CHAPTER XXXI.OVER AT OAKWOOD.
Mr. Burton, of whom little has been said, was not a very frequent visitor at his own house in the country. He liked the dust, and heat, and noise of Wall street better than the green fields, and the tall mountains, and cool river, which encircled his country home in Oakwood. So the house on Madison Square was always kept open for him, and two or three servants retained to keep it, and there he slept, and ate his solitary meals, and lived his solitary life, while Mrs. Burton and Georgie were away enjoying the good which money and position can buy.
Occasionally, however, there came over him a desire for a change, and then he packed his valise, and took the cars or boat for Oakwood, usually surprising its inmates, who, never knowing when to look for him, were seldom expecting him. He had come up from New York thus suddenly the very morning after Georgie’s interview with Maude, and announced his intention of spending the entire day, and possibly remaining over until the morrow, provided there was anything worth staying for.
“Oh, there is! There’s the croquet party at Leighton Place this afternoon, and you’ll go, and I’ll have you on my side, because you are capital at a long shot,” Maude Somerton said, hanging about her uncle’s chair, and evincing far more delight at seeing him than his wife had done.
Mrs. Burton was a very good woman, and a very proper woman. She always kissed her husband when he came to Oakwood, and when he went away, and inquired how he was, and how the servants were getting on, and asked for three or five hundred dollars, as the case might be, and deferredto him in a highly respectful manner, pleasant to behold. But she never hurried out to meet him as Maude was wont to do, nor threw her arms around his neck, nor smoothed the thin hair from his tired brow, nor said how glad she was to have him there.
Maude loved him as the uncle of her mother and the only father she had ever known, and almost the only heart-beats of affection the business man had felt in many a year, were called up by the touch of Maude’s lips to his and the clinging of her soft fingers about his own. So, though he hated croquet and could see no sense in knocking about a few wooden balls, he consented to join the party; and then remembering that he had not seen Georgie yet, he asked where she was.
Georgie had a violent headache, and toast and tea had been carried to her room, and Mrs. Burton had been sitting with her when her husband came in, and reading her a letter received that morning from a man of high standing in Boston, who asked Mrs. Burton’s consent to address her daughter.
It was an eligible offer enough, and but for one obstacle Georgie would have thought twice before rejecting it, for she knew better than any one else how fast her youth was fleeting. That obstacle was the genuine liking she had for Roy, and the hope that she might yet be fortunate enough to win him.
Never until this morning had she felt so much like talking freely with her aunt of her future, and her growing fear lest, after all her years of waiting, Roy Leighton should eventually be lost to her.
Nervous and weak from the effects of last night’s interview with Maude, and the headache from which she was suffering, she could only bury her face in her pillow and cry when her aunt read the would-be-lover’s letter, and asked what answer she should return.
“I had hoped to see you settled at Leighton ere this, but Roy does not seem as much inclined that way as he did some time ago,” Mrs. Burton remarked.
And then the whole story came out, and Mrs. Burton understood just how passionately her niece loved Roy Leighton; and how galling to her pride it was to have had her name coupled with his so long, without any apparent result.
Mrs. Burton was roused, and resolved at once to strike a decisive blow. Roy had no right to play “fast and loose” with Georgie, as he certainly had done. Everybody supposed they were engaged, and he had given them reason to think so, and done enough to warrant Georgie in suing him for breach of promise if she would stoop so low as that, as of course she would not.
Mrs. Burton was not one to expose herself or family to public ridicule. What she did would be done quietly and with no chance of detection from the world, and she at once set herself to it, thinking it surely was a Providence which sent her lord home on that particular day. Kissing Georgie affectionately, and bidding her to think no more of the Boston match or of Roy either, as it was sure to come right, she sought her husband, and found him in the library with Maude, who had been telling him of her engagement with Jack Heyford, and whose face was suffused with blushes when her aunt came in.
Of course Mrs. Burton had to be told also, and she behaved very properly, and kissed Maude twice, and said she had done well; that Mr. Heyford, though poor, was a very estimable young man, and a brother of Georgie. This last was evidently his chief recommendation to the lady whose infatuation with regard to Georgie was something wonderful.
