance.”
“No, she doesn’t!” Godfrey exclaimed. “It’s a natural wave. I’ll swear to that; for I saw her once brought on deck early in the morning, as sick as she could be, and I tell you it was just the same; and it is not red, either,—it is a beautiful auburn, with a shade of gold in it; and, as father says, she has the most remarkable face, for a child, that I ever saw.”
“Really, Godfrey, you are quite her champion. You’ll want us to invite her here next,” Julia said, while Emma ventured to remark:
“Anyway, she is beautiful; and do you know, I think there is a look in her face or eyes like Mrs. Schuyler. I thought of it to-night when we were at dinner.”
“That’s it!” Godfrey exclaimed. “I’ve tried and tried to think who Gertie was like. It’s Edith. There’s a resemblance; only Gertie will be the handsomer of the two when she is grown.”
“My dears,” Miss Rossiter began, in the tone she always assumed when displeased or grieved; “it seems to me your conversation is not very elevating. What possible interest can you feel in those people at the cottage? There can be nothing in common between us, even if they have the furniture of your poor mother’s room. Godfrey, I was very much hurt when you wrote Perry to take dear Emily’s bedstead and bureau down there. Suppose they were old, they were very dear to me, and I would gladly have had them in my room. The bedstead is much handsomer than the one I’m sleeping on now, and should be sacred to us because your mother and my sister died on it.”
Miss Rossiter’s handkerchief was at her eyes, and her voicetrembled as she spoke. But Godfrey did not reply at once, and when he did, he said:
“I did not suppose you’d care to have that bedstead in your room, or you should have had it. Perhaps I can manage it yet.”
“No, no, I beg; let it be as it is. I can bear it,” Miss Rossiter said, with the air of a martyr, while all the time she knew that no amount of money could induce her to sleep on a bed where she had seen a person die.
She would not confess that she was superstitious, but she was, and until this moment, when the desire to find fault with something was strong within her, it had never occurred to her that she wanted the furniture for her own use. She merely did not wish it removed for her sister’s successor. If it had been good enough for a Rossiter it surely was good enough for Edith Lyle, and in addition to all this, it hurt her to know that common people like Mrs. Rogers and her daughter were to stretch their democratic bodies on a bed where Emily’s aristocratic limbs had once reposed. With her handkerchief to her eyes there fell a chill on the spirits of the young people, who sat silent until Godfrey said, suddenly:
“By the way, girls, I’ve not told you a word about Bob Macpherson, the artist. I meant to bring him up with me, but he was so much absorbed in the galleries and studios that he decided to wait a little. You are sure to like him.”
“Where did you pick him up?” Julia asked; and Godfrey replied:
“In Rome. I wrote about it at the time. He is an artist from pure love of it rather than necessity, for he has money enough and comes of a good Scotch family.”
“Didn’t you write us there was a title in it?” Julia asked.
“Yes; but several removes from Bob, though. I fancied that his father married beneath him, for Bob never says a word about his friends on the maternal side. He went to see them, though, up in Scotland somewhere, and when he came to Oakwood he was awful blue and silent for days, and doubtful about coming to America, but he got over that. He wants to paintsome of our American views, and surely he could not select a better point on the Hudson than Hampstead. I hope he will come soon. I’m lost without him.”
What Godfrey liked he liked heartily, and he went on lauding Robert Macpherson until his hearers grew tired of it and asked him to talk of something else.
Meantime Edith had gone to her room, where her husband left her while he looked over the letters and documents which had been accumulating for a week or more. As he went out Norah came in to attend her mistress.
“Get me my dressing-gown and brushes, and then you can go. I shall not need you any more. I am going to sit up awhile,” Edith said; and after her maid was gone she arose, and walking to the long mirror, stood looking at the image it revealed of a beautiful lady, clad in heavy silk, with jewels on neck and arms and in her shining hair.
And then her thoughts went backward to the time, years before, when a strange vision had come to her, of herself as she was now clad in costly array, and the mistress of Schuyler Hill. Then her heart had been breaking with a sense of desolation and dread; now it was swelling with pride and happiness, even though that happiness was mingled with regret when she remembered the past and the dead youth whose grave was just across the lawn where the monument was showing so plainly in the moonlight.
And yet she was very happy, and had been so ever since her feet touched the soil of America. She had seen everything in New York which was worth seeing at that season of the year,—had driven with her husband and with Godfrey and with Robert Macpherson in the park, and had been pointed out as the handsomest woman there. She had shopped at Arnold’s and Stewart’s and Tiffany’s, and lunched at Delmonico’s, and dined at Mr. Calvert’s, and stood on the very spot her feet had touched that day when Abelard was made her husband. But no one had suspected her in the least, and Mrs. Calvert, who was a good-natured little woman, had accepted her in good faith as an entire stranger to America and its ways, and patronized her accordingly.
And it was just here that Edith’s conscience gave her a great deal of trouble. When the Calverts and her husband and Godfrey talked to her of America as of a place wholly new to her, she felt herself a miserable impostor, and there was at first a dull pain in her heart as she thought of living on and on with this hidden secret, as she had made up her mind to do.
But gradually this feeling began to give way, and when at last she left New York and started for her country home, she was very happy, even though there was underlying her happiness a feeling of unrest, a feverish desire to see the cottage once more and the grave on the hill, where the evergreens were growing.
How different was this arrival at Hampstead from what the first had been. Then Abelard had stood upon the platform in his working dress, for he had not had time to change it, and with her mother she had walked up the long hill and round through Mountain Avenue to the cottage which was to be their home. Now in place of Abelard, a liveried coachman stood waiting for her, while another servant in livery handed her to the carriage, and both bowed respectfully when their master said:
“The air is so pure and the day so fine I think we will take the longest route home, and drive through Mountain Avenue.”
That was the road which led straight by the cottage door, and Edith’s heart had beaten rapidly as they drew near the turn in the street which would bring the cottage in view, and when at last she saw it, the blood surged swiftly through her heart, and her hands were clasped tightly together as she looked eagerly at what had once been her home. It was not greatly changed, except that it had recently been repainted, while the creeper, which when she lived there had just commenced fastening its little fibrous fingers to the clapboards, now covered two sides of it entirely, and made its present name, Vine Cottage, very appropriate.
There was her old room, and the window was open just as it used to be, and the honeysuckle was framed around it, and an open book was lying in it, together with a child’s work-box. It had had an occupant then, and who, she asked herself, forgettingMary Rogers, until her eye caught sight of Gertie Westbrooke, whose bouquet of daisies and forget-me-nots fell directly in her lap and seemed a welcome to her. Then she remembered having heard from Godfrey that Mrs. Rogers was to be his tenant, and she knew this child with the bright flowing hair and eager face must be the same whose “God bless you” had been the only “God bless you” given her at her bridal.
“It is very strange,” she thought, “that this little unknown child should always cross my path with flowers and blessings and welcomes;” and she turned her head to look again at the two figures gazing after her.
If a thought that the elder of the two was Ettie Armstrong crossed her mind, I cannot tell. Probably not, as she was thinking of the cottage and the child and the bouquet, which she put in water as soon as the meeting with her husband’s family was over, and she was alone with Norah in her room, and as she turned from the window and saw them she unlocked a square ebony box, which her maid, in unpacking, had taken from her trunk. Inside this was another box, a little old-fashioned thing of painted wood, with Chinese figures on it. Abelard had bought it for her on Sixth Avenue, and she had made it a receptacle for her first wedding ring, and a lock of Abelard’s hair and the blood-stained rose which had been found next to his heart and brought her by Phebe Young. There, too, as a safe repository, she had put Gertie’s first bouquet, with the “God bless you” in it, and there she now put the second one, her welcome to Hampstead. Why she put these flowers with the sacred mementoes of Abelard she did not know, nor did she question her motive, but said to herself, “I must make that little girl’s acquaintance;” and then, donning her white dressing-gown she went to the window, from which a view of the cottage could be had, with the moonlight falling on it, just as it used to fall years ago when she was a poor obscure girl, with no thought that she should one day stand as she was standing now, the mistress of Schuyler Hill, with every possible luxury at her command. And there, too, in her old room was the glimmer of a lamp, and a little figure moved occasionally before the open window,Gertie, most probably, preparing for bed, for after a little the light disappeared, and Edith found herself wondering if the child was kneeling by her bedside and saying her prayer.
“Yes, I am sure she is praying,” she thought, “and perhaps she prays for me. I wish she would, for unless she does there is no one to pray for me now in all the wide, wide world.”
Oh! how unspeakably terrible was that thought: “Nobody to pray for me in all the wide, wide world.”
She had lost faith in her mother’s prayers, and, as a consequence, her own heart and feelings had insensibly grown harder. But they were softening now, and as she stood looking into the moonlight, she clasped her hands involuntarily, and whispered to herself:
“Oh, Father in heaven, help me from this hour to be a better woman than ever I’ve been before.”
There was a step behind her, and in a moment her husband’s arm stole round her waist, and her husband’s voice said, as playfully as Colonel Schuyler could say:
“Ah! Edith, my darling, moon-gazing, are you? What do you think of the view, and your new home, and can you be happy in it with me?”
Colonel Schuyler’s love and admiration for his wife had been steadily increasing ever since the morning when he first called her his own, and if there had been in his mind a lingering doubt as to the wisdom of his choice, it had been dispelled by the sight of her in her evening dress, sitting at his table, and performing her duties so gracefully and in a quiet, matter of course way, as if she had sat there all her life, with that array of silver, and cut glass, and flowers before her.
How fair, and self-possessed, and ladylike she was, and how the pink coral and the soft lace trimmings of her gray dress became her, and how proud he was of her, as he watched her in the drawing-room, talking to his daughters and Miss Creighton, who, compared with her, lost fearfully in the balance of beauty, and grace, and culture.
Usually in the olden days, when Emily trailed her silken robes over the costly carpets, or reclined in her easy-chair, orreposed upon the couch, he had found the atmosphere of the parlors a little tiresome, and had seized the earliest opportunity for stealing away to his private room. But now it was different, and only the knowing that his letters must be read had availed to take him from Edith’s side; and even while he sat reading them his thoughts were with her continually, and hurrying through them as soon as possible he joined her as we have seen. Pausing a moment in the door he looked admiringly at her as she stood in the deep window with her white dressing-gown falling in graceful folds around her, and her brown hair rippling over her shoulders. She was beautiful, and she was his, and he loved her, and fain would know if she was happy, so he asked her the question, “What do you think of your new home, and can you be happy in it with me?”
“Yes, Howard, very happy;” and Edith’s hand stole into his, and her fair head drooped upon his shoulder as she continued: “It is a beautiful place, and I am glad you brought me to it, that when you came in just now and surprised me as you did, I was thanking God for it, and asking Him to make me worthy of it. Howard, do you ever pray?”
It was a singular question, and it sent the hot blood quickly to Colonel Schuyler’s face, while a feeling of shame and remorse took possession of him. Years ago he had with other young men of his age been confirmed as a matter of course, and because it was the right thing to do, but he had never reaped any benefits from the confirmation, or given heed to that without which the laying on of hands is of no avail. When Emily died, and he saw what religion could do for her, he set about trying to work out his salvation himself, and by acts alone. Every feast and fast day was for a time observed, while he gave largely to the church and the poor, and insisted that his daughter should be confirmed, and expressed a wish that Godfrey would do so, too. But Godfrey answered “No.” He was not going to renounce the world, the flesh and the devil, he said, when he liked them first-rate, and should lie if he said he didn’t! So Godfrey was given up, but the colonel saw his daughters confirmed, and encouraged them in their Sunday-school teaching,and never allowed them to read light literature on Sunday if he knew it. He asked a blessing at the table, the shortest he could find; kept the Sabbath day strictly, so far as dinners, and drives, and company were concerned: but there was nothing real about it, nothing which in the other world would have weighed a straw with Him through whom alone we go to God, and when Edith startled him with the question, “Do you ever pray?” he answered her truthfully, “Not often, no.”
“Then let us begin now,” and Edith held his hand in both hers. “I’ve never prayed either as I ought, but I’ve been thinking about it, and I’ve so much to be thankful for, and need help so much to make me what I should be. Let us begin together, to-night.”
He could not resist her, and there in the moonlight, with their faces toward Emily’s grave and Abelard s, they knelt down side by side; and though the Lord’s Prayer was all they said, it was praying just the same, and God heard and blessed them, for He knew the wish there was in their hearts, and sent to Edith at least the peace she so desired. And so, with a great happiness and feeling of rest and quiet in her heart, she laid her head upon her pillow, and sleep fell softly upon her in her new home at Schuyler Hill.