CHAPTER XXXIX.COL. SCHUYLER INTERVIEWS GERTIE.
Col. Schuyler was not quite satisfied with his interview with Godfrey, or his promise to keep his word and marry Alice Creighton. No doubt he meant to do it, but Godfrey was impulsive and hot-headed, and loved another with a depth and fervency which astonished the coldblooded man. All day he had been haunted with the flushed, excited face, and the thrilling voice which had said so passionately, “I love Gertie Westbrooke so much that I would rather live with her on a crust a day than share with another the splendors of the world.”
Perhaps during the long summer days, when they would be thrown together, he would forget his word of honor, and tell her of his love, and what then? She would listen, of course, unless some powerful obstacle were interposed to keep her from it, and that obstacle the colonel would interpose in the shape of Gertie’s own promise and sense of honor. He could trust her better than his son, and he meant to put her to the test, even if by doing it he wrung her heart cruelly, and awoke within her a sleeping passion, of whose existence she possibly did not know. And yet the colonel had no antipathy to Gertie; on the contrary, he liked her very much, and thought hers the most beautiful face he had ever seen, if he excepted Edith’s, which it in some respects resembled, and had Gertie’s forty pounds a year been forty thousand, or even half that amount, he would have given the preference to her, notwithstanding she had no family, or friends, or name. But the colonel held money high, and prized the luxuries which money brings, and did not wish to live without them. And money was not quite as plentiful with Col. Schuyler as it once had been. He had met with some heavy losses recently, and now that little Arthur had come, and other children might yet call him father, Godfrey’s fortune would be much less than he had hoped to make it, and so Godfreymust marry rich, and his love be put aside, and Gertie must help to do it, and be the means, if need be, of breaking her own and Godfrey’s heart.
“Gertie,” he said to her, very pleasantly and affably, when just before dark he found her watering a bed of geraniums near the south wing windows; “Gertie, can I see you alone a few moments? I have something to say to you.”
“Certainly,” she answered, and putting down her watering-pot, and taking off her garden gloves and hat, she followed him to the same room where, earlier in the day, Godfrey had declared his love for her, and where now she was to promise to reject that love should it ever be offered to her, for that was the colonel’s intention. He knew Gertie well enough to know that her word once passed she would keep it, though her heart broke in the keeping. But how should he commence? What should he say to the young girl whose blue eyes were confronting him so steadily?
“Gertie,” he began at last, “I brought you here to ask a favor of you; a great favor, which I hope you will grant.”
“Yes, Col. Schuyler, anything I can do for you, I will,” she said, and he went on:
“I have been kind to you, Gertie, have I not, ever since you first came to live with us?”
“Yes, very, very kind,” Gertie answered, wondering at the question, and his reason for reminding her of the kindness.
“I have tried to do you good,” he said, speaking with a little hesitancy now; “first for Mrs. Schuyler’s sake, and lastly because I liked you myself, and was greatly interested in you, and felt that you were no ordinary girl. I tell you this to let you know that the favor I have to ask has nothing to do with you personally. I am your friend, and will be so as long as I live, and provide for you at my death, or sooner if you marry, as you probably will,—girls like you always do, and I,—yes I——”
What was he going to say to her, Gertie wondered, a thought of Tom Barton crossing her mind? Was Col. Schuyler about to advocate his cause? Impossible, she said to herself, and waited impatiently for him to proceed. But she was not at allprepared for the abrupt question with which he finally plunged into the business.
“Gertie, has my son ever made love to you? That is, has he ever said or done anything which under some circumstances might give you reason to think him more interested in you than in another?”
There was a violent start, and Gertie’s face was crimson as she looked across the table at the man questioning her thus, while her thoughts leaped backward to the previous night and the eyes which had looked so tenderly upon her, the hands which had held hers so fast, and the voice so full of passion telling her of the lost letters and saying to her so sadly:
“If you had received them, Gertie,—if you had, I might, oh, who knows what might have been?”
All day long the remembrance of that interview had been in her mind, filling her with a delicious feeling of happiness that Godfrey did care for her, and bringing occasionally a pang of regret as she wondered what would have been had she received his letters. She had never dreamed of marriage in connection with Godfrey. She had always supposed that he belonged to Alice, and so she did not know the real nature of the emotions Godfrey’s language the previous night had called into being until Col. Schuyler tore the veil away and laid her heart before her, bare and palpitating with love for Godfrey, his son. What right had he to question her thus, and how could she answer him, she asked herself, as, with her hands locked together, and the love whose existence she had just discovered swelling and surging in her heart, now with throbs of anguish as she remembered Alice, and now with beats of joy as she thought of Godfrey, she sat motionless and silent, until the colonel spoke again:
“You do not answer me, and from that I infer he has made love to you. Was it last night? He told me he talked with you. Gertie, this must not be. Godfrey is bound to Alice. It was settled years ago in our families. It was his mother’s dying wish. It is the one thing I desire above all others. I have nothing against you, Gertie,—nothing; but Godfrey mustmarry Alice, and you must not let him break his word to her.”