It was not Mrs. Burton’s way to skirt round a thing orto hesitate when a duty was to be performed; but on this occasion she did feel a little awkward, and after Maude was gone stood a moment uncertain how to begin. At last, as if it had just occurred to her, she said:
“Maude’s engagement reminds me to tell you that Georgie has just received through me an offer from that young Bigelow of Boston, whom you may remember having seen at Saratoga last summer.”
Mr. Burton was very anxious to resume the paper he had been reading, when Maude came asking an interview; but he was too thoroughly polite to do that with his wife standing there talking to him, and so he answered her:
“Maude first and Georgie next, hey? We are likely to be left alone, I see. Does he belong to the genuine Bigelow race?”
“Yes,—the genuine. You must remember him,—he drove those handsome bays, and his mother sat at our table, and said Georgie was the most beautiful girl at Saratoga.”
“Georgie better take him, then, by all means,—she is growing older every day,” was Mr. Burton’s reply, as he rattled his paper ominously, and glanced at the “stock” column.
“But Georgie don’t want him,” Mrs. Burton rejoined, “and she does want some one else,—some one, too, who has given her every reason to believe he intended making her his wife, and who ought to do so.”
Mr. Burton looked up inquiringly, and his wife continued:
“I mean Roy Leighton. His name has been associated with Georgie’s for years, and at times he has been very devoted to her, and almost at the point of a proposal, then some interruption would occur to prevent it. His mother’s heart is set upon it, and so, I must confess, is mine; while Georgie’s,—well, the poor girl is actually sick with suspenseand mortification, and I think it is time something was done.”
Mrs. Burton was considerably heated by this time, and took a seat near her husband, who asked what she proposed doing.
“Nothing myself, of course,—a woman’s lips are sealed; but you can and ought to move in the matter. As Georgie’s father, it is your right to ask what Roy’s intentions are, making Mr. Bigelow’s offer, of course, the reason for your questionings. You are going to the croquet party this afternoon,—you can, if you try, find an opportunity for speaking to Roy alone, and I want you to do so.”
At first Mr. Burton swore he wouldn’t. Roy Leighton knew what he was about, and if he wanted Georgie he would say so without being nudged on the subject. It was no way to do, and he shouldn’t do it.
This was his first reply; but after awhile, during which his spouse grew very earnest and eloquent, and red in the face, and called him “Freeman Burton,” he ceased to say he wouldn’t, and said instead, that “he’d think about it.”
And he did think about it all the morning, and the more he thought the more averse he grew to it, and the more, too, he knew he would have to do it, or never again know a moment’s peace when under the same roof with his wife.
“I wish to goodness I had staid in New York,—and I’ve half a mind to take the next train back,—upon my word I have; but then wife would follow me if I did, and hang on till I consented. She never gives up a thing she’s set her heart upon; and if she’s made up her mind that Roy must marry Georgie, he’s bound to do it, and I must be the ‘go-between.’ I believe I’ll drown myself!”
The poor man fairly groaned as he finished his soliloquy, and glanced from the window toward the river winding its way down the valley. His peace of mind for that day wasdestroyed, and not even Maude’s blandishments had power to brighten him up as he sat in a brown study, wondering “what the deuce he should say to Roy, and how he should begin.”
The party was not to assemble at Leighton until half-past three, and so he had a long time in which to arrange his thoughts,—longer indeed than he desired, and he was glad when at last the time came for him to start.
Maude, who seemed to be mistress of ceremonies, had been unusually quiet and reserved during the morning, but when at lunch her uncle formally announced to the guests at Oakwood her recent engagement with Jack, she became at once her old self, and entered heart and soul into the preparations for the party.
She had visited Georgie in her room, and kindly offered to bathe her head, or do anything which could in any way alleviate the pain.
Of the events of the last night not a word was said, and both felt that one page at least of that interview was turned forever. Maude, who had nothing to fear, was the more natural of the two, and talked freely of the croquet party at Leighton, and wished so much that Georgie could go.
“Perhaps you can,” she said, “if you keep very quiet. Your headaches do not usually last the entire day.”
But this was no ordinary case, and when the time came for the party to start, Georgie, though better, and able to sit up, declared herself too weak and nervous to dress for the occasion, and so they went without her, poor Mr. Burton lagging a little behind with his wife, who was very kindly instructing him as to the better way of opening the conversation with poor, unsuspicious Roy.