He spoke rapidly, glancing only once at the face opposite, which was white as ashes, and he could see the slight figure sway a little from side to side, while a sound like a smothered sob broke on his ear, and then Gertie spoke, very low and very decidedly, but with no anger in her voice.
“Col. Schuyler, you need not fear for Godfrey. He never made love to me, though I think,—I believe it would be easy for me to tempt him to do so, but I shall not try. I will not be the serpent in your Eden, or sting the hand which has fed me. You have been too kind to me for that. I shall not prove ungrateful.”
“God bless you, Gertie. I was sure you would do right. It is more necessary to me than you know that Godfrey should marry Alice, and you have lifted a great burden from my heart. Godfrey is impulsive and hot-headed, and easily influenced, and seeing you every day might be won from his allegiance, especially as I do not think his whole heart is in this marriage; but it must be, and, Gertie, if he should come to you with words of love, promise me you will refuse to listen. I shall feel secure then. I can trust you, I know. Will you promise, Gertie?”
He held his hand toward the little, cold, white fingers resting on the table, and which crept slowly on till they lay in his grasp, while Gertie said:
“I promise, Colonel Schuyler; but,—but,—Godfrey,—I did not know before that I loved him so much until now that I am giving him up forever.”
Oh, what a piteous voice it was, and how the slight frame shook with suppressed sobs and tears while the colonel sat watching and wishing so much to comfort her. But he could not, and he let her cry on for a few moments, when he said:
“Gertie, your distress pains me greatly, but you are young and will outlive this fancy; and, Gertie, it has occurred to me that you may wish to go away for the summer while the young people are here, but I would rather you should stay. Mrs.Schuyler would be very unhappy without you, while Godfrey, I think, would be discontented and follow you, perhaps. It is better, on the whole, to stay: and Gertie, I need not ask that this interview shall be a secret between us. Not even my wife must know of it.”
Gertie hesitated a moment, and then replied:
“Colonel Schuyler, if a time ever comes when Godfrey speaks to me of love I shall refuse him, as I promised, but I shall tell him why. I must do that, you know!”
And with this Colonel Schuyler was obliged to be content. He had gained his point, and looked upon his son’s marriage with Alice as a sure thing, and he felt very kind and tender toward the young girl whose heart he had wrung so cruelly, and whose sad face smote him as he bade her good-night and blessed her for what she had promised.
The next morning Gertie was suffering from a severe headache and did not appear at breakfast or lunch, but she was better in the afternoon and was able to walk to Edith’s boudoir, where she lay upon the couch and had her dinner brought to her. As she was about to eat it a voice said at the door: “May I come in?” and, without waiting for an answer, Godfrey entered the room. He had heard from Edith that she was there, and declining the dessert, had excused himself from the table and gone directly to her.
“See, I have brought you a pond lily and a bunch of blue violets, because I remembered how much you used to like them. The violets are just the color of your eyes,” he said, as he held them so close to her that his hand touched her white cheek and sent the hot blood to it suddenly.
Then, drawing his chair close to her couch, he began to talk as easily and naturally as if the sight of her, so pale and languid and sweet, were not stirring within him a wild tornado of feeling which, had he known of the answering throb in her heart, might have burst its bonds and trampled down every right of the little lady coming down the hall ostensibly to call on Gertie, but really to know for herself if Godfrey was there with her!
“And so you are taking your dessert here? Really, MissWestbrooke, I shall object to this,” Alice said, as she entered the room, trying to speak playfully, though there was that in her eyes which warned Godfrey not to provoke her too far if he would avoid a scene. Spying the lily she snatched it up, exclaiming: “The very thing I was wanting for my hair! Where did it come from?”
Gertie glanced at Godfrey, who explained:
“It was the only one the boy had, or I would have bought more.”
“Oh, you brought it to her, then?” Alice said, dropping it as suddenly as if it had been plague-smitten, while Gertie said, entreatingly:
“Please keep it, Miss Creighton, I really do not care for it.”
“Neither do I, thank you;” and with a very low bow Alice left the room, waiting at the end of the hall till Godfrey saw fit to join her.
There was something of a quarrel between the two lovers, who walked down the garden to a retired summer-house, where, Godfrey said, they could have it out, bidding Alice “scratch and bite like a little cat, if she wanted to.”
“I don’t want to scratch nor bite, and I ain’t a little cat, but I do not think it fair in you to admire that girl so much, and take her lilies and violets and things, and you engaged to me,” Alice sobbed, while Godfrey, who knew that she really had just cause for complaint, tried to appease her, and promised not to offend again so far as Gertie was concerned.
“Though I do like her,” he said, “and always shall; but I intend to be loyal to you, Allie, and mean to make you happy, and I want you to remember that, and not flare up every time I happen to look at a girl.”
And Alice promised that she would not, and took his proffered kiss of reconciliation very graciously, and when, in the early dusk of the warm summer night, I walked up to the Hill to call on the young ladies, I found the engaged pair sitting by themselves at the far end of the piazza, Alice with her hand clasping Godfrey’s arm, while she told him something to which he seemedto listen in a preoccupied kind of way, as if he hardly knew what she was saying to him